Things My Husband Says

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!

I spent a fantastic weekend with Sexy Husband, doing a lot of nothing, and spending a surprising amount of time with his housemates. His housemates are a married couple somewhere in the same age range as we are, a waitress and a dog-wrangler/metal band singer. They’re very nice people, and I have a severely awkward relationship with them. It began the first day I hung out with them (on our second date), when she thought I called her a drunk (what I meant to say was that she was drunk, not a drunk). Then I hurt his feelings by not saying hi to him and letting myself into their (unlocked) house. I am not intentionally a jerk, but it happens. Of course, I didn’t realize I had offended them, because I’m also sometimes oblivious, until Sexy Husband pointed it out to me. Another reason I am lucky to have him. So I made them an apology pie (peach blueberry, mmm), which a drunken metal kid declared was “better than sex!” Yeah!

So, fast-forward several months of continued awkwardness to present day. Friday night we nearly closed down a bar after seeing the Pixies. (so good!) I drank a number of Manhattans, made him change the way we were walking home because it was making me sea-sick, then declared that we should have nachos and disappeared into the bathroom. When I reappeared, there were magically nachos (again, love that man), and as we were devouring them the housemates came home. After some happy drunken ramblings, she declared that she wanted pizza, over her husband’s grumblings. “I don’t care, Trophy Wife will go with me!” And so I did, and heard the first of two instructions about married life. As we’re standing at the counter and she’s chatting with the poor guys serving pizza to drunks at 2:30 AM, she turns to me and says, “You should get Sexy Husband something. I know he said he doesn’t want any, but the thing about husbands is that sometimes you just have to do things even though they say they don’t want them.” So I got two pieces of pizza, we walked the half-block back to the house, narrated by her husbands continued complaining about the trip (yes, he complained about walking half a block with us and stood outside smoking). After complaining about being made to make me nachos, he did manage to bite my finger eating the much-maligned pizza.

The second important instruction about married life came when I got home, and was discussing Thanksgiving with my mom. My parents are stepping way out of their box, and we’re all having Thanksgiving at SH’s mom’s house. There are so many issues about this, but none of them need addressed here. The important thing is that neither SH’s mom nor his step-dad really eat sugar, and so I’m responsible for desserts made with real sugar. Hello, pie! I have yet to skip making apple pie at Thanksgiving, and I’m not about to start now. I assumed I would make pumpkin, as my parents both like it. So the last question was, what kind of pie does Sexy Husband like?* Turns out he wants sweet potato, and pecan. I hate pecans. There are almost no food items that I really actively dislike, and pecans are pretty high on the list. So, I decide to switch sweet potato pie for the pumpkin, and tell my mom that I’m not making pecan, because in addition to hating pecans on their own merits, I think pecan pie is gross. for a moment, it seemed like she thought that was fine, beyond asking me whether I’d told him that she makes great pecan pie (which I did not. She does). But then: “This is your first Thanksgiving together! He said he wants pecan, you should make it. He loves you.” Yes, as in, “don’t you love him enough to make stupid pecan pie?’ And yeah, I do love him enough to make him stupid pecan pie, and I will. Stupid pecans.

* Yes, I’m marrying a man whose taste in pie I do not know. Scandal!

I’ve written and discarded several posts today, because they all seemed kind of maudlin. Instead of watching bad TV on the couch with Sexy Husband and the dog, I’m at my parents house (where I live), generally failing to get anything useful done ever, and feeling full of self-pity about it.

That time is over for today! I just put a big piece of beef in the oven to roast, and next I’m going to make my brother help me find my lost knitting project in the garage. Yesterday I made and froze a heavily-brandied apple pie filling for Thanksgiving at the soon-to-be parents-in-law’s house, but there are still lots of apples left over. Perhaps when the expedition to the freezing garage is over, I’ll think about making a pie that people can actually eat.

Too bad Sexy Husband won’t get to enjoy it. Time to reconsider the benefits of being here rather than there? Probably.