Perhaps the most romantic words ever uttered in the history of our relationship:

“Baby, don’t put this on your spreadsheet.”

The Boy and I split everything right down the middle. Bills, rent, groceries, dinner dates.  If he drops his card at dinner one night, I take the receipt home and add it to the spreadsheet I keep of our expenses so I can settle up later. Perhaps it’s not exactly romantic, but marriage is as much business as it is pleasure. Besides, we essentially bring in the same salary and have the same goals and challenges related to debt and saving for the wedding, so it just makes sense. Plus, I’m totally enamored of fair. This love affair with equality is most likely some holdover from growing up one of five in, shall we say, less economically favorable times. Ever try to split a package of M&Ms between five kids? You should see me cut a cake into an odd number of symmetrical slices. It’s masterful.

The Dork Lord doesn’t have the same hang-ups with fair – in his mind, what’s his is mine, period, and what’s mine is his and it will all work out in the end. I probably don’t have to tell you that’s not quite concrete enough for me. I demand precision! This philosophical difference causes relationship hiccups from time to time, but even he can’t deny he’s grown to love the spreadsheet.

Last night, I dragged myself home later than usual – literally, dragged. By the time I crossed the apartment’s threshold, I was pulling my laptop bag behind me by its strap, my purse hanging from my wrist doing uncomfortable things to my circulation. Everything hit the floor at once. Laptop, purse, shoes, keys, sunglasses, jacket. And then I crawled onto the couch next to the Boy and pulled a blanket up to my chin.

“I think I might be dead.”

“What can I do for you right now that would make it even a little bit better?”

I thought for a second but said nothing. Everything I came up with would land one or both of us in jail and that’s not exactly what this relationship needs right now.

“How about a cheap dinner out?”

Cue the balancing act in my brain. Dinner sounded awesome. But it’s hard to eat healthy out and do it on the cheap. Speaking of cheap, spending any money right now is the quickest way to give me an eye twitch. And you remember that damn eye twitch.

“Or,” he offered, “I could put something in the microwave…”

“No, let’s go out, ” I said, doing some mental math. Carry the one. “I need it.”

Dinner was all things cheap, healthy and relaxing and while we were finishing up eating and talking about our days, the Dork Lord leaned over for a kiss.

“I’m glad I could take you to dinner.”

“Me, too. Just what I needed.”

And then he said the words that made my heart flutter.

“Baby, don’t put this on your spreadsheet.”

I’m pretty sure my coworkers think I’m pregnant. Ooof.

Skipping out on hurricanes last night at happy hour was all about appeasing my inner control freak – the girl who had big, big plans to go home and eat a healthy dinner, low in guilt and saturated fat. And as relationships go, booze and willpower’s is, by the laws of nature, an inverse one; booze goes up, willpower goes down, and vice versa. It’s like the Boyle’s Law of self loathing. And boy, can it get ugly the next morning (insert all of your bad morning after memories here).

Also, hurricanes? Meh. Start passing out dirty martinis and you won’t see such restraint. Or brownies. Then I’m just a girl who can’t say no.

I guess this is a very normal thing, but once you’re in the settling down mode, the workplace seems to hum with Womb Speculation. Gain a little weight and the office goes nuts. There’s an over/under at my office, which I’m pretty sure has something to do with actual dollar bets being placed on my uterine occupancy status. Turn down a drink and Whoa, Nelly! Getting married means everyone wants to know when you’re going to spawn, but the second you say, “I’m not drinking,” speculation is bypassed completely and you get that look – the one that says, “Oh, we know.”

Please. I didn’t get pregnant. I got chubby.

I keep thinking I’ll jump back into the 30 Day Shred, but something tells me that right now, I probably can’t handle being yelled at by Jillian. Not to mention that every time she says, “Chop, chop, ladies!” I kind of want to stab things. I’ll show you chop, chop.

No cause for alarm or anything, but I think I just might be losing my ever loving mind this morning.

I’ll venture a guess that it’s something to do with Mercury or Venus or Mars in retrograde (whichever of those retrogrades and messes everything up, that’s the one I mean) because sitting at the counter this morning, lapping up coffee and ruminating on the uneasy feeling growing in my gut, I said out loud to the cat, “Something is wrong.”

The cat didn’t answer, which is pretty normal for Sir Hal. He’s not very talkative in the mornings. So I continued with the coffee and some cataloging, sorting out the pieces of my life into mental piles of Messed Up and Not Messed Up. House? Not messed up – the appraisal is all done, just waiting for the final paperwork. Wedding stuff? Not exactly messed up so much as mildly overwhelming. Work? Eh, maybe messed up, but that wasn’t it.Blast!

Lather, rinse, repeat. I went through it all again and still I didn’t locate that thing plaguing my stomach.

It started last night. The Boy was on the couch doing Trig, I was next to him writing thank you notes and suddenly, like a switch was flipped, I just knew something was amiss. The Dork Lord patted my head, reassured me with “honey” and “baby” but there wasn’t a lot he could do. If I were a math problem, he’d have me all sorted out in no time.

If I wasn’t always right about these things (Impending Doom and I are tight), I’d push the feeling aside and go all in on the Mardi Gras festivities. I’m pretty sure we’re closing up shop early today to, you know, boost morale and enhance our work relationships. Happy hour sure beats trust falls.

Me, I’m very exciting these days.

It’s Thursday night and I’m just now getting around to watching the Academy Awards. Wait, let me set the stage first:  the Dork Lord is at school tonight, so I’m standing barefoot in the kitchen, my hair pulled up in a post-exercise sweaty knot, and I’m hovering over the counter eating rotisserie chicken off the bone. Glam-or-ous. In a perfect world, “I Feel Pretty” would be playing somewhere in the background.

And so pretty, that I hardly can believe I’m real!

I was going to go on about how the Academy Awards – which even as an adult, I watch primarily only for the dresses – is on the tube and about how I’m  feeling so uncomfortable for the hosts, yadda yadda, but this stuff is days old. You already know. Because you watched it when it actually happened. It probably doesn’t get old to hear that Colin Firth is scrumptious, so I feel okay putting that out there.

Guys, I wish I had something riveting to tell you. You know, besides that I did fifteen whole push ups this morning – something I was pretty proud of until I told the Boy and he said, “Real push ups or on your knees?”

“Well, dammit. On my knees.”

Who decided those aren’t real? Considering I’m finding it difficult to wash my own hair after ten or so, that’s real enough for me, thank you.

The house news is that… there’s no news. The appraisal supposedly happened on Tuesday but all’s quiet on that front (is this normal?), so we wait and in the meantime, I have very vivid dreams about mistakes in paint colors.  I feel like I should put up an Out of Order sign on the blog until something actually happens, until I actually have something to say other than, Nothing to see here! Otherwise, we’re left wrapping up here by covering my unreasonably elevated excitement over getting a haircut tomorrow.

Told you. EXCITING.

Please don’t break up with me. I’ll put away the chicken.

It’s the month of March, I believe, that folks say comes in like a lion. Meaning the disposition of  the weather, of course. Well, it’s March today and though the sun is out, the sky is crisp and spring is sprung, around here – be it a lion or some other cranky beast -  something is certainly roaring.

If you thought planning a wedding, getting robbed, buying a house and all that goes with that is a special sort of mayhem, something else fairly large-and-in-charge is now afoot at the Circle K.  One of those, I’ll tell you something when there’s something to tell things, so you’ll have to hold your proverbial horses for a bit. No, it’s not babies, you hush your mouth.

Getting ready for bed last night, I leaned forward to check out the stellar collection of under eye luggage I’m sporting these days and whispered to my reflection, “I don’t know how you’re supposed to do all this.” The answer was right there in front of me. On the counter. In an amber colored prescription bottle.  My doctor may have ignored my repeated phone calls but my mother didn’t.  Ah, the miracle of modern medicine. Say what you will about self medication, but one teeny white pill and I’m sleeping the sleep of a fat, happy baby, blissfully unaware of this thing called growing up and this other thing called, anxiety.

Speaking of fat, I did push ups. Five. And fairly sorry I did even that many. Washing my hair was a bit difficult this morning which felt a little pathetic, but I told myself all I needed was some time and persistence and I’d get my yoga arms back and I felt a little better. Then I gave myself credit for daily flossing and felt a whole lot better. That shit’s gonna pay off in like, forty years for sure.