15 posts tagged “pigeon”
We did a repeat of this dinner party. This time we had 32 vessels for alcohol at the end of the night. We're getting better with age, just like the Barolos we mercilessly consumed.
No earthquake this time, but my darling husband is once again talking about how closing one eye lessens the effects of his drunken state. Never a good sign.
I have long observed in man (and by man I mean men, not mankind) a tendency to forget that we live in three-dimensional space.
Take, for example, the refrigerator. If a man is looking for something -- let's say milk -- and it isn't located in the foremost plane of the fridge, the milk doesn't exist. It doesn't matter if the milk is scarcely obscured by an insignificant object like a jar of Grey Poupon -- if it isn't immediately apparent like a full-grown elephant in the vast expanse of a savanna, its existence is called into question.
I have a working theory that this male dimensional challenge is what makes table surfaces preferable to drawers, gives counter tops more appeal than cupboards, and leaves crisper drawers forlorn like vestigial organs. It also explains why chairs, sofas, and beds slowly evolve into valets and closets.
Most perplexing to me is that some of these men have less trouble wrapping their heads around four-dimensional spacetime or multi-dimensional string theory than notions like behind, between, and inside.
Take, for example, my darling husband. He's hands-down one of the smartest and most observant people I've ever met, or am ever likely to meet. After several hours of reading, he peeled himself off the sofa and away from his book to hunt for his iPhone. He hunted and hunted. Many minutes later...
Him: Do you know where my phone is?
Me: No. Why don't you call it?
Him: <dials>
Stage Left: <muffled ringing sounds coming from underneath the book he was just reading>
Ah, yes. The phone was lost in yet another one of the many faces worn by the ever elusive third-dimension: under.
The only correct response to the question, "Would you like some tea?" is "Yes. That would be lovely."
It's that time of year again, where the world is allegedly off somewhere falling in love and I'm dragging my Pigeon, kicking and screaming, into the holiday season. I'm basking in the light of our majestic tree, Lonely Steve, sipping some Caramele tea from Lupicia, and considering the following holiday facts about my husband:
- He objects to sleigh bells in songs on principle.
- He's mentioned at least 5 times today that he bought me a present, that he won't tell me what it is, and that it will be arriving very soon.
- He was quite certain of imminent death while retrieving our Christmas decorations from the storage space in our garage, and told me so repeatedly.
- He's exceedingly proud of himself for naming our tree Lonely Steve, and for spotting said tree 30 seconds after we arrived at the lot.(*)
And the way we spent our evening just about sums up the pervasive December dynamic:
ME: Singing Christmas standards and bustling around the tree.
HIM: Looking at photos of knives and drinking whiskey.
Jingle, jangle, jingle.
* Note that we were at the lot for the better part of 30 minutes anyway, due to my Elaina-ness.
Good
Finally getting the chance to play on a soccer team with my Pigeon, and breaking him (and possibly myself) in the course of getting his cardiovascular fitness up to snuff.
Bad
Having one bag and one container of garbage and one container of lawn waste rejected by the City of Santa Clara because I didn't follow their rules that they didn't bother telling me about when I signed up for the utility. It wasn't even my damn garbage... it was here when I moved in. And it smells like either rotting beans or rotting dog food, neither of which is appealing in the mid-summer sun.
Good
The summer sale at DSW, and buying 4 awesome pairs of shoes for less than $200:
Bad
Cutting myself 3 times in the last 24 hours, because A) I'm clumsy and B) handling all this cardboard is sapping all the moisture out of my hands.
Good
Having the kitchen stuff totally unpacked.
Bad
Finding a live spider in Richard's day-old glass of drinking water that hasn't found its way off the nightstand.
Good
The fact that this live spider incident has probably cured him of keeping glasses of water on the nightstand, which (incidentally) drives me nuts... in that cute married couple way, of course.
Bad
The large flying buzzing around the living room, bouncing off the large mirror and making that annoying sound flies make when they repeatedly fly into something like a glass door, window, or mirror. Also bad is the fact that the live spider did not eat the fly before he found his way into Richard's old glass of water, and before I helped him find his way into the garbage disposal.
Good
Finding delicious new Indian restaurants near your house. Indian food in general.
Bad
Eating too much rich Indian food. Gastrointestinal woe in general.
Despite a very long dinner with my lovely friends David and Diego, I managed to pack up five boxes this evening. Additionally, I purchased a baby shower gift and caught up on all my RSS feeds. Clearly the knitting ban is working.
In other news, I can't help but notice a trend emerging in our packing:
In the course of packing up the corner bookcase, Elaina comes across several items belonging to Richard. She checks that he doesn't need them readily accessible within the next 5 days or so, then lovingly wraps them up and places them in a box.
Richard comes across items belonging to Elaina. He carries them out to her and hands them over, explaining that they don't fit into the organizational schema for the existing box of items he's spent the past hour painstakingly packing. My blue headband, for example, might end up in his office at the new house... and he doesn't want my blue headband in his office... because, well, it just doesn't belong there.
Now... I'm not arguing that my headband has any business in the office or that any of it matters in the grand scheme of things; however, I can't help but notice that my frantic scramble to pack up all our possessions and make this move happen seems to be coinciding with an indulgent, leisurely "organize my life" movement on the part of my husband.
Injustice abounds.
What happens when Richard is goes to San Francisco without adult supervision (i.e. with Sam and Tobin... who don't post here, so I don't know why I linked):
[1:30 am, at The Nest. E is frosting cupcakes (don't ask). R is outside the door, cooing.]
R: Coo coo coo...
E: Hey, baby!
R: It's my dove in a box!... <pounce>
E: Are you drunk?
R: No."
[2 am, at The Nest. E is flossing her teeth. R is sprawled out on the bed.]
R: My brain is inadequately mapping position and mental models.
E: Most drunk people just say, "The room is spinning."
R: But it's dependent on orientation! If I'm on my side, for example, it's really bad. But if I'm my back, it's pretty good. Also, closing one eye seems to help."
Intelligence, meet sake and bourbon.
Why I love my man:
He is giddily describing carbohydrate "wangs", thousands of dimensions of existence, and something or other that is isomorphic to a Turing Tape in Diaspora. He says:
and this is where it gets awesome..."
This has been going on for minutes. He says that his brain now
hurts, but he's still muttering something or other about human
consciousness.
I wouldn't trade him for a million-billion dollars.
We just returned home after watching a 7:45 screening of 300:
Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army."
It was everything we hoped it would be and more, and it was one of the prettiest films I've ever seen. The content wasn't often pretty, mind you, but the cinematography was astounding.
As I sat down to dutifully report my movie-watching experience to my fellow Voxies, I spied an enormous spider hanging out above our living room wall clock.
By now, we all know how Richard feels about spiders. What we couldn't predict, however, is the way in which this particular movie would impact the management of this particular spider. From the sofa, I hear the not-too-familiar sound of my souvenir Sting Sword (don't ask) being unsheathed*.
E: What are you doing, baby?
R: It's the only thing that'll reach him.
E: You've got to be kidding me.
R: [stabs the spider with the tip of the sword]
E: [silently shakes head behind R's back]
R: There. Spider dead. Job done.
*Note that by "unsheathed" I mean "removed from its new semipermanent home in the magazine rack".*
#328
"Honey, get the scissors out of your ear."
