long distance love

So… Frank is a Pilot.  This means he is gone for days and days.  It also means that we experience much of our relationship over the phone.

Example conversation:

Emily (E): Sooo, what else is new?

Frank (F): HMmmmmm.

Long pause.  You have to be ok with long pauses when carrying on a marriage via phone.  You have to give the other person a chance to “buffer”.  Buffering is when their brain catches up with their mouth.  The reason that their brain and mouth get out of sync is because they are playing Bejeweled Blitz online.  (Darn you, Mother, for showing us that game!)

E: Yeah?

F: So, yeah, well, I’m still listening to that zombie book on CD.

Background info: Frank has a love/hate relationship with zombies movies/stories.  While he hates, hates, HATES being scared, he can’t help himself when it comes to Zombies.  He’s like Bubba from Forest Gump, “There are zombies that run fast, zombies that run slow, zombies that swim, zombies that dance and zombies that can be frozen and thawed…” and an hour later, I’m drooling on myself, stabbing myself in the face with a pencil and wondering if I, myself, am a zombie…

E: aaaaaaahhhhhrrrrrggghhhh.

F: Whatever. So anyway, zombies –

E: No, that was me gagging at you.

F: Oh, so you weren’t making a zombie noise to scare me?

E: No!  I was groaning that we are STILL talking about zombies.

F: Well, cuz zombies make that moaning noise, so I thought you were trying to scare me.  Well anyway –

And he’s off and running on to his next part of the zombie adventure.  Something about under water zombies that getcha when you’re swimming.  Which, unbeknown to Frank, gives me a whole new arsenal of things I can terrify him with…

Not only is this a zombie, but it's also what I look like when I'm listening to Frank talk about zombies...

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three things: walking in the front door

Please do not judge me for these three things.

Pretty, pretty please.

So these are the three things that happened when I finally got home tonight.

1.  What died in here??

Frank and I have had a few cases of smellasitis.  Basically, it’s when something wreaks to high heaven.  The source of this odoriferous offense?  About 99% of the time it is the garbage and of the times it’s the garbage, about 90% of the time, it’s because I tossed old flowers in there.  When will I learn? When??  I nearly passed out when I walked in the door and knew instantly it was the smell of rotting flowers.  Oh, and did I mention that TODAY was garbage day?  Guess I won’t be using the garage for the rest of the week… yikes!

2. Mail Call.

So, I hate getting the mail. I think there are two experiences that turned me off to the whole “getting the mail” adventure.  First, there was the time that my friend mailed me friendship bread batter.  In a zip lock bag, in a manila envelope.  I’m surprised, quite frankly, that the batter didn’t explode a long time prior to making it to my mailbox.  Or maybe it did explode, but our friendly postal carrier simply didn’t care.  Regardless, I reached in for the mail one day and pulled out… a hand full of soggy batter.  Of course, initially I didn’t know that the white clumpy goo covering my hand was soggy friendship bread batter.  My initial thought was that someone threw up in my mailbox.

Second, there have been reoccurring incidents of spiders.  I do not like bugs.  If you are a bug, I am sorry, but I do not like you.  It’s a blanket statement, but it is 100% true 100% of the time.  Even butterflies sort of creep me out.  I know bugs do lots of great things and I am grateful for their service, but I do not like them.  Anyway, spiders have taken up residence in our mailbox.  I live in fear that when I pull out the mail, I will be greeted by a big black hairy spider.  In my worst nightmares, this spider is spewing friendship bread batter.  I know.  It’s rough being me.

All of this means that I am hesitant to get the mail.  Which means that mail sometimes piles up in our mailbox.  Which probably therefore means that our mail carrier curses when she gets to our mailbox, not knowing if she can jam another piece of mail in there. By the way, she/he does an excellent job – sometimes I have to put my foot on the post of the mailbox and pull really hard to get all of the mail out of there.

So, I got the mail today.  It was only 1/2 full of mail.  Only one bill, one magazine, one catalog and no spiders.  Brilliant!

Speaking of mail: Nordstrom is having their anniversary sale until August 2nd. Are you there Nordstrom?  It’s me, Emily…

3. It’s electric.

Our front hall light switch has always been a little tough to flip.  It catches a little bit when you flip it on.  Then one day it really got stuck, so I just pushed it over anyway … and heard a loud snap.  Since then, that light switch just loosely flaps in the wind and sometimes I am able to turn the light on, but mostly not.  The new development tonight is that if you slam the garage door, the light turns on.  So, that’s fun.

I think it’s about time we have an electrician stop by…

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things that have really actually happened in the past week

We ate sugar.  And lots of it. We hosted a cocktail & dessert party and even though we had quite a turn out, our friends are neither the lushes nor the sugar-holics we hoped they were.

Seriously people – if you don’t have to unbutton your pants so you can breathe after a party – did you really have a good time??

We also slept a lot.  A Lot.  Like, more than I thought was normal or possible.  And it was DE-LISH-US.

I have no regrets.

Except about how much sugar I ate.

And how I haven’t gone back to my sugarless lifestyle… I mean… SOMEONE has to eat all of the left overs.

Ahem.

I have also developed an addiction to online Boggle.  You know, the game where the letters get all mixed up and you try to find words in the jumble.  Yeah.  I love that game.  I play it to the exclusion of writing.  Which means there are a LOT of thoughts bumbling around in my head, longing to get out… but then I just ignore it and keep playing Boggle.

Like I said, it’s an addiction.

I also watched an entire TV series called Life.  Sure, it was only 2 seasons long, but it was AWESOME.  And I loved it. Although, ironically while watching Life, I was the one who was desperately in need of getting a real life. Who cares though –  it was something I could get away with while FK was gone.  You know, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him…

But I think the HUGE pile of unfolded laundry in the basement may have been a tip off.

Although, I was able to drag my lap top around, playing the aforementioned TV show while cleaning the house.  So, you know, I was in the clear for a while.

It’s just that I never made it down to the basement.

Or the giant piles of laundry.

You know how you have those emergency pairs of underwear at the bottom of your drawer?  They are for emergencies because they are SO unattractive, that if seen by others, they actually cause an emergency.

It was a dark time in the K-House, but I will say, I spelled a record 60 words while simultaneously watching Life on Hulu. And cleaning the bathroom.

I’m pretty much amazing.

Yup.

Toot. Toot. (my own horn)

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best buy

So we were buying a new computer yesterday.

Just a nice, small laptop for Frank.

The sales lady went to find “Dan” to see if he could help us make this new computer a little bit more compatible with Frank’s iPhone, without dropping $100+ for a new Microsoft Outlook program.

An unsuspecting man named Tom asked if we’d been helped.

Tom: Have you been helped?

Frank: We’re waiting for Dan.

Emily: Where is the bathroom?

Tom: Wait… what?  Dan is in the bathroom?

Frank (not missing a beat): No, Dan is waiting for you in the bathroom.

Tom (unphased): So you need Dan and you need a bathroom?

Us: Yup.

Ah, those cracker-jack Best Buy employees – you can’t put anything past them!

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three things: traveling with the k fam

There is traveling… and then there is traveling with the K Fam.

Thing one: Where is Emily?

Being that I am a model of a light traveler, it takes me about a decade to get through security.  Between getting my shoes, sweater and belt off, tossing my quart sized plastic bag in the bin and pulling out my lap top from my bag – it’s practically a 30 minute process.  If Frank goes through security ahead of me, he’s already at the gate requesting the exit row before I can even get my sweater back on!

Thing two: “Did you know the girl sitting next to me has a cousin who knows your sister’s brother-in-law’s aunt?”

While Frank is happy to hold my hand and listen to his iPod in flight, I love finding out about the people sitting around me.  I’ve had the pleasure of being seated next to a President of a Lutheran Seminary, a guy from the UP going to his son’s wedding in Pennsylvania, an RV Magazine sales rep, a Mormon mother, a singer in a band who recently suffered an unfortunate accident that involved falling on a shard of glass and a guy who was in the mob (seriously – I’m pretty sure he was in the mob!).  Not to worry – if I see someone is reading a book or listening to their iPod, I leave them alone.  But if someone is interested in talking, I just can’t say no!

I’m not saying Frank isn’t chatty, I’m just saying he enjoys solitude a little more than I do.

Thing three: Repeat after me – no checked baggage!

Since one of our primary travel destinations has been Atlanta, Frank and I have had a few… ahem… discussions about my occasional decision to check bags, resulting in at least thirty minute waits at the baggage claim.  Oh, and did I mention the one time that my bags went to Midway and I went to O’Hare?  Yeah.  That was excellent.  Since then, Frank has given me a few lessons on how to pack a bag and has written on my forehead in Sharpie Marker: “No Checked Baggage!”  What can I say?  I hate dragging bags around the airport…

So yeah… “No chopped cabbage!” or… wait… was it,  “No dropped garbage?”  Frank? Hey hon?

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