The Calm Before the Storm

After Thanksgiving on Thursday and waking up before the sun on Friday to go buy our appliances, Matt and I both needed a break on Saturday and Sunday.  We absolutely lazed around yesterday and are planning on doing the same today.  I took up Simming again, which I thought was impossible with release of Sims 3 right around the corner.  It's not as exciting as I'm sure Sims 3 will be, but I've been enjoying it anyway.

This next month will be crazy for us, just like I'm sure it is crazy for everyone.  Next week we will do our first walk-through on the house and have our inspection.  Next weekend we will start to pack all of our stuff up.  Then we will have our second walk-through, and close next Tuesday or Wednesday.  Then we'll start the move-in process, which must be complete by the 14th since we need to be out of our apartment on the 15th.  Our appliances get delivered/picked up sometime between the 11th and 13th.  After all that we'll have about a week to get settled into the house and unpack before we go to Michigan for 10 days over Christmas.  Then, once we're back in Houston, my mom will come down to visit and help shop for the house.  Then I'll go back to school after New Years!

A crazy month, but one we've been looking forward to for a long time and still can't wait for.  The 1st is Monday!

Turkey

Our first Thanksgiving was both wonderful and slightly disastrous.  It started off with me taking a shower while Matt made cinnamon rolls and got the turkey ready for the oven.  I then shoved a bunch of herbs in its tummy, buttered it up, and popped it in the oven.  Since we had a while to wait we ran some errands.  When we got home we checked the thermometer and it said 153 degrees.  153 degrees!  That's only 12 degrees away from the 165 that the thermometer police said it would be done at!  So I rushed rushed rushed to get the stuffing and potatoes and cranberry sauce and green been casserole made.  (Super traditional, right?)  While I was working on the sides Matt was helping me by peeling the potatoes and basting the turkey and whatnot.  I made the master plan and he did the grunt work.  I was the brains; he was the brawns.  Insert obvious statement about how this is a metaphor for our marriage here.  Anywho, Matt was basting the turkey and keeping an eye on the thermometer and he told me that the temperature was actually going down.  Down!  Throughout the course of the sides cooking the turkey dropped down to 137 degrees.  No, up is the right way, turkey, not down.  You don't cool down until I take you out of the oven and put you in my belly.  Then you may cool down, but not yet.  So long story short we had to end up eating all our sides at like 3:30 because they were done and starting to get over-cooked  but the turkey didn't come out until after 6:00... at which time we figured out that Matt had only taken one of the two giblet bags out and the bottom 1/4 of the turkey was still a little  pink.  Which is why it took a 12 lb turkey almost 7 hours to be almost-done cooking.  So we salvaged what we could, which was actually kind of delicious, and threw the rest away.  We have a whole gallon size bag full of turkey, so it didn't all turn out bad, but still.  It was kind of an ordeal.  Happy first Thanksgiving, us!  We'll call this one First-time's-not-the-charm.

What's most important, though, is that we really made this Thanksgiving together.  I know I said that I was the brains and Matt was the brawns, and that's true, but we each brought our best attributes to the table... literally and figuratively.  I had the ideas and made the plan.  I knew what to buy and where to buy it and what to pay for it.  Matt helped us follow through and stay on track - making the plan come to fruition.  He also did some of the things that I just didn't want to do without complaining like I would have.  We both worked together to make it easier on the other person the whole way through.  In fact, in the end we had almost no clean up because we had each anticipated and acted on the other's needs so well.  It was kind of a cool day working side-by-side with him.  Maybe someday this can be the new metaphor for our marriage.

Christmas

November is almost over which means that it's been Christmas for a few weeks now.  It's been a different holiday season for me so far, but not really in a bad way.  It's been warmer, obviously, but I've enjoyed it.  I kind of like doing my Christmas shopping in jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a puffy vest, as opposed to a ground-length puffer parka with a wool hat and mittens layered over knit gloves.  Ok, there's a some exaggerations in that last sentence... the worst of which being me implying that I've done any kind of Christmas shopping.  Either way, I've almost enjoyed the weather.  Whenever I see that it's snowing in Michigan I get the same look on my face that I do when I (every month) think I'm pregnant: mouth agape, eyes bursting from their sockets, head shaking slowly side to side.  Luckily neither of those things will happen while I'm in Houston... probably.  I mean, it did snow here a once few years ago. ;)

Christmas always gets me on a tradition kick.  My family's not big on tradition, but we always had some associated with Christmas.  Getting to Catholic Church 3 hours before mass to get good seats (which are the ones in the back, by the way) then eating Pi's take-out while opening one present and watching whatever Christmas movie was on basic cable on Christmas Eve is probably the best one.  I plan on carrying this one with me for a while because why would you ever willing stop a tradition that involved Chinese food?  But that's the only one that I can think of.  All of the other "traditions" that we had were just things that you do with little kids, like leaving out milk and cookies for Santa.  No grown-up traditions.  So I'm making new traditions.  New city, new state, new marriage, new house, new job, new friends, new traditions.  The only thing is that these new traditions don't have very solid ground to take root in.  This year we are moving into our house a week or two into December, which means that we probably won't even get a tree.  We certainly won't put up lights or wreaths or angel-shaped jelly decals.  And even if we were here... do traditions even count as traditions when they're only between two people, not within some jumbo-sized family?  Instead of making our own traditions this year we'll go home to Michigan and do other traditions there.  At least they'll be someone's traditions so maybe I can get my tradition fix that way.  Also I'm hoping someone will announce a pregnancy over the holidays.  No one in particular, though.  Just not Heather.  I can't handle that yet.

PS I fixed the link to flickr in my last post.  It should work now.  If not, tell me.

Pics

Hey hey hey!  I tried to publish pictures of our house to my blog but it ended up being very, very difficult and they ended up looking oddly cryptic, so I published them on flickr instead and you can see them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattandtracie/

Oh the waaaaaiiiiiting is the hardest part!

Waiting for this house is really hard. Hence the title of this post. It's November 12th and we probably don't get to move in until December 5th. So I am dying. I just wish we got to be in there before Thanksgiving so that we could have that whole weekend to move and organize and cook turkey and mashed potatoes in our new house. Instead we will have to do that in our old apartment, which is chocked full of unpleasant memories of my past cooking misadventures. Curses. In an odd way, I'm kind of excited to do Thanksgiving with just Matt and I... our little family celebrating together. But I'm sure I'll miss my friends and family on that day, especially if all Matt wants to do is watch the Lions, which I'm sure he will. Maybe we'll have people over. They can eat on our... coffee table? Hm. Another reason for the house.

And another thing about the house... I'm already stressed out about how to decorate it. Stupid, I know. How often do you get to go out and buy all new furniture? I should be excited. But it's not like, "Oh, we need a new dresser so let's go find one and we'll get a good deal and use a coupon" or something. It's more like, "Hey, let's spend thousands and thousands of dollars on furniture that you had better like in 6 months because you can't just replace this stuff because now you like sage instead of pumpkin." The colors, not the foods. It's kind of nerve racking. Not to mention the fact that I have never decorated a house before so I don't know about size, color, proportion, weighting, or chi. I don't know how much a bed should cost. I don't know what holidays have big sales (turns out, Veterans Day! oh, too late!). Seriously, I think my heart rate is up right now just writing about it. I'm kind of a perfectionist (no way!) and even more afraid of failure (that's shocking! - said in your best Buddy the Elf voice, please) and even more afraid of having my imperfections put on display for the general public to see (ya' don't say!). And I can't think of a way that my imperfections would be more on display for the general public than if I failed at decorating this house.

It's all very 50's. Inescapably 50's. Not unlike my desire for a really great washer and dryer...

A Landmark Election...

...through the eyes of my 7th and 8th graders. Here are some of the funniest comments I've heard from my students today about the results of the election last night.

"Now in four years we'll all be Communists!"

"If McCain would have just won California he would have won the whole thing!"

Student: "I voted for McCain!"
Tori (another teacher): "You don't have the right to vote."
Student: "In the MOCK election!"

A very tiny, black student: "Now I want to be president! ...or a professional basketball player!"

Student: "Did you know Texas was a read state?"
Me: "Yes I did. Did you know Michigan was a blue state?"
Student: "Huh... figures!"

"California said no more gay marriage."
"Too bad, C, I was gonna marry you there."
"Dude, what?"

Me (to a male student): "T, are you wearing a headband?"
T: "Yes."
Me: "Why?"
T: "Because Barack Obama is gonna make gay marriage so my friend and I are wearing headbands like gay guys."
Me: "Oh. Gay guys wear headbands?"
T: "Do they ever!"

And one truly valid question, "Now that gay marriage is over in California... what happens to all the gay people who got married there? Are they still married? Or is it like it never happened?"

Well, I don't know.

A long time coming...

Well the biggest news, as I think everyone knows, is that Matt and I are in the process of buying our house! We're really excited about it. It's 2 floors, about 2500 sq.ft., has a gameroom... basically exactly what we were looking for. I told Matt that the next step is furnishing it with the entire Ikea store. He said the next step was actually closing. Touche.

Matt is getting sick. He's had a sore throat for a few days now and he wont kiss me on the lips because he's scared he'll give it to me. He just kisses my forehead. It's adorable. He's in the bedroom lying down right now, fretting over the Michigan loss to Purdue. Poor guy - rough day. He's so funny when he's sick. He's kind of reverted to being a kid again. He's super sweet and cuddly and puts on his puppy dog eyes all the time. I've heard that lots of men revert when they're sick, but this is the first time Matt's really been sick since we've lived together so I hadn't seen it in him before. It's sweet for now... I just hope he doesn't get any sicker.

Last night we went to a Halloween party but we didn't have costumes. I didn't even know that we were going until that night and I'm not allowed to wear a Halloween costume to school, what with it being a pagan holiday and this being Texas and all, so we didn't have costumes. We looked pretty sad compared to everyone else. One of Matt's friends was the hamburglar. It was cool. I talked to Tom (Steel) yesterday and he said that he and Bev were going to be Donald and Daisy duck and I seriously can't wait to see pictures!

To combat my depression from having to turn the air conditioning back on today, I decided to play some Christmas music this afternoon. I think it might be making my depression worse. Christmas music looses it's flavor when it's 85 degrees and sunny outside. I have been having kind of a hard couple of weeks with missing Michigan. The summer wasn't so bad because of course it's hot in the summer... it was just extra hot down here, which I had come to expect. But now I'm so ready for the change of seasons and it's just not coming. Last week there were a few days where the high was in the 60s and I coudn't have been happier. I thought that the low temperatures would stick, but I guess not. It's supposed to be around 80 for the next week. Enough about the weather forecast. The point is that I miss fall and home and apple cider/apple cider donuts from Bayne's and long sleeve shirts and sweaters and pumpkins and my vote counting and everything. I hate winter with a passion (from December 26th on, anyway) but I LOVE fall. It's my favorite season. It's the season that says, "Let's bunker down and get ready for winter. Better put on a sweater and make a big pot of soup." This whole fall has made me realize that I definitely want to come back to the Midwest when we're ready for babies. Can you imagine never taking your kids to a pumpkin patch? Or on a hay ride? Or doing a snow dance the night that a big storm is on its way? Or waking them up 2 hours before sunrise to whisper, "You don't have to get up this morning... it's a snow day"? Or never having a white Christmas? It's fine for Matt and I to be here and not have those things for now, knowing that it's short term, but we will definitely be coming home in a few years.

And all this Christmas/home talk has gotten me thinking about traditions. Matt and I have only been married for just over a year, so the traditions we have are few and far between. One thing we did last Christmas was get one of those dorky mall ornaments (that I, and I believe the rest of America, secretly loves) where your whole family is represented in like snowmen or something. So I think ours is two grown-up reindeer, one boy and one girl for Matt and me, and then two little reindeer for Miles and Lucy. Matt brought that up today and said that we needed to be sure to get another one this year. I was like, "Why? It's all the same people, just a different year." He was like, "That's the point. It shows how our family grows and changes, who's a part of it every year and for how long." Our family. So I think that's our first tradition. Hopefully we can eventually add on some more traditions that involve mashed potatoes.

Last thing: I've been watching John and Kate Plus 8 (much thanks to Katie!) and I really love it. The other day one of my students said to me, "Ms. Steel, do you watch John and Kate Plus 8?" I said, "Yes, Madison, I do. Do you?" She said, "Yes. I love that show! You remind me so much of Kate!" I was flattered because I like Kate. Even though she is occasionally off her rocker, she is loving and caring towards her kids. She never baby-talks to them. She knows when enough is enough and her kids know when she means business. She has created traditions for them as a family. And she runs that house like no one's business. Her kids, all 8 of them, love and respect her.

Well, Ms. Steel, that's not to darn bad!