We had actually had fun. I mean, it sucked when it started to rain, and I got loopy towards the end from lack of sleep, but the headphones and lawn chair and gloves made it bearable, and hanging out with each other under weird circumstances is always entertaining.

It’s a cool thing to have someone you’re in a relationship with totally understand why something that sounds so awful, like standing in the rain for two and half hours in the middle of the night, is an experience worth having, if only to get through it together (the savings on clothes were fantastic, too; we’re stocked for the next year with stuff to wear.) It’s bonding to have the rest of the world call you crazy.

Sometime in the middle of it all Rob placed his hand on the side of my neck and ran his thumb across my cheekbone thoughtfully. “There isn’t anyone else I’d rather be here with.” he said. “I like being here with you.”

My thoughts exactly.

“There I was, up to my elbows in dog food, hoping to make him love me.”

I wrote that two years ago as the beginning of a story I was going to tell, and never did. Now seems like a good day to post it.

When Rob got Matty (shortly after I met him) he inherited a gigantic dog food container. It belonged to his sister, but she’d started to cook for her dog and didn’t need it any more.  There was a scoop with it that he stored in the container, and sometimes he’d forget to take the scoop out before he filled it up with new dog food, thus burring it under fifty pounds of kibble. One time he did this right before a long shift at work when I was scheduled to feed Matty for him, and he called to let me know I should just “eyeball” the food because the scoop was way at the bottom.  I, being ridiculously in love with him and hopeful that I could win his love back, thought I would reach in and get it, and then he would be so grateful that he’d love me, marry me, and I’d get to have his babies. Love is not a rational thing.

The smell was awful because the dog food was fresh (and this was back when Rob was buying the cheap stuff which is horrendous), but I dug deep, wiggling my fingers through greasy kibbles, all the way to the bottom. I was half way down when I stopped and realized I was being crazy. “Let him get his own scoop,” I thought. “He’s not going to fall in love with me if I do this.” I pulled my arms out and washed them off, fed Matty and stormed out of the apartment totally pissed at myself.

Clearly it was the right move.

And so, on this day when everyone is saying what they are thankful for, I am thankful that I have Rob (and Matty, and now Leeloo and Tino!) and that he usually remembers to take the scoop out first before he pours in the dog food now, and that if he doesn’t, he gets it out himself.  I’m doubly thankful that I don’t have to resort to levels of ridiculousness to feel like I’m blipping on his radar.  I’m also thankful that he’ll walk to the store that’s six blocks away, in the rain, past the one right around the corner, because they’re the only ones that have the right kind of pie tins; that he’ll go to the store again to get the one thing I thought I had for baking, but forgot, even though he asked before leaving the first time, “Are you sure you have everything?” and I was all, “Pshh!  Yeah!”  I’m thankful he takes the time to be way affectionate through it all, even when I’m crazy making five pies, and that he deals with my blasting of Christmas music a few days earlier than I promised I would (I tried to hold out until Friday, I really did, but I was baking and it seemed so apropos!).

I’m really, really thankful that we get to live together for always.  It is awesome.

Happy Thanksgiving!

photo via

For the month of November a local bar has been having Connect Four night every Tuesday. You can place in any of the first three nights, and then on November 24 all the semi-finalists will compete for a few grand prizes.

They have a bunch of standard game sets to play on scattered around the bar and then a giant, big-ass connect four board, and after I played some qualifying rounds (and won!) Rob and I teamed up as a duo against a couple of guys we met there. Nicole snapped this photo of us contemplating our next move, whispering strategy behind checker pieces as big as saucers. I’m a pretty intense player, but when you’re plunking huge plastic disks into on a board that’s three feet high and four feet long, it gets taken to a whole new level of serious.

“Huh?”

“Star Trek.”

“Oh. You know what I think is a weird phrase that gets used a lot? ‘It is what it is.’ I mean, of course it is what it is. Everything is. Dumb.”

“Not Transformers. They’re ‘more than meets the eye!’”

Yeah, that’s right! Two list items in one weekend!

Saturday night me, Dana, Wesley and Rob headed to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. There are touristy things to do in New York City that are way overrated, but going to the top of the Empire State Building is not one of them, especially at night when all the lights on the ground are twinkling and you can see three states worth of view. The observation deck is open until 2 am and the last elevator up is at 1:15. We walked through the lobby doors at 1 and sailed through the empty maze of velvet ropes that usually are jammed with tourists. From lobby to observation deck was about 5 minutes.

At the top, I got good and kissed.

This is Rachel Lee Walsh. She’s pretty awesome.

This was the first time it occurred to me to snap photos of our studio. Rob likes to have the microphones just so, and you can tell in the sound quality of my final project. If you need a sound engineer in Brooklyn you should hire him and pay him lots of money. He’s worth it.

Rachel and he were scheming to play together, because she noticed his upright base in the corner of our sound booth and found out that he used to play blue grass. She has a country/folk/blues kind of thing going on. I think they’d rock together.

At one point in the interview I say to her, “Oh, you are of my people” which is a weird thing to say, I know, but the way she writes songs is from the perspective of wanting to tell a human story, and this is the way I do my podcast. Her writing is both clever and simple.

This is Rachel’s guitar strap, and I think it’s SO cool. It’s from Kelly Horrigan.

To listen to our interview, go to the interview page at HeyBrooklyn.com or type Hey Brooklyn into iTunes.

“It’s fine!” he said, but then later he admitted, “I would have just left it. But I know you. You need it nice. So, we paint.”

How great is my guy? It hadn’t occurred to him to bother talking me out of painting the entire apartment, he just sucked it up and did it.

You may take this moment to stand up and applaud my husband for his awesomeness, thoughtfulness, and wonderfulness.

Later, he was all hugs and consoling pats on the back when I had a meltdown and could not paint another single stroke. After that, I was sent home to shower and relax while he spent the day finishing up by himself. I really hate moving, but since I have to, I’m glad to go through this with Rob. He is a good dude.

We painted two colors, a light slate blue that’s unusual but growing on me, and a color that I thought would be a hip modern camel-butterscotch beige, but what actually turned out to be a mustardy, baby-poop, project housing hallway tan. Bummer! I’m hoping that will grow on me, too.

The whole process of picking colors was frustrating and overwhelming.  I’ve picked paint before and had both great success and horrible results. If I was doing it again, I would have borrowed the ENTIRE color deck selector from Home Depot rather than deal with traveling to Home Depot several times for a bunch of chips (at one point I had about 2 dozen different beige squares spread out on the floor of the new place and let Stu! pick what she liked; she told me to throw them all out and try again).

***

According to this article NYTimes, we are part of a growing trend of people that rent in NYC and buy in the suburbs. I wish we had thought of this before we spent months and months looking for something to buy here last year! We felt a little crazy taking this unusual real estate path, but it seemed like it made sense, and a year later, I’m excited about our decision. See? I do live and learn! Just not about picking paint colors.

After, with Jen, who also donated about a foot of hair.

Today is my second wedding anniversary. I know this because I wrote it down last week, after Rob looked up from writing on the calendar and said, “Do we have anything May 5th? I feel like we do.”

“I don’t think so, but it sounds familiar… hm. Nope, nothing on my calendar for that.” We racked our brains for a minute before it clicked. We just aren’t sentimental about it.

On Sunday night, my mother-in-law mentioned it excitedly, and asked if we had big plans. We didn’t. “Very romantic!” she said, sarcastically. But we don’t care.

There are Rob-related moments that mean a lot more to me than May 5. I remember the date we got engaged, April 22, and the date we first met, August 4. There another date I remember, too, but, you know, I’ll spare you, because if I told you the first time we decided to duet and it turned out to be your birthday, THAT WOULD BE AWKWARD.

I don’t remember all the important dates, though.

What I’d really like to remember, and can’t, is the first time I looked in my wallet, realized I didn’t have cash, and found his to take out a twenty. When did we become money stealing close? When did we reach the point that we started showering together occasionally for no other reason than to save time? How did I forget to take note of the beginning of the dictionary of inside phrases and jokes and songs we have? Shouldn’t I be celebrating the fact that he will always get out of bed and shut the window, or get me another blanket, if I’m cold? Furthermore, when was the first time he got out of bed, found wool socks, and put them on my ice cube feet for me so I wouldn’t have to stick my arms out into the frigid room to do it myself? I wish I thought to write that one down, because he does this on a fairly regular basis, and if that doesn’t deserve a party that what does? Also, when did it become ordinary to ask of each other, “Smell. Is my breath horrible? HAAAAHHHH!”? Because I really like that I can do that.

May 5, 2007 was fun, but it wasn’t what it should have been. Things I tried to make happen never materialized, and things that should have never, ever happened went on while I watched helpless (and no, Jen, it wasn’t you forgetting the ring!) I didn’t feel the way I should have felt, and if I could go back and choose between not having a wedding at all or having the wedding we did, I would have eloped because, in the end, there was only one thing I really cared about, and I would have gotten him either way. He was the best part of the whole thing.

(Well, him and that cake.)

You may recall it being mentioned in my 2008 gift guide, under the section “For the Ladies to Wear”. I described it as “Hands down… my favorite item of all of gift guides.” Since then I’ve mentioned it to Rob about four times a month. I’ve also sent him the link randomly over IM in the middle of the day, and once, in video chat room with our friends, I showed everyone the link and said, “This is a really great necklace and I really like it and I hope that Rob buys it for me.” I would often pull it up on my laptop while we were side-by-side on the couch, elbow him, and say, “This is gorgeous! I want it.” We even got into an argument once, where he said, “If you want something, you shouldn’t hint at it!  You should just say it!” and I was all, “Fine! FINE! I WANT YOU TO BUY ME THIS FUCKING NECKLACE!” He didn’t.

Today, I gave up and started to buy it myself, and as I was clicking, Rob wandered down from his lair office to take a break from editing audio.

“Look!” I said, all sassy “I’m buying this for my damn self!”

He squinted at the screen. “What is it?”

“The necklace.” I figured that was all the explanation he needed sledgehammering him with hints for so long.

“Which necklace?” he asked. “Can I see?”

He clicked to the bigger picture and shrugged. “Hmm.  I’ve never seen this before.  It’s nice.”

He’s dead now.