Archive for December, 2009

Maybe It Just Means…

Dec 31st, 09 / 4 Comments

….we should remember we forgot them or something. Anyway, it’s about old friends. *

 

It seems like an appropos time to tell you about my worst New Years Eve ever, which took place, oh about 10 years ago to the very day. (So funny how that works!) I should preface this with a caveat that unlike most adults New Years Eve doesn’t do it for me- I’ve found myself stuck in traffic, in line for the bathroom or waiting for a glass of champagne at the bar more times than I care to count as the clock struck midnight & the revelry began. “Better luck next year!” should really be the theme of my lifetime of new years. (This year B & I are attending a small dinner party with close friends where we will open a bottle of champagne from our honeymoon & eat some black eyed peas for good luck.)

 

Anyway. 10 years ago the millennial New Years Eve (I’ve done the math properly, right? 1999 to 2000? If not, ahem, excuse, that is what I’m discussing.) found me and my family at Lake Tahoe along with assorted family friends, aunts and uncles and cousins. Skiing! The lake as a backdrop! Cozy and together, breaking into a new century! Whooo!

 

And then of course we got there and Tahoe was having one of the worst snow years ever. Rocks abounded, I actually asked my parents to please return my lift pass because I was ruining my skis and having zero fun, and I didn’t want to waste their money. My cousins who had never skied before were put into ski lessons where they complained they didn’t feel well, my Aunt insisted they go, long story short WORST STREP THROAT INFECTIONS EVER. My Mom started feeling poorly (due in large part to the pet-free condos we rented clearly being full of evil evil cat hairs) and everyone was cranky.

 

The teenage brethren (clad, I’m sure in Lucky brand jeans and Abercrombie sweaters, with our hair teased to new heights, and approximately 9,782 pounds of mascara (shut up I was 16) coating our eyelashes- every. single. lash- and complaining mightily) settled in for a 10 hour long MTV countdown of the best music videos of the past 100 years. So you know, starting from Video Killed the Radio Star. We suffered watched the first 95 videos for 9 hours, with the same endless loop of bad commercials, and began to actually anticipate the final five videos – WHAT WOULD THEY BE, WOULD BOYZ II MEN BE ON IT?!- when our mean, evil parents (who had drug us out to LAKE TAHOE THOSE MEAN MEAN PEOPLE) insisted we go to some “teen” party held at one of the ski lodges.

 

You can just go ahead and feel sorry for us now. We missed the finale of a show we’d been watching for nine hours and we were shuttled over to the resort where our parents paid some exorbitant fee for us to sip apple cider and awkwardly shuffle around a dance floor to bad music while other clumps of similarly situated kids did the same thing, all of us wishing we were somewhere else. Except of course one girl in our group, who at age 14 was already gorgeous (and a close friend of mine still) who immediately found five guys to chat and dance with, all while her older brother (one of my best friends) watched until an epic, epic sibling argument broke out in our group all while the older brother yelled, over and over “HE LICKED YOU JENNY!” which just so wasn’t true, but it didn’t stop him from yelling it (or the phrase becoming our mantra until we graduated from high school). One of my bridesmaids then got in a fight with her brother over a friend of theirs who had come along for the trip, and I was in the middle of my closest friends and my poor, sick cousins and suddenly, oh man, PEOPLE WERE MAKING ACCUSATIONS OF LICKING. We lived in Utah people- we were (and are not) not of the licking variety.

 

Where does this story end you wonder? Well we used our new fangled cell phones (1999!)to call our parents and insist they come get us and we rung in the new century on the balcony of the condos with some half hearted poppers and sparklers. More than half our group went to the hospital over the week (a half dozen cases of horrific strep throat, one broken collar bone, one broken wrist and an ear infection) but none as fantastically as my Mom who had an epic allergy attack at the very end, causing me to drive home with the family of the still dueling brother and sister and have to sit in the middle of them the entire way home while my brother stayed with my Mom and I had to use this incredibly odd paging system to tell my airline pilot father to LAND YOUR PLANE AND COME BACK TO YOUR FAAAAAMILY! all while fretting about my 4 AP classes back home.

 

I could end here or I could tell you about how on that horrible drive home from the worst New Years ever we got stuck in a blizzard and had to spend the night in Elko, Nevada in a Holiday Inn Express and how Jenny & I both got in trouble from our cheerleading & dance team coaches despite our protests of THE WORST! BLIZZARD! EVER! and David, the brother, took up half of my middle seat in the car so I’m pretty sure I walked with a limp for the next week, but I won’t.

 

Instead I’ll just say that 10 years later a lot has changed but a lot has stayed wonderfully the same (all those cousins and friends are still pretty much the best people ever) and I’m hoping that this New Years Eve includes no licking, 10 hour video countdowns or hospitalizations.

 

Happy New Year! May it be a good one for us all.

 

I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. *

 

*Name that movie! And song! And best New Years Eve speech ever!

Family, Married Life, Soapbox

True Confessions of a Married Woman

Dec 30th, 09 / 7 Comments

Sometimes  B isn’t particulary expedient about calling me back. Rather than leave him a voicemail or five call back repeatedly I sometimes turn to the sure-fire plan b: send him an email to his work account with a dog adoption notice at our local shelter. He typically returns my call asap, if only to tell me “no”. Wife win!

 

I’ve only just discovered that B’s favorite vegetables are spinach & corn. Interesting. I also note that my favorite brussel sprouts & green beans are not on the list. Weird.

 

I try very hard to be quiet in the morning (I leave the house at an hour when only the worms are awake) unless B snored the night before. Then I look for my shoes under B’s side of the bed, typically with great fanfare. They are never there. Also weird.

 

I replace the bath towels every three days with clean, fluffy towels. I don’t suppose he notices, but I like to think that if I never did it he’d eventually notice his towel was grungy.

 

I can’t help it that some of my favorite pans to cook with are some of his least favorite to clean. I cook, he does the dishes- FAIR IS FAIR.

 

I always get his lunch bag (environmentally friendly household!) down from the cupboard in the morning & leave it on the counter for him. It seems like a nice gesture.

 

I buy my laundry soap based on what he likes, not what I like. Compromise.

 

I do not however buy the soap or shampoo based on what he likes. Zest & Pert Plus do not a happy wife make.

 

I rotate the couch cushions every evening. I only confess to this in case of my untimely demise, I’d like someone to let B know that if you don’t rotate them they get all squished & funky so lets go ahead and rotate them shall we?

 

I also vacuum the inside of the dryer out once a week. It helps cut down on the lint. Please tell me you are also insane do this too?

 

I write B love notes & slip them into his briefcase or lunchbox because when he writes them for me, they make my heart skip a beat. I like to think that one day when we are old and wrinkly, if we forget the wine we drank on our honeymoon & the name of our favorite corner bistro we’ll always remember that we were special enough for someone to put a pen to paper to write out, forever, how much we were loved.

Married Life

2009 In Review

Dec 29th, 09 / 1 Comment

I’ve been reading a lot on Twitter, CNN, blogs & various other things that I read (not including the soup can labels, mostly because they avoid discussing the events of the past year in the middle of their sodium content) that many people feel 2009 was the worst year ever. Based on some of their stories I think that this is true for them. I’ve been pondering how I feel about 2009 – so before my obligatory NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS, FTW! blog post (come on, you know it is coming) I thought I’d take a look over my 2009. I could never categorize it as the worst year ever, but I’ll fully admit that it was a year of high high’s and low low’s, best described as a topsy turvy whirlwind.

 

January 2009: I ushered in the New Year after just leaving/losing my first real job. I hear it was cold outside in January, but I didn’t do much leaving the house. Instead I wallowed and checked lawcrossing.com obsessively, while moping around the house and refusing to do much of anything. B’s Grandmother passed away after suffering greatly from cancer and we spent a snowy weekend in Michigan in mourning. Utter misery- check!

 

February 2009: In an attempt to do something other than wallow and mope I packed my bags & flew down to New Orleans where I spent time with some of my closest college girlfriends (read: free therapy & laughter) and stayed a week with Katie from Overflowing Brain, which was divine. I ate too much Popeyes, caught some Mardi Gras beads & met some other blog & Twitter friends for the first time. I smiled a lot and came back to Chicago feeling like I had a renewed sense of hope in the job search. Upon my return, B swept me off my feet and proposed one sub-zero night on the lakefront. It wasn’t until we got indoors that I was willing to part with my gloves to put the ring on!

 

March 2009: I spent a few days in newly-engaged bliss (read: hellloooo wedding magazines!) before my Mom called to tell me my nephew was ready to make his grand entrance into the world. I enacted an movie-worthy scene of throwing together a suitcase, dashing to the airport, making it on the last flight home, racing to the hospital and sprinting into the maternity ward moments before Baby Z was born- it was magical and special and my Godson is perfect. I spent some time at home, snuggling with the newest addition in the family and finding my wedding dress with my Mom.

 

April 2009: EMPLOYMENT baby! Need I say more?

 

May 2009: I turned 26 years old (a fact that I’ve really struggled to remember the past few months, telling someone I was 24 and telling someone else I was 28, both times fully believing what I was saying), began settling into the new job and generally felt content with life. I also survived the swine flu, which really deserves a gold medal in my opinion.

 

June 2009: B sailed and sailed some more and I worked on wedding planning. I was so anxious for summer to come & go- my fall wedding was dangling in front of me!

 

July 2009: My little brother beat me to the alter & got married, with me as a bridesmaid & B as the officiant. It was a quaint, homespun wedding with pretty flowers, delicious food and a towering buttercream covered cake that coated me in icing from head to toe in the preparation hours. My parents house was filled with family and friends and it was nothing short of lovely. My favorite memory of the night however was after the wedding- my parents and B and I were sweeping up the main floor of the house when a spectacular summer rain storm blew through- we opened all the doors and smelled the sage brush and clean rain and watched it pour down and lightening strike the mountain tops. I also moved, a feat that never gets the billing it deserves as The Worst Thing Ever. Boxes, boxes, packing packing, hauling, hauling, packing, unpacking, mess, disaster, boxes.

 

 

August 2009: B turned 28 and we flew to Savannah to finalize wedding plans. We laughed at how sticky and hot it was and how clever we were for thwarting the Southern humidity by planning an October wedding. (Karma: see, bitch.) We settled on flowers, selected organ music and marveled at how we were getting married in two months!

 

September 2009: Weddingweddingweddingweddingwedding. And then we finalized and licked and stamped and finalized some more. September was consumed with The Planning.

 

October 2009: October was magical. I married the man of my dreams in a fairy tale wedding – elegant, simple and sophisticated. My best friends and family surrounded and supported me and it truly was the happiest day of my life. After sleeping as much as possible the next day, B and I took off for a fantastic week in Napa Valley where I ate a lot of cheese and drank even more amazing wine. Words don’t do justice to the emotions and happiness that surround the month of October, but let me just impart on you: best. month. ever.

 

November 2009: We successfully hosted our first family holiday! The turkey was moist, the side dishes were delicious & no one went to the hospital with stitches or food-related illness. I found out that Law With Grace was expecting her own little bundle of joy in 2010 and managed to do most of my holiday shopping. FTW!

 

December 2009: B & I threw a Christmas party (what we hope will become an annual tradition), celebrated our first Christmas as married folks & ate too many cookies.

 

I’m excited to see what 2010 will bring- I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it is a smoother year, with less pitching between emotions (see January v. October) but with equal levels of joy, love and happiness.

I love this crazy, tragic, sometimes almost magic, awful, beautiful life

Chicago, Family, Happy Holidays, Mardi Gras, Married Life, New Orleans, Travel, Wedding