Soup

Try to keep up. I feel like writing, not editing, so read at your own risk...

Sitting in the cafeteria in Fred Meyer today, thumbing through an American Classified to stay occupied since all of the Boise Weekly's were gone and the only newspaper in sight was coated in what appeared to be that divine mixture of ketchup and mustard so suited to corn dogs. I remember a classified called The Thrifty Nickel, and now I'm wondering if that classified still exists and if so has it changed its name to keep up with inflation?

Page three of the American Classified. Section: People Meeting People. Advertisement/Entry: "All you can eat buffet. Come experience the best buffet in the Northwest, menu changing every Thursday". A way to meet people? Odd. Brilliant. But perhaps true, certainly a buffet would provide more chance to interact than my habitual tub of cottage cheese and small bag of assorted nuts. But this is why I come to Fred Meyer for lunch every day, to spend my allotted 30-minute break keeping to myself and bracing for the second half of the work day. I prefer not to interact much, plowing through periodicals or people watching through the large windows facing east toward the foothills. Said windows also face a row of five or six handicap parking spaces, which (and I know I know I may burn in hell for this) really provide entertainment on certain days, as myriad individuals that perhaps should not be driving try to maneuver over-sized and antiquated Skylarks and Eldorados between the baby-blue lines, like watching the Titanic coming in too hot to an iced-over bay and trying to split NFL-regulation goal posts canted 60-degrees out of whack. Spectacular (though relatively non-damaging) events guaranteed daily. In short, the 30-minutes goes fast; before I realize it my tub is empty, the trail-mix contents reduced to red, papery husks and crystallized fructose raisin "crystals", a smile back on my face (or at least the morning scowl subsided) and I am ready to return to work.

Speaking of food, and this is by far, hands down, THE most random segue you will ever hear, my beautiful wife is roughly five weeks pregnant. Holy shit! We found out roughly two weeks ago. Here's how it went down:

Tuesday October 13, 11:15AM: Calvin receives phone call at work. He and Lauren chit-chat for maybe three minutes about the weather (literally) and agree to meet around 12:30PM for lunch. The phone call ends and Calvin returns to the computer CAD nerdery that is his life.

Tuesday October 13, 11: 21AM: Calvin feels a tap on his shoulder, swivels around in his office chair, and finds Lauren standing in the cubicle with an oddly blank (yet I dare say coy) look on her face. Before Calvin can inquire about Lauren's presence (wha? why? b but, when?) Lauren slaps some sort of object down onto the desk, something roughly the size of a pen enclosed in a sandwich bag. Then (and I am not sure of this exact sequence as time and space managed to melt into a mild-altering color wheel of condensed plasticized LSD dreams) Calvin realized he was looking at a pregnancy test, two blue lines, and Lauren simultaneously saying "I'm pregnant".

Tuesday October 13, 11:22AM: Like an idiot, Calvin is speechless for much too long, finally managing to blurt out something like "let's go outside!", then spends the next fifteen minutes smooching all over his cherished wife (mother-to-be) and trying to explain that the delay in response was out of blissful shock and not disappointed shock. Mission accomplished, the two ride off into the sunset*.

*This part is a lie. Calvin turned 180-degrees and entered back into the salt mines, not to emerge again for another six hours. Lauren returned home with song birds on her shoulders, squirrels holding up her trailing gown, and several fawns and rabbits prancing merrily behind the Saab (which got a little iffy on the freeway connector but overall had the effect desired).

And now back to that atrociously disjointed segue. Food. Lauren is NOT having those weird food cravings, but IS having those weird food repulsions. Poor thing has been extremely nauseous every day for the last ten days and has lost a couple pounds instead of gaining them. My job is to wait patiently for her to finish being sick, then to start rattling off every dish I know how to prepare (from Cheerios to pancakes to fancy-pants soups) until something sounds, how should I say, not appealing but rather tolerable to her sensitive palate.

Somewhere in all of this, last Friday to be exact, I drew the short straw at work and was "nominated" to go to China THIS Friday. I begrudgingly agreed, but by Sunday night it was blatantly clear that I needed to put my foot down and ask for a "get out of a China-trip free" card. Lauren and I were sitting on the floor in the bathroom, she sick, both of us damn-near crying; it's never been more clear what I needed to do, and I sent off an email that very night alerting my boss to the need for a meeting to reconsider my roll in the upcoming factory visit.

It is true I've been struggling at work, but the reaction of my boss and workmates (including the mate who drew the now second-shortest straw and had to go in my place) went light years toward improving my attitude. It wasn't a perfect situation, as there was obviously a touch of awkwardness, but I think all will be fine. So, now I'll be here. More than anything I just want Lauren to stop yakking, it's excruciating to hear her heaving and realize how miserable that makes you feel.

My roll: dishes/laundry/shopping/cleaning/errand boy. I'm trying to do my best but inadvertently drop the ball every now and again. This evening, for example, I went ahead and re-heated some curried butternut squash soup from earlier in the week. Lauren, asleep upstairs in the loft, came running down and practically projectile vomited into the toilet. Oops. We want for a little walk around Camels Back park yesterday and I brought along a mini-thermos of coffee w/ hazelnut cream. Again, oops. I'm learning, though it's like fumbling blindly through a labyrinth with ever-shifting walls.

We have our second doctor's appointment tomorrow, 11AM. The sonar images from the last visit showed a modest (yet encouraging and healthy) little sack well-secured to the uterus wall, but it was so early that the developing Calvinito (or Calvinette, though that sounds like trailer-trash-kitchenware) was all but invisible. We asked "how big, like a grain of rice?" and were told it was smaller than that. Lauren and I agreed it must be perhaps the size of a cous cous granule, or maybe half that which we called a (single) cous. So tomorrow, we'll see how far our little cous has come, perhaps trading the title to KB (kidney bean) or maybe even BB (butterbean). At this point, for me, it's surreal and hasn't fully sunk in. I mean, I'm going to be a dad!? What the!? Holy freaking rad. Holy freaking rad.

Disjointed entries rule! I hope you enjoyed reading this, I'm glad I wrote it all down.

Rain

Fall has arrived, no wait now it's gone and winter has arrived. I would have to look at the calendar, as I can not seem to remember the exact day that Fall officially commenced, but I can look out the window to affirm that Summer has indeed passed and is sorely missed already.

The rain started sometime early yesterday afternoon, first with a few random drops spread over three or four hours then finally a committed gushing around seven o'clock. It has not stopped since. The water is much welcomed; Boise has been quite dry since the beginning of June. I'm hoping to get out for a ride if I can shoot the gap between storm cells this afternoon, but I'm not holding my breath. Oh, gotta run, Lauren's rolling out of bed...

Later (two days later!): The rain kept coming but I managed to get that ride in. I rode out Hill Road to the cemetery, relishing the crisp clean air, marveling at the sight of my own foggy breath and dodging downed branches in flooded storm drains. I'd yet to feel raindrops so I pushed my luck, pedaling straight past my doorstep en route to Warm Springs Avenue on the east side of Boise. I made it to the Botanical Gardens when my luck ran out and the skies opened back up. The rain wasn't torrential, nothing like, say, Thailand in terms of flow-rate, but holy geez the temperature was a bit chilly for my taste. Not to mention I was wearing some heavily insulated but poorly-water-repellent clothing that essentially turned into a swamp cooler once saturated. I was ready for some soup when I finally got home.

Fortunately soup was waiting. Lauren and I hit the Saturday Market and picked up (nearly) all the makings of beef stew: market fresh potatoes of all variety and color, shallots, purple onions, and baby carrots. Combined with our own garden's contribution of rosemary, sage, thyme, yellow tomatoes, and parsley, the only store-bought item was the large chunk of beef purchased from Albertsons. In short the stew was amazing, satisfying to feel so connected to the food you eat. Nice to connect with Lauren so much this weekend. She and I have been on different pages lately; or perhaps the same page in different books, I dunno.

This coming week is looking better for, well, getting my head screwed on straight. The only hiccup I'm bracing for (blindly) is the release of my pops from jail. Won't go into that now, but I expect it to be challenging no matter what; challenging if things revert to hell, challenging if he finally comes 'round, so to say. Asi es la vida. In the big picture, I'm doing well at staying so friggin' busy I don't have time to think about life in too much detail; working a main job, doing a smidge of side work, and building/repairing bikes for amigos. Along those lines, wait until you see Greg's new road bike. Sha-bamm.

All right then. Oh, as sort of an ode to a summer passed (since it's raining, er, nearly snowing outside now), here's a wicked panorama I took and stitched from our July visit to Alaska. Paradise.