5-year plan

I am a fan of 5-year plans. I have one for work - which I just completed 3 years ahead of schedule. I also have one for kids - in 5 years we'd like to start having children. And because I have never changed a diaper and really enjoy my independence, I've started preparing for that overwhelming life change now. Thus, stage 1: become acclimated to the world of pregnancy/babies. So far I've read Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year and Andrea J. Buchanan's Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of it. I also read several mommy blogs. Someday I'm going to tackle the infamous What to Expect When Your Expecting because shouldn't you know what to expect before you're expecting? I also hope to learn from a distant friend who has the same cloth diaper/homemade baby food aspirations I do, who is pioneering the way for the rest of us with her newborn.
I'm made it clear to husband that in addition to setting aside money for baby, a condition of me blowing up like a balloon is setting aside funds for a post-partum membership at the renowned posh for-serious-fitness-people-only gym in our neighborhood.
I'm already worried about day care, breastfeeding, $$$, and the fact that I can't imagine myself having a kid. I can't believe people my age have kids. I still feel very much like a kid myself.

Near misses

Moments of infinite stupidity in my life:
1. Quitting all youth sports.
2. Trying out for the flag corps in high school (I shudder just typing it).
3. Thinking that it wasn't a big deal when I started dating Husband on the close heels of another relationship.
4. Thinking that I'd be happy teaching.

Moments of infinite wisdom:
1. Drifting from the popular crowd in 6th grade when they began being cruel to other girls.
2. Recognizing that I cannot wear coral, don't look good in bangs, and shouldn't wear square-necked shirts.
3. Choosing self-respect over winning and selling out in high school debate.
4. Recognizing almost immediately that Husband was the One.

Nerdy

BREAKING NEWS: I may be going to England next January! More later.

PROTEIN-DEFICIENT NEWS: I checked out the new USDA food pyramid to see what they are all about and to create my own personalized little pyramid. Because I am a lover of charts and graphs (see anal retentiveness a.k.a. nerd, previous entry), I entered in what I ate for the day. I achieved only 3 out of my 5.5 servings of meat/protein (through bean soup, almonds, and tofu), but my nutrition chart (which they also include) said that I got more than the daily recommended allowance of protein. Should I be eating less protein-rich protein? It's so confusing.

BOOKNERD NEWS: Read a series of delightful essay and snippet-like books this weekend: The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Rosenthal, and The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell.

NEWS FOR EVA FANS: Why nerds make good husbands

Five-star or five-person tent

I sometimes like to pretend I am the hip spontaneous type... the type B kind of person who cannot do math and who feels things instead of listening to their brain. But I am not. I am the nine-year-old who asked for a hanging file system for my desk drawer so I could organize things. And now, I am the person who created an H Family Vacation Preference Indicator survey to assess where we should go on vacation next year. Yes, I am my dad. But to my credit, the indicator was useful - we are very close to booking a place, and we've only been at this for a month! You'll recall we are months ahead of the debacle that was last year's decision process.

Left to my own devices, Husband and I are frugal, thrifty travelers... seeking out clean nice facilities, although of the B&B, tent, or cabin sort. But I can fit in as well in tent living and buying meals from the grocery store as I can in five star hotels and gourmet meals. Give me a giant ocean front room and I will nod coolly to the concierge and say, "This looks fine." I melt for good service, though, and cannot resist cooing over all of the little extras... such as people coming around with Evian spritzers, bowls of strawberries or sorbet, offering to clean my sunglasses or fetch a CD player. Uno mas!

But I really can't stand anything in between. It has to be all the way nice or just basic. There's nothing worse than a Best Western Potomac View.

Husband and I had a Small Fight this week. We don't often have fights of any size. This is an event! You should have had ringside seats! But we have reconciled and can now enjoy the equally infrequent act of making up.

Morning after pickle

Snapshots from my weekend:
Wrangling vines from our lilac bushes in the rain, getting all soaked and dirty akin to camping and then throwing the clothes in the washer, cleaning up, and going out for Thai food with the satisfaction of having put in a hard morning’s work.

Attempting to rehydrate Sunday morning and assessing whether I had a gossip hangover (where I’ve revealed/inquired too much). Proclaimed myself free and clear, and while munching on a pickle (gotta replace that sodium), shared an detail from the night before with Husband, who reminded me that I’d shared the same detail last night when I’d stumbled in and collapsed in a chair moaning “drunk....druuuuuunk,” and shaking my head repentantly (but not too fast).

Posts I wrote today but deleted: a random series of thoughts that ending up coming full circle in a clever yet banal way; an essay on love death sex money a la the San Diego list, but I lost steam after death.

Coming soon... more sex!

I recently learned that people like to read about love, death, sex, or money. I do not talk much about love (beyond my affection for Kozy Shack), death (beyond my kitty dying!), sex (I know it’d be a lot more interesting if I wrote about my sex life like other bloggers, but that stays in our house/yard/car/random public venue), and I’m pretty sure my talk about money is not the kind that the speaker intended. Maybe I can get around the sex thing by writing about other people’s sex – Theystolemybike, now with weekly sex updates from my friends!

Ok, Ok, here’s one vaguely sex-related story. I was playing racquetball as I do over lunch with my friend and she mentioned that she saw this guy she recognized as she was buying pansies, and she realized she knew him from the local porn shop. I raised my eyebrow and she clarified that it’s a porn/video store. As my eyebrow was still raised she further clarified that she’s never seen porn before and chatted on a bit about that. Then there was this silence where I didn’t say anything, because while I am no purveyor of porn I can’t really say that I’ve never seen one, and it would take a lot of work to explain all that. So I turned and served.

Magic swirling ship

Four writers that I love enough to have read everything they’ve published: Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Junichiro Tanizaki, Jane Austen.

I am taking a new approach to reading. Rather than my voracious read-anything-I-feel-like-binge method, which allows for some Junk to slip in with the Good Reads, I’m going to go for a more thoughtful, Zen-type approach where I am choosier about what I read and try to get more out of them, as if I had to discuss them in class.

Am reading Kafka on the Shore by Murakami and loving it! Only Murakami can pull off stuff like this. I feel lost on a wonderful scary magic swirling ship, and like a kid can’t wait to read this night’s segment.

Don't mention the war

My dad helps companies to become more profitable, and sometimes I type up surveys he does of the employees. While the surveys are generally tedious (We need better communication... I don't get paid enough... same same same) there are always a few standouts. They fall into two categories: 1. the swearing/offensive kind, i.e. "My boss is a jackass and can eat shit" and 2. the revealing of abhorrent business practices, i.e. "If we don't have enough money the boss will pretend that we never received certain invoices and put them off until they threaten to sue us." Through typing thousands of surveys I have discovered that the favorite cliché of the disgruntled worker is: "Too many chiefs, not enough Indians."
I told husband about this last night.
Husband: That's really really, amazingly offensive.
Me: Yeah. [pause]. Well not really, I mean Indians had chiefs... so...
Husband: Are you kidding?
Husband: Too many Jews, not enough Indians???
Me: [horrified] Are you kidding? I said too many chiefs, not enough Indians!

So remember my friend who is Jewish and my alarm in almost saying "verboten" in front of her? Now I'm so self-conscious about it that inadvertently my stream-of-conscious is firing up all sorts of Holocaust-type commentary when talking with her. Today she mentioned how it my jacket was spring-like, and I almost started humming Springtime for Hitler. Nein!

Kale or culottes, cats or concrete

Give the girl a hefty tax return and a salary increase and she turns into a glutton for consumerism.
Now that we don't have to watch every dollar, suddenly I feel free! Free to go out to lunch without factoring it into my weekly spending! Free to buy a random chai latte* from the local cafe on a Tuesday night without forgoing Friday's coffee morning! Free to develop my digital pictures for a user-friendly place and not use the Best Buy photo rebate card I got with my camera that is impossible to use because you must use it in the store yet can only order photo processing online.
But with this freedom comes many agonizing decisions. The money is not endless, so I am faced with dilemmas like: a summer's supply of organic veggies or much-needed new clothes? (I have a rapidly increasing number of pairs of underwear** with holes. Enough said). Two new cats and a summer trip or fixing our garage wall? Paying more down on the car payments or the mortgage?

*The secret to the cafe's chai latte, is, surprisingly, their use of a powdered chai mix. I know this flies into the face of common sense and the most holy Oregon Chai, but I have always had a fondness for crunchy bits in my beverages - i.e. partially dissolved cocoa, Kool-aid, etc.
**When checking the thesaurus for synonyms for underwear, I found this: smallclothes. Hee hee. I will adopt it as my own.