Red Tractor | Credit: sxc.hu | Click to embiggen

If my husband were a super hero, he would be Stoic Man. His costume would be in shades of grey and his symbol would be a period, and, the title of this post aside, he would not have actual adventures, merely…occurrences. He is, after all, a Midwestern Male. When I’m teasing him, I call him “Stoic Man. Period. No Exclamation Mark for You.” When I’m annoyed with him, however, I call him, “Farm Boy,” although that’s muttered with no small measure of affection tempering the annoyance.

Today, I was reminded of a special facet of Stoic Man – his particular use of language. Specifically, he fails to understand the difference between “how are you?” and “what are you doing?”

An example of this linguistic phenomenon comes from his recent business trip. On one of our nightly phone calls, I asked, “I can hear you coughing. How are you?”

His response was, “I’m driving to get dinner.”

I pointed out, as I’ve done many, MANY times over the nearly 17 years we’ve been married, that I didn’t ask WHAT he was doing, but HOW he was feeling.

This morning, I learned that Stoic Man language runs in the family. Witness:

MissMeliss: Did you remember to call your dad? It’s his birthday.

Stoic Man: Yes.

MissMeliss: Did you ask if he’d seen his shadow? (This is an inevitable question for anyone whose birthday is February 2nd, after all.)

Stoic Man: Yes. He said he was seeing it all over the place.

MissMeliss: How is he doing?

Stoic Man: He was doing dishes.

MissMeliss: Did you actually ask how he was doing, or did he mention that your call interrupted a task?

Stoic Man: I asked how he was doing.

MissMeliss: And?

Stoic Man: He said he was doing dishes. (Beat) Now you know, I come by my language issues naturally.

MissMeliss: I think I need another espresso.

Outdoor Skating | Source: iStockPhoto.com | Click to embiggen

I’m sitting on the bed, folding clean laundry and watching the 2012 National Championships of Ice Skating. It’s one of the three sports I actually follow with any real interest, and this year’s championships were in San Jose. If we both still lived there, it’s the kind of thing my mother and I would have gone to as a mother-daughter thing.

Ice skating has always been an important part of my relationship with my mother.

I remember my first pair of skates, which had four blades, and didn’t let me go very fast, but kept me on my feet. And my second pair, the kind with double blades (the kind Donny Osmond used to wear in the opening of the Donny and Marie show). My mother used to hold my hands and skate backwards so I could skate forward.

When we lived in Georgetown, CO, they (the “town”) used to turn the baseball diamond in the park into a skating rink in winter. My friends and I would walk there after school, and skate til the streetlights came on (if we could last that long), then run home for cocoa. Sometimes there would still be snow on the ice, and it would melt into the laces, and your fingers would freeze as you tried to untie your skates.

Sometimes my parents would take me out to the reservoir, when it froze, and we’d skate there. The wind and water were so cold that the ice on the lake would freeze into waves, so the ride would be bumpy. If you were tall enough, you could hold a snow shovel up like a sail, and let the wind push you across the cold, green ice. I was never really tall enough, but I kept trying, anyway.

Skating outside was not the graceful sort of skating you can do indoors. I wore a coat and hat and gloves or mittens, and had tights on under my jeans. Sometimes, if it was really cold, my mother would make me wear scratchy silver socks with flecks of shiny metal in them, over the tights. I was so warm in those my feet would sweat, and then they’d get cold anyway, and I hated the itchy texture.

The last time I bought ice skates was the year the Sharks moved to San Jose, and they began offering public skating sessions at their practice rink. Some of the newer players worked in the pro shop, and it’s quite the thing to have a hockey player holding your tiny foot in his large, calloused hands, helping you find the right size.

I haven’t worn those skates since before I married Fuzzy, but they’re in the closet, with the guards still on, and the white leather still too-shiny, and too-stiff, from not enough use.

There’s a rink in the mall eight miles from here, but even though I keep looking up their times, I never manage to go. I’m not sure my ankles can handle skating any more, honestly.

Even so, I love to watch skating, and when the program is over, and I’m tucked up in bed, I know my dreams will glide out onto the ice, and the memory of skating will inform my dreams, and it will feel like flying.

In 1922, Andre Citroen commissioned an expedition across the Sahara Desert. It was the first time the great expanse would be crossed in motorized vehicles. Of course, Citroen provided their half-track trucks for the journey.

Lately, my blog has made me feel as dry and dusty as the Sahara, without the benefit of the blue ribbon of the Nile, the mythology and folklore of the fertile crescent, or the possibility of discovering a forgotten pyramid to break things up.

A week or so ago, I announced a blogging hiatus, and I did some thinking about what I want to do here. I’ve just revamped the look of the site – but I do that once or twice a year, anyway – and took a step I’ve never done: I eliminated ALL of my previous posts. All of them. All the way back to 2002.

When I started writing online, I meant it to be writing practice, to keep the juices flowing. Now, however, I write for a living. I write every day. I just don’t always write what I want to write.

I could, I suppose, use a paper journal, but I’ve never understood the point of writing things no one else will see. So, I’m reclaiming my blog, in my own way. I’m not promising it won’t sometimes be an open journal, because, essentially, it is. Artists keep sketchbooks. I have this. I’m not going to commit to a schedule – I don’t need to. I write every day, remember?

So, this is my great expedition. No funky French half-tractor/half-jeep, just me, and my brain, and endless mugs of really strong coffee.

I hope you’ll share the journey with me.