So my fun news for today is that I spent an hour this morning being shown around the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which you may remember from Dana’s recent post. I was interviewing for a volunteer position there as a gallery guide, which involves an 8 week training to become an expert on one of the “zones” of the museum (I think I’m going to pick either mammals, birds, or fossils) and then acting as a roving teacher during one 4 hour shift every weekend for a year. They even have live animal demonstrations — mostly reptiles and amphibians — which I am totally psyched about. I can’t wait to show off my first Chuckwalla!

I’m very excited because I’ve been working very hard lately to build my knowledge of science so I can inch ever closer to my goal of being able to write articles and someday books for children on scientific topics. I think working at the HMNH is going to be a wonderful step in that direction, plus buckets of fun. This morning alone was fascinating. I got to touch some balene (also called “whaletooth”), hold a fossilized fibia (I forget from which dinosaur, but it was astonishingly heavy), and stare into the eyes of a stuffed tapir. Also, I found out that cashews and mangoes are related to poison ivy. Which is apparently why you have to be careful when you’re roasting cashews, because they can give off noxious fumes. Beware, cashew roasters!

You’ll all have to come and visit me at the museum next year.

After that thrilling start to the day, I was lucky enough to be able to hang with Jenn, Peter, Michael, Laura, and Autumn at various points in the afternoon. Not only that, but there was fabulous veggie pizza, painfully rich Burdick’s hot chocolate, and a terrific craft fair in the square to add to the excitement. You can understand why I crashed on the couch when I got home this evening.

But take all that and add the wonderful news that Ross (almost certainly) passed his third Taekwondo test today, making him a Green Belt; that sometime while we were out our super-cool landlord dropped off a huge bunch of roses and a crystal vase to wish us happy holidays and a happy new marriage; and the fact that we’re going to see this tomorrow…

…and you might see why although I’m feeling a bit overstimulated and overwhelmed at the moment, I’m still in a pretty good mood. I’m going to dream deeply tonight and wish you all days that are equally full of wonder and sweetness.

I’ve been prowling the Craigslist Pets board and crooning over the pretty kitties that need saving, but I still don’t think we’re quite ready yet to add an animal to the household that’s much bigger than my hand — if that. That didn’t stop me from checking today to see if my insurance covers allergy shots, though (it does) — or from sighing over a particularly moon-eyed puss who sounds like a “cause-kitten” (she’s been so abused she won’t come out of her cage).

Still, the bonsai seems to have returned from the brink of death. That’s something.

I don’t want to write about the grumpy, suspicious officer who interviewed us yesterday, but just so you know, it went fine and I’m approved pending my FBI background check results coming back. I asked how long it would be, and the man seemed very put out by the question, so whoooo knows. Also I would never have known that a person could make the sentence, “You two are quite a wacky couple, huh?” sound so offensive.

But anyway. I may have some fun news to share tomorrow, and there’s a pantomime in store for us on Sunday. I can’t wait.

Preparing for tomorrow morning’s “Are You Really in Love? Prove It!” interview is at once nerve-wracking (in the way that any exercise in the procurement of documentation is nerve-wracking for the sort of people who routinely file away receipts from the purchase of chewing gum and accidentally recycle tax returns) and amusing (because it involves going through old emails and photographs: “What the hell was I thinking when I let my hair grow out like that?”).

In the spirit of anthropological investigation, here’s one completely incomprehensible note picked at random from the first weeks of our email correspondence — a friendship in the making.

From: me@brandeis.edu
Subject: frozen meera’le
Date: December 27, 2001 7:41:02 PM EST
To: him@brandeis.edu

hello yaz (what a great name, by the way. this whole e-mail is a by the way, by the way). i recommend the kneading of claws into ross’s leg. it seems to me he will love you even more afterwards. pain brings people together.

miss you!
m-dame

Also, for you to ponder, this sentiment from an email Ross sent me on February 5th, 2002 — whose subject line was: I’m not the lord of a particular clock.

….I was remembering this morning that the first thing you said to me when we met (not counting the time in front of the library) was “Yael tells me that you’re emotionally detached.” I knew then that I really wanted to talk to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. The man knew exactly what he was getting into and he totally asked for it.

I was invited to a pot luck dinner on Sunday night, and I decided to make a dish that I’ve hungered after in my dreams for the past two years, ever since I was handed a tiny cup of it, warm in my wintry hands, minutes after entering Susan Bloom’s house for the first time. I asked her for the recipe a few months ago and I present it to you now in full, because your life will not be complete until you too have tried this for yourselves. I’m sorry I don’t have pictures, but I assure you it was extremely easy and it turned out so wonderfully rich and smooth that someone asked me if there was cream in it. (There isn’t, and as a result it is vegan! And yet it tastes amazing! Go figure.)

WEST AFRICAN PEANUT SOUP
Serves 6-8

Serve topped with scallions or chives. (I served it with a dollop of sour cream.)

I feel duty bound to mention that if your blender is of the heavy glass vintage kind, and if you keep it on a high shelf in your pantry — and if, for some inexplicable reason, your pantry is treacherously full of extra fans and tiki torches from your July wedding and the last three weeks’ worth of recycling that you haven’t gotten around to putting out — if so, you may sustain some head trauma when you are hauling down the blender, standing sandwiched between fan, torches, and recycling, and the glass pitcher that sits on top of the blender thwacks you right in the middle of your skull, causing pain to radiate outwards from the impact point. You may at this point be forced to sit for 10 minutes holding a package of frozen fries on top of your head — since, of course, your ice trays are empty — answering simple addition questions because your well-meaning companion is worried you may have a concussion.

I’m just warning you, in case you decide to make this soup.

Snow on my mind. It blizzarded briefly in Boston yesterday and although the sidewalks are already covered in the familiar mix of gravel, dirt, salt and melty slush that is the stuff grimy city winters are made of, this is also the season of beautiful surfaces. Snow lays itself over twigs, stairs, roofs, railings, and abandoned shopping carts; it emphasizes textures even as it smooths them over. Sometimes it creates serendipitous new shapes, as on these wooden planks — pieces of a jetty in the Harbor near South Station — which today have become bones…

Reading a very interesting tome on the quest for cellular immortality led to a long and involved conversation today about the failure of (some parts) of the scientific community to clearly explain its work to the public at large. There is a lot of popular science writing out there that purports to address the layman, but which does not adequately bridge the gaps in knowledge that the untrained mind brings to the table. You can consume book upon book about string theory or quantum mechanics for the general reader, for instance, and wind up with a lot of fascinating images flitting through your brain but no real gains in comprehension because there’s not enough fundamental understanding to hang new ideas on — especially new ideas at a theoretical level that is disconnected from observable physical phenomena, a level that is mostly mathematics. I think there is a real hunger out there for scientific knowledge, but lots of what is available is either simplified to the point where it’s no longer true, or so skeletal that even if you grasp it it means little. The seductive notion that pretty much anybody can understand pretty much any scientific concept if it’s explained well enough is probably true — but there’s no point explaining branes, for instance, if you don’t also explain a lot of particle physics, string theory, and the theory of general relativity. Which of course would take several courses worth of time to do.

Anyway. Bridges between theoretical physicists and dumb schmucks like me. Gotta build them. Damned if I know who’ll do it.

Oh yeah, this other picture is of the sashimi that Adam made for us last Sunday; just one small part of a huge Japanese dinner he put together all by himself. It’s so pretty I’m including it in this post even though I can’t think of a single clever way to connect it to the preceding paragraphs. I hope you don’t mind.

…another tired day, and again I don’t know why, but I’m remembering two words for feeling this way that James* used to use, both of which bring me back to a soft black leather jacket and cool blue nights. Anyway, James was never tired — he was always either “shattered” or “knackered.”

I like those terms (so tired your brittle bones are bound to break, so tired you’re bound for the butcher), but I don’t really have the right accent for them.

*My darling English boyo from long ago-o. I have no idea what he is doing at the moment and haven’t been in touch with him in years. But I do hope he’s well. There was such drama dancing around that affair — when we said goodbye at the airport in Tel Aviv he told me he was going to keep the strands of my hair that clung to his brush (it was long, long, long then); when I put him in a cab for the airport after we broke up in Waltham I went back into the house and keened on the floor of my room until I was — well, shattered.

The other evening when Jenn and I were having dinner she accused me of never talking about Ross. A few moments later she amended her statement to say that I never talk about my relationship with Ross. That is, of course, the type of offering that tends to make a person a trifle defensive, so between that and the sweet potato kibbeh and the Portuguese wine I had little in the way of coherent commentary to offer on her observation that night. But now I have only mushroom/artichoke/feta/tomato/chickpea risotto in my belly, so perhaps it is time to respond. And since I am convinced that

a) my relationship with Ross is for us to know, and
b) happy, settled partnerships aren’t particularly interesting,

I’ll simply tell you some things I’ve been noticing about him lately.

When Ross is practicing Tae Kwon Do moves, he makes little sounds that are a little like soft waves breaking. They are part pant leg swish noises, part purposeful breathing noises, and part explosive utterances that are supposed to passionately underscore his kicks and lunges, but that he tries to keep small and under his breath when he’s at home, either out of consideration for my sensibilities or out of self-consciousness. It is like having a strange, organic machine in the next room, the exact nature of whose activities is unknown, but which sounds like it is doing something beautiful.

When we saw Rent the other night — which I thought was dreck, anyone surprised? — all the college-aged women around me were dabbing at their eyes and sniffing loudly during the final scenes of the film. So was Ross. Except he was a little more discreet about it. It was so endearing I let him bask in his enjoyment of the movie for a good 10 minutes before I started criticizing it.

When Ross is getting ready in the morning after a shower he usually sings or hums to himself and does silly dances. This has nothing to do with wanting to amuse me; he does it entirely for himself. I often walk in on him in the little dressing room we have, poking at his hair and making faces in the mirror while scatting. The other day I noticed that when we leave the house for work many times I am humming a song under my breath that I’ve heard that morning.

Ross is equally good to hug from both sides (front and back). He makes a mean latte; with microfoam, even. No matter how sleepy he is, he wakes up to answer my questions about mathematics and computer science. He likes writing equations and I think diagrams satisfy some deep need within him for clarity. He has the mind of an economist, in many ways (if my highest ideal is humanity, his is efficiency).

And yet somehow in the end it turns out that Ross is a much nicer person than me — but I don’t hold it against him.