Look Me Up and Down and Up Again (Where are the socks?) Yesterday, we at the office renegotiated our yellow pages contract with Jason, the
Those Canadians: First they took our Costcos... and I said nothing for I did not have a membership. And they took our Trader Joe's, and still I said nothing because Fred Meyer's had an ok organic section. Then they came for our bridges. Again I did not speak up, for I was too busy to travel to Mt. Vernon... then they came for me... and nobody was left to stop them from wanting mediation over their Costco milk and dented cars!!
Jason wears a blue and pink pinstriped shirt. His tie stage-whispers "paisley" in a contemporary color scheme that echoes the lushest of persian rugs. Needless to say, his handkerchief is the same gleefully garrulous print. His suit, a sumptuous fuscuous matte, hugs his body in a decided slim-cut. His chest is just shy of cartoonishly broad against his slim physique. His hair cemented atop his head in a shellacked bouffant of ocean tide. I can't help but notice that, despite this parade of pomade and pomp, he is not wearing any socks!
He aspires to a slickness that he never quite achieves, and this failure is where his actual charm lies. Because underneath it all, he seems less oleaginous (hair product aside), than very young. His business flirtations seem less cleverly calculated than endearingly goofy. He still can work out a genuine blush at slight provocation. As somebody who was known as the mistress of the rainbow hair, flashing jewelry and tutus through her rather recalcitrant teens, I can relate to somebody who is both expressive and retiring at the same time, I suppose.
Although the boy really needs to get some socks...
Being the insane cycling addict that he is, Andrew was jonesin' for a ride of the cyclical kind upon his return from being-at-work-staying-at-Iron-Man. It was spluttering a bit of moisture outdoors, so he thought he'd set up the trainer. I believe setting up the trainer counts as half a work out. It did seem to take an excruciatingly long time. I think that he may have spent equal amounts of time setting things up, in fact. I wonder if he magically gets one-tenth of a track upgrade point for setting up the trainer correctly?
Andrew also uses a phone book to prop up the front wheel. I sincerely hope that it's the phone book with MY PICTURE and listing in it. Jason always says that phone book advertising through osmosis is one of the most effective kinds of advertising.
It would be nearly the literal truth that this morning began with a SPLASH... Really, it began with waking up, though. Then there was some futzing around. I started some laundry, which ultimately began the juices flowing for our dark and damp morning. Our dryer has a few little quirks to do with its nobby bits. Namely, it won't turn on for me. Andrew, who has several years of stage rosin and steel bits crushed between his index and forefinger, rarely has a problem. But I essentially am consigned to big puppy dog eyes and imprecations. Usually, I admit defeat and ask Andrew to turn the dryer on for me eventually. I did so this morning, after only an hour of struggle (ok, a few minutes of struggle and then many more of "ignoring it until I thought it was late enough to wake Andrew up). It's hard being the man around the house in all those nauseating 1950's connotations.
To "make up for" the inconvenience, I did bring him coffee and chocolates in bed. By "make up for," I really mean "set-off further chains of events all calculated to send us fleeing from the bedroom before somebody lit the bed on fire." First thing to know: chocolate melts. Coffee cups are sometimes warm. Sometimes when you put chocolate on a plate with a coffee mug, the chocolate rolls and melts against the side of the coffee mug.
This is all well and good if you leave the mug on the plate. If you instead decide to hold it in your lap, it tends to start looking like you have had a little bit more "colorful" fun in bed recently. Andrew learned this lesson with my assistance. Chocolate besmeared his pants, our sheets, and the comforter, necessitating his second rise from bed in short shrift.
Just as I was saying off-handedly "ah well, I wanted to do the sheets today anyways," he attempted to remount the bed. This is also all well and good when the offending chocolatey mug (now thoroughly wiped clean) is not also sitting on the offending chocolatey plate on the side of the bed. And SPLASH! We have officially baptized the home this morning. At this point, it seemed like a good idea to leave the bedroom in peace and spread the java-joy to the rest of the home. Surprisingly the downstairs couch remains untouched this morning (this is a frequent site of little coffee spills, so it must be quite perplexed by such a turn in events).
Sheets are now through the dryer (with Andrew's strong hand once again intervening - see, we're a modern couple that shares the household work... or something) and back on the bed, dirty as ever because we put them back after our fifty minute (no wait, let me not be imprecise 48 minute) run and jaunt through the strength training circuits of the YMCA. I was originally going to take a shower before unloading the laundry, but there was a spider in the shower. And somehow the effort to remove the spider from the shower seemed to outpace the effort involved in putting the sheets back on.
And, after a rather thrilling start to the morning, I've now also managed to unload the dishwasher, thus gaining access to plates and able to sit down to some of that food-nonsense. The time to inundate the world with coffee seems to have passed. Let the throwing of food commence!
Going Bananas in the Analog-Virtual Ladies' Department Mr. (W)right may be an engineer, but he's spent sufficient time in the dance and theater worlds of New York City to have a whole new world of deliciously snarky meeeeeyow to him. It's one of his finer attributes, and one that balances his generally straightforward sincerity and pointed penchance for literality in all things. The odd comment that such and such a vague acquaintance (frenacquantancey?? Is that a word) looks like she's a drag queen aspiring to Cruella DaVillainosity whose hair could withstand a hurricane and whose makeup may require fracking to remove... well, it tickles my fancy from somebody who spends most of his time knitting his brow over the contradiction of actual reality and the thing I just said.
In this mind-frame, looking at catalogs together over breakfast is a longstanding tradition that dates back just shy of the Paleolithic Era of our love. Perhaps it used to be the Victoria's Secret magazines sent en masse to his animal house. Perhaps it was the "wealthy white people who want to be vaguely ethnic in a purified asian kind of way" magazine, or the "sporty ladies in their thirties magazine"... or the "douchey hipsters who spend more money on cologne and clothes than rent" catalogue... or perhaps it was Chadwick's (pictured above).
I remember somebody once saying that professionals shopped at Nordstrom's and their paraprofessionals shop at Macy's. It may be an over-generalization, but there's something to this. I've noticed that price-points are not the only distinctions between typical "professional" dress and "paraprofessional
dress in convention. Not to say "professionals" are snobs and slobs, but maybe the extra dalliance with being virtually grad students (shudder) has caused a splintering of mentalities: either they dress in expensive and conservative clothes, because damnit they've earned the right and the bankroll to be taken seriously, or they remain mired in the world of advanced degrees and all the pallor and sartorial squalor associated with those things. Me, I just still look and comport myself like an intern... eternal fountain of youth, baby!
Either way, paraprofessionals have a little bit more style-consciousness, particularly with color, fabrics, and overt styling. "Paraprofessional" outfits have more distinguishing frills, colors, and cuts to distinguish Monday's outfit from Thursdays. Paraprofessionals also tend to have a slight amplification of makeup and focus on coif as well. And they do get paid less (in theory), so they maybe want more variety at lower prices.
I think that Chadwick's once was a mail-order catalog catering to the aforementioned paras - solidly built basics and the kind of tops that had little touches for a discount price. I've actually had some great turtlenecks and suit pants through their occasional sales through the years. As their initial class of paraprofessional customers are aging into retirement, it's exploded a bit from its anchoring concept. Ambition ever outwards, there are now "casual" "sea foam crops" "pink berry boyfriend cardigans" "breezy dresses" and all manner of monstrosities intended for the active seventy year-old who has wrapped herself in her bed sheets, topped it off with shelf liner and then gone to the beach...
It's spectacular to behold these poor models - women about my age who never quite got it to fall into place for that Victoria's Secret contract... or even that J.C. Penny's contract - garbed in garments that would only ever be appropriate on somebody under ten or over seventy-five. We'd speculated that the notable appearance of fine lines and wrinkles strewn across these poor models' faces was an attempt to make them more relatable to the customers, but are now of the opinion that Photoshop is probably just a bit out of budget... as is anything approaching decent lighting or photographic equipment. Several of the models have strange creases on their faces that give a strongly mustachioed aura. I'd note that several of the photos that make it into the magazine also look an awful lot like test shots.
Perhaps it's too easy to go all America's Next Top Model Tyra panel on this magazine, but it's morning and we don't need challenge until after the second cup of coffee. All's I know is that it's one of my favorite little pleasures with my favorite fella, and it may be the reason that I was a few minutes late (yes me! and I did run into a few alate cobs on my way to work) getting out of the house this morning. You can't stop a good Chadwick's mid-stream. Andrew is right though. If i keep looking at these, they'll eventually break my skull and find my ordering one-of-everything-in-sangria-dusk... and no, they don't sell socks.
Would you like a little milk with your coffee flood?? So dedicated circlers with memories on par or superior to the average guppie's may recall that this weekend had some dark and damp moments in the bedroom (oh my!), as+Andrew Wright and I managed to paint the entire room ebony with melting chocolate and flying-jiving mugs of java. It appears that the universe wanted to greet such festivities with its own little ole!... or really I should say au lait.
My mother was the unfortunate bystander of these ongoing pranks, but the exploding milk-bullet was doubtless meant for me. We stopped by the grocery store yesterday. After some monumental consideration about expiration dates balanced against need, she decided to get milk. We put the milk in a bag with some orange juice. I had another bag of my own and was carrying both for a while, until she offered to carry one of the bags. Apparently she got the ticking lacta-bomb. We don't know what happened between the time it went on her shoulder and the moment she realized that her entire lower half had been subject to an unanticipated milk bomb, but something apparently happened.
I dare anyone to make some kind of joke about crying and my moo-juice monsoons... Bring it!
But speaking of crying, I thought it was funny timing that I have been engaging in a minor discussion on the current division of household and work tasks between married men and women, just as I turned the page to this charming (and extraordinarily redundant) article about how screwed 2011 and 2012 law school grads really are! I'm doubly blessed to have had lower expectations and a position more or less waiting for me through law school.
Contemplating my dire future with the joking "well, hopefully Andrew will just invent something and we'll be rich enough to live lives of leisure" made me think a little bit about how +Andrew Wright do conform to some of the norms of a gender-differentiated marital partnership. We both work full-time at the moment, but the addition of Andrew's commute gives us a work-to-home ratio that makes me "at work" proportionally less. At this point, certain things start to just make sense.
My general expectation of living together was that we would likely take care of ourselves - each doing his/her own dishes, laundry, self-care, and cleaning after oneself - but probably that there would also be tasks one of us took on more than the other. Not only for the commute, but because of our respective strengths. I'm very good at multi-tasking, am pretty fastidious with money, and like to live in the kitchen (since I eat about twenty meals a day), for instance.
Given that I'm a leap-out-of-bed morning person and Andrew is an ooze-out-of-bed-in-a-gelatinous-stupor kind of person, we have two options: (1) I leap out of bed as usual and am done with my entire morning routine in fifteen minutes, at which point I hit the road and show up to work while college students are still returning home from their crazy nights out bar-hopping; a half hour later, Andrew's alarm goes off, he lays in bed for a good half hour, takes maybe another half hour to get himself together, and eventually he eats breakfast around two hours after I've started working, thus getting into work later and pushing our schedules ever further apart; or (2) I leap out of bed (I'm spring-wired, I can't help that part), and channel my morning energy to take care of some housekeeping details - trash, recycling, putting things away - before making lunch and breakfast for us both. I wake Andrew up with coffee midway through breakfast, we eat together, and I get into work at a slightly less insane hour. Andrew has less stuff to do before hitting the road and gets back some of the time lost in the commute. Biggest advantage of #(2) is that we get to see each other.
Similarly, it's no sweat off my brow to make his dinner while I'm making mine, and it greatly diminishes the likelihood that he will just be getting around to starting his rice a half hour after I've gone to bed. Plus, I like that it again allows him to have a little after work "recreation" (read, crazy cycling masochism) time without sacrificing sleep, never eating, or us never seeing each other, but I like that I can alleviate some of the time-crunch (not nearly as good as Nestle) out of Andrew's long day.
Because I'm in the kitchen so frequently, I also tend to notice and create crumbs, clutter, and overflowing trash sooner than Andrew might. Fortunately, we have a bi-monthly cleaning service, but the in-between brush ups with brooms and vinegar water are more likely to be my touches. I also am more likely to be the sentry on supplies - bathroom products, paper towels, etc. And since I'm incredibly anal about never-ever-ever being in any more debt than absolutely necessary, I've gladly taken over the community bills. Granted this mostly involves setting up automatic payments and obsessively checking to make sure everything is covered, so not a huge task.
We do still do our own dishes. If the frying pan is dirty when it's breakfast time, I don't make Andrew's breakfast (since I don't need the pan for mine). If Andrew brings part of a mountain back into the shower with him, it's expected that he'll deal with that before my next shower.We blessedly do our own laundry - I don't think Andrew would dare allow me to touch his cycling clothes anyways. And I know he would never let me - with my slapdash way of folding things absent crisp creased edges and perfectly starched underwear angles - put away his clothes. Of course, I usually get the sheets and the towels when I do my laundry. But then, this doesn't really add to my laundry load, so I don't mind. And, for the most part we buy our own groceries, with small substitutions of foods that I've made in quantities beyond my capacity to consume or which I prefer to use in cooking.
A friend of mine recently applied to an MBA program. Upon my comment that I was finding myself surprisingly talented and drawn towards the administrative part of my work, she enthusiastically encouraged me to go to MBA school with her! My first response was that this would absolutely ensure my future as a house-wife. It's funny, but there really is an odd correlation between wives working part-time to no-time (in the labor force), and the combination of higher education and socioeconomic class that often comes with it.
Andrew doesn't believe that I could ever be happy without a job, but I'm never entirely sure. I think I would really miss having an office - the office is a place I can go that is entirely my own at certain hours. I am known to drop in here before or after work to do personal tasks, or to have a change of scenery. When I was in school, I roamed quite a lot to find different little "offices" in various locations.
If I think about "having something to do," I can easily fill the space with theoretical things. In my ideal day, I'd have two to three hours to write (nothing monumental, just my usual), a few hours to follow up on that writing and catch up on my reading/communications, two or three hours to walk, maybe an hour to work out, a few hours to cook, a few solid hours of down-time, and a few hours to do things. The doing part would hopefully involve taking classes, volunteering, continuing my work on the collaborative law board, maybe picking up a case here and there, being more flexible about seeing my friends, and donning my super-hero suit to fight the threat of lacto-terrism. Of course in hypothetical land, energy is limitless and we always act in our own rational best interests. In the real world, we seem prone to inertia and often have to struggle to force ourselves to do the things that make us happiest. Of course, again, if kids ever came into the picture all scenarios change.
All of the above is torturously theoretical. People are impressively poor predictors of their future happiness or behavior, and unless reality hits certain tipping points, our status quo seems to be working well for us. I have enough time to do a little extra around the house. We have a decent amount of money to support our joint and individual expenses. And I am blessed with a rare find for a 2011 graduate: a job that works for me as much as I work for it.
And for those who've made it through this ponderous palaver, congratulations, you win a virtual ice-cream cone (be careful, though, it may well be wired to detonate, and I'm not sure whether it's you or your theoretical spouse who usually picks up the laundry and cleaning duties...)
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