Are there more than 2 people in the universe?

Hello all - warning: this is going to be a long, rambly post. I still don't have cell phone service and we don't have a home phone, so I feel a bit cut off from the world still. So leave lots of comments and send me e-mails, okay? = ) So, where to begin?? Let's see... as I mentioned, we did get our power back on Tuesday. We hibernated pretty much until Thursday evening. Side note -- this whole vacation thing is getting out of hand. Not that we're not getting anything done, but we've gravitated towards sleeping from about 2 or 3 till 10 or 11. We've also developed a fondness for the game 10,000, or greedy as some may call it. My family used to play that game and I introduced Dave to it. Now we have to play it nearly every night, no matter if we don't start till 12 or 1. Dave won the first game and I've beaten every one since then, which is oh so fun. Okay, back to Thursday - boy do I want to get pictures on here soon. When we just sit around our house unpacking, it's easy to think that life is pretty much back to normal. But when we went out on Thursday, life was anything but normal around the city. Most of the business were still closed at that point. We had a hankering for some Mexican food and had a coupon so we thought that justified going there. We are trying to not eat out much and save money, which is a very good thing right now. But anyway, we were also going stir crazy in the house and didn't have much to eat around here. So the place we wanted to go was open but the line was insanely long. So we went looking and lots of places were closed. There were trees down all over the place. The other thing that was odd was that in our backyard there's trees down all over and it looks like we just went through a hurricane. Which we did, but it just didn't feel that bad. How could all those trees fall and we didn't even know about it? Another interesting thing about Thursday was that we drove by this gas station and the line was all the way down the street for a very very long ways. I wish I had taken a picture of that. I've never seen anything like it. I guess so few gas stations were open and that was the result. In the end, there was a Chinese buffet that was open and incidentally, one of the best I've been to in ages. So that was nice. Then we went home. Oh, also, most of the stop lights are still burned out so driving is sort of chaotic. I hope I don't have drive before they are working. So, that was Thursday.

Okay, now I want to tell you about yesterday. There are a lot of things with unpacking that I either have to just do on my own, or have to do with Dave, but not as many things that Dave can do on his own. I wrote a list of things we needed to get done and mine was considerably longer than his. So, once we were finally up and ready for the day.... (OHHHHH, I have to tell you this - I mean, I'm embarrassed to tell you, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I took a shower and put on PJs. Yes, that's right. It was WONDERFUL! I mean, we were just going to be here unpacking all day - where does it say that that's against the law? I know someone who's husband doesn't like when she wears PJs all day. And I just wanted to celebrate the fact that that's not the case for me.) Okay, so we're finally getting started on things and Dave goes to the corner gas station that just reopened and bought eggs. (our milk is not drinkable, we can't find a grocery store that's open when we go out, so we haven't been eating cereal for breakfast - isn't that so interesting? I'm sure you're happy to know that.) So, other breakfast options - I made egg burritos the day or 2 before and they were some sorta yummy. Yesterday Dave made French Toast. All by himself. Well, with me barking instructions from the "couch"/computer area. This might not seem like much to some of you, but trust me, it's progress. I was very impressed. They were fabulous. (then he did the dishes too) He seems to be enjoying certain aspects of non-bachelorhood, such as having more than 5 items of food in the kitchen. And having a bookshelf with all his books organized, rather than looking for algebra textbooks buried under socks in a random laundry basket. And whenever I made something to eat, aka cook, his eyes bulge out of his head and he looks startled and ultra impressed, like - "YOU MADE THAT??" Anyway, it's fun. = P Another random tid bit of info - tomorrow I'll probably feel dumb for rambling so much about all these little details of our lives, but anyhoo... Dave discovered when he was unpacking that he had all these clothes that he didn't know he had. And he didn't have with him this summer in Warsaw. So yeah, we bought a lot of clothes for him over the summer and then come to discover a whole pile more and yeah, he has so many clothes it's not funny. I feel a bit guilty - like today I counted fourteen short sleeved dress shirts. Yeah, 14. And there's some in the laundry. I feel like we should be handing some of them out to homeless people or something. We sorted all his clothes yesterday and he let me get rid of some, but there's still 14 + dress shirts. The plus side is, we can go nearly forever without doing laundry, which is very expensive, so maybe we'll save money in the long run...

So, now I want to tell you about today. Ahhhhh today... where did it go? After sleeping in till some ungodly hour, the intent was to do some shopping. We had a few places we needed to go -Dave needed to get some small pieces of metal before he could finish putting the desk together, which is of utmost importance for organization sake, we had a rather long list of stuff from a wal-mart (shudder) type place, and then wanted to get some things from Bed, Bath, and Beyond where we were registered. It's a long story, but we had a coupon we could use and then biggest thing we wanted to get were dishes. I have to tell you this story. I've had these dishes picked out ever since we registered. They were really nice all white with a design sort of cut out of them in these cool stripey things. They were bone china though and always with the really expensive dishes. So I couldn't understand why a 4 place setting was only 44 bucks. I mean, that's corale prices. So today when we were actually going to buy and started looking closer, it all made sense. It was 44, not for a 4 place setting, but for 4 pieces: ONE place setting. We wanted to get enough for 12. Yeah, um we didn't get those. So I gathered what was left of my broken, weary spirit and went to the cheap dishes section, where we did find some that we both liked for a quarter of the price, and actually, the longer we looked, the more I liked them better than just stark white - no offence to anyone who owns white dishes - none at all. Anyway, the ones we got are Khaki swirly on the inside, brown on the outside with a stripe of various color around the outside. I think they'll go with pretty much any color we'd ever decide to have in the kitchen. I really like them. Yeay! Now we have dishes and a table. (side note: it's so nice to have a guy that has opinions about dishes and shower curtains and spoon rests and tables ... etc. I tend to be on the indecisive side [okay, that's a gross understatement] and it's so nice to have someone to help out with all these little and big decisions.) But oh yeah, what happened was the Bed Bath and Beyond didn't actually have the dishes we wanted, just the display. And they couldn't order them because they still didn't have power and were running on a generator. But there's another BB and B in town so we drove way over there (first we stopped at Lowes but Dave decided that what he needed he could get at Walmart so we left empty handed - that will make sense later in the story). So we go all the way to the other BB and B and they do indeed have the dishes. Annoyingly, they didn't have the shower curtain we wanted. That was at the other store but we didn't want to get it because we wanted to use our coupon for everything. After a big kerfluffel about coupons and things (I was SO mad at myself - I left my receipt at home for the cookware we had bought a couple weeks ago and they said they would apply the coupon to both purchases. So I have to find another coupon to get the rebate for the cookware and I lost a bit of money... bla bla bla... it's a long boring story.) So, we got dishes and a few other small items for a steal of a price with the coupon and with my gift card I had from my cookware purchase. THEN, we had the long list of stuff to get at Walmart, but we were really really stinkin hungry at this point, and what are we going to do. We're not supposed to be spending money in this fashion, but we had lots more to do. So we go to a restaurant and split something. And it's getting later and later. So the plan was go find Walmart. We asked Lucy to take us there and she did - out of business. So we went to another one - closed. So we tried Target - closed. At this point, we were a long ways from home. And also at this point, our need to use the facilities after drinking WAY too much beverage at the restaurant, was far overshadowing our desire to make it to Walmart and get our stuff. Oh my. So we're driving home and searching for ANY place that might be open and have a public restroom. Drove past a Walgreens, bummer, missed that one. Whipped into a CVS with all the lights on - closed. There's an open gas station! Hooray! Oh shoot, the store is actually closed and you can get gas only with your card. Oh, there's a Burger King right across the street, clearly open - so we go there: open only for drive through. It's getting painful. Keep driving - OH LOOK, there's a gas station with all the lights inside on! Hooray!! Relief at last! So I (hobble) in - look around... oh no... sinking feeling in my gut... "excuse me, where's your bathroom?" "We have no public bathroom!" WHAT? What sort of gas station doesn't have a public bathroom!! That's what people do! They fill up they're gas tanks, empty their bladders, and away they go. So terribly unimpressed. So we keep driving and driving and driving... and at long last... could that be a bar? With a generator? sure enough. We whipped in and made great haste and the wretched ordeal came to an end. I have never been so happy to see a bar in my life. And I think everyone was too drunk to notice a couple of non-paying customers using the bathroom. Except for one very creepy looking old man who sat at the counter and glared at me as I walked out. I'm pretty sure his intent was to follow and murder me, but Dave came just in time. whew! So we came home. Nothing from walmart, including nothing needed to assemble the desk. In fact, we were gone nearly the entire day "shopping" and bathroom hunting and came home with dishes. Yep, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to document the huge waste of time that was today. I feel bad that some of you will feel obligated to read all this. (I guess we did come home and Dave changed the burned out light bulbs and I scrubbed the quarter inch of crud off the ceiling fan in our room, as he handed me blade by blade. So all was not lost today.) So I'm going to go now. 10,000 calleth... or maybe Dave has to do Math tonight. I don't know. But it's only 11:22 meaning we have another 3 or 4 hours before sleepy time. goodnight. Oh, one more thing to mention. Sorry. If I may complain just a little - I really need a chiropractor. I tend to be tight in my neck and shoulders, but have been experiencing much more intense pain and tightness than is normal. It's so weird. It's like there's this spot right in the middle of my upper back between my shoulders that all the pain comes from and that has this catch that needs to "give" or pop or something. Like to reach in front of me and pick something up is very painful in that spot and then the pain shoots out from there. It's very not fun. I should close on a happy note. Well, this might be happy for you - some day I'll have a job and will do something with my life other than bore you with every detail of it. hooray! Oh but wait, I do have one more thing. Dave said the other day... "I'm just scared that one morning I'll wake up and you will have eaten half my arm." Okay, so being cooped up with little social interaction may make me a bit squirrly and I hate to admit, violent, at times. But only just a little. I feel like we are the only 2 people alive sometimes. But thank goodness for a sense of humor. We have spent more time laughing our heads off at eachother the last couple weeks and I think that has kept me sane. good bye for real.

Addendum: (following morning) I was getting ready to proclaim joyfully that the persistent, most aggravating insomnia that was such a part of my life the months leading up to the wedding was gone. I did have trouble sleeping on our honeymoon, but since coming to Baton Rouge, I've slept 9 - 11 hours many nights and still been groggy the next day. arg. also annoying. But it's really nice to not lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Last night I slept from about 1:30 - 5 something. ugh. wide awake. Also last night as I was getting ready for bed, I dropped a dresser drawer on my toe. Holy jumpin, it hurt like the furry of I don't know what. So I went to bed icing my tow and heating my back. Then I woke up early. And my toe still hurt. So instead of eating half of Dave's arm, I stumbled out in the living room to look for something to do. And found myself here. What am I doing adding to this post that's already the size of Toledo? I don't know. But here's some more things that I woke up thinking about - 2 things actually. Our microwave, and our stove. Dave's (stupid, little, annoying) microwave does not heat things well. (I am grateful for Dave's microwave, really, I am) You need to heat things way longer than you would in a normally functioning microwave. I don't know if that has something to do with the fact that the rotating microwave plate is in Iowa at the moment... Anyway, I've just had this hankering for popcorn the last while. The first time I tried to make some in the microwave - oh my, the hideousness the resulted. Basically, it was way underdone -- most of it unpopped with enough of the buttery goodness for 20 pounds of popcorn in a quarter of the bag. ugh. The next time I was determined to not make the same mistake. I used the popcorn setting even - At no point did the popping noises become less than 2 seconds apart or whatever it is (I don't think anyway) but oh my, I think I heard a smoke alarm go off in Florida! The rock hard, jet black substance was not edible in any way. Now I only have one left. What do I do? Any suggestions?

And now, the stove. It's way hot! The other day I wanted to make homemade pizza (most of this is in the comments of Sabrina's blog, but I'll ramble about it here anyway). I had honestly not made home made pizza in years and now I remember why. First of all, it took me about 2 hours to make. Yeah, I'm slow, but 2 hours of precious unpacking (or 10,000) time? THEN, the STUPID oven - it was not in very long at all, and the first time I checked it, it was QUITE crispy. I was so torked. Dave thought it was wonderful of course, but I think the taste buds of guys are some how affected by that chemical bath thing that washes over their brains while they're in the womb. And then, what was the real clincher in my mind was when I started adding up how much stinkin money was in that pizza. Granted I wanted it to be good and put a lot of stuff on it, but we could have ordered any pizza anywhere for cheaper. Now I know why people order in pizza.