Monday, August 29, 2011

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.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

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.

Friday, August 19, 2011

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?"

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

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!"

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

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.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

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.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

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.