This blog is going to be even more long and drawn out than usual. I apologize in advance. Also sort of picture heavy. And probably disjointed.
So not a whole lot has been going on with us. That's not to say that
nothing has been going on, but it's just been calm seas for the most part. Most recently my brother Elvis was up for a rather lengthy visit, just over two weeks. That was really nice. I'm not taking summer classes, and Dorian is working full time Mon-Fri from about 8-6 [with commute], so we pretty much had all day to ourselves. Not that he and Dorian don't get along or anything, it's just..I don't know, it was nice to just have one on one time with Elvis.
Anyway, Dorian isn't a fan of spicy foods [although since the start of our relationship I've been making my cooking progressively hotter and hotter to build up her tolerance], but I absolutely love eating the hottest foods I can find, as does Elvis. The problem is that I don't really have any friends here who like food as hot as I do, and Elvis doesn't have any down in Ca, and eating hot food by yourself isn't fun, it's just...Bad. The fun comes when you share the misery and pain with someone else, right? So we spent a great deal of time hunting for the hottest of hots, and ate a lot of great Korean and Thai. We also got to try this Indian/Pakistani restaurant that I've been curious about since we've moved here. It was so good that we went three times in a week, despite the hateful hostess.
When we weren't going out, we were eating at my house. A few months ago I got a wild hair up my ass about finding and buying some
ghost chili hot sauce, but couldn't find any. When I finally did, and tried it, it was hotter than I was expecting. So I tucked it away on the back of the condiment shelf in my fridge and forgot about it until Elvis got here.
But for whatever reason, Elvis found it, and we started putting it on
everything. It was brutal at first, but at this point it's like tobasco. The other night Dorian and I were eating pizza, and I put so much of this sauce on my slice that Dorian asked me to go sit on the recliner instead of sitting next to her because the smell of the sauce was irritating her nose.
Speaking of hot things being irritating, on one of the first days Elvis was here, I took him to a store in Tacoma that carries over 300 labels of beer, mostly microbrews and rare imports:
Because he lives in the shithole town we grew up in [where everyone drinks real 'american' beers like coors], places like this are like a candy store to him. So we spent
way too much on beer and meat [namely spicy landjager, which is my latest addiction], and I was super excited because I found a fairly rare bottle by my favorite micro-brewer:
Dogfish Head's Sah'Tea. It's an ale brewed with black chai and Juniper berries. Pretty much knocked my socks off. Anyway, we were just starting our quest for spicy, so Elvis asked if there were any good hot wing places in the area. I had no idea, but a quick Yelp search found us a place only a couple of miles away, so away we went.
Mistake.
Not because of the quality or anything, just..Well, keep reading. So I'm not a huge 'chew meat off of a bone' fan, especially because of my beard. If given the option between bone or boneless, I always go boneless just to save having to go to a public restroom and wash my beard out in their sink. So I ordered their large basket of boneless chicken strips, and Elvis ordered a large basket of wings. Our waiter showed us the sauce menu, and when we got to the bottom/hottest of the sauces, which was called something like "Atomic wing sauce" there was a little joke/description along the lines of "it's so hot your server might ask you to sign a medical waiver!" Stupid, but promising, right?
WRONG. We got the wings/strips covered in this light red/orange-ish sauce, and already we knew it was weak. I mean after you've eaten hot foods and sauces long enough, you can judge the level of hotness based on color and consistency alone. The darker red/crimson and thicker the sauce, the more trouble your in. The lighter and thinner, the weaker it is.
So we both took small bites, laughed, and flagged him back. This stupid jock/bro-dawg looks at us with this stupid look and says, "What's the matter, guys? Too hot? I can swap 'em out for a milder sauce for just two dollars! hahaha-" and Elvis just puts his hand up and says, "Shut up, don't be stupid. This sauce is for babies. Babies with no tongues. Do you have anything hotter? Come on, this is pathetic."
And the guy gets all shifty-eyed and goes, "Well, we have this sauced called 'endorphin rush' that we use to make the atomic sauce, but we only use like three drops per gallon..'
"Fine, great, perfect. Bring out a bowl of it, please"
So the guy brings out a pretty small bowl of this stuff that's so dark it looks like congealing blood, and pretty much has the same consistency. This sauce was insane. Worse than the ghost chili sauce at home. I could definitely taste habaneros and the ghost, but what else they threw in there I have no clue. For the first time in years a hot food caused me to break a sweat and made my eyes water. Same thing for Elvis. Unfortunately I think we offended our waiter, because he's pretty much avoiding us at this point. We both have a water and a pepsi, and we're emptying both about every ten minutes or so, and eating quite slowly. The restaurant was virtually empty and he only had one other table to tend other than us, but would do his best to only stop by our table every twenty minutes or so, and when he'd leave to get us a refill, he'd take about five minutes to come back. Even though the bar was within sight. Yeah. We were eating for over an hour and a half and I think we had two refills. Maybe three.
So because I have strips, I can safely dip my strips in with my fork, but Elvis is having to dunk his wings in while holding them, and as a result is getting sauce all over his fingers. I see this as a golden opportunity to try to get him to touch his eyes. I came
so close. It would have been horrible had it actually happened, and I'm sure he would have beaten the shit out of me, or worse, just rubbed his hands in
my eyes, but it was still fun trying.
So we finish. Sort of. I think my basket came with like six strips, each of which had to be about six inches [at least] long, and more than three inches wide. Elvis had the biggest wings I've ever seen in my life. Anyway, we didn't 'clean our plates' like good little boys. We could have, but would have felt sick for the rest of the day. So we both decided to go to the bathroom before we left, and as we got in, I told Elvis, "Make sure you really wash your hands man, at least twice. The last thing you want to do is touch your dick with that hot sauce on your hands." He agreed, and washed his hands for a good three minutes.
Not enough, apparently. We both tinkled, and decided we'd stroll around the parking lot before getting into the car so our food could settle a bit. Well, about two minutes into our walk, he stops, goes all bow-legged, and just starts making this weird
hissing noise. It took me a minute to figure it out, but when we shoved his hands down the front of his pants and started rubbing, I knew for sure. Then I laughed. Then I realized that if he had somehow managed to get the sauce on his penis
despite washing his hands, the last thing he needed to do was touch his genitals any more, so now here we are in the middle of a parking lot, he with his hands down his pants, rubbing furiously, head tilted up to the sky while he hisses and looks like he might start crying, and now here I come, taking a flying leap and grabbing his forearms, trying to pull them out of his pants. Unfortunately he's a triathlon runner, which means he's constantly training, which means he's pretty strong. So instead of me pulling his arms out of his pants, my arms were just sort of going along for the ride,
dutch-rudder style.
Awkward.
He eventually came to his senses when I shouted that he was going to make it worse, and stopped. He 'walked it off', although he was apparently in a bit of pain for the rest of the day/night. We dubbed the affliction 'ding sting', the evil sibling of the notorious 'ring sting'.
Yeah.
While he was here we also took him to Fat Smitty's in Discovery Bay, which has to be one of the most ironically named places ever. Use google maps if you really want to see what I mean. Anyway, Fat Smitty's is famous for...The Fat Smitty, which is the epitome of fat Americans and their beloved road side cuisine. It's pretty fucking delicious though, and roadside burger joints like these are a dying breed that have been slowly swallowed up by conglomerates like McDonald's and the like for decades. An example of the sheer size of the Fat Smitty:
It's two quarter pound patties [after being cooked, not before], four strips of thick cut bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles, grilled onion, ketchup, mustard, mayo, and three buns.
It's worth going to Fat Smitty's just to see the wood carvings out front:
Plus the horrible menu, which not only offers a quote from motherfucking Ronald Reagan...
But...
Yeah, 'Freedom fries'. If you order french fries, the server will say, "Okay, and what size order of
f r e e d o m fries did you want?" When that happens I always picture an American flag waving behind them. Or that they're picturing that happening in their own mind. Fucking hicks.
My biological father Spike [who owns a beer specialty shop in Northern Ca] sent me a package of california micro/rare brews for my birthday, although he shipped it early so that it would arrive when Elvis was up so we could enjoy it together. That was nice.
Um, other than that nothing too eventful. My birthday was pretty nice, ended up getting like three separate birthday celebrations in a two week time frame, so that was cool. My mom took me, Dorian and Elvis out to this Neapolitan Pizzeria for my birthday dinner, which was fun. Except for the middle aged 'cougar' waitress who was openly hitting on me the entire time. I kept hoping Dorian would tell her to fuck off, but she actually hid her rings and just sat back and watched/laughed. It was pretty horrible, other than the fact that she gave us a lot of free shit and took a bunch of stuff off of our bill.
Elvis left a couple of days after that, and my Grandma made me a birthday dinner at her house, with just me and Dorian. That was nice. My grandma made me one of her famous cobblers in lieu of a birthday cake, which was great because I don't really like cake.
Then my step-dad, the one my mom is currently divorcing, came into town to finalize the divorce, so he took me, Dorian and my mom out for a nice dinner at a local micro brewpub called silver city. I was expecting it to be awkward and terrible, but it was actually pretty nice. Ate terrific meat, had way too much beer, and he gave me a decent amount of cash because I told him I need art supplies.
Now onto the 'plans' part of the blog:
I think there's only a couple of people who have joined and actually stuck around since it happened, but I'll do a brief recap just the same: Dorian was pregnant, but had an extremely late term miscarriage. A couple of weeks shy of full term, really. I guess the term I should use is 'still birth'. Anyway, our daughter died for no apparent fucking reason, Dorian almost died in the process, and while the whole ordeal was devastating and is something I'll never really recover from, it definitely brought us closer together and solidified our relationship.
The problem, though, is that it left a sour taste in both of our mouths as far as having more babies, or at least trying. Our daughter, Zoe, was an accident. So the idea of actually
trying, and having the same thing happen all over again, is terrifying. Plus we're both in school, and I'm not currently working, so we're not as financially secure as we used to be.
I'm not saying we're broke, and I'm not saying that I couldn't jump right back into the medical field and provide for my family should she get pregnant tomorrow, but we'd only be comfortable, at best. When I'm done with school I'll be making about five times what I was, if not more, and Dorian will be able to go to school full time instead of part time like she is now.
Here's the problem:
We're getting old. I just turned twenty six, and we're still in school, still renting, no kids. I've got at least a year left of school until I can start working in a teaching hospital at the level I want to work at, but two years until I'm totally done. That puts me at twenty eight, and Dorian and nearly twenty nine, as she's six months older than me to the day.
As far as owning a home, I've got a fairly large inheritance that I've had stashed away for about six years, and in its original amount it would have been enough to make a large down payment on a house, but with the interest its built, we'd be looking at making a
huge down payment on a house, which is nice. I don't want to buy a house now, and really we can't, because we want to live in California anyway, but something we
are considering is this:
The lease on our cottage is coming to an end at the end of July. We've been told that they'd love to have us re-sign for another year, but my Mom has also said that she'd love it if we came and lived with her, and I think she's pretty lonely now that she's living alone, especially because she's out in the
woods. Her house is pretty god damned spacious, and we'd definitely be able to save a lot of money if we did that, but I've learned over the years that my relationship with my parents is immediately strained if I live with/in close proximity to them.
At the same time, I think that the source of that strain may have had a lot to do with the tension/anger/resentment between my Mom's [now] ex-husband and me, as she was put into the position of having to take a side every time we'd fight, which was often, and she grew to resent me as being the source of the stress of
that situation. Does that make sense? I don't know.
Anyway, something Dorian and I have discussed together, but haven't talked about with my Mom, is that maybe we
should move in with her, and that we
should try to have another baby. We'd have the support of my Mom on hand instead of having to try nearly a half hour, and the baby could receive all of our financial support instead of having to be split up between rent/bills/whatever. I don't know. Again, it seems like there would be a lot of pros/cons with that situation, and ultimately it's something I'd have to talk to my Mom about. But she was so excited about Dorian being pregnant the first time around, and so fucking destroyed when we lost Zoe, that I can't imagine her not being supportive of the idea.
What do you guys think?
Also, I really want to have boys. Lots of boys. I sort of have baby fever, but not really. I'm definitely at that point where I know I'm ready mentally, physically and emotionally, it's just the financial aspect that worries me. But people is lesser situations have made it work for many moons, so I'm sure we could do better.
Anyway, we pretty much have names picked out and everything. Pretty obnoxious. Sorry for the length of this blog, and I applaud you if you made it to the very end.
