While I wait for the plumber
Last night as Otto and I lay in bed talking, I knew today would be a special day. What I did NOT know, at that point, was that it would start with me finding a small waterfall underneath my sink. That was… rather more special than I had anticipated. (And by “more special” I mean “especially sucktastic.”) Nevertheless, that faucet has leaked (the actual faucet part, not the pipes) ever since we moved in, and I have been ignoring it, and I guess at some point last night it just snapped and went all Glenn Close on me (“I’m not going to be IGNORED, MIR!”) and this is what I deserve.
Yes. I deserve soggy spare toiletry items under the sink, because I am cold and unfeeling and all of that.
Anyway, that’s not actually what I wanted to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you—and let’s just pause for a second here, while I put on my most blissful, sappy face—is that Otto and I have been married for seven months today! read more…
Party girl
Woo! My weekend simply flew by, because that is what happens when you have an active social schedule the way that I do. It’s not easy being a socialite, but somehow I manage it.
Come to think of it, I suspect this weekend was a year’s worth of weekend excitement, owing to the fact that most of the time I consider it a busy weekend if I get up off the couch long enough to look for more snacks.
Anyway, I bid farewell to my usual level of sloth these last few days and was VERY BUSY and as a result, I now need a weekend to recover from my weekend. Um. Hmmm. Seems like this could be a problem, what with it being Monday and all. Oops.
I shall bravely soldier on, stopping only to nibble on leftovers in the fridge! Because I am a trooper that way! read more…
Merry is not necessarily musical
I am home just briefly inbetween church services—this is the morning the choir is doing our cantata at church, and in addition to the service for which we usually sing (the NORMAL PEOPLE service), I had to go sing at the early service (the BUTTCRACK OF DAWN service).
Part of my problem really embracing this church has been that I am terribly homesick for the choir I sang in at my old church, for various reasons. I had thought it was mostly because I miss my friends, but there’s more to it than that.
Like today, for instance. We’ve performed the cantata once and we’re about to go do it again… and I have to say, I think that with a month or two more of rehearsal, we’ll really have that puppy nailed.
Yeah. (“Dear Jesus, Sorry for making your birthday tuneless. We tried. Love, The Choir.”)
Now in MOBILE pajamas!
I joke about how I work in my pajamas all the time, but actually it’s not a joke. I’m a sloth. Sorry. Also, I have very comfortable pajamas.
So this morning I sent the kids and Otto on their merry way, and sat down (in my jammies) to start working, and I was about a paragraph into my first project of the day when KABLAM! something, um, blew up outside. And everything in my house turned off! And the answering machine started clicking and beeping, which Otto tells me in device parlance means MY! BACKUP! BATTERIES! ARE! DYING!
I am not an electrical expert, or anything, but it seemed bad.
After calling Otto (because he promised to love, honor, and FIX EVERYTHING), I called the power company. And they said, “Ayup. Something happened over there. We’re not sure what, yet.” And given the GOBS OF CONFIDENCE that instilled in me, I immediately hopped in my car and drove to my nearest coffee shop. read more…
Still enjoying being a girl
I can’t believe I ALMOST FORGOT TO TELL YOU about this. Heck, I almost forgot to tell Otto. It’s called REPRESSION, people. It’s a wonderful coping mechanism. I use it all the time. Like… ex-husband? What? I don’t recall.
(See how that works? It’s awesome.)
Anyway, some of you noticed that I told you all about my excellent adventure in the MRI machine a few weeks back but then didn’t post a follow-up. This is not because I don’t love you (because I do! I love you! each of you! and especially you, there, in the back!), but because I didn’t have any information to share.
Yes. You read that correctly. I had a breast MRI for “something suspicious” nearly three weeks ago, and the feedback was… nothing at all. read more…
The *#%&! red velvet cake
Yesterday was Otto’s birthday. I like it very much when Otto has a birthday, because he is the youngest man I’ve ever dated (I, apparently, used to have a thing for older men), and it is only between his birthday and the following summer when I have MY birthday that I can claim he’s a year older than I am.
(Why yes, his birthday IS all about me. Why do you ask?)
I have been ribbing Otto for a while about what we’d do for his birthday, because my birthday this year didn’t work out all that well, due to a number of circumstances. It wasn’t a big deal, really, but you have to understand that Otto completely and totally screwed himself the year of my divorce—when life had been running at maximum suckitude for several years already—by making my birthday not only a veritable festival of extravagance and pampering, but he somehow managed to draw the whole thing out for about a month. (“It’s your birthday week!” he’d say, and then “It’s your birthday month!” after that, and by the time he was into “It’s your birthday quarter!” even I had to concede that possibly this was enough.) Anyway, dude neglected to pace himself, is all I’m sayin’. read more…
A boy, his puppy, and a plane
Once upon a time there was a small boy who became overly attached to his stuffed puppy. The puppy’s name was, of course, Puppy. And everything the boy did, he did with his puppy. And any time you suggested a game or a book or even a TV show, the boy had to check with Puppy, first, to make sure that that was okay. At bedtime, his mother had to kiss him AND Puppy goodnight, or he couldn’t sleep. And if Puppy was missing at bedtime? Well, let’s just say you’d better find him. STAT.
This was extremely charming when the boy was two or three years old, but was becoming tiresome by age six or so. By the time the boy was seven, his evil mother was working very hard to suggest horrible things like “Leaving Puppy at home” and “Thinking for yourself” and “MAKE YOUR DAMN DOG STOP LOOKING AT ME.”
And then the boy and his puppy moved, and the mother decided it was time for some changes. read more…
Everything is JUST SO GREAT!
Otto and I stayed up past midnight last night, and I probably shouldn’t tell you what we were doing, but I can tell you that it involved a lot of licking.
Oh my GOD; what is WRONG with you???
We were doing our Christmas cards. Sicko. Sheesh.
It has generally been my policy to do Christmas cards only on alternate years when Mercury is in retrograde and I’m able to dig the money for the cards out of the sofa cushions, and then I take some pictures of the kids and Photoshop them beyond recognition or transplant a head from one picture onto the body of another or something, and then I send them out bearing some terribly personal message like “Happy holidays from our home to yours!”
Boy, are you lucky if you’re on my list. read more…
What a novel idea
Chickadee is mastering the fine art of defusing a potentially unpleasant situation with humor. I’m not sure where she got that, but WOW I LIKE IT. (This is your humor. This is your humor perpetuated through DNA. Any questions?)
I mean, yes, I don’t like it so much when I’m mid-rant about how there’s books all over the floor and a wet towel on the chair and would it be SO HARD to get her dirty clothes into the HAMPER… and she flings her arms around me and shouts, “WOW, I think I see something SHINY! And it is YOU! And I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, SHINY MOM!” It is very hard to lecture when you’re trying not to laugh.
This afternoon the children were playing Uno together very nicely while I finished up some work. I was just thinking to myself how great it is, when I heard Monkey begin to whine. read more…
What a long strange trip it’s been
I’m sure that there’s a point at which it will stop amazing me, but it hasn’t happened yet. And so in the meantime I shall continue to GOGGLE at the small miracle which is Otto’s facility with the children.
It’s a strange thing, this, because obviously I would not have married him if I didn’t believe him capable of this. I KNEW HE HAD IT IN HIM, of course, but it’s one thing to know deep in my heart of hearts and another thing altogether to watch it unfold in front of me.
It makes me warm and fuzzy for the kids, because—despite what some other people related to them might think—there is not some sort of global allotment of love which might be used up if they dare to use some of their ration on a positive relationship with their stepdad, and in fact some might argue that an extra positive parental unit just makes good sense. Sort of like having a spare tire in your car.
It also makes me happy for Otto, because this is a man who once told me he had no interest in having kids, and HAHAHA SUCKER, YOU’VE GOT ‘EM, AND YOU’RE ROCKIN’ IT. And as we well know, little makes me happier than being right. read more…