Five moments that cracked a small grin today, and we are quantum.
Speedy grub.
Becca and I both make food. There are creatures who depend on us for some degree of sustenance, and pizza is too expensive and allegedly a poor dietary choice for breakfast five days a week, so we…make food. I make food fast. That’s my claim to competence.
Becca makes it moderately fast, but no matter how much I try to watch her process and catch her in the act, she somehow, time and time again, makes little miracle dishes out of leftovers and healthy stuff that looks pretty and is doggone good. Really, really good.
There’s just something about pretty-looking, delicious-tasting food that makes a day better and a soul bounce a little higher. Especially when it’s made by a pretty person.
Call me by my name.
There is something about walking into a building and being recognized with a smile. A little thing that’s a big thing. It feels good. So peeps, when you’re hiring secretaries and receptionists and people at the front for your business…remember it’s not all about typing speed or software knowledge or data entry efficiency or scheduling proficiency. Those things might be important. But remember the value of having someone greet others when they first walk in who can make them feel welcome and warm.
Learn people’s names and remember them. Try. Try. Try. You’ll fail, again and again, but keep trying and stop blaming a “bad memory.” That’s why you keep practicing. To get better at it.
Coffee date for three
Did I get fifteen minutes of drinking coffee with my wife? All by myself? Why yes, I did, and it was great! We had the place all to ourselves. Just me, her, and our two youngest sons. So not completely to ourselves. But with fewer companions than usual.
Lanessa
I enjoyed a short but vibrant phone conversation with my lovely 23-year old sis Lanessa, and we spoke of her Los Angeles basketball career that has taken off suddenly, and then we spoke about the beauty of colorful and profane language and the three guiding principles in using it:
Swearing should be:
Joyful.
Respectful.
Poetic.
Joyful means that it should generally be used in a positive manner to indicate something positive, rather than thrown in anger, aggression, or discouragement.
Respectful means that it should generally be used with an awareness of the people and space around you, as well as the context and ways in which its use might enhance or detract from the overall vibe.
Poetic means that it should be used in a non-generic and interesting way that provides something different than how others might use it. There’s lots I have to say on that one, but I’ll write a longer post soon.
I looked across the room and my heart flipping flopped like Frank Lloyd Wright ranch houses stacked a billion high.
Becca is three weeks post-birthing a fourth child via major surgery, and she strode across the room through a melange of people and my heart somersaulted; her statuesque blonde curls and curves brightening the atoms with invisible color and I thought, wow, wow, wow,
and I whispered to her:
Wow, you are so fucking hot, you are absolutely sizzling,
and she said to me saucily:
Thank you!
and I said to her:
I mean, lousy personality, but so hot.
and she said without skipping a beat:
Thanks, I’ll take it.
That’s the relationship we have and it’s so shallow and so deep all at the same time. We are such a quantum couple.
The boys are back in town.
We watched a partial episode of Veronica Mars, season 4. A season that is dark and dismal and not without entertainment value, but nowhere near the beautiful blend of sauce, sass, sunshine, and darkness that made the first two - perhaps three - seasons so unique and charming, even when covering dark territory. Season 4 has a license to curse and find all manner of unfunny ways to show that “it’s gritty” that feels like a far shout from the wonderful gritty mess that the series was built around.
Also watched a partial episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 masterpiece of speculative fiction moved me greatly when I first read it in the early 2000s, but I’ve held off on watching the series. Two episodes in, I’m already having nightmares; fictional nightmares that are holding hands with the daymare reality of a Trump government and increasingly Gilead-moving political momement toward fundamentalism and use of religion to war on women and establish draconian Old Testament power hierarchies.
Anyway. Becca fell asleep and I returned to finish episode 5 of the brutal and often-funny The Boys, another fictional world in which superheroes are the bad dudes and we’re rooting for the little guys to take ‘em down.
And thus it was. Some good moments on a Wednesday.
