snips snails and sausage tails

After a long day (more on that later this week) I find myself in my favorite place in the house.

My bed.

I'm laying in my bed in a tank top and my undies with the covers pulled up as high as I can get them. One cat is curled on my lap giving my computer dirty looks for being where he wants to be while the other sits at my feet content being in my company.

Did I mention it was a really long day? A good day, but a really long one. Did I mention I'm hanging out in my undies and a tank top? I really need some time to just stretch out and relax without the constraints of the outside world.

Or pants.

I was perfectly happy to sit here by myself until sleep overtook me but then DrNormal wandered in and in an attempt to keep him here (without getting naked) I turned on Iron Chef.

"Is it a new episode" he asked.

"Yup"

"DID THEY JUST POUR LIQUID NITROGEN ON SOMETHING?"

"Yup"

"Can we watch it?"

"Of course we can"

I continued to surf the internet a bit, catching up on posts I needed to read, looking over a few e-mails I should reply to, adding a friend on upcoming, checking people out on Facebook, you know... evening things.

"OH MY GOD SNAILS" he screamed (like a frickin' girl)

"ugh... snails" I sighed.

Yeah. It's been a long day and I am so not a snail eater.

inspire me...

An hour ago I lay here in this very same spot with my hands resting upon this very same laptop.

Waiting. Thinking. Wondering.

It was my writing time and I was about to dive into some great adventure, spin a fantastic yarn. Tell a tale that only I can tell...

and then

Dr. Normal came into the room and smiled at me. And he lay down on the foot of the bed, I could feel the mattress compress beneath him and he began to speak. To ask. To share.

Not the news of his day (which is like every other day he spends at work).

He was sharing something else entirely. A new idea. A new ambition.

A new project.

I lay still and listened for 45 minutes with my hands upon these keys. Listening. Hearing. Thinking.

What he said to me set my mind afire. Vivid imagery heavy with verse trailed in and out and still my fingers did not move. He talked, I listened and began to dream. Not too much. Not so that my eyes grew far off and my mind was distracted, just enough so that I could revel in his words.

This man that I love, he is an inspiration to me every moment...

But I still have nothing to blog about today.

camikaos goes to the movies...

It is a rare occasion indeed when Dr. Normal and I get to go out of the house just the two of us without serious prior arrangement, but it just happened to work out that way on Sunday in the late afternoon.

We'd had a long weekend of fun and fancy, but all that fun was a lot of hard work so at the end of our weekend, knowing that Dr. Normal had one more day off to look forward to, we decided to take advantage of the fact that my mom is visiting and staying with us. We changed clothes and gears (Sunday morning saw Dr. Normal playing a gig in Sellwood Park) and headed out the door.

After a stop to talk to some neighbors, another to pick up some perfume and then a little pause as we randomly ran into some neighbors who moved away a year or so ago we headed down to the waterfront for perfect martinis and a lovely dinner.

We were having too much fun, enjoying each others company too much.

We didn't want the evening to end.

We each had our own idea of what to do with our stolen time:

Dr. Normal thought it was a perfect evening to stroll hand in hand along the water. For us to spend some quiet time talking and admiring the beautiful weather while strolling along the river that we were married on.

I thought it was a good time to watch and action flick.

I won.

When dinner was finished up we got into Dr. Normal's car and left the sanity of the city to head out to suburbia where there was an 8 pm showing of The Dark Knight that wasn't sold out. It was a big sacrifice for him to spend our precious alone time driving out to a movie theater. In the years that Dr. Normal and I have been together we have probably seen less than 10 movies in a big theater together.

He hates them, big theaters that is. We have a small locally owned one screen theater in our neighborhood that he'll go to if a good movie is playing but other than that he can't be bothered. I respect that. I appreciate. I agree. I hate those big theaters with 15 screens and huge crowds with overpriced over salted food and too loud sound systems. But...

isn't there always a but?

The Dark Knight isn't playing at our theater and we don't always have my mom around to watch K for us, to put her to bed, to allow me an evening out with my husband when I don't have to worry about our daughter.

And I really realllllly wanted to see it. REALLY REALLY REALLY.

So he gave me what I wanted. Gave up his sunset stroll on the river to take me too a movie that he wanted to see, but would have been happy to wait for it to come out on DVD.

For that, I really owe him thanks, and an apology.

We drove out to the mall, parked in the garage, walked to the theater and bought tickets. The only think that kept Dr. Normal from screaming and ripping his skin off was that we didn't have to wait in line. We shelled out $20 for our 2 tickets and I know that everyone says this all the time, but really $20 for the two of us to just get into the theater??? I can buy a movie for that... I frequently do buy a movie for that! For less than that!

But I really wanted to see the movie, REALLY REALLY wanted to see it.

We headed inside and stepped up to the snack counter where they had one thing going for them... they had cherry coke. I asked how large a large was and the counter girl showed me a soda larger than my cat. I asked how big a medium was and she showed me a soda larger than my head.

I ordered a small... it was still huge.

I got Dr. Normal a small bag of popcorn and she asked if he wanted butter on it. I could see the vein twitching in his forehead. I quickly told her no, but even as she was walking off to scoop up his fluffy popcorn goodness he was grumbling about the fact that it wasn't even actually really butter! "FALSE ADVERTISING" he loudly snarled as she was turning back toward us with his bag of popcorn. I paid her quickly and ushered him along. Thankfully our theater was the closest one so I steered him in and we found our seats...

That's when it got bad, really bad... they were showing commercials. Not just one commercial but one after another until I felt like I'd been watching ads for hours. Dr. Normal couldn't take it so he pulled out his iPhone and popped in his headset, closed his eyes and began playing Wagner as loud as he could hoping to drown out the inane advertisements that were sending him into a frenzy...

When an especially riveting piece came on he handed me one of the ear pieces so I could listen too.

There were at least 30 minutes of commercials before the disembodied movie theater voice over woman said it was time for previews, guess what? SHE LIED.

Even after she said it was time for previews there were still MORE COMMERCIALS.

(yes I know that previews are just commercials for other movies... I get that I do...)

It cost $10 per person to get into the movie and they still make us watch 30+ minutes of commercials?!! I hate commercials, that's why I have TiVo. Dr. Normal hates commercials, that's one of the reasons he doesn't watch TV.

When the previews finally started in earnest we made fun of the stupid movies coming out (except the new James Bond movie... we can't wait to see that, I hope it comes to our small local theater).

Then it was finally time or The Dark Night to start...

Dr. Normal pulled out of his justifiable but incredibly unpleasantly grumpy funk and turned off his music, we curled up and watched the movie...

When it was over (yes, that's right... I'm not telling you anything about the movie) we stayed in our seats until everyone had finished shoving and elbowing to get out the doors and then we strolled out hand in hand and headed for our car.

I'm just glad we didn't have to watch any commercials after the movie or Dr. Normal might have imploded before we made it home.

the man in the park

Dr. Normal isn't much of a people person. It isn't that he can't get along with people... it's more that often it isn't worth the time expended to get along with people. He's a busy guy and between his adoring family, his music, strange love and his day job he often doesn't have time for himself let alone meeting new people, so imagine my surprise when he learned that a twitter pal of ours was in town and he invited him to join us at a concert and picnic in Sellwood Riverfront park.

Are you imagining it? My surprise that is...

We were already planning to attend with some other friends of ours, and I had already met Gary at a Portland tech event and liked him instantly, but I am not Dr. Normal... which is to say that even though I don't LOVE meeting people I also don't shy away from it the way a vampire would hide from the noonday sun. None the less I hadn't imagined it. Dr. Normal had actually asked some one to join us solely so that he could meet him... what kind of parallel universe had I landed in?

I went about my business preparing for our picnic, doing the shopping, making the sandwiches, helping K prepare fruit salad and looking forward to a pleasant evening under the big blue sky, near the river I love so dearly.

We walked the mile to the park and settled in a big open area that was filled with families playing tag, soccer, frisbee and racing each other to and fro while we filled our plates with carefully prepared dishes from our own kitchen and that of our dear friends' and we ate and laughed until Dr. Normal got the most enormous mosquito bite I had ever seen and then moments later Lia chimed in that she thought she saw Gary off in the distance.

Dr. Normal cursed.... we took pictures of his bug bite (right on the edge of his hairline at the top of his forehead) so he could see it. He was frustrated by it and trying to cover it with his hair when I walked off to wave Gary and his 2 kids over to our blankets. I thought he was just being funny. I thought maybe he was being a bit odd and vain... I didn't realize yet that he was meeting his man crush!

The rest of our evening was spent nibbling on fruit salad and watching as K played with our new friend's daughter and listening in abject horror as Dr. Normal talked at Gary until we were all afraid his ears would bleed... He was so intent upon meeting and talking to him that I'm not sure he took a single breath.

But boy was it nice to see Dr. Normal smile...