Sunday, April 24, 2011

Tulips; Yellow and Purple

Yesterday I bought some purple and yellow tulips. I had just taken a shower so my hair was half wet and half frizzy, and I was wearing my token OU Football T shirt (went to one game in 4 years, ladies and gentlemen, but darn it all if I don't love that shirt) and my gray gym shorts with the paint stain on them from the Great Funeral Home Paint of 2007. (Aaron and I took all odd jobs that summer, together. We painted, we camp counseled. We watched movies in my basement. It was glorious.)

Anyway, my point is that when I bought the flowers I didn't look like a person who would be buying flowers at a grocery store. At Lowe's, maybe. Because you could've assumed that I was doing housework in my grub clothes and the flowers fit into that. But I wasn't at Lowe's, I was at Basha's, where the flowers are way overpriced and where the home-owners certainly do not go on home improvement shopping sprees.

And the flowers were most definitely overpriced. I paid like, $7.99 for each color. One bushel of purple, one of yellow. That's like, almost $15, man. (Full disclosure: there was a giant pause in my typing before I got that number out. I haven't taken a math class since 2005, so it's ok.)

I hadn't planned to buy them. They weren't on my neat, yellow, college-ruled list. The other thing about the flowers was that I didn't really have a purpose for them in mind, other than putting them in my little purple vase and in the center of my clutter-filled kitchen table. Also regarding live flowers: they don't live forever. You have to have these things in mind when you are shelling out $15 on something. Especially when $15 could also go toward dog food, or laundry detergent, or Chipotle.

The best part about all of this is, though, that I bought the flowers. I had one millisecond of "oh, I shouldn't" but I took that thought captive, ya'll. And Aaron didn't even blink a beautiful eye of his. He looked at them and said "Oh Ria, how beautiful!" and when I said "they're kind of expensive" he looked at me like I was speaking a different language, and we just paid for them at the register.

This Easter morning when I got up, the tulip blooms had started to open up, and the swirl of purple and yellow that I saw out of my still-sleeping eyes was just so sweet and sugary. I went out on my porch with my mug of orange juice. (Orange juice is my coffee, but I still pretend it's real coffee.) And I sat and stared at this gorgeous sunrise, and I read the resurrection story in Luke and John, and I thought about my Aunt Cris, and I realized that buying flowers is a little thing, but if in doing so you can stomp on a little tiny fraction of the larger-than-life swarm of useless anxiety that we allow to surround ourselves every single minute, well, then that is really something. It is like a little bit of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter that's all your own. And that was only made possible by the real Easter.

My weird, anti-intellectual, but ever-present anxiety died in a moment, and then a sweet, flower-smelled peace resurrected that couldn't have otherwise. And the victory is delicious.

Happy Easter!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Chevere

So yo escribo completemente en espanol, lo leias? Espero que si.

Pero probablemente no.

Si mi hermano aprendo el lenguaje como El dijo, El podria leer este. Pero, no. Cobarde!

La otra cosa es, yo necesito mas puntuacion, pero yo no se como en Blogger. No te importa, yo se.

El problema es yo tengo miedo porque no estoy hablando espanol a mi trabajo nuevo. Y yo se el frase - si no lo usas, lo pierdas. Entonces yo estoy escribiendo eso. Tambien, compre un libro en espanol por Pablo Neruda. Me olvido el titulo en este momento. Pero estudie Sr. Nerudo en el colegio - es un Chileno con mucho talento. Voy a leer el libro despues de lo que estoy leyendo ahora, "Water for Elephants."

Ok, ok. Lo siento, mis amigos del ingles.

Por favor si lo entiendes ese post, digame! Podemos ser amigas de espanol.

Que tenga.... sabes el resto.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Second Visits

Last week Mom and Papa Fisher came to sunny Scottsdale for a visit. Actually, what's funny is, it wasn't so sunny. Mom didn't find that funny. (These rhymes are unintentional.) I felt terrible, because obviously, one comes to Arizona expecting rays and heat and palm trees. And that is our norm 364 days a year. Mom and Dad just happened to be here on the annual week of clouds and gloom and rain.

The horrible part: I loved it.

It made me want to curl up and read and snooze and watch movies. And actually, for a lot of their visit, that's what we did! That's what's great about Second Visits. You don't have to have the traditional "let's go see the sites" kind of time together. You can have REAL time together. As if they lived down the street, and we happened to take a Saturday to shop at Tempe Marketplace.

That's my backwards way of saying I'm trying to bamboozle them into moving down the street.

(Although I don't think that would be too hard, honestly. The excessiveness of Dad's "oohs" and "ahhs" at the scenery and his endless references to foreclosed homes was telling. AHEM.)

On an honest and more somber note, I can't describe the yuckiness of the ends of Mom-and-Dad visits. I've blogged before about how I'm not cut out to live this far from them. When they leave, all I can think about are these pretty childhood memories that I wish I could grab back.

But homesickness ain't nothing a little bitta Aaron Michael and Biggest Loser can't fix, right? At least temporarily.

So this week got off to a tear-filled start when Mom and Dad caught their return flight on Monday morning, but it's looking up now. After all, it IS the 99th anniversary of the Titanic's voyage. Coolest week of the year. What have you been up to?

Monday, April 4, 2011

Monday Nonsense

Ok, friends. Here's the dealio, as Michael Scott would say. Due to the 'political' nature of my new job, my boss is a bit wary of me having a public blog. (They were burned in the not-too-distant past by an employee with a weak social network filter. Ahem.) However, upon hearing that, after I got over the initial devastation (not really) I researched and found a way to have an invite-only blog. So for now, you all and I share a secret. :)

That being said, I didn't start this post with a lot to say. Just wanted to be in the blog world again.

So, my sweet Mom and Dad are coming out to ol' Scottsdale tomorrow for their yearly April visit, and it feels like Christmas Eve. Aaron and I just completed the Baer Apartment Deep Clean of 2011, and that feels lovely. We blasted Mute Math, John Mayer, and Eisley. Also the vacuum joined in on the noise factor.

While I was cleaning the shower and Aaron Michael was sweeping the furniture, I had one of those existential moments where I realized I was actually having fun, and that Aaron is just the stinkin' bee's knees. Sometimes I think people imagine the 'domestic' parts of marriage to be anti-climactic. I certainly used to, before we got married. But I would trade the awkward tension of dating for the happy hum-drum of cleaning together almost any day.

We were born in different states. We literally never knew of each other for the first 18 years of our lives. Now we are inseparable and we clean our apartment together in music-filled silence. Who could've known?

That reminds me of a line in "Memoirs of a Geisha," which I just finished and have been mulling over all day. But I can't quite recall the line right now. It is about the rhythm of life and how our destiny is like a stone falling toward the earth... it's the most beautiful line and I'm butchering it. But this is where I tell you that if you really want to hear it, you'll have to go read the book. Then, of course, call me so we can chat about it!

Alright, time for my nightly glass of cranberry juice (girlfriends: jump on this train. If you'd like to know why, Google it or e-mail me.) and then a little bit of reading. Tonight I'm starting "Water for Elephants."

I have to say a thank you before I go, though. I was nervous putting myself out there to have an e-mail only blog, because I wasn't sure if I'd have any takers. But ya'll made me feel very loved and I'm so glad we can share this together. And hey - if you have a blog too, would you mind leaving it in the comments? I really really want to follow you.

Goodnight, friends.
Maria