I’m watching the final episode of ER. I know I’m a night late, but I hadn’t had a chance to watch last weeks episode first and it was just sitting on the Tivo starring at me, promising that there would be something in the episode that would make the final episode make no sense at all if I didn’t watch it first. So, I waited until W went to bed tonight and started my three hour ER marathon. I’m not goign to make any personal reviews of the show or the finale, other than to say that Ernest Bornine story was absolutely beautiful and it is a shame that the media industry doesn’t realize what an amazing group of actors they are overlooking when they don’t find more work for actors of his age. My life will not be the same. And not in a spiritual or fancy pants way. Just in a real life, this is what I do kind of way. I watch ER. I always have. For fifteen years now, that has been my Thursday nights. So this is definitely going to be a change for me. I’m now three minutes in and I’m already finding myself tearing up a bit.
This weekend we take care of our spring cleaning. The apartment is in dire need of a good deep cleaning now that we have really settled in. I didn’t do much cleaning during the move, since I knew that this would happen now. So I want to clean windows and sills, get the baseboards really cleaned up… The porch deseparately needs to be cleaned out. I think we’re finally going to have to run this last load of empty cardboard moving boxes to the recylcing facility, since it seems like no one really wants them. But oh yes! Spring cleaning *will* happen!
I almost forgot to write today! And with it only being the third day of the NaBloPoMo thing that we’re trying to do, it would have been a crying shame if I screwed up this early.
As everyone knows by now, we’re going to be looking for a new place when our lease here is up. We have to give a sixty day notice, so technically, at the end of November, the search has to begin in earnest. I hate leaving that stuff to the last minute, but it seems that’s the way things work. Landlords don’t post things as vacant until a month prior to wanting to lease it, but tenants have to give notice two months in advance. Seems a bit silly, does it? To have to give notice prior to when you know if you will have a new place? Leaves me feeling a bit out in the cold, so to speak.
I’ve been emailing with a woman who has a duplex in the Standish neighborhood. It has a great fenced back yard and is a block from a library. It’s also a block from a high school that has a reputation as not being the greatest, but all in all it’s a decent neighborhood. The duplex is “ok” on the outside. I’m really hoping the inside blows W away, because that will make up for the outside being just “ok”. I’m pretty lax when it comes to housing really. Actually, I think I’m too lax. I don’t pay attention to much. If it has four walls, a roof, and a stove, it’s pretty easy for me to ignore everything else. Until I realize that there is only one electrical outlet in the whole house or the floor tilts so horribly that everything rolls around. Or that the neighbor has a confederate flag hanging from the back of his pickup. (All things that have actually happened) So, luckily W is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum. She has a much more stringent set of requirements for our future home. Hopefully we’ll be able to balance each other out.
EDITED: Thank you to Jumi for pointing out that my half-asleep ass originally referred to the confederate “rebel” flag as the Union Jack. Much appologies to those from the UK or the Commonwealth realms.
I’m realizing this morning that my weekends now officially start on Wednesday. The new arrangement with The Boy™ is that he is with his pops from Saturday afternoon until Wednesday morning before school, and then I pick him up Wednesday afterschool and he is with me until Saturday. It’s perfect for all involved really. He attends a school which is only in session Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday he is homeschooled with direction from the school via the internet. Since The Professor™ works during the day, it would be virtually impossible for him to be home with The Boy™ for those homeschooled days. My job gives me the freedom to be there with him. It is the perfect 50/50 split of the week, allowing both of us as parents to get half of the weekend for grownup life, while still having the kiddo with us for a weekend day. It’s ideal.
And so, today, being Wednesday is the start of my weekend.
I’ve begun attending the Twin Cities Women’s Choir on Wednesday nights as well, so W and The Boy™ will be on their own. From what I understand, tonight that means they are watching television and making calzones. She is really adjusting beautiful to having an 11 year old child around half of the time. Ninty percent of me knew from the beginning that she would be great with him. Hell, she’s a kid herself some of the time. But I never figured she would just jump right in and become such an integral part of his life. I am so grateful and thankful for that. It has made the transition so much easier on him.
Posted by Amelia on Sep 9, 2008 in
160 Lbs of Boxer Love,
Co-Habitation It’s Monday again. Lovely lovely Monday. Back to work and real life.
My sister was in town last week, so Friday afternoon I went over to visit with her for a bit and help with some last minute clean up on one of her rental properties. We had a good time and it was great to see her, but honestly, I feel like we’ve gotten closer since she moved out of state. The Boy spent the night with her since she was leaving on Saturday. That left W and I with a rare Friday night with no kiddo! We initially planned to have dinner out and a quiet night at home, since there were a million chores and errands planned for Saturday. That idea fell out the window pretty quickly after we settled in for dinner at Lyle’s. Two for ones can cause any couple to forget their plans for a quiet evening at home. W loves Vodka Redbull, so she ordered two. Plus the two that came with it. After we finished, we hung out with some of W’s friends who were playing poker. She decided the buy-in of two shots was perfect, so she played for awhile. I am horrible at poker and even more terrible at shots, so I was her card assistant.
The Saturday schedule felt a little packed when we first got started, but it all flowed together pretty nicely. We swung by the post office to ship out some items W sold on Amazon. At first we were more than willing to drive to Eagan to send the packages, thinking that we could use the automated postal machine at the post office there, and then we would just head out to the rest of our errands which were all in the southern suburbs anyway. The postal machine failed us immensely though since it was not able to process media mail postage rates and we had to wait in line anyway.
After leaving there, we headed out for haircuts, which turned out…well it was a draw. W got a fantastic haircut that is making her consider always driving to Eagan to see that particular stylist. I, on the other hand, asked the gentleman cutting my hair for a “Hepburn-esque pixie” and ended up with what looked more like a crew cut. He must watch alot of George Hepburn movies or something. I had to play with it for some time with a large amount of styling products before I found a combination that works enough to give it more of a “Twigggy” style. Though considering my body type is anything but Twiggy, I doubt that it looks appropriate on me! It will do for now though.
The dogs were with us during the errand running so we felt they deserved a long hard romp at the dog park before we continued on to our next destination. Little did we know that the pond at the dog park was covered in moss and that within ten minutes of playing our dogs would be as well.
With big plans on adding to our wardrobe in a quick, efficient, and cheap manner we headed to the thrift store. For under $40 we picked up two pairs of jeans, three sweaters, a vest, a button down shirt, a Hamilton Beach grill, and a CD. Not a bad haul, truly.
Atleast you got the pictures to spice up an otherwise dull post!
Posted by Amelia on Aug 27, 2008 in
Co-Habitation We’ve been talking alot about our pending move. Of course, it won’t be until sometime this winter when our lease runs out here, but being the over planner that I am makes me start planning very far in advance. At that point, I really want to have all of my stuff from the house ready so that we can combine our apartments. We recently helped a co-worker of W’s move and she had used a You pack, They move service. Our move, obviously, will be alot less stressful than previous times when I have moved cross country. And I really wish I had used a long distance moving service when I did. It seems something like that would have made things much more convenient. The idea of just packing up boxes and letting someone else to the heavy lifting is much more favorable to all of the hauling stuff around. Maybe I can find a company that specializes in short term moves to use for our move!
I’m defeated! I totally lose at the Nablopomo this month! I’m not going to make any excuses at all. I just fail.
I was on a pretty good roll there, almost making it to the halfway point. But then crap came up, as it often does when I have a blog, and it made me withdraw a little bit into my shell. I hate when things from nearly ten years ago rear their ugly heads to make me feel a bit insecure. Truly I have not been as happy as I am right now in a very long time. Everything is going well and right. I have a great girlfriend. My family is ok. We’ll never be great, but we’re all ok and they are all supportive of my life. I have a great job. My son is happy and healthy. My relationship with The Professor is fantastic and he is the best friend I could ask for. Things are good, hell things are great. I have nothing to feel insecure about. But old wounds run deep I suppose.
Today is my day off, so I’ll be continuing on the quest of organizing the apartment. It is getting a little sticky in here, so the a/c is on and the blinds are closed. As soon as the apartment cools off, I’m going to get going on some sort of project.
OH! And today is our three month anniversary! Three months. Yikes. It feels like three years, truly. And yes, we are *that* couple. We were pretty much moved in at six weeks, due to unforeseen circumstances. The original plan was that it would be temporary until I found an apartment, but it worked and we decided to keep living together. But yep! Anniversary. Well Monthiversary. We’re off for Chinese food this evening. If I can find a decent place to go online.
I really did intend on being a good NaBloPoMo participant. I planned on writing insiteful, interesting, entertaining posts every day for the entire month of August. And here I am on day ten, having already missed a day. I had full intentions on writing one of those fantastic posts yesterday, but a couple of things got in the way.
We didn’t get rolled out of bed until fairly late yesterday morning. Atleast, late for me, what with the whole 7 a.m. thing. We headed over toward Saint Paul in the mid-afternoon. W got her hairs cut and we hit up a thrift store for a bit. Completely scored the most fantastic vintage bread box and a few new sweaters. OH! And red shoes! I got fabulous red shoes! I’ll post a photo of them when I have the energy to upload them off the camera.
We spent the evening at the Irish Fair of Minnesota. It is always one of my favorite days of the year, and I got to see one of my top four favorite bands of all time, FLOGGING MOLLY! They put on a fantastic show and I could not keep myself out of the pit. I planned on standing near W all evening and just watching from afar, but the music kind of sucked me in just around when they played Devil’s Dancefloor and I had to get near the front to dance. There’s just something about a good fiddle and tin whistle that makes me need to jump up and down with a bunch of drunk and rowdy bhoys! (The fifth of vodka I sipped throughout the night in my orange juice probably didn’t hurt much either. I’m a light weight anyway, so that was a bit of liquor for me).
Today we haven’t done much of anything. I didn’t even change out of my pajamas until almost 2:00. And the only reason I took them off at all was to leave the house for an hour and see Tipping The Bucket at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. It was a great show, don’t get me wrong, but I have a feeling if W hadn’t already paid for the tickets online, we probably would have just stayed on the couch in our jammas. The show was entertaining and I’m glad we saw it, but we were *that* lazy today.
Now I’m getting ready to go to bed at 10 o’clock because I go into the school tomorrow for paperwork and fingerprinting and what not and some time this week I should get my classroom assignment! Horray! And I think I am just going to pretend I didn’t forget to blog yesterday and continue on with the challenge.
I’ve been brewing plans to make a quilt for our bed for this winter. Partly because I’m tired of fighting W for one of the two undersized blankies that we have on the bed. I want to make it big enough to cover both of us so I can snuggle up closer and not have to worry about it falling off the bed. I know, cheesy. But also because I want to add something of “me” to the apartment.
When I moved out of the house, I left everything for J, my son’s father. He’s not the kind of man who will go out and buy new blankets or household items. He’d just live his life without them. He would have slept on a bed with no sheets or blankets. Not because he’s gross or dirty or lazy. Just because he has a bit of the absent-minded professor thing going on and wouldn’t think to do so. I worry about him sometimes without me living there. The man, literally, may forget to eat. (In fact, I do believe this post has inspired the name of my son’s father for use in this blog. Hence for he will be the Absent-Minded Professor, or just The Professor.)
But I figure a quilt would be a good first thing to add to the apartment. It will be infused with ME!
I am getting caught up on this crazy laundry monster that was trying to take over the apartment! By doing two loads a day most of this week, and a huge load last night and another huge load today, I am almost 2/3 done. Believe me. The amount of laundry that had taken over was incredible. I’m not a huge fan of the dryer in the laundry room. It seems that no matter how much laundry is in a load it will not be dry after only one cycle. You have to run it through atleast twice. And me? I’m cheap. I refuse to pay $2.00 just to get a dry pair of jeans. But that tends to mean that while I’m doing laundry, our apartment has clothes hanging EVERYWHERE to finish drying. Any bookcase, table top, or chair back that is available has a pair of jeans or a towel draped across it.
Posted by Amelia on Jun 10, 2008 in
Co-Habitation,
W Spent the night with W again last night. It just seems the natural thing for me to do, as I feel completely lost and cranky when I’m not there. I’ve been sick the last few days with a horrific summer cold and laying on her couch watching Tivo is all I wanted to do.
I woke up in an off mood and, from what it seems, so did she. I ended up gathering up my stuff to take back to my place so that I could do laundry and she got ready for work. It was fairly quiet in the apartment and kind of awkward. BUT it felt completely normal. Bad mornings happen. And I didn’t feel bad about having a bad morning with her.
Is that utterly sick or what?
