Acting like Frenchies

The ear doctor and I try our very hardest not to watch TV on Monday nights. Monday nights are special for us. For talking. For laughing. For family.

Last night I got off work late because I had to stay and attend a really frustrating meeting. I stopped by the market to get some fish for dinner and a pre-made salad. It was just one of those nights.


We made the dinner and I could literally feel the stress rolling off my back. By the time I was sopping up the delicious buttery fish oil from my plate with a chewy slice of sourdough I was ready to laugh.


We spent a hour playing keep away from the dog with an old chewed up basketball. We laid in our pretty green grass that just months ago was a bare patch of dead dirt. We decided to grab the leash and walk the dog 2 blocks away to our favorite gelato place. We sat on a bench and enjoyed zabaglione (which I pronounce as zag-a-ba-lonie) and raspberry sorbet.


At which point the ear doctor turned to me and said, "let's go home and watch Harry and the Hendersons"


A perfect way to spend the evening before we celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary.

adventures in pet ownership

Last night the ear doctor and I went over to a friend's house to return their grass edger and we ended up sitting around chatting for a bit.

These particular friends have the most beautiful little puppy. A vizsla. The puppy and I have almost the same color hair. They love their little puppy more than anyone I've ever met loves their dog and because she happens to be a pretty perfect specimen of the breed, they've decided to start showing her.

And I didn't know this, but when you show dogs you can't get them spayed.

Which means that sometimes your dog has her period.

Which is why last night their puppy was wearing a pink plaid flannel diaper with a jumbo maxi-pad slid inside.


Maybe you're more used to seeing a dog wearing a diaper...but I sure wasn't. All I could think of was how gross it would be to take care of a dog during her "time of the year" (which I found out only really happens every 6 months or so)

And I thought, "I'd never do something gross like that for a DOG"



That was, of course, until this morning when my dog had a long gross piece of grass coming out of his butt hole that he couldn't shake loose.

What did I do? I put my hand inside the poo bag, got a grip of the piece of grass and pulled the long slippery thing out of him.


I didn't even hesitate.


Who's the gross one now?

Friday night the ear doctor and I went out to see Super 8. 

The whole time I just sat there totally enthralled with the story telling. About 8 minutes into the movie the ear doctor turned to me and said, "this is like Goonies" and I said, "or the Sandlot." Both of which are probably in my top 20 movies of all time.

I literally gasped a couple of times at the beautiful camera work: the reflection in the gas, the slow closeup on the soldiers shuffling boots, the turn of the gas station sign obscuring our view of what exactly was going on.

And the music choices for the movie? Perfect. I left the theater singing My Sharona out loud, thus making the sweet abuelita standing with me in the bathroom line just a little bit nervous.

Let's not even talk about how great the costumes and hair were.

I totally nerded out over the whole thing and it made me think two thoughts. First, I MUST get myself a Super8 camera. How great are those old grainy images?!?!Second, I'm so glad I used those 3 credit hours of undergrad taking Intro to Film. I probably never would have noticed the beauty without taking that class.

a whole new world

So turns out I should listen to my sister more often.

She said I would love falafel...but I just couldn't wrap my head around eating garbanzo beans...or chick peas as my mom taught me.

I've tried hummus in all it's myrid of forms and found it gross and grainy and completely unpalatable.


But, falafel? COMPLETELY different. Divine. Wonderful.

AMAZING!

Moving

Right now my little sister is throwing the last few boxes into the back of a moving van and hauling her family from the sweltering heat of summer in St. Louis to the promise of sub-zero winters of Minnesota.

She's closing the door on the perfect little 100 year old row house that they shed blood sweat and tears over to renovate from top to bottom in just 3 years. She's saying goodbye to the amazing friends who loved and supported her for the last 4 years...probably the hardest 4 of her life. She's taking off and driving north without knowing if they'll have a house to live in when they get there.

And while I know she's probably excited for the next phase of her life, I can't help but be a little bit heartbroken for her today.


The day we pack up our little house and move away is going to rip my heart in two.


Neither of us were really built for change.

Missing Out

My little sister and her husband are in Orlando right now enjoying a full week at Disneyworld. I'm sure my little 4 year old niece Charlotte is having the time of her life. Surrounded by her cousins, meeting princesses, getting to eat as much junk food as humanly possible...that's the stuff of dreams for a 4 year old.

And I was getting pretty bummed that I was sitting in my cubical, in rainy, cold, gloomy Denver, working crazy long hours and missing out.

So I went to weather.com and checked was it was like in Orlando.


Over 90 degrees...yikes!



Then I imagined how I'd feel if I were in Orlando, in 90 degree weather, holding my 2 year old nephew's little heater body while we stand on hard black pavement waiting in line to meet Lightning McQueen....


...and I felt a tad better about missing the fun.

obsession

Last year the ear doctor and I failed at Homeowners 101: Keeping your grass alive. Total, utter failure. Our yard was the only one on the block that dried up and turned into a big dirt pit by August.

Probably because we didn't water it all summer?


This year we have both become grass-loving freaks. We water the grass. We fertilize the grass. We had it aerated which it probably hadn't been in 20 years. We mulched. We reseeded the thin spots.

Every time we walk through the front yard (at least twice a day) we crouch down and inspect the new growth. We measure the progress. I'm pretty sure I've even said a prayer under my breath to ask for divine intervention in saving the grass.


It's our newest obsession.



Even now as I sit in my cubical at work and eat my lunch at my desk I'm taking glances out the nearby window and thinking, "I really hate that it's raining today. I wore awesome new shoes and they got gross water spots all over them when I walked the 30 feet from my car to the building...

...but at least the grass will look beautiful"

Leavin

You can always tell it's the day before I leave for a trip by the strange outfit I throw together. I pull something out of the back of my closet that I hardly ever wear because I want to make sure I have my cutest clothes available for the trip.

Because I've never once had my picture taken the day BEFORE a trip.

Never once been immortalized in that moment.

So today if you looked at my clothes I'm pretty sure you could tell that at 3:30 this afternoon the ear doctor and I are boarding a plane and flying off to St. Louis to celebrate my brother-in-law's fantastic achievement. He's worked harder and sacrificed a lot and is finally getting to take the Hippocratic oath and graduate from med school.

I couldn't be prouder.


And I get one last trip to St. Louis in before they move away and I never have another excuse to visit the city again. There are 3 absolute musts that I will be participating in this week...other than the ceremony, of course:

1. Gooey butter cake from either ]Park Avenue coffee or Gooey Louie...or maybe both
2. City Museum
3. Frozen Custard from Ted Drewes



Usually I wouldn't post about going away on a trip and leave the creepers on the internet an open invitation to check out our house, but since we got robbed a month ago and haven't replaced anything yet we really don't have anything worth stealing!

Weekend update

Friday night the ear doctor and I were invited to a housewarming party. But it wasn't held at the honoree's new home, it was held at someone else's place that had more space. I thought that was kind of strange, but was willing to go with it. And it was a really fun, pretty typical party until about 10 pm when someone brought out a trumpet and started stumbling through a barley recognizable version of battle hymn of the republic. Yikes.

I just looked around and was a little amazed at what I now considered a fun Friday night out.

Saturday morning I spent the whole morning at work desperately trying to get a jump on the week.

Then I drove myself over to a friend's house for a graduation party. That party was a lot less likely to produce a crazy symphonic talent show, but i did find out about half way into the party that 3 of the 4 people living at the party house had just been diagnosed with strep throat the day before.

At which point I stopped eating from the big bowl of help-yourself-with-your-bar-hands ruffles and started feeling the back of my neck to check for any signs of immediate onset fever.

Sunday I spent the whole day laying around on the couch in my new favorite sweatpants from Walmart. I was attempting to recover from the midnight puke session I had the chance to experience brought on by whatever rotten thing I consumed the day before.

Try not to be super jealous of my life...

life saver

Yesterday it was so cold and rainy here in Colorado that it put everyone in a funk.

It was so funky around here at work that someone actually yelled at me, stormed out of a conference room and slammed the door behind himself so hard the walls shook.

So funky that I dropped a huge glop of guacamole on my pants during lunch and I had to wear the stain the rest of the day.

I'm telling you, EVERYONE was feeling the funk. After work I started getting a flurry of texts and calls asking about our regularly occurring Wednesday night youth group activity. The other leaders were tired, had grumpy babies or had to drive all over town to get things for their new house. The idea of trying to cheerleader a bunch of likewise funky-attituded teenage girls seemed about as daunting as summiting Mt Everest.

But we just couldn't cancel on our teens. So, I altered my plan for the night.


Luckily, I had read Designmom recently and her awesome daughter reminded me how awesome it is to learn to make friendship bracelets.


So with the last ounce of energy in my soul I went to the craft store, bought 3 dollars worth of embroidery floss and pulled off a miracle. A fun activity for teenage girls with zero planning involved.



Blogs saved my life last night.

On TV

Friday afternoon we heard that the food trucks from Food Network's Great Food Truck Race would be pulling into Denver for the weekend.

There are very few things that the ear doctor loves more than eating his food from a truck in the street. I think it comes from him living in Mexico for 2 years and eating his weight in Tacos Al Pastor. Every time he sees anyone selling food on the street he is drawn to their offering like moth to flame. So it's no wonder that his eyes lit up and our plans for Saturday afternoon were set.

We'd be driving all over Denver hunting and gathering our meals from kitchens on wheels.

Our first conquest was the Roxy's grilled cheese truck in Wash park. Delicious goat cheese, duck prosciutto and fig preserves toasted perfection. Definitely a strong contender.

Then we drove into downtown and found the Cafe con Leche truck and I had my first taste of amazing Cuban food. Since I don't really care for pickles I've always shied away from a Cuban Sandwich. We walked up to the truck and I just told the guy to make me the best thing he had.

It was awesome. He took a flattened grilled plantain, piled sweet, pulled pork on top and finished it with this creamy sauce, tomato chunks and grilled onions. This was my favorite thing we ate BY FAR.

Roscoe wanted some BAD!

The third truck we searched out was the Korean BBQ/taco truck called Korilla. By this time the fatigue and heat of the day was getting to me. We stood in line behind the most annoying kids in the world who wouldn't leave our dog alone and the food, to me, was just OK. The ear doctor loved it. I think his eyes even rolled back into his head with joy each time he took a bite.

We intended to keep driving around and try the other 3 trucks, but I was full and tired and sore. So we went to our favorite ice cream place instead...then came home and passed out.

Now we'll have to tune into the show to see if we made it into any of the background shots! There were camera crews at 2 of the 3 trucks we saw.

The only other time I was on TV my best friend and I were sitting in front row seats at our high school state basketball tournament looking totally bored out of our minds. It was awesome.

two steps back

Fact: I am physically incapable of taking it easy.

Fact: My shoulder is still not healed from my accident almost a month ago. I can't use it to reach around my back and grab my towel to dry my back so I just kind of throw it across my body and hope that my skin gets dry enough to pull clothes on. Oh, and I can't really pull up my pants with both hands. And trying to push myself up off the floor with that hand? Impossible.


Saturday morning we decided to dedicate our precious free time to landscaping. A few weeks ago I got a little crazy with the round-up...killing our perfectly fine front lawn in spots so I could plant a whole row of pretty pink Peonies.

See? I'm a total blogger. I love peonies.

I couldn't stand one more day of ugly dead grass staring back at me whenever I walked up to my front porch, so we rented a tiller, bought bags of compost and got to work.


But I was really no help at all. I defeatedly asked my husband to lift, haul and perform all the hard manual labor while I sat my butt in the dirt and attempted to pull year old dead grass out of a chain-link fence with my left hand. I was useless. And really, really frustrated.

I love to work hard in my yard and I consider it one of the best traits my parents bestowed upon me. But I just felt oppressed by my shoulder.


And I was even more annoyed and frustrated in the middle of the night when I had to wake up and soak in a tub to soothe my screaming muscles.


Turns out recovery is every bit as hard as everyone promised it would be.

Great debate

I can't decide.


When our house was robbed, my DSLR was stolen. And as much as I loved my old one, it isn't being made anymore. So now I have to pick what model I want to go with. I've narrowed it down to two options that are basically the same price...the Nikon D31oo and the Sony a33. They both seem like great options, but I just can't decide which I want.

They both have 14.2 megapixles and both take movies.

The Sony has a cool translucent mirror technology in the body so it doesn't have any moving parts inside the camera body. I like this because in my last camera this part got messed up and it was an expensive fix. Also, the Sony is a little lighter and smaller. The Sony takes faster pictures (7 frames per second vs 3 with the Nikon). And it has a cool flip down view screen making taking self portraits really easy. And we all know how much I love self portraits...

The Nikon has a true optical view finder. In the Sony when you look in the eye piece you just see the same display as on the back screen of the camera. A digital image...not a reflection of what you're actaully seeing like a traditional camera. There is a digital interface between you and what you're seeing...I don't really like that very much. Lastly, the Nikon battery lasts almost twice as long as the Sony battery.

Anyone have any experience with both and know which I should pick?

Garden update

Last year my vegetable starts looked like this at this time of year:

And this year they look like this:

So now I'm a little worried that I'm not going to have a good crop this year.

These are the kind of things that keep me up at night.

Accessories MAKE the look

For those of you who aren't familiar with the intricacies of the LDS (mormon) culture, allow me to shed a little light.

For some reason, here in the states, there seems to be a fascination with all things Polynesian/Hawaiian woven into our collective conscious. It's not really surprising. Not that I've ever been to any tropical island, but from all accounts they seem very nice.

In our congregation we have a bona fide Hawaiian lady. She grew up on one of the islands and now suffers through the dry, cold Denver winter every year. Why? From the frequency of her expression of fond past memories, I'm not quite sure.

Last night she came to teach all the teenage girls in our youth group how to make Lei's out of yarn. I was just going to sit in the background and watch, but peer pressure got the better of me and I grabbed a skein and got to it. I made a "lovely" bright green and yellow lei. When I came home I hung it up on a coat hook in our mudroom...next to the garbage...I'm pretty sure I knew it's final resting place.

But then this morning I got this picture sent to my phone my the ear doctor:

Seriously? How can I possibly get rid of it now?

self promotion

One of the great things about America is that anyone can run for public office. Your neighbor who has an axe to grind with the city can pony up the dough to make himself posters, ask his friends to stick them in their yards and get elected to be on the city council.

And I know that technically ANYONE can run for office, but come on? Really? This guy?

If your last name is Schitter you should probably think twice about politics. You just should.

Half of me wonders if my neighbors put this in their lawn as a joke.

PS. Yes, I totally sneaked out early this morning to take a picture of my neighbor's front yard. I asked the ear doctor to come with me on my clandestine photography mission and this was his selected footgear for the operation:

Good thing no high speed chases ensued.

better half

Last night I was a grump. Due to my lovely accident, my shoulder relentlessly hurts and my mood is all messed up. Due to the bruise on my brain and the swirling chemicals attempting to heal it, my emotions have been on an out of control roller coaster. Basically, I've felt like 3 weeks of strait PMS.

And I'm really lucky to have the ear doctor. Without him I would have eaten PB&J and macaroni and cheese for the last month.

Last night he not only grilled me up the most delicious lime-cilantro trout with his new fish grilling basket, but he also indulged my silly craving for a root beer at 9 pm. And when he got home from the "emergency" run to the grocery store, not only did he have an icy cold beverage in his hand, but he'd got us a container of cookies n cream ice cream.

So as I sat in a piping hot bathtub, read a murder mystery on my kindle and slowly sipped my soda I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the guy in the front room loudly chuckling to a 15 year old episode of Seinfeld that he's seen at least 8 times.

Low key holiday

Our Easter was great.

It was the first day in 9 days that I really did my hair...but I still couldn't shave my legs so I wore a long skirt and just hoped that people at church were kind enough to look the other direction.

We were invited to a friend's house for dinner and I managed to bake the most perfect lemon meringue pie...an Easter classic in my mother's house. I managed to basically make it with one hand. The hostess said it was the best pie she'd ever had in her life and my husband said it was the best crust I've ever made.

Then I spent the entire evening laying around on the couch recovering from the great effort it took to do the above two items and eating jelly beans.

Why I love insurance Part 2

It's probably because I've never been a really truly physical person. I've never pushed myself to run so hard that it made me throw up. I just never really saw the point of determining the physical limits of my body like some people seem compelled to ascertain.

Also, I've never really been hurt this seriously before. Sure I fell out of a tree when I was 10 and had to wear a neck brace and I slipped once in the tub, spraining my ankle and necessitating crutches. But this kind of all over, body and brain numbing pain? I never knew it until now.

Which is probably why I'm still surprised after a week of basically going to work and sleeping I'm still not healed. I'm still dragging...still limping...still wincing.

But there is a bright side.


2 weeks ago, the day before we left for our family spring break our house was robbed. I was sitting at my desk trying to tie up loose ends on a Friday before vacation when I got a call from the Denver police department. The officer informed me that our cute, perfect, cozy little home had been forcefully entered and our valuables pilfered.

I was in shock.

Visions of our dog being hurt or running away filled my mind and tears filled my eyes as I cut off the kind officer and asked out our little boxer-boy.

Turns out the thieves had come in through his doggie door, locked him in a room in the basement and took off with our beautiful new flat screen TV, our Wii, all our games (except Tiger Woods...strange), my lovely DSLR camera and some heirloom jewelry that the ear doctor's grandmother had given to him to give to me in the future.

UGH!

What a hassle. We have to arrange with our home owners insurance now to get estimates and reimbursements for all the stuff they took.

But you know what, I am so filled with gratitude that the intruders only took material things. They didn't ruin our house or hurt our dog.

And most especially, they didn't even touch our lovely, expensive big comfy brown leather couch.


And since this week I've pretty much been living on that couch while I recover from my ATV accident I can say for a fact that things could be so, SO much worse for me right now.

Why I love insurance Part 1

I am not an athlete.

I've lived almost 30 years of my life without finding a need to wear perforated fabric.


Until now.

Last weekend I was in a pretty horrible ATV accident. One minute I was cruising down a dirt road, the wind in my face. The next I was sitting in a hospital bed, hours later with my mom softly smoothing my furrowed brow and sipping water from a plastic straw.

I was informed that I'd rolled the machine, bit a huge chunk out of my tongue, split my motocross helmet in two, wrenched my shoulder, bruised my hip and road burned my knee.


X-rays were taken and prayers were said. I am so lucky to first, be alive, second, be awake and alert and third, be surrounded by family who loves me.

5 days after my accident all I have to show is a really cool gray mesh sling, bleeding scabby knee and ringing headache.