Monday, December 27, 2010

Exclusive Offer... Coming Soon!

Check back Saturday for a New Year's special... ;)

Roll it Out!

"But do you think the dough will rise the same at altitude?" I asked Tiffany as we packed our bags to visit her sister in Denver for Christmas.

It was my 117th pizza-related question in two days.

"Oh my god," Tiffany said. "Please stop worrying about the pizza."

I couldn't help it. I had volunteered to make homemade pizzas for Tiffany's family--her mom, Patty; dad, Gary; cousin from Peru, Alessandra; and sister, Melody--on Christmas Eve. This was partly because I wanted to contribute something to the weekend and partly because the original Christmas Eve dinner--Gary had offered to make tofu stir fry (none of us are vegetarians)--had been booted from the menu.

"Okay," I said.

But I lied. As we waited to board the plane the next morning, I was still worrying. I feared I had bitten off more than I could chew--figuratively speaking. Literally speaking, I could eat homemade pizza every night of the week and never tire of it the way Tiffany was tiring of my questions. The problem was, I had only made homemade pizza dough once, the weekend before, after I volunteered to make the homemade pizzas in Denver and then found out Denver does not have a Trader Joe's, which is where Tiffany and I cheat and buy our pre-made dough.

"There are only six of us," I said. "My recipe will make about eight dough balls for eight-ish-inch pizzas. Do you think we should make all eight pizzas or freeze some dough for Melody or not make all the dough?"

This is a trick I pull when I'm trying to get in as many questions as I can--I bundle them into a long run-on question in hopes that Tiffany will answer one of them before she stops responding to me at all.

But she didn't even look up from her crossword puzzle.

So I fretted. That night, I was head pizza chef and Patty was sous. Tiffany was second sous/drinking beer with Gary. While Melody was at work, we mixed with our hands and kneaded with our fists. Short a rolling pin, we used the bottles of wine Gary had bought to roll out the dough. And, because I was terrified of not having enough to go around, we made all eight pizzas, baking them on baking sheets, broiler plates and the bottom sides of pans.

As the pizzas started to come out of the oven, crispy-crusted and golden-cheesed, I was feeling very fine. And then Tiffany and Gary came back from picking up Alessandra at the bus stop. She's living in Colorado for a few months while she interns at a ski resort. Guess where she's been assigned?

The kitchen.

Guess what she makes, five days a week, several hours a day?

Pizzas.

Ah, well. Some things cannot be foreseen and therefore cannot be worried about in advance.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Go Team! (Whichever team! I Don't Care!)

Last night, Tiffany and I went to watch the University of Kansas' men's basketball team play UC Berkeley, and I was reminded of two truths about myself. First, why I was a better soccer player than a basketball player. The speed of basketball and the size of the court made me play that particular game in a constant state of claustrophobic panic-- once, the first year I played on a team as a 6th grader, an opposing parent (what a jerk!) yelled "Shoot it!" as I was dribbling the ball past half-court. I did shoot it. And, as you might expect, I missed. Also, the fact that basketball teams call plays was not conducive to my personality. When a play didn't work, I didn't know what to do, so I'd dribble straight for the basket without a thought for any of my teammates. In soccer, there's no such thing as plays, so I could never feel inadequate not completing one.

The second thing last night's game reminded me of is this: I have no loyalty as a fan. I grew up in Kansas, so you might think that, although I did not attend KU, I'd cheer for my hometown team. Alternatively, because I live in San Francisco, you might think that, although I did not attend Cal across the Bay, I might cheer for the Bears. But I cheered for neither team. Instead, I did like I always do when I'm watching a game and cheered for a good match. When Kansas was on a roll, I cheered for Kansas. When Cal got too far behind, I cheered for Cal. I was happiest for the few minutes in the game when only four points separated the teams. Having been an athlete all my life, I am curiously indifferent to who wins games in which I do not play.

My brother cannot understand this about me. When the Giants and the Rangers were set to play in the World Series, I bet him the Giants would win. He was horrified that I'd chosen the Giants over the Rangers. It was as if I'd told him I was pregnant but had decided to donate my baby to Goodwill.

"But you were born in Texas," he said sadly.

"So," I verbally shrugged on the phone. "I live here."

Anyway, of course I won the bet, but I wasn't happy about the way I won it. I wanted the series to last longer than it did, and so, while I bet on the Giants, what I really wanted was a lot of fun games to watch.

Tiffany, also, is not a fan of my indifference. When the Patriots or the Red Sox play, she cheers wholeheartedly for them because she grew up in the Boston area. I'm happy for either of those teams to win, but, if they're winning by too much, I cheer for whomever they're beating.

"Wooo-hooo!" I yell, when the opposing team scores.

"Rebecca!" Tiffany screams. "Shut up! If we* lose, I'm blaming you and it won't be funny!"

I'm an intensely loyal person in other areas of my life. As a spectator... not so much. But I guess that's a kind of loyalty too-- I'm consistently, passionately, faithfully loyal to the idea of a good spectacle.


*As an aside, we have a good friend who hates it when spectators use the first-person to cheer for a team, as in, "We're winning" or "We made a great trade last year." She thinks if you're not on the team, you don't get to have ownership in the team. But I take ownership of all teams... as long as they're giving me a great game.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Commitment... And Everything That Goes With it (And Everything that Doesn't)


A few days ago, over a bowl of shared udon noodles, Tiffany told me she was ready to take our relationship to the next level.

I finished slurping a noodle up from the not-so-secure grasp of my chopsticks.

"Really?" I asked.

Now, before our families start calling to bemoan the fact that I've revealed some very big news on my blog, let me explain what level Tiffany meant:

A Christmas card picture.

Yes, after almost six years, Tiffany felt committed enough to me to plaster a picture of the two of us on a card and mail it out to all our friends and family. We've been co-signing Christmas cards since we moved in together, but I think we can all appreciate the seriousness of The Christmas Card Picture--it's what couples do when they're married, when they buy a dog, when they have children.

"Hmmm," I said, stabbing at another noodle and grinning across the table at her. "This is a big moment for us!"

Those were the wrong words, of course. As any half of a couple knows, the minute you assign significance to a moment, the other half will verbally backpedal until any significance is lost. But Tiffany, brave soul, stood strong. She remained committed to The Christmas Card Picture even as I splattered her with noodle broth.

We couldn't discuss the idea much more that night. We were late for a showing of "Burlesque"--a movie Tiffany couldn't wait to see and a movie I had no desire to see whatsoever.

But a few days later, the topic came up again as we prepared our Christmas card lists. We decided to find a suitable picture. This is tougher than it sounds because Tiffany and I are the World's Worst Picture Takers. We very rarely have a camera with us, and, when we do, we almost never point it at ourselves.

"It's like we don't even exist," Tiffany said, scrolling through the hundreds of pictures on our computer, 99.9 percent of which featured someone else.

"How about this one?" I asked, pointing to a shot of the two of us taken by a tour guide in Vietnam from so far away we look like Fisher Price people.

"Eh," Tiffany replied.

Clearly, The Christmas Card Picture called for new material, so, when we got our Christmas tree, we begged one of the workers on the lot to take a photo of us loading it up to carry home.

"You're carrying it home on that?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head at our battered Vespa.

"Yes," we answered.

Click.

The photo was a little bit blurry. That's not the fault of the man who took it because our camera takes blurry pictures when Tiffany and I use it too. We just haven't bothered to figure out why. Still, the blurriness almost looked like soft-focus (like all the scenes of Christina Aguilera in "Burlesque"--you know, where her hair fades out in a soft glow--or maybe you haven't seen it? Good for you.). By our standards, it was a keeper.

But when we played around with the picture and some card-making software, we both got cold-feet.* And it's not because we're not ready to "commit" (clearly, we are: Tiffany, who hates food-in-mouth noises proposed The Christmas Card Picture over my noodle-slurping, and I went to see "Burlesque"**--what more commitment can a couple endure?). It's because, in comparison to The Christmas Card Pictures we are receiving from our friends (with babies laid out on plush carpets and toddlers squeezing each other around the neck and puppies in reindeer antlers), we just look like a boring couple with a tiny half-naked Christmas tree. And we don't want to inflict upon our friends and family the cheesiness of just the two of us.

I mean, come on...

That's what this blog is for.

*Despite the fact that this picture never went on a card or into the mail, I've posted it here for illustrative purposes.
**I secretly enjoyed the movie, mostly for the music.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

O (Naked) Christmas Tree



The other night Tiffany and I went to get our Christmas tree.

This is a big event. We don't have a house to string lights on or a staircase to drape garland over. After the tree, the most extravagant decorating we do is to put a Santa Claus toilet lid cover on our toilet. My grandmother sent us the cover, which is literally Santa Claus' face, and we like it because it's funny and also it keeps the seat warm. Anyway, you would think that, given the prominent role the tree plays in our holiday-ing, we would put a lot of care and time into the decision of which tree to buy.

You'd be wrong.

But that's not because we don't care. In fact, it's because one of us cares so much, gets so excited, that she cannot even take the time to consider all the trees on the lot and rushes to the first tree she sees. That one is Tiffany. I pointed this out to her last year after we purchased our tree. We had barely stepped onto the vacant lot where a non-profit organization sets up its tree-selling operation when Tiffany, unable to control herself, rushed to the tree she wanted (the first one she saw) without even a "how-do-you-do" to the other trees:

"How about this one?" she cried.

Seeing her face, I could hardly refuse. I took a deep (quick) breath of the fresh Christmas tree smell and then we paid for our tree and left.

This year, we took a more measured approach. To show how capable she was of taking her time, Tiffany diverted us away from the section of trees that met our height and size requirements (short and tiny) and led us around the lot, pointing out massive trees the size of the ones her family used to have. Only after our lap did we return to the section of small trees and proceed to ponder them.

"Which one?" I asked.

"I know, which one," she answered, smugly. "And I know which one you picked too."

I doubted that. When I was little, my mom bought my brother and me a book about how all the imperfect Christmas trees never get chosen and how they're only imperfect because they offered their branches and needles as shelter and food to forest animals (I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it!). Since then, I can't bear to buy a tree without any blemishes.

"This is the one I want," I said, trailing my fingers over the branches of a perfectly imperfect tree.

"That one!? It's naked!" she cried, pointing to the wide gap between its top and lower branches.

We compromised on a half-naked tree. At the apartment, we nestled our tree in the place of honor in front of our biggest window, twenty feet from the bathroom and Santa Claus' face.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Wranglers

This is how it came to pass that on a recent Sunday I was standing waist-deep in brush waiting to wrangle a bull:

Our families celebrated a little early Christmas and the birthday of our good friend Robert on an overnight at Robert's farm just outside of Austin. After a late night by the campfire, we were enjoying a batch of breakfast tacos on the porch when Robert came back from checking on his horses.

"Anybody want to go help wrangle a bull-calf that got loose?"

It's safe to say I never expected those words to be directed at me. In fact, I wasn't sure what wrangle meant. I pictured wrestling. Although you might think I would turn down the invitation with that mental image, I jumped up with Tiffany, my brother Brandon, my best friend Zac and Zac's girlfriend Kate to get some wrangling gear on (Brandon's girlfriend, Lindsay, was in bed with a head cold. No wrangling for her.).

Brandon came back pulling on a lavender Provincetown sweatshirt of my mom's (perhaps the first wrangler to ever so do). Zac emerged buckling his favorite leather belt, which has his last name etched into the hide. Tiffany, Kate and I couldn't think of anything we couldn't wrangle without. I did wish, however, that I'd put my contacts in earlier. I was wearing what Kate has dubbed my "special occasion" glasses. These are the glasses I bought two years ago ostensibly to replace the glasses I bought twelve years ago. Instead, I wear my old glasses most of the time to extend the longevity of my new glasses. I didn't see how wrangling could help in that regard. Alas, there was no time to waste.

Zac drove his truck, with the rest of us, plus my mom and Zac's mom Marilyn, piled in the back. Marilyn's cell phone rang as we bumped along the gravel road.

"Can't talk now! We're wrangling!" she answered.

Wrangler Robert shook his head, laughing.

A couple of pastures away, we met Robert's neighbors who had only moments before nearly wrangled the wayward bull into a trailer. Our task was to re-wrangle the bull.

We introduced ourselves.

"I'm Rebecca," I said, shaking the hand of a woman who was busy trying to call the bull. She wore a sweatshirt that read "No Outfit's Complete Without a Few Cat Hairs."

"Hooooo---woooo," the woman responded. I thought her bull-call sounded more like a train whistle, but who was I to judge?

A man in a cowboy hat passed a long rope to my brother.

"You get close enough, toss this over him," the man said.

My brother nodded, mute.

"Then, I'm warning you, you're going to want all your friends tugging on that rope," the man went on. "That bull's gonna fight."

And with that, we traipsed off into the brush.

"Is this a problem?" Tiffany asked as we set out, looking down at her red scarf.

"No," I said. "I think the bull will be more offended by Brandon's lavender."

(It turns out Brandon was an okay shot with the rope--he was able to lasso my arms to my side without any trouble at all).

Early on, Robert got within touching distance of the bull with the help of a bucket of feed. But, because we had not snuck around to cut off the escape route, the bull trotted off without any difficulty. We pursued, at one point breaking into a run ("Oh no," Kate said, as she fell in line behind us, dodging the branches we flung back as we went, "I'm not wearing my running shoes!").

But we never did wrangle that bull. In fact, if there is such a thing as unwrangling, that's what we did because we never even saw him again.

We had a lot of fun, though.

Yes, that's one thing we know how to do.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Safety First!


It poured all day Wednesday, and that night Tiffany walked in the door from work wearing our scooter rain gear. It's fairly unattractive stuff... a gigantic yellow waterproof jacket that zips up well over any collar you might have on and baggy charcoal-gray waterproof pants that bunch at the ankles and make a swish-swish noise when you walk. I'll tell you what, though, it works. After you've had to sit on a wet seat in a pair of jeans, splashing down without a care in latex feels fantastic.

The jacket is yellow the better to see us in the rain. When we first bought the scooter in Los Angeles, I made Tiffany wear a reflective vest whenever she rode it despite the fact that she passed her written and driving tests on the first try, something I did not do. I failed the written exam, missing the cut-off by one question and had to stand outside the DMV's office for 15 minutes before I was allowed to go back in and retake it. Tiffany thought this was hysterical. I did not. Besides an exam I had to take at the end of Confirmation class at church, it was the only test I'd ever failed.

A few minutes later, as it turned out, I failed another one--the driving exam. First, I scooted too slowly around a circle in the parking lot so that I lost my balance and had to extend my legs to catch myself from falling. Then, the former highway patrolman/instructor asked me where my clutch was.

"I don't have a clutch," I said smartly, knowing he was trying to trick me. "We don't have gears."

"Really?" he asked.

"No...?" I asked, trying to read his eyes for a double-trick question.

Silence.

"This thing?" I asked, pointing to a red button.

"You don't have a clutch," he said.

I bowed my head in shame.

Apparently, he liked me because he let me ride around the circle again, which I did without trouble, and he pretended that I hadn't changed my mind about the clutch under pressure.

So anyway, despite the fact that Tiffany was a natural-born scooter rider, I enforced the vest policy because I couldn't bear the thought of someone running her over because they hadn't seen her (or for any other reason, come to think of it). Then I wore the vest. It was my first solo scooter trip at night, and a car of teenagers pulled up beside me.

I smiled at them, thinking they were admiring how cute I was on our clutch-less scooter.

Then, they pointed and laughed.

"Look at that vest!" they howled, pulling away when the light changed.

When I got home, I stuffed the vest in the back of the closet.

"You don't have to wear that anymore," I told Tiffany.

At least the yellow jacket serves an important second function: keeping us dry. As for the rest, well, I leave it in God's hands. Hopefully he doesn't hold a grudge about that Confirmation test.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Bugs! (The crawly-kind not the computer-kind)

I have an outrageous fear of bugs. Always have. When I was little, if I saw a bug in the room I was occupying, I would take refuge as far away from the bug as possible (on the seat of the toilet, on the arm of a chair)--still keeping it in sight (the only thing that scares me more than a bug is a bug I know is still there but can no longer see)--and scream:

"DAD! BUG!"

Or:

"MOM! BUG!"

Or:

"BRANDON! BUG! PLEASE!"

Brandon required a "please" because, as an older brother, he sometimes enjoyed watching me suffer. Few things cause me more suffering than bugs. Strangely, I used to let Brandon drape my outstretched arms in his pet snakes and was not the least bit perturbed.

Anyway, what makes my fear of bugs all the more bothersome is that, although I hate bugs, I also hate to kill them. I hate bugs and I hate killing them, equally. Killing them makes me feel bad, in the case of some of the more innocent-looking bugs and even some spiders I know are doing good things (like eating other bugs), and it makes me feel disgusted, in the case of bugs that crunch when I smush them with a wad of paper towels or bugs with a million legs some number of which inevitably end up separated from the body when I smush them with a wad of paper towels.

Also, I cannot kill bugs with the bottom of my shoe (gross! I have to wear them after all!) or rolled up-magazines (I have seen too many people swing and miss, thereby notifying the bug of his impending death and sending him scurrying into couch cushions or tiny cracks in floors). No, when I am by myself with a bug, I use the wad of paper towels, and I don't skimp. I do not like to feel the bug in my hand.

I know I am not alone in my fear of bugs. I also know that many women in my situation will call upon a man to de-bug a room. And now you see the problem Tiffany and I have, don't you? We do not have a man. We are man-less, by design.

Tiffany does not like bugs either. And she would NEVER reach for a bug with her hand even if her hand was covered in a wad of paper towels. So sometimes we are left in a situation like this:

"TIFFANY! BUG!"

"EEEEK! GIVE ME YOUR SHOE!"

"NO! DISGUSTING!"

"YOU KILL IT THEN!"

A few nights ago a long-legged flying bug flew directly at our faces while we were preparing dinner. He was not so scary looking. But I hated him all the same. In a moment of self-sacrifice, I reached for him with cupped hands and... caught him!

"I caught him," I said to Tiffany, "open the window! Quick, he's flying around in my hands!"

But instead of opening the window, Tiffany screamed at the top of her lungs at the thought of the long-legged flying bug flying around in my hands. In so doing, she scared me, and I dropped him.

And then I am sad to report that Tiffany reached for a magazine, rolled it up, and... well, she didn't miss.

Friday, December 3, 2010

First Word. Sounds like love (is, in fact, love).

The night before my family and our two best-friend families left New Orleans where we'd gathered to spend Thanksgiving, we crowded into the tiny living room of the house we'd rented to play charades. We snacked on left-over turkey and ham and made a gigantic bowl of "queso" (melted Velveeta cheese with canned Rotel tomatoes and chilis) to sustain us.

Charades used to be an annual Thanksgiving tradition for us. Over the 25 years we've celebrated the holiday together, we've played charades in my family's home, a hotel room in Laughlin, Nevada, a rented house in Florida and a number of different cabins in national parks across the southeast. The last few years, however, the game has been left off the agenda. This year we decided to bring it back.

For the record, I am not very good at charades. It takes me at least 10 seconds of my allotted 90 to count off how many words are in whatever movie, book or television show I am supposed to act out. If I wasn't so competitive, I'd be too embarrassed to even try to act out anything. But before my cheeks have time to redden, I just think about the points my team needs and start waving my hands and pulling on my ear and trying to communicate without using my words.

Anyway, it was a particularly dramatic Thanksgiving this year. Just how dramatic, I'll save for my book. It's enough to say that so much happened between lunch, when we passed a pen around to write our titles on scrap paper, and dinner that most of the group had forgotten about the Big Game.

Not Little Rebecca.

"Y'all," she finally called out into the kitchen, different bedrooms and outside patio space, "can we please just play charades?"

And so we did.

My mom was one of the first to act. We were on opposite teams. When she took her crumpled piece of sticky-note, I saw the panic set in. She doesn't like to be the center of attention. Like, at all.

"This is yours," she said to me, dejectedly, "I can tell by the handwriting."

My mom then set about trying to use her hands and body to depict the movie "Lady and the Tramp." She wasn't doing well--mostly using her hands to fan out a dress for her first word and then putting her hands on her hips and trying to look seductive for her fourth. The longer people had no idea what she was doing the more awful I felt for her. I'm very competitive, but I'm also compassionate. I'm what you might call a compassionate-competitor. I whispered that she should call on my favorite lifeline in charades, the trusty "sounds like" clue.

"Sounds like 'ramp,'" I hissed into her ear as a suggestion for something she might be able to successfully pantomime.

I saw my brother coming before I heard him. Brandon and I were on the same team.

It was like slow-motion only fast.

"No--o--o--o," he yelled. "Don't help her!

He reached for my head and pushed it back away from my mom's ear and, accidentally, right into the arm of the chair I was sitting in.

Thud.

Well, so now you know my brother is very competitive too. But compassionate as well. No sooner had my head hit the arm than he cradled me in a bear hug until I pushed him away telling him I was fine.

"Okay, you get 30 extra seconds for my disruption," Brandon told our mom and her team.

Unfortunately, the extra time didn't help.

I wish I could tell you who won. Probably Zac's 86-year-old grandmother could. We were 13 in number (sadly, three of our group had already departed) and she decided to sit out to make even teams of six. She acted as the keeper of the titles, referee and sometimes clue (when one of my teammates pointed to her, I successfully called out "old" for the first word of "Old Yeller"--for the record, she might also have been used for "elegant," "beautiful" and "damn good grandma.")

Love comes in all shapes and sizes. But sometimes it looks like this: a group of friends and family sitting three to a couch cushion and two to a chair shouting out guesses, laughing their asses off and passing each other chips dipped in melted Velveeta cheese.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Bumps on a Road


"Bumps on a road, bumps on a road, bumps on a road."

That's what I tell myself every time I fly through turbulence because one time Tiffany told me that turbulence is just like "bumps on a road." Her dad is a pilot and so this, in theory, should make me feel better. After all, it comes from someone who knows someone who knows.

But it only works for a few minutes. Then, I remember:

"Holy sh*t, there is no road. I'm six miles up in the air."

I have to fly a lot. That's what happens when you live far away from your family. You'd think I'd get more comfortable flying, but I don't (I also don't like the smell of airplanes, but in comparison to bumps on the road, this seems like small potatoes). Every time I fly, I say the same prayer and promise I'll do something with my life (like blog!) if whoever's up there lets me keep living it.

Last week, Tiffany and I flew to New Orleans to meet my family and friends for Thanksgiving. On the way there, we hit a lot of turbulence. After a few minutes, the pilot cheerfully came on and told us that, although traffic control had recommended he fly around the hail storm raging below us, he thought it had subsided enough to go on through it and keep us on schedule.

My heart sunk to my stomach. My palms, already sweaty, became sweatier.

"We should be through it in about 20 minutes," the pilot breezed, signing off.

Whenever Tiffany and I are traveling together and hit bumps on the road in the air, she reaches over to take my hand. This makes me feel better and worse. It makes me feel better that Tiffany--who I always find out later was also nervous--is calm enough to think about helping me stay calm. It makes me feel worse because it reminds me that holding hands with the one I love just means I have a one to lose in case of a cr-sh (it feels safer to not spell that word out).

Anyway, our flight back home to San Francisco was a little better. But we hit a few bumps on the road about 30 minutes before we landed. I was handling this okay until the flight attendant got on the intercom and said:

"Remember, in case of an emergency landing, your seat can be used as a flotation device."

Tiffany grabbed my hand.

But fortunately, I was too angry to be scared.

"What the f*ck?" I whispered to Tiffany. "They never say that at the end of the flight!"

I was so distracted trying to find the flight attendant in question to give her a dirty look that I hardly even noticed as we flew over all the bumps. Then we landed.

I found the flight attendant on my way out the door. But I only thanked her. It seems silly to hold a grudge once you're on the ground.*

*This picture is one we took from the window of our plane on our way to Vietnam. Thank god there weren't many bumps in the road on that lo-o-o-n-g flight.

Thank You!!

Thanks to all who read my blog last week and participated in the 50th Post Celebration extravaganza! You bumped my page views up by more than 1,000 in one week (prior to that it took me four months to get to 4,000, so that's quite an accomplishment).

I hope you keep reading, commenting and passing me along.

Bookmark me! Check back! I promise to keep posting... including one immediately following this post of gratitude.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

50th Post Celebration: By the Light of the Interior Car Lamp

Last Friday, Tiffany and I were on time to our friends' wedding.* This is a big deal. We have never been on time to a wedding before. Once, we barely beat the bride. No, we did not squeeze in between bridesmaids and skip down the aisle. That would have been horrific, obviously. We slunk in down the side of the church and slid into the pew next to our friends who had saved our seats.

For our friends Meg and John's wedding on the South Shore of Massachusetts several years ago, Tiffany and I allowed plenty of time for regular summer Boston traffic for our drive from New Hampshire. We also allowed plenty of time to drop off our friend who was not attending the wedding. What we did not allow time for: traffic from a Red Sox game and a gay pride parade. We dropped our friend off on the side of the highway.

"Good luck!" we called as she walked down the shoulder of the exit ramp.

She gave a little wave. Or maybe it was a little middle-finger. We didn't have time to be sure. Because on that occasion, we made the terrible mistake of sending our dresses with Tiffany's mom thinking we would be able to change at the hotel. We weren't. Instead, we did our hair in the bathroom of a Dunkin' Donuts and changed in the far corner of the church parking lot. Tiffany was actually in that wedding, too, which added a whole other dimension of stress... and sweat, might I add. Have you ever tried to pull on a form-fitting fabric over damp skin? Not fun. Or pretty.

Anyway, on Friday, we managed to make it to Sonoma with plenty of time to spare. Kind of. We planned to change in a Starbucks bathroom while the barista prepared our chai latte and americano, but we had so many extra minutes that we drove to the house some of our friends had rented for the weekend. Only, when we got there, their cab was just a few minutes away (they, obviously, have never been late to a wedding). So we ended up having to rush anyway, stumbling around in the bedroom, shimmying into our dresses and peeling the price tags of our shoes.

We left at the same time as our friends, but Tiffany and I arrived at the winery where the wedding was taking place several minutes after they did (still early!).

"What happened?" they asked. "What took you so long."

"We had to do our make-up," Tiffany answered.

And in true Tiffany and Rebecca fashion, we had done it, pulled over underneath a street light, with the rear-view mirror and interior car lamp for a vanity.

*Note: The wedding, and our friends, were absolutely beautiful. I had goosebumps.

50th Post Celebration: Thanksgiving

When my family and our two best friend-families started the Thanksgiving tradition that we continue to this day, I was small enough to fit in a turkey pan. So were my best friend Zac and my brother Brandon. I know this because we took turns getting into the pan that year and using it to "sled" down a dirt hill. We did this while our parents pulled each other around on a flatbed wagon. The other child in our group, "Little Rebecca," was too small for the turkey pan. She was a bald-headed baby. But later, she was in whatever we were in. Unless we kept her out. The year we jumped off the balcony in our cabin onto couches below, for example, we deemed Rebecca too small for the activity. In retaliation, she promptly told on us as soon as our parents walked through the door from their hike.

Around the year of the turkey pan sledding, or maybe the next, our turkey took an exceptionally long time to cook because of some oven malfunction we cannot recall. In the video from that year, which was taken with my dad's ancient and enormous camera that he fixed to a tripod and aimed at the table, we are never all sitting down at the table at once. We are constantly in motion. Some of us are peering into the oven to check on the turkey (which was ready for sandwiches the next day). Others are jumping up for butter or more forks or a serving spoon. We look like some Vaudeville act: the moms with their '80s hair-dos feathered and fluffed; the dads with their '80s sweatpants with elastic ankles; the kids in our gigantic '80s t-shirts, and all of us laughing and chattering and never finishing a single thought or conversation.

One year Zac's mom made him try squash and he threw it up onto his plate while we all watched in horror. One year Rebecca's mom twisted her ankle while we played tennis. Another year her cold turned into pneumonia because our cabin didn't have heat. One year my dad busted his knee open on a rock in our football game, and then, to show that he was fine, bent and extended it a few times only to bust it open further, which caused my brother to nearly pass out (my dad was not fine--he required dozens of stitches).

A few years ago, Brandon hosted Thanksgiving. On the night before the Big Meal, we had a light dinner of fried catfish and french fries. While my brother and Zac manned the fryer, Tiffany and I prepped some pies in the kitchen. The grandmothers--then both 85-years-old-- and Tiffany's mom Patty sat on the couch in front of a crackling fire watching The Polar Express. When someone mentioned that it was warm in the house, I helpfully turned on the attic fan, which sucked the smoke and ash that had been going out of the chimney into the living room. Tiffany's mom and the grandmothers didn't bat an eye at the smoke and ash whirling around them. Patty later said she thought the movie was 3-D until the fire alarm started going off and I ran shrieking for the attic fan switch.

Anyway. Thanksgiving is my favorite all-time holiday. I like Christmas music, and dressing up on Halloween is fun, but mostly I like piling up my plate with casseroles, mashed potatoes, cranberries, turkey, ham, pie, and love.

Mmmm-mmmm. Can't get me enough of that love.

50th Post Celebration: Sous! Cut the Onions!

Early in our relationship Tiffany and I realized that there really can only be one cook in the kitchen, no matter how big your kitchen is. We both like to be in control, and only one of us can be. It's either my dish or Tiffany's dish; it cannot be our dish.

The solution Tiffany devised is to deem whoever came up with or is most excited about the dish, Chef. The other half of the couple is Sous-chef, or Sous for short. But I find those roles aren't very helpful. For instance, when I am in the kitchen by myself, I am Chef, obviously. And I'm good at that, in my own way. I'm perfectly comfortable with the fact that I have 15 open spice bottles or flour and sugar containers in front of me and only the slightest recollection as to which I have already used. I don't mind the fact that I have to consult my Joy (of Cooking) for every single step.

But when Tiffany is my Sous, I become very flustered. I can't help but think she's judging the fact that I consult my Joy. For. Every. Single. Step. Also, I don't have a commanding presence in the kitchen. As Sous, Tiffany often tells me what to order her to do:

"Chef, you have to tell me to get your bowls and spoons," she'll say, coming up behind me with my bowls and spoons as I pore over Joy.

"Chef, I'm going to mix the milk and eggs and that way you can sift the dry ingredients," she'll say, pushing Joy aside and handing me my dry ingredients.

This is how it was happening Sunday when we made pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup. We had 5 pounds of freshly pureed pumpkin we had prepared to make a practice-pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, but this practice-pumpkin pie never materialized because the friends we invited over to help us make it brought two homemade pumpkin pies as examples of a finished product (that's kind of a tongue twister, isn't it? And a run-on sentence. Apologies!). It turns out there is such a thing as too much pie in a one-bedroom apartment.

Anyway, I was Chef for the bread because I like to bake, and Tiffany was Chef for the soup because... well, because I thought the soup was a bad idea to begin with (when it comes to passing judgment on Tiffany's decisions on what to prepare, I am an excellent Chef). It sounded too sweet to me. Also, I wanted to take a shower after the bread was in the oven, and Chefs cannot leave the kitchen to shower.

When I came out, I found Tiffany in tears in the kitchen, knife in hand. For a moment, I thought the pumpkin had made her suicidal, but it turns out she had been chopping the onion the soup called for. Ever since we started buying all our fruits and veggies at the farmers' market, we've noticed a major change in our onions. They are painfully potent.

"Uh oh," I said, padding into the kitchen in my slippers.

She brushed past me and threw herself down on the carpet in our living room, pressing her fists into her eyes (no kitchen is too small for that omni-present ingredient, drama).

"How am I supposed to prepare my meal if I can't see!" she howled, trying not to laugh.

I tossed myself down beside her, giggling.

"Some ice for your eyes?" I offered. "What can I do?"

"You can grab the knife and cut the onion like a sous should!"

But chefs and sous are only Chefs and Sous in the kitchen. In the living room, we're just partners. So we lay there laughing, and then we got up and finished the soup together. And it was actually quite tasty.

***

50th Post Celebration: Earthquake Shoes

I wore my Earthquake Shoes the other night. They're the pair of old sneakers that Tiffany made me put under our bed just in case we have an earthquake in the middle of the night and need shoes to escape our apartment.

We also made a special Target trip one weekend to stock up on Earthquake Supplies. We bought bottles of water and peanut butter and protein bars and a little first-aid kit. We took an old backpack out of our closet and stuffed those items inside, along with a couple of flashlights we had on hand and a spoon (for the peanut butter).

The peanut butter was my idea. Growing up in Kansas, I had a friend whose family kept jars of peanut butter under the seats of their car, just in case they got stuck in a snow storm or a tornado. I always thought that was strange. But after the first time Tiffany and I felt our apartment rattle around us in a little San Francisco shake, we started thinking about what we might need in an emergency. She mentioned food and I remembered the peanut butter.

We devised an Earthquake Plan, too. If we are not together, we'll each make our way to the park up the hill from our apartment and wait. Hopefully one of us is home to grab the backpack. If not, no peanut butter. Anyway, the plan is to wait at the park for each other for... we never can decide how long. I just can't visualize leaving if Tiffany wasn't there. What would I do? Look at my watch, sigh, and say, "That Tiffany. Always late. Well, gotta run!"

If we're together when the earthquake strikes, that would be better. I always feel safer with Tiffany around. Together, we'd know exactly what to do: jump from the bed, step into our Earthquake Shoes, grab our Earthquake Supplies and run from the building as it crumbles down around us.

Now, as to what we'll do once we're standing naked in our sneakers on the street... well, we're still planning for that contingency. In any case, every time I wear the Earthquake Shoes, I put them back under the bed where they belong.

Monday, November 22, 2010

50th Post Celebration: The Red Shoe


This is how our Wednesday fight happened. It started Tuesday night, very sneakily. As you know, Tiffany and I were in a mad hustle this week to find new dresses and shoes for our friends' wedding. On Tuesday night after work, we planned to hit up three more stores. At the first store, we found a dress for me. Feeling empowered, we hit up another store for Tiffany. But none of the dresses we found were just right. Now it was 7:30 and we were hungry. And tired. Recklessly, we decided to try for shoes. At Macy's. On a day when they were having one of those blow-out sales.

The shoe section looked like the inside of a gigantic messy closet. I guess for security reasons, the store only puts one shoe of each marked-down pair on a rack. As we came up the escalator, I gasped. There were women and shoes as far as the eye could see. And scary women, too. Women who wanted that other matching shoe, like, five minutes ago. Women screaming for sales attendants, their weary husbands slumped on sagging couches holding purses. Tiffany urged me on.

And in the middle of that madness, Tiffany and I both found a shoe we wanted the match for. I heard her find hers first.

"Oooohh," she exclaimed. "These are perfect!"

I came around the display with my own shoe to find her walking on one barefoot and one high heel, parading back and forth between the psycho women around us: up-down-up-down-up-down. I'm sure by now you've guessed where this is going... the shoe she had on her foot was the same shoe I had in my hand. A red shoe. Very sassy and fun. In a size six. I didn't even hesitate. Clearly Tiffany loved the shoe--she already had it on. I handed her mine (it didn't help her; both were left-footed). I already had a dress, after all. For the sake of our relationship, I could live without the fun shoe.

"You take it," I said. "I'll keep looking."

I circled the floor a few times, dodging elbows. When I came back, Tiffany's face had fallen. The shoes we had found were too big--fine for clomping around the department store floor but not for dancing.

"Do you have a smaller size?" Tiffany asked an exhausted saleslady.

"No!" the woman shouted.

I slipped the shoe on my foot. And, as it became clear that my toes and heel were perfectly in line with the front and back of the shoe, I felt the slightest shift in the recirculated department store air around me. Specifically, in the air between Tiffany and me. Because now I had the shoes and the dress and Tiffany had neither. Trouble.

"You wear them!" I cried, thrusting the box at her. "Stuff something under your feet!"

"No, no," she said, "they're perfect for your dress."

We left the store. On the scooter ride home, bag-laden behind Tiffany, I braced myself.

The next morning, before work, I tried on the whole shebang, dress and shoes, in front of the mirror. Before I could take the ensemble off, Tiffany came in from the kitchen.

"Awesome, looks great," she said. But then she turned on her (bare) heel.

I slunk into the kitchen after her, and she slapped the eggs she'd scrambled for me on my plate. I knew they had been cooked with love. But I couldn't really taste that love. Or feel it.

A little bit later in the day, we resolved the issue.

"I'm sorry," Tiffany said. "I'm such a girl."

"I know," I said. "But luckily that's exactly what I want you to be."

After work Wednesday, we were back on the scooter, flying through the city on our way to our last store, a boutique. We arrived 30 minutes before closing time, and I took charge.

"Can I help you?" the greeter asked.

"Yes, you can," I said. "We have a dress emergency."

I pointed to Tiffany.

And guess what? Tiffany found two dresses that night. And, because they were on sale, she bought them both. For less than I had paid for one. The next day, she got a pair of shoes. And at the wedding, when I had to take the red shoes off to restore feeling to my feet, she kept dancing in hers.

50th Post Extravaganza! Blow-Out Posting!

Today's my 50th blog post. It's also almost Thanksgiving. So for my 50th blog post, I'm going to tell you something I'm thankful for: blog stats!

I just discovered them. And now that I have, I'm thankful for them. Because all this time I've been thinking I've been blogging away in obscurity, spurred along by the occasional comment from my family (usually when the blog post is about my family). But it turns out my page has been viewed more than 4,000 times! Considering I only have 4 people in my immediate family (and only three who are computer-literate... my 86-year-old grandmother has never turned a computer on) this is fantastic news. Someone has been reading my blog in Saudi Arabia. I don't know how that's even possible, but I'm thankful for that too.

Anyway, in honor of my 50th blog post, I'll be offering up a blog a day this week. That's right... even on Thanksgiving. So, when you need a break from your family, you can come read about mine. (First post to follow)

And now I beg of you... if you read me, follow me. Comment on my posts. Please. Link me on your facebook page. E-mail me to your co-workers. But mostly, keep reading. Because now that I know you're being counted, you count. No, really, you matter to me. Or your IP address does. But these days, what's the difference?

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Shop 'til You Drop

"I guess my head is not a size two," I say to Tiffany, as I struggle to put my head through a head-hole on a dress that is already perfectly situated around my waist and thighs.

She giggles, her voice muffled as she tries to extricate herself from a gown she is trying on.

Ahh, shopping. Unlike most girls, I hate it. You can tell by the way I walk past the racks, trailing a finger half-heartedly, moping along by myself as Tiffany scours whichever store we are in for bargains and surprise finds. Or by the way I sometimes fail to wander off on my own and instead shadow Tiffany, clipping her heels or walking into her if she stops suddenly. I am a listless shopper, usually. As in, "lacking energy or enthusiasm," not "without a list." I actually love lists. Especially crossing things off of them.

But dress shopping is fun. I don't claim to be good at it, let's be clear. Sometimes I pick up what I think might be a likely candidate...

"How about this?" I ask Tiffany, smiling brightly.

"Are you kidding?" she answers.

"Yes," I lie. "Totally."

If you can believe it, I am a far better shopper than I am a liar, so I don't fool her or anyone who happens to be stalking the racks nearby.

On our first round, I take six dresses into the dressing room and Tiffany takes eight. We share a room. We almost always do. It saves the trouble of peeking a head out the door and calling for each other repeatedly for a second opinion. Also, trying on dresses is hard. I have a terrible fear of getting stuck. And sometimes we actually do get stuck. Today, for instance, the price tag of a dress Tiffany was trying on got stuck on the tag of her thong. So every time she tried to pull the dress over her head, her thong... well, it was uncomfortable.

The tricky thing about being a lesbian is sometimes Tiffany and I want the same things. This can be awesome, as in, we can share certain clothes and therefore have double the wardrobe. Or this can be terrible, as in, we're getting dressed to go out and we both want to wear the same thing.

At one point I tried on a dress that I loved. It had a low-plunging neck line, right between where my breasts would be, if you could see my breasts.

"I still like it," I said stubbornly. "It shows off my... sternum."

Tiffany liked the dress too. When she tried it on, she gave a little twirl.

"It looks better on me," she smiled.

"But why?" I asked.

"Because it looks good."

Because she has breasts, she meant.

I tried on another dress. The one with the tiny head-hole. I asked Tiffany to help.

"Oh my god," she said, "It's for your arm."

And indeed it was. A one-armed dress.

Who knew?

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A Two-(Count 'em...Two) Penis Sunday

As I'm sure you'll not be surprised to hear, I have little (translation: no) experience with the male anatomy.

Which makes what happened on Sunday so much more fun.

On Sunday, Tiffany and I and our good friends Rob and Howard* saw two penises. They were attached to two men (which makes sense) whom we saw walking down the street in the Castro. The men were not together. And their appearances in our lives were separated by a few blocks and a couple of hours.

The first man we saw from behind.

"Is he... naked?" I gasped.

"Hmm," Robert mused. "No, I'm sure he has a sock on."

As I tried to visualize that, and scurried with Howard to see, a woman who had just passed the man, shook her head.

"No, he's got nothing on," she said.

We saw the second man after lunch (thankfully, not while eating lunch). He was sitting in a metal (brrrr!) chair at the corner of Castro and Market Streets surrounded by other (fully clothed) people sitting in metal chairs. He was reading a newspaper. Again, Howard and I scurried to see. In so doing, Howard bumped into a man and I fell into a pothole.

Once I behaved similarly when Tiffany and I were walking in New York and saw Bette Midler. I stared discreetly as we passed and then, ignoring Tiffany's pleas for me to stop, circled back around and passed Ms. Midler again. As I was about to make a second circle, Tiffany grabbed my coat sleeve and yanked me back to her.

In San Francisco, it's apparently no strange thing to see naked people. But Tiffany and I generally avoid the major festivals and parades where such nakedness occurs, and all of our friends keep their clothes on. In other words, in nearly three years in the city, no penis sightings.

Mind you, I'm not complaining.

I'd take Ms. Midler over the penises any day of the week.

And twice on Sunday.

*See previous post explaining these most-amazing of men.

Robin Howard

There is no such person as Robin Howard. Or there is no such person that I know. But many of my friends used to think there was because I talked about Robin Howard all the time:

"I just came back from a great weekend with Robin Howard," I'd say.

"Oh, Thanksgiving was awesome," I'd say, "Everyone in my family was there. Mom, Dad, Brandon, Robin Howard."

"Robin Howard and I went to this amazing show!" I'd say. "We had dinner in the city and took the train home. It was the best."

Eventually, of course, most of my friends met Robin Howard.

"This is Rob an' Howard," I'd say.

"Ohhhh," my friends would say, extending a hand. "You're two people!"

My family met Rob and Howard when they moved to Kansas City from New York for a few years. We went to the same church and soon became best friends. In two years, they were invited to our Thanksgiving tradition, which hadn't added a new member in more than a decade.

By the time I came out, Rob and Howard were already back in New York and I was in school in Boston. Besides my family, they were two of a few people that I wanted to tell face-to-face that I was gay. I took the Chinatown bus from my city to theirs and practiced what I would say (It turns out, I learned during this period in my life, there is no convenient way to segue into: "I'm gay"). To preface my big news (which did not surprise them), I put a package of rainbow Skittles in front of each of them.

The next year, when I went to graduate school in New York, Rob and Howard let me live with them. Once a month, I left my "rent" check (which was very small and which they only let me contribute after I told them I couldn't live with them without paying it) on the kitchen table, sometimes with a vase of fresh-cut flowers. We watched sitcoms together at night and ate dinner together around their dining room table. Sometimes Rob and I played Scrabble and he beat me--every time. When we cleaned the apartment, we blasted country music and danced around in our pajamas.

Rob and Howard (who got married two years ago on their 18th anniversary) also have the distinction of having seen--up close and personal--Tiffany and me fall in love. They took pictures of us before we went out on our first date. We went on double-dates. And on weekend mornings, we ate breakfast together at the diner in Brooklyn Heights and laughed our asses off.

Maybe you have a lot of friends. I have a handful. But the ones I have are the best. And Rob and Howard are two of them.

Or one.

Depending on how you say their names.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Half-Life of Soccer

I haven't played soccer in seven years. That's a long time, but apparently not long enough.

I still dream about soccer. Quite often, actually. At least as often as I dream my other recurring dream, in which my gums are coated in a thick paste--like that mold the orthodontist gives you to make your retainer--and as I try to pull it off all my teeth come out.

Like the teeth dream, my soccer dreams aren't pleasant. Usually the team I'm playing for is cobbled together from all the teams I played for over the years (the Tigers when I was four, the Blast from about eight to 11, the Crush from about 11 to 13, the Pizzazz and Crush, the Pizzazz, and finally, in college, that fiercest of mascots, the Terriers-). Usually we're losing and I'm needed in the game. The whole team is waiting for me to come in on a substitution or to start the game, only--and here a variety of things play out on my dream-field: I can't find my shin guards; I only have one cleat; one of my contacts has mysteriously torn in half rendering me legally blind; I don't have a jersey.

In my soccer dreams, I'm never doing something awe-inspiring, like tearing down the field on a break-away or scoring a game-winning goal. No. I'm about to cry because I'm searching my bag for that shinguard, cleat or jersey or struggling to see with only one eye, all while my coach stands over me ominously and my teammates, the referees and opposing team all wait with hands on hips.

None of these things ever happened to me in real life. Okay, once I forgot my shin guards when I was about 12 in a tournament in Oklahoma City. I had just switched from the Crush to Pizzazz and none of the girls liked me yet (or even spoke to me much, which makes for an interesting playing experience), and I did want to cry. But somehow an extra pair was provided and I was able to play.

Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to call these dreams nightmares. No one is chasing me with an axe or pushing me off a cliff. But they aren't fun. The other night I dreamed I was running full-field sprints without any cut-off point. We weren't running 10 of them or until we did them in a certain time. We were just running them, over and over again.

I woke up, thankfully. Otherwise, who knows how long I would have continued up and down that field, racing through some past world of mine while the real world waited for me outside my head?

What's so weird is I never dream that I've forgotten to pay our bills or rent or missed one of the daily deadlines I face at work. Which leads me to think I'm doomed to dream anxiety-ridden soccer dreams until I haven't played as long as I did play... in eleven more years.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Peace of Mind: Worth the Wrinkles

Sometimes I wish I were an old lady.

(Sometimes I feel like an old lady, like when Tiffany and I go to bed at 9 p.m. or when every bone in my body creaks in certain weather, but that's a different matter altogether.)

Sometimes I wish I were an old lady so that I could already know all the things I have to figure out before I can be an old lady. Like where to move and when to buy a house and when to move so we can buy a house (we couldn't buy a closet in this city) and how to make the most money possible and still look forward to my job every day.

If I were an old lady, I'd already have done all those things. I wouldn't have to decide because I would have already decided. And--bonus!--Tiffany and I will probably stay up later when we're old ladies because we'll be rich and won't have to work because someone will have discovered my blog and decided that rather than giving my words away for free, I should be paid to tell you these same stories!

Most women don't want to be old ladies because of all the wrinkles and stuff. But, if my mom is any indicator, I should be in pretty good shape (no, I am not saying my mom is old--by definition, however, she is older than me). Anyway, I like the wrinkles on the old ladies I know. I don't have a problem with people's perception of my age. But if I did, it wouldn't matter. People always perceive me to be younger--flight attendants have tried to kick me out of the emergency exit rows on planes. In other words, I have a ways to go before I'm old and even longer before people think I'm old.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just do this whole life thing in chronological order.

Today the Giants had their World Series parade one block from my work. In the elevator on the way up to my office, someone asked me if I was going.

"I'd like to," I said. "I'll probably dash out to see it.* But parades are tough for me because I'm so short. I never see anything but the people screaming at what I can't see."

"Well," the woman said as she got off on her floor, "maybe they'll think you're a kid and push you up to the front."**

*I did.
**They didn't.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Ikea-Proof Your Relationship

There are a few proven ways to test a relationship. You know, the kind of events that really show what your chances are as a couple--the equivalent of testing a newly constructed tree-house by jumping on the floor you just assembled. If it holds, hey, you've done it! If it falls... sh*t.

Two relationship tests that I know of are moving and putting together Ikea furniture. In almost six years, Tiffany and I have moved three times and put together Ikea furniture twice. (Okay, we actually have built Ikea furniture three times, but one of those times was for our friend. On that occasion, we nailed the back of her dresser on the front. We were able to salvage it, but now the front of her dresser has tiny pin-nail holes all around the edges. We don't count that one--it wasn't our furniture!)

Last weekend, Tiffany and I finally bought a dining room table. Of course, you know from reading past blogs that Tiffany and I live in a one-bedroom apartment. We don't have a dining room. We have a coffee table in front of our couch. But now we also have a corner-of-the-living-room-table-that-we-eat-on.

We'd been looking for a table for a while. Here's how it worked:

"Oooh, look at this table," Tiffany said proudly, calling me over to look at a craigslist ad in her first weekend of looking.

"Hmmm, nah," I said.

Days go by.

"Babe, here's a perfect one," Tiffany said. "It could go right by the window."

"Really? Turquoise? Nah."

More days go by.

"You don't like any of the tables I've shown you!" Tiffany said.

"You haven't shown me any tables I like!"

And that's how we ended up in the car on the way to Ikea.

Ikea intimidates me. When we arrived at the top of the escalator, I grabbed a map. I used to get lost on the highway that circled Kansas City--you can't imagine how easily I get lost in a store with an endless series of fake living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens and bedrooms.

We found the table we liked in the first fake living room. We sat down at it immediately and put our forearms on the surface to assess its size.

"Having a seance?" a woman asked as she passed with her son.

"No, something much more difficult," I said. "Trying to agree on a table."

We loved the table. And what we loved most about the table, besides the fact that it was cheaper than the ones we were looking at on craigstlist, was that it had two leaves that pulled out so that it could be small when we didn't need it and big when we did. In a complicated marvel of carpentry I will never be able to explain, you can pull the leaves out and then lift the middle of the table and push them back under.

And it was that marvel of carpentry that scared us. Because we knew we had to put the table together.

Still, determined--and tired of eating hunched over our coffee table--we bought it. And, of course, what we bought looked nothing like our table. It looked like a gigantic cardboard box because that's what it came in.

Tiffany and I prepared ourselves for irritability. It's what you should do, you know, when you confront a task like this: prepare yourself for the fact that your partner is going to do something fabulously annoying. For instance, in such situations, I am prone to asking subtly undermining questions ("are you sure that's the right screw?") at inappropriate times (when the screw is already in the hole).

But you know what? We didn't get annoyed at all while we built our table. Even when Tiffany took the one Ikea-related task I'm good at--sorting the various screws and plastic thingys--and did it herself.

Because here's the trick. Tiffany is way better at certain things than I am, and, rather than try to prove that I am just as good, I defer to her on those things. I can't read Ikea-furniture assembly instructions because there are no words! There are only pictures and arrows! And I am spacially-challenged. So Tiffany deciphered the instructions and then we took turns putting the various pieces the way she concluded they went.

After that, we had a table.

And you know what I am good at? Making dinner. So I made it. And I let Tiffany help. ;)

Monday, October 25, 2010

Date Night!

When you're in a long-term live-in relationship, date night is a funny thing. Tiffany and I spend every night together, after all. But just because we eat dinner doesn't mean we're on a date. What really happens is a lot of non-date stuff, like, cooking the dinner, spooning the leftover dinner into Tupperware for lunches, washing the dinner dishes and then emptying them from the drying rack so there's room for the next day's breakfast dishes.

In February, it will have been six years since I took Tiffany out on our first date. I was living in Brooklyn with Rob and Howard, my basically-uncles, and Tiffany was living in Boston. She drove down for the weekend, and, on Saturday night, I took her to the museum for a Marilyn Monroe exhibit and salsa dancing. Afterwards we went out for Chinese and my fortune said "You are a lover of words. Someday you will write a book." The next weekend was Valentine's Day. I'd never had a girlfriend on Valentine's Day (okay, I'd never had a girlfriend), so I went to the Wal-Mart near my subway stop and bought a red top I thought was sexy. It wasn't. I haven't worn red since (I have, however, bought other things at Wal-Mart). Oh well. Tiffany took me out for Brazilian food and then to the top of the Empire State Building.

Two weekends ago I decided Tiffany and I needed to go out on a date (don't worry, we've been on other dates besides those first two... let me think here...I'm sure we have...). So I asked her. Actually, I told her:

"Ooooh," I said, reading the Sunday paper. "I'm taking you out on a surprise date Friday."

I ripped off the page where I had gotten the idea so she wouldn't cheat and try to figure out what I'd seen. All week she tried to guess where we were going. I wrote a count-down on the dry-erase board on our fridge above the day-to-day notes we leave for each other:

Four Nights 'Til Date Night!!
--turned on crock pot at 8:05
--LAUNDRY
--check to make sure car hasn't been towed
--love you!

Even I was excited and I knew where we were going (it wasn't that exciting, you'll see).

It was warm all week, but when Friday rolled around, so did the fog. Tiffany asked me what she should wear as she straightened her hair.

"Something warm," I said.

"Are we going to be outside?" she asked, eyes widening.

"Mm-hm," I said, exiting the bathroom.

On the scooter, Tiffany called out all the places she thought we might have been going as we passed them. They were mostly restaurants with, you know, chairs and table service.

"We're here," I said, pulling into a parking lot.

"I can't feel my toes," she said, swinging her flip-flopped feet off the scooter.

I took her hand and led her into a ring of RV-like trucks that local chefs have turned into mobile restaurants. Dozens of people were milling about in the middle trying to decide which truck to hit up for Chinese-inspired buns, El Salvadoran pupusas, and chicken tikka masala burritos. Tiffany and I shared one of each. After every purchase, we circled the folding chairs strewn about the center of the ring but couldn't find a spot to sit. So we ate standing up, taking turns holding the food and blowing into our hands to stay warm.

It was freezing. We had to stand in line for 15 minutes at each truck. The masala burrito was so spicy that we had to buy the pupusa to cool off our tongues. By the time we finished that, we were too cold to contemplate dessert. But it was awesome.

On the scooter ride home, Tiffany clung to me Koala-style to stay warm. We stopped at the 24-hour grocery store and bought a box of hot chocolate. Back at our apartment, we boiled water, poured it over the powder and cupped our hands around our steaming mugs. We shared a gigantic bowl of popcorn.

And we left all the dishes in the sink.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Let's Pretend

All day long we had been telling her about the magical forest, so when we finally arrived at Muir Woods with our friends and their three-year-old daughter Julia, I felt obligated to... well, make the forest magical.

It wasn't hard to do. After all, the gigantic Redwood trees do seem other-worldly. Walking among the whispery-quietness of them feels like being transported onto the pages of a fairy tale.

Plus, playing pretend is something three-year-olds do really well. On her own, Julia mentioned Tinkerbell--a possible candidate for her Halloween costume-- asking whether the fairy lived in the forest. I couldn't deny the possibility, so I suggested that if she did, she might have a secret elevator in her majestic tree house (it did not occur to me until just now that, duh, fairies have wings... luckily that went over Julia's head too).

After a while, looking for Tink became tedious. Instead, Julia wanted to hide from her parents.

"Let's find a good spot," she'd yell (we were having too much fun to be whispery-quiet, even in the designated quiet section of the woods--apologies to the guests in our vicinity that day) before planting herself directly in her parents' sight and yelling "Surprise!"

Tiffany and I quickly taught her that good hiding spots are ones in which people can't see you. We took turns running ahead and kneeling with her behind fence posts and trees.

Eventually, Tiffany decided to curtail all the lifting-of-Julia-over-fence-posts-and-scampering-behind-boulders, offering up the delicious possibility that we hide by actually becoming the things we saw in the woods.

"Let's be trees," Tiffany whispered to Julia, taking her little arms and pointing them straight up into the air.

"Okay," Julia giggled.

"Let's be the bench," I suggested, lying her down on a bench seat before taking my position on the next bench over.

"Okay," Julia giggled.

"Let's be the forest floor," Tiffany said, and Julia and I dutifully lay down next to her in the dirt.

"Surprise!" we yelled just before the rest of our group stepped on us.

A little bit later, the smallest part of our forest-floor had to go to the bathroom.

Once, years ago while babysitting, I led a six-year old back in time across a sewage pipe suspended over a litter-filled creek. I don't remember how far back in time we were going, but on the way there, my charge slipped, falling into the muck below. I dashed down the side of the creek bed to pull him out.

"I want a bath," he said through gritted teeth, with half of someone's discarded blueberry muffin plastered to his chest.

Which just goes to show. Pretending can only get you so far. One minute you're the forest floor. The next minute you're holding a three-year old over a public toilet. One minute you're an intrepid time traveler. The next you're a babysitter taking a boy for a bath.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Ode to John Hannon

I don't normally take blog requests--or succumb to friends who are whining about the fact that I haven't blogged about them (actually, there is only one such friend... read on). But my friend John Hannon is mad at me because I haven't blogged about him yet. He's writing mean things on my Facebook page, which I shamelessly use to promote this free blog. I can't have bad publicity, so I'm going to tell you about my first John Hannon experience.

When I was trying to figure out where to go to college, I had pretty much made up my mind to go one place when I decided to take a soccer recruiting trip to Boston University. That weekend, the fall of my senior year in high school, I fell in love with the city. I loved the "T" and I loved that the Red Sox game was playing on a big screen at Faneuil Hall and I loved... that there was a place that delivered frozen yogurt.

This is where John Hannon comes in. See, I met all the girls on the team that weekend... and I met John, the boyfriend of one of the junior defenders, Meg. I was assigned to stay with one of Meg's best friends, Deidre, and on my second night, John Hannon decided my recruiting trip would not be complete without a frozen yogurt delivered from Angora Cafe near the campus.

I had never had Angora yogurt delivered, of course. I don't think Kansas, where I grew up, has yogurt delivery, period. In fact, except for TCBY, I'd never really had frozen yogurt. I was an ice cream girl.

Anyway, John Hannon pulled out the menu with the list of possible toppings and mix-ins for the yogurt. I didn't know what to get, but if I had, it wouldn't have mattered. John ordered for me. He ordered me his favorite: Oreo cookie and York Peppermint Pattie. I loved it.

Either that night or the night before John also made apple tarts, one of his early culinary adventures (he has since gone to culinary school, so he's way beyond tarts now), with fresh apples that he and some of the girls on the team had recently picked themselves. I'd never been apple picking.

So if we follow this logic: John Hannon introduced me to Oreo and York frozen yogurt (delivery!) and fed me tarts made of fresh-picked apples and, therefore, is one gigantic (he's over 6 feet tall) reason I went to Boston. If I hadn't gone to Boston, I'd never have met Tiffany, and you wouldn't be reading this blog. Or you might be, but, it would be whilemygirlfrienddoesdataentry or whilemygirlfriendwritesadcopy or something like that. You get my drift. I'm in love with Tiffany and John helped me find her!

So I guess Tiffany and I owe our relationship to John Hannon.

Or to that freakin' awesome yogurt.

*Please note, John Hannon and his wife Meg are great friends of ours. We haven't seen them since I started this blog or since they had their baby girl Lily and John is just mad because I haven't written about Lily's poop. But when I see her I promise to write about that or something better.

The Extra Burger

I've figured something out--one of the really big questions in life: never have kids unless you're really hungry. I don't mean hungry metaphorically, like, hungry for the unconditional love and support you've signed up for. I mean literally hungry for all the food they won't eat.

I'll tell you how I came by this pearl of wisdom.

I was, after all, once a kid. When we stopped for Dairy Queen or Braum's ice cream cones on road trips as a family, my dad's cone would vanish in seconds and, soon after, he'd reach his hand back between the front seats.

"Let me have your cone," he'd say to my brother and me, "I'll take care of the drips for you."

Brandon and I always handed our cones up. We didn't want to make a mess.

But my dad wouldn't just take the drips. He'd take half the cone, laughing at our bewildered faces.

"Dad!" we'd whine.

"Brad," my mom would say, giving him a look.

"Okay, okay," he'd say. "Next time just the drips."

We used to call my dad The Disposal because of the way he disposed of the extra food on our plates at dinner.

Now that I'm an adult, I've seen the other side of things. Until a few weeks ago, I had never in my life eaten two burgers in one sitting. Back when I was in middle school, before fast food grossed me out, sometimes my brother would pick me up from soccer practice and we would go to McDonald's and order Big Mac meals. I ate that... and the fries and drink that came with it (yes, I know a Big Mac has, what, two or three patties? But still--it's only one sandwich). But I never ate two burgers because I never ordered two.

Then our friends Teresa and Bobby came into town with their children. We stopped at an In-N-Out Burger on our way to Muir Woods. I wasn't really hungry because I had already eaten most of their three-year-old daughter Julia's animal-shaped crackers. But I couldn't pass up a cheeseburger. Bobby ordered burgers for everyone--me, Tiffany, Teresa, Teresa's aunt who was traveling with them, Julia and their five-month old son Peter. Plus an extra burger.

"Who wants some?" Bobby called out as he and I walked over to the table with bags of fries and cardboard boxes of burgers.

We all took one. Except, of course, Julia who wasn't sure about hers and Peter who has no teeth (although he did stare knowingly at my burger as if already aware it was something he might like later on).

Bobby ate his and the parts of Julia's that were edible after she'd dismantled it and the extra one too. But that still left Peter's.

"Come on, Rebo," he said, sliding it down to me. "You've got room."

Well... did I?

It turns out I did--in my for-the-benefit-of-children stomach. You have one too. I guarantee it. And that's why I offer you this advice: work up a major appetite before you bring a child into the world.

Wonderfully Weird

About two weeks ago, I stood with my best friend Zac on a rooftop bar in Santa Fe and waited for Tiffany to arrive with the purse (I hate carrying purses and almost always cram my stuff into hers). When she arrived, along with Zac's girlfriend Kate and Tiffany's sister Melody, I fished my license out and showed it to the bartender who wouldn't serve me my water until I'd shown I was of age.

"Isn't it weird we're adults now?" Zac said.

I peered at him in the bright light of the setting sun. Took in the scruff on his face, the man-ness of him.

"Yes, it is weird," I said.

Tiffany, Kate and Melody laughed at us, but I knew what he meant. Zac and I met when we were four and our moms worked together at a child abuse prevention center in Jackson, Mississippi. Our moms--and a third mom whose daughter Rebecca was born when we were six--became best friends and Zac and I did too. We used to fish for stuffed animals off the top bunk of his bed and speak in pretend foreign languages. Our families only lived in the same state for three years, but the friendship survived the crossing of state lines and even international borders. When Zac and his parents moved to Istanbul for a few years when he was nine, we recorded messages to each other on cassette tapes and mailed them back and forth.

I wanted Zac all to myself, but of course I had to share him with my brother Brandon, who is four years older than us. Thankfully, as we grew up, I got less and less jealous and the age difference between Brandon and us and Rebecca grew less and less important.

For most of our friendship, our parents planned our visits. They controlled the money and navigated their work schedules and our school schedules and our sports commitments and Zac's trips back and forth to Turkey. Since the day we met, our families have spent Thanksgiving together and have a couple of other planned trips a year as well.

Last year, we kids decided to branch out and start a trip for just us, whoever can make it: Brandon, Zac, Rebecca and I, significant others, siblings.

We plan all the travel details and the meals and the accommodations, and we do it all without our parents, which, as Zac pointed out in Santa Fe, makes us adults (even if I still get carded every time I go into a bar).

Of course, lots of other things make us adults too. Like the fact that we're, in order of age, 33, 29, 28 and 22 years old. Or the fact that we live on our own and work real jobs and pay rent.

But we knew each other before adulthood was even something to consider--when we were little-bitty-skinny-legged-kids and bald-headed babies. And that is rich, thank-my-stars-lucky and weird. Wonderfully weird.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

What We Fight About


Yesterday Tiffany and I spent a few minutes walking around our apartment in stony silence. We passed each other--blank-faced, like rude strangers on the street--in the living room and kitchen. In our bedroom and in the hallway connecting all of the above.

We were in a fight.

Yes, we fight.

Here's what we were fighting about:

We went on a run. It was warm in the city (thank god for San Francisco's autumn summer) so we didn't need layers. We chit-chatted our way through pedestrians and traffic and even tossed in one of the city's steepest hills at the half-way point, reaching the top without air in our lungs and on wobbly legs. Then, we started our meandering way home. And here's where the trouble started: Tiffany and I don't cross the street in the same way. We usually run separately, squeezing our runs in before or after work while the other is already or still at work. With that independence, we've established different rhythms.

At busy intersections with stop signs instead of lights, I time my approach with the cars going the same direction as me. In other words, I speed up or slow down so that I can cross the street with the parallel traffic.

Tiffany asserts her pedestrian rights--with looks in all directions, of course--as soon as she arrives.

In hindsight, I think we would both agree: who the f cares how we cross the street? But yesterday, we did care. Because we were both trying to cross in our own way, we often ended up with Tiffany half in the intersection and me hesitating at the curb waiting for my car. We got some angry waves, and the non-rhythm we had going made us angry too.

"Let's just do it your way," Tiffany said as we approached the next block.

"Fine," I said, knowing full well she thought my way sucked.

In fact, at that particular intersection, my way did suck. The perpendicular truck didn't want us to wait for him to go. He pulled into the intersection, saw us waiting at the curb, and stopped, waving us frantically on as other cars piled up on either side.

I mentally cursed his niceness as we ducked our heads and sprinted across.

Tiffany and I didn't speak the rest of the way home.

My brother sometimes asks me what Tiffany and I fight about. Someone else we know often says, especially in big groups for better dramatic effect, "I tell my therapist all the time the healthiest couple I know is a lesbian couple!" (I'm not sure who should be more offended by that statement--Tiffany and I or straight people. I choose not to be offended by the back-handed compliment. My old soccer coach was famous for those. Once, during a drill in the first week of practice my freshman year in college, I sprinted for a crossed ball, diving to reach it with my head and redirect it toward the goal. I missed. My coach clapped, then said: "That's okay, Rebo, someone more athletic would have gotten that ball!")

Anyway, I often can't remember what Tiffany and I fight about. We don't fight about the big stuff, like money and how to spend or save it. But every once in a while some little thing--like crossing the street--will trip us up.

And, big or little, I guess what matters is how you bring a stony silence to an end. Yesterday, as we walked around the apartment in our sweaty running clothes without speaking, I finally made my way over to Tiffany at the window and stared at her. This is what I sometimes do when I'm not ready to apologize but I am ready to acknowledge that we are not rude strangers on the street but partners in a nearly six-year relationship.

She stared back at me and we broke into smiles.

"That was stupid," she said.

"It really was," I said.

And then we weren't in a fight anymore.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

This Particular Poop of Peter's

(First of all, I apologize in advance to Peter for this. I want you to know, I never would have put this out onto the Internet if it wasn't for your mom's special request. But, as faithful readers know, I've never been able to refuse Teresa.)

It looked something like soft-serve ice cream only it had more texture and was green-ish-brown, like if soft-serve ice cream came in split pea and ground chuck flavor and had smushed bits of split pea and ground chuck spread evenly throughout.

It was coming out of the bottom of my best friend's baby.

Now, I've changed my fair share of diapers. The lowest several hundred dollars of my bank account are the savings I accumulated working as a babysitter on weekend nights and summers during high school. At one time, I was even good at changing diapers. But, as a non-parent, I never got over the embarrassment of having to hold a little human's feet above his or her head while I swiped at his or her bare bottom with moist towelettes and various creams and powders.

Still, even with my experience, I've never seen anything like this particular poop of Peter's (Peter, I love you). Tiffany, Teresa and I were sitting in the breakfast room of a hotel in Sonoma last weekend when it happened. We had just finished one of those breakfasts reminiscent of mornings in the college dining hall in which you keep going back for more just because no one is adding each additional item to a bill. I managed to eat a Belgian waffle, a plate of too-dry scrambled eggs, a chocolate chocolate-chip muffin, a handful of fruit loops, a tiny little cup of yogurt and a banana in the span of about 30 minutes.

Anyway, during that same time Peter, Teresa's 5-month-old, had breast milk. He hadn't pooped in two days, plugged up, I can only assume, from a serious schedule adjustment as he, his parents and his 3-year-old sister enjoyed a few days off on the opposite coast of the country.

Predictably, he pooped, just as we were finishing our multi-course breakfast.

"Phew!" Tiffany sniffed, lifting Peter away from her chest and holding him out in the universal help-I-have-a-dirty-diapered-baby way.

Teresa held out her arms, and I stood up to go. Since we were finished with our breakfast, I saw no reason to put poor Peter through a public changing on the cushion between us. I thought we were headed to the room.

"Where are you going, Rebecca?" Teresa called, easing her child down onto the seat and pulling out diapers and wet wipes in one fluid motion.

"Nowhere," I said, sitting back down.

Teresa pulled Peter's diaper away from his itty-bitty body. And that's when we saw it. Indeed, Peter had pooped. But, more importantly, he was still pooping.

"Oh my god," Tiffany said, peering over Teresa's hands to see the substance oozing out of the boy (Peter, I love you).

"What is happening?" I hiss-whispered. I turned my shoulders and slid my arm across the table to shelter Peter from view.

"I don't think your little hand is going to block this, Rebecca," Teresa said, laughing hysterically.

I looked at my hand. It did appear very small next to the enormous amount of poop piling into the old diaper.

A man paused by our table. I willed him to continue walking without looking our way. No such luck. He turned. And stared at what was taking place on the seat to my left.

"Nothing to see here," Teresa said matter-of-factly, flashing the man a smile and waving him on with the hand that was not directing the flow of Peter's poop.

I, on the other hand, glared at the man and moved my little hand further down the table in the hopes that my forearm might better shield the scene.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Peter stopped pooping. He smiled contentedly as he had throughout the whole process and Teresa folded the bulging diaper up. She handed it to me.

"Can you throw this out?" she asked.

And I did. I took that diaper like we were completing an illicit transaction and tucked it low to my hip, scurrying out of the breakfast room, into the lobby and out the front doors of the hotel, dropping the diaper into an outside trash can.

When I returned, Teresa and Tiffany were still laughing. And Peter was still smiling, as if nothing had happened. And, as far as the world was concerned, nothing did...

Until I wrote this blog.

(Peter, I love you.)

Friday, September 24, 2010

No Yawning

The thing about when your friends start having babies is you can never again complain to those friends about how tired you are. Like ever.

As I mentioned, we have some of our best friends in the world in town and the last couple of nights we've been hanging out with them and their two itty-bitty kids. Tiffany and I had a long week. We had friends in town last weekend and I had a business trip for work and got up one day at 3:45 a.m. to catch a flight and Tiffany gets up almost that early practically every day and...

None of that matters. Because Teresa and Bobby also got up super early to catch a plane the same day I did... only they did it with a three-year-old and a five-month-old just like they have to do everything with a three-year-old and a five-month-old until those children become... well, basically forever.

When you don't have children, you can't yawn in front of friends that do. It's like lamenting the fact that a cute guy or girl you met at a bar hasn't called to someone in the middle of a divorce. In other words: totally disproportionate.

I caught Tiffany yawning in the kitchen last night while Teresa was helping their daughter Julia make a better choice about having another rainbow-colored goldfish cheese cracker or not having one so she would be hungry for her dinner and Bobby was pacing the living room with their son Peter trying to soothe him to sleep.

"Suck it up," I hissed at Tiffany as I handed her a plate while simultaneously stifling a yawn of my own.

"You suck it up," she hissed back.

"Who wants more goldfish?" we called into the living room.

Tonight Tiffany and I tucked ourselves into bed early to get ready for our day of babysitting the wee-est one.

"Hey," I said as we were brushing our teeth, "maybe we can take a nap with Peter tomorrow."

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Best of Friends

My grade point average went down the semester I became friends with Teresa. I was a sophomore in college and the decline was no small sacrifice for me. I really really really cared about my grades. Once, during my freshman year in high school, I had a 103 percent in my Spanish class. My dad picked me up from cross country practice one day and I told him I'd gotten a 100 percent on a test.

"Uh oh," he said, laughing, "your average went down."

I didn't laugh.

I was a nerd and still am a nerd and probably always will be a nerd. But when I became friends with Teresa, I had to put my nerdiness aside. No, really--she demanded it. She liked to stay up late and watch crappy TV and have sleep-overs on school nights and--crucially--she didn't want me doing things like homework while we did all of that. I had never understood the notion of "cramming" for school before. But suddenly I did. I had to cram all my reading and papers and assignments into the slivers of time that Teresa was busy doing something without me.

And I made those slivers of time as small as possible because, like everyone else who ever met Teresa, I thought she was wonderful.

And she still is. She also still lives in New York, which is far away from San Francisco. But this week, she and her husband--who is also wonderful--and their two children--who are, of course, wonderful squared--are in town. While they're here, Tiffany and I are soaking up every second with them because that's what you do when you're best friends.

Now, I am only one of Teresa's many many best friends (Tiffany is another--we all went to school and played soccer together). On the other hand, she is one of very few best friends of mine. Unlike Teresa, I am stingy with my friendship (not only stingy but brutally honest: in elementary school, I once told a girl who told me I was her best friend that she could be my second-best girl friend because I already had a best friend--Zac--and a best girl friend, Beth Ann... okay, so now you know I'm nerdy and mean)

Anyway, Teresa was the first friend to really teach me that certain stuff--like getting to class on time and getting enough sleep before a test and tenths of percentage points in a grade point average--doesn't matter. And that other stuff--like telling stories to a friend until she falls asleep and and knowing what to do when someone cries and how to make them laugh again--does.

And tonight, Tiffany and I got to teach her three-year-old daughter how to make a fort out of pillows and a blanket.

So that's pretty damn cool.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Hottest Toaster Around


You know how in "Entourage" the actors are constantly pulling up to the hottest bars, stores and restaurants in their fancy cars and clothes?

(For my most loyal reader--my mom--a brief description of the show: it's an HBO comedy about a group of Queens-born guys who follow their best friend to Hollywood as he becomes a famous movie star)

Well, when Tiffany and I were catching up on an old season last night, we saw a place we went to while we lived in Los Angeles in one of the scenes.

"Oh my god!" I said, as we sat on our couch. "There's the thrift store where we bought our toaster!"

"What?" Tiffany said. "Wow, you're totally right."

Of course, the actors didn't go into the thrift store. They just happened to be walking past it. But still, there it was.

We were both quiet for a minute, pondering what it meant, exactly, to have the thrift store where we bought our toaster appear--however briefly--on a hit television show. Or, for that matter, what it meant to have bought our toaster at a thrift store.

I looked past the TV into the kitchen. I could see the toaster on its shelf.

Every once in a while, Tiffany and I will look around at our furniture--the Goodwill chair, the hand-me-down couch, the store-bought (but discounted because of a dent) desk, the garage sale bookshelves, the gigantic now-years-outdated TV--and wish we had new stuff. Or, like, stuff that matched.

I could feel one of those times coming.

Sure enough, this morning we woke up and Tiffany was in full rearrange-the-living-room-mode which is almost always a sure segue into please-let's-buy-new-stuff mode.

"So, if we move the chair over here, that would open up this and really, we could buy a new chair and, you know, maybe a new smaller couch, which opens up this space here for a great new table..." she trailed off, looking at me.

"We could," I agreed.

We stared at our living room, thinking of all the other things we were saving for. Trips to see our family. Get-aways for ourselves. A house.

"Or we could wait," she said, putting her head on my shoulder.

"We could do that too," I agreed.

Then we moved everything in the room around. And it looked, you know, almost new.

A little bit later, I found I had a fond affection for the toaster as I made our toast while Tiffany made eggs.

I think Tiffany must have had a fond affection for the toaster too:

"What did you do to this piece of toast?" she said as she tried to extricate the piece of bread in the slot on the right.

"I had to smush it," I said. "It was the butt, and I had to make it fit."

"Well," she said, gently using a knife to pry the piece out. "Not at the expense of our toaster!"