Author: Jen Barry

Things are never normal in the Barry household, but yesterday was one of those days were regular “abnormal” looked downright boring.  If you live anywhere in the Southeast, then you’re aware that the temperatures were nearing eighty degrees.  Yet, somehow, we ended up with a roaring fire in the fireplace.  To get to that point, we should start at the beginning.

Over the course of two weeks, Nashville has seen three wicked storm systems pass through.  During the first, six large trees in the neighborhood were entirely uprooted.  Now, because we rent, absolutely nothing happened to our own trees.  There is no doubt that our house would have burned down the day after we signed the papers if we bought it.  That’s just how my luck goes.  Instead of our house blowing down along with the trees, we just lost a pretty large branch.  It lay in the ditch through the next two storms, during which three more trees fell.

That still doesn’t explain the fire on a gorgeous, warm spring day, though you might see where this story is going.  You just can’t yet see where it’s coming from.  For everything to make sense, you’d need to know that we noticed a bit of water damage above our fireplace about six months ago.  The landlord sent in workmen to fix it, and after three days of tearing out the drywall down to the studs, replacing it with new, sanding, and painting, everything seemed peachy.  Until the first rain.  That was when we noticed that whatever we thought was wrong with the chimney wasn’t fixed.

More workmen.  More drywall removal.  More drywall replacement.  More water damage.  Finally, the vicious cycle seemed to be over.  There was still a lot of moisture in the bricks, and only a super-hot fire could fix that.  We hoped.

So, to really appreciate the whole scene, you must picture my city-boy husband wielding a tiny, electric chainsaw (which made a very unsatisfying “brrrrr-brrrrr-brr-brrrrr noise) as though he were a logger from the Great Northwest.  In the time it would have taken another man to cut up six branches, my handy husband showed that branch who was boss.  It was then city-girl’s turn to get a fire going in the fireplace without the help of newspaper or lighter fluid (I did really, REALLY want the lighter fluid.)  After a good hour of struggling, we had a wimpy little fire going.

I’m not really sure how it happened.  I guess I can understand now how a cigarette can cause a forest fire, because that tiny flame that I got started eventually burned white hot, and we had to open all the windows in the house to keep from fainting from the heat.  When that didn’t work, we pumped up the air conditioner.  I wish we’d thought to cut up that branch on Saturday, when a fire might have been a bit more welcome.

Suffice it to say, if there’s moisture left in the bricks, it wasn’t for our lack of trying.  Hard.  Really, really hard.

Edit:  My husband likes visual aids.  He humbly submits to you a photo of the fruits of our labor.

Anyone married to someone from another country knows how frustrating the language barrier can be, even if the spouse in question in from another English-speaking nation.  You know what I’m talking about–those slang words from England, Ireland, Scotland, or even Australia.  Right in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation, it seems as though you enter the Twilight Zone and nothing makes sense anymore.  You know, like when someone asks for “chips,” and you bring him a bag of potato chips, or when he wants “crisps,” and you have no clue what he’s talking about?

Yeah.  That’s what it’s like in my house all the time.  Granted, my Irish husband has been in the States for ten years now, and he’s pretty Americanized from all of his television time.  On occasion, though, he’ll throw a “knackered” or a “banjaxed” into the conversation, and I’m left scratching my head and wondering if he’s lost his.  After five years of marriage, I’ve picked up my own bit of Irish slang, but not nearly enough to keep up with his sisters when we visit Ireland.  I spend most of the time wishing I had a dictionary so that could ask the way to the “jacks.”

It’s caused a fair few fights in the Barry household because neither of us can understand why the other can’t follow a few simple directions in English.  It’s not like I fire off instructions in French, and he’s never tried to ask for something in Russian.  Yet, there are times when we both stop and stare at each other with blank looks while our brains try to process what was just said.  Don’t even get me started on the tirades of incomprehensible Irish slang when Manchester United is playing, either.  I can’t keep up, so I usually put in headphones and write (as I am now…though I looked up in time to see Chicharito score!)  I just don’t have the mental capacity to watch the game and translate the Irish slang in my head.

What kind of language barriers do you hit every day?  Sometimes it’s even a matter of differing regions in the States.  Do you have a friend or a spouse that leaves you confused half the time, even though he or she is speaking English?  Let me know!