Free If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon by Jenna McCarthy

cage.
    “Come on, honey,” he pleads. “We’re on vacation.”
    Lots of wives complain about husbands whose nonstop channel surfing makes them dizzy and nauseated. I once read an article—and it was pure speculation, mind you, not a scientific exposé—that suggested that a man’s inability to settle on one channel could be merely an extension of his evolutionary need to expose himself to as many women as possible in the (subconscious) hope of maximizing reproductive success. In other words, more channels equal more chicks. Another theory suggests that channel surfing is just another of the many ways a man—the aggressive hunter to our more laid-back gatherer—is built to explore. Perhaps Joe is more evolved than most, because when it comes to television he’s not much of a surfer. In fact, I’d say if anything he’s a loiterer. Something on a random channel will catch his eye—a stock market ticker, a black-and-white movie with cowboy hats, anything to do with sports or nature, a big voluptuous pair of knockers—and he’ll be spellbound for hours.
    One day he appeared to be watching a screen saver of a forest. It piqued my interest only in the is-that-TV-broken-or-is-hereally-watching-a-screen-saver? sort of way.
    “Whatcha watching?” I asked.
    “It’s a documentary about birds,” he replied.
    “Is it interesting?” I prodded.
    “Not really,” he admitted.
    “Oh,” I said. “So why are you watching it?”
    “I want to find out what happens,” he answered. “Besides, I’ve got an hour invested in it already.”
    What I wanted to say is, Dude, we have at least 899 other channels! Cut your losses! That’s already an entire hour of your life you’ll never get back! But that combination of hopefulness and loyalty is rare and sweet, when you think about it. So instead, I did what I always do: I said good night and crawled into bed with Sheldon, the cats, and my book and prayed for sleep to come quickly.

CHAPTER FOUR
    What’s Cooking?
(I’ m Gonna Go Out on
a Limb and Say Me)
    Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart
is through his stomach flunked geography.
    • ROBERT BYRNE •
     
     
    Heart disease may be the number one actual killer of women in this country, but the whole orchestrating-of-the-meals thing has to be the number one killer of their little spirits. I mean, honestly. Unless you’re Rachael Freaking Ray and somebody is paying you to come up with a crowd-pleasing spread under a certain price point night after identical night, what is there to love about the gig? To be fair, I am sure there is at least one woman out there who wakes up each day eager to show her family how much she cares for them through a new and innovative display of culinary wizardry. I would genuinely love to meet her and shake her flour-dusted hand. Then I’d like to shove a flaming lamb chop into her annoyingly chipper pie hole.
    My friend Jill owns a restaurant that makes the best chicken you have ever tasted in your life. Somehow the wonder chefs over there can take a boneless, skinless slab of poultry and turn it into a mind-blowing series of multiple orgasms for your taste buds. Lunch or dinner, on a sandwich or à la carte, served alongside an award-winning bottle of wine or a glass of tap water, this stuff is the best of the breast, bar none. When Jill’s Place began selling its signature spice blend, I bought it and I even used it, but my chicken still tasted like, well, chicken.
    “You’re holding out on me,” I accused Jill over yet another plate of perfect poultry one evening.
    “What are you talking about?” my friend demanded, the picture of innocence.
    “There obviously is some ingredient or technique you use to make your chicken taste like this,” I charged, shoveling in another impossibly delicious bite.
    “We just season it and grill it,” Jill insisted.
    “Liar,” I replied.
    I begged and pleaded, and Jill continued to deny employing any steroid abuse, so I dared her to