She Likes Purple

Seven Quick (TV) Takes

(Obviously we have some spoilers ahead so tread lightly.)

I know, I know, I should just start a TV blog and be done with it. (What if I told you that was in the works? Would you read?) Anyway, that's obviously not available today, and I do have some Very Important TV Thoughts I'd like to share. I won't be offended if you close your browser with an eye-roll, though! But, warning, you will miss a tidbit on Mike's proposal to me and how it's now connected forever to Leslie Knope.

1. I watch and love The Vampire Diaries. No apologies will be made for that, you should know, because I genuinely think it's a stellar show. I hope someone out there watches (hi Liz!) and can commiserate with me over my rage toward Matt. This is a guy who broke up with Caroline because he couldn't deal with her being a vampire. And now he's Elena's chomping toy. I know! He has mad guilt from the accident but if he doesn't high-tail it over to Caroline's house and offer up one helluva an apology soon, I'm going to throw my remote at the TV. Do it, Matt! Apologize! Mike hates it when I throw the remote.

2. Guys, I'm hearing very bad things about Nashville's ratings. Please don't make this another Veronica Mars situation (although we did get three seasons there). Watch! It's good! It's not just about country music! Don't make me weep over its cancellation. Do you want me to weep?

3. I think I'm giving up on Grey's Anatomy. I feel like I was one of the last viewers, loyal even when the show tried its best to make all of his break our loyalty (I will forever have a softness for Meredith Grey; she speaks to me for some reason), but then they went and killed off Lexie and Mark and I think I'm out.

4. Oh, Sons of Anarchy, you are doing all you can to shred my sensitive feelings this season, aren't you? I don't remember being this wrecked after past episodes when I was watching them THREE IN A ROW. But each week this year I feel I've been punched in the gut when the show fades to black and then I think, it can't get worse, it just can't, AND THEN IT GETS WORSE. Oof, Kurt Sutter, ease up, would you! With all that said, I think Charlie Hunnam has been outstanding this season. I have barely noticed his horrible haircut because he's continually blowing me away with his acting. Which means he'll get absolutely zero award nominations. I think that's how those things work. (Also, what do we think, was Gemma high, drunk, or just tired this past week? I am stumped.)

5. Last night's Parks & Rec will stay on my DVR forever and ever. Oh, Ben Wyatt, you perfect TV man, you. (Related note: It's hard to watch Adam Scott in anything else these days because I always feel like he's cheating on Leslie. Stop kissing other women, Adam! Including your real-life wife, please.) Anyway, during his proposal, Leslie said yes before he could finish asking and I DID THIS TO MIKE. I took the ring out of his hand before he was done just like the crazy woman everyone knows me to be. Last night, as we watched, we both got a little excited that Leslie stole my move. I've always wanted to be more like Leslie Knope! Last night I said, "Babe! I Leslie Knoped you!"

6. I've recorded all of Arrow and haven't watched any of it yet. Should I? Is it good? (I use "good" relatively, of course. I know we're talking about the CW here, but I'm a regular voluntary watcher of CW shows. I love some quality TV but I also love some teen love triangles.)

7. This is a general TV thing, but I've noticed that I do this one particular thing when I'm watching a show I really love. I continually pause the TV throughout it. I want to make the hour last longer and when I'm obviously enjoying a scene, I'll pause it in the middle and go make a snack or send an email or just relish the moment, which sounds RIDICULOUS as I type it out, but it's become my measuring stick for enjoyable TV. If I recommend something it's likely I've paused it mid-way a few times.

Share any TV thoughts below!

My (First) 2012 Wishlist

When one stops shopping, one creates wishlists. If you're shocked there are 4 pairs of shoes out of 16 items on this list, you might not know me very well.

(Here's last year's wishlist, just in case you're into year-old wish lists where all the links are probably dead.)

Top to bottom, left to right: 1) Metal Letter 2) Estee Lauder BB Creme 3) Texas Necklace 4) Vince Camuto "Kain" Pump 5) Teddie dress 6) TOMs University Red Rope Sole   7) Polka Dot Swimsuit 8) Merino classic crewneck 9) Frye Paige Tall Riding Boot 10) Lily Mineral Necklace 11) "Runway" Boot 12) See What I Green? Dress 13) Workout Racerback 14) Zig Zag Dress 15) Cream Blusher 16) Beaded Necklace (Juuuuust realized this listing is $88 for ONE strand of beads, so HA HA HA no. But the collage was already made, so it stays.)

What's on your wishlist this year?

Lost and Finding

Mike wasn't looking for me, even in those early days when he had me. I've told this story before, this sort-of unromantic story of how the guy I was falling for was spending an awful lot of time swearing up and down he wasn't looking for a commitment, a relationship, me.

It seemed to happen gradually at the time, that our plans began to include each other, although in hindsight it happened very fast. He Wasn't Looking For A Relationship in January and loved me by May and that's not very long at all, but waiting makes time move much slower, doesn't it?

He fell in love with me despite himself, I think. He said he went home from work one day, swore he'd wait as long as he possibly could to call me--promising he could make it until the next day--and he lasted a half hour. I genuinely believe he didn't want a relationship, that he didn't think I was that relationship even if he had been looking for one, but life is funny, isn't it? I like to think I was just that utterly charming and adorable to make him break all his promises to himself. It was probably just bigger than us, from the very beginning, bigger than his protests, bigger than my craziness.

I tell you all of this (again, for the hundredth time?) to emphasize the magnitude of the moments from that first year when Mike would show his commitment to me. Like the time he sat me on his couch, instructing me to close my eyes while he placed a diamond necklace in my hands, a beautiful shiny investment in us. I thought I was the luckiest girl in all the world that night. I loved that necklace so much.

I think I've lost it. I can't find it. It was in our bathroom, with the rest of my jewelry, and now it's gone. I cried when I realized it was missing and I cried when I told Mike and I'm crying again now.

Why am I so brokenhearted? It's just a necklace! It's replacable! But, oooooh, it's not. Of course it's not. It was his first big gift to me, this guy who wasn't looking for a commitment with this girl he was buying diamonds for. 

Damn, I hope it turns up.

***

I've been feeling a little like that necklace these days--lost, out of place. I'm struggling with my diet, my work-outs, my dirty house, my sad yearly to-do list. I still feel impossibly busy each and every day, but I also feel impossibly behind and out of focus, too. I think it's likely the time of year combined with an insane workload combined with a really busy social calendar. It makes me want to crawl under my blankets with any free time I have. It does not make me want to do laundry, but that's no surprise to anyone who has ever met me.

Anyway, I've decided to try and shake myself out of this lostness by setting daily goals for myself, simple things I can write down at the beginning of each day to stay focused. I tweeted my list today, and I might do that more often.

It's so easy to forget what we want to accomplish each day as we tick through the actual hours, so I hope this simple idea has a positive effect.

I also really hope I find that necklace.

No Wants

Starting today, I'm giving up my wants.

After a particularly high credit card bill last month--for many valid reasons, including a trip to Disneyland and some medical bills that needed to be paid, but for also some pretty invalid ones, including shoes--I took a close look at this month's statement (so far) and highlighted everything that didn't need to be spent. I'll cut it to you straight, it was $410.92. That's not thousands of dollars or an impulse tv purchase or anything but it's a plane ticket, it's an extra car payment (and then some). It's a lot.

Now that Christmas is looming and my birthday is a mere nine days after that, there's no reason to spend $410.92 on anything I don't need. Gifts are coming! Gifts for others need to be bought! We still have a mortgage!

So, deep breath, through the end of the year, no more wants. That means no more shoes, no extra Blathering outfits, no impulse home decor purchase. I've done this before, with a lot of success, and I'm doing it again. This doesn't include some things that might be included on your wants list. Spending time with friends and the occassional family dinner out is considered a need, in my book, even if you think my book is made of lies. Still, whenever possible, I'm going to opt for the cheaper social option. Hosting a happy hour in my yard instead of at a pricey wine bar. Making a picnic family dinner, etc. 

One other thing I'm going to start implementing is a work-out jar. Every time I work-out, I put a $1 in the jar. At the end of the year, that money is mine to spend guilt-free. (Please let it be more than $5.)

Want to join me in this no wants adventure?

All About Cranberry Juice

I haven't written Kyle's birth story yet and it's safe to say that's probably never going to happen. I mean, the kid is going to be four (omg) in February, so I think that particular blogging ship has sailed. This is actually okay with me, though. It was such a perfect day, it's kind of nice to keep it all to myself. (I often say the nine months before and the two months after were hell but those two days in the hospital were pure perfection.)

One tiny little tidbit of a thing that came back to me tonight, though--as I was looking in the fridge in our garage and noticed a random  bottle of cranberry juice that someone left at our house--was how we had free reign over the juice fridge in our hospital. I would send Mike down the hall once an hour, it felt like, on strict orders to fetch a giant cup of ice pellets and a couple containers of cranberry juice, so I could pour the latter over the former and chug it down. It had been years since I'd had cranberry juice, but it was just delicious after nine months of being sick, sick, sick. I don't know if there will ever be a good way to describe the awfulness that is puking at nine months pregnant from nausea AND heartburn. COMBINED!

That cranberry juice somehow made me feel normal after so many months of feeling the absolute opposite of normal. Feeling horrible, feeling awful, feeling humbled by how many public places I threw up in. I could enjoy eating and drinking things again! GIVE ME ALL THE CRANBERRY JUICE. (Also all the cupcakes and donuts. ALL OF THEM.)

It was so long ago, being pregnant, having Kyle, taking a newborn home, utterly confused and shocked and scared as to what to do with him. I know how to parent Kyle of October 2012 just fiiiiine. I question myself at times, sure, but most of the time I really don't. I'm his mom. A mom of an almost-four-year-old. We got this, you know.

Then I open our garage fridge and see a half-gallon of cranberry juice and catapult back to being in that hospital bed, holding my teeny-tiny boy, marveling at him--he was so much more beautiful than even my best pregnant moment could have dreamed him to be--and side-eyeing Mike into refilling the cranberry juice cup on my bedside table. Get me more delicious juice, babe, while I hold our delicious boy.

That's the thing about memory, you see, it's so far gone until it knocks us over flat with its presence. It's nothing until it's everything. It's a four-year-old boy kicking a soccer ball the wrong way down the field until it's a newborn with steel-blue eyes who looks at you like he's always known you (because he always has). Memory is dormant until it's all-encompassing. It's a planned blog post about (more) shoes until it's a blog post about how my tiny boy is now a soccer-ball chasing big boy.

He was the left and now he's the right.

It all came back in a cranberry-juice-soaked moment.

On the Road

In college, Mike had a motorcycle and we'd ride it often. To dinner, around town on Sunday afternoons, and occasionally we'd take it out for the weekend and ride it around Texas, sometimes stopping to camp for the night. While I often complain about this state and all it's far-right politics and absolutely horrible weather, I still love it in very big ways and one cause of that love is seeing it from the back of a bike. It's something else, this big, sprawling state of ours. I loved those rides so much.

Mike still rides, although almost exclusively on the track these days. He races in an amateur circuit around Oklahoma and Texas--which is much safer than you're thinking, closed and controlled environment--and those Sunday afternoons of riding around our college town are behind us. They have to be, for the most part. We've grown up, we have a son, we can't afford multiple bikes, or an extra vehicle on our insurance plan. Mike also felt like while he was becoming a more and more responsible rider, the drivers around him were becoming less and less so. Texting, talking on the phone, etc. All things motorcyclists don't do. All things that can obviously still affect them.

All that said, it had been five years since I was on a bike and I thought it was time for me to hop back on, for a low-key, keep-to-the-back-roads ride with Mike, for a just-us birthday celebration. We borrowed his mom's road bike--yep, both his parents ride--stayed close to home and avoided all freeways and roads where the speed limit was over 55.

It was kind of like riding a bike (ha). It all came back to me. I remembered how to lean into the turns, hold onto Mike in a natural way, and I started waving at other bikers just a few minutes into the ride.

One thing I had forgotten was the smell of the road. It's a little indescribable, but it's something of a mix of fresh air, engine fumes, dirt, and smoke. It hit me in an instant, that smell I used to smell so often. It sticks to your clothes and I remember when Mike used to walk into the house in college, how the smell would greet me before he would. "Where'd you ride to?" I used to ask before I even looked up.

We left without any plans for the night, so we felt lucky to stumble upon some great lakeside cabins with just one available room left. We ate dinner at the resort's marina restaurant and it was delicious--a lot of veggie options, even!--and then we curled up in bed and watched our football team try their best to give us heart attacks. (We won but just barely and after being up 27 points earlier in the game!)

We stopped for breakfast on the way back, before picking up Kyle and returning to the dishes and bills and errands. We weren't gone long, we weren't gone far, but it felt like traveling back in time a little bit, being young again, falling in love with Texas again. Falling in love with Mike again. I am always reminded when I spend any time alone with him just how much I still like him. He's a likable guy, I think, but I always am re-surprised by just how much I enjoy him, how he fits me, how it's still so fun to make him laugh.

It was a really lovely night away.

It was good to smell the road again.

Impractical

I don't have a particularly fancy social life. Occasionally, I meet a friend for a drink and sometimes I even drive downtown for a night out with Mike but usually it's book clubs, soccer games, and yoga dates in my free time. I don't work in a particularly business-y environment, either. It's a small, casual office. I dress up when we have authors in town (once a month, maybe?) but that "dressing up" is compared to the usual jeans and flats. So, there's no reason I should have bought these shoes.

I did have a $25-off coupon, though, and I am a sucker for impractical splurges when the splurge is only $45.

I know it's crazy to buy yourself a pair of shoes you 1) do not need AT ALLLLLLL 2) have no particular place to wear them to. But, I just love them so much. In fact, I'd suggest every single person who likes shoes, splurge every once in a while. Not even on price! Splurge on impracticality. Add something to your closet that's totally ridiculous to wear to school pick-ups or the grocery store or wherever. I love these shoes, I feel happy knowing they're in my closet, like they invite cooler opportunities to find me. Like, say, hosting a party in Vegas.

Hear that, Universe, I now have the shoes. You can go ahead and send the Bellagio my way.

(Poorly) Teaching Twitter

Mike called me into the bedroom the other night while he was watching The Voice. They stream tweets on the bottom of the screen while the show airs, from the judges, host, etc.

Mike: Where are those notes coming from?

Me: Those are tweets.

Mike: Like, from Twitter?

Me: Yes.

Mike: Okay. Well, what are all those pound signs? What do they mean?

Me: They're hashtags.

Mike: What?

Me: We've talked about hashtags before! You click on them and can see all the people talking about that topic or you can even mute a hashtag so you never have to see those tweets in your timeline and...

Mike: WAIT, so does Twitter decide when to assign the pound sign? Like when it's a popular topic?

Me: You aren't getting this at all.

Mike: Why does that tweet have so many pound signs? I mean, I can't even make sense of that!

Me: THEY'RE HASHTAGS.

Mike: What?

Me: This isn't a conversation I'm particularly enjoying.

Mike: What do the @ symbols mean?

Me: I'm gonna go.

Favorite Reads This Week

In honor of posting more, how about I post some things for you to read elsewhere? (It makes sense in my head!) Anyway, an ode to my (oh-so dusty) posts of the week and other awesome links, too.

Mommy Melee's "Please Remember These Things" -- Maria is one of my favorites. I wish I could make her write every day, but this post in particular was just so good. Beautifully written, completely relatable. I think that sums up a good blogger right there.

Lainey Gossip's "Nashville" recap -- I really enjoyed the pilot last night (did you?), and this recap touched on most of what I felt about the show. One silly random aside, there were a couple sweeping, FNL-esque sunset scenes and I felt weirdly territorial of those. Like, good try, NASHVILLE, I am enjoying you a lot, but you will never be Dillon, Texas. (I know, the latter isn't even REAL, it's AUSTIN, but WHATEVER.)

Hillary with Two L's "Will You Remember Me" -- From the post, "She is coming home next week. Just for a visit, not forever, but that doesn't matter. She is a forever kind of person." This was just beautiful and obviously made me think of Natalie. I'm not certain of much, not much at all, but I'm certain of Natalie. It's impossibly comforting to have a friend like that.

The entire Television Without Pity's Tumblr. Here are all the posts with a Parks and Rec tag. First, you're welcome. Second, kiss your day goodbye.

Rhi in Pink's "Getting in the Picture" -- Rhi's post is in response to this post, that's gone viral, and I love them both. Let me tell you a story: When Kyle was born a friend offered to take his newborn shots for free and they were fantastic, I loved them all, but I refused to get in any of them. I (thought I) was fat, I was exhausted, I was anxious, I couldn't imagine ever having an almost-four-year-old and regretting a lack of self in his baby photos. All I was thinking at the time was, Please don't scream through this, buds. Yet here I am, without a face in those photos. You will regret it, if this is you now. You will wish you could look back on your 27-year-old, new-to-motherhood face. Get in the picture, please.

Feels like as good a time as any to link to my recent Food and Style Lush posts, because they're both things I considered posting over here. Kyle's behavior chart, something I've mentioned a few times on Twitter (in short: it might be our best parenting idea to date, not that it was OUR idea or anything). A review of Eataly, a delicious gourmet market and handful of restaurants in New York, where I ate one delightful night on my recent trip.

I'm a book industry and book marketing nerd, so you might not find this fascinating at all, but as book readers, you just might. "Are Publishers Making a Killing on E-Books?" (Part one and part two.)

Any great links from your corner of the internet?

Back It Is

I used to write here all the time. My monthly archives show I wrote 27 posts in December 2010, for example. (Twenty-seven! Posts! That's so many words! Although taking a quick glance at those posts, it's also a lot of lists, so apparently I still blog, I just do it on the notepad I keep in my purse now.)

I feel like while I'm busier than ever, I just don't have as much to say. I mean I do, of course, I could always talk about something. (SONS OF ANARCHY, I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS.) But everything is as it always is, as it should be, and there's nothing going on that's really new or noteworthy or something I haven't written about a dozen times before.

Then, when I do think of something grand to write about--a new Real Marriages post, my monthly menu plan, fitness thoughts, etc.--it gets buried by deadlines I have elsewhere. I have to do that thing over there before doing anything fun over here and time just sneaks away and away and away.

Did there used to be more hours in the day? In December 2010, I think there must have been.

STILL. I really miss it. I miss hitting publish so often. I miss seeing comment emails hit my inbox. I miss connecting with someone over a shared thought or experience. I really miss looking back on my life through the lens of this blog and remembering so much I had forgotten. I miss the regular process of recording it, too.

Blogging about blogging is spectacularly uninteresting, even as I re-read this I'm a little uninterested in myself, but I swore I'd hit publish this time, so I'm going to.

I also swear I'm going to make more of an effort to hit publish more of the time, even if it's a crappy post, even if it's just more lists. Maybe I'll even post every day in November if that's even still a Blogging Thing (is it?) because when you miss something, you either find a way to move on or you find a way back.

Back it is.

The First Reason Why This is My Favorite Month of the Year

When we were on our family vacation in California last month, we were out all day one day and everyone was exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel. Kyle was so exhausted, in fact, he didn't bat an eye when the car stopped. Mike got him out of his carseat and carried him inside.

As I gathered up beach towels and bags and purses and rogue little boy flip-flops, I watched my husband carry my sleeping son inside. My heart, it caught in my throat.

I wanted to find my camera. I wanted Mike to walk slower. Would pausing time forever be too much to ask?

All I kept saying in my head, over and over, was, Wow, I just really fucking love those two. (The voice inside my head has the same foul vocabulary as I do. I hope you'll forgive it/me.)

One of those two (the older one) has a birthday today--a big birthday at that (35!)--and where I sometimes feel like words are on my side, I never feel like that when it comes to Mike. He's just better and righter and more than all the words.

Still, it's his birthday. It's his day. He deserves a few words.

Happy birthday, Mike.

I just really fucking love you.