No Shave November: Week 3 Whiskers!

I have to say, Evan's facial hair has us all surprised this year. Minus the damn bald patch, his other hair follicles have put on the afterburners in this third week, and what Evan is now sporting could very well be called a beard.

See? 

Side view, with the stubborn bald patch. C'mon, Patchie, you have a week to redeem yourself!

One more week to go! Stay tuned for the grand Whisker finale!

Adventures in Baking!

The other day, it was gray, gross, and raining outside, and I was at home by myself. There was nothing decent left on my Netflix Instant Queue, and so I meandered into the kitchen, hoping to find something, anything, to munch on.

That's when my eye caught on our brand-new, shiny KitchenAid mixer. We got this thing of beauty for our wedding, and I've been dying to drive it all by myself since. The main reason I haven't (and shouldn't) is because I can't cook anything. Well, that's not totally true. I can make a mean grilled-cheese, and on a good day, I can pull out all the stops and whip up some mac n' cheese from the box. But overall, the jury has declared that I am inept in the kitchen, and shouldn't be trusted with actual cooking machinery, such as the mixer.

But, desperate, sans Netflix queue times call for desperate measures, and I set out to make peanut-butter cookies with peanut-butter M&M's. After some intense Pinterest searching for what looked like a relatively fail-proof recipe, I began my quest.

And I failed. Miserably. My cookies (and here, I'm using the term very loosely) came out looking like Frisbees with peanut-butter tumors sticking out of them. I also left them in the oven for a tad too long, and so  biting into one was like trying to eat a sidewalk, and they didn't taste much better, either. Evan gainfully tried one when he got home, almost lost a tooth, and said, "they have a good flavor..."

I lamented this complete failure to my friend, and while she was sympathetic, she wasn't exactly surprised. She's known me for ages, and just a few weeks prior, we had attempted to make muffins, which came out looking greasy (odd, for a recipe with no butter in it) and tasting like foam.

I was convinced that the Heavens had seen fit that I would never bake a decent thing in my life, when my friend decided to try to help me regain some sort of baking dignity by inviting me over to make cookies. I was hesitant, to say the least. With my luck, I'd end up burning the house down because the butter wasn't exactly at room temperature when we mixed it in.

And so, we got started. We had decided to make chocolate cookies with peanut butter M&M's. When I arrived, my friend looked at me, solemnly placed a can of Crisco on the counter and said, "this is the secret to really amazing cookies. Trust me." Even though my arteries were screaming that I was making the biggest mistake of my life, I decided to trust my friend and go ahead with the plan.

Our main ingredients. Paula Deen would be proud. 

Because of my previous failures in the kitchen, I was more or less relegated to reading the recipe and measuring out flour, cocoa, and other things, and I was totally okay with that. 

More than happy to observe this amazing process. 

I had never really realized that baking was quite literally, a science. I had always thought you could cram all the ingredients into a mixer, ignoring cooking commandments like, "at room temperature," "softened," and especially, "fold into the dough." For whatever reason, I thought all of these terms were interchangeable "throw it all together, put it in the oven, and you'll get perfect cookies!" No wonder my baked goods were monstrosities. Notice I said were, because I'm a decently quick learner, and my baking has since improved. As in, things that I put into the oven are generally considered edible. 

Dough filled with chocolate and calories, ready to go into the oven!

I wish I could say that I had a picture of the final product, but I don't, because they were very quickly devoured, with no fear of losing teeth or breaking jaws. I'd call this mission a success!

No Shave November: Week Two!

So, we are officially in the second week of Evan's big challenge of growing facial hair. He's pretty proud of the results thus far. Here is quick pictorial update. Oh, and I'm sorry for the absolutely terrible picture quality. It's for two reasons, really.
1: I'm short, so my poor, nearly 6 foot tall husband has to deal with relatively unflattering photographic angles because I don't feel like getting 5-inch heels to take a picture of him.

2: Our house was built in the 70's, when people didn't believe in overhead lighting being installed in their homes. Being November, it now gets dark roughly right after breakfast, and our house takes on a Batcave-like ambiance. Great for candle-lit dinners, terrible for picture-taking.

Front view. Note the tolerant smile. "Think of the blog!" I said. 

Side view, just so you all can see the bald patch I was talking about earlier. I think it's cute. At this point, his patience was wearing thin, as I accosted the poor man with a camera as soon as he came home from work.

Not to be outdone, Newton also is sporting a bald patch from his adventure last week.  I feel like he's saying, "I don't always get bald patches, but when I do, they cost $800 dollars."

Ta da! I'm so proud of Evan's little hair follicles for working so hard. Well, except for the ones on the bald spot; those ones are slackers. Stay tuned for next week's update! 

Newton: The World's Most Expensive "Free" Cat

Newton is our cat. Despite his unique brand of insanity, he has wriggled his way into our hearts and we do really love him. Really.

We met Newton in the summer of 2009, because we had agreed to cat-sit him for a week. We should have seen a slightly red-tinged flag when his owner called and said, "Hey, I can't wait to see him, but if you guys want to keep him, that's okay too." And so started the three most interesting, wallet-draining years of my pet-owning life.

Little orange-furred ball of terror. He was so cute, and we had no idea. 

First year we had him, he decided in his infinite feline wisdom, that the entire house was his own personal urinal, and we ended up having to replace the entire floor, baseboard, and the drywall (seriously) of an entire room. That wasn't cheap.

Second year we had him, we decided to get another kitten, Ampersand, thinking that some company might calm him down. Instead, he went full-on insane with jealousy, and instead of calming down, we had to take him to the vet and get him started on kitty Paxil for anxiety, which come to find out, had caused his urinary rebellion the year before. Again, tuna-flavored anti-separation anxiety medication for cats is not exactly a frugal expense.

This picture pretty much sums up their relationship.

This is our third year with him, and while he's calmed down a lot (thank you, Paxil!) he has decided that he wanted to tackle the great outdoors. Probably to get away from Ampersand, who for some reason adores him as much as he abhors her. Since he's started his outdoor explorations, he has gotten two upper respiratory infections (which he lovingly passed onto Ampersand) and has spent a whole night outside, leading us to imagine all sorts of awful outcomes, only to have him show up at our door early the next morning, yowling for his breakfast.

His latest mission to actually prove his worth to us started when he got a fever of 104.9 and had a white blood cell count of 41,000. Oh, and to add worry to anxiety, he started throwing up every hour. Off to the vet we went. A tad over $800 dollars later, and all we know is that he has an infection somewhere. This is some seriously expensive bacteria we're talking about here.

While it makes us cringe to think about spending the equivalent of two brand-new car payments worth on a 10 pound cat who once thought my favorite sweater was a pee-pee pad, we honestly can't imagine our lives without him. He's the cat that knows when you're not feeling well and will gladly spend all day on your lap, watching your favorite girly movies, purring away. He's the cat to greet you at the door, making you feel like some sort of celebrity every day, and he's the kind of cat who will look at us with such love and trust that it absolutely melts our hearts. He's totally worth it. I know it may sound silly, but he's family.

Update: Newton is now at home and is on the mend! We now have the super awesome task of throwing pills down his throat twice a day, followed with a chaser of a syringe full of "palatable" medication (palatable my foot. Newton tries to cover up tuna and chicken like it's poo). Ampersand is over the moon about him being back, and a major sign that he is feeling better is that he hissed at her the moment he saw her. Oh, and we got a call from the vet saying that he'll probably need a thorough teeth cleaning and might need to have a few teeth extracted. At the end of the conversation, she mentioned that it would probably be about oh, $400 dollars to do that. Newton, the world's most expensive free cat, strikes again. But, he's worth it.

"Yeah, this face? It's going to cost you."

Evan Takes On No Shave November!

Evan loves personal challenges. Earlier this year, he took on Hood to Coast, the Warrior Dash, and went skydiving. Oh, and he married me.

He says that he does these crazy, tiring things because he likes the personal challenge; he likes to go up against himself and his limits, and win. Personally, I think he does these things to worry me, but his reasoning is more poetic, I suppose.

With that said, Evan has decided to take on a huge new personal challenge: No Shave November. The school where he teaches is having all the male teachers do it to raise money for cancer research. It's really a great cause, but Evan's challenge comes in the fact that he does not really grow facial hair easily. At 27, he still has two baldish, baby-soft spots on his face that don't grow facial hair at all. In all honesty, as a Mexican woman, I feel that I have an easier time growing a mustache.

Evan's first foray into growing facial hair came when he was about to start student teaching at a local high school. He realized, with a start, that he was only five years older than the students he would be teaching, so he set out to grow a goatee to look older. It took him a full two weeks to really get something going, and once it was in, it became a permanent fixture.

Here is my adorable husband, with the adored goatee! Please ignore my ridiculous hat/sunglasses combo. 

And now, after four years with the goatee that I have come to love, and that Evan's hair follicles worked so hard to produce, he has shaven everything and is ambitiously hoping to have a "beard' by the end of this month.

I, of course, have taken it upon myself to chronicle the whole thing. Here is the picture from week one, taken three days after he had shaved everything:

I have friends and relatives that have this much stubble after one night. Let's go, facial hair! 

Stay tuned! More pictures to come! Here's hoping my husband looks like a lumberjack in 25 days! 

3 Months!

We have officially been married for three months! Three months ago today at this time, Evan and I were doing our "first look" photos at the World Forestry Center. It was an awesome moment, especially because I had managed to keep my dress a secret for 18 months, so it was Ev's first time seeing it.

I think he liked it! 

It really was a wonderful, perfect day, and every day, I find myself feeling incredibly lucky to be married to my best friend. These last three months have already taught me a lot about marriage and what it means to really start building a life with someone. In honor of it being our three-month anniversary, here are three things we have learned so far:

1. Make "couple time" a priority: No, I don't mean that kind of couple time (although...*blushes*). After we got married, we made plans with a lot of people, and suddenly, we hardly saw each other. Honestly, every weekend in September was totally booked, and while we had a great time with family and friends, we didn't find ourselves with a lot of time to just be newlyweds together. So, for October, we carved out two non-negotiable "us" weekends (barring serious injury, illness, or zombie attack) in which we go on dates, arrange stuff at home, or just veg out and play board games. It has made a huge difference in our relationship, because instead of feeling rushed to spend time together whenever we found a spare minute, we can relax and enjoy our weekends together.

2. Communication is awesome: I know that anyone reading this that has been married for longer than a nano-second is rolling their eyes at this one and thinking, "Duuuuhhh," but honestly, this has been incredibly important in the course of our relationship and even more so in our fledgling marriage. As I mentioned in an earlier post, our lives have become rather hectic, what with the two of us basically hitting the ground running when we got back from our honeymoon. Life really hasn't slowed down much, and in all of our rushing around, it can be tough to communicate as clearly as one would like. So, we've really had to work on making sure we are a) not keeping everything that bugs us (my darling husband likes to leave all of his little shaved goatee hairs all over the sink, for example) in until we explode about something mundane like the dishwasher not being loaded properly and b) that we actually listen to each other when things come up. As in, we put our phones away, put the laptop down, and turn off the TV as soon as someone says, "You know, I was thinking..." Even taking five minutes to really truly listen and communicate does wonders, even if it takes place as you both scarf down breakfast as you try to put on your shoes.

3. Even though you're a newlywed, you're still a person: There's this weird pressure when you first get married to go everywhere together, to do everything together, and to basically buy his and her everything and start working on a long list of shared hobbies. But here's the thing: as wonderful as being married has been, and as awesome as it is to spend time with my husband, there are just times when I need to go out and just be Mariela for a little while. Sometimes, I just need to blast Shakira until the house shakes, or sing Beatles songs incredibly off-key, or watch terribly trashy television while browsing Pinterest. There are moments when I'm totally self-indulging that I feel guilty about not wanting to spend every minute working on my brand-new marriage, but then I realize that doing all of those things that make me the person that I am actually help our relationship. Evan doesn't want a clone of himself that does all the things he does all the time; he wants me, and all the things that make me, me. That'd be so boring. So yes, there are days when I take an afternoon to myself, browse through all of the makeup and clothes I can't afford, or blast Adele in my car (I call those mini-concerts), or shake my groove thang at a Zumba class.  And the greatest part of all of that is that at the end of the day, I come home, happy, restored, and ecstatic to see my husband.

And there you have it. Three marriage lessons in three months. And now, my husband and I are going to celebrate three months of marriage by braving this disgusting Oregon weather and going to get ourselves some pumpkins!

Hey! We're Married! Now What?

Before we got married, everybody kept telling us how different everything would be. Being polite people, we would agree and carry on with our pre-wedding plans. Once away from advice-givers, we would scoff and say things like, "How much can things change? We've been together for 6 years, and lived together for five! All that change stuff won't apply to us!"

Oh, how wrong we were.  Everything started to change right around the time the plane touched down in Portland and we stepped off, glowing with newly married bliss and Maui tans.

See, we had had a plan before we got married. I had just graduated from Portland State University with a Master's Degree in Education, so I was to go off, get my own classroom, and start educating some middle-schoolers. My husband (gosh, that still sounds so weird!) had been accepted to graduate school, and was going to take things easy for the next two years. In short, I was going to be the Sugar Mama of the Tyler household, while Evan went to school. I was totally cool with that plan, but the Universe saw fit to basically toot in our faces and come up with a totally different plan.

Totally happy, but totally clueless about the Universe's plan

The Universe's plan consists of Evan losing his teaching gig due to huge budget cuts, getting a new job in a new district teaching a new grade a new curriculum (have I said "new" enough yet?) and also starting graduate school. As for me, the Sugar Mama plan fell through, and I am now scouring the internet every day for any (and I mean ANY) substitute job available. When I'm not subbing, which is annoyingly often, I am trying my hand at this whole, "keeping house" scenario I keep finding myself in. 

This would be a good time to let you all know that I am a notorious slob, and that I can't cook to save my life. My incredibly awesome husband (still weird!) has been in charge of most of the household stuff for the last two years while I finished up my degree. He can cook incredibly well, he knew at what temperature colors/whites needed to be washed, and he loved, loved, loved, vacuuming. I know, I'm totally blessed.

 In a way, we are both finding ourselves in roles besides that of Husband and Wife that maybe we were not totally ready for. Everybody was right; everything has changed, and we're doing our best to tackle all of these changes together. Thus, this blog. I've started this to chronicle this first year together, so in ten years, we can look back on this little account and laugh at how we took on the Universe's plan nifty little plan for us. It has been a crazy 87 days so far, and I'm actually excited to see what comes next.

Bring it, Universe. The Tyler's are ready for it.

Yeah. He's my hero. But I'm no damsel in distress, either!