Our Parental Injured Reserve List Grows + Election Preview!

On passing the ball, the Red Wave, and flagrant podcast-hopping

The post-40 segment of our lives is one in which we must periodically bid uncomfortable farewell to skills that used to come easily. For a 40+ woman in her third trimester, one of those skills is sleep. So, it came to be that I was on the couch at 2 a.m. two nights ago, watching one of the three true-crime documentaries left on Netflix I had not yet consumed. Acid reflux was the culprit, a foe which unfortunately cannot be fought horizontally.

In the morning, my husband found me on said couch and volunteered to take over school drop-off for the kids, so I could rest. He went to the gym after, texting with a generous offer to pick up a McDonald’s bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit on his way home. When he walked in the door, the biscuit gesture went from generous to heroic as I saw he was hobbling with Gollum-esque posture due to a lower-back malfunction. Instantly, the parenting/household duties medicine ball — a metaphorical one, not the one that injured him— was passed from him back to me, as he had most inconsiderately trumped my mild fatigue with his actual injury. Such is the sport of parenthood, and I’m very glad to have someone to pass the ball to at all having done it on my own for years.

My husband is a fit guy, loves to be in the gym, and needs to be there because he does a pretty physically demanding job. He also needs to be there because he is the human equivalent of a Belgian Malinois, not coincidentally the breed of dog we have. He needs a job and extensive exercise or he will chew up the couch. Metaphorically, that is. I think. We haven’t tested the prospect and I’m not anxious to.