Some things are just fowl

I knew when Wife and I got wrapped up in this "pregnancy thing" she'd start craving some wild eats. I thought our refrigerator would look like Fear Factor just barfed inside it. 1,000 year old eggs, goat balls, chocolate-covered earth worms, I was afraid Wife's fondness for everything plain would make a cataclysmic 180 and she'd demand food concoctions that would make carrion vultures gag.

Honestly, I was all set for pickles in peanut butter, or ketchup-drenched Biscotti. I didn't think I could stock enough mint chocolate chip ice cream or potato chips and french onion dip to satisfy the waking prego-craving monster inside Wife, I just hoped she didn't acquire a craving for human flesh dipped in ranch dressing because I knew we were well stocked in that regard.

What I wasn't prepared for was the anti-cravings.

Broccoli, spinach, grilled steak and fried feral cat drizzled with hollandaise sauce turned Wife's belly more than the teacups at Disneyland. One look at burnt cow meat off the grill (I'm the Emeril of the Valley, folks, come on by and I'll show off my culinary skills - no can char a hunk of meat like me kids) and Wife would turn greener that Kermit the Frog.

But what really has sent her on the high road to nausea is chicken. In every form imagineable - cooked whole, grilled, boiled, broiled, steamed, solar ovened, raw, raw with feathers - Wife gets that look a drunk does after that 13th beer that says, "you better clear a path to the puke bucket because I'm bee-lining it, baby."

The chicken anti-craving is why Wife and I spent the holiday apart last week. I wandered off to California for some family fun, while Wife womaned the compound and chowed down on a Thanksgiving omelet at her grandparents' facility. No word if they tossed in some cranberry sauce. (And yes, I see the irony. She can't eat chicken, but she can partake in the animal's offspring. But she's pregnant and I'm not going to point out the illogicalness of her dietary habits. That's a good way to get your bottom lip pulled up over your head.)

Meanwhile, I played dorky daddy at my uncle's house, showing off ultrasound pictures of our little fish to anyone who walked by - "Oh, have I showed you our little freeloader? See, there's the hand and the head and if you look at it in just the right light it resembles W.C. Fields" - to the point where relatives avoided me by the end of the night for fear I'd stop them to show off our little freeloader pics again (they'd be right).

What I learned, though, was that my aunts had similar olfactory queasiness. Perfume was the offending odor and to this day they can't smell that particular brand for fear of dry heaving their sushi after a single whiff. And Wife's not alone in her nasal chicken assault. One friend said she still can't eat chicken after her pregnancy. That was seven years ago.

In the end, Wife was afraid that her aversion to stinky cluckers may also leach over to other fine-feathered friends who gobble, so she chose not to accompany me to California. She didn't want to be the party pooper of the family and be forced to eat mashed potatoes, yams and stuffing in the car, two blocks away from the wafting aroma of Thanksgiving turkey.

So, I made sure I ate for three on turkey day, and now my anti-cravings are kicking in because the last thing I want to see is another drumstick for, oh, about three weeks. Christmas turkey is almost as good as Thanksgiving bird.