Birthday

I've always loved this song, but this year lyrics are especially apropos.
Happy Birthday my love.

Ohio

A few weeks ago the boy and I took what I'm referring to as our second honeymoon. Just us and no internet and no cell phone coverage in a cabin in the Ohio hills. We've never had even an overnight trip, just the two of us since we've been married. It was absolutely perfect.

The house frame was ancient, but totally re-done in a kind of rustic modern style. Elegant butcher block counters combined with a huge massaging showerhead with an original stone fireplace and quirky little details. Sometimes I get scared of the overly-floral bed and breakfasts out there, it's really hard to find a modern tasteful one, and this one was perfect, we couldn't have asked for more.

Matches for the grill kept in there.

There were so many porches and little outdoor spaces, I spent every minute I could reading or eating or drinking outside, just soaking up the green and clearing my mind.

We drank that champagne on a perfect rainy afternoon. I have a problem with saving things forever, and I was determined to go ahead and drink this, in an effort to enjoy life minute by minute, before it turned to vinegar. I'm not going to say it blew my mind, but maybe it should have. Having never had anything so fancy my tongue had no idea how to process it, I think. It was really really good. It was miles above anything I've ever tasted before, but it wasn't pure nirvana. In the end it was a nice champagne for sipping on a tree-top level porch with my love. I wrote down a lot of thoughts about what it takes to drink a bottle of champagne like that, kind of Gourmet Rhapsody style, but I will save that for another time.

During the daily thunderstorms we would grab a glass of something nice and go out onto the porches and talk. I learned some new things about my boy, stories, thoughts and opinions that I had never heard before. Sometimes I forget that we don't know every single thing about each other. We only entered each other's worlds a few (ten!) years ago and there are whole lives full of experiences from pre-us. It's so crazy and fun to learn something new about him and it keeps happening, all the time.

I would kind of like to live in Ohio now.

It's always been our goal to eventually live on some kind of land, and this just reaffirmed how good that would be for our souls.

The only bad thing about the location was the lack of good food (for any trip to be worth its beans it must have great food in my book). We did our best with Wal-Mart's finest, and I hope I'm not offending anyone when I say that their top of the line steak and crab legs were pretty terrible. The best meal we had was a little pasta made with produce and herbs that I'd brought from home. If we did actually live in rural Ohio I guess we'd just have to grow our own steak and crab legs.

I hated to leave, hated it. But gosh darn that real life calls and we dove right back in.

A Look Back at a Big Week

Tonight's drive home was spectacular in so many ways. There was the sunset, as seen here. And the fact that the boy and I, for the first time in our whole relationship, drove fast with the windows down and old Wilco blaring from the stereo. The fast and windows down part are nothing new, but until this week we've never had a working stereo so we usually drive to the tune of our own conversation. Which isn't bad at all. But nothing quite compares to the mood created by the music you love. Especially enhanced by a warm dusky evening on the Chesapeake Bay.

This week was big in some ways. I had a birthday, my 29th to be exact. And almost all my favorite (local) people came out to help me celebrate with a major fancy picnic. I didn't get a single photo, I just soaked it in. As I write I'm reliving it through leftovers - 'The Birthday Sequal: Birthday Harder' Zeb called it tonight - blue cheese, truffle honey, homemade bread, an olive assortment, rosemary olive oil cake and champagne.

A day later we hit 3 years of lucky in love, and we spent that day buying our first joint car, a traumatic, funny, and ultimately bonding experience that I can't imagine we'll top in terms of memorable anniversaries. We took breaks from the pushy salesmen to wine taste in Virginia, and ended up at a 10 pm dinner at Ceiba with our new ride.

Tonight, driving back from an Annapolis Sound job, in that new ride with the windows down and this sunset and those tunes and my husband of three years I felt my mind calm a bit, and remembered how good life is right now.

Happy Valentine's Day!

(via Le Love)

Year Two

It just keeps getting better and better.

(Julene Harrison)

He's home. The world's right.

Life Without Zeb: Night 2

Zeb did not leave me. In case that was not clear. He is away on a business trip, leaving me home alone for the first time. Contrary to my expectations, I've been fine (sorry love, it doesn't mean I wasn't missing you!) Last night at happy hour with co-workers, sister, and Parkers I wished he were there, but I remembered how to act in public without him. After that was a peaceful girl night involving Brie and Sarah Jessica Parker, and I slept very well. I remembered how to make my own coffee this morning. I had a good day. I began to wonder if I am completely insensitive (or is it independent?). Could it be that I can live, at least for a few days, without him?

Then there was a mouse in the kitchen. I'm completely undone. It wasn't a scampering mouse as afraid of me as I am of him, he absolutely meandered past me, in no hurry to keep his cover. I think his little mouse eye winked at my horrified face staring down at him. Now I'm trapped in the dining room with a heart rate sky high, and my dinner is burning in the oven. All of a sudden I miss Zeb so much that I could cry. Tonight I had great plans to clean my whole house, write the great American novel, and do yoga. Instead I think I'll huddle in the furthest corner from the kitchen, which is my bed. Come home soon my boy. 

Life Without Zeb: Night 1

Kicking and screamingly (or at least whiningly) giving up on the vow that we will be the next John Lennon and Yoko Ono and never spend a night apart.

Trying to re-create, tonight, a certain kind of night that I used to have often, pre-Z. A night with just me alone in my shadowy apartment, candles lit, Over the Rhine playing something melancholy, cheese melted over bread, and a movie watched all cuddled up in a big soft chair. I was lonely, those nights, but I loved them too. It was a beautiful, aware, purposeful lonely, probably better called solitude. I'm alone tonight. I suppose it's my choice whether tonight will end in beautiful solitude or just plain old loneliness.

Music To This Girl's Ears...

From the hubby: 'If I were Jim Halpert, you would be my Pam.'

Incidentally, we are very very glad The Office is back. We have something, again, to live for.

Reason # 1,384,087 Why I Love My Man...

Saturday morning comes shining through the window and he rolls over and all cute sleepy like he volunteers, 'Hey babe, do you want to go to Anthropologie this morning?' This involves him battling traffic for two hours round trip on the DC beltway, two more hours of waiting while I examine, not once but four times, every single object in the store, then he has to come up with an opinion on the ten drawer knob options I've narrowed down to. All this he suffers through and all he asks in return is a burrito for dinner. Wow. What a man.

Will It Ever Stop?

That seeing the man I love across the room and getting weak-kneed and forgetting what I was saying 'cause I mean LOOK AT HIM!

Birth, Marriage, and Death

You could say this week was significant. I entered my late twenties, the boy and I entered our second year of marriage, and his dear grandfather passed away. To celebrate the first we spent a lovely day in Virginia wine country, to celebrate the second we dined at a top-notch local steakhouse (courtesy of our landlord who shoved a large gift certificate under our front mat this week), and to celebrate Grandpa Scevers life we'll be in Oregon this weekend. Thanks to all of you for your comments, emails, texts and phone calls for each of these events.

Five Plus One

Anniversary Day at the Turner exhibit - Zeb's favorite artist, now perhaps challenging Klimt as mine.

Happy



Zeb and a "Nude Woman"

S and Z Forever

The beginning...

"Inside those years, they had no reason to hurry. They were young. Their world was clean. It was church on Sunday. It was reading books, soaking in the bathtub. Picking wild berries and making jelly at night, when the white kitchen was cool with a breeze, the windows up. They always knew the phase of the moon, but seldom the day of the week." Diary - Chuck Palahniuk