Home Improvements

Today has been a day of samples. Which means I’ve tried out two. I slopped down some floor paint to see if we liked the color, it’s sort of a medium blue/gray? I think it’s too close to the lighter blue/gray we have on the walls. We’ll see, it might dry differently. Next up is the pickling stain I’m trying out on the beams and ceiling. I like the pickling stain! It lightens up the wood and makes it paler, instead of the golden-yellow  it currently is. We’ll see about the floor paint. I know, my life is riveting.

 

Itchy Springtime

I do not have fleas or poison oak, in case you were wondering.  I have an itch for change.  It happens every year.  It happens around January-February, when the winter has been long and dreary and the fun of Christmas and holidays have gone.  I get itchy and restless and nothing is good enough.  I pick fights with Nikolai and I fidget, color my hair or cut it.  This year we did a quick weekend at the coast with friends in dreary winter, so that forestalled the itch.

I have it now.  I have been mentally prepared to be purchasing a house and moving, but that change isn’t happening, which is having an odd effect of making me crave change because I was prepared for some and it hasn’t come.  I know what my cure will be, though.  Well, I have about three options lined up in my mind.  I’ll either dream about them until the itch fades, or the house thing will actually happen (no it won’t) and take up my need for change. First option: meet with a tattoo artist to consult on the next tattoo I want.  I have had vague ideas for a few years now, and I would like to make them a bit more solid.  I need to at least find an artist I want to work with first, and that’s fun.

I could start hiking every weekend or after work on nice days.  I could sign up for a few more parkour classes.  I could sign up for some crazy classes at my dance studio.  Mostly I want to do the tattoo thing.  Probably because I have three tattoo projects in line in my head, and I want to do them in order so I have to get started.  Someone, chime in!  Give me an opinion!

 

Success!!

Tonight, for (I think) the first time, Nick and I cooked together.  AND IT WAS AMAZING.  We used a mulligatawny recipe from The Pioneer Woman that used chicken, onions, and apples with curry and cream.  We worked together, people!  I chopped things, and Nikolai stirred things, and we both measured things, and after an altercation about rice, we arrived at a new favorite curry soupy thing.  This is big for Nikolai, because he doesn’t really like soups as are soups.  He likes chilis, chowders, and other thick things.

I’m just busy being amazed that we shared a kitchen and cooked a dish together, because as previously noted, we have issues in the kitchen.  He can cook up great things alone, I can whip up deliciousness solo, but we’ve not often shared and made a thing together.  BUT TONIGHT IT WORKED OH MAN.  Rejoice with me, my chillens.  Er, friendends.  Okay, like my three readers ever. I DON’T EVEN CARE WE COOKED TOGETHER.

 

 

Also curry is delicious.  That is all.

 

Ready, steady, go

I was on the receiving end of a burst of ambition last week.  I decided (for a number of reasons that will NOT put in print) that I wanted to get back to where I was pre-wedding.  Single, happy, alone, without Nick all the damn time, also there were pets that I could cuddle.  Okay, okay I’m teasing good grief.  Pre-wedding I was exercising daily (except for weekends) and not eating very much sugar.  I would no white flour or simple carbs, but. . . nope.  However I had in effect shrunk my stomach and was eating smaller portions.  All was well.  And then. . .I got married and was shipped off to Disneyworld for a weekish.  It was very nice, (although I plan to disillusion any and all virgin brides I encounter in the future) and we had a lot of fun walking around.  However meals were included, and Disney is convinced a single person can eat two or three servings of pasta, one of meat, one of veggies, a juice or other non-water beverage, and a dessert as big as my two fists together, all in one sitting.  Even Nick, eater extraordinaire couldn’t finish it all.  Which meant I was eating maybe half.  Maybe.  Anyway, I stopped going for my daily walk.  Then we came home and I moved for the first time in my life.  I am not joking.  I moved out of my mother’s house, the house I came home to from the hospital, into my first apartment with my new husband.  So I spent a month pouting.  And then I spent another month not wanting to leave the house because my new neighborhood was larger than my old one, and therefore was scary.  And people might see me walk.  And then shank me.  And then in an attempt to fatten up my husband, I started cooking.  And then eating the leftovers because the turkey butt wouldn’t eat them, he’d go for a freezer burrito first.  But he’d eat cookies!  So I made cookies all the time.  Are you seeing the problem here?

Anyway, I set myself three goals, that I’m not sure I want to say here.  Because then I’ll have to tell you if they don’t happen, or if they do.  And I’m not fond of accountability, man.

 

Announcing: AWESOME

Every new year, I get fidgety and twitchy, and experience the burning need to change something about my appearance, drastically.  This year, it manifested in my hair.  It is now red.  Eep!

 

 

Tommorrow is coming

I think I take it back.  I don’t really want a new job that is a five minute drive away.  I don’t really want a full time job that pays well and will make a crazy difference in how Nikolai and I live our lives.  I don’t really want to get to work by 8am and behave myself and learn new things and make mistakes and disappoint people and wear grown up clothes instead of jeans or corduroy.

 

No, it’s not just that I’m scared of something new and changes and stuff.  I would never let fear rule me like that!  Don’t talk to any of my high school teachers, though.  They might try to tell you something just ridiculous about how I’m a perfectionist and can get totally frozen my panic that I won’t do a project just right.  They might even say that I prefer getting a bad grade because I didn’t do an assignment rather than do the assignment and not do it well.  But they’re high school teachers, and teenagers have melted their brains.  Their word can’t be trusted.

 

Isn’t it Ironic

I’m better at irony than Alanis Morrisette.  Irony is my husband working on Labor Day.  Irony is anyone working on Labor Day, the holiday created to celebrate the working man and his contribution to society.  This was, of course, from the time where women rarely worked outside the home, so it’s not rude to say “working man” and “he” because it was mostly true.  Also the coal miners got Black Lung and the gold miners got Sparkly Lung and it was a harder, more bleak time in our nation’s history.  Anyway, Nick worked today and I thought that was more than a little ridiculous.  However, he’s expanding what he’s doing at work so maybe we won’t have to move to Florida to settle his need to have something change, because seriously, Hurricanes, Humidity, and H’alligators.  How much clearer can I get?  No one wants me to sweat that much.  It makes my thighs unhappy.  I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.

 

Major breakthrough

I suggested going out to sushi this afternoon and Nikolai was totally up for it!  This is a big deal because all through our entire 1y 10m dating life I suggested going out to sushi but he said no on the grounds that there was this one place downtown that was . . . I don’t know, magical?  So that outing had been put off for that entire time.  After five months of marriage, I suggested it again and he finally caved, probably because he was hungry and the sushi place runs ridiculously good deals – max price of $1.50 per plate.  They run on a little conveyor belt thinger, and I pretty much love it.  We went, he ate some, and developed preferences.  Well, today we went again!  He even ate actual rolls, not just tempura!  Granted, none of those rolls involved raw meat, but I’m just glad he’ll go to sushi with me.  He can learn the delicate flavors of salmon and tuna later.  Right now, he likes California rolls, Philadelphia rolls, tempura, and Vegas rolls.  He even likes wasabi and ginger, and that is just enough for me.

 

Now it’s a waiting game

I had one tab open on my browser all day.  It was the digital job application for an health club that has an LMT opening.  Yay, right?  Yay. . . .

I promised Nick I’d apply for three days in a row, and this morning I finally got up the courage.  Or maybe I got up the indifference.  I detest applying for jobs, because I feel judged.  Well, it’s because I am.  It makes my soul shrink within me to be turned down, and I prefer to avoid the whole process to keep myself safe from being told I am average, mediocre, and not what they need.  My biggest, hugest, most ginormousest fear is being not good enough.  Not good enough as a wife, not good enough at knitting, at running, at being skinny, at gardening, at cooking, at reading, at being smart, I do not want to know I’m not special.

Anyway, I applied.  I opened the page at around 10 am today, and I am proud to say I hit submit just fifteen minutes ago, at 7:45ish pm.  See, I had most of the application done by 11am, but then, then, I accidentally clicked a button on the toolbar(?) at the top of my browser and navigated away.  I screamed.   I hit “back”.   I saw that nothing had saved.  I screamed some more.  I called Betna.  She didn’t answer.  I left her a nice message full of profanity and quavery voice.  After that, I decided to fill out some of the basic information again and then go lie down with a book.  I just couldn’t handle the idea of writing out my strengths and weaknesses and lists of my duties at current and previous jobs and addresses and identifying three references that were neither friends nor relatives (huh?).  I did a little more after my book nap.  I did a little more after I got out of the shower.  I did a little more after my sister got here, and then I did nothing until I got home from shopping with her.  Nick had two friends over, so I did a little more.

Then I made dinner!  It went okay, but one of the bits flopped open with great violence and attitude and spread its guts everywhere.  I let out yet another string of contextually nonsensical profanities.  Everything’s fine, dinner went quite deliciously, except I didn’t put jalapeños in it.  After dinner, I was still keyed up because 1) the friends hadn’t left yet, even though I had prepared, made, and eaten dinner with only Nikolai (and seriously guys, dinner when you’re not invited is not something you stick around for if you can help it) and 2) that stupid quesadilla messed itself up!  Nikolai unplugged something at the back of his computer, and then said in the most disturbing, slow motion voice ever (maybe I’m the only one that heard the slow-mo?), “The internet’s gonna reset.”  Whereupon I lost what little sanity and control I had.  I smiled, hyperventilated, almost punched a cabinet, sobbed, and shouted.  Well, I spoke very meanly in an intense fashion, so I might as well have used less words and more volume.  It’s an inverse formula like that.  I then said rude things, gender-specific rude things, and stomped off to the bedroom with my beer.  Nikolai came in later and we talked and I calmed down, friend1 left, and I left the room, finished the application, hit submit.  Eventually friend2 left as well.

I hate job applications.

 

No, they’re all babies and always will be.

After work yesterday I trekked out into the deep darks of the opposite direction of home.  I went to visit Aunt Dawna (Hi!) so she could teach me knitting.  Instead of teaching me, she tried to pawn me off on the internet.  She wanted me to see these lovely, wonderful websites that have how-to videos and written instructions.  Well, she should have checked the rainbow-print of the contract she made with me for Christmas (or was it my birthday?) last year.  There’s a perfectly clear promise to teach me how to knit until I know or until one of us dies. That doesn’t include just handing me a laptop with videos, Dawna.  That means you show me with your own hands!  It’s the Rules of Life.

Ahem.

I also got to see Uncle Kebin and their four boys, Tallboy, Blue Eyes, Spiderman, and Ham-o.  I teased them all mercilessly, and cuddled them without remorse.  After all, they have no sisters.  Since I’m pretty much a mini of their mom, and my own mother has mistaken me for my aunt when seen across a room, we’ve all reached a consensus that I’m actually my aunt’s child.  That makes me her boys’ big sister, and big sisters are built to torment.

Tallboy is tall, tan, and bulking up for probably yet another growth spurt.  He is a study in brown: brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin.  He tans the best of the entire family.  It is rude and irritating.  He reminds me of my older sister, of my cousin that is the oldest in his family, and of a person with severe control issues.  We played Apples to Apples once, and he protested that the winning red card didn’t match the green card, because it didn’t logically define it.  Well, I can’t remember what the cards said, but I must say in similar situations, yes my dear boy, supermodels are aerodynamic.  And furthermore, I will continue to choose the winner when it is my turn based off of what answer appealed to me most.  Logic does not enter into it.  Neither do proper definitions.

Blue Eyes is second-born, and as such I feel a kinship with him.  Also he is fair-skinned, blondish, and *gasp* blue-eyed.  I discovered a genetic quirk in our extended family – the second born is light-skinned, light-haired, and light-eyed.  I’d say blond and blue, but my blond left me at 9 years old and another cousin has hazelly eyes, but we’re all fair.  Blue Eyes is all arms and bony legs.  The kid unfolded from the couch halfway through my visit and I burst out, “Whoa there, Gangles!”  His mother and father cracked up, and he had to go look up gangles in the dictionary.  He’s competing with Tallboy for that particular nickname.

Spiderman is boy #3, and he bears a striking resemblance to his eldest brother; he’s brownly monochromatic.  Also, he loves Spiderman.  And climbing on things, jumping off them, climbing from one thing to another, wrestling his father, brothers, myself, and pronouncing words with a “w” instead of and “r”.  Spidewman.  Dinnew.  Bweakfast.  I don’t like to wead.  He has a great smile, and always wants to know that he is being paid attention.

Ham-o is the baby.  Don’t call him that, though.  He is . . .he is identical to his father at that age.  And the age before that, and before that, back to birth.  He’s a little clone.  I know, because I’ve seen pictures.  He’s not fully fair like Blue Eyes, but more of a mix between fair and monochrome like his other brothers.  The most interested in being close to people that visit, the most crooked smile, the most devious grin,  and the most heartbreaking sob, Ham-o rattled through about 5 names to get to mine to tell me something, names including Mommy, Gramma, and the names of my mother and older sister.  I knew what he meant, so I answered to all of them.  He still corrected himself until he had the right name.  He used to pronounce my name with a “d”.  I was Denna.  Grandma was Dwamma.  Sometimes he still does that, and it makes me contemplate legally changing my name to Denna so he won’t stop anymore.

The oldest one is getting facial hair.  Well, facial fuzz.  He has a mustache-shadow.  And his voice is deeper.  I don’t like it, so I decided to share some lovely anecdotes from his babyhood because I was there, and because I could.  Blue Eyes, now taller than me (and telling me over and over), attempted mustache growth.  Except his hair is blonde, so it was more like a lip halo.  Also his voice broke repeatedly, and so I told him about the time when he was a baby that he drooled into my sister’s mouth.  Ahhhh, I feel better.  My boys are back in their places – childhood.