A Moment of Life

Brett walks into the living room, beyond where I sit at my desk.

He raises the Firestick remote and says, "Alexa, who was the shortest American President?"

I shout from my desk, "William Harding!"

Alexa tells us it was James Madison, at 5'4".

Brett asks, "Alexa, how tall was William Harding?"

I shout from my desk, "Six foot ten!"

Alexa tells us William Harding was 6'10". I am exuberant! "Wow! I guessed it!"

Brett is laughing. "Yeah, first you think he's the shortest, then he's 6'10"." I had randomly thrown out the name William Harding, then randomly threw out the height 6'10. "Ask her who was the tallest."

Brett protests, "It was Abraham Lincoln." 

"He was no 6'10". He just looked extra tall 'cause of the top hat."

Brett gives in and asks, "Alexa, who was the tallest President?"

Alexa confirms what Brett knew: Abraham Lincoln. At Six foot four. What?

"Aw, crap. WARREN Harding, not William." I suddenly remembered the name. I'm devastated. Brett carries on and we learn that Warren G. Harding was 6'0", the 14th tallest president. Now not only was I wrong in my initial guess, but wrong about the tallest. 

"You might not have had the right name, but at least you guessed 6'10" correctly!"

... But for whom?

(We did ask, but it's already out of my head. Some businessman or other.)

Passion! ...Fruit

PASSIONFRUIT!
Living in the tropics as I do, passionfruit flavored/infused/juice drinks are everywhere. I tried passionfruit once and loved the tartness of it. I have also tried Tamarind flavored things, and liked them, too.

PASSIONFRUIT!

Yesterday morning, at the market, I finally remembered to try buying some passionfruit and tamarind, as I've wanted to. Now, I had never eaten fresh tamarind. I don't know if anyone ever does, but I thought I'd try a passionfruit-tamarind juice. Since I like them both.

Pods about 4-5" long, meat inside is sticky and pulpy.

I bought the fruit, then came home and looked up recipes. I did not immediately find anything combining the two fruits, possibly because - get this - they are BOTH known for being sour! haha. Joke's on me.

Both basic juice recipes call for a blender, and sweetener. We do not keep sweeteners at home, because ants are everywhere all the time, and I don't want to mess with the hassle of keeping them out of liquids, or trying to keep sugar crystals dry. I keep my life as simple as possible.

Without a blender, I did the best I could to collect the meat of each fruit. Tamarind is tricky, because it's pulpy. I really think I need to invest in a blender if I want to use tamarind again. But you know what? Unsweetened was perfect for me! I gave Brett a half-glass to taste, too. He didn't mind it, but commented that the passionfruit seeds are better than the juice itself. True. It's like pomegranate that way. He didn't drink any more, leaving me to basically drink 4 passionfruits. (I didn't take any pictures, sadly.)

Then, when I sat down at my computer, I looked up the nutrition of passionfruit, just for fun. It's fruit, so I figured it's healthy. I found out obvious things: high in antioxidants, protects against cancer, boosts the immune system. Blah, blah, typical tropical fruit things, right? Further down, I read that a small percentage of people have an allergic reaction. Okay, no problem, I'm not prone to allergies. 

Next sentence:

"Those with a latex allergy appear to be most at risk of a passion fruit allergy."

Guess who has an allergy to latex? Oops. My darling husband, whom I just poisoned. I sent him a quick message, so he'd be alert if his body acted weird. He said he already had a headache, on a day when he had just been talking about how GREAT he felt.

I'm a horrible wife.

Traveling in Tandem

We are moving. 
I will tell you where to later this month, but it is a big move.

This trip is different from our previous travels together, however.  Typically, I make the travel arrangements along with any required stop points on the trip, and he handles other logistical details, like forwarding mail etc.

When we had been dating less than two months, I was in a wedding in New Hampshire and invited him as my guest. (I was living in Indiana, he in Illinois, at the time.) I handled tickets, hotel, all my bridesmaid stuff, and let him figure out how to get to me to fly out of Indy and what to do with himself while I was occupied with wedding stuff out east. It was an awesome trip.

The year we got married we had many road trips. In fact, truth be told, part of the logic behind wedding in May when we had talked about doing it in the fall was because we had so many places to go and wanted to go together! His daughter's graduation, my goddaughter's graduation, and about a billion weddings all took place between that May and October. It was a great summer.

We developed a system: If it was my family/friend, I planned the travel details. If it was his, he did. His planning tended to be along the lines of... let's see how far we get the first day, and contact Hotels.com while on the road. My planning was more detailed. I learned to incorporate some leeway because, when you marry someone who is at their best and most comfortable flying by the seat of their pants, you accommodate! 

October was the finale of the traveling and it was my friend's wedding in Moab, Utah. We both knew people in Colorado, so we chose to fly in and out of Denver and rented a car. I secured rooms in the hotel recommended by the bride - OUTSTANDING - but allowed whole days with no plans. There is so much to do out there, I had a vague idea of "we must visit this and that" but left timing to him. 

It was possibly the best trip of our lives so far. We were supposed to leave the hotel on Sunday but were having such an amazing time in Moab that we extended our stay by a day. 

That was a fun reminiscence for me! Circling back to my point...

For this move, HE got the tickets! Our last major trip was to return to the US after about a year in China, and he noticed that the arrangements seemed to stress me out. There are SO MANY details and potential pitfalls when traveling internationally, and going through a 3rd party, I found, added to the headaches. So this time HE did the travel arrangements and is handling logistics of moving like canceling the lease and dealing with banks and things. While I am home working few hours right now I am packing the house, putting out feelers for potential buyers of furnishings that will not travel with us, etc. 

I love our marriage. I don't know of any couple as thoughtful of each other.

Absence Can Be Good

I love it when my husband is out of town.

But I love it when he is here, too.

I think there's a connection.

Right now, he is in another country - well, he spent the weekend there and will be home tonight. 

When he leaves for short periods of time, I can do things like:

• Sleep in the middle of the bed.
• Not wake to pull the blanket my direction in the middle of the night.
• Sleep soundly with no interruptions from phone notifications.
• Fall asleep in silence without the TV on.

It's not all sleep-related, though. During these short bursts of absence, I can do cleaning I can't do when he's home.

• Dusting (the smell of dusting polish gives him a headache)
• Wash bedding he can't sleep without

I can also set my music or TV to whatever I want or - drum roll - NOTHING AT ALL! Sometimes, I just love silence.

Absence is good for him, too. I'm sure he appreciates sleep-related benefits of absence as I do. Also, he can't concentrate on his writing or reading when I'm home because our apartment is very tiny, and I talk a lot. 
Also, I sneeze loudly. 
Also, when I have a sudden epiphany, I tend to announce it audibly with an "OH!" that makes him jump out of his skin.

He uses a straight razor to shave - on the rare occasions he does - so when he decides it's time to shave he waits until I'm gone. He wanted to shave right before his current trip, so I just shut the one door I can shut and agreed to stay in my own space until he was done. If I make him jump while shaving, he could cut an artery!

I was single for a long time. I'm used to my noises. I think I developed a habit of verbalizing every observation I make. He... tolerates my noise well. 

A little occasional absence from each other helps!

Spread Wars II: This Time It's Personal

Five-odd years ago, a couple of Aussie bloggers I followed at the time started an online debate about which spread was better: peanut butter or Nutella. I joined in the fray (and links to both of the original blogs are in that post, although both are inactive now).

You do not need to read that post to understand this post.

We now live in China, and when we first found peanut butter, I noticed they only offer small jars. Small, and tiny. I have since found creamy in larger jars, but I now realize that the big jars of chunky that I used to purchase in the States are simply an element of The American Dream.

Peanut butter is not cheap here. When we first moved here, we had nothing, so we certainly didn't spend on peanut butter. When we decided to splurge - mostly because of my peanut-buttered apple addiction, I spread the peanut butter very thinly. I was the primary user of the peanut butter, and I was frugal with my expensive decadence. 

Now that we are more settled and have reliable income, there is always peanut butter in the house. (It's not cheap, but it's not *that* expensive.) 

However, we are at an impasse. Brett has this habit of dipping a licked utensil into the jar of peanut butter. And he ALWAYS wipes down the insides of the jar with his finger. His logic, "You let me put my tongue in your mouth..." like that makes any kind of sense. So when we had a backup jar - because we must never run completely out - I claimed it as mine, hid it, and told him the current jar was his to ruin.

Now, I considered hiding the peanut butter in my underwear drawer, or among feminine products, or other places he NEVER would consider. I am good at hiding! But Brett is a typical man: unobservant. He is always asking where something is which I quickly find by moving one thing. So I didn't put a lot of effort into hiding it: 

He never opens the cabinet under the cook-top.

I didn't dream he'd actually move the saucepans like this!

Brett: Well, I'll buy more peanut butter today. You can get yours out from under the stove.
Me: What? You found it?
Brett: I've been without peanut butter for two days!
Me: I thought I was safe, because you never open that cabinet.
Brett: I didn't find it by accident. I knew you hid it somewhere. I was making a big show of bringing in my chocolate bars smeared with peanut butter - I thought surely you'd ask!
Me: I saw your almost empty jar on the counter, and almost threw it out, but there was enough for at least one more of your chocolate bars, so I decided to leave it there so you wouldn't search for mine.
Brett: I kept waiting for you to notice yours was going down.
Me: I wasn't using it, because I didn't want you to see me eating peanut butter and remember we had another jar in the apartment!


Today he is buying his own peanut butter. He'd been digging into mine secretly - allegedly not using his fingers - for the last 2 days. He kept expecting me to notice, but I didn't because I was intentionally avoiding using peanut butter, thinking he forgot we had another jar, and would try to take it from me!

So we were both deceiving each other over the same thing. Except apparently he was trying to get caught, while I just assumed his small jar was lasting and lasting, like a Hannukah miracle.

This is the real Spread Wars, people: keeping your spouse out of your spread!

UPDATE: He still hasn't bought more peanut butter, 2 days later.

The Struggle is Real

"Share something you struggle with."

BAHAhahahahaha! I moved to China 7 months ago. I could make this a list of the chaos of big and small hurdles that require maximum agility to survive. 
But I won't. That would just annoy me. Humor is better. 

There is one thing that is a daily struggle in my life, regardless of where I live. It is a part of married life, I suppose, and perhaps you can relate:

THE FIGHT FOR THE BLANKETS

Yes, I married a blanket hog. It's a sad tale, but true. Love him as much as I do, a part of me catches a draft several times a night as he rolls over and takes the blankets with him. We celebrate our 3rd anniversary next week - just THREE YEARS! - and we have already discussed the need for single beds. 

The struggle is real.

First, he is bigger than I, so I recognize that it takes greater blanketal area to cover his body than mine. Add to that the fact that he wraps himself around both a large pillow and a bunched up quilt, and the volume of his space that the blankets must cover is doubled.

Then, that pillow and quilt act like velcro on the cotton duvet cover and grab onto it with each somnolent movement.

I know he tries to be careful. He wakes up to turn over, and tries to keep that velcro action from happening, and cautiously rolling without taking the blankets along. But inevitably I awaken too, either to grab tight hold on my end of the blanket and hold it in place, or with a freezing shoulder, arm, or hip - whichever is exposed.

Do we need a larger blanket? Yes. But the bed is not very high, and I don't want it dragging on the floor. We actually added a fleece blanket on top, which gives several additional inches on each side. It does help, but not completely.

This is us in a few years.

There is no resolution. Only separate beds will fix this.