Mornings in the Pence household:

JingjingjingjingjingjingJING as Shawn shuts off the shower and the cat comes running into the bathroom.

JingjingjingjingjingjingJING for a few moments in the absence of sound the once-running shower filled. And then Shawn, giggling. JingjingjingjingjingjingJING of the cat's little bell on her collar now mingled with Shawn's giggling. Then from the bathroom I hear Shawn say, "You SUCK kitty!" And he's laughing. Of course, all you can hear of Flora is JingjingjingjingjingjingJING.

"I can't put my underwear on with a cat in them!" This prompts me to finally peer about the door and into the bathroom. There's Flora, rolling all over the floor, biting Shawn's freshly washed feet. Dunno about you, but trying to put your underwear on while there's a cat chewing on your toes presents a whole different world of balance to tackle.

It's moments like these that make me happy.

And now, for another installment of Things That Shawn and Mel Say. As usual, the romance happened using AIM, as it's what's on Shawn's work computer during his lunch break and I still use it via Trillian.

bariguy: freakin mosen the wandering jew!
Ashadow0fme: ...lol whut?
bariguy: moses!
Ashadow0fme: ROFFFFFFFL
MOSEN
bariguy: It's an exclamation of OMG WTF R U DOIN'!
Ashadow0fme: I DON'T KNOW WHAT R U DOIN?
bariguy: thinking I was talking about reloading the who damn site from scratch, lol NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ashadow0fme: You said reload! Without specifiying what!
Ashadow0fme: Death!
Ashadow0fme: Destruction!
bariguy: Failure of defense roll results in immediate electrocution by my brain of taunting +5
bariguy: it's a critical hit and you are mocked to death
Ashadow0fme: ...I love you so hard.

"Most of the people who drive trucks in Florida are douche bags."

"That guy's driving a truck." Point as I watch some guy in a truck drive by, with half a disassembled bar in the truck's bed. "He must be a douche bag--wait. Aren't we driving a sorta-truck? Wouldn't that make us douchebags?"

"Nah," as he watches traffic and said truck go by."We don't drive a truck, we drive an SUV. And we don't even drive a real SUV, we drive a sporty SUV. So we really just drive a tall car."

Thank you mister joecifur, it is beeeauutiful. I showed it to my bebe.





This is a pen Shawn brought home from work, for me. Freakishly huge pen is awesome.

Last night's hothothot bedtime sexy talk:

Shawn: Attempts to angle his cold feet onto my warm feet.
Me: Pulls my right leg as far as it would go to the right, folding and tucking my left foot behind right knee, thus foiling his clever plan.
Shawn: "Ohgoddamnit."
Me: "I DO NOT WANT YOUR COLD FEET ON ME."
Shawn: "BUT THAT'S WHY I BROUGHT YOU HERE. I IMPORTED YOU FROM CANADA TO WARM MY FEET."

Perfect by =EpicureanPoetry on deviantART

My husband clucked his tongue and looked away before he said, "Why would you take a picture of my hands? My gnarled, old, fat hands."

And I wanted to say, "Because they have touched me. Because they are bigger than mine and they have trembled on my skin or wiped away my tears. Because they have cupped my chin or swept across my hair as I lay sleeping. Because they are your hands and I love them. They are perfect."

Instead, I took a picture and hope it says the one thousand words I wish them to.

Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?
Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts.
So it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess,
And to stop the muscle that makes us confess.

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just,
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.

You fasten my seatbelt because it is the law.
In your two ton death trap I finally saw.
A piece of love in your face that bathed me in regret.
Then you drove me to places I'll never forget.

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just,
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just,
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls-
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls-
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.

Breakable Lyrics: Ingrid Michaelson

Today Shawn and I decided to have a bbq. It seemed a poor tribute, but the day whispered sweet nothings. It was the sort of day in Florida we don't have often. The sun tried to beat us all with her brilliance but the breeze just laughed at her and cooled as with winter.






It must have been a beautiful seventy in temperature. We brought out the bbq and dropped several sticks of wood to smoke along with the charcoal and Shawn decided that, instead of eating indoors we would drag the table outside on the porch to eat.

I'm glad he decided that.

The day felt like two lovers deciding to call in to work sick so they could spend the day curled naked and lazy within one another's arms. The sky was a rare blue that I remember from childhood or children's books with long, long, thin scratches of rare clouds. The grass made my toes wriggle in anticipation; I wanted to wander through it to see if it was cold beneath my feet but I didn't. I suppose I should have.




We brought the bird out to the porch, we brought the cat too and as I stood there I began to miss the sounds of family. Of my family. Of friends I imagine I should have had sitting at a table covered in spilling late evening sun.










I wondered about you. I pictured you sitting at the table making gawd-awful comments so that I'd choke to death on my pomegranate seven-up; laugh until the tears came and stuffed ourselves full of good food. I wondered about you, and if you get lonely like I do and if you'd like to come. I'd like to think you would have.

Everything tastes different when I eat with the wind through my hair. It makes me feel old. It makes me feel lonely. It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel loved.

This morning as Shawn blearily settled in front of his computer with coffee to await imminent doom in the form of going to work, both of us heard the tail end of a news story about some one trying to get Lethal Injection filed under 'cruel and unusual punishment.'

Shawn and I had a moment where we looked at each other before he declared: "Death by being anally raped by a rhinoceros. Now that would be cruel and unusual."

And now I am running about the house doing house hold things with those words stuck in my head, giggling to myself.

While driving your car and turning a U turn to get onto the right side of a double lane highway, grab your wife's breast and exclaim: "Whoa, almost killed us both just to grab your boob!"

Later on in the afternoon:

While she is in the bathroom brushing her hair, come up behind her and stare at her behind. Then say: "Is your ass getting smaller? I mean, it's all getting...bumicle shaped."

Ladies, eat your heart out.

Sometimes when Shawn is talking to me about any given subject, be it his day at work, his thoughts, this neat thing found on the internets or anything else, I do odd things.

I think my golden moments are when he turns away in mid conversation to do something and I reach down and grab the bottom edge of my shirt. I take the bottom edge and raise it over my head, then, by the time he's turned around to continue talking, I've grabbed my own boobs and have begun to juggle them.

I encourage you to do this next time your S.O. is in a deep, meaningful conversation with you. It helps if you make sound effects, or hum some circus music.

Me: "I should make peanut butter cookies."
Shawn: "Oh, yes. That makes sense. 'Let's eat less. I only ate two Burritos for supper, and now I'm having fiftety cookies.'"
Me: "...Fivety?"
Shawn :"Fivety. It's half of eleventy."

Last night I was feeling my insomnia, so I decided to make a post-it-star plant for Shawn, my husband.

This consists of little post-it notes he bought me eons ago which are shaped like stars. On them, I write silly things or serious things and stick them in his lunch or his pocket for him to find later.

Instead of putting them in his lunch or what not, I decided to stick them to our bathroom mirror, which has also fallen victim to being a platform for us to communicate over with dry erase markers --and afterward, draw stems and leaves from them making the notes look like little flowers.

What I wrote on them isn't important to me. They were little bits of truth or silly things one should say to someone they love occasionally, but the response is what has had me tearing up off and on all day.

"You make everything I do worth doing and you make me a better person."

No one has ever said that to me that I can remember and I cannot possibly tell you how beautiful it is to read, to know.

If you have someone that makes everything worth while, if you have someone that, at the end of the day when you're exhausted, cranky, tired, irritable but makes you smile anyway--tell them. Tell them they make it all worth while and watch them glow.

It's magic.