Through a Glass, Darkly

Ten years ago today, Mike asked me to marry him. (I didn’t say yes for a few more days, and I debated about whether to wait and post something on the 24th or to go ahead and do it now. Obviously now won out.)

We hadn’t actually been out on an official date at that point. Not because we were courting, but because he was my boss, and we were trying very hard to follow the rules. Because of that, I wasn’t completely sure how he felt about me. And then he asked me to marry him. I was, in a word, surprised. Everyone was surprised. But I knew (in a way that I couldn’t necessarily put into words without sounding cheesy, and I am not so good with the cheesy) that I wanted to be with him, even if I didn’t have a clue what “forever” might actually look like. So, three days later, I said yes. Ten years ago.

When we look back at that time, we laugh and say things like, “We were so young!” and, “What were we thinking?” There’s nothing else to say, really. I was 19, and he had just turned 23. We had no idea what we were doing.

It’s been ten years full of all sorts of things. There’s been family drama and graduate school and career changes and my dad’s death and fantastic vacations and lazy weekends and road trips and concerts and changing churches and moving. We have been through a lot together, and we have staked our claim: This is who I am, this is who we are together. Some of those lessons have been difficult, but we have learned them and changed and grown together. We are not those 19- and 23-year-olds. We both feel so much more confident, so much more grounded in many ways. He makes me brave. He gives me the courage to take risks like changing jobs and dreaming about the future. I hope I do the same for him. I am so thankful that 19-year-old me said yes, even though she had no idea what she was getting into, because I like where we are and who we are. I can see the winding path we took to get here, and I know I could not be me without Mike.

So, baby, here’s to ten more years. (And ten more after that, and ten more after that . . . for as long as we both shall live.)

I finished Gaudy Night last night . . . my summer class has made reading somewhat difficult, but it will be over in a week and a half, so I expect my books read to skyrocket in July.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that one of our fellow concert-goers did not have what I thought to be proper concert etiquette. At the time, I considered quoting from Gaudy Night, but was too lazy to get the book off of the shelf. So I will quote from it now, as it is still on the couch here beside me (I don’t know where to put it . . . the rest of our books are packed. I miss you, books). I will go ahead and confess that this paragraph shapes quite a lot of what I consider to be proper concert etiquette.

He was wrapt in the motionless austerity with which all genuine musicians listen to genuine music. Harriet was musician enough to respect this aloofness; she knew well enough that the ecstatic rapture on the face of the man opposite meant only that he was hoping to be thought musical, and that the elderly lady over the way, waving her fingers to the beat, was a musical moron. She knew enough, herself, to read the sounds a little with her brains, laboriously unwinding the twined chains of melody link by link. Peter, she felt sure, could hear the whole intricate pattern, every part separately and simultaneously, each independent and equal, separate but inseparable, moving over and under and through, ravishing heart and mind together.

You guys, I just love Dorothy Sayers. Maybe she is being too judgy in this passage, but . . . “unwinding the chains of melody link by link?” That is some gorgeous stuff right there. Gaudy Night is a book that has meant a lot to me as a woman, a scholar, and a feminist, and this is one of the paragraphs that has left its mark on me. I know that I am no genuine musician, but I try to be respectful of those around me who can appreciate the intricacies of music when I am attending a live concert. And that was what I was trying to say - the woman who annoyed me with her exuberance was, according to Dorothy sayers at least, probably not even really enjoying the music, but wanted to be seen enjoying it, to be thought of as musical.

I find something different every time I read the book, and while I remember this section, it stood out to me this time. Harriet is discussing her relationship with Peter, how Peter has watched her wrestle with her demons and been respectful enough not to interfere or force himself into the situation, despite the fact that he loves her.

“Yes. I almost wish he had interfered, instead of being so horribly intelligent. It would be quite a relief to be ridden over rough-shod for a change.”

“He will never do that. That’s his weakness. He’ll never make up your mind for you. You’ll have to make your own decisions. You needn’t be afraid of losing your independence; he will always force it back on you. If you ever find any kind of repose with him, it can only be the repose of very delicate balance.”

Perhaps this paragraph left its mark, too, without me knowing it, because those are things I would say about Mike, as well. I wouldn’t say that Mike reminds me of Lord Peter in any way except this: when I have tried to abdicate certain decisions or decision-making processes, he makes it clear that he expects me to act as an equal partner. He always encourages me to think for myself and to work out my problems without trying to fix them for me. It is a delicate balance, and one that I appreciate about our relationship. He has, esentially, asked me to grow up and expected a lot from me over the past few years, and his faith in me has helped me live up to his expectations.

There are so many new and unread books on my list that sometimes I don’t have time to squeeze in the old favorites. But this was the right decision for me, to pick up this book. I am always sad when it is over. Usually I move straight on through to Busman’s Honeymoon. And I would have this time, too. Except it’s already packed up.

Almost every morning, I come downstairs and find my travel mug cleaned out and draining beside our sink. It is especially difficult to open, and Mike knows that, so he opens it almost every morning and cleans out yesterday’s coffee. It’s one of my favorite morning things, to turn the kitchen corner and see my mug sitting there. I appreciate how Mike takes care of the little things, and as we have been searching for a house, I see how much of that falls on him as well. Mostly because he has more time, but that doesn’t mean I appreciate it any less.

Looking for a house is difficult - when we bought this house, it was kind of like choosing my wedding dress. I “knew” that was the right dress, and we “knew” this was the right house. This time around, things are a little bit more complicated, and we have been weighing what we want and who we think we are more than we did the last time. We think we have settled on a house, though. We are going to go look at it again tomorrow and probably decide for sure. We are thankful to have people who are helping us make a good decision, but it also makes me miss my dad.

We went to one of the older theaters in town to see Indiana Jones today. It just seemed right, to see it without stadium seating or big fancy surround sound. I wouldn’t call it the best Indiana Jones movie (that’s Raiders, of course) or my favorite (that’s Last Crusade), but it was good, uncomplicated fun. Parts of it were a little overly silly, but I enjoyed myself and had a good time. Also, it was only $8.00 for both of us. I bet you paid more than $8.00 for one ticket! My dad has been on my mind lately because of this movie coming out. I don’t know exactly when I saw my first Indiana Jones movie, but I think that it was when we rented the VHS of Raiders and Temple of Doom one time when my dad and I were both sick. Seeing them when we were both sick always made Indiana Jones feel like something special that my dad and I shared (in between puking our guts out). (Temple of Doom did not exactly make me feel better, let me tell you.) The first time I saw the trailer for the new movie, I cried a little bit, because it made me miss him and because it was weird that there was another movie and he wouldn’t be here to see it. I think he would have thought the same thing I did - fun movie. A little bit silly, but fun.

Mike would like for me to tell you that he beat me at Trivial Pursuit. Which is fine. I enjoy a good friendly competition. My hat is off to him. He should definitely be proud. After all, while I was getting questions about Confederate generals (which I answered correctly) and retired NHL commissioners (which I did not), he was getting questions like the following:

What tune did Jim Weatherly originally pen as Midnight Plane to Houston?

Midnight. Plane. To. Houston. Yeah. He got a pie piece for that. How about this one?

What does the W mean to roving WLAN computer users?

W? Roving? What could that be? Certainly not wireless! Except, yes it is. Another pie piece for Mike.

What fraction of Africa’s rainforests can be found in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Now, I know what you are going to say here. That could be a difficult question. But let me assure you, as we will discover in just a minute, the number questions are never really that difficult if you are thinking. Unless they are questions for Kari. And this was a question for Mike. And, indeed, the answer was . . . one-half. Another pie piece. This was one of his more difficult pie pieces.

What Democrat cringed in horror at his half-brother’s role in Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings?

I actually knew this one from my Quiz Bowl days. Mike guessed correctly, but I thought that everyone knew about Roger and his drug/alcohol problems. Obviously drugs and/or alcohol would lead to one making a movie called Pumpkinhead 2. Another piece of the pie for Mike.

Speaking of numbers and how they work in Mike’s favor, here is a nice little question:

How many winning seasons were fans of the New Orleans Saints able to enjoy, from 1967 to 1986?

Well, let’s see what we’ve got here. Really specific dates? Check. A team not historically known for winning? Check. That can only mean one thing! Zero! And, indeed, the answer was zero. Another piece of the pie for Mike. (Sorry, Scott, for bringing up such a painful subject.)

And, finally, my personal favorite question from this batch:

What U.S. State lost 30,500 hogs to 1999’s Hurricane Floyd?

Hey, Mike, remember when I was in college and there was a hurricane coming through North Carolina and we went to Kelly’s apartment for a hurricane party and then nothing happened to us and then Eastern North Carolina flooded and we felt awful about it later? You do? You mean to tell me you remember Hurricane Floyd hitting North Carolina? Dangit. I guess that’s six pieces of pie, now, isn’t it?

In our house, there is some debate about whether the final question should be selected before or after the card has been perused. Mike insisted that I choose beforehand. So I chose History, often a difficult category, and he got a question about a president of our country who was also, I kid you not, the founder of UVA. He won. But, you know, that’s cool. I’m not bitter.

If you need me, I’ll be on a midnight plane to Houston. (MIDNIGHT PLANE TO HOUSTON, YOU GUYS. HE GOT A PIE PIECE FOR THAT! HURRICANE FLOYD! I will have my revenge.)

I don’t know anything about Tullycraft, but one evening I was listening to the radio station that Mike DJed for over the summer, and I heard this beautiful haunting song. I made Mike call the station and find out what the song had been, and it turns out that it was “The Lonely Life of the UFO Researcher” by Tullycraft. Now, sure, that’s a silly title, and in some ways it’s a silly song. I kept finding reviews that said that very thing. But, in my humble opinion, those people are missing the point. This is a song about faith and doubt, about believing in what is not seen, about questions and needing to know the truth. All of those things are set in the context of UFOs, but don’t be deceived. I experience these same emotions all the time, belief and unbelief forming an uneasy truce in my heart. Feeling misunderstood by people who don’t share my same faith. Desperately wanting a sign that I’m not wasting my time.

Antenna towers, and distant hopes
I’ve measured happiness with telescopes
Well, I’ve been face to face with what my future brings
The reels they turn recording blips and pings
Through the white noise and distortion
There’s a message I can feel
Just give me one sign that you’re real

Please give me one sign that you’re real

This year, our Lenten theme has to do with restoration, and I thought on Sunday about what Mike and I were like five years ago, how much we had managed to hurt each other and how, little by little, we have grown up and grown from those mistakes. If I am needing some sort of sign from above to confirm God’s existence, I only need to look at my husband, who faced his fears about college and grades and intelligence and returned to school, coming out of his shell and developing an incredible confidence in himself and his abilities. And not being satisfied with bettering himself, he has wholeheartedly embraced a profession that allows him to help other people.

There are so many ways that Mike encourages my faith, but none more than the way that he has quietly allowed God to work in his heart and give him the courage to change. This is what I picture when we talk about God restoring the years that the locusts have eaten: I think about how I will feel on May 16th.

“When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes–what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows–what new landscapes–what new beauties–what curves and hills and valleys further on.” -Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

We learned something else in New York, something I forgot to mention. Mike can sleep through anything. I mean anything. Except doormen beating on trashcans at 4:00 in the morning. But traffic, drunk people, crazy cats . . . please. He scoffs at them. In his sleep. I already basically knew that he was the best sleeper ever, but my jealousy of his sleep reached new and more perilous heights. He lies down and falls asleep almost instantly. How does he do this? He sleeps through almost anything. How does that work? I had to take a nap in the park like a homeless person in order to keep up with him.

On a completely different note, Saturday morning I went running, and the weather was absolutely perfect, the kind that makes me feel like I could run forever. But, actually, since I haven’t run as much lately (though we did walk approximately 800 miles in New York), I could not run forever. But it was still nice to get out and get some time to myself.

As I was running, “Moon River” by The Innocence Mission (I know, what kind of running music is that?) came on my iPod, and I started thinking about what is happening “just around the bend” in my own life. As a good Anne of Green Gables fan, I thought about Anne and about how life is full of choices and opportunities and challenges, bends in the road that keep us from knowing exactly what is going to happen. There were times that the future did seem to stretch straight ahead of me, with things lined up in perfect order. Life isn’t really like that, though. We think that we are on a certain path, and then the road does bend, or maybe we could go all Robert Frost and take another path altogether. We can have ideas about when we want to get married, what we want our weddings to look like, our careers and when we will have children. But plans and priorities change, relationships wax and wane, and the things that happen shape us into people who wouldn’t be satisfied with that straight path, even if it was still an option for us. I will never be the kind of person who wants to beat an entirely new path (think of all the mud on my shoes!), but I have learned/am still learning to be thankful to these adjustments to The Plan, these unexpected bends in the road.

All of that to say that this is my last week at my current job, and I will be taking a new job as a school media specialist starting in November. This is why I’ve been a little quiet here lately . . . I have had a lot on my mind.

I don’t know what will happen around this bend in the road. I have been happy at my job, but I think that it’s time to make the switch for all kinds of reasons. Mike and I have been talking about this for a while, and we feel like it’s the right decision, even if it’s a hard decision to make.

I wish I was more like Anne, that I could anticipate the beauties that are to come, but right now I am a little bit frightened at this undertaking, to be honest. Frightened and excited. I hope I am up to the challenge.

We realized a couple of things this weekend.

1. We should really travel together more. We always travel with friends or family, and, friends and family who read this, please don’t be offended by this, but it was really fun just to be with Mike in New York City. This is partly because we have been together for nine years (NINE YEARS), so navigating what he will want to do and when he will need to eat is almost like navigating those things for myself. But it was mostly because he is my favorite person and it was really fun to be in New York City with him. We are looking forward to traveling more once he is out of school.

2. Mike genuinely has no sense of direction. Also, street numbers mean nothing to him. “54th and 7th” is like speaking gobbledygook (I used that word for you, Andrea) to him. His eyes actually glaze over. There was a point at which my cousin was showing Mike the street map for the Brooklyn Bridge area, and both of us simultaneously realized that instead of me helping in the kitchen and Mike taking care of the map, we needed to switch places. Because if he was in charge of the map, we were doomed.

—

As you might imagine, the corner of 54th and Broadway is rather loud, so I didn’t get as much sleep as I might have wished during the night. So we slept in Saturday morning, which was wonderful, and then we checked our luggage and went to Central Park. I defy you to find a better day to go to Central Park. It was gorgeous. We didn’t get to do everything we wanted (like visit the Central Park Zoo), but Strawberry Fields and Alice in Wonderland made up for the lack of gay penguins. (I did not know that Roy and Silo had broken up!) I have wanted to see the Central Park Zoo for years, but it never works out when I am there. (Are you ready for the full confession? Can you handle it? Are you sure? Because the first place I heard about the Central Park Zoo was in a Baby-Sitters’ Club book. It’s a good thing Mike doesn’t read my blog. He would never agree to go now.)

After Central Park, we went to The Met. I guess Mike can’t bust on me too much for wanting to go to certain Central Park exhibits out of BSC fandom, because he (and I) wanted to go to The Met because he just read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the first time. (That’s totally the same thing, right? My silly teen series and his Newbery winner?) We enjoyed it, and then we hit our limit for art. And then we couldn’t find our way out, so we looked at more art. And we understood how people could hide in the museum overnight. Also, when I went to the bathroom, I looked to see if any children were hiding in the stalls. (That is a reference to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I loved that they hid in the stalls.) Finally, we escaped. That’s not completely true, though. We had to ask for help. We went up to one of the security guards and said, “Hi. We want to leave.” And he told us which way to go. It’s a good thing, because otherwise we might still be there.

After that, we did some other things like eat muffins and visit FAO Schwarz before heading to Brooklyn to stay with my cousin and his wife (who is pregnant, yay!) (and has a book coming out in May, you should totally order it right now!). Since I had visited their apartment before, I remembered which trains to take, and I managed to navigate us there without any problems. (Again, let me emphasize how important my navigating skills are to our relationship. No, I could not navigate us in the labyrinth of The Met, but I can navigate the labyrinth of the subway system.) When we got to Brooklyn, I told Mike, “You are going to like it here.” And he did. Now he wants to move to Brooklyn. One problem, though. I like Brooklyn a whole lot, but I don’t really want to move there myself. I would be fine with visiting it more, though.

Last time I visited my cousin, I quoted the following passage on my blog:

“If you want to make Brooklyn in words or film or paint, you must see the way the sun defines the silent streets on an early Sunday morning, sculpting trees, buildings, fire hydrants, stray dogs, and wandering people with an almost perfect clarity.” - Pete Hamill

Maybe it was just that I was visiting in October again, but it was so lovely on Sunday. My cousin said, as he drove us to the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, that he loves his neighborhood on Sunday mornings. So I don’t think it’s just me. We had the best day on Sunday, brunching with my cousin, reading (Mike) and napping (me) and eating pizza (Grimaldi’s) in the park, and wandering around the neighborhood. It was just a golden day, and I was so happy to spend it with Mike. We have a lot of things going on in our lives right now, and this weekend was the perfect way for us to transition into some of them.

We were very lucky to win the tickets, but I also feel so lucky in general. To be married to such a wonderful man, to have been able to go on the trip, to see things we’d been wanting to see, to spend time with my cousin, to rest and walk and eat great food. It was one of those magical weekends that happen sometimes, and we are thankful that it happened to us.

I am chronicling this as much for myself as for anyone, and that’s my excuse for it being so long.

I was afraid I would cry. That was my biggest fear about the whole evening, for weeks beforehand. Just like I knew I was going to cry when July 21st rolled around, I couldn’t imagine being at Carnegie Hall with J.K. Rowling and not shedding some tears. (Plus, I’m always tired after traveling, and I am not great to travel with, I think, because being tired makes me more likely to cry. Mike is a saint.) I knew that, as we got our books signed, I’d have one chance to tell her what it’s meant to me.

We were allowed to bring our own book to be signed. Mike brought the special edition of Sorcerer’s Stone. But I brought with me my favorite book of the series, Goblet of Fire. The first release party we went to, the book we read on our honeymoon. If I could have only one signed, that was the one I wanted.

I did not want to ruin it by crying.

So, I’m lame, but I practiced. I practiced it over and over in the car on the way to work, on the way to a librarian conference, in my head at lunchtime. I practiced, but it didn’t make a difference. I cried every time. On Friday, before we walked over to Carnegie Hall, Mike asked if I knew what I was going to say, and tried to say it to him, but I cried. How could I distill what all of this has meant to me into one or two sentences? Reading the books out loud with Mike, sharing them with friends, release parties and costumes and years of speculating. How could I say thanks for all of that?

The night itself was basically amazing. They did a random drawing to assign seats, so we didn’t know where we were going to be until we picked up the tickets on Friday. It turned out that we were in one of the boxes. It felt like being a queen, sitting there in Carnegie Hall with an excellent view of the stage. We chatted with the people around us, taking pictures of the stage and each other. Except that of course we didn’t do that, because they told us no flash photography and we are very very obedient.

Or maybe not.

But pictures without a flash were okay.

Even Dwight got in on the fun:

The chair of greatness:

And there were some introductions and some videos, and then, finally finally, she came out. And that, my friends, is when I did cry a little, because we were there, in Carnegie Hall, giving J.K. Rowling a standing ovation. (Mike said later he knew I’d cry then, curse him.) I am not much for the standing ovations, myself. I think that we give them much too often to people who don’t really deserve them, but I didn’t mind giving one to her. The fans finally getting to say thanks for the years of fun we’ve had. She seemed really moved, and said that we had to stop or she would cry.

The reading was great, the questions were very interesting (I will say more about Dumbledore in a minute), and you can read a transcript of all of that here, so I won’t bother getting into all of it. I’ll just talk about the signing. We waited a while, still up in our box, as they cleared the people on the floor first. We watched her as she was signing the books, and what struck me the most was that she was so present for each person, looking them in the eye, listening to their stories. The Scholastic handlers, bless their hearts, were trying to move everyone along. And I understand that, I do. But if they were just going to give us a signed book, they could have done that without giving us interaction with her. The whole point of the tour was that she wanted to spend time with her fans. I didn’t begrudge anybody the chance to say what he or she wanted to say, provided it wasn’t a ridiculous amount of time.

As our turn approached, I made Mike go ahead of me in line. We are so different, because, even knowing that this was his one shot, his one chance to say something to her, he didn’t feel like he had anything to say other than, “Thank you.” Or possibly asking her to adopt him. But I sent him through first so that we could maybe stick together, that maybe the handlers wouldn’t rush me through if it was two people taking up the time of just one. It didn’t really happen like that, though. They moved us through pretty fast, and Mike went on ahead and then it was my turn. They took my book, and I watched her sign it, and then there she was, right in front of me, and I leaned in and said, “We read Goblet of Fire out loud on our honeymoon, and it is really special to have you sign it.” Here is what I remember: When I said the word honeymoon, she looked me in the eye with genuine interest, very alert. I am sure that other people have said similar things to her, that we aren’t the only ones who read Harry Potter on our honeymoon, but she also signs a lot of books for kids, and this is a grownup story, and I felt like that registered with her. She and the women around her (Scholastic employees) all went, “Awwwww.” She looked at me and said, “Thank you,” and then said something about it being special for me to say that. It’s kind of a blur after that point, and then I rejoined Mike on the other side and . . . it was so crazy, because he hadn’t seen any of it. It really did all happen so fast. And we went and had hamburgers at 10:00 at night and squealed about it and I was so tired that I just wanted to crash.

I can’t say enough about how impressed I am that she would listen to what I have to say, that she was engaged and warm and friendly with all those people. It was a really great time for us, the culmination of a lot of years of fun and fandom. We won’t ever forget it.

We were dismayed to wake up on Saturday and see the blurb across the bottom of the television, “Dumbledore is gay!” Friends called us to ask what was said and what we thought, and we told a few people about it. It’s interesting, because I went to a librarian conference on Thursday, and one of the seminars I went to talked about how gay teens are more likely than straight teens to attempt suicide, and how the presence of books with gay characters in a library correlates with lower suicide rates as well as incidents of violence and harassment in schools (that’s more specifically about school libraries). (Also, as a good Freakonomics reader, I understand that the books themselves may not be exacting change, that they could be a sign of a good overall community that wants to keep kids from being harassed. But the books are a piece of it, is my point.) And so my first thought tended on those lines, that it’s a positive thing for this character to, oh, by the way, be gay, because he’s a respected character, and it may help stop violence and harassment everywhere.

From a narrative point of view, I feel like the story obviously works without it, but that it gives more nuance and emotional resonance to the story of Dumbledore, which was already revealed to be pretty tragic. I love backstory, and that’s exactly what this is. It helps us understand why he did some of the things he did, why he got caught up in what Grindelwald was saying, even possibly why he was so aloof with other people later on. Dumbledore loved a man, the only person who was his intellectual equal. And he was very wrong about him, and that is a very sad thing. To see something so complex blurbed as, “Gay Hogwarts Professor!” is disheartening, because Dumbledore is a full, complete character. But that’s the culture we live in, I suppose, full of soundbites and sensationalism. I don’t see it as anything to get worked up about. It doesn’t change the story we have. It just fills it in a little, and that, to me, is good storytelling.

So there’s my soapbox. I hate to even have to address it, but it’s the one thing everyone’s talking about. The Great Dumbledore Outing was a very small part of a wonderful night that was part of a wonderful weekend. I guess the rest of the weekend report will be later. I keep making you wait. You can at least view the pictures online now if you’d like.

Sometimes I see women my age identify themselves as “the Mrs.” or “the wife” and it always gives me pause. While I work hard to keep our house clean and I take very seriously the vow that I made to make our home my primary ministry, I don’t identify myself primarily as a wife. I don’t even like it when I am given the designation “Mrs.” as it sounds far too old (and a little too much like my mother-in-law). I don’t know what I would choose if I had to pick one word, but it wouldn’t be “wife.” Nor do I think Mike would choose the word “husband” as his primary identity. I don’t mind being identified that way, say, in an introduction (”Hi, I’m Mike’s wife”), but I don’t think my primary identity is in being a wife, and I think there’s a subtle difference there.

Some of that is probably because we don’t necessarily follow the “traditional” gender roles in our house. Mike is a much better cook than I am, and I’m the one who has been working on our broken toilet. There was a weird moment over the weekend when I had climbed in the attic to look at our air conditioner and Mike was on the floor below the attic opening, telling me about the stuffed peppers he was making. It’s good to know we clearly don’t have hangups about that sort of thing.

I think the most important thing is that since I’m working full-time, I see myself in terms of my profession and education as well as my marital status. And I have so many other identifications that are important to me: daughter, sister, Christian, friend, bibliophile. I’m just Kari, really. It’s good to be comfortable enough with myself to be able to say that, to accept myself as a whole rather than feeling that I have to compartmentalize. From time to time, I do wonder if my relationship with God ought to be my primary identification, but that almost seems like declaring the Bible to be my favorite book, which is something I would never do. When it comes down to it, I wouldn’t be a Christian without those other designations, too. Friends, family, books, husband - all those things have shaped my faith, giving me reasons to believe when I am mired in unbelief. I probably wouldn’t be a wife without the other parts, come to think of it. I need all those different “legs” to be able to stand.

I have said before that what I thought I needed in a relationship ended up being very different than what I thought I needed. Mike’s personality and strengths mean that he can give me the space I need to figure out who I am and what my role in our relationship is supposed to look like instead of waiting on him to tell me. Sometimes this means he does the taste testing when I try making my own refried black beans and sometimes this means he gives me a boost into the attic so I can inspect the air conditioner.

But it never ever means he calls me his “little wife.”

Over the weekend, Mike helped me navigate a stressful situation that involved theft, blood, and drama. I had warned him that I would need his assistance, but that turned out to be quite the understatement. He was a calming presence throughout the afternoon, handling some things so I could do others, giving me confidence in my decisions, and emphasizing the things that were going well.

It took longer than I thought for us to get used to each other again when he came back from Costa Rica. We’re not used to living so much life without each other (I lived life! It’s just that it mostly involved doing laundry and planning meals), so it was hard to get on the same page again. And that doesn’t even take into account the changes that a trip like that can bring into someone’s life – seeing sea turtle hatchlings, zip lining in the rainforest, white water rafting. Boy does my laundry seem dull in comparison. The chocolate cake I made, however, was not boring at all.

I am not one to believe that (or live like) I need Mike to be my everything. I have great friends and a great family, but when it comes down to it, Mike is my best friend because I spend the most time with him. I love experiencing life with him, and he’s undoubtedly the person with whom I experience the majority of things. I think that it was hard for us to get used to each other again because I hadn’t been able to tell him the little stories of the day - the silly website I visited, the recipe I want to try, the strange encounter at the grocery store. We worked very hard to reconnect over the weekend, spending time with our rabbits, seeing a wonderful movie, and then, with the theft, blood, and drama, sliding back into a bit of normalcy with our familiar teamwork.

This whole thing was quite a learning experience for me. It had been a while since we were apart from each other for quite so long, especially without being able to talk at all, and our relationship is so different these days than it was back then. The last time he went away for over a week, I hadn’t gone from thinking of myself to thinking of us, even though we were married. The past few years, we’ve gone from just being “fun” to encouraging and challenging each other through some difficult times. It’s gotten easier to see us as a team, which made it harder when my partner wasn’t here.

Though I think we are still pretty fun. I was inordinately pleased to be able to call him last night about a bumper sticker, and happy to have him call this morning and report his latest musings on flavored coffee. I laughed during our, “What are we going to have for dinner?” discussion that turned into silliness. More than anything, I love our conversations that are grounded in the holy ordinary.

“In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where two people can finish each other’s sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give me banter any day of the week.” -Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

I am notoriously bad at Scrabble. What I have figured out is that I am not great at games where there is a lot of visual information to take in, like Nerts or Scrabble. I can’t see all of those things at once. In Scrabble, that means that I create words that start or end with one of the letters on the board, because I can’t “see” it quite as easily when the letters are in the middle.

I also get really irritated when I suck at Scrabble, which is pretty much always. But, come on. If you had to put up with Mike turning your “CAT” into “CATASTROPHE,” you’d get irritated, too. (That didn’t actually happen, but it could have happened. Because Mike is excellent at Scrabble. Similar, equally humiliating things have happened. On a triple word score.) I have gotten so irritated in the past that Mike put a ban on Scrabble at our house. I don’t think we have played since the great ice storm of 2002.

An aside: the first time I remember playing Scrabble was with my grandma. I was probably in late middle school or early high school. My grandma does crossword puzzles constantly and watches Wheel of Fortune every day. She is good at word games. This game of Scrabble was momentous because it’s the first time I remember being utterly humiliated by my grandma in a game. She had stopped letting me win a long time before, but that game of Scrabble was the first time I remember that she didn’t go easy on me. It was not just a loss, it was a devastating defeat that shook my Scrabble confidence.

That changed this weekend, though. A few weeks ago, we bought a cute table to play games on, and we had planned to play Scrabble when Mike got home from youth camp. I am not sure what made him change his mind about playing Scrabble with me, but I was determined to do better, both in the actual game and in my sportsmanship. And so, on Saturday, after going to the grocery store and doing some laundry, we played four games of Scrabble, ate cheese nips, and forgot to make dinner. Here are some interesting facts about those games.

-Mike got the 50 point bonus for using all his letters in one turn. I have never ever gotten the 50 point bonus. (I didn’t even know there was a bonus for using all your letters.) The word, for the record, was “INERRANT.” The last “T” was already on the board.

-We do allow some use of the dictionary, mostly for checking the spelling of words before we play them, but occasionally to see if something is actually a word before we put it down. We are aware that these are not official Scrabble rules, but there’s something to be said for keeping the peace.

-The dictionary we use is the only dictionary we own - a Webster’s that my mom owned when she was in college. It’s always fun to threaten to challenge a newer word that could not possibly be in that dictionary.

-My favorite word that I made was “JIHAD.” Come on, that’s an awesome word. I should be commended for it. I turned Mike’s “HAD” into “JIHAD.” Brilliant. And the “J” was on a triple letter square.

-I got the Q every single time. I am now brilliant at Q-without-U words like “QAT” and “QAID.”

What you want to know, though, is whether I won. At least, I hope you are rooting for me a little bit. The good news is that I finally won the last game we played on Saturday, and won it by quite a lot. The bad news is that it was not a sustainable victory, because we played two more games yesterday, and I won one by two points and lost one by two points. Statistically, those games were a draw. I have not yet gotten to the point where I can pound Mike into the ground on a regular basis. And, let’s face it, I probably never will. But at least I am now spelling words like “JIHAD” and “QUARKS” instead of “CAT.”

I still get really irritated when I am playing badly, and there’s some debate about the way I play the board (Mike says I’m too concerned with making sure the board is opening up, which causes me to sacrifice points instead of letting it open up on its own), but I think there has been some improvement. If I don’t feel so completely insecure about my Scrabble playing (often fed by comments such as, “I would expect you to be better at Scrabble”), I don’t get so upset. So my one victory went a long way in helping me be a better Scrabble player. And Mike swears that he didn’t let me win.

Right after we got married, we noticed that some of our friends had a continuous Scrabble game going on on their coffeetable. That’s the idea we’re going for here, because our new table has little drawers we can keep our letters in. Of course, continuous Scrabble is going to require that we stop a game in the middle, and if this weekend was any indication, I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to do that. And, really, don’t you think balanced diets are overrated? Cheese nips are where it’s at. We’re feeding our minds instead.

Alisa and Carla have reported that they like the songs on the CD I made, except for one: The Dandy Warhols singing “We Used to Be Friends,” AKA the Veronica Mars theme song. I’ve started running again, and I’ve been using that playlist. I have to say that “We Used to Be Friends is a kick-butt song to run to. It gets me moving.

Speaking of Veronica Mars, over the weekend, Mike and I employed a “Work hard, play hard” mentality. Saturday I did a lot of work around the house while he did some yard work, and then on Sunday, after working on our new fire pit/patio area, we watched nine episodes of Veronica Mars. We finished season two, and I can see why people say it wasn’t as good as season one, because I think it would have been frustrating to watch it over an entire season, but watching it as quickly as we did (19 episodes in less than a week) was fun. And now we are all caught up! We’re ready for Gilmore Girls/Veronica Mars Tuesday nights!

I finished Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t my favorite book of all time or anything, but I liked the characters, and I liked the concept of following them on a race around the world. I would have liked for it to be longer, and there was a subplot I would have liked a little more resolution to, but I give it a thumbs up overall. At first I was like, “No, I don’t think it was actually better than Dogs of Babel,” but that one was so unusual that it’s hard to compare. This one was more straightforward, and what it did, it did very well. I will definitely keep an eye out for her books in the future.

In the acknowledgements for Lost and Found, Ms. Parkhurst thanked her husband for watching the same shows that she does. Appropriate for a book about a television show. Mike and I generally watch the same stuff, with me getting him into Veronica Mars and him getting me more into Scrubs and The Office. But that got me thinking about the kinds of things I thought were important in relationships before I was married. I think it’s great that Mike and I like the same movies and television shows (not so much the same music, though), and it’s important to me that Mike can watch a chick flick or a show like Gilmore Girls without making a big deal about it (i.e. his masculinity isn’t threatened), but it’s much more important that he be respectful and thoughtful and kind. I’m thankful that’s the kind of guy he is, because, working with the public, I come into people who are just the opposite of that. Every day.

Speaking of working with the public, I don’t actually work with them any more. So scratch that last statement. I used to come into contact with people like that every day. Now I come in contact with a lot of books every day. And I have windows, so I can see the sun. Or the rain, as is the case today.

Speaking of rain, yesterday I was running and it started raining. I decided that Mike and I need a code for when I’m out and it starts raining, because I didn’t have my cell phone with me. The rain was nice, because it was cooler. I did not, however, like the man who, while I was walking, said, “Now’s the time to run!” I will run when I want to run, sir. The Dandy Warhols are not currently playing. Now is a time to walk.

And now that I’ve brought it full circle back to running and The Dandy Warhols, I’ll go ahead and hit publish. Seems like the best thing to do.

I hardly ever flat-out recommend books. There are many reasons for this. One is that I don’t like to share things that are close to my heart, because if you don’t like them, it’s like you don’t like me. Another is that I’m more than a little afraid of being Book Ass-Person (please see Adam’s post on Bible Ass-Man if that makes no sense to you). Book Ass-Person does not care whether her book relates to your overall topic, she just has to make sure that she mentions a book, even if it really has nothing to do with what you’ve just said. Book Ass-Person is annoying, especially if you’re not a big reader. You might be better served by a conversation, a song, a listening ear. Book Ass-Person does not listen. Book Ass-Person has the answer to all your problems, right there in paperback.

I’m going to make an exception, though, just this once, to recommend a novel I recently reread and enjoyed very much. If you enjoy the same books that I do, if you like interesting characters and a thoughtful story, then I would like to suggest Evensong by Gail Godwin. (It’s on my top ten list, but only because I forgot Gaudy Night. I’d make Evensong #11.)

When Mike was still working at his old store, one day he went by the library and picked up a book for me. “Philip Yancey recommended this author,” he told me, “and I know you like Philip Yancey. This is her latest book, Evensong.” I was impressed with his thoughtfulness, and dug in as soon as I could.

Evensong is from the perspective of a female Episcopalian minister, Margaret, and is set in the mountains of North Carolina. This, however, is no Mitford clone - I like the Mitford books, but their charm is in their simplicity and optimism. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call Evensong optimistic, because Margaret’s faith does buoy her along. However, it’s also true that the main character is wrestling with whether she can stay in her marriage to Adrian. More correctly, she wants to stay in her marriage, she’s resisted a few opportunities to leave, but she doesn’t know how to stay if things aren’t going to get any better. In Mitford, things are a little easier, and I read those books to meet a specific need. Evensong wasn’t a quick read for me, and it has characters and stories that you have to dig into a little more. I think my favorite thing about reading the book this time was seeing how determined she was to make it work. One of the themes of their marriage is that they both have complicated stories or, in visual terms, murals, and yet, there they are, together in the midst of them. I felt that way just last weekend, when Mike and I were cleaning out some old papers and boxes, and there were all kinds of things I’d forgotten, all sorts of new stories to tell. We aren’t people without any history, and we bring that history, good and bad, to our relationship, hoping to make new stories together. A lot of this book is Margaret and Adrian still learning, even after several years of marriage, how to be together in spite of their respective pasts.

The other big marriage-related theme in this book comes from Margaret and Adrian’s engagement, when he, as a much older man, claims that he doesn’t want to limit her future, and she says, “Why shouldn’t our having each other make more of us both?” Margaret uses that phrase in a wedding that she performs during the book, and she stays with Adrian because she believes that, yes, their work can make more of them, but that they can’t give up on their marriage because they aren’t yet done making more of each other. I loved that phrase, because I love the idea of marriage making more of me instead of holding me back. I think that women, especially, can start to believe that they could do or be more if they didn’t have a family and a husband to take care of, when caring for people (both inside and outside of marriage) is actually how you learn to be a more complete person, to sacrifice, to put others first, to be sensitive, to be compassionate, to speak the truth in love.

One of the small things I noticed this time was how much Margaret and Adrian work as a team, even when they’re not getting along like they would hope. Something would happen, and Margaret would think, “I need to remember to tell Adrian.” Or she’d read something and want to share it with him. As I was reading Evensong, I was reminded of how much I do that same thing, and I thought, “Marriage is like a constant conversation.”

It sounds like the book is woefully depressing, but it’s really not. Many of the parishoners add humor, Margaret and Adrian do enjoy being together even though it’s a difficult time for them, and a mysterious monk and an outcast teenage boy who end up staying at the rectory also make things interesting.

I don’t know why, exactly, this book resonates with me so deeply, but I enjoyed the character of Margaret so much that I read the first book about her: Father Melancholy’s Daughter. I enjoyed it quite a lot, too. On the front of my paperback copy of Evensong, it says, “The New York Times Bestseller,” but I haven’t heard people talk much about Gail Godwin. I have only read those two of her books, but I’m going to make my way through several of her others in the next few months. And I would like to give Evensong my wholehearted recommendation.

I’ve been reading a book called Why I’m Still Married, which is full of essays women have written about marriage. In almost every one, I can find something that I relate to, something that echoes my own relationship. It reminds me of how universal our struggles are, that people have been there before, and their examples give me courage.

I am interested in reading about marriage, because I like people’s stories. And I realized, while reading this book, that I would like to gather the women who are important to me and get them to tell me why they are still married. “By the grace of God,” most of them would say, and I would lean in and say, “But why? How?” Everyone’s story would be different, everyone would say that they work things out in different ways. We’d hear about laughter and children and tears and vacations and mornings in bed and time in the kitchen and late night walks - all those moments of grace that make it worth it, even in the darkest times. And if we met again in five years, their reasons would be different yet again.

I’ve been married almost six years, and there was a point last year where I thought, “We are finally starting to get the hang of this thing.” I could tell you some reasons why we are still married: that Mike has learned to say, “We’ll figure it out together,” instead of, “It’s going to be okay,” when I cry, that he makes me laugh even when I don’t want to, that his strength and compassion continue to grow, that he teaches me to be more patient and forgiving.

Today, though, the reason I think I am still married comes from a story that Mike told me last night. He had to go to a play for one of his classes, which meant that he didn’t get home until almost 11:00. In one of his earlier classes, several people were making announcements, and someone announced the play, and someone announced a meeting, and when the teacher asked if there were any other announcements, Mike said, “Yes, I am going to the play tonight, and if any of you find out what the figure skating results are and tell me, I’ll kill you.” Mike and I are still married (and I think we might be able to make it) because he cares about the things that are important to me, and I try to care about the things that are important to him. From silly things like figure skating and music and books on up to listening to each other’s hurts and fears. Mike, in all his passion for life, has embraced me, and with me he’s embraced my favorite basketball team and my love for Italian food and the chick flicks I watch and the novels I read when I’m upset. He’s embraced the way I can’t keep a desk clean, the way I hate to vacuum, the way I fold his t-shirts. He makes me feel valued and important. I could list a million different reasons why we are still married, but today the reason is simply that he pays attention to the things that are important to me so that I can be myself. I feel really lucky to have found that.

Since being with Mike, I have consistently struggled with comparing us to other couples, edging right up to the line of jealousy. I’m not sure if it’s just wanting to have attention (”You guys are the cutest couple!”) or too many romance novels or the grass is greener syndrome (that made me think that other people had things easier than we did) or just my regular old comparison struggle exhibiting itself in new and different ways. In college, I struggled because Mike and I were never going to be the cute IV couple, since he wasn’t in IV. I struggled because I wanted him to be as high profile as some friends of ours who were in ministry. And I struggled most of all with the in-law situation, wondering why other people got in-laws who liked them (or at least, you know, showed up at the wedding) while I had a whole ‘nother can of worms.

It’s gotten better as I’ve gotten more comfortable with myself, but it still comes up from time to time. And there’s one couple that always makes the hackles rise, for some reason. Part of it is attention - I want people to think we are a great/cute/whatever couple. And part of it is something I can’t really figure out, a niggling jealousy that comes up . . . maybe because things seem consistently easy for them. They have that gift of walking through the world without trouble. I know I can be a tad dramatic about the problems in my life, but it can be frustrating when I’m having a hard time and this couple’s biggest problem seems to be, “Where will we go out to eat tonight?”

One thing I have learned is that an outsider can’t always tell what’s going on in a relationship, good or bad. It can be easy to assume that something is not going well, but sometimes things that we think shouldn’t work . . . do work, easily. The couple makes it work. And sometimes people seem happy in public when they really aren’t. We all know stories like that. So, really, I should know better than to assume that my friends don’t have problems. But I keep right on doing it.

I’m having a rough day today, so I know perspective is a little off. I’m a little mired in the negative. But even I can see, looking at my original list, it’s interesting to see how some of that stuff either doesn’t matter anymore (being a cute IV couple), or how it’s worked out in another way (the high profile stuff - Mike is co-leading a Wednesday night class at church, he was liturgist a few weeks ago, his cheesecake went over like gangbusters, and a paper that he wrote about the church was given to the deacons). I’ve made some peace with the in-law situation. My priorities have shifted in many ways. But this one area is still hard for me, harder than it really should be. I’m still learning . . . contentment, if that’s what you want to call it. Not to compare.

It’s not that I want Mike to be any of those other people, or that I would particularly like to be any of those other people. I just, as Mike always says, wish everything in my life could be perfect.

I’ve been reading Don’t Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth Davis, but I decided last night to switch to Light From Heaven, the latest Mitford. It was a good decision. Reading Father Tim makes me feel like, even if everything isn’t perfect, it’s going to be okay anyway. Just what I need to hear.

I hadn’t gotten a compliment on my diamond ring in a while. Maybe I don’t clean it enough, or maybe I don’t walk in that, “My left elbow is constantly bent so you’ll notice my ring,” position that the newly engaged often sport. Maybe it’s because I’m much less conscious of it than I used to be, so I don’t make other people as aware of it by constantly glancing at it or letting it catch my eye. Whatever it is, the compliment I got this week caught me off guard.

“What a sparkly ring! You must have been really happy to get it.”

I didn’t know what to say, exactly, except to agree. I was happy to get it. I’m still happy to have it. I don’t think about it all that often, except to put it on in the morning and take it off when I get home, but I’m glad it’s there.

Maybe that was what made me think of a long-ago conversation I had when I was engaged, in which my friend (who was also engaged) was talking about some of the problems she was having with her fiance, problems that I felt were very serious ones and had hurt her deeply, and she sighed and said, “But I think God has told me that this is as good as it’s going to get.” I am not exactly sure how I responded, but it was probably incoherent. I didn’t say what I wanted to say, which is that I don’t think God works like that. Sure, he does give us difficult situations, and we are often called to not-so-easy relationships because we need to help and we need to learn. But I have never seen any indication that God calls us to settle, that we should take what we can get and not hope for any better. Especially in a spouse: that relationship is supposed to mirror that of Christ and the church, and I would hate to think that any thought of “settling” would enter into the discussion. Whatever I said, it wasn’t that, and I have always regretted it. I should have made the time to discuss whatever it was she believed about God that made her say that, and whatever it was about marriage that made her think that she didn’t deserve any better than a guy who was hurting her in so many ways.

Christmas is a time to draw near to those you love, as well as a time to do that end-of-year evaluation. For those reasons, I’ve been thinking about how Mike and I are doing lately. This has been an interesting year, with the crazy flooding over the summer, some difficult relationship issues (not with each other), and the busy-ness of both our lives with work and school and church and friends. Things have been hard circumstantially, but being married five years seems to have smoothed more of our rough edges than I realized, because our problems lately haven’t been with each other.

I look at my sparkly ring, and I think about Mike and all the things we’ve gone through in the past seven years, and I am thankful that I have never for an instant considered being with him “settling.”

I was tapped by Alisa.

Seven Things to Do Before I Die (Lord willing):
1. Go back to Prince Edward Island.
2. Attend Mike’s college graduation. Cry a lot. Take lots of pictures.
3. Go to the United Kingdom.
4. Visit the western part of the United States.
5. Read The Brothers Karamazov.
6. Write a book.
7. Read my favorite books with my kids.

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
1. A cartwheel.
2. Throw a softball correctly.
3. Dance.
4. Sing on key.
5. Understand Mike’s parents.
6. Shop for very long by myself.
7. Heal (physically or emotionally) quickly.

Seven Things that Attract Me to My Spouse [romantic interest, best friend, whomever](not necessarily in this order!):
1. His sense of humor.
2. The way he looks when he’s asleep.
3. His passion for life.
4. His courage.
5. The way he capitalizes words to emphasize them.
6. That he watches chick flicks and Gilmore Girls with me.
7. His good looks.

Seven Things I Say (or write!) Most Often:
1. “like”
2. “Let me transfer you to circulation.”
3. “I don’t know.”
4. “baby”
5. “Help!”
6. “Twenty cents per page.”
7. “I love you.”

Seven Books (or series) I Love:
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling
3. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
4. The Austin Family Series by Madeleine L’Engle
5. Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner
6. Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
7. The Mary Russell Series by Laurie King

Seven Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again:
1. Miss Congeniality
2. You’ve Got Mail
3. The new Pride and Prejudice
4. The Pride and Prejudice miniseries
5. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
6. Sabrina (the one with Harrison Ford)
7. About a Boy

Seven People I Want to Join in:
1. Kelly (so you will blog again)
2. Emily (so you will blog again, too)
3. Mom (who doesn’t have a blog, but who could email me her answers and I would post them for her)
4. Shelby (also needs to blog again) (her answers)
5. Sarah Cozart (needs to blog again) (is anyone sensing a pattern here?) (her answers)
6. Sarah Shearer (needs to blog again)
7. Geof (because he made me do one of these things over the summer) (his answers)

But over the years two questions of mine have evolved which make sense to me.

I ask the boy or girl how work is going: Are you functioning at a better level than usual? Do you find that you are getting more work done in less time? If you are, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you can’t work well, that you’re functioning under par, then I think something may be wrong.

A lovely example of this is Josephine: the spring she and Alan were engaged, when she was eighteen and a sophomore at Smith, they found out that they could not possibly be apart more than two weeks at a time; either Alan would go up to Northampton, or Josephine would come down to New York. She knew that she would be getting married ten days after the close of college. And her grades went steadily up.

The other question I ask my “children” is: what about your relations with the rest of the world? It’s all right in the very beginning for you to be the only two people in the world, but after that your ability to love should become greater and greater. If you find that you love lots more people than you ever did before, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you need to be exclusive, that you don’t like being around other people, then I think that something may be wrong.

This doesn’t mean that two people who love each other don’t need time alone. Two people in the first glory of new love must have great waves of time in which to discover each other. But there is a kind of exclusiveness in some loves, an kind of inturning, which augurs trouble to come. -Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

Madeleine says that when people come to her with relationship questions, she responds with these two questions of her own. I remember reading it for the first time, thinking how wise it was, and it has stayed with me. When I read it last week, I thought again about it, about how I have some regrets about some of our decisions, but that I think our instincts were right, that we knew we needed people, no matter how things worked out.

And I’ve been thinking lately about the choices that different people make, how I am sure I hurt people in the process of figuring out the balance of my relationship with Mike and my relationships with others, even though I tried my best to let my friends know that I needed them. And how I have been hurt when friends have chosen to drop me for a guy. Of course the balance between protecting a relationship and being overly insular is not always easy to determine. Sometimes I don’t mean to be so insular . . . I just forget to plan things. Mike is often better about keeping us in circulation than I am.

I think the first part is very wise, too - if a relationship is constantly a distraction, if it keeps you from being on task, it’s probably not the most healthy thing. When I read this book for the first time, just before I got married, I was proud to report that in the semester before our wedding, I got all A’s. hehe.

Anyway, that’s just a few thoughts on this chilly afternoon.

I don’t normally dissect episodes of Gilmore Girls here, but I’m going to discuss some details from last night’s episode because it’s kind of on my mind today. Don’t read below if you are planning on seeing the episode and don’t want to be spoiled.

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Back when I worked at the Christian bookstore, I always had a sense that I didn’t fit in with the customers. No, I hadn’t read the latest Left Behind book, nor was I likely to. Yes, I had read that book that talked about the evil inherent in Harry Potter, but, actually, it made me really angry, but I’m not allowed to tell you why, since the customer is always right. No, I don’t think it’s a great idea to give a KJV Bible to a six-year-old when it’s on a 12th grade reading level. Yes, I will be dressing up for Halloween. I seemed to be some kind of crazy rebel in the sight of many of the customers, even though I didn’t think my views were that radical. Growing up, I often felt that way, too, as there were points in my life where I was the only one in my youth group who wasn’t homeschooled or at Christian school. I was given some grief about it from time to time by the other kids (and, occasionally, their parents) . . . never mind that, of all of them, I was one of the few who wasn’t sleeping around. That wasn’t the point. The point was that I was going to that evil public school. (Actually, I think the point is that my parents were involved with my education and didn’t leave it up to the school regardless of what kind of school it was, but I guess we can agree to disagree.)

It reminds me a little bit of the frustration Kelly has been feeling lately in a study she’s attending through her church. She called this morning and we talked about some of it again, how rigid it all seems, how wrong it seems to think that wives are required to check their personalities at the altar as if being a wife is our only avenue after that point. No, as Kelly said, I’m a follower of Christ before I am anything else, and being a wife is my primary relationship here, but I’m also a friend and a reader and an employee and a daughter and a sister and a coworker (hehe, did you see how I counted my relationship with books as one of my primary relationships?) . . . and without all those things I wouldn’t have much to bring to the relationship I have with my husband. At this point I need all of those things to be the person I am supposed to be. I may not always have the same job, or maybe I’ll stay at home, but I am other things than just wife and homemaker. I say that even as I remember that I vowed to make my home and family my primary ministry, which I believe it should be.

Today I was looking at some blogs and I thought, “People still argue about Harry Potter? That seems so . . . long ago.” I am thankful that in big ways and small ways, Mike and I have retreated from a lot of that subculture, and it was quite a delight to show up to church on Sunday morning and have people ask us if we’d finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yet (we hadn’t, but when we finished that evening, I called one of my church friends pretty much immediately to dish, and I’ve been exchanging emails with my pastor about it all week long). It feels really freeing to find a place where we can talk about things, where people aren’t afraid, where I’m not told that I’m lesser or that I can’t get to God because I’m a woman.

I think . . . I think it’s hard for me to explain the connection between Harry Potter and a wife’s role, except to say that it’s there in my mind because I see so many people looking at those things and experiencing fear. I am grateful to be experiencing more freedom.

Years married: 5

Times I have been sad we didn’t have a wedding video: 0

Times we have listened to the CD of our wedding ceremony: I think 2

Times our vacation was almost ruined by forgetting the plane tickets (luckily one of us remembered them on the way to the airport): Just once. Because one of us is more careful and one of us asks a lot sooner.

Times our vacation was almost ruined by one of us almost leaving the oven on. For a week: Just once. (I actually think it was the same vacation as above, but I’ll have to double-check with Mike about that.)

Times that extensive power outages have forced us to go stay with friends or family: 2 times in one winter. The great ice storms of ‘02 and ‘03.

Times I have ordered lasagne: Mike says I “always” order lasagne, so . . . a lot.

Places we have lived: 3

Times I allowed Mike to move the TV into the bedroom: 3 (once when I had mono and once when I was just really really sick and this week because of all the painting downstairs)

Times Mike has asked me if we can keep a TV in the bedroom: 1,000,000,000

Time we were both working full-time jobs: About 9 months

Former bosses who sound like Smurfs: 1

Current bosses who sound like Smurfs: 0

A’s made while one or the other of us was in school: Too many to count (hehe)

Pets: 0

Plants Kari has killed: 3 or 4

Plants Kari has kept alive: 3

Churches regularly attended: 2

Vehicles owned: 4

Vehicles currently owned: 2

Deer hit: 1

Household members who are afraid of heights: 1

Household members who are afraid of spiders: 1

Hours Kari has spent complaining about the smell of Mike’s beef stroganoff creation (including Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff, sour cream, corn, and A1 sauce): At least 17

Times Mike has won at Yahtzee (a game of CHANCE): hundreds

Times Kari has won at Trivial Pursuit (a game of SKILL and KNOWLEDGE): also hundreds

Times Kari has won at Scrabble: 0

Times Mike has won at Book Lover’s Trivial Pursuit: 0

Discussions of whether we should stop playing competitive games: thousands

Times Kari has mowed the grass: 2

Times Mike has mopped our kitchen floor: 2

Years it took for Kari to convince him to mop it even once: 4.5

Counting Crows concerts seen: 4

Caedmons Call concerts seen: 0

Floods in our house: 1

Diet Coke drunk: Average 50 oz/day for 365 days/year times 5 years = 91,250 oz (which we believe is a low estimate) (and that’s just Mike)

Remotes in our house: 13

Reality shows we follow: 3

Hours past midnight we stayed up reading (out loud) a sappy book that made us cry that I shouldn’t mention here: 4

Harry Potter books read together: 2 (that’s since the wedding, mind you)

Sleeps until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 0

Number of months after the wedding that Kari’s watch battery died: 1

Number of months that it’s been since Mike said he would replace it: 59 and counting

Scrapbooks filled: 3

Books read, hours spent laughing, tears cried: Too innumerable to count, but I can tell you the laughter outnumbers the tears by a long shot.

Regrets: 0

A couple of years ago Mike and I were in a situation where young married couples were asked to give one word to describe their relationship. The only thing I could come up with was “fun.” Mike and I do have lots of fun together. We enjoy a lot of the same entertainment like movies and TV shows and sports, we laugh all the time, and we just enjoy being together. So, “fun” was my answer. (I can’t remember if it was our answer, or if we were both giving answers, or what the deal was. The important thing to remember is: Kari + Mike = Fun.)

As we went around the room, each couple said their word. I don’t remember any of the other couples’ words except for one. I remember the couple who went right in front of us. Their word was “journey.” I have never felt so shallow in my whole life. To go from “journey” to “fun” in 2.1 seconds . . . well, it just made me feel very small. And immature. The contrast seemed like, “We’re over here having a real relationship while the two of you have your silly fun.” (Not that anyone said that, just that that’s how I felt.) It has become something of a joke for me and Mike, a word we pull out when we’re trying to make the other person laugh. “I think things have been going well lately, don’t you?” “Yes, I think we are doing well on our journey.” (See? See how fun we are?)

In the past few years, though, the normal good and bad times of life have caused a bit of a shift, and something about yesterday’s entry made me realize: I don’t think that “fun” is the word that I would use anymore. Not that we don’t have fun, because we do. Our relationship is still characterized with a lot of laughter and goofing off. But the word I would use these days is “courage.” I see Mike being brave in so many ways, including going back to school and learning to deal with issues from his childhood. I see both of us learning how to open up more and more. I see the times we could have called it quits, and how we squared our shoulders and kept trying. It takes courage to do this thing, and we are bravely doing it together.

I’m reading Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and I’m mostly enjoying it, but it’s taking me a while to get through it. I’m not sure why, exactly, but something about it is slow. I’ll read and think, “I just got through a lot!” but I will look at the page numbers and realize I only read three or four. The story is interesting, and it’s not hard to immerse myself in the world of the book, but when I put the book down it’s not that easy to pick it back up again. I’m about 2/3 of the way through, so I can’t decide yet if I recommend it or not. Like I said, the story is interesting, and I love some of the characters (and the ones I don’t love are still interesting), but there’s just something about it that hasn’t grabbed me.

There was one bit, though, that I loved and wanted to share:

“Never in a lifetime would Gen [the translator] have come to her [the opera singer] on his own. Never would he find the courage to express his own sympathies and remorse, in the same way that Mr. Hosokawa [Gen's boss] would not have the courage to speak to her even if his English had been perfect. But together they moved through the world quite easily, two small halves of courage making a brave whole.”

That last sentence is my favorite part. I read it to Mike last night, because I have seen us work together like that, and it’s a beautiful thing.