The Chiara Heresies VII

I come into the kitchen to find Chiara staring intently at several photos on facebook of a rather nondescript looking priest.

"I went to school with this guy," she says with a hint of wonder and confusion.

"And now he's a priest?" I ask.

"Well," she says, "he always was weird."

She's A Summer Girl

Chiara, trying on dresses for me, just came into the room to show me a recent purchase. She took a wide eyed look out the window at the clamshell sized snowflakes heaping down, made a face like a kitten that was just made to lick a lemon and said, in a little raspy voice: "winter."

The New Feist Video Is Like A Nightmare Straight From Chiara's Id

In that it features both CAMPING and THAT HAIR:

The Chiara Heresies VI

Chiara has some coworker with a teenaged son. The coworker (and her son) are Mormon and the son is of an age where he is about to go on a two year long Mormon proselytizing mission. The coworker is describing how, before the son can be sent to the city or region where he will serve his mission, he must first go through three days in the "Missionary Training Center" in Provo, Utah.

"What's the Missionary Training Center?" asks Chiara.

"It's like three days of intensive church, more or less," she is told.

"What?!" cries Chiara, "Three days of church?! That's the worst thing I think I've ever heard. I'd shoot myself!"

The Chiara Heresies V

Chiara is talking with a friend of hers who went on a Mormon mission.

"But, did you really convert someone?" she asks, incredulously.

"I converted this whole family; I never saw a group of people with worse teeth," replies the friend.

"Ahh," says Chiara, "so you converted insane people. That makes more sense."

Invited To The White Party

Chiara: What am I going to wear?

Me: Well, you have those white skinny jeans and I guess you must have a white top of some kind, right?

Chiara: Yeah, but I don't want to look like someone who sells ice cream.

Six Degrees Of (Creepy) Terror

In bed, Chiara relates to me the content of one of her many nightmares, this one from last night:

"I was in a strange old hospital; one of those creepy ones where bad things happen. Keven Bacon was there.

We were in this room and a creepy old man came in, a cripple of some kind. He made us uncomfortable, so we went to my room in the hospital. Kevin Bacon said he had to give me an injection, but he was acting very strange. He didn't really look like himself and he was creepy.

I told him that I didn't know if I could trust him and he just smiled. He stuck me with a needle in the side and it hurt, but it wasn't too bad. I told Kevin Bacon that it hadn't been so bad.

Then he stuck me with a bigger, longer needle and it HURT.

Then I woke up."

"Kevin Bacon was in your nightmare hospital?" I asked, laughing.

"Weird, huh?"

"I don't know. Not really. That guy is in everything."

Marriage, Airwolf, Scott Bakula

Last night, at three in the morning, as Chiara and I were getting to sleep, we reminisced about television shows from the 80s. We discovered that we missed Quantum Leap desperately and could, neither of us, understand how they had a plot every week on Webster or Alice. We both definitively agreed that Airwolf was the stupidest show ever. A super helicopter? a helicopter?

This, for us, was a sort of impromptu renewal of our vows.

Chiara, Her Righteous Anger

An eagle-eyed Chiara spotted that the young boy on the fire escape who has a chance encounter with Batman in Batman Begins is none other than a young(er) Jack Gleeson, Game Of Thrones' Prince Joffrey.

"Kill him! Kill him NOW!" she yelled at the television Batman.

Chiara Unchained

I'm standing in front of the stove this evening, cooking dinner, when Chiara rushes up to me, grabs me by my collar and, eyes narrowed and teeth bared, raspingly shrieks:

"I. Neeeeed. Chocolaaaaaaate!!"

Then, as I stand there stunned, she releases my shirt, darts over to the small desk in the kitchen, grabs her car keys and her purse and launches herself out of the house and into the car.

She came back from the market ten minutes later and wordlessly, with furrowed brows, began mixing brownies from the mix she'd purchased.

The Traditional Gift

While at dinner last night, I was describing to Chiara the list of "traditional anniversary gifts" that I feel quite sure no one has ever paid any attention to.

She asked what they were and I read them to her:

Me: "First year - Paper."

Chiara: "Money."

Me: "Second year - Cotton."

Chiara: "A tissue."

Me: "Third year - Leather."

Chiara: "A belt."

Me: "Fourth year - Fruit or Flowers."

Chiara: "A basket of flowers?"

Me: "Fifth year - Wood."

Chiara: "A broomstick to the head."

Me: "Sixth year - Candy or Iron. Candy OR Iron?"

Chiara: "Heavy candy?"

Me: "And here is this year's - Wool or Copper."

Chiara: "A copper sweater?"


Bonus Chiara non sequitur from later in the evening:

"Humphrey Bogart looks like one of those guys who has too much saliva in his mouth when he talks."

Seven

Today Chiara and I have been married seven years.

I can only assume that she is hanging around for the insurance money, because I certainly wouldn't be married to myself for seven years.

And I have a kind of rule that I don't use this blog for serious, sincere things.

So, instead I will just report what Chiara said the other day about the angry man in the theatre, who shouted at the old woman using her phone during The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams:

"I know that all those people in the theatre were old, I mean, they were like archeologies, but that old woman was only playing with her blueberry for like one second before that old man yelled at her. Is he crazy?"

Love you, amore. You're the one who is crazy.

Oh, and P.S., Une Femme Est Une Femme is a DELIGHT, you brat.

Oprah: Still THE WORST

Chiara informs me that, on Oprah, a man who worked for the show was asked how working on the show had changed him.

His response was, apparently, that he began to use the word "cute" and that straight men do not otherwise employ this adjective.

Of course we don't.

When i see a very very small puppy trying very very hard to stay awake and failing, the only word that struggles through the murk to the forefront of my mind is:

"FOOD"

Because I like to have sex with women.

Duh.

Above, yet another thing for which I simply CANNOT imagine an adjective. Huh. Weird. Is "Football" an adjective?

Chiara, Insult Comic II

Today, after The Colbert Report, when Tosh.0 came on, Chiara, who has apparently been fortunate enough to have never seen the show, said:

"What is this, The Soup for morons?"

The Chiara Heresies IV

Getting home at four in the morning, Chiara complains of the lateness of the hour.

Says me: "But what do we care? We have nothing to do tomorrow. We have no kids. We don't have church in the morning."

Says Chiara: "I have church in the morning - The Church of Sleep."

Oprah is THE BEST (at being THE WORST)

I am in the office, doing some work. Chiara is down the hall in the bedroom, watching Oprah. I cannot really hear the program, but I am suddenly aware of the whooping and hollering of a couple hundred middle aged women coming from the TV.

Me: What is all that noise? Did Oprah just give everyone some milquetoast country singer's CD?

Chiara: No, she let some kid play guitar with his hero, Lenny Kravitz.

I nearly laughed up a lung.

The Chiara Heresies III

We are in the supermarket. I have been in the baking aisle, trying to select a baking soda. Chiara comes up behind me with the cart and leans in conspiratorially.

"Deed you see those missionaries?" she asks me, eyes wide.

"No, why?" I reply.

"They were soooooo ugly!"

"You mean because of their cheap suits or their 1950s haircuts or something?"

"No, I mean they were ugly. Like trolls."

"You mean they were just physically unattractive people?"

"Yes, and there was a group of them, all ugly like each other."

"Why do you care about this?"

"I would never believe in some invisible man for people so ugly."

"You mean you would consider it if they were better looking?"

She thinks for a moment, cocking her head for comedic effect.

"They'd have to be pretty hot."

Chiara, Insult Comic

Chiara: Did you ever have a falling out with a friend?

Me: Not since eighth grade.

Chiara: What happened in eighth grade?

Me: I stopped being friends with this kid because I thought he was too nerdy. I wanted to be more popular.

Chiara: That's terrible!

Me: No, it totally worked. He went on to become one of those kids who wears all black and a trenchcoat. He used to play dungeons and dragons at lunch while I had girls for friends. My plan was a great success.

Chiara: Girls for friends? That's no success.

The Chiara Heresies II

On Easter, Chiara and I eschewed the traditional family brunch and went for a walk around the Avenues - the neighborhood where we live.

The weather was fine for walking as long as you stayed in the sun, but turned bitter cold as soon as you went beneath the branches of a tree or the shadow of a house. We had intended to make a picnic outing of it: stop at the neighborhood market, buy some provisions, sit in the park and get our mind off of things, but it was just too cold in the wind and the ground was still too damp from the previous day's rain.

We walked back to our house through the cemetery. It is, or so I'm told, the largest city-operated cemetery in the United States, so it is gigantic. It is filled with tombstones worn down to illegibility by the years, pitched at odd angles as they slowly sink into the earth. Here and there something really tragic, like the stone from 1870 that listed a woman and three unnamed children - a death in childbirth we guessed. Mostly we tried to spot the masonic symbols and the most old-timey names:

(Jedidiah, Zebedee, Tharquad).

At the edge of the cemetery sits a church. Parishioners were filing out of the doors in their cheap suits and floral dresses, heading home from Easter Sunday services. We tried to guess their denomination based on their hairstyles and clothing. A group of teenagers were sitting in a circle on the grass, be-suited and be-floraldressed, reading from the bible and talking.

I had to stop Chiara from shouting at them "Aren't you tired of believing in imaginary people?!" by admonishing her that it was Easter.

She reminded me that I was the one who was always on about the pagan origins of Easter - its Anglo-Saxon roots as a holiday for Eostre, Goddess of the Dawn and of Spring, celebrated as a fertility festival with colored eggs, rabbits, and baby birds.

All true enough, but still . . .

As it was, she pointed at them and barked out, in Nelson the Bully's telltale singsong, "Haa-Haa!" as we passed.

I don't know if they looked over at us or not. I looked firmly at the wet ground and the misshapen headstones and quickened my pace. Chiara chuckled evilly.

"Aren't you glad we can sleep as late as we like on Sundays and then go for a walk or do whatever we want?" she asked me with a smirk.

I said that I was glad of those things. And that we didn't have to sing unmelodic and droning songs in the company of our neighbors every week. And that there were at least two days of the week we didn't have to leap out of bed at some (un)godly hour. Still, I didn't want to taunt those poor dopes - look at their haircuts!

Then we went home and made waffles.  We picnicked at the kitchen table and watched the Daily Show on TiVo.

"Happy Easter," said Chiara to me.

"Happy Easter," said me to Chiara.

The Chiara Heresies

Chiara and I are in bed.

She is telling me a story from work:

They have a public address system at Nordstrom, where Chiara works, and occasionally employees are tasked to make certain announcements. The other day a particularly effeminate gay man who works with Chiara was making some announcements and Chiara was beside herself with delight.

Chiara adores everything about homosexual men.

Apparently this guy speaks with a pronounced lisp and in a kind of valley-girl patois and apparently it is quite funny and quite charming. Anyway, Chiara says to another girl she works with how much she enjoys when this particular guy makes announcements.

"Why?" says the girl.

"Because," says Chiara with an eyeroll "He's soooo gay!"

"Do you think so?" asks the girl, her face scrunched in confusion.

"Of. Course." levels Chiara.

And there is a kind of pause. Let us imagine it is longish and pregnant.

"Look," begins the other girl "not that I have any problem with it myself, but don't you think that gay people are doing something against the will of god?"

And, wait for it. Chiara's response:

"God? Which God? Are you stoopid? There ees no god. Don't be reediculous."

This is where I burst into shocked laughter.

"I theenk I might be a sociopath," says Chiara pensively.