Tuesday: In which we got our new couch but I don't have much else to say.

(UPDATED with PICTURES!!)

We got our new couch and it’s beautiful! 

It’s surprisingly huge. I knew how long it was going to be (81”), and I knew that wasn’t going to be any bigger than our other couch, so I wasn’t prepared for how tall and cushy it would be.  When I sit on it, my feet don’t touch the floor!  Ha!  The back goes up high enough so that if I wanted to rest my head backwards, it would have a place to rest.  

It’s a perfect shade of grey/tan, and it makes our living room look zen and peaceful.  Also, the accompanying throw pillows have flowers on them that are the same shade of spring green as our “chandelier” (read: paper-lantern-looking, cloth, hanging light fixture), thus tying everything in and completing our massive home-makeover project.  C'est fin!  

(The only negative thing I can say is that the new guy has a pretty powerful new/synthetic smell to it.  I'm tempted to leave it outside to air out tonight, but then I wouldn't have anywhere warm and cozy to enjoy my breakfast in the morning.  Nothing is worse than a frost-covered sofa.  I suppose.)

That’s all for now.  Pictures to follow.  I am now going to attempt the maneuver of propping my Kindle so that I can keep my arms inside the covers and still read and pretend I’m not falling asleep.

Peace. ßSee? My living room made me say that.

Ta-da!!  Sorry it's so dark... it's a rainy day and when I put the flash on, it looked like this:

Blog #2 for today: In which we mourn the loss of things we never should have loved.

I'm going to come clean about a problem that I have.  I personify everything, which makes replacing, throwing away, and generally overall rejecting inanimate objects very painful to me because I become emotionally attached to them.  Rationally, I know this is ridiculous, but nonetheless, it is my brain.

In a comment on a previous post, my mom shared an idea she was considering to help get rid of Christmas chocolate faster in order to combat the fat belly issue that accompanies this time of year.  She is toying with the idea of throwing a piece of chocolate away for every piece of chocolate she eats.

I could never do this.  I'll compare it to my pill thing: when getting my vitamin in the morning, I'll pour them into my hand.  Most of the time more than one will fall out.  I'll play out this scenario where the two pills were either best friends, husband and wife, siblings, whatever, and one is sacrificing itself for the other. "NO!  Take ME instead!  I LOVE YOU!!  I LOVE YOU-HOOHOOHOO!! NNOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Heartbreaking, right?  So, the chocolate thing would never work, because then I'd imagine all of the chocolates huddling together for comfort.  The chocolate pieces would sit together discussing either fulfilling their martyr-destiny of being eaten, or getting old and being thrown away -- which is sad because the chocolates sat and waited, probably finally coming to terms with the martyr-destiny, only to spoil, get that white chalky coating, and be thrown away cold and alone among other trash items.  The riff-raff of the food world:  coffee grounds, chicken trimmings, eggshells.

Saddest and most disturbing of all, however, is this new and inherently wrong idea of being thrown into the trash in the chocolate's prime.  I imagine, despite myself, that the chocolate pieces catch wind that their eater is going to eat one piece and then choose another piece for sacrifice to the garbage.  Now there is a whole new cause of unrest and disturbance in the candy basket.  Picturing the chocolates like this is too much for me.

That's truly crazy and I wouldn't blame you for considering not reading another word I write for as long as we both shall live.  The true reason for this blog post is something a little more understandable.  I shared the pill and chocolate examples, though, to convey how much more magnified my feelings are toward the subject.  So here it goes.

We're getting a new couch.  Marcus and I just celebrated three years of matrimony.  About four years ago, we made our first major purchase together.  After we got engaged, we bought a couch for $400.  At the time, we probably high-fived and congratulated ourselves on such a frugal find!  The couch has been through a lot,

(This was the night we spilled potato and leek soup on it.  We brought the cushion into the kitchen to clean it off, just to explain the setting.)

but it's been a good couch for our first three years.  Neville has taken to sitting on the back cushions, which has caused a serious squashedness overall.  We've also had to switch out the seat cushions because they sag in one ::ahem:: particular spot where some fatty sits every morning and drinks her coffee, and every evening watches TV.

We've done a makeover on our greatroom recently, kind of accidentally.  I won't get into the details, but needless to say one project causes other projects, and we became increasingly aware of the necessity for our couch to be replaced with something of a bit higher quality.

As excited as I am to put the cherry on top of the massive greatroom project, of course I'm more than just a little nostalgic and straight-up depressed about saying goodbye to our old couch.

The new one came in faster than I was planning.  I wanted to get the old couch prepped for sendoff.  I was planning on removing the cushion covers and washing them (as I learned this can be done after the leek soup fiasco), vacuuming out the inside, and getting it all spiffed up for a new owner.  My brother and Marcus are taking it to St. Paul's thrift store in the morning on their way to pick up the new one.

 A lot of thought went into the donation location.  Initially I was going to donate it to Goodwill.  I'm going to be picky about who buys our couch, even though I'll never know where it'll end up and have little (if any) control over this factor.  I figured that the likelihood of some kid who got kicked out of his parents' house for being a bum buying it and putting it in a rundown apartment, spilling bong water on it and putting cigarette holes in the upholstery is less if I donate it to a church's thrift store.  I like to think if I take it to St. Paul's, some nice retiree will buy it for his or her new place, and on it good books will continue to be read, crossword puzzles will be worked, and coffee (even if it is decaf) will be enjoyed.

Tomorrow morning I'll drink my last cup of coffee and enjoy my last zucchini muffin while sitting in my dented-in spot.  I know it's ridiculous, but my heart aches to say goodbye to our first couch.

Taken minutes before they hauled it off.  We thought it was appropriate to include the pillows that came with the couch.

Tomorrow, we'll welcome the new guy.

And now...

Alright.  Here we are and it’s after Christmas.  Sure enough, I got what I was hoping for—a Kindle.  Do you think I’m going to be able to talk about it, though?  Of course not!  It’s Christmas weekend, and any attempt for real quality time I’ve made with my Kindle has been sabotaged in one way or another.

In my short, and very sweet time with it so far, I’ve discovered that I can’t live without the dictionary feature, but it’s very, very distracting and I find that I want to look up any and all words that aren’t solid members of my vocabulary yet, regardless of whether I can assume the meaning from context.  I hope this new habit doesn’t prove detrimental to my mad context-clues skills. 

I’ve begun reading Cutting for Stone by someone whose name I can’t pronounce and/or remember to save my life.  It’s about twins born in Ethiopia to an Indian nun and an Englishmen, both of whom practiced medicine.  From what I can tell so far, the nun-mother is dead, but evidently the people she left behind were not entirely scandalized that she, a nun, somehow got pregnant without immaculate conception.  One of the twins is narrating – I’m in the prologue, so I haven’t really started yet, I don’t guess – and it starts out with his four-year-old self exploring his mothers desk that has been preserved as she left it in a missionary hospital, and wondering about a particular framed print of St. Theresa being shot in the heart by cupid. 

So far,  (and according to my Kindle, I’m only 2% through the book) I love the language and the general feel of the book.  My friend, Laura, who recommended the book to me in a comment on the Book Monkey on my Back entry, said that this book ruins all other books, because none are written so beautifully.  I hate to ruin any other books for myself, but I found that I couldn’t pass up the chance to read a book that pales all other books in comparison.  What would you do?

I’m writing this first on Microsoft Word, (for Mac.  And the rendition is grossly inferior, but whattaya gonna do?) because Marcus has unplugged the Internet from the wireless router so that it goes directly into the PC because our router doesn’t have enough ports to run them both, and the PC has no air card. 

He did this last night to setup his new Civilization V game, which I believe he may have played until 2 am.  I don’t feel like going in there this morning, crawling under the desk in that disaster of a room (thanks to Christmas decoration boxes and other such junk) in my delicate state of sleepiness to fool with Ethernet cables and wireless routers.  That is not my cup o’ tea. 

* * Significant Lapse of Time * *

I’m home from work now, Internet is back up, and I’m about to post this!  I thought I may have had more to say by the time I got home from the first day back to work after Christmas, but as it turns out, I don’t.  Plus, I have pizza waiting to be eaten, and it’s taking serious precedence.   

A Christmas Eve dream that has nothing to do with Christmas Eve

I know I said I wasn't planning on writing more til after Christmas, but I have a little bit of time (that I should be using to wrap and make cookies) and I wanted to share my dream.

I dreamed I was at my old high school and I was searching for my old friends.  I found a couple of them sitting in the courtyard, which was way smaller than it used to be when I was in school there.  They wanted to go to the auditorium for some sort of speech or assembly that was optional.  When I got there, I was late (I somehow got separated from my friends) and I walked across the top of a few refreshment tables and kicked over a bunch of things trying to get from the entrance of the auditorium to the exit.  Suddenly, I was MUCH taller than everyone else!  Freakishly so, like Alice.  I couldn't be small enough, and everyone was staring at me as if they were waiting for me to provide some explanation for my massive size.  I pretended they weren't looking and sat down in the aisle.

At some point in the dream, after the assembly and after I had returned to my natural size, my friends were asking for my email password so that they could email me (why they needed my password, who knows, but it made sense enough to my dream self), and I was signing it to them in American Sign Language alphabet.  They didn't understand and kept excitedly guessing the wrong letters, as if it were some mystery game.  I yelled at them because we had always signed to each other in high school to talk when we were told to be quiet.

Later, we all convened in some large room.  At first, I was talking to Keith Richards through a little ticket window, but he was also George Harrison (but mostly he was Keith Richards).  He was telling me how Mick always stole his girlfriends.  I told him that surely that wasn't true.  He started naming 60's and 70's supermodels that they had both dated, and I admitted he had a point.  Then, I told him that I was always more attracted to him than Mick, anyway (the Keith Richards that looks more like George Harrison, at least) and then, embarrassed, I slunk away.

My friends had doubled, tripled, quadrupled in numbers, and I didn't remember or know most of them in the first place.  Everyone was crowding around in a big circle to visit, which, even in a dream I thought was kind of weird.  They set up chairs in a big amoeba-shaped circle around an old bar.  I ended up sitting in between some of the folks I either didn't remember or didn't ever know, but I had a blast.

Then, in real life, Neville stood on my bladder and I woke up.

Christmas

Guess what!  Pretty soon many of my blogs will be about my new Kindle and all of the amazing books I'm reading on it!

They will also be about playing on the Wii, which was last year's Christmas gift, because while it's not the toughest workout around, it is the most fun and it's much better than not doing anything at all!  Plus, my posture is atrocious, as it so often tells me, condescendingly.

It also may mention how much I hate the task of un-decorating.  That's okay, though.  This year, we hardly decorated and it's been kind of nice!  We have our tree up, our Nativity scene out, our stockings hanging from each end of the curtain rod, and a couple of other decorative knickknacks.

We finally got our plans worked out.  Tonight, I'll go to my parents' house and help my mom cook and prepare.  And maybe have a little "cheer." And listen to music.  Tomorrow, I'll mostly work on cleaning my house.  I'll drop into my Grandmother's party for a bit, but since we live next door, I may also bake Tollhouse.  Then, at 3:30 is the Christmas Eve Service at Fairhope United Methodist!

We're changing it up a little this year with our traditions.  The six of us (being, Mama, Daddy, Alex, Elizabeth, Marcus and myself) are going to do our Christmas on Christmas Eve this year.  We concluded that it made it as fair as possible for us to have enough time to spend a good bit of Christmas with Marcus's family.  Last year they got the tiniest wedge of our time, which isn't right.

On Christmas morning, Marcus will sleep in, (because Lord knows, he needs to!) and I'll get up and work on getting ready and cooking and whatnot.  Lunch is at Papa's house with my EXTRA SPECIAL, AMAZING, FABULOUS, BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED, INTELLIGENT family at or around 11:00 (with my family, you never know! 11:00 may mean 1:00, or 1:30. . . )

Anyway, after lunch and coffee and relaxing and visiting with my family, we'll head over to have the rest of Christmas with Marcus's family.  The forecast calls for a tiny chance of snow, which means that mostly it'll be disgusting, wet, slippery rain.  I'm glad we're at least staying local!

I'm guessing that I won't blog again until the day after Christmas, because the madness and mayhem begins this evening at 6:30, but you never know.  Just in case, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!

Fat Belly

The season is upon us.  I have been eating a tiny bit heavier everyday, feeling a little sorrier for myself everyday, and getting a little thicker through the middle everyday.  I made this realization to my mom this morning:  I was telling her that I wasn't feeling great, and she suggested I drink a coke.  I drink a coke anytime I'm feeling sick in one way or another.  Diarrhea?  Coke.  Nausea?  Coke.  Headache?  Coke.  Any combination of the above deserves a coke.

Then, something happens.

Anytime I feel sick in any or all of the aforementioned ways, I feel rather sorry for myself.  The Pavlov's Dog thing kicks in, so that anytime I feel sorry for myself for reasons emotional, physical, mental, bratty, or otherwise, I crave a coke.  It's my reward for being so sad and pitiful.  (I usually only drink half of it, though, because I only like extremely cold coke.  As soon as it's not extremely cold, I lose interest.  This usually happens halfway through.)

I've been feeling alright most days, but the closer it gets to Christmas, the less I see of my husband, and the more stress that's on everyone that I come in contact with because right now, almost every American in some way or other is on a deadline that comes due on December 24th around 3pm.

Even if I'm feeling fine, somehow, somewhere, someone will be difficult  to me in my sensitive state and will cause me to think things like, No one else has to wait on demon-possessed customers if they don't want to.  Then, I'm reminded (by myself or someone else if I think the previous statements aloud) that that's not at all true.  I counter with But they have a choice.  I don't.  At which point I realize the ridiculousness of my thoughts and I can no longer speak (which is best), so I just swig my coke down and gaze out the window at the mall traffic jam or the grown, bearded, balding man who ran, grabbed the light pole, and tried to swing his body around it, either like a pole-dancing hooker, or a little boy.  Let's assume the latter and move on.

These days have been happening much more frequently, so I've either consumed more cokes than normal, or more candy than normal since it's readily available.  I'm working on getting rid of it (by eating all of it).  As soon as I get close, some other thoughtful moron brings our office more chocolate.  I swear I'm the only one working on getting rid of the temptation.

Do you think it would be less fattening overall if I sat and ate all of it at once?  How does that work?  It seems like one massive indulgence wouldn't be so bad as a habit of significantly smaller, yet not totally insignificant indulgences spread out several times a day, everyday during an entire holiday season.  What do I know, though.  I'm not a nutritionist.  Although being a nutritionist would be really cool . . .  I guess, if my coworkers want to be all willpower-ey, they can.  I'll get fat for their sakes.

I don't know if this is weird or not, but I'll risk it to prove my point.  Often, at some point during a bathroom trip, at home, at work . . . usually not at public facilities, I look at my belly.  I either look at it to admire it's near-flatness and general nice shape, or I'll look at it to monitor it's growth and Jabba-the-Hutt-like qualities.  I've always done this.  I don't feel critical towards it, so it's not really a dangerous thing, just in case you were worried.  Anyway, last night while performing this ritual, I wondered how big it really would be if I pushed it out as far as it would go.

I'm not kidding.  I looked 6 months pregnant.  After I relaxed it, I still kind of looked 6 months pregnant, except I was carrying this coke-and-candy baby lower.

Recently, while walking down to the bay with a bunch of my cousins, I discovered that it's sort of a family trait to always have somewhat of a belly.  I shared with them that I had gotten down to too-skinny for my wedding and I still had a little belly.  My youngest cousin (who is very short, so the following is okay and not scary) said that she got down to 98 lbs and still had hers.  I think it made us all feel much better and more accepting of it.

I'm accepting that one will always be there, but I feel much more affectionate towards a little one than a 6-month-pregnant-with-no-baby one.  I'm not making a diet resolution, though.  I don't like the way I look or feel while I'm like this.  I have a tremendous amount more digestive issues, and I feel sluggish, physically when I don't eat right.  I don't require a resolution, because it's the natural order of things.  Once the holidays are over, I'll be happier, more relaxed, and there will be less need to medicate with candy and sugary, carbonated beverages.

So there.  Ta-da!

(Does anyone else feel the need to end their blog post with some sort of dumb last-word thing?)

Almost

Unfortunately for you, the reader that hopes for something fun and interesting to read, and fortunately for me, the crash test dummy, I have a lot of things that almost happen to me.  Lately, when these things almost happen, I think "Wow!  I'm glad I skirted that one, but it definitely would have been something funny or interesting to blog about!"

For example, last night, I was trying to close the curtains behind the Christmas tree.  I reached my hand behind the tree beyond my reach, resulting in my almost topple into the fully decorated Christmas tree.  I hit a few ornaments, touched my face to a few branches, but nothing fell off, nothing broke, I didn't hurt myself at all.  Horror of Horrors!!

I don't even like to jinx myself by bringing this up.  I never wish anything of this nature would happen to me just for the pathetic sake of blogging.  I work at a bank in or near the only traditional mall in Baldwin County, which is one of the highest-populated counties in Alabama.  The traffic up there this time of year is . . . there isn't the right adjective to tell you how heavy and ridiculous it is.  What's more, people will straight UP try to run over pedestrians.  What changes in the mind of a normal-shopper when the shopper makes the transformation into a Christmas-shopper, I do not know.

Raw animal instinct takes over.  I must buy that sweater for Uncle Joe!  Survival of the fittest!  Look!  That person has left the protective covering of her vehicle!  Let's eliminate the competition!  Like a gazelle in the Serengeti.  The gazelle is only trying to get to her office, but the lions are hungry.  Wait, they aren't hungry.  They want shoes!  They want to take the gazelle out for the SPORT of it!

It's amazing the number of people who wait til the last minute, KNOWING that they won't be able to find a parking place.  Knowing they'll get in a huge traffic jam.  Knowing the crowds they'll have to battle.  If you knew that here it is, 4 days before Christmas, and the mall is as jam-packed as it was a week ago, you'd be ashamed at your unprepared kinsmen.

Needless to say, I could easily be run over walking into my workplace this time of year.  It has almost happened almost everyday!