cirque du muss

Dazzled by his recent acquaintance with the vast retail vistas of the Internet (in this case, free shipping both ways), Ben recently ordered nine pairs of shoes from Zappos.

I'll leave that there for a few lines to sink in with any of you who knew Ben five years ago.

When the order arrived, we both ran down the driveway, ironically barefoot, to pick it up from our mail carrier's Subaru. As we turned back toward the house, Ben held up the box and exclaimed, "My clown shoes!"


It tickled me so, I had to take a pic, and that takes a lot.

Ben would probably want me to mention that he only intended to keep one pair and the giant order was for trying-on purposes. Of course, none of them fit his Hobbit feet and he had to send them all back.

Ben was accepted to the library science programs at UH-Manoa and the University of Washington. What should we do?

too far?

Today I told one class they sounded like a horde of Beavises and Buttheads. Then added an impression (hunh, hunh, hunh, durrhhhhh) for emphasis. Apparently, B&B is being rerun on some cable channel, so they actually knew what I was talking about.

After another class rushed out the doors to see a potential fight in progress, ignoring me until I slammed the doors and threatened that anyone caught outside would get turned in for truancy, I told them I'd hate to see how they would act in the midst of a terrorist attack (as if that were entirely possible, even imminent, on our ridiculously rural campus). I punctuated this with a slack-jawed, buck-toothed impression:

Duhrrr. Wonder wut's goin' on out thay're? C'mon, yall! [explosive sound effect]

It's funny how even in Hawaii, a Southern accent universally connotes dumbness. Of course, had I used a pidgin impression, it might not have gone over so well.

Miss Muss, the Slack-jawed Yokel (!)

I have a whole backlog of Ben stories and Houseguest Tales that I have not been posting because--well, life with Ben and the Boys has just been so fun and all-consuming. Oh, there's also the crushing laziness.

Here's one I had the foresight to jot down on the back of a sheet from our daily New Yorker cartoon calendar. (I typed Jew Yorker by mistake--hee!) One of the unexpected joys of married life is getting gifts that I used to mock when I worked at the bookstore, but now can't imagine life without. I save all the torn-off sheets and use them for grocery lists, then have a moment of amusement at the store when I pull it out of my pocket and reread the cartoon, no matter how lame.

Without further ado, a Ben-Missy Mussy dialogue.

Ben (whining): We're out of ketchup.

MM: Here, open this.

B: BOO, Hunt's!

MM: It was on sale.

B (in mincing, sing-song voice): Oh, fine! Next time wool panties are on sale, I'll be sure to get you some wool pa-han-ties.

My husb is a Heinz man, apparently. Who knew he was susceptible to brand loyalty?

Another piece of ephemera brought a twinge of sadness to my otherwise blissful weekend ritual of cleaning the kitchen counter. As Ben puts it, we're Empty Nesters (not fans of the Richard Mulligan show, which was awesome, but actual sufferers of the middle-aged-parent syndrome).

It's a sheet of notebook paper helpfully labeled "heuristic experiment," then containing the following:

DONALD

+ GERALD
________

ROBERT

Hints:

1) D = 5

2) Every letter stands for a number 0-9

3) Each letter is a number different from the number given another letter.

Houseguest # 1 (of 3), Lu, posed this early in his visit when we were talking about some epistemological question or other. Why was I having a conversation in which epistemological questions were even possible? Lu is what my mom likes to call "A Renaissance Man." She uses that to describe people who are both intimidatingly intelligent and good with their hands, whether in carpentry, engineering, climbing coconut trees, or cooking--you know, all the things Lu can do better than me. Basically, when around Lu, I talk out of my ass and madly hope that he won't see through my author-name-dropping and quoting of "this article I read--well, really this really interesting headline--in the New York Times" to my comparatively Neanderthal intelligence. Although, come to think of it, he would probably have an argument for how the Neanderthals were comparative geniuses for their mastery of survival tactics that modern man completely lacks. Anybutt.

This equation, which Houseguest #2 of 3 figured out within 24 hours, is apparently a way for psychologists to examine how a person reasons. Whether you get the answer is not as important as how you arrive at it. Suffice it to say that before I just stared at it with my mouth agape, I first tried to use my logic and algebraic skills; which were stunted in 9th grade by a Filipino teacher whose indecipherable accent I protested by accepting an F rather than submit to her extra credit scheme of making dozens of origami polygons; then quickly reverted to mad, random guessing, going through many days of New Yorker cartoons and erasing more than I have erased in my adult life.

That reminds me of how my "hobby" in 3rd and 4th grade was making "eraser shreds," by diligently rubbing $1 Sanrio erasers across clean paper in a quest for uniform eraser turds which we would separate by hue and organize into the compartments of our plastic pencil boxes. Monica, Jonadine and I would sometimes stay in at recess to meet our self-imposed quota. I shall have to analyze this curious social practice soon. Please continue to read despite the possibility that I may actually do so.