Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sep30

The Applesauce

Posted on by
The Applesauce

First things first.  Apparently our kid is going to be a Hoosier, according to The Poll from yesterday.  At least according to 66% of you.  And this is a democracy; I’m pretty sure that’s a margin that would even fly in Congress to pass a major bill.  So…she’s a Hoosier.

Now about the applesauce.

On Tuesday, Angel and I picked a bajillion apples.  OK, well, not a full bajillion but however many apples fit into a bushel.  They were extremely heavy and uncooperative (at one point, my full bag became possessed by the Apple Gremlins and spilled down the hill; I had to go chase after the stupid little things and I never did find them all.)

All told, I think I got about 42 lbs of apples and paid $24.00 for them.  Not bad, even though I had to re-pick the Golden Delicious bag.

With 42 lbs of apples, something Very Specific must be done with them.  Applesauce and apple butter were my plan.  That’s why this morning I woke up at 7 (although didn’t get myself out of bed until 8:00 because all my limbs felt like they were made of cast iron) and found myself at Wally World at 8:45 trying to find canning jars.  Then I went back to Angel’s house, where since 9:30 I have been making a royal mess of her kitchen.

I bought something like 48 jars, and I think they’ll be full by the end of the day.  At least the applesauce ones, the apple butter will have to wait until tomorrow because I have to simmer it all night once I get home.  I may have gone a little gangbusters, but I was thinking “hmm, the child will eat applesauce soon…” as I was standing in the canning jars aisle. I figure I can return a package if I don’t use it.

The apple peeler bit me in the thumb, and now I have a disgusting blood blister and bruise.  I’m not even sure how it happened.  I tried to re-create the situation and none of my attempts worked.

There are still oodles of apples to peel before we can be finished with the icky part (which is the peeling) and move on to the fun part, which is squashing up the peeled and cooked apples.  But according to my calculations, it takes 30 seconds to peel a single and slice the average apple and we still have…lots left.  Probably an hour and a half, actually.

A bushel is a lot.  It sounds really small but it’s really not.  It’s a lot.

Sep29

Sorry. Another poll, but it had to be done.

Posted on by
Sorry. Another poll, but it had to be done.

Last night, as we were hanging up curtain rods and draperies, Joey said, “So…is our daughter going to be a Texan or a Hoosier?”

And I was all, um…I don’t know, dude.

“Technically, we’re Hawkeyes,” Joey said.

“Not me, I’m not.” I said.  (I don’t like the University of Iowa.  Herky is lame; he scared me when I was a kid once.)

“You still are even if you don’t like the U of I.  Iowa was nicknamed the Hawkeye State before the University of Iowa had the Hawkeye mascot,” Joey said patiently.

“I’m still not,” I insisted.  ”I only say nice things about the U of I when I’m talking about them with my Pops.  Otherwise, I hate it categorically.”

Joey gave up after that.

The point is, though, our daughter was lab created in Dallas and she lived (in an embryonic state) in an actual Petri dish in an actual building for five whole days before being poofed back into me.  So…she has Texas on her already.  However, she will be born in Indiana and actually do the whole breathing and eating thing up here.

We never could make a decision on her state affiliation status, so I thought I’d put it up for a vote.  Democracy being the American way and suchlike.

Sep29

The Name Game: Week 12

Posted on by
The Name Game: Week 12

Apparently, nobody likes the name Lenore.  40% of you voted it as the Most Unpopular Name On The List, and therefore, Lenore is no more.

Ha.

That rhymed.

Joey said, “Well, there goes our Edgar Allen Poe name.”  I don’t think he’s too heartbroken, though. Incidentally, only 7% of you disliked Elinor.  So…the Sense & Sensibility name lives on.

The final stats on the Unpopular Four are as follows:

  1. Lenore – 40.48%
  2. Wren – 30.95%
  3. Frances – 21.43%
  4. Elinor – 7.14%

This leaves us with only 9 names and 8 weeks of pregnancy left.  AAAACK!  HER ROOM IS NOT READY!!!

Analie

Beatrice

Coraline

Darcy

Elinor

Frances

Gillian

Helena

Isabelle

Julianne

Kiera

Lenore

Marna

Nora

Olivia

Piper

Quincy

Rowena

Simone

Talia

Uma

Violet

Wren

Xara

Yalena

Zerubabella

Sep27

The Unpopular Four

Posted on by
The Unpopular Four

I am well aware that some of you think some of the names in our list are, well…WEIRD.

It’s fine.

Joey and I are weird people.  It’s how we roll.

So I made a list of most unpopular names in our list.  This week, the one that receives the most votes (as in, you think it is the weirdest of the four) will be eliminated.

Because that just sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

And NO, Zerubabella is not on this list.  It’s not a weird, or even unpopular, name.

We still do not have webs at our house, something I tried working on this morning with little to no luck at all and I got really frustrated trying to figure it out…so I am leaving this poll open until Wednesday morning.  I may or may not have a chance to get somewhere with webs so I can close it down and post a winner before then.  It’s hard to say, eh.

And now.   Please vote for the name which you believe deep down in your soul to be the absolute weirdest name on the list.

Sep27

One Of My Favorite Pictures of Joey

Posted on by
One Of My Favorite Pictures of Joey

This Sunday, Joey performed his first baptism.  It went off quite well, too.  (He’d practiced on The Kid when we were all in in the hot tub the night before, which I think helped a lot.)

Unfortunately, we forgot Joey’s nice, conservative brown swim trunks at my grandparent’s house after we went swimming.  So Sunday morning, Joey realized he was going to have to wear his wild Hawaiian flower ones with the cargo pockets that always fill up with tons of water and then go ooshing everywhere when he gets out of the pool.

Because everyone was in town helping us get settled in and helping the grandparents pack up for their move (which will take place later this week), pretty much my entire family excepting The Kid was at our church on Sunday morning.

Gramps managed to snap this quality picture on his iPhone of Joey and The Brother.

Many things should be noted about this picture:

  1. Joey’s outfit is amazing.  Red shirt, white striped button down, khaki blazer, wild swim trunks…and Simple slip ons.  A true class act.
  2. Joey looks extremely nervous and stressed.
  3. The Brother is drinking a LOT of coffee.
  4. He also looks kind of stressed too (probably from drinking all the coffee?), but likely not for the same reasons that Joey would be nervous and/or stressed.
  5. The sign directly above their heads reads MEN, which is appropriate considering only men are in this picture.

And now I should do what I came to get on the interwebs to do, and that is figure out what kind of interwebs service we will have at our house.  It’s super hard to do research on a service provider when, like, you don’t have internet at your house yet.

Sep25

A Backhoe

Posted on by
A Backhoe

This afternoon as I was sitting in a comfortable chair at Casa de Grandparents, Gramps walked by and said, “It was a backhoe.”

I was all, Um, WHAT was a backhoe…?

And Gramps just crossed his eyes at me and he was like, THE THING FROM YOUR EARLIER POST THAT YOU DESCRIBED AS A BIG YELLOW SMASHING MACHINE.

Oh, that.

Guys know the names of all kinds of heavy machinery implement type things.

I just googled “backhoe” because I wanted to see what it looked like again.  Someone had earlier suggested that the device I was unable to name was a “front end loader”, so I googled that too.  Internet.  They look exactly the same.  Please advise how these are different.

This is a backhoe.

This is a front end loader.

See what I mean?  Basically the same machine.  OH WAIT.  Maybe it’s because the backhoe has an extra claw on the back of it?

Well, I’ve had about as much fun as I can handle.  I’m going to go back to my earlier campaign to see if I could get my grandfather to give us his hot tub.

So far it’s not going well for me.  Or Joey, he’s trying too.

Sep25

The Dump Run

Posted on by
The Dump Run

If there’s one thing my Pops is really skilled at it, it’s loading up the truck and taking a bunch of garbage to the dump.  Just about every weekend when I would come home from college, Pops would come wake me up at, like 7:30 and say, “I’m making a dump run and you’re coming too, get up.”

So I’d get up and brush my teeth and get in the truck and off we’d go.

Dump runs were way more exciting back in the day when we had the actual dump truck.  It was this old-timey truck (ok, maybe from the 80′s) that had been used for railroad maintenance (ever seen those driving on railroad tracks?  so cool) and some guy from Kirkwood had turned it back into a real truck in shop class.  Anyway, Pops got it on the cheap and we used it for our “farm truck”.

Basically that meant we went to get rock from the quarry in it, and used it for dump runs.

The dump truck was coolest because we never had to unload anything when we got to the dump, Pops would just get it all lined up to the trash pile and then stand out there and holler to me, in the cab, “PUSH THE HANDLE”.  And when I pushed the handle in, up would go the dump bed.  It was hydraulic, as if you care.  All the trash would go falling out into the pile ‘o dump garbage, and then off we’d go.

Pure excitement.  Especially when we stopped at the gas station on the way home for breakfast.  (Read: Pepsi and a Snickers.)

Fast forward, like, ten years to when Joey and I bought our first house.  The day after we closed, we started ripping out trim and carpet.  We threw it out back in the yard.  After three weeks of this, the pile kept getting bigger and bigger.  Eventually, a destroyed refrigerator and mangled up dishwasher were added to the yard.  Oh, and let’s not forget the massive pile of broken down boxes and styrofoam filler that were overflowing off our front porch.

If ever the term “white trash” applied to Joey and I, it has been over the last week.  Because we are white, and our yard was full of trash.

In fact, I have seen one of our neighbors walking the fence row between our yards, inspecting the growing piles of trashes in our backyard looking stressed about the low quality kids who moved in next door.

This morning though?  Pops showed up with a U-Haul trailer.  He drove that trailer back into the yard and we filled that entire thing up with all the trash in our yard, including the dishwasher and refrigerator.  Then we took it to the dump.  They made us pay $100.00 to get rid of that junk, but it is gone and done and smashed by the big yellow smashing machine that has a name, and I can’t think of it.  It’s not even exclusively used at dumps, they use it to dig holes in the ground. (HELP.  Does anyone know what those are called?)

I tried to pay for the dump run, but Pops said, “why don’t you just buy us doughnuts later.”

So then we met up with everyone at Dunkin Donuts and everyone else tried to pay for the doughnuts.  But I prevailed, I tell you.  I slapped down my Amex and told the lady behind the register (who looked like she could not wait to see us leave her restaurant we had caused so much trouble) that she would be taking MY card and no one else’s.

It worked.  But it was only $16.00, so I think somehow I still came out ahead on this somehow.

Now it’s lunchtime.  Everyone else is eating and they’re like, “Where’s Jenna anyway, she was the one who was hungry…” and the reality is I am here, sitting in the comfy chair blogging this post before all the words fall out of my ears and I forget what I was going to say.  Blogging for me is like expensive chocolate. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

I think it’s all out of my head now.  And I look at this and I think it really wasn’t worth holding off on eating lunch for either.  Absolutely 0% of it is profound in any way.

Par for the course.

Sep23

The Name Game: Week 11

Posted on by
The Name Game: Week 11

Yeah, so about the pictures of the house.  Remember how I said some larger-type person stepped on our camera at Old Threshers and broke it?  Well, we think we can take pictures on it, but we can’t see them.  So…this is causing us problems in the whole Take Pictures Of The House area.  I KNOW, way lame.

Henry has taken to the house surprisingly well, considering how traumatized he was of the emptiness and wood floors before we moved all the furniture in.  But he recognized his chair immediately, and he’s been alternating between it and the couches since he got there.  I think he’ll do just fine.

Last night I got up at 3:30 because, surprise!, I had to go to the bathroom again.  Henry was all curled up on the floor in the duvet that we had tossed over the edge of the bed, and he was a wad of coziness and cuteness.  I decided he was so cute I should just pick him up and snuggle him for the rest of the night.

So I did.

Well, Henry decided that he needed to sleep right where my feet should have gone, and suffice it to say that from 3:30 a.m. until 7:00 when Joey’s alarm went of, I did not sleep well.

No more Henry in the bed.  Even if he’s cute.

As this is Thursday, it is time to delete a name from The List.  I’m sitting in Joey’s office while I type this, and Mom’s right here next to me.  She’s been helping unpack boxes.  The kitchen is almost totally unpacked (excepting the fact that the kitchen cabinets don’t have doors on them yet, they’re all in the garage and still need some paint on them) and we were just hanging things on the walls before we came to check our email.

We still have no internets.

Anyway, I deferred the name deletion to Joey who, in turn, deferred it to Mom. After some consideration and consideration of her strategy, she has deleted Simone.

Adieu, Simone. C’était amusant que ça a duré.  (Translation: Farewell, Simone.  It was fun while it lasted.)

Analie

Beatrice

Coraline

Darcy

Elinor

Frances

Gillian

Helena

Isabelle

Julianne

Kiera

Lenore

Marna

Nora

Olivia

Piper

Quincy

Rowena

Simone

Talia

Uma

Violet

Wren

Xara

Yalena

Zerubabella

Sep21

We’re in!

Posted on by
We’re in!

906 miles, 2.5 months, 1 temporary residence and we are finally moved in to our house!  It is weird.

We’re unpacking boxes that were packed, in some cases, three months ago.  I’m pulling things out that I put in while packing with friends; I am remembering where we were, what we were talking about, and I keep getting all sentimental and teary-eyed.  Sometime I just miss Dallas because even though Joey and I both grew up in Iowa, Dallas is what feels like home.  We had to do more growing up there, in some ways, than we did in Iowa.

I didn’t really get “homesick” much until we started getting so much closer to actually moving in and getting reunited with our things and our memories.  And ya know, it’s not bad.  I’m glad to be here in Indy, I really am.  I just wondered when I’d get homesick and I guess it took this long.

Sunday evening, we were in an unpacking frenzy.  We set up enough furniture to sleep in beds and be able to eat breakfast in the morning, and then we all crashed.

And it was then that we discovered that the blinds for our bedroom window were AWOL. There had never been any on the baby’s room windows in the first place, which was where poor Mom was staying.  So there we stood, Joey and I, hiding in our bedroom hallway and trying to figure out how to get into our bed whilst wearing pajamas (which, incidentally, I had not been able to locate so I was wearing Joey’s Mountain Dew t-shirt, which really doesn’t fit so well at all anymore) without crossing in front of the big window that faces the street.

We decided it was impossible.

Joey slid across the wood floors to his side of the bed and dove under the covers while cars zoomed by outside.  I could see their headlights tracking patterns across our walls and I figured they were moving so quickly they wouldn’t have time to notice we had nothing whatsoever covering our window.

I followed his example, only much more awkwardly since I am rapidly losing my ability to slide and dive.

We decided to let Henry sleep with us since it was a special occasion and all, and we three lay there watching the car headlight patterns on the walls.  Joey was about asleep, but I coudln’t shut my brain off.  The last time we had seen this bed, these sheets, the down comforter, we were in Texas.  Granted, the mattress was on the floor in the dining room, but we were in Texas.

“It feels weird to not be in Texas now that we are reunited with our stuff,” I whispered.

“I know,” Joey whispered back.  ”But we’ll get used to it.”

He’s right, we will.  I already like my Indy kitchen 100% better than my Texas kitchen, and the bedroom is growing on me daily.  It’ll feel more cozy once we can put area rugs down, but we can’t until Friday since we had the wood floors redone.  (Henry keeps diving off the bed and wiping out when he hits the floor, and I feel super bad for him.)

Alrighty then.  Mom and I need to go to the store to buy toilet scrubbers because I threw mine out in Texas.  I just felt like the level of disgusting would exponentially increase if I packed them and then stored them for several months, and I was pretty sure toilet scrubbers would be sold in Indiana.  So…yeah, my toilets are gnasty but I can’t clean them because I’m not putting my hand in the toilet water.

No sir.

I’m not doing it.

Sep18

Quiet

Posted on by
Quiet

I woke up obnoxiously early this morning: 6:15.  All I could think about was lists of things I wanted/needed to do at the house today, and the fact that I was STARVING, and that yesterday I drank the last of the orange juice.  (Since becoming pregnant, it has been Very Important to keep high quality orange juice in the house at all times.  It’s like my energy drink and I could put it down by the half gallon if Joey wouldn’t bust me for wasting juice.)

The more I thought about the fact that we were out of OJ, the more stressed I became.  What if I didn’t get any all day?  HOW WOULD I SURVIVE?  I started getting squirmy but made myself keep laying there.  I’m not sure why, because really all I did was work myself up more and more over the lack of orange juice in the house.

By 7:15, I couldn’t take it any more.  I whispered, “Are you awake?” to Joey.

I think all my stressed-out squirming had woken him up, because yes, he was awake.  We discussed the mighty plethora of things we needed to accomplish today, and then we fell silent.

“It’s really quiet in here,” Joey said.

“I know, let’s see if it’s quiet enough that we can hear the blood moving around in our bodies like they say you can in padded rooms in mental institutions,” I suggested.

We both held our breath and laid there, intently trying to see if we could hear our blood moving around.  Then Joey’s stomach growled.  (Either that, or he has really loud blood.)

We decided it was time to get up and get moving.