Things only He would Choose

Chris had his 33rd birthday yesterday.  As many of you know, this was his Hobbit coming of age.  We're all very proud of him.

In celebration of this achievement, I convinced him to take the day off of work, and we would do whatever he wanted.  And as proof of the mystery and comedy that is my husband, I thought I would share the list with you.

For his birthday Chris wanted to:

• sleep in.
• eat lunch at the most elegant and supreme Chinese buffet.**
• Pie.
• The go to the Wake County firing range for a class.

And that was all.  He's an odd and simple man, my husband.  So his birthday dawned and I got up with the kids and kept them reasonably quiet so that he could sleep.  My parents came down because they wanted to take him to lunch, so they went to the most elegant and supreme Chinese buffet with us.

I made him a butterscotch cream pie (one of his favorites) in the morning and my sweet Mom brought him his very own peach pie (his other favorite), I also made a chocolate pie for the general assembly.  So there was chinese food, and there was pie.

Now, for the next part of our story, you must remember back to somewhere on this blog, I know not where, but I know I've talked about our dating somewhere.  Chris and I both went to UGA, and I would take morning classes and he would take mostly afternoon classes, so we would meet downtown for lunch, eat lunch, and then head back to his apartment.  I would study and he would nap until his classes started.  Then we would head back to campus, I would continue to work in the library and he would go to class, until we would meet up for dinner.  I know it sounds boring to most, but it was just right for us.  So naturally, after lunch, he wanted to come home and nap.  So we bedded down the children and I cleaned up the kitchen while he napped.

He must have had an awesome nap because he totally forgot to go to the firing range for his class until 5 minutes before it was due to start!  I felt so bad!  I should have put it on the calendar, but I didn't.  I just assumed that since it was at the firing range, he'd be so excited he wouldn't forget.  So he didn't get to go to his class, but we had plenty of pie for dinner (they are, every one of them, DELICIOUS).


In a somewhat related note, we talked about my increasing inability to sustain the whole of Burnstopia happiness while he sinks into an annual funk.  So he's been trying really hard this year to combat it.  And you know, he's doing a wonderful job.  And the thing is, I understand.  I know what it's like to look at your life on your birthday and feel disappointed that it isn't what you thought it would be.  I know what it's like to feel like you should be doing something different, or be somewhere else, or whatever.  I get that.  But I also know that at the end of the day, what matters is that we're on the path.  Not how fast we're going, or how far away the goal is, but that we're on the path and we're moving in the right direction.  And in spite of all of the inherent frustrations, the disappointments, the discouragements, I know we are on the right path.  And best of all, we're together.  And that's worth celebrating.





**We get these fliers in the mail on a weekly basis advertising their restaurant in this manner.  It cracks us up endlessly, and now we don't even know the name of the restaurant, we just call it the most elegant and supreme buffet.

What we've been doing...

A little bit of everything.

• I finished Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife, from which the BBC miniseries was derived.  It was very, very good.  Happy and sad and interesting and revolting all at the same time.
• I finished the Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, it was also very, very good.  Funny and smart and interesting with just a hint of sad behind all of that.  (Bear in mind that it's a modern novel, and so has none of the aesthetic of a classic, but it was a fun break-from-thinking read.)
• I'm up to my elbows in a dissertation that I'm editing.  I told Chris, I never think of myself as a good writer.  I think I'm adequate, but nothing special.  Until I read some of these dissertations, then I think maybe I am a good writer.  Because I know not to end a sentence with a preposition (I still do it, I just know better), and I know the difference between to, two and too.
• I'm halfway through a little short-sleeved shirt for my Girl.  It will match her bloomers and I'm trying to finish it before she outgrows the bloomers.  Talk about a race against time.
• Chris has been working a lot and he made this crazy trip in the middle of the night to a semi-local gun store to camp out for an AR-15.  He came home to sleep because I mocked his desire to just drive there after work and sleep in his car all night.  He got in bed.  He read for a while.  Then he tried to sleep but couldn't, so he got up (at 2am!) and drove an hour south to wait in a cold, dark, rainy parking lot to buy this gun.  The really sad thing?  He wasn't the first one in LINE!  But he got his gun, so he's happy.  And given the season of the year, I'll take anything that makes Chris happy.
• The babies are awesome.  
• The Boy is struggling a bit with what would appear to be some social anxiety.  He had a meltdown in Primary yesterday (Primary is the children's portion of our church service.  It's set up so that they sing and learn together for an hour and then have a sunday-school-esque class for an hour.), he was in the large group portion (the age range is 3-8 years old) and another boy was making weird faces, and all of the kids were talking and goofing off (as children are prone to do), but being an introvert like his Mama, it was a little too much stimulation for a very tired boy (we go to church right smack in the middle of his rest time), so he just melted down.  I tried to calm him and get him to go back to class, but he just wouldn't (or couldn't) settle.  So I cut my losses and took the children home.  He slept for two hours and then explained all of this to me, and we talked about what he can do next time to calm himself down when he feels overwhelmed. 
• The Girl is teething like she's behind schedule, she cut three teeth in a little over a week, and one of them was a molar.  She's had a string of nights where she doesn't sleep well, she's fitful and fussy and I have to keep going in to settle her down and once I saw all those teeth pop out, I thought, "Well there you go!  That's why you've been such a bear!"  But otherwise, she's hilarious.  She eats voraciously, particularly when it's something she really likes.  I'll peel and cut up an apple for her and she crams her mouth so full she can't close it.  Naturally, she chokes and spits half of the pre-chewed apple out, which is gross, but it's so funny to see her swiping the apple slices and cramming them in her mouth that I keep doing it.  Hopefully, all of these new teeth coming in will help her out.
• I've finished a charming little gift for my friend Brett who is expecting another babalah.  It's been done for a while, but I need 10 minutes to sit down and write her a little note and then I can send it off to her.  I'm excited for her because she and Ben make adorable and perhaps more importantly, hilarious children.
• Chris' birthday is this week.  I convinced him to take the day off of work, so we'll all go to lunch as a family and I'll be making him birthday PIE.  I already told him that I'm buying him a new pair of shoes for work for his birthday, but I need his cooperation for that, so I'll also try to get him to go shoe-shopping on Wednesday.
• And that's about it.  Other than Chris' birthday this week it should be quiet.  I'll finish the dissertation and send it back.  We'll do school and all of the normal Burnstopia things.  I like weeks like this one...with not many things fixed, but enough going on that life isn't dull.  I've started another new book (the follow up to Call the Midwife) and finally found a decent formula for knee-high socks.  I'm only a month behind, but I'm just starting to pin down some goals for this year...maybe I'll share them and maybe I won't.  That way no one will be disappointed if I get side-tracked.