Big Money

We officially have tickets to go to Long Beach to spend Sept. 9-13th with T, V&J. Our tickets were cheap! Only $350 for two round trip tickets on Jet Blue. And I will only work two days that week since it is the week of Labor Day. No work on Monday, only Tuesday and Wednesday. Yippee!

Also, it's the second Friday of the month which means it's the Long Beach Roll out. Ness and I will lace up our roller skates and Asher and Thomas will skateboard along side us, all through the town. How exciting. I'm gonna have to get one of Nessa's shirts that says...I "skate" LBC!

And today I found this Kate Spade vase on One Kings Lane:
And it matches two of the vases we got for our wedding: (I have the big pink one, and the small turquoise and now the little pink one. I can think of a ton of cute little arrangements with these beautiful vases...)

And only $45 and it's really heavy, leaded glass. I can hit someone over the head with it if they try to break in to our house. So I bought that too. Now I'm all done spending the big dough...

Bright Lights, Big City

My Favorite Color is Shiny

I wanted to write about our anniversary trip to New York but I have been slackin'. I'll get to it eventually but right now I just have this lump in my throat because I want to move there so badly. I just saw a picture of an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn and I just felt like I needed to go home and tell Asher that we need to go. NOW.

Everything rational inside me says it isn't the right time, it never will be. I lost my chance when Asher moved out here, when I didn't do more to move out to be with him. But that would have been a different life. We wouldn't be where we are today. How can I leave family? How would we survive? Would Asher be able to do art for his work? Could I find a job that I loved? When could we have babies and then how would we feed and care for them?

So yes, more questions that answers and it wouldn't make sense but goddamn it...I just can't let this dream die.

Praying

In the last week, it occurred to me that I forgot exactly how to pray.

I've been asking for other people's prayers but when it came to me doing it, I felt like I wasn't doing it right. I had trouble quieting my mind and thinking of eloquent words to say to the sky. Struggling to censor anger and fear with a more pleasant request for leniency and strength.

Last night I listened to the program "Return to the Scene of the Crime" on This American Life. In a segment of the program, local author and sex columnist, Dan Savage, talks about how he grew up Catholic. He came out to his mother in his teens and ever since then he couldn't reconcile the Catholic church's beliefs (for instance, gays going to hell) with all the things he believed (that he was a good person).

His mother was the opposite, she could fit all her beliefs within the confines of the religion, even if her beliefs differed from the Pope's. He called her a good "American Catholic." She believed in birth control and gay rights and that women could be priests and they should all be able to marry.

Because she knew her son had fallen away from the religion she would say, "I know you don't pray, but keep me in your thoughts."

So last night, after hearing this, I kind of decided that to make it easier on myself, to make it less intimidating, I would just think about praying as "keeping you in my thoughts."

I've been praying all day.

I don't find it coincidental that I chose to listen to this podcast last night, just in time to ease my mind. I take it as a sign that God is always listening to me, even though I have trouble talking to him.
You can listen to the radio show HERE. Dan's segment starts at the 38 minute mark.

Me & My M

Asher sang this to me while we were walking home from dinner tonight. He remembers it from Sesame Street. How sweet is that?

Mmmmm....Pie

Last night I baked my very first Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. It is the prettiest pie I have ever baked. Unfortunately, it is too pretty to eat.
Last night, after it came out of the oven and sat for a minute I decided we couldn't do it. It was going to be our dinner because I had been busy baking since 6 and Asher was working. But like I said, it was too pretty to eat. So I made Asher a toasted cheese sandwich and off I went to bed. It was after midnight. Why did it take me so long to bake this one special pie? I cleaned out the refrigerator in the meantime. I think I threw away one entire shopping trip to Winco in rotten vegetables. I am ashamed we didn't eat them before they grew fur.
But back to my pretty pie. I used a new recipe for the crust, this one has sugar in it (and both butter and shortening)! And the whole reason I picked is was because of a line on the Smitten Kitchen recipe:
Certain pies, like, say, this Lattice-Topped Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, should be made every Memorial Day weekend, creating the most delicious bridge between rhubarb and strawberry season, during the most welcome break between winter and summer.
Isn't that perfect? I made it with rhubarb from Aunt Mirna mixed with some from Pike Place Market and strawberries from Safeway. They were kind of sour but this recipe has both white and brown sugar in it. I think we are in for a treat...when I decide it's okay to destroy it.

****Okay, I JUST realized, looking at the pictures compared to Smitten Kitchen's pie that I didn't weave the lattice like I should have, I just layed the strips on top of eachother willy-nilly. This is good news because now we can eat my ugly pie. Anyone want to come over tonight for pie?