One of Those Days

Today started as yesterday left, just after midnight. I was sitting at my desk before bed, admiring the new brochure I designed for Sean's office. We were planning to send it out today as a direct mail campaign to 13000 people in Utah County, and I was thinking that if I were looking for a dentist, this would be exactly the kind of office where I'd like to go. Then I noticed the typo. The hideous, glaring typo that I had somehow missed over proofread after proofread. Right on the front panel of the brochure, our office address is listed as LAYTON, not Lindon. Those of you who live in Utah know that Layton is about an hour or so north of Lindon, and therefore people in Lindon will probably not be terribly interested in a dental office in *&?#$@& Layton. I ran into the bedroom, nearly in tears, to confess to Sean. He was his usual wonderful, understanding, downplaying self, and assured me it wasn't the end of the world. He convinced me to come to bed, where he held me while I spent the night tossing and turning, wondering how I could have made such an awful mistake, and having nightmares that I had gotten the phone number wrong too (I didn't, thank goodness). With some help from our great mailing people at World Wide Mailing, we can solve it. But it's not going to be the fabulous, polished, perfect brochure I had worked so hard for.

Ella was having one of those mornings when she woke up at 8:00. One of those, "NOOOOO! Go OUT! Don't get me out! Want DADDY!!!! Too bwight! Shut bwinds! Don't change my diaper! ELLA DO IT! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" mornings when she has her first full-blown fit in her crib seconds after she wakes up. I wanted to get her up and get to the grocery store early to get a jump on my errands, but she wasn't having it. We went anyway, and what should have been an hour-long trip took over two hours. Part of the problem was trying to rent a steam cleaner for my area rugs and dining room chairs. We're having a dinner party on Saturday and I'd like the place to look as nice as possible, and the rugs have needed to be cleaned for a while now. It was about as easy to rent this steam cleaner as I imagine it would be to rent a leer jet. We waited in line for ages, finally got the thing rented, and asked the service guy to hold it while I did the rest of my shopping downstairs.

The shopping went fine for the most part, other than me suffering from a bout of delayed-onset placenta head and having to run back and forth across the grocery store a hundred times. We finally got to the checkout, and Ella had had enough. Enough again. After the "enough" she'd had upstairs at the service desk, and the "enough" she'd had while we bought some pansies for the pots outside, and "enough" she'd had at the dairy case. Now she had had "enough" with the checkout. She was trying to stand up in the front part of the cart so she could push the buttons on the credit card machine, while I was quickly loading groceries into my bags to placate the impatient people who had been drawn like moths to a flame to the express checkout immediately after the sympathetic checkout lady had allowed me to go through with my 1.2 million items. In order to avoid a head injury, I lifted Ella from the front part of the cart into the main part, where she couldn't reach the credit card machine and couldn't get out. I finished bagging the groceries and turned to lift the last bag into the cart. There sat little Ella Mae unloading an entire carton of eggs around her, gleefully chanting, "Eggies! Eggies! Eggies evooeewhayooo!" By the grace of god, none of them broke and I caught her just as she was preparing to launch one overboard. As we walked away from the checkstand, she yelled, "Thank you, nice yady!" to the checkout woman.

The rest of the day went about the same way, Ella alternating between positively infuriating to totally disarming. The problem was partly Ella, partly me, and partly the Leer Jet Steam Cleaner that worked half the time and the other half puked out its contents onto an almost-clean floor. After taking over some groceries and flowers for Richard, our neighbor who is finally returning tomorrow from what seemed a very long winter away (we have to wait a few more weeks for Dennis, sadly), I sat with a glass of wine watching Ella and Maggie chase each other around, Ella half-naked, squealing and giggling with Maggie at her hip, while Sean got her bathed and ready for bed. Thank goodness for a fabulous partner who comes home from a long day at work and immediately takes over, rescuing a tired, exasperated wife from One of Those Days.

Favorite Things

This sunny day has me in such a great mood! I've been thinking about things that make me happy today, and decided to post a few here for reflection on a less-sunny day.

• Sunny days!
• The Bakery's incredible Choux La Creme (cream puff). Their choux pastry is some of the best I've had. Sean surprised me with one the other day and I just finished it with a late cup of coffee (they're gigantic). Delicious.
• Cute little Ella eating lunch! With a fork! I had to record this event for posterity.
• Listening to the birds chirping outside at the bird feeder.
  
• The feeling of having accomplished something. I just dug up my much-maligned patch of Star-of-Bethlehem, and am hopeful that I won't have to do it again this year.
• Sweet anticipation of my spring vegetable garden. On the list this spring: peas, lettuces, spinach, and a few other cool-weather tolerant veggies I haven't decided on.
• My raised garden beds! This is the first year that I won't have to do loads of work just to prepare the soil for a garden. My spring garden can actually happen!
  
• Ella hugging me this morning and saying, "I love you so."
• Last but certainly not least, a husband who is so incredibly supportive, helpful, and thoughtful. Sean calls me every single night on his way home from work to see if I need him to pick up anything. He cleans up my inevitably huge dinner mess every night. He takes Ella to the park on his days off so I can have some time to myself. He does all of the grocery shopping. He is in charge of Ella's bedtime and usually bathtime. And he surprises me with Choux La Creme!

Potty Training Begins, and A Summary of a Marriage

Ella woke up this morning and told me she wanted to wear her "big girl panties" today, so I thought we'd give the potty training a concerted effort. She did really well for the first part of the morning, but after three accidents in a row I decided to give it a go again later. Wish us luck!

In the meantime, this relationship questionnaire is running rampant all over Facebook, so I decided to post it here.

What are your middle names?
My middle name is Eve, Sean's is Richard.

How long have you been together?
We've been together for just over 5 years, married for four and a half.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
I met Sean in the Scary Chair at his former dental office, as a very phobic patient with what I thought was a giant cavity. I had been having nightmares that my teeth were turning black & falling out, so I asked the guy I was dating at the time to call his Friend the Nice Dentist and see if he'd see me. Sean and I were both in relationships at the time, so we didn't start dating for about two years, after we both found ourselves single.

Who asked whom out?
We went out as friends to get some sushi, so no one asked anyone out, per se. By the end of the night it was clear that we were headed down a more-than-friends road.

How old are each of you?
I'm 32, and Sean is 37.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
Well, Sean is an only child, and I only have one brother so there's not much competition. We're lucky enough to live relatively close to my family, so we see my brother often.

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
In the beginning, parenthood was definitely the most challenging situation we had faced as a couple. It continues to be a challenge, but now the biggest problem is that we don't get much time together, or much time to ourselves as individuals. It has certainly gotten much easier as Ella has gotten older and more able to express herself.

Did you go to the same school?
No. I went to the University of Utah, and Sean attended Augustana College for his undergraduate degree and Southern Illinois University for dental school.

Are you from the same home town?
No, but we're both from very small towns. I grew up in Fillmore, Utah, and Sean grew up in Elmwood, Illinois.

Who is smarter?
We both have our strengths. My memory is better (probably due to his multiple head injuries), but he is less likely to fly off the handle and explode, which is a much smarter way of dealing with things than I tend to do.

Who is the most sensitive?
See above and flying off the handle (me).

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
Takashi is probably our top place, for sushi and in general, but we also love Chanon Thai for great, incredibly spicy food, and Fresco for a nice, intimate meal with great service.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Vanuatu.

Who has the craziest exes?
I don't think either of us have crazy exes, per se. Any imploding relationship results in some craziness, but the people themselves are perfectly rational, normal people.

Who has the worst temper?
No question, doubt, or competition. Me.

Who does the cooking?
I absolutely love to cook (nothing makes me happier than sitting down with a cuisine magazine or a cookbook to find new recipes), so I do most of the cooking, but Sean is great to take on the clean-up.

Who is the neat-freak?
I think messes bother me more than they do him, but I wouldn't necessarily call myself a neat-freak.

Who is more stubborn?
That's hard to say - we're both pretty darned stubborn.

Who hogs the bed?
Definitely me, but if he wouldn't try to get away from me I wouldn't have to chase him all the way over to the last sliver of his side of the bed.

Who wakes up earlier?
Sean, but he also goes to bed hours before I do. Nighttime is sewing time for me, so I'm often up until the wee hours.

Where was your first date?
Sushi at Shogun in Salt Lake, then back to his place to play pool.

Who is more jealous?
Neither of us are jealous.

How long did it take to get serious?
About 4 hours. Hahaha! We both knew almost immediately that we wanted to be together, so not long at all. I had moved into his house after 2 months, and we were married in 9 months.

Who eats more?
Sean, unless we're talking about ice cream.

Who does the laundry?
I do most of it, but Sean pitches in.

Who's better with the computer?
Definitely me. We grew up on either side of the huge recent leaps in computer innovation, so when I was a freshman in college setting up my first email account, he was already in grad school.

Who drives when you are together?
Sean. I'm not sure why, it just kind of worked out that way.