Hope as an anchor for the soul

It's a charming notion, and has such a grand ring to it, along the lines of 'I will hold beauty as a shield against despair.' But then, Hebrews is a very grand book.

Michael is so very helpful with my personal grooming, ever ready to pluck a stray hair that escapes from my ponytail and trails down my back. Sometimes he's a bit zealous about this, grasping at a hair that's not yet lost its grip. Me: 'Ow!' Michael: 'Oh, are you still using this?' Last night ~ Michael: 'Whup! There's an 'air!' (pause) 'Not in the progeny sense.'

Halcyon summer days

Except I never could remember how to pronounce that. But halcyon summer has hit in the busiest of ways.

This is going to be a quiet evening, as I only have to bake chocolate chip cookies (we are woefully out - I had to pack date bars [which is really breakfast food and hardly qualifies as dessert] in Michael's lunch this morning), pack Michael's lunch, fix supper, whip up a big pot of soup for supper tomorrow night (ensuring enough leftovers for lunches the rest of the week), call Verizon to straighten out a cell phone issue, and put away the laundry while Michael mows the lawn. Then after we eat supper we can change the sheets, run more laundry, make the bed, wash the dishes, and read more Narnia together before getting to sleep by nine sharp (since we still haven't caught up on our sleep from getting back from our Virginia weekend at TWO AM yesterday morning). This is going to be a breeze. Except that I forgot to take the butter out to soften, so I am absolutely stymied on the cookie front (experience has taught us that the texture turns out totally wrong if you dare to melt the butter instead of creaming it in), and I thought out my to-do list in such precision that to put it out of order would throw off my groove, so while I'm waiting for the butter to soften I might as well come in here and write about it.

Monica is such a riot. The compensations for having to work and wake up early every morning are (besides the money) getting to work with such great people. Today she came up to Crissy, sent her some secret signal, and ran off giggling fiendishly. Crissy then showed it to me, which I can't wait to teach my brothers: point to your eyes, point to the side of your head, point to the other person, hold your nose. Get it? Get it? It even rhymes! Running low on sleep and high on sugar (two cups of coffee this morning which were probably more than half sugar and cream to keep me awake), I couldn't stop laughing.

Well, actually, I have stopped by now, apparently. But it was very funny.

To continue the saga of the gum incident

Because Lunch Breaks are too short.

So anyway there we were sitting in the pew during the ceremony, and I decided upon a stick of gum. Operating upon the possibly fallacious premise that what's good for me is good for everyone, and that Michael will necessarily share my opinions and thoughts, I offered him a stick too. (Michael has to correct this mistaken impression whenever I seem in danger of forgetting that we are in fact two separate people. When he was printing out our boarding passes and I misunderstood at what step he was in the process - thought he was printing two apiece instead of printing out his after having printed off mine - Me: 'Why are you printing out two copies?' Michael: 'Love, I know this is hard for you to remember - us being married and all - but we really are two different people. We each need our own pass to board.') I proffered the stick of gum to him. He took it in his hand with a quizzical expression, held it up to the light, examined it curiously...finally I had to help him direct it to his mouth. After that he seemed to know what to do with it. Ron, watching from down the pew (why wasn't he paying attention to the ceremony?), started shaking with silent laughter. He obviously thought it every bit as funny as I did, although we decided that it was the sort of thing you have to see to believe - completely lost in translation when he tried to explain it to a present but unobservant bystander later on.

Michael's unerring ability to make me laugh inevitably reminds me of Sir Percy from The Scarlet Pimpernel: 'A bowl of punch, honest Jelly! The wits that have made a clever woman laugh must be wetted!'

In which it is discovered that the rigours of a full-time job and the pleasures of maintaining a random blog are not entirely incompatible.

It's called Lunch Break.

So we were sitting in the pew at Carrie's wedding paying earnest attention to, of course, the bride and groom, the stars of the show, after all. (During the gathering music and prelude I kept looking around the room and beaming as I recongnised dear familiar face after dear familiar face, and nudging Michael and whispering 'Look there! It's so-and-so!' and pining anxiously for the reception so I could rush over to talk to them, and I had to keep reminding myself that this was Carrie's Wedding Day, not Rose's Big Chance to See Everyone Again and Show Off Michael To the Ones Who Haven't Met Him Yet.)

Lent...sort of

Michael asked me last week, 'So, should we give up sugar for seminar week?'

Those fortunate enough to have read the book Cheaper By The Dozen will recall with fondness the chapter wherein a very civic-minded lady pays a visit to Mother, hoping to enlist a volunteer in the cause. The clincher is the very quotable line 'How revolting! And within eighteen miles of national headquarters, too!' Well, it's been rather like that this week. Every one of my actions is called into scrutiny, pondered over, and tsk-tsked by Michael in the most pious manner. 'Wearing pants today? And during a basic seminar week, too! What's this? Running the dishwasher? Rose! What are you thinking!' Really, now, aside from the late nights and uncomfortable chairs (unavoidable in any seminar), it's been very good for us. It's nice to have a refresher course in all this auld lang syne, and as Michael said last night, 'I didn't remember how funny he is!'

Back to the basics

The Basic Seminar is coming to town this week, and Michael and I are attending. Hence very busy lives for the next few days. We cooked up a huge pot of stew on Saturday, and roasted a huge pot of pork roast for BBQ sandwiches yesterday, the idea being that we could eat quick meals of leftovers before we dashed off to the seminar each night. (Except that we had Todd and Marcela over for dinner on Saturday, and somehow when Todd's around there's never as much leftover as you think there should be =>) It's been a long time for us both - over ten years for me, and at least fifteen for Michael in his estimation, meaning, as I have been pointing out to him repeatedly, that that means it's been about half our lives for both of us! It will be interesting to see how our views and perspectives have changed in the intervening years. We shall see.

End Construction

Road work on 85 at odd hours continues. I suppose the powers that be consider themselves to be doing us a favour to limit their activities to non-rush hour times, but it's still a bit of an aggravation. When I see the signs announcing the merciful conclusion of the work zone, I am always reminded of Jonathan's stock wry remark whenever he spotted one of those orange 'End Road Work' or 'End Construction' signs: 'Those protestors!' accompanied by an exaggerated shake of the head. The funny thing is that he's been doing this for well over ten years. That's a pretty clever joke for a four-year-old to crack!

It's the time of your life, so live it well

Friday night we watched A Bug's Life. And at long last I realised why practically the only line that stuck with me from the whole movie was the line 'It's the time...of your life....so live it well!' Aside from the fact that that line comes from the only song in the whole movie, that line is practically the only line of the whole song. Not only that, but the song is played only during the credits! How did I pick it up and remember it after all these years? Because it played during the outtakes, of course, and there is nothing like animated outtakes! I must have watched them and the song lodged in my head without my noticing. No wonder, as it repeats again and again, which is not a problem as it has a very catchy tune. But it all makes sense now, like when I watched The Princess Bride again after not having seen it for maybe ten years after it came out in, when was it, 1987? For many, many years later, before the whole movie slipped from my memory into foggy oblivion, the only line I could remember was the classic 'Hello...' (If you need me to finish that sentence for you, my friend, there are serious holes in your life. Gaping chasms in your heart that need to be filled.) And I could never understand why that was the only line I could remember. 'Boy,' thought my mature fifteen-year-old-self, 'I must have been really morbid back then, to remember a line about killing and dying!' And then - gladsome day! - I watched it again at long last (but not for the last time!) and it finally dawned on my why it had made such an impression on my impressionable seven-year-old-self: because he says it like twelve times in once scene alone!

I wonder how many more of these 'Aha!' experiences are lurking around corners just waiting to be discovered. There is an excellent line in one of the Father Brown stories, which I wish I could find and copy down exactly, but I'm not due to go on another Father Brown kick for awhile yet and I'd have to read through the complete omnibus to track it down, but it goes something like this: 'All at once a window in his mind opened and shed light on something which he realised, quite suddenly, that he had known all along.'

And to think it will soon be June

No time to post; merely saying that in passing as tomorrow will be the last day the quote will work, for this year at least, and I don't anticipate the blog fad lasting that long. No splashing through mud and wishing for hobbit-holes for me!

Of swords and stones

Once I had gotten over my shock and dismay at the discovery that the Gwinnett County Public Library system deliberately and as a matter of principle does not carry a wide selection of normal videos (how else to describe the fact that they carry only a limited selection of children's videos, without saying that they don't stock adult videos?), I determined to make the best of a bad situation, relinquished with a sigh my notions of free and easy access to such improving videos as How To Dance the Cha Cha or the complete Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas, and checked out a few kid videos. Not as grand a scope as might be, but at least it's free. We are going to watch A Bug's Life, which Michael has never seen and I have seen only once, from which I principally remember the outtakes ('Do you think I'm stupid? Do I look stupid to you?' 'Yes! Ha, ha, sorry, I couldn't resist.') and the theme song 'It's the time of your life, so live it well.' So true!

Last night we watched The Sword in the Stone, another movie which Michael had amazingly enough never seen. It was one of my favourites growing up, and I calculated that it's been about four and a half years since I've seen it last. (Random footnote: I remember not only the circumstances under which I watched it [checked it out of the Loudoun County Library, watched it for my parents' anniversary], but also the weather of the day [cold and cloudy October] and what I was wearing and doing earlier that afternoon. Michael: 'How do you remember details like that? The last fifteen years of my life are mainly a blur!' Me, kindly: 'Well, maybe when I'm your age I'll feel that way too.') We were both intrigued to note that the story and design were by Bill Peet, a wonderfully talented children's author to whom Michael introduced me last year and whose stories Michael grew up reading. I knew already, of course, that the storyline was inspired by T. H. White's book The Once and Future King (that was my favourite part of watching X-Men II with Michael recently: clutching his arm excitedly when the book was shown and exclaiming, 'I've read that book!' A sensation to rival even the satisfaction of playing chess with him on a neat replica of the glass chess set) and though I've only read it once, I thought it carried some very original ideas on the topic of invisibility. Most memorable exchange:

(Sir Ector is talking about getting a tutor for the boys.)
'How many are there?'
'Two. Counting both of them, that is.'

And that was nothing like a good joke

I'm thinking of another Uncle Albert quote: 'People come and see me, and we have such a nice time, and then they have to leave, and it's all very sad.' This morning we waved off the Lieberts, stopping by on their way through to camping in Virginia, even though Michael offered to let them just pitch a tent in our backyard and save themselves a very long drive. We had a great visit. The kids were watching cartoons this morning and discovered that you could improve the fuzzy reception by standing at certain places in the living room. We adults stayed up late to talk last night and ended up introducing Mark and Beth Anne to Jeeves and Wooster. It's a good thing the first episode is so terribly funny, because it's the one we always show to people, so we've seen it perhaps a dozen times. 'She is just the girl for you, Bertie. She will make something of you. She will mould you.' 'I don't want to be moulded - I'm not a jelly!'

Chocolate chip cookie bars

It's been months since I've made an actual drop cookie. Now the standard is to use the Nestle Toll House recipe in an 11x14 cookie sheet, which produces moist bar cookies that keep their taste and flavour for the full week (or less) that it takes us to devour a batch. We were describing this to B&A a few weeks ago, when they complimented us on the taste and flavour of our bar cookies. 'Instead of dropping them on multiple cookie sheets and using up a lot of oven racks,' Michael said, 'we just press the cookie dough into a jelly roll pan.'

'A jelly roll pan? Is that what you call it? Have you even ever made jelly rolls?' asked Benjamin.

'No, but you could.'

'Hmmm...calling something not by its actual use but by its potential...why not call it the severed-head-of-cow pan?'

So, of course, that's what I always think of when I make cookies now. I'm off to press cookie dough into a severed-head-of-cow pan.

The merry month of May

Watched Moulin Rouge last night. It reminded me of reading an Alexander Dumas novel (of which The Three Musketeers is highly overrated, by the by - far more deserving of mention are Queen Margot or The Queen's Necklace, but I suppose the titles just weren't as dashing-sounding): very well made, extremely finely done, made you sympathise and identify with the characters, but ultimately you couldn't countenance the morals. It was, well, very French. At the ending scene, when Satine is dying in Christian's arms, Michael remarked, 'I wonder if he'd be hugging her as closely if they'd known just how contagious TB really is.' Good question. So as soon as the movie was over we went online and spent some time researching the history of TB, AKA consumption, and found that by the late eighteen hundreds they knew GOOD AND WELL just how contagious it was (doctors were prescribing quarantine as early as the early eighteenth century), so probably Christian was just holding true to his Bohemian ideals of recklessness and hopeless passion and such sentimental drivel.

On Saturday Benjamin came up and spent the day playing Axis and Allies with Michael. Ever since we went to the Blue Willow Inn I've been dying to serve B&A the wonderful southern meal of fried catfish, fried green tomatoes, and tomato chutney. So Amanda came up for dinner and we enjoyed a filling repast. It was by now 7:00 - the game had been going on for nigh on ten hours, and at our suggestions that the world could be conquered in that time 'the boys' laughed immoderately. So Amanda and I trekked off to the cheap theatre to watch 50 First Dates, an amusing and largely forgettable chick flick that 1) gave away the ending to Sixth Sense and 2) had the very inspirational moral that you should live every day with the object of making your spouse fall in love with you all over again. Back home for delicious coconut cream pie. Conquest of the world was still underway. Amanda went home. I curled up with a tome of Edgar Allen Poe. It is not advisable to read this kind of stuff by yourself. I fell into uncertain slumber and heard the next morning that the Axis won.

Today is Thomas' seventh birthday. I remember when I turned seven - not so very long ago, as I like to remark to Michael. What is this world coming to?

Groovy movie time

For the third weekend in a row we're heading into another Blockbuster Binge, although this time it didn't cost us a thing, since we were able to borrow five movies from good friends Benjamin and Amanda (hereafter referred to as B&A, for shortcut's sake, although for the opposite of shortcuts we often extend our prepositions as long as we can make them, in teasing reference to our wedding vows, when ONE of us said, instead of 'And thereto I pledge you, my love,' 'And theretofore I pledge you, my love,' or something of the kind. Our memories of the event are kind of fuzzy. But in fond memory of that moment we tend to add as many syllables as possible to all prepositions, especially therefore or thereto, as in: theretowherefor, hereinafter, inasmuchaswhich, etc.). The advantage of this arrangement is that it allows us to watch movies that I've always wanted to watch (Austin Powers, Grease) but never would have justified spending the money to rent.

'He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.'

It was just about ten years ago that I decided, mournfully, that I'd come to the end of all the great books in the world, and hereafter would have to resign myself to reading them over and over again for the rest of my life. Fortunately I was much mistaken, and have been discovering wonderful new books at a pretty steady pace ever since. And now the fun is doubled, because Michael and I can read them aloud to each other, and it's half as fun to read aloud a book new to him as it was to discover it for myself the first time.

It's as impossible as it ever was to determine what it is that makes a book great, or that defines it as classic, but one of the most compelling factors for captivating my interest and soliciting my approval is the essentialness of a good, strong narrative style: a book needs to be written well, with a certain distinctive, classic style, for me to really appreciate it. A witty dialogue is of course a great asset, as one can stow the lines away for future reference:

'There, you see; all is happily concluded.'
'The conclusion I perceive. Not so the happiness.'

And it sure is Monday

I can always tell when Michael was the last one to drive my car (aside from the fact that I usually remember when and where we last went, and who drove anyway), and it has nothing to do with the seat being pushed back (in point of fact I usually scoot the seat back as I get out, just on the off-chance that he'll be the next one driving it, because my theory is that it's easy for me, as the shorter person, to get into the car and then scoot the seat forward than it is for him, as the taller person, to squeeze into the car and then scoot the seat back): the slide-open mirror on the driver's sun-shade is always closed. Michael, apparently, has no use for looking at himself in the mirror while driving.

Quite the weekend. On Saturday Michael trekked off to the War Room for a day of Advanced Squad Leader, a WWII strategy board game that makes Axis and Allies look about as complex as Candy Land. I, meanwhile, sprayed the lawn with weed-killer. This was a simple task as the weed-killer came in concentrate that you poured in a bottle which you then affixed to the end of the garden hose, and spray the lawn through the bottle, much like a sustained stream of Windex, except much more poisonous. The directions were unclear as to how intensely you were supposed to broadcast the stuff, so I blanketed the lawn pretty thickly, and read after I finished the bottle that you were supposed to apply the stuff on a non-windy day, wearing long sleeves, boots, rubber gloves, and goggles. If my hair starts falling out we know what to blame.

Then set off on a windmill-tilting expedition to find more generic white socks for Michael. The specifications were explicit as to size, colour, make, model, length, and structure; these were special socks and could not be purchased in any regular department store. I called several specialty sports stores in the area to see whether they had any in stock, and ended up driving to a mall twenty miles away to procure the desired prize. Michael has worn out probably ten pairs of socks since we've been married, and he was down to about three good pairs. This was, therefore, very satisfying.

At some point we got to talking about Alien, the first two of which we've watched with friends over the last few months. Michael mentioned that the third one picks up right after the second one leaves off, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that there must be an alien somewhere aboard the ship, since they scorched the planet at the end of the last one. Right? And if it's on the ship...oh, no, then it's going to get one of them...which one? This put me in agonies of suspense to know their fate. So we called up Benjamin and Amanda, and Todd and Marcela, and invited them up for dinner Sunday to watch the final Alien movie. It's great to have such good friends who can turn on a dime. Plus B&A have the series, so we didn't have to rent it.

Of the immortals

More on Doriath last night.

Me: Really rough luck being an elf prince, don't you think?
Michael: Why?
Me: Your father's immortal. You'll never inherit the throne.
Michael (after a pause): You know, I'm very glad you weren't an elf. I'd feel really awful if you had to give up your immortality to marry me.

Hmm, maybe we should nick-name our home Doriath, Rivendell and Pemberley surely being long ago appropriated.

Cogito ergo sic

At one time I translated the above literally as 'I think, therefore thus [it is],' the meaning being (using a loose interpretation of implied fragments of grammar, with which I thought Latin was supposed to be just rife) something to the effect that if I thought so, well, there it was. A sort of Pooh-ish tautology, if you will: '-or my name isn't Winnie-the-Pooh,' he concluded. 'Which it is,' he added after a moment's thought, 'so there you are.' Actually it probably means just gibberish, but it's a nice idea to think that Latin can be so agreeably manipulated.

Random thoughts of the day:

I had no idea Galadriel went back that far. Looking at the flow charts and family trees in the various appendices just doesn't do justice to the span of ages of the Eldar. It makes the age gap between Aragorn and Arwen seem all the funnier, though. Her grandmother's great-grandfather (if I have this correctly) was actually Finwe.

Losing another chess match to Michael last night reminds me in full force why I don't like knights. I can never shake the suspicion that my opponent is using his to much better advantage than I am, so I'm always in a terrible rush to eliminate the knights early on, which rather gets in the way of the over-arching strategy. I mean, the ultimate aim is to do in the king, not the knights. The best I can say for knights is what I always scribble in the margins when I feel a need to doodle: The white knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly.

Snaps and snails

Michael tells me that he never liked Rice Krispy bars until I made them for him. This puzzled me (who could possibly not like Rice Krispy bars?) until we discovered that he had been eating the wrong kind his whole life! Apparently the kind he grew up eating were the marshmallow type, while the kind I grew up eating (and, of course, the kind I made for him) are the peanut-butter-and-corn-syrup type, with melted chocolate chip topping. As we discussed this, I began to realise that I hadn't had the marshmallow type until a few years ago - in fact, it may well have been since moving to Virginia. This sparked quite a theory on the origins and variations of Rice Krispy bars - is there a distinct West Coast and East Coast variety, perchance? I do confess that I like my way better - marshmallows are great, but you can't beat chocolate - but I still like the new marshmallow variety, anyway. Not so Michael. This I cannot fathom. He says it's because he finds it 'slimy.'

Speaking of slimy...

Last night at the dinner table we were talking of the news of the day. Michael tells me that there's a new threat to Florida wildlife (and the not-so-wildlife): African snails, escaped from or released by their pet owners, are wreaking havoc on the landscape. This piques my interest. 'And so Florida is being destroyed by vapid and irresponsible pet owners. But it's not just the irresponsibility of letting your pet (and a dangerous one at that) escape into the wild: it's the whole premise of owning said so-called pet in the first place! What kind of person would keep a snail as a pet? What kind of void - no, what kind of vacuum - a gaping chasm of a hole - would you have to have in your heart, to turn for affection and entertainment and validation to a cold-blooded, creeping, slimy, snail? How lame is that - how empty and devoid of interest would your life have to be to need snails to enrich it?' The italics grow more bombastic until I notice that Michael is looking at me with an odd look. 'What? What is it?' 'I guess I never told you about the pet snails I had as a kid,' he mumbles. Oh agony of remorse and retribution! How can I sufficiently abjure my words and assure him that I really didn't mean a bit of it and that I have nothing against snail-owners after all? 'Like Darcy...you need the pleasure of acquaintance long enough to realise that I occasionally find great enjoyment in professing opinions which are not my own...of course I don't think ill of you just because you owned snails...that was before you met me, right?...I didn't know you kept pet snails.' 'I didn't,' he tells me with a grin. 'I just wanted to see if I could cure you of your fancy for tirades.'

Like ha!

'Have I at last met a foeman worthy of my steel?'

Thus I penned in my diary the week after meeting Michael. And indeed, subsequent acquaintance has proven only how able he is to match wits with and even outsmart me. This is highly entertaining and endearing. For instance. Last night he called to let me know that he was on his way home from work. We chatted for a few minutes, and then there fell a lull over the conversation. After a moment I started to say something at the exact moment he began, 'Have you ever been to-?' Of course we both stopped mid-sentence. 'You go ahead.' 'No, you first.' 'No, really, you go.' At last I agreed to go first, on condition that he not forget what he was about to say, and spoke my piece, inconsequential as it was. 'Now what were you going to say?' He started laughing. 'Nothing!' 'What?!' 'When it fell silent, I thought, Any minute now she'll start to say something, so I just made up a random sentence fragment to torment you with. Just playing with your mind, Love!' Ha! How does he do it? He's the only person who can play such effective mind games with me.