Chicken Soup for the Soul… Not Necessarily.

 

We are halfway through our life lessons series about the top 15 dishes to master by the age of 30. So far, so good, right? Well, not so much over at our house. Looking back to yesterday’s “incident” I am amazed at how I can go from blood boiling anger to gut wrenching laughter all in one day. Let me tell you a little story.…

All I wanted was some chicken noodle soup. Paris has been windy, chilly, wintery and quite frankly I have been a little bit afraid to go outside. I don’t want to get sick again and these incessant French commercials about “la grippe” aren’t helping. I am terrified of invisible germs and all I want to do is stay healthy. It is a well-known fact over my house that “Ellie is on a health kick.” I have been juicing my little heart out… Spinach, blueberries, carrots, cucumber, celery, kale, ginger, flaxseed oil, coconut oil, tumeric, lemon, beet and apple. I have been meditating, researching a new acupuncturist, having daily kinesiology therapy sessions, drinking warm chai lattes with almond milk, plenty of rest and keeping warm.

All of the caregivers, nurses and therapist are instructed to wash their hands with warm soapy water until they get through two renditions of the happy birthday song. If I see a sniffle, hear a cough or witness any sort of malaise, that person will not make it past my front door. This is a germ-free zone. I thank my lucky stars every day that I have not gotten the stomach flu that Gracie had, her boyfriend had, her roommate had and my mother-in-law had. For some reason I have been spared and thank God because I do not have the muscles to actually throw up. I will most likely choke and die a horrible death. So, we are all on high alert at my house… High alert!

My husband has been a witness to all of this but apparently none of it “sunk in.” It is a good thing that I’m completely paralyzed otherwise I would have smothered my husband in his sleep for what he did. Since I physically cannot harm my husband, my only recourse was to punish him with my smarts and wit, basically the only things that I have left. Make yourself a drink, sit back and let me tell you what he did…

Continuing my health kick and research for the blog, I decided to make homemade chicken noodle soup. As you know, I cannot do this on my own due to my “situation” so I have to enlist the help of my caregivers. Usually I don’t trust any of them to even help me make croutons, but my new caregiver Joel is a fantastic cook. He doesn’t just slop everything into a pot and cook it. He actually cares, like I do about making the perfect chicken noodle soup. We even had a long conversation about it! So, off to the streets of Paris Joel went to collect the ingredients. I sent him to my favorite roasted chicken boucherie to buy the most succulent, flavorful roasted chicken in all of Paris. All of our vegetables were organic… Carrots, celery, onions, potatoes. We added pasta noodles, herbs de Provence, rock salt, pepper, fresh lemon juice, cilantro and even a few juicy cherry red tomatoes because I like that. We added the skin of the roasted chicken for a little extra fat and flavor. We simmered it for hours and the whole house smelled delicious. We made enough of the soup to last for days.

That evening, my husband brought a big bowl of this hard-earned chicken noodle soup to me for my dinner. This soup was so unbelievably good, so rich, so flavorful and I could tell that it was the perfect soup to ward off any germs, illnesses or flu. I kept saying to my husband, “This soup is so delicious. I cannot wait to have it tomorrow for lunch. Gracie and her friend, Maggie, are going to stop by our apartment after they go to the Louvre so they can have some of this delicious soup. It is so good! It’s going to be even better tomorrow! Oh, I can’t wait.” Yes, things like this get me excited. All I could think about was this chicken noodle soup. I literally could not shut up about the soup to my husband.

My husband has this unlawful and annoying personality trait of telling white lies to me. He is convinced that I do not need to know the whole truth. He thinks that he is protecting me. I am completely paranoid about everything and interrogate him on a daily basis… Did you lock the front doors, does the cat have fresh water because you know she only drinks fresh water, does my feeding tube look swollen, remember you are not allowed to have gummy bears because you will choke, did you wash your hands, is my cell phone charged because I might have to call the paramedics if you have a heart attack in the middle of the night, do you think Gracie is having sex with her boyfriend, did you move the curtains away from the heaters because they could catch on fire, do we have a backup plan in case the elevator stops working and there is an emergency in the apartment, if a terrorist breaks into our apartment and takes us hostage do you think I will be able to reason with him, don’t forget to watch out when you are pushing my wheelchair so that nobody hits me in the face with their cigarette, is my electric toothbrush charged, when does the crème fraîche expire… I am exhausting so David’s usual answer is always, “Yes.” He says “yes” whether or not he means yes. He knows that it’s just best to say yes otherwise I will panic and then he will have to go fix everything. But here’s the thing, I hate it when he does that. I hate white lies. I just want to know the truth so I can remedy this situation. I am always considering the snowball effect. If the cat doesn’t have fresh water she will not drink the water and then she will get dehydrated and die. She is a Persian and a diva and it is my responsibility to cater to her needs. Yes, these are the things that I think about. David wouldn’t care if the cat had to drink toilet water for a week. One of the most difficult aspects of having ALS is losing control of your own house. It drives me crazy and I cannot police everyone every moment of their lives. So, now you have a little history and we can get back to the soup story…

I spent the entire evening looking forward to my chicken noodle soup the next day. I had a perfect night sleep and at 8:30 AM I woke up in a panic… David was sound asleep next to me and I started screaming, “David! Did you remember to transfer the chicken noodle soup from the stock pot on the stove into a sealed container and put it in the refrigerator last night! David! Wake up! Is the soup in the refrigerator? You didn’t forget to put it in the refrigerator last night, did you? It is not still out on the stove, is it? David, wake up!” David just loves waking up to this kind of panic from me. In his barely audible lack of sleep voice he says, “Yes, I put the soup in the refrigerator last night.”

Because I have lived with this douchebag since 2006, I know when he is lying. My intuition told me that that soup was not in the refrigerator. Luckily, my caregiver had just arrived to work that very second so I screamed at him, “Joel, please go to the kitchen and see if the chicken noodle soup is still on the stove or in the refrigerator.” I knew it! I knew it! Joel told me that the soup was still in the pot on the stove. I went from a perfectly sound sleep to raging bitch within 30 seconds. David was still half asleep and had no idea the wrath that was about to be bestowed upon him. “David! You are such a white liar. The soup is not in the refrigerator! It is still out on the stove. You were not going to tell me and you were going to let me eat leftover soup that has been left out and now it is laced with every sort of foodborne illness on the face of the earth. You can’t leave food out overnight. I don’t care if you are French, you can’t do it! I have a weakened immune system already and the last thing I need is fucking salmonella poisoning. I hate you and want a divorce. I’m going to tell the judge that it is dangerous to live with someone like you because you have no regard for food safety. David! Wake up, did you hear what I said?”

As usual, because David has trained himself to ignore me, David just rolled casually out of bed and went to make himself a coffee. He didn’t care about the soup. He went to his closet, without speaking, put on his jeans, a black cashmere sweater, a scarf and his cute jacket, grabbed his cell phone and quietly walked out of the door. He knew it was best not to engage me. He knew it was safer for him to be at his office.

As I sat in my bed fuming for all of the right reasons… David told me a white lie, David tried to poison me, now I have no soup for lunch… I decided that it was high time to teach David a lesson. David needed to be “schooled” old-school style and I was just the girl to do it. I started to hatch my revenge…

I waited about three hours until I knew David was deep into his work at his office. David’s office is about 10 blocks away. He chooses to walk to work instead of getting his car out of the garage, driving to his office, trying to find a new place to park etc. Believe it or not, even though David has a tiny little Smart Car, it is still a nightmare to park in Paris. So, David walks to work every day. Yesterday, it was particularly windy and rainy and I knew it was not a pleasant walk to work. Can you hear my evil laugh? I knew David had a very busy day at the office and needed to get a lot of work done. So, I called David at his office and started my lies by saying “Hi, Bunny. You’ve had a delivery here at the apartment that we had to sign for. Were you expecting a delivery from Hermès? There is a huge orange box that was delivered from Hermès.” There was silence on the other end of the phone for about five seconds and then David said, “Uhhh, no, I wasn’t expecting a delivery.” I could hear the panic in his voice. I knew he did not want me to think that he had bought anything at Hermès because all of our money has to go to my caregivers, our rent, my medication, my hospital bills etc.

I said, “Well I don’t know what you ordered, but there is a huge box here.”

David said, “I’ll be right home.”

Can you still hear my evil laugh? My sinister plan was working. Now David had to leave the office, leave all the work that he was doing, put on his jacket, grab his umbrella and walk 10 blocks home in the rain to our apartment expecting a big fat (non-existent) Hermès box. I could barely contain my laughter. I knew that David was stressed out his entire walk home thinking… “Oh my God, what did I buy? Is it something that I custom ordered a long time ago and now it is ready and I have to pay for it? Is Hermès delivering a gift for me because I’m such a good customer? Do I have a secret admirer? Oh my God, Ellie’s going to kill me.”

I could barely contain my decorum thinking that this was the perfect punishment. It will send him a message, it will teach him a lesson, it’s clever, and see if he ever tells me a white lie again and attempts to kill me with day-old rotten chicken noodle soup.

20 minutes later I could hear David unlocking our front door. I kept saying to myself, “Keep your composure, Ellie. Don’t laugh, keep a straight face and say your line. Don’t blow it.” David walks directly into my bedroom and says, “Where’s the box? Where’s the Hermès box. I didn’t see it in the foyer. Where is it?”

I said to him with perfect composure, “I think it’s in the kitchen, in the refrigerator…right next to the chicken noodle soup.”

David started walking towards the kitchen, I kid you not. He had no idea that I was fucking with him. I had never done anything like this before. I have never played a joke on him. I could hear him open the refrigerator door. He came back to my room and said again, “Where’s the box?” I said again, “David, the Hermès box is in the refrigerator right next to where you said you put the chicken noodle soup.”

David was still confused and said to my caregiver, “Joel, where is the big Hermès box that was delivered this morning?” My caregiver just kept his head down and did not answer. I knew what my caregiver was thinking, “How did I get in the middle of these two lunatics?” Luckily, my caregiver knew what was good for him and he did not rat me out. He kept his game face and just shook his head. David started looking all over the apartment. I thought I was going to implode from trying to contain my laughter.

After about five minutes, David came back towards my bedroom, stood at the doorway and just looked at me. He finally figured it out and he was quite frankly astonished. I think he was astonished that I would actually go to these lengths to trick him just over chicken noodle soup. He just stood there and looked at me. The amount of pride I had for myself was overwhelming and I started laughing internally and my body was shaking and tears were coming out of my eyes. I could not stop. I knew David wanted to kill me but he had to keep his cool for several reasons...He knew that he deserved this, he knew he could not explode in front of the caregivers, he knew he looked like a fool. He didn’t say a word, he just went to the front door, opened it, walked through it and quietly closed the door and went back to work.

As soon as he was out of our apartment, I burst out laughing. I called everyone I knew to tell them. I honestly think it was the best thing I could’ve done because I don’t think David will ever, ever white lie to me again or dare question my food safety concerns. Please feel free to use my methods at your own households if necessary. Tomorrow, we will actually learn how to master chicken noodle soup now that I’ve calmed down a bit. :-)

Bunny.

That’s what we call my husband, David…Bunny. I don’t know why but it just works. The next best word to describe David is “dichotomy.” David is a dichotomy in every sense. To know him is to love him yet to know him is to want to rip his head off. David has led a charmed life until it all fell apart. This man, Bunny, is the man you want on your team because he will not back down, he will not crumble, he will not falter and you will never be the same without him but you also want to punch him in the face. But let’s back up a little… By the way, if this love story is boring, I won’t be offended if you skip today’s blog.

 

In 2006, my sister called me and said, “That cute French guy just left his wife and moved in next door to me.” My response was, “Well, you better march over to his house right now and tell him to ask your sister out on a date.” Her response: “No, that’s tacky, you slut.” So that was that. She refused. But don’t worry… I was only devastated for a week. The very next weekend I decided to go to the polo match in Santa Barbara with my best guy friend, Max. Max is an arrogant, handsome, funny, macho Italian whose family owned Brioni. Need I say more? Sometimes Max and I spoke on the telephone 15 to 16 times a day. Max is the type of guy who comes early to help you with your party and eats all the appetizers before your guests arrive...Which he did. He’s also the type of guy who sleeps with all of your friends… Which he did. Max is the type of guy who usually gets kicked out of a restaurant….Which he has. Max is the type of guy who whips you with a kitchen towel and draws blood… Which he has. However, Max is the kind of best friend that you want. So, here Max and I were sitting at the polo match in the parking lot drinking champagne in his fancy car like white trash before we went inside. All of a sudden, David drives up in his pale blue/gray Ferrari and parks next to us. I almost spit my champagne out. I started screaming to Max, “Max it’s the French guy! It’s the French guy!” David stepped out of his car and started screaming in French on his cell phone. I told Max to go talk to him and Max agreed that he would. But here’s the thing, we had to wait one hour for David to get off the telephone. David screamed on the telephone in the parking lot of the polo match for a solid hour. So by this time, Max and I were completely tipsy from the champagne. Finally, David got off the phone and Max made his move. I sat in the car impatiently waiting. Max came back to the car and told me to pull it together and that we were going to go inside the polo club and have a drink with the French guy. I had waited five years for this moment! And guess what? I froze, I totally froze. I couldn’t say a word to David. Max kept looking at me like, “You fool.” We had a couple more drinks and Max did all the talking. He and David were having a blast. I stood there like an idiot. Max took me aside at one point and said, “Ellie, I have some bad news for you. I think David likes me.”

 

Good news. David actually liked me, not Max. David and I have been together ever since that day at polo. But it hasn’t all been roses. David and I are both extremely boisterous passionate human beings. This is not a ying and yang type of relationship. It’s a yang and yang relationship. Neither of us will ever back down from our truth… Whatever it may be. David and I could fight over how we raise children to which cheese to buy for fondue. We will fight to the death. But the good news is that two minutes later we love each other again. I never knew there were men like David in the world. David’s idea of a fun evening is staying home with the children, cooking dinner, and watching a movie. David’s life revolves around his family and he does not give one bit of energy to anything else besides family and his work. I have never once worried that David would cheat on me, go out with the guys to a bar, flirt with women… Nothing. That is not in David’s character. All he cares about is us. David likes to go shopping with me… for clothes, shoes, antiques, perfume, books, food etc. When David is stressed out he goes to Williams-Sonoma. Swear to God. He loves to go to museums and exhibits. Our weekends are filled with stuff that I want to do. We have never done anything that David wants to do. We don’t even know what David likes to do because we’ve never asked and he has never told us. He would spend three days at Disneyland with a smile on his face if we wanted to go. David is in charge of everything and organizes everything. He even packs juice boxes for the children if we are in the car for longer than 30 minutes. He makes all the school lunches. When the children were young, David gave them all a bath, brushed their hair, blowdried their hair, put them in their pajamas, gave them a spray of perfume, cooked dinner, did all of the dishes, snuggled everyone and put everyone to bed. This is what makes David happy.

 

However, he’s totally annoying. He blow dries his hair for too long, he always loses his keys, he always misplaces his phone, he’s a terrible driver, he falls all the time, he uses shampoo as soap, he hates that we suck at tennis, he over feeds all of us, he refuses to speak before coffee in the morning, he hates that we are computer illiterate, he’s socially inept and doesn’t care, he eats food off the floor, he hoardes clothes, he’s super loud, he calls his mother at least five times a day, argues with everyone including his lawyers, he hates when I buy expensive flowers, he hates when I put nails in the walls, he’s always overheating, and he has that typical pessimistic French attitude. He doesn’t understand the humor of Napoleon Dynamite and eats foie gras.

 

However, he’s also totally wonderful. He brings me a present nearly every day. He has let me watch anything I want on the television for the past eight years. He’s happy when I am happy. When he is out of town, he calls me at least 400 times a day. He loves music. He loves to watch Westerns with John Wayne. He’s never gross or crude. He doesn’t watch sports. He loves to take pictures of us. He doesn’t snore. He takes baths. He always buys me pretty dresses without me asking. He convinces surgeons to let him go into surgery with me. He puts his hand on my back the entire night while we sleep. He is the best friend someone could have. He likes to look through family photo albums. He is loyal, honest, tender, strong and has great taste and style. I never have to tell him what to wear because he always looks chic. He loves Gracie like his own daughter and tells her to look up words like “altruism.”

 

When David was going through his divorce and fighting his wife for custody and trying to cure his autistic son… Our life was very difficult. Like I said, David and I do not do well in high stress situations. I would leave his house crying and screaming nearly every week. He would always chase me and bring me right back home. David is one of those types of guys who never says I’m sorry but always shows me how sorry he is. It has taken me eight years to understand David. I finally decided that it’s just best to let David be David. I can’t change him. Letting David be David means having to put up with someone who is overly obsessive about organizing, overly obsessive about dry-cleaning, overly obsessive about the refrigerator being perfect, overly obsessive about the closets, overly obsessive about grooming the cat, overly excessive about watering the plants, overly obsessive about the children, overly obsessive about every single thing that we do. If we come home from a vacation at 3 o’clock in the morning, David will unpack all of our bags, do all of the laundry, fold everything, put it away, organize the house again, download all the photos, charge all the electronics and then maybe he will go to sleep. Every inch of paperwork is organized at our house and David actually owns a laminating machine. All of his shoes are in specialized little felt bags, all of his sweaters are perfectly folded and he has a special area in our apartment for his suits and jackets. Oh, did I mentioned that David loves clothes. David is a total clothes whore. But here’s the weird thing, David usually only wears one outfit. All black or gray. His entire collection of clothes are hardly ever touched. Most of them still have price tags on them. We had to get a storage in Santa Barbara because David had so many clothes… That he didn’t wear! He would go visit his clothes on the weekends. Swear to God. On a sad side note, David’s entire collection of custom-made shoes were stolen out of the storage as well as all of David’s suits and cashmere sweater collection. My response? “See? You should’ve worn your clothes and had them at our house. Now, some hoodlum is running around Santa Barbara in your Hermes suit. Happy?” I have often asked David why he basically wears a uniform of black and gray. He told me that he will wear brighter colors when his son is cured of autism. See how easy it is to love him and then hate him?

 

June 16. David’s birthday. I was in New York at New York Presbyterian Hospital being tested for ALS by a brilliant doctor who specialized in ALS. David was on a flight from California to New York rushing to get to me. He showed up at the hospital with all of his suitcases. He found me in the doctor’s office a broken woman. I was in a hospital gown trying to prove to the doctor that I could lift my foot up and that I did not have ALS. Sadly, we all knew that I did. I had a talk with David that night and I told him that he did not need to stay in this relationship. My disease was going to get very, very ugly and he did not need to go through this with me. David told me that he would never leave me and that he never wanted to have this discussion again and if I ever brought it up again he would kill me himself. And guess what? This man has been in the trenches with me ever since. David took over. He organized every doctor appointment, read every article on ALS, consulted every type of doctor on earth, made me sit in a hyperbaric chamber, made me get acupuncture, made me sit in an infrared sauna, made me take hundreds of supplements, made me have my blood checked every month, made me have intravenous vitamin drips, took me to every doctor from New York, Chicago, Paris and Los Angeles, forced me to get a feeding tube, forced me to get a diaphragm pacer, force-fed me every healthy food on earth, helped me get my head together mentally, took me to every type of therapist, and basically was trying to do anything in his power to save me. Here’s something you don’t know about me. I didn’t want to do any of it. I wasn’t brave, I wasn’t strong and I wasn’t motivated. I was lost but David basically took on my disease for me. He also decided to remove every bit of toxicity from my life and that included some friends and some family. I fought him at first telling him that not everyone could be like him. Not everyone can handle my disease. Not everyone is as strong as he is. According to David, that was no excuse. He expected my friends and family to step up to the plate like he did. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, not everyone will be there for you when you need them including my own family. That was a big lesson for me to learn. David has protected me from all of it. Unfortunately, this means that the whole load is on David. Every financial hardship, every emotional hardship, every physical hardship, and every spiritual hardship. It is all on David shoulders.

 

To add insult to injury, not only do I have ALS, but his son has autism, his father passed away from Alzheimer’s and he lost custody of his children. He has a broken heart but he is not a broken man. The only time that I have ever seen David break down was after his father’s death in the summer of 2013. It was just all too much and as usual, David and I took it out on each other. Remember, we are not good in a stressful situation. After three weeks of hell that summer, we regrouped and got back on track. By the way, we just decided to agree to disagree. Neither of us apologized for “the incident” and neither of us took responsibility. We never even bring it up because if we do all hell will break loose.

David has watched me go from a healthy, active, fully functional woman to someone who cannot do a thing for herself and he has never treated me differently. He still thinks I pretty, he still spends every waking moment with me, he still organizes fun weekends for me, he brushes my teeth, wipes my tears away when I have a meltdown, and refuses to let me go.

 

So, that’s Bunny. Even though I have ALS, I still feel like the luckiest girl on earth. I can truly say that I have known love. He still screams all day, he still overly organizes, he is still a narcissist, he is still bossy but I wouldn’t have him any other way.