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The Fella and I sit watching “Community.” Vaughn breaks into his Annie’s Song*.

The Fella: Didn’t Barry Manilow actually have an “Annie’s Song”?
Elsa: Wasn’t it John Denver?
TF: Oh, sure!
E: But I don’t know how it goes.
TF: I think it’s the “you fill up…” [He trails off, obviously reluctant to give us both the earworm.]
E: Ah. “Like a thing in a thingee.”
TF: Yup.
E: Like a blank in a blanket.
TF: Uh-huh.
E: Like a frog in a bucket.
TF: Exactly.

*which is nowhere to be found online, so here’s Troy and Abed mimicking Jeff.

Things I slept through this morning, according to The Fella:
- yardwork and a leafblower just under our bedroom window
- someone yelling at those workers to SHUT UP
- children yelling and playing
- a loud and long alarm in the building next door

Things I slept through in my dream:
- my dream-self peeing (which normally snaps me right out of a dream)
- Zooey Deschanel dropping off a yardful of rambunctious children at my quiet and sedate daycare
- someone yelling at Zooey Deschanel’s noisy brats to SHUT UP
- a loud and long alarm in the building where my dream took place
- being Lily Tomlin

[salty language alert!]

Elsa: I’m pretty sure some dumb f*ckers on the internet just ruined the next episode of “Mad Men” for me.
The Fella: Did you go to dumbf*ckruiners.com, baby?
Elsa: … yeeeeeah, that’s on me.
The Fella: Yeah, you should really delete that bookmark.

[The Fella enters the room to see me scowling at the computer screen.]
The Fella: Whatcha watchin’?
Elsa: I’m watching… [looks more closely] a turtle… plaaaaaying… with a shoe.
TF: Oh, the turtle humping the shoe. Sure.
E: I don’t know if he’s humping it. He’s rubbing against it with the center of his shell, but that’s not where turtle genitals are.
[The video cuts to a close-up of the turtle's genitals moving vigorously as it humps]
E: Oh. Ew! [clicks the tab closed] EW! AUGH, that was turtle porn! Who posts turtle porn?
TF: Who watches turtle porn?
E: I watched an unsatisfactory turtle* video, of a turtle eating salad, and I was looking for a better one. And instead I saw turtle porn! EW! Good thing we had sex [recently] because that’s over for a bit. It’s ruined.

[later that day]
The Fella: What are you smiling at?
Elsa: Nothin’.
TF: Whaaaaat? Are you watching cute puppy videos or chicken-having-sex-with-a-donkey videos, or whatever you get up to online?
E: [cuts him a slow look]
TF: Hey, you were watching turtle porn earlier, don’t act so innocent.
E: I didn’t know it was going to be turtle porn! I said “ew!” [quietly] That was gross.
TF: Yoooooou were watching turtle porn and you know it.
E: I HAD JUST WATCHED AN UNSATISFACTORY TURTLE VIDEO! It was a turtle eating a salad, but sped up. That is someone who does not get the point of turtles.
TF: No.
E: Who looks at a turtle and thinks “They’d be awesome if only they went FASTER”? No one!
TF: … Fast turtles would be awesome, though.
E: Yeah, IN A WAR. Not on YouTube.

*Apparently, that’s actually a tortoise. My mistake.

Since the appearance of the internet, the world has changed in ways I could never have imagined in my childhood.

I suppose that my youthful self could have envisioned some of the more obvious and celebrated online conveniences and necessities. I would have understood the desirability of email, a single-point, globally-accessible source for the delivery of written communication. Like letters, but with immediate delivery? And you can log in from any point where you have a computer and an internet connection? (Or, y’know, a sufficiently clever phone?) Younger Elsa would have understood — and maybe even have predicted — the basic outline.

I could have imagined having immediate on-demand access to an encyclopaedia indexing matters of all kinds, that we could just call up a user-submitted page rather than debating trivial questions all weekend long: was Copernicus Polish? Was Burgess Meredith in How to Marry a Millionaire? What are the chief ingredients in gremolata? It would have blown my young mind, but I would have realized that it was both feasible and beneficial.

What I could never, ever have foreseen, and what blows my mind every single time: sitting on my couch and getting an email announcing a package delivery before I can even register the footsteps on the porch as “probably the UPS guy.”

I came down with a cold just before New Year’s Eve, and it persisted until, ooooh, yesterday. That’s more than two weeks of snotty, sniveling sickness — and two weeks of experiencing The Fella’s shining example of unconditional love. Some simple acts of love:

- insisting I sleep cozied down in the bed with him instead of confining my coughing, hacking, restless, contagious self to the hard sofa.

- gazing at my slack, shambling frame as I change from a sweaty, baggy pair of gray PJs to a clean, baggy pair of gray PJs and saying (in a voice ringing with sincerity), “You’re so pretty!”

- driving to the restaurant whose name and address I don’t know to order the soup I can’t pronounce.

Several years ago, right after moving back to this small city, I was walking down the street when I spotted a strikingly familiar fellow walking toward me. As we got closer, I ran through the possibilities: is he another adult student from one of my classes? Did we go to high school together years ago? Is he a friend-of-a-friend? Is he a friend from my youth, all grown up? Is he a customer of mine at one of my previous jobs, or am I a customer of his?

Of course, I was running through these possible contexts so that I could greet him with the appropriate level of friendliness. Is he a passing acquaintance? Nod and smile or wave, and keep walking. If I’m a customer or client, I’d like to be friendly but still leave him some social space for privacy. But if he’s an old friend, it would be a little aloof to wave and blow on past.

I couldn’t place him, so I gave the tiniest of waves and the mildest of smiles and kept moving. He waved and smiled back.

And when I saw him a few days later, we did the same thing: raise a hand in greeting, give the half-smile, and keep walking. And this is what we did for the next dozen or so meetings: passing on the sidewalk, at the library doors, in the grocery store, wherever. We must have some similarity of schedule and taste because I bump into this guy regularly.

At some point, I noticed that he started looking at me more carefully. He couldn’t figure out where we knew each other from either!

And then I realized: I know his face but he doesn’t know mine. He’s an anchor from the local news. (I don’t have broadcast TV these days, so I haven’t seen him on TV since we started waving at each other. But I’d previously seen him on TV for years, so the face is very familiar.)

The next time I saw him — walking down the library’s long exit ramp while I was walking up the entrance ramp — I suppressed my impulse to raise my hand in greeting. C’mon, I don’t know this guy! And more to the point, he doesn’t know me!

And then he upped the ante: he waved and said “Hello!” And now, every time I see him, he gives me a hearty hello and I give it right back.

And that’s the story of how I accidentally trained a local news anchor to greet a complete stranger.

All week long, I’ve been having what sound like classic anxiety dreams, what should be classic anxiety dreams, but Dream Elsa keeps stepping up and mastering the anxious situations.

- A dream replays a real-life conversation in which a loved one asks me to do something I feel awkward about doing. In the dream as in life, I tactfully and pleasantly say no, re-establishing my boundaries; in the dream as in life, the loved one graciously accepts my refusal and we chat about other things before saying “I love you, bye.”

- I find myself at a party where I know absolutely no one. Instead of freezing up or standing in a corner, I pour myself some punch and smilingly make my way around the room meeting people.

- I awaken in an unfamiliar and busy bank lobby without pants. “Huh,” I say to the tellers, “my pants have disappeared, along with my wallet. I’ll have to get new ones! See you later.”

- The bank building shifts, as dream landscapes tend to do, and becomes a shopping mall bustling with shoppers. Unsurprisingly, all of them are fully dressed; I am still trouserless. “Well,” I think, it won’t be the oddest thing they’ll see today. Hmm, I bet I can buy some pants in one of these stores!”

- I’m out with The Fella in a busy bar when I’m temporarily struck dumb. He looks at me quizzically; I calmly gesture to my mouth and shrug, smiling to reassure him. He understands completely, flashes me a loving look, and without words we fist-bump, clinking our wedding rings in solidarity.

I’m not sure what these mean, but I wake up each day nodding in appreciation of this Dream Me who sizes up each situation and faces it with calm confidence and competence. I half-expect to dream of showing up, naked and unprepared, at a final exam — and to get an A+.

Feeling nostalgic. Want to go over to Elsa’s and ask her to play Blondie’s Parallel Lines album.

A few small pleasures on this gray rainy day:
- new boots, bought in the last days of spring and packed away for a rainy day;
- sugar cubes, bought for champagne cocktails but distinctly pleasant to watch them melting in a cup of tea;
- a whole basket of fresh tomatoes, bursting with juice and scent, too gorgeous to cook or gussy up;
- a brand new sketchpad and an excellent pen;
- a few minutes stolen with The Fella, bundled up in bed with blankets and books.

For the moment, I’m directing my writing energy elsewhere, but I’ll continue to check in with little things — and little things can be good.

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