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...

Happy Birthday to my Blog!

While My Girlfriend Studies Chemistry is 1-year-old today. That's right, I've written 127 posts about my relationship with my girlfriend Tiffany and my family and, guess what, I've still got a relationship and a family to write about!

To celebrate, I thought I'd offer up a little quiz along with a regular post (immediately preceding this quiz). You can find the answers to each of the following questions among older posts (hint: try the search function in the top right of my blog) and submit your answers via comment, if you choose to participate. First person to answer all 20 questions correctly gets to pick my next blog post topic.

Good luck! And more importantly, please keep reading! Post me to your Facebook page and share me with your friends!

1) Where did Tiffany and I meet?

2) What derogatory term did Tiffany use to describe my state of residence when we first met?

3) What did I make for Tiffany on Valentine's Day this year?

4) What is my family's favorite game to play on Thanksgiving?

5) What song did my brother and I used to sing at the top of our lungs when we lived in the same state, same city and same house?

6) On what forms of transportation is my mom "like a six-year-old girl--gleeful and mischievous"?

7) What phallic vegetable did I use to make a most excellent lasagna last summer?

8) Am I a regular snowboarder or goofy?

9) What is my worst travel experience in life so far?

10) What was I drinking when I told Tiffany I was gay?

11) What part of my body did I get stuck underneath our scooter?

12) Did Tiffany and I send out a Christmas card picture last year?

13) What was my brother wearing when we tried to wrangle a bull?

14) Is there any part of putting together Ikea furniture that I am good at? If so, what?

15) Which of us fit into a pair of fabulous red shoes?

16) If Tiffany and I split the difference between my family's location and hers, where would we be living?

17) Why has Tiffany been studying chemistry?

18) What is the name of our most recent plant?

19) What did I used to get my brother for Christmas growing up?

20) What did I once use to sled down a dirt hill?

Quality vs. Quantity

Tiffany and I met Lily, the daughter of our good friends Meg and John, on Sunday, a couple of weeks before her 1st birthday and exactly six days after she took her first steps (Yes, the entire country celebrated and the sky exploded in color on the day Lily first put one foot in front of the other.).

We were late meeting her. Late on Sunday specifically, by a few hours, and late in general, by a few months. On both counts, this is because Tiffany and I have a tendency to over-commit (this should come as no surprise for a couple who on some weekend mornings can do laundry, make lunch for the week and get in a run all before breakfast).

On this trip back to New Hampshire and Boston, we had over-committed ourselves in stupendous fashion. We had allotted four hours to Meg, John and Lily. By the time we got to them, at the soccer game in Boston where Meg's sister was playing, we had about 37 minutes. We had come straight from a New Hampshire brunch with Tiffany's high school friends (only three hours for them, due to the hour travel time required to get Tiffany and me from one state to the other, which we spent in the car with Tiffany's cousins: transportation + quality time = uber efficient). We lost an hour in an unexpected dinner with Tiffany's sister and boyfriend who had flown in to surprise the family, and another hour en route to pick up our friend Jessie (one previous hour, over breakfast after Tiffany and I flew in on the red-eye: eating + quality time = uber efficient) because I was holding the iPhone.

When I called John to let him know we were finally on the way, he just laughed on the other end of the line.

"I'm so sorry!" I wailed.

There were 20 minutes left in the game when we arrived at the stadium. But by the time we got to the right entrance gate after heading off in the wrong direction, we lost another four minutes.

"Hurry!" I shrieked over my shoulder to Tiffany and Jessie as I sprinted off in my flip-flops.

With injury time and the minutes we spent lingering in the parking lot, we earned back some of that clock, but I doubt we made much impression on Lily. I coaxed a few smiles out of her by offering up my wallet, cell phone and sunglasses (the closest things I had to toys), but the one time I picked her up she squirmed and made an "I'm-about-to-cry-face" so I put her back down again quickly.

In the parking lot, we walked past our car to Meg and John's, and then they drove us back to ours.

"I'm not sure whether this makes you the best kind of friends or the worst," Meg said, of our brief encounter, as we hugged goodbye.

Then John offered me a handful of peanut M&Ms for our car ride home, and I felt assured of the answer.

Fireworks (and Family)

A few years ago, Tiffany's dad Gary started a new tradition. On the Saturday after the Fourth of July, he invites a few branches of his extended family up to his New Hampshire lake house for a cook out and a major fire works display sponsored by the lake homeowners' associations. Gary and his girlfriend Sherry (with the help of the rest of the family) do it up nice: grass fed beef and turkey portobello mushroom burgers, organic hot dogs, homemade desserts.

Until this year, Tiffany and I had only been able to make it once. In an unfortunate coincidence, Gary's tradition falls exactly two weekends before one of my family's biggest traditions in Mississippi. It's hard to fit in two cross-country traditions in a single summer month, and often Tiffany and I have to skip one or the other or both.

As the weekend of his party nears, Gary starts to fret about the weather. If it's cloudy, you can't really see the fireworks; if it rains, the whole display is pushed back a week meaning no one he loves is around to see it. Gary checks the radar for northern New Hampshire a few times a day and curses any clouds that creep into his patch of sky. This year, especially, he fretted:

"Well, girls, I have some bad news, there's a new state law banning fireworks of a certain size, so the show may be less grand than usual," he started.

That wasn't all. There was a chance of thunderstorms for Saturday and, worse, the chair of the lake's fireworks committee had announced he was stepping down after this year's display. The very future of the fireworks was iffy with a chance of non-existence.

Besides the fireworks, though, there's plenty to do. Like being thrown--flip-flops and all--into the lake. Sharing sandwiches out of a cooler. Getting up on water skis and promptly going back down again. Watching your girlfriend's cousin teach his whole family how to do the Dougie in the living room. Posing for a family picture so long your quads give out. Sneaking pieces of homemade spanakopita before it's officially put up for grabs.

And, yes, eventually, after all of that and more, there are the fireworks. We all troop outside to watch them, perched on Gary's back steps or sprawled on the damp grass. I held Tiffany's hand, and looked up so long my neck started to cramp. I like the ones that look like willow trees in the sky. The loud ones make me jump.

"Well, girls, hope you enjoyed the show," Gary said, as we packed our bags to go the next day. "And I hope there's something to see next year."

We fretted with him--for solidarity's sake--but we aren't very worried.

It's not like we fly across the country to see a bunch of colorful combustibles.

Ahhh, Su(nburn)mmer

It's that time of year when Tiffany and I really become an interracial couple. You know, summer. Or, as it happens in San Francisco, that one rare gorgeous weekend when it's warm enough to wear a tank top without shivering. Well, of course we wore tank tops. And, of course, my Greek/Peruvian-blooded girlfriend went from tan to tanner while I went from white to red. No, I'm serious. If I'd been wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of blue shorts today, people might have stopped to salute me.

This is the reaction Tiffany and I get when it's tank top season, however long that may be wherever we are:

"Oh my god, Tiffany, what a gorgeous tan! Oh! Hi, Rebecca... ouch! Someone got too much sun!"

When Tiffany and I hold hands at our whitest and brownest, respectively, our interlocked fingers look like some sort of public service advertisement for embracing diversity. Sometimes I think my whiteness actually helps her. I reflect the sun in her direction.

We went paddle-boarding on Sunday with a couple of friends who are as vanilla as me, and they had so much sun screen on we stuck to them when we hugged. They tag-teamed their whiteness--she covered his shaved head with SPF 85 (!!) and he took care of her bare shoulders. I think it would have been easier to protect my skin if I'd fallen in love with a girl with a compatible hue. Alas, my love is as brown as a berry. And I'm... ouch.