The last few days...

Hi all. Thought I'd stagger over here and write a little update. Oh the greatness of the length of the endlessness of the last several days. How sweaty they are to describe, how sleepy I am still thinking about them. Anyhoo... I'm trying to remember the highlights of our move and such things. Dave and I were up till around 2:30 Friday night packing. That was more like a low light. I was so tired I could hardly move and Dave was enthusiastically encouraging me to plod along. Why in life does everything always take longer than you think it will? Anyway, Saturday morning we started moving and we had 3 trucks and people helping which was great. Actually on Saturday I felt guilty for not doing enough. I was mostly in the new place telling people where to put stuff. We're on the second floor now - everything (well, almost everything) had to be moved up 2 flights of stairs and not a lot of wiggle room. The poor guys. Okay, this is gross, but when they FINALLY got our big ole leather love seat (which is poofy all over and not easy to move) into the apartment, it was extremely wet with sweat. Isn't that nice? One of the guys suggested we just burn it when we move. The one thing that didn't go up the steps was our ginormous bookshelves that they lived over the balcony - very entertaining. = P So anyway - now we're here but still have to go back and clean the other place and clean (oh the hideousness of the oven over there. I shudder to think) and such. Anyway, they stopped moving things around 5 - 6ish, but there was still more over there. Yesterday we went over and moved some more and used my friend's truck. It started pouring rain on the way to our new place. Fun and games. This morning, Dave and a couple other people got the last of it. So as for this place, I have the kitchen all unpacked but other than that, not a lot is really in order. Another fun little thing is that our air conditioner is not working and no AC in Baton Rouge in July is just not a happy thing. Thankfully at this new place, we have 24 hr. emergency maintenance and someone is working on fixing it. We're using a window unit tonight and hopefully by tomorrow it'll be fixed. So that's my excuse for not unpacking tonight. That and I'm crazy tired and have a headache. So we're soon to retire to the only cool room in the house. I want to post pictures soon. For the most part, I LOVE the kitchen. It's so much bigger than the last one. We can open the fridge and dishwasher and Dave and I can stand in it ALL at the same time. Amazing. The whole place is much prettier and I expect that cockroaches won't be as much of an issue (THREE in the last week at the last place). The rooms are very nice sized. The only real glitch is that the living/dining area really is smaller. And we filled up our last place to the brim. So now we really can't fit all our junk in here. At least not like it was before. We're looking at different options to deal with that small annoyance. But anyway, still come visit cause you'll have an ample sized bedroom to stay in for sure. Okay, I'm tired of cooking so I'm off now. I think there were things I wanted to say but have forgotten them. Maybe it'll hit me at some point. addios

Why am I posting at the late hour of 9:38??

Jest if you will, but that has recently become quite late. Dave might think a better question is why am I posting while he's faithfully packing all our dishes. I have no good answers. I just want to say hey in my fatigued state. What's going on? Not much. We've been packing a lot. Actually, we got most of it done last Saturday. Everything but the kitchen and our bedroom and some of our bathroom. Now it's time to put the smack down on that (sorry, flash back to RBI days). I've spent several evenings sorting through old cards and letters. I know I keep way too much, and I've tossed a lot of it, but let me tell ya. I've found some GEMS that I still can't bare to part with. I'm still probably keeping too much, but I'm making progress. baby steps. Dave just pointed out that it's not that much work to just take the unsorted stuff to the new place and sort it there. As in, we HAVE to pack the kitchen, you don't have to sort that at this very minute. True dat, so I finished the pile I was working on and um... found myself updating my blog. oops. A girl's gotta have a little fun, no? I honestly feel like I'm in a time warp right now - been reading so many letters from friends from so long ago and there's so many things I forgot about and then you read it and it just takes you back. Anyhoo... in other news, um... let's see... My sweet hubby has become quite prolific in the kitchen lately. He used to not cook anything. Then he started cooking with great help and guidance. Now he just says, I'll make supper and does it all by himself from start to finish. It's so wonderful! And he's been doing it a lot lately since I've been working long hours and he's been working shorter, sporadic hours. You won't hear me complaining! I'm trying to remember what all he's made lately - chicken tacos, regular tacos, Honey mustard BBQ chicken stir fry (something like that - one of our favorites), turkey burgers (which were perfectly seasoned and juicy)... isn't that impressive? He's also really good at making Rhonda's homemade tomato soup that you can find on her recipe blog which I would link to but I'm too tired. Anyway, I hope his mother is reading this! = ) Speaking of tired, something has got to change or I shall go out of my ever lovin mind! This early morning business is for the birds. No tweets found here. By body simply refuses to conform to such a schedule. Basically, no matter how crazy tired I am, if I go to bed before 11, I WILL wake up between 3 - 5 and can't sleep for anything. Now why is it if I stay up till midnight I can sleep till 10, but if I go to bed at 10, I wake up at 4? So then I survive the day but drag home and I'm so exhausted but try to stay awake until I can go to bed and do it all over again. It's a miserable way to live, let me tell ya. I guess I just did. Sometimes I take drugs and that's a nice break from it, but not a great long term solution. What is wrong with me, anyone know (as it relates to this particular issue, please)? Well, speaking of which I should go to bed. Tomorrow night is our last night to pack and then Saturday is the big moving day. I'm so happy that my friend got a babysitter all Saturday so she'll be with me at the new place helping unpack and set it all up. That thrills my soul to pieces. I can't believe tomorrow's Friday already. Where did the week go? Um, that's all. catcha later.

random pics

My baton rouge bosom friend Jan
Some of my treasures - read below and it will make more sense. The purple beads, lots of cross stitch, my AWANA car and trophy, and....
In case you missed it above - my real live hair! I think one braid is mine and one is my sister's but I'm not 100 % sure. I'm also not exactly sure why they exist - if we cut them off or what. Anyway, the odd thing is that each time I move, I really do throw stuff out, so how is it that this stuff has made the cut each time? I don't get it? Well, I get some of it, but not the rocks and beads.

breaking momentarily from the chaos...

I don't even know where to start, so I'll just start rambling. I'm so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open and I really want to go to bed, but I'm determined to write something while it's still the weekend (for some reason) and then you probably won't hear from me for a while. Life has been full of changes lately - nothing too big or anything, just jobs and housing and things like that. I recently started a new job doing full time child care for a family who recently relocated to Baton Rouge. They have 2 kids and they're almost 4 and almost 2. So far, it's been great. Of course some days have been rather challenging, but I love the freedom I have with this job to go fun places and do thing with the kids. We usually go somewhere every morning and come home and then it gets nice and quite for awhile while they sleep. Their mom works from home so I see a lot of her and we enjoy chatting. Well, I do anyway, I guess I haven't asked her if she enjoys chatting with me. They also have a nice big pool that we use nearly every afternoon. After my last job experience here, Dave and I (especially Dave - = ) both thought it was time I did something different. The last year has been filled with so many stresses and new things and a stressful job on top of all that just wasn't the best thing for us at this point. So now I come home totally exhausted, but in a much better mood. = ) The worst thing about the job for me is the insanely early mornings. Insanely early for me anyway. I have to be there by 7:30 and I don't usually go in my pajamas. So I'm gettin up way earlier than I believe God intended humans to awake. The really annoying thing is that my body just will not cooperate with this type of schedule. Last week I kept trying to get to bed early, only to make it after 11 some time. Then one evening I just crashed and slept forever and woke up at 10, and of course, couldn't sleep that night. So the next evening I was determined to not sleep at all in the evening and then go to bed early. I actually made it to bed around 10:00 which hasn't happened since I was 10 I think. SO, then I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and can't sleep! I was SO SO SO annoyed! If anyone has any brilliant suggestions, I'm open to them.

We are also moving in 2 weeks. We were hoping to move August 1st, but our new place is making us pay rent form the 25th on, so we figure we might as well move then. All of a sudden, it's upon us and there's SO much to do and I'm so fried in the evenings. So hopefully it will all get done somehow. I'm trying to be much more organized about this move, so packing is more work than unpacking should be, hopefully. Anyway, our new apartment has washer/dryer hookups which is fabulous. It's also a bit further from campus which has it's pros and cons. The pro being that drunk college students won't be knocking on our door at 2 in the morning asking if Andrew lives here. (this happened Friday night and suddenly, moving seemed like a great idea again) I'm be farther away from my bosom friend which is the con. = ( But I think our friendship will survive the additional 10 - 15 minute drive. Speaking of moving and packing, I think I mentioned awhile ago wanting to get rid of all the stuff I don't really use, need, or like, etc. Well, the time has come. My bosom friend Jan came over last night to try to help me and encourage me to throw out all my junk. You should have heard us cackling like a couple hens at all my ju... I mean priceless treasures. Here's some of her words of wisdom. I told her wait till you see my rock collection and she said, "It's not a COLLECTION unless it's DISPLAYED." Hmmmmm, she might have just made that up. Anyway... upon seeing my beautiful purple bead necklace (looks like a toy sorta) she exclaimed, "WHY are you 31 years old and own something like this??? Get rid of it QUICK before anyone sees it!" Of course I don't care if anyone sees it because I'm telling you all about it. Then there's all the things that people have given me over the years, esp sister in laws for some reason, and especially little counted cross stitch things that were really cute. I told her that as I go to get rid of something, I'm haunted by the weeping face of the person who gave it to me. It's true. And then there's children's artwork. Weeping children are even worse than weeping adults. AHHHHHHHH. She tired to tell me that I needed to throw out ALL my cards and letters. I got them all in a pile in the living room currently, and I'm determined to get it all down to one small box or so of ones that I keep. Oh the weeping faces. Jan asked me what Dave thinks of me keeping all this stuff. I said, "What does Dave thing? He's worse than me! He still has a smurf collection (only it's not a collection cause it's not displayed) and the razor he used for his first shave!!" Among many other things. Anyways, I think you be proud of us, because the razor is gone, the beads are gone, and so are the real braids of my sister and I. And much more. ANYWAY, on to something other than packing and purging.

In other random news, It was our 11 month anniversary on Thursday. We celebrated by eating supper at Coldstone Creamery and then going to the levy and walking around and remembering how nice it is there. I have to tell you about Coldstone though. I got the coffee lovers (which I am not, not it's not bitter when it's in the form of ice cream) - it was coffee flavored ice cream with heath bar, roasted almonds, and carmel. Oh my. It was one of the best things I've had in a long long time.

Speaking of food, I made the terribly discovery, actually, I think I read it on allrecepies.com, that you can make any cake mix into cookies by simply adding 2 eggs and half cup oil. I'm here to tell ya, it's true and they are GOOD! I used up some cake mixes that we had laying around and wanted to get rid of. And then Jan and I made cookies with the kids the other day because a guy from our church is doing this prison ministry and one of the things they do is take cookies in. Anyway, let me just tell you that you really really should get a lemon cake mix and add 2 eggs and half cup oil. You don't even need to get out your mixer, just stir and drop. They were fabulous. Butter pecan and orange were also superb. You can also add things like white choc. chips to the butter pecan and cream cheese icing to any of them... oh boy. The end.

Rivedance is coming to Baton Rouge in November. I want to go so bad I can taste it, but after looking at ticket prices, I'm not sure it's worth it. A good seat clearly wouldn't be an option and even sitting in the nosebleed section is pretty expensive. I had just been talking to someone about how far we'd have to go to see Riverdance and how much we want to go, and then in the next few days, when Dave and I were walking we saw the sign for them coming right to our doorstep. It makes me ill to think about it.

Last night I went to a math function with Dave. It was odd - if it would have been other grad students, that would have been one thing, but this was all undergrads from schools all over the country who were doing a summer program at LSU. Dave's advisor was having a party for all of them and told Dave that he and his wife should come. So we did. hmmmm... it was interesting. Oh the nerdiess in that room. I was bored out of my mind until I went to talk to the professor's wife. She has a magnet on her fridge that says, "I'm too pretty to do math." I liked her instantly. Anyway, chatting with her was nice. Oh, to back up, what drew me to her and the kitchen was in the living room everyone was sitting around and all of a sudden they were saying things like two is three, six is three, ten is three, five is four, eleven is six, four is cosmic... I thought first of all that they had all lost their nerdy little minds. Then I figured they were all talking about some high level math thing that I couldn't hope or want to grasp. It was odd. Anyway, on the way home, Dave told me no, it had nothing to do with high level math. It was just a silly riddle. So I ask you, do you get it? One is also three, forty two is eight. bla bla bla.

Well, congrats if any of you are still reading this. Hope I haven't bored you to tears. The next 2 weeks will be spent packing ferociously. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend.