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Books, Home, Humor September 9, 2009September 9, 2009

I Could Never Be a Librarian…

“I cannot live without books.”
-Thomas Jefferson

We bought (another) bookshelf some time ago but just got it secured to a wall in our office a couple nights ago. It was nine thirty in the evening and we were both exhausted, but I pulled almost all our books out to reorganize them to use all that glorious additional space we’d acquired. Not as easy as you might think.

Should I sort alphabetically? If so, by title or author? What about by color of book cover? Size? Hardback vs. Paperback? Topic? Gah! What was a bibliophile to do?

toomanybooks I eventually decided on chronology, starting with Homer, Virgil, and Beowulf (remember how I majored in European Studies with an emphasis on literary history?…) working my way through Geoffrey of Monmouth, Dante, and Petrarch, and got on rather well until I butted into the sixteenth century. I stared down at my copy of The Other Boleyn Girl and then frowned at the space it should go for a while before setting it down in a new pile. I could not, in good conscious, wedge it between Sir Thomas More and John Donne. I didn’t even get a full century ahead of that before I ground to a halt again. Rousseau, Voltaire, Manon Lescaut, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and…The Scarlet Pimpernel? Hm, a better fit than the Boleyn Girl, but still didn’t seem quite right.
“Are these supposed to go in order of subject matter or when they were written?” I demanded of J. as he obligingly carted books around the flat for me.
“I have no idea what you’re doing,” he returned, disappearing into the office with my anthologies, essays, and critical works.
“Me neither!”

The same problem with C. S. Lewis, as well as the fact that I have works from him that fall both in fantasy and theology, neither genre had previously featured. I tucked The Chronicles of Narnia with my science fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold and Douglas Adams…and then realized I had no idea where any of them should go chronologically! “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” didn’t necessarily come after post-modernism in my mind. And what about all my academic books, J.’s philosphy and textbooks?

I finally got it all sorted, but with an additional bookshelf not all of the available space is used. Which means of course a run to the campus bookstore (hurrah for employee discounts!) and Barnes and Noble is in order!

Humor, Marriage September 4, 2009September 4, 2009

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

“My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time, when you get out of bed, it’s feet first!”
-Henry Youngman

Unlike many people, J. and I did not live together before we got married which, besides other learning curves, presented us with an amusing problem: learning to share a bed. I lived in our flat alone for months before the wedding and so, after years of university dorm room or ghetto student housing mattresses, I justifiably learned quickly to sleep in the middle of our/my shiny new queen size. Arms stretched wide just because I could. Not so handy when your new over-a-foot-taller-than-you husband moves in!

Nearly every morning one of us delivers a laundry list of blunt trauma accusations to the other. “You kneed me at three in the morning!” “How, exactly did you manage to wake up on the other side of the bed?” “You nearly butted me out of bed, I woke up looking at the the floor.” “Where’d you think I got that bruise from?” “You elbowed me in the face!” etc…

Apart from the normal co-habitation hazards, there’s a new threat. J. has either developed a creative (i.e. sadistic) way to get me up in the morning, or has simply forgotten to turn off his phone alarm. See, my alarm wakes me up to the soothing sounds of Madeleine Peyroux or Adele. J.’s phone alarm sounds, to my sleep foggy ears, like a nuclear attack warning.

Small Dog spazzes, and J. wonders about this creature he married.

However I feel as though I have had the last laugh. Three days ago, when this awful sound catapulted me into wakefulness for the first time, I sort of panicked. And by panicked, I mean flailed. The act of which got J. soundly punched. I felt badly afterwards…a long time afterwards because, being the antithesis of a morning person, a tiny part of my morning-hating soul wanted to believe he deserved it.

Friends, Home, Humor July 27, 2009July 27, 2009

Highs and Lows

“Who made these cookies? Venice?”
“No, my wife.”
“C.?!”
“Yeah. Apparently she cooks.”
-Ronald and J. Thanks for the support, love.

Newlywed and me being caught up in the idea of being a good wife (coupled with a degree of gentle poverty) J. and I have been being good about putting together meals, cheap dates, and limited spending. Which leaves me feeling smug. “Look! A modern woman am I! Dinner on the table, clean house, and laundry done once a week. AND I’m currently the primary bread winner, bacon bringer, ladder climber, whatever, so I can in no way fall into the barefoot and chained to the kitchen sink variety. I am woman hear me roar!”

Then again, even though I fight it hard, I sometimes find myself slipping into the 19th century. For example, when Venice decides to show me how to make her amazing peach-strawberry jam. Incidentally, Venice’s overall fabulousness is in no way lessened by this knowledge. She’s from Idaho, they know how to do that sort of thing up there. Anyway, I got it whipped up and gelled with barely any loss of face, and now it’s kind of my dirty secret hiding in the back of the freezer.

But then on sunday, when J. and I were both feeling under the weather and stayed home, I went into Absolutely Fabulous Wife Mode. I whipped up bread pudding for breakfast while my plagued husband slept in, a broccoli and carrot soup for dinner, and even managed to stay a good friend and drove Marie home (she lives over an hour away in my hit-and-miss car)…and then…Venice came over to borrow cooking spray, a lemon, scotch tape, and wrapping paper (how she combined them I’ll never know) looking like this:

“What the Betty Crocker?!” I demanded, but it was sheer jealousy. Perfect 1950’s housewife (minus the valium, hopefully). I immediately tumbled down a well of inadequacy.

Editor’s Note : Savitrii just came by and asked what I was writing. I said I was blogging about making jam and her eyes bugged. “YOU?!” she demanded shakily, “I…I don’t even know who I am anymore…” Har har, people.

Drama, Home, Humor, Snark July 21, 2009July 21, 2009

Black Thumb

“Despite the gardeners best intention, nature will improvise.”
-Michael Garafolo

Those perfidious fiends at the home and garden store! They basely sold me six little plants, that were labled as cherry tomatoes, that I lovingly planted along with cilantro and basil, and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t kill them. My little sister also gave us a potted geranium, in a vibrant red, to put outside our front door to make it more cheerful. This too I hoped would survive being my plant pet. But I seem to have been doomed to disappointment. After weeks of coaxing these fickle things with water, sunlight, fresh air, and lots of expectations, I have been rewarded thus:

Cilantro that's gone to seed (as well as a sickly yellow which you can't tell in this photo...)

And do these in ANY way resemble tomatoes?!

Home, Marriage April 10, 2009April 10, 2009

I Want That One, And That One, And…

“Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.”
-Michel de Montaigne

Something else I’ve discovered: I’m pretty good at being a pre-wife. Flat found, furniture bought, basic appliances purchased (which I haven’t ruined, exploded, or dropped yet!), and organization of said flat taken care of. Utilities set up, bills paid on time, and I even got into the spirit of registering, even though the guiltis still painfully acute. And J. is an excellent pre-husband! He put our dresser and bookcase from IKEA together, reminds me of wedding stuff we still have to do (i.e. registering…could I blame the guilt on him?), bemusedly tolerates me running around like a headless chicken when I think something has to be done immediately, and does the heavy lifting. And he’s very fun to look at! Mostly planning the wedding has been an unenjoyably chore, even though I think it’s going to turn out beautifully, but planning the marriage itself has been rather fun.

money1 Besides finishing trawling Bed Bath and Beyond with a registry scanner yesterday (Target’s our next victim), and deciding to buy a comforter set because it’s half off and on clearance, we also decided to buy a computer (finally, since I’ve been without for months now and J.’s laptop seems to have decided to tank on us). So while it seems an expensive week, with tax refund money and a returned security deposit from my old condo, it actually won’t be too bad!

It’s surreal sometimes to no longer be a starving university student and having a legitimate income to spend however I find best (…or if I really, really need that pair of shoes…). It seems the more money you have, the more places it has to go. Where the topic of hot internal debate used to be, “Can I afford that or should I continue to just use my boot as a hammer?” it’s now become, “I know I can buy that but should I get it now, put it on a credit card, wait until payday, or spend the money on something else?” Often it’s not a choice between can or can’t, it’s a choice of when.

On a completely different topic, Marie has asked me to come talk to a group of nursing students who are going on study abroad to the UK about living in Britain, culture shock, and cultural perceptions on both sides. I’m particularly looking forward to lecturing these girls (none of whom besides Marie have been out of the country in their lives) regarding American tourist behavior abroad, a subject of which I have many vicious opinions!

Home, Humor February 26, 2009February 26, 2009

Sugar Mamas, Inc.

“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and serve them one’s self?”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A storage receptacle, NOT our future home, yeah!

Once upon a time Venice got married (while I was out of the country and couldn’t come to the party!) and moved into an amazingly inexpensive apartment. A year later, C. was proposed to by J. and thought, “Gee, not only would it be awesome to live by somebody we actually know instead of moving into a new complex surrounded only by perky, happy newlyweds whose major life ambition seems to be reproduction as soon as possible, but it would also be awesome to not have to spend nearly twice as much on a place as I do now while halving the space. I wonder if there are any openings in their building?” And behold, there were! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are not going to kick off our married lives in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere, we will be card-carrying adults with a place of our own!

Pity our respective men, we’ll be living two doors down from one another!

Now, the moral dilemma. I have a rather nice tax return this year and no computer, do I use part of my return to buy myself one, or do I put it all towards outfitting my newly acquired flat? The correct answer of course is, “furnishings,” but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss having a computer.

rain1 There are other options as well, should I use the money to help my parents out with the wedding? Pay for at least part of the photography J.’s parents have very generously offered to take care of? Sleep on an air mattress and use crates for furniture, and investing the money in a valiant attempt to stimulate the economy? Turn on a really big fan and dance around in a rain of cash? (The first two have obvious karmic potential, the third I’m nixing for obvious reasons, the fourth is oddly appealing…)

Small Dog Syndrome