Things My Husband Says

Holy crap, my other thing is BLOWING UP! I know that was the goal, and I’m super happy, so don’t misunderstand me when I say, “AAAAAAAHHHH!”

Oh hey, it’s Daylight Savings time again! I’ve lived in the PNW for twelve years now, and I still find this whole business confusing. Having come to terms with the way that the lack of winter light affects me, I’m totally in favor of squeezing out whatever tiny drops are to be had, I just can’t ever quite get into a routine with it. I get the whole “spring forward/fall back” part, so my clocks get changed in the right direction, but it’s really a crapshoot whether I’ll guess right about whether we’re on Daylight or Standard time at any given point. Today I know that it’s Daylight, which I guess makes sense, Daylight in the summer. But why are we saving daylight in the summer? Shouldn’t we save it in the winter?

I feel like this is a particularly bad weekend for me to lose an hour of. In just about six hours I need to have Sexy Husband out of the house and on his way to the airport for a very big day tomorrow. I also need to go to the store so I can bring something to potluck brunch. In an hour. And I need to make sure my secret project is as close to ready as I can get it, before the aforementioned SH-on-the-road thing starts. So, naturally, I’m typing this. In my defense, I’m dressed, and drinking my coffee, which is a mandatory part of my morning. I regret nothing!

Also, yes, it’s pouring rain and 48 degrees outside. I know it’s not summer. You know what I mean.

Hey there, blog. Long time no see. It turns out that living with my husband diminishes the need I feel to write a blog whose primary purpose had been communicating with/entertaining him. Sorry.

Aaanyway… I do have some stuff that I think I should start writing about, as part of my general life process. Let’s have a list, shall we?

• Bicycling. Despite the fact that Sexy Husband is the primary driving force behind me getting on a bike and owning down on that shit, I’m starting to feel a little bad for interrupting his video game playing with a thousand constant tiny biking victories. (That may be a little sarcasm.) I am pretty proud of myself, and I think I should share it here, so the real people in my life don’t start getting burnt out on hearing about it.
• Meditation. I’ve been going to a Shambhala meditation approximately weekly, and really enjoying it. I think I need to be more diligent about meditating at home, and expanding the usefulness of that practice in my life. I still feel uncertain about how that should progress, and I think some navel-gazing writing about it may help.
• Making Things. My New Year’s resolution was to make more things. I have had some mixed success with this overall, I think. I don’t want this to become a knitting blog, because I am a super lazy and sporadic knitter these days, but I should be better about telling you (me) about what I’m knitting, and keeping track of the many things I am fermenting and baking.
• Life stuff. This is a broad category. When I sat down today, it was largely due to a couple of interactions we’ve had with friends this week. I wanted to write about the nature of friendship as an adult, and do a little musing on relationships and whatnot. I’m not going to do that right this moment, but I want to do more of that. Life at 30 has a lot more interesting developments in that realm than I would have imagined.
• Taking pictures of things. This is not actually something I should write about, it’s just something I should be doing. We’ll see.

Things I won’t be blogging about here, at least much: Pie. Pie has its own blog now, which I am currently actively procrastinating, in part because I can’t find the card reader thingy, so I can’t move the pictures I did take from the camera to the computer.

It looks like I’m heading into an extraordinarily busy time in my life, but I’m trying to embrace the idea that busy people are more effective at getting stuff done. The reality is that I’m going to have to get a lot better about using my calendar, which is a thing I HATE. Meh. Oh well. Onward, forward soldiers, as we say in this house!

For the last several weeks, I’ve been following the story of Japan’s missing centenarians. Yes, plural centenarians, missing.

What the crap?

First there was a story about a Tokyo’s alleged oldest man, who turns out to have died 32 years ago. His family mummified him and kept him in his bed.

And one of Tokyo’s oldest women? No one has seen her since 1986, when her daughter moved.

These discoveries are coming to light as the country prepares for Respect for the Aged Day. Perhaps instead of a single day to honor centenarians, they would be better served by actually verifying their continued existence?

Japan believes it has more than 40,000 centenarians, of whom 200 are now known to be missing, and that’s before all 47 prefectures have reported the results of their attempts to locate them. I’m having a hard time imagining how a society that has a national holiday to celebrate their super-elderly can lose so many of them.

One of them was registered at an address that became a park in 1981! One of them died in 1966! He would’ve been 126, except that he died at 82, which is still a respectable old age, but c’mon. Forty-four years?? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Let me tell you something: I hate moving. We haven’t even actually started moving yet, and it’s already killing me. We got the keys to the new place on Friday, and discovered that (no surprise) the landlord did not get the weird-ass mismatched trim painted after the previous tenant moved out. So we spent all weekend painting a million miles of trim. I’m really glad we did it, but damn. That was exhausting. I still need to clean the floors, and just the thought of climbing the four flights of stairs is putting me into panic mode. Do not want.

I had hoped to get out of going grocery shopping before we had to move, but this morning I killed the last of the coffee in the house (while pouring boiling water all over my hand. So smart). Then I ate tortillas for lunch. Just tortillas. So, yeah, I have to go to the store. Crap. And I have to take the airport shuttle to my parents’ house again, to go get the rest of my crap. On the plus side, though, I get to also bring my brother back with me, to help with the hauling!

And hopefully by next week I won’t feel quite so taxed by the learning curve of work, and I’ll actually remember to blog. Here’s hoping!

One week, one week, one week, one week!

Even better! Not even a whole week! Only four days! But ‘one week’ has such a more satisfying ring to it, I think.

We get to move this week!

Luckily we’re only moving three blocks, because we are not at all ready. We’re not going to be ready. Ready is not going to matter. We are masters of making the most of our unpreparedness, and that’s going to serve us really well this weekend. If your eyes are sharp, you’ll be able to spot us hauling dresser drawers and arms-full of clothes and our ever-growing collection of Timbuk2 bags crammed with our kitchen and books. It will be a sight.

This week! This week, this week, this week!

Oh, I’ve been reading Apartment Therapy for the last couple weeks. I want so many plants, even though I am a proven plant killer. I want them! I also want a felted wool headboard, and art, and curtains. So excited! Just wait until we start playing around in the kitchen. It. Is. Going. To. Rule.

Holy crap!

Okay, I love the Discovery Channel, but I have to make an objection. No, it’s not about Shark Week, though that is something that I object to. No, I’m talking about a much more sinister threat.

Cephalopods.

People, I am just going to say it. Cephalopods are fucking scary.

One of the most toxic species of cephalopod is an 8 cm cuttlefish called Pfeffer’s Flaymboyant Cuttlefish. It is tiny, it will kill you, and science does not understand the mechanism of its toxin.

One of the largest species, the North Pacific Giant Octopus likes to live in the Puget Sound. That’s where I live! (OK, no, I don’t actually live in the sound. Nor do I go in it.)

And we’ve all seen this, right? They’re ridiculously, terrifyingly smart. They will destroy us!

Yeah, so, anyway, now Sexy Husband and I are having a laptop-date, watching “Killer Squid.” When it started, he said, “Humboldt squid are not actually aggressive, they just get all crazy when there’s food around.” Um, yeah, no. They are actually aggressive. Like, cannibalistically, viciously, scary smart, holy crap aggressive. Seriously, google “killer squid.” What comes up? Humboldt Squid. And they’re taking over the ocean. They will not be stopped!

This makes me feel a lot less ridiculous about my desire to never go in the ocean. I’ll enjoy my beverages on the beach, thank you very much. Yikes.