Turning 29 again

So September marked the 3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday.  It's not that I think I'm old, it's just that more and more often I realize my lifestyle is slowly sliding into something settled.  Not that it's a bad thing.  It's just a thing.  I want to spend my time differently now - I just can't help but notice the changes.  Like when I'm sitting on the couch on a Friday night, watching television with my cat and my husband, struggling to keep my eyes open after 10:30.  There used to be at time in my life when 10:30 meant I was just getting into the dance club.

My birthday celebration reflected my current lifestyle.  I had a fabulous dinner celebration with my close friends and my parents.  We gorged ourselves on Italian food and laughed and had a general good time - but afterwards?  No partying - I just wanted to go home and relax on the couch.

But something that will definitely make you feel old?  Seeing your old collectible figurines in an antique store:

It's like a showroom!

Since our new bedroom set has finally arrived, and since my life seems to be so insanely full of things that when I actually find time to sit down and blog about it I draw a complete blank and end up posting nothing, I figured I would share with you the beauty and wonderment that is our new bedroom.  With real furniture and everything.

Attempting to make our house grown-up

It's been almost 2 1/2 years since we bought this house. One of the things about bouncing all over the west coast for our jobs is that we don't spend enough time at our house to get all those finishing touches done.  Things like putting up photographs or buying houseplants or even, um, finishing hanging the shutters because your husband threw out all the little hinges and they haven't sold hinges like that at Home Depot since 20 years ago when your house was built and now you're going to have to order them online but that seems like a lot of work.

We also have what you might call, "furniture essentials."  We have a couch, which is so comfortable all your friends and family start buying the same model and it may or may not suck you into a vortex of downy cushioned goodness from which you will never escape.  We also have a TV (well, 2 TVs, which would make sense if you know my husband at all), an entertainment center in which to display the TV, and some various other items like guest room furniture and a dining table.

One thing we do not have, however, is a bedroom set.  We do have one of those black metal thingies that sets your box frame up off the ground, so in that respect we are a step above the college days of having your mattress sit right on the floor, but otherwise our bedroom is generally a hodge-podge of miscellaneous furniture that has been collected over the years.  We have what should be a glass-topped end table and a coffee table functioning instead as nightstands; a cheap fake-wood corner entertainment center sitting in a corner of the bedroom, complete with VCR and DVD player but, until recently, lacking a TV... and that's about it.

But today is a momentous day, folks.

WE HAVE A BEDROOM SET.  Like real grown-ups, y'all.

Well, technically since we ordered the bedroom set online, it won't get here for another month.  Except the matching desk, which was delivered today.  But it counts anyway - and very soon we will have a dresser and a bed with headboard and footboard and THEY WILL ALL MATCH.

Super Giant Fish at our Front Door

So, I just realized the Big Buck Hunter has been in our front entryway for OVER TWO YEARS. I keep holding out hope that one day we'll class it up enough to move that thing somewhere... not so obvious. Like a Man Cave. Chris DEFINITELY needs a Man Cave. I think his new ploy is keep buying hideously unsophisticated things that have no business in the house so that we end up with so much redeneck man-crap in our front foyer that I have no choice but to agree to let him have a man cave. And, oh, yeah, his giant mounted fish finally arrived.

You can't quite tell here, but this thing is "to scale" meaning that fish is about 6 feet long.

Note the Big Buck Hunter in the background...

And, in the true irony that is my life, the boys fired up the Big Buck Hunter and began playing while I was typing this blog.  (They had to move the fish out of the way first, of course.)

An Iowa Wedding: The Bachelorette Party

The bachelorette party was a day-long adventure that started out with cake and cocktails at the Barefoot Bar, then progressed to a day of meandering down the lakes in a pontoon boat stuffed full of twenty-something ladies, bottles of booze, and various “gifts” that will not be shown in pictures on this blog due to their lascivious nature.  But they were responsible ladies, and had the foresight to pay the boat rental place to supply them with a driver for the boat.

Meet Tyler.

Tyler is 19 years old.  He was also the lucky employee of the boat rental place who got chosen to drive our boat.  He was pretty happy with this outcome.  

This picture is where we returned to the boat rental place and he had to "show off" his good luck to all his male co-workers.  Thinly disguised as having one of them take a group photo.  

During the boat float we did the usual: jump on giant trampolines in the water until the homeowners came out and shooed us off, stop at Arnold's Park for a quick roller-coaster ride, dance while wearing stick-on mustaches (yes, that's what Tyler's wearing in the first photo), and attempt to learn how to get back in the boat without a working ladder.  After the boating was more bars, and outdoor concert, and a surprise appearance from a pirate (okay, he was actually a Captain Morgan sales guy, but he did give out free hats to everyone at the bar).  

All in all, a successful party to celebrate the impending end of A-Star's single days.

The Nerdery

The twins, Frick and Frack, have a younger sister, A-Star.  Here is a picture of the three of them:

And now the lovely miss A-Star has gotten married.  I will share that story in another post, but the lead-in here was that the twins and I took a flight out to Iowa last weekend for the wedding.

On the return flight, I was sitting middle seat, between my husband on one side and Frick on the other.  We had stopped for a layover and this was the second leg of my flight.  My husband happened to glance over and notice I was reading a different book from the one I was reading on the earlier flight.

He says to me:  "Are you reading two books at the same time right now?"

Me: "Yes, I am.  I need the paper book for takeoff and landing, when my Kindle has to be turned off.  It's not as interesting as the book I'm reading on my Kindle, so this is just to 'tide me over' until we can turn on our electronic devices again."

Him: "Oh, wow, I don't think I've ever read a book to 'tide me over' until I can read another book.  You are such a nerd."

I just shrugged, and went back to reading my book.  Until we reached cruising altitude, of course, when I would start reading the other book.

How to travel with big furniture and tiny cars

Today on the freeway I passed a mustang convertible, top down, with about 6 patio chairs crammed in the backseat at odd angles. The driver who, for some reason in all his 50+ years of living did not have a better solution, must’ve figured that his wife holding on to the legs of one of the chairs counted adequately in place of a tie-down strap.

I will say that one thing I’ve taken for granted since meeting Chris is the convenience of a pickup truck. Between him and his friends, there is always someone with some way to move lots of stuff from point A to point B.

Back in my single days, this wasn’t always the case. I did have a hatchback car which I took full advantage of, but a hatchback car is still a car, and therefore has its limitations. Like the time I decided I needed a new TV.

I had just graduated college, packed up all my things, and moved to Los Angeles. No job, no prospects for a job, no plan, and only a tiny savings to keep me fed, clothed, and housed until I found employment. Because the old TV was one of the sacrifices I made in the move, I decided a new TV was in order.

I found one at Wal-Mart for about $300. Keep in mind, this was before the flat-screen era, so this baby was 42” of cathode ray tube-style fun:

(This is not the actual TV)

Seeing as how I had just moved, I had no friends or contacts in the city. I happily let the nice Wal-mart salespeople load up the TV on to my cart, paid for my purchase (hello credit card), and sauntered out to my Mitsubishi Eclipse GS and popped open the hatchback. I realized at once I had a problem:

I couldn’t lift the TV out of the cart to place it in my vehicle. 

I managed to overcome this problem by standing there for a bit, looking sad and lost and confused, until finally one of the skinny teenaged boys that are forever running around collecting the shopping carts came over and the two of us heaved it into the back of my car. I realized that I now had another problem:

The TV was so big that I couldn’t shut my hatchback closed. 

The pimply-faced teenager was looking around, like some bungee cords were going to magically appear. They didn’t. I took pity on him and explained that I wasn’t going very far, so “I would just drive slow” and the kid left to go corral more shopping carts. I managed to sort of keep the hatchback closed by tying it down with a contraption made of elastic hair bands and a plastic shopping bag. I figured it would do for the 8 or so blocks that I had to travel.

I made it to my new apartment without incident, but was again faced with another problem:

How to get the TV out of my car and into my apartment.  By myself, now.

I couldn’t carry it – it was far too heavy. Thankfully I was on the ground floor, so I didn't have to manage any stairs, I just had to navigate from my parking space in the back of the building around to the front door.  In the back alley, there was still a stack of empty boxes that I had recently set out there after unpacking my things. I grabbed a box, broke it down to a flat piece of cardboard, and set it behind my car. I very carefully (re: a lot of grunting and heaving) rolled the TV out of the back of my car and on to the cardboard. Somehow managing not to have it come crashing down on to the pavement.  The cardboard then became a “sled” upon which I dragged the TV all the way around the building and into the front door of my apartment.

It was a successful move. Idiotic, but successful.

Although I must say that story pales in comparison to the time we moved a whole bed – mattress, boxspring and all – using only my friend’s Honda Civic and some ingenuity. But we’ll save that story for another day.

Incidentally, here is a photo of the actual TV, in that very apartment.  We won't comment on the VCR or cassette-tape player stereo system or the Nintendo DS, all of which were already on the verge of being outdated when the photo was taken.

Nor will we make mention of the fact that I owned an actual candelabra and a cat-shaped fan-pull.  The beer mirror that I picked up on a sidewalk sale in downtown Seattle should at least earn me back some coolness points.