While He Was Out

Enough complaining about the burden of love. 

With my beloved roadblock out of the way, I tackled a handful of house projects. Brett has lots of opinions on things - as most people do - but while he may feel strongly about about say, the color we paint the hallway, he doesn't feel strongly enough to ever put thought into it. So I may say, "Hey, I think I want to paint the hallway a sunny yellow or a broody blue," and he'll respond with, "Hmm... ok. Well, that's something we could talk about." and then I'll say, "Oh yeah? Don't want me to just do it? Be done with it? Change it if you don't like it?" To which he'll respond, "I just think we need to consider all the options." I've already done that, of course, so I'll say, "Ok, why don't you get on Pinterest and look at paint colors you like?" And then he'll grunt. 

I'll ask him a few times to do this and he never will, because he doesn't really care. He just wants some say - I get it. But meanwhile, weeks and months later, I'm left trying to determine how betrayed he'll feel if I just go ahead and do it. 

That was a real example up there, so no, I  haven't painted the hallway (and Brett probably hasn't remembered that conversation). But, while we was out, I had 4 projects to complete (none of which would result in feelings of betrayal): paint all the trim in the house, fix the ceiling in the main room, sand and paint a drywall patch in the bathroom, and pizzazzy up the patio. 

The painting went as expected, so I'll spare you a play-by-play. Dad hooked me up with two guys that could come fix the ceiling. Their names were James and Ricky. James was the head honcho, but anytime I poked my head in, James was sitting on a bucket playing on his phone while Ricky did all the work. They had to do a bunch of sanding while they were working so I emptied out the main room as best I could and then draped the place in plastic. 

James and Ricky helped with the renovations when we first moved in here, so they were interested to see the finished product. While they worked, I sat in my little office, typing away at my computer, occasionally answering phone calls, and being what would appear to be, a busy, working person. And I know they saw me, because sometimes they would poke their heads into the office to ask me questions, and it wasn't like I had cartoons playing on multiple monitors. 

One morning, Ricky asked, "What does your husband do?"
"He's a structural engineer," I responded. And then Ricky nodded his head and looked all around and out the window, taking in all the prettiness I suppose. James grunted his approval. I waited for Ricky to ask what I do for work, but he didn't. Instead he asked, "How many kids y'all have?"

"None," and I smiled.
"Y'all ain't got no kids!" James exclaimed from his bucket.
"Why not?" Ricky asked, a sense of urgency in his voice.

If ever there was audience who wouldn't understand a young woman's reason not to reproduce, it would be two men in their 60's who have spent a lifetime doing back-breaking labor. They did their part - I should do mine. So I simply said, "I've never wanted any." That is true, but the real answer would involve touching on philosophy, psycology, and a whole host of somewhat progressive concepts. They would never hear me out.

"What about your husband? I bet he wants kids?" 
I smiled but just shook my head. They looked at me in silent confusion for a moment.
"She's just not ready," James told Ricky. Ricky turned around to look at his friend and nodded in consideration. 
"How old are you?" Ricky asked.
"Thirty four." 

Then Ricky grimaced, flexing his neck muscles and exposing his bottom teeth in the universal sign for 'uh oh.'
"She's just not ready," James repeated. "She will." Ricky nodded again, comforting himself. 

"Yeah, she will," he repeated after James, "She will. She's not ready."

I waited for them to ask me what I would do instead ... like a career or life goals or hopes for myself, but they didn't.

"Who gone take care of you when you're old?"

They continued to heckle me about it for a few minutes, proud of themselves for each having four kids and suggesting that even if I adopted one, I'd be better off. I went back to my office tickled, only slightly offended, but mostly wondering what James and Ricky's lives have been like so far. And the lives of their wives, for that matter.

When they left that afternoon, I prepped the patio; sealed up and leveled out big cracks in the concrete pad and put down a coat of light gray concrete paint as the base layer. I ran out of paint right at the end, leaving a little 2x5 foot patch unpainted. I'd have to go back to the hardware store for more. I'd do it tomorrow.

Ricky came back the next day to finish the job without James. Again, he stuck his head in my office, no doubt noticing my multiple screens of USDA protocols and legal petitions on food distribution, and asked if he could borrow a bucket. I took him out back to the garage and on the way back in, he saw the unpainted patch of patio and noticed that it all looked different than yesterday. He pointed at it and looked at me, quizzically. "I ran out of paint," I told him. 

"You did this?"

"Yeah," I said cheerfully, "I'm going to paint something on it."

"Why?"

"Just trying to make it look nicer. It a dirty old cracked slab but I don't want to repave it." Ricky thought about this a long time before nodding his head and saying, "Well that's good. I guess it gives you something to do." 

Then he turned and went back inside.

I had to keep from laughing out loud. His lack of expectations of me is unprecedented. I've never met anyone who regarded me as a vessel for domesticity so openly. So singularly. Ricky finished up work on the ceiling and packed up his truck. I asked him what he was going to do with his weekend and we spent a good half hour talking ... only about him of course. I waiting for him to ask anything about me, but he didn't.

He's known around his town for his grillin'. He cooks for crowds almost every weekend and has people traveling to his neighborhood to taste his food.

"You should start a restaurant, Ricky," I told him, "Or least hire some folks to help you so you can take on all these jobs you have to turn down."

"I want to, but I don't know... I can't find any reliable help," he told me. He went on to show me several pictures of roasted animals - fully intact. "Here's a whole hog I did last weekend." I looked at the charred, blistered skin on what looked to be an adolescent pig, an image that normally perturbs me, but I had to keep from laughing. He swiped to the next, "Here's a turkey and a half dozen chickens." He swiped again. "And see here. Twenty-four beef cheeks," he declared proudly.

Ricky managed to hit all the highlights. His outdated patriarchal views, offensive lack of curiosity about the human he spent three days with (me), and now he's showing me the live animals he buys and roasts -  animals I spend hours each day earning tiny rights for. Ricky had no idea just how big he was fumbling for this particular audience.

I found him hopelessly endearing.

"Ricky, if people are paying for the food, they need to be paying for your time too," I told him. "You're staying up all night smoking these meals. Those are working hours."

Ricky looked bashful.

"Don't sell yourself short, Ricky!"

The last bit I'll tell you about is the patio. I wanted to paint a checkered floor on it. Now, I challenge you to do a googling about this because people frequently put in checkered floors - they are charming and whimsical - but, some people fail at it and they don't even know it. How can you fail at something as simple as lining up squares? Well I'll tell you. They line them up parallel to the surrounding walls. No! This is wrong. It will only look right, if you place your squares on a diagonal. Here, I'll show you.

            Classic and Soothing                                                                Alice in Wonderland - Funhouse floor 

It's all about the diagonal! (Tile size and contrast are also important considerations.) So, herein lies my problem - how do you draw out the lines for a painted checkered floor if you can't just mark every 24 inches and draw a line? I spent half a day tracing a square stencil (a roughly-the-right-size square painting I pulled off the wall) at an awkward diagonal on the concrete floor. I knew some engineer type could probably tell me a simple mathematical way to draw the lines, but the only one I know was in Japan. Google didn't help either. So I'd plop down my square, butt a loosely-straight board up against it and then drag my pencil as far as I could. The farther I got from my original square the more splayed and rectangular the sections became. Also, I took a step back and decided the square size was too small. But only barely. Should I start over with a bigger stencil? I've already invested so many hours and it was so hard to keep the lines straight.

I called Mom. 

It took a lot of hemming and hawing before she agreed that they probably are too small. "But I'll help you re-do it!"

Mom and I spent the next day trying to draw out the lines. It was no easier the second time around but it was significantly more amusing. We giggled and schemed and messed up and laughed, and when we'd step back, our squares were splaying out and becoming rectangular.

"Well wait a minute. How did that happen?"

"Hmm.. let's start again from over here."

"Ok."

We'd redraw the line, feeling great about it this time ... and then it wouldn't line up with the ending point.

"Well wait a minute. How's that?"

We'd carefully line up our wonky board, double check that the starting point and the finishing point were accounted for and then we'd start in the middle and each trace the board in a different direction. None of it ever really lined up properly and we were dumbfounded every time. Sometimes one of us would catch the other messing up in real time and then we would chastise and laugh at them, and one time I realized mom and I were both drawing the same line in the same direction - my pencil dutifully following behind hers. 

"Go the other way!"

We finally finished drawing them, stepped back, and agreed ... they're too big.

But we weren't starting over, so we starting painting. We had to make educated guesses on which of the many scribbled and scratched-out lines we intended for us to use as THE line, so painting proved to be challenging too. None of the corners meet up, the grey paint dried blue, and we were both astonishingly achy from three days spent working on a cement floor, but we got it done... if you don't look too close.

That Thing Where Brett Stunts My Progress

When Brett left for however long to go to Africa, I got heaps done around the house. All of us present at the time remarked on my productivity. What was this new leaf I had turned? Then Brett came home and I went back to being a slug, struggling to complete everyday tasks. 

This trip was no different. My calendar burst at the seams with options and accomplishments. I took on small projects for a couple nonprofit organizations, applied for a job and had a first interview, painted all the trim in the house, redid the patio floor, hosted a social hour for my volunteer group, walked the dogs twice each day, and still managed to cook myself proper meals (right up until the end there). I wasn't even watching TV at night. I was reading - like an adult would be doing!

Then Brett came home. And oh how I wanted him home. Life is so bland without him. But that first day, he woke up and set about how he wanted to use his day and I found myself becoming increasingly irritated. The sensation shocked me and I had to retreat into my sticky inner-workings to figure out why I was annoyed that precious, peaceful, wonderful Brett's presence was present. 

"Hey, you wanna walk the dogs?" he asked, innocently.
I did not want to walk the dogs. I already had a dog walking schedule going and his suggestion felt like an attack on the highly effective dog strategy I had been using for two weeks. I'm not a morning person and don't like to participate in physical activity before breakfast. He knows this about me. Why would I want to walk the dogs? Has he even considered me? Doesn't he know we can take care of this later? 

Who is this bitter Lue? So I said yes, and we walked the dogs but I stayed privately mad the whole time. Don't be mad at him, he's just getting tasks done. Don't you want him here? Of course I do! Well then stop being grumpy!

My calendar was suspiciously empty all the days ofter the one marked 'Brett Home!' I flipped back to the pages from the last two weeks and combed through the chaotic scribbles to look for jobs to do, anything I may have missed. But there was nothing. Meanwhile, Brett was very busy. He had to unpack, catch up on work emails, visit his parents, pickup something from somewhere. He even went surfing one morning. And I followed him around; running errands, grocery shopping, sitting bundled up on the windy beach while he surfed, scrolling instagram while he had a quick work call, but I was stupefied. Angry at my unreasonability. Thrilled to have Brett home. Disgusted with my vanishing drive. I retreated back to my sticky inner-workings. 

"Why you mad?" I asked myself.

Because I was handling everything fine; quickly, easily, on my own schedule and now everything takes twice as long and has extra obstacles. But surely that's just the price of living with another human; spouse or otherwise. It's not a reflection of marrying a doofus.

Ok, so why are you doing nothing now that he's home? 

Because I don't want to be busy when he might be available to go play. And because he'll have lots of opinions on how I go about painting the trim or redoing the patio. He's liable to mansplain, my own project to me. Because I can't really deep focus when he's always coming around asking questions ("Do we have any quarters anywhere? Have you seen my glasses? What day do I have jury duty?") or running his plans past me for confirmation, and suggesting we walk the dogs or run some errands now before his 11:00 call or his 3:00 appointment. Because I do want to do those things with him when we can! Because I love him!

I continued mulling and came up with this pathetic thesis statement:
"If my desire is to spend as much time with him as possible, which it is, then I need to operate around his schedule." Hence my empty calendar and inability to things when he's around. I scoffed at this, hating it for multiple reasons. What am I, a schoolgirl with a crush? 

"I'm not obsessed with you," I told him with a sting in my voice. He looked up from his book at where I sat, perched on a stool watching him.
"What?"
"I like having you around. I don't need you around. I'm better without you. You hold me back."

"Ok?"

So, the romantic summary is that I will forgo all my wants and needs in a day for 10 minutes with Brett. 

The reality-based summary is that I probably need to set boundaries for myself. 

Surely I'll get over him soon, right? 

Scenes from Japan

The Big One is wrapping up a two week stay, bouncing from Tokyo to Osaka to Kyoto. He and Erik have curated a unique adventure by having loose ideas of things they'd like to do, surrounded by the whims of the day. They have had continuous grey weather. Quite cold (lots of snow) and quite rainy. Fortunately they are both bright-eyed, optimistic types so it hasn't stopped them from making the most of it. 

The fun bit is that I can see Brett's location through his phone. So at any point during my evening, I can look at a map of town and see that they have visited such and such museum, or are dining at this establishment. One time I checked it and they were at a barber shop. They seem to explore a town with no logistical strategy. In a six hour span, they've hit parts of town in all cardinal directions. There's no, "let's go to this part of town today, and go to the west side tomorrow." It's seems more likely that they are looking for attractions while eating lunch. "There's a sumo experience an hour away!" So onto the train they go, and I receive photos like this:

I receive email updates on their trip around noon my time. This is when they have come back to their hotel for the day and are winding it down. Brett's captain's log will be abundant but vague. "We were cold so we went to a hot spring - I've got a story to tell you about that. Then we found a great hole in the wall sushi joint!" Sometimes I write back an adrenaline filled report about my quiet life here with the pets, but other times I just wait to see when I'll hear from him - like the olden days of carrier pigeons. "I doth wonder on the whereabouts of my beloved." Then I'll churn butter a hope not to die an old maid.

They did go get their hair cut...together. They've visited temples, shrines, and museums. They have hiked in the mountains, taken some tours, taken a cooking class, gone to a baseball game, but mostly, they are eating things. Lots and lots of eating. I mostly get pictures of food. "You won't believe this miso soup! It's the best I've ever tasted. Nothing like what we get at home."

Pre and Post haircuts. I'll allow that Erik needed it.

My life here without him has been very quiet and extremely repetitive. Living alone really makes you realize how many of the exact same actions you take everyday. Here I am eating again. Let's check the mail again. Oh look, more dishes. 

This is all the same even when he's here, but I guess it's the talking out loud to someone that makes it so fun. 

I can't wait to see him!

I Forgot About The Blog Again

 I'm sorry. So here's the beginning of an essay I wrote on finding out about factory farming;

I ordered a duck club sandwich at an outdoor café in Paris and considered myself living the good life. I’d never eaten duck before, nor had I been to Paris, but since I was only fourteen and I was sitting with my parents, there was no real cause for such an inflated sense of self. My sassy older sister seemed to be experiencing the same burst of worldly independence, though she had the nerve to angle her chair away from the rest of us. Dad was tickled that I had ordered duck. As a simple family from James Island, the idea of consuming any bird other than chicken was lofty and refined - possibly too big for your britches. With enthusiastic spontaneity, Dad quacked at me as I took my first bite and it caused an immediate, heartbreaking revelation. Think how many broken hearts have sat, quietly brooding outside of a Parisian café; how wonderfully romantic. But how many were caused by the sudden realization that a duck died for your sandwich? The reality dawned on me as my dad continued to cluck and flap his elbows. I stopped mid-chew, completely repulsed. My sister edged farther away from us.

Though I haven’t eaten duck since that one bite that day, I can’t say why the Duck Club Revelation of 2004 didn’t cross the Atlantic with me on my way home. Life in a “meat and three” region doesn’t promote existential thinking about the origins of your meals. The popularity of eating some animals over others tainted my reason. Chickens were made for eating because idyllic marketing images said so, but ducks, well, they swim in ponds with fuzzy yellow ducklings and scoop up breadcrumbs. It would be cruel to eat the family.

 

Fourteen years later, after our muggy, backyard wedding, my new husband and I sat to write our wills. I had fought against taking his last name because I am not a trinket under his ownership. “That’s not what it means,” he scoffed, equal parts proud of and annoyed by my independence. We did however agree that if one of us kicked the bucket, we should have the right paperwork in place to prove that we loved each other. Both of our wills say, "he/she gets it all," but the lawyers wrote it in Shakespearean for some reason. Signed, sealed, filed away in case of emergency. But what if we’re smothered out together, holding hands in a fiery blaze at an illegal Folly bonfire? What would happen to our "assets" (small collection of animals and one overpriced rug)? We spent time researching non-profit organizations that do a good job allocating finances to the causes rather than the well-meaning pockets that started them. That’s when I had a second Duck Club Revelation.

"Wait, go back," I said, as The Fella clicked through the pages. "What's that one?".....

The Aftermath

What a ride this last year has been, huh? 

Getting the dream job, going to Italy, melting down, quitting the dream job, celebrating Christmas, getting another dream job, deciding to move, Brett quitting his job, and then deciding to stay. Bleh! We're both mentally exhausted! 

Since we met, I've described Brett as a walking beam of golden light, but lately he ranges from a sleepy storm cloud to partial sun. I miss his golden rays. He misses his golden rays - they've been squelched out by The Man.
So we're taking a few months off. No real jobs. No responsibilities - except mortgage, utilities, groceries, heath insurance, gas, pet food, and the Netflix subscription. 

Other than that, no responsibilities. And lawn care. But that's it!

Brett is headed off on a boys trip to Japan soon. He's always wanted to go to Japan, so we're both thrilled for him. I was not invited but also I was not, not invited - but I can take a hint. Boy trips are more fun when no girls are present, and who would take care of our four full-time and two part-time pets? And I'm not sure I'm up for a 14 hour flight to then spend 10 days pretending like all the boy activities are stimulating. 

"Will we be stopping for afternoon tea?" I'd ask, gracefully. They would have to remove their mud covered dirt-bike helmets to hear what I said. 

"Huh?"
"Afternoon tea. There's a lovely boutique..."
VROOM VROOM! Off they would go round the track again and again. 

No no. I'll stay here on pet patrol. Ever since deciding to stay in Charleston, my usual appreciation for Springtime weather has become an impatient beast. I want to hole up on the porch and read books and well, sip tea. I can't wait to be outside again from March to November. What is life indoors? This wait for Spring is killing me.

I have plans for while Brett is away. Plans that resemble the successful undertakings of his previous international boys trip - but I'll stay cryptic so I can surprise him. If he even reads this post, he won't read into that statement. Isn't it fun knowing someone so well? You figure out exactly what you can get away with. 

Our plans for our temporary retirement are minimal but they do include a half-bath renovation and abundant experimental cooking. Maybe we'll go on a big road trip or buy a business or join the roller derby. Who knows. 

Brett has been nonchalantly referring to this point in time as his mid-life crisis. It's led us to lots of big thinking on the concept. Does everyone have one in some way? What will mine entail? Does my on-going crisis about existence exempt me from this particular milestone? Surely I've served my time. I've always giggled at people that want to leave legacy of some kind, but recently I had the weight of "an unproductive life" settle comfortably on my shoulders for the first time. I've never worried about that before (because I don't really believe in productivity for the sake of it, and who cares what silly acheiviments society made up to keep you participating. You can't fool me with trophies and corner offices. Pshaw!) but it felt like a legitimate concern for a minute there. What am I supposed to do with that? 

Anyways. We're going to be stationary nomads for a few months until our savings dwindle too low. 
Then I guess we'll both go get jobs.