If Friday is Casual Sex Day, does that make Saturday Formal Sex Day?
Kewl! Count me in! Sunday Sacred Sex Day sounds even more intriguing.
Friday or not, I've been collecting this past week's bullet points. I present them now for your consideration:
I've always heard it said that your tastes (as in tastebuds) change every several years. I honestly believe this is so, which is why I'm devastated every time I taste beets and still find them disgusting. I have some totally silly, unfounded and illogical belief that I should like beets. Why I should like beets when I really don't like many, many other root vegetables is beyond me. Another hated food, though, is starting to surprise me. All of a sudden I'm finding that instead of a heavy, rotten, cloyingly sweet odor that makes me want to gag, bananas suddenly seem to have an almost floral fragrance to me, sweet and exotic. I'm finding banana flavored items beyond the banana bread I've always loved to be appealing. Not sure how far it will go. There are still big textural issues that stand between me and enjoyment of a fresh banana, but it's an improvement. Maybe there's hope for shrimp, lobster and salmon yet. And beets. Beets and I may yet have a future together.
This past couple week's menus largely featured European inspired comfort foods, and also local winter-store foods. There were lovely smoked porkchops from a little market in West Branch that maintains their own smokehouse served with red cabbage and apples. A couple bunches of what are probably about the last available local leeks teamed up with Michigan potatoes and bacon fom the same market for a yummy Potato Leek Soup. A crockpot full of lambshanks (from a local sheep farmer) braised with my own homecanned tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery and red wine warmed our cockles on a snowy, blustery night this past week. It's very unusual, but lamb is on the menu again tonight. Shortly I'll go whip us up a dinner of lamburgers, creamed spinach and baked sweet potatoes.
We were stuck at home for Valentine's Day as Paul was oncall. That was fine with me, anyway. I'd just as soon stay at home, cuddled up with Mr. Man, crying our eyes out watching "The Notebook" after a dinner of homemade lasagna and non alcoholic Cherry Spumante (The mister was oncall, remember.). Nicole came by to visit for a little while, too. I had snuck off early in the day to pick up a piece of lingerie that had been haunting Paul's imagination since our anniversary, and purchased the first replacement piece for Paul's wardrobe of, well, some Black & Decker Bag items that managed to disappear sometime this past year. They're not terribly big items, and not expensive. They probably got mixed up in the bedclothes and somewhere a hotel housekeeper got her amusement for the day.
It's not like we haven't left Black & Decker Bag goodies in other places in the past. A bottle of lube that went up north with us for my birthday weekend has also gone missing. Not gonna be a hotel maid that finds that. I'm so glad we manage to keep track of the more expensive and/or unusual items from the Black Decker Bag. There are just some things that, um, well, yeah......dunwanna go there.
BTW, not trying to hurt anyone's feelings here, but I've got a little something to say to a big ol' handful of people on my FL. EVERY HOLIDAY IS A MADE-UP HOLIDAY. Somewhere, someone created every single holiday in existence, take it from someone who lives in a Sweetest Day celebrating state. If you don't like it, don't celebrate it. Personally, Easter bugs the piss out of me.
A few weeks back we started replacing the lightbulbs around here with CF bulbs as they burned out or we could afford to add a couple to the household shopping list. With a few exceptionsthat will not be changed to CF at all, they're all changed over now. It's made a more than 20% electricity usage since the previous month's bill, and 15% less usage than the same period a year ago. Nice that such a small, painless change can make such a big difference not just for our budget, but for the planet.
I complained a couple weeks ago that one thing I hated about purchasing album downloads instead of CDs was the lack of liner notes. The flip side of that is that I really like being able to replace a damaged CD with an album download instead of having to pay for a new copy of liner notes and a jewel case that will be thrown out. I've already got liner notes, and I'm not sure if jewel cases can be recycled.
Recently I started playing the three albums/desert island game with myself for a little self entertainment, and was surprised how hard it really was for me. I came up with my first album immediately, Sinead O'Connor's "Universal Mother". It's not that it's a particularly masterful bit of music or anything, although I do think her voice is about at its finest on that CD. It just speaks to me, and after more than a decade of listening to it, I just do not get tired of it. It took a couple of weeks before I could come up with album number two, but after replacing my husband-damaged copy of Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer's "Drum Hat Buddha" with an album download of it, I realized just how much I had missed the wonderful turns of phrase, the fascinating stories told, the superb instrumental solos that live at that threshold where the fiddle meets the violin, and the sweet, sweet voices of both of them. Maybe I just haven't yet found album number three that I'd want with me on a desert island for the rest of my life.
I have been a horrible slacker the last couple of weeks. Winter, kids on snowdays, and the fact that they keep the pool at Citation Club so damned cold, had really gotten to me. I went a good couple of weeks without hitting the pool once. The Farmington Y is convenient to me. I really should see if there's anyway I can afford a membership there so there is some alternative to a pool that's just too cold. I did get back a couple times this week. I've missed it.
I had a conversation with Rudy this past week that gave me insight into his head that I've never had before, and made me realize anew just how right the hands of fate turned the whole matter of Sean. I knew right from the beginning that Rudy was not the type of man who could/would raise another man's child comfortably, let alone raise that child as his own, but I just started to really understand this past week how little a difference it would have made if Sean had turned out to be his. No. That's not true. It would have made an immense difference, but not in any good or pleasant way. Underlying everything, it's become very apparent he never wanted children, period, and he bears a deep and abiding resentment and feeling of having been tricked into parenthood against his wishes. Not quite sure what to say other than "whew, glad that big nasty resentment's not directed at me.", and thank the fates that gave me a child in need of a father, and then brought me a father in need of a child when Paul came into our lives.
That Irish Coffee? Why, yes. It certainly did happen. It was lovely. Wanna see?
I finally got our few holiday pictures uploaded. They're here.
Well, going to settle in for the next day or so of weird weather now. Stay warm and dry.