Diagnosis: Brain Cloud

It has been a short work week and I should wonder how it flew by so fast. But the last three days have been dragging for me and I just can't get excited it's the weekend.

The weather outside is beautiful but I couldn't get out of bed this morning until 8:00, which is when I should be touching down at work.

I've gained three pounds on our long weekend trip but I have yet to embrace my inner Nike swoop and just get back on the treadmill.

I spent a half hour in the middle of the night last night comforting my poor dog through a bout of indigestion of some sort, catching a rerun of Top Chef. When Ruby finally settled down, stopped licking me and started snoring, (and I found out who had to pack their knives and leave) we trooped off to bed again. Then we (Ruby and I) woke up again at 2, so she could get out from under the covers. Then again at 4:30, so she could get back under the covers. Then me alone at 5:22, to get up and pee, then fall asleep (sort of) while peeing. Then the alarm goes off for David at 5:45, and ostensibly for me at 6:15, but I wasn't having any of that this morning. Hence the late for work.

After six years of the same-old same-old, I think I've tied a frayed knot at the end of my rope with my current job, and I'm hanging on halfheartedly. Yesterday I applied for a job I am actually interested in, so of course I'll never hear anything more about it.

And I'm whining in my blog, which I don't enjoy, despite what it looks like.

I thought I was getting sick but that hasn't come to much more than a sinus headache. I think I've got a case of vacation hangover, which to me is straight out of Joe vs. the Volcano, where Joe Banks goes to work and everything in his life, his office--everything, is gray. And the flourescent lights "Suck! Suck! Suck!" the life out of Joe. That's it. I've got a brain cloud.

Today at work I found myself daydreaming about how I could get a job at the San Diego Zoo, maybe taking souvenir pictures of people as they come through the gates. I would get to wear shorts to work. I would get to work outside. Working in the sunshine right now strikes me as the best job ever--you see? Brain cloud.

I actually looked on the San Diego Zoo/Wild Animal Park website to see if such a job opportunity existed--not at present, but I'll keep checking back. Don' t get me wrong, I don't want to be a zookeeper (too much poop). I don't want to drive the double decker bus around the zoo. I want to take pictures of people who are happy to be on an outing or on vacation and are willing to throw their money to the wind or, as it were, the photographer. See? Brain cloud.

This, incidentally, is not the job I applied for yesterday. But it is nice to dream. Down here under my brain cloud. Now I will go back to typing someone else's words, which "Suck! Suck! Suck!" the life out of me.

2 Hole Punch Confetti

Some days I can spill all of the contents of my 2 hole punch and see it as a mini-celebration.

Today is not one of those days. And yet, spill my 2 hole punch contents I did. Whoopee.

Whether 'Tis Nobler to Stay Home in Quarantine or Spread My Germies and Keep My Flex Time

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mr. Bump got a wicked head cold (probably from the airplane) on our recent trip to San Diego. He cowboyed up through the trip but today is Day 2 of him staying home from work, something he hardly ever does. This is not a man who takes mental health days, or I'm not feeling great days. I believe the criteria to be fever, vomit and/or vertigo that prevents him from riding his bike to work. So he is home in bed and I am here at work, feeling like I just might be on the verge of getting sick. However, unlike my husband, I do not have a gajillion sick days to play with. My sick days are also my vacation days, so I get to choose: be sick at home and not give this to anyone or go to work sick and keep my vacation days for the trip to London.

On another note, is it wrong for me to want to stay home and take care of my husband when he is only sick with a head cold and probably only needs lots of rest, orange juice and Sprite by the tumblerful and Tylenol Rapid Release Gelcaps for the fever (oh, and one of those cool temporal artery thermometers which I finally broke down and bought)? Why do I feel an almost excessive need to take care of him? Maybe it is my need to nurture finding an outlet. Maybe since I have no baby to take care of, I'm infantilizing my husband. Maybe I just want to stay home too and hang out.

So it is off to work for me and the grandiose hope that either this ick will wait to pounce until Saturday or will pass me over entirely. Either way, I'm jamba juicing it for lunch and keeping my fingers crossed and my hands washed.

And Then There Was The Gelato

I forgot to mention that we found the most decadent gelato place in the universe, Gelato Verro Cafe, which was so good that it deserves its own post. Dark chocolate, chocolate hazelnut (think nutella in ice cream form), strawberry. K had the blackberry sorbetto, which I did not try but looked just as scrumptious. My mouth is literally watering right now. Trader Joe's, too. We need those here in Colorado. Just for the nut section and the greek yogurt alone. Oh, and then there was this place, where I couldn't finish my dessert. Oh, oh, oh. It was worth the 2--make that 3--pounds I gained in the last week. It was worth the treadmill punishment that is to come.

My name is Mrs. Bump, and I am addicted to food.

Hello Mrs. Bump.

Vacation Ruminations

I promised myself I wasn't going to complain about having to come home from vacation and go back to work. After all, I had four really great days off.

That being said . . . Waaaaaaaaahhhhh! I don't want to be home! Home means bills and work and laundry.

Now that I've got that out of the way, its time for some highlights: (I'm feeling the bullet points today)

• Stepping out of the San Diego Airport into a cloudless, sunny sea-scented day.
• Acquiring a good 60 freckles after a first day burn--so much sun, so much skin showing, so worth it. Not that I did it on purpose, mind you. I should have been more careful, but the sun felt delicious on my shoulders. I'm a sucker for delicious.
• Funny songs made up by our friend C "when the Muse struck him." Priceless.
• I'm just going to lump all the food in one bullet, although it was so so good. So here it is, in no particular order: Raclette with friends. Saffron satay. Shakespeare's. In N Out. Croce's. The Fish Market. The Old Spaghetti Factory. The previously mentioned gnocchi, along with spaghetti with browned butter and mizithra cheese, wherein we commandeered the kitchen of our friends to make them dinner. And last but not least, four ridiculously enormous breakfasts prepared by our friend C, who rivals us for champion of breakfast goodness--this from a man who used to hate breakfast food. Delicious, delicious, delicious.
  
• Being eye to eye with an agitated, pacing tiger at the San Diego Zoo with nothing between us but a piece of plexiglass.
  
• Alex, the tram driver at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, who managed to make a tour very fun, even as he educated us about the near extinction of many species of animals. "Please keep your hands, arms, legs, and torso in the train or you will . . . fall out."
• Running into old family friends of Mr. Bump at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in a bizarre, happy accident.
• Getting to see my friends Elana and Paige after too, too long. Elana--I'm going to hold you & Davey to that visit!
• Babies babies Babies! Max, Davis, Joey and Sammy--you guys were not as scary as we thought you were going to be. It helps that you're all so damned cute.
  
• Bringing home a sack of meyer lemons from Elana's lemon tree. They smell so sweet. I think they will become meyer lemon curd before the week is out.
  
• Having lemonade from lemons from that tree at Elana's house. And that delicious pumpkin bread. Mmmmm pumpkin bread. Delicious.
  
• Just hanging with our friends K & C, talking about life, reading books, cracking each other up and playing games. We are indebted for all their hospitality.
  

Things I did not enjoy, because there are always some when traveling:

• The Frontier ticket counter person in Denver laughing at me when I asked for exit row seats, then telling me that I wasn't travelling under the "same name" as my husband. When I pointed out my name on my driver's license, she complained it was not "hyphenated." Too bad, bitch. I didn't choose my name for your convenience. (It was also way too early (5:30 a.m.) for her to be that rude.)
• The staff at the Budget rental car in Mission Valley, at 1904 Hotel Circle. Should you ever wish to rent a car, please do not approach these people. They will promise you a convertible and then make you drive a Pontiac Vibe. They will promise you a 10% discount for your trouble and then make it a 5% discount. They will not apologize for not having the car you reserved, because you were an hour late to pick it up. They will not apologize for making you wait for a good 15 minutes for any help in the first place. And then they will say you are late. They will not apologize for changing the 10% discount to a 5% discount. They are the devil and they must be destroyed. That being said, the Vibe was kinda fun to drive, if a little sharp on the brakes. But a sunroof does not a convertible make.
  
• Missing this bookstore.
  
• My Mr. Bump getting sick in the middle of the trip, and hovering over him helplessly, watching him be a trooper until evil people with stinky cologne sat next to him in the airport on the way back. Mr. Bump, I am so sorry you got sick.
• The evil Frontier ticket counter person in San Diego who LIED and told us there was only one exit row seat, when there clearly were 3 once we were on the plane, plus a whole row of bulk head seats. LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!
• Girl at airport, appx. 16 years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor playing cards with her family--YOUR BUTT CRACK IS SHOWING. WE DON'T WANT TO SEE IT. PLEASE PUT IT AWAY.
  

So there you have it campers. We had fun. We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats. Ok, maybe we didn't cry, but we were pretty blue on the plane home. I'm already conniving for another trip in July. We'll see.

Today is my Thursday

Ahh, the beautiful vacation short week! One more day of drudgery before Mr. Bump and I wing our way off to San Diego for an extended dance remix version of the weekend. I am fresh from purchasing a new pair of lovely cotton pajamas for the occasion, along with a few other do-dads from Target. We won't go there but yes, I did ditch. At the checkstand, to the checker. What follows is the list of things I need to remember to pack:

1. Gnocchi.
   
2. Reading material--shoot, forgot to get magazines for the plane at Target.
3. Plane snacks--dried apricots, red vines, or similar oral fixation foods.
4. Water.
5. Sunscreen.
   
6. Directions from K and C's house in San Diego to my friend Elana's house in OC.
7. Resistance bands so I don't lose all this gorgeous muscle I've developed--Hah!
8. Hmmm--I probably can't fit my scale in amongst everything else, can I? (Trust me, it helps to keep me honest.)
9. MP3 player--need to change up the music, tho. Stuck on gym shuffle of Madonna, No Doubt, Gwen Stafani and Soul Coughing.
   
10. New striped cotton pajamas--for some reason I often forget this little detail in the hustle and bustle of packing (makes for a very embarrassing or uncomfortable trip, having to wear actual clothing to bed or go naked at someone else's house--can't do it).
11. Cell phone charger and various other boring things that aren't glamorous, interesting or funny but complicate the trip if you don't have them. Similar to pajamas in that regard.

Things I may pack if I have room:

1. Immersion blender. I know, I know. But it makes the marinara sauce so much easier to make.
2. Extra books in case I finish all the books I bring. Maybe extra books in case I finish those books? Nah, maybe not.
3. More than 2 pairs of shoes. Right now I'm holdin' at 2.
4. My pillow. This may, in fact, have to rise to the above list. I don't sleep well without my pillow. Alternatively I could just bring/borrow Benadryl, K and C being big fans of it.
   
5. Earplugs? Am I reaching, now?
6. Spanx. If you don't know what they are, then you don't need to know.
7. Workout gear and running shoes? Am I really going to want to do that when I could be spending time with my friends? I don't think so.
8. A spare resume of both mine and my husband's to shop around so that we don't have to return to our boring and mundane lives here?
9. A couple more books for the flight back.
10. An extra bag so that when we buy stuff we can check it on the way back, like last time.

Let me know if you want me to pick anything up for you. Sounds like I might have room.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Yesterday was a glorious, peace restoring, restful day. Which I needed after Saturday. I slept in, got up, ate cheerios and toast and tea with Mr. Bump, then crawled back into bed until well after noon with a good book while he went off to his brother's house to make what you see pictured here--this being a cheese press. He spent a good deal of yesterday welding bits of this machine together so that it looks more like a torture device and less like a pvc pipe that has been wittily attached to a cutting board with bolts and pieces of pipe. The idea of the whole thing is that when finished, we can take the milk and rennet and cultures we already have ordered off the internet and press them down in this thing into a small wheel of

cheese, which we will then dip in wax and hopefully age in a small "cheese fridge" aka dorm fridge that we have yet to purchase. I think we are about to cross a boundary from cooking to "making" food. We shall see what transpires from here. Perhaps we'll soon get to the point where we can hole up in a cabin up in the wilderness with a cow, a herd of goats and a vegetable garden. Of course, neither one of us can keep a house plant alive indoors, so I don't hold out much hope for heirloom tomatoes.

Anyway, when he finally got home and got it all to work we went off to Whole Foods to get ingredients to make gnocchi for our dear friends K and C, who will we be visiting in San Diego at the end of the week. We also got ingredients for a beautiful roast chicken, brie, strawberries and fresh greens salad, and some equally gorgeous fingerling potatoes, etc., etc. I could spend hours wandering around their produce section.

Then we came home and steamed potatoes, added flour, added more flour, added even more flour, and even still more flour to the steamed potatoes (which had been pushed through the ricer) until we had a huge mound of dough that needed to be cut into little gnocchi-like shapes.

We had a two pronged approach to the production: first, a cavatelli/gnocchi maker, with a crank that churned out little pieces of dough which, I must admit, resembled grubs. (Don't worry, they looked better when the dried out a bit.) The second prong was the old run-the-lumps-of-dough-across-the-back-of-a-fork a la Marcella Hazan. Those looked much less like grubworms, but not exactly like gnocchi either.

At some point in this mess when my hands are covered with a starchy mess of potatoes and flour, my dear friend Paige calls me to talk about our upcoming trip to SoCal. I tell her we're making gnocchi and she hears it as "nookie" and there is a deep pause of hoping she's heard me wrong.

So right now we've got about 2 pounds of gnocchi of various shapes and sizes in the freezer, a three day week in front of us, plane tickets to San Deigo on Thursday, and after a weekend of dinners and showers and cream sauces, I haven't gained a pound. I'm sitting pretty good, thanks to a Sunday of snooze, grocery shopping and "nookie" making.

Heavy Downpour

Never with so little enthusiasm have I set out for a party than yesterday afternoon, when my MIL and I attended a baby shower for my husband's cousin. I was not pleasantly surprised. The lengthy afternoon consisted of the following:

• Fifteen minutes of being introduced to people I had either met before and didn't remember me or who didn't have any interest in conversing with me.
• Five minutes of consuming the meager amount of food that would fit on a pastel pink baby shower plate five inches in diameter with my pastel pink plastic fork.
• Fifteen minutes of avoiding and then pretending I hadn't avoided participating in the "Baby Price is Right," a game who could be easily won if you had bought Desitin or pacifiers any time in your recent retail past.
• An hour and a half of alternatively watching said cousin open pastel pink baby clothes, pastel pink baby hats, no less than two baby monitors (including the one we had bought off the registry, which of course came after the wrong one someone bought and of course didn't come off the registry so our gift was deemed the "duplicate"), and enough tubes of Desitin that I don't think that this mother will ever know the true price of Desitin and at the same time being deputized by the expectant mother's mother to document the whole thing with her digital camera. For fun I took several shots of said aunt-in-law folding all the tissue paper for a future use. I wonder what she'll do with those shots.
  
• Another twenty to thirty minutes of avoiding playing a game in which everyone else attempted to name children in both movies and books. I was seriously disappointed by the expectant mother's lack of knowledge of any characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, Little House on the Prairie, Little Women, Peter Pan and Charlotte's Web. This child has no hope.
• Finally departing without having had a single conversation with either the expecant mother, her mother, or anyone else that we didn't actually meet, after two and a half hours of excruciating boredom and just a wee bit of nausea.

The party favors where pink and white m&ms. There were little pastel pink baby clothes and pictures of the expectant mother and father at similar ages (I seem to remember this little trick from their wedding) hung from clothesline around the room. There were some pink balloons, but amazingly enough the punch was sangria-red. Although the cups to put it in were pastel pink, and of course we were required to put stickers on our cups. Of course. Of horses and balloons, I think.

Now I'll let you in on some of the finer points of the day--I need these in order to feel like a whole day of my life was not a waste of time:

• My dearest Mr. Bump making me coffee in the morning, even though he doesn't drink it (although not technically part of the shower, part of the day so it counts).
• Being 45 minutes early to the shower and driving around with my MIL until we found an ice cream shop, and then taking the time to have a cone--I had chocolate, she had raspberry.
• Taking Mr. Bump's grandmother, probably the sweetest person above 80 in my life and the only one of all of Mr. Bump and my grandparents still living, out to dinner at Pagliacci's. I think she liked her dinner and we enjoyed seeing her--we have not had the pleasure often lately.
• A moment with my MIL when a woman at the shower said she's "all about grandbabies" and "can't wait to be a grandmother" was gushing in earshot. I turned to her and all I said was "Bless you."
• Various other moments throughout the day when my MIL and I would share a look, a sigh, a "hurry up and open another f-ing present!"
• The last thing is one of the first things that happened in the morning that I'm not sharing, but it made the whole damned day worthwhile.

Maybe someday we'll get pregnant, or maybe we won't, but I make this vow right now. No shower. No games. Just a great party for all our friends and family before our life changes forever. That's if we ever get pregnant. At the moment, I wouldn't hold my breath.

London Calling . . .

After much ado and dither, we have finally booked our trip to London for our anniversary! We will be staying here, after much debate about safety of neighborhood, proximity to Tube and Paddington Station, and the ability to find our way back to that crepe place just down the street from the Victoria and Albert Museum. We are so excited we may just wet down both legs. We plan to spend 7 days and 6 nights walking in the rain, visiting museums, drinking tea and sussing out great food. It is there to be had in London, you just have to look. I want to shop in Portobello Market, Harrods, and Marks & Spencer. It's a high/low brow approach to travel.

I can't wait, I can't wait I can't wait.

Marathon Dog

Exhibit A, Ruby in repose. Ruby Rubinskaya is mostly in love with three things. One of them happens to be the ball that she is gripping between her front paws.

Another one is her "puppy," a series of soft stuffed animals in the shapes of various dog breeds that usually last about a year until someone punches a hole in it. Her current "puppy" is a pug that resembles her boyfriend who lives just up the street--Bandit.

The third thing that Ruby is in love with is her own leash. I think it might just be her favorite chew toy. Last night by the time I got home from work (Mr. Bump got home 2 hours before I did) my loving husband had taught the dog how to walk on the treadmill on her leash. There she is, haltingly trying to keep up with the belt, which was down at about .5 mph, all the while complacently chewing on her own leash.

Later that night there was something of a disaster when she tried to hop on the treadmill with Mr. Bump and without her leash. She just couldn't get the hang of continuing to walk forward. She slid off the back once and off the side. Finally she just gave up to watch, which thankfully is what she does when I'm going 4 mph on it.

Now if you're thinking that our treatment of Ms. Ru is cruel and that we were doing it just for kicks, then you clearly have not been watching my favorite animal show of all time, "The Dog Whisperer." Not only do I have more than a little crush on Cesar Milan, but nobody loves the sweet combination of a happy ending and a happy dog more than I do. Anyway, getting back to our dog Rubix, Cesar often puts dogs on the treadmill to tire them out if they have too much energy. And boy does Ruby Tuesday have excess energy. I'm not sure that it is something we'll do on a regular basis to run her batteries down, but it was funny to try.

This morning I really, really did not want to get out of bed and come to work. It was warm, I hate my job, and Ruby has this way of curling up behind my knees when I'm lying on my side that effectively pins me to the bed so it is easy to blame my slack on her. But she's so warm, and she looks at me with those deep brown eyes which seem to say "you're not really getting up, are you?"

Mr. Bump tells me that she doesn't want to just snooze when he stays home from work, either because he's sick or just has a day off. But she's more than willing to do it when I'm still in bed. Do you suppose that dogs pick up on our base desires? That they are tapped in to some high frequency whine we put out, hovering above what we say we want, or what we should want, or what we do, or what we say we ought to do?

Then again, maybe they're just dogs. She has always been allowed to crawl all over me, sleep on my hip (it's a pretty solid one). Maybe she's telling me what to do, when she would never dare do that to Mr. Bump. But if the truth be told, right now I'm looking for someone to tell me what to do. If no one else is going to, is it so wrong to take advice from the dog? That's her there, she's the one complacently chewing on her own leash.

This is a picture of Ru on my hip (the lump below her) with her puppy. Vive la Ruvolution!

Rock Ass Red

Do you know how infuriating it is to spend $70.00 plus tip on a haircolor your hairdresser has termed "Rock Ass Red" and have NO ONE notice?

It sucks ass red, it does.

Today I Met the Boy (I Did) Marry

I met Mr. Bump 7 years ago today. It was the day of the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. One of those bright blue sky Colorado days, still cool but sunny and sparkly. The day was downright promising.

I initially met Mr. Bump on Yahoo personals, back in the day when not everyone had a polished persona on the internet. He posted an ad, I responded. Truthfully it was out of character for me (I'm more of a lurker), but his ad was 3 times as long as all of the others and he wasn't looking for someone physically specific. I think his only reference was to modesty. (Hah!) He surprised me by emailing me back, and so the course of our courtship commenced. (In hindsight it was courtship, but at the time I wasn't sure what it was.) We talked about books and cartoons and growing up 15 miles from each other in small towns in Northern Colorado. We had a lot in common. After a few weeks of correspondence, I thought we should take the next step and talk on the phone.

Boy was that a bad idea. He barely said a word and so I babbled to make up the gaps. I, of course, being the insecure soul that I am, thought he really wasn't that into me. It was all going too well.

I'm sure he would know whether it was my idea or his to finally meet, but I don't remember that detail anymore. I'm not heavy on details in my memory. I have more of a sense memory--I can tell you how a particular meal I had in New Zealand last year tasted, what the seaspray felt like hitting my face on the ferry to the Aran Islands three years ago, or how that whole summer of our romance, the summer after I met Mr. Bump, was a soundtrack of jazz and Jonatha Brooke.

But we decided to meet.

My roommate and best friend, Ms. M, wanted to follow me and watch to make sure I didn't get abducted. But sometimes you just know that whatever might go wrong that day, it wasn't going to be that kind of misjudgment of character. Besides, we met in the afternoon. At a coffee shop. By Cheeseman Park, which is essentially the gay male mecca of Denver. I figured if he was secure enough to both live in that area and meet me there, I wasn't going to worry about abduction.

I remember three events that defined the entire day for me. I sort of knew that it was a different day, and these incidents proved that out. Whatever was going to happen with this guy, it was going to be different.

The first was that, on the drive over to meet him, I looked in my rearview mirror at a couple in the car behind me. The girl in the passenger seat was holding he hand of the guy in the driver's seat, and she was licking his hand like an ice cream cone. I guess it was supposed to be sexual, but it was truthfully just repulsive and funny. And sort of sad.

The second was that as I drove on I happened to end up behind a St. Patrick's Day float, a remnant from the morning's parade, driving down Speer Boulevard at 45 miles an hour. It was also a singular, incongruent sight. It was going much too fast for anyone to enjoy it.

And the third was that when I pulled up, half a block or so from the coffee shop, I could see him sitting at a table outside waiting for me. He was waiting for me. And I knew it was him. (Granted, I had seen a picture, but it was a fuzzy one.)

I'm not going to say that all my nerves went away, or that I "just knew" he was the one for me. Truthfully, at first I couldn't completely rule out the possibility that he was gay. (Well, he was living a block from Cheeseman, he was polite, well dressed in a turtlenecky kind of way, and he didn't try to kiss me for a good five dates.) But as we walked around his neighborhood, looping back to the coffeshop and then forging out in a different direction, I had a growing sense of hope in someone new. And yet, at the same time, he felt like home to me.

And he laughed at my jokes.

And now, 7 years later, here we are. We have a dog. We own a home. We both wear our wedding rings every day. We hold hands when we go on walks and we do home improvement projects together. We cook together, we bake together. We eat on the same side of the table. He taught me how to drive a stick. He doesn't let me get away with things like "the man always drives." He also does the dishes and he listens to me babble on about nothing. When I do a silly little dance he never laughs at me--he joins in. Mr. Bump is my lover, my family, my partner.

And he still laughs at my jokes.

Thanks Mr. Bump, for the ad, for Deitrich's, for our future.

Are You Going to Jump, or Can I?

It is a common enough occurrence in our house. One of us gets home late (me, this time, after a 4 mile workout at the gym) and there's no food in the cupboard. Ok, so maybe it is more like no meals per se to prepare or we're out of groceries but don't want to go shopping. So we finally agree to go Out to dinner, the dog flings herself into the crate at the sight of Mr. Bump in a jacket, we dither about where to go and I'm waiting on him and I pick up a book and then he's waiting on me so he logs back on to his camera forum or Amazon Wishlist (just discovered and oh so fun).

So we head out the door and somewhere between home and our local Red Robin, we begin The Discussion which has been hovering in the air around our house for at least the last two years. The discussion that starts, "Are you going to jump, or can I?"

We both hate our jobs, and we both want to be able to find fulfillment in what we do every day, all day long. But we are of the belief that we need at least one paycheck to pay that pesky mortgage and keep Mr. Bump in camera equipment, me in pajamas and Ruby in kibble. Yeah, ok, so I don't have to quit my job to search for something more meaningful. But it sure would free up some time in which to do that.

I don't think I'm just being self-sacrificing and a martyr when I tell Mr. Bump that if he wants to quit, to go back to school, to try something different, that I would be willing to stay at my job for a set period of time. Lord knows my life would be easier if he were happier. But he is not willing to jump blindly into the abyss--he wants to know where he's jumping AND that he's making the right jump before he jumps. Now here is the main difference between Mr. Bump and me. I just want to jump. I feel like the longer I stand out here on this ledge (five years and counting) the more comfortable the ledge gets. The more sticky the soles of my feet get.

But here's the deal: in my estimation, if I quit, he stays, and if he quits, I stay. I mean, it just makes sense. So we're getting out of the car and he says "You don't think I'm holding you back, do you?"

I don't really answer that question.

We go in and sit down and it's bright and noisy and red and there's a very large red bird wandering around and a little girl in the booth next to us who is very interested in us. She stands quiety about 2 inches from my ear and studies us, like a new species. We get out our deck of cards and try to talk about something else. The subject is circular, and it is putting me off food. The subject leads to The Future, which leads to Children?, which leads back to the aforementioned jumping.

And even though the little girl is boring a hole in my ear, Mr. Bump shifts nervously in his seat.

I know how our relationship works. I hear about something, research it, make up my mind about it. Then I broach it with Mr. Bump. Then I have to spend some set period of time pushing him along, waiting for him to consider and mull, push a little more, and watch him come to the same conclusion I did minutes, days, weeks, months ago. I know that. I do. But some decisions you just want someone to make for you. And tell you everything is going to work out. And to hold you close or take the blame if it doesn't.

The little girl--she's maybe 2?--still isn't saying anything but I turn and smile at her and she just looks at me. I feel like she's asking me, Well, are you going to jump?

And for the life of me, I can't seem to answer her unspoken question. It is a new experience for me, not to know what's next. And it is bugging the hell out of me.

As a post script, the little girl went on to put ranch dressing in her mother's hair. The large red bird needed someone to hold his hand while going down a short flight of stairs. We went to the grocery store anyway after dinner. And Mr. Bump made crackers before we went to bed. It was a strange night and nothing was resolved, except homemade crackers are really good, even children who look sagacious can be savage, and not even the big red bird can see what steps are next.

(wasn't that cute how I was able to tie it all up?)