weekend

I stayed home on Friday night to bake coffee cake. It had apples in it.

My boy came to me after a late work night, and we slept.

I woke up first. It was nearly noon, though you wouldn’t have known it from the grey light through the windows. He was just an occasional arm or leg outside a pile of duvet while I warmed up breakfast and made hot chocolate.

We stayed in bed as long as possible. I soaped his back in the shower, and he watched me put on mascara.

This boy-- he makes me such a girlfriend.

We’re more than six months in, and, yeah. . . it’s still a surprise. The good kind of surprise.

~beatrix

we are gathered here today

We had sex three times then wrote some wedding vows not quite on purpose:

I, Beatrix, take you, Ted, to have and to hold and all of that even if you get fat from all the snacks. I love you more than eating. . . Um. . . I love you almost as much as eating. . . but it’s very close. Also, I promise to try to remember to clean the hair out of the shower drain as long as you try to remember to trim your mustache before it gets long enough to get in my mouth when I kiss you. And you know, I’ll forsake all others. . . unless Natalie Portman agrees to that thing we talked about. So I generally take you for better or worse and richer and poorer, though let’s aim up and not down, ok? Forever and ever.

~beatrix

sweet nothings

For the first time in my life I’m more afraid that something’s not going to work out than that it’s going to.

Maybe we shouldn’t write Valentines.

I didn’t even want to date you when I first met you, but . . .ugh. . . sometimes I think maybe we should just get it over with.

~beatrix

explosionless

Ted and I had our first fight.

“I would hesitate to even call that a fight.”
“Well, I didn’t like it.”

Simplified, it came down to the most basic of relationship problems: I don’t feel that you were paying attention to what I needed.

Explosionless, it came complete with listening and logic.

It was so calm it happened while crossing streets, and by the time we reached his block, I was letting him hold my hand again.

“You are good at that.”
“I didn’t feel so good at it earlier.”


~beatrix

happy day after halloween

these are the things we were not for halloween:

emma and coach tanaka from glee
a lion tamer and a lion
a chicken and julia child
something from a video game (obv. not my idea)

instead the boy went as Over-Worked and i went as Burnt-Out. i didn't even have to fake the unwashed hair or dark under-eye circles.

had a kit-kat for dinner. happy day after halloween.

~trix

confessions

I sometimes practice a controlled sort of procrastination in which I schedule a time to stop putting something off. I need to move at the end of the year, and I chose the day to start thinking about it.

I followed through, and even looked a few apartments online.

But then I found some really great one-bedrooms I certainly can’t afford on my own. One even has a fireplace.

AndthenIlookedatweddingdressesbutonlyafew.

~beatrix

where we come from

Once, my baby brother said if I got married on Game Day, he wouldn’t come. And it’s probably true.

’Cause where we’re from, college football alliance is something like religion. “The Cliffords. . . they’re Presbyterian,” you might say about an entire, extended family, “and Tech fans.”

But maybe it’s more like ancestry. Us, for example-- we’re Scottish and Irish and some Cherokee on my maternal grandmother’s side. And we’re UGA fans (though I didn’t go there, and most of my family didn’t either), but we’re Auburn fans on my paternal grandfather’s side.

And on a Friday night, when I said, “Oh, tomorrow’s Game Day,” Ted said, no it’s not, because to him Game Day is Sunday.

So he cares about professional football and he doesn’t play golf and he’s never had a Christmas tree.

“If you ever live with me, you’ll get to have a Christmas tree.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. You can put whatever you want on it.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Yeah.”
“Jew-y things?”
“Yeah, if you want. We always had a Star of David on our tree.”

Which is true because one Christmas Eve my dad brought home two department-store presents, one in in red and green with a Christmas ornament, and one blue and white with a Chanukah ornament. They turned out to be gloves for me and my mom, but they didn’t fit and we returned them.

~beatrix

kitchens and love

“I just want to move to a one-bedroom in the Lower East Side!” It was a declaration, “It will be cheaper. . . and nicer.”

“No, it won’t.” It didn’t make any sense. “How would a one-bedroom be cheaper than your two-bedroom with a room mate?”

“You don’t move into a one-bedroom by yourself.” he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it while we waited to cross Avenue A.

“Oh, right.”

“It will be so nice. We’ll have things like. . . counterspace. And. . . enough room to have people over for dinner.”

“And a table?”

“And a table. And it will have a big refrigerator and a set of good knives and a real oven and. . . a blender.”

“A blender?”

“Yeah.”

The boy knows how to make me moan with pleasure, whispering kitchen fantasies in my ear, and I’ve decided I’d also like a sewing machine. But our imaginary apartment was getting kind of girly, so I asked him:

“But what about you? What do you want?”

“Hmm. A big, flatscreen tv. . . .”

“Of course.”

“Aaaand. . . a paper towel holder.”

For real. The boy wants an apartment with a paper towel holder.

“What if I bought a washer and dryer?”

I gasped, and laughed at myself:

“My first thought was, I’d marry you.”

So he said he’d get me that and I wouldn’t have to worry about his choosing an ugly ring, and later he said he’d cover them in Swarovski crystals.

If things didn’t make so much sense, they wouldn’t make any sense at all.


~beatrix

worth it

“Talking to me should be a safe place.”

“I know.”

I know.

And it got me through this day.


~beatrix

whatever

“Yeah. . . . You know. . .. I don’t always think about babies. Sometimes I occupy my time by planning our wedding.”

I didn’t really say that, but this is real:

“I have a thrilling night planned: we’ll finish dinner, then we’ll go to the magazine store and then the grocery store.”
“The magazine store?”
“Yeah, I need to look at the new InStyle Weddings. I keep forgetting.”
“And you just remember you have to look at wedding magazines when you’re with me?”
“No. I just need to go look at it.”
“Whatever. You’d say yes.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Well, there’s lots of time.”

~beatrix