Category: Husband

Family, Friends, Humor, Husband, Shopping, Weekend

Monday, Ho!

“Ahh, what a day! Up at 6:00, a 10-mile run in the sleet, and NOW a big bowl of plain oatmeal! How I love the crazy hedonism of weekends!”
– Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

I indulged this past weekend, minions.  I may have overindulged, in fact!

Let’s burn plastic  and worry about doing penance on Monday.

I’ve had a self-imposed shopping ban in place for months now, saving up for a major shopping trip, and I finally took it.  Woof.  There was carnage, kittens.  And then I went to a movie and dinner with my godfamily to round off my weekend of hedonism, because between weddings and assorted craziness we haven’t been able to play as much lately and that needed to be rectified.

Now the Small Dog clan is going on austerity measures until the holidays – Germany would adore us.

J.’s back in town tonight, permanently, no more cross continental marriage!  And immediately I drag him to an out of state wedding this weekend, we have another godfamily dinner at the start of next week, I head out to the Flyboy’s Wedding Part Deux in Louisiana the Saturday after, and the next day is our three year anniversary.  Life events are like buses, none come for huge stretches and then they all come all at once!

Humor, Husband, Linkstorm, London, Weekend

Friday Links XIX

“For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It’s quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn’t quite that simple. The fried egg isn’t properly a fried egg until it’s been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn’t do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It’s all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.”
– Douglas Adams

Last week was no good, pumpkins, my hormones went all crazy and I ate copious amount of terribly bad for me food.  I’ve been trying to get back on track this week and it hasn’t been any fun.  Food/Exercise morality is hateful.

Salad?!

But then – then!  On Monday J. got a job offer in London!  And if you think I’m complaining about anything for weeks to come, you’re nuts.  Here are your links, kittens!  I’ll be spending the weekend celebrating my birthday (!), checking in on the Queen’s Jubilee, checking out a new exhibit at the Museum of Art (courtesy of the V&A, so you know I have to go), and being a bit lazy.  How about you?

I burst into hysterical giggles checking these out.

Too bizarre.

If you’re celebrating the Jubilee with a G&T and dread a watery cocktail bringing you down, or just want your lemonade to look extra fancy at the next neighborhood barbeque, I think these oversize ice cube trays are nifty!

Very scary and upsetting, not for the faint hearted.  (On a less somber and highly inappropriate note, I’m pretty sure this is how the zombie apocalypse starts…)

Marie’s style is preppy, Kiri’s is French country, Nora’s is pure mid-century American.  My decorating tastes (inherited directly and unadulterated from my mum) are hardwood floors in houses stuffed to the brim with antiques and treasures from world travels, interspersed with trendy art that can be altered to fit the times.  There is probably no place for this in my Someday House.  Which means I may have to undergo a complete style makeover to accommodate it.

I have seen these fabulous riffs on vintage floating around the internet for months and I had no idea a genius company was behind it.  I have presents for the girls covered for years off of this site!  I’m craving this one in particular – because I am pretty sure this phrase has crossed the lips of of myself and everyone I have every considered to be a true friend.

Tumblr of the week: for my fellow expats, travelers, gypsy souls, or generally lost friends.  And for those of you who just love to travel.

Old news, but new to me.  Technology is weird.

I suffer from pasta portion control.  Therefore, this thingy is fantastic.

More kitchen stuff!  I am not prepared to pay the money for these, but the tiny organizer in me thinks these would save a lot of space.

Scary!  Women: know your finances!  I’ll the the first to admit that J. does most of the financial research in our family (he’s an accountant after all), but without trying to sound like an idiot or helpless female, he takes time to explain financial concepts to me if I don’t understand them well.  I also try to educate myself about the economic state of the world, country, and my family.  He may be the financial wizard, but there isn’t a single financial decision made that we don’t talk about and come to an agreement on – from food budgets to student loans.  Lady minions – this is important!

Spring is nearly over, but I think we can all agree that these brings out the country gentry in all of us, right?

Recipe to try (and one of the cuter ex-pat blogs out there).

Here’s your weekly sheep, and good luck to you.

Family, Friends, Humor, Husband

In Other News

“I even made him eat healthy food.  Mostly.”
“Bless you.”
– Peregrine, C.

I was lazy all weekend, and I regret nothing.  Long phone calls with some of my the girls (although Scarlett still owes me one), biking, Thai food – bliss.

In the meantime, while I was being a loungey housecat, Peregrine took a long vacation to the UK to visit some friends in Oxford and frolic in her former home of Scotland.  Naturally she crashed on J.’s couch in London from and to the airport, which meant I got to Skype with two of my favorite people at the same time.  My brain nearly shorted out from glee.

My only quibble is that I was not there too!  This will be rectified in July.
Humor, Husband, Travel

The Proverbial Straw

“The camel has a single hump,
The dromedary two;
Or else the other way around,
I’m never sure, are you?”
– Ogden Nash

I put J. on a plane yesterday morning, and it was horrible.  Somehow the first six months of this project were awful but doable, but the prospect of the last three months somehow feels unbearable all of a sudden.

I was determined to get him off to London with a stiff upper lip, lots of support, the usual sort of thing…and then on Tuesday night we went to Target to pick up a few last minute things for him.  We walked into the store and I froze like I’d slammed into a brick wall.  The whole thing had apparently undergone a massive renovation in under a week.  Every single department had been shifted around, the layout had been completely changed, and I couldn’t find anything.

And I can carry a lot of damned straw.

And apparently that was enough to trigger the randomest of neurotic collapses. Minor existential crises, a husband leaving the country, and work concerns and ambitions piling up I could handle.  But screw up my local Target and that poor camel of legend is done for.

J. held back howls of laughter as I marched through the store muttering, “What is this doing here?  Who’s idea was this?  This is all wrong!”
“Look,” he said, trying not to snicker, “now you’ll have to come back and explore it.  It’ll make for a fun shopping trip.”
“I am never coming back here,” I vowed.
“Why not?”
Because…because…”  I looked around trying to put a name to the problem before settling on, “Because someone moved my cheese!”

After making it home, having a cute cuddle and a quick cry, I felt better.  But only marginally.  After dropping him off at the airport I was so out of it I missed my exit and had to go on a bit of a highway adventure to get back on track.  Two days later, I still feel like the cosmos have moved my cheese.  My equilibrium is off, kittens, and I’m struggling trying to get it back.

Basically, I’m sad and having a bad day.

Family, Humor, Husband

Photographic. Evidence.

“I hate cameras.  They are so much more sure than I am about everything.”
~ John Steinbeck

Husband in town = neglect of minions.  Aunty C. is sorry, but she still love you all and trusts you forgive her as long as she promises to remember you in the will.

We’ve been playing hard.  Lots of movies, lots of eating out (which I will atone for once he’s gone by not setting foot in a restaurant for weeks), family time, and Easter celebrations.

Unfortunately almost none of this is documented.  Some people take pictures of everything (looking at you, godfamily) and they have so many fun memories locked away in photos and online.  J. and I?  Well, pretty sure the last time either of us actually tried to take pictures was at our wedding, almost three years ago!  If anyone asked us to prove we exist, we’d have a devil of a time trying to.

The trouble is, I’ve never been a photo taker.  I prefer writing things down to remember them and I am one of those women who can’t take pictures.  No, really.  I can hold a smile until the very second the photographer presses a button somewhere – most pictures of me feature my face mid expression change.  To say that this is unattractive is a gross understatement.  There is also that sneaky problem of me looking very different in my head than I seem to in pictures.  In my head I am taller, more fit, and my skin is flawless.

Ah well!  We’re going to try and be better about snapping pics from now on, if for nothing else than to prove to perfect strangers that our respective spouses aren’t only to be found in Facebook profile pictures.

Here, see? J.'s real, not the deluded imaginings of a Dickens-esque spinster with far too many cats.

 

And this is what he, understandably, is looking at. The desert selection at our favorite place to eat. Come visit us, we'll take you there. And may I recommend the Banana Cream Cheese Pie (also known as the ambrosia of the gods!).

 

 

 

Humor, Husband

So, Your Husband Comes to Visit…

“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”
~Andre Maurois

That title makes us sound like the most dysfunctional couple imaginable, but really, all things considered, I really like my marriage.  Even when we split the party between two continents, I’ve always felt confident in and enthusiastic about being married to J.  He’s a catch.

But a six month absence does lead to some funny instances of, “Oh.  I’d forgotten you do that.”

For example, he is much better at doing dishes than me.  In fact, I came home from work yesterday to find he had redone a load of dishes that had failed to live up to his exacting standards.  Lovely for me – who hates doing dishes with a vicious passion – until it makes me question if my plates, pots and pans have been (in spite of my best efforts) dirty for the last six months.

Me: "Good grief, you're hungry again?" Him: "I've only had one dinner!"

Also: feeding him.  Last night I made a pot of curry, an easy and tasty recipe (courtesy of Savvy) and one that would have lasted me three days prior to Monday.  Monday being the day J. flew in.  It’s completely gone.

In spite of his voracious appetite and his singular ability to make me feel domestically challenged, I’m awfully glad he’s here!

Family, Humor, Husband

Spring Has Sprung

“O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

It’s the first day of Spring and J. is here!  There may have been a freak snow storm last night and it may be freezing outside (after the most mild winter in recent memory), but I’m happy as a clam!  We’ve got plans to go to all our favorite places to eat, catch a few plays and shows on campus and around town, visit our new nephew (born yesterday!), and spend time with family.

More practically, I’ll have to relearn how to share a bed with another person who’s got over a foot on me, I’ve liked sleeping sprawled in the middle for the last few months.  I may have also taken over his old side of the closet…  Luckily he’s still too thrilled to see me to care.  He’s going to spend his break studying for his finals, then return to the UK to take them, and graduate in July.  We’re nearly done, kittens!

Humor, Husband, London

The J. Files V

“Gentlemen never wear brown in London.”
– Lord Curzon

I’m neglecting you, darlings, but it’s an unaccountably busy Thursday.  So here’s some pictures of the weather in London, which is also rather unaccountable in that it’s freezing cold, courtesy of J..  Remember, we are not jealous or sad, we are very proud of him.  Aren’t we, kittens?

The London House (I shall continue to refer to this shared student hovel as a grand town residence for the sheer snobbish fun of it).
A rather dashing gentleman at Piccadilly Circus.
Grad School, Humor, Husband, London, Sad

Absence Makes the C. Grow Nostalgic

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Things I really miss about my husband (all of the time, but particularly this week):

1.  How buddy buddy we are in public and how sickeningly cute he is in private.  One of my best memories of him is from the first year of our marriage.  It was the middle of the night and he woke up for some reason and got out of bed which woke me as well.  But thinking I was still asleep, he leaned over and kissed me on the nose.  Just because.

2.  We had a really great household system: I do laundry he does dishes.  I hate dishes, loathe them with an intensity usually reserved for cockroaches and split pea soup.  With him gone, I am reduced to doing my own dishes, which is a hateful nightly event.

3.  How easy it was to talk to my best friend about my day and hear about his.  We schedule Skype dates and email and chat regularly throughout the day, but it’s not as satisfying as our conversations during car ride home after work..

4.  Cuddling.  We are shameless cuddlers.  We cuddle on the couch, going to sleep, watching movies, talking, you name it.  The most satisfying feeling in the world is his arms around me, and not having it for months at at time makes me excessively grouchy.

5.  Believe it or not, listening to or watching sports with him, it’s ridiculously funny to hear my normally calm, reserved guy randomly exploding with, “C’mon!”  “He was in!”  “Travel?  TRAVEL?!”

6.  His quiet steadiness.  Sometimes I feel like the family tornado, constantly doing something, running, planning, doing until I burn out and collapse on the sofa.  Which is usually when he steps in with a grin and  calmly handles whatever it was that seemed so overwhelming a mere five minutes ago.  No doubt this trait will feature more heavily when we finally decide to spawn.

7.  Doing things with him.  We are really good about indulging one another’s interests and likes.  I bought him tickets to his favorite team for his birthday one year, even though I couldn’t care less about basketball.  He returned the favor by taking me to the opera.  I had Korean food for the first time with him, he went to England for the first time with me.  We’re far more adventurous together than apart.

8.  How helpful he is.  Since he’s been gone it seems like the flat has decided to show it’s age and start to go to pieces.  Cupboards have needed to be fixed, furnaces have needed tweaking, faucets refuse to shut off, oven handles have come undone…the list goes on.  Margot’s charming gentleman caller (Wrench) has been an absolute wunderkind and helped out whenever he visits, but keeping up with a house is a full time job.  Largely doing it by myself is rotten.

9.  Dates.  I have no problem going to movies or restaurants by myself, my alone time is valuable and relaxing to me, but there’s no question that dinner with him is ten times better than dinner without him.

10.  His scent.  His cologne, which I love, is not very powerful, but it lingers.  It still haunts his side of the closet, which packs a powerful punch of nostalgia whenever I open it.  I miss smelling it every day.

No doubt about it, minions, separation sucks.  On the plus side, he’s coming to stay for a few weeks sometime in March or April.  On the plusser side, less than six months and we’re done with school and on to the next adventure!