At an ungodly hour one Saturday night, actually well into Sunday morning, with bellies full of booze and cartoons on TV:
Me: Are you asleep?
Him: No… I just… have a really bad habit of not being awake… during people’s performances… and I didn’t see this name on the program.
Me: I’m going to take that as a yes.
Let’s take a moment to check in with things I thought I would do during February, shall we?
I’ll Suggest You!: Status: failed. This really only worked as a collaborative project, and that was fine during the week. But when the weekend rolled around, Sexy Husband and I had more, um, compelling collaborative projects to work on, and then I got bored with it. And I didn’t see The Stranger advertising to continue the experiment this month, which probably means that the rest of Seattle was just as bored with it as I was.
The Device: The device was Sexy Husband’s xmas gift to me. It claims to have 7 hours of ‘useful’ battery life. I first charged it on Christmas day, and it was the second week of February when it died, after what I would call intermittent use. SH was curious how long it would last with daily use, so one of my goals for February was to see how long the battery would last with daily use. I’m not exactly sure how, but I really just failed to fit this one into my daily routine. Maybe I’ll pick this task up again later. We’ll see.
Yoga:
Sell my broken car: nope.
Send out wedding invitations: not quite, but I did manage to find an awesome printer. We were at an event, and I won a prize (!), and was congratulated, as was Sexy Husband. Then she found me, and said, “Did I hear you’re getting married? Would you consider yourselves offbeat?” “OMG, yes! Our wedding theme is ‘never forget, never forgive’! Why do you ask?” “I do wedding stationery! Cool stuff, like robots and sock monkeys.” “Can you do dinosaurs? We want dinos!” At this point she had what I would describe as a cute-gasm. Or maybe she suggested dinosaurs and I had the cute-gasm. I was drunk, but she had the presence to give me a card, and the rest is, as they say, awesomeness. Yay, Twitter!
Here’s hoping March will have a higher success rate. At the very least, I’m going to have to deal with the wedding planner, and the invitations are underway, and I’ll do the car, and go to the seamstress. Wish me luck!
The other night, as we were hunkered down to watch some cartoons and drink beer in bed:
SH: “You know what I like about you living here?”
TW: “Do tell!”
SH: “I get to harass you both at the same time!” and then he squished the dog and me both into a giant pile. Hurray for family time!
Bonus conversation!
We built a pile of pillows on the bed, for the above-mentioned cartoons and beer, and once he and I got ourselves settled in, the dog decided that she wanted to lay on the (sleeping) pillows, which is Not Allowed. So he made her move, and she went with her second choice of position, which was on the opposite side of him from where I was (which is how the dual-squishing above was made possible).
SH: “Aw, this is my favorite kind of sandwich, where I’m the meat.”
TW: “I mostly prefer to be bread. I don’t mind being the meat if she’s the outside spoon, but when she’s the inside bread, I hate it.”
SH: “When she’s the what?”
TW: “It’s okay when she’s the little spoon. But if you’re the little spoon and she’s the inside bread, I don’t like to be the meat.”
SH: “Spoons? Why are there spoons in this sandwich? Why do we let you make the sandwiches?!”
This morning the Sexy Husband had a date with a project that required him to get up at an hour of the morning when KEXP is not music, but alternative news and general liberal rabble-rousing. It’s a totally necessary service, and one that we’re very lucky to have available on the clock radio, but it does not make for the best humpstarting soundtrack. It was effective at getting the ball rolling, though, by pushing his ‘hungover tirade’ button. Then we did the humpstarting, which the little lady thankfully does not interrupt, but the minute one of us leaves the bed, she starts hooting. And this morning, when she started hooting, he started shooting finger lasers at her, “pyew, pyew!” And then he went and got coffee, and brought it to me in bed.
SH: “A tirade, a fuck, and shooting the dog with lasers. That’s what I bring to a Saturday morning.”
TW: “Truly, I live a charmed life.”
SH: “And to think, there are people who are actually jealous of you!”
I do not know what to make of that statement. I would burn with jealousy of me.
this is the third part in a series explained here.
Yesterday, The Stranger Suggested Po Dog, a restaurant specializing in fancy-ass hot dogs on what are supposed to be really good buns. Three days in, we’re starting to get a feel for the personality of their current guest reviewer, and I’m starting to suspect he’s drinking the haterade. He did agree that Po Dog puts on a nice hot dog, but not without pointing out the origin of those dogs. Dude? You know that’s how restaurants work, right? While there are plenty of places that hand-craft every item that shows up on your plate, most of them have supply contracts with big corporate entities. Where do you think all those Sysco trucks are going all the time? I know we’re spoiled by living in the land of fresh sea food and a thriving locavore movement, but your snarking about the source of the dogs seems needless. And ps: you actually can’t get Hebrew National at Costco anymore.
Sexy Husband says: I would rather eat the puppy that was in their first Stranger advertisement. I like to think that the puppy is named Nom.
I say: Jesus crap am I hungover. It’s 5 pm, every news article everywhere today has been about food, and I would like nothing more than a chili dog right now. Or a bowl of pho. Or a pulled pork sandwich. I’m making BLTAs for dinner, and they’re going to be good, but I would like to accompany them with a torta milanesa. And have someone else actually prepare them. Mmmm, pulled pork sandwich.
this is the second part in a series explained here.
Yesterday, The Stranger suggested ‘Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History”. Their guest reviewer found it to be a totally worthwhile recommendation: a tiny (16 pieces) collection of art created by alumni of a junior high school in the Bronx in the early 1980s.
Sexy Husband says: it is hard for me to turn down outsider art made by survival driven kids, but…I think that this would be way better if it was Henry Rollins instead. Listening to Henry Rollins critique art is like watching walrus make love, or http://cryingwife.com/. I don’t know why, but it is captivating.
I say: the man knows a thing or two about art, and despite my ongoing reluctance to interact with it, this might be an interesting thing to do with him. I really can’t speak to Henry Rollins’s art critiquing style. He used to have a show on Sundance, and for my money, if you’re going to invest time in Sundance Channel show helmed by a musician, I recommend Spectacle: Elvis Costello with…. It’s fantastic.
This is the first in a series explained here.
Yesterday, The Stranger suggested ‘Police, Adjective’. It is allegedly a slow, dark comedy, the kind of movie that I’ll put in my Netflix queue and perpetually bump down in favor of SciFi Original Series.
Sexy Husband recommends: ‘Police, Verb.’ There are a couple ways he suggests you can go about this. One: find a police officer and verbally assault them.* Two: find a police officer and apply a verb to them. He suggests Hug.
Trophy Wife recommends: Please, please don’t verbally assault police officers. I don’t want to get into a conversation about police and politics; this is just not really a good idea. I also recommend you not hug a police officer unannounced. If you feel that hugging a cop is a suggestion you might take, I suggest you make sure it’s OK with the cop.
*Seriously. This blog does not advocate verbally assaulting anyone, especially the police.
So, the lovely alternative weekly paper in our fair city provides daily suggestions for entertaining/enlightening/otherwise engaging activities. I can’t speak for the Sexy Husband, but I have never done any of them, in part because this is the first time I’ve actually lived here, but also because I am frequently misanthropic and/or lazy. During the month of January, a brave Stranger reader took on the challenge of doing everything they recommended, and providing a report. I greatly enjoyed reading his reports, and when the opportunity to take on the role for February came up, I actually considered going for it, before misanthropy got the best of me.
Over beers, I discussed this with SH, who clearly thought that I was wrong to not go for it. I understand his position; I have nothing but time, and the fact that I’m brand new to our city, but not to the Stranger, should make for interesting interactions. But I don’t want to go to shows, or galleries, or horrible movies, despite fully acknowledging that doing so would be good, and character building, and reassure him that I don’t, in fact, hate art.
This was the case he was going to make on my behalf:
“I should be picked for this position because my alternative to following the Stranger’s suggestions is to observe Black History Month with ‘Today a Black Man Suggests,’ and your suggestions seem less likely to cause permanent damage.”
(Or something along those lines, I honestly don’t remember the exact threat associated with Today a Black Man Suggests. Maybe, ‘and i’m just not that flexible’?)
Despite misanthropy winning out, I realized that this is actually really good fodder for some blogging, as SH husband will share an opinion about pretty much anything, given a platform to do so. So, instead of Yesterday The Stranger Suggested, welcome to I’ll Suggest You! The series will start later today, after I walk the dog (again! wtf?) and eat some lunch.
Here’s something unusual for this blog: an actual conversation with Sexy Husband!
SH: I just think it’s funny to be the guy who walks up to the fishbowl full of condoms and starts stuffing my pockets.
TW: Yeah, you would think that.
SH: I just think me doing anything a teenager would typically do is funny. Revving my engine at stoplights, needlessly stealing condoms, picking up high school girls…
TW: Oh, gross, tell me you don’t actually do that!
SH: Rev my engine? Yeah, but since I’m on the Vespa, nobody really knows but me.
TW: No, the high schoolers.
SH: No, I’m coming to the point when I don’t even like college girls, unless they’re grad students.
TW: Aw, you’re getting old! That warms my heart.
SH: You’re mean. (This is at least the third time this week he’s said this to me. It’s apparently a big part of the appeal.)
TW: Oh, I like that you’re a grown up.
SH: You’ll also be glad to know that I think you’re way hotter now than you were ten years ago.
He was right. This did make me very happy.
