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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a new love affair

I have a new obsession.  A new love.  I think about it all the time.

No, it’s not Bejeweled Blitz (a terribly addicting game on Facebook).  It’s this:

Whole Foods.

I love it there.

The produce is beautiful and delicious.  The meat counter – Heavens to Betsy! – is unrivaled by our local grocery chain.  The cheese stand – oh, if only cheese did not wreck havoc on my digestive system – I would’ve eaten the whole stand. The. Whole. Stand. The gelato isn’t just gelato – it’s sexy gelato.  This gelato romances me from across the bakery, glowing all hot and sultry-like.  This gelato says, “Emily, please, just take a look.  Just a little look.”

And then there’s the nut butter.  Fresh ground nut butter.  Nut butter the way that God intended.  Pure, unadulturated nut butter.

Heaven help me.

And let me tell you – this is true love.  I know a few of Whole Food’s faults already.  I know it is pricey.  I know the take-and-bake pizza is terrible.  I know that Annie’s Rice Pasta and Cheddar Mac & Cheese is nothing like Kraft’s.  Nothing.  Not even in the same ballpark.  It is sacrilege that they put this Mac & Cheese in a blue box as if to suggest that they are comparable to Kraft’s neon orange bliss.  Consider yourselves warned.

But these few faults are like finding out your husband is leaves the seat up.  You still love him, you just know to check before you sit in the middle of the night.

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::burp::

Picture this:

Frank and I are sitting on the couch, watching old DVR’d Saturday Night Live episodes.  He’s leaning against me while I am trying to master this terrible game called Bejeweled Blitz.  My mother is addicted to the game, so if I ever want to relate to her again, I need to learn this game.

ANYWAY.  We’re sitting here and I burped through my nose.

You know, the polite way to burp.

But as Frank has explained to me on several occasions, this does not “descent” the burp.

So anyway, I polite burped and blew it out my nose – and onto Frank.

A few seconds later.

“Oh… ohh… EM! Seriously?? Did you just burp? What was that?  Seriously – that is nasty – really?  It’s not funny.  Stop laughing. It’s gross. I’ve told you before that is gross.  Why would you do that?  Why?  Seriously.  No, stop laughing.  You knew it was wrong.  Why?”

“Frank, c’mon, I mean, I didn’t realize it would be THAT bad.”  Although, admittedly, we just finished ravioli with pesto sauce and bread with chunks of garlic cloves in it. So yeah, I guess I kind of knew in the back of my head that it could get ugly.

Frank moves over to the other side of the couch.

“I gotta put this on the blog.”

“Don’t put it on the blog.”

“I have to.  I am trying to authentically document our life together.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

Frank shakes his head is clearly disgusted.  “You are the grossest wife EVER.”

A few minutes later, Frank is watching Community and giggling to himself.

“Oh, hey, Em, I realized today that I owe you an apology for something.”  I look over at him, surprised.  A rare moment indeed!

“Really? For what?”

Joy of joys!

Realization passes over Frank’s face.

“Yeah, but I’m not going to tell you.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.  Oh man, the look on your face…” [insert uncontrollable laughter] “… it’s like that thing from Star Trek 2 that Kahn puts in the guy’s head to make him go crazy.  Blog that!”

And so I did.

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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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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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