How to Defile a Fresh, Delicious Meal.

You know how sometimes you prepare a fresh, nutritious meal for your loved one and they praise its beauty and flavor and you feel really warm and cozy inside, but then your loved one is all like, "You know what would make this even better?" and he goes into the fridge and gets RANCH?

That doesn't bother me.

Not even a little bit.

Actually children, two months ago I would have been right there with him, slathering the ranch all over my beans and tomatoes. But that was before I discovered my dairy allergy. And now I am barred forever from the sweet manna of Ranchy delight, just as a Catholic who has failed to attend church on a Day of Holy Obligation, such as August 15, day of the Assumption* is barred from the sweet manna of Heaven. Or something like that.

*I guess the Pope didn't hear what they say about assuming things--am I right?!

An Abiding Love for Poetry.

Some people like to cuddle with their spouses.

Some people like to cuddle with their cats.

Me? I like to cuddle* with poems.

 How happy does this cuddling make me? Sooo happy (pictured).

*Yes, just cuddle. For the last time, your brother is not half haiku, he's just short.

The Curious Case of the Gelled Garlic.

This past week, I was minding my own business, using ingredients at the normal pace, letting them sit in their ordinary place on top of the microwave (ginger root), beside the coffee maker (avocados), and on the diningroom table (vitamins).

So you can imagine my surprise, children, when my ingredients began doing something that was certainly not ordinary. This perfectly normal bulb of garlic started getting translucent and gel-like. Squishy. Mellower-smelling.

Your father said I should probably just throw it out, but he didn't know I had already used it in his dinner! I'll write tomorrow if it kills us.

Actually, I probably won't.

Things You Understand as You Get Older.

This week, your father and I received a Victoria's Secret catalog in the mail. I have to say, we used to get these at my parents' house when I was growing up, but I never before understood why they upset my mother.

However, now that I'm a married adult, I can see she had a point: it is pretty annoying that they keep putting these women's faces on photos of my body.

Sheesh.

(Happy birthday, Mariska!)

Some Things I Find Beautiful & Strange.

I've been waiting for these images to fit neatly into the narrative arc of a blog post, but children, I just don't think it's going to happen. So I will present them to you here, simply as they are: beautiful and strange things that I come across in my everyday life.

First, I present you a perfectly freckled banana. It's rare to find a banana with such tiny, even freckles across its skin. Rarer still that your camera is handy at just the moment you notice the banana's loveliness.

Second, I offer the Mysteriously Crackled Ice. Frozen in a thin layer across the top of the ice cube tray, this ice covered a dozen chilly air pockets, and nothing else. No "cubes" here, my children. Only an icy crust easily penetrated by a human finger.

Finally, a plate monster. With soysage eyes and a giant kale mouth, this monster has something strange and happy to offer any diner who might come across it during the course of a meal.

All right. More later. I have no doubt in my mind that the world will continue being as strange and beautiful as ever, and when it does, I will blog about it.

Not-So-Everyday: Visitors to Carbondale!

After a long line of excessively everyday occurrences (which, because of your mother's future fetish, you have been cruelly subjected to knowing about), we had some not-so-everyday things happen in Carbondale last week. What such events, you ask? Visitors!

Despite all odds, we actually enjoyed a visit from two people, who had to travel for hours and hours to get here--and they did it anyway! We couldn't have been more perplexed or more delighted to see folks from "the outside," as we call them down here. And now, children, prepare to meet your paternal grandmother, Laurie, and one of your top four favorite aunts, Christie.

The visit was such a thrill for us all that we decided to actually leave the house. Here I am strapped in the car for a drive to the big, delightful world beyond the walls of our everyday abode.

Such pure adventure awaiting us on the open road--it takes my breath away to remember it all!

Being Fancy.

Children, you know by now that your father and I are many things, but one thing we are certainly not is fancy. However, from time to time, both of us like to "play against type," as it were, and act a bit fancy just to get it out of our system.

This week, your father went all out. First, he insisted that we visit a local winery, and when we got there, he donned one of the fanciest disguises of all: the finger mustache.

After a leisurely session of drinking wine in an extremely fancy multi-layer outdoor deck (in a shirt so fancy it has buttons on it), he frolicked among the grapevines to demonstrate just how at ease he is with fanciness.

I would be lying if I said I wish you could have been there, children, because if you had, I would have had to take care of you instead of drinking delicious wine. But I am glad you have this blog post to cherish for all of eternity.

Roommate Troubles.

So everything was going great with Maisie, our new roommate. For the first week or so, she mostly stayed out of our way and we stayed out of hers--and when we did hang out, it was really chill. You know, she'd scoot up the wall and I'd just kind of keep typing, and then eventually she'd scoot somewhere out of sight and I'd be sure to check my shoes before putting my feet in them.

But then she started inviting some shady friends over. For example, this guy.

And another guy I found in a teacup but whom I didn't have a chance to photograph.

Let's just put it this way. Maisie, if you're reading this (from the internet connection for which you HAVE NOT YET PAID), consider yourself on roommate probation until further notice. For serious.

How to Make Green Tea.

I really appreciate how manufacturers provide step-by-step instructions on the packaging for taking a food from ingredient to finished product. For example, this bag of green tea.

Without these concise, three-step directions, how would I ever have been able to create this little masterpiece?

I wouldn't have been able to, that's how.

Noah and the Sandbox.

This weekend was warm and sunny, which means that Noah played outside for the vast majority of it. Mostly, he sat around, moving dirt about in the patch of his lawn that I believe is officially called a "garden," but which appears to this simple observer to be a sort of sandbox for adults.



You be the judge, readers.



The warm weather also brought the fortuitous coincidence of my finishing a bottle of olive oil and some wild daisies springing up in our backyard. So for the next few days, anyway, we'll have some fresh flowers on the table.

(And for the rest of the spring, we'll have an ungodly ant infestation.)

The Elephant in the Room.

So I got a rather offensive mailing this week from some weight loss company trying to raise money. I mean, they weren't very subtle about their suggestion that I slim down.

No thanks, American Association of Unfortunate Weights. I will not succumb to your insidious mind games and believe that, if I send you a check, I will one day be the size of the smallest, cutest elephant in the line instead of the biggest!

(But thank you for the stationery.)

Our Newest Roommate.

To be honest, children, I thought one of you (most likely the oldest) would be the first roommate your father and I ever brought into our lives. But that was before I met Maisie.

Meet Maisie.

Ever since she first darted into my peripheral vision while I was typing at my computer, I knew that we lived in the same house. But it was only later that I realized that made us honest-to-goodness roommates.

Maisie & me, just hanging out near a wall.

At first, I thought I would most likely murder Maisie, as I had done to so many of her brethren (sistren?) over the years. But after naming her, murder began to seem increasingly undesirable. So we struck upon a truce: she would kill and devour any insect intruders (or as she calls them, "squatters") she came across, and I would let her live. With us.

Thumbs up for inter-species friendship!

I have no regrets, though since our first full day of friendship, I haven't seen much of Maisie. And honestly, it doesn't bother me excessively. Let's just hope she doesn't try to pull this disappearing shit when the rent's due.

What's in a Spoon?

To your father, a spoon is a spoon. He doesn't care whether it has a pointy end, what its scooping capacity is, or how it might balance (hypothetically) on the edge of a mixing bowl during the Ballet of the Kitchen Utensils.

To me, however, not all spoons are created equal. I'd like to spend a few moments today addressing the matter of my dessert spoon.

This spoon, as you can see, has a rounded end (so as not to press into the tender flesh between the thumb and forefinger) and a deeply scooped head. Some folks would say this spoon is proof that there is someone out there creating spoons--how else, these people would ask, could a spoon so magnificently hold the perfect amount of both milk and cookie in a single mouthful?


Other folks would say that this spoon evolved to have this structure over months of being used to eat desserts.

Me, I don't care who you believe. As long as you get your chubby little child arms out of my way so I can have this spoon at dessert time, dammit.

Care of Magical Creatures.

As you know, children, I am a fervent proponent of tricking yourself into doing things that are less than pleasant but must nonetheless be done. This weekend, I devised a clever way to take more pleasure out of vacuuming the house.

All I had to do was trick myself into believing that our vacuum cleaner was a magical creature named Hortensia who lives in the front closet and enjoys eating the dirt accumulated on human carpets. She's a very low-maintenance magical creature, and only needs to eat once a week (or so) to survive, but she does require some attention, as I realized this weekend when I noticed something was not right with her midsection.

It turns out she needed a stomach transplant--good thing I bothered to check! It was touch and go for a while, but she pulled through in the end. 

Style 7 stomachs, which suit most vacuums named Hortensia.

The operation.

You can probably imagine how relieved I was once the operation was over and Hortensia was back to her old self. See you next week, Horty!

That "Giving Up" Feeling.

You know how sometimes, at the end of the week, when you've spent hours and hours of your life writing marketing emails for people selling totally BS things like psychic readings, and you just want a few sweet minutes to work on a poem for a change, and also you need some bourbon and tater tots STAT or you might just collapse?

I had one of those weeks. But it's almost over. So it's all going to be okay.

The Redcoats Are Coming!

Naturally, by "redcoats," I mean "strawberries." I am a poet after all, and it is a poet's job to describe things so that other people have to slow down and ask themselves what the GD the poet was smoking when she put those words together in that order.

It was a real treat to find these beauties at the produce store, and when I got them home, your father and I about devoured them.

Sorry, frozen blueberries, but your reign is OVER. (The pancake in which these blueberries were staying took the news awfully hard, electing to slice itself in half and flop against the plate as if nothing were worth living* for.)

*By "living," of course, I mean "being covered in syrup."

The Best Investment We've Ever Made.

What began as an innocent question this weekend ("Do we have Scrabble, Wife?" asked your father) turned into the single wisest thing we have ever done as a married couple. Frankly, the only question that remains in my mind is how it took us so long to buy our own Scrabble game.



We whiled away most of Sunday 'round the board, which we set up in our freshly-swept back porch area (take that, helicopters).



In addition to granting us some much-needed time away from our screens, the game (as always) provided me with infinite hilarity as I rearranged my letters in my trough to form mildly profane expressions.



In fact, if "points" were given for this achievement rather than "making actual words in accordance with the board layout," I might have beaten your father once or twice.

(Also, one small word of complaint. I love Scrabble as much as the next word nerd, but I don't know if I'd characterize a game in which people can read entire paragraphs of their books between turns "edge of your seat" anything.)

BUSTED!

Ever since your mom discovered that she has an allergy to dairy, your father has been really "enjoying" being the only one to drink out of the milk jug.



I mean really enjoying.

And I can't even get upset about it, because it's not like he's being unsanitary--he's only sharing germs with his future self, after all.