"One of the reasons I'd never cheat on you is that I wouldn't have time to ride my bikes..." and other love sonnets - I am now envisioning some kind of Ovidian fable/surrealistic cinema in which +Andrew Wright's LeMond suddenly becomes human and they begin a torrid but conflicted affair out on the mountain bike trails, while I look increasingly French and despondent (but pretty!). I feel Jean Cocteau could get behind this if I battled the underworld to retrieve him (of course taking care never to look directly at him lest he be whisked away to the underworld again)
While Tuesday has been our unofficial date night, nobody bothered to ask anybody out (google calender invites so count and are totally romantic in my book) yet, and I expressed enough flexibility that the evening quickly turned from date-night to singles-night.
Actually, more like husband's working late night (oooh we've truly made it into DINKY Yuppie pinnacles there, yes?). But with a coda of and then running the opposite direction from home to pick up a mountain bike that he's trying out this week night Followed by and getting home just as the wife has managed to fall asleep and spending the next several eternities twitching, tossing, turning, opening windows, fighting zombies and other things that make the wife moan pathetically as sleep flits from her grasp once more night. I still maintain I won the unnamed nocturnal competition, as I managed to wake up still clinging onto my corner of the covers after many near-misses.
In celebration of my ad hoc singles night, I ... well, I didn't have time to call over the tennis pro or the cabana boys. I might have, really, but they prefer a 24 hour notice to really round up all the coconut oil for their gleaming pecs. They're still tentatively scheduled for tonight, it being a track night and all (except now it might rain and then not be a track night). But I did have some dinner and do some crosswords and otherwise live my oh-so-exciting life.
In between moments of being singly-ADELLA, I may have spent a few minutes glancing out the window in horror of the increasing weed forest that our new yard is becoming. I am fairly certain we have about two weeks before our bed will be entirely thistles and dandelions, which sounds charming in a children's fairy book, but less so in a regular DINKY existence. And yes, it turns out we may be just DINKY enough to farm (har har, hopefully it won't come to tractors) out both our interior maintenance with house-keeping, and our exterior maintenance with a lawn service. Hopefully soon, I can just hire somebody to dress me in the morning and make sure that I bathe regularly.
In celebration of my no-longer-singles morning, I gave our deceased toaster a proper burial and set the fire alarms off again as a stirring send-off tribute! It turns out that no matter how many precautions I take with fans and air flow and low heat, there is no way I will ever be able to grill a piece of bread on the stove top without a reprise of DIE FIRE ALARMEN CYCLE... well, lesson learned. And I'm sure my husband appreciated all the fanfare in celebration of his return from the Southern lands with his new lady-on-the-side (she's high suspension and I'm not sure how I could begin to compete with that!).
After about one piece of "toast" I gave up, and microwaved my bread only because I'd forgotten to take it out of the freezer earlier (hippie bread likes the freezer). I'll say Ezekiel whateverever Bread survives microwaving like a champ. It was actually not bad, even if it lacked that crispness that generally finishes off a good breakfast for me. I compensated with more coffee. Caffeine and crisp do have an alliterative alignment that makes them more or less interchangeable, after all.
Yesterday, as promised, I tried out my new Saucony Virratas. I didn't run much - maybe about six minutes total of back and forth to the YMCA. I did wear them on the elliptical and while sludging through the masses of laboring grunting Atlases. They felt good - the shoes, not the grunting Atlases. The grunting Atlases plod past exuding an aura of musk and testosterone that nearly chokes me from twenty feet afield. I can't imagine being within a tangible radius of one of these aged brutes. I suspect consciousness would easily be abandoned in such circumstances. But the shoes are nice. There's a zero heel to toe drop, which I love, given my propensity for prancing over running (mid-strike sounds so much more serious than mincing quickly). And they're pretty, which I love even more. A hint of storms to come, I woke up this morning with a pretty nasty blister on my heel. I'm not sure what this means for working these shoes into actual runs for a little while. I have tended to revert to bandaids as preventative measures, but I did enjoy that my Kinvaras didn't appear to require this after the first few wears. As always, the jury remains sequestered for another day of deliberation.
I will, as the song goes, survive. I may even buy a new toaster today to celebrate... um... not having a toaster and avoiding yet another day of burning down the kitchen! Still hoping that it will sing, but actually heating bread would be a very good start.
In celebration of my ad hoc singles night, I ... well, I didn't have time to call over the tennis pro or the cabana boys. I might have, really, but they prefer a 24 hour notice to really round up all the coconut oil for their gleaming pecs. They're still tentatively scheduled for tonight, it being a track night and all (except now it might rain and then not be a track night). But I did have some dinner and do some crosswords and otherwise live my oh-so-exciting life.
In between moments of being singly-ADELLA, I may have spent a few minutes glancing out the window in horror of the increasing weed forest that our new yard is becoming. I am fairly certain we have about two weeks before our bed will be entirely thistles and dandelions, which sounds charming in a children's fairy book, but less so in a regular DINKY existence. And yes, it turns out we may be just DINKY enough to farm (har har, hopefully it won't come to tractors) out both our interior maintenance with house-keeping, and our exterior maintenance with a lawn service. Hopefully soon, I can just hire somebody to dress me in the morning and make sure that I bathe regularly.
In celebration of my no-longer-singles morning, I gave our deceased toaster a proper burial and set the fire alarms off again as a stirring send-off tribute! It turns out that no matter how many precautions I take with fans and air flow and low heat, there is no way I will ever be able to grill a piece of bread on the stove top without a reprise of DIE FIRE ALARMEN CYCLE... well, lesson learned. And I'm sure my husband appreciated all the fanfare in celebration of his return from the Southern lands with his new lady-on-the-side (she's high suspension and I'm not sure how I could begin to compete with that!).
After about one piece of "toast" I gave up, and microwaved my bread only because I'd forgotten to take it out of the freezer earlier (hippie bread likes the freezer). I'll say Ezekiel whateverever Bread survives microwaving like a champ. It was actually not bad, even if it lacked that crispness that generally finishes off a good breakfast for me. I compensated with more coffee. Caffeine and crisp do have an alliterative alignment that makes them more or less interchangeable, after all.
Yesterday, as promised, I tried out my new Saucony Virratas. I didn't run much - maybe about six minutes total of back and forth to the YMCA. I did wear them on the elliptical and while sludging through the masses of laboring grunting Atlases. They felt good - the shoes, not the grunting Atlases. The grunting Atlases plod past exuding an aura of musk and testosterone that nearly chokes me from twenty feet afield. I can't imagine being within a tangible radius of one of these aged brutes. I suspect consciousness would easily be abandoned in such circumstances. But the shoes are nice. There's a zero heel to toe drop, which I love, given my propensity for prancing over running (mid-strike sounds so much more serious than mincing quickly). And they're pretty, which I love even more. A hint of storms to come, I woke up this morning with a pretty nasty blister on my heel. I'm not sure what this means for working these shoes into actual runs for a little while. I have tended to revert to bandaids as preventative measures, but I did enjoy that my Kinvaras didn't appear to require this after the first few wears. As always, the jury remains sequestered for another day of deliberation.
I will, as the song goes, survive. I may even buy a new toaster today to celebrate... um... not having a toaster and avoiding yet another day of burning down the kitchen! Still hoping that it will sing, but actually heating bread would be a very good start.
And She Said Let There Be Toast! And There Was Toast! And She Saw That it Did Not Set Off The Fire Alarm - Well, the new toaster does not sing. It's more the strong, silent type a la Gary Cooper or whatever hyper-masculine trope you trot out to counter the image of the sensitive 1990's male... I'd like to clarify that at no point did I set out to buy a four slice toaster. However, just as there is an increasing gap between upper and lower classes in our great nation today... well there aren't really a lot of middle-class toasters, exactly. There's basically the cheap kind that looks pretty, comes cheaply, and gives bread a nice warm hug before returning it relatively untoasted. And there are the gizmodic Fantasias of a toaster that are smarter than your average bloodhound, moonlight as a camera and a waffle-iron, and require 20% down payment with reasonable interest rates... This Black and Decker seemed like just about the only relatively reliable brand that looked to dedicate itself to the activity of thoroughly heating bread.
As a measure of its success: no fire alarm bells at all this morning! And I had toast for breakfast. I consider myself, thus far, a very satisfied customer. I even have about a minute back on the breakfast-making processed, since I can now do all of Andrew's toast at once. I have used this extra minutes sagaciously by staring into space and pacing around a bit before resuming my morning routine. We'll call it a minute of mindlessness, which is the yin to whatever minutes of mindfulness I theoretically practice...
In other news, +Andrew Wright continues to have made some very potent pacts with the weather gods and negotiated yet another implausible spat of track-approved weather for his evening last night. No "working late" last night - last night was pure track-widowry. He once again returned relatively unscathed and is now - doubtlessly - considering my very helpful suggestion that if he wants to get a little extra oomph to his top-end, he might take a page from those Fast and Furious movies and get himself some Nitrous so he can go all into warp drive like they do.
This suggestion, incidentally led me to realize what needs to happen for Fast and Furious 7 and it involves Vin Diesel and the Rock wearing skin suits (which, given cycling clothes are generally crafted for tiny Europeans, will probably have to be unstitched and duct taped on their bodies at about four skin suits an action-hero) and careening around on time trial bikes in those bullet helmets. I would so see that in 3D. Ooooh especially if they start using bikes to tow enormous safes around a metro area!!
As for me, I had a pleasantly restful evening after a frazzled early week, and was happy enough to grab dinner with my dad, chat with my sister, and introduce the new toaster to all the other kitchen appliances. They seem to be playing nicely so far... Today will be trial "run" two for the pretty new shoes. We'll see if any other mysterious blisters pop up tomorrow morning!
In other news, +Andrew Wright continues to have made some very potent pacts with the weather gods and negotiated yet another implausible spat of track-approved weather for his evening last night. No "working late" last night - last night was pure track-widowry. He once again returned relatively unscathed and is now - doubtlessly - considering my very helpful suggestion that if he wants to get a little extra oomph to his top-end, he might take a page from those Fast and Furious movies and get himself some Nitrous so he can go all into warp drive like they do.
This suggestion, incidentally led me to realize what needs to happen for Fast and Furious 7 and it involves Vin Diesel and the Rock wearing skin suits (which, given cycling clothes are generally crafted for tiny Europeans, will probably have to be unstitched and duct taped on their bodies at about four skin suits an action-hero) and careening around on time trial bikes in those bullet helmets. I would so see that in 3D. Ooooh especially if they start using bikes to tow enormous safes around a metro area!!
As for me, I had a pleasantly restful evening after a frazzled early week, and was happy enough to grab dinner with my dad, chat with my sister, and introduce the new toaster to all the other kitchen appliances. They seem to be playing nicely so far... Today will be trial "run" two for the pretty new shoes. We'll see if any other mysterious blisters pop up tomorrow morning!
Date Night Strikes Back - That's right, despite the cruel caprices of mutually turgid work-weeks-from hell, +Andrew Wright and I did the date night thing after all, and nobody got killed. At least not in the context of "date night" - I can't speak for the world at large.
Andrew, having worked roughly a fifty hour week in two days (I don't exaggerate ever), got off early yesterday and made it home before me. This is a fairly shocking event. I told him that since he had done so, I expected him to greet me in a skirt with cute socks. He didn't quite get to that, but he did take a nap - a very good thing, since he'd been out racing all the night before, and did his first speed workout that afternoon - and change his shirt.
Of course no date-night between familiars can ever quite be like one of those first-hooking-up dates, and I think I can say why - well there are many reason (for instance, early dates are largely about power-dynamics, maintaining several facades, and assessments of another person who is also maintaining and assessing simultaneously). But my particular observation is that early dates are all about putting up with discomfort. A lot of it. Uncomplainingly (who wants to seem like a nag to potential parnters?) and sometimes quite stoically. There's the tantalizing torment of ambiguity to every move and every action (something that inevitably makes all routine tasks take several hours longer and may create bonding through some form of panicked Stockholm syndrome). There are unstated compromises in scheduling, staying out late/going out early, losing sleep, fudging on work hours, going MIA on your friends, and trying doggedly to seem more "fun" and "agreeable" than any actual human being ever possibly could be. All in the name of obfuscating your most lovable little quirks that somebody will eventually come to love. Try as you might, once you know these things about each other (and desperately love them even as you grumble about them), it's hard to get that level of discomfort back.
Sometimes, we do try.There's an ongoing mostly unspoken compromise on date-nights in general. I like to be back to the house early enough to have some down time (and to make myself two or three more meals before tucking in, since I don't usually have enough Adella-friendly restaurant fare to sustain me). Andrew prefers to take his time with life, is allergic to feeling rushed, and commutes from out of town.
I usually end up getting home kind of late and missing one of my regular evening meals (which then impacts my sleep because I haven't had as much down time and I wake up earlier and starving!), and he usually is kind of frenzied trying to make it roughly "on time." I'd say neither of us finds this ideal, but... well, were this actually a first date or ten, we'd both be making way deeper compromises without ever letting on how wearing they were on either of us.
This evening, Andrew was home early, and yet the dance began in earnest to at least approximate some good old fashioned early-date anxiety, as only seasoned couples can ever attempt. We had a typical sort of Mars-Venus introduction to the evening when I first suggested a restaurant, and benightedly responded "yeah, totally" when Andrew skeptically asked if I wanted to go right then, since it was kind of early at just around 5:00 p.m. I was, of course, hungry, and liked the idea of going to a restaurant that takes more time without feeling like it was cutting into that last little part of the evening.
Channeling my prismatic miasmic mind, I then worried that I was once again inadvertently pressuring him to do things faster and earlier than he liked, so I said "but of course we can wait if you'd prefer..."
after which my natural weigher-of-all-sides interjected with additional logistical information, such as "although if we go later, I'll probably want to go somewhere closer to the house..."
Andrew, having worked roughly a fifty hour week in two days (I don't exaggerate ever), got off early yesterday and made it home before me. This is a fairly shocking event. I told him that since he had done so, I expected him to greet me in a skirt with cute socks. He didn't quite get to that, but he did take a nap - a very good thing, since he'd been out racing all the night before, and did his first speed workout that afternoon - and change his shirt.
Of course no date-night between familiars can ever quite be like one of those first-hooking-up dates, and I think I can say why - well there are many reason (for instance, early dates are largely about power-dynamics, maintaining several facades, and assessments of another person who is also maintaining and assessing simultaneously). But my particular observation is that early dates are all about putting up with discomfort. A lot of it. Uncomplainingly (who wants to seem like a nag to potential parnters?) and sometimes quite stoically. There's the tantalizing torment of ambiguity to every move and every action (something that inevitably makes all routine tasks take several hours longer and may create bonding through some form of panicked Stockholm syndrome). There are unstated compromises in scheduling, staying out late/going out early, losing sleep, fudging on work hours, going MIA on your friends, and trying doggedly to seem more "fun" and "agreeable" than any actual human being ever possibly could be. All in the name of obfuscating your most lovable little quirks that somebody will eventually come to love. Try as you might, once you know these things about each other (and desperately love them even as you grumble about them), it's hard to get that level of discomfort back.
Sometimes, we do try.There's an ongoing mostly unspoken compromise on date-nights in general. I like to be back to the house early enough to have some down time (and to make myself two or three more meals before tucking in, since I don't usually have enough Adella-friendly restaurant fare to sustain me). Andrew prefers to take his time with life, is allergic to feeling rushed, and commutes from out of town.
I usually end up getting home kind of late and missing one of my regular evening meals (which then impacts my sleep because I haven't had as much down time and I wake up earlier and starving!), and he usually is kind of frenzied trying to make it roughly "on time." I'd say neither of us finds this ideal, but... well, were this actually a first date or ten, we'd both be making way deeper compromises without ever letting on how wearing they were on either of us.
This evening, Andrew was home early, and yet the dance began in earnest to at least approximate some good old fashioned early-date anxiety, as only seasoned couples can ever attempt. We had a typical sort of Mars-Venus introduction to the evening when I first suggested a restaurant, and benightedly responded "yeah, totally" when Andrew skeptically asked if I wanted to go right then, since it was kind of early at just around 5:00 p.m. I was, of course, hungry, and liked the idea of going to a restaurant that takes more time without feeling like it was cutting into that last little part of the evening.
Channeling my prismatic miasmic mind, I then worried that I was once again inadvertently pressuring him to do things faster and earlier than he liked, so I said "but of course we can wait if you'd prefer..."
after which my natural weigher-of-all-sides interjected with additional logistical information, such as "although if we go later, I'll probably want to go somewhere closer to the house..."
I was just revving up for a two hour soliloquy on the merits and demerits of related scheduling implications, when Andrew interjected that we could just go now. I suspect that he (binary man that he is) suspected a trap. That trap may well have been being-stuck-in-a-monologue-to-nowhere-about-merits-and-demerits... or it might have been a multiple choice test he could easily fail. I'm not sure.
Naturally, I was concerned that he'd agreed to go early only because he picked up that I had wanted to. Then I began to think that had we gone out later, he could have finished his nap, taken a shower, and been more present for our date... etc., while I easily could have eaten at home and.. (so, yes, the monologue continued in my head when it was muted in the room).
When he again made an offhand comment about us being early ("early" to rhyme with "walking into a restaurant wearing no pants and a carp on our heads, screaming about the tiny aliens in our ears"), I confessed that I felt a bit guilty about possibly pressuring him, and that I hadn't meant to. Of course, since he was groggy and binary, he misunderstood and suggested we could go to another restaurant! Just revving up to say "ok" I started mentioning that I didn't know that the alternative place had any dinner items that I'd actually want, but... and of course - sensing a test or a monologue again, he said no, let's just go to the first restaurant.
There may have been some still lingering concerns for at least part of the dinner that he wasn't actually just a little tired, but secretly fuming that his horrible wife had forced him to go out for an obscenely early "dinner" (to rhyme with "mordant mockery of a meal") at a restaurant he clearly must have hated, after luring him out to state alternative preferences before shooting them down mercilessly all the while screaming "Yippee Cayeee Mothaf**"
He, for his part, probably spent at least some of that time attempting valiantly not to appear as totally tired and out of it and he probably was, since I'd already - in prior monologues earlier in the week - stated a concern that after track night and a hard run, he might be totally comatose for any date we scheduled on Thursday.
Still harboring concerns about this time-dynamic, I then tried to compensate for that by being pointedly timeless (no watch, no cell phone) and trying not to in any way rush us through dinner, allowing the bill to remain untended for some time after our meals were finished. He thought that we were simply staying there because (1) maybe I was waiting for him to pay, and then (2) I believed the staff would someday pick up our check at the table. I meanwhile imagined hints of impatience as possibly the continued annoyance of the prior scheduling debacle. Eventually, we paid and made our merry way into the - as always - best part of the evening, that sweet succulent going home together part.
Granted, had this actually been an early date, we would both have utterly concealed our preferences and much of this communication would never have come to light on either side. Andrew would have maybe asked about the earliness once, we would have ended up going early, no alternative restaurant would have been discussed, Andrew would have been nervous and continued valiantly to attempt to appear awake and interested in what I had to stay, and we still would have waited for several more hours at the restaurant while mutually obsessing over exactly how to address that bill sitting between us. I would have been less concerned about whether Andrew felt I was pressuring him than about whether he thought I was a boring idiotic nut-job with an eating disorder, and probably would have sat in agony with a full bladder through dinner for fear of confirming that prior theory and/or disrupting the tentative threads of one of those artificial conversations one squeezes out during first-dates.
Not to say that the dinner and catching up (there was plenty of that to do, since we haven't really seen each other except at breakfast for the last couple of days) were not very satisfying. Dinner and catching up were well worth it, but sometimes I think that we go out together to remind ourselves how nice it is to come home and melt into a fully relaxed mush of ooey gooey oxytociney propinquity.
The homecoming was rather lovely, and managed not to be overrun by the siren calls of internet browsers and household tasks. Between snuggling, snogging, and couch-surfing, we bonded by torturing our beleagured leg muscles after mutual afternoon runs. Andrew took the foam roller and I afflicted my hamstrings with this nasty little massage stick. I didn't know how much secret confidential information I had in my head, but after a few minutes with this baby, I was singing like a canary (with lots of confidential super-important secrets)... ok maybe more like somebody in that ambiguous blend of pleasure and pain that comes from a good tear-jerker of a massage. Hey, a little discomfort in a date night is always a good thing, so more must be a plus
When he again made an offhand comment about us being early ("early" to rhyme with "walking into a restaurant wearing no pants and a carp on our heads, screaming about the tiny aliens in our ears"), I confessed that I felt a bit guilty about possibly pressuring him, and that I hadn't meant to. Of course, since he was groggy and binary, he misunderstood and suggested we could go to another restaurant! Just revving up to say "ok" I started mentioning that I didn't know that the alternative place had any dinner items that I'd actually want, but... and of course - sensing a test or a monologue again, he said no, let's just go to the first restaurant.
There may have been some still lingering concerns for at least part of the dinner that he wasn't actually just a little tired, but secretly fuming that his horrible wife had forced him to go out for an obscenely early "dinner" (to rhyme with "mordant mockery of a meal") at a restaurant he clearly must have hated, after luring him out to state alternative preferences before shooting them down mercilessly all the while screaming "Yippee Cayeee Mothaf**"
He, for his part, probably spent at least some of that time attempting valiantly not to appear as totally tired and out of it and he probably was, since I'd already - in prior monologues earlier in the week - stated a concern that after track night and a hard run, he might be totally comatose for any date we scheduled on Thursday.
Still harboring concerns about this time-dynamic, I then tried to compensate for that by being pointedly timeless (no watch, no cell phone) and trying not to in any way rush us through dinner, allowing the bill to remain untended for some time after our meals were finished. He thought that we were simply staying there because (1) maybe I was waiting for him to pay, and then (2) I believed the staff would someday pick up our check at the table. I meanwhile imagined hints of impatience as possibly the continued annoyance of the prior scheduling debacle. Eventually, we paid and made our merry way into the - as always - best part of the evening, that sweet succulent going home together part.
Granted, had this actually been an early date, we would both have utterly concealed our preferences and much of this communication would never have come to light on either side. Andrew would have maybe asked about the earliness once, we would have ended up going early, no alternative restaurant would have been discussed, Andrew would have been nervous and continued valiantly to attempt to appear awake and interested in what I had to stay, and we still would have waited for several more hours at the restaurant while mutually obsessing over exactly how to address that bill sitting between us. I would have been less concerned about whether Andrew felt I was pressuring him than about whether he thought I was a boring idiotic nut-job with an eating disorder, and probably would have sat in agony with a full bladder through dinner for fear of confirming that prior theory and/or disrupting the tentative threads of one of those artificial conversations one squeezes out during first-dates.
Not to say that the dinner and catching up (there was plenty of that to do, since we haven't really seen each other except at breakfast for the last couple of days) were not very satisfying. Dinner and catching up were well worth it, but sometimes I think that we go out together to remind ourselves how nice it is to come home and melt into a fully relaxed mush of ooey gooey oxytociney propinquity.
The homecoming was rather lovely, and managed not to be overrun by the siren calls of internet browsers and household tasks. Between snuggling, snogging, and couch-surfing, we bonded by torturing our beleagured leg muscles after mutual afternoon runs. Andrew took the foam roller and I afflicted my hamstrings with this nasty little massage stick. I didn't know how much secret confidential information I had in my head, but after a few minutes with this baby, I was singing like a canary (with lots of confidential super-important secrets)... ok maybe more like somebody in that ambiguous blend of pleasure and pain that comes from a good tear-jerker of a massage. Hey, a little discomfort in a date night is always a good thing, so more must be a plus
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