Wild wild weekend

I have felt oddly content and one with the world all weekend. Our financial planner is proud of us and we're getting life insurance on the Hubster, which is the last piece of the puzzle in terms of what we were supposed to start up, and our little IRAs are picking up steam. I went to Trader Joe's and discovered that they have pepper-rubbed (and, based on how it turned out, nicely brined) pork tenderloin, which my Hub broiled on each side and then covered and let the heat left in the iron pan cook it gently the rest of the way; it turned out GORGEOUS, perfectly done, not a bit of dry. Also picked up a wee bit of steak, which is enough for us now that we're both eating much smaller portions of the red stuff. I got fresh broccoli, broccoli rabe, and zucchini, too, and informed my Hub that it is his sworn duty to make sure that we use them for dinner ASAP.

This is going to sound very odd, but I had the greatest celery last night. I chopped some celery sticks up for a veggie side to my cold pork mid-meal, and was startled to discover how it tasted. It might be that going off sugar is adjusting my tastebuds, or that I've gone mental, but I swear that I haven't tasted celery like this before. It was peppery and tart and had a strangely sweet smell to it. I became verbally enthusiastic over it and my Hub decided that I had gone insane. What the hell, as long as I like it, right?

I am utterly in love with Kathleen Daelmanns' cookbooks again, having tried out another one of the recipes therein. I may have mentioned this before-- it's a shrimp, cucumber, mango and black bean salad, with a lot of garlic and ginger and phenomenal Asian tastes to it. I made it again yesterday and this time I upped the amount of cucumber and mango, and cut out the olive oil (which hadn't, as far as I could tell, done a damn thing for the flavor in the original recipe). EXCELLENT. I'm going to try another new-to-me recipe from her books tonight, a broccoli-spaghetti fritatta with parmesan cheese on top. My Hub is thus far dubious, but we agree that thus far all the ingredients are things that we like, so we might as well give it a shot.

There has been an ongoing argument re: dinner at our household. The whole reason that we switched our work hours was so that we'd be home earlier and have a longer evening, thus making it so that we didn't have to immediately cook dinner upon walking through the door, and making it easier to deal with the concept of going to bed at nine PM. This was fine until my Hub cut his calorie intake to the point where he gets ravenously hungry every three hours and was demanding that we have/make dinner immediately upon getting home at four P.M., for pity's sake. I told him that if he wanted that, he'd have to do it himself, because I wasn't going to cook anything under that kind of pressure; I hate few things more than having to think of something to cook when someone else is peeking woefully into the kitchen and asking how long it will take. When my Hub gets very hungry, though, he can't concentrate on what to cook, either, so between the two of us neither one wanted to think of what to cook, and both resented it.

The current solution: my Hub has agreed to have a midmeal snack upon getting home, and to move dinner to seven PM. I've agreed that on the nights I'm supposed to cook (since we alternate), I'll get the planning out of the way before work, and that way I can just go on blissful autopilot when we get home and not have to do all that thinking at a time of day when my brain wishes to take a rest. Thus far everybody's happy.

My Hub found a folding weight bench that adjusts to all sorts of shapes and angles, and promptly upon purchasing it he beat himself up like mad on it, and also did pushups and crunches on his yoga mat, and did pull-ups on the bar he's attached to the bedroom doorframe (assisted pull-ups, pushing off a little on a stepstool; he is determined to be able to do unassisted ones by Christmas). He's getting some arm definition and bulk going on there, which is sort of astonishing; he showed his "guns" off when his ex came over for dinner with us the other night, and she was completely gobsmacked. (Let me have a moment here to neener. NEENER! Okay, I'm done.) He's started picking me up all the time again, which he hasn't done in a while (granted, an extra 20 lbs on me made that a bit more difficult) and in general he's all Mr. Muscle & Fitness. It is a hoot.

Also, in the big news of the weekend, we've got a tentative plan in place re: babies. I have my annual doctor's appointment in two weeks, at which point the process of getting me off Zoloft will commence. One year from then, when I go in for my next annual, I'll go off birth control. Our theory being that this will give us a full year to get used to the idea and have our freak-out in advance. I'm already in the midst of the freak-out, but I'm also starting to hit a point where I'm looking forward to the whole baby thing. It's like... I love us being us so much that I want more of us.

So, that gives me a year to hash things out financially. I'm hoping that'll also give us time for the housing market to settle down; we have just enough space for a baby in our apartment, but only just. I'd like to get us settled down in this neighborhood, hopefully in a two-bedroom condo that's decently close to the El and to our church (and, hence, the associated day-care and pre-school program).

That also gives me a year to get my habits squared away. I want us to be solid on the healthy lifestyle, together, before bringing a baby into the picture. We've both had problems with bad eating and lack of exercise (to say the least), and neither one of us grew up in a household with a sound approach to nutrition and staying active; I don't want our kids to have that problem. Or, at least, I don't want it to be our fault; at least we'll have given them the right tools, you know?

On the one hand, I just want to go ahead and dive in and get pregnant ASAP. On the other hand, oh dear God do I have a lot to do to while we're still childless. Ack.