Mouse & Bunny

A couple of years back, Jess bought a box of Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies – basically, organic goldfish crackers shaped like rabbits – one afternoon while we were shopping at Whole Foods.  Later that evening, we sat down on the couch to watch a movie, and she brought out the Cheddar Bunnies, to snack on while we watched.

Halfway through the movie, I asked her to hand me a few.  At which point, she looked into the box, then over to me with a guilty smile; she’d unintentionally eaten the entire box.  I told her she’d probably turned into a Cheddar Bunny herself after eating that many of them.  And, from then on, the nickname stuck.

Shortly after, in response, she tagged me Mighty Mouse, I assume due to the trifecta of small size, big ears, and super(-ish) strength.  And ever since, in texts, emails, and notes, we usually address and sign off as Cheddar Bunny and Mighty Mouse.

Jess has a talent for finding awesome greeting cards.  In the past she’s given me great ones for even minor holidays.  (For Halloween, one with a ghost on the cover that read, “You’re my boo!”; another with two skeletons – one in a tux, one in a wedding gown – holding hands: “Till death do us part is for quitters.”)  But inspired by the nickname, she’s also managed to somehow find, and give to me even on random, non-holiday days, dozens and dozens of mouse and bunny-themed cards.  (“You’re wonderful,” with a bunny dressed as Wonder Woman; “You’re somebunny special”; or, for my birthday, a grey bunny holding a slice of birthday cake: “Oh no, another grey hare!”)

As I realized I could never keep up with finding equally excellent cards in response, I decided to go an alternate route, one requiring just raw time spent rather than card-sourcing skill: I started drawing cards for her myself.

Lest that sound overly impressive, I should first caveat with a note about my artistic abilities: you know how, when you’re in kindergarten, you start by drawing stick figures, and then you move on?  Well, I didn’t.  I’d like to think of my style as sort of “outsider art”, though in truth it looks more like something you might buy at a local fair to support an after-school program for severely mentally-disabled children.

Nonetheless, I have enough enthusiasm to trump my lack of talent.  So, after doing a handful of mouse and bunny cards for our anniversary, and Christmas / Chanukah, I went all out for Jess’ 30th birthday, doing 30 cards for the 30 days leading up to it: Mouse and Bunny out for a run, at dinner together, strolling hand in hand through Central Park, etc. And they were a hit.

So, since then, I’ve been sending hand-made cards to the rest of my family.  Some, like my Father’s Day card to my dad, stand alone. (That one illustrated all the generic ‘dad gifts’ my brother and I have managed to skip over the years, whether ties, golf clubs, or bottles of Scotch.)  But other cards extended the world of Mouse and Bunny to include the rest of my family.

That was aided by the fact/weird coincidence that my brother calls his wife “goat” as a term of endearment.  (I have no idea about the origin, but it predates the bunny/mouse thing by several years.)  Therefore, I already knew how to draw my sister-in-law as an animal.  And, since my brother and parents are related to me, I obviously could just draw them as mice, too (just with different hairstyles, etc.).  Then there’s my niece and nephew, though that was also pretty easy to solve: goat parent plus mouse parent equals goat-colored mouse, or mouse-colored goat.  Thus, for my parents’ birthdays, I was able to draw them cards with the whole family (everyone at the beach for my father, at the ballet for my mom), which were also a hit.

Inspired by those successes, a month or two back, I started working on a next-level attempt: a Mouse & Bunny children’s book for Jess.  Though there’s obviously a series waiting to happen here, I started with Mouse & Bunny Go for a Hike.  I loaded it up with inside jokes, small visual gags, and details I knew she’d appreciate.  And though it took me waaaaaay longer than expected to complete, I think the time definitely paid off.

Not, admittedly, in the quality of the drawing itself, which is as bad as ever. (And given Dan Ariely’s research on the so-called Ikea Effect – “people who have created something themselves come to see their amateurish creations as similar in value to expert creations” – it must be even worse than I’m self-assessing.)  But, at least, it paid off in terms of what I hope it communicated to Jess.

As I’d otherwise have trouble putting into words how mind-blowingly, heart-overflowingly wonderful and awesome and amazing she is, or what a perfect match she is for me, those 20-some terribly illustrated pages at least show how far I’m willing to go to try and communicate that love to her nonetheless.

August 26, 2018

TWO

Back in the summer of 2015, after eight years of marriage, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly single.  Friends and family argued it was for the best, but it still felt like a gut punch.  So I wallowed for a few months.  And then, I got up, shook myself off, and decided to head out on some dates.

The last time I had been single, online dating was still very much in its infancy.  But by 2015, there were more dating sites than I could count.  Over the years, however, I had always loved OK Trends, the great data science / dating psychology blog penned by the founders of OK Cupid.  So, that seeming as good a choice as any, I signed up.

Like other dating sites, OK Cupid allowed users to post pictures, profiles, and personal specifics (age, location, etc.).  But, uniquely, it also presented a huge battery of multiple choice questions.  The queries (like “how often do you make your bed?” or “in a certain light, wouldn’t nuclear war be exciting?”) ran the gamut of relationship-relevant topics, from values and lifestyle, to spirituality and sex.  To sign up for the site, you needed to answer a first 25 or so questions.  Then, as you browsed the site, you could see the full list of questions that any other user had answered. But – and here was the brilliant stroke – if you wanted to see how someone had *answered* any of those questions, you needed to answer (or have already answered) the same question yourself.  Pretty quickly, just by browsing through others’ profiles, most users amassed hundreds of answers.

For each question, OKC also asked which responses you’d accept from a partner, and how important the question was to you in choosing a partner.  From which information the site could use a Bayesian algorithm, and kick out a ‘match score’ between any two users.  In my experience, the algorithm was impressively spot-on.  Anyone with whom I matched at 80% or up would make for a totally pleasant date; above 90%, and it seemed like there might be relationship potential.

So I was particularly intrigued to discover a very cute redhead with whom I was a ‘perfect’ 99% match (the site’s highest possible score).

I spent far too much time crafting an effortlessly casual first message to her.  And, miraculously (even more so once I eventually saw the daily deluge of messages she received, and to how few of those she responded), she quickly wrote back.  After a couple of email exchanges, we set a date for the next week: drinks at a wine bar in the West Village.

I have to admit, I had a crush on her before we even met live – enough so that I spent much of the week nervous that she would cancel.  But, she showed up.  Even prettier in person, she also turned out to be funny, articulate, smart, and well-read.  She had recently moved to NYC after finishing a masters degree in classical vocal performance, so we overlapped on a love of music, and of art of all kinds.  But she was also sporty and outdoorsy, read existentialist philosophy for fun, was a foodie and a dog-lover, dreamed of both adventurous international travel and weekend afternoons on NYC beaches just a subway ride away.  She kept up with my drinking, and my mile-a-minute talking style, matching both in spades.  I was pretty much smitten right away.

On our third or fourth date, we headed to a rock concert at Bowery Ballroom, stopping for dinner before at Freeman’s, a great semi-secret restaurant nearby.  According to her OKC profile, she was “mostly vegetarian,” so I started suggesting veggie-based dishes that we might share. What looked good to her? “The filet mignon.”  But didn’t her profile say she was a vegetarian?  “Well,” she smiled, “it does say mostly.”

After a month or two, we were spending more and more time together.  One evening, sitting together on the couch, I tried to ask, basically, if she would be my girlfriend.  Except I liked her so much that my brain sort of melted down in the process, and I became a completely inarticulate, babbling moron.  I’m pretty sure she had absolutely no idea what I was asking, but she stuck around nonetheless.  We started seeing each other even more frequently.  We headed off to Atlantic City for a long weekend; though the city was terrible (as my brother accurately describes it, “Vegas in a trash can”), we had a truly excellent time together, and I was sad to drop her off at her own apartment at the end, even after dozens and dozens of hours straight in each other’s company.  For Valentine’s day, based on her long-standing love of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we headed to Montauk.  She found a Clementine-colored hoodie, and, true to the film, even managed to get a mug custom-printed with her photo as a Valentine’s gift.

We started knocking off hikes and climbs of the tallest peaks within driving / training distance of NYC.  We ate our way around NYC, dining in holes-in-the-wall (hole-in-the-walls?) and fine establishments (like a birthday dinner at Contra; along with the truly excellent wine flight, perhaps the finest meal of my life).  We ran the Hudson River trail, cooked brunch, went to jazz shows and art museums, got lost in the stacks of the Strand (like any bookstore, a dangerous place to bring her, as she invariably refuses to leave).

Somewhere along the way, she apparently agreed to my inarticulate ‘let’s go steady’ request, as we moved in together.  My brother (who loves her, as does my whole family), still calls her Jess 99 at times, in honor of that original 99% OK Cupid score.  And, indeed, she’s as perfect a match for me as I could ever hope to find.  Smart, funny, literate, thoughtful, beautiful, articulate, kind.

As of today (or maybe yesterday? it’s a matter of some record-keeping dispute), Jess and I are now two years in, and going strong.  I am, in short, exceedingly in love, and unbelievably lucky to have found her.  Further special thanks go to the fine folks at OKC for the assist; without a doubt, she remains the best online shopping I’ve ever done.

November 2, 2017