poka bean

fall in my neighborhood

Posted by Poka Bean at 9:01 AM 2 comments

the truth revealed

I was given the strangest compliment of all time yesterday. Whilst reaching out to sign my name on a receipt at the grocery store, the young adolescent male behind the check stand gasped and proclaimed "WOW, you have BEAUTIFUL fingers!" with such unbridled enthusiasm I thought he might just don lederhosen and begin frolicking about the Austrian hillside singing The Hills Are Alive.

Now, this compliment was odd for two reasons. First of all because what teenage boy thinks to say that to a woman he doesn't know, and with such glee? And secondly because it's categorically untrue.

See, my fingers aren't beautiful, friends. They're freakish. My fingernails grow upwards instead of down. I keep them nice and short in hopes their true nature won't be revealed and scare away all the nice people. And I have a horrible habit of picking at my cuticles. Badly. Viciously. Daily and nightly and ever-so-rightly. So much so that they are often bloody and scabbed over and torn to pieces. So much so that Emily gave me regular lectures in the days of our roommate-hood and regularly hid my cuticle clippers because I abuse them as though they are an addictive drug. I am a helpless junkie in desperate need of rehab.

But the real kicker is not my fingernails nor my cuticles. Not at all. The real issue here is my actual fingers and their abnormal bendy-ness. It's the fact that my thumbs look like this:





See that top picture? When I give Jon backrubs, I use the part of my thumbs that's pointing UP to dig into his knots, not the tip of my thumb like you "normal" people might. I'm much more effective that way.

My other fingers are also ridiculously stretchy and bendy but my thumbs are definitely the most notable. They're just a little special something I inherited from my dad and while I'm not ashamed of them - nay, I'm down right PROUD - I'm not so dilusional as to think they are "beautiful" by normal-people standards.

Apparently passing an eye exam is not required for employment at the grocery store and that's fine by me. I'll take the compliment cause it's the one and only time I'm going to get it.

Posted by Poka Bean at 7:33 PM 4 comments

get happy

If this face doesn't melt your heart, then you don't have one.
A heart, that is. Not a face.

My nephew is the coolest kid on the planet. Props to my sis for birthing such a stud.

Posted by Poka Bean at 5:24 PM 5 comments

home sweet home

It's SO good to be home. Staying in a really pretty house with all the lavish amenities we do not enjoy in our own place was nice and all but by Day 2 we were already ready to move back into our own space.

It's amazing how quickly we've adjusted to living on top of each other in our tiny place. The first morning we woke up in our friends' house this past week I was stricken with the saddest puppydog face you can imagine and instantly said to Jon, WHERE WERE YOU ALL NIGHT? Their bed was HUGE in comparison to ours and he was so far away from me that quite frankly I'm not entirely sure he was even in the bed at all. Cuddling is BY FAR the best part of marriage and the California King does not lend itself well to The Cuddle. We are sticking with the queen-size bed for awhile. For sure.

Later that morning we realized we were both really grouchy not only because we had been geographically separated for so long but because it had taken us so much longer to get ready. On account of all THE WALKING. There is so much walking BACK AND FORTH, BACK AND FORTH, BACK AND FORTH when you don't live in a tiny space. In our studio, I have but to pivot on one foot to have every article of clothing, toiletry, cleaning supply, grocery, linen closet item, dvd, book, and cd that we own within my reach. Of course, I do have abnormally long arms, but still.

When we moved back home today, though, I was so inspired by the deep down cleanliness of the house we'd been staying in that a major cleaning and organization binge was inevitable. And the first order of business was to put on our bed skirt...something Jon didn't even know existed when he moved our bed in a few months ago all by himself and thus it has sat forlorn in the corner for many moons as I am not brawny enough to lift our matress and put it on by myself. I have been begging him for three months now to please help me put the bedskirt on because I cannot STAND to look at all that crap we have stored under our bed anymore but somehow the bedskirt task has been avoided repeatedly. So at last we put it on and you would've thought Jesus had returned by the way I was REJOICING and seeing bright lights and hearing angelic music but alas, Jon did not share my joy. He "doesn't get it." What's not to get? How can that eyesore of a junk collection beneath our bed not make you want to claw your face off with your own fingernails and then feed it to the dog? What part of finally covering it up with a lovely and nicely pressed piece of white cotton so that we can now trick the world into thinking we are clean, tidy, non-junk hoarding people does NOT make you want to jump up and down and squeal like a schoolgirl?

Men. Seriously! I do NOT get them.

Nonetheless, I ought to wrap this up. It's time for ice cream and a movie and then we've got to go to bed. We have a week's worth of cuddling to make up for so obviously, we have our work cut out for us.

Posted by Poka Bean at 7:51 PM 4 comments

bon voyage

We're housesitting for friends this week. Friends with a beautiful home. Friends with a black-bottom pool, a jacuzzi and a whirlpool bathtub. Friends with cable TV and TiVo.

SING GLORY, HALLELUJAH, AMEN!

So, in the event you don't hear from me for the next fews days, chances are I'm too busy pretending to be on vacation to sit down and post anything for the likes of you.

I suppose there's a chance I'll have time to write but just in case, I'm posting this pre-emptive warning lest I receive more hate mail from certain someones threatening to take me off their "must-read" list because I've gone missing for a spell. Certain someones who happen to be notably and uncharacteristically absent from the scene the last several days. Ahem.

So I bid you adieu and promise to bring back stories from paradise...the place where swimming and soaking and asking JON, WHERE ARE YOU? are actually possible since the walls within which we'll be residing span farther than arms reach. Totally rad.

Posted by Poka Bean at 8:12 PM 3 comments