Double the Dates, Double the Dinky (And Watch Out International Community)

Previously on A&A's Adventures in Cohabitation: Mountains were run, mud mucked and mired, 90's rock ballads were belted in increasingly punchy hilarity, and bells were run when it ended in Fairhaven. Catatonia followed suit overriding memories applicable to the holiday. Coming up - the story begins and ends with date nights of the sort that could spawn a franchise. The international community may have to contend with Adella (W)right after all, and mysterious upgrade points point to a Track Season full of Cat 7 Orangutan precious bananas to go towards thwarting King Koopa once and for all!

You Know What Happens After The Third Date - FORTUNE COOKIES!! In the immortal tradition of the last two weeks, yesterday night was the highly cherished and irrepressible (W)right Date Night. After all this promposal hubub, I did wonder if simply setting it up on our google calendars was insufficiently effective to create such an evening... should I have hired a SWAT team to storm Mr. (W)right's engineering complex (a place that makes gargantuan machines for use in aerospace and outspace, and home to a hive of engineers who all believe they are weeks away from becoming Iron Man) then shoot out "come to Chinese take-out with me? Luv A" in the wall near his desk?

Despite my negligence dateposing, Mr. (W)right made it precisely on time, a rather shocking event, considering the variable vicissitudes of (1) work, (2) traffic, (3) the Costco gas line, (4) caprices of our alien overlords, the norns and whatever other forces are knitting and weaving their hungry paws through our collective fortunes. And despite his not having hired William Shatner and Weird Al Yankovich to serenade a dateposal to me earlier in the day, I was all showered, gussied, and ready to eat.

And yes, we ate Chinese food at a little hole in the wall just across the freeway. I'm not sure why I've been so drawn to these sorts of places for our date nights, after all the effort I take to - for once - desludge from the day, put on nice clothes and otherwise primp for the evening. They do have some sort serious advantages, though. For one, they aren't fussy. The fussier a place is, the less apt I am to find anything remotely edible on the menu. Suddenly a simple salad is made from beef-lettuce and sprinkled with pig loins. Suddenly, the wait-staff seems totally uncertain how to time delivery of my order from the appetizer or salad menu against my husband's entree order (as if such sequencing were more difficult than the human genome).

This Chinese joint turned out to be quite good. Sure your food comes a la styrofoam, but the quality matches anything on spode koi platters for a few dollars off the cost. To my delight, the place actually had plain old steamed tofu and vegetables on the menu. And they meant it. No random oils or surprise bacon bits in my meal. Just a heap of veggies and fresh tofu large enough to leave me with lunch leftovers today. Heaven! And whatever Andrew shoveled out of his various containers was apparently up to both snuff and scarf.

I'm not sure what to take from our respective fortunes for the evening, which held both hope and a minor tritone. Andrew's informed him that discontent is the foundation of future success, while mine told me many travels are in your future. I can only speculate that this heralds Andrew's eventual third-life crisis, which shall inspire him to run away in search of adventures, and my many future months travelling the globe in search of him. Hopefully, by the I will have my new passport in my new name.

I'm glad to say that as of this morning, he is still in-state and didn't appear to be packing to flee. Of course, it was morning, so he mostly appeared to be blinking reluctantly at the morning light and hunching over a cooling coffee as if it held the secret to all time, but would only whisper it quietly to the very patient.

Yes, that is a clock with math formulae instead of straight numbers on its face. It's a birthday gift from Mr. (W)right's mother that is about perfectly suited to him. Even more entertaining is that not only is is difficult to suss out the actual time indicated on its mysterious mien, but the time actually is wrong 99% of the time, due to there being no battery quite installed yet. I'm sure there's a profound statement in that somewhere. Fortunately we seem to have an overabundance of accurate clocks at hand: on the stove, on the thermostat, on the microwave, on the rice cooker, and on our various smart-devices and laptops... but do they tell the same essential truth about time as this clock? I doubt it.  

Another (W)right of Passage Unlocked - I may now leave the country, ladies and gentlemen. Let the international quavering commence! To celebrate, I give you a series of winding stories to do with passports past. 

My father owns a beach house in the Gulf Islands. He purchased this just briefly before the more-so-so-than-great divorce. Originally, getting there was quite an ordeal. It involved driving up through British Columbia, taking a ferry to one island, hitching a ride to the other side of that island, inflating a tiny blue dinghy, and braving the open sea to get to our destination island. Since his lot did't have a dock, we then had to park on the other side of the island, pack up the dinghy and hike for what seemed to me on par with the amount of time the Hebrews spent wandering the desert (except with more plants). Usually by the time we reached his area, we could then sit around for a brief spell before having to head back. 

Things improved drastically by the time I hit my teens. There is now a beautiful house, partially of my father's own design; there's a real boat available for transportation between islands; there's a dock; there's a caretaker with a separate cabin; there's a sports court; there's even semi-reliable internet. It's still pretty eremetic, but it's a luxurious seclusion. Or so I imagine. I haven't been there in years, despite my father's pining desire that it be otherwise.

My Dad and I tried to take +Andrew Wright there about two years ago. It was about halfway to the border that I realized -  horror of absolute horrors for somebody who considered herself a bit of a jet-setter in her pre-lawschool days - my passport was expired. After some angst, we reached the consensus that my dad would drop us back in Bellingham and go on to Parker Island on his own. Since then, well... I've really been meaning to get that passport renewed. But there were a few thins standing in the way. First, I was in lawschool, then there was the bar, then moving and trying to figure out this lawyerly nonsense... 

At some point about a year ago, I did manage to fill out the passport paperwork. But I was a bit held up with the requirement for a new photo!! I rather liked the photo on my expired passport. It's from a time when I was a wee chubby teen, but it's adorable. I just knew that I was due to a consignment of hideous grimacing aged nastiness for my next passport spell. 

Oh Photos - photos provide us with a limited yet unique opportunity to view ourselves from the outside. We are constantly trapped in our own heads, and famously unable to see ourselves the way that others see us. Photos break the wall ever so slightly and allow us to see more than the entranced gaze our mirrors reflect. They show us the pained grin/snarl we flash in moments of mild annoyance, the tacitly skeptical amusement at the world at whole, the face of our own distraction, and of course the agonizing details of posture in a given flash.

 It is inadequate, to say the least. We don't truly see ourselves from that outside perspective and never will. The image is lifeless and decontextualized from surrounding circumstance: a world of motion and time flattened into a single staid frame. The eyes with which we view ourselves are still our own, still shaped by our own self-delusions and expectations; they still are set to hyper-focus on details that no other viewer would possibly see. To the extent that people see what they expect to see, we barely even see the photograph before grafting our preconceptions back into the image. The truly great photographer can pull us away from this and imbue an image with his/her view, sometimes letting the person herself shine through and sometimes allowing a new eidos to be grafted onto the physical image.

We yearn to see ourselves the way others see us, but we equally dread the possibility that what we may see is foolish, unattractive, and at discord with the image we hold of ourselves. Nothing is so disconcerting as seeing a roll of photos from a dance performance, all janky angles, thwarted extensions and squinty eyes. I understand that this was not the final effect, but seeing this stokes internal insecurities that perhaps that really is what the world sees when I perform - an awkward, stuttering mess. This can be especially harsh because little imperfections that may flash through a beautiful motion are suddenly stilled for scrutiny. In each photo there may be one hair out of place, sickled foot, or funny expression. Nothing is perfect. And this is distressing, as anything that disagrees with our self-identity can be.

So... we game the system. We don't just want to correct for the mistakes of the camera... we want the magic mirror to tell us that we are the Fairest in the Land (toughest athlete, most popular person, sharpest dresser, most elegant walker), even if we somehow understand we are not. We pose, we manipulate lights, we mimic motion and pause for maximum effect. We selectively choose the photos that come closest to our concepts of ourselves (and the odd one that exceeds it) and surreptitiously delete the rest. 

Passport photos have no patience for lofty delusions of grandeur and flights of fancy. They want photos that look just like us  in mid-travel. Which is never pretty. I don't really even need to see myself after a 24 hour layover at a bus station in Bern. I sincerely don't need it memorialized in talismanic form

So, the photo issue deterred me for some time. That, and general  inertia. Finally, I'd worked up the gumption to live with a horrible passport photo just about when I got engaged and knew I'd be changing my name anyways. So I decided to wait... and wait... and wait. 

Then I got married... and waited some more. Then I got our actual certificate and hopped into action after only several more stops on the skyways to married bliss. And now, just seven weeks after I became oh-so-Wright, I have a passport! 

Why do I foresee many long waits at the Canadian border in my future again? Time to vanish to Tahiti for a while first.
 

Welcome Wednesday - As often happens when there are Monday holidays, I'm all out of sorts about this pesky passage of time nonsense. I was unswervingly convinced that yesterday was, in fact, Wednesday. It felt like Monday, but I knew it couldn't be Monday, because Monday was - of course - a holiday. Still, it just didn't feel like Tuesday and I knew we were too close to just-off the weekend for it to be Thursday or Friday.

Nevermind that I went to the gym with Azita, a signature Tuesday activity (and Thursday, but as I say, I knew it wasn't Thursday). We've graduated our warm up from the rowers to the elliptical machines, to my delight. I am a very big fan of ellipticals. When I was at Saint John's, there was a miniscule little offshoot of a gym room, with a sprinkling of traditional gym equipment. As a passionate but introverted person, I'd gather up quite a lot of steam during our evening seminars.. I would run to the gym and pound out an hour on the elliptical just to bleed myself dry of that heady mix of frustrated intellectual incubation and general excitement. Eventually I found the elliptical so pleasant, that I would set up there for an hour or two most mornings. It was a place to throw on my favorite cd or two (oh yes, I'm that old... I may even have seen those archaic relics called - oh what is it - cassette tapes in actual use) and fall into the voluptuous chasms of my own navel.

This exercise was the predecessor to my early lawschool running obsession.  I don't really run much, other than socially, but I sincerely miss that timeless isolated experience of just me, my legs and my music. Though maybe I don't miss my ear buds flying around my head like some kind of comic book super-hero's malfunctioning weaponry. 

But back to the elliptical. I love the elliptical even when I'm not listening to music. Of course, at any high effort, it can be incredibly awkward to have a social companion. I'm a highly interactive listener, which means I feel weird if I am not (1) making eye contact, (2) giving visual and verbal feedback to indicate I am following and empathizing, (3) responding appropriately. When you're side by side with somebody, and working out all the breath in your body, this is not particularly easy. There are the losses in balance from constantly being turned to one side, the increased breathlessness of attempting to converse, and the added discombobulation of that darned nodding head and shrugging shoulders.

 Don't get me started on the challenges of holding a conversation while lifting a suitable weight load. I'm not quite at "GRUNT GRUNT BABY RRRRRR YES!!" (verbatim transcript of a fellow gym-attendee yesterday, by the way) mode in my work out, but I do now seem to adopt the lamaze breathing and unadulterated stare that bores straight through the fabrics of time and space; also, I kind of need to concentrate to get out that last rep. Mostly, I just lose count or gasp out "uh huh" in a clipped manner until my rest period. 

To complicate day-of-the-week matters in my little head, +Andrew Wright even made it home at a fairly reasonable hour. This is extraordinary, considering the fact that there is a major portion of the freeway missing these days, what with that pesky bridge collapse in Skagit. It's too early to tell but it appears that you can in fact still travel between Bellingham and Seattle with only some additional gripes. I suppose after you've survived Everett "rush hour" (and in Everett ever hour is "rush hour" or perhaps just "why must this accursed wasteland stand between me and my destination?? Seriously is it snowing in April again?? Only here???" hour) This made it feel even more like Wednesday, since Wednesdays have been our date nights. Which means tonight is our date night again! I can take two Wednesdays!

 Tonight actually will be our last Wednesday date night for a while, since the pre-season track schedule that had him racing on Fridays is different than the on-season track schedule, which has him racing on Wednesdays until he either gets enough "upgrade points" to unlock the bonus round and save Princess Daisy, or we reach super-cajun-season track racing. I believe in those cases, he gets to race at 2 a.m. on Sunday mornings... Or something like that. Just so long as he has a skin suit, silly helmet and a bike without brakes... it's all trackety track goodness, baby. 

But I have a pretty firm grip on this now: It's Wednesday! My second Wednesday of a week without Mondays or Tuesdays. And I'm ready to roll, baby!

Double-Date Score Supernova - Well, finally made it to the "real" Wednesday. This, of course, was my second Wednesday of the week. At least as far as I was concerned, since Tuesday heavily perfumed itself in humpday redolence. Second-Wednesday was no shoddy sequel seeking to safely capitalize on the successful tropes of the first. No, it was far more of Empire Striking Back and Sending Love to Russia, while being 7 Fast 7 Furious (oh c'mon, you know you want to see Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and The Rock crashing large vehicles in increasingly complicated and implausible choreographies of sheer impersonal TECHNOLOGY EROTICA). Except, well, nobody lost a hand, spiked anyone with poison boot tips, or crashed a fighter jet while towing a semi with a tricked out dirt bike...

Although +Andrew Wright  did get to play with a forklift! Since apparently EI is one of the bizarre companies that trusts its engineers not only to crunch numbers, but also actual equipment (hopefully not literally), Andrew had forklift training yesterday. Tomorrow he gets crane training. Basically, he gets to play with life size erector sets all day, is what I'm learning. I'm getting fairly jealous here.

Forklifting aside, though, it was a sequel that capitalized on the strengths of its predecessor while furthering the series. This time we went to the wildly posh Fiamma Burger (a local moderately foodie-a-fied fastish food place downtown, and apparently the place to take your cute-but-loud children). There's a nice sort of cleverness without the frills that makes it an appealing unpretentious place. Sure the ketchup is chipotle ketchup and the little side salads come with pepitas, but you're not paying a "we're so local and awesome" tax like you often do in these places; nor are you eating off of plates made from repurposed Pabst bottle caps, or obnoxiously denticulate hyptagons. 

And yes, he did get a kiss goodnight. Then he got to follow me in afterwards. It's good he did; although he seems to like his car well enough to survive the extra commute, I think that if I insisted he "leave" at the end of the date and sleep in his car just to continue a running joke that we're not an old married couple of a whole two months... well that seems unfair. 

Also, he may never have discovered - as we powered our electronics back up - that he has obtained a mysterious upgrade point for track!!! Just in time for the on-season racing to commence! He now, apparently, has 2 points. He needs 20 to get his magical superific category bump back to the back of the pack of faster racers, so he's 10% there.

I find all of track racing pretty mystical, so this unanticipated point did not surprise me any more than if Andrew had been awarded a golden banana for placing 7th in the 7th race of the Kirin for Cat 7 Orangutans (which he now will place on his helmet for a fully bonny effect, but only during Scratchy Snowball Points Races occurring during the full moon). He, however, appears to grasp track enough to find elements of it surprising. There were many charts. Many results. No evidence of this extra point from any individual night. I'm going with handsomeness points. I knew I was right about the bathing suit portion of the competition!

Ok, so while bringing a girl back to your place and then walking her through a half hour of browsing stats on your racing status might not count as game (then again his big sell on our first date was to discuss in detail his preference for flip phones... I'm not saying that wasn't a winner, but it may explain why I didn't realize he was thinking of me as date material until after several more flip-phone-fantastic dates), I still maintain it was a heady and wonderful date night... 

And appears to have done the appropriate adjustment to my inner calendar. It is Thursday. I have no issues with that. I fully embrace Thursday in all its Thursdayness. And then gulp, because yeesh we have two settlement conferences on Monday and several more deadlines for the end of the week and that damned ball is bouncing around in my court just near the out-of-bounds line... LEAP!