On my extended hiatus: a toddler looks back in anger

Hello. No doubt, you've all wondered what had become of your intrepid, once-conscientious correspondent. Perhaps a slow diabetic death, the naysayers will surely opine. They will be disappointed, no doubt, to learn that I, Raoul Dominguez, am alive and (mostly) well.
As it turns out, Debra was far more serious about making me lose weight than I'd anticipated. Or, perhaps more correctly, given these grim economic times, Gene's unemployment benefits ran out, which begat these woeful new eating habits for the lot of us. This served the additional, disappointing purpose of making my proposed hunger strike a ridiculous redundancy. You see, when first I refused to eat, Debra and Gene mistook this for a child's grand gesture of heroic self-sacrifice for the good of the family. O, the shame of having my actions so thoroughly misinterpreted!
In any event, they rained down tears upon me, babbling idiotically about their brave, selfless little man. The indignity! To this I responded in the only way I knew would make my displeasure clear: I vomited. However, due to not having eaten a substantial meal for over 16 hours, all that issued forth from my innards was a thin, clear drool which tasted only of bile. The sight of which served only to redouble the force of my parents' horrifying emotional outburst.
But already, despite their lamentations, I'd begun to think that I may have unintentionally hit upon the very strategem that might ensure my gastronomic well-being. Would they, upon seeing my herioc self-sacrifice, perhaps insist that I be the one allowed to continue to dine as I'd been accustomed? Would this charade of brave baby finally evoke feelings of parental sacrifice for my own good?
It would remain to be seen, but for now I shall wait, eyeing the television keenly, awaiting the splendor of KFC commercials, struggling to keep my hunger pangs at bay. Already I can feel my plan working, but for now, as Debra cooks up the night's repast of cruel porridge, I shall endure the suffering and stake my claim upon tomorrow. I shall overcome.

The Holidays: Wherein Your Humble Correspondent Experiences Conflicting Emotions.

Dear Reader, please forgive my lack of vigilance and conscientiousness in updating this online diary of late. If only I might offer you some worthwhile excuse (viz. I had been scooped up, adopted, by Danish royalty and reared according to my new station! Or, perhaps, a surprise trip to the world's finest gastronomical locales!), but no, I have nothing of the sort with which to regale you. In fact, if it is at all possible, these past several weeks have been the lowest point in my not inconsiderable experience. To wit, I must report that the Dominguez Clan has officially fallen on hard times. O, the indignity!
At the very least, I'm buoyed by the fact that we do not reside in Olden Times, during which Gene, the pater familias, might well have been hauled away to a debtors prison, leaving Debra and young Raoul to fend for themselves without the means nor wherewithal (let us speak candidly - Debra does not possess the necessary faculties to provide for herself, let alone a small child, even one as astute as myself).
But the simple good fortune that we now live in an age devoid of debtors prisons does nothing to assuage our growing concern that we may yet end up destitute, perhaps living in a weekly hotel or worse -- in the Aerostar!
As mentioned in a previous missive, Debra has placed me on a weight-reduction regimen. I initially harbored hope that, given my own steadfast resolve, I might weather this storm and once again find myself eating the sweet ambrosia of KFC boneless chicken strips in between freshly-baked Poptarts. But no! This dietary regimen was not, in fact, designed as a course of reduction for yours truly, but rather it was a fiscal necessity! With Gene's unemployment benefits waning, Debra had been forced to economize. And who do you think became the first victim of this economic downturn? Why, of course! The little folks, i.e. Raoul, i.e. Me.
Isn't this always the case? Main Street suffers, while Wall Street (i.e. Debra and Gene, still living high on the hog, no doubt, as is evidenced by Gene's ever-increasing daily intake of fortified wines!) knocks on the government's door, hat in hand, looking for a handout! A handout! My indignation knows no bounds!
How dare one ask for a handout when this mess is of one's own design? Was it not Gene who was so unceremoniously let go from his position at the Wal-Mart? Not I, Dear Reader! Not I! While I diligently labored to provide this man with a happy homestead (was all my feigned laughter for naught?) and endeavoured to remain healthy so as to carry on the good Dominguez name, he has brought this shame home to roost, as it were. Perhaps I shall die of hunger before my gonads reach the requisite maturity and I'm able to sire an offspring of my own! Perhaps, for want of gravy and mash, I shall be consumed by the malefic ills of hunger and deprivation!
But please, do not for a moment think that I have been corrupted by self-pity! That road is one which is far too oft taken by lesser men. I shall not succumb.
In fact, I shall wear this deprivation proudly on my sleeve as a badge of honor. And if I should happen to fall, to perish before the prime of life, I shall have been a martyr to this sluggish economy! A martyr in the fight against incompetence! And from beyond the grave I shall decry government intervention! Handouts? Bah! What happened to those days when men pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps? By sheer dint of spirit!
Perhaps, however, going hungry involuntarily is not the answer! Perhaps I shall stage a hunger strike! We'll see how Debra likes that!
I shall join the ranks of Mahatma Ghandi! Long shall we live in glory! I will yet best this foe, the "economy!"
In the meantime, however, notice that Debra has once again forced me to wear this asinine ensemble! Her taste for irony is not going unnoticed, I can assure you of that. I can already imagine the mise-en-scene when Gene returns from the tavern and sees his firstborn son dressed against his will as a ridiculous turkey, while all that sits on our own table is a godawful concoction of Ramen, empty pie crusts, canned beans, and ketchup.
Damn this holiday. Damn this economy. Damn, damn, damn!
My hunger strike shall commence tomorrow forthwith!

Ha Ha, I say. Ha Ha.

O, the indignity!

Damn you, Debra and Gene. Just, seriously, damn you.

As I lie here, immobile and shamed, the only thought that sustains me is tonight's impending cornucopia of sundry sweets and savouries; treats both salted and sour, rich and delicious.

The worst part? Catching a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror, I find myself thinking unholy thoughts of auto-cannibalism. A delicious child-sized hamburger? O, the shame as I salivate at the very sight of myself.

Gene and Debra, I vow, will pay for this disgrace. For now, however, I require a nap.

Dinner, 10/27/2009

1 piece lean chicken, skinless, broiled
1/2 cup steamed broccoli
1/2 cup brown rice, no butter

2 cups apple juice

total calories: 490

Debra has seen fit to put me on a diet. If this continues, I may have to consider a hunger strike.
I am not happy.
Gene is cackling like a hyena. God damn them both.

Ack! Tuesdays!

Greetings, Dear Readers. Would that I could address you under more felicitous circumstances, but, today being a Tuesday, named alternately after the ancient God of conflict, Tiu, or the less archaic Germanic etymology, Dienstag, roughly translated as "day of service," this day portends naught but deleterious drudgery.

The day dawned with a howling wind whipping across the plain, and the meager clouds were tinged with red: take heed, sailors! Gene stumbled into the nursery, rheumy-eyed and unshaven, his unemployment clearly wearing on him, for what is a man if not the bread winner? Gene's unemployment benefits, I'd overheard him telling Debra, were set to expire and there was as of yet no prospect of work on his windswept horizon. So despite my general antipathy towards this man, my heart went out to him. And besides, when he was still working at the Wal-Mart he was absent from the house no fewer than eight hours daily, plus the additional time spent at the tavern drinking away a sizable portion of his check. His gainful employment was a boon to my treasured private time.

But I digress. Tuesdays...Long have I harbored a mistrust, indeed a loathing of this second day of the work week. It has, sadly, only gotten worse since Gene was let go. Mondays are easy to dislike, but it takes true fortitude to detest Tuesdays. Mondays, likewise, are easier to stomach given Gene's acrimonious mood. On Mondays, while Debra is out running her various domestic errands, Gene is still somewhat jovial from the weekend. He wakens me, still optimistic as the week begins, hopeful still that Gus will call and invite him back to work.

"Today's the day, little man," he says habitually, lifting me from my crib and gently wiping the sleep from my eyes. "Gus is gonna call and tell me about how it was all a mistake, a misunderstanding. The Wal-Mart ain't the same with ol' Gene, is it, Raoul? Inn't your Daddy necessary? Dun't it run a bit less smooth over there without me? Yes it does! Yes it does, my son. You'll see. You'll see..." And then he drifts off into a silent reverie, staring through the window and patting me on the back. And there we stay for a while, he throwing his gaze across the endless tallgrass plain and me casting mine on my hamburger mobile, staring and patting. Staring and patting. Always staring and patting.

The hopefulness of Mondays has all but evaporated by Tuesday morning, though. By Tuesday the demons of aimlessness and daytime television have laid Gene's spirits low yet again. After a pleasant Monday spent on the corduroy couch with Gene watching back-to-back episodes of Judge Judy and eating Minute Steaks, Tuesday's awful silence has me disheartened as well. By Tuesday, Gene has put back most of a fifth of his beloved Early Times and endured no less than 14 consecutive hours of those screeching harpies poised on the red carpet on the E Network. Also, Tuesday is Debra's meeting so she's gone for most of the forenoon, and she leaves me with only my second breakfast bottle (formula and beef bouillon). So by 10am I'm ravenous and, with Gene stupefied on the couch or even the floor, I'm left to fend for myself. Last Tuesday I was forced, degradingly, to gnaw on half a potato I'd found behind the refrigerator. Dear Readers, this truly was a low point. The potato having grown soft and its eyes turned to tendrils desperately seeking purchase in soil. Its taste, however, was not altogether unpleasant. But even so.

The silence, however, was and remains unnerving. Gene lies prostrate in the family room, staring listlessly at the ceiling, immobilized by fear, perhaps. Fear? Can it be? Regardless, there he lies scarcely even bothering to swat away the flies that circle his unwashed, stubbly girth. The silence booms, alternately accentuated by and abated by the howling wind that manages to find the unsound conrers of our house, where the walls meet and on bright days you can see cracks of daylight. The wind whistles thinly there and I am hungry. Wan, thin, desolate, like the very land upon which we have homesteaded. If only I were capable of operating the electric can opener.

Tuesdays, my friends, what is to be done? What is to be done?

Luckily, I secreted away a small ration of Gummi Bears inside an ingeniously designed hollow in my actual Teddy Bear, but even this cache of sugary sweetness has done little to assuage the hunger pangs which even now plague me. So I crawl down the thankfully carpeted-yet-seldom-vacuumed hallway, intent on accosting Gene and forcing him to prepare us both a noon repast. This is as much for his own benefit as for mine. For what elixir can there be to jar a man in such doldrums better than a hearty meal? What tonic can gird one's loins so fully as the very stuff of life? Rack of lamb! O, to reach those lofty peaks of barnyard tenderness! Game hen? Quail? Ah, surely not foul, those fowl! Perhaps an egg dish? Savory, rich hollandaise! Or perhaps a bit more pedestrian? Casserole? Green bean and mushroom? Surely such a thing is not out of the question?

When finally, through my admittedly awkward perambulation, I reach Gene's immobile figure and begin my caterwauling, urging him shrilly to attend to my alimentary needs (and his own!), he does not deign to more. Lifting myself with great effort onto his own mountainous chest, I peer intently into his eyes. It is clear he has been crying, although the tears have long since dried. He is simply staring at the stuccoed ceiling, breathing belaboredly. One gets a sense of glacial time, perched there on his chest. He seems to be mummified, in suspension. His troubled, shallow breath smells of disinfectant. Finally, I roll off my father and come to rest on my back just next to him and together we lie in anhedonic contemplation.

The acrid smell of his sweat is immediately apparent, but the smell is the perfect complement to this mise-en-scène; it is the smell of defeat at the outskirts of American suburbia. An unlaundered sweatshirt, stained with a week's worth of food runoff, each meal growing slightly less extravagant than the one before as our food budget dwindles. Soon, no doubt, we will be eating Hamburger Helper sans the hamburger. Or shall we be reduced to Tuna Helper? Who can say?

But thoughts of our decline are shortlived. Before long, Gene's regular though labored breathing and the gradual rise and fall of his chest has lulled me into a deep meditation. My own breathing falls into step with that of my father, and for a brief moment I see my future laid out before me. The spotty late-morning light dissolves into visions of the distant future as I lie on a carpet with my own infant son beside me and we both stare at the ceiling. Only this carpet is plush and unstained, and the ceiling in gilted. The walls that surround us are hung with tapestries and large, tasteful paintings. I see myself from above, the adult Raoul, corpulent certainly, but vigorous, a man with healthy appetites. I rise and lift my son and hold him to my breast. I look around and am greeted warmly by my future wife, the future mother of my future son. She is small and elegant. Her small hand rests on my powerful forearm and we lock eyes. I hold her gaze in a manner that is both sexually dominant and infinitely tender. Then we look at our son. This is a boy who will never know hunger, who will never go without. He is clothed in a cashmere jumper. I have a neat and stylish beard.

Suddenly, I am called to alertness by the sound of Debra's keys in the lock. She enters the room and immediately interrupts our somnolent musings with her harpy's shrieking.

"What the fuck, Gene?" she yells. "Wern't you suppose to find some work today? I come home from my meeting to see you two fat asses lying on the goddam floor? What the shit?"

Then she lifts me roughly off the ground and sets me on her hip with difficulty. In the kitchen she unwraps a Butterfinger and places it in my hand. The fluorescent light crackles overhead. In the other room, Gene strains to roll over and right himself.

Visions of Sugar Plums

Hello, Dear Readers.
When last I wrote, I left off with a report of impending sleep. To wit, a reportage of the strange netherworld, the domain of Hypnos and his son, Morpheus--the Gods of Sleep and Dreams.
My usual nighttime preoccupation with sweets, savouries, succulent victuals, and agreeable aliments was not to pass this night! But rather, I was transported to a nightmare dystopic realm; a frenzied personal vision of my own eventual demise. No, Dear Reader, not at the hands of some malicious villain, dark and mustachioed, but at the hands of a murderer most nefarious and insidious: high blood pressure; heart disease; other assorted ailments all too commonly seen in the gourmand!
My visions, friends, stood so vividly before me that even my dream-self shrank in horror of what might one day befall me. To begin, chest pains constricted my heart and my throat in a manner most vile! I found myself standing, near prone, in a grimly lighted cave (or, at least it appeared so!), all hued in reds and brownsmost unnerving. The faint flicker and crackle of torchlight and a musty breeze was apparent, even in my panick'd condition, and as I clutched my throat, hoping for a reprieve, the foulest odor I'd yet smelled in my life emanated from somewhere unknown. Spoiled food! Excreta! Malodorous sweat! Sulphur! As you can no doubt imagine, my panic only increased.
With this, my visions grew ever more intense. Skin disease! Shingles! Itchy scalp! But no, friends, it grew only worse. The twin malefactors of Diabetes and Colon Cancer made their appearance in a manner most profligate! They appeared incarnate as two towering, leering wretches, bent on stealing away with first my gimpy feet, followed by amputated lengths of bowel, and finally my very life!
Then the fever dream, rather than dissipating, leaving me awake and jarred past all reason, grew only more vivid. Lucid images were replaced with a roiling, turgid cacophony of carnival flashes and off-key pianola symphonies. Scenes of pure malefic color and emotion exploded before me in a calamitous ruin. So aggrieved did I become that I was left senseless and bedraggled when finally I awoke in an impotent howl.
Debra and Gene certainly took their sweet fucking time in coming to my aid. Were my screams not distressed enough to rouse them from their own reveries? Were they, perhaps, engaged in their own greasy brand of bumping coitus? I am loathe to imagine it, but when their own and only son cries out in the night, afflicted and besot by demons, does it not behoove even the most injurious and neglectful parent to spring to swift action?
Alas, this was not the case. Despite the genesis of my night terrors, Debra and Gene simply entered my chamber with their usual panacea for any disquiet on my part: a lukewarm bottle of equal parts buttermilk and cognac. Despite my protests and attempts at recrimination, the elixir soon had its desired effect. I am only thankful that the sleep engendered by this calmative was a dreamless one.
With this, Dear Reader, I bid you adieu for the moment. Tomorrow I will continue with Dr. Stephy's suggestion of my food diary. Perhaps, however, there will be an accompanying dream journal as well. Perhaps.

Last Night Was Pleasant

As you can see by my smiling visage, last night's meal was pleasant. I'm quite getting into the swing of things with this food diary, and, if anything, it will allow me to savor once more the various flavors and textures of meals past, if but only in my memory.

For the evening repast, Debra prepared Andouille sausage Jambalaya, a personal favorite of mine even if the Bayou spices do tend to fill my diaper with a pungent offal in short order (but, I ask you, is this not a small price to pay?), a cheese plate of wondrous variety, and for dessert a pecan pie. My heart was ablaze with joy upon simply beholding this veritable feast laid out before my highchair, but then the joy turned to consternation and finally to fear, as I realized the burning sensation in my chest was not joy. O, no, dear reader! It was either searing gas pains or my very first heart attack. Neither one to be taken lightly.

I squirmed and wriggled in my (slightly too small) highchair, which Gene mistook for mirthfulness. Father, I cried out beseechingly, this is not mirth! I am in pain! Do not gird your loins to your firstborn man child! Do something! Help! Or, that is to say, I would have said these things. Alas, my speech has not kept pace with the development of my written communications. Panicked and pained, I scanned the kitchenette for a pad and pencil, all in vain, while that corpulent cask of crapulence hooted malignantly to Debra, "Oh Debbie, will you look at that? The little man is dancin'! He's a reg-lar American Idol."

But then, in one foul explosion coming simultaneously from fore and aft, my ailment revealed itself to be nothing more than the severest of gas pains (owing, no doubt, to the week-old carton of beef Lo Mein I'd discovered and made short work of while Gene and Debra napp'd on their twin beanbags while Dr. Phil brayed on meaninglessly in the background). The force of my flatulence practically lifted me from off my chair, while the burp acted as a type of retro-rocket, tilting me slightly off-center and tipping the highchair just enough for me to tumble roughly to the floor. Now, on any other day I would have howled at the indignity of such an outcome, but today I was simply too relieved to be free of the roiling, turgid pains in my chest and abdomen to give one further iota of thought to my graceless fall.

Picking me up and righting my chair and nearly doubled over with laughter, Gene remarked, "Wells, I guess the folks on America's Funniest Videos might be interested in Raoul too." I was about to launch into a tirade of protest, but Debra mollified me ably with a steaming bowl of Jambalaya. I quickly regained my composure and took a moment to take in the aromas and colors set before me. Such beauty! The crawfish! The sausages! The spices! Sheer heaven, this ambrosia!

I won't go into further detail, because what words can truly express the melange of flavors I experienced? What adjectives can capture the medley of tastes?

After the meal, Debra put me down in the nursery and, sleepy though I was, I simply stared at the off-white of my ceiling for a time (water-stained in an arresting pattern of swirls and semi-opaques) contemplating the future. What places would I live to see? What manner of strange people would I encounter? To what lengths would I go, one day, to satisfy my hunger? Then, quietly, unnoticeably, as if by some nepenthe, I slipped off into the sweet embrace of sleep.