Icees and Marriage

After nearly 8 years of marriage, Kathryn and I are still learning new things about each other. Couples with more years under their belts have said the same thing. They've said, "After nearly 8 years of marriage, Kathryn and Joe are still learning new things about each other." See? It's what everyone is saying these days.

The occasion for today's revelation was a romantic luncheon at Gattitown. We got our hopes up when the Icee machine didn't have an "Out of Order" sign like it did last week (yes, we're star customers at G-Town these days - for some reason, Kathryn feels less preggie-sick when she's eaten pizza), but upon closer inspection, the mix wasn't ready yet. Drat! Foiled again!

So we set to eating lunch. At one point, I go for a drink refill and notice that the Icee machines are ready to go. Sweet! I get one small cup of cherry Icee for me, one of Coke Icee for Kathryn, since those are, of course, what both of us most like. I set them down on the table in their respective places and go back to get napkins. I come back and Kathryn is laughing, saying "Are you joking? You're not going to drink all that cherry." I said, "Why not? I like cherry."

(I'm starting a new paragraph because this is the part where the story really takes off.) She says, "How in the world do you like cherry? Everytime we get Icees from Sam's, you always insist that we get Coke."

"Of course," says I, "because you like Coke more than cherry." "Nay," replies the wife, "I like cherry better than Coke." "Really?" "Really." "Hm."

Says Kathryn, "So you really don't like Coke better?" "No," quoth yours truly, "I prefer cherry." "Hm."

Anyways, I could go on and describe the part of the conversation where we candidly worked out our feelings on Blue Raspberry, but that's either another blog post in itself or not worth going into.

Wow. Who'd a thunk it? Nearly 8 years of marriage and we'd been doing this crazy little Icee dance, neither of us getting what we truly wanted, both of us trying to sacrifice a little to try and please the other person. To think that all this time, we could have both been savoring more of that frozen cherry goodness, instead of settling for less. Boggles the mind. Whether or not the lesson in all of this is, as the psycho-babblers love to put it, "COMMUNICATION!", I've certainly learned something about my wife, and I'll take it on serendipity.

Needless to say, this one has almost certainly already gone down in Wikipedia as the Great Peebles Icee Surprise of 2009, and will be told and embellished for generations to come.

Names

Hello again, friends and families! I'm still here, and have just been pretty swamped taking care of a sickly Kathryn and her stomach-baby. Lately, my motto has been, "Hate the pregnancy, love the baby." Wait, hang on...

Okay, I'm back. Ironically enough, I was called away to attend a nigh-puking Kathryn. (Actually, I didn't type "wait, hang on" before going to help her, if you're wondering why someone would keep a sick pregnant woman waiting while he finishes a thought. I typed it in after I came back because it was just too appropriate.)

Anywayz, despite all the sickness and tiredness, we're excited about baby and you'll undoubtedly be hearing all about it on here.

I'll kick off the baby-blogging by asking for a little help with names. Specifically, boy names. Girl names seem easy to me, because you just end them with -ylie or -era or -va and they sound pretty. Piece of cake. But boy names, that's harder. I'd like it to sound masculine enough, without being overused, and it has to go okay with the name Peebles. Sure, those last two apply to girl names as well, but still, for some reason, we're finding boy names harder to add to our list of potentials.

So I thought I'd turn to my fan-base for a little help! I'll get the ball rolling with a few leading contenders, and then maybe we'll get some good suggestions rolling in. Sound good?

Here's what I've got so far:

-Floribert (I think maybe it's Italian or something... seriously, this one really grows on you)
-Phoseph (You know, if I wanted to honor myself, but in a subtler way than Joseph II)
-Gandalf (No one would dare mess with someone wielding a powerful name like Gandalf)

So... post a comment with your ideas! If you don't, I'm likely to use one of the aforementioned names!

Housies!

It's official, folks - we've got people living with us! As Kathryn noted, Ryan and Chalyce moved in last night. Whoop! Despite apparent subconscious anxiety and an overall challenge of succintly describing "them living with us", I'm super-stoked.

Let me deal with the latter of those caveats first: how to refer to them. It's trickier than you might think. Some people throw out the term roommate without any regard to etymology. (I know, I know, it's a crazy world we live in. Words aren't just words, you know.) But hello, they're not sharing our bedroom. So "roommates" is out. I also thought, Hey Joe, maybe call them "cohabitants". Unfortunately, this word has a connotation that prevents it from being appropriate to our context. So that's out too. I think I've figured it out, though. I'm gonna go with housie. (Disclaimer: we haven't actually sat down to have the DTR talk yet, so this is subject to change.) It even checks out okay on Urban Dictionary if you go with the second meaning.

If you know me, you'll know that it's rare that Urban Dictionary and I see eye-to-eye. But this time, we're cool.

So we've got housies! People who live in our house in a non-weird way in a part of it that's enough on the other side of the house that we all have some privacy but also we share a kitchen and living space and generally get to know good friends better by living in close proximity! Housies! Yay!

Those of you who know me better than just my dramatic history with Urban Dictionary might be thinking, how is Joe's subconscious handling all of this? You might be wondering that because you knew that I grew up as kind of a loner-nerd and have only become super-cool in the past few years. Yes, I know this comes as quite a shock to those of you who have only known me in recent years, but I used to be socially awkward.

How does this play into being around people all the time, and not just in public? I'm going to have to work that one out. I'm not worried about stuff coming to the surface as far as wanting more isolation than I'll be able to have, I'm just trying to be ready for it if it does come up.

Then again, my subconscious may have had something to say about it all, based on my dream last night.

I dreamt that I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. (Our bathroom is across the hall from our bedroom.) I open the door to go in, and Ryan is standing there. One of us says, "Oops, sorry". (I forget who. By the way, the part of the house they're living in is on the far corner from our bedroom, and it has its own bathroom.)

Pretty wild stuff. Probably a bit of a letdown with all the buildup, too.

So. Here's to good times with the new housies! Here's to building community and people not being fazed by other people's crap! Here's to sharing lasagna, pillow fights, and having someone else to mow the yard! (Heh, heh.) Or something like that.

Here's to a true thumbs-up event.

It's a tie!

COWPIE #5 has officially ended, the votes are in, and folks, we have a tie!

This means a verdict will effectively never be rendered about whether it is better to:

a) cram as many random elements into a chunk of writing with no regard for how they will resolve (a la Joe), or

b) come up with a cool (albeit nerdy) idea and a direction for the book, and properly pique readers' interest in getting to the ending you already envision (Kathryn-style).

To each their own! Well done, Kathryn. Until next time...

COWPIE #5! Book hook

Howdy folks! Welcome to another quality installation of the COWPIE phenomenon! menon. mahna. Anyhooz, you remember the drill. Read this entry, and the one over here, and post a comment to vote for your favorite! Or post an entry in a comment to join in the fun! Voting closes Sunday night (otherwise this would go on forever - gotta count all these manually, you know).

Here's the prompt for this go-round:
Write the first few sentences (120 words or less) of a book. Could be any type of book. Most gripping entry wins.

So that's what I did. Microsoft Word will back me up: I've got 120 words - precisely - of the most hand-wringing, seat-edge-inhabiting, mind-gripping prose this side of the Brazos. Ready to blow your Chacos off. But prepare yourself: it's going to be a veritable roller-coaster of emotion. No sooner will you have devoured 120 juicy, delicious, well-seasoned, not-too-overdone, with a hint of cumin, savory words, than you will suddenly and inescapably be overcome with disappointment that what comes next will, in fact, never come next. It will literally be said, for years to come, "that's all he wrote."

But cheer up. In the meantime, you've got a COWPIE to devour! Enjoy every last fresh, steaming word. Without further a-doo...

(Actually, go ahead and take a minute to let that last string of jokes wear off before moving on. Okay, ready? You sure? Proceed.)

Chapter 1

11:55. It’s nearly time, Maurice. Oh well. Nothing more you can do now. Even if there were still time for agonizing, that wouldn’t make them understand. Friends. Bah. Each and every one of them false. Each and every one of them, regrettably, about to lose everything.

11:57. Fools. You warned them, Maurice. Weird science, they said. Fuzzy math. Bad religion. Petty politics. They wouldn’t listen to reason or pleading.

11:58. You can do this. You must do this – it’s the only way.

11:59. Was that a slight breeze outside? Is it possible? Down here? Can’t be –
but that means –

12:00. Time.

Maurice unzipped and stepped outside his tent. Taking one last look around, he ran like he’d never run before.

Regarding telephones

First, a grievance:

It's difficult for me to conceive of areas of our country from where you can still get a busy signal when making a telephone call. I suppose it's the sheer age of call waiting and voicemail technologies that make this particularly astonishing to me. I'd love to see some kind of nerdy statistic to support my bafflement, like "a decade of our time is equivalent to two centuries of ancient time" in terms of the development and adoption of new technologies.

I don't know why it drives me so batty to get a busy signal when I call a person or a business, but it does.

Next, the irony:

I can't receive text messages on my cell phone. A number of people have pointed out to me that "everyone gets text messages", so I wonder if this handicap, combined with the increasing representation of gray on my facial and cranial hair, ages me prematurely. (I think I'd actually be okay with this if it hastened retirement or discounts on food or coffee, but I doubt it will.)

Times like this make me reluctantly appreciative of God's sense of humor. Not to mention his amazing sense of economy at providing these kinds of dramatic entertainment at my expense. Blessed are the poor - for they will find they are rich enough to be made fun of.

One man's trash...

(from the draft pile...)

I recently sold this beauty to an older couple from Hearne:

Somehow, even though my life isn't ultimately defined materially, it still seems that the cars I drive have a kind of influence on the way I perceive my identity. Or at least, the way I perceive the way I'm perceived.

Take the Escort, for example. In a kind of "Blessed are the poor" meets "I'm so awesome because my experiences of early-life-stage middle-class poverty-approximation totally outdo yours" way (you know, the conversations where people try to one-up each other on what their parents made them drive as starter cars, and the like), I'd really grown into an appreciation of the kinds of reactions I would get as I started up that car close to a group of friends, and puttered away, carried along by an engine that was tens of thousands of miles past due for a tune-up. (Seriously, this was the car that could always be heard coming from at least a couple of blocks away, with its mighty 1.8 liter V4.) As an added bonus, I would make sure they got a good view of the back bumper as I drove off - or at least, the half of it that still remained. (Sorry, no pic here - the one above was my "best foot forward" teaser for the Craigslist posting.)

But it was as much fun to drive as it was for others to experience me driving. Consider all the "personality" that the new owners had to find compatible with theirs in order to want to make it their own:

-Windows didn't roll down. (This is because, after a while, the kind that you crank yourself start wearing down on the inside, and once it starts taking a strong man to roll and unroll them, the parts just aren't made for that kind of brute strength.)

-A/C didn't work on the top setting. (And the second highest-setting certainly wasn't cutting it in Texas summer heat.)

-Engine idled rough. More precisely, it shudder-heaved. (Best to slip it into neutral at stop signs and stop lights.)

-Transmission fluid and oil leaked. (No biggie - just add a little more every other day.)

-Visors weren't really movable anymore. (Sunglasses a must.)

The poor dear had begun to show her age, too. Peeling paint, rusting metal. A handful of dents and dings (other than the bumper, all of these were inherited from the previous owner, a.k.a. "Sistah".) But, having been built Ford tough, this was hardly cause to raise an eyebrow.

Ah, the memories. It wasn't my first car, or even my second, but it certainly was one of the most memorable. And who can put a price tag on such experiences? Actually, in this case, that would be about $450. So we'll hope for the best, but if it goes kaput, then at least the old couple aren't out too much money. May it treat its new owners well and not become rural yard art.

So, goodbye, my weird friend. It's been interesting. I say that because it sounds better than frustrating. But now I've got stories to tell, and that's something that money truly can't buy.