Wallace (& Brita Guilt)

Warning: I'm tired and this entry is about as ADD as it gets.

Today is my birthday; as my brother’s girlfriend put it, “my third annual 29th birthday”. Whatever. I’m not so hung up on my age that I care whether people know it or not, although Paul teases me about my age fairly constantly. That is the problem with marrying a younger man; they can be pests about your age.

The day was a bit humdrum and ho-hum (hum). I woke up with a headache, probably still recovering from the drunken Wild Thing the night before (get out of the gutter, it’s filthy in there! Go read my last entry.) Paul made me French toast, which was yummy even though he forgot to put the cheese on. Yes, cheese. My family is weird and we melt a cheese slice on our french toast then eat it with syrup. Yum! We went to Costco, came home and had pizza for dinner (again yum).

Devin and Jenna came over and we played Puerto Rico and Chez Greek, which were both new games to me and a lot of fun (I won Puerto Rico but I suspect that they may let me win because it was both my first time playing and my birthday). Jenna brought delightful healthy snacks and they gave me a bottle of ‘Ryan’s Cream’ (like Bailey’s) which we had in hot chocolate with marshmallows. The only bad part of the night, which also continues to be bad, is that I developed Brita guilt because I can apparently still talk with my mouth full of foot.

Paul always overfills our Brita pitcher and then when I come along after and try to pour a glass of water it pours out the top and invariably onto my sock, soaking it. (If you’ve ever seem me with wet socks, you really never want to see it again. I loathe wet feet. When I worked in the bush my partner would do anything to keep my feet dry. My extremities are temperamental (you’ll meet my hair later)). So Paul was pouring water and it was slopping all over the place so of course I went on and on about what happens when you over fill the pitcher and ‘see isn’t it a pain’ and all that and after a couple of minutes I finally realized that he hadn’t filled the pitcher, one of our guests had, which was actually quite nice and not required and they were probably not familiar with both the peculiarities of the Brita pitcher and my anal retentive properties in that particular area (which Paul is now quite well versed in). So now, every time I pour myself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher, I have Brita guilt. I would have made a very good Catholic.

The best part of my birthday was Wallace. I actually got Wallace more than a week before my birthday because I NEVER get early birthday presents. They’re almost always late either because my birthday was forgotten or everyone was too busy in the pre-Christmas foofera (yes, I typed fooferah but I have no idea how to spell it.Neither does word though, so tough luck.). (Note: for the record, Paul never forgets my birthday. He just occasionally forgets when we got married despite the fact that it is on not one but two cross-stitches in our kitchen.) Anyway, I was going out of town the weekend before my birthday and when I got home from dance class on the Thursday night before my departure, Paul handed me a gift (actually a gift bag stuffed with socks. He is weird). After extracting the many socks, the bag held…a 30G iPod. I promptly named him Wallace to match our new laptop Gromit, on which (on whom looks wrong) I am composing this entry while (I really wanted to put whilst) reclining comfortably on my bed.

I have wanted an iPod for a very, very long time and have been holding out until the ones that are big enough to hold photos come down in price. Apparently I’d been annoying Paul all year because every time I saw one I would tell him that I wanted an iPod. My sister and brother and my brother’s girlfriend all went in together to get it for me. Paul let me buy it an iSkin to protect Wallace on my trip. When I arrived at the meeting place for our trip, Sarah gave me an FM transmitter for Wallace!

Most of you don’t really comprehend what an exciting combination of gifts this is. My car is a 1980 Volvo station wagon named Stanley. He has a push button am/fm radio and that’s it. The reception on the radio is quite poor, which is particularly painful on long trips (I once drove him to the south end of Utah in July, which is both not recommended and a story for another day.) At any rate, for the first time in my 14 years of driving, I could have music of my own selection in my vehicle. This was a red letter day, let me tell you. (Now I have to look up what that really means and where it came from. I am a crazy person, I tell you. Look at all the crazy! Apparently it’s from old calendars on which the holidays were marked in red. Alright then, let’s have a holiday; Karen finally has music in the car! This is cause for celebration!)

It’s amazing the impact Wallace has had on my life, in particular on my mornings. I detest talk radio (which is why the best gift I have ever bought Paul is a pair of wireless headphones so that he can listen to talk radio in the morning without causing me to become homicidal. Really it was a gift for me. Don’t you worry, I bought him several.) This means that I normally drive in to work in silence and haven’t actually spoken yet by the time I have arrived at work. More than once I have discovered upon my arrival that I was suffering from complete laryngitis. Now I drive to work singing along with Wallace’s tunes. I arrive (somewhat) cheerful and generally with full voice. I am perfectly capable yelling “Asshole!” after an idiot driver and continuing cheerfully with my sing-along where before I would have stewed about idiot drivers all the way to work and arrived grouchy with an acid stomach. I’m sure that my co-workers are appreciating Wallace just as much as I do.