Waiting out the rain with both my spouses

"tony 20 and kevin 29 trying but cars r bad...montoya not factor...hendrix drivers leading!...car 99 v strong. jj 48 2nd but cant pass dont worry...c edwards won! backflip! tony 20 in 7 place."--L'Ailee's texts to me, approximately 3 to 3:30 yesterday afternoon

"To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your hands over your ears and grimace."--Dumb Dares for the Office calendar's suggestion for today

I apologize for not posting or reading others' posts this past week. Once again, busy yet boring. Things are going on in the world, the country, the campaign. Other people have beaten me to discussions of them, and I don't know if I can treat them right anyway. Y’all already probably know how I feel about that study saying there’s more religious turnover in America than ever—I’m part of it! However, I will say that I certainly hope that Hillary Clinton doesn't have any photographs of herself in hijab floating around. I mean, a short few days ago I would have thought that such a thing meant she was being respectful to her hosts in a foreign country, but now I know such photographs really mean the politician in question is a radical Muslim spy who hates America! I don't know what pissed me off more--the blatant prejudice, the idea that white Americans might be stupid enough to fall for it, or the fact that some of my fellow white Americans really *are* that stupid.

Sometimes here, or on other lists and forums, I refer to my "work husband." This is a term I've encountered a lot in the real world, but requires some explanation to some blog readers. It doesn't mean we have a torridly yearning Jim-and-Pam relationship a la the Office, though we hang out together as much as Pam and Jim. A "work spouse" is a person who, for your eight or ten hours a day, you work with and click with as tightly as (ideally) you would with your partner or spouse.

Usually work-spouse relationships are mixed-gender, but some people--not all gay or bi, either!--have same-gender work spouses. B. and I have to get along because our job functions and departments overlap a *lot*. But then we discovered that we're both Southerners who moved to NYC strictly for love, that we both enjoy NASCAR and country music, and that we both have fundamentalist relatives. I officially became his work wife when I asked him whether he really wanted bacon on that burger in light of his recent cholesterol test results. Hell, even his Solstice gift to me was as selfish as the gift of lingerie he gave his real wife for Christmas--it was the "Dumb Dares for the Office" page-a-day calendar. He loves pranks as much as I do, but unlike him, I'll actually implement a few! Then he can sit back and enjoy the results!

He also enjoys watching the race at my house, because I've always got food (come to think of it, he's forever asking if I've got something for him in my purse or drawer, too!), and L'Ailee won us a large hi-def TV last year. His wife is Dominican and likes Juan Pablo Montoya because he's "Spanish", the way my Russian wife likes him because he's so blatantly Not From Around Here. L'Ailee was wearing a new Montoya t-shirt that fit her closely; his wife admired it. "It's in the NASCAR catalog," B groused. "I was gonna get that for you, but you said no."
"Yeah, but I trust *her* taste," she replied. Thankfully, an argument didn't flare up from that! Of course, I have to admit that I'd trust my actual wife's taste over my work husband's, too! Two other couples also came over, and everyone was recovering from the flu except for me and L'Ailee. We took lots of zinc and Vitamin C.

The second race of the year is always a little bit of a letdown after all the pomp and circumstance at Daytona, but Fontana was something the hell else this year. I'm sure you heard about it even if you aren't a race fan. The long, long rain-out. (I proposed surfing or just finding something to do nearby, but as I said, nobody was up for it.) The heroic attempts to dry the track. The hour-plus rain delay. NASCAR's inability to admit that a race just wasn't meant to happen on Sunday. And, of course, the rather spectacular crash between Casey Mears and Sam Hornish! Those two had a Pagan (me), a Catholic, and two Protestants praying for them, as well as four atheists and agnostics biting their nails and lips. I felt sorry for everyone out there; they were a display of patience. Monday was a beautiful sunshiny day, after that long wet weekend, and the race went off without a hitch then. B and I couldn't watch on TV and, of course, no radio station in NYC was broadcasting it either. So we relied on online updates and L'Ailee's texting. Thankfully, she almost always has Monday off. Her fingers are *quick*!

While we sat around waiting for a race, we flipped around the TV to see if anything else was on. We hit on a commercial for "The Other Boleyn Girl," with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansen.

I treated it like a horror movie: "Don't go with him, Natalie!"
B. joined in. "Don't let 'im put that crown on your head! You don't wanna know what happens to it next!"
"But it'll make that head-shavin' scene in V for Vendetta look like a walk on the beach!" I chimed in. Our wives and friends began laughing.
"Maybe the movie's about how her sister figures out what Henry the Eighth was like," B. said.
"And then it's 'Oh, honey, I wouldn't *dream* of standin' in the way of your happiness! It's okay, I'll go find me a nice duke!'"
"Bet there would've been some kind of pattern recognition after a few wives, don't you think?"
"Yeah! And then women were like, 'Oh, look, I think the king likes you!' 'Nah, I believe I'll just stand here and get hit by a bus instead.'" Laughter.
B. adopted a falsetto. "This is medieval England. What's a bus?" Gales of laughter.

Another commercial that got our attention is the one from Interstate Batteries that appears on Speed TV, or at least has for the past couple Sundays. Basically, they use their ad time and ad money to sell not only batteries, but Jesus. You can see the ad here. It is animated and depicts showers of hearts from above making everything better and everyone much nicer. The hearts represent “God’s love.” The website has a testimony from the CEO, a FAQ about how everyone’s a rotten sinner who needs Jesus, and an offer for free tracts in the mail.

We aren’t fond of it, not even the Protestants. It’s not that we want to ban it or anything stupid like that; it just seems odd, and we don’t want to be preached to. We could be at church instead of watching a race if we wanted that. The really funny thing about it, we all decided, is that Interstate is a primary sponsor of the Joe Gibbs racing team, which we love for its glowering, fist-throwing, smart-assed comment making, *no* comment making, aggressive drivers. (Including my man Tony Stewart.) The car Interstate’s logo sometimes graces belongs to 22-year-old phenom Kyle Busch, nicknamed “Rowdy,” who has wrecked his own brother. Tony was so close to winning the Daytona 500 this year, too, only to have it taken at the last second by Ryan Newman. We figured God needs to send the Gibbs boys a few more hearts!

Links, links:

Speaking of religion change, another former Evangelical takes a look at what he left behind in a new book.

I just discovered pomegranate Jelly Belly beans! Yum, yum, yum, yum. They’re fat and gluten free, with 100 percent of your vitamin C in a serving. It’s health food!

Why aren’t people having more kids? Maybe they just don’t *like* them very much. And that’s okay.

Springfield’s tire fire may be the wave of the future! Burning tires as potential green energy source.

”Flex Sex”, a/k/a “bisexuality”, on Fox News. Not quite as bad as you’d think.

Finally, a good article on uterine fibroids in Salon. I am one of many 30-something women who deal with them; it’s about time we got some good information without digging.