Showers of the wedding and the ablution variety

Before launching into the soap and water shower topic, which was prompted by a comment FreckledK left on yesterday's post, I feel the need to update you on The Shower issue.

Because as you know, I was feeling like a bitter little lemon.

Nick called older sister and said he had to be very candid, and that the shower was turning into a big issue when it didn't need to be. He said that my friends and I are just not traditional shower people, and while I appreciate their generous offer, the girly shower just doesn't fit my personality.

And she said the younger sister is going through crazy pregnancy hormone shifts, and so the "just suck it up you don't know what you're talking about" can be dismissed. And that really, they just want to do something nice for me, and have time to get to know each other.

So now we are going to figure out what we'd like to do together, and I am looking forward to spending time with them.

Yay for straightforwardness! Straightforwardidity? Straightforwardocity?

As for soap and water showers: I am all about the efficiency and not about the romance.

I love showers, and prefer them to baths, but I really don't like to share. I know some people think showering together is romantic, or like having someone else wash their hair or soap them up.

Not me. I like to wash my own hair and scrub my own bits.

Some of this is temperature. I like my water scalding hot, hotter than any man can ever bear. I don't want to compromise and take a tepid shower, which you have to do if it's too hot for the other person.

I get cold if I'm out of the shower stream, which you invariably are at some point if you're sharing. Nick is a whole foot taller than me, so we can actually share the shower and both be mostly under the stream of water, but it means that I'm squinting and snorfling water up my nose the whole time.

Plus I have an order in which I do things. Shampoo, conditioner, face stuff - I love Never a Dull Moment from Origins, soap up my body, rinse everything off. I like to get in, let the products that need to sit stay on for the appropriate amount of time, rinse off, get out, and get dry.

No malingering, no la la la this is so fun! Let's stay in here till we prune! Not for me!

The National Cathedral: four thousand and a few words

We, like much of DC, trekked up to the National Cathedral on Friday night to see the work of Swiss artist Gerry Hofstetter.

I was ready to be all, "Sure, whatever, a slide show on the side of a building."

But it was really amazing. I particularly liked the way the trees got all trippy in the swirly colored light. And that's all I've got to say about that.

She is a fast machine, she keeps her motor clean

We were in the car the other day and Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice came on.

It's the kind of song that sticks with you. And so a bit later, when I was singing under my breath and off-tune, "Laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind. . ."

Nick said, "Hey, let's play this at your parents house a lot and see if we can get Betty singing it."

Because he knows the AC/DC story. And he knows my mom, which makes it all the better. But anyone who reads LG knows I tell Betty stories all the time and that I am completely crazy about my mom.

She's one of my closest, closest friends. When nobody else in the room knows what I'm talking about, she will. And similarly, I speak Betty.

If I'm looking for support, she's a natural person to call. For even the most ridiculous thing.

Nick and I have been in a house temperature negotiation. If I could, I'd keep it at 78 all summer. He'd like it at 72, at which point I'm wearing fleece - no exaggeration.

So he suggested trying 74 degrees. Which means we've taken the comforter off the bed. His replacement suggestion was a wool blanket, but I'm allergic. And he was all, "You'll be fine till we get another blanket."

So I called Betty, partly to ask where she got this super soft synthetic blanket she gave me (but alas, fits my bed, not Nick's) and partly to tell on him.

I said, "Mama, Nick is trying to make me sleep with a wool blanket!"

"Noooo!"

She says this with exactly the horrified tone I am looking for. Like, the tone you might use in response to something like, "Nick tries to chew off my toes while I'm sleeping!"

"Tell him he can't do that!"

I turn to Nick. "Betty is appalled by your behavior."

So there.

For the longest time I took all these extraordinary abilities that she has for granted.

She can make just about anything. She can draw a pattern on paper and then sew the garment. Anyone who has ever tried to sew, much less create a pattern, or even just watched Project Runway, knows that this is completely phenomenal.

When we lived in Bangladesh Betty got really into dyeing and batik, and so of course I got to do batik as well. Looking back, the batik phase coincided with my nipple fascination faze. So everyone, both men and women, everyone I drew - or in this case waxed and dyed for all eternity, because cloth lasts shockingly forever - had nipples. Lots of beach scenes. Lots of nipples.

I'll have to find them and post them. They are ridiculous.

Anyway, I always took for granted that my mom had all these creative ideas and skills. And now I realize how exceptional they are.

If I have a kid, I hope I'm half as cool a mom as Betty.

I love you, mama. Happy Mother's Day!

Anagrams, or the shattering of any illusion that I could ever be remotely cool

I think reading Ada, or Ardor by Nabokov was the first time I'd ever thought about anagrams. His writing floors me, particularly when I think about the fact that his writing and word play is so amazing in English, which was not his mother tongue.

And it turns out I love anagrams! I had no idea until the other night, but I do. It makes sense, though, because I love crosswords and logic puzzles.

If you don't know what an anagram is, it's taking a word or words and rearranging the letters to make other actual words. Like, "Lemon Gloria" could be "melon oil rag." The more letters in your names, the more fun.

So there we were, sitting at the bar at Rustico the other night drinking delicious beer. And one of us suggested doing anagrams. Anagrams! Cool!

We love Rustico more than is reasonable. Greg, the beer guy there, always has fantastic suggestions. You can tell him what you like and ask him to choose something new. It's an excellent little beer adventure.

So it was late on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the bar was close to empty. We had space to spread out our napkins and compare.

Because we discovered that the easiest way is to write down the full name and then cross off letters as you go. Which eventually requires writing the names over and over and over.

The best I could do with Nick's name was "I hold down sofa lice." I was rather pleased with myself.

Neither of my names are terribly long, so there's not a lot to work with.

We got to working on Greg's names, and were determined to use "orgy," but didn't quite succeed before it was time to stop with the beer and head home to bed.

Anagrams! Super fun! Try it! Let me know!

Where you draw the line

If I am close to you, I am remarkably share-y. What's mine is yours, pretty much. But I think everyone has their lines.

I haven't shared gum since high school, and now the idea makes me throw up a little in my mouth, but I'm fairly cavalier about germs. I use the 5- or even 10-second rule for things that fall on the floor. I have bought food from street vendors in all kinds of places. The kinds of places where you are likely to wind up with parasites.

On a side bar, my current boss is a serious germaphobe. She talks about it very candidly. She bought a new fridge because she couldn't stand the idea that the previous owners of their house had stuck their heads in the fridge at some point.

When she says things like this, I like to mention that by contrast, I grew up doing things like licking the walls in Bangladesh. Which draws a visceral reaction every time.

So anyway, the lines you draw may be arbitrary, but they're still your lines.

I reached toward the toothbrush holder for my toothbrush the other morning and it wasn't there. Because it was in Nick's mouth.

He'd left his in the shower, and as we were in a hurry, he'd grabbed the one in the holder. Which was mine.

And I did a little squirmy icky dance and got all, "That's mine! MY toothbrush!"

The sharing of a toothbrush is something I'm rather opposed to and, it turns out, something Nick is fairly casual about.

His argument is that we could not be closer, and that toothbrush sharing between us is not actually all that intimate in comparison to so many other things.

My take, however, is that nothing compares to scraping bacteria off your teeth. And my toothbrush is mine, and his is his. And the twain shouldn't really overlap.

I asked my friends in the Quangle (which is next to the Quad). What if their boyfriend or husband used their toothbrush? They were horr-i-fied.

One said she'd throw the toothbrush out. Another said she'd probably use it again but only after running it under very hot water. The third wasn't sure between the two.

Bob, who overheard the entire exchange, was more interested in the shower aspect of the entire thing. I tried to get him back on the toothbrush sharing, to get a guy's perspective, but that wasn't the part that got him.

He was all, "Why? Why would you do it in the shower?"