Otto never tires of telling people the joke about how it was an easy decision for us to have a small, family-only wedding ceremony without all of the traditional hoopla. "We've both already been to the wedding where she wore the big white dress," he'll deadpan, then sit back and wait for that to sink in. In a few more months, Otto and will have known each other for 23 years. Today, we've been married for 5 of them. [Aside: OH MY GOD look how tiny the children were!!] Just 5 years; our marriage is only embarking on kindergarten, and in some ways I'm still holding its hand to cross the street,...
Did you know that school is finished for the year here in just a few weeks? (And before the usual slew of "No fair! You get out so early!" comments that this usually brings, allow me to point out that the kids went back to school the first week of August. They've had a whole year.) Anyway, it's true. School is nearly out for the summer. Just a few more weeks to get through, which means that everyone's Great Big Hairy Meltdown is right on schedule for... now. This happens every year. I have no idea why it surprises me, every time. But the children are... oh, a little on edge, let's say....
You may remember that one piece of my recent weekend of doing pretty much nothing included a landscaping estimate. This is because my darling husband seems to believe that the outside of our house is supposed to look a certain way. I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just saying I'm a lot better at, shall we say, selective visual fields than he is. Why, the weekend before the do-nothing weekend, Otto had declared a family yard pick-up day, and I'm not saying it didn't look great when we were done, I'm just saying that this is a Mars/Venus issue. What I think when I look at the front yard: Grass!...
[Thank you for the sweet comments yesterday. I'm pleased to report that the day did indeed improve, thank God, and a good time and a massive chocolate-cake-stupor was enjoyed by all yesterday evening. Go make this flourless cake immediately, whether you're gluten-free or not. I may never make anything else again.] So I've been meaning to tell you this story for a while, but it was while rereading yesterday's post and saying to my husband, "HAHA! You can't tell I'm off my meds at all from that! HAAAAA!" that I realized it was time for a good-size dose of levity---the kind of levity that only...
You may perhaps remember that during the last few months of last year---having no idea how much 2012 was going to suck, and how much less I'd be working---we decided to give all of our spare moneys to our favorite contractor so that he and his guys could rip down our sagging deck and replace it, and then of course it ended up taking forever, including failing the first building inspection in January because the handrail on the stairs ends on the second-to-bottom step instead of the bottom step. (TRUE STORY!) (Know how you fix that? Your contractor comes over and attaches a piece of...
We had a pretty uneventful weekend, here. We watched football (go Patriots!). We grumbled about the weather. I swore I was going to do laundry and go grocery shopping and then I did lots of laundry but neglected to go grocery shopping, which meant that this morning I packed everyone a delicious lunch of various odds and ends, and have hereby sworn that TODAY, no really, today, I SWEAR, I'll go get groceries. The kids saw their dad. Chickadee's quiz bowl team defeated their most loathed rival team at Regionals but ultimately didn't go on to State. While they were doing that, I was at play...
The thing is, there are lots of things to love about Georgia, but it's really far away from our families, which is kind of a drag. I mean, it's not as bad as when I lived in California---we're all in the same time zone, at least---but it still means that visiting is kind of A Production, and there are times when that's difficult. So when we first moved down here, we said hey, we'll come back for Christmas every year. The first year we had a good trip, though I did end up getting an ear infection and calling my doctor back in Georgia to beg for meds and sending Otto out looking for an open...
Yesterday was Otto's birthday, and lo there was much celebration and rejoicing! Except... there was no way I was going to manage to top last year's surprise (and subsequent party and extravaganza), plus Otto was out of town for most of the weekend, plus life is completely overwhelming right now for various mostly uninteresting reasons, plus I just generally sort of suck. So, we love him to bits and all, but I'm afraid that as birthdays go, it wasn't a terribly exciting day. I mean, there were presents, and we went out to dinner, and I told him I love him about a billion times, but I still...
Otto and I are going on a real live genuine date tonight, in just a little bit. I am drinking a large cup of coffee by way of preparation, because the sad truth is that my idea of a perfect evening, lately, is sitting on the couch watching TV for a while before going to bed at about 9:30. I'm not sick. I shouldn't be tired. But I am exhausted, mentally, and that's bleeding over into everything else. I've taken to shutting off my alarm in the morning and going back to sleep; on the rare occasions when I used to do this, before, I would just get up 15 minutes later when Otto's alarm went off....
