I got punked.

The other day my husband totally punked me and wasn't even trying to*. I got home from work and a couple of packages had been delivered to our house. This is a pretty common occurrence as both my husband and I are internet shopping freaks. I took the packages in and noticed they were both for hubby so I put them aside.

Hubs calls to let me know when he'll be coming home, so I let him know he got two packages.

"OMG, DON'TTOUCHTHOSEPACKAGES." he says.

"Ummmmmmm, okay, I won't." i say. My b-day is coming up so I'm guessing one or both are for my birthday.

So later he gets home and asks if I want to open one of my birthday presents. This makes me think they are both for me. I love presents! Who doesn't? My husband and I are really really really bad at waiting for actual birthdays before we give each other presents, btw. So yessssssssssss i want to open it.

I think for a second I looked like this:

I estatically rip into the package using keys, scissors, and a sharp kitchen knife to get through the offending cardboard box to the contents within. Shreds of packaging, paper, and plastic shipping bubbles start to float in the air. I finally get to the goods and what do I find?

A hunting rifle scope.

I am not a hunter. My husband is. He starts laughing maniacally. Gasping for air because he was laughing so hard, he pants "I didn't... know... that's... what... that was. I... really... thought it... was your present." Once he gets his ability to breath normally back, he asks if I want to open the other one and try again. Ummmmmmm, no. As much as I love presents, I don't want to get punked again. I'll wait until my bday.

* Edit: so I just talked to hubby and he says he totally meant to do it. He thought the scope I was opening was actually something ELSE that he had ordered. So yes, he is Dr. Evil.

Why my husband is the bees knees, pt.1

1. He likes when I text him and call him dude. Recent example: "Dude. Still waiting for the effing bus." I was supposed to get home from work an hour earlier than him and waited for the bus for 45 minutes before it came. He texted back that he was leaving work five minutes after I got on the bus. Yeay for public transportation and trying to save the environment.
2. He quotes The Zombie Survival Guide as if it were peer-reviewed, research driven scientific literature. As in we're watching a C minus zombie movie and one of the characters shoots the zombie in the chest, it keeps moving, but the head shot does them in and my husband explains. According to my husband, "Because the virus Solanum allows the brain to continue functioning without blood circulation from the heart. Shooting their chest doesn't do anything, you have to shoot their brain." HAHAHAHA he's a nerd too.
3. He encourages my ridiculous sense of humor. Like my obsessively quoting my current most favorite scene from a movie. I am constantly asking "Guys, you ready to let the dogs out?" See below.

Where did the summer go?

I ran across this post about how it can seem like you have no free time in the summer. This summer it is true. Don't get me wrong, I love summer. But right now, I feel like summer's half gone and I haven't done all the things I wanted to do (be lazy). I'm still at the beginning of my summer reading list, and It's almost August!

My weekends have been filled with short trips, occasional work, baby showers, BBQ's, and family meet-ups (double time now that we're married.) Longer days mean a push to get more projects, chores and errands done. As a result, the leftover free time hardly feels adequate enough to enjoy the usual summer pastimes like frozen drinks, poolside lounging and being lazy.

I know my husband feels the pressure too, because we have a cabin up in the mountains that we (by we I mean he) completely gutted and is rebuilding into our little private hideaway. His deadline is to have a bathroom installed by Labor Day. There is an outhouse now. Not kidding! Once it is done, we'll be able to hole up there, snuggle, enjoy cozy fires in the cooler months and cool off in the awesome nearby lake in the summer months. So he spends all of his extra time trekking up there to git 'er done.

Cabin above, Garden below

This weekend we don't have anything planned, so I'll catch up on the housekeeping and some work, Hubby's going to work on the cabin. I did look ahead on the calendar, and aside from a weekend trip for my birthday, we don't have much planned, so maybe I'll be able to ease out of summer and sneak in a lazy day or two. How's your summer been so far?

Guilty pleasures vol 1

I have a confession. My current guilty pleasure is So you think you can Dance, or sytycd, for those of you in the know. Also for those of you who don't watch it, this show is a reality TV contest where amazing dancers tackle two or three routines a week and perform them in order not to get kicked off the show. Omg, I know! I'm such a nerd. I DVR the show and make my husband watch my favorite routines. Sometimes three or four times in a row. I think this show rocks mainly because I get to watch amazing talented athletes seem either push their bodies to the limit or take some off the wall routine that a choreographer threw at them and nail it? I wish I could do it. Also, not all of the contestant's dances are awesome, but most are even better than the professional routines they hire as fillers for the result show.

I could not even begin to attempt this (all pics from sytycd gallery)

Second confession. Last year, my husband took me to see sytycd on tour. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I have to say I don't think I'll get tickets to the live show again. I like watching the routines on TV where I can see everything up close and pause and repeat it as much as I want.

Dude. I don't even know what they are doing here. (all pics from sytycd gallery)

The reason it's a guilty pleasure? I'm pretty sure I'm not the demographic they are aiming for, I don't vote, and sometimes, it's totally cheesy. The cheese? The weepy contemporary dance routines some of you may be a fan of. I'm not. Nigel Lythgoe, former dancer and current executive producer and judge? Super cheeseball and total dance nerd. Cat Deeley, the show's beautiful leggy MC? Even bigger cheeseball. She also inexplicably cannot seem to pronounce the word judges. (She says jidges, and usually covers it up by making the audience scream the word judges whenever she is supposed to say it.) Lastly, Mary Murphy, former judge who used to express her pleasure at a routine by literally screaming at the top of her lungs for a solid twenty plus seconds. That's also why I DVR the show. I can FF through all the cheeseball parts. Any other SYTYCD fans out there?

I forgot to bring my lunch to work today.

I want you all to know that I'm craving a good grilled cheese sandwich right now (croque monsieur if you're French) Mmmmmmm...Warm crispy creamy cheesy goodness. Can you just smell it? It will be the first thing I make when I get home.

Found this picture in googleland, but this is pretty much the face I make for grilled cheese!

My favorite variety lately involves two slices of wheat bread, brushed or sprayed with butter spray, Muenster cheese, and sliced tomatoes sprinkled with garlic salt, on the griddle, crisped to a warm gooey perfection.

closeup

I'm hungry! Any other grilled cheese lovers out there?

My Husband's Hissy-fit

This is more a story about how you can have one of those mornings where nothing seems to go your way. Do you every have one of those mornings?

Well, My husband had one yesterday.

Yesterday, my husband gets up in the morning to walk the dogs as per our usual routine (because you know how I am in the mornings) Our dog who actually has continence problems is visiting grandma for the week, so he thought he could make it a week without hosing down the garage*, right? WRONG. We had run out of dog food, so I had grabbed a small bag at the local pet store until we could grab an industrial sized bag of our usual stuff over the weekend.

Why is it that dogs can eat spoiled food and garbage and grass and cigarette butts, but you feed them one meal of a different dog food and they have an intestinal meltdown?

You get where I'm going with this.

Poor sick doggie.

So after hubby finishes hosing down the garage, he comes upstairs to try making a homemade frappucino with the new toy I got him for his b-day.

Cafe Frappe

Truly, The Cafe Frappe machine works great and makes frappucinos that taste like the real thing! It's awesome, and if you like a morning cold coffee beverage, I highly recommend it. However, it turns out that if you put the lid on backwards, when it gets into blend mode, it will spray chocolatey icey coffee mix all over your clothes, kitchen counter, floor, wall, fruit bowl and curtains. It also turns out that if it is a little difficult to lock it in place, you probably have the lid on backwards. Expletives ensued. I threw the curtains in the wash and tried not to make it worse by enduring his foul mood in a tense silence while we made it to work. Thankfully, when our workday was done, I had my normal hubby back. Poor guy. Just one of those days I guess.

* We park our cars in the driveway. Our garage is actually our weight room, storage, doggie hangout room, and my hubby's workshop.

Tubin'... tubin'.... tubin' down the river...

So this post is actually about what we did last weekend to stay cool. I'm sorry it's a week late, but it's hotter than a cat on a hot tin roof out and my brain cells are working at an appropriate Southern pace to accommodate the weather. And I just now found the cable to get pictures off of my camera. Anyhow, I highly recommend DIY tubing if you have the necessary ingredients.

Ingredients:

1. tubes & life jacket (state law)
2. river
3. friends
4. at least two cars

So you guys ready to let the dogs out?

We started off the morning waiting for our peeps to assemble. My hubby took our tubes (these are actually tire tubes from big truck tires) down to the gas station to fill them with air. Once everyone was assembled and the cars were packed, we drove about an hour and a half west to Harper's Ferry where we normally go tubing. We had a couple of pit stops along the way for coffee, breakfast and to re-secure the tubes stuffed into the back of the truck so they wouldn't fly all over I-70.

Operation Re-Secure Tubes

The only bad part about DIY tubing is that it takes some time to drop everyone off upriver, drive both cars down river to the end point, and then drive the remaining car back up to the drop-off point so that the drivers can participate. **Tip- leave the car with the food and beer drinks downriver. That way you can chow down right away and not have to wait until the food gets back to you.** The good part about DIY tubing is that there are no release forms and if you should float a cooler to down the river, you can pack it with whatever items you so desire. Drinking alcoholic beverages in the state parks of Maryland and West Virginia is illegal, but you might just fly by the seat of your pants if you are a DIY tuber. Speaking of flying by the seat of our pants, We also usually pick some fairly flattish rocks to stop on and sunbathe for a little bit along the way.

Can you spot the cooler? And yes, my husband is wearing a shirt, baseball cap, and his shoes.

Doesn't this look relaxing?

Then when you are done, carry your tube up the river bank to where the "down river" car is parked, open up the trunk and inhale anything resembling food as if it were your first and last meal.

Lil sis and I. All cooled down. And satiated.

Once adequately stuffed, send someone for the "upriver" car, reassemble and trek home. It is a nice little day trip, and a great way to enjoy nature while cooling off a little. Any DIY tubers out there?

It's hotter than a cat on a hot tin roof...

Seriously?

Enough with this heat! I've been having trouble making to the gym. It's a combination of my love of sleep and lack of motivation to get out there in this heat. You'd think I wouldn't mind the heat having grown up in Louisiana where the heat in the air sticks to you like a thick swampy blanket. However, I also believe that is why Southerners have perfected the art of rocking in the shade of a porch, sipping on sweet tea or even better, a mint julep.

Yesterday I sucked it up and went for a swim instead. I was on the swim team when I was little(r). I can say that it has been a good eight years since I have been in a pool with any regularity. It was a little intimidating since the other three swimmers in the pool at the time were obviously well trained in competitive swimming.

But you've got to start somewhere. So I started, lap one went well, then holy cow, swimming is hard! My arms felt like wet noodles after about 40 minutes. But it was nice to finish a workout, feel the burn so to speak, and not feel like a big sweaty mess. I'll try again today. What do you do for exercise in the heat?