Monday, August 8, 2016

Date Night Makes Me So Hornet

When two thirds of the shorties are out of the house, we like to drag ToddlerBandit along to dinner, stick a screen in his hand, pretend he's not there, and call it:


Date Night.

Which is exactly what we did this weekend after a day of boating. The biggest littles went with their buddies for their first ever smash bash and a sleepover, which they reacted to thusly:




We went to KC's where I had my usual meat salad and where Hubs had the burger of the week and made me SWEAR to him that I would make him get the mac and cheese burger for sure next time. For sure. He says they have the best ever buns and that I need to get off my "high horse" about the carb thing and just eat one already because I'm missing out.


I believe him.


We spent the rest of our romantic dinner arguing over whether another couple was a couple or a mother and her son. His vote was mother and son because there was about forty years difference between them. My vote was that they were very early in their Match.com relationship because I saw them making out when they first walked through the door. She also appeared to be wearing pants for the first time in a long while in direct conflict with the religion that was dictating her hairdo, which didn't match what he had going on with his appearance. So there's no way that was her son.


We never did find out, so let's just say that I was right for the purposes of our marriage continuing down a happy path.


I also decided that people would assume that we were brother-and-sister and that ToddlerBandit was HIS kid based on the fact that my body just screams, "there's no way she has pumped out three children, I mean come ON...look at those narrow hips."


...and then he choked on his delicious caramel milkshake and rolled his eyes at me.


To really spice things up, we stopped by the Home Depot for more bee killer spray because those assholes are back again. And before everyone gets all uppity about how the bees are an integral part of our ecosystem, these aren't bees. They're wasps. Umbrella wasps, to be exact. I know this because those stupid charts that say "how long are the legs on your bees?" say so and also because I finally found their dumb houses that they build on the eaves.


Architecturally annoying as hell.




Oh, by the way, too...the doves are back. Well, they never left really. I took their nest down but they were all like, "No. We live here now. We will rebuild that tomorrow. Knock it off."


So. Birds and bees. And Mr. Fix is all like, "Hey...I'll go get you the ladder so you can get on the roof and take care of that."


So I hike my ass up the ladder in my sandals, which I kick off at the top rung, the one that says, "Hey, don't step here, dummy" but I do anyway. And suddenly the only thing in my mind is:


1982. 1982. 1982. My parents got their new roof in 1982. If anyone needs to know when my parents got their new roof, it was 1982.


I'm sure there's been another shingling since then, but that was one of them. I know this because I was five years old when my thighs last fit properly into corduroy pants, and my favorite ones were red and they had Strawberry Shortcake on them because duh, 1982. And they were reroofing the house and I was on the roof and I was throwing old shingles down and I was scootch-sliding instead of standing up and later in the day my mom was like, "what did you do to your pants???" and I suddenly realized I had an assless chaps situation going on.


My pants. My underwear. My ass was out. Back when it was teeny tiny and super cute.


And I'm up there thinking WTF were my parents thinking letting a five year old hang out on the roof?


And this was all I could think of as I sat perched and frozen and barefoot on the roof in my newly favorite leggings, gravity and mass calculations different from my five-year-old self. Still unable to stand, I rolled into position to spray the nests. One by one, as I sprayed, I could see there were more. And more. And more. These things had set up residence in the hidden recesses of our roofline. I ran out of murder juice and asked for more. Then I waited for the poison to sink in so I could annihilate them with the power washer.


And while I waited for Hubs to get back from wherever he was (seriously, he was off dicking around somewhere and I was annoyed that I could have fallen and he wouldn't even know), I had a chance to just sit on the roof and take in the quickly setting sun. And the sky was indescribably beautiful. And the moon was an impossible sliver of a crescent. I was in a Michael Parkes painting.




Or I might have been high from huffing all that wasp spray, now that I think of it.


The next day, I set out to observe our newly bug-free outdoors and was met with the swarm. Again. I found ANOTHER five nests further around back in a vent. But since I have a "nobody gets on the roof alone" policy (which only I adhere to around here), it will have to wait until at least Thursday again so I can finally show these jerks there's only room in this house for ONE queen bee.

Me.

I can't wait, really. Because that's the day when Hubs and I see each other again, and we only have two more episodes of Stranger Things to pound out on Netflix. Because when we do Date Night, there's no Netflix and Chill, there's only Netflix and Play Next Episode. You know, when we're finally done with all the super romantic stuff.

9 comments:

  1. On the trail ride, we unknowingly threw trash into a trash can that was also home to wasps. You've never seen a horse and human sync up their brains and high tail it out of there so quickly. Ugh to those stinging bastards

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stranger Things is spectacular!!! I just wish Netflix didn't make me feel like a lazy bastard by asking, "Are You Still Watching" when I am marathoning. It's kind of a jerk move.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's like a Fridgidaire asking upon the door opening whether you're REALLY hungry or just bored.
      Yes. Still watching. Always "still watching". Stick that into my preferred settings or something, Netflix.

      Delete
  3. We are at about the same place with Stranger Things as you - we have about two or three to go. Hopefully I'll get through them tonight with our eldest daughter (other half lost interest in it).

    This is where I admit to grinning like an idiot about the roof/ass story :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Husband and I went out to dinner for our anniversary and took the two kids. It was magical. My daughter ate too many complimentary peanuts and puked on the tablecloth. Pretty sure we locked eyes as I handed him the pack of wipes for clean-up.

    ReplyDelete