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This is 2008. We are in Sydney.

This is what Rand and I look like.

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And the Opera House.

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And the harbor.

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This is what Ciaran looks like in 2008. He lives in London, but is in Sydney for the same conference that Rand is attending.

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2 months prior, I was laid off from my job. I remember the news as coming in via text message, but it was actually an email.

In four months, Rand and I will get married in the shade of a white house on a day that will reach 98 degrees.

This is one of the first of Rand’s business trips that I’ve accompanied him on. I intend to sit around the conference center, waiting until he’s free. I don’t even entertain exploring the city on my own until Ciaran says the following:

“You are not going to spend your day at the conference. This is my favorite city in the world. You have to go out and see it.”

It will be the first time I’ve ever wandered a city on my own. This is the self-portrait I take in front of the Opera House.

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And on the bridge.

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And at Luna Park.

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In 2008, Jane is living in Seattle. She has come to Sydney with us, and I take this photo of her and Rand and Ciaran.

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And here is one I take over my shoulder, without looking.

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The four of us will walk through the Botanical Garden, and Ciaran will point out the bats in hanging in the trees.

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We will have a conversation that I don’t remember, except for this one exchange …

Me: I have good news!

Ciaran: You do have a sister?

I have no reply to this, and Rand teases me for blushing.

Later, I will take this photo of Rand and Ciaran as they talk. I can’t hear what they say, but I think that one of them laughs.

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This is 2013. We are in Sydney.

This is what Rand and I look like.

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And the Opera House.

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And the Harbor.

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This is what Ciaran looks like in 2013. Several months ago, he moved to Sydney with his wife. Last September, we went to their wedding in Ireland.

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I’ve lost track of how many of Rand’s business trips I’ve been on. We have been to Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, England, Peru, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, San Marino, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden. And once, we drove through Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.

I have explored countless cities on my own. But Sydney was the first. I wander around it again.

This is the self-portrait I take in front of the Opera House.

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In 2013, Jane is living in London, and does not come for the conference. But Ciaran’s parents are in town. This is the photo I take of the four of them.

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We walk through the Botanical Garden, and look for the bats in the trees. Ciaran tells us that they are gone.

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Later, I will take this photo of Rand and Ciaran as they talk. I can’t hear what they say.

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But Ciaran makes me laugh.

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Behold:

Note to self: next time you decide to post photos of your undergarments to the your blog, consider picking a slightly prettier pair.

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You know, it just occurred to me that the above photo looks a little crass. Here it is again in black and white:

Now it’s classy!

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That is my bra, which, in a sleep-deprived hazed, I seem to have left on the towel rack of our bathroom sometime on Saturday, shortly after we got back from Europe. I have zero recollection of having put it there. I’m not even entirely sure why I took off my bra in the middle of the day (though to be fair, it was something like 1 am in Paris, which is a perfectly acceptable hour at which to not be wearing a bra). I suspect it had something to do with the subsequent nap I took.

Later, feeling somewhat refreshed, I got dressed and headed to our friends’ wedding reception. There, I had a slice of cake that was so good, I might have proposed to the woman who baked it, promising her that we could be really fat and happy together.

I also had one and a half drinks which, as some of you know, is enough to make me forget that I can’t dance. I crawled into bed near midnight, humming indie rock love songs. And Sunday morning, when I went into the bathroom, I saw this:

Another bra has arrived. Clearly, this bathroom is their spawning ground. Soon, this land will be crawling with tiny little training bras.

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No recollection of how that one got there, either. If a third one shows up, I’m blaming poltergeists.

I know, I know. I inadvertently took a week off of blogging. I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to. After France we headed to Germany and … well, have you ever tried to get internet access in rural Bavaria? It’s impossible. On the plus side, it’s very easy to get good pretzels and sausages. And now, the night before our flight, we find ourselves in an airport hotel in Munich and I finally, FINALLY have access to my poor neglected blog.

Some of you have sent me emails and tweets asking if I am okay. That is absurdly sweet. Thank you, I am very well. A few pounds heavier, and rather annoyed at the guy who sold us a third-rate SIM card at the airport in Munich, but well. And I have loads to tell you. Tons and tons of things.

About France. And Germany. And self-acceptance and patience and macarons and eclairs. So much.

But I’m not even done talking about Sydney yet. And between that trip and this one to Europe, we squeezed in jaunts to Florida and Boston, which I need to share with you as well. Time seems to be passing me by too quickly.

And should you need more proof of that, take a gander at this photo I found of Rand and me in Sydney in the spring of 2008:

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WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE? I honestly have no idea. Look how young and pink and unwrinkled they are. It’s … weird.

Compare that to this photo that our friend Ellie took during our last trip to Sydney.

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Note how Rand is getting absurdly handsome and distinguished and grey, and how I look like a wax figure of myself that’s been left out in the sun NICE AS WELL (I am working on some self-acceptance.)

Whenever Rand finishes a book before me, or sees a movie before I do, I always ask him to tell me how it turns out. Not spoilers, per se; I just want to know if the resolution is a happy one. And if it isn’t, I usually skip it. I know it’s kind of cliche, but I’ve reasoned that life is just too short to spend on narratives that lack happy endings.

Besides, even though I know how things will turn out, I still enjoy the story.

And, well … I know a lot of you know the story of my blog. I know the narrative repeats itself over and over. Much of what I say and what I experience isn’t new. I eat a lot of cakes. I get lost. I get yelled at. I make out with Rand. I doubt myself. I wonder if these jeans make me look fat. I remind myself that it doesn’t matter if they do or not.

Rinse and repeat.

Even though you know the story, even though you know how it turns out, I hope you keep reading. Because I still want to share it all with you. And next week, I promise, I’ll go back to doing that. But first, I need to get home.

Have a wonderful weekend, folks. Talk to you when I’m stateside.

View from our hotel room in Sydney.

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Live in a town long enough, and it will change you.

I’ve been in Seattle for much of my life, and much like the family pet goat that once drenched my five-year-old self with urine, this town has left its mark on me (although often in much kinder, less urine-y ways).

For example …

After enough years on Seattle roadways, I now am physically unable to exceed the speed limit when I am behind the wheel. Not long ago I saw someone zipping past me on the freeway. The guy must have been going 63, 64 miles per hour, while I was cruising along at a perfectly reasonable 55.

“Maniac,” I muttered to myself. And then, for good measure, I shouted “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” though I do not know to which children I may have been referring.

Granted, the speed limit was 60 mph, but that’s just a suggestion. A suggestion for maniacs.

My town’s passivity has rubbed off on me as well, undoing any lessons I may have learned from my mother, a woman who is far from passive. Even when she’s asleep, her presence is deafening. “I AM HERE,” her metered breaths seem to shout, “AND I WAS WONDERING IF YOU WERE GOING TO EAT THAT.” In. Her. Sleep.

I, on the other hand, recently stood at the fish counter of my local grocery store for the better part of an afternoon, waiting for the two people in back to turn around and notice me.

I suppose I could have called out to them or cleared my throat loudly or something, but I’ll leave that sort of crazy, pushy, behavior to east coasters.

Besides, a mere seventeen minutes later I got my fish, thanks to another employee who didn’t even work in that section, but saw me standing there and felt pity on me.

But the most notable impact of living in Seattle all these years might have to be this: I am absolutely impervious to rain while on vacation. Granted, I realize that probably doesn’t sound all that impressive. But since it’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever have to a superpower, I’m sticking with it.

Rand and I first noticed that our reaction to rain was different than that of most during a trip down to Los Angeles last December. It the Friday before Christmas, and we were walking through an outdoor promenade type shopping thing. A light rain had been intermittently falling.

In Seattle, we’d call this sunshine. Or at the very least, “not rain.”

For most Angelenos, however, it was a clear sign of the end of days, as they immediately cleared out the area on what should have been a profoundly busy shopping day. I suspect the grocery stores, however, were packed with people buying flashlights and batteries and carton upon carton of corn nog in anticipation of forthcoming apocalypse.

It meant that we had our run of the place.

“I AM THE QUEEN OF THIS PROMENADE TYPE SHOPPING THING,” I shouted, running down the pedestrian-only street (seriously, what are these things called? We do not have them here in the northwest. Our malls have walls. And ceilings. And Cinnabons. AS THEY SHOULD.)

A few shopkeepers eyed us warily – we were the tornado chasers. Running around in the drizzle as though we felt nothing.

It was the same in Sydney. We’d had a week of sunshine in the Great Barrier Reef, and when we found Sydney cloaked in a blanket of grey clouds and drizzle, we merely laughed.

And then we set out to explore the city. We had some lovely company, too:

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It turns out that anyone from the U.K. or Ireland seems to share our superpower. Take that, rain.

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I’ve been having a lot of trouble blogging lately. It’s something I’ve been trying to ignore – throwing up a post here and there, attempting to make them funny and light when frankly, my heart just hasn’t been in it.

I originally started this blog for Rand. Having been cursed since birth to roam the world with the memory of a goldfish, he has only vague recollections of many of our trips. Time and again he’ll start recounting a story, and I’ll have to fill in the gaps.

And holy cats, there are a lot of gaps.

“Remember that time,” he’ll say. “When we were at that place, with those people, and that thing happened? Wasn’t that just something?”

I am being only slightly hyperbolic here. He will actually say things like this, after which I’ll ask him a few questions (“What did the people look like?” “Was the place indoors or out? Cold or warm? Actually visited by the two of us or completely invented by you?”) and piece together what he’s talking about.

“I blogged about that, babe,” I’ll say, and gently direct him to a post that explains in detail what happened that one time with those people. And it was just something.

Nobody freak out: the blog still serves that original purpose. Rand and I are happy and fine together, and I still write with him in mind. I mean, how could I not want to get up every morning and write about this guy:

I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure it’s magic.

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But now my sphere of readership is much bigger; this isn’t really something I anticipated, and while I’m grateful for it, it also scares the crap out of me. A recent scathing comment on the blog (in which I was told, in succinct and indelicate terms, that I prattle on about the same nonsense and it is “just sad.”) had me questioning a lot of things. And while I’m sure the hater’s comment was not designed to actually make me think (because hateful comments rarely have that goal), it did indeed make me wonder: is it selfish to write a travel blog when so many terrible things are happening around the world?

Yesterday a friend was telling me about the factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed 1,000 people, mostly women and children. I managed to miss this story entirely when it was at the front of the newscycle. Another friend of mine, who recently moved to Oklahoma, is constantly updating her Facebook with tales of tornado warnings (often with news that yes, she’s alive and well, and hiding in her closet). Still another describes the scenes outside the window of her apartment in Turkey – riots and screaming, police pushing protesters back, trying to disperse the crowd.

While I complain about the price of food at the gorgeous resort we’ve just visited.

I want to keep writing, but it seems insensitive and out of touch and entirely douchey to warble on about my travels in the wake of all of this. I’m having a lot of difficulty on that front. Food blogs make more sense to me, even in difficult times. Food is a source of comfort. When things get rough, people still need to eat, right?

But what about travel blogs? What role do they play when things are shitty? Do they distract? Enlighten? Remind us that we aren’t alone, and that we’d better try to make the world a better place for everyone else?

Does my blog do that?

I honestly don’t know. I’d like to think that it does. But it’s hard not to feel self-absorbed and petty and privileged at times like this. I think about my original goal – of writing this blog for Rand, and while that brings a bit of perspective to all of it, it also makes me wonder if I am causing more harm than good. My husband was recently skewered online. I will say only that the discussion was full of a crapload of half truths, but as the discussion in the comments reached a fever pitch, one person left the following remark:

“He even gave his wife a brain tumor.”

I don’t know what to do with that. My intent, in revealing so much of my self and our lives online was never to have it be turned against him. And for the record, even though he lets me play with broken thermometers and he put a giant old microwave in my office which keeps me warm on cold nights*, I’m pretty sure Rand didn’t give me a brain tumor.

I’m not sure if I have any answers here. I’m just trying to figure out how to be honest with myself, and with all of you. I’m trying to figure out how to keep blogging, when it seems like I should be doing so, so much more.

I’d love your thoughts on the issue.

*Oh, and Rand didn’t actually do this stuff. In case you were wondering.

UPDATE: Wowzers, guys. I’m completely humbled and honored and rendered kind of speechless by your replies. Thank you all so much – I didn’t mean that I was going to quit blogging right this second or anything. I was just, as Rand put it, having a crisis of faith, and feeling really guilty that I can go about my day blogging and writing about my privileged life when a lot of people out there are going through a lot of crap.

Bottom line: I might be switching some things up a little in the future. But I promise that whatever I do, I’ll keep blogging, okay?

We’d kayak in the morning, and snorkel in the afternoon. We’d hike to the edges of the island, as far as we could safely go, and sometimes even a little farther than that.

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When there was no place left to go, we stopped.

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All through it, Rand would frantically tell me to watch my step on the uneven trail, or watch the edge of the path, or to just stop doing whatever it was I was doing, because he was terrified of the idea of me tumbling over the edge. Terrified in the same way I’d been so many times before, when he ventured too close to the edge and I begged him to come back.

He would not let me climb on top of this thing, on account of the whole falling-to-my-death quality it seemed to have.

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And so I listened to him, walked a little more carefully, took his hand when he offered it.

Which was often.

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And he decided not to be angry with me.

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There are far more fun ways that a married couple can get tired and hot and sweaty together on vacation. But I think we both had a nice time.

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On other days, we didn’t do very much at all. I mean, besides wandering around, looking for lizards.

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When we found them, we took pictures.

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And when even that became too much excursion for us, we sat by the beach, reading. And doing little else.

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Those days were fun, too, but I think we learned something about ourselves. Mainly, that neither of us is that good at doing nothing. Inevitably, after a few hours spent on the beach, watching the clouds drift by as I pretended to read my book, he’d turn to me and declare that he was bored.

Then he’d ask if I wanted to go on a hike. Or searching for lizards. Or frogs. Or whatever else we might find. And my answer was always the same: Yes, yes I would.

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I would like that very much.

Clouds begin to roll in over the resort at Hayman.

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On our last night on Hayman Island, it rained.

We didn’t mind it so much. We’d had our sun – five days with weather that was just about as perfect as one can get. We watched the clouds gather ominously, the promise of a thunderstorm that never did materialize. We only got a bit of a rain shower.

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It caught us as we were out for a walk on the beach.

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Growing up in Florida, I learned that a beach is not where you want to be during a storm. So I dragged Rand (who really wanted to stay and frolic in the surf, but NO. No, that was not happening) back to the resort. The island was lovely, even in a downpour.

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We decided to keep walking. There wasn’t any thunder or lightening to worry about, and the resort had umbrellas sitting around everywhere, so it turned out to be a nice stroll.

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Plus, we’re used to the rain. We’ve accepted that it’s a facet of our life. The grey clouds that hover above our home town also seem to follow us, even when we’re on vacation at the ends of the earth.

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My husband, marveling at the notion of warm rain.

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And we’re both pretty okay with that.

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Sunsets on Hayman island were quite lovely.

I’m mostly speculating here: we missed a large number of them. We were so jet lagged that we were often in our room by dusk, impatiently watching the last bit of light disappear from the sky so we could justifiably crawl into bed.

I don’t know if two childless adults have ever cheered the arrival of 7:30pm as much as we.

On one or two nights we managed to stay awake and watch the sky turn dark. The turquoise of the water would turn a deep indigo, the blue sky slowing fading into a hazy shade of orange and periwinkle.

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And all the shy, nocturnal animals would emerge. If you’ve seen a possum stateside, you already know that they are one of the more terrifying mammals in existence. They look like a hybrid between a Skeksis and the scary face that Alec Baldwin makes in Beetlejuice. #childofthe80s

But in Australia, they were downright adorable:

It’s like Sanrio got a friggin hold of them.

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Even the bats were lovely; we’d pass underneath a tree, hear a soft rustle, and see one fly out of it, flapping its giant leathery wings in the fading light.

Wallabies, a notoriously shy creature during the daylight hours, would begin to descend from the hills looking for food at sunset. They’d freeze when they saw us. We’d stare at each other for a few tense seconds before they’d bound off, covering huge distances in a few quick jumps.

This was what we had been missing.

One evening, we managed to see all of it. We’d decided to go on a walk before dinner (in an effort not only to see the island at sunset, but also to keep ourselves awake for long enough to actually enjoy an evening meal). We headed down the beach, following the shore as it curled away from the resort.

We’d managed to catch low tide, and waded in the warm water, gesturing to little creatures with our toes. Growing up in Florida, I’ve developed a nasty habit of reaching into the water and picking up whatever I find interesting in order to show it to Rand.

Thus I was scolded for the umpteenth time to “Put that hermit crab back where you found it. Its terrified.”

But then you went and did the EXACT SAME THING, didn’t you, Rand? DIDN’T YOU?

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And Rand took photo after photo of me, which made me self-conscious, but also sort of happy. It’s nice to know that even when your hair is a mess, and your skin is breaking out from sunscreen, and you are wearing a sundress that was last laundered in your hotel room sink (ditto for your underwear), there is someone who still thinks that you are lovely.

Thankfully, some of the photos were in silhouette, which makes everyone look better.

I guess the evening wasn’t incredibly eventful. We walked along the beach, looked at the water and thought deep thoughts: -

“I should start breeding miniature horses.”

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“I wonder what a marshmallow factory smells like. Good, I bet.”

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We watched the sun disappear, and started heading back to the resort. It was nearly dinner time.

Suddenly, I stopped.

“Oh, my god.” I said in a shocked whisper.

“What is it?”

“I just realized … I do like holding hands and long walks on the beach at sunset.”

Not gonna lie: this realization caught me by surprise.

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I just needed to stay awake for long enough to realize it.

My brain, pre-surgery. See the little grey nob at the base of the white V-shaped ventricles? That was my tumor.

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So don’t have to get another MRI for a whole year now, but as I stare at those images my the inside of my head, I realize my fascination with the human brain remains. Looking at the cross section of grey matter, at the organ that makes me me, I find myself amazed at how we all function.

Or, rather, I’m amazed at how I function, and I just assume that everyone else operates the same way.

The other day, I couldn’t remember the name of the actress that I think bears a striking resemblance to my friend Katie. So I just gave up on the matter, knowing that my brain would come through. And sure enough, a few hours later, while Katie and I were having dinner at a Japanese restaurant and talking about something entirely different, I looked up at her and screamed, “LINDSAY SLOANE.”

(Thankfully, Katie’s known me long enough to not get fazed when I do stuff like that. She just stared at me, nodded slightly, and went back to her sashimi.)

But … it’s amazing isn’t it? I mean, how the hell did my brain do that? It has, on occasion, been unable to identify people that I’ve met a half-dozen times, but is able to pull the names of random actresses from deep within the folds of my grey matter when I’m not even consciously focusing on that.

The machinations of my mind become even more intriguing during long trips, when sleep deprivation and jetlag start trashing the inside of my skull like college-freshmen in a summer rental.

As we flew to Sydney, I curled up, exhausted, in my seat. I had earplugs in, over which I’d placed noise-reducing headphones. My sleep mask was pulled down over my eyes, and my blanket was tucked in around me (with the seatbelt fastened over it so that the flight attendants needn’t wake me).

I was about as comfortable as an adult human could be in a premium economy seat. And so I tried to lull myself to sleep on a trans-Pacific flight (a near-impossibility for me).

You are so comfy, I thought to myself. And so tired. So let’s just think about how you are relaxing in a hammock, and all the sounds of the plane are actually someone mowing their lawn a few houses over. Yes. And you are drifting, drifting … Nope, nope. Nevermind. You have to pee.

No, wait. Maybe you don’t. Nah, you’re fine. Anywho, you are drifting, drifting off to sleep and …

On second thought, you do have to pee. Like, really badly. Do you hear me? YOUR BLADDER IS FULLER THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN. IT IS LIKE A WATER BALLOON IN THE HANDS OF A FIVE-YEAR-OLD. It is just waiting to bust. Go. Pee. Now.

So I begrudgingly got up from the cocoon that I had created for myself, and wandered over to the bathroom, where my bladder managed to produce not a flood-like deluge but a mere trickle as if to say, “Take that, sucker.” I walked back to my seat a tired and broken woman.

Once again, I reentered my cocoon, tried lulling myself to sleep with visions of hammocks and lawnmowers or whatever, and just as this process was beginning to sort of almost work …

MY BLOOD RUNS COLD, MY MEMORY HAS JUST BEEN SOLD!

My brain, in an act of treason comparable to Brett Favre playing for the Vikings, started blaring the lyrics of “Centerfold” by The J. Geils Band. Are you familiar with this song? It’s about a guy who purchases a nudie magazine and is horrified to see that his high school crush is You know what? Never mind what the song is about. It totally doesn’t matter. The important thing is that it is one of the worst songs ever written. I can only assume whoever penned it hates humanity and created this ditty as a sort of punishment to inflict upon us. Seriously. It’s soooooo bad.

And my brain was mercilessly blaring it at 30,000 feet. I have no idea why it decided selected that song, but it did.

MY ANGEL IS A CENTERFOLD! MY ANGEL IS A CENTERFOLD! 

I tried every trick I had to rid my mind of it and attempt to sleep. I counted sheep. I hummed the “Girl from Ipanema” (which I’ve heard works to unstick a song in your head). I even tried a tactic I devised as a kid, where I imagine the song is emitted from a small radio, that I subsequently bash with a sledgehammer, ending the noise. This latter technique almost always works for me.

But this time, it didn’t. What’s worse is that I don’t even know all the lyrics to this godawful song, so it was just the chorus, playing over and over and again. It. Did. Not. Stop.

We finally got to Sydney. I had had no sleep.

In a daze, we took another flight to Hamilton island, and from there we took a boat to Hayman island, where we’d be staying for the week. I was half awake through all of it, yawning and stumbling as I watched the Great Barrier Reef unfold in front of me. It was glorious, and I vaguely remember it.

I guess we got on this boat?

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And I think that maybe this happened.

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No friggin CLUE who this guy is, but he seemed nice.

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A few days later, we were well caught up on sleep, and exploring some of the islands of the reef. We found ourselves on Langford, which is uninhabited and, at high tide, a little more that a narrow spit of white sand surrounded by turquoise water, and a reef that is exceptionally popular with the local sea turtles.

That’s right: there are friggin sea turtles in the water and YOU CAN SWIM WITH THEM.

Rand and I did just that snorkeling around and hoping that the turtles would approach, but found that they were feeling a little shy that day.

Except for one. I saw it resting on the sea floor, slowing moving around. And because my world is full of magic, it gently began to rise up for air directly where I was. It was so close to me that I could touch it. Which I did, gently, my gloved fingers touching its shell for a brief moment.

You’d think that my brain, now well rested, would have quietly let me enjoy this moment. That it would be silent as I encoded in this memory in its folds, to be revisited again and again until the day I die.

Instead, perhaps aware of the significance of what was happening, the sheer incredibleness of it all, it began to screech like a drunk sorority girl. A rapid-pace color commentary on the situation that was entirely unnecessary and vapid. And as much as I willed otherwise, it would not shut up.

Oh. Mah. Gawd.

That is a frigging sea turtle, and you just touched it. You just REACHED OVER and TOUCHED IT. That was, like, pretty much the best thing to happen, ever. IT TOTALLY WAS. Are you listening? THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST MOMENTS OF YOUR LIFE AND I HOPE YOU ARE PAYING ATTENTION TO IT. 

Followed by a brief pause, and then, as I watched the sea turtle gently swim away …

MY BLOOD RUNS COLD, MY MEMORIES HAVE JUST BEEN SOLD.

MY ANGEL IS A CENTERFOLD. MY ANGEL IS A CENTERFOLD.

Sigh. Just another day with my unremarkable brain.

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Years ago, my friend Rachel was telling me a story about her then-boyfriend (and now husband) Adam. I can’t quite remember what it was about, but she paused halfway through and said, ”Do you ever have those moments where you look at someone and realize how much you love them? Well, I had one of those moments.”

I, of course, knew exactly what she meant.

I should warn you right now, that if you are in no mood to read about how lovesick I am, you should probably visit another blog and come back to this one later. Or possibly never. Sorry.

But if you do go, never to return, you will miss out a great deal of awesomeness. Behold:

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I should explain how all of this played out, and how I found myself staring at my husband at the end of Portobello Road, thinking, “Holy crap. I love this man.”

As is often the case with Rand, this outpouring of heartfelt emotion was followed shortly thereafter by, “This is really weird.”

We’d just walked through the antiques market in Portobello Road and, miraculously, the clouds began to part slightly. There were even moments where we could see blue sky overhead.

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And as we strolled, we could hear music playing over a screechy speaker system. The sound quality was awful, and we couldn’t understand why it was being blared through the street, until we neared an intersection and saw them.-

There were two gentleman, emphatically lip-synching “Monday, Monday” by The Mamas & the Papas,

“Wow,” I muttered to Rand. “These might be the two worst street performers on the planet.” Rand nodded, but pointed out that it was kind of impressive. Despite a complete and utter lack of talent, and no real instruments to speak of, they had found a way to busk for money. It was somewhat ingenious.

I asked Rand to give them some money so I could take a photo. Obligingly, he walked over and plunked a coin in their bin (they’d set it on the ground in front of them, along with a book entitled How to Drink).

Enthused by my husband’s generosity, the lead singer (can I even call him that? I mean, he was wearing a napoleon style hat with a stuffed animal skull on it, and was barefoot save for one flipper, so he was obviously in charge, right?) pulled Rand over and handed him a toy guitar. And then this happened:

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And this:

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I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s one of the greatest things, ever.

I watched my husband, half in awe. Not only at his stage presence (which, as you can see, is beyond reproach) but at his ability to not take himself too seriously. I marveled at the manner is which he stood there, absent of any self-doubt, and played a toy guitar with gusto, along with two gentleman who may or may not have been drunk.

And all I could think was: Wow. I really, really love him.

And also: This is weird. 

Rand stayed and performed until the end of the song. He handed the toy guitar back to the lead singer, and found me in the crowd. Wordlessly, he took my hand, and we walked on through the crowds at the edge of Portobello Road Market.

For a long time, neither of us said anything. We just walked, Rand holding me close, and looking off into the distance. Finally, he spoke.

“Holy shit. Those guys are nuts.”

We both laughed and I brushed a bit of hair from his forehead, and thought about how he is my beloved. And it wasn’t weird at all.