Boom

ahem.

My husband insisted I was making up the name of an island. I am not, but it was the colonial name, apparently; I'm sure he knows it by its Africanization policy name, Bioko.

For those of you using a reader to see this, I will spare you the agony of having to google the name Bioko. The name he accused me of inventing (which, actually, is a reasonable accusation): Fernando Poo.

Wikipedia says that it was used in the Illuminatus triology. I only ever read a tiny bit of The Eye in the Pyramid, but perhaps that's where I learned of it. If I ever become a drag king, I am changing my name to Fernando Poo.

1998

When Sweetie and I started dating ten years ago, Bush wasn't bothering anyone except Texans. The dotcom economy was just beginning, really--friends actually loved working at Amazon, and cowboy-developers could hunker down at Microsoft and code until their hands died--none of this "you are a cog" agile programming nonsense, none of this "you are not an editor, you are a site merchandiser" awfulness. I traveled to lame suburbs around the country, fixing educational toy stores by hiring people living in halfway houses. Sweetie worked at a small tech company that bored him silly: when people asked him what he did, his response was "it doesn't matter". (Note: when you haven't seen someone in 10 years, and this is your answer to the second most commonly-asked question in our culture, it only leads to confusion.) My spine was still made up of 100% natural materials, and his red satin suit was brand new. I think he wore it when we went to the Spice Girls concert. We went to indie rock shows and knew the people in the bands. He drove a Miata. I had housemates, whose breakfasts began with a bong.

I don't normally sit around and ponder how much has changed, but it's weird to remember a time when NAFTA and DOMA seemed as bad as a modern president could ever get. It's not hard to chart the broad changes between potheaded housemates and owning a condo, or from having a high-pressure but boring job to having a much lower stress (and more interesting) one, or a spine made out of bones to a spine made out of titanium. It's weirder to try and remember specifics--my nervousness when we started dating, because "in a relationship, somebody has to be the crazy one, and clearly it wouldn't be him" (which, yes, hi, I'm the crazy one); the total confusion of getting home from work the first night of the WTO "riots" and learning just how much tear gas burns; his first few weeks of working at Avenue A, when he had a fake desk crammed into a hallway and more people were being hired every week via crazy bar crawls; getting finally fed up with complicated "live-in partner" paperwork and running off to Vegas to get hitched by a freaky minister who claimed his name was "Reverend Love". 

Happy 10, Sweetie: I'm glad we still like each other.

America's Lazy-Ass Husband

You may not know, but my insanely helpful, practical husband has his own tagline: America's Husband. Normally, he's a walkin', talkin' HGTV reality show all wrapped up in a fine-ass suit from Leroy's...but last night he said, after reading my blog, "but how big are pygmy hippos? I mean, "pygmy" can mean a lot of things."

I think, "internet?" was maybe not the nicest response to someone who is currenty at the story buying me Sparkle Jerry Cherry Tangy Taffy without even so much as a raised eyebrow.

So: my Hippos of Happiness are about 3' tall, 5.5' long, and about 500 lbs. Not exactly pocket sized, but small enough that I still want to domesticate them, along with red pandas, the slow loris, giant otters and ring-tailed lemurs. They tend to be solitary (aw), and live in forests that are being chopped down. They're nocturnal.

And because I know what you really want is more information about Leroy's Menswear, I give you this, from 2006.

Roll a Fort Save

Sweetie is generally indestructible, which is an awfully nice set of traits to have: rarely sick, no bad knees (since his gross untreated-for-years bursitis was cleared up five years ago), sturdy back, doctor-approved weight, reasonably fruit/veggie-friendly diet, and regular, if moderate, exercise and physical activity. If you actually painted the picture of health, it would look a lot like him, especially when he's got a bit of a tan and looks all glam. Or nerd-glam, I guess.

So he went in for his 40th birthday physical, and rolled a one. Turns out his cholesterol is even higher than it's high-but-don't-sweat-it number of five years ago (that would be the 35th birthday physical) and since he no longer receives the benefits of youth on stat charts, his risk of heart freakouts has gone from 1% to around 10%. It's time to do something about it, apparently, but it's tough to figure out just what that should be.

I am for sure part of the problem, not part of the solution. Yes, there is a lot of real, healthy food around here, and yes, he drinks his 100% juice and eats some fresh, raw fruit and vegetables every day, and the beef is grass-fed (much more omega 3 that way) and I've been on something of a bean kick for a few months so fiber is not an issue. But my various gigs require a fair amount of restaurant dining (at least it's not Claim Jumper crap), and I bake at least once a week. I have also reviewed health and diet books for a number of years, and have a pretty realistic picture of the problems in our current food-related life. Mostly, it's butter, and depending on your perspective, the presence of white flour in our homemade breads and desserts (but he's actually more of a whole-grain eater than I am). There are a few obvious places where he could make changes without much trouble--smaller butter-laden restaurant portions (he's a clean-the-plate fellow, and often that includes my plate, too), a bit less pork belly and a bit more sushi, a bit less puff pastry and a few more vegetables. No one ingredient has to go, and really, nothing is that big of a deal--it's not about weight loss or will power or anything--just a bit more effort in the household food choices. Having the nearly-free student-run bakery across the street certainly doesn't help matters; they are the main source of puff pastry in his diet.

The trouble in these theories arise when we look at his blood work tests of five years ago, when all of these changes were in existence--we didn't live next to the bakery, his daily lunch was a PBJ on whole grain with some fruit, and he walked a few miles each weekday, to and from the office. Back then, there was an assumption that the cholesterol level was hereditary--he could totally lose out on some tasty quality-of-life things and maybe--maybe--see some benefits. At 1%, that seemed silly. At 10% and climbing, it's a little creepier. But it's hard to think that anything other than drastic change would result in any obvious results. The plan is for him to do a little food log for a week, visit a dietitian, and spend a few months trying to follow her recommendations, then in March everything will be checked again and he'll see if a cholesterol-lowering drug actually makes more sense than forever avoiding homemade cookies. I suspect I know which will give the bigger benefit to him, but am trying my damnedest to cope with a future that might include ditching my favorite hobby in order to help keep my husband from having an early heart attack.

Another human nature response to all this: Undeserved, unsought crap arrives in everyone's life from time to time, but it's especially difficult managing that "why him?" feeling. I picture all these crap-eating, no-exercising, vegetable haters skipping merrily along with their 165 total cholesterol and resent the hell out of them. I am actually one of people to hate in this: My diet is much more erratic and sugar/fat-laden than his, and I, despite the tendency of my musculoskeletal parts to fall apart into crippledom, am blessed with low cholesterol and low blood pressure to the point of freakishness. With all my years of robot-spine-fusion troubles, I always figured on a certain amount of responsibility for the trouble--stage diving, motorcycle accidents, heavy smoking, the full package of dumb decisions--but Sweetie's choice of a few cookies every week doesn't seem to merit the results. Maybe it's just that cookies seem, on the face, more innocent than unfiltered camels.

He meets with the dietitian on Monday. It's conveniently on the same street as our favorite doughnut shop and taco truck. I am not kidding.

Weather Demon

Cap'n Sweetie likes to visit Weather Underground; he perhaps likes it a bit more than one should like looking at weather reports, but whatever: weather can be neat. Especially not-too-deadly-but-still-scary weather--we have a long record of being caught up in crazy electrical storms/floods/nor'easters on our vacations. Qualifier: scary weather is neat weather only when it doesn't cause the infrastructure to fall apart.

So the other day, he forwards me a link to a shot a weather hunter guy took at night flying around during Hurricane Felix. It's deeply freaky; the moon is all cool, but I swear that's some kind apocalyptic skull demon thing on the left. And yeah, OK, there's a certain element of cheesy laser show because of the skull-thing. Tlaloc and Coyolxauhqui couldn't get tickets to Laser Floyd, and so got together to make Non-Laser Hurricane Felix. (A small cultural-awareness apology for using Aztec gods when I should use Mayan; I don't know my Mayan gods.)

A Very Quotable Kid

The small fry we routinely refer to as The Perfect Child (even if his parents disagree) is the four-year-old King of Soundbites. Heard by Cap'n Sweetie while sailing with this PC: "Yes, with patience and sitting still, I have the mad skillz."

It's like he's in training to be a ninja before starting kindergarten this fall. Does the ninja utility belt come in his size? Speaking of the ninja costume...why have I never gotten together with about 10 friends and all dressed as ninjas for Hallowe'en? I mean, aside from the lack of the "sexy ninja" version of the costume. Whoops, I should have known. The tagline is great: You won't be invisible in this sexy ninja costume!

Flexboat

Today was my second trip out with Cap'n Sweetie on the USS Flexboat. Once again, a couple of uber-cute harbor seals were around, and even more exciting: the Rhinoceros Auklet. Behold!

Sailboats are fun, but there is a small degree of not fun getting-in-the-way that I, the non-Cap'n, do not like...come to think of it, I doubt Cap'n likes it either. It would be easier if I was a brain in a jar and he could just shove the jar out of the way. We're not sure if a bigger boat is the right answer; that sort of seems like people in the suburbs who get a bigger house instead of getting a divorce. That analogy makes it sound like a bigger deal than it is; the actual issue (which will make sense to those who know Sweetie) is that I just get mowed down when he's doing things and having someone hollering OW! does not exactly help you focus on accomplishing high-dexterity tasks. I do not yet understand the point of politely saying "helm's a-lee" when what you need to say is, "watch your damn feet!" Perhaps it's related to the necessity for politeness in small quarters.

In other news, Hamilton has grown two pounds--just about doubled--since we brought him to here. He's working to catch up with 20-lb Mr. Behemoth, but for now he tries to make himself appear big by rearing up on his hind legs and spreading his front paws in a fair imitation of a grizzly. The world's tiniest pocket bear.

The funniest-to-us direct mail piece of the year arrived yesterday: it's a 20% coupon for the Amazon lodge where we had the lovely time and the robbery/murder. Oh happy day, we are free to extend this bargain to our friends. If you're tired of our vacation story trumping yours, we are happy to provide the internet code.

Oh, and because Sweetie finds a charmingly ridiculous array of things to entertain himself with of late (and as a girl who's knit a viking hat, I know from ridiculous hobbies), we now have a snail farm on the deck. If you want a snail (thus far, they make excellent pets, all ten million of them), just stop by Cap'n Sweetie's Swap-n-Snail Bucket Ranch. My Bucket Ranch tagline of the day: Don't Ask No Questions.

Land Ho

Sweetie has signed on with a group I have taken to calling FlexBoat and it's grand. Earlier this week, we blew off a big Cap Hill Sound Transit meeting (me: ugh, don't you remember our caucus? him: yes, but blah blah important blah civics blah oh well sailing!) and spent an afternoon fiddling about Shilshole. Based on our three-hour-tour, these critters are available for viewing if you pay a minimal bit of attention: Harbor porpoises, Harbor seals (spotted cuteness), California Sea Lions (hey, I've snorkeled with them!), osprey (the most pinheaded bird of prey), the Greater Scaup (a duck I was happy to add to my list) and some amazingly big orange jellyfish that look like doilies that could kill you faster than you can say, "Is that a doily, or a jellyfish?"

Safety tip for the day: You know that thing you learn at camp called the Dead Man's Float? Yeah, don't do that. There's this unpleasant little thing called hypothermia, and the DMF will in fact kill you dead much more quickly than something called HELP that will nearly double the time you can stay alive.

While Sweetie would tell you otherwise, I think this is all part of his ongoing secret campaign to get me to stop doing unfavorable comparisons between here and Charleston. Puget Sound has a weird feel to it that always makes me feel like I'm actually walking into a marketing brochure or a postcard; like all the pretty stuff is kind of a circle around a place I like very much but don't feel very attached to. I'm not sure if it's just placement of the hills or an actual effect of the humidity in Charleston, but I feel much more appreciative of my surroundings when it's all flat and rivery and marshy and gold/blue instead of green/blue. My ideal setting: a house on stilts in a marsh just at the end where it starts to turn swampy (marsh: grass in water; swamp: trees in water), where I am about 15 minutes by foot to my friends, restaurants and movies. A sailboat in Ballard is mighty nice, though, and soon enough we'll be looking into sailing around the Florida Keys and the Virgin Islands and Scotland and wherever.

Speaking of travel, a thing that I suspect is our final check from the Ecuadorian robbery has finally arrived. The lodge has had to take their insurance company to court, apparently. I fussed until we got our hotel fees returned for the extra night in the city and the missing night at the lodge when they evacuated everyone; this new check is for 25% of the cash we have taken from the safe. Since we'd kissed it all good-bye once we got our passports returned, it's nice to get anything at all--and it's even nicer to feel like I never have to deal with them again. Funny last surprise from Ecuador: Sweetie can't donate blood for a year, because we were in a part of the Amazon basin where there's malaria. Weirdly, a lowland city we avoided, which is known to be a vast malarial swamp, is apparently fine as far as US blood donations go.

How Is Sweetie Like A Manatee?

He will also be seen in Jersey this week. Plus, he can be difficult to motivate. And actually, I wouldn't be surprised if he could chow down 12 bunches of kale in a day. Maybe a better question is "how is Sweetie not like a manatee?"

Macho Cheese

This entry is the result of an odd mix of events: I've been reading a sweet memoir about birding, the printed blog of Mimi Smartypants, a centuries-old Italian advice book called The Book of the Courtier and a lot of online stuff about Latin American culture. I also just spent four days sharing an apartment with two other hetero couples (they didn't overlap, so it was actually two days with each couple). The night before we left on our Seafair Avoidance Weekend, I had a houseful of geek boys, drinking beer and playing Dungeons and Dragons, which morphed into drinking beer and talking about The Future.

The result of all this has mainly been thinking about the boys I know, and trying to put them in some kind of historical context. Before the industrial revolution, men were pretty femmy; the upperclasses were fully expected to write poetry, sing insanely tragic romantic songs to their beloved, dress in bright colors, wear perfume and behave under tight societal restrictions when it came to basic manners and daily habits. Poor men, while expected to perform the lowerclass/manly stuff like gutting fish and trapping bunnies and ploughing land, were fussy about the wine they drank, hugged frequently, sang and danced with each other on all social occasions and put tremendous amounts of effort into beautifying public spaces. Then everything got all industrialized and personal value was tied to net income, which led to unpleasant sexism and a multigenerational trend for men to be really boring and repressed.

Now, the guys I know have become post-industrial. I can have conversations with them about fashion and literature that are awfully similar to the ones I have with girls. They care about style, and they hug and sing, and dear lord, might even write poetry although I hope the vast majority never share it with me. Most of them are reasonably happy with their jobs, but net income is by no means their primary method for determining happiness. Granted, most of them would sell out to the highest bidder in a heartbeat, but they're quite aware that selling out is exactly what they'd be doing and don't feel the need to gloss it over. Sweetie does seem to be the only one who genuinely knows his way around a tool box, but since I fix everything with just a hammer and a roll of duct tape, maybe in my own ignorance I underestimate the skills of the non-Sweeties.

I'm not talking about the word "metrosexual", because that word is basically the modern term for "dandy" or--even better--"macaroni" (yes, as in "stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni"). Metrosexual is, from what I've read, about fashion sense. Fancy shoes and styley shirts aside, I think what I see is more a result of this slow, painful shift to a post-industrial world. I think it's neat that the fellows I know are so vastly different from the men I read about as literary characters from the 20s to the 80s. They seem to have changed less on the way from boyhood to manhood than the two previous generations, without being immature jerks (even if I have seen one use pretend anti-girl-germ spray recently). Maybe the boring suit-n-tie-short-back-and-sides guy was really the result of Henry Ford's assembly line, and now that those lines are gone (at least in the US), that guy will fade away, too.

I kind of expect a lot of comments on this that include fart jokes and sugartits remarks. Maybe instead of that you should go buy a pair of shoes and sip a mocha frappacino. If you write a poem, keep it to yourself.