The other day, Mr. H and I were watching Rules of Engagement, part of our Monday night comedy line up after The Big Bang Theory (seriously, pee your pants funny) and How I Met Your Mother.
Audrey had just gotten a promotion and she wanted her husband, Jeff (the Patrick Warburton character) to take her to a Broadway play – “Maybe even a musical – where people might even burst into song for no earthly reason.”
At that moment I realized my life is a musical.
My husband bursts into song for no earthly reason (other than he’s just really happy). It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, washing dishes, walking down the hallway, looking for something interesting to magically appear in the fridge. He makes up funny, silly songs too.
Of course there is no singing out in public or skipping down the sidewalk, but just wait, one of these day’s we’ll have a child and I’ll bet we’ll see him doing that with him or her too.
I went out for a walk and stopped in one of the mom and pop shops to get something to eat. I don’t know how long I spent in that store, but I think the guy behind the counter was starting to wonder about me. I spent a huge amount of time looking at the cookies. Wow, there’s a lot of cookies out there, even in the Mom and Pops. I looked over the nuts and the chips and I was about to give up when I spotted the apple chips. You see, I’m unofficially officially on a diet – meaning I’m going to watch what I eat and eat less garbage but I’m not going to weigh everything I eat or spend all my brain cells counting fat grams and calories.
Something about the apple chips caught my attention and said “yum” to me. The fact that they came in flavors like cinnamon and caramel certainly didn’t hurt anything. And it said right on the package, “A heathier option.” Well, if one is healthier than two should surely help me rack up some good fruit and veggie karma. I bought both the cinnamon and carmel flavors and took them back to my little den where I sit and curse my computer, my professors, my %^$& lack of abilitiy to concentrate or string one coherent sentance after another, and anything else I can think of to blame for why I can’t seem to get these papers done.
Back to clacking away at these papers and nibbling away at the apple chips as I type. Four hours later, as I’m staring around the room giving my eyes a break from the monitor (I’ve been at this since 6 this morning) I catch a glimps of the nutritional info on the back of the apple chip bag.
Each bag contained 2.5 single ounce servings. Each serving had 140 calories and 7 grams of fat. So after happily munching away on two bags of apple chips and blissfully thinking I was gonna get some kind of kudos for actually eating an apple, I actually consumed 700 calories and 35 grams of fat. So much for not counting calories or fat grams. At 540 calories and 29 grams of fat, I could have gone ahead and had a Big Mac. Gah! I’m so depressed I might need some chocolate.
I moved to Seattle from Alaska the first time in 1992. I walked around the city for months in a constant state of wow. Sixteen years later I’ve still got a crush on this city.
I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what it is about Seattle that makes it home for me. It starts with the water. I’ve got at least 4 drawbridges within 3 miles of my home (don’t get me started on drawbridges, they get me all gaga too).
Follow that up with the culture of this city. I love living in a place where education is actually valued. While there’s always room for improvement, and I’m sure some of you Seattlites squirmed a bit at my last statement, education is valued here. Moreso than many other places in this country, including the place where I grew up. Hell, take a look at our library(s). And our colleges. According to Encarta, we top the list as one of the most educated cities (which, on the downside, doesn’t help me much when job hunting).
There is so much more: the food, the people, the easy access to recreational activities, the easy access to the rest of the world (I’m from Alaska, that’s relevant). I just wish I could afford to live here. There is no buying a house in this town.
What is it that makes your corner of the world home?
Before you gasp in horror (or secretly cheer) they were just joking around. It made me gasp, but for a different reason. That was just the sort of thing my dad would say. I could see him sitting there with a full on belly laugh, his feet sticking straight out in front of him (he always stuck his feet straight out when he belly laughed), if he heard my husband say that. He would have loved that line, and he would have filed it away in the back of his brain for future reference looking for a really good opportunity to whip it out and use it.
I miss my dad, but I’m struck by how similar he was to my husband.
What about you? Do you find similarities between your significant other and one of your parents?
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