Category Archives: Friends & Family

in which Kris sets a new record

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This is just one example of the many thousands of ways in which my best friend kicks major ass:

1. She moves 2,500 miles away from the city she’s lived in since she was eleven years old. She has never lived in a city that her mother didn’t live in. But now, at age 30, she overcomes her fears and does it, and she moves to a city that she loves, but where she has one friend. Me. (Well… Dave too, I suppose, but we’re kind of a package deal.) And she has no job in this new city, she just has her clothes and her dog with her.

2. She arrives on a Monday evening. She has job interviews on both Wednesday and Thursday of that first week. The first interview is for a job really, really wants, but is afraid to hope for because she doesn’t want to jinx it. The second interview, she was kind of “meh” about.

3. The following Monday – after she’s lived in this new city for all of one measly week – she gets the job that she really wants. She’s starting on Wednesday. As in, two days from now. Do you see what I mean? Kick. Ass.

Also, her realtor is showing her house to potential buyers tonight, so this is turning out to be quite a fabulous day for her.

This weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday, Kris and I met up with Janet and Linda and we went out dancing. We were going to go to a new club that I’ve never been to before, but the bouncer told us that both Linda’s and Kris’s shoes were “inappropriate” according to their dress code. They were both wearing ballet slipper style flats, and he said that “for insurance reasons,” all club-goers must have shoes with a sole that is least one inch thick. You know, I’m used to clubs having dress codes like “no sneakers” or “no ripped jeans” or whatever. (And man, can I put any more quotation marks in this paragraph?) But I think the rule about shoe soles just might be the biggest pile of “poo” (ha!) ever – I was in heels, and I’m pretty sure that after two cocktails, I would’ve been WAY more of an insurance liability than either of them in their flats. Whatevah.

So we drove over to Pioneer Square and went to a different club, which I’ve been to before, but it’s been ages. Apparently we showed up on “Voodoo Circus” night, which would’ve been cool if we’d known about it and been prepared for it. As it was, walking in the door, we were sort of like, “Um… the hell?” because there were crazy psychotic goth clowns running around all over the place, and it was a bit scary. We spent most of the night in the basement where they were playing normal techno-y dance music. Britney and Usher remixes? Oh, hell yeah.

Sunday, we met up with Linda and her friend Ashley (who I’ve now met three times, but it’s always been for very short intervals so I don’t really feel like I know her well enough to consider her a friend), and we saw the new Eve Ensler show, The Good Body. It was fantastic. Of course, I’m no theatre critic, and anything that I attempt to write about it will just come off as cheesy and trite, but I loved it and we’ll just leave it at that. If the show comes to your town, go see it. That is all.

Hope everyone’s having a happy Monday.

Day 5: home sweet home

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I forgot to mention: that whole thing about Lucky not wanting to lie down in the car? I am apparently brilliant, because I found a solution for that. Somewhere in Nebraska, I figured out that she just wanted to be able to see what was around her because she was stressed, and that’s why she wouldn’t lie down, even though her eyes were falling shut while she was standing up. She has a little bathmat that’s sort of her “dog bed” for car travel, and it was on the seat next to our luggage, which was stacked practically to the car’s ceiling. So I moved Kris’s & my suitcases (which are about the same size and shape) onto her side of the car, put her bathmat on top of them, and with the extra few inches of height, she happily lay down and went to sleep in the car. I guess it was just the idea that she could open her eyes and look around if she wanted to, which made all the difference. She slept for a good portion of the remainder of the trip. Score me one point for figuring out a dog’s brain.

Also, file this bit under too much information: Sunday night, after we had spent over two hours outside of a service station in Utah and then run on the ice & snow after the dog? Kris got out of the shower and said, “This is weird. I have little red bumps all over my legs, all the way up to my waist.” She said it hurt, sort of like a heat rash. I figured it was probably just her skin’s reaction to the change in climate, since she tends to have really dry and sensitive skin anyway.

Then I got in the shower and realized that I had the exact same thing. It didn’t hurt until the hot water of the shower hit it, then it burned worse than razor rash. It had pretty much gone away within the next 48 hours, but when Kris talked to her mom (who’s a nurse), she said that it sounds like we had early symptoms of frostbite. Fan-freakin’-tastic. So when I made that previous subject line about frostbite? I really wasn’t kidding.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about our last day on the road. There was only a little over 500 miles left – which, after you’ve driven 2,000 miles in three days, really doesn’t seem like a big deal. We set off from Idaho and headed through Oregon and into Washington. That was by far the most beautiful scenery of the whole trip. I don’t think there’s anything quite like the Cascade mountains, it’s just amazing to see. By the time we were about ten miles away from home, I could feel myself starting to squirm involuntarily in my seat. Nothing obscene, just a little instinctual happy dance. This trip was the longest I’ve been away from Dave since he and I moved in together in January of last year, and I couldn’t wait to see him. I practically jumped on him when I first saw him. (I didn’t, only because he probably wouldn’t have caught me, and we both would’ve ended up with some serious injuries.)

That night, in spite of our exhaustion, we still went to the grocery store and bought lovely fresh things with which to cook dinner. We were both so sick of junk food from fast food restaurants and truck stops that the thought of a real, cooked meal sounded like heaven. And honestly? It was simple (spinach fettucine with chicken & broccoli), but it was divine. Although it was still at least a good two days later before our stomachs were somewhat back to normal.

To sum up how things have been since then, I’m going to do bullet points because I’m lazy and I don’t feel like trying to make these thoughts flow in some kind of cohesive manner:

  • Kris and I are both still pretty exhausted, and we’ve been going to bed around 9:00 every night. I think I’m a little better than Kris, energy-wise, only because I don’t have the emotional exhaustion of a major life transition to deal with. I remember what it’s like to move to a new state and try to set up a whole new life, and it’s not easy or fun at all.

  • Kris has had two job interviews already, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday, and they both seem pretty promising. So that kicks ass.

  • Lucky seems to love our house, because we can close the gate on our driveway and give her free run of our entire two-acre property. The dog will run and run and run, until she comes inside and passes out on the floor. It’s hilarious to see. She’s “escaped” twice so far (gotten out when we forgot to close the gate), but we got her back within a few minutes, so it hasn’t been a big deal. We really do have to train her to come when she’s called, though.

  • Lucky and the cats: Dave’s cats are terrified of her. They’ve had enough run-ins with other neighborhood dogs to be highly suspicious, and that’s fine. I think they’ll come around eventually. Lucky met Teenie for the first time last night, which is the first time Teenie’s met a dog in her nearly-ten years on this planet. Lucky walked right up and licked her smack on the nose. Teenie just stared at her, but she didn’t growl or hiss. I’m hoping that’s a good sign. Either that or she was terrified and didn’t know how to react.

  • The barking is outta control. She barks at any strange noise, any new person, and Dave. (She’s getting better about him, but she’s generally just scared of men.) And oh, all the new critters! In the four days since she’s been here, she’s now seen her first horse (next door), deer (we have two that like the grass in our yard) and a possum (shudder). So that makes for an awful lot of barking. And her bark is ridiculously loud. We finally bought her a bark collar last night. It seems cruel, the whole idea of zapping your dog whenever they bark, but apparently they’re considered to be humane by most sources. And honestly, Dave and I both touched it when it was in “test” mode last night, and it doesn’t hurt, it’s just kind of weird and annoying. So hopefully that will help.

    • Back to helping Kris ease through this transition and her panic over “oh god I moved to a state where I only know one person and I won’t have any other friends or a social calendar to speak of:” we have plans for both Saturday and Sunday nights. Saturday, a bunch of the girls are getting together to go dancing, which we haven’t done since last fall. That’ll give Kris a chance to meet some of my friends, who she’ll hopefully bond with, and it should be a lot of fun. Then Sunday, a few of the girls are getting together again to see the new show by Eve Ensler (the woman who did “The Vagina Monologues”). It’s funny, all the husbands were invited along for both events, and all of them declined. I wonder why? (Hee!)

    mentally destroyed on a Sunday

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    This afternoon, I met up with a couple of friends to see “Brokeback Mountain.” I’ve heard and read so much about the film over the past couple of months that I thought I had pretty well prepared myself for it. I mean, there’s been so much hype about it that I figured it would either be a let-down, or else I’d find myself studying the actors rather than getting involved with the characters in the story. And I guess I was sort of right – watching the movie was pretty intense (moreso than I expected), but I didn’t cry or anything. (I cry a lot during movies. Way more than I do in real life.) Now, several hours later, I can’t seem to get that movie out of my head. I think it’s probably messed me up for the next couple of days. I won’t give away any spoilers for those who haven’t seen it, just… damn.

    Random aside: There were several old ladies in the theater with us, which I didn’t even notice until halfway through the movie. I really wonder what on earth they thought about the more graphic scenes. They must have been ok with it since they didn’t get up and leave. I guess by their age, they’ve probably seen it all.

    After the movie, I went for lunch with the ladies, which was nice. I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands getting ready for my road trip with Kris later this week. I hit a few motels to get their national directories (good to have when you don’t have a specific plan of exactly where you’re going to stop on the road), and I bought one of those big road atlas books that has maps of all the states. Because hey, MapQuest isn’t always 100% accurate, so it’s good to have a back-up reference.

    I can’t quite believe that I’m going to be in Memphis in 4 days. Well ok, the going to Memphis part really isn’t that big a deal – hell, I was there less than a year ago. I think what’s more shocking is the fact that Kris is finally moving here after talking about it for the past five years. I’m so happy about that, and a little nervous because I want her to find all of the happiness and success that she deserves, and all I can do is hope that this is the place where she’ll find it. I’m confident that she has a better chance of finding it here than in Memphis, so at least I know she’s making a step in a positive direction for her life. But I also know from experience that major transitions are never easy, so I just pray that hers is as smooth and painless as possible.

    merry christmas

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    I wrote a long post a few days ago about our plans for the holidays, and never got around to posting it because I thought I’d wait until it seemed more time-appropriate. And as it turns out, our plans? Didn’t so much happen. The top item on my agenda was that we’d go to church on Christmas Eve, even though I haven’t been to church once in the 4 1/2 years that I’ve lived here. I’m not a huge fan of organized religion, and it’s hard to find a church that that jives with my particular brand of laid-back liberal Christianity (read: no hellfire & brimstone). But, I love the Christmas Eve service, and it’s one of the traditions that I have with my family that I thought I would really miss this year. So I did some investigating and found a church: Methodist (of which I am half), in the middle of downtown Seattle, and one of the oldest buildings in the city (very cool). And they mentioned tolerance and acceptance on their website, so I was totally down with that. Then, since we were going to be downtown anyway, after church we were going to walk around and look at the lights, and have our nice little romantic Christmas Eve, just the two of us.

    Yeah. How that played out? Early last week, Dave came down with some sort of cold/flu thing, so even if he could’ve stayed conscious for the entire hour-long church service (which was doubtful), he also has this incredibly scary cough that sounds like he’s dying of TB. We figured it wouldn’t have been too cool for us to subject the other church-goers to such horrifying sounds, so we stayed home. No downtown walking/looking at the lights, either. And probably no going to the movie theater today, since he still has the horrible cough. Darn it. I really wanted to see Narnia, too.

    What we did do, instead, was have a ridiculously huge meal (some I cooked, and some that came ready-made from the supermarket), the leftovers of which we’ll be eating for the next week. My grandmother would be so proud. Well, she wouldn’t have been proud of the ready-made items, but I used her recipe for stuffing, and it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Meanwhile, Dave drank enough Bushmill’s that he was not feeling too shabby by dinnertime. (Alcohol kills germs, right?) And we watched the first Lord of the Rings movie. I’ve never seen any of them, so we rented the whole trilogy for the weekend. As for the first one…. hmm, I’m not sure what I thought of it. It was good, I guess, but toward the end I was getting antsy, like, “could we just wrap it up already, please??” Maybe it was all the festive holiday egg nog I drank (and by “festive,” I mean “containing large amounts of bourbon”), or maybe I just don’t have the attention span for 3 hour movies. It’s definitely making me re-think the whole idea of seeing King Kong in the theater.

    Anyway, even though my plans got scrapped, and in spite of Dave being sick, it was still a very nice Christmas. I like that we spent our first Christmas as a married couple alone; and particularly in light of how sick Dave is, I’m really glad we didn’t have to fly anywhere. But I talked to everyone in my family last night, and Dave talked to his today, so it’s not like we’re totally disconnected out here. Overall it’s been really cool. Now if we can just figure out what the heck we’re doing for New Year’s…

    Hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday weekend!

    happy news all around

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    As for the issue of the horrid Jane Austen, I must confess that the movie was not that bad. At least, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. (My expectations were severely low, after all.) But I must say that I am just so tired of the whole “oooh, you’re horrible, I will hate you forever / no wait, I love you but there’s some conflict so we can’t be together / no wait, I love you & you love me and the conflict resolved happily so we’ll get married and have thousands of babies” formula. Yes, I know that Jane Austen probably invented the formula, but let’s face it, it’s been done. to. death. However, getting to spend time with the girls before and after the movie was awesome, so I really can’t complain. And I think we might now have plans with all of them for New Year’s, so that’s very cool.

    In totally unrelated news, I’ve been waiting to write about this because I didn’t want to jinx it, but I think I can officially say it now: Kris is moving here next month! I’m so excited, she’s been my best friend since college and I absolutely adore her, and she’s wanted to live in Seattle since long before I ever moved here, so I’m really happy that she’s coming. She’s had a few almost-moves in the past, but something always came up (usually money-related) that kept her from doing it. But she found out that her boss wants to retire, which means she won’t have a job after mid-January, and there’s nothing else to really keep her in Memphis. Her boss is also giving her at least two months’ severance, which is enough to cover moving expenses and the last few repairs she needs to do to her house to put it on the market. She’s going to move in with us for a month or so while she looks for a job and an apartment. (Poor Dave. He has no idea how loud our house is going to be after Kris shows up.) So it really is going to happen this time. And here’s how I know that it’s definitely going to happen: last night, I booked myself a one-way plane ticket to Memphis. Well, actually, I’m flying to Little Rock because it’s several hundred dollars cheaper, and then I’ll rent a car & drive 2 hours to Memphis. Because, you know, it’s just such a long way to drive by herself, so I’m going to drive with her. And her dog, Lucky. It has nothing to do with just wanting an excuse to take a 4-day road trip with my best friend, singing Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco songs at the tops of our lungs and making each other laugh until we have to pull over and find a place to pee. Oh no, nothing like that. But hey, it’s a non-refundable plane ticket, so she’s locked into her end of the deal now. Hah!

    Anyway, I’m flying down on January 19th – which, for those of you keeping track, is three days after my 30th birthday – and we’ll set off the next day. I’m hoping that we’ll make the 2400 mile journey in four days, but I’m a little skeptical of how a very tiny Mazda is going to fare on the very big mountains of Wyoming. (In January. In case you missed that the first time.) Dave is being given the responsibility of acting as our road trip meteorologist. We’re going to check in with him once or twice a day for weather updates, to make sure we aren’t going to be driving head-on into any major snowstorms. It should be fun. The dog is going to make it interesting; I’ve driven thousands of miles with Teenie in the car on multiple occasions (and flown with her several times too), but I’ve never traveled with a dog. The only aspect of it that makes me nervous is finding cheap motels on the road that have pet-friendly policies. I’ve snuck my cat into motels before and it was pretty easy. But it’s a bit more challenging to be stealthy with a 50-pound dog who really likes the sound of her own bark. Unless we can put her in a hat and a trenchcoat and teach her to walk on her hind legs. That might work.

    But who cares? Best friend is moving to town!!! Yay! Happy dance! Lots of exclamation points! Whee!!!

    New York state of mind, or something

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    Here’s the recap of the rest of our NYC trip, and be warned, this is going to be long. But first, a funny story. After that last post, our plan for the day started like this: Go to T’s apartment. Have breakfast with family. Everyone gets on the subway and heads down to the ferry, which will then take us to Ellis Island. Great!

    Here’s what actually happened. We took 3 steps out of our hotel, and a giant inflatable Scooby-Doo floated by several stories above us. As it turns out, the route that would take Dave and I from our hotel to my sister’s apartment required us to pass through Times Square, which was sort of a main artery of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. And guess what? You can’t cross a parade route. I got out my cell and called my sister.

    Me (yelling over the crowd noise): We can’t get to your place because the parade is coming down Broadway.
    Her: The what?
    Me: The parade? That happens every Thanksgiving?
    Her: Seriously?
    Me: Um, yeah. In fact, Big Bird is passing in front of us as I speak.

    She tried to give me a different route, but basically it just wasn’t happening. So the revised plan became: Dave and I would find breakfast on our own, catch the subway ourselves to the ferry point, and meet up with my family there. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Right. Here’s how that played out. We got on the subway (quick aside: before we got on, Dave stopped to have a smoke in Bryant Park. I just realized today watching Project Runway reruns that that is the place where their Fashion Week show was. Love it!). And because Dave stupidly let me be in charge of reading the subway map, I got us on the correct train, but going the wrong direction. We were in Queens before we realized our error. Oops. So we got off, walked across the platform, got back on the train going the right direction, and rode it to our stop. We had to change trains then, and I was starving to the point of crankiness, so we thought we’d get out and look around for food there. Guess what? Most restaurants are closed on Thanksgiving. So we had breakfast at McDonald’s, which is the first time I’ve eaten there since seeing “Super-Size Me,” and it was just as revolting as I thought it would be. Blecch. Then we finally found our second train, met up with the family, and did the whole tourist thing for the rest of the day.

    Friday, we all split up. My folks left, Dave went off in search of boy things (video games and such), my brother used my sister’s guest pass to work out at her gym, and my sister and I went shopping. Ah, Macy’s, how do I love thee? The Macy’s in New York is nothing like it is here. It’s 8 stories tall and takes up 2 buildings. It is truly an awesome sight to behold. And I did well in the self-control department, I only bought one pair of pants (black corduroy, and yes, they were on sale) and one pair of really adorable shoes (only I got them in black, not champagne).

    That night, Dave crashed early, so my siblings and I went to this karaoke place where you can rent a room by the hour and sing all the karaoke you want in a soundproof room, just you and your friends. That turned out to be pretty hilarious. I couldn’t even begin to tell you all of the songs that we sang, but a few of the artists include Britney Spears, ABBA, Captain & Tenille, Reba McEntire, Elton John, Barenaked Ladies, Van Halen, Weezer, Billy Joel, Electric Light Orchestra, and at least a couple dozen more that I’m forgetting. We were there for well over 3 hours. It was great.

    Saturday, my brother left early in the morning, and we had some time to kill before our flight, so my sister took us to see the World Trade Center site. It’s a weird place to go as a tourist – there’s just a general sadness in the air, and you notice that everyone on the street is a lot quieter. It’s almost like going to a cemetary to pay your respects, or visiting one of the concentration camps in Europe – only in this case, there isn’t really anything left to see except a huge hole in the ground. We didn’t stay there too long, it’s a bit overwhelming. On our way back, we passed through Grand Central Station so Dave could see it from the inside. It’s really beautiful there, and the bustling of noise and activity was quite a contrast to the place we had just left.

    The flight home was pretty miserable. I’m still sick – the severely cold weather in NYC didn’t help me at all – if anything, I think I might be worse, and I’m going to try to get in to see my doctor tomorrow. So, from a sinus standpoint, I was in hell for 5 1/2 hours. Also, the in-flight movie was “Must Love Dogs”, which I watched out of boredom, and god, that was a piece of crap film. Good actors, bad movie.

    That about sums it up. We had a great time, I’m just happy to be home and sleeping in my own bed now. I missed the cats, too. And hey, I start a new job this week! Woo!

    happy thanksgiving

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    Quick post while Dave’s in the shower: I survived the flight. I got a job. (More details on that later.) We’ve managed to eat some pretty awesome food – some cooked by my sister, some cooked by chefs in a fancy-shmancy restaurant. I got a great early birthday gift from my sister – a pair of jeans that make my ass look fantastic. (How rare a find is THAT?) We’ve been to the Museum of Modern Art and Central Park. We (meaning Dave and I – and probably my siblings, but definitely NOT my parents) got way too tipsy last night at dinner. I’ve managed to only get into one fight with my dad so far. (I’m doing well. Trust me.) And today we’re going to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty before we head back to T’s apartment and eat way too much food for Thanksgiving. I’m wearing my fat jeans in anticipation. Hope everyone has a good holiday.