in which i elaborate on our weekend, already introduced in summary by my beloved

when justin picked me up on from work on friday, we realized neither of knew exactly how to get to kent, so we drove down to akron (i work in suburban hell about halfway between cleveland and akron). we didn't have any plans (other than mine to lay waste to as many bottles as possible), so we got off at the exit labeled "downtown" and meandered into a neighborhood with a mexican restaurant, the name of which justin recognized as belonging to friends of friends, so we parked, put our names on the waiting list, and went next door to a coffee shop.

we drank italian soda (boysenberry for me, orange for justin) while we played chess at a table made for that purpose. when the restaurant rang justin's cell phone, i was giving justin a pounding and was just about to finish him off, so i say i won, but justin says it doesn't count. i think the least he could do is give me that victory, don't you? i haven't beat him at chess in so long; it would be the gentlemanly (not to mention charitable) thing for him to do.

back at two amigos (the restaurant), i saw a server walk by with a margarita the size of my head, to which i can only say, god bless america. of course, i had one, and it was fabulous, but the problem with giant margaritas is that i get messed up pretty quickly, and by the time i get to the bottom of it, i have lost all interest in getting any drunker. a good drunk requires persistence, pacing and variety, none of which the godzilla margarita affords. i had a delicious grilled veg burrito (in a spinach tortilla) covered in their salsa blanca, which was cream cheese and hot peppers (can't remember what kind - see previous description of margarita).

a few doors down is an old school, independent movie theater. they were only showing one movie (wallace and gromit) in their huge auditorium with seats so old the bottoms didn't snap back up on their own, and they only accepted cash, but justin found an atm in time for us to still see most of the previews. in the back of the theater was a huge bar, complete with booths and high tables, where one could sip a chardonnay with one's popcorn while watching the movie. there should be more theaters like that, no?

w&g was cute, with a surprising number of jokes for older folks. after the movie, i was thoroughly sober (another problem with the one-trick goliath margarita), so we decided to work on sugar comas instead. up the street was a place called mary coyle, an ice cream parlor that has been in operation since 1937, according to the signs. pine panelling covered the walls, and the booths and chairs were all upholstered in orange - and not because they were trying to be all retro-trendy. the football game of the high school across the street, st vincents/st marys (alma mater of basketball phenom lebron james, btw), was being broadcast into the restaurant by radio, and racks of postcards by the cash register featured the goodyear blimp. it was a little surreal. we ate frozen peanut butter pie covered in at least a cup of hot fudge sauce, and we lived to tell about it.

it was not the allnighter in new york or the bar crawl in madrid for which i had hoped. it wasn't even the drinking binge i threatened. but it wasn't bad.

yesterday we had one of our saturday-only breakfasts, vegetarian pigs in a blanket (boca breakfast links rolled up in reduced fat crescent rolls), before going to the hardware store and getting groceries and stopping by his grandma's. our vegan friend from san francisco is here on business, and he came over for dinner. we started with roasted red pepper hummus and whole wheat pita triangles, with chocolate porter for the boys and mac jack hard cider for me. then we had arugula and white bean soup (it was supposed to be escarole, not arugula, but the market didn't have escarole yesterday, so we adapted) with more beer, and then polenta with tomato-shiitake sauce and asparagus in lemon juice and browned butter with a bottle of malbec. then we finished up with apple cake (my best stab yet at making it without eggs, i must say) and vanilla soy ice cream and, well, more beer. i was going to make coffee, but none of us really wanted it. really, we all just wanted more beer.

we talked a little about baby stuff; our friend and his wife started trying to get pregnant a couple of months ago. they're only 29, but she was an only child, after two miscarriages, and is already worried and charting like a fiend, which is driving our friend mad. she's nearly two weeks late now, and three hpts have been negative, which makes me a little concerned about an ectopic pregnancy. does anyone know if an ectopic shows up on a hpt?

the three of us stood in line with the 22 year olds for the decemberists' show and none of us were carded. i really must get my hair colored. at least i did run into a woman coming out of the restroom who was older than me. either that, or she needs to get to the colorist more than i do. the band rocked harder than i expected, i must say, but i enjoyed it, and it helped make it more tolerable for the boys, who made non-stop jokes before the band came on about the band's (non-existent) hardcore roots. we left during the encore, because it had become unbearable for me to stand any longer (further cementing my status among the oldest people in the room). the shoes i wore were cute but lacking in support, and ever since the d&c, my tailbone and lower back have been out of whack (what exactly did they do to me in the operating room????). we got home and i crashed while the boys listened to records and drank more beer and figured out how to plug one of our old monitors that was still in the basement into the laptop, for which i am ever so grateful.

this morning when we woke up, we started the negotiations. you know the ones. tomorrow will be two weeks since the d&c. bleeding is down to .001 percent. we don't have any condoms in the house. we could use the old withdrawl method. neither of us really wants to use that method, which is neither fail-safe nor fun. we could take our chances. it would be okay if we got pregnant, wouldn't it? (believe it or not, that was justin's statement). it would be better to build the old endometrium back up and to have the starting date of at least *one* menstrual cycle to work with, wouldn't it? and so forth. in the end, we got dressed, went out for breakfast, and then bought some condoms. it wasn't what either of us really wanted to do; but it was lovely to get back in the proverbial saddle again, i must say.

if anyone is still reading this recitation of this weekend's happenings in la casa de los dead babies, then allow me to point out the relevant conclusions one may draw from this post:

1. i am really, really depressed, enough to want to drink myself silly around the clock.
2. polenta, at least without parmesan or romano stirred into it, cannot stand up to a spicy tomato sauce on its own.
3. arugula, however, is a fine substitute for escarole in soup.
4. justin and i are not going to have any problem being ready at the same time to try to get pregnant. hallelujah.