D i e n u

I am happy to announce that, if the apocalypse comes, Randy and I are preparing for being prepared.

We’re starting our very first vegetable garden. Right now, it’s just some chopped-up dirt in our backyard, but come summer, it’s going to be a luxurious, verdant 8′x6′ patch of awesome.

Check out the ground-breaking ceremony:

 

 

Is there anything sexier than a skinny white guy with a pickax? I don’t think so!

Almost as exciting as our chopped-up pile of dirt that will someday be a lush garden is our custom-built compost bin:

 
You never saw two people get so excited about eggshells in your life. I have a feeling for the first couple of weeks, Randy and I are going to be fighting over who gets to go out and turn the compost. I can’t wait until we get some usable mulch!

(Yes, I am eagerly anticipating mulch. I think this makes me an official grown-up.)

So, it’s technically a couple of herb pots sitting on the outdoor table. But I planted them and they grew and I harvested them. So I say it counts.

Apparently, we’re not the only ones who like an herb garden. As you can see below, someone’s been snacking on our basil.

But they kindly left some for us. And it sure was tasty.

A couple days ago, this e-mail was sent to everyone in the agency:

Subject: To Whom It May Concern

Who ever accidentally grabbed my chicken pesto sandwich out of the fridge in the pantry and either hid or ate it, I’d like you to know that my stomach is growling. You can make it up to me by buying me another one.

Now, e-mails like this are not uncommon at my agency. I’m sure all of you who work in a building with a refrigerator you share with other people have received an e-mail of this sort.

But there was something different about this e-mail.

The “something different” became quite clear to me as I thought back to earlier in the day, when I’d taken my half-sandwich (left over from lunch the day before) out of the fridge and brought it to my desk, where I proceeded to eat it and do about ten different work-related things at the same time.

As I absent-mindedly devoured my lunch, I remember thinking, “Hmm, my sandwich tastes different than I remember from yesterday.”

But I was busy and honestly, I’m not sure I really even tasted it.

So when this e-mail popped up in my inbox, I wasn’t halfway through the first sentence when my mind started rewinding through the day, doing that thing in movies where you know a memory is really important because the key line of dialogue has this echo effect on the end.

It was kind of like this:

“Hmmm…my sandwich tastes different…different…different…erent..erent…”

And just like that, I knew.

I had eaten that woman’s sandwich.

I was totally that person. The person who, whenever I’d seen e-mails of this nature in the past, I summarily judged as a sleazy character devoid of morals and workplace ethics.

Now that sleazy character was me!

But, being the genuinely well-intentioned person I am, I didn’t give into my initial impulse, which was to hastily press “delete” and pretend I’d never seen any such e-mail.

Instead, I wrote this:

Oh my god, I ate your sandwich! I am so sorry.

The bad news is that I ate your sandwich. But the good news is that, if you want it, there’s a half-sandwich still in the fridge waiting to be enjoyed.

Fortunately for me, she was very kind and understanding about the mistake.

But the sad thing is that, when I went to retrieve my sandwich, I peeked in the box to make sure it was indeed my sandwich. And realized that my sandwich and the sandwich I’d eaten were completely different.

Like night and day different. Her sandwich was a chicken pesto panini. Mine was a grilled sandwich with chicken, mozarella and roasted red peppers. Mine was on bread. Hers was on focaccia. In fact, the only thing they had in common was the chicken. Except my chicken was cut in long, thin chunks, while hers were perfectly square chicken cubes. So they really had nothing in common at all. They weren’t even in similar boxes: my sandwich box was light brown and hers was black.

Yet I still managed to grab her sandwich out of the refrigerator and eat every single bite of it without ever once consciously observing that it was nothing like the sandwich I’d imagined I was eating.

If that’s not a sign that I need to get back to meditating, I don’t know what is.

I hate Valentine’s Day.

Like a lot.

That doesn’t mean I’m not a romantic. In fact, I love to love.

But I don’t love feeling pressured to love on a specific day just because card manufacturers and retailers and florists have a big old gaping void between Christmas and Mothers Day.

I don’t love listening to mopey single people bemoan the fact that the ark of Valentine’s love is setting sail without them.

I don’t love long lines at the grocery stores of men with their last-minute wilted flower bouquets that they clearly just grabbed on the way home because they know they’ll be in deep shit if they forget.

I don’t love conversation hearts. The printing quality is crap and they taste like chalky poop.

I don’t love lacy red underthings that flatter absolutely no one except for the models that wear them in the catalogue.

I don’t love the valentines that kids have to write out, one for everyone in the class, because we all know that, left to their own devices, the little bastards would totally play favorites and someone would go home feeling like shit.

So let everyone have their awkward Valentine’s Day dinners and festive red outfits and artifically inflated flower prices and cheeky cards made of 75% post-consumer recycled content .

Randy asked me on Tuesday what I wanted to do for Valentine’s Day. I said, “Let’s order a pizza…And since it’s the day of love, we’ll get one with artichoke hearts.”

Ahh, romance.

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a klutz. And if you’ve kept up with this site for any period of time, you’ve read about some of the stupid things I’ve done.

I’d always thought that dislocating my thumb while trying to take my pants off was the clumsiest thing I’ve ever done. But on Saturday night, I think I might have topped it.

One of my co-workers is getting married soon and Randy and I were invited to her engagement party. It was a nice excuse to wear a pretty dress and heels and put my hair up. And overall, a very fun party.

Except for the part where I ended up with a shrimp in my eye.

A shrimp covered in cocktail sauce.

Which, as you can probably imagine, stings like a mother when you catapult it into your eyeball.

Honestly, I have no idea how it happened.

One moment, I was biting into a delicious piece of shrimp doused with cocktail sauce. The next, I was blinded in my left eye and a searing bolt of pain was shooting through my head.

Randy has all kinds of complicated theories about how it happened. I thought he was going to bust out a compass or something to track the trajectory. But he said that he looked over and I was screaming “My eye! My eye!” (quietly, of course — wouldn’t want to disrupt the party) and
there was a shrimp tail on my shoulder.

My gallant husband was there when I needed him though. He took my little plate from me and steered me by the elbow to the restroom, yelling “Make way! Shrimp emergency here!” (In retrospect, I’m not sure how I feel about the yelling part.)

Then he spent five minutes getting shrimp out of my eye and wiping cocktail sauces from my lashes. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

My left eye was flaming red for the rest of the night and blurry most of the day on Sunday, but I seem to have recovered.

The shame, though — that will stay with me for a while.