What turns you on?

I am already an online gaming widow, but I still can't help but get turned on by the idea of J taking that electric guitar of his and starting a band. This is just a fantasy. Because if he ever made me into a band widow I'd kick him. Hard.

Years ago I innocently came up with a new name for J's favorite music genre: Semi Angry Adult Contemporary. It was the subtitle to a mix CD that I named "Pissed On." (Know you, better to be pissed off than pissed on? I am so lame.) This is what they'd play. And a little more contemporary stuff too. You know, anything from the 1990s. (For the record, I am 28 and J is 31? I could do the math, but it's 5 o'clock somewhere.) You know the kind of music I'm talking about if you ever wore Docs or were turned on by ripped flannel. Yes, the Seattle grunge thing. Know what I wore? Ripped jeans made for someone 50 pounds bigger than me (Oh wait! My current size!) Docs, with a frumpy skirt or dress OVER the jeans. And because I lived in label conscious California, it wasn't just any frumpy dress you could pick up at the Paccholi store even though we had plenty of those around. No, I wore frumpy dresses and skirts from LAURA FRIGGIN ASHLEY. (That really is her middle name btw.) Ooh! Don't forget the little black over priced wallet from Pacific Sun with a heavy weight dog chain attached. You know, in case anyone tried to steal you library card and babysitting money? I may have gone to public school, but most of the kids were much more concerned with the fact that the brand new $40K car they'd gotten for their 16th birthday was the wrong color.

Why bring this up now? Last night while the Cracker was still sobbing because an elderly neighbor (that he normally loves) had the balls to wave at him on our walk to the mailbox, it hit me. I named the fantasy band!

Cubed. Except you wouldn't spell it out, just have a little superscript 3.

Okay, you're not laughing. But I swear it's clever! J is an Engineer, not super nerdy, but still an Engineer. And when he's not at home in front of his gaming computer, he's in a cube.

J nearly peed his pants, which is good, because while we still find each other outrageously snort-Coke-out-your-nose funny, even our oldest and dearest friends are starting to just nod uh huh and ignore our messages.

"So some dork would go into a music store and say I'm looking for Cubed, but it's not under the Cs?"
"Ohmygod! Yes!"
"And the lowly clerk would be like Get the hell out of my store!"
"You are so my soul mate!"

And the clever part is that the last word anyone would ever use to describe me is nerd, but J has rubbed off on me a little. My dad is also an Engineer. And while I'm bored, I can follow his technical conversations better than any other Engineer's wife I know. I can even ask meaningful questions and accurately point out a stupid mistake made by a tech in the lab before J has the chance to tell me.

Rather than use and, because and parentheses a million time like I normally do (it’s they typing diahreah I can’t seem to shake…you know, being able to type faster than you can think) here’s a list to paint you a picture of my sexy man:

-tall and thin with glasses
-1 tattoo soon to become 2
-looks like he could jump on a mountain bike and go jump piles of dirt with the pros
-can name a Phish song
-watches The Daily Show, South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy
-enjoys the occasional microbrew
-pierced his ear cartilage in a romantic date with me back in 1996, which has since grown out. It was his first carilage piercing, my second, also now grown out.
-which brings me to finds my nose piercing sexy
-favorite t-shirt is a tie between Optimus Prime (from the Transformers) drawn ghetto style and one that says Engineerd
-wears Birkenstocks (no black socks, thank God)
-played Ultimate Frisbee in college
-most importantly, has social skills

And the stuff I've already mentioned:
-plays electric guitar
-listens to Semi Angry Adult Contemporary
-online gaming phreak

Sadly, he still can't always be left to dress himself. Most days the Cracker and I are up before he is (which of course makes me curse him) but on the rare occasion he's dressed and gone before I am up, he always makes a Engineer fashion no-no.

The last one? Ooh...this was good.

Beige shoes.
Black and charcoal stripped socks.
Dark brown seuded dress pants.
Shiny black belt.
Wife beater.
Light gray distressed polo shirt, and distressed as in not a work shirt because brand new it still looked like a river rock had wailed on it

And now for the cherry: he's a red head!

Even as a teenager, I've never found most of the Hollywood leading men attractive. Brad Pit...no. Tom Cruise, in Top Gun, before the creepiness...hell no. Dermot Mulroney, who almost ruined Wedding Date for me, and who keeps popping up in every chick flick I rent lately...oh so creepy! In the world of music...New Kids on the Block? Wise beyond my years on that one.

Which brings me now to my short list of men I find attractive:
Topher Grace
Sharif Atkins
Matt Czuchry
Billy Joe Armstrong (now there's a guy who can pull off eye makeup!)
Patrick Dempsey (but who doesn't love him now?)
UPDATING TO ADD --> Jon Stewart (how the heck did I forget him??? I love this man!)
Hugh Jackman
Colin Firth

And because of the last two, whom J has decided are British because they have non-American accents, he tells everyone that I love Hugh Grant. Eew...no.

The Big Three

It happened. I survived. We partied the following Sunday.

Everything went well except the food. Normally when we have people over, I make more than any of our guests could possibly eat. Then try as we might to finish it over the next few days I still end up tossing most of it. This time I decided to cut back, but sadly the poor dad who served himself last ended up not getting a hot dog, which he would have liked, and then a bunless hamburger. To make matters worse, all the kids had a hamburger bun, had taken a bite, and then left it for trash. And we even had a last minute cancellation from a family of four. Wow, I really goofed.

Then there was the cake situation. The Cracker and I couldn't choose between a Tonka Truck cake or the Little People Farm cake, so instead we ordered a small one of each instead of one big one.

There were two Tonka construction cakes to choose from, one lame one, one cool one. So I steered him towards the non-lame one and they of course made the lame one. It still had trucks though, so the Cracker was happy with it. Me, however, I was disappointed. You see, the cool one looked like something Martha Stewart's handlers would have done. The other one was just kinda tacky. (The frosting was unnatural and very scary looking.) AND they spelled his name wrong. Fine. Whatever. So they brought out the LP cake. It was LP, but instead of being a farm theme, it was general "Little People Have a Birthday Party" themed. And this did matter, because the Cracker loves LP and he loves farms. When we placed the order a few days earlier in person with the decorator she even checked to make sure that they had the right pieces, the cow, the farmer, and then put them in a bag with our name on it. Sigh.
















The guy at the bakery felt bad. The order forms were right in front of him, and he could see that they were indeed the wrong cakes and that his name was spelled wrong on the truck cake. He didn't do the decorating, the woman who took our order 2 days earlier did. Ugh. Me? I excell at baking, even creative decorating, but for some reason I have never been able to do anything decent with a tube of frosting. So the nice man offered to try to fix it. He got the right figurines, made balloons into trees, and generally did the best he could. Then he gave me a free Chai and knocked the customization fee off the price of the cakes. I almost hugged him.

Other than that, all went well. The Cracker got amazingly thoughtful gifts, and had a great time with his peeps.