A Look Back at Yesterday’s Food and Beverage Intake, a New Toilet, and a Whole Lot of Love.
There are moments in life when you question your decisions.
There are moments when you question your judgment.
And then there are moments when you question whether you should have purchased a house with the bathroom four seconds away from your bed when your colon has apparently instituted a three-second evacuation policy.
Welcome to my Friday morning.
I woke up a few minutes ago with stomach cramps.
Not ordinary stomach cramps.
I’m talking about the kind of cramps where your intestines send a message to your brain that says:
“You have three seconds. This is not a drill. We are not negotiating.”
Unfortunately, the bathroom is four seconds away.
For those of you who aren’t particularly good at math, that’s a problem.
Somehow, through a combination of athleticism, divine intervention, and what I can only describe as an Olympic-caliber butt clench, I made it.
Barely.
Once seated, I realized I was facing one of life’s great philosophical questions:
Is this going to be a really good day or a really, really bad day?
Because the next 30 seconds would determine whether I would be going back to bed or calling my insurance company.
As I sat there contemplating my immediate future, I began thinking about what could have possibly brought me to this crossroads.
So I mentally reconstructed yesterday’s food and beverage consumption.
Nothing particularly unusual.
At least by my standards.
I started the morning with my usual smoothie.
A gallon or so of wild organic blueberries.
A fresh orange.
A fresh lime.
Ceremonial cacao.
A couple tablespoons of macadamia nut oil.
Some wild Greek olive oil.
And a large scoop of psyllium husk.
The psyllium husk was new.
For those unfamiliar, psyllium husk is basically a natural fiber supplement designed to improve digestive regularity.
In retrospect, perhaps I should have looked up the definition of “regularity.”
Because apparently, when combined with enough blueberries to feed a family of bears, regularity becomes an optional feature.
Next came my coffee with honey and a tablet of molecular hydrogen.
The hydrogen was also new.
I’m not exactly sure what molecular hydrogen is supposed to do, but apparently my digestive system interpreted it as rocket fuel.
Beef carpaccio and a salad.
Simple. Healthy. Beautiful.
The salad dressing consisted of olive oil and anchovies.
Nothing processed. Nothing artificial.
Just clean, natural ingredients.
Raw beef.
Anchovies.
Olive oil.
In hindsight, I was apparently conducting a gastrointestinal stress test without the benefit of medical supervision.
Two martinis.
A little tuna tartare.
Nothing crazy.
Just a couple of cocktails and some raw fish.
At this point, my stomach was probably sending warning signals, but unfortunately the martinis had disconnected the communications system.
We began with raw oysters flown in from Japan.
Followed by a piece or two of hamachi crudo.
A couple of glasses of champagne.
Then things got interesting.
A few glasses of wine bottled in 1928.
Yes, 1928.
The wine was almost 100 years old.
Which means the grapes were harvested before the Great Depression, before World War II, and possibly before the invention of modern indoor plumbing.
An observation that would become extraordinarily relevant approximately 12 hours later.
We accompanied the wine with a few appetizers.
Mushrooms.
Brie.
Figs.
Pasta.
And several other things whose names I couldn’t pronounce.
For dinner, some sort of Australian filet in a light cream sauce, paired with a 1969 Red wine of French origin and a more recent Burgundy.
Dessert consisted of a few bites of four different creations and a Spanish dessert wine.
A magnificent evening.
Extraordinary food.
Extraordinary wines.
Wonderful company.
What could possibly go wrong?
Apparently, everything.
As I sat on the toilet trying to determine whether I was experiencing a digestive cleanse, a religious awakening, or the opening scene of a gastrointestinal horror movie, it occurred to me that perhaps yesterday’s menu wasn’t quite as innocent as I initially believed.
Let’s review.
Raw beef.
Raw tuna.
Raw oysters.
Raw hamachi.
Anchovies.
Enough olive oil to lubricate a small industrial machine.
Approximately 14 pounds of blueberries.
A new fiber supplement.
A new hydrogen supplement.
Martinis.
Champagne.
Nearly century-old wine.
More wine.
Cream sauce.
Cheese.
Dessert wine.
And figs.
Fucking figs.
I had essentially combined the Mediterranean diet, the Japanese diet, the French diet, the Australian diet, and a pharmaceutical bowel preparation into one 24-hour period.
And somehow, I was surprised by the outcome.
Now, I’m not going to get overly graphic here.
I have standards.
Admittedly, they’re extremely low standards, but standards nonetheless.
Let’s just say that what happened next could best be described as a catastrophic failure of the Kohler containment system.
I won’t go into the specifics.
But at one point, I actually considered whether I should call FEMA.
Or perhaps the EPA.
I’m not sure which federal agency has jurisdiction over this particular type of environmental disaster.
I did, however, immediately realize that I had two choices.
Lowe’s currently has Kohler toilets on sale for approximately $250.
Delivery and installation are extra.
But $250 seemed like a remarkably reasonable price to erase an unfortunate chapter of my life.
A brand-new toilet.
A fresh start.
A clean slate.
Perhaps even one of those fancy Japanese toilets that washes your ass, dries it, plays classical music, and apologizes for the inconvenience.
I briefly considered replacing the entire bathroom.
Possibly the house.
After all, real estate is replaceable.
Dignity is not.
This would require a few rolls of paper towels.
Lysol.
Windex.
Clorox.
Grout cleaner.
Rubber gloves.
A hazmat suit.
And potentially a priest.
I stood there surveying the damage like an insurance adjuster after a Category 5 hurricane.
There were questions.
Serious questions.
Was the grout salvageable?
Would the porcelain ever forgive me?
Would I need to disclose this incident if I sold the house?
And most importantly:
Could I somehow blame this on the dogs?
Unfortunately, the dogs are on vacation.
Which brings me to the most important part of this story.
Love.
My wife, Lauren, is currently in New Orleans.
She gets home in a few hours.
And I love my wife.
I really do.
We’ve been through a lot together.
The good times.
The bad times.
The beautiful moments.
The occasional moments when one of us has considered murdering the other.
You know.
Marriage.
And as I stood there contemplating the $250 Kohler replacement option, I realized something profound.
Marriage isn’t really about flowers.
Or jewelry.
Or romantic dinners.
Or even telling someone you love them.
True love is cleaning up a biological disaster so your wife doesn’t have to.
It’s looking at a bathroom that resembles a crime scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie and saying:
“Not today, sweetheart. I’ve got this.”
It’s putting aside your pride.
Your dignity.
Your gag reflex.
And potentially your respiratory health.
All for the woman you love.
So I chose Option Two.
I cleaned.
And cleaned.
And cleaned some more.
I used enough disinfectant to sterilize a small hospital.
I scrubbed surfaces I didn’t even know existed.
I discovered architectural details in my bathroom that had previously gone unnoticed.
At one point, I found myself negotiating with the grout.
And somewhere during the process, I realized that I was performing perhaps the greatest act of love in my 63 years on this planet.
Not buying diamonds.
Not taking romantic vacations.
Not writing love letters.
Scrubbing my own shit off a bathroom floor before my wife got home from New Orleans.
Hallmark really needs to make a card for this.
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I destroyed the bathroom.
But I cleaned it for you.
And the beautiful thing?
Lauren will probably never know.
She’ll walk into the house, give me a kiss, ask how my morning was, and I’ll say:
“Pretty good, sweetheart. Nothing unusual.”
Because that’s what heroes do.
They don’t seek recognition.
They don’t ask for medals.
They don’t demand applause.
They simply do what’s necessary.
Quietly.
Selflessly.
Armed with Clorox and a roll of Bounty.
Of course, now that I’ve written this blog, there’s a reasonable chance she’ll find out.
Which brings me to one final thought.
Yesterday, I consumed some of the finest food and wine on planet Earth.
Rare Japanese seafood.
Australian Wagyu.
Extraordinary French wines dating back nearly a century.
Ingredients selected for their purity, quality, and supposed contribution to a long, healthy life.
I probably spent more on dinner than it would cost to replace every toilet in the house.
And this morning, I spent an hour on my hands and knees with a bottle of Lysol.
There’s probably a lesson here about excess, moderation, and the human digestive system.
But I’m not particularly interested in learning it.
Because tonight, I’ll probably go out for dinner again.
And I can almost guarantee that at some point, someone will order oysters.
I’ll have a martini.
Someone will open a great bottle of wine.
And I’ll look around the table, smile, and say the same words I’ve been saying for decades:
“What could go wrong?”
P.S. I’m keeping the Lowe’s website open.
Just in case.
P.P.S. Lauren, if you’re reading this, welcome home, sweetheart.
I love you more than you’ll ever know.
And if you smell Clorox, don’t ask questions.
Some love stories are better left untold.
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