Celebrating Valentine's Day

For most of our relationship, Scott and I have kept Valentine's day pretty simple — exchanging cards and maybe going out to dinner or giving a small gift. To me, Valentine's Day is kind of like New Year's Eve; it gets really hyped up and if it doesn't live up to those lofty expectations, then it's a failure. Not to sound all anti-establishment, "Valentine's Day is made up by the greeting card company" about it. I do appreciate a day dedicated to celebrating the ones you love, but I try not to build it up too much. Simplicity is best.

My friend Hannah and I were talking about Valentine's Day gifts for our spouses. She and I were both lamenting that the sweet, Pinterest-y ideas out there are completely impractical for husbands because 1) you take all that time, effort, and love to put together a year of dates package or 52 things I love about you book, building up this wonderful gift in your mind only to have 2) your husband smile, say thanks, and put it in a drawer. I'm not saying that Scott wouldn't appreciate the gesture, but these kind of gifts are made by girls with their own girl feelings in mind.

I was reminded of this principle when I told Scott that I had planned on making cinnamon rolls in the shape of hearts (per Pinterest, of course) for breakfast, but I was short on time. "That's OK," he said. "All of the icing would just fall through them onto the pan, and I'd just feel like it was a waste of icing. That's a girl thing anyway. 'Oh, how cute! Let me take a picture for my blog.'"

Yeah, he busted me. And there he summed up the two views on Valentine's Day: the man's ("a waste of icing") and the woman's ("How cute!/Blog!").

So, this year I got him a card from me, a card from Preston, and a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels (his favorite). Simple. There's really nothing on Pinterest that can match how much I love that guy, anyway. It would take all of the mason jars, burlap scraps and Valentine's puns around the world to even try to come close.

How do you celebrate Valentine's Day? Small scale or all out?

Image via Real Simple

Thoughts from the mister: Binge-worthy

Breaking Bad photo, House of Cards photo, Downton Abbey photo, Mad Men photo

Thank you, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc., for bringing binge watching television shows into our already lazy lives. In addition to binge eating, drinking and candy crushing, we can now pass the time watching 30 consecutive episodes of "The Wire." In an effort to put together the ultimate list of binge-worthy shows, I did what any good researcher would do and Googled it. As expected, I came across an article published by the foremost expert in streaming television, the AARP. Yes, the AARP! What else are retired baby boomers to do other than spend hours of their time binge watching the greatest television shows of all time? We all know they worked hard and shored up all that money in their 401K not to travel and see the world or spend more time with their grandkids but to catch up on "Breaking Bad" or see if the new season of "Arrested Development" can live up to the hype. I have to hand it to AARP; their list is a darn good one.

So, if you have some free time on your hands, don’t complete that project you have been meaning to finish for a year or collect coats for the needy, sit down with feet up and enjoy these 10 binge-worthy shows:

1. Breaking Bad
2. House of Cards
3. Downton Abbey
4. Mad Men
5. The Wire
6. ER
7. Homeland
8. The Sopranos
9. Friday Night Lights
10. Arrested Development 

To read the full article, go to http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/television/info-10-2013/10-great-tv-series-to-binge-watch.3.html.

Getting to know Scott

This is Scott's admissions office photo, and it's one of the few where I've seen him genuinely smile. It's a good smile.

After laughing hysterically at Katie's post about her husband, Nate, I knew I had to do the same to Scott. I mean, when is annoying your husband with questions for your blog not fun? Here's a little about the man of the house.

(My comments are in bold.)

What is your current profile picture? 

A picture of me and Preston with you cut out of the picture. 
Thanks for that. 
Oh, no, it's us at the zoo. I changed it.

What is your middle name? 
You know what my middle name is. 

What is your current mood? 

Exasperated. I don't like this.

If you could go back and change something about your past, what would it be? 

Coming to college with a girlfriend.

So you could mack on all the ladies?

I'm not falling for these subquestions. To explore opportunities; let's put it like that.

Maybe I shouldn't change that, though, because then we might not have ended up together.

Do you have a crazy side?

No. No, I don't. I'm pretty consistent and like things around me to be consistent. 

What are you writing? I don't think you're writing what I'm saying.

(I was.)

Have you ever had a near death experience? 

I don't think so.

What about the time you were stung by all those bees?

Oh, yeah. The yellow jackets. I was 3 or 4 and picked up an anchor next to the garage, and it busted the hive open. My great-grandmother had me in the backseat of the car pulling the stickers out of my face on the way to the hospital.

(This led to a discussion on great-grandparents, which I've cut for time.)

Whom do you look up to? 

My grandfather because regardless of the consequences or if someone would pay him back, he would help anybody. That could have a positive outcome or it could mean someone drove off in a truck he'd help cosign on the loan. He never expected anything in return.

Do you still watch kid movies or television shows, and if so, which ones?

No. 

You didn't really watch kid stuff as a kid, though.

If a good kid movie came on though, I'd watch it.

Like what?

Mighty Ducks!

(Followed by his best Hans impression.)

If you had one wish, what would you ask for? 

I would wish to not have to wish.

Then just don't wish.

OK, my first inclination is to wish for money, but I feel bad about wishing for money. So I wish for money with built in stipulations.

Like what?

If I don't have to work, then I have to spend my time helping out someone. The money is to free myself up to help other people.

I would just wish to fly like Peter Pan.

Ooh! And teleportation!

Can you sum up your life in a word? 

I can't think of one word, but I can think of a phrase. I'm a glass half full guy (No you aren't!), but it's still only half full. 

Uncertain? No, that sounds like you're going to die. 

Don't put that. And don't write that.

Acceptable. This is the longest "one word" answer. 
Routine.

What is your eye color? 

Blue.

What was the last movie in you went to in a theater? 

Gravity.

Do you have a favorite store? 

Store? I thought you said "storm." Monsoon.

But favorite store, it's a tie between William Sonoma and any privately owned men's store.

Snob. (Mocking tone) "I like high-ended kitchen supplies and preppy Southern wear."

If you could live anywhere, where would it be? 

Charleston, S.C. or ... 

(After several minutes deliberation) OK, it's not an exam. 

Hey! I just want to think about my options.

Have you changed much since high school? 

Yes. Bald and fat. (No!) Write it down.

Have you ever slapped someone? 

Probably

Who?

I don't know, I'm just going to say probably.

Would you like to? 

In my current maturity, I'll say no; I can think of much better ways to punish someone. 

That sounds diabolical.

Who is your favorite author? 

Anybody who writes screenplays.
You don't read.

I do like Julia Reed, though.

What did you read? 

Queen of the Turtle Derby

Pick a sitcom character whom you relate to: 

Chandler from "Friends." Broken home, married a girl outside of my league, a little nerdy, use humor as a defense mechanism, but still cool enough to hang with the group. And I tend to fluctuate in my weight and Chandler seemed to.

But that's because Matthew Perry was on drugs.

It's not because of drugs.

What is your happiest moment? 

Preston being born and showing him to you for the first time.

Where do you want to be five years from now? 

I just want to be somewhere. 

I don't like to think about the future. Whenever I plan it, it always turns out differently.

Do you have a phobia? 

Not really, do I?

(He doesn't.)

Do you have a weird quirk? 

I probably do, but I can't think of anything specific.

What about having to have the cereal boxes with the nutrition facts facing out?

That's not a quirk. That's just correct.

What is your favorite thing about me? 

I see what this is. It's a lot of questions to throw me off guard 
then you ask the one you really want the answer to. 
You're very tenderhearted and a very caring person.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what three things would you bring?

A TV, you and Preston, and a couch.

No way to get off the island or some means of survival?

No, that sounds pretty good.

What is a great weekend to you? 

TV, you and Preston, and a couch

What is your favorite color?  

Blue. No, red. Blue. Red? I don't know.

What is your favorite breakfast meal? 

Bacon, eggs, biscuits and gravy. Can't go wrong with that.

Thanks for indulging me.

Thanks for ruining my day.

White Christmas

A white Christmas in the South is a rarity, so dreaming of one is about as close as I can get. This year though, we not only got to celebrate Preston's first Christmas but a snowy one, too. As soon as the flakes started falling, we quickly gathered outside to watch it transform everything into a winter wonderland. It was one of the highlights of our Christmas, and Preston loved to look at the change of scenery. 

Scott, Preston and I enjoyed our long break together — lazy mornings, pajama living, and lots of new flashing, singing toys thanks to grandmas and great-grandmas. 

I hope you had a merry Christmas, too!

(Photos: 1 & 5. Scott and my sightseeing expedition //2. First look// 3. Bundled up//4. It's snowing!)

Thankful for Scott

Home Bible study, 2006: Where we first met

To celebrate the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I thought I'd start a little "thankful for" series where I can share (and remind myself of) all the blessings God has provided.

I thought I'd start of today with Scott. Nov. 1 is an important day for us — it's the day we began dating seven years ago. He was, quite literally, the answer to my prayers.

I came into my freshman year at Harding with wide eyes and dreams of finding the one. Having dated no one in high school, this was the place where I'd find my future mister. Obviously, he was going to be the very first guy I dated in college, and, when that very first guy I dated in college dumped me a month later, I was heartbroken — probably (definitely) more than I needed to be.

Crying on my little twin bed in Sears dorm, I prayed that I would never be dumped again. I asked God for the next person I dated to be the last person I dated, even if that meant I had to wait until I was 40.

A month or two into sophomore year, I met Scott. When we'd been dating a couple of months, I remembered that prayer. I don't know why, but I was surprised that God had actually listened to that weepy prayer of a over-dramatic girl, and that he had sent me exactly what I needed.

So, here we are, seven years later. We've been through job changes, going to school, house buying, having a baby, and the small minutia of daily life. There is no one who I'd rather have by my side, as my best friend, husband, and father to our son.

I'm so thankful that God listened to my prayer and how wonderfully he provided for me — and that it didn't take until I was 40 after all.

First comes love, then comes marriage ...

Four years ago I was incredibly blessed to say "I do" to the love of my life. Marriage has been a crazy journey with ups and downs, ultimately falling more in love with the person I pledged forever to in the beginning. I know in April when "then comes baby in the baby carriage" will change it all the more, but I am so excited about what parenting holds and am glad to have Scott as my baby daddy. 

As a fun little walk down memory lane, here are a few pictures of Scott and me and our years together. 

Left: Scott meets the parents. (2006) / Right: My social club ring ceremony. We're engaged! (2006)

Left: Engagement photo (2007) / Right: We finally said "I do!" (2007)

Left: Honeymooning in Jamaica (2007) / Right: We graduated! (2008)

Left: Our first house (2009) / Right: Scott is now a master of business (2011)

Left: We'd just found out a couple of weeks before that we were going to be parents (2011) / Right: Now we're anxiously awaiting our little boy's arrival!

I can't wait to see what the next years bring, and I look forward to a lifetime of standing next to this man in all of those pictures!

(P.S. Last year's anniversary post.)

River Market rendezvous

This Thursday is Scott and my fourth anniversary. To celebrate, Scott surprised me this past Friday with a one-night getaway to Little Rock for dinner with "none other than your dashing husband," as my email invitation read. The invitation also told me that my gray Toyota "limo" was leaving at 5:45 and that I was to be packed and ready to go by then. 

My handsome date for the evening//The Christmas tree in the lobby of the Capitol Hotel

When we arrived in Little Rock, we checked in to our hotel and walked down the block to dinner at Ashley's in the Capitol Hotel. Everything we ate was delicious, especially the steak I got, which had to be well done. (As a former medium rare girl whose major pregnancy craving is red meat, I'm always overjoyed to find a place that can cook it to my pregnancy-required temperature and not having it eat like shoe leather.) The next morning, we slept in, went to lunch at the Flying Fish, then did some shopping before we headed home.

It was a great escape to galavant downtown, linked arm-in-arm with my favorite person, and feel like we were city dwellers for a day.

Ashley's window decked out for Christmas//River Market view

Duty calls

Some call it your civic duty, others call it torture, but whatever you call jury duty, it's seldom looked at as an exciting event. Scott got his notice in the mail last week and, compounded with the ongoing car saga, exclaimed, "Why do bad things keep happening to us?"

So he's off to the courthouse this morning, trying his best to look like an unfriendly potential juror. I suggested he pull a Liz Lemon.



Do you have any jury duty horror stories? How do you attempt to get out of it?

Thoughts from the mister: Some like it hot

Scott enjoyed blogging so much last time that he thought he'd do it again. This time it's all about his latest love affair with TABASCO. Enjoy!

Would you believe me if I told you that I devour a bottle of TABASCO brand pepper sauce every month? Well, it’s true. As of late, it seems that no food is complete with a dash or two or three of TABASCO. The spicy and vinegary sauce delights my taste buds and awakens my mouth, providing a much loved Southern Creole comfort. Whether you are sitting down to a platter of a dozen oysters or a warm bowl of pinto beans and cornbread, TABASCO must somehow find its way on to your plate. It always finds its way onto mine.

Some Like Its History
According to family tradition, Original TABASCO brand pepper sauce was created in the mid-to-late 1860s by Edmund McIlhenny. A food lover and avid gardener, McIlhenny was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that had come from Mexico or Central America. On Avery Island in south Louisiana, he sowed the seeds, nurtured the plants, and delighted in the spicy flavor of the peppers they bore.

The diet of the Reconstruction South was bland and monotonous, especially by Louisiana standards. So Edmund McIlhenny decided to create a pepper sauce to give the food some spice and flavor — some excitement. Selecting and crushing the reddest peppers from his plants, he mixed them with Avery Island salt and aged this “mash” for 30 days in crockery jars and barrels. McIlhenny then blended the mash with French white wine vinegar and aged the mixture for at least another 30 days. After straining it, he transferred the sauce to small cologne-type bottles with sprinkler fitments, which he then corked and sealed in green wax.

More than 140 years later, TABASCO Sauce is made much the same way except now the aging process for the mash is longer — up to three years in white oak barrels and the vinegar is high quality distilled vinegar (www.tabasco.com).

What a day

Well, here's the car. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but it's definitely not in the condition I last saw it.

Despite the stress of the car wreck, we actually had a nice evening. At about 4:45 the body shop called and said that the tow truck driver and failed to get the car key from Scott and therefore we needed to go back to Little Rock and drop it off. We loaded up in our little rental (a roller-skate otherwise known as a Chevy Cobalt) and headed back.

Once we dropped of the key, we decided we needed to do something fun, so we went to Pei Wei (not Taco Bell) for dinner. It was nice to feel like we were out for a special reason (since dinner in Little Rock is a special event) in the midst of a trying day. When we opened our fortune cookies, we got a nice reminder that things weren't really that bad.

Yet another reminder that the car is just a thing, that we have God and each other, and that is just what we need. Plus, the wreck was an "unexpected event," so maybe we'll be getting some riches out of that?

Afterward, I decided Scott needed some cheering up, so we went to his favorite place on earth — The Container Store, a veritable heaven on earth for Type-A's. We then headed home, playing our version of "Name That Tune" with Cranium's Humdinger rules. (If your not familiar with the game Cranium or its Humdinger cards, let me explain. You've got to get your partner to guess the song by only humming or whistling. It can be quite difficult based on the song or the hummer.) Scott boasted about his whistling skills, while mine were less than great. It's hard to whistle when you're laughing. I do think I did a pretty great rendition of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So," though.

There's an Italian Renaissance idea of romance called sprezzatura. It means that you find the romance in your ordinary life. (I'd like to say that I learned this from my studies in Italian culture or through reading the manuscripts of ancient Italian philosophers, but, alas, I learned it from Ames on "The Bachelorette.") I realized that last night in the car coming home, laughing and whistling and enjoying our night despite the fact the morning had been so difficult. That's why I can say that yesterday was a good day.

Things

I chide Scott when he forgets to call or text me on the days he drives to Little Rock. I just like to know he's made it there safely. Usually I take the "no news is good news" approach and let it go. This morning as he left I said, "Try to call me if you remember." He replied, "I'll try; I'll try." I took that as a "I probably won't."

When my phone rang, I was surprised he actually remembered, even more so that he was calling and not the usual "Here." text message. His first words were not what I expected. "I've been in a wreck," he said. "I'm fine, but the car is in bad shape." Even though I clearly heard the words "I'm fine," the tears had already started falling. Just the idea that he was stranded an hour away from me and could've been hurt was too much. I felt helpless. After giving me the details, he hung up to call the police, and I prayed a quick prayer of thanksgiving that it was only the car and not something much, much worse.

Between tow trucks, insurance agents, body shops and car rentals, I was reminded that these are just things — silly, small, trivial things that mean nothing in the grand scheme of it all. I didn't care that his coffee had rained down a sticky, staining mess in the interior or that the car might be completely totaled. All that mattered was that Scott wasn't hurt and that God had protected him. That's all that matters. I'm so incredibly thankful for that.

Thoughts from the mister: My egg obsession

I'm shocked that I'm about to type these words, but today Scott is guest posting. Yes, my Scott. The man who eschews all things technological and that are therefore somehow intrusive to his private life, the one whose Facebook I created, who grumbled whenever I'd text him, and whose eyes roll when I talk about my blog. That Scott. So sit down and try to savor this moment. It's like a rare astronomical event — who knows if or when it will happen again.

As a kid I preferred my eggs scrambled with an abundance of cheese. I eventually grew into eating them fried, but, at my request, my mother would mangle the yolk and cook it into oblivion. I don’t actually remember the first time I indulged in a runny yolk, but to my matured tongue it must have been a revelation. These days I enjoy an egg on anything. Seriously anything. Fried, poached, or soft boiled, an egg is the perfect topping. Who needs a sauce when it can be replaced with a rich and viscous egg yolk? Chef and food writer Anthony Bourdin has proudly called himself an “egg slut,” and I would make the same observation of myself.

During a recent visit to Oxford, Miss., Jennifer and I enjoyed a fabulous meal at James Beard-award-winning Chef John Currence’s nightspot Snackbar. I indulged in the Duck Confit Croque Monsieur. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the French classic, croque monsieur is the French version of a hot ham and cheese sandwich, made with a gruyere béchamel sauce and ham, served on toasted bread. Currence’s version replaces the ham with duck confit and includes the addition of homemade pickles.

At Snackbar the Duck Confit Croque is offered two ways, Monsieur and Madame — Monsieur being the classic way and Madame adding a runny, fried egg. Yes, I said it, a runny, fried egg. The Madame was something I could not pass up. The dish was spot on in both flavor and texture, delivering a hearty richness with the duck and egg and balanced with the fresh tart pickles and whole grain mustard. The meal was an egg lovers dream, and my compliments to Currence on his reinterpretation of the French classic.

There is something magical about the maturing and changing of taste buds, allowing the discovery of new foods and new food obsessions. As far as my taste buds go, I know which came first between the chicken and the egg, and I am so happy that my taste buds chose the best for last. For those of you that live scrabbled and hard lives, loosen up! Take a chance on the beautiful uncompromised joy of a runny egg. Your taste buds might surprise you, giving birth to a food obsession.