Merry Christmas!

Two weeks ago, my husband came home with bags full of Christmas decorations. He’d gone to a number of stores on his way home from work: WalMart, Target, Michael’s, JoAnne’s, and Home Depot. In these bags were an array of holiday decorations, including (but certainly not limited to) Santa hats, garland, wrapping paper, bows, lights, and fake snow.

I was excited. “All this is for the house?” I asked, ready to start decorating. But he shook his head and quickly corrected me. “No,” he said, “They’re for the gym.”

Turns out, his holiday Christmas card idea was to go to the gym we frequent, decorate various exercise equipment, and take pictures. During gym hours. With gym people staring at us. Our house never had a chance to boast even one Christmas light.

Here are some of the pics. What do you think?

Yes, he bought the socks too.

Are you feeling the
 holiday spirit yet?

The bows help him focus.

Santa is a strong man.

Two points if you can guess 
what's in the box.

What's a squat without a Santa hat?

Add of course, we had to end the evening 
doing simultaneous holiday pullups.

It's Our Anniversary (Part 2)

 

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary on September 24. After pressing the husband for celebration suggestions besides the gym, we decided to go on a dinner and dancing cruise in San Francisco. Here’s a quick play-by-play:

Sunday

Wake up. Watch football (that’s all me). Go to gym. Drive to San Francisco. Dress quickly at hotel. Go on dinner and dancing cruise. Return to hotel.

Husband's quote of the day:"People will know it's our anniversary because I have flaps on my back pockets."

Monday

Wake up. Eat chicken and waffles from delicious restaurant in suspicious neighborhood. Go shopping. Drive home. Go to gym.

Husband's quote of the day: "The guy outside in the wheelchair is a troublemaker."

Happy one year anniversary to us!

It's Our Anniversary (Part 1)

Monday, three days from now, marks one year since the husband and I have been together.

I asked him earlier this week what we were doing to celebrate our anniversary.

"Let's go to the gym," he said with no hesitation. I just looked at him.

I'll let you know how things go after the "celebration"...

Sock Holes

Last night, after my husband took his shoes off and sat down on the couch to relax, I noticed a big hole in the heel of his sock. Upon careful inspection, I noticed another hole in the same spot on the other sock!

Me: You need to throw those socks A-WAY.

Husband: What socks?

At this point, I just looked at him and didn’t say a thing. He knew exactly what I meant.

Husband: Ohhh! These socks! Those are my airpockets.

Even just now, as I showed him the pictures I took last night of his socks, he said, "I don't see nothing wrong with them socks. Those are some good socks."

Those socks will be in the trash by tonight.

Congas

My husband likes to take all sorts of lessons: pottery (more on that in a later blog), salsa, improv, Chicago step, and most recently, conga drums. Since our move to a new city, he’s somehow found happy instructors in remote areas in small buildings that teach each of these. I am certain he will find other lessons to take in the future.

Yesterday, he decided that he needed some more practice time on the conga drums. “One hour a week is not enough to get good,” he explained to me. I nodded in agreement because I am a supportive and loving wife. So off we went to the music store to buy a pair of congas.

Today, he came home early to “work from home” (read: practice on his new congas). He left for a bit to go to the gym and to his drum lessons, and now he is back home. The game is on, the volume on the TV is up, but I can’t hear because of the beating music.

“You wanna play too?” he turned to ask. “We can make you a beat.” I smile and shake my head. “This was a good investment for America,” he concludes as he puts on his headphones to add a bit of music to his dream. 

Check out a video below. Prepare to jam.

Early Tenure, Promotion, and a Celebration

I got tenure and promotion at my University. A year early. I immediately called my husband while he was at work, and screamed in his ear, "I got it! I got it!" He brought home flowers, chocolate-covered strawberries, and took me to one of my very favorite restaurants, Morton's.

I am so thankful to God!

Fans

My husband likes fans. And by fans, I mean those round oscillating devices designed to blow air. While I prefer our home to be cooled with a dose of central air (65 degrees is my ideal temperature), to my chagrin, he prefers to be cooled by fans (75 degrees or higher is his ideal temperature).

He likes and has owned a lot of fans: fans with tall stands, fans that need to propped on tables and desks, heavy duty fans, white fans, black fans, etc.; as long as it rotates and spews out (hot or cool) air, he's happy. He even has a track record of overused, broken fans that have had to be replaced because they couldn't handle the 24-hour a day work schedule. 

But he doesn't just use fans to cool himself off. Now he's using them as dryers. Dryers for what, you might ask? Let me provide you with two recent examples:

Scenario One
Last week, I was sick. I diagnosed myself with food poisoning from a restaurant that I'm considering returning to because the food was delicious. But I digress. I came home, vomited on the floor in front of him, and attempted to clean it up. He finished the cleaning process and below is his attempt to dry the floor:

Scenario Two
He made himself a salad as part of his dinner last night and began by washing the lettuce. Exhibits A and B below are his lettuce-drying efforts.

I laughed for several minutes before I ran to get my camera. He's out of town now, and needless to say, all of the fans are off and the central air is on.

Clean

I like things to be clean and neat. Not like Adrian Monk, but in a sensible, non-dusty manner. My husband, while not a dirty person, is also not quite aware of when things are in disarray or a bit stale. So every Monday at 5:30am, as I leave for the 2.5 hour drive to work, I take one last longing look at the pillow placement on the couch, the empty sink, and the swept-with-love floors. I know that nothing will look the same upon my return on Wednesday afternoon. My absence basically means that the husband has a little over two days to, as he calls it, "party in the house," until my return.

During our Tuesday evening phone conversations, the disclaimer usually is, "Um, when you get home, the house won't look exactly how you like it," or "I didn't quite have enough time to straighten things up." Yesterday though, there was no disclaimer. I arrived home and laughed at the "clean" house. For your enjoyment, here's the play-by-play with some pics:

Bedroom: The bed was made with all of the pillows stacked neatly on it. Note that the comforter was put on the wrong side. The outside has a design and is shiny. He didn't notice.

Guest bedroom: It was still very clean, which means he only went in there to iron. The iron was left on (note the red light).

Bathroom: The white rug was folded so he wouldn't get it dirty. He forgot to unfold it. Also, a new roll of toilet paper was placed on top of the toilet. The empty roll continues to make its guest appearance.

Kitchen: The dishes in the dishwasher were clean. The dishes in the sink...well if they were clean, they'd be somewhere else.

He tried. And I appreciate it because I made no attempt to try to clean up anything. Instead, I threw all the pillows on the floor and went to sleep. I'm not cleanin' nothing!

Valentine's Day

My husband has never done very well on Valentine’s Day. For example, last year, while we were still engaged, guess what I got? You are correct! Nothing. And by nothing, I mean not one thing. Like the I-kept-opening-my-door-sadly-looking-for-flowers kind of nothing. So this year, I began the conversation early:

Me: Do I need to make a list of what you should get me for Valentine's Day?
Husband: When is it?
Me: February 14.
Husband: ...But what year though?

I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere at this point. But the next day, I told him what I wanted. I want flowers and those chocolate fruit things from Edible Arrangements and a card and dinner. Yes, all of those things.

Valentine’s Day this year was on a Tuesday, so when I got home from a very very long day on Monday evening, there were breathtakingly beautiful roses sitting on the counter. I gave him a big hug. I was so happy. And the fact that the roses were in a glass pitcher that's usually filled with cran-apple juice didn’t even matter—I kind of liked it (if you look closely at the picture, you can see the handle). Later, after rolling off the couch, I went upstairs and…wait for it…there were more roses on the dresser in our bedroom! Truth be told, at the time, I didn’t care if I got anything else. On his least favorite holiday, he showered his wife with roses.

For Valentine’s Day, I decided to make dinner instead of forcing him to take me out. When he arrived home from work on Tuesday with my Edible Arrangements in tow, I opened the door to greet him, wearing a hot red dress and some heels. The table was set for dinner and I told him to go upstairs and put on a tie. He obliged (see picture) and I laughed my way through dinner at his failed attempt to appease me. Apparently my dress wasn't enough to get him to put on a suit or even a dress shirt. It is my hope that the tie/horizontal stripe polo combo will never make an appearance again.

Finally, after dinner and my chocolate covered fruit, I said, “So where’s my card?” He responded, “Huh? What’s that?”

He gets an ‘A.’ Good job, Babe.