Don't I know your name? - The Bob Story

Jungle gym, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

The Beautiful Miss Brown visited the library yesterday looking for a book on taxidermy. It happens. I'm not asking any questions.

Turns out, she and her boyfriend had seen a red fox dead in the road, and they scooped it up, put it in the trunk, and decided to skin it. I nodded. I used to do that.

Did I used to do that? Yes, yes I did.

There was a day, a rare, beautiful spring day in Cleveland, when I sat behind Clark Building on the CWRU campus with a hot plate and a big pot. Watching that pot. Watching the people come in and out of the student center next door. An acquaintance wandered over, curious.

"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Boiling an owl."
"No, you're not."
"Sure I am." I poked the sodden owl carcass with a stick.

I believe it was at that moment that that boy became irresistably drawn to me - decided I was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his, er, next couple of years with. I myself was thinking more about how much bleach to add to the water. You want enough that the cartilage dissolves, but not so much as to take all the coating off the beak.

There are a few things you can do if you intend for someone to fall in love with you. The most foolproof, of course, is to BE EIGHTEEN AND BE BOILING AN OWL IN PUBLIC. Second most foolproof, of course, is to be eighteen period. The worst thing you can do is to quote Elton John lyrics. Look how it worked for Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge. He ended up having to drag Nicole Kidman around the rest of the movie.

You could sing real awful but write great songs, like Nick Cave or Lou Reed. You can show up in majorette boots. Majorette boots are the most sexually potent objects in the universe. I have boots of almost every variety, from cowboy to pirate and back again, but I have never had the nerve to get myself a pair of majorette boots.

You can insult the object of your affection in such a way that it's really a compliment. This gives him or her the opportunity to act all affronted, but be secretly pleased. This is tricky, and should only be attempted if you are eighteen, or a genius.

The rest is all variations in tone and eye contact, and that I can't help you with. Really, the majorette boots are the way to go.

None of this explains my husband Bob. I was not wearing majorette boots when we first met - or even my glasses, so I was bat-blind. He was probably wearing Chucks. He did not insult me. I did not insult him, I don't think I spoke a word. I was twenty and he was twenty-one, so we were past our irresistable years, though admittedly not by much. We were sober, it was daytime, and he was wearing a tie over a white t-shirt. But it was love at first sight for both of us.

Yes, those of you who don't believe in love at first sight (Jaime) or who have heard this story before (Jaime) can tune out now. I'll tell you the rest of the owl story later. And I don't begrudge. If you had had to hear this ridiculous story as many times as Jaime has, you would roll your eyes too. Hell, even I resist telling it too much, and I know it to be true. This story inspires works of art (Sarah). It causes people to ask if the world spontaneously bursts into song around us (Brian) (smartass).

But here, by popular demand (Sandy, Melissa), is The Bob Story: a teen novel in the making if I ever read one, spanning continents and decades and leaving a trail of betrayals and broken hearts, but with, after all, a happy ending.

How we met

I think it was 1986. It was certainly summer. We were in college - he was at Columbia and I was at Case Western Reserve. I was spending the summer working in Provincetown, Mass, washing dishes and managing a kite store; he was in Cleveland canvassing door-to-door for some environmental organization. One weekend I came back to Cleveland to visit my boyfriend.

Let's call this boyfriend Blot on My Conscience Number One. No, that's far too long. Besides, we're cool now. He and his wife came to our wedding. Our kids play together as if they've known each other all their lives. Let's call him Pants.

Anyway, that weekend I got the flu. Miserable weekend. Hot and bored and feverish in the tract house Pants shared with his brother (whom we'll call Peel), I woke up one afternoon to voices in the living room.

I hate not being in on things. So I struggled out to the living room to sit on the floor and be with company. It was some friend of Peel. Bob. Peel was thinking about transferring to Columbia, and Bob was there to give him advice and drink cheap beer and make a lot of wisecracks.

From what I could tell with my glasses off, he was cute. He was very funny. I don't think I said a thing - I really was ill. And I have no idea what he remembers of that afternoon. I didn't even really catch his name.

But when Pants's brother Peel needed help moving his crap to NYC that fall, I hopped into the van so quick I'm sure I sprained something.

In New York, after unloading, we got something to eat and then ended up at a bar. I nodded along with the conversation, thinking, "Boy, wouldn't it be great if that guy from this summer showed up!"

The guy from the summer showed up, made his way to our table with that bouncy walk some athletic boys can't help having.

I thought, "There's an empty seat next to me - wouldn't it be great if he sat next to me!"

He sat next to me.

I still don't think I had much to say. This guy, now that I had my glasses on, was even better looking than I had thought, and I had thought he was pretty cute. I was breathless, especially when his left thigh got closer and closer to my right, until our legs were pressed together with actual force. After everyone was drunk, we found a minute to speak privately. I don't know what we said. I may have proposed. Anyway, it wasn't that private - I kind of got busted for it. God knows Peel hated me from that moment forward. Guy works for the SEC now and I swear if I ever get investigated, I'll know it'll be because of that night at the Lion's Head.

The Next Time We Met

Had to be the next summer. Bob came home to Cleveland for a visit, and made the rounds. Pants and I were in the same social scene, so I saw him at a party or two. Stalked him. And then one night, Bob and I were among the last ones awake at Bob's friend Bob's house. Bob's friend Bob has a daughter named Paula - it's very confusing. Pants had fallen asleep in a chair. I think he was doing his med school internships that summer and he was always falling asleep over a plate of food or while trying to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation or once, memorably, while he was on his back under his VW bus fixing something. I thought he had died.

Bob and I were on Bob's friend Bob's porch talking about poetry or something smart that I know nothing about, and I couldn't stand it one more second. Without looking at him, I reached out my hand. He would either ignore it, and I had imagined any attraction he might have felt for me, or he would take it, and I would... I don't know. Attack him. Cry. Sit there until my hand fell off.

He took my hand. We stopped talking about poetry or politics or whatever. Explanations, assurances, gazing. He kissed me. Side B of Blood on the Tracks played over and over on Bob's friend Bob's stereo. At length, we took a walk. And on the walk, none of your business. Let's just say I never washed that U2 t-shirt again.

We got back to Bob's friend Bob's house and took up sleeping positions - he on the couch, me on a chair. Pants woke up and realized he needed to stop home at our house before going to the hospital the next day. I told him I'd catch a ride with someone else, and as he left, I crept onto the couch with Bob.

My memory's a little hazy at this point. It might have been the next day, the same week, the same summer, or it could have been the next summer, when I found myself in Bob's mom's car getting a ride home. Bob's mom, whom I was later to know as The Estimable Frannie. Sorry for boning your littlest lamb in the back seat of the Buick, Frances. Though after some of the drama Bob's brothers and sisters brought... no, yeah, let me just apologize. I miss you, Frannie.

A cop knocked on the steamed-up window that night, and I, all free white and twenty-one (probably) and full of bullshit entitled indignation, was like, "What?! Are we doing something illegal?" as Bob shoved my jeans at me and hissed, "Just say 'Yes, officer'!" The cop sighed. "First of all, the park's closed," he said, and I said, "Well. All right then."

That morning, Bob came up to the apartment I shared with Pants to say goodbye. He was going back to New York. Knowing now what was waiting for him at his mother's house - the dozens of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, the lifelong better-than-brothers best friends, I am impressed and flattered that he spent so much time with me during his visit home. Although... I guess none of them were boning him in the back of Frannie's Buick, so I suppose that gave me an edge.

I found his wallet wedged in our couch a couple hours after he left. I had no phone number for him, and everything in his wallet had his New York info on it. I panicked a little, finally got ahold of him (I think by calling Pants and telling a preposterous lie about why I would need Bob's mom's phone number - Pants, brother, I do not deserve your forgiveness), and eventually settled on sending his wallet to him in New York.

So I sent it. Along with an eight-page letter handwritten on legal paper in my miniscule handwriting.

Did I do that? I may have edited it down to six pages before it hit the mails. On the list of how to not make a person fall in love with you, writing them a six-page handwritten letter after you've met three times is just below quoting Elton John lyrics.

But somehow...

We Meet Again

Later, I graduated. Pants and I broke up, over completely unrelated matters. I got a job with a software company. It failed. I moved home to Baltimore. Slept on the bunk bed that had been bought for me when I was six. Worked writing software manuals for an insurance company.

Kind of a low point.

One day, bringing in the mail at my parents' house, I noticed a newsletter from a Catholic charity in Seattle. Not the usual kind of thing you find in my parents' mail. Opening it, I found one line scrawled across the top: "How are you? How is Baltimore? Love, Bob."

Imagine walking along your street and a tiny meteorite falls to the sidewalk in front of you. Glowing and smoking and FROM SPACE.

I wrote back to the address on the newsletter, using my company's stationery. "Dear Bob - Seattle? and Catholic? and Yes."

In addition to writing manuals, I also handled tech support. I answered phones all day, walking people through the onscreen instructions, taking shit from redneck lady office managers who were fed up with this newfangled computer hoodoo. It was 1988. I sprained my hand doing that job, when I punched the handset of the phone I was speaking into. How stupid is that? Punching a phone.

So the day the phone rang at work and Bob said "Hello Paula. This is Bob." For the first time, exactly the same way he says it a dozen times a week to me. Imagine walking along your street and the CHRIST CHILD falls gently to the sidewalk in front of you. And you have your camera on you, and he asks if you would like him to grant you three wishes.

I got goosebumps so hard they hurt.

Bob was coming to the area for his cousin's wedding, and we made plans to extend his trip so that we could see the sights and be uncomfortable around each other and weld ourselves one to another for a few days. We went to Assateague, if I remember. Saw the ponies fucking in the parking lot. Not the aphrodisiac you might think, but we did not let that bother us.

And in spring he was visiting his brother in Washington D.C. I left work and drove down 95 like I was a paper airplane with jet engines. There was a party, I was wearing a blue dress, must have been fifty people on Joe's deck, and all I could see was him. That night I admitted I loved him and he laughed. "You may never meet anyone who... who worships you like I do."

Blot on My Conscience Number Two, Poe, was somewhat suspicious when I started making plans to 'visit my brother' in Seattle. My brother did, in fact, live in Seattle, and I did, in fact, plan on staying with him, since Bob was living with his girlfriend, The Completely Awesome Girlfriend, at the time. She came to our wedding. Her children play with our children like they have known each other all their lives. It's a theme.

Bob was working at a homeless shelter. I had his home address but I hadn't written or called (no, he and Completely Awesome had already broken up. It was a different girlfriend. Well anyway), so I staked out his place of work. Nothing like hanging out in the alley outside a homeless shelter dressed like a late-80's club kid. A very nice lady with very few teeth offered me an apple.

And here he comes, straight from his lunchtime basketball game, sweaty and still with that bounce in his step, carrying his ball. Walked right past me, his head swiveling on its stem. I have never surprised anyone that thoroughly - and let me tell you, children, I have pink hair. I can be a surprising person.

There were a few visits to Seattle. I stayed at his place when he was between girlfriends, at my brother's when he wasn't. There are one or two blots on my husband's conscience too. On one trip, I went out to dinner with my brother's girlfriend and we discovered roasted garlic for the first time. Ate an entire head of garlic, like four inches in diameter. The next day, Bob was due to meet me at my brother's place on his lunch break, but my body was busy converting all that garlic to THE most toxic gas. I raced around the apartment opening windows and finding fans, waving my arms around, desperately trying to chivvy those clouds of fart into the at-large atmosphere of Queen Anne's Hill.

Eventually, he wrote that he had been accepted to a program in Africa. In Zimbabwe. He'd be gone a year at least, and had no plan further than that. He was flying out of JFK, and suggested we meet in New York. And for once in my life, I refused him.

I used to write him letters that I couldn't send. I wrote lots of letters I did send, and he wrote me, less frequently, letters full of description that I scrutinized and re-read and parsed for hidden meaning, but in some ways, in those days, he was so unreal to me that I could use the idea of him like a movie. He was so handsome, and so romantic, and so very very intermittent. You can see how that is just not to be trusted. A humid afternoon here, a Pacific cliff there, plus all that sneaking around. How could you not be in love with that? And how could you imagine that to be anything remotely resembling real? I know a teen novel when I'm in one.

When he was in Africa, I went to Africa too. Now - Africa is big. But I knew he'd be traveling in the north while I was there, and I suggested we meet in Tunis. And for once in his life, he refused me.

Bob says that if he were writing this story as a teen novel, he'd change that. He'd have met me in Tunis. But in the novel, he'd find me just at the moment I was being menaced by a gang of bus drivers who were holding my backpack hostage, and then we'd run away, and then I'd turn to him and say, "Well. You got me back for that alley in Seattle," and then whatever whatever.

But instead we did our separate trips, and learned our separate things, and came back attached to yet another couple of Blots. He disembarked in Boston, where his girlfriend had been accepted to law school. I returned to Baltimore, took a secretarial job and ran a failing business. He got a job signing people in and out of another homeless shelter.

Ergo, grad school.

We grow up

I moved to New York to go to NYU. He stayed in Boston and went to MIT. I went on MIT's website one day and looked up his email address. It was 1995. I wanted to invite him to my wedding, but the groom (who is hopefully a Blot On His Own Damn Conscience) said, "No way."

One day, I got an email. "My girlfriend broke up with me. I am pretty depressed." Oddly enough, this email came exactly one day after my husband had left, apparently for good.

"I am 'pretty depressed' myself. I think my husband left me. What are you doing this weekend?"

I was single for exactly two days. When he showed up at the Port Authority Friday afternoon, I was so nervous. We hadn't seen each other in five years. He had grey in his hair. He was warm, and beautiful.

In New York that weekend, were we a little wounded? Maybe. Maybe that's why we were so un-selfconscious with each other. God, I always thought Bob was this brooding, serious guy. All that time doing social justice stuff - how could he not be angry all the time? And how could he not disdain me, with my hot pink suede ankle boots and head full of song lyrics? That weekend though, I just took him everywhere I liked, and everything I liked, he liked it too. We talked more. He turned out to be kind of a goof, which was a big relief. 

When I dropped him at the bus station Sunday night I asked if we were going to see each other again. "I mean, soon, not like usual. I know we always see each other again." He replied with something to the effect that I'd have to get a restraining order if I wanted it not to be so.

I got a divorce, he got a degree. He moved in, with his chair and his bottle capper and his forty-seven hats. I proposed one afternoon in a bar.

I said, "It's getting warmer. Time to wash the curtains in the living room."
He said, "Ah. Of course. Warmer weather: wash curtains."
I said, "Isn't it relaxing to know that one day you'll be married to a person who knows when it's time to wash the curtains?"
He smiled at me and said that yes, it was a weight off his mind.


You know, now that I'm thinking about it, it wasn't Pants who saw me boiling that owl. It was Pants's best friend, Mike, so he heard about it secondhand, which is probably even better. The reality of reducing an animal to bones is seldom as romantic as the concept. Probably why Mike never fell in love with me, plus he was already in love with someone else. What did she do? She was beautiful, and brilliant, and a free spirit. That works too.

That explains a lot.

The way I walk is just the way I walk

Sam, Molly (making her mosquito face), and Casey, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Other day, a ton of kids (a squirming, complaining, ticklish ton - they get that way when you pack them in to weigh them) were playing at our house. In, out, making forts, playing tag, wearing hats, playing LEGO. The way I like it.

I was working in the kitchen (read: screwing around on Facebook while reveling in the fact that there were six kids at my house, none of whom required direct or constant supervision - GETTING BIGGER ROCKS) when I heard Zhou, who was working with LEGO in the living room, make an exasperated sound.

I heard him get up, stomp to the sliding door in the dining room and slide the screen closed.

"THIS is why there are so many mosquitos in this house!" he groused to nobody in particular.

I related this anecdote to Bob last night as we stood in the kitchen swatting at pantry moths. I said, "He's only six, but you add a couple 'goddamns' in there and that could have been his grandfather speaking."

Bob said, "That's funny, I was thinking the exact same thing, but it wasn't your dad that came to mind first."

+++++

Our house came with a lovely wooden screen door. The old-fashioned kind, with old brass hardware. Here's a picture.



And maybe you don't think about your screen door every day, but in Baltimore, if you don't have air conditioning, your screen door is an important element in your suite of ventilation strategies. In addition, we have a very friendly street, and if the front door's open, I can be in the kitchen and have a straight sight line out to whomever's walking by. People wander in to say hi, and I can keep one eye on the kids playing out front.

Well, that door eventually fell apart. As things do. You can see where it's starting to come apart in that picture, actually. We hired our pal Rich to replace it for us, and he had a hell of a time finding a wooden one that matched the style of the house and fit the opening. Big surprise, we have a nonstandard door hole. Took him a whole day to shave the thing down to fit. The kids played with the curls of wood from his plane. And then it took me a whole day to stain it. I do not like stain. Here's the new door:



Next, the old hardware that Rich had transferred to the new door stopped working. So, next time our friend Jack was over fixing other stuff (god, it is SO GOOD that we know people that hire out their technical skills - my only motor skill is folding laundry, and Bob can usually accurately dig a hole) I asked him to look at the screen door latch.

The latch hardware was totally worn out in one direction. It's brass, it's 85 years old, a groove was worn in the... the thing. But he managed to jam the spring so that the knob would work if you turned it counterclockwise. The opposite of the intuitive way, but I really like that hardware and I didn't want to replace it with new.

Nowadays, we frequently have visitors who need a brief stymied moment before they get the screen door open. Sorry, friends. But the kids and I have gotten used to it. Neural pathways are teh awesome.

The day that Jack and I made the hot sauce (Jack has tried it and says it's great, I haven't opened a bottle yet), we noticed a rent in the screen door.

"Goddamn it!" I exclaimed.

Jack shook his head. "Gotta beat those kids good when they get home, huh?"

"I don't think so," I said. "They've seen all the trouble we've gone to over that door. They watched you fix the latch, remember? One of their beastly little friends, I guess."

When Mao and Zhou came home from school, Zhou was the first one up on the porch. "Hey!" he called out. "What happened to the door?"

"Well, you're off the hook," I thought to myself.

Mao was next up. "What? Oh, man! Who did that to the door?"

Either they were both innocent, or they are much better actors than I thought, and I am in BIG TROUBLE GOING FORWARD.

That evening, I showed it to Bob. "I am really upset about this door. After all the trouble we went to getting it fixed, now it looks terrible and it's going to let in all the bugs."

"Yeah, that's too bad," he agreed. "Mao told me about it when I got home. I asked if he thought I could blame it on Zhou and he told me 'No. She already knows he didn't do it.'"

I looked at my husband, graduate of three of the most prestigious universities in this land, and furrowed my brow. I did. I know it when I do it, and I have lines on said brow that no amount of Jurlique Calendula Cream can erase.

"You," I said.

"I hate that door!" he said. "I'm going out in the morning, and I have my gym bag, and my laptop bag, and my coffee and my keys, and then the goddamn door doesn't open! What the hell is wrong with that door?"

"You have to turn it the other way," I said. "How long have you lived here? When Jack fixed it, the hardware was too far gone to work the usual way - what the hell! I explained this when it happened!"

"Huh." He went over to the door and turned the knob experimentally, watching the latch go in and out.

"Next time I'll try turning it the other way," he said. "Before putting my foot through the door."

Sheesh. THIS is why we have so many goddamn mosquitos in this goddamn house!

She's doing the Lagos Jump

In no particular order, some recent photos, partly to explain why I haven't been blogging much lately.

Flying A, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

This is the big happy Baby A flying through the sky at the pool. I think maybe some airline should adopt this picture as their logo.



My men at the pool.



How much does this seven-year-old love reading? This summer he has charged through almost a book a day. He's reading books that I call Second Chapter Books - the ones you read after Magic Tree House is too easy and before you start reading morbid 300 page novels. Secrets of Dripping Fang, An Awfully Beastly Business, How to Train Your Dragon, and Dragonbreathare his favorites this summer.



I have nothing to say about this picture except my god, how beautiful is this child? It's kind of frightening.



Here's Rabbit reading to his friends Zee, Legolas, Mao and Zhou. In case you're interested, that's The Dunderheads by Paul Fleischman, illustrated by my secret husband David Roberts.



Quality parenting. Kid has a boo-boo, apply a cold National Boh to injured area and rub his back. Well done, me.



This is my husband casting a suspicious eye on, I believe, our older son, who may or may not be antagonizing children who wish to pass in front of the swingset. Lest you think my husband is being unduly vigilant (as parents can get sometimes, usually due to years of bitter experience), you can see that, behind him, Joel's Spider-sense has also been activated.



I'm going to come up with my own version of the game Clue. And in it, one possible solution will be: BODY LOTION JOHN, in the ALLEY, with the MARGARITA PITCHER.



Last but not least, I finally got my children inked onto my body. This was a drawing that Zhou did of himself and his brother when he was four. I saved it because I loved the stick figures with their GIANT hands. I was explaining it to a friend the other day, saying, "Don't you love it? With GIANT hands, you could do ANYTHING!" when Zhou piped up from the corner of the room, where he had been quietly using LEGO to build Bucky balls or design new viruses or whatever: "Except sew!"

"Ok, yes, sewing would be difficult with GIANT hands."
Mao looks up from his book, "And dialing a cell phone."
"Granted, darling, you'd have to get a special cell phone."
"Also knitting!"
"Guys! It was a metaphor, ok? Plus, besides, you could totally knit with giant hands."

Hope your summer is just as grand as ours has been. Now I'm off to the doc in the box so they can look at a suspicious rash on a kid. Whee!

And I don't like the way his boys keep lookin' at me

I love islands of civility, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

First in a possible series of meditations by my husband, who, drunk and bored and in Detroit, typing with two thumbs on a Blackberry, is funnier than I am on my best days.

Begin transmission:

About 1971 and i was maybe 6 when my father took me and my brother jim to a Cleveland Barons game at the now demised Cleveland Arena, a facility which then Cavs coach said, "led the league in cars stolen from the parking lot." I have only the dimmest most impressionistic memories of being there. I don't kno who they played. If the won. Were thy in the NHL then? I believe so, if briefly. Smoke. The players circling the half ice before the game, ominously, like ravens. The Zambomi (of course). I liked the logo, i can't remember it precisely but there was a monocle involved. Now that i have kids i realice i almost certainly fell asleep, a least on the ride home. It is a wonderful memory full or warmth and protection in the presence of menice, the unknown. Kernal of childhood.

Well that was the last time i watched this much hockey. (One period so far. . If redWings win, locals go bananas. That would be cool. I may burn a car myself...) i am at a fairly pthetic rooftop bar (there is a portapotty up here) in the decimated heart of downtown detroit. The Greektown casino wafts soullessly over us, its fabulous blue translucense ethereal, detached, other, safe: which is rather the point. (It is beautiful though.) Down on earth, bright red wheels-withiwings shirts dominate. My chums up here are tattooed, edgy, teeth are at a premium. Chants of Go Wings and Lets Go Red Wings pop up, not at the many tense moments, taut pauses, during course of the game itself but in spasmodic outbursts during the commercials. We are, it feels, biding our time. I am told this would be the 5th championship in last 12 yrs. Besting the Yankees Red Sox Patriots during that period. Probbly have to go back to Jordan's Bulls to match it. Before that, what?, Russell's Celts. Did Gretsky win that many? Well now pburgh scores people are yelling 'fuck you.' Ok. That's fair. I hope they lose. I hope they both lose. How's that for fuck you. Althoug, burning that car would be cool.

The pointless 'People Mover' whirs by. It is a little two car monorail train that connects this crappy part of downtown with similarly other crappy parts of downtown culminatiing (arguably) in the gargantuan cylindrical blue and bankrupt GM headquarters. Like so many (all so far) of the urban rejuvenation efforts here it reeks of trying to hard, forced. At once outsized in unfulfilled ambition and puny in the face of the forces marshalled against it, the empty skyscrapers, and streets. The crowd is warming up now. Cheering for what seems to be (to the uninitiated) spectacular play of the goalie. (Another flashbaack. Not long after the Barons game, i read ' Roger Corzier Daredevil Goalie' about a RedWing, mde me the man i am today.) (Hey pess the attack. Shouts of 'Keep it in.' 'Shoot!' Actual applause how quaint, you would never hear hat t football o basketball.

The game is dizzying. Brought to you by the Marines - what does that tell you?
Use of the word 'outlet' as a verb is fun, as in '... outletted to Grvrnidki...' Up and back. The players are, in interview pregame etc, so unostentatious. Bearded, hockey being more or less a delay in that crane-operator career they were pursuing. the blur of it all. Another People Mover, empty i can see. They've popped on these bright construction lights now up here. Harsh. I realize, as the sun is set, there are no other lights up here. So thse offensive glaring orbs outshing the omnipresent flatscreen. A couple of sets of christmas lights would suffice, boys, at a tenth the cost. Just like the portapotty. Cheap. Poorly executed. Like the gm bldg, overkill, faux gaudy, uncomfortabl w the need for scale and pace.

I'll never make it thru the third perod. The poet wants to say something about preserving the moment of uncertainty and hope, perfect, medias res, letting the bull live, leaving it like those Barons, loved and unknown, forlorn (and monocle'd), just colors and and exotic lingering cigar incense. But in fact i am just too drunk and my thumbs are cramping up. Routine hockey injury i am sure. Go Browns :b

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

His sunglasses were also in his work bag

when he backed over it. But like the laptop, the glasses were ok!

"This is KAOS: We don't 'Ka-frickin'-boom' here"

We are back living in our house full-time but, if possible, we are more disoriented than even we were when we were commuting across town from my parents' house.

For instance: to prepare a meal, first we have to locate dishes and cookware. Then wash them, because they are covered with drywall dust. The washing's in the utility sink in the basement - still no water in the kitchen. Then we cook, bringing food up from the basement fridge and around from the breadbox and food-prep stash in the dining room. Then back to the dining room - the long way, because the door between the kitchen and the dining room is still blocked, and I'm not sure why. Then there's washing up. My back is KILLING me from bending over that utility sink.

And Oh yes, I know, cry me a river, I'm going to get a brand new way-classy kitchen out of all this and I should just shut my yap. We are listening to The Long Winter in the car and holy Jesus the Ingalls family is down to bread and water, huddled in the dark around the cookstove in the kitchen, burning straw because there is no more coal or wood, with at least another month of winter to go. That is not us.

But man, I'm telling you, we are getting funky in the head from all this. Today? No wait this deserves its own paragraph.

Today my husband ran over his laptop with the car.

And didn't realize it.

I mean, mornings around here are even more messed-up than dinner: first of all, there's me, no help at all, virtually catatonic until about 8:00 a.m.; and there's NO socks, I think we left two dozen pairs of boy socks over my mom's; and the milk is in the basement, and the cereal is who knows where, and you have to wash the bowls and locate some spoons if it's cereal, and if it's oatmeal, you have to unplug the rice maker and plug in the microwave. I don't even know what Bob has to go through to make lunches - I haven't made a lunch since Mao's first week of school three years ago.

And now there's snow.

So today, Bob was taking the kids to school because I had to be at work at 9:00 and before that I had to have a high-level conference with the contractors over, I shit you not, drawer pulls and weatherstripping. People were running late because our Zhou decided he had to count to 300 before getting out of bed. (NOT incipient OCD - I am sure that if someone had noticed that he was lying in bed counting, and asked him to quit that and get up and get dressed, he would have been able to do so without going into a screaming fugue state.) Oh and then somebody had to poop.

Eventually though, they were off. Bob took the minivan, because the Civic was mired in the mud and snow and ice at the bottom of the driveway, and besides the kids hate riding in that car, it looks like a cross between a gym locker and a file cabinet. He was going to stop back to help me pry the Civic out of its icy berth before we both headed off to work.

While he was gone, I had my drawer pull summit with Contractor Mike. When we moved on to the weatherstripping around the front door, I noticed Bob's gym bag and work bag sitting in the snow where the driveway meets the sidewalk. I call him on the phone.

"Did you get mugged at the end of our driveway twenty minutes ago?"
"What?"
"You don't seem to have managed to have gotten your gym bag and work bag all the way into the car."
"Oh you're kidding. I had to go back inside for someone's lunchbox and I must have walked right past them."
"I'll go get them - you'll run 'em over if you pull in the driveway, where they are now."
"..."
"..."
"Oh my god -"
"Do you think - ?"
"Did you feel a bump when you pulled out?"
"I did."
"Because - I've seen a laptop after it's been run over by a car, and - well it looks pretty cool actually - the screen gets all saggy, but..."

So I fetched the bags in and it was hard to tell. There was no tire track, nothing was visibly squished, but I didn't try to open the laptop. I thought at most he'd caught part of one of the bags, but not a direct hit.

Turns out, yeahhh, he ran it over. When I talked to him later though, he said, "But you're never going to believe it, it started right up!" He hooked it to a projector and was cranking along on his spreadsheets and proposals. I advised him to a) order a new laptop and b) save anything he could salvage to a flash drive immediately. I also said, "Note to self: buy more life insurance for Bob." He thinks I'm making with TEH HUMER when I say that and to that I snort "Sure thing, Seizure Boy."

We have got to get this project DONE.

Into the mystic

creepy, crawly, creepy, crawly, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Bob and I had the rare chance to go out together last night. Little year-end party, people we knew, people we didn't know that well. Socializing! Colleen's cheese puffs! Beer! Now that's holiday.

Nowadays, living where we do, sooner or later most conversations come around to kids. Or school. Or kids and school. That's ok by me. We love our school. The teachers are motivated and smart and kind, the other parents are G-R-E-A-T, and the lighting is not too soul-crushing. We have lot of nice anecdotes about how well our kids are responding to it.

For example! Last week it snowed a little, and Mao, looking out the car window, started reciting a poem that had been in his Poetry Book last year in first grade.

Snow makes whiteness where it falls.
The bushes look like popcorn-balls.
The places where I always play
Look like somewhere else today.

And! Yesterday Zhou got into a scrap with a kid in his class. It's not like they were rolling around on the floor gouging each other's eyes out, but still, that stuff is taken really seriously: the teacher took them to the principal's office, and since it was the end of the day, the other mom and I were invited as well. The interrogation went like this:

Teacher: First of all, Zhou, are you all right?
Zhou: Sure!
Teacher: Ok, can you tell me why your pal here was hitting you?
Zhou: I was saying something he didn't like.
Teacher: What were you saying?
Zhou: Nuh-uh.
Teacher, turning to the other kid: Ok, what did you say that he disagreed with?
Other kid: I said 'Uh huh'.
Oh, it took forever to tease out what exactly they were arguing about, and by then the teacher was late for a doctor's appointment, so she said she'd put this discussion in her pocket until tomorrow, and then they'd play it out in class. This perked Zhou right up. "You mean a reenactment?" he asked, his eyes bright. "I LOVE reenactments!"

So we're telling all these tales to the other parents last night, and I realize we are BRAGGING. I realize that we brag about our kids ALL THE TIME. We brag discreetly, we brag openly, we do the back-door brag. After we got home, I brought it up to Bob.

"You know, we brag about the kids ALL THE TIME," I said.
"Well, they're pretty great kids," he says.
"Yeah," I said. "I think we should keep doing it. I think if we spend a lot of time talking about how great they are, they're going to think they're great, even if we don't do it right in front of them."
"I think you're right," Bob says. "If our default posture is that they are great, we will be more convincingly disappointed when they act like assholes."

Consensus. The essence of successful parenting.

I've got blisters on my fingers

Maybe getting old won't be so bad, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Just a few things.

1. We're gonna WIN.
I think.

2. I took 500 photos yesterday.


Our friend Stacy asked me to take pictures of the merch for her business, Great Soul Wellness Studio, and the new coffee joint in the neighborhood, Grind On. We had, let's see... about 11 kids and babies changing in and out of t-shirts, grownups doing the same, and, memorably, my Bob modelling proper use of the Great Soul water bottle. We were lucky to have beautiful weather, and craft service from Grind On, and cooperative, funny kids.

3. I'm going to be 43 three weeks from today and that is ok by me.
See above picture. Can't get my glasses straight but that's ok too.

4. I found the perfect meme. Actually, Wendy did.

5. I have 50 books to read and review for the Cybils Awards.
I'm a panelist in the graphic novels category, and it has been a real treat so far. Some standouts: Rapunzel's Revenge; Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School; Holly Black's The Good Neighbors
; and Life Sucks. But it's a lot, so if you don't see me for a while, that's why.

6. I'm freezing my butt off.

Jose Jones told me alone his story

fixing the picnic table frame 3, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Bob took this picture when I was on my back fixing the old pickanick table. It's kind of a funny series of photos. And yes, I got grass clippings down the crack of my ass. I know you were wondering.

They're kicking out in Dohini too

self portrait on Mount Royal Ave, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

My parents took the kids this weekend to their place in Virginia.

This is huge. Bob and I haven't had more than about 18 hours to ourselves in going on 7 years. When somebody asked me what we were going to do with all this time, I said, "I think we're just going to sit and cry for 48 hours. Then we'll watch TV." We've been wound pretty tightly.

Anyway, Bob took the afternoon off yesterday and we had ourselves a little Baltimore photo safari. From Mt Royal Ave to the Camden Industrial Area, from the deck of cards on Wilkens Ave to the Domino warehouse, we had a beautiful day playing with my new camera. And we didn't have to worry about the kids getting tetanus, or falling in the harbor, or any of the other terrible things that can happen when you scramble around industrial areas.

If you ever have a spare sunny afternoon in Baltimore, go to Tide Point, the fancy live/work complex the Struever Bros made out of an old Procter & Gamble site, and watch the giant claw unload raw sugar from a giant ship. It smells like pralines.

All my tubes and wires and careful notes

Couple of weeks ago, we visited Bob's brother Joe and his wife Jeannie at their place in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Joe and Jeannie make their living telling children stories with puppets (really! although it's a running joke that Joe is secretly a C.I.A. agent, as nobody can seriously support themselves as a puppeteer). Their house, consequently, is full of cool stuff. Musical instruments and picture books, juggling equipment, wigs, giant yoga balls, and puppets.

The kids were horsing around on the floor one afternoon, and one of them knocked over a heavy little cube wrapped in electrical tape. Instantly, about twelve strings of Christmas lights came on all over the room. A mercury switch! Magic! They played with that thing for an hour.

It reminded Bob and Joe of a weekend, decades ago, when Joe lent his Washington, D.C. apartment to their sister Anne and her husband. Joe wasn't at home when they arrived - late at night and after a long drive. Fumbling around in the dark, one of them kicked the mercury switch. Instantly, a million colored lights illuminated Joe's apartment, which was - as now - filled with many interesting objects, including a headless mannequin, around whom the lights were wrapped in an intimate way. The stereo came on, heartily pumping out "Jingle Bells" at full volume. Something mounted on a turntable started rotating. So Anne and Mike suddenly found themselves in a loud, luridly-lit Christmas funhouse in the middle of the night, with no idea how they had turned everything on, and no idea how to turn it all off.

This story reminded me of a weekend, easily ten years ago, when Bob and I stayed at my parents' house when they were out of town. I know that house pretty well - I grew up in it - so I know the little quirks. I know how to work the security system and which lights are on timers. My dad enjoys fiddling around with technology. I showed Bob the lightswitch in the downstairs bathroom that operates on a motion sensor.

The first morning we were there, my dad's alarm clock went off - loudly - at 6am. When Bob ventured into my parents' bedroom to see about turning it off, he couldn't find the lightswitch. Sliding his hands around the wall in an increasing panic, all he found was a blank switchplate. "Aha!" he thought. "Motion sensor!" So he stood in the middle of the room waving his arms in wide swings, as if he were trying to flag down a truck on a dark country highway.

After a minute of this, he thought, "Wait, he's not going to put a motion sensor in the bedroom - the light would go on every time you rolled over in bed." Then he thought of Dad's security system and froze. It was JUST possible that my slightly paranoid father might have installed motion-sensitive video cameras around the house in case of a break-in.

In which case he would arrive home to footage of his not-yet son-in-law standing in the middle of his own bedroom, nude, waving his arms like a pornographic snow angel.

Shot right through with a bolt of blue

I seem to have developed a relationship with this year's baseball semifinal. Whatever you call it.

I'm not, as anyone can tell, a sports person. Like a lot of spazzy, myopic kids, my number-one strategy for avoiding ball-coming-at-me situations - which without exception elicit from me flop sweat, prayer, flailing, grimacing, and shame - has been to profess an active disdain for organized physical activity. Hey, I never liked organized religious activity either. Same reactions.

However, as my memories of cringing at home plate feebly waggling a bat at a softball I can barely see fade to dim specters in the dust-moted golden haze of The Land Before 1983, I have less reason to sneer at sports. Now, from time to time, I can enjoy watching professional basketball players actually fly: I can gasp at the artistry of women's soccer players (look at that shit! she kicked the ball around the defender, passing it to herself!). In New York, we even went to baseball games. Those were really fun.

But I'm still not a fan. I still don't know the rules, and I still think football in particular is both bureaucratically boring and viscerally ugly - a rare combination, wouldn't you say? I don't follow a team, or any particular players.

My husband is something of a fan. He knows a staggering amount of information about athletes, up to and including where some of them went to high school. He grew up in Cleveland, which is by god a sports town in a football state. He and his long arms played high school basketball and college rugby. He would watch a couple of games a week if he had the leisure to do it (to his immense credit, he doesn't, so he doesn't).

The fact that Bob grew up in Cleveland is significant. Cleveland teams have brilliant seasons, but do not tend to win championships. Was it a big deal when the Red Sox won the whatever a few years ago? Hah. NO Cleveland team has won ANY championship in ANY sport since some year that my husband and every member of his family would know.

Wait I'll look it up. 1964, the year Bob was born, the Browns won the Superbowl.

[Bob corrects me: the Super Bowl hadn't been invented in 1964. The Browns won the NFL Championship.]

And it's not that Cleveland teams simply suck: this much I know. I went to college out there, and in the '80's in Cleveland, even at the geek school, much of our social life involved getting together to watch the Big Game: playoff series after playoff series - and even a Super Bowl, I think - when through some sudden fluke, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. Last-minute fumbles, insane athletic feats by the other guy, chokeage. Apparently, God Hates Cleveland Sports.

Game 1:
This weekend we were out in the old town for a family wedding. Niece Kate marrying Nice John. (Good luck, you kids!) Game one was the night before the wedding, and we missed it - well, Bob missed it. I didn't know one way or the other. We were attending Cousin Stretch's baptism that evening, and as the priest expelled her demons and incorporated her into the church, everybody but me knew that the Indians were playing the Red Sox. Boston won.



Game 2:
Katie and John, the bride and groom, are, like most Clevelanders, sports fans. Big sports fans. Let's put it this way - when their wedding invitation arrived, and it was cream-colored with a brown border, I didn't think for a minute that the brown was there to signify that it was an autumn wedding. I had my fingers crossed about the bridesmaids - I knew there was an outside chance they'd be wearing orange dresses with numbers on the back.

They weren't, of course - hey come on, I'm teasing... but the wedding party did enter the reception at a run, each wearing a team jersey over their tux or gown. That was pretty cute.

That night, back at the hotel, after our kids fell asleep, a batch of family crept into our hotel room to debrief, drink more, and - you guessed it - watch the game. That game went to 23 innings, tied until the Indians scored an unprecedented 47 runs in the top of the last inning and then retired the Red Sox side. Those numbers may not be exact, I did eventually fall asleep once the Indians were ahead by like 4. Still, pretty compelling, for baseball.

The next evening we found ourselves downtown when dinnertime rolled around. Googling "best sushi Cleveland" and plugging the addresses that came up into Google Maps, we came up with some joint in the Warehouse District. The football game was just over when we parked, and my god. Apparently the Warehouse District in Cleveland is considered a good place to watch the game, get unbelievably wasted, and then stagger around trying to use your cell phone in between little vomiting episodes.

I kept a tight hold on the kids, and we made it to the sushi place without either of them being propositioned or puked on. The sushi place was not what we expected - lots of purple and glass, it looked like a club, kind of. But it was fine, you know, fish is fish. We always end up eating sushi when we travel. At any other restaurant the kid options are as follows:

1. hotdog
2. grilled cheese
3. chicken turds
4. cheeseburger
5. maybe spaghetti

... and several days of a diet like that is just ugly. At sushi places they eat edamame and tofu and miso soup and fish.

When I took the kids to the bathroom to wash hands I noticed that the big guy at the table next to us was kind of... paved... in diamonds. Big studs in the ears and two wide bracelets on one arm. "Musician?" I thought to myself. "Gangster? Bet he's a ballplayer." He was a black guy with a shaped short beard and he spoke staccato Dominican Spanish into a cell phone. He acquired at least three hangers-on while he ate his sushi and watched the irritating Tom Brady get sacked on the overhead TV.

So the next day I looked through the Indians and Red Sox rosters, and found that we were sitting next to David Ortiz, designated hitter for the Boston Red Sox! Big Papi, they call him. Beloved, in Boston anyway.



Game 3:
The next night we were up in Bob's sister T's swanky new apartment facing the lake. Big beautiful views, including the stadiums and the blimp. Of course, we turned the game on, and once again, Cleveland won.



Game 4:
Last night we were back home here. We watched the game. Cleveland won. I am more than mildly not-disappointed. I am, in fact, looking forward to Thursday's game. I am thinking to myself, "Wouldn't that be something, if for the first time in 43 years, Cleveland won a championship? This is kind of exciting. But, uh, HOW many games are we talking about?"

I spent the first seventeen years of my life actively avoiding sports. I spent the next seventeen years peripherally aware of sporting events and teams, and the last five gradually getting used to the fact that athletic prowess can be kind of compelling.

Things have changed since I was the most uncoordinated kid in the Baltimore metropolitan area. For one thing, nobody expects me to do sports now - I have a knowledgeable, physically competent husband to teach my boys how to throw and catch, kick and hit, and to explain to them how the Earned Run Average is calculated.

For another, the Baltimore teams of my youth have undergone a molecular shift. The high-achieving Orioles that everyone used to brag about are treated with contempt even at home, and the Baltimore Colts, well, the Colts live in Indianapolis.

It's kind of a funny thing: my first year in Cleveland was 1984, the year that the Colts ran off in the middle of the night. I had heard something about it, but in Cleveland, my god, it was all anyone wanted to talk about. People teased me about it! I was dumbfounded and amused. I didn't even pretend to understand, but I did kind of enjoy it years later when the Browns quit Cleveland to come be Baltimore Ravens.

"Ravens" is not a bad name for a Baltimore sports team, but I cannot bring myself to like them (I'm not alone, either!). I sort of can't remember why, though. Maybe that's just how it works.

They clean up good

paying attention to the vows, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

We are back from the PNW. My brother's wedding, then a few days marching around Seattle, watchin em throw fish, eating pho, checking out the new library, hanging out with our friends. The Sci Fi Museum was particularly great. I bought a dodo. Sunsets, lots of sunsets.

Bob forgot to pack cufflinks (who remembers cufflinks?) so he used the doodads from the kids' Crocs. Suave! Mr Four passed out during the reception, and the bride was a knockout.

It was a great vacation, it was a beautiful wedding, and it was a nightmare of travel. Fucking airlines. Miserable asshole airline personnel. We are so lucky that these boys didn't LOSE their MINDS - cause god knows I came close. Arrived back at the homestead at close to 5am, after boarding a plane in Seattle at 11:30am. All done now.

Fried-ku

It's just coincidence that I composed (almost wrote composted - my mind must be rotting usefully) a haiku today. I am not participating in Poetry Friday. I am against poetry. Except Bukowski parodies.

for Jaime, who runs:

Agh pain sweat cars yech
Running in New York City
Plus stepping in gum

in anticipation of our trip to the PNW:

Packing for four
Ass-hot here, it's sixty there
I can't find our pants

for Bob:

At the Zappa show:
Why don't I remember this?
'Cause I spent college drunk?

This from a kid who still wears Velcro shoes

Like most (sane) people, I have a "way" of loading the dishwasher. It's the same dishwasher every time, and basically the same dishes, so I think I've found the arrangement that works the best, and I do that every time.

My husband does not. He approaches loading the dishwasher like it's some kind of art project, mixing up plates and glasses and bowls, paying no attention to useful scraps of manufacturer advice like "top rack only".

If I try to add something to the dishwasher after he has been in there, I often end up rearranging what he's done to make it more space-efficient. I try try TRY not to complain about this. It's not his fault I'm a rigid modernist and fail to cherish his more Impressionist spirit. Also, he would be perfectly within his rights to say, "You don't like the way I do it? Well then I'll leave it for you to do. Every time."

But the other night, as I moved greasy bowls into a more logical arrangement, I suggested, "You know, I wouldn't be doing this if the dishwasher wasn't basically full already. You should go ahead and run it when it's this full, and that way I won't get all naggy on you about the retarded way you sling dishes into here."

I was nicer than that, and he took my advice with good grace. But as he passed into the dining room, Big Man, who is five, looked up from his coloring and, sounding like Desmond Tutu, said, "Dad? You should just do it her way."

8 facts

Wendy from Notes from the Windowsill got me with the 8 Things Meme. Heck, I'll bite. It's my first.

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Hard to say what to put on this list - my habits are mostly in the compulsive brand loyalty arena. I'm like James Bond that way (yeah just keep telling yourself that), his Sea Island cotton shirts being analogous to my Eddie Bauer mom t-shirts, I guess.

Besides the incessant swearing, I mean that's a habit, but anyone who's ever found themselves on this page or met me or, probably, flown overhead in a plane, knows about that one.

So here goes:

Fact: My favorite new word is "man-panty." It was coined by my husband when describing why he needs new swim trunks.

Habit: My favorite breakfast is leftover rice, plain yogurt, and Indian pickle.

Habit: I call my children "poodle".

Non-habit: I don't watch TV. Shave things. Or wear makeup, match my socks, iron, smoke dope, or change the litter box. (Two of these things I miss - guess!)

Fact: You could produce a blank, horrified stare on my face by saying "How about camping?" or by discussing shaving vs. waxing vs. Nair vis a vis one's bikini area. I got that same look when the "man-panty" thing came up.

Fact: Can't bake.

Fact: Scared of heights.

Habit: I spend money on bras, moisturizer, rice, shampoo, coffee, and perfume, but I buy cheap-ass cars, plants, soap, nail polish, beans, and pool toys. Fancy beer, the good canned tomatoes, organic chicken and shoes - I wait til they go on sale.

I tag:
Life O'Jaime
garish and tweed
Anger Hangover (who will probably kill me)
missing dust jacket
snaggletooth
SeanCJackson
and his DW: PumpkinSpice Knits
Strange Librarian

Today's Tom Sawyer

To: "My Neighborhood Librarian" ynl@blabla.blam
Subject: Todays Tom Sawyer
From: bob@blabla.blam
Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 21:22:58 +0000

Car
Shuttle bus
Plane
Car
(Mtg)
Car
Plane
Little Train
SHuttle Bus
Car
(Mtg)
Car
Shuttle Bus
Little Train
Big train
Shuttle bus
Other shuttle bus
Car
Home.

:b

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Mr. Librarian had a rough day Thursday - meetings in Norfolk, VA and Paterson, NJ. But he still had a sense of humor and an ear for song lyrics at 9:22 that night.

It's a sound salvation

Mr. Librarian listens to me-yew-zik in the car. Music. On the radio! The college station! How the hell he stumbled upon that I have no idea.

Here it is: neither of our cars has a CD player, and I think the Civic doesn't even have a tape player, so on the road, if we want a little diversion, it's either radio or the voices inside our heads.

The car I usually drive, a green Subaru (apparently the automobile of choice for middle-aged lesbians - this I've been told twice by two wildly different people, so either someone's made a joke about it on cable or it really is true), is tuned to NPR. I got it tuned in once and there it will stay 'til we crash that car. I don't know how to program the little buttons, and I don't remember the frequency of the station, even though, when it's on, I'm sure they remind me every 15 minutes. See, that's why I don't listen to the college station - I cannot retain the station ident for more than five minutes.

Today, however, I was driving the Civic. We switch off: whichever one of us is going to work has to do it in the weapon of the oppressor, 'cause the Subaru has the carseats - hey and let me tell you (warn you), dosing a burrito with hot sauce while piloting a manual-transmission vehicle is kind of something that I have lost my talent for. Whee!

The radio was on, and since it was the college station, Wilco was playing, and then something by that yodeler from the Cranberries (uck), and I guess I really don't listen to music radio much, because when the announcer cut in I fully expected the voice of a DJ from Oh My God the so distant past. It was such a funny feeling - like if you took a bite of ice cream and it turned out to be mayonnaise. Damien Einstein was the voice I was expecting, he was on WHFS, our "alternative" station in the 80's.

And it occurred to me, I can remember the frequency of WHFS: 99.1. "Niney-nine wuon" Damien would say. Guy had a bit of a speech delay: I was always impressed with the station for valuing his encyclopedic music knowledge and discernment over what you have to imagine was their desire to have non-garbled DJs.

I can also remember where my college station was on the dial: 91.1. "Dobleyuh Arr U dobleyuh," so said Prince, the reggae DJ to whom I was apprenticed when I started there. "You gonna be grreat reggae DJ!" he would pronounce, in his big dance-hall voice, and then, "Put on dese rekkids - I'm-a gwine out to de halll-way to smoke a liddle reefah." I was not ever a great reggae DJ, not even after he made me interview Third World on the air. In my memory, there were like 13 guys in that band, all reeking of dope and patchouli and stuffed in the air booth, and I couldn't understand a got-damn word they said. I was a teenager from the suburbs and they were genuine Rastafarians from Kingston. Prince was out in the halll-way. Smokin a liddle reefah.

Nothing goes together like radio and driving, though. Music someone else is choosing sometimes produces these moments of serendipity: the right song in the right landscape at the right speed. By the way, the proper soundtrack for trying to get Taco Bell hot sauce on a burrito while steering with your knee and downshifting is "Pop Song 89".

I am the milkman of human kindness

He's great and all but.

Close the medicine cabinet door.
Close the closet door.
Close your undershirt drawer.
Close the breadbox.
Close the kitchen cabinet door.
Close the door to the basement.
Put the lid back on the butter dish.

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song

I have a friend at work who teases me about my (wide but shallow) breadth of knowledge. Yeah, ok, I know kind of a lot about Northeastern Congo, controlled vocabulary, epidemic disease, and the music of the 1980's, and I've forgotten more art history than most people would ever want to know, but mostly I know a little about a lot of stuff. Classical literature, scientific illustration, India, database architecture, old VW's, you know. I define "liberal arts major".

So my friend asks me if Bob is "as smart as" I am and I say, Oh hell yes. Bob has an analytical mind and a trove of historical and experiential knowledge that comes into play every time he reads a newspaper. Listening to his comments is like learning the hidden contexts and meanings that underlie all political acts. And yet, he's a consensus-builder who knows when to solicit everyone else's opinion and when to sit back and listen. I could never do that. Plus he plays piano and knows a lot about the movies of the 1980's, so we complement each other there.

So my friend asks, "Was that the attraction? Was that what drew you to each other?"

I laughed and laughed. The joke is that Bob and I fell in love at first sight: purely, we each thought the other was cute. We were teenagers.

We've been together ten years this month. We've been married for seven years, and we've been in love for 21 years, during which time we cohabitated with a combined total of seven other significant others (one of whom I married) in five states and one foreign country (Zimbabwe).

We finally got our act together in March of 1997, when he was in grad school at MIT and I was living in NYC. You think we're so smart? Well, consider this: after 12 years, it took geographic proximity and an incident of astonishing synchronicity to throw us together, ultimately for good - the email exchange went something like this:

To: Paula
From: Bob
I'm a little depressed this week. My girlfriend left me for a girl named Tex.

To: Bob
From: Paula
Huh. I'm "a little depressed" myself. My husband appears to have left me too. What are you doing this weekend?

When we got married, we chose to get our certificate from the Staten Island Borough Hall (I totally recommend it, it's a nice old building and the ride over on the ferry gives it a real sense of occasion) so that we could have a big ceremony with no officiant at all. Instead of vows, we read each other excerpts from our letters to each other - 12 years of pining and stupidheadedness. Then, our Best Man and our Babe of Honor held up cue cards and the entire assembly pronounced us husband and wife. We were married by acclaim.

Now, as anyone who reads this blog knows, we have found out that he's an energetic, engaged, imaginative father as well. What you may not have gathered is he lets me slack all over the place, he loves my cooking, likes the same movies as me, and mostly he doesn't mind when I get all OCD about how to load the dishwasher.

All that stuff is totally just icing though - I still love him for his body. You just have to look up what Anya says about Xander in that episode where nothing else really happens. But you might not want to.