our hood

Shaun, Marzieh, and I are chilling on the couch over the weekend, tickling her, letting her bite on our fingers, reading her stories, and making up songs to our sweet little babe. It's hot, but for the summer breeze we've opened our apartment's windows.

All of a sudden, a tweenage boy yells out the following---twice---to his friend at the top of his lungs outside our window: "F*** off, you homo!"

I turn to Shaun, and communicate all my distaste for this, as well as my sense of frustration for our lack of ability to protect our baby's ears, through a LOOK.

Shaun interprets this LOOK as though I'm seeking translation and deadpans quietly, "Apparently there's a homo outside."

That man.

even my subconscious is faithful

a couple of nights ago, i dreamt that i was married to a man who is one of our mutual friends, a great person, someone we haven't seen in years.

and in my dream, i was disappointed.

when i woke up, the most salient part of the dream for me was the bit where i was grumbling to myself, "Why can't I be married to Shaun?"

foreign humour

Leila: "Shaun, do you want to host a French exchange student this summer?"

Shaun: "Why? You want to have that international experience, that certain 'I don't know what'?"

these can be added to the post below

Talking with someone who was complaining emphatically about a new, local politician. "What has he done?" I asked, interested to hear details of babies on spikes or whatever other version of inhumanity it was that could cause this particular brand of dislike. "Well, he's GAY. And he's given a LOT of his own money to the Democratic party."

The girls across from us had a "make out" party on Friday night. They had a list of the rules of the party still hanging outside their door when we made our way to the Ridvan celebration the next morning: Singles only; Don't get too "frisky" (i.e., "NO HAVING SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!"); Must participate in games; Brush teeth.

(I just read these two things to Shaun, and he asked, "Oh, you didn't take a picture of the list? They took it down."
"Maybe I should just ask them for a copy of it."
" 'Hi. We're thinking about having one of those parties of our own. Couples only; NO GAYS.' ")

The first week we were here, we stayed in a lovely hotel. Next door to a Hooters.

things i want to remember about our first days in this place

Suburbs of Denver

How much I'm enjoying this book.

The light brown chihuahua, belonging to one of our apartment neighbours, that accidentally got let out by a workman and had the whole complex out looking for it.

The name of the chihuahua: "Layla".

Hearing people, strangers, call out my name all day long outside my windows, weirding me out.

"Hey mamma, you're busy with baby, huh!" called out to me by a fellow resident as I headed up to our apartment instead of joining a dog-searching team.

The lonesome wail of a coyote in the field adjacent to us when some fire trucks approached our neighbourhood.

Seeing a tiny brown wild bunny the size of a guinea pig hop into a gutter under my feet when I went to check my mail today.

Asking the front office about the dog, hearing that it was eaten by the coyote, the remains of its tiny body found nearby, and that the bunny I had seen would be dessert.

Everything on every menu contains cheese, and it all comes with cheese or cheese sauce on the side. The same thing could be said for cream.

Upon meeting our baby, a lady who was showing us some apartments exclaimed, "I've never met a Marzieh before!"

A woman going for a walk, saw me applying sunscreen to Marzi's legs kicking in her carseat, stopped to coo at the baby and chat, started talking to us about the huge telecommunications business across the road that had mismanaged its finances and was now practically bankrupt, turned to me and said: "I mean, they made such a mess of it, you and I, as women, we could have run it better!"

The woman telling us that the apartment complex we were interested in was much better than the one she lives in, saying, "The police get called out to that place far less than they do where I am!"

"'Get me out of these blue clothes, mommy!'", said to me by good-humoured woman behind the cash register at the petrol station, about my daughter (wearing blue).

Getting Shaun's soda for free at the petrol station, because the woman thought Marzieh was totally adorable and Shaun was a "good daddy" for carrying Marzi in the ergo.

Getting 25% off the price of our lunch at a local restaurant as a "welcome to the neighbourhood".

A woman walking towards me on the same pavement when I went out for a walk with Marzi (in the babyhawk) switched sides, saying as we passed each other, "Let's keep that baby away from the curb!".

The lining of my nose creates a new topography every day; every morning I have to blow my nose because of the high, dry air here. There is so much bodily fluids (are? many? fluid?) leaking out of me through my nostrils. I will say no more.

The eternity between moving in here on Saturday and our internets being turned on on Thursday. TAAAAAAAAAKE FOREEEEEEEEEVER.

"My life was stupid. ... And dumb. ... And I wanted something cool."---A Baha'i in our community, new friend, on how he became a Baha'i.

Moving into a kitchen that---impossible though it may seem---is smaller than our old kitchen in Seattle. The one where I was using a bookcase for pots-and-pans storage.

Seeing this typo in our co-sleeper: "MISE EN GARED."

Going for an extended drive one day to ensure that Marzieh got a good rest when she fell asleep in the car, and accidentally suddenly finding ourselves in Boulder.

The number of bogans on the street, a sight unseen since I was last in Wainouiomata circa 1997. Weirdly, this area is a haven for strip-malls, McTownHouses, and bogans.

Not being asked where I'm from.

Inadvertently offending the two women who were showing us the apartment complex that we now live in: The first one was cooing over Marzi, and the second one said, "Yeah, she has four kids!" I wanted to say something about how, considering how much she was ga-ga over Marzieh, I wouldn't be surprised if she had even more children in the future. What actually came out of my mouth was, "And it looks like there's another one on the way!" I blame sleep deprivation.

The second instance of offence was when the second woman, after half an hour of chat and showing rooms and general interaction, asked me where I come from. I happily told her, and for some reason continued to say how much I appreciate not being asked where I come from, which is generally what I've found to be the case in the Denver area. I think I was trying to make a point about how she was the first person to ask me, and how it was nice that it's not the first thing that everyone asks. Can sleep-dep cover this situation too?

After a week of clear skies and sunshine, waking up on Monday morning to snow.

How much Marzieh's second cousins (Shaun's first cousins) loved on her at the memorial service for Marzi's great-grandma's husband.

"Her name's Matilda, right?", asked of me by a distant, older, relative about Marzieh's appellation.

The number of golf jokes that I didn't get during the eulogies.

I forgot that there was a pocket-knife, a swiss-army thing, in my purse, which I took as carry-on luggage on the plane from Seattle. My green card indicates that I have the same country of origin as Osama bin Laden. No one stopped me. I found the knife a week later when we were unpacking all our stuff into our new place. I thought for the schvorteen-teenth time about how America really needs to learn about security from Israel. Also about how glad I am that security at the airport made me take off my sandals.

The loveliness of having Shaun walk home to have lunch with us every day.

The guy who connected our internets, a sunbeaten tattooed man called Robert, telling me that he has swine flu. ... Ha, ha.

Super Target.