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Saturday, March 12, 2005

we really know how to throw a party

(I thought about putting this entry in the photo blog, since it is rather image-intensive, but since it's more of a daily-life entry, and the photos are, um, not artistic in the slightest, I stuck it here. Sorry about the hugeness of it.)

One night maybe six years ago when T was going to be away overnight visiting a friend, I decided that I would do a lot of fun girly stuff to make his absence more endurable (up until he got a job in telecom with its requisite two-week overtime stints in fire season, we had only very rarely been apart overnight). I rented chick movies -- this was the first time I watched "You've Got Mail", which turned out later to become one of T's favorites, but oh well -- and bought Doritos (which T hates) and made myself meatloaf (ditto), and I stayed up as late as I could make myself so that I wouldn't have to lie in bed waiting to go to sleep without him. (shut up, that is NOT pathetic.) Anyway. Somehow this developed into a tradition wherein when Daddy is gone, the kids and I throw a "party". That sounds really bad, I realize that, but we're not celebrating his absence -- we're more taking our minds off it. Tonight T is at a men's retreat, so here, courtesy of The New Nikon and the fact that I'm feeling a lot better than I was, is a look into the debauchery that the mice get up to while the cat's away.

This is not for the faint of heart.

(OK, maybe it is.)

First we all played a good game of pretend. The kids had torches (flashlights) and were exploring a ruin of a castle (our house, with all the lights turned off). I was the queen, who inexplicably was still alive inside this ruin. Adventure ensued.

observe my stately mantle (made from, um, a waterproof crib sheet. C was the costume designer for this production). And if you look really closely you can see the brown paper crown on my head. (LT took this picture. He is suitably aware of the honor and trust I bestowed upon him in allowing him to use The Nikon.)


LT then made a map of an imaginary country. I am unclear as to whether this map represents the country over which I reigned. I'll have to ask him tomorrow.



Then C made cookies, almost entirely by herself, from a mix she'd been given, um, for her birthday. In September.

it's a good thing these were just for family. C still needs practice at not licking the spoon.


the finished project

Part of a traditional party is the freedom to stay up as late as we want. When the kids can't keep their eyes open any longer, they make a tent in the front room and go to sleep in it.

The sheet down the middle divides it into a room for each of them. Do you notice that their legs have to go between the chair legs? Why again is this fun??

So there you have it -- a virtual tour of our wild, wild life. I'd better hope T doesn't read this one.
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Tuesday, March 08, 2005

[cue Energizer bunny] ... still coughing.....

I have had this really obnoxious cough hanging on to one degree or another for more than a month. I had the full-out cold back I think at the beginning of February, maybe late January, and ever since then this cough just refuses to leave. It gets better and worse but it doesn't go completely away. Last night it was so bad that I was keeping T awake (for the second night in a row, since C was coughing like this the night before) so I went and slept on the couch. And today it's just gotten worse. Finally tonight I consented to take some Day-Quil (since we have no NyQuil and T pointed out that I wouldn't be sleeping if I was coughing anyway). So now I have a really bizarre disconnected buzzy sort of feeling, as well as, um, a really really bad cough. See, T? SEE? My chest hurts. My abdomen hurts. My head hurts. And because I am so clever, I did not replenish our supply of ordinary cough medicine today, and anyway I'm not sure I could take any since I took the blasted worthless Day-Quil.

Please pardon me while I through a pity-party hissy fit over something so inconsequential as a cough, while real people have real problems on such a scope as to cause my problems to completely disappear. To even be pleasant.

Also please pardon me while I stay up all night jiggling my foot and twitching my head back and forth to feel if it's still attached. NEVER AGAIN WITH THE DAY-QUIL, HONEY. NOT HAPPENING. EVER EVER.

Monday, February 28, 2005

Breaking out of a rut

Lately I have been in a serious cooking rut. I began to dread the inevitable "What's for dinner?" when T would call me from work. The family would gather around me like baby birds with their mouths wide open, and I would throw in some hot dogs or a take-and-bake pizza or the occasional batch of spaghetti and run screaming from the room. I WAS TIRED OF IT, the neediness and yet the pickiness.

But when it comes right down to it, it's not really pickiness. Someone in our household (and I'm not naming names but I may happen to be married to him) just has really weirdo tastes in food. Here is a short sampling of the list of foods he doesn't like me to cook (note: if you happen to have ever cooked any of these things for my husband, don't feel bad. He doesn't HATE them. He just prefers when he's home and has some control, not to have to eat them.):

• Roast beef, and any of its trimmings (including really awesome potatoes roasted along with the meat. Right there, that shows you that something is wrong with him)
  
• Chicken pot pies, even yummy homemade ones
  
• Meatloaf, even really GOOD meatloaf, not the bricks of hamburger and oatmeal with ketchup slathered on top that defined meatloaf in the house where he grew up
  
• Baked potatoes
  
• Scalloped potatoes
  
• Any kind of potatoes except for a) mashed or b)Lipton onion roasted
  
• Soup, except clam chowder, which, hello, costs as much to make as a dinner out, so why cook?
  
• Stew
  

So I figured that I would stop teasing him and haranguing him about all his weird issues about food (we've been married eleven years and for nearly all that time I've worked very hard to try to convince him that just because his mother didn't know how to cook something doesn't mean that it isn't a worthwhile dish), and I had him make a list of foods he does like. Said list follows.

• Pancakes.
• Spaghetti.
• Pancakes.
• French toast which he can't eat because it has eggs in a recognizable eggy format, which for some reason cause his hiatal hernia to flare up to "hospitalization" levels
• Lipton Onion Roasted Potatoes
• Tacos
• Pancakes.
• Biscuits and gravy
• Chicken Marsala with Italian red sauce
• and let's not forget pancakes.

(if I could make a little cartoon drawing of myself with smoke above my head, I would put it here.)

So last night I pulled out this box of recipe cards that T bought before we got together. It was one of those things where they send you a sample set and explain that for X number of dollars a month you keep getting more and more cards until you have *fanfare* THE ULTIMATE RECIPE COLLECTION. He thought, hey, women like men who cook, and since he was in the market for a wife, he signed up and paid the X dollars for a couple of years until he figured out that he would be receiving recipes until he died, and that he had never used a single one of these (rather expensive) cards, at which time he canceled. A few years later I inherited this collection when I married him (and all he had in the refrigerator was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jam. He did have some really cool T-Fal pans, though). I never used them much -- I had first my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook and then the Internet to tell me how to make pancakes, spaghetti, chicken marsala, and French toast. ANYWAY. Last night I pulled out these cards and sat on the couch while he sat next to me, fiddling on the computer, and we played flash cards. Anything I thought he MIGHT not dislike, I would hold it up and he would say "OK" or "No way". When we were done I had a stack of about sixty recipes to try. Not bad, and it's way better than giving up and making spaghetti. Again.

Tonight I made "Southwestern Chicken Wraps" which were actually really good. Or maybe I was just really hungry, I dunno.

our weekend in pictures

Well, it's 3 a.m. and I'm at the computer. I have a good reason to (still) be up -- honest I do! T was called into work at 11 p.m. because, it turns out, a power outage caused some problems with radio transmission thingamabobs, and since he works in telecommunications, radio transmission thingamabobs are his job. (You can see by my extensive use of technical terminology that his knowledge has rubbed off on me a really whole lot, can't you.) He just called and said he's heading home, so he should be here within an hour or so. I just hope he doesn't have to turn around and go back in at 6AM like usual.

We had a really nice weekend up until about four hours ago. ;-) Yesterday we went with my parents to pick oranges at their neighbor's house. She is an elderly woman whose ranch, including the orange orchard, has been in her family for a hundred years (literally, this year). She can't pick the oranges herself anymore, so it's become tradition for our extended family (and a few others we drag along each year) to go do it for her when the oranges are ripe. Here are a few of the last pictures I'll be taking with my dinosaur of a digital camera before my wonderful anniversary present arrives this week:

This picture shows not only a very good reason why I need a new digital camera, but also the view from the top of the orange tree I was picking. It's harder to stand fifteen feet up a ladder and take a picture than you might think. :)

The person who finds the smallest orange each year "wins". We're not sure exactly what the person wins -- bragging rights? The first turn in the lunch buffet? (mmm, fried chicken this year. It's a good deal for all concerned -- the neighbor gets her orange crop in and we all a lot of exercise, enough oranges to last us quite a while, and five extra pounds apiece thanks to the fantastic lunch she cooks up for us.)

Cows in the road. How often do you encounter that on the way to work?

Back at my parents' ranch, we spent some time splitting wood, because we were nearly to the point of burning our furniture at home. Here are LT and C helping my dad drive the tractor into the shed to get the splitter.

We recently made a very important discovery at my parents'. Namely that straw on a steep slope is just as good as snow for tobogganing. Visits to Grandpa's will never be the same again.

C tied her shoes by herself for the first time after dinner on Saturday. That screeching sound you heard at about 6:00 Pacific time was my daughter running around to everyone in the house (and that was a lot of people) shrieking about her accomplishment.

Friday, February 25, 2005

way to blow it, wal-mart.com

Well, I guess that whole we-don't-buy-anniversary-presents thing is out the window. Last year I got the cell phone, which was a total surprise and hence I, in keeping with the previous nine years of tradition, did not get anything for T, and felt like a total heel. Not a sexy stiletto heel either, more like a worn-out Converse gym sneaker heel. But then I just found out that this year I am getting A NEW DIGITAL CAMERA, WOO HOO!! It's not a D70 like my brother's; I didn't want one of those -- a little too much camera for me to handle, frankly, and I am just not cool enough. No, the one I've been drooling over in a "someday" kind of way is the Coolpix 5400. AND ONE IS ON ITS WAY TO ME even as we speak, because I have the best husband IN THE WORLD.

Who will be getting a motorized focuser and a new tripod from Orion, by the way. Because at least this year I wasn't caught totally flat-footed by the fact that I was actually receiving a gift, thanks to the fact that the wal-mart.com person couldn't figure out that if it was gift-wrapped with a gift tag saying, "Happy Anniversary Honey," it probably wasn't the best idea to discuss the order with the customer's WIFE. Thank you, clueless wal-mart.com person.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

the un-valentine's day

This is a mystifying time of year for me. Everyone and her sister is all het up about What The Man Will Get Me For Valentine's Day And It Had Better Be Good. T and I have never done much for V-day (tomorrow will be our twelfth one as a couple) -- maybe twice flowers, maybe once a dinner out. And I don't care. Maybe it's because our anniversary is only a month away. Maybe it's because I'm the kind of person who LIKES getting an iron and an ironing board for Christmas from my husband and the kids (true story, that's what I asked for this year). Maybe it's because we were both the kids in our classes who only got Valentines in our boxes at school because everyone in class had to make them for everyone else. Maybe it's because, clichéd as it sounds, it's completely true that an average day in our marriage is happier than Valentine's Day is for most of the couples who celebrate it. For whatever reason, we have always just seen Valentine's Day as one of those holidays promoted by card-and-gift manufacturers for their own purposes, and we've pretty much ignored it. So don't watch this space for any romantic oohs and aahs tomorrow.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

such sticks in the mud as we are

I grew up in a household where we didn't have a lot of money and generally our houses were small, but gas was relatively cheap, and so one of our favorite ways to enjoy ourselves was to just go rambling in the car. We were a spontaneous bunch and we'd take off on a weekend trip to the Bay Area to visit my mom's sister's family with very little more than a phone call to say we were on the way. So I have this gene, strengthened by my upbringing, which makes me want to be spontaneous. Often.

However, T is different. His nature and nurture push him in the other direction. He is a big planner, and sudden changes in plans stress him out A LOT, even if the change is for the better. This means that in the past ten years my spontaneity has been squelched to the point where we have gone beyond not-spontaneous and into the realm where even fun things we've had planned for months don't happen.

OK, now I'm being unfair. We're not so bad as that, and a lot of our fun plans do come to pass. But the thing is, there's this really really high tide this weekend, see? It's a proxigean spring tide (there's your vocabulary word of the day), where the earth is close to the sun and it's a new moon and so the high tide gets really high and the low tide gets really low. This happens every few years or so, for a couple of months in a row. And ever since the summer I've wanted to drive to Morro Bay for the proxigean tide and see the ocean come clear up across the beach to the dunes. Sounds silly but I'm silly in general so that's OK, right? But now the weekend has actually arrived, and T has a really unpleasant cold so he's exhausted, and we just bought this 1969 Dart and he wants to stay home and play with it, and plus we spent seven hours in the car(s) yesterday as well as seven hours in the car the previous Friday, and blah blah blah no Morro Bay trip blah.

Grr.

I could go by myself, but honestly, I would be so lonely for ten hours in the car and all night in a hotel room (but oh! the reading! it almost sways me...) that even the tide thingie wouldn't make it worthwhile, I don't think. Oh well, there's another identical tide next month. So what if it's a Monday, and the chances of T being allowed to take a day or two off work to go over there with me are laughable, and the weather's good this weekend but who knows what it will be in 29 days, and so on and so forth. I can still pin my hopes to that. And I can also (this is the really fun part) milk my disappointment for all its worth, and imply to T that because we're not spending money on my long-planned Morro Bay trip, I have the right to buy more Christmas lights and put them up, and the right to renew my gold Diaryland membership, and to go out to dinner instead of cooking, and to also hold this over his head and use it as a bargaining chip for months to come. Oh, it takes practice to be the kind of wife I am, and after ten years, I'm beginning to really get good at it.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

more answers to questions

This is the second entry today with answers to the question "meme"; don't miss the first one.

Some GREAT questions from Paula:

Do you think your kids would be as well off if it were your husband instead of you home with them, assuming you were making as good a wage?
I think they are maybe marginally better off with me home. Mostly, a role reversal would just make their lives different, not necessarily better or worse. But I think our family is better off overall with me the one at home, and T the one at work. Hey, if we could have it any way we wanted it, both their parents would be home all day. Not a lot of work for a telecommuting dad around here, though.

If not, is it a matter of gender or just who would be better at child-rearing and home-schooling? (Because both certainly take talent to do well.)
Well, initially it was definitely a gender issue, because I was the one with the breasts. ;-) Nowadays, well, we each have different strengths. I am more patient, and am more inclined to accept that kids are kids and not to expect them to behave like little adults. I am perhaps better at breaking things down to teach them, although chances are he'd do fine at that, he's just never been tried. I have less of a tendency to expect them to catch on to academic concepts as soon as they're presented the very first time. He, on the other hand, is more organized than I am, and tidier, and probably more attentive, because he's less trusting that the kids are OK left alone for longish periods. It would certainly be an interesting learning experience for both of us to switch roles for a while.

As far as why we don't do it, well, that's more complicated. The simple answer is, we do it this way because the status quo works and why fix it if it's not broken. Also, the fact is that I probably am a LITTLE better-suited to the homeschooling aspects of raising them, because of the patience thing. And he is better at "regular" jobs than I am. I've done "9-5" in a variety of occupations, and I will again someday I'm sure, but if it's one of us going to work and the other not, he's the one to go, because he's better at taking criticism and dealing with the sort of interpersonal stress one encounters in a workplace without getting trembly. Also, husband working/wife tending the home is the Biblical pattern, which is important to us, and it's more suited to our inherent natures. It's not that he's not nurturing, because he is; he's a fantastic and loving father who is seriously emotionally invested in his kids. But he is also tougher and more aggressive than me, which is important in a work environment, and I, as I said, am more patient, which is good for someone who's going to be the sole caregiver for kids. And I'm a better cook. ;-)

None of this is to say that if circumstances changed in some way, we would not roll with the punches and switch roles. I've thought about doing it for a few years just to help T have a little more freedom to find a job that he LOVES rather than one that he tolerates and at which he is competent. But again with the status quo thing -- it's hard to just step out and do that.

Did you have to decide if you wanted kids or was it something you always knew and never questioned?
I have always, always wanted kids. I never ever went through a period when I didn't. I used to pretend I was "having a baby" with my dolls, when I was like three. For a while when I was in high school I decided that I wanted to be a single mom -- didn't want to marry or live with anyone, but still I wanted the kids. My husband also wanted kids as soon as he was mature enough to think about it seriously, and never had to be convinced. When we were first married he wanted to wait a couple years and I didn't, so we compromised and waited one year. :)

Friday, March 19, 2004

the wedding was only the beginning

The wedding day was only the beginning, it really was. On that day we were transformed from two people who loved each other into one entity made up of two individuals -- we were Us, the two of us, for the rest of our lives. We looked at each other and thought we knew each other, thought we loved each other so much there couldn't possibly be love greater than what we felt. And we were so wrong. What we have today is better, stronger, more passionate, more loving, more compassionate, more friendly, and happier in every way. Added to the basic giddy adoration we had for each other in the beginning, we now have a history of hundreds of shared joys and sorrows which have knit us closer together and given us a greater understanding of each other.

And of course we have three beautiful people in our lives -- two in person and one in memory -- given to us by God, who have made our lives (and other people's lives too) so much brighter. We are so blessed that I can't even get my mind around the size of it.

The past ten years have been an amazing gift. Here's to as many more as God will give us...

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ten years later

March 19, 1994:







March 19, 2004:


I felt like Miss Havisham, somehow, putting that on. I've been wanting to try it just to see if I could, and today seemed like a good day for it. Here, however, is proof that I am NOT yet at my lowest married weight -- the dress wouldn't quiiiiite button all the way up the back. (and bridesmaids, wherever you all may be: I am truly sorry about the buttons. Please accept my sincere, groveling apologies. Holy COW what was I thinking, to put you through that.) Since this is a special occasion and all, and I don't want to ruin my mood, I'm going to assume, just for today, that the reason it won't close is that my breasts are more robust than they were when I was 19, and leave it at that.

And while we're on the subject of "what was I thinking" I'll just say that apparently no, I did not think my football-player shoulders were QUITE wide enough, hence the enormity of the sleeves. ahem.

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