spritechan | Entries tagged with relationships

I first started watching Sex and the City on TBS in 2005, when I was lonely during my first year of college, living by myself and experiencing severe insomnia. The episodes were mostly in order, but because of the heavy censoring I didn't always get the full picture.

I was 17 and in a struggling relationship. I idealized Happily Ever After with The One. I hated Big - he was terrible and cold. I hated cold men. I loved Aidan and Steve. I couldn't believe Carrie would hurt Aidan so much.

Eventually I started getting the seasons on DVD (2007-2010), and a clearer picture started to emerge. Smith and Harry were added to my list of amazing men. Still hated Big. Started to see that Carrie was very problematic. By the time I saw the first movie, I could NOT forgive Carrie for what she did to Big (and I was pretty pissed at Charlotte too for stopping him from explaining). As if either of them are perfect. Obviously the whole movie plot wouldn't exist without Carrie running away, but fuck them both. I also hated how dirty they did Smith. They made him callous. The show ends with a patient Smith telling a recovering-from-chemo Samantha he loved her after flying back from the movie set. Movie Smith is wrapped up in himself and a bored and neglected Samantha leaves him.

The second movie is just stupid, other than Charlotte's parenting difficulties and part of Big's handling of Carrie telling him she kissed Aidan - the part where he says it really tore him up and really just, how he processed in a very true-to-Big way... giving her a "Reminder that I'm married" ring is wildly unlike either of them - Carrie does not want to be "owned" and Big doesn't give a fuck about proving anything.

Anyway - someone in ONTD shared this article. And it really made me reflect on the show and its impact on me.

Carrie fell under the thrall of Mr. Big, the sexy, emotionally withholding forty-three-year-old financier played by Chris Noth. From then on, pleasurable as “Sex and the City” remained, it also felt designed to push back at its audience’s wish for identification, triggering as much anxiety as relief. It switched the romantic comedy’s primal scene, from “Me, too!” to “Am I like her?” A man practically woven out of red flags, Big wasn’t there to rescue Carrie; instead, his “great love” was a slow poisoning.

After watching through several times, I don't actually think Big was made of red flags at all. As a 32-year-old, Carrie is my age when the show starts. Carrie is immature and plays a lot of games. She expects Big to intuit everything she needs and throws tantrums when he can't. When he confronts her directly, she deflects. He wasn't there to rescue Carrie, though several times he does offer to. She says he doesn't chase her, but he does - just on his own time, like everything else in his life.

[T]he conundrum Carrie faced for the entire series: true love turned her into a fake. The Season 1 neurotic Carrie didn’t stick, though. She and Big fixed things, then they broke up again, harder. He moved to Paris. She met Aidan (John Corbett), the marrying type. In Season 3, the writers upped the ante, having Carrie do something overtly anti-heroic: she cheated on a decent man with a bad one (Big, of course), now married to that “perfect little woman,” Natasha. They didn’t paper over the repercussions: Natasha’s humiliation, and the way Carrie’s betrayal hardened Aidan, even once he took her back. During six seasons, Carrie changed, as anyone might from thirty-two to thirty-eight, and not always in positive ways. She got more honest and more responsible; she became a saner girlfriend. But she also became scarred, prissier, strikingly gun-shy—and, finally, she panicked at the question of what it would mean to be an older single woman.

This summary is on-point. Though I think Carrie is fake a LOT of the time. I don't think Aidan was "good" and Big was "bad." Though I do have a lot of negative feelings about Big's coercion of Carrie in the elevator, Carrie had been avoiding Big because she knew she wanted him too. Aidan, the first go around, was presented as very pure. And that made the pain all the bigger. Although I'd like to point out, while the affair Carrie and Big have seems to stretch over quite some time (and again, feels pretty realistic in many ways), the reality is they were only messing around for about a month. Affairs are rarely that short-lived. Just saying.

The way the Aidan-Carrie-Big triangle played out the second time is honestly super-realistic in a lot of ways, in my experience. Aidan's remaining trauma and Carrie's desire to stay friends with Big hit directly home for me. I'd say most relationships are not stable or trusting enough to make it work, but it's exactly how I wanted things to play out for me. Well, plus open relationship. Carrie and Aidan should have definitely worked on the relationship in therapy instead of needling each other for however long, and Aidan obviously needed individual therapy as well to deal with his trust issues.

Her friends went through changes, too, often upon being confronted with their worst flaws—Charlotte’s superficiality, Miranda’s caustic tongue, Samantha’s refusal to be vulnerable. In a departure from nearly all earlier half-hour comedies, the writers fully embraced the richness of serial storytelling. In a movie we go from glare to kiss in two hours. “Sex and the City” was liberated from closure, turning “once upon a time” into a wry mantra, treating its characters’ struggles with a rare mixture of bluntness and compassion. It was one of the first television comedies to let its characters change in serious ways, several years before other half-hour comedies, like “The Office,” went and stole all the credit.

^^^ Definitely agree. I think the growth experienced by the characters is true to human nature and very relatable.

Most unusually, the characters themselves were symbolic... the four friends operated as near-allegorical figures, pegged to contemporary debates about women’s lives, mapped along three overlapping continuums. The first was emotional: Carrie and Charlotte were romantics; Miranda and Samantha were cynics. The second was ideological: Miranda and Carrie were second-wave feminists, who believed in egalitarianism; Charlotte and Samantha were third-wave feminists, focused on exploiting the power of femininity, from opposing angles. The third concerned sex itself. At first, Miranda and Charlotte were prudes, while Samantha and Carrie were libertines. Unsettlingly, as the show progressed, Carrie began to glide toward caution, away from freedom, out of fear.

The show’s basic value system aligns with Carrie: romantic, second-wave, libertine. But “Sex and the City” ’s real strength was its willingness not to stack the deck: it let every side make a case, so that complexity carried the day. When Carrie and Aidan break up, they are both right. When Miranda and Carrie argue about her move to Paris, they are both right. The show’s style could be brittle, but its substance was flexible, in a way that made the series feel peculiarly broad-ranging, covering so much ground, so fleetly, that it became easy to take it for granted.

These last two paragraphs, I think, perfectly capture why I keep coming back to the show. Relationships are complex, and the characters are not always right. They make stupid decisions and have bad opinions. They are judgmental, naive a-holes. There is so much gray. The assumed tropes of high school sweethearts that live happily ever after and never fuck up and never hurt each other are not *real* like this show was. Multiple people can be right in any given situation, and yet everyone can still get hurt.

And then, in the final round, “Sex and the City” pulled its punches, and let Big rescue Carrie. It honored the wishes of its heroine, and at least half of the audience, and it gave us a very memorable dress, too. But it also showed a failure of nerve, an inability of the writers to imagine, or to trust themselves to portray, any other kind of ending—happy or not. And I can’t help but wonder: What would the show look like without that finale? What if it were the story of a woman who lost herself in her thirties, who was changed by a poisonous, powerful love affair, and who emerged, finally, surrounded by her friends? Who would Carrie be then?

The first time I watched the series, I was so mad that she ended up with Big. After several watch-throughs, I came around. Again, I don't think Big was poisonous. He always loved Carrie, but he was a white man used to being in power/getting his way/being selfish and she intimidated and confused him with her own brand of self-importance. He came around - he experienced a lot of growth in the show as well. Carrie going to Paris was a dumbass idea. She'd already seen that Aleksandr put work first - why was she surprised? I think Big chasing after Carrie to the end fit exactly with his M.O. And I loved how the other characters played out too - Charlotte and Harry and new baby (flying in the face of her ex husband's POS mother's opinions on adoption), Smith softening up Samantha's refusal to be vulnerable, Miranda finally acknowledging the importance of family to her.

I dunno, there's so much about the show that aged super poorly (or was just poorly done to begin with), but the overarching story and themes still sit deep with me :)

Yesterday Steve and I had what probably looked like the strangest banter, but it's so us and felt so good.

We were talking about a related topic, but I lightly brought up the "I feel like you gave me an ultimatum about moving and not wanting to leave your friends" situation mentioned a few entries ago. He clarified:

He says he meant the whole "I need to play in the hay and sleep with other people while living abroad" and

If I suddenly decided WE need to move across the country IMMEDIATELY he would work with me on it if I really absolutely was sure, and reiterated that I definitely mean enough to him to not stubbornly stay here

So it turns out I misunderstood him and I feel a lot better.

But the point of the post is that Noah messaged me lamenting that he finally met a girl he vibed with, and then she told him after their first "real" conversation that she was poly and in 2 serious relationships. Noah has not had ANY relationship or any of the etc. other than some kissing. He said he knows in his heart that he couldn't do poly, and they agreed not to pursue anything. Noah, while talking to me about it, said that he "felt stupid for feeling special but how could he be special if she already is with two other guys" and again my mind was blown re: monogamists because that's exactly the rationale Steve gave!!!! So I brought up my confusions to Steve.

Which led to a REALLY enjoyable silly banter for like an hour, where we talked in jokes and metaphors about poly and monogamy and cheating and cowardice and TV show portrayals of relationships and it really just feels good to be able to openly talk about our situation without it being a threat or feeling like it's opening a can of worms.

What happened in our relationship is not treated like a bomb about to go off or like if we give it any attention, we'll get sucked into that black hole again. I wish I could remember ANYTHING we said to each other, because it was all hilarious, but I suspect no individual statement would have nearly the same impact as the entire strings of phrases we tossed back and forth. I keep trying to type examples, like at one point he said I should just call every guy Steve because men are interchangeable blurs to me, and it makes no sense and is NOT funny to the layperson (and in fact, would be alarming fighting words in a different context). Just trust me that I was completely tickled the whole time. And so was he.

He just makes me very happy.

Last weekend (LAST last, the 22nd) Ben, Sean, and Dave were visiting from Madison. Well, Dave is continuing to visit from Europe but yeah. I can't remember all the finer details but the point is that Sean and Ben were going to Disney World (AGAIN, but this time with Ben's parents) and Dave was going to be alone for a week. Steve and I thought that was nonsense and invited Dave to spend the week with us.

Steve and I have never actually had a house guest stay longer than the weekend, but we DO have a guest room. Dave was such an easy guest: all he wanted to do was eat baguettes, order cheap pizza, play ITG, and talk about ITG and mini golf. He managed his own schedule and kept himself busy while we were at work. In the evenings one or more of us would play ITG. All 3 of us made improvements, and Dave ended up getting 2 new quads which is super impressive. Steve and I did pretty well too. I still need to re-learn officials after not having played them in months while preparing for Cupcake. But even with that, I have improved like 10 scores. I just need to increase my stamina and suffer through hard songs.

That's pretty much been my life! I also started knitting a hat with a super fun technique, SO EXCITED. I've been buying a lot of fun yarn lately. So happy about my yarn. I should knit more.

I've been really really tired still. Even with many hours of sleep, still so tired. I've been working on my attitude AT work (still really struggling with the getting TO work part), and negativity I could be bringing into my job. It's helped this week be better - I think I'm naturally one of the better educators at connecting with kids and making them feel like I care about them and want them to do well - AND that I expect them to give their best. However, I still think I've been struggling at being 100% and not getting bogged down with the annoying things - refusals, bad attitudes, etc. - and this week I decided to take it in stride and not allow myself to get exasperated. Instead I've been infinitely patient and understanding. For example, when Tino said he wished I'd teach at the board and if he didn't get it, come to him individually........... which is literally all I do. Forever. I did that even HARDER today than most days; usually once we get to "work days" I'm working individually and small groups 100% but today enough kids needed help that I went for a class re-teach. But I listened patiently and told him that tomorrow I will do just that. lol. We're working on 2-step equations and I know that's a challenging topic and requires a lot of thinking and effort on their part.

I'm super nervous about next year's group, it sounds like the 6th graders are much lower than this current group of 7th and 8th graders, so I'll have to manage them differently. Trying not to freak out already, but it's like, I'm working so hard at FINALLY building my curriculum binder after having lost most of my online resources when I left SPPS, and next year I'll have to change it probably. It's okay.... one thing at a time.

Therapy appt yesterday went well, but I left here around 2:30 and that is TOO LATE somehow to get all the way around the Twin Cities and at the appt by 3. So I blustered in at 3:05 and had to ask to let me go to the bathroom because I hadn't gone all day hashtag teacher life. Otherwise we had a lot of really good conversation about communication in my relationship with Steve and talking about boundaries and how boundaries/needs/agreements aren't static and we should revisit them regularly to see if they changed and how to modify our needs, etc. She also suggested a different book for me and Steve to review together that is more modern and might be more helpful now that we're not in crisis. I talked with Steve about it on my hour drive home, and I think he also will be looking into individual therapy. He still has a lot of bad moments and we agree it would be good for him to vent or work through some of these thoughts with an impartial and supportive third party.

We've been spending a lot of time in daily contact with Ben/Dave/Dmac/Sean, and have seen much less of our local friends. Noah fell a little off the map for a bit but is back. I've had some minimal texting wtih Courtney and it sounds like Steve talks with JWaid and Nick, but we haven't been hanging out? It's interesting. Noah mentioned to me the other day that it feels like everyone is just being regular old adults and it's disappointing. I imagine that happens in everyone's lives. I remember being a teenager and my mom hanging out with her best friend from high school after not having seen her in like 10-15 years and thinking that was insane! How can you not talk to your best friend?! But now I get it. And Bre and I maintain spotty contact and technology of course allows us to keep up with people without having to directly interact with them often anyway.

Uh I totally dropped the ball on shirts for both Fantastic Beats AND Cupcake. I just like... forgot about them. Whoooops. It's not a huge deal for Cupcake but I feel pretty bad about FB. It's not super like me to forget, but it just feels like I've got a million things I'm thinking about at any given time and my brain just decided that ordering shirts was not a necessity. That and I guess I had no reminders sooooo it's hard to remember.

My great-grandma died a couple months ago and she willed her money to her children, but since my grandpa Jack died a couple years ago the money allotted for him went to HIS kids. My mom sent me $1000 as a nice gesture, and I think that was super sweet. I think I'm probably going to use it for tattoos - I have a bunch of medium-small ideas I just want to knock out quickly here.

1. Something like "Go all in" from this Jim quote in The Office - "Well, you know, you can’t have everything so you gotta ask yourself what makes you the happiest. You just go all in for what’s most important. That’s my new thing." Pretty self explanatory, one of my favorite lines in the entire series, really speaks to me. Probably on my wrist? Somewhere I can see.
2. "A Heart's a Heavy Burden" with either blue Calcifer or the shooting stars from Howl's Moving Castle - I know I have an entire Ghibli sleeve but also this quote is my entire life. Either over my heart, or on my available ribs/side/hip.
4. Booya Moon from Lisey's Story. It's my favorite Stephen King book of all time, and I'm linking the image given on the book jacket for reference, but I think Andy would really like to draw his version or vision of it. I like his art. Probably on one of my thighs.
5. Possibly one of Andy's drawings, because I know how much he likes to tattoo his originals, and one recent one he posted is super good. Not sure where though.

The day started out fine, I had a decent amount of plans to continue organizing and cleaning and I got started in that... and then I crashed into a deep depression I’m blaming on getting my period on Monday (it was only 37 days from my last cycle, am I leveling out finally??). I’ve been really emotional and weepy, which is super unlike me. I spent the day laying on the couch feeling sad and anxious and worthless and scared, and then when my iPad battery got too low, I moved into the bedroom to continue my moping and so Steve came home to find me in fetal position and leaking tears.

He snuggled me and reassured me and we talked about reading more of the book we’d been reading. I know we both want to keep reading it, but it’s hard to go to such a heavy place when we’re really enjoying each other so much lately. I’ve been wondering if I should go to counseling once I get the school’s insurance (since it’s supposedly so good, though not sure yet about its therapy options)... like obviously there’s significant underlying issues to why I behaved the way I did, which was clear from my one session alone with Kelly. It was so annoying to be aware of my childhood and teenage years and to feel like I’m making excuses or minimizing because we only had an hour and I didn’t want to spend the whole time talking about my past when this issue was more pressing. But who we were affects who we are and clearly there’s more there that I should probably work through. If I can get a good counselor I think it could be helpful.

In the meantime, I cried a little bit and Steve and I napped for a bit until it was time for yoga, which Steve was sure would be helpful. He started ITG while I got ready, and it was a little chillier so I brought sweatpants and wore my shawl.

Yoga was interesting. I wore my Thinx workout shorts in case I leaked, and I LOVE them, but the leg material is really light and thin and rides up high when moving a lot, and I’m pretty sure my butt cheeks hang out. It was only me and 4 other women, all of whom are also “regulars” of Brandi. Normally I put my mat in the front row but because of being self-conscious about my junk hanging out I was in the back today, so only one woman was in front. She made a joke about how she ate a ton of vegetables right before class and maybe people shouldn’t be downwind of her. Brandi walked in in the middle and that sparked a silly discussion about farting in class (since everyone in the room was there on Monday with the other incident). I’m always simultaneously thrilled with being a part of things and tense because I struggle with getting close to people or relaxing into a situation.

I digress. The class was interesting because my hips were more tight than they’ve been in a long time, which I suspect was due to 1. My period and 2. All the traumatic, stressful, sad emotions I’ve been experiencing. In yoga, the hips are traditionally where we store sadness, anxiety, and trauma, so the theory is that you can get more emotional when doing exercises that release the hips.

So, I wasn’t very good at any of the hip openers, but we did something new, which was splits practice, so I got to learn how one starts to move into that that isn’t just standing splits. That was cool. Today in extended side angle I branched out and tried for a full bind instead of a half bind, and I got really close! I surprised myself and it really feels like I might get a full bind here soon. I did maybe pull one of my shoulders a little out of place trying to reach, but it shifted back during the next pose and I’ll be more careful next time.

My standing balancing wasn’t great because of my busy mind, so I held back a little in those poses. But! Brandi had us do a crescent twist with our knees on the ground, and THEN encouraged us to lift into full crescent (like being in the twist and then lifting our knee off the ground at the same time) and that balancing was awesome for me. Lifting yourself off the ground while in a twist is something I always feel like is impossible and then when I do it, I’m really surprised at my own body. Lol. I also did side plank today, which normally I do the modified pose of.

For the inversion, I wasn’t feeling dolphin again, but instead of crow I practiced wheel. I used to be able to do wheel all the time in the past, and now I can’t. I think it’s because I was doing it incorrectly before. I thought it was because my arms are weaker since stopping and starting yoga again but that can’t be true now. I really want to get back into that pose regularly. Instead of forcing my way into the pose I’m working on setting all of it up correctly, which makes it harder for me to push my arms in. So I did what amounted to a bridge headstand, which is a “bus stop,” as Brandi calls them, before full wheel.

Normally during legs up the wall I go into shoulder stand and then plow, but today I was really feeling legs up the wall. I marveled at how when I started yoga again back in June, I couldn’t straighten my legs beyond like 45*, and they’d get shaky and tired, and now my legs are perfectly straight and the pose is really relaxing. It’s my favorite restorative pose right now. Mmmmm.

In Brandi’s class, when we go into fetal before the end of class, she has us do a breathing routine, and today she talked about loving yourself and forgiving yourself, and in order to truly love others you need to love yourself, etc. And since I’ve been super depressed and emotional and NOT loving myself today, it hit me pretty hard and maybe I cried a little... but the class was dark so it didn’t matter.

When class was done, Stacy mentioned to me and Brandi that she got roofied at a local sports bar and luckily she was with a girl friend who got her home because she’d blacked out at like 9:30pm and remembered nothing. She said when she talked to the manager he said it happens depressingly often.

Then I got home, Steve was cute and heated us up our leftovers, we watched an episode of Parks and Rec, and then I snuggled him while he did more sidequesting - mostly Majima stuff - in Yakuza Kiwami. <3

I’ve been getting into more of a gaming mood lately. Steve gave me a stern lecture the other day about how I’m just wasting my summer doing nothing, and he’s right. It’s like I get so paralyzed worrying about wasting it that I just... waste it. Ugh, it’s the worst, I’m the worst sometimes.

So I started a bunch of laundry and played Hearthstone. Hearthstone is great, but it’s not finite. You can’t “beat” it. I felt like I should choose a game I can beat. I decided I wanted to keep playing Persona 5, as it was just getting good and I had beaten the second dungeon, but I was surprised to find that my save data wasn’t on my profile. I thought it was because we upgraded to a PS4 Pro and my data just wasn’t downloaded yet. I figured I’d wait until Steve got home to figure that out, and looked at other games instead. I seriously considered playing Bloodborne, but I was in the mood for a pretty, ambient game. I settled for A Girl and Her Robot because it looked like a pastel-y version of Ico.

I played a decent amount of it, and Steve got home right as the game switched from being a gentle, quiet game of exploration and puzzles to an impossible action game. After getting literally nowhere with the boss, I looked it up, and someone wrote my exact fears out. The game ruins itself by becoming focused more on battles and talks about how the boss fights are insanely difficult for no reason (not fun and challenging but because of bad and clunky controls and the way in which you have to start over). I quickly decided that was as far as I’d want to go in that game.

I asked Steve about my save file and...he discovered that WHOOPS. He only copied HIS save data over. Uh ohhh. I got some decent autism because I just cannot imagine starting all of that over again. My lost social links and, to a lesser extent, personas. And the beginning of the game is SO TEDIOUS with the handholding. I really need to mourn and process, and Steve does not handle guilt very well, so he needed tending to at the same time I was trying to wrangle in my grief. So he kind of melted down, frantically putting the game in and saying he was going to play up to where I was (lol I was definitely over 20 hours in, probably even over 30). I kept telling him it wasn’t the same and wouldn’t be the same, but I appreciated his willingness.

Eventually I talked him down enough from the ledge not to kill himself while I was at yoga, but not THAT far from the ledge. It’s just a game, I’m sure I’ll get enough steam to start it over eventually. But I had two hours of yoga planned for tonight and I needed to leave. I called Steve on my way there to check in, make sure he didn’t nope off into the sunset like he was at high risk of doing.

First up was Brittany’s Hatha class. It ended up being just me and one other, who is another instructor there. It’s nice to be comfortable with the teacher, because on days like this when no one shows up, I can get targeted attention. Brittany really pressed me to push out of my shoulder sockets and worked my arms so hard in various poses while in plank. We also did a ton of half-moon/Warrior 3/standing splits stuff. Brittany is a gymnast and obsessed with handstand, so everything we do with her really works towards that. Which is fine for me because even though I’m terrified of handstand, the stuff I do with her is really challenging and makes me feel like I’m trying for something.

Right after that was Hannah’s tune-up class. Thank god it wasn’t demanding because I could barely hold myself up on all fours - my shoulders and arms were just DEAD from Brittany’s class. It was a good way to spend the hour. Prior to class I talked with that other instructor, whose name is Brandi, and she is a special ed teacher in SPPS, at one of the high schools. So we have a lot we can talk about. That was cool.

After yoga, I went home and immediately needed food, so I whipped up some (yep) fried egg sammies and simple fruit smoothies, and Steve showed me his new trick in Mario 3. He and Noah are trying to learn to speed run that game, and Steve wanted to start by learning the fastest, silliest way as a means to get acquainted with the game. He is hilariously bad at the general game, but he’s decent at the wrong warp (look it up, it’s very entertaining and takes only a couple minutes). I asked if I could try the first part, and omg the controller he was using was weird! It wasn’t an originally controller and it felt like the inputs were slightly off. He gave me a regular controller and the B button basically did not work at all. Ugh. Come ON controllers!! But it was really cute and I was curled up in his lap while we played.

After that we spent the rest of the night enjoying Super Monkey Ball speedruns. So fun, so good. After all that yoga and late-night eating though, my processing and memory were SUPER off. It was really silly. I kept asking questions about the runs that they literally had just talked about, and I kept forgetting or mishearing what Steve was saying (in a funny way). At one point Steve spluttered, “What is the MATTER with you?? You’re like, Flowers for Algernon!! Get it together!!” Which caused me to laugh for like 5 minutes straight, and laugh about every time I thought about it for the rest of the night. And when we were getting into bed, I took out my hair, which had been in a bun. Steve took one look at it and notified my that I looked like Solid Snake. Which elicited another huge burst of laughter because I knew EXACTLY what he meant. God I love him. :D

My morning was spent much the same as yesterday morning, so I’ll skip over that, but I did need to wait for the new TV to arrive and sign for it and direct the guys to where to put it. That went off without a hitch, and then I asked Steve if he wanted me to come out for some Jamba lunch and walking, and he of course agreed enthusiastically. Before that, I RACED to the park to catch a random wild Lickitung, mwahahaha.

I started to leave, then when I was trying to take a Pokémon gym I realized it was colder than I anticipated and was threatening rain, so I went back home to get my windbreaker, and then I stopped for gas and tried to do a 3-star raid but was unsuccessful solo (I got really close though). Then! Onwards to the University. We got Jamba and I stopped to pee because I learned my lesson from last week and didn’t want to ruin my own day.

After that we started wandering around campus, and Steve asked me my plans and I told him I planned to grocery shop. He then made a comment to me about not spending a lot of money and that I purposely buy the more expensive of a product because I think money equals quality, and I interpreted the tone as attacking, so we got into a tiff about it. This looked mostly like tense silent with brief word exchanges, and after like 10 minutes of me seething in my autism and his own feelings on the matter, we were able to discuss our points - Steve doesn’t want me to spend a million dollars shopping and reminded me that we had developed a weekly budget several months ago (which I obviously forgot about). Since I do all the shopping and cooking, it’s very upsetting to feel like he genuinely believes I buy the most expensive thing on purpose, when in all honesty I don’t look at price basically ever and go off of what I want - whether that is ingredient list or the item of produce or whatever. A specific example of this is wanting 100% buckwheat soba and not flour/buckwheat soba. In the end I agreed to stick to the original budget, now that I was reminded and remember it, and he expressed his appreciating of the fact that I want us to eat good food and do the making of the things. The rest of our walk was back to normal, good and fun.

After he had to go back to work (boooo) I headed to the Wedge. I was able to find most of the things on the list that I wanted, but still needed a few things from Whole Foods. I drove to Woodbury and got the last few items I needed before heading home.

Once back home, I set about making lunches for the rest of the week, which didn’t take long as I was using a Rawvana recipes. I love her recipes because they are delicious and usually 5 ingredients or less. The food always has a lot of flavor and strikes home the beauty of using only a few ingredients. The problem I have with her recipes is that she expects you to consume 200-300 calories for a meal, which is ridiculously unhealthy. I think she tries to balance this out with salads and fruit as snacks, but it still works out to like 1100-1300 calories per day, which does not work for me and certainly doesn’t work for Steve. So I usually end up either doubling the recipe, or taking a recipe that says it serves 4 and making it serve 2. That sort of thing.

After the food was done and dinner was had (if you guessed fried egg Sammies and rice, you’d be right!), I played Hearthstone all night, finally beating the Witchwood solo adventure and playing some constructed. Steve okayed Shadow of the Colossus and Nick was playing Demon’s Souls. A good night.

This week is SGDQ, Summer Games Done Quick. GDQ does two charity 24/7 marathons per year, where people speed run games to earn money for Prevent Cancer Foundation (January) and Doctors Without Borders (June). SGDQ typically raises about $1 million USD, and AGDQ raises up to $2 million USD. This year they’re also going to do another one in the fall, but I haven’t researched it yet so I’m not sure what that’s for. Steve and I stared watching Games Done Quick in January 2013, and we’ve made it tradition to watch them all since.

Beginning with probably the last month of school, our house began to experience an increasing decline in its upkeep. I go through cycles of organization and slobbery, and it usually slowly builds up until it basically looks like Steve and I live in a state of squalor. Clothes end up everywhere, laundry doesnt get done, and when it DOES get done, it sits in baskets gaining wrinkles and soon it becomes impossible to remember which clothes are clean and which are dirty. Dishes begin to pile up, both in the sink and around the house (particularly our coffee and tea mugs)... my shoes end up all over the house, because usually I feel like I can’t stop on the landing, and instead wear my shoes to whichever room of the house I’m going to sit down in. It’s a terrible habit that I should fix. Mail ends up all over the place, yarn and projects are in randomly spots, cat food all over the floor........ you get the idea.

To combat this, I usually take a room at a time. When I decided to clean and organize, I CLEAN and ORGANIZE. Having grown up in Paul’s Cleaning Bootcamp TM, I tend to approach cleaning in a militant kind of way. I think this also helps explain why I avoid cleaning: when I clean, I am compelled to do it extremely thoroughly. I can’t half-ass it, or it’s not even clean and I wasted my time. So. I started with the kitchen, because a messy kitchen keeps me out of it. I deep cleaned both the coffee maker and the teapot, and now both run so smoothly. I reorganized the counters - they now have a lot of space. I moved the tea bag holders around and found new locations for the cooking utensils and noodles. I swept the kitchen, took out the trash, and did all the dishes. There honestly weren’t too many dishes, as we have a dishwasher, but many dishes failed to get clean because the wait to rinse them was too long. So I washed everything by hand and put it away. I also made some food, yay!

Noah and I have kept in touch about our food and exercise habits, as he experienced a rough week last week emotionally, which caused him to hate on himself a lot and try to sabotage, but he continues to lose weight, and has stayed under 300 pounds. I’m supporting him as best I can at jumping back on the wagon, and managing myself as well. Because of excuses and reasons, I didn’t do yoga for 2 weeks. In order to get that discount in the fall I need to attend 7 classes per month this summer, which means... I need to get in 5 classes this week. Perfect, honestly. Even though I’m cutting it down to the wire, I like the motivation to HAVE to go. To add in a layer of accountability, I signed up for classes for the first time since joining my studio. I have avoided booking classes and instead preferring to just show up, just in case I get lazy or something comes up. I’m the kind of person who typically does worse when people are watching, because the anxiety of letting people down becomes too great and I self-sabotage to the highest degree. If I outright fail people it will feel less bad than if I try and fail right???

Today’s class was Twilight flow, which is different depending on the instructor. Brandi is a woman I’ve emailed with, but never had a class with. I like Twilight class on Monday because that means I can go game shopping, and then go to class at 8pm. Steve, Nick and I went (haven’t seen Tyler in like a month, too busy being Stepdad of the Year) to LevelUp, but no games of note. We ate before we went, to hopefully allow me to digest before yoga. That was unsuccessful, and I spent the entire class feeling like my quesadilla was in my throat.

I loved Brandi’s class. She has a good energy, had really good words for us, and wasn’t as woo-woo as the other instructors. She’s still relatively new to the studio, so she was more hands-on and took the time to give little massages on our backs halfway through, and on our faces and shoulders at the end of class. Hannah used to do that, but then she stopped.

Since this is a class I’ve never been to, the people in there were all new to me. This means that I got several compliments on my hair and tattoos, both of which I am unaware of during yoga. Yoga is the only time in my life that I can tune everything else out and focus solely on my breathing and postures, so it’s really funny to remember that not only am I seeing other people, but they see me too. When I was walking out, a Mom commented on my hair and mentioned that her 10-year-old daughter asked for highlights and she was really nervous but bought her a semi-permanent dye. She relaxed into the conversation considerably when I told her I teach middle school, and I gave her some suggestions and tips (she surprisingly didn’t know that you can dye hair with kool-aid, which is the most common way I’ve seen younger kids get color in their hair), and she freaked out a little about her son turning 13 - I assured her 7th and 8th grade are so the best. So I guess I have a new Monday friend. Yay!

When I got home, Steve and Nick were watching SGDQ, and I played Hearthstone and talked to Ben Holland. Hopefully he’s coming over this weekend! I beat all of the bosses of the current solo adventure except 1, and I think I keep getting bad card choices because she is like everyone’s fave. Steve said something about how so many of our friends can’t get past early bosses, so I should be kinder to myself because I’m actually pretty decent at Hearthstone. Lol.

So we went to bed around 9:40, and I woke up several times with such bad reflux that I basically was vomiting in my mouth/choking/coughing. If that wasn’t bad enough, at 3am I woke up so cold and couldn’t get warm. I was shivering so much and asked Steve to cuddle me. My joints (fingers, knees, elbows) hurt so badly that I started to cry when Steve held me. He was not warm like I was hoping; he felt cold too. He of course told me that I was burning up and broke into a sweat immediately upon touching my skin. Eventually he went and got me another blanket for myself and gave me some NyQuil, as he had to get up in a couple hours. As I lay there waiting for the meds to kick in, I thought about how when Haley is sick, she just tolerates it. She never puts medication, even OTCs, into her body unless she absolutely must (and the only thing I can think of over the last 5 years was when she got her first UTI and waited until it was a kidney infection to prove to herself it wasn’t going away). I was grateful I don’t have a mental illness that makes me suffer like she does. Eventually the NyQuil started to work and my pain subsided enough for me to fall asleep.

I woke up 13 hours later, well-timed to a concerned text from Steve about whether I was alive or not. I was much better, my fever broke at some point, and my joints were still tender but not super terrible. But I had to spend the day in basically a hangover state, all gingerly moving about and taking it easy.

Haley came over to get a shirt she left over at my place and we laid outside for awhile until it suddenly started to rain. We talked about how I value people who have passion about things and hobbies and interests, and Haley values people who... have passion about their personality? It was really hard for her to put into words and I kind of feel like I know what she’s getting at. The difference I guess is that I think if people have no hobbies or passions, they’re kind of empty and boring, and she feels the opposite - that you’re “deeper” if you are interested only in other people and getting hype from simply being around them, and that if your life is a hobby you have less substance to YOU as a person. It’s actually a very interesting way to look at two opposing perspectives.

Personally I can’t imagine how boring and frustrating life would be if you had to rely on others to entertain you or make you feel fulfilled. You’d experience so much disappointment when everyone fell short of your high expectations and demands. I love having hobbies and sharing in the passion for them. She particularly asked a lot about Ben and Sean and why we like them, because they’re the quintessential “normal” people that Haley wants nothing to do with. It was so hard to explain the good vibes that I get from them, and how we share hobbies but also are different in a lot of ways, and how much I appreciate the way Ben talks about both things he loves and things he hates, and how Sean is observant, responsive, and independent in her own ways and has hobbies that overlap with Ben’s but she also has her own interests too that are unique and cool.

Soon after she left, Steve got home and left again to trade in his PS4 for a PS4 pro, and I showered and got ready for dinner. Soon after, Scott and Nick showed up and we met Courtney, Joe Waid, his girlfriend Megan and Quimby at India Palace. The place was packed and I learned that Courtney always calls ahead, when Steve and I have never done that. They were able to seat us in a weird spot in just a few minutes. The food was delicious as always, though I ate very little because I was still feeling a bit weird. I was pretty quiet, as was most of the group, most of the time. It’s like everyone was having a tired adult day.

After India Palace a few of us walked over to Starbucks for drinks and then headed back to our place. Steve’s plans for his birthday were to play Hidden Agenda, a game developed by the same people who made Until Dawn and played very similarly. Until Dawn is an amazing survival horror game that I insist you find a way to play, because it is SO GOOD. Choices affect outcomes and story. Hidden Agenda can be played as a story or as competitive between people. The group chose competitive, and each chapter in the story, someone random would get a “hidden agenda” to try to make something happen (or not). These events impacted parts of the story, and everyone got to vote between two choices during parts of conversations or scenes. Most choices were majority vote but some were “everyone has to agree” choices.

In the end, the group got a bad ending, but our suspicion over who the identity of the killer was confirmed, and now I want to play through the story to see how my decisions alone would shape the narrative. I LOVE these kinds of games, “choose your own adventure” for the modern day.

It was after midnight when the game ended, and Joe waid and Megan had left around 11, but he texted me asking for updates when the game was over, haha.

Bedtime and Kripp! Tomorrow is Larvitar day in Pokémon Go... and also about 50 million other things we’re doing.

Today was a day spent working, working so damn hard. In the morning we were all asked to come to a meeting to say goodbye to those of us leaving. Parkway is experiencing a mass exodus as a result of all the turmoil, and Jocelyn had us say goodbye one by one, with other people speaking “honoring” the ones leaving, and then the ones leaving giving a small speech. There are like, 13 of us going. Lots of people cried. When it was my turn, Tealie, Jan, Corri and Jenny all had really nice things to say about me. Tealie told the story of the time we had that crazy class our first year together, when the kids literally could not move with purpose and at any given time people were wandering the room. We really wanted the kids to be able to move and do a gallery walk, and somehow came up with the idea to put tape on the floor for them to follow, and it WORKED. soooo funny. Corri and Jenny both talked about getting to truly co-teach and what they learned from working with a teacher who cares so much about kids and has so much patience, and Jan called me her work daughter and pretty much made my entire life because Jan IS my mom. She’s the mom I never had, and I love her so much.

I ran really quick to Vincente’s IEP meeting, and Brian told Vincente’s mom that I’m the one person that Vincente would do anything for because we have a special relationship. After that I spent the day trying to get all my files in order. I sat up in the work room with Jan, Brian and Andy, all doing the same thing. Eventually I asked Steve to join me while I finished my work at Parkway. I still haven’t started on my stuff for Nokomis, but that will have to wait.

He came, and I was surprised to find that I was basically at the end of stuff I needed to do! I hadn’t eaten since 8am so I was very very hungry. I suggested we go to Cossetta’s, and we were both really looking forward to it because we could sit outside. There wasn’t a line, which was awesome. When I got up to the mastaccioli, I asked the lady if I could get extra sauce, like I have done every single time I have been to cossetta’s. I said it very nicely, as I always do, but apparently it was the most annoying request in the entire world to this lady. She made a huge show of stopping, GLARING at me, and dramatically dumping the noodles out of the container. She very bitchily informed me that I was supposed to tell the lady NEXT to her, who was handing the containers as orders came in, so that she would know to put extra sauce in the bottom. As if that’s the only place sauce can go, and I violated a sacred rule. Let me remind you I have done this every single time I have gone to Cossetta’s, without issue. I felt the rage boil inside me as a black cloud of anger formed between us, but I remembered how Steve said I’ve been picking fights lately with customer service people, so I swallowed my DEFINITELY JUSTIFIED anger, and used the same tone as the lady when I responded with just an, “okay,” and hoped the biting contempt in my own voice got the point across to her. If I was anyone else, or maybe if I was alone, I would have asked to see a manager because her attitude was completely unnecessary and rude as hell. She legit talked to me as if I was a stupid child who ruined her day. To my surprise, Steve was just as mad as I was, and made a couple loud funny comments as we waited at the next section.

The food was delicious, as always. When we got home we watched the Sony E3 conference with Scott, and since I went into it knowing nothing about what’s coming out, I was properly entertained. Some of the games coming out look exciting and fun.

We woke up and Sean wanted to go to a farmers market. I can’t remember which market she wanted to go to and which Ben wanted to go to. Whoever wanted which one, we ended up at the smaller market. I got really excited about this bakery stand, and ended up hating the caramel roll I got, so Steve graciously ate it for me. I bought some mustard greens with flowers (my fave) and some strawberries. Then we were all hungry, and Ben and Sean brought us to this AMAZING bakery called Bloom, where they had tons of vegan and gluten free pastries, as well as delicious pop tarts and tea. Since I couldn’t order everything I wanted, and we were on a time crunch, I decided I am going to go there again tomorrow. For today though, I got a sweet vegan pop tart as well as a savory hummus “pop tart” that ended up being more like a pastry sandwich but tasted AMAZING. it was all super delicious.

We got to the yarn shop right at 11, and the boys left. The weaving class was... interesting. I was cranky and belligerent most of the time, because the lady would not. Stop. Talking. We’d get started in one thing and she’d interrupt us every 4 minutes. She redirected the two other ladies multiple times to pay attention and not try to do the things at the same time she was doing them, even though I’m sure some people learn best by imitating while they learn. She seemed VERY concerned that people might miss something and *gasp* ask for an instruction to be repeated. There were only four of us. I was super irritable because the boys kept texting asking for updates, and I felt like a child who couldn’t use her phone even though it was important for them to know when to pick us up. We had barely gotten started on any ACTUAL weaving after the 4 hours were up! It was madness. So I was kind of cranky when we left, because it felt like holding in a sneeze.

I worked through my annoyance though because we were going mini golfing afterward and I knew that would be fun and we’d have time to weave in the evening.

Mini golf WAS fun, we did the course we don’t usually do, and Steve and I tied for second place at the end. We all did terribly except for Ben of course. I got an RNG (lucky) hole in one, much flirting was had, and it was just a good time.

In the evening, the boys played ITG and VR and I worked on weaving. Sean took a nap and then weaved some. DMac and Mike came over at some point and Dmac cutely asked for relationship advice, and it was funny to hear Ben give relationship advice when he’s had one girlfriend his whole life, that he started dating when he was like actually 12. But I appreciated that Dmac feels safe enough with us to be vulnerable like that.

For dinner it was Cafe Hollander again, and this time I ordered something better than the burger, and the uneven table made several people spill their drinks. Dmac spilled his into his lap and got pretty grumpy about it for awhile. We got pretty into the women’s heptathalon? Some college thing that was mostly women doing various running challenges, and we talked about how we’re all so old now compared to people in sports and how weird it is to follow basically teenagers in professional arenas.

After dinner we chatted for awhile but I was BEAT. SO tired. To couch pod!

Wait, it’s already halfway through the week?? That’s both exciting and terrifying. We only have one more real week left of school and I have so much to do, including a lot of things that require me to test students - not just paperwork typing. I’m definitely fucked again this year with regards to filing... getting access to our special ed files is so much hassle and I hate it! I was also quite terrible with progress reports, though I believe I’m not the only one by far so phew. It just means I’ll have a long Monday the 11th getting everything finished. Lucky for me though, since I only have 6th graders I don’t need to freak out as much as other years, since none of my kids’ files are getting sent along to high schools. That was my big issue in previous years, especially my first one (where I had 10 8th graders omg).

My day was spent feverishly trying to test and get emails sent out, and by the end of the day I had a pretty bad headache, so I came home to a waiting Steve and tried to nap away my headache in the dark. The nap was unsuccessful because I realized I wasn’t tired, just low energy and kind of emotional. Eventually I sat back up and did some scrolling until Steve was kind enough to heat us up some dinner, more potato soup. Yummm. When he was gone I started thinking about how grateful I am that Steve has stuck with me, and how strong he is, and how much I love our life and how much I appreciate him. I mean I think that stuff all the time, but seeing Pat and Aimee for some reason really launched my head into a tailspin about how even though it was just 3 months ago, that all that feels like a completely different life, and I feel so divorced from that behavior, and a life without Steve is such a sad, empty, pathetic version of a life that is so pale and colorless. He makes my life so full of happiness and love, and I don’t want a life where he’s not in it. So all of that has been swirling in my head and he brought me down heated up soup and bread and I just started crying. He asked me what was going on and I tried to tell him, I hope I did an okay job. It’s hard to articulate all of my feelings on the matter and they just get so intense that apparently what I do now is cry. Lol.

After I calmed down and we talked about it, we ate our soup and enjoyed Kripp playing some Hearthstone, exactly what I want to be doing with my life, and precisely who I want to be spending that time with. Soon after, Nick came over. We chatted for awhile about this and that, and then put on The Office while Nick continued Uncharted and I got scolded for continuing to scroll and not knit, which was so valid. I really would rather be knitting, I think it’s just that I love the iPad so much, it’s hard to transition away. I knit a good chunk more rows on my LYS shawl. I’m about 1 and a half repeats from doing my first color change. The Hedgehog fibers yarn is GORGEOUS and soft and I love working with it. I continue to encourage everyone to take up knitting, it is such a fine hobby AND YOU GET TO USE WHAT YOU MAKE (or gift it, whichever). Like you make an actual textile and it is amazing, and super impressive to non-knitters. To be fair, a lot of it IS impressive. But still. ;)

YarnHarlot posted an entry recently where she was able to take horrible, cheap dishcloth yarn and weave two very nice scarves out of it, and it has made me even MORE excited to learn weaving with Sean next weekend at Sow’s Ear. Another fantastic use of yarn, can’t wait.

Noah and I texted a bit about our food consumption and MyFitnessPal. Noah is realizing that MFP underestimates calories and overestimates exercise. I explained that with my Apple Watch , my scores get wonky as the watch actually tracks my true activity, which can lower (or raise) my total amount of food to consume for the day. It’s kinda cool but also kinda confusing. I’m just aiming for a specific range at this point until I get a better grasp of my activity levels. But Noah sent me a super cute text that ended with, “thanks for excitedly doing this with me, it’s keeping me motivated to become a thinner dood.” Awwww. It was so sweet, but more starkly put into perspective how he lives in the middle of nowhere with only white racists and teenagers as company, and I want to be a good friend! And you KNOW how much I love a good motivational health regimen. What better way than with friends who need support?!

I forgot to mention yesterday that Steve and I went to Stephanie’s Yoga Flow class for anniversary and that was super good and fun. She moved a bit too fast for my liking, and she was as dopey as ever. I prefer classes with slightly less poses in favor of holding to get a deeper stretch. If you’ve ever tried to hold a pose for even 45 seconds, you know that *less* poses does NOT equal *easier* poses. Moving too fast just means that you can’t settle in, make sure you’re doing the pose correctly, with all its micro adjustments and muscle fatigue. But it was good to go for anniversary, and I really want to find a class that works for Steve. Maybe I’ll take him to hot yoga, since that’s the same poses every time and they are slow and drawn out. But still the opposite of easy.

Now I’m about to head to bed. Nick is still here but I think he def needs to head home relatively soon because he has to work, and Steve will probably stay up playing Owl Boy on the Switch, which we just got in the mail yesterday. Looks good so far!

Today was the beginning of Second Weekend, yay! Steve has the week off and I have Monday off, but I’m also taking tomorrow off - I’d like to say it was pre-planning for our anniversary, but I didn’t actually look at the date before I decided I was going to take it off. Just luck!

We took our time waking up, and then I made us some smoothies following Rawvana’s 5-day plan. The smoothies are mostly “green” and I know Steve likes fruit smoothies, but I thought it would be fun if we followed the plan together for the week to jumpstart our health process. Guys, the smoothies are hilarious. They make 60 ounces of liquid. Howwww are we expected to drink that much at one time?? I hate consuming a lot of liquids at once, and if you take too long with smoothies, they get frothy and thick, almost chunky. Steve was able to get his down and then decided to go mow the lawn. I decided to get going on lunch and try to finish my smoothie. Lunch is a Mexican salad, and it’s really good when you actually measure the ingredients right. I had a mishap where I actually used way too much cumin for one set of the salads and it made for sooo much intense salty flavor. But it was all right. Even though Steve took over an hour on the lawn, I still wasn’t finished with my smoothie by the time he came in. He stood over me while I finished it (lol) and then we ate our salads. Other than the extreme saltiness, it was good!!

Next on our agenda was to go to Steven Be yarns, because they were having a 25% off everything sale. Steven himself was there, along with his mom, and she is a very old first-generation German immigrant. She even referred to her marriage as “I married an American”. She told a slightly awkward but funny story about how her friend or sister had encouraged her to buy Steven a Barbie doll, and she refused and bought him a truck that he never played with, so for his next holiday the friend bought him a Barbie, which he loved and played with and made clothes for. His mom had her own yarn shop and obviously passed all that down to him. They made a book together and it was really cute, but the items in there are too intense for me - extremely textured, chunky yarns, flamboyant colors and combinations. But the stories in there were pretty neat.

The thing that is just a little too much about Steven Be isn’t that the store is overwhelming with choices - because even though that’s true, I love seeing so many options and samples, it’s that everyone is trying to be so helpful that it feels like when you’re at a garage sale and the sellers are eyeballing you hard while you look at stuff and you feel a huge pressure, like they’re gonna take it personally if you don’t like everything. I ended up only buying one skein of yarn, a beautiful gradient that I wanted last time but was too expensive for a single skein at $61. With 25% off plus 2 more percent bonus, it was far more reasonable.

It was hot as as balls out, my car sitting at 103*, but we really wanted to do some Pokémon Go. This week’s Advneture Week, where you get crazy experience for spinning stops you’ve never visited, so we drove around that area of Minneapolis for quite some time to find stops. Oddly, we found a cemetery that was just FILLED with stops. Feeling a little weird, I drove in there and we slowly drove past the stops we could, but eventually we got out and walked around to get the rest. We marveled at some of the massive headstones, sculptures, and crypts that were there, noting that as people stopped being able to afford the luxury of headstones (or as cultural views of grave sites shifted), many more recent sites only have the small flat slab. It was an interesting way to spend a half hour! There’s even a gym in the cemetery?? Just seems a little inappropriate, but I’m not complaining too much, we got so much experience from that one area.

After that, we drove around a bit more, stopping at random place for more pokestops and debating whether or not to get ice cream. Initially we totally were going to and even came across a random ice cream shop, but literally when we were going that way, the weather changed to be ominous, windy and dark, and threaten rain.

So we finished the raid we were doing in Pokémon go and decided to head to The Wedge for a couple of things. As I was turning the car around, I saw a couple people walking down the street. My head thought, “oh, that looks like Aimee!” And it took a few seconds for me to realize Oh wait, that’s Pat with her! And THEN my brain started to panic, because we were turning around right in front of them and ohmygodwhatiftheylookintothecarwhatdowedothen?! Steve didn’t look up or over to see them, and they didn’t look into the car. We drove for a few blocks while my brain screamed with anxiety and adrenaline, and I debated whether to tell Steve. I made a basic pros and cons list, because I was the only one of the four of us who knew this happened, and what a crazy near-miss it was. We had JUST been on that street, and if we were 20 seconds later getting into the car or they were 20 seconds earlier, we would have walked right into each other. And it would have been the worst. I never want to run into either of them, anywhere. Too scary, too awkward, too terrible. In the end I decided to tell Steve, because I didn’t want him to think I was keeping something from and I also wanted someone to share in the “what are the odds”?!?! Because we were in the most random of areas, AND make a joke that the universe turned the weather so that we would leave the area before disaster struck.

After a bit of conversation and talking it through, I think Steve and I got to an okay place (it of course brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings for Steve), we got to the wedge. We picked up a few things, like half and half, sprouted bread, tea and crackers. After that we decided to head home.

Home was cooking dinner, which was a potato soup. For this soup I ended up using all of the remaining red bell peppers (pretty sure we bought 12), a bunch of potatoes and sooo many Roma tomatoes. While that cooked, Steve and I watched Hearthstone and played a game of rummikub, which I narrowly won after an entire game’s worth of being crazy behind.

We took the soup downstairs for more Hearthstone, and it was so hot for so long, lol. Finally we got to eat it and it was delicious, but a lot. It’s crazy how full liquids can make you. I bullied Steve into drinking all of his broth, to encourage water intake and flushing out his system. When he let his food settle enough he decided to play ITG. I think he had a decent day, he was playing some challenging songs the whole time, and some new ones we’d never seen before that seemed pretty neat.

I was working on knitting, but for some reason when I wound the ball I was using, there must have been a tangle that happened deep within the ball, because my yarn kept catching on itself and getting twisted. Instead of dealing with it and being more and more annoyed, I went to get to the root of the issue. Turns out something just went horribly horribly wrong, because I never did pinpoint on specific thing, and I ended up needing to cut the yarn because I needed to weave the yarn in and out of itself - it had just gotten so insanely twisted up! It took an hour and a half (aka the rest of my night) to resolve, but NOW the yarn is ready to be used nicely.

Also during the evening, after dinner, I gave Steve his anniversary gifts. As always, I had so much fun getting gifts for him. I like to vary it up between gifts on his Amazon or backloggery, unique gifts and gifts that are practical. For him this year, I got:
-tickets to a Final Fantasy music show that we’ve seen before, because it’s local and intimate
-new wallet, handmade from Etsy and Splatoon themed
-a new mug for his new job, with an Undertale theme
-a KitKat sampler from Japan, with really fun flavors
-the newest Kirby plush, ice Kirby (he’s trying to collect them all)
-a Hollow Knight figurine, super gorgeous and neat, also from Etsy
-a complete in box copy of Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones for GameBoy Advance. I was so damn excited for it because the box is like MINT, and I knew how much he’s been wanting this game.
-a card I ordered from Catana comics with a heartfelt message inside

He of course loved the gifts and was so happy about the card. We love giving gifts to each other and I’d been waiting SO long to give them! My big gift this year of course was this iPad I’m typing on, and I love it, but I know he was feeling a little weird about getting one big thing (he did the same thing at my birthday when he gave me my Apple Watch) because we’re so into these many thoughtful gift situations, but I am eternally happy about having both and it has just as much sentiment as the other ones. So much loooove.

It was a bit of a lazier day, getting up later but not too late, still before 11. Noah wanted to maximize his game time and probably ease the strain on his budget, so he requested a quick breakfast. They went out and got BK, and brought me home a bagel from Caribou. I really took my time easing into the day, reading PostSecret and journals/blogs, and getting my list for meal prep for this week. We agreed that beginning tomorrow we’re gonna tackle the correct eating HARD and I like to support us by finding delicious and not-too-complicated of recipes, though I’m still struggling to find enough food in a day to support a grown man vs an average-sized woman.

After I caught up on my entries, I went downstairs and joined the boys in the rest of the day of gaming. Steve continued to play random games, Noah continued to play Dragon Warrior 3, and I continued in Persona 5. Noah got to the almost end of his game, and I beat the second dungeon in Persona 5. We ordered a pizza a few hours before Noah had to go home, and Steve and I went to pick it up together. We of course then played a little Pokémon Go on the way. I kept my pizza consumption relatively low, 2 pieces of pizza and like 4 pieces of the breadsticks (they’re smaller). I always think about when I was growing up and we basically rationed our food - a Jack’s pizza with the fluffier crust would feed me, my mom and sister. Bethany and I would each get two pieces of pizza, and Mom would get 3, and if one of us was still hungry MAYBE they’d get the last piece, but we’d often either split it or Paul would eat it along with whatever he ended up eating. I think about how Mom was always only eating the 3 pieces and how I should also be fine with that many, not more, when eating pizza. Lol.

Eventually Noah randomly announced that it was time to go. He packed up his stuff, put the couch back where it goes, and we headed out. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced drinks (green tea lattes for me and Noah and an Americano for Steve) and hit the road. I finished the thumb on one of Mom’s gloves and spent the rest of the time telling the boys about memes and other things on my Facebook page.

We went to find a couple stops and a gym after dropping Noah off, because Steve had a Pokémon Go quest to spin stops he hadn’t before. That was fun. Oh hey, do you notice when my entries have the accent in the word Pokémon and when they don’t? That’s how you can tell whether I’m typing the entry up on my iPad or my work laptop - iPad autocorrects and the laptop doesn’t. :P

Steve and I talked a bit on the way home about how we’re feeling about the relationship, when Pat’s name comes up in conversation with friends and how it makes us feel, and what direction we feel like we are moving. It was a good conversation... we talked about striking the balance between moving on and not pretending like it didn’t happen, and how we are making the relationship stronger and some things we have noticed in the positive. I apologized again and tried to impress upon Steve just how much he means to me. We talked a little about how the other day he made some comments that I felt blindsided by and I had gotten really upset, and how we can handle the situation better moving forward.

Steve just notified me that he makes fun of me in his entry about being so hype for grocery shopping, so that’s cool, lol.

So after we got home Steve put on some Hearthstone and I entered in the recipes into MyFitnessPal. I also had been entering the food eaten this weekend and came up with 2400 calories per day for myself. Whoops. I should definitely be consuming between 1700 and 1900 per day, depending on if I’ve exercised. I KNOW I’ve been consuming at least this much on average, which would easily explain my weight gain. Not that I’m surprised in any way, and I’m sure there are plenty of days it gets even higher than that!

Seeing that info really helped me feel like it would be good to go for a walk. We didn’t take our whole route because Steve was getting some chafey legs, but we did about 3.5 miles. The local middle school just got a new playground installed at the end of last summer, and I’d only been there once with Haley and Steve hadn’t seen it at all, so we climbed the high tower and went down the slide, I pushed him in the fun slidey swing and we took turns on the rope swing. It was sooo fun. Then when we got to the field path, we saw the first fireflies of the season!!! Fireflies are so hype. They’re romantic and pretty and make it feel like you’re somewhere magical. In the peak of their season, the completely dark field (there are NO lights on in that area) is just lit up with sparkles. Steve showing me his firefly field is one of my most favorite memories of our relationship. Today it was like 10 fireflies, but they’ll get there.

I was more tired than I thought I would be once we got home, so we settled into bed after putting the groceries away, and watched Kripp play Hearthstone. All in all I’d say it was a solid day!

Thursday. The third day*. Today was the first blazingly hot day of the year. Like, the kind of day where the weather screams, “REMEMBER ME!?!?! MINNESOTA, WHERE THE TEMPERATURES ARE ALWAYS EXTREME MWAHAHA!!!” It was 93 and humid, and it was 86 degrees before 9am. So sweaty. I wore a nice new flowy soft dress, and the rest of my school year is going to be almost exclusively dresses, as neither of my schools have air conditioning and it is so sweaty.

My morning was good, we switched to mean/median/mode/range and plotting and analyzing data, and that’s been going well. Helped Vincente and Malik on their stuff of course, talked about silly middle school things like how the space between the crook of your elbow and your hand is the same length as your foot, how even though Malik is only 12 that he already experiences “tall people problems” such as hitting his head on the bus door and that his bed is too short and he has to spread his legs to sit on the toilet because the wall is too close and his femurs are too long. I’d like to add in a side note here about this specific one, where he told me this last one the most innocently a kid could, like not at all thinking about the fact that to sit on the toilet he would need to be pooping and of course it is taboo to admit you sit on the toilet in middle school - though this generation is way more open to talking about pooping/farting etc. than mine was... I might have actually melted into the floor if ever it was suggested I do either of those things during ANY of my school years. XD

2nd block was fine, the first period was kind of annoying because Chanel was gone again, and I let the second period be super low key because there were only 4 of them and Dyshawn was really in the mood to talk to me today and it’s the end of the year so I let him. He’s the ringleader of a trend of timed “slap boxing” matches at school. Slapboxing is exactly what it sounds like: like boxing, but you hit with an open hand so as not to leave marks or do lasting damage. The new game invented and going around the school is to get filmed slapboxing with someone for 10-15 seconds and then you’re done. I asked Dyshawn what the purpose of that was, and why it was fun. He said a lot of people kind of want to fight or prove themselves, and a timed match (supposedly) means no one gets mad, hurt, or (probably most importantly) caught fighting at school. He showed me a couple of videos - Brian had angrily told me that Dyshawn was targeting the 6th graders but there were kids of all ages in our school participating - and everyone is smiling in them before and after???? So like, it seems to be working for now... but you KNOW someone’s gonna play dirty and it will all fall apart. Really interesting though. When I was in school play fighting was really rare, because it ALWAYS turned into a real fight. And in my hometown, if you were caught fighting, both parties went to court. Always. No exceptions. It was a great deterrent. I’d say from 7th-11th grade (I didn’t go to high school for my senior year) I witnessed 4-5 fights in total. A couple of years ago that was the daily average at my school, a school of 500 kids. Anyway, kids are ridiculous and endlessly interesting.

After that I went out to Eden Prairie to meet Steve, Nick, Quimby and Courtney for lunch. Since Steve’s last day at Supervalu is tomorrow, and they all work out in EP, Steve invited me out with them. My car’s air conditioning is broken and I like the windows down anyway, so I was a sweaty mess by the time I got all the way out there (about a 35-minute drive). We went to India Palace... Wait. India Palace is in Woodbury! Jk, this is a different India Palace. They’re franchised, and this place was good, but not as good as the one we love. But it was definitely tasty. We took our time eating and chatting, and invited people to hang out today after work. Then we stopped in at Starbucks because it was in the same strip mall. Then Steve and I said cute goodbyes and walked to our cars... and I couldn’t find my keys. Kay, I REMEMBERED locking my car. The first thing I thought of was how I’d JUST locked my keys in my car twice over the last 3 months. Awesome. But I distinctly remembered tucking them into my purse! Wtf! I started kind of panicking, because I didn’t see them in the car, so I didn’t think I locked them in. And then I turned and Steve was walking back to me! He came back to bring a drink to his coworker Jay, and I filled him in on my problem, and we went into the Indian place again, thinking maybe I left them on the table. Nope. Went to Starbucks, not there either. We walked back to my car and peered in super intensely. Didn’t see them. Went BACK to the Indian place. Back to Starbucks. KAYYYYY. I knew I drove there using my keys??? I could NOT figure it out. Steve had to get back to work, and I really needed to get back to work, and I was so afraid I’d call AAA and they’d open my car and the keys wouldn’t be in there, and then what? Eventually Steve had to leave but he felt really bad, and I started to call AAA but decided to retrace my steps one more time (I tend to panic when I have an audience and can’t see or think rationally because of embarrassment/insecurity/idk), and lo and behold, found them on my walk. THANK GOD. Called Steve, so relieved, jfc.

I still had enough time to make it back to Nokomis without getting in trouble (as in, with enough time to be face-to-face with kids). Today was actually a concert practice day for the younger kids and the older kids are finishing up a poetry residency with real poets, so I spent a lot of time in the E2 classroom talking with Nicci, one of the E2 teachers. Then I decided to take Jeremy for some work, and he asked if he could bring a few friends with since it was gonna be just him. I said sure, and so he and 3 friends ended up in my office for about an hour. They were all super cute, like, “So this is where you go every day” and one of them even asked me if I lived in that office. I pointed to my comfy chair and said that’s where I slept. They all figured out I was joking, but in that kind of innocently suspicious and somber way younger kids who don’t understand dry humor do. It was still funny. They were all working really hard, and two of the boys were so happy when I helped them figure out how to do some of their math work, and Jeremy was just beaming with excitement of being able to work with his friends in my office. Every so often one of them would quietly say, “It’s so nice in here. I can actually think because it’s *quiet*.” Aww.

I got home around 4:35, and Steve got home soon after. We picked up and put away laundry and collected alllll of the dirty clothes and got them downstairs, and the house is vastly improved. Someone in the gaming community died today, TotalBiscuit if you’ve heard of him. He had cancer, and he was 34. People told the Hearthstone streamer Trump (not to be confused with the other guy) WHILE on stream, and he told a few stories of his interactions with TB and Hearthstone beta etc., and the stream comments were a mixture of support and comments about cancer and TB’s experience, and he suddenly broke down into tears. Chat immediately turned into a bunch of hearts and “everyone cries” and people encouraging him to end the stream to grieve. He initially said he’d be fine, just needed a few minutes, and mentioned how surprised he was that he started crying. He broke down a few more times over the next 10 minutes or so and was finally like, “Okay guys, you’re right, thanks for understanding, gonna take tonight off.” it was quite sad, poor Trumpy boy, heart hurts for him. I think Steve and I both got somewhat choked up just in sympathy.

Eventually Nick, Courtney and Scott came over and we went to Catrina’s for burritos. They were yummy as usual. Catrina’s is a local Mexican food place, like Chipotle but better in every single way except for the fact that they don’t have a vegetarian meat option, just beans. Catrina’s opened a few years ago, and we know the owners pretty well. They opened another location a year or so ago, and they’re just about to open a third location, and they were recently featured on a national news segment. They’re delicious and we go there every week at least (they’re also within walking distance of our house). Good thing we didn’t decide to walk today, because it started storming after we got there. Phew! Today I decided to mix up my salsa choice because the citrus jalapeño just looked too fresh and good. Today was a good burrito, as usual.

When we got back to the house, Scott played the remastered Shadow of the Colossus, we put on the Office, Steve started a game on the SP, I continued working on Mom’s fingerless gloves after Steve guilt-tripped me EVEN THOUGH I wanna knit my shawl instead (“Leah, it’s getting way past Mother’s Day and I don’t want you to be giving these to her for NEXT mother’s day“). I’m actually almost done with them now, just gotta finish the cuff on the second one, knit up the thumb, and add the kitty heads. And weave in the ends of course but that’s a given. And THEN I can work on the shawl. The next thing I start should be the afghan Bethany wants for her wedding. I can work on it alternately with my shawl or other projects.

On my knitting podcasts, a frequent topic is whether the people in question stick with one project, or have several going at once. When I began listening to podcasts, I thought that I was basically a “one project at a time” person, because even if I’d have multiple projects started, I was never working on more than one thing at a time. Unfinished projects were projects I’d abandoned but not emotionally given up on and didn’t want to admit that I’d never finish them. Now that I knit like every day, and more seriously, I generally have 2-5 projects going at any given time, and I’m confident in where I left off and that can and will finish it. It’s funny, when I thought about how I only worked on one thing, it made me feel very knitters, but that was only because I associated multiple projects with not finishing them ever. Now that I actually have been consistent in getting things finished, and working on different types of projects at the same time (more mindless things for on the go, more elaborate ones for home), I feel way more knitterly smug than before. Also I just really love knitting.

All day and night Steve and I were texting each other cute texts. We’ve been so good lately, he makes me so happy. I love spending time with him and we have so much fun. SO MUCH LOVE!!! So goosh <3

Today was definitely a lazy Sunday, considering we went to bed so late. I woke up a bunch of times in the morning but was far too comfy cuddling with Steve to bother actually getting up. At 11 I felt guilty enough to FINALLY wake Steve up. We took our time but I'd say we were up by noon. Lol.

To ease into our day, there was coffee and Rummikub. Perfect. It looked like I was going to win for the longest time, but Steve pulled it out in the end, getting a solid 29 points from me and pulling ahead on the leaderboard. Oh well, that just means that his embarrassing picture is up on the board and not mine. Hehehe.

Hunger struck about then, and Steve was jonesing for some Naf Naf, so off we went. But not before stopping at the park for a little Pokemon Go. We were just gonna spin the stops there, but there was a raid at the police station across the park, and I needed 2 more raids to complete my next Mew quest. Now I'm down to 1! Getting closerrrr. It turned out to be a LOT nicer today than it was yesterday, sunny and decent temp and only a little windy. It was definitely far more ideal for eating outside.

Naf Naf was delicious as always, and the guy making our bowls was either new or feeling particularly generous, because my bowl was basically overflowing. Needless to say, I took home a ton of leftovers. Naf Naf is right by Whole Foods, and we needed some necessities. I ended up grabbing a bunch of fruit (summer weather really gets me craving fruit), a few other random things and we decided to take a tour of the mochi. My flavor preference went: 1. Strawberry 2. Mango 3. Pistachio 4. Red Velvet 5. Chocolate Mocha 6. Passion Fruit. Steve's favorite was mango. They were very good.

After that, Steve asked if I wanted to accompany him to scout for another media shelf for the game room. Of course!! So that took us to Savers, where he didn't find a shelf, but DID find a couple games - one for reselling and one for silly curiosity play. Next was Goodwill, which was a total bust and we were out within a few minutes, and then we went to Gamestop because it's Nick's birthday today and Steve wanted to look and see if there were any games he might want to get for Nick. He did end up buying the remastered Shadow of the Colossus, not entirely sure if Nick owns it already or not, but saying we can just take it if he does, and get him something else. He ended up getting a few other games, including one called Snipper Clips.

Suddenly, from all that activity (lol) I got tired and really wanted to snuggle on the couch and maybe nap. So we went home and put on some Hearthstone and I dozed in and out. Steve didn't fall asleep as far as I know, but he lay with me for awhile, and that was really nice. I really felt good nestled against him with his arm around me and it was just what I needed. Eventually he decided to sit up and played some Hearthstone on his phone while I napped some more with my head in his lap. That was also quite nice.

Neither of us were super hungry for dinner so I just cut up some fruit and Steve had a muffin and we snacked while starting Snipperclips. The game is for the switch and is ideal for 2 people, because you work together to solve puzzles. Each person is this like kind of wine tumbler-shaped paper guy, and you can like, cut each other into various shapes (circle, bowl, pointy object, etc) to fulfill whatever purpose is given. So, for example, if you need to get a ball through a hoop, the easiest way is to cut one of you into a bowl shape to catch the ball and then dunk it. To pop balloons, you need someone to be pointy. Etcetera. They require you to work together to solve it, and it's already made for some really fun puzzles. We beat the first world tonight and I can't wait for more!!

Tomorrow is gonna really blow, so busy with IEP and eval meetings after school and Tealie is gone again. Trying not to panic with suffocation. Only three weeks left until the end of the school year, and I'll have two more days off next week. I can do it. But it's sooo stressful. Ugh. This is why I need relaxy ideal days like today. They're so nice and fill up my soul. I'm really looking forward to summer with Steve, it's gonna be awesome.

Saturday found us waking up a little later than we’d planned on, but not too much later. I was really excited to eat breakfast outside and enjoy the weather. It’s been in the mid-80’s for at least a week, and I thought it would be a really good start to our weekend. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us. It was gray, cloudy and chilly. Stubbornly I still wanted to go, as 59 degrees wasn’t SO bad and it didn’t seem super windy. I just dressed a bit warmer than I wanted to, and Steve still thought he should wear shorts and a T-shirt.

The plan was to eat breakfast at Birchwood Cafe early enough to beat the insane rush that happens somewhere in the mid morning. Birchwood Cafe is this amazing brunch place that is a little more expensive than you generally want to spend on a given early-in-the-day meal, but it’s priced the way it is for good reason. They work very hard to ethically and organically source all of their ingredients, and they make really good food, all from scratch. Ever since the ONE time we’d eaten there in the past, I was craving the savory waffle (sans bacon). So that’s what I ordered, with a side of potatoes (they season their potatoes with mustard seed and olive oil... sooo gooood. I really should start doing that. Lol. I know it’s not hard because I’ve done it several times following Blue Apron recipes). I also ordered a coffee. Steve ordered pancakes and we split the two meals.

We sat outside (again, stubbornly), but it was definitely not ideal. With my hood up I was actually pretty decent, but Steve got colder the longer we sat outside. The food was really good, per usual, though the waffle was crispier than I remembered, a little overcooked. While we ate, we watched more and more people show up, to the point where eventually the line was packed in and out the door. We did beat the rush, even on a crappy day. Sweet.

The reason we found Birchwood Cafe in the first place was a year ago when Steve really wanted to go to a new game store opening up called “Heroic Games.” When we went there, there wasn’t much to see, and it’s a really small shop. Since then, Steve has seen them pop up as a happening place, and he also sees the cool games they get in. SO, he wanted to check out the place again! I also was interested in checking out the yarn store where I bought most of my yarn from when I went to Yarnover, Stevenbe. It sounded really cool and it was also in Minneapolis, where we were. After checking the map, we were pleased to discover that the game store was actually on the way, and basically on the same street, as the yarn store.

The game store had more things than last time, and Steve did look up the prices for comparison on a couple of games, but surmised that the cool things he gets in and posts online must sell right away, so the remaining stock gets pretty stale. It was still a cute little store (I mean LITTLE, like, 10 people could comfortable fit in there if you didn’t expect more than 3 people at a time to be looking at things) and a cute thing to do with Steve. Soon after, we headed down the road to Stevenbe Yarns.

You guys. This yarn store is insane. First of all, when you walk up to it, it’s got this huge sign. And then there are like 4 different doors that lead into this place, but they want you to use one with a big gate. The doors are metal, like a warehouse. When you walk in, you’re immediately hit with a strong smell of wool. You find yourself in a foyer with crappy yarns on extreme clearance, and branded coffee and trinkets for the store. That opens up into this massive show room filled with bright yarns of so many varieties. They have kits everywhere and samples of items knit up with the yarns. It’s really neat. While we were perusing, I found myself a couple of long circular needles. I’ve been interesting in experimenting with knitting armwarmers and socks on circulars to reduce the stitch sizes when changing needles when using DPNs (double-pointed needles). I’ve increasingly seen more people do this. I bought some really short circular needles to try for socks, but I wanted to also try long circs for gloves. The shop owner informed me that there was plenty more yarn upstairs. HOW. HOWWWW.

There are about 10 steps that lead up to a landing, with “geek-specific” themed yarns and samples there. I don’t watch Dr. Who, but I was particularly impressed by this shawl and would definitely knit it if I knew someone in my life who loved the show and would wear a shawl.

10 more steps and you’re on the second floor. MOAR YARN. Not only moar yarn, but there was another big room, a side room, and a hallway filled with yarns. But wait! Another discount yarn ROOM. Holy crap. The upstairs had their “fiber” area, with unspun wool of various types, spinning wheels, carding machines and weaving looms. It was all very neat.

Once heading back downstairs, I hemmed and hawed for quite awhile around these gorgeous hand-dyes (who am I kidding? I will always want the stripey hand dyes) before finally settling on a skein that was beautiful and was under $30 (the needles I was buying cost over $30 together already)... my second choice of yarn was $61 and I felt too guilty spending $100 at the yarn store when I have so much yarn at home that I DO wanna knit.

After the yarn store, we headed home. The weather was still lame, but it wasn’t threatening rain or anything. There was a Pokémon Go event from 1pm-4pm for Charmander, and the legendary Pokémon Ho-oh also is going to be in 5-star raids starting today. Steve invited Nick to come Pokéhunting with us at the park by our house, and he came over pretty quick. We all walked over to the park and started catching Charmander. Within like 15 minutes, Steve and Nick had each caught like 2 shiny Charmander, and I hadn’t even seen one!! I was throwing a fake fit about it. Lol. While we were at the park, Ben contacted us via FB messenger and invited us to Mall of America (Ben and Sean are in town!) and hot tub + VR in the evening. After some conferring, we agreed the mall would be the best place to go.

Even though it was a Saturday, and a Saturday with a Pokémon event happening, I still found parking quite easily and we met up with Ben and Sean after stopping to catch some Charmander. They were in line at Carlos’ Bakery (from cake boss) and got some really tasty pastries. We didn’t get more than 12 steps before we ran into big Mike! WHAT ARE THE ODDS, seriously. He informed us there was a Latias raid starting in like a minute and we should go there. I had to wander away from the group to get the right GPS location to participate in the raid, but eventually we all got in and got to try to catch her. Unfortunately, none of us were successful.*

A lot more catching of Charmander was had over the next 2 hours, including lots of shiny’s, and Ben teased me about how much I whined about not getting any good shiny’s and I ended up with a pretty good one. Sean got overly excited about Raltz more than once, to the mock indignance of Ben. Much hilarity ensued as we circled the Mall. We got to participate in TWO Ho-oh raids, though I had to do a lot of wandering with the first one (again, GPS) and we all got yelled at by security because there were SO MANY people there playing Pokémon Go that it was clogging up walkways (like, no less than 100 people). On my VERY LAST throw on the first Ho-Oh raid I got him. Nick didn’t end up with any legendaries, Ben’s phone died during the first raid but it miraculously saved his spot when he plugged in Mike’s to-go charger and booted it back up, and Steve and Sean both got one. On the second raid, Sean got a shiny Ho-oh and EVERYONE was mad jealous. So lucky!! She was very happy and it was cute.

Soon after we had to head out because I had Cafetalk lessons starting at 6:30. We got BurgerBurger to go (the sandwich I ordered was requested no bacon of course, and while I got the veggie patty it had a crapton of bacon on it, which I discovered during my first huge bite). Haley was at our house doing laundry, and spent the next two hours pissing Steve off and making Nick uncomfortable with her questions. She’s been obsessed lately about the fact that women have hair on their buttcheeks and would not shut up about it. And other inappropriate topics. She left before I was finished with my second lesson.

Did my lessons and then it was 9. Nick headed home, and Steve and I went over to Ben’s parents’ house to try out BeatSaber VR. It was SO. FUN. Look it up if you haven’t seen it yet Exactly as I imagined it, though I kept accidentally pressing the menu button when songs got intense. It lines up really well and does sense you better than PlayStation VR, because it has two sensors for you instead of just the one and can track your movement better. The only downside is that it was on a computer and only the person playing could hear the music, so the room was quiet save for the swishing noises as you swiped, and the heavy breathing of exertion XD Hard mode is really fun, and I was unable to pass any expert songs (which I’m happy about - love a challenge). We all took turns playing to our hearts’ content. When I wasn’t playing, I was knitting on Mom’s gloves and fighting with one of the kittens to stop trying to eat my yarn and needles.

Sean went to bed around midnight and Mike left, and then Ben’s friends Kuh-San and Amanda (they’re married) came over. Kuh-San is one of Ben’s longtime friends, having lived just down the street from each other, and he makes a daily appearance in Ben’s “post-college pre-Madison” book, Corrupted Complaints. He and his wife were pleasant and nice. More BeatSaber, more conversation, and then hot tub. We spent about a half hour in the hot tub. Steve had been asking me what I liked about hot tubs, and I was having trouble articulating other than it’s warm and comfy and fun. Lol. Once we got in there, I realized it was because if you’re in a group, you just take the talking you were JUST doing, and add in fun warm water and artistically good sensory distraction, like putting your hands and feet in the jets, floating back and forth, and experimenting with how much of your skin to expose to the chilly air.

During that time we talked a lot about Disney World. Ben, Sean, and Ben’s parents JUST got back from a trip there, are going to go again in August, and planned for us to join them there in December (plans right now are the 1st-9th). I’ve been to DW once, for my little brother when he was 6 and I was 19 (so over 10 years ago) and I didn’t remember it being that fun. How can it be so fun for a group of adults that they go three times in a year?? I don’t know how you can want to go that much. Ben basically ended up saying that it’s just an excuse to spend a lot of time with the people you care about, in an easygoing place with a lot of access to comfort and luxury and unique foods and people. And of course, the Disney theme and fireworks. So I guess it’s something about not thinking you’re going to an amusement park, because it will never compare to Cedar Point or Six Flags or King’s Island, but more like you’re going for the ~experience~.

Soon after there was toweling off and Kuh-San and Amanda left, and then Ben laid on the floor of his living room and Steve and I sat on the couches and we talked about journaling, jobs, and other nothing topics that felt really good to just be hanging out. I really like Ben a lot, and he has a lot of thoughts/rants/etc. It’s really funny when he and Steve are talking, because Ben has such an analytical way of thinking (“process” thinking where he wants everything to be as efficient as possible and even though he doesn’t process super quickly, you can bet he will find a good solution) and Steve has such an analogical way of thinking. They’re both hilarious when talking, so it’s always enjoyable to be around when they’re having a conversation.

Oh, and I took a cute selfie.

Finally we got too tired to continue (it was well past 2am by this point), and Steve and I stopped at Taco Bell, not having gotten dinner (I just ordered a bean burrito), ate quickly and collapsed into bed, serenaded by Kripp playing Hearthstone.

Perfect end to a perfect day.

*Steve informed me, post-entry, that he lied to everyone and he DID catch Latias, but felt guilty that he was the only one and thus pretended he didn’t. HAAAHAHA omg he’s the best.

Breaking this one up by the topics I divided up yesterday!

Garage sales and Pokemon Go
Steve was interested in checking out the Madison garage sale scene, so we meandered about without much luck for awhile, but it turns out that we were just in the wrong area. We turned around after Steve looked up garage sales on Facebook or something (seriously, did you know that was a thing?? Weird) and we had more luck in a DIFFERENT neighborhood. He likes to go to garage sales to look for old games and systems, particularly with the hope that it's an older person (usually a lady who cleaned up after grandkids) or parents after their kids have moved out. I don't like garage sales and haggling makes me nervous, but I don't mind driving around and knitting and playing Pokemon Go, so I have fun too!

Sow's ear breakfast/Pokemon Go/New plague
We couldn't spend TOO much time garage sale-ing because we needed to eat and I had a knitting class scheduled at the Sow's Ear. The Sow's Ear, I've mentioned before, is an amazing Cafe and Knitting shop in Verona, WI. If you're ever near Madison, go there. Not only do they cater to people who love good yarns, they also have amazing drinks and food options. I ordered the grilled cheese on a french baguette and a cup of their summer asparagus soup, plus a hot chocolate with soy because YUM. Then Steve and I walked around a bit getting PokeStops and marveling at how there could be so many damn people on "Main Street," like calm down people GO! AWAY!!!

Knitting class and cute texts
My class started at 1, and Steve and I took bets on how old the other people would be. Steve guessed an average of 39 (with me bringing down the average, and I said 45 and older. There ended up being 5 other women in the class, the youngest of which was 40+. Three of the women were at least in their 60's. Everyone but the youngest was fine, the woman on my right was funny, and the woman on my left was kinda derpy. The youngest of them just had that annoying voice quality (think back to Yarnover and the fuckin' nerd ladies with their pressured speech and nasally voices) and she knit very slowly. But she was nice, and she showed us a stranded (colorwork) double-knitting project that made my colorwork look like a kindergartener's so I should stfu about knitting speed. Though she did make multiple comments about how fast I knit and suggested there had to be crochet videos for learning to crochet with your right hand and I should try to find them.

The stitch I was learning was Brioche, and I'm REALLY glad I learned it in person before trying to learn it via videos or words. It's basically a type of ribbing, but the way instructions talk about them is way more complicated than the act of brioche. It has a very easy and repetitive rhythm, and once you get a couple rows, you can just SEE the stitch and just remember which ones you yarnover on, which you slip, and which you work. It's also really neat because it's technically reversible. I started my practice with a yarn I thought would look good and knit up okay, but I didn't like the black contrasting... it's too bold. I'd want something else I think to finish (though the yarn is Mano del Uraguay and sooo soft).

Steve had gone out to more garage sales during this time, and he actually found some awesome deals. He ended up with a complete NES system in addition to several games - two of them BOXED, which is super rare to find at a garage sale. Usually Steve ends up finding video game boxes on ebay, and NES ones are not easy to come by. He's actually just finishing up getting boxes for all of our SNES games, so it seemed fitting he'd finally found some for the next system he needs to collect for.

He texting me such cute texts about how much he loves me knitting and how taking knitting classes is ideal girl behavior. I missssssed ideal girl stuff. When we first started dating he would point out things I did that were "ideal girl behavior" - things that he didn't necessarily KNOW of, like didn't have a list in his head, but things that definitely count towards comprising the perfect girl. Apparently knitting (/having a passion for a hobby) is one of them. ^_^ All I want is his looooove and support! He's VERY good about supporting my endeavors, love him so much!

I got to talking to the woman next to me about how beautiful her yarn was (from KnitCircus) and she said they have kits specifically for the cowl we were working on at their store, and I HAD to go check it out. It was 3:30, and the store closed at 4. I quick packed up my things, raced out to Steve and explained the situation, and we booked it out.

Omg what happened Knitcircus exploded from a small store to a store filled with yarny treats
Last year Sean and I went to KnitCircus and it was definitely in a different building, this store was MUCH bigger and had so many more options. It was to DIE for. They have the best gradients and rainbows and mixes of colors, and their yarns are already wound for you. They're pretty spendy but SO worth it. I was in yarn heaven.

I found some yarn for the cowl I wanted and we realized we were pretty tired after so much stuff in the day, and we headed back to Castle Seanjamin, put on some Hearthstone, and I cuddled up into Steve's perfect nook and we promptly fell asleep. It was a good nap! We woke up rested and hungry, and I suggested we try Dumpling Haus, a place we've seen on the way to The Great Dane a bunch of times. I was intrigued!!

Dumpling dinner/socially unacceptable food behavior
Steve of course didn't remember that I've talked about this place a bunch of times. It just sounded so good!! When we got there, the place was PACKED. There was ONE small table left and I claimed it, and Steve and I each ordered a set of dumplings (Bao) plus dessert bao (nutella) and Steve ordered pork and greens wontons and chicken fried rice. I also ordered the tofu soup. The bao was perfect and light (I got veggie and it tasted like Spring). My soup was exactly what I was looking for as well. I knit while we waited.

There was a man and his child eating next to us, and I thought they were very normal but Steve did not get good vibes from the dad. He just seemed serious and probably the kind of parent I would be - he didn't freak out or even say anything really when the kid knocked over his pop, just suggested he get more paper towels. He mentioned more than once that he didn't like wasted food, and when they left, the child had left one bao untouched, which I thought was strange. Like, they could have easily taken it along and given it to family (who they were talking about) or saved it for later! I asked Steve if he would eat it if I grabbed it off their plate (I assumed it had meat in it because most of the food there did), and he said he would if I was brave enough to violate the social code of not taking food from strangers' plates. They had been seated less than a foot from our table; we basically ate together! I had no problem snatching the bao off the plate and plopping it in with ours. It turned out to be pork, and Steve ate it happily. I have never understood why it's so frowned upon to take someone else's leftovers, especially if they're completely unsullied. :P

Witness to an accident/co-op/COPS
Full and happy, we decided to go to Willy's Co-op right after dinner instead of the next day, just for time's sake. I really wanted to stock up on their vegan jerky, which is AMAZING and I haven't seen it anywhere else. On the way, we were at a red light at a really weird intersection, and we watched an SUV sideswipe/half T-bone a sedan with two women and a child. The child was in the seat where the SUV hit, but it looked like he had slowed enough and she was turned enough that most of the damage ended up on the tire well and did SOMETHING so the trunk popped open. Steve was driving and observing to make sure the family was fine, so I was completely impotent when the SUV just DROVE! AWAY!!! What the fuck?! Like, the damage to the SUV was at least as significant to the sedan, and he didn't even check to see if they were okay???? WHAT THE FUUUUCK!!! I was so stressed out, I am such an "action" person when it comes to emergencies. My brain works in such a way that it immediaely develops a bulleted list of things that need to be attended to and wants to DO them. As a passenger and also in a situation that I really couldn't be helpful in after a certain point, it was a frustrating situation. The people in the sedan were okay, I think they were just really scared and upset.

Got the jerky, got some coffee, got a water bottle and some treats - vegan gluten free dense soft muffin for me, and vegan banana muffin with peanut butter frosting (literally his perfect dessert)

On the way back to Castle Seanjamin, we passed no less than 6 cops on this 5-miles stretch of road. The first was a cop pulling someone over who was next to Steve. Then we passed one speed trap with an undercover SUV, and then at the next exit there were TWO cops (one undercover charger and a regular cruiser), and THEN we saw TWO SEPARATE people pulled over, within a hundred yards of each other, plus another cop just driving (probably after just having pulled comeone over). It was madness. WHY SO MANY COPS. CALM DOWN.

Dmac/ITG/knitting
When we were on our way back from the co-op, David (Dmac) asked if we wanted to play ITG with him. Of course! Though I also wanted to be KNITTINGGGGG. It was good. We played a bunch of songs from the Fantastic Beats pack, but Steve and I weren't having off-days exactly, more like Ben's machine just feels sooo different from ours now... it's really weird, and we were both late ALL the time, which NEVER happens. I just couldn't find the sweet spot and would insanely overcorrect. Just strange. But we all had fun, talked to Dmac about the popularity of Ultimate Frisbee in Madison and his tryouts for teams, and he ended up getting a really good score on an ITG Rebirth song.

During that time I started my Knitcircus cowl and it's been beautiful so far. After Dmac left we showered quick and hopped into bed!

Oh, and we've also decided to rename from couple complaints because we don't really complain much - we just initially stole Ben's book titles (College complaints, corrupted complaints, cubicle complaints and "Compendium of Complaints" - all of the books). Ben has a really funny way of talking about things, and I never really think of them as *complaints,* more like musings and thoughts. Like he doesn't strike me as a negative person and he's quite funny, but I GUESS he's complaining? It's just not how I personally view complaining. lol. So I think we're going to rename to couple chronicles. Fits better. :)

All in all, it was a busy, but relaxing, and just basically a perfect day. Wow. Love this boy, love this life!

Uh oh, today was another morning where the sleep was just too damn good and suddenly it was far too late for morning coffee. The good news for me was that I had a paperwork day today and as such, didn't actually need to be at work by a certain time. On top of that, I'm done in a month with this district completely soooo.... I may not be the best employee right now.

I ended up doing a lot of catching up with typing, and it was frustrating that there was always a piece or two I needed that I couldn't just get by, say, testing a kid. I needed information from specific teachers. So I sent some emails and wrote what I could find. Overall it was a really boring day so I spent a lot of the inbetween texting Steve and tagging him in memes, and chatting with Bethany and Haley. It was a really good day for talking with Steve via text, but he was gone for FAR too long. Thankfully I'm gonna figure out a way to have lunch with him tomorrow, because god my days are lame without him! My principal at Nokomis emailed me congratulating me on "picking a great leader" of a prinicipal for next year, because everyone knows everyone in education. She also told everyone at their staff meeting, so I gotta prepare for questions over the next week or so.

Before noon Steve sent the confirmation that he got that job at the U of MN!!! I'm SO happy for him and SO proud. The university has a ton of perks that the hiring manager filled him in on, such as good healthcare, free undergrad degrees and 75% reduction in cost for graduate degrees, and even though his job is basically the same as what he does now, he's getting even more money (and he already made a decent amount). Even with my reduction in pay by switching districts, we still come out ahead. It's funny that his hiring manager was so eager to share the perks, because my new principal did the exact same thing when he offered me the position - he talked about how good the healthcare is in particular plus the district contribution. St. Paul does similar but the healthcare isn't as good. For example, vision isn't covered at all, but they do cover most of the premium. Now Steve doesn't have to give a shit about his job anymore, or, he can give even less of a shit. He's defintiely Michael Scott after Michael gives his 2-week notice:

So. Of course we were both excited all day to celebrate. When I told Bethany and Haley about it, of course Haley wanted to come to dinner, and I felt bad turning her down because she really WAS happy for him and we hang out with her so little these days. Once Steve got home we got WAY too snuggly and fell asleep for about 45 minutes, and it was much needed. As it's after 11 and I'm definitely going to regret staying up so late, I'm thinking I'll likely need a nap tomorrow, too.

Haley, Steve and I went to Acapulco, and Steve soon told us Nick was going to be able to make it after all. Haley made a small scene by really wanting a booth and barely waiting for them to clean one off before sitting in it, and it was really funny with Nick having to sit by her. She alternated between talking about her ex/boyfriend, asking inappropriate questions about Nick's sex life, demanding he show her his Tinder account after he told her he saw her on there (he refused and stood his ground), eating her food messily, and passing around pictures of her butt in a thong and having us vote on them (I'd voted earlier and the boys ended up picking the same one as I did). Nick was really funny because he seemed VERY nervous about looking at the pics until I gave permission. Honestly I do appreciate it, because I am weird about Haley sometimes but she's not like, a THREAT or anything. She never does these things in like a malicious or sneaky way, she legitimately is curious. It's really hard to explain because she obviously wants people to think the pics are sexy, but she's not being annoying about it. UGH I CAN'T EXPLAIN IT. Like there's a difference between her and other girls. Like the intent. I don't know. Either way, I guess I'm protective of her AND my friendships and I'm not worried about her with Steve or my friends. It was an amusing time and I'm glad she felt animated and talkative today.

She left after dinner but Nick came over. The boys played handhelds and I decided to play ITG. The first couple of songs I did terribly on, but after a few more I really started warming up, and I ended up doing pretty well. I finally got the star (96%) on Anubis and Summer in Belize, improved my Hand of Time to above 97%, and got the tri-star (99%) on The Game. We recently read in Ben's book, written in 2013, that he had just gotten his 2nd quad (100%), so we went to his Groovestats to see which song it was. It was The Game. Only 25 more excellents to improve and I'm there!! lol. Damn you Ben and your amazing accuracy!! Nah, I'm proud of the improvements I made, and I felt really good about the play today. I even tried a few new 12's and even though I couldn't pass them, it really felt like a stamina/getting tired issue vs ability. None of them seemed too hard, footwise, just my ability to not get tired out. I have optimism of being able to pass another 12 soon.

It's worth mentioning that I beat Steve at Rummikub yesterday, but it was a really good game. We'd been operating on the system of the 2nd person being able to take one last turn after the other person goes "out," but yesterday was the first time we played without that rule, so the game became much more intense and nervewracking, lol. I'm still only beating him by a few points, but that could change at any time!

Monday coffee time was a success. Steve didn't have to wake up right away because he was working from home, and really would just be sitting anxiously waiting all morning for his final interview. I showered and mildly cursed Steve's name when I discovered he'd removed the razor from the shower, but then just shrugged and framed it like less time in the shower/more time with Steve. Today was supposed to be the hottest day this week, in the 80's. We sipped our coffee (a day old, because we didn't drink much of the last pot we made and couldn't really justify throwing it out), chatted a bit and snuggled. All too soon it was time for me to go, the second-hardest part of my day after waking up.

When I got to school at 7:20 (a few minutes late, naturally), I learned that someone had thrown some dairy product in our garbage and it didn't get changed and baked in our room all weekend, so the room was absolutely saturated in that old-milk/mold smell. YUCK. It was terrible. Going against the general perfume-free rule, I sprayed the entire room like 3 times, which our kids were all grateful for. Just pure awfulness.

I went and did my Monday gym supervision and Todd was there today with his students, which was a nice change of pace from just the 6th graders and I like chatting with Todd far more than I do with Brian. The boys played some 4-on-4 and everyone was having a good time right up until the end, when Chaz escalated for no reason (as usual) and pushed Dyshawn, who is a year older than him. Dyshawn turned around as a warning to see who pushed him but didn't even look mad, though everyone else was on alert because that was a clear provocation. I think Dyshawn is the kind of kid who can judge who's worth his time, and Chaz, while scrappy, definitely isn't. Because this is such a frequent problem with Chaz, everyone ignored him and left, which was a relief.

1st block was WAY too hyped up for a Monday, and we started a new project*. It's usually the favorite of the year and Tealie and I made it up 4 years ago, called the Real Life Project. It uses percentages, proportions and a bunch of other random math and requires students to compare two jobs, find a house/apartment, car (or calculate for public transport), and groceries and figure out whether they can afford their expenses. Invariably the majority of kids look up impossible professions, such as a sports figure or actress, but having to choose 2 usually means the second option is reasonable - today some examples included Uber driver, cosmetologist, McDonald's employee and nurse. Tealie and I spent a good chunk of the hour just getting students settled, but eventually 95% of them got to work and started getting excited about it. Second block was uneventful, just working on equations still. It was especially quiet because Konmeng was gone from period 3 and Tre'Kari wasn't there for period 4. Dyshawn told me he had a dream that Doug (one of my colleagues) got into a verbal argument with another student and he said something like, "I didn't want to have to cuss but can you please just shut the fuck up" XDDDD I love how that was such a big deal to him, when more than half the stuff he says any time he opens his mouth is foul and inappropriate.

Steve was at his interview when I stopped by home, which sucked, but I sent him a bunch of encouraging texts. I got fresh coffee and watered my hanging plant before heading to Nokomis. I had a pretty chill day with the 4th and 5th graders as they all had independent work to do, and they came late so I called Steve when I knew he was done with the interview. He was told by the hiring manager that (AGAIN) it went well, so Steve spent the rest of the day hoping for the final call. The guy messaged him on Facebook in the evening to say that he and the director hadn't had a chance to touch base but that they would soon. I'm 99.9% sure Steve will get offered the position. It really sounds like he will.

My 1st and 2nd grader also went really today. We practiced "short i" words something fierce while I typed up my sub plans. The 1st grader has no cognitive issues, only social, so I just give her an extra dose of academics while I work with the 2nd grader, who definitely has some sort of visual processing disability, which I discovered when I was doing her initial testing and qualified her for Special Ed a couple months ago. She regularly confuses b, d, and p and she is smack dab in the average cognitive range, very socially adept, and tries so hard. I see her face when she knows her brain is jumbling up words, and she is very self-conscious that she can barely read. So I'm making her hit words HARD. Her mom is annoyed that we're working on "basics," but she goddamn NEEDS the basics. Not that she doesn't *know* these simple words, it's about training her brain to see the letters correctly.

My three young boys (K and 1st) were okay today, Kamron cried once as usual lately and for literally no reason - I told him he couldn't take all 6 of the koosh ball fidgits (Larmar only wanted one) - but I never take any of that crap and he stopped pretty quickly. It's so funny when one of them acts up because the other two always act EXTRA like, "I'M not being a baby, but SOMEONE else is" about it. Can't WAIT to not have to work with little kids anymore. Hate it. But Kamron still gave me two hugs when he left (he always gives me one, and then often gets some distance away and then comes back for another) and said "I'll see you TOMORROW" like a thousand times as he walked back to his classroom.

As soon as I booted them, I raced home to Steve. He had to do one more meeting so I layed on the floor by the window scrolling through Facebook until he was done, and then I went and tried to nap unsuccessfully for a half hour before we left to go PokeHunting at Mall of America (or MoA, as we know it). First we went to the local stops, got coffee, and headed to Level Up. Normally on Mondays we go game shopping with Tyler, sometimes Nick and rarely Quimby. Today was canceled, but Steve and I still decided to look at the better of the two stores. He did end up with a Wario game that just came in, and it was sold to Steve for only $6 even though he guessed to the clerk that it would sell for $10 (and he told me after we left that it's worth $12).

MoA was fun, we stopped at GameStop before heading to BurgerBurger (their impossible burger in a lettuce wrap is amazing and they have good friesand dipping sauces) because I hadn't eaten basically all day save for some fruit. After that we wandered the mall and did a 3-star raid and had silliness when our dumb in-game characters were all wonky because of bad service. Even though there were several others clearly playing as well, we never all lined up at any of the various raids, which unfortunately never exceeded 4-stars. We were really hoping to get a 5-star raid with people because Latios is going to stop being a raid boss soon. Alas.

We got some disappointing Macarons that we discarded after trying the flavors, Steve got a bubble tea, and we generally had a nice romantic time wandering the mall. It's such a more bearable place during the week... far less people.

After that we headed home, and after I watered the garden and let my feet rest for a few, it was meal prep time! I made our breakfasts for the week and two sets of lunches:

Chia Pudding is a staple breakfast. I often wake up hungry but Steve struggles to eat food that doesn't make him nauseous in the morning. Chia pudding works for both of us because it's easy, versatile, and doesn't cause Steve to feel ill. AND it can be made ahead of time, and is in fact encouraged to do so to allow the seeds to plump.

For Steve's lunches I made a Butternut Squash and Pasta with Cheez sauce. I'd say it's some of the best vegan cheesy sauce I've ever made, omg. Instead of making separate vegetables I just used the leftover squash as the main veggie, and it looks amazing. Whenever recipes call for a certain amount of nutritional yeast, I always add more because YUM. My sauce was insanely thick so I ended up actually using almost double the water, added slowly, and it was perfect.

For my lunches I made a Mexican-style couscous. Always a delicious and flavorful meal. I usually use a bit more broth than called for and I add turmeric to everything. I also just used the entire bell peppers instead of half.

I made all of these at the same time, and Steve helped with the dishes when I was in the final stages of cooking. It all took just over an hour, and I'm not even a particularly fast or efficient cook. With practice I've been able to reduce my time in the kitchen, but a lot of that has to do with choosing relatively simple recipes (aka a few main ingredients) with several spices and use of salt and pepper even when it doesn't call for it. It's amazing what a huge difference it makes (thanks Blue Apron for teaching me that!!).

Finally, I snapped a photo just because-

It's mirrored because I took it in the Snapchat camera but still :D

Off to snuggle cats and a boy!

*After MCA's (standardized testing) we spend the rest of the year on projects that are varying degrees of math-focused, and most years is a really fun, busy, creative and honestly kind of relaxing way to end the school year.

This morning when I woke up, I was pleased that I woke up naturally, even if I still felt quite tired. I expected to it be kind of late for how much of the "waking up and going back to sleep" cycling I did before I finally decided to stay awake. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was only 9:15; plenty of time to get ready and get brunch at Ward 6.

Steve and I got ready and headed out after locating a couple of our reuseable bags. When reuseable shopping bags first came out, I didnt really have an interest in them. When my mom got into selling ThirtyOne bags, she gave me one of hers to use, and it was so nice! But I would ALWAYS forget it in the car and have to use disposable bags anyway. Now it's gotten to the point that if I forget my reuseable bags, I either try to carry it all in my arms (often) or, if I have too many food items, I buy another reuseable bag (less often). I know that we own at least 5, more like probably 7 or 8, reuseable bags. So why is it that we can only find 2?

After we got to Ward 6 we did a little Pokemon Go. Today I wore a new dress I got on sale at Express, which meant I was wearing "nicer" shoes, my wedges. These shoes are of good quality, but even so, they still wear at my feet after awhile. Today was really good though. I had no probems walking around, but I did definitely need to consume food, as the Hangry Monster was roiling on up. Got my usual Belgian Waffle. It was very good today. If they put the toppings on my waffle, I get the tiniest drops of fruit compote and whipped cream. If they put the toppings on the side, I get an actual serving of both. The fruit is always delicious - Ward 6 sources locally and organically as much as possible. Yum.

At some point Steve and I got on a bad train of thought, and things quickly spiraled. He made a comment that he thought was kind of a sharp joke, but was actually just sharp and mean, and suddenly I was crying. He seemed caught off-guard, but I had been sensing some anger underneath his presentation all morning. We tried to talk about it but we both just escalated until he tossed his card at me to pay and stormed out to cool down. When we left we talked some more, somewhat calmer, as we went and took a couple gyms and did a raid at Metro State. Eventually we reached a place where we were okay moving on with our day and talked a little bit more as we drove to the store. Once we got to the Wedge I think we were recovered. It had been a little while since we'd had a slip like that, and that's okay. It just serves as a reminder that Steve is still struggling (as am I), and we need to be mindful and open. It's obvious that I'm continuing to be more open; I was as surprised as he was that one comment, in public no less, made me cry on the spot.

Shopping was good, we got most of the necessary foods for meal prep. Every store we went to was packed though, ugh. We agreed we need a new plague. We were pleasantly surprised when our bill somehow totaled only $77. Sweet. Steve got an americano from the cafe and I bought some Honest T. When I was drinking it I was thinking the drink could used a touch more honey, not a lot more, but I could barely taste it. At some point I read the label: Unsweetened. Hm, makes more sense now.

There were still a few items we needed when we left the Wedge, so we went back to Woodbury and went to Whole Foods. That trip was short and sweet, and finally we needed to stop at PetsMart for oooone more thing. Oh, and Cub... and the Dollar Store... and Menards. I don't know how we did all that and still managed to make it home at a decent time. Steve got the groceries away and then we took a sex break (amazing) before heading outside to read Ben's book. Steve read a few chapters while I sunned myself, and then we traded and I read a few more. It was awesome.

When the sun started to get too low we came back inside and Steve heated up some food and we took another sex break and that was awesome. Steve has a final interview/meet and greet tomorrow to see if he'll get this job he really wants at the U of MN. I'm 99% sure he will get it, because it sounds like he's not even really against anyone, just that the director wants to meet him before the offer is formally extended. So I ironed his suit for him so he'll look extra sharp tomorrow, while he started some ITG. He had a really good set, improving a bunch of scores. It was really fun watching and supporting him, and I enjoyed seeing him feeling good about his play. While he did that I worked on my Mother's day gift and got a good chunk of the colorwork done. There are going to be a LOT of ends to weave in, but hey, at least it's knitting up quick!