Nine Reasons to Love Matt

In honor of our ninth anniversary today, here are nine wonderful things about my husband, in no particular order.

1. Matt cried at the end of Porgy and Bess last year. I mean, he was seriously choking back a sob or two at the sight of Porgy using his crutch to push himself on his little cart, intent on redeeming Bess. Somehow this made me feel cherished.

2. Miles vomited on Matt for three days in a row on our recent trip to South Dakota, and he never complained.

3. Matt does a ridiculous "running man/ jump rope man" dance in public, particularly when he wants to entertain kids or teenagers. He looks like a total idiot, and somehow that's a good thing.

4. Matt makes balloon animals, and he can juggle.

5. Matt fixes broken things, installs new things, and makes plants grow.

6. Matt is obsessed with the weather and will spend hours tracking a storm on live doppler radar. "Okay, I think it should be here in about five minutes..."

7. Matt is a servant who is content to let others shine or take the credit.

8. Matt is still one handsome guy, and he makes me feel beautiful every day.

9. Matt does the right thing, and it is my pleasure to follow his example.

There you go. I never dreamed marriage could be so fulfilling. What a lucky gal I am!

A Peek at Miles's To-Do List

May 27, 2009

1. Fill diaper.

2. Create Poo Masterpiece on crib and walls. Working title: "Sanctifying My Mother". Don't forget to sign it.

3. Leisurely bath. Practice shouting the ABCs. Put finishing touches on Shamu impression, displacing as much water as possible. Way to multitask, bro.

4. Break personal record for longest period of uninterrupted nudity.

5. Fetch watering can full of last night's recycled bathtub water. Use every last drop on the bathroom rug.

6. Time out.

7. PB&J.

8. Negotiate the loan of Mariah's lovey for naptime, since all four of mine are covered in poo. What a sucker.

9. Raid mom's night stand. Remove tub of vaseline. Apply liberally to face, hair, and furniture. I am a stud.

10. Time out.

11. Reject healthy dinner. Demand a cracker.

12. Time out.

13. Bath # 2. Bonus points for extra nudity.

14. Challenge sisters to a game of baby tag. Fall down. Scream loud enough to alert the neighbors.

15. Don batman pajamas. Scale sisters' bunkbeds.
*note to self: Utility belt is for decorative purposes only. Grappling hook not included.

16. Lights out. Begin plotting tomorrow's attack on Mom's sanity. Life is good.

Flushing the Lines

Okay, everyone. I see that it has been almost a month since my last posting. I have no excuse. Thanks to the economy, my writing jobs all but dried up in the last thirty days. I have been wallowing in free time like a little piggy--a radiant little piggy like Wilbur in Charlotte's Web.



My mind is more of a jumbled mess than usual, so I'm just going to clear it out in this post, and then maybe I'll have something of value to share with you next time around.



Our friends Mark and Sumar and their two boys came to visit us a few weeks ago, right as the Twilight movie was being released.



Confession: I picked up a battered copy of Twilight at the used book store after discovering that it was all the girls in the youth group were talking about. The book is ridiculous, as are the three sequels, which I ordered online and devoured in rapid succession. I couldn't stop myself, like I was trapped in a tweener tractor beam. Even worse, I got Matt hooked on them. We preordered our copy of the Twilight movie on Amazon, but it wasn't delivered by the big release date.



Sumar coaxed me into driving out to Wal-Mart at 12:15 a.m. so we could buy her copy of the movie and then stay up ridiculously late to watch it. The Wal-Mart associates set out the new DVDs right at midnight. Since Corsicana is a small town, all the screaming girls and their screaming mothers had already cleared out by then, having devoured the Twilight themed cupcakes and scattered all the candy from the vampire pinata.

Last year as Matt and I were leaving for the theater to see Twilight, our babysitters warned us that we would be disappointed.

"They totally changed the plot,' said sitter A.

"Yeah, they did. And Edward is WAY better looking in the book," sitter B chimes in.

So we snuck into the theater with our dollar store candy and snickered through several scenes of the movie. It's funny how the things that have turned other people off--the super cheesy special effects, the endless brooding, and winners like "and so the Lion fell in love with the lamb" uttered with zero irony--just make us love it more. In fact, we like to remind folks who take this so seriously that the plot is based on the idea of "vegetarian vampires." It is what it is. Matt and I like it for the emphasis on chivalry and restraint. But since we're not, say, 13 year old girls, we try not to remember that, ummm... there's no such thing as vampires.

That being said, I feel I must inform you that not only was Edward better looking in the book (no human being could live up to the Meyer fantasy), but he was also more playful and more eloquent. He was also a much better composer.

Attention Twilight movie maker people: As a vampire who has been on the planet for almost a century and never sleeps, Edward has had nothing better to do with his time than attend high school, rack up graduate degrees, and practice the piano. Am I to believe that these 80 years of practice would produce a composer/pianist with the same musical stylings as John Tesh? Not Aaron Copeland or Leonard Bernstein or Richard Rodgers or John Williams. John Tesh, from Entertainment Tonight. It's preposterous.

Whew. Thanks for letting me clear that nonsense out of the old noggin.

Love,
Misha

Merrilee vs. The Tooth Fairy

Here's a video we made for our youth group variety show.

My evening in gerund phrases

Yes, folks, it is 1:22 a.m. Here is a summary of the last two hours:

Fighting the flu disturbs even the soundest sleeper, especially a little boy who has misplaced his favorite lovey.

Fretting over a sick baby keeps a mommy from accomplishing anything.

Barking dogs do not encourage friendliness in your neighbors.

Spying a giant rat in the eves of her back porch can really lead a girl to question the family policy banning firearms.

Pooping on the laundry room floor is an effective tactic by which the passive-aggressive dog may protest his banishment from the end of the bed.

Cleaning up dog poop in the middle of the night scores serious brownie points with the ladies.

Screaming at the top of your lungs quickly alerts everyone in the house (and the neighborhood) that you are dreaming about bugs, especially the flying variety.

Tucking little ones into bed may be one of the greatest joys of motherhood.

Taking your own temperature is the first step toward admitting that after three weeks of nursing your kids through first flu A and then flu B, your own luck may finally have run out.

Obsessing over the grammatical flaws in the previous sentence reminds you that blogging should be fun. Fixing that sentence would not be fun; therefore, this entry is finished.