Ishi: “Do you know why I’m shaking it like this?”
Me: “Of course. The act of shaking transports more water over the surface area of the ice cubes.”
Ishi: “Not only that, but the warmer ice-melt is also more quickly transported away from the ice cubes, allowing water faster access to the ever-colder center of the ice cube.”
Me: “Sweet! Not quite the Mpemba effect, but it works for me!”

This is what happens when two geeks at heart spend the latest heat wave watching back-to-back episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Without a doubt, Ishi. By the time mid-November rolled around, I had several large writing assignments looming on the horizon and the end of the semester was approaching at the speed of light and sound combined. I was a physical and emotional wreck. Fractious, impossible to please, and panicky. But also strangely unresponsive to the pressing concerns around me. Instead of working or doing anything remotely productive, I would spend hours trimming the split ends off my hair, or playing some ridiculous online game. Then something would set me off, like, oh I don’t know, the sound Ishi’s feet made as he walked into the room? It really didn’t take much. And then I would snap at him, and sometimes cry. I frightened myself.

Ishi was an absolute rock. The kind you cling to in the middle of a raging river. The kind you pray for when you’re hiking and you slip on a particularly steep grade. The kind that gets up at 4:00 in the morning and makes a Timmy’s run for the double-double that will keep you out of bed as you struggle to get just one more page written. The kind who does the laundry, the shopping, and the spontaneous rubbing of tight, aching necks and shoulders.

The kind who holds you when you’re sobbing so hard you’re gasping, convinced you’ve gone as far as you can go and it’s all over, and tells you how proud he is of you. That you make him want to find the money to send you to this school as long as you want. That everything you see as a failure, he sees as an achievement and as another reason to love and respect you.

He outdid himself. It was nothing short of the absolute best he has ever done when it comes to loving his wife as Christ loved the church. He had his own stress and exhaustion to deal with and yet during those crushing weeks, he never uttered one complaint to me. I felt utterly borne up and sheltered, and the love I feel for him now as a result is tremendous in its weight and depth.

Even better, we both felt a hot and intense deepening of our love for God, as though we were being bathed in it. It suddenly felt very easy and natural to pray out loud together, and we’ve started doing even more praying than before. Truly, when husband or wife loves well, the effect is powerful and delightful. No wonder God loves marriage!

So we loved our shift and then it got changed; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday he works from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday he is off. This wreaked utter havoc with our schedules and it really felt like we were constantly trying to catch up with things. The days Ishi works, he doesn’t get home until about 9:30 or 10:00, which is too late to be eating supper, but I would always still try to have supper when he came home – it was not working well and we ended up always just grabbing fast food on the way home. Then he’s off for three days in a row, which alternately felt like he was ALWAYS home, and yet we still couldn’t catch two minutes together because of school, work and volunteer commitments. I didn’t even realize how crazy unhappy we were until the last two weeks, when we finally, finally got some things to click.

Now, for the third Monday in a row, we’ve had a fantastic day. We slept until noon… noon! We got up and Ishi cooked brunch; an awesome omelette with some diced chili-rubbed pork chops left over from supper last night. Cooking on a regular basis has done wonders for our moods, thanks to stable blood-sugar levels and happy tummies!

We needed to try and find some things from our insanely out-of-control storage locker, a trip to which always makes us fairly apprehensive. It’s stressful having such a huge mess that never seems to move towards being finished, no matter how many hours we spend there. We’ve fought terribly there so many times that we even get snippy in the car on the way there! Talk about Pavlov’s dogs!

Well, I don’t know what was in that omelette, but we got there and got to work without a single cross word. We really need to do some serious purging and decision-making regarding the sheer amount of STUFF that is being stored in that huge locker but we avoid it like the plague for the reasons I just mentioned. Today, we did just that. We got there around three-thirty and just went on a purging bender. This locker is filled with boxes of clutter and junk (interspersed with genuine belongings and family treasures) from the last four times we have moved. It’s heartbreaking and frankly, a little terrifying to confront the evidence of just how much difficulty I’ve had with just the normal tasks associated with daily life. I counted something like fourteen unopened bank statements and maybe twenty or thirty bills. Who doesn’t open their bills? Me, apparently, just a few short years ago. The entire locker at one point was strewn down the length of the hall. Stuffs. We has it!

The storage place locks down at 9:00 PM, and at 8:24 Ishi declared us done for the day. My butt was in hearty agreement, so we kicked into high gear and repacked everything that was left (most of it, *sob*), put aside the 60L construction-quality garbage bag we’d filled, and ran the boxes of “keepers” down to the car, and vacuumed the incredibly dusty and littered hall floor with the Shop-Vac I keep in the storage locker, making it to the keypad to punch out at exactly 8:57 PM. I’m telling ya, we live life on the edge.

We were both so hungry we were actually lightheaded. I hadn’t planned to be there any longer than a couple of hours, but we got into such an amazing groove that Ishi really didn’t want to stop. Visions of cheeseburgers were literally dancing in front of my eyes, but we are desperately trying to get back to our healthy lifestyle, so Ishi was reminding me of the fish fillets he’d put in the fridge with a marinade before we left. But even he was admitting that they didn’t sound very satisfying. All of a sudden I remembered that I had frozen some Rio Grande^[1] a few weeks back and we still hadn’t had it! I know I sound way too excited about something as simple as supper after a long day, but please understand where I’m coming from. For most of my marriage years, something as simple as supper was often beyond me. We ate out almost constantly and it was killing our bodies and our budget. For me, it’s a tremendous victory to A) have the food available in the freezer in the first place (because it means I cooked something within the last few months), B) have the discipline to pass up a fast food meal in order to eat this meal I cooked and C) have the energy and non-resentful attitude necessary to put it together!

We got home and I popped the Rio Grande into the microwave to defrost, threw some pasta on to boil, and went to change my clothes. When I came back, Ishi had cleared the table, grated some cheese and drained the pasta. We were like some family out of a Norman Rockwell painting! It was excellent and I calculate we saved about 500 calories each.

We’d picked up a movie on the way home. My choice was Smother, but it was out. Ishi’s choice was Role Models and I prepared myself for a bit of a lame deal, but oh my goodness… I laughed so hard I cried! We snuggled on the couch and snickered like kids and we honestly, honestly haven’t enjoyed each other as much as this since last summer. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the winter is truly over for now. I’m pinching my arms and wiggling my toes and checking to make sure nothing is missing or broken, and I think we’re going to be okay.

Now our work is done for the day and we’re up way too late (again!), but it’s been such a great day we just can’t be bothered to care. Tomorrow is another full day but for the first time in moons and moons, I feel adequate to the tasks in front of me.

Please Lord, let that feeling stay with me for a while!

1. Rio Grande is awesomeness. Ground beef, burrito seasoning, salsa and black beans. Serve over brown rice or whole grain pasta, a small dollop of sour cream and guacamole, and enjoy.

Ishi however, is very good with people and somehow got a member of staff to offer to hide a number of the pink boxes when they came in again so we would not be forced to stay disorganized indefinitely. Yay! Problem solved, we paid for the other things we’d picked up and headed to the exit. At which point Ishi announces that he’d better visit the restrooms before his 32 oz soda caught up with him. I watched his cute butt sashay down the hall, pause in front of the doors, and go in. He actually took a good couple of seconds looking at the doors but I didn’t think anything of it.

A few minutes later, he’s walking back towards me and when he catches my eye, he grins sheepishly.

“What’s with the weird smile?” I asked him.

“Oh, nothing, I’m just thinking about the last time we were here…” he said as the grin widened. The last time we were here? I thought back: we’d had a few tense moments and left the store a little annoyed with each other. What was so funny about that?

“No, not that… when I went to the bathroom.” We were now walking through the parking lot and I kind of prodded him.

“What do you mean, when you went to the bathroom?”

“Well, I walked in, and there was a woman changing a baby on the changing table.”

I start to laugh. “Well that must have been a bit awkward…” I said.

“Not, really. I just thought that was weird and went to a stall. And then I came out and saw TWO women changing their babies and went, oh, hang on… and then I looked and thought, where are the urinals? And… are you going to be okay?”

Because at this point, I am immobilized by the spasms of hysterical laughter and cannot quite stand up straight. I literally am laughing so hard I can’t breathe. Somehow, I manage to squawk between guffaws…

“You didn’t think anything was off until you saw TWO women and no urinals? What did you think when you saw the FIRST woman standing there?”

“Truthfully? I just thought, that’s weird… typical Vancouver…”

Oh, sweetie. *wiping tears of laughter from my eyes* More like typical Ishi.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

I am still amazed at how true this is, despite the fact it makes no sense whatsoever to be spiteful to the people you are closest to. It just bewilders me. And when I’m on the receiving end of such contempt, it enrages me. I mean, who does he think he is, talking to me like that?

Who does he think I am?

It hasn’t been a real fun couple of weeks for me at the hands of he who is the most familiar with me of them all.

It’s gotten pretty damned old, actually.

Today I came home with this (half price!) and this (in birch), which in addition to two of these and this (also in birch), brings the furniture item count in this household to the highest it’s ever been, even pre-flood. We are coming very close to living like actual, real-live grownups do. I KNOW! SHOCKING!

Today Ishi and I spent two hours at IKEA, one hour at lunch, one hour at Michaels, and then another hour at a scrapbooking store, and we didn’t have one single argument. Not one. And? He suggested going to the scrapbooking store (which I hadn’t seen yet) when he saw how thrilled I was by the scrapbooking section at Michaels!

We got home and watched the hockey game while he had some wine and quickly put this together.

It’s been possibly the most perfect day we’ve ever had. What a great record to break!

1. My husband. Not his real name, of course. I just got tired of typing “my husband”. “Ishi” (ee-shee) is Hebrew for “my husband” and it’s easier to type. You could almost see that coming, couldn’t ya?

So, being half of an infertile couple, and realizing that this is the second cycle in a row that I have observed intense and burning hatred of my husband during “that magical time” when really, really hating someone is totally not conducive to the type of activity needed to procreate with them, and being fairly cognizant of some of the rules of nature, I concluded it would be incredibly helpful if Darwin were still here to offer his sage advice. Perhaps it would have gone something like this:

Dear Darwin,

I have been married eight and a half years, during which time we have conceived only once. I found a great book which is teaching me how to observe my cycles so my mate and I can be sure we are engaging in the relevant activities at the appropriate time.

Unfortunately, we are realizing that during the appropriate time, certain changes take place in my body that the book doesn’t mention. For example, I develop the ability to smell my mate’s offensive foot odor from ten feet away. Also, my eyes develop the astonishing ability to see through walls to perceive that he has left the toilet seat up, and I can hear snorts at the end of his laugh that I can’t hear at any other time of the month.

My needs change as well. Usually I enjoy close physical proximity with my mate, but at the precise time in my cycle that such proximity would be productive, I find I would much rather get just close enough to remove some vital part of his anatomy in order to bludgeon him to death with it. Needless to say, my mate’s survival instincts prevent him from coming close to the den during these days, despite my loud insistence that he do his male duties or lose his male goodies.

Everyone in the world of evolutionary biology hails your theory of Natural Selection as being as close to a universal truth as we’ll ever get, so please tell me, Mr. Darwin. How can Natural Selection help us have a child?

Sincerely,
Mrs. Half an Infertile Couple

Dear Mrs. Half,

For the love of all that is holy, do not reproduce. Get a puppy. No. Get a goldfish. And only one. If you get two, they will form a suicide pact. Should two such woefully incompatible and mismatched human beings continue to try to procreate, Natural Selection will see to it that the offspring hates each other and you. And if your offspring have offspring, well, they will just eat it. Take my advice. Sterilize yourselves and have sex with hot random inebriated strangers at that precise time in your cycle so as to further the genes of people who deserve it, for they have been blessed by Natural Selection.

Sincerely,
Charles Darwin

Dear Mr. Darwin,

If Natural Selection isn’t smart enough to get around Clomid, wine, roses, and IUI’s, well, I guess we aren’t too worried about being blessed by it. Thanks anyway.

Mr. & Mrs. Infertile