My Husband Looks Like An Electrical Socket

It's been almost a year since the Big B had his spinal fusion surgery.
Just about 4 months since his second surgery in October.

(That's right, he had to go back under the knife to try fixing his back again. Turns out my fears that his bone fusion wouldn't take were unfounded. He went back this time because the leg pain was still there, and when the surgeon took a look, he found that the bone had grown outside the fusion cage and was pinching the sciatic nerve again. My man may be skinnier than a rail, but he's got Superman bones.)

His scars make him look like an electrical socket. They sorta did before, but the latest incision really completes the whole piece.

Hmmm....I see Halloween gag-costume possibilities here!

But wait a minute--

Isn't the girl usually the socket and the guy the plug? I could be wrong here, and please feel free to correct me if I am...


Hmmm.

We're not a conventional couple (certainly we're the only people on our block that argue about prophecy at the top of our lungs out on the porch), so I shouldn't be so surprised.


Plus I got the picture by making a deal where he got to play Call of Duty in exchange for a few snapshots.



I wish I could have gotten the video button pushed in time.
But I didn't.




Otherwise you'd also be treated to a very funny shot of the Big B wiggling his (non-existent) ass.



Wearing his favorite Call of Duty pajama pants at the same time, no less. It was too cute.


Damn my slow hands!

The Green Monster

Everyone has one at some point in their lives, over something or someone.

It rears it's ugly, envious head when you see someone with something you want, when you feel threatened and are vulnerable to its whisperings in your ear.

Mostly they are benign, little things, like lusting after a purse or wishing your hair would do that or you could go somewhere fabulous.

Less pretty are the times when it involves a relationship.

I have never had a serious wrestling match with the monster (I think). Frankly, I don't get it.

Intellectually, I understand the feeling, but I don't think I've ever been deep in its grasp. I suspect that like an orgasm, if you only think you've been gut-wrenchingly jealous, then you really haven't.

Even dating a hyper jealous man-boy for a couple of years didn't make me understand it entirely. I just didn't feel it viscerally, down in the gut where I understand it stabs from. When the man-boy harassed me once for not getting jealous over a girl (supposedly) hitting on him in front of me all night, I tried to go through the motions, but that's exactly what it was--me doing what I thought a jealous girlfriend would do.

For me, it comes down to making sense and my own special brand of people-naivete. In small doses I think a bit of envy can be good. Keep you on your toes, from taking your loved one for granted.

But the kind that makes you check in on your lover every hour, on the hour? or accuse them of cheating? or stalk their Facebook page? or steal their phone to read text messages? or any other aggregious violation of personal privacy and freedom? Makes no sense to me.

A friend of the Big B's was over this past Sunday to watch the football game. Earlier that weekend on Friday I was dropped off by the Big B to go out for a girl's night with the friend's wife and another girl, so the guys talked briefly and set up their man date for two days hence. B's friend said how great it would be to watch a game with a friend instead of alone, but was already temporizing, saying things like "I'll have to talk to the wife" and so forth.

Sounds innocous enough, if you haven't seen their couple dynamic before. I had, so I quickly piped up that she could bring the kids and hang out with me if that would make her say yes.

(In retrospect, the part of the allure of the gameday hang session was probably the absence of said wife & kids, just for a bit.)

What strikes me is that there would be any doubt whatsoever about a "yes" answer to that question. I'm not saying it shouldn't be asked--respect for each other in a committed relationship demands that--but more that the expectation would be a non-approval for something so simple.

For the Big B and I, the question would be expected to be asked, but barring previously made committments, in most cases the question is more of a formality, a quick check to make sure there are no plans and to let the other person know what you plan on doing. Early on, the two of us established a straight-down-the-middle, equal sides partnership that is quasi-sibling like in the fervor to make things exactly equal.

I'm not saying this approach is without pitfalls. No such approach to relationships with other human beings exists, as far as I can tell.

But I can say that if it were the Big B and I, and he was driving me and my girlfriends to the bar and picking our drunken asses up after 2am on a Friday night (and most likely not getting laid because of the state of my over-inebriation), there would be no question that he could go watch the game on Sunday at a friend's.

Granted, a caveat is that we are currently geekling-free, but I strongly suspect that our policy of making room for each of our own "alone time" will continue even after children are born.

(Those of you with actual children, feel free to scoff at this. Please note, however, that in our case we're extremely lucky, in the fact that we have three sets of grandparents prepared to fight tooth and nail for babysitting rights, and one pair is a short car ride away and the other is within walking distance. Hooray grandparents, we thank you already!)

I am profoundly grateful we are this way.

I never want someone to get a call from me, checking up on my husband, demanding to know where he is and berating them because I didn't appreciate that he hadn't answered his phone when I called him (minutes after the game had ended!).

 I never want my behavior to remind them of lyrics from the Limp Bizkit song "Stuck":

Psycho female blowin up the phone line

You need to tighten that screw, it's been loose for a long time

Cliched, I know, but if you love something, set it free!

I heard somewhere (I forget who or where, forgive me) that your loved one should be a part of your life, but not be your life. I am completely on board with this.

If you aren't allowed to have a life apart from each other, how do you keep your relationship growing? By experiencing things on your own and as a couple, you bring more elements to the table to share with each other and gain the space needed to keep it fresh, stop taking-the-other-for-granted syndrome in its tracks.

So I believe. What about you?



Silly Sunday

One picture story is true, the other is false.


Before:

After vigorous ruffling:

Either way, he's a puffball. Just how disorganized depends on how dry & staticky the air is, and whether his human feels like torture that day.


Before: The Big B giving the puppy-eyes look for something he wants.

After: Gloating when I fall for it.

And running away in fear of my righteous wrath.

Chrismas Eve Success!

I woke up a nervous wreck Christmas eve morning.

"Where's that recipe? I NEED that recipe!"

The Big B is watching me dash around the house, opening drawers and rifling through papers like some sort of espionage expert.

My dad's side of the family was coming for Christmas Eve.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

Despite having hosted Thanksgiving earlier this year with my immediate family, I was still nervous about hosting for the extended family. My family at Thanksgiving are non-judgemental and easy going...but on my dad's side, we were always the black sheep, and the judgement is subtle but there.

Friday before the fateful day we went to Momma's to celebrate and my mom and sister did their best to assure me I'd do fine.

It wasn't convincing me (nothing could), but as long as my mom was willing to take my frantic calls for help that day, I was stopping short of pulling out all my hair in nervous anticipation. Knowing my sister would be there to help in the kitchen was also a boon that kept me from the edge of insanity.

My mom passed along some uneaten veggies to me when I left Friday night and borrowed me a platter for the ham since I don't own one.

But by the time all the relatives arrived, I was ready.

Actually, I was ready before they started arriving, and that made me start fretting that they werent't here yet, and where The Hell Were They? I had tried to time the meal just right so that it would be nice and hot for everyone and now that I was ready, no one was here!

Oi Vey! (as Momma would say).

Finally everyone arrived and I started anxiously making the raisin gravy for the ham, stirring vigorously away with my whisk. I shooed non-essential people out of the tiny kitchen (thus ensuring that my uncle couldn't trap me in the kitchen like he had done to my mom for so many holidays before) and called the Big B to come carve the ham.

"I don't know how to carve ham!" he says to me, blinking expectantly.

"I don't care! It can't be that hard."

"Can't you just do it?"

"Ask my dad to help you, then."

"YOU ask him, he's your dad!"

I turned to him and gave him my best glare/exasperated/desperate look. "Listen here! I have other stuff I need to do right now! I don't have time to do this; this is YOUR job, figure it out!"

For a second it looked as if he were going to argue with me some more, but my look must have been a good one because he just grinned and went to find my dad. Soon he was busily instructing my perfectionist hubby on how to carve the ham properly.

My sweetie; he genuinely always wants to do everything 100% right, and even if this is sometimes used as an excuse ("I don't know how to cook!") I have to love him for his anal-ness.




Things went well. The gravy turned out superbly (thank you Momma!) and somehow all 17 of us fit into our tiny space for dinner. Then it was time to do some quick clean up and then present time.

The Big B had a funny idea to play a trick on the relatives. I was freaking out because I couldn't find our Yahtzee game, and we needed dice for the White Elephant/Dice game present exchange for the adults. When he heard me freaking out about not being able to find the dice, he gives me a level look.

"You DO realize we're D&D'ers, right? That means we have a shitload of 6-sided dice."

Duh! I laughed and sent him to the office to grab 3 sets of 6-siders. When he returned with them he gives a mischievious smile and says, "Let's play a trick on the relatives! Tell 'em we're gonna use 20-sided dice this year; that'll keep the dice game going on a loooooooong time!"

We giggled together and when it came time for the dice game, he was taking out the garbage and I run up to him asking, "Are you going to do your announcement?"

Little did I realize at the time, but my dad and his fiance heard this comment, and got entirely the wrong idea from it.

B told me to do it myself and he'd be right there, but I was so excited I rushed my words and got only blank looks from everyone when I told them "we want to spend much more time with you this year, and as you know we're D&D geeks, so rather than regular dice, we'll be using 20-sided dice instead! Good luck getting doubles this century!" and I laughed, a bit maniacally, I'll admit.

Dice jokes just aren't as funny to non-gamers, I guess!

After the game was over, my dad and fiance pounced on me.

"What's the big announcement?" and their faces were a bit nervously concerned and exuberant between my dad and fiance, respectively.

"Oh, nothing, we just wanted to play a trick with the dice since we're D&D nerds." Right after I said it, it dawns on me that perhaps they thought we might be announcing that we're pregnant.

"I'm not pregnant, don't worry!" I rush to assure them. My dad's face instantly clears with relief. He really wants me to finish school before kids.

Eventually, all the relatives were gone and it was just my sister, her boy-toy (who's an excellent potato peeler, and received praise for this all night, so much so that it has become a running joke now), the Big B, my dad and fiance.

We celebrated our own little immediate family celebration, wished my dad Happy Birthday (he shares his day of birth with Jesus. I always figured he got screwed as a kid, with cheap relatives telling him 'Here's your Christmas/birthday gift' so we always make sure to celebrate his birthday as well as Christmas) and enjoyed some coffee and conversation.

Then the day was over, and I could finally sit down.

Thinking on it afterwards, I don't know why I was so anxious. It went fine, all the aunts, uncles, cousins and Grandma were proud and happy and everyone brought something to share so in reality I didn't have that much cooking to do at all. My Grandma was so proud, when I asked her to say Grace before eating she told me she couldn't, or she would start crying! which almost made ME cry, because she's a tough lady with all her wits about her still at 89 years old (hooray genetics!).

My aunt gave me a hostess present and she and Grandma both gave me some Christmas-themed platters and bowls so that I would have more for the next time. One of the platters from my aunt were still filled with yummy dessert bars. Nom nom nom....

The next morning we went back to Mom's for a nice brunch before going over to my mother-in-laws.

And I brought my veggie tray from Christmas eve and the dessert tray. The Big B's mom hosts every holiday and doesn't even ask anyone to bring anything, and having just gone through the nerve-wracking experience myself, I figured she'd appreciate the gesture.

Plus I don't need those sinful dessert bars staring at me every day for the next week, tempting me with their sugary goodness.

This got me thinking about what the holidays actually mean, after you scrape off all the commercialization and greed.

Most especially the past few years, when the non-wealthy (read: most of us) are stretching each and every dollar as far as it can possibly go, an economical Christmas could end up being sad or pitiful.

Instead, that holiday magic seems to wrap itself around your soul and people who love each other pull together, doing little things to help each other.

It may just be something as small (yet incredibly important) as a mother soothing a nervous child on taking over adult responsibilities, quietly answering questions, providing recipes, lending various kitchen implements and giving her some veggies to use for her own hosted holiday.

It might be something as thoughtful as giving a hostess gift to a young adult, so her Christmas decoration collection grows that much bigger.

It might be that same young adult becoming wiser and more appreciative of what the mother adults in her life have done to put together a holiday feast for numerous relatives each year. Taking that warmth she felt from all the help given and paying it back to another hosting mom.

No matter how tight the wallets have become, hearts don't have to be.

I'm proud of our economical Christmas. We may have felt that we weren't spending enough on the food or gifts, but when it's all over, the true present is the love you feel, no matter how large or small your holiday was.

This is that elusive spirit they talk about, and I can see why it infects so many people.

I know this is a bit tardy, but after the holiday season is over and the long months of winter loom before us, no holiday in sight until the leaves unfurl again, I feel it's more important than ever to have some warmth to sustain us.

Happy Holidays and New Year, everyone. May the year 2012 bring you all the laughter, love, warmth, hope and happiness you desire.

Honey! Why Don't You Put On the Eulogy Log?

So you're all probably sick of the holiday posts and whatnot, now that the new year has started already.

Well, too bad!

I'm a procrastinator, which means you're just getting my Christmas-related posts now.

Maybe you can't see it, but I'm sticking my tongue out and giving you a great big raspberry.

*thbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb*

 No, my tongue is not normally that color! I just finished eating a candy cane, if you must know, and apparently some color transference occurred.

Like many people around the world, as December approaches it means digging out all the red, green, silver, gold and white colored decorations and dumping them all about the house. It means untangling all those christmas lights and praying that they still work. It means that your January credit card statements will be horrifying when they arrive.

That's a bit melancholy...I'm sure you're all great budgeters and diligently save up every year well ahead of the holidays in order to buy all your presents in cash. For those who forgo present-buying for whatever reason....you suck. Only because I'm jealous, not because you don't buy into a religious holiday that's been hijacked by the retail industry (or whatever reason you don't do gifting in December).

Personally, my favorite part about this (past) time of year all comes down to trees and lights. I wish we were the kind of family that put up amazing displays of electricity-guzzling lights, but we aren't. Mostly because that would require 1) owning said lights to put up and 2) going outside in Minnesota in the winter on an aluminum ladder to put up the damn things. Luckily for us, we have a great excuse: we only own enough strands to light up our Christmas tree. Being broke is great!

However, there is one thing I don't want to go without, lights or no lights. Christmas requires a tree. A REAL tree! One that will fill the house with the lovely scent of sap and pine, one that requires daily stooping to fill the tree stand which inevitably gets sap in your hair, one that must eventually be placed outside for the garbage man to pick up (or placed ever-so-carefully in the firepit, whereupon it will sit until it turns entirely brown and uber-dry, where it will sit until I get the itch to light it up in one big, brief bonfire).

As a family unit, the Big B and I are small potatoes. Just us two and our two furry four-legged feline children (I don't count the albino, blond and regular ordinary gray squirrels Ghost Face, Blondie or the Godfather as part of our "family" although they do freeload off our property). As such, we don't have much in the way of holiday decorations or traditions yet.

We're slowly accumulating them, however. It's a weird transition to go from the traditions of your parents as you were growing up to meshing them with someone else's traditions. Candy canes on the tree? Not done in my childhood home, but the Big B will steal several from his mom's house to put on our tree (I think he does this more to satisfy his sweet tooth than for the tradition). Candy in the stockings come Christmas morning? Again, something new but not unwelcome, oh no! Not at all.

One of the first traditions we started since moving into the more spacious upstairs of our current home was to get a bona-fide tree from a lot nearby each year. We go with my mom and Bonus Dad each time which has become a new tradition of it's own (plus, they own a nice big Jeep on which to cart our tree safely home).

My mom and I run around the lot, looking for the scraggliest of trees possible. I was taught that short-needled and hole-y trees are the best for ornaments, because the holes in the foliage allow you to place those pesky heavy ones on a stronger part of the bough, ensuring that ornament loss does not occur.

The plus side is that the uglier the tree is, the cheaper! A win-win situation.

This year we ended up going with an F-Fur, and no, I can't remember what the "F" stood for. I want to say Ferngus Fur, but that can't be right...

It doesn't look that Charlie Brown-esque, but this little tree was a great bargain.

Of course, the cats love the tree too. Thank goodness neither tries to climb it, they being primarily indoor cats for most of their lives.

Alabama is a connoisseur of sap-water and will be drinking from the tree stand until this baby comes down. She's got a junk-food disposition, being a lover of popcorn, flaming hot Cheetos and Ritz crackers, so it's excusable that she finds the sweet sap water to her taste.

Gizmo, unfortunately, is, to put it frankly, a little shit. Everything about the tree is tantalizing to him, from the tree-stand water delicacy, to the new ornamental "toys" and finally the fact that he can sharpen his non-existent claws on the corner of the tree stand. He was instantly curious as we set it up and hung around watching intently as we put the lights and ornaments on.

Sharpen those imaginary claws!

I had an adorable picture from last year where he tangled himself up in the lights and just gave up and laid down, but in my impatience I didn't want to hunt for it.

The Big B moans and groans when it comes time to decorate the tree. The first year he got out of having to do anything but get the tree stand up from the basement. Last year he had to put the lights on (something that was traditionally done by my dad growing up) but got out of putting on the ornaments. This year I was resolute; we would be decorating that tree together, dammit!

After grabbing our little ferngus tree it was still daylight and the Big B convinced me to wait until dark to start decorating. I warned him that I would be finding the Yule Log burning show on cable and we would have it on in the background as we hung the ornaments.

(The yule log fireplace TV program is something of an inside joke in my family, made even funnier by the fact that our TV hangs over an actual fireplace).




The Big B...I love him (duh) but his grasp of language has a few holes in it (who doesn't know the word "posh"? Honestly!). As I started to carefully unpack my box of ornaments he says to me:

"Honey, didn't you want to put the eulogy log show on while we decorate?"

Ah, my sweetie! I knew he wasn't kidding by the straight face he maintained while he said it. Of course, this became a running joke for the rest of the night, as he continued to refer to it as the "eulogy log".

When I found a "psychedelic yule log" On Demand through my cable box I just had to play it because it was so bizarre.

Too bad the picture was blurry, but at least you can see the pretty rainbow colors!



The weird techno/electronica/bad 80's synth music accompanying it wasn't the least bit Christmas-y but it was good for a hoot, leading to some more silliness as we put the lights on.

Sorry some of these are blurry...stupid camera!

 

Ah, doesn't he look (fuzzily) proud?

Eventually the lights were wound exactly right around our little ferngus tree and the ornaments were all placed evenly about the tree, with the favorite ones front and center.

My family was all about the unique ornaments, never the generic-looking Christmas balls, bows or tinsel.

Plus Gizmo would almost certainly eat the tinsel if we had it, and then I'd be cleaning a litterbox full of glittery poop.

There are some ornaments I especially love, and I was willing to fight my mom and sister in a death match to get them when we split up the ornaments between us (not that they fought me over them, me being the one with the weird rainbow/mushroom obsession).

Not a very good picture, but you can see why this is my

absolute FAVORITE ornament, can't you?

The clown ornament on the right is a genuine antique. We had many of these antique ornaments, but lost many when our lopsidedly decorated tree fell over one year. Luckily, the fantastic clown ornament was spared destruction.


Finally I placed the stumps from each of our trees from years past on the tree skirt. Another tradition I had completely good intentions about doing but somehow never got around to actually completing, the plan was to engrave in some fashion the years on each of the stumps to chronicle each new Christmas. I can still tell them apart by their size and shape, but if I don't get to putting the years on soon, that knowledge will eventually be lost.

All of this excitement had gotten to the Gizzy, who retreated to his "safety zone".

Personally, I think it was to disarm us about his closeness to the tree. At the time of this picture, ornaments were spaced evenly around the tree, top to bottom, front to back. As the weeks have passed, the ornaments have slowly been moved higher and higher, in an effort to keep Gizmo from accessing them and using them as new toys.

He's a beast and has broken several ornaments and a musical statue of Tiny Tim and his father, but he gets away with it cuz he's so darn cute and because he has his momma's eyes.

She does it too!

I'm relieved to find out that I'm not the only one who wants to torture her (future) kids. I once said that to friends of the Big B's and the wife gave me such a look of horror that to this day, I think she thought I was serious.

My good friend Sarwa* came over the other day with her two children in tow.

Now Sarwa is not anyone I'd have pictured as a mom in high school. She moved to my hometown in 8th grade and was always a bit wild. You couldn't hold this girl still. She could burp louder than anyone I'd ever heard, I mean loud enough to rattle-windowpanes-loud. She was always making strange jokes or doing little dances or making up songs spur of the moment.

Our freshman & sophmore years in high school consisted of us mainly walking around town in our ridiculously huge pants while Sarwa would beat box and make up impromptu love songs and sing them to me.

We had the same names and same last initial, and we reveled in the confusion this caused. Whenever anyone would say our name we'd both scream "WHICH ONE?!?"

We worked at Subway together and our manager hated the fact that he had to write out our entire names to differentiate between us.

I NEVER get nicknames (not counting ones from family) so of course when our little duo was nicknamed it was Sarah & Scary Sarah.

I wasn't scary. At all. She was! We wore the huge pants of the rebellious youth of the time, with pantleg circumferences going as high as 5' around for one pantleg.

(If you're curious as to what pants that large around look like, it's so similar to a skirt you'd barely notice except if one walked with very long strides).

Because of these over-large pants, they often trailed behind us like the train of a gown. In the ever-crowded hallways of our rural school, they would often be stepped on. If someone stepped on Sarwa's pantleg, she would turn around and give them a glare scary enough to make them swallow their gum inadvertently and decide they should take another route to class.

Sarwa has 5 brothers and they love to wrestle, and as a result she is freakishly strong.

Motherly is not a word I would ever use to describe her. She would half-jokingly say all the time that she wasn't going to live to see 21, much less have kids, but we were too close for me to allow her to take that seriously.

If someone put a child in her hands, she would hold it out from her body awkwardly and give a look that would say very eloquently "What am I supposed to do with this?"

So when her first child was born, a lovely boy she referred to in the womb as her "parasite", I was highly interested to see how motherhood would take her.

The first time I saw her giving her son a raspberry on his belly I about fell over.

Sarwa just doesn't DO that!

Cut to a few years later and Sarwa had a baby girl this spring. I hadn't seen much of her since she lives up north a ways and schedules are hard to coincide, but we make an effort to hang out at least every couple of months.

So she comes over with 3-yr old son and 6 month old daughter in tow. She is a sweet, sweet child who allows me to hold her without fuss. Sarwa's son is another matter...in order to get a hug from him, I have to fake-cry which always makes me feel guilty, like I'm causing the need for future therapy (*sob* "...and my mom would have this strange lady come over who talked too loudly and would cry until I hugged her, but I didn't really want to hug her...)

I'm a pillow freak (inherited from my mom I think) and so our sectional couch (also inherited from mom) has about a gagillion pillows on it. Her son is having a grand old time burying himself underneath them and exploding out of them periodically while Sarwa & I chat and catch up.

Then she does something that makes me realize that wild and crazy Sarwa is still there, somewhere underneath the diaper changing pad and breast pump.

She grabs her son's ankles, yanking them out from under him so he falls flat on his back on the couch. She puts her hand over his mouth and begins tickling him mercilessly, while he squeals in obvious delight, his heels pounding away on the cushion.

At my shocked expression, she calmly tells me, "He shrieks so loudly I have to cover his mouth or the neighbors think I'm murdering him."

YES!

SHE won't judge me when I playfully torture my kids. She'll join right in!

And to the parents that don't understand that "torture" is an expression of love?

I feel sorry for you. You've never had the joy of embarrassing your kids or tickling them while they squeal in delight. Try it sometime...it's good for the soul. At least I always enjoyed some loving torture growing up.



*Names have been changed...slightly. But I'm not fooling anyone, am I?

The Women in My Family Are Comfortable With Touching

This is something I've discovered when comparing my immediate family with others. Everyone has boundaries to some extent, with the only difference being in size and application.

For the most part, we have no issue touching other people in social settings. Just met you? No problem, we'll be back-patting, arm squeezing and shoulder-punching you like we were lifelong friends quicker than you can say "bad touch".

Like the time my mom chest-patted my high school boyfriend Parrot Boy (so named for his blue hair, prominent nose, and various pierced body parts. What? I fancied myself a rebel youth). He looked so startled we both laughed about it later on when my mom apologized to me for doing it. Hilarious, because despite Parrot Boy's best efforts to be angst-y and scary, very little deters the women in my family from being touchy-feely.

This sometimes creates problems, like when you marry someone who isn't touchy-feely. Or someone who avoids unnecessary tactile contact like the plague, as the Big B does. I try to be good about not touching him too much, but every once in awhile I can't hold it back any more and I go into "leech mode", whereupon I latch onto him like he's the last floating piece of debris in the ocean after a shipwreck and squeeze with all my might. If he struggles, I've been known to wrap a leg around his hip and be dragged around the house until I've had my fill of hugging.

Coupled with this, I was raised to be comfortable in my own skin and to have no problems discussing bodies and natural functions.

So it was no surprise when my mom, sister and I found ourselves in a compromising situation on a road trip to see Dave Matthews Band one summer.

As a present for my mom, we bought tickets to one of her favorite musical artists and decided to make a girl's trip out of it since the concert was in Wisconsin. We loaded up in the car, booked a hotel room at the Rainbow Inn (eh? eh!) and proceeded to drive across Wisconsin.

We pulled off at a trucker stop/gas station/middle-of-nowhere place to stretch our legs and walk around a bit midway through our drive. We parked in a non-busy part of the large lot and somehow, the conversation turned to our breasts and went something like this:

Me: Your girls look HUGE! (staring at my sister)
Sister: What? Yours are just as big!
Mom: (laughing) 
Me: Yours are way bigger! Mom's don't look exactly small, either.
Sister: I think Mom's are bigger.
Mom: (Surprised) Really? I think Sarah's are the biggest.
Me: No way. (Feeling my breasts and looking at the others) Yours are definitely the largest.
Sister: C'mon! We're all pretty similar in size, I think. (Feeling herself up at this point)
Mom: (Feels her own and reaches out to feel ours) I think she's right, Sarah.
Me: (Reaching out to feel my mom's, then my sister's, then my own again) I think you both are crazy!
Mom & Sister: (Feels their own and then everyone else's)

Meanwhile, I happened to look around and realize we had an audience...

Me: *hissing* Omigod don't look now, but I think we just gave that trucker over there something to put in the spank bank...
Sister & Mom: Ewwwww! (All breast fondling stops and we start giggling)
*Disclaimer

And with that, we decided we'd stretched our legs enough and hopped back in the car and speedily made our exit from the scene of our unintentional lewdness.

In honor of that trip, I made us take this photo together on my wedding day.

We're crazy, and neither of them could refuse me on that day.

HA!


*This conversation is not accurate as far as who started touching who first, what exactly was said, or who even brought up the subject of breast size, although I have a strong suspicion it was me. But it is accurate as far as the tone and such. Plus there really was a trucker leaning on his vehicle watching us.

My Little Thanksgiving

My first Thanksgiving as hostess very nearly could have been a turkey-less disaster, but instead was probably the best holiday I could ever wish for.


We had turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean hotdish, stuffing, corn pudding, cranberries from the can, rolls, pumpkin & lemon meringue pie.

Oh, and homemade, delicious, made-from-all-the-drippings gravy (see them whisking away using Momma's guaranteed-yummy technique?).

It wouldn't seem right to have a Thanksgiving at my place without playing with our food a little.

Who would have ever suspected that at 10:00 am that morning, this turkey was frozen solid? Between that and the temperature fork/Celsius-Fahrenheit conversion argument of 2011, Wii Jeopardy, and platefuls of excellent food, we all had a great time.

I'm thankful for my family, who can have a frozen turkey on Thanksgiving morning and panic in a bubbling laughter kind of way instead of psycho freaking, who turns taking the bird's temp into an argumentative giggle-fest.

Look What My Son Caught for Me

He was so frakkin proud.

I knew something was up when I got out of the shower and instead of being in his customary spot on the rug just outside the tub, he was laying underneath the toilet.

Luckily, I am a habitual looker-down-before-I-step kind of person, so I managed to spot the "gift" before stepping on it (let me just say "eeeeeewwwww").

You guessed right.

My furry, four-legged "son" caught a mouse sometime between my alarm going off (where he was curled up in the nook of my bent legs) and me getting out of the shower last Friday morning.

And he's declawed!

This is the 2nd animal he's caught in the house. The first time he caught a little black shrew. We think it was him but really can't be sure since we do have two hunters in the house (Alabama Mae caught a shrew outside during a Father's Day BBQ and promptly brought it to my dad as a present).

This one I could be sure was his, just because of his odd behavior. When I stepped out of the shower, he looked at me, then at the mouse, and then back at me as if to say "Momma! Aren't you going to praise me?"

Of course I couldn't deal with the dead critter just then...I was still naked for cryin' out loud!

So I used some toilet paper to move it away from immediate danger of being stepped on in our 1' square bathroom and proceeded to get to the point where I was dressed enough to toss the carcass outside.

I considered flushing it, but thought it would be a bad idea. Gizmo is an extremely smart kitten, and he would try to "rescue" his prize if he saw me put it in the toilet.

But when it came time to dispose of the corpse, IT WAS GONE!!

OMIGOD. Not good.

Now I had to find this damn thing because there's no way I'm letting a potential mini-mouse zombie reanimate within the confines of my home.

I checked the usual spots...his food & water dish, his little hidey-hole cat castle, the spare bed...

Nada.

But then I remembered one truly important fact about my son....he's a HUGE daddy's boy, so I knew that he would have to show off his hunting skills to his father upstairs.

Nevermind that the Big B is sleeping away, Gizmo is a quiet understated kind of kitty but he would wait patiently until B acknowledged his feat.

And that's right where I found him and the mouse, hanging out on the carpet upstairs, waiting patiently for the accolades that are justly due him.

 Oh he looks so very proud, doesn't he?

Okay so you can barely see the thing...but it was definitely a live mouse at one point!

I guess all that practice with the fake mousies last night really gave Gizmo an edge this morning when it came time for the real thing.

My son, the mighty fluffy hunter.


*I tried to delay-post this 3 FRAKKIN times...Blogger hates me, because it's now a week later than I meant to post it. *sigh*

What Happens When You Have a Crush On a Fictional Urban Fantasy Character?

I'm in serious crush with a character from one of my books.

Ack! How did this happen?

Is this normal? Is there some new psychological disease they're going to name after me, that describes when someone has a crush on an entirely fictional character and pines with unrequited (and un-requit-able) love?

A friend introduced me to the urban fantasy series by Jim Butcher awhile back and I've been hooked ever since.

The main protagonist, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, just happens to live in Chicago and is the only entry under "Wizard" in the phone book. (He does not do love potions).

He's seriously tall and lanky, old-fashioned when it comes to women and children, and a wiseass of the nth degree.

He has a cat named Mister who is the closest thing to a mountain lion in those parts. He has a humongous Foo dog named Mouse who is smarter than most people. He drives a battered and beat-up Volkwagen Beetle that at one point was blue, but due to various attacks by supernatural creatures has had some cosmetic and body work done and is now more colors than a My Little Pony.

One of his best friends is a talking skull named Bob with a penchant for porn and seedy romance novels.(He's actually a spirit of intellect who lives in the skull, but let's not mince the details).

Harry battles all the supernatural baddies who come to Chicago to cause mayhem. He often gets beat up, has his apartment attacked and is constantly running his mouth when he is out of options. This is in addition to somehow finding enough money to pay the rent on his apartment and office.

Frequently this wise-cracking magic wielder gets the raw end of the deal, but he always keeps his head and somehow manages to save the day.

How can you not love a hero like him?

He's gotten to:

• Hang out with and mouth off to archangels
• Be protected by an actual fairie godmother (not as fun as it sounds)
• Battle monkey-demons who fling actual flaming poo at him
• Tell the Alien from H.R. Giger/Alien movie fame to "Get away from her you BITCH!"
• Visit his own grave
• Ride a giant zombie T-rex re-animated by polka music
• Lead a legion of tiny fair folk wielding box-cutter weapons in return for paying them in pizza

On top of being one of the baddest-ass wizards around, he hangs out with a group of collegiate werewolves who keep their campus free of crime (supernatural and otherwise) and regularily plays Dungeons and Dragons with them.

If I weren't married already (and if he wasn't fictional) I'd be driving to Chicago to throw myself at him.

If you find yourself craving some light reading and enjoy urban fantasy (or hysterically funny wiseacre heroes who regularily engage in witty banter) I strongly suggest you pick up this series. It's the best urban fantasy I've read, ever, and is one of my top ten favorite series.

Which is saying a lot, if you've seen the state of my bookshelves at home.

*The book series should not be confused with the SyFy series of the same name. Yes, technically it's based off of the books, but the word  from other loyal Dresden fans who've seen it, it's blasphemous and evil to relate itself to the books.

Equality is Important

HRC's On the Road to Equality Bus Tour is starting up, hitting major conservative areas of the United States with their message of hope, equality, and education for LGBT communities.

I've been a member of the Human Rights Campaign for only a short while, but have been a supporter of their message for much longer.

I believe their message is important and needs to shared as widely as possible so I encourage all of you to visit their site and download the awesome decals they've provided. Rest assured that I'll be printing these myself and attaching them to my car as soon as I get it back!

Hot Stuff, Coming Through!

I tease my man about his scrawny-ness often.

"Geez, won't you grow a butt already?!"

"Chicken legs!"

"For a moment there I thought you had grown an ass, but then I realized you were just bent over."

But truthfully, although I give him major shit, I find him incredibly sexy. I've long said that in my dictionary, skinny is synonymous with sexy.

And today is the 2nd anniversary of our marriage. Two whole years! The time flies by.

Our wedding photos all turned

out completely gorgeous*

I'm not overly superstitious but I will admit that at times I can see where things could be considered signs. Both of us are big procrastinators, always underestimating the time it will take to do things and as a result we're often found rushing around like the proverbial headless poultry. Preparing for our wedding was no different...

Amazingly, despite all the last minute things to do, the wedding went off without any problems. I'd been through the wedding deal several times with my friends and knew to expect at least three things to go wrong. Well, three things attempted to go wrong, but all three ended up working out just beautifully and only added a little bit of stress.

The weather was perfect--sunny and blue skies, not overly hot, with a nice cool evening to help the dancers at the reception keep from melting. The entire thing was exactly how we hoped it would be...just perfection. Our dance floor was never empty for more than a few moments from the minute the DJ got started until they kicked us out. We hit a local bar and closed that down afterwards and despite all the drinking and the crazy mix of people, there was no drama and everyone said they had a great time. For weeks afterwards we were hearing that our wedding was the best one they'd ever been to, ever.

It made the Big B feel a lot better to hear this. "If I had known it was going to turn out like this ahead of time, I wouldn't have bitched about all the money we were spending before!" he remarked to me a few weeks afterwards. I smiled because while he theoretically knew how much we were spending, I had kept the details from him after he almost had a coronary when I told him how much the flowers for the bouquets were going to cost...I think he much preferred it that way!

So although I'm not superstitious, I take our completely successful and kick-ass wedding as a sign that our marriage will be the same.

Another sign is the story of the rings...no, not that story (Lord of the Rings), but instead a simple story of two forgetful people who are not used to wearing rings.

The Big B complained during our long engagement that it wasn't fair I got to wear a ring and he didn't until after the wedding. I told him too bad, so sad--I was the one losing my incredibly unique last name, after all!

That being said, I had to get used to wearing my engagement ring at first, not being a girl who normally wears rings. One morning I was carpooling with my mom to work and put on lotion in the car on the way. I removed my ring to keep lotion from gunking up the facets and settings and put in my lap while I moisturized. Mom pulls over to the curb in the middle of downtown Minneapolis; I hop out and walk to work.

Hours later, I leave the bathroom stall and go to wash my hands and that's when I realize something is horribly wrong...MY RING IS MISSING!

I stagger out of the bathroom and run into my boss on the way out. I don't know what my face looked like, but it must have reflected what I was feeling because he immediately asked if something was wrong. I told him I lost my ring and he immediately gave me leave to go look for it.

In my head, I knew exactly what had happened. I had failed to put the ring back on after lotioning, and so I had two options, one hopeful and one a snowball's chance in hell. The first option, which I desperately prayed was the case, was that the ring had fallen somewhere in my mom's car and was patiently waiting for me to come get it.

The second option was that it had fallen onto the downtown street when I exited the car. I figured that if it was in the car, it would wait for me, but if it was on the street, the sooner I got there, the better the chance it would still be there.

I walked/limped as quickly as my maiming shoes would let me, and all the while visions are running through my head of what the Big B would say when I told him I lost the incredibly expensive diamond ring he had sweated and saved for to give me as a sign of his devotion. Every time I tried to think of what I would say, my mind blanked and all I could think was "Please....please....please be there!"

I turned the corner and started looking frantically at the sidewalk where I had hopped out. Nothing. My eyes spied a sewer grate and I was almost hoping it would be in there, as at least there it would be safe from casual passers-by, even if it would be a pain to get it out of the grate.

I began to lean over to look down into the sewer when my eyes were inexplicably drawn further up the side of the curb...and there, incredibly, was my ring!

Against all odds, it was there waiting for me! I don't know how I got from where I was at to the ring--it felt like one moment I was standing in shock, and the next moment I was snatching it from the ground. I put it on my finger where it belonged and then had to lean against a light pole for support as my knees went weak.

It was sitting on the little apron of concrete between the sidewalk and the tar of the road. What are the chances that this ring would not be seen by anyone in the 5 hours it had been sitting here, glinting in the light, sparkling its worth to anyone who took a closer look?

I had to tell somebody about this and I was still shaking and my mom worked downtown, so logically I went to her first. She too knew something was wrong immediately. I started my story with the preface "Just so you know, I have my ring" and I held it up to prove it "but I have GOT to tell you what just happened!"

She couldn't believe my good fortune either. We debated on whether I should even tell the Big B. I knew that if I had truly lost the ring, either we wouldn't be getting married (something I had to talk him into in the first place) or at the very least I wouldn't be getting another diamond ring! But since the ring was safe, did he really need to know that I'd almost lost it? On the one hand, ignorance is bliss, but I also didn't want to keep something like this from my future husband. After all, successful marriages require communication and honesty, right?

When I got back to work, my boss asked if I found it and when I told him the story, he said to me, "Buy some lotto tickets! You're obviously on a lucky streak!" I decided not to push my luck.

Eventually I decided to tell Brandon...and after I finished, shaking a little as I told the story, he turns to me and says laughingly, "This is one of the things you could have kept from me."

Go figure!

I chose to take the story and my freaky good luck as a sign that we were destined to be. But then something else happened...

It's our first winter as a married couple and the Big B is happy to be wearing his ring. He was even less used to it at first, not being the kind of man who wears jewelry of any kind (he doesn't have pierced ears and even avoids sunglasses for the most part). By this time he wore it constantly, even to bed, and had developed a habit of twisting it whenever his hands were still and his brain was moving. We pile in his Hyundai to go to Menards for some things when he stops to put lotion on.

Sound familiar?

Apparently, my hubby and I don't learn from each other's mistakes. He did the SAME THING I had done before--took the ring off to put on the lotion. We take off for Menards, come home to put our things away, and suddenly he comes up to me with his face paler than the usual white-boy Minnesota winter complexion.

"I can't find my ring..."

We search his car frantically but come up with nothing. We look at each other and get in the car and drive back to Menards. It's mid-winter and the parking lot is a mess of snow, slush, dirty ice humps fallen from the wheel wells of cars and here and there some pavement peeking through. At least here we can hope that some customer didn't notice it and walk off with it, as the grey of his Tungsten ring would blend in too well unless someone was looking right at it. Unfortunately, this meant it was that much harder for us to find.

We found where we had parked or close to it, and began combing the lot for the little circle of metal. I began to feel hopeless--no way were we going to find this thing! B swore he would come back during his lunch break the next day if we didn't find it that night. I comforted myself with the fact that at least his ring was cheaper to replace than mine!

Just as we were about to give up, he shouts! and strides to a spot nearby, bends over, and triumphantly holds up his wedding band.

*Whew*

Now I don't feel quite as bad about almost losing mine, since he did almost exactly the same thing with his.
And it just reinforced my belief that we are, indeed, meant for each other.

How else? We make the same mistakes...and have the same luck. I like to think it was Someone--the Universe, Fate, Higher Power, call it what you will--that wanted to show us that if we believe in each other and persevere, we can get through the bumpy stuff, even when we think all is lost.

The other day we had another ring scare...I get home and he tells me, "I can't find my ring, but I didn't have it all day at work so I assume it's upstairs in the bed."

He sleeps with his ring on, and while it requires a tug to pull off his finger, it's conceivable that it could have been pulled off while he slept.

But after we tear the bed apart and search every corner of the bedroom area and don't find it, a familiar panic starts to set in. We return to the car and find nothing...I quiz him on whether he remembered having it on during his drive to work. He can't recall and we're getting desperate.

We're ready to head to his work to check the parking lot, store and break rooms just in case when he comes running out of the garage door.

"Found it!"

Turns out that it was hiding in his back brace. It has these neat hand-pouches to help him put it on by himself, and requires him to put his entire hand in the pouch. Apparently, when he put it on that morning and pulled his hands out of the pouch when he was done adjusting it, the tension was enough to pull off his ring.

So for these stories, our without-a-hitch-wedding (except our own, of course!), the way we are both ready to argue at the drop of a hat (and love it), our shared love of geeky things, our passion for the things we love (even if we don't love the same things all the time), and a thousand other small details...

...I truly believe we're a match destined to be.

After all, when I was a little girl, I answered my BFF thus when she asked me, "Who do you think you'll end up marrying?"

"A big-nosed, tall, geeky guy with glasses."

While the Big B doesn't have glasses (and his nose isn't all that big), I'm confident that at some point in our lives he'll require corrective lenses and then my prophecy will be completely fulfilled.

Happy Anniversary Hot Stuff.

I Love You.


*Photos courtesy of Erin Johnson Photography. You can (and should!) check her out here or here at her blog. She did a wonderful job on our engagement photos and her associates did a perfect job at our wedding.