Christmas as an Adult

My gift to the world: the blog resumes!

I apologize that the blog had to pause - this past semester was a whirlwind (think tornado), but Andrew and I persevered and the world as we know it is back to normal as we know it.

Andrew and I started a new tradition this year after the academic semester ended. We went to Galena for some R&R and Christmas shopping. We soaked in the hot tub and ate, drank, and ate some more. The best part of Galena was the stillness of the place. There's an ordinance against music being piped into the streets, so when we exited a shop, we'd be standing on a quiet, perfectly preserved street, the snow falling lightly, holding mittened hands...I couldn't believe how much I loved the sound of nothing at all. I nearly became obsessed with the silence.

Which brings me to the theme of this year. I've always loved the chaos of Christmas. I think part of it is that I've always been a week into vacation when Christmas arrives, so it's controlled chaos, and I've always loved the loudness and the frantic-ness. But this year, I started realizing what Christmas is like as an adult. The build-up is stressful and takes a lot out of you, and then it feels like a wedding - it goes by in a blink of an eye, and you're left trying to piece together all the fun moments.

I started realizing that I'd become (or am becoming) an adult when the way I've always felt about certain things at Christmastime were completely different this year.

The Tree
We love to cut our own tree. This year, we drove out to a farm in nowhere Iowa. It had sledding and saws and the smell of pine, and it had been snowing. It was awesome. We took mugs of hot chocolate with us. But by the time we'd cussed eachother out getting the tree into the stand, we'd both decided that next year, we'll be skipping the stress of chopping the darned thing down and just getting a half-dead pre-cut.

And decorations present a whole host of other issues. Last year, our decorations looked beautiful to me. This year? Well, a little tacky. We had the crazy idea to host a Christmas party on the 9th of January, so they're all staying up well past Epiphany this year, dead as a doornail tree and all. When I agreed to this in September, I thought I'd relish the extra 3 days of a decorated house (as good Episcopalians, NOTHING MOVES until Epiphany), but I have a feeling it's going to be a long 12 (and now, for us, 15) days of Christmas this year.

Gifts
Typically, I love planning and buying gifts. Last year, I made a ton of our gifts, and Andrew and I did service and donations as gifts and then wrote heartfelt letters to our parents about how they raised us well and with a conscience. This year, neither of us had the time to put into a gift like that, so we stuck to lists. I'm not really a fan of lists, I found. As I was frantically driving around town on a Friday night, figuring out which stores would be open at midnight and the roads were starting to freeze, I realized why people really dislike gift exchanges. The experience in Galena changed my mind a few days later (where we could pick out surprises and things that can't be found everywhere, and I did get to make a few gifts that I was proud to give!) but it was an odd feeling to find something that I typically love so much to be a harried, frustrating experience.

In terms of receiving gifts, I found that I received this bizarre adult enlightenment in the week before Christmas - surprises are the greatest thing ever. I should probably preface all of this by explaining that Andrew and my families spoil us. As in, really, really spoil us - and we always send out lists before Christmas because they're requested (but for the record, I do get very excited about the things on my list - just ask anyone who was around on the 26th about how much iced tea and water I sucked down out of the elusive Starbucks cup, or how much useless knowledge I proudly spout from Us Weekly, etc) but this was the first year that while I was embarrassingly excited to receive the items from the list that I'd compiled back in November, many of my favorite things were the most unexpected. This year, among my favorite unexpected gifts were a book from my dad and a neat little candle holder from Andrew's stepsister. I'm tempted to follow the lead of my brother-in-law and ditch the idea of lists - both for purchasing and receiving - altogether, which seems to me a very creepy reminder that I must be, at the tender age of 26, becoming an adult.

Going Home
This was the first year that we didn't spend our trip equal parts friends and family. Seeing family trumped, and our friends felt the same way about their families. But it's strange when home doesn't feel like home anymore - not seeing the same crew of friends from childhood (with a couple lovely exceptions) was a part of that, but there were other details that just bothered me a little bit too much. My hometown has a huge Walgreen's where I remember an un-lighted 4-way stop when I was young, and I didn't recognize any of the altar servers at church. As we sang hymns, I started doing mental math, and realized that the oldest altar server was eight years old when I graduated high school. No wonder I didn't recognize anyone. I realized that the people I remembered were aging, and they wouldn't be there forever. It dawned on me that there are probably only a few years left that I'll even go home for Christmas, since in five years or so, Andrew and I will probably want to have Christmas at home for the sake of a kid.

And that's where it got bittersweet. I think most people feel like their last Christmas "as a kid" is the one where they come home from college, or maybe the first one they share with a new family and the holiday traditions they had as a kid are disrupted a bit. When these things happened for me, I remember being a little stressed out, but excited because Christmas was just getting amped up - for the college homecoming one, my family discovered Bailey's because I was a "grown up," and when Andrew and I started dating, I got to add two phenomenally different sets of holiday traditions to add to my own, and the expansion of my family's trio to a quartet felt completely natural. And, after five years (I can't believe we've been celebrating Christmas together for five years) of this magical time of year, I've fallen into a child-like groove because I know what all the goodness of the season will be like. But this Christmas was the first one where it hit me like a brick that our Christmas traditions probably won't always stay the same - in fact, they really can't. But I wish they would.

Travel
Andrew and I returned to Iowa this afternoon on snow covered roads. We were supposed to host friends of ours for the night who were also traveling to see family, but they didn't make the trip due to the snow, and while I'm sad to miss them, it's been an exhausting and exhilarating week. In my old age, I'm really glad to be home - we have to pick up Morty at the boarding place tomorrow morning and I have a host of errands to run as a result of being gone for a week, and I am loathing the idea of getting back in the car, because I just feel like I've been in a car too much. It's weird to travel for the holidays, because I feel so torn on my return. While I miss family ridiculously, and I miss being at my old home, the "here" home is home. When we pulled into the drive, I realized that I'd been missing this place for days, and home feels really good.

Andrew and I are in the process of figuring out New Year's plans, and we've decided to put a moratorium on travel and be home by 10pm for a toast by ourselves. We really should just start wearing our pants at our ribcages now, I suppose.

The holidays as an old fogey are bittersweet. A week before Christmas, our priest (well, Bishop, but that's another story for another day) gave a sermon about how when you think of the experience of Mary, Christmas is actually very sad - it's about the day a baby was born to carry the weight of the world, and the book of Luke sums it up with "and Mary carried these things in her heart." I've heard those words a million times, but this year, they had a little bit of a haunting feel to them. On Christmas eve, the priest at my home parish dedicated midnight mass to the people who couldn't be with us this year, but wanted to. Maybe I just wasn't listening before, but it hadn't ever dawned on me that the extreme joy I always feel at Christmas is maybe because it's paired with just a little bit of sadness.

I will always love Christmas. I love the surprises, and the mystery, the food, the sparkle, the snow - and absolutely most of all I love spending Christmas with my family. I'm lucky that Andrew shares my giddiness about it all, and I hope we hold on to our child-like feelings about Christmas forever. There are some things about adulthood that I think I can learn to shake off or ignore - but I'm actually somewhat happy to have maybe grown up a little bit this year. There are things that I truly hadn't noticed, like how delightfully gaudy my mother-in-law's handmade stockings really are, and few things that I've taken for granted, like coming home to my parents' church. There were the new things - being a part of the sixteen-person crowd at Andrew's dad's house, which was the most delightfully over-the-top family Christmas I've ever experienced (seriously, it should have been documented with a film crew. We'd be more popular than The Office). This year, I became aware of it all - the stockings will not look like they're from Pottery Barn next year either, and when we return home again, I'll be even more of a stranger in my home parish, too. And, if we're honest, the odds of an entire family getting together again in less than 5 years is probably pretty slim. It's all a little sad from the perspective of an adult, but at least I've finally figured out how to pay closer attention and enjoy the moments as they come instead of looking forward to another Christmas next year, identical to this one.

Though Santa, if you're reading, I can't help but ask...please? Maybe just one more year, just like this?

A Big Week

When I talked to my grandma this weekend, she said, "Well, it sounds like you're having a big week." A big week indeed.

Last Monday morning, I woke up as usual to breakfast in bed (yes, I'm aware that I have pretty much the greatest husband on earth), and Andrew said to me, "You need to see the backyard." He raised the shades in our bedroom, and I looked out at what looked a like a driving range where a drunken golfer had gone to town with a seven-iron. There were divots everywhere - no tunnels, so we ruled out moles. I posted photos on Facebook, and we called our parents, and folks offered us solutions from a band of squirrels, an alien landing, and even one pretty informed (from an ecologist) suggestion that we might have a reckless moose on our hands.

The mystery was solved Tuesday night when I decided to stake out our back porch by flipping the light on. A large, ambling, cat-like creature streaked by. Unless it was a very large skunk, it seems our culprit was a raccoon.

Though everyone we've told about our digging friend urged us to get a live trap (so great, we'd have a LIVE angry raccoon?), I think the problem has been solved for now by a combination of frost and turning our porch light on at night. It's not energy efficient, but the grass thanks us.

The next big exciting thing in our week was planning for our weekend. We were invited to a Halloween party and potluck out on a farm about 40 mins away, and since I got my first paycheck, I also wanted to do just a bit of shopping to celebrate. And, to make our day more complicated, I also wanted to go to a pumpkin patch/apple orchard because it's fun and we don't have any free weekends left until November. Andrew and I knew it would be a packed weekend, but we've both been really stressed at work, so we figured it was worth it if we could unwind and have some fun.

On Thursday afternoon, Andrew and I finalized plans for our Halloween costumes. I got the "Eight is Too Much" wig (tipped off by a student who works at Spencer's - a place I hadn't been in about 10 years) and on Friday, I spent my evening figuring out items for a potluck and trying to find stickers that Andrew could wear as bling earrings. He'd already gotten a fake Ed Hardy shirt (actually inspired by Miami Ink, another TLC show) earlier in the day. We thought our Jon and Kate costumes were going to get a big reaction and were pretty proud of ourselves.

Because I'm a Friday night football widow in the fall, my custom is to use Friday night to catch up with my girlfriends who also happen to be stuck at home (but lucky for them, they have cable and can watch What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress, so it's less pathetic). While running around in Target, I was chatting away with one of my close friends from high school, and I asked her what she thought I should take to the potluck. I didn't want to take dessert, so she suggested corn bread. I said that was perfect. Then she suggested adding a can of jalepenos to the batter. At first, I thought that was a bit much, but then she gave me the hard sell, and I trooped over to the Mexican food aisle and picked up two cans - my friend had suggested a can per box of cornbread, but since I wasn't too sure about this venture, I just grabbed two of the teensy jalepeno cans and headed to the checkout lane.

When I got home, I went straight to the mixer and made a vat of jalepeno corn bread. I was a little concerned when I could smell the heat coming off the batter. I was more concerned, after I made 36 corn bread muffins, when I tasted one. I'd made burn-your-face-off cornbread. At this point, it was midnight, and I wasn't about to go to Walmart or any other 24 hour establishment and I had no interest in making new cornbread. This was it. Andrew came home at 1am and deemed them fantastic, but keep in mind, this is the guy who had just lost the Dueling Marinades for having the world's spiciest chicken.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 9am (we'd planned on 8) and rolled to the oil change place by 10:30...a bit after our ETA. We arrived at our destination (which was a nearby college town) around noon and went to lunch at a restaurant I found on TripAdvisor.com. It was heavenly - and a fun eating experience. The restaurant had an open kitchen, so you could watch the whole preparation of the meal, and for pseudo-foodies like us, that's just icing on the cake....or homemade caramel on the apple bread pudding with basalmic icecream, since that's what we ordered. Then we headed to the outlet stores, where I added to my ridiculous collection of Coach purses (yes, I know it's sick) and Andrew got blue striped shirt, because he doesn't have enough of those.

And then, Joann (what we named the lady on the GPS) led us out to the country and we came upon the apple orchard/pumpkin patch. Between the moments where we thought we might die, it was really fun. When we first stopped in the main building, we picked up a basket and asked the high school chickie what protocol was. She pointed us to the ripe areas and then implored us to try whatever apples we wanted. She must have seen our faces light up, because she quickly added, "Within reason. Please don't gorge yourself!" I think I ate 6 apples before we left the area, and we wound up with more apples than is really reasonable for two people to eat, but isn't that the point? Next, since we had a basket full of apples, we decided to hop on the tractor ride so we could take the public transportation option to the pumpkin patch.

Maybe it's something about the Midwest, where people think children are indestructible, but we were a little shocked when a woman (wearing open-toed leopard flats - not really appropriate for the apple orchard) saw that the tractor was full, and then started loading her four children, all under about six, on to the rail of the tractor. An orchard worker told her that no, only adults could sit on the rail, and she said, "Right, I was going to hold them." You were...what? Being compassionate (and incredulous) people, Andrew and I gave up our seats, and sat on the rickety rail (all while muttering things about "teaching moments about waiting are great for children" - yes, we are old and curmudgeony as well). After some protest by the parents around her, the crazy lady with open-toed leopard flats hopped on to the rail, holding her baby in its carrier thingie (note: Parent readers, please forgive me for not knowing what those are really called. I'm sure Andrew and I will catch on to this lingo eventually). I would have been fine with sitting on the rail, but since we were packed in, I had nowhere to hold on to, so the only thing holding me on was my balance, and if I leaned forward, I was facing a line of four year olds. Terrifying. Then add to the terror that the terrain was not flat nor smooth, we needed to duck for tree branches, and part of the ride was sliding down a muddy patch into a creek (at which point I cracked jokes about fording the river and having your oxen die, though I never actually played Oregon Trail as a kid). Around this point, the child in front of me pulled off her hat and was being admonished by her mother. I wasn't really paying attention, but the mother said to me, "Have your children discovered their hair and the scissors yet?" I was incredibly embarrassed when I responded that no, I don't have children, but then I realized the poor woman was more embarrassed than me when I saw the fabulous mullet the child had given herself. I realize that every child does this, but silently, I thanked my mother for discovering me (and taking me to a salon) before I got to the point this poor kid did.

When the driver stopped for the pumpkin patch, we bailed and waved goodbye to the overflowing tractor wagon full of babies and their apparently very fertile parents (there literally wasn't a family on there with less than three kids).

And before us, the pumpkin patch loomed. We dug in, and within 15 minutes, we'd found our pumpkins (mine has a twisty stem, which I love) and were relieved when the tractor came back around less than half full. We left the pumpkin patch/apple orchard with warm apple cider, hot "turnovers" (the gourmet version of the McD's apple pies - freaking heaven. I will dream about that flaky crust for the rest of October), two pumpkins, and about a dozen apples.

Then it was off to the Halloween party. Since this is a very long post and I'm getting a little exhausted, we'll just go with the highlights:

-Our host, an interior designer, was dressed as a goth chick. It was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

-Her daughter was a loofa. I will SO be re-creating this costume; it was genius.

-Our costumes were not exactly understood. They thought Andrew dresses like a pretty boy (and likes stick on earrings?) and thought I was going as a blonde with a bad haircut. Sad.

-Food at Midwestern potlucks is the best food on earth. Hands down.

-Andrew doesn't know how to play Scattergories. It's ok, he learned quickly.

-It was a really fun time.

On Sunday, it was back to Sunday school, and then we wrapped up our week with our first monthly "Financial Meeting," which we capped off with a fire in the firepit in the backyard and roasted marshmallows, not before I learned how to make German red cabbage as a side for dinner.

It was a really good week. A big week, but a good one.

The Duel

Every year since we've been married, Andrew and I have hosted "The Dueling Marinades." 

It was something we actually planned on our honeymoon. We had so much fun getting all of our friends in the same place for our wedding that we decided we needed to host a party with good food and drink (just like our reception) as soon as possible. We decided to have a big cook-out, invite our families and our friends, and we decided to make kebobs simply because we have a mini-obsession with grilling kebobs. 

In the week before this first party, we couldn't decide on a marinade, so we each decided to make one. When my dad showed up, he called this our "dueling marinades," and since Andrew and I are competitive by nature, it turned into a major competition. This first competition included a wide variety of meats for a build-your-own kebob bar: beef, chicken, shrimp, and brats. My tequila-lime chicken was a big hit, although I will say I thought Andrew's mojo beef was pretty darned good. We had a great time, and we were shocked by how much fun we had hanging out with our parents and friends and co-workers - in other words, we realized that when you're an adult, it's fun to invite old(er) people to your keg party.

By the next fall, we had moved into our now home, so we hosted a second Duel/housewarming party, inviting our parents again, grandparents new friends, old friends, and new coworkers. It was the first cold day of fall, and a little miserable, but fun nonetheless. In the second year of the duel, Andrew's BBQ marinade killed my orange sesame ginger marinade. Tough crowd, in my opinion.

So, this year, the party had become tradition as had the friendly competition. Since we've been here nearly two years, we found that we had a much expanded guest list - about 75 people were invited, and 30 came, which frankly, was a pretty big turnout. We simplified some things (we just provided marinaded chicken, beer, hotdogs, and soda - scratched the build your own kebob thing), and asked everyone to bring a dish to share. And, to add to the fun, my Greek marinade won by a landslide over Andrew's chipotle pepper marinade (13-5, to be exact).

Andrew's birthday gift from me was a fire pit, so we capped off the evening with s'mores.

Watching children make s'mores has to be one of the more terrifying and hilarious things on earth. The kids were covered in sticky goo, and relished in setting marshmallows on fire. Surrounding the firepit was a graveyard of discarded, badly burned marshmallow debris and the graham cracker box had clearly been attacked by sticky fingers. Fortunately, we had three more boxes left, since I insisted to Andrew that we get the huge box from Sam's Club.

My new favorite thing is sitting outside by the fire. It's so nice and relaxing to hang out and talk with friends or family and just enjoy good company. There are some things I don't like about being a grown-up, but I do like how they party.

To the Birthday Boy

Dear Andrew,

Today, you turned 27.

In my mind, we're both still 24, standing on some concrete steps, staring down at our loved ones' smiling faces and wondering how the heck we got here. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that it's 2 years and a handful of months later. The time has gone quickly and slowly at the same time, and I get this strange feeling that it's just the way these milestones happen.

We've moved together, each changed jobs, visited the ER together (twice), made leaps, and each time, we've been holding hands.

I'm pretty lucky to have you by my side. I know it's your birthday today, but I can't help thinking what a wonderful gift I have in you as my partner.

Love,

Katie

Japanese Make-In

Last night, I spent two whole hours preparing dinner.

For the last month or so, I've been slowly collecting the things I need to make a full Japanese meal. I bought tofu, sushi salmon from my local (and awesome) fish market, nori (seaweed), pickled ginger. While visiting Alma Mater on Saturday, I talked Andrew into stopping at the massive world gourmet food store, and I found the seasoning for miso soup, something that had been quite elusive in Iowa.

On Sunday afternoon, when Andrew and I were lamenting that we had nothing left in our fridge, I realized that if we added a cucumber and an avacado to my list, we could have one heck of a dinner.

Around five or six, I started with rinsing the sushi rice and throwing it into the rice cooker. Then I cracked the eggs and started following the directions for making a Japanese omlette for what I think is called "tomago" (which I am sure translates in Japanese to "mmmmmm!"). It took 5 eggs and we ended up with 4 pieces of sushi out of that, but to my absolute shock, it turned out perfectly. I cut up the cucumber, salmon, and avacado for rolls, toasted the nori, seasoned the rice, rolled everything up, heated up the miso, cubed the tofu -

- and two hours later, I emerged covered in sticky rice with a platter of 5 pieces of salmon california inside-out rolls, 5 pieces of cucumber rolls, 2 pieces of salmon sushi, and 2 pieces of egg sushi, and two bowls of miso soup (and a container of leftovers). Before serving this masterpiece to my husband, I took pictures. While I love to cook, even I could recognize that I probably won't be doing this again soon.

It tasted great and I was very proud of myself (hence the blog about the adventure), but it also dawned on me that two hours is a LONG time to be in the kitchen, and even though Andrew was helping out by washing dishes as I went, there were 4 pans, 3 bowls, 3 cutting boards, 3 knives, 1 fork, 3 mini bowls, and several measuring cups used before we even got to plating the meal - which is a total that I feel is maybe a little overboard for a dinner for two people.

In other words, take-out is probably a lot more cost-effective than make-in.

Employment

I've been putting off blogging for about a week because I've figured that I'd want to write about the new big leap in our young lives - but I also wanted to make sure everything was official and that I had something to say.

Last week, I accepted a job offer. It's a position still in higher education, but not classroom instruction, which is/was my current career. When I first started thinking about submitting the resume, I wondered if this was the right move. While I love teaching, I wasn't teaching full time, and thus it didn't offer a lot of stability for Andrew and me. By the time I had the interview, I recognized that I really wanted the position - I wanted to be able to use my talent and understanding about higher education, but work in an environment that presented a new and different challenge. I also realized that part-time teaching is the fast track to burn out, a cold reality that I've been trying to ignore for the past two years. This new job will still be using the same creativity and many of my same skills in the classroom, but in a new way. I couldn't be more thrilled. It's a very, very good fit. Readers of this blog should probably also know though that I will be beginning my new job and continuing to teach until the end of this semester, so fasten your seatbelts: your author is about to have one very crazy autumn. And, since this is a completely public blog, that's as much about my professional life as I plan to describe.

However, in the eve of this new job, there have been a lot of conversations about how life will change in our home.

The most bizarre realization by far is that I'm 26 and have never had a full-time job with benefits. As far as I can tell, this is the only downside of grad school. Since I was 24 when I was done with school and then strung together teaching gigs for the last two years, it's not like I've been sitting at home in my parents' basement, but the thought has more than once crossed my mind that it's going to be very, very strange to say I worked a 40+hour week. Andrew and I will likely be seeing each other a little less, and we will be starting all over in terms of getting in the rhythm of a work schedule (right as we'd gotten pretty settled into our current pace).

And then there's the financial impact. It's no secret that I'm really bad at math, but to me, the most exciting thing about a full-time job is having a yearly salary. As a part-timer, the only time I saw my yearly salary was if added up each individual assignment on a calculator, and even then, I'd stare at it cross-eyed and re-calculate. I am convinced (Andrew is not) that I can now afford the lifestyle I've always dreamed of. I've already won two auctions on E-bay, so I think we're off to a great start.

But in all seriousness, we've been talking numbers a lot. It's little written about or discussed (which is why I think I should write about it and discuss it), but sorting out finances, as far as I can tell, is the most complicated part of a young marriage. Since our financial strategy in the time since our nuptials has been to get our bills paid and on time, it's been exciting, oddly comforting, and (at least on my end) insanely boring, to start discussing our savings plan. Though we have different savings goals (I want to save so we can go to Italy and so we can afford pretty, shiny things for me to wear - Andrew keeps on blabbering on about retirement, family, education, etc), nonetheless, I'm starting to realize that "savings" is a very nice word.

There is also the topic of the breadwinner. Andrew and I have always planned that I would be the breadwinner, eventually. This made sense to us, since I was in school longer and have more expensive loans to pay. In Andrew's senior year sociology class, there was a discussion of women out-earning men, and he thought to himself, "Hmm, Katie should make more than me. Interesting." (And he says that he didn't think about marrying me until more than a year later!) It's not something that he has any problem with, and he's never complained or even blinked an eye about supporting my less-than-lucrative career choice since we got married. Our financial view is that our money is simply that: our money. Frankly, I think Andrew may be more of a hard-core feminist than I am - he's pretty proud of me. But I have been pretty intrigued by how many articles there are out there about how men are happier when they earn more than their spouses. In our house, I haven't detected any sadness on Andrew's part - we've been cracking jokes and grinning at each other like we're the luckiest damn people in the world.

That's basically how I feel - Andrew and I feel like lottery winners. Life is good. We're both employed, our kitties are fed, and our house is safe. What more could we ask for?

Oh! And speaking of the house - luck has shined on us again.

First instance: our next door neighbors replaced their perfectly good screen door and gifted the old one to us. "New screen door" was the only remaining item our summer/fall house repair list, since our front door lacks a screen door, thus lacks in the energy efficiency department. By the time it gets cold, we should be more efficient!

Second instance: the rental house next door now has tenants, a husband and wife about our age with a baby. When we looked out our bedroom window and saw their car with its NPR decal, Andrew and I nearly did a happy dance.

Finished...Really?

Last night, around ten o'clock, I made a scary observation:

Our upstairs is finished - well, mostly.

The only change/fix/upgrade that we have left is to get our fireplace in some sort of working order (eventually, there will be a long post about this, as we sued over it). But, in the short term, there aren't any more projects left.

We finished the floors, and rugs have been laid down.

On Saturday night, I got a call from J.C.Penney's that our new Roman shades were in - which weren't supposed to come for another 3 weeks. We got an incredible deal on them ($15 per shade) so it wasn't shocking that Andrew spent three hours and every curse word uttered by mankind to put them up. Regardless of the pain it took to install, the end product is that our entire house is now mini-blind free, and the shades look, at least to us, pretty fantastic - though anything would have been an improvement over the mini blinds that our cats had been slowly gnawing off so they could stare out the front windows.

And last night, I painted the ceiling fan in the master bedroom. Oddly enough, this is a project that we'd done before at our old rental. The fan in the study there had one of those primary color fans, perfect for a kid's bedroom, and I couldn't stand the darned thing. The day project that I thought the fan would be ended up being a nearly week long disaster involving copious amounts of spray paint. This time, I knew better. I got out my "sorority paints" (wood paint that I have a nice collection of after painting paddle after paddle during my college years) and went to town on the hardware - which Andrew removed quite easily, since we were old hat at taking down ceiling fans.

Then, while waiting for that to dry, I sanded and stained the fan blades. I wasn't a huge fan of the color of the stain, so I decided just to paint them brown. Unfortunately, after painting the nightstand in our bedroom, I was out of brown. But, my parents spent a small fortune on art classes for me when I was little, and I remembered the most important lessons ever shared there: the color combinations which will result in brown.

Yet, like any project under our roof, there was a roadblock. The only red/purple I had was fushia. I mixed yellow and green in and then some blue to get it darker, which resulted in a cool slate color, and then I added in the gold paint from the hardware. Andrew was watching me like I had inhaled too much of the paint fumes, but in the end, it actually worked really well.

We let the whole mess dry and went over to a friend's for dinner (single ladies: contact me - this guy makes FABULOUS lasagna), and then Andrew put the fan back up. Viola! A new fan for about $3 in paint.

Our next interior house project is to finish the basement, but I don't see that happening too soon. I know I'll figure something out and the little projects never cease, but there's something both thrilling and sad about looking around our little house and realizing that there's nothing pressing that I want changed in the immediate future.

The Crackberry

Yesterday Andrew and I made a move that we now believe will
irrevocably change the landscape of our married lives.

We got blackberries.

Now as I write, I do so from my shiny new blackberry. It is hella cool. I am a little slower with the typing, but I'm already deriving much joy from the fact that I can blog from the sportsbar where Andrew and I are watching football. I really just came here for the lunch, so now I can be entertained by more than just the Bears themed bridal shower taking place in the private room. It took us awhile to figure out what kind of party it was, but we caught on when we saw a blender followed by pyrex hoisted high for all to admire.

Andrew and I have been sitting here for nearly an hour. He watches his alma mater and during commercial breaks we commiserate about shortcuts and downloads.

Ah, marriage in the technological age.

Nature is Gross

Earlier in the week, Andrew got a notice from the Environmental Protection Agency telling him he needed to clean up some brush that he'd put in a pile in the back of our property (off the alley). At first, we thought maybe one of our neighbors was nutzo and "turned us in" but then on closer inspection/reading, we realized that it was just a random neighborhood check - probably because the same agency mows the lawn of the house on the corner once a month (smooth!). We felt a little stupid, but did have to laugh a little at the irony because we realized that we wouldn't have gotten a notice had we just let everything behind the garage grow back into the Little Garage of Horrors. It wasn't a big deal, though Andrew has yet to clean up the mess (tsk tsk!) before they come back on Friday.

Feeling oddly motivated, today I decided to clean up my potted herb garden. Since I hurt my back, Andrew let my tomatoes fall into disrepair, and a bunch of weeds crept through the wood chips around the pots. At our last session, my PT told me to up my activity level, so I figured messing around in the garden was fine. After I moved the first pot, I saw a huge centipede and I got that creepy crawly feeling. I got the rest of the pots moved, and then I spotted a big huge spider sitting on her web.

This is the point where I bailed. I came back inside, sat down in my study (planning on blogging about my short-lived gardening attempt that I'd left in a mess for Andrew to clean up). All of a sudden, I heard a bunch of dishes clanking around in the kitchen. Morty was in our kitchen sink, freaking out about a cat he saw outside.

We've been waging the war against neighborhood/feral kitties all summer. Morty is territorial and has "Retaliation Aggression Syndrome" which means he'll get angry at the cats outside and then see Elmo, get confused, and beat the crud out of Elmo. It's kinda scary (and resulted in Andrew going to the emergency room once this summer when Morty got loose and ran outside to wage real war on one of these kitties). We found that a mixture of "kitty repellent" (looks like kitty litter, smells different) and moth balls got the cats off our property, but recently the cats have been creeping back.

Being the brilliant person I am, I decided to chase after the cat. I walked out the back door, closed it behind me, and went running. The cat ran off, and I felt exhilarated, since I haven't run in about a month.

Then I turned around and realized that I closed the back door. The back door that locks automatically. The back door with the replaced lock. Taking a deep breath, I located our hidden key. No luck - we were still hiding the key for the old lock.

I had no idea what time it was - I knew it was somewhere between 4 and 6, and Andrew would be home at 6:30. I had no shoes, and was wearing a tank top and short shorts - no bra - so this is not the clothing where you can go over and knock on your neighbor's door.

It was at that point that I went back and faced the spider and finished the gardening chores. I also tried to weed the cracks in the driveway, but that got boring, so I retreated to our front porch and did my best creepy old man impression as I just watched the goings on of the neighborhood.

Andrew came home at some point, so clearly I was rescued. But, I learned a valuable lesson that I should have learned in ohhhh 4th grade: always have a freakin key!

In other news, Andrew volunteered with United Way today and was paired up with a kid at lunchtime as a part of Big Brothers/Big Sisters. He's contemplating signing up - he had a fun time hanging out with the kid, learning the ins and outs of monkey bars and "take-aways" (subtraction). I'm in favor - sounds like there could be some fun dinner time conversations to come.

What Happened to August?

My husband is politically opposed to turning on the heat in August. I agree.

Last night, I spent a good hour and a half "autumnizing" our home.

My first stop was to change up the blankets stored in the living room. I'm one of those people who needs throw blankets within arm's reach. The late spring/summer/early fall set are all light quilts and thin chenille throws that are fine for curling up with in the A/C. It seemed a little wrong, but last night, on the eve of the last day in August, I brought out the artillery of throw blankets: two super thick, knitted yarn blankets that Andrew's stepmom had made us.

Morty, my cat, has a bit of an obsession with these blankets. One of my friends once noted that Morty will curl up with just about anyone if they're draped in the knitted blankets. Frankly, I was a bit upset by the comment, because I'd read Morty's behavior as being more cuddly in the colder months.

When I opened the drawer of the hallway built-in to get the blankets, Morty hopped in. Normally when Morty jumps in drawers, it doesn't present much of a problem - we scoop him out and that's the end of it. But in this case, the drawers are extremely deep and not very tall. Should I try to open the drawer more, I'd pretty much crunch my cat. When I reached in to get him, he didn't budge. He realized that he was back far enough that he was beyond human reach. Meanwhile, I realized that if I kept on poking at him, I was going to get bitten. There was of course the option of leaving Morty there, but I'm feng shui and not about to leave a drawer open all night.

I called for reinforcements. Andrew came armed with the spray bottle. As a testament to his undying love for the blankets, Morty stayed put until he was drenched in water, as were the neighboring blankets in the drawer. In the end, all blankets were returned to their correct destinations, as was the cat.

We also put our thick bedspread on the bed, cleaned the fans, and put them away until next year. While I was excited to jump into the big fluffy comforter - our bed is a Queen but the comforter is a King so we never have to have the annoying argument of who steals the covers - it was a little sad to see all the light summery things of summer leave.

Our new, bare hardwood floors were ready for rugs last night (we needed to wait 2 weeks until replacing rugs - I can't believe it's been two weeks since the floor project was finished!). Now that there are rugs down, it really feels like the rooms are done and have come together. Besides, our toes were starting to turn to ice running around on the cold floors. It's weird to be able to say "all done" on this project, especially since our home life was practically defined by it all summer.

I don't know why I'm so bummed about fall coming this year. Maybe it's because it never really got disgustingly hot, so it feels like there wasn't a true summer. Maybe it's because fall is just a big tease of the long, drawn out winter ahead.

Grandparents are Grand Indeed

When Andrew had the interview for his current job, I hopped in the car along with him and then drove the additional 40 minutes to have lunch with my grandparents. On my way there, I realized that since I'd reached my teen years, I'd never actually spent time alone with my grandparents - I'd always tagged along with my parents. There was no particular reason for this, other than it was a relatively long drive at about 3 1/2 hours, and I had kept myself pretty busy in high school, college, and grad school.

On that day, sitting alone with them in their kitchen was really fun. I was able to hear the same stories that my parents had told me but from a different perspective, talk about my parents, and talk about life with people who love me very much - but who didn't raise me. I felt very grown up, which I should at age 25, but as the baby of the family, I really hadn't ever felt grown up in the presence of relatives.

My grandparents are pretty cool people. At 85, they're both incredibly active and sharp as a tack. On that particular day, they didn't believe me for a second that Andrew was "consulting" with another paper in the same company (the white lie I told them just in case Andrew didn't get an offer or didn't want to take the job), but rather started surmising how great life would be if Andrew and I moved closer to them. I felt the same way. When Andrew and I had our five minute discussion of whether he should accept the job, one of the biggest pros on my list was moving closer to my grandparents.

Today, the two of them hopped in their little red car and drove the 40 minute trip with the intent to help me make curtains, and my grandpa wanted to taste the beer that Andrew made. I'd purchased some material and a set of sheets, coming to a whopping $27 grand total, and Grandma brought her sewing machine. And, of course, a carload of food. On my counters, I now have a half dozen ripening tomatoes, peaches from Michigan, and a loaf of zucchini bread. In the pantry, I have potatoes from their garden and a squash (it's the kind that looks like a pumpkin but is green and white striped - Grandma, God bless her, handed it to me and then told me "It's a squash..." followed with baking directions - for the record, I knew that already!). In the freezer, I have bags of freezer corn. In the fridge, 4 large zucchini and a couple of peppers, also from their garden. And I think that's it. In other words, I have no reason to visit the farmer's market this weekend.

The details of making the curtains are relatively boring, other than the fact that watching my grandmother with a sewing machine was like watching a mechanic work on a car - I wondered how on earth she kept track of all the stuff on it and still couldn't figure out quite how the thing operated. At the end of it all, curtains were made and hung. The ones in the kitchen were a bit of a riot - I wanted a long valence, long enough for privacy, but short enough that I couldn't splash up water from the sink or splatters from the stove. Once we were finished, Grandma stood back and said, "well, they're different...very modern."

I knew this wasn't a compliment, since Grandma's decorative style of choice is French Country. Grandpa and I tried to dissuade her that they were perfect, but she had none of it, and made sure to remind me that I could always make new ones on my own (yeah right!).

When Andrew came home a few hours later, he of course noticed the food before the curtains (to his credit, it was spread out all over the counters) and immediately wanted a full report of what Grandpa thought of the home-brewed beer he'd made - for the record, Grandpa loved it.

Not many people get amped up about curtains, but Andrew was very pleased with our custom window treatments as well. They match the rooms, and moreover, we no longer have to stare at food-splattered, gunky mini-blinds leftover from the previous owners.

As we surveyed the improvements my grandparents had made on our house, we were once again reminded that having them so close to us is pretty grand indeed.

The Fall Begins

Today was the end of summer.

Signs had been everywhere all through the last week. On Thursday, when I left for PT, I saw something red in front of the garage. On closer inspection, it was a red leaf that had fallen from our neighbor's enormous tree. Looking up, the red leaf had a cluster of still attached friends. I felt my mouth get cottony and my heart beat a little faster. The fall is now looming ahead.

Andrew and I made the most of our last summer weekend. Andrew's brother came to visit, and the guys worked on some final mitre sawing on Friday night, and not without some glitches, we rented the 1989 classic "Field of Dreams," because had decided to take a Saturday morning road trip out to Dyersville, Iowa to see the movie site. If you've ever imagined what the Field of Dreams looks like after seeing the movie, your image is probably spot on. It's a white farmhouse with a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. We hung out for about an hour, Andrew and his bro "had a catch" (we all noted how the famous line seemed awkward, since local dialect would have you saying "play catch"), the guys ran the bases, and we went back home.*

In the evening, we hit up our local minor league team's ballpark, and then we wandered over to the riverfront to a street festival where we listened to Joe Bonamassa, a favorite artist among Andrew and his siblings, and also the performer of the first song we danced to at our wedding (a recording, I should probably make that bit clear).

I can't really complain. If there had to be an end of summer, we at least did things up right.

After I finished prepping for class last night (read: throwing anything that could be recycled on the floor so Andrew could clean it up later, as I forgot that I've lost my ability to bend), Andrew and I attacked our wall calender.

Lazy days are over for us. I counted 3 days from now until September 27th that are open. From meetings to tailgates, we're going to be on the go quite a bit. Not that it won't be fun - because there are plenty of exciting things in the works - but there will barely be a moment to breathe in that crisp Autumn air. After this realization, we declared Saturday as "Married Day." The plan is simple: No planning anything, no work, and no house projects.

A few years ago, planning to spend a day sitting around doing nothing would have seemed ridiculous to me. But now, I'm just bummed that it's only Monday.

*Not without expressing our distaste for the mass marketing of "If you build it, they will come," since the real line is "If you build it, he will come." But, the heat-sensitive "magic" t-shirt where players emerge from the corn due to your body heat with the same tag line was kinda cool.

Neighborhood Organizers and Physical Therapists

Since my last post was a bit in-depth about my back, I should probably start there. I began physical therapy yesterday and went back this morning. Yesterday was interesting. Since I'd never been in physical therapy before, I didn't really know what to expect. I was starting my second set of exercises and all of a sudden, I broke out in a sweat, felt dizzy, had to sit down, and then leaped up to dry heave in the bathroom. I didn't know what was wrong with me - I'd had breakfast, I wasn't sick - until it dawned on me that I'd just had a panic attack. I said as much to my PT, and she said that pain can bring on that sort of thing. After talking me down a little and promising she wouldn't hurt me, we got down to business, and I felt leaps and bounds better as I walked out the door.

I'm still pretty stiff, but after I do my exercises, I stand a bit more evenly and my left hip juts out a little less. At my session this morning, I also got an ultrasound (no screen, just the roller thing with jelly) and I got plunged. Yes, plunged, with a plunger. My PT assured me that I won't have plunger hickeys all over my back, but I haven't checked yet to see if she was telling the truth. Regardless of the strange methods, I feel much, much better than I did Tuesday or even Monday. Unfortunately, my PT wants me to quit the vicodin, which is a bummer, because I kinda liked how the world feels when I'm just a bit cloudy. And, now that I've written that, I realize it's probably for the best that I lay off the drugs.

Yesterday evening, Andrew and I (while under the influence) went to a neighborhood planning meeting. The area we live in shares part of its boundaries with a small university, so it has the sometimes interesting combination of families and college students living next door to each other. In fact, one of our neighbors is a house of college students, whom we love. They're very quiet, and the few times we've even heard music, it's been snapped off at 10pm on the dot. Unfortunately, the "For Sale/For Rent" signs just popped up in the yard. Andrew and I are hopeful that a young couple like ourselves will buy the house next door, but anyone who has survived childhood and lived with the disappointment of an old couple moving in next door when you were hoping for your storybook new BFF knows that whoever you want to move in next door to you probably never will. Worse case scenario is that the house gets purchased by a corporate landlord operated in California. We have our fingers crossed that we just get another group of college student renters.

So, with these changing possibilities, Andrew and I thought it might make sense to go to the planning meeting. We were the youngest people in the room. There was one guy who looked to be 30-35, and after him, the next youngest person was in their late forties. And, we had really nothing to contribute to the meeting, since the basis was that you got to go to different city representatives and complain to them. We approached the library and told them we liked them because their online book ordering system was like a free subscription Netflix only with books, which unfortunately the librarians interpreted to mean that we like their DVD selection (which I do, since once a semester I run in and grab a stack of documentaries to show my students). We were a little insulted - just because we were 30 years younger than anyone else present didn't mean that we don't enjoy reading. We also suggested to the transportation people that they add in a connection leading from our house to the bike trail that is entirely downhill...both ways would be preferable. Unfortunately, the transportation people had been getting a pretty big beating from the old people who didn't like the bus schedule, so it took them a minute to get the joke.

Some people might think that such a meeting would be a waste of our time. However, we got loaded down in freebies. Each of us got a canvas bags with the 2010 Census logo on it (I love canvas bags!!), pencils, pens, post-its, about 5 brochures that we grabbed because the information seemed somewhat useful, and we were given 4 tickets to our minor league ball park for filling out a survey. And, if that wasn't enough, we also drank about 4 glasses of lemonade between the two of us and ate three cookies. The macadamia nut was quite good. If that's not an incentive to get involved with your neighborhood, I don't know what is.

The Back Story

For the last week, I've been trying to downplay (at least in my head) that there is nothing wrong with my back. Sure, it hurt, but I figured it should hurt after we'd been working so hard. I scheduled my massage for Tuesday and figured that I'd spend a day relaxing in our beautiful house and then move on with life - namely, start preparing for my classes, which start next Monday.

Before I laid down on the table, I told Lynn (the only massage therapist I've gone to more than three times - I love her) that I was feeling stiff and sore in my lower back due to all the housework we'd been doing. I got on the table, was trying to relax, and she got to work. First she put a little pressure along my spine. It ached a little, but not in a bad, painful way. Then she gently applied pressure to the right side on my lower back. As I yelped in pain, I literally jumped up out of the horseshoe that holds my head. I don't know who was more shocked - me or her. It's probably not often that a massage therapist has someone leap practically off the table.

It was in that moment that I realized that I wasn't just aching, I was injured. As I described to her how I'd been having mobility issues (trouble getting off my shoes, it hurt when I hit the brakes in my car, couldn't get out of bed), I also realized that I'd been deluding myself that this was normal. Though I think Lynn was a little shaken, she assured me that the massage was still a good idea, as I was putting a lot of strain on my surrounding muscles, but she said without question, I needed to see a doctor.

And so the next half an hour passed more or less in silence, except with the occasional "are you still ok?" questions as she moved to different muscle groups. Then came the moment that she and I had both been thinking about but not discussing: I needed to roll over.

It hadn't dawned on me until I was laying face down that even in my own bed, it was extremely difficult to roll over due to the pain in my back. But at home, I had a queen sized bed. Now, I was on a less-than-twin sized massage table. Oh, and I'm topless.

Sure, I trust Lynn like I trust my doctor - and it's not like I'm particularly concerned about her seeing my breasts. One of the things that no one tells you about getting married is that when you go in to try on wedding dresses, for the fittings, and finally for the big day itself, you will be getting undressed in front of spectators. So being less than clothed in front of short-term acquaintances is unfortunately not something that I'm afraid of. But being in pain, mostly naked, and having your massage therapist have to call for reinforcements - well, for some reason, that struck me as downright terrifying. And of course, there was the irrational fear that I'd just be stuck on a massage table forever.

Later, Lynn confided in me that her mind was full of stories from colleagues who'd had to call the paramedics to remove people who had become injured or passed out on a massage table. I'm very glad she didn't mention this option to me, as I have several former students who are paramedics, and this thought might have thrown me into even more of a terrified state.

As you've probably guessed, I was able to roll over. It was slow, not very graceful, but thankfully wasn't as painful as I imagined. And, from my back, I was able to prop up and slowly ease myself off the table. After lunch with Andrew at our favorite Italian eatery, I called my doctor.

Andrew and I went through three general practitioners before we finally chose a doctor. We thought we had a really lousy track record - clinics changed on us, and one doc was just a quack. Anyway, we'd resorted to just going to prompt care when finally someone referred us to a doc (actually, a nurse practitioner) who we were told we'd like - she's spunky with a sense of humor, and very good. Unfortunately, we've seen her so many times just this summer that she remembers us right away.

One of the biggest gains I made when I got married was in the area of health care. I got Andrew's insurance and access to his mother, a nurse. She's a great resource, especially when it comes to how much pain killer is ok to take until you can get to the doctor (answer: no more than two vicodin. So far, I've only had one at a time and that's enough to make the world just a little hazy and my back hurt somewhat less). And, Andrew asked me if I wanted him to come with me to the doctor, and of course the answer was yes. Some people might think this is strange, but as my mother-in-law pointed out, people never remember all the instructions, especially when they don't feel well, so it makes sense to take another set of ears with you.

Therefore, Andrew was sitting next to me, helping me remember all of my symptoms (the scariest of which is that my hips are no longer even - my left side tilts up and forward at visible difference), as the good doc told me that I needed to go to physical therapy.

Tomorrow at 8am, I'm visiting a physical therapist. I've never really given much thought to my hips (except when jeans don't fit), but I can't even begin to describe how much I hope she can put my hips back. What good are beautiful floors when you can't dance with your husband across them?

In other news: Andrew worked the mitre saw tonight and fitted the transition boards between the bathroom tile/hallway and dining room laminate/hallway. It looks beautiful and both of his hands are fully intact. He also did the laundry and made (most of) dinner. I give him mad props; he's pretty darned good to me.

Back to Normal

The last two days have been long to say the least.

I had the most miserable night of sleep on Sunday night. Normally, Andrew and I love that one of the architectural elements of a craftsman is lots of natural light. However, when the world's longest thunderstorm is raging outside and you're sleeping in the dining room... suffice to say it wasn't exactly the height of tranquility.

And then there's the nerves. I liken it to the night before Christmas morning (or, if you're in my family, the morning of Christmas Eve, since we do presents before midnight mass). You know that something good is going to happen, but at the same time, you're nervous that it may not be as good as you remember or there may be a big disappointment because you're anticipating that excitement so much. I knew that our project would be complete on Monday evening, but since we'd had two weeks of setbacks, I couldn't help but be cautious with my enthusiasm.

So, on Monday morning, Andrew kissed me goodbye on his way to work and I rolled out of bed ready to get as much done as I possibly could. The poly was set enough for sock feet only (no moving furniture in for 24 hours, so we had to wait until Monday at 6pm), so that meant I could yank up the tape, put our closets back together, and hang up all of our photos. I'd injured my back in all the chemical scraping, so it took nearly all day for me to accomplish these tasks. Around 2, I went to Hobby Lobby to get a new curtain rod for the dining room, since the one we were using was literally held together with electrical tape. I hobbled out of Hobby Lobby and couldn't even find it in me to visit Tropical Sno or Target. That's when I knew it was bad.

Andrew came home a little early, so we made a quick run to a sandwich shop down the street for dinner, and then we got to working. We took a brief break at a quarter til 9pm to get my almighty Tropical Sno (Cherry Pineapple Cheesecake), and then we were back to work. The last item was in place by about 11:45.

And that's that. Now we're back to normal, even though we still have a few projects left: Andrew needs to put on the quarter-round around the baseboards (I didn't get enough because I have awful skills in math, and Andrew is waiting for our handy neighbor to help him with the saw), my Grandma is going to help me with new curtains, and I need to paint our ceiling fan (don't worry - this is a project that I've actually done before in a rental).

After that's done...who am I kidding? We'll figure out a new project.

Loft Living

I'm already counting the hours until our house gets put back together - we start with polyurethane tomorrow morning and then we have to wait 2 hours between each coat (we've been told that there needs to be about 3 coats) and the 24 hours before the furniture comes back. Carpets can't be put in for another two weeks, but I'm over it.

Anyway, that means our "loft living" will hopefully soon come to a close. When I was apartment searching in grad school, I wanted to get a studio apartment but none were open. I ended up in a one bedroom that was the perfect size just for little ol me and Morty the cat. Right now, Andrew and I are scrunched into a living space about the size of that apartment. But now, in addition to most of the furniture that was in that apartment - my couch, my chair, my bed, my dresser, my desk, my tv - we have all of the things from Andrew's bachelor pad - his couch, his chair, his dresser, his computer, his tv. Oh, and there's my twin bed from when I was in high school on top of the dining room table. At first, we were doing ok. We kept things tidy, had tools separate from laundry, a safe place for bills and receipts, and that kind of thing. However, that's when we thought we'd be living like this for a week.

Now that our loft space has been lived in for two weeks, it's a veritable mess. There's mail all over, a few dirty dishes, random medicines and purse contents strewn all over the coffee table, and the stack of bedding now intermingles with drop cloths and shop rags. We haven't made our bed in a week (since my grandparents were here). It just doesn't feel right, as it's on the dining room floor.

Since Andrew and I are both tidy people, the chaos is starting to drive us a little nuts. I think we've both given up. Part of this stems from the fact that when you wear the same outfit (I have two in rotation) for two weeks as you sweat and get brown gunky floor goo stuck to the seat of your shorts, it's really hard to have high hygienic standards. We have cleaned up our act a little - we moved the trash can to the middle of the living room for a few days so it was easier to deposit the take-out when we'd finished eating.

The cats, however, are having a grand time in their expansive living space which includes the kitchen and the basement. I used a plastic drop cloth to close off the pass-through and we closed the kitchen door which is barely ever closed, so it feels a little weird. The cats had left the plastic window alone until 6am when Morty realized he could paw at it to get our attention. Now whenever Morty wants something like food or attention, he just paws at the window. I don't think he's smart enough to realize that he's capable of ripping the whole apparatus down and that's why we come at his beckon call, but he does know now that pawing at the window means that his humans will become his hand servants without fail.

At least someone is enjoying the arrangement.

Sweat Equity

It's almost 11pm on Friday, and I'm very proud and relieved to say that the floors are well on their way to being finished.

After finishing with the chemicals last night, Andrew and I decided that it would speed up our timeline if we sanded today instead of tomorrow. Andrew took a half day at work, and at noon we were off to Menards to rent the sander (again).

I thought I'd be doing some sanding while Andrew worked, but the hand sander we borrowed from my Grandpa ended up to be way too powerful and I quit, unfortunately not before making a small, scratched up valley along the baseboards in the guest room. So, I spent some nice down time taping up the pass-through in the kitchen so the cats can't escape into the hallway and back bedrooms and following Andrew around with a camera because I don't want to miss a "before and after" opportunity. The number of photos on my camera now is 148, and I think there was a whopping 68 in the download before. I'm quite the documentarian, though I'm probably harboring false hope that someday, someone will find these photos remotely entertaining or useful.

Anyway, while I pretended to work, Andrew went to town with the sander. Lo and behold, the sanding process actually went the way it was supposed to. By 5pm, Andrew was finished with all three sanding grits and our floors looked amazing. They're clearly 85 years old, but they look miles better than they did two weeks ago. 

Andrew must have been tired afterward, because I talked him into Chili's for dinner. The reasoning I used was that we haven't been eating healthy for two weeks, so why start now? We looked really gross in our work clothes, so we decided not to wait for a table but rather get take-out and went to a park where we sat by a pond and had a picnic as Andrew tried to look for people frolfing (or disc golfing, but frolfing is so much more fun to say). 

After the picnic, we went to our new favorite place: Tropical Sno. I'm a Tropical Sno snob - I only like the one that's in the nice, lower-traffic area in the higher-income neighborhood.  And, this Tropical Sno offers an amazing deal. For $12, you get a heavy plastic cup that you can refill all summer for $1. Since they ran out of this year's cup, they started selling next year's, so this thing is good until the end of next summer. To make it even sweeter, they're open until September 19th, and this location is steps away from where I work. Andrew and I decided that I needed a back-to-school present. Right now, my Tropical Sno cup may just be my most prized piece of dishware. And, in case you're curious, Andrew had the red raspberry and margarita flavor (my suggestion, even though I can't stand raspberries) and I had my ultimate favorite combo, canteloupe papaya coconut. I only mention this because the woman in line behind found our combinations to be quite intriguing, and I figure any reader of this blog would want to know, too.

When we got home, we started staining. I'd tested a section in my closet before we left and was pleasantly surprised. I can't believe what a difference staining makes. It doesn't cover all the wood's imperfections, but it does cover most of them, and the color of the oak is very rich and beautiful. However, now that we've finished both rooms and the hallway, there's still a little more of a yellowy hue than we were shooting for. The rest of the house is more of a cherry walnut stain, so that's what we wanted to achieve for the floors. We plan to do just one more coat tomorrow morning (and if that doesn't make the color right, we'll just live with it as is) and spend the rest of the afternoon by the pool, which by design is located right next to the Tropical Sno - bliss!

And, if all goes according to plan (yes, I know it never does), we'll be finished with staining by 11, we'll wait 24 hours and do our first coat of poly after church on Sunday, finish with our 3 coats by Sunday night, and we'll be moving furniture in by Monday when Andrew gets home from work. I don't think I've ever looked forward to a Monday this much in my life.

Committees and Memberships

In the last week, when Andrew and I aren't discussing floor refinishing, we've been working on our grand scheme to take over the world - one committee at a time.

I have a weird dysfunction, which is that I like being on committees. The process of brainstorming is, to me, so much more exciting than actually executing a project. I also get very excited when people ask me to be a part of an organization, because I know that what inevitably follows is a committee. Plus, I have some strange notion that when I'm asked to be on a committee that it's because I'm popular and people like me, and the truth never dawns on me: most people have better things to do with their time than serve on a committee; therefore, I've been asked because I'm a warm body. However, this excitement is sometimes marred by the fact that I have a problem saying no, and I often end up over-extended.

In the last year, Andrew and I have managed to stay relatively non-committal. We joined ESA, a service organization that was my sorority in college. I say "we" loosely, as I'm the only one in our household who has actually paid dues, because Andrew hasn't actually officially joined yet. This year, because I was terrified of having to do a difficult job that required lots of planning, I volunteered (a little too enthusiastically) to be the Educational chair. I was oddly relieved when, after I missed the first meeting of the fall, I realized that they'd gone ahead and planned educationals without me. How easy is that job?

Andrew and I also became members of the local (and badass) art museum, which was Andrew's gift to me for my birthday. This may be the best membership that I've ever held, as it's free admission to the museum. And, this summer, the museum started a Thursday evening program of art talks, a cash bar, and they've now added bands and tapas. Tapas are maybe the best thing ever (better than T.J. Maxx discount designer handbags), and mixed with art, learning, and a little booze...well, it's almost euphoric. The tapas are $10, and drinks aren't free either, but the rest of it is due to our membership, and it just feels darned good to walk in and say "We're members." And, because we know very little about art except for what I can remember from Montessori and elementary school Special Art, we're not very noticeable and thus, will likely not be asked to ever serve on a committee. It's grand.

Like our art museum membership, there are some memberships that you get just for donating. I realize that this is the first time I'm going to embark on a taboo topic, so like the news, I'm giving my readers fair warning: I'm about to talk about money. If you find this creepy, stop reading now. 

Since his first job, Andrew has had a small amount of money deducted from his paycheck to go to the United Way. Since we started our marriage assuming that we'd have separate accounts, we never really had a conversation about our charitable giving - we just gave to whatever organizations we wanted. Then, after we moved here and I was underemployed, we realized that separate accounts only make sense if you make enough to keep both afloat, so six months after actually tying the knot, we combined our finances. Frankly, I think this was the most difficult thing and the biggest learning opportunity we've had in our marriage so far. I digress.

Last fall, Andrew started receiving invitations to go to benefits and celebrations for United Way donors. He told me how much he was deducting from each check, and it didn't sound like a lot to me - so what transpired has nothing to do with Andrew's honesty, but rather my lack of math skill. However, when I overheard the amount that he (we) were donating per year, I threw a pretty massive fit, because it was the sort of number that we'd discuss before we spent in any other situation. Yes, I threw an ugly tantrum because I married a good person.

The way we solved the situation was to continue to donate the same amount, but because we share our income, I insisted that my name also be placed on the donation, because I always include Andrew's name on "my" donations to things like NPR or the paper cut-out that you sign for muscular dystrophy when you add a dollar to your total at K-mart. And, we agreed to expand the donations that we give to charities of my choice (which we'll get to in a minute).

Apparently, in the grand scheme of things, most 26 year olds are not big on donating, so Andrew and I were placed on a list of "Emerging Leaders" with the United Way. And, because we're on that list, we were asked if we wanted to serve on a committee. Because I still don't know a whole lot of people my age here and love committees, I enthusiastically said yes. So, we became co-chairs of a committee with another couple. I'm not really sure if there are actually members of the committee or if it's just the chairs (the details are murky), but yay for more committee work.

And finally this week, we come to the phone call I received from our church. Last year, we were asked to teach Children's Chapel, which is a simplified version of what's going on in church for little kids to understand/participate in until they join their parents right before communion. I loved the idea, but then when I realized that I have zero experience with 5-year olds, I shied away pretty quickly. I explained this to the coordinator, she understood, and I felt relatively guilt-free for turning down someone (maybe the first time in my life) to volunteer.

The same coordinator called on Monday and asked if we would consider being Sunday School teachers for a junior high class. Andrew's initial reaction was somewhat like my own: no way. But, as I started thinking about it, the idea grew on me. I shared my thoughts with Andrew, and we read about the program we'd be teaching. The program is basically in place to teach kids to have a positive view of themselves and how they fit into their faith community and in an adult community. What really got to us was the alarming rate that young adults and people our age feel a lack of connection with the world around them.

There's all sorts of irony in asking us to be Sunday School teachers - Andrew wasn't raised in a church and my memories of Sunday School are trying to read the clock the entire time (which, due to my issues in math is still difficult) so I wouldn't be late to acolyte - but in the overall scheme of things, I think we fit the criteria for membership: we're warm bodies with a willingness to help. Then of course, maybe we're just popular and people like us.

Ridiculousness in Retail

Because I've been avoiding preparing my syllabus (not that there are massive revisions needed, but the act of putting a new season/course number seems symbolic of summer being completely over), I have spent a little too much time in various local retailers' establishments.

Yesterday, I scouted out window treatments, which first led me to a fabric store. I hate to be judgmental, but fabric stores always make me feel like I've stepped back in time about twenty years. They also bring back hushed memories of my mother whispering things in my ear about "women who can sit around and make homemade Halloween costumes" as we picked out fabric for my Grandma to whip up my Princess costume (purple felt, silver trim - it was awesome). It's not that I feel better than the people (okay, let's be honest - women) in the fabric stores. Rather, I feel horribly inadequate and un-feminine. When the nice lady walks up to me to ask if I need help, my gut response is to say, "WHAT? DO I LOOK LIKE I CAN'T OPERATE A SEWING MACHINE AND I HAVE NO BUSINESS HERE?" but instead, I go with my "Von Maur" response, which is "Oh thanks, but I'm just browsing."

I may have also felt conspicuous yesterday because I could not, for the life of me, picture my kitchen in my head. So I was snapping photos of any fabric that I thought could make good long-length valences in my kitchen - to be made, of course, by my grandmother. In my head, I play this scene where I learn to use a sewing machine as she's "helping" me make my window treatments, but I have this feeling that what will really happen is that I'll end up watching, rattling on about something pointless, and poof! Grandma will have worked her magic yet again.

In the same shopping excursion, I also went to Target and T.J. Maxx. Typically my Target trips exceed an hour in length, but I'd been chatting on the phone when it suddenly died, and then a lady ran over me in her motorized scooter. Really, she just hit me with the basket. I found myself quickly apologizing out of sheer mortification, and as it dawned on me that she totally rammed into me, I decided it was time to exit on to T.J Maxx, which is basically my favorite place on earth. Where else can you get designer handbags on clearance and Soy Vay Veri Teriyaki? Though I really wanted to leave with an amazing Michael Kors orangey brown hobo (for $69...I cannot believe I left it), I found a pair of twin extra long sheets that I am portraying as fabric for the guest room. The color is perfect, and believe it or not, it's not all that hard to rip the seams of a fitted sheet until you have a nice looking piece of fabric from which to make curtains. I'm like a Tommy Hilfiger version of Scarlet O'Hara in reverse.

I thought I was done with my retail ridiculousness, but after dinner, Andrew and I realized that we were out of the amazing chemical stuff and we needed to make a trip to Lowes. While we were there, our "buddy" Dan spotted us and waved us down. He asked how we were doing, and we said we were doing much better with the chemical stuff and that we plan to sand this weekend (actually, the latest is that I think we're going to start Friday afternoon). He responded that we looked "a lot less stressed." I replied that no, we were plenty of stressed, but we'd just been to dinner and had a pitcher of beer with the pizza which put us in a more zen-state (Dad: Andrew was driving, and no, he did not have more than one glass per hour). Dan went on to tell us that he was very sorry for our troubles, and next time we paint (keep in mind, we just put fresh paint on both bedrooms), come to him and he'll get us a good deal. It would have been fine if he would have ended there, but Dan kept on talking.

Apparently, the day after we rented the sander (the one without the attached pads), a guy came in to rent it. The friendly folks at Lowes let him leave the store, and he too returned it. Dan told us that the guy was very angry.

That's when we too made a hasty exit, feeling that poor guy's pain.

Cats, Backs, and Blinds

The biggest news from yesterday is that our kitties are now residing safely at home. The one thing Andrew and I learned from our very expensive boarding mistake is that our home requires cats. It's been way too quiet (even with sanding and echoing rooms) without cats racing through at 10pm and whining in the morning. And sleeping without obstacles at my ankles was nearly unbearable. 

Morty snapped back pretty quickly - he was curling up with me within minutes of being out of his carrier, after, of course, a walk-through of the house to make sure all the scents were in the right place. I think Elmo might have one of those low-grade fevers after his rabies shot, because he's been very chill and sleepy. He didn't even raise his head when Andrew walked in the door. But man, was he vocal when I picked them up. I could hear my kitties' yowls all the way down the hall.

Andrew and I are both getting very sick of sleeping in the dining room, but unfortunately progress is moving slow. Andrew's back is having issues, and when I woke up this morning, I was feeling stiff from sleeping funny, too. Therefore, the chemical removal hasn't been going as quickly as we'd hoped. I got my closet done last night, and that was about it. My plan for today is to get some more done in the guest room and then go window-shopping.

Practically since we moved here, I started looking for window treatments. Our house has a lot of windows, and there are only 4 of them that I'm happy with. I ordered roman shades for the living room, but they're on backorder until September. I need a new rod for the dining room, and although Grandma and I put up new valances in the kitchen, those are temporary until I pick out some new fabric for custom-by-Grandma window treatments. And, over the weekend, my Grandma suggested I just have her make the new curtains in the guest room, too, since I'd just been having a sheer over mini-blinds.

I think it's a sign of insanity, but I am so incredibly enthused by the idea of being completely mini-blind free. Every time I see mini-blinds, I have flashbacks of college. At the end of the year, my apartment places always charged something like $20 for "blind cleaning" (no shit, those things were gross and a PITA to clean). When the cats started to chew through our blinds in the front room, Andrew and I checked the price on them at Lowes, expecting them to be somewhat expensive. Nope. One window = $3. Dirty rental bastards.

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time scouring the internet looking at Craftsman bungalow interiors. Andrew and I weren't really sure our house "counts" as a Craftsman in the first place, but we found out through some 'net research that we actually have an excellent example of Craftsman architecture. A lot of the houses that are showcased on the internet/magazines are actually a lot bigger than the norm, since one of the Craftsman principles is simplicity. The columns in our living room and porch are "signature" for the style, as is our decorative fireplace (I nearly spit out my diet coke when I saw a photo of a Craftsman from 1910 with a potted plant in the fireplace). Anyway, I was very proud of us when I started reading about how to decorate to the period and read that we were actually doing a pretty bang-up job. Turns out, our taste is very Crafstman-esque to begin with. I didn't get a whole lot of new ideas about window treatments, but I can tell that getting rid of the mini-blinds is a step in the right direction.

Chemical Warfare

Sanding Day 2 looked like it was also going to be a complete disaster. We woke up early, went to an 8am mass (we're seeking all the help we can get), returned Sander #2 to the local hardware store, and started sanding with Sander #4. However, since we did hit that late movie (which was wonderful), my eyelids were having a hard time staying open. When Andrew started sanding, I started naptime, since there wasn't a whole lot I could get done anyway. When I woke up, Andrew told me that there was no way he'd be able to geo cache with ESA. Since I'd been slacking on the job already, I decided that it probably wasn't very supportive to go without him, so I didn't go either.

When I came inside from making that phone call, I found Andrew sitting on the floor in our guest room looking pretty dejected. I disagree with him that he wasn't making progress, but it really wasn't enough progress for there to be an end in sight to this project. I sat down with him and we decided that we simply needed to be open to a new plan. 

There were three main issues that seemed to be at odds with each other:

1) The sanding wasn't working. Each time we sanded, the discs would come up full of this melted, dark brown gunk, and then the gunk kept on getting redistributed around the room.

2) We'd more or less blown our budget.

3) On Monday evening, we need to pick up the cats.

We could just start staining the floor, but it would look like hell. We could get another sander or find a pro, but there's the cash issue. We were starting to think of stripping the varnish from the floors, but since we'd already done that on the woodwork, we knew that the chemicals are very abrasive and we need to pick up the cats and bring them home at some point.

Being a mature, independent adult, I recognized that there was a surefire way to solve our problem: I dialed my dad and asked what the heck we should do.

With the help of a little search engine called Google, Dad found a non-toxic, environmentally friendly paint stripper: Mostenbocker's Lift Off. Better Homes and Gardens likes it, and that was a good enough endorsement for us. Sadly, we could only find it at Lowe's (where we are now politically opposed to shopping), so off we went, leaving our integrity at our doorstep. At least this time we had our sense of humor back. We happily said hello to the whole Lowe's crew: the guy who sold us the awful lock, the guy who sold us the sander that didn't work, the girl who gave us the world's biggest paint stirrers, and we even made a new friend at customer service when we made our umpteenth return for a bunch of items we didn't use, including the cute little hand sander I found. We also added in a side trip to Walmart (where we are also politically opposed to shopping) on the way home because although Andrew told me he read the instructions on the bottle, he failed to mention that we needed paint brushes and alcohol. It was a glorious bout of shopping.

It was around 5pm when our test patch of this stuff was set and ready. We were simply shocked that this stuff actually works. It's not a magic product, but it's bringing up more than enough of the varnish goo (which we've gotten really descriptive about - Andrew says it looks like poo, I say it looks like fudge, and my Grandma described it over the phone as looking like molasses - Grandma wins).

We plan to wage the chemical warfare on the hallway tonight as it's the only place we can't really restrict the kitties when we bring them home tomorrow night, and see how far we get this week. Next Saturday will be Sander Rental #5, but at least we'll be going straight to Menard's this time and getting the help of our new favorite person - a wonderful woman named Tuesday. My guess is her parents really liked the Moody Blues. After all, who can resist such lovely hippie poetry?:

I'm just beginning to see

Now I'm on my way

It doesn't matter to me

Chasing the clouds away

If you don't laugh, you cry....and sometimes still cry

Andrew and I have adopted the mantra "If you don't laugh, you cry" to keep our spirits up when our projects blow up in the face. And, for the most part, we've done a lot of laughing.

But today was a different story. Here's a timeline:

7am: Katie and Andrew wake up

7:30: Put Morty and Elmo in their carriers

8:00 Arrive at the vet clinic to board Morty and Elmo

8:30: Are told that Morty and Elmo aren't up to date with shots (they are, we just don't opt for ones like Rabies since they're indoors), so they'll each need a Rabies vac which is only $17 per cat. And that fecal sample we brought in? For them to check that, it's $31. And since they need shots, they'll be getting a visit from the vet. That's $43 each. So, adding in the fee to board the cats, $13.50 per cat, per day (as we were told over the phone - the only cost that was mentioned), the total will be $240. To board the cats. For three days.

8:45: Arrive at Lowes to rent sander. Girl in paint department says "Uh, I dunno about that sander; it hasn't been working." The manager of the dept had told us three days before that it was. When we called to reserve it last night, we were told that it works. We wait while she makes halfhearted attempts to call around. We're assured by customer service that it indeed works.

9am: My grandparents are due to arrive - they're always early, so we're nervous that they're already at our house.

9:20: Andrew tests the machine. It works. He goes to attach the sand paper. The attachment for the sandpaper is missing.

9:30: The friendly (=dipshit) people at Lowes can't find any attachments - they'll call us back.

9:40: My grandparents arrive. My grandpa takes a look around for about 30 seconds and starts sanding with a hand sander. Keep in mind, he's 85 (and totally badass).

9:45: The folks at Lowes call back. No sander attachment.

9:50: I call K&K Harware (a local place). They have a sander. Andrew and I leave to pick it up.

10:45: We arrive back with the new sander. Did I mention they're godawful heavy?

11:15: Andrew and Grandpa start sanding, and the grit isn't heavy enough. Grandma and I leave to go get better sandpaper.

11:30: I start calculating how much we've spent on this project. I realize it's getting really, really expensive after I spend $40 on Sandpaper

Noon: Grandma and I put up new curtains in the kitchen. Looks cute

1pm: Men are still sanding. Getting nowhere. We decide to break for lunch.

1:15: My diet is put on hold - Grandma brought potato salad, cake, zucchini bread, creamed corn, tomatoes from the garden, bean salad, and cucumber salad (keep in mind - when she asked if she could bring anything, I said "I can get some deli meat and we can do sandwiches, if you'd like to bring a salad that would be great." This was the best part of the day by far.

2pm: Andrew realizes that the sander is getting nowhere. Calls Menards.

2:30: We usher everyone out the door, Grandma and Grandpa leave (letting us know they can come back tomorrow, which is super sweet), and we go to Menards to get a new sander. This will be #3 for the day, and keep in mind, they're heavy.

3pm: We're back at home, we attach the sanding pads, everything is great for about 30 seconds and then a disc of sand paper flies off.

3:30: I break out the superglue.

3:35: We call Menards and ask for another sander. I start crying. We've been up since 8am, spent roughly $500, and have achieved nothing.

3:50: Menards is FANTASTIC. They have a new sander ready to go, with new attachments, waiting with someone to load it into the car.

4:10: We lug the sander back into the house. This is #4. It's still heavy.

5pm: The air conditioning has to be off to sand, and the house reaches 80 degrees. The stain on the floors, instead of turning into powder, is turning into a dark brown liquid. We decide it's gotten too humid, quit sanding, and turn back on the AC.

5:15: Katie meltdown.

5:30: Andrew decides it's time to take a nap while we wait for the house to cool down.

6pm: Sleepytime.

6:30: We wake up and go back to sanding. The floor is still liquifying, and we're going through these sanding discs (at $5 a pack) like they're water.

7pm: We need more discs. We decide to return sander #1 to Lowes and get more pads.

7:30: The people at Lowes have no idea what they're doing. The nice lady at customer service is wonderful, but the other 3 (yes, three) people trying to figure out our return are a disaster. We forget to get the sanding discs.

7:45: We stop at Menards to get the discs.

7:50: Andrew tells me that we're just going to have to sand all day tomorrow (which means no geo caching at the Putnam museum with my ESA group, which I'm really bummed about) and we have no idea how long this project will last. But, dammit, we're not sanding all night, so he's going to take me to a movie this evening (since I didn't get to see the movie last night).

8pm: Andrew resumes sanding. Makes good progress in the guest room and does a great job on the hallway.

9pm: Andrew quits sanding, I start blogging.

9:15: I post this, move to the shower, and hopefully have a fantastic time seeing Julie and Julia.

Ugh, what an icky day. One disaster after another for 12 stinking (hot) hours, and so little to show for it.

Income in, Out it Lowes

This evening, in preparation for tomorrow's big sanding day, Andrew and I went to Lowes to do our maniac shopping trip. We were shooting for $150, but we ended up spending a hundred over that - math is not a strong suit in our household. But, we did get a lot accomplished. We are now the proud owners of a Skil 1/4 sheet palm sander (bringing our hand-held sander total up to 2 - whee, tools!) because our handy neighbor forgot to bring that over on his way out of town (we'll let it slide - he did let us borrow a badass circular saw), and to rent the thing was $15 when the device costs a whopping $30. We picked out our stain (Red Oak - I was a little bummed that the stain didn't have some spectacular name, like "Wistful Mahogany" the way that paint does), got our water based  finish, a whole cart of other supplies, and now we're ready to roll.

I did discover during the course of my errands that our cats, whom we'd been planning on boarding, are going to have a rude awakening tomorrow morning in addition to being abandoned in a weird place. I believe the receptionist told us that they need rabies shots up to date, and since Morty and Elmo are indoor-only gatos, we've really never followed up on the rabies vaccinations (with our vet's blessing). Because we're desperate and need a place for them to be, rabies shots will be added into our ever blossoming flooring budget. But, so far, it's still cheaper (and prettier) than carpet.

We also found out today that if you leave a Swiffer (with pad) sitting on hardwood floors, you will erase the varnish on the floor and the pad will disintegrate into the wood. Nice, eh?

Tonight is also date night, so if we're going to catch our movie (Julie and Julia! I'm very excited), I have a lot to do - I need to clear out my closet, and Andrew and I are going to fill the (few) cracks in the floor and tape the baseboards.

If you're reading this, be thinking of us tomorrow - I have a feeling it's going to be a very, very long weekend.