high and low

I went to the grocery store after the gym after work yesterday. By the time I got everything put away at home, it was almost 9pm and everyone had already eaten. This morning on the drive to school, I listed the three options my kids had for dinner tonight: 1. london broil, 2. burgers, 3. pollo asada.

My boy responded first: "Can we go out to dinner?"
Then my girl: "I'm full from breakfast."

Not helpful.

I love stocking the fridge with new foods almost as much as I love purging the fridge of old foods. Both are cathartic and necessary. I enjoy making dinner, but our timing is way off at this particular juncture. Everyone gets home way before me, and is starving and pigs out. By the time I work out, get home, prepare food and get everyone to the table, it's practically bedtime.

Having dinner together most nights is important to us, though, so we persist. I do wish the preparation to inhalation ratio could be improved, but we have our methods of keeping everyone at the table for a minimally acceptable period of time.

There's always high point/low point.

We used to talk about this frequently in the days of weekend 3-ways, remember? Get your mind out of the gutter, they were group posts.

High point/low point is a good practice, though. Let me do one for today, which will have been yesterday by the time you read this:

high point: I had a great performance review today, and planted a seed for some upcoming international travel.
(pro tips: no one is allowed to say "this meal" as their high point, even if it is. No one is allowed to pass, even if your day totally sucked. You have to find the highest low point aka your least sucky point. You can only say one high point)

low point: My last (overstuffed) lettuce wrap could not be contained by a mere leaf and literally imploded, and a sesame flavored mess descended upon my pretty dress.

Yeah, we ate out.  It was 900 degrees in my house and there was a brush fire near by. Sue me.

What's your high point/low point?

You can ring my bell

Greetings from Philadelphia! It may be cold and gloomy today -- but I like this city! Not sure how I've never been here before, but it's true. This is my very first time to Philly. It's most unfortunate that I no longer eat meat, as the famous Philly cheesesteak is lost on me, but I did enjoy my brief visit to the even more famous Liberty Bell.

And just look who I saw there!

My boyfriend!

Multi-Dimensional

I know it seems, from my posts, that all I ever do in my life is eat snacks and drink booze.

Yum, snacks . . .

. . . Mmmm, Booze . . .

But there is a lot more to my life, there really is.

First of all . . .

. . . we're greening up around here. We are! Finally.

Second of all, yesterday we had snacks . . .

. . . and we had booze.

Both.

And . . . 

. . . we had our Westy back, from her rest cure.

We had snacks and we had booze and we had our Westy.

You see that? Multi-dimensional.

doppelganger

Remember that day in Phoenix when we were enjoying some outdoor activities and clicking our heels? After spectating at the bride and groom to be's kickball game, we walked across the big park to spectate the groom playing flag football. It was a pretty day, it was a pretty park, and we had nothing but time. My girl and I meandered along, generally keeping pace with some people we'd recently met, and whom we suspected might actually know where we were going. 

My girl was sort of flipping and twirling around, as she does. I was probably checking my phone, checking out the park, being my usual distracted self. I looked up and was surprised to see that my girl had ventured waaay ahead and was climbing up a goal post. Neither of those actions would be alarming in her natural habitat, surrounded by friends and on familiar turf, but here in Arizona while hanging out with a bunch of grown ups, it was surprising. I said to the person walking next to me: "whuh?" 

When she responded with her own "what?" I turned to see that the person walking next to me, also watching my girl up on the goal post, was my girl. 

mind. blown. 

Seriously. This was a totally random encounter! Everything about these two girls was eerily similar. It freaked me right the frack out. Look at them.

LOOK AT THEM!

All wound up

The last few days I have been wound up like a tight, fierce fist ready to explode into someone's face. I'm irritable, stressed out, and so over dealing with such intense feelings of impotence and powerlessness.

It's not that I'm not trying to problem solve and work on solutions, I am. But the frustration of re-remembering that I'm dealing with someone who I find completely irrational and extremely hard to communicate with, and that I, of course, can't control, and will never be able to control (even if what is going on is complete crazy making), is humbling, and depressing, and a brutal reminder of just how big and deep and wide some of our bad decisions can be. When you have to work things out over and over and over with someone who doesn't make sense to you, things can get bat-shit bonkers really fucking quickly.

So, in order to sooth my disturbed mind, I'm posting some words of wisdom that will hopefully help me hang on for yet another day of crazy.

You all probably don't need any of these, but bare with me, k?

Convergence

Easter! Spring! Outside!

What a delightful opportunity to get together with one's peeps, and have snacks.

Yum, snacks.

Featuring scungilli salad . . .

. . . smoked salmon with all the accoutrement . . .

. . . shrimp . . .

. . . some class of sausage . . .

. . . and a brand-spanking-new UConn Men- and Women- Championship t-shirt.

Go Huskies!

And Spring, you ask?

Oh, my people, it is here.

But wait! It wasn't just Easter. It was also our esteemed Eldest's birthday. A convergence of two major holidays.

MB was completely surprised by her Carvel ice cream cake. Except she wasn't. Not even a little bit. She was totally faking it. Because that is what we *do*. If it is our birthday, we pretend to be surprised, we eat Carvel ice cream cake, and then we don't have to help clean up the kitchen.

A Birthday Girl and Easter all in the same day.

A convergence of delightfulness.

first things first

Sooo, we missed our anniversary.

Me, You and Ellie debuted on April 19, 2008! 

Happy Anniversary,  Ellie!

Happy Anniversary, Beth!

Happy Anniversary, Jacquie!

Why thank you. 

Six years, kids. I have to say, I think we've come a long way, baby. I've certainly had my share of days where I can't imagine what I can possibly dredge up to fill the page on my day to blog, but still I would not change a thing about our little project and what it's become. 

As the story goes:

Once upon a glass or twelve of wine, Jacquie and Beth and Ellie got to talking. We decided that we were all enormously smart and clever and hilarious, and that it would be a crime not to share our unique talents with the world. We decided to start a blog together.We needed a name, so Jacquie asked Beth: “What should we call a blog about me and you and Ellie?”And the rest, as they say, is history. We are having a blast writing this thing, and if there was any trepidation that we were only smart and clever and hilarious that night because of all the wine, our words here thus far have succinctly affirmed our mutual self-admiration.

Ah, so humble.

To commemorate this auspicious occasion, let's revisit each of our first posts on the ol' bloggie doodle, shall we?

Ellie kicked us off with I Never See This Stuff Coming

Then I chimed in about ice cubes

And Beth's first post was Scary Hairy

It's all so amusing and nostalgic! Ellie was on the road, Beth had a different last name, and I had really...um... dumb naive kids. Some things never change?

Bali Immersion fun

Happy Monday morning people! I almost always find it rough to get back to the office on a Monday morning, but taking a look at this video put together by a woman who assisted during the recent Janet Stone Yoga immersion in Bali made me feel a lot better!! ;)

There is a very unattractive shot of me about half way through. Be on the look out ;)

Yeah, yeah, I know, the video is long. But so are Mondays.

A Smattering . . .

 It's Friday, peeps, and you know what that means.

Time to clean out the camera.

Here's Jennie and me on Sunday . . .

 . . . and here's that self-same, newly-green grass, covered in ice, on Wednesday.

 We'll get there, though. We're getting closer and closer. As is Mistah's spiral.

Speaking of Mistah, here are some bananas, looking very yellow against a B&W background, because Mistah is very smart and clever.

Here Jennie and I are again, at our favorite watering hole, manning the fort . . .

 . . . and doing a bang-up job of it, I might add.

Here is one of New London's best murals, miraculously free of cars parked in front of it. It's the first time that has ever happened.

Here is some scungile salad and prosecco, a reward for doing 10 minutes of yard work a couple of weekends ago.

And, finally, my favorite . . .

This cracked me up, every time I watched March Madness online (until I realized I wasted my entire "free pass" on early-round games).

Only 62% loaded??

That's more like it.

I've got some catching up to do.

T.T.L.E.

The other night as I was sitting in the backyard with my boy gazing at Mars, I thought I’d grab the actual camera for photos instead of using my phone. Wait, what? You can’t see Mars from your back yard? Not even on the night of the Totally Tubular Lunar Eclipse? Poor earthling.

Anyway, I took about 800 really bad photos of a really beautiful subject. It was hard to be still enough to get a good shot out there, but believe me when I tell you that the mental snapshots captured some of the very favorite moments I’ve had in this house. It was just me and my boy outside on a Monday night at midnight. The full moon was spectacular in and of itself, as evidenced by Ellie and her Mistah, but from the moment the earth’s shadow took its first bite of that big white wafer, the viewing became transcendent.

It was awesome, in the way that word can be literal.

The next day at work, when I plugged my camera in to the computer to see what I had to work with, I discovered some previously unexplored photos that had been taken during our recent trip to San Elijo!

Again with the heavenly bodies

camp leisure town

handsome. tall. thin. vertically challenged waistband. 

camp action town

view from above, camp fashion

I love finding gems in my camera too, Beth!