How I Met My Honey

Ooh, another carnival! I love a carnival! And this one is about how we all met our husbands/wives/significant others Go see Reba and play along too!

It was October, 1999. I was living in a really cool apartment near downtown Dallas with  my friend Alicia. I was also casually dating two guys, which is something I NEVER did. Not EVER. I was never good at casually dating because it made me feel very uncomfortable. And this situation was definitely outside of my comfort zone, but I was working it ok. The two guys in question were polar opposites. One was a total guy’s guy - sports freak, no fashion sense, fairly clueless when it came to women but a good guy all around. The other was more on the artsy side. He was a musician but not by trade, dressed very fashionably, and knew all about wine and women (which was a stumbling block to any long-term potential we might have had). Both were older than me - Sports Freak was 32 to my 25 and Skirt Chaser was 36. I liked them both ok but there was no real magic there with either of them. I had just finally after two years gotten over a very slow and painful long-distance breakup, so I guess that was the reason I was embracing my new single gal status with such gusto.

One Saturday night, October 23 to be exact, some new neighbors of ours were having a house warming party in the courtyard. Since everyone’s apartments opened out to the courtyard, Alicia and I decided that we’d better just go to the party - we wanted to stay in and watch a movie and eat pizza since we’d both had big nights out the night before, but knew we’d not be able to hear our movie anyway. So down we went, with the plan of having a beer or two and saying hi and then going back up when the noise died down.

I remember that he was standing by the grill talking to my next door neighbor, wearing a Dave Matthews Band t-shirt. I came up to say hi to my neighbor and he introduced me to Jake, whom he had just met himself. For the next hour or so, we kept running back into each other. We’d sit and chat for a moment then we’d go do something else. I was completely not looking to meet anyone new, as I already had more on my plate in the men department than I could handle, so I was not flirting. We were just talking. There was a moment when I was unintentionally bitchy to him, and although he’ll exaggerate exactly how bitchy I was, I realized immediately how it had sounded and tried to make amends. I don’t know why I cared, because as I said, I was not looking for another guy.

The night progressed and we continued to talk and talk and talk. We both liked hockey. He said very casually that we should go to a Stars game sometime. I said out loud “That would be cool!” but in my head I was thinking “What are you doing? You can’t handle dating another guy!” But instinct must have taken over. We ended up being the last ones at the party, Jake and his co-worker and my roommate and me. We sat at a table and talked until the wee hours. Jake asked for my phone number, and I invited him up to the apartment so I could get write it down for him. At that  point in her life, my dog Lucy was very scared of men and wanted no part of them. But for some reason, when Jake came in the apartment, she didn’t freak out, she even let him pet her. It was like she knew before I did.

As the weekend ended, I had convinced myself that if Jake called, which I was sure he wouldn’t, I would just say I couldn’t see him. But he did call on Monday and he had tickets to the Stars game for the upcoming weekend. Again, instinct ruled over the babbling in my head telling me to not throw another ball in the air to juggle. As the week wore on, I told myself that I would give him the talk after the date ended.

But we went on the date. And we had a great time. I wasn’t nervous. We had so much to talk about. We were laughing constantly. After the hockey game, he took me to a Halloween party. In the car on the way there, he held my hand. The instant he took my hand, my stomach dropped like I was on a roller coaster. After the party, on the way to the car, with a very light rain falling, he stopped me in the middle of the street and kissed me. And that was it.

Two weeks later, I had given both the other guys the heave-ho and he had broken it off with a girl he’d been seeing and we were exclusive and serious. By Thanksgiving, we had acknowledged the fact that we were probably going to get married. We dated for a year to make sure we weren’t insane and were engaged on September 20, 2000. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Anyone else want to share? I love to hear about true love stories. C’mon, dish!

Is This the New Math?

Today I got this in the mail

Last I checked, one had to be a bit older than 33 (ok, 34 in two months) to join the AARP. But maybe I’m just counting my age wrong in my head. Or maybe I am actually much older but have gone dotty and just don’t remember how old I really am.

Either way I’m opening this to see what kind of member benefits there are. I’m not ashamed to pull out an AARP card if it gets me a discount at the movies or at Disney World.

Bye Bye Glackeys

One of my very favorite Bridget-isms is “glackey” for “glasses.” We don’t really know why she says it that way, but there was a period of time when you couldn’t always tell if she had just seen a duck, wanted a cracker or was admiring your spectacles because her words for all three sounded strangely the same.

Today I had to take a shower when Bridget was awake, something I try not to do. I either get up before she does or I wait until she’s down for her morning nap. But today it had to be done. So I gathered up some favorite toys and books and gave the bathroom a quick baby-proofing and hopped in for a quick shower. Apparently I was not quick enough because at some point she got bored, stood on tip-toe and grabbed my glasses off the bathroom counter. When I got out of the shower, she had the arm in one hand and the glasses on top of her head. She proudly pointed to her head and said “Glackey!”

My lovely kate spade glasses are history. She’s broken them beyond repair, I fear, since the screw is still in the hinge on the broken side - it seems she has broken the arm clean off right at the hinge. Luckily I wear contacts 99% of the time but it’s times like now, when I’m ready for bed and my contacts are sitting in their case getting all clean that are going to be trouble. I actually am wearing the glasses now without the right arm, but they are all wonky on my head. I guess that’s ok for reading before bed and I can get by until I can get to the eye doctor for a new pair. When I replace them I won’t be nearly as indulgent, since this last pair was purchased as a way of draining the money from Jake’s old flexible spending account. I doubt I’ll be buying a fancy pair this time around. But that’s ok right? I mean, as a mom, aren’t I supposed to be wearing hopelessly outdated glasses with my corduroy jumpers and turtlenecks? I think Bridget was just trying to help me remember my place.

Food Wars

Like every mother in the history of the world, I find myself obsessing over what Bridget eats. Or more specifically, what she doesn’t eat. Shelly at Scenic Overlook wrote a great post about it here very recently. We are coming up on Bridget’s 18 month check up and by my scale at home, the girl is barely 20 pounds. She’s healthy in every other way, making all of her milestones and then some. I’m sure I really shouldn’t be worried at all.

But when I see how very little she eats throughout the course of a day, I start to freak out a little. I won’t say she’s picky because like Shelly says, I don’t like that label. Everyone is a picky eater if by picky you mean knowing what foods you like and don’t like. And why on earth would you eat food you don’t like? No one calls me picky because I don’t eat liver do they? Anyway, her food intake is minuscule. We try new foods with her fairly often but I can only count on her eating certain things.

I’ve tried to force some calories into her with ice cream or vanilla pudding for dessert but my kid - get this - doesn’t really like sweets! She likes this one kind of organic oatmeal and cinnamon cookies but that’s about it. Yesterday she ate two bites of a chocolate chip cookie before shaking her head no at it.

Here is the list of things I can count on her eating: cheese, crackers (either whole grain goldfish or Earth’s Best organic crackers), canned fruit (rarely fresh), yogurt, fruit and cereal bars, peas, water and milk. Everything else is a gamble, if not an outright waste of food. I don’t care that she eats very little meat really but is the protein in her dairy enough? Is she getting iron? Does she need a vitamin?

My brain tells me to stick with my philosophy on child food. She will eat when she is hungry. It’s simply my job to provide nutritious foods for her. I will LET her eat, I will not MAKE her eat. I will try to introduce new foods over and over because you never know when a toddler is going to change her mind. In fact last week, scrambled eggs apparently got the thumbs down for the first time ever. That used to be one food I could count on. And it may be again but not right now. She also turned her nose up at banana today for the first time. We’ll see if that lasts. She won’t eat grapes, but twice last week the child ate almost an entire kiwi. Go figure.

I’m sure I’m getting myself all worked up over nothing.  She is healthy. She is developmentally right on track. She’s happy. If she were malnourished, she wouldn’t be any of those things, would she? At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.

Thwarted!

Y’all know I am severely challenged in the decorating department. It’s a gene I don’t have.  But the other day i was out and about and found a great mirror for our formal living room. And that’s a cop out because I can’t commit to a piece of art, so a mirror is the easy way out. Anyway, it was a lovely mirror and for a decent price. I brought it home and proudly showed Jake. Who noticed that it had a ginormous gouge out of the corner. Not even slightly subtle. I’m not quite sure how I missed it in the store.

Today it had to go back and of course they had no more of them. And no, it’s apparently not an item that is available at all stores anymore. So I can probably go look at another store and hope it’s there, but that’s my only option if I want it.

Now I really need to get on to the pressing matter of this damn shower. Still no farther on the menu than I was before. I really ought to get to thinking about this.

Dr. Jake’s At-Home Surgery Center and Sno-Cone Shack

We are going to open up another in-home business, because last night, we discovered that Jake has yet another talent - performing surgical procedures on his wife in the comfort of our master bathroom.

Remember Jimmy? The mysterious leftover from my breast surgery? Well, he was still around and still painful and frankly I was getting worried. Last night as I got into bed, Jake noticed it and asked me when I was going to go to the doctor again. I was thinking, “well, I’ve been to two doctors who both assure me it’s not a big deal so what’s the point?” Then he noticed that the something in there (we’ve always felt there was something in there) was starting to come out. I said “Great! Do you feel comfortable pulling it out?”

So into the bathroom we went, where I got out my beloved rubbing alcohol, some cotton and some tweezers. After taking a big whiff of the rubbing alcohol just for giggles, I swabbed down my back and the tweezers and let Jake at it. I couldn’t look at what he was doing in the mirror because I am a wimp like that, but it only hurt a little bit at first and then I didn’t feel anything except him fiddling around. It took a while but he got it.

This is Jimmy:

The motherfucker is a piece of wire at least two inches long with one end bent back in a kind of hook, and I believe that is the end that was poking up through my skin. If you want to get a better picture of it, go here and view it large. Creepy.

When I had my surgery, the first part of it was going up to a breast imaging center so that they could use ultrasound to mark the edges of the tumor with wires so my surgeon could easily know she had gotten all the tissue. Jimmy can only be a piece of one of those wires.

I’m so fucking pissed off right now I can’t even explain it. I don’t care so much that medical waste was left inside me because it really hasn’t hindered me in any way. Sure it hurt, but it wasn’t debilitating or anything. What pisses me off beyond belief is that when I asked my surgeon about it she blew me off and told me it was a pimple, without even touching it. Now at that point, I hadn’t even touched it myself enough to feel that it was obvious there was something in there, mainly because it hurt like hell and I’m a bit squeamish about stuff like this. Had I touched it and felt the thing in there, I would have made her touch it. I also went to my own doctor last week who agreed it was something but thought it might be a stitch that had come off and moved. I don’t really blame him because he had no idea the nature of the surgery and had no reason to suspect that this could be anything like it was.

I’m also a little worried about what else might be in there, that hasn’t started to make its way to freedom. I’ll be calling the doctor’s office next week, although I already have an appointment for the week after for my final follow up. I guess I’ll need to demand an x-ray or an ultrasound to ensure that no more of these wires have broken off and are on their way to pierce an internal organ or anything.

If I were a more litigious person, I’d be looking at vacation homes in Hilton Head right about now. But I’m not.

Unprepared

So it just dawned on me that I’m throwing a baby shower in a little over a week and other than sending out invitations, I have done absolutely nothing. Not one thing. Haven’t given it a thought.

I have my standards for showers - the same yummy punch I always make (and no, the recipe does not include sherbet in any flavor thankyouverymuch) and petit fours from Stein’s bakery  - but other than that, nothing. I have to figure out decorations, games (because the guest of honor says her family would do better with games than to sit around and criticize her life choices, and I can see that so games there will be), favors, paper goods, a gift….. so yeah, everything.

Normally I go way overboard in the number of different foods I make for parties, so I’m trying to tone it down. Jake doesn’t want to eat left over shower food for three days. But I think in trying to reign myself in, I’m stifling my creativity.

So tomorrow, I must devote my day to shower planning. At least I have a new dining room table to serve it all on. Whatever it is I serve.

Today I Became A Woman

Don’t we all that that one thing, that one item we could own or event that could take place in our lives that we think will make us a real honest-to-god grownup person?

For me, that item was a formal dining room set. Don’t ask me why. But I’ve been dying for a pretty place to hold my china since we bought this house almost five years ago.  I guess because a china cabinet and a formal dining table aren’t necessities. You can easily live your life and entertain your friends around any old table since it’s the company that matters most anyway. And I’ve had my china stowed in my regular kitchen cabinets and it’s worked ok, even though I desperately needed that room for other things. It was serviceable  but not how I wanted it.

Today, thanks to the furniture delivery men, it is how I want it. My dining room, begun back in 2003 with painting and crown molding and a chair rail and picture molding is now almost complete. The only thing really that would finish it off would be if I could ever get some flingin’ flangin’ window treatments in there besides the wood blinds.

For now, though, I’m happy. Except now I have to go rearrange my kitchen cabinets to take advantage of all my room! Whoop!

Facebook Gives Me Warm Fuzzies

And not just because I adore throwing sheep at people and playing scrabble.

In the past week, I’ve been reconnected with eight old friends I’d lost touch with, all of them from all the way back to high school days, including my old friend K who, even after all this time without contact, is simply one of my favorite people in the world and has been since I was in 10th grade and we were in Art History class together.

This is way more fun than any of the other old-school high school reunion sites ever were. But maybe if they’d given us the ability to throw sheep at one another, I’d have liked them more too.

Tongue Thruster

That sounds like the subject line of a spam email doesn’t it?

But no, I am a tongue thruster apparently and it’s doing no good to my braces. So after 33 years of swallowing my saliva, I am now charged with learning how to swallow without pushing my tongue against my teeth. It’s harder than it sounds, I assure you. But I must figure it out in the next five weeks before I go back to the orthodontist. Or else risk undoing the good that’s been done so far. And we are almost halfway there. So I have to protect the investment.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to swallow and not touch your tongue to your teeth? Fuck. My tongue is tired and I haven’t even been doing anything fun.