Amuse bouche... Supplements
Jacqueline had considered crying off the night out with the girls. She was just so tired. There was nothing unusual going on. Jacqueline was just tired all the time.
She was sick of hearing herself saying it to people and she and Derek were locked into an undeclared ‘who’s tireder’ competition that was driving a wedge between them, particularly in the bedroom.
Anyway, these days it took Jacqueline and the girls about two months of planning to fix on a night that suited everyone, so she mustered herself.
Through the first half-hour and first glasses of white wine of the night, Jacqueline and the girls each confessed that they had each nearly cried off. They were, to a woman, completely wiped.
Through the second half-hour and second glasses of wine — “We should have got two bottles? Why do we always make that mistake?” “My brain is fried,” — they talked supplements. Now in their 40s, they talked about supplements with the same passion that they had discussed men in their 20s and babies in their 30s. They closely monitored the online vim, vigour and health-supplement recommendations of, primarily, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elle Macpherson.
One of the girls said she was now on eight different herbal remedies a day. She told them she’d bought one of those days-of-the-week pill holders.
They were all on the various oils — the evening primrose, the starflower, the one that sounded like the stuff whales eat. One of the girls said she had moved from the ‘just for women’ version of her chosen oil to the menopause variety. “But you’re not menopausal, are you?” asked Jacqueline, with the fear of someone sitting beside a person with the plague. “Maybe; god knows. I’m wrecked, I know that,” came the answer.
Jacqueline recalled that the last time one of the girls had thought she was menopausal, she was actually unexpectedly geriatrically pregnant.
“Does any of this stuff actually make you less wrecked, though?” Jacqueline asked. “I’m on four different things and I’m a long time waiting for the energy to arrive.”
Jacqueline and the girls wondered should they have a third glass of wine. They really didn’t feel as tired as they had an hour earlier. It was nearly past their bedtime and they knew they’d pay in the morning, but what the hell. They could take double supplements and finally get the promised energy rush. It was what Gwyneth would do, they decided, and she’d surely forgive them the non-organic vino. Sure how much more tired could it make them?