Weekend of good stuff – a recap

Monday. Grr. Do you sometimes wonder on Monday morning if you can make the magic of a good weekend last a little longer if you just *pretend* that it isn’t Monday already. I’m trying that now. It’s tough to do in the office…

Friday night! I had a massage. I had a 6:30 appointment (that was already rescheduled from Monday), but when I got to the woman’s house, she looked at me like I had three heads. I was all: “Um, I have an appointment for…now?” and she was all: “Oh, REALLY?” But it all worked out. She swiftly prepared the room and got down to business. I’m doing well, body-wise. I don’t have a ton of issues, and it’s probably helpful that I’m very flexible (or as she put it, I seem “loosely put together”). I do have some killer tightness in my right shoulder blade area, which she worked like a bad-cop. We also had an interesting conversation about upbringing. I explained that I had a particularly healthy/wholesome upbringing with good, responsible parents on a farm (for crying out loud). I said I always felt safe and cared for (all true). She said that she’d done a lot of studying of people who’d worked with different cultures and they’d found that children who grow up in stable environments frequently have better body-coping and less stress in their bodies. Children who grow up with less care and safety and more chaos learn early to keep their bodies rigid and just keep using that as a coping mechanism. I‘m not sure if the idea hold water, and I know that correlation is not causation, but I thought it was an interesting idea nonetheless. After the massage, I! did! nothing! It was nice.

Saturday, I puttered around the apartment and got ready for the Boston Ballet’s The Nutcracker, to which I wore my most tutu-like skirt :). I got to the opera house a few minutes before J, so I sipped my latté and looked on as a million adorable little girls sprinted in with their parents following close behind. There were so many bows, and velvet dresses with faux-fur cuffs, and sparkle nail polish… When J arrived with her mother and niece we had time to get to our seats and take a few (covert) pictures before the show started. These dancers were incredible. Their bodies were so muscular it was not to be believed. They demonstrated such control over every move; they were like machines. You know what it reminded me of? Really good special effects in movies – where you KNOW that it’s not real, but it looks so real. Only this was REAL. GAH!
After the ballet ended (rather abruptly, I thought, in the middle of Claire’s dream…) we puttered about and ended up at the Union Oyster House – the oldest restaurant in the country. It was good to get inside because the icky weather was turning increasingly cold and gross. We had yummy seafood and dessert and coffee. We then walked in the snowing snowy snow to North Station to drop off J’s mom and niece. There was hot chocolate. It was molten. J and I took the T back to my place, twirled around in my living room like drunks, debated the likelihood of padding in the male dancers’ junk-region, ran a quick errand in Arlington, and made our way over to the Paradise rock club to see our friends in the Ryan Montbleau Band. The road was snowy and bad and did I mention snowy? Also, people in MA don’t know how to drive in the snow, so they were doing it wrong. We made it unscathed, though we did have to trek through several blocks of slush, and it was hella-windy, which made my umbrella nigh on unusable, but I persisted, so most of the time I walked with it inverted, as the wind kept blowing it into the shape of a bowl. It still caught some snow, and J and I had a good laugh, as did passers-by.
This post is getting long, but if you’re still with me*, XOXO, because there’s still more. We dropped our stuff backstage in the band’s room and swiped a beer, then we made some rounds. Caravan of Thieves was the opener and DANG were they fun. It was a gypsy jam and they all looked the part and the singer reminded me of John Leguizamo in Moulin Rouge, only normal size, and I got to talk to the (upright!) bass-player (Brian) after the show about them and theatrics and theatre and stuff and he was lovely and charming and J bought me a cd. Because she is generous. And also pretty.
Then RMB was playing and everything was happiness and light (and grey suits – they wore grey suits). There were many many people there that I knew and were shook it and listened and talked and hugged. I was responsible, as I was driving, and I didn’t get home until 2:30, and I got to sleep in (apart from many cat-related interruptions).

Sunday I did as close to nothing as possible (for me). I did some cleaning in the bathroom and kitchen, and made turkey soup, and watched LOTR: Return of the King (because I hadn’t watched it on Thanksgiving 1B and I was owed it!). Then in the evening, my wonderful man returned (Return of the Man!) and we had dinner and watched an indie British film (Boy A**) and part of No Country for Old Men and went to sleep after much cuddling and Eskimo-like face rubbing (because he’d shaved, and freshly-shorn dude’s faces are so SO so wonderful, but especially his).
Seriously, I have more thoughts rolling around in my head but I will save them because you probably need a nap after this.

*If you’re not with me, good day to you. I said GOOD DAY!
**This movie is good, but also depressing, and kind of left unresolved. But still good.

Personal preference

Any homemade vinaigrette must include mustard. Either the grainy German kind, or mustard that includes wasabi (oh hell yes). Dayglo "yellow" mustard isn't really mustard...

I. Don't. Learn.

Thing twelve-million-and-two that I said to my boyfriend while drunk (seriously, you'd THINK I'd just lay off the booze already, but NO!*):

"When we have babies you shouldn't be in the delivery room to see my mangled girl-parts. J will be there. You can wait outside. That way you'll want to have sex with me again one day.**"

Seriously, a trained Monkey has more tact.

*I did have a reason for drinking, as the cast list for Dracula was posted yesterday***, and M is away for the WHOLE weekend, and Proseco is quite delicious.

**Dear people with babies whose husbands saw their mangled girl-parts during delivery: That's cool for you - it's just not for me. We also don't pee in front of each other and he is under the impression that I just don't sweat. That's how we roll...

***I'm in. One of the Brides of Dracula. I wanted a lead, but dude I have been a lead like two and a half times this year, with this group. No complaints. PLUS! I get to have fangs and hiss menacingly. Good enough for moi.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em both... and there you have: a post with a lot of colons.

No, this post will not be about Blair, Jo, Natalie, Tootie, or Mrs. Garrett. Or Poughkeepsie. I'm sorry to disappoint you.

The BAD:
My wonderful man will be away from Friday afternoon to Sunday night. Sad. But! He'll be having fun and he deserves fun, so, good for him, I guess. (I can't believe he would have fun without me! No, he probably won't... Right?)

The GOOD:
Things I am doing this weekend, starting with Thursday because I am a fucking rock star and the regular weekend does not contain enough time for me to party:
Thursday : Scorpion bowls and fried seafood at The Summer Shack to say "bye" to the man. Romance, yeah!
Friday: Work (boo!), but then after work FREE MASSAGE. By a professional massage-giver, even! You are jealous!
Saturday: Boston Ballet Nutcracker with J and family. Then dinner in Boston. Then Ryan (fucking) Montbleau Band at the Paradise for dancing and more dancing!
Sunday: Friendsgiving dinner at friends house where there will be lots of friends and foods.

Holy hell that's a lot of stuff.

Also, GOOD worth mentioning: Aunt Flo came today to tell me that I am NOT pregnant! I know! You didn't even know that I was worried about it because I am totally crafty like that and I don't tell you absolutely EVERYTHING people because then how would we keep the romance alive? HOW?

Anyway. It's only Tuesday. Tonight I'm going to audition for Dracula. Oh hell yes, DRACULA! With the fangs and the blood and the undying love. That's entertainment, baby.

C is for...

GAH! The hallway smells of cookies because there are cookies in the hallway! Right outside the boardroom! I will not eat of the cookies because even though the cookies smell of heaven I am strong.

Smells

SO

GOOOOOOOOD.

But, I am STRONG. So, NO.

Sad fake little tree

Hee hee. My man came over last night with his fake little tree (the one I'd really pinned high hopes on...) behind his back. It was... small. And made me... sad. Seriously, this was the fake equivalent of Charlie Brown's tree from his Christmas special.

Les: Dude? Really?
M: ...YES!
Les: Oh, honey, no. That tree just makes me sad.
M: I knew it would once I saw it, but I had to bring it over so you could see it.
Les: Stop bending the stalks down! It's shedding all over my floor!
(Here we giggled a lot at the patheticness of it all...)

Soooooooo, no. Now I need to find a tree that it 1) small and 2) preferably fake. It wouldn't have mattered either way, but after I got the idea I wanted to decorate, there was no going back.

I think we've also determined that we will avoid the giving of "stuff" for the Christmas holiday, and stick to doing something fun together. We both already have a lot of stuff anyway, and no desire to pile stuff on top of more stuff (though I TOTALLY just screwed myself out of a KitchenAid mixer...). So I'm thinking a fun night in Boston. Expensive, ridiculously delicious dinner with a bit too much wine. Walking around looking at lights and loving each other. Mmmm.

The end of a thing

Tomorrow is the last day of blogging every day. Now, I know that I didn't blog EVERY day in November... I missed three days. And I suffered mightily for it! Wait, no. No one suffered. In any case, have I learned anything from blogging (almost)every day for a month?
I guess. I determined that even though there's a lot of crap that comes from posting just for the sake of posting, there's also a lot of good stuff. Funny stuff. Stuff that I might want to revisit later, but might not have ever posted in the first place had I not felt obligated. And I think that's good. It helped to be accountable for posting every day - even if it was only to myself. Plus, there were lots of mundane details that I posted that I probably wouldn't have otherwise, but that's kind of how you get to know how people are different from each other, right? The day-to-day stuff? I mean most people leave home, get a job (or a few jobs), meet someone (or several someones), start different chapters of their lives on a semi-predictable timeline. Not everyone lives in Somerville, acts in plays, has the best friends ever, gets to snuggle with the enginerdiest skier/surfer dude... That's the stuff that makes me... me.

Anyway, enough of that. I won't continue to post every day, but I am certainly motivated to post more, and not to omit details that I think are too small when I could just as well include them. Right now, I'm in the middle of making soup from the leftover turkey. It's also got broth, carrots, celery, onions, and spinach. Yum! The man and I will eat it with arugula salad and a little bread. I hope that he'll bring over his fake little Christmas tree and we can trim it together while watching a movie*. That's what makes us... us.

*Last night we watched Good Night and Good Luck, which he'd never seen and I haven't seen since the theater. GAH this is such a good movie! And I was struck again at how the integrity of the media continues to be such an important issue that I'm not sure can be overstressed. The media is broken; it's not being used to its potential. I know it disappoints me, and that's why I don't watch regular tv anymore. And, the longer I go without watching it, the less tolerance I have for it. If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend that you do. HIGHLY! (That's a threat in case the BOLDCAPS didn't give it away!)