Comma Dot Comma

It was a foolproof plan. “Winter, Schminter” I said
to myself. “That big baddie won’t get me for WEEKS yet.”

Itchy, layered clothes? Don’t need ‘em.
Icicle fingers and toes? No way.
Perpetually chapped lips? Right out.

The plan was simple and direct. It required no work except willpower. It involved nobody else. It was a perfect plan. Ready?

Okay. The plan had two parts:

1. Do not turn on the heat in the apartment until after December 1.
2. Do not open the box of sweaters and fuzzy tights until after December 1.

Yes. I, Dottie of comma dot comma, would hold back winter by sheer stubborness. Name it and claim it, baby.

So it was that I found myself in the midst of 20+ degree days, completely unwinterized. I still had mostly open-toed shoes! Of my two winter coats, one had no buttons and one was all ripped up inside. I found a right glove and a left glove, but they were trendy (if by “trendy” you mean “not remotely matching each other,” which I do. Because it is going to be a trend someday soon, since I have resolved to wear them all winter. I don’t have a history as a trend setter (brown cords with pink blotches all over them, anyone?) but it could happen. ).

I also turned on the heater. It smelled like burning dust.

DRAT! FOILED AGAIN!

But now it’s been hovering in the 60’s for a few days. Maybe my plan worked after all?

First off and unrelated to post title: if you are a prayer, please commune/icate with God for my friends Mike and Stacy. They are in an uncertain and scary moment in a long yearned for, hoped for, prayed for, everything for, pregnancy.

Now, on to scary marriage.

Events of late have conspired to make me consider again that worthy institition. One day recently while wandering around the leaf-strewn neighborhood near my work I found myself keeping pace with a young guy. Old school punk rock: mohawk, leather, chains, tatoos. We pretended we weren’t walking the same speed or direction for awhile, but at the stoplight he gave in and asked directions to the local tavern. I gave them. He said he had to get there fast, before his wife’s shift ended. Why? He had just found out she had cheated on him.

“I’m so sorry,” I said lamely. “I hope the two of you can find a way to work it out.”
“I don’t,” he said, pointing at his cell phone. “This is the third time! She just lies to me and lies to me!”
“That really sucks,” I said.
“Yes, it does. We’ve only been married four months.”
The light changed, he went his direction and I went mine. I prayed for him as he walked away but felt I had missed an opportunity of some kind.

Then a friend told me that marriage was scary, because how do you keep from being sick of each other? This person’s parents, married more than 30 years, talk to each other through the dog: “Spot, mommy’s idea is really harebrained, don’t you think?” “Spot, don’t listen to daddy. he’s so unreasonable!”

Then this weekend I went to a wedding. It was a nice one, full of happiness and hope and the Holy Spirit. But inevitably weddings stir up talk of marriage and inevitably the Mister and I are the longest-wed in the group of acquaintances huddled by the hors d’oeuvres table. And inevitably we are called upon to dispense nuggets of insight. I’m kind of smug about my marriage so I don’t mind talking, to a degree. But part of me realizes that every marriage is as unique as the two people who make it, which puts an obvious limit on the value of any nuggets coming out the nugget dispenser.

Anyway all I can say is that marriage is scary. Not because I might get cuckolded (can a girl get cuckolded?)or sick and tired of the Mister (can’t imagine such a thing!), but because with every passing year I invest more and more in a losing proposition. My career choices, my friends, the music I listen to and movies I watch, where I live, my sex life, my politics, my spiritual path: all deliberately and permanently shaped around my spouse. (Not to say we share all the same tastes and opinions, just that we constantly take the other person into account.) For us, to be happily married means both of us committing to live life together. To change together. To make sure we keep eating out of the same bowl, so to speak. The more we do this, the more there is no going back to our old individual lives. We have a really good time, even in the sandpapery spots when life gets so rough we’re all abrasions.

But what is this thing we’re making together, this marriage? What’s it going to be in the end? Nothing. Zero.
One day, sooner than ever, I’ll lose the Mister, or he’ll lose me. It’s a basic fact, no getting around it. It will be like a sweater unraveled into separate piles of colored yarn. But we keep doing it anyway! In at least this one case, the Now is more than the End. How scary, and how great. Worth it, I suspect.

And that’s the only nugget I got, if it even is one.

Whatever happened to Neneh Cherry?

Who’s that gigolo on the street
with his hands in his pockets
and his crocodile feet
hanging off the curb
looking all absurd
(watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon)*
sucking beer through straws
where did you get yours?

I remember reciting this in the halls of my junior high. WAY better than “We like the cars, the cars that go boom.” I mean, the sneer inherent in “crocodile feet”! The near-rhyme of “curb” and “absurd”! Followed by girls drinking beer with straws! Good stuff. I recommend singing it in the supermarket or when approached by sleazy people. What junior high song sticks with you to this day?

*What they tell you to say if you are in choir and forget the words.

Classic maneuver for outsmarting procrastination: Back Myself Into a Corner.

In this case, it meant announcing the URL of this blog to a roomful of people, when nary a word had been written thereon. Sho nuff, Mike linked to it (Right back atcha Mike). So now I simply must write something. How about a list or two? The only thing I might love more than lists are multiple-choice tests. First, a thank-you to Nate, who introduced me to the word omphaloskepsis and helped me get this thing set up and kindly badgered me at regular intervals.

Why Comma Dot Comma Dot Net?

Why Procrastinate?