Posted to Links at 11:13 PM | Comments (2)

May 18, 2006

I deserve a medal.

I am a packing goddess. Worship me.

I finally got over myself and quit my whining and started packing. I rearranged the living room so that our furniture takes up less space, and now we have a little place to put boxes. I also emptied out the clothes I want to pack well in advance from my closet and moved everything I want to leave out for awhile to one side so that I could block in my closet door, and now we have a good little chunk of space there. That seems to have been enough to motivate me, and I've become a packing machine.

So far I've packed up all those clothes, nearly all of our board games, our entire bookcase (all 9+ boxes of books), most of the junk cluttering up my corner of our bedroom, and a box of fragile tchotchkes. Plus, I'm going to take credit for two rubbermaid bins that were already packed. So that's a total of 17 boxes.

Plus, I finally got around to copying all my old clips of RENT on the news and on talk shows and in live concerts onto DVD.

Of course, the negative of getting all this done is that my hypoglycemic self hasn't had anything to eat other than a couple oreos, and my blood sugar level isn't very happy. Oops.

Posted to Miscellaneous at 03:57 PM | Comments (1)

May 15, 2006

Motivation to pack

There are a lot of reasons I'm looking forward to our next living situation--among them are less noise, a chance to get back to work, seeing friends and family--but today, the biggest thing on my mind is that we'll have a freezer big enough for me to keep ice cubes around. Really. That's the thing I'm rejoicing about today.

I can't imagine a summer of homemade iced tea without ice cubes.

Posted to Minnesota at 12:42 PM | Comments (2)

May 14, 2006

because challenges are only challenges the first time around

Holy cow. I hate moving. I really forgot how much I hate moving, which is surprising considering that it's only been 10 months since our last horrific move.

We've been back in Oberlin for about a week now, which means that our packing SHOULD be about 1/4 done. But it's not. It took me three days to make myself start calling a bunch of moving companies to price out options. It took us until Thursday night to buy packing tape so that we could start. And it took me until today to finally haul out all the boxes we saved from our last move.

In the four hours since I got those boxes out, I've packed two boxes. Two boxes full of stuff that I had already set aside before Lauren even got her job offer as things that needed to be stored in boxes for reasons unrelated to moving.

Very promising, huh?

It's just that I don't know where to start. I seem to remember that last year, moving was a Big Challenge. I had never organized a cross-country (kind of) move before, so it was fun to prove that I could handle it. It was neat to tell Lauren which boxes things should go in and be right about our system for labeling boxes. It was especially nice to know that Oberlin was covering most of our moving expenses. And it was great that we had both a loft and a dining room that were mostly unused and served as great spaces to stick boxes so that they wouldn't be in our way.

In fact, last time we packed, we had so much spare room that we managed to house a third person on an air mattress in our living room throughout the entire packing process.

This time around, it's not new and exciting. This time around, every square inch of space in our apartment gets used daily (or is taken up by the World's Largest Dining Table that the college provided and would not remove). There's nowhere to put packed boxes. We're looking at the definite possibility of having to rearrange the furniture in here to make more room for boxes. Oh yeah, and we have to pay for it all ourselves.

Anyone wanna come pack up our stuff and/or store our packed boxes for us? We'll love you forever...

Posted to Miscellaneous at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2006

because content is overrated

I was going to write this great entry about the Eddie From Ohio concert we went to last night, and about how the average age in the room was around 40, and about the World's Tallest 60-Year-Old Man who sat in front of me, and about how Robbie is a sexy beast, but... That's all I have to say, and that doesn't make for a great entry.

So instead, links. Mainly products this time, and apparently with quite a snarky attitude. Oops.

That's going to have to do it for now. Sadly light on interesting content, but full of stupid things that I was totally tempted to buy before I came down off my "I need that!" high.

Posted to Links at 12:42 AM | Comments (1)

May 10, 2006

Confronting my past

As I've mentioned about a million times, right now I'm reading all the BSC books in order. Today I read #32, Kristy and the Secret of Susan. I have to admit that ever since I started this venture, I've been anxious to get to this book, wondering what I'd think of it now.

When I first read Kristy and the Secret of Susan in 1990, it was the first time I'd heard of autism. I was fascinated. I decided, at 9 years old, that I wanted to work with autistic kids someday. That interest never disappeared. There was something I couldn't put my finger on about autism that made my stomach turn.

I didn't retain a lot of the actual information in that book, and now that I've reread it, I'm surprised that Ann M. Martin was willing to depict Susan the way she did. For most of the book, it appeared that Susan's life was pretty hopeless. It wasn't until the very end that Kristy understood that just because Susan was too developmentally needy to even go to a special ed day school didn't mean that her parents didn't hold out hope for her life. The book was clear that not all autistic children are savants, that IQ is pretty secondary, and that autistic kids have varying levels of communication abilities. The only thing the book left out, as far as I'm concerned, is how violent autistic kids can be when that's the only way they know how to communicate.

But somehow, reading it this time while understanding why I was so interested as a kid was a little depressing. A teensy bit of that is because I don't feel that great about having a disability that affects me so much, but more than that, I feel that desperate "no one will ever understand what it's like to be me" feeling that has made me feel so isolated on and off for my entire life. I know that everyone feels that way sometimes, but knowing that I have a disorder that my wife and friends will never really GET can be frustrating.

I'm glad I reread this book, but I don't think I'll be reading it again any time soon. I'm especially glad that I was introduced to autism this way when I was young, though. It was important for me. It made the whole thing less scary when Aspergers became a reality for me.

After all, if Ann M. Martin covered it, it couldn't be TOO horrible.

Posted to Books & Mental Health & Nostalgia at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2006

I've got the all clear

There are certain secrets I'm really good at keeping, and others that I can't keep to save my life. Any secret that is told to me with the mandate "you can never ever tell anyone" are safe. I try to get clear on whether or not I can tell Lauren (unless she's the one who told me), and then I lock that information away in my brain. I even manage not to think much about it.

But secrets that are only temporary, secrets with future release dates... No good. If I know that the information I have will get out at a later date, I have to completely remove myself from all human contact in order to keep my mouth shut.

So that's why no entry for the last week. It was partly because we were at my parents' house, and I didn't really want to tie up either of my parents' computers for very long. It was partly because I was actually pretty busy over the weekend, seeing the city that I love and a few people who I love, too. But mostly, it was because I had a time-sensitive secret that I just KNEW I wouldn't be able to not talk about if I tried to post here.

But today I've been officially given permission to post this at will.

We're moving home! Lauren got offered a job at the University of Minnesota as a Residence Director and she accepted. We'll be moving into her first-year hall in late June.

And as the icing on the cake, the Twin Cities' first Trader Joe's opens later this month.

I'm a very happy girl. And now, after 3 months of trying NOT to talk about Lauren's job search here, I can resume posting regularly.

Posted to Minnesota at 08:35 PM | Comments (6)

May 02, 2006

Maybe I should buy a nice, soft baby doll to cuddle with for now

Today I spent 4 1/2 hours in the Cleveland airport. I used that time to burn my tongue on very hot tortilla soup and to reread the first 60 pages of The Kid, Dan Savage's book about adopting his son.

(Side note: I may love me some BSC, but even I know that it would be really loser-y for a 25-year-old to read BSC books at an airport. Plus, there's no way I could pack enough books to keep in the BSC reading for the next week. Plus I'm still missing #34 and am currently on #30, and am determined to read them in order. So I only brought one Super Special BSC book with me to Minnesota. Now back to the real entry.)

I also spent that time watching a lot of babies. Now, reading about adoption while watching babies is a fairly lethal combination. Especially when the babies have curly hair and big eyes. In the springtime, which is procreation season.

I think it's pretty safe to say that my I-wanna-be-a-mommy-NOW instinct is in high gear. Remind me why we're waiting a couple more years again? Even my zaide agrees. My mom was telling him (probably for the 108th time) how bored I am in Oberlin, and my zaide's response was, "So why doesn't she get pregnant now?" When my mom told him that we'd like to be a little more settled first, he said, "Why? People have babies all the time in all circumstances. The time is never exactly RIGHT."

Yeah, Zaide, you tell 'em.

Only how badly I feel about all the weight I've put on since we moved to Oberlin and I've done nothing but sit around and eat is keeping me from getting down on my hands and knees and begging Lauren to PLEEEEEEEASE go buy some sperm right NOW so we can start already.

I think I need to go to bed and think about something else, like banging my head against the wall until I get a job or my plot to take over the world. Seems safer, doesn't it?

Posted to Nesting at 11:47 PM | Comments (3)

May 01, 2006

I didn't mean to stay away so long

I haven't posted in quite awhile, have I? I've been very busy. I've been busy knitting on the practice piece I used to teach Lauren how to knit, reading a LOT of BSC books, and avoiding thinking about our future. So you can see why I haven't had time to post.

Actually, though, this past weekend was a very full one. On Friday, Lauren and I went to see Stick It, which I had been looking forward to since January. I'm sad to report that it really wasn't very good. You'd think the combination of stupid teen film, gymnastics routine, and a character who fits my type pretty exactly would make for a good (bad) movie, but it didn't. That won't stop me from Netflixing it when it comes out on DVD, though.

On Saturday, Lauren and I got up early, went to Black River the moment it opened, got a window table, and ate a very yummy breakfast. I'm an ice cream LOVER, but even I wouldn't have expected a waffle with fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream to be that good. After that, we got the perfect seats and watched the Big Parade. This was only the second time I've been able to make it, and the first time for Lauren, and I'm glad we went.

We watched the parade, we waited in a 45 minute line for hot dogs, we enjoyed an Oberlin Steel performance, we talked to SarahD, who I haven't seen since August, and then we met up with Lauren's parents, who came to visit for the weekend and sat outside and talked while watching the Israeli dancing ExCo and the donut eating contest. It was a really good Oberlin day, and it reminded me how much I really loved this place as a student.

Even the insane sunburn I got wasn't enough to ruin my day.

The rest of the weekend was good, too. We went out to dinner with Lauren's parents in Westlake, and on Sunday Lauren made a two-weeks-early Mothers' Day brunch and then we all went to an OMTA performance.

And then we died of exhaustion.

Still, not much that's worth writing about, but I figured it was time to break my almost-two-week silence and say SOMETHING.

Tomorrow I go back to the Twin Cities while Lauren heads off to an on-campus interview. She's got two back-to-back this week, but since her second one is in the cities, we get to spend the weekend together at my parents' next weekend. I'm fully committed to a visit to the Crema Cafe and Pizza Luce. I'm in full "homesick for Minneapolis in spring" mode, and I plan to take advantage of this last-minute visit.

Or just sit around my parents' house and enjoy being with family. Whichever.

Posted to Oberlin at 01:20 PM | Comments (5)