Shopping

Acting on the blogvice (which is just regular advice, conveyed through a blog) of my college friend Lindsay, I decided to try out a new tactic with my grocery shopping. Generally, I shop on Friday evenings after I get paid, and I delight in wandering literally every single aisle of the grocery store, looking at this, poking that, sniffing the cheeses and inspecting the produce. I chat with the people in the bakery. I consider a new and exotic variety of dry goods and, when I see that it is good, I buy it.

But, I tend to spend about $50/week on groceries, and I just feel like that's silly for only two people. So, last week I sat down with a notebook and planned out every dinner we'll eat for the next five weeks. Yep, that's right. Every one. We tend to eat no more than toast or a banana for breakfast, and we both eat lunch at work, so dinner is the main meal we spend money on.

After I planned the meals, I wrote out exactly what I would need to buy each Friday in order to cook all those meals from that Friday night to the next Saturday. The lists were surprisingly short to me, which I felt was promising.

Now, I grant that this is a basic shopping list--dinner ingredients, plus bread, milk, eggs, and similar staples. If we run out of something like coffee or flour that we only buy once every few months, it's an extra expense, of course.

But, that being said, I've spent enough time at the grocery store to know within a dollar or so exactly what things are going to cost me if prices stay the same, and I was pretty confident I'd be able to pick most of them up for less than $40 and, several weeks, less than $30.

We put it to the test last Friday, sticking strictly (with one exception) to the shopping list. We did get coffee, too, which was $10. Counting that, our grocery bill was $38 and we have enough food to last us until this coming Friday.

And I feel good about that.

I feel less good about NaNoWriMo, because as soon as I said I'd start, our computer broke and wouldn't turn on for nearly two days, and then Dave and I both got sick, so of course I'm wildly behind and that saps my motivtion like woah. But I have started writing and I write a few pages by hand at work each day, which is a habit that's easy to get into--I speak from experience--and will be easy to continue, even if I don't make the end of November deadline. At least I'm writing.

Ha

Because apparently I don't have enough to do in my life already, I've started a new blog! I'll still write in this one, because this one is for personal stuff. The other one is meant to be public, and is about things that are easier to spread outward in an online sense--cooking, crafting, saving money, etc.

Of course, I'd love for you all who read this blog to read that one too.

Scrimpalicious

NaNo

Ok, well, I've been informed that it's a good idea to make this public because if nothing else will keep you in it, shame and/or encouragement from friends and family will. I know my mother-in-law reads this, and she already brings it up nearly every time we talk (may she be blessed; nobody else does, and that lets me hide most of the time).

I went and did something impetuous. I regret doing it, but it's done and I'm not going to back out.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo.

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. People from all over the world sign up to write a novel in 30 days. The website keeps track of your word count and lets you post excerpts, find writing buddies, and get in touch with other local people who are doing the project. There's a weekly writing group going on at Legacy Village, which is halfway between home and work for me.

It will probably be crap. I'm not even positive what novel I will start writing two days from now. But I've said I'll try, and try I will. It is helpful that I have the next week off from work completely because my employer is going out of town, so I will be sitting at home watching her dog and being bored. Or will I? No, I will not!

I will be sitting at home, watching my boss's dog, and embarking on any and every conceivable around-the-house project that I can find to keep from writing. And when I've done all those, I will be writing.

Listen, I'm just trying to be realistic here.

I've got two hours before work, because Friday is a late-start day, and I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe a trip to the library, or JoAnn's? Maybe just hanging out at home with the kitties. We shall see.

Mornings

I'm madly in love with my husband all the time, but I think the time I feel most in love with him is i the morning before I leave for work. The alarm goes off and one of us hits snooze so that we can have nine minutes of half-asleep snuggling before I have to get up and get ready to go.

Once I've gotten dressed and washed my hair, if I have any time left (and I almost always do), I sit in bed with the laptop and read the news and get my mind in gear for the day. And while I'm doing that, Dave is fast asleep in the bed next to me, but even though he's asleep he'll reach out for me and scoot closer and sigh, and then all I want to do is put the computer away, turn off my phone, crawl back under the covers with him and hug him forever because I love him so much that it almost hurts my heart to feel it.

Oh sheet

I am afraid of the dark.

As a result, every time I go into our basement at night (where the overhead lights are all burned out), I am convinced that I am going to die. Our basement is a terrifying place, full of the carcasses of someone else's antique furniture and bicycles, multiple boilers and furnaces, eerie storage rooms where the darkness is so intense that it looks solid, and, for some reason, a toilet.

My terror at having to venture into the basement is my only excuse.

You see, I had to wash our sheets today. I've been meaning to do it all weekend and, with one thing and another, it just kept getting put off. I realized this afternoon that time was running out and I really had to get it done, so I stripped the bed, bundled up the sheets, and made my way downstairs, noticing only as I walked toward the door to the basement steps that it was already almost completely dark outside.

It's ok, I told myself reassuringly. There's a lamp plugged in next to the washing machine. Just get to the lamp and turn it on, and you'll be alright.

So I girded up my mental loins, clutched our sheets to my chest, held my breath, and walked down the stairs into the darkness.

There was just enough light coming in from the windows to cast bizarre shadows over the spot where the lamp had been. It wasn't our lamp, so I wasn't particularly worried about theft. I was, however, aghast to realize that I was in the basement, in the dark, with no way to turn on a light.

My first impulse was to turn and run right back up the stairs, dirty sheets and all. But I knew Dave was expecting to come home to nice, crisp, clean sheets on our bed after work, and I didn't want to disappoint him. I made my way to the washing machine, holding up my cell phone in an attempt to light my way a little bit (it didn't really work).

There were strange noises coming from the other end of the basement, an area where I have never been, because it is always dark, even when lights are on. Things creaked and groaned, and something rustled in a way that makes me almost positive that there must have been some sort of animal there. I opened the washing machine, shoved everything blindly in, dumped in the last of our laundry soap, and started the cycle.

And then I ran. I mean it. I was out of that basement seconds later, and my heart didn't stop racing until I'd double-bolted the kitchen door and turned on every single light in the house.

This is my only excuse.

You see, normally I check the laundry very carefully as I put it into the machine. I look at each individual article to make sure that I'm not mixing things that shouldn't be mixed. Laundry is domesticated chemistry, after all, and anybody who's taken chemistry knows that you need to be careful about how you put things together.

But it was dark, and I was terrified and embarrassed that I was terrified, so I rushed. And besides, it was dark. Did I mention how dark it was? And the scary noises?

I thought about just not putting the sheets in the dryer till Dave got home to either do it for me or hold my hand while I went back down into the abyss, but I knew he was expecting clean, dry sheets when he got home. So, when his brother stopped by to pick something up, I asked him to come down in the basement with me and hold off any monster attacks while I transferred the laundry. Being a good brother-in-law, he agreed.

It was still really dark though, so I just blindly felt around in the machine for all the sheets/pillowcases/etc and moved them into the dryer.

When Dave did finally got home, there were no sheets on the bed. But, just as he walked in, the buzzer went for the dryer.

"It's dark in the basement. There's no light, and I was ascared," I said. Yes, I really did say 'ascared'. That should tell you how ascared I really was.

"Oh," he said. "Is there dinner?"

"Tell you what," said I. "I will make you some dinner if you go down into the horrible basement and get the sheets and make the bed.

We called it a deal and he went to get the sheets. When he came back up, he had a funny look on his face.

"Well," he said, "we have yellow sheets now."

I think I made a "bguh?" kind of noise as I turned to look. Alas! When I'd pulled the sheets off the bed, they'd fallen on the floor and gotten tangled up with a very pretty orange and red scarf that I recently bought. In the dark, of course, I didn't notice that it was there, so the scarf went into the washing machine on the hot/whites cycle with our formerly pristine white sheets.

Now, all's well that ends well, so I will say that the dye mixed very evenly with the sheets, and now it just looks like we've owned very pretty butter yellow sheets all along. We agreed that we'd both be more upset if the color wasn't so attractive.

Still, I really liked our sheets. They were an expensive wedding present, and I find white sheets to be a most delightful thing. I guess now I'll have to buy some new ones.

I just feel like an idiot, because it's such a typical, traditional kind of mistake for new wives and housekeepers to make, and I know that I ought to have known better. I feel like a character in a 1950's cautionary tale.

But it was so, so dark.

Markon '09

I can't imagine that I haven't mentioned in the past how totally awesome our wedding-stravaganza was. One of the awesome things about it was seeing all of our old school friends who we never get to see, and hanging out with them. Apparently, they felt the same way about it, because at our wedding some of them hatched a plan to get together again and hang out for a weekend.

One of them, Mark, decided that the perfect opportunity for this was his birthday. We all made plans over the summer, and this past weekend we got together for what was officially dubbed Markon '09. Mark knows Dave from the Order of St. George, a club they were in together in college (Dave was president for three years). So, all the old guard of the OSG group core (and their wives) rented out hotel rooms, road tripped, and met up on Friday night for some good times, old school style.

We carpooled down with Dave's brother and his iPod, which meant a rad rockin' in-the-car dance party that involved Dave and Matt singing along to ABBA's classic hit Dancing Queen. They knew all the words. I'm not sure how that happened.

Most of the weekend was given over to OSG's favorite activity of tabletop gaming. It's not something I've ever really done before, but I was willing to give it the old college try, so to speak, for the sake of Mark's birthday and Dave having a good time during the weekend. I'm not sure it's something I'd care to do all the time, but it was a lot of fun.

On Saturday night, everyone dressed up in 1920's-era costuming (more or less) and went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. To be honest, the restaurant wasn't anywhere near as exciting as it should have been for the price, but it was fun to get dressed up and go somewhere nice all the same.

Matt, Cody and I play ADVENTURE!

On Sunday, we wrapped up the gaming and then all went out to Primanti Brothers for lunch. Primanti Brothers is a Pittsburgh institution, known for their crazy sandwiches, which have cole slaw, cheese, and french fries on them. It is magical and delicious.

It was a great weekend. Even better, though, was coming back to the kitties and our own home.

Ahhh...

For once, and I do mean for once, our apartment manager actually got on the ball and dealt with something immediately (have I mentioned that our shower is still broken and the only actual shower I've had in the last month and a half was in a hotel? It was amazing, by the way. I almost cried). Dave called at 9pm and the manager showed up the next morning and got the pilot going on the furnace.

Happily, that did indeed prove to be the only issue with our heat, and things warmed up promptly and have stayed that way. At this point, the only radiator that still isn't working is the one in our bedroom, and since I have mentioned in the past that Dave is a human radiator once he falls asleep, that isn't too much of an issue.

So, our house is warm and cozy, my brother in law is staying with us for the week, which is rad because it means an extra person to hang out with, and things are good.

But, it's 10:30, and I am old, which means it's time to go to bed.

House Woes

Le sigh. Ok, we don't really have house woes--our current problem does not amount to a woe, at least not yet, because we believe we know what the problem is.

When we moved in, the gas man came to light the pilot for our water heater/boiler et cetera and asked Dave if he should also light the furnace while he was down there (the house having three separate boilers and furnaces for the three separate tenants). Because it was the dead of summer, Dave said not to bother, and we continued on our merry way.

However, now it is not the dead of summer. It is the dead of Autumn, and Autumn in Cleveland is a chilly thing indeed. Our way, at least momentarily, is somewhat less merry than before. We went down to West Virginia this weekend for the wedding of our good friends Bill and Jenn, and then spent a night in Pittsburgh to hang out with old college buddies, and when we came back, our house was so cold that it required socks, four layers of clothes, an hour of cooking in the kitchen and a hot drink for me to reach a point where I felt like I was actually inside of a building and not standing outside in a remarkably breeze-free zone.

Unfortunately, the residual heat from cooking dinner did not last through to this morning, when dragging myself away from a pile of blankets and a husband who sheds heat like a furnace in the night became almost impossible, and made my teeth chatter.

This is a problem that has to be solved. I don't like to be hot, but I don't like to be freezing, either. Also, Dave's brother is staying with us this week and I feel bad having the house be a refrigerator when we have a guest.

Thankfully, it's a relatively easy problem to solve, now that we've put our heads together and remembered what we didn't have someone do in the summer. We put a call in to the landlord and asked if he could send someone to light up the furnace so that it can get hot and send hotness up from the basement to warm us.

If he has not come by the time I get back from work, I will be grumpy enough to consider going down into the Big Scary Basement and trying to figure out how to do it myself.

Potpourri

My dad and my brother both came down with the influenza, apparently. However, because my mom is a ninja and reads the same interesting things that I do (because we have the same Facebook friends, in this case), they've all been taking elderberry, which, as you may recall, is a magic gypsy remedy against the flu and all other diseases ever. As a result, my brother's already back in school and my dad was only really sick for a couple of days and is now just dealing with hoarseness and sinus congestion but not actual flu flu.

I am buying elderberry extract immediately. For serious. Apparently it tastes delicious, which is how you know it has to be magic, because since when does medicine taste good? Since gypsies invented it, that's since when.

Yesterday, I bought a sweater at Target. It was $20 on sale for $15 and tomorrow, after I get paid, I am going back to Target and buying the four other colors that they had, because it is a delicious and cozy sweater, and I'm a sweater addict.

One of my goals this year is to knit a sweater. I'm starting out slow with the knitting projects, though. For instance, in August and early September I knitted one (1) fingerless glove. That was to practice cabling, which you should look up on our good friend google. I didn't make a second glove, but I meant to. Now I am knitting two (2) socks.. that is to say, I'm working on a sock and hopefully will not be so bored with it by the time it's done that I refuse to start the second. Inertia is strong in knitting.

But next, oh, next I will attempt to knit a sweater. I feel like there is some degree to which one is not actually a knitter per se until something of that magnitude has blossomed forth from the needles.

Once again, I am delaying my leave for work until the very last possible moment, which means snuggling in bed with the computer and my husband under our heavy pile of blankets. The house is freezing, because we still haven't figured out how the heat works. When I woke up this morning, my teeth started chattering as soon as I made my exit from beneath the aforementioned blanket pile.

It isn't that I don't like my job, and I love making money, but it's so cold and 7:15 is so early in the morning to get up and 9 hours is a long day and you can insert more whining here. It gets repetitive after a while, I know.

I will bottle it all up inside of me for the rest of the day, and nobody will know. Except for you.

Not sick yet

Ok, so, here's the deal.

I work in childcare. Dave is a waiter. Both of those jobs involve a pretty high rate of exposure to pathogens, and when flu season rolls around that means that it's time to think about what the heck we're going to do to avoid getting sick. With H1N1 on a roll around the country, this only gets more true. Sick time doesn't just mean being sick, it means being broke.

So imagine my surprise and curiosity this morning to see a link to this abstract posted on my Facebook page, of all places (it pays to be friends with people in some type of medicine).

Seriously? The results of Elderberry Flavonoids compared favorably to the effects of Tamiflu and Amantadine? Correct me if I'm wrong, but seriously, doesn't this say that Elderberry works better against the flu than the $90 flu drugs that they sell at the pharmacy?

If this is true, and let's hope it is because that would be rad and I would laugh, it solves a problem, because I am paranoid about the flu and also have no desire to drop $180 on two rounds of Tamiflu if one of us gets sick.

So, I googled "Elderberry for flu", because google knows everything (duh). Apparently elderberry is an ancient gypsy remedy for flu, among other things. Gypsies, man. Everyone knows that gypsy medicine is practically magic and therefore has to work.

According to one slightly questionable site on natural medicine, they did a study of Eldberry and flu in Israel in the 90's and had a 100% cure rate in 2-3 days. Now, a 100% cure rate is less impressive with the low mortality rate of most influenzas, but the 2-3 days thing is pretty impressive, given that without it the flu takes 6-7 to go away, and on Tamiflu it still takes about 5. I have no idea if they're telling the truth, but it isn't like elderberry is bad for you. People eat that stuff for food. Also, they make wine out of it, so it's got to be good.

Homemade elderberry extract takes 30 days to make, and I'd prefer to start taking it, well, immediately. But, we don't live five miles from a Whole Foods for nothing. Have you ever seen the pharmacy aisle in that place? It is a cornucopia of herbal remedies and weird supplements, not to mention their plethora, yes, plethora of bizarre and outlandish teas. And I will also check CVS because hey, you never know.

If Whole Foods doesn't have it, there's a Middle Eastern import store and I am quite positive that google and I can locate a health food store in the vicinity. I probably wouldn't do it if it were just a bunch of naturalists and herbalists recommending it (much as I love herbal medicine), but an actual, legit study published in a legit science journal is worth checking out, and it can't hurt. The worst that happens is we drink a lot of elderberry extract and/or tea for a few months and still get sick and have to take Tamiflu. That isn't really the end of the world, right?

Ok, time to go to work. But seriously, you all think about that. And don't breathe on me.

My husband is not awake for over-coffee conversation, so a blog is in order

Once again, I am freezing and Dave is bundled up under three piles of blankets to continue sleeping until he chooses not to continue anymore, at which point he will get up. I'm snuggling in bed with him and the laptop for 15 more minutes, and then it's time to go to work. It was 40 degrees last night--Is it seriously time to break out the winter coat already? At 8:15 in the morning, it is 45 degrees outside, with a projected high of 65 for the day. Tomorrow, I am told, it will be 59 and raining. 59, I tell you! What am I supposed to make of that?

I have tomorrow off, which makes today Friday, in a metaphysical sense, and I am blissfully happy about it. Long weekends are the best, even if only working 24 hours in a week means getting paid much less than usual. I will cope, for the sake of an extra day of sleep to gird up my circadian loins before working 45 hours a week all through October.

Sock number 1 is about 50% done. I'm nearly finished turning the heel, and then it's just basic knitting until the sock is long enough to fit Dave's foot. The problem with socks, of course, being that once you get one done, you get to bask in your sense of accomplishment for like five minutes before you have to cast on and start the whole thing over again, and without the sense of curiosity and adventure that came with a new sock pattern the first time you knitted it.

I have decided that, at least as far as the Internet goes, people do not use outmoded exclamations often enough, by gum! I won't commit myself so far as to say that I will make an actual effort to use them (more) often, but if it occurs to me--if the spirit moves, so to speak--I will not resist.

After work, I will take some pictures of the cats, and of my jelly, and perhaps of the sock, and then there will not only be blog entries, there will be blog entries with pictures. By Jove.

By and large, the cats are fab. We've been dealing with some litterbox issues, which is frustrating. 98% of the time, everything is fine, but after we go to bed one or the other of them seems to decide that litter boxes are only for when humans are awake to see where you're excreting things.

I'm knitting Dave a pair of around-the-house wool socks, because our floors get cold. We experimented yesterday with turning on the heat and as far as we can tell, nothing happened. We've got steam heat, and it's been so long since I lived in a house with steam heat that I honestly can't remember how it really works other than turning the thermostat on, so I have no idea how to check if it's working other than the ambient temperature of the house and the relative hot-or-coldness-to-the-touch of the radiators, which have remained solidly chilly.

It's good that it's cold now, because if there's a problem with the heat, I'd prefer not to be finding out the first time it snows or something like that. We may end up just getting a space heater for the bedroom and dealing with the chill in the rest of the rooms, since everything is well insulated and the windows, at least in the front room, are new. The kitchen heats up quickly if you cook anything, which makes up for the cold in there, which really only leaves the dining room and bathroom, since we use the guest room almost exclusively for storage at this point. And, like the kitchen, the bathroom is small and enclosed and heats up quickly if you do something like take a shower.

Not that you can shower in there right now (haven't been able to for the last two months), because there's a broken pipe that gushes water into the basement and results in no water pressure, so we bathe in the tub, because the broken pipe only affects the shower head, and wash our hair in the sink. But the principle remains the same.

I love our house, but it's an old house and the property manager has 14 others to deal with, which means that even major problems sometimes end up at the bottom of a long list. Throw in the fact that he's been having some health problems and, well, it's been about two months since I had a real shower. The stove shorts out if you use all the burners at once (as I found out several times while making jelly this past weekend) and you have to go down into the basement and reset the fuse.

I love our house, and I love our life, and I love our cats. But, like the cats, who still sometimes forget what a litter box is for (but only occasionally), sometimes the things we love can be endlessly frustrating.

Like Dave, who is snuggled under three blankets and sleeping soundly next to me while I write that I have to stop writing this entry now, because it's time to go out into the cold and wet and go to work for 9 hours. Grumpity grump grump.

(That's not true, I'm not frustrated with Dave at all. Just envious. I want to stay in bed all morning.)

Kitties!

Well, we made it to the Parma animal shelter in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday, only to discover that they're closed from 12-5 and then open again for 2 hours. So, rather than drive half an hour back home, we decided to look around for something to do in Parma.

Dinner seemed like a good option, so we consulted our GPS for local points of interest that were food related. Our first bid was for Polish food, but after driving 30 minutes to the only Polish restaurant that the GPS knew of in Parma, we discovered that the owners were on vacation and the place was closed for the week. We opted instead for German, drove another 30 minutes, and found ourselves at a place called Das Schnitzelhaus.

It was delicious, there was good draft German beer in 1-liter steins, delicious schnitzel, and tasty pierogi. That killed just enough time, we drove back to the shelter, and met the crazy cat ladies who run the place.

Seriously. Every one of those women was a crazy cat lady.

We ended up picking two cats, a boy and a girl, who we took home yesterday. Their new names (as chosen by us) are Schroedinger and Sappho. Schroedinger is long-haired and gray with a white face and white paws. Sappho is black and white. Pictures soon!

I am writing this at 11:45 in the morning because I woke up with a migraine so bad that I threw up at work and, because I am not a glutton for punishment and prefer to be at home when I am not feeling well, I came home. I'm feeling much better, having swallowed half a bottle of excedrin and a handful of aleve (this might be an exaggeration) and no longer having anything left in my stomach to expel. But I'm still glad I'm not at work, because it frees me up to deal with another problem... and here is its story.

Last night, after work, I snuggled into bed with a piece of maple candy (food of the gods, by the way) and the first season of Dexter. All was going well, and Dave had just called to say he was on his way home from gaming.

About ten minutes later, I saw a shadow under the bedroom door, which has about a 1-inch gap between itself and the floor. At first, I thought it was the shadow of Dave, about to come into our bedroom, but it turned out to be someone very different.

Yes, that's right... we have mice.

I'm not particularly surprised. The weather is getting colder, and we live on the ground floor in an old house. It only makes sense that mice would come and investigate.

Artist's depiction of possible mouse

Being a hardy sort of girl, I stared at it while it twitched its whiskers and waved its tail and stared straight at me, trying to decide if it was worth the risk of coming all the way into our bedroom. Ultimately, it decided that it was not. Once it had left, I got up, stamped my feet hard on the floor, and opened the hallway door. Of course, the mouse had fled and was nowhere to be seen.

"We're getting cats," I announced without preamble as soon as Dave walked in the door. "Immediately."

"Um..." he said, in the tolerant and loving way that he has when his wife announces ridiculous or unpredictable things without preamble, "okay."

"Because," I continued, fixing him with a narrow stare, "we have mice."

"Ah," said my husband.

"Yes," I said. "I saw one. It came into our bedroom."

"Well, then, I guess it's time to get cats," he said, nodding wisely.

He remarked later that he was somewhat surprised, because we've seen no evidence of mice, but we agreed that the cooler weather is probably driving them inside and that cats are the clear solution. I say cats, plural, because cats are pack animals and if you only get one, they get pretty loco, which is Spanish for homicidal psycho jungle cat*.

After some online browsing and negotiation with various Craigslisters, we decided to go to the Parma animal shelter, which offers cats at $75 a pop--a hefty fee, but they're already fixed, de-wormed, tested for FIV, and vaccinated, so essentially you're getting a free cat and paying for all of its veterinary care.

We're leaving as soon as Dave gets out of the shower. Pics when our new kitties are home.

*With apologies to Bill Watterson

Le Sigh

The alarm goes off every morning at 7:10. This is so that we can hit the snooze button once. A man named John Saunders once devoted three or four pages to describing the delicious half-asleep feeling of knowing that you have to get out of bed soon, but also knowing that you don't have to get out of bed yet, and being awake enough to enjoy it but sleepy enough to still be cozy and warm.

All of that is true, of course. The best part of the whole night is snuggling under the covers while the alarm is snoozing.

The problem is, eventually you can't hit snooze anymore. And then I'm sad, because all I really want to do today is stay in bed with Dave (who is burrowing further under the covers and making sleepy grunting noises next to me while I write this). I want to stay in bed all day and then get up around maybe six or seven, get some dinner, and then come back home and go upstairs to watch House on our neighbor's TiVo at eight.

Sadly, the only part of that which will actually happen is the bit about House, which is going to be rad, but really was the least attractive part of that whole mental picture.

Instead I will go to work, and I'll have fun and I'll feel good about it, but most of me will be lying in bed asleep next to my husband, who I love more than anything, feeling warm and cozy.

Oh well. Maybe tomorrow the stay-in-bed-all-day fairy will like me better.

A nod of the head

I did, indeed, go back to Whole Foods today after church. Not only did I buy chrysanthemums and apples (macintosh, local-ish, in a paper bag, just like when I was a kid)--I bought a pumpkin! It's tall and skinny, although I ogled several short, squat ones too. Ultimately this one won me over due to its twisty stalk and the curlicue of dried pumpkin vine clinging stubbornly to it.

The pumpkin, along with two pots of yellow 'mums, is now sitting on our front steps. The third pot (they were three for $12) is purple, and has taken up residence on the dining room table.

But I'm not here to write a blog entry about that, or about the delicious faux-Indian dinner that we had last night and tonight (we love leftovers). Instead, I'm going to write some more about blogs I read. The blog I'd like to point you all to today is called Dollar Store Crafts.

If you like to craft and you like to not spend money, this is worth taking a gander at. Essentially the idea is that the author posts crafts that can be done for $5 or less in materials, most of which come from the dollar store.

But, I hear you saying to your computer screen, surely dollar store crafts are ugly. After all, have you been to the dollar store? Things only cost a dollar there for a reason.

Well, yes, the dollar store is not the typical location for buying exquisite crafting supplies, but the thing I love about this blog is that pretty much everything on it is something that 1) I can afford and 2) I would actually be willing, nay, happy to make and lay claim to.

So, check it out. Even if you aren't a crafter, you might enjoy seeing the creative things that people are doing on a thin budget.

Dollar Store Crafts

Do grownups live here?

I freely admit that these are emphatically not the best pictures I've ever taken. But, they do convey the general idea of the look of the place, even though they give you no idea of the space. Actually, it's only pictures of two rooms; I didn't take any of the kitchen, guest room, or our bedroom. Those will come later, when they are tidy.

The view from the front door-- 2/3 of the living room. Sadly, the fireplace isn't functional.

But as you can see, we've hidden the couch in a pleasant little nook created by the bookshelf.

Go further in and you can see the front door and closet on the left, and the entrance into the dining room on the right. The two pictures hanging by the lamp are illustrations from the Canterbury Tales, given to us as a wedding gift.

The view into the dining room and the rest of the apartment from the living room. The doors at the end of the hall are to the two bedrooms. To the right of the dining room are the pantry/workroom and kitchen.

Walk into the dining room and this is the view on your left. We actually rotated this table around after I took this picture, so now it goes horizontally. It looks much better that way.

And this is the view to your right--more books, more artwork, another clock, and the door into the pantry.

So there you have it--the two main rooms of our home. I am in love with it.

Is it October yet?

All the public rooms in our house are now what I can safely call--without even a shred of false optimism--done. Books are unpacked, artwork is hung, furniture is moved, floors are swept, and everything has found itself a home. As soon as I finish writing, I am going to put batteries in the wall clocks and set them so that unsuspecting guests do not wander from room to room thinking that at one moment it is perpetually 10 o'clock, and at another it is precisely 7:05 and 21 seconds. Then it will be really done.

The October issue of Martha Stewart Living came in the mail today, complete with a cover photo of pumpkins and squash arranged cunningly to look like giant, root vegetable-y toadstools. We sat out on our front step in the sun and read it together and enjoyed the burgeoning crispness of Autumn in the air while discussing the relative merits of apple cider muddled with cranberries and green curry served in a black cauldron at a Halloween party (verdict: cider is always better on its own, and green curry in a cauldron is clever and sounds delicious).

The arrival of Martha Stewart magazine is always a discombobulating event, because it comes some two weeks before the actual month in question is due to begin. Now everything feels October-y, even though there's a week and a half left in September. I had to forcibly restrain myself from buying a pumpkin and some pots of 'mums at Whole Foods this evening.

I went to Whole Foods because there was nothing left in the fridge but eggs and some spoiled ears of corn that we didn't eat because I did show some false optimism and assume that my husband would ever be in the mood for corn within the life of the produce. As soon as it goes out of season, he will crave it and I will shake my head and smile tenderly and offer him a pale memory of fresh corn out of a can and think wistfully of the delicious summer feasting that we let slip by.

Although I didn't buy a pumpkin, I did buy several pounds of organic fingerling potatoes (the gold ones and the purple ones; purple potatoes are a joy to my heart), a roast for later this week, some beef for dinner tonight, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions. I pondered long and hard over the many varieties of apples that are now available, but was so spoiled for choice that in the end I threw my hands up and decided that the choice was beyond me for the moment. I experimented dangerously, too, with bags of frozen vegetables ready to be tossed into curry or fried rice at any moment.

Curry and fried rice are two staples of our weekly diet. Curry because it is both easy and delicious--a tablespoon of curry paste, a can of coconut milk, whatever vegetables we have lying around, and whatever meat I pull from the freezer, along with a generous helping of basmati rice from our magical rice cooker of bliss. And then, with the leftover rice, I make fried rice, because it is easy, quick, and delicious.

I learned how to make fried rice when I lived in Alabama and was poor. The value of being poor is that it teaches you how to make delicious poor-people food (as Dave calls it). Rice is cheap and nutritious. So are onions. Garlic isn't cheap, but we always have it anyway. Toss in some scrambled eggs and any vegetables that didn't get put in the curry, throw in a handful (literally, I just scoop a handful out of the jar) of cumin and coriander, a little cinnamon, and some cayenne pepper, and we eat like kings. Fried rice is an end-of-the-week dish, when we're out of fresh meat but not yet out of everything else and so not yet willing to go to the grocery store.

Earlier today we had breakfast at Kalie's with Molly and Brittany, who came out from Grove City last night to play Scrabble and Cranium with us, and to sleep on our living room floor, because they are Good Friends. After we said our goodbyes and saw them on their way, we stopped at Susan's Yarns, a small yarn shop on the way home. I've been wanting to give it a look and see how it was, and I wasn't disappointed. It's everything a mom-and-pop store ought to be--dingy, dark, and disorganized. There were empty cardboard boxes on the floor and a giant bin of assorted buttons, and box after box after box of every yarn you could ever hope to want, with not a price tag to be seen.

When I'd found a yarn I wanted (I'm being ambitious and knitting some socks for Dave and myself, because the weather is getting cold o' nights and we have wood floors and dubious-looking radiators for our only heat source), I looked around helplessly for someone to tell me how much it might cost. Eventually, I found the owner, who was a tall, thin, and ancient-looking Australian with white hair and a white aran-style sweater so covered with cables and bobbles and mismatched wooden buttons that it looked like someone made a stitch sampler and then decided at the last minute to throw some sleeves on and call it a day. He knew the price for every skein, ball, and hank in the store, recommended the right needle size for the yarn in question, and looked scornfully down his nose at me when I said I prefer bamboo needles to metal. It was perfect.

I'm making faux-Indian food for dinner. Lamb at Whole Foods was a cool $15/pound, so I opted for beef instead. Cube the beef, fry it up with some onions, throw in some potatoes, cauliflower, peas, and maybe a little zucchini and then dump a bottle of pre-made korma sauce over it (I'm not proud, and I am lazy, at least in this instance--real korma takes forever to make) and toss some rice in the rice cooker. Twenty minutes of work and then two hours of enjoying the smell of softly simmering magic as it wafts through our beautiful apartment and warms everything it touches.

And then I'll get back on the computer and upload some pictures of said beautiful apartment.

Or maybe I'll run back to Whole Foods for those 'mums. They smelled so good.

Oops

I just realized that I haven't written anything here in a month. My excuse is that the "S" key on our keyboard is being sticky and so it's frustrating to write.

Here is a summary of our recent news:

I got a job. It's nannying--it's fun, it pays well, I'm working full time, and we've doubled our income. That feels good, cause we were pretty broke.

Now that we have some money, and now that the weather is cooling down enough that we are no longer wandering around in a soporific heat-zombie haze, we've started to look about ourselves and turn our apartment into someplace where grownups live. This is an improvement over its previous appearance, which can best be described as a glorified storage facility.

Today we rearranged the living room, hung artwork and clocks, and put up curtains. It's amazing how curtains and a few paintings will make a whole room suddenly feel like a "real" room, even if it's still a mess. There are boxes and things everywhere still, but it feels much more put together all the same.

I sprained my foot at LARP a week ago. Still sore, because I haven't been keeping off of it. Whoops. There is a somewhat less-than-thrilling tale connected to it that I may share at some point. Mostly I'm just annoyed because I didn't hurt it doing something fun and/or glorious out in the woods in the middle of the night. I did that for 3 1/2 hours without so much as a stumble.

Also, we bought a real live grownup alarm clock today after three months of using cell phones with alarm tones that we hate. It is a fancy schmancy $12 dealie from Wal-Mart that wakes you up with either alarm clock bells, cathedral bells, or wind chimes. It also plays noises to help you fall asleep. I am currently listening to the "ocean" setting ("brook" had too many frogs and not enough running water, and "wind chimes" was essentially an Enya song that never made it to the vocals). I feel sleepy already.

Now that I'm settling in to a work routine and our house is finally, finally getting to a state where it's set up, it's finally beginning to sink in for me that we are for-real married and not just on some glorious temporary vacation from life. It's a good feeling, but surreal in a too-good-to-be-true sort of way. Does that make sense? After the last year, my brain is convinced that seeing Dave every day means that I am on vacation from whatever drudgery I am normally involved in, ergo the fact that I see Dave every day--well, you see what I'm saying. The idea that I can live real life and see Dave every day is novel and exciting.

I think there were other things I was going to say, but, although I was being facetious about it a few minutes ago, the ocean sounds and seagulls really are starting to make me sleepy, so more later.

A Wee Update

Hello, friends and family.

Well, we just keep on keepin' on, so to speak. Dave is still looking for teaching work, but there is still a prospect or two on the horizon so keep praying for him. He did get hired as a tutor with the Princeton Review, which won't be enough for him to be able to leave his current job, but will be really nice supplemental income.

And speaking of supplemental income, I have discovered something. While I would love to stay home every day, and enjoy the theory of it immensely, I'm not sure it's worth the boredom when Dave works 12-hour days combined with the anxiety of being so close to the wire financially speaking. So, I've been looking around for some work and I've got a few prospects.

Of the three phone interviews I've had, all of them went well and were promising. One netted an in-person interview and got me to the next step of the vetting process. Of the other two, I have another interview tomorrow, and one interview that has yet to be scheduled. All of them are for part-time or extremely part-time work, but two or three of them in combination would make a huge difference in our current money situation, so let's all keep fingers crossed, yes?

We went to another LARP event this past weekend, which was super fun. I've got a new project--sewing a dress for my lovely sister-in-law--and we're continuing to settle in well to married life.

Someday I'll get the wedding photos posted, I promise.

Anyway, I have patterns to cut out and things to pin, so that's all for now.

Arts and Crafts and Presents

Off the top of my head, I can think of three people we know who are due to be having babies in the next week to four months. There are probably more that I just don't know about yet or can't remember at the moment.

Well, I've always believed in celebrating babies, so I decided to make some presents.

For one, I made a blanket. It's satin on one side and flannel on the other:

For another, I used some leftover fabric from Dave's LARP costume and the blanket to make a dress:

More to come, but that's all for now.

Link

I think I've found a new favorite website. I seriously sat and read this blog for three hours yesterday (after I had all my chores done!). Now I'm spoiled for choice about which project to take on next..

Craft Gossip has something for everyone, no matter what sort of creative things you like to do.. or even if all you like to do is sit and fantasize about the creative things you will do someday when you can.

I'm excited about moving out of the "sitting and fantasizing" category and back into the "able to do crafts whenever I feel like it" category.

Thoughts

I've spent the last hour or so in the kitchen, scrubbing pots, scrubbing counters, and dealing with rancid food that didn't get cleaned out of a pyrex dish soon enough. Let me tell you, rotten curry is NOT a good smell. I also cooked spaghetti for my lunch. By the time I was done with an hour of running the hot water and boiling more water in a pot, the kitchen was so hot that when I opened the freezer to get ice cubes out, the clouds of "steam" that poured out of it were so thick that I couldn't see.

These are the things I learned today:

• When my kitchen is clean, I feel dramatically better about life in general
• It is always better to wash things immediately after they get dirty, especially if you are OCD and prone to minor panic attacks about touching mold or rotten food. (You'd think I would have internalized that one sooner. Sorry, mom and dad.)
• Cooking isn't as much fun when it's only for me
• If you don't like pears, but you buy them for your husband and he eats all but one of them and then loses interest, eventually that lone pear will start to rot, until its insides liquefy and turn into something that smells very much like vinegar, and looks very much like maple syrup. This will drip out of your fruit bowl and onto your cutting board, and you will feel stupid when you finally find it under an avocado and realize that that's why you can't get rid of the fruit flies in your kitchen. Ew.
• Housework is much better when, upon its completion, you can flee back to your air-conditioned bedroom

This is what God is teaching me about marriage, love, and dying to self: that I, who hate making beds (especially beds that are merely a mattress on the floor and are up against a wall), will make the bed when I get up, not because I was asked, but because when my husband comes home from work tonight, I want him to have an inviting place to lie down and rest.

Lumberton

So, for the last weekend of our honeymoon, we decided to go to a Live-Action Roleplaying event. This is something Dave has done before, and I never had. Essentially it involves spending the weekend at a Girl Scout camp, dressing up in costumes, getting foam swords, and fighting people dressed up like monsters.

It was so fun that I feel sort of guilty about it.

I did bring my camera, but didn't take any pictures. However, our friend Jill also brought her camera, and she did actually take pictures... so here some are.

Dave models the linen tunic I sewed for him
on my new sewing machine


Making music on blades of grass... music
that sounded like dying geese.



Apparently, I wasn't able to blow on blades
of grass with a straight face.


I know I look really angry here, but I'm not. It
was just incredibly hot, and the sun
was in my eyes.

I admit, I was dubious about the whole exercise, but it was tons of fun. There's another event in August that I think we're going to try and go to again. I've got a couple of modifications to make to Dave's costume now that I've seen it in action--the snaps need to be moved a little and reinforced, etc... but all in all I was pleased with how it came out, especially given that I haven't sewn a piece of clothing other than that one in about four years.

Plus, I got to dress up like a gypsy and sing folk songs to the most appreciative audience I've ever had. How could I not want to do that again?

The Honeymoon Wraps Up

Well, it's time to settle down into real life again, I suppose. We're coming up on our 1-month anniversary of married-dom. I'm not entirely sure how it went by so quickly, but it's probably because we were so busy being totally freaking rad that we forgot to notice the passage of time.

We've been enjoying our wedding gifts--some, I confess, more than others. For instance, the two lovely clocks we got still aren't on the wall... but our salad bowl gets used nearly every day, all of our towels have been through the rotation at least once, and our sheets are soft and comfortable. The two dutch ovens we got have been seeing a lot of action, and I spent two full days glued to my new sewing machine, making a LARP costume for Dave.

Highlights of the honeymoon:

1. Excellent food! I keep meaning to take pictures and then not doing it, which I think I'll regret later. I've been trying to make bread, and we've been doing almost all of our shopping at Whole Foods (with the occasional jaunt to Giant Eagle for dry goods). We've done a good job of sticking with mainly fresh produce, usually local and/or organic. Very little processed food. Very lots of deliciousness. For instance, last night we rubbed a chicken down with rosemary, sage, thyme, coriander, garlic, and olive oil, then roasted it in the dutch oven and made couscous in the broth when it was done cooking. Now we have half a chicken left--the meat for chicken salad, the bones for stock. We've also identified several restaurants that we really like, including Lemongrass (for Thai food) and the Jerusalem Grill (very very tasty falafel).

2. Lots of sleep. This is a big one for me, because historically I have wicked insomnia. Well, no more. It's boring to stay up once Dave is ready for bed, so I don't. And it's a lot easier to fall asleep when someone else is being sleepy next to you and insisting that it's time for bed. I've gone from an average 3-4 hours of sleep a night with lots of waking-up in between to an easy 9-10 hours a night.

3. Trip to New York. We went up to ye olde homestead in upstate New York for July 4th to put in an appearance at my family's yearly reunion. Highlights-within-highlights include a picnic at the rest stop overlooking Chautauqua Lake, illegal home-launched fireworks, really good catered food, Scrabble, and a comedic little interlude involving us, naptime, a locked door, a trio of 13-year-old cousins, a video camera, and the roof outside of our windows.

4. Movies. We saw Public Enemies and Harry Potter in the theater. I recommend either or both to any reader of this blog. They were lots of fun. We've also been watching lots of movies at home, thanks to Netflix and the awesome TV my oldest brother and his wife gave us for our wedding.

5. Trip to West Virginia. This is probably going to warrant an entire post on its own once I get photos. We went to a Live Action Roleplaying event down in Wheeling, West Virginia. That was pretty much the final Big Event of our honeymoon, which is funny given that the camp rules prohibited us even from kissing or hugging during the weekend. That being said, it was tons and tons of fun and I want to go do it again, maybe when the weather cools down to a more reasonable temperature.

6. My birthday! As of yesterday, I am 25 years old. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction at having got married before this happened. Dave gave me a new sewing box for my birthday, after watching me ogle the ones at JoAnn's for an unreasonable amount of time. For someone who doesn't sew himself, he showed excellent taste. It's roomy and attractive and will match the other things I own. Win.

We've been slowly (and I do mean slowly) unpacking things, washing all the clothes that have sat in garbage bags for the last month while we moved and got married and did more important things, and organizing our kitchen. We're getting to know our neighbors. There's a couple living on the second floor who seem to be a lot of fun, and a very friendly guy lives on the corner just across the street from us. He came over yesterday to introduce us to his dog, Puff Daddy, and to inform us that he lives in the house where Paul Newman was born.

Maybe now that I'm all caught up it will be easier to go back to individual blog posts about one thing instead of these massive catch-up summaries.

Et voila. Our honeymoon.

Wedded bliss

So, I'm pleased to report that being married is The Best Thing Ever. Seriously. Couldn't be better, unless perhaps we were independently wealthy and Dave never had to leave and go to work.

We've been enjoying our wedding gifts heartily, from the artwork on the walls to the dishes in the kitchen to the towels in the bathroom. I feel so loved and taken care of, and surrounded by the love of our friends as well as the love of my husband.

Speaking of experimenting with wedding gifts, we got a cast iron dutch oven and I decided to use it to try making the New York Times' No Knead Bread recipe. We had Dave's brother over to sample it (along with some pate, merlot, and camembert).

I'm going to be making a post about the recipe and the process, because it's so easy that nobody who reads this blog has an excuse not to try it for themselves and enjoy its deliciousness. Seriously, we've been seriously discussing just not buying store-bought bread anymore.

But that post isn't ready yet (the pictures need to be edited). In the meantime, I will give you this spoiler--a photo of my beloved in our home, getting ready to share good food with people we love. I don't know that I could get a much better portrait of him--wifebeater, tattoos, good food, good drinks, good friends, and a radiant smile. Throw in some books and there's the love of my life.

Showing off the first meal ever
served to guests in our home

I really like it when things that I think are going to be really good turn out to be not just really good, but mind-blowingly wonderful.

Wedding Weather

I admit that sometimes I can be weird. For instance, I will sometimes sit and watch the Weather Channel. All day. I just find it interesting, I guess, and I like to look at the maps and forecasts and think about all my many, scattered friends and what the weather is like in all the different places where they are. And then later I know and I mention it and they wonder if I've been stalking them. I haven't. I just like the weather channel.

A few days ago, I realized that I could actually go to weather.com and look up the 10-day forecast for the weather and actually see the forecast for my wedding day. Cue girly squealing and minor Impending Wedding Day freakout.

Then I actually checked.

Three days ago, the prediction was for 82 degrees and scattered thunderstorms with a fairly high chance of precipitation.

I was relatively (relatively) sanguine about this, though. After all, I told myself, in my secret heart of hearts I was expecting the probability of rain. It's Western Pennsylvainia. It's June. Of course it will probably rain. I knew that. And 82 degrees? Well, I mean, that's warmer than I wanted, of course. The same part of my heart that secretly admitted and planned for the possibility of rain also secretly hoped that the temperature would be at least in the 70's.

After all, Dave gets very, very cranky when it's hot, and he's wearing tweed on the wedding day, which is not exactly the coolest and lightest of materials.

But, weather can't be helped. I decided to just be peaceful about it and hope for the best.

And check weather.com obsessively, and pray for better weather, and ask other people to pray for better weather (specifically mid-70's during the day and not rainy, at least not until after the photos). After all, on my mom's wedding day it was raining in every single major city in Europe, except the one where she got married.

The next day, I checked. 81 degrees. Scattered thunderstorms. Sigh.

The next day, 80 degrees. Scattered thunderstorms. Oh well.

Today? A mere 77 degrees! And isolated thunderstorms! The chance of precipitation is down to only 30%!

I'm going to keep checking, and I'm going to keep praying. In my little wedding-day dreams it goes down to between 72-75, it will be a little overcast--not direct sun, but not gloomy--and there will be a breeze that will smell like rain. Late in the evening, when Dave and I are ready to get in the car, there might be some distant lightning and thunder, but the rain won't actually hit while we're driving, because he doesn't like driving in the rain at night. However, immediately after we get home, a thunderstorm will start, and we'll spend our first night at home listening to thunder, looking at lightning, and falling asleep to the sound of heavy rain on the bedroom windows, because that's one of the best sounds in the world.

One of the best... right after the sound of Dave's voice.

Shut up, I know it's sappy.

Wow..

I think somehow I secretly believed that we'd never get to the day where I could say "I'm getting married in a week," but we did. It's 3am on Saturday, which means I can officially say it.

Don't even ask why I'm up at 3am. It's a long story. All of this cross-country traveling has played merry hell with my circadian rhythm.

Now it's bedtime, but I had to exclaim first.

(Also, Dave is at LARP this weekend and has his phone turned off/out of signal range. He forgot to call and say goodbye before he left. Not talking to Dave on the phone before bed completely destroys my nighttime routine. I don't like it. We aren't getting married a day too soon.)

This gold and silver I give thee

A lot of things about our wedding have been chosen to be incredibly simple or straightforward. Our wedding rings... well... they definitely fall into that category, too.

I've never been much of a fan of yellow gold jewelry. My parents have white gold rings, which might part of the root from which that opinion grew. And of course, my engagement ring is made of silver, and I am really not into the look of mixed silver and gold jewelry.

We looked a number of places for rings, wanting something that was simple but also beautiful and worthy. We even checked out Amazon.com. No, really, we did. I'm not proud.

Ultimately we did end up ordering our rings from online, on a website called e-WeddingBands.com. Their prices were reasonable, their quality was good, they were recommended by the Better Business Bureau, and their customer service has been excellent, including calling Dave on the phone to double-check his shipping address. We were able to select from a wide variety of widths and sizes in 1/4 increments, which saved us time. Everyone else only did sizes and half-sizes, and Dave needed a 3/4-size. We thought we were going to have to order large and resize.

Anyway, I was really pleased with what we got. The rings are very, very simple. They're white gold. They match each other, they match my engagement ring very nicely, and they match us, I think. Nothing fancy, nothing trendy. Just a solid, simple bit of gold.

Our wedding is in fifteen days. Dave has the rings at home, waiting to be exchanged.

That's a good feeling.

For we are bound by symmetry

We're getting married in three weeks. Twenty-one days. Less than a month.

I wondered if by now I'd have had any second thoughts or felt nervous at all about the prospect of being married to Dave forever.

The answer is no.

I was cleaning out some old files and came across a whole host of photos taken between early 2002 and mid 2004, almost all of me, all at college. I used to have a lot more, but they were stored online and lost as I either forgot passwords or websites stopped providing hosting services. I wish I'd been better about keeping track with them. It's strange to look back at all those photos (I took a lot) and remember everything associated with them.. who I was dating at the time, what color I'd dyed my hair, what classes I was taking, what my favorite clothes were.

I miss college (the first attempt) a lot. I miss all the potential, and having not made as many stupid mistakes, and the friends who were never more than a five minute walk away.

But in three weeks I'm going to be marrying the most wonderful man I've ever met, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him, and there's nothing in the world that I would trade for him.

I heard a song tonight by the Decemberists, one of my favorite bands. One of the things I like about them is their unbelievably beautiful lyrics. So, I'm including the song, for your listening pleasure, because it's got some lines that are so sweet they make me want to cry.

Three more weeks, and I can hardly wait.

This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed

And how it whispered “Oh, adhere to me
For we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb.”

Home Sweet House

Big news for the soon-to-be-newlyweds!

I am on the phone with my beloved even as we speak, and he is on his way home from signing the lease for our very first apartment.

It's in University Heights, a neighborhood that Dave is very excited to live in. Walking distance (albeit a long walk) from the Cedar Lee theater. An independent movie theater that also serves beer? Um, yes. Props to our new neighborhood. I'm excited to see that over the summer, the Cedar Lee is going to be showing HD films of opera performances from Europe. I can definitely handle that.

Also conveniently close by are our favorite breakfast place, Dave's current place of employment, Little Italy, and a bunch of other pleasant places.

Have I mentioned the hardwood floors, cute residential neighborhood, and (blocked-up, but with a gas hookup) fireplace? No? Well, let me mention those now.

We can take occupancy as soon as the current tenant moves out, which will be June 1 at the latest. Today is a good day.

Yikes

Well, it's been ten days since I last wrote anything here. That isn't because there aren't weddingy things going on, or because I don't like blogging (there are tons of weddingy things going on, and I adore blogging).

But you see, dear friends and family, this past week has been The Busiest Week Ever, at least as far as college is concerned. That's right... it was finals week, and not just any finals week, but my last finals week as an undergrad! So I had to temporarily put blogging and other wedding things on semi-hold while I crammed for killer exams, finished a 40-page paper, and did a presentation in font of the whole English department.

I'm back now to announce that I am officially done with college, and graduation ceremonies will be on Saturday at 10am.

David is coming out tomorrow and getting a hotel room. We've got to pack up my dorm room (how is it possible to accumulate so much stuff over a single year? Oy gevalt), pick up our marriage license at the Mercer County Courthouse, and finish the last bits of our wedding registry. Yeah, I know, it's five weeks before the wedding and the registry still isn't finished. I'd feel guiltier if more people had bought us presents, but they haven't yet, so I don't (well, I do feel guilty, but only a little).

I met with the caterer this week, did a little shopping in town for some small wedding doo-dads, and have been brainstorming about fun things like flowers and neckties and shoes. More to come on that in a day or two. My super awesome future mother and sister in law are throwing me a shower on Sunday, and I'll be blogging about that, as well.

For now, I'm going to crack open a Diet Coke, stretch out in bed, watch the newest episode of House, and enjoy being finished.

A few things

So, I've slacked off a little bit with the journal writing. There are a few reasons for this, mainly that I was busy getting wedding invitations addressed and mailed out. There will be a post on that soon, with pictures of them in progress, etcetera.

In the meantime, while I study for finals, I suggest you amuse yourselves with two of my favorite wedding-related humor blogs. I warn you, you may spend a huge number of hours looking at these, aghast.

They make me feel good about myself. I'm not entirely proud of it.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com - The most awful cakes you will ever see

http://tackyweddings.com - Like Cake Wrecks, but for all the other awful things that can happen at weddings

Other things coming up:

1. Finals start on Friday. I'm almost done with college!

2. We are now officially able to say that we're getting married next month. Woah.

3. Next time Dave is in Pennsylvania, we're picking up our marriage license. That's right. The wedding is close enough for things like that now. (blog post to follow)

4. We picked out wedding rings (blog post to follow)

5. Meeting this week with the catering people (blog post to follow)

6. Photography - not formally officially decided, but we might be changing photographers. A month and a half before the wedding! Am I crazy? You'll have to wait and judge for yourself.

Invitations

We're almost done with invitations. Supplies have been purchased, components have been assembled, envelopes have been stuffed. About 3/4 of them are done, addressed, and ready to go--I'm waiting on sending them because of that last 1/4, which consists of David's friends who I've been asking him to call and get addresses from since before Christmas.

I got it all done over the course of the weekend, with the helpful helping help of the wife of one of the lads. Said lad and another friend came out to Cleveland for the weekend for an all-weekend gaming session with David and his brother, and the Mrs. and I bonded over paper cuts and the gross taste of envelope glue.

I took a couple of pictures of the process, for posterity's sake. The last 1/4 I will probably do in the next day or two, and I will probably enlist the aid of my local bridesmaid, Miss O'Molly. And then I will mail them, and once the people who read this blog have received them, I will put up pictures of the assembling process.

I actually hand-delivered a few of them yesterday, to professors and school friends and the like. It was very satisfying.

Boutonnieres

I still have no idea what I want for my own flowers, but I've found some inspiration for boutonnieres.

My first idea was to do something with hydrangea, to echo the bridesmaid bouquets:

credit: A Floral Affair flowers

I don't know exactly what is going on with the stem there--I don't think I'm a super huge fan, but I do like the look of the hydrangea, mostly. The problem is, hydrangea by itself is just too plain.

That's a problem easily solved, though, with the addition of a little lamb's ear or dusty miller--which also echoes the bouquets.

credit: Martha Stewart, lamb's ear and orchid boutonniere

I like that lamb's ear a lot, but not a huge fan of orchids. There's going to be stephanotis in the bridesmaid bouquets, though...

source: The Bride's Guide to Chic

How pretty is that? I still don't like that weird metallic stem thing, but the stephanotis is so pretty, and the dusty miller and eucalyptus both look gorgeous. I love eucalyptus.

So I'm thinking perhaps for the groomsmen we can do a martha-like look with the leaf of lamb's ear or dusty miller and then maybe a spray of hydrangea, and for Dave we can do the same thing, but with stephanotis. I'd love to work some eucalyptus in there somehow, too; it's got that same silvery-green look to it, and it smells divine.

Wedding Invitations

This week is my Easter break, which means I'm in Cleveland allll week. I am so happy about this, I can't even tell you.

Last night, Dave and I went to the store in search of supplies for wedding invitation making. I'm not going to tell you exactly what they're going to look like, because I want people to appreciate them in person when they see them for the first time, but I will tell you some of the things we bought last night:

Steel paper clips
Linen paper
Manila envelopes

Whaaaaaat?

You'll just have to wait and see.

Also, stamps alone are going to run us about $84. Omgsauce. Since when did going to the post office get so expensive?

Living Space

Unlike a lot of couples these days, Dave and I aren't going to be living together until after we're married. Right now, I live in a dorm, and Dave rents from a friend who owns a house, so we're going to have to find a new place just for us before the wedding. Exciting!

A couple of days ago, I was struck with the inspiration to poke around on Craigslist and see what kinds of apartments we might be able to find in Cleveland.

I've lived on my own before, but I wasn't the lease holder for the apartment in that case--I had a financial arrangement with my roommate and even though the managers of our apartment complex knew me, we never ended up getting around to putting my name on the lease (whoops). Anyway, I've never been one of the 100% responsible parties when it came to paying rent.

And other than that, I've only lived in college dorms or with family.

So this whole apartment-hunting, living-out-on-our-own thing is kind of a big deal for me.

I found a listing on Craigslist for a duplex in Euclid that looked pretty much perfect. Not one to let an impulse get away from me, I sent the information to Dave, who agreed that it looked great. He called the number for the listing, and he went yesterday to have a look at the place. He liked it so much that we agreed we'd go ahead and put an application in for it.

Now, here's the problem: someone else got there first. The landlady is going to process that application first, and Dave gets the impression that ours will be processed only if that first applicant changes their mind or the application falls through for some reason.

We really, really want this apartment. It's the upper floor of an older house on the East side of Cleveland. It's a ten-ish minute walk from the lake, it's near some really nice restaurants, a park, and a library. It's spacious (1,100 sq. ft. for a 1-bedroom!), and it's affordable.

So, for those of you who read this that pray, how about throwing in a good word for us with the big Housing Supervisor in the sky? This place looks like it would be pretty ideal.



I mean, come on... look at that kitchen.

Les Fleurs, Deux

I've been continuing to think about wedding flowers. I should be writing a paper, but sometimes I need to take a break and let things percolate, so I don't view this as procrastination... I view it as letting my thoughts settle into something cohesive. It's sort of like sleeping on it, only without the sleep part.

I decided a good way to go about encouraging my history-paper-related thoughts to settle would be to stir up some wedding thoughts instead, so I got on Flickr and started browsing. I collected a mosaic of pictures of most of my favorite flowers and foliage.

As I've mentioned before, my mom is doing my flowers. Sadly, she's also on the other side of the country. This is where this blog can be really handy, because I can collect those pictures and make a mosaic and blog my thinking on wedding flowers as it evolves, and she can probably get a better idea from that than if we were sitting in the same room and I was trying to explain it without pictures or the clarity of thought that comes from actually writing things down.

These are the pictures I found:

(Source: 1. dried wedding bouquet, 2. Peonies Floating in Thin Air!, 3. plumeria "celadine", 4. Tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa), 5. Green Maple Leaves, 6. rosa-lírio, 7. Women... It's for you! I'm in love with you this morning!, 8. Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), 9. the madonna lily, 10. Turkey Run - Lamb's Ear, 11. Hydrangea, 12. Wild Welsh Poppies, 13. B_W Dusty Miller)

This is resized to fit on the page, but if you click the link here you can see the mosaic full-size.

Top row (L-R): Peonies (one of my all-time favorite flowers), Plumeria, Tuberose, Maple Leaves
2nd Row (L-R): Stargazer Lilies (tied for top-favorite flower with peonies), Roses
3rd Row (L-R): Lady's Mantle, Madonna Lilies
4th Row (L-R): Lamb's Ear, Hydrangea, Poppies, Dusty Miller

In a nutshell, I like lush, large, fragrant blossoms, the smooth, cool green of tree leaves (it isn't just maple leaves; I have similar feelings about oaks and aspens), and the smooth, fuzzy, silver-green of lamb's ear and dusty miller.

While searching, I also found a picture on Flickr that immediately became my newest vision for bridesmaid bouquets:

(Credit: Flickr - Epressions Floral)

Hydrangea, stephanotis, dusty miller (according to the picture description... but I think that looks more like lamb's ear than dusty miller). Picture this with a green-tipped or white hydrangea instead of blue-tipped. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

In my imagination, the guys have boutonnieres that probably involve lamb's ear or dusty miller, and maybe a small poppy or mini-cluster of hydrangea blossoms.

Blogs I Read

When I am procrastinating--I mean, when I am thinking about wedding things because those things Need To Be Thought About, what I generally do is browse the Internets and read blogs in which other people write about their weddings and put up pictures of pretty flowers and what have you.

These are some of the things I read:

WeddingBee - The online bible of do-it-yourself wedding stuff. It's a blog! It's a community! It's a DIY paradise! And all this can be yours for free. Sigh. I live vicariously through the Bees.

Offbeat Bride - I wouldn't say we go as far off the beaten track as most of the people on this site, but there are some really great and fun ideas on there, and some really gorgeous photos. Dave likes to read it too, especially when they post recaps and photo galleries from crazy theme weddings (Star Wars wedding anyone? Of course Slave Leia can officiate!)

Vintage Glam Blog - It's pretty and wonderful and I love it and I want it. I want it all.

Also, even though it isn't really wedding related, I read RetroThing, because it has... well.. fun, retro things on it. You never know when inspiration might strike, or where it might come from.

Ceremony

It's very trendy these days to write your own vows.

Well, without offending anybody who did that, it's just not our thing. We're both good writers, but we also have spent years and years in schools where sometimes it seemed that the only objective was to instill in us a sense that compared to the literary greats, we are not so.. well.. great.

Or, as Dave put it, "if a pre-written ceremony was good enough for my favorite writers, it's good enough for me."

Of course, the question still remained as to which pre-written ceremony we'd use, as of course every denomination seems to have one. Even here, though, there wasn't too much digging around. We discussed it once or twice, confirmed that we agreed about this as we do about most things, and that was that--the Book of Common Prayer it is.

Most people would be able to leave it at that, but we are not Most People. Oh no. We are, very proudly, English Majors. Not for us the modern Book of Common Prayer, with its standard spellings and newfangled edits of a word here and there.

Did you know, for instance, that there are slight differences in the Book of Common prayer depending on whether you are Episcopalian (USA), Anglican, Episcopal Church of Scotland, Church of Ireland, Church of Wales, or Anglican Church of Canada? And that's to say nothing about the fact that, like most reference books that have been in print for a while, there have been multiple editions.

So, knowing what sort of thing we had in mind, I asked myself.. to which Book of Common prayer do we wish to refer? Surely nothing so new as the 1956 edition, or even 1900. Something from the 1800's, perhaps? No, not even that.

Illumination came to me one day as I was thinking about the British Literature Survey class in which I first set eyes on my intended. In the first semester of that delightful two-semester course, as part of our coverage of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, we have to read the Book of Common Prayer.

The original Book of Common Prayer, as penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, this Book is of course still available, even if it's considered a wee bit archaic by most people now. It's exactly perfect for us, and we intend to use pretty much the whole "forme of solemnizacion of matrimonie", although I still need to find out if we'll be allowed to have a communion service in the chapel, since the written policy is that absolutely no food and drink are allowed. I wonder if the Body and Blood of Christ get an exemption.

I'm very excited about our wedding ceremony. I think it will suit us exactly.

The Booke of Common Prayer - 1549 Edition