We say some funny things. I am reminded of this on a semi-regular basis, anytime a foreign student comes through the door of my deli.

Alex is Russian. He comes in at least twice a week, and orders the student special. “I would like the Starving Studen Combo because I am starving and I am a student,” he says in a thick accent, then allows himself a congratulatory chuckle for being so darn clever.
Sometimes, Alex will order another sandwich after that. He’s a beanpole, and pats his non-existent belly and states that he’s still hungry. One day I told him that he’s a bottmless pit.  I then had to explain what a bottomless pit is. My definition wasn’t satisfactory, but he’d been handed his second sandwich by then, and he wandered back to his table shaking his head at this silly American girl.

There’s also an Indian med student who comes in frequently for dessert and coffee. We were out of his usual chocolate cake one evening, and I recommended the carrot cake instead. He made a face. “Does it taste like carrots?” he asks.

“No…not…really…” I say.
I proceed to list off the ingredients. He decides it won’t kill him, and buys a slice. It made me think maybe when people like him and Alex will go home, they might tell their families of what they did in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Despite feeling slightly sorry for my poor explanations, I like that I’ll be a slice of their American experience, and maybe “bottomless pit” and carrot cake will catch on somewhere on the other side of the world.

“This room is a pigsty.”

A beat.

Dear God, I sound like my mother.

I channeled my father the other day, and when I realized what was going on, I felt I’d been thrust into a cold, slimy pond.

When my dad explains things, he sticks his hands out and shakes them, as if to say, “Slow down! Let me finish.”
I was sitting in the cafe in Barnes and Noble, drinking coffee and people watching in between the pages of a David Sedaris book. A woman toting an infant and dragging a gigantic stroller entered, her younger son and daughter trailing like ducks. I watched her order a cupcake, apple juice, and coffee as she shifted Baby from one arm to the next. Boy and Girl sat at a table across from me and discussed in earnest tones what alcoholic beverage they would pretend the apple juice was.

I watched the four of them like my dad would. He is a baby ogler. He stares with a silly grin on his face, sort of chuckle to himself and pretend to go back to what he’s doing. Later, if curiosity gets the better of him (and it always does) he’ll approach and talk with Mama. Any church event or family gathering where babies have been present, my dad ends up holding them. The church nursery used to enlist his help in a classroom full of infants. All he did for the entire duration of the service was sit in a rocking chair and hold babies….And people acted like this was some great feat, like it was a talent!

So Mama kept glancing around nervously, like she’s been kicked out of stores due to rowdy kids before. Satisfied with the lack of stink eye, she forgets the world for a minute and takes a sip of coffee.

She and the kids passed me on the way out. I scooted my chair to make way for the gargantuan stroller, and she murmured a hurried apology for disturbing me.

Then, I did it.

“No, no, it’s okay,” my hands shake in front of me, like I’m calming her down. I tell her I have a huge family and know that it’s like a parade of chaos no matter where you go. I told her it’s like being home. But I wasn’t looking her in the eyes. I was watching my hands out in front of me. They may as well have morphed into octopus tentacles.

Holy crap, I’m turning into Dad.

Nevertheless, Mama looks relieved and herds her children out of Barnes and Noble. I spent the rest of the night thinking about Dad and his mannerisms. The way he stutters, mumbles, shakes his hands, laughs when something really tickles him. The way he pushes his chair to the side at dinner and leans back to signal he’s done eating….At least, until he grabs a post-dinner peanut butter sandwich, that is more peanut butter than anything. He’ll eat this while he leans against the door frame of the TV room. If he sits down, it means he’s committed to watching what’s on. Otherwise, he’ll go play Free Cell on the computer.

I thought about the way he ogles babies and pregnant women. The way he looks at the dog, like he loathes her very existence. “She’s not my dog.” Secretly, he enjoys having a dog. I just know it. Society has taught him he is more of a man because he owns a dog, and just thank goodness she’s not a chihuahua or a poodle. At least you have a heeler to lay at your feet.

It’s weird that I miss watching him watch things. At dinnertime, he’ll survey the table and all those seated there. Sometimes, he has a triumphant look on his face, like he’s the master of all he surveys…the lord of his castle, with that damn dog at his feet.

But man, does he look comfortable there at the head of the table…or in the driver’s seat of his truck, telling whoever’s in the backseat to repeat the phrase, “accelerate to cruise velocity” or “turbines to speed.”

He’s so at home at “his spot” on the couch. It’s weird how dad’s have that….that one Lay-Z Boy or couch cushion with the outline of their jeans’ back pockets worn into the material. We had this ancient red couch, the far left cushion with a huge Dad-sized indentation. If he was home, you didn’t sit there. Period. Everyone understood this unspoken rule.

I have a picture of his sleeping on that couch. I love this picture so much, although there’s really nothing superficially special about it…in fact, it’s kind of a crappy picture. I love it because I captured him in his element…in his house…in his couch….snoozing.

Things has been on the busier side of relaxed this week, as Tanner has launched into Operation: Apartment Cleanse in preparation for the arrival of his family, my brother, and our friend Trevor this week.

I’ve been super tired, but for some reason, my brain wouldn’t let me sleep today. I suppose one of the perks of being a pedestrian is that walking is really conducive to clearing your mind; resolving things; pondering. Maybe that’s why I woke half an hour early, just to begin the walk to work.

Today, our deli catered the funeral of a little girl who drowned in a swimming pool this week in El Paso. All I did was make sandwiches for her bereaved family, but I can’t stop thinking about her, the situation. My coworker, Scott, went to the church next door to deliver the food, and came back crying. He saw the tiny casket, and her weeping family. He started again as he told me, I could tell he was thinking about his own daughter.

I have to wonder about God’s plan when it comes to children dying. Not doubt, but wonder. My perspective is so sheltered, so blinded, so tainted by what the world tells me, or really just how limited my brain power is. Putting all notions of the “Age of Innocence”  and predestination to this or that, I have to believe that God knows each heart, no matter how small, and that His judgement and mercy and grace are perfect. He knows what to do, and thats really all I can tell myself.

It’s just the funny thing about perspective and the farther you get in life. The more I learn, the less I know.

On the note of getting farther in life, Tuesday was my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary. Tomorrow is Tanner’s and my first. Again, with my sheltered viewpoint, when I look at our past year, learning to cooperatively coexist and think of someone other than yourself every second of every day, and multiply it by thirty years…well, kudos to you, Mom and Dad. I’m beginning to understand the struggle to pledge oneself to another, in a world that tells you to only think of you. I also understand the overwhelming rewards. I’m so grateful to the example, and the inspiration, they are to Tanner and I. Here’s to many, many more years of marital shenanigans!

Not that we’re trying, but Tanner and I have always loved the name “Sidney” for a girl (“Sidney Lynn”, to carry on his family’s three generation tradition of giving  the middles names of Lee, Lane, and Lynn. Don’t even think of copying us either).  So while burning time on the internet today, I looked up the meaning. It means, “A city in Australia.”

No duh.

Tanner means, “a man who tans hides.” His middle name, Lee, comes from Old English “leah“, meaning “meadow”. I like to think his name means “Man Who Tans Hides in Meadow.”

Concieted person that I am, of course I researched my name in depth. According to behindthename.com,

AMANDA

Gender: Feminine

Usage: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Finnish

Pronounced: ə-MAN-də (English), ah-MAHN-dah (Spanish, Italian)  [key] 
Created in the 17th century by the playwright Colley Cibber, who based it on Latin amanda meaning “lovable, worthy of love”. It came into regular use during the 19th century.

Apparently Cibber wasn’t terribly successful, or popular, within his lifetime.

He wrote some plays for performance by his own company at Drury Lane, and adapted many more…receiving frequent criticism for his “miserable mutilation” (Robert Lowe) of “hapless Shakespeare, and crucify’d Molière” (Alexander Pope). He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed….he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, social and political opportunism…and shady business methods. He rose to herostratic fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope’s satirical poem The Dunciad. Cibber’s poetical work was ridiculed in his time, and has been remembered only for being bad.

His invention, my name, Amanda, first appears in his play, Love’s Last Shift.

The central action of Love’s Last Shift is a celebration of the power of a good woman, Amanda, to reform a rakish husband, Loveless, by means of sweet patience and a daring bed-trick. She masquerades as a prostitue….and seduces Loveless without being recognized by him, and then confronts him with logical argument. Since he did enjoy the night with her while taking her for a stranger, it has been proved that a wife can be as good in bed as an illicit mistress. Loveless is convinced…The play was a great box-office success and was for a time the talk of the town, in both a positive and a negative sense. Some contemporaries regarded it as moving and amusing, others as a sentimental tear-jerker, incongruously interspersed with sexually explicit  restoration comedy jokes and semi-nude bedroom scenes.

In short, my name was invented for a wife who plays a hooker to dispell the Feminine Virtue myth.
I wonder how much of this my parents knew before settling on my monkier….

This statement was prompted by an episode on HGTV, featuring luxurious bathrooms across the country. One showcased a beachy bathroom with an in ground Infinity bathtub. Tanner cringed. “How is anyone supposed to fix a leak on that thing?” he cried in outrage. “Every home should have access panels. Someone could make millions putting access panels into homes like that…I should do it. I’ll make millions.”

After work that night, I received a phone call from my sister. “I just thought you should know,” she prefaces, “Dennis Lihte died this morning.”

I suppose my reaction probably wasn’t that different from anyone else who loved Dennis, altough I’d like to think it was. I imagine that everyone had a flood of emotion rush to their tear ducts, a flash of a million memories in their brains. I returned to the couch and tried to exlain to Tanner who Dennis was, where he might know him from, what he meant to me. I was just  incredibly dumbstruck.

The next morning, the phone rang.
Jo.

“Who is it?” Tanner grumbled.
“It’s your mom, babe.”

He rolled over. We both knew what the call was about. I harassed him about it for a few more hours, but I understood why he didn’t want to get up, why he didn’t want to call back. Just like if I don’t open my phone bill, I don’t owe money. If he didn’t call back, Granddad Howard was fine.

He eventually did call. Granddad Howard had died that morning in a totally painless and peaceful way, as far as anyone can tell. The funeral was that Saturday. Immediatley, Tanner started telling his mom we would figure out some way to get there. We’d walk if we had to. Jo said it wasn’t necessary, Tanner’s dad was paying for our rental car.

I had a long drive ahead of me, which is nice when you have a lot of thoughts to sort out. How were the Lihte’s? How were the Powers? Why had everyone picked this week to die?

As we drove through the mountains in Ruidoso, the scattered thunderstorms nmroads.org had warned me about turned into a full blown hailstorm. Sheets and sheets of rain and hail fell around us as we crept along at 15 mph. In a situation that normally would’ve scared me out of my mind behind the wheel of a car, I felt strangely at ease. It was beautiful.

We arrived in Portales around 9pm and met up with Tanner’s family at Grandma Betty’s house (Tanner’s great-grandmother), where everyone was eating and telling stories about Howard. The stories continued over the weekend as more relatives and more food arrived. People weren’t talking just to talk. They wanted to share how they were going to remember Howard. No one felt the frail frame of a man weakened from chemotherapy was an appropriate way to commit him to memory. Obviously in comparison to everyone else, I knew little about Howard. My favorite memories of him were silly ones. Once, shortly after Tanner and I got engaged, we travled to Mulehsoe to spend Christmas with his family. When we arrived, no one was home but Granddad Howard. He sat us on the couch opposite the fireplace and told us he would build us a nice romantic fire…which constituted squirting lots and lots of lighter fluid onto newspaper. Another time I overheard him telling his great grandson Baylor how he was going to slice off his ears with his pocket knife and make ear soup.

All weekend long, everyone kept on saying over and over how much Howard adored his wife Marjorie, Tanner’s grandma. Tanner told me once about Granddad Howard’s nightly habit of smoking cigars and drinking huge glasses of Sangria out of the back porch. One night he’d had too much Sangria, wandered into the living room and started dancing in front of Marjorie. “I love you! I love you ! I love you!” he sang. “Get away from me, you ol’ drunk!” she laughed.

Jo, of course, had a way that she wanted to remember her dad. “He would always give-give you whatever he had. Everyone always had new clothes, new cars, before he even thought of himself, “she said, “Remember, Tanner? He always drove that old truck while everyone else had a new car.” She shook her head, “Anyway, I don’t remember what is was now, I just remember I was really sad, like, really, really depressed. I was in my room, and I was crying, and he came in with his old baseball glove. ‘JoLynn, this is my most prized possession. The only material thing I love in this world. I want you to have it.’ He said, ‘That glove never made an error.”

The night after the funeral, Tanner, Tabor and I made our way out to the back porch while everyone else slept. We passed around a bottle of Sangria and talked more. Comics. History. Stephen King. Family scandal. Everything eventually came back to Granddad Howard. Some of these stories were the best, because they didn’t deify the man. They were stories about his temper, crude humor, mistakes as well as triumphs. More Sangria. Tanner looked thoughtful as his thoughts turned to heaven.

“Granddad and I were looking over the corn harvest this one time, and he told me that he believed that maybe God saved a slice of heaven just for you. A space designed for you. A space He knew you would love and that you could share with Him. ‘This is my heaven,’ he said, ‘to watch things grow. To plant and hope and watch the harvest.”

¹ “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. ² In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” -John 14:1-3

The thing is, our criteria had slightly shifted. It’s very likely that parvo virus is still alive in our apartment, so we had to choose an adult dog. We picked up a two year old mixed terrier named Nana. She is the most timid animal I have ever seen. It’s going to be a huge challenge trying to teach her to live with people (house breaking, leash training, etc). Right now, she has just shifted from hiding place to hiding place.

Nana is an excerise in patience. Which is hard to two dog owners who only want to romp with her.

She likes underneath the table best.

Parks news article #1. We are still dogless. Animal Services put me in contact with a woman who rescues dog with Parvo. We’re hoping within our apartment’s weight limit will come our way via her.

Parks news article #2. Two days after I was fired from DG’s, I called Eric because he asked me to. I had no intention of asking for my job back. I called because I didn’t want to burn any bridges on my way out. When I called, before I said more than, “Hey Eric,” he told me he’d like to put me back on the schedule for Monday. We had a small talk and I asked him to please, please, tell me what I’m doing that bother him before he spontaneously terminates my employment. Most of my friends think I’m nuts for retruning.
I came back because making some money is better than making no money. I’ll just hang out making sandwiches until I hear back from some of the places I applied to.

I think they biggest thing I have taken away from this whole thing-having the carpet ripped out from underneath my feet-is the lesson God is constantly trying to teach me: Trust.  Sometimes, people who are secure in what they’ve built up for themselves need a trust lesson. How can I be getting what I need from God, when I think I can be fulfilled in “the world”?

I am learning the difference between joy and happiness. I knew the difference in my head but now I am learning it in my soul. Yeah, I am really, really unhappy right now. I work for a crazy old guy who can’t keep his pants up and refers to his employees as “whatchamacallit over there.” But there’s an attitude I can cling to. Nothing will fulfill me but Christ, and that is a powerful notion. Powerful enough to obliterate the dispair I feel when I consider my circumstances.
It makes me think of Spanish’s ser and estar. Ser, if I remember correctly, is concrete. I am a girl. I am American. Estar usually connotates some action or temporary state. I am in the computer lab. I feel hungry.
Estoy, I am unhappy.  Soy, I am in Christ.

I had work the next morning, which was Super Bowl Sunday. A big deal in the sandwich business, which means that yes, we were mercilessly slaughtered. I don’t even remember all of what happened, it was that crazy. At one point, however, I was working on the flat grill and had all my orders set out, and a huge line of customers quickly formed. Eric was in the back, in his “office” working on some spreadsheets or something.
“Eric,” I call, “Can you hop on the register?”
“What?” he says.
“Can you take some orders?”
“Oh!” he jumps up, grabs the waist of his falling pants, and waddles to the register.
He helps one customer. Then, ignoring the rest, turns around to “help” me on the grill.
“Eric, I’ve got this,” I insist, “I really need you to take some orders.”
The man ignores me and sticks his bare hands (that just handled money) in a bag of frozen hashbrowns.
I insist again, “Eric, please, I really need you to take some orders.”
Everyone in line is looking peeved. He still mutters something to himself.
I am begging him now. In my head, I promised him everything. A pickle. A cookie. My tips. My paycheck. My firstborn. Just please, don’t touch the food.
He finally gives up “helping” and returns to the register.
This story is important later.

Toil, toil, endless sandwich related toil. Finally, it nears the four o’clock hour. Caroline and I are about to get off work for the day. My phone rings. It’s Tanner.
“Babe,” he says, “the dog hasn’t moved in the last three hours. Did you call the shelter already?”
“No,” I say, “I haven’t had a chance to.”
“She’s in really bad shape, her nose is all dry. I’ve been wetting it and her mouth for awhile, but I’m at work now. I really think it’s parvo.”
Silence.
“Babe?”
“I’m still here,” I say.
“I’m going to call the shelter, ‘k?”

Tanner calls back five minutes later. The shelter thinks it’s parvo too. I need to bring her in ASAP they say.
Caroline speeds me back to the apartment. I run inside and throw a towel inside my laundry basket and look for Beans. There she is, laying next to Tanner’s side of the bed. Drooling. Lying in her own bloody mess. The word “Parvo” in racketing around in my skull. I pick up her stiff body and wonder if she’s dead. Did I just touch a dead animal? I hold her body to my ear. Did I just put a dead animal to my ear? Tiny breaths. She’s breathing. I run to the car, laundry basket in hand.
Caroline puts the car into gear and speeds to Bataan Memorial. I crane my neck every thirty seconds to see if Beans is breathing. When we pull into the animal shelter, a tech is waiting for us. We have to take the back door, so as not to infect other healthy dogs. The tech goes in. A vet comes out. She is an Amazon of a woman. I keep on staring at the gap in between her two front teeth and her name tag. Melissa.
Melissa says this dog is in bad shape.
Melissa says they will treat her for parvo, but things look grim.
Melissa says that we, of course, can pick out another puppy, but should probably get an older dog because the parvo virus is in our apartment now.
Melissa took my dog and my laundry basket.
Caroline took me home.

The shelter called the next morning, to let me know they decided to euthanize.

Three days later, Tanner comes home early from DG’s. “We have to talk,” he says.
Eric pulled him aside when he arrived and told him that he wanted to “lay off” Tanner and me for awhile. He tells Tanner he’d like to keep him, but not his wife. Apparently, I used to be okay but now I boss him around too much. So I am fired. Tanner is fired by association. More than anything, I am so furious that Eric didn’t even have the nerve to call me and tell me that I no longer had a job. He can’t even afford that courtesy. He had to send Tanner like a messenger. And how do you lay someone off “for awhile”? We’re either fired or we’re not, we aren’t just going to hang in the balance until you decide we are worthy enough to make sandwiches.

I have been encouraged by Caroline to file for unemployment. My head is spinning so much I don’t even know where to start. Today I applied for a couple of jobs but am not feeling terribly optimistic about them. I am not feeling optimistic about much today.

We’ve both been working so much lately I thought it would be healthy if we both had a concrete day we could devote to sleeping in, or running errands, or….vegging. It sounds super slothful but it really has been so good for us, and we’ve only enacted the practice for two weeks, and we’ve gotten a lot done around the house (apartment) consequently.

Moreover, yesterday was Wednesday! For our day off, we made the arduous  journey to the animal shelter on Bataan Memorial and looked at prospective pooches. It was heart wrenching for Tanner because the place was filled with beautiful Pit Bulls but our apartment requires that we not adopt a pet that weighs over 25 lbs, I doubt we could fudge that rule very much with a dog of that size. He’s resigned himself to obey that rule.
So we’re looking and having the time of our lives petting every single dog there, and a rustle beneath the shredded newpaper stole our hearts.

Oreo, as the pound has dubbed her, is a little white terrier with a black patch over one eye (any one of you who knew in middle school knows that I can relate).  She’s only four months old and super sweet. Also very energetic but I’d be worried about a puppy that wasn’t.

We looked around some more but both knew that this was the dog for us. So we set the adoption in motion. “Oreo” is currently waiting at the shelter, for some surgery;-)

Tanner and his brother, Tabor, have always had a knack for naming their pets the perfect name. Mr. Pants, a pitbull with pant-like markings. Banjo the beagle. We both knew we could do this dog more justice than “oreo.”

So, unless we come up with something “more perfect,” our new dog’s name is Beans.