caylin turned 9 months today. more specifically, 2 hours ago.

brett and i just watched silver linings playbook, and one of the songs they played was frank sinatra singing, “have yourself a merry little christmas”. they had the big christmas lights in the background. the big ones, not the crappy wal-mart ones we buy today. the big fuzzy bulbs. it just hits me like a rock. i’m still not sure if he noticed me crying. i swear to god, i was born in the wrong decade. either that, or i was reincarnated in this one. because if that’s the case, i was already born in the 50’s. had they played the judy garland version, i’d be a basket case. those 2 voices kill me. tears? flowing. heartbeat? racing. i’m with you, mom!

it may or may not help that brett just served me shot #8 in one of our last nights in this townhouse (by the way, 8 is nothing in this house. we got this.). caylin is upstairs sound asleep. loki and thor begging for food, the usual.

boxes everywhere–not so usual.

this is so bittersweet. it’s killing me.

i didn’t have this much of an issue moving from my very first “big girl” apartment at colonial grand, or me and brett’s first “official” apartment together at bolton’s landing. i don’t know why. maybe it’s because we only lived in that one for 6 months. maybe it’s because they’re still like… a mile away or less than that.

this move is different. it’s where we brought caylin home. her nursery was completely torn apart today. by us, obviously, but i remember carefully picking out every decoration. every highlight of that room. every piece of art. showing my grandma pictures of what i wanted it to look like. my grandma was and is such a huge part of caylin’s childhood–she MADE that nursery what it is. blankets, mobiles, bibs, toys–everything. handmade by her. it kills me packing that room up. it will definitely be transferred to her new nursery, but that room will always be her first home. the nest i made for her.

anyway, before i cry again (also, this is bullshit. i’m supposed to be all into metal and shit. THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL! james, back me up!), at 9 months:

• WE HAVE A CRAWLER. finally. caylin was insistent on standing up first, but now she’s crawling. not just backwards, but all over the place. she doesn’t enjoy her freedom yet, but she will if she must
• standing up with wobbly butt–she will stand up anywhere as long as she can get a grip. it’s ridiculous. she loves it, though. she’s like a jack-in-the-box in her crib./li>
• speaking of jack-in-the-box, she is staying up later these days. 8:45-9:00 instead of 8:00. a blessing and a curse for me and brett! hooray for more time with caylin; however, it might contain more whining…. which is okay by me :)
• girlfriend climbs all over us, dammit. caylin is obsessed with climbing all over us. whenever we’re playing with her on the floor, that’s all she wants to do. that, and play with pacifiers. she loves them. she swaps them out like she’s recharging or something.
• she’s eating all my food. yeah. for the last, like, 2 weeks… i’ve been eating standing up. she HAS to eat when we’re eating (that’s been going on for about a month), so i feed her standing up next to her highchair. she eats “her dinner”, which is the gerber ravioli or chicken (i swear she’s gonna turn into a chicken) or whatever pasta i made for her, PLUS half my food. she eats… so much. it’s ridiculous how much something so tiny can fit sooooo much food. but she kills it. she’s not even chunky. her thighs are getting there (she has me to thank for that), but the rest of her is ridiculously tall, blonde, and beautiful. THIS CHILD IS BLESSED.
• she loves goofy faces. her laugh is infectious. it’s amazing and i love it. if i had the energy to sit there and make faces at her all day, i would.
• babbling constantly–it’s amazing. there is nothing more soothing than hearing your baby attempt to talk to you. i don’t know what she’s saying, but it’s incredible. i swear she’s trying to make sentences. either way, it’s fantastic.
• we’re still wearing 18-month clothes. the 12-month clothes are pretty much spent–squishing toes and what-not. i’ve packed them up. we can only wear the dresses now, but that’s ok. short dresses are ok until you’re like, 11, right? plus, it’s hot as crap in charleston.

anyway, semi-short update. i had 1 meal today. brett and i spent the morning packing, and then we packed up the truck to drop a bunch of stuff off at goodwill and take a load to the house. we took off wed-fri from work to move into the new place.

christine and i spent half of today putting together the bed frame and the mattress pad from IKEA, only to find out the bed frame was a queen (supposed to be a king), so we’ll have to wait another 2 weeks to get the king size. i know, first world problems, right? i have no issue sleeping on the mattress on the floor. the silver lining is that we have 2 guest bedrooms in the new house, instead of 1–awesome. the rest of our furniture should be delivered saturday.

in the meantime, i’m excited that loki and caylin are getting their first backyard tomorrow. i never thought loki would make it to today. her tumor is still there–it shrinks and grows everyday. i hate it. today, it was especially large, which made my stomach hurt just thinking about it. if she can enjoy a few months of the new house, i will feel somewhat better. i owe so much more than that to her, but at least she’s here to enjoy it now.

weekend before last, brett and i purchased our living room set and our dining room set.

yesterday, we did a pre-walkthrough of the house (pictures below).

today, we purchased our washer/dryer (sold my “old” washer/dryer to my mom when she moved into her townhouse) and our new fridge, and did a bit of packing.

i got my closet cleaned out (except for my clothes), and finally emptied out the downstairs closet (which was an absolute nightmare, this is a good example). brett and i are getting rid of both of our computer desks and buying a new L-shaped one for the downstairs, so we cleaned out our desks tonight before we get rid of them.

cleaning out my desk meant finally getting rid of my “mean green machine”. the very first computer i ever built back in high school. my first gaming computer, and also my night light for a few years. it had glowing green cathode tubes and fans mounted in it before i maxed out the power supply. it was this site’s first web server for a while before i converted to godaddy. my buddy grainger and i built it together, and i remember being so excited to finally have an awesome (well, back then it was awesome) computer to bring to all our LAN parties.

yes, it still has a floppy drive. i haven’t used this thing in… many years. but up until now i couldn’t bear to part with it. i was really sad to see it go this evening. caylin and i waved byebye to it when brett took it down to the garbage.

brett also sold his very first self-built computer last week. he claims he didn’t use it enough. i helped him build it after he ordered all the parts about a year ago. i MADE him take a picture of it for nostalgic purposes. i want him to remember building it with his preggo wife, a billion pieces strewn about on our living room floor, sweating while trying to get his ungodly large graphics card seated correctly. it’s all about the memories.

it’s sick how much i attach myself to things like this. i still have the wrapper from a saralee cheesecake i ate at my very first boy/girl party in the 7th grade at my first boyfriend’s house. it’s in a shoebox with about 900 other little memories. i’ve since filled up 3 more shoeboxes, and will continue to do so until the day i die. and then caylin, if she’s like her daddy, will be going through my crap like, “why on earth did she save this? this is garbage.” and if she’s anything like me, she will totally get it. and she’ll probably have a shoebox or 3 of her own in her closet.

as promised, pictures of the house. since the last time we went, we have a painted accent wall downstairs, and some landscaping done. carpeting, lights, mirrors, etc. it’s so close!

anyway, tomorrow we have our walkthrough with the builder. we made a list of things to fix when we went saturday, so hopefully we will get this wrapped up soon! one of the things on that list is to paint the upstairs balcony door black to match the downstairs. i don’t know how or why that got left out to begin with, but i’ve been bugging them for weeks to get it fixed. if i’ve learned anything, it’s that building a house is frustrating. i’m ready for this process to be over.

between caylin growing faster than i can keep up with, mother’s day, and moving soon, i feel like a basket case. it doesn’t help that our townhouse (up until this week when we tidied up a LOT) was starting look like a shell of a home. boxes everywhere, walls slowly becoming bare, caylin’s old clothes all boxed up.

the older i get, the more i realize i don’t deal well with change. which is crazy when up until 2 and a half years ago, that’s all my life consisted of. i moved 9 times between 2005 and 2010, but the difference was most of those moves ended up with me moving back to boone. or somewhere else in boone. the last 3 were in charleston, and each move was less than 2 miles away from where we’re living now. our little corner of the world, with everything we’ve ever needed nearby. my first big girl apartment out of college on my own is 1/4 mile from here–the first apartment brett and i lived in together when he finally came to charleston. then we moved down the street. and then we moved here.

so much has happened since we’ve lived here, and so many memories:

• planting our first garden
• our first fight
• buying crappy patio furniture so we could sit in the garage with the door open and drink scotch together in our pajamas
• getting engaged
• hosting UFC fight nights with friends
• frequenting our favorite friday night dinner spots (the mexican place down the street and king street grill) together before caylin was born
• stopping at food lion on my way home from work, where everyone knows me now
• trying to sunbathe in a lounge chair in the bed of my truck
• learning to cook
• date nights at the awesome bar down the street
• buying crappy walmart bikes to go ride through the trails behind our neighborhood
• finding out loki had a tumor, crying after her surgery, hoping she’d make it to our wedding. and then caylin’s birth. and now to the new house.
• great times with our awesome neighbor
• taking shots with brett over the kitchen sink, chasing them with giant steroid grapes from food lion
• finding out we were pregnant, crying, panicking, and driving to walmart to buy more pregnancy tests
• getting married
• our awesome disney honeymoon
• piecing together caylin’s nursery, little by little (i never knew it then, but i absolutely loved making that room perfect for her. god, that was awesome.)
• watching all our shows in our cozy living room, it was always the coziest when the christmas tree was up
• bringing caylin home from the hospital
• having the time of our lives getting to know her over the past 8 months

i could go on forever.

the last 8 months, all we wanted was to move into a bigger place. a house where caylin and loki could have their yard. our future home. but this HAS been our home for the last 2 and a half years, and i guess i never really thought about it until it came time to leave. and now we have like, 3 weeks left in this place.

maybe it’s hormones, or maybe it’s because i missed working out for 5 days when i was sick, but this just sucks. it’s exciting and awesome and i love that we can give caylin such a gorgeous home in a great neighborhood, but part of it sucks. i wish i could take it all with me. i wish that i could print a photo of every single memory and get it framed and stick it on a wall in the new house without it costing a billion dollars to do so. i don’t want to forget a single bit of it. ever.

also, i wish caylin would just stop growing and that might make this all just a little bit easier. she wore size 18 month pajamas to bed tonight. it makes my heart hurt. i revel in the very few nights she wakes up crying and i get to cuddle her.

for the love of god, i can’t take all this at once. no one told me parenting would tug at my heartstrings so much, dammit.

it’s not mother’s day yet, i know. but i felt the need to write this. especially after the last 8 months. even more after the last few weeks. and even more after the last 2 days.

we pay my mom to be our full time nanny, but on top of being absolutely amazing at that, she takes care of loki and thor throughout the day. she cleans out the litter box. she does our laundry. she does caylin’s laundry. she still folds it perfectly. she gets our mail. she vacuums. she shampoos our carpet when one of the animals pukes. she cleans the bathrooms. she turns off the crock pot when i forget. she buys more crescent roll dough when she has a craving and eats all of ours (really, mom. you don’t have to buy us more. we should be buying YOU crescent rolls by the truckload for all that you do).

we’re moving in less than a month. so over the past several weeks, my mom has been bringing empty boxes and tupperware to our house when she comes over every morning. while caylin naps, she starts packing and cleaning. she started packing up our entire house, box by box. little by little. carefully. meticulously. wrapping breakables in leftover tissue paper and dish towels. the woman has more patience than i could ever hope to have, and puts forth so much effort to make sure things are done right. of all of the admirable traits i could get from her (and her mom is the same way), i especially wish i had gotten these.

the last 2 days, i stayed home sick from work. there’s a bug going around our team and i finally caught it. my mom let me sleep in yesterday morning, and took care of caylin. when i got up, i took over taking care of caylin, and my mom started cleaning and packing. scrubbing stains out of the carpet. dusting. hanging pictures up to cover up nail holes and ripping dead flowers out of the front yard so it won’t look so bad when they show the house to potential renters. she took care of caylin when i needed to work. she ordered us a pizza for lunch, and hung out with me and caylin all day.

today, she showed up with her carpet cleaner, her vacuum, and magic erasers. she spent most of the day cleaning the carpet on the stairs, vacuuming the stairs, scrubbing the downstairs floor, and scrubbing scuff marks off our walls. for hours, she did this. hours.

this is my mom. even when i was in college, she would come visit and she’d clean my bathroom, and make sure i had everything i needed before she left.

to this day, i regret fighting with her as much as i did in high school and college. two hormonal women living under one roof alone is never a good combination, and i’m sure it happens to every mother and daughter. i’m sure it will happen with me and caylin when the time comes (this kills me thinking about it). but that doesn’t change the fact that i hate how mean i was, when after all that, she is still this good to me, and even better to caylin.

our trips to get frozen yogurt together. splitting domino’s pizzas. watching big bang theory and everybody loves raymond and under the tuscan sun. disney on ice and broadway/off-broadway musicals. our awesome trips to disney (there are more to come!). watching the partridge family and i love lucy and bob newhart. listening to “oldies” radio. these are the things i will always remember and love. i already make sure caylin gets a regular dose of 50’s/60’s music. these are some of the best memories i have.

i couldn’t ask for a better mother, a better woman to look up to, a better person in my life. i’m horrible at being mushy and affectionate in person–brett will tell you the same thing. but it doesn’t mean that i don’t KNOW that i am so lucky to have someone so amazing in my life who takes such good care of me and my family.

i don’t know what i’d do without you, mom. and i don’t know what i’d do if you hadn’t moved to charleston. i love you so much. thank you for being the best mom in the world.

caylin turned 8 months old on tuesday. 8. months. old.

• a little over 20 pounds!
• wearing 18-month clothes (OMG!)
• her hair is getting longer :) it’s so fuzzy and so blonde. who would’ve thought i’d make a blonde baby?!
• she eats EVERYTHING. i share my dinner with her every night, even after she’s just eaten her dinner. i made her some homemade mac & cheese (girl can’t get enough macaroni) and brett fed her until she was going to pop, or so he thought. i sat down with my dinner… and she continued to eat my chicken and green beans. ribs, ravioli, chicken, steak, hamburger, beefaroni, pork loin, cheerios. you name it. she’ll eat it.
• she’s not babbling as much lately–that only lasted a couple weeks. she does this sing songy thing a lot and just makes weird whimsical noises all the time. she’s goofy.
• she can feed herself her bottle now, until she gets distracted and i have to give it back to her. but at least i can have a free hand for a bit :)
• she plays with loki and thor a lot lately. i wish i could get video when they’re REALLY going at it, but i never have my phone ready. it’s unbelievably adorable.
• no teeth yet, but that doesn’t stop her from putting everything in her mouth. the only thing she won’t put in her mouth on her own is food (unless it’s a rice cake). not sure what that’s about. she still wants us to feed it to her.
• she’s really into pulling my hair, which does not help with the postpartum hair loss. which, by the way, is just stupid.
• she can kind of crawl, but only backwards. she can also walk in her walker, but prefers to walk only backwards. she’s walked across the kitchen a few times, and around the living room, but she usually gets bored before she gets anywhere.
• she still loves drinking out of cups, and she enjoys licking ice cubes. she’s a strange one.

i can’t believe how goofy and spastic she is. she is gonna be a riot when she starts walking and talking. and a handful.

in other news, brett and i started watching the sopranos series about a month ago. i’d never seen it until now–he used to watch it when it was on TV. since walking dead is over and the americans just ended this wednesday, we needed something else to hold us over until the rest of our shows start up in september.

these days, caylin goes to bed around 8, i go upstairs and do my nike training club workout for 30-45 mins, shower, and then we hang out and watch sopranos or a movie. it hasn’t gotten old yet, but we haven’t been especially social lately–something we need to work on. and we also need a date night. we haven’t had a night out in a while where we didn’t go out with friends and/or get drunk. as awesome as that is/was, our only time alone with each other is from 10-midnight every day. if only there were like 2 more hours in the day.

we definitely need to take caylin out more, or at least get her around people more often. we had a team cookout/party at my lead’s house and caylin absolutely freaked for the first half hour. tears were flowing, i felt horrible, and almost had to take her home. she’s turning into a homebody like us :) i think getting the new house will help, though. in my last post i mentioned our new neighbors. they are about our age with a 17-month old, and our friends amanda and andrew live 3 houses down. we’ll have a pool and a playground, and new restaurants to go to. hopefully we’ll get out more soon. i’m excited.

speaking of neighbors, we went to visit the new house today. it’s almost done. hardwood floors are done. light fixtures are in. they still have to fix the back porch (they forgot to add the extra 5 feet to the side where the grill is supposed to sit), and there isn’t any carpet. but it looks amazing. here are a few pics from our walk-through.

first things first! we’re having a baby girl. we found out last week that there is, for sure, a little girl in there.

after about a day of thinking on it, we decided we’re naming her Caylin Corinne. Caylin because we think it’s pretty. Corinne after my cousin Corey.

after we found out it was a girl (and let it soak in a bit), i pretty much decided that this kid’s whole life (or at least the first part where it just lays there and can’t decide what its surroundings look like) is going to be decked out in rainbows, sparkles, and unicorns. i am in love with this nursery, so this weekend i went to home depot and bought dark gray paint. brett and i finished painting on sunday. this weekend has been reserved for touching up the areas we kind of uh, slipped up on. like all over the ceiling.

now to buy all the rainbows.

in other news, the amazing stacey lynn gave us our wedding photos. here are a few i snagged out of my facebook album. :)

life feels like a whirlwind the past few months. since we’re having the baby, i traded my truck in for a 2011 jeep liberty. it was one of maybe 3 SUVs that i liked, and because loki is huge, brett is 6’forever, and now we’ll have a baby seat, an SUV was really my only option. but i really like the jeep. i’m getting used to it. :) and loki will get used to the trunk.

she had her first ride in the jeep yesterday. this week gave me a bit of a scare when the area where her tumor was removed started swelling again. because it’s a weird kind of cancer, it can change size and shape daily, so when it started swelling, it made me think it might be coming back again. so back to the vet we went. they couldn’t find anything, but the next time i feel anything i have to take her in immediately. i think i waited too long this time because the swelling had gone down again, so they couldn’t get a good sample. i want to keep telling myself she’s ok, because i can’t afford to dish out that kind of money on 8 more rounds of chemo. it’s just not possible.

and we decided to wait another year to buy a house. that way we have a year and a half to save up some more money. i still have to finish paying off loki’s chemotherapy (this is why i can’t afford it, i’m still paying for it) and my dental work, and i’d like to be debt free (minus the jeep) when we finally make that kind of a down payment. and ideally before the baby comes. so in a way, it was a huge load off my mind. one less thing to think about this year. not to mention we won’t be switching houses while toting around a newborn. i can’t imagine. more money going out, less money in our pockets, and the added stress of a brand new baby and a brand new lifestyle. i just don’t see a lot of good coming out of that.

my depression has been making the rounds the last month or 2, and i can feel it taking a toll on me. i knew it would happen, but wasn’t sure when. and apparently, the bigger the bump, the more the tears. and it’s only brought on stress. i’ve tried to not unload it all on brett. there have been nights when i’ve had to go upstairs and get it all out, pull myself back together, and curl up with loki on the couch for a few hours. but sometimes the only thing that can make you feel better is a pair of giant man arms around you. he has been nothing short of amazing through all of it. and he knows that a reese’s blast from sonic will cure damn near any bad mood.

which, actually, is another good reason we’re not moving yet. we’ll have a sonic across the street for another whole year.

i left for iowa monday evening. brett dropped me off at the airport, 45 minutes later i was in the air and on my way to chicago. everything went smoothly, got my bags, drove to the hotel, checked in, played angry birds for an hour (dangerous addiction, people) and finally passed out. i stayed up way too late for having to get up at 5:30 the next morning, but if you’ve played that game you can vouch for me when i say it is SO HARD TO PUT DOWN. you’d think stupid golden eggs wouldn’t be enough to have such a grip on a person’s life.

i got up, showered, and followed my boss to our meeting. i have a hard time with 7:30 in the morning, so i drank a 5-hour, plus my coffee, and had a muffin. i don’t know how i’d never had a poppy seed muffin before, but i’d never had one until halloween weekend, and now i love them. especially the ones at T.K. tripps–they are to die for. if you don’t have a T.K tripps in your area, i feel sorry for you. because they are incredible and they serve them during brunch with warm butter and i can’t think of anything more awesome for a sunday brunch. besides mimosas. but i’m not ballsy enough to do that in public.

ANYWAY, the meeting was actually a preliminary design review so it wasn’t your typical meeting. which means it was long. which means it lasted from 8 in the morning until 6 at night. which means that i almost died twice during the entire thing and the only thing that saved me was the chocolate cake and mountain dew and my cell phone. i was texting brett every couple hours, mostly because i don’t have the attention span required to sit through one of these things. the overall event was very informative and interesting–i enjoyed 90% of it. but 10 hours in the same room had me twitching in my seat to the point where people probably thought i had to pee. it was difficult, but i learned a lot. and more than i ever thought i would know (or need to know) about kernel separation.

we went out to dinner with everyone afterward. my cousin met up with us, so it was nice to see her. i ordered a caesar salad thinking it would be, you know, a regular salad. with lettuce and parmesan and croutons and dressing. it wasn’t. it was 5 pieces of lettuce with a mountain of mushrooms, banana peppers, onions, no croutons, and dressing. i was sad. i hate mushrooms, and onions, and banana peppers. to top it off, my pasta alfredo made me feel sick to my stomach. or it might have been the whiskey sour i ordered that had absolutely zero sour in it, a splash of sprite (maybe? it had bubbles), and entirely too much whiskey. that was the only drink i had that evening. and for the entire trip.

i got up wednesday morning to fly home and i made sure to wake up early enough to go by a kohl’s or a target to get new sunglasses. i broke mine. again. i found a kohl’s and didn’t find sunglasses, but i did find more sweater dresses and matching jewelry. next time i break my glasses, i’m going to a gas station. or a CVS.

i flew home (i’m skipping the long part about where i almost didn’t get a seat on my connecting flight and had to walk 85 miles through chicago o’hare just to get my stupid ticket), and brett picked me up at the airport. i walked into the apartment, and to my absolute amazement, he had vacuumed, cleaned the dishes, taken the trash out, wiped down the table, and made the bed. i had been dreading coming home (not really, i never dread coming home, i just hate cat litter) and finding kitty litter all over my bathroom floor, and then i came home to this. and it made me so happy. i am truly lucky and i don’t think i can say that enough. my man is incredible.

we hung out and watched the last episode of dexter and relaxed for the remainder of the evening. thursday was a government holiday so we didn’t have to get up early the next morning. but we probably should have.

first of all, my car was still in the shop. the guy called and told me that the problem was actually in the transmission (they thought it was a spring but that wasn’t the case) so instead of $300, it would cost $2000. a bit more than i had hoped for. originally, brett and i planned on going to get boxes and start packing on thursday. but plans quickly changed when i realized i needed to get a car instead. we are actually moving out of our apartment today (friday) and don’t get the u-haul until tomorrow, so having only 1 car would be a bit of a pain in the ass. especially since i still want to go to my welding class tomorrow. transportation NIGHTMARE.

we went to toyota because for as long as i can remember, i’ve wanted a toyota tacoma, black, extended cab, lifted, shiny toolbox in the back, the whole nine yards. we looked at prices on what i wanted and as it turns out, i have expensive taste. toyota is not cheap. and while they are great cars, i don’t wan’t to (read CAN’T) spend $27,000 on a used truck. that’s just not happening. so we headed to the ford dealership near our apartment. i was kind of bummed because i couldn’t get the tacoma, and i didn’t really see anything at the ford place either while we walked around. and then finally i saw a black F150 in front of me and i felt the urge. i felt the THIS IS MY NEW CAR feeling and the butterflies and i knew i was getting my hopes up.

i don’t really have any credit aside from my best buy credit card that i got in march (note to readers, if you don’t have one, don’t ever get one). i don’t think the march-november time frame on a jointly paid credit card from HSBC is really a great credit building achievement so we told the salesman that i wanted to see if i could even THINK about buying this truck before i got let down in the end. we filled out a whole mess of paperwork and when they told me that i would be approved, i think i shed a tear. i mean, i make good money, i don’t have kids, my rent is split with brett so we really don’t pay much on the apartment, and aside from that and a few bills we have totally disposable income. on paper, it makes sense that i would get approved, but since i had to have my mom co-sign on my BEST BUY CREDIT CARD, getting approved for a loan on a car seemed a bit out of my league.

i was more than pleasantly surprised. so i am the proud new owner of a ford F150 FX2 sport. it is black and shiny and i couldn’t be happier. also, i’m fairly certain that brett will try to steal it if i don’t keep an eye on it. next step == learning to park it correctly.

the car buying process took out a good chunk of our day. we got home around 6:30 in the evening and still had to start packing. and surprisingly, we got most of it done. or maybe my mind is just playing tricks on me because the apartment is in shambles. i hate moving, and i REALLY hate moving again after 6 months. this town house has GOT to last us at least a year or 2. hopefully at that point we’ll be ready to buy a house. who knows.

i don’t think i can even cram anything else into my schedule today. after i leave work, i have to go to the treasurer’s office to pay property taxes on my car, go by the rental office and drop off november rent for the townhouse, get the keys, and go to the apartment. pick up brett, who is going to take me to the transmission shop to pick up my car. drive my car to the ford dealership and get the plates switched. then come back to the apartment, start loading up the truck, and then begin the moving process. which will last all weekend. my mom gets here today, brett’s parents get here tomorrow, and hopefully we can get a lot of the moving done tonight and leave the heavy lifting for brett and his dad.

this is the ONLY scenario in my entire life where i actually can say that i can’t wait until monday.

tuesday night, brett and i finally got everything unpacked and settled into the new apartment. no more giant cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. no more plastic bags strewn about. no more random crap everywhere.

it’s a good feeling.

we both decided we wanted to make this apartment look more like a home than a dorm room. granted, the other apartment looked nice, too. this one just looks more… sophisticated. like, we actually bought ART.

we did not plan on buying ART, but after we walked into bed, bath & beyond, we got sucked in. i warned him that this always happens to me. i went in to buy 2 seat cushions for the kitchen table, and we ended up with a $240 bill between the 2 of us. seriously, that store is dangerous. as soon as we saw the paintings and cute framed artwork, we were like kids in a candy store. I WANT THAT ONE! no THAT one! OMG I HAVE TO HAVE THAT ONE!!! SHIIIINNNYYY!

we got a lot of stuff, but we were mostly excited about this one. it just makes the living room feel warm and cozy.

here are our balls. we are very proud of them.

i woke up this morning and it felt like i’d been hit by a truck.

everything that could be sore… is sore. even my hands are sore. my legs look like they’ve been beaten with a stick. i don’t remember being this sore the last time i moved.

i am naturally gifted at getting injured, but my joints specifically are all out of whack. my hips pop out, my shoulders crack constantly, i crack my knuckles every 20 minutes, and they are so loud that they seriously sound like firecrackers. my toes crack. my back cracks. my knees pop in and out. and, good lord, my neck will pop about 5 pops at a time on each side. but the part that gives me the most trouble is my right shoulder. it cracks, pops, grinds (you can literally hear it grinding), and gets stuck at least like… half a dozen times a day. and it’s painful.

so what did i go and do? i injured my LEFT shoulder.

my shoulder is done for. i don’t know if it was the kayaking, or the way i’ve been sleeping on it, or just lifting things that i shouldn’t be lifting… but it’s done. i can’t even use it to steer while i’m driving. brett seems to think it’s my rotator cuff (based on my POINT TO WHERE IT HURTS analysis). i guess now i wait and see if it gets better, and if it doesn’t, i go see a doctor. i can’t tell you how excited this makes me. :mad:

on the upside, we are officially moved out of the old apartment, and moved into the new one. 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, BIG living room, sunroom, BIG kitchen, extra closets (but my clothes still don’t fit in mine, damn t-shirt addiction). it’s much more comfortable for 2 people. but i will never let go of the fact that the bathroom is 1/3 the size of the old one. the bathtub? about half. it’s sad, but at least we each have our own space now. brett and i went to wal-mart last night and his new bathroom is all gussied up and looks awesome. it’s slowly coming together!

tonight… more unpacking. and target. evidently, second bedrooms don’t need ceiling light fixtures (wtf?)… lamps it is.

last week, i decided saturday would be my official “start packing” day. brett and i are moving into a new apartment this weekend and despite the fact that i weeded out A METRIC F*CKTON of crap, i still had a lot more crap to sift through.

this collection included…

2 routers (2 pieces of crap)
2 modems… modemS… i don’t know why that is plural. pieces of crap.
1 scanner that no longer works
1 tablet that no longer works
an old phone
8 extra usb cables
3 extra power cables + a mountain of random power bricks and chargers
4 extra cat-5 cables
2 LED fans, 2 cathode sticks, 2 extra power supplies, USB card, video card… ugh
6 flash drives (4 of which don’t even work anymore)
2 extra cameras (both… deader than dead)

not to mention the random assortment of goodies that led me to take this terrifying photo.

i quit after half an hour, but within that half hour i managed to eliminate all the JUNK i had lying around. finally, for the first time, like, EVER, about 99% of the stuff in the apartment is either necessary or something i can’t bear to part with. yet.

that includes the 23583 whiskey bottles and moonshine jars on top of my fridge.

i’ve somehow convinced myself that… one day, i’ll be able to create something magnificent.

this weekend was move-in weekend.

after months of anticipation, brett is finally with me in charleston. brett, his mountains of clothes, his couch, his TV, and his entertainment center, are all finally in my apartment. let’s just say, if and when we have guests over, they will have 13 different seating options and will be able to watch ESPN HD and play xbox at the same time.

he starts working in 2 weeks, and we’ll be in vegas the rest of this week, so this past weekend was really the only option we had to move his things down without being too rushed.

we drove to boone friday afternoon to get the rest of his belongings. actually, he drove to boone friday morning. i drove to boone friday afternoon, and would have arrived sooner had i not gotten stuck in the ice. quick side story:

if you’ve ever driven up 421 north after a snowstorm, you know how gorgeous the mountains look. i wanted had to take a picture. i am mildly obsessed with the mountains and get goosebumps when i see them on the drive back to boone, and i couldn’t resist pulling off onto the parkway to snap a photo.

unfortunately, they did not have any signs or warnings surrounding the entrance to the blue ridge parkway. my saturn is not the best off-road vehicle, but i was not aware i would be driving through a foot of snow and ice and fallen down trees. i got up to the parkway and got stuck. my car was facing uphill, and i couldn’t even go in reverse.

i panicked for a minute. i looked around to make sure no one was watching. i got out of the car and kicked some snow from around my tires and tried gunning it again–no dice. i sat there for about 10 seconds when a jeep pulled up. somehow, by the grace of god, i knew the person behind the wheel. my friend stephen, fellow AppState alumni, and his girlfriend were trying to take the scenic route, also. they, too, realized how impossible it would be.

they had a jeep, so they had no problems turning around. my little saturn, however, took some pushing and shoving and rocking and finally we got my car rolling, and i made it back down to 421. after all that, i still didn’t get my picture.

ANYWAY, that sucked. i got to boone safe and sound. i helped brett and his parents clean up his apartment and pack up the rest of his things, we ate dinner at macado’s, made a quick trip to ink link to buy a new eyebrow ring (my bathroom sink keeps swallowing mine), and drove down to mooresville to spend the night.

the next morning, we loaded up the trailer and headed to charleston. i packed up my christmas tree (so sad, i did not want to take it down yet) and did some SERIOUS cleaning and rearranging. mostly in my closet. i gave a trash bag overflowing with clothes to goodwill and an entire box full. my closet is still at full capacity. i don’t know how we fit all his things in there. he has more clothes than i’ve ever seen in my life.

there is now a very real fear that one day i will come home and my closet shelves and clothes racks will have collapsed into a giant, mangled mess on my floor. we are nearing that point with the shelves in the laundry room, as well. needless to say, we need to move into a 2 bedroom when my lease is up. we’ve realized how insane it would be to even make an attempt at house-buying after only 5 months.

we got everything unpacked yesterday by 5, and were done setting it all up by 7:30. his surround sound system pretty much owned us, but we finally got it figured out. about an hour of that was spent just trying to fix the giant cable management FAIL behind my entertainment center. once i got that worked out, we spent an hour getting the surround sound hooked up.

little did we know, the manual was packed in one of the boxes. prior to finding the manual, we finally looked up the manual online. prior to looking the manual up online, i got shocked half a dozen times scooting around on carpet plugging things in and yanking cables out. my left arm was tingling for 20 minutes–seriously.

after all that was said and done, i reheated leftovers and we watched surviving the game. ice T is such a badass.

in addition to yesterday’s events, i also made my first attempt at making coffee. evidently, i made it extra strong. because of this, i was wired all night. so we also watched revolutionary road and fracture until 3 in the morning. i finally passed out, but only after stuffing my face full of pizza rolls and spilling the remaining coffee all over my kitchen floor, and, of course, myself.

yesterday was full of FAIL, but it was also so very full of WIN! because now we are all settled in. and las vegas is tomorrow. and when we come home on saturday, i’m almost certain the entire contents of my closet will be in a mangled mess on the floor, but at least it will be our mess. awww.