The Providers

Last week was insanely busy for Jonathan and I. So busy, in fact, that we never seemed to have time to go to the grocery store. There was just a lot going on and the end of each day we found ourselves looking at each other saying, "what do you want to do about dinner?" After a mutual agreement of "I don't know", I would mentally resign myself to the fact that dinner might entail a scavenger hunt of whatever was in our pantry. Toast, tuna fish, cheese and crackers, beans, whatever. I was too tired to be picky. At 5:30, or 6:00 most days all I want to do is sit down, sip a martini, light up a smoke and zone out my brain. The whole dinner conundrum was just too much. Meanwhile, Jonathan's energy works in the exact opposite way that mine does. He's pretty mellow all day and as night falls, he begins to ramp up. Thus, he would begin his barrage of questions.
"What do you want for dinner?"
"Seriously Michele, we don't have any food. What should we do about it?"
"Do you want to go to the store?"
"Pizza, Chinese, bbq?"
"Michele, Michele? Stop ignoring me! What do you want to do about food??!!"

We went through the same routine four nights in a row. Each of these nights at around 8:30 Jonathan would be able to take it no longer. Cupboards were flung open, ingredients recited, jars were opened, the frying pan sizzled. And, voila! A healthy, delicious dinner was created through the ingenuity of master chef, Jonathan. My Ghandi-esque resistance to making a decision about what to eat served me well. We both went to bed sated and promising to go to the grocery store the next day.

During this whole grocery store boycott, Marbles decided that we apparently needed help with garnering our meals. One morning she brought me a buck toothed field mouse and left him by my bed. Sighing, I got a paper towel and hucked the small carcass into the bushes along the edge of the road. Damn cats, I muttered. The next morning I cautiously peered at the area beside my bed before getting up. No carcass. Phew. I was making coffee when Jonathan called to me. "Michele, you need to come here and bring some paper towels!" I crept into the bedroom to see Jonathan pointing at the floor beside his bedside. There was Marbles looking intensely smug, sitting next to a rather large dead rabbit. "How come she brings you a big bunny and I get a paltry fieldmouse with a bad overbite?" I asked Jonathan.
"You know she likes me best," he replied. "Now get this thing out of here. I actually stepped on it when I got up!"
I felt badly as I got rid of the bunny carcass. It was all too much, this carnage. I love Marbles, but she's a blood thirsty serial killer. There is a reason that she has a black heart clearly displayed in her calico hairdo.
This morning there was no dead animal in our bedroom. Thank God. However, while I was doing the barn chores, there was a great ruckus outside the front of the barn. Both dogs were peering into the enormous tuft of decorative grass in the small garden there. "What the hell!" I barked at them. They looked sheepish as I poked around in the grass, but I didn't see anything so I went back to work. About a half hour later I heard Remy growling, very loudly. I marched out front and there was Becks behind the huge tuft of grass with Remy standing in front of him. I screamed at both of them to move and got my pitchfork. Gingerly, I moved the sides of the grass to and fro with the tines of my fork. Mustering my courage I shifted the back part of the tuft and there on the ground was a gigantic dead woodchuck. I won't write down what I then said to my dogs and I only hope the family that lives in the house next to us was still asleep and didn't get to hear my curse filled tirade (on a Sunday morning, no less-they can pray for me in church at least if they did). I've never known Remy to kill anything. He's always been such a gentle soul. Was he sick of listening to Jonathan and I argue about dinner? Had he taken matters into his own paws? Well, even if he had being dogs, both he and Becks lost control and had begun eating the damned thing themselves. DISGUSTING. Sputtering and spitting out expletives, I picked the dead wood chuck up with my fork and deposited him/her into the manure dumpster.

That's it. I can't take it anymore. I've been having visions of Remy coming home with a six point buck. I'm going to the freaking grocery store. Now.