The Muffin Man?

Jack: How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can't make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.
Algernon: Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.
Jack: I say it's perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.

-The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

I made muffins yesterday, nice fat ones.  I finally got the guts to confess to the Man (at around 11pm) that I'd eaten seven of them for lunch. Yes, seven. Seven muffins.  He had three when he got home from work and that left two in the ziplock bag on the counter.  Those two were my breakfast plan.

But they weren't my breakfast.

Why? Quite simply because the cat ate them.  Yes.  The feline ate my muffins. And I have yet to forgive him. What business had he to be eating muffins at all, under the circumstances?  It was perfectly heartless of him!

Steak (because I can)

So, while the Man and I were at the shore this week, I decided to order a steak (yes, when I could've gotten seafood--don't ask).  Now, I like my steaks medium-well to well-done.  As in, I don't like to see gushy red stuff coming out of something I'm eating.  The Man informed me, however, that by ordering my steak as I did, I was practically inviting the chef to give me the crappiest piece of meat he had on his hands.  All I have to say to that is "shame on you!"  My steak actually turned out quite scrumptious (even the Man said it wasn't bad), but when I got back to D.C., what did I find on my yahoo homepage but this:

http://food.yahoo.com/blog/edlevineeats/27074/the-best-steaks-to-grill

The first two lines read: "If you ask Mark Pastore of La Frieda Meats, a Manhattan-based meat purveyor, you should never prepare your steak well-done. That's like squeezing all the goodness out of the animal (and eating a leather shoe)." 

My response? Oh, well.  I don't plan to stop eating shoe leather any time soon.  It tastes nice.

Evidently...

When you're pregnant (or rather, I should say, when I'm pregnant)...

When ONE'S pregnant,

One can laugh so hard that one can cause one's self to throw up!

And then, one can throw up so hard that one can pee in one's pants!

Cool story, eh, Hansel?

I'm never letting the Man be funny ever again. Baby Friz evidently does not appreciate humour.

Oswald: Friend or Fiend?

I think this should go out to a vote.  (See above, Oswald's myspace picture.)

The Man and I bought a cat last October, ostensibly to keep him company while he was living by himself in DC before we got married, mostly because I wanted a cat and the Man spoils me ridiculously.  Unfortunately, we couldn't take Os with us to Texas after we got married so he spent 4 months in Lebanon with my oldest sister and her husband, wrecking havoc and generally rampaging.  They say they loved him. They also say that they will now never own pets. So Oswald came back into our ownership around the middle of May and, since then, has been going back and forth from my black list to my favourites list.

Here's the situation (you can judge for yourself). 

He's adorable, extremely personable, and highly amusing. However, he's destructive as all get out, overly opinionated, and occasionally violent.  I love: that he comes to cuddle with me in the mornings, that he likes to be petted in the middle of the night when I go to the bathroom, that he chases his tail...and bites it, that his mouth opens up a good two inches like that snake that can unhinge its jaw.  Plus, he's just so darn cute.  However, I highly dislike Oswald's propensity to: chew through important wires (like my laptop charger...which cost 80 bucks to replace), climb on my newly sanitized kitchen counters, meow and throw himself at our bedroom door if we don't get up early enough in the morning, beg for food when we're eating dinner (sounds cute; gets old fast), chew on the blinds, and bite when you don't pet him exactly where he wants to be petted.

Can you understand my dilemma? I'm past the point of wanting to drown him in the nearby Potomac (I was so close the weekend where he chewed through 6 major cords in the space of 24 hours), but I'm still not completely sure where my opinion of him lies.  So what do you think? Friend or foe? Let's take a vote.

Morning Yearning

Sunrise at a little green table with my journal, a sarape, and a cup of tea. I have a feeling that this is going to be my safe place. I woke up earlier than usual, unable to sleep well after the Man left for work, and my reward was a quick snuggle with the cat and the chance to see the sky change colour.

A Little Bit of This

So it's been a while.  In fact, such a while that we've completely moved and started something new in D.C. (well, Alexandria to be precise).  The Man works long hours, and I'm home figuring out this whole life thing.  Our house is mostly set up, and there's news of a dining room table, although eating on the couch is still a step up from eating on the bed, which was the first four months of married life.  We still need curtains (blankets tacked up over the windows=tacky, no pun intended) and a desk, but we are making friends and settling in, and I am finding my place here, I think.

It's interesting to me, this whole moving thing.  I've done it before (frequently), but since getting married, for the first time I find myself moving without a preconceived notion of what's next for me.  I'm not moving for a job or for school; I'm moving for the Man's job.  And it's not that I'm not looking for a job or looking at grad school possibilities (because I am), but they are not the only options, and I think sometimes I could do nothing all day but read and pull myself together really quickly before the Man comes home.  That's not what I'm planning on doing though.

Yes, I do find life to be a little smaller right now. I'm not running around for 19 hours of classes, a part-time job, ridiculous amounts of extracurricular activities, and a social schedule that leaves me coffee shop hopping. But I'm learning that there's beauty in the smallness.  I have time to go for walks and find wild strawberries in the woods. I watched a squirrel run off, possessively, with a mushroom as he glared back at me for even daring to look at him while he was foraging. I take time to pet the cat (and punish him--fiend). I'm almost done with this latest journal that has taken me through several months of big changes. I've made enchiladas verde and electric lemonada (this with an awesome newish friend) and zucchini bread and lasagna. And the best part is that the Man comes home every night, and I can stop whatever I'm doing to be with him.  Funny how I know that's the best part since I only have a couple more months of it.

There's no point to this post.  Just a little doodling. I suppose, in my own way, I'm leaving behind little footprints to look back to later.

I miss the ocean, but I found a little stream behind our apartment complex...and a couple ponds complete with Canadian geese, which make me think of The Westing Game.  And I got to go for a ride in a yellow bi-plane which maybe is one of the coolest things I've ever done. Maybe. It's a toss up.

Almost Over

The Man is out on 24 hour patrol, and I'm at home with my computer and a stack of unfinished thank you notes listening to the Weepies.  It's Wednesday night on the home front, my second-to-last Bullis Wednesday.  And so begins the countdown of lasts.

The biggest last that I'm faced with is that this week is the last time to prove to myself that I can live without deadlines or due dates, that I can motivate without the promised reward of good grades or someone else's approval.  It's been three and a half months of tanking out on myself in that regard, but who knows? Perhaps I will suddenly be injected with some alien ambition and will find myself doing more than stagnating.

What a weird, weird few months.  I've made friends, watched stupid movies, gone tubing down a silk-green river.  I've spent hours writing (and weeks purposefully not writing).  I've read my Bible (and avoided reading it). I've had many mugs of coffee (and almost as many of tea). I've gone for walks in the burning sun, seen seven circling vultures, watched a snake coil sinisterly, laughed at yellow butterflies.  I've felt the ocean spray on my face and laid awake at night longing for rain to come.  I've seen the hill country in the light of a lowering sun and read books the wind tried to tear from my hands.  Most importantly, I've loved the Man so intensely that the thought of him leaving...is not a thought that I want to entertain. 

And next Friday we'll squeeze all our belongings into our sun-roofed silver car except for what can't be squeezed, and we'll leave behind "my" back road, Saturday breakfasts at La Madeleine,  the toaster oven that won't work at the same time as the coffee maker, the fuzzy TV, the boxes full of the Man's MRE's, the miscellaneous gear hiding behind the armchair, the laundry basket I dragged up and down the stairs twice a week, the Do Not Disturb sign, the scratchy white towels, the view out my window...and a thousand newlywed memories.

There are rumours that there's a home waiting for me somewhere in DC.  I hope so.