Love is in the air

Long term relationships are mostly cyclic in nature, which is a San Francisco way of saying that all relationships have ups and downs, and right now Emmett and I are happily experiencing an up time, which is a relief because the stresses of day to day living can tear at the fabric of any relationship. Ours is no exception. This "up" period made for another great weekend. Sometimes I wish we could have weekend for at least a week at a time...oh yeah, they call that "vacation". I almost forgot. Maybe someday. Anyway, ahhhh hemmm, I need to stay focused here. It's almost 8:30am and that boy will be up in just a few short moments and I'll be running all day with no more time for writing.

Friday I did a test run of working 12 hours during the day and I thought it went very well. I worked 8am - 8pm and it was fine. 12 hours of work, no lack of sleep and still home in time for dinner (albeit a late dinner). God, I sure hope I can land a job where that is the schedule.

The only downside was that Thomas was already in bed when I got home so I didn't get to say goodnight to him, but that would have to change if I were doing this on any kind of regular basis. Emmett had already eaten dinner, so I got some soup out for myself and watched "Under the Tuscan Sun", which I had been wanting to see for ages. It was totally not what I was expecting. It is not a love story and is definitely not something I'd recommend seeing with a guy - this is the very definition of a "chick flick". I really liked it - it was a great message about overcoming life's disappointments and seemed very realistic in it's depictions of what life is like post-divorce (or post break up) for many women. I'd define it as a "female empowerment" movie. It's not particularly realistic, but I still really liked it. Emmett didn't like it so much (duh) and spent most of the time typing up his shopping list on the laptop.

On Saturday we all got up reasonably early to do all of our weekly grocery shopping. The first place we went was to the Alemany Farmer's Market, and all I have to say is - Oh....My.....God. That place is so incredible and amazing! I should have remembered from the times my Dad and I used to go to the farmer's market in Detroit how much fun it is, but somehow over the years I had forgotten. It was so much fun and so incredibly cheap! I was so encouraged that as long as we can keep our budget reasonably on track we can really get more and more committed to an organic lifestyle. We spent $43 at the farmers market and the amount of food we got was incredible. And that number was increased by the fact that we bought things like flowers (for $10 I was able to create a beautiful and huge bouquet of roses, lavender, and sunflowers, it's GORGEOUS!). We bought some delicious local honey, and two $4 loaves of bread that are the most amazing bread I think I've ever eaten. Oh yes, and a huge GALLON of unfiltered organic apple juice. Not to mention TONS of fresh fruit and vegetables, all organic (no yucky pesticides or genetic modifications in our food, no sir! :-)). The only thing that continues to be slightly disappointing is the corn. There is nothing here like Michigan corn. I had to laugh - we stopped at the organic corn stand and I decided to pick out three ears of organic corn (for $1) and Emmett says to me, "you have to peel the green back and look to see if it's good". I shot him a look and said, "are you kidding? I KNOW how to pick out corn." We both got a laugh out of that. I didn't grow up in the midwest and not know how to pick corn. Cars and corn. That's what I learned about growing up in Detroit haha.

After the Farmer's market we went to Berkeley Bowl, a grocery store in Berkeley that is extremely popular here for being cheap and having good, high quality food (grass fed beef and organics in particular). I have to say that on my first trip to BB I was amazed at all the good, cheap produce but had thought that the rest of the stuff was only so-so. It's a great store, but I don't think worth the bother of going over the bridge and then having to sit in traffic to get back. My attitude was probably a bit tainted by getting into an argument with this guy in the store. Thomas and I were hanging out in the produce section while Emmett was running around getting all the things on his list. The store was extremely crowded and noisy and I think it must have been overstimulating Thomas because he kept shrieking in a loud and ear-splitting kind of way. I had been telling him "no" and trying to get him to stop, to no avail. I finally decided that I would just try to distract him by playing a patty-cake type of game with him. So there we were in the produce section playing this game and Thomas lets out an eardrum-shattering shriek. I start to ignore it continue with our game because any reaction I might have is only going to make him think that he got a reaction out of me. Well this guy shouts at me from about 15 yards away - "DON'T ENCOURAGE HIM TO DO THAT!!", yelling this at me. Now this is an incredibly crowded grocery store, so now there are about a dozen head turned our way and needless to say I'm terribly embarrassed and enraged. I shout back at him "DON'T TELL ME HOW TO PARENT MY CHILD!" I didn't hear what he said after that because of the blood rushing in my ears from the embarrassment, adrenaline and anger, but I said then "What would YOU like for me to do???!!?? " I mean did he expect me to start beating on Thomas right there in the grocery store? Anyway, he turned away and the moment was over, but, needless to say, my good mood was definitely gone. A couple of minutes later when Emmett returned we saw him again and I noticed he didn't say anything at all to me when Emmett was around. Much easier to pick on a woman alone with a child. What a jerk. I pointed him out to Emmett and he was going to go up to the man and say "I heard that you have a problem with the way that my son is behaving", but we decided to just let it go, finish up and get the heck out of there.

We got home around 1pm, got the groceries unloaded, Emmett's mother arrived and Emmett and I got ready to go out on a little "date". A lady came by and bought some of my surplus baby clothes, which was nice to get a little $$ for them. Emmett and I went to the Metreon, went to the bar and got a drink and talked for a while and then went to see the "Manchurian Candidate". Great movie! We really enjoyed it. We rushed back to the house to relieve Kathleen so that she could go to the baseball game and we played with Thomas for a while, watched the game on tv, and split a bottle of wine. It was fun and relaxing. We were going to go to a party after Kathleen got back, but I was just sort of wiped out by the long day and decided to stay home. Emmett left about 10pm and I waited up for Kathleen, since she was taking the bus home that late at night. Once she was home safely, I went up to bed. Emmett woke me at 3am when he got home and we talked for a bit before heading off to dreamland.

Sunday was spent totally hanging out at home and cooking. The weather has been really bad, that's why we were in all weekend. Emmett made an incredible spaghetti sauce that I CANNOT wait to have for dinner tonight. I made broiled halibut, persian rice and steamed broccoli for dinner. MMmmm mmmmm. I was delicious. I took a nap midway through the day for like 2 hours, it was awesome. Oh and in the morning Emmett stopped at Lido's on his way to the store and brought me home a fresh-baked pastry. It was mouth-watering! (All this talk about food - how am I ever going to lose any weight? haha The answer is lots of exercise and I'm going to really have to watch carefully during the week. I MUST get this extra weight off!!!)

There was lots of time for playing with Thomas on Sunday and that was cool. He's really into reading right now and will bring you a book and say "I read". It's really cool because he's usually so high strung, hyper and impatient that he never focuses on anything for very long, but he will sit in your lap and seems to really enjoy being read to. I take this as a very encouraging sign. Another amazing breakthrough that Emmett witnessed this weekend was Thomas learning how to microwave. This is not a good thing - but still an interesting display of intelligence. He had his water and he said, "I heat water in microwave" - yes, he said 'microwave', a big word for such a little boy. Then he put his bottle in the microwave and pushed the 'one minute' button and then waited about 20 seconds or so, took his bottle out and walked away drinking it. He's such an amazing kid. Nana brought him a little indoor tent, a sort of fort thing, and he loves it but he wants us to go in it with him and it's pretty small for either Emmett or I. It's funny to see us trying to cram ourselves into the thing to play with him. All three of us had fun putting on Emmett's Simon and Garfunkel CD and dancing around the living room.

Another good weekend over and now on to the rest of the week...

Love,
Melissa