Spring Planting

You might think that February would be too early to plant your tomatoes, but no. Turns out, if you live in a place where you have a 50/50 shot at running your air conditioner on Christmas Day, you can plant in February.

Slag's back is, of course, very delicate, so Skiver and I were drafted to serve as his crew. I had snuck out of work an hour early and thought I was going to spend the hour goofing off, but no. I was promptly snared. Skiver, being the smart one and also not the one who lives with Slag, was tardy and arrived after work started. The work started at 4:15pm. Which also happens to be the exact minute that I arrived at home from work today.

I tried the tilling before Skiver arrived, but....I suck at tilling. Skiver is surprisingly good at tilling. He said it was more fun than vacuuming.

A Happy V-Day

Yesterday was my and Slag’s 13th Valentine’s Day together as a couple. We’ve finally settled into a place where nothing is required. There are no more worries about someone’s feelings getting hurt because they weren’t gifted or flowered or acknowledged properly. Most of the anxiety has been Slag’s. He was clearly traumatized sometime earlier in his life for not doing “the right thing” on Valentine’s Day. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’ve spent the years trying to undo it.

Don’t get me wrong, the first few years of our relationship, I was delighted by the bouquets of roses that appeared at home or at work on that special day. The ones delivered to work were the best, because then EVERYBODY got to see how much I was adored.

But it kept escalating. I finally put a stop to it the day I arrived home to find three dozen long stem red roses in multiple vases throughout the living room. Because they wouldn’t even fit into one vase. Do you know how much three dozen roses costs on Valentine’s Day?? Me neither, but I know it’s a lot. Too much. We could have used that money to add on to the house like we’ve talking about for a couple of years. Instead, because he so much wanted me to know how much he loves me and wanted me to be happy on Valentine’s Day, he invested huge quantities of cash in something that would be dead in a week, ten days tops. He was essentially burning money in my honor. And I love him for it. But it’s just not needed anymore. I know he loves me and I know I love him and we don’t need to “do” Valentine’s Day anymore to prove it to each other. And this is a very comfortable place to be. I like it.

This year we had an extremely fun V-Day hanging out with our bestest friend Skiver. Skiver and Slag got take-out wings from Hooter’s and I had take-out from my favorite Italian restaurant and then we watched Evil Dead II on DVD. And then we participated in the Valentine’s Day tradition that I still fully support: the over-the-top chocolate dessert. I found a recipe on the web and tweeked it to suit my preferences. (The recipe I saw suggested boxed mixes. Ha, as if. I’m not snobby about much of anything, but I do not “do” brownie and cookie mixes. And that’s all I have to say about that.)


Phase 1: Make the brownie batter of your choice (enough for a 13x9 inch pan) and spread it in a buttered baking dish.



Phase 2: Make the chocolate chip cookie dough of your choice and drop little spoonfuls of it into the brownie batter, mashing the dough flat with a spoon if needed.



Phase 3: Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Phase 4: Make a ganache with by melting together 12oz of your favorite chocolate chips, 6 tablespoons of butter and ¾ cup of cream. Spread over the cooled brownie/cookie thing.

Phase 5: Gormandize.

Phase 6: The next morning, eat more for breakfast. Then throw the rest in the trash so you don’t finish off the entire pan and subsequently grow out of all your jeans over the course of a single weekend.

Yes, I have posted a picture of the inside of my trash can on the internet, the content of which looks remarkably like poo. My mother must be so proud right now.

A Little Something

Slag bought me a present last week. Right out of the blue. There was no special occasion or anything. Just a little something, because he was thinking of me.

How cool is that? Every girl likes to be surprised with gifts from her man every now and then. It’s especially romantic when he presents the gift and then makes a sudden retreat to the other side of the room, where he cowers defensively with a pleading look in his eyes that silently begs “Please don’t hurt me or any of my stuff.”

He got me one of these:

So…..yeah.

What might be the appropriate response from moi, given that I need to keep my man respectful, but I also want to at least give the appearance of being sane?

On the one hand, this is really, really close to responding “yes” to the famous question: “Honey, do these pants make me look fat?” Which would naturally result in a nuclear-holocaust-type situation. For him.

On the other hand, the man is clearly desperate. He’s so frantic to escape my raspy, middle-aged, half-assed-runner’s calluses that he’s willing to risk my woman-wrath. I have been shoving my cold, callused feet up against the delicate skin behind his knees a lot recently…..OK, truthfully, I’m not that picky and I’ll stick my cold, callused feet any place that’s warm. Slag has lots of attractive warm spots. So I can see where he might be justified in suggesting a different grooming strategy for my feet.

What to do, what to do….

I’m shooting for sane this week, so I’ve decided to forgive him. The egg thing actually works pretty well. Plus he’s really adorable when he cowers.