Per Whimsy's Request

A general update? Really? Hold on to your socks, peeps! This is some THRILLING stuff for you!

The Great Food Experiment is going well. Keeping Chris honest is more difficult than I had anticipated. He's in meetings most of the days and they frequently involve food. I cajole him into making fairly good choices--and he really does try--but when you put a bacon-wrapped filet mignon in front of a man who lives with a vegetarian--you can only expect one outcome. He does well for the most part, and we eat together most evenings, though it's later than I would like. What can I say? I miss my man. He works mostly 12 hour days, sometimes longer, trying to get his work done in addition to all the meetings he has to sit in on. He's starting to get a better focus on what he wants to be doing--he knows he wants to spend time with the CFO and the Legal department, and he may opt for more time with the CEO. I never thought that I would end up married to a future CEO, but I just might be.

The Boy and I are doing well--I'm still losing weight, though slowly. I made wheat bread this week and a blueberry pie for a treat. I'm doing yoga in the morning since Chris works so late at night and I have no desire to run AND push a stroller with the GIANT boy who has taken the place of my tiny and squishy baby. I opted to discontinue the blog...for various reasons. If you're really curious about what we're eating, or if I've found any good recipes lately, please email or comment, I'm happy to share. It was just too much! Too much craziness! Trying to keep up with TWO blogs and ONE Boy.

Who knew?

Ice cream? Yes please. Breyers vanilla is my favorite--because it goes with everything. Chris has been requesting peach pies most of the summer, so between the peach and the blueberry, vanilla keeps us in cool creaminess. We'll have blueberry this week and peach probably next week. And yes, I'm still losing weight inspite of ice cream and pie--I eat it in moderation, and I firmly believe (now, after the past few months) that part of what was messing up my metabolism was all the processy crap in food. Now that all of that is gone, my body is doing better metabolozing calories. And I just feel better generally. My wonky guts happen very seldom...even if I occasionally (very occasionally) eat fish.

Fun Fridays! Tomorrow's post is a vivid Tale of how sometimes Life happens and it is, apparently, not aware that Fridays have been designated FUN Fridays. Two weeks ago, though, we had a lovely pajama day, where we both spent the day in our jammies, we read books, we chilled, we had cheese and crackers for lunch, we watched a movie (gasp! I know! I? I allowed my kid to watch a movie with me. We normally don't let the Boy watch any TV or movies, so that's why it was a treat). We watched BBC's North and South. I figured it was ok because there are no special affects, no naked people, no one is maimed and they use very proper speech. He actually enjoyed parts of it. And it was hilarious to watch him alternate between being captivated by it and annoyed.

(I have no idea what to do for Fun Friday this week...any suggestions?)

The Boy: the oh so delicious Boy. He's not walking (he cruises around the furniture)--he knows very well that he can move faster if he crawls. He is, however, trying to climb the catpost. Leike climbs up to the very top (it's about 5 feet tall) to get away from the Boy when she has had ENOUGH. And he just looooooooves her soooooooooo much! But alas, this may be the Boy's first experience with unrequited love. She does not love him. She does not love him in a boat, she does not love him in a coat. She does not love him, Leike she is. The whole unrequited love and climbing the catpost in attempt to convince her of his adoration would be funny except he keeps falling. Not falling far, and not hurting himself seriously, but falling and getting MAD that he cannot convey the depth of his affection to the object of his unadulterated admiration. It's a totally different kind of affection than what he has for Agnes. Agnes merely amuses him. Leike CAPTIVATES him. If she walks by while he's doing anything--he stops and just stares...as if hypnotized, if you will. It's weird and funny all at the same time.

That was really long, and not really to the point, sorry.

The New Digs: Big. Which is really nice. The Boy just crawls laps through the apartment, he has a few balls that he loves to roll in front of him and then crawlcrawlcrawl as fast as he can to catch up to them, and he laughs maniacally while he does this. It's remarkably entertaining. Chris and I have decided that we don't like black appliances (all of our appliances are black and they just look dirty all the time...no matter how much I clean them), we're also not big fans of the layout of our dishwasher, but hey--at least we have a dishwasher, one of our apartments in Athens didn't have a dishwasher, or rather it DID, but the dishwasher walked on two legs and breathed air!

I finally hung up the last of the pictures, it's not exactly how I want them, but the space I had to work with was kind of odd. So it's long and narrow instead of more balanced. I will say that I love the big, giant bathtub in the master bath...after long sweaty days I crawl in there for a swim before bed. It's awesome. We also love having a separate bathroom for the Boy--no shower curtain to get in the way during bath time, no sweeping kitty litter up before we go in to bathe him...it's so much more efficient. Run the water, strip the Boy, plop him in, soap him up, later rinse repeat.

We swim a lot. As you may have gathered from the summertime post. The result is that I spend most of my days sunburned. We go swim and I brighten up like a cooked lobster, I take a couple of days off, fade back to WHITE (Snow White, Blinding White, Alabaster, Magnolia Blossom, choose your adjective)...and then we go swimming again. Chris keeps lotioning up my shoulders and calling me his little lobster. It would be affectionate if it weren't so applicable (and also if he weren't so horribly allergic to all shellfish!).

And Me? I'm...ok. Not unspeakably miserable. Not unhappy per se. Lonely. Flummoxed. Most of the time. The days tend to blur together...the weekends punctuate long stretches of familiar routine. I try to keep busy, baking, cleaning, cooking, reading, playing with my Boy, I do my workouts (that's how I rationalize my otherwise sedentary lifestyle), I have some sewing projects to work on--yes, Whimsy...I am attempting to sew. My sister recommended some awesome books to help guide me along and I've picked up a couple of patterns for skirts and some cute pajama pants for the Boy. I think I shall attempt the pants for him first. I have a research project of sorts that I'm working on--I'll try to keep you posted if it's published, which it probably won't be, but you just never know. I read some unspeakable CRAP published in the same journal that I'm going to submit this paper to, if I ever finish it, and if they'll publish that CRAP, I might just have a chance.

I was asked to teach for my church again. So I'll pick up where I left off in North Carolina, so that's nice. I have to teach this coming Sunday, actually. Chris and I had our first work affiliated social event last week. It was at a place called Captain Stan's and it was...fine. A little strange for me. Chris was there to network, to press the flesh, to nob his hob off. I was there...as an accessory? I'm still not sure. I think the people he works with were curious to meet me and the Boy and Chris wanted the moral support, so I went. I felt...odd. The only thing I could think was, "Wow. So this is what trophy wives are for...huh." It was odd. And meat-laden. But all in all, the people he works with are very nice and friendly and outgoing in ways that I am NOT. They utterly charmed the Boy and that's all it really took to win me over.

And that ends your happy walking tour through Burnstopia of late. Hoo Boy. I'm not sure we can handle this much excitement on a regular basis like.