Moral: Julie and I met while BEING AWESOME.

СВЕТИ ГЕОРГИActual conversation in the car on the way home from dinner:

Cassidy: Mom, how did you meet Julie?
Ben: In a strip club.
Me: OMG we did NOT MEET in s STRIP CLUB. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN?! DUDE!
Cassidy: hahahaah So, how did you meet her?
Me: Street racing.
Ben: BECAUSE THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER!
Me: Yes, it is.

Naked dancer or criminal street racer. Pick your poison.

My poison was driving fast down long straight farm roads in the dead of night.

Moral: Julie and I met while BEING AWESOME.

Moments like that.

Today was one of those days where I sat down at one point and the house was completely quiet. Cassidy had left to spend the night at her OMGBFF’s house, Ben was still at work, the dogs were sleeping blissfully at my feet, bellies full and properly rubbed and Samus was curled up on my lap, a warm little ball of cute and it was just… perfect.

10 minutes before that I was on the phone yelling and fighting for something I believe in so strongly it causes PHYSICAL pain. Actual. Physical. Pain.

Right then, in the middle of my zen calm, the phone rang and after the conversion I’d just had, I dreaded even looking to see who it was but that Mommy Sense kicks in when your kid is away from home and you HAVE to check the phone because no matter how old they get, when they are away and the phone rings there’s always that 1/4 of a second that you say a silent prayer they are okay. So I do, and it’s Ben and I silently thank the Universe that my daughter is still okay and answer the phone:

Ben: So you want to go see Green Lantern tonight? There’s an 8:15 show and we can do dinner first as long as we leave when I get home.
Me: I was actually going to ask if you wanted to see that tonight but I didn’t want to push too much with your back hurting.
Ben: Let’s go! I’m good!
Me: Okay! I’ll change!
Ben: OKAY!

And you guys, I got off the phone and for a few minutes the world was perfect. Cassidy was off doing whatever it is tween girls do on sleepovers. She’s spending the night with my Dream Friend for her. Her friend Alexis is exactly what I’d pick if I could have picked her friend FOR HER. She’s sweet, polite and quite mostly but every once in awhile she will crack up with this hearty belly laugh that is infectious. She is a good secret keeper. And her parents are nice and smile a lot and participate!

And Ben. Ben’s back is hurt so sitting for a long time hurts him and I know that he WANTED to see Green Lantern but he also knew that I needed to not sit on the couch and Be Sad and Be Worried tonight and he suggest this movie as much to help me as he did for himself and… I just love him so much. I know that I’ve said this before but, you guys, this man. This man is amazing. And selfless. And patient. And I’m so lucky to have him.

And then Kumo farted so loud he woke himself up. And Danica was like WHAT WAS THAT FULL ATTENTION IMMINENT INVASION. And Samus was like WHY ARE WE RUNNING IS THERE TOYS, WHERE ARE THE TOYS LETS FIND THE TOYS YOU GUYS YEAH!.

And the moment was over. But it’s moments like that, those moments, they’ve kept me sane the last week or so.

I have a really long, probably ugly, war in front of me but as long as I can grab onto these moments between battles, remember what I’m fighting for, I will succeed.

‘lil snippets

Ben: What did the fisrt person who landed on the moon say?
Cassidy: OH MY GOSH!
Me: *laugh*

Friday Craigslist LAWLS

Remember all those rocks I mentioned before? The ones we removed, one at a time, from the GIGANTIC pond in the back yard? Well, we’ve been meaning to put them up on Craigslist for quite some time and Ben finally got them up today. Now, we are GIVING these rocks away.

FOR FREE.

We could probably make a few hundred dollars on them but we JUST. WANT. THEM. GONE. and posting them for free Ben had quite a few hits in a very short amount of time. The first response was from a nice couple that is in the process of building a pond for themselves and are going to be here tomorrow morning to haul them all away.

BUT! The great thing about Craigslist is that there are always THOSE people out there. You know, THEM. And Ben got one. The following exchange is the reason that I was never in a great rush to list them myself and also why I’m so glad Ben took on the task:

Crazy ass Rock Guy (AKA: Steve):

Hi,

Yes, I am very interested to take most of all of your rock this Sunday. Sat might be possilbe after 3 but I have to wait for another confirmation. However, Sunday is best for me. Please let me know if it is ok.

Thanks,
Steve
[Phone number redacted to protect the innocent stupid]

Ben:

Rocks are tenatively spoken for, but will update once they’re taken (hopefully tomorrow).

Crazy ass Rock Guy:

No idea what you mean by saying rocks are tenatively spoken for. So you still have them available or not?

Ben:

Tentatively spoken for means that someone has contacted me and is making plans to come get them, but they have not picked them up yet.

Thanks,
Ben

Crazy ass Rock Guy:

You must be an University teacher or belonging to the Poetry Club. In a daliy life and common usage, we don’t use your language. It can only cause more confusion.

Thanks,
Steve

Ben:

I’m sorry for taking the time to give you an update. Please disregard all of my previous emails and the advertisement I took the time to write, and generosity for giving away free landscaping rocks (just…wow…). I don’t know who ‘we’ is, but I don’t belong to that group.

Let me put it in language that better suits you (sigh).

You will never get them.

Enjoy your weekend,
-a generous asshole.

And because Steve is one of those persistant kind of whack jobs he didn’t give up and Ben got these about an hour ago:

Fucken smart ass…rocks don’t speak man so wtf u mean by saying rocks are tentatively spoken for…….U don’t even know what the fuck u are talking about u idiot.. tentatively AHOLE ….make more sense

Then 8 minutes later:

fucken retarded W trash– Obama is a president now u ahole…..

WOW?! Obama is president?! I had no clue! I really didn’t! I’m so glad that I had this educated voting member of society to inform me!

LOST!

Yesterday on the way home:

Ben: LOST TOMORROW OMG!
Me: I bet it will be SO GOOD.
Ben: Yeah, it will be answers to some of the questions, twists you’d never expect and will end with a cliffhanger!
Me: So… It will be like every other episode but twice a long.
Ben: …
Me: It’s going to be the same thing as always, BUT LONGER. I’m totally not even going to bother watching.
Ben: FINE! YOU DON’T WATCH THEN!
Me: I WON’T!
Ben: YOU ARE DEAD TO ME!

But really, if you are a fan of the show, you’ll be tuned in. If you aren’t a fan of the show YOU ARE DEAD TO ME!

I’ll be ignoring the Interwebz tonight to avoid spoilers for LOST and Idol (TEAM ADAM!) and just wanted to give all my peeps a heads up. I think people get a little worried on an Idol night when I’m not TweetYelling at Paula. But really, she’s JUST NOW admitting to drug use?! REALLY!?

OMGLOST!

The End

No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is NOT saying.

So a question was posed on a message board about your feelings and if you share them with your S/O and it reminded me about a conversation that Ben and I had one night over margaritas and mexican food. I don’t remember EXACTLY the situation I had explained to him but I remember telling him how I had over reacted to something he had done but rather than tell him, decided to wait to see how I felt later that day. Looking back I could see that I was acting slightly nutcase-ish but we were talking about my mood swings in general. The gun part of the conversation is real and makes me crack up even today.

Copy/pasting my forum post:

I trust Ben explicitly so he’s always who I turn to when I’m feeling like I need to talk.

I’m not always the best person to be “in tune” to what I’m actually feeling about something in the heat of the moment. I suffer REALLY bad mood swings when I’m PMSy (like bordering on PMDD) and there are times when I know that I’m probably over reacting in the “feelings” department so I usually wait an hour and reassess how I feel. Sometimes I’m like, WOW TOTALLY OVER REACTED THERE! Or if I feel like I was justified in feeling the way I did, then I can tell him and he’s always REALLY open to listening to me. There are even times I tell him about the over reacting.

Me: Hey guess what. When you were doing the dishes earlier and you put them in the dishwasher wrong even though I’ve explained it you to a BILLION times I wanted to take the turkey baster and shove it up your ass, suck out your internal organs and feed them to you for dinner. HA! ISN’T THAT FUNNY!?
Ben: *blink* *blink*
Me: But see, I THOUGHT about it and looking back I can see that I was probably being a little reactionary.
Ben: And this is why we don’t keep guns in the house.
Me: To keep me from killing you or you from killing me?
Ben: Yes.
Me: *nods*

I like that we can laugh about the fact that I’m a psychotic nutjob.

It was NOT like this in the beginning. I can’t even imagine how Ben put up with me and my walls. I was so closed off to my own feelings there was no way for me to express them to other people without completely screwing it all up and either pissing everybody off or sounding like a complete jackass. And this is not to say that I’m perfect about this now because I am SO NOT. It’s still something that I struggle with and try to work on. It’s BETTER now but I still have quite a bit of room for improvement and I’m sure that Ben can see that much more than I do because now he can read me like a book and is, in a majority of the cases, better at assessing my feelings that I am.

Yesterday I twittered how every day I’m reminded how lucky I am to have such an amazing husband and it’s true. Every single day he does something to make me love him more, trust him more, value him more… and I know I’m not always the best at reminding him of that. He asked me what I meant when I twittered and I didn’t have the words at the time to properly explain what I meant so here it is:

I’m reminded every day what an amazing man I’ve married… because he hasn’t shot me yet.