B-E-A-You-tiful!

 

This is my hand after the Queens of the Stone Age show.  Since I am of age, I got a B on my hand (presumably because we were at the Beaumont Club).  Today, Andy kissed my hand and then looked at it and said 'B for beautiful.  My beautiful baby!'

Awwww....

Happy Anniversary!

Today marks 2 years since Andy & I got together (read: did it on the first date)

Here's to us!

Happy Valentine's Day

Candlelight & Romance

 I'd love to start this post by telling you how much I hate Valentine's Day.  I really would.  I'm well aware of the fact that it's an obscenely commercialized "holiday", but c'mon, nobody (read: not enough people) hates on Christmas for that!  At least this one has a thinly-veiled genuine reason!  Thanks to estrogen, I love the idea of a day that revolves around letting people know how much you care about them.  I'm a firm believer that you should do that all the time, but let's face it: sometimes the people you love really piss you off.  This one day you can ignore all of that and be cheesy.  And it ain't easy bein' cheesy!  Although Andy & I do make it look so.   I also love holidays that allow me to eat like the raging fatty that I am, and so far we're 2/2 eating like kings on the infamous VD!

For the record, I also loved the holiday when I was single.  

To sum up our evening: We went to the grocery store.  Then I convinced Andy to go to Nick & Jake's to see if they still had some of the highly-coveted Boulevard Chocolate Ale on tap - they did!  I took a picture, but it disappeared from my phone, as if it never happened.  We each had 2, and it was everything I dreamed it would be.  Afterward we went home, cooked dinner, ate until we couldn't eat anymore, and promptly fell asleep.  What's not to love?!

Andy made me a delicious meal - lobster tail, steak, cauliflower, asparagus, AND rosemary garlic mashed potatoes

P.S.  I got a necklace, that has a heart and the band around the heart says 'Love Forever', a heart-shaped box of miniature Reese's, and a shamrock mug.  Good job, Love.  ...AND the BEST card ever: 

On the front it has metallic hearts down the side and says:

 

Words From My Heart

I don't want to control you,

or change you,

or make demands of you.

 

I don't want to be responsible for you,

or cling to you,

or need you to feel okay about me.

 

I just want to watch you smile,

hear your voice,

share with you the simple pleasures of life.

 

I want to touch your face,

hold your hand,

enjoy the comfort of our relationship.

 

But most of all, I want to...

 

And then inside it says:

 

make you my sex slave.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

"Making Love"

Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching, and we are poor. Andy & I have agreed we'll just have a nice dinner and exchange cards. I ordered a letterpress card from Etsy, and I'm sort of thinking of trying to make him something. Had I planned better, I'd have saved the Edward Sharpe cross-stitch and given it to him now, but of course I did not.

If you know of any good homemade Valentine gift ideas let me know. I have a few things up my sleeve, but since I just sent the link to my blog to Andy this past week I'll refrain from posting them for now.

The Bar is Set, and it’s High

Today I found a link about a guy in New Hampshire who proposed to his now-fiancee by making a movie trailer starring Muppet versions of the couple.

I read the story of it, and watched the video, and it made me tear up.  It's awesome; you should definitely check it out.

Getting Couple-y...

After spending much of my day yesterday looking for some sort of inspiration (I was feeling under-the-weather and particularly dumpy), I decided to write this blog about couples that either remind me of Andy & I in a way that makes me ultra-happy, or ones that I think we should aspire to be more like.  I'd like to tell you that they are in order, but my inability to make concrete decisions only gets me as far as the list - ordering it is just too much!

1.  Alex Ebert & Jade Castrinos



They are just too damn wonderful for me to even put into words.  Long long ago, I saw Imarobot in concert.  I thought Alex Ebert, the frontman, was incredibly sexy in this rebel-punk sort of way.  That's never been my type but there was just something about him!  How odd that 8 years later I would fall in love with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros before ever realizing that Alex is the frontman!  Talk about a 180 - now he's this hippie 'peace and love' type and I love him even more!  BUT, being the creep I am, I probably love his girlfriend/muse Jade even more!  She is basically everything I wish I could be, and the 2 of them combined is sickeningly cute.

Andy's also fallen in like with Edward Sharpe & TMZ, and I know he also has a crush on Jade...perhaps even a man-crush on Alex, but that's only speculation.  :)

They write and sing about how simple love really is, and their mutual adoration is apparent at all times.

Anyway, some sources insist they're still together, but it seems they split up.  Even the ones that say they're no longer together, though, talk about the close relationship they've maintained and how much they mean to each other.  I read somewhere they "started off as best friends, it got romantic for a while, and then went back to being best friends".  While I'd definitely prefer to be the together version of the 2, I do hope that if something ever happens to mine & Andy's relationship that we would stay a large part of each others' lives.  The amount of respect I have toward him is tremendous and I'd hate for that to ever change, regardless of our romantic situation.

2.  Una LaMarche & Jeff Zorabedian

Una, aka The Sassy Curmudgeon, is my blog idol.  She shares my odd sense of humor, general distaste toward a large portion of society, and love of sweatpants and wine.  The idol portion comes along in that she's much better at expressing these things than I am.  I like to think it's because she's a few years older than me, or has taken classes in these sorts of things, but it's likely just that she's more clever than I (sigh.).  In any case, while I admire her writing skills and quirky points of view, one of my favorite things about her & her blog is the way she portrays the relationship between her & her husband.

She makes me realize that perhaps it's Andy & I that have a "normal" relationship, and not the characters in romantic comedies.  Either that, or I'm consoled by the fact that a couple whose dysfunction closely mirrors ours seems to be working out so well, even on the long term.  Either way...

I've also popped over to her husband Jeff's photography blog on several occasions (I think we all have), and was delighted at the way he spoke of his "Liz Lemon" ( :D ).  He also referred to her as his muse...funny....maybe I just want Andy to put me on a pedestal?  Meh, that's neither here nor there...

Because Una is a nutjob like me, and her husband seems to be the 'quiet at first, then ridiculous' type (as is Andy).... her blog gives me faith in the fact that 1) not all people are irritating, and b) ridiculousness can be attractive, and even a key component of a relationship.  I take solace in that.

3.  Carl & Ellie Fredricksen

If you've seen Up, you know that Carl & Ellie are basically the cutest cartoon couple EVAR.  As you watch them grow old together, over a span of 10 minutes, you can't help but fall in love with them.  When Andy & I watched the movie, I kept saying how I wanted to be like them.  THEN (SPOILER ALERT), Ellie dies!  I don't know if it was just the movie or the fact that I'd kept saying they were us, but Andy cried.  That was one of those moments that I knew how madly in love I am with him.  While I generally find men crying to be quite off-putting, I thought it was incredibly sweet.

Anyway, in spite of their sad ending, they start off as 2 hyperactive nerdy "explorer" kids, and they grow into adults who spend their time just enjoying each others' company.  Even now I'll occasionally say to Andy, "You're my Carl."  He is.  (He also didn't get the reference the last time I said it.  It definitely loses the effect if you have to explain it.  I guess I'll have to say it often enough that he remembers...old man!  :-p)