It’s Christmas night and so far I have to say? This Christmas has been pretty awesome.  We slept in this morning and then slooooowly opened presents and by noon we were both crashed on the couch in front of the television.  We had talked about watching the fifth season of Lost but you know–you can’t just idly watch Lost.  You have to Watch. Lost.  So we nixed the idea in favor of some Sex and the City and Die Hard.  One of my presents from Will is that he promised to spend the whole day on the couch with me no matter what I put on the television set.  Of course he’s playing WoW on his laptop but you know what? I’m okay with that.  Because?  As we sit here watching the fourth season of SATC (we’re going out of order) I’m typing this blog entry on my Eee PC!

I got kind of spoiled this Christmas.  Okay–I get kind of spoiled by this guy every Christmas (and birthday).  This year, along with a couple of books and one of those bean filled things that you put in the microwave and then put on sore spots for muscle soothing, Will got me a netbook–something that I’ve been lusting after for years but that we could never afford.

The gift isn’t without conditions–accepting this means that I have to let him refurbish my old Dell so that we can send it to his Dad, who has been after us to get him a computer for months.  Still though–I  love the idea of being able to take my computer with me pretty much anywhere I want to go without having to deal with the weight of my old laptop.  That thing felt perfectly light for a few steps but as soon as I’d get out the door it would suddenly gain about a hundred pounds.  This little netbook can easily be slipped into a case and put into my backpack or the Hello Kitty bag I use as a purse (and catch all).

In other news, even though we have a sixteen pound turkey defrosting in our fridge (what? It was free), we decided to forego the big Christmas dinner in favor of being lazy and snacking.  With just the two of us this year (thank God), it seemed like such a huge hassle to make the giant turkey, the big pan of stuffing, and the pot full of mashed potatoes.  Right now it’s looking like we’ll just cook the turkey tomorrow morning and then snack off of it for the rest of the weekend.  Part of the “blah” ness about the big dinner comes from poor Will having to cook a giant meal for the third time in a month (remember, he cooked a bunch of stuff for his work’s Christmas lunch party last week).  Part of it comes from me thinking “I’m so just not in the mood for a big meal”  Why put in the work for something neither of us is jazzed about?

All in all it has been a wonderful and relaxing day and I’m really really grateful for it.  Except for a few short phone calls we’ve mostly been left alone to just sit back and enjoy the quiet and each others’ company.

Merry Christmas!

O.Kay.  The dishes are washed, the laundry is folded and put away, the floors have been swept and vacuumed, the recycling and trash have been taken out and–for the most part–the apartment is clean.

The gifts have been wrapped and put under the tree.

As soon as Will gets home from work, Christmas can begin! Yay!

Merry Merry to you and yours!

Today (well, for the nine minutes that are left of it) is Will’s birthday.  We started celebrating it yesterday with one of his work friends whose birthday is the 19th and today, as a birthday gift I promised to not nag or complain about how much time he was spending playing WoW.  I gave him a couple of other gifts too, of course, but I think it was this one that he appreciated the most.  Sometimes, apparently, a dude just needs a day to sit back and play games on his computer without his wife saying “oh my god I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate that damn game.  Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy do you have to spend alllllllllllllll daaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on it?”  Who knew?

In addition to his “nag-free” day I gave him a tie and a couple of other video games that he’s been wanting.  One is a replacement for a game that he already had but that we haven’t been able to find, no matter how many times we turn the house upside down looking for it.  I admit that I was a little selfish here and bought him the editions that play on the PS3 instead of on the computer.  Even if his attention is focused on the game and I am blogging (or working or reading or crocheting or knitting or whatevering) at least hopefully now we’ll spend some time in the same room, dammit.

Thankfully, he really liked his gifts and we did have a nice Denny’s cooked meal for dinner and honestly?  I found the day to be pretty peaceful.  I vacuumed our living room, did a few dishes and then curled up and watched my Netflixed Ally McBeal DVDs and every forty minutes or so would go in and give Will a hug or scratch his back or just love on him for a minute (get your mind out of the gutter) but NOT nag.

It was a nice way to end a kind of hectic and irritating week.

First there was the flu/blahs that kept me in bed all day Tuesday.

On Wednesday there was an ill fated trip to the DMV during which we only realized AFTER we got all the way there that we forgot to bring the proper documentation required to renew Will’s license and then that evening there may have been a kind of big argument that started about, well– a certain person’s certain friend whose attention may or may not border on the whack side of okay and ended up being one of those clear the air fights that, by the end of it is more about “and you never put your butter knife in the sink, you always leave it on the counter!”  Every couple has one of these every once in a while–it starts about a specific situation that has been sensitive and tiptoed around for a while and finally comes to a head and before you know it, all of the stuff you say you don’t really mind becomes fair game to shout about.   By the end you’re fighting about whose feet smell worse and whether or not one of you actually understands how the flushing mechanism on your toilet works and you’re both laughing but the next day you wake up feeling raw and fragile and still have to spend a couple of hours crying into the furry belly of your cat.

Of course, I couldn’t really spend Thursday licking my wounds because Thursday was the day that Will was cooking his company’s Christmas “Potluck” stuff in our kitchen all morning and the day that the staircase leading to our apartment got ripped out leaving us with no structurally sound and convenient way to leave our home.

What’s that?

Yeah.  On Wednesday we found a note stuck to our door “tomorrow we will be repairing your staircase for wood rot, we apologize for the inconvenience.”  I don’t know a lot about construction or wood rot, but to me that sounds like “we might be replacing a couple of your steps” not “we are going to completely remove the staircase that allows you to get from your front door to the rest of the world and take all damn day to put it back.”

Around 10ish we started to hear banging and pounding and air compression guns and, because I’m too short to see out of the peephole in our door (which was installed by the same guys doing the staircase) I asked Will to take a look and see what was going on.  Will looked through the peephole and said “yeah, we don’t have any stairs anymore.”  Then he pulled over the cat litter container so I could stand on it and look and sure enough: no stairs.  No way of getting to the parking lot from our front door.

This meant that Will had to climb over our balcony and I had to hand him the 20lb Turkey, the 10lbs of mashed potatoes, the 11×17 pan of stuffing and the medium saucepan full of gravy over our patio railing and then he had to carry them all the way around our building to get them to the car so that he could drive everything in to his work for their “Potluck.”

(I put that in quotations because, apparently, about half the people who came to eat food did not actually bring anything of their own to share)

He came back a couple of hours later so that we could go back up to the DMV (and then to Sonic afterwards to buy me a burger for lunch) and you know what?  There was no way I was going to go over our balcony and leave our apartment unlocked for half the afternoon.  So I? went out my front door and demanded that those construction/buildy guys let me use their ladder.  And when they tried to talk me into going over the balcony like Will had done?  I told them that if they weren’t going to set up that ladder for me that I could go ahead and do it my damned self, so they should just get out of the way.

I see no reason to be nice when I’m tired and GREATLY inconvenienced.

I was also not about to make these guys’ life any easier.  I mean seriously.  They installed our peephole so high that even Will has to stand on tiptoes to see through it rendering it USELESS when I’m home alone.  They left me without a working front door when they were switching our front door a few weeks ago and decided to up and leave for lunch without telling anyone (after we had been PROMISED that such a thing would not happen by our property managers) and then instead of simply replacing the two steps that needed replacing they ripped out our entire staircase and then put it back a single step at a time and almost trapped us inside our apartment for the day.  What if there had been an emergency?  What if there had been a fire?

Oh and the staircase that was supposed to be completely finished by Friday afternoon? Saw NO work on Friday at all.  The railing? Is being suspended by caution tape from the staircase above ours because they didn’t finish bolting the thing in before they left on Thursday and the whole thing is going to need to be painted and if it is the same guys that do it I predict they’ll do the whole thing at once which means we’ll have to choose between walking in wet paint or going over the balcony again.

Every week or so we get another reason to find a new place to live. Does anybody out there have a house in the area that they want to rent to us?

Friday, thankfully,  was pretty uneventful, which was kind of nice after the beginning of the week’s hoopla.

Saturday morning was pretty leisurely and then in the evening we went to the joint birthday party for Will and his friend.  The people throwing the party (one of whom’s birthday was Saturday) are big drinkers and I know they were looking forward to getting Will sloshed and sure enough, they were having him down jello shots less than ten minutes after we got there.   I didn’t drink and instead spent the evening off to the side of the action talking with one of the other people who doesn’t drink and having a grand old time talking about babies and child development and laughing our asses off at pretty much everything until it was time for her and her husband (and new baby!) to leave. Then I played on my iPhone until we left a couple of hours later when Will was sober enough to drive home.

Today is absolutely the best day of the week–having spent it calmly and lazily at home and celebrating Will’s birthday (he keeps telling me what a great birthday it has been so I feel like a very successful wife).

Incidentally, how did the week before Christmas get here so fast?!? Didn’t Will and I just get married, like, two minutes ago?

Today it is super rainy and gross out which makes it a perfect day to build a blanket nest on the couch, putting Julie & Julia into the DVD player and knocking out a quick blog post before I get to work.  Honestly?  It feels like the type of day in which I could just blog and read and watch television all day but you know what?  I did that yesterday when I was gross and ill.

Can I tell you something?  By the time it was bedtime yesterday I was SO BORED.  I spent almost all day in bed watching free stuff on On Demand and napping and by 6 I was so tired of it that I moved out to the couch just to have a change of venue.  That is how exciting my life is now.  Lying on the couch was my “change of scenery”!

We put our tree up a couple of days ago and now it is my job to make sure that the cat does not destroy it.  Will is from a “I know it’s in the window, but that doesn’t mean that we have to decorate the back of the tree since nobody can see into our windows!”

Side Note: downpour outside! Wow! It’s like sheets of water falling out of the sky! (I love this weather when I get to stay inside)

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  The tree.  So our tree is decorated three quarters of the way around and I like it.  We aren’t “theme tree” people so we have a kind of hodgepodge of stuff up there: the traditional bulbs, lights and candy canes and then the ornaments we pick out each year.  I like the hodgepodge and the “remember when we bought this??” even though we’ve only been buying ornaments together for four years.  (Yes we’ve been together for almost five years but our first Christmas was spent with my Mom so we didn’t need our own tree.)

Wait.   I had a different point.  Oh yeah!  The tree is decorated three quarters of the way around so it is tipping ever so slightly forward–not enough to fall over at random (I hope!) but enough that there is no way I will be letting the cat get anywhere near the thing without strict supervision.  So far she seems pretty uninterested in the tree but I think that’s because I’m sitting here, armed with a squirt bottle to keep her from trying to climb it or knock stuff down.

So.  The tree is up! And I’m on kitty patrol which means that I have moved my center of business operations out into the living room until after the holidays.  I have resumed my post on the couch and our electric bill is most likely going to skyrocket from the cost of lighting the living room all day but you know?  I can sit in my blanket nest with the cat warming my feet and look out our giant living room windows at the rain and it is unbelievably cozy.

Not even knowing that I have to go out in it in forty five minutes to go to the DMV with Will to renew his license is making this moment less appealing.

Has it really been more than a week since I last posted?  Talk about NaBloPoMo Mojo leaving the building!

I really don’t have a whole lot of excuses.  I mean sure I spent all afternoon with my good pal Wendy on Friday (with a special Katie sighting tossed in for good measure).  And on Sunday my sister in law (who just started a blog but I don’t want to link until she says whether or not she’s committed to it) stopped in on her way down to Roseburg on Sunday.  Yesterday was laundry day (I did not finish it as I ran out of time before I went to get food with Will) and today I spent almost all day in bed feeling flu like and pathetic (but that doesn’t count because hello, I’m totally blogging right now!).  But that still leaves a whole lot of days in there during which I did not post.  So.  Yes. I suck.

And I should post more often.  But my frozen pizza is almost finished baking so I have to go.  I think it is going to be a two Totinos pizza night tonight.  After spending most of the day feeling fluish, pathetic and on the verge of major vomiting I am suddenly starving.

Saturday we drove up to Everett (about an hour north of Seattle) and back.  In thirteenish hours.  Maybe fourteen.  I can’t remember exactly.  My sister in law had knee surgery (her fourth, poor girl) and her doctor was adamant that she not even TRY to drive her car (a manual transmission).  She had been hoping against hope that she’d be able to drive it but it turns out that no way was the final say of the day (whee! Off the rails poetry!) so she put in the emergency call of “I need to trade cars!” to Will on Friday.

It was a good visit.  I like my sister in law a lot so I was happy that we got to go up and see her (and that we’ll get to see her againt his weekend on her way through town).

Sunday I spent being a sloth on the couch, watching movies on On Demand.  I blew through Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour (which was okay), The Changeling (which desperately wants an Oscar nod), Confessions of a Shopaholic (which I had already seen and still got a kick out of the second time around) and the new Robin Williams Live Stand Up Special (which was funny, but not as funny as his Live on Broadway special).  I also took a nap.

Yesterday I did some work in the morning and then spent the afternoon running errands downtown (aka library and bank).  When I got home, I ended up taking a nap from 6:30 to 9 (oops).  This was good because it meant I actually had some energy left to sit up and talk with Will for a while after he got home at 10 from taking a final.  It was bad because then I was up until 1 in the morning and not even playing the six degrees game could get my mind to go back to sleep (though I’m very proud that I connected Richard Pryor to Emma Watson in about four steps).

Today I woke up and was all “yeah! I’m going to get stuff done! Woo! I rock! Yay work ethic!”  And then I took a shower and it all went away.  So I spent a couple of hours on the couch watching West Wing on DVD trying to get my motivation back and you know what? Somehow I managed to finish my to-do list by 2:30.  How I did that? I will never know but there you go.

And now you’re all caught up with me, what’s new with you?

I’m sitting in our office with the heat cranked up and? In addition to my THREE layers of clothes, I have on a hat, a scarf AND GLOVES.  Peeps, it is FREEZING over here.  Okay not technically because the ground is green and the frost melted a lot earlier, but somehow in our apartment it feels like negative a hundred.  I much prefer cold weather because I can bundle up in warm fuzzy sweaters and sweatpants and blankets and call my day good but sometimes I think “wow, I wish I had some extra insulation because this is crazy!”

Also? The gloves make it really hard to type this blog post.  Bygones.

Last night we went to Costco.  I have decided that there is no such thing as a store that isn’t dangerous for us.  Why is it that when I’m on my own I can walk away from stuff totally fine but when Will and I are together I lose all of my “save money dammit!” willpower?  Why doesn’t he ever get stingier?  It’s so not fair. Especially since our income can’t handle the extra pressure right now.

Last week I mentioned the possibility of us getting a new car.  We were denied an independent loan from Will’s credit union (bad debt to income ratio) and now we’re waiting for the dealership to get back to “us.”

I am still a little irrationally angry about the whole situation so its probably better that I don’t blog about it as I can’t seem to do so with out turning the blogosphere blue.

I think I will sing along to some Glee to cheer myself up (and warm myself up)!

Happy Friday!

I took the day off yesterday because I seem to have come down with a big honkin’ case of the “ugh”s.  I don’t feel actively sick, but I’m achy and fluey and everything looks gross…except fruit. And pasta.

Yesterday Will took the day off from his job to work on school stuff.  It’s the end of a term and he’s up to his eyeballs in projects and presentations and we have hit our trimesterly “I hate school! I just want to be done! School is stupid!” ness.  Because his work was for a grade, I let him use the office all day and spent the morning working from my laptop on the couch with West Wing on in the background.  I know.  It’s only the zillionth time I’ve watched it, but I was in the mood for some background noise.

And you know what? By 1:30 I was lying down on our couch and giving up all pretense of being able to get anything done.  I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sleeping on and off on the couch (and eventually barfing in a magnificent display of “okay, so it turns out that the salisbury steak was a REALLY bad idea”).  Because I knew Will was planning on staying up super duper late I decided to just make camp on the couch for the night but by 11:30 I had had enough and crawled into bed and ohhh, the nice cool sheets and the dark quiet room and yeah baby, it was hawesome.  I woke back up at 5ish to “help” Will get ready to go into school early and then slept until 10:30.  So I spent nearly 24 hours in an achy, sleepy “I don’t feel sick but SERIOUSLY, the dull ache has got to go and WHY can’t I find a comfortable position for my head?”

Then today I went to the grocery store and TOTALLY over did it.

Usually I have a rule.  A non-breakable for my own sake rule.  A save myself from torture rule.  That rule?

“Stop shopping when the basket gets heavy.”  It is a rule that has served me well.  After all, if the basket it heavy in the store it will only feel HEAVIER when you’re halfway home and can’t find anywhere to stop and take a break.

But? I couldn’t help myself.  I loaded up.  And it’s all (pretty much) healthy.  I brought home a gallon of orange juice (low pulp, sorry Will!), a quart of chocolate milk, a 56 oz smart water, a tub of watermelon chunks, some light sour cream for ranch dip, a bag of romaine lettuce, some chicken strips (for lunch), a box of saltines, and a raspberry yogurt.

Wait. What? Yogurt? But you HATE yogurt!

Yeah, I do.  I have issues with foods that I do not have to chew but I know how good yogurt is supposed to be and I’m trying to get in the habit of being healthy before I have to be and it’s more of a struggle and I thought I would give yogurt another try.  I didn’t get the kind with fruit in it because it was expensive, but I DID get the kind without high fructose corn syrup (seriously Yoplait, doesn’t the high fructose corn syrup negate the healthiness of your product?).  I haven’t tried it yet for fear it will make me hurl, but it’s just waiting in the fridge.  Maybe if I approach it with a “I WILL like it this time, I WILL like it this time” I’ll have an easier go of it.

Also, it’s weird, but the only food I seem to enjoy lately is fruit.  When I was wandering around the Fred Meyer produce section all I wanted to do was fill a giant pool with all of the fruit (and, okay some veggies too) and take a bath in all of it.  There are some people who are smart about science and biology and they say that when your body craves a certain food it is because your body really needs something that the food contains.  Apparently I’m borderline scurvy because the fruit cravings are INTENSE.

I guess it’s good though: I mean if you’re going to have “I will punch you in the face if you get between me and that” kind of food cravings, having them be for something healthy and good for you can’t be a bad thing, can it?

I do hope that I feel better and more energetic tomorrow though.  I have a mountain of laundry begging to be washed, dried and folded.