Sweet Summertime

Happy first day of summer, internets.

In honor of the year's hottest months, some things making me happy right now:

• Over the freaking moon that my Hugh is done with his Step One exam. I was saying this morning that in those last few days of studying, I started thinking I had been playing up non-stressed Hugh in my mind. Rest assured, as of yesterday at 2:25pm (because he's such a fast test-taker) it was validated that he is just as fun and wonderful as I remembered. Whew.
  
• In honor of the end of seven weeks of fifteen hours a day of studying, we are celebrating it up. Champagne, giant bouquets of peonies, mid-afternoon beers, long-awaited prizes, dinners out, best friend visits, weeks off of work...we don't hold back around here, friends.
• My new go-to appetizer (cantaloupe, mozzarella, prosciutto, and basil served with crostini):

• My cucumber plants are covered in flowers (soon to be cucumbers) and I just picked my first garden tomato (!) this afternoon. If there is anything better than eating a tomato warm from the sun and fresh from your garden, I don't know what it is:

• I'd married this face (and drink another one of those cocktails) again in a hot minute:

With that, I'm off to continue the hoopla with my favorite husband. I hope you're spending your days with someone who makes you feel like your feet don't even touch the ground. As Hugh likes to tell me, bottoms up, teacup!

My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Kitchen.

As a distraction from the fact that my husband is taking the biggest test of his life, to date, as we speak, I'm going to talk about breakfast.

As I've mentioned in the past, Hugh and I don't see eye-to-eye on eating. I think three balanced meals and two snacks are a necessity. Hugh, on the other hand, is content to consume all of his day's calories in one sitting, usually sometime between the hours of 4 - 7pm.

When we first moved in together in 2005, this made me crazy. I would obsess over how to make Hugh eat like a normal person. And Hugh would ignore me, eat nothing all day, get home from teaching at 3:30pm, and raid the kitchen. Because he was starving, he would say. Um, yes, that is usually how one feels when one does not eat for TWENTY-THREE hours. I would come home from work at 6pm ready to make dinner, and Hugh would be "not that hungry." And I would lose my shit.

Oh, figuring out how to live together when you are twenty-one. Glad that's over. Fortunately, we've ironed out the system a little in the last six years. I've (mostly) stopped trying to force my (biologically necessary) eating habits onto him. Doing his part, Hugh humors me and tries to eat either breakfast or lunch. And I try to come up with things that are easy to make, easy to eat, and nutritious.

Enter, the Green Shake:

Thing I love most about this drink: it's loaded with spinach. But the only indication that it's loaded with spinach is the color. It tastes like bananas and vanilla. It's light and easy to drink, even if you aren't a breakfast-eater, but it still keeps you full for a few hours.

Also, this is obviously a smoothie. But Hugh calls it his Shake. And if he's consuming two cups of spinach, a glass of milk, and a piece of fruit before 8am, I don't care if we have to call it Hugh's Magic Muscle Milk. In fact, I think that is what we should call it:

Hugh's Magic Muscle Milk
Adapted from Ducks in a Row
serves 2

1 1/4 cups Vanilla Almond Milk
2 bananas*
2 giant handfuls spinach (approximately 4 cups)
1 scoop Vanilla Protein Powder
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
10ish ice cubes (more or less depending on how icy you like it)

Throw all your ingredients in the blender or food processor. Blend until completely combined, about one minute.

Drink it up.

Grow giant muscles.

Or at least stay full for a few hours. And appease you wife.

*You could also use one banana and one piece of another fruit. This will make it less sweet, but still delicious. Suggestions: a cup of ripe blueberries or strawberries, a mango, or a peach.

In a show of true love, I was up this morning before 6am to make Hugh his Shake before he left for his test. And, because he loves me too, he was drinking it. Don't you just love being married?

Post Script: As I get ready to publish this, Hugh has been testing for one hour. I will now spend the next seven hours trying to find things to distract me from my crazy butterflies. Seriously, I could not be prouder of that guy. Or more excited for 3:30pm. Tick tock, tick tock...

The Homestretch.

The White Hot house is in survival mode right now, friends. All I have to say is that we are on the final countdown. Three days from now, at approximately 3:15pm, Hugh will be done with Step One of the USMLE. And there will be great rejoicing across the land.

And then we are off for two weeks. We have lots of fun activities planned, including a visit from Hugh's long lost best friend, a day trip to the SAV, and some back-burnered cooking projects. I think the resident husband also plans to sleep for twelve hours a day.

Also, I hope to hop back on the blogging train. Because while Hugh has been doing all the studying, I've been doing all of the everything else it takes to run our lives. Coupled with commuting and working, that doesn't leave a lot of motivation for much of anything else.

So, sit tight. Wish him luck. And we'll be back next week.

Post Script: Hugh has, without a doubt, reached a breaking point with the endless days of studying. He's been looking for household tasks to complete as a form of procrastination. So, in the event that you were worried about the state of our silver, please don't. It's been polished.

I Got Nothin'.*

No fun stories. No cute photos. And definitely no quality time with my resident doctor. That's because Hugh is deep in the throes of Step 1 prep and we are kind of in survival mode right now. Deep as in, Down Days are a thing of the past, there has been no day off in three weeks, and studying starts at 530am and ends at 10pm. The good news is, this time next week - that's right, only one week to go - he will be finished! Six days and counting, friends.

In closing, I leave you with this terrible photo of bad** Fletcher standing up on the half-wall in our living room to get a toy I took away from him:

So rotten, but so cute.

Be back soon, internets.

*Okay, that's a little bit of a lie. I mean, I'm not just sitting around twiddling my thumbs for seventeen (seventeen, people!) hours a day. I have a few recipes and a completed house project. What I don't have is a lot of motivation. Apparently counting down the seconds until 3pm on June 20th will take it out of you.

**We've actually been praising Fletcher like crazy for being the best guard dog ever today. Here's a hint, creepy guy walking on foot carrying bolt cutters knocking on my door, if you knock and then quickly walk away as soon as you hear my dog bark, I'm probably going to call the police.

Henry Parker. Also, Worst Mom Ever.

So, in addition to being basically the worst blogger ever, I am also a terrible mother.

Why, you ask? Well, my first-born child turned six on Monday. And I completely forgot. Hugh reminded my on Tuesday morning when I was driving to Savannah. This will mark day three of beating myself up.

Fortunately, I think HP has forgiven me. This is how we've spent our morning:

Pets who sit like humans: always funny.

Also, please note the jealous Momma's dog on my other side. As soon as he saw Henry sitting beside me, he spent the next thirty minutes alternately whining and trying to climb into my lap. As my Mom tells me, I really need to work on my tendency to over-indulge them before we have any human children. I say, have you even seen their faces? Who could say no?

Baby Henry:



On that note, I'm off to feed this cuteness more catnip*:

We just love you so, Henry. Here's to many more years of getting to admire your beauty fur and you waking us up in the middle of the night because you're hungry.


*I mean, I can't be that bad of a mother if I grow catnip in my garden just for him, right? Right?