Perceptive reader “Curious” asked about the significance of Mighty Bear Woman. I will oblige.                                                

I was going to name this the Fog Blog—I like fog and rhyming. It turns out, however, that Fog Blog is taken.  Slog Blog then came to mind.  I suffer from SAD—Slow-going-All-Daylong—throughout the year.  Mornings are especially difficult.  I get up when my Marty solemnly enters our bedroom and announces “Your coffee, my queen.”  He makes it according to my exact specifications: a little soy milk warmed up in the micro-wave for thirty-six seconds, then the freshly brewed Starbucks Morning Blend.

Slog Blog is taken.

“Does it have to rhyme?” asked Marty.

“I want something catchy.”

“How about Wife of Marty?”

I decided to query my Facebook friends, giving them the following options: soberlithuanian, crazylugan, am/lit, and happydaiva. The insightful Melissa Routzahn wrote the following: “If a sober Lithuanian is anything like a sober Latvian then it’s a mythical creature, which does give it an element of intrigue.” A number of people liked crazylugan, but I nevertheless crossed it off the list—I don’t want a bunch of crazy lugans angry at me.

The most popular choice was happydaiva, but a former student mused that it would reduce my “ability to rant in the blog at a later date” because I’ve set  “an unrealistic tone of happiness.”

I soon realized I needed a different name and decided on The Adventures of Mighty Bear Woman.

Mighty Bear Woman came into existence when I was seventeen years old. I was a shy, uncoordinated teenager, afraid to speak up in class, terrified of boys, scared of life in general. One night I had a dream that I was dressed in a bear costume. I tried to take off my bear head only to discover that it was stuck and that I had grown two feet. I came to an important realization in the dream—bears get respect!

Mighty Bear Woman was born that night many years ago. She roams the streets of Chicago and suburbs when the sun has set, looking for evildoers, avenging wrongs, primarily those against women. Half human, half bear, MBW has the strength of a European brown bear and the brains of a smarter-than-average human being.

Some of you might suspect that Mighty Bear Woman and I are the same creature. You would be wrong. MBW cheers for the Cubs inasmuch as she cares about baseball at all. (She once accidently sat on a Cubs fan named Tim Taylor—he had to be hospitalized.) She likes football, especially the Bears. Her favorite sport, however, is ice hockey. There is nothing she likes better than donning a pair of skates and joining in a fast-paced game somewhere in Finland.

Mighty Bear Woman drives a Harley Davidson.  I drive a 2001 forest green Chevy Prizm with no electronic anything.  

I wear loose-fitting shirts with leggings or clingy wrap dresses with a touch of spandex.

Mighty Bear Woman goes around naked much of the time.  She dons a flirty blue dress for special occasions. Sometimes she pins a police badge onto her thick brown fur. Mighty Bear Woman has gotten into trouble impersonating police officers and stopping unsuspecting male speedsters.

Mighty Bear Woman will sometimes blog in this space, a difficult endeavor since she is a poor typer.  Topics by both MBW and Lucky Daiva (me) will include books, baseball, music, marriage, Scrabble, sex, foraging for berries, and why European brown bears are better than grizzlies.

When I dream of Paul Konerko, he is not selling me stamps at the Post Office or writing me out a speeding ticket.  No, we are involved in more intimate interactions. After these interactions, Konerko, first baseman and super slugger for the Sox, always tells me he desires as his life’s companion not his young, slim, sane wife, but an overweight, angry, menopausal woman. The dreams always end with his wife busting in on us, shocked not so much that Pauly is in bed with another woman, but that the woman happens to be me.   

I’m hoping the White Sox’s 9-game winning streak will put an end to foolish rebuilding rumors. Losing Konerko would be disastrous, not only to the team, but, more importantly, to the team’s many robust female fans. Who would I dream about? (Wait, no, that’s “Of whom would I dream?”)  Alexei Ramirez?

The winning streak is, of course, the direct result of my husband and me spending a week in Lithuania. This interesting causal relationship was pointed out by wise sports observer Joe Heumann.

Marty and I are buying tickets to Lithuania the minute the Sox lose a game.   

Earlier in the season the White Sox lost a bunch of games in a row, five, I think. Marty claims it’s because I had washed his lucky shirt. How ridiculous. Everyone knows they lost these games because I had angered the God of Baseball by referring to the Yankees as the Skankees and the Minnesota Twins as an irritating stain on the otherwise pristine cloth of American League, Central Division baseball. (You try scrubbing them out, soaking them out….) I was also harassing clerks at gift shops and gas stations throughout Central Illinois by pointing to Cubs paraphernalia and faux-politely inquiring: “Can you tell me where I can find the White Sox stuff?” Slack-jawed stares of stupidity met my question, as if I had asked where the radium to make the atomic bombs was kept. Once, at a Cracker Barrel, I grabbed a cute little Cubby teddy bear off the shelf and stuffed him head first into a mug with the Cubs logo. I ground him into the mug. I then proceeded to cram all of the surrounding cubby-wubby teddy bears into all of the mugs. I felt a twinge of guilt when a little boy—he couldn’t have been more than four—saw the bears with their chubby cubby feet sticking out into the air and started screaming. His mother glared at me: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I should be ashamed of myself—a woman in her fifties, an accomplished professional, a devoted wife and teacher, stuffing teddy bears into mugs. I don’t hate the Cubs.  I just get annoyed at the media hoopla that follows their every misguided move. Here in Central Illinois the television stations begin their baseball coverage with the Cubs, followed by the Cardinals. (Sometimes vice-versa.) I don’t mind the Cardinals coverage—they deserve it with their history of World Series appearances and wins. The Sox get 15 seconds if they get anything at all. And many Cubs fans, more so than Sox and Cards fans, simply don’t know the game. Cubs fans think a “utility man” is the guy who changes the lights at Wrigley Field.

My husband’s idea of fine dining is The Olive Garden. He loves the endless salad bowl; he keeps the waiters working.  I like restaurants where the chef experiments with new ingredients and the waiters don’t call the customers you guys.

Neither of us cooks much, which presents problems. Sometimes I’ll make spaghetti or a stir-fry with shrimp or chicken. I’m good with salads and soups.

Marty’s usual daily dinner fare is a 12 inch Subway sandwich. He often asks for turkey meat with all the vegetables, plus additional tomatoes. No mayo. Extra mustard, lots of vinegar. LOTS of vinegar. The workers at our local Subway, some of them former students of mine, call him Vinegar Man.  Once I joined my husband for his evening meal. “Dr. Markelis is married to Vinegar Man,” I heard one of the workers whisper to the cashier.

My husband loves football. He used to play offensive half-back in high school and then again in college. This wasn’t enough football, so he joined a touch football team called the Beercats. He played on the Beercats for twenty years. He was Number 36, the middle linebacker. 

“What’s a middle line-backer?” I asked Marty when we first started dating.

“Think of him as the quarterback for the defense.”

“What’s the defense?”

My husband has a lucky number. Thirty-six.

I don’t believe in lucky numbers.

My husband cheers for his team even when watching a game that’s been taped.

“That’s stupid,” I say.

He responds with a talk about quantum mechanics and string theory.

I once took him to a Lyric production of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. Not even an opera, but an operetta, a farce, “a funny play with lively music,” I told him. He kept waiting for the superhero to appear.

“Superhero?”

“You know. Deflator Mouse.”

“What?”

“Mighty Mouse. Without the self-esteem.”

He used to gamble. I used to drink.

He likes South Park and The Simpsons; I enjoy the Simpsons, but think South Park is juvenile.

He likes puns.

“A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it,” he’ll say. Or, “The best way to communicate with fish is to drop them a line.”

“What time is your dentist appointment?” I asked him once.

“Tooth-hurty.”

“I thought it was at three.”

“No. It’s at TOOTH HURTY.”

I ignore his puns. I don’t want to encourage him. This makes him angry. “I should at least get a groan. Or a courtesy laugh.”

We argue about the concept of the courtesy laugh.

“You give your friends a courtesy laugh when they tell jokes that aren’t funny,” he claims.

“My friends don’t tell jokes. They’re naturally funny.”

I feel bad when I say things like this. Luckily, I know what makes my husband happy. A game of Scrabble. My husband is a Scrabble genius; give him a seven letter word like PRESENT and he’ll come up with its anagrams in seconds: PENSTER, SERPENT, REPENTS.

“Think of the story in the first chapter of the Bible. The snake, or the SERPENT REPENTS because the Old Testament writer, the PENSTER, is there. He’s PRESENT.”

“Except in the Bible the serpent doesn’t repent. In fact, he’s responsible for the downfall of man.”

“Well, maybe if there’d been a better penster present…..”

When we play Scrabble, my husband usually wins. I used to try to distract him with small talk and, sometimes, puns: “How do you like my rack?” I’d say, pointing simultaneously to my breasts and my Scrabble tiles. This would make him angry, almost as angry as when I’d place one of the tiles on the board upside down.

He lugs around a Scrabble board the way some men carry condoms. “You never know when you’ll get lucky,” he says.

My husband talks at length to salespeople, waiters and waitresses, cashiers. They like him, except for the grumpy Subway owner who charged him extra for tomatoes.  

“Sir, you are eating me out of house and home,” she said in a thick Indian accent.

“None of the other Subways charge extra for tomatoes,” he replied.

“You understand, no?” she said very slowly, as if talking to a child, “vee awe in-di-vi-duly owned and oper-ated.”

My husband cries at movies.  Years ago we went to see Babe, the story of the beleaguered pig. At the end of the film, when Babe enters the sheep-herding contest and emerges victorious over the dog, garnering perfect 10’s and the adoration of the crowd, I heard a funny sniffling sound coming from the right. My football player husband, eyes wet with tears, head trying to disappear into his jacket, was holding back sobs.

We argue about his driving (my nagging), his lateness (my nagging), and his choice of restaurants (my pickiness.)

We rarely argue about money, never about sex or politics. We both like sex. With each other. We’ve done it on a golf course in October, on a raft in Lake Michigan, on a big oak table in an executive board room at the Dartmouth Library.

I am the more jealous one. Sometimes I dream that my husband is with another woman, someone younger and thinner and more athletic. Someone who appreciates his puns. I wake up angry and worried. I nudge my husband from his peaceful sleep.

“What is it?” he asks. ”

“I dreamt you were cheating on me,” I say. Sometimes I smack him on the shoulder.  

“I can’t help what you dream.” 

I tell him my theory: one person’s state of mind while sleeping—his thoughts and desires–can permeate another’s dreams. 

“You’re crazy,” he says.

I describe the woman, some amalgam of who I think I should be, some nonexistent woman neither of us knows.

“I don’t get on your case when you dream of Paul Konerko,” my husband finally states with some irritation, referring to the White Sox slugger and first baseman.

“That’s true,” I say. I apologize to my husband for hitting him on the  shoulders.

I try to fall asleep.