Christmas In A New House... State...Culture

WOW! What a difference between Charleston and Portland! First off I must say that I am highly jealous of everywhere else in the US that is getting snow, because we certainly aren't! Portland got a complete dump for Christmas and I think they are expecting more. I on the other hand was sweating my buns off and fighting mosquitoes while trying to hang my outdoor lights.

Yes, it was quite an adventure decorating the outside of the house. An adventure in Folly! Now Tom and I haven't decorated the outside of the house in a few years and we've obviously never decorated the outside of this one. So it started with the idea of getting some net lights to drape the bushes in front of the front porch. We bought one that sounded like it would be the perfect size. However I assure you they are not as wide as they claim. The one we bought was enough tho cover the end of the bush and I had to go by two bigger ones to cover the rest of the bush.

Then I found these cute little prelit saplings to flank the driveway. However the cord that runs between the saplings is about 2 inches off the ground. The HVAC guy walked through and killed the first set and I walked through and killed the second set and the third set I bought just plain didn't work. I bought another brand through Home Depot which were bright white LED lights and you could have landed small aircraft with them. So we'll just have to find something else next year.

Then I was trying to find time for Tom and I to decorate the front porch and garage together, but one way or another it didn't happen. So, I did it myself on night, and as I said it was warm, muggy, and buggy. I got it done about 10 minutes before Tom came home. So I said " I got the porch, you get the garage!" Well then none of our ladders worked because they were to short. When we did manage to get Tom on the roof, he felt it was to steep. So I have two unused strings of icicle lights that never managed to make it onto the peak of my garage roof to finish to look I was going for.

Then came the Christmas Tree hunt! I saw a tree at the local fruit stand we liked. It was gorgeous and would have cost us $60-$70 in Vancouver. I almost died when I saw the price tag - $250!!! We didn't get that tree, and it was still sitting there a few days before Christmas. We did visit tree farms in the area, but their idea of a Christmas Tree down here is Leland Spruce, or larger versions of what I grew up thinking of as a shrub cut into Christmas tree form. We were getting very discouraged. We did find a lovely tree - from North Carolina - at Chik-Fil-A (think the Burger King of Chicken breasts.)

Happy New Year EVERYONE!!!

Was that an Alligator?

So, Tom has this weekend off and we spent today running around to Home Depot and Lowe's and Costco. Now, all three of these stores are much closer to our current house then they were in Portland. If you don't count the 3 minutes it takes just to get out of our development, it's about 2-3 minutes to Home Depot and Lowe's (they are directly across the street from one another and about 5-6 minutes to Costco. The whole reason I describe how close the stores are to us is to illustrate how close the Alligator was to our house.

Yes. Tom and I saw our very first wild South Carolina Alligator on the way home from Costco. (I had Tom take a picture with my cell phone, I'll have to see if we can get it onto the computer.) I was driving and we were passing a pond just a little ways away from Lowe's, and I just had the vague sense of seeing an Alligator shape on the bank of the pond. I told Tom and we decided to turn around and check. Sure enough! It was about 4-6 feet long and it was sunning itself on the bank.

Of course the joke on the way home was me telling Tom that I hadn't seen the 3 local Ducks that hang out in a pond in our development. Tom just turned to me and licked his lips.

Vacation!

Tom has had the last week off from work. We didn't know he was going to have a vacation in October until we got his call schedule on October 1st. So since I was supposed to work, we didn't really have a chance to plan a getaway. This hasn't been Tom's best vacation, I'm sure. However, it has been productive. Tom has built his workbench in a corner of the garage and wired in outlets so that he can start putting his tools away. They have been hodge podged on a table in the middle of the garage since we moved in. We bought some cabinets at the ReStore for $30. He just needs to put the pegboard up on them to hang his screwdrivers and wrench's and he'll be happy.

We also got our gardening stuff organized with a clever little shelf with hooks to hang tools from on the bottom. Slowly but surely the garage is emptying out and it looks like Tom might actually get his wish. He is determined to park in the garage by the time he goes back to work.

So, for those of you who haven't looked around at the rest of our blog and noticed our blog links - WE'RE PREGNANT!!! I got really excited and when we resolved not to tell everyone early on, so, I started blogging so that I wouldn't pop. This is our first pregnancy and we tried for over a year, so I wanted to tell everyone, but deep down I knew it was a good idea to wait until the first trimester had passed. However my best intentions have gone awry and I think more people know at this point then don't. So we are 10 weeks pregnant, very early I know. Our first appointment is next Wendsday, so hopefully I'll have more info to share then. Feel free to visit our "Little Person" page to see what's been happening so far.

Other good news is that I have found great terryaki beef or "beef on a stick" for the first time since I lived in North Adams and we also had a really delicious Thai dinner the other night. Talk about Mango and sticky rice! It came in a huge bowl and was warm and coconutty sweet! Mmmmmmm! Oddly enough the restaurant that makes the good Terryaki also makes other good Chinese food and sushi, too!

We had torrential downpours all day today and by this evening a large portion of the back yard was under signifigant water. It was deep enough that it actually covered the tops of our solar lights along the back fence. I hope they work once they've dried out. At one point the edge of the water had made it about a foot past the base of my birdfeeder. (You can find a picture of the backyard in my last post.)

Life in Charleston

IS BUSY!

First off, let me apologize for not posting in a while. This is my second attempt at this blog. The initial page sort of froze up and none of my links worked anymore. I tried to have our friend, Jonathan, help me trouble shoot the problem with me, but it was working for him. So I just decided to start over and transfer everything old to the new.

Tom is very busy. Really he is hardly ever home. They are keeping him very busy at MUSC. I'm lucky if I see him 10 hours during the week. I feel bad that he is SO tired all the time. Of course I also get frustrated when he comes home and wants to eat and go to bed and I just want a few minutes with him when he is conscious. I try to be patient and hold out for the weekends. I get at least one weekend day with him all to myself.

I also have a job. I was hired in July by Dr. Zetz at Crescent Moon Orthodontics. I'm working as an assistant along with another dedicated assistant and then one who has been out sick since right after I started and another who is often out sick due to chronic issues. It makes it interesting. I find it somewhat frustrating that I came to this office from an office where I felt like a valued member of the team and I was confident that Dr. Brown trusted me and wouldn't be mad about decisions I made, but here I feel not quite so appreciated or confident. I only work Thursday and Friday for the most part, so I just go and do my best try not to worry to much the rest of the time.

The vast majority of our things are unpacked and have a home in our new house. The Office still needs book shelves so I can finish unpacking boxes in there, but it's only now getting so it's comfortable to work in the garage after 10am. We also need to finish arranging the garage. It needs shelves and a work bench. I also need to by a table and chairs for the kitchen.

We have a lot more wildlife at this house then we did on Mall St. Just this evening I had two rabbits in the backyard. The birds are eating me out of house and home. The neighborhood has residential ducks and Hattie and Sam are enthralled with the frogs we encounter on our walks. We also have a couple different lizards running around the house, definitely Anoles and I think the other is a Skink. The best part is the wildlife we don't have. For those of you who had to listen to me wine about Skibby Man and his noisy neighbor in the apartments behind us (over our backyard) in Portland, WE LOVE OUR NEW BACKYARD! It is SO quiet. There is a house behind us, but it has a large backyard so it's a ways away and the only noise I hear is when they are mowing their lawn. It's GREAT!

We are still trying to find restaurants we really like. We have a few we can go back to, but we aren't in love with several of the places we've tried. The supermarkets are lacking as well. I finally made it into Earth Fare a few weeks ago and was so happy to smell that "natural food store" smell. In general the other grocery stores are okay but lacking basics like good frozen vegetables and buttermilk (in the south! Isn't that crazy! I thought buttermilk was as much a staple in the south as Okra and fried chicken! No cornbread, either!)

We did go to see Fort Sumter in August. We also visited Fort Moltre again as well. My sister Lisa and my brother-in-law Kenny came to visit us in mid-August. Kenny is very into history and the civil war and the like. So while they were here we took the boat out to Fort Sumter and had a tour (in the pouring rain, it started just as we got off the boat.) It was very interesting to see the fort and hear about the battle. I didn't know that the fort is actually built on "northern" soil. The land the Fort Sumter sits on is fill brought down from Massachusetts! The aircraft carrier you see here is the Yorktown. It's located at the landing where the boat back and forth to Fort Sumter docks. There is a submerine there as well and you can take tours of both.

Getting Settled

Well Tom and I are in South Carolina
now and getting pretty well settled in.
Our last little bit of time in Portland
(or at least my last little bit of time in Portland) was hectic and bittersweet. My mom and her friend from Tennessee flew in at the end of May and puttered around (packing and exploring) while I finished up my last few days working for Dr's Brown and Doleac. My dad flew in on June 5th and Tom's parents drove up for the weekend to attend Tom's graduation.

Everyone helped pack and Bill and Molly were nice enough to take on packing the last of the paintings. Bill even built a crate for the largest ones. Packing and loading the truck took a lot longer then we had expected and actually took a lot more room, too. We had the 24' truck (that dad drove) fully loaded with Tom's car on a 4 wheel trailer in tow ( a scale along the way confirmed that out truck with a weight limit of 26,000lbs was carrying over 31,000, I don't remember how overweight the trailer was) and then rented a 5'x8' trailer for me to tow with my car. That still meant having our bikes shipped and we had to leave our lawn furniture behind. We just plain ran out of room! I thought I had done so well culling down and donating and selling stuff, but there was still so much!

Our little Caravan left Portland on June 9th at about 3:30pm. It was a much later start then we had expected, but we ended up with a lot of extra stuff to do that day. Considering the kids climbed in the back of my car and refused to get out (as if to say "YOU are not leaving US!") about four hours before we left, they did great that day and I was impressed with their behavior the whole way. They acted as if they had lost faith in my ability to find the beach, but they slept most of the way and when we stopped they were very good about doing what needed doing, getting a drink, and then they wanted right back in the car.

So the first day we drove about 300 miles and spent the night at a Super 8 in Baker City, OR. We left Baker City the next day about 9:30am and had one of our most nerve wracking days of the trip. Everything went fairly well until late evening when we were getting close to stopping. We were driving from Utah to Wyoming and I had about a 1/4 tank of gas. We'll be stopping soon, no problem. Except there was a lot of construction and none of the exits had services and I started getting really low on gas. So while I'm trying to find gas, Dad is behind me driving the truck and it just dies as he's going up a small incline. Up until then I hadn't been panicking. I figured if I DID run out of gas, he would pass me, stop, and we could drop Tom's car and I could run up and get gas. So, now the panic sets in. I'm figuring not only am I going to get stuck way past nowhere, but dad is going to call Budget and they'll send out a new truck and we are going to have to move everything from one truck to the other. I'm ready to cry because that took all weekend in Portland. Turns out it was just a hose that came loose and all they had to do was put on a new clamp and refill the coolant. I also made it to the next exit which was where we were staying anyway. I do have to say that I have never before unscrewed my gas cap and heard a vacuum! So, that was how we arrived in Evenston Wyoming! About 500 miles.

We stayed in a Motel 6 that night and needless to say it was nothing to leave the light on for. When I mentioned our disappointment to the front desk staff the next morning they took note and we received a letter of apology and a 100% refund in the mail! Those were some expensive pillows we didn't get!

When we woke up the next morning, June 11, it was 32 degrees and started snowing as we finished filling up and were getting on the road. We had the whole gambit of weather that day; Snow, hail, REALLY strong winds. We got to Goodland KS that night and it was in the 70's. This was also the night there were several tornadoes in Eastern Kansas and some Boy Scouts were killed at there camp. 641 miles for the day. We left Goodland, KS on June 12th and it was hot and humid and in the 80's all day. We hit a lot of rain and several thunderstorms throughout the day, and were chased into Missouri but another Big storm that his Eastern Kansas that night. It was a 620 mile day.

On Friday the 13th, we left O'Fallen Missouri at 8:30am and drove 597 miles, making it to Mom & Dad's house in Tennessee around 10pm. All in all we drove though OR, ID, UT, WY, CO, KS, MO, IL, KY, and TN between 3:30pm on June 9th and 10pm on June 13th.

We got to relax for the weekend before making the final leg and getting into Charleston on June 16th. I signed the papers and we got the keys to our new house. Palmetto Bugs and all!

WOW!

I went out and mowed the lawn today and when I came in my Weather Channel Desktop was going nuts talking about thunderstorms. It was still sunny and beautiful outside so I didn't pay any attention. Well a little while later Kobe came in off the deck and he was wet. The sun was still shining, but it was raining; big fat drops outside. A little while later I turned around and WOW! What a gorgeous sunset. It was still raining, and there was some thunder and lightning, but the whole sky was just alive with color.

Been a While?

Life has been so busy, and so much has been happening, I haven't had time to sit down and update for so long. First big accomplishment: Tom and I celebrated 7 years (yesterday) of living together in "more-often-then-not" wedded bliss. We had dinner at Castagna on Hawthorne in Portland and then came home for cake from A Piece of Cake on SE 17th. I had a small 6" chocolate cake with raspberry filling made. It is very similar to our wedding cake, except that it is covered with chocolate ganache and not roses.

We also go a late start placing our house on the market, so it didn't actually go up for sale until the beginning of April. Even with that delay, we had an offer in 8 days and got more or less full price for it. We had to give them some money to deal with an unexpected sewer complication, but at least they are dealing with it. That means we can just enjoy what little time we have left in the house. Of course my crying when I do yard work has just gotten worse over the months. I love this house so much; I keep telling Tom I wish we could just pick it up and move it. Oh if it weren't for impossible dreams!

We also have had our offer excepted on a new house in Charelston. It is really a lovely house and I think it is a good compromise for everything we were looking for and what we needed. All it really needs is some refencing for the dogs and a little bit of yard work to perk it up. It really has a bare minimum of landscaping right now.

We have also been doing a mad dash around Portland, visiting our favorite

places and seeing the things we haven't managed to see in 7 years. We are

really going to miss all of the Mcminnamen's establishments (Edgefield, The Kennedy School, The Barley Mill Pub and the Bagdad) I keep telling Tom we should franchize one in SC. I finally saw the Portlandia statue.--------->
Who knew Portland had an imitation Liberty Bell right in the middle of downtown!?

So no luck on the baby front, yet. That has been really hard. However, as so many people have told me, I am still young, and maybe if I just relax, things will happen - when I just stop thinking about it. Please pardon me while I go excise my tongue from my cheek. To my credit, I normally manage to keep a smile on my face when receiving this "advice" from those people who A) have children and B) never had a lick of trouble popping a bun in their oven. Seemingly, most of the people who shower me with such advise are the ones who wake up one morning and say "What is this bun doing in my oven, I didn't want another/anymore bun/s right now!" Oh, and by the way, being told by everyone and their 2nd cousin to "relax" really doesn't help achive the goal, it really just pisses me off.

Maybe if I were a 14 year old crack addict, that advise would come in handy. However, I assure you I am a 28 year old wife of an employed professional. I haven't thought of anything else for about 12 years. I had to wait 6 years for Tom to get on board (because that is what good wives who want their relationships based on trust do) before even getting to the "trying" stage only to still be childless without even a glimmer of hope on the horizon 10 months later. The bitterest pill is standing there, every night, and taking "the pill," even though YOU aren't the one who doesn't want to get pregnant - only to find out that you really didn't need to do that because, HEY! you can't seem to get pregnant anyway. Pardon me, but the optimist in me is going to step out of the room now for this "truly,life sucks" moment. The only thing worse was having to smile and cutely say "No, not yet!" when being asked if we have children or were we trying.
Wow, I guess that's all I had to say about that. Really it's not, but I'm sure you're sitting there making the "movin' on" gesture with your hand, so I'll do just that.

I also took a three week trip to the East Coast in March. I rented a car (I still can't get the smile off my face from driving THAT car!) and drove round trip from Greeneville to Massachusetts where Mom, Colby, Amanda, and I got to spend time with Gram-Gram and Pa-Pa, and see uncles and friends and extended family while we were there. We stayed a week before heading back to Tennessee, only for mom and I to head to Charleston to initiate the hunt for the new house.

My Mom will be here on Memorial Day with her friend Anne. They are coming to go exploring around Portland and help me pack. We are signed up to do the 2nd Annual OHSU Tram run/walk on June1st. It's Mom's first organized event, so this should be fun. Then Dad arrives on the 5th, we pick up the moving truck and Tom graduates on the 6th of June. Bill & Molly will be driving up from Truckee for that momentous evening. Then Mom, Dad, Anne, and the kids (read dogs) and I will be leaving sometime around the 10th of June. Tom will have to stay on in a rented room in The Pearl until June 21st. Crazy month, huh? To top it off we already have social engagements in Charleston. So the fun only begins when Tom arrives.