Where did the days go?

It is Wednesday, again. The days seem to drag and fly by at the same time! Here is a quick update on life:

1. I painted the dining room and now only have one room left to paint (living room). I'm hoping to get that finished before our housewarming party this weekend. The bathroom wall cabinet has arrived but needs to be installed, that may have to wait until Friday.

2. We went to our last 'law prom' on Saturday night and had a blast! It is crazy to think that Frank and his friends are almost finished with school, but I'm excited that we're almost there! Next comes the Bar in July, then real life begins.

3. Frank and I agreed on a rug for the dining room, now we just have to find time to go get it. Maybe we can agree on a rug for the bedroom and office, too - it would be nice to knock it out in one trip.

4. I'm annoyed with politicians that make asses of themselves. You aren't going to win support from people that matter with idiotic press stunts. Sure, you may be able to twist it around so that your lemmings back home think you are great, but everyone in Washington can see through your farce and it makes you look stupid. No one wants to work with someone that is stupid (except Obama, who chose Biden as VP...I will never understand that) so good luck getting anything done between your ridiculous grandstanding. ugh (these comments are aimed at Stephen Lynch of MA, and Ari David of CA)

I'm Excited About: Massage Edition

I'm getting a massage tonight. Need I say more?

I cannot wait, this is about 6 months overdue and if I waited one more day I think my back would have held an outright revolt. I hold most of my tension and stress in my upper back with my legs taking any left over tension and holding it in my quads.

A couple of years ago it was getting close to Christmas and Frank was deciding what gifts he should get for me. I do my best to be straight forward and honest and not desperately hope for things that I've never mentioned to him before - that being said, I'm pretty sure I had said (a few times) I would LOVE a massage, like a real one, with a massage therapist. So, I hoped and waited and ..... did not get a massage. Want to know why?

Because Bill Simmons' wife, The Sports Gal, who occasionally writes for his columns listed a massage gift certificate as "cop out" gift (Week 13) for wives/girlfriends/etc! I was furious! I love spa gift certificates and I really do want it. I wrote a mean email to Sports Guy and told him that his wife ruined my Christmas.

After that I told Frank, flat out, that a massage was a wonderful gift and that I would be happy to get one every Christmas, birthday, anniversary, or for any other gift-giving occasion.

I'm glad we got that settled.

Tonight I'm going to Massage Envy - I think I've mentioned them before. If you've never had a massage I recommend you call them to schedule an appointment because they run a $50 special for first time clients. $50 for a 50 minute massage - woo!

Ramblings

1. My eyes are super-duper dry. It feels like someone keeps dropping sand in them. I actually used ClearEyes last night and again this morning. I may buy some for the office while I'm out for lunch today. The thought of contacts is painful.

2. I'm getting a massage tomorrow night after work. My friend Ali and I have been talking about doing this for months and we finally booked it. I'm super psyched because I can feel the knots in my back even when I don't move. It is way past time.

3. Law Prom is this weekend. It is our last one, I don't have a dress, and I need a haircut. I went shopping the other evening and didn't find one dress that I couldn't live without, I barely found a dress that was 'ok'. I decided to come home empty-handed and just shop in my own closet. This can be tricky as my weight seems to fluxuate somewhat wildly and there have been times in my life when nothing in my closet fit me...I'm hoping that I'm my normal size right now, otherwise I'll have to go buy that pretty-but-not-super-impressive dress that I tried on at Dress Barn (moo).

4. The Olympics are ranking at about a 5 for me right now. There are a few atheletes that I find interesting, but there certainly aren't any Michael Phelps. I have yet to sit down with the intention of watching the Olympics, but I have found myself watching them by accident about 5 or 6 times. The weather is pretty icky for Canada, perhaps they should have talked to China about seeding the clouds and what not before the games. Maybe things will get more interesting later...or maybe not.

Before - main floor edition

Here is the "before" tour of the main floor of the house. Our living room, dining room, and kitchen make up this floor. I have not painted anything on this level and honestly, there is still some unpacking to be done.

This is the view from coming down the stairs. The front door is to the right and the dining room is to the left. We have the same sage-green couches from the last place and a great rug that matches them perfectly. The couches are comfy and somehow have managed to fit in all of our homes, what a lucky break for us!

This picture was taken from the spot between the couches, in front of the small bookshelf. You'll notice that the TV is sitting on the coffee table. I kind of like it that way, but Frank isn't sold on the 'no coffee table' thing yet so we may come up with some sort of solution for that later. In my mind's eye (which, coincidentally has no budget whatsoever) I see a couple of cube ottomans that can be foot rests, coffee tables, and blanket storage - you know the ones that have a tray on the underside of the lid? Those.

Well, Hamilton is obviously bored with the living room so we'll move to the dining room. I'm sure it says absolutely nothing about us that the only functional piece of furniture in the dining room is the bar, and that it has been functional since day 2. I'm going to say that it is because the contents are so fragile and I just couldn't stand to leave it in boxes on the floor for fear of breaking something. Yes, that is exactly what happened.

This bookshelf-turned-china-cabinet may be my favorite feature (after the chair rail that you can't see in this picture). It will hold all of our dishes and cook wear that we use on a regular basis but can't fit in the kitchen. Lucky for us, as Tina pointed out, our dishes are very pretty and make a lovely display. The not so pretty things that don't stack well will go in the portions with doors for my sanity's sake.

And here is the table and that lovely chair rail that I'm so excited about! Once there is paint on the wall the chair rail will be much more noticeable. Below the rail will be red and above will be cream. I'm hoping for some awesome fabric to fall from the heavens from which I will sew curtains. Right now I'm dreaming of toile, we'll see if someone has a toile sale that just happens to match my paint....don't hold your breath, but intercessory prayer might be nice!

The table will not always be in the corner like that, once I paint and put more things away (like all of the boxes you see) the table will come more toward the center of the room so that there is room to sit. I'm also hoping to find the perfect rug for this room, but I think I may need to decide on the lay out before I know what the "perfect rug" is going to look like. I could go huge and try to cover the entire floor, or I could keep the table pushed toward the back wall and use a smaller area rug underneath to help separate the space. Huh, we'll see.

Now the kitchen. It is tiny, it has no dishwasher, a tiny window over the door, and almost no counter space - but it works! I have no intention of painting the kitchen right now, though I can't make promises for later. Perhaps a fresh coat of paint in a year when I'm not tired of painting anymore.

Past the (gas!) stove top and the fridge are the basement stairs. Sometimes I hoped there was a tiny pantry hiding back there but my dreams were dashed when we moved in and spacial reasoning kicked in. Luckily amazon.com and Prime shipping came to the rescue and we have a lovely kitchen rack at the bottom of the basement stairs that holds our cooking supplies, pots, pans, and assorted kitchen gadgets (the coffee maker, for example, lives in the basement when not in immediate use). Some things have already changed! I put the microwave on top of the fridge yesterday, freeing up a little room on the table and inching us closer to unpacked.

And that is all for now folks, the basement will have to wait! Oh, I have the pictures, I just like making you wait. And I'm enjoying that I am getting so many good posts out of these pictures - an added bonus to having 3 floors in the new digs!

Getting There - Upstairs edition

So, there isn't much on the walls yet but the walls are painted so it is time for an update.

The office - the walls have been painted, the bookshelves are up, the books unloaded, and the desk is operational. Frank has hung his Tottenham scarf but most of the other details are still to come.

The bookshelves will be organized and then decorated with pictures and sports paraphernalia. I promised Frank that he could hang all of his Dartmouth Winter Carnival posters when he has an office...so hopefully those will go up soon too!

Some of the cooler items may end up in Frank's office in Fairfax, so I can't promise pictures of diploma's or J.D.s. And here is Frank, putting the office to good use! He was a good sport and agreed to downsize his desk - his former huge desk is now serving as my sewing/crafts/laundry folding/gift wrapping table in the basement. Thanks Frank!

This final feature is temporary and really comes and goes as it pleases. We didn't install it, it just shows up sometimes.

The bedroom - walls are painted a cool Newport Blue. My mirror is hung over the dresser, and is the only thing on the walls so far. We bought and constructed an armoire for Frank as there is only one small closet in the bedroom.

Wall decorations, a rug, and window treatments are still to come. I'm hoping to use the same curtains we had at the old place by cutting and sewing the two panels (four, really; two black, two patterned) to fit as one panel per window (there are three windows in our room now).

The headboard is the same from the last place, but it hasn't gone up yet. It is a two person job and so far this week Frank or I have been away during reasonable drilling hours. Did I mention that the duplex is pre-WWII construction? Well, it is and that means it is sturdy, and that you need a drill to hang a picture.

Finally, the bathroom. It is bright yellow! Again, Frank's choice and he did well. I pointed to the shower curtain and said "chose a color from that curtain for the walls," he took no time at all to chose yellow. Subsequently, I have about 96% of a gallon of yellow paint in case anyone is in need...

I'm trying to find the perfect cabinet to hang over the toilet. We're sadly low on storage space in the bathroom so I'm trying to find something that is 1. white 2. affordable 3. has doors/drawers that are not glass 4. has a towel rack on the bottom. I don't think this is too much to ask, but apparently Target, Home Depot, and CraigsList think it is.

We could also use something in the shower to hold our soap/shampoo/conditioner, but I'm picky - I hate the caddies that hang from the showerhead, they never stay up and I always hit them when I'm washing my hair. Still dreaming up a solution for this one, I'll get back to you.

Lastly, I'm also hoping to find an under-the-sink solution. Be it a cabinet, shelf, or cubby, we need more storage. The good news is that mirror is a medicine cabinet, I just need to get around to organizing it and helping it to reach its full functional potential.

All for now, Hamilton and I are worn out from the tour. We'll post more "before" pictures from the rest of the house later on - a couple more rooms to paint and more boxes to unpack, and we'll let you see it before it all gets going!

Don't drink the water

I just came home from a lovely baby shower. Good friends, good food, a pregnant lady that could go into labor any time between today and march 3rd - you know, the usual.

Only there was something else there, too...4 other pregnant people! And I have my suspicions about another person there that I also think may be pregnant, but I'm not sure yet. There are so many babies in our Sunday School class that I'm losing count.

When Frank and I joined our Sunday school class it was about 6 couples and no one had kids. two and a half years later there are at least 15 couples and 5 babies and 5 more pregnancies. And that is just the ones I can think of off the top of my head! I'm sure I forgot someone, I just know it.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, if you are looking for some great friends you could very easily find them at Cherrydale Baptist, but if you don't want to get pregnant don't drink the water (or coffee) there, I think they spike it.

A Cautionary Tale

The Quan is coming to visit this weekend so we've been trying to get some things straightened and cleaned up around here. Not that Quan would be upset if we didn't, its just that I inherited this thing from my maternal lineage that requires me to scrub the house before anyone visits.

On the list of things to do was cleaning the dog. He needed a bath, he needed to have his ears cleaned, and he needed to have his nails clipped. He hates having his nails clipped, and I hate him when I try to do it and he is a pill. So, off to Petsmart I sent him.

I think something bad happened at Petsmart.

When we went to pick him up he was crying/howling/barking constantly, and he didn't know we were there. Then, we had the brilliant idea of putting him in a shopping cart so that he wouldn't get dirty or wet walking through the snow/ice/water/oil covered parking lot - he jumped out! (reminder, my dog is 14 inches tall) So Frank carried him the rest of the way to the car. On the drive home he wouldn't look at us or interact with us at all, very much like an angry teenager. Then when we got home we gave him a raw hide as a mea culpa and all seemed well again. Until he came upstairs to see us in the office, and as I was stroking his cute head, he let loose and tinkled all over the floor! He was immediately sent outside, and a few minutes later when I looked out the window to check on him, he was eating something that he should not have been eating! (it wasn't snow...)

Frank and I think something happened at Petsmart. He is acting drugged or abused, or both and we aren't too pleased. So, no more Petsmart for Hamilton, we'll go somewhere else - maybe somewhere where I can see the entire process start to finish and they don't take 4 hours for a bath.

He is sleeping again now and I think we'll take him on a nice walk this evening just to get some life back into him. Poor guy - none of this would have happened if he weren't such a pain in the rear when it comes to nail clipping.

We Apologize for the Interruption in Service

I went to bed last night around 10:30pm and woke up sick as a dog at 1am. After trying to go back to sleep, I continued to wake up ever 20-30 minutes because I was so sick.

Frank was an absolute champ! He rubbed my back, brought me a blanket (when I couldn't leave the bathroom and was freezing), and he scraped snow off the car at 3:45am so that he could drive me to the hospital.

Lucky for us the ER was not busy and I was in a room in no time, flat. I liked my nurses and doctors, except for the morning doctor - he was kind of a jack ass, but I was as nice as I could be to him because Frank doesn't like it when I am mean to people in positions of authority. At one point, when he was trying to tell me that there was nothing he could do for my nausea, the nausea that had been controlled for hours and had suddenly come back, I did say "So, you're saying 'that just sucks'?" He eventually gave me more nausea meds, well my nurse did and then we packed up to leave. Not surprisingly, I got sick one more time for good measure at the hospital but we left anyway.

Frank drove us to the pharmacy to get my pain and nausea meds then drove us home where I promptly took my meds and fell asleep. 7 hours later I woke up feeling hungover. I guess that is what dehydration feels like.

So, off to eat some apple sauce and gatorade.

Don't get sick in a snow storm - it is pretty terrible.

Still Here

I haven't been into the office since Thursday, February 4th. We're still looking at 2 feet of snow on the ground outside and we're expecting another 10-20 inches between noon today and 9pm tomorrow night.

That's right, I could see 4 feet of snow on the ground for the first time in my life. At which point I am packing up my husband and my hound and we're moving south.

Not really, but I had a dream about it last night and it was awesome.

Frank assures me that his camera is in the car so I'll make sure I get it out of the car before the snow starts up again and buries our car, again.

Hamilton is tiring of the snow and I am tiring of being in the house. Our road is still covered in snow/ice and is essentially a one-lane road at this point. Metro buses aren't running on side roads and the metro rail service isn't using outdoor tracks.

I used to think snow days were fun! Free vacation, an extra day to do stuff, but now after this many days cooped up and at least two more staring me in the face I'm over it.

On the plus side we have not lost power, we have plenty of food, and lots of painting and unpacking has been getting done.

I'll finish painting the bedroom today and maybe even start on the living room. Maybe I'll even have time to take "before" pictures of downstairs, too.

I hope you're day is lovely and full of sunshine and blissfully lacking in snow!

Before - upstairs edition

So we moved last weekend and spent this weekend snowed into our new home. I finally found a camera, but the battery died so I only got a few pictures.

We already painted over the lime green office/nursery (it was a nursery, now it is an office) with a grey-green/seafoam color. Frank chose the color for this room as it is mostly his office.

We aren't unpacked in there yet - we need to get the tools to anchor the bookshelves to the walls before loading them up with all of our books. Once that is finished we'll add stuff to the walls (art, diplomas, etc). Hopefully we'll find a rug for the room before loading up the bookshelves, too. The "after" pictures will have all of the final touches in place.

Next is our bedroom. The blue is called "newport blue" and is a grey-blue, a bit more subdued than our last blue bedroom. It is halfway painted (the blue is a bit darker in person than it looks in the pictures) and we're still looking for the right armoire to replace the temporary one Frank has now.

The "after" pictures will have the room entirely painted and there will be stuff on the walls. There may or may not be an armoire, depends on what we find.

The final upstairs room is the bathroom. Currently it is just an off-white color with a touch of yellow (testing the color) and a lot of spakle on the walls. When it is finished it will be yellow, which will coordinate with the shower curtain and compliment the black and white tiles.

I was hoping to have the bathroom finished this past weekend but the sanding block was in the car, and the car was under two feet of snow, so that didn't happen.

One major improvement that you cannot see is that when we moved in there was no showerhead. It was like taking a shower in a heavy mist - like the things they have at Disney World in the summer. Now we have a showerhead and I could not be happier about that!

That is all for now because the battery died on the camera as I came downstairs for more pictures.

Maybe I'll go paint more now, or unpack some more clothes, or take a nap.

Wednesday Nights

Wednesday nights are for small group. I love, love, loooove our small group. It is such a cool and random group of couples, we're all so different! And we eat dinner together each week before diving into our study. Tonight the theme is Asian.

Frank and I are bringing drinks/plates/cups/napkins. Usually Frank would see this theme as a challenge and would whip out the Wok and make something super awesome - but we can't find our stove under the mountain of stuff yet, so we're on paper product duty.

We've been with our small group for a long long time now, they are like our little family. I'm so grateful for those relationships and the trust we all have in one another. They are such a blessing to us, and I hope we are a blessing to them, too.

Two of our small group couples are the ones that swooped in and helped us unpack on Sunday evening - that is the kind of friends that they are. On a snowy, cold, Sunday night they came into our mess with smiles and open arms ready to help us get settled. You can't ask for anything better than that.

What a special bond a small group provides, something I never really understood until we became part of it.

Happy Groundhog Day

Am I the only one that thinks this should be a federal holiday? I bet Punxsutawney Phil would agree.

The DC area is celebrating Groundhog Day with rain, freezing rain, and snow...again. We're expecting anywhere from 4-6 more inches tonight and tomorrow, on top of the 1-2 inches we still have on the ground.

The good news is we're already moved into our home and we have plenty of unpacking to do should we get snowed in. Also, more good news, our dog loves snow! He's content to romp around in it, dive into banks of it, and sometimes try to eat it, and now that we have a fenced in back yard he can do all of that without one of us being outside with him!

My awesome boss just came and broke the weather news to me, but he also told me to head home early so for that I am grateful.

I hope it is more snow than ice, and I hope there is at least a 2 hour delay in the morning to make all of the worrying and driveway-salting worth while.

Happy Groundhog Day, here's hoping your 6 more weeks of winter are dryer than ours!

We Survived! (Again)

We are officially residents of Arlington, VA again. Frank is returning the keys to the old apartment today (and picking up one last thing that would not fit in the U-Haul, any of the 3 SUVs, or the 3 other cars full of our stuff).

The place is great - and our friends are AH-mazing! We had 7 people help us from 10am to 4pm, then 4 more reinforcements came in around 5pm to give us a second wind and help us get some of the furniture placed and boxes unpacked. I'm telling you, there is no way we could have done this without each and every one of them.

The first crew got all of our stuff loaded into the truck and the cars, they helped me clean the apartment, take out trash, drive it all over to the new place, unload everything, take furniture upstairs, take stuff to the basement, and maintain sanity. We bribed them with pizza, but honestly, that wasn't much of a bribe considering how much stuff we own!

Thank you so much Matt & Katie, Chaz & Holly, Dave, Zach, and Tina for all of your heavy lifting!

Then, just as we thought it was over...in came the Connallys and the Bairds! We still had Tina there, too! We got a second wind and managed to get the living room and dining room into functioning order (like, you can sit down on couches, and put away dishes and stuff). Tina and I put together the bedroom so that Frank and I could crash later with minimal effort. Thanks to the Connallys and the Bairds our apartment is livable and navigable, two things I didn't expect to happen until later this week. The Connallys even moved all of the office furniture into the middle of the room so that the room is ready to be painted! The Bairds helped to clean, unpack, and move boxes like only the Bairds can.

We are so very grateful for our friends.

No we just need to keep unpacking and get to painting! We'll be ready for visitors by May :)

I'll take pictures soon so that we can have a "Before and After" post later, but for now there are a few things stopping me:
1. I don't know where my camera is
2. I don't know where my computer is
3. We don't have internet at home yet
4. I can't upload pictures at work

So you'll just have to wait