A Good Finder

A couple years ago I found this film about dating and marriage produced by BYU in 1956 and I talked about it on Strangerville when I did the four-part series on old Mormon films. Well, I finally built up the stamina to recap it, with screenshots so you can see how exceptionally hot one of the protagonist's suitors was. 

You can read this real doozy of recap here. Also, shoutout to Josh Fowlke, our artist at The Beehive, who once again created the perfect piece of art for this recap. 

In other news, my husband, the man who vowed before God to love and worship and support and never criticize and always agree and suffer in silence for me, attacked me out of nowhere the other night. 

There's an ongoing debate in my home about whether or not I'm a bad "finder." Skylar includes "good finder" at the very top of his list of positive qualities he believes he possesses. This topic comes up every single day.

Skylar: Will you please hand me the cumin?

Eli: I don't see it.

Skylar: Did you move stuff around?

Eli: I don't have to because it's not here and that would be a waste of time.

The Urge To Be Happy

I'm sitting at my kitchen table. The fire is going. Duncan is perched in front of the front door staring out at a snow storm. Skylar is in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher and quietly singing something to himself. Taylor Swift? I don't know. It's probably Taylor Swift.

We walked around the neighborhood this morning to get coffee and breakfast. As we walked, we talked about our favorite Nevada memes from this week. Like this one:

A Pretty Serious Dispute

I need you to solve a debate that is make or break for my marriage. 

Skylar, who is wrong, thinks it's rude when I'm working or writing and he starts trying to talk to me and I very politely ignore him completely. He also thinks it's rude when I mindlessly respond with a curt "uh-uh" without ever looking at him. 

Obviously he, who is wrong, would characterize this differently than I have. He would incorrectly tell you that I'm not "politely" ignoring him and that the fact that I'm ignoring him is inherently impolite, but nonetheless, I'm not doing it "politely" anyway. He would falsely say that all he's doing is trying to treasure the few seconds we have together, which his horrid schedule barely and rarely deigns to allow, and that my refusal to join him in that honorable quest in fact makes me quite rude.

Then I'd interrupt at this point (but I'd do it politely, obviously) and I'd say "no one made you go learn how to put cameras up people's butts and look at poop through a microscope" and he'd cut me off there and yell "for the last time, that is not what I do all day." And then I'd remind him that it's rude to yell and interrupt so maybe a little self-reflection would be a better use of his time than this current escapade of projection. 

He'd roll his eyes at that point and say it's "useless" arguing with me, which is curious, because he would then continue to argue with me. And look, I'd suggest that if you're doing something you think is useless, that probably says a lot more about you than it ever could about me. 

Anniversary

Tomorrow is my and Skylar's one-year wedding anniversary what how is that possible you look so young STOP IT YOU GUYS.

What a wild first year of marriage this was. So many unpredictable left turns. I mean, I assumed when we got married last September that our next twelve months would include a worldwide pandemic, a near economic collapse, an earthquake, and a mountain hurricane, but I didn't think we'd also have to process all that news about Meghan and Harry.

In twelve months we've faced more together in some ways than I would have expected to deal with in a decade. I feel so fortunate that he's the person I've had to navigate all of this with. 

People commonly talk about how you can tell a couple is about to break up when they start gushing about one another on social media. Something compels relationships in crisis to engage in full denial in this way. Sometimes when I start to write something nice about Skylar he'll say to me, "people are going to think we're about to get divorced if you publish that."

Whatever. I can't help myself. I adore that man.

Skylar makes everything better. He makes everyone better. I don't know how he does it. You meet him and suddenly you're just a better person for it. 

Rotations

Skylar started his "rotations" this week, which as I understand it roughly translates to "wander around a hospital trying to look busy so no one asks you to clean up poop."

His first rotation is in gynecology. They do these rotations in part to help the students try to figure out what kind of doctor they want to be. I already nixed gynecology for Skylar after I imagined a likely future scenario in which he calls from work every evening and says "I got gabbing with my first patient—she was a GODDESS—and then missed all the rest of my appointments for the day so now I have to work until 4:00 AM."

When he first started medical school I made a lot of jokes about what kind of doctor I needed him to be—all motivated by selfish reasons, of course. The list included only specialties that could give me access to cheap elective cosmetic surgeries and an ocean of botox. After a while I became worried that my jokes would get taken seriously so I way over-corrected and started giving a weekly speech about how I didn't care at all what he did as long as he was happy. Within 24 hours he started leaving open on his laptop applications to professional improv groups.

Ok, that last part isn't true, but if he had enough time right now to be funny it would be.

The point is, I need him to make us all look young again but I need him to think it was his choice. That way I can seem pretty and supportive.

Wedding Ring

My husband has decided he should "get credit" for "not losing" his wedding ring. He told me this the other night like he had saved a bus of children from going over a cliff.

"I feel like you haven't adequately recognized how amazing this is," he told me.

To clarify: I have been married to this particular husband FOR FIVE MONTHS.

I told him I was deeply concerned that he thought this was praiseworthy, mostly because this meant he expected, and continues to expect, that this thing I put on his finger would go missing in very short order.

"We all know this is going to happen at some point," he said in a tone that also screamed "I have literally lost five driver's licenses since I met you."

I would be lying if I said I hadn't worried at least a little about the fate of that ring. I remember wondering about this when I bought it. Skylar does tend to lose stuff. We both know this. One time a relative sent him a $100 bill in the mail for some life milestone and in one single move he pulled it from the envelope and stuck it in my pocket. "I'll misplace it immediately if I set it anywhere else," he had told me.