Loathe:
* When pets become high maintenance… like my fish seem to have become lately. The time and emotional burden drains me, I feel as if my priorities are all screwed up. Which, in turn, is making me evaluate whether or not I want to continue keeping them. Tony is encouraging me to keep them, but try to emotionally distance myself a bit from them. He has a point and I handled it pretty well when the albino female died abruptly last week from the fungus. But there’s still the drain of my time and I’m not sure how to get around that.
* Excel sheet misery. Honestly, people, look at the thing in “print preview” mode before you send it to someone and FIX IT so it’s printable. It really grinds to have to reformat something with 2 minutes to spare before a meeting in which the sheet is to be used.
* Scary pedestrian intersections. There’s this intersection by my work where it’s impossible to see pedestrians during early afternoon hours. The sun is squarely in driver’s faces when attempting to turn left, and the corner where pedestrians step from is heavily shaded. I know now, but the first time when I learned it, I nearly hit someone in the crosswalk. I was horrified! Since then, I’ve seen several other drivers do the same thing, with closer calls than what happened to me. I wish there was a way to warn the pedestrians.
* People who go into a public restroom and continue to talk on their cell phones.
Love:
* Crock pot cooking. I love being able to throw a 3 or 4 pound hunk of meat in the thing, a few potatoes, some veggies, leave for the day, and when I get home the house smells great and dinner is ready. So easy! Best of all, the meat is always so moist, it nearly falls apart just from looking at it.
* Having wonderful friends. I sure don’t deserve the friends that I have, but then there’s no repaying the gift of grace, is there? Two things make me mention this.
First, the HOA situation I mentioned last week, which I let stress me out beyond reason? Well, one of my lawyer friends said he’ll make a call to see if he can settle the “misunderstanding” without it escalating further. HOA law is generally kind of scuzzy law, and is so far beneath the type of law he normally practices, I feel incredibly humbled that he cares enough about me to try to resolve it for me.
Second, you guys are so amazing. I don’t know why I even doubted sharing with you a portion of my struggles. Thank you for sharing back.
One Last Thing:
We just got back from the mountains. When we visited our friends at our favorite breakfast place, Tony mentioned that he’s on a diet. The cook, Charlie, looked at him and said in disbelief, “A diet?” In a tone of voice that clearly said, why the heck are you in MY restaurant if you’re on a diet? A place that’s known for their enormous pancakes.
We got our seats at the counter and were talking about various things, all the things you talk about in a small town, shooting the breeze I believe it’s called. We had our orders in and Charlie was talking and cooking, and he turned away from the grill to get something and Tony glanced over and said, “Hey. What is that?” Charlie replied, “Nothing. Nothing at all.” And resumed his position in front of the grill, blocking what Tony had seen.
A few minutes later, with a mischievous grin on his face, Charlie placed this in front of Tony, and the entire restaurant busted out laughing. I do believe this takes the record for the smallest breakfast ever served in that restaurant… one month after the record of the largest pancake ever served.
Charlie demonstrates the size of the last pancake he created for us.
The real breakfast, served a couple minutes after the laughter subsided…
We went into town after breakfast and visited our favorite candy store, where they handmake fudge and all kinds of concoctions in there. They always have “trial” candy, and this time they had dark chocolate covered cheerios. Oh, the bliss.
We also always visit the local KMart and I found a couple pairs of jeans in my size. I tried them on and the black jeans looked fine, I thought, but the other pair I didn’t care for and couldn’t figure out why. I normally don’t involve Tony in my clothes buying decisions, but I called him over for his opinion and asked him if the black jeans made my butt look big. I love asking him that, by the way. He shook his head and said, “No, it just looks like your butt.” There might have been a bit of a leer, too, but I can’t remember for certain.
I said, “OK, let me go try the other ones on and show you.” I went in the dressing room and did the switch, came out and showed him. He was shaking his head negatively and said, “No, I don’t like those at all on you. It’s the color of the border threading. It’s just all wrong.” Basically reinforced my decision, but gave me a valid reason for it.
Grateful for an honest husband, I just had to shake my head at how weird it is that jeans from the same manufacturer, the same same size and cut, the only difference being the color, can look so vastly different on the same body.
Although a bit sad that our “free” internet access up there has disappeared, I was grateful to spend the evening watching movies together, eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate.
The frozen lake…
It was … perfect. Exactly what we needed.
Jammie J's Quest 