Climbyness is Next to Oddliness

What's up, it's the Notorious H.U.B.S., guestblogging by popular demand. (And I do mean demand -- thanks to reader A.T. for the late-night text message. Please can I have my puppy back now?)

Here's a little story about your regular blogger. When I met BrooklynGirl I was a starving student, living in a tiny dorm studio. It was the type of place where the kitchen was a sink and two burners, in the hallway. It was the type of place where I could sit up in bed and very nearly touch three walls. It was the type of place where I literally -- LITERALLY literally - propped my bedframe up on its side every day so I could stand the mattress behind it and pretend I had a living room. Ok, half a living room. It was that type of place.

Anyway, after I met BrooklynGirl but before she looked around my fireproof hovel and sang "let me upgrade you," she came over a few times to hang out. We were young and giddy with newfound love, but I was extra giddy at not having been dumped when I told her I lived in a dorm. What sort of person does that, at my distinguished age? How strange do you have to be to voluntarily cohabitate with close-talking grad students from Minsk and college sophomores in Levi-would-shudder jeans? Pretty odd, right?

And then, all at once, my worries were gone. Because during one of BrooklynGirl's visits, I looked up from my seat in the "living room" to see my unofficial fiancee, the love of my life, the syrup on my pancakes, standing.

On my windowsill.

Just standing there, four feet up. As if it were perfectly normal. Chillin'. What's more, this relocation from normal altitude had occurred when I'd looked away for just a moment, IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION. "Sometimes I feel climb-y, " she explained meekly, and I've learned that to be true. The other day she towered over me from the ledge by my desk, and last week she was alarmed when she thought--mistakenly, for just a second--that someone had pruned a certain tree on our block. Seems she finds that tree tantalizingly climbalicious, and has been waiting for a chance to scale it. All of which is to say: I know I have nothing to worry about. My wife is one odd duck. (A climbing duck, I guess.)

H.U.B.S. is out, my people. I will strike again when you least expect it!