Tidings of comfort and joy

Happy holidays, everyone! Just had to take time away from our seasonal celebrations to share two quick anecdotes:

1) Being that Ann's family is Jewish, we went to the in-laws' house last weekend for Hanukkah... lunch, to gorge ourselves on latkes and that most Judaic of foods, meatloaf. (Which was delicious, by the way.) Ann's parents also gave us our gifts, and Molly's was a kind of "My First Hanukkah" set for kids. Darn thing is pretty in depth, with a menorah complete with wooden candles and even detachable wooden flames so you can "light" them, as well as a pan and wooden latkes. It's sort of a bizarre hybrid of a child's cooking set and Hebrew school, but whatever, it's pretty cool. Also included with the set were 6 pieces of gelt and a dreidel, so that very night Ann decided to educate this ignorant gentile on the ways of the Jew through an epic dreidel smackdown the likes of which the world has never seen. Things got pretty heated, to be honest; I don't think gangbangers throwing dice in South Central are as aggressive as Ann was when her non-Jewish husband started winning. All I'll say is this: you haven't lived until you've heard the mother of your child yelling "Gimel, mother[bleep]er!"

2) On Christmas Day we fed Molly and then brought her over to the Christmas tree, where I helped her open her present (several Dr. Seuss books and The 12 Days of Christmas in New Jersey... keeping it real, Garden State) while Ann snapped plenty of pictures. What neither of us realized until Ann started uploading the photos to our computer is that my choice of attire would require a little skillful PhotoShopping. Let me explain: back in college a friend of mine went home to India over winter break, and when she returned she brought Christmas presents for a few of her closer friends. I received a t-shirt with a picture of an Arabian-style palace and the words "Via Agra (Man's greatest erection for a woman)." Juvenile, for sure, and not really acceptable for me to wear in public, but it's super comfy and I sleep in it all the time, to the point where I barely remember what it says anymore. However... not necessarily the shirt you want immortalized in cherished family photos that your daughter may well be looking at 5 or 6 years down the line. There are certain questions you just don't want to have to answer unless absolutely necessary, y'know?

A perfectly cromulent word

As an addendum to my last post, I feel obligated to note that a friend of Ann's read it and emailed me to say that she couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't know all three of those words/phrases. She did admit, however, to not knowing whether that was the result of growing up in the same county as Ann, attending the same college, or just hanging around Ann long enough to have absorbed them through osmosis and become subconsciously (though quite erroneously) convinced that they are, in fact, real sayings. Personally my money's on the latter, but it's anyone's guess. Either way, I thank her for embiggening my previous post with her contribution.

On Beyond Zebra

One of the things I love most about my wife is the fact that she makes up new words. Much like Italian director Sergio Leone, who named one of his movies "Duck, You Sucker!" because he somehow got it in his head that this was a common phrase in English and wouldn't be told otherwise; much like this, Ann not only invents words and phrases, but also has learned how to convince herself that they've always existed and you're the weirdo for not knowing them. A small sampling, just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here:

-"Housing." That's as a verb, not a noun, and it has nothing to do with where you live. To house one's food means to consume it very quickly, as in "Wow, you totally housed that taco!" I have no idea if it's meant to imply that you quickly made a home for the food in your stomach or what.

-"Rammy." To be rammy is to be restless, not satisfied with what you're doing. If we're sitting on the couch watching TV and I keep suggesting that maybe we should go out and run some errands or take a walk, I'm being rammy. I've often wondered if it's a bastardized form of rambunctious, but if Ann knows she isn't telling.

-Then there's my personal favorite. If you asked "What do you want to do for dinner?" and I replied "Let's just pick something up," your reaction would be "Okay, he's saying we should grab a pizza or some Chinese food on the way home, bring it back to the house, and eat it." And that's why it never would have worked between us, baby, because I hate Chinese food. You know that. Nonetheless, that's what any normal person would think, right? Nope. Uh-uh. Because if your wife is Ann and she says "Let's pick up dinner," what she means is let's just eat whatever leftovers or ready-made food we have lying around the house rather than cooking a big main course. The "pick up" dinner is a thing unto chaos, a casual meal wherein one eats whenever and whatever he wants, independent of what or when the other person is eating.

So where did this stuff come from? I honestly have no idea. I know it's not a regional thing, because Ann and I grew up within 30 miles of each other. So unless these are language tropes commonly employed at Penn State, I have no choice but to conclude that she just made them up herself. In which case, major props for the creativity, but whenever Molly starts talking, you'd best believe I'm going to be keeping an ear open for any sign of new words. I'm already the only male in the household, I don't need them developing their own language too.

Potty humor

Hey, everyone. Apologies for the lack of recent updates... beyond Molly keeping us busy, I've been under the weather and exams are coming up next week. More updates to come in the near future, but in the meantime, I thought last night merited a quick mention. Ann and I decided Molly could stand to be cleaned, so Ann got in the tub to administer said bath while I undressed the squirming little demon. Off came the sleeper, off came the diaper, I brought her over to the tub and lifted her up... and that's when I felt the warmth. Yep, our darling little girl had decided to mark her territory on my arm approximately two seconds before entering a place where no one would have even noticed if she peed. Awesome.

Naturally, Ann couldn't stop laughing. Once I passed Molly off to her and cleaned off my arm (and the floor, and the edge of the toilet), we got down to the business of cleaning her royal urinator. Molly actually doesn't mind the warm water as long as we cover her with a washcloth to keep her warm (and also, I hope for my sanity in, say, sixteen years, for modesty's sake), so everything was going fine. Fine, that is, until... yeah. Need I say more? Let's leave it at the fact that suddenly the tables were turned and I was the one laughing uproariously while Ann cried out in disgust. And no, it wasn't pee.

Who says there's no such thing as karma?