I'm going to tell you anyway

You know how something important/exciting/interesting happens in your life, and you want to tell people about it, but you realize that it won't seem important/exciting/interesting to anyone but yourself? And then you go ahead and tell people about it anyway? Enter the following story.

My first car was an '89 Volkswagen Jetta. I loved my little car, and I still love the boxy design of the newer versions. The Jetta was an automatic transmission. My second and third cars were also automatic transmissions. I've never owned a manual transmission, and so I've never really learned how to drive one. Sure, I thought it'd be a useful skill to have down, but it was never a big deal. "Didn't your dad ever teach you how to drive a stick?" I've been asked. Truthfully, he probably asked me if I wanted to go out for lessons with him, and I was probably too busy wallowing in my teenage angst to even respond.

The Huz drives a stick shift, and years ago we had some driving lessons on country roads. I even drove the car around our town a few times, usually only killing it when I got nervous about other cars being around.

But that was back when we lived in a place that had rather flat geography. Now we live in a very hilly city, and I'm much more nervous about getting started uphill. We had some more lessons a few weeks ago, mostly for refreshing the physical movements of dealing with the clutch, and yesterday, for the first time, I drove in the city with a destination in mind rather than just driving aimlessly in parking lots or around the block near my house.

We headed out the door to get sushi, and he asked, "Quick driving lesson?" I hesitated, but agreed. So I cruised around our neighborhood for a little while, and then headed out onto a main road. Sitting at the stop sign with my turn signal on, I think I said outloud, "This is a bad idea." With picture perfect patience, The Huz reassured me. "You're doing fine."

"But I'm not ready," I whined.

"You're doing fine," he repeated. "I'll help you get out. You're fine after this next white car."

So I pulled out and everything was fine, because after getting started in first gear, I've got no problems. Naturally, my biggest fear is killing it at an intersection or somewhere that pisses people off and makes them honk at me and freaks me out so I kill it again. Okay, actually my biggest fear is having to start on a hill with a car too close behind me. Aaaaaaand of course the first time I drive out on the road, that's exactly what happened. I got stuck at a stoplight, heading uphill, and a car pulled right up on my ass.

"Oh shit. That car's too close. We're heading uphill. Oh shit. I'm not ready for this. This is a bad idea. Oh shit. I'm gonna hit him. Oh shit."

Calmly, amazingly, The Huz: "You're fine. The light's about to change. Start now. Quick off the brake. Start now. Just do it quick."

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit how hard my heart was pounding. It wasn't my car. I've never been in an accident. I'll look like an idiot. All good reasons to be apprehensive, in my book. But I did it. And I didn't hit the guy behind me. And I drove all the way to the restaurant.

As we got out of the car, I couldn't stop saying, "That totally freaked my shit out." And he was like, "Really?" And I said, "Oh yeah. My heart was beating so hard. It was probably as exciting as skydiving would be."

Another year

My birthday weekend brought the welcome respite of 50- and 60-degree weather, and for the first year in recent memory, March's reputation for nasty beginnings was spared. Despite The Huz's most-repeated phrase this weekend ("I'm not good at planning parties"), he managed to pull together a surprise party for me Saturday night, complete with a surprised look on my face. A friend of mine sort of ruined the surprise by e-mailing me to ask what the order of events was, so The Huz went into recovery mode and convincingly warned me not to get my hopes up too high. He said he had something planned, but that the person he'd counted on to help him execute it had backed out. While that turned out to be true, I was totally convinced that whatever it was had fallen through completely, and I was happy to spend the evening with my guy.

We went to a friend's house "to pick up my present because it was too big to keep at the house," and there was a sweet little crowd waiting to wish me a happy 25th. And the leftover keg beer hit the spot yesterday afternoon as we soaked up the rare warmth sitting outside. Just when it seemed like it would never warm up, a couple of warm days makes all the difference.

Time for a list of unrelated items

1. I always think recipes call for too much onion. I always use less than I'm supposed to, and I usually think it's still too much.

2. My lovely in-laws gave me a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas. She is cobalt blue, and she looks like this:


She and I have made four loaves of bread and one two-layer cake. We're still getting to know each other, and I'm taking it slow. But I have to add that bread loaves three and four (half white/half wheat with whole flax seeds) were so delicious that I marvelled at their deliciousness with every bite. It makes the best toast I've ever had, swear to god.

3. I am trying to resist eating the average-tasting chocolate chip cookies glaring at me from the counter next to me. I am the unfortunate owner of a receptionist desk out in the middle of an office, and people always dump food around me since everyone in the office passes by. Not only do I have no privacy, I have to suffer everyone else's "generosity." Why on earth do people still make no-bake cookies? Disgusting.

4. I brought half of a green pepper and a Diet Coke Plus for my afternoon snack. When I picked up the fridge pack of the Diet Coke Plus in the grocery store, The Huz gently questioned my choice by asking, "Why don't you just take a fucking multivitamin?" I gently responded, "I'll do that too."

Okay, maybe he didn't use the word fucking at all, but that's how the memory sounds in my head.

5. Why don't hashbrowns in the skillet ever turn out as brown and crispy as they're supposed to?

6. Do you watch tennis? Can you BELIEVE that hunchy Sharapova beating Henin like that? The nerve.

7. Springform pans do not work as well as I imagined they would.

8. I got my hair cut, but I'm having a hard time committing to the extra primping time shorter hair requires.

2008

I will:

have my fourth wedding anniversary
have my 25th birthday
start law school
travel to Germany (hopefully)
travel to California (definitely)
travel to Colorado (definitely; I love weddings!)
read more (a ton more; see #3)
sleep less (a ton less; see #3 again)
probably cry a lot
try to surf (but I can't promise I'll put my whole heart into it; you know, cause of the sharks)
maybe learn to swim a little better before I try to surf
spend a couple of weeks with my 95-year-old grandpa
quit the longest full-time job I've ever held
quit trying to grow my hair out because I just don't like it
continue to make lists because I do like it

I am handing my credit card to the lady across the counter. She announces that the grand total price of my new glasses will be $130. Well that's not actually true, because I'm just replacing the lenses in an old pair, thus saving money. I glance at The Huz, giving him the look of I know you weren't planning to spend this money like this, but I need to see. As we walk out of the store he's being very quiet and so I say, "It needed to happen. Shit's getting blurry. I'm nervous driving."

He replies, "DUDE. One hundred and thirty dollars?!?"

"Is that a lot, or not as much as you thought it would be?"

"That's a fucking ton of money!" he says.

I counter, "Well it would've been more if I'd gotten new frames. I wasn't trying to surprise you. How much did you think it was going to be?"

"Like $20."


If new glasses cost $20, I'd have glasses piled all over my room. There'd be glasses of all different colors stuffed into every drawer and shelf in the bathroom. I'd have a pair of glasses to match every freaking outfit I own. You know how sometimes when you say a word over and over, and it's not a word you say very often, it starts to sound funny? Glasses. Glaaaaasssssses. Glassiz.






Glasses.

And now I can let the cat out of the bag

So, as you may know, yesterday was my third wedding anniversary. Though I wrote a smooshy post about feelings yesterday, I know you want to know what we did. As it happened, I planned our first anniversary activities, and we decided that it seemed like a good idea to alternate who plans the anniversary, so this year was my year again. In the preceding months, I'd pored over the internet, looking for good ideas. I like to pick things that we haven't done before, or atleast not done together. So I planned a few fun things, and I kept it all a secret until we got going.

First we picked up some freshly baked cookies from a store here that will make cookies to your specifications. The Huz love love loves cookies, but we don't usually buy sweet snacky food like that. Last week I'd asked The Huz what his ideal cookie would be. He replied chocolate cookie with chocolate chips and macademia nuts. So that's what he got! Mine were oatmeal cookie with Heath bar bits in them, and I called the order in earlier in the day so they were fresh and awesome and ready to go.

Then we headed over to a local spa where we soaked in a jetted tub and ate our cookies. After the tub I'd scheduled a side-by-side massage, which was so very enjoyable, particularly because I'd never had a massage before. Being rubbed by a stranger was largely as I'd imagined it would be, which is good because I imagined it was going to be the best thing I've done in forever, and it was. My massage therapist (is that the correct term?) was professional and sweet, and she spoke in a hushed voice and asked me how I was feeling and gave me chills nearly constantly.

Then we trotted home to put on some dressier clothing and we went to dinner at Restaurant Tallent, where I've been dying to eat for at least a few months. After reading this, I knew the bar menu was going to be the perfect way to enjoy our anniversary dinner together. Despite my very good intentions of documenting the evening, this is the only memento of our fabulous dinner:



That's right, tawny port and espresso. But when we got home, in a fit of we must take pictures because I am in a skirt and this rare occasion must be documented, here are my favorites from our self-timer session:

Three down, Ninety seven to go

Three years ago today, my friend Annie came over to my house to help me curl my hair and pin my bra to my dress, and The Huz, who was not yet The Huz, came home from work early, and we went and got married. We didn't want a big poofy wedding, and though I was pretty sure I was going to cry when faced with the emotion attached to the day, I didn't want to be a big blubbery mess in front of all the people we knew. I'm not a pretty crier; I get so red and puffy when I cry that you can usually tell that I've been crying for hours afterward. Not a good look for a fancy reception and thousands of photographs. We also didn't want to go into a scary hole of debt for what would ultimately be one day of partying. An important party? Yes. A party that could be worth thousands of dollars? Not in my opinion.

We'd been engaged for a few months, and we just wanted to be married. We planned to get married, run off and spend the weekend together, and then return and tell our families that Surprise! We're married! We had set the date for Friday afternoon at the courthouse, but I started to feel some intense guilt about not telling our parents. I knew our mothers would be so hurt that we didn't include them in this part of our lives, and I decided that having a special secret between us just wasn't worth it. So the Sunday before the big day we spilled the secret to his parents and then mine. At both houses it went something like this:

Us: So what are you guys doing this week? Any plans?

Them: Oh nothing much. Regular work week.

Us: Oh yeah? What about Friday? Are you doing anything on Friday?

Them, starting to get suspicious: Well....no....not that I can think of. Why?

Us: Well we're getting married and we were wondering if maybe you'd like to come.

I am so thankful we made the decision to share that day with the people we love, because parents came to the ceremony, siblings and relatives came out to dinner, and friends went out on the town. We would've had an intimate and sweet wedding weekend if we'd eloped like we'd planned to, but instead we had so much fun with each other and family and friends that it still makes me teary.

So much has happened in three years that sometimes it feels like we've always been together, that the memories of before there was an "us" are distant and confusing. And then sometimes, as we fall down laughing together, or see each other in a new way that renews the spark, or fall speechless when the other is there to lend support and love that we couldn't make it without, it feels like we've just started. It feels like we've got forever in front of us. And I'm glad I'm spending it with him.

I still watched the rest of the movie

After months of studying and prep books and practice tests, the LSAT is finally over. After the test on Saturday I began to reward my hard work, naturally, with booze, and last night as I finished a bottle of champagne and watched bad romance movies on TBS, I'd periodically pop into the other room to visit The Huz while he read a journal article for work. One cheesy movie ended and its sequel was on next, and before I knew it I'd begun to watch it. Like most people, I'm pretty leery of a sequel. But even when the acting is awful and the plot can't really go anywhere, once you start to watch something you haven't seen before, it's easy to get sucked in.

So this sucky movie gets going, and it turns out that the actor that played the lead male in the first movie is the same, but they've replaced the lead female with some g-list actress. Oh hell, I started out planning to avoid naming the movie so I wouldn't have to suffer the shame of people knowing that I willingly watched "The Prince and Me 2," but there I said it. So I stomp into the other room and say, "Do you want to hear some buuuulllllshit?"

"What is it baby?" he says.

"So they kept the lead dude from the first movie, you know, the prince, but I guess they couldn't get Julia Stiles back so it's some other bitch playing her. And there's no gesture to try to make up for it; they just call the new one by the same name as they did in the first movie. Isn't that bullshit?"

"Who's the other actress?" he asks.

"I don't know, some whore who can't act," I say.

"You never did like a whore," he says, and I totally crack up. "You know," he said. "You should get drunk more often. I'm so much funnier when you're drunk. When you're sober and I make a joke, you're just like...." He proceeded to make a completely straight face and threw in a little bit of a disapproving look.

You heard it here first, people. Not only should I get drunk, but it should be more often! Let the celebrations begin! Starting with this:

I'll probably check his e-mails too, just to show him who's boss

A friend of mine told me about a fight he'd had with his girlfriend. He said that whenever he leaves the room she goes through his phone to see who he's been calling or texting. I mentioned that conversation to The Huz, and I followed it with, "I'm telling the truth when I say that I never do that. I'm serious."

"You better not," he said.

"Hey! Don't follow an admission of trust and honesty with a threat!"

"Well I'm just saying that it would really piss me off if you did."

"I know. And that's another reason why I don't do it," I said.

"You better not," he repeated.

"Jesus," I said. "Now I'm going to just because you pissed me off."

Last night right before bed

"Wouldn't it be cool to watch water freeze, like at the very second that it happens?"

"I'd rather chug a beer."

"Me too. We're made for eachother............You're going to be a crazy old lady."

RE: letter to the editor

The other night my husband and I had it out at the grocery store. He commented on a post I wrote, and I deleted his comment. He was pissed because I censored a comment that someone (though I was pretty sure it was him when I deleted it) made about something I wrote, and he was also pissed because since I wrote that post, things have changed. The original post was about how a woman was raped at night near a place where I had just gone running alone the night before. I don't intend to stop running or change my life because of it, but I do intend to go running before dark if I'm going alone, stay in areas where people are, and consider carrying my cell phone. A few days after the woman reported the assault to the police, she recanted her story. In a follow-up interview with the police, she admitted that she had consensual sex with a man she met on the internet.

Let me begin by saying that I firmly believe that she should be charged with false informing and anything else applicable to this kind of case. She wasted police time, she scared countless women, and now she's confirmed many people's beliefs that women will cry rape for no reason. His comment was along the lines of, "Why don't you mention that the slut had consensual casual sex with a guy she met online?" I tried to explain that if someone read my post and then read his comment, they'd forget in an instant what I had written and only feel anger toward her for lying. Go ahead and feel anger toward her! That's fine. But I know my message is still valid and shouldn't be lost because of reactionary feelings.

I don't know who she is, and I don't know why she made the false accusations, but I do know that despite the fact that she wasn't in fact raped, I was offered a little wake-up call to be more careful. He was pissed because anyone reading that post would still think that she had really been raped, and he felt that it was wrong for me to have not immediately taken the post down or at least corrected the facts.

That 19-year-old did something really stupid, and I hope she is properly punished. But just because that bad thing didn't actually happen to her doesn't mean that bad things don't happen, and it also doesn't mean that the lesson I feel like I learned isn't important.

marriage is bliss

in my bathroom this morning:

"Baby, as I shave the nubby hairs of my armpits, I'm reminded of my love for you."

Our priorities are clearly different.

My husband has 24 movies in his Netflix queue. I have 202.

On being right

him: What did you have for lunch today?
me: Palak Paneer. It was soooo good.
him: Oh yeah, I love that tofu.
me: It's not tofu. It's Indian cheese.
him: No, it's tofu.
me: No, I'm sure it's cheese.
him: (in a haughty tone) Indians worship the cow. They would not eat cheese.
me: Fine. Let me just go get the box with the ingredients on it.
him: Whatever.
me: (I return with the box) Let me just read this out loud for you: ORGANIC BASMATI RICE, ORGANIC SPINACH, ORGANIC ONIONS, FILTERED WATER, PANEER CHEESE (MILK, CITRIC ACID, CALCIUM CHLORIDE).
him: Oh.

But what about my happy ending?

My husband felt concerned about a little lump he found near his left epididymis, so he went to the doctor. He described the uncomfortable situation:

"I got my balls felt."

"Oh yeah? Was she gentle?"

"Yeah, but it's still weird."

"By weird to you mean awesome? With a stranger touching your dick?"

"It's not very sexy. She moved my penis out of the way so gingerly with her thumb and forefinger."

"Hm. Well did she tell you anything? Do you have to go back?"

"I'm going on Monday to get an ultrasound. I was sitting there talking to her, and she said, "Okay let's take a look." And I said, "Ok." So she said, "That means you have to stand up and take off your pants."

So he went yesterday for the ultrasound and looked so uncomfortable when he got home. I was washing dishes, and he opened the door and announced, "I got my balls felt again."

"Did you? Was the gel cold?" I asked because they always show the nurse squirting a great big dollop of the cold gel on pregnant bellies on tv.

"No, they warmed it up."

"Well that's good. What was it like?"

"Well they just kind roll it around and take pictures."

"So....did they tell you anything?"

"Legally they're not allowed to."

"No, I mean about your dick."

"My dick was covered up. The only thing she could see was my balls."

"Oh..... Well then what about your balls? Did you ask about your balls?"

"I told you, they legally can't tell me anything before the doctor examines the results."

"No I mean, about how they look. Like size and hairiness."

I thought about not telling you

(on the phone)
"I got my first hatemail today."

"Yeah? What did it say?"

"It said, "The internet never fed anyone. Those people should just send food." I marched off an angry response already."

"What did it say again?"

"It said, "The internet never fed anyone. Those people should just send food.""

"I don't think that's hateful."

"I think anything that clearly means "You're stupid and what you're doing is stupid" is hateful."

"Oh..........Well I wrote it."

"What?"

"I read your blog last night when I was taking a break, and I wrote it. I thought you would think it was funny."

. . .

"I wasn't trying to piss you off."

(tension clears as I start to laugh) "It did piss me off, but it's funny now. I'm gonna go edit this in."

Because he loves me

Today I'm wearing the eyeshadow that my husband says makes my eyes "look like buttholes."