"February is a suitable month for dying." - Anna Quindlen, One True Thing

So, I'm not super clear as to where February went. The calendar gods have always seen fit to throw in this ridiculous month which is fraught with problems...fewer days, and then MORE if it's a Leap Year which solves the problem of the Lunar Calendar vs. the Gregorian Calendar. Or that's what I gather from having read about it for .02 seconds on Wikipedia. Then my brain exploded.

February was exceedingly full. We went to Mexico, came back and had Valentine's Day, which Marc and I both completely forgot about and celebrated by having Cory over for dinner and watching Hurt Locker. And then the following week was spent executing the precarious dance that was arranging Marc's 40th birthday surprise party (which was nearly ruined by a wintery storm in which rain drops the size of dinner plates were falling out of the sky...I went outside and screamed STOP IT! STOP BEING SO STUPID AND ILL TIMED, WEATHER! [I said some other salty things too, if I'm being honest] And what do you know? It did! Stop, that is. Just for one day, but that was all I required.) (Otherwise, the party went off without a problem! I highly recommend marrying a gullible man if you can arrange it...it makes these kind of things SO much easier! Hi honey!), and then I've spent the past week recovering from said party and so here we are, on the cusp of March.

It was difficult to come home from Mexico. Because it looked like this:

And was filled with many of these:

Which made us oh so happy and content and lo! Full of much glee! See?

I highly, HIGHLY recommend this kind of escape during the cold months. Normally I would spend February in a mid-winter funk, wanting only to watch tv without my pants on, and then do productive things like whine about how cold I am. I'd don the same, pilly sweatshirt that I swear I've had since the day I was born and retreat to a quiet corner of the house, which happens to be our arctic bedroom and is full of annoying things like laundry that requires folding and random detritus that needs to be put away. But in February, it's easier to kick all of that to the side and hide under my duvet until something nicer, like Spring, comes along. So see, you were saved all of that by our timely trip to the tropics. You're welcome. We'll have to do this every year, even if we have to sell a couple of kidneys to make it happen.

To the one I love

We have finally returned from a week in Mexico. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I entered the airport last Friday in a cold sweat of worry and trepidation. We had not embarked on a vacation like this - one so purely decadent that catered solely to my love of lying on a flat surface with a cocktail in hand - since our honeymoon. While I have many advanced degrees in Being Quiet & Still for seemingly endless stretches of time, Marc is of the WHAT ARE WE DOING TODAY THAT WILL TAKE MY HEART RATE HIGHER THAN WHAT IS RECOMMENDED BY THE HEALTH PROFESSION AT LARGE school of thought. And yes, he speaks in all caps. To say our definition of what qualifies as a "vacation" differs at best. And because of this, because of the hyperactivity and the need to MOVE AROUND ALL OF THE TIME, we have schlepped thirty pound packs up very high peaks, woken at dawn to climb things that we were perhaps just meant to be observed from sea level and hanged out over precipices that made me finally demand a life insurance policy.

To quiet the noise in Marc's head requires a dose of activity that the normal person would perish just to listen to. The noise in my head, however, is easily shut off with a margarita and a view of the sea. Marc, perhaps seeing some sort of desperation beginning to cloud my vision came home one day and announced that we were going to Mexico. To lie very, very still. I wept with joy. And so for the past week, my head has been blissfully peaceful. I have spent hours gazing out at the deep blue ocean and my troubles seemed to wash out with the tide. It was the healing balm I needed.

And Marc? My nerves about him being able to enjoy a vacation like this and not drive us into some sort of argument that would include my yelling "O MY GOD CAN'T YOU JUST ENJOY THE TROPICS LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING???" and him throwing himself off of the balcony? It would seem that having access to a gym, several Tecates at lunch, an afternoon nap and sufficient quiet time with his wife were enough to keep him from committing hara-kiri with a broken beer bottle. I was shocked! The man only naps when he is sick, or I am sick and he is faking the same symptoms. But the time together? I don't know that we have had anything like that in years.

Marriage is a funny thing. In the space of a day you can feel like bashing your spouses skull against a very sharp object and then make love to them that evening in a way that communicates that you will never, ever let them go, despite having wanted to induce threatening trauma to their heads earlier. Mexico, in its infinite beauty, in its slowness, its blue blue sea and rocky sand and beautiful stray dogs that I always had to stop and pet afforded me the peace of mind that allowed me to fall in love with my husband all over again. Not that I was out of it, mind you. I just had the space and time to appreciate all over again why we were HERE, here with one another, in the first place. And I reckon these re-births happen continually over the course of a life together, but this one is mine and is covered in sand and lime and beautiful sunsets and endless sleep and looking over at his smiling brown eyes and being flooded with that rush of knowledge that I did a good, an excellent thing, by saying yes to this version of my life so many years ago.

And so we come home and unpack and pet our dog who will ignore me for the first 24 hours because I dared leave her. And we will fall asleep in our own bed tonight and wake up tomorrow to schedules and bills and unanswered emails. And I'll go upstairs to fold the seemingly endless trail of laundry that follows me wherever I go and perhaps some sand will fall out of an undisturbed pocket or my collar will chafe against the sunburn I carry on my neck or Marc will look up at me, over his newspaper and I'll remember how deeply he slept every afternoon, waking with the imprints of the sheets creasing his face. And I'll be happy.

This life. It is more than enough.

And while I hate Costco, technology hates me

So there was this moment last week wherein I realized that I hadn't written in a while. And so I sat down to do so and had a few funny stories going. I just needed to import them from Word and then push that handy little "PUBLISH" button. But then this little thing kept flashing on my Mac dashboard...something about computer updates and I was all, "Oh, I should probably do that!" since once, I hadn't updated in, like, MONTHS, and Marc was using my computer and was all, "WHY IS THIS THING SO SLOW?" and I was all, "I don't know...because it's TIRED?" And then he checked and realized that the software was SIX MONTHS OLD which we all know means that I might as well be etching my posts on stone tablets. And I was all, "What? I like marble!" and he shook his head in disbelief that his wife, who grew up in Silicon Valley could be so horribly inept at computer maintenance and then my eyes glazed over and I went and made a cup of tea and he solved the problem and I yelled, "YOU MEAN I CAN RUN SEVERAL APPLICATIONS AT A TIME WITHOUT THE SPINNING WHEEL OF DEATH APPEARING?"

And then he fell over and died. Of frustration and defeat. It was sad. But my tea was good.

SO! Having learned the hard way, I went to update my software, not really paying attention to what I was doing because Jersey Shore was playing on mtv.com, and The Situation was talking about the crucial aspects of GTL. And all of a sudden, my computer went black and SHUT DOWN. Apparently, I had given it permission to do so, as it started up right away again. BUT! ALL POSTS WERE LOST. I hadn't saved them. Or I think that's what happened. It's hard to say. I spent a lot of time tapping my screen going, "HELLO ARE YOU IN THERE?" but nothing appeared except my screen saver so I'm assuming they are permanently lost, at least to me.

And that is why I haven't posted in a while. I'm mourning the loss of all of those typed words that are no more.