two years ago today...

i was working at haggen, in the deli, and about two hours away from getting off work and going out on my first date with D.  i was a little bit of a nervous wreck; i had to change in the bathroom before i went over to his house, and i was worried i would smell like fried chicken and grease.  i remember i wore my black and silver striped t, my all black work chucks, and this goofy necklace i made out of stuff from michael's crafts.  did i mention i was nervous?  i made some poor girl i worked with hang out with me in the bathroom while i got ready because i was so spastic.

i remember pulling up to his house, and seeing him at the kitchen table with his roommate and i was literally so nervous that i actually thought about driving away.  really.  i had a moment when i thought "i could just drive home right now and he would never know i came by and didn't come inside."  i sucked it up though, after all, i had put on some eyeliner.  i pretended my palms weren't sweaty and knocked on the door.  he hugged me after he opened it, and i thought that was nice.  i brought over a bottle of wine, not knowing that he didn't drink wine, and we ate pork verde and chips with his roommate and his girlfriend.  we got kind of drunk, and after hours of sitting at the table talking and talking, i put some music on his cd player and he swooped in and kissed me.

i distinctly recall thinking "oooh..."  he was (is) a good kisser.  we made out in the kitchen, which seems fitting now, because that is our favorite room in the house.  when we talk about our "dream home" we always start with the kitchen.

we're going out to dinner, and then maybe we'll get to make out some more!  i have to say, it's been a good two years.

good afternoon, my dears

this morning i found my boyfriend/fiancé asleep on the couch.  this was notable for a few reasons, one of them being that i am retarded enough in the morning to have not even noticed he wasn't in bed with me, and the only reason i discovered on the couch is because in my sightless state (i was sans glasses), i heard the cat meowing at me and i walked over to pet her.  needless to say, i was surprised to find D sprawled out, in his bathrobe and nothing else.  even stranger, there was a jar of mayonnaise on the side table next to him.  just D, the cat, his porn-tacular mustache and robe, and a giant, costco sized jar of mayo.  good morning, thursday.  evidently he'd gotten up in the middle of the night hungry, and had made himself a sandwich then passed out.  which is kind of funny on it's own, but i liked the vagueness of what was going on before i figured it out. 

i broke down and bought a martha stewart wedding magazine today.  not because i'm buying into any of that wedding-industrial-complex or completely-DIY-or-DIE shit, but because i like to see what's out there, and steal ideas and make them my own.  if we're going to have a wedding, it might be nice to know what kind.  maybe preparing for it in advance will also cut down on some of the stress.  or i could just end up getting tipsy on wine and rolling my eyes so far back in my head they freeze that way.  if you see me tomorrow and i look crazy, you'll know why. 

beat it!

this is rocky, D's brother's african grey parrot. the week before we started sitting her, D started getting us all ready to have her around. to be honest, the kids and i were not amused or impressed, and i made more than one "it's all fun and games until she gouges my eyes out" jokes. the first night she was here was kind of tense; we were all a little wary of her, and D's brother gave us a lengthy list of things she did and didn't like, and instances when she was likely to bite. the next night, though, we were making dinner and she was around the corner and somehow we ended up whistling at her and she was whistling back...and the next thing you knew, we realized she's actually a pretty awesome bird. sure, she doesn't like to be held, but besides that, she's totally into us and fun to interact with. watching her pick up new words and phrases, getting her to dance with us, feeding her slivers of banana and hearing her chirp "oh boy!" has been amazing. she's incredibly curious and smart, and now that she feels more and more comfortable with us she's become a real joy to have around. the kids and i have looked up all sort of articles about her type of bird, and have learned that they have a reputation for being smart and attentive. we think she's pretty cool, and having her around this week has been super fun. we're sad she leaves in a few days!

i also had a chance to play ridiculous amount of rock band this weekend with the kids. what started as a short trip to my house to pick up some stuff became hours of rocking out with only one break for pizza ordering. i knew rock band was fun, but had no idea it could kill so many hours in an afternoon. not that i'm complaining! i discovered i suck at the drums, am passable on guitar, but really like the singing part best. especially since wave of mutilation is one of the songs. dear pixies, how i love you. the best thing about D's kids is that they're fairly open to new stuff; we listen to all sorts of music and they don't automatically poo-poo the music i love because i'm "old" and not cool. they'll give it a chance, although they haven't yet decided they love the pixies as much as i do. the girlchild loves lady gaga the way i do (whoo! this makes for awesome kitchen dance parties!), and the boychild and i have bonded over led zepplin and he's shown an interest in tom waits. i know i've said it before, but i really dig these kids. if they weren't D's, i would still like them. they're funny and smart and interesting, and when we hang out on saturday afternoons it's not because i'm trying to score points with their pop or because they need to be baby-sat; it's because we do fun shit like play rock band all afternoon or go out and play pinball at the local old-school arcade, or hang around the house drinking coffee and watching movies. we have fun together, and getting to hang without their pop gives them a chance to relax and be themselves and decide if they like me or not. so far, so good.

because we had such a fun and relaxed and sleepy weekend, though, i have a ton of shit that needs to be done today! oil change, shopping, making time for coffee with a friend, all these things need to happen. D's getting ready for finals, which means he's cooking up a storm and finishing some reading for class, so i'm going to try to give him lots of quiet space and time to get it done. i got the kids to help me clean up the house yesterday so he'd have one less thing to think about (i bribed them with beowulf *and drillbit taylor), and in a few days he'll be on spring break and i'll be lamenting the fact that i have to go to work and gets to stay in bed all day.

*i did not want to see this, but the boychild is totally into norse and greek mythology. i have to say, the animation was weird and creepy, there were some awesome fun parts like the sea monster sequence, but it felt exactly as cheesy as clash of the titans to me. the boys loved it.

oh, hai!

jeez, it's been a while. i haven't been doing anything seriously exciting, i just haven't been home a lot and when i have been there my computer has been seriously acting up. i thought i got it fixed the other night, but yesterday morning when i went to start it up it had the same hiccup-y problem. for whatever reason it won't start; it gets going and then i hear it stall and start and stall and start and it just freezes on the first start-up page. i tried a re-set, but that didn't do it, so maybe leaving it alone overnight gave the computer fairies enough time to sneak in and work their magic. we'll see!

valentine's day was a nice surprise. the boyfriend liked the one sock i finished, and it fit perfectly, so i feel pretty good about finishing the other one. he succumbed to peer pressure and bought me a box of candy; he was sheepish about it, but his fellow students got him so nervous that i would be disappointed if there was no candy that he ran out and got a box that was entirely too big. the kids were stoked as it is so giant that we've all been munching on it since then. it was a quiet day, which was just the way i wanted it. valentine's day isn't a big deal to me, but having an excuse to squirrel ourselves away for a weekend was just too good to pass up.

sausage making is a much bigger pain in the ass than you might realize. especially when the man making it is such a stickler for "perfection." we've been grinding meat, re-grinding it, playing with the seasonings, making test batches, tweaking stuff and then starting over. this is a much more scientific cooking endeavor than i am used to, and it's been fun learning about what's going on, why you do things in a certain way, what works and what doesn't. i've gotten to get my hands in it, and now i'm totally ready to skip ordinary sausage and move right on to salami. i want to cure meat! (hee hee, that's what she said.) this weekend i also got to introduce chicken paprikash to the kids, who liked it way more than they thought they would, and we spent one morning wandering around costco and picking up giant packs of toilet paper.

i think my roommate is freaking out that i'm going to move into the boyfriend's house next week, so this week i need to spend some time assuring here than i'm not going anywhere for a while. he's got to finish school up, and as much as i adore being with him and hope someday we shack up, i'm not in a huge rush. it will happen when it's time, and for now i kind of dig knowing i have my own place where i can hide out when i'm fussy or need to pluck my eyebrows. this is definitely the "honeymoon" phase, and i don't want to rush out of that and into full-on domesticity. playing house is nice (so nice, seriously), but i want to enjoy it for what it is right now. plus, i hate moving. i hate packing and unpacking and the sheer toil of getting my overnite bags ready is more than enough for me at the moment!

well this was inevitable

it wasn't a fight, exactly, but it wasn't fun. a very, very late conversation was initiated last night that ate most of my sleep time away. then this morning after three hours of sleep and the latest start on earth (i was a half hour late to work because the boyfriend forgot to set the alarm!) i find out that he might have been spazzing out because he'd had too many beers and not enough dinner.

i understand that it's normal for people to feel kind of freaked out by how they feel, but i've never understood the need to have a talk about "what if you leave me." i've also never been good at talking about my feelings, except to describe them as ones that feel good, and ones that feel lousy. i am woefully inept at the "talk" which makes me most guys fantasy girl. however, my man likes to talk about his feelings because he's a goddamn hippy*. just because i'm not good at it doesn't mean i can't do it, or am unwilling. however, at two a.m. when i am confused and tired you probably shouldn't bring up the big issues of your various insecurities because i will go into panic/confused mode and not be any good at listening or knowing what's going on.

i will also end up irritated that i'm exhausted all day at work while your teachers let you go home early because you look tired and they love you. i'm not mad, exactly, and i think in the end we had a good talk and he feels better about a lot of things, but dammit. today just kind of sucked.

*i might have a touch of the premenstruals, making me more snippy than usual!

lest you think i'm all blinded by love

i have, in fact, spent some quality time with my girlfriends and will admit that the boyfriend is awesome but falls short on a few fronts. for one, he can't make a decent cup of coffee. dear lord, it's not hard. it's true his coffee pot is sort of shitty, but his coffee is just impossible. i will choke a cup down in the morning because i have to, not because i want to. also, he wears clogs. not just any clogs; but brown man-clogs that are approximately five hundred years old. what's funny is he hardly ever wears anything else brown. he also lives in sweatpants when he is not at work or going to or from school, which, when paired with the brown man-clogs of doom make him look ridiculous. adorable, yes, but he is amazing in his ability to look handsome while clownish at the same time.

okay, maybe i'm a little blinded by my affection for him.

i have work related stuff to tell you too, but to be honest, i'm hoping to get into work early tomorrow and make some cash money. that means going to bed now! before i go, though, your stories ruled. i hope this one turns out as well.

the boyfriend just came over to my house for some much-appreciated, adults-only, alone time. not to say we don't both just dig the hell out of his kids, but sometimes we want to make-out on the couch and not have a smart-ass 14 year old go "ewww..." news flash! grown-ups sometimes want to snog and grope while watching tv! we were, after all, teenagers once.

we've passed the one month mark. of course things are all still hearts and stars and kissing in the kitchen when we think no one's looking, which is pretty normal for this stage in a relationship, but i'm telling you this: it feels like more than your standard honeymoon phase. it feels better, which is to say it feels like feathers and sparklers and tickles and bites. hard to describe, but not too hard to feel. it still feels big and makes me giggle, and 24 hours without seeing him still seems like days. i can't get enough of him.

here's what i wanted to ask you, though; when did you know? is there a "too soon" when you meet someone seriously awesome? i vacillate between wanted to climb something high and shout about how fantastic and wonderful he is, and feeling shy like it's too soon, like i can't possibly know what i'm talking about and should keep my pie hole shut. so i'm curious about your story, when you knew you loved someone, how you knew, if you told the whole world or kept it a secret for a while. i want to talk to someone about it, and you guys have got to have a few good stories for me.

i love breakfast at the boyfriend's house. today in addition to lovely hashbrowns, eggs, and bacon, we made pancakes with the batter blaster, for the sheer novelty of using a can of pressurized pancake batter. i'm sure the boyfriend's homemade pancakes are better, but to be honest, the batter blaster hotcakes were pretty good. smeared with a little marionberry jam, or dunked in runny egg yolk they were delicious. they were lighter and fluffier than i thought pancakes out of a can would be.

i'm going to switch my shifts around this week and start taking sundays off. we'd talked about it before, but both of us (me and him!) kept the day to make a little extra, and blah blah, but it's hard to have no time off at all. i do want to be able to spend a whole day goofing off with him, and how will hot sauce banana ever get off the ground if we don't have time to devote to thinking up album and song titles? these things are important!

i'm incredibly excited about tomorrow as well. i'm hoping we don't have a 9 a.m. appointment, so i can run inside and watch the inauguration on tv as it happens. i kind of already feel like i might cry, so if i get a bit misty while watching, you know, history in the making, please don't make fun. thanks!