This is what is growing on my back deck:
It just started blooming within the last week or so. I'm not even sure that Kurt saw it blooming.
And it looks darn like what this website says is Japanese white wisteria.
It smells HEAVENLY. I wish I could upload a bit of scent for you to experience.
I may just have to spend evenings on my back porch the whole time the thing's in bloom!!!
Yesterday my husband left for a five-week deployment to San Diego. This isn't as bad as it sounds; five weeks really isn't that long, for one, and for two, San Diego means he can still use his cell phone.
It's the deployments to foreign countries (and this includes Canada -- sorry, Art!) that really get on me. He can't use his cell phone, so we're limited to the one or two emails he can sneak in per day. I miss him being on the USS Bridge; they had a ton of computers and he was able to email me whenever the urge to do so struck him.
Anyhow.
I had full intentions of waking up with him at oh-dark-thirty in order to see him off yesterday morning. I also had a hard time sleeping, as I was deathly afraid he would turn off his alarm and thereby miss ship's movement, never a good thing. So once he decided to get up at 4:30am or whatever it was, I guess my brain finally decided to shut off. I sat up in bed while he was doing his thing in the bathroom, thinking that I would just relax till he was finished (what am I gonna help him with in there anyhow??), and once he came out I would just keep him company.
Slowly, however, my body started to list to the right, and before I knew it, I was laying back down on the bed. So I decided to close my eyes so I could relax until he finished in the bathroom.
Next thing I know, he's trying to turn me back into bed the right way and he's kissing me goodbye.
I am a bad wifey.
Then today I took Gracie out for her Thursday Date with Mommy. How this is supposed to work is this: we get up, have breakfast, watch the Price is Right, get dressed, and meander out the door any time after 11am. Then we head down to our local Norwegian mini-town to peruse our favorite antique store, chat with the proprietor, and then stroll along the street and window-shop. Around 12:30pm or so, we head to the bakery cafe and split a sandwich and some pasta salad. And if the weather is nice, we head out to the waterfront where there is a nice patch of grass for Gracie to play on.
It has to be on a Thursday or a Friday too. I prefer Thursday because it's less crowded than a Friday, and weekends are right out because of the tourists coming into town and there not being sufficient parking. I can't go on a Monday because the bakery cafe is closed. I can't go on a Tuesday or Wednesday because those two days are the days my favorite antique store is closed.
It's complicated!!
But things didn't quite work out as intended today. For one thing, now my antique store is closed on Thursdays, only open by chance or by appointment!! Plus they're closed until next week too. That I totally don't get. There's a major (for this small town) festival going on this weekend which pulls in a mass quantity of tourists, and they're going to be closed!! Wouldn't you WANT to be open when there's going to be a huge influx of tourists, and you're the most well-organized and neatest antique store with the highest quality merchandise on the whole street??
That's what I thought.
Fortunately the bakery cafe was open, so Gracie and I shared a turkey wrap with cranberry cream cheese and some potato salad. Yum yum! And it's a GORGEOUS day in the neighborhood, so I wore Gracie out by letting her run amok in the grassy area. We made do with the antique store being closed by walking all the way up to the garlic shop, which is selling off all its merchandise and closing. Kurt was so sad when he saw the sign. That store sells all kinds of awesome stuff, like hot sauces and garlic paraphernalia and kitchen decor. Plus the whole store just exudes a homey garlic aroma. Yummy!
So we're managing just fine with Kurt being gone, although we're looking forward to having him home again. And it will be awesome to have him home for dinner every night too!!! Imagine that!!!