blow outs - he vs. she

He thinks it's silly to pay someone to wash and dry your hair. She (and her naturally frizzy mop) believe that a blow-out is the most practical form of pampering one can buy.

She thinks it makes no sense to blow out the leaves in advance of the 60mph winds forecasted during Frankenstorm. He believes the threat of wet leaf stains on patio stones should be the first warning issued during inclement weather alerts.

So, this happend on Saturday.

This will happen on Friday. 

The Secret Lives of the Wives Club

I read a book back in the winter called The Secret Lives of Wives. 

In this book the author (and wife of 23 years) Iris Krasnow interviewed hundreds of women who've been married between 15-70 years. After uncovering all sorts of things that would make even the Desperate Housewives blush, she determined that, in short:

"The happiest wives have a sense of purpose and passion in work and causes outside of the home. Wives who counted on a spouse for fulfillment and sustenance were often angry and lonely...

Finally, the wives with the highest marital satisfaction have a tight circle of wild women friends with whom to drink, travel and vent about their husbands."

The latter is certainly the mantra that my friends and I embraced this weekend for a relaxing time at the beach...

The Wives Club (what we call ourselves because we're all connected through our husbands, who are BFF, not because we're smug married) went coastal for a few days to Venice, Florida, without the husbands, without the kids. 


You've seen a peak at the napkins I made, but Katie made us custom koozies. Super cute. 

For our short stay we mostly just went to the beach, swam in the pool....

...and went out for dinners. One night we did get SUPER wild when we Redboxed the new Footloose. I sent this picture of Katie to Dan back home and told him things were about to get crazy... 

Short of reading from the Fifty Shades series, the wildest thing we really did was eat french fries and ice cream every day. During the rest of our time we just gabbed and napped. We laughed a lot, and smiled through tears a little. It was a fantastic way to spend a few days.


With an expert author on marriage weighing in that weekends like the one we had lend to a marriage lived happily ever after, I can't see why our husbands won't support more weekends just like this one! 

The Nicholas Sparks Guide to Estate Planning

Have you entered to win a $50 gift card from Shabby Apple? Enter here - I'll name a winner tomorrow!

I went away this weekend with some girlfriends, and is often the case when women are together for 48+ hours, the topics of conversation cover a wide range. For us, it was everything from coffee creamer to Kardashians, moisturizers to....mortality.


Most of the women in the group already have children, so unlike yours truly who still has bank accounts in her maiden name, these ladies have their stuff in order. They have wills. They have recruited and approved women their husbands should marry in their untimely deaths. My most organized friend, who plans, prepares, and freezes her meals months in advance, has something I think every house needs: A Death Packet.


In this packet she and her husband have detailed everything they do, respectively, to keep their house in order. Passwords, plans - simple rules for how their life works - all in one place. If Dan goes before me, I would surely need all the details about our finances, something that (by choice) is totally out of my hands. Likewise, if Dan is left without me, he'd need a map for finding his socks (check the dryer first). A short list of people know where to find my friend's packet if something were to happen to both her and her husband at the same time, and meanwhile, they have the peace of knowing that when the worst happens, dealing with Life Goes On will be a little bit easier.


But here's where their planning for the worst makes the will you put together on the internet or even by a fancy lawyer fall a little short: in the packet are letters she and her husband have written to each other. To be opened....when. Straight out of the Nicholas Sparks Guide to Estate Planning, no? When she told me this I nearly choked up, mostly because I know this couple and could imagine it, but also because I think that final good-bye, a letter you can hold and have forever, is both the most bittersweet and romantic gesture I've ever heard.


It is never easy to talk about losing the people you love, so that makes preparing for it very easy to avoid. Rarely do I return from a long weekend with friends with anything but bloat and a hangover, but after this weekend, I came home not only knowing I need to get my affairs in order, but feeling inspired to actually do it. 

A Dinner Date With My Husbands

When I was in my late twenties/early thirties and still single, I confess that I would often get a tad bitter when I'd hear about a woman my age or younger who was on her second husband. To nurse the sting, I’d often turn to the bottle…

Kidding about the bottle part. But Photojournalism 101 - Write to your pictures. I digress...

Not that anyone should be denied a second-chance at love, but I wasn't processing the news with that kind of mindset. Selfishly, I was questioning how some people could land two husbands when I couldn't even find a good boyfriend. Silly? A little. Human? I think completely.

Years (and hostility) have since passed as I now find myself with two husbands of my own...without the drama of divorce, AND at the very same time!

Now, I rarely drink alone....

That part is actually true.

Friday I went to dinner with the husbands at Aqua Al2, a new-ish restaurant in the Eastern Market neighborhood of Capitol Hill.

You know Dan, of course, the first and primary spouse. We happily share all the good and the bad that comes with a legal union. He cringes when forced to wach One Tree Hill, still feigns interest and amusement when I plan a party, and says he thinks I look pretty without any make-up. We like to hold hands while sitting on the couch. And introducing (said in the same TV voice as the Smash commercial) Patrick...

Patrick is my work husband. We share all the good and bad that comes with a job in politics. With me, he never tires of making reference to when that dog ate Dan Scott's new heart, is very vocal about how ridiculous he thinks my party planning can be, and tells me that I’m in high-def when I come to work without my face on. We like to gmail chat while sitting six feet from each other.


Disclaimer: I'm not mocking real marriage here, and all parties involved in this little dinner trifecta (i.e, the Brother Husbands and I) know there's no divorce trajectory in motion. Our husbands jokes are all in good fun, even if a tad cheesey...


With them, I had a grand time putting the "2" in Aqua Al (where we went to celebrate Patrick’s birthday!).

Two dapper dates, two bowls of homemade pasta...

...that makes me one happy girl!

Our Second Anniversary

It was Dan's "Choose Your Own Adventure" for me.....

verses the sports-themed  "Game Plan" I created for him.

Adventure always trumps a plan, no? It did for our Anniversary Challenge.

From the choices Dan offered, I would have quickly bounced on a picnic and sailing, which was to be followed by dinner at my favorite restaurant in Washington called TenPehn. Only....to our disappointment, it rained and to our surprise, TehnPehn has gone out of business. The plays and productions at the theaters in Baltimore and Washington were just kind of meh to me, so....

we ended up at a drive-in movie theater somewhere on the outskirts of Baltimore. Dan had found it weeks ago, and I LOVED the idea! It was the perfect way to kick off Fall, tossing lots of pillows and blankets into the back of an SUV (maybe sneaking in some red wine...) and snuggling down to watch a movie, popcorn and cotton candy in hand, respectively, with the tailgate open.

Ugly Bootlegged Photo - the drive in is CRAZY strict about no camera use

In the spirit of  the drive-in, I wanted to dine somewhere that was really cozy - no linen table clothes for this anniversary date! 

To his credit, Dan spent hours searching for a place that had the "stone and fireplace vibe" I was wanting...

We found it at  Woodberry Kitchen...

Also on the outskirts of Baltimore, this restaurant has one of the best urban-meets-rustic vibes EVER! I adored it, everyone there did! Check out the amazing firepit!

By Sunday morning, when it became my turn to step up to the challenge, the bar was raised high. It was kind of a downer to go from Woodberry's farm-to-table gourmet to.....down on the farm with Bob Evans.

But at least Dan got his beloved biscuits and gravy.  And just as I altered his plan a tad, he chose to forgo my "halftime show" of seeing Moneyball, and traded it for his own time-out (a nap) before watching the Raven's play...

with our friends Kim + Dave. Sweet victory awaited back home when I served up Dan's favorite cake!

I can't recall the last time Dan + I spent both Saturday and Sunday on a weekend doing things just for fun. I can't even remember the last time we had a real date, not just grabbing dinner or going to see a movie. We were long overdue for this time together, and it was such a perfect weekend. I don't think you need an anniversary to issue a challenge to your mate, but taking the time to do some planning on behalf of your partner is certainly time well spent..even if, like me, you get super out-planned!

The Anniversary Challenge

Monday will mark two years since Dan and I declared our I Dos...

We have a trip coming up in October that's our "gift" to each other, but to celebrate this weekend, I laid down an Anniversary Challenge: Dan is to plan a Saturday night date he thinks I will love. Come Sunday, I'll make the day all about him.

If left to my own devices, I'd create for us both some over-the-top evening, assuming because I would have put so much thought into it, and because it'd be what I would want, that Dan would naturally love it, too. 

That happened this year for Dan's birthday- a film at a quirky DC theater I thought was special, dinner at one of my favorite little bistros in Washington - places I loved and wanted to share with him. Only, he wasn't that into those ideas, and admittedly, he'd hinted as much as plans were being made. Still, I was sure it would be just perfect, so...we went. He soldiered through it like the good guy that he is, but as we headed home, in a very unDan move, he kindly let me know that I'd given him a birthday night custom-made for...myself.

He was right, and I felt so bad. I didn't do it selfishly, but...I did the things I would have wanted him to do for me, not the things he might have wanted from me. To compensate, the next morning we got up, I took him to breakfat at Bob Evans ('cause for the life of me I can't master his favorite biscuits and gravy) and then we went to the movies to see True Grit. 

Dan's birthday is not too unlike our first married Christmas when, among the gifts under the tree was the most shiny, sleek, expensive....ice scraper for my car.  Sure I needed it, and Dan only had me in mind as he joked, "I'll be the one who uses it!" Still, I didn't want it for Christmas, from my husband. So, in a very me move, I suggested that, henceforth, he shop beyond AutoZone for special occasions. The next year, there were Tory Burch boxes.

Dan and I are alike in many, many ways, but emotionally, if we were eggs, he'd be hard-boiled and I'd be scrambled!  When we were dating, there was a constant effort, on both our parts, to woo the other so we didn't operate in our respective neutral gears of frivolus and practical.  What eventually would be revealed, coasting through married life together (the hard way - because I just couldn't get through that popular Love Langaues book; too Chicken Soupy for my Soul) is that Dan and I give and receive affection in very different ways.

I'm the kind of person who will manufactor whimsy for others. Have I mentioned how I love a theme?  I joke that if we had $10 left in the bank, Dan would let me spend it on party papers. He has never tried to hinder my crazy, and often times he plays into it to charm me. That's one of the ways I knew he was my perfect match. Thank God, too, that he lends his level-headed, pragmatic temperature to keep our flame at a steady burn.  Because...no matter how pretty it is, a monogrammed napkin can't soak up all the messiness of marriage.  

So, for our anniversary, with this challenge, we'll be forced to think like each other, for each other. It should be a fun way to 
customize happiness for one another, a simple enough practice that should be a constant theme in our marriage every day.

Can A Marriage Survive Without Borders?

Book lovers 'round the country are sad to see Borders closing, and I'm certainly among them. 

My cousin put this photo on  Facebook. Our family always has had a flare for the dramatics.

I've always loved roaming the isles of any bookstore, or piling a table full of magazines while sipping on something frothy at Borders Cafe. The Borders in my 'burbs is less than a mile from my house, so since I know no one in my neighborhood, it's truly become the friend on whom I call when times are lonely and tough. 

If Dan is working from home and needs quiet, I go to Borders. 

If Dan is out with the the guys, and I have no plans with my friends,  I go to Borders. 

And, always - always - if Dan and I have a little spat, Borders is where I go to simmer down. 

When news broke that Borders was closing, Dan joked, What are you going to do? You'll have no where to go when you're mad at me!  

Can a marriage survive without Borders?  I guess we'll soon find out.

The Meal That Started It All

Yesterday marked the anniversary of my first date with Mr. W.  You may have read the story of how we met, but I left out some less-than-storybook details.

Our first date was, per my suggestion, at ESPN Zone. Not kidding. 

photo credit: Flickr

I was trying to appear laid-back and totally That Girl who loves to grab beers and watch football. It's so important to be authentic when getting to know someone (HAAAAAAA), right?

So, while Kentucky battled LSU in a few overtimes (I bet Celebrate We Will remembers that game!) I ordered up a plate of sliders and the Dubs asked for a salad. I swear, I don't think he's ordered a salad as his main entree since. I still order sliders. Remember - authenticity.

After dinner, I went against every thing my mother had ever taught me about safey and invited Mr. W back to my house for a firepit*. We roasted marshmellows, and he told me about the time he was once detained at the Canadian border. I knew then...he was a keeper.

The ESPN Zone in D.C. is now closed, but happily, Mr. W and I are still in the game. Last night, to mark our dating anniversary, we threw some logs on the firepit. I made mini-burgers and a Caesar salad for dinner...

and over the meal that started it all, we relived the highpoints of the last three years, the biggest for me being that the man I met on the internet, despite giving the Canucks a little grief, did not murder me that night has always been a perfect gentleman to me.

If you're married, do you still celebrate dating anniversaries?

*I do not endorse inviting first dates home with you, no matter how you've met them. Nearly all of my online dates were secretly monitored by friends who were in the same places where the date and I were meeting. Just saying.

It's a Love Story

I'm really excited today because Gwen In Love, a blog about love and relationships that showcases real-life love stories, has featured the story of how Mr. W and I met!!

If you love love stories, you'll love this blog (and hopefully our story!) Gwen is SASSY.  She is very candid and thoughtful in sharing insights on love + marriage, plus Gwen just has a way of writing about, um...the birds + the bees and everything that flowers around that topic better than anyone in Blogland. You'll fall in love with her blog - I have!

ALSO...I hope you fall in love with my new blog design - I have!  You can't hurry love....or the story about I got so lucky to get this new make-over. You'll just have to wait to hear it!  I do promise to tell it soon. 

Counting Cards

One difference between marriage and dating is that, once wed, you've already won the jackpot. No more gambling with one's heart. Therefore, you're not afraid to show your hand.  So when the anniversary cards, addressed identically with the same silly nickname that Mr W and I call each other, were opened last night....

...the shuffle through the decks at Hallmark would reveal...

...Mr W and I chose for each other the very same card.

What are the odds?

One Year Ago

Do you remember...the 26th night of September?

Love was changing the mind of pretenders

While chasing the clouds away

Our hearts are ringing

In the keys that our souls were singing

As we danced in the night

Remember - how the stars stole the night away

Hey hey hey, Ba de ya

Say do you remember

 Ba de ya - dancing in September

Ba de ya - never was a cloudy day