Engaged: Thoughts on a verb used for combat and marriage

Well said, Where Y’at magazine.

I always forget I make tea for myself or for Flynn.  Always.  I put the water in the kettle, have it boil, even pour into mugs with tea bags in.  Then I forget.  I walk away to let it brew a bit but end up remembering 45 minutes later that I even did it all in the first place.  With this pattern, Flynn has taken it upon himself to be in charge of tea making, along with the coffee making that is, apparently, too demanding for my mental capacity in the morning.

He takes these deep breaths in, rolls his eyes and shakes his head at the same time when he walks into the kitchen to find tea left neglected.  It is even a much more vigorous shake of the head when it is his tea.  He yells something to me in the next room that I can’t make out; I retaliate with a smart retort that he probably didn’t hear either.  He puts the water back on, boils, brews, adds honey, hands the tea to me and says to me “you slay me, Curley.”  Some men use the line “I’ll love you forever,” “You are the apple of my eye,” “I’m so lucky to have you.”  But I get “you slay me, Curley” – not even using the endearment of my first name.  It is as if he is my baseball coach and I just struck out for the third time that game.

It is this line however, that comes up multiple times a day from both parties involved.  I don’t want to end this blog by presenting myself as incompetent and Flynn, the patronizing spouse.  No no, I can be just as patronizing.  That article is truly right in saying engagement is the word used for marriage and combat – and in the O’Brien/Curley household, we are the idea’s personification.

But not only does Flynn accept my ineptitude to not follow through with tea-making, he also finds it endearing.  Not only do I accept Flynn’s undying love for watching the Star Wars animated series, in his sweat pants, on the blow up mattress in the living room with martini in habd, I love him for it.  Of course, I make a sarcastic remark – reminding him he is, in fact, 26 years old and he has been watching cartoons for far too many hours than what is socially acceptable.  But I say it with a loving smile.  He looks at me, takes a sip of his martini, and goes back to watching his show and says “I’m in grad school, I need a break sometimes.”  ”Quite the break,” I say and jump over the pile of air mattress and blanket and head off to the next room.

To love and to cherish. In sickness and in health. In combat and in marriage.  Apparently you need a little bit of both to help the world go ’round.  I head back into the living room where he has set up Star Wars shop.  I have gotten into my sweat pants and I curl up next to him and begin to watch.  I secretly like watching the show.  He turns to me, grabs my finger with the engagement ring on and says “Life Partner! You are stuck with me!”  ”Yes,” I say, “but you are stuck with me too” and nuzzle my head on his shoulder and watch Ben Kenobi, yet again, yell at Anakin for doing something irate and passionate and not reasonable.  Very un-Jedi.

Think of me next time you get a hangover.

David Sedaris wrote that line and I jotted it down instantly.  I thought it would be a goodie one day to leave for someone, just to shake things up a bit. Out of context, you really have no idea if being reminisced over a head ache, a toilet, the most brutal black coffee is romantic, or even friendly.  Kind of an insult.  ”I thought of you when I was thinking that death could actually feel better than what I was feeling one morning.” Great.  Glad to know you’re thinking of me.

I avoided the blog, in case you didn’t notice that the last entry was in September.  I have no reason.  I have no valid excuse.  Nor did I ever join the Big Easy Roller Derby league.  That I would like to blame on not ever coming up with a name bad ass enough to make them weak in the knees, or I guess in derby diction, bad ass enough to break knees.  But if there is a consolation prize, I did get health insurance and joined a water polo team.  I did get punched in the eye on Saturday – my head got mistaken for the ball.  Water polo balls are yellow.  Bright yellow.

Yes, New Orleans has treated us kindly with a warm welcome of blows to the head, heartburn, and hangover.  Other consolation prize: no car theft, bike theft nor hurricanes!  No wonder I have been so blog-world MIA, I’m having such a smashing good time.  I’m not really sure where the next line would go.  I want to avoid a very superficial recap of the past 6 months and go straight to a specific incident that encompasses all and really hits it out of the park, all the while avoiding predictable rhetoric and sensationalism that I’m sure I have already fallen guilty of within these past few paragraphs.

There is a bar across the street from our apartment.  Once called the Irish Garden, privy to the Irish Channel neighborhood that we dwell in; to me, it looked like a front for a large drug operation.  No one would ever be there, yet always open.  I assume for the large amounts of cocaine smuggled in from the Gulf of Mexico.    It closed without anyone knowing and the next thing we know, Parasol’s – the city-wide acknowledged home of the best roast beef po’ boy and just blocks away from our apartment as well – is under ownership scrutiny.  Days later, the Parasol’s po’ boy ups and leaves with manager and staff in tote to buy the lost and forgotten drug dealership front “Irish Garden,” renaming it Tracey’s, established in 1949, after Parasol’s original name.  T’was a grave and whirlwind fight over Miller High Lifes and gravy fries.

Tracey’s is currently frocked with 10 Irish flags between 10 Mardi Gras flags, waving high from the second floor’s cast iron balcony.  You know when LSU scores a touchdown in the apartment from the crowd screaming, watching the game on its 12 flat screen tvs.  I was one of about 5 who watched the Giants fight their way into the world series there.  I was one of about 10 there, who actually saw them win it all.  I order Miller High Life, the champagne of beers and the drink of champions in NOLA.  I have ventured out from the roast beef po’ boy and order the turkey club with extra bacon.  I ordered gravy fries every night the Giants were playing, convinced it would help them win.

We went to Tracey’s to celebrate Flynn’s 26th birthday.  Loads of spinach and artichoke dip, queso con carne, and ti many martoonis later, he finds himself at a table with his closest friends from New Orleans, a new group but a special group, at Tracey’s.  He sips his jack and coke as his buddies drink High Lifes.  It is a High Life.  I read his face.  His level of happy birthday-ness is read through the eyes and he is having quite the happy birthday.  He gets up, kisses the forehead of every girl at the table with us and goes home.  Birthday over.

He wakes up to nausea and a head ache.  Reliving the night before, he takes his phone and reaches out to those who were there, couldn’t be there, should have been there.  While I do damage control in the kitchen and eat leftover king cake, he sits and takes his coffee with asprin, relaying back and forth with his two thumbs flying around the mini keyboard. It was a great birthday – the first of many here in our new city.  He has to let that be known.

And it is as if they all told him “think of me next time you get a hangover.”  Except, I don’t think Mr. Sedaris ever anticipated his nuanced phrase to be a positive one – but that is New Orleans after all, to never miss the nuances, to never anticipate, to never expect.  To call each other while hung over because, although death may be the better alternative at the present moment, it is still a moment in New Orleans worth talking about.

I’m a Mardi Gras Tree

I’m a mardi gras tree

dem prettiest tree around

purple, yellow, and green leaves so fine

I do a lazy sway

I do a lazy sway.

some trees, dey try to act like Me

all trees, dey want to be like Me

down here in the big easy

where the livin’ easy

ooo wee where the livin’ so easy.

dey bring dem 2^nd lines ‘round

po’ boys and girls and rich ones too

walkin’ and dancin’ and singin’ like

dey be celebratin’ Me

always celebratin’ Me.

I’m a mardi gras tree

dem prettiest tree around

My fine purple, yellow and green leaves

I do a lazy sway

I do a lazy sway.

ooo wee.

Home Sweaty Home

…is now New Orleans, La as of 2ish weeks ago.  It’s hot.  Not the point.  In the transition from California to Louisiana, there is much to do and conquer.  Eat as many po-boys as humanly possible, find the best jazz venues in town, avoid brain freezes from the drive-thru Daiquiri shops, find a place of employment.

My method to finding a job in New Orleans is simple.  Network.  Find one.  Done.  The catch is, once I have wooed the hiring committees and they have offered me their 401k plans, and ideal cubicle set ups to me, I have another plan.

1)    Find awesome rewarding job.

2)    Get necessary health insurance.

3)    Join Big Easy Roller Girls Roller Derby League!

That is the true intention of this entry.  To express my undying infatuation with those illusive girls with hot pink highlighted hair, tattooed arms, pierced faces, barbarically yet scantily clad outfits, armed roller skates, and oh-so jealous, oh-so-creative nicknames is the true entry.  I have spent, embarrassingly enough, too many hours on the website.  Scourging through tournament photos, profiles, wondering “am I badass enough to fill those roller skates?”  Let alone, “will I give my mother a heart attack when I tell her my deepest desire?”  No, because that is why I’m not joining till I have a job with health insurance.  So I’m covered if I get elbowed in the kidney, lose balance, fall on the barrier wall, knock my head and go unconscious, losing  a tooth while I’m at it (note to self : encourage dental coverage as well).  That is the point of having health insurance, right?  Getting away with doing stupid sh*t?

After I spent a rainy afternoon watching Whip It with Ellen Page (- if you haven’t yet – do it), I thought I finally found my in to the world of truly bad ass girls, a quest I have been on since early childhood.  I blame the initial desire on my three brothers: always trying to keep up with their muddy, roughhousing antics.  I could have been a contender.  I failed then, but never gave up the true fight.  I’ve contemplated piercings, skull tattoos on my arm, boyish haircuts (actually went through with that one, bad move), dark makeup, black nail polish, water polo all for the sake of trying to find my inner badass.  At times the badass girl I longed to be and myself were just two star-crossed lovers, never destined to find each other as a perfect match.  But suddenly, on screen was a girl next door figure, like myself, who was athletic, a fighter, and the Babe Ruthless character I just ate up.

So here is my chance everybody.  The Big Easy Roller Girls: an entirely epic and integral part of my new life here in New Orleans.  I’m a fighter, the girl whose nose I broke one time in high school during a water polo game would agree.  I’m athletic and definitely competitive.  Balance on eight wheels?  Meh, maybe not, but I’m down to practice.  All I need now is an oh so fierce or so creative nickname for my roller derby persona (ideas? – hook a sister up!).

Then I’m set.  I’ll have a job.  I’ll have health insurance.  I’ll have an entirely new way to work out.  I’ll have a cool bad-ass group of girlfriends.  And I will be one of them.  A bad ass, finally.  Thank you New Orleans, my home sweaty home, for giving me what I have always wanted.