Thursday, February 26, 2009

Monday, February 23, 2009

The Meme of Us

What are your middle names?
Marie and John. Guess who has which name!

How long have you been together?
We met in March of 2000 and started dating a month later.

Who asked whom out?
I guess I did. Sort of.

How old are each of you?
He is 28 and I'm 27, though for two weeks we are the same age.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
Mine. He has more in commom with my family than I do with his. Plus, there's nothing like cancers to bring a family together!

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
My unemployment paired with the unreliability of his freelance work.

Did you go to the same school?
I took two classes at the university where he spent three semesters, but in totally different years.

Are you from the same home town?
Yes, but my neighborhood had cornfields, and his neighborhood had people and drugs.

Who is smarter?
Not only is he better at everything useful, but he also scored 100 more points on the SAT. What a jerk!

Who is the most sensitive?
Me! I am more likely to take things personally. And in a totally different area of sensitivity, I have to wear ear plugs to the movies or I get headaches. However, I don't have to let my cocoa cool off as much.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
I don't know, we rarely go out anymore.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
The Hoh rainforest.

Who has the craziest exes?
I'm guessing he does. I only have one, and he was more quirky than crazy (mostly). One of his exes is one of my favorite people, but I get the feeling I'd hate the rest of them.

Who has the worst temper?
He gets angry more often than I do, but I get in a worse rage when I do lose it.

Who does the cooking?
I do, but there are dishes that only he makes, like barbecued chicken.

Who is the neat-freak?
He despises clutter, and I hate that he doesn't take his shoes off in the house. I have managed to change much more than he has.

Who is more stubborn?
That's a toss-up.

Who hogs the bed?
Me! I'm very acrobatic in my sleep. He says he has to sleep on the floor at least once a week because I literally kick him out.

Who wakes up earlier?
He does, and he wakes up throughout the night. I don't sleep as much as I slip into a deep coma for nine hours.

Where was your first date?
We went to Jimmy John's, the used CD store, and then camped. We decided it was a date after the fact.

Who is more jealous?
In what context? We don't get jealous of each other, but sometimes I get jealous of people with steady jobs and two living parents.

How long did it take to get serious?
He was serious after a matter of weeks, I held off for months. I'd heard about his fickleness and refused to get too attached. Meanwhile, he wanted to marry me.

Who eats more?
He does, but he burns way more calories.

Who does the laundry?
I do usually.

Who's better with the computer?
Definitely me.

Who drives when you are together?
He does, because he drives faster.

Our House

Last week, a housewarming card and free address labels from a charity I never donate to arrived in the mail. Then, MacGyver and I bought a washer and dryer.

Our house is now a home.

The washer is a high efficiency front-loader, and the first load of laundry was quite exciting. In fact, it garnered an audience.

That's MacGyver on the right, sitting in a full laundry basket. Gonk is on the left in the empty one, trying to be just like his daddy. Domino inspected it from the top down and stopped giving a shit. As usual.

One room in our house has four windows and a southern exposure. Someday it will be the library, but for now it houses the fish, the coat tree (literally), an extra couch, and our new starship. MacGyver duct taped (actually, it's "semi-reflective cosmic protective strips") the appliance boxes together, cut hatches and port holes and a cat door, and I designed the control systems. So I got to curl up in a poorly-ventilated enclosed space with a Sharpie for my part*. Wheee! Right now it's a starship, but you can also set it to dirigible, time machine, or submarine. It's powered by dilithium crystals, has a navigational touch pad, and has an army of ninjas, space monkeys, and velociraptors in holding cells. The velociraptor holding cell is reinforced by TWO layers of duct tape, just in case.

*I pimped my box! tee hee!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Working Backwards

Yesterday, the 15th, I had the pleasure of eating homemade tiramisu amongst friends. Most of the day was spent washing dishes. The task was truly Sisyphean.

On Valentine's Day, I made Chicken Parmesan, Spinach-Gorgonzola Dip in a bread bowl, Salad, and Hot Fudge Sauce (everything was delicious enough to merit capitalizing). MacGyver and I stuffed ourselves silly and watched The Princess Bride. Life doesn't get much better.

On the evening of Friday the 13th, two of my brothers and I saw the premiere of the latest Friday the 13th movie. That morning I began passing out snickerdoodles and cards. I accompanied Job to his appointment with the oncologist and got the CT scan results. Apparently, the chemo has stopped the tumor's growth and even some of his bone is recalcifying. So, fuck you, metastases!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

I'm a Winner

MacGyver and I have been very, very careful to not waste food, as it costs money, which we need more of so we can buy a dryer. Unfortunately, I let something slide. Yesterday I was cleaning the kitchen, and had to throw out the kitty litter and six-week-old chicken legs. I had the genius idea to empty half the litter (absorbent pine pellets!) into the trash, dump in the meat real quick, and pour the rest of the litter on top. I mean, it's odor-absorbing, so what could go wrong?

I'll tell you.

Chicken so old it's starting to liquefy is far more potent than cat poo, and even the power of pine is no match for it. When I finally shook it out of its container, I nearly retched. It smelled like a rotting corpse. I would know. The last thing that smelled this bad was the week old cadaver of a man who had perished in his unair-conditioned apartment in July the summer I interned at the morgue. When we got him, he had a vivid green cast to his dark brown...skin. We had to slough off what had been his epidermis so we could read his tattoos. Also? Two of his girlfriends called the morgue looking for him. And? He was HIV+. It was a memorable day.

Anyway, I ran to the bathroom and turned on the exhaust fan. I was still feeling vomity when I called MacGyver to find out where the Hell the garbage can was. I had never paid attention to where he took the trash, to me it just disappeared to a magical land where I never had to deal with it, ever. He said something like "You opened it up inside?!?" and I yelled something about believing the cat litter would take care of it, and he told me to look out the window so I could notice where the trash can was, and I retorted that I couldn't see out the window because I was hiding from the smell. There was silence, I believe he was reflecting on how he won the spouse lottery. I mean, some wives have jobs and watch their weight and can remember the last time they washed their hair. Me? When I call, he has no idea what's going to come out of my mouth. I'm interesting.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Like BOOK IT!, But Not

While we moved in in January, I culled unread and unfinished books from my multitude of tome-filled plastic totes. By February 1, I had 38 books lining a shelf waiting to be read. I started with Starship Troopers, and am more than a third of the way through thus far. I have a bad habit of buying books and not reading them, instead turning my attention toward those I borrow from friends or the library. I reason that I have the rest of my life to finish the ones I own, but just weeks for the others. My goal is to finish all 38 books by February 1, 2010. Knowing me, I'll still be borrowing books to boot (and I already have! I'm also working on Wicked, Truer than True Romance, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), so the goal is attainable but not easy. I'm hoping to finish the three shortest in two weeks, and then take about ten days for every other book. For accountability's sake, I'm making a list to be posted next year (or when I finish, whichever comes first) and I'll note the ones I complete as the year goes along.

In other news, I'm sick of winter and I have another job interview Thursday morning. Wish me luck!