May the Todd Be With You

Todd has this uncanny knack for getting people to do what he wants. (Which is probably how I ended up not only married to him, but also doing his laundry. He used his crazy voodoo and got me to up the altar and into the laundry room. I am telling you, the man is slick!) He can encounter the most strict rules, the odds stacked against him, the planets entirely unaligned for him and still get people to cooperate with him most of the time. I've told you his ability to get my car registered with the DMV, where I had failed the day before. He didn't do this with some magic document that made the DMV staffers swoon. He just went in there, gave them all the same pieces of paper I gave them the day before and managed to succeed where I failed. The man has a certain mystique about him, that manages to cut through all the red tape and get things done in short order.

On Tuesday night the realtor called us and said, "You're closing on the sale of your house on the 31st. You need to call the fire department and get them to inspect your house between now and the 31st." I called the fire inspector right away, and was informed by their voice mail greeting that they require two weeks notice for inspections. Two weeks that I didn't have. I had less time than that, something like six days.

"Todd! Crap! Whaddarewegonnado?" I blurted into the phone. "GAH!!!"

"Don't worry, let's just go down to the fire station in the morning and see what can be done. It'll be harder for them to turn us away if we go there."

The next morning we wandered into the fire station, and went to the administrative office. We (Todd) explained our situation, and then proceeded to charm the living hell out of the woman behind the counter.

Batting her eyes, "Why certainly, Todd. Your wish is my command" the woman behind the counter replied. With dazed eyes, she robotically ambled over to the appointment book, "Our next appointment is 9 AM tomorrow, master. Is this suitable for you, kind sir?" She blinked, snapped out of Todd's tractor beam of cooperation, and went back to her desk as if she was slightly confused as to what had just happened.

We met with the inspector, and asked him all about what we needed to do to prepare for the inspection--replace our ancient smoke detectors with smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. (Which ended up taking the Force of Todd roughly .35 seconds to complete.)

"OK, so we'll see you tomorrow at 9. I'll have some hot coffee on for you," Todd smiled.

"Uh, thanks, but I can't accept any gifts," the inspector replied.

So I guess the Force of Todd ends just short of bribing a city official.

:::

Radio silence for the next few days. We will be scrubbing, cleaning, sanding, painting, moving, arranging, rearranging, wiping the sweat off our foreheads, and then eventually kicking up our feet in our new house this weekend. I am not sure when I will post next, but you better believe it will be with pictures of the new joint.

My Body, Circa 2008

I was reading my pal Gypsy’s blog today, and in this entry she asks the Universe for her body circa 1994. So it got me thinking of what my body was like back in 1994.

In 1994 I was 20 and was in college. I played field hockey in the fall and ran track in the spring. I was too busy to eat junk--with all the practices, classes, my radio show, and hanging out with my friends. I ran 3-4 miles per day, at least, and I trained in the gym almost every day so I could jump higher, run the hurdles faster, and throw my shot puts and discus further. My stomach was flat; my legs were toned to the point where you could see the definition of every single muscle when I was just standing around.

Since then I’ve gained pounds and lost pounds, but I still—for the most part—have been a runner. I am proud of the miles I rack up, but I still don’t have the see-every-muscle-toned-legs that I had back then. I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that I eat way more ice cream now than I did back then.

Today I walked 6 miles with a dog that belongs to some very dear friends of ours. While we were walking I thought about my body circa 1994. Back then I didn’t pay attention to how flat my belly was. I didn’t pay attention to how toned my legs were. Those were all just parts of my body that helped me compete better. I didn't obsess about the loss of muscle tone on my thighs as I do now.

The other night I was cleaning out the closet, in preparation to move, and found a belt I used to wear back then. I used to wear it on the tightest notch, and it was loose on me then at the tightest notch. I tried it on again, the other night, and was happy to see that I could latch it on the tightest notch, but it wasn’t as loose as it was in 1994. I ended up throwing the belt into the bag of stuff we’re donating to the Salvation Army, and cast it off with a “Quit livin in the past, man,” kind of flourish.

You all know I’ve been running/walking my ass off these last few months, literally, trying to reach my goal of 3,000 miles on the pedometer. This week I am trying to squeeze in 57 miles, because I was out of commission last week from my Life of Plague and Pestilence death-warmed-over-nauseafest-2008. I am proud to say that it’s Wednesday night and I’ve already put down 34 miles. Go me!

Since I started this 3,000 mile project I’ve lost about 10-13 pounds, though about half of that loss is due to not eating all last week (see above, Plague and Pestilence.) I am proud to say that my belly is flat, but I still don’t have the see-every-muscle toned legs I had then—but they're almost there.

It would be nice to end this post with something like “Here comes my body, circa 1994.” But you know what? My body, circa 2008 has travelled. It's since learned to sail, learned to dive, now wraps its arms around a husband and feels the slight weight of a wedding ring on its finger. My body, circa 2008, has since been skinny dipping, and has broken its toe. My body, circa 2008, has since witnessed the death of its mother and still feels its throat close up when the body's brain thinks about it.

Maybe I didn't appreciate my body, circa 1994, as much as I should have. But I sure as hell appreciate my body, circa 2008, and all it's done a whole lot more.

Two More Days

We move into the new house in two more days, this coming Friday, and then we close on the old house on Monday. We’re almost done packing and now we need to do things like replace the smoke detectors, and get the house inspected by the fire inspector tomorrow.

We’re excited, but it’s also a bit emotional for us, as we’ve spent the last few days reminiscing about living here.

The day we moved in here, early December 2001, was a weirdly warm day for December. I think it was close to the 70’s for that week, which is very rare for December in Rhode Island, and I was walking around in a short sleeve shirt that whole time.

At the home inspection the inspector had pointed out that the latch on the guest bedroom door was installed backwards. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, and instantly forgot he pointed it out the moment he said it. The night we closed on the house we bought an air mattress and set it up in the vacant living room. We opened up every window in the house, because it was so warm out, and listened to the ducks and geese honking and quacking in the cove as we blissfully fell asleep.

Then in the middle of the night a door opened. We opened our eyes, and sat there silently listening.

“Are they back? Did they forget something?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Todd answered.

WHAM! The open door slammed shut. We sat bolt upright in bed, pulling the covers to our necks.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, go check it out!” I nudged him out of bed.

“Me?”

“Yes you! You’re the boy! It’s your job to check these things out!”

“Some feminist you turned out to be…”

“Just GO!”

We got up and turned on the lights, we walked through the house. Of course the prior owners didn’t come back to get something they’d forgotten. Nobody had entered the house. We wandered the house trying to figure out which of the locked external doors had opened, of course none of them had.

Then my mind wandered back to the home inspector, pointing out the latch on the guest bedroom door.

“Oh! I know what it is! Look!” I pointed to the latch on the door and remembered that the home inspector said that the door wouldn’t close properly because the latch was on backwards. Because we had every window open in the house, a draft must have come through the house and pushed the door open, then sucked it shut again.

I wonder what weird noises the new house will make. I can’t wait to find out.

One More Week

This time next week we’ll be inflating an air mattress and preparing to sleep in our new house for the first time. Maybe we’ll light a fire in our fireplace; maybe we’ll walk the trails in the woods before it gets dark. We will walk from room to room, running our hands along the walls, pointing out where the furniture will go, deciding what color to paint the walls, and where to hang the pictures.

We’ll spend this week finishing up the last of the packing and doing things like having the mail forwarded, and making sure the electric, phone and cable will be turned on at the new place.

We’ve been talking about how well the dogs will catch on to living in a new house. Both dogs have lived their entire lives in our old house. They have their favorite sunny spots to lie down in; they smell the familiar smells outside the house. They even know when we’re coming home when we’re coming back from a long trip. They know the pattern of pulling off the exit, going through four traffic lights, turning right at the Walgreens, the left turn onto our street, then the right into our driveway.

Next Friday the boys will be moving into a house where three un-spayed/un-neutered dogs lived. When we first looked at the house the female had given birth to a litter of 10 puppies. Then a few weeks ago when we did a walk-through at the house, the female was pregnant again. I am hoping that in the next week she won’t give birth, and funk up the house again. But the house definitely smells like three dogs lived there to my people nose; imagine how it will smell to my dogs and their very sensitive noses.

Todd says, “Don’t be surprised if Griffen and Nemo pee in the new house.”

“But I don’t want them to pee in my new house, and heads are gonna roll if they pee on a spot that I just cleaned.”

“It’s gonna happen, Beej. And you can’t get mad at them for it. They need to mark their territory.”

“But, we spent all that time housebreaking them!”

“I know, but the smell of those other dogs is going to make them nuts.”

So, while I am busy fondling my new walls, caressing my new fireplace, rolling around on my hardwood floors, and turning circles in the backyard—a la Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music—my dogs will be peeing. In my house. Against the walls I just fondled, the fireplace I just caressed, and on my hardwood floors.

Hopefully they’ll do it after I roll around on the floors.

The Grass is Always Greener

If you had the chance to step into somebody else’s life, and live life their way for a while, would you do it? I think it would be fabulous to try out someone else’s way of life, just to see how someone else lives and maybe try something different I wouldn’t have otherwise tried.

I’ve been moderately curious about the idea of a house swap since I read the novel “Tara Road” by Maeve Binchy several years ago. Then that movie “The Holiday” came out, which also features a house swap situation—and then my cousin and her family did a house swap with a family from San Francisco for a time as well. She said it worked out very well, and the people who lived in her house were cool and that she loved having the chance to live near San Francisco and stay in a home for all that time instead of in a hotel.

Todd and I had long toyed with the idea of renting out our house for the summer and living entirely on the boat. As appealing as it might sound to have someone else pay our mortgage for a few months, there are a few things that bother me about the idea of renting out our house—namely the idea that someone else is sleeping in our bed. So that’s what’s been keeping me from wanting to go into a house swap situation. All I can think is “Are these people going to funk up my bed?”

This morning I woke up and thought about my house swap curiosity. I imagined what it would be like to spend a week or a month in somebody else’s home—looking at their things, their pictures, wondering who they are and what they like to do. Reading the books they have on their shelves, listening to their CDs, tasting the food in their cabinets. Would I try to do some of the things that they enjoy doing while I am there? For example, there are a pair of snow shoes in the closet, snow on the ground outside and pictures of them on the walls with their smiling faces and snowshoes on their feet, then I should go out and try it—you know, in the spirit of the owners of the house.

Strangely enough, I was flipping through the channels and saw that some house swap reality show was on. In the show the two families trade moms for a week. I am not really that into reality TV, but I thought “What the hell?” and watched it. Of course, it’s a reality show so the producers are going to try to make it as interesting as possible. The two families who swapped were, of course, as opposite as two families can be. One family was strictly vegan family from California, and the other was a family from New Orleans. The New Orleans family kept alligators as pets, they hunt, they had alligator heads on their walls, not a vegetable in the fridge—you get the picture. Of course the vegan mom got all preachy and tried to get the alligator family into her way of thinking. Then the alligator family got offended by the vegan mom’s pushiness. Hell, even I was offended by the vegan mom’s snarkiness about the alligator family.

So, now that I am thinking about it, I wonder what kind of family I’d end up with if I ever went on this show. Obviously, in the interests of drama, it would be a family that would be entirely opposite of who I am. So, who would that be? I would probably end up with a very religious family, because I am not at all religious, that doesn’t like the outdoors. I would probably end up with a neat-nick family, or one that’s entirely into organic food—because my house isn’t always all that neat, and I do not go in for the whole organic food movement. I would probably end up in a house that uses styrofoam for everything, while I am a bit of a recycling nazi and literally fantasize about ways to eliminate things like styrofoam from my life. Oh, and they’ll probably expect me to cook and they’ll likely go hungry in that week.

While I am off stepping into someone else’s life, another woman would have to step into mine. Who would that be? Again, the exact opposite of me. This woman would probably have a blast for the entire week—Todd would make sure of that. But with Todd’s luck, she’d probably hate boats, won’t know how to swim, be afraid of dogs, and doesn’t like the outdoors for fear of getting dirty. I can just see how it’ll go down:

Todd: Do you dive?
Woman: No, I can’t swim.
Todd: Wanna go to the beach?
Woman: No, too much sand.
Todd: Wanna go on a hike?
Woman: Ew! There’s probably bugs carrying rabies there.
Todd: Wanna take the dogs to the park?
Woman: Isn’t it muddy there?
Todd: Wanna go sailing?
Woman: Ew! Boats are damp.
Todd: OK, so how ‘bout we stare at this wall for the afternoon, then.
Woman: Great! I love doing that!

But then, I’d never get to go on a wife swap reality show. (Never mind the fact that I’d never sign up for that.) I doubt they’ll ever let someone on who would actually go along with the family for the week and do the stuff that they do without bitching about why their way of life is wrong. They probably wouldn’t take someone who would say to the family she’s staying with “Yeah, what the hell? I’ll wear a Burqa to the beach. You know, I’ve been trying to be more careful about sun exposure anyway…”

But no matter what I still dig the life I have over any I could try on for a week.

A Life of Plague and Pestilence

Good times in our house. Todd is still battling his sinus congestion-y mess of a cold. He’s been downing Sudafed and Tylenol cocktails, while honking his schnoz into those tissues that are laced with Vicks. Then he ended up rubbing his eyes after handling the tissues that are laced with Vicks: “Youch! Dammit!”

Yesterday I was taken down by the overwhelming urge to hurl my guts out. The overwhelming hurl urge is still with me today, and I’ve barely eaten yesterday and today.

You know I am sick when I don’t want to eat. I eat frequently throughout the day, and often get grouchy after not eating for about 3-4 hours. Todd, ever observant excellent husband, knows that my grouchiness can only be appeased with something in cookie or bar form. He’s gotten to the point where he will stash granola bars in his pockets when we were working on the boat and it’s not quite time for lunch yet. He recognizes the symptoms of empty belly grouchiness, usually in the form of cussing like a sailor--loudly and with abandon--throwing my tools around, and bitching to myself about whatever injustice I’d encountered in the last five minutes. At this point he’ll place the granola bar in reaching distance for me, gently nudging it with something long so he can keep all his fingers.

Not only do I not want to eat anything today and am feeling all around yucky, I woke up yesterday with a gigantic zit on my chin, and today I woke up with that all too familiar painful tingle on my bottom lip. Yep, cold sore. Great. Just what I need. Not only am I nauseous, but now I get to put foul tasting goo on my mouth, you know, just what a nauseated girl needs.

I’ve been going through my mental rolodex of cold sore cures. I can’t be bothered to go to the Walgreens to get a bottle of L-Lysine, because I am nauseated at the thought of being vertical at this point. I have a tube of Abreva in the medicine cabinet that never seems to work as well as the ads say it will, but of course I’ve been smearing that all over my lip every .3 seconds.

A few years ago I was complaining to a friend about a cold sore that just would not go away. “I have just the thing,” she said. “But it’s kinda gross.”

“I don’t care!” I screeched. “I’ll do anything at this point. Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! Just fricken tell me! Come on!” I groaned.

“OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You know, of it’s grossness,” she sighed.

“Come on! I am dying here!”

“OK, the ultimate cold sore cure is pee.”

“Pee? Like pee? Urine?” I asked, instantly sorry that she’d told me about the expanding usefulness of urine.

“Yeah. Pee. Urine.”

“Ugh, that is so gross. Please tell me you didn’t put pee on your mouth,” I shuddered, completely skeeved out at the thought.

“OK, I won’t tell you that.”

I haven’t yet gotten that desperate, that I’ll put pee on my mouth. But in a fit of desperation during another agonizing cold sore I scoured the Internet for the ultimate cure. You know, because everything on the Internet is true. I came across many accounts of people putting nail polish remover on cold sores.

So I tried it. As weird as it sounds, though not as weird as putting pee on a cold sore, it actually works. Sort of. It makes that irritating cold sore tingle go away, which is nice. It doesn’t do much for the nausea, however.

I’ve Never Been All that Big on St. Patrick’s Day

OK, to be honest, I am a St. Patrick’s Day grinch. I am not wearing green today, nor have I ever worn green on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never really understood the point of wearing green, drinking green beer or, gah, eating green bagels. I’ve never eaten corned beef, and actually have no idea what it is.

My St. Patty’s Day grinchiness began when I was a child. I hated the color green when I was a little kid. I didn’t own a single green article of clothing that I recall. Actually, I am sure I had green clothing, but I know that I have refused to wear them. I didn’t grow up in a house the celebrated St. Patrick’s day—I am Polish, and my parents didn’t go in for the whole “Irish for a day” thing that so many others do. In my house, it was all Polish all the time. (Insert Polish jokes here.) Celebrating St. Patrick’s day (or Halloween for that matter) was not the custom my parents were raised with in Poland, and were not the customs that they raised their children with.

I remember my first irritation with St. Patrick’s Day. I was in Pre-K at Warehouse Point School; I was five years old. We had gym that day, and my class was all lined up for some sort of activity. The gym teacher went down the line of Pre-Kers and gave a sticker to everyone who was wearing green that day. Of course, I had no idea what St. Patrick’s Day was, I had no idea that I was supposed to wear green on this day—not that I would have worn it anyway as I hated green.

I looked at the stickers stuck to the green shirts of my classmates, and instantly felt left out. I think that only me and one other kid—maybe it was the weird boy who insisted on wearing his jacket all the time and was notorious for having his sneakers on the wrong feet—didn’t have a sticker because we both weren’t in green. What a crappy thing for a teacher to do!

My dislike for St. Patrick’s Day extended into my teen years. My first non-babysitting job was in the bakery department of a local supermarket. The shipment of green bagels came in a day before St. Patrick’s Day. Green. Bagels. Is it just me, or should bread products never ever EVER be dyed green? Ever the dutiful bakery employee, I put the bagels in a basket and set them on top of the case, I think there were maybe 8 of them in there. I made a little sign that said something to the effect of “Yay! Green bagels! Get into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit!” (Worded a bit better than that, but you get the idea.)

Not one of those bagels sold. The day after St. Patrick’s Day I marked them down and put them on the “day old” shelf. Then another day after that they were tossed into the trash. All 8 of them.

So here it is another St. Patrick’s Day. I am wearing a grey sweatshirt. And I am still wondering what the big deal is about St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never worn green on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never been inclined to kiss someone because they’re Irish because their T-shirt commanded me to. I’ve never been to a bar on St. Patrick’s Day, and I like my beer amber colored, never green.

Color me grinchy.

It's All About Demand

I’ve been thinking about the whole thing about having to provide my driver’s license to buy Sudafed. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me.

When I was in college I took this very interesting class called Drugs Across Cultures. This class was fascinating in that each lecture was about a different drug and how the production and consumption of each drug affected the economy and the culture of where the drug was produced and where it was consumed. Inevitably a culture forms around the purchase and use of the drug in which all the people involved develop their own jargon when talking about the drug, their own rituals for where and when to consume to drug and their own social mores for how to behave before, during and after use. A very risky economy is produced in which the players are paying money for the drug, and there is a complex distribution pattern that gets the drug from where it was produced to where it is consumed, and all the people involved all get paid along the way. If anyone in this chain is compromised by law enforcement, then the entire system is impacted and its economic gains are interrupted.

While learning about the economical and cultural ramifications of each drug was very interesting, the main thing I took away was the law of the international drug trade. When you deny a supplier a market, the supplier will find another market. If you deny a user a supplier, they will simply seek another supplier. In other words, the demand still exists whether or not the supplier exists. As long as the dealer knows there is demand somewhere, then all they have to do find those people who demand the drug. All that is necessary for a drug dealer to flourish is for the demand to be present.

Why is the demand present? What is it that people are looking for when they buy and use drugs? And why do we as a society think that having to provide a driver’s license at the pharmacy to buy a box of Sudafed will do anything to lessen the demand—which is what actually drives the drug trade?

This is the very idea of why it bothers me that I had to provide a driver’s license to buy Todd some Sudafed. If there’s someone out there who is hell-bent enough on producing and distributing meth—to keep up with the demand of their customers--then having to provide their driver’s license to buy the main ingredients will not stop them. They will simply find another way to get the ingredients back to the lab and keep up with production. There are trucks to be robbed, fake IDs to be gotten, or maybe by now there are Sudafed mules whose job is to go into the stores and get Sudafed. Limiting the quantities of Sudafed will only be a speed bump for the producers and dealers of the drug, and will only drive up the cost of the drug—because getting the ingredients to make it is now just a bit harder.

This policy—whether it’s a law or a store policy—though good intentioned does little to address why the demand for crystal meth exists in the first place.

Diatribe over.

Because Only People With Driver's Licenses Operate Meth Labs

Todd's picked up a nasty sinus congestion-y kind of a cold. Last night we walked up to the Walgreens with the dogs to pick up some meds for him. I stayed outside the store with the dogs while he went in to get his meds. He picked out the formula of Sudafed that is stored behind the pharmacy counter, then realized that needed his license to get it and didn't have it on him because we'd walked to the store.

He walked out of the store, empty handed, eyes watering, nose stuffed up to the point where he's barely able to annunciate , "I cabn't get the bedicine, I beed my license, and I don't hab it. Will you please bo in and bet it for me?"

Now my drivers license number is stored on some Walgreens computer. Is this really going to stop people from buying Sudafed and using it to make meth? What's to stop the meth lab scientists from going store to store, having friends take turns buying it so they can stay under the radar? I wonder if this is going to end up forcing meth lab scientists to make meth out of something else that might end up poisoning their customers, or that will help them blow themselves up.

:::

This morning Todd and I went out to breakfast with some friends. We were gone for about an hour, and came back to get something before going to the Home Show at the RI Convention Center. Normally when we leave the house we go through an admittedly less elaborate preparation process than we had to in the past. We just make sure that things we don't want eaten--fruit, loaves of bread, anything that once contained food, or anything that I happened to be standing next to while thinking about food is put away. We've been letting them have run of the house while we're out because we removed the handle from the refrigerator so that Griffen can't use it to open the fridge.

We were gone for an hour and I came back into the house to get something we'd forgotten. I opened the door and found Griffen curled into the tightest ball at the bottom of the stairs. This is Griffen-speak for "I did something very bad, and you are going to be very very pissed at me. I admit I had fun, but now I know I was wrong."

I walked up the stairs and saw the fridge door wide open, carrots, salad, herbs and whatever else was in dog range torn up and left all over the house. I walked into the bedroom and found an empty egg carton and egg shells strewn all over the room. One of the dog beds was drenched in egg yolks.

Bad dog!

Answering Phones, Dropping F Bombs and So Much More

Today I am working at Todd's office, covering the phones while his Administrative Assistant is out. While answering the phone is not the most difficult task I am in constant paranoia that I will either hang up on or drop an F bomb while one of his important clients is on the phone. I predict I will do this at least 359 times today. I think the worst part is having to tell people who's on the phone, because I always forget the name of the callers--despite the fact that they told me not .5 seconds before. Just now, I called one of the employees here and said "It's um... Shit! What was his name? Bill? Bob? From Something Telecom?" It's not my forte, but I am glad to help out for a day or two if it means making everyone else's job around here a bit easier.

Remember how I said we'd be closing on the new house on Friday? Remember how I said I was diligently packing the entire house? Well, on Tuesday--a scant 3 days before the closing--the seller requested an extension on the closing for another 2 weeks.

It's funny because just the other day I woke up and said to Todd, "I had the strangest dream last night. In the dream Mr. Seller Man wasn't ready to move and at the closing he told us how his house isn't ready yet. So we suggested that he live in our old, vacant house until we close on that one."

"That's funny," Todd said. "I dreamt almost the same thing. But in my dream he didn't live in our house. You're just weird for dreaming that."

"Uh yeah, that's where dream crosses over into nightmare," I said.

So, we're not moving this weekend. I will not spend next week scraping the bits of broken mirror off the walls in the radioactive orange room. But I have packed just about everything and left us with a week's worth of clothing. I have already scheduled the electricity and cable to be put into our names. So I have to go and reschedule all that.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I wonder if we'll ever get to move in at all.

45 T-Shirts. 1 Torso

We're moving in four days. Well, kind of. Most of our furniture will get moved next week, but we'll go and camp out in the new house and enjoy its new-to-us-housiness after we close on Friday. We'll live out of a suitcase for the first few days after the closing as we scrub the house from top to bottom and lament the fact that we didn't think to move something like the pots and pans and that we live too far in the blissful boonies for a pizza to be delivered.

Today I packed the coat closet and the board game shelf. Yesterday we packed up the tool bench, and the variety of crap in our laundry/work room. I am working on clothes right now, and am trying to reduce the weight of our shared armoire--one entire shelf of which houses Todd's collection of 45 T-shirts. I left a half dozen of his favorites on the shelf so he could wear them this week, and tossed 40 some odd T-shirts into a suitcase.

The man owns 45 T-shirts. 45 of them. He only has 1 torso on which to wear these 45 T-shirts. To be fair, I have no idea how many pairs of shoes I own, and I only have two feet on which to wear them. But that's different! I need all those shoes.

If I were a different kind of wife, I would have performed a T-shirtectomy just now--a complicated maneuver involving a large garbage bag and enabling gravity to ease the T-shirts into said garbage bag. But alas, I am a cool wife who doesn't go around throwing out her husband's stuff, and I expect the same in return.

But if we sewed all those T-shirts together we could probably make a sail for the boat.

It's 5:20 in the afternoon...

...and still so blindingly bright outside.

Happy Daylight Savings Day, Internet! Spring forward, get outside and enjoy the extra sunlight!

Miss/Won't Miss

We are now T-minus 7 days to the closing on the new house. In addition to the packing, I've been reflecting on the things I'll miss and the things I won't miss about living in this house. It is very convenient--there's a branch of the library not even a half mile from here, and the post office is a half mile away. There's a Walgreens on the corner, within a quarter mile, and a Cumberland Farms convenience store and gas station 200 steps from this house. But it is also very noisy here. We're just off a main road, and the house is very close to the street. I am constantly afraid of the dogs getting hit by cars in the road, and the neighbors behind us are noisy.

One thing I will miss is the water. This is the view of Apponaug Cove, taken from my living room window:



These are the inhabitants of Apponaug Cove. We have ducks, geese and swans that make the Cove home all year round:


The geese occasionally cross the street to nibble the grass on our lawn:

Now onto the things I won't miss. This is the view from the side living room window. This is my neighbor's house, it is way too close:

This is the view from the kitchen window. In the spring/summer the trees are filled with bushy looking leaves. In the winter this is what it looks like. I am so thankful that I won't have this view anymore:

This is the view from the back door. Apparently this is where trucks go to die, as I've yet to see any of these trucks move:

This house is also three miles away from TF Green Airport. Sure, it's convenient when we are flying somewhere. But planes fly near hour house, and sometimes right over it. This was taken from my living room window:

Overall, good riddance. Out with the old and in with the new.

And Then Lance Armstrong Congratulated Me

My birthday was on Tuesday, and of course Todd spoiled me absolutely rotten. I've been needing some new running shoes, and he got me a sizeable gift certificate to The Sports Authority. But then he also bought me something really really cool. Have you guys heard of the Nike+ system? It's a transmitter that you place inside your shoe, and it tracks your workout--distance, pace, etc. and transmits that to an iPod. Then as you're working out you can see on the iPod screen all your pedometer data, and every so often it will tell you either how far you've gone, or how long you've been at it.

I have an iPod Shuffle and the Nike+ only works with the iPod Nano. I said to Todd that I can't use this thing because I don't have the right iPod. He said "Yes you do. I ordered one, it just hasn't come yet." So, the night of my birthday I also got a brand new, green and shiny iPod Nano.

This morning I took the Nike+ and iPod to the gym for a spin on the treadmills. (Man, I had forgotten what great running music Metallica is. "Enter night.... Exit light....") I ran for 46 minutes, and then the little Nike+ voice told me that my workout was done. Then Lance Armstrong got on to congratulate me on my longest workout yet. Lance Fricken Armstrong. How cool is that?

:::

This morning as I was rocking out to Metallica, listening to the voice tell me every 5 minutes how much time I've been running, and hoping that I won't disappoint Mr. Armstrong I was watching CNN on the treadmill's TV. I was reading the closed captions, and chuckling to myself at the weird mistakes that closed captioning makes sometimes when it's trying to keep up with the news anchors talking. This morning during a segment on the Presidential Primaries the captions told me that predictions for the nation's economy were dependent on "Q4 tea leaves readings." So, that's how they decide when to lower or raise the interest rates! Reading tea leaves! Brilliant!

The Anatomy of a Move Part 2

It's happening. It's actually happening. We close on the new house on the 14th, and plan on moving our stuff in over the week after that. We're going to have some new carpet put down upstairs while the house is still vacant, then have the movers take our stuff over after that. I am also going to paint the bedroom that we will live in while we build a larger bathroom off of the master bedroom. At the moment the bathroom off the master is roughly the size of a phone booth. Scratch that, half a phone booth. So we're going to knock down this farging wall, and this farging wall...* The walls in the bedroom that we will be sleeping in are radioactive orange with a darker orange sponged over them. There is also a mosaic made of broken mirror shards swirled across one wall of the room. That should be a hoot to take down seeing as how they are pointy, jagged pieces of glass adhered to the wall with what probably is glue composed of a space age polymer that could stick a guy in a hard hat to a I-beam at a construction site. I see the need for a new box of band-aids in my future.

Today I just called and lined up the phone/cable/internet to get turned on for the 15th. I still need to do the power, and call the oil company to have the furnace serviced and stuff like that. I can't contain my excitement over finally getting into the house. I can't wait to start a fire in my new fireplace, and have a soak in my new hot tub, and park my car in a garage. (And throw a kickin' party once the boxes are unpacked!)

I've been trying to pack up things that we don't use all the time. It's kind of a challenge because there still is a lot to pack, but we're still trying to live here too. I know I should pack some of the clothing in the closet, but I can't bear to think of not having a choice every day when I get dressed. So instead I packed our ridiculous assortment of mugs:

I was enjoying the emptiness of that shelf, then Todd came home and moved some spices up there when he was cooking dinner. *sigh*

Then I tackled the cabinet above the stove. In this cabinet we keep wineglasses, shot glasses, cocktail shaker. Somehow I do not remember purchasing all those shot glasses, and wonder if I was already drunk when they were brought into the house--thus negating the need for the shot glasses to begin with, I guess. Who needs a glass when you can drink your booze straight out of the bottle anyway:

Empty! Looky looky!

And it all fit into two boxes, even after I went to Stop and Shop and swiped an entire stack of store circulars so I could use them to wrap all the glasses:

Next, I am packing the closet in the guest bedroom.

*Quote: Johnny Dangerously

Only the Heartiest of Rhode Islanders go to the Beach in the Winter

Yesterday Todd had some work to do in Newport. The dogs and I tagged along for the ride, and we all went to Second Beach for a walk and occasional toss and fetch of a frisbee. The boys love the beach, and we haven't taken them there nearly enough this winter.

Here are Griffen and Nemo fetching up their respective frisbees:

Nemo daring to get his paws wet:

Todd and Griffen walking on the beach, Griffen scarcely able to contain his inner water dog at the site of the surf:

Griffen swimming with his frisbee:

Nemo prints:

Todd:

Me:

2010 Miles

I mentioned last month that my goal this year is to get my pedometer to read 3,000 by the end of 2008. On January 1 I started with 1,801 on my pedometer.

On Feb 1, this is what is read:


Today, on March 1, it reads:

Since Todd bought me this pedometer for my birthday I have run the distance between Providence to Minneapolis and BACK to Providence again.

Only 990 miles to go before the end of the year.