Last Tuesday was our four year anniversary. I know. I’m twenty-three with four years of marriage under my belt and a still alive, somewhat small-ish two month old. We celebrated (the anniversary, not the still alive baby, though both deserve a party) by going on our second date after the whole baby thing happened. Thankfully your prayers worked. We did not once discuss our little valentine (unless you count the time when I realized there was dried spit up on my shirt, sigh). Our prix-fixe menu was superb with lobster risotto, tender short ribs (apparently I am a sucker for a good short rib since I’ve ordered it the last four times we’ve gone out) and a champagne caramelized mango tatin, if you’re me, or a hazelnut chocolate bread pudding and caramelized banana parfait if you’re him. Yes, our anniversary date was a success and the deep red roses are still perfuming the house (even though the florist was a day late, “too many orders”. Excuse my eye roll).

But before he knew the florist would fail him, my husband thought he would “have some fun”. After far too many hints (in  my opinion) and a desperate plea to go to the store for a “few items” (read: at least bring home a picked over bouquet of daisies) he came home with the ugliest, half dead, burnt orange and brown Idontknowhwhaththeheckyouaresupposetobe flowers and a package of baby’s breath (which in four years of marriage he has made one thing clear: his hatred for the tiny white buds) and a card (sorry, honey. I thought you were actually serious about this…) making me think he tried his hardest to find the most decent, award winning flowers and a funny/cute card (copy this card I got him 2 years ago) to make me laugh. I will not lie. I was extremely disappointed*. I wanted to shove the flowers in the trash can behind him, but refrained and left them on the table to finish their long, slow, miserable wilting death. I channeled my anger into reading my CI magazine that appeared last week instead.

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Yesterday was a sad, devastatingly upsetting day in our house, well, at least for me it was. This kid, who let us take a peek at some blue eyes he likes to hoard under his eyelids, has grown out of his newborn-sized clothing. (I will give you a moment to grab a tissue box and think of something encouragingly sweet to comfort me with. Also, chocolate chip cookies would be nice). After folding tiny onesies and stretchy pants my foot couldn’t even fit into if it wanted, I have now had to graduate my quickly growing kid into the next size up (and really, this should have been done a week ago, but I slightly enjoyed — to my kid’s dismay every time I had to dress him — the struggle to snap a cute fox onesie on him, and the elephant, oh and the monkey one and the I am handsome one while I still could squeeze him into it).

And thus dinner was comfort food. Something mama could drown her sorrows in as my kid has already thrown my back out just from feeding him — yes, he is that heavy already. Plus my husband finally joined in on the twitter front, and I was not his first follow…more like his seventeenth. 17! Marrying each other, living together, having a baby together, yes, it has all been good. But following me on twitter — it’s like I asked you to chop off a finger*.

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This dinner idea was formed over a year ago when my mother invited me along to her yearly fall fair tradition. We spent all day dodging in and out of tents, braving the cold wind only when we needed to get to point B and spent the rest of our time eating caramel and nut covered apples and and gulping hot coffee (or cider for those of us opposed to the black addiction in our pre-punch days). The leaves were already shades of burgundy and gold, floating to the ground and letting themselves crunch beneath our feet, but girls must be girls and the cold October wind got the better of us by lunch and we called it a day after we ducked in to a local tavern were I unhesitatingly ordered their mushroom and leek lasagna.

Normally I would pick through the underwhelming red sauced, ricotta cheesed, noodled layer concoction they label as lasagna. I would drum up ways to improve the dry texture or increase the flavor, as the basics of onion and garlic seem to be non-present or lacking in some. It was the way I got through; the way I justified spending $12 on a plate of ehhh. But as you all know (and could probably guess by the eleven mushroom entries in the index) you could pretty much say anything you want about a dish but I will still give it a chance if it has mushrooms.

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Alright, before I start seeing fingers wag and hearing tongues a-clucking let me first say I’ve only been holding out on you because summer has been holding out on me. Are we better now? Do you love me again? Grrr. What if I promise you bagels and baked goods and all things daisies and sunshine and butterflies? …Ok, we’ll work on that.

So as much as I love spring, and as much as I have desperately cried to mother nature and begged her for warm, tree-budding, grass growing days, I have actually been wanting spring to get a move on it because I am yearning for summer like I yearn for… well, summer.

It’s the most yearning I do all year because everything good happens in summer. The weather’s warm, the sun is always out, there is suddenly wildlife, like birds, and worms and chipmunks and bumblebees and caterpillars that turn into beautiful butterflies, and it’s bikini season which really means beach season, and there is of course me, I was a product of summer which only makes summer all the better, but people, that is not even the best part. Produce! Fruits, vegetables, stands filled to the brim of overflowing as my eyes are shiny with lusty want as I pick over strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, watermelon, raspberries, and of course the non-red stuff too like peaches, nectarines, blueberries and blackberries and berries, berries, berries. I mean, spring I love you, but you can’t bring me berries like summer.

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People, I had great plans for last week — paint my bedroom, make a newer, better version of rice crispy bars (if that’s even possible), scrub the kitchen floor, do laundry (ha! I crack myself up sometimes) — and did I do a single one? No. I found myself victim to the thermostat (and the central heat’s) cruel joke of keeping the house at a cool and balmy frighteningly freezing 55-degrees (yes, as in 23-degrees warmer than the freezing point, as in 43.4 degrees colder than a normal body temperature, as in so cold my fingers are now permanent icicles that break when forced around a hot mug of cocoa that is guaranteed to warm me up, but cannot for the life of me hold it up to my mouth because of my now-nub fingers…) Sigh, it’s been rough, not that I am complaining — no one likes complainers, I’m just simply telling you facts here, yeah, just facts. I definitely don’t want sympathy, condolences or heart-felt wishes from plastic surgeons to repair my broken, damaged fingers. I’m not that selfish.

And since I am not a mumbling, grumbling, freezing complainer I will tell you that my week instantly brightened when I received Gweneth Paltrow’s GOOP newsletter which quickly made my mouth water as she listed five Mario Batali recipes full of cheese and cheese and cheese and goodness. She talked about ipad and iphone apps from Mario, and if I were rich enough (read: did not spend all my money on dishes, shoes and hair products) to own such amazing devices I perhaps would have been more interested in what she was saying before scrolling down and almost trying to lick my screen to get that goodness in me (cold people don’t think properly sometimes. Like my husband, you should ignore me when I get a bit crazed and only take notice of me if I start to foam at the mouth, that obviously would be bad).

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