Sock it to me

Kyle and I are ALWAYS in a hurry, mainly because his sense of time is like my sense of direction, except worse. I can find my way around if a map's handy, but Kyle apparently never learned how to tell time. I credit this deficiency to two factors:

1. He used to simultaneously play and broadcast his own football games in his backyard, himself playing I guess 23 characters, thereby developing a world of his own in which he created generous time restraints, which in turn were probably influenced by No. 2:

2. His best friend as a young-youngster was literally his dog. And dogs operate on a different timetable from us humans. This is a very confusing timetable, mind you, because I Googled "dog years," and Wikipedia gave me some sort of graph that hasn't helped me figure out Kyle. This is unfortunate, because I don't know why when I say this: "Hey Kyle, we need to leave for X in EIGHT MINUTES." He translates it to: "Wow, that's enough time to shave, shower, dry a load of laundry and play hide-and-go-seek with the DOG." But Kyle obviously can't live up to this warp-speed mentality even though he THINKS he can, so we're about 52 minutes late to everything because my powers of persuasion don't work on those who are operating under the canine influence.

Combine this false sense of reality with a crazy-good ability to misplace things, and we're now about, oh, 90 minutes late to everything.

Like Monday. We're already, you guessed it, running a little late, and Kyle needs his cleats for his softball game.

"They're not in my truck [where they stay permanently]," he says. "I just looked. Where ARE they?!!!"

"They should be in your truck. That's where they stay permanently," I comment.

"They're not in there," he yells with his fists in the air. "I DISTINCTLY remember bringing them into the house, and thinking that that was a dumb idea, and then not paying attention to where I set them down."

I poke around the closet for a moment and then sneak outdoors, where I see that the cleats are nestled on the truck's floorboard.

I return indoors to tell him as much. "Do you have some socks?"

"They're in the truck," he says. "I just now put them in there when I was looking for the shoes."

OK. So I head back to the truck in good faith, trying to be a doting and supportive wife who trusts her husband's word above any other.

"Oops! I DISTINCTLY remember putting them RIGHT HERE," he points to the console and scurries into our yellow house to retrieve a different pair of socks from the ones he had previously planned to take. The others, at this point, are apparently still MIA.

I had forgotten about the lost socks till we got home that night and I glanced upward while heading for the bathroom:



That is where he stuck his socks. Wedged between the bathroom and the cat's bedroom, 1.5 feet below the ceiling. It is an absentmindness that's characteristic of a special breed. Maybe it isn't as bad as wrapping one's keys in painter's tape and tossing them into the woods, but at least I'm not alone.

To have and to hold

Parking three blocks from my downtown workplace has many cons and only three pros: I don't have to pay the $30 a month to park in the lot across from my workplace, I get some exercise (you know how they say to take the stairs instead of the elevator? this walk is my justification for not taking the stairs), and I pass the Christ Episcopal Church Book Store.

Yesterday after work I was feeling particularly unspiritual, I needed a book to read to my new cat, and I like to buy things, so the bookstore sensed my vulnerability and gave a shout out. I knew that I wanted a Lamott book, for I was also feeling particularly unwriterly and wanted inspiration.

(All those things are important in their own right and deserve to be noted, but reading and writing really don't have much at all to do with my point. Shopping does.)

I like shopping because I like Things. I am a gifts person. I am tactile,
and I think I would pray more if I were Catholic, because of the rosary. I admittedly know nothing about rosaries, except that my Irish great-aunt who's a very short nun in France gave one to my mom and that I want it.

(Kyle and I are doing a "love languages" group study, and during the "gifts" week one of the leaders said that he believes Jesus was a gifts person. I felt quite smug; I take all I can get.)

When I spend a night alone, I sleep with my Bible, for extra protection. God is actually there with me, when I hug my Bible.

At the wedding of Kyle and me, I was adamant that the preacher not explain the unity candle. Symbolism speaks for itself, I said. Things can say a lot, if you listen.

So when I stood at the counter, paying for my new book with part of the $30 I saved this month, my eye was caught by a little basket of "angel prayer charms" that had little birthstones stuck right into their hollow chests and functioned like lockets. I picked the one that held a blue stone for September. I paid the man again and left.

Today at work I typed up a 9-point-font, sentence-long prayer and folded it neatly into the angel and attached it to my key ring. I sat it in front of me, beside my cell phone and red coffee mug.

When I look at that little angel -- as when I felt it in my coat pocket on my three-block walk to work this morning -- I breathe a prayer, and I know that Kyle is safe in Georgia. I just know it, and the tiny blue stone twinkles.