Enigmatic Female

The Poverty Line

Dallas is spending this year clerking for a federal judge here in Dallas. While Dallas respects and admires the judge tremendously, he sometimes struggles to extend that same admiration to the judge's staff. Perhaps it's because they tell stories like the one I'm about to write here.

"I have a nephew who was a science major in college. He thought he wanted to go to medical school, but he wasn't sure, so he decided to get a teaching job for a while. You know, teachers only make like $40,000. They live at the poverty line."

Dallas tried to intercede that $40,000 is hardly the poverty line, especially if two people were living together making $40,000 each, as under this woman's logic, Dallas and I are living at the poverty line, as we're living on his $80,000 salary, since I haven't started working yet. This just isn't a hardship, I assure you. I can even buy name brand cereal! And we have health insurance! And other stuff!

The woman (who lives in a very upscale neighborhood in Fort Worth with her husband, a surgeon) responded (and got agreement from another woman) that you just cannot afford everything you need when you only make $40,000, and that it's therefore the poverty line. She clearly wasn't prepared for resistance on this idea, as her strongest argument was this: "I know that when the judge went into public service, there were a lot of things he had to give up [federal judges make over $100,000, and they make it for the rest of their lives]. People who make $40,000 have to make sacrifices. Like where they go on vacation..."

Dallas responded, "Yup, people at the poverty line really have it rough. They can't just go to Europe for a couple weeks, they have to make sacrifices."
_______________

A couple days pass, and the staff is again assembled at lunch, and Dallas has yet another macaroni-based leftover (have I mentioned how much macaroni we've been eating?). His co-clerk commented on it, and Dallas responded, "Well, when you're living at the poverty line, you can't have that many options." Chuckles from everyone but the woman making the poverty line comment.

A Few Guilty Pleasures

1. American Idol Season 5 Reruns. Sure I know how it ends. So?

2. Macaroni. Many, many dishes made of plump little elbows.

3. The Little House on the Prairie books. As good at twenty-seven as they were at twelve.

4. Butter. On toast, on fresh French bread, on macaroni, in crumbly cobbler topping, on waffles...

5. The Biggest Loser. Despite two of the above-listed items, I'm getting almost motivated.

6. Scrubs. Six times a day.   

7. House hunting. Our current house doesn't have room for a pool, or a laundry room, or a king size bed.

8. Seventy degree days in October. We had a day in the fifties this weekend. I didn't like it.

9. $30 cashmere sweaters. Got 'em at Ross Dress for Less. To know it is to love it.

10. Monopoly. Love it like you used to.

This Moment of Clarity Sponsored By Cafe Brazil

Recently I've had pangs of self-doubt. Did I do the right thing in leaving New York and my job when I did to move here and be married to Dallas? In that former incarnation of my life, it seemed that I lacked very little. I liked my job, loved my friends, had a large salary to spend on clothes, brunch, and the latest lip gloss, and I was learning to box with a kickass trainer who helped me lose about 20 lbs in just a couple months. Life was very very good. But, and this is a loud, painful, whiny but, I felt that all of those good things were a mere consolation prize for not having what I really wanted -- a steady relationship that could lead somewhere. And by somewhere, I mean marriage, 2.4 children, a few dogs, and a full-sized kitchen. It didn't seem that I could have the life I wanted in New York without making half a million dollars a year (not to mention not being able to find the right man), which would essentially prevent me from taking any enjoyment I could find in that life, as I'd spend sixteen hours a day at work. So I moved and got the marriage, the dogs, the kitchen, and in a couple years, the children will hopefully follow, along with a house in the 'burbs with a pool and swingset out back. Unfortunately, I threw out the baby with the bath water, and accidentally convinced myself that I had to give up all the things I enjoyed about my New York life in order to get the things I wanted from my Dallas life. I've even compromised my firm stand against chain restaurants in my quest for perfectly grilled quesadillas and good salsa (a story for another time). Today, for the first time in a very long time, I feel whole. Like maybe, just maybe, I can have both the pleasures of my New York life along with the satisfactions of my Dallas life. Today I had brunch with a girlfriend. Without Dallas. It was the first brunch I've eaten in a resaurant since I left New York. I felt compelled during my first weeks in Dallas to cook an exciting breakfast for Dallas on the weekend. It was going to be "our thing," this excellent breakfast, with blueberry cakes, and frittatas, and good sausage, and homemade biscuits. Only, it never really took, and we usually found ourselves grabbing something quickly before we rushed out of the house for the rest of the day. There was no weekend ritual like I had in New York, where I was something of a brunch hound, often indulging in two brunches per weekend, as it was one of the only times my otherwise-busy attorney friends could be certain of having free time. In those days I was willing to wait an hour for a perfect cup of Sarabeth's coffee and an English muffin, to break my pork-free diet to indulge in the thick bacon strips at Good Enough to Eat, to run the risk of seeing an ex's mother at Popover Cafe for their strawberry butter on a hot popover. A good brunch would set just the right tone for a wonderful rest of the weekend. Today's brunch showed me what I've been missing, both in terms of kindred female company, as well as the wonderful indulgence that is a cozy Saturday morning meal begun with hot gourmet coffee, and finished by jelly on toast. And, to quote my kindred female dining companion about the suitability of brunch at Cafe Brazil, "what it lacks in atmosphere it makes up for in [taste]." The meal was lovely, and it boasts something way way better than any New York brunchery -- a self-serve coffee bar with more than a dozen coffee selections to which you ferry your own thick ceramic mug and choose your own brew. Bravo!

The Last 48 Hours

Tuesday morning I slept in until 10, unaware that my phone was ringing. At 10:26, I checked my phone and found a message from Dallas' 35 weeks pregnant sister-in-law. She said that Dallas' brother, J, was out of town, and that she couldn't reach her mother, and she was heading to the doctor's office, because she wasn't feeling quite right. In a frenzy, as she's had a preeclampsia scare and was still quite a ways from her due date, I got ready as quickly as possible. I spoke with her and she said she was probably next in line to see the doctor, but that it was probably nothing. I told her I was going to start driving toward her doctor's office (about an hour from our house) and if it was nothing, she could call me, and I would go home. I drove quickly, feeling that something was definitely something, not nothing. I didn't hear from her as I got closer and closer. I was about two minutes away when I heard from her again. As I turned onto the street of the doctor's office, she called me and said her water broke and that she wasn't sure what they were going to do. She was understandably scared. That all happened around 11am. By noon I had taken her to a perinatologist at a larger, better equipped for premature births, hospital. By 1:00 we knew that she was dilated two centimeters and feeling stronger contractions. The sonogram showed that the baby's estimated weight was 5 lbs, 11 oz. She was sent to labor and delivery. She was in her room by 2:00 and dilated to four centimeters. Her husband, meanwhile, was making his way north to Fort Worth, from Laredo, over five hours away. By 5:00 he arrived, she was dilated to five centimeters, and had declined an epidural. Around 5:30 they gave her some IV painkiller (pain reducer), and I headed to her and J's house to let their dogs out and tidy up a bit. Dallas met me there. Around 6:20 we got a call from Dallas' dad saying she had gone from five to eight centimeters in twenty minutes. We hurried to tie everything up and headed back to the hospital. When we were about five minutes away, Dallas' dad called back. The baby, weighing 5 lbs, 13 oz was born at 6:47. Dallas is now an uncle, making me an aunt, of a beautiful little girl who was apparently in a big rush to meet the world. She is doing well, as is her mother, and they should be heading home from the hospital today. After hearing this kind of birth story, and seeing how perfectly adorable the little baby is, it makes me feel like it might not be all that bad to go ahead and pop out a few kids while we're young. Dallas, however, has the idea that we should wait a couple years. After taking a few turns babysitting, I may want to concede him this point. Time will tell.