happy day, my love.

https://januaryone.com/blog/_happy_day_my_1/

I GOT IT! I got the damn picture. Whew! Can you say YARN DIET?
When G got home last night I told him I got his birthday present, MY birthday present, our anniversary present and Christmases and Chanukahs to come. (And because he’s the sweetest boy in the Universe, after I told him about it he actually asked me, what’d you get for yourself? DOH! He said, no, that won’t do! Mwah, my love!)

So it was a live auction kind of thing and because I’ve never bid on anything save two roving things on ebay I thought, why not watch the live auction stuff. I put in my high bid and opened up the applet thingy at around 11AM when “they” said my lot was going to come up. Well, apparently my AUCTION started at 11AM, but my lot didn’t scroll past until 3:30PM and I watched all that freaking time. Yup. I’m crazy like that. But it was pretty fascinating with the bids running up the screen and the auctioneer saying (well typing – there wasn’t actually any sound – although that would’ve been really cool) it was about to close – and my heart raced a little at the thought that I’d be missing out on the cloisonne tea cups engraved with strange birds that may or may not have been from Italy. Weird shit out there. And people buying it. I thought I had it all figured out – I was an Internet bidder, surely and there were floor bids and I was a little disconcerted that only floor bids seemed to win. And then the reserve wouldn’t be met and the auctioneer would post a message reserve not met – bid again – and no bids would come in and the reserve wouldn’t be met and yet the floor bid would win. Interesting. All of it. And then FINALLY it seemed like my print was coming up. I was sitting on the edge of my chair – nails lost long ago over the fierce bidding on a Bavarian turn-of-the-century cuckoo-clock – when the bidding started. $50 Floor bid. $60 Internet bid (could that be me?!) $90 bid. $375 bid Floor bid. Auction CLOSED.

WHAT?! How could it go from $90 to $375 and who was this FLOOR BID person stealing my prized Dali print that would make Georgie cry!?!?!? (Always the goal of any gift. I’m shameless, I know.)

I called my sister to tell her I lost. I was almost in tears, exhausted from watching every last bad oil painting from someone’s basement stroll by on the screen. Tired from all the gilt. All the pewter. All the vermeil.

Then I went looking for the print online – even though I had looked a million times before and never found it. In fact, I had given up until Lee Ann had read a comment I made on Jenny’s site and SHE found it for me. Bless you Lee Ann! Bless you. And to compound the problem, Dali, in his infinite obsession wisdom, did 819 versions of St. George slaying the Dragon. But ONLY ONE is the RIGHT ONE. And of course, that’s the hardest to find.

Oh but find it I did. Right here. I was about to buy it when I thought, you know what? I better talk to G first. Maybe we didn’t like it as much as I thought we did. Maybe it’s better I didn’t win the auction. Think of all the YARN I could buy with that money. I did buy him a $24 briefcase that he’ll be (maybe) perfectly happy with. I rationalized the whole thing away.

And then I checked my email. Turns out I was the floor bid of $375. I WON THE DAMN PRINT!!! I instantly felt sick to my stomach. Buyer’s remorse set in like a thick fog on the ocean. And how the hell did the bidding go from $90 to $375 JUST LIKE THAT?

I actually called them and they were quite nice about it – explaining to me that my bid was in already and they bumped it up to meet the reserve (since my high bid was just over the reserve number) instead of having to bump it up $10 a shot for the next hour. They saved me time.

And while I’m feeling all sick about it, G said to me, “that was so smart of you!” and telling me I have to frame it AS SOON AS WE GET IT and scoping out places in the house to hang it and refusing to look at it online because he wants to be surprised by it! And now you know why I’ve been with this incredible, delightful, crazy-as-me man for fifteen years.

Oh yeah. I finished the second square for the John Glick Project while I was watching old Fisher Price toys scroll by and I did some knitting on my Sunshine socks, only to find out I had added an extra stitch somewhere back about 1000 rows and had to rip it. Rip it good. Dadadada da don da don. Rip it GOOD!

That’s how long G and I have been together – and to be honest – it’s freaking me out a little.

Saturday is fifteen years since THAT DAY. The day we first decided that we were going to be together forever, and while it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing, time has definitely flown by. I can’t believe it’s been that long. We’ve lived together for fourteen of those years and been married for four. When we finally did get married, I insisted that it be on August 6th – THAT DAY – eleven years later. I’m so glad we did that. It was a Monday, like the one in 1990 and we eloped in Vermont, just the two of us and Taffy, our JP and the flowers in front of the court house where our ceremony took place exactly matched the flowers that were painted on my dress. I got married with a plain platinum band and inside it’s inscribed August 6 – because I couldn’t decide between 1990 and 2001 and I wanted to incorporate both.

Why is it freaking me out? I love G more than anything and he’s truly my best friend in the world – the person I feel safest with. I think I’m freaking out because I’m getting older. It’s really odd to think that I’ve been with him my ENTIRE ADULT LIFE. I’ve now lived out of my parents’ house longer than I lived there. I’ve known G for eighteen years.

G is almost eight years older than me (his birthday is on Sunday) and he’s fighting the whole aging thing and I’ve always been pretty cavalier about it – you’re only as old as you feel yada yada yada. But guess what? Turns out those numbers are kind of scary after all!

Of course, I know, you can’t look at your life as a series of numbers – but it’s anniversaries and birthdays when you DO look at those numbers and they keep getting bigger and bigger and you just have to wonder – where did all that time go? And how much time is left? [GASP!] It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long at all, which I’m sure is a good thing – if it felt like forever I’d be really worried.

As I mentioned, G’s birthday is on Sunday. Birthday’s were never a big deal in his family, but they’re a big deal to me. G and I are incredibly generous with each other all year round – in time, in love, in gifts – I mean really – if we want it we generally just get it for us. But I used to love spoiling him early on in our relationship. Waking up on his birthday and pulling out all of these elaborately wrapped gifts. He would get so choked up and I love making him feel special. As the years have gone on – it’s getting harder and harder to spoil him. Hence, I have nothing for his birthday this year. Sure, keeping sane has kept me preoccupied, but still, I like to have SOMETHING.

Lee Ann might have solved the problem. She found a Dali print we saw last year on a trip to Cape Cod – a lithograph of St. George & the Dragon that we fell in love with (my patron saint, if you will!) and I looked and looked and couldn’t find it and then LeeAnn goes and finds it in like five seconds. But anyway, it’s up for auction today and I just put a bid in. I have no way to gauge the price on these things – it’s beyond my scope – but I hope I get it and I hope it doesn’t go to my high bid.

I didn’t do any knitting – well a couple of rows on a square – yesterday. That’s okay – I’ve still got ten weeks and three days to finish short rows.