Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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!"

Monday, November 21, 2011

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.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

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.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

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.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

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.