Whenever my husband goes out of town, I cheat. I figure what he doesn't know won't hurt him, and since there's no way for him to find out that I cheated, why not have some fun while he's out of town?

Do I feel guilty about this? Maybe a bit. But only because I know that my indiscretions may eventually catch up with me in the end. You see, I don't just have one lover. I have two.

Ben AND Jerry.

It's true: I'm supposed to be dairy-free. Wheat-free, too. It's not that I'm allergic to wheat or dairy; it's more of an intolerance. And by intolerance, I mean that when I eat anything with wheat or dairy in it...

I snore. Yes, I snore. And it's loud. Like rocket-engine loud. Someone once measured it in decibels and it was somewhere between a heavy-metal rock concert and a baby crying on a plane, both of which are annoying, but apparently not as annoying as an extremely loud wife snoring in the bed next to you.

Or so I've been told.

While my husband is out of town, I don't care if I snore. I don't wake myself up snoring, and I don't keep anyone else awake either. Yeah, sometime the dog gets annoyed, but then again, sometimes he snores, too. When he snores, he gets thrown out of the room. My husband doesn't do that with me because it would make me mad, and he knows which side his bread is buttered on.

Wheat-free bread, that is.

It was a tough decision but for the sake of my marriage, I chose domestic bliss over fresh bread. But when the cat is away, the mouse will play... and eat a lot of cheese, pizza and ice cream.

I thought I was in the clear, but the problem with wheat and dairy is they always come back to bite you in the butt, or at least make your butt bigger. After several months, it was becoming clear that I definitely had a little something going down on the side and I knew I was going to have to come clean.

But then I found a guy who makes really good gluten-free cakes and bread. And my favorite ice cream dudes, bless their hearts, started a line of dairy-free ice cream. Was it possible I could have my wheat-free chocolate lava cake and eat it, too?

I made the switch while my husband was away. And then when he came home, we went to sleep, and I assumed all went well.

But alas, I was wrong.

"You snored last night," he said accusingly the next day. "Did you eat wheat or dairy yesterday?"

"I did not," I replied honestly.

"Well, you must have had something. What did you have?" he asked.

"The only thing I had that I didn't make was a piece of wheat-free chocolate cake."

"Maybe you are chocolate-intolerant now, too," he said.

I glared at him. "So, you're saying that now you think I should give up chocolate?

"Maybe. If it makes you snore."

"Actually, I think you should give up something now, too," I replied.

"What?" he wondered.

I shrugged. "Sleeping in the bedroom."

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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