Friday, December 21, 2012

Three-Handed Couple


As you know, Tiffany and I were a little shorthanded these last few weeks. After I broke my right 5th metacarpal over Thanksgiving, we were down to three upper extremities between us, just as we were moving into our new apartment and assembling--my personal favorite relationship test--Ikea furniture.

We started off okay. Tiffany was willing to wash my hair and floss my teeth for me, and I accepted those kindnesses gratefully.

But pretty soon, I got grumpy. I couldn't do any of the things that would be most helpful, like carrying boxes up the stairs of our third floor walk-up. Instead of taking pride in the things I could do--like sit in the double-parked car and call all our magazines to update our address--I pouted.

Tiffany, meanwhile, was not upset that I couldn't do any of the things that would be most helpful. She was totally fine with taking on the brunt of our household chores and tasks. Until I started taking all my frustration out on her.

"How do you like the bookshelf here?" she asked one evening after I had been passive-aggressively second-guessing her decisions without offering any suggestions of my own.

"Whatever," I sighed.

"Alright, Eeyore, what is wrong with you?" she asked, throwing up her hands.

"I'm mad I can't do anything!" I screeched, throwing up my one good hand.

Tiffany darted her eyes around the room, looking for any task to appease me.

"Why don't you organize the pencil jar?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm a two-year-old!" I hissed, stomping away from her into the farthest corner of what suddenly felt like an exceptionally small apartment.

Later, I apologized.

"Maybe we're not a very good three-handed couple," I said as we walked to dinner together.

Tiffany nodded, reaching for my cast. But she was just being generous. The truth was, I wasn't being a very good one-handed person.

After I realized that, things got better. When we assembled the next piece of Ikea furniture, I organized all the screws, which is really the only part of assembly I'm good at anyway, no matter how many hands I have.

A few days later, still one-handed, I decided to go ahead and do something I'd been meaning to do for a long time.

I asked for one of Tiffany's hands.

And when she gave it to me, I put a ring on it.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Under the Category of Things Only Dentists Should Do

I broke a bone in my hand over Thanksgiving, and, I'll tell you what,
one-handedness has seriously cramped my style. And my dental hygiene.

After the first few nights of only brushing (with my non-dominant left
hand, so by brushing I mean limply swiping at my teeth and sometimes
my cheek), I asked Tiffany if she would floss for me, and she said
yes!

Alright, alright, it wasn't quite as quick a response as that, and it
really didn't warrant an exclamation point. It was more like:

"Oh my god, are you serious?"

But still, the end result was the same: she was willing to
stick her fingers in my mouth to pick out a stubborn piece of broccoli
from our first dinner in our new apartment.

Just like she was willing to wash my hair for me. I manage that on my
own, however. Sort of. With my right hand pseudo-casted and swaddled
in a plastic bag, I can't really work up a lather anywhere except the
part of my hair I first touch.

But flossing takes two hands for sure. And Tiffany provided them.

"You know what would be easier?" I asked. Since her fingers were in my
mouth, it sounded more like:

"Uh oh ut ould ee eaier?"

"Please don't talk while my fingers are in your mouth; you're gumming
my hands," she said, grimacing.

"Oss icks!" I cried, ignoring her.

Floss sticks.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Suburban Spiders


One thing I won't miss about the suburbs: spiders.

When Tiffany and I first moved in with our friends on Long Island in August, we encountered so many spiderwebs while running in the early morning that I soon took to holding my arm up in front of my face to intercept the sticky webs. Tiffany hit one spider full on and took off her t-shirt right then and there--arachnophobic-Brandi-Chastain-style rather than risk running with him in tow.

I don't know where spiders live in the city, but they don't have time to build webs. Too many people walking to and fro. Maybe city spiders have co-ops.

Anyway, I've learned to spot the tell-tale shine of the silk draping across my path and to watch out for spots where a web could be connected across the sidewalk: two bushes, a stop sign and a bush, a tree and a stop sign, and so on and so on. Rather than risk getting tangled up, I began walking and running in the street. Tiffany did too.

The other night, we were walking home from the train in the middle of the street and a car raced past us, driving much too fast for pedestrian traffic.

"Slow down!" I shouted, raising my arm up but keeping my middle-finger down (Tiffany does not like it when I am road enraged). I hoped I wasn't yelling at one of our hosts' neighbors. "I mean, geez, people are walking here!"

Tiffany and I looked at each other. Then we looked at the sidewalk. And, since we hadn't seen a spider since the temperature started to drop, we headed toward it.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Disorganized Chaos

Tiffany and I have been living out of suitcases and duffel bags so long that I've stopped even pretending to fold my clothes anymore. Except for my dress pants and shirts, my wardrobe (mostly t-shirts and capris since we moved here in August and haven't really unpacked our winter wear yet) is shoved onto a few shelves in our friends' basement. The majority of our clothes are still packed tightly in boxes. When I take a pair of pants to the dry cleaners, my lower-half options decrease by about 20 percent. Living in a state of such chaos can make my mornings very frustrating.

"I'm turning on the light!" I shrieked to Tiffany this morning after rummaging around in the dark for several minutes. She was supposed to have had the luxury of a later wake-up time than I did. "I can't find anything! I need the shirt-thingy that I wear underneath fancy shirts, and I have to leave in 13 minutes!"

"Mmmmm," she mumbled.

"I'm dumping all my clothes on the bed!" I cried, tossing things with both hands behind on me onto the comforter so I'd have more room to assess what I was finding. "I can't find that shirt-thingy!"

Sometimes I find repeating myself makes people more likely to do something for me.

"What shirt-thingy?" Tiffany asked, extricating herself from my growing pile.

"The one with the straps..."

"Is the shirt you're wearing see-through? Do you actually need the shirt-thingy?"

I looked at myself in the mirror and held my hand up inside my shirt. I couldn't see my hand... or could I? Now in a panic, I picked a regular t-shirt from the pile and put it on underneath my fancy shirt. Tiffany shook her head at me slowly.

"I don't care what it looks like," I said, lying through my gritted teeth. "I'm wearing it!"

Tiffany saved the day. When I came back downstairs from putting bread in the toaster for peanut butter toast, the emergency breakfast I make when I don't have time for anything else, Tiffany had my shirt-thingy dangling from her pinky. I put it on and then sprinted back upstairs again to eat. Still, I wanted her to know how much I appreciated what she'd done.

"Can you come upstairs to give me a kiss!" I cried. "I have eight minutes!"

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Parent-speak


After three-months of living with small children, I understand kids perfectly well (dinosaurs have nine teeth no matter what I say; the letter P can be called any other letter of the alphabet depending on our mood; it is always a good time to sit down on the floor and roll a ball back and forth). It's parents who can be difficult to follow sometimes. Here's a conversation I had this weekend when our friends Meg and John, parents of Lily (2-years) and Stella (2-months), came to town:

Me (to Lily who had spent the previous five minutes looking for cracks in the wooden floor at her father's suggestion): Ooooh, Lily, let's go look out the window and see what we can see!

Lily: Okay! Let's find a school bus!

Me: Hmmm, there aren't many school buses at night. How about something else that's yellow... taxis!

John: Oh, really great idea, Rebo.

Me (brightly): I know...(then picking up on excessive amount of sarcasm) wait... what?

John: Taking a two-year-old to the window??

Me: But it's closed. And it's locked. And I'm holding her.

John: Still.

Me (narrowing my eyes, considering whether to point out that he and his wife decided to drive their small children to New York post-Hurricane Sandy and pre-walloping nor'easter in the middle of a gas shortage.... considering, considering, considering. Being the bigger person. Temporarily.): Fine. Lily, let's go back to looking at the floor.


Saturday, November 3, 2012

First-World Refugees


After Hurricane Sandy, Tiffany and I were displaced from the basement of our friends, where we were already displaced, to the spare bedroom of other family friends who took me in during another time I was displaced (aka, graduate school). Weary of living out of boxes and bags-which we've been doing since we moved from San Francisco in August and will continue to do until we move into our Manhattan apartment in 27 days-I stubbornly refused to pack anything but work clothes. Of course, then I was unable to go to work, so I have been wearing the same "casual" outfit for days.

On the day of the storm, we filled up our car with gas, bought a bunch of bottled water, and then plopped down in front of the TV to "use the electricity while we've got it!" by having a Glee marathon. Along with my mom, whose weekend visit was extended by the storm, we took turns charging our cell phones in the car even though they were rendered virtually useless by the power outages all around us.

Every time the lights flickered, we gasped, collectively, and when they came back on we looked around and congratulated ourselves for being lucky.

When the power did finally go out, for a 12-hour period the day after the storm, we huddled around the fireplace, reading until we couldn't see anymore. After our electricity was restored, we shut off all the lights and stayed right where we were by the fire, Glee be damned.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

My Bestie

I only have a handful of friends in New York.

Ok, fine... I only have a handful of friends. Period.

Anyway, one of my New York friends, Jen, sticks out like a sore thumb from my handful.

The only thing Jen and I have in common is a common friend, Teresa. And it is only because of our love and respect for Teresa that Jen and I initially stayed in the same room together long enough to develop a mutual affection.

Jen is fashionable. I'm... not. She's loud. I'm less loud bordering on quiet. She likes to talk politics. I do not. Oh yeah, and speaking of politics. We don't have those in common either.

I try to avoid political conversations with Jen, but the other night, she wouldn't let me, so we took Teresa's living room hostage and went at it despite the fact that everyone else in the living room was either a sleeping newborn or trying to watch Modern Family.

"I'm fiscally conservative!" I hissed at one point, trying to rebut her argument that I was disagreeing with everything she agreed with just to be stubborn. I instantly thought of all the ways I am not fiscally conservative and hoped she wouldn't.
"Freezing your leftover pizza does not make you fiscally conservative," Jen spat. "It makes you weird."
"I'm personally fiscally conservative!"
She scoffed.

"Whatever!" I shouted. "Binders of women?"

I mean, seriously. What kind of person doesn't believe in leftovers?





Sent from my iPhone


Saturday, October 6, 2012

On Coloring


I'll tell you what: Having kids is tough.

Well, technically, Tiffany and I don't have kids (I know I've been away from the blog a long time, but still, three weeks would be a pretty aggressive gestation period for a human being). But we are living with two of them now--and their parents--until we find a place of our own in New York.

When I say tough, I mean that having children around is so much fun I don't have time to do any of the things I should be doing when I'm not at work--like writing this blog, going for a run, or finding an apartment where we wouldn't have kids to play with anymore.

I came upstairs in my running clothes the other day, and Peter, our friends' 2-year-old, was lying on the floor on his stomach in the kitchen, coloring.

"Come on, Rebo," he said, using the nickname his mom and a few other soccer teammates gave me in college. "Color."

He had just learned to call someone to him by waving his hand toward himself, and he scooped his entire arm through the air to indicate that I should come closer.

"Maybe later," I said. "I'm going for a run real quick."

Peter stared at me.

I stared at Peter.

And then, in that amazing ability children have, he forgave me for the words I had just uttered, and scooped his arm through the air again as if I hadn't spoken at all.

"No," he said, matter-of-factly. "Color."

He patted the floor next to him and held up a purple crayon.

I took it.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

E-Z as Can Be


Anyway, we made it to New York. Lots of people were wondering because it's been a while since my last post. Some of Tiffany's friends even texted, emailed and called to ask if we made it out of Impy's driveway, which is nice because it means they were reading the blog (but obviously not too closely or they'd have realized we never pulled into the driveway in the first place).

So we made it. And as soon as we got the chance, we got back in the car and drove to see Tiffany's family in New England. After years of living plane-rides away from our families, we were giddy at the idea that we were connected to certain members by the same highway (I even texted my brother in Florida that I could see him in just under 1,300 miles). But it wasn't enough that we could leave work on a Friday night and be having a beer and Dr Pepper with Tiffany's dad before bedtime. We wanted to be there faster, which we realized as soon as we got onto the West Side Highway in Manhattan and almost immediately had to come to a stop in the Cash Only lane while E-ZPass drivers cruised by us on the way to their own families.

"Sh*t," we said, looking at each other.

But it turns out you can buy E-Z passes in the cash lane in New York, so, guess what, we bought one.

"How does this work?" I asked the woman.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, when can we use it?"

"Right now," she said.

"Oh good!" I cried, stuffing my dollar bills back into my wallet.

The woman stared at me.

"Not right this minute," she said. "You're in a Cash Only lane."

Monday, August 27, 2012

Road Trip: Blogged (Sunday)


Tiffany and I have been lucky on our road trip because we've gotten to see a lot of our friends and family who are scattered across the country. Besides having Tiffany's dad Gary along for the first half of the ride, we saw Tiffany's sister Melody in Denver and my mom and grandmother and lots of friends in Kansas City. Last night, we drove right by my grandmother's best friend in Dayton, Ohio.

When I say we drove right by her, that's exactly what I mean. Oh, sure, eventually we made a U-turn, pulled in front of her house and stayed the night, but when we first saw Impy, she was standing in her door waving us into her driveway while we kept right on going, waving frantically back at her.

"Should I pull into her driveway?" I asked Tiffany.

"Absolutely not! Do not pull this trailer into her driveway!"

"Call her and tell her we're turning around!" I shrieked, as Impy looked after us in confusion.

After I made a wide turn at the next four-way stop, we lurched to a halt just off Impy's curb.

"Girls, I cleared the driveway so you could pull right in," she said, coming to give us a hug.

"Thank you so much, Impy," I said, giving her a squeeze, "but we don't know how to reverse."

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Road Trip: Blogged (Yesterday)


Yesterday was the first day of the road trip that Tiffany and I didn't have her dad with us, which probably explains why we almost ran out of gas in the middle of Missouri.

With Gary, we filled up every time our gas gauge hit the quarter-tank mark, but Tiffany and I thought we'd go right to E before we stopped that morning. We waved off a visible-from-the-highway station confidently, only to be leaning forward in our seats a few miles later as we passed... absolutely nothing.

"It's fine," I said. "We have 30 miles once the light comes on."

Tiffany was quiet.

"Right?" I asked, the pitch of my voice creeping up. "Or is that some myth I've acquired in my many years of hardly-ever-driving?"

We shouted when we saw a Sunoco off in the distance only to discover that the last gas pumped there may have been shortly after Lewis and Clark passed by.

After several exits that said "No Gas," there was, finally, a very ambiguous blue "Gas" sign that listed no gas stations.

"What does that mean?" I shrieked. "There must be no gas here!"

"Or maybe they just haven't gotten around to putting up the sign," Tiffany countered.

"I don't know..." I hesitated. "I mean... if there was a station, don't you think they'd..."

I'm always indecisive at precisely the moment a decision is crucial.

"I'm going," Tiffany said swerving toward the exit ramp.

Anyway, there was a gas station. Tiffany and I sighed in relief and were halfway to the bathroom before we realized Gary wasn't around to man the pump.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Road Trip: Blogged (Day...???)


Is there anything more sacred than the food that sustains an auto-bound American? I don't think so. 

Tiffany and I planned a combo of junk and healthy food for our trip, but we ran out of time to prepare or purchase the healthy stuff. In fact, we wouldn't have had time to buy the junk food either (see this previousRoad Trip post about our botched return flight from vacation), but for a moment of hyperopic genius (see same previous post).

The airline that left us stranded last week in Mexico with a leaky engine put us up at no charge in an all-inclusive hotel, so Tiffany and I ate breakfast there Friday morning before the rescheduled flight. But when we got to the airport, the airline also gave us each $10 vouchers to use at one of the restaurants. We weren't hungry and didn't need a snack for the flight (we'd managed to squirrel away two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the hotel despite signs throughout the buffet to "Please Do Not Take Food Off the Premises."). We looked at each other dejectedly considering the loss of someone else's money. And then...

"Babe," I said, nudging her in the ribs. "Do you think we have to use these at a restaurant?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, can we use them at the little stores that sell books and snacks!"

"You want snacks for the flight? We have our PBs!"

I rolled my eyes.

"No, I want snacks for our road trip! They've got tons of junk food in there!"

Tiffany burst out laughing.

"Ohhhhhh... you want to go shopping in the airport!"

She paused. I could see the wheels in her brain turning as she considered how much time we had between our arrival in SF and our friends' wedding.

"Okay, let's go!"

Tiffany's dad, a master of efficiency (see this previousRoad Trip blog post), was impressed.
  
Gary likes to shop locally too. At our first stop in Nevada, he came back from the gas station announcing he'd decided to try a "local snack." I was worried. I'd heard that on a road trip with Tiffany's sister Melody, Gary purchased "Buffalo Chips." Made to look like bison poop, they actually were a very interesting combination of potato chips and chocolate (Gary mailed us some for Christmas).

In Nevada, Gary held up a bag of Sabritones, a chile and lime "puffed wheat" snack. They were "hecho in Mexico." Also, they were disgusting.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Road Trip: Blogged (Day 3)


It's a little strange having someone in our backseat on this trip across the country--or sitting in it ourselves, for that matter. For most of our six years in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Tiffany and I either walked or scoot-scooted where we needed to go. When we did drive, it was usually just the two of us with an empty backseat. Actually, until a few months ago, we accepted as fact--based on our limited experience in the rear of our vehicle--that we had the World's Most Uncomfortable Backseat.

It turns out we just didn't know the seats had straps that allowed their backs to be adjusted from their 90 degree angle.

Miserably ignorant, we nodded and grimaced in solidarity with friends and family members we lovingly placed in the locked and upright position for trips all across California.

"We know," we said solemnly each time. "We're sorry."

Lower back and neck pain was the price guests paid for our company.

Anyway, luckily for Tiffany's dad Gary (and me and Tiffany), on one of my mom's recent visits I yanked on a strap to discover--seven years after we bought the car--that the seats actually recline fully. Unfortunately, my mom was sitting in the seat when I made my discovery and suffered a mild case of whiplash in the process. Her pain, however, paved the way for our cross-country comfort.

Thanks, Mom.