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During the months I spent obsessively pouring over wedding blogs, reading every single one I could find casually reading a post on weddings here and there even though I wasn’t engaged, I became obsessed with the DIY factor. It just seemed fun, even though so many of those posts ended with the author saying how the project seemed like a good idea at the beginning, but it quickly became overwhelming/tons of work/stressful/etc. It also seemed appealing because I figured I could make some of the “nicer” things that we wouldn’t be able to afford to purchase outright.
I’ve been Weddingbee-free for 7 1/2 months now – and have successfully avoided most other wedding blogs, but I still think about all the fun things I could do.
But then I thought that even though a lot of DIY projects save a lot of money, you still need a lot of tools to create them with. And while a lot of people have those crafting tools already, I do not, and some of them aren’t cheap. And since L and I will have a very small wedding budget, I thought that it would be convenient if I already had some of those tools before we got engaged – so that those costs didn’t come out of our budget.
But I knew L would think I was crazy if he found out that I was buying things related to a wedding before we’re even engaged. So I tabled the idea.
Then one day last month I was perusing the Paper Source web site (not a wedding site, but I could sort of get my fix that way 
and I clicked on their call out for rubber stamps. I know people are obsessed with stamping and I thought I could find out more about it. Under their new arrivals section, I saw this:
Image via paper-source.com
Then it clicked in my head. What if I bought this stamp and embossed it on note cards (I learned about embossing through some of my other DIY reading) and then marketed to some of the people L knows through work. Isn’t it perfect for a little boy’s birthday party or thank you notes or something of that sort? If I was selling these things, then purchasing the tools wouldn’t just be for wedding-related things and then L couldn’t give me a hard time about it. (Foolish me, he obviously saw right through my reasoning and makes fun of me anyway.)
I continued to peruse the stamps and saw they had just about all the different mascots for the sororities at my college. It clicked again. Emboss that on notecards and email the chapter presidents about them. Perfect for recruitment and big/little sister gifts!
I made a few initial purchases. The fire truck and a turtle stamp, 2 colors of ink and embossing powder and a few blank notecards.
It didn’t stop there. Armed with the weekly 40-50% off coupons for AC Moore, I slowly purchased some other necessities: a paper cutter, heat embossing gun, a bone folder, etc.
But how was I going to sell these? I turned to one of my favorite websites: Etsy. And I’ve set up shop.
I practiced a bunch and I finally added items to my shop. Not just the fire truck and turtle notecards, but other decorative notecards, wine tags, etc. I plan to keep adding new things – so check back. And I always welcome requests for stuff that I might not have listed yet.
So, take a look. And tell your friends!
This past weekend, L and I started working on digging holes for the fence in our backyard. Luckily we used a gas powered post hole digger, so that helped a lot. But it was still hard work. And it was hot out. And we worked alllll day. When we stopped at 9pm (after we dug into a yellow jacket nest and I was stung 4 times and he was stung 5 times) we were exhausted and sweaty and didn’t get to bed till very late. Therefore I was looking forward to going to bed early last night.
It is a rule at his volunteer department that you respond to 5% of the monthly calls OR sign up for one night a week to be on call where you will respond no matter what. Well, L always responds to at least 5% so he stopped signing up for nights. As it turns out, a lot of people meet the 5% percent so they stopped signing up too and thus there was a deficiency of people officially on call. The top of the chain of command was making a big deal about this, especially to the captains (which L is one of them) saying they needed to set a good example and sign up for nights. Really guys? You just need to change your rule because these guys aren’t doing anything wrong.
Although this annoyed L, he was the bigger person and started signing up for nights again a few months ago. A lot of the time, the pager doesn’t go off at all – or only once or twice a night (and when I say night, I mean starting at like 6 when I get home). But apparently L has some sort of curse.
He was on call last night and you know what? It went off. Not once, not twice, but SIX times between 7pm and 5am. Also? FIVE of those times were after 10:30pm. Oy. Freaking. Vey.
He crawled back in to bed after one of them in the middle of the night and I said, ‘how bout you just stay here for the rest of the night.’ I kid you not, it wasn’t 5 minutes before that damn thing went off again. He hopped out of bed and if I wasn’t so tired I would have hopped up just as fast, grabbed the pager and thrown it out the window.
It’s not like you wake up to the soothing sound of crashing waves, it sounds like this (to think I complained about it going off twice in this post. I would have killed for it to have only gone off twice last night).
This has become a trend for him. He was on call last Monday night and we got some wicked storms. He ran two calls before 10pm and then left for a call at 12:40am and ran continuosly until 5:30am. Umm, what’s up with that? ha.
In anycase, I am very sleepy today.
L and I have been together for about 2 1/2 years now and spend just about every free moment together – whether it’s just him and me or it is amongst friends or family. Needless to say, we know each other quite well, so it’s not too often that he does or says something that completely surprises me.
He is your typical guys-guy, but he’s got a lot of heart. We talk about our future about every two point five seconds. Obviously we both want to get married and we talk about the family we will have one day. “One day” being the key word. Neither one of us feels ready to extend our family beyond the puppies any time soon, but we know that eventually, we will.
In the meantime though, he’s good around babies and kids. The volunteer FD is crawling with them, and he’s just so natural around them. Whether it’s making sure the little boy who is just learning to walk doesn’t trip, or it’s throwing all the kids into the pool for fun at a party we are at.
But still. There are some things I don’t expect him to say or do.
He makes fun of me when I casually make references to things we can do at our wedding. “So, I know I’m not supposed to be talking about this, but wouldn’t it be really cool if we did x,y,z at a big celebration we might be throwing sometime next year?”
But then, he throws me for a loop.
Saturday night we had been at a friends house for a pool party/BBQ, one of the other girls there just announced she was pregnant a few weeks ago. While L was playing with all the kids in the pool, I was sitting on the deck talking with a bunch of the other girls and catching up with the pregnant girl.
Yesterday on the way to lunch, I was bringing L up to speed on everything I had heard. He asked me how far along that girl was now and I said I wasn’t sure, but her and her fiance (no shot gun wedding – it was planned before she was pregnant) are finding out the sex of the baby this week.
“I really like the cake idea,” he said. “Yeah, me too,” I replied – not showing how surprised I was that he brought this up again. “Like, if you had a party and then cut the cake and everyone found out at the same time,” he continued. Again, shocked.
No idea what I’m talking about?
We were watching 18 Kids and Counting a few weeks ago – the show abou the Duggars on TLC. L really is not a fan of this show, but for some reason, I’m addicted. I usually save the DVR’d episodes for nights that he is working, but every now and then we watch it together. The oldest son in the family was married a few months ago and he and his wife recently announced that they are expecting their first child.
Being the media saavy family that they are, they decided to take the opportunity to find out the sex of their baby on national television – The Today Show.
When they had their ultra sound and the doctor determined if it was a boy or a girl, she gave the information to a bakery that the couple had supplied them with. The bakery made this really cute baby-themed cake – although it was super unisex. But when the cut into it, the bakery used either pink icing or blue icing in between the layers and that was based on the information the doctor gave them.
So, the couple was on The Today Show and when they cut into the cake, they found pink icing – they were having a girl!
Even then, L commented on how cool he thought that was. I agree, I think it is totally an adorable idea and I do like his idea of having some sort of party with family to announce the sex. (One day. Not any time soon.)
But then when he brought it up again, weeks later. It just surprised me. Not that I didn’t love it. I love that he thinks that way, it just sort of surprised me a little.
He’s such a cutie. I think I’ll keep him around for a while more.
It has happened. My poor little car is officially old.
It happened on the way to work this morning. Not long after I got on the highway. Perhaps that’s appropriate considering I spend a good amount of time on that highway every day. And yes, all 100,000 of those miles are from me. It had a mere 11 miles on it when I bought it brand new.
To think, it’s just over 4 years old. My damn commute is what did it. Almost 100 miles a day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad I moved in with L – I just wish I could find a job that was a little closer to the house.
So here’s to you, my cute little car. You’ve been loyal to me – even after that minor little accident a few years ago. And when I say minor, I really mean, not so minor. I look forward to many more miles with you. Especially the 743.92 – each way – that we’ll be taking you on in a couple weeks when we go to CT.
Good morning, afternoon, and evening to all of you new readers out there!! Hi I’m Heather, some of you may know me from Everyydayy however, did you know I moved?? Well I did. You can find me blogging over at EveryyDayy Grace now. I really hope you’ll check me out over there once in a while. Anyway, today I’m making a big comeback to blogging. I have been on a hiatus due to working crazy hours, and just having some crazy shit going on. Anyway, as I type this I am sitting at my desk at work listening to my John Mayer Pandora station patiently awaiting my last move in of the day. I actually wrote this post several months ago, while I was unemployed. As I sit here and read it now, I just want to smack myself, I would give ANYTHING to have a nap right now. Even my left pinky toe–oh ya it’s that serious!!
I HATE NAPS.
Yea I said it. What are you going to do about it? Seriously naps can suck it! They are the sneakiest fuckers! One second you’re watching a movie, then you wake up 6 hours later, asking yourself how the hell you napped that long.
They make you miss your Thursday night shows. They make you miss your normal dinner time and when you wake up at 9:30 craving hotdogs and beer and have to go to the damn store because of course you don’t have that at the house and you would have gone to the store earlier, but you fell asleep!
So by the time you go to the store, cook, and eat it’s almost 11:00. Now you can’t go to sleep because you’ll get a stomach ache and you’ll be miserable anyway. So you decide to play with your blog and get frustrated until you start throwing pens, pencils, paperclips, anything in arms reach at your computer.
You look at your clock and you’re like OH SHIT IT’S MORNING ALREADY! You make sure the boyfriend gets his butt and heads to work on time. By this time you’re hungry again so you make some breakfast, you knows eggs, turkey bacon, and toast. Unless of course you didn’t do dishes after dinner the night before and you don’t feel like washing the pan so you just grab a muffin (mmmm Cream cheese muffins!!!)
Breakfast is done and Ellen is on, you laugh your ass of for a good hour, then it’s 10:00am. You can either go lay down and try to sleep, or push through it and screw with your blog some more. You know throw a few more pens, yell at the rambunctious kittens, and try not to rip the hair out of your head.
11:00 rolls around and by this time you hate everything and everyone. You can’t go to sleep now because Rachel Ray is on. You play on your blog some more, by this time you’ve said fuck it, and you start a savings fund for a redesign. (Yes, hopefully in the next few weeks-depending on work and such) 2:00 and it’s time for Tyra, so you obviously can’t go to sleep now.
Now you’re so tired that you couldn’t go to sleep if you want to. FUCK NAPS!
We treat our puppies like they are children. They are so spoiled and we do everything we can for them. Do we have almost $1000 to spend on Shep’s eye surgery? No, we don’t. Are we going to figure out a way to make it work so he can be taken care of? Absolutely. And in return, they are ungrateful hellians.
This is Shep with his bone this morning.
This is Dixie chewing on her bone this morning.
Now, I ask, why could they not do this last night when we were kind enough to leave them out for three hours when we went to dinner and to enjoy some nice live music on an outdoor patio?
Instead, they did this.
Just as a note, this (particular) chair had no previous damage to it when we left the house.
I knew it would be bad when I walked in the laundry room (it’s directly off of the garage) and Dixie was sitting there with her tail between her legs and Shep was hiding in his crate.
Ever since the mattress incident, we rarely leave them out of their crates when we’re not home. A couple weeks ago they did just fine for an hour, but the big problem is their inconsistency. Sometimes they are good. Sometimes they are not. I guess yesterday was the latter.
It’s official. Shep has an actual appointment to have surgery on his eye and remove the growth that is beside it. L and I finally decided that by the end of this month we’ll have enough money to move forward with it for now. August 20th is the big day.
I called yesterday to make the appointment and speak with the vet tech. to ask some questions. We have been planning on this costing approximately $900, but they told us that that is really toward the high end. It will be anywhere between $750-950. The surgery itself will probably cost closer to the $750 range, but they might send it off to the path lab to have it tested/biospied, which is an extra $180 (approx.). I think we’re going to go ahead and tell them to definitely have it sent off – just to make sure.
The surgery, apparently, is kind of minor. In terms of recovery time anyway. We weren’t sure if he would have stay over or anything. When I spoke with the vet tech., she told me that we need to drop him off by 8:30 am the day of the surgery, he will then be put under general anesteshia (I know I spelled that wrong), have the surgery and will probably be ready to go home around 1 or 2pm that day. I couldn’t believe it. When we had him and Dixie fixed, they were able to come home the same day, so I guess it’s not different really.
They are just going to cut in and remove the mass. He’ll go home with some pain medicine, ointment and antibiotics for the week. I asked if we should schedule it when someone will be home the next day and she said that wasn’t necessary, especially if he stays in a crate while we’re gone. He’ll be a little loopy and tired that night, but the next day, he should be fine and can play and everything.
He won’t have a cone, collar or bandage over his eye. Too bad. L and I were really looking forward to him wearing a patch. Then we were going to call him a pirate, and perhaps get him a parrot to wear on his shoulder. 
We’ll have a little more than half in cash and will be putting the remainder on L’s credit card and paying if off from there. We could have had the surgery done as early as next week, but we’ll have some more cash at the end of the month, so we decided to wait. We’ll be glad when he’s back to normal and we know everything is ok.
… that I hate my job?
Because I do.
A lot.
And if jobs weren’t so hard to come by, I would get up and walk out of here right now.
- On Sunday, I was really worried about this work week. Mostly because it was going to be a full five days for me. You see, the last three weeks, I have only worked 3 or 4 days because of vacation and holidays. Thankfully, it didn’t go by as slowly as I thought it was going to.
- Last night I went the the monthly business meeting for the volunteer FD. These meetings can be kind of entertaining when the discussions get heated. There is lots of drama and things wrong in this department. Really. Men always say that women have drama, but we’ve got nothing on these (mostly) guys. The main problem is that they make rules and don’t stick to them. I have mentioned this time and time again. Last night was the perfect example. They created a new weapons policy – in a nutshell, no weapons allowed on FD property unless you’re a police officer, etc. This all came about because someone had their gun in the station the other day just messing around with it (cleaning or something, I mean). This made come people uncomfortable because there are a few members that have a history of physical violence and are quick to fly off the handle. Therefore, having a weapon accessible is not really a good idea. You must remember that we live in the South and our town does have it’s own “back woods.” A lot of the people got all upset saying they couldn’t prohibit that if they have a concealed carry permit – it can be prohibited if signs are posted. They were mostly concerned with the fact that a lot of them keep guns in their car. One guy even said that he probably had three in his truck last night. So, the Board of Directors and the chief said, ‘just don’t bring them in the building. I”m telling your right now, i”m not going to check your cars.” Someone questioned that saying that the parking lot was FD property though, they again repeated, “As long as you don’t bring it in the building, I’m not going to check your truck. It’s fine if it’s in your truck.” If that’s how it is going to be, fine. Just don’t say it as part of a formal meeting. While the entire meeting is being recorded. The rules need to be followed. This is just one example.
- Shep has something wrong with his paw. He has been limping ever since we picked him up from camp two weekends ago. We thought it would go away, because he often limps after he plays a lot, but it hasn’t. We’ve determined that it is his paw, one toe in particular, and not his leg. I mean, he limps really bad. But he still plays with Dixie. I almost wonder if he does it for sympathy. Just kidding. He won’t let L even go near one of his toes. I’ve been giving him some children’s Tylenol, but I don’t know if it’s helping. I just wish he could talk. L might take him to the vet next week if he doesn’t show any improvement. I almost wonder if it is a broken toe, and like a human, there’s not much you can do about it. But we’ll see. Our poor little Shep-dog.
-Speaking of Shep, we’ve got about half of the money for his eye surgery saved. I think we’re going to try and save a little bit more and then move forward and put the balance on a credit card. That was the original plan, at least.
- I’ve recently been thinking about selling three of my Lilly Pulitzer dresses online. They have been sitting in my closet for two years and each of them has only been worn one time for a few hours to a couple different bridal showers. They don’t fit anymore because I bought them in my skinny days. I know that I could get at least $100 each on ebay for them – and that would be $300 I could put toward shep’s surgery, or my credit card, or in savings. But then I think, they would be so pretty to wear to a bridal shower of my own. And there’s no way I”m letting my self stay this size for our wedding and that once I sell them, I don’t have the money to replace them – so maybe I should wait. I’m just not sure. I’m still throwing the idea around.
- My coworker returns from maternity leave on Wednesday. I am SO. EXCITED. It would probably be inappropriate of me to fill her office with balloons, right? Because I’m assuming that she’ll be sad about dropping her little one off at daycare for the first time, but I am definitely excited.
Happy Weekend!
There is this one woman in my office that I can not stand. I’m sure I’ve talked about her before on here. I’m not the only one that feels this dislike toward. Every other person in the office does as well. Literally. Every. Single. Person. Except our boss/owner. He thinks that she is God’s gift to the world. And she thinks that she is better than everyone else. But really she is one of the most inefficient people here. Anyway…
She is going on a business trip and is leaving in a little while. She is going with our new employee that just started about 2 weeks ago, however they are driving separately.
They are going to Charleston, SC, which is about 3 1/2 – 4 hours from where we are. The guy’s fiance just got here because they are going to make a trip out of it and stay the rest of the weekend. He walks by WWW’s (wicked witch of the west) office to see if there is anything additional that she wants him to bring. No, but she wants to know if he printed out directions. Yes, he says. She asks him to go make a copy of them so she doesn’t have to bother looking them up herself.
Seriously.
He had to walk back to his desk, then back past her office to the copy machine and then back to her. I have a problem with people who make annoying requests like that.
Getting to Charleston is pretty easy from Charlotte. And for someone who has lived here most of her life, she should really know the gist of getting there. Once in Charleston, it’s not a terribly hard city to navigate. I really don’t understand why it was so difficult for her to just pop in the address into google maps or mapquest.
I just sat at my desk and shook my head during the entire exchance. Knowing more details about how she is and how terribly she interacts with all the rest of the employees would probably help you understand why this annoyed me so much – but you get the idea.
I found another job to apply for to sounds like something I would really love to do. I just opened my resume to tweak it a little. I went through and added a couple of things to my job descriptions and then I went to the bottom where I have extra curricular activities listed. I pushed the mention of my sorority down a couple of lines, and above it I wrote:
[Name of our town] Volunteer Fire Department
Auxiliary Support Team member – help plan, coordinate and execute department events, including…
According to Word, I spelled everything wrong except ‘department’ and ‘help.’ Interesting. When I right-click to look at spelling suggestions (even though I already know everything is spelled correctly), everything listed seems to be in a different language.
I don’t even know what happened, all I’ve done is type!
Weird.
As you all know, I’m a big softy when it comes to animals – especially helping animals. Yesterday, L texted me from the vol. FD telling me they were on a doggie rescue mission, when I inquired for more details, he called.
A yellow lab had showed up at our friend’s house that morning and they had spent their free time calling local vets and looking for lost dog posters around town. The Humane Society and other ‘no kill’ shelters were also full and this guy was not going to be able to keep him because his other dogs were aggressive toward the new dog.
I begged L to let us take him – just temporarily. He kept telling me we didn’t have the room or the money, which is true, but I couldn’t let this dog go to animal control where he surely would have “walked on the red leash” (been put to sleep – I got the red leash thing from some show/movie I saw as a kid).
Our friend was going to put the dog in his pen outside, but called us later that night saying that the pen was falling down and wasn’t going to work. I told L that we could put both our puppies in one crate (since we knew that worked from our recent beach trip) and put the other crate in the garage with a fan and crack the garage door like all of our neighbors do.
It was settled, we were going to meet our friend in an hour to pick him up. I was nervous about bringing another male dog into our house because they can be so territorial, especially after our friend had had problems with them. But his dogs are not socialized and ours are, so we had that going for us.
When we got back, I dropped L and the new dog off at the entrance to the neighborhood, then I went and got the puppies and walked them up there so they met on neutral territory.
Shep did his weird whiney bark and jumping thing once he saw the dog and all three tails were wagging a mile a minute. They did their sniffing and were jumping around, which was hard to manage since they were all on leashes. And then it happened, as I was afraid it would after I met the dog. He started humping both of the puppies. A lot of dogs do this to show dominance, and this one is definitely the alpha dog, but it doesn’t help that he is not fixed.
We let them play and pulled him off of them whenever he was being inappropriate, then brought them to our yard. There were no problems with aggression, which was good – and honestly, knowing how our puppies make friends with anyone or anything, I wasn’t too worried.
Rather than putting the crate in the garage, we set it up on our screened poarch because we have ceiling fans out there and it wouldn’t be so stuffy. We got him a huge bowl of nice, cold water and an extra fan to keep him cool.
L took him for a walk and then we took him on the poarch and let him walk around. When we walked inside for a few minutes he started barking like crazy and we were nervous, but I brought a sheet out and covered the crate -t his is supposed to help puppies sleep, so I thought I would give it a try with this guy too. I also wanted to block the sun that would rise on that side of the house in the morning. And you know what? It worked like a charm. We did not hear one peep out of him all night or at all this morning.
This dog obviously belongs to someone. He is in great condition; clean teeth, nicely trimmed nails and definitely well fed. He’s a huge dog, but not fat by any means – all muscle. And he is VERY well trained. He is the perfect looking lab and I don’t believe that he is mixed with anything. Given his great condition, I almost wonder if he is used for breeding and that is why he is not fixed.
We think that he may have gotten spooked by fireworks the other night and gotten away from his owners.
Our friend is going over to our house this morning to pick him up and take him to the vet to be scanned for a microchip. Fingers crossed. He’s a beautiful dog, but we really can’t keep him.
UPDATE: Our friend picked up the dog and took him to the vet to be scanned for the microchip and unfortunately he didn’t have one. He dropped him back off at our house and we were going to figure out what to do next. Later L calls me saying that our friend’s wife saw a sign on a telephone pole with the dog’s picture. They called and it was a teenage girl who was quite anxious to get her dog back. Apparently her parents were out of town – it’s my thought that the dog got out and she freaked that she was going to get in trouble, not to mention she was probably sad to have lost her dog. Our friend picked the dog, who’s name was Shea and was 3 years old, from our house and delivered him to the girl.
I’m so glad that not only is he safe, but he’s with his real owner.
This weekend turned out to be really nice. Our office suprisingly closed at 3 on Thursday, which was very nice! I headed home and continued to work on the banners I was doing for the Volunteer FD’s 4th of July parade “float.” L and I had a quick dinner and then he headed to training while I went and purchased MORE blue glitter for the signs. I then worked on them until midnight and was still not done.
We had plans to actually put fence posts in the ground Friday, but I had to get these posters done since we were decorating the float at 2. I finally finished at 1:45. Spent a couple hours decorating and hanging out and then went home to shower and change and then headed to LM’s housewarming party.
I was sad about not getting to put the fence posts in. You know, since L cleared the land last AUGUST. Oh well, hopefully we’ll be able to do them next weekend.
LM’s party was fun and we stayed till about 1, which made getting up early the next morning for the parade tough.
We left the fire station at 8:30 to go get in line and hung out till 10 when it started. The parade route is really small, but it was fun nonetheless. We had great weather – sunny and warm, but not too warm.
I would show you pictures of my signs, but I would have to black out a huge portion of it that includes our town’s name (although, I’m sure I’ve slipped up and left it in some picture on this blog at some point) and I just don’t feel like doing that.
After the parade, L and I just hung around the house and then headed back up to the fire station around 6 for an impromtu cookout before the fireworks in town.
Yesterday, L worked so I took the opportunity to sleep in way later than I have slept in a long time, cleaned the house and took the puppies to the dog park. Ever since Shep came back from camp last weekend he has been limping. He always limps after he plays a lot, and I just chalked it up to him getting hurt when he was younger and it just getting sore. He was limping a lot at the dog park and I wonder if he injured himself at camp. I gave him to children’s tylenol – although I have no idea if it helped or not since he obviously can’t talk! I guess we’ll just keep an eye on it.
Hope everyone else had a nice 4th too!
I’ve mentioned before that L and I live in a sort of small town. Actually, land-wize, it is pretty big. But a lot of it is very spread out and filled with horse farms, etc. We live in the area that is near the downtown, the closest to Charlotte and where most of the development is taking place.
If ten years ago you told someone that you lived in our town, they would have thought you lived way out in the boonies. Which, really, would have been true. But since we are not in the same county as Charlotte, but still within commuting distance, lots of people are making their way out our way for lower taxes, etc.
That’s exactly why L chose the area when he purchased the house three years ago.
When he and I first met, I had heard of the town because one of my freshman year roommates hailed from there, but I didn’t know anything about it.
He showed me the historic downtown – two or three blocks lined with old brick buildings, split down the middle by train tracks. And the bridge. Oh that bridge over the tracks that I have a love for. I really don’t know what it is about it, but I love it. (See the masthead of my blog – taken from atop that bridge at dusk)
L and I had been dating for about 10 months when I moved in. I had lived there for approximately 2 months before I found out we didn’t live in a town. Yes, that’s right. We did not live in a town (or a city). Where did we live then? In the county. I still don’t really understand all of this. I guess because in CT we don’t have county governments, so this is something I’m still getting used to.
We had an address with our town name, but were not actually residents of the town. Instead, we were residents of some township that I had never heard of before.
I deemed myself the girl without a town. You know, sort of like the story (or poem or something…) “The Man Without A Country.”
About six months later, I learned another fascinating (horrifying?) fact about our little town that we lived in, but not really lived in…
It was a one stoplight town.
Yes, you heard me correctly. One. Stoplight.
CR grew up in a one stoplight town and I always thought it was crazy because I didn’t know they really existed. And now this. Now I live in a one stop light town? What?!
You might wonder how I didn’t know this having been staying down there frequently pretty much since L and I started dating – which was at least a year and a half at the point of this realization.
When you drive to our house from the Charlotte area, there are only two main ways. You get off the highway, and you drive straight, on one road for about 10 miles. In those ten miles, you go through lots of stoplights. You are also going through a few other towns. It just never really dawned on me that none of those lights were within town limits. I also never really gave it much thought.
We pretty much stick to the area where we live and only occasionally drive out in the more country areas of the town, so I just never put two and two together that the light downtown by the train tracks was the only one.
What brought this all to light was when they were building a Lowe’s home improvement store and put in two stoplights near it and L said to me, now we live in a three stoplight town.
If only you could see the look of confusion and surprise on my face.
Moving on…
There had been talks for some time that we would be annexed into the town. And finally, it has happened. It went into affect on Tuesday. We are officially town residents.
And on Tuesday morning, this showed up in our driveway.
![Jun30_0001[1]](http://playintherain.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/jun30_00011.jpg?w=490 "Jun30_0001[1]")
Oh yes. That’s right. A garbage can. This means that we now have trash and recycling pickup. Halleluja! Now L doesn’t have to take it and get rid of it in the dumpster at work. Sometimes he would mean to take it when it was full and it would slip his mind and it was always those days that he went on a four day break afterward. It’s just nice to finally have a schedule. And just have to roll it to the curb.
I never thought I would be excited about something like this. But alas, I am.
L, however, is not excited about this at all. The taxes are going up significantly because of this annexation and really all we’re getting out of it is garbage collection.
Ok. I can understand that. But. Let me bask in my excitement. And the reason I can do so without worry? I don’t pay the taxes. Although it is our “home,” it is technically his “house” and until there is something sparkly on my hand with a sparkly little neighbor next to it and my name gets put on the house, I don’t pay the taxes. So. I can enjoy this. And enjoy the fact that now I’m a girl with a town.
Now, let me just clarify… I mentioned my surprise and disbelief when I found out we didn’t actually live in town and it only had one stop light. I don’t want it to seem like I don’t like the area where we live, because I do. I really do. Ok, I wouldn’t mind chaning neighborhoods so that the ghetto wasn’t right behind us, but the town itself? I really like it. A lot. I never would have thought in a million years that this is where I would like to live, but I just think it’s adorable. And actually, I’m one of the ones that doesn’t like all the development that’s going on. Yes, it’s nice we have a Harris Teeter less than a mile from our house, but it could have stopped there. I’m not a fan of the idea of a McDonald’s opening or anything else. They tearing down a large section of town to put in a mixed-use development right beside the historic downtown. I don’t like that idea. I like it the way it is. And if I have to drive into Charlotte for something, so be it. Anyway. I can’t stop all of that, but do love the area.
They don’t call it Hotlanta for nothing! Man was it a scorcher while we were there, but oh boy did we have a great weekend!
L got home from work Friday morning, packed quickly and a little while later we were dropping the puppies off at Camp for the weekend and hitting the road.
We arrived in Atlanta at 3pm and checked into our hotel – The Ritz Carlton. This place was just absolutely gorgeous. And our room. So pretty. And big. And comfy!!
This picture does not include the marble foyer
Lounging on the comfy bed
I had gotten a REALLY good deal on the hotel somehow and it included tickets to the Georgia Aquarium and the Titanic exhibit there. All in all, it was only $10-15 more a night than some of the average hotels we would have stayed at. And I took advantage of that knowing that we probably won’t see the inside of a hotel like that again!
We hung out at the hotel for a couple of hours while L finished up some homework from school and then headed to the first game at 7pm.
Our seats were much better than I thought they were going to be, which made me happy. The place was absolutely packed though! We had some ballpark grub and a few beers and were just in our glory. The beer was definietly expensive ($6.75 if you went up to the stand to get it, $7 if you got it from the guys walking by the seats), but was at least cheaper than the $10 we spend at the concerts lately.
I can not even describe how many Red Sox fans there were. When they all started cheering, you would have thought you were in Fenway.
We were exhausted after the game and just headed back to the hotel. Where housekeeping had come to our room for “turn down” service. We were so not used to this.
Saturday we got up bright and early, grabbed breakfast from Chick fil A and headed over to the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. They had a few of the areas where you could pet the animals. I was really not into this at all, but L thought it was cool. I did touch a sting ray so he would quit harrassing me about it and inadvertantly splashed the lady next to me when I jerked my hand out of the water. L claims that since he didn’t see me make contact, that it doesn’t count. So not true. I am really not fond of sting rays. Espeacially after I was stung on the foot by one when I was in high school. So this was an exceptionally big deal.
We walked around and saw lots of other exhibits. My favorite was definitely the sea otters because one of them reminded us of Shep. It was feeding time and he was up on the rock and they had a plastic baby pool up there. He pushed it into the water, jumped in and climbed into the pool to float around. He was adorable.
Our tickets also included admission into the special visiting exhibit on the Titanic, but unfortunately we had plans for an early lunch with a girl I was best friends with growing up. We asked if we could leave and come back and the staff said that we could our ticket stamped, but it was only good for an hour. We talked them into giving us an hour and a half. So we left in hopes of that working because we really wanted to see the Titanic stuff, but didn’t want to have to pay admission into the aquarium again – especially since it is a pricey $26/person.
We headed back to our hotel where my friend and her husband picked us up for lunch.
We went to a cute little restaurant on the outskirts of downtown and had a fabulous time catching up. Her and I don’t talk very often, but every time we see eachother, it’s as if no time has passed.
They dropped us off at the aquarium where the crowds had grown emmensley. We walked to the line for people who already had tickets and were crossing our fingers they were going to let us in. We were 20 or 30 minutes past the hour and a half they had given us. We were going to tell them that we had gotten lost and hope that they took pity on the poor tourists. We were in luck though, and the woman checking stamps was sidetracked and only looked to see that it was stamped and didn’t even look at the time.
We headed up to the Titanic exhibit which was really cool. When you entered they gave you a ‘boarding pass’ with a passengers name and story on it. At the end of the exhibit, they had a list of all the passengers who lived and died when the ship sank. I lived. L died. As we were perusing the names, I came across a first class passenger who had survived. She had my middle and last names. My middle name is a family name. I wonder if there was any connection – although I’m pretty sure that no one related to me would have been sailing first class on the Titanic (which cost the equivilent of $42,000 today).
Once done with the exhibit, we headed back to the hotel with just enough time to change and get to the game.
Another great time, even though it was at 4 and hot. It could have been worse though – there were lots of clouds and a breeze every now and then, so we really lucked out.
After the game we decided to get dinner by our hotel. We didn’t want to drive anywhere so we were going to go to Hard Rock Cafe or Hooters. The line at Hard Rock was an hour and a half, and although I’m not a fan of Hooters, they do have fabulous sangria!
The line was only about 20 minutes, but after only a few the host asked if tehre was another party of two. I raised my hand and followed him. We were being seated with another couple. We were a little nervous as we walked back to the table and thought it might be awkward, but it turns out they were our age and there for the games as well. We ended up drinking all night with them and heading to another bar when Hooters closed.
Sunday, we had plans to run through the fountains at Centennial Park because I am a little kid like that and L wouldn’t do it with me last year. Instead, we layed in bed for the morning nursing slight hangovers. We packed up and headed out to lunch at The Varsity, the largest drive in and then to the game which was at 1:30.
Lucking out again, there were lots of clouds and a breeze and we finally won a game! So different from the last two where we were ordering beer every time the guy walked by. This time we got two waters and a frozen lemonade.
Once the game was over we started our drive home and arrived around 10:30. It was weird to be in the house without the puppies. L picked them up Monday morning and they looked like they had a great time. Shep was dirty and they both definitely need a bath!
