You know how sometimes a song gets stuck in your head, or someone says something so funny that you just keep repeating it over and over and cracking up? Lately my house hold and workplace has been gripped by this phenomenon.
I've been whistling the tune to the Patty Duke Show non-stop for two weeks. As soon as I get to work until the second I leave, Patty Duke. I can't even tell you the last time I even watched a rerun of the show.
This week's episode of Bored to Death ended with Ted Danson's character George yelling "I want a colonic!" And this struck me as so funny I've been running around the house screeching "I WANT A COLONIC!!!!!" and collapsing into a pile of giggles ever since.
Last night Josh, somehow got the word, just the word "Eventually" stuck in his head to the tune of "America the Beautiful". Imagine if you will:
"Eventually, eventually, e-ve-eh-entuallllyyyyyyy" and so on.
So we did what any normal couple would do; we lay in bed and sang a rousing verse of "Eventually" together before drifting off to sleep.
I can only imagine what the neighbors think of us.
This month's baking challenge with the EBcO baking group was soft pretzels.
I decided to make Alton Brown's recipe, and I was surprised how easy it was. I'm not a very experienced baker, and though the pretzels didn't look perfect, they tasted great.
There is something very comforting about making dough and watching it rise. I'm a tiny bit impatient, so I always leave the dough to rise in a bowl I've covered in plastic wrap and placed in the sun to hopefully speed up the process.
Pretzels are the fussiest bread I've ever made, just because they need to be rolled out and twisted. It took me a few tries, but by my fourth pretzel I had it down.
I had a lot of fun with the forming step, once I got the hang of it.
Please forgive my haggard appearance; this was that day I was crazy hungover and just a mess. I was feeling pretty rough, and pretzels seemed comforting
By far the hardest part of the whole process was boiling the pretzels before baking them. My pretzels had a tendency to fall apart and untwist once I got them in the boiling water. Unlike the twisting, I didn't really get better at this part of the process as I went along. Fortunately, after a 30 second dip in their boiling bath they were pretty easy to put back together- though they didn't look very promising.
I popped these glutinous, mushy blobs in the oven and out came soft, golden pretzels.
While they baked I put together this really tasty hot mustard for dipping.
They were quite something actually, Josh and I abandoned dinner altogether and supped on hot pretzels brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with kosher salt instead. Dipped in the hot mustard they were irresistible.
And I love it. Where I'm from, Colorado, the summers stretch long and hot and then one day, bam! It's winter. Here in Chicago it's been ever so subtly getting cooler, and then this morning I was shivering on the way to my car wondering where I'd stashed my winter coat.
Autumn is my most favorite of the seasons. Sure spring has its charms, summer brings the sun and the park and winter lends itself to snuggling down under blankets. But autumn begs for light sweaters and long books. It damn near requires you to make cocoa and carve pumpkins; to cook big batches of chili and spend Sundays watching football. To load your dog and husband in the car and set sail for somewhere you've never been, just to go have lunch at some dingy little small town diner. To have passionate debates about which new and likely-to-be-cancelled sitcom we'll watch tonight. To spend Sunday mornings lounging in bed under the heavy down comforter, hesitant to touch bare feet to cold wood floors.
At work I've been tasked to do something so impossible that they don't do it at any of the other eleventy-hundred steel mills in the world, this big 'ole grizzly bear of a project is surely going to suck up the whole weekend and an impending trip to THE Home Depot will no doubt drain my checking account.
But it is the weekend. And that is something.
By Sunday we will be done with the cabinet, so I can get back to the organizational black hole known as my office, I'm excited about the prospect of not one, but two meals with friends, and I'm thinking that sometime in the course of this grey weekend I'll have a chance to snuggle down on the couch and watch some TV with a big glass (or two!) or red wine (preferably not Boone's Farm Strawberry wine procured across the street), and sit out in the sunroom and sip my coffee.
I'm also looking forward to some quality pet time. Lately we don't see Murph much, he runs downstairs as soon as he's able, but when he does, up runs Phil; a cranky, bold old kitty who likes to strut around our apartment like he owns the place. Shoot, Murph, Kitty, Josh and I all pretty much defer to Phil on everything, so maybe he does.
After many weekends thrifting for just the right cabinet (stand up, narrow, doors-not-drawers), Josh and I found the perfect solution to our "bar in a box" problem on Saturday.
Tucked away in a tight corner Josh noticed this heinous pepto-pink cabinet and had the imagination to see what it *might be.*
I saw it too so I "negotiated" us a great price, we got it loaded into the Prius, and carted it home.
And then our little nightmare began.
Earlier this week I mentioned that we scraped, and scraped and scraped... well I wasn't kidding, just look how thick the paint is!
So we're about 80% done stripping, next we'll sand and finish. Which begs the big question... what color?
Sometimes I feel like when life is good, there's nothing to really write about.
I mean, nobody wants to read about the amazing enchiladas I threw together for dinner last night (recipe here), of what I thought about the season premieres of my most anticipated shows (NCIS and NCIS:LA, great and meh, respectively).
Nobody wants to hear about how the other night Josh made me laugh so hard that I had tears rolling down my face and my ribs hurt three separate times.
Or how I got kind of high from paint thinner (on accident) and ran around the house doing the world's worst "Cornholio" for about an hour.
Or about the new book I started. Certainty by Madeleine Thien; pretty good so far.
Or that I'm in the market for a new alarm clock. Fascinating, I know.
You might be interested in this new knitting project I started, sort of a free form scarf made from this amazing silk and stainless yarn. Or the cabinet I'm refinishing right now; but both projects are nowhere near completed yet, and I'm not ready to share them.
You'd probably enjoy the story of my trip to the bank last week, and how it took a fifty year old man three tries to get the spelling of my name change (from my maiden to my married name) correct, despite the fact that he had it on four separate documents right in front of him. And then argued with me about my zip code (declaring it to be 60649, even though the US Postal Service declared it 60619)... for about 15 minutes.
But I really didn't put the effort in there, did I? Lazy.
Even a quick stop at the tamale truck on my way to work didn't shake me out of this funk I'm in, I guess I've got a case of the Mondays.
This weekend I slept in. At least, a little.
Made waffles, and drank coffee in the sunroom while listening to Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!
Successfully thrifted new bed rails and a cabinet for which I've been hunting.
Stripped paint until I was sick and sore.
Stripped paint.
Stripped paint.
Stripped paint.
Watched too many episodes of No Reservations while stripping paint.
Ate tacos, burnt bacon, steaks and too much ice cream.
We're still stripping paint. My fingers hurt. And my back. And my right knee.
I'd hoped for a great post, our thrifted cabinet before-and-after, but we're still stripping paint, did I mention that? So far I've counted at least 9 different colors, and several coats of each, the paint is on a half inch thick. Each time we get six layers off and think we've exposed wood, we find a new color. Green! Red! Pink! Gold! (Gold? Seriously ugly.) So the before-and-after will have to wait until, you know, after.
Everyday for the last week or two everything that comes out of Josh's mouth sends me into a blind rage. I'm talking, white hot fury here.
Let me give you an example:
The other night I was in the worst of the worst moods. Work pissed me off. My very short drive home pissed me off. The dog looked at me funny and pissed me off. I was angry, and I was in the mood for a little comfort. I looked in the fridge and pulled out a package of kosher hot dogs and sent Josh across the street to the bodega to pick up some bacon.
I was in the middle of making bacon wrapped hot dogs (oh, the indulgence) when I commented that the "bacon was weird."
Josh's reply "What's it doing?"
And I lost my shit.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN WHAT'S IT DOING? IT'S BACON, IT ISN'T DOING ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!"
I was gripped by this overwhelming rage, but in the middle of my tirade, this tiny voice in the back of my mind was piping up... "Um, why are you screaming about your husband's anthropomorphization of a fatty food? Really, he was just trying to make you laugh, and frankly, you would have said the same thing..."
I began to calm down, and then I began to think hard about the last week, how angry I'd been for absolutely no reason. How just looking at Josh (my absolute favorite person on the face of the earth by the way) made me want to just rip his smug lips off... I'd felt this way before, several times actually. Every time I get about 9 months in to a new type of birth control pill I start to go a little crazy. My mom actually used to be on "crazy watch" because it can take me a while to figure out what's going wrong. I'm not always quick to admit that I might be the one with the problem.
It's for this reason I've never been on the same pill for more than a year, and this time is no different. I went off the pill just a few days ago, and I'm already feeling more like myself. As quickly as I was gripped by this mad rage, I'm beginning to feel like my sweet (well, sweet enough) rational self again.
It's really frustrating that after 10 years of this I still haven't found a pill that works for me long term, and I think I'm giving up. No more chemicals, I'm tired of turning into a crazy person for no reason at all.
Pets are remarkably adaptable creatures, a mere two weeks into the new place and they've made themselves at home. Murphy has made friends and Kitty has apparently summoned all her bravery and ventured out into the yard a couple times while we were sitting out there. I think she doesn't want to miss anything. Josh has been taking pictures of these little furballs like crazy lately, here are my favorites.
Believe it or not, I woke up Sunday morning with an honest-to-god hangover.
This wouldn't have been news two years ago; but now I'd have to say that I'm just not a big boozer.
Time out- let me just type that again- I'm just not a big boozer. And let me laugh because... Ha, Ha, Ha, and Ha.
I can't believe it either.
But considering the cause of this hangover was a scant three Coronitas and one teeny tiny dirty martini, I'd say the proof is in the pudding.
So Saturday we had a big day, yes? Josh and I got up bright and early (5 am!) to hit the road and take our voluntary leave from 14,500 feet. We don't have pictures or videos (neither of us wanted pictures of just one of us, and they couldn't take pictures of both of us, so we kept that little padding in our wallets) but we do have one sublime shared memory. My favorite part of the whole day was right after we landed, Josh said to me "thanks for making me do this- all of this" and planted a big wet one on me right there in the middle of the corn field.
After a long drive home, a failed attempt to check out Renegade, a nice long nap and another hilarious/frustrating trip to the Jewel on 79th and Stony Island we landed back home with two steaks and a six pack of tiny beers. Our downstairs neighbors built a fire in the back yard fire pit, the four of us threw the ball for Murphy and we spent the evening talking, laughing and drinking tiny beers. But we forgot about the steaks.
Around 9:30 we remembered we were hungry, but opted for a dinner of crispy garbanzos and dirty martini in lieu of actual food.
You know, I always forget that that last martini is never a good idea, but by now I think it is safe to assume I'll never learn.
I woke up with that slightly-spinny-too-bright-just-rode-the-rollercoaster-too-many-times-need-a-coke-or-some-apple-juice-or-some-soy-milk-if-that's-all-we-have now unfamiliar feeling. Josh, who passed on the late night martini (well, lets be honest, he always passes on the late night martini because he's smarter than me) felt great, rolled over and chirped something about grabbing Murph and hitting the park. My nonsensical grumbled response was all he needed to shutter the blinds and sneak out without me.
Though he did return with some apple juice. That's love folks.
Long story short, that's why I still have Saturdays eye-makeup smeared all over my face in this picture, even though it was taken around five in the evening on Sunday.
I've had a lot of requests for pictures of the new place, so this weekend I snapped a few photos. Because of the shape of the apartment and the old-school layout, it's a pretty tough space to photograph, but I did my best.
I've had a lot of requests for pictures of the new place, so this weekend I snapped a few photos (a few are Josh's too). Because of the shape of the apartment and the old-school layout, it's a pretty tough space to photograph, but I did my best.
This first photo was taken from the sun room through the old, original window that remains in the kitchen. I think the sunroom is turning into my favorite spot in the house. For the record, neither Josh nor I smoke, we just keep that ashtray for guests, and it hasn't found a home yet.
The sun room has a door leading down to our landlords' apartment and the back yard. They have opened their home and welcomed Murphy in, and we almost never see him anymore. If we're home, the doors are open, and if the doors are open, Murph is poking around downstairs.
The view out the back window is great, the yard is lovely, and Murph has taken to spending as much time as possible chasing squirrels. There are always birds swarming the birdfeeders, and I can sit and watch them flitting around all day.
In this picture you can see what I love about that old window- the way the light and colors are distorted due to the width variances which, by the way, aren't due to persistent viscosity, that's just an old metallurgy myth. Really, it's just a result of the way that panes of glass were made so long ago.
I also love the hallway that leads from the dining room to the kitchen, Josh's old art looks great hanging here, and I love the way those hanging vases look when they are filled with fresh flowers.
It is so nice having a real, honest-to-goodness dining room, and our "stuff" seems to fit just right.
You can see the walls are a kind of buttery-khaki color. As much as we loved the dark greys in the old apartment, we've decided to embrace the lighter neutrals. Frankly, neither of us could summon the energy to paint again, and the lighter walls work with all the light (lots of windows) and make the apartment sort of glow.
The pantry! Yes we have a window in the pantry. And yes, we keep the cat's food in the pantry. And my cookbooks. And our laundry hamper. Hey, the bedroom is pretty small, and we had to get creative. There are as many shelves on the other side of the pantry housing all the small appliances and kitchen gadgets my grandma sends my way, as well as our wine fridge, and various vacuums, toolboxes and mops/brooms/swiffers.
This is the view from the kitchen to the sun room- the most difficult room to photograph. It is a narrow room with high ceilings, which means I can only get pictures in iterations, it's just impossible to move back far enough to snap the whole room in one shot, even from the kitchen.
I finally found a place for the Ferm Living bird stickers I snagged on clearance.
Those drapes I made for the old apartment found a home out here as well. It certainly isn't a beautifully decorated space, but it really is comfortable. A big comfy chair, a hot cup of coffee and the chirping birds make a perfect start to the weekend.
I love this old table Josh salvaged years ago. The kitchen is a little wonky in the apartment. It is an old, old building, so the modern sized appliances are a little overwhelming. The average sized fridge looks huge in here, and creates this nook of unusable space. Enter that old, bright table, my onion bowl, and some fresh flowers. That picture frame (filled with some of the worst and funniest pictures from our wedding) is covering the huge outlet and the plugs for the fridge.
And finally, one quick shot of the living room. The living room and the other two smaller bedrooms that Josh and I are using as our offices are no where near ready to photographing, but I love how our iving room sort of glows in the afternoon light, and how that light can be seen even from the very back of the house.
When I first met Josh he was kind of timid. Smart, funny, sharp as a tack but not particularly adventurous.
It struck me as extremely odd because I love nothing more than trying something new. A new food, a new place, a new activity... I love it, and I'm always game for an adventure.
Josh, on the other hand was a picky eater, not inclined roam outside his comfort zone, and finicky about the unknown. I was crazy about him, but I couldn't imagine shrinking my love of things undiscovered to fit in his small box. Every relationship has deal breakers, and I'd identified this as one of mine. Not wanting to write him off with one large brushstroke, I talked to him about it. I explained that I could live with it if he didn't like something I liked, but I probably could not live with it if he wouldn't even try.
He promised to try.
He had his first big challenge last Labor Day. My beer-abhorring mild-mannered sweetheart agreed to join my friends and me on our annual tubing trip/beer drinking competition. He approached the weekend with gusto, knocking my friends' socks off with his fearless costume and enthusiastic attitude. He won their approval that day, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't matter to me.
Over the course of the next year he kept his promise to always try. He tried pork and discovered he liked it, and he tried sausage and confirmed that he didn't. He developed a taste for beer and a willingness to join me on my many little adventures.
I have to tell you, that as impressed as I was, I hadn't seen anything yet. A few weeks ago he agreed to do something with me. Something I'd decided to go ahead and do with or without him because while he'd kept his promise to try new things, I'd also promised not to push it.
So imagine my surprise when he agreed to go skydiving with me.
We're jumping out of a plane Saturday morning. Wish him luck.
There are more things I love about our new apartment than I anticipated. There is only one thing I'm not happy about (low water pressure is my personal nightmare), but frankly I am in love with everything else. I'd love to show you, but most of you live too far away to see, and those of you who live close... well, the odds of getting you down to the south side are pretty slim. So I'll just tell you...
There is no room in our apartment that doesn't get sick amounts of light. All the outside windows are new, double pained and weather tight. There is a huge window inside that separates the sun room from the kitchen that is the original, lumpy, bumpy glass.
I have a huge, sunny pantry with plenty of room for all the weird kitchen gadgets my grandma sends (she is a little addicted to QVC).
We have walls; WALLS people, which separate our apartment into many rooms, not just one huge room.
Cable T.V. Loves it.
We have a beautiful yard, are park adjacent and have access to a "private beach".
As long as we keep the back door open Murph has free rein to wander out into the yard and into the downstairs landlord's apartment. She gives him toys, throws the ball and sometimes offers treats. Needless to say we almost never see Murph anymore as he has fallen in love with these kind neighbors who never yell at him to get off the couch or make him leave his dirty tennis ball outside.
The bodega on the corner woefully caters to a demographic we don't necessarily count ourselves in; Boone's Farm wine and malt liquor prevail, but they have a small but comprehensive supply of groceries and a cold reach in freezer stocked with frozen treats. The Sponge Bob cotton candy flavored popsicles might just be the death of me...
This was by far the longest and bumpiest move yet (10 in the past 11 years). There were problems with the movers, my furniture got dinged and scratched but there was no major damage and finally everything reached its destination- our new home.
I totally unplugged from the internet, I didn't read your blogs and I found I had nothing to say because we had this to deal with:
And this
And this.
And frankly, moving is exhausting.
And a little disconcerting. Not for us, but this guy was pretty confused.
And the cat is kind of pissed at us.
But they'll get used to it.
There are a few constants, things that I can count on in every move. Repainting this trusty old bookshelf is on of those things. This crappy little bookshelf has been with me for a decade, and it's been a different color in every apartment. I always thing that maybe this year will be the year that it outlives it's usefulness, but there always seems to be a place for it.
This year, my first move as part of a team, brought some surprises. The bad surprises like the bickering about who put what where and why, I suppose were not really a surprise But rounding a corner to find this guy elbow deep in a task that I dread was quite nice.
The pleasant surprises I suppose are why we do this whole team thing after all.
Josh and I have been kind of mushy with each other the past few days. I think something like moving does that to a person. The act of boxing up all your possessions naturally leads to conversations and out bursts like "look what I found!" and "God, do remember that day in the park..."
We've been really lucky and really happy. In the past year we've both also grown up a lot. We're both independent if not solitary people and I feel like we've mastered the art of being together and being sometimes alone together too. Our marriage has been a lot of work, just like everyone says, but a lot of fun too. I've really begun to appreciate the ways in which we differ just as much as I appreciate what we have in common.
Last night as we were packing those last few boxes, Josh was trying to drain the cleaning solution out of a little hand held carpet cleaner*. He picked up the refillable cartridge and turned it over and over in his hands. He put it back in the machine and took it out again. He shook it, he twisted it, he did everything short of banging it on the counter like you'd expect an ape to do on a nature show. I silently watched him and cracked up.
I could have told him to unscrew the cap, but I was laughing too hard. He scratched his head- again, a mannerism one would expect from our primate kin. He started laughing too.
The whole scene lasted maybe five minutes before he figured it out, but I feel like it summed up our relationship perfectly. The artist and the engineer; sometimes it's fine just to laugh about it.
*If you have pets, this will be the best $40 you will ever spend. Just sayin'.
