Dogs and Small Children

     Nothing wakes a person up from a dead sleep faster than the sound of a dog about to barf on the carpet. This is how Satu and I awoke a couple of weeks ago at four in the morning. After I let Sassy outside and then back in, I gave her some pats and tried to reassure her with the only words that I am positive she understands. "You are a good girl Sassy. I love you."  Neither of us were able to go back to sleep once Sassy had setteled down though because the noises coming from her stomach sounded like someone slowly shaking a gallon of milk back and forth. The gurgeling sounds were punctuated with terrible dog farts that made me feel sorry for us all.
     "Why don't you get Sassy a little piece of bread to see if it will calm her stomach?" Satu said. This seemed like an excellent idea, so I went to the kitchen and broke off a piece about the size of my palm. I brought it over to Sassy who seemed excited to be getting a treat, and put it between her two front paws. Then I bannished Gimmie from the room so he wouldn't steal her bread. Sassy wagged her tail and put her face down beside the bread. "No, no girl, you have to break it into smaller pieces." Satu said as I was climbing back into bed. I climbed back out of bed and broke the bread into three little pieces for her. I patted her on the head again and told her I love her.
     As soon as I had snuggled in next to Satu, I heard a low, impossibly long growl. Gimmie had returned and was really jealous of Sassy's treat. I was not going to have a showdown over bread at 4:30 am, so I grabbed the little one up by the scruff and threw him outside. He acted like I was killing him and continued to whine and cry at the back door as Sassy began the most pitiful ritual I have ever seen in my life. She stood up and tried to bury her little bread chunks in the dog bed. She scraped at the flat surface a few times making no impact at all and then gently placed her treat on top of the spot she had scraped. She tried this a few times and looked at me helplessly like she couldn't understand why the bread was still on top of the cushin. This was both sad and adorable to me because it gave me some insight into how instinct works without the need for understanding or thought.
     Satu got up and went over to Sassy. She put both her gentle hands on the dog, which I know from experience can make you feel instantly taken care of and loved. Sassy settled into the bed and let Satu press on her. Then Satu picked up a little piece of bread and said sweetly "Sassy, do you want this? Do you want a cookie?" Yes, she did want that. Satu picked off a little tiny piece and pretended to eat it while Sassy watched. She made smacking sound and acted like it was so delicious she couldn't believe it. I thought to myself, that will never work, but it did. When she offered it to her, Sassy took the little piece of bread and chewed it up. Satu kept up this little game until all the bread was gone and the gurgeling noises in my dog were quieting down. Sassy settled down to sleep and Satu came to snuggle in next to me.
    "I can't believe you can do that." I said. " How did you know that would work?"
     "That always works with dogs and small children." Satu answered like it was common knowledge.
"They all just want what you have. It works every time."
These are the kind of things that Satu does all the time that make me understand just how soft and sweet she is on the inside. Her compassion comes from a place of real understanding about people, dogs, cats, frogs, bugs, rats, you name it. I bet she would find a way to help just about any poor little creature that showed up in her life. We are all really lucky to be among the creatures in her care.

Alphabet Soup

Satu called yesterday after I left her house to see if I wanted to take a personality test. I did! I consider magazine surveys and personality tests kind of like reading fortune cookies. I don't know if you can trust them to give you true insight, but I will still consider the information as long as it doesn't give an undesirable outcome. If it says what I want to hear, then I knew it all along, otherwise it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
I answered about 50 questions, a lot of which were the same question phrased in various ways. At the end of the test Satu informed me that I am an INFP which means two things to me: 1. I do have a personality, so I didn't fail the test. Yay! 2. If I want to remember who I am, I will have to give up space in my brain for this acronym.
Let's think about this for a minute.
I stands for introverted. I guess that's true, don't look at me.
N stands for intuitive which I suspected all along. The opposite of N is S, and I am definately not a sensing person. I don't pick up on cues and analyze things. I am usually completely unaware of the little details that make up my world. For example, when Gimmie peed on me at the dog park it took me a minute to figure out what happened. I percieved warmth, then I percieved wet, then I realized what warm and wet might mean when they happen at the same time and turned to see a little dog trotting off. It was only the combination of these three inputs that led me to understand what had happened. If I had been a sensing person, I might have known the dog was there and I may not have gotten the golden shower in the first place.
F stands for feeling. That is 100% accurate. I am a rational person only because I have trained myself to consider things more objectively than I am naturally inclined to do. I believe in the scientific method and I trust proven facts, but I force myself to consider them when I act. Emotionally I am like a little animal. If I am hungry, then the world will suffer. If I am cold, I feel emotionally fragile. If I am warm and full, I feel happy and like laughing. Watching "Piggy gets warm bath" on youtube can make the difference between a good night's sleep and a four hour panic attack. My faith in humanity is often restored just by watching flash mob videos or having someone love me enough to make me a cup of warm tea.
P stands for perceiving, which is apparantly a nice way of saying that my life is a MESS! It is true that I don't worry much with the order of things and I can go with the flow in most surroundings, but am I really that kind of shoot from the hip, whatever happens is fine hippie? Yeah, maybe, whatever. I truly can't be bothered to put a label on it.

What kind of mystical creature is Satu? She is an INTJ. That means we are half the same and half different. I think that's very promising. You can't date someone who is too much like you, you are supposed to be able to help eachother balance and bring different perspectives to the relationship.
I definately believe that Satu is an introvert. She hates to make first contact with anyone in the outside world. She's no wimp about it, when she has to be "ON," she will be, but given her druthers, she'druther not.
I am a little surprised that Satu is an N like me and not an S. She usually does know about the details around her. She not only knows that the couch is green and not grey, but she is aware of the couch's green-ness, the paper that was on the table, but no longer is, the spot on the floor and the show on TV all at the same time. I guess she is intuitive too though. Maybe you can be both.
T stands for thinking. Satu is nothing if not a thinker. Her mind is often strategizing and preparing her for action while I am just happy to have my head on her lap. She does nothing without considering the consequences, ever. I think our differences here are why we have a hard time doing simple things like picking a place to eat. She has to think about all the places we could eat and consider how crowded they might be on a Thursday and if they are likely to have parking and adequate fire exits while I can't think at all if I am hungry. But I think our differences are why we make a good team in life too. She helps me make a plan and think about possible other ways of changing the lightbulb before I stack a five gallon bucket on a three legged stool. I remind her to weigh emotions in all of the equations and if all else is equal, sometimes you just have to pick a direction and stick to it.
J is for Judgemental, which she can be sometimes, but from reading about the test, it seem this has more to do with how you oganize your life than how you feel about people. Satu knows people better than anyone I know. If you can trust anyone to judge the world correctly, it is her. Her world is orderly, even when she is behind in her tasks, she has her patterns. I doubt there is ever a time, for example, when she becomes so overwhelmed by her laundry that she just says "Fuck it," and throws the dark jeans into the pile of whites. She knows where things go, people included.
What I know is that we go together. It doesn't matter if I feel happy while she thinks she is happy as long as we keep building a happy life together.

Gentle touch

     Satu has a gentle healing touch. I find just being around her comforting and I trust that she knows how to make things better. She always makes things better.
     I do not have a gentle touch. I interact with my world at full speed, hands on the stove, face first into everything style. As a result, I often need a gentle healing touch.
    Yesterday, while Satu was at work, I decided to use some hair remover on my face to make sure there were absolutely no stray whiskers to make me unkissable. Never mind that the tube said NOT FOR FACE on it. Never mind that it said whatever it said about time on it (I didn't bother to read the instructions.) I just put it on my chin and upper lip and ignored the burning sensation as it went to work.
     I am happy to report that my face has no stray hairs on it. It is also bright red like a baboon's ass and the skin that is left is tight and shiny. The pain wasn't bad at first, but worsened after a couple of hours until it began to feel like I was wearing a fake beard that had caught on fire. As we lay down to sleep, Satu put her cool hands on my face and gently rubbed some soothing lotion into the skin. As the stinging was starting to ebb, she fetched a little bag of ice for me to hold against my mouth.
     What a kind sweet girl she is to keep putting me back together.

If you like it then you should put a ring on it.

I love her

.
and love her.

     I have known that I want to make a life with Satu almost as long as I've known her, but desiring something, even with your whole heart does not mean that you will get your happily ever after. I sometimes feel that the things I love the most are likely to disappear for no reason other than I wanted too much. For this reason, there is a part of me that always suspects that what I have with Satu is too good to be true. Don't get me wrong, I know that she loves me. I know that she is steadfast in her love and will try and try and try; it's just that the thought of losing her is so paralyzing that there is a little part of my heart that anchors the rest of it, always pulling back from risking too much. We never really talked about getting married, whatever that means for two women in this changing world. I assumed that she knew I wanted to because it is so obvious how I feel. Everything about me is obvious. I just couldn't bring it up because I didn't want to risk losing the possibility of marriage. Then there are also the auxiliary fears:
1. What if I get her a ring she hates?
2. What if I can't afford the ring she likes?
3. What if she says yes and she doesn't like my wedding dress? Is it stupid for two women to get married in dresses? I certainly can't wear a tux. Marriage is not a statement about roles, it should be a statement about commitment. Can I wear white, or will that make me seem like a joke.
4. What if my family doesn't come?
5. What if her family doesn't come?
6. What if they all come and fight all the time?
7. What will people at work say, will I have to come out again? Should that go on facebook? Maybe I can just get rid of facebook.
8. What if the whole thing makes me have a heart attack?

     What if I come home from work one day and she shows me a ring she has found online that she is drawn toward event though it is not typically her style? As unlikely as that seemed to me, that's exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. My heart swelled with hope and all of the fear I had felt about having the marriage talk washed out to sea. Seeing her looking at rings made the possibility that I had hoped for seem like it may actually happen. It was not a fools daydream after all.
     I knew I had to buy the ring. The stress of worrying about rejection was gone, but now it was replaced with financial worry. Even though the ring she loves was not terribly expensive, I have been putting every spare penny I have into starting a business which may either turn into a viable income when I get out of the Marine Corps, or dissolve into a very expensive fantasy. There is no way to tell.
     I had to get things in perspective. People go into debt for business, for cars, for school and for so many other things in life, and none of those things could possibly be more important than seizing this moment.
I bought the ring. When it finally arrived I was on the phone with Satu. I have no idea what we were talking about because I can only do one thing at a time, and I certainly didn't want to wait to look at the ring until we were done talking. Waiting is not one of my most practiced skills.
     For the rest of the day I carried the ring around off and on. I looked at it in different lights. I got on my knees and held the box, which felt really wrong, so I decided against that kind of thing. I woke up once in the middle of the night to retrieve the ring from the kitchen and put it by my bed. In case of emergency, I decided, I would save the ring and the dogs and let everything else burn if need be. I woke up two more times after that to look at it.
     The next day I drove up to Satu's house with the ring in my purse. Then I put in my pocket, then back in my purse. Though I had decided how not to give her the ring (not on my knees, not in public etc), I had not decided how to present it. I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop myself from giving it to her long enough to develop a romantic plan though. I was just too excited, so I was going to have to make it up on the fly.
     I told Satu I had a prezzie for her. She is good at waiting though and wanted to delay gratification for a little while. I put it in my pocket and then moved it to my bag. On the way to lunch she looked at me and said " I am ready for my prezzie now." Alas the ring was in my bag at home since I wasn't going to give it to her in public. Later that evening we cozied up on the couch together and I decided to get in some sleeping clothes. I had been so preoccupied with the ring that I didn't pack a sleeping costume. I had just put some clothes in my bag from the floor of my closet. I decided on a pair of stretchy black calf length jammies and a dingy concert  tee shirt, and once I put that on, I decided against giving Satu the ring that evening. Not only had I left my A game at home, but my B, C and D game were nowhere to be found either. I was so ugly in my sleeping costume that I was embarrassed to be alive and had to be covered up with blankets.
     At about 3 am Satu woke up to use the restroom. We were out of toilet paper which to me seems like misfortune, but to her is a symptom of her life falling apart. We had a long conversation about her dissatisfaction with work and the feeling that she should be doing more in life. I tried to assure her that we were going to make a bright and happy future together, but she still kept focusing on missed opportunity and failure. Eventually she sighed and settled down with her kindle. I went downstairs and retrieved the ring. I wanted her to know that the future was ours and I wanted her to feel as hopeful as I did about it. I stood in front of her in the world's ugliest outfit and slid the dingy green box onto her kindle screen. Then I kissed her sweet head and held her while she studied it in the light.
     I will make an effort to think more about the details of the wedding and not just make it up on the fly this time. I also feel relieved because no matter how bad my dress could be, it can't possibly be worse than the outfit I proposed in and, after all, she still said yes.

The best, worst trip ever.

Never argue with an artist when they have a vision. Never. They see things in a way that you can't understand.

      When Satu found her dream car, it didn't surprise me at all that it was a 1979 Toyota, Corona LE lift back that had to be cream colored. She has been hunting this car down for years only to find one after another in the Philippines or in such disrepair that it can only be scrapped for parts. Finally, she found one for sale in California, so I new we had to fetch it.

      We constructed a plan, not a good one, but a plan none the less to get out to Hemet, CA and drive the car home. We each took a week off of work to execute our plan, thinking that might give us a few days to troubleshoot since it was an old car.
 Here is the original plan:
1. Fly to California.
2. Meet car owner and buy car.
3. Drive home stopping in Santa Fe to spend a day with Satu's sister.

Here's how it went down:
Day 1
      We flew to Palm Springs while Satu, who is deathly afraid of flying focused all of her attention on not having a break down. It was a long flight. When we got there, we rented a car to drive out to Hemet. We met Randy at a local restaurant. The car looked a little more ragged than we expected, but when I saw Satu light up, I knew we were buying it anyway. We were planning on fixing it up, so it just had to make it home. The owner showed us how to wire the lights to the battery and gave us some spare parts in a plastic bag. We bought the car and drove off to find a hotel for the night. As we were looking, the sun began to set. That was when we realized that the interior lights didn't work. Luckily, Satu had a flashlight that she could use to scan the gauges. I realized as I was driving behind her, that the tail lights didn't work at all unless you were braking.
Day 2
     The next morning, we got up early to return the rental car in Palm Springs. It overheated on the way. When we pulled over, I opened the radiator cap creating a green geyser before I thought about it. We made a quick trip for fluid and shop towels and drove the last ten minutes to Palm Springs before it overheated again. We got another rental car and a tow truck to Pep Boys. They added fluid and did not charge us because they were afraid to change the oil or flush the radiator in such an old car. I guess the top off worked though, because the car was holding on to life again. It was getting dark when we got the car back, so we decided to stay in Palm Springs for the night. Doubts startrd to creep in, but we didn't listen, we went downtown and poked around a little while.
Day 3
     The next morning we returned the rental and headed out. We made a stop in Palm Desert for some Christmas gifts before heading through the Mojave. The car seemed to be doing fine, but I didn't know that the next two hours of road would be so unpopulated. We almost ran out of gas. When we were down to  our last fumes, we coasted into the only gas station for miles. I paid well over the going rate to fill up and bought a $25 gas can and some water (just in case.) Within another hour, we found the interstate. Right as we were turning on the on ramp, the Corona gave a sigh of relief and shut down. We rolled to the shoulder and talked nicely to it for ten minutes. It started up again after a little protest. By the time we needed gas again, the car was turning itself off every time we slowed down. It made the turn into the gas station especially nerve racking. We stopped for the night in Kingman, AZ and tried to calm down after the long day. We decided that if the car started in the morning, we would take it as a good sign and try to make it to Santa Fe and figure out a plan from there.
Day 4
     The car started. We thought it was a good sign, but it was just tricking us into getting an hour away from any town so that it could crap out for good in the middle of nowhere. After we yelled at the car for a little while, we drained the batteries on our phones getting a tow truck back to Kingman. The cheapest plan we could come up with was to rent a truck and a tow dolly to make the trip home. We were both too fried to try to fix the car and risk it letting us down again. We got a 16 foot moving van from Penske because that was the only thing we could rent to tow with. This turned out to be the best part of the trip though, because the guy who ran the rental place was truly AWESOME. Jim Hinckley loves classic cars and rustled up some tools so I could disconnect the drive shaft. I felt bad about lying to him and telling him we were sisters, but I didn't want to risk him not liking us. He was that cool. He turned out to be a route 66 historian and when we were all set to go, he disappeared into his office and returned with a hand written list of places he could recommend on our route. It was so refreshing to meet such a kind and intelligent man that we began to see the trip as an adventure again. We had a few hours left before we had to stop for the night, so we decided to make the best time we could.
     At the first fuel stop, Satu was in good spirits. She bought something called Bit-o-honey and we looked at some crazy little desert trinkets. Back in the van she handed me a bite of the candy to try. "Hmmm. Yummy. Uh Oh." I said spitting out a tooth. There was nothing to do but laugh and hand Satu my tooth for safe keeping. We just laughed for an hour.
     As the sun set, Satu found us a place to stay for the night. We were both more calm now that we had a truck we could trust to make the trip in. We stayed at La Posada in Winslow, AZ. It was like paradise.

 

This is a picture from the website since Satu has all of the hotel pictures on her phone. I will have to do a separate post about how wonderful this place was. We had one of the best meals of our lives there at the Turquoise room. The service was outstanding and the hotel was full of amazing art. We decided that this is where we will get married.

Day 5

     We hit the road late the next morning after we had toured every corner of the hotel and eaten a fantastic breakfast. Refreshed and optimistic, we called Nicolette and told her we would be in Santa Fe that evening. We made it to Albuquerque, NM before I got pulled over. It took me a moment to figure out that the siren was behind me since I couldn't see around the moving truck. When I got over, the cop informed me that I was losing rubber from the tires on the Corona and they were about to blow. He kindly suggested that I stop two exits up at a local tire place that could give us a good price. Thank heaven for him, because I couldn't see the car and might have dragged it an hour without tires if he had not intervened. Between being pulled over and getting to the tire place, we blew off enough tire to put a huge dent in the Corona's wheel well. When Satu saw it, threatening dark clouds formed over her head. Some very handy gentlemen of Mexican origin had our new tires on almost before we could ask them.

     We made it to Santa Fe right at dusk. As we turned down the residential street that her sister lives on, it became clear that we would never get the moving truck down one of those narrow neighborhood streets. I went a couple of extra miles and parked in the small parking lot of a local pet store. I felt pretty confident that we I would have enough room to maneuver out of there. Satu's sister called and said she would meet us and we could park at her church. It was here that I realized that I could not in fact maneuver our rolling monstrosity out of the parking lot, so I just drove it down the adjacent street and jack-knifed it so badly that we lost all hope. Fortunately, Nicolette showed up before Satu could dump me. She called a friend of hers who came to the rescue and hooked up his farm truck and bailed us out. Nicolette tried to reassure me when we went for gas and gave me a very kind pep talk. That night we had some great Mexican food and a little while later I had a terrible panic attack. I don't know why, but Satu didn't dump me then either.

Day 6

We got to see some of Santa Fe with Nic and met some of the people in her church. Around noon, we were able to trade the tow dolly in for a trailer so we wouldn't risk losing any more tires. Both of us wanted to stay, but we were already so behind schedule that we decided to try to get some miles down that evening. We made it to Tucumcari that evening and stayed at one of the places Jim had put on the list. It was a great place called the Blue Swallow Motel. The owners were great and let us pat their dog and made fresh coffee in the morning. They loved old cars too and made us feel more hopeful about our dead Corona. We bought Jim's book in their lobby and made plans to return to route 66 when the car was running again.

Yes, they had 100% refrigerated air

 

Day 7

We were back in adventure mode. We drove with determination and focus all the way to Dallas that night. I was not prepared for every single road in Dallas to be under construction. Once we got through the city, we started looking for a place to stay. The city traffic was so bad that I had started to shake and couldn't do one more left exit or lane change. I tried to stop at a HoJo, but couldn't find the hotel and ended up back on the interstate. We tried a second time and had to do a couple of gas station loop-de-loops before I could make a landing in the Holiday Inn parking lot. We walked to dinner on shaky legs.

Day 8

We finally hit our stride. At noon, we realized that we wouldn't make it all the way home, so we picked a medium sized city to stay in on our last night. In Meridian, Mississippi we made reservations at Weidman's restaurant, but weren't really sure how we would get there. I called a local cab company where I encountered the worst customer service of my life. The dispatcher hung up on me, and when I called her back an hour later to ask where the cab was, she told me she still didn't have one available. We got in our truck and headed down town. Luckily, there was a bank near the restaurant and we were able to park there and walk to dinner. The meal was great and we had a fun date night.

Day 9

We returned to Atlanta victorious. I jack-knifed the truck and trailer one last time in Satu's driveway and blocked off traffic in her street. Her kind and handy neighbor Dave came to the rescue and now we have a new project to fit into our lives. That evening I saw Satu pat the Corona's hood lovingly and I knew we had chosen the right car.