Oh, my stars and garters!

Oh, hey, Licky.

Passing the time with Sharpies and Photoshop.

A longer post than I intended about something that happened a while ago

Fifteen years since your first kith?

Celebrate by climbing on a batholith!

Enchanted Rock is great. I can't believe we'd never been there before. We drove out there yesterday and had a fine picnic near the top.

It feels a tad self-indulgent to celebrate two anniversaries, but Eric and I were together for a long time before we got married. Anyway, it seems silly to give up an excuse to do fun things and eat food.

To underscore how arbitrary this anniversary is, though (and to illustrate how inept I was at managing my life, romantically and otherwise back then), it commemorates the end of the most awkward date pretty much ever.*

(I was too embarrassed to tell this story for a long time, but once I started telling it occasionally I felt better.)

I'd had this frustrating on-again off-again thing with this other dude (OD) since high school, and it was stuck firmly and irritatingly between on and off when Eric and I started going out.

That night Palace (I forget which incarnation, Music, Brothers, whatever) was in town, it was OD's birthday, and OD and I both liked the band. OD naturally assumed he and I would go together.

Eric also fairly assumed he would be accompanying me to the show since he knew I had a ticket and after a handful of dates and bike rides, it was clear the two of us were going to have a lot of fun together.

Shit.

For some reason I couldn't bring myself to do anything to make it stop: tell one, tell the other, fake a case of hantavirus, step in front of a truck; my powers of imagination failed me.

Instead I procrastinated, trusting I would eventually come up with a way to finesse the situation into something acceptable to all parties, and then it was the night of the show and the three of us were riding the No. 1 bus down to Emo's together.

The night was as bad as I'd feared, stilted, uncomfortable, and full of guilt as I watched OD slowly grasp what was going on, and on his birthday to boot. 

I consider myself very lucky Eric didn't conclude I was a hopeless shithead and ride his bike away forever** after the cab the three of us silently shared dropped Eric and me off at my apartment at the end of the night. Instead he paused in my doorway and gave me a long, sweet look and a kiss.

I still feel a little lousy about how badly I handled that night, but OD is over it by now. And don't tell anyone, but I think this thing between Eric and me just might work out.

*If you have had a more awkward one, I would very much like to hear about it.

**As I was writing this, it occurred to me for the first time ever to ask Eric why he did kiss me after all that. Answer: "I kissed you because it was such a horrible date. I could see that you were hanging out with this guy and I thought you shouldn't do that, you should hang out with me instead."

Boing

It's been a blah, sad couple of weeks around these parts. The presence of nephews...sorry, ninjas helped quite a bit.

Went for a walk

Voted, took some pictures, moved some seedlings around, ate some vegetables. Back to work tomorrow.