If you’re reading this, Dan and I have arrived safely in Washington. We are going to check in to our motel early, where we are going to promptly collapse and sleep until it’s time for dinner.
I wanted to post something about everything I’m thankful for, but I’m too tired to get that sappy, so I’m just going to say that I’m thankful for everything I have in my life – family, friends, furbabies. You guys – and burritos – are what makes life worth living.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
We were supposed to go to the Valley to spend Mother’s Day with Dan’s family, but instead decided that we needed some family time and celebrated my Mother’s Day (you know, because I have four furbabies) by taking the pups to Point Isabel in Richmond.
The goal was to take Nix and Leela down to the water and encourage them to swim, followed by a relaxing picnic (sandwiches for us, peanut butter Kongs for them). We had to flip that plan of attack around a little bit after realizing that while Point Isabel is a HUGE park, it is also FILLED TO THE BRIM with people and their ill-behaved dogs. So lunch (and some vigilant guarding of our dogs from extra friendly and overly curious puppies) came first, and then we were off to the water.
Dan took Leela in first, and though it took her a couple of tries, she was eventually happily splashing around. She is half Lab, after all. Nix, on the other hand, was suspicious. None of his breeding predisposes him to swimming, and given how much he hates baths, getting him used to the water is bound to be a slow transition.
I tried to encourage Nix to step into the water by standing on rocks a few feet into the surf, but he climbed right up onto those rocks with me, completely avoiding the water altogether. What can I say? I have a very savvy (and apparently aquaphobic) dog. (These pictures probably make him look happier than he actually was at the time.)
After deciding that Nix had had enough of our water torture, we headed back to the trail (and eventually back to the car) to head home. Nix was anxious to get away from the water, and basically dragged us the whole way back to the parking lot. He probably would have dragged us the whole way back to Fremont if we would have let him.
The car ride home was quiet, with the dogs giving in to their exhaustion from all the excitement that afternoon and falling asleep on top of each other in the back seat.
Cutest Mother’s Day ever.
When I was younger, my ultimate dream was to spend New Year’s in New York’s Times Square. Or at least it was, until MTV ruined the entire holiday.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to appreciate the opportunity to keep New Year’s Eve low-key. My first New Year’s Eve in Merced was spent with Chinese food and an Entourage marathon. Last year, Dan and I went out to dinner, and then came home and watched the ball drop in our pajamas. And Raeann’s Mad Men-themed New Year’s party the year before that was the most dressed up I’d been in YEARS.
So when I found out that neither my parents nor Rae and Stephen had plans for New Year’s, I devised a brilliant plan for us to all come together, eat dim sum and ice cream, and go to bed at 12:05 AM.
Some choice photos from the evening:
Our dim sum FEAST.
Feather headdresses are sexy.
MoMo got in on the celebration.
Dan said we look "way too sober" in this picture. NOT POSSIBLE.
Basically, it was perfect.
Happy 2012, y’all!
Dan and I have an agreement that we’re holding off on spawning offspring for at least a few more years, but in the meantime, I needed to get a fix for my baby fever. So on Sunday, we headed to Dan’s parents’ house in Turlock to celebrate with his family and help Baby Braeden celebrate his first Christmas.
We beat Jenn and Anthony there, which means I had to wait a full TWENTY MINUTES for Operation: Baby Fix to commence. But when they finally arrived, I snuggled that baby endlessly. And then I made Dan do the same.
YOU GUYS, LOOK HOW CUTE.
Anyway.
Christmas with Dan’s family is always fun. There are shit tons of presents (except I’m not allowed to say “shit”), crap tons of honeybaked ham (except I’m not allowed to say “crap”), and bucket loads of pie (“bucket” is an acceptable word).
I got all kinds of fun stuff, like a new mini-umbrella:
New scarves, which I desperately needed since all of mine are in storage in Merced, and it’s COLD here:
And, of course, the much anticipated Kindle:
I could have killed Dan when I opened my present to find a Kindle. I mean, REALLY. Two weeks ago, I called him on my way home from work, and this is the exact conversation we had:
Dan: Do you want a Kindle for Christmas? Because you’ve mentioned it, like, five times this week.
Me: I don’t know.
I said “I don’t know” because I really didn’t know. Would a Kindle make my life easier because I wouldn’t be carrying around a five-hundred-page paperback in my purse all day? Absolutely. But would I miss the smell and texture of books? Would I miss being able to highlight passages, dog-ear the pages, and break the spines? Absolutely.
So you can see how I believed him when he told me, every day for the last two weeks, that he hadn’t bought me a Kindle. He used this conversation as an excuse: “‘I don’t know’ means ‘no’ with you.” Fine, husband. Fair enough.
I spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what my present could be if it wasn’t a Kindle. Maybe jewelry? But why would Dan spend money on diamonds when he could buy me something useful, like a genetic test for Nixon? Or a pink leash to match the pink collar that I bought for Leela that Dan totally hates?
(Why is it that all of my other dream gifts revolve around my pets?)
But it turns out that a Kindle actually is what I wanted. And I’m lucky enough to have a husband who can read my mind. Or at least decipher my vague answers to his fairly direct questions.
Dan also enjoyed my gift to him, which was, against my better judgment, a Joe Montana jersey.
(Those of you who have heard my Joe Montana camping story will understand the “against my better judgment” comment. Dan has heard the story multiple times. It does not negate the fact that he loved his Chrismukah present.)
But the best part of Christmas was when Braeden and I opened our presents to find the same gifts. Except Dan and I bought him a 49ers teddy, and his parents bought me a Giants teddy:
Great minds think alike, I guess.
I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had a fabulous one, and that you got all the gifts you wanted! And I hope that you were maybe even allowed to curse in front of your in-laws, because if so, I want to live vicariously through you. Shit fuck damn, I wish I could do that.
… is Jewish Christmas where I come from. Which means we take our loud, inappropriate, drunk family out to Chinese food. And then order the entire menu.
But that comes later.
We got to my parents’ house early in the afternoon so Dan and my dad could watch football while my mom and I made latkes to make up for all the latkes we didn’t get on Friday night. Making latkes is a laborious ordeal, and not something you do often, partially because they’re holiday specific, and partially because they stink up your entire world.
(I’m not exaggerating. It took me two days and three washes to get the smell of fried potatoes and onions out of my hair.)
But it was totally worth it, because for one, it made my mom really happy.
And for two, I had the pleasure of watching Dan eat latkes for the first time ever. He ate them with his hands, but marriage is about letting the little things slide, right?
Several hours later, after I was sufficiently drunk on latkes (and wine and vanilla vodka), we ventured down the street to Golden Rice Bowl, formerly known as Beijing on Irving, affectionately known as “Lou’s.” This place has been our Chinese restaurant of choice since I was three or four years old, and actually used to be owned by the family of my orthodontist’s assistant. (Six degrees of San Francisco, anyone?) Their family sold the restaurant a few years ago, but the new ownership retained Lou, their star waiter, who knows my entire family by name.
Jewish Christmas dinner was, as always, fantastic. Lou is a champion of multitasking, somehow managing to satiate all the needs and cravings of our massive group of fourteen while also handling nine other tables of three or more people.
What can I say? The dude is a (very underpaid) saint.
The only qualm I had with the evening was that there were TOO MANY PEOPLE at the restaurant. Remember when Chinese food and movie theaters on Christmas used to be just for Jews? Apparently, those days are long gone. And Golden Rice Bowl was filled to the brim with people in Santa hats. Many of whom were dirty San Francisco hipster transplants who probably couldn’t afford the plane ticket back to Ohio (or wherever the hell they’re from) for Christmas.
Yelp needs to stop making the things I love so popular.
But even with the influx of hipsters and Santa hats, Jewish Christmas was a resounding success. I was so filled with pot stickers and general’s chicken and Szechuan eggplant that Dan practically had to roll me out of the restaurant at the end of the night. Because this is how Jews do:
They came to kill us. We prevailed. Let’s eat.
I had a longer holiday weekend than most, since I’m lucky enough to be able to celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas thanks to my Jewish parents and my very non-Jewish husband.
I joined my parents and our friends / “family” on Friday night for Shabbat and Chanukah services at their synagogue. You probably have a group like us at your place of worship. We’re loud, we’re inappropriate, and we bring our own wine, so we’re probably drunk. Friday night was no different.
Anne brought foam menorah hats, which my mom, Remi and I all happily wore. The rabbi joked during services that the people lighting our candles should be careful not to light us on fire.
Though the evening was light on latkes (they bought them from Trader Joe’s and totally underestimated the number of Jews that would show up to an event with free food, so everyone got one and a third latkes), we did enjoy the sufganiyot (jelly donuts):
… As well as the slew of chanukiyot (menorahs) that lit up the room. There was one for every family that attended. So you should be able to tell by this picture alone that we needed about eight THOUSAND more latkes than were prepared for this evening.
Things like this make moving back to the Bay Area – as stressful as it was – completely worth it. If I were still living in Merced, there’s no way I would have been able to spend the evening in San Francisco with my family, celebrating the Festival of Lights. I’m feeling very lucky this year to have such a wonderful job that lets me live in such a wonderful place, near my amazing family.
I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas / is having a fantastic Chanukah / will have a fantastic Kwanzaa. And I hope you get / got everything you want[ed].
I did!
Dan and I had a fight the night before Thanksgiving. I had to bake a delicious-but-ugly pecan pie for Thanksgiving dinner, and I had a list of very specific ingredients that I needed. Dan happened to be going to Safeway on Tuesday afternoon, and offered to pick up the things on my list. Perfect. Thanks for saving me a trip to the ridiculously-insane-because-it’s-the-week-of-Thanksgiving supermarket, husband.
The one item Dan couldn’t find was corn syrup. No big deal. On Wednesday night, I stopped at Safeway on my way home from work to pick up the corn syrup he couldn’t find. It took forever to find it, and even longer to get out of the store. Even the express lanes were fifteen people long, and the cashiers weren’t doing me any favors in terms of speeding up the process.
But I made it home, with corn syrup. And I started to get the pie baking process ready by pulling out all of the ingredients I needed. And that’s when I realized there was no brown sugar.
Brown sugar is necessary for a pecan pie. And it was on the list. And Dan didn’t get it, and he didn’t tell me that he didn’t get it. And this is about the time that I blow a gasket.
The fight started with “why didn’t you get brown sugar.” It evolved into “why didn’t you tell me you didn’t get brown sugar,” which turned into “you don’t communicate with me,” which turned into “your work schedule is ruining our marriage.”
And it’s true that I hate Dan’s work schedule. I supported him through seven painful months of unemployment, and when he finally got a job, we were so excited for him to have something, ANYTHING, that I didn’t freak out about the fact that he’d be working nights. I did warn him that we’d probably never see each other, which turned out to be true. And for six months, we managed. But it’s getting to the point where I can’t manage anymore. I need him to be home so I can see him, talk to him, snuggle with him. I got married so that I could have a partner, and on Wednesday through Saturday nights, I really don’t feel like I have one.
So Dan is working on finding something new. Which makes me feel terrible, because as miserable as his schedule makes me, he really likes it. And he really likes his job, which is important to his happiness. And I like it when he’s happy.
The fight went on for almost twenty-four full hours. When he came home from work that night and tried to snuggle up next to me, I pushed him away. I hadn’t been so angry with him since that fight we had earlier this year about abortion.
Abortion and brown sugar. Divisive topics in any marriage, I’m sure.
But we resolved things. Dan assured me that he is committed to finding a job that works for both of us, and continues to look even though he may not be talking to me about it all the time. And I promised to be more patient and trusting, and to understand that the economy is shitty right now (as if I didn’t already know that) and that he’s doing the best he can.
We’ll get through it. We’ll communicate via text message. We’ll relish the two hours a night we actually get to sleep in the same bed. And when the day comes when we can finally be on the same schedule and spend quality time together, we’ll go back to ignoring each other while he plays video games and I watch reruns of Teen Mom.
And life will once again be perfect.
1. Snuggles with the Amazing Invisible Cat, who only came out of hiding because the dogs were still upstairs, asleep on the bed with Dan. I literally think it’s been a year or longer since she last sat on my lap.
2. A loud, annoying, delicious, football-filled Thanksgiving dinner at which I drank too much wine and found myself immensely proud of the delicious (if admittedly ugly) pecan pie I baked. (I got tons of compliments on it, and it was the only one of three pies to be finished by our twenty-person group.)
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
You guys, it’s raining.
I asked the rain to wait. I was even polite about it. But I guess giving me a few days to secure my brand new rain boots was just too much to ask. And now my feet are cold.
I’m torn between loving and hating this time of year. I’ll take any excuse to bundle up in hoodies and fake Uggs and spend the evenings on my couch drinking wine and watching TV, but at the same time, it’s fucking cold outside, my dogs are going ballistic because you can’t run them in this weather, and I have somehow managed to soak every pair of socks I own.
And it’s only more difficult in the new house, because we’re not fully unpacked, and I almost feel like I’m trapped in this jungle of books and boxes and Ikea recliners – recliners that really should be in storage, but how the hell are we going to get them there in a rainstorm?
Then there are the holidays. Dan’s new job apparently has him on Thanksgiving this year, so I’m without a partner and, apparently, without a dinner to attend. My parents will be in New York for my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah, and the Thanksgiving dinner we normally attend is being held at another house for “just immediate family.” That’s not to say that there aren’t other dinners I could attend, but those dinners are two or more hours away, and I was really hoping to have a glass of wine or three with my turkey.
So I’m grouchy from the weather, and I’m grouchy from the driving, and I’m grouchy for not being able to see my family during what should be the happiest time of the year.
And it’s still fucking raining.
