Looking to the weekend

Tomorrow, along with being the feast of St. Michael and every single one of the blasted angels, is our birthday. I say 'our' because WH and I were born on the same day, but eight years apart. 

I don't think that a birthday has ever before snuck up on me quite so quickly and unnoticed as this one.  I think that having a baby naturally makes a person a little bit less self-involved so I haven't had a lot of time to think about turning thirty-three. 

We have decided to forego presents this year. We've both run out of time and besides, we're about to take on a significant renovation in our basement so we don't feel like we have a lot of extra money to be spending on gifts for each other that we don't really need.  We will go out on Sunday, taking in a concert in the afternoon and then going for dinner.  Miss A will spend a delectable afternoon with her Auntie.

Otherwise, we'll spend a nice weekend together as a family.

It'll be perfect.

Attachment

I can't wear my wedding ring any more.

I was fairly certain that this day would arrive sooner than later and I turned out to be right.  I can still wear the engagement ring, but even it is not long for my left hand, I fear.

It's not a big deal and I know that it's temporary, but I was much more sad about it than I thought I would be.

I love my rings.  I look at them every day and think about my husband and my marriage and our home and our life together.  They're a constant corner-of-my-eye reminder of how lucky I am to have what I have.

I know that they are just "things," and that in the grand scheme of things, they don't matter.  I know that if we had no material symbols of our marriage at all, we would still be happy and committed to each other.  I know all these things.

But I miss my ring.

But then, eventually, I feel a might boot to the side of my abdomen and I'm reminded why it is that the rings will be in a box on my dresser and not on my hand.

And that's a pretty nifty thing.

Turning the Page

Hello blogospere! Nice to see you again!

GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT??

We are having a BAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBYYYYYYYYYYY!

Sorry, I tried to think of a soft and gentle and clever way to make that announcement but nothing seemed to quite encapsulate how I feel about it the way that capital letters do. 

We had the best summer vacation ever and the very best part about it was our discovery about mid-August that we're expecting our first little one.  We are now about 13 weeks along and everything seems to be going well.  I have had a little bit of nausea in the first months, but nothing really to complain about. I'm hopeful that those issues will soon be over! Bring on the 2nd trimester, I say!

It's very exciting and my heart is totally and entirely full at the thought of all the people who already love our little lima bean and can't wait to meet him or her.  I feel very, very blessed! And very, very thankful!

Stay tuned!

Adventures in Interior Design cont.

WH and I continue to wrestle with what to put up on a number of our walls. 

This morning, we had the following conversation:

WH: Here's a crazy idea.  What if we made our own artwork? 
Me: [pause]
WH: No, wait, it would be great!  We could take a class on making a canvas and then we could just paint them!
Me: But what if we don't like them?
WH: Then we won't put them up!
Me: But what if I don't like yours and you really like it?
WH: Then we'll put it up.  Because I worked hard on it.

Me: Aw, honey... Thanks for writing my blog post for me this morning. 

Movie Night: Part 1

WH and I both have Tuesday evenings at home this fall. When we realized that that was going to be the case, we decided that we would commit to devoting Tuesday evenings to each other and to doing something that wasn't related to choral music or work or housecleaning etc. We settled on movie nights.

These are the parameters:
- movies can be watched at home or by going to the theatre.
- for ease of decision-making, we will alternate picking the movie.
- no blackberries, no iPhones, no computers!

So, last Tuesday, I chose It's Complicated, starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.

We both enjoyed this movie! I don't think that the movie challenged any of the three main actors very much, but they were at home and comfortable in their roles. Particularly impressive was Steve Martin's performance, which was contained, gentle and fragile. Jon Krasinski (of The Office) was refreshing and funny as the soon-to-be son-in-law who knows more than he wishes he did.

Visually, the movie is delightful. Beautiful scenery, beautiful homes and a STUNNING bakery owned by Meryl Streep. (WANT!) I was pleased to find that, part-way through the movie, I actually wasn't sure how it was going to end. This is not a typical feature of romantic comedies, so it was a nice surprise! It was a great first movie night!

WH gets to choose next week's flick, and he's talking about Sherlock Holmes... Whee!

Augenblick Update

Surgery went well and recovery is proceeding apace.

I'm a little bit ... bored, I guess, but the fact that the surgically repaired eye is not yet working together with the good eye means that I can't read, I can't really spend any more than 15 minutes on the internet at one time, I can't play any of the games that usually occupy my free time... I can watch TV, however, so that's what I've been doing. And napping.

Tomorrow, I hope to get out for a walk with WH to get some fresh air. Maybe if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll do laundry!

Speaking of WH, he's been entirely lovely in the TLC department, fetching things to and fro and keeping me laughing and cheerful at every turn. He has also been totally non-judgmental when, to the question of what I want to eat, I have responded with, "Chips. And spring rolls. And tater tots."

Well, my 15 minutes is up...

My neglected blog

Oh poor blog; how I have neglected thee... Such is the current busy-ness of life, I suppose!

I'm sitting in the sunny living room this afternoon while WH plays what may be his last golf round of the year. I have a glass of champagne, and a cat sleeping behind my head on the back of the couch, and the TV humming along quietly in front of me.

And I'm thinking about being thirty, which I'll be, as of Tuesday. (Hurray for Michaelmas!)

Thirty is an age that excites me. I think about where I was heading into my twenties, not knowing what end was up, where I would be, what I would do, how I would get there, how I would pay for it, etc. etc. And here I am at thirty, married to my perfect partner, living in a house that I love, doing work that is challenging and fulfilling, enjoying a tremendously busy extra-curricular life of my own choosing, surrounded by the most amazing group of family and friends... What, on earth, could I possibly think to complain about? It is practically an embarrassment of riches...

Some of you may recall that WH and I have the same birthday, but because this was a big birthday for me, WH threw me a party last night. We had burgers and munchies, lots of wonderful things to drink, and many of the friends and family mentioned above were able to come and celebrate. What a blast! And the party even had an informal theme!

Let me explain...

I always wanted a Mr. Potato Head when I was a child. Of any toy, it was the one I craved the most. (MU would point out here that I never uttered this desire, which is probably true...) I hadn't thought about this yearning until a couple of months ago, when I said to myself, suddenly one day, "Dammit, I am almost thirty, and I WILL HAVE A MR. POTATO HEAD." So I asked WH for one for my birthday, and he came through, so now I have one. And my lovely friend S brought me the little mini Mr. Potato Head that comes with the doggie and kitty as well, so now I have FOUR Mr. Potato Head figures.

And to top it all off, our friend G baked this:I know, right?! Amazing!

Needless to say, I had a great time.

So on Tuesday, WH and I will both celebrate our birthdays and the year of our life that has now past. I can't wait to see what's to come down the road!

And now, my champagne glass is empty and the laundry needs pushing. Tra la la...

Two Years Ago Today...

... this is what I was up to.

Actually Chorus

Happy Anniversary, WH!

About the Silliness

I sing about random things. Brushing my teeth, cooking dinner, getting dressed, how ridiculous the cats are, etc.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect it's for attention. Or more specifically, if I do sing long enough about something silly enough, I can make my husband laugh, one of my favourite activities.

After breakfast this morning, I was in the bathroom singing the I Have Good Hair Today song (I have good hair today because I used the straight-iron that my husband gave me for Christmas... oooh yeah... and I fixed my weird flippy thing in the back... woo woo yeah... I have good hair today).

WH was sitting in the living room with a bemused expression on his face.

Chorus: Do you ever wonder to yourself what the hell kind of crazy person you married?
WH: Nope.

Lucky for me!

Recipe for a Nice Evening

1 Dijon-encrusted rack of lamb (I'm pretty sure that this is what I would cook if I was ever on Hell's Kitchen and had to cook my "signature dish")
1 heaping dish of mashed potatoes
1 bunch of asparagus
1 bottle of nice wine from Washington
2 scoops of chocolate ice cream
2 cuddlesome cats
1 project (hanging curtains)
1 Victor Borge Special

... a pretty nice way to spend the first evening we've had at home together in a long time.

Words to Live by...

... courtesy of my husband.

We were having a conversation over the Christmas holiday about grocery shopping. WH had been to the Big Chain Grocery Store earlier that afternoon and was relaying frustrations with carts and long lines, etc.

Chorus: Well at least you had had a good lunch before you went grocery shopping. It's never fun to shop when you're hungry, and they say that you're more likely to buy a whole lot of junk food if you're hungry while you're grocery shopping. Whereas, if you've eaten, you feel more energetic and less likely to buy all kinds of junk you don't need!

WH: That's true.... Isn't it funny how the same premise is NOT TRUE for the liquor store?

Say what, now?

Conversation in the dining room tonight:

Chorus: Honey, we haven't really done a very good job at keeping the cats from clawing the couches.

WH: Yeah, we've kinda given up the goat on that one.

Chorus: I beg your pardon?

WH: What? We've given up the goat.

Chorus: The goat?? I think you mean ghost.

WH: No, goat. Goats are more tangible than ghosts. It's a family expression.

********************
We do have fun together, him and I.

A Christmas Story

So, one of the things that I bought my husband for Christmas this year is a pair of gloves. And the reason I bought him a pair of gloves is that the only hand-warmers he has are very large heavy-duty mittens, which are great in the cold, but don't afford a lot of flexibility for finicky things like getting your keys into your car, changing the radio station in the car, etc. So I thought (rightly or wrongly... possibly both) that what he needed was a nice pair of thinsulate gloves that he could wear whenever the big mittens were too cumbersome. I wrapped them yesterday and tucked them away with the rest of his Christmas presents.

Cue the following conversation in the car on the way to choir practice last night:

WH: I don't know what's more annoying... wearing these mittens or just having cold hands.
Chorus: Oh yes?
WH: But at least they're not gloves. I HATE GLOVES.
Chorus: What? You hate gloves?
WH: Yes, I HATE GLOVES. I hate having my fingers separated, and I can never find gloves that fit... I HATE GLOVES.
(long awkward silence)
Chorus: Well... I guess I'll just take them back then.
WH: Take what back?
Chorus: The gloves I bought you for Christmas.
WH: Ha ha... wait. Are you serious?
Chorus: Yes.
WH: Oh. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... I bet I'll like them!

(much hilarity ensues)

Cue the following conversation on the way home from choir practice when we stopped to put gas in WH's car. If you've never pumped gas when it's -25, it's a miserable task.

WH: Boy it's cold out here.
Chorus: Do you have your mittens?
WH: Yes. I sure wish I had gloves though. (sheepish grin)

The Tannenbaum Quandry

Sounds like the title of the next Bond movie...

Anyhow, both WH and I grew up in homes where real Christmas trees were a staple of the holiday experience. When my brothers and I were very young, our father used to take us out into the bush to cut down our tree. As we got older, and that errand became more difficult to manage, we would get our tree from one of the local tree farm sales lots, or from Big Chain Grocery Store, or from Colourful University's forestry students, or wherever was most convenient. What was important was that the tree was always real. (We did have one year when we took the whole tree thing in an entirely different direction, but that's a story for another day. So is the story of the year that MU and I stole the Christmas tree...)

In the three Christmases that WH and I have spent together, we have put up a real tree, much to the great delight of our cats, and much to the distress of WH's allergies. We would never have considered an artificial tree; it just ran against every idea either of us have of what Christmas should look like in our home.

But a number of things have come to light in the last couple of years:

• WH's parents, and his sister and brother-in-law, made the switch to artificial.
  
• Middle Brother made the switch to artificial.
  
• Friends of ours bought an aritifical tree this year that looks FANTASTIC (and very real!) at a really reasonable price.
  
• I got more than normally annoyed at how many pine needles I was still finding all over the house in July and August.
  

So now we are in a quandry in our little wee house. I think that we both still feel emotionally pulled towards the real tree and what it meant for us growing up. And we are both aware of the environmental reasons why real trees are desirable. And having allergies didn't stop us from getting cats...

But you know, I just have this feeling that we're going to make the switch. Maybe, when we're in a bigger house and have children, we'll switch back, and maybe we won't. We'll have to see how this first year goes...

I think that we both know that real or fake isn't actually that important, and didn't actually play as big a role in our childhood Christmas traditions as we think that it did. And we'll inevitably discover that our Christmas is as wonderful and memorable with an artificial tree.

But isn't it funny the things that you hold on to?

Being the Choir Wyf, Part 4

I've been involved in a number of conversations in the last couple of weeks about the choices that professional musicians make about balancing family and career. We know many professional musicians who have chosen to have no family at all and have thrust all their energy into the career side. In many cases, extreme loneliness is the result, even if the career is highly successful. When we got home on Friday night after the performance of Solomon, WH said to me how happy he was to be able to come home and celebrate a successful concert with someone else. One of our singer friends has been the subject of some criticism for having had children and a family perhaps at the expense of what could have been a vast international career. But at the end of the day, she goes home to two beautiful children, and a house and husband that she loves... and I'm pretty sure that she has absolutely no regrets. And I am glad, hugely glad, to be able to be the person with whom WH comes home and celebrates his successes.

Here's a bloggy safe picture of my hubby rehearsing the choir before the dress rehearsal of Solomon last week. Pretty cool, eh?

Trader Tuesdays: Slo-cooked chicken

WH and I have the following conversation almost every single day:

What do you want for dinner tonight?
I don't know; what do you want?
I don't know.

Who starts the conversation depends on who phones who at what time... it varies. As we enter what will probably be one of the busiest months of our entire existences, we have to do better. I'm hoping to do some meal planning for November before I leave for City With Lots of Roses on Saturday morning. In that spirit, this morning I actually got up a bit early and I put four chicken breasts (two for dinner, two for leftovers), a great slug of salsa, some corn and an onion in the slo-cooker with salt and pepper, and put it on low. WH will put rice on before I get home from work, and ta da! DINNER! Pro-Activity, thy name is CHORUS! I would love to get in the habit of putting some thought into dinner every day before I go to work...

What about you?? What are your favourite and best slo-cooker recipes?

A Conversation

The Scene: WH and I were eating Baked Tostitos with Salsa and Sour Cream as as snack. We eat this snack quite often, or some close derivative of it.

Chorus: I only want to buy this kind of salsa from now on. I like the corn in it.

WH: You know... I don't think that I really like salsa...

Chorus: Really?! Because... I don't think that I really like salsa either!

WH: (Gasp!) We learned something more about each other. We have something in common!!!

Chorus: WE BOTH DON'T LIKE SALSA!!

So it's been that kind of revelatory evening. Seriously, neither of us like salsa, and never thought to mention that to the other, in the whole four years we've been together. That's four years of salsa eatin' that we could have avoided...

Note: We have a friend who makes homemade salsa that we exempt from our new-found dislike of salsa. It's yummy.

On Yams.

That's right. Yams.

So, I sent WH off to do some grocery shopping yesterday afternoon, which he does quite happily during the week because the Big Chain Grocery Store is much less busy than on the weekends.

One of the things on the grocery list for yesterday was a yam or sweet potato, because they're healthy, and tasty, and the recipe I use calls for a liberal dose of Rum, so how can you go wrong?

When I got home from work, WH took me into the kitchen to show me all the groceries he had purchased, and we're looking at what we've got for produce, and he reaches into the drawer and pulls out... My dear friends, the BIGGEST YAM I HAVE EVER SEEN.

It was about as long as the distance from my elbow to the ends of my fingers.

And he said, brandishing the yam at me, "This was the smallest one they had. You should have SEEN some of these yams!"

Which was about the point that I got hysterical.

Some thoughts about Moving...

WH and I are thinking about selling the Little Wee House next spring.

It's funny, how quickly one's mind slips into "house selling" mode... how to show the house, what repairs and improvements should be done to maximize the appeal of the house and the return on investment. And of course, how quickly the mind turns to thoughts of the new house, what the must-haves are, and what we're willing to compromise on. When we bought TLWH, it was a very quick process, and we didn't have a lot of time to think about what we wanted and didn't want and why. Not that we regret the purchase (we love our house), but there's a certain luxury in having a few months to give more thought to what we're hoping to find.

As I think I've written before, I'm not a good mover; I don't like the feeling of packing up my life into boxes, I don't like the disorganization, I don't like the chaos, I don't like the stress. But of the moves I've made in my lifetime, I'm most excited about this one. The new house we buy will probably be a place we live in for a long time and a place in which we raise children.

And that's a lovely thought.

Kitchen Conversation

WH (on perceiving the bag of untouched peaches in the refrigerator): So, um, how's that peach cobbler coming, honey?

Me: Oh, shut up. ... ... ... How's that home-made wine rack coming?

WH: YOU shut up.