Pizza Pie

Tiffany and I made a homemade pizza last night for dinner. We almost ordered out instead. We were starving, and homemade pizzas take a lot longer than delivered ones, what with all the kneading and rising and punching down of the dough. But we'd eaten out every meal of the weekend, so we opened a bag of tortilla chips to hold us over and started prepping.

Pizza is one of our specialties, but this pie had an inauspicious start.

"Doesn't the yeast need to sit in the water for while?" Tiffany asked as I was measuring out tablespoons of salt, sugar and olive oil.

"Yeah," I said. "Oh. Sh*t."

I looked at the bowl, already filled to the brim with flour. My packet of yeast sat unopened on the counter.

"Here," Tiffany said. "I can fix it."

She sprinkled the yeast into the tiny edge of water that remained around the mound of dry ingredients and swirled it around as best she could.

It really did seem to work. The dough rolled out fine and looked gorgeous on the stone. In fact, it might have been one of our best batches ever until we forgot it was baking at 500 degrees instead of our normal 350 while looking over Tiffany's biochemistry homework.

"It's ruined!" Tiffany shrieked when she opened the oven.

I waved away the smoke as I came into the kitchen.

"How ruined?" I asked, "Look! The cheese is still yellow underneath this black layer!"

Indeed, although the crust of our pizza was actually charcoal, the middle met our fluctuating definition of still-edible.

While I dialed for delivery, Tiffany cut up the salvageable parts to freeze for later possible use.

"Okay," she said, "so this is like we're-starving-lost-on-a-desert-island-with-no-food-emergency-dinner."

"Right," I nodded, "Thursday."

BUZZ

At first I thought Tiffany was imagining the mosquito in our bedroom.

"He's back," she whispered one night, just as I was falling asleep.

"Hmm?"

I slurred my response, not willing to fully commit to whatever conversation she was initiating.

"He's back. The mosquito. Don't you hear him?"

I sighed. The Mysterious Mosquito again. She'd mentioned him a few nights before too.

"No, babe, I don't hear anything. I think maybe you're imagining him."

"No! He keeps buzzing right by my ear. Last night he bit me."

I rolled over, taking most of the covers with me as I have a tendency to do. Tiffany didn't even notice.

"I don't think San Francisco even has mosquitos," I said. "Didn't we read that somewhere... HOLYSH*TWHATWASTHAT?"

I sat up as fast as I could, swatting at the side of my head.

"Did you hear him?"

"Hear him? He's like a buzz saw. How big is he?"

I turned on my light just in time to see the mosquito pass in front of Tiffany's ear.

"Watch out!" I yelled.

Tiffany and I disagree about how to kill bugs. I prefer that someone else kill them, but, when that is not possible, I like to smush them with a thick wad of paper towels so I know exactly how dead they are and-most important-where they are. Tiffany is less precise. She throws shoes, swats with magazines and flicks dish towels.

While we debated how to proceed, The Mysterious Mosquito eluded us. Kneeling on our bed with our hands outstretched, we caught sight of our silhouettes on the wall and burst out laughing.

But as soon as I turned out the light, the mosquito got the last laugh:

"BUZZ."

First Gear! It's Alright...Reverse, Not So Much

Every couple has a dominant-driver-half, right? When Tiffany and I go somewhere, I almost always head straight to the passenger seat. That's not because I don't like to drive. It's because I hate to park. Specifically, I hate to park in the city.

If we're headed out of San Francisco, I eagerly offer my services.

"Want me to drive?" I ask, magnanimously.

"No, I'm fine," Tiffany usually says.

"But you always drive. Let me take that burden from you once in a while."

She rolls her eyes.

"Oh, I see. You don't want to drive home, do you?"

"Precisely."

In truth, I'm not a bad parker. I'm only bad when Tiffany is in the car. The pressure of having such a superb parker (she learned to drive in Boston, for god's sake... I learned in Shawnee, Kansas) in the passenger seat is unnerving. Even when that superb parker is the love of my life.

The other day I drove us back into the city from our Easter Sunday hike. As we made our normal loop-de-loos through our neighborhood, we spotted a right angle spot on a frighteningly steep hill.

I saw the spot just after passing it, so I checked behind me and threw the car into reverse. Then Tiffany saw an even better spot just ahead on a slighly less steep part of the hill. I began to go forward, haltingly, without giving any gas at all.

"What's happening?" Tiffany asked. "Are you in neutral?"

"Yes," I said, without having any idea what gear I was in. In the quick transition from one spot to the other, I thought I had put the car back in drive. We continued to stutter our way forward.

"Oh my God, you're still in reverse!" Tiffany yelled. "Stop the car!"

I didn't have to. It stalled out on its own.

"I broke the car!" I screamed. "I broke the car!"

But I hadn't, actually. As soon as I put it in park, it started right up. And after a lap around the block to make sure I really hadn't broken the car, I turned expertly into my original spot.

The Easter Bunny Lives!

Tiffany and I didn't do anything for Easter this year.

It's really a family holiday, after all, and we were by ourselves. Last year, Tiffany's mom was in town visiting. We woke up to a candy and coin trail and had to hunt for our baskets, which contained copious amounts of junk food (Patty knows the way to my heart... chocolate bunnies).

Anyway, this year, our only family connections were made through a round of phone calls. Patty in particular was horrified that we hadn't Easter-ed it up.

"What did you get in your basket?" she asked Tiffany.

"I didn't get a basket," Tiffany pouted. "My easter bunny sucks."

I glared at her.

"What did Rebecca get?" Patty asked.

"She didn't get a basket either. Her bunny is just as bad as mine."

"Wait," I whispered, scurrying into the kitchen. I stood on my tiptoes to reach into our top cabinet, underneath the extra turkey pans we'd bought when we made our practice and real Thanksgiving turkeys. I dashed back to the living room, waving the Easter egg dye kit I'd bought the year before for Patty.

"Oh, the Easter bunny did come," Tiffany laughed. "He brought year-old egg dye!"

To celebrate Easter, Tiffany and I went for a trail run. As we came huffing back down the hill to our car, Tiffany stopped in her tracks and pointed.

A gigantic hare was sitting on its haunches a few yards ahead of us. He twitched his ears in our direction.

"I guess it's Easter after all," Tiffany whispered.

And it really did feel that way.

Race Day

When Tiffany and her dad signed up to run a marathon in Oakland, I first offered to have a couple beers ready for them at the finish line. But I knew I would feel sluggish standing there in my jeans while they panted and sweated in their running gear, so I quietly extended some of my runs in the weeks prior to the race, telling Tiffany, "I'm thinking about doing half."

On the day before the event, I went with Tiffany and Gary to pick up their race packets and veered off into the same-day registration line by myself.

I handed the woman my credit card.

"It's 110," she said.

"What?" I cried.

"110 dollars."

"But the full marathon is $120!"

She nodded.

"Shouldn't my race be half as much?"

Ignoring me, she pointed down the line where I could pick up my $110 t-shirt.

On the morning of the race, Tiffany and Gary told me what time I should expect to meet them at the point where our courses intersected four miles into my race.

I checked their math in my head.

"Okay," I agreed.

Then I realized I didn't have a watch.

"I'll just run fast so I don't miss you!" I yelled as they ran off shaking their heads.

And I did. I ran those four miles as fast as I could, terrified Tiffany and Gary would set some father-daughter world record and leave me behind. I'm pretty competitive, as we all know.

The only things I do halfway are marathons.