Meccanized

Dear USPS,

After years of delivering my mail, I think you have a pretty good idea who I am and what I’m all about. You’ve seen all the bills, paid on time. You’ve brought me good news in the form of college and grad school acceptances and bad news in the form of rent hikes and rejections from literary journals. You probably know more about my life than some of my closest friends.

Which is why it is so upsetting that you didn’t realize how much it would piss me off that you are tardy in getting me my Wire DVDs.

I had things perfectly planned so that I could have one night – ONE NIGHT – where I could sit, uninterrupted, and take in a few episodes of Season 2 before life gets hectic again. There is even snow and ice falling from the sky – it’s like the Universe saying “Yes, Lindsay, this night is my gift to you. It’s too cold to brave the outside world, too dangerous to drive anywhere. I want you to take this night and waste it absorbing TV…no, not TV…HBO.” But when I flung open my mailbox, eyes filling with excitement like a kid on Christmas morning, fingers fluttering in anticipation of holding that little red envelopes, did I find Bubs and Omar waiting for me? No. No, I did not. In the words of McNulty and Bunk in Season 1, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Now, I’m sitting here typing this post, watching the storm worsen outside and longing to know the identity of the female body floating in Baltimore Harbor, to see what deal Avon Barksdale is able to cut with prison officials by offering information on the tainted the heroin supply and to hear the melodic chorus of “Way Down in the Hole” filling my apartment.

Damn you, USPS.

Meccanized,

Lindsay

My friend Dave once proclaimed that his ideal woman would be good at math and smell like burritos.

I’ve always liked this description, and I started thinking about it again this weekend, when, for some reason, I was forced to defend my love of “The Notebook” on three separate occasions. Apparently, no one in Bethesda, MD has a soul.

One such conversation revolved around this anecdote, that a woman dumped her fiancee because he said he wouldn’t build her a house a la Noah and Allie in Nicolas Sparks’ finely crafted masterpiece. I sided with the woman, proclaiming to a handsome gentleman I had just met that I would expect my fiancee to build me a house to prove his love; yes, it’s that kind of crazy that has felled so many, many men over the years.

Of course, I was kidding about the house. It’s romantic to watch Ryan Gosling hammer nails for love, but in reality, all I can imagine is a lifetime of my asking him to take out the garbage and him whining “I built this whole house with my bare hands, and you can’t carry a trash bag five feet to the can?” But it is fun to think about what romantic gestures I’d actually want to see from a significant other. Assuming all the basics — kindness, a sense of humor, similar values, height to make up for my lackthereof, here is what I’ve come up with:

- Willing to watch “The Notebook” with me.  And find my endless stream of tears and choked “Awws” charming. Repeat for basically any other chick flick and most episodes of “Friday Night Lights.”

- Does whatever he has to to make sure that nary a sprig of cilantro ever crosses my path.

- Does not automatically poke me in the spine the second I tell him I hate having my spine touched. For the record, every single guy I’ve dated has failed on this count, and one even got punched in the face for it (it was an involuntary reflex…I swear).

- Automatically picks up my bag and puts it in the overhead bin without asking if I need help.

- After the bag is stowed and the plane starts to taxi, takes my hand before I grab his. DOES NOT look at the wing and say “Oh my God, is that piece supposed to be that loose?” and then laugh maniacally when I panic.

- When we’re riding on public transportation, always moves to the door a few minutes before the actual stop, because he also has a chronic fear of not getting through the crowd of people fast enough to make the timed doors and then having the vehicle pull away with everyone knowing that you were supposed to get off at that stop but couldn’t because you were too slow.

I don’t think I’m asking for a unicorn here, right?

Please, tell me about your metaphorical hand-built houses!