For the love of grapefruit

Just when I think I'm nearing the end of my rope, believing she would be so much happier, so much better off, housed with a human pack whose individuals do not come and go so frequently without her, and does not confuse her with mixed messages and conflicting commands, Zenzi gives me one good day -- one really good day, and then a not terrible day, and then a pretty good day -- and I think, "maybe, finally, we've got the meds right," or "maybe it's been me and my negativity all along."

Well.

So.

You'd think a holistic guy wouldn't offer his patients candy, but Witchdoctor usually keeps a tin of Altoids on his reception counter. Right there, for the taking, next to a dispenser of zinc & C chewables, is a tin of peppermint Altoids: Serving Size: 3 mints (2g), Calories per serving: 10, Total Fat: 0g, Cholesterol: 0mg, Sodium: 0mg, Total Carbohydrate: 2g, Sugars: 2g, Protein: 0g. Altoids, the curiously strong, 100% nutrition-free breath mint.

He's a nice guy.

He admits readily to his problematic love for carbohydrates. He might as well admit to it; he's been looking more than a little pudgy since I saw him at a party wearing vericose veins-revealing shorts in August. He was huffing a bit and sweating profusely in the heat after climbing the inclined driveway to say hello.

It was a little upsetting to me to see that my doctor is not taking better care of himself. It's personal, because I like him, but it's also bad advertising or at least poor testimony to holistic, chiropractic, naturaopathy when I've been telling MrZ (also attending the party) for years that I wouldn't trust his pasty, fat, pimply MD because he so obviously has no clue about how to take care of his own body. It was my mother, though, seated next to me in an Adirondack who, freed by half a glass of Chardonnay, said, "That's your doctor?"

Who doesn't love a good comeuppance?

Wow. I was going to hyphenate comeuppance, but no hyphen is called for, and what a beautifully uninterrupted parade of letters we now have waving flags and beating drums to celebrate my just deserts!

My doctor looks like shit these days, but I still trust him.

Recently, after he adjusted the Eena's and I was paying the tab, he reached into the pocket of his perfectly pressed trousers and pulled out a container of Tic Tacs:

Sugar, Maltodextrin, Tartaric acid, natural and artificial flavors, rice starch, Gum arabic, Filling Agent (Magnesium stearate), Artificial colors, Glazing Agent (Carnauba wax).

Each Tic Tac weighs just under 0.5 g. Since US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5 g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero, and since a single serving of Tic Tacs is a single Tic Tac, Tic Tacs are labeled in the US as containing zero sugar.

Fascinating stuff!

I said, "Pink Tic Tacs?"

He shook them playfully, smiled at the girls, and said, "Grapefruit -- limited edition -- have one!" They accepted and thanked him and he passed the little soon-to-end-up-on-the-bottom-of-a-polar-ocean-floor plastic box to me.

I said, "Thank you! I love the flavor of grapefruit, but I can't eat a real grapefruit anymore."

"What happens when you eat grapefruit?" he asked.

We were five in the reception area: Witchdoctor, Joe (the Saturday receptionist whom I keep calling "Jeff," or the converse -- I'm not sure), the Eenas, and me. I allowed myself to be graphic concerning my issue with grapefruit. Think CLR Power Plumber.

Witchdoctor said, "Hm. That's usually either gall bladder or liver."

"Liver would make sense." Little smile. From me. To him.

I do still love, so very very much, the grapefruity flavor of a New Zealand Sauv B, but truthfully a bottle of Barefoot will do.

And, yes. Yes I do admit shit right in front of my kids. It's pointless not to because they live with me; they know things. And anyway, lying is bad and omitting the truth is lying, and I've ended up with these remarkably honest kids who actually come to me with the occasional difficult-to-admit-to item, and knowing is one hell of a lot easier for me than wondering or worrying. Just putting that out there. For whomever. For some unlucky Internet traveler who might need to think about it.

So, right there in front of Jeff/Joe-Joe/Jeff and the Eenas, Doc tested my gall bladder. My grandmother's was stolen by unscrupulous surgeons, so I'm glad mine is fine. Then he tested my weak, sluggish, struggling-from-nightly-abuse liver.

Poor liver. I'm so sorry. I might have been kinder toward you, a little more thoughtful anyway, without the built-in loneliness and boredom of traveling husband, or if I had at least inherited my father's tendency toward brutality when drunk, but probably not. There are no reasons or excuses. I do have friends and I'm quite capable of finding ways to amuse myself, and, who besides me would even think to suggest that if only I were a violent asshole when drinking I would not drink? That's just stupid, that's what that is.

And I won't say "never again." Not for nothin' will I say, "never again."

I'm half-finished with this bottle of stuff that smells worse than Valerian root extract. It contains a boat-load of B-12, pantothenic acid, B-6, C, Folate ... blah blah blah ... milk thistle, inositol, betaine, L-methionine, green beet leaf, fringe tree root (I wonder what fringe tree looks like -- sounds pretty), celandine root ... in other words a buncha stuff I mostly never heard of that when combined smells like shit but is supposed to cleanse and strengthen the liver.

I had a glass and a half of Rioja and a snifter of Drambui with MrZ, Saturday evening, on our anniversary. I felt a little drunker than I've felt in years. Not in a bad way. And I did not chase the celebration with a B-complex and 600mg ibuprofen as had become my practice when feeling not even quite that drunk but probably should have been feeling even drunker than that given what I'd consumed between the hours of six-ish and eleven-ish.

Since Saturday the 14th (don't feel like counting days) I've been as relatively sober as I've been in however many years (don't feel like figuring it out, and MrZ is not here to do it for me) it's been since my first trip to New Zealand. Relative sobriety, in AA circles, is not sobriety. It's "dry drunkenness," I think. Anyway, aside from sleepiness, which may be due to another cause, on day three, I think it was, I went a little emo -- I mean there was a near-complete parade of emotions I wasn't expecting.

Rage did not make an appearance, but I did get a little pissed off after having written and sent what I thought was a rather meaty email to MrZ only to receive cracker crumbs in return. You know, "Hello? Did you read one goddamned word, asshole?" but I didn't say that (write that) to him. I mentioned it to Ange, cracker crumbs analogy and all. She got it. Diffused it. Ange the Bomb Squad. ABS. (Gonna order P90-X for the Eenas for Christmas, by the way. They want it.)

MrZ's just like that. Wrapped up in his own stuff. Doesn't realize he's doing it. Makes up for it later, sometimes without so much as a hint. No sense going off on him about it.

I feel good. Overly sleepy on and off, but mostly good.

I'm also wondering two things:

1) What would it take for me, personally, ever to experience the whole "pink elephant" thing my step-father went through multiple times and

2) when this bottle of beneficial stink is finally consumed in its entirety, and I dare to extend once again the timid, self-doubting hand of friendship to Ms Ruby Red, will she accept, or will my little sacrifice, made only for the love of grapefruit, be rejected?

I hope I never discover the answer to the first question.

I fully intend to get the answer to the second one.

By the way, it is not lost on me, I have not failed to consider, I mean, the possibility that my dog feels better and behaves better when I behave better and feel better.

That's not lost on me at all.