Time For A Game Of Twister

Left foot red, right hand green...

Yay for Memorial Day weekend!  I love three day weekends, even when I'm not going out of town.  Three day weekends mean that my Saturday is my own.  I don't have to run around getting all my errands done because I have a whole extra day to complete them.  I can sleep in, have whatever breakfast I want instead of the breakfast I have time for, and lollygag around until I get motivated enough to do something.

The Saturday before Memorial Day, I woke up after seven o'clock for the first time in a long time.  I snuggled with my honey and contemplated lazing away the morning in bed.  I was feeling so well rested that I even decided to cook breakfast.  I made eggs over easy for my honey and scrammies with hammies for myself, as well as some toast for me and a yogurt for him.  I broke the yolks on both of the eggs I cooked for my honey.  But, in my defense, I like my eggs scrambled and I haven't been a breakfast waitress in almost a decade now.  My skills are a little rusty, to put it mildly.

Breakfast completed, my honey hopped into the shower while I awaited the arrival of our guest for the day.  Mrs. Mynd had asked me on Friday at work if I would mind watching her daughter, affectionately known as Princess Sassy Pants (or PSP) on her father's blog, while the older Mynds went to a rock climbing class.  Since PSP and I had gotten along so well when her parents were out of town earlier this month, I told Mrs. Mynd that I'd love to watch the kiddo.  The princess arrived at the house at about 10:30 complete with a breakfast from Panera.   I had shared with Mrs. Mynd that I was thinking of going shoe shopping on Saturday, so PSP had come over with no toys or games, but prepared to spend the day walking around shopping centers and malls with me.  As soon as I was ready to go, so was she.  Yippee!  A girlie day of shopping for shoes.  Does life get any better than that?  I think not!

Princess Sassy Pants was an awesome shopping partner!  She could glance at a pair of shoes I was considering and immediately offer an opinion about the height of the heel, sole thickness, or dressy quality of the shoe.  She quickly learned my shoe size and would scan the lower shelves looking for any shoe that we decided met the criteria.  It was like having a mini personal shopper!  We came up short at Famous Footwear and Payless.  I blamed our close parking space for the lack of acceptable footwear.  If there is a close parking space available, Murphy's Law clearly states that the store will not have what you want.  At Kohl's, we hit pay dirt and found two pairs of sandals.  Yay for cute shoes that won't brake my ankles!

We stopped and got lunch from Atlanta Bread on our way home.  We happily muched on soup and sandwiches before getting down to the very best part of the day.  The princess was in the mood to play a game.  Since I have no children of my own and all of my old childhood board games are still at my mother's house there was only one available game in the house to play.  Twister! 

Mrs. Mynd, the school secretary where I work, had given me Twister when some misguided soul donated it to the school for use as an indoor recess game.  Can you imagine the trips to the school nurse that could ensue from playing that game during indoor recess?  I shutter to think.  Needless to say, Mrs. Mynd decided the game was not for classroom use and sent it home with me one Friday when I was hosting a faculty happy hour.  Before you ask, it didn't get used then, either.

But, I digress.  PSP wanted to play a game and Twister was the only one to be had in the house.  The rest of the story is much better told through pictures than anything I could possibly think to say.

One of my honey's early defeats in Twister...

"Spin the spinner already.  I'm gonna fall!"

Twister meets Frogger

PSP wins again! 
This one happened so fast I could only get a blurry picture.

There are no pictures of me playing Twister with PSP, although I did play three rounds with her.  I was just smart enough to maintain control of the camera, even while I was playing.  We had a blast!

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

My honey's in the kitchen on the verge of a panic attack because guess who's coming to dinner...my mother.  In a further attempt to charm and win her over, my honey came up with a great idea this week.  He invited Mom over for a homemade meal of his world-famous tacos and Spanish rice.  He hoped a wonderful meal and good company would help to ease her disapproval of our living situation.

He planned everything down to the last detail.  He planned a full menu, made a comprehensive grocery list, went shopping well in advance, and had a schedule going in his head for when he needed to start cooking each appetizer and entree.  He was fully confident in his menu and ready for this meal.  What he wasn't ready for was the amount of anxiety he would experience because he was in charge of making a meal for my mother.

As you may have read earlier this month, I experienced alot of anxiety and stress over his parents' coming over on Mother's Day.  Some of my nuttiness was because of the total spring cleaning that needed to occur before their arrival, but a lot of it was because I know his mom is an amazing cook.  My honey is always talking about the great meals his mom makes and what a good cook she is.  I wanted the food to live up to her high standards.  My mom, on the other hand, never cooked when I was growing up.  My dad got home first, so he always started dinner.  I didn't know my mother could cook until I was well into my teens.  Plus, my mom has been to my house loads of times, when it was both clean and dirty.  No need for stress when cooking for a returning visitor, right? Wrong!





My honey was stressing out about this dinner from the second he got home.  Traffic had been especially bad that day and he was about thirty minutes late getting home from work.  This meant that immediately he was behind schedule.  Add to that the fact that he realized after getting into the kitchen that he had forgotten to leave the steak out to thaw and we had a recipe for a frazzled chef.  My honey was panicking as he started mentally reorganizing his menu.  "We have pre-cooked chicken strips in the fridge for your salads, right?  I can use those to make tacos, can't I?" my honey was asking.  I assured him that we did have chicken and he could use it.



Since it had been a hot day, I sent him upstairs to change out of his work clothes while I put the steak into the microwave to thaw.  By the time he came back down, the steak was thawed and I'd sliced up the onions for him.  Crisis #1 averted.  He decided he would do both chicken and steak tacos, anyway.  Next, he began to worry about what time my mother would arrive.  We hadn't set a firm time for dinner.  We usually go over to her house for dinner at about six, but Mom has been known to show up at my house early.  He asked me to call her and confirm her arrival time.  As he began  sauteeing onions and mushrooms, I put in the call to Mom.

"Everything okay, honey?" I asked
"No, I put too much water in with the rice!" he replied.

Mom was willing to show up whenever we were ready, but had been planning to arrive sometime around five thirty.  This gave my honey even less time to get the meal together.  I shared this with him as he started making the rice.  In his distress, he put too much water in with the rice.  Now he was freaking out and asking if we had some white rice he could mix in to correct the ratio of cups of rice to cups of water.  I assured him we did have more rice and got it for him.  Then, I started making the salads, so he'd have one less thing to worry about for dinner.  Mom showed up as I was putting the salads on the table.


Mom had brought my beloved dog, Roxy, with her.  My honey was immediately greeted with doggie kisses which seeemed to calm him down some.  My mother, being quite used to showing up for meals at my house that aren't ready when she arrives, sat down at the kitchen table and chatted with us while I set the table and my honey finished cooking the taco meats.  He did a great job of making light of his delayed start and measuring blunder and even though I knew how upset he had been earlier, I don't think Mom had any idea how frazzled he was.

"I like taco meat!" Roxy's eyes seemed to be saying
as she shamelessly begged for food.

Everything else came off without a hitch.  The meal was delicious!  Mom was impressed with my honey's culinary skills and told him he was now the chef for family taco night over at her house.  Yay!  What a success!  My honey even made my mom smile when she saw him slipping table scraps to Roxy, the wondermutt, under the table.





I did dishes in the kitchen while my honey showed my mom some of the personal touches he had added to the living room (such as the hockey player bobbleheads on the  mantel and our massive joint DVD collection).  Mom and I had choir practice after dinner, so Mom made her farewells to my honey and headed out to the car.  I had to laugh once she was out the door.  "Now you know how I felt when your parents were coming over for dinner!" I told him.  I gave him a big hug and kiss and told him I loved him before heading out to choir practice.

Of Potholes and Pot Roasts

I am exhausted!  We had such a busy weekend.  My honey and I were booked solid with lots of family and friends related activities.  We had a yard sale to set-up with my mom, a friend's birthday to celebrate, a wine tasting to attend (Yeah, I know.  My non-drinking self went to a wine tasting.), Sunday dinner at my mom's house, and then the great crash from all that running around.  Although the items just listed were in the order of there scheduled appearance, events did not necessarily occur in that order...

This was the plan for Saturday: a happy couple at a wine tasting.
It didn't quite work out that way.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, I was gently nudged awake and a voice whispered into my ear.  But, it wasn't sweet nothings my honey was whispering, instead it was, "What time did you tell your mother you would be over to help out with the yard sale?"  Not exactly the wake up call that every girl hopes for on a weekend morning. 

It wasn't even seven a.m.  I was being awoken (gently, kindly, and with all the love in his heart) by my honey to ensure that I was on time to my mother's house.  Given the current state of inter-household relations, being late and angering Mom was NOT a good idea.  I completely understood his concern for my timely departure.  But, it was Saturday and I was so tired my eyes hurt.  It was my one day a week to sleep in without an alarm waking me up.  I was pouty and unhappy about having to be up, but fear of further maternal disapproval got me moving and over to Mom's house promptly at 7:30.

My honey opted to stay home, having not seen my mother since I dropped the 'moving in together' news on her and being unsure of his welcome.  Within two seconds of my arrival, though, my mother was asking where he was and why I had been unable to talk him into coming over and helping out.  So, I texted him to hustle over to the mothership's home.  I also promised her delivery of one honey in five minutes or less.  Oops, his place is fifteen minutes away.  Mine is two minutes away.  Guess she knows where he spent Friday night!  Oh well, she's going to have to get used to the idea eventually, right?  Why not start now?

He arrived just outside of my boasted five minute window, but in good spirits and very willing to do anything my mother wanted him to do.  My honey's no fool.  He would have gratefully schlepped hundreds of pounds of yard sale trinkets out of and back into the house in order to earn some goodwill from my mother.  We got the yard sale set up and Mom left the two of us outside to act as her sales team.  We did a pretty good job, too.  Over the course of four hours, my honey and I sold ninety dollars worth of junk to unsuspecting strangers and neighbors.  If you don't think that sounds like a lot, consider the fact that not a single item in my mom's yard sale cost more than one dollar. 

Yard sale completed and maternal goodwill earned, we raced off to celebrate my BFF's birthday.  She had decided that this year's birthday theme would be "Thirty-One Is The New Twenty-One"  and in this spirit, we reenacted her twenty first birthday with a trip to a local event known as "Wine In The Woods".  Now, I don't drink and my honey is more of a beer drinker, but since it was her birthday and my honey was already gaining experience as a goodwill ambassador, we paid the fee for one designated driver and one wine taster and in we went.



Yeah, it was a little crowded.  No wonder we couldn't find the friendamily!

We hadn't eaten breakfast before rushing off to yard sale with my mother, so the first thing we did once inside the "woods" was hunt down a food vendor for some barbecue.  BBQ sandwiches in hand we strolled through the crowds looking for the friendamily.  Within ten minutes, in fact before we even located my friendamily among the sea of thousands of smiling, glassy eyed faces, one of us was already hurting.  It was me, of course!  Leave it to me to be the only sober person in the park to stumble and fall because of a pothole in the dirt walking path.


My honey was walking directly in front of me.  Hundreds of people were walking directly in front of him.  Nobody else had any trouble negotiating the dirt path, but me, the SOBER girl!  The pothole was about six inches in diameter and maybe three or four inches deep, but I couldn't see it because of the thick crowd meandering along the path.  I stepped right into it and went down like a ton of bricks!  Man, this sounds familiar!  Oh, wait.  I did something similar just a few months ago when I broke my right ankle.


Luckily, this time it was my left foot and I was wearing tennis shoes, so I didn't break anything.  Thank God for the last second impulse I had to change my shoes between the yard sale and the wine tasting!  But, I couldn't stroll from tent to tent with my friends while they tasted various wines or visit the craft fair in the middle of the park because walking more than twenty feet just wasn't an option.  In short, the rest of my day was pretty much trashed after I fell.

Funnily enough, after two minutes of browbeating from my friends to leave me on the blankets in the shade and two hours of strolling around in search of a bottle of the wine he had enjoyed, my honey was also trashed.  So now I was hurting and he was feeling no pain.  My honey is a happy drunk, but even a happy drunk can be obnoxious when you're not feeling very happy yourself.  Upon returning to our home base, my honey was happily intoxicated and telling me that if he could have fallen in my place, he would have.  It was sweet the first time he said it.  By the forty or fiftieth time he said it, it wasn't sweet anymore.  It was really annoying.  I know you are reading this and cringing right now, my love.  No worries.  I still love you even when you are intoxicated and repeating yourself over and over and over again.

That's us!  He's had a little too much wine
and I haven't had quite enough pain medication.

Eventually, it was time for the merriment and imbibing to stop.  This is where the real trouble began.  The parking lot and my car were a good half mile from the wine tasting pavillions.  I was in no shape to walk that far.  My honey was in no shape to aid me in walking that far, though he certainly tried.  We started out walking arm in arm, but as we began going downhill towards the parking lot, gravity seemed to speed up my honey's steps til he was pulling me along.  Afraid he was going to pull me forward and cause another fall, I let go of his arm and started walking unaided.  We caught a very brief ride with the handicapped shuttle (which stopped twenty yards short of the parking lot, WTF?!) and then I bit my lip and dug my fingernails into my palms as I walked the last five hundred yards to the car unassisted.  I drove us home (Again, thank goodness it was my left foot and not my right!), got him dinner, and then watched him pass out on the couch before eating a single bite. 

Thankfully, this brought Saturday to a close.

"My girlfriend must really love me because when I woke up the fan was turned on and pointed in my direction." 
No, he didn't say that when he woke up, but he should have.

Sunday started with my honey telling me that the room was spinning and his head hurt.  Shocker!  I wasn't surprised after all that wine.  I got him some Advil and a cup of water before getting ready for church.  I drove over to my mother's house to pick her up for church and she was bubbling over with excitement about how much stuff she had gotten rid of and how much money we had made at the yard sale the day before.   She inspected my foot and proclaimed nothing was broken, though Doctor Mom quickly announced that I was going to have the mother of all bruises in a day or two.  She was right!  My foot is black and blue now.

Now for the really good news:  We must have impressed Mom with our yard sale efforts because she announced after church that I should go home and get my honey because she had made a pot roast for Sunday dinner.  Pot roast is one of my all-time favorite Mom meals.  If she's making my favorites again, that can only be a good sign for her getting over her earlier displeasure with us.  Don't you agree?!?!  What?  Well, who asked you, anyway?  Oh wait, I did.

Ben Franklin has been famously misquoted as saying that "beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy".
Well, for me, pot roast is proof that my Mom loves me and wants me to be happy.

Does This Stress Make Me Look Fat?

(and other questions you shouldn't answer)

We survived Mother's Day!  My honey won the battle over who would be cooking by being the first to get out of bed that day.  Can you really call a thirty second conversation a battle?  We're still so in the honeymoon stage that neither of us raised an eyebrow, let alone a voice at the other.  I was okay with that because I was such a shrew the day before that I figured if he wanted to cook, then I should let him do whatever he wanted.  I got to make the salad, set the table, and serve dinner, so we had a nice division of labor going for us.

My honey even excused my cleaning frenzy craziness, saying that I was stressed out and that it was okay that I vented a little in his direction.  I still don't think my behavior was okay, but if he's willing to forgive, then I am willing to forget.  He was such a good sport about my stressed out craziness.  So now he's seen me pretty much at my worst and he's still here... yay!!!

This week was fairly eventful.  I had to house sit/dog sit for my mother while she was out of town overnight on a business trip, which meant that my honey got to spend his first night home alone at the townhouse.  We texted back and forth before bedtime, like we used to do before we lived together. Then, I texted him an hour later when I couldn't get to sleep. 

A few weeks ago, when he was out of town on vacation and/or babysitting over at the Mynd's house and I couldn't get to sleep, I would watch the Western Conference hockey playoff games to get to sleep.  At the time, he thought he'd created a hockey fiend, but really I was watching the games because it made me feel closer to him since he's such a huge hockey fan.  I had to resort to watching the L.A. Kings decimate the Phoenix Coyotes to get to sleep while house sitting for my mom, too.  I even caught myself rolling over in the middle of the night and reaching for my honey, something my mother's dog did not appreciate, as I grabbed her at three a.m. instead.



It was only a night away from home, but we were both exhausted the next day.  Apparently, despite sleeping solo for the better part of thirty plus years each, neither of us can get a good night's sleep without the other being there anymore.  Weird, huh?  We caught up on our sleep the next evening before life started getting eventful again.

My honey's best friend, whom we normally dine with about once a week, got some bad news from back home that his mother had passed away.  His mother had been in failing health for months and he had visited her about three weeks ago when her caregivers warned him that the end was nigh, so this wasn't an unexpected event.  But losing a parent, even when you know it's coming, is never easy.  My honey rushed out to be with his friend (they were already planning to have dinner together, but he left early so they could have more time to talk) and I went over to my mother's house to have dinner before going to choir practice.

While my honey was off doling out a man hug,
I was dropping a bombshell on my mother.

I chose that evening to tell my mother about the fact that my honey and I were moving in together.  Maybe not the wisest course of action on my part, huh?  I'm sure you are wondering how she could possibly have not known about this life event, especially considering you've known about it for weeks and weeks.  Well, the answer is simple.  My mom doesn't know that I write a blog and I hadn't shared too many relationship highlights with her lately.




Believe it or not, I am pretty close to my mom.  My best friend once told me that my mother was really my best friend and my BFF just ran a close second.  I usually tell my mom everything.  In this situation, I didn't tell her much of anything for a couple of reasons.  First, it's not the world's most comfortable conversation to tell your Catholic mother that you are engaging in pre-marital sex.  Second, telling Mom that my honey was spending the night regularly and getting comfy in my home wouldn't exactly have been good dinner conversation with my brother, sister-in-law, and four year old nephew also at the table.  Third, telling the woman who moved straight from her parents' house to her wedded home that my significant other was moving in, despite the fact that there was no engagement ring on my left ring finger, wasn't going to be a happy conversation.  So, I procrastinated in tell her.  Can you blame me?

I probably would have procrastinated even longer, except for the fact that my honey was bothered by the fact that I was keeping our moving in together a secret from her.  He'd been encouraging me to tell her for quite a while and it needed to get done. I know that.  The sheer number of people who knew about our moving adventures meant that I was living on borrowed time to tell her myself before she bumped into someone who would inadvertantly informed her about my living situation by asking how the move was going.  This week, I put on my big girl panties and told her.  By the way, I was right.  It wasn't a very happy conversation.

Yeah, she wasn't too happy with me.

She isn't happy with me right now on many levels.  First, she asked how I knew we would be compatible living together and I, like an idiot, answered her. Thus, I confirmed her fears about pre-marital sex and her suspicions that my honey had been spending a lot of nights here.  Then, she asked about the impending move of my honey's parents.  Early on, I'd been told by a friend that my honey's parents were moving back to their home state of Indiana and he was getting their town house when they went.  Long story short, they aren't moving anytime soon and if they ever do move they will be selling their home. 

The 'no move' revelation brought on the wrath of the ignored mother, who'd been only too willing to be flexible on Mother's Day and at other times because she thought she would only have to deal with sharing us with the in-laws for a few months at most.  Upon hearing that my honey's parents weren't going anywhere, she promptly told me what she thought about all that flexibility she'd been showing.  She doesn't like having to share me with another family.  She doesn't like not getting to see me daily and wondering when she will see me next.  In short, she's having some separation anxiety.

That's where we stand right now.  My mother isn't very happy with my recent life choices.  My honey got an extra dose of stress, when he really didn't need another person to worry about, as I came home all freaked out after receiving maternal disapproval for the first time in my life.  And we still had a busy weekend of family and friend events ahead of us, but that's a story for a later blog.

Beware: Spring Cleaning In Progress

This weekend, I am a crazy lady.  I can't help it and I did it to myself.  While broaching the topic of Mother's Day with my honey to find out if we were going to be doing the Mom thing separately or together, together being his preference, I unintentionally set myself up for a massive meltdown.  He wanted to do Mother's Day with his mom on Saturday, but she was booked by his siblings.  My mom was willing to bend to whatever the schedule needed to be,  wasn't that accomodating of her?  I suggested lunch on Sunday.  He didn't want to go out as every nice restaurant on the planet would be a mad house and we couldn't very well ask his mom to cook her own lunch, now could we?  So, without any forethought to the consequences of what I was about to suggest, I suggested we have his parents over to our place for lunch. 

What the hell was I thinking? 

His parents have never been to my place before.  We are in the middle of moving in together.  There's stuff everywhere!  Plus, I was not the world's greatest housekeeper before he and all his stuff arrived, so the house was already in desperate need of a spring cleaning.  I don't want their first impression of my home to be that it needs to be cleaned and decluttered and what is their son getting himself into with this messy woman!

I did not want my living room looking like this
when his parents came over for the first time.

The next day, I managed to shoot myself in the foot again by talking to my honey when I wasn't quite awake.  We were laying in bed, discussing where to watch Saturday's hockey game, and my honey was lamenting my living room TV because it's an old tube screen TV that's gotten a little blurry with age and is nowhere near as big as his massive big screen.  He can't see the puck on my TV.  The score is so small and blurry that he had to use his phone to check the score of last night's baseball game when he turned it on. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  Again with no forethought and no conscious brain activity looking out for me and my best interests, I sleepily mumbled that we should bring his big screen over to the house (in reckless violation of the June 8th agreement) and set it up on top of my entertainment center until we could get a new entertainment center to hold it. He said that would be great and he was sure his parents wouldn't think we were being rednecks by having a TV on top of a TV.



I'd forgotten his parents were coming over. 
What the hell was I thinking?

Clearly, I wasn't thinking.

It took forty minutes of negotiations/arguing to retract the statement.  My honey had realized he could get a rise out of me by playing around with the TV on top of the TV thing and kept insisting he was going to bring it over.  Even as he left for work, he was still saying how excited he was that the big screen was coming over, completely ignoring my repeated cries that NO, it was not coming over.  I even texted him another NO after he left for work.  He thought it was hysterical that I was getting so worked up about the house not looking perfect when his parents came over.  Little did he know that he was only seeing the tip of the crazy lady iceberg.

This morning began too early.  It's Saturday and Saturdays are supposed to be for sleeping late to catch up on all the rest you missed out on during the week.  But, not this Saturday, not for me because his parents will be in my home tomorrow and I hadn't had any time at all to even think about cleaning the house.  I set an alarm for six a.m. because in addition to needing to clean the house top to bottom and go to the grocery store to refill my empty fridge with Mother's Day lunch items, I had to get my emissions test done on my car.  This is the last weekend before the deadline and I had even told my honey to remind me that I had to get it done first thing this morning.  I woke five minutes before the alarm was set to go off and laid in bed thinking I'd get up as soon as the alarm went off.  Well, the alarm didn't go off and I slept in til eight when my honey rolled over and reminded me that I wanted to get to the emissions place early.  Epic fail on the alarm clock!  Maybe it knew I was really tired and needed more sleep.  Maybe the alarm clock was looking out for me today, since I'm not doing such a hot job of it myself.

I blew off the emissions testing after my honey read the reminder notice and saw that they had evening hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Time to start cleaning the house!  I started upstairs and my honey went down to tidy up the living room.  Immediately, we had a problem.  My honey hasn't lived here that long and he didn't know where to put anything away.  He knows where to go to find food, to take a shower, to watch TV, and to go to sleep.  Other than that, he doesn't have a clue where I keep things. 

"Honey, where's the vacuum?" 

"Honey, where do you want me to put this?"

"Honey, where does this go?"






In trying to help, my honey was driving me nuts and because we each had our own ideas about the order in which things needed to be cleaned, I was ending up going behind him and redoing everything he had done.  My autocorrecting his cleaning made him nuts.  This wasn't working.  In an attempt to get things back on track and avoid the fight that was starting to brew, I asked my honey to get the garbage from all the bedrooms and bathrooms and when I came down to find two full trash bags I sent him to the dump.  I love my honey, but I don't know if I can have him in the house while I'm cleaning.

This is pretty close to my mood when I am cleaning my house from top to bottom.

While he was gone, I cleaned and mopped two bathrooms, the kitchen, and the front foyer.  When he got back, I announced that the wet kitchen floor made this the perfect time to go to the grocery store.  This was a great idea because it was our first trip to the grocery store where we were getting food to cook a meal together in our home.  My honey got a real kick out of the domesticity of it all. 

Who knew grocery shopping could save the day?

Back at the house, we took a break for lunch.  I looked around my messy living room and dining room and began to freak out about the ton of cleaning still left to do.  My honey said we would get it all done in no time.  Only if we meant me cleaning and him watching sports on TV, my head screamed. 

I had a little meltdown, right then and there.  My honey rubbed my back and shoulders and hugged me, trying to get me to calm down.  He was being so sweet and I was feeling like such a bitch for not wanting his help, but I had to say something to him.  I told him the only help I wanted from him was for him to stay out of whatever room I was cleaning at the time.  He looked at me like I was nuts.  I probably hurt his feelings.  No, I definitely hurt his feelings.  But, I needed to tell him that the best thing he could do was to get out of my way and let me get this done.

He looked a little chagrined, but being a smart man, he let me have my way.  Sort of.  He insisted on tidying up some of the boxes of his stuff in the home office.  Since I was done cleaning in that room, I was okay with that.  He left me alone for about an hour before asking if there was anything he could do to help.  I sent him out to the deck to sweep off the "helicopters" and other gifts from my neighbors' trees.  While he was out there, I finished cleaning the dining room.

I took a break from cleaning when he came back in and went to the kitchen to make the dessert for the Mother's Day lunch.  Shortly there after, I discovered that my rarely used kitchen was missing a whisk which I would need to make the dessert.  "Honey, would you like to help me?  Run to the store and get me a whisk, please."  Perfect!  I finished cleaning the rest of the house while he was out looking for the whisk.  I even asked for a specific brand of kitchen utensil, which slowed him down some.  Whisks he could find, but the OXO brand whisk proved to be elusive.

Now the house is clean, the dessert is ready for tomorrow's lunch, and all I have left to do is cook the pot roast tomorrow morning.  My honey is already making noises about how he will be doing the cooking, but says he might let me help.  If he lets me help the same way that I let him help me today,  I have a feeling I will be banned from my own kitchen tomorrow morning.

Keys to the Castle

We've hit a new stage in our relationship.  My, they seem to be coming fast and furious now, don't they?  It started out as a night here or there.  Then, it was all weekend and now it's progressed to every night.  My honey is always at my place now.  In fact, he now has his own key to the house.

We were briefly separated recently due to his vacation plans and the Mynd's taking a long weekend trip out of town for a family wedding. The Mynd's have three children; two teenage boys and a second grade princess.  We had each, separately, agreed to help watch their kids before we started dating.  My honey had agreed to stay at the Mynd's to watch the teenagers.  I had agreed to watch the princess at my place for a boy-free weekend of girliness.  All of this was scheduled and arranged in January, months before our first date would take place.  Even though 'he' and 'I' are now a 'we', my honey thought it was a bad idea to stay at the Mynd's together to watch the kids.  Something about unmarried people sharing a bed and scarring young mynds for life.  So, there would be a boy house and a girl house for the duration of the long weekend.

I say we were apart, but we got the kids together as often as possible over the weekend.  It would have been cruel to keep us the kids apart for five whole days.  We took the kids out to eat, took the kids to see the new claymation Pirate movie, watched hockey games with the kids on the Mynd's hi-def, big screen TV, and took the kids to church together.  He took them to the service at their church, I went to mass at my church.  By the end of the weekend, my honey had decided that three kids was too many and he definitely didn't want to have more than two. 

The teenage Mynds are a little older than this,
but the princess from this picture definitely works.

I'm pretty sure his trip to and from church alone with all three kids in his car helped him reach the two child max decision.  When I caught up with them after mass, he looked flushed, beleaguered, and was mouthing to me, "Please, take one of them!  I don't care which one, just take one."  I took the princess, who also looked like she desperately needed a break from her brothers.  Apparently, "I'm Not Touching You" was a game played diligently during the ride to and from church.  In spite of this, we somehow survived our extended weekend of quasi-parenthood and we even found time to nap together on the couch while the princess cleaned her room and the boys played on the gaming console of their choice.

For the better part of two weeks, he wasn't at my place (what with all the vacationing and child-rearing going on in our lives).   The day that the Mynd's returned from their trip the following conversation took place:

Honey: I'm definitely coming straight home after work.

Me: Here or your place?

Honey: (chagrined expression) Here.

Me: Aww! You just called this home.

Honey: Yeah. (sighing) I've been slipping and saying that alot this week.

Me: To who? That's the first time you've said that to me.

Honey: To people at work.

Me: Really? (big smile)

Honey: Yeah, really. (smiling)


A few days later, we took the conversation a step further.  My honey gets home from work earlier than I normally do.  Since he's been staying with me so much, I've been cutting out of work earlier than normal in order to get to the house before him.  But, last Wednesday was a long day for me at work.  I had a mandatory training til after 5 pm, which wasn't going to work with the whole rushing home to open the house for my honey thing I'd been doing.  He's normally off work by four and home by quarter of five. 

We talked about ways to solve this problem.  He said he could go to his place and hang out for an hour.  I thought that was silly since he hasn't done that in ages.  I offered to leave him my key so he could let himself in when he got to the house.  He said that wouldn't work since I leave for work after him and would need the key to lock up the house.  Nothing I suggested was acceptable to him.  Then, I looked at him and realized what he was angling towards.  My honey was ready for a key to the house!

This is not the first time this key situation has occurred.  There have been times where he was off work and I wasn't, times where I left for church and he waited at the house for me to come back.  I left him the key on those occassions because I felt bad that he couldn't leave the house due to his keyless status.  I even told him to take the key and get a copy made while he was off work so that he could come and go as he pleased.  He refused, saying that getting a copy of the key was something we should do together.  Now, by refusing to accept any alternative solution to the problem, I realized he wanted a house key.  Big step, huh?

When I suggested we go to the hardware store and get a key made for him, he lit up like a Christmas tree.  He grabbed his keys and suggested we go immediately.  Yup, that's what he was aiming for with all that nay-saying of other ways to handle the situation.  So, off to the hardware store we went and together we had a key made for him.  We also had a copy made for Mrs. Mynd in the event that I ever fall out of a canoe again and need her to come to the rescue with dry clothes.

The key was apparently a starting gun for moving in together, something we have been talking about doing, but that I wanted to hold off on until after school let out.  Once my honey had a key to the casa, stacks of DVDs showed up in my living room, tons more clothing arrived in the bedroom, and a box of hockey paraphenalia showed up in my home office.  There has even been talk of his big screen TV (which won't fit in my current entertainment center) and his gaming system making the journey to the house.  I put the kibosh on that one temporarily. 

Holy moly, that's a lot of DVDs.  I owned plenty on my own,
but now there have to be like 500 DVDs in the house.

I can organize and store DVDs (as seen above) and clothes on the fly when the situation calls for it.  The box of hockey stuff can hide in the office til I'm ready to help him figure out where it will go on permanent display.  I draw the line at moving furntiure (extremely large and heavy furniture) before school lets out.  We said not til June 8th and I'm holding him to that deal.

I'm betting the TV and entertainment center are here before then, though.  He'll wear me down, I just know he will.  How else can the hockey bobbleheads lining my mantle right now be explained?



Obviously, not my best photo editing work.  But, this is what the top of my mantle looks like right now.
Three months ago, I couldn't have told you who most of these players were and now they live on my mantle. 
Don't the eyes seem to follow you?  Creepy!