If You Disagree With Me, You're WRONG

Happy Anniversary, Uncle Walter!

It's been 13 years today since Uncle Walter and I met.  I've been sick the last day or so, and had forgotten the date.  But it's a special one.  My whole life changed in that split second when he walked in the door, and it's been 100% for the better.  The saga is ongoing, and every day is more of an adventure.  Thanks for everything, UW!

Okay, you've caught him. Now what? Otherwise known as How The Wife and Uncle Walter Met Part 2

Ha!  $750?  That was just HIS share!  I had my own $750 phone bill to contend with!  And while Uncle Walter was a fairly well-paid computer guy, I was a gas jockey earning slightly more than minimum wage.  So, yeah, it was a lot of money.  But it was a lot more for me.

When Uncle Walter asked to come down to see me over New Year's, I was... happy.  Okay, okay, fine, yes I squeed.  But I've never done it before or since!  And given that I am a girl and yet have abstained, you must cut me some slack.  I was visiting with my mom when the call came through, and when she heard my cheerful cry she was immediately curious.  In a rare bout of maternal interest, she asked me some questions about what UW liked.  Please keep in mind... this was maybe about two weeks after he and I had met.  I didn't really know much about him!  Telling my mom he was a hottie in the sack isn't quite what she had in mind.  Wracking my brain, I came up with the fact that he liked bread and he liked potatoes. (This will make more sense in a bit.)

Fast forward a couple of days and UW gives me his arrival information.  Now, I never went to high school.  Never had much in the way of standard education beyond the barest whiff of 6th grade.  But even I knew that Orlando was in central Florida and Tallahassee... was not.  That, however, was where UW was going to fly in.  Oh joy.  And to top it off, I was able to snag Wednesday, New Year's Eve DAY off, but NOT the night before.  And UW's flight was arriving at 9 a.m.  Great.  So I had to work a 9 hour shift and then drive 4 1/2 hours to pick him up.  But I'm a trooper!  I did it with only a teeny bit of aggravation!  (Read:  I bitched him out half the trip.  Please note, I did not have a radio in my car!  That is one hell of a boring ride at 3 a.m., by yourself, pre-cheap-cell-phone-rates, without even the distraction of music.)

I finally make it to the airport.  There I spent an hour or so in the parking garage doing what every person does just before New Year's: writing Christmas cards.  Eventually, though, I realized that I was going to have to get in there and find a comfy bench so that I could pass out.  See, I hadn't flown in YEARS.  Like a decade or more.  And I'd never been to the Orlando airport.  I just knew that he would come through the main area.  So, I found a bench and dragged my butt and my blanket over to it, and eventually fell asleep.  I woke at about 8 a.m.  I read the paper.  I drank some coffee.  Come 9 I started getting antsy.  Where WAS he?  Had he stood me up?  How the heck was I going to find him?  I didn't have any of the flight info.  I just knew what time he was arriving and from where.  Fat lot of good that would do me when the freaking airport is like a mini city!  And, even in that pre-9/11 atmosphere, they wouldn't tell me his flight details.

Wait!  What's that I hear?  A page over the loud-speaker?  I wander wearily toward the terminal he's supposed to be arriving from, hearing my name once more.  I have my newspaper tucked under one arm.  I am dragging a large afghan.  I am wearing my Phantom of the Opera t-shirt so that he'll recognize me.  I am bleary eyed and have gotten about 2 or 3 hours of sleep over the last 48 hours.  And there he is!  I think he was wearing a white shirt of some sort.  But honestly, I'm not sure.  I stumble toward him, thrust out my mass-o-keys (yeah, it was about 20 key chains and 4 keys).  My greeting for my future husband?  "You're driving,"  Before I turn around and stumble back off toward my car.  He followed.

I can't remember if I told him we were going to stop by and see my grandma before then.  I mean, it's only about 1 1/2 hours out of the way (round trip), so it wasn't a big deal.  Now, my grandma lived in this teeny-tiny town near Eustis and Crow's Bluff.  How tiny is tiny?  It has a stop sign and a flashing yellow light.  My brother lived there with my grandma, and there were some relatives visiting.  One was a young man who had a watch JUST LIKE Uncle Walter's prized calculator watch, AND he spoke Klingon!  Oh goody!  Someone to entertain him!  In an effort to impress one of the few respectable men I've ever been seen with, my grandma makes us lunch.  Hm...  What do I know about what UW likes?  Oh!  He doesn't like mayonnaise!  So I make sure Grammy knows that.  Fine, look, I get it -- Tuna Fish is DRY without mayonnaise!  Sheesh.  Sue me for trying to be thoughtful!  He liked the chocolate covered pretzels at least...

Somehow we made it through the visit and were off again (this time with me driving).  We arrived in town, making a quick stop at my mom's apartment.  She, for some reason, is not there.  Now... remember when I said that she'd taken an unusual maternal interest?  Yeah.  Thing is, her way of showing that interest was to stock up on things that UW likes.  Like the nice, fresh-baked loaf of bread.  Awesome!  And... a freezer full of frozen mashed potatoes.  I mean FULL of them.  Stacked wall to wall.  Not just frozen mashed potatoes, but VERY CHEAP frozen mashed potatoes.  I'm pretty sure UW's face was stuck in this weird combination of shock/fear/disgust for about 5 minutes.  Needless to say, we took the loaf of bread and left the potatoes.  We finally made it back to my place.

My place was a very small 2 bedroom mobile home in a trailer park out on the very edge of town.  I shared said mobile home with a good friend, who also happened to be an ex-boyfriend, who also happened to be an occasional friend with benefits.  In the year or so since the beginning of the disasterous breakup with the long-term ex and the REAL breakup (ie when we stopped screwing around on the side), which was just before I met UW, I was rooming with my friend and enjoying those benefits.  Yes, yes, fine, I'm a tramp.  Whatever.  I own it.  Thing is, while I saw it as a fringe benefit of friendship, I think he kind of had expectations.  I didn't think of it, or realize it, but looking back on it, he did seem kind of upset about my hook-up with UW.  He didn't let on, however, and the meeting was only slightly awkward.

Fast-forward through most of the night: we go back to my mom's, discover that cheap non-alcoholic fake champagne does NOT have a cork to pop, learn that the tiny loaf of bread my mom made was supposed to be SHARED (oops), and then head back to my tin can abode.  Where we very happily "ring in the New Year" in the best way possible.  For every time zone.  For HOURS.  I was walking a bit funny the next day.

Over the next couple days, Uncle Walter got to meet every single member of my immediate family -- lest one randomly placed sister -- (and there are a LOT of them), go to work with me every day (for 8+ hours at a gas station no less), and get lost looking for Radio Shack.  He also ate a great deal of Pringles.  Aside from the times I'd lock the store and we'd have bouts of sex in the back room, or the endless nights of sex at the trailer, that's most of what we did.  That and talk.  We talked a lot.  About everything.  And that really, really strong like?  The one that made me want to spend more than just one night with him?  Continued to grow.  And pretty soon we both kind of realized this was a good thing.

Sunday morning comes, my day off, day four in our current saga.  Uncle Walter is set to leave on Wednesday.  He was going to fly away, and we had no idea when we would get to see each other again.  I was dead broke and he'd maxed out his credit cards and used up his savings (not to mention his vacation time) coming to the wedding and down to see me in the first place.  What to do, what to do?  Uncle Walter realized what he'd have to do.  And when he asked if I would move in with him, I could only say yes.  That night I called and quit my job.  The following day we packed all of my stuff that we could fit into my Geo Metro.  We stopped by to see all of my local family one last time.  Everyone gave me heartfelt, but pleased, good-byes.  And then we made the 16 hour drive.

Well, this seems like a good enough place to stop, don't you think?  Stay tuned for the next installment:  Meeting the Parents!

A special birthday wish list...

The Girl is about to turn 8.  This is a momentous occasion, of course.  How exactly does one go about making her birthday a happy one?  See, last year her generous grandparents bought her exactly what every 7 year old needs: an iPod Nano.  What?  Your 7 year old didn't get a Nano for their birthday???  Clearly they are not one of the cool kids.  The Girl is just that awesome.

The problem with getting presents like that is that you then raise expectations.  Grandma and Grandpa asked The Girl for a wish list this year.  She made one out with 4 items:

1) Barbies -- a very appropriate gift for an 8 year old, even though she has DOZENS of them all ready.  But whatever.

2) Costumes -- why not?  Lots of girls like to play dress up, and she's finally outgrown most of the dress up clothes that we'd gotten her 4 years ago.

3) A make up set -- well... okay, I know there might be some contention here, but I see nothing wrong with it.  She can't wear the make up to school (against the rules), so it's not like it would be an every day thing.  Mainly I think of it this way...  If something's forbidden, it becomes *necessary* and thus something that a child is likely to pursue.  But if something is made to be okay, seen as "regular," when the time comes that she is old enough to actually wear make up, she'll be comfortable with it... and thus won't slather it on with a trowel and look like a whore.

4) Dresses -- hey, The Girl is a girly-girl and she likes to wear pretty dresses.  Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, despite my own tom-boyish tendencies.

So she turns over her list to the GPs and continues on her merry way.  Then she was confronted with something Grandpa had.  A very cool gadget.  And The Girl fell in love.  She sneaked back upstairs and amended her list (which, for some reason, was written on the back of a paper plate).  What could she have asked for?  I'll show you (warning: she wrote the list in pseudo French):

How to win a guy in 12 hours -- and never let him go (Otherwise known as: How The Wife and Uncle Walter Met) Part 1

Since Uncle Walter has graced you all with a... heart-warming rendition of how we met, I figured I had best get a bit more of the story out there -- or at least my side of it.

Half a lifetime ago, I became very good friends with R.  We're still friends to this day!  There are many, many stories surrounding R that I could tell, but this blog has to end eventually -- it's my anniversary and I DO plan on getting a little sum-thin sum-thin.  Anyways, R went off to college in North Carolina and had a series of roommates, none of whom I knew anything about.  I may have talked to them on the phone once or twice.  Eventually R moved down to south Florida, while I withered away miserably in the hell of north Florida.  Fast forward a couple of years to 1997, and R is getting married!  WOW!  Really, guys, R is a wonderful guy and totally deserves all the happiness in the world, but it was a complete shock that he was getting hitched (there are many, many stories about that, too, but... sum-thin sum-thin, remember?).  And me?  I was to be a bridesmaid!  In pastel mauve.  *Pastel Mauve*  Holy Hell.  (Is it any wonder that disaster of a marriage only lasted 3 years?  I'm pretty sure Pastel Mauve is code for: Divorce Imminent -- and rightly so.)

Being the amazingly awesome friend that I am, I arrived (in my snazzy "new" Geo Metro 2-door hatch back) early to help out.  Being the amazingly BROKE friend that I was, I was invited to share a room at the motel with the bride's mom.  So there it is, the day before the wedding, the 11th, and it's like 200 degrees out.  Okay, okay, fine it was only 87.  But it was DECEMBER for goodness sake!  I was sweltering in that tiny apartment.  I was wearing some jean shorts and my favorite, comfy, Phantom of the Opera t-shirt, doing what I always seem to wind up doing -- washing dishes.  GOD how I hate washing dishes.

Some back story here:  I had recently gotten out of a 4+ year relationship that had ended, to put it mildly, quite badly.  I was feeling lonely and a little bit undesirable, and was looking, in a very blunt and obvious way, to get laid.  I wanted to find some hot, young college-boy to slake my lust on.  I arrive in this college town to find that EVERYONE, from 16-32, was a virgin.  Oh, HELL NO.  I was NOT going to take some guy's virginity and then callously leave.  So I'd given up on finding a hot piece of ass, contenting myself with teasing, unmercifully, the various young virgins.  And they DID seem young.  I wasn't old or anything, but I was older than most of the people there (except the parents) and I felt every day of it.

I had heard tell rumors of someone flying down for the wedding, one of R's random roommates from college.  A man who lived *whispered tones* "up north" -- who would share my abhorrence of the freakishly hot weather.  Elbow deep in filthy dish water, the door opens and THERE HE IS:  The Northerner.  And what do I see?  Well, to be honest, I wasn't sure.  I couldn't get past the fact that "Mr. Up North" was wearing a fucking WOOL SUIT!!  So, naturally, I glare at him and yell out "Why are you wearing pants?!?!?!"  Then I looked at his face.  This poor guy!  He looked like a scared rabbit!  He must have thought that he'd wandered into some weird nudist colony!  He was shortly brought to ease by R and various and sundry people, even going so far as to change into jeans and a t-shirt, and I continued washing dishes.

But, you see, the thing is... despite the pants, he was pretty darn cute.  He was clearly a nerd, clearly a bit uncomfortable amongst the young crowd, but he had... a nice quality about him.  After finishing the seemingly never-ending pile of dishes, I wandered over to him, eyeing him, and the fit of his jeans, while giving him the impression that I was interested in his lap top.  I don't remember much about it, but that it was gray and he was playing some shoot-em-up game.  How does one approach a clearly shy techie-guy?  Well, on his turf, of course.  So I played the gore-fest game (and enjoyed it, don't get me wrong).  And we chatted.  And I liked him!  I shall call him Uncle Walter, although he didn't adopt that nom de plume for many years.

I'm not a subtle person.  I know, I know, shocking, isn't it?  When it was time to go to the rehearsal dinner, I dressed in a floral dress with a nice, tight bust, which I was half falling out of.  I rode with UW to the dinner, helping him narrowly avoid a terrible accident with a truck, for which he has forever been grateful.  I was more than willing to take him up on his gratitude, making that clear by performing what can only be termed as lewd acts on breadsticks to give him a "taste" for what I could do.  He seemed suitably impressed.  It was as if the Olive Garden had narrowed down to just the two of us.  Except, of course, for the crowd of kids and various parents who were watching me with chagrin, not knowing whether to laugh or blush.  Ultimately they just shrugged it off.  Those who had known me for years knew better, those who just met me were afraid.

UW and I talked.  And talked.  And talked.  And finally, as the night was drawing to a close (and his non-virgin status had been confirmed), I advised him, tactfully of course, that he was going to have sex with me that night.  He seemed a bit shocked.  I can't imagine why.  He seemed somewhat resistant, so we came to a compromise.  We would sleep together.  Nothing more, just sleep, and then we'd see where things would go from there.  Did I mention that I was sharing a hotel room with the bride's mother?  And that UW didn't have a room of his own?  Oh, and that he'd forgotten pajamas?  Yeah.

Sleep we did, for a bit at least, trying to be extra quiet so as not to wake up R's future mother-in-law (whom, I was assured, was a very deep sleeper).  But it wasn't too long before I was woken up to a prod in the thigh... and nature took its course.  Four hours later I was happy, sated, and asking him what his last name was -- while we showered.  I don't know whether R's now-ex-MIL ever woke up that night (don't really care), but she surely guessed when I woke up in a tangled mess of sheets.  But UW is ever the gallant gentleman, and he returned to his own (shared) room before morning -- to... uh... preserve my reputation or something.

The wedding came and went off without a hitch.  Aside from one pesky strangling, a few leg-bruises from R's father (who, for some reason, felt the need to pelt me repeatedly with champagne corks), and a thumbs-up from R -- all the approval for my "relationship" with UW that we required.  I was nervous about that approval, you see, because, of all the people I met and R's awareness of my intentions, he had -- to put it politely -- warned me away from UW.  UW, he said, was a nice guy, and he didn't want me to break his heart.  So, while dancing, I asked R if he would reeeeeally be upset if we hooked up?  Would he REALLY mind?  When he grudgingly said no he wouldn't, I dropped the "already happened" bomb, and the thumbs-up and big grin to UW eased my mind.  Embarrassed the hell out of UW, what with his naughty behavior now becoming public knowledge, but he really wasn't complaining.  It WAS a hell of a night, after all.

That night we had the room to ourselves.  And many, many naughty things transpired.  And we enjoyed them a lot.  But... time passes.  After 3 amazing nights, on the 4th day, UW flew home.  He gave me a bruising kiss goodbye, and, before he could see me crying, I left -- never looking back.  I've never heard the end of that one, actually.  He said he looked for me, and I'd just walked away.  But, as promised, he called me that night.  So I could make sure he got there okay, of course.  And then the next night, I called him.  And then I think he called me.  And then... well, one of us always called the other.  And a couple of weeks later, he asks me if I would want him to fly down to see me over New Year's.  And I squeed.  I did!  Really.

There's a lot more to the story, of course.  I mean, how does one get from a one-night-stand (or a 3 night stand?) to 10 years of marriage, 2 kids, and a blogging empire?  Well, that would take a lot more time than I've got tonight (sum-thin sum-thin, remember?).  But I will write it out one day.  For now, I shall sip my champagne and remember a day 10 years ago.  Not a rainy, dreary day as this one has been, but a beautiful, sunny, cool, fall day.  Where I stood under the sun and trees in my purple dress, barefoot, and married THE COOLEST GUY EVER.

Here's to you, Uncle Walter!

If you can't reduce, then reuse and recycle -- the ultimate conservationist use for breastmilk...

What  do you do when you have more breastmilk than you know what to do with?  Well, first choice is to donate it, but that is a long process, and in the meantime, it's easy to run out of space for it all.  Throwing it away is one of the most horrifying things that someone could possibly do to the most nutritious food on the planet.  One couple, who seem like some of the coolest people on the planet, have found an awesome use for it.  Daniel Angerer is making cheese out of his wife's extra milk.  Too bad it's not available for sale.

Yeah, I know this grosses people out.  But when I say that it's the most nutritious food, I mean it.  There is nothing better for the human body than human milk.  It is designed to give a person everything they can possibly need for their health (it's just usually not in sufficient quantities for an adult).  And while the cooking process will remove a lot of those nutrients, just the way cooking any food will, it's still an amazing way to help a growing boy or girl to stay healthy long past weaning!  Especially if you never breastfed at all.  And more so if your child has extreme allergies and will react to dairy products.  Which happens a lot.  'Cause, you know, COW MILK IS MEANT FOR BABY COWS, not baby humans, and it's almost amazing that humans can drink it at all.  It's from a different SPECIES, people.  That would be like suckling directly off a dog.  And yes, I use dairy.  I have no moral or ethical problems with it.  But I do resent the fact that breastfeeding is treated as a privilege, not the right it is, but forced milking of a cow is big business.

Why would we not flinch at eating cheese made from cow's milk, but hesitate to eat cheese made from human milk?  I'd rather something be MEANT for a human, rather than yanking the milk out of an ANIMAL and calling that "food."  Wouldn't you?  If you're like most people, no.  But there are some of us who find the whole process of eating cow's milk to be a little gross -- even if we still do it.

And besides, this can support a family!  No extra costs to house and feed the animals.  Just a gourmet dish made from the healthiest stuff on the planet.  I'd buy it!  Right now, breastfeeding has little public support pushing for its use.  There's no money in it, since it's provided to children for free. THIS however, may provide a way for making money -- and thus allow for breastfeeding lobbying and support.  And maybe will encourage others to use the milk that they were built to use, rather than the animal milk that some company sells us with the lies that it's as good as human milk -- or even close.

So KUDOS, Mr. and Mrs. Angerer.  For what it's worth, you have my support and my respect.  Good for both of you!  And yay for little Arabella/Caroline for getting the nutrition she needs and deserves.

And, just 'cause it's me: To anyone who thinks there's something wrong with this: Screw you.  As the name says, if you disagree with me, you're wrong.