Zombie Dough Skull

During a couple of Piper's recent sick days, we turned to Play-Doh as a way to combat the boredom. I broke out the Halloween cookie cutters and made this (the cutaway skull was accidental, then I filled it with braaaaiiiins). I was quite pleased with myself, Piper was amused, and best of all, my husband was totally grossed out. He likes to watch slasher flicks, yet he could not handle me rearranging the zombie's brains.

"Oh my God, STOP TOUCHING IT."
"Whaat? His brains are crooked. I'm fixing them."
"Sure you are. That's so gross!"
"Are you saying I'm intentionally trying to gross you out by messing with my little zombie skull?"
"Yes, yes I am."
"Hmm. Well, I wasn't before, but now that you mention it..."

Love means never having to say "braaaaiiiins."

Welcome To My Birthday

YUP. Not only is it Friday the 13th, 90 degrees and rising (actually 93 at the moment I write this, I took the photo a couple hours ago), but it's my birthday.

My very nice husband gave me my first present at 12:02 last night, a bottle of raspberry lambic, which I immediately had two glasses of. I'd been reading this book before bed and it made me so anxious I couldn't get to sleep. I'll post a full review after I've finished it, but so far I have two things to say: 1) this marketing stuff is scary, scary shit with long-term societal implications; 2) everyone who has kids, wants kids, likes kids, hates kids, or has ever been a kid should read this. I'm now an avid reader of the author's blog and looking forward to reading her other book ASAP. Anyway, two glasses of lambic and an episode of Psych are a good cure for can't-sleep anxiety.

He gave me my other present this morning, a set of movies: The Color of Magic and Hogfather. We are some big Pratchett fans in this house.  Piper sang me a song: "Happy birthday to Mom-my! Happy birthday to Mom-my! On your birth-day, you! can! eat! CAKE! Happy birthday to Mom-my!"

Life Lessons, Brought To You By Tragically Ordinary

I am miserably sick today with some sort of sinus thing, and since I haven't quite completed my latest knitting project (and therefore can't share it yet), all I have for you is a list of things I've learned. These are things I've been thinking about a lot lately, because we've had some discussions about our future plans for this little family (actually, at this stage, it's more like 'plans to have a plan to make plans') and for ourselves. Friday is my birthday, which I always dread, but I'm trying hard not to get too hung up on it this year. I'm trying to view all the hard knocks and missteps and bumbling that have occurred in my life so far as learning experiences, instead of a list of reasons why I shouldn't be allowed near people and should never be given power tools or a checkbook.

 What I've Learned So Far:

1. Wear an apron while cooking bacon. Do not cook anything while drunk or naked. Definitely do not cook anything while drunk and naked.

2. If you buy your significant other something awesome for their birthday, and the same year they buy you some unwanted, bewilderingly useless kitchen appliance for your birthday, it's time for a new relationship. This is particularly true of college relationships, and quadruply true if the other party doesn't understand why you're upset. If they can't comprehend that you make $7.50 an hour yet managed to buy them an amazing and perfectly-chosen $125 gift, and that their reciprocal $35 newspaper-wrapped breadmaker might be upsetting, especially given that you don't bake, they're probably not The One. If you've been together for two years and get a shrug and a "I didn't know what else to get you," they are definitely not The One.

3. You will  never be able to convince anyone else that their significant other is not The One. It's really something they need to realize on their own.

4. If your baby makes a gigantic mess every time she eats blueberry applesauce, either deal with it or stop giving her blueberry applesauce. Don't try and feed it to her while she's in the bathtub. It's going to make a bigger mess than you ever imagined.

5. If you're moving to another state, some place you know nothing about, RENT for a year.

6. Investigate strange smells promptly. This applies to any and all strange smells in any and all locations. 

7. All mothers are crazy. All mothers drive their daughters crazy. Most mothers-in-law are crazy, too. Everyone's definition of "crazy" is different, so it's all (HA!) relative.

8. Air conditioning, a working dishwasher, and a sense of humor are key components of a happy marriage.

9.Before you buy that extra t-shirt or stack of discount books or whatever trinket you're eying, consider how you feel about moving it back and forth across the country a few times. Doesn't sound like fun, does it?

10. Don't confuse "adventure" with "stupidity." Don't confuse "caution" or "responsibility" with "fear."

So what about you? What have you learned so far?

Overheard in Our House

"Umm...hey, did you turn on those twinkling snowflake lights for her?"
"What? Oh, yeah, I did. Why?"
"Oh, good, the living room isn't on fire, then."

Although I suppose if it was, our house would at least be warm, because we are too miserly to turn up the heat. We walk around in thick socks and layers of sweaters and find excuses to bake things, but we will not turn up the heat. Our Northern pride will not allow it, even if our icy toes are begging us to.

In The Panic Room

My in-laws are coming to visit while Ryan is on Spring Break. They are coming for five days, and they are staying with us.

Yeeeeah.

I know I agreed to this, I know I said "oh, yeah, sure" somewhere during the round (or ten) of conversations that determined when they would be coming and how long they would stay and what season it would be and if it would be okay with us and is Piper excited her Granny is coming and I need to know exactly what to pack and how many hours exactly does the trip take and if we would be properly gratified that they graced us with their presence and where Jupiter would be in the sky at the time of their visit.

I know I said that it was okay if they took up residence in our guest bedroom for nigh on to a week. But really, what else could I say? Because I think "Um, actually, you people freak out my kid and make me so uncomfortable it is nearly physical and say inappropriate things and complain about everything and just generally drive me completely crazy, so if you could get a hotel, that would be great" would not play well.

But I was fine with it, until yesterday, when the following conversation took place:

Steph: Oh, look, a flyer for the volunteer fire department's fish fry. All you can eat flounder and shrimp. You've been hankering for fish and chips, I've been crazy for shrimp. We should go to this. It's on the 4th, next Saturday.
Ryan: Um, okay, I guess we could. But my parents will be here at some point.
Steph: No, your parents are coming weekend after next.
Ryan: No, they're coming the 4th. That's this upcoming weekend.
Steph: Yeah, but that's not Spring Break yet...they're coming while you're still in school?! I'm going to have to entertain them for FIVE DAYS while you're in school all day? What the hell?
Ryan: No, Steph, that's the start of my spring break.
Steph: No it's not. Your spring break starts the week after next week.
Ryan: No, it's the week after this week. This is my last week of class before spring break. It's the end of the month this week.
Steph: Yeah, but your spring break doesn't start until the sixthhh...OHGOD. Crap. OHGOD.
Ryan: You know, I thought you were being pretty nonchalant about their arrival-
Steph: (looking around at cluttered dining table, flour-covered kitchen counters, mountain of dirty dishes, guest room that can charitably be described as "a disaster") OH GOD. They're coming this weekend. Oh my God. What am I going to do? Oh God. OH GOD!
Ryan: -but there she is! There's my girl.
Steph: OHHH GOD oh God OH GOD oh GOD OH NO.

For The Love Of Ikea

I have been in a low spot lately. Too many problems, not enough solutions. When I get down in the dumps, I am cranky, morose, and mopey, but my husband is positively intolerable. He just runs around repeating "What can I do? What can I do? How can I help? What will make you happy?" and getting progressively more hyper about it until I either shriek "You can leave me alone for ten minutes!" or throw something at his head. Obviously that is not a good solution to either of our restless emotional states, so a different tactic was required.

I made Ryan take me to Ikea today, because that is my happy place. Really, who doesn't like to go to Ikea and pretend that they live in those tiny, well-organized fake apartments? I love organizational things, boxes and crates and bags and drawer dividers and pencil holders and pot racks and spoon holders and memo boards and baskets and hampers. I am obsessed with bed linens, too - I collect them the way some people do teacups or vintage buttons. Ikea allows me to get my ya-yas out in these areas pretty cheaply. Sometimes, like on today's visit, I don't even need to buy anything. Just knowing that I could compartmentalize every inch of our silverware drawer or each pair of socks I own is enough.

They say you can't buy happiness, but I think They just haven't witnessed two floors' worth of furniture and kitchen gadgets with amusing names. Not to mention the smell of cinnamon rolls that permeates the place. And the best frozen yogurt I've ever had, for just $1.

My happy place should probably be a meditation garden somewhere, or inside my own head, or a certain bridge in Amsterdam just as twilight is falling or something, and not a retail establishment. I suppose this makes me very bourgeois and Middle American and what-have-you. But you know what?

They do not have free childcare on special bridges in Amsterdam;

There are no tranquil meditation gardens within a 17-minute drive from my house;

And it is very hard to find good cinnamon rolls inside my own head.

Totally Lame-Ass NYE

My parents are here, and staying with us, which means we have FREE babysitters for as far into the wee hours as we want to party.

And yet, we are so deeply, profoundly lame that we don't have anywhere to go.

There's a celebration in Charlotte's downtown (er, Uptown) district, but we don't really feel like going to that. It's cold outside, parking downtown is expensive, and I think it's alcohol-free anyway. Any decent bar is charging $20 cover tonight and we don't feel like shelling out $40 to stand around crammed in with a bunch of people we don't know and sip warm $3 Budweisers and a glass of watery champagne at midnight. There's not even a movie that we want to see bad enough to pay full price for. Some friends have invited us to hang out and watch movies at their house, but it's 40 minutes away and we are both pretty tired (we went to bed at 2:00 a.m., our visitors got here at 6:00, and I got a 2-hr nap but Ryan didn't).

So we are hanging around the house with our daughter and my family, snacking and watching movies. I have taken advantage of the baby-occupiers to do a little pretend/fantasy-shopping and indulge my bag obsession. It's nice to spend a couple of hours frittering away time on the Internet without anyone whacking me in the face with a copy of Goodnight Moon.

Next Year Everyone Is Getting a Lobstergram

1. We finished our holiday shopping last weekend, which was pretty good considering we didn't start until the weekend of Dec. 6th. It only took one episode of us screaming at each other in the mall parking lot, two online orders, one case of me speaking to Ryan through gritted teeth in the middle of the bookstore, eight eggnog lattes and twenty-six apologies to do it. I cannot count how many lessons we learned this year. They were not fun lessons, but valuable; we already have a plan of attack for next year's holiday gifting, one which thankfully does not rely on my speedy completion of handicrafts or Ryan's ability to refrain from cracking jokes when I am already pissed off.

2. Those same gifts that were nearly the cause of a divorce were supposed to be wrapped Saturday night/Sunday afternoon, packaged up, and taken to the post office on Monday. We bought The Golden Compass to watch while wrapping Saturday night. Not much in the way of actual wrapping and packaging got done. From the big pile of stuff, three things got wrapped, none of which are being mailed anywhere. His parents' present (a collection of photos in a frame) is not even half done and although Ryan assures me that he'll figure out some way to ship a picture frame with four glass panels in it, he has yet to come up with any useful ideas. Mostly what happened Saturday was we tried to wrap things together, then I got bossy and Ryan got mad, so he retired to the couch to play with his new deck of trick cards and I spent several hours saying "PIPER! GET DOWN NO! STOP TOUCHING THAT! GET OFF THE TABLE! PUT THE SCISSORS DOWN! BRING THAT BACK HERE! STOP EATING THAT! LEAVE IT ALONE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP POKING THE CAT WITH THE SCISSORS! DON'T TOUCH THAT! DON'T TOUCH DON'T TOUCH DON'T TOUCH DON'T TOUCH PUT IT BAAAAAAAAAACK!"

3. It is now Thursday and not a single thing has been wrapped all week. Ryan keeps responding with his usual "chill out, wouldja?" attitude when I explain every day that I need some (expletive) time without the baby in the house so I can (expletive) wrap the (expletive) presents so I can take them to the (expletive) post office because they are already going to be (expletive) late. The holiday season has not been good for my resolve to curse less (so that our exceptionally observant parrot daughter doesn't start repeating the f-word in public).

It Came From the Laundry Room

Piper and I were doing laundry after Ryan went to bed. I was sitting on the floor of the laundry room with a pile of dirty clothes, handing things to Piper so she could put them in the washer.* I grabbed a piece of clothing and something long, slithery, and many-legged tumbled off it. I jumped up, shrieking, and the Thing slithered back into the laundry pile.

My shriek freaked out Piper, who echoed my "EEEEEEEEEE!!!!" noises while looking very concerned and then started to cry. I picked her up and called "I need some help in here!" across the house. Ryan hadn't gone to bed that long ago; I figured he was still awake. "I NEED SOME HELP IN HERE!" I yelled. No response.

So I charged across the living room, put down the wiggling baby, and together we threw open the master-bedroom door. "I need some HELP IN HERE!" I yelled.

Ryan's head emerged from the covers. "Whaa? Haa? Mmrefah?"

"Iwasgettinglaundryfromthepile and athingfelloutitwashuge OH MY GOD itwasbigitwasoneofthosethings oh my God, the thingswithallthelegs, ohGodoh- a millipede, that's the thing with all the legs, right? Centipede? WELL THERE'S ONE IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM AND IT'S HUGE! Killitkillitpleasecomekillit!"

He sighed. "You want me to come kill it?"

"YespleasebecauseitwasHUGE ohGod HUGE HUGE!"

"Can't you just...oh, never mind," he said irritably as he got up.

I went with him to the laundry room still jabbering about the SIZE of the THING and made him go through the laundry in the basket, piece by piece. He did, grudgingly, the whole time giving me a lecture on how I shouldn't get so "worked up" about the bugs around here, because giant bugs are just a fact of life in this part of the country, and getting upset and freaking out isn't helping anything. He was referring to the fact that the first time a giant flying cockroach palmetto bug got into the house I was screeching and running around like my hair was on fire for half an hour and spent the rest of the evening nervously jumping onto the furniture any time I saw a shadow move.

Personally, I think I have been pretty understanding about the bugs. I spend a lot of time cleaning, scrubbing, re-washing, and sterilizing things to combat the ants (swarms of which have lately been found in such locales as the linen closet and under the computer desk); I didn't have a nervous breakdown when I woke up with a tick on my eyelid and I didn't even scream the time I found an earwig in our bed. In fact, I didn't even wake him up that time, I just killed it myself.

But here he was, giving me a lecture on how I need to "just deal with it" when I find a bug. He went through everything in the basket. I hovered anxiously the whole time, emitting random freak-out noises, which Piper mimicked with astonishing accuracy. When no Creature of Doom appeared, I made him go through it again, which he did, although by now he wasn’t even pretending not to be annoyed at me. The whole time he lectured me in a patronizing tone about how I was going to have to learn to accept the bugs, and why did I have to make such a big deal, it’s not helping anything, blah blah blah. Then he said that since obviously there was nothing here now, he was done.

"You're not-not going back to BED are you? WE HAVE TO FIND IT!"

He looked at me, that patronizing, patient look you give small children, pets, and mental patients. "Well, Steph, I've been through everything in the basket and it's not here. I don't know what you want me to do. It's gone."

"What the fuck is the point of being married if I don't even have a husband who will kill bugs for me?!" I yelled. "I made you chocolate-bourbon-pecan pie from scratch, and you can't even kill a gargantuan prehstoric-size millipede for me? It was HUGE! You don't understand! It was on my UNDERWEAR!"

"Well, I looked through all of the laundry twice. It's not here. Where could it possibly go?"

"Move the basket. Maybe it went out one of the holes in the side of the basket."

He started to deliver more of his "My wife is being a hysterical sissy and should not be afraid of bugs and especially should not wake me up to kill them for her" speech, then stopped mid-sentence. His eyes got really big,and he backed up. "I need a shoe," he said in a flat voice.

I gave him a grungy flip-flop from the pile by the back door. He moved the laundry basket, then brought the shoe down like a hammer. He stood up and looked at me.

"I, uh, see how that could be alarming," he said. "I totally apologize, because you are totally correct, that was HUGE. I saw it, it was like this big-" he held up his hand and pointed to indicate the millipede's length. "Oh my God, that's like four inches. Maybe even six. So, um, yeah. I'm sorry. I could definitely see how that would be disconcerting. It's dead and I don't even want to touch it. I am very sorry I doubted you. It was, in fact, HUGE."

"I know!" I said. "And it almost fell on my LEG!" I shuddered. "And...thanks. For killing it. And for acknowledging that my reaction was in proportion to the size of the bug."

"Well, I expect to be faithfully represented on your blog," he said. "Both as a killer of large insects and as an apologetic husband."

I hope I have done him justice here.


*She likes to help, and even though it makes everything take two or three times as long, I really don't mind. Her little face totally lights up when I say "thank you very much!" as she hands me some laundry or clean dishes or puts something away for me.

Oh, Awesome. Now I Am Going To Freak Out.

Among all the other reasons to get rid of our cats, I just thought of a new - very big - reason. Several of them have decided they need to be indoor-outdoor cats and they kill things and leave them outside the house. Until I found a dead bat outside just now, it hadn't even occured to me to worry about rabies. Awesome. Especially since Piper will body-slam and wrestle the cats all the time and some of them have bitten her almost hard enough to draw blood over it.

Nobody is up to date on their shots because we can't afford to keep 9 cats up to date. We can't even afford the $18 rabies shot times nine. It wasn't an issue before, since nobody went outside. But now they won't stop going out. I think they are also bringing a variety of extra bugs in. I woke up this morning with a TICK on my EYELID. Oh, yeah. A bloodsucking bug burrowing itself into my ocular cavity. We had found ticks in the house before, but we weren't sure that's what they were because they were HUGE. We were under the impression that ticks were small and unobtrusively-sized, the better to surreptitiously suck your blood. Surely, we thought, these monster-sized pointy bugs MUST be something else. Until this one attached itself TO MY EYELID and Ryan had to use a heated-up hairpin to get it out.

Possibly the worst part is that I didn't even find it - he did. While we were kissing. He was giving me a getting-ready-to-head-out-the-door kiss when his eyes got all big and he said "You were right. I think those bugs are ticks. You have one on your eyelid." He scratched at it and it wouldn't come off. "Uh, yeah, you have a tick on your eyelid," he said. "And it's not coming off..."

I did not freak out, though. I guess a tick on my eyelid sent me past hysteria into "oh my God, this cannot be happening" territory. I sat there calmly while he went to find something to get it out. I stood there calmly while he pressed a hairpin to a stove burner. I did flinch the first time he poked me with the red-hot metal, but only the first time.

Between the tick and the giant flying cockroach that found its way into our living room last weekend (also due to the outdoor cats), I think I am so over The Glorious South. And having pets.

A NC native friend told me that giant flying cockroaches are referred to as "palmetto bugs" down here, in order to make everyone feel better about the fact that (as our exterminator told me) they live in the trees and there is nothing you can do to avoid them.

I don't feel better.

Edited to add: Oh, and did I mention that fleas are a when, not if type of thing down here? I have been obsessively checking the cats and administering drops to the ones who go outside and vacuuming the couch every single day and the entire house every 2-3 days, but every time I see one of them scratch I want to rent a flamethrower.

Piper likes to run around the house naked (she's become quite the post-bath and mid-diaper-change streaker) and sits on the carpet like that; every time she does I pray pleaseletusnothavefleas please let us not have fleas pleasepleaseplease because if she is sitting naked on a carpet with fleas in it I will have to kill myself.

I can't wait until we can afford to have hardwoods put in.

Also, as I told my husband this morning: Screw camping. I am never going camping again, except maybe in Antarctica, because if I got a tick on my eyelid when I haven't so much as set foot in the backyard in two weeks, let alone gone near the (small strand of) woods behind the back yard...well, I just can't handle it.

Why Rent When You Can Buy? Oh, That's Why.

So, my husband is in North Carolina, attempting to teach miscreants teenagers how to diagram a sentence. I am here, holding onto my sanity by a thread down the fort. After much discussion and some frustrating apartment-hunting (online by both of us and in-person by him), we have decided that it couldn't hurt to look into buying a house. This, of course, means applying for a mortgage. Because, you see, you can't really buy a house until you ask The Man for some money and The Man tells you how much imaginary money you'll have to spend.

We went through this once before, in California, before we decided that working two jobs apiece just to own a piece of shit condo in the seedy end of town was not something we wanted to pursue. I handled it all, spending much time on the phone with a very nice lady from some mortgage firm or other, a firm which apparently sold my information to whoever buys that sort of thing, because now I get 10 automated robot telemarketing calls a week on my cellphone about "an important personal business matter" and "the great rate I can give you on your current mortgage." Whatever, dudes.

I also handled the documentation and made many phone calls badgering a certain employee of another mortgage company to GET OFF HIS ASS and do something when we had to use that mortgage company in order to qualify for a downpayment assistance program provided by the city and a reduced-interest-rate program for teachers. This guy took our documents and then sat on them for four weeks, while I left him an increasing number of irate messages and finally called threatening to camp out in his office until he filed our paperwork for us. In the end, it didn't much matter, since we didn't want to buy a piece of shit condo in a piece of shit town, but we only decided this after I spent all those weeks trying to get this assmonkey to do his fucking job.

Anyway, this time Max is handling it so far, although I will be the one digging up our tax records and pay stubs and bank statements when it comes time. Max has on occasion sighed heavily and rolled his eyes at my obsessive filing of our personal documents, but a couple of days ago he thanked me for my dedication because he knew all it would take was the flip of a file-box-lid to get what we need.

Monday he called to tell me he called several mortgage people and was only able to get one on the phone. It was a guy, and when Max explained what we're looking for/our situation, this particular mortgage-broker-person said he was just going to run Max's credit/info, instead of ours together, because he thought that would give us a better score and more money. We were under the impression that since we're married, it doesn't much matter, but I guess that's not the case.

I was irritated, because when Max relayed the conversation, I got the distinct impression that this mortgage guy had dismissed me outright since I'm not employed (at least, not in a paycheck-gathering, social-security-accruing sort of way) and am, for all intents and purposes, a Stay At Home Mom. Which, uh, let's face it, as much as I just shuddered typing that sentence, I am. Oh dear, there goes another shudder.

However, this does not mean that I am happy to be cast aside uncounted. Particularly since my credit score is 60-100 points higher than my husband's (which makes it very high, the sort of high that made dollar signs pop into housing lenders' eyes during our first attempt at buying a home). My husband has good credit, but that is mostly due to my influence (and by "influence" I mean constant badgering about paying bills on time, taking over paying the bills so they get paid on time, and threatening to make him eat his credit card if he used it again before the balance was fully paid off). So I am a leeeeetle annoyed that this loan guy is blowing off my very existence.

My irritation with this loan guy's attitude is approaching the levels I reached during our house-shopping days in California, when I endured all manner of sexist comments and attitudes from realtors. I'm still not sure if people involved in the house-buying business are this stupid and offensive to everyone, or if everyone but me is too stupid to be offended.

Unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes

So, Max is Down South, and we are still stuck in the Great White North until we figure out a place for us to live. He gets up at 5:30 am to go to school every morning. I just called him at 12:20 am to tell him something. He wasn't mad. In fact, this sort of thing is pretty typical of our relationship. The conversation sounded like this:

Him (groggily): Hello?
Me (jabbering): Okay, I'm sorry to call you at this hour but I had to tell you this right now or I would forget, okay? So I'm really sorry but I had to tell you this. You remember that one time when we were in the Starbucks and that Sparklehorse song "Shade and Honey" was on only we didn't know it was a Sparklehorse song at the time? And I spent the whole three and a half minutes or whatever of the song going "Damn, what is this? I know this. What is this? I know this song, I know all the words, what the fuck is this?!" but I couldn't figure it out and then we got the Sparklehorse album and I was like "oh, that's the song" and I got all obsessed with Sparklehorse and I listen to the album at least twice a week now?"
Him (patiently): Yeeeaaah...
Me (still jabbering): But we never did figure out where I knew the song from?
Him (still patient): Uh-huh...
Me (teeth nearly chattering with excitement): Well, guess where it's from?! You remember that movie Laurel Canyon that I watched like eight times in a row? It's in there, the guy sings it! The songs in the movie are Sparklehorse songs, the lead singer wrote that song for the movie!
Him (as if a light bulb has gone on): OH! Oh! Yeah!
Me: I just wanted to tell you that.
Him: Well, I love you. Good night.
Me: Me, too. 'Night.

See? I blurt out weird things at random times and he not only follows what I'm saying, he's right there with me.

I love that man.

Happy Friggin' New Year

Max left the night of the 30th for North Carolina, so I rang in the new year on the phone with him. Piper, who was of course NOT SLEEPING, celebrated by pooping at midnight exactly. I'm totally serious. It was a mess that required 10 baby wipes, 2 changing-pad covers, a new pair of pajamas, and 15 minutes to clean up.

We are all sick here. My nose has been running for days, a near-constant trickle and drip. I've resorted to wiping it on my sleeve several times so I don't drip snot on the baby's head. Piper also has The Plague (as we've all taken to calling it), and the accompanying stuffy/runny nose. She uses me to wipe her nose, leaving glistening trails of baby snot on the shoulders of all my shirts.

I sincerely hope y'all are have a better new year than I am right now.

Not a Planner, But He Makes Good French Toast

One of my husband's more exasperating qualities is the way he hands out information. Whenver anything's going on, he either a) doesn't get all the necessary info, or b) doesn't give it to me. For example, he'll tell me his parents are talking about coming for a visit on Saturday, but he won't know what time and he thinks "maybe we're going to go eat lunch or something together." I don't find out until Friday night that they are coming the next day at two o'clock and not only are we going out to eat, they have a very specific place in mind and I need a nice-looking outfit to wear and they'll probably want to come back here afterwards so I need to make a dessert and stock the fridge with beer. It has taken YEARS of screaming and pleading and explaining and temper tantrums on my part to get him to correct this habit even a tiny bit. At least now he'll tell me up-front that he doesn't have any more information, and occasionally he'll remember to ask for it before he hangs up the phone with the person he has just made plans with.

I'll admit it, I am a control freak and I like to have as much information as possible beforehand. I like to be able to plan for every contingency. Some people would find it paranoid and weird that I would pick out three (sometimes more) possible outfits to wear to lunch with my in-laws, so that I have choices based on what the weather is like tomorrow, possible shoes I might feel like wearing, and whether or not I think his mom will wear a blue dress and do I want to run the risk that we might be dressed even a little bit alike. I am more inclined to call this facet of my personality the "they drive to weird-ass out-of-the-way places and I don't want to be scrunched into their Saturn for four hours of drive time wearing too-tight pants and a sweater that is hotter than a blacktop in July, and ok so sue me but I would be weirded out if my MIL and I both showed up in flowy blue dresses" factor. I will make said dessert and buy said beer for consumption post-meal at our house, but I will fret that maybe blueberry pie won't go with whatever we'll be eating, and perhaps I should buy both light and dark beer because you never know what people will be in the mood for.

My husband's refusal/inability to adhere to the Defense of Our Marriage Freedom of Information Act (i.e. Weetzie will freak the hell out when she does not know every tiny detail beforehand so if you are making plans you'd better get your facts straight, pal, and God help you if you don't tell her everything you know immediately) has forced me to be a little more Zen with my planning. Oh, sure, he's improved (he usually remembers to nail down time, date, and place now), but you are talking to a woman who will not wear red underwear beneath a purple skirt because those two colors don't match and it would bother me all day. I am so Zen now that he can say "my parents are coming on Saturday" and I will just shrug, pick out two possible outfits, and make an apple crisp. That's how Zen I am.

My Zen-master qualities will be sorely tested with this move. Er, possible move, since last night he said that he hadn't actually told them he full-on accepted the offer, and he thought maybe he'd go down there first and check it out. I spent the day combing websites and puzzling over neighborhood maps for a place we may or may not move. I haven't even gotten around to trying to price moving trucks or figuring out how we're going to live for months and months with no furniture because we got rid of it all and, horrifically enough, there is no Ikea in North Carolina.

I suppose I can't blame him for his caution. We went in blind and excited for our California move, and that did not turn out nearly as great as we thought it would. And a job is nice, but if it's going to be another terrible job in a place we can't really afford to live and would hate...well, that's why we left California.

I am pretty proud of myself, though, for not picking up something and beating him with it when I asked about things like the job salary, benefits, etc. and he said he didn't know. I just took a deep breath and told myself that I can't blame him for not researching the job all that well, since we thought it was a long shot and weren't sure how interested we were in another big move. It would just be nice to know these things, so I can work out a possible budget and maybe find a pediatrician or know if I'm going to have to auction a kidney on Ebay every time Piper gets an ear infection or someone keys our car.*

He's supposed to go down there for an orientation before the end of the month (two days right before the school lets out for Xmas break), and I think his plan is go down there solo and check it out - the school, the neighborhoods, the town in general. We want a reasonably nice neighborhood (our budget never allows for one that's super-trendy or super-safe) where we can survive with one car. I am going cross-eyed looking at apartment listings and trying to get familiar with a city I've never been to. When we moved to California, it was sheer dumb luck that got us an apartment three blocks from his school, which just happened to be on the safer end of town. We picked that complex because it was cheap and allowed pets. Somehow I don't think Fate will be that kind twice, and I don't want to end up livng next to a sewage treatment plant (does Charlotte have a DoWiSeTrePla?) or in a place where living with only one car is out of the question.

One thing that got me totally excited about this (possible, probable) move was when Max pulled up the weather forecasts for there...and then for here. It's supposed to be high-60's in Charlotte this weekend. Here? They're prediciting mid-30's and snow. I did not like the cold when I lived in Michigan before, and two years of wearing flip-flops 11.5 months of the year did not make me happy to come back to a place where I have to dress my wriggly, cranky child in 4 layers of clothing just to take her outside.




*Which happens a lot, actually. Twice in the first year we owned it - once in CA, and once two days after we arrived back in Michigan.

Overheard In Our Living Room

"Oh my God, you have made me so gay."
"What? Why?"
"Because I'm looking at that girl, and all I can think is 'she has fabulous eyebrows!'"