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.