It’s one thing to create a name or slogan that’s perfect, like the toilet-seat-cover maker’s product line “Rest Assured” or the paving company’s bumper sticker “If you do it yourself, it’s your own asphalt.”

It’s another thing to have a name that ends up fitting your career perfectly and calls to mind the nature vs. nurture debate from my developmental psychology class in college:

–Teets (a cattle farming family’s last name)
-Penny (a city treasurer candidate’s first name)
-McGeoy (the last name of a woman in charge of a solar energy project in California)
-Dennis (a dentist)
-Dr. Wack (a chiropractor; see more doctor names here)
-Rotz Meats and Gore Meats (meat/butcher shops)
-Margaret Spellings (Secretary of Education under Bush)

I’m sure there are a ton more….

Thanks to this week’s two snow days, I have just finished Gone with the Wind, one of the most depressing books I have ever read. It was so depressing I don’t even want to write about it. As Scarlett says at the end of the book, “I’ll think of it all tomorrow…. After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Well, maybe I’ll think more about it tomorrow; for now I’d rather not commit to draining myself further.

The auctioneer representing the sellers of a house we really really really really really want to buy commented today that “worry is interest on a problem that hasn’t happened yet.” I’m not really worried right now, as much as full-to-the-brim-with-anxious-expectation-that’s-not-too-certain-to-be-satisfied.

In two ways, this is the case.

The first way is that the temperature tonight, wind chill included, will be down to an ohmygosh -3 degrees. Okays, so that’s nothing like my sister-in-law’s balmy -15 of last night, but I’m hoping it’s cold enough to bring down a two-hour delay or maybe even a day off from school.

The second way I’m soggy-bottom excited is that we’ve placed an offer on the house we really really really really really want to buy and pretty much no matter what the sellers counteroffer, we’re going to accept the price and pay for it because we really really really really really want it.

In neither situation does my jittery self-splatment really help anything move along or make me any more tolerable to my dear wife and daughter. In a way I can feel the compounding of that worry-esque interest into a sleepless night that will leave me even more jittery, discombobulated, and otherwise fuddled.

Good grief.

Amen.

It’s our sixth wedding anniversary, and I have a bellyache.

I’ve had it since Friday, when I laid on my parents’ couch for almost the whole day, ate only toast and crackers and drank ice water and Ginger Ale until evening, when the pesto linguine and buttered and sugared squash followed by tapioca pudding with crushed strawberry sauce called my olfactory sense back from its figurative deathbed.

I’d had enough of the couch by then, and more than enough of reading Gone with the Wind, especially its descriptions of the neverending days of Atlanta’s Civil War seige and its accompanying physical discomforts, which were all the more vividly played out in my imagination due to my pitiful condition.

The squash and linguine were more healthy and tasty than any food we would have had had I not fallen ill, since if I’d been well we would have gone ahead with the date I’d planned in celebration of our six years of weddedness. Unbeknownst to M, we were going to go to a local restaurant (“If you can look past the dirt, it’s great,” one of my dad’s coworkers said of the place) to eat and watch the DVD of our wedding on a laptop. But I was in no way suited to that possibility, and we had to postpone the festivity.

Yesterday I felt better, mostly, and took a walk, split firewood, and drove home, but by bedtime, while we were watching our wedding video (in a technical situation that allowed us only to skip chapters, not fast forward or back up, which was problematic because the DVD’s chapters were extremely randomly established and so we missed particular highlights and had to settle for hodge-podge segments, and so we didn’t get to see the “look of death” that struck my young face when I realized that the ceremony prelude was over and it was time to process), I was starting to feel a bit miserable again. Fortunately we hadn’t coupled the viewing with food; we’ll take care of that part later this week, when I can enjoy it again.

In the meantime, I’m being how I be when I get sick–mopey, demanding, lazy. I dozed until nearly 10:30 this morning (N was napping by then, too, so M didn’t even try going to church), right now N is napping again and so M has jogged off to the grocery store for Jell-O, chicken noodle soup, and Ginger Ale (“In small cans,” I requested), the futon is housing my mildly wracked frame, and just now N woke back up and so I must rescue her from her crib.

Happy Anniversary!

For Christmas this year M bought me a 1986 Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary (Aid to Rhyme). Its “carefully arranged groupings of the words, and their endings” are not only poetic helps; they are themselves poetic:

ATIC
Acrobatic, anastigmatic, aquatic, aristocratic, aromatic, Asiatic, autocratic, automatic, axiomatic, chromatic, climatic, diplomatic, dogmatic, dramatic, ecstatic, Eleatic, emblematic, emphatic, epigrammatic, erratic, fanatic, fluviatic, hieratic, hypostatic, idiomatic, lunatic, lymphatic, mathematic, melodramatic, miasmatic, morganatic, operatic, phlegmatic, piratic, plutocratic, pneumatic, polychromatic, pragmatic, prismatic, problematic, rheumatic, sabbatic, semi-aquatic, static, systematic, thematic, theocratic, trichromatic

IES
Apple pies, cries, dragon-flies, fireflies, flies, fortifies, lies, pies, plies, ratifies, skies, squash pies, supplies, tries, wailing-cries

UE
Accrue, argue, avenue, barbecue, blue, clue, construe, continue, cue, curlycue, due, ensue, flue, glue, hue, imbue, ingenue, marble-statue, misconstrue, out-argue, overdue, pursue, queue, rescue, retinue, revenue, revue, ring-true, robin’s egg blue, rue, skyblue, slue, statue, subdue, sue, true, true-blue, undervalue, undue, untrue, value, vendue, virtue

Despite my numerous firsthand negative experiences resulting from barging ahead, I rarely turn down an opportunity to step up to the plate even if the pork chops are still oinking.

In some situations this is a blessed character trait: At school I am rarely stressed, since I am frequently over-planned; so far in our home business office (same room as the mud room, living room, entertainment den, study, kitchen, spare bedroom, and dining room) we’ve never had to pay a late fee for any bills, since they’re usually paid off days or even weeks in advance.

In other situations, however, this conquering of anticipated responsibilities is a cursedly incoherent babble of potentials. For example, as I pulled into the parking lot at an auto parts store on Monday, I saw a sign: “Free windshield wiper installation with purchase.”

Now, I already know how to install my own wiper blades–a guy at a different auto parts store once showed me–and so un-free or even no installation would have been absolutely fine. But as the customer service representative went to retrieve my new thermostat and I cast my critical eye over the store, it occurred to me that our wiper blades have in fact been a bit noisy recently, and we’re going to be traveling a lot in the coming weeks, and so maybe I should get some new blades, just in case.

“Maybe they’ll fit in the wheel well with the spare,” I thought, but they don’t and so now our trunk is even smaller.