Eric and I celebrated our two year anniversary this past Monday. We had a great day settling in at our new house in Massachusetts, then we drove down to Hartford for dinner at the U.S.S. Chowderpot. Seafood seemed a good choice, given our new status as New Englanders, and some friends had given Eric a gift card to the restaurant for his graduation, so we really enjoyed the trip! It has been quite an amazing two years! Eric finished grad school, we bought a house and moved to a different part of the country, and we've just been enjoying life growing together.
On a rather unrelated note, while we were unpacking stuff in the house, we ran across some CDs that we don't need anymore, so we decided to do the adult thing and amuse ourselves by watching them burn in the microwave. Awesome.
You can see the sparks flying in the microwave (sorry not a great pic).
Moving is tough. My husband I have been in our new home in Massachusetts for just about a week now, and every day it seems I've hit a breaking point after a lot of little things pile up and I just want to curl up and go to sleep so I don't have to face it--something doesn't work right, things cost money I'm not sure we have, I don't know the roads, I don't know the stores... Needless to say, I'm one of those people who needs plenty of time and space to adjust to these types of changes.
Well, yesterday I had one of those moments again because nothing had worked out that day like I thought it should. We'd decided to make Pad Thai for dinner, so I went to the store for some things--by that point I needed to get out of the house, and a grocery run was a good excuse. I had to go to two different places to find rice noodles, and the ones I ended up buying were not the kind I'd always bought for Thai dishes, so I was already frustrated. Then Eric and I spend an hour in the kitchen chopping and processing everything for dinner, following the recipe to a T--which said to soak the noodles for 20 minutes--only to realize later that these particular noodles had to be boiled first, not just soaked. By this point everything was in the skillet, so we had missed the opportunity to cook the noodles separately, and they were still as stiff as raw pasta. I was so upset that I was ready to throw everything out and start all over, with chicken instead of beef because the last of the beef we'd bought was in that skillet. I got so frustrated that I stomped upstairs, changed into my running clothes, and decided to go work off all the frustration, leaving my poor, loving husband behind, desperate to make this better.
When I got back home about a half hour later, I had chilled out a lot but had still resigned myself to making a salad for dinner, because there was no way I would enjoy Pad Thai with raw, crunchy noodles. In his most compassionate, soothing manner, Eric said to me, "Before you make your salad, just give it a try. I cooked it for a while with some extra water, and I think it turned out pretty good."
You can't say no to a husband who wants nothing more in that moment than to see you smile. So I gave it a taste. It was delicious. He'd been able to add enough extra water to saturate the noodles, and nothing overcooked. I felt so guilty for getting upset about it. It wasn't a huge deal anyway, just the last straw that day.
So this post is to brag on my fantastic husband. For letting me be upset when I need to get things out, for fixing the Pad Thai when I don't cook it right, and for just wanting to see me smile.
