Currently

Loving: Cooler days.  For all the bitching I did about the winter in Maine--and I definitely did my fair share of bitching--the summer heat here was just getting to me. I got crazy heat rashes that burned in the sun (only around my elbows for some reason), my skin (and in particular my tattooed skin) was so slathered in sunscreen all day that I developed zits and rashes, and somehow, despite SPF 70, I developed my first tan ever. Walking the dog was a downright chore. Happily now that monsoon season has come, we have more days that are in the high 70s and low 80s rather than the mid-90s. Don't get me wrong, I'll still be bitching once the temperature gets down to 30 again.

Reading: Still reading the collection of Ray Bradbury's short stories; it's huge and is taking forever.

Watching: X-Files and Breaking Bad. Rob and I finally caught up with the current season so I can actually watch with the normal people now.

Thinking About: Work, mostly, and the winter.  We're planning a bunch of trips and I'm so excited to have Rob around 24/7 again.

Anticipating: A potential trip to Denver this weekend to visit a friend! I'm super excited to get out of town, assuming Robbie's not home.  I'm also anticipating Rifftrax Live in Albuquerque on Thursday, because it, too, shall be awesome.

Listening To: Hank Williams III mostly.  His songs about crazy drug binges really speak to my experience.  Just kidding, they just make me laugh. Also listening to the X-Files all day while I work...I like having the TV on when Rob's gone because it makes me feel a little less alone.

Working On: Some tutorials for work.  And also working on staying sane while Robbie's gone, which is always an uphill battle.

Wishing: That Robbie would come home in time for him to see Rifftrax Live with me next week.

Sickness, Santa Fe Fires, and Surprise Nights Off

I always enjoy alliterative post titles, don't you?

Anyway our last few days have been full of all of the things I list in the title.  First off, we went out to eat at the Zia Diner, which has been a frequent eatery of ours in the last few months.  I had nachos and Rob had chile cheese fries with wings.  For at least 2-3 days later, we both had symptoms of food poisoning. Let's just say that ours was not a fun house to spend time in.  We were together, though, so I can't really complain. The best food poisoning is shared food poisoning, am I right?

Don't worry, I won't share pictures.

The fire "weekend" ended on Thursday and Robbie went back to work on Friday.  It was hard, but for some reason not nearly as hard as it's been in past times.  Frankly I was kind of hoping he'd go out quickly because I've learned that the sooner he goes out, the sooner he comes back. On Friday they told us that Rob was unavailable--not on call--until the following day, Saturday.  Of course, my husband chooses government jobs, and he wasn't available on Friday...until he was.  He got sent to a fire in the Santa Fe ski basin for the night and was set to head to Arizona on Saturday morning.

But remember that whole government job thing I was talking about so long ago, in that last paragraph? Sometimes, just sometimes, the unpredictability works in your favor.  The buggy Rob's squad drives in broke down in the parking lot as they were heading to Arizona, and because it was so late in the day they let them come home for a night before leaving at 5a.m. on Sunday.  It was really, really fucking awesome to get a whole other unexpected night to snuggle, catch up on "Breaking Bad," eat a dinner of pizza and breakfast sammies, and watch MST3K together.  Some nights we're together we're both so present and I'm reminded of how lucky we are to be so fucking in love, and that we as humans invented italics so that I could stress how awesome it is in a blog post.

Anyway, like it always does, our evening ended and now I'm back to where I was, sitting on the couch and watching X-Files episodes.

As a side note, you know how long I've been watching X-Files? I'm not even halfway through the episodes on Netflix.

I hope you are all having a stellar weekend.

The Languages of Love

In therapy the other day I was talking to my therapist about the idea of the Five Love Languages.  If you haven't heard of it, basically it's a way to describe how we communicate to and with our significant others.  From what my therapist told me, it's a pretty solid concept that's been monetized into a schmaltzy book series with a heavy religious push, but I'm just focusing on the concept for now.

Essentially the theory is that each of us has a particular "love language" and respond best when our significant other communicates with us in that particular love language.  Lapses come when we try to communicate with our partner in our love language and unknowingly ignore what their love language is. That's a really clunky description but hopefully it makes sense.

The five languages are pretty self-explanatory: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Gifts, and Quality Time.

I'm not usually one to latch onto fad concepts like this but I did find some truth in it for Rob and I.  I knew right away that my primary "language" according to this concept was Words of Affirmation.  Nothing makes me happier than when Robbie tells me he loves me, or can't wait to see me again, or is proud of me.  In turn, I tend to flood Rob with Words of Affirmation despite the fact that it doesn't really seem to affect him in the same way that it affects me, because I assume that it'll make him feel loved.

Lesson: Don't try to communicate with him when he's sleeping.

We took a quiz together and turns out that my languages are "Words of Affirmation" (bingo) and "Quality Time," basically spending time one-on-one doing anything and everything.  Robbie's results were more or less what I expected--Quality Time and Physical Touch.  I love that we share one language, especially because it helps to explain why we're happier spending time alone doing nothing than out and about with others.  

Anyway I'm not trying to push this concept or the book; really I just wanted to share it with you because it's something I've been giving a lot of thought to of late and I think it's already affected to some extent how I communicate with Rob.  Just goes to show that there's always something new to learn about yourself and your partner.

If you're interested in taking the quiz, this is the one we took. I'm not sure it's particularly well-crafted, it seems to fixture mostly on the Gifts language, but our results were pretty correct I think.

Have you ever read anything about this concept? Does it seem truthful or nonsensical?

If You Really Knew Me

I've been seeing these posts out and about and I hesitated jumping on the bandwagon, mostly because I share pretty much everything with you guys (sorry about that, by the way) and it might be hard for me to come up with shit you don't already know.  But hey, I'm up for a challenge, and I have a few new readers, so here goes.

This is officially my go-to picture for awkward posts.

If You Really Knew Me, You'd Know...

1. My rib cage is asymmetrical.  Rob and I actually just noticed this one, and most of my real-life friends don't know it so maybe it doesn't really belong on the list. ANYWAY.  The left side of my rib cage...ends? I guess?...higher then the right side.  I've looked it up and apparently this can be a sign of scoliosis (with which I've never been diagnosed), but Rob's best guess is that due to the kidney-sized hole left by a tumor and subsequent nephrectomy at a very young age my ribcage developed differently on that side. I wanted to ask my doctor about it out of pure curiosity, but I'd already asked her about the possibility of other autoimmune diseases because of my celiac disease and I didn't want to seem like a hypochondriac. I debated showing you guys a photo but decided that might just be too awkward.

2. When it comes to crushes on famous people, I tend to skew older. Right now it's a tie between Bruce Springsteen (63) and Mike Ness (50).

3.  I love documentaries and nonfiction books (especially true crime), mostly because drama and suspense tend to stress me out. This is also the reason that I tend to watch the same shows and movies over and over rather than branch out.

4. I swear a lot.  Rob and I both do. It's such a bad habit but I figure we have a few years before kids and might as well take advantage of the freedom.

5. I think a few of you know this, but I have a phobia of trains and train crossings. There are a few very active crossings her in Santa Fe so this has been a tough one in the last 6 months.

6. I like the process of getting tattoos. The pain sucks, sure, but I like how "present" it makes me feel (sounds weird, I know) and I love working with an artist to get exactly what I want, or sometimes, exactly what I didn't know I wanted.  Call me crazy.

If you decide to jump on the honesty bandwagon, leave me the link in the comments!

Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week

1. My Robbie is home!

Pretty self-explanatory. Rob came home after 14 days on Sunday and it's been simply marvelous having him home again.  Yesterday he took me out to lunch at the Coyote Cafe which I'm pretty sure Jesus would've eaten at if he was in Santa Fe (some people here will tell you that he was, by the way). Jesus might not have partaken in the prickly pear margaritas that Rob and I had, but he probably should've.

Side note: I asked the waitress, and this color is apparently totally legit, as in no artificial colorings or anything.  Prickly pear puree is just this color naturally.

2. Caitlin and Rob Hammock Time!

Turns out Rob isn't a huge fan of the hammock because of his back, but we still got in some double-hammock time together which made me pretty happy indeed. Also, ignore how manly my legs look, please.

3. New Tattoos and Famous People and Things!

I told you in my last post about my new tattoo, which was pretty painful compared to the others (it's on my inner bicep) and is actually and oddly still painful several days later, but is nonetheless awesome and I can't stop staring at it.  Yesterday afternoon I sent a picture of the tattoo through Twitter to Dan Andriano, who wrote and sings the song "This Light" that inspired the tattoo and its meaning.  Last night we were watching TV and I got his response, which I think was pretty fucking cool of him.  I had a big-ass grin on my face all night.

4. The Olympics, I guess!

I've never been all that much into the Summer Olympics but I like watching them with Robbie. I told him that I want to run a race with one of those sprinters and just see from above how ridiculous it would look. We also make up words to explain things that the athletes do wrong to sound like we know what we're talking about. FUN TIMES.

5. Birthday Week!

As most of you know, Rob and I are strong believers in Birthday Week.  We decided last year to only do it when one of us reached the latter half of a decade (i.e., 26) or when we hit a decade (30), but now we're just doing it every year.  This week Rob gets to decide what and where we eat, gets out of doing most chores (especially the dishes), and can dictate any activities we do outside the house.  Plus we both exclaim at various times, "Birthday week!" It's truly a magical time.

What's making you all happy this week?

Yet Another Post About Nothing

You gotta love a post about nothing.

I've decided that more bloggers need to free-write.  I'm kind of over the whole 'having to plan an entire post with readers in mind' thing.  Maybe that's not new, though. Maybe no one else worries about that shit anymore.  Wouldn't surprise me, because I'm usually behind on these things. And, well...everything, I guess.

It's 1:30am and I am wide the hell awake for some reason.  You know how sometimes you try to sleep and your bed feels like the absolute least comfortable place you could be at that moment? THAT THING.  I'm watching Eddie Izzard's "Circle" special on the Netflixes which is hilarious and I'm snuggled in Rob's Army poncho liner because the air conditioner makes my house too cold. Warmest thing in the world, that poncho liner, by the way.

I've had a busy couple of weekends which has been awesome-pants (totally going to try to get that phrase started) because Rob comes home tomorrow (or technically today I guess) and staying busy is what needs to happen (other parenthetical statement). I've been rained on and went swimming in Abiquiu Lake, got a new tattoo and drank a prickly pear margarita at a convention in Albuquerque, bought some local art in downtown Santa Fe, and checked out the Science Museum up in Los Alamos, where the Manhattan Project was based.

Funny thing about the Science Museum--it's run by the government since the Los Alamos lab is actually a national lab. We watched a video about the Manhattan Project that really awkwardly skipped past the whole, you know, bombs-dropping-and-killing-people thing and focused more on the awesome martini soirees the scientists held while their countrymen were fighting and dying in World War II. I mean why deal with the massive world-changing implications of your actions when you can just wear awesome '40s clothes and hairstyles and drink martinis, am I right?

Forgive me for bringing up X-Files for the second time in my Posts About Nothing, but what on earth is Scully's deal?! Bitch has seen some crazy shit with her own eyes, and yet each episode when Mulder suggests that maybe, just maybe, some paranormal activity is responsible, and she acts all condescending and lame? I hate that "Mul-DER!" tone she has.  HE'S ALWAYS RIGHT, why do you doubt him every single goddamn time?! Rob thinks that it's probably more pronounced to me because I'm watching them all in a row, but I think a girl has a right to expect some measure of continuity.

Can you tell I'm home alone a lot?

Oh hey, before I forget, my darling husband turns 27 today! He's officially in his late 20s, though he'd argue with me on that point if he wasn't all the way in Colorado. He should arrive home later which is great because he'll be just in time for birthday week. 

Look, a rainbow!

A New Favorite Author

Unlike apparently the rest of my countrymen and women, I was never required to read Fahrenheit 451 in high school and to this day have yet to read it.

A couple of months ago when Ray Bradbury passed away, my father-in-law recommended the book "The Illustrated Man" to me, which I bought on a whim at our local bookstore with Robbie one day.  I'd never spent much time reading sci-fi so I went into it unsure of what I'd think.

Source

If you haven't read "The Illustrated Man," the book centers around a man in a circus act who is covered in tattooed illustrations, each of which depicts a different story that changes when one watches the illustration move.  The entire book is composed of the short stories that these illustrations tell--each story is different, with different characters, settings, plots, motifs, and messages.

I hate to sound crass especially in reference to such important literature, but I'm honest with you guys, and this book and Ray Bradbury rocked my fucking world. Never ever have I been so drawn in, so disturbed, so amused by short stories.  Each story, few spanning more than 10 pages, had me absolutely engrossed.  The amazing thing is how timeless they seemed, an impressive feat given that the book was published in 1951 and that many of them reference complex technology that only existed at the time in Bradbury's mind. And though most of the stories are based in science fiction, others touch on a plethora of other topics, each just as well-written as the last.

I passed the book along to Robbie after I read it and I think he was almost as equally moved as I was, particularly by a story called "The Rocket Man." Because I felt like I needed even more of Bradbury's stories, I promptly bought a large 900-page volume of short stories that weren't in "The Illustrated Man."

I'll spare you more of my excited babbling about how amazing Ray Bradbury is, but if you don't mind I'd like to share some of the passages that have moved me the most. A few of these passages are from "The Illustrated Man" and others are from the other collection of Bradbury stories I bought.

From "The Rocket Man":

   I asked Mother about a few things that morning after Father had been gone a number of hours. "Dad said that sometimes you don't act as if you hear or see him," I said. 

  And then she explained everything to me quietly. 

 "When he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, 'He's dead.' Or as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four times a year, it's not him at all, it's only a pleasant little memory or a dream. And if a memory stops or a dream stops, it can't hurt half as much. So most of the time I think of him dead-" 

 "But other times-" 

  "Other times I can't help myself. I bake pies and treat him as if he were alive, and then it hurts. No, it's better to think he hasn't been here for ten years and I'll never see him again. It doesn't hurt as much." 

From "No Particular Night or Morning":

“We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.”


From "The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair":

"From that twilight hour on the piano stairs on, their days were long, heedless, and full of that amazing laughter that paces the beginning and the run-along rush of any great love affair.  They stopped laughing long enough to kiss and only stopped kissing long enough to laugh at how odd and miraculous it was to find themselves with no clothes to wear in the middle of a bed as vast as life and as beautiful as morning."

"I think it's our mouths," he said. "Until I met you, I never knew I had a mouth. Yours is the most amazing in the world, and it makes me feel as if mine were amazing, too. Were you ever really kissed before I kissed you?"
   "Never!"
   "Nor was I. To have lived this long and not known mouths."
   "Dear mouth," she said. "shut up and kiss."


That's all I will share for now to spare your eyes. Have any of you read Ray Bradbury, or any other sci-fi author?