Me-ness

Mrs. Apron and I went to the King of Prussia mall together on Saturday. It was the first time I had been back at the mall in years. When I was a child, when my family was bereft of things to do, we all inevitably piled into my family's Oldsmobile, or Buick, or Toyota, or Pontiac or, finally, Saab, and went to the mall. It was the Saab that my father was driving when he ran my foot over in the parking lot in front of Bloomingdales when I was fifteen. That traumatic event marked our last family trip to the mall.

Those treks were getting a bit long in the tooth by 1995 anyway.

As Mrs. Apron and I parked the car at Bloomingdales, I stared at the facade of the immense retail space and said, "That's where he ran my foot over with the car," pointing to the curb cut by the entrance, "right there." I shook my head and laughed to myself because, really, it's funny. And I instinctively reached for my wife's hand, and she took it.

When my family would go to the mall together, my sisters, my mother and father and I, we would invariably split up. My sisters would shop for girl things with my mother, and my father and I would pal around together. I would drag him all over the place, to the K. B. Toys, where my dilated pupils would hungrily gaze at all the enormous die-cast cars in 1/18th scale. It was at K. B. Toys where my father first noticed me, as a nine-year-old, standing in the aisle, bent over, rubbing my hand against the small of my back like an octogenarian with spinal stenosis.

"Mummy," he asked, his brow furrowed, "what is the matter with your back?"

"It hurts," I said simply, my brow furrowed, too.

Scoliosis. Thanks, gene pool.

I would also take my father to the Electronics Boutique, where I would show him the backs of all the computer games I wanted. I invariably chose ones that our computer did not have sufficient memory of graphics capability, (remember VGA vs SVGA, 256 color requirements?) to run correctly, or at all. And these wastes of money that would not perform on our home P.C. were invariably not returnable because, in my excitement to use them, I had torn the box to shreds till it resembled hamster bedding.

That man wasted a lot of money on me.

Looking back on our time at the mall, I can't remember one time-- not one single time that he and I were together that he made me go to Macy's with him to look at sweaters for him, or... anything for him. Those trips were all about me, to fuel my interests and my desires and my wants and my perceived needs, and I had no idea.

On Saturday, I accompanied my wife to the mall for no other reason than for her to purchase new bras at Bloomingdales, because our impending twinnage has caused her to appreciably outgrow her current bustenhalters. Okay, we also got Auntie Ann's pretzels, too, but the bra shopping was the main event. And it took an hour. And all the while I stood out among all that lacy and frill and cups and straps looking like part husband and part pervert-- which I am both-- and I texted a friend to ameliorate my feelings of awkwardness by giving voice to them in those text messages.

And it helped.

I suppose I could have gone somewhere in the mall for myself that Saturday, but I had no desire to do so, and it wasn't just my counterculture distaste for the mall.

As we exited, we passed through the men's department (or "menswear" as they used to call it on "Are You Being Served?") and I saw a handsome cardigan, stylish and conservative at the same time. Ralph Lauren. My wife and I both went to it at the same time and investigated it. I didn't look at the price tag, but I didn't have to.

"I can't have anything for myself anymore," I said, half-jokingly, "because we're having twins and my life is over."

Mrs. Apron smiled at me.

"Or, you could say that it's important for you to still have things that you like so that you don't lose your me-ness," she said.

"Right," I said, "the me-ness of penis."

I don't know what that means, I just said it because it rhymed and it's sophomoric.

My me-ness.

Antique typewriters
Old telephones
Eyeglasses
Short-sleeve dress shirts
Skinny ties
Wing-tip shoes
Monty Python
Gilbert & Sullivan
Thrift shopping
Amateur theatre
Writing
Bacon
Coffee
Chocolate
Brash humor
Sensitivity
Introspection
Brooding
Crappy TV
Cuddle time
Worrying

I don't know what parts of my me-ness I'm going to lose once these twins come-- I suppose every parent loses some, as my parents did. Some of it is willing, some of it gets lost with a fight, and I guess what ends up after being funneled and distilled and wrung out by time and diapers and sleep deprivation and sacrifice will be the essence of my me-ness.

Whether I like it, or whether I don't.

Ah, Live Garden

I've learned precious few lessons in this loopy little life of mine, but, if there's one thing I have learned, it's that when you're bumming around on a Saturday with a twice-pregnant lady, and it's 3:40pm and you haven't had lunch yet, there's a very high probability that you're going to end up at Olive Garden.

I haven't been to an Olive Garden for probably nine years-- maybe more. I don't know. The mind plays tricks on one, like a cheap whore or a street mime. I can remember being at an Olive Garden-- the same Olive Garden, in fact, at which my wife, unborn twins and I dined yesterday at 3:40pm, and I can vaguely remember where I sat, but I have no recollection of with whom I dined, and/or under what circumstances. I'm reasonably sure it wasn't another pregnant lady.

Whatever the reason-- call it refinement or snobbery or circumstance or a typically logical and appropriate scheduling of breakfast and lunch, or a generalized ambivalence towards heaping portions of cheese-infused cheese, Mrs. Apron and I don't tend to end up at Olive Garden.

Yesterday, though, meals got screwed up-- way too much time had elapsed since breakfast, and there we sat, in chairs with casters, staring at a menu that was essentially coated in cheese, looking at meal options that were...

...expensive.

I mean, maybe to us they seemed expensive, and, to you, paying $16.50 for a lunch entree would be no big thing, and that's okay, because that's what makes America great-- that we all look at things differently, but I was kind of blown away. And not in the good way, where you're blown away by a cheap whore, or a street mime.

Anyway, not including the tip, our meal came to $31.47. Now, sure, I got a wildly overpriced Diet Coke, but we don't drink alcohol (neither do the twins), and we don't get appetizers, and so, frankly, to me, that's a large price to pay for an impulse-driven lunch.

At Olive Garden.

Sure, I get that they're building the cost of their unlimited salad and breadsticks into the cost of their entrees but still. Come on. This is basically dog food. And I say that with all due respect to the nation's Olive Gardens, their loyal patrons, and this country's pet food manufacturers, purveyors, distributors, and consumers.

(Disclaimer: This is where the post gets racist.)

So, Mrs. Apron and I couldn't help noticing that we were practically the only white people dining at the Olive Garden. I didn't really know what to make of that, except for the fact that this particular Olive Garden is located on the sort of dividing line between the suburbs of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia of Philadelphia. It's also right on the major SEPTA bus line, and I don't think it's terribly offensive to make the contention that minorities are heavy consumers of SEPTA mass transit services in the Philadelphia area. So, maybe it's just this and similarly-situated Olive Gardens, or maybe it's a blacknomenon. I don't know. And I don't care, it was just interesting.

You know, in that racist way.

The meal itself was fine-- unremarkable, I guess, if only for the fact that the waitress asked if we wanted grated cheese on top of our already superfluously cheesy meals, which I thought was uncheeselievable. While we were eating our salads, she came over with our entrees, looked at us, paused briefly, furrowed her brow and asked,

"Is something wrong?"

I wanted to say, "Yeah, there isn't enough cheese on this salad," but I didn't. When we declined her offer to further inflate our already-outlandish bill with dessert, she curled her lip down like a child pouting in a toy store. It was bizarre. I wanted to punch her in the face. Instead, I gave her a 20% tip because, sometimes, logic just doesn't enter into it.

I guess food at the Olive Garden is to Italian cuisine what No. 1 China takeout is to traditional Chinese fare. The one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. But we eat it anyway, because we like cheese and unlimited salad and breadsticks and cheese and it's 3:40pm when the waitress says, "Good evening, my name is Miika."

The Long, Slow End

Right now, there is a dog upstairs with me in the office as I type out these words. Her name is Molly. We call her Molly McButter, because, really, she basically looks like a stick of butter. When we adopted her from the Morris Animal Refuge, she was called "Miley", but we weren't going to have that happy horseshit. So we changed it. She didn't get it for a little while, but then, she did.

Right now, there is another dog in this house, but Finley isn't upstairs with me in the office. He's downstairs, in the living room. Incessant panting and sporadic yelps that echo up the staircase indicate that Finley wants to be up here in the office with me and Molly (well, okay, probably just with me) but it seems that Finley's upstairs days are over. On Thursday night, for the first time since he came bounding stupidly into my life in March of 2003, he and passed an evening on different floors of the same home.

If you could affix a lighted taxi sign to his hind quarters, it would flash "Out-of-Service". His back legs just aren't functioning anymore. They are atrophied, quivering shadows of their former selves. In the morning, he cannot rise up of his own strength. I have to scoop my hands underneath his big old gray butt and force him to stand up, while he tries to brace himself on his two front legs, which are going, too. I won't pretend that, once, I didn't accidentally shove my finger into his cornhole. I washed my hands five times that morning, but that finger smelled for hours.

Recently, the situation has crept perilously towards untenable, especially considering the impossible-to-blink fact that we've got twins on the way, and they are going to require scads of our time and attention, and having an ailing, failing dog on our hands, who is miserable, unpredictable, frequently unmovable, is, well, troubling.

On Friday, I thought Mrs. Apron and I were taking him to the vet for the last time, and that all we would return with was a leash. But that didn't happen, partly because Mrs. Apron declared herself unready to part with our big, gray friend. Partly because the vet encouraged us to try a last-ditch effort of Tramadol, anti-inflammatories, a new diet, and glucosamine supplements.

Is this going to reverse the damage that 13 (or is it 14, or is it 15?) years have done to deteriorate this dog's muscle tone, will it reverse or at least stabilize the probably severe joint pain he is enduring at every moment? I don't know. I have lots of doubts but, really, I don't know.

And maybe I'm a coward for not insisting that Finley be put to sleep in our arms as we sat on the floor of the vet's office and cried ourselves blind, like so many other dedicated and foolish and lovestruck pet owners have done before us, and will continue to do after-- but I don't know about that either.

I suppose that every pet owner ends up writing something like this, sooner or later, or, at least, they think about it. They feel it. They go through it. This is something you must go through as someone who loves an animal. I've owned a dog since 2003, but I've never gone through this-- the end.

The long, slow end.

I don't know what this is supposed to look like, all I know is what it's supposed to feel like. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, to protect my dog, to protect my wife, to protect myself. I don't know if I am to follow doctor's advice, or defy it.

In her post about this, my wife went back in her memory and shared on her blog memories of Finley, from when he was young and spry and fun.

I can't do that. I won't let myself go there. It's rather the same way that I won't take out old pictures of my wife and I, when we were new to each other-- not because we were happy then and we aren't now, but because I'm too afraid of looking back. When I was a boy, I would bring my baby album to my mother, climb up on the couch with her and say, "Mommy, let's reminisce." I had a vague notion, I suppose, of what the word meant, but I didn't realize that you can't really reminisce until you've grown old enough to experience memories in a more tremulous, fragile and, oftentimes, painful way. When you get older, I guess, there is that knowledge that what's passed cannot be repeated-- not the expression or the sentiment or the emotion or the circumstance. You can look at wedding pictures and you can even go back to the place where you got married, and it can feel good, and it can feel sweet, but it will never feel the same way it did on October 22nd, 2006-- it just won't.

And you can go back to the dog park, too. But Finley has to stay in the living room.

Goddamn, Thors and Thorettes: It's My Masonic Apron's 900th BLOGDAY!

Well, here we are, kids.

When I started this ass-crap, on Friday, March 13th, 2009, I was not just a 20something Blogger but, as that moniker would imply, a twenty-something.

Now, I'm a thirty-something. And not a 30something Blogger, because that website is all about Cialis and shit. And I can still get it up.

(Obvs.)

Speaking of which, as you know, in mid-to-late December, I'll become a father to two assuredly charming and awkward children. The way I figure it, my impending fatherhood will coincide nicely with the termination of this blog, or at least the obsessive, habitual, ritualized nature of the postings on this blog. I somehow don't think I'm going to manage keeping my marriage together, changing scads of freshly-sharted diapers, doing feedings, tummy-time, G&S lullaby-singing, working, and maintaining my sanity whilst blogging daily.

Will I still write on this site? Sure. Probably. We'll see. When my mother used to say, "We'll see" to me, it always, universally meant "No" but, when I say it, I really mean it.

We'll see.

At the rate I'm going, and have been going for some time, I'll reach a thousand posts before the children are born, and that'll be good, because reaching a thousand posts will satisfy that itch I have for roundness-- must be why I've always been a breast man. Lots of zeroes in a thousand. Lots of big, round... things.

900 is a good number, too, though-- don't get me wrong. But it's not the kind of number to crap out on, necessarily. Not at all.

Mrs. Apron suggested that, on this 900th post, I reflect on what I've been doing on here lo these many months, but I'm a little resistant to that idea. See, there's a fine little line between healthy self-analysis and a kind of neurotic self-absorption that threatens to envelop bloggers throughout Blogsylvania. And I don't want to be enveloped.

Unless it's during sex.

I go back and forth on whether or not I like blogging. If you're doing something for the 900th time, you'd think, "Well, fuck-- I'd better like this." But, even after all this time, I'm still not sure. I've always expressed myself better through the written word than I have through speaking. I get tongue-tied, emotional, my voice starts to break. I get confused, stymied, lost, unhinged, distracted. Caught up. Caught off guard.

Unguarded.

I don't like being caught off guard, and I don't like being unguarded. It's kind of a big reason why I don't do drugs, or drink. Or talk.

Writing is a way to bring it in, real thin. It's a way to make yourself vulnerable, and yet, at the same time, to keep everything firmly in check. Edited. Restrained. Controlled. Guarded. Even my work that appears to be the most wild, the most revealing, the most off-the-cuff, well, isn't. It's the illusion of familiarity and manufactured freedom. It's the performance aspect. It's me letting go, but not.

I think people who meet me after reading me (I make sure that there aren't many of those people) must be phenomenally let down, in a way. And bored. And confused. There's so much... quiet in me. So much furrowed brow and rumpled shirt and half-finished phrases and thoughts-- so much vacant glancing at my own shoes and socks. It's a good thing I usually wear interesting socks.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

I'm kind of surprised, in many ways, that we're here together, you and me. 900 posts. I sort of didn't think I had it in me-- the scourge of the sea, just little old me. Mrs. Hook's little baby boy.

(Sorry-- "Peter Pan" moment. It happens to me sometimes.)

In another way, though, I knew we'd get here. Because I couldn't let us not. I'm not ready to let go of... whatever this is.

Not just yet.

See you tomorrow, Pan.

Snoogle Up Close

Pregnancy, I'm told, does funny things to a woman's body.

"Things just aren't in the right place," my wife is fond of saying. And I suppose I know what she means, but only sympathetically, not empathetically. I can guess what she means, is what I'm saying. Like, there's two babies in there, pushing up against her bladder or whatever, taking up room, being weird and turny and tumbly and shit in there.

They're shitting. in. there.

Gross.

And her breasts are huge-- they're not where they're "supposed to be" either. They're everywhere, actually. Her belly isn't where it's "supposed to be".

Nothing is where it's supposed to be.

This makes things like reaching for a glass in the upper kitchen cupboard tricky for my 5'0" wife, because her belly is round and it goes up against the counter and it gets in her way because, you know, it's not where it's supposed to be. The counter or the belly-- more the belly, though.

Sleeping's kind of a biatch, too-- for my wife and, consequently, for me, too. It's a bit of a shit because, during this time of pregnancy, while the children are all ensconced in amniotic fluid and plasma and Jell-O or whatever it is, we're supposed to be getting all the sleep we're not going to have again for the next fifteen-or-so years.

And yet, at 21 weeks, we're not sleeping.

There was little sleeping in Ireland, because my poor wife is besotted by body parts that aren't where they're supposed to be. If Mrs. Apron could go back in time and star in a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, she'd be in the "Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things" because, in her life as a pregnant biddy, things are most definitely on top of other things.

And she can't sleep.

And, consequently, I can't sleep.

So, on the recommendation of several of our friends, we went to Babies R' Us on Friday afternoon to purchase a maternity sleeping implement, called "The Snoogle".

It looks like an enormous tapeworm. Or a big, white, turd.


Don't ya think?

It set us back $64.99 (plus tax) but, hey, I reasoned with myself after spending approximately $3,000 in Ireland, if it helps Mrs. Apron sleep, it's going to more than pay for it on its first night.

And it sure did.

Mrs. Apron passed a snoozeful night's rest on Friday night. I, however, had a terrible and fitful night's sleep. See, I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but this Snoogle is gigantic-- and we have a full-size bed. And we have two dogs-- fortunately one is elderly and arthritic and can't get up on the bed anymore. But the smaller, agile one sure can, and does. So, there's six of us up on this bed:

Mrs. Apron
Molly, the dog
Mr. Apron
Twin A
Twin B
The Snoogle

So, while Mrs. Apron was wrapped around the Snoogle, Molly was pressed up against me, and I was jammed up against the Snoogle. I woke up constantly, which was problematic for me, because I had to work on Saturday, and the alarm was set for 5:15am.

I didn't make it that long.

I woke up at 3:31am, with a bladder so full I'm sure my eyeballs were yellow, so I peed. Then I got back into bed and, eventually, I fell asleep.

And, apparently, it was at some point between that moment and 4:25am when I had sex with my wife's Snoogle.

I wish I could deny it, but there was copious, um, DNA evidence to suggest that's what happened.

I was dreaming about this Jamaican girl, who wasn't really Jamaican, but was a wizard, and, if I had sex with her, she would lose all of her magical powers and become a regular Jamaican, non-Jamaican human or whatever-- and, evidently, I got it into my head that freeing this woman of her wizarding powers was a good thing, so I balled her.

More accurately, I balled my wife's Snoogle.

I never thought of myself as the kind of guy who'd be unfaithful, the idea of cheating on the woman I love more than anyone else in the world is unfathomable to me-- the callous disrespect and disregard for her emotions and for the vows we made to each other on October 22nd, 2006 would be unthinkable to me. And yet, on Friday night, I cheated on her. In our own bed. While she was lying there, in a blissful, heretofore fleeting sleep, only a snoogle away.

Running Away Into the Night

When Mrs. Apron and I go to see shows, as soon as the cast takes its last company bow, we outtie.

I clutch her hand, we make a mad grab for our jackets, and we're flying down the aisle to get the fuck out of there. This is especially true if we've seen a show downtown and the car's in a parking garage and we just can't seem to remember if the lot is a 24/7 dealie or if it's open 24 hours a day. Once, we gambled and lost. The parking lot gates were locked, with our car inside. Had to call a friend who lives downtown to pick us up and drive us home. Had to pick up the car the next day. Had to feel retarded.

When we go downtown to see a musical, or an opera, or an offering of that charming in-between genre, an operetta, we jet quickly, as is our custom. Most normal people, I don't think, exit theatres like we do, as if they are engulfed in flames. They stand up, they stretch, they gather up their things, they take one last glimpse in the program to see where the hot girl who played the maid went to college so they can stalk her on Facebook, they use the bathroom, and they amble out of doors into the crisp, confident night.

We flee.

Other folks flee the theatre after a show, but they don't look like us. They're not holding onto playbills or ticket-stubs, they're not glowingly praising or cattily slashing the performance that just ended. They're dressed in black from head to toe, and they've either got large, black cases strapped to their backs, or they're wheeling impossibly huge silver or black cases in front of them. They're the pit orchestra members, and they're getting the f outta H.

And, I guess, why wouldn't they? It's not like they've got to hang around to be showered in adulation and approbation after a show. They may have done their part exceptionally well, providing soul-stirring music and they may have been a deft compliment to the onstage performers, but, when those lights go down, that's it. There's nothing for them.

And they know it. And they run.

Sure, in days of old, they got a perfunctory round of applause after the eight or nine minute overture, and the markedly shorter entr'acte, and they get acknowledged when the company indicates the pit during curtain calls, but, really?

I feel for the pit. I do.

The closest people care to get to most pit orchestra musicians is not after the show, but during intermission, where there's always three or four awkward-looking men in Dockers and/or plaid button-down shirts who wander aimlessly over to the pit and peer down there. I like to watch these people during intermission-- I call them Pit-Gazers, and they do gaze, in this slightly ambivalent, slightly interested, slightly dazed manner, craning their necks ever so slightly as they peer down into that musical abyss with a look on their faces that suggests they are casually regarding a moderately interesting zoo exhibit.

Ah, giraffes. Mm. One's sleeping. Mm-hm.

I got to thinking about pit orchestras yesterday when I came home from work and my wife was watching "Ellen". There was some blonde country-ish performer singing some vaguely twangy song that somehow mainstream America has decided it likes for whatever reason. She was just singing, not playing anything-- because anybody famous enough to be popular enough to be on "Ellen" can't possibly sing AND play an instrument. So, she was accompanied by a guitar player, a mandolin player, a fiddler, and some guy on a drum set. All the band members were vaguely lit, while the singer was bathed in Heaven's stage lights. When she finished singing, the audience went absolutely bucking fananas. Ellen stepped onto the stage and hugged and kissed the performer like they had gone to grade school together, and what followed was particularly embarrassing-- the guitar player standing to the singer's left stepped forward and offered Ellen his hand. And it was so awkward because, for a split second, she looked at him like he was crazy, like-- why would I shake your hand-- who the fuck are you? All you did was rock out on the guitar like a really talented musician. Anyway, she looked incredibly puzzled, and she hesitated, but then shook his hand limply, and I sat there on the couch and shook my head.

That poor bastard, I thought-- he doesn't get it. The only person who gives a shit that he was on "Ellen" was his wife or his girlfriend or, if he has both concurrently, both. I felt so ashamed by our culture that refuses to accept and reward talented musicians in favor of those who are "supposed" to be "featured", and I felt embarrassed, too. It kind of made me want to go running away into the night.

I'm Not Herbert Lom

But, these days, I look like him.

Of course, I don't look like him, really. I look more like Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfuss, the character he made famous in the "Pink Panther" films, being tortured into madness by the ineptitude of Peter Sellers' Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Clouseau's rampant and limitless bumbling, paired with his inexplicable and accidental good luck at solving the most complex heist cases, grated on Lom's character, who developed a tell-tale eye twitch whenever in the presence of Clouseau, or even just when his name was mentioned.

"CLOUSEAU!" a psychiatrist yells at the supposedly-healed Dreyfuss during a session at a mental hospital-- to assess Dreyfuss's response. The patient reacts with perfect calm and ease. Until, less than 10 minutes later, he has several unfortunate encounters with a pond because of his nemesis, the moustachioed and impossible to understand Clouseau.

It would seem that Lom's character Dreyfuss and I are kindred spirits, as I have developed a twitch under my left eye. It first appeared perhaps a year ago, stuck around for a few days, and went away-- whatever little muscle it was, I guess, no longer felt the need to assert itself and make its presence known so insistently. This time, though, it has come back with a passion. The twitch re-emerged early in June and it's been hanging around pretty consistently. Sometimes it's a quick pulsation, going up and down with great energy and verve, other times it's slow and faint. No matter the rate or force, I've got to tell you, it's fucking annoying.

And I feel kind of silly writing about it, because it seems like it's the kind of thing one might choose to write about if one were grasping at straws for something to write about, and if that's what it seems like to you, that's because that's true. I was rather stuck, actually, for a topic today, and I felt like asking someone for advice-- a friend or a wife or whatever-- but then I usually end up not using that person's suggested topic, and that probably makes them feel like monkey vom, and it makes me feel guilty for soliciting an idea that I'm most likely just going to shitcan anyway.

But I suppose you're supposed to write about what's on your mind, and what's on my mind most frequently is breasts, but I wasn't really in the mood to write about breasts, although I did recently have an illuminating conversation about breasts a couple days ago-- maybe that's why I don't feel the need to write about them-- and so I thought I would go to a topic that really can't help but be on my radar, and that's this ceaseless twitching below my left eye.

I wonder what people think when they talk to me for any length of time. If they're making any reasonable attempt at eye-contact, they've got to notice it. It must be very unsettling to look at. Most people are probably too polite to say anything about it. Anyway, what would they say?

"Jesus, how about that nasty-ass twitch you've got there, fella! What's the matter-- your eye have Parkinsons?"

I'm not terribly polite, at least, not with people I know well. A friend of mine is pregnant and I haven't seen her in a few months. She's going to pop next week. Anyway, I saw her for the first time in months last weekend and she is so fucking pregnant it's not even funny. And she's growing out-- straight out. It looks like her baby is wearing a hoop-skirt, for Christ's sake. She was wearing a size 2-XL t-shirt. And she was trying to talk to me and my eyes kept going, quite unabashedly, I might add, to her belly.

"I'm sorry, Amy," I said, "I'm just not even listening to you-- I can't stop staring at your fucking belly!"

Which, in a way, was probably a good thing, because she probably didn't notice my eye-twitch that way.

I'm thinking of naming my twitch "Herbert" after Herbert Lom. Since we found out that we're having twins, we've been talking a lot about names. Everything's a name thing now. We were watching Michael Palin's "The Missionary" last night, and one of the actor's names is Denholm Elliott.

"What about 'Denholm'?" I said to my wife.

"That's funny," she said to me. And I presume it wasn't about the movie. In reading up about Denholm Elliott for this post (yeah, I do research. Sort of.) I learned that he was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, and died of AIDS-related tuberculosis in 1992. That made me sad. Herbert Lom, however, who was born five years before Denholm Elliott, is still living, apparently. Lom is ninety-four, if you can believe that. I don't think Mrs. Apron will let me name the kid "Herbert" either.

Lom, originally from Prague, was born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru.

Now that's something to twitch about.

Herbie. Rides. Again. (!!!!!!!!)

The sequel's rarely better than the original. That said, everybody likes a triumphal return.

"Herbie Rides Again" isn't a very good movie, in spite of some admirable performances by Ken Berry and dame of stage and film, Helen Hayes. The sparkle and charm of the original movie, though, is gone. The A-list celebs are nowhere to be seen: Dean Jones, Michelle Lee, Buddy Hackett, and David Tomlinson all said, "Thanks, but no thanks," to once again co-starring beside a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. As sequels go, it's about average, but, much unlike the original, it's nothing special. But there's something about the title that indicates that the film, or at least its namesake, aspires to greatness. There is something valorous that we all like about an underdog getting up to fight again, to shake off dirt and failure that threatens to be permanent, but is really momentary to emerge hopefully victorious.

In 2009, Mrs. Apron and I miscarried, and we were heartbroken. We had told people we were pregnant, and we had told them far too early, and then we had to untell. Fortunately, with most people we knew, we only had to untell them with our eyes. One look at us and they knew. My director of "Pirates of Penzance" knew. We were staging "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" and, when the piano tinkled, I doddered and fuddled appropriately, but, during the downtime, while choreography was hammered out, or choral notes were finessed with the assistant music director, the director, a close friend of mine, watched me. During a break, she took me out in the hall and held me for what seemed like a very long time.

"I love you," Julie said as she ran her hands along my back and I stifled sobs in the hallway. Years ago, she'd lost her son-- all but 19-- in a car accident while he was on his way back to college after winter break. She knew all about loss. It doesn't go away.

"Sometimes," she said to me, "I get in the shower, run the water at full blast, and I just scream and scream and scream."

I never screamed about our miscarriage, not in the shower or anywhere else. That's not to say that I didn't grieve-- it's just not how I grieve, I suppose. I wanted to scream, and rage, and throw things, but I didn't. What I think I might have done, looking back on it, was displace a fair amount of my grief and I probably morphed a significant portion of it into worry and despondency for my wife. In that respect, one might say I didn't exactly "own" the loss, and one could definitely make that argument. And I wouldn't argue.

I think one of my greatest fears is dying before I get a chance to do the things in life at which I will excel. Fortunately, I've acted in a fair number of plays, musicals, and operettas, and I've been appreciated by audience members. I've written a lot that has been seen, and I've written a lot that has never been seen. I've been an efficient friend and confidant to probably enough people, and I've been a loving son and brother. Not gonna lie: as a husband, I think I'm pretty much the shit. The only thing, really, that I haven't had the chance to do that I think I'd be good at is being a father, and so, when the miscarriage happened to us, I think I focused on the fact that I might not get the chance to, well, do that.

Well, this is my sequel.

We're twelve weeks pregnant. And, yeah-- there's two of them in there.


And that's scary, and that's amazing, and that's actually maybe a little dramatic for my taste, which is an admittedly funny thing for a former theatre major to say, but it's overwhelming, almost like I'm pushing the shock-factor a little too hard.

But it's true. There's two.

1

and

2

Come to me, my little love bugs. Let's dim the lights and start the sequel.

This Post Is About Sex

Actually, it's not about sex. I just thought I would put that as a title to try to get more people to read the post. Call it marketing.

What this post is about is surprises, and I suppose the only way surprises could really be related to sex is the charge facing Julian Assange, which is "Sex by Surprise," which sounds like it could be the title of a Neil Diamond album.

(Fortunately, it isn't.)

As I write these words (5:43pm, Thursday) my wife is planning on taking me somewhere special for dinner. I'm not quite sure why, of all nights, we're going out for dinner somewhere special. I don't think May 19th is some sort of event in our history together. If it is, I'm going to be in the shit. But I don't think it is. I don't think she has some kind of good-for-one-night-only coupon to Applebees or something. We're way too uppity for that shit.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Apron texted me while I was at work with a rather cryptic message, stating, "I have an awesome idea for something you really would like to do tonight. It involves food, no carabiners, and no harnesses. Lots of vaseline and ropes, though."

I think she's kidding about that last part. But, just in case she's not, I've got our vinyl facemasks with the zipper mouth openings tucked away in the glovebox. The mention of "carabiners and harnesses" is a not-so-subtle reference to the surprise my wife planned for my birthday which was...

(Drumroll, please...)

Indoor rock wall-climbing.

......................................................

I figured out where she was taking me the night before it was scheduled to happen.

Me: "What am I supposed to wear to this alleged surprise?" I asked my bride.

Her: "Um... comfortable clothing..."

Me: "Okay. What about on my feet?"

(Pause.)

Her: "Sneakers."

(Pause.)

Me: "Are we going rock-climbing?"

(She looked at me.)

Her: "Yes." (Pause. Cue Mrs. Apron tears.) "You don't want to go, do you?" she whimpered.

Truthfully, she was right, and she knew she was right. I didn't want to go. Why the fuck would I want to go? What about my personality, my fears, my proclivities, my preferences, my tendencies, my interests, my frail sanity would make anyone think I would want to strap myself to a harness and climb up a fucking wall and then come down, only to have to do it again?

I wanted to flip out at her and ask her that very question, but, instead, I sucked it up, because the woman I loved was crying pre-emptively because she knew she had disappointed me, and so I did what I had to do and I said,

"I do want to go." And I plugged the dam. Frankly, I don't think she believed me, but it was enough to quell the tears, and it sealed the deal. The next day, I was going indoor rock-wall climbing.

Surprise.

I didn't really enjoy myself. Surprise. I was way too preoccupied with judging the speed (or lack thereof) with which I acclimated myself to the harness, knot-tying, and (to me) complex instructions delivered in a rote fashion by the staff member at the rock wall gym. When I was the climber, it was no problem. In spite of my predictable fear of heights, I zoomed up the fucking wall-- aided in that vertical venture by my monkey arms and legs. It was when I was the belayer, responsible for the safety of the woman I love more than anything in the world, that I freaked out inside, sweating like a bastard, hands trembling as I clutched onto the rope and the break for dear life, absolutely panic-stricken that something stupid I would do would send my beautiful Mrs. Apron plummeting to earth, damaging her skull and our marriage.

Fortunately, none of the various disaster scenarios I violently and graphically saw in my head throughout the afternoon came to pass, and, after three hours, we were sitting together, bathed in steep sunlight at a sidewalk café, she enjoying a veggie-burger, me plowing into fried clams and cuban-style egg rolls. Which was definitely more my speed.

Surprises are funny, you know-- rather like sex, I suppose. You build them up, trying to discern what the other person is going to like, and sometimes you get so wrapped up in thinking about it and planning it and obsessing over it, you forget just a little bit about what you're doing (or why you're doing it) in the first place. But, even when they're not quite what you wanted or expected, surprises generally turn out just fine.

You know, like sex.

C Minus

My wife went away to Providence to visit her family this weekend, and I walked through our house as one who wanders vacantly and purposeless.

That's not completely true -- it's partially true -- and, besides, it sounded poetic as fuck.

I was, I'll admit, a little lost. Not lost in the way that you'd expect a traditional, stereotypical American husband to be "lost" without his wife, in that I didn't shrink all the laundry, I didn't blow up the microwave, and I didn't forget to shower, eat, or go to work. Yeah-- this was my weekend to work, and I think that's probably for the best. Had she gone away and left me alone with no scheduled activities or responsibilities, I might have fallen apart. But we'll never know.

Fortunately.

I don't know about you, but I engage in rather a lot of self-critique -- of my writing, of my habits, of the random shit I say to people throughout the day, of my so-called "performance." I guess it's natural for a recovering theatre-major to evaluate his/her performance. And it's not so much, "Was that thing I said to that person at 2:35pm funny, or was it misconstrued?" (although I definitely do that kind of micro bullshit analysis, too) but it's much more of a self check-in -- like, "How'd I do today?"

Was I effective as an employee and a coworker?

Was I a good husband, son, brother, friend today?

Did I utilize my time in a manner that brings shame and embarrassment to me, or was my time utilized efficiently, appropriately, and rationally?

Really-- I'm not German. I swear.

On a grading scale, using the Bell Curve and points for extra-credit, I'd give myself the Weekend Without my Wife grade of C-.

First of all, I broke Passover -- on Friday night. It felt salacious and inappropriate and almost like an act of infidelity. And, what's even worse: I broke Passover at my parents' house. When I walked into the dining room, there was matzah on the table. I was relieved. Then they brought out toasted bread.

"But..." I mumbled. Then, the main course came out.

Shrimp. And pasta.

Then there were Snickerdoodle cookies for dessert. It was the unholiest, unkosherist, fuck God up his asshole till it bleeds bloody yeast dinner.

Ever.

And I ate it lustily, and even had leftover shrimpies for lunch the next day.

So that... wasn't good.

I was very good at the working part of the weekend. I did my usual thing, was very effective and compassionate and funny and it was a successful weekend at work -- so that bumped my score up significantly.

Then, the night came. As Mark Twain once wrote, we are "never quite sane in the night." Well, that's me. Without my buddy here, without the activities in which we engage when the sun goes down (oh, shut up, you pervy child), I was most definitely lost. Saturday night was an utter befuddlement. It was as if my face was attached to the computer monitor. I blogged. I watched porn. I flitted time away on Facebook. I ate dinner at the computer, which struck me as incredibly pathetic, even though it was normalized behavior back in college.

Then, I tried to watch "The Wire," which I had never seen before. I made that my status on FB and was inundated with inane comments from people I haven't heard from in ten years, leading me to come to the conclusion that I ought never to mention anything popular on Facebook ever again. Three minutes into Episode 2, Season 1, the DVD crapped out. Twice. Utterly frustrated, I stared at the floor for twenty minutes before deciding to fold the two bag's worth of laundry that I'd done earlier in the evening.

Oh, and I vacuumed, too.

In John Irving's "The Cider House Rules," the character Candy says that she is "just no good at being alone." I suppose I'm not either. Not quite co-dependent-- just not so good at being alone. I get out-of-order, unfamiliar, unpleasant. I also get ashamed. Why wasn't I picking up the phone calling people I know and haven't seen for a while to get together? Was I afraid they'd brush me off?

Was I afraid they wouldn't?

I actually did search for concerts or plays to go to Saturday night -- but nothing piqued my interest. I feel like I actually would have gone to hear a singer-songwriter or see a show by myself, but I can't imagine I would have enjoyed it very much. Besides, who would I have made fun of people with on the way home?

So, all things considered, I gave myself a C-. I've done worse, of course, and I'm not particularly ashamed of that grade, to be honest. In many ways, I think I kind of expected it. Fortunately, my buddy's back. And I feel some grade inflation coming on.

(Perv.)

Where the Truth is Always Told

I like to think of this blog as a place where the truth is always told, but that's not what this post is about.

Besides, it probably isn't true anyhow.

------------

A long time ago, before my wife was my wife, we were driving in her old PT Cruiser up to Plattsburgh, New York, where she had done a bit of her growing up, once upon a time. Back in the dark ages of 2004 or thereabouts, there were no Sirius Satellite Radios or iPods (at least, not for us there weren't) and so we did what people have been doing for decades when their cars meander into unfamiliar interstates-- we fiddled with the radio dial until something agreeable came on. We were hoping for the local NPR affiliate, because we're Jewish and educated and white and all, and we might have found it, I'm not exactly sure. It was 90 point somethingorother, but it was the lovely, friendly baritone voice that stopped my finger on the dial. He was singing a charming tune, a sweet song, a song about what it is to love someone unwaveringly, through the years. The song was called "The Thing that Makes You Beautiful," and the warm, rich voice that sang it through the plain-Jane speakers of that PT Cruiser was Michael Cooney.

It asks a simple, sweet, honest question of a love:

"Won't you let me be your mirror,
Where the truth is always told?"

And, really, isn't that what we all want from the one we love?

I made sure to remember Cooney's name when it was announced by the probably plaid-shirt-wearing DJ, or maybe the future Mrs. Apron wrote it down on a scratch piece of paper. I don't remember but, either way, it stuck. When we got home from our trip to the NY Hinterlands, I went to Cooney's website and ordered the CD, "Together Again" which featured the song that swept us up in schmoopiness. Because Cooney's website was as quaint as he is, you had to send in your orders via mail and pay by check. I included a note about how my wife and I found his song by accident, and how we basically found each other by accident, too.

Cooney sent me the CD, and a very sweet, handwritten note that I probably still have in a tin cigar box where I keep all very sweet, handwritten notes that people send me, for whatever probably misguided reason. As October, 2006 approached, Mrs. Apron and I planned for our first dance to be "The Thing that Makes You Beautiful."

"The Irish trio can take a break for our first dance-- it'll be awkward for them, but I don't care," I said to her. She agreed.

Of course, because I'm a tremendous ballcock, I had lost the CD, and, with the wedding date fast approaching, we were without our first song.

So, I sent another note, and another check, to Cooney. This time the note was a longer one, full of self-deprecating remarks about my ballcockness, and I also briefly shared with him the story about my wife's brain surgery, as I learned in the liner notes of the CD I'd lost that Cooney was in a head-on car crash at the hands of a drunk driver and had himself undergone two craniotomies. Thus, the title of his CD, "Together Again" finally made sense. He was, at last, put back together again.

Cooney, very quickly, mailed back another copy of "Together Again," another nice note wishing Mrs. Apron and I all the best. He also mailed my check back.

Since we married, I have done my best to be Mrs. Apron's mirror, where the truth is always told. It isn't easy, because sometimes you don't want to hear the truth, even from your mirror. Especially from your mirror. And sometimes even a mirror shrinks from its responsibilities in favor of a quiet, taciturn night, or even out-and-out cowardice. But a mirror tries to discharge its duties, its sworn, avowed duties, in fact, as any promise made on a wedding day is sacrosanct.

Sometimes, being a mirror to Mrs. Apron is as hard as dissecting a particularly painful therapy session with her, after the dust settles, and the tears come. Sometimes it is as hard as sorting through the mess and detritus that is her family, and mine. Sometimes it is as easy as telling her she has a huge smudge of chocolate on the left side of her face, left numb after her own brush with neurosurgery.

Of course, that's not really that easy either.

Showering with the Coworkers

My wife and I started our new jobs on the same day: September 13th. She went to work at a private charter school. I went to work at a mental hospital. We were both trying to find our way in this tremblingly wicked little world, trying to find jobs that would keep us afloat, keep us engaged, keep us coming back for more, keep us from going mad.

(Yes, people go to work at mental hospitals to keep from going mad. Well, people like me do.)

"I'm just excited to be working with people who have teeth," my wife said. Some of her coworkers at her former place of employ were from, well, different walks of life than she. And that's okay, as long as there's one or two people with whom you can have a decent conversation. As a Jewish vegetarian, I can't really imagine what it must have been like for her during work potlucks, surrounded by the endless parade of ham-salad and french onion green bean casserole.

Mung.

Coworkers are funny. Some people go out to bars with their coworkers. Some people become friends with their coworkers, or lovers, or even life-partners. My eldest sister works for my father. And she spends a fair amount of her workday crying in the bathroom.

'Nuff said.

Whether you hit the bar or the bowling alley with your coworkers, or whether you wouldn't never consider doing either, you spend a relatively significant proportion of time with them-- even if you never see them after your workday ends. Having coworkers that you can connect with is important, some might even say that it is vital. Yes, there are going to be some that you cannot stand, some that you'd rather gnaw your own eyelids off than spend ten minutes with in the same cube-code. There are also going to be some that you'd like to have been elementary school friends with, had you the luxury of shape-shifting and rearranging and DeLoreanizing. Most of them, though, are just kind of there, and wouldn't it be nice to make some sort of human connection with them? Nothing earth-shattering. Nothing involving bodily-fluids or even omlettes, but a moment that says, "Hey, you're human, I'm human, we're both humans who breathe the same air for forty hours every week together. Let's bond over something, for Christ's sake."

My wife works with a guy who drives a Jeep Compass. Because my wife has The Car Gene, she notices things like this and, also because she has The Car Gene, she knows that a Jeep Compass is usually exclusively reserved for women. Especially a Jeep Compass with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker on it.

"It's probably his wife's car," I surmised, "he must be borrowing it while his Plymouth Gran Fury is in the shop."

But it wasn't so. Week after week, Dude McGee showed up for work at my wife's school in a Jeep Compass with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker slapped on its ass, Mrs. Apron reported to me.

"Wow," I replied, with typical eloquence, "that's gay."

And, really, it was.

"Hey," I said, "you should send him a link to that "Car & Driver" Rental Car Olympics test-- he'd probably get a kick out of it."

I am referring to a highly enjoyable set of tests the C&D staff put four rental vehicles (Ford Mustang, Lincoln Town Car, Jeep Compass, and some Cadillac piece of shit) through, including Which Car Goes Fastest in Reverse? (Town Car -- 63mph!) and which car does the handbrake parking test best?

It wasn't the Compass. In fact, I don't think the Compass won any of the tests. That's why I knew she needed to send the link to the web version of the article to her coworker. Any man who drives a Jeep Compass (with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker on it, no less) must have a sense-of-humor about it.

Turns out, he did. Sort of.

"That was really great," he told Mrs. Apron at work yesterday, "but my car did so poorly!"

Um, yeah. You might as well drive the Malibu Barbie Corvette.

"Thing is-- people don't like it because it's a 4-cylinder and has no power. But I drive it like a little old lady and I actually get pretty decent gas mileage."

I hope that by driving it "like a little old lady" doesn't infer that he drives it whilst wearing diabetic compression stockings and orthopedic shoes.

"Thanks for sending me that link," he said, "it was great."

Mrs. Apron was very happy to now have a connection, a fun, lighthearted, gentle ribbing connection with a coworker.

"That's wonderful, buddy," I said, quick to encourage socialization for either of us as a sign that we're not complete retards, "I had a connection like that at work today, too!"

"Cool, buddy!" my wife said. "Tell me about it."

"Well, a couple of the nurses and social workers were in the chart-room talking about peeing in the shower,"

"Of course they were," my wife intoned.

"And then, of course the conversation turned to masturbating in the shower..."

Soon, I Will Jit in a Cup

And, later that day, I will blog about it.

Because that's the kind of society in which we live, and that's the kind of guy I am. And, fortunately, that's the kind of wife I have-- who will tolerate my exposing explicit and painful components of our lives to you, all-too-perfect strangers-- and not divorce me and/or pelt me in the junk with a tennis ball.

Such an act of junkular violence, obviously, would rather run counter to our procreation mission.

When we miscarried in the autumn of 2009, I innocently thought that we could wait the prescribed three months and just, you know, make it happen again. Turns out that, unlike ordering the "Rooty-Tooty Fresh & Fruity Breakfast," is easier said than done.

On Friday, Mrs. Apron went to a fertility clinic. They have prescribed her hormone medication. They're going to inject dye into her girl parts and take a look to see what shape everything's in. They're going to test her blood.

And, of course, they're going to test my spunk.

I'm not thrilled about this prospect, but I'm trying to be positive and mature about it. As you might imagine, neither comes naturally to me.

Heh-heh. "Comes."

See?

The good thing about the semen analysis is that I get to masturbate into a cup in the comfort of my own home on a Wednesday morning, and then drive it over to this clinic on my way to work. I don't have to do it in the exam room like some creepy bastard, and I don't have to let the scrubs-adorned pony-tailed chippy behind the counter know any of my peculiar pornographic proclivities. Which is nice.

What's going to be weird is that, on Wednesday mornings, my wife is at home. Like, how is this going to work-- logisitically speaking? I'll wake up, get dressed, walk the dogs before they explode all over the place, and then, like... what? Will I be here upstairs jackin' away while she's downstairs eating her "Smart Start"?

I mean, weirdsies.

There was a funny thing in the packet that says, "Occasionally, due to religious reasons, the sample may have to be obtained during intercourse. A special condom designed for this purpose will be provided." My wife read it to me and we laughed. Good ol' Catholics: saving the day with a dose of ice-breaking "Every Sperm is Sacred" comedy once again.

There is, of course, nothing funny-- about Catholics or infertility-- going on here, but I don't know what else to do at this point but be an idiot. Really, it's kind of my default. And thank God Mrs. Apron encouraged me, or at least allowed me, to blog about this.

"You realize that, if I do that," I said to her on Friday afternoon after her appointment, "that I'm going to do it my way, right?"

She smiled at me.

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

"Ha!" I laughed, "or more."

"Exactly."

I want a baby-- a son or a daughter, but not both at once, please-- and I will jit in a cup if it means that we'll be one step closer to the life we've wanted together for a very long time. I'm not in a rush or a hurry, but I am getting a little impatient to get started with this next part of our lives. It's not a contest, or a race, or a anything, really. And it's certainly not a joke. But, sometimes, it's really all I've got.

Well, that, and a hell of a lot of love.

Selective Omission

I can remember very clearly the moment in 2004 when I told my mother that my then-girlfriend was taking me on a ski weekend. She was sitting on the living room chair, her legs criss-crossed underneath her, wearing one of her trademark, after-6pm-sweatsuits made by Russell Athletic (the kind I used to wear in elementary school-- no, to elementary school) and she looked at me. She looked at me with those thin-lips and those crinkly eyes that made you feel instantly that you were no longer talking to your mother, but rather a psychoanalyist, or an assistant principal. Or Carl Jung's assistant principal. In a gray sweatsuit.

Anyway, my mother looked at me and she asked one simple question, the way my mother often does. There isn't a barage of interrogatives or pejoratives. That would be a waste of carefully cultivated and conserved breath on her part. She uses her breath quite sparingly, though her wit gets a healthy dose of exercise. She tilted her head to one side and regarded me for a moment before asking,

"Now why would you go and do that?"

Of course, I know what she meant. I mean-- I'm her son-- even back in 2004. She didn't mean, "Why are you [specifically] doing that?" She knew why I, the carbon-based form of life that is, was, and always will be her only son, was going skiing. The answer to that question would have been quite painfully obvious: I was falling in love. And anybody who's ever known anybody who's ever fallen in love will tell you that people who fall in love do all manner of moronic, insipid, and/or potentially dangerous things. So, clearly my mother's question wasn't why I was going skiing. The question was: why would anybody go skiing?

Anybody. Ever. In the world. She could not fathom it.

And, really? I get that.

Why would anybody in their right mind shove their feet into constricting, heavy, ridiculous-looking boots, shove those boots into fiberglass planks (that you're then supposed to wax, you know-- to make them faster) and then hurl yourself down a fucking snow-covered mountain in the middle of winter?

After skiing now for seven years, even I can't really explain it. I guess for me it's still about love. Ski slopes are my wife's happy place, and now that she no longer skis with her father, I want to, and I guess I'm really supposed to be the man who makes that happen. Although, now that I have new skis and new boots that don't tear large chunks of skin off my feet, I'm actually really starting to enjoy it for its own sake. (Don't tell my mother! She worries!)

As you go through life, you hear a lot of stereotypes-- some perpetrated by mass media. Some by your family and your friends. Some by the balding jackshit in the burgundy button-down shirt at work. I don't really mind stereotypes very much, because they're either true, or they're ridiculous, or because I recognize them as defense mechanisms or tools of the ignoramuses in our midst. I generally just don't pay them much mind. But one stereotype in particular really sort of gets on my wick, and that's the stereotype of the Jewish mother as The Worrier-- especially when it comes to her children. I find this stereotype annoying for several reasons:

* It implies that other mothers don't worry about their children. I kind of have a problem with that.

* It paints the picture of Jewish mothers fainting on couches and having panic attacks and fanning themselves with large brassieres whenever little Schmuelie goes out with a couple of friends for the evening.

* It creates a very uneasy feeling inside of me when I talk about my mother to people who don't really know me very well and they go, "Oh, your mother must really worry about you!"

Well, actually, yeah. She does worry about me. She worries that I'm depressed. I think, in high school, she worried that I was gay. My freshman year in college, when I was mercilessly bullied and harrassed by 3/4ths of the residents of my hall, I'm sure she was worried that I was going to commit suicide. She worried about me the first time I was prepared to become a police officer. And the second time, too, eight years later. When I was a little boy, full of neuroses and eccentricities, I'm sure I gave her plenty to worry about, as I impersonated Andy Rooney in my room alone and memorized entire episodes of "Fawlty Towers" for fun. And, every day, she worries about me entering a locked psychiatric facility that houses some of the most acute and assaultive patients in the state.

Wouldn't your mother worry about that? And wouldn't she worry about that whether she was Jewish or not? I kind of think so.

My mother doesn't worry because she's Jewish. She worries because she has chronic anxiety. Once, when I was seven or eight, she told me about a nightmare she had. She and the three of us kids were playing on the beach on summer day, and she saw some ships in the distance. By the time they got close, thousands of what she described as "naked, screaming Koreans" started jumping off the boats into the water, and then running towards the beach-head, screaming their heads off. "There were thousands of them," my mother told me, "running and screaming towards us, and I scooped all three of you up and I ran."

Now, I don't know what you think-- but I don't think that's the dream of some Jewish mother worry-wart stereotype; that's the dream of someone who's scared to take a piss lest Jaws sinks his teeth into her ass.

"We don't need to tell your mother that I bonked my head on the ski-slope today," Mrs. Apron said to me on the way home from the Poconos last night. "All we need to tell her is that you did really well and are making fabulous progress."

"No shit," I said, "it'll be like the news from Russia-- selective omission. We'll just conveniently forget to tell her, also, about the guy we saw lying in a snowdrift waiting for EMS who was shouting about his broken arm, and we don't need to tell her about parents who send their five-year-olds down black diamond slopes, and we don't need to tell her that we ski around people who are probably inebriated by one o'clock in the afternoon either."

"Ah, news by selective omission-- it's really better that way," my wife said confidently.

"Fuckin' aye."

Triggers, Coping Skills, and Registraion, Please

I talk a real good game.

Really, I do.

That's why you're still here, you know. You haven't figured out what an immense fraud I am, in spite of the fact that I've provided you with untold amounts of factual evidence to support that contention. In spite of the fact that I just told you I'm an immense fraud. You haven't quite gotten the message yet, because you like my shenanigans. You freak.

Or, maybe you already know I'm an immense fraud, and you just don't care. I don't know which makes you a bigger freak. Either way: you're a fraud and I'm a freak. No, no-- wait. Strike that. Reverse it.

Or not.

Day in and day out, I sit across the table from people whose arms look like a freshly filleted hibachi steak, people who are labile or homicidal or disogranized or disheveled or depressed, or detoxing-- and I talk to these people about things like triggers. What is it that sets you off? What makes you descend into either a passing or a momentous sadness?

Is it a song on the radio? Is it loud noises? Is it physical or environmental? Is it pay-day, or Christmas, or a certain person? A certain street-corner? Is it getting the flu? Is it me, or is it you?

I talk to them about how anything can be a trigger, anything for anyone. I talk about the big things, like September 11th, and the little things, like February 14th, and everything in between. I talk about how triggers are going to happen because life happens around us-- we cannot control that. All we can control are our reactions to these triggers.

And, while on the subject of those reactions, I talk to these people, and believe me, they talk back, about coping skills. What do we have in our personal arsenal (actually, perhaps "toolbox" is a better word to use around people with weapons charges and some with a penchant for a little good ol' fashioned pyromania) to assist us in dealing with situations where we are triggered? Can we go to a "safe place," either a literal one or a figurative one, in our mind? Can we summon up a soothing melody, or journal, or call a supportive friend or loved one? Can we take a walk? Can we immerse ourselves in a good book? Can we use a stress ball?

Can we talk to someone?

For so many of the patients with whom I work, the answer is, sadly, "no." Either family have disowned them or distanced themselves, friends are users and shitheads, therapists are unavailable or non-existent-- many of these people are alone in their heads. And, for some of these folks, that can be as scary as being a four-year-old at bed-time who's petrified of the dark.

For all of my good-talker, talks-a-good-game talk about triggers and coping skills and the like; I lost it yesterday. I got triggered. Coping skills where like, wha wha what? And I just fell apart.

Nobody died. Nobody got sick. There was no jarring phone call at 3:00am to let you know that a loved one's pelvis had exploded or a friend had wrapped his Durango around a 7-Eleven. I just... couldn't find my registration card for my car.

Yeah. And I wasn't even stopped by the police. I needed it so Soly, my cantankerous, 67-year-old Israeli mechanic, could inspect my car.

I had brought him my insurance card, and the title to my car, which I own outright. I thought that would be enough. He was talking on the phone when I walked into his garage-- which, somehow, you're allowed to do. Take that, OSHA. As soon as he saw the title in my hand, he held out his hand to me, in the "No," format, and said to the person on the other end of the phone,

"Look, if the car has a problem here, it will have a bigger problem out on I-95, so, either you want my help, or you don't. So, think about that, and let me know. Shabbat Shalom." And he hung up. It was my turn.

"What the fuck is that?" he said to me, staring at me icily, as if I had just walked into his garage with my dick hanging out of my fly, still slimey after impregnating his daughter.

"What?" I asked innocently.

"I don't want that. I don't want the title. I need the registration card. With the barcode."

I stared at him. And then he started yelling at me.

I'm used to Israelis yelling at me. It's happened all throughout my life, at some of its finer and some of its lower points. My father has let me have it with his explosive, broken-English tirades more times than I can count. I've been getting my car fixed at Soly's since I was sixteen, and I know that walking into his garage is about as emotionally safe as walking into a snake-pit. There is always a chance that you're going to get venomized by an Israeli slitherer.

I had been operating under the impression that, when you owned your car outright, that your title was your proof of ownership, that you no longer got that registration card with the barcode. It's not true. I got the car in April of last year, and so I just didn't remember getting the registration card. I searched with maddening frustration through my wallet, and I threw some things around haphazardly in my glovebox. Nothing.

Defeated, my wife drove me home. Soly would fix my hazard light switch on Saturday, I told myself, and the inspection and emission test would just have to wait until I ordered another fucking registration card from the state.

When we got home, I searched everywhere I could think of for that fucking card. In the pile of clutter and disorder of old cellphone holsters and bumper-stickers and gloves and cards and watches (pocket and wrist) on top of my dresser. I looked in a wallet I had abandoned earlier in the year. Just expired gasoline credit cards.

"I'm going back to Soly's," I said to Mrs. Apron, "I just have to search through my glovebox again."

"You do whatever you need to do," my wife said, clicking away at the computer.

I can't even tell you what was in my glovebox. No, I can. Because it hurts, so, therefore, I must do it.

About 8 fliers from the production of "Iolanthe" that I was in in... ready? November.

Approximately 25 raffle tickets from a 50/50 from work for the patient fund that was held in, ready? October. That I lost.

6 CDs without cases.

4 CD cases.

5 audio tapes, including Beethoven, Leon Redbone, and lots of mixes I made for my wife when we were courting long distance.

Vehicle service receipts.

The original window sticker for my car (it was expensive in 2002!)

A pair of brown, tortoise shell glasses in a ziploc bag (to keep them fresh?)

A ribbon that my wife uses to tie her hair back because her hair blows around in my car.

Oh, and my registration card.

I marched into Soly's garage with it clutched in my hand and I slammed it down on his scheduling book. He looked at me.

"It was in my glovebox the whole time, and I am a fucking disgusting mess," I said, by way of further explanation, and I turned around and walked out. On my way out, I turned to the new black guy Soly brought on recently to help out.

"I hope he doesn't yell at you like he does to me." The black guy smiled.

"I yell at everybody!" Soly yelled after me as the door swung shut behind me.

When I got home, I sat on the floor of our office, and I cried.

"I'm disorganized," I told my wife, "and that's something I usually ride you for."

She held me tight.

"Oh, buddy-- do you have any idea how much I love you? You give me things I never even knew I needed. Someone to talk to. Someone who listens to me. Someone to hold my hand when things are scary. You save my life every day."

Someone to talk to. When triggered. To cope.

"You're doing the scariest thing of all with me," I said to her, as the tears welled up in my eyes again. "Life."

And she hugged me again.

Always a Little

There's a film I love very much called "The Impostors," starring Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt. It's a delightful, loud, boisterous, silly farce, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the films of yesteryear, where big hats and bigger reactions ruled the screen. Of course, even in a film that is so desperately funny, I tend to look for the quieter, softer, more sullen moments.

I'm just that way, I guess.

There's a scene towards the end of the film where the first mate of a ship approaches the Captain, played by the wonderful Allan Corduner. The scene is a lavish party on the boat, given in the captain's honor, with lively swing music playing in the background and all the elite ship's guests dressed to the nines. The first mate observes the captain for a moment and he says,

"Sir, you look sad."

The captain looks listlessly off into the distance and, almost casually remarks,

"I am always a little sad."

That bit of dialogue, lasting for maybe four or five seconds, is my favorite part of the film, and I suppose it is that way because we love what we feel instinctively is truth, and, for me, that's what that is. There's just those tiny, fleeting, almost absurd moments where you identify. Where you acknowledge. Where you catch yourself almost whispering out hoarsely,

"Me, too."

Back in college, when I was seeing a therapist once a week, I delicately broached the topic of anti-depressant medication with my therapist.

"Well," I said, "it's been a year-and-a-half, and I guess you know me well enough by now. What do you think?"

Rick sat across from me, curly carrot-topped, snowflake sweater, ruddy cheeks, content in his gayness and his charming, gap-toothed grin. His eyes crinkled as he crossed his corduroyed legs and said,

"What do you think?"

"Jesus, Rick," I said, "do you have to be such a fucking therapist all the time?"

He laughed. Which, of course, is just what I wanted. My own private audience for my weekly one-man show. And you couldn't ask for a better audience of one than Rick. He was, quite simply, to die for. And he thought the same of me. It was almost unhealthy.

I told him that I felt I ought to be farther along than I was, that I thought I had all the insight I was going to have and my mood wasn't changing, my writing was still intractably dark, and I was still bitter and angry and sullen about the same things I was bitter and angry and sullen about years before.

"I don't know," he said, "part of me thinks you're exactly who you should be right now. But you're never going to stop wondering, I suppose, so I'll give you a referral to a psychiatrist. Mostly to shut you up."

The next week, I found myself in a strange-looking, uncomfortably dark office on the other side of town, and in wheeled a quadriplegic psychiatrist in a motorized wheelchair, mouth-operated through a blow-tube. I talked to this guy for an hour. "Don't stare at his legs, don't stare at his legs, don't stare at his legs" I repeated to myself in my head, over and over. He diagnosed me with chronic, low-level anxiety and depression and told me about medication he would prescribe to me, if I wanted it.

Turns out, I didn't want it.

And so maybe that's why I'm always a little sad. Maybe things would have been different if I had called up Dr. Hot-Wheels and said, "Hey, let's get those prescriptions filled." But I kind of doubt it. After all, they're pills, not pixie-dust.

I don't know why my brain is wired, or cross-wired maybe, the way it is, why it ventures into dark places sometimes, why it can't shut off at night sometimes, why it broods and obsesses and why it finds the sick and depraved funny, and why my lip trembles when I'm driving in my car sometimes.

Of course, the miscarriage didn't help.

It's been over a year, and the searing, shattering pain has worn off, but the cold, flat ache remains. The uncertainty about whether we will get pregnant again persists, and I hear it in every silence that passes between us, in every off-hand remark, in every sigh and in every cough. I hear it and my ears bleed.

But at least now I know why I am always a little sad.

I Confess

Being married to me is what Gilbert might call, "A uniquely singular experience." I'm strange, uncommon, and unpredictable, which keeps things interesting. I'm also irresponsible, impetuous and incompetent-- which, um, also keeps things interesting.

I also can't lie or conceal to save the hair on my ass.

When I was an EMT, I remember dropping a patient off for an MRI; this type of a call is called a "wait-and-return." It was a small office and my partner and I waited in the waiting room, reading out-of-date magazines for over two hours while our patient was MRI'd in the big paper-towel tube. As we sat, the nurses and receptionists behind the counter went milling around about their business, not saying much to us as we sat, and waited. It was the part of the job that I enjoyed the most: being on the clock whilst doing nothing but sitting on our asses. The dispatcher keyed us up several times, her voice exhibiting increased annoyance, to let us know that we had calls pending.

"Oh, well," I said back into the mic, "our patient isn't done. It's not like we can leave her here."

No, no-- leave her there we could not.

Funnily enough, that's what we ended up doing. An emergency call came through, which obviously took priority over my partner and I farting into the fabric of the waiting room chairs. So we got up, told the nurse behind the desk that another crew would be over to pick up the MRI patient when she was done, and we hustled to the elevator that would take us back to our ambulance. As the elevator doors were about to shut, a nurse came rushing towards the elevators and slid her hand in between the doors.

"Wait!" she cried as the doors parted. She had a pink Post-It note in her hand. "My friend wrote down her phone number-- she said you were cute." My partner, a 350-pound leviathan, reached out for the note and the nurse jerked her hand back as if offended.

"Um, it's not for you-- it's for your partner," she said, stuffing the Post-It note into my hand.

As I drove the ambulance down the Roosevelt Boulevard with lights and siren blaring, my partner jabbed me in the ribs repeatedly with his enormous sausage finger.

"Fuck, yeah, bitch! There's nothin' like bangin' nurse bush, know what I mean, H. P.!?" My partner had the unflattering habit of referring to me as "H. P." because of my unfortunate resemblance to the world's most famous wizard.

"Please stop calling me that," I said. My partner laughed uproariously. "And I will not be banging any nurse bush, thank you," I said, weaving in and out of traffic.

Truthfully, I was flattered. It marked the first, and only time, a woman had ever given me her phone number for the intended purpose of my calling her back and initiating some sort of conjugal contact. Not only was I flattered, I was also deeply ashamed and extremely uncomfortable. I was practically engaged to the future Mrs. Apron and I felt like I had cheated on her, even though I had done absolutely nothing of the kind. When I arrived home from work that day, my wife was taking a nap. I climbed onto the bed and woke her up.

"Listen," I said, still wearing my uniform and jacket, "there's something I need to talk to you about." She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and furrowed her brow.

"Okay," she said, "what?"

I took a deep breath.

"Today, at an MRI office, a nurse gave me her phone number. Well, actually, a co-worker of hers gave it to me, I guess she was too embarrassed or whatever, but I didn't do anything and I threw the number away-- I don't think I even talked to her-- I mean, there were three nurses working there, I don't even know which one it was. But... I just wanted to tell you, because I don't want to disrespect you. I love you."

My wife rolled her eyes.

"Bobber," she said, running her hand through my worried hair, "it's okay. I think it's kind of cool, actually-- that I have this hot commodity that other chicks want. You're behaving like you did something wrong-- you're so funny."

Later that year, I had another confession to make.

My wife, being a crafter supremo, had a pair of special fabric scissors, orange-handled Fiskars. They're special, and they're expensive. She loved and depended on these Fiskars, and she was so invested in them that she even wrote her name on the blade in black Sharpie marker.

Weird, right?

Well, you know those super-sealed plastic packages that cell-phones and other electronica come encased in that cannot be opened with anything short of copious amounts of C-4? Well, home alone, I needed to open one of these packages and, not having any C-4 handy, I grabbed the closest destructive implement I could find-- Mrs. Apron's Fiskars. And, in the process of cutting the package, half of the handle broke off. I was totally fucking beside myself. I immediately floored it to a small independent fabric store, the broken pair of scissors on the passenger seat. I was convinced that, if I did not immediately purchase and replace the scissors that my wife would stab me straight through the heart with the broken pair.

And, if the judge was a crafter, she'd probably beat the murder rap.

At the fabric store, I ran to the scissor section (I know, I was running with scissors. Naughty-naught.) and there, a portly woman in a hijab was picking up the last pair of identically-sized Fiskars. Talking at a thousand miles a minute, I babbled about my indescretion to her-- told her the whole fucking stupid story and begged her to let me have the new pair, even offering to give her the broken pair I had in my hand, plus paying her the retail cost of the Fiskars, because I am totally insane. To my astonishment, she took the broken pair, saying they were still useful, even with half a handle and my wife's name on them, and she left the store. I couldn't believe it. Behaving like a maniac in public had, for once, actually paid off for me. I jubilantly brought the new Fiskars scissors over to the counter and paid the hefty fee.

I tore open the packaging and threw it away, along with the incriminating receipt. After arriving home, I found a black Sharpie marker and wrote my wife's name on the scissors, and put them back in the container with all her other sewing crap. The still-life was complete again. A day or so later, I was watching her craft at her table and I blurted out a spontaneous confession.

"Oh, Bobber," my wife said, "I knew you'd done something to my scissors."

"How the hell did you know that?" I asked, confident that I had expertly covered my tracks. She smiled at me, holding up the scissors.

"You wrote my name on these upside-down."

I'll Take That as a Condiment

I was judged last night.

I know, you have every right to be blanched, facially speaking. I was, too, aghast and/or agog. What will no doubt stun you into a shocked silence is the additional fact that the source of this judging was none other than... (dun dun DUN...) my wife.

Yes, it's true, darling. Now, close your mouth before a reindeer poops into it. There's a good girl.

It is surprising, I acknowledge, to learn that even the stalwart Mrs. Apron has unfortunate tendencies that range from the sporadic flatulence to the felonious-equivalent of judging her husband, which I'm pretty sure she swore before a judge and jury at our wedding that she would not do.

"I will obey him with Christ-like reverence until such time as he sees fit to either reveal himself as fallible or ascend to Heaven at the wheel of a chassis-off-frame restored 1963 Volkswagen Beetle."

At least, I think that's what she said. It's been four years, you know. Who can remember all that shit? That's why I, in my infinite wisdom, invented the blogosphere.

In any event, in order to faithfully recreate the circumstances in which I was judged by my wife, I need to take you back a couple of weeks. My wife was invited to participate in a girl's night out, in celebration of a local female blogger who recently began a blog about the charming foibles of raising a child. It was an evening of estrogen-laden jollity, no doubt, featuring said blogger, her mother, grandmother, friends, and readers of her blog. They all met at a restaurant that opened recently several towns away and the gimmick of this particular haunt is that everything is centered around peanut butter-- peanut butter sandwiches with or without bacon, or avocado or what-have-you, peanut-butter-centered desserts, and, well, straight-up peanut butter-- in Bell jars. Homestyle, crunchy, smooth, or hazelnut.

Come and get it, while the peanuts are still fresh and the novelty's still quaint.

This event was not without its attendant embedded social awkwardness, however, for my wife, the venue was nothing short of perfect. She is of the opinion that people who have severe peanut allergies ruin the fun for everybody else and, thus, ought to be sterilized. And you thought I was crazy!

So, Mrs. Apron went to this shindig and returned with a glass jar filled with "Homestyle" peanut butter-- which is just that. No sugar. No partially-hydrogenated horseshit. Now, I don't like peanut butter-- I never have. Back in elementary school, when most of my peers were bringing peanut butter and/or jelly sandwiches on white bread for lunch, I was packing corned beef, high-end mustard, deli swiss on a challah roll. Why didn't I have friends again? Oh, and they called me "Paul Pfeiffer."

"I know you're annoying and you hate everything, but, seriously, you've got to try this shit," my wife said, in the enticing language I prefer best.

And I did. And it was awesomesauce.

It was so devine, in fact, that the very next weekend, I drove us out to this silly little place, with its peanut-shaped tables, and bought another jar to replenish our supply.

Last night, my wife and I were sschnuggled up on the couch together after a lovely, non-breastmilk-related engorgement of Indian food, I turned to Mrs. Apron and said, "You want something sweet, don't you?"

"Peanut butter bar, please," she said, referring to a homemade creation of ours. I returned with a bar for her and a jar for me. After I had inserted the fourth heaping spoonful of Homestyle peanut butter into my mouth, she turned to me and said,

"You are absolutely disgusting, do you know that?"

"Momndfpf?" I replied.

"That, sir, is a condiment-- meant to be used with something, like an apple, or Oreos, or celery. I looked at her, and reinserted my spoon into the jar, being sure to scoop some of the peanut schnork off the beveled sides of the jar.

"It's a condiment, like ketchup, or mustard, salad dressing, mayonnaise, or relish."

"So," I said, holding the spoon up to my mouth, "you're equating this practice with tipping my head back and spraying a heaping blork of Ranch dressing to my mouth?"

"Yes. I am," Mrs. Apron said.

As I relieved the spoon of any trace of peanut butter, I said, "Feeefaabmogcomminon."

Which, in non-peanut-butter-speak translates to, "I feel a blog coming on."

Thank You For Four Beautiful Years

Every now and then, I get to be a total mush-pot.



You don't mind, do you? See, it's my blog and I feel kind of entitled sometimes.



Mrs. Apron and I were married four years ago today, under a chuppah dappled with sunflowers, on a sun-drenched October the 22nd on a lovely little hilltop with friends and family, and Gilbert & Sullivan, and a celtic fiddle, guitar, and mandolin trio. There were personal vows, scrawled in pencil on scratch paper, written only hours before, at around one o'clock in the morning while we waited for a tow-truck that never came, to tow away an inert 1966 Volkswagen Beetle that was to be, but never was, our getaway car.



Herbie didn't ride again.



One of our vows was to wait for tow-trucks together. One was to save the last rye chip in the Chex Mix bag for the other. One was to hold hands when we're scared. Truthfully, I don't remember the rest, but I suspect we're making good on our promises to each other most of the time.



And, when we don't, we're pretty good at mending the cracks that inevitably show up in the plaster.



I remember back when Mrs. Apron and I were dating. She lives in Pittsburgh and I lived just outside of Philadelphia. I remember the 311 mile drives to and fro, all along I-76. I remember the billboards about Christ and Gettysburg. I remember splitting my urethra while urinating at the rest stop in Chambersburg, sending streams of pee straight down onto my brand-new trousers. Trousers which I promptly threw in the trash can in favor of corduroys, the only other pants that I'd packed-- oh, and it was around 88 degrees. I remember our first dates, I remember birthdays and field trips, G&S parodies and cuddling together on the couch to watch "E. R.," (an early mutual favorite that we later fell out of love with, you know, after the second helicopter crash), or "COPS" (my influence) or "Project Runway" (her influence) with hot Irish Breakfast tea and home-made lemon bread.



I also remember disagreements and challenges and fumbles and tears-- the brain surgery and the miscarriage, but those are meant to be remembered, just like the laughter and the fun. It's life-- what can you do? Life's like that when you have a partner. Well, it's like that when you don't, too, but I'm glad I've got mine. Sometimes I say, "I don't know who I was before my wife," but that's really not true. I do. It's just that sometimes I'd rather not remember that guy.



He wasn't all that.



The schedule's been a tad crowded these last few months-- with both of us leaving and starting jobs, and facing the challenges of DIY kitchen remodeling and me working swing shift every other weekend, well, life's been different around here. And, in many ways, the same. I'm still just as excited as the dogs when she comes home. And I think that's as good a sign as any. I don't make loud, inappropriate noises or pee on the rug, though. We'll save those types of shenanigans for our fortieth anniversary, I think.



Thank you for holding my hand, Bobber. I used to get scared a lot more than I do these days.

The Best Day of the Year

No, it isn't "No Trousers for British Actress Natascha McElhone" Day. It isn't even "Donate Gently-Used Antique Volkswagen Beetles to My Masonic Apron" Day. And, unless I'm sorely mistaken, it isn't even "The Idea of a Jewish President Isn't As Funny As It Used to Be" Day.

It's my wife's birthday.

Knowing me, insufferable sap that I am, I probably wrote a post like this on October 9th, 2009. It just seems like something I would have done, 365-or-so days ago. If I did, hey, you have two choices: 1.) you can sue me, or 2.) you can use this as an opportunity to look at the two blog posts side-by-side and write a little compare-and-contrast essay on them. Five paragraphs, please, double-spaced, size twelve font. Times New Fucking Roman, bitchcakes. Oh, and A.P.A. formatting, because I think all civilized people can agree that M.L.A. is for queers and communists.

I love my wife's birthday. It turns me into a complete Pudding Pop. Every year, at the precise, absurd, prior-to-butt-crack-of-dawn time she was born, we have set the alarm clock to wake up, hug, and go immediately back to sleep. That's just how we roll.

That's not my favorite part of my wife's birthday, though. Well, if it is, I don't know it, because I'm barely conscious, and neither is she. My favorite part of her birthday comes in the weeks, actually, the months beforehand. See-- I'm a planner. I love scheming. I love machinations. I love scurrying around, buying things surreptitiously, trying my best to pay attention when she says, in January, "Oh, I'd like this! Girls love sparkly things," at an antique shop or "Ooooh, cuuuuute!" at some brightly-colored skirt at Anthropologie. I love planning weekend getaways, talking to crackly old biddies named Edna and Mary Jane who run bed-and-breakfasts in random spots along the East Coast. I even like telling them that my wife is a vegetarian, but, "you can just give me all her breakfast meat." I always use that line when booking rooms for us at B&Bs, and the old biddies always laugh. Oh, Edna. Keep that bacon coming.

I like whipping up a birthday treat for my wife. She's the baker in this relationship, and I routinely fuck up things I try to do myself, because I lack the attention-to-detail that a recipie demands.

Add the vanilla AFTER turning off the heat? Oh.

But, usually, my kitchen capers and cockups are regarded affectionately as blunders of the heart, and I am given leave to "try again next year." And I do. Because, for me, it's fun.

Every birthday of my wife's comes with a custom-written parody of a Gilbert & Sullivan song. Rhyme and meter are all preserved, as is Arthur S. Sullivan's music but William S. Gilbert's lyrics are all supplanted (sorry, Schwenck) by yours truly, and I have an absolute ball setting the funny, quirky, delicate and strong story of our love to a patter song from "Iolanthe" or a duet from "The Gondoliers." Yes, that is my idea of fun. What's yours?

I like decorating the dining room with streamers for my wife, because my parents did it (okay, they still do it) for me and my sisters, and for each other. And, after the first time my wife saw the dining room of my mother and father's house streamered up to the nines for me, she started doing it, too. It's a good tradition. It makes more sense to me than not eating pork or not driving a car on Friday night.

My wife and I have known each other since February 16th, 2003, and it's hard for me to remember a time when October 9th wasn't the best day of the year for me. My own birthday has sort of faded in importance to me, that has become a rather emotionally tempestuous day in May where thoughts of mortality, uncertainty and other unfortunate thoughts cloud my otherwise vigorous thought processes.

But I suppose it's only natural that the birthday of the one you love should eclipse your own birthday, because, when you're married to your partner, to your buddy, well-- they're supposed to come first.

I'm glad you're here, October 9th. There's presents for her, double bacon for me, and enough love for a thousand more October 9ths.