What the fluff?

I've noticed that I've been pretty good lately keeping my blog free and clear of any real thoughts. I have made a conscious effort since February, when I went through my "What does it mean to be an Olympian, and how does that scale to the life of a non-athlete?" period, to keep my blog free of more personal thought or feeling; I felt that I was being way too revealing, that I had to cultivate a more reasonable and well-balanced web persona, and, besides, who really wants to read about how sixty-percent of the time my mind is occupied with thoughts of direction, goals, opportunities found and lost, feelings of inadequacy and failure, disappointments, angst and anxiety, and all the darker shades of life? In this last post to show you the view from inside my mind, I declared that I would put an end to the posts that showcased my more cheerless train of thought, and I have to say that I've done a pretty good job at that. I suppose in one way I should be proud - I set a goal and stuck to it. But then why do my blog posts feel so... not like me? Like I'm pretending that life is only happy, and that all Doug and I ever do is fun, fun, fun? (Of course, if you've noticed, the frequency of my posting has cut way back, and that has something to do with the fact that my life, and my life with Doug, is not fun, fun, fun every day. You hear from me less often on this blog because I've cut out the posts in which I asked myself some of the more meaningful questions of life. My reduced blog presence is not really a time issue, as I might make it out to be. I have time.) Don't get me wrong, though - Doug and I do have fun, mostly on the weekends or on vacation days, and I want to share those moments with you, too. But I'm gradually feeling like I should go back to sharing some of those moments inside my head when the lights go down, I get a little introspective, and I start to think a little more deeply. That's a very real part of me, just as much as our weekend fun, and there's no reason why I shouldn't express it. This is a blog about my life written by me after all, isn't it? It's not fair to either of us if I don't give a more complete view of the inside.

That being said, today I'm going to write mainly about fun stuff, and I'll spare you the recount of the morning I spent in Lowe's trying to buy a pumpkin for our front step from a woman who appointed herself the unofficial pumpkin-weighing police. Good Lord, what a ridiculous experience, and all before 9am. Instead, I'll show you a photo of the back of my quilt, which I finished last week. It's a damask pattern, which I really like (Toile is another favorite of mine. I'm an old woman at heart, really.), and I picked it out so that if we get tired of looking at the t-shirts we can flip the quilt and have the damask pattern facing up instead. I know. I'm just so clever.

In exciting event number two, we went to Dedham's Oktoberfest celebration last weekend, and ate... the famous German hot dog and baked beans. There is German potato salad on that plate, though, and some very good mustard on the hot dog. I believe it was Dusseldorf mustard. I don't think we'd had any ever before, and Doug and I both liked it. So even though we didn't feast on bratwursts and knockwursts and whatever other kinds of wursts there were, we did enjoy a bit of Germany nonetheless.

In exciting event number three, another food related event, Hot Molasses played at Somerville's fifth annual Fluff Fest this weekend. Here is Doug, all excited about Fluff (which was invented in Somerville, by the way) and wearing his free Fluff Fest t-shirt (the perks of being in the band!). And here he is with Andrew, the Hot Molasses bass player, during their set: They played a good show! None of them were too pleased with their performance that day (though you can tell from this clip that it wasn't bad at all - in fact, quite good!), but what can you expect when you had another show in just about that exact same spot only about fifteen hours earlier. Come on, guys. Give yourselves a break! After all, aren't you a band that stands for hope, resiliency, and overcoming sticky situations?

What was fun about Fluff Fest, besides getting to see Doug play, was eating Fluff. This past week Doug and I had quite a few Fluffernutter sandwiches in preparation for Fluff Fest. Doug had never had Fluff before (how can I be married to someone who had never had Fluff before? For me it's a major block holding up the food pyramid.), and I was looking for a good excuse to eat it. I can safely say, though, that after this past week - and this weekend - I can go another while without having any. I think it might have been the Fluff hors d'oeuvre that did me in. Fluff, saltines, pickles, and cheeseballs are not a match made in culinary heaven.

I am looking forward to the baked ziti that I made tonight, though. I was trying to think of something to make that would give us a few leftovers, and that I could throw in the oven while I was doing other things today (like clean out my refrigerator, which I realized that I hadn't really done thoroughly since I bought it last year. Oops!), and so this was it. And it's just fresh out of the oven now. I can't wait any longer. Dinner here I come.