Chapter 3, April flowers bring what? [Part 1]

Recap:
Welcome back book clubbers, hope everyone had a great weekend. I didn't have to spend any time thinking about this book so mine was pretty spectacular! During our last review, the Zero and Meri met and began a relationship that was moving faster than the speed of love. Within a week of meeting each other, they two met and started a sexual relationship. By the end of the first month, they were spending their weekends at Hobby Lobby while talking marriage and babies. It's getting pretty serious folks.

Chapter 3:
This one is entitled, “April flowers bring what?” and already I’m irritated. The phrase to which this is referring is, obviously, “April showers bring May flowers,” based on the meteorological tendency for April to be particularly rainy; thus, create plant growth the subsequent month. It’s often used to metaphorically describe periods of sadness and strife that result in happiness and joy. So why the hell is the phrase wrong here. Is this intentional? Spoiler alert: there are no flowers in the chapter; there is a lot of fighting though… Keeping the phrase as is seems appropriate. Is this supposed to be funny? Is the author stupid? Am I stupid for not seeing the brilliance at play here? Anyhow, the bullshit book club will be breaking this chapter up into 2 parts for your reading pleasure.

We begin with an argument between the Zero and Meri over what date should be considered as their anniversary. Meri believes it should be March 1^st, the Zero feels it should be the 2^nd, and the reader, of course, could not give a shit. No surprise, the Zero wins; March 2^nd it is and thus, the couple has officially made it through one solid month together. The Zero gloats, “things were so good. We were really, really happy together.”

A whole month? Good for yooooouuu

The Zero lets us in on a little behind-the-scenes information about Sister Wives’ filming process. Usually the show is filmed from 10am to 6pm; with the intent of finishing early before any of the children would return from school. It seems Meri was on call to film her portions, but if she wasn’t needed for much then she had a great deal of freedom to call and text her love interest. The Zero maintains that even on days when she would be filming longer couch sessions; she would race to call him during her breaks. Based on the lack of content the viewer sees in a typical season you would guess that the entire thing was filmed in a single afternoon, but you’d be wrong; Meri is actually a busy woman.

Zero becomes really paranoid about the microphone Meri is required to wear while filming; he instructs her not to call him or even take his calls while she’s wearing one. Meri tells him that she always makes sure it’s off, but Zero knows best and insists, “I told her I thought the thing would still work or something and that was not something I would compromise about.”

And seeing as this is the first week of April 2015, who wants to bet that the Zero had just finished watching the final episode of HBO’s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. As a budding serial killer himself, I can just imagine the look of terror on the Zero’s face as the closing scene rolled; and picture him as he frantically reached for the nearest scrap of paper to scribble, No microphones ever!!! How great was that documentary. Sorry, with all the dullness my mind is desperately drifting to more interesting topics.

The reluctant Meri of the previous chapter is gone; as a result of the worsening situation with her husband and the blatant manipulation of the Zero, she’s succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome. Seriously, she’s devolved into something of a Stage 5 Clinger, by the Zero's account, and spends the entire chapter trying to figure out where the Zero is or what he’s doing, and begging him not to leave her. Zero claims he received 59 voicemails from Meri in April; nearly two a day, which seems like a lot from someone who lives a couple blocks away from you. This guy must be lousy at picking up his phone. He tells the reader that most of their calls were spent plotting how to get Meri away from her husband and the show. He knew it was wrong but he was, “running on love. And my love for her was endless.” Uh huh.

He informs the reader that he and Meri had a nauseating code to discretely reference their sex life; whenever they would discuss a “business agenda” or board meetings” they would be talking about sex they’d had. In typical Zero fashion he finds this hysterical, “we would laugh and laugh and laugh. It was so much fun.” On April 2^nd, Meri left him a voicemail example of this, saying, “I need to apologize for pushing my business agenda this morning. And, um, ask your forgiveness.” The Zero reflects, "That morning we were able to sneak in some very good sex. I remember it as soon as I

listened to that voicemail again. Wow." Why is it that every time the Zero describes sex, I start to get the impression that he's never had sex. Really, who talks like this?

 Oh yeah, this guy 

Zero reveals that in “early April,” he had heart surgery. I knew that laughing thing wasn’t normal! Those were totally mini cardiac events; I’ve been to Webmd once or twice, I’m practically a doctor. He doesn’t really say what his heart issue was but states that his body was “shutting down,” which perplexes him because he says he works out religiously, walks frequently; he even follows a strict vegan diet.  He blames his bum ticker on increased stress at work, from having to work long hours, oh, and on Meri. He says that for all of March he was either up late talking to her or, “sneaking around for sex.” Their relationship is literally killing him, but things are great other than that.

Recovering from heart surgery is a huge deal; I would imagine the rest of April is about to get pretty boring from here on. Really you can’t travel for 2-3 weeks, return to work at those 6 businesses you own for at least 4-6, or even drive for 3-4. I would imagine sex is almost completely out of the question for several weeks as well. So everyone breathe easy, we're probably not going to get any more gory details this chapter.

The Zero takes this opportunity to tell us that once he flew in to see Meri for the Disneyland trip last month, he never left. Seriously, I guess he just called his office in Oklahoma City and was like ‘Hey I’m screwing this reality star now, so… yeah. See you never. Bye.’ That must be nice. This makes me wonder how much stress this dude really could have had- all I see is sex, Disneyland vacations and trips to Hobby Lobby. He says he flew in and out of town a lot for “business things,” though. During these trips he would notice that, “we would start bickering a little bit about small things.” Fortunately, “we'd call each other on it and attribute it to missing each other.” Ah, co-dependency.

On April 12^th, Meri attends a cardboard boat race that was being filmed for the show. The event had a small carnival feel; as such, there was a psychic booth there. Meri feels “called” to do a reading; the psychic tells her that she’s living a dual life and that a tall, kind and smiling, man is the man she’s meant to be with, that they will have children together and she’ll be very happy. The Zero, “dang near dropped the phone,” when Meri told him; shocker, the Zero associates these positive attributes with himself, saying, “that's me.” They’re both amazed that the psychic's reading managed to encapsulate of all his godly qualities and are encouraged that they’ll be together forever because no one else knew about their affair, not even the Zero's best friend forever, Lindsay. It just had to be legit.

Now, I believe in psychics and astrology too, even though I’m smart enough to know better; I blame it on my Irish heritage, we’re a superstitious lot. I believe there have been numerous instances in human history where individuals have known things through a sixth sense that defies any sort of logic and that there are such gifted individuals today, helping police solve cold cases or assisting the government a la the Stargate Project. These rare gifted specimens, however, are not typically found hawking their services at cardboard boat races. Your run of the mill psychic is usually just a cold reader- someone who employs basic observational techniques to gauge information about who their client is and what they want to hear. There’s nothing remotely special about Meri’s psychic. A frumpy middle aged woman approaches your booth? Well, most  women want to hear about a man. Talk about a man. 92.5% of women date men taller than themselves. Tell her that he’s tall. If her countenance seems to brighten when you mention a man, you tell her how happy he’s going to make her and how they’re destined to be together. And done.

 Her readings are 99.9% accurate

Anyhow, the Zero is inspired to visit a psychic of his own a few weeks later; I’m assuming he had to be wheeled from his sick bed and driven there. His psychic told him that he’d marry the woman he was with, that the woman was an intuitive herself, and that his, “happiness is tied to this woman and can not be broken.” See how wrong mall psychics can be. She offers to tell him more but, “it was going to cost another $150 and I had heard enough.” Isn’t $150 to a mega millionaire the equivalent of five cents to us common poor folk? Way to be cheap bro. The Zero is convinced his psychic is right too; because he says that Meri does indeed have, “special powers,” that she could tell the future to an extent and see visions of what will happen. Kay.

In mid April, the honeymoon phase pixie dust is beginning to wear off and Meri starts complaining to Zero about how he never answers his phone. He claims that work has him busy from 6am to 10pm, because he has business calls he has to take from both coasts, and that April is his busiest month since it’s tax time. Something tells me his cardiologist would be really, really displeased to learn he was working so hard less than two weeks after his heart surgery. Seriously bro, you’re supposed to be taking it easy- your chest was just ripped open after all.

So he placates Meri by giving into her request for love letters, she had told him, “it would be fun to go to the mail and get a love letter.” So he writes her letters and once she would get them she would race home and, “jump in “our chair” to read it,” and read it aloud to him on the phone and cry. Not even joking, he says she cried and said she loved receiving them. These two really know how to have a good time. Zero is characteristically pleased by his efforts, “I write some darn good love letters.”  

Kanye thinks you might be egotistical

Contemplating the Zero's arrogant stupidity seems like a good place to pause and end this meeting. In our upcoming second portion of chapter 2, we'll be covering our favorite couple's first real fight misunderstanding and more details about Meri's disintegrating relationship with Kody. Cheers until then.


-Kate