Eat, Drink & Be Merry

I am a brain donor. But hey, I'm happy... so it's okay. At least, today I'm happy. Tomorrow I'll probably be about 17 shades of tired, and most likely a little grumpy by the end of my 12 hour shift (esp after staying up past midnight tonight), but when the opportunity to go to dinner & a movie with Chris & Jo comes up, I'm .... well .... I'm just a girl who can't say no.

Tonight after work (I get off at 8:00 pm, remember) I met them for dinner - after which we drove back a little closer to home (and also to the theater where you're allowed to bring in food from the surrounding food establishments - hello, Cold Stone!) for a movie. I got home at 12:15 and, sadly, am wired as all get out ... so I thought I'd share my night with my online audience. (I know, you all wish I'd just go to bed already, but first please allow me to give you a little insight into my Fabulous Friday Night.)

Hello, PF Chang's - one of my many true loves when it comes to food. Tonight I had my fave - Mongolian Beef, with about 3 cokes (because we all know that I love myself some sweet & fizzy coke along with my salty & spicy food). It was, as always, amazing. Mmmmm......

Hello, Cold Stone - my one true love when it comes to places that serve frozen confections. Tonight I had the Very Berry (however-that-goes) with toasted almonds. Oh, that ice cream's a little piece o' heaven, I tell you...

And then we went and saw this movie, which I am not too proud to tell you ... I had no desire to see. (Renee Zellweger gives me a bit of a headache, and well ... as much I do enjoy hearing Harry sing, he's not really that great of an actor.) Nonetheless... Christine had seen it with her roommate last week and I had it on good authority that I'd think it was pretty funny, so... $9.75 later, I was in. And let me just say... holy freaking crapping cow, this movie made me laugh so hard that I thought I was going to break something loose inside of me. Honestly - the wacky Minnesotan hair-do's and the accents, not to mention the local colloquialisms.... seriously - about the funniest thing I've seen in I-don't-even-know-how-long. Wow.
So, there you have it - a night in the life of me. And my favorite part of the whole night (and you'll have to admit that topping my fab dinner, my favorite ice cream in the whole entire world and the funniest movie I've seen in a good, long time is something to say) was when Jo turned to me in the movie ticket line, as I was standing there tired and bleary eyed (but still happy to be there, out with two of my favorite people EVER) and said "I'm so glad you came... I love this spontaneous part of you ... the eat, drink & be merry part." Do you see why I love her? "The eat, drink & be merry part" ... now, that's pretty great. It's not every day I hear something that so sums my life up. And even though I know that's probably not the most flattering picture of me ever painted (if you take it in the direct scriptural meaning, which you know I don't ... as I never like to think of myself in an un-flattering light), I do think it's pretty accurate... Gosh, it's great to have friends that know me so well - and love me in spite of myself. I am, truly, the luckiest girl ever.

G'bye Girlies....

From youngest to oldest... looking their best (not covered in mustard, root beer, syrup or anything else) - these are my girls. It's been a fun, albeit tiring and somtimes cranky-making, 5 days.

Domestic Diva

Okay, so... this week has been a mix of doing things I do well ... and doing things that I don't do so well. Clearly, the peed-on-pillow-fiasco was not a highlight. Breakfast for dinner, however, was FABULOUS. So fabulous, in fact, that I had to call my mom to tell her how amazing Julie's pancake recipe is. (For those TMM aficionados out there, it was a "I must write Mum" incident, for sure!) When I called home to tell her about how fab the pancakes had been (as well as to tell her how opposite-of-fab the bed peeing episode had been), Judy told me I should put the pancake recipe on the blog. So, here it is, per her request... (And I'm just saying... FREAK, these pancakes were great. Esp when had with buttermilk syrup. Seriously... fabulous!)

Buttermilk Pancakes
3 cups flour
3 Tab white sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
3 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup milk
3 eggs
1/3 cup butter, melted

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, beat together buttermilk, milk, eggs and melted butter. Keep the two mixtures separate until you are ready to cook the pancakes.

(I know... it sounds like a ridiculous amount of liquid for only 3 cups of flour - but trust the recipe. When you mix the two mixtures together, it's surprisingly thick and gooey.)

And... kids that grew up in our house know that all pancakes are better with buttermilk syrup. (I found out this week that hash browns covered in buttermilk syrup are pretty yummy, too.) So, that having been said...

Buttermilk Syrup
1 cup butter
1 1/2 - 2 cups buttermilk
2 cups sugar

Melt together and bring to just a boil (on low) --- turn off the heat and add:

2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp baking soda

(The soda will make the syrup fluff up a little... so make sure you have enough room in the pan for the mini-explosion.) Stir the syrup well before serving, because the butter & buttermilk separate when it sits.

DELISH! Makes a fabulous breakfast... or dinner. :-)

Domestic Disaster

Yeah, so... I learned the hard way that you can't wash a pillow in the washing machine. Turns out they go all wonky in the water (or maybe it was getting off center in the spin cycle). Pari had done a number on her bed last night. She somehow managed to pee through her pull-up, enough to soak her entire sheet, her fuzzy footie pj's, and (disgusting) her pillow. (Yeah, I have NO IDEA what she drank. And I did have her pee in the potty before bed. ...It's a mystery.) The good news is that Julie has A TON of extra pillows - so this one won't be missed.

Calgon, take me away... (as if it were that easy)

You Belong in Rome

You're a big city soul with a small town heart Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand And gorgeous Italian people - could life get any better?

What City Do You Belong In?

Yeah, this quiz isn't kidding. I was made for Rome, I'm pretty sure. Maybe I can get Julie to upgrade my thank-you-for-watching-my-children-while-I-was-enjoying-a-tropical-paradise-vacation gift from a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts to a one way ticket to Rome... It's worth a shot, right?

Homemade Give-Away BONANZA!

Here's how it works: The first five people to leave me a comment get something made by me just for them. It can be anything I want, I get to choose. It can be silly or serious, edible or not, but don't plan on anything alive.

Here's something fun I saw (and signed up for on my friend Peggy's blog). You want me to make you something? Okay... but you'd best be leaving me a comment - and soon.

There are a few rules involved (aren't there always?)

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It will be done sometime this year. (Don't expect grand things if it takes a long time. I'm just lazy!)
4- You have no clue what it's going to be. (The choice is mine! --insert evil laugh here--)
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange and/or silly.

The catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they've posted on their blog win a hand made, super creative, possibly lovely whatever in the heck I decide!

Be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

I know a picture would save 1,000 words, but...

...this isn't a picture I could post online - so you'll have to make do with my 1,000 words. (I'll try to keep it at less than that, but in order to paint you a literary picture, I'm gonna have to get just a little wordy.)

So, tonight's my first night here with my cousin's girls. They went to sleep fairly quickly and painlessly (halle-freakin-lujah!), and by 8:30 I was so tired I was yawning my own face off, so Cousin Lisa (their aunt) went home early so I could go to bed and get in some good sleep before tomorrow comes and I have full-time-mom duty.

No sooner had Lisa left than I heard crying coming from one of the girl's bedrooms. As I am a firm believer in letting kids cry it out (now that I've let that slip, I'm sure that none of you will ever want me to watch your kids, and I'm fine with that), I let her sob her little heart out. After half an hour of incessant crying... I started to worry. (Not about the crying kid so much as I was concerned she was gonna wake the other three up. Can you imagine the horror that would have ensued, had that happened?!)

I went in to check on her, and Par was FAST ASLEEP, crying her fool head off. I patted her back and tried to turn her over (thinking maybe her arm was stuck in a bad position or something)... and DANGIT ALL TO HELL, she woke up. I mean, bright-eyed-bushy-tailed woke up. Heaven help me.

So I picked her up to cuddle her back to sleep - which didn't work (she just kept crying). So I carried her downstairs to get her away from the other sleeping children... and she still kept crying. So I did the only other thing I could think of - I sat down in a dark room, grabbing my cell on the way... and called her mom (who is in Hawaii) to ask if this is normal behavior, and what in the crap could I do to make the kid fall back asleep. Julie gave me the run-down of what I could do to calm her down/stop the crying... and by the end of the conversation, Par had zonked out on me. (I guess taking kids into dark rooms and making long distance phone calls is the best way to get them back to sleep. Who knew?!)

Anyway, so now I had Par asleep on me... but I needed to get her back in bed. So I picked her up and carried her like a baby (because it's the easiest way to control her body - making sure that she a) doesn't flop about while I drag her back upstairs, as well as b) stays asleep.

As I took the first step up the stairs, both arms wrapped firmly about the 4 yr old I was carrying, I realized that my pj bottoms were... uhm... falling down. (They're a little big. That's right - I buy them big, because I want to be comfy. And big pj's are GREAT, to sleep in. It turns out they're not so great to carry sleeping babies in. Good grief.) By the time I hit the 5th stair, I was stepping on my pj's --- because they'd just kept slipping, and me walking on them wasn't helping. By the 8th step, the elastic waistband was around my knees - and... you guessed it, by the time I reached the top stair, I was wearing pajama tops, a 4 yr old sleeping child and ... my panties. Nice. ... And there was not a blessed thing I could do about it. And as I was carrying the sleeping child back to the last bedroom at the end of the hall all I could think was "thank heaven they're all asleep, they'd be FREAKED that I'm not wearing any pants". And then I had to giggle... I mean... LAUGH OUT LOUD giggle at how ridiculous the whole thing was.

And as I thought about how funny/stupid the whole thing was... I actually got a little bummed that there wasn't anyone to share the memory with (kinda like when I peed my pants in the movies last summer and then blogged about it) ... so I had to tell you all. Judge me if you will... I don't even care. I'm just bummed that all the laughing at myself totally woke me up and now I don't know how I'm ever gonna fall asleep... and I've got to get some sleep tonight, because tomorrow I have to pack sack lunches, get kids off to school, potty-train a 2 yr old and then deal with piano practice and dinner tomorrow night.

Ugh... Pray for me (and my slippery pj's), please.

The OTHER four cutest girls...

Today I head to Utah to stay with my cousin's girls for five days. That's right... as of this afternoon, *I am the single mother of 4 girls. Heaven help us all...

*Disclaimer/Warning to all the mothers out there whose phone numbers I have in my cell... be prepared for "ohmigosh, what do I do now?!" phone calls.

It's a tie...

...between the two cutest pics of the four cutest girls.

Aren't we adorable, and don't we look like we were having the most fun EVER?!


... It's because we are. And we DID! (And now I'm so tired that using these few words has worn me plum out and I must go to bed - at 9:00 pm. I know - weird.)

Oh, sweet mystery of life... at last I've found you!

I'm in love. And I'm not even kidding this time.

Honestly, these are *the best treat EVER!

*Disclaimer: these are the best treat ever that can be purchased in a drug, convenience, grocery or all-purpose store (such as the CVS, Circle K, Safeway or the Wal-Mart). There are some treats that surpass this in quality and enjoy-able-ness that can be found in Sees' stores, or other such specialty confectionaries.

Valentine's Day 2009 aka The debut of The Red Dress

This is us at dinner on Saturday. I know, it's a sitting pose and you can't really see The Red Dress - but here you go. (I'd tell you how many people have asked for pics of T.R.D., but you'd think I was exaggerating.)

For those of you who don't know (all of) us, I'll run through the names from left to right, front to back: Andrea, Lisa, Genevra, me, Michelle and Jenni.

Vegas with the bank chicks was, as always, fabulous. We did break from our regular (more structured) routine and didn't all go to a show or do anything too extreme. It was mostly eating and hanging out... with some silliness thrown in for good measure. I did take my camera, but then I never pulled it out, so really... the only pics I have are the ones our waitress took (like this one) and a few that Jen emailed me copies of. For the bulk of the trip (read: if you want to see a super cute pic of me w/o makeup bundled up in a blanket, having taken over Michelle's pillow, watching Burn Notice for the 8th hour in a row on Sunday) you can find that on Lisa's blog.

I do love my CB girls! :-)

The story of Chatty Patty & her friend Christine

So, here's a funny story that I think my readers will enjoy...

Yesterday after brunch, the Utah girls hit the road and Genevra and I went back to her place for a leisurely day of sitting & talking (two of my personal favorite past-times, as we all know). About 7:00, Genevra Lynn dropped me at the airport, in plenty of time for me to walk onto my 7:50 flight. Oh, except that my flight was delayed (apparently, rain in Vegas is a big freaking deal, because a good chunk of the flights were canceled, and ALL the flights that weren't canceled were delayed.) I didn't leave until closer to 9:00 NV time - which put my get-home-in-AZ-time around 11:30. Because my friend Christine is a saint and an angel, she waited up so she could come and get me and take me home. That having been said, I'll do the rest of the night in a time-line-outline (it's easier - and will be less to read - than if I did a narrative blow-by-blow of the entire night).

11:28 - Christine picks me up at the airport. I'm exhausted from my rockin Vegas weekend. (I say this tongue-in-cheek, because everyone knows that I all really did was eat & sleep - but whatever.)

11:34 - We pull in to my apartment complex and I realize that I don't have my gate card to get in after dark. (This is a fairly common occurrence. I leave ALL THE TIME after dark and have yet to remember to bring my gate card with me.) Christine pulls over so we can wait for some other poor sap who isn't home by midnight on a Monday night to pull in, so we can follow them in through the gate.

11:38 - I'm so tired that I tell her that I'll just use my literal gate key and let myself in and then walk the 100 or feet to my building.

11:39 - Christine pulls over to the actual gate/gate and I pull my keys out, but then we get to talking about ... well, who knows what, actually and before we know it, it's after 12:00 and we're still sitting there chatting, when someone (FINALLY) pulls in who has their gate card. She whips around and follows the dude through the gate and pulls up as close as she can get to my building.

12:17 - We're still sitting in the car, chatting away... I'm still yawing a little bit, so Christine's telling me that I need to get out and go upstairs and get some sleep, but we were in the middle of something and I didn't want to cut the conversation short.

12:55 - By now, I'm not yawning so much and we've moved on to another topic.

1:42 - Yup, still sitting in the car, chatting away. (Have I mentioned that the car has been running this entire time?)

2:19 - Christine looks at the clock in her car and giggles and says "look, it's my birthday!" - which changes the topic of conversation back to her birthday, which is Thursday this week, and the reason why we're headed to California tomorrow... So she gives me the run-down of her birthday wish list - what rides she wants to do (Splash Mountain, Pirates and Peter Pan, if the line's not too bad) and what she wants to eat (Pineapple Whip!). And we proceed to map out the Disneyland day... that was all the adrenaline rush I needed to not look at the clock for another hour.

3:10 - I say that I need some fresh air. Chris agrees, and she turns the A/C down in her car (yeah, for you Utah readers, she turned the A/C down to 69 - from 72 - in the middle of the night, in February). I rolled my window down, too, so we had a nice breeze going.

3:33 - I realize that I haven't eaten in 12 hours, so it's no wonder that I'm hungry. Christine asks if I want to go to breakfast - she's pretty sure there's an IHOP about a mile away. I tell her, no, that I really ought to go upstairs and just go to bed. She, of course, agrees (esp since we'll be spending 6 hours together in a car on Wed & Fri this week - with a full day at Disneyland sandwiched in between)... and then we proceed to just keep on talking.

Oh, yes, and the car's been running this entire time...

4:14 - I say that I'm so hungry I'm getting light-headed (never mind the fact that I've been awake for almost 24 hours and that could be why my body's weirding out), and that maybe breakfast isn't such a bad idea...

4:34 - We decide to just go and get food - we both need to go to bed, but by this time, we know we'll need something in us in order to stay asleep. So, we head off for the IHOP that Christine knows is close.

4:47 - The IHOP is sooo not where Christine thinks it is - which is HILARIOUS to us (mostly because it's the middle of the night). We get completely turned around (because we all know that I'm no good with driving and/or directions even when it's the middle of the day and I'm lucid) - somehow we skip Main and go straight to Broadway before Christine knows we've gone too far.

4:58 - By nothing more than a stroke of luck, we end up taking a bizarre turn that lands us directly in front of IHOP.

5:00 - We head up to the door of the 24-hour-IHOP, only to see that they're closed until 5:30 am. (We later found out they had to close so they "clean the wood". Random, right?)

5:01-5:23 - We stand outside IHOP (in the rain, thanks), waiting for them to open - laughing at ourselves that we've been up all night, and at our luck that the place isn't open.

5:23 - The manager comes and lets us in (so we can get out of the rain), but tells us that he can't feed us for another 20 minutes or so. He offers us fresh coffee - I tell him that we just need some fresh water - Christine and I giggle uncontrollably - he gives us some water and some menus and just walks away... (Not a bad decision on his part.)

5:45 - Our super-perky-ridiculously-peppy waitress comes out and takes our order. Christine gets an omelet - because she loves them. I order the Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-&-Fruity (because the name makes me giggle, and because I love to eat little piggies... and it comes with sausage AND bacon).

6:00 - The food comes out and we literally TEAR INTO it like we've never eaten in our live-long-lives. About half-way through our pancakes we take a break to sing "Good morning, good morning... we've talked the whole night through" ... and then we bust into giggles. Christine says, and I quote, "You'll have to tell your mom this story... she'd love it!"

6:33 - Breakfast is over, we're still giggling like 12 yr olds.

6:47 - We've paid and we're back out on the street, discussing that this time when Christine gets me home, I need to just get out of the car ... not because we couldn't keep talking (because we know we could) ... but because if she doesn't head home right away, she's gonna get stuck in rush-hour traffic and that's not somewhere she wants to be (esp when she left home at 11:20 PM the night before in order to make a 6 mile round-trip drive).

6:53 - She drops me off and we both make a big show of saying good-bye quickly.

7:00 - I am upstairs and ready to hit the hay when I get a random text from her saying that she's a block from home and her "empty" gas light just lit up... Considering that she came to the airport at almost empty and we sat and idled in my parking lot for 6+ hours before we drove through Tempe looking for IHOP, I figure that's not too bad...

Yeah, so... I go on vacation so flippin tired that all I can do on Sunday is lounge about and drift off into naps all day long. Then I come home on Monday and pull an unintentional all-nighter talking to a friend who I'm gonna be with Wed, Thurs AND Friday. Seriously, I'm such a retard... It's a good thing I have today to rest up before we head to Cali tomorrow, right? (And yeah, I'm so taking sleeping pills with me so we don't have an unintentional repeat of last night whilst we're on our little trip. Honestly... I could talk for DAYS when I'm with my girlfriends. Geez.)

Travel Logging

So, I've been in Vegas for over 24 hours now. We've eaten, napped, eaten, played cards, talked, slept, eaten again... and I'm just about ready to go down for another nap - but maybe I'll have a snack first. (Anyone sensing a theme?)

We've had a lot of good times (all of which are documented on Lisa's blog, if you want to go and check us out) - including a full-on, furniture moving & posed out photo shoot last night after dinner. (What can I say? We're party animals!)

The pics to come later (as in... when I'm home and have the time to get them downloaded and then uploaded). I'm a little busy now with the napping & the eating and can't be bothered with pics at this time - but I did want to do a little update, if for no other reason than to refer any curious folk over to Lisa's blog. (Because I'm a blogging cheater and want to take advantage of her having travel logged. I know, I'm lazy little thing - but you love me, anyway, and we both know it.)

The End. (for now)

My red dress and I are headed to Vegas...

I'm meeting the CB Gals (Jenni, Mich, Lisa, Genevra and Andie) for a Girls Weekend. Tonight we're getting all gussied up and going out on the town. I thought this would be a good occasion for a Red Dress Debut. (Pictures of me actually wearing the dress, accompanied by said friends, to follow.)

Viva Las Vegas!

I'm the luckiest girl in the world. I really am.

Do you want to know all the reasons why? Well, that's too bad - because I honestly don't have the time (or the stamina, frankly) to give you all the reasons - but here are a few.

I don't have to go back to work until next Friday, and that's just a half day, so it hardly counts. After working half of Friday and Saturday of next week, I'm out until Friday of the next week. In essence, there are 15 days left in the month and I only have to work 3 1/2 of those 15. (How freaking sweet is that?!)

And as if that isn't enough, today is the 13th, and it was my 5th working day of the month. Well, 4th and 1/2, actually (because today was only a half day, too). What that boils down to is that by the end of this month I will have only worked 8 days out of 28.

Oh. My. Gosh. I love my life! (And I love the 224 PTO hours that I have at this new job. Honestly, LifeLock is kicking the trash out of the Choice Bank/Silver State Bank vacation plan.)

See? I told you - I am the luckiest girl in the world.

The End.

The Secret Life of Bees

So, I've heard this is a fabulous book. Really, I've heard it's FABULOUS. And I've been meaning to read it for years. (Along with a bunch of other stuff that's on my "to read" list.) When the movie came out, I thought "oooh, that looks good... I'll have to read the book, though, before I see it" - and because I never got around to reading it, I didn't allow myself to see it in the theaters, even though I wanted to.


Fast forward about 6 months to today, when I had a free rental at Blockbuster and only about 4 more hours in my day before LOST came on and ruled my Wednesday night. I headed down to get a movie (because we all know there's no other way I'd rather spend my day off than on the couch with a good flick) and when I saw this in the new release section... I had to have it. All my resolve to read the book first went out the window. I picked it up, checked it out and headed home. I finished it with 30 minutes to spare (just enough time to get online, check my emails and put up a post before my main man, Sayid, hits the airwaves).

Men, women, children ... whoever you are, reading this... SEE THIS MOVIE. It was fabulous. I was pretty bummed that I hadn't read the book - I'm sure it's even better. But even so, this was a FAB movie. I do love me a good coming of age story, and this one set on the brink of the Civil Rights Act is a beautiful tale - and a movie wonderfully done.

A relationship that's stood the test of time

Circa 1978

Circa 2009
Over 30 years and still going strong...

The new & improved fitness plan for 2009

I figured, where else do I get such a great work out? I walk all day and then use the muscles in my arms to hold on through Indiana Jones & Thunder Mountain. Seriously ... it's a grueling physical workout that leaves me sore for days. Which is why I'm pretty sure I'll be a Skinny Minnie (absolutely no pun intended) by February 2010, since now that I've got the annual pass on my side, I can walk the parks (and then hang on for dear life) FOR FREE any day for the rest of the year.


That's right folks, I bit the bullet and bought an annual pass when I was at the park last week. I have 361 days left on the pass - and I come with free parking. So, anyone wanna go?

She LIKES red!

Actually... she loves it. So much so that when she went shopping for a funeral dress, she HAD to try this one on. Mind you, the dress does look very different on me (as in, I did not make that gay face when I had it on - also, the bust ...uhm... fits a little more snugly and the neckline is a little more ...uhm... daring on me) - but here you can get the general idea.

But then, a red dress seemed a bit much for a funeral, so I decided to try on this little black number.

Again, I had better posture (imagine!) than this model did ... so it did look a little different on me (even if the model does have better legs - who doesn't? - at least I know better than to bend over backwards when someone's taking my picture). But still, I loved it. But did I love it more than the red dress? Uhm.... no, no I did not. The bummer is that I couldn't justify buying a red dress to wear to a funeral. So I did the only thing that a woman armed with a 30% off coupon can do - I bought both of them. And a necklace and some super cool bangley bracelets (ala Lisa Walton, so you KNOW I feel stylish) --- all for $103. (Yeah, I know. Go, me!)

The thing is... I really do prefer the red dress. I just wish I could get away with wearing it to Grandma's funeral on Saturday.... She really liked bold colors, so maybe if I wasn't speaking, I could get away with it. But no, I'll be up there front & center for the whole thing ... so I guess I'd better go with basic black. Gag. Sometimes I really hate being a grown-up.

Superbowl Sunday at my house

I wondered as I typed the title of this post if Superbowl is one word or two. (Yeah, I'm not making it up.) I am truly not a sports fan, this we know.

So, rather than tune my tv to a football game that would go on for hours - I took advantage of the downtime I had tonight and put in my new 4 hour long Jane Eyre movie. And let me just say, it did not disappoint. I mean... IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT. It was long, but in a good way. (In the same way that the BBC Pride & Prejudice is long. In a very thorough, following-the-book, sort of way.) I'd forgotten parts of the story ... how I get spooked by the fire, and confused about what's going on about 2/3 of the way in. Egads, starting this movie after dark was a bit of a mistake. (Just because I'm a scaredy-cat and it's a little bit spooky.)

But shoot, I do love Mr. Rochester. (I mean - I really, really love him.)