When we Swam

Also, since it's been stuck in my head for the past two days, I share this:

Gobble

We're hosting Thanksgiving.

This isn't actually a very big deal. We aren't having the entire family over - Thanksgiving is the holiday we've decided to do our own thing with since we are with my family for every single other holiday, as well as birthdays, and other random times throughout the year. We hang out at home and I get to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Dog Show so I can pick out which dog I would someday like to have yapping in our backyard.

One year we had a friend over, who didn't have family around. It was low-key. The year Bug was born was eventful, what with my c-section incision deciding to join the party as well as Bug rocket-puking one of only a handful of times she's ever barfed in her life, and I wept at the dinner table because my hormones were all screwy, and our photos from that year just do not do the scene justice (OH, that was a FUN year). Last year was our first year here in the house, and I honestly couldn't tell you what we did. I think we had friends of ours over. Maybe we were by ourselves? Maybe R has a better memory than I.

This year, friends of ours are coming over. One couple. Possibly another friend with a friend of hers will stop by later in the day for leftovers and/or dessert.

Ramble, ramble.

My point to all this. For definitely four, and possibly six, people, I currently have a SEVENTEEN POUND TURKEY in my fridge.

Why, you might ask?

Good question!

I had a coupon for a free turkey. The smallest turkey left for this particular brand was SEVENTEEN POUNDS.

Our friends are certainly getting leftovers to take home.

As an aside, one of our cats is currently licking the wall while standing on his hind legs and mewling.

Virus Kitty

Orange

I've been spending less time online lately, overall. My Google Reader is overflowing. My emails are backing up. My hulu queue is staying full.

Ok, I admit I've been playing my fair share of Farmville on Facebook, but I'm guessing my liking of that game will dissipate after another level or so. Plus, there's this. I don't even normally do Facebook games (Warbook was the last one I played, and once I hit level 50 I quit playing any of the games).

I've also been working on making our kitchen look less like someone shopped the clearance rack of a yard sale and more like someone made an effort to make things coordinate. We have the ugliest floor, but it won't be replaced for a couple of years, unfortunately. So I'm trying to make do with what we have and not have clashing patterns and contrasting colors. I think we're going on six weeks of working on the kitchen. If it we six months, then you can pick on me. For now, I'm ok with my slowness.

We also rearranged the living room over the weekend, because having the kitchen in disarray wasn't enough. Thankfully the living room only took about an hour and is mostly settled. We're making a corner of the living room the toy area, instead of the ENTIRE LIVING ROOM being the toy area.

It's hard this time of year, with the time change and darker days. We have a SAD light somewhere in our basement, and once this kitchen is done I'm determined to dig around until I find it. The kitchen will be brighter and cheerier and that will certainly help MY feelings about winter. Our kitchen is in the center of our house, and had dark wood and dark-ish walls and has a dark floor.

R, to his credit, tolerates all this house upheaval that I put us through and lets me have my way. He puts up with a lot from me.

Bug is growing by leaps and bounds (she's outgrowing pants and shoes and coats). She's being more affectionate (she gave the vacuum cleaner a kiss before going to bed last night). She's talking more (less "da" for everything and more attempts at words). We ventured out to the zoo for a family adventure (free tickets!) and she got a kick out of the monkeys and the otters. She was passed out cold for the drive home.

I need a vacation. A proper one with fun sights and sleeping in and drinks I've paid too much for simply because they have an umbrella in them. But, alas, real life beckons and says we need to save that money for a new roof, for a new fence, for a new bed (holy cats do we need a new bed), for the crown on my tooth. So I read more and nap once in a while and try not to worry about it too much.

Halloween

We didn't get many trick-or-treaters this year. Somewhere in the vicinity of thirty-five, I believe; more than last year.

We bought Bug a chicken costume that she picked out and talked about a lot until it arrived. She was excited when we took it out of the box. However, when she put it on, she acted like she was being punished. And that was the last time she wore the chicken costume.

She didn't go trick-or-treating, which is fine since we'd only be going to a couple neighbors' houses. She wasn't all that interested in the trick-or-treaters coming to the door, either. But she did like the M&Ms she got to have...

I cannot believe it is November. I cannot believe it is time to change the clocks back. I cannot believe it is 4am and I am up again. I had a whiskey & coke after we turned out the outside light and gave a bunch of candy to the last group of kids, and I suspect that has a lot to do with it. I must be getting older if alcohol keeps me awake instead of helping me sleep. Ha.

Dreams

I don't watch scary movies because they give me nightmares. I don't read Stephen King or whoever today's popular horror author is. I haven't seen a horror movie since college. It's helped, because I rarely have a bad dream.

Last night I had some sort of bad dream and I ended up running into our living room in my nightgown in the middle of the night. I was only partially awake when I ran out, and became fully awake when I realized it was 62 degrees in this house and I was standing in my sleeveless nightgown freezing.

I don't know what the dream was about, or why I ran from my bedroom into the living room. I just know that when I think about how I felt running from the bedroom, my heart gets all aflutter again.

Tonight before bed I've watched The Office (the wedding episode, and I admit I got teary because, awwww. Love.) and Grey's Anatomy (which, frankly, just annoyed me and wasn't really good). Neither one should be nightmare inducing, but we'll see.

Actually, wait. I think I just figured it out. We've had wasps getting into our basement somehow (sweet merciful crap I do NOT want to think about HOW or what they're destroying and how it will need fixing). The kitten (who is a year and a half old but is still cute like a kitten) killed one. I killed two. R killed one that had gotten upstairs. We're not entirely sure they're coming in through the basement, but it's likely. I didn't see any today when I went down, and the cats have remained relatively calm (although the older cat is currently giving the evil eye towards the window because a 'boom car' is driving by).

So. Let's hope for no more wasps and that it was a fluke.

Paint paint paint

We're painting our kitchen cabinets and wall. I've hated our kitchen since we moved in, and cannot wait to get this completed so the kitchen is less like a seizure inducing blast of ugliness and more like a seizure inducing blast of brightness.

Ok, it won't be THAT bright, but we're going from very, very dark cabinets to bright white, and ugly country-blue stripe/floral wallpaper to a very bright orangey-yellow.

I took time off work. We're only about 15% complete. HAHAHA I completely underestimated how long this would take. I figured two weeks. It will probably be a month, but it's OK because between R and I can we get it done pretty well.

Ok, honestly? I hate sanding and he's doing the sanding part now. I have a BLISTER on my pointer finger and my thumb from sanding. Who gets blisters from sanding?

I like painting. It's very soothing. Plus it covers up the UGLINESS of what we currently have.

As an aside, Facebook keeps telling me to friend a couple of you I know only through blogging. One of you I've known for around ten years and have met up with around various places of the internet. One I've known for about a year. It always feels weird to say, "Hey! Be my friend on Facebook!" for people I've emailed here and there, but would be happy to share that part of my life with. But I married a man I met on the internet, so my boundaries in such matters are perhaps fuzzy.

Neighborly

We didn't move around a lot when I was growing up. We moved once, from a really big city to the middle of nowhere. People rarely moved to the town I grew up in. It was rare for a new kid to join the class (I think there were two in eight years that had moved into town). Most people moved away.

We were close to our neighbors, though. One set of neighbors were like surrogate grandparents to my sisters and I. When we had a house-fire, our neighbors had my sisters and I sleep over at their place until we had other arrangements. I learned about farming and cows and hard work from one of neighbors, too.

The first time I remembered moving (since we moved to the middle of nowhere when I was quite small), was into the dorms. I was SO EXCITED that I got there at 8am, right when the doors opened and we were allowed in. My car was weighed down with everything I truly thought was important (I needed, MAYBE, 1/4 of what I packed). I knew all the other ladies on my floor. And most of the guys (the women's and men's sides were split by a lobby).

Then I moved back home because I dropped out of college after that first year due to depression and thinking my internship job at the gigantic, international company was taking me places (it didn't, really, since I was laid off).

Then, the gigantic, international company hired me back. Then they laid me off again six months later. Then they told me I could have a job an hour and a half away. Oh, and could I start next week?

Being nineteen, I said sure. I had nothing else to do and I needed health insurance and money.

So I moved in with my sister. And her husband. And their toddler son. And their pre-teen daughter. I got to know their neighbors. I knew almost everyone on their street, except for the older couple at the end of the block because they kept to themselves and didn't really talk to anyone or go outside.

Eventually, I couldn't take the drive anymore. Nor living with my sister and her family (too stressful for us all, frankly). So I moved into my own place. Finally. It was a small apartment building, and I knew the people on my floor. The guy next door to me died after a few months. I didn't find out until I saw furniture being moved out and asked his son if his dad was moving. Oops. (To be fair, the old guy never came out of his apartment anyway.) There was the couple at the end of the hall with the four-year-old girl who liked to escape in the middle of the night and knock on my door to come in and play. By the time we moved out, R and I had nicknames for quite a few of our favorite people and were pleased whenever our not-so-favorite people moved out (like the guy we found out had multiple warrants and would blast his music in the middle of the night and have friends over that would get into screaming arguments with each other). Oh, and the neighbor who lived upstairs with the squeaky bed that was so squeaky we heard too much, and who I'm thankful I was not sleeping with, and that's all I'll say about that, thank you very much "Mr. No Rhythm Speed-racer."

I bring this up because I still do not understand a certain trait of Minnesotans: distancing from everyone. I'm an introvert and I still don't understand this.

It's a completely different neighborhood environment than anything else I've lived in. In the apartment building, it was a little different. We got to know each other simply because we all lived in the same building. At the house, there are two sets of neighbors I'd be OK with running over to their house in the middle of the night in case of emergency. Two other sets I'd go over in the daytime if I saw them outside and I was outside and would happily chat with them, but probably wouldn't go out of my way to do so. The rest? We've either yet to meet, or they keep to themselves so completely they never look at anybody else or go outside. One neighbor being an exception to all of the above, but we won't get into that because she's just nuts. There is only one set of neighbors that if I saw them in the store, I'd recognize them. The rest? I probably wouldn't recognize even if they waved and said hello to me by name.

And we're not alone in this. Friends of ours have lived in the same house for 25 years and only know two neighbors' names. A friend at work said she only knows her next-door neighbor and has never met the ones across the street. She's lived in the same house for 10 years.

Part of it is I'm not outgoing. I'm not an extrovert. I tend to not make a big effort to meet people. Part of it is this Minnesota stand-offish-ness. I think I should keep going with this personality trait of mine and not take it personally that I don't know the other neighbors. I probably would take it personally, but this seems to be common of almost everyone I talk to about their neighbors, at least of those that own houses. Townhomes and condos seem to have a different community, as do apartments.

Do you know your neighbors? Am I being over-eager in wanting to meet them (mind you this is a year and a half later, and I've gotten the hint they keep to themselves, so I'm not out to run across the street the moment I see them outside)? Am I just old-fashioned in how I thought people knew the people in their neighborhood?

Sicky

Bug is sick. It's her first real cold ever. Which is unfortunate, but inevitable, considering all the kids are back at the daily germ factory, I mean school. R is coming down with something. Right now I'm not sure if I'm coming down sick or if I'm just exhausted.

To help Bug eat more, since she's not up to much for food, I made some of her favorites - chicken and broccoli mixed with cream of mushroom soup over noodles. It only figures that the child who yells "MA!" through her nasal passages loves cream of mushroom soup, too. What a Midwesterner.

I remember when I was growing up, we had some meal with cream of mushroom soup mixed in as a main ingredient at least once a week. Usually more. (As an aside - we used to buy it by the CASE from the local co-op, but I digress.) When I was in junior high, somewhere around 11-years-old I'd guess, I was a friend's house. Her mom served cream of mushroom soup for lunch. Just the soup. I was dumbfounded. Cream of mushroom soup wasn't a soup, it was an ingredient! I lived a sheltered life. It never dawned on me that the word SOUP was right in its name. For some weird reason, I remembered that when I was cooking tonight.

Bug likes her noodles, but didn't eat much tonight. Her nose is plugged, she has a fever, and we're keeping an eye on her. My paranoia tells me to be ready to go to the doctor in the middle of the night tonight, so I'll be showering and getting a few things together "just in case." She hasn't been sick like this before, so it's all new to us.

Worry-wart = ME.

This is the kid, though, who was literally running laps around the living room while I stood in the middle of the room trying to wake up while R was leaning against the cabinets waiting for the coffee to finish brewing.

And, frankly, I'd rather the first sickness happen when she's old enough to be entertained and distracted by the television so she can rest. If she was six-months-old, there's not a lot you can do for distraction from feeling icky.

Guitar Hero

We now have Guitar Hero 3 in our house (super cheap thanks to coupons and a gift card).

My productivity, once Bug is in bed, has just diminished considerably.