On Being Hormonal

Bonjour, I’m hormonal. So, I’m wearing my motorcycle crash helmet around the house. No, I do not ride a motorcycle. The helmet is so that if I give in to temptation and bang my head against the wall, I will not hurt myself. And the pull to do it on an evening such as this one is so strong that I can easily be confused with a crackhead on withdrawal.

It is 11:00 p.m., and I have been in my studio working on jewelry for hours. I am bleary-eyed. When I walk into the kitchen, this is what I see:

On very small and narrow kitchen table:

A perfectly good check made out to my French husband from a client; a pen, a post-it, a beer-bottle cap, the butter dish; a couple of half lemons, squeezed; a half-filled cocktail glass, an empty water glass.

On kitchen counter:

A couple of beer bottle caps, lots of bread crumbs, a couple of knives, forks and spoons; six glasses, a jar of blueberry jam, an empty vitamin bottle on its side; a can of dog food, a used, aluminum foil makeshift cat-food-can-cover; two paintbrushes.

In the sink:

Three more glasses, cutting board with jam on it, a bowl, various utensils, a full jar of mustard, (Dijon, of course); more breadcrumbs. “Would it kill you to put the bottle caps in the trash instead of leaving them on the counter?” I say, as I deal with the debris, my voice mimicking some half-remembered comedian. I am annoyed and frustrated, but sort of not, because I have just made a killer pair of earrings with silver peace signs from an artist who I am fond of, and two special pink pearls that were given to me by a close friend with whom I’d had a falling out. We have recently made up, and the fact that I have unearthed these two pearls out of my morass of beads and stones feels like a sign that things are all right with the world.

“I was going to clean it up! Leave it!” Pierre says.

“Yeah, right,” I mutter half to myself but loud enough for him to hear.

“Look, Princesse, either clean up or don’t, but if you’re going to do it, don’t complain about it! Didn’t I clean up the kitchen last night?”

I refrain from commenting on how, when I woke up to make my coffee that morning, I had to ignore the blue plastic New York Times wrapper that was in the kitchen sink, along with the wok filled to the brim with water because it needed to soak overnight, even though it’s the non-stick variety. My new, favorite, pink pearl peace earrings are dangling prettily from my ears, and all is right with the world.

But I leave the crash helmet on just in case.

Excerpt from Sex, Cheese and French Fries—Women are Perfect, Men are from France, a book by Carine Fabius