Santa's Little Helpers

Tiffany's dad Gary, a pilot, had a layover in San Francisco on Christmas Eve. On the Eve of Christmas Eve, Tiffany came to me, giddy with excitement as I was changing for dinner.

"I forgot to tell you!" she yelled. "We're going to be elves!"

"Huh?"

"Elves! We're going to dress up like elves when we pick up my dad at the airport!"

So that's what we did. On our way home from dinner, we stopped at Walgreens and picked up poster board and crayons. The next morning, a few hours before his flight arrived, we lay on our stomachs on the carpet and colored.

"HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!" my poster said.

Tiffany's said:

"WELCOME TO SF, CAPTAIN DAD!"

With just an hour before Elf-ing, we changed into our outfits. Strangely, we both own pairs of green pants bought many St. Patrick's Days ago and never worn since. We put on red shirts and looked at ourselves in the mirror.

"Okay," Tiffany said. "So all we need are Santa hats, jingle bells and elf shoes."

"Do you think we really need elf shoes?" I said. "I mean, look at us."

"We don't wear the shoes," she said, drawing out her words like I was an idiot. "We kneel on them, like this."

Here, she took a pair of slip-ons from our closet and knelt on them, holding her poster down low so that the toes of the shoes peeked out from underneath. I stood back, examining the effect. She did, in fact, look miniature, Elf-ish.

Apparently, there were a lot of other Elves and Santas running around San Francisco on Christmas Eve because we had to hit up four different drug stores before we found Santa Hats.

At the airport, we got lots of strange looks. One woman refused to take our picture, backing away from us and shaking her head.

"Elf-hater," I whispered.

When Gary came out, he almost didn't see us we were so far below eye level. But when he did, he grinned. Then, he reached behind him to his carry-on and pulled out his own Santa hat and a red sack filled with our presents.

"Dear God," I said to Tiffany. "It's so clear to me now where you come from."

Upgrades All Around

Never upgrade your technology. That's what I've learned. The minute you upgrade one item, you have to upgrade everything that goes with it.

Tiffany and I put off buying a new television for years. Our old TV was fine, we told ourselves. Why spend the money to replace something that's not broken?

But, after some of Tiffany's family members came to visit and saw what we were working with, they teamed up and got us a very big flat screen HD TV for Christmas.

We were worried about pretty much every aspect of how to get the new TV functioning. Cords and cables intimidate us--me especially. We picked up the gigantic box from FedEx and left it sitting in our living room for two weeks before we opened it up. When we finally did, I had snacks and drinks handy to fortify us for the work ahead.

But it turns out new TVs are pretty easy to set up. There were a few screws involved to get the screen on its stand, but mostly Tiffany plugged in colored cords to their corresponding colored holes. The hardest part of the process was getting the battery cover off the remote. I scurried into our bathroom for a fingernail file and pried it open.

"Ta-Da!" we said together as the cover flew across the room.

When the TV came on, we felt empowered. But none of our channels looked any clearer than they had before. Everyone had promised us our picture would look "so real... almost too real." But our picture looked exactly as it did on the enormous old TV which we had just carried down to the car of an ill-prepared craigslist shopper. She came to our place with a grocery dolly that would have been crushed under the weight of her purchase. She apparently is less tech-savvy than we are:

"Oh, I didn't realize it would be so new!" she said as we pointed to the monstrosity in our hallway.

I raised my eyebrows at Tiffany.

Anyway, when our new TV's picture looked exactly like our old TV's picture, I called my brother.

"You got a new TV?" he shouted. "Thank God!"

"But it doesn't work," I protested. "How do we make our channels come in HD?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"You're not going to like this," Brandon said.

"What?"

"You have to pay for HD channels."*

Winning Hearts and Minds

Because Tiffany and I live very far away from our best friends, we have to make a serious effort to carve out a place in their children's hearts.

We've exhausted ourselves trying to squeeze in visits between family events, and we're not above sending pictures so the parents can point to us every so often on the refrigerator and say:

"And these are our VERY best friends, Tiffany and Rebecca. They love you very much, and you love them more than any other aunties."

Tiffany and I want to be the best aunties, ever. But, between us, I want to be most best.

When we finally saw Lily, the daughter of our friends Meg and John, we didn't have time to stop and get gifts, so we offered what we had. Much to my disappointment, she had no interest whatsoever in my flip phone, sunglasses or wallet and instead played with Tiffany's iPhone in delight.

Point, Tiffany.

Last weekend, we made a quick trip to New York to see some family and friends. Because of our work schedules, we arrived at different times. Tiffany got in Thursday; I landed Saturday morning. This meant Tiffany had extra time with Julia and Peter, the daughter and son of our friends Teresa and Bobby. But--because Tiffany packs way more clothes than I do, plus a hair straightener and dryer--only I had room for the Christmas presents.

On Saturday, Tiffany--who was spending time with her friends from high school--called bright and early:

"Did you give them their presents?" she asked, panic rising in her voice.

"No!" I said. "Without you? I would never!"

I almost did, actually. But I decided against cheating to curry favor. This did not stop me from gloating and sending a picture via text when Peter held my hand just an hour or so after I arrived. Apparently, he hadn't made eye contact with Tiffany until the end of her first day.

Point, me.

Division of Labor

I was picking feathers off our heirloom turkey when Tiffany and I got
mad at each other on Thanksgiving. It was 7 a.m. Because her aunt was
sleeping on the couch in our living room, we had to be angry quietly.

The fight snuck up on us. All week we'd been happily preparing our
apartment and planning the meal. We borrowed a table to put adjacent
to ours so we had room for Tiffany's aunt, sister, cousin and mom,
Patty. We didn't borrow a sixth chair--Patty sat on our exercise ball.
On the Saturday and Sunday before, we made our pie crusts and dressing
and packed them into the freezer for safekeeping. Then, on Thursday
morning, just after I removed the giblets from our turkey's cavity,
Tiffany let out a big sigh and said:

"I guess I'll do the kale."

"Lucky you," I said, angry that she hadn't volunteered to do the bird.

"But only because I'm letting you do all the fun jobs," she hissed, raising
the bunch of kale up in the air in her fist.

I stared at her, feather in hand.

"What? I only started the turkey because I thought you didn't want to!"

"Can you turn on the water?" she asked, ignoring me.

I narrowed my eyes and shook my head, holding up my turkey-slathered
hands. I had a sudden image of taking our turkey by its legs and
putting Tiffany's head where the giblets had been--you know, like that
scene from "Friends."

Glancing at the couch, we scurried behind our open refrigerator door to bicker.

"I wanted to do the turkey!"

"I had no idea! I'd much rather do the mashed potatoes! They don't
have feathers! Or legs! Or necks!"

We stared at each other. Slowly, she lowered her kale, and I widened
my eyes into a more pleasant expression. When we were sure that we
both were going to capitulate, we broke into grins.

Mutually-agreed upon divisions of labor... something to be thankful
for. Arranging them before both halves of a couple burn up with
resentment... even better.

Here Come the Bridesmaids!

I've been holding back on a blog about my brother's wedding. Don't get me wrong, there was no shortage of material from which to choose: good food, old friends and family, new friends and family, lots of laughing and some happy tears.

But all weddings have those things. For the blog, I needed something different to write about. Something bigger, something bolder, something not all weddings have...

...like a pair of dating lesbian bridesmaids.

When my now sister-in-law Lindsay asked Tiffany and me to be in her bridal party, of course we were thrilled to be a part of the special day.

But after we were thrilled, Tiffany thought about the practical consequences of serving as bridesmaids together. She had been excited at the opportunity to match her shoes or some accessory to my dress, so that we would look complementary.

"Shit," she said. "Now we're going to actually match-match."

My friend Teresa said we were lucky that we got to spend the whole wedding weekend together instead of at different boy-girl/bridal party-non-bridal party segregated events. That's true. Once Tiffany was a bridesmaid and I was just her date and she sat at the head table at the reception and I sat with the photographers (when they had the opportunity to sit). All night long I told the waiters:

"No, she's not finished with that--she's coming back."

and

"He's having white wine."

Because Lindsay was a Good Bride, Tiffany and I weren't totally matching. The bridesmaids got to make small adjustments to the dresses to accomodate our different senses of style. Because I have no sense of style, I left my dress exactly the way it came--strapless--but a few inches shorter to accomodate my midget legs. Tiffany added halter straps so that we would look different from the bosom up.

Unfortunately, this did nothing to help the fact that from the bosom down we looked like conjoined lesbian twins. During slow songs on the dance floor, there was no way to tell where I ended and Tiffany began. We were one swaying mass of navy blue on two pairs of different (thanks Lindsay!) heels.

Still, of course we had a blast. And, the other bridesmaids didn't laugh (too much) when Tiffany took out an instruction manual on how to apply her eyeshadow or when they asked if I was doing my hair--which was still wet from my shower--and I said:

"I did!"

Fun with Files (and Coins)

"Is there something wrong with us that we actually enjoy doing this?" I asked Tiffany on Saturday morning as we sat on our living room floor surrounded by piles of file folders and stacks of coins. It was 6:30.

We were having a double-organizational session. The weekend before we'd purchased a brand-new (to us) honest-to-god four-drawer wooden file cabinet to replace the flimsy six-year-old two-drawer one we bought before we had any files. Now we had to transfer all our files into the new cabinet. We were also finishing wrapping three years worth of coins we'd collected in a gigantic flower vase.

Tiffany didn't hear me.

"Babe," I said, "seriously, is there something wrong with us?"

"Huh? Maybe," she said.

As you've read before (here, here and here, for instance), organizing is Tiffany's favorite task. She is a super-organizer. In an abundance of caution, she makes a file for everything.

Everything.

"I'm going to put the instruction manual for our bike rack in a Sporting Good Instruction Manual File," she said.

Organizing is not my favorite task. I'm actually quite bad at it. I believe in broad categories of files, like: Miscellaneous Financial and Important Documents. This is why I am unorganized.

"Do we have enough sporting good instruction manuals for a file?" I asked. "Or couldn't that just go in with all the other manuals in the Tech Manuals file?"

She stared at me, horrified, then shook her head as if to clear my ignorance from her brain.

We went about our tasks quietly for a few minutes.

Then:

"I don't have very much in my Joke file," she said sadly.

"Your what?"

"My joke file," she said. "My dad has one. You know, to stuff little jokes and things."

"Where do you find such jokes?" I teased.

Secretly, I admire the file. I have a terrible habit of never remembering joke punch lines. A Joke File might be just the ticket. On the other hand, forgetting a punch line and then asking my audience to "hold please" while I checked my Joke File didn't seem very funny either.

"This is my favorite," she said.

I looked up.

My girlfriend--who's been successfully self-employed for some time and markets herself here--held a file called Tiffany's Old Resumes upside down.

Nothing came out.

Turkey: Take I

Apparently Tiffany and I are the only couple to ever make a practice Thanksgiving turkey.

"That sounds like something Nana would do," my brother said when I told him.

Actually, no.

When I told my grandmother, she cackled and said cooking a turkey "is the easiest thing ever."

"Just put it in the oven!"

Thanksgiving, as I've written before (here and here), is my all-time favorite holiday. This is the first year I've spent it away from my family, which is sad, but also the first year Tiffany and I get to host some of her family, which is awesome.

Because we can't provide some of the most basic things for our guests--like a table big enough to sit around or enough chairs in which to sit--we want to make sure the food they're eating off their laps is top quality. Practice turkeys, as they say, make perfect turkeys. Or something like that.

But it turns out cooking a turkey is just like cooking a chicken, which we do all the time, and except for accidentally leaving our paper-wrapped giblets in the cavity (good news, they did not catch fire!), we did just fine.

What we do need is a better knife. As Tiffany tried to saw through a drumstick and wing so we could serve the friends we'd invited over for our experiment, she lost her grip, flinging little bits of skin and dark meat in my direction.

"Hold still," she said, picking one such bit off my forehead.

"Ew," I said.

In any case, now we know what we're doing. What we don't know is what to do with all the left-over practice turkey we have, a week in advance of the left-over real turkey.

Love-Love

Every once in a while, Tiffany and I play tennis. We get out the stepping stool and reach up into the recesses of our closet for the neon orange and blue tennis bag I got one Christmas when I was eight or nine and taking lessons.

"Which one is my racket again?" I asked recently when we were getting ready to play.

(Like I said, we only play every once in a while.)

The truth is, neither of us is very good. The problem is, we're both pretty competitive.

The first time we played, a few months into our relationship, we got so mad at each other that Tiffany threw her racket--McEnroe style--and I didn't speak to her for several hours.

Since then, we've toned down our game a bit. When things get a little tense, we emphasize the "love" in the score.

"Forty-Love, as in I love you!" we shout across the court.

Or, if a new game is starting, but the set is going badly for one of us:

"Love-Love... love, love, love, love, love!"

The other day when we played, Tiffany beat me three games in a row.

Then I won two and we started a sixth game.

Tiffany threw the ball up to serve, then caught it again.

"Which one of us is winning?" she called.

"You are!" I shouted back across the court.

I won again and, rather than play a tie-breaker, we decided to call it a day with an even score.

Sometimes it's best to quit while you're ahead.

A New Leaf (or at least a new seed that might eventually become a new leaf)

In case you thought I was bragging in my last post, which described a certain inability to relax that Tiffany and I have the misfortune of sharing, let me correct you. I am not proud of the fact that sometimes we lie in bed after a productive day and make a list of productive things to do the following day. These are not characteristics to admire.

Last Saturday, we practiced unproductivity.

We slept in (til 7:30).

Instead of rushing off to do our errands and forgetting to eat, we made ourselves tea... and then boiled water for second cups.

"Don't panic," I said to Tiffany as we sat on the floor in our pajamas catching up on weeks-old magazines, "but we haven't done anything today. I think this might be relaxing."

After our tea, we went out for breakfast. I consciously made an effort not to think of all the things we could be doing if we weren't waiting for a table. Instead, we talked--and not about what we needed to get done before Sunday night.

Later, we went for a run on the beach. When we felt like stopping and walking, we stopped and walked.

On our way home, instead of going to the grocery store, we went to the driving range, and, even when we knew people were waiting for our slips of green turf, we didn't rush. We poured our balls from our buckets a few at a time and took sips of Coke and beer in between our (terrible) shots (here we discovered something else we need to practice: golfing).

But old habits die hard.

On the way home, we backslid slightly and got our oil changed.

"There'll be no line," I begged. "It's Saturday night."

We paused to appreciate what getting our oil changed on a Saturday night said about us as a couple and decided we were okay with it.

At the shop, we high-fived each other on our efficiency and, while we waited, turned our plastic-backed chairs to the setting sun.

Burning that Candle Until There are No Ends Left to Burn

"I think we may be efficient to the point of inefficiency," Tiffany said last Sunday morning.

I looked across the table at her. We were enjoying the exactly six minutes we'd left ourselves to eat breakfast. It was 10:39 a.m. We were leaving at 10:45 to meet friends at the Chief-Raiders football game.

"You may have a point," I said.

Already that morning we'd cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, picked up our broken down scooter, swung by the farmers' market for our veggies, stopped by the grocery store and made the breakfast we were eating (actually, we made the breakfast we were eating twice. Tiffany knocked the first skillet of breakfast off the stovetop while she was trying to make our lunch).

"Do you think other couples spend this much time preparing stuff to enjoy later?" I asked as I washed the dishes in our remaining 90 seconds. "Or, do most people procrastinate all that stuff so they can enjoy what they're doing right then?"

But there was no answer.

Tiffany didn't have time to answer. She was too busy dressing for the game while simultaneously laying out her clothes for the next day.

Free Sh*t!

Zero.

That's how many beers I drank at the Chiefs-Raiders game we went to with a couple of friends on Sunday.

10.

That's the number of Raiders souvenir beer cups I came home with.

Tiffany doesn't even let me drink out of plastic cups at home anymore (something about the leaching of hazardous chemicals) and still I can't pass them up. In fact, I have a problem passing up anything free.

When I was training for my first triathlon and was terrified I was going to drown, I gave up desserts for six weeks. But at the two baby-triathlons we did for practice, they gave away Costco muffins and brownies at the finish line. I took one of each and then went back for one of each three or four more times.

"Babe, we're going out to breakfast," Tiffany whispered as I took another bite of blueberry deliciousness.

"But this is free!" I grinned.

"Actually, we paid $65 to run this race."

"Good point," I said, turning on my heel to go back for more.

Anyway, I'm not going to keep all the Raiders cups for myself. I'm nothing if not generous with my free stuff, plus we already have a stack of Giants cups I don't get to use. I'm going to send a few of the new ones to unsuspecting family members. I'll just save one for our own cabinets so that I can open the door and think:

"I paid nothing for that perfectly good cup."

before reaching for one of the glasses we paid for.

A Little Bit Country...

I went looking for an outfit for my brother's rehearsal dinner one night last week. By myself. I'm a weak shopper, so this was brave of me.

In a stroke of rare luck, I found exactly what I wanted on a mannequin. I stopped in front of it and stared while shoppers pushed past and around me.

"Can I help you?" a salesman in a pair of skinny black jeans asked me.

"I need something a little bit country," I told him. "This is perfect."

He clapped his hands excitedly.

"Ooooh! Halloween!"

"No," I corrected, "my brother's wedding. In Texas."

He whisked me away to a dressing room, promising me the mannequin's ensemble--a flannel western-style shirt dress with a belt around the middle--as well as "some other fun stuff to try."

He brought me back a sleeveless denim dress that poofed out at the bottom.

"This is so chic," he said. "And it's marked down from $300..."

My eyes widened.

"Chic is not really the word for me," I said politely, pointing to my sneakers.*

"Just try it!

"Fine," I grumbled.

A couple of minutes later, I opened the dressing room and waved him over.

"See," I hissed. "Un-chic."

"I see," he said solemnly.

He handed me the mannequin outfit. With the boots I had at home, I thought it would be perfect.

I told him so.

"Fabulous!" he said, "With some great makeup..."

"I only really know how to do mascara."

His face fell.

"With some great jewelry..." he tried again.

"Yes!" I agreed. "Jewelry I can do.

We high-fived and both went home happy.

*Chic is totally not the word for me. In fact, when writing this post, I first wrote "sheek." It didn't look right, so I looked it up and one of the online definitions said "if you spell 'chic' this way, you most likely have no clue what 'chic' means..." Truer words were never written.

Thirty is the new Someday

I'm turning 30 in a few weeks. And I've decided I'll be making some changes when I do.

Tiffany and I are super thrifty. We're constantly saving our money for something-like a house or a coffee pot that starts automatically--in a distant future we call Someday. The trick is, we never get to Someday. Instead, we continually push the future further back. Sometimes it feels like we'll never get there and instead forever have money in savings but live in a one-bedroom apartment and make Tiffany's coffee manually after we get up.

Recently we decided we're ready to claim a piece of the future now: nice hotels.

Last month, we booked a spur of the moment trip to San Diego to see if we could find The Sun That Forgot San Francisco. We used a buy-one-get-one-free airline coupon and rented an economy car ("Is a gold car okay?" the woman behind the counter asked us. "Bling-Bling!" we exclaimed).

We settled on a reasonably priced room at a place with a pool and hot tub, just a quick walk from the beach.

Then, our future beckoned. Mostly to me.

"We don't really need a pool and hot tub," I said. "We'll never use it. How about this place? It's $30 bucks cheaper and we can use that money to rent surfboards."

I had doubts as soon we pulled into the parking lot. After we hand-cranked our gold car's windows up and manually locked all the doors, we came face-to-face with a leathery-looking man being ushered away from the "lobby" by staff. He had unkempt hair and smelled of pee.

"Is he a guest, do you think?" I whispered.

"Here we are!" Tiffany cried, throwing open our door to a reveal a room with peeling wall paper, a decrepit looking sofa and... some other stuff. After my first glance, I stopped registering what I saw and visualized my Happy Hotel Room, which smelled clean and had pillows without impressions from other people's heads.

I knew I had no right to complain since I had pushed for the cheaper room. Still...

"I'll pay for another place!" I blurted out. "I don't care how much it costs--I want to be able to walk barefoot in our room without cringing!"

Once I knew the future was brighter (not our immediate future but our second-night's future...what? 24-hour cancellation policy, people) and after I had piled all the moveable furniture against the door, I relaxed a little in our scary room.

"When I turn 30," I said shuffling to the bed in my flip-flops, "no more cheap hotels."

The rest of our trip was fantastic. We found the sun and the beach and pretty much didn't look for anything else.

Which brings me to the next piece of the future I'm ready to embrace:

"When I turn 30," I said to Tiffany on our second day as I piled my t-shirt and shorts on top of my face and stomach to cover my burns, "sunscreen."

Video 1

About two years ago, Tiffany and I touched something on one of our remotes and a little message called "Video 1" appeared in the top left corner of our television.

Try as we might, we could never again find the button that removed that message from the screen, so, since then, every television show or movie we have watched has included that visual. When something took place in the top left corner of the screen--think football or basketball scores and a surprising amount of background action in scripted shows--we couldn't see it.

We accepted this small inconvenience the same way we accept the fact that our TV's speakers make a subtle crackling sound. Our TV is a low priority, as is most technology--and I use that term loosely--we've invested in together. For illustrative purposes, I will share that when we don't want to miss a good show, we pull a dusty cassette tape off a shelf, insert it into our VCR and press record.

"Why does it say Video 1 on your TV?" my brother asked last week, when he came into town for a quick visit.

"I don't know," I said. "We can't figure it out."

"How long has it been like that?"

"It was like that the last time I was here," our family friend Rebecca contributed from the couch, ratting us out the same way she used to when we were children and left her out of a dangerous game. "That was eight or nine months ago."

"Give me your remote," Brandon said.

I handed him the only two we use--the ones for the cable box and the DVD/VCR player.

"No, the TV remote," he said.

"Ohhhhhh!" Tiffany and I looked at each other excitedly. "It's there, on top of the DVD player. We've never touched it!"

Brandon touched it. And, just like that, the Video 1 message disappeared.

I once was blind. But now I see my whole TV.

Ain't So Tough, Tough, Tough

When I was little, I used to want a broken arm. I didn't want to break my arm. I wanted it to be all of a sudden broken, without pain, so that I could look tough and have a cast that my friends could sign and oooh and ahhh over.

I thought I had gotten over this. I haven't.

Last weekend, as you may remember, Tiffany and I ran this race called the Tough Mudder. I wasn't nervous until a few days before.

I began to picture the myriad ways I might injure myself: I could drown in the ice-filled water, for god's sake; or scalp myself as I crawled under the barbed wire; or trip and be crushed under the weight of the log I was supposed to carry down the mountain.

Actually, what happened was, I got a splinter.

No, I'm serious.

I hurt my hand too--the man who hauled me over one of the walls on the obstacle course crushed my metacarpals in the process. But that injury was invisible.

Tiffany, on the uninjured hand, fell and scraped all the skin off one of her forearms. It looked so tough. And, apparently it hurt a lot too.

"Careful!" she warned me, any time I approached that part of her body. "It hurts a lot."

"I bet," I said sympathetically. "My hand hurts too. You can't see it, but it really hurts."

Everywhere we went after the race, people noticed Tiffany's scabbed-over arm.

"Wow, did you get that in the race?"

"Yeah."

"And did you run the race too, Rebecca?"

By that time, I had already taken the splinter out of my finger (which really hurt!), and there was no point in holding my invisibly-bruised hand out for them to see.

Like a good partner, Tiffany ooohed and ahhhed over my invisible injury the same way I did over her visible one. She took my hand and turned it over, held it under various lights and ran her fingers over the still-functioning veins. When we got home, after she poured hydrogen peroxide over her arm, she gave me a bag of frozen peas for my hand.

And then we sat on the couch and talked about how tough we were.

Putting Our Relationship to the Tough Mudder Test

"Just so you know," I told Tiffany as we pulled on our spandex at 5 a.m. on Sunday, "this is not just a race. It's a test of our relationship. If we can survive this..."

Tiffany rolled her eyes.

My brother is getting married next month. In between trying on our matching bridesmaids dresses and looking for shoes, Tiffany and I have been doing a lot of talking about how you know your one is the one.

Anyway, a few months ago, we signed up for this race called the Tough Mudder. It's a 12-mile run up and down the ski slopes of Tahoe during which you must complete a variety of obstacles, like: swimming through ice-filled water, carrying logs down narrow mountain paths, climbing a series of too-tall walls.

I was joking about the race being a test of our relationship. But it turns out it was, and we didn't start out well.

"You are the worst person to do something like this with," Tiffany said before we'd even gotten to the starting line.

I was in the middle of a tiny panic attack. Having been told--only moments before--that if we drowned in the mud or fell backwards down one of the too-tall walls, race staffers would identify our lifeless corpses by our wristbands, I realized I'd put the wrong one on.

"They're going to know who we are," Tiffany said, pointing to our foreheads, where our race numbers were scrawled with permanent marker.

I ignored her and sprinted back to the car to get the green band.

We started talking again after the swim through ice-filled water. I'm not sure if we had actually gotten over our anger or if we had such a severe case of brain freeze that we forgot about it, but it doesn't matter. When we emerged from the tank, I grabbed Tiffany in a bear-hug, ice cubes spilling out of my sports bra, and screamed:

"I love this! And you!"

"My crotch!" Tiffany responded. "I can't feel it!"

Things went beautifully until mile 11. Perched on the two-inch wide top of a 10-foot wall, it became clear I would not be able to pull Tiffany up without falling off myself. She had helped me, and now I was helpless to help her.

This is it, I thought to myself. We're doomed as a couple.

Just then, another participant came up behind us.

"Like a boost?" he called in a thick Scottish accent.

"Yes!" Tiffany cried. "I would love a boost!"

"She would!" I said, swallowing my pride. "Thank you!"

"Don't mind my hands," he said, proceeding to put them all over my girlfriend's lower region.

On the other side of the wall was another wall (this happens in real life sometimes too). Tiffany and I climbed the second wall on our own, hurling our bodies against it at full speed, pressing off mid-way with one foot and grabbing for the top.

Strangely, I did feel better about our relationship after the race even though we hadn't been able to complete it on our own.

Hey, sometimes you need a little boost.

And you should always take it. Even when it comes from a burly man in a kilt.

Ring My Bell

So I told my brother Tiffany and I were going on a bike ride last weekend, and he asked if it was a work-out ride or a leisurely ride.

I hesitated.

"Leisurely," I lied.

It wasn't a work-out ride. In fact, I didn't even clip in (and, no, not just because I sometimes fall off when I clip in). But the ride did take us over the Golden Gate Bridge, and, as anyone who has ever ridden over the Golden Gate Bridge knows, there's no way to do that leisurely.

There are only two types of people on the Golden Gate Bridge: angry people and oblivious people.

That's because, unless you're oblivious, you can't help but be angry at the swarm of pedestrian tourists who refuse to walk in single file and have the audacity to try to take "scenic" pictures on a national landmark. Or at the professional bikers intent on maintaining their highway speeds on a path four feet across and hundreds of feet in the air.

Tiffany and I are not oblivious. Our only hope is to get across the bridge before we become angry.

Our strategy is that the front-rider rings her bell like crazy (yes, our bikes have bells). And I mean like crazy. Tiffany took the lead this time, and I stayed as close behind her as I could. We sounded like an old-timey cash register gone haywire as we careened down the path.

"Your bell's starting to sound angry," I yelled at her as we bore down on a pair of lovers smooching in front of their camera.

"Really?? I'm trying to ring it nicely!" she called over her shoulder.

We made it across with our tempers in check. As for the people we dinged along the way... well, it's every man for himself on the bridge.

Kenny Who?

The other day Tiffany and I rode our bikes out to an art fair across the bridge. Our friends had said it was worth checking out: lots of food, live music and, of course, art. We checked our wheels at the free bike valet and sauntered over to the ticket booth. I squinted at the price list.

"Twenty-five dollars a piece to get in?" I whispered.

"Yikes," Tiffany agreed.

She asked to see the program of a woman standing nearby.

"I'm just here for Kenny Loggins," the woman said. "He plays at 3."

"Oh really?" we both said, "Wow."

"Who's Kenny Loggins?" I whispered to Tiffany when we were out of earshot.

"You know..."

and here she broke into song:

"You gotta know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em..."

"That's Kenny Rogers!"

"Ohhhh," she said. "Then I have no idea."

After debating the ticket price and Mr. Loggins' identity for a few minutes, we decided we didn't like art that much, handed the woman her program and walked back down the shore a bit to a paddleboarding place.

For ten bucks a piece, we each got a board. As soon as we were standing and stable, we made our way across the water to the cove right behind the festival and listened to some of the music for free.

Into the Wild

I realized yesterday Tiffany and I need to get out to the country a tad more than we do now.

We were hiking up a mountain outside the city (okay, fine, we were hiking around a big hill outside the city) when a rabbit bounced out of the bushes on one side of our trail and into the bushes on the other.

"What the f*ck!" Tiffany screamed, jumping back, nearly taking us both back down the steep incline we'd just come up.

"It's a rabbit," I said.

"I know it's a rabbit, but it's probably feral," Tiffany said.

"By definition," I agreed.

"No, I mean, it's probably..."

"An attack rabbit?"

"Yes! Exactly."

Later, she turned to take in a panoramic view of the city (okay, fine, the fog) we'd left behind and a hummingbird nearly speared her between the eyes with his beak, mistaking her bright pink tank-top, perhaps, for an unusually tall flower.

"Did you see that!?" she cried.

"Yes," I said, "that was close."

"He could have poked my eyes out!"

Even I was somewhat concerned, however, by the extremely large traps set off a few paces from the trail in various spots. They were big enough to hold 40 feral rabbits. But judging by the poops we encountered (some of which appeared to contain rabbit fur), the traps were meant for something with a slightly bigger intestinal tract.

In any case, Tiffany and I survived the rabbit, the hummingbird and the hike, with only minor cosmetic injuries to our running shoes (read: dirt).

A Romantic Comedy

I had the apartment all to myself this weekend. A little bachelorette with nothing but time.

When I got home from work on Thursday, the day Tiffany left to spend a long weekend with her Dad, she'd left me little notes in every room. My favorite was the purple post-it on the TV:

"No fun things. Only boring TV. I love you."

Once not long after Tiffany and I started dating, I cheated on her by watching a movie she wanted to see. I went home for the weekend and my mom and I saw it by ourselves. I felt guilty from previews to credits but still managed to enjoy my popcorn and coke. Tiffany has never let me forget that betrayal, despite my promise to see the movie again with her (which we finally did a few months ago--six years after I first saw it).

Sometimes we update our Netflix queue and, if I say we've already seen something and Tiffany doesn't remember, I hear:

"Oh, you must have seen that one without me, too."

"No," I explain. "We saw that one together in Los Angeles. Remember, we rented it the night we came back from that bar where we saw the guy from 'Entourage'?"

"Humph."

Tiffany has selective memory.

Anyway, I didn't even touch our latest Netflix movie this weekend. I know better than that. Instead, I watched one and one-quarter of two Ryan Reynolds movies back-to-back. Technically, I knew I was on safe ground because Tiffany and I had seen them both already, but, because they fall under Tiffany's favorite all time genre (romantic comedy), I prepared for jealousy. When Tiffany called and asked what I was doing, I told her:

"Watching 'The Proposal' on TV and eating an ice cream sandwich."

"Awwwww, without me? I love that movie!"

"I know, but you've seen it. We saw it together in the theater!"

"So! How could you? Romantic comedies are my favorite! I go away and you watch one without me!?"

"What did you think, I was going to watch C-SPAN all weekend?"

"That would have been perfect!"

I swear.

Color Me Hot, Hot, Hot

For the record, the color my grandmother wanted for her toenails when Tiffany and I took her and my mom for pedicures last weekend was mauve. That's the color she already had on. Because she doesn't see very well anymore, she asked me to find mauve, and, though I did my darnedest, the closest thing I could find was basically brown.

"Here," my mom said, swooping in and expertly picking a bottle from the rows and rows of colors.

Mauve, it read on the bottom.

I did not want mauve, so I reached for the display of pinks, picking one I thought looked somewhat my age and personality. When Nana saw I had a different bottle than she had, she put her mauve down on the table and said,

"I want that one too."

For the record, the color my 87-year-old grandmother and I ended up sharing was: "Some like it hot, hot, hot."

This is funny because one of the many things Nana and I have in common is that we do not look like we like it hot, hot, hot. Some other things we share: taking pride in still owning clothes we bought decades ago and a tendency to worry about things we absolutely cannot control.

Anyway, when the women at the salon took the color and led Nana and me to a pair of chairs, they were chattering away in another language. Occasionally, I caught the phrase "Some like it hot, hot, hot." I'm not sure what exactly they said after that, but I'm pretty sure it was something like: "Yeah, right."

My mom chose to go color-less and had her nails buffed. I didn't know buffing was an option, and immediately regretted my own choice.

Tiffany, on the other hand, went in bold--she wanted blue, which, apparently can be very tricky. The degree of separation between funky-sexy blue and Smurf blue is miniscule.

The blue she ended up with was bold, alright. But not quite in the way she'd hoped. The name of the color--"Over the top"--was technically true, but does little to provide a mental image.

It was only later that my mom identified the blue for what it really was. After our pedicures, the four of us took a cooler of beer and Dr Pepper down to the Golden Gate Bridge. We sat on a bench and ate hot dogs and chips. When we got up to go, I crushed the cans the way my grandfather used to.

"Oh my god, Tiffany," my mom cried, pointing at Tiffany's feet. "Your toenails are Bud Light blue!"

And they so totally were.

GPS-lessness

As has been discussed here before, I have almost no sense of direction.

On Sunday, I drove with my mom from Wichita Falls to Austin. We were the lead car in a three-car caravan and pulled into a Dairy Queen for lunch (if you've never been to a middle-of-nowhere Texas town's Dairy Queen, you really should find one and go--it's like the place to be on a Sunday afternoon. Plus, who doesn't love dip cones?). When we pulled out, I turned right and gunned it (I had a plane to catch!).

"Where are you going?" my mom asked.

"To Austin," I said.

"Well, we're headed back to Wichita Falls right now."

So I screeched off the road and made a U-turn in the vacant lot next to the Dairy Queen, waving to the rest of our caravan who, of course, had not followed me initially.

But my GPS-lessness is not limited to motor vehicles. I can do the same thing on my own two feet.

Last month, Tiffany and I were flying somewhere (I don't even remember where--that's what happens when you have to fly to see anyone with the same genetic makeup as you) and, as we walked from one gate to the other on our layover, we stopped for Tiffany to go to the bathroom. I stayed outside with our bags and when she came out we set off again--in opposite directions.

"Where are you going?" Tiffany asked.

"To our gate," I said.

"We just came from there, Rebecca. Seriously, you didn't even move--what were you doing out here, spinning in circles?"

A Blond Joke

My brother and I look a lot alike. We share something of the shape of our dad's face and our mom's blue eyes and blond hair.

Back when blond jokes were popular, I heard a lot of them. And, despite my grade point average, they were usually well deserved. This weekend I was reminded why.

I flew to Texas for a quick (read: 27 hour) trip to see my family, and, on Saturday, we all crowded around a hotel pool for an hour before we headed off to a shower in celebration of my brother's upcoming wedding.

The pool was surrounded by a metal fence with a locked gate. As our family members and friends arrived, I jumped up from my spot in the sun to let them in. Over and over again, I told them to:

"Hold on, I'll be right there," and they held on and, in about 20 steps, I was right there, swinging the gate open.

I was vaguely aware that no one else offered to let our guests in, but I didn't think much of it. Unlike me, most of them can see each other more than once every couple of months, so I figured they weren't in any hurry to hug.

Finally, I had to leave the pool area to use the restroom. When I returned, no one got up.

"Dad," I called. "Come let me in."

"Rebecca," he called back, "reach over and let yourself in."

I blinked.

And then I reached over the chest high gate and let myself in.

As others showed up, I stopped offering to open the gate. One-by-one, they opened it independently, without a moment's hesitation.

My brother was the last to arrive, and, I swear it was just like looking in a mirror when he stopped short and yelled:

"Hey, someone come open the gate!"

Ironing 101

Tiffany's mom Patty taught me how to iron this weekend.

The lesson didn't start off very well.

"Okay, Rebequita, first, get me the iron," Patty said, in her Peruvian accent.

"Ummmm..." I said.

"This ought to be fun," Tiffany observed. "Watch this, Mom."

I made my way to one of the two closets in our apartment.

"Cold!" Tiffany shouted.

I changed course and headed to the other closet.

"Colder!" Tiffany yelled.

"I know!" I cried, turning on my heel and heading for the kitchen, where I remembered I'd seen the iron tucked in a drawer we never open along with our heating pad and a slew of probably expired medicines.

It was there.

I can count on one hand the times I've ironed in my life. I find it an incredibly tedious task. Also, I'm spatially challenged and can never remember what I've already done (an alternate explanation is that I'm such a bad ironer I can't tell what's already been ironed).

What I do is this: when my iron-worthy clothes come out of the wash, I immediately hang them up to dry if they cannot go in the dryer. If they can go in the dryer, I dry them and immediately hang them up, folding them along the place a pleat would be if I bothered to iron them. I tell you, this method works. Once, a co-worker complimented me on the wrinkle-free quality of my clothes. Ha!

In truth, the iron intimidates me.

"Rebequita, don't be afraid of the iron," Patty scolded, grabbing the appliance from my hand and smushing it as hard as she could down on my pant legs.

I took the iron back.

"Okay, Rebequita, look what you just did," Patty said, taking the iron out of my hand again. "You ironed over a seam. Now you've made a line on the fabric that will not go away. But it's okay, that's why I turned the pants inside-out. That way you cannot mess them up."

Patty rotated the pants until it appeared to me the exact same patch of material was on the board ready for my iron.

"Didn't we just do that leg?" I asked.

Tiffany snickered from the kitchen.

"No, Rebequita, this is the other leg--can't you see the wrinkles?" she said. "Pants have two legs."

Now, come on.

Even I know that.

On the Catwalk

Whenever Tiffany's mom Patty comes to visit, she brings a suitcase full of surprises--mostly things she's picked up for us on her trips to see family in Peru and China. As soon as she arrives, she spills the contents on the floor of our living room: fried corn snacks, Peruvian seasonings, and some of whatever clothes and shoes are in fashion.

Usually Tiffany and I don't bother trying to keep up with the latest trends (example: neither of us own a pair of skinny jeans). I can pretty readily admit that I'm out of the loop, but I have to be careful calling my very own girlfriend unhip. Long before Tiffany and I started dating, she had a brief career in the fashion world in a buyers' program for a major department store. When she left the job, which made her miserable, another friend and I joked that we wondered how she'd lasted so long since...

well, I believe our words were:

"You have no sense of style."

Tiffany didn't speak to us for a couple of hours after that.

Truthfully, Tiffany and I do have a sense of style. It just has no connection to the passage of time. For instance, in most of the pictures on our wall, we are wearing one or two of the "nice" outfits we each own even though the pictures span our six year relationship.

Anyway, when Patty came to visit this weekend, her suitcase was full of tights, long clingy tank tops and flowy shirts. In theory, I knew all of these things went together.

"Everyone is wearing this," Patty explained, tossing the items to us one by one.

I gave Tiffany a dubious look. But, when she tried it all on, the strangest thing happened:

She was fashionable.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she frowned.

"You look... it's so weird because you look like you know what you're doing!" I exclaimed.

She generously let that comment pass.

Inspired by Tiffany's experience, I tried on the clothes myself.

And that's when I realized:

Tiffany has style.

I don't.

The Big Race

I nearly scared myself out of our Big Triathlon before we even started it last weekend. First, on the plane ride to Mississippi (the race we chose is associated with a county fair my family's been going to for 25 years) I made the mistake of reading an article about the dangers of running in extreme heat. It had been more than 100 degrees for several weeks in Mississippi.

"Is my pee straw-colored?" I asked Tiffany.

She sighed, regretting her own mistake, I'm sure, of telling me about the article in the first place.

"No, seriously," I said. "It has to be straw-colored. If it's yellower, I haven't been drinking enough. If it's clearer, I've been drinking too much. Also, I need to eat something salty."

I handed us each one of the bags of peanuts I'd stashed from our first flight.

I didn't feel any better when we got to our pre-race meeting. Every car in the lot had an Ironman or half-Ironman sticker on it. All the men had shaved legs like women and all the women had muscles like men. Also, some of the women were wearing full make-up, which was intimidating in its own way. I began to feel weak and unattractive, all at once.

Then, the race director opened the pre-race meeting with a prayer. This was definitely a regional twist.

"Dear Lord, please be with our triathletes; help them to stay strong and please make sure none of them go down."

Far from reassuring me, the prayer just reminded me I probably had something to pray about.

But, you know what, maybe some of that prayer rubbed off. On Saturday, it was a cool 85 degrees. I didn't bother checking the color of my pee, and Tiffany and I didn't drown, crash or go down. In fact, we did better than we expected. Even without mascara.

The Fair

Nearly every July since I was four, my family heads to Mississippi, where we lived for several years, for the week-long Neshoba County Fair, otherwise known as Mississippi's Giant Houseparty. No, seriously, that's what they call it (and that's exactly what it is).

When July rolls around on the years we can get there, it's hard to know who's more offended as Tiffany and I prepare to make the trip: our San Francisco friends who can't believe we're paying to go to Mississippi where they think everyone is a pot-bellied hick or our Mississippi friends who can't believe we still live in San Francisco where they assume everyone is a pot-smoking hippie (okay, the Mississippians have a point here...).

These stereotypes run deep. The first time Tiffany and I took a road trip through the south, about a year after we'd started dating, my dad worried for our safety.

"Just be careful," he started as we talked one day over a couple of burgers. "Don't... well... don't act gay."

But Tiffany and I made the trip just fine. We acted the way we always act and only had one scare when we blew a tire on a long stretch of highway somewhere in Alabama. We inched our way to a nearby off ramp and a deserted looking gas station and held our breath when two men in an 18-wheeler pulled up behind our car with its equal rights sticker on the back windshield. Guess what those two men did:

Helped us change our tire.

Similarly, the first time I took Tiffany to the Fair, some members of my family fretted. But the Fair is one of my all time favorite places; it has most of my all time favorite people and many of my all time favorite foods. It's a place where the biggest decision you make is which drink to pour into your plastic cup when you walk down to watch the horses at the red dirt race track. Or whether to wait until after supper to have your first slice of caramel cake. Or where to hide your slice of caramel cake if you want it to still be around after supper to eat.

I couldn't imagine not sharing all that with Tiffany. Still, before we went, I told her everything she needed to know: all about how my Fair friends and I used to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl until we were sick, all about Lindsey's Lemonade and the fried dill pickles and chicken-on-a-stick at Penn's, all about the cabin's iffy plumbing (cross your fingers, close your eyes, and flush. Also, have a plunger handy.).

When we got there, we held hands walking around the red dirt track at night like every other couple and when I introduced her to my Fair friends, guess what they said?

"Nice to meet you."

Size Matters

For a few brief moments in my triathlon training career, I was brilliant. Not in the pool, of course. As some of you may remember, the swim portion is not my finest. And not on the run, surprisingly, although for most of my life I've been a runner.

No.

I was brilliant on the bike.

When Tiffany and I did our first long training ride, I couldn't believe how fine I felt. I felt so fine that when it was Tiffany's turn to lead, I kept creeping up into her space, just edging into her peripheral vision, trying to push her. Finally, I came right up next to her.

"Let's go faster," I cried, and she said:

"I hate you."

I'm not paraphrasing. That's precisely what she said.

"But we're not even breathing hard!" I protested.

"I AM!" she panted.

I fell back a few paces. And then I reached my hands behind my back, stretching my arms. That was the last straw. When Tiffany saw that I was keeping pace with her without my hands, she was furious.

"No, seriously, I hate you right now," she spat. "Go ahead of me if you want."

Well, of course I would never leave my girlfriend pedaling by herself on a country road. Especially when my girlfriend was the only one of us who had memorized the route. I dropped back even further, and we rode the rest of the 32 miles in silence (ps-that's a really long time).

Rather than accept my superior biking abilities, Tiffany investigated what might really be going on. It didn't take her long to figure it out: my bike wheels are bigger than hers.

I wasn't sure how much difference this could make, but, to be supportive, I agreed with her.

"No wonder," I said. "I knew I couldn't be that much better than you."

(Wink. Wink.)

But of course she was right. When we took our bikes in for a tune-up, the mechanic validated the wheels theory immediately.

"Damn!" I laughed. "I thought I was just especially fit."

He looked at me standing in front of him with my Target helmet and mismatched hand-me-down spandex.

"No," he said.

PS--For the three of you, who participated in my blog's birthday quiz, we did come up with a winner (although none of the three got all the answers correct... didn't anybody use my search function??). As soon as the winner provides me with a blog post topic, I will get it up as fast as I can...