Author Archives: Cindy

bom dia, voce fala o portugues?

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Our housekeeper came yesterday, which means I left for work and the house was dirty, and by the time I came home, it was clean. I have to say, it is an awesome feeling to come home to a clean house and to know that there is nothing you have to do to tidy it up. It feels totally self-indulgent and wonderful – like a long bubble bath on a Sunday afternoon. (Which is something that I haven’t done for quite some time, and I really should.) One thing that hadn’t occurred to me, however, is the immigration status of our housekeeper. The first two times she came to the house, I paid her with a check, and she didn’t say anything. Yesterday, she called to let me know she was going to come at noon instead of at 9 a.m. (not a big deal, she has a key), and she asked if from now on, I could pay her in cash. Somehow I just never stopped to think that maybe she’s not here legally, which means she wouldn’t have I.D., which would make having a bank account, or even just cashing a check, difficult for her. I suppose it’s also possible that this is just a side business and she doesn’t want to declare the income on her taxes. The conversation left me feeling rather guilty that I hadn’t thought about her situation earlier, like I should have been more considerate and asked her up front how she wanted to be paid. Oddly, though, it didn’t occur to me to feel guilty about the thought of assisting a possibly illegal alien or the fact that I may be helping someone to avoid paying taxes until much later. I guess I have a skewed sense of ethics – my loyalty tends to be more toward individuals rather than government institutions. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

Anyway, since I have a clean house (woo!), we’re having some friends over for dinner tonight. It’s one of Dave’s co-workers and his wife – I’ve met them a few times now, they were at our wedding, and I like them a lot. I hope the wife and I get to bond some more, because lord knows I need some girlfriends around here. Ever since I cut off Psycho Krissy earlier this year (btw, did I ever tell that story? I’m not sure that I did, and she doesn’t read this blog, so if you want to know, I’ll tell you), my total number of girlfriends in the state of Washington has been a big fat zero. Poor me. All of my girlfriends seem to be either in the south or on the east coast, no one in my time zone. Well, that’s not entirely true – my friend Leslie moved to Sacramento recently, but that’s still a few hundred miles away so it’s not like I can go shopping with her on the weekends or anything. And Dave is ok for shopping, but he gets bored quickly, and (as I tell him every time he turns his nose up at something that I love) he just Doesn’t Understand Fashion. So here’s hoping that I make some new girlfriends soon.

P.S. The subject line loosely translates to, “Good day, do you speak Portuguese?” Since our housekeeper is Brazilian, it seemed appropriate.

newlywed weekend excitement

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As far as my plans for a big exciting weekend that would make for a great blog entry? Yeah, not so much. We went to a little local festival, which was sort of interesting in a “gee, they have funnel cake, but no ferris wheel, what gives?” kind of way. We sat around and people-watched for a while, listened to a semi-OK band, and ate junk food. Then we went home and took a nap. The end. After we woke up, we went shopping and bought a bike rack that will fit on both of our cars – yay! And then it rained for the rest of the weekend so we couldn’t actually ride our bikes – boo!

Sunday, Dave didn’t feel well, so I went shopping by myself. Through the wonders of discount stores, I managed to find myself a nice little summer wardrobe collection for a relatively small amount of money. So that was fun. Then I came home and cleaned (well, not really, I just moved stuff out of the way for the housekeeper, who comes tomorrow) while simultaneously watching “Raising Helen“. Has anyone else seen this? I’m still not sure if I liked it or not. Then, Dave and I went to the supermarket (oooh, see what an exciting, fast-paced life we lead?) and rented that Lemony Snicket’s thing. I think two movies in one day about children who are orphaned after both parents are killed in some horrible freak accident is a bit too much for me. During the second movie, I started making plans in the back of my mind of who will take custody of my as-yet-unconceived children, should Dave and I die in a car accident or a fire or whatever. Because you know what? My kids are not going to end up with either Jim Carrey OR Kate Hudson, and that’s final. Maybe Billy Connolly. But we’ll see.

In other news… Well, there isn’t much other news, except that I don’t feel well today. Dave had some co-workers from out-of-state visiting last night, so he had to go out to dinner with them and do the whole corporate entertainment thing. And since I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without him, I took 2 over-the-counter sleep aids instead of my usual one. (Awww, isn’t that sweet? Seriously, it’s not like he has to be in bed with me for me to fall asleep, I just get freaked out when I’m in the house by myself. I know I’ve mentioned this before.) So today I have this weird, fuzzy, Tylenol PM-induced hangover, and it’s basically impossible for me to concentrate on anything. Fun! Only 3 hours left of my workday. Sigh.

P.S. I’ve added some more photos to the rehearsal & wedding albums, courtesy of my mom. Unless you’re in them, you probably won’t care. But hey, this is the best picture I have so far of my dress, at least until I get the pics from our wedding photographer. Enjoy.

nesting

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This week has been pretty low-key since the in-laws have departed. Dave and I have been enjoying having the house to ourselves again, and I think we’re going through some kind of cocooning phase. It’s nice. But to that end, there isn’t a whole lot going on right now that would qualify as good blog material. So instead, I’ve updated my sidebar to include a whole bunch of other blogs that I compulsively read almost daily. You might notice, if you click on the links, that a lot of them are what one might call “mommy blogs”. Don’t read too much into that. I’ve already been accused of being pregnant once this week, and I did not respond too kindly to it. Yes, Dave and I want to have kids at some point, but it’s going to be a while before that happens. We probably won’t even start trying until next year at the earliest. So simmer down. When I get knocked up, believe me, Internet, you’ll be the first to know. Meanwhile, the mommy blogs that I’ve linked to just happen to be written by some very funny and creative women. That’s all.

In other news, there will be more wedding photos posted soon, as my mom just sent me a CD with all of her pictures on it. (I was going to post them today, but I left the CD at home.) I know that seems like an odd way to receive digital pictures, but believe me, if you had to try to explain to my mother how to copy files onto her hard drive and then add multiple attachments to an email, you would end up telling her to go to Wal-Mart and have them put the pictures on a damn CD and just send the blasted thing through the regular ol’ postal service. Which is exactly what I did.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. I’ll try to do something interesting that will make this blog worth reading on Monday.

routine? really?

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The in-laws fly back to the UK tomorrow. It’s kind of a strange feeling. I mean, on the one hand, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Steve over the last 3 months, and I think it was really healthy for Dave and Steve, because they didn’t really know each other as adults. So this time has been really good for them because it seems like they’re genuinely friends now, not just brothers. And it was fun to visit with Mags and meet her new boyfriend, Roger. She seems very happy and he seems to be good for her, so that’s wonderful. But at the same time, Dave and I haven’t had more than a day or two on our own for three whole months. So, as good as this visit has been, I’m also really excited to have it back to being just the two of us.

It’s very odd to think of how much my life has changed since the beginning of this year. As of January, I went from living alone for the past 6 years in a series of small, one-bedroom apartments, to living with someone in a large 4-bedroom house, in a town that’s smaller than anywhere I’ve ever lived. And can I just say how much easier it is to keep a one-bedroom apartment clean, as opposed to an entire huge house? The dusting alone is enough to wear me out. So that was already a shock to my system, but then almost as soon as I was getting used to the idea of living with a guy, along comes Steve and I’m suddenly living with two guys. Who tend to be kind of messy. And it isn’t just my space anymore, I have to compromise and share and be reasonable. Which are not things that I’m used to. At all. So it’s been sort of hard for me.

Also, back in February, Dave and I were just starting to get settled into a daily life routine – we’d get home from work in the evenings, go to the gym, come home, cook dinner, watch a little TV and go to bed. After Steve got here, everything shifted. Sometimes we’d cook dinner, most of the time not. The gym suddenly vanished from our to-do list. Plus we’ve had a million other things going on with the home improvement projects, the wedding, the house refinancing to pay for the home improvements and wedding, etc. But now that’s all done. I’m hoping that once we get used to Life as a Couple again, we’ll re-establish that healthy pattern that we were starting to settle into before Steve arrived. Especially with working out, because I sit in an office all day and don’t really get any exercise at work, and I know that when I’m exercising regularly, I’m generally an all-around happier person. So, here’s hoping.

wedding pics

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Wedding pictures are now posted. Whee! And in honor of Sally’s brother, who takes some awesome food pictures, we have a few of our own here, including cake, something that on the menu was referred to as “whole decorated salmon” (and boy, were they not kidding), a dinner roll that got thrown all over the reception hall, and fun with fruit. And frighteningly enough, this isn’t even all of our photos, I’m still waiting for a few people to email me theirs. Oh, and then there’s the photographer we paid, who should be sending me her 400+ photos sometime in the next month or two. Enjoy!

the 365th day

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Today, it has officially been one year since my first date with Dave. For those of you who are anti-cheesiness, stop reading here. I cannot believe how amazing this past year has been. I never thought that I would marry someone who I knew for less than a year – although give me a break, we were close enough, and I knew after he broke my 2-month-boyfriend curse that he was going to be the guy that I ended up with. He gets me on a level that I don’t think anyone else on the planet gets me. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who can make me laugh until I’m teary-eyed the way that he can – and he has been known to do this before 8 a.m., which is an amazing feat in itself, since my brain – and my sense of humor, for that matter – usually don’t wake up until sometime around noon. (That is a horribly constructed run-on sentence with total comma and dash misuse. I apologize to my grammatically-inclined readers.) Plus, he’s brilliant, absolutely adorable and a great kisser, so how could I have not fallen head-over-heels for him?

It somehow seems appropriate that today is also the day that I went to the department of motor vehicles to get a new driver’s license that will officially drop that B from my name and add the W in its place. Which, btw, was one of the most remarkably easy and pleasant DMV experiences I’ve ever had – only a 10 minute wait, and the employees were polite & courteous. Amazing. Must be my lucky day.

So, there you go. I doubt we’ll celebrate this holiday from now on since our wedding anniversary will be 9 days prior, but I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge it this time around. Happy one-year anniversary, babe. I love you.

more pics & other stuff

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I just got my cousin Alphagal’s pictures from the rehearsal dinner uploaded. I have a lot of wedding photos from her too (as well as my sister), but I need to sort through them all so I can make a little online wedding photo album. It’s coming soon, I promise.

In other news, we got a new car this weekend! We had to get rid of Dave’s insanely expensive car that we couldn’t afford, so we got the new Subaru Tribeca instead, which is very cool. I’ll spare you the nerdy details (you can read them on Subaru’s website, if you like), but it has lots of neat little gadgets which immediately made Dave fall in love with it. It’s very spaceship-y – he can practice his best Captain Kirk impression while he’s driving it. (“Khaaaaaaannn!!!!”) So that’s happy. Of course, test-driving cars all weekend prevented us from making it to a theater to see the new Star Wars movie, but hopefully we’ll be able to do that sometime this week.

In blog-related news, I’ve tweaked my sidebar a bit, rearranged some stuff, added a link to Dooce (who, incidentally, I found by random blog-hopping and it turns out that she went to high school with best friend Kris and guy friend Chris G – and she’s a very funny, clever writer, which is why I’m linking to her), and I’ve added a little mood-of-the-day icon, courtesy of unkymoods. I think it’s cute. Hope y’all like. Happy Monday!