Random Moments in Married Life

I'm standing at the kitchen counter in my PJs, putting together a PB&J waffle sandwich for Travis' breakfast, having just rolled out of bed moments earlier. Travis comes up behind me and wraps me in a hug. He asks, "Was this a dream, or were we awake for a while really early this morning, telling 'What do you call a man with no arms and no legs...' jokes in bed?" Giggling, I respond, "Yes, that happened. You woke me up by laughing in your sleep. Confused, I woke you up and asked what was so funny. You told me about the dream you'd been having, which involved a man with no arms and no legs. Then we told a few jokes and went back to sleep."

Just Added to "Makes Me Chuckle..."

The newest addition to the "Makes Me Chuckle..." section in the sidebar is People of Walmart, for which I have my Facebook friend (and college dorm & classmate) Betsy to thank for bringing it to my attention.

Makes me chuckle. Also makes me glad that I participated in the Taylor tradition of braless midnight Wal-mart runs before the advent of camera phones.

Dare You Not to Smile as You Watch This

Awful Library Books and Wedding Vows

Joining Cake Wrecks and Awkward Family Photos on the list of sites that make me chuckle (see below right) is Awful Library Books, a blog by two librarians (Mary & Holly) that documents actual library holdings. Explain the site's authors, "The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information."

The timing of my discovery of this site is quite appropriate, since just this past Friday Travis and I applied for our Oak Park Public Library cards. I didn't have "Awful Library Books" in mind as I combed through the selection of wedding related titles, but now I want to go back and reconsider the offerings in light of this blog...because I know I passed over several volumes based on their apparent obsolescence. (They say you can't just a book by it's cover, but really, sometimes you can. If it's pink and decorated with doilies, I'm gonna say it's probably not the wedding reference book for me, and that it likely wasn't printed in this century.)

One book I was pleased to find on the shelves (and subsequently checked out) was The Complete Book of Christian Wedding Vows: The Importance of How You Say "I Do". Travis and I have started working on the various elements of the ceremony, and one of the tasks related to that (though "task" seems too laborious a word to describe a very meaningful and enjoyable activity) is writing our vows - those promises we will make to one another that will bind us together in covenant commitment.

With my own wedding approaching, I find that news of others' engagements, marriages, separations, and divorces affect me more--or maybe just differently--than they used to. Several "friends" (the Facebook kind who were legitimate friends at one point in my life and are now merely acquaintances who share a common history from a past season of life and spy on one another's lives via the ubiquitous social networking site) have gotten married in the last few weeks and months. I find that I am so very happy for them, in a sappy, cock-my-head-to-the-side-as-I-click-through-their-wedding-pictures-and-sigh kind of way, and yet I am also sobered by the statistics that tell me that one out of every two of their marriages will not last till death does them part.

When I heard (also via Facebook) that my high school youth pastor and his wife celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, I couldn't have been happier for them. I clapped my hands in delighted applause, breaking the silence in the solitude of my office.

When I heard the news that Jon & Kate Gosselin are separating I was deeply saddened, willing them to instead demonstrate to a watching world that a marriage is worth fighting for, that it's worth the hard work of salvaging and forgiving and rebuilding. That what's best for their children is not a household atmosphere devoid of tension and conflict, but a family intact with two present parents who are fiercely committed to the vows they made 10 years ago (and incidentally just renewed very publicly on an episode that aired last season).

And when I saw the headline of this article from Time Magazine (Is There Hope for the American Marriage?), I found that I wanted to read it...to find out what the author thinks the answer is. Here are a few notable quotes:

"In the e-mails exchanged between the governor [of South Carolina, Mark Sanford] and his girlfriend, they trip over themselves to praise the other's virtues. She was 'special and unique,' 'glorious'; he was a man of emotional generosity who 'brought happiness and love to my life.' These two humanitarians were engaged not only in worshipping each other's high-mindedness but also in destroying another woman's home, hobbling her children emotionally and setting her up for humiliation of a titanic proportion. The squalor and pain that resulted from the Sanford and Ensign midlife crises make manifest a bleak truth that the late writer Leonard Michaels once observed in his journal: 'Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another.'"

"There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage."

"Think of the touching moments on Inauguration Night, when at ball after ball, crowds of young people swooned at the sight of Barack and Michelle Obama dancing together, artlessly but sincerely and clearly with great affection. They are an immensely appealing couple, and it was a historic night, but what we saw reflected in the faces of those awed young people — and in the country's insatiable appetite for photographs of the First Family's private life — was wonder at the sight of a middle-aged man and woman still together, still in love."

'What we teach [our children] about the true meaning of marriage will determine a great deal about our fate."

Run for the Border. Sing When You Get There.

Here's something to make you smile on a cold and rainy Monday (at least here in Chicagoland).

Cake Wrecks

In case you're in need of a chuckle today, I'd like to introduce you to Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong.

What is a Cake Wreck? Well, according to the blog's author, Jen, "a Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places."

Here's the cake that started it all, and it just happens to have my name on it!

Curbside Consultation of the Colon

The U.K.'s Bookseller Magazine has announced the shortlist for the annual Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. You can read all about it here.

The shortlist includes 6 titles, which are as follows:

Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press)

Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash (SLACK Incorporated)

The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press)

Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T)

Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead)

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker (Icon Group International)

The prestigious award was first conceived by The Diagram Group’s Bruce Robertson as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Run by Horace Bent, the first ever winner was the University of Tokyo Press’ Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, in 1978. Last year’s winner was If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.

Go to www.theBookseller.com to vote for your favorite. As you can see from the title of this post, I've picked mine.

You Mock My Pants

It has recently come to my attention that a series of statements can be made much more interesting by replacing one of the words with "pants." [For this I am indebted to Jason Boyett, who employed this tactic with lines from Star Wars and Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God" on his blog.] I've decided to try this with some classic lines from one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride.

Farmboy, polish my horse's pants. (Buttercup)

She doesn't get eaten by the pants at this time. (Grandpa)

Pants cannot stop true love. (Westley)

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my pants. Prepare to die. (Inigo)

You mock my pants. (Buttercup)

You rush a miracle man, you get rotten pants. (Miracle Max)

You were not hired for your pants, you hippopotamic land mass. (Vizzini)

You be careful. People in pants cannot be trusted. (Fezzik)

We face each other as God intended. Sportsmanlike. No tricks, no pants, skill against skill alone. (Fezzik)

I challenge you to a battle of pants. (Westley)

You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched pants when your back was turned! (Vizzini)

Really that's all this is, except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking pants. (Count Rugen)

Please consider me as an alternative to pants. (Prince Humperdinck)

Suz through the years...

It seems by now a lot of people are aware of yearbookyourself.com, a nifty site where you can upload a photo of yourself and see what you might have looked like with the hairstyles of days gone by. I'd managed to resist jumping on the bandwagon until today, when I decided it was a legitimate way to entertain myself on my lunch break. So, here's what I might have looked like back in the day (and as a brunette)...

1968

1986

1994

Caution: Icy Conditions May Result in Jazz Hands

I saw this sign at the Chicago Botanic Garden this past weekend and it struck me as funny.

Need to laugh?

Read this post, and then watch the video of Joe Cocker performing "With a Little Help From My Friends" (The Wonder Years theme) at Woodstock. Best use of captions and clip art I've seen in a long time.