I know I'm really starting to get the hang of this blogging thing when I start half my entries with some variation on the phrase, "Not much has been going on lately, but . . . "

It was an uneventful weekend. The wife, on Friday, did go to see a play featuring many friends; I did not. It was a shitty week, frankly, and I had to work late that day, so I just showed up after the show was over for the opening night party. I ran into the director there--a good friend--and said, "Sorry I didn't come for the show, but . . ." and prepared to launch into my tale of not much woe, but he cut me off, saying, "But you didn't want to." It seemed unwise to contradict such a succinct summation. "I'm here to drink your free booze," I said. "Excellent!" he said, grabbing a bottle of whiskey. This is what real friends do: they labor to tolerate the myriad of ways in which you are a disappointing asshole.

I did have a lovely dinner with the wife on Saturday. We had what we call a tapas night--just many little plates of stuff like salamis, olives, bread, chorizo, cheeses, lightly steamed vegetables, etc., and we just graze. It's simple and great and, best of all, is a killer way to see how all kinds of different foodstuffs go with whatever wine one has chosen to sample that evening.

It really was a lovely dinner, so I naturally followed my instinct to see if I could ruin it. I picked up a nice piece of pastrami, a thinly-sliced tatter of a morsel, put it in my mouth, and then let a large flap of it hang out of my mouth, as if it were a horribly maimed lower lip. Then I leered at the wife. "EW!" she said, and laughed. My tens of readers will recognize this as being fairly emblematic of my level of humor.

"Wud?" I asked innocently. "You wouldn't lub me if I god indo an industrial aggsident and I looged lige thid?"

This is a hoary joke of mine that I never tire of. "You wouldn't love me if I got into an industrial accident and looked like this?" is a question I have plaintively asked after sticking grape tomatoes up my nose, after putting my arm around the back of my neck and hooking the corner of my mouth, after jamming small screwdrivers in my ears and hanging Christmas ornaments off of them. "If you really loved me, my appearance wouldn't matter," I've said after rolling my eyes into the back of my head while my gums were packed with citrus rinds.

The wife is no fool, except for the whole marrying-me part. "What on Earth would cause your lip to look like a piece of pastrami?" she asked sensibly, while I worked at flapping the piece of pastrami ghoulishly.

"You don't love me any more," I said morosely. This is another stock line. "You'd leave me if I got the pastrami-lips."

"I . . . well, it's a good thing it'll never happen," she said primly. I wailed in horror.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhh . . . don't leave me and my pastrami-lips! Kiss me!" I leaned in impulsively for a deli-kiss, and the wife recoiled. "You won't kiss my pastrami-lips?" I was really warming to the phrase pastrami-lips; I gave my head another little shake, and the slice of pastrami waggled enticingly, anchored in my mouth by my tongue.

My horrified wife had a question: "Listen. Would your pastrami-lips--" (Yay!) "--only look like pastrami? Or would they taste like pastrami, too?"

It was a good question. I gently masticated the meat pensively as I thought about it. I had to be honest, especially after I looked at my glass of wine. "I hope it wouldn't taste of pastrami all the time," I said. "I'd hate to open a nice bottle of Malbec and have it taste like pastrami."

"I wouldn't want you to taste of pastrami all the time," she agreed. I still had the awful slice of meat hanging out of my mouth, and she eyed it angrily. "I don't like the pastrami-lips," she said, suddenly restive.

So I slurped the meat into my mouth and ate it. We finished the rest of the meal without incident.

What I said earlier about friends? It goes double for spouses. Easy for me to say: I don't have to be friends with me, least of all be married to me. I don't know what I'd do without these good people. I'm lucky to have them around. They allow me to fuck around, to be my usual self-indulgent self, to play without consequence. Without these people, my beloved wife, my beloved friends, I'd never bother to start off writing something like:

"Not much has been going on lately, but . . . "