After a whole week of employment with her new employer, she who must be obeyed shatters my dreams of a weekly doubling of the salary by announcing she intends staying with the same company for the foreseeable future (i.e. Tuesday). She also luxuriates in the prospect of two days off and we start the break with a trip out for breakfast and coffee, after which I am banished to the chairs in Royal Garden mall while she checks out the sales in case there is anything she wants to buy with the salary she hasn’t got yet. After that we head for some food stalls where she purchases bags of food to take to the windsurfing club to share with her friends.
Things unravel slightly once we get to the club when I discover all that is on offer for my lunch is a couple of pieces of scraggy pork and some other very spicey meat which I do not recognise (never a good sign), and some rice. This is not enough for a growing boy (outwards not upwards) who intends to spend the afternoon whizzing about on the water and I assume a huff and jump in the car to find myself some alternative sustenance (a double choc sticky surprise at Svensens, highly nutritional).
Some confrontational words are exchanged upon my return, but we make it home and go for dinner without further incident and then settle down to watch a chick-flick; “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Totally forgettable and I don’t think either of us laughed once. Checking our respective mails before bed and she throws a wobbly over the lack of speed of the internet, the temperature of the room and probably even the current price of petrol; all of which are suddenly my fault.
It is at this point that I sigh internally and make a strategic retreat to bed. It’s the same every month, I should put it in my calendar. Wikipedia defines women with PMS as having symptoms of “sufficient severity to interfere with some aspects of life.” She who must be obeyed switches from sunny disposition to irrational annoyance every month with sufficient severity to interfere with our normal harmonious existence. Still, once I recognise it, I learn to ignore it rather than to try to reason with it, and after a few hours she is back to normal.
And indeed on Sunday morning, the hormones had stabilised and she was all sweetness and apologies; which of course I accepted with a slightly pained expression, just so she knew how much I had been wounded and would need extra attention if I were to fully recover.
The dietary deficiencies of Saturday were forgotten when I was presented with an excellent meal of fish cooked in ginger, tom yam kung and yummy veggies on Sunday evening; and was left to watch the German GP without interference (nice one Lewis).
Fully reconciled, I rewarded her with yet another chick-flick, “What Happens in Vegas.” Marginally more amusing than the Saturday night offering and featuring Cameron Diaz who is cute. But not as cute as my wife, except on one day a month.