Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am okay. Day 5 of no nicotine. I got like six more different flavors of Icebreakers mints, and it’s really kind of gross, but it seems to be working. Two different shots at a PS5 today — one from Sony and one from GameStop. Wish me luck. Not that I need it. Just something to do. Something to do. Something to do. Grey skies over black town. I can feel depression all around. But your leather boots on.
Whoops. Sorry. I have often had “Something to do” running through my head this last year.
Yesterday I reinstalled my OS on my computer. It was shockingly easy. I mean, it took a long time but it was very easy. Reboot. Hold down command-R. Select “reinstall,” you’re done. No messing about with USB drives or DVDs or anything. It was great. All my settings were maintained. So far no Spotlight Search process overload system hang. Can’t recommend it strongly enough.
Yesterday I also finally finished up with getting my car registration renewed, so please give me a round of applause. Also got the same Save the Honeybee plates that we have on the other car. I like them. They don’t say the BS First in Flight on them, and the money goes to honeybees who can complain about that.
I had a nice dream last night. Apparently I owned a large outdoor sculpture — sort of like an Oldenburg — of a giant chocolate donut with pink frosting and sprinkles on it. But I had forgotten about it. And Emma sold it, in a deal brokered by Karen Wong, my old client from the New Museum with whom I’ve been doing some work lately (in real life, not the dream). She sold it for $120,000. And I was so psyched because I bought the thing for, like, $500 from my friend April, who in real life paints donuts but in my dream she had expanded her horizons to monumental sculptures of donuts. Looking at this dream now I’m realizing it was uncool to sell off a friend’s piece of art for a big profit and, thus, keeping them from making that profit, but that didn’t occur to me in the dream. I am sorry April.
Today is mine and Emma’s eighth anniversary. Eight. I think? 2013. 2021 minus 2013 equals eight. Yes. Eighth. We’ve been together well over a decade now. Details are fuzzy on the beginning of our relationship but I think I can confidently say we’ve been together twelve years. That is crazy. This is, of course, by far the longest relationship I’ve ever had, but it doesn’t feel that long. It doesn’t feel like eight years since the wedding. It still feels pretty new. I married well.
That was a fun wedding wasn’t it? You guys were awesome thank you for coming. Let’s do that again someday. I’d rent the Music Hall again and invite you all if you all can come. Let’s dance till 4 AM again with dedicated day care in the dressing room and successive rounds of taco, cupcakes and pizza. I’m sure I could make it till 4 no problem. Hahahaha.
When we got engaged, on Christmas eve um, Ima gonna say 2011 but maybe was 2012, no, I think 2011, anyway, we were at Emma’s old apartment in Cambridge, I was living in New York. Emma was about to move down to New York and we were going to move in together, but Emma’s grandmother let it be known that she did not approve of Emma moving in with a man while single. I had been carrying around the ring to propose for, like, six months. Like, seriously, carrying it around in my pocket. Oh right it was 2011, because I had the ring with me when I quit Barbarian and we took a road trip down to Florida to see Janet, and I was going to propose there, But Janet took the surprise away and was like “when are you going to propose? Do you have a ring yet?” so I panicked and didn’t do it. So I finally managed to get it done at Christmas, because we were running out of time, Emma was moving in a few weeks (well, we were getting the apartment she was moving a bit later), and we didn’t want to upset Grandma.
So after I proposed and she said yes, before we watched more of Star Trek or whatever, that night we did all those OK Cupid compatibility tests that were all the rage back then when OK Cupid was, like, doing the data science thing and writing that fun blog that we were all into for a hot second. We scored like 95% compatible or something, so that was reassuring. I asked Emma how long she thought we could make it. She said “I’m pretty sure we can make ten years.” So far, she’s proven remarkably accurate. I think at this point, even if things went rapidly south, out of the blue, we’d stick it out to the ten year mark just to prove the prediction correct.
But things are not going rapidly south. Things are going very well. We’ve been cooped up in this house for more than a year and a half together, barely seeing anyone else except our daughter and Emma’s mother, and we’ve not fought at all. I think maybe there was one argument in there somewhere but I don’t remember it. That is remarkable. Like. It hasn’t even been hard. It’s kind of crazy how compatible we are. It’s kind of crazy how much we enjoy each other’s company. We parent together well (though, I admit, often we just parent separately, but if you ask me, that is part of the secret of why we parent together so well). It is crazy how well we communicate. I mean, I can’t convey (har har) how great this is. Sometimes we’ll be sitting there parsing some problem two people in the world are having and we’re both genuinely stumped because we can’t figure out why the two people in question aren’t talking about it, and then we remember, oh, yeah, people have a hard time communicating. Talking about things. I’m so thankful for this communication. That sounds self-congratulatory. I am sorry. But it really is just… talking, man. Talking. It’s a thing.
Sometimes it feels magical, sometimes it feels like pulling teeth. Sometimes she’ll ask me some absurdly simple question and I just… want to lie about it, so badly. It just happened the other day, what was it. Some completely innocuous thing. I think it might have had to do with a tiny wine. Oh no. I remember. It involved my t-shirt sorting method. Anyway, I really wanted to make up some elaborate lie about it, but I just sort of entered this fugue state and told the truth and… nothing happened. Because it was completely not a big deal. Because the whole thing was in my head, there was nothing, and telling the truth and communicating just made it go away. I still find that remarkable. Communication. I am not explaining this well, it all sounds like I used to be a compulsive liar or something and that’s not the case, but, well, communication in a relationship can be magical.
Last night I started bawling while we were watching Mythbusters because I saw the picture of 670 people Afghans crammed into the belly of a C-17 Globemaster being airlifted out of Kabul and it was a super hi res photo and I zoomed in on a random spot and in doing so, I zoomed into the face of these two little kids. And I just started crying and oh god I’m doing it again writing this. And it’s not really logical because these people are getting out, they’re not the ones still stuck there. And of course Emma’s just as upset as I am about the Afghan situation and she was, like, both simultaneously concerned for me and feeling a little guilty for her escapist urges to just watch Mythbusters instead of facing the crisis head on. And we navigated that shit no problem. Like, it wasn’t even hard. Tears running down my face, her offering me comfort, and offering to switch to the news if I wanted, me offering her reassurance, telling her it was okay, please turn Mythbusters back on, and we both meant it and it was just a little snapshot of marriage seventeen months into being locked down with each other and it went just fine. Like in those early levels of Mario Brothers that aren’t even hard anymore, because you’ve navigated shit like this before, and you got it down.
I don’t want to sound smug, I don’t feel smug about it. Emma and I did take day-to-day compatibility into account when we agreed to get married, but I think both of us are shocked at how well it all worked. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, and there were times I wondered if we’d make it. Those who’ve known me a long time probably think it’s hilarious and out-of-the-blue that this is how things transpired. Emma and I aren’t smug, no, we’re thankful. Every day.
So happy anniversary, Emma. I love you. I love our live here, even if I am often looking at Zillow listings in New England. I love our family and our house and all the time we spend together and I couldn’t have picked a better person to be cooped up with for seventeen months. I’d say “here’s to seventeen more” but that is just sadistic. Here is to eight more years. Or at least two. Ten years. We can do it.
Oh. And if anyone needs more matchbooks, just say the word. We still have, like, 2,000. Please. Take some matchbooks.
Let’s do a mix!
Ha, actually, let’s just do this.
Here’s a playlist of some music from the wedding reception. It’s by no means complete, and it seems to have some Spotify linkrot in it since I made it, but it still looks like a pretty fun dance mix. Enjoy.
i danced my ass off at your wedding party and was honored to be included! #webbles4eva
Happy Anniversary!