Aspirations

Depending on my mood, a given event can be either inspirational or depressing. Inspirational as I think, “Yeah, that’s what I want to do, that’s who I want to be.” Depressing as I sigh, “I will never manage that.”

Take today, for example, reading Shannon Hale’s blog (http://oinks.squeetus.com/) and now Dean Hale’s blog (http://www.dreadcrumbs.com/). Honestly, how many people do you know who can relate snow, zombies, and poo in ways that make you laugh out loud despite the baby sleeping in your lap who you don’t want to shake awake?*

After wiping the tears of delight from my eyes, I thought “Yeah, that’s the kind of funny I want to be.” And then I sighed. “I will never manage that.”**

*Go now. Read it. Do it (you know you want to). You will never look at these things the same way again. Here’s a direct link: http://www.dreadcrumbs.com/2010/03/the-snowzombiefeces-triad.html. Go. GO. GO!

**This blog post, despite appearances, is actually not a cry for approval and reassurance that I am, indeed, delightful, funny, and the wittiest thing since… something very, very witty. No, I may never be funny enough to write about goats, but maybe if I keep trying very hard, I may someday be funny enough to write about anteaters. Or xiphiases (xiphia? xiphieae?). Until then, I’ll just have to practice.***

***Hence the blogging.

Father's Day

There is something terrible, truly terrible, about being married to a man like Brice. After, say, about five and a half years of marriage and frequent attempts to express in words how nice he is, it has gotten nearly impossible to say something about his awesomeness in a new and interesting way. Yes, the real difficulty with being married to a wonderful husband is running out of clever things to say about him.

So instead of saying anything new this year, I thought I would instead review a few Brice-isms that made me laugh. Selected in no particular order and with no attempt at completeness (because you don’t really want an encyclopedia)…

A poem from high school:

Tribble.

Tribble trouble.

Double tribble trouble.

Double triple tribble trouble.

Captain, I think we have a problem.

Two jokes that originally inspired my crush on him:

Why don’t seagulls fly over bays? (Because then they’d be bay gulls!)

What’s green, fuzzy, has four legs, and will kill you if it drops on you from out of a tree? (A pool table.)

A moment from early in our marriage:

As I was writing in my journal one night, he walked up and said, “I brandish my elbow at you” and rubbed my knee with his elbow. I commemorated the moment in my journal, and since it was on the first page, every time I open it I get to relive that moment. And every time I smile.

Today at dinner:

We’d just eaten crème brûlée made from a mix, and I told him I thought it was so delicious that I would probably never make it from scratch again.* He said, “So we should really call it ‘crème hooray’!”

 

Some point in the nebulous past:

The time he couldn’t remember the word “macramé” and called it a “dangly afghan for plants.”

And more recently:

The way he walked into the room with his arms up in the air and said, “Got sock? Foot cold.”**

And there you go. A few moments that make me smile. Happy (late) Father’s Day, Brice!

*In case you were wondering, it’s called something like “Dr. Oetker” crème brûlée mix, and it is yummy and super easy. The stuff I make from scratch always tastes too eggy.

**Go read the picture book Socksquatch. You won’t regret it.

Baby Crowded

“My training session got canceled, so I won’t be going to Yellowstone this week,” he said, trying to be heard. Our baby was increasingly trying to get our attention by using the upper ranges of her vocal cords. She wasn’t crying exactly, more like squeaking.

“Going where?” I asked in confusion.

“Dulles Hub,” he said, indicating his employer’s D.C. office.

“Ah,” I said. By now I had picked up our baby, and she was feeling significantly more content and therefore significantly more quiet. “That makes a lot more sense than ‘Yellowstone.’ I couldn’t hear you very well; my ears were baby crowded.”

I’d never used the term before, but it seemed to fit. Baby crowded. Full of baby. More to the point, too full of baby for much of anything else. Occasionally other parts of me are baby crowded. My nose when a poopy diaper makes it impossible to smell the delicious brownies cooking in the other room. My arms when both of my daughters are sitting in my lap reading/eating a book. My eyes sometimes when Brice comes home. I love to watch my daughters brighten, smile, and giggle just because he’s there. They adore him, and their adoration is mesmerizing.

This picture makes me feel a bit baby crowded too; I find it nearly impossible to look away. Brice calls her a modern-day siren. I guess it’s a good thing we don’t live on a boat.

The Magic of Fireflies

I wandered outside last night, when the sun was just setting and the sky slowly darkening. The air was warm and heavy against my skin. Looking out across our lawn, I saw them: little sparks, flickering on and off, brief brilliant spots of light. The existence of fireflies makes me certain that there is magic in the world. What else can account for their joyful beauty? I love to sit and watch them. They are mesmerizing and fill me with a sense of lightness and silent melody. I hope I never get too old for the magic of fireflies.

The Post I Didn't Post

So, here’s something I hadn’t thought to consider when I made my goal to Write a Weekly Blog. What will I do when I’m not feeling peppy or perky? Or pretty much any adjective that is generally applied to a cheerleader?

It turns out that what I do is stall a whole lot (as if I didn’t stall enough already). Then I write the blog post based on how lousy, curmudgeonly, and all-round dreadful I’m feeling. And then, instead of posting that one, I post a story about Princess Lolly.

...

Version #1 of the rest of this blog post was a neurotic, obsessive-compulsive, lengthy analysis of Why I Write a Blog.

Version #2 (thankfully composed solely in my mind) was a sort of whimpering sad-puppy plea for sympathy about the whimpering sad-puppyness of my plea (sound a little self-reflexive?).

Version #3, discarded almost before it began, was actually a description of why I was in a lousy mood.

In version #4, I said, “Well, I had a lousy week. I wrote a wretched blog post at the time. It sounds depressed and perhaps a little pathetic (it is). It sounds a bit overwhelmed (it was). It also sounds like the weather was hot (yup). Don’t worry, our air conditioner is still working, and I have not officially packed my whole family up to live in a cave somewhere (but do not think it wasn’t contemplated). And now for the real thing.” (And here, of course, I posted last week’s original entry.)

This is version #5, in which I say, “I’m still not willing to post it. So there.”

Princess Lolly, part 2

Once upon a time, Princess Lolly was skipping happily through the gardens at her parents’ castle in Candy Land.

“How are you this evening, Princess Lolly?” asked her mother, Queen Frostine.

“I’m good. How are you?”

“I’m doing well. My word, you’re looking very sticky this evening!”

“Yeah,” said Princess Lolly, smiling happily.

“What fun things have you been up to that made you so sticky?”

“Well, I will tell you, Mommy.”

And this is her story:

Princess Lolly loved to visit her friends in Candy Land, and she decided that she would visit them all on this bright, lovely day.

First she visited Plumpy in the Plum Forest. Plumpy’s favorite food is plums, which he liked to pick from the tree and eat in one bite. Princess Lolly loved to eat those plums, too, but she didn’t pick them off the tree first. She simply walked up to the tree and bit a plum right off the branch.

As anyone who has tried it knows, this is a very messy way to eat a plum. As she bit, the juice dripped out of her mouth and down her chin and cheeks. This made her face very, very sticky.

Next Princess Lolly visited Mr. Mint in the Peppermint Forest. Mr. Mint’s was a lumberjack, cutting down peppermint stick trees and loading them up to haul away. Princess Lolly was too young to help him chop down the trees, but she loved to help him carry the peppermint sticks. And sometimes she would hug one of those trees, just for the sheer happiness of it.

Hugging and carrying those peppermint sticks made her arms and her torso very, very sticky.

A short walk away from the Peppermint Forest, Princess Lolly’s friend Jolly was waiting in the Gumdrop Mountains. Large gumdrops cover the land, and there is only one travelable way through the mountains: the Gumdrop Pass. So naturally, when Princess Lolly visits Jolly, that’s the way she goes, skipping across the gumdrops in the pass.

Unfortunately, gumdrops are not very strong, and sometimes they collapse under the weight of hopping feet. So Princess Lolly found herself sinking into a large purple gumdrop, all the way up to her belly button. After she pried herself up out of the goo, she continued on her way. But her legs and feet were very, very sticky.

Next she made her way to Grandma Nutt’s house. Grandma Nutt was famous for her peanut brittle, which she made by hand almost every day. When Princess Lolly went to visit, Grandma Nutt was stirring a batch in her giant pot with her best wooden spoon.

Princess Lolly preferred to be a little more hands-on. Though the brittle was warm, it was not too hot, and Princess Lolly reached in to stir it with her arms. And when they poured it out to cool, she spread it not with a spatula but with her hands. By the time Princess Lolly left Grandma Nutt’s house, her arms and hands were very, very sticky.

In fact, at this point, Princess Lolly’s face, arms, hands, torso, legs, and feet were all very, very sticky.

The day was nearing its end, and there was just enough time to visit Gloppy in the Molasses Swamp. She dove into the swamp and swam happily. So even if she hadn’t been sticky before, by the time she was done at the Molasses Swamp, she was—from head to foot—very, very sticky indeed.

Finally, Princess Lolly returned home to her mother, Queen Frostine.

“Hello, Mommy,” said Princess Lolly.

“Hello. How are you this evening, Princess Lolly?” asked Queen Frostine. And after Princess Lolly had finished telling about her day, Queen Frostine declared with a smile, “I think, my dear, that it is time for a bath!”

However, Queen Frostine did not have any water. In fact, all she had was the Ice Cream Sea. So at the end of the day, after a thorough bath in a vast ocean of ice cream, Princess Lolly remained very, very sticky.

The End