This is a little different than your standard “Random Orts”, because it includes lessons? And I only have two of them. Welcome to a new segment here at Passion Knit.

1. When eating couscous that has been re-heated, and seems to be rather hot? It is not a good idea to BLOW ON IT. Unless your couscous is drenched in a sauce of some sort, you will send countless micro-orbs of pasta flying, like pollen on the wind, only in those nature shows, there’s a point to it all. In your house with the couscous, it’s just a mess.

2. Consider the two-cent stamp and when you, and everyone else in the United States of America is going to need one or twelve. Going to the post office the day after a postage increase – no matter WHAT you tell yourself – is not a good idea. I told myself, “Self! We are going after the lunch crowd, it’s late and therefore it will not be crowded!” and I told myself, “Self! We will use the machine to buy stamps, so there will be no waiting in line!” And I did not count on the fact that fourteen other people had the same brainiac idea about going late, and I did not count on the fact that the post office – despite having stamps for sale at the counter – would choose not to refill the stamp machine with the two-cent stamps, and instead spend time taping a sign over the slot that said “SOLD OUT”. Lovely. So into the line I went, and let me just interject that every post office I go to in this town has a certain – how do you say? Je ne sais quois. Let me invoke the French when I cannot find my own language to express myself. The Westport location is exceptionally colorful. I had braced myself for the panhandling homeless, but once inside found myself sandwiched between a woman who wanted to talk (and touch) the man in front of her (they did not know each other) and an older Asian alcoholic man. You ask how I would know he was an alcoholic? Well, let me just say that when most of the people I know drink, you can smell it on their breath. People who drink heavily and daily exude it from their pores, and his pores were on High Exhaust. So as I braced myself (and my nose) against the Southern Winds of Dispomania, I watched & listened to these two hippy-dippy wannabes talk trees, vegetable stamps and her fawning attempts to touch his extremely dangly earring. I finally got my stamps and fled. ZOIKS! I can really only conclude one lesson: Plan Ahead.

Four years ago today, the Wo and I stood out by the ocean in a gazebo and exchanged rings while the wind whipped around us and a Jamaican minister pronounced us husband and wife. He wore a tie I knit him out of Koigu, and I wore a long openwork duster knit out of “Wild Stuff” (how appropriate!) Barry White crooned on the boombox, which seems kind of funny, and as fast as it all went, I still remember standing by my now-husband and being so happy to see that ring on my finger, the ring that is identical to his, titanium for strength and platinum for purity, engraved on the inside with a line from a children’s book. Simple and true, “To the moon…and back.”

Coupla nutbrown hares, we are. We’re going out to dinner on Friday, just so there’s no school-night factor and we can go clubbing if we want to. We’re so into clubbing. SO into it! Nntz! nntz! Nntz nntz nntz!

It’s a little daunting if I start listing everything we’ve done, gone through & learned over the past four years. With buying our house, adding a dog to the family, losing my father, me changing jobs – there have been a number of things considered “major life stressors”. However, we’re mellowing, and learning (never stop learning!) and we’ve evolved in our communication skills, and yeah, we still fight and aggravate the snot out of each other at times, because if there’s one thing nobody puts on a Hallmark card when you get married, it’s: “This will be one of the most challenging things you do in your life.” I’ve said it a million times, too, that in saying that, it’s not BAD, it’s not all some arduous work, it’s just that far too often you think, “OK! Got married! Check that off on the list, wouldja?” And it doesn’t work like that. You have to care for your marriage, and adjust within it, and have difficult battles sometimes, and then you get rewarded with crazy things that only make the two of you laugh, and references to oddball things and minds that think the same and start singing the same song when someone on tv makes a reference, because you are SYMPATICO. This is the first year I finally understood a longer-view on gardening, that some things can wait until next year to do. It was a strange, foreign feeling. Yet I would never have felt that, without the Wo. I’m always, “Git it and go! Right now! Now! Now! Now! Must accomplish all and everything at once and did I mention NOW?! Must do it now!” And usually I get so tired with all the “NOW!” and “Everything!” parts that I flop down in exhaustion and watch 6 hours of Law & Order. So I’m glad I’m still learning a few things, despite all the other things I seem to be forgetting at a rapid pace these days.

Last night as James described his day at Worlds of Fun with the three students he chaperoned, I listened to him describe his kindness and practicality with a girl, who kept pretending she had ridden the rides and just didn’t want to, when the truth of the matter was that she was terrified and scared, and didn’t want to admit it because she thought the other kids would make fun of her. He told her not to lie, to just be honest about what she felt, that it was all ok. I watched him and I thought of how much I love him, how every time I think I’ve reached, you know, “maximum capacity” for how much I could love another human being, I’m surprised to see, and feel, that I love him even more. So so much. Now now now.

Happy four year anniversary, my dear. Eight years to the day we met, outside of Broadway Cafe. I was late. You were early. Of all the things in our lives that :have: changed, those qualities in each of us still have not. :) I love you!