24 hours into my forced widow/bachelorette (I'm not sure yet which is more apt) state, I realize that Ben leaving me for a week has some perks.
I get to leave my washcloth wherever I want. Seriously a luxury for my anal-ity.
I can read for HOURS on end...which I did last night. Approximately 5 or 6 hours. In the backyard, delish coffee, no neighbors out mowing their lawns, the bugs basically non existent, slight breeze, beautiful clouds, 6 doves, and some book candy.
No one sees me cry when I read. (I cried during the movie, and I cried during the book. Both honest to goodness, wrenching my heart cries. Sometimes I feel like crying on the inside when I read something but the eyes don't produce. This time, I literally had to stop and cry for a minute before I could continue reading.) Maybe not the best choice last night (P. S. I love you...story of woman who deals with recovering from her husband's death while he "sends" her notes to help her cope), but there wasn't anything else I wanted to do.
Toby brings me the toy mouse the first thing when I wake up in the morning. Me. I get full and undivided attention from my cats. She also brought her precious mousy to me (and only me) last night after my fit of crying and sighing brought me back inside.
I don't have to share my salmon or cheesecake. Yum.
I don't have to watch or try to ignore stupid Star Trek and Magnum P. I. Ick.
I can not only park my car in the middle of the garage (again, incomparable luxury when one has a squishy tight garage) but I can also park my pillow and thus myself in the middle of the bed. Admittedly, it can mess me up in the morning when I can't figure out how to get out of such a large space. You get used to just rolling over and kind of falling out of bed.
No one slept on me allll night!! No arm flung across my head. No head weighing down my shoulder. No cats laid on my legs, prohibiting a natural sleeping posture.
I guess that I am learning to appreciate the space that a week alone gives me.
"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." William James
P.S. Regardless, I still miss him.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
In hindsight...
Reflecting on the camping trip again, I thought that I had finally come up with some good ideas about how to conquer the inevitable grossness of containers from leakage in the cooler. If it's just Ben and me, I don't take mayo cause I don't need it and Ben can just suck it up if he wants it. ;-) However, since there were 4 other people with us this time, exceptions were made to condimate the lunch meat sandwiches. Oh wait...the lunch meat sandwiches that never materialized since I completely forgot nearly all of the meat in my fridge.
So I pre-made as much as possible, and had lots of ziplock containers with as much as I could. They don't leak unlike ziplock bags. For example, I had the lunch meat in one (not that it mattered), the fruit salad, the sloppy joe mixture. I even scooped out a bunch of margarine and mayo and put them in separate (yet identical) containers.
Saturday morning I was making an impressive mess with the pancakes and eggs on the campstove, so I wasn't really paying attention to what other people were doing or putting on their pancakes. Why we were almost out of margarine was beyond me, but I remember thinking something along the lines of "Great, just something else I screwed up on and didn't bring enough of...what are we going to put on corn tonight?" I was ticked enough that I wasn't really talking let alone investigating. If five people (I hadn't stopped for pancakes yet) had gone through what I thought was tons of butter for what we would need that weekend, then oh well. People would have butter-less corn on the cob. Which, incidentally, did make Ben's sister sad to some extent!
When we got home and I was unloading the cooler, again, I wasn't really paying attention but just threw stuff into the fridge. I thought I'd just mess with the empty butter container later. Apparantly "later" means in about four days since I didn't pull it out until today. Sidenote...today must be some sort of clean out day for me. I also finally (2 months later) went through and sorted all of my paperwork (quite considerable) for last semester's grad classes. Yet this is getting long enough with more of this digression...
I pull both the mayo and the margarine ziplock containers out and stood confused, befuddled, bemused. The mayo container was practically empty, but (suspsense building pause)...the margarine container was absolutely as full as when I had loaded it up originally! Hmm...not only did everyone else have to use the less yummy tasting and almost out Crisco-since-it's-cheaper-than-Pam spray for their pudgy/hobo (why is it hobo?? Ben's brother calls them poodgie for some unapparant reason) pies. But also, that means that there was a plentiful amount of mayo that was slathered alllll over pancakes. This wasn't obviously too disgusting (though it really sounds like it would be) since no one said anything, and I didn't notice either. But then again, I was still steamed over my lack of foresight and memory.
Pancakes smothered in mayo and liquid sugar. Mmmmm, healthy! But then again, it's not like it pancakes smothered in solidified vegetable oil (which does generally revert it back to a liquidic state) and liquid sugar is really any better. Thinking of it that way kind of ruins my Saturday morning now.
"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something."
Mitch Hedberg
(Not that this quote has anything to really do with any of this, but it is about food.)
So I pre-made as much as possible, and had lots of ziplock containers with as much as I could. They don't leak unlike ziplock bags. For example, I had the lunch meat in one (not that it mattered), the fruit salad, the sloppy joe mixture. I even scooped out a bunch of margarine and mayo and put them in separate (yet identical) containers.
Saturday morning I was making an impressive mess with the pancakes and eggs on the campstove, so I wasn't really paying attention to what other people were doing or putting on their pancakes. Why we were almost out of margarine was beyond me, but I remember thinking something along the lines of "Great, just something else I screwed up on and didn't bring enough of...what are we going to put on corn tonight?" I was ticked enough that I wasn't really talking let alone investigating. If five people (I hadn't stopped for pancakes yet) had gone through what I thought was tons of butter for what we would need that weekend, then oh well. People would have butter-less corn on the cob. Which, incidentally, did make Ben's sister sad to some extent!
When we got home and I was unloading the cooler, again, I wasn't really paying attention but just threw stuff into the fridge. I thought I'd just mess with the empty butter container later. Apparantly "later" means in about four days since I didn't pull it out until today. Sidenote...today must be some sort of clean out day for me. I also finally (2 months later) went through and sorted all of my paperwork (quite considerable) for last semester's grad classes. Yet this is getting long enough with more of this digression...
I pull both the mayo and the margarine ziplock containers out and stood confused, befuddled, bemused. The mayo container was practically empty, but (suspsense building pause)...the margarine container was absolutely as full as when I had loaded it up originally! Hmm...not only did everyone else have to use the less yummy tasting and almost out Crisco-since-it's-cheaper-than-Pam spray for their pudgy/hobo (why is it hobo?? Ben's brother calls them poodgie for some unapparant reason) pies. But also, that means that there was a plentiful amount of mayo that was slathered alllll over pancakes. This wasn't obviously too disgusting (though it really sounds like it would be) since no one said anything, and I didn't notice either. But then again, I was still steamed over my lack of foresight and memory.
Pancakes smothered in mayo and liquid sugar. Mmmmm, healthy! But then again, it's not like it pancakes smothered in solidified vegetable oil (which does generally revert it back to a liquidic state) and liquid sugar is really any better. Thinking of it that way kind of ruins my Saturday morning now.
"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something."
Mitch Hedberg
(Not that this quote has anything to really do with any of this, but it is about food.)
Monday, July 14, 2008
3 girls versus a flood
Camping has lately become synonymous with rain for me. Four straight trips have had issues. The first one of the streak was a horrendous 12 hour deluge; this latest one was a 12 o'clock dash to the nearest hotel. Hot humid weather not surprisingly gave way to a storm at night. Though I have been in tents several times while a storm outside has raged, never can I remember a time when I have tried to wait out the storm all the while trying to figure out if the weight of our bodies was enough to keep the tent from blowing away.
When the rain began to seep in not only at the floors but also at the roof, there was little to do but puddle jump to the car. A few more mad dashes back and forth, a broken and water logged canopy, a decision to abandon the t-shirt sandbagged tent, a dark/foggy/twisty road, and a suite with direct access to the indoor pool...finally led to a warm, DRY albeit very firm bed with promises of a deep whirlpool tub and continental breakfast in the morning.
It's hard to believe, I know, but 3 girls are rather ineffectual against a dripping mesh ceiling when only armed with 2 old towels that lived a good life in the glory days of college.
"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure." Alice Hoffman
When the rain began to seep in not only at the floors but also at the roof, there was little to do but puddle jump to the car. A few more mad dashes back and forth, a broken and water logged canopy, a decision to abandon the t-shirt sandbagged tent, a dark/foggy/twisty road, and a suite with direct access to the indoor pool...finally led to a warm, DRY albeit very firm bed with promises of a deep whirlpool tub and continental breakfast in the morning.
It's hard to believe, I know, but 3 girls are rather ineffectual against a dripping mesh ceiling when only armed with 2 old towels that lived a good life in the glory days of college.
"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure." Alice Hoffman
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