Juxtapose

Seriously don't want to jinx myself, but I just want to record, somewhere, the fact that I think I had a really good day at work today. Someone I respect there even said they were really glad I was there - and they didn't say it to me, they said it to my manager. That was nice. Very nice.

Had a lovely evening talking with Gram and Grandad over some Whoppers and Chicken Tendercrisp sandwiches in our typical high-class fashion. We have it our way. Went back to their house and cut Gram's birthdaypalooza chocolate raspberry cake from Market Basket (delicious and seemingly gourmet) and talked some more. Mark and I think we should make grandparent double dates a regular thing. It was a good night.

On my way out of their driveway, my brakes were feeling a bit squirrely, so I pumped them a few times to see if they did what the brakes on my old car did when they'd beef up after a few seconds of that, but that wasn't happening tonight I guess. I'm thinking I blew a line (how's that for a simultaneous nursing/auto-mechanic/illicit-drug triple entendre, suckas?), but seeing as it was 1130PM and my nerves were already on edge by then, I didn't even investigate, really, even after I had safely backed the little blue hellion into its spot of rest to await out the snowstorm slated to arrive in, oh, a few hours from now. Somehow I managed to initially pay more for this car than any other I've ever bought, and while all the rest were way older and much more ugly and clunky than this one, none has managed to cost me as much in repairs as this Saturn. It's the princess car. It needs my attention all the time. It needs me to spend money on it. It always breaks before a major snowstorm, or the day before I have to work for the first time in a weeks, or when I just am in need of a mental breakdown. It likes when I have to divert my regularly scheduled activities to attend to its boo-boos.

That said, I did manage to drive from their house back to our apartment, through a healthy number of stoplights, stop signs, high snowbanks, and hills by means of the Downshift and E-brake Method. Though I admittedly almost pooped my pants with fear that some New England Jerk (like I would usually be on a normal day) would mercilessly pull out in front of me or ride my tail because I was stopping yards away from the stoplights, my heart was warmed and filled when it was all over and Mark turned to me and said with love, "Vern, you're the most punk rock wife ever."

lolprez says, i can has lots of promisiz!!!! i can has econumy!!! i can has oprah's endorsmintz!!! yes i cans!!!

Also,

I love Twitter:

glenngiven: what excites me about prez 44 is that the country is not pinning any unrealistic hopes on a man with no track record. This should end well.

UPDATE/EDIT!!!!!!! -- I also love Facebook status comments such as the following, posted in quick and incredibly witty succession:

John A: I can haz wealth redistribution?

Heidi W: OH HAI. IM IN UR WHITE HOUSE.

Christine B: You forgot "BREATHIN UR AIR".

John A: And "HEALIN UR PLANET"!

Best weekend ever - nothing to do, nowhere to go.. We slept in on Saturday and spent most of the morning huddled under the covers to keep out the chill, just talking about the theory of WHAT, exactly, to do with the rest of the day, which is one of my favorite things to do when I have no obligations. We cleaned out our clothes and our singular closet, getting rid of old jackets and weird shirts we never wear, we watched Battlestar Gallacticas until I was sufficiently stressed out by all the action-packed-ness, we went over to my parents' to visit.

Sunday we woke up to a moderate volume of snow and church was canceled because of it. All day we kept warm at home as it just kept piling up on top of the stuff that we've already accumulated so far this winter. Lacking proper breakfast foods in the house (as we usually do), we had black beans and rice for breakfast, watched a movie, and by the time we were done with that, ("breakfast" occurred somewhere around 11AM), Mark made the trek outside to shovel out our cars while I made pizza. I love being snowed in. We ate pizza and relaxed and played Scrabble and read Hosea and just talked. So nice. I don't miss the millions of weekends I used to work at all. With the weekday rush - get up early, kiss goodbye, work late, get home, make supper, eat supper, unwind for a few hours before we say goodnight, too tired to talk about anything important - two hours spent not doing anything on a Saturday morning feels like we get to talk about everything we missed through the week.

I'm having an unusually un-depressing January for once in my life. I know we got married in January, but usually January and February are just blah with their dark nights and cold weather. I can never keep warm and my soul is equally chilled without some sunshine to brighten things. This year I'm thankful for a lot of things, but I'm especially thankful for my marriage.

As an Anganes, I take a certain joy in light bickering and roasting of others who I'm close to, and I enjoy it when they do the same to me, knowing that every Anganes, from youngest to oldest, knows exactly what buttons to push to make me get rowdy. Being that this character is bred into me from birth, Mark gets the brunt of it and he can give it back to me as well. We tease and usually I'm obnoxious and NOT meek and NOT quiet, and Mark is immensely long-suffering (proof: we are still married), and I am lately truly enjoying the long winters days because of this. It's hard for me to believe that anyone would be able to enjoy being stranded in an apartment with me for a weekend, but he genuinely seems like he does. This is mind-blowing. A crucial point in the matter is the fact that Mark is very WYSIWYG. He's not much of a faker and if he tries he's not very good at it. So when this person who already pays the bills for me, puts up with me when I put off doing laundry for so long that there is not a single piece of clean underwear to be had, and shovels the driveway like its his mission in life walks in from one of those shoveling missions and announces, "I love relaxing with you!," I take it seriously.

So my Mark doesn't always open my car door for me like Brian does for Abbey, because I'm a zippy, pushy New Englander who does things for herself. He can't really fix anything mechanical like Jen's man does. He doesn't preach on Sundays and he doesn't know how to cook like Joshy does. But he's got a lot in common with these guys because he loves his wife, loves God, and works hard to make those things flourish and grow deeper roots. Every day. We watch our friends, other married couples, and see how they interact and how they have grown since they met and got married, and each of them does things a little differently but yet we're all moving in the same direction. This is comforting, knowing we exist in this vat of people who are all about me, Me, ME! the individual, rather than putting their spouse first. I like that we're not alone in this. I like that it involves a little bit of loss of independence for a mass gain of freedom to be taken anywhere God leads in this big world, only with the support of someone by my side. I like Mark. I like snowy weekends.

I love this baby already. I saw it squirming around on the ultrasound and sucking its thumb, trying to make it difficult for Ultrasound Lady to take all the pictures she needed for all the views and I knew, pretty much right then, that this kid is going to be a troublemaker. Maybe it will have the fidgety demeanor of its mother, youngest uncle (Uncle Teds), and maternal grandfather. Maybe it just didn't like to have its space intruded on by someone poking at it from the outside world. Whatever it was, seeing it headbutt back in the direction of the ultrasound wand when Ultrasound Lady gently bopped it on the head to get it to turn around really made me smile and elicited a genuine LOL from Mark, a semi-rare event that makes me LOL a little bit myself (a less rare event). In keeping with the genetics of its oddball parents and all the oddballs of present and yore who made us this way, as well as the miracles God makes out of science, I really do hope that this kid is a character. I really like characters.