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A conversation, the nature of which makes me wonder why he seems so happy.
The Fella: I’m running to the store, do y—
Elsa: ICE CREAM!
The Fella: [chuckling] I thought you might! What ki—
Elsa: Chocolate with stuff in or stuff with chocolate in.
The Fella: I thought so! Anyth—
Elsa: Or pistachio!
I’ve discovered an unexpected side effect of watching The Karate Kid for the first time in my 40s. For the past few weeks, any time I have to push myself or offer a little self-encouragement, I hear a little internal soundtrack:
Sometimes that soundtrack gets externalized in the form of me singing the chorus — and only the chorus — in a strained whisper-yell as I putter around the house. It’s fitting when I’m lifting weights for my physical therapy or doing crunches for core strength… but even I admit that it’s a little funnier when I’m rolling out pastry dough.
It also intersects oddly with a standard household compliment peculiar to us; we routinely tell each other “Aw, you’re the best girl.”* The conflation leads to exchanges like this morning’s:
Elsa: No hurry! We’ve got plenty of time to get everything done. We’re the best! arou-ound!
The Fella: You are the best.
Elsa: AROU-OUND!
The Fella: I know! You’re the best girl.
Elsa: [punching the air] And nuthin’s gonna EVER KEEP ME DOWN!
*You read that right.
Heads up, movie buffs: Mr. Videoport Jones (a.k.a., The Fella) and intrepid reporter Justin Ellis will be live-blogging the Oscars for the Portland Press Herald. The NXT Gal and I will be with them in the isolation booth, mixing cocktails and cracking wise. You can count yourself in on the Facebook event page, and tune in to the NXT Generation on Sunday night!
A dream:
In the dream, The Fella and I decided quite practically and happily that we should each marry again, adding another husband and another wife to the marriage. The very straightforward dream reason: the more people in the marriage, the greater the likelihood that at least one spouse would be in the mood to make pancakes for all of us on a given morning. (Perfectly sensible, you have to admit, and as good an argument for polygamy as I’ve heard.)
Everything went swimmingly, without envy or rancor, right until my dream-fiancé and I started talking about vows. He (and I’m sorry, fictional dream second husband, your features and character made no impression on me at all) started trotting out the classics about love and forever, and I quite plainly saw that I could not possibly marry this other husband…
… because I love The Fella in a way I never knew was possible, and there’s no one else I can love like this — no matter how many pancakes he would make me.
It’s official: this year, The Fella and I are celebrating Thanksgiving at home, just the two of us. We’re having a modest vegetarian feast, and because many omnivores wonder what the hell to serve to vegetarians at traditional holiday meals, I thought I’d outline our menu here. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you ever have that dream where you find a new room in your home? If you have, you know the one I’m talking about: you’re trundling along doing your daily household chores and then — buWHA? — you walk past a door that was never there before. You open it and find a new room, open and fresh and uncluttered. It’s empty, but full of possibilities.
Sigh. I love that dream.
The Fella and I have been kicking around a new floorplan for our dollhouse-sized apartment. And by that, I mean I’ve been graphing out rooms and layouts, and he’s been nodding at them and cheerfully saying, “Sounds great!” and “Whatever you want!” and “I’ll move everything!”
This isn’t as gendered as it sounds, with the suggestion of the fussy little woman who wants to pretty up the house and the gentle lug who silently moves every stick of furniture just a skosch to the left. Indeed, our situation flips some gendered expectations on their heads. I can easily maneuver imaginary items in imagined three-dimensional space and translate graph layouts into actual rooms of furniture, and he cannot, which makes design discussions impractical for us. He’d much rather jump in and move stuff around.
(Of the two of us, I’m also the one with the toolbox, who knows where the hammer is, who got all excited about the cordless drill, who has a nodding acquaintance with the folks at the hardware store, who takes stuff apart to see how it works. When a recent guest remarked that he’d finally got the hang of our awkward bathroom door, The Fella proudly piped up “No! It works now! Elsa fixed that!”)
Still, this new plan does require us to move just about every item of furniture in the place, and by “us,” I mean “him”; even if my back allowed me to drag furniture around, my husband will not. If the new layout doesn’t work, we’ll he’ll have to move every item of furniture back, too.
But for the past day or two, whenever I examine the graphed-out floorplan or look around the rooms and imagine them re-arranged, I get that odd floaty sensation, as if I’m dreaming. As if I’m dreaming the dream of the extra room.
The Fella surprised me with dinner last night. He came home with two pizzas and a salad for me.
Elsa: This is going in the vows.
The Fella: What is? Pizza?
Elsa: Salad!
The Fella: And there’s lots of pizza, for leftovers!
Elsa: Oooooooh! Cold pizza in the morning!
The Fella: There’s [counting] — there’s like six or seven slices left. You could have one an hour, all day. You could have a slice an hour for six or seven hours.
Elsa: That’s all I ask from any day: six or seven straight hours of pizza.
I’ve been studying the giant listing of vows at [wedding forum redacted], and as I do, I’m struck by how many people’s vows make untenable promises about “always”: I will always keep this passion alive, I will always adore you, you’ll always be my beloved and most awesomest best friend.
And I’m thinking, “…really? So, you can consciously control your impulses, turning on and off your flow of oxytocin and serotonin like a tap? Coooooool*. But most people don’t work like that.”
The realist** in me suddenly sees why marriage services are so often three-pronged: a celebration of the present with its smoochy-faced love; a reminder that marriage is Serious Business; a sobering pledge of fortitude in the face of challenges. The couple vows to behave a certain way, because, duh, you can’t control your passions, but you can control your behavior.
Because emotions are slippery, fickle things, I can’t sensibly promise how I will feel in the future. The Fella is my bestest beloved most awesomest best friend, and I’m entering this marriage believing that will always be so. I will nurture and bolster my passion, my fondness, my adoration of him, and do my best to give him reason to do the same. I enter this marriage believing that our love, sympathy, and hard work will keep these feelings vital and growing, always shifting and changing with us.
I can hope and believe and, most importantly, I can strive to make it so; I can’t promise that my crazy hindbrain will follow in step every day.
But I can pledge to treat him as someone I love and adore, as someone for whom I am passionate, as my bestest beloved most awesomest best friend. What, then, does that mean? For me, it means a promise of respect, trust, honesty, kindness, sympathy, and a mutual assumption of good intent now and in the future — even if I’m hurt, even in anger, even if my lizard-brain hisses at me.
Surely this is the crucial part of the vows, in any case. Ardent love and bountiful affection don’t test our vows of commitment. Marriage (or any bond of love or friendship) is predicated not on the continuance of fleeting passions, but on the determination to honor our promises, even (especially) when loving kindness flags or falters.
*I would like to cut you up and study you. Please?
**Yes, The Fella is aware that he’s marrying an affectless robot.
In which I discuss my ticklishness and willfully disregard my interest in primatology.
Elsa: Just because I howl like a monkey and kick, that doesn’t mean you have to stop.
The Fella: That is how monkeys say “no.”
Elsa: That’s how monkeys say everything .
blind tasting: HFCS Coca-Cola and kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola
During Passover, many markets stock a quantity of Coca-Cola suitable for Passover consumption. This means no corn, which means no HFCS; this batch of Coke is made with sugar! Sugar sugar sugar!
The Fella crooked an eyebrow at my excitement as I extolled the virtues of sugar sugar sugar cola. After some prompting, he admitted his skepticism that I could discern any difference, so I proposed a taste test.
Elli
Elsa
