when things go wrong, i sing along

So I blubbered to Z that I was feeling inadequate, and he replied, "You're extremely adequate."

Which was a nice thing to say. So after work he took me out for dinner to celebrate how perfectly adequate we were together. We decided on Indian, since Z is frightened of Indian food because nine tenths of it is absolutely awesome and one tenth is loathsome. (His cousin was married to a professional chef of Indian descent, and Z lived with them for a while, so he was exposed to a lot of very authentic subcontinental cuisine without being told the names of any of it.)
I promised him that the most loathsome stuff, they really don't serve in restaurants for Americans, so anything on the menu would be a pretty safe bet.

It was a fancy restaurant, so after the fabulous meal they brought out bowls of warm water with rose petals for us to wash our fingers, and a little bowl of mixed spices as a breath-freshener, and also a single red rose for the lady at the table. So, as Z paid for dinner, it turns out that he bought me a flower. Which he's never done before, mostly out of a sense of noodgely contrarity. I have it enshrined in a collins glass on my windowsill. Throughout the evening, we analyzed everything to determine whether it was adequate. (The only truly, horribly, shamefully inadequate thing was my knowledge of Indian history and culture: I am incredibly ignorant despite having had a chatty roommate from Madras. I don't even know where Madras is. And somehow all my attempts to learn have failed.)

And now, an essay on Adequacy, as promised at the dinner table.


Any language's superlatives are destined to be overused; it's human nature. People say "perfect" of things that are flawed, say "wonderful" of things they do not wonder at, say "best" to the mediocre, exclaim "totally" to the incomplete, and proclaim "awesome" at things which do not awe them. People "love" pasta, or lilacs, or wool socks, or say they do to please an anxious hostess or gift-giver.

And so it seems stingy indeed, when the superlatives are so devalued, to use a word that is not one. "Adequate" seems a ridiculous thing to call an intimate. But, when it is one who worries about being inadequate, it is the most genuinely reassuring thing to say. Because we so abuse superlatives, it is a strange and thought-provoking turn of language to avoid them.

I suppose it's a mark of our relationship that Z knew I'd laugh at his choice of words, but also would be pacified and, well, snuggly. I was going to go on about this some more, but don't think I really need to, and also, I think I should actually, you know, get something done today.

(I was going to dork out about Denethor and Ondoher's sons, but that's a bit too much for me. And all you Tolkien nerds thought I was going to do it!! But I didn't.)

family updates

Here is my brother-in-law posing behind his house with the alligator. Remember the alligator, that a while back was in their pond and Adam and all the neighbors suddenly turned into rednecks and started taking potshots at it? Well, apparently they're all real bad shots, because the gator came back. This time Adam decided to call Wildlife Control, instead of the neighbors, and so in a couple hours with considerably less firepower he and the officer caught the poor little gator.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/176322010/in/photostream/
Katy missed all this, as she was inside studying. The gator looks teeny, but if you think about it, well, six feet is six feet, and that thing could still eat somebody's dog. She came outside and there's a photo of her touching the gator but she assures us it's not dangerous.

So Fiona called last night and totally destroyed my enjoyment of all this by telling me she saw on Animal Planet that they kill gators they pull out of people's ponds. Which totally harshed my mellow, dude. It's so little and cute! *wails*

Oh well, I wouldn't say that if it had eaten Scout or, more likely, Crawfish.

In other news, my poor dear uncle has gone to a one-week alcohol abuse treatment program. He's always had a fondness for the drink, which wasn't really enough of a problem to be anybody's business until he finally sought help for his depression (which we had worried about) and they put him on antidepressants which interacted with alcohol and suddenly, that was a problem. Not only do they interact with alcohol and give rise to eccentric behavior, but they also don't work, so he's still depressed, which only makes things spiral downhill. So thank heavens he's getting help. We'll see how it goes, of course; I take after him a great deal in temperament (and we also incidentally have the same misshapen big toes), and he is very much the Difficult, curmudgeonly old coot I will become in thirty years if Z doesn't convince me to mellow out a great deal.

My two little sisters will be visiting me on the 3rd and 4th, so I'm pretty psyched for that. We're also having some of Z's friends over. I haven't really decided yet about inviting work people.
Crap, I ought to do a lot more work on cleaning the house... I've been doing housework all morning, but in a sort of desultory fashion, and haven't concretely achieved a whole lot.