That big one is the size of my leg.

Darla and Trevor were home for a few days this week and said they’ve never seen this much snow up here in 20 years, which was a huge comfort and made us feel less INSANE. They asked how we weathered the cabin fever, and all I could think to reply was “well, we’re still married.” I really have felt like that… that if we were still friends by the time winter ended I would be satisfied.

While they were here we spent a few days with Mikey’s mom so they could have the run of their own house, so Mikey could still get some school work done (Kelly and the kids were here too – full, noisy house), and so Jan could spend some time with Hazel, who has barely seen her grandmas and grandpas any more than when we lived in Canada since we’ve been stuck up on this hill so much since we moved here. It felt strange to be in civilization again. Hazel needs new sneakers for running around outside (!)… so I just went out shopping (didn’t find anything). I went to the craft store and forgot something so I just… went back the next day. Amazing.

I feel like I can breathe again. I have motivation again. I finally started five Christmas presents that I had given IOUs for… I just didn’t have the time with the move and holidays immediately after so I let myself off the hook instead of spontaneously combusting from the stress, and then when I did have the time after Christmas I was stuck in the house all the time and there was no sunshine and the thought of making five of the same, very time consuming thing made me panic a little. So… they will be March presents.

I also finally finished those pajama pants before we left for the ‘burg. Some bib-to-be-fabric that never made it, a goodwill-ed pillowcase, and an old brown tshirt of Mikey’s:

Hazel is napping. The sun is out. The house is clean. Mikey is gone. I don’t even know what to do with myself. Edit all those Etsy photos I took last week, I suppose.

Oh yeah, I ripped out this scarf. I got about a third of the way in and realized I can make the cables look way better now that I know how to do it. Plus… it has served its purpose – knitting scarves makes snow go away. Now that I see the yarn made into something I rather think it would make a very nice tiny sweater. Anyone have faith that I could actually learn how to knit a sweater? I’m not so sure.

Listening: drip, drip, drip
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (yep, I’ve now swaptree-ed almost everything she’s written)
(Hazel is) Reading: Welcome Spring (thanks Grandma & Gabe’s!)
Working on: Christmas presents for 2009 AND 2010 – only in my crafting universe does this happen; not giving up on the blue & gold blanket being done this winter; some custom necklaces

washed six loads of laundry
applied for five jobs
during four hours on the computer
got three emails
talked to two people on the phone
made one pan of cornbread.

I haven’t had problems entertaining myself since I was seven and I feel like I’m going crazy in the middle of a city with one million things to do. I just want to walk down the street and see someone I know, or hear a damn cricket at night, or something.

I just discovered that in my myspace profile I can click on my zodiac sign and get a horoscope. Your world feels pretty tightly wrapped now, but this doesn’t necessarily upset you. You are willing to live with the restraint.

Now is probably the time to start running. I have NEVER run while listening to music and I don’t own an ipod, but all of a sudden when I see people go round and round with white cords dangling from their ears, I think “how am I supposed to get back into running without an ipod?”. All I need are legs and shoes, and legs and shoes I’ve got.

But wait, tomorrow’s horoscope says this: Yesterday’s struggles continue as aggressive Mars forms an irritating quincunx with electric Uranus. …Even taking action now may not solve the problem.

Well shit.

What’s a quincunx?

3 a.m. : Taking into consideration the advice of Mr. Billy Bragg, I went to youtube and found the cat video that he so highly recommended. Is it bad that, as a cat lover, I am sitting here laughing silently and uncontrollably, watching this over and over?

- no more Lost for a whole year.
+ get to see Mario & Jenn tomorrow at the Shakespeare festival in Stratford (and discuss Lost).
+- there will be action figures this winter. I don’t know how I feel about this. Mikey will pout if I have a sawyer toy.
- bread goes bad REALLY fast in this country. This might seem silly, but it’s true.
+ but that’s probably because there are less preservatives.
+ my cousin is mailing me cheese from South Dakota.
- Hershey’s chocolate is not the same.
+ Mikey wallowing on the floor with Dorothy pinned in his arms… “STAY! you aren’t a prisoner, you’re my daughter!”
+ metal-on-metal bang announcing mail arrival.
+ it’s supposed to get warmer over the next few days.

I want to learn how to make handmade books / photo albums. Like… ones that are bound really well. Archival. I also still need glass & metal handling knowledge for some pendant ideas that have been in my brain for months. Why do I have to get a real job. Why?

Also, day 4 sprouts, plus some new babies where we’ve put part of the first batch into salads or pitas or just our mouths:


mmmmmmmm.

Yesterday we went to the grocery store and bought tons of food. For two weeks we’ve just gotten a few things as we needed them (two decent grocery stores within thirty seconds of us), but yesterday was The Grocery Shopping Trip. This particular store had vertical poles spaced evenly around their entrance so you can’t take your shopping cart to your car. The spots right by the entrance are designated for parking and loading up your purchases. Strange. So anyway, this elderly woman and myself were waiting for the husbands to get the cars, and she eyed my cart and chuckled and said, “well you certainly did a good job.” I mentioned that we’d just moved here and had to stock up. She asked where from, and I said the states.

“Oh really! My mother was born in West Virginia. Do you know where that is? In a little coal mining town outside of Morgantown. My grandfather owned the company store. She was married there… had to wait for the circuit rabbi to come through town. Then she relocated to Pittsburgh. I was born in Detroit.”

Of course I was on the verge of tears and could barely get the words “I’m from West Virginia” out of my mouth. Then I tried to breathe and told her that my mom was born in Detroit, and she clapped her hands and said, “well we might find that we’re related before these men get back!!” I want this to happen a lot.

Also….

My baby started school today. Don’t you just want to pinch his cheeks?

Our phone is hooked up now. I sent out a mass email that Mikey will forward on to his contacts, and if that doesn’t cover you let me know if you’d like our number.

I can’t believe season two of Lost is right… over… there….

I put together one bookcase and had some kind of weird heat stroke from sitting in the sunlight and hammering things together (or I’m just a baby), so I laid on the couch for a couple hours and watched the documentary about the national spelling bee that I love. When Mikey came home we put together the other three bookcases and two CD towers, and then spent the evening shelving books and CDs. While all of this was going on, I was watching the last three episodes of season one of Lost. I’m freaking out all over again.

Tomorrow after we go eat lots of yummy veggie food on the harbour, I will put together our table and stain it, and then put together the chairs. Then I will prop my sewing table top against the wall and wish for legs. They’re out of legs for a couple of weeks, and they were out of the dressers we want. At some point next week we have to go back again and get dressers and then put those together. And then we should be all done. And I will be so happy.

Toy shelf. Jesus, Mary, George Bush, GI Joes, Star Wars, penguins, and a bookworm.

I miss Emmalee.

I wanted Mary or Janet or Andy or Angie or my father in law or anyone who would barely be able to suppress laughter if I turned to them and whispered, “your honor, the defense requests that Ms. Mishke put on her bra!”

I’m seriously not making fun of someone for wearing a bra OVER a camisole… seriously. Go for it. She looked good. But the Seinfeldesque nature………. oh god. I want things like this to happen to me all the time so I can add more things to this “seinfeld moments” category in my blog.

Today is really really dreary, and I’ve got nowhere to watch WVU kill Marshall. I kind of wish I was just there, sitting with my brother on one side of me and Jenn bates in her coonskin cap on the other side. And then when we win, Mary and I would walk around and look at all of the fires.

But I’ll just watch Seinfeld reruns all day. Alas, I only have the first four seasons on DVD (all of my tapes are gone forever) and so I cannot relive The Caddy.

Listening: Denison Witmer : Recovered
Reading: Dominion by Matthew Scully
Wishing for: five and six

I will try to recap. I have a cold, and my brain does not process things completely when my head feels like a marshmallow.

On Thursday, Mikey and his mom drove to Ellenboro to pick up our truck from the devil company. It was the only 17′ truck in a 50ish mile radius. You can’t take penskes into Canada and you can’t LEAVE budget trucks in Canada, so we had to stick with uhaul. At least it didn’t break down on us or give us any problems at all.

Mikey drove that thing like a champ. I wasn’t behind the wheel for a single second (not that I didn’t offer). At one point he called and said “am I still alive?” accompanied by lots of profanity about the absence of lines on the road and the pitch black darkness.

So we loaded up our storage unit, then my parents came to the house with the cats to help us finish with all of the stuff we had there and see us off. I didn’t think I would ever stop crying, ever. I didn’t, in fact, until we were well into Ohio. Vy chance, the first cd in the car changer was a mix I made a month or so ago. I couldn’t get through a single song… they all reminded me of someone that I was driving away from. About half an hour into the drive I turned on Songs:ohia’s Ghost Tropic and felt better. That should NOT be comforting, and Ghostface Killah should not make a girl cry (for the record, I’ve only cried twice since we got here… once when I uncovered bookcases in the uhaul and saw “Handcrafted by Walter Dillaman” burned into the back; once today when I was pouring some iced tea into a Black Bear pint glass for Michael). It took us forever to get to our hotel outside of Buffalo, and I felt like death when we woke up a few hours later. We had to drive into the city in the rain and bad traffic. I was sure no one would be there to help us unload in the rain, but a guy in Mikey’s program – Drew – and his wife Kathy were there. God bless their souls. John came from a meeting and helped for awhile. We got it done, and then our apartment looked like this:

Now it’s better, but we’re at a bit of a standstill with the unpacking until we get bookcases and dressers. Hopefully this will happen tomorrow:

(These need a home, badly. 35 boxes spewed onto the floor = bad.)

(So do all of these.)

(My craft things were mostly organized onto these shelves, and then I found more. My sewing table will go to the right of them against the wall… the couch is against them on the other side. Makes a nice ‘lil room divider. You can see the batcave/computer/music room in this one. I forgot to take pictures of it.)

The cats are happy with all of the boxes and pigeons and things.

(Chattering at the pigeons.)

Other details:

Drew and Kathy, the aforementioned super couple, are freaking awesome. They have two adorable children (Leo and Mazie) and two adorable kittens (Emily and Pink). Drew is Mikey’s caliber of nerd, and Kathy is in social services – I am definitely a fan of the Maxwells. After helping us move in on Friday, they had us over for dinner and crainum on Saturday. On Sunday Drew saved our car from being towed. We weren’t parked in a tow zone, but there were two or three old tickets (which we were just going to throw away since Ontario gov’t won’t track license plates from the states) so a cop decided that maybe it was stolen and was going to have it towed. Out of four and half million people who could be walking by, only THREE would know it was our car, and Drew happened to be walking by. He said he’d go get us so we could move it. A nice security guard gave us a visitors spot in the other family housing building across the street until we could get our parking spot squared away on Monday. Other awesome people in this city besides John, the Maxwell family, and that security guard: the Australian girl in the management office of our building…. she’s SO NICE. She just moved here with her husband five months ago “for adventure”, and she’s helped us with so much stuff. I always want to ask her if she likes peanut butter, but then I think what if she’s never watched Lost, or what if she doesn’t LIKE Lost? She wouldn’t get it. The humor would be…lost. But in my dreams, she says, “oh yes! I’m the only girl from Austraila who likes peanut butter!” in that perfect voice that Claire and I could never perfect. Also, our banker was amazing, as was the very very patient guy who spent almost an hour getting our cell phone business sorted out – US credit check “instantly” and such.

The best thing about this country. “Bush is an idiot” is the mainstream. I LOVE IT OH MY GOD I LOVE IT.

This is one example of the man being used in an advertising campaign – this one happens to be for a college. Another we’ve seen is a giant billboard with his face and the slogan “don’t read enough?”. It’s for an audiobook company. I am so happy with this phenomenon.

Also, several of the french things have made me giggle. for example, raisin flavored soda…aka grape:

Our nighttime view is especially nice. Morgantown is the largest town that I have ever lived in, and it’s obviously small. I wondered if I’d feel like I was totally and uncomfortably surrounded by other humans, but this is not the case. It’s just Michael John and I and the cats and then… everyone else. None of our neighbors are loud. The girl across the hall has a dog named Eddie and I’ve not heard him bark once. I haven’t even heard a baby cry.

I don’t know what else. I will post more photos when everything is completely arranged. Mikey and I got new cell phones yesterday, but the long distance isn’t good so we’re trying not to use them to call home. If you want our numbers, however, email one of us. Our house phone should be hooked up in a week and a half or so, and we’ll have free long distance to the states. So we’ll call you all the time then.

edit: I forgot this photo of a WELCOME CAKE from Drew & Kathy. Did I say that I love them?

2.] Yesterday I realized what is possibly the most exciting part of the beginning of Mikey’s phd quest: I get to help him buy school supplies. He has very good taste in pens, but there’s an entire office supply world out there, and I know nothing of his preferences. Small or large notecards? What colors of highlighters? Does he even use highlighters? Does he red-pen things? Spiral notebooks or legal pads? Does he want a backpack, which would be better for his thirty year old spine, or is he just going to carry everything in his usual messenger bag? Does he want an adorable mini-recorder to record lectures? He knows that I have this obsession. One day he sent me a link to a virtual stapler. I can’t wait to send him off to his first day of class with all of his fresh paper and a thermos of coffee. Should I make him pose with his GI Joe lunchbox? Yes, yes I should.

3.] I was looking at drawer pulls online just before, because there is some chest-of-drawer-refinishing in the near future. My favorite ones (sculpted olive branches) cost FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. For a five drawer dresser, two pulls each, the pulls would be worth about as much as my car.

4.] Tomorrow is my last day of office-wenching. I’m going to have a lot of free time on my hands for the next four weeks unless the temp agency has a really, really short term assignment available.

5.] Most importantly >>>> TOMORROW: Cobra (my baby, et. al.), Librarians (my boys), and Scale Model (Neill is the only one I know, and I sure love him) at 123 Pleasant Street. Come dance and sweat for five dollars at ten pm in our dirty, beloved bar. Everyone who’s usually there will be there, except for the ones going to see Ryan Adams instead (excusable), and the ones who moved to New York (I guess this was a good decision). Even Mandi and Ethan are coming to town for this.

Listening: Pink Floyd : Dark Side of the Moon
Reading: The Most Dangerous Alliance in the World

I motored to work this morning with two intact wipers, and when I left – in the middle of nowhere along a highway – there was a baptist church flyer where my driver’s side blade should have been.

Even if they didn’t steal it, even if they accidentally broke it off and just threw it across the highway or something, you’d think they would have reconsidered leaving evidence of their identities.

Repent, sinners. You owe me four dollars.

water
6:30

Who wants to go? I don’t know what this means, but I want to find out.

My job is fabulous. I spent the whole day xeroxing, sorting, and filing pieces of paper. The whole day. With people that I know, and some that I don’t but already like anyway. Everyone felt very sorry for me, but they don’t know the hell that I have endured over the past three years at Panera Bread. Compared to those demanding, horrid, demonic coffee addicts that I had to deal with on a daily basis, one hundred and forty two papercuts are heaven.