Cheetos

Joey had his nerd meeting last night. I wanted to go along particularly bad because there were Cheetos. Lots of them. A whole big dispenser of Cheetos and you could have as many as you wanted.

I really like Cheetos.

They are my favorite chips, but I never buy them because know that if I did buy them, I'd eat them. And then I'd have to buy new jeans.

So last night from about 6:00 to 6:30, our conversations sounded like this.

"Can I go to your Nerd meeting tonight? I want Cheetos."

"No, you can't. You have to meet the girls."

"But...I want Cheetos."

"Seriously, you can't come. You have to meet the girls."

"Oh. What about next month?"

"Um, let's see. Next month the Nerd meeting falls on the same day as your accountability meeting with the girls. But maybe in May."

"But...I can skip once, right? I could have Cheetos."

"You're the one telling Laura you're not there because you'd rather be eating Cheetos and making yourself sick than sharing your heart with them."

"OK, can do."

"I'll bring you back a baggie of Cheetos tonight, how is that?"

"I am so excited. Can you come home early so I can eat them?"

You know, it sounds really bad when I type it all out like that. But enough of all this. Joey went to his meeting and I met the girls for accountability. When I came home, I got everything all ready for going to work out at our 5:45 a.m. spin class we do on Fridays. I packed bags, made lunches, put water bottles in the freezer to cool and tidied up the kitchen.

Then I got in bed to read. Joey normally gets home about 11 or 11:30 because the Nerd meeting is up in Addison and they all go to dinner afterwards.

And so I read and read. I considered falling asleep but the thought of Cheetos was keeping me awake. My book was good too. At 11:00 I heard a key in the door and Joey come inside.

"Can I have the Cheetos?" I yelled from the bedroom. (The door was closed.)

"Hi to you too."

"Can I have them?"

"I left them in the car. I was going to give them to you in the morning..."

"Oh. Well, I stayed up so I could eat some...can you go get them please?"

(I'm not usually this bratty, people, At least I don't think so anyway.)

Shortly, Joey walked in with a baggie full of Cheetos.

"Thanks! My hero!" I crowed as I began munching on the Cheetos while still laying in bed.

"You're going to have to brush your teeth again," Joey informed me.

"I know." I said.

Henry sniffed around and found a stray Cheeto. He took it down to the end of the bed to munch it and, after eating half of the baggie's worth of Cheetos, I put mine down too. I brushed my teeth and then tried to fall asleep.

But the anticipation of the Cheetos combined with the strange chemicals in them made me wide awake. I lay there staring at the ceiling wishing I could fall asleep. Sometime after 12:00, I finally got my wish.

When the alarm went off at 5, I could not wake up. We shut off the alarms and managed to oversleep and not get up until 7:10 (we're supposed to leave at 7:30), so we had to get ready in record time. I was glad I had laid out everything the night before.

Just as we were getting ready to leave, I walked in the study to take Henry outside.

"Oh...no..." I said, looking at the floor. "Remember that Cheeto Henry got ahold of last night? He obviously threw it up sometime between last night and this morning. From the looks of this mess, it was more like last night."

"Gross." Joey said, coming to inspect.

"I'll clean it up, will you take him outside?" So I scrubbed frantically at the very large spot of goo on my carpet (serves me right) and, within 5 minutes, it looked good as new. (Thankfully. Otherwise our friends would never come over again.)

And so we left at 7:35 and walked to the car. Joey wearing carrying his backpack and me munching on the last of my Cheetos.

"I really like Cheetos," I told Joey. "Thanks for bringing them for me."

"That's not a very nutritious breakfast," he returned.

But it sure was delish. And that's why I never buy them. Can you imagine what my life would be like?