CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When you get married, you have to learn one another's habits and foibles, and you STILL want to please the other. When you have a son, all your friends celebrate, when you have your third son and it's a three-boy band called Diaper City, you are so far down the dish drain and the potty train and the Thomas train that no one knows you anymore.

And by that time, you do not look like yourself anymore, so no one knows you, period, which is fine because you don't have time to know anyone either.

So once you really know your spouse, the truth comes out: It's all about him.

Well, that's what you TOLD him, isn't it, BEFORE you got married, right? So don't act so surprised, missy.

So you march around the house repeating, "It's all on me, it's all on me, it's all on me ... ." Your husband doesn't know if you are talking about the poop or the cats or the pomegranate squirts, the laundry or managing the contractors.

He offers to baby-sit and scoop the cat litter so you can go to Kroger, which feels like a buzz when you haven't been anywhere in weeks and months. (So you go to Kroger at 85 mph.)

You are excited to buy pomegranates for Christmas, because they are the food of the gods in Greek mythology -- a symbol of fertility and abundance.

You used to read and think!

And you are surprisingly fertile.

You worry about that.

Besides, pomegranates freeze well and you do not forget that everything now has to be done in ENORMOUS BATCHES, so you can freeze it and forget about it. That way, it can later become "frozen mystery food" in the freezer that you don't remember, and which gets so old, you throw it out and the work that went with it.

You buy 25 pomegranates at Kroger because they are on sale for $1.59 -- which is a really good deal -- and they are ripe and ready.

You take them home and place them in the fruit bowl, so you can admire your taste and your thriftiness before you have to peel them and pick out all the seeds and make a mess that you will have to clean up.

Alone.

Peeling pomegranates is about as tedious and messy as anything you can think of, so you put it off until the next day.

But before you get the chance to peel the pomegranates, your husband comes down in a monogrammed shirt and peels his own pomegranate, squirting copious amounts of the stain-making equivalent of motor oil all over his business clothes.

Since he won't shop for clothes, one more good outfit bites the dust.

Do you take off his shirt and treat it with stain remover right away?

You do not.

HOUSEHOLD TIP: Kitchen scissors can take a monogrammed dress shirt and turn it into a dishrag immediately. As long as the shirt is all cotton or linen, it won't repel water.

Suddenly, as soon as the opportunity for a really big mess creates a carnival atmosphere, there is a Greek chorus of "I want some pomegranates too!"

Over and over and over.

You consol yourself because pomegranates might be an SAT test question in 12 to 17 years.

You go upstairs and put on your pomegranate-stained chemise and make everyone strip in the kitchen in order to make the point for all eternity that pomegranates are not peeled or eaten until everyone is either naked, or nearly naked. Which is kind of a Greek idea anyway. So you peel and they eat, but you don't. Because after you have peeled them all, you are sick of pomegranates.

So the next time you buy pomegranates, you peel them naked yourself, when no one is ding-donging you.

So you think about the myth of Persephone and Hades and Demeter. That leads to thoughts of Taki Theodoracopulos, a Greek, and his highly entertaining online magazine Taki, a magazine you used to read, written by someone you used to know.

And you think of going to Greece and eating pomegranates on a boat.

Which is impossible for a while, even though you did that once, and hope springs eternal because you keep buying swimsuits in an 8.

Reach Tracy Herz at tracyh...@gmail.com.