Sunday Scribblings

21Mar

I’m Confused a Lot

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 17 Comments

I just don’t get

binary numbers, C++
matrices or calculus

economic policy
political bureaucracy

John Milton’s prose
Paris Hilton’s beaus

gambling on horses
billion dollar golf courses

prenuptial agreements
the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince

privatized health care
armpit hair

the King James translation
ethnic discrimination

spelling bees
honorary degrees

talk radio shows
bros before hos

anything liver-and-onion
running just for fun

broomstick skirts
sugar-free desserts

sweaters on pets
blondes vs. brunettes

erotic fan fiction
smoking addiction

hair plugs
the point of slugs
wannabe thugs
recreational drugs

cubism
terrorism
fetishism
veganism

and

last but not least
brewer’s yeast

2Mar

Fortune

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 4 Comments

We’ve reached the best moment–the drowsy hum just after a huge Italian lunch but before espressos. The scent of coffee is already twisting through the air in those soft, bohemian swirls artists love to paint, and sunlight settles warm and heavy on our eyelids. Now, a deep breath, a half-hearted effort to stay awake… One more nibble of dark chocolate…

It’s a time machine, this moment, like a Dear Diary peek into the future. It’s a snippet of home video, showing our girls grown up into their own beauty and our little family traditions as familiar as furry slippers. It’s a glimpse into the connectedness we share, hot coffee together after lunch in twenty, thirty, forty years.

Maybe it’s just a drowsy mid-afternoon daydream… but I’ll take it as my fortune. Any day.

2Feb

Foul!

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 8 Comments

My experience with sports is… how shall I put this? Pitiful.

I wrote a satiric sports article in junior high using the Dave Barry technique of playing dumb–saying “touchdown” for basketball, “slap shot” for fishing, that sort of thing–and I had to do research. To PRETEND to be uneducated. I didn’t know the name of a single sports player who didn’t appear in the Bible. I used to think “foul” was just a genre of bird. Oh, the shame.

My know-how has increased slightly over the years. For instance, I learned a few things about football when I played Intramurals in college, things like That is a goal, and If the ball is coming toward you, catching it would be preferable to playing dead, and Always aim for the boobs. I also mastered racquetball in the sense that I stopped losing eyes after a few weeks of playing. This native Texan even learned to snowboard two years ago, though ~~half of Pennsylvania’s~~ some ski lifts did have to be stopped on my account.

But! Now, we have a Wii, and I am vindicated. My husband may have grown up knowing the difference between tee-ball and golf, but boy I can THRASH him at virtual bowling. I have conquered tennis! Boxing! Skateboarding! The ever-popular hammer throw! No more stealing a TV from church to watch the Olympics*, not when I have recently found my calling as a world-class electronic athlete!

So really, the point of this post–besides embarrassing myself–is to remind you to be grateful while you’re watching the Superbowl tomorrow. Be grateful that you didn’t have to steal your TV from church. Be grateful that you live in a country where men have the right to run around in tights, body slamming each other. And most of all, be grateful that I’m not sitting next to you asking, “When is someone going to shoot a three-pointer already?”

*Keep in mind that this was back in the early ’90s when personal televisions were the equivalent of Satan sitting in one’s living room… unless, of course, one were careful to watch only the Olympics, only on a TV from church. The irony, it’s exquisite!

20Jan

Fish Pâté

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 5 Comments

Q: “Can you describe the exact sensation of being a dying and/or delirious fish?”
Normal, respectable, sane human being: “No.”
Me: “OF COURSE!”

So what, you ask, led me to my proud moment of gasping and flopping on a blue plush train seat, watching the air spin giddy circles around my head, feebly moaning with my rubbery fish lips for water?

That would be my husband. See, Dan knows some things that I did not use to know, like money is not essential for a European tour. Neither is common sense. And forty-five minutes is PLENTY of time to disembark from our international flight (provided it lands on time), gather our luggage, go through customs, buy Underground tickets, cross London, and get on the Chunnel train to France which, if missed, would leave us stranded in England with neither money nor common sense (which I did not yet realize were unessential).

Dan assured me we’d make it, and I wondered if “make it” was some European phrase meaning “die penniless, delusional, and certifiably insane when we get lost somewhere in East Upton Worcestershire and fail to mind the gap.” I, you see, am a realist. But wouldn’t you know it, the stars aligned. Our plane landed early. Our luggage came out first. The customs officer waved us through. We caught the Underground just before it left. We successfully minded the gap and donned our brick-laden backpacks and ran, and ran, and died briefly, and ran some more, and flopped onto our train with EIGHT WHOLE MINUTES TO SPARE. Even though I was delirious and a fish and all, gasping for breath on that blue plush seat was one of the most ridiculously exhilarating experiences of my life.

We made it, just like Dan said, and catching the train was just the first of many marvelous European adventures, including but not limited to getting lost in Paris, ordering pâté thinking it was potatoes, getting pregnant, getting lost in Venice, hiking in the Alps, getting lost in Zurich, antagonizing cows, getting lost in Paris again, climbing 16,300 steps (I counted), getting lost in London, and being interrogated in Iceland in Icelandic about the terrorist nature of our bottled water. Also getting lost in Iceland.

In case your head has not yet exploded from the vulgar number of lists in this post, here’s what I learned from that particular trip:
Money really isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of funness.
Neither is common sense.
My husband, in addition to being right, is a fabulous person to get lost in foreign cities with.
And most important of all, “pâté” does not mean potatoes.

13Jan

Mastercard’s Got Nothin’ On Us

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 10 Comments

We sit nose-to-nose in the tiny stone room that some say is the highest point in the city. We share a completely fantastic pizza made from ingredients that should never be put on pizza, like salad. (Daring, no?) We drink imported beer out of thick glass goblets–wine glasses on testosterone, basically–and laugh. We talk about the past and the future and mostly all the bits in between, and when dessert comes, we shut up. (Chocolate soufflé. You understand.) We wind our way through the cobblestone maze of Centro in the rain, holding hands and flirting shamelessly, and when we find ourselves back home, we smile.

This is date night, post-children edition. It is exactly like fine wine–rare and luxuriant, complex and lingering, inhibition-loosening and too expensive to indulge often. Yet as most indulgences are, date night is worth every penny… and then some. (Babysitter: €25.50. Dinner: €40. Half a liter of gasoline: €580.18. A whole evening to feel sexy and pretend to discuss things in an intelligent manner and remember why we like us: Priceless.)

Dating before kids was fun too, though usually less… sophisticated. We used to go to the wondrously horrifying dollar theater about once a week to watch movies we only cared $1 about and contract interesting diseases through the ripped plush upholstery. Afterward, we’d make out in the parking lot and grin when passers-by yelled at us to get a room, because hey, we’re married, even though we don’t look married because married people don’t make out in parking lots, and we already have a room, and ha!

Now that we’re parents two times around and legally Responsible Adults (to elaborate on a previous point, ha!), we tend to do more date-ish things on our evenings out. Dress up, eat at restaurants with real tablecloths, that sort of thing. But we still make out in the parking lot afterward, and I’m reminded every time why I wouldn’t trade our relationship–with its sparks and sand pits, its whimsicality and profundity, its ins and outs and especially the whirling in-betweens–for anything in the world.

4Jan

Serenity

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 10 Comments

The new year is already up and running, but I’m wandering somewhere on the other side of the line with untied laces, trying first not to choke on the dust, second to figure out how the hell to catch up, and third to find serenity in the midst of personal chaos. That’s my wish-on-a-star for this year–serenity. It was conspicuously absent last year, and I’m suddenly feeling desperate.

Don’t get me wrong–last year was fun… in the way that hurricanes and tornados and seizures are fun. It was like a twelve-month play date with a schizophrenic giant. Dan got his master’s, we were unemployed, we were homeless, we moved three times, we shipped our possessions and selves overseas without any guarantees, we started a new life in Italy, we had a baby, and our two-year-old inexplicably turned thirteen–each a circumstance saturated with stress. 2007 should have come with a label: “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: This year may be hazardous to your health; proceed at your own risk.”

I’m wildly glad we took so many risks to chase our huge dreams, not letting practicality or security tie us down. I also know that one day, I will realize how truly incredible the payoff is. But for now, I’m spent, running on a backup generator. This holiday break has been rather disastrous, with all four of us contracting bronchitis, influenza, or a hairy scary combination of the two, and I haven’t found the space to recharge. Thus, I find myself entering 2008 with my sanity tied in knots and my view of the future splattered with calamities.

If I still believed in the power of resolutions–or at least in my own power to keep them–I would make several:

To have fun with my girls every day.
To try cooking a gourmet recipe every week.
To learn Italian fluently.
To get in shape.
To reach out to new acquaintances without fear.
To rediscover God.
To make friends with new books and rekindle my friendships with old.
To write, constantly, with all the beauty and honesty and creativity I have to offer.

But I would give up these hopes, these efforts, this carousel of trying and failing and trying again if only to have a year drenched in serenity. Then, I think I could finally find the craziness to be me.

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