What?

I am deaf....or maybe Oli mumbles....or maybe it's our differing accents and dialects. In whichever case, I frequently can't understand him and reply to to him with, "What?"

Two cases from the last 5 minutes:

[Refering to a previous conversation about videos]
Oli: Yeah, we'd need two versions.
Me: What? Two virgins?! Which one of your friends did that?

[Regarding the morning news]
Oli: Did you read the article on Al Gore?
Me: What? About Aragó?
Oli: You are DEAF!
(Note: Aragó is a street in Barcelona)

We'll have to stop speaking to one another or this marriage won't last long.

Stephen "Giant Balls" Colbert

WOW. Stephen Colbert is my new hero.

Read this.

~ Angela

She's a big kid now

Amazing how they grow. Twelve weeks ago Lily was in my belly and soon thereafter she was a new wrinkly little pink thing. Today she is a social independent-minded creature that can smile and say "a-goo". *Sigh* A few more weeks and she'll be president.

Wedding photos!

To view our wedding photos visit http://www.fredfox.com/scripts/albums/index.php . Click on 'online ordering', username: FAROS and password SEELEY. Enjoy.

By the way, thank you everyone who attended the wedding and thank you kindly for your gifts (particularly to Mike and his stripey thing). We had a fucking great time and we owe it all to you. It was heart-warming to know that you were so touched by our union and moved by our beautiful little girl.

If you are all genuinly feeling more disposed to marriage and babies then please have them in exciting and exotic locations so we can all enjoy more adventures abroad.

Huzzaahh!

Do you have Mr T on YOUR wedding video?

We do.

My friends were downtown about to board a boat for an architectural tour of the city when they saw Mr T and Conan O'Brien canoing down the river. British people don't know who Conan is so they only had eyes for Mr T.

When he came ashore my friends persuaded him to do a short tribute to Angela and I on Ben's wedding video.

Links to the wedding video will be posted when it is completed. Follow the 'fotos de boda...' link on the right to see photos of the wedding taken by friends and family.

baby adventure

Lliy had her first adventure last weekend. She sat comfortably in her baby carrier and held her trusty staff as her father transported her along the paths and canyons of starved rock state park. On one occasion she demanded to be taken off the beaten trail into the unknown wilderness. Unafraid of what may have lurked there and unperturbed by the mangled corpse of a half-eaten skunk she continued wide-eyed until her diaper exploded onto her mother whilst resting on a fallen tree.

We are expecting big things from Lily and a trip to starved rock is but the first in a series of adventures that'll no doubt prove increasingly more audacious.

sucking me dry

The title says it all. Note the contrast in our expressions, one of contentment, the other of exhaustion, and our appearances, one fat and well-fed, the other scrawny and mal-nourished.

These are the lives of baby and mother.

Relax! Don't do it!

Here's our life in a MasterCard commercial:

9-week-old baby
10 stress dollars
Oliver's torn ligament (see blog entry that is to follow)
10 stress dollars +
10 stress dollars more for the baby/house work this adds to my load
Final wedding-day touches
5 stress dollars
Pending arrival of 27 out-of-town guests
20 stress dollars
One rental apartment meant for our guests turning out to be uninhabitable
10 stress dollars
Extreme lane closures on Dan Ryan expressway
5 stress dollars
Lily's first vaccinations
5 stress dollars
Getting telemarket scammed and having to open a new bank account
5 stress dollars
The bank messing up the opening of the new account giving me $2000 that don't exist...which sounds good but yields many phone calls
5 stress dollars

A beautiful inoculated baby and sweet crippled fiancé with whom to share a sunny spring wedding day
Priceless

***

By the way, thinking up that title made me look up the lyrics to Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I had NO idea that the song was like that. I never listened too closely.

It smiles

Dude, my parents' house got hit by lightning.

Dude, my parents' house got hit by lightning.

Initial reports indicate that the event was the loudest the Ruiters have ever heard and that a burn mark remains on the ceiling of the guest bathroom.

This strike occured within an hour of Oli, Lily and me leaving their house. Man am I glad we got out of there because it would have been horribly unamusing for one of us to die on the toilet and worse still for the survivor to have to explain to an older Lily what happened to her absent parent. It's the stuff that playground ridicule is made of.

~ Angela

Don't call me an American!

Lily is tired of being referred to as an American.

"Nationality is passed down through the father's line, thank goodness, and that means I'm English", Lily said earlier this afternoon. "Although I live here, and I may well grow up here, I'm not really that keen on playing baseball, eating freedom fries, watching insufferable network news or finding more culture in my yoghurt than in the society around me".

In an effort to assuage any doubts about her true identity Lily was seen earlier today playing football, not 'soccer', with her father. “American football is a joke; what’s the deal with all those advert breaks, and why do they wear all that body-armour? They’re pussies, that’s why!”

Lily's first utterances have found resonance with some, particularly her father, but they have also met with disappointment among many of her flag-waving peers, who have accused here of being un-patriotic and in league with Islamic terrorists.

Lily continued, “I like to call a Z a zed, not a zee, and I certainly don’t agree with the ridiculous month/day/year notation used here in the US. It’s nonsensical.”

Lily’s comments have rallied the support of a number of liberal groups, but have also galvanized conservatives in support of the embattled Ruiter administration.

Spring break

The toe nail didn't fall off but it's still purple. I thought I'd continue with spring league anyway since half our team couldn't attend this week. With no subs we were losing about 6-1 in our first game of the day. I'd just made a nice cut into the end zone and just as I prepared to launch myself into the path of the oncoming disc, a catch that would have surely been a turning point in the game, my marker struck me down with a well-placed foot, turning my ankle over, crunching it, then throwing me helpless on to the cold cold and unforgiving earth. Out of the game, without health insurance and unable to walk down the aisle Angela now has an invalid and infant to care for. I just hope the ankle gets better fastly.

I know my foot looks long and strange anyway, but observe the two englarged areas at the back, above the heel. They'll be purple soon too.