Rob and Me

Dance With Me


DanceStrangely, Rob and I have danced only once in the almost five years we’ve been together. The occasion was our engagement, and we danced to a mix he put together in front of a roaring fire in a cabin at Devil’s Den.

There was no dancing at our wedding, but it was a bit nontraditional in many respects anyway.

Part of the reason for the lack of dance is simply opportunity. We’ve had only two that I can recall. The first was the wedding reception for his nephew, but the venue was late and not kid friendly, so I ended up taking Dee back to the motel and he stayed on for the older girls. The second would have been a dance at a family reunion on his in-law’s side of the family, but he went and had that heart attack, so we didn’t attend.

A couple of weeks ago, the social committee showed up at his office door to plead for more attendees at the annual Christmas party.

“Would you like to go?” he asked.

“Would you?” I replied. “You aren’t the mingle with my co-workers type.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “but there will be dancing and I haven’t taken you dancing in a long time.”

“Technically you’ve never taken me dancing at all,” I pointed out, “because Devil’s Den was an in house thing.”

“Then I have been remiss and should correct that.”

We are going to dance then tonight. I am a terrible dancer. Ruined by Catholic school gym class instruction. But we will give it a go and hope I don’t take out any toes in the process.

A Prairie Wife Kind of Day


Photographed by Kenneth Chan. youngjediboy@hot...

Image via Wikipedia

Except for the sleeping until nearly noon, it was a farm wife on the little prairie day. Rob rescued our pitiful potato crop on Friday and they needed to be turned into delicious meals before they rotted.

I began the process yesterday afternoon with stock pot full of potato soup. I outdid myself. It was soup for which to die. However, I put barely a dent in the potato stash and so determined to make another pot today for the freezer and turn the rest into delicious breadstuffs.

It’s not fun. Gardening, harvesting or transforming. I am left with little doubt as to why women abandoned the kitchen and cooking in droves as soon as technology, cultural norms and the fast food industry made it possible for them to do so. I am fortunate that I have a husband who doesn’t believe that all things drudgery is women’s work. I experimented with a new soup recipe yesterday and found a way to turned mashed potatoes into tasty buns today, and he dug in, peeled and diced while I made everything else “so”. We are a team like that. Slightly awesome to behold if I do say so.

Before we started, a trip to town was necessary. Hard as it is for me to wrap my mind around, we don’t have enough Tupperware for freezing.

“Canadian Tire or Walmart?” I asked.

Unless we make for the edges of the city or the city itself, our shopping venues are quite limited in The Fort, which is the one thing I don’t like about it. I have no idea why the town council thinks young families would want to settle a place with overpriced, poorly constructed home and zero convenience and ease of shopping when they could find better, cheaper options closer to the heart of the city? But I digress and will leave the puzzlement of the town’s management for another day.

“I guess we should patronize Canadian businesses,” he said and so Canadian Tire it was.

Known generally as Crappy Tire, it has its niche in automotive parts and sporting goods, but it’s no Target.

I haven’t been in since the remodel, which consists of mainly rearranging where is what – something that doesn’t endear a store to me in the slightest. They did nothing about the faded worn feel of the place or to fix the fact that even with a dozen easy to access employees walking around, no one has the any idea what you are talking about when you ask them questions and fewer of them know where specific stock is housed without needing to contact a supervisor.

Tupperware, a new bread maker and Christmas decorations later, we were on our way to tea, slushies and home. Seldom do we indulge in the North America Sunday consuming rituals, so it’s a novelty when we do.

I am not done with the wifery. There is bread to make tomorrow. I am okay with baking. It’s not the worst thing about being a homemaker. That would be cleaning. Not the daily tidy up, but the deep sanitizing/dusting stuff. Baking does shoot your day to shit however, but the oven time part does facilitate writing pretty well.

The day ends with Rob on his knees grouting. The kitchen is about three steps away from done done, which makes this Prairie wife’s day.

 

 

* Just five more days of this mom blog contest thing. I’m precariously perched in the 6th spot and honestly, to get the maximum mileage out of being linked in the list – I need to be in the top five. When the site promotes the list, it only shows the top five and you have to click-through to see the others, which I am guessing doesn’t happen a lot. So to get to the fifth spot – I need more votes. 25 or so to catch or just overtake her. If you care to help out, click here. Remember you can vote daily and more than once if you have a smart phone and a work computer. Thanks!

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I’m Worried About You, Honey


The day began wobbly. Literally because my ears are still somewhat plugged and the back of my throat aches, but 10 AM soccer practice will not be denied. Though some

Frost on Window

Image by Chris Campbell via Flickr

might argue that it’s hardly Dawn’s bumcrack, I consider having to be anywhere on a Saturday before noon barbaric.

The neighbor drives a school bus, in case you’ve forgotten, and with the warm weather deserting us, she is revving that yellow beast up at earlier and earlier hours. Most weekday mornings find us jarred from our short-sleeped slumbers 30 minutes or more before our own alarms sound off. The weekends, in my opinion, should be about snuggling in until it’s officially daylight at the earliest and even that is a bit too uncivilized for my aging tastes.

Cold weather has caught me unprepared. My winter coat is still in the basement closet and I am out of practice with the whole “warming up the vehicle” routine. When Dee and I made for the truck, it was cold and frosty.

And I had no idea where the ice scraper was.

“What are you doing?” Rob was at the door watching me incredulously as I attempted to scrape frost off the passenger side windows with a Starbuck’s napkin and my fingernails.

“I forgot to warm up the truck and I have no idea where the scraper is,” I thought that was a reasonable reply.

He came out in his robe, liberated the scraper from a side compartment and shooed me into the truck as he proceeded to clear the windows of Jack Frost’s handiwork.

“Your mom is silly,” he told Dee as he kissed her good-bye and gave me the “I can’t believe you sometimes” look when he kissed me.

Fast forward.

Practice is done. I managed to stay upright and wrangle a few groceries while Dee continued her march to someday dominating at the World Cup and we were home. I’d phoned Rob to check on his plans to run into the city while we were out, but he’d decided to wait for us.

“Wouldn’t you like an outing?”

I love outings. Rob’s idea of outings typically involve a lot of driving with Clark Griswold-ish stops at various home handyman fave spots, but as I seldom make it farther from home than grocery or yoga class – I am easy to please.

But after we entered the house, Rob crooks his finger and asks me to come upstairs with him. He needs to show me something.

“I’m getting worried about you, Honey.”

Wha???

The last time he was “worried” he thought I’d been putting tea bags in the paper recycling and it was actually him that did that.

I reached the bedroom and he showed me one of his white socks and one of Dee’s leggings.

“Did you fold these together?” he asked. “I found them rolled together.”

It took a minute but I remembered that months ago, Dee had rolled her legging together with her Dad’s sock as a joke.

“Dee did that.” I explained, “as a joke, but thanks for jumping to the conclusion that I am demented.”

The girl child lay on her bed cackling and Rob looked relieved and a bit chagrined.

*Still blogging for NaBloPoMo, catch today’s here and this is the last time I am linking to the Top 25 Canadian Mom Blogs list contest though the contest will continue on without further notice from me.