No Secrets For Me

Yesterday I spent my lunch hour shopping, which was a much needed break from work; however I have since found myself with an unusual case of buyer’s remorse.

One of the stops I made was at Victoria’s Secret. I never shop here. Since I discovered Nordstrom lingerie and various dot com lingerie, Victoria’s Secret has been a thing of the past for me. Not sure why I went in, but I did. The first area of the store I came to, I loved. Everything was soft and comfortable looking. The colors were muted and sweet. Then I realized I was shopping in the equivalent of the “old lady section”. I wasn’t actually looking at lingerie, I was looking at nightgowns. My grandmother would have happily worn what I was looking at, and the only other ladies shopping in the section were at least 55 or older. I chalked this little mix up to low blood sugar and moved on.

I perused the store in its entirety and actually found a few things I liked. {And, they were age appropriate.} I walked away, hot pink bag in tow, feeling just fine. Until…I watched So You Think You Can Dance.

One of the dancers was wearing the “top” I had just bought. I kid you not. Sure, they removed a few of the bells and whistles from the original garment, but it was the.very.same.top. I feel like the store should have placed a sign over the outfit that read, “Will see dumbed down version of this very thing on national TV…tonight. Please cover your partner’s eyes.” But, they didn’t and now I have the be-dazzled hooker version of some dancing top.

Now I remember why I never shop at Victoria’s Secret…because everyone else does…including the cast of So You Think You Can Dance.

Love is Like Battleship

I am sure the award for “most delinquent blogger” is out there somewhere and is currently being engraved with my name on it. My apologies for the lack of real blogging lately. I have been busy trying to keep up with my live in husband…

Today the live in called from his office as he was re-programming his new blackberry. {For those keeping track the live in is now on blackberry number five. The last one fell victim to him accidentally leaving it in his pocket while rafting.} During this phone conversation he casually asks me what the electrical outlets look like in France. Like I have flashcards or something to identify every country’s outlets, why would I know this? I told him we have one at home and he can see it tonight. He then asked if I could look it up online. Remember, he is calling me from his office…where he has access to the same world wide web I do. I told him to look it up himself, to which he replied…and I quote…"because I am busy thinking.”

I could have gone so many directions with his reply. However, after nearly seven years in this Battleship like game I know to remain focused. The real question here is why he needed to know so bad? We are leaving for France in a few weeks, we have the outlet adapter at home, and the only thing he really needs to plug in is his iPod. And then, just like in Battleship, he makes a wrong move. He let it slip that he may have a connection to gain world access on his new blackberry. This is the hardest part for the live in…leaving his dear blackberry state side. I am sympathetic to his withdrawals; however world access is not in our travel vocabulary. This will not happen, or I can guarantee he will be on blackberry number six as his phone gets tossed into the Mediterranean by moi.

Truly, it’s for his own good.

This trip will be our longest ever. Which, in other words, means this trip will be the most the live in and his blackberry have ever been apart. Ever. I can already see him eagerly powering on in the Chicago airport as we return home…

Nice try, live in, nice try.

A Thank You Note

Dear Live in,
Thank you for asking me out on a noon time date today.

Please ask me out again.

Same lunch spot, per favore.

xoxo,

b

...

A Letter

Dear Mr. Sandman,

Please send some good sleep to my sweet live in and I tonight. The sound of a siren, a motorcycle revving, or a street fight might help. Please re-direct several semi-trucks to drive right outside my parent’s quiet suburban home. If you are feeling especially generous you will schedule midnight road construction too. You see, Mr. Sandman, were are not sleeping in the loft again tonight. We are sleeping far away where the sound of crickets and frogs fill the nighttime air. To ordinary people this may be soothing. To us, it just’s not busy enough.

xoxo,
erica and her live in.

...

3rd Time's a Charm?

I really didn’t think I was going to write about this subject. It wasn’t a secret, all of our friends and family heard the story weeks ago, but perhaps it wasn’t blog appropriate I thought. However, in light of the most recent chapter in this story, all bets are off.

Hopefully by now you can understand the sweet, sweet marriage my live in and I share. It’s one of humor, patience on his end, constant BFF status, and totally throwing each other under every bus we can find.

Well over a month ago the live in lost his wedding ring. Of course we were sad, we turned the loft upside down searching for it, and after quite a bit of time had passed and no sign of the ring we decided to move on. Or so I thought…

We found a ring we both loved. The ring needed to be ordered in the correct size so the live in went down to the jeweler {alone} to determine what that was. It never crossed my mind that he would need a guardian for this task. Fast forward a week later, the ring has been delivered, and the first thing out of my mouth is, “it seems really, really loose.” He assures me it’s not. This banter continues back and forward for the better part of a 3 hour drive to visit my family. Once there, every.single.person. tells him the ring is too loose. We pull and tug on the ring, easily getting it to come off. He finally concedes.

I return the first ring and order its replacement. He refuses anything but a half size down. Again, I didn’t think he needed a guardian for this decision. Fast forward another week, and the smaller version has now arrived. Again, it looks really loose to my sister and I. Again, he assures us it is not. I leave it.

Sidebar: Another rad characteristic of our marriage is that we {mainly he} tend to share information that may cause rage in front of other people.

The next day we are in the bank, sitting at a desk being helped with some business. The bank also happens to be the live in’s place of work, and although we are taking care of personal business, we are being helped by several of his employees. About half way through the meeting he slides his ring off, gives it to me, gives me a look of sheer fear, and says, “this is a teeny bit too loose I think.” My response, “I am going to neck punch you right now.”

Today I went back to return the 2nd ring and I am pretty sure they assumed I had been left at the alter…again. They treated me as if I would start crying at any moment, until I explained the situation…again. His 3rd ring should arrive next week.

I truly hope this is the end of the story, for everyone’s sake.

On Second Thought

Last week the riveting topic of Spring Cleaning got brought up. The unanimous opinion was that Spring Cleaning is a bit overrated and tasks that fall into this category should be more efficiently dealt with at the time of a move. In other words, the back of a closet, the junk drawer, and the toiletries should remain untouched until moving boxes are involved. Otherwise, who really cares?

However, my opinion may have just changed.

I was having a few friends over this week and on the menu was cheese and crackers. My sister, my live in, and I were in the grocery store picking out items for the evening. When we came down the cracker aisle I waived it off, telling them we had plenty of crackers at home. I mean plenty.

Perhaps it was a hostess’s intuition, perhaps it was sheer luck, but something said we’d better open the crackers we have at home and make sure they are still good. After all, I couldn’t exactly recall when they were purchased. We opened the 1st box…they were all natural, all organic, whole wheat – maybe that’s why they tasted a little dry? We were onto the 2nd box. Not good. Couldn’t figure out why though. 3rd box. 4th box. Not good at all. In fact, they tasted so bad we immediately spit the cracker back out, drank some water, and made faces that looked similar to that of a screaming newborn. 5th box…still terrible. 6th box? So freakin’ awful the live in brought it about two inches from his mouth and the stench was so strong he had to throw it away. We’re talking, really, really bad here friends.

6 boxes later (and a trash bag full of reject crackers) we checked the expiration dates. 2004. Hmm. The oil in the crackers had gone rancid. We were eating extremely expired food. I was about to serve my guests extremely expired food. Not only could my digestive system not handle this, I would have lost any street cred I once had as a party thrower. And that, my friends, would lead to clinical depression of the worst kind.

Even better…we had to have moved those crackers with us when we came to the loft, the 2004 expiration date it a dead giveaway. We couldn’t even abide by our ‘wait till moving day to clean out the pantry’ rule. Who are we?

Maybe now that we have more shelf space we can transfer the Top Ramen we moved with us to the more convenient cabinet…that stuff NEVER goes bad, right?!

A Random Act of Kindness

This last Friday one of the nicest things happened to us since living in this neighborhood.

We were walking from Jo Bar, home of the best drink in Portland, and we were met by a man carrying a huge bunch of freshly cut lavender.

He was giving away free bouquets to strangers on the street.

It was so impactful to see the faces of surprise and gratitude as he walked down the sidewalk offering the flowers.

Their fragrance covered the blocks as he passed.

We were headed to a little party that evening and passed the lavender on there…

{A really grainy camera phone pic}

MO...Mission O-ccomplished

Hello, my friends, long time no see. I am in the midst of a little self praise. I love setting goals for myself, and I love even more the feeling of actually moving toward reaching the goals. Currently my goal is to be more “lady like”.

I come back to this dream every summer…and fall, and winter too, but generally most often in the summer. You see, I hate shaving my legs. I absolutely loathe it. I often wonder what celebrities do in this area. I can’t imagine someone with unlimited financial resources actually shaving their own legs. Laser hair removal? Waxing? What’s their answer? If I weren’t saving up for my eye lid lift, I would be saving for total hair removal of the fiercest kind. Until then, I am stuck with the old fashion razor and cream method.

My poor live in. My other qualities must out weight this teeny tiny issue, because it’s very rare to find me with silky smooth legs. Not even on our wedding day did I shave. Not even on our wedding day.

However, since I don’t know of an AA meeting for shaving, I will proclaim to you my friends that I have been clean for four weeks now. This is a big deal. Sure, I have to wake up 25 minutes earlier than I normally do because I have the speed of a 14 year old. Sure, my knees have razor burn every.singe.time. But, I am clean. I can wear skirts now. I can go swimming. My life has no restrictions now.

I don’t know if I would necessarily fall into the “lady like” category, but I do know my legs would.

Here Come the Claws

We ran into one of our neighbors this evening. Actually, I should say my live in husband ran into one of our neighbors this evening. To her, I was invisible.

She was outside walking her dogs and we were headed out of the building. She trots right up and starts chatting him up about their shared passion, Beaver football. She is 75. He is 30. I think it’s fair to call her a cougar. They stood there exchanging pre-season stats and discussing ticket sales for a few minutes. I stood there like an awkward third wheel.

Sidebar: This is a reoccurring theme with Ms. Cougar. The live in has even been invited into her den before.

When it’s time to leave she says good bye…to him. I, remember, am invisible to her. This confuses me because most old people love me. It’s the red hair. They think it’s precious. But, apparently it’s only precious when they’re not on the prowl.

Watch out for her, live in, watch out!

We’ve eaten all of our cherries.

I miss them already.

{my photo}

...

Timing is Everything

What makes our relationship work? Good communication. It’s key for us.

For example…yesterday I was coming home from work and walked into our building lobby through the parking garage. At the same time I see my live in enter the lobby elevator after coming home from his workout. I sprinted toward him screaming his name like a crazy person, expecting to see him hold the elevator for his lady friend. I was wrong. I made it just in time to see the elevator door close. I caught the next elevator up and saw the live in walking about 30 feet in front of me down the hall to our loft. Again, I sprinted toward him screaming his name like a crazy person, expecting to see him hold the front door for his lady friend. Again, I was wrong. The door slammed in my face.

We finally reunited inside the loft. We had a good laugh, talked about the rudeness of wearing headphones in the building, and broke some news to the live in. I saw my moment and had to take it. He was already 2 points behind for the elevator / door incident. My news would cost me 3, maybe 4 points, and we’d be even steven. Am I right, ladies?

I closed my eyes and confessed. “I almost took off my side view mirror while parking the car. I was distracted and it hit the fire hydrant.” (Hard.) I peaked through one eye to see his reaction. He was trying not to laugh. He asked how I was distracted while parking. I told him. But, I knew what would come next. A threat. A threat to take away our new GPS.

You see, I am in love with our new GPS device. I love it, I love it, I love it. However, it’s giving me sensory overload. Technically I don’t need a GPS device to find my parking space, but I do love looking at it and, well…bam…that’s where the fire hydrant meets the mirror so to speak. This is my second offense with the GPS in four short days. On Friday “she” told me to turn right. She told me again, and again, so I began to turn right. Except my light was red and there was a car right in the line of fire. I caught myself before it actually got ugly. But, she tricked me. She should have known. I don’t consider that one my fault.

The live in said my next car is a 1981 Honda Civic. Fine by me, as long as GPS comes with it.

More Hood River...

My friends, I hope you all are having a nice long weekend.

Here are some more

photos from our little day trip to Hood River.

This town is one of our ultimate faves.

Amazing food, cool people, and tons to do…

{We could spend hours hanging out on the grass watching the kite surfers, sail boats, and wind surfers...one day we'll take kite surfing lessons.}

{A sweet local hangout...Mike's Ice Cream.}

{Dog River Coffee Co. has the best lavender lemonade. Never tasted better. Seriously.}

Hood River Cherries

The live in and I went on a little

adventure to Hood River today to pick cherries.

We both applied the 'one for the bucket, one for the mouth' method...

...so much fun.

{u-pick cherries at alice's orchard in hood river}

We Do Voodoo

Tonight we were pleasantly surprised to see the Voo Doo Doughnut van

sitting right outside our building.

The live in could not resist…

{The live in at First Thursday}

Isn't it Ironic...

…that I am Mapquesting directions to the FedEx warehouse,

where I will pick up our new GPS device?

hmm...?

{Tube Map}