Cheese and My New Phone Case: A Good Weekend

Well.  This has been an eventful weekend for our family, but first things first, "first" being "food," naturally.

Friday night Derek and I got to go on a date, and we made the excellent-fantastic-enlightened choice to eat at The Cheese Shop in Des Moines.

Holy. Dairy cow.  The Cheese Shop isn't exactly a new establishment, but just in case we're not the last Iowans to have eaten there:  Central Iowans, get thee hence.  Immediately.  You just have to.  I had the Bacon & Blue Salad, Derek had the Skillet Mac & Cheese, and it was one of those times where, after cleaning my own plate, I slid Derek's unfinished food right on over and polished it off, too.  (He told me he was done and that I could, okay?  Twice.)  This made me a hero, because that is how I choose to look at it, mostly by thinking in terms of "NO FOOD LEFT BEHIND" and "NOT ON MY WATCH."

The blue cheese on my salad was so fresh and so creamy, the candied Valencia almonds perfection, and the cheese in Derek's entree was incredibly flavorful.  We also watched them prepare a few meat and cheese boards and loaves of crusty bread with olive oil for other (possibly smarter) patrons, and determined we must return sooner rather than later to sample these offerings.  It took every ounce of self control I had not to vault over that counter and begin gnawing on a hunk of fresh artisinal bread they were purposely torturing me with.  These are the kinds of thoughts that come after running seven miles before the sun rises, as I did that morning, which sounds dandy until I tell you one of my running partners- remember the Magnificent Mindy?- ran 18 miles that morning.  Like, whoa.

We also got a new-to-us van, which is exciting- almost as exciting as MY NEW PHONE CASE:

The front:  Yup.  Fine.  Good.  Unassuming.  It's a phone.

Back:  BEST THING EVER

Because you know I'm all about that case, 'bout that case- everybody sing!

I'll most likely be writing all about our new means of transportation that neither makes us deaf nor tries to murder us later this week- for now I just couldn't wait to show you that beautiful, beautiful phone case.  Of course, once I had snatched it from the mailbox and extricated it from its packaging, Derek took one look at the thin plastic case and said, "What?  This thing will do nothing to protect your phone!"  For a second I worried he'd been struck blind by the sheer radiance of that case, because who could talk about protection and keeping a phone intact and blah blah blah when faced with A PHONE CASE THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOGWARTS EXPRESS TICKET ASSUMING HOGWARTS EMPLOYS A GIFTED GRAPHIC DESIGNER?  (No, my caps lock button did not get stuck; I just feel rather strongly about certain things, usually centering around books.)  

How was your weekend?

Savoring the Cheese

Our calendar for the next couple months is very full.  There are few days that don't have multiple somethings penciled in, to the extent that I've found myself thinking, Just have to get to June.  The month of June, I can breathe again.  I'm treating all this fullness, this busyness, like it's a grind, when in fact what I should be doing is appreciating it, what I should be doing is stopping to enjoy the cheese.  "Enjoy the cheese" because while I love roses and will stop to sniff at them every so often, it's more to check just how poorly my sniffer is sniffing on that particular day, whereas with cheese, my lovely, lovely cheese, I will lavish time upon it, taking for-ev-er to eat even a small amount.

This is saying something as I am a slow eater to begin with, due to several reasons I am aware of because my college roommate and I spent way more time than necessary dissecting the reasons for my sssllloooow rate of food consumption, because that's just what you do in college, I guess, but not to worry:  I'm not going to take you through the whole thing.  Bad enough I've forced Derek to listen to our detailed findings.

But with cheese?  It's even worse.  If I'm eating it plain, a hefty block in one hand and some fruit in the other (Ooooh, heaven.  Hello, saliva pooling in my mouth, even now), I will take as long as I please, thank you very much, because I am not a savage.  This is cheese, friends.  I was devoted to Madonna's Like A Prayer album as a kid, and continued to love that freak right up until she declared that she doesn't eat cheese.  Even as a child I recognized that some things are sacred, and certain delicious dairy products are one of them.  If there is a cheese gene, I have it and have passed it to Adelaide, who loved cheese so much as a baby that she would lose her ever-loving mind if the word was said within her range of hearing and we did not have an offering of cheese to throw at her from a safe distance (I am only barely exaggerating), to the extent that I started to call it queso in her presence, which worked for right around six days.  I recently made the mistake of letting her try some of the havarti cheese I was nibbling on whilst the children were eating the more homely colby jack (don't get me wrong, I love even peasant cheese), and she was so smitten that she now asks for it on a daily basis.  The asiago is currently hidden in the back of the cheese drawer (because of course we have a cheese drawer) in the fridge, away from her voracious eyes.

So for the next couple months I will stop and take time to enjoy the spring vocal concert and the havarti and the soccer games and the aged white cheddar.  And I will do so as slowly as I want.

ALSO HIDDEN