7.28.10

Dear Husband,

You’re almost done.

You can do it.

NO ONE could have handled this project better than you have.

A few more days.

A few more whiny phone calls from Nellie.

A few more early mornings, and badabing.

Dunzo.

Time for some time off.

Some bike rides.

Some sleeping in.

Some turning the cell phone off.

I, personally, can’t wait for that. For you.

Thank you for providing for me, for listening to me babble when you get home, for being brave, for being patient.

I’d spend every Sunday afternoon taping numbers on massive air conditioners if it meant hanging with you.

You rule, Klein drools.

Wife.

Cue that one song from Chariots of Fire.

Today is the day.

Today, D and I register for the Houston Marathon.

Then we cross our fingers and duck tape them that way until August when we find out if we get to run it or not.

It’s a lottery this year.

We want to run it so badly.

If you think about it today, shoot up a prayer for us to get in.  Truth be told, the odds really aren’t that good, so we’ll take all the help we can get.

Then cross your fingers, rub your rabbits foot, and yell “NO WHAMMY!” or whatever you think may help.

I’ll let you know the verdict on August 17th.

Quite possibly the most unhealthy post on this blog...but oh so good.

Bakerella.  Do you read it?

I don't regularly (until now!), but I did the other day and holy transfats, Batman!! 

2 words: pillow cookies.

They didn't look like they would really work, so I had to make them to make sure that Bakerella was not leading us all on.  That's the only reason I made them.  Just doing my part for our country.

I made them to eat them and you know it.

Uh. what do you mean that cookie dough looks too good to have been made by me?

Busted.

shove that brownie morsel into the cookie, then roll the dough around it

 

Pour glass of milk.  Serve.

You can get the recipe here.

Happy Monday!

A letter to The Man

To The Man:

The 24 hour/day phone calls, the people complaining, the 7 day work week, the missing church.

Mr. Shneebly said it right.

You are working my husband to death.  Stop it.

Regards,

Mrs. Carroll

Hoot.

Next week will be better.  Next week is the last week of DC’s huge work project.  Then, maybe we’ll be normal again.

Thanks for sticking it out.

Happy Friday.

Things you might have or know someone who does that I am looking for, and other hodge podge

First, the hodge podge.

Lois is finally blooming.  You can see her via the link on the left.  The one that says Lois, people.  She is a corpse flower.  When she blooms, she will smell like a corpse.  Hence the name?

The Tour ends this weekend.  Big sad face.

Marathon registration is next week.  Pray we get in.  Pray until August because that’s when we find out.  K, thanks.

Now,  I am looking for the following: 

1.  Picture frames.  I have, oh, maybe 10 pieces I need to frame and hang but I am too picky about the frames.  I don’t want to go to hobby lobby or Michael’s and buy a plain Jane frame for what I think is too much money.  I went to THE resale shop in Houston (The as in the best as in there are none better) last weekend to find some I can paint, searched through hundreds of frames, and didn’t find any- if I liked it, it wasn’t the right size.  Anyone loyal to a frame place and want to share?  Anyone have some in their place they want to give me?  No?  Ok

2.  A test tube rack.  For cheap.  Not kidding.  Anyone have one in their closet?  No?  Too weird? 

3.  A new, stupendous, rockin’ Pandora station.

4.  Book recommendashe.  Devin will cringe now.  I get books in the mail probably once a week, and have plenty to read.  But I am always looking for new ones, so there.

5.  An iPod hooker upper to the car- that plays through your radio.  Mine broke last night.  So sad.  Anyone have a great one that they recommend??

Because a lot of people asked…

This is yellow meat watermelon…from my Monday post

7.21.10

Dear husband,

Work on the weekend?  What in Sam Hill was that all about?  I am proud of you, you brilliant engineer, you, but let’s cut back on the weekend work.  It cramps my style.  Because life is all about me.  Wait…

I know I told you I slept through my run on Saturday, but really, I felt bad that you wouldn’t get to do what you wanted (ride your bike) on Saturday morning, so I didn’t do what I would want to do.

I wish that were true.  I totally slept through it.

Thank you for not getting mad at me about my run in with the law last night.  Note to self: when you’re in a car, and husband is on a bike, do not race husband home.  Cops don’t understand.

I would have won,

Wife.

Dave Ramsey & I would get along just fine.

I want to invite him over to our apartment

pour him some coffee

and talk for hours.

This will do for now.  This is where my love for his wisdom begins.

What had happened was…

We had a triple date on Saturday night.

I planned to blog about it.

Everyone brought something to share…we had red and yellow meat watermelon, guacamole, our favorite chips, and some delicious wine.

The others brought cheese, salami, crackers, more cheese, more wine

We were going to sit outside at an outdoor theater.

I had my camera to get shots of our friends, of the food…

Cue torrential downpour.

Cue canceled play.

Cue picnic in friends’ apartment kitchen.

So that’s why my post for Monday was ruined.  You can thank the rain.

You were pretty as can be sitting in the front seat lookin’ at me tellin’ me you love me & you’re happy to be with me on the 4th of July

Love me a Shooter Jennings song.

Listen here.

July 4, 2010…Lake Livingston, TX

about 2 weeks later.

    

  

   

 

7.14.10

Dear Husband,

When we sat in the drug lord’s house this weekend (aka the couples shower) and you slowly looked around the room, then at me, and said, “We need to have a discussion”, I was excited to know what your brain was brewing.  Then you listed things about the blue-hairs in the room that you did not want me to wear/be/turn into.  But ya know, I’m not the one who spilled a whole fajita on my pants, so maybe we should start with you not gumming your food.

Thank you for driving me to San Antonio while I slept and recovered from my 10 mile run.  Thank you for driving me back from San Antonio while I slept and recovered from a migraine.  Hopefully we can get those figured out soon.  I’m pretty much over having one every weekend.  You’re a trooper for dealing with me.

One more thing.  Last night, in your sleep, you said the following:

“Maybe it’s like Michael Jackson [20 second pause during which I made sure to sit up to be fully awake for the rest of this] eh it’s better the 2nd time around”

I would pay a large lump sum to be able to know what it is you were doing and who the heck you were with in your head last night.  For now, I’ll pray because there is a lot about that sentence that worries me.

Make Way,

Wife.

P.S.  Dear Devin’s friend Dan and his wife Callie, thank you for letting me sleep on your couch for eleventy billion hours and for not judging me for doing so.  You rule.

Please Hold…

The hospital I work at is a circus freak show this week and is thus sucking the life out of me and everything in my life.  Hence the lack of bloggage.

Please don’t leave.

And please don’t gchat / email me with your usual “ahem” because I haven’t posted anything.

You know who you are.

I don’t need that kind of pressure.

I’ve seriously considered not drinking milk for the rest of my life solely to avoid this ever happening again. ever.

Yesterday was probably the first day ever that I had less than 1% motivation to go for a run.  It was pathetic.  Like I would have rather sat on my couch feeling like this guy in all his glory than go for a run.  In fact, as I was driving home from work, I was dreaming of pouring some red wine, cleaning the abode a bit, eating some good grub, and maybe watching a movie with the man of the house, or maybe getting to read more than 2 pages of my book before I had to go do something / fall asleep holding the book.  Notice I did not include a run in said dream, and I didn’t think it would take much to make those dreams happen.  I was so inconspicuously persuasive in the way I told Devin, in detail, the kind of evening that would make me happy.  Wine!  Food!  Cleaning!  Movie!  Jabba the Hut!  COME ON!!!

3 miles later, we were back from a run.

Back at the bat cave, I was racking my brain for dinner ideas.  Here is our issue.  When we have a holiday weekend, or any weekend at the lake or out of town, it’s like all planning/proactiveness (it’s a word)/normalcy is gone for at least 6 days afterward.  We rush out of the house as soon as we can on Friday and come back as late as we can on Monday, and then we wonder why we have no food, we have no jobs, our pets’ HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!!  So we have been scrounging for meals all week, trying to stretch our fish and bread Jesus-miracle style before we make our big trip to the store this weekend.  No one likes to go to the store all week for this or that.  We like to plan it all out and go ONCE.  And if it’s not a good time to go, we resort to rationing.

I suggested breakfast for dinner last night.  Pancakes or waffles; either way, I’m happy.  We had all of the stuff for it.  Easy.  D Money wanted BLTs, which coincidentally also make me happy (because bacon makes me happy; I’m not here to be judged).  We also had all of the stuff for those.  BLTs and pancakes.  And wine.  That’s all we had in our apartment and THAT is what’s for dinner.  Why are you gagging?

The problem was that we actually didn’t have enough milk to make said pancakes slash waffles because when Devin eats a bowl of cereal, he uses the amount of milk that 17 cows make.  I’m just bitter.  Anyway, the discovery of our nearly empty milk jug was precisely when the night went downhill, and when I say downhill, picture me snowboarding for the first time down a mountain in Aspen ending in a crash cracking my sacrum.  That kind of downhill.

I happily packed up and headed to the store for some milk because I would much rather do that than help cook tonight.  A quick trip.  Milk.  That’s it.  Oh, and shampoo because Devin is out and Central Market is the only place that has his kind.  Milk and shampoo. 

The Texan readers of this blog can probably vouch for the awesomeness that is Central Market.  My favorite grocery store.  A block from our apartment.  Bliss.  A quick trip to central market isn’t really usually at all ever possible for me.  When you walk in, they have your cart ready for you with some coupons and a little newsletter on it and a greeter at the door who makes you feel like you’re walking into Disney World and a sample at every corner all the time and a selection of flowers you cannot find anywhere else and they let you drink wine while you shop and OMG WHY DIDNT I REMEMBER THAT LAST NIGHT.

The store is an endless maze of aisles that, oh how convenient, forces you to walk the ENTIRE grocery store before you find the check out.  Unless you take the shortcut.  Which I did.

I came back with romaine lettuce, some new Texas salsa, shampoo, bananas…Central Market makes me buy unnecessary items, but it makes me oh so happy to have been there.  When I got home, the apartment was filled with the delectable smell of bacon.  The huz was hard at work on the BLTs and I was just about to crack open the wine my mouth had been watering for when he asked me to give him the milk so he could start the pancakes.

Shortcut = I missed the bloody dairy aisle.

I just stared at him.  Waiting for him to read my mind, hand me a glass of wine, and leap on his white horse and ride away to fetch the jug.  Since he uses it all in one bowl of cereal anyway.  And somehow, in that 2 seconds of staring at him while he was laughing at me, I realized that he was elbows deep in cooking the rest of the food, and I would be the one going back to get the milk.  The blasted milk.

I did what you would have done.  I ate half of the bacon he had already cooked.  Jab.  And then he told me while I was out for the milk, I would need to get more bacon.  Because I just ate what we needed for the sandwiches.  Touché, Mr. Carroll.  Touché.

So I packed up again.  Bacon.  Pancake Mix because we were about to use it all.  Milk.  Milk.  Milk.  MILK MILK MILK!  And as I was moping out the door, I turned back to see my handsome husband standing in the living room, slyly smiling as he chomped down on a strip of bacon, and the only thing I could think to yell at him was WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!!!! 

I only read extremely intellectual literature.

So this is what I found out.  On your second trip to Central Market within 30 minutes, and it is about 15 minutes before the store closes, the greeter isn’t as nice the second time.  It’s less like Disney World and more like walking into the twilight zone or a pscyh ward.  Luckily, I do that a lot.  The experience is less pleasant the second time especially when there is a group of east Asia tourists who are solely there to gawk at the massive grocery store and talk about how all Americans do is eat (and they’re right), but they happen to be standing right in front of the pancake mix and this American hasn’t eaten in about 9 hours.  I made it home alive although the checker looked at me like I may not if I kept offering to let the other guy go in front of me and oh by the way did I mention that Central Market is also one of the most expensive grocery stores on this planet and I don’t even want to think about what I could have bought with that money. 

And when I walked in the kitchen and asked for wine and Devin said by the time we eat it will be time for bed so opening a bottle probably wont be a good idea, and in fact would be wasteful, I brilliantly shouted I JUST WENT TO THE MILK TO GET THE BACON!!!

Clearly, I belonged in that psych ward.

And so, it made sense to make BLTs and pancakes for dinner.

Without wine, I might add.

Because we had no other groceries…and we’re waiting to go to the store.

Tour de Etsy

7.6.10

Dear Husband,

Goggle adores you.  Every time I see or talk to her, she tells me how fantastic you are, and I always smile and say, “I know”.

But when we left the concert on Saturday, and you waited for her and held out your hand to help her down the stairs, I really really knew how fantastic you are.

Thank you for sacrificing half of your weekend for Lu’s idea of a salad, a long run with me, a family trip to the mall, and the Houston Symphony’s rendition of Hey Jude.

I owe you huge.

Wife

Football season is here

A lot of our guy friends have a love for the pig-skin throwing sport we Americans stupidly named Football.  I would have named it other very clever names, had I been asked.  Those friends’ other halves hate that their husbands spend all day every Saturday and Sunday glued to the TV watching any game, randomly yelling like the players can hear him and interrupting her nap, randomly deciding he knows more than the ref and decides to list reasons why to her, randomly explaining every last detail of that play to her and then forgetting she is in the room. 

Guys, ever wonder why your wife is so enthusiastic about Superbowl Sunday?  It is the end of football season, and for the rest of the year, it’s you and her…doing what she wants to do…like scrapbooking.

Oh my gosh, I feel suffocated from writing that.

In our house, on July 3, my football season started. 

The Tour De France is upon us, my friends.

The only differences here, I guess, are that I agreed to get the upgraded cable package just so we could get Versus, that I break my promise not to look up the results daily, that I too follow Lance’s twitter, that I am seriously looking into a fantasy cycling team, that I spent the first 45 minutes of my morning reading a 5 page online article about the Lyle Lovett look-alike whom we casually call The Boss instead of the news or a normal blog read, that I can name more cyclists in the tour than any girl and half the guys I know, that I know the difference between yellow, green, and polka dots, that I have started planning our trip to the tour next year (newsflash to the husband), and that I can’t wait to get home and watch what we already know happens, happen.

So if you’re looking for us, we’re somewhere you wouldn’t normally find us: on the couch watching TV. 

Every night.  Until July 25th.

I’ve got a fever.

And the only prescription is more cow bell.

Thank You

This week, I got this print in the mail

But I didn’t buy it.

Maybe 2 weeks ago, I put a link to it on the left sidebar, where I put everything I see that I love.  I have a thing for birds.  But not pigeons.  Or seagulls.

This week, I got it in the mail.  I was so confused.  I went and checked my purchase histories…nothing

I emailed the seller thanking her for the gift, but she didn’t intentionally send it to me as a gift, and she is just as confused as I am.  We have concluded that someone bought it from her and asked her to ship it to me.

So whoever you are, thank you so much.

I love it.

And while we’re here, check out yumiyumi.  I want one of everything.

Sometimes you gotta make it 1st grade

D-town and myself, we have a lot going on in life, just like everyone else.

We have so much we need to pray for, and sometimes things just slip our mind.

The Bible tells us that God gave everyone the tools and gifts we need, we just have to use them.

Devin and I want to use prayer more diligently.  Because how can we just sit around waiting for God to do something if we haven’t asked Him to do it?  Or show us?  Or answer us?  Or lead us?

How can I constantly say I would like a change in job, but not constantly ask for it?

The huz and I, we’re visual people.

So we busted out the watercolors (it’s completely normal for 20 something married people to have watercolors.), cut open a grocery sack, and painted some things we need to focus our prayer on.

For example, we sponsor 4 kids in India through Compassion International.  We send them money every month, but we haven’t prayed much for them.  They’re on the top left.  The house on the top right- we don’t know if we should buy or rent when our apartment lease is up because if we buy that means we’re staying but what if we go for new jobs that take us elsewhere…anyway, we know we will be moving out of our current place regardless, so we are praying for guidance and a safe place that is close-ish to work and church that won’t blow our entire savings.  And we’re also hoping to get into the Houston marathon, which is a lottery entry this year.  So that’s on there too.

We left some space to add things, and it hangs on the wall we face when we eat breakfast and dinner together every day.  So when we pray, we can peek and ask and be more consistent in our talking with God.

Sometimes you just have to make it as simple as you need it to be a la first grade.

He gets that