Murder Most Delicious

My mother came for a visit last weekend. As my longtime readers will know, my mother is a woman of impeccable charm, style, and wit, who also tends to forget who I am, generally when she’s holding a shotgun.

Now, my mother didn’t actually tell me she was coming. I just got an email with her flight details and a note to pick her up ‘or else.’ Obviously, I did. I may not fear ninjas or Cat-Men from Pluto, but yeah, I don’t mess with my mom.

I took the day off from work and spent the morning furiously cleaning my apartment. I even cleaned the fridge. Yes, I actually took the shelves out of the fridge (not hard, as there was nothing in there), and went at its innards with a sponge. I didn’t just dust things, I picked them up and dusted underneath them. If it was fuzzy, I vacuumed it. If it wasn’t fuzzy I wiped it with a sponge. If it moved, I caught it, buffed it to a mirror shine, and then let it go, which resulted in a couple very confused spiders. And then, when I was done, I cleaned the sponge and the vacuum. My place was so clean it hurt to look at it.

Later that day, I picked my mother up.

I knew something was up when she hugged me and called me ‘honey.’ We chatted amiably the whole way home and then went out and had teriyaki. Afterwards, we got ice-cream, and then picked up some snacks for later. The next morning, we went out for breakfast, then lunch, had a snack of hot pretzels, then went to dinner, and had more ice-cream afterwards. This continued throughout her whole visit. It was a gastronomical Mt. Everest and we were all out of Sherpas.

NOTE: Yeah, that didn’t make much sense. I was originally going to do a Sherpa/Sherbert joke, but that one was even less coherent.

It was around lunch on the first day that I figured it out. My mother’s a devious one: she was trying to murder me with food. Yes, be it through cholesterol, high-blood pressure, or gall stones, she was trying to do me in. It all fit.

Granted, it’s an improbably long, convoluted, labyrinthine (took three tries to spell that one right) way to go about killing someone, but who would suspect? Even if she was questioned, all she had to do was say ‘but I’m his mother! I just wanted him to make sure he was eating!’ Who would argue with that?

So I was determined to outfox her. Whenever her back was turned, I would exercise. At home, I took some weights into my bedroom and did a couple dozen reps every hour. I did wind sprints in my hall. When we ate out, I would excuse myself, go to the restroom, and do a bunch of sit-ups and push-ups. Trust me, you don’t want to touch the floor in a men’s room, but I did. My very survival depended on it.

And after three days, my mom left and I could claim victory. Despite all the eating, I’d actually lost three pounds.

Unless, it was all some sort of weird scheme to get me to exercise more. In which case, I lost, but I’m not sure how. She could be trying to get me in shape to harvest my organs. Or maybe she’s planning on moving and wants me in top shape so I don’t drop her credenza. I’ll definitely have to think about this one more.

Then again, she might have just wanted to see me and make sure I was eating right.

Nah.

Cheers,
-Jason