Things My Husband Says

Um, so, yeah… moving! It’s awesome! We’re done!

I just unpacked the last box of kitchen stuff, which leaves us with just two big rubbermaid bins of ‘miscellaneous’ stuff to sort through, so I’m willing to say we’re actually done. Damn, though, this shit is exhausting. I left for the parents’ house Wednesday before last, and just unpacked my last box today. It’s actually a much better turn around than I’m used to when moving. Sexy Husband is a very industrious man, I must say.

Not only are we all moved in and unpacked, but it looks like adults live here! Adults who don’t have a ton of furniture, but adults nonetheless! We have art! I knew we did, but it looks like a lot in our little space. And we got houseplants, to supplement the ones that SH brought with him from before. So far we haven’t killed any of them, and they all seem to be thriving, which is awesome!

I don’t know whether I mentioned this before: new kitchen is super tiny. It’s actually bigger than the one in another apartment we looked at, but still only barely big enough for SH and myself to both stand in. Trying to fit my life into it is like playing epic Jenga, which would be awesome, if I didn’t totally blow at Jenga.

We got a gift off our registry over the weekend! A lovely giant stainless wok, full to brimming with mardi gras beads and tiny dinosaurs! OMG. And I made yogurt! New house is full of win!

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.

Well, the goddamn housemates did not pay the cable, for what appears to be the bulk of this year, so we don’t have internet at home. We could solve this problem by just paying the bill, but that’s not going to happen again. They’re out of town most of this weekend, and they can pay the bill when the come back. Until then, I’ll be taking advantage of the myriad places in our neighborhood that have wifi, and playing Beautiful Katamari.

But! There’s good news! We totally have our own place, in less than a month! A lovely, hard-wood floored, gas-stove having, east-and-south facing, gigantic closeted, lovely, clean, quiet place of our own! I am the happiest Trophy Wife ever this week!

I’m back in the parents’ house this week, on a last-minute house-sitting adventure. I’m not going to lie, even up to the point when I got here yesterday, I really did not want to do it. Last week was really hard, and the thought (and reality) of packing my things, hauling myself to (and missing) my ride, and spending a week alone with the zoo did not make anything easier.

What I failed to take into account was how severely I had been needing some quiet. While it’s true that there are huge chunks of my day when I can avoid interacting with other people, I never feel like I’m alone, or in my own space. Even when they’re gone, the housemates are always present, and I’m always in their space. This is the ongoing problem for me when living with other people: I don’t ever feel like I have control over my space. I was particularly, painfully reminded of this at 3 am Saturday, when our really long and difficult week ended with us arguing on the sidewalk, because of the 20 people in the house. Fun times, let me tell you.

One of the major differences between the Sexy Husband and I is that I tend to be introverted, and he is a serious extrovert. If you ask him, he might tell you that he just fakes it, but it’s truly invigorating for him to spend all night in a crowd. I enjoy it, but it takes a lot of my energy, even at those times when it feels energizing. I love the energy that life gives him, and I look forward to getting some of that back for myself, as we build our life together.

So, once again, here I am, in the arms of my family, even as their arms are soaking in some Vitamin D down south. I feel so much better already. I look forward to when I can feel this way without going halfway across the state from SH.

And confidential to SH: I have a surprise for you. You’re going to be very happy about it. It’s not in my pants.

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: fail.

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?!”

One of the best things about housewifing is that I don’t have to get up and run out of the house in the morning. This means that, if we actually heed the alarm, I get some adorable time in the morning with Sexy Husband. While this does frequently amount to not much more than humpstarting, it does occasionally mean serious adorableness. This week I was treated to a dramatic reenactment of this, with a suggestion that he was going to spend all day using that voice. As I wore his hoodie to run my errands that day, I couldn’t help thinking, “you’re the man your lady could smell like!”

This morning the adorableness began with the always-entertaining coffee in bed. Coffee in bed is one of my favorite ways to transition into the day (right after humpstarting); it makes the day seem kinder, even when it’s a gross Seattle February day like today. While I am slow to get out of bed in the morning, even with my cup of coffee, Sexy Husband is not. Once he’s awake, he can’t go less that 55 mph, or he’ll explode! Seriously, the man does not stop moving, and let’s not even get into the things that go on inside his head (nothing bad, just frenetic). So, this morning, while I savored my coffee, I was treated to a bedside naked workout. There are some people that I would like to taunt with the fact that this is not the first time, but that seems redundant. They are, after all, the same ones who are (inexplicably?) jealous of my immeasurably charmed life.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon, doing the housewife thing, and they kept playing this Hallmark commercial over and over. “Blah, blah, blah, get your loved ones a card instead of doing something meaningful. It’s the biggest little thing you can do for them.” After a recent conversation Sexy Husband and I had about our feelings about Valentine’s Day, I had an epiphany. The biggest little thing I can do? Hold up my half of Steak and Blowjob Day.