Trashed

The garbage men took our trash can that Gina ran over. They must have been tired of our trash bags being wedged inside of it. Now she has her sights set on our recycling bin.

Not-so-fun money

As the accountant for the Moose family, I am often the bearer of bad news. Usually this amounts to some variation of me telling Gina we’re broke. “But . . .,” Gina says, her brow  like a sad puppy’s as her dreams of shopping or some other perk are drowned in checkbook ink.

The latest gloomy update was that the cushion we had for a family vacation was now going to stuff medical bills. I tried to break the news gently.

“But how are me and Boo going to go on vacation?” Gina said.

I’m glad she took the news with a good sense of humor. Either that, or I’ve just been audited.

Curbside casualty

When Gina called to say she’d hit one of our trash cans, I thought she’d only dinged it. I’ve done it myself. It’s easy to forget they’re sitting there on the curb. Here’s what I saw when I got home:

“Holy cats, Boo!” I said to Ryan. It was an impressive piece of work. The steel seams were split on one side of the can. It looks like an elephant sat on it.

I can’t give her too much grief. I’ve scraped more than my share of paint off my car, whether it’s on the side of the garage door or on Gina’s Pontiac (she shouldn’t have parked it in the middle of the driveway!) So I’m keeping quiet on this one, except to say that I’m worried about her next victim:

Save yourself, Oscar! Gina’s taking out the trash!

Mother’s Day

Gina and I were trying for a year and a half when I thought she might be pregnant.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” I told her. And then I did anyway. I said what she took for a light period may actually have been a fetus implanting. I’d been doing my research earlier that day. I was getting my hopes up, too.

She didn’t want to take a pregnancy test until the next morning since they’re more accurate then. I got up, went about my routine, and tried not to think about it. I was getting out of the shower when Gina came in and said,

“We’re having a baby!”

“Baby baby?” I gave Gina a hug, and we kissed and laughed and cried. “Baby baby!” We held each other and rocked in a joyous circle. All the doubts and the few false alarms and the tests that I went through. All forgotten in this beautiful moment. A miracle.

A miracle.

Gina showed me the proof, a plus on her test. Then she made me buy another one. I was convinced, but she went and had a blood test for good measure. But first we called our families and I told everyone at work. There was no way I was going to be able to keep the news all to myself.

That was June 24, 2008. One of the best days of my life.

Happy Mother’s Day to my beautiful wife.

Just look at our little guy.

Date Night

I promised Gina we’d go out on a date for her birthday. We went tonight, three months later. This parenting thing keeps us busy.

After our babysitters (Grandpa and Grandma Moose) arrived, Gina and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I reminded Gina what a fascinating conversationalist I am by talking about how I haven’t been able to find a good sale on pot roasts. I sensed that she didn’t share my passion for the price of beef, but we had an excellent time.

We wanted to see a movie afterward, but the only two we were interested in didn’t have any convenient show times. Being the romantic guy and quick thinker that I am, I turned to my wife and said, “do you want to go look at baby clothes at Target?”

So the baby literally got new shoes and we spent half of our date in a department store. But quality time is quality time.

And Gina looked really fine.

The couple that coughs together . . .

My lackluster blogging record in 2010 is due somewhat to my almost chronic case of bronchitis. I’m now on round three. To celebrate, I decided to share this batch with Gina. But don’t we look good?

Oops, I forgot this was taken before the mucous started flowing.

Vote of confidence

I’ve watched Ryan on my own before and managed to keep him intact. But for some reason, Gina sometimes forgets I’ve parented before. She’s on her annual overnight with four of our nieces, and before she left she gave me instructions I hopefully didn’t need. Like don’t forget to feed the baby, change his diaper and give him a bath. I exaggerate, but not by much.

When I called the hotel she’s staying at to tell Gina goodnight, she asked how Ryan and I were doing.

“First we went and played at the abandoned nuclear reactor,” I said.  “Then we sorted through the garbage dump for discarded razor blades. After that we sat around and drank expired milk.”

I’d like to think she didn’t believe I would do any of that.

Angels

Gina and I were squabbling on our way to get our marriage license. It wasn’t a major argument, and I forget what it was about. But things were a little tense as we walked into the government center.

There was only one other couple in the license branch that day, plus an elderly man who took a seat across from us as we waited. He asked us if we were there to get our marriage license, and we said that we were.

“Marriage is a wonderful thing,” the friendly gentleman said. And he proceeded to tell us about his wife and their long life together. He said she was his best friend and that they loved to travel together. How they went to Mexico and barely left the room, but that “that was all right.” How she’d passed away a few years before but he was grateful for their time together.

“Our marriage was free of pretense,” he said. That’s the phrase that stuck with me. It was an eloquent description of what I looked forward to with Gina. A marriage so right and comfortable that we could just be ourselves.

Our conversation was interrupted when the desk clerk called our name. Gina and I picked up our license. And when we turned around, the old man was gone.

Neither of us said anything until we got to the car. After the kindly stranger had spoken with such openness and warmth, we both felt silly about whatever it was we’d been disagreeing about. We apologized and then talked about the man who’d disappeared. And Gina said what we both were thinking:

“He was our angel.”

The reason I thought of this story is that today is a special day. Happy Birthday, Gina. You and Boo are my angels.

The night I was trapped at Nana’s

Our friends the Roots have a party every year the weekend before Christmas. The first year we went, Gina and I were dating. She was living with her mom. The drive to Nana’s is half an hour of barren rural roads, with two stoplights to spice things up. It’s not a snowplow priority. And the flakes were already coming down as I went to pick Gina up.

Once you’re five minutes out of Gina’s hometown, everything’s dark at night. There’s no streetlights and little traffic. The snow was drifting already. We were starting down the long country stretch when three deer leapt out in front of us. They were all in a row and they looked like ghosts as they appeared out of the snow. I didn’t have time to think, but somehow we didn’t hit any of them. Gina and I are convinced it was our guardian angel at work.

Once we stopped hyperventilating we continued onto the party, where we both got to sit on Santa’s lap. We should have asked him for a ride home. We came back to my house, but seeing the weather we decided to head back early.

By then the snow was a blizzard and the back roads were impassable. I turned around shortly after the point where I couldn’t see a thing.

“You’re going to have to spend the night tonight,” I said. Gina wasn’t for it. Apparently her mother comes from the school of thought where it’s more appropriate for a woman to succumb to frostbite than to spend the night at her boyfriend’s. So after some debate we were back on the road, this time on an alternate route.

The other way to Nana’s takes you down two well-traveled roads but involves a lot of backtracking. It took three hours to get there from the time we started from home. This was one of the weekends Nana had six people over to sleep: Gina’s brother Jim and five of the kids. Gina’s sister Sue and nephew Chris were also sleeping over, so between all of the company there was no room in the inn. So Gina volunteered to sleep on the floor and let me have her bed.

I knew that her nieces, Angie and Amy, always crawled into bed with Gina in the middle of the night. As Gina tucked me into her bed while everyone else was asleep, I envisioned a nightmare scenario: Amy and Angie would come to snuggle thinking that I was their aunt, and when they realized it was me they would wake up the whole house. I was more afraid of two six-year-old girls than I was of the blizzard outside.

Gina did her best to calm my nerves, than went to sleep in the living room. I lay in bed and tried my best. Then the snoring began. It was Jim, and the only relief I got was when the furnace kicked in. It was just loud enough to drown him out. I tried falling asleep to the blower. I managed a nap and got up around 6:00, determined to head home. Quiet as a mouse, I crept through the hallway and into the living room. Gina was asleep on the floor. And standing in her nightgown was Nana.

“I see we had another guest last night,” she said without batting an eye. I told her of our epic adventure and that it was time to go home, then kissed Gina’s forehead after figuring out which silhouette was hers.

By then the plows had found their way to the lowly back roads to Nana’s. I made my way home and crawled into bed in peaceful solitude.

Gina still laughs when she thinks of me with her sheets up to my neck, gripping the edges as tightly as I held the steering wheel.

Panic

I stayed home sick today with Ryan, who was a little congested himself. We spent the day lounging around in our sweats, except for an emergency grocery store run. Gina raised the alarm that she had broken the seal on our last roll of toilet paper, and there was no way it was going to make it all the way to payday on Friday. Gina’s willing to scrimp for the sake of our budget, but there’s some things you just can’t ration.

As Boo and I drove the couple of minutes to the grocery store, my cell rang. It was Gina in another state of distress. She was fighting a massive headache. She’s trying to wean herself off of caffeine, and the battle is not going well. I tried to console her the best that I could, while Ryan sent her a text:

Hi Mommy,

This is Ryan. Daddy taught me how to type today. I hope your headache is ok. I wanted to bring you a baba of Diet Pepsi but daddy said that was a bad idea. I’ll let you snuggle with Pooh Bear if you want. I love you mommy!

Boo

P.S. I don’t want to take a nap right now.

Ryan’s also figured out how to turn on the TV. I better keep him away from our computer before he orders a flat screen.