Rain Puddles and Special Moments

I played in puddles today. It rained most of the day up at my parent's house and my daughter was outside in it helping Grampy plant trowels in the garden. Yes, you read right. Trowels. So after she came in all wet, I decided on an impromtu puddle-jumping session. Now, normally I'm a bit picky about the puddles I jump in, but I wasnt' today. The biggest puddle was the dip in the gutter at the end of the driveway. So my mom, my siblings, and my daughter and I were splashing icky water all over each other until we were completely soaked, and we didn't mind a bit. The pants I have all are a bit too long, so they hung partly over my feet and acted as perfect scoopers to send big waves of water when I swung my leg through the water. It was fun! Their dog Miko, a white Miniature American Eskimo with a curious patch of yellowish fur low on his back, was more gray than white by the time we were done. So while the kids trooped into the house for baths, I gave the poor dog a bath with the hose outside. He did not appreciate that AT ALL. And he kinda looks like he's been through a losing battle with a blender. All his fur is matted so bad you can see clear down to his skin. Poor puppy.

Anyway, so that was probably the highlight of my day. Earlier we watched a movie I've added to my Must Get list. It's called Leap Year and has Amy Adams and a guy whose name I cannot remember, and it was really cute. So I now have 5 movies currently on my list, at least until I remember any other ones. Blindside, Shrek 4, Benny and Joon, Leap Year, and the new Alice in Wonderland. I just saw that one with my sister-in-law this week and I liked it. I don't like most of Tim Burton's movies, and I haven't seen a lot of them, but I love Johnny Depp so I went for it. Johnny Depp may just be my favorite actor of all time. There is not a role he cannot play, and the more crazy and over-the-top, the better. He is simply amazing. And freaking hot as well, which only improves things.

Also today I made chocolate covered strawberries with my sisters and youngest brother. We had fun, and it has been decreed that I am the master at chocolate covered strawberries and making garlic bread (yes, the garlic bread was a completely random point, but I made that tonight too and I have my own "secret" recipe for the perfect garlic butter topping). Also, I have invented a new delicacy. Strawberry Volcanoes. That's when you cut the tops off of strawberries, put a circle of melted chocolate on a flat surface (like a pan or something), set the berry flat side down on the chocolate so it covers the bottom of the berry, then with a spatula or fork or whatever, drizzle chocolate over the top of the strawberry generously. It kinda looks like a volcano. And Chocolate Strawberry Mountains are just the topless strawberries dipped in chocolate. Hey, the more chocolate the better! But none of this cheap, crappy chocolate you get in the baking aisle that come in those plastic bags that have pictures of different candies on the front. You must use a really good chocolate. My favorite is the plain chocolate Symphony bars. Hershey's chocolate chips or bars, or if you're of a mind to be a tad more expensive, Lindt Extra Creamy bars would probably work fabulously as well. Add that chocolate to perfectly perfect strawberries, and you have achieved heaven in a candy.

Let's see, other than that, I went to the store with my mom and sisters today and finally bought a new floofah (my lingo for loofah). One of the dogs chewed up my old one two weeks ago (the turds) and I've been needing to get one ever since and I finally did! And I got an extra for my travel bag. Yay me!

Oh, and I have two more things to report. The first is that when we were out playing in the rain today, a train was coming by the house. My parent's house is right across the street from where the train tracks are, and my daughter loves to watch it go by. So my dad took her over closer to the tracks to see it better, and it was just the perfect photographic moment. It was raining, so the light was soft and pretty and bright colors stood out great. They were holding hands and watching the train, and one thing that is kinda cool is that my grandpa, my dad's dad, loved trains. He had a model train set put up in a room in their basement with a whole landscape that he built, and it was wonderful. Trains were his thing. So we got a great photographic moment there. Grampy and granddaughter watching the train go by, holding hands. It was so cute. I think there's a good Father's Day present right there.

The last thing is that my hubby got a letter today. It's a letter that he wrote to himself Senior year of high school for an assignment that they said they would send out five years later. That would be now. After quite a bit of pouting and threats, he finally let me read it. And although I am sworn to secrecy about what it says, it made me smile. In it there is one part that says that he doesn't care about anything else as long as he's married to me and keeping me happy. It was kind of a blast to the past to our dating days, and I miss those days. We had lots of fun and we didn't have to be adults yet. I was talking to my mom today, and if couples didn't have to worry about money, marriages would be so much easier. It's being the adult that sucks when you get married, not the marriage or your spouse. I've said before that I was completely ready to be married, even though I was only 18. And I was. It was being a responsible adult I wasn't ready for. Bounced checks and car payments and overdue rent. The love, however, I was always ready for.

And on that note, I'm going to do my calendar (what exactly is the point of calendars if you don't write down what you do that day? Calendars have kind of become my mini diaries) and read the next chapter in my scriptures (I'm on David and Goliath, I'm excited) then kiss my husband and go to sleep. Sounds like a plan to me.

Marital Relationships

Just for the record, I am going to make an effort to keep this post reasonably short seeing as how it's 1:21 in the morning here and I need to get to bed. Just saying. If I actually succeed in this endeavor or not is entirely dependant upon whether or not the muses are smiling tonight. Which I almost hope they are, because I came up with a story idea a couple months ago and I've been piecing bits together, and I just found a way to join up A and C at work today.

Today the topic is marital relationships. Not relations, relationships. I would hope that you are not looking to my blog for advice on marital relations, although I could offer some very sound advice and wonderful bits of trivia. Anyway, marital relationships. I find that one thing in a relationship that always makes things better is when you can be completely immature with your spouse. This morning while I was still in my pajamas, my husband and daughter and even the dog all got on the bed and wrestled and tickled and giggled and wiggled and had all sorts of fun just lying all over each other and poking or tickling any exposed body parts. The dog was having a ball burrowing his head underneath whatever happened to be blocking him from our heads, and our daughter was having a ball blowing raspberries on any exposed skin. Before today, I was not aware of how ticklish my legs are right above my knees.

Then, later, after I got off work and hubby put baby to bed, we decided to have a little late night tryst. We have no money whatsoever until payday, but I have been squirreling money away over the past weeks and had $25. This is another helpful thing in relationships, when you can squirrel away some money that is unknown to the spouse every so often. Then when you are both suffering incredible hunger pangs and cravings for fattening fast food, you can satisfy the roaring beast. So anywho, we went to Dairy Queen and got fattening food and fattening ice cream, then went to find a secluded area for a little, ahem, private time.

I will only say one thing on this matter. When you are already a bit freaked out that you're going to get caught in a state of undress by a cop, it does not help to be parked on the other side of a farm. Because when you wake up the goat next door and he comes questing to find out what the crap is going on, it tends to startle. If I had been wearing clothes, I would have jumped out of them when that wretched creature bleated in dead silence not 20 feet away. That is all.

So, the point to this whole story is to, at least once in awhile, go a little crazy and do something unexpected. We haven't made out in a car like that since before we got married, and after we recovered from having the daylights scared out of us by a nosy goat, we had the most entertaining bout of the giggles that lasted all the way home. Keep the love alive, people! Do something stupid and sexy!

I think I'm coming to the end of my relationship advice for the evening. Or morning. Whatever. I have one last piece of advice: if they snore, learn to sleep through it. I realize this may pose a hazard when you become so talented at this that you sleep through a fire alarm (guilty) but nevertheless, it will save you much time and grief. There isn't a cure in this world that will make your darling beloved stop snoring miraculously. (A side-note: it also helps if your parents were both snorers. Having grown up with champion snorers, I am quite used to snoring. I can still sleep through loud noises just like I did when I was 9 and my parents marveled that I slept through 5 solid minutes of the fire alarm going off. I can sleep through just about anything. Just ask my husband. On second thought, don't. That's not a story I want to get out.)

And so, audience, I am going to try to go to bed now. My muse shall have to wait til tomorrow, because I don't think that after a 10 p.m. Dr. Pepper I'm going to get much sleepier and I must gather May roses while they bloom. Nighty night!