Diagonals

After a struggle, the quilt is finally inside the duvet cover.

Corners define shapes. They are guides when inserting one similar shape into another. Grabbing and holding on to matching adjacent and diagonal corners is most important in some tasks. 

Last week, after washing our quilt and duvet cover, David and I attempted once again to put the former inside the latter. The procedure involves a series of steps. First I turn the cover inside out so I can get a firm hold on the top two corners. While I hold tightly to the quilt corners through the cover, it is David’s job to slide the duvet top down to the bottom right-side out and over the quilt. Then the final step is for me to hold tightly to the top cover and quilt corners while David does the same at the bottom, at which point we both shake the quilt vigorously to help everything align correctly.

It shouldn’t be too difficult — unless I hold two diagonally-wrong corners, as I did this time. Because we have a small bedroom, I usually stand on the bed while we maneuver this feat together.

Since the last time we did our duvet dance, we had purchased memory foam for the top of our mattress. I discovered the new surface makes balance difficult when grabbing and shaking. In the confusion of mismatched corners and foam that remembered steps I didn’t want it to remember, I lost my balance and rolled around on the bed.

Instead of tossing out a few four-letter words, giggles erupted. And, since they are contagious, giggles reached out to David and tickled him, too. Help — hahaha — I've fallen on my bed —hahaha — and I can't — hahaha — get up! There we were with a confused mass of quilt and duvet cover, laughing our heads off.

Being adults, however, and recognizing that we had a chore to complete, we went about correcting our mistakes — with some extra giggles thrown in — and finally got the cover on. With a few shakes as we firmly held our correct corners, this time everything fell into place and I remained standing tall on the bed. 

Our mistakes leading to uncontrollable laughter felt so good. This was a simple release in an everyday moment, an example of making mistakes together, losing balance, losing control and then discovering everything works out okay, especially if some laughter is tossed into the recipe. 

David and I will soon celebrate our 37^th wedding anniversary. During these years together, we’ve mixed up diagonals and lost balance but sometimes the tumbles are fun and ultimately laughter balances the equation.

Note: If you prefer a more tame experience, this video shows how one person can make this a boring chore without the comedy: https://youtu.be/DRPfudNNd8Y

 

Professional Mohel

Created by Bonnie Schupp

My husband David found an interesting business card while taking care of his mother's things after she died. It was a card from the mohel who presided at his bris.

Always one to find a humorous side of things, David posed as a rabbi from your worst nightmare. You can see that he really got into his role.

We then brainstormed with ideas for captions. The list below is what we came up with. Maybe you can add some of your own.

• Sharp-witted mohel, circumspect to the point.
• Mohel with sharp knife for hire.
• David cut short his job training.
• David's new job was cutting edge.
• David's new career required circumspect and forethought.
• David cut up before every bris.
• The bris took an unexpected turn.
• Overly endowed baby met his match.
• With sharply honed skills, David began.
• David scorned new cutting edge technology.
• David always sliced through bureaucratic details.

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QXWVWZV

I lost.

Again.

The 19th game in a row.

I lose every time I play with my husband David. We've been together for almost 29 years.

He's good. Very good. But what makes it worse is his uncontrollable laughter at his own brilliant moves and my bad luck. Notice I said "bad luck." I was an English major, taught language arts and have three university degrees, including a doctorate.

What makes me repeat this losing scene night after night? Am I a masochist? I don't think so but I'm beginning to understand what I failed to learn in college. I'm just not competitive and David is. Very. So now I'm quietly observing his strategy and I'm getting better.

Marital Trouble

Years ago when we were in another Scrabble frenzy, I thought I was finally going to beat David. From the very first play, I was ahead and remained so throughout one particular time. We were near the end of the game and I just knew I was going to finally win...until David played all seven of his last tiles on the triple word score and went out, leaving me with some high scoring letters. He won on his last turn. The end.

At that moment, our then teenage daughter, Lauren, arrived home from a date. As she entered the house, I announced somberly, "Lauren, your father and I are getting a divorce." Then I saw her face. This was a teenager who didn't know what had happened at home while she was making out at the movies. With some guilt, I quickly reassured her that it was her mother's temporary insanity speaking when hope crashed hard.

During 29 years of marriage to a Scrabble-winner, I can say that I did win once. And this might be the secret of beating David at Scrabble. I convinced him to go with me to Downs Park, several miles from us. This is where I do my best thinking. We sat on a park bench and played against a backdrop of the Chesapeake Bay lapping the shore...and mosquitoes attacking David. Ever since then, he refuses to play with me in the park.

Misery Loves Company

Tonight I felt a little down after my 19th loss and decided to Google "Scrabble losers." Apparently I'm not alone. I found a Scrabble losers unite!'s Journal on Live Journal and Scrabble Losers Anonymous on Facebook. I discovered on a blog called Scrabble Losers Rejoice that Mental Floss Magazine has a list of ten words that are real but which opponents will probably challenge: aa, qat, zax, cwm, xu, qua, suq, adz, jo, qadi. Look them up!

There's also a Sore Scrabble Loser You Tube video, so shaky in the beginning that I thought someone was going to get hurt. Two girls who had just finished playing Scrabble together, talk about their game.

I'm thinking about buying the book, Everything Scrabble (Edley, Williams, Williams, Jr.). It has lots of good advice and even a poem Born to Lose by Maxene Johnson:

"...But SCRABBLE losers are unique.
They take their losses without pique,
They tally scores, emerge all smiles,
They merely shrug and blame the tiles."

In my search for other losers, I found an item that I should be wearing... a t-shirt on a site called Threadless, Nude No More with a design showing a nightmare of a Scrabble hand: QXWVWZV.
As it says at the top of that page, "Well, this just really sucks."

David gloats about yet another win.

Today's fortune cookie: It's not merely how much you know but how you play your tiles.


(Another fun blog post from Australia that you might enjoy: http://www.arizaphale.blogspot.com/2012/07/shizzle-that-is-scrabble.html)