Backhanded compliments

I am not a dumpy heifer.

I have it on good authority, the waiter at lunch told me so. Because in a moment of absolute insanity, I asked him if the restaurant was hiring. He brought me back an application and said that the bartender had asked, when handing over the application, what I looked like. The waiter told me he'd given me props because if I was a dumpy heifer they wouldn't even consider me.

I smiled about that for an hour, but didn't fill out the application.

My first semester in grad school I decided to make some tuition money by waitressing. Tons of my friends had done it and pulled down bank, so I signed on with the local pizzeria and went to their corporate headquarters for a week of training. Then I shadowed a seasoned server for two weeks. Then I got my own tables for a week. Then I quit. I am small. I am clumsy. I like to eat during dinner time and I get grumpy when I don't, so I became the girl who had to make a couple of trips from the kitchen to get a small table their pizza, who spilled drinks on the customers, and who was crabby as Yosemite Sam by 8pm. I got myself a part-time office job and tried to throw in my pizza apron. The manager wouldn't let me; he had me keep it for when I came back.

Apparently he was afraid he'd be stuck with a dumpy heifer who didn't spill on people.

A matter of time

It took eight months, but Ed's dream has come true. He got to see someone fall in the river. And that someone was me.

The End.


Kidding! Of course I have many, many explanations for what happened last night. Apparently people fall in the river fairly regularly, usually up near the bars and restaurants and after drinking a few. Ever since we learned this Ed has thought that seeing someone fall in the river might be the hilarious highlight of his year. I'm no ballerina, and he's asked me a few times if I've fallen in yet, scared he might miss the moment. I hadn't, and was offended that he'd assume I would. It's one thing to be so clumsy I break dishes, completely another to fall off a sidewalk.

So, to the point. In the beginning...we were sitting on the couch, we'd finished dinner, and even old episodes of Rome seemed bor-ING. So Ed and I stared at each other for a few minutes, then had the brilliant idea of going for a little walk. It was a (relatively) cool and breezy night, so we wandered through the neighborhood and thought we'd jump on over to La Tuna and see what was happening. And I say "jump" and I mean "jump," since La Tuna is half a mile and a full river from our house. There's a pretty path that goes behind some of the mansions to a set of concrete stepping stones that cross the river. STEPPING STONES, people.

As we approached the river I was surprised how deep it was, since South Texas has been in a huge drought and generally the river is really low in this spot anyways. There was a couple on the stones laughing at their dogs playing in the water, and the dogs jumped on and off the stones happily, getting them very wet. And slippery. So yeah, I slipped right off the middle stone into the river up to my waist. I splashed around in shock. The lady asked if I was part labrador. Ed held out a hand and boosted me back on the stones. I looked at him. He laughed and laughed and started walking towards the other side of the river. Wait! "Um, shouldn't I go home and change?"

Ed just looked at me.

"Uh, okay?" I tentatively followed him. His shoulders were shaking and he said, "C'mon, you're drying off."

"I am NOT! I'm dripping!!"

"Well, you're not getting any wetter, so that means you're drying. Water is evaporating off you as we speak." Ed hasn't looked this happy since our wedding day. I decide to give him his moment and stop complaining, even though my toes are turning into raisins in my squelching sneakers. He takes my hand and we cross the road.

La Tuna has only outdoor seating, so I put on my best dignified face and walk past the crowd to an empty table. I sit down and people resume their conversations. A friend joins us. We stay until I'm mostly dry and jump back across the river home.

It was only when I was getting ready for bed last night that I realized my underwear was bright pink, and my pants, as you can see in this camera phone picture, were very thin.

Who says engineers can't dance?

There's a ceilidh dance called "Strip the Willow," where couples line up facing each other, women on one side of the room and men on the other. The lead couple comes together, grasps hands, spins around a couple of times, and sets off down the line, linking left elbows and spinning with the next person in line, then spinning right elbow with your partner. You spin with each person of the opposite sex, then meet your partner again at the bottom of the room for some more spinning until the end of the measure of music. Or until you fall down.

My dad was my partner.

The Chief, as we call him, is an engineer and does everything according to Best Practices. He ties his shoes efficiently, adds exactly the same amount of pepper to his eggs every Saturday morning, and he attacks traditional Scottish dances like a math problem. You could almost hear his brain turning over, "Okay, this is the part where we spin. Commence spinning!" He grabbed my hands and I was flung to every degree of the room. My shoes were two beats behind my head. "Okay, this is the part where I send Katie back to the line of men!" I was launched the five feet that most people have to dance through. By the end of the line, after 30 or more extraordinarily efficient spins down the room, I saw his hands coming towards me again and I almost ran away instead of grasping them. "The last spins! They will be the best." His grin gave his thoughts away and I'm sure my eyes showed my terror.

Back in the line of women, trying to get my inner ear back into my head, my brother came up behind me. "You know, Katie, lots of the Scottish men were also launching their partners around, but you have to give Dad credit for beating them all. I think he created the most centrifugal force in the room."

I laughed back at him, "U.S.A!!"

Loving kindness

Ed and I were in Scotland for a wedding, a Scottish wedding. The dinner choice was between chicken stuffed with haggis or beef with yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. The after dinner choice was between death by Scotch or by beer. Fortunately, I got caught up in the ceilidh dancing and was too busy jumping around and do-si-do-ing to worry about an additional choice - to cigar or not to cigar? Ed, as a token non-dancing American, was not given an option. He was given a genuine Cuban and a glass of 12-year-old Glenfiddich.

Around 11pm he came to me, looking a little green, and said he'd be heading to the hotel room. I made fun of his cigar breath and twirled around, dancing Strip the Willow with my dad.

That night Ed was sick. It happens, especially to non-smokers who get through an entire Cuban.

The next morning, Ed was sick. I woman'd up and took my first turn driving on the left and shifting with the wrong hand.

The next lunchtime, Ed was sick. I dragged him out to look at a couple of his clan's monuments and put him back in the car.

After lunch, Ed was sick. Ed's never had a hangover like this, but I don't think he's ever smoked an entire Cuban before. I gave him some Irn-Bru (Scottish hangover cure and altogether nasty sodapop) and greasy chips. I left him to go to the Highland Games in Stirling with my sister and her husband. Jeff had also smoked at the wedding and felt queasy, but he'd only had a couple of puffs. He was fine by morning.

At dinnertime, Ed's sick. My sympathy is gone and I drag him half a mile to the restaurant, where I feed him greasy potato skins covered in chili. Anything to soak up the poison in his stomach and get him to man up and see Scotland with me. A 24 hour hangover? I ask you.

The next day, Ed's fine. We fly to Dublin. We go to dinner with my parents; I get one whiff of my food and am sick. For 24 hours. Ed brought me Gatorade and plain pretzels and other stomach-flu remedies. He didn't tell me to man up and see Ireland, and hasn't yet said "I told you so." Even when we found out that my brother and sister in law were also sick as dogs, with the stomach flu, the day after the wedding.

Another new job idea

Ed and I are just back from two weeks in Scotland and Ireland. We went for the wedding of a family friend, which was amazingly fun, and chilled around for a while after in Ed's "homeland." His clan has a castle! I want the north tower room and some ladies in waiting, please.

Then we went to Ireland and were driving through the gorgeous western Ireland country - rocky mountains covered in sheep. And suddenly I asked Ed, "what kind of person would tag a sheep?"

"Huh?"

"That sheep! It's been spray painted!"

Ed looks up from driving on the crazy skinny roads, shifts with his left hand, and agrees, "Yep, spray painted."

"Do you think Irish teenagers are so bored that they spray paint sheep? Is that like cow tipping? Those poor little sheep!"

"They seem happy enough."

"Happy? They've got blue butts! Would YOU be happy with a blue butt?"

"Am I a sheep?"

"BAA! BAA!" I laugh and laugh at my own hilarity. Have I mentioned that we were together for two whole weeks, morning, noon, and night? It's a wonder Ed didn't chuck me off the Cliffs of Moher.

The next field we passed had green sheep, and the one after that had bright pink ones. And not just a little dot on the butt, these last sheep looked like Barbie's dream sheep. Bright pink from their noses to their hind legs. In the pub that night I asked the waitress about the spray painted sheep, and she said the farmers do it on purpose, to identify their own sheep and also to make them easier to find on the rocky hills. I wonder what the ASPCA would think.

Then I have a genius idea. I can be a sheep farmer! I've been looking for a new career; I'd get myself a bunch of sheep and spray paint giant Lone Stars on their sides! Texas sheep! My sheep would clearly be the best sheep, and everyone would know it just by looking at them. I'd be the best lil' sheep farmer in Ireland, because my sheep would have Texas pride.

Yep, I've only lived in Texas six months and already know Texas is Best. Giddyup, sheep!