"Whining" and Dining

"Did you pack everything you need?" he asked.

In a resentful tone I replied, "I don't need to pack.  I put everything I need in that plastic bag over there.  I can't even find my weekender bag in this mess!"  The truth is I was looking for sympathy and I was looking to hear him say, "Maybe we shouldn't go, maybe we should stay with our kids."  But that's not the message I ultimately received.

He had his heart set on going away for the weekend; just the two of us.  At one point during my silent protests he even said something about paying attention to my husband too.  He was crying out for attention and although I could mentally understand it, emotionally I couldn't because there was a little baby in the back of my mind.

I have a pretty level head on my shoulders and it's not that easy for me to get emotional.  I'm not the textbook example of what you think of when you think: woman.  But Mateo has done something to the chemicals in my brain where while his constant crying sometimes drives me to the edge, on the same note the thought of leaving him for just one night caused me to weep like most of my other estrogen-carrying counterparts would.  It's that newborn/mother bond... I'm not immune to it, turns out.

Other than my silent, passive-aggressiveness I did not protest any further with my husband.  The rational side of me knew that he was right.  A weekend away from the boys would be beneficial for the both of us and this was our only opportunity for awhile.  But at that moment, the main reason that I did not protest was mostly to save an argument between the two of us.  No good could come from me running my mouth off while emotional.  It would be like entertaining an argument with a drunk, belligerent fool. 

Speaking of drunk, in an hour and a half we reached our destination:  wine country.  Where my husband wined and dined me (maybe a little too much of the wining part says the hangover I had the next day!) He dropped some extra dollars on a fabulous suite complete with a jacuzzi tub and fireplace with flat panel tv above it, where he further spoiled me by watching 2, count 'em 2!, Rachel McAdams movies!  He NEVER does that (The Gladiator and 300 are just about the only types of movies he enjoys)  He topped the cherry on the cake when he agreed that The Time Traveler's Wife is better than The Notebook.  Can it get any more romantical than that?

And that's how I unintentionally spent my St. Patrick's Day! -Shirley 

Click below if you were also a belligerent drunk on St. Paddy's Day!  ;)

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Hubby Rules!

It's Monday, boo.......  Over the weekend we had the kind of weather that makes California.  The stuff of dreams.  The type of weather that makes you want to haul a$$ to your favorite beach and lay out in the sand and tan.

But what did my husband do in this beautiful weather?  He donned his painter's gear and 1) primed the entire exterior of our house 2) Attached the house address numbers to the outside of our house 3) patched and sanded the entire interior of the house, all while sometimes dealing with an emotionally attached-to-his-father toddler that got away from mama because she needed to nurse the baby.

In other words, he tried to make me happy.  And he was successful! I honestly think that by the end of this week we will finally have some color on our walls.  When the walls and flooring are done, I plan to post some status pics of the remodel. 

Trying to divert the keyword search term "Men suck" to blogs other than mine - Shirley

Click below if your man doesn't suck...

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Easter Super Hero

I'm woman enough to admit when I've misbehaved or have acted like a biatch. For example, let's take yesterday. To be specific, it was Easter and we had absolutely NO plans, and were glad for it.

It was a dreary rainy and windy day. Javier had been working all week and was in no mood to do anything but hang out, rest, and watch some TV. We hung out upstairs to keep Mokee company while my sister and Will were in Hawaii. The day progressed delightfully uneventfully, and it was really nice to see him bonding with Diego now that he had an extra minute.

It got dark a little after 7pm, and that's when I heard Javier calling me after he had gone downstairs. I asked him what he wanted, and he told me to come downstairs because there was a flood in our bathroom that had soaked through the bathroom walls and into the office and garage. I went down right away.

At first we surmised that the leak had come from the bathroom, which we had recently remodeled. Maybe a pipe had begun to leak? Javier was surprised because he had professionally installed all the plumbing. He went to shutoff the water while I donned on rainboots and grabbed our wetvac to begin vacumming up the puddles of water. After about a half an hour of vacumming the bathroom, I proceeded to the office to begin cleanup there. Our wonderful and expensive area rug was soaked and I had to move the printer off the floor before we would have a short circuit on our hands. I had to move heavy furniture to make sure that we got all the water out. As I vacuumed a spot by a wall where a piece of our furniture had been propped up against, I noticed that every time I sucked up water, a new puddle began. Maybe the leak was NOT from the bathroom after all? Maybe it was rainwater seeping into the house.

To test my theory, I must have vacuumed the same spot 10 times, and each time got the same results. I called Javier to relay my scientific findings. He went outside in the dark to take a look at our sump pump, and came back to report that the pump had indeed failed.

It was futile to continue vacuuming because water would continue to flow into the house. Additionally, the weather forecast showed that it would continue to rain tomorrow. Javier's best advice was to somehow channel the water so that it would flow in a "safe" path through the rooms and into the garage where I could sweep out the water.

I believe my response was, "I'm not creative enough to build a channel, I'll just continue cleaning up water until it stops." But he knew, and I knew that I would be there all night if I followed through with my plans.

Still, we argued. I hated to see our house and stuff flooded, and I wanted an instant solution to this problem which I obviously wasn't finding. Javier told me to relax and go upstairs, and he would build the channel. So I went upstairs only to accidentally drop and break a glass jar of spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen floor.

"F!cK!!!!" I yelled in exasperation. Javier came and told me very calmly that it was OK, and that we would solve this problem and not to stress out.

"I don't handle stress very well, you know that." I responded sullenly. I was done.

Javier built a channel out of an old sheet and bags of concrete that he had in the garage. Then he went back outside to look at the pump once again and see why it may have failed. He left the front door open and in a few minutes I could hear water swishing outside. Oh please, oh please, tell me that Javier got the sump pump to work, I thought to myself.

And he came up the stairs to the front door with a big smile on his face. I was so happy when he told me that he got the pump to work. Even though we will still need to replace it, the emergency was abated for now. I told him I wanted to go back downstairs and attempt to clean the mess up again. After a half an hour, I told him it appeared to be OK.

The rest of the night, Javier kept mentioning proudly how he had managed to solve the crisis. And I was very thankful that he had not given up on that old sump pump. Being a contractor, this was an area that he knew like the back of his hand, and I could see the joy in his face when he felt that he had been exceptionally useful. There was no denying how grateful I was that he stuck by me while I was spazzing out. He deserved an honest apology from his damsel in distress, and he deserved to be treated like a superhero receiving his accolade that night. He got what he deserved which he humbly accepted, as any super hero would.