Showers and flowers and toddlers, oh my!

This has been one thrilling weekend in The Wall. (I'm trying it out, calling Rockwall "The Wall" to see how it goes. Maybe it will catch on. Someone had to be the first one to call Dallas "The Big D".) Anyway, we had friends staying with us with their ball-of-fire toddler who was a little less than a lump of coal the first night due to a terrible ear infection. Fortunately he regained his strength (and energy) and managed to entertain us and our big dog with his antics for the majority of the weekend. It was great to see them again, and despite the minor illness setback, everyone seems well and happy. Baby number two, who is four weeks from being a healthy little girl, said hello to me through Morse code disguised as hiccups. I'm not sure her mom suspected a thing.

In addition to our house guests, our friends from across the world have moved back to the states! Yay for having the D family back home safely. They too are expecting a little one, so all of the ladies threw a shower for them (her) at another friend's home. For a few fleeting hours it felt just like old times again. However, we did realize when discussing car seats and potty training that we'd come a long way from finals and dorm life. It was fantastic to see everyone again. Can't wait to meet the kiddos.

Aside from that, I'm pooped. It was a big weekend. My couch is calling my name for a nap. I'll have pictures soon. To tide you over, be impressed with my horticultural prowess in growing this Knockout Rose. That's its name, though it is an apt description of its beauty as well. As this thing looked like a stick when I planted it, I couldn't be more pleased.

Little indulgences

My absolute favorite summer dessert is blackberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream (Blue Bell, naturally). This weekend in a swirl of company, I couldn't help myself and created a masterpiece of decadent dessert-y goodness. Tart, sweet, flaky, and absolutely fabulous when warm with a scoop of creamy homemade vanilla perfection. The recipe is my step-mother's, and I'm quite certain she does a better job with it than me, but I'm starting to get the impressive top crust arrangement down. It's quite exciting. Because company can only eat so much cobbler, we had plenty left over.

I can't stand to partake of a fattening evening on my own, so I supplied my puppy with a new rawhide. For a dog who has been on a diet for four months, we've entered Nirvana. This is her Valhalla, please do not disturb.

Target is my favorite store

I was wandering around Target tonight, arguably to pick up things for a baby shower I'm part of hosting this weekend, but mostly because I love wandering around Target. Target has everything you could possibly imagine, and is absolutely chock full of things you don't even realize you need. (Unless you're my husband, who doesn't need these things and doesn't think I really need a seventh clock for our great room either.)

Anyway, upon checking out, the two high school aged cashiers were talking to each other.
-----

Cashier #1: I think they're highly dependent for each other.

Cashier #2: What?

Cashier #1: I'm trying to sound smart.

Cashier #2: What's that mean? Dependent?

Cashier #1: You know, related and liking each other and stuff.

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And stuff indeed.

Third time is not a charm

My work crowd does not really head out to lunch all to often. In fact, since I've been at work, we've only actually ventured off of the campus twice for food - and one of those occasions was today. We went to a local pizzeria that is known for delicious delicious crust and absolutely fantastic iced tea. Rave reviews.

Our food arrives and a member of our table had ordered a personal pizza with pineapple and jalapeños. An odd combination, I guess, but no more unreasonable than anything else anyone puts on a pizza. Her pizza came with pineapple and pepperoni, not jalapeños. The waitress was incredibly apologetic, and went to correct the order. She left the first pizza behind - a freebie. The woman who was missing her pizza instructed us all to go ahead an eat. So about halfway through the meal her new pizza arrives. Jalapeños and... Pepperoni! Now there are two correct toppings, but they are on two separate pizzas. Plus this woman looks like the hungriest person on the planet with all this food in front of her. The waitress stops and asks what's wrong when everyone at the table stops eating/talking/moving because we're so confused at how this could happen twice. She apologizes profusely again and offers to bring a side of pineapple, but the problem is not that the topping is missing so much as that the pepperoni is present. At this point we're practically finished, so my teammate (sans pizza) just requests the correct pizza to go. We are trying to get back to work, after all. Right before we leave, a new pizza arrives in a to-go box, with two extra to-go boxes for the extraneous pizzas. We can't stand it and take a peek at the final pizza offering... Pineapple and pepperoni - again. Three pizzas, all wrong. First matches the third no less. Poor teammate!

On an aside, they did really have fantastic iced tea and my pizza was delicious.

Return of the bobble heads

Today at work I found myself inexplicitly turned into a bobble-head doll. My boss stopped by my cube and at some point in the conversation I realized that my neck had lost the ability to hold the weight of my head. I deduced this due to the fact that every four seconds or so, I would nod uncontrollably to assert the fact that I was indeed listening rather than thinking about what other method I could use to assert the fact that I was listening. Blinking rapidly? Leaning forward? What else could I do to make her realize that I am listening?

In the end I'm pretty sure I only absorbed half of the message she was trying to get across. Stupid neck.

The century mark

Today in the metroplex we reached the century mark. Over one hundred degrees of hotness baked the city for hours and hours, resulting in cement that is hot enough to fry an egg. Really. Living in a giant concrete jungle isn't the most fabulous place to be when the temperature starts to rise. The laws of thermodynamics are a cruel joke. It left me longing for a January day last year when Zoee and I built a fort to protect ourselves from a barrage of snowballs projected by a certain husband of mine. At the time I remember being excited about the future hot chocolate and down comforter on the couch. Now I just wish I could swim in the snow to cool off. I'm sure Zoee feels the same way.

The cost of summer living

Today we were being the diligent young Americans that we are and doing financial planning and reconciling. We do this periodically, say once a week or so, to make sure we know whether or not I can really buy that piece of art I'm wanting (read: sno-cone). Anyway, this was always a relatively simple task in Colorado. All of our bills were approximately the same in Colorado at all times, which made budgeting a super easy task. In fact, the time of year we found ourselves most concerned with utility prices was the winter, when the freezing air tried to creep into your bedroom at night. Thankfully, it was always possible to pile on more down and keep warm.

Now we find ourselves in the opposite situation. We're in Texas. In June. It's hot. Really hot. We've done everything we can think of to keep our energy costs down. We programmed our thermostats to be energy efficient when we aren't here but not so much so as to overtax the AC unit when we get home. We try to keep all doors and windows closed to keep the bought air in. We even go so far as to stripping off clothing before turning down the air. (Well, there's a limit to stripping when company is around.)

Anyway, we're thinking this is working fantastic. We've been living in our house since February with no energy bills over $50. This is GREAT! Well... All that was true until our latest energy bill. If things keep increasing at this rate one of us will have to take a second job flipping burgers! I can only hope we've seen a peak in the energy-cost-increases. There are four more months of summer to go!

(For those not of Texas, I do mean four more months of summer. It's mid-June, and summer in Texas officially ends mid-October. We won't see temperatures below 80 for the daytime high again until that point, and I really don't think any daytime high above 80 should as "autumn".)

Any given Monday

There are few things I love more than hanging out at our house. Seriously. I LOVE our house. We've established this. But there is indeed a collection of things that I value a great deal more than our house, and those include my adorable husband and my beyond cute doggie. Today I attempted to combine all of these things together in what I like to romanticize as "Sitting on THE Porch". I love the porch, as we've previously established. I've decided that the best use of my and my adorable (and patient!) husband's time is utilized by sitting our porch chatting in an animated fashion while our perfectly trained Labrador sits calmly at our feet. In an effort to make my dreams come true (to make me shut up about the dang front porch already?) my husband and I poured a couple of glasses of Shiraz and camped ourselves on the porch.

After approximately five minutes my dog became incredibly interested in why we were subjecting ourselves voluntarily to the outdoor air. She checked me out to make sure we were still alive, then quickly retreated to the inside of the comfy, carpeted floors. "Coward!" I call her.
After the departure of our puppy dog, my super-cute husband and I have a few more minutes of exciting and engaging banter before, *GASP*, I contract the hiccups. Really? REALLY? A certain R who went to the Simpsons movie with us at the Movie Tavern when I managed to get the hiccups through the entire final third of the movie will understand. These aren't quite the quiet, dainty hiccups that you think of with a refined woman. These are LOUD. These are in charge. These are hiccups worthy of an Emmy. These are movie-quality. These are A sized hiccups. So E, mortified, asks that we please retreat to the back porch where our neighbors cannot see. We head back inside.

I am still in love with our house. I still fully believe that my husband is the most incredible man in the entire world. I think our puppy is fully the most adorable piece of chocolate ever to grace this good Earth. But I sure wish I could have held off on the hiccups slightly longer.

There are only so many sub-80 degree nights that I've got left this summer...

Tag-tastic

I have become engaged in the online blogger's equivalent of the grade school game of tag. Because I love all games grade-school, I'm participating. Rules: Answer the following questions about yourself. At the end of the post you pass on the questions to 6 other people. Write them a comment telling them that they've been tagged and ask them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know that you've accepted the challenge and refer to your post.

Here it goes:

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago I was seventeen, living in the big ol' burg of LJ, and spending a great deal of time playing soccer, hanging out with friends, and trying to pretend that the next year of being seniors in high school was going to be the most amazing thing ever, even though since then I have had many other most amazing things ever. I'm pretty sure you can't ever have enough of those. Just yesterday I had the most amazing afternoon ever, and it was deemed as such because I was able to consume a root beer float sno-cone. Sno-cones make summer for me. Anyway, ten years ago I was trying to study, trying to grow up, and trying trying trying to make that all important decision - should we go to the mall or the beach today? (Hey, it was summer and I was in high school.)

2. Five items on today's "to do" list:

• Clean the house (check - thanks to my helpful hubby it only took half the time!)
• Buy groceries so that I don't have to spend the week eating saltine crackers and mustard for lunch. It's not as delicious as it sounds.
• See a movie. We've been trying to see a movie for a while, and today is the day.
• Afternoon visit with the in-laws. They're coming down to see us! Yay family!
• Make dinner with the hubby. We're grilling. Something fantastic happens when you grill corn-on-the-cob. It's more than cooking. It's voodoo magic that will make you never want corn any other way.
  

3. What snacks do you enjoy?
Lately I've been eating a ton of Olive Oil and Cracked Pepper Triskets with low-fat Babybel cheese. But it's summer, so also lots of grapes and nectarines. I love nectarines. And miniature watermelons. Mmmmm. Oooh, homemade guacamole and baked Tostitos. This isn't a good question to answer when you're hungry...

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
Someone is making me a billionaire? That's AWESOME! Well, first I'm going to pay off the mortgage and the cars and the student loans... Debt, gone! While I'm at it, I think I'll pay off all the family mortgages too. I don't want them to feel stressed out. And I would take that month-long vacation to Australia and New Zealand that I want to do, and take the hubby to the UK like he wants to do. Any family members want to come? It's on us! And because my friend K says that Spain is the most amazing place on the planet (one of, anyway), I think I would have to visit there. Then I think I would spend a lot of time floating around in a lake on a boat. We'd have a couple - one for skiing, one for floating, and one for sailing. I figure I've got a lot of time, I can learn how to sail. Oh, and I'd finally take golf lessons so that I can drive the ball straight.

5. Where would you live?

As a billionaire? I think I'd live right where I do. I love our house. Really. I love it. But I would hire painters to come and paint. And an interior decorator to help me know what I want to do to the place. We'd probably have an extra house in the hill country somewhere, and in the Cinque Terre. Look at this place! How can you not want to live there? The best gelato we had in all of Italy was in the yellowish building right next to the pink building on the end. According to the rules, I'm supposed to make six other people be "it" now. That's different than playground tag, where there's one "it", but okay. Here goes. I'll tag the Bergers, the Bierhalters, Lauren and Phil, and the Denneys. That's not six. But it's going to have to do.

She's chocolate and she's melting.

With the exception of eight weeks of Christmas holiday type activity and two weeks of wedding blitz, my lovely lab has spent all of her four years of life in the relatively mild state of Colorado. All of her exposure to Texas has been, until now, in the mild-mannered winter months of December and January. The temperature of 96 degrees isn't something she even realized could happen, much less would happen on a daily basis. Texas is hot, she's noticed. Much hotter than anything she's ever seen before. As the temperatures rise, I find her more and more camping on the cool tile of the bathroom. By the end of the summer, she might find a way to sleep in the freezer.

Your future? My fridge!

The lime tree I have been growing on my back porch since March has decided that it is time to produce. Enough of this mooching water and doing nothing. It's time to start pulling some weight around here. And pull it does! Check out the size of those babies!

Okay, so it's not impressive yet. But, trust me. As the summer progresses, it will quickly morph into amazing lime-tastic-ness.

Forty-two... Of what?

Every day at work there is a group of people who play a very popular dominoes game called "Forty-two" at lunch. With players of forty-two, this is an event. Nay, this is the highlight of the day. Forget whatever else needed to happen in cube-land, all that really matters is that so-and-so played a five-two the last round and it walked even though the four-six was still out. This is the highlight of the day for many. I am one of those many.

I started playing forty-two with my family a few years ago. My brother and his wife had become hooked on it, and it's been going back for generations. My great-grandfather was perhaps the best forty-two player of all time. So when I was invited to play in the foursome at lunch, I was all over it. It's been some pretty exciting lunches lately, I'll tell you.

Forty-two players are much more animated than the Bridge players. It's like the difference in the Blackjack tables and the Craps tables in Vegas. Blackjack = all business. Craps = who the heck cares what's going on? I'm getting to jump up and down!

I'm excited to be a part of the jumpers. Except now I'm known at work as one of those loud people in the break room at lunch. I guess I'll have to go with that.

How do I love E?

My husband is perhaps the most understanding and fantastic man on the planet. He is wonderful. I cannot for the life of me find the words to explain why his sitting on the couch watching the History Channel gives me such joy, but here are a few reasons...

• I am unable to do chores without help. Even if he doesn't feel like it, he feels like I shouldn't have to bear the burden of housework on my own. We're both working professionals, so we share the chores. I scrub, he vacuums. I launder, he mops. I think he feels that floors are manlier. We fold together, if you were wondering.
• He loves cooking. When I sigh with exasperation, "Let's just order in; it's easier!" he replies with "In the time it will take for a pizza to get here we can make a fantastic stir fry! Let me pour you some Shiraz."
• He comes up with exciting and interesting dates. "Let's make a coconut cake from scratch!"
• He is fully willing to participate in my ridiculous plans (e. g. "Indoor skydiving?!? How can that go wrong? We're TOTALLY going!") -- For the record, we did go indoor skydiving and it was a hilarious fantastic time.
  
• He understands my passionate love for the washing machine and refrigerator and doesn't feel threatened by them. (See here.)
  
• He loves our dog as much as I do, but is better at resisting her beseeching cries for "people" food. (See here.)
  
• He understands that when I say "I don't really want any ice cream" that I really mean "I'm going to feel like a pig if I have to eat ice cream by myself so I really want you to ask me if I want some because you want some and we can be chubby and happy together". (Once again, see here.)
  

These are just a few examples. Trust me, there are millions more. He knows everything there is to know about any animal you can think of. He can build things out of nothing. He can fix plumbing. He can fix ANYTHING. He pretends to know wine. He pretends to care when I'm passionately involved with my lime tree. He trusts me. He depends on me. And he knows that I can't function properly without his smile in the morning.

Tonight he made me stir-fry because I was pooped. And I had a glass of Shiraz and sat on the counter while we talked about our days. *Sigh* It's a good life.

Water dogs and the lake

Our first day on Lake Ray Hubbard...

She's supposed to be a water dog. In fact, I've seen with my own eyes her amazing ability to swim with multiple retrieved objects in her mouth all at the same time. So today, when the boat was sitting in the slip after hours of work preparing for this moment, we were sure she'd want to go. We're certain of it. Yes, we think, our Labrador will LOVE the feel of the wind in her face, the algae-salt smell of lake water, and the beautiful sunny day we've chosen to go out on the lake.

At first, she couldn't get enough of it. I mean, it is in fact a lake. A really large lake full of wonderful things like fish and birds. But after we finished idling out of the marina and actually started zipping around the lake, she quickly dissolved into a quivering mess on the floor of the boat. It's CHOPPY, she tells me, with terrified eyes. Do you realize that at this speed any one of us could quite easily be thrown from the boat? She is quite concerned for our safety.

After finding a nice cove near the dam to turn off and float, she seems to relax. She once again realizes that, hey, we're in the water! Gasp! She jumps on the back of the boat and dives into the water. Yay! But wait, how do you pull a Labrador back into a boat when they're soaking wet and dog paddling off the back? Not very easily, I'll tell you that much.

Our first day on the lake for this season was a huge success. Hooray for sunshine and water. The pairing is better than peanut butter and chocolate. Less fattening too.

Next time we're getting her one of those dog life preservers with the handle to pull them out easier though. For her sake.