Painting Chef – Cheaper Than Therapy

I’ve disappeared into a literary wormhole… seriously. I’ve always been a reader but over the past month I’ve been like an addict searching for a fix. Thank god for the library, right? Otherwise I’d be strung out AND homeless while Amazon lived happily on not even noticing that every penny of my vast, vast (snort…) fortune was now resting happily in its little hands.

Here are my latest fixes… (In no particular order other than my remembering what I’ve read) I recommend every. single. one.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

Steps and Exes by Laura Kalpakian

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Beauty, Disrupted by Carre Otis (SHUT UP. I have a weird fascination with the models of the 90s. They were around when I would sneak out of bed to watch Cindy Crawford on House of Style and I was obsessed with Elsa Klensch’s “Style” on CNN. Headline News? I don’t remember. It was before I got all fatty and my teeth moved back to being jacked up because I promptly had my braces off and chucked my retainer into a drawer and never thought twice about it. DON’T BE LIKE ME!)

Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell Not sure why this one says the release date is September 2012 as it is sitting in my bookshelf and I have already read it… also the one book on this list that, while wasn’t BAD, was the most “meh” of the bunch. But I will ALWAYS read about Dr. Scarpetta, even though I kind of want to kick her in the teeth at this point.

So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman

The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister

Of Bees and Mist by Erica Setiawan

A Grown-up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

The Face Thief by Eli Gottlieb

Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb

Zero Day by David Baldacci

Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Your turn! What are you reading?

My darling husband is an engineer and all that that implies. When he took up with me a dozen or so years ago, he was suddenly exposed to a world of clutter and disorder and haphazard “organization” the likes of which he had never seen. I? Was familiar with his breed as they are rampant in my family tree. He didn’t have that luxury. Bless his heart.

But over the years, we find a common ground and we find a way to live with each other. He only throws the sledgehammer at me if the piles of junk mail hang around longer than a week and if I get angry while he cleans up behind me in the kitchen, I make an effort to avoid organs when I stab him. We are thinking of starting a side business as marriage counselors. Or at the very least, getting a reality show.

All this aside, we do manage to exist in the same house and are both still very much alive after doing so for a decade. (FUCK I’M OLD) But over the course of a decade, couple tend to… accumulate things. Many things. And eventually, those things need a place to be things and do the things that those things do even if all they are doing is sitting in a box with other things that at some point seemed related but now all you have is a box with a picture frame, three Barbie dolls (Joan Jett, Debbie Harry and Cyndi Lauper and I LOVE THEM but I have no idea what to DO with them), a book on calligraphy, 4 issues of Martha Stewart Living and a sushi mat.

But there were many of these boxes. LOADS of them. And stacks and piles and leaning towers of things that had all been jammed in this one room whenever company was coming over and I was suddenly embarrassed to be kind of clutter-y. Rinse and repeat and suddenly we were finding ourselves in a single room, always keep the door closed, hoarders situation that we were no longer able to ignore.

So we spent a weekend cleaning out what had come to be known as The Purple Room. And that bitch turned out to be a LOT bigger than I thought! I once again have a place just for painting AND? AND!! AND!?!? I just stole my ballet barre from my parents’ house and Patrick is going to put that sucker up on the walls. Well… after we rip the weird foam sun down from the wall, sand them and paint over all the strange birds and picket fences and odd little things painted all over the purple walls. And put up mirrors behind the barre. Oh, and after we pull up the totally ruined by a formerly non-housebroken dog and put down hardwood. And find a new desk that isn’t secretly a kitchen table. And maybe re-cover a chair. And put up a television.

Shit. now I’m exhausted. Can we just close the door again? Stupid engineers.

Holy crap. Are you sick of reading “Year in Review” posts? I am and yet… I still find myself oddly drawn to them. I don’t think that I’ve ever actually written one though. I suppose I could write one short one to catch you up for all six (really? I’ve been doing this six years? JESUS. Shut up already. And actually it will be SEVEN years in February so there.) years that I’ve missed and it would go something like this… blah, blah, cake, shoes, asshole wife, no baby, baby, dead baby, rinse repeat, too much wine, 90210, more wine, awesome husband, DAMMIT PATRICK, cake, shoes, baking, painting, more wine and I’m spent.

So yes. There was that.

But I kind of feel like the past year was different. It was a completely and totally indulgently selfish year. It was, if you will, all about me. I didn’t focus on anything else and it was actually kind of a fabulous thing. For the first time in a really, really long time, I can honestly tell you that I like the me of December so very much more than I liked the me of January.

I have a long way to go. I’m still kind of ridiculously lazy but it’s a thinner lazy than before. I’m not AFRAID to get up off my ass and do something. You know, I’d just rather… not. It has been a full 4 months since I’ve hidden from anyone I knew in high school in the bathroom of a Walgreen’s so that I wouldn’t have to see that flash in their eyes when they go… um… OH! Hi. It’s been… a long time. While I hear their brain spinning out HOLY FATASS BATMAN!

I have embraced my love of baking again because I’m not scared of it anymore. I don’t feel guilty loving to cook because I think that’s what a fat girl should do. But I also don’t have a secret shame of cooking because I know I’m not going to eat a dozen cookies. I’ll have one. And then I’ll share them. And that makes me so much happier.

I planned a really fabulous vacation with my husband. A vacation truly worthy of the celebration he deserves for having been married to me for an entire decade without whacking me in the head repeatedly with a shovel and burying me under a barn somewhere whilst laughing maniacally and imagining the peace and quiet he can now enjoy without me walking into the room and screeching “DEAR GOD. We are NOT watching American Pickers or Storage Wars. Change the channel IMMEDIATELY!!”

Huh… was that… oddly detailed? What… that’s not normal? Shut your lying face hole.

I’ve kind of loved this year. It was a good one. It was a year that felt like I’d finally turned a corner in my life. I’m not where I want to be but it no longer feels unattainable.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m excited about the year to come. I have some cool stuff on the horizon. There is the aforementioned vacation (that’s HUGE!). There is, as the previous post might have implied, a new venture that I can’t wait to tell you about. There is the re-visiting of the fertility issue in the second half of the year (AFTER I go to Mexico and get my margarita on). There is another fun summer on the lake where I will hopefully not puss out after only one day of trying to wakeboard (YA’LL! The PAIN was unreal. My hands are not that grippy. I think I need a finger strengthener… ). Perhaps there are some ballet classes. I miss ballet so very much. Did you even know that about me?

There is an entire year out there that is waiting to be lived. In the past year this space was knocked down a few rungs. I wasn’t very present. That will probably happen more in the coming year but, unlike this past year, I am not going to let myself feel guilty of that. I have a lot of fulfilling things going on. I am endeavoring to spend more time living my life as opposed to writing about it on the internet.

(What I’m saying is that not much is going to change here, I just won’t feel the need to apologize for that and the very few of you that still read this can just be cool with that.)

Happy New Year my friends. Now get out there and punch 2012 in the junk.

The fact that I am sitting right here writing these words is a testament to the absolutely shit-balls awesome guy I married. I say that because I’m alive to type this.

Ten years later.

He hasn’t killed me yet.

It’s probably weird that we have been married for ten years and it’s still just us. Two dogs. Two cats. Two hundred and twelve shoes. Three Kitchen-Aid mixers (thanks Neena.) But here we are. Still us.

I think there would be no argument from anyone, least of all my dearly beloved, when I say that I’ve put the man through his paces over the past decade. He’s a saint, I know it and I’m damn lucky to have him.

Nothing about our life looks like I thought it would 10 years into our marriage. Granted 10 years ago, I had no idea what I WANTED our life to look like in this far-off, imaginary year where surely to GOD the cars would fly and someone would have figured out a solution to that whole pesky laundry and vacuuming situation, but I’m pretty damn certain that it did not involve living back in Tennessee and working together. For my father. And probably there were kids… and more cats…

But here we are. And guess what? I’m kind of blissed out. And m very, very wise peanut butter filled chocolate afternoon treat just gave me a very valuable piece of information…

Happy 10 years babe. Damn, you’re a lucky bastard.