Mumbling Madly

In an attempt to make peace in our household, I find that my husband and I have resorted to sweets. After a recent argument (stupidly held at the unreasonable hour of 2am), he came home the next day bearing Molly Moon ice cream and I, in turn, brought two offerings from Cupcake Royale.

Our arguments have changed over the years. When we were courting, we would spend hours in the car traveling the 1-5 corridor. He lived outside of Portland, I lived in Seattle; it was a romance we decided would only last for the summer of 1999. Together in the car, passionately debated the merits of religion, politics, and LIFE, that big, beautiful world we were using as our playground. I was fresh out of college and throwing around all sorts of big words thanks to my freshly graduated, newly acquired, academic vocabulary (‘homogeneous’ is one of the words I can recall overusing). Josh had recently spent two years in Brazil, and his new found worldliness made him extra sexy as he expounded on the struggles and hardships of South America. The hours we had in the car, unfettered and totally free, allowed us to really get to know each other…we decided to continue dating after the summer.

After I dropped everything and joined him to become a snowboard bum in the CO mountains, our arguments transitioned into that of any new relationship: space, time, food, and habits. Neither of us had ever lived with the opposite sex before. Standard issues like toilet seats being left up, milk cartons found accidentally left in the cupboard, and clothes left all over the place were standard grievances. Larger fights involved a certain person loaning the other one’s car out to a fellow mountain local (who didn’t have a driver’s license due to a head on collision with a bus the year prior). Time and time again I was continually putting my foot in my mouth at various parties (subsequently causing embarrassment and eventual scolding on the drive home). As we transitioned out of being a new couple into a more seasoned one, we learned to forgive one another’s respective quirks and relished in the simple fact that we had each other. The twenty-something years are typically filled with lost, wandering, feelings as one scrapes out a living and tries to become an adult. We felt lucky that we had each other during those times.

After marriage, we fell into a few standard arguments: the dishes, money, and, oh, I don’t know…me putting my foot in my mouth in front of friends and (his) family. The arguments fell into such a usual pattern it was if they were scripted. A few things were resolved, i.e: I clean the dishes and Josh puts them away. I am also in charge of sending Josh monthly emails that usually involve me FREAKING out about our finances (I don’t think he even reads these anymore). We’ve developed a series of hand signals which we use during public events (usually indicating the desire to ‘leave…NOW.’) When I was pregnant we rarely argued, so astonished by the enormous undertaking we were about to embark, Josh tiptoed around me in stoic reverence. I glowed, I waddled, I expounded my new-found sense of taking on the world, one pregnancy at a time.

Then the baby came…and at first we didn’t argue at all. We simply put our heads down and plowed through the inexplicable exhaustion, the sleepless nights, arms going numb from jiggling the baby in a rhythmic, hopefully sleep-inducing, dance. We approached newbornhood as a team, determined to make it out together. Because babies are constantly changing with no predictable pattern, it was hard to get any real rhythm going. And while the sleeping has gotten better, it still doesn’t change the basic feeling of being unrested that I feel from day to day.

After the first three months, Josh started sleeping through the night again as the baby made his preference for his mother loud and clear. I masked my resentment with the resigned acceptance of a martyr. Sure, I had the boobs, the food, the familiarity…but couldn’t the baby understand that a bottle was a fine substitute? Sure, Dad smells different…kind of like an office building…but that’s ok too! I always had this rule pre-baby: No fighting with Josh after 10pm. All arguments were on hold until the morning. Now the rule should really change to: no fighting at 2am.

Last week, at the unfair hour of 11:30pm (too late to be still in the evening, and too early to really get any sleep under my belt), the baby called out. I had been enjoying a really nice spoon, the kind where everything feels right in the world. I was so tired I was experienced “Floating Bed Syndrome,” where the whole mattress feels airborne. My husband had been whispering sweet nothings in my ear before he abruptly dropped off into a deep sleep. I was following him, blissfully, into a state of dreaming. With my child making his wakefullness known, I rolled out of my hubbie’s embrace and into the cold, blanketless world.

The encounter didn’t take long, about 10 minutes, before I staggered back into bed, eager to feel the warmth and love of my marital bed. Josh was not in the same position I had left him in. He was lying flat on his stomach, turned away from my side of the bed, with a pillow over his head. I slid into bed and tried to turn him over…wouldn’t he like to continue snuggling? His shoulder was unresponsive. I lifted the pillow off his head and made my wishes known…silence. I lay there in the dark, the chill of being up in the middle of the night still on me. “Pssst,” I whispered. “Can you spoon me? Hey…hey….can you SPOON ME?” Hubbie woke up with a start, disoriented and confused: “Snnrrgggfff.” Thus began a two hour siege involving me becoming the most unspoonable human on the planet and yet outraged that Josh wouldn’t comply. Threats were thrown, pillows were gathered up, the couch was slept on briefly before I bribed him back to bed (only to immediately pick up my spoon crusade again). The sheer injustice of not being spooned was so palpable, so personal, that I could not let it go. I found myself blubbering in the dark next to my baffled, (but stubborn), husband.

Sleep dep does remarkable things to one’s spirit. Arguments you would never have in the broad daylight at a reasonable hour occur in the darkest of times. The rational side of me is the first thing to go. Suddenly, my wild imagination takes over and I become this crazed, unlovable, harpy. I am lucky that I have a partner who knows me so thoroughly. “I love how open and honest you are about your feelings,” he once said during the many car trips we took on the I-5 corridor eleven years ago. “I never have to guess how you’re feeling.” The coy, secretive, Geisha was never my style.

Silently, we eat our ‘truce’ cupcakes and lick our ‘make up’ ice cream. Sometimes, I worry about the occasionally dark turn our arguments have taken. What happened to the sweet simple days of fighting over who does the dishes? Will we ever lapse back into making fun of each other’s house cleaning quirks? Despite this, there is laughter behind our eyes, because despite the argument aftermath, I know we’ll tell this story again: “Remember how I yelled at you to spoon me at 2am? That was so, so funny…”

Find myself exhausted with the juggling of teaching jobs, dancing, and keeping house. Husband is asleep on the couch at 6pm while watching Kung Fu Panda. This is where I have found him every night of the week at 10:30pm when I arrived home after rehearsal…now I see that it might not necessarily be the late hour that motivates his sleep. No…I think he’s a bear and he is hibernating for the cold, dark, weather.

Yes, I’m wearing a shag rug collar and the reindeer are constructed using pale, white sequins, and yes, Josh’s sweater looks homemade. After several stressful weeks, it was nice to kick back in a Belltown condo, eat meatballs, and be surrounded by friends wearing equally hideous sweaters. (Josh’s sweater actually became a finalist in the top 4). Bad Sweater pics can be found here.

Actual Thanksgiving Dialogue:

My husband, fed up with my toothpaste habits, has gone independent. No longer does our little cat coffee mug hold both of our electric toothbrushes and a tube of paste. Instead, my own toothbrush and a balled up, oddly disjointed, tube sit in disharmony together. Josh recently stashed his own brush and a fresh tube of toothpaste in a top shelf next to his contact lenses and gel. What began with a simple comment about my lousy toothpaste squeezing led to Josh simply avoiding the conflict altogether and going solo. Oh sure, he tried demonstrating to me how he carefully squeezes from the bottom in order to push the maximum amount of paste out and onto his brush. “See, when you push from the bottom you never have to squeeze multiple times in the middle to get it out…the paste just travels up to the top instead of being pushed back down.” I took the paste and immediately dented it in the center, pleased with the quantity that came out. “No, no, no!” Josh cried in dismay; his perfect toothpaste set up destroyed by a single swipe of my thumb. 5 years ago, he would have suffered my toothpaste disrespect in silence. 9 years ago he would have never brought it up. These days, however, Josh is taking action. Why put up with a sloppy spouse when you don’t have to? Better to hide a tube of toothpaste from me altogether and never have to worry about it. I admire this strike of independence because I would rather have it resolved…and it means I can push the toothpaste however I want.

I went to Safeway to buy dental floss. The pink paper frame around the credit card machine at the counter announced that it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “Would you like to donate a dollar?” the checker asked me. “Sure!” I said, feeling very purposeful. I contributed my dollar and the checker continued ringing me up. “Uh, can I have the little pink card with the donation name on it?” I asked carefully. “Oh, of course!” the checker apologized. The card read, “Donated in Honor of __________” I took the card and carefully wrote Brynn’s full name. Then I blabbed to the checker about Brynn’s Stage 8 breast cancer at age 28, how she’s in radiation now, how proud I am of her. “Bless her heart!” the checker said genuinely.

Hobbes returned a week later to the vet for a follow up appointment. When we entered the exam room, I opened up the cage. Hobbes refused to come out. I didn’t realize the delicate nature of examining ill-functioning anal glands. Hobbes needed an anal exam, read: a lubed finger up her butt. Under the vet’s request I left the room again this time, Hobbes yowling in protest. “She peed,” the vet said when I returned. “Her glands feel fine, no relapse.” Hobbes glared at me from inside her cage. We will return in 2 weeks.

On Sunday night Josh and I went to a rather prominent modern dance show. I won’t give away too many details but the artistic director is African American, the company has elevated status in Seattle (above the usual fray of 10 Tiny Dances and eclectic Cap Hill ensembles), and I typically take a ballet class on Friday morning’s with the company. The first piece was unarguably the most enjoyable: hip-hop infused with a liberal use of hoodies, beats, and well timed facial expressions. There was a really beautiful dancer in this piece who was both charismatic and wonderful. The other two pieces were, quite simply weird. I borrow Josh’s assessment: “So many of the pieces were based on just being weird…I mean the dancers were good, but the movement was so strange I was distracted. Why is all the merit placed on just being really odd?” In addition to being weird, the piece by the artistic director looked painful. The dancers were slapping their limbs inadvertently all over the mylar floor, their bodies taped up in obvious attempt to hide and prevent bruising. They sweated and purposely huffed and puffed, the panting obviously included as part of the choreography. They smacked their limbs around and sounded like they were all having asthma attacks. I wasn’t into it.

On the rainy drive home, Josh and I agreed that the one dancer in the first piece was really hot. Then my husband said something marvelous, “You know, I think she looks kind of like you! This happens to me all the time…I’ll see some girl with dark hair and think, ‘wow, she’s really attractive…” and then I realize: ‘Oh, she looks just like my wife.’”

Score.

Everyone knows about Vail…its big brother, Aspen, manages to stay just as well known but is largely associated with elitism and unattainability. Its beefy Colorado step-brothers (Breckenridge and Keystone), kid sisters (A-Basin and Loveland Pass), and secret love child (Copper) don’t hold a candle to Vail. As far as I’m concerned, Vail remains the most widely known mountain resort of the US (never mind its competition with Whistler as the Big Daddy of North America). It also recently received the title of Most Expensive Resort (take that Aspen!) and is swamped year round with tourists. When people asked where I was going on vacation I said ‘Vail’ (easily identifiable) but I was hoping to go elsewhere. While there is a certain amount of cache one has by saying, “I went snowboarding in Vail,” the reality is that Vail makes me cry. I’ve never had a successful time there, maybe it’s the mounds of skiers, rude international travelers, and the fact that one time I got tangled up in one of their shoddy, orange, plastic fences.

This is where our wonderful CO connections kicked in, specifically: Jodi. She and Josh met in 1999 at an SOS meeting (SOS is an organization that helps at-risk youth learn to snowboard) and have been friends every since. We’ve all been friends, truth be told, but I missed out on many of their earlier ‘weekend warrior’ trips from Fort Collins to the mountains in the early years. They slept in cars, parking lots, old cabins, all for the sake of snowboarding and teaching kids how to ride. Jodi is also an entrepreneur, a real business woman, currently heading Activity Sitters, a high end baby-sitting service she founded a few years ago. Having grown up in Vail, (not as a rich kid but actually a poor kid living in the mountains), she returned after college to have a go at making a living. The town home she co-owns with her bf and roommates is nestled in Avon, which also houses the Beaver Creek Resort.

The Vail Valley is filled with two types of people: The extremely wealthy and everyone who is making money off the extremely wealthy. The disparity is far greater then when we lived next door in Summit County. With rent, food, gas etc. at astronomical levels, cost of living is very high, but the pay off is that you get to live in the wonderful abyss: Far from highways, 9,000 feet above sea level, the terrain rocky and covered with snow peeks. The isolation is huge, as if you are squirreled away from all humanity with nothing but the mountain for entertainment. Going back up to the mountains was a test: are we really in the right place? Sometimes when I’ve returned from a long day of rush hour traffic I crave nothing more then the blinding sunlight at the top of a mountain. Sure, there’s no Nordstrom Rack, limited places to go out to eat, and a small pool of people to hang out with. However, your mind is practically forced to slow down as the demands on your time become very basic and simple. I can see why this is the lifestyle I chased after leaving high paced Seattle in the late 90’s.

I’ve never been to Beaver Creek, but because it was five minutes away from Jodi’s place it became not only convenient but a lot of fun. We enjoyed two bluebird days, filled with sun and decent groomed snow. I was clipped twice, first by a skier and the second time by an out-of-control female snowboarder. I’d forgotten the recklessness one experiences when you throw a bunch of tourists on the same mountain over a holiday weekend. I also marveled at the array of accents you find when your town is a melting pot, specifically from Jodi’s roommates who were from Milwaukee and had a very pronounced way of speaking.

Jodi’s two teenage cats, Tosh and Leo, provided endless entertainment as they galloped and chased each other all over the place.
Josh and I had forgotten the vitality that young cats have and marveled at their ability to PLAY (something Hobbes gave up long ago). Here is Josh and Leo spending some quiet time on the couch:

Suddenly our toothless, chubby, old cat seemed pale in comparison to the sheer entertainment of Tosh and Leo. That is, of course, until I opened the door to our room in the middle of the night for some air. The kitties ran in and proceeded to chase each other in mad circles at the foot of the mattress. ‘They’ll settle down eventually,’ I rationalized, trying very hard to fall asleep. The pair did not settle down, in fact, I realized that they had isolated their chase to a single solitary circle that would not let up. I closed the door and opted for less air in the room.

We were extremely lucky to be on the receiving end of such generosity. Jodi’s bf is a sommelier (read: fancy wine expert) and uncorked multiple bottles of fancy wine for us to sample. Despite the altitude playing havoc on my system, I graciously drank some excellent wine. I also made a big meatball dinner for Jodi and friends as thanks for the hospitality:

While driving back down the long winding highway away from the mountains I was reminded about CO drivers: no signals, tailgating, wandering over to our lane, high speeds, everyone owns a truck our an SUV. We sighed as we left the Vail Valley, certain we would have to visit again. We spent one last lingering night in Golden before heading out on Wednesday, my body immediately rewarding me with a Big Cold the second I stepped on the plane.

CO I miss you!