I finally convinced Molly that Ralphie May wasn't an offensive asshole. Which is an achievement in and of itself. I made the mistake of showing her Ralphie May in front of my PG-13 grandmother and could tell her presence was making Molly uneasy of if she should find him funny at the risk of my grandmother's judgement (at the time, she was still relatively new to my family).
I was glad she got to see my favorite comedian in a better light, but was even more impressed when I came home from work and she told she finished the special we had started watching and really liked it. Ralphie May is my kind of humor: truthful, outrageous but well-said, with no one barred from ridicule or criticism. Also I find it kind of funny he's a big guy who's atheistic and in love with a Jewish woman and is trying to lose weight. Which is pretty much my life story at the moment.
The fake roses I bought that were mentioned in a previous journal were put to use. I bought four fake purple flower bouquets and spent nearly two hours separating the fake petals and fake leaves from the fake stems. Then I bugged the piss out of my cat, Prince, with the pointy stems. I put the fake flower parts in a bag and misted them occasionally with a vanilla scent until they reeked of it, then promptly proceeded to hint about the surprise to her, which she actually guessed I was going to do when I hinted at it.
The flowers were for after our date night. When we came back from dinner I had my room prepped. the bed was made, with fake vanilla rose petals, massage oils off to the side (I actually forgot to do that), the room lit by candlelight and filled with the ambiance of a small brook thanks to my white noise machine. I know that sounds very sensual and set up for sex. But consider this, on the bed was a tablecloth, to catch any massage oil that may drip off of her. We did have grabbing, but the purpose was to alleviate a lot of the stress she was feeling in what turned out to be about a 30-40 minute massage.
But the best surprise? The best surprise I had for her was Charlie. Who's Charlie? This is Charlie.
That red panda companion on her shoulder is Charlie, a stuffed animal that I got for her while at Midwest Furfest, WintersRead and Chrysisi and my roommate can verify that! She is also wearing my Green Bay Packer sweatshirt, which I'm surprised doesn't tear apart; that sweatshirt is near eleven years old, and I wore that sweater for at least six of those years!
The story of why the red panda is named Charlie is an interesting story... literally. I often read Molly a bedtime story. It's an easy way to relax us both and help her sleep better. Sometimes though, I make up the stories, usually because I'm to lazy to go over to the computer. One night, I made up the story of Charlie. Charlie is a red panda in a forest who loves to learn and absorb all the knowledge he can. So he collects things from the forest (leaves, sticks, fruits, rocks, etc) to study them. One day he finds something that he thinks is a nut on the underside of a leaf but is confused by how it looks and feels. Charlie's pretty sure that it's a nut and wants to just break it open but resists the urge to do so in case he harms whatever this "nut" might be. So he goes to ask a friend, and the friend recommends seeking out the wise owl. Charlie travels all day and all night to get to the owl, and at sunrise he and the owl try to figure out what kind of nut Charlie found, and when he hands the nut over to the owl, they both notice that a butterfly's head is poking out of the nut and they realize it's a chrysalis for a beautiful butterfly.
That's the short version, I've told it so many times now I have patterns and variations to how I tell it, and it's much longer and more personable when I tell it.
So that's why the journal is titled Charlie the Red Panda.
