Ring around my heart

Jewelry and I don’t have much of a history together.  I went through an eccentric phase in high school or college, though, where I wore pinky rings.  I was on a big frog kick (heh… frog kick) at the time, and I had two different pinky rings with metalworked frogs on them, and I’d switch off which one I’d wear.  It is with embarrassment, but no shame, that I admit to this iffy fashion option.  I have no idea where these rings are now, but they’re probably at the bottom of a box somewhere.

There was also my class ring, but it didn’t fit on my ring finger so I wore it on my left thumb.  At about the same time, I went to college and I decided that wearing a ring on my thumb was lame, so I stopped doing that too.  That ring is in an old classroom-memorabilia box at the farmost corner of our closet.

In college I flirted briefly with necklaces.  I had a peace sign on a black thong.  Other necklaces came along, too, but I always went back to the peace emblem, to the point I was tempted to just skip the pendant and tattoo the peace sign on my sternum.  Never got the tatt, but I did eventually stop wearing the necklace.  I think the thong snapped.

Oh, and earrings.  I got my left lobe pierced in college and I had a couple dozen earrings.  Metal studs, pirate hoops, smiley faces, and yes, even frogs.  Mostly a silver hoop.  There was a plan in motion to pierce both of my ears several more times, and really set off the airport metal detectors, but then I started getting more involved in theater and it wouldn’t make sense to get any new holes in me – thankfully.  I got sick of taking earrings out and putting ‘em back in again every night I had a performance, even with just the one piercing, so I let that one go as well.  I held on to the earrings for a good long while, eventually letting Elle look through them for any she wanted, and getting rid of the rest.

So it seems that I have had a more torrid relationship with jewelry than I initially led myself to believe.  But the point is, I haven’t worn an earring, a pendant, a necklace, or even a pinky ring in nearly ten years.  Heck, when I can get away with it, I don’t even wear socks.

Now, I have a wedding ring.

This is an awesome ring.  We bought it in Prague, when we were vacationing there last fall.  It’s a pewter color, with beveled edges and a brushed-steel looking finish around the band.  And it’s made of tungsten carbide, which is incredibly tough.  I’m not sure what you make out of tungsten, but once you make it you’re not breaking it.  I could steamroll my ring (but I won’t) and still wear it, once I pried it out of the concrete.  The ring is also heavy, because the material ain’t styrofoam.  When I wear my ring, I know I’m wearing a ring.

This is very good, because it breaks the habit of not wearing one.  To be perfectly frank, wearing the ring was something I was worried about as the wedding approached.  What if I can’t stand wearing a ring, I asked myself?  What if it’s too tight, too loose, too hot, too whatever?  Then, it’s so small, a ring.  Even with my big fingers, a ring is pretty small relative to, say, a laptop or a sofa.  What if I lose it?  I’m a fidgeter!  What if I drop my wedding ring down a sewer grate?  Oh my god!

When we were on the honeymoon, which was obviously the first place to really get used to wearing the ring, I left it off my finger a fair bit of the time.  I took it off for the jungle adventuring we did – jaguars like shiny things, probably – and I took it off for the diving too – I figure turtles and sharks just love eating shiny stuff.  Between not having my finger eaten and not dropping my ring onto the ocean floor, it seemed a better bet to leave the ring in our room safe.  In my defense for my skittishness, Elle did the same thing.  We wore them for dinner, and happy hour, and other social and non-daredevil things, and we played it safe more often than not.

Here’s what’s awesome.  I missed wearing my ring when I didn’t have it on.  Even when it was brand-new, I missed the already-familiar weight of it around my finger.  Blessing of a heavy ring, I guess, but I always felt its absence when it was in the safe.  It was the first thing I did when we got back from gallivanting – open the safe and grab the rings.

Now that we’re home, I only take it off to shower, and I hook it round my glasses so I know right where it is.  I’m not losing it, and this way I’m putting it back on before my specs.  It does get hot, and I definitely do fidget with it, but there’s no question that I’ve completely embraced the permanent addition to my wardrobe.

Maybe it’s time to think about those piercings again.

The good old days

Elle recently got a new phone.  She hasn’t gotten rid of the old one, yet, because it has some pictures on it that she wants to transfer, and maybe one or two other mysterious things she wants the phone for before she sends it off to get recycled.  The phone – a flip phone with a shiny, plum-colored color to it – resides currently on our coffee table.

This morning at breakfast, Elle noticed a small booklet underneath the old phone.  “What’s that little book?” she asked me, “the one under the phone?”

“That’s the instruction booklet for your Motorola,” I said.  “I found it while I was cleaning out a drawer.  I thought you might be able to use it, if you need help doing all that stuff you wanna do with the phone before you scrap it.”

She looked surprised.  “Thanks.  I can probably just look up what I need on the Internet.”

“Mm,” I said.  Then there was a brief silence.  “Is it old fashioned of me that, when you said that, I was thinking, ‘Why would you want to look it up on the Net when you have the book right there?’”

Elle laughed and drank her juice.

“And why was that funny?”

“Yes,” she said, patting my knee.  “You’re very old fashioned, baby.”

Wine, Wine, Wine

A Pinot Noir from Germany showed up in our wine rack today.  I have no idea how it got there; neither Elle nor I remember buying it or receiving it as a gift.  But we were having fish for dinner, with brussels sprouts and a creamy gnocchi-like polenta dish from Trader Joe’s, and when Elle asked what kind of wine to have with it I said, “Something light.  Not the Silver Oak (I have no idea when we’re going to have occasion to drink that).”  She found the German pinot.  I was totally expecting it to be not so sweet, like French wine.  But this is German, the same people who make cloyingly sweet riesling, and this pinot was both hot and sweet, and perfect.  I drank it too fast.  I love when awesome wine appears magically in our apartment.

I should be sleepier, but I’m not.   A almost wish I were, because tomorrow’s an early day and I would like to want to be sleeping.

So yeah, Elle and I are walking that fine line between appreciating the art of wine, and being annoying wine snobs (not that all wine snobs are annoying, but I have a feeling I would be).  I can spell gewurtztraminer, for example, but I don’t know how it’s different from a pinot grigio except for where they’re usually made.  I know the kinds of wine we generally like and the kinds we generally don’t.  I also know that doesn’t really matter, because there are exceptions to every rule, and we’re always trying to find them.

A great place to experiment with your wine palate is the wine store at Trader Joe’s.  I don’t know how they get away with it, but TJ’s manages to offer really good food, and really good wine to go with it, at amazing prices.  (I feel like I should be standing in front of a striped awning, wearing a tweed coat and waving my arms while I say that, while “Buy now!” flashes across the bottom of the screen.)

We go to TJ’s Wine every month or two, to stock up.  Buy our faves and try a few new things.  They sell these wine totes, that hold six bottles each, for less than a dollar, so we usually bring one or two (or three if we’re feeling madcap) totes to the wine store and bring ‘em home filled.  The next stop after the wine store, though, is always Trader Joe’s proper, the food store.

You want to have a buddy, shopping at Joe’s.  One person to get in line right away, the other to flit through the aisles grabbing all the groceries, then finding you in line and dropping the stuff off.  Two advantages:  You don’t spend a boring forty five minutes in a line with a grocery cart full of thawing frozen goods, and you don’t have to negotiate the humanity-filled aisles of Trader Joe’s with a wide-load shopping cart.  This is advanced grocery shopping, not for the faint of heart.  The risk equals the reward, though, and the food is almost always awesome (but don’t get the pre-packaged four cheese lasagna).

So the other day we were on a TJ-run.  We’d gotten home from Belize, home to an empty refrigerator and Mother Hubbard style bare cupboards.  Planning a major haul to restock our larders, we even brought the laundry cart from home, after a strategy session on how we’d manhandle a laundry cart full of groceries from 14th Street and Third Avenue, through three subway stations, to our apartment on 176th Street – the Manhattan equivalent of the North Pole, or at the very least Greenland.  Tricky.  Ambitious.  Some would say foolhardy.  But we jammed our eco-friendly shopping bags into our knapsacks, wheeled the laundry cart out into the sidewalk, and sallied forth.

First the wine store.  Only a one-tote trip, but we found three whites (including a sauvignon blanc – a risky move for my finicky palate, but our hopes and spirits remained high), a familiar red and a random unfamiliar one, and a rose (goes great with goat cheese).

Then to the grocery store.  We shopped hungry, usually a bad idea.  We even tried knocking off the edge of our apprtites with a slice of pizza each, but it didn’t really help.  We were very indulgent in our shopping, and by the time we rolled our cart outside, we even had a few things stuffed in our knapsacks for want of space.  The wine tote had no chance of fitting into the cart, so we carried it.

On the uptown A platform, we left the wine behind.

We were doing so well!  Working together, we muscled the cart down the steps to the L train.  We got to the elevator at the transfer point, and down another flight of stairs.  We were high on achievement.  Go team!  Maybe it was the traffic, maybe it was that chatty couple on the platform that distracted us from each making sure the other had the wine in hand.  Whatever it was, we were on the train, hot and tired, when it hit us that we’d left the tote on the platform.

Not that the wine was super duper expensive or anything, but we bought this awesome goat cheese and now the rose’s gone.  You know?

I tried tracking the tote down with the MTA’s lost and found service.  Admittedly, a long shot.  Predictably, no luck.  Some lucky commuter got shitfaced that night.

Now that the shame and frustration from the event has passed, I can write about it with sort of a chuckle.    I mean it was only wine, it was only a few bucks.  It ain’t like we left the laundry cart full of groceries behind.  And heck, if we’d brought that wine home, we would have had a bottle of white with the fish tonight, and who knows how many years it may have been before we discovered that really awesome German Pinot Noir in our wine rack?  So, really, it all turned out for the best.

Still, though.  You know?  Damn.

This is just gross.

The sunburn on my back has started peeling.  This, in itself, is not very interesting, nor is it even really news – I just spent nine days in the Caribbean, of course I have a sunburn and of course it’s starting to peel.

Swear to God, though, I’m gonna sprain something important trying to peel that dead skin from my back.

If Elle ever gives up on me and trades me in for a better model, it will be for a man that doesn’t pull, peel, and pick at himself.  I peel scabs, I pick at my lips when they’re dry, I scratch at stuff and pop zits and on and on.  Elle will very gently, and with either a small smile or a wide-eyed glance of exasperated admonishment, take my hand and remove it from my savaged cuticle, for instance, or the scab on my shin from when I crashed the laundry cart (don’t ask).

The way I see it, scabs are the toys given us by Mother Nature, to play with while our wounds heal.  In the Kauffman household, I’m pretty much alone in this world view.  The majority view (there’s only two of us, but I think Elle has managed to get two votes to my one) is that wounds must be left alone to heal.  She’s right, of course – case in point, my gum surgery of two weeks ago – but I still think it’s worth having a few interesting scars, if the payoff is getting to fidget with my dings and scrapes as they heal.  Elle says, at the rate I’m going, my body will be a curdled twist of scar tissue by the time I’m fifty.  Against my scar-molesting nature, I agree that would be slightly gross.

Already, post-honeymoon, my body is a playground of temptation, a battle-damaged garden of Eden.  The forbidden fruit includes a healthy handful of mosquito and sandfly bites, the scuff marks from beach volleyball, and a whole phalanx of itchy plant-rash blisters that I’m dying to scratch.  It’s only for love of Elle that I’m not raking myself to ribbons with my fingernails, but I’m mostly managing to keep my hands to myself.

Put a peeling sunburn in the middle of my back, though, and then you can put a hidden camera on me and sit back.  I’m YouTube-worthy.  I bend side to side, reaching first one hand and then the other behind my back trying to reach the tantalizingly out-of-reach edges of my skin.  You might catch me sitting on the bathroom sink, craning my neck around as I try to follow my scrabbling fingertips in the mirror.  Grunting and moaning, because my shoulders and neck ache from all the straining and stretching, and then sighing in disappointment when the stuff I peel loose doesn’t slough off in ribbons.  There’s no point in being a masochist if you can’t be a high-volume masochist.

Some morning, Elle will come into the bathroom and find me paralyzed.  My head will be twisted 180 degrees like an owl, both my arms will be dislocated from hyperextension, my fingertips will be blue from lack of circulation, and my back will be a crisscrossed map of fingernail tracks.  But around me will be an ankle-high mound of beautifully and seamlessly peeled sunburn-skin, and my face will be fixed in a serene smile of accomplishment.  I’m still not sure whether Elle will laugh out loud or do a full body creeped-out tremor fit, just prior to calling 911 to fix my broken and brainless self.

Verbal Snapshots

It’s really late.   I’m honoring my ‘write something every day’ rule, which I relaxed somewhat while we were on our Belize trip, and will now begin treating as a serious (but fun) responsibility again.

Some of the unexpected highlights of our trip:

* Being invited by the resort bartender and one of the waiters to come into Hopkins – the village near the resort – to hop karaoke bars with them.  Elle and I both sang – I did “Tainted Love,” and she did “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the more crowded bar, and “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence at the bar with a sand floor, a dart board, and about seven drinkers.  It was classic, and I got an awesome picture of her wailing the song.

* Getting a specialty diving certification as an ‘underwater naturalist,’ which means I’m better than I was last week at identifying seagoing life, and observing how it all works together in an ecosystem.  On the same dive, I was close enough to a hawksbill turtle to jump on him and use him for a skateboard.

* Eating termites.  They taste like minty carrots.

* The view from the top of Xunantunich, the Mayan temple.  You can see Guatemala.

* Walking a mile on the beach with a  few co-honeymooners, then playing an evening of beach volleyball with the Hamanasi dive team and a collection of Hopkins locals.  The locals were definitely much better at volleyball than most of us Americans were.

* The night one of the resort cats, a chubby calico named Ginger, invited herself into our treehouse and spent the night curled up between Elle and me, purring and kneading the mattress.

* The great friends we made there – at least three other couples – with whom we’ll be building lasting friendships.

* Meeting and drinking with Lucky at the karaoke bar, politely refusing a friendly game of darts, then finding that Lucky was our divemaster at eight the next morning.  What hangover?

* The fact that we are SO going back.

Vacation Bullet Points

Here are a few things Belize has a whole lot of:

• Palm trees!  Obviously.  Also coconuts and noisy birds.
• Geckos.  They’re pretty much Belize’s answer to house mice.  You move a book, or a plate, or a rock, or look into a corner of the room you’re in (usually a ceiling corner), and you’ll see a cute little lizard saying, “what’s up.”
• Mangoes.  Little known fact:  there are about half a dozen different species of mango growing in front yards throughout Belize.  I’ve only tasted one of them.  There’s seeds all over the road in Hopkins, the town right near our resort.
• Cultural diversity.  Resident communities in Belize include – but are not limited to – Latin American, Garifuna, ‘native’ Mayan, Creole, Chinese, and (believe it or not) Amish.
• Yellow school buses.  Not too long ago there was a change in licensing laws, or school zoning laws, or something, and a lot of buses were taken out of service.  I swear we’ve seen at least thirty buses, most of them on cinder blocks in front of houses.
• Half-built, or half-disassembled, houses.  There’s cinder-block husks, or skeletons on stilts, all over.  Lot of it is because of hurricanes.  There’s a building down the road here that was going to be a restaurant, but the owner died and the building has been vacant for a couple years.
• Nice people.  Belizeans rock.  I don’t care what cultural demographic they’re from.
• Stray dogs and chickens, but only in the villages.
• Honeymooners.  This resort is like half honeymooners and half families.  We’ve met at least five couples that got marries on the same day as us – but we were first.  Noon wins.  Not that it matters!  But we have lots of newly-married friends, and we’re planning a reunion tour same time next year.
• Divers.  It’s like a separate classification of human being.  A really cool one.  I was certified as a scuba diver today.  We saw eagle rays, sharks, and dolphins, all close enough to touch.

Happy hour is almost over.  Time for one last Belikin beer before I clean up for dinner.

Greetings from Belize

So since the last post, I’ve gotten married, said hello and goodbye to about a hundred and twenty-five people, had Game Night with my brother and his girlfriend, flown to Belize, settled in at our resort, explored the jungle, gone into the ocean for the first time in my life, scuba dived a Caribbean reef, had local food and beer, and slept through both pounding storms and spectacular sunrises.  As may perhaps be expected, I’m having trouble choosing what it is I should write about.  I’m also having the time of my life.

I’m writing from the bar at the main building of Hamanasi Dive and… I forget the full and complete name of the place, but there’s diving as well as adventures in the jungle to be had, at the resort from which I’m writing at the bar of.  I’m wearing a knit shirt, sandals, and cargo shorts, and in the pockets of my cargo shorts there is nothing at all except for my chap stick.  No wallet, no keys, not even the Blackberry that was a wedding present (Elle got one too).  In New York, I’d already have that Blackberry hooked up to an IV.  Here, I’m blessed not to have any need for it.  Or for the roaming charges I’d incur if I turned it on.

About forty-five steps from the rocking chair I’m writing from is the treehouse Elle and I are staying in, with a canopy bed and – get this – no TV and not even a phone.  (And yet they have free wi-fi in the bar?)  Forty-five steps in the other direction is the ocean, as well as a freshwater pool.  I’ll just say we’re really glad to be here.  Now that I’ve visited both the jungle and the bottom of the ocean, I can honestly see applying for a job here.  The evening scene at Hamanasi is very …um, vacant.  Probably by design, but I see myself taking on turning Hamanasi’s night life into more of a social scene.  Monday is Game Night.  Tuesday, improv comedy by the pool.  Square dancing on Wednesday?  It’s a work in progress.

Tomorrow is actually the (primary) reason we chose this place for our honeymoon.  We’re doing a full-day adventure, with a zipline tour of the Belizean jungle canopy, followed by a bunch of rappelling and cave exploring.  I’m jonesing to be cruising along above the jungle floor at a couple dozen miles an hour, snapping blurry pictures all the way. 

Pictures.  The challenge is to walk that fine line between taking enough pictures to represent the awesomeness of our vacation to our family and friends, without being so much of a shutterbug that I miss the actual vacation.  So far, so good.  For good or bad, my camera won’t work while we’re scuba diving, so while I can’t post pictures of the fish I’m shaking hands with, I’m not distracted and swimming into a coral reef either.

On the non-adventure end of the vacation scale, I took a guilt-free three hour nap today.  I totally get why people go on island vacations.  I don’t even mind that a New York bartender could serve an entire bar in the time it takes King to make two drinks for Elle and me.  I’m in no hurry.  The drinks are worth the wait.  The pool will still be perfect.  I’m on vacation.

Last Thoughts as Single Josh

So it’s my last bedtime as a single guy.  One of my groomsmen is asleep behind me on the couch, so I’m typing quietly.  His job will be to make sure I get to the hotel on time tomorrow and that my pants are not on backwards, among other things.  If there are papparazzi – and, this being New York, you never know – he will keep them away from me.

Tonight I said “Good night, Miss Cox” for the last time… unless I meet someone else with that last name, I suppose, but the POINT should be clear.  And I don’t actually say “Good night, Miss Cox” every night, but tonight I said it with a particular aplomb.  We smiled, and then I left her at the hotel with her attendants and came home.

I hope I remember my vows.  Hell, I hope I remember the English language.  My Uncle Reverend will say “Do You Josh” and I’ll probably say blalllbyjiggmathnaut followed by some completely random string of words spoken in perfect Greek.

And the whole thing is just so simple and thrilling.  I’m starting a whole new forever in about twelve and a half hours.  Okay.  Well, I started that future when I said “Will you marry me” and all that, but we’re declaring it out loud and giving it a name and a pair of rings to prove it, in front of a hundred and million people, in about twelve and a half hours.  I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight, but I’d better try so I don’t do something even more careless and embarrassing than speaking flawless Greek by accident.

Also, I need to pack an overnight bag.  I’ll want my toothbrush, and I’ll definitely want open-toed shoes.  Maybe snacks.

Today was pretty great, by the way.  At first it was a huge overwhelm, having eight parents and two grandparents and a half dozen attendants all in the same place, and wanting to talk to everyone at the same time and not knowing where to start.  Everyone got introduced to everyone, though, and got along well, and by the end of the day we were all old friends.  My guys and I had sushi, and went to play pool where we were all about the same skill level (that level being ‘hilarious’), then we had a wedding-rehearsal and then a rehearsal dinner and then a little while to just hang out together and relax before going to our separate beds.  Calm before the storm.

Speaking of storm, there was a doozy of a storm for about an hour while we were having dinner.  Everyone bracing themselves against the wind, umbrellas disemboweled, kind of a storm.  Blowing lit candle holders and place settings off of outdoor tables, kind of a storm.  Really glad we were watching it from indoors, kind of a storm.  It was beautiful, powerful and awesome.  Afterward the sky was amazingly pink and orange and full of cotton ball clouds, like a Renaissance painting or a cheesy greeting card, and we all stood outside with our mouths open and our eyes shining.

I’m so excited to be married.  I’m not used to that much attention, but tomorrow I’m just gonna stand there and dig it, with my bride right next to me.

Till tomorrow, then.

From the Comfort of a Chair

So WOW.  There’s, like, a million people in town.

There’s a total of something like twenty-five people visiting from out of town this weekend, but when you’re used to only one or two out of town guests at a time, thirteen equals a million.

Having an out of town guest is a bit stressful, because you interrupt your life to enjoy the guest’s company.  You go out to dinner, maybe do some New York touristy things, show them your favorite spots, and generally give your guest a good time.  Find out what your guests would like to do and see, and then do your best to make all that stuff happen before the guest goes home.  It is worth it, but it does take time and energy.

So now that there’s a million guests in town, I feel like a one legged man in an ass kicking contast.  A one legged man with a gargantuan ass.

I mean it’s totally worth it, like I said, but man my ass is sore.

I swear, every parent I’ve ever had is in town.  Not only that, but every parent I’m going to have.  Plus their friends, and my brother, and his girlfriend who is awesome, and all my favorite relatives and out of town friends.  They’ve been in town for one day, and already I’ve earned a rest.

Officially, I’m looking forward to the honeymoon more than I am looking forward to the wedding.  Grandpa needs to rest.

At least tomorrow and the next day we pretty much have the day scheduled.  None of the “Well, I don’t know, what are YOU hungry for” moments.  We picked the food already, and it’ll be delicious.

Lest there be any doubt, though, let me stress:  we’re having a great time.  This weekend will totally rock.

I just hope they let us sit down once in a while.

Explody

Tonight I should have gone to bed.  It was a long day at work, and tomorrow – another double shift – promises to be equally long.  Longer, because it’s the second double in a row, and we know how THOSE just seem to get longer and longer the more deeply you stack them.  So I should currently be sleeping.

Three days ago, though, I made a promise to write daily, so here I am, writing.  One may notice that I didn’t write in my BLOG yesterday or the day before, but that wasn’t the rules – the rules were just to write.  I don’t even need a computer, I can use a notepad if I want.  Or stone tablets.  Chalk.  Whatever.

But two days ago I wrote a page of dialogue, and yesterday I turned it into a one-act play, and today is a blog day.  Tomorrow might be a book review.  If I’m really wiped out, it may be a haiku.

So instead of sleeping, I’m writing, because I made a promise.

Thing is, I could have been writing half an hour ago, but half an hour ago I was playing Minesweeper.

If you don’t what Minesweeper is, look in the Games folder of your computer, and you’ll almost definitely find it there.  Look at your own risk.  Maybe finish reading this blog first and then go look.

What is it with Minesweeper?  How is it such an addiction, and such a time suck?

There, just writing about it, I got the urge and went to play another game of it.

Maybe it’s the racing-the-clock thing.  Maybe it’s the Zen logic-zone I get into when I play.  Maybe it’s the direct simplicity of the goal.  Could just be the clean lines and pretty colors of the game.  One way or the other, I’m hooked on it.  I open the game, and I can’t close it till I’ve won at least once.

I hear my father has a similar addiction to Freecell. 

I can tell it’s bedtime when my stupid-mistakes ratio gets too high.  By that barometer, I shouldn’t go to bed for at least another hour.  But I need to maintain my strength and my health, for the festivities at the end of the week - and the week of vacation to follow.  So, off to bed I go.

Just one more game, first.