This is why I love him.

(If you are here for ICLW, welcome! You can find my little introduction – and my very important question for you – here.)

***

Over the last couple of weeks I've been developing some strong food aversions and nausea, but other than a bad reaction to a glass of water drunk much too fast, I'd kept inside me what I'd managed to ingest (that being white rice, white bread, white yogurt ... and gummi bears of any color).

The other night I was lying in bed, engrossed in a book, sleeping husband curled up next to me and sleeping kitty curled up on me. The book had a restaurant scene with talk of fish, and whether it was fresh (no), and mutton, and whether it was stringy (yes), and ... well, that's all I can bear to recount. As I read the descriptions, I could feel my own stomach roiling until the point that I thought there might be trouble.

I started gently trying to disengage the kitty from my chest and myself from the covers, awakening Gilles in the meantime. "Where are you going?" he asked sleepily, as he does every time I get out of bed in the night – like there's a wide range of possibilities for the answer.

"I have to throw up!" And by my saying it, the need became urgent; I stopped being gentle with cat and covers both, pushing them aside and running to the bathroom just in time to aim into the bowl.

Five minutes later and all was better. So much better, in fact, that I was hungry again, with an appetite that only gingersnaps could satiate ... a certain kind of gingersnap, an English one. Luckily for me, I had just the cure ready in the cupboard, as one lonely packet had escaped August's counter-policy carry-on crackdown to voyage with me to Switzerland.

I took them to bed with me to munch on under the covers, reawakening a drowsy Gilles as I settled myself in. "Are you okay?" he mumbled.

"I just threw up!" I announced exuberantly, pleased to have passed this rite of passage (not that I'm thinking too much about symptoms ...).

The mumble became a grumble as he closed his eyes again. "Hmmmhh. Sleep."

"Don't you care?" I asked, slightly offended but no less exuberant.

He looked me over with one lazily reopened eye that lingered on my packet of biscuits. "You don't seem so sick," he declared.

And he rolled over and went back to sleep.

***

We were lounging in the living room, together in spirit but lost in solitary pursuits, curtains closed against the quiet darkness, when all of a sudden he leaped off the couch and strode away purposefully. I heard the fridge door opening and the lid of a glass jar popping.

"What are you eating?" I, ever-meddlesome wife, demanded to know, trailing him into the kitchen where he stood popping them, whatever they were, two by two into his mouth.

Then I saw.

Cornichons (i.e., little pickled cucumbers traditionally eaten with one of Switzerland's most amazing cheese dishes)!

I've been usurped! Isn't he supposed to leave those kind of stereotypes to me?

***

"Look," I demanded for the n^th time, thrusting the most recent ultrasound picture into his face, "isn't it nice?"

Usually he just smiles patiently and says yes. This time he took the printout, examined it more closely, and remarked, "It's funny, if you didn't know what this was, you might think it's some kind of tumor."