Last night I hennah’ed my darlin’s head.  She suggested gloves, but I was all manly and stuff.  Besides, the gloves were at the other end of the house, and who wants to walk that far to keep his hands clean?  It’s just skin.  It’ll wash.

Heh.

45 minutes later her hair was covered in the slop, and so were my hands.  Washing it off, I found that I had a lovely burnt orange complexion on my hands.  And fingernails.

And it doesn’t come off.  Not with soap, nor salt scrubs, nor anything.  I look like my mother was frightened by a yam when she was carrying me.

Far be it from me to fail to admit when my lovely is right.  I just sent her:

• Oomp loompa doompadah doo
• I wouldn’t be orange if I’d listened to you
• Oompa loompa doompadah dee
• My hands look like yams for the whole world to see
• I put a henna mudslide on the head of my love
• Refusing to consider wearing protective gloves
• How bad can it get? is what I asked of you
• Then stuck my hands in the staining green goo!
• Oomp loompa doompadah doh
• You have the chance to say “I told you so!”
• You knew I’d turn a bright orange hue
• Like an Oompa loompa doompadah do!

Writing for the first time in, I believe, ever.  My darlin’ told me she’d build breakfast if, in return, I sat down with my cup of coffee and tapped out words.  How could I refuse an offer like that?  Besides, I was fresh from the RCRW meeting, and was suitably inspired with “huh, people write stories.  I remember liking that.”

I immediately began to slump at the notion of slogging away at Self Sacrifice some more.  Dutydutyduty called, and I wanted to let it go to voicemail.  Writing wasn’t a joy, wasn’t fun, wasn’t anything but heavy and gray and unlusterful.  Clearly it was time to contact the Muse and order up a fresh batch of joie de’ecrit.

So this morning I’m working up Hardboiled Christmas Candy (working title), a cross between The Maltese Falcon and Rudolph The Rednosed-Reindeer.  How can I not have fun with that?

scurries off for more fun with that

Me:  Let’s go to bed.

Shannon:  Good plan.  You kept me up way too late last night.

M:  I kept you – you kept me.

S:  How did I keep you up too late, Mr. Pokey-fingers?  I was rolled over and going to sleep.

M:  Well, yes.  Obviously.  You know what that does to me.

S:  <stunned look>

M:  I mean, I’m only human, and if you’re going to lie there and do nothing, quietly going to sleep, what do you expect is going to happen?

S:  Are you ever aware of the noises that come out of your face?  When your mouth is open, do your ears close, or do they just not process?  I’m only asking because I’m curious.

5:37 — Ringler’s Annex, in the basement 32 minutes

6:15 — Max 23 minutes

Ringler’s Annex — very unlike me.  Not that being here (here being the refurbished basement of a tiny corner bar; glossy finished wood behind walls of windows above, but exposed concrete walls down here, pillars holding the floor overhead, celtic knotwork and whimsical elves painted in subdued gray on the walls, floor, ceiling, and mosaic of broken tile from more respectable construction moving in organic curves over some of the corners and pilasters) is unlike me, but to be here, alone, on a work night, when I could (and my training screams should) be home with my darlin’ — that’s unlike me.

But here I am, thanks entirely to my darlin’, who suggested that I was sot in my ways and could use a break.  ”Stop,” she said.  ”Replenish the spirit while keeping that increasing liver at bay.  Stay the flood of beer that is covering the countryside, and save us all.  And you might write a bit while you’re about it, and do it in a more pleasant place than you’ve been doing.”

So here I lurk, away from the upwardly mobile crowd sitting on their downward dropping backsides upward of me.  It may say something about my character that, with all of PDX to sit and drink and write in, I chose a cave.  This basement is lit with a dozen 25 watt bulbs in age-yellowed fixtures, with table candles to augment.  But for the barkeep, I’m alone, and in the back, around the corner and under the staircase.  My hat is pulled low over my forehead to keep me from idly watching the empty room, and there’s a beer at my elbow for pensively sipping while I consider what happens next in my novel.

Which takes me to it.  Go, you lot, back to your terrain haunts, and leave the shadows to me.

Oh — and Shannon, you are an excellent mate and I love you.

Tonight, I go to the zoo with my darlin’ to see the Brothers of the Baladi play.  Delicacies will be eaten, wonders will pass before us to entertain and delight, and we won’t notice, being lost in one another’s gaze.

Today was terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. I overslept. There was no coffee, and when I found things for breakfast it was a bad bran muffin that I never got to eat and a mushy banana that I only got a bite of by almost-lunch. Then I didn’t get lunch until 1:00 and it sort of sucked so much that I finished my mushy banana so that if I died the sucky lunch wouldn’t be the last thing I ever ate.

Yesterday, I developed a lovely headache. It started behind my eyes, moved outward latitudinally until it described the outlines of a lid for letting the pressurized contents of my skull out. Light hurt. I was talking to Shannon of this, and noticed that her head pulsed unusual colors in time with her words. Eventually, nausea moved me to the bedroom, where I suffered, listening to the oppressive thunder of the cat’s sleeping breath.

Migraine. Never had one. Don’t want another.

Shannon gets them from time to time, and knew not to nudge me, not to turn on lights or speak loudly, knew I didn’t want anything but to die. Knew - bless her - where to gently rub my nose and forehead to soften the rock-hammer strikes of reality striking skull, my pulse. She fed me the magic black pill (she promised blessed cyanide, but she lied; they were a barrage of herbal remedies) that further gentled things until I could sleep.

Today I feel fine - my hands are a bit unsteady, but that’s the end of it. All hail Shannon, bringer of the healing waters to wash down magic black pills!

We rose and shone with vigor and purpose today, rather earlier than I’d have liked.  We dropped $50 on gas and went to the Black Sheep Gathering, where I strolled around with my darlin’ as she ooed and ahed over various fleeces, fibers, yarns, and a variety of obscure ornate devices that one may use to change these things from their natural state to that of, say, a one piece body suit or felted hedgehog.  Then she and a like-minded crony sat down to practice their arts and I took me to a coffee shop.

So I could practice my art.

There was a dearth of blood sugar in there someplace, where I tried to be fussy and self-abusive, but a snack and micro-nap on the lawn fixed that, and here I am, pretending to be productive but instead nattering on to the aether.

There could have been nobbing about with my cronies today, but the time window was too small and the time table too undefined. Better to have less weekend, but less stress, too.

So. Time to crack the whip over me.

Yesterday my darling spouse and I went to the Japanese Garden, smelled the last of the wisteria, looked at growing things and flowing water, and then popped over to the zoo for a walk among the animatronic dinosaurs. A very nice time was had.

Today, by darling spouse took me to a coffee shop, where she parked me at a table on the patio, set up her spinning wheel and spun while I let the words out of the One True Pen (Mark III). 500 words flowed nicely onto paper, with little of the self-editing that I’ve been doing lately. Coffee was drunk. Sitting between water features and sipping took place. All things were perfect in this, the most perfect of worlds.

I called my email provider and discovered that, by adding web hosting and taking away services we aren’t using, I get more server for less money and a place to park my website.

AND, there is still time to type up what I wrote today. I am, by my reckoning, very likely to have a second short story to go out for consideration before the first one is accepted or rejected. This is having an amazing effect on my morale; having something out there looking for a home seems to make it easier for me to work on things in progress. We’ll see if I can remember that when I am next blocked up inside.

Lovely weekend, and it isn’t over yet….

Saturday was being nice to my darlin’. She was especially wonderful this last week, and I was happy to do it. There was fluff and dye and all sorts of things. Sunday was being nice to us, doing couple-y things and I like us so I’m good with that, too. Today was supposed to be dealing with housework and chores and stupid things that have to be done, and somewhere in there we would take me to a coffee shop to write and to a movie.

Oops.

Life happened, and I got my darlin’ sick, so instead I did housework and cooked several times and did more housework and will, in the end, have done housework and cooked. I really want to be grumpy about it, but it’s just the way life is and nothing’s to be done and that doesn’t change that I really want to be grumpy. So instead I’m tired from keeping my balance all day, which at least means that I can sleep tonight.

As soon as the kitchen is clean and the laundry is done.

For weeks and weeks and, I think, weeks, Shannon & I have had no crisis. The pace to which we had become accustomed has broken stride, and we would have stumbled. Fortunately, there were others nearby, and they had crisis to some degree and could lend us a cup or two.

Not much of a crisis, mind you; just something that extra hands would do well for. We had extra hands and are good neighbors. Crisis navigated, life goes on, but Shannon and I still lack for crisis of our own…but there are kids, there are relatives of varying degree and description, there are friends of friends in need, and our hands have no crisis of our own, so –

At some point recently I became somewhat grumpy. I couldn’t put my finger to just why. Then my son’s life had a fairly major blow-up at the same time that the in-laws irrigation system had a fairly major blow-up, and we dropped everything and drove south to tend to both issues. The week following was out of kilter; the laundry was undone, the kitchen fouled with a week’s accumulation (we do dishes, but there are deep-cleaning things that wait for the weekend), the garden was untended, the writing not done, the yoga not practiced.

Shannon, stepping carefully next to me as we picked our way through our own untended chores, noted “I want to live my life for a while instead of everyone else’s.”

Bingo. The source of my grumpiness.

This weekend we tended us. We walked through gardens, we played with fluff (well, Shannon played with fluff), I will write, we yogged, laundry is even now in the doing, the kitchen is all a-soak, and there is a steak marinating while a soup steams on the stove. Later, I think, there will be an Indy or a Caspian.

OUR weekend.

Just right. Smart wife. I wish she’s said it earlier.

Time to go to Schreiner’s. A wonderfully pleasant day of bumping shoulders, holding hands, and making gooey eyes at one another is in the offing.

“…but, if you don’t [perform activity], how will I know you love me?”

No hesitation: “I haven’t smothered you with a pillow, yet.”

Perfect. Just, entirely, perfect. And, it makes me realize how many people truly love me.

Monday night I came home a bit dejected-seeming from work. I asked Bridgette, “how bad would it be if I went a bit over-budget on your birthday?”

The cautious reply: “How much over budget?”

“$300?”

“That might be pushing things a bit….”

“How about $850?” I paused for her shock, and to let that sink in for a moment. “See, there was this ATV for sale, shiny-black, with a raccoon tail from the antennae and the mudflap girl on the back…. Okay. Relax. I didn’t buy the ATV.” We talked for a bit and I noted that I’d been looking at rings, and hadn’t been comfortable with the choices available or spending the money from our joint account.

“You’re tipping your hand about the ATV,” she noted. We explored for a bit, and finally decided that what I’d need was for her to join me in shopping for rings and looking at price tags, and hoped to do that later in the week, or perhaps the week after.

Tuesday was Bridgette’s birthday. I woke her to kisses and flowers, wished her a happy birthday and left her to go back to sleep. When she rose to shut off the alarm clock and feed the baby birds (she breeds birds) she found two boxes of crackers next to the clock, decorated with a bright bow and a card; “Why would this be a good present? Love you….” Following a chain of reason, she investigated the refrigerator and discovered a gift bag with a cheese torte(sun-dried tomato with basil and garlic. Mmmmm.) and a more sentimentally appropriate card.

And so the day went. She needed to wrestle boxes to find appropriate clothing for dinner that night, and on her boxes of clothes was another gift. Her niece and nephew had called her and asked her to stop by to receive hand-made birthday cards and found more gifts (one of these was a couple yards of foil garland to wear in her hair, something I’d asked her neice to insist on. Why? Because public humiliation is how we say “I love you” to those we hold close.). She knows me well enough that when she joined me to go to dinner, she was expecting a dramatic finish to the gift build-up. After the discussion last night, she wasn’t expecting (I believe) a ring, but might still be thinking a formal proposal was in the works. There was nothing. I was quite appreciative of how she was decked out (pause while I think about that for a moment.) but provided no new gifts. The tension, I suspect, was something that you could cut with a knife and spread on crackers, if you ran out of cheese torte with sun-dried tomato and garlic and basil.

Dinner was at the Jacksonville Inn. We got very nearly lost on the way; I was, I explained, following directions gleaned from the phone, but we relied heavily on Bridgette’s memory from 15 years ago to get us there. With obviously apparent luck, we overshot the restaurant by only a block and were there. The place is just wallowing in affluent luxury. I loved it. We were seated, and considered wines and appetizers and such, and things were lovely. After the appetizer was served, another tray was set near the table, and several gift bags were placed on the tray and then served to Bridgette. Inside was a ridiculous number of varied plant bulbs — I had given her a garden for her birthday, our first garden together. Misty eyes, big smiles, much kudos for a day of pleasant surprises and build-ups, and for seeming entirely ignorant of the location of the Jacksonville Inn when I had obviously set up this business during the day. Very nice. The dramatic finish was manifest, and the tension was correspondingly lower. A pleasant meal followed, with warm side passages into birthday appreciation, both for the birthday girl and the choreographer.

Dessert was brought, a tray of some dozen desserts, each one introduced to us by our server, it’s proper name given and its heritage discussed, along with the relative virtues of each dessert. Finally, she turned the tray 180 degrees on the table, saying, “And tonight we have a special selection –” and revealed the open ring box that had been facing away from Bridgette through the production.

I looked the tray over and said, thoughtfully considering, “I think we should have the ring.”

Bridgette was crying before I could hit the floor with a bended knee. Neither of us recalls exactly what I asked, but it was apparently quite eloquent. By the end of it I was breaking up, too. I was kissed and hugged and she eventually said, against my neck, “Yes.” There was more of the kissing and such, and then she continued the murmur through happy tears, “I think the lemon mousse.”

Perfect. Never let a minor issue like the proposal of marriage interfere with an important affair like dessert.

And, in fact, the mousse was terrific.

I have spent, over the years, quite a lot of time thinking about the whole Zelda business, and how it might have been kept from going so woefully awry. In the end, I think, perhaps, the mistake was marrying. Not Zelda specifically (although we were perhaps tempermentally unsuited to one another in some ways.), but in general. Without going into pages of detail (for a change), there is little that can be gained from a legal piece of paper that cannot be gained from a lifetime commitment without one.

So, last Tuesday night I became engaged to Bridgette. It seems like a good idea for reasons that, I have determined in conversation with Aberdeen, boil down to “I want to.”

Details to follow.

I noticed today that, in the past three weeks, I have stayed in my own apartment twice. And I have started to purchase half the groceries at Bridgette’s apartment.

Neither Bridgette or I seem to recall making any decisions on this, specifically. She just stopped asking if I was staying, and I stopped checking to see if that was wished for. I think keeping my apartment is a good idea, regardless; it’s good to have alternatives, and like that. Or, as she put it, “It’s good to be able to kick you out if I need to.” And it’s good for me to have a place to run away to, if I need to.

This has just been a very odd sort of relationship, all through.

So. It occurs to me that, by and large, I have been posting under the “Private” setting. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy posting to my friends, it’s just that I feel that a person should be able to enjoy smearing goat butter where ever she likes without some voluble exhibitionist (that would be me) bandying the news about in public. So.

Gardening proceeds apace, turning a patch of asphault in the barrio of Corvallis into a riot of blooms and foliage. Bridgette’s cats have come to not merely accept my presence, but expect it and resent it when I fail to show. Mornings begin with my strolling over on the way to work, entertaining the cats and making myself tea, and passing time with Bridgette when she comes home from work, before I leave for mine. Generally, I pass by again on the way home and we sort of exchange roles as she preps for work and I come down for the evening. Very pleasant.

Bridgette recently showed uncommon personal ability (not unique to my experience, but rare) by noticing that she was the obstacle standing between herself and things that benefitted her (that would be relating to me) and so she — stopped. Didn’t look for outside assistance, didn’t make excuses, just fixed things that she was doing and got out of her own way.

Cool

We poked about for signs of panic, claustrophobia, over-involvement, and didn’t find any on either part. Hard to get used to not living from crisis to crisis. Hard to get used to developments being good things. Hard to get used to people around me taking care of their own problems (again, not unique in my experience, but the folk I know who do that live miles and miles away).

I think I like it, rather a lot.

And there’s nothing wrong with smearing goat butter, if the butter’s fresh.

Oh — right. “The Unnamed Interaction.” There has been some discussion on interpersonal interaction nomenclature; we have been doing something that is not just dating, although there have been date-like happenings. More than friends. Much more than insignificant others. Significant others … a bit premature, we both feel. My vote is for calling what we are doing a “mature relationship”, but Bridgette wants no part of anything that includes the word “mature”…which I sympathize with on principle. We have determined to enjoy a nomenclatureless interaction and simply celebrate that it’s working so well on so many levels.

But. I must point out that, if it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and seeks out the god of vengeance, Horus, like a duck would, one must suspect that it may be some form of waterfowl. Y’know, I gotta say this is some sort of early stage of significant other kind of relationship. But denial is a pleasant sort of exercise, and keeps the panicky stuff at bay, so I’m not pushing. Shutting up is my best skill, these days, and I’m honing it finer.

Most people are relieved.