jparks: “Do you want me to take you to Circle A with the egg?”
me: “Uh, Circle A? With the egg?” (I’m thinking it’s maybe a new restaurant for brunch)
“Yay, you know the egg. The Circle A.”
“uh…”
“The. Circle. A.”
“Cirque du Soleil? Ovo?”
“Yes!”

Folks, this is why I had to marry him, because no one else would ever be able to figure out what in the hell he’s talking about.

Last year when I decided I wanted to run a marathon, I asked jparks if he wanted to run it with me. He laughed and said no, not because the training would be too much, but because running was boring. I tried to tell him that running is not boring, especially if you run with a partner and even running alone is fun because of magical inventions called iPods and podcasts. He still couldn’t be swayed and I went on my merry running way without him. Somewhere along my training jparks decided that maybe he should get a bike and this quickly spiraled into me meeting him at work one day where he was smiling like a fool and announcing “I’m going to ride my bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles!”

It’s safe to say that when he first told me that I might have laughed because really? Have you guys met my princess of a husband? He was going to ride from SF to LA? No. No fucking way. I tried to explain that maybe this wasn’t the best idea because if he thought running was boring, what was he going to do to entertain himself on really long bike rides where it’s illegal to wear headphones? In fact, what was he going to do on really long bike rides when he actually had to you know, ride the bike? He refused to listen to me, mostly because he had already paid the registration fee, and started training.

That was back in November and since then he has really (surprisingly) committed a lot of time to training. Of course, since he’s jparks there have been times when he wanted to quit, but did you know cycling is way more expensive of a sport than running? And nothing can motivate him like me getting upset over the cost of his bike, jerseys, or other random crap required for rides. For once my nagging skills were useful.

Since this ride is in support of the AIDS foundations in San Francisco and Los Angeles, jparks had to raise at least $3000. I’m not going to lie, I thought I would be the one raising the money for him and was a bit annoyed. But Whitney came to our rescue and designed some posters for jparks to hang around his office that helped him come up with the money in record time. I think it was because we hit on the perfect sales pitch: “Want to get rid of jparks for a week? Donate here!”

After months of training, fund raising, nagging from me, sores knees, sunburned stripes on his bald head, and countless gu packs he leaves on Sunday morning for a 545 mile trek down to Los Angeles. For seven days jparks will ride most of the length of California, sleeping at night in a tent (did I mention the camping? oh yes, camping. hahahaha) and eating whatever is served in the food lines. Honestly I can’t imagine jparks doing any of those things but I know he will because he’s too stubborn to quit at this point. And besides all his coworkers donated so they could be jparks free for a week and I’m surely not going to let him sit at home and pester me all day so they can have their week of quiet.

Like I mentioned, he has reached the minimum amount of money needed to go on the ride, but if you want to show your support for jparks or the AIDS foundations, donations can be made here: To Fight HIV.

I know how hard and time consuming training for something can be and I’m incredibly surprised that my ADD husband was able to stick with this for the past seven months. I gave him a lot of crap throughout his training because that’s who I am, but honestly I’m really proud of him. Even if now he has little chicken legs and weighs less than me.

As I previously mentioned, jparks got some new headphones for his computer and now he can play his computer game or rock out to whatever music he wants without disturbing my television viewing schedule. Of course, the downside is that when he does rock out I can’t hear the music, but I can hear this:

Unfortunately he wasn’t chair dancing while singing which is probably a good thing since I’m not sure the world is ready for that level of awesome. And that heavy breathing is me trying not to laugh so he won’t turn around and catch me taping him. My favorite thing about this video, which happens all the time when jparks sings, is that he can’t remember half the lyrics and kind of mumbles his way through them.

In case you’re curious, the song is Misunderstood by Better than Ezra and it’s honestly a really good song when performed by actual musicians.

I was a little worried that with getting laid off I would have nothing to blog about except for things along the lines of “omg, today’s Golden Girls episode was amazing!” or “big day today, I did laundry!” But have no fear, I’m on day 3 of unemployment and I have not only content to present you with, but it’s real live video content.

We sent Lily to the vet yesterday for a painfully expensive dental cleaning where they had to sedate her. I guess at some point she pooped on herself at the vet’s and they didn’t clean her off too well. Jparks really wanted me to bath her but I played the “how will you be able to bath a baby if you can’t bath a dog” card and forced him to do it.

First we have Lily swimming while jparks gives her a blow out:

When he was done with the blow out, he sniffed her butt. Of course the camera was off then and when I turned it back on he refused to repeat the sniffing. I really have no idea why he would refuse to sniff the dog’s butt on camera when he knows I’m going to post it here. So here’s me begging him to sniff her butt:

Aren’t you all psyched to see what unemployment brings to my blog next?

Last night jparks and I went to purchase our first Christmas tree. Upon purchasing it, the kid working in the tree center tossed it through the wrapping tube thing for us and then threw it on top of our car. As I stood there, expecting him to tie it down for us, he started to walk away. Suddenly he stopped, turned back, and asked “Do you guys have any twine?” Uh no, that’s what you’re for. You provide the twine and tying service, I provide the cash tip. This is the system I have known and loved for many years, don’t go rocking the boat now, sonny.

“No, we didn’t bring any.”

“Okay, we’ve got some.”

The kid comes back and hands the twine to jparks as I quickly stash his tip back into my purse. Now here’s the part where I make the fatal error, I allow jparks to start tying the tree to the car with no input from me. And while under normal circumstances jparks requires little to no adult supervision, this is definitely a time when I should have been paying more attention. The problem was that my Grinch of a husband had never purchased a Christmas tree before and therefore had never see a tree tying professional in action. When I finally put the camera down for a second, and saw the final product, I nearly died laughing in the parking lot of Lowe’s. I am in no way exaggerating.

Here’s a picture of jparks while he was tying the tree to the car. Look closely and tell me what you notice:

Did you notice that he tied the tree through the doors and now opening them will be impossible? The best part was when I asked him if that was what he had done, he was all “NO! OH MY GOD, Do you think I’m stupid? I would NEVER do that!” And then he tried to open the door for me and I died right there in the parking lot.

After much grumbling from him and laughter from me, he managed to pry the door open about 4 inches so I could squeeze through. I really wanted to get in Duke of Hazard style through the window but jparks was opposed to that. Probably because he didn’t want to draw anymore attention to his masterpiece.

The best part was when we finally got back to our house, I opened my car door and then jparks opened his, causing mine to slam shut rather loudly. Luckily no limbs were injured, so I sat there laughing for a good three or four minutes. In fact, I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t even get out of the car and had to wait for jparks to untie the tree so I could open the door all the way.

Thankfully we managed to get the tree into the house incident free and it only took us two days and three Target visits to get all the lights I needed for it. We have a few ornaments hung, and still could use more. But the house smells like Christmas time, so I don’t mind.

Yesterday jparks and I were having a fight slight disagreement, as we often do on the weekends, and I would love to tell you exactly what we were disagreeing about, I haven’t the slightest idea. And while I normally don’t enjoy disagreeing with jparks, yesterday’s fight ended with me not having to deal with his clean laundry anymore, and OMG that makes the disagreement totally worth it.

See, jparks has the tendency to wear fancy clothes, unlike all the other engineers at Google who happily wear their free Google tee shirts. But not my jparks, daily he wears slacks and button downs that have to be ironed. By me. All the freaking time. If I don’t get stay on top of the laundry, the pile can easily grow as tall as our dresser and then I have to spend a full weekend day ironing.

But now I’m free and the man who once said he has a personality and that’s why he doesn’t wear khaki pants will now be in charge of his own laundry. Yesterday afternoon I pulled all of my clean clothes out of the pile, ironed them, and put them away. As things come out of the dryer I throw jparks’ stuff onto his growing pile and my stuff gets put away. You wouldn’t believe how much quicker the laundry goes when I’m only dealing with half of it.

The only downside is that now jparks will be wearing his clothes wrinkled since he won’t iron. Because you know, nothing says “I won’t wear a tee shirt because I’m better than that” like wearing horrifically wrinkled clothes. Should you see him in the next few days and he looks like a homeless guy heading to a business meeting, please feel free to make fun of him. That’s assuming you can talk through your laughter.

“You know I only said ‘Ohh Pottery Barn!’ was because I thought they would have a sugar bowl for my tea. I really need a sugar bowl”

Tonight I went and bought him a sugar and cream set and when I gave it to him this came out of his mouth:

“Now I can have a tea party!”

Yet he still maintains that he’s not gay.

So, who wants to come to jparks’ tea party? RSVP now so he knows how many finger sandwiches to order.

Tonight jparks and I had a date night. For us this meant we went to dinner and then shopping for a jacket for him. If you’re asking yourself how we manage to keep the romance alive in our marriage, here’s a few hints: Banana Republic and J.Crew. Aw yeah, the couple that shops together, bow chicka wah wah. Kidding. We really just shopped, came home, and watched tv. See, exciting.

Anyway. We went to the mall so we could maybe, hopefully, please god, find jparks a new blazer/sportcoat type thing in black. When we drove into the parking lot he saw the two story Pottery Barn and declared, with much elation, “Ohhhhh, Pottery Barn!” I called him gay and got in trouble. I’ve since been corrected (by him) and was told he’s metrosexual and I’m not to call him gay anymore. Gaw, gay guys are so sensitive.

We found him a coat at Banana Republic and then headed to J.Crew where all the sale items are currently an additional 50% off. That’s like free. So I did the one thing I hate to do while shopping and tried on some clothes. Normally I’m the person that will buy one pair of pants in two sizes, take both home, try them on at my leisure, and return whatever pair doesn’t fit. But when J.Crew does it’s big clearance type sales, they don’t accept returns so I’m left with no choice.

Here’s me after trying on four pairs of pants:

I was sweaty, red faced, hair a mess, and really pissed off. After seeing this picture, do you have any idea why jparks wouldn’t want to have sex with me, because I have no idea.

The effort of trying on things was worth it because I ended up getting a pair of pants and a dress for the low low price of $34. Total. That, my friends, is a bargain that I couldn’t pass up. Which totally makes up for jparks’ crazy expensive jacket. Gaw, gay guys are so snobby about clothing. Only the best, most expensive things will do.

Here’s what happens when you’re too busy to put the dog treats into the pet treat jar:

jparks: “Those cookies you bought don’t taste good.”

me: “What cookies?”

“The ones in the plastic bag on the counter”

“Hon, those aren’t cookies. They’re dog treats for Lily.”

“Oh, well that explains why it tasted so gross”

“Are you still hungry? Should I grab Lily’s kibble, put it in a Cocoa Puffs box and let you have some cereal?”

“Leave me alone!”

“If I put a frilly toothpick in a Snausage will you eat it for an appetizer?”

“Ugh”