Category: Life as I know it

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Was it Summer yesterday?

Because it sure felt like it. 80+ degrees, sunny skies, hot breeze blowing, it was great! It was actually almost a little too hot for this early in the season, but I am certainly not complaining. I started off the day in jeans and a 3/4-sleeved shirt, then quickly changed into shorts, then again into a tank top. R grilled up some delicious homemade green pepper and Colby Jack burgers for lunch, then D and I sat outside for a good hour yesterday afternoon enjoying the fresh air and listening to the Brewers on the radio. Talk about the perfect way to spend a Sunday.

I did a garden survey too, and am happy to report that all plants appear to have survived the harsh winter again and are coming up nicely. I’m especially excited for one garden in particular this year – I created a new one in our backyard last fall and wasn’t sure how well it was going to fare. I dug up and tilled a row along our neighbors’ garage and planted 6 peony plants that one of my grandmas sent for D, then covered the whole thing with mulch. This was in October and the peonies were just roots, so I was afraid they were going to be destroyed over the winter. Fortunately I saw a couple of them starting to peek through yesterday, so I’m very hopeful that they’ve all made it and will be a beautiful addition to the scene. Peonies are one of my absolute favorites, and I planted these right next to one mature white peony bush that we already have in the back corner of our yard. I can’t wait to see these all in bloom together.

Oh, and the anniversary present turned out splendidly! I rented a limo to take us to dinner Saturday night and then out on the town afterwards, and R was completely surprised. He was so excited and we had a blast. I still have to get the pictures uploaded, so I’ll share those tomorrow.

Until then, here are a couple from our lazy, almost-summer afternoon yesterday. I can’t wait until the real thing is here to stay!

Pure deliciousness

 

D playing in the shade while Mommy soaks up some rays. I need a pedicure!

 

All worn out from playing outside

 

D and Daddy hard at work 🙂

 

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FF & other random musings

Here we are again – TGIF! And an extra special one today, for it’s our anniversary!! Hooray! R and I have made it 5 years so far in the holy sacrament of matrimony. Yeah, I’m not so sure how holy we are, but you catch my drift. 🙂 I did finally figure out something to get him, but I’ll wait to divulge it until after today, just in the off chance that he happens to glance over here.

In other news, you remember that Supreme Court election I was all excited about because it had become so close and the person I’d voted for seemed to have a fighting chance? Yeah, not so much anymore. Apparently they *missed* an entire city in our area when they were tallying the votes, so now the candidate for whom I did not vote is ahead by like 7,000. Um, what? How does that happen?? How do you just miss 11,000+ votes? That is either a) a lie, b) a very convenient stroke of good luck for my opposing candidate, c) the latest scummy incident in what has become the shitstorm of politics in our state, or d) all of the above. Guess which one I’m going with? (hint – the answer is d) I hope that county clerk, or whomever is in charge of the ballots in that city, was fired immediately. Or at the very least has some sort of charges levied against him/her. That just can’t happen. Politics – yuck.

On a lighter note, here’s a good quote for this anniversary FF. I’m not sure what the problem is – I haven’t had any witty nuggets lately, so my quote book’s been getting a workout:

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”  ~ Mignon McLaughlin

And here are a couple pictures from that wonderful day 5 years ago…


The beautiful church in which we were married

 

Taking off on our carriage ride after the ceremony

 

Cheers!

 

Yum, cake!

 

I love this guy!

 

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Road rage(-ette)

It seems most times I’m in the car there is at least one person to whom I’d love to shout, “You $#%! moron!” Seriously. Not a full-fledged road rage episode or anything, just a little “ragette”, if you will, to point out their lack of motor vehicle operating skills. I constantly ask R how people learn to drive up here. It’s like the driver’s ed teachers just put kids in a car, slam the door, and shout, “Away you go!” Some people have zero concept of the rules of the road. And merging? Oh forget it. I swear to god merging is not in the driver’s ed lesson plans in the state of Wisconsin. There is one on-ramp to a major highway near our house in particular that is especially terrible. 3 lanes merge into 2 just past the ramp, so essentially you have 4 lanes merging down to 2 if you include the on-ramp lane that joins the mix. People NEVER do it right. They zoom past the gigantic line of cars already on the highway using the on-ramp and 3rd lanes, then cut everyone off right at the last second when they run out of lane. I HATE that! That is NOT how you merge, you f’n idiots. This pisses R off to no end too. I’m always tempted to ride the line on the lane on that side so people can’t get around me and have to get in the line of traffic like everyone else. Too bad I rarely get the balls to actually do it. 😛

Now I’m not a perfect driver, but I do consider myself a good driver. Yes, I tend to be a little on the quick side, but I just like to get where I’m going. And I’m not an asshole about it either. I don’t tailgate (at least I try very hard not to. this is something i used to be really bad about doing, but have gotten much better since R felt the need to point it out CONSTANTLY), I don’t zip in and out of lanes cutting people off, I do know how to merge, I do obey traffic signals and signs, I do use my turn signals, and I am one hell of a wicked parallel parker. Ok, that last one doesn’t really apply to *driving* per se, but I thought I’d throw it in for good measure. 🙂 Don’t believe me? Just ask R – he’ll even admit I’m good at it, which is a rarity. He’s seen me squeeze into some spots that other people would drive away from too scared to even attempt.

This morning’s drive wasn’t too bad, but there was one choad in particular who really annoyed me. He pulled onto the on-ramp right ahead of us (not the one I was talking about earlier, though), and I noticed that the left rear of his SUV was totally low-riding it. Big Poppa must’ve been sitting back there, plus that tire was super low. He zipped into the carpool lane on the ramp and totally failed to obey the metered light signal – he took off when the lane next to him got the green light. Um, ok, whatever. Then a short way onto the highway, he decided he had to get right back off and completely cut off the car behind him to get to the exit, of course NOT using his signal. Ugh! I’m sorry, but even when the dumbass drivers aren’t affecting me personally, I still get mad at them. If you don’t know how to drive then get off the highway!!

The absolute worst road rage I’ve experienced came a few weeks ago, though. And actually, I wasn’t the one raging, it was R; but I was in the car and had I been driving I absolutely would have been fuming too (i was fuming, but i was just in the back seat for this one ;)). We were using the terrible on-ramp above, and the jerk in question actually tried to cut us off getting onto the ramp. Should’ve known something was up from the start with this one. Turns out it was an idiot chick on her cell phone. Wonderful, this should be fun. So we merged into traffic as soon as we were off the ramp, but whaddya know – she blew around us and flew farther up the lane that ends instead of merging like the rest of us. So when we finally got up to the point where her lane was ending, guess who was stuck up there, trying to get into the highway flow? Moron girl, surprise, surprise. R didn’t want to let her in, since we had been witnessing her idiocy that whole time and couldn’t stand it. I don’t blame him, and I probably would have done the exact same thing. Just keep nosing forward so she can’t get in front of me. But she didn’t take the hint and cut right in front of us anyway, literally coming within an inch of smashing into our front right side. WTF! Nice maneuver, bitch! So now R was pissed, as was I from the back seat (I was back there b/c D was really cranky that day so I was going to give her a bottle on the way to wherever we were going). Plus we were stuck right on her rear bumper, since she left us zero wiggle room with her jackass move. R honked when she did this and she proceeded to flip him off. Oo – bad move, you incensed the lion that is my husband. He honked again and flipped her off now; very mature, I know, but such is the beast of road rage. She obviously knew she cut us off and he was letting her know he was unhappy, but she just continued to yap on her phone and shoot us the bird from her rear view mirror.

Ok fine, typical road rage stuff, but then she did something unthinkable. She actually slammed on her brakes when we were inches behind her, knowing full well there was about a 99.9% chance that we were going to slam right into the back of her piece of shit mobile. WHAT?!?!?!! Who does that??! OMG. At this point I was ready to jump out the back window and ring her scrawny little neck. There is an infant in this car, you bitch, and you think it’s funny to try to cause an accident??! Where were you raised – HELL?! Oh you should’ve heard the words that were flying around our car at this point. Poor D – I hope she doesn’t understand that colorful language right now. 😉 I seriously was flabbergasted that this little shit would do such a thing on a jam-packed rush hour highway. Did she honestly think the accident would have been found to be our fault? She was the one slamming on her brakes with the intent of making us crash into her! I have no idea how we managed to avoid a collision, but thank god we did. And of course the middle finger-flipping and curse word-shouting contest continued until we were fully separated once traffic dispersed. But man oh man, was our blood boiling for miles after that one. I was amazed at the audacity of that piece of trash to do such a thing – that was something I had never witnessed first-hand before and hope never to again. Especially since she was endangering D. Me and R, who cares. We can handle ourselves. But D?? She’s an innocent, helpless baby, you low-lifed whore! (sorry, can you tell this one still riles me up?)

License plate 414 NNC – you are the most despicable, disgusting driver I have ever seen, and if I ever see you stranded on the side of the road, I will NOT be stopping to help. I may be struck by lightning for being such a Bad Samaritan, but when you endanger me and my family, may God have mercy on your soul if I ever get my hands on you.

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I voted! But should I have?

Yesterday was another mid-term election day ’round these parts, so I got out there, did my civic duty, and voted. But I don’t think I could have been less prepared when I looked at the ballot.

We were voting for Supreme Court justices, local School Board members, County Executive, and then the recall ballots for some of our Republican Senators were out too if you were so inclined (if you’ve been following along from the beginning here, you can probably guess whether or not i signed that one ;)). Most of the races only had one candidate, so those were easy; but I kind of felt like a deer in headlights when I got to the ones with multiple choices. I had been meaning all day yesterday to look up each of the candidates to do a little research before I went to the polling place, but I kept forgetting then ran out of time before I left work. Oops.

I have already admitted that I am pretty politically obtuse, so this really should come as no surprise. But usually I at least know all the candidates’ names and have an idea of what their platforms are. This time, though, I felt like a complete idiot.

I wasn’t too keen on voting in the first place, because I figured Supreme Court and County Executive? Those aren’t huge elections – my vote probably won’t even matter. Isn’t that horrible? People have fought long and hard to ensure we have this right to vote and here I am tossing it aside. Don’t worry – I chastised myself and then did cast my ballot.

So, if I didn’t know for whom I was voting, how did I decide? I went with that good ol’ rule from tests in school – go with your gut, as your first answer is usually correct.

Fortunately I did end up recognizing a couple of the names on the ballot once I got in there, but I still felt so stupid since I wasn’t 100% sure on anyone. I stuck with my instinct though when I got to ones where I was unsure, and it turns out that was the way to go. I did end up voting for the candidates I would have chosen had I been the most highly-educated political pundit out there. (admitting my lack of political knowledge here really makes me sound like a moron, but like i’ve said all along, i’m just being honest. i just don’t get all charged up for this stuff)

My polling place dilemma made me wonder, though… Which is worse – an uneducated voter or a non-voter?

**Edit: As a follow-up on the day after this post – it looks like my vote did count after all. In the race for state Supreme Court, with 100% of votes in, the race will most likely be headed to the first statewide recount in more than 20 years. The unofficial winner leads by a margin of just 204 votes out of a total of roughly 1.5 million cast. That’s only 1/100th of a percent. Crazy!

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I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but I just can’t help myself

** WARNING: This post contains WAY too much tmi (and yes, i know the “tm” in tmi already stands for too much, so you should get the picture). So if you have no interest in knowing anything about the marital act in our house (wink, wink, if ya know what i mean) then stay away! 🙂 **

Now that my little full disclosure statement is out of the way, let’s get onto the main event…. I’ve been going back and forth in my head all night and day about whether to post this one or not, and I finally decided to take the plunge. What the hell – I’m opening up with you about all other aspects of my life, so why not this one too? R might want to strangle me if he knew I was telling you guys about this, but I’m really not disclosing anything too personal. It’s not even embarrassing in the slightest, just something funny that occurred when we both happened to be naked. 😉 (oh come on, you all know we have sex. we have a kid, duh)

Let me start by saying that when you have an infant, getting it on usually takes a back seat to the bazillion other things you have to do to take care of said infant. At least it has in our house, anyway. (ok that might be a little embarrassing, letting you know the status of our sex life since having D, but whatevs, it happens ;)) R and I have talked about it lots of times too – it has nothing to do with not wanting to engage in the act, we’re just always busy or tired or busy and tired or tired of being busy…. We’ve even tried to make sure we designate a day each week as “the day” to make sure we, how shall I say, keep in touch like that. Yeah, that usually fails too. (some of you may be thinking really, SM, only 1 day a week? yes – see above about all the busy and tired and baby. 1 day a week. if more, awesome! but right now we shoot for 1. wow, this is getting more embarrassing by the second after all! :))

Well last night D was super cranky after daycare because she hadn’t taken an afternoon nap, so after I fed her once we got home she konked out. Success! And apparently R found my opening the dishwasher to try to get the clean dishes put away before she woke back up enticing, because he suggested a little “nap nookie”. At first I was like what, really, right now? But then I was like yeah, really, right now! Duh. Let’s move this little game to the bedroom.

Now here’s the part that made me want to write this post. I got a new box of condoms the other week that touted something about “her ecstasy”. Yes please, I’m all about that. And yes condoms, because although I’m not yet back to “normal” in that monthly-ish cycle way due to breastfeeding, it doesn’t mean I can’t still get pregnant; and we don’t want D v.2.0 just quite yet. I didn’t know what all the “her ecstasy” in that box entailed, but it was good advertising on Trojan’s part. Well when R opened the box last night we both about died laughing. He pulls out the slew of condoms and goes, “They’re huge!” And dudes, they were – they were gigantic! There was a row of enormous shiny purple wrappers just laughing in our faces. I was like what in the world did I buy?? R said, “What, are these Magnums? I must have been fooling you all these years because I’m not that big!” Omg y’all, we were seriously in hysterics. I kept saying no way, I swear they’re regular size, I didn’t see anything about XXL on the box when I bought them! So I grabbed one of the packages and felt the contents, and it seemed to be the normal size, so we couldn’t figure out why they looked so much bigger than the other kind we’d always gotten. Well screw it, let’s get one of these open and give it a whirl, see what the deal is. Sure enough, it was the regular size and worked like a charm, so I still have no idea what was going on with the wrappers. Besides causing some sexy time hilarity, there really was no reason for the humongous pouches. Inflation I guess – add more packaging to give us less bang for our buck? (ha, get it, bang? i’m so funny)

And the “her ecstasy” part must be the super lube factor on these. Which I am also all about right now. For since I’m still breastfeeding D, that is one of the pleasant side effects I get to experience. A little *lack of moisture* in the lady area, if you will (gross, that just sounds gross, but “dryness” makes me think of a desert). Oh, they didn’t tell you that? Yeah, it’s fantastic. Sorry – I warned you – tmi. I’ve never had to deal with that one before, but now I know why there’s a whole aisle full of lube at the drugstore. So if these condoms take care of that part for you, sweet! Another side effect I had read about while pregnant but wasn’t sure how accurate it would be is the decrease in sex drive you might experience while breastfeeding. Hmm, maybe that’s true too and may account for some of the reason why our mojo has waned a little. I’ll have to work on that one. 😉 You gotta love all these hormones and stuff the female body goes through to make a little person!

So there you have it – a glimpse into the bedroom of SM. Fascinating, ain’t it? 😉 Hopefully you weren’t too shocked and awed and will continue to come back and read. Don’t worry, I promise I won’t make these kinds of posts a habit. Unless you’re just dying for more, that is…. 😉

p.s. This episode just goes to show the difference between sex after 5 years of marriage and a baby and sex while dating. Can you imagine pulling out ginormous condoms while trying to be all coy and sexy in the courtship phase of your relationship? Instant mortification! But now? We just flop on the bed and laugh at ourselves. 🙂

 

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Yum to the um!

So remember how I said R’s a great cook and loves to take pictures of what he makes? Well check out what we had for dinner last night. BLADDOW!

Mushroom ragout-stuffed rolled beef tenderloin. Um, yes please, I’ll have two. 🙂 He served it with a side of spaghetti, then made some extra spaghetti sauce to go on top of both the beef and pasta. What a man!! For a beverage, we enjoyed a bottle of this:

Pacific Peak Merlot

 

It paired nicely with the beef – a smooth, easy-drinking red with none of the harsh throat-burning that some merlots can cause (i’m sure there’s a technical *wine* term for that, like it’s caused by tannins, or whatever, but i like to dumb my descriptions down to my wine level – do i like it, or don’t i like it?).

‘Twas a great way to wind down the weekend. Saturday we spent the afternoon and evening at our friends T & S’s house watching some NCAA tourney bball action and letting D play with their little girl, which was a lot of fun. Yesterday morning I got some house cleaning and laundry done while R did all the preparations for dinner. D’s cold intensified infinitely yesterday, unfortunately, so she spent all day coughing and battling snot rivers out of her nose. Poor little thing. She’d cough so hard she’d gag, which would in turn cause her to throw up anything she had in her. 🙁 Fortunately she was only up once last night and seemed a little better this morning with much less coughing, so we have our fingers crossed that we don’t get a call from daycare asking us to come pick her up today. We both were amazed, though, at how happy and playful she still was through all of it – nose wiped a million times, jammies changed 3 times due to barf eruptions, coughs to the point where you could tell her throat was so raw and sore, and very little napping.

And now here we are back at Monday again. How does that always happen so quickly?? I hope you all had a great weekend!

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Division of power

One of the radio personalities we listen to each morning declared she was going on strike in her house a few weeks ago, and it got me thinking…. What would cause me to go on strike in our house? Is there any reason I’d ever feel the need to do so?

Her big thing was that she was fed up with not getting any help from her husband and kids when it came time to figure out what to have for dinner each day (yeah, it was a real knock down, drag out fight, can’t you tell? ;)). Now, dear readers, I would never find myself in this situation because, as many of you know, I don’t cook. I don’t enjoy it, I don’t get any real satisfaction out of whipping up a whole big spread or a nice fancy dish, I don’t like following recipes and getting all the ingredients and dishes together, and I’m not particularly good at it. I mean I am certainly capable of following a recipe and producing an edible finished product, but it’s just not my thing. In fact, I often say that if you want to torture me, make me chop stuff. Yuck.

Fortunately I am very lucky to have R, who is a wonderful cook and actually does enjoy it. This obviously isn’t the only reason I’m lucky to have him, but you know what I’m sayin’. He loves trying new recipes and gets totally involved in the prep and execution. His signature meal is Thanksgiving – he’s been known to make the entire buffet line of eats, even when it’s not really Thanksgiving. It’s hilarious too – he always stages his good dishes and photographs them. I’ll have to post some pics the next time we have one. They usually involve nice big cuts of meat, so it’s a good thing I’m not a vegetarian!

He’s gotten really into making food for D as well, which is awesome. He’ll bake up a batch of sweet potatoes and puree them up to be frozen, steam other veggies and do the same, and he even boiled a couple chicken breasts and baby-food-ified them the other night too to see if she’ll try meat yet (fyi, she won’t. she gagged every little bite of chicken. not sure if it was too salty or the texture, but it was pretty funny to see. so we’ll stick to cereal and veggies and fruit for now). I have contributed slightly in the baby food department – I’m good at mashing bananas. Probably because all you need for that is a fork, not a food processor. 😉 I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m lazy; it applies to this aspect of my life, too.

One time one of my grandparents asked me if it bothered me at all that R does all of the cooking. No, of course not, I replied (i think my answer may have surprised them a little. what? a woman doesn’t feel displaced when her husband does all the cooking? heaven forbid. yeah, different generations and all. i’ll forgive them :)). You see, we have an excellent division of power in our house – R cooks, I clean. It’s a great system. For although I couldn’t care less if I know how to make boeuf bourguignon or a killer rack of lamb, I do pride myself in keeping a mean clean house. I try to get things dusted and vacuumed once every week or two, which of course R thinks is totally unnecessary, maybe because he’s often trying to play video games when I want to vacuum. Too bad, just pick your feet up for 5 seconds. Whenever he huffs about me cleaning I just keep politely reminding him that he could have much worse things than a wife who keeps a clean house.

Don’t get me wrong, housework is not something I consider *fun*, but I do feel great once I have the house cleaned, the laundry done, and the rest of my weekend to enjoy the lack of clutter and piles of junk from the week and dust bunnies running around the wood floors. While we were remodeling it drove me crazy having entire rooms’ worth of stuff packed into other rooms (i swear we didn’t get to use our dining room as an actual dining room for a good year at one point), plaster dust all over the joint, and certain uninhabitable areas of the house in general. But now that we’re all put back together I do love seeing clean dust-free furniture, crumb- and dirt-free floors, and shiny tile kitchen counter tops. Call me crazy, I can take it.

So what are things like in your household? If you’re married or live with someone do you have a similar divide and conquer system, or is one or the other of you responsible for the brunt of the chores? Any of you feeling like you need to go on strike yet?

I guess to answer my own original question, I can’t really think of any good reason that I would tow the picket line at home in this regard. Our cook/clean division of power is a well-oiled machine, so I’ll stick with it. Plus one of these days I’m sure R will teach D how to find her way around the kitchen and I’ll show her how to help Mommy use the dusters. 🙂 R is notorious for turning his closet area into a massive clothes monster, but instead of striking and refusing to clean it up, I just go in there every so often and put the pile away. And just remind myself that I could have much worse things than a husband who throws his clothes on the floor. 😉