Ftrain, by Paul Ford

My domestic state makes this effort possible--[Wife] unemployed, and no jobs in NYC; she joins Weight Watcher's, counts her points, works on her own life, and feeds me as well. All fine, making the best of a botch. But could this calorie inventory happen if she was working? Maybe, but the hard part was starting and we wouldn't have taken on the effort. The last time I really gained weight was building an archive at work--months and months of sitting and stuffing through the nights. Rational amounts of work and managed stress, a supportive home life, an ideal and loving relationship with mutual support, meals cooked with fruits and vegetables, the olive-oil spritzer and the scale unto which both of us measure our portions. Admittedly I'm uncomfortable to have her in such a wifely role, with myself as snackwinner and herself as domestic caretaker. She is much happier and more fulfilled on the phone yelling at truckers than filling out unemployment forms and being told she is applicant number 300 for a given position. But this is also another blessing in a life that, when you put aside the anxiety and drive to self-destruction, and subtract childhood, is practically choked with blessings, a life that has been kicked in the face and forced to its knees by blessings, at whence a small mob of gifts, blessings, and benisons come shrieking out of nowhere and just start whaling on it, and the life cowers and hides its hands but finally it stops whimpering; they leave it unconscious and broken in a puddle of its own benedictions. That sort of life.