notageek

“Hey, wake up!”

“Why?”

“Because we need another witness. Go get in the car.”

One of my aunts informed me that the bossy older-sister prerogative never does go away, even when your younger brothers end up taller than you, or with more schooling or more children or fewer limbs. So I exercised it that day, even though said brother has only achieved the first of that list.

The guy at the information desk was staring at a line of young men ambliing through the metal detector, but perked up when we mentioned “wedding” and directed us “around the CEEment thing and down the hall.” My hometown court’s officiants was booked up through July, so we drove over to our neighbouring city that everyone loves to hate, the one that lacks the university and the extremely annoying politics and the unaffordable housing, where a cheery greasy-haired justice of the peace in her 40s legally married us so that our Canadian officiant for the big wedding didn’t have to jump through any more hoops later that week.

To thank my brother for his service in tagging along, taking polaroids and signing a wobbly signature, my mother took us all out for lunch. Because the housing is more affordable in Neighbouring City Everyone Loves to Hate, a lot more immigrants have settled there, and the homey little Latin American restaurants as a rule are more plentiful.

So in honour of my first marriage (which lasted two whopping days before I got married again and had a big parTAY), here’s the recipe I made up after having chilaquiles at a small eatery in One Of Those Towns Everyone Loves to Hate. It’s probably completely inauthentic, but it tastes kind of like the restaurant’s, The Boy eats it up, and tortillas are damn cheap in The States.

Pseudo-chilaquiles, or That Tortilla Breakfast Thing. Serves three to four, or two if one is my husband.

-Heat 2 tbsp grease in a pan.
I like chicken fat and a cast iron pan, respectively. And, uh, sometimes I don’t stop at 2 tbsp.
-saute 1 minced onion until translucent.
-beat 5 eggs together. Add salt and black pepper.
-cut 4 corn tortillas into strips; soak in beaten egg.
I like the strips quite thin so they soak up egg quickly.
-cut 4 more tortillas into strips and fry them until slightly crispy.
-shove crispy tortilla strips to one side and pour egg/tortilla mixture into pan. Stir everything around until the egg is solid.

Serve with bacon or sausage on the side, chile sauce or salsa on top, whatever.

Once Upon a Time, when I lived in California, I dated a Nice Mormon Boy from a Nice Mormon Family, and we lived in their Helping Families Out room for most of a summer. They were pretty easygoing; certainly way more than their church has a reputation. The mom had a habit of muttering unkind things at Orrin Hatch pontificating on TV, and I once required the dad’s input on something and peeked through an open door to see him reading and lounging on his bed in his underwear. His special garments, if you will, and their very existence was to me a surprise.

But anyway, they tolerated a son and a woman he had no intention of legally marrying any time soon living together in their Helping Families Out room, which is a name I made up and not, as far as I know, any particular LDS thing except in sentiment. They recognized that we had a long-term relationship, if not quite the kind that would warrant a temple recommend, and put up with it and appreciated my presence and contributions in much the way they appreciated their non-church-member son as a person and put up with his persistent non-member status.

The dad explained his tolerance of our situation by mentioning that he considered our relationship a spiritual marriage of sorts, and then he asked if I could obtain the names of my predecessors for his records. The little brother, fresh off his mission, offered to arrange an appointment for us to seee the local bishop, and pointed out that the Relief Society would be happy to make cookies for a little par-tay. I’m not sure, but I think every adult LDS woman is a Relief Society member, and certainly the family’s mom was. She was NOT always happy to make cookies for a par-tay on the spur of the moment, and sometimes that was clear in the cookies.

Eventually for other reasons I moved back to the Land of the Banana Slugs, leaving both the Mormons and their son in California. I’d like to say I learned a great deal about myself and what to expect from commitment and a relationship, but it’s like delineating the shape of an iceberg as the seas drain. I am still figuring it out, and it is still changing. Nevertheless, from whatever intervening experience, I know way more about both commitment and relationships now than then, although I have no idea how much there is left.

I did get married last week, and there were no wedding cookies. At all.

Why yes, yes I do always manage to post during finals weeks. It’s a time when I have fewer classes and, more importantly, even more to put off; finals weeks are also the junction between the busy term and the busy vacations, which for the last few years has involved me taking the soonest-possible train to Vancouver, BC and spending a lot of time making spaetzle. It’s a time for contemplation, and also for running to the bathroom from anxiety every hour or so.

But this finals week, this is different,and not just because it’s the end of my first professional year, and not just because it’s the first term I have ever taken 21 credit-hours. No, this one also happens to mark another, unrelated and completely different but also very significant juncture: Holy fuck, I am totally getting married.

Long-distance relationships develop a kind of surreality that takes a day or so to clear when I do manage to see The Boy. I’ve never come out the wrong end of it, but then again I haven’t seen him for almost a month and I’m also dazed from finals. Which, by the way, are very nearly over; the last one is tomorrow. Morning. So to flip from that dazedness to both settling back into the relationship—which, for the first time since, uh, I went back to finish my undergrad work, will not be on periodic hold–and to the par-tay celebrating the permanence of said relationship–well, it’s kind of a shock. And I have been very studiously Not Thinking About it lately, what with the 21 credits and all. It’s not actually the commitment that’s tweaking me out, so much as my up-and-coming job title.

You know, that one that starts with a W, and ends with an I-F-E. I have had several strange job titles in my time (Student Capsule-making Bitch? Telephone Interviewer? The Temp?) but none of them have been permanent, and few of them have been so, um, historically deep and culturally broad. I mean, I have done some freaky-deaky stuff in my life, but it’s not usually the kind of things that my Pentecostal relatives would also do. And while I have a decided lack of sleeves on the Big White Dress, and also a decided lack of Jesus in my heart (and seriously, where the hell would he fit? We can’t just jam a grown man through a tricuspid valve, even if people used to be significantly shorter), I’m thinking I probably share more on the marriage-ideas front with the Pentecostal relatives than with my freaky-deaky compatriots.

And my cohort? They are no longer very freaky. They are pharmacy students, and as far as I can tell every stereotype you have ever heard about pharmacy students is true. We are anal-retentive, we are pushy with information,we are overly picky about details, we are fairly sheltered, we are a conservative boring bunch and we hang out mostly with each other. Oh, and we are mostly women of East Asian descent who look hot in white lab jackets. HOT, I tell you. Except for the HOT part, by “we” I mostly mean “my classmates”.

What the fuck am I talking about? I think I’m maturing more, and just as I am the punk-ass bitch pharmacy intern, I am going to have to figure out some way to be a punk-ass bitch wife.

Holy fuck, wife.

I’m not sure that the title is actually valid Italian, but I like the way it sounds, when I mutter it and make the double-L slightly longer than I would in Spanish. Really, today’s roses had nothing to do with fruit, as I was out picking petals to stuff into a jarful of honey.

Perhaps I should explain about my mom.

My mom hates Mother’s Day, describing it as “that day that encourages people to make moms burnt toast and greasy eggs for breakfast and then pick at it and mess up the sheets and leave the kitchen all messed up and treat their mothers like shit the rest of the year and think they can make it up with overpriced flowers.” My mother, incidentally, used the large arrangement of silk flowers that my dad got her when my twin brothers were born as fodder for my elementary-school crafts projects. I would not describe her as “overly sentimental” unless under extreme duress to do so, such as a death threat or the dire need for sarcasm. I sent the Mother’s Day card to my boyfriend’s mother instead, and she called and gushed about how touched she was, so I know I Did The Right Thing, even if I did set a precedent.

I inherited my mother’s dark flyaway hair, her small-but-not-receeding-chin, her inability to sunburn unless trying really hard, her propensity for saving things “because they look useful”, and a sense of humour that occasionally needs mayonaise to counteract its dryness. My appetite, metabolism and arse size are from my dad’s side, along with the abilities to look good in pukey shades of green and to write long, intricate papers due tomorrow.

My mom has lived for twenty years or so on tea, toast, salad and dinner; my dad used to buy her chocolate but having it around the house drove him nuts and he ended up eating most of it himself. Now he just buys himself chocolate and eats it when my mom isn’t around so he doesn’t get nagged. She is a pain to shop for; once my handprints stopped being darling I was pretty much at a loss for gift ideas, and that is why I tend to gift her with things that can be put on toast, to complement the butter. Occasionally I mix it up and get her something similar to Almond Roca, which she has been known to eat until it gives her canker sores.

This is why I have a quartful of rose petals steeping in honey; my mother likes it on toast with butter, and I am too darn lazy to go messing with a good formula. And Almond Roca is too difficult to make.