FETCH. FETCH. FETCH.
Is not happy that I am at work today. Neither am I.
Oh well, sometimes it happens. But I’ll be home soon enough to be the lucky recipient of approximately 6,259 dog saliva and mud-coated frisbees and sticks and a rapid fire progression of
Sit! Lay! Speak! Speak! Speak! THROW IT YOU DUMB WOMAN.
I almost threw up in front of my trainer yesterday. My handsome, fit, 22 year-old trainer.
Today I can barely raise my arms and I passed up cake because it would require walking down a flight of steps to get it. I PASSED UP CAKE YOU GUYS.
This coffee is the only thing keeping me awake right now. Too bad I can barely lift the cup.
Tuesday night was my first night back with a trainer in two weeks. Two weeks of no training and minimal working out. Then last night I met with A.J., my usual trainer, and he CRUSHED ME.
Why did I have training two nights in a row after such a long break of laziness? Well, it’s a long complicated story; one that Ryan calls “Gym Drama” and one that’s going to turn me into the Gym Slut of Route 1. Basically, I am going to continue to workout at my current gym, but follow A.J. to a new gym for once weekly hour-long training sessions.
So last night I’m pretty sure he was trying to prove to me that all the gym drama was worth it by having me RUN SUICIDES IN THE PARKING LOT after a half-hour of brutal push-ups – 20 of them, boy style; squats; kettlebell swings; rows; and Rope Wrasslin’ (that’s what I call it, some people call it Swinging Rope Training). At which point all the water I had previously consumed came rushing to the front of my mouth as my legs twitched and my arms quivered.
It wasn’t embarrassing. Not. At. All.
“Are you OK?” He asked.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” I replied. “Imma just Rub Some Dirt On It. See you next Wednesday.”
This is my leg:
mmmeaty!
This is my son’s leg:
mmmmeatier!
I’ve come to the realization – yes it took me thirty-mufflemuffle years to be enlightened – that my knees are NOT normal. There’s this…. tendon? bone? muscle? running down each side of my kneecap that is quite, um, substansial. It’s not fat, it’s something else, and it’s going to keep me from ever having what Ryan calls “Nice Stems”.
I’ve long known – okay, Ryan long ago alerted me to the fact – that my shins are also somewhat odd. I’ve got what he calls “front muscle” on my shins. Instead of getting nice calf muscles from working out, I get nice shin muscles which is, frankly, weird.
And then there are my GIANT quads. They’re big even when I don’t work out, now they’re just getting bigger. Don’t get me wrong, my thighs continue to shrink as I replace the fat with muscle, but those muscles are just bulky and they’re only getting bulkier. There ain’t no streamlining those beasts.
I have linebacker legs.
Guess who else has linebacker legs?
Lil' Mr. Beefy Legs
His legs are shaped EXACTLY LIKE MINE. Of course, it’s cute as pie on a toddler, not so cute on me. He has the same weird knee tendons, the same giant quads, and the bubble butt of a 15 year old girl. My big ol’ bubble butt was adorable when I was 15. Now it’s just, um, big.
In addition, Gabe’s legs are growing, like, an inch a week. He’s stretching out and getting taller and taller. If you’ve ever seen Ryan in shorts you know that he has legs for miles – if he were a girl, he’d have Fabulous Stems! So Gabe may end up having Fabulous Bulky Stems!
Genetic probability has Gabe growing up to be quite tall – at least 6′-2″ in all likelihood. And he’s probably going to have my legs – my brother does, but he’s only about 5′-10″ (Is that right, Dave?).
So what do you get when you combine the bulk of my legs with the length of Ryan’s legs? This kid is going to be a beast. He may ACTUALLY be a linebacker. Think Todd Heap or Heath Miller.
I may not need to worry one bit about the future state of my 401k if all works out according to plan…
I know, I know, it sounds like some sort of 80′s quasi-soft porn starring Mickey Rourke before his Wrestler comeback. But it’s not, it’s a gorgeous flower that Gabe gave me for Mother’s Day.
Okay, maybe Gabe didn’t exactly GIVE it to me, maybe I bought it for myself for Mother’s Day and brought it home only to have Ryan say, “What!?! I was going to buy that for you for Mother’s Day, Loser!” to which my MAY have replied, “I know, but I was afraid if I didn’t buy it today, they’d be all sold out tomorrow.”
Whatever, that’s just semantics. It’s gorgeous. I love it, and it’s the perfect addition to my buffet. My baby has such good taste!
The past few weeks, the shopping stars aligned with some birthday moola and gig pay and good luck. Home Improvement Karma has been our pal. First, Deb found my new buffet on Craigslist and I scored it for a steal. Then, I finally found an affordable (read: cheap) rug that Ryan and I agreed on and my romantical husband ordered for my birthday. Then, I ordered some sweet and cheap modern chairs from Target to pull the mid-century vibe together.
The chairs were delivered Friday. Per some reviews on the website that mentioned their ability to scratch easily, I gave them a good coating of spray polyurethane before Ryan assembled them. The rug arrived at my neighborhood Home Depot on Saturday morning. After pulling everything together and looking around the room in satisfaction, Ryan said, “Now I just need that chair from Crate & Barrel and retile the window, and I’ll be completely happy.”
A little background on the Chair from Crate & Barrel. Ryan has stared lovingly at this chair for ages, arguing with me over color selection and scale, and had decided this was the chair for him. His Old Man’s Chair. It was also expensive. Well, more expensive than we wanted to expend. But he would periodically request that we visit the Towson store so he could look at it and imagine how it would look in our living room. He did that yesterday after we spent the morning at the playground. So off to the mall we went to stick our heads into C&B to visit his chair.
As we got off the elevator, I could see the red handwriting on the price tag. I didn’t say anything, and held my breath as we crossed the store. DUDES, it was a floor sample clearance! Ryan’s eyes lit up and I knew there was no way we were leaving the store without that chair.
So now I present to you, The Living Room Redo Redux:
Mid Century, Finnerin Style
Beige and Grey and White, Oh My!
That Rug really tied the room together, Dude.
Never fear, I have plans for that mission style rocking chair… but the larger rug (8X10 Mohawk Rug from Home Depot) makes the whole room feel more cohesive and larger, as does the smaller scale of the white stackable chairs from Target. And then there’s the chair, my g*d, the chair!
You Just FEEL more like Don Draper in this chair.
This Graphite Petrie Chair sat in the window of the Towson Crate and Barrel store for months. There were no damages to it, but the salesman said it’s possible there was SOME fading of the fabric due to extended sun exposure. Whatever. We didn’t see it, and we paid nowhere near full price for it as a result. Note to self: always visit your favorite furniture stores just before they change out their seasonal displays. The grey metal table next to it is also a C&B purchase – a $34 purchase. It’s the perfect simple accessory to blend in rather than compete with the awesome chair, the dining set, and the buffet once it’s finished.
Vintage Accessories, natch
On the buffet is a white dish my Aunt Tammy bought at the actual Fiesta Factory Store in Newell, WV, a blue orchid, and a vintage teak elephant that Ryan’s Nana gave me from her basement collection.
Tusk!
And yes, if I were actually staging this room, I should have set the table. But I’m lazy. So imagine it is set with white plates and wine glasses. There.
We drink our Manhattans here.
The simple white placemat, small hurricane, white shells and grey candle were also picked up at C&B yesterday to tie it all together.
Oh man… when I get this buffet finished… I’m going to be in home improvement heaven! I’m actually In Love with this room, like, if I saw it in a magazine, I would say, “Damn, I’d like a room like that!” And now, amazingly and patiently, we have it.
I think we are finally pulling everything together in something Jeff Lewis would approve of. Or Ryan’s girlfriend, Nicole the Rehab Addict.
And yes, I will surely bore you with more pictures as soon as the buffet is finished. It never ends…
On Saturday my parent’s and my brother and sister-in-law came to town to celebrate my belated birthday and Mother’s Day, but mostly to bring Gabe his tractor.
We grilled steak, made crab cakes, indulged in Key Lime pie, and enjoyed the gorgeous weather. But mostly we watched Gabe swoon over his tractor. The boy is a tractor freak.
Vroom Vroom!
The front of any Home Depot is cause for elation
The freshly applied mulch in the back yard made for perfect tractor fodder.
Yeah Tractor! Yeah!
It also makes for AWESOME throwing in the air and rubbing-on-face times.
SUCH A BOY.
Hey, remember when we redid our back patio and it looked amazing? Sigh.
Toddler Parking Lot
Then last night, after a wonderful day of relaxing, making spontaneous purchases (more on that to come) and a three hour family nap, Cuddle McCuddleson decided to bestow his sugar-fueled love on me in the form of mouth-to-mouth yelling (I won), violent eskimo kisses, and full-on body slams to my face (thanks for teaching him that one, POPPY). Then he peed on this stool.
Hi, I'm Gabe, and my legs are 6,000 miles long. Just like Daddy's.
I’m pretty sure the peeing part was the one that made my Mother’s Day.
This is an actual conversation that occurred between me and Ryan last night around 11:30 after I came up to bed.
Ryan: How did people poop before the iphone?
Me: They read Jazz Times magazine.
Ryan: “Why Jazz Guitar Sucks”
Me: STILL the best article ever.
This is in reference to the cover article on an issue of Jazz Times magazine that was sitting in Ryan’s bathroom the first time I came to his house in Hampden. I felt the need to point it out, even though I barely knew the guy. The same magazine was sitting there three years later when he sold the place.
Ryan: Or they read Sless’ Jam Bandz Weekly.
This in reference to several copies of some hippie rag – High Times, Jam Scene, Patchouli Monthly, some absurd magazine that Sless was into back in the Grateful Dead Adulation Period of his early twenties – that also sat next to the can for ages.
Me: Ugh.
Ryan: But there’s only so many Derek Trucks articles you can read, you know?
Then he fell asleep. And that, my friends, is a successful marriage.
Crass I know, but totally appropriate. Plus he's drinking a Guinness. Bonus Points.
We may look back at this as an historic week some day. Right now I just look at it like correcting a wrong.
I don’t want to get into a big political hoorah, because I don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s the way it SHOULD be. People who choose to spend their lives together, combining their households, their incomes, their insurance policies, their income tax filings, their woes and cares, in sickness and health. The end.
For folks who couch their disagreement on religious grounds, just remember that we are talking about a legal contract here. One that can be dissolved via a divorce proceeding. A proceeding that I, personally, have a bigger problem with religiously than whether a man marries a man or a woman marries a woman. But that’s another debate for another time.
I just wanted to take a minute to say Good Job, Prez. You’re Alright. We’re rooting for you. And remember, we’re all in this world together so let’s be nice to each other, even those who are different than you.
Cheers, Shalom, Peace, Hare Krishna, Namaste, Wave That Rainbow Flag. It’s a good day.
I’m not a very good photographer. My Instagram feed consists of about three things: Gabe, Bruce, and whatever alcoholic beverage I tried that was yummy.
Lately, my subjects have gotten even more narrow – Gabe and Bruce. Gabe and Bruce eating. I think it’s because it is the only time I can get the boy to stand still enough to snap a shot that isn’t a complete blur.
May I present to you my narrow picture content:
Gabe eating waffles. Bruce waiting to eat waffles.
"Is it a day ending in Y? If so I'm probably eating some form of chicken noodle soup and carrots."
This is, like, my favorite series of pictures ever. I can’t look at that last picture and not laugh inappropriately loud.
"I told you, No pictures while I'm eating Frosted Flakes, WOMAN!"
Oh look, one where he's not eating. But there's a firetruck, AKA, Balabala.
He’s such a BOY.
