Un Chunks

No, I'm not getting a divorce; it's far more worrying than that.














Love Chunks is my jokey pet name for my husband and is sort of the opposite of what he is. He's the last person you'd be inclined to think of as your own Softy Schnookums or Snuggle Puff. Sure he's got buckets of love, but he has never ever been chunky in the Forty-something-bloke-with-back-fat-and-size-14A-moobs sense. If anything he's fitter and trimmer now than he was ten years ago.

Trouble is, he's on holiday at the moment. For most of us, that means eating more, eating worse, sleeping in, avoiding exercise and reaching for another handful of cashews and a cold glass filled with golden fluid and white fluffy stuff on the top.

Not for our Love Chunks. It's only been two weeks of his four weeks of long service leave and he has:

Gone on a bike ride to Point Cook and swum in the sea at Williamstown

Done six workouts in the gym including weights, crunches, lunges and exercise bike riding

Played tennis four times

Gone running - usually 10km each time - too often to count

Taken his canoe out for a spin on the Marybyrnong three times

Hopped on the train to Lilydale and then lifted his bike off to do the old railway track/new bike route around the Yarra Valley and then ridden back home again

Booked some sailing lessons

Signed up for yoga classes and

Played basketball with Sapphire a few sessions a week

......Not to mention taken me to my first psych appointment, cooked every evening meal, done the shopping, helped me hoik the buckets of shower and washing machine water onto the garden, celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary, joined the Greens party, publicly corrected Andrew Bolt to the acclaim of several well known leftie bloggers, taught Sapphire how to make kwai chow, taken Sapphire to school, catered for several lunch and dinner parties, rewired our digital television system and read several good books.

So, last night as we flopped on the sofa in the still hot and sticky heat, he nervously picked out a 45 gram Kit Kat from my chocolate stash in the fridge* and said, "Oh dear, I don't know if I should have something like this so late in the evening."














It was the first time in my entire life that I wished I wore bi-focals so that I could put my knitting on my lap** and look down my nose at him before dryly retorting, "You're right. You shouldn't have that - you should have all bloody TWENTY of them with each wafer finger dipped into a 24 carat gold forty four gallon drum holding double clotted whipped cream served to you by Myf Warhurst and Jennifer Aniston you dim little over-achiever you!"

God I love him.


* They were on special at Woolworths for 89 cents, so of course I bought twenty. And also the chunky varieties, Rolo, Aero, mint, Milo bars etc.
** I knit long squares to my mother's precise instructions (a scarf of seven squares comprising 45 stitches in a row, done seven times) so that she can sew them together as blankets for the homeless shelter she supports. It's a worthy cause, but if I'm honest it makes me feel less slack and slovenly sitting in front of the telly if I've got my knitting with me.