Absence Made Your Heart Grow Fonder...I Know, Right?

Amigos, I apologize for my absence. I've been crazy-obnoxious busy at work like a college-town bar, which means two things: 1) I haven't been taking a midday jailbreak to let the whole wide Internets know how immature I am, and 2) By the time I get home I'm so burnt out on reading that I want to set Dr. Seuss on fire, so banging out anything remotely funny, or even English, is not really an option.

I don't blog about work for a variety of reasons, one of which being that I like being allowed to show up every day for another installment of I'm Sorry, What?, but to paint a picture of my frustration, yesterday I spent the better part of twenty minutes listening to a client agonize over whether he should sign just his first and last names, or his first, middle, and last names. Things I Wanted To Say But Probably Fortunately Did Not Say: "Your signature looks like you got lit and tried to draw a bird. Sign anything you damn well make up so I can go get some coffee and mental stability! Is that a cockateel*?"

What I Actually Said Because I Enjoy Health Benefits: "Since I'm not the attorney, I can't legally advise you in this matter." Le sigh.

Back on the home front, the most exciting thing to happen to me so far in O'Niner happened this week: Four months after moving into our very own This Old House (complete with This Old Plumbing and This Old Dear God What The Hell Is That??!?!?!) Lawyer Boy and I finally got a china cabinet, so I could unpack the dozen boxes full of my minorly concerning obsession with china, crystal, and silver that had been sitting in the corner like a bubble-wrapped dinner party. Even better, Lawyer Boy made our china cabinet with his own two hands, and the two hands of Bill, my cousin, who's my cousin in a way that no state except Massachusetts legally recognizes. Whatever. Wine is thicker than blood. LB and Bill spent all weekend in Bill's cabinet shop--yes, this was a professional endeavor; it wasn't just LB buying a few make-your-own-birdhouse kits and nailing them together.** The end result was a beautiful Mission-style cabinet, approximately the size of a school bus. I feel dirty every time I say "Mission-style," because I worry that people immediately think "missionary-style," and we're suddenly no longer talking polished wood and beveled glass in a family-friendly kinda way. I'm still amazed that the whole thing was done in one weekend, although I'm sure that if we had wanted something huge and ornate, with curvy cabinets, carved wood, and flying buttresses, it would have been a different story. Impatience is the only reason I didn't insist on a portrait of my face carved into the center cabinet door.

I was two parts excited and one part train-wreck horrified when I saw all my china, crystal, and silver together in one place, because until that point, I had been unaware that I was thisclose to being the eighty-year-old cat lady who throws tea parties for her muu-muu-clad friends with Guiding Light on for background ambience. I almost have enough to have the entire Duggar clan of crazy over for dinner, except I object to serving Tang in my Waterford crystal. Happily, it's really useful Waterford crystal. The goblets hold twenty fluid ounces of delicious (and usually cheap) wine, which means that if you can heft it up off the bar, you've got yourself one heck of a sparkly personal party. I offer that tidbit to anyone who says that wedding registries are only for things you'll never use.

By the time I had filled the cabinet with the full load of my geekery, it was completely obvious that my dining room is officially more mature than I am. It looks like grown-ups live here! I'm so intimidated by my dining room, I feel like I have to go stand somewhere else just to make fart jokes. I don't know how to handle this: I'm so excited to have my dishes back, but I worry that this might be the end of parties involving a cooler full of vodka-infused Kool-Aid (Jungle Juice, to those of your lucky enough to be Hokies) perched in a sticky puddle next to the chili dip on the dining room table.

What am I saying? We'll just move the cooler to the backyard, where the cabinet can't judge us.

*Spellcheck tried to tell me that "cockateel" should be "cockatrice." If anyone knows WTF a cockatrice is, kindly inform me. But I have a feeling it's not an appropriate word to use in front of my dad.
**Reasons I Was Not Involved: I once bought one of those make-your-own-birdhouse kits, strapped on my mad skillz, and put it together, and even though this was before the days when I discovered wine and laziness, my avian apartment came out crooked. Carpentry was out.