Heartfelt sentiment

My husband just might be the most romantic nerd on the face of the earth. And I have proof.

He's also finally been able to keep a secret from me for longer than it takes him to dial my number on his cellphone, so really, I urge you to duck and take cover, and watch out for those flying pigs. They fast and sneaky, and I hear they just come out of nowhere, completely take you by surprise, and then there you are staring at a pair of fangs going for your jugular.

Or perhaps I'm just getting far too wrapped up in all of this New Moon hype. Far too early on a Sunday morning. And I don't even like Twilight. Hmph.

But just watch them pigs soar high above the clouds, and keep an eye out for any that might be getting some funny ideas. Probably should have bought that pitchfork when I had the chance. Now, all I'm left with are a tripod and a statue the husband brought from Malawi. Not exactly close-combat ready.

But why are these creatures violating our airspace this time around?

Yesterday I received my birthday present. It is not my birthday for another month yet, but this is what happened:

I look through a jeweler's catalogue in Finland, during the summer of 2008: "Oh. Oh. OH. Oooh."

"What is it honey? Maybe you shouldn't have had that last glass.... Or all that cheese.... And maybe those 4 pounds of strawberries weren't such a hot idea. I mean look at your lips woman... You know you're allergic. Sigh..." The Hubby looks at me suspiciously.

I push that catalogue at the unsuspecting husband's face: "No! It's not that. It's just that I want, want, and neeeed this heart-thingamajiggy-pendant-shiny-thing from Swarowsky. Look at it. LOOK! It has a flash drive inside. Isn't it the cutest thing ever?"

"And you need a crystal encrusted flash drive to hang around your neck on a chain because...?" the man responds in a dry tone.

"Well, er... Duh," I roll my eyes.

"Because all of your friends have one?" he quips.

"NO! I'd totally be the first. That'd be so cool," I'm too taken by the badly reproduced image of the heart to understand the sarcasm.

The Hubby looks at me as if I've once again overindulged the materialist Extranjera: "But why a flash drive? Do you even know what that means?"

"Of course I do. It's like a USB thing. For stuff. To use with a computer. For stuff. You know," I roll my eyes so hard they actually make a screeching sound.

"I know, but do you?" he smiles back at me.

***

Yesterday while touring a Johannesburg mall I spot a shop: "Oh. Oh. OH. Oooh."

"What is it honey? Maybe you shouldn't have had that last glass... Or all that meat.... And maybe all of that coffee, black of all things, wasn't such a hot idea. I mean, look at your hands woman.... You're shaking like your high on something. Sigh..." the Hubby looks at me suspiciously.

I drag the unsuspecting husband towards a shop with a dark blue front: "NO! It's not that. It's just that they have a Swarowski shop here. And I, like, urgently need a flash drive to move my photos around. And you remember that cute heart-one they were selling in Finland? I neeeed that. Now."  

We step into the shop and I enquire for a "heart-thing, that like comes apart, and then there's like a thing, for, like, the computer and stuff, inside there?" while I draw a heart in the air and in grand gestures mime taking it apart. But we get a quick, and a slightly condescending "I'm sorry, that was a limited release product."

There is nothing to do, but leave the shop.

I look at the Hubby and contemplate embarking on the mother of all guilt-trippings: "Damn. Now I really wish I'd gotten one back then in Finland. Uhhuh. I really do. I do," as the Hubby attempts to gently maneuver me in the direction of the exit and the car.

The man distracs me with yet another cup of coffee: "Maybe we can just get a chain for it and look for it elsewhere? Some other time?"

***

"Can I distract you for a second?" the Hubby inquires late yesterday night.

I quickly glance at him, but return to a furious (and rather one-sided to be frank) battle I'm having with burning my homework on a CD that obviously wants to stay virginal.

"What?" I glance at the man again.

He hands me a little box: "I was supposed to give this to you on your birthday, but you're saying you need it now, and that you need it empty, right? But just in case you want, there's a folder on my computer of pictures of us, our music, and some emails we sent to each other, that I was going to upload on it, so that you could always have all that with you."

"Like a modern locket," my man tells me.

My viking really is the most romantic computer-nerd ever. At least in my world.

Love you man xo

What has the 'Big Bad Abroad' done to Hubby

I know. I know. Sheesh.

I know you know that a header such as the one above pretty much means that I haven't left the confines of this here portable 'puter for some time now. And I'm possibly starting to reek.

As usual. You know me too well.

I admit to not showering since Friday, listening to outrageous, yet sing-along-friendly country, and indulging in the finer things in this existence: coffee, wine, and blogging (and the occasional pizza as those come delivered to the door). I have indeed been busy writing for Project ARWP, Balderdash, and Siamese twins joined by the ocean. However, as fun as sitting in one of three places: at the kitchen counter, on the upstairs couch, or in the downstairs green armchair, with my laptop on my actual lap and a coffee cup/ glass of wine (allow for variation of the time of day) within easy reach, not much worth writing about happens.

Enter: Hubby with grease on his hands.

"What in the hell and its seven chambers of purgatory (or some such thing that sounds very grand, but extremely distressed at the same time)," I think, but what comes out of my mouth is something more like "Wha... nah... walls 'n fok... fingerprints.. ngh?"

"I have taken out the battery," the good man tells me.

"Who.. Huh?" I wittily respond.

It seems that my loving Hubby had after all decided to actually do something about my broken down Daihatsu. By himself. As he apparently wasn't really feeling my well-thought-out and meaningful experiment to see whether the silvery piece of painted cardboard would catch on and fix itself.

I though he would have called someone.

But Hubs is versatile. Turns out.

"I'm going to run it over to the Battery-store and get it tested," he continues all expert-like.

I must admit I wasn't aware of the fact that he even knew how to pop the hood, let alone extricate a battery. I wouldn't have any idea. I had to spend 5 excruciating minutes with a very nice gas station attendant looking for a lever that would open the gas tank the first and only time I decided to put gas in the car. He was very nice about it. I on the other hand yelled at the Hubby later for not telling me about said lever.

And got the 'WTF woman, read the instructions, or better yet, Google it' face. He would never be so rude out loud.

But instructions and me. That's just never, ever going to happen. Proof: Photoshop, me and annoying tutorials I will never, ever watch. Never. Ever. Got that? Never, ever.

So there.

"They'll test the battery cells, but I think I might end up getting you a new battery," he finishes off with bravado.

And I'm left in awe of who I married.

Although this is the same man who a couple of months ago did not know how to change a tire. Is the universe playing with me or has Hubby discovered Google as well?

We are left to wonder.

Very random sweating

There were some very cool, cool and much less cool things that happened this past week.

I danced for three hours straight at a weird basement club with a childhood friend and we managed to do the lambada as well as the macarena quite a few times, while a bunch of Finnish men were trying to cosy up to us by doing the very uncool (and sometimes scary - Really. Haven't you ever seen yourself dance? What you're doing is not hip hop, it's kicking the hell out of your fellow dancers) 'I'm bumping and grinding to your back in case you would be interested in a little something, something, or possibly a lot of something, something with my drunken ass'. Needless to say: no dice, even though my friend is single.

I danced for three hours straight at a weird basement club with a childhood friend and the next morning I couldn't get out of bed, because I think I managed to break my hip with lambada, or a well planned, superbly executed, and accurately aimed scary (glad i didn't hit anyone badly) burlesque kick. Think Moulin Rouge with a severely overweight Kidman kicking at everyone around her while headbanging vigorously to a late 80s nondescript pop song. Loved it, 'cept for the whole looming hip replacement.

I danced for three hours straight at a weird basement club with a childhood friend and the next morning I though my head was going to explode. Turns out one should not mix cheap wine with headbanging. Or better yet, headbanging should be avoided regardless of it being kind of cool to freak out the younger clubbers with said antic. Also, headbanging in air, as opposed to into a table, or a railing, or someone else's head is potentially a healthier, less painful choice come next morning. Although, I now very strongly feel that I still got it. Whatever it is.

I found out, or was actually reminded of the fact that the best time to enjoy a burger or two is after dancing for three hours straight. Makes them taste better. And they have to be burgers from here. And, no, the person serving you these burgers does not appreciate your wit at 3AM, or the informative (by which I mean completely made up) lecture on South African coins (nor are they accepted as means of payment).

With my Mexican/Parisian friend we learned that the best way to freak out a waiter in Finland is to demand an authentic Mexican margarita, give a mini-lecture on the palatal differences of lemon juice and lime juice (after consuming quite a few bottles of authentic French champagne prior to the lecture, or even arriving at the restaurant where we moved onto red wine), and do all this on a Tuesday night, 15 minutes before the place is set to close. Also, by tipping a waiter in Finland one can really screw with their heads, regardless of how well-deserved the tip was.  

Lastly, the other day I was putting on my shoes at my parents and I noticed that my mother owns a pair of Dr. Martens. The insoles have sculls on them. I asked her whether she had noticed the sculls and her response was: "Oh, the ones on my Docs?"

I'll just leave you with that.

An ode to Hubby

I'm still sort of left dry of things to write (and my fokken keyboard still lights up for no reason confusing me as I try to write), but I realized that I owe someone a post. The hubby that is. On how awesome a husband (and human being) he is. This post was to be the result of that ring he designed and had made for me.

And by that ring I mean this ring:

Some kind of quarts set in something something silver. Close enough.

Why I was reminded of having promised this sort of post to the hubby was that today I got breakfast in bed. Every single inch of my body is hurting from yesterday's golf at the course affectionately (I misspelled this word twice yesterday, only to realize my mistakes in the car hours later, and was left wondering whether this was it [too much wine] for my brain) called Devil's Field. The tips of my fingers feel like I borrowed them from a corpse and I won't even go into the specifics regarding the aches and pains in the rest of my body (and the possible links to the dead pieces of flesh at the local market's meat-counter). All I will say is that I think golf was actually invented by the Devil (were he to exist) or at least someone posing as him. I think golf might just prove to be the thing to finish me off, draw my number, send for the reaper, or just kill me dead. Who knew that golf was an extreme sport?

But enough about my impending golf-induced death and onto the man of my dreams (a very natural bridge).  

As I have previously written about meeting the hubby, I'll just launch, face first into a list of epic proportions of why Hubby is so great, wonderful, and the man for me, even after these here several years (I'm told 8) of sharing my life our lives, in hopes of scoring lunch, and perhaps also dinner in bed, as to be ready for another 18 holes tomorrow (smart she is not, but if you wanted to be nice you could go ahead and call her tenacious).

This will not be a list consisting of 'hubby is great because he loves me when I am horrible to him and to others' because, firstly, this is my blog and I will not be portrayed in that light, and secondly, that's more than evident between the lines anyways.

An ode to hubby as a human being of god-like (the loving kind) attributes:

:: Hubby loves complex lists with sub-sections and weird references, and often draws up such things on the backs of envelopes, or grocery store receipts. (I don't know why I'm opening with this, but here it is anyways.)

:: Hubby remembers every single birthday of anyone who has ever told their birthday to him and always informs me of impending important days to remember in good time.

:: Hubby is good with money, and manages to spin it in ways allowing for it to simply pass through my hands without the tiring middleman's (a.k.a. Extranjera's brain) involvement.

:: Hubby is frightfully smart, and can do weird math is his head. This balances out the fact that for some reason hubby cannot pronounce 'vegetable' or 'analogically'.

:: Hubby reads.

:: Hubby is always loved by everyone. I've found this to be an awesome buffer between folks and my personality.

:: Hubby is patient. Extremely patient. For eight years he has been waiting for me to 'grow out of it'.

:: Hubby is kind. There are still orphaned kids in Mexico who talk about El Vikingo who taught them about astronomy. In Spanish. (And this is all hush hush from the hubby, but the man doesn't really speak Spanish.)

:: Hubby tries hard and never quits. Even when all of the forces in the universe seem to be working against him he keeps on going, and somehow manages to pull me through as well.

:: Hubby always takes my side. Even when I go against my mother.

:: Hubby is a man of the world. He feels just as home in a luxurious five star hotel in Singapore as he does dancing barefoot with topless natives in Panama. Hubby is the one who taught me that it is okay to use the bathroom at a fancy schmancy hotel even if you are not staying there, rather than going into McDonalds. Actually, the nicer the hotel the better.

:: Hubby doesn't enjoy watching sports.

:: Hubby is excellent at small talk and doesn't feel the need to swear while engaging in it.

:: Hubby can keep a secret. Just not from me.

:: Hubby has never once mentioned the word 'job' in relation to me not having one, at least in front of me.

:: Hubby likes learning new things, and reading manuals. He completes me.

:: Hubby will always let me sleep in, no questions asked, even though I won't let him go to bed before I feel tired.

:: Hubby can repair anything with glue back to its original appearance, while being married to the queen of duct-tape.

:: Hubby truly feels that no woman can own too many different bottles of perfume, or different pieces of jewelry, and that despite of owning all of these trappings (and more than a 100 pairs of shoes) his woman can wear that same pair of Birkenstocks every day, for two years, without fazing him in the least.

:: Hubby is honest. he always tells the truth, but manages to never anger anyone. Regardless of numerous, and I do mean numerous, attempts, I haven't cracked his formula for this yet.

:: Hubby likes visiting his grandparents. Every year he puts effort into finding them a special present they will enjoy. This year they got a picture book of South Africa, so that they could 'see what we've seen'.

:: Hubby always likes people, until I tell him not to.

:: Hubby will go out for pizza at 2AM because my very drunken friend would like some, and upon returning not be angered by the fact that the friend is asleep on the couch and I'm halfway strangling myself with the tent-bed I'm attempting to put together, while I'm also reaching out for the pizza to munch on as he proceeds to extricate me.

:: Hubby loves animals. Even the sizable cows his parents insist are really dogs.

:: Hubby has mad braai skillz. (This point is in no way a comment on the love for animals, although I must admit my thoughts went from cow-size dogs to juicy steaks.)

:: Hubby has an endless supply of praiseworthy qualities, and he will go to great extremes to make me happy. I doubt I could have done better in any possible universe. The only potential question in the equation is how long will Hubby have me.

I'm ready for my lunch in bed now.