(1:22:55 PM) Me: I made myself an awesome wrap out of hummus, tabbouleh, tomato, irish cheddar, and lavash bread.
(1:23:09 PM) The Guy: that’s because you are awesome
(1:23:29 PM) Me: Are you still ass-kissing me because you forgot my birthday?
(1:23:41 PM) The Guy: no
(1:23:43 PM) Me: You could just send me flowers or something and call it square.
(1:23:50 PM) The Guy: tho today is apparently chinese valentines
(1:23:53 PM) Me: Why aren’t you still ass-kissing me because you forgot my birthday?
This is like the conversation you get when you ask your husband, “Which one of these jeans makes me look fatter?” Normally the Guy is much more wily than this. I can only ascribe this uncharacteristic lapse on his part to lunar influences, the Republican Party and maybe Satan.
At one point during lunch today I glanced over at Hobbes to find him dangling over the edge of his high chair, his head hanging, his wee arms waving aimlessly. His toy was on the floor. Well, of course it was on the floor: he had thrown it there.
Since this was the third time I’d picked it up for him, I wasn’t what you would call moved by his loss. “Do you expect gravity to reverse itself?” I asked the back of his head.
His arms stopped waving for a few seconds. He contemplated the floor. “Meep,” he said. And then his arms started revolving again in a hopeless helicopter movement that was intended, I suppose, to Jedi mind-trick the rattle back into his hands. Considering it was only a few months ago that his arms grew long enough to reach the top of his head, I considered this optimistic at best.
I was reminded of nothing so much as the T-Rex from Meet the Robinsons.
For those who are wondering, I eventually retrieved it for him, only to watch him toss it onto the floor and stare forlornly after it yet again. He spent half of the meal like that, draped over the edge of his high chair and waving his arms around. It kept him entertained, at least.
***
The wedding yesterday was actually quite nice, and was in a beautiful location — the Auberge du Soleil in Napa — though far, far, far away. A two and a half hour car ride with an angry infant was not high on our list of things we wanted to be doing that day (or any day, let us be honest) but in fact it wasn’t as bad as all that. Hobbes slept peacefully for about an hour of the trip, entertained himself for another half hour, and since the car ride was broken up by a stop at a diner that did serviceable omelettes, I had no real complaint to make either.
He started screaming half an hour from our destination. You know the sound a dentist drill makes when it starts grinding through your teeth? This was worse.
Our trip back, being plagued by tourist traffic and insane, out-of-town driving — I naturally exclude us from that definition — was a lot more painful. The Guy, never the most forgiving of drivers to begin with, began huddling over the steering wheel with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, muttering things under his breath that Hobbes will be punished for repeating someday. Hobbes was by no means reconciled to being trapped in his seat, for that matter; he spent a good 40 minutes screaming as we inched our way into San Francisco.
We stopped by Japantown for a break all around, and found a J-pop festival going on. We were too frazzled to take pictures, although I wish I had; San Franciscans have their own sense of style, but Japan takes things to a whole different, weirder plane. The best I can do is link to pictures that I found online at carouselofcrowns, a blog that I know nothing about except that it showed up on my google search for that day.
Hobbes? He was happy as a clam in mud. The Guy and me? Enh. We ate a couple of crepes at the Kinokuniya mall, stared with great interest at the goth lolitas, and eventually headed home through still more traffic, a little over an hour’s worth of driving.
There was more screaming. I’m not entirely sure it was all from Hobbes. We arrived home a little over 12 hours from when we’d set out, collectively exhausted and piecemeal grumpy.
“And that,” the Guy said grimly, “is the last social commitment I’m making for a while.”
“We should buy plane tickets for Seattle next week,” I said. “For Mom’s birthday, you know.”
His mouth said, “Okay.” His eyes said, “I hate you.”
“I love you too,” I said.
“Jesus,” he said.
I have no feelings about Him.
For the record, we are all still exhausted.
***
In other news, Hobbes is starting to stand on his own for a good half-minute at a time. He is extremely pleased with himself when he does it, though I’ve been noticing that the size of his head often overbalances him.
It must be difficult to have your center of balance located between your ears.
My relevant updates are fairly uninteresting, so I comment only that I am headed to a wedding this weekend that has, let us say, its peculiar elements. There are times when one does not want to see behind the curtain of the show to see how the gnomes and the hard-hatted squirrels get all the players into place — dinner springs to mind, or at least that portion of it that goes from grazing in the field to saran-wrapped packages in the meat department. Weddings are not entirely comparable to the gory transformations of the slaughterhouse, but … then again, maybe they are.
Anyway, exposure to unnecessary information is not part of my mental diet. I reject it.
me: I AM SO TIRED.
me: Hi.
Angela: Hi.
Angela: go to bed.
me: I need to go to bed. Hobbes’s been waking up at 5 AM lately.
me: (I’m too tired to move.)
Angela: can’t you drug them? or is that “unethical” or “bad parenting” ?
me: Hahaha.
me: I drug him with milk.
Angela: ah.
me: I bring him to my bed, curl up around him, and give him the bottle. And then while I feed him, I fall asleep.
me: if it works…
Angela: so, basically, he’s tucking you in.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I guess he is.
Isn’t that nice of him? What a sweet boy. Excuse me. I have to go to bed now.
“The thing with the Guy,” I told Sako, “is that he’s a failure as a romantic.”
“So’s John,” Sako said.
“He tries, but every time he fails. Like the time he brought me flowers on the back of his motorcycle and all the heads got ripped off by the wind–”
“John did that.”
“He did?”
“No, but it’s the kind of thing he would do.” She paused for thought. “Except that he wouldn’t buy me flowers to begin with.”
“Headless flowers.”
“You’re never going to let that go, are you? What’s it been, six years? Seven?”
“Anyway,” I said.
“Are you romantic?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with any of it.”
“Neither do I,” she confessed.
We’re neither of us romantic — the Guy and I, that is — at least with each other, though I suppose that begs the question who we would otherwise be romantics with. I have no answer for that. I suspect that both of us have silent yearnings towards self-expression in that direction, coupled with a deep-seated, insurmountable fear that we’ll be laughed at by the other party if we ever try to demonstrate it. Not an unfounded fear, truthfully; most of our relationship is based on mockery, laughter and nitpickery — the best foundation of any relationship being common ground, no matter what Dr. Phil may say — so it’s not unreasonable for the Guy to suspect if he brought me flowers and a box of expensive chocolates, I would point out that the flowers would just die and that I’m also a diabetic.
I satisfy my romantic cravings by reading Georgette Heyer novels in bed late at night. He satisfies his by playing Super Mario Galaxy on his Wii so he can save Princess Peach.
“You know what John would do?” Sako said. “He would fix the toaster.”
“So would the Guy,” I said.
“I would say on Sunday, I want toast, but our toaster’s broken, darn. And on Monday he would fix the toaster so I could have toast.”
“So would the Guy.”
“Except by then, I wouldn’t want toast anymore.”
“No. But it’s the thought that counts.”
“And that’s kind of sweet, right?” Sako said doubtfully.
“Right.”
“In a really dorky kind of way.”
“Yeah.”
We both fell silent for a moment. Then I ventured to ask, “Would he bring you the toast in bed?”
Sako looked thoughtful. “Is the bed broken?”
“No.”
“Then probably not.”
“The Guy might,” I suggested, though not, it should be noted, with any degree of optimism.
“John would fix the bed,” Sako said. “And that would be sweet.”
“Except that you sleep on the ground, in a sleeping bag.”
“He could fix the zipper, or sew a– he could fix the zipper.”
“And move some rocks around so you weren’t lying on them.”
