Living Small

Happy Birthday David!

Yes, today is the big day, though we have already been celebrating since Tuesday night, when we went out for drinks and appetizers with David's dad.  Last night the Birthday Fairy delivered a piece of David's favorite cake and some new CDs, today we are having lunch with David's office and dinner with David's mom, and tomorrow night we are going out again with David's dad and brother.  A very busy week for a very special guy!  I won't say how old he is, but, as with wine, cheese, and steak, my beautiful husband only improves with age.

Birthday Tree

My grandparents planted this tree in their back yard when my cousin and I were born (we were both born the same weekend).  The tree is now 29 years old.  Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa!

Giant

A comment on yesterday's post reminded me of something I wanted to post about today anyway -- more on my most recent trip.  One of the many reasons I titled this blog "Living Small" is that, compared to the rest of the world, I am rather small (5' 3").  The fact that I didn't reach this height until my late teens meant that I felt even smaller most of my life.  Now, as long as I wear my Dansko clogs, I feel like I fit into the general population pretty well.  If only I had discovered them in middle school! But when I was with my mom's family last weekend, it was like going through the looking glass.  I am the tallest woman in three generations of my family!  I'm not quite sure how that happened, but when I'm with them I tower above everyone, which makes me feel downright gangly.  For just a few days there, I was living large.

Anniversary

I can't believe it has already been a year since David and I got married!  This was a great year, but it went by super-quickly, so I hope we get to have many many more.

Remote Starter

When David and I are making plans, he jokes that I am his Blackberry.  When we are out driving in the car and he doesn't know where we are going or makes a wrong turn or needs to find an alternate route, I am his GPS.  This morning, I became my husband's remote car starter!  Normally, David walks to work, or rides his bike when there is no ice on the ground.  Today, however, he is driving because he needs to leave early for a doctor's appointment.  But it has finally become that time of year when you can't just hop into the car and drive away.  The other night we had our first snow that really stuck around, so driving now requires either scraping, turning the car on early and letting the snow melt off, or both.  I suppose that if we had a garage, it wouldn't matter, but this is the time of year when I am most grateful that I can walk to work.  No scraping, no going out early to get the car started.  Except today.  Fortunately for David, I leave for work a while before he does, so I just started the car on my way out.  Maybe next time I need to drive somewhere in the morning, I can send him down early to start the car for me!

Good Luck, David!

Today is David's first day at his new job, and he should be there by now.  Yesterday we braved icy roads and pouring rain to complete his new-job wardrobe, and he has a new pair of shoes that we got in Pasadena last week, so he was all ready to go.  This morning, we walked in together partway, which is kind of funny because we almost never walked together when we worked in the same building.  I can't wait to hear all about it!

David's Surprise

As I have blogged about before, David is an avid gardener.  What I haven't said yet is that he subscribes to numerous gardening magazines and catalogs and frequently orders garden stuff in the mail.  So when he received a package yesterday, addressed to him and with flowers on the box, he assumed it was a sample of something for his garden -- perhaps flower seeds.  Imagine his surprise, then, when he opened the box to find a free sample from Kotex!

Date Night

This was quite a weekend.  On Friday night David and I went out for dinner.  I know that doesn't seem momentous to most people, but it was our first meal in a restaurant, just the two of us, in over a year -- since David's birthday in 2006.  We had eaten in restaurants with other people in that time, and we had gotten takeout from restaurants, but we hadn't sat down in a restaurant across from each other and eaten a meal.  I don't know how we managed to go so long -- during the first few years of our relationship we ate out together several times a week, but I guess we had gotten into some kind of home cooking (me) and takeout (him) pattern, and hadn't noticed all the time going by. 

It wasn't like I had even been thinking that it had been a long time and we should go out.  David asked me on Thursday if I wanted to grill on Friday, and I said yes.  Then I remembered how we had grilled together the previous Friday and I recalled that, although I enjoy grilling (and David does most of the grill work), the previous Friday I had been so tired from the week that I didn't want to do the rest of the cooking.  So I suggested that we go out instead.  It was only then that I realized how long it had been since we had gone out just because we felt like it and not because we had made plans with other people.  We also realized that Friday would be our 7-month wedding anniversary, so going out seemed fitting.

We ended up at a Korean barbecue restaurant on the south side of town, which was just about the perfect meal for us.  The waiter set up a grill in the middle of the table, and brought us a plate of raw meat and a plate of raw vegetables, and we grilled them.  There was also, of course, kimchi and a whole bunch of other little veggie appetizers and side dishes.  So we got to grill, but we didn't have to do any of the real work of preparing the stuff to go on the grill! 

It was fun going out on a date with my husband.  There are other thinkgs that I don't mind doing only once a year (swimming, for example), but going out just the two of us seems like something we should do more often, unless that would make it lose its novelty...

Husband on Fire, or The Constant Gardener

In preparation for last weekend's party, David spent about the last month working constantly on the landscaping of our house.  He mowed the lawn repeatedly, purchased and planted dozens of new trees, flowers, and shrubberies (and a lot of hostas, which don't seem to be either trees, flowers, or shrubberies), re-contoured the flowerbeds, and mulched the whole thing.  The showstopper, however, was the patio.  In the two weekends before the party, David (with the help of his brother and stepfather), excavated a 12'x12' area outside our back door, digging down six inches, filled it with gravel and sand, compacted it, and laid bricks in a snazzy herringbone pattern.  Over the course of two weekends, we went from boring grass to intriguing patio.  It looks fantastic and made a gorgeous backdrop for the yellow and white gingham tablecloths we had for the party.

Building the patio, however, got David a bit behind in his other planting, mowing, and mulching activities, which meant that he spent all of last Friday and Saturday trying to finish up.  On Saturday he worked from about 10am to after 10pm.  At one point, I went outside to see how he was doing, and there was literally steam coming out of his head!  It was a rather chilly day, so it must have been his sweat turning to steam from his own body heat, visible against the cold air.  In any case, I had never seen a person steam before.  David thought it was pretty cool, a testament to his hard work.  I did feel a bit guilty about the fact that I was just hanging out with my parents, knitting, and eating at Zingerman's (repeatedly) while David was working so hard, but I think he really likes gardening.  In any case, I tell myself that gardening for him is like knitting for me and, whenever he worries that I am obsessed with yarn, I compare it to his hosta obsession and he quiets right down.

Our gardens, both front and back, are now totally stunning, and all of our guests admired them.  The problem, however, is that if gardening really is David's knitting, then I know he will soon need a new project, and many of our guests did ask what David will do with himself now that the landscaping is done.  Perhaps now we will just have to buy a new house, or maybe he will start digging things up and putting in new things!

I Am My Husband's Blackberry

David has a new nickname for me: Blackberry.  Yes, as in that kind of Blackberry.  Before making plans, he always asks me what we have going on on a particular day, and then he tells me everywhere he needs to be sto that when he (invariably) forgets, I can remind him.  A couple of weeks before his birthday, for example, we made plans to go to his mom's for dinner on that night.  A week later, when he started making plans with his dad for the same night, I reminded him that he already had plans.  Our friend Ken had a party two weekends ago and, the whole week before, David kept asking what we were doing that weekend.  He knew we were doing something, but kept forgetting what.  At some point during the week, he said, "I don't need a Blackberry, I have you!"

Las weekend, David was on the phone with his dad, making plans to go to the annual fundraiser for Amara Conservation, but he couldn't remember what time it started.  So he called out to me:

"Hey, Blackberry?"

"Yes," I responded.

"When does the Amara happy hour start?"

So I guess it is now official: I am David's Blackberry.