Is it weird that I’m starting to know all the paint counter employees at Lowe’s-es and Home Depots in a ten-mile radius? Today I got my least fave. I brought in actual paint chips (chips of paint I scraped off our peeling baseboards) and asked them to please match. This dude (the manager) calls me to look at their computer monitor while his underling stands slack-jawed and listens to this conversation:

Him: We can’t create a perfect match. It’s .56 off.

Me: Point five six? How off is that?

Him: [Very obviously refraining from rolling his eyes at my stupidity] It’s point five six. So there’s point one, point two, point three, point four, and then point five six.

(Also, he has extreme halitosis. This is how I remember I’ve had unsatisfactory dealings with him before–I remember not his face, but the smell of his breath at three feet away.)

Me: [Considering the fact that, in his mind, these fractions represent something–something he can see in his mind very clearly. And he’s the kind of person who thinks, because he can clearly see the thing that was beaten into his brain during Lowe’s Paint Manager training, I should be able to see it, too. But I can’t, because I’m stupid, and probably because I’m a woman. This is all sort of interesting to me, but not uncommon and not surprising and not worth getting into right now, so I’m not going to say “You’re just telling me numbers. I understand that point five is bigger than point one,” etc., etc.]
So… Is point five six like half a shade, or a whole shade? Is it visible to the naked eye?

Him: Oh, yeah. Are you trying to match something? People will be able to see the difference.

Me: And that’s the best you can do? You can’t make a match at all?

Him: No. UNLESS….

Me: ?

Him: Unless you want to go [waves at paint chips all around us] look at these paint chips and try to find one that matches.

Me: You’re saying you can’t match it from this sample, but if I find a paint chip that matches the sample, you can match that?

Him: [Obviously satisfied he’s finally gotten through to my stupid brain] Yes.

It takes me five seconds to look at the various Glidden whites and see that mine is a violet white. It takes me five more seconds to decide between the closest two violet whites. It takes me ten seconds to walk around with a bit of the sample on top of the paint chip, checking it in various lights afforded by Lowe’s and imagining the paint chip in semi-gloss form. I like doing this. I love colors and paint chips and matching and imagining. I think about the guy who worked at the Home Depot near my old house, who is the only person I’ve ever met who’s more obsessed with paint colors than me. He seemed like he had Asperger’s, the one time I worked with him. I couldn’t tell if he got pleasure from deciding on colors or not. But I had the impression he respected me. I wonder how he’s doing. I miss him.

I take my selected paint chip (“Pegasus”) to the counter and Halitosis Point Five says, “Did you find one?” in a supercilious tone that indicates he knows I picked the wrong color. It occurs to me that it’s probably a liability issue for him. He doesn’t want to make me a color and have me come back later, bitching and wanting to return the custom-made and therefore un-name-able and therefore probably un-re-sell-able paint. Maybe that’s happened to him a few times in the past and he’s learned it’s easier to force the customer to pick a paint chip. He’s probably not a bad person. He has no way of knowing I’m not a bad person, who would ask for custom paint and then return it and try to get him in trouble. I guess I can’t blame him.

As I’m waiting for my quart of semi-gloss Pegasus, another customer walks up and asks the Paint Underling, “If I bring in a paint chip, can y’all match it?”

She says, “Uh huh. We can match anything.”

I refrain from commenting. I focus on the poster board this paint department has prepared with handwritten labels. It’s the four exact colors of the Texans’ logo. (Or is it? Within how many tenths of a mystery unit are these reds and blue a match?)

I receive my paint can and walk to the cash registers, happy I had an excuse to look at paint chips today.

Duality of Dog Ownership

I am either the best dog owner, because I walk my dog three times a day, or I’m the worst dog owner, because I can’t train him to go to the bathroom in our backyard, and I yell at him about it.

I’m either a responsible dog owner, because I carefully monitor my dog during our walks, baggie in pocket, to ensure he only pees/poops on mailbox stems and plants no one would touch with their hands… or I’m an abusive dog owner, because when my tiny but wiry and willful terrier pulls very hard on his leash, I sometimes tug the leash hard enough to yank him off balance, making him flip in the grass. And then I sigh angrily and move on (now that I know for certain the flipping in the grass doesn’t hurt him). (Because it’s happened often enough, horribly.)

Likewise, I worry about him running, half blind and half deaf, into the street and getting hit by a car. I worry about it so much, it makes me angry when he tries to do so, and I spank him. And he can tell, the few times he still tries to dart into the street, that I’m about to spank him for it, and he throws himself on the ground and makes a sad, abused, beseeching face that shows me what a monster I am. And I feel ashamed of it. But I spank him, usually, anyway.

I know a lot of people who think pets are like children. Once you get a pet, they say, you’ve made a commitment for life. Only evil, horrible assholes get tired of pets or give pets away or euthanize pets for biting their children.

I know a lot of people (who came here from other countries, usually) who believe animals are either food or employees/slaves. It’s almost immoral and certainly ridiculous to keep animals in one’s home for the purpose of decoration or affection, buying them food and getting nothing useful in return.

Between these two perspectives, I have a reasonably clear (?) vision of myself as a middle-class American woman who’s lucky enough to have time and money for indoor, full-time, named/registered/immunized pets. I’m very lucky to have the luxury, emotionally, to angst over my relationship with these pets and their emotions. “If that’s the worst thing you have to worry about…” my dad would say.

I grew up making pets out of strays and feeding them table scraps. Watching them give birth to litters on piles of dirty clothing in my closet.

I’ve lived in houses whose owners didn’t allow animals inside, from whose back doors I’d venture, out into fields, with bones in my hands, to buy a little wordless companionship.

I’m a good person because I sleep with my dog curled against me all night.

I’m a bad person because I typed a blog entry trying to excuse my sins. Used my writing skills not to make money, but to persuade you certain parts of me outweigh the others.
…
…
…

This new compulsion started when I joined Amazon Prime on a trial basis last year, for xmas shipping. I stayed enrolled and let them bill my credit card because friends were raving about the service. Even though I’m not much for online shopping and couldn’t find many things on Amazon that: 1) I needed to buy, 2) that made sense to buy online, and 3) were priced competitively.

But recently I realized what the service actually is: an instant gratification machine. I blame a coworker: Every time we hold a “virtual meeting,” she constantly searches Amazon Prime for whatever we’re talking about and then sends me links. (Kinda like “There’s an app for that!”) She influenced me to order washable post-workout car seat covers while we were talking about hot yoga, and I don’t even do hot yoga. (But I did start doing regular yoga since that purchase, so… That’s good, right?)

The other day I was at a Big Box Retailer and my husband texted “See if they have those bamboo plate holders.” They did not. But I went home and saw that Amazon Prime did. Click–ordered.

Also at Big Box, I saw a child’s toy that I liked, so I bought it for myself. (I deserve the occassional cute plastic horse because I work hard, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it!) The brick-and-mortar environment killer only had one such toy left, but Amazon Prime had all of them, so I ordered my faves and I’m getting them TOMORROW.

It’s kind of terrible. I feel kind of bad about starting this shopping-based habit, just when I’d gotten my compulsive shopping habit under control. (Hours of therapy talking about that unpurchased plastic horse = success!) But not really. I don’t really feel bad about it yet.

One day Ray (that was his name) noted that I was having a tragic childhood. He wasn’t being mean—it was obvious. Everyone at the non-profit organization could see that I was poverty-stricken, angsty, and vitamin-deficient. It wasn’t a secret and a lot of my childhood neighbors could be described the same way. So Ray noted my “bad” childhood, said it would likely lead to a bad young adulthood, and then I’d be destined to have a good second half to my life.

I laughed. How did he figure that?

It was a theory he’d developed. He’d observed that people who had inordinately bad childhoods usually went on to have very good lives later. And the reverse was true, as well, he said. He gave me examples. Most were successful people who’d grown up poor and child actors gone wrong. He listed James Dean. I pointed out that James Dean had died young. He said that was the ultimate example: good half was fame and fortune, bad half was being dead.

I thought his theory was silly. I didn’t say so but he could tell, and he kept reassuring me that it was true, especially in my case. He invoked his ethnicity. He was some kind of American Indian—I forget which tribe—and he had a special feeling (which, as a Chicana, I had to respect), therefore his words were actually a premonition. He saw my future by looking into my eyes. Click!

I’m not a dumb-dumb. Even then I knew he was trying to be nice. Cheer up the girl and get her to smile. Guys tended to do that, some more creatively than others. His method fed into my secret hopes and made for a better photograph.

When the ‘80s ended, I embarked on an unhappy young adulthood. Of course I did—with the life I’d lived until then, it was practically my destiny.

But now I’m happy. (Like the Russian man said, every happy family is happy in the same way, so you can imagine it without details.) Everything around me is different, to the point that people who meet me now have a hard time imagining the hungry, sad child I tell them I used to be.

Problems arise in my life, yes. But they aren’t part of an unlucky existence—that unstoppable series of unfortunate events, one after another—like they used to be. They’re only temporary obstacles. Like plots on a sitcom, they’re resolved with happy endings, week after week.

I know, rationally, that my life changed because I’ve gained experience, worked hard, gone to therapy, and aligned myself with trustworthy people. But I think about Ray’s theory more and more lately, and it gives me extra confidence. Even though it’s silly, I find myself thinking, “Remember, this is the good half of my life.” That means problems are temporary. That means it’ll all work out in the end.

It’s a comforting mantra, like shorthand for everything I’ve learned. Basically, it was the modeling fee Ray paid me for my smile. #can’tstayseriousforonewholepage

Poetry Book as Personality Test?

Read my latest book, Falling in Love with Fellow Prisoners and tell me what you think of it, and you’ll be telling me something about yourself.

Someone said it’s all about sex and women striving to dominate men.

Someone said it’s about hope and being a mom.

A lot of Houstonians said it’s about urban loneliness.

College students are my favorite readers because they bravely tell me their interpretations and demand that I confirm or deny. Some students thought the poem “Girlfriend” was about a girl lamenting to a boy. Some thought it was a boy having his heart broken by a girl. All the students in the class knew “Eula in the Bathroom Stall” was about feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable… but why? Because the speaker was defecating? Masturbating? Having a really bad day at school?

A young woman asked if the catcaller’s words in “Omega Wolf” were things that had actually been said to me. I told them the actual comments that had inspired it—way less graphic but every bit as invasive—and they were shocked. Could easily imagine the fear/loathing/fascination I felt and then tried to convey in the piece.

Someone thought the poem about a spinal headache was about miscarriage. His mistake made me imagine his fears.

I hate opaque poetry and I try to keep mine plain and comprehensible. But I love hearing people’s interpretations, even when they’re totally different from my intent. All I want is to make you feel what I felt, or let you know that I feel what you felt, so we’ll feel less alone.

In celebration of HIspanic Heritage Month Dia de los Muertos, I’m hosting a book giveaway contest.

Look at these sexy titles:

Zumba by Beto Perez , Maggie Greenwood-Robinson
Evenings at the Argentine Club by Julia Amante
Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz by Belinda Acosta
Tell Me Something True by Leila Cobo
Amigoland by Oscar Casares

I’ve been working like crazy, trying to write decent stuff and not hacky stuff. Like every other fall and every other time I’m under deadline to write a book, I have a lot of good ideas for other projects but NO TIME to do them.

Here’s my deal right now… let’s get it straight real quick, because it gets so confusing that not even my husband knows what’s going on:

1. You have seen, so far, in print in real life, my first short-story collection, my first novel, and two children’s books.

2. You will see, in January, my second novel. Also, pretty soon you’ll see my third children’s book. Both of these books, I wrote almost a year ago.

3. Right now I’m working on my third novel and my fourth and fifth children’s books. You will see those a little over a year from now.

See how it goes? Everything takes a year (at least) to get from me to you. So it’s like I’m working in a time machine, here. Kind of. People ask what I’m working on and I say “My next novel” and they say, “The one coming out in January?” and I say, “Um… what year is it right now?”

And I’m not high or drunk, either.

So it’s come to pass that, also, that next month, on November 20, you can see me on PBS in an interview I did a year ago. I can’t wait to see it, myself, because I remember enjoying the interview at the time, and it’ll be interesting to see what parts the editors and producers thought y’all might like.

Stuff keeps coming up like that: Time-machine stuff I do now that pays off later, or stuff I did a long time ago that’s showing results right about now. And all that is good. It’s like planting seeds.

Right now, between bouts of writing the books that you’ll see a year and a half from now, I’m trying to think up what I want to create for the year after that. Assuming, of course, that anyone wants to pay me to do anything by then. Because that’s always an assumption or a hope, but not a guarantee. I’m super glad, so far, that people are still paying me to do stuff for the future.

Do you like art? Do you like artists?

If you do… If you live in Houston and want to:

• See local artists and listen to them detail their artist processes in a laid-back setting
• Network with artists and arts community peeps in a decidedly non-network-y atmosphere
• Eat pizza and drink beer,

then you should come to the Spacetaker Speakeasy on Wednesday, October 21st, at around 6:30 PM.

Telling y’all this because Spacetaker is a local arts org that’s near/dear to my heart for the reasons described in the bulleted list above. I’m telling y’all this quietly, though, because the Speakeasy events are still kind of secret and cozy, and I’d hate for them to get too big too fast. So only show up if you really like art and artists, and only invite people you consider special and awesome, okay?

Admission is free and I don’t get paid to shill for Spacetaker. (I am a member of the Artist Advisory Board, though, so I want to see it achieve its mission, because that’s how I roll. There — full disclosure made.)

Work Days

I’m supposed to be the “Events Coordinator” for our department at work, which means, basically, that I’m in charge of thinking up reasons for people to bring cake to the office.

So we’re having a floor-wide, multi-department “trick-or-treat potluck” on October 30. No, it is not related to Halloween and therefore it cannot be deemed insensitive to hardcore Christians. It’s treating ourselves in celebration of coping with all the tricks we’ve been dealt during the last quarter. Get it? Trick, treat? See?

Anyway, so I made the invitation for this event, along with a sign-up sheet that contains a lot of cheesy industry-related puns. (“It’s a mutual food platform!” HA!!)

After I sent the invitation, this guy Tom from one of our neighboring departments told me, “Thanks for doing that. It’s been so dreary here lately.” And that made me happy, that I could help lift dreariness a little, for one person at least.

And it’s kind of pathetic, maybe… kind of Office Space… that something like that could make me momentarily happy. But it did. I make fun of Corporate America a lot, y’all know, but I’d rather work for Corporate America than, say, Privately Owned Firm America, or Retail America, or Food Service America, or Construction Work America…

So, life is good. That’s what I’m trying to tell y’all. Hey, maybe I can just repost pertinent bits of this entry on Thanksgiving Day…

Later, taters. Talk to y’all again soon.

Right now I’m working on my third novel, which doesn’t have a title yet. It’s Saturday night and I’m writing the seventh or eight chapter, out of order, because I haven’t written Chapters 2 through 6 yet. But I have a good feeling about this one, already. I’m excited, and I think y’all are gonna like it.

In January, y’all will be able to buy my second novel, Lone Star Legend. Actually, I have ARCs (Advance Reading Copies, for reviewers) right now, so email me if you’re any sort of book reviewer and would like a copy to review sometime in December or January. Just know that the ARCs have some wonky formatting issues that affect my OCD, but will be fixed in the real books, in January.

Aside from the very temporary wonky formatting issues, I think y’all are gonna like that one, too. Especially y’all who are familiar with the Internets and the things that go on there.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for someone to re-design my author site so I can update with the events I’ll be doing later this year.

And, um… Also, I have another kids’ book coming out, called I Kick the Ball, but I’m not sure when, exactly. They said 2011 but I think it’s actually going to be 2010. I’m super-excited about that one, because it has a little boy for a protagonist, and as y’all can imagine, I have an affinity for little boys, seeing as how I gave birth to three of them. Also, they hired a really awesome illustrator for it, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

There are also a zillion other things going on, all good, that I’m not supposed to talk about yet. So I feel like I can’t ever really update y’all in a real way.

But… there is a moral to the story. The moral = hard work pays off. Hard work snowballs and makes you glad you started it.

knitting stuff

I’ve taken a few knitting classes over the past three or four weeks, so now I know how to knit, and I’m super-glad because I’ve wanted to knit all my adult life but never managed to teach myself….

and now I know how, and I’m making a scarf out of cheap acrylic, and next I’m going to make a more complex scarf out of expensive acrylic, and after that we’ll see what happens, but I have dreams, y’all.

I’m on this knitting social networky thing called Ravelry.com, and my name there is Gwentown, in case you want to friend me so I can look through your projects and steal your ideas.

other stuff

Other stuff is going really well, all considered. I have no complaints, y’all.

I started to type a big old status report on my three kids, but then I felt weird and deleted it. I always feel weird telling details of their lives, but especially so now that they’re teenagers. I mean, I have the mom blog on the Houston Chronicle, now, too… So I’ll angst about the privacy issues there, and tell y’all here that my kids are doing really well.

I keep saying “my husband this” and “my husband that,” and people think I’m trying to remind everyone that I’m a newlywed, but really it’s just that I’m used to saying “my boyfriend” and I’m trying to train myself out of it.

My husband is out at a concert with his friend right now. I’m at home working. Well, I’m supposed to be working, but instead I’m typing this blog entry. Shhhh….

this little girl

Today I was knitting in public (which I’ve heard people say is tacky, but I don’t understand how it’s tackier than, say, shopping for clothes in public, but I think it’s mostly British people who say it’s tacky, and I’m in America, so whatever). I was knitting in public — at the hair salon, actually, while my husband got his hair trimmed — and there was this little girl.

Not to be judgmental, but then again why not, so this little girl and her brother were getting simultaneously bitched at and ignored by their parents, if you can imagine that. You know how I mean? Their dad was feverishly typing on his phone, but keeping up a steady stream of “Chloe*, be good. Steven*, be quiet. Chloe, shut up. Steven, I’m gonna spank you if you don’t behave.” (*Not their real names.) He wasn’t even making eye contact with them — just telling them to shut up and behave. Then he’d haul them outside and buy them ice cream, then haul them back in and bitch at them, without looking at them, for eating the ice cream like children instead of like adults. All while reading his phone.

So I was thinking, “Wow, this dude really doesn’t enjoy having kids.” But I kept my eyes on my knitting.

At one point, the discontent dad hauled little Steven outside to spank him or buy him a candy, and little Chloe started circling me like a hawk, staring at my knitting. It cracked me up on the inside, the way she literally circled me to see the process from all angles, then walked up really, really close. She was maybe seven or eight years old.

“You ever seen anyone knit before?” I asked her, finally, when I could feel her breath on my hands.

She shook her head.

“That’s what I’m doing. Knitting,” I told her.

She ran around to my other side and sat next to me on the salon’s sofa. She said, “Are you sewing a blanket?”

I told her I was knitting a scarf. I unrolled the scarf for her to see, and showed her the knitting needles.

Her dad came back in and bitched at her to sit on the other side of the room.

Later, little Steven won his dad’s attention by emptying the water cooler onto the floor, and Chloe took the opportunity to squeeze onto the sofa between her dad and me.

“Knitting a scarf,” she said slowly, to no one.

I smiled in her direction.

She sidled over and asked, “Does the yarn break?”

“Chloe,” her dad said warningly. But I ignored him and answered her question. Tried to. It took a while to figure out that she thought the width of the scarf was due to me secretly cutting the yarn. So I showed her how the yarn folded into rows. While I did this, her dad took Steven and left again, apparently deciding I couldn’t kidnap a kid with knitting needles in my hands.

Chloe asked more questions and I tried to answer. I wished, then, that I had one of those little knitting kits for children, because she was so fascinated and so clever, I felt like she’d be a natural at it. You know? But I didn’t have one, and I stopped short of telling her to ask her father for one.

Then my husband’s hair was done and we got up to go. I turned to say goodbye to Chloe, but she was busy getting nagged at by her dad.

Maybe it’ll occur to him to buy her a knitting kit on his own. She can knit, then, while he plays with his phone.

Or maybe she’ll take a knitting class when she grows up.

fish in hot bean sauce

When I first met my husband, I didn’t think that people ate fish fins.

Now I know that it’s the best part of the fish to eat.

We went looking for this restaurant that my coworker Jennifer Y recommended. It didn’t have an English name, she’d told me. The Mandarin name was, phonetically in my mind, “Lao Di Fun.” She wrote down the characters for me and I put the piece of paper in my purse.

But today, after the haircut, I realized that I was carrying a different purse and had neglected to transfer the Mandarin-inscribed paper to it.

We decided to look for the restaurant, anyway. We went to the shopping center where we knew it to be. It was full of restaurants with Chinese characters all over the windows and glass doors. We found parking near the most likely looking one and went in. My husband, who is Chinese but doesn’t speak Mandarin, made me do the talking. (I’m not Chinese, and I don’t speak Mandarin, either, but I was the one who’d gotten the name first-hand from Jennifer Y.)

“What’s the name of y’all’s restaurant?” I asked the hostesses.

“Spicy Szechwuan,” they said, in heavily accented English.

“Um… What’s the real name, though? Does it have a Mandarin name?” I asked.

They told me. It wasn’t Lao Di Fun. A waiter joined them. He asked what I was looking for. I said, “Lao Di Fun?”

They said, “What?”

I said, more carefully, “Lao… Di… Fun.”

They couldn’t understand me. Then, after like fifteen minutes, one of them goes, “Wait — do you mean Lao Di Fun?”

I said yes. They said, “Oh, it’s next door.”

Next door, the same basic thing happened.
What’s the name of this place?
Classic Kitchen.
The real name?
[Something in Chinese.]
Do you know where Lao Di Fun is?
What? What’d you call my mama?
Lao… Di… Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun! It’s over there.

Next restaurant over, same thing happened.
Hello. Bamboo Dumpling House.
Lao Di Fun?
What in God’s name did you just say, Caucasian Woman?
Lao… Di… Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun is over there.

And again, and again, and by now y’all are realizing that Jennifer Y must have given this place a very strong recommendation, and that we must trust her opinion. Well, yes. That, plus my husband believed that a place without an American name on the door must be very authentic and therefore worth trying.

We went in a big circle, with the last waitress pointing back across the parking lot to the first restaurant we’d entered, before giving up and deciding to eat at Alias Spicy Szechwuan.

(I suspect that Alias Classic Kitchen was the real Lao Di Fun, but that they literally could not recognize their own restaurant’s name coming from my mouth.)

We got menus with several pages, but my husband suggested we focus on the House Specialties section. In that way, we ordered “Fish in hot bean sauce,” (but one-star mild, please), plus fried string beans with ground pork. The waitress directed us to the “appetizer bar,” where we selected marinated cucumber, marinated seaweed, and pan-fried pork rind for our three-appetizer plate.

While we waited, I ate all the seaweed and most of the cucumber. We each tried a piece of pork rind but didn’t try more than that. I looked around at the restaurant’s decor. It was nicer than the average hole-in-the-wall in that neighborhood, with a semi-typical red and black color scheme. They also had the requisite aquarium full of fish, all of them flat and pinkish and happy-looking. A group of Chinese women came in with one white guy, who talked very loudly about the girl among them who was his girlfriend and the fact that she spoke Chinese and Vietnamese and therefore “spied” for him at Vietnamese restaurants, and then said loud Cantonese words to the waitress, who smiled very politely as she walked away. Behind us, a baby ate rice from a yellow baby bowl her parents had presumably brought from home. When she was done, she proudly flung the bowl on the floor.

Then, finally, they brought our fish to us. Whole, on a giant plate, in a pool of spicy, oily red sauce. Damn, y’all, it looked good.

“Look at his little head,” I said. “It’s so round.” His face was all covered with sauce, and they’d been good enough to remove his eye, so I didn’t feel as bad as I otherwise might have.

My husband, who is very gentlemanly, filled my rice bowl with rice and put a piece of fish on top. I tasted it. “This is really freaking good,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s fresh,” my husband said.

“Yeah, it tastes fresh,” I said. “It’s all like, soft and stuff. Like it was never frozen.”

“It’s one of the ones from that tank, baby,” he told me.

I looked over at the tank full of pinkish fish. “Aw.”

I felt bad for, like, three seconds. Then I remembered that all those fish were going to die, anyway, so they could at least die making people happy. Right?

First we ate the flesh that didn’t have bones. Then we ate the flesh that did have bones, putting it in our mouths whole, eating around the bones and removing them with chopsticks. Then, we sucked the fins. Then, we spooned the fish-speckled sauce onto rice and ate that.

This is gonna sound crass, maybe, but one of the things I like about eating at Asian places is that I can relax my table manners a little and no one minds.

At one point, I was sucking on my fish fin and staring into space, experiencing the chili flakes and oil and vinegar and something mysteriously sweet, and the waitress walked by and caught my eye. “Good?” she asked.

I nodded. “It’s very good.”

We’ll find Lao Di Fun next time, maybe. I was glad we found this place this time, though, whatever its real name is.

Lest you think my honeymoon was nothing but the drama surrounding the Epic SCUBA Fail described below, I will assure you now that Hawaii is every bit as awesome as everyone says. I kind of already figured, in fact, before we even set off, that it would be futile to try to describe such a well known travel destination, or even to photograph what’s been photographed so many, many times by professionals.

What was unique about our trip to Oahu, then, was something Dat-and-Gwen-centric: the additional evidence that we make a good team.

WARNING: FRUITY, SMURFY, SACCHARINE WORDS AHEAD.

Part of the reason my boyfriend fiance husband and I get along is our shared ideas about adventure: 1) We like to have “adventures.” 2) We find adventure in little things.

Late one night, a couple of years back, the Houston freeway known as 290 was closed for repairs. That’s our normal route home. Our alternative was a long, parallel, four-lane road called Hempstead.

Hempstead is one of those industrial roads that’s mainly frequented by 18-wheelers. So it’s not only lined with giant metal buildings full of giant hunks of metal, but also the occasional pancake house and strip club.

When you drive down Hempstead in the wee hours of the night, you’ll see that a few of the buildings are lit up and full of moving machinery, and so presumably full of men who eat pancake specials and give parts of their paychecks to strippers. If you like, you can peer into the buildings, analyze the vehicles in their parking lots, and imagine all sorts of stories.

From the middle of Houston to the edge, it’s a long ride down Hempstead. We rode slow and silent for quite a few minutes before Dat pointed out, “We’re on an adventure.”

“I was just about to tell you that!” I said. Because I really was. Because we’re always on adventures, me and Dat.

So imagine us as those two people, but riding down a freeway under mimosas the size of mainland oaks and trees that dangle mangoes, in our rental car that was upgraded to a convertible for cheap. Imagine us walking down beaches full of tourists from all over the world, as well as locals of every flavor. Every other person there has a story – some that they told us and some that we had to construct on our own. And everyone has cameras, and you get to see what they think is important to capture with them. And then you trade cameras with strangers and hope for the best. Even when they can’t frame a shot for crap, it’s a memory preserved for you.

Memories preserved in me, all jumbled on a page:

Oahu = very beautiful plants, mountains and shoreline surrounding thousands of structures from the ‘70s and older, all peppered with tiny slivers of new-new expensive stores and rentals.

Every single person there is mixed or in a mixed couple, and it’s the only place I’ve ever been where absolutely no one gave us a second glance for being a Caucasian chick with an Asian guy. We were even mistaken for locals, once by an irate tourist seeking King’s Hawaiian bread and once by a snooty salesman in the Ala Moana shopping mall. I felt like I was in the idealized future of my fantasies, where everyone is mixed and no one can hate people based on ethnicity. And it really seemed that no one in Oahu did. But it was more than just that – all the locals were well versed in multiple cultures. And they were all obviously proud of their fellow peeps. It was beautiful.

Everyone asks how the sushi was, and we never even tried it. We didn’t get the chance. Mostly we ate in Chinatown, where the merchants were having a contest to see who could offer the cheapest dim sum. Everyone there spoke Cantonese (even the Vietnamese people) but told us they were learning Mandarin. They have “bubble tea” there, but it’s mostly bubble slushies. Our cha siu = their char siu. Our dried plums = their li hing. Chow fun = look fun. Red bean = “black sugar” or azuki bean. Yellow bean = non-existent. But everything was good and fresh – especially the plates including ginger. A lot of the restaurants used noodles from the one noodle factory that still made them by hand. And they were so, so good. I never appreciated chow fun until I ate it in Honolulu, y’all.

The way all signs in Houston are in both English and Spanish? Is the way all signs in Honolulu are in English and Japanese. All the employees at the mall spoke Japanese. All the Japanese people carried LeSportsac bags, and you could get the knock-offs of them in Chinatown.

Locals in Oahu seemed to come in two sizes: manapua-eating size, and surfing-all-day size. Guess which size I’d be if I lived there? Yeah. Hawaiian food is sweet and rich. I normally love sweet/rich food, but the Hawaiians had me beat with their sweet fried chicken and their two-starch plate lunches and the buttery, buttery fried sandwich bread. No, we didn’t try poi, because we didn’t go to any luaus. The McDonalds in Hawaii Kai advertised fried taro pie, but no, I didn’t try one. I was too stuffed with coconut manapuas (kinda like round kolaches or baked bao) and the hole-less Portuguese donuts called malasadas. No, we didn’t try the shrimp trucks. I feel like we disappointed everyone back home with the fact that we skipped the tour-book stuff and mostly ate Chinese food. But it was good, so I don’t care.

The groceries and gasoline weren’t much more expensive than in Houston. Only a few random things, like orange juice, were expensive. They sold hard liquor in the grocery stores. They sold Japanese candy at every drugstore. The Wal-Mart was a little more expensive and had less selection than Texas Wal-Marts. (Yes, we went to the Wal-Mart just to see if it was different from our Wal-Mart.) The Old Navy, however, was exactly the same. Stores with only Japanese stuff were 3,000 times more expensive than the other stores. The sales tax was, like, 0.0001%.

That’s all. I’ll stop here because it sounds like I’m obsessed with food and ethnicity and money, I know. But I don’t know how else to describe what we did there. I mean, we spent most of the time driving around the edges of the island in our rented convertible, saying “Oooooh!” and “What if we lived there? Or what if we lived there?” and “OMG, can you imagine if that was your elementary school?” and clicking zillions of pics of everything that’s been photographed a million times before.

And being on the beaches, beaches, beaches that, no matter how much better or worse they are in relation to each other, were all five gazillion times better than our Gulf of Mexico’s. Hours and hours just staring at the clarity of the water and wanting to cry over it. Marveling over the rocks and the vicious undertow. Holding up handfuls of sand to each other and picking out our favorite individual grains.

And, you know. Having adventures together. Incidentally being in love. I can’t describe it better than that. I can only say that I can’t wait until we do it again.

Because we will, some day.

the flowers

I couldn’t find fake or real flowers for my hair, and I was running out of time to do so. I asked my oldest son to go with me to pick up lemons and limes and goi, five hours before the wedding. As we rode from the grocery store to the restaurant making the goi, I thought aloud. I said, “You know what would work? Oleanders. But those peach-colored ones. If only I could find some of those. But I probably won’t… they’re usually fuschia or white….”

And then we were passing Home Depot on the right, and their parking lot was bordered by ubitiquous oleander hedges. But not the fuschia ones or the white ones – the peach ones!

I pulled over. I parked in the corner past the wheelbarrows. I left the engine running and my son watching from the shotgun seat as I disembarked and snagged several sprigs of oleander flowers.

An hour after that, I walked into the salon with a small bouquet tucked into the outside pocket of my purse.

“Ooh, what beautiful flowers!” the receptionist cooed.

“I got them from the Home Depot parking lot,” I said.

I don’t know if they believed me, but what does it matter?

the rice

The rice came out bad. Or wrong. Or something. It tasted okay to me, but as my new father-in-law painstakingly explained, “It tastes good now, but in one, two hours, it’ll be bad.”

So we threw it all away. Dumped it all into a trash bag. The early guests gasped.

My new brother-in-law sped to the restaurant where we’d gotten the goi, to pick up replacement fried rice.

Everyone looked at me, as if it had been my decision. I looked at my in-laws. My mother-in-law was upset. Disappointed. Embarrassed? My father-in-law, though, had the impassive face of a man who cold-bloodedly performs sacrifices for the greater good.

He will serve no rice before its time. Not after its time, either.

cakes

We had two cakes. The main cake (“wife’s cake,” as Dat explained it to his parents) was supposed to be Italian cream with raspberry filling, but I think it was just yellow cake, and the raspberry was combined with cream cheese. It had simple off-white buttercream frosting and edible candy pearls that surprised everyone who encountered them.

I’d wanted pineapple filling, but changed the order at the last minute out of deference to my mother-in-law, who was getting us an Asian cake (groom’s cake, “man’s cake”) so that the elder Asian palates in attendance wouldn’t go into sugar shock. I was told that the classic Asian wedding cake was pineapple flavored.

I was relieved, because I’d been afraid they’d order taro root cake. I don’t care for taro cake, but I was ready for anything.

We cut the bride’s cake first, then the groom’s. We fed each other bride’s cake. Then my sister-in-law Van very graciously took the cake server from me so that I wouldn’t be stuck serving cake for the rest of the night. Someone else manned the groom’s cake, and everyone was served sweets tout de suite.

“Oh my God, the cake is so good!” said a friend of the Caucasian persuasian, later.

“You think?” I said. “I’m kind of annoyed because I told her Italian cream, but I think she used yellow, instead.”

“What do you mean? I thought it was mocha or something.”

She meant the Asian cake. I went and tasted it. It was very moist yellow cake with whipped cream icing and mocha filling. It was very, very good. Immediately, I cut a slab of it for my dad, who’d eaten the first slice of bride cake. “Eat this one – you’ll like it,” I told him. (All dads love mocha, don’t they?)

Later, one of my Asian friends said, “Your cake was so good.”

“Wasn’t it? It was mocha.”

“What? I thought it was raspberry filling.”

She’d eaten the bride’s cake. Someone else told her, “You should have tried the Asian cake.” She said, “I never eat Asian cake. I don’t like pineapple and taro.” But we made her try it and she was happily proven wrong.

Everyone liked the cake, whichever one they tried. I was glad.

Dat and I didn’t shove cake into each other’s faces. We’ve always said that we don’t believe in that sort of thing. If you look at the pictures that got posted on Facebook, though, it does sort of look like we’re shoving. But we’re not. We were just hungry by then, I think.

Recently, on the Facebook of a friend’s Facebook friend, I read something annoying.

This person had a question posted under the picture of face. Something like, “Why is it okay to talk about your belief in yoga or vegetarianism, but it’s not okay for me to talk about my love for Jesus Christ?”

I’m going to pretend that this person meant that question seriously, and that he wasn’t just pulling the red herring victim routine that is so fabulously common amongst combative conservatives. And I’m going to answer this person’s question.

One: It’s okay for you to talk about your love for Jesus Christ. You have that right.

Two: It is exactly as annoying for you to talk about your love for Jesus Christ as it is for anyone else to talk about their belief in yoga.

Here is where you Jesus evangelists go wrong — you don’t know how to have normal, interesting, polite conversations. Also, you missed that part of 7th Grade Language Arts where we learned about “persuasive essays.”

Here is how you could have an interesting conversation about your beliefs:

Example 1:
Joe Blow: Wanna have breakfast?
You: No, thanks. I’m on the way to church.
Joe: Aw, dude. You go to church?
You: Yeah.
Joe: I can’t go for that. That’s a waste of my Sunday, you know?
You: I like going. It takes an hour, but it makes me feel better after I’ve gone.
Joe: For real?
You: Yeah. Let me know if you ever wanna check it out, and you can go with me.
[Joe: No, thanks.
or
Joe: Okay, I will.]

Example 2:
Joe Blow: … and she said she was gonna start doing yoga. Can you believe that?
You: Oh, cool.
Joe: No, dude, she said yoga. That’s lame.
You: You think so? I like yoga.
Joe: You do yoga? Uh, why?
You: I like it. It makes me feel better.
Joe: For real.
You: Yeah. Let me know if you wanna check it out some time, and you can go with me.

See that? Okay, now, here’s how to be an asshole.

Example 1:
Joe: … and then I went to Banana Republic, and they were having a sale.
You: Joe, when’s the last time you went to church?
Joe: What?
You: I used to be like you, but then I found Jesus Christ, and my life has improved 100%.
Joe: What? What do you mean, like me?
You: Come to church, Joe. Come change your life. Make your life awesome in the light of Jesus’s love, like mine is.

Example 2:
Joe: Wanna go to Jack in the Box?
You: No, because I don’t eat meat, because eating meat is wrong.
Joe: Oh, uh… sorry.
You: You should stop eating meat. When I was eating meat, I was fat, lazy, and a sexist, capitalist fascist. Now that I’m vegan, I have a clarity on life that meat-eaters can’t begin to understand. You should stop eating meat, Joe. It’s disgusting.
Joe: Uh… I just remembered that I have to run errands at lunch. See ya.

There you go, buddy. You can talk about your love for Jesus all you want, but you can’t make me enjoy a rude, annoying conversationalist. Because that’s what it’s always about, isn’t it? You don’t just want to talk about Jesus. You want to talk about Jesus and have everyone on earth agree with whatever you say. You can’t always have what you want, though. (Especially not if you’re annoying.)

Now you know, Facebook friend of my Facebook friend. I hope my answer to your question is helpful. You’re welcome.

If you don’t already read the Craigslist Missed Connections for your town, you totally should start doing so. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Missed Connections are the section of the classifieds in which people post ads to specific strangers. Like, if you met someone at a club last night and she gave you her number, but you lost her number, and you also forgot her name, because you were completely wasted, then you might want to post a Missed Connection ad in search of her.

Or, like, if you saw a handsome stranger at Home Depot, and he smiled at you in an inviting way, but then a meteor hit the earth and everybody died, preventing you from getting his phone number, then you might like to post an ad in the Missed Connections section of the paper in the afterlife, in case he sees it there and wants to hook up.

I periodically read Houston’s Missed Connections, not because I suspect that any stranger might have fallen in love with me at a nearby Starbuck’s, but because they’re pathetically hilarious. The majority of them fall into five main types of sadness, which I will chronicle for you here.

1. Way Overconfident Men

You: Hot blonde, about 5’6″ and 114 lbs, wearing a denim skirt that showed off your cute pink and white striped panties when you bent over to pick up your baby’s toy. Me: Interested in getting to know you better, possibly for more than just a one-night stand. Contact me ASAP.

2. Women Whose Insecurity Renders Their Ads Pointless

I saw you again last night at Memorial Park. You’re the bike cop with the impossibly beautiful eyes. You probably wouldn’t be interested in me, since my BMI is 19% and I have cellulite on the underside of my buttocks, and my cup size is only B and I can’t yet afford the plastic surgery I so desperately need. And you’re probably married, too. Or gay. But I just wanted to post this ad to tell you that you’re gorgeous, and seeing you each afternoon is the highlight of my day, and whoever your wife (or partner) is, she (or he) is very, very lucky!

3. The Very Promiscuous

We met briefly last night at MBar. You wore a pale blue American Apparel summer shirt, I wore a white Abercrombie tank and blew you in the second stall. Get in touch with me — I need to share test results.

4. The Desperate High School Shout-Out

Anybody know Belinda F. from Austin High class of ’89? If so, please tell her to call Reynaldo from her 3rd period Fundamentals of Math. It’s an emergency. I need to know how you’re doing, Belinda. I need to know what you’ve been doing since graduation.

5. The Unintelligible

To: You Know Who. From: The One You Hurt. My question is, Why? Why did you do it? No one had to know about it but you and me, and her. Why did you have to destroy everything, including my heart? And my credit?

Have you ever posted a Missed Connections ad? Do you know anyone who has? Do you know anyone who actually found love (or sex) through one? Please share.

New Banks = KHAN!

My boyfriend and I get our hearts broken, locally, on a weekly basis. Why? Well, there’s a lot of development going on in Houston lately. Lots of new shopping centers are going up like wildfire. We see one going up near work, and what do we do? We dream.

Him: “Maybe it’s a new restaurant. Maybe it’s something good, like sushi or pho. Or sushi-pho fusion.”

Me: “Or bubble tea! Maybe it’s sushi and pho with bubble tea!”

Him: “Yeah! And po’ boy sandwiches with marinated hot peppers! Or, hey, maybe it’s a store.”

Me: “Yeah! A shoe store, maybe. Or a wholesale jewelry store. Or a craft supply store! With bubble tea and low-calorie sandwiches! And a wine bar, and free babysitting! And roller-skate rental!”

So we watch the new development, driving slowly around its block each day. And then, finally, the sign goes up. It says:

FIRST NATIONAL TUMBLEWEED BANK.

Or:

WASHKAHATCHIE BANK

Or:

THE PEOPLE’S CREDIT UNION OF UNITED FARM TEACHERS

Because, I swear, nine times out of ten, it’s a freaking bank. And my boyfriend and I look at each other, and we sigh. A tear runs down each of our cheeks. We wonder aloud who has such pressing need for so many effing bank branches.

And then we move on to the next development.