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Saturday, June 04, 2005

a date

Tonight T whisked us all off on a date.

Yes, the whole family, it wasn't THAT kind of date, it was just a nice surprise evening. He'd known that I wanted to go take sunset pictures at a lake where we camp sometimes, and see the dam with the water as high as it has been (I AM SO GEEKILY EASY TO AMUSE. So sue me). So he loaded us all into the car, took us out for fast food, and then started driving. We had so much fun. In case I've never told you, I have the best husband in the world. Just so you know.

There are sunset pictures in the photo blog, but here are a couple of family ones.

LT and C. LT is carrying my tripod. That's not a purse. :)

The family. Except me. (In case you're wondering, T is smiling. Really. And he wonders why people sometimes find him intimidating.)

Saturday, May 07, 2005

ssshhh...

...be very quiet.

Right now there are people in my kitchen washing my dishes. And I am not sick or otherwise incapacitated.

yippee!

Also, the kids simply could not wait until tomorrow to give me the following (ooh! a list!):

• a new iced tea jug, because mine cracked
  
• two new pie/pizza spatulas, because both of mine were broken (not by me) in the space of about a week, a month or two ago
  
• chip clips with magnets, so they can always be stuck to the side of the fridge, because when I want a chip clip I can never find one, even though I am falling over them when I don't want them
  
  (do they know me or what?)
  
  
• two bookmarks, because I collect bookmarks
  AND
  
• A $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.
  

Apparently this list represents a large percentage of their recycling haul from earlier this week. I am absolutely convinced that I have the world's most amazing children. And of course I'm not biased at all.

Happy Mothers' Day to all my friends who are moms... and to those who aren't yet too. (((hugs)))

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

"How do you keep falling in love?"

KiwiRia posted the following in her journal:

How do you keep falling in love?

Due to recent problems in our marriage, my husband and I have decided that we really need to work on spending more time together - not just "we're-living-together" time - but proper quality time, just like we did when we were dating.

However, we seem to have gotten stuck in a rut, so I need ideas!
Ideas of (inexpensive) things to do on date-nights.
Ideas of how to fall in love with my DH all over again.
Ideas of how I can make my DH fall in love with me all over again.

We love each other dearly, but in the stress of everyday life, the magic tends to slip away.
What do you do to rekindle the romance in your relationship?

Oh dear, she had to go and ask for my advice (not specifically my advice, but yeah, so what?), didn't she. I am such a sucker for giving advice. I wrote such a long reply that I decided to go ahead and post it here and link to it, rather than taking over her comments area with my long-windedness. My reply follows.

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Wow, there's a lot of good advice so far! What a good use of the blogosphere, no?

As for me, eleven years of marriage have helped me to discover the following:

1. If the computer is YOUR addiction, so to speak, just shut the darn thing off. If it's HIS, he won't like you doing that, so you have to lure him away from it. I suggest the aforementioned sexy outfit. This is where you're lucky not to have kids yet, because those of us blessed with little ones can't just do this kind of thing as soon as DH walks in the door, we have to wait till the kiddos are in bed or send them to Grandma's ahead of time. Although we can, um, kind of HINT, in a subtle way, to, um, keep things at the forefront of our minds while we wait. (Ditto with the TV or whatever else might take you away from each other.)

2. All the time, whatever you're doing, don't get so engrossed in it that you don't touch/talk to/smile at each other. Just being in the same room together can be really chummy if you're still aware of each other, and really desolate-feeling if you're not. When we watch a movie, we cuddle with each other on the couch instead of sitting in separate chairs. When he walks past me, he pauses to kiss me; when I walk past him sitting at the computer I stroke the top of his head. I look up from my crocheting and wait till he looks up from his studying, and I catch his eye and smile. That kind of thing.

3. In our specific marriage, I have found that when we start getting snippy or "bored" with each other, a lot of the time we'll look at our lives and see that we just don't have much time together. We make a conscious effort to fix that, to spend hours in each other's company even if it's just doing ordinary household things or our own projects, and things get better. This is the opposite of what most modern relationship advice will tell you -- that these things are a sign of needing some time apart. That never, ever, ever works for us.

4. All the other suggestions about romantic dinners at home, etc. are great. You and your DH both love theater; maybe a night on the other side of the curtain would be a good date? When T and I are broke (which is often), even just a standing date every two weeks to put the kids to bed on time and put in one of the movies we already own, and lie on the couch together to watch it -- and then, well, YOU know -- is perfect. It gives us something to look forward to, and just having an appointment for something pleasant with each other reminds us of how fond we are of each other.

5. In the long term, see if you have time in your schedules to take on an activity together. Do you still do the theater thing? If not, could you do it again in some form? Something where you not only have a standing "date" to spend time together, but also have something to reminisce and think and plan about in common, can be a really good thing.

6. Remember to be playful. Remember to be engrossed in each other. This gets HARD to do sometimes, when you reach the stage where your relationship is easily taken for granted. The focus needn't be on that flirty-butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling -- that pretty much belongs to the beginning of a relationship. The problems start when a couple equates that feeling with "love", and thinks that because that feeling is gone, the relationship is somehow flat and the love is gone. It's not. It's just not a new relationship anymore, and that's a good thing, because new relationships might make you dizzy and crazy and blissful, but they are never as rich as long ones. I think of the things that enrich my marriage and make me feel passionate about my husband, and often it's the little things, like riding in the car listening to the radio and getting fired up about the same things politically or theologically, or in making each other laugh, REALLY laugh, belly laugh, or in the way he makes up songs for me or crosses the room just to kiss me. (Funny: T and I fell in love while carrying on a series of political and religious debates with each other and so now, even though we agree on most issues, one way we really connect with each other is by having a really verbal, passionate discussion about current events or theology. nerds? nah.)

7. Being on track spiritually always, always helps us. If we get to where we're not spending time in the Word (apart OR together) and in prayer, it really starts to show in our attitudes, which affects our relationship. The times our marriage has been at its very best have been the times when we've been in the habit of purposefully setting aside time for devotions together. Sadly, this is not nearly as large a percentage of our marriage as it should be....

I don't mean to sound like I think I know it all. Obviously I don't know it all, or anywhere near that. But I do have a really happy marriage, and these are just some things that that marriage has taught me.

Monday, May 02, 2005

out of practice II

Well, here's how you get me to shut up, I guess. Just get me my own domain and I completely run out of things to say for days on end.

Real life started again today. No sitting in the recliner crocheting for hours. No waking up in the morning and stretching lazily and going back to sleep with my leg stretched over T's. No, T went back to work, and the kids and I had a regular day filled with school and errands and housework and all that. I even cooked dinner, which I hadn't done since April 12th, which has to be some kind of record, right? Laundry, messes, getting the soap out of C's eyes in the bath, getting down the breakfast cereal, shopping for things we're out of -- all these things are once more my responsibility. I wouldn't mind, in fact it would be nice to be getting back into our routine, if it weren't for the fact that we had become accustomed to the luxury of having T home all the time and now he's not, and we just plain MISSED him today. It was almost as bad as the day he had to go back to work after two and a half months off for a broken ankle in the winter of 2002/2003. I'm inclined to make a joke about that being pitiful, but I really don't think it's pitiful, if I didn't like having him around I wouldn't have married him, right?

Also, I have to seriously start watching what I eat again. I gained FIVE POUNDS in the past three weeks, not only because I was sitting around not getting much exercise, but also because I ate like a trencherman the whole time. I think I felt like I had to make up for the three days of either liquid diet or no food at all. And people kept bringing us these fantastic meals, and the meals were so HEARTY and the quantities were so large, and T wanted to make me happy so he would bring me heaping bowls of ice cream with brownies, and anytime I was hungry I would just snack. So if you ever should NEED to gain five pounds in three weeks, (I will try hard not to hate your skinny self and) there's the method right there for you.

Good things about today:

• School. The kids were cooperative and we all really enjoyed ourselves. LT gets to basically skip the chapters in his math book that deal with the multiplication tables, since he learned those last year, so now he's doing geometry and measurement, which C is learning along with him as well as doing two-digit addition. They both have books they're really into right now -- LT is tearing it up in his Hardy Boys series (well, tearing it up for a nine-year-old, at least), and C has one of those old-fashioned school reading textbooks, maybe from the 40's, which she borrowed from my parents yesterday, and she's halfway through it. Every time I hear her read out loud she surprises me with how FAST she's getting better and better at it.
  
• The library. I hadn't been there in weeks. I didn't find any books I wanted (when I'm reading Austen, nothing else has any appeal) but I found a few movies. And it was good to just BE there.
  
• LT discussing Austen adaptations with the librarian.
  
• The rebate from the purchase of The Nikon finally arrived, just in time to pay (pause to push down the wave of white-hot self-loathing trying to overtake me) the fine from my traffic ticket.
  
• I went back to the community chorus and I really enjoyed myself.

Oh, man, I am just SO un-funny tonight. You know the scene in The Phantom Tollbooth when Milo winds up in the Doldrums? And the doldrums kind of slink around and talk slower and slower until Milo is lulled into a state of exhausted apathy? I am that tired.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

my husband. And his friends' baby.

Here, just from yesterday, is a brief partial list of reasons I'd be totally jealous if anyone else was married to my husband:

• He willingly went and bought me, um, girlie stuff at the drugstore.
  
• He made breakfast and lunch, and dished up the food that people brought for dinner, and he did the dishes, as he has every day since I had surgery last week.
  
• HE MADE ME SIT DOWN AND READ JANE AUSTEN. Do I even have to continue?
  
• He was outside at twilight having a strategy-and-sneaking sort of war with the kids and LT's friend, who was over to spend the night for LT's birthday. He was on C's team.
  
• He spent the morning fixing his grandmother's brakes (for free, of course) and just smiled when she was impatient with him about it.
  
• He has extremely sexy arms.
  
• He cleaned the guest apartment because his friends were coming to visit today.
  
• When I went to bed, he stripped the blankets off and then made the bed while I lay in it, which -- especially the cool sheet floating down -- is just the most comfortable thing ever. In a comfort-food sort of way.
  

Speaking of T's friends -- they are the ones with the miracle baby about whom I wrote in my old journal. And here's Little Miss Miracle herself, in all her little babyish glory:

This is the first time The Nikon has been set loose on a baby. It is having a hard time controlling itself, let me just put it that way.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Thank you

thank you for all your nice thoughts and prayers about my surgery. I'm home, about to take a nap, but I wanted to post about how wonderful my family is. I came home to a huge WELCOME HOME MOMMY banner across the front of the porch (pictures later), a sparkling clean house, with THE LIVING ROOM REARRANGED (have I mentioned how much I love rearranging furniture?) so as to allow me access to books, light, pens, paper, the computer, the remotes and a view of the TV (meaning as soon as I wake up from my nap I'm starting a Jane Austen marathon), all from my recliner. Everyone is being so nice to me. I am in some pain, not as bad as after the c-sections I don't think. Thursday was awful, Friday was bearable, and today is fantastic by comparison with the other two, although I still have that feeling like I will never again feel normal. Will be glad to prove that wrong SOON. :)

Sunday, April 10, 2005

bye-bye, Snickers (and Special Dark and big bowls of Rocky Road and...)

T has hypoglycemia, specifically reactive hypoglycemia, or if you want to get really technical, he has "nonhypoglycemic hypoglycemia", since when he goes in for a 3-hour glucose screen, even though he's very nearly comatose about fifteen minutes after the glucose hits his system and he stays that way for the entire three hours, nothing shows up in his bloodwork. For quite some time, maybe two or three years, he's noticed that if he eats sweets, especially on an empty stomach, he gets a) very tired, sometimes to the point of literally HAVING to go to sleep b) a thudding headache in his temples and c) extremely irritable. Nowadays if he even eats, say, not-sugared but not-whole-grain breakfast cereal, he is in bad shape. Yesterday he had cake with lunch and spent the afternoon unconscious on the couch, and the rest of the weekend was not a whole heck of a lot better for him. When all this mess surrounding my medical issues is all cleared up, he's going to see a new doctor; meanwhile, since his symptoms match reactive hypoglycemia exactly, we're going to assume this is what he has and act accordingly, and see if all symptoms clear up.

Which, frankly, is not going to be a whole lot of fun.

Well, there is that aspect that's kind of fun, wherein I get to be all methodical and make lists of possible foods to eat and create SIX MEALS A DAY from them. But let's face it, a man who can ordinarily eat nearly an entire single batch of waffles in one sitting is not going to like having one-inch cubes of cheese become a regular part of his diet. My favorite teenaged-boys-eating-horror-story is: when T was in high school and then in the Navy, he would frequently buy a pound of sharp cheddar cheese and a quart of chocolate milk, and that was a meal. Or he and a friend would go buy a dozen donuts. Each. For breakfast. He doesn't do that anymore, of course, but still, it's a big step from where he is to where he'll be from now on: looking at a dinner plate with, for example, two six-inch whole-wheat tortillas holding a total of two ounces of meat and some vegetables. But hey, lettuce is a free food! As is celery! So he should be really happy about those, at least. I mean, come on. Lettuce and celery! Who needs cheesecake when you have those?

I'll sign off with two pictures. This evening at almost exactly five o'clock the whole family started in at the same time with the "I'm HUNGRY" thing, looking at me as if they expected me to pull a roast turkey and all the trimmings out of thin air or some such thing. I told them I'd make dinner but first I asked them if, just to humor me, they could do an actual baby-birds-in-the-nest imitation, to send me into a kitchen with a smile. And they did.

And then here's a picture of me, coloring with C. Did you know that Crayola manufactures a crayon called "purple mountain's majesty"? Anyone who can tell me why that made me send a tersely-worded email to Crayola gets a free signed first edition of my first book: The Essential Guide to Grammar Snobbery.

That's just the working title, of course.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

you know you wish he was YOUR dad

Here's what the kids (the 35-year-old, the 8-year-old, and the 5-year-old) spent Saturday afternoon building:

that old dryer just keeps on giving

LT as gunner and C as driver (I think those are the correct technical terms)

inside view. I told them to "look angry." Remind me not to tick LT off, will you?

It was his idea. That should not be surprising to you. :)

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Monday, March 21, 2005

Our neighbors

I've mentioned our neighbors in my photo blog (they're the ones with the gorgeous tulips). They're these little old Christian ladies who have lived together their entire adult lives, who ran a Christian camp for kids until just a few years ago. They used to shuttle my dad (and T's dad too) back and forth to Sunday school when they were kids, this is how long these ladies have been loving the Lord and spreading Him around as much as they can. Anyway. One of the ladies has become quite infirm, and needs live-in care. This past weekend the live-in carer apparently went on a drug binge (!!!) and failed to show up from Friday through this morning, when she showed up long enough to quit and grab her stuff, not even willing to help her former patient out of bed. So this weekend T and I have been filling in for the absent nurse in the morning and evening, getting Miss Ruth up from her chair, into the wheelchair, onto the commode, up from the commode, and into her bed in the evenings, and reversing the procedure in the mornings. We do the heavy work while Miss Jan, who is about the size and weight of LT, helps Miss Ruth with the more intimate aspects of her care. It has been quite an experience. (This morning I did the morning procedure without T, since he was at work). We walk away each time with our muscles aching, stretching our backs, so unspeakably grateful for the freedom to simply hop out of bed and go about our day without giving a thought to how we'll do it, pondering the kind of friendship that says: I will offer you my emotional support and friendly affection as long as you need it. I will trust you with my physical and financial well-being. And when we get old, and you can't take care of yourself, I will stand beside you and take care of you and stand up for you and help you in what should be very private moments, and I will strive to keep your dignity intact, and I will do this as long as it takes.

That is agape if I ever saw it. May God grant me the grace to love -- my friends, my family, my husband, my children -- like that.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Happy Birthday Family :)

Yesterday was our eleventh wedding anniversary. My parents came by and gave us a gift and offered to watch the kids while we went to spend it, but we decided instead to get dinner for the whole family and have a little "party" at home. We'd been thinking and talking all day about how our wedding anniversary, yeah, it celebrates the day we got married, and the first time we -- um, nevermind -- and the fact that there was NO MORE KISSING GOODNIGHT AND SAYING GOODBYE -- this was a biggie at the time. But the thing we kept thinking about yesterday was how our wedding marked the formal beginning of our family, of the entity that has grown and changed and become the center of our earthly lives and given us so, SO much joy. We spent a lot of time thanking God for the fact that His way of doing things is such a happy way. So it seemed fitting that our celebration wouldn't just involve T and me, but the whole gleeful group of us.

Do we rot the teeth out of your head with sweetness, or what.

Today we went to my parents' so that T could help my dad fix, um, I think the fuel pump in Mom and Dad's van. But it could have been some other thingamajiggy, I'm not sure. Meanwhile I went for a long walk (a very long walk, to quote the Musgroves in Persuasion), because I had of course brought [holy chord] The Nikon, and by golly I wanted to use it. Apparently I should have remembered the How Long And Which Direction rule, because everyone got kind of freaked out at how long I was gone, and went out searching for me, wondering if maybe I'd had an episode of tachycardia and was lying curled into the fetal position in the mud beside the road in the rain, or something. Which of course I hadn't, I was just, um, taking, er...

one hundred and sixty three pictures.

That takes a while. In fact, it's rather remarkable that it only took me two hours and three and a half miles, isn't it? Don't you think?
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