not exactly a party animal.

i am officially the most socially-awkward person i have ever met.

no seriously. you should meet me, and then you would know. when i first meet a person, or am in an unfamiliar situation, or in a large group, my default setting is quiet, shy, and just painfully awkward.

case in point: yesterday's monthly party at work. it was the perfect storm of all three of the situations i just mentioned that make me clam up: since i just switched offices a week ago, i'm perpetually meeting new people, the party was on the first floor of the building (i work on the third, and lets face it the entire building is still new to me), and it was a pretty good sized crowd (even though i'm told the parties drew a much bigger crowd before they stopped providing beer) which means that i was the epitome of awkward.

i knew a grand total of 5 people there (the people from my department) and even when i ran into a guy i knew from college, our conversation went something like this:
me: hey, you work here?
him: yeah, you work here too? cool. where do you live?
me: in maryland.
him: i live in york.
me: cool.
us: *awkward silence, smiles, and head nodding*
and then we walked away from each other and didnt talk any more.

i ate a piece of pizza and a brownie. i stood silently as people around me chatted. i listened to people i dont know (and couldnt really see over the cubicle walls, or really hear over the music on the intercom system) announce some company business, read the suggestions from the suggestion box, and give out the employee of the month award. (surprise! not me.) and then i somehow found my way back to my desk to get my stuff and go home. and that was it. i didn't meet any new people. i didnt hold any conversations that lasted more than 2 minutes. i kept my head down and hightailed it out of there at my first opportunity.

i have a feeling its going to take me awhile to make friends around here.

criss-cross applesauce.

about a month ago, i told you that we went apple picking with my sister and her family, and we brought home a half-bushel of apples. just in case you are not well-versed in the measurement of volumes by bushel, let me put that into layman's terms: we had a crap-ton of apples. especially for just the two of us. we ate them in our lunches, and i baked a couple into cookies once. but mostly, we just glared at them every time we walked past them in the kitchen, using them as target practice for our jedi-mind-tricks, willing them to just disappear.

we are not very good jedis.

we got to the point where there were fourteen apples left, and they were starting to go bad, so i knew it was time to either start throwing the apples out, make a triple-quadruple batch of apple cookies, or cook them into applesauce. i went with the least-wasteful and seemingly easiest option of the applesauce, expecially since the internets told me i could use my crock-pot.

luckily for me, i discovered that one of my apples was rotten to the core when i went to dice it up, leaving me with thirteen chopped up apples, which justbarely fit into my crock-pot.

then just for fun, and because i was following an amalgamation of several online recipes, i added a little water, and some brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

i cooked the apples overnight on the low setting, because i was so excited to be making applesauce that i couldn't wait until the morning to start, so when i woke up, i was greeted by a crock-pot full of delicious smelling cooked apples.

and then i mashed them with a potato masher, and left them sit for the rest of the day on the warm setting, because it was time to go to work. (this is the part where being less impatient the night before and waiting to let them cook during the workday would have made a lot more sense... oh well.)

after work, i allowed the applesauce to cool, and also wisked it to try and get rid of some of the larger chunks of apple. definately not the most hi-tech system of applesauce making, but hey it worked.  

at this point, i realized that instead of having a crap-ton of apples, i now had a crap-ton of applesauce to deal with, and not a very good idea of what to do next. i briefly considered some sort of a quick-and-dirty pseudo-canning process, but after talking to my sister we decided that it was longer than a 2-hour process. (tanning with a t on the other hand may have been added to my list of things-to-do-at-some-point-in-my-life)

freezing the applesauce was also an option, but since i kind of had canning on the brain, i decided that i would rather just put the applesauce into jars, and either eat it all within the next few weeks before it goes bad, or give it away to people who might appreciate the sentiment of a jar of home-made applesauce. 

lucky for me, the spaghetti sauce that i like to buy is packaged in 24 oz. mason jars, (i like to buy it because of the jars) and i have been saving them for any number of potential projects. so i washed up as many would fit in my sink, peeled off the labels, and scrubbed off all the glue residue and even the stamped-on expiration dates.

to get the applesauce into the jars, i made the fortuitous discovery that i own a gravy ladle! smaller than a soup ladle, bigger than a spoon, and the perfect substitute for a funnel of any sort, which i do not own. and just in case you're planning on doing this yourself, you should know that 13 apples = 84 oz. of applesauce, so make sure you have enough jars. which i did. yes sir, yes sir, three (and a half) jars full.

i still can't quite decide if i should be selfish and keep all the applesauce for myself, freeze it in the jars, and pull it out for Christmas or sometime that i want to seem really impressive when i show up at a dinner party with my homemade applesauce, or if i should stick to the nursery rhyme and go with "one for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane." to me, that means i'd keep one for myself, give one to my mother-in-law, and give one to our next-door neighbors.

what do you think? are you as impressed by my most recent kitchen adventure as i am? what do you think i should do with my three jars of homemade applesauce? (i'm not counting the half because i've already eaten half of it) do you think that frozen jars of applesauce would be ok to put in my carry-on to take to Thanksgiving in Wyoming? or do you think that would land me in airport-jail? what if i split it out into a bunch of 4 oz containers? hmmm...

birthday weekend.

this weekend was a prime weekend for celebrating for several reasons:
1. i successfully transferred jobs mid-week despite the most evil sore-throat head-congestion combo known to man
2. Mark worked reallyreally hard this week and just made the deadline for his project submission on Friday (and when i say 'just made' i mean he probably chased the poor UPS woman down the street so she wouldn't leave without his delivery) and
3. the hubs turned 24 on Sunday!

so celebrate we did.

we celebrated the end of our crazy workweeks by going out to dinner on Friday night, and then just chilling out, watching some tv, and working a little bit on our Halloween costumes.

for the rest of the weekend, we celebrated Mark's birthday. We started out with a bang, with a birthday surprise on Saturday morning, in which i took some initiative and kinda sorta forced the man, who since the last tour du bridge (two summers ago!) has been saying he really wants to get a road bike, to finally get a road bike by surprising him with a trip to the bike shop! Mark is in love.

Saturday night, i managed to pull together a pretty sweet birthday party with some of our friends, including decorations and food and dessert and glow sticks and strobe lights and costumes! i couldnt really pick one theme and stick with it, so the party ended up being a Halloween-Birthday-Dance-Rave kind of a hybrid, and i think it went over pretty well with everyone in attendance.

since my real costume for this year (Goldilocks) isnt quite finalized yet, i dressed up as a cowgirl. but Mark got to wear his real costume and spent the evening as Robin Hood - man in tights!

 

it was a great party. trust me, you're really sad you missed it.

then on Sunday, since we love this guy SO much, he got another birthday party with the fam. more good food, more presents, and more time just generally enjoying the company of the people around us. it was basically the perfect weekend of relaxation and partying and just general celebration.

now if you'll excuse me, i have a mountain of dishes and laundry that needs my attention...

last day.

today is my last day at my current job.

surprise!

i havent said anything about it before now, not just because i think that writing about and sharing stories from work for the whole internets to see can open up some proverbial cans of worms that would be best left alone, but also because i'm still not entirely sure just how i feel about it all.

don't worry Mom and Dad and various other family members who keep tabs on me here, i didn't get fired and I am still employed. i just decided to take advantage of an opportunity to transfer to a different department within the same company in a different office that is closer to home. i think i will enjoy the work, and i know i will enjoy the shorter commute that will allow me to sleep in a little longer every morning, but i am still emotionally conflicted here.

as much as i am excited to be able to move on to something new, i am still apprehensive at the same time. because no matter how many times i am told that the people in the new office are nice, i still have a feeling they won't hold a candle to how awesome my coworkers are right now. i have spent the past two years getting to know these people, building relationships, going out to friday lunches, and celebrating birthdays and babies and weddings. i really really like them, as coworkers and just as generally good people, and it is hard to say goodbye to them.

i guess you could say my feelings about the transfer are kind of like a crazy mashup of "Oh, The Places You'll Go" and "Annie Bananie"...

Will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed (98 3/4% guaranteed!)

but you will never, never ever, find a friend group of coworkers that's half as clever, you will never ever find, a friend people who are as good and kind, no you will never, never ever, ever, find another friend job like me.

**updated to add:

Reason #174 that i love these guys - my going away card:

i'mma miss you guys.

i'm in love with a stripper.

a paint stripper, that is.

maybe i should start at the beginning. about a year ago, i found a piece of furniture at a yardsale for $35 that i just couldn't pass up. i first described it to my mom as "a table with 4 legs." Mark prefers to call it the credenza, but i am of the opinion that since i am under the age of 50, i am too young to own something called a credenza, so i refer to it as the not-a-credenza. anywho, it was in need of some love, and i was in need of some furniture for my new house. it was a match made in heaven.

i decided that refinishing it was going to be my winter project. and then winter came and went and i decided that maybe it could be a spring project. and then spring went by so fast that it turned into a summer project.

so in July, in the midst of our massive drywall extravaganza, i finally made time to start it. after going over the entire thing once with a 60 grit sandpaper, i not only discovered how many layers of paint were on this thing, (at LEAST 4 in colors including but not limited to white, gray, tan, green, orange, teal, and red) but also that sanding them all off was going to take a ton of time and sandpaper. i mean, all those curvy edges and the turned legs look really pretty, but i was not looking forward to trying to sand four layers of paint off of them by hand.

it wasn't pretty. so it sat again for a few more months until last weekend, when in the middle of a frustrated crying sanding-induced hissy fit, the hubs suggested trying out the paint stripper that we had used to get rid of the stray paint splatters on the fireplace brick. and i have to say that for as messy as it was, (the majority of the paint came off with the color and consistency of snot), and as much as i didnt like having to wait 15 minutes between each application and removal, it was way faster and way less of a pain that trying to sand it all.

overall, it took a few hours of paint stripping last sunday and this past saturday, and then a relatively quick once over with 220 grit sandpaper, and this beauty is ready for paint! (i know it still doesn't look extremely fantastic, but trust me its a huge improvement)

i bought the paint yesterday, along with all new hardware, and i am excited to get painting and get this thing back into usuable form. our dining room table has been suffering as the only horizontal surface on which we can dump stuff when we come in the house, which means we have been eating a lot of meals off our laps on the couch, so it will be nice to have the not-a-credenza back in action.

**UPDATED**
since you all (and by you all i mean you, Mom) asked so nicely, here's the color: it's called Blue Agave (by Behr) and i think it's going to be gorgeous, don't you think?

and if you disagree with me you can just go ahead and keep your opinion to yourself. its not like i asked for it or anything...

simple pleasures.

this morning, at my house, it is dark and foggy and rainy. and what i am really in need of is a good reason to smile and be happy. on the radio station that i listen to for the first half of my commute, Thursdays are the day they share their 'simple pleasures' that they are enjoying that week. things like re-discovering an old TV show, or actually enjoying a movie in the theater. those things sounded nice, so i decided to come up with a few of my own. let me show you them.

1. hats for everyone at tea time.

2. nephews who know how to share. even with those who are a little piggish sometimes.

3. access to a fantastic dress-up box.

4. the fact that the hubs is letting me post these pictures on the internet.

anyone else out there finding joy in the simple things lately?

please to be sharing!



beyond comprehension.

if ever asked, i would say without a doubt that my wedding day, a year and a week ago, was the best day of my life. i don't think i stopped smiling all day. i felt as though nothing could go wrong. i never felt the chill in the air. my immense joy made me untouchable, and my feeling of joy-fueled invincibility lasted for at least a week.

conversely, if ever asked, i would probably say that the day my Gramma Rita passed away, almost two years ago, was the worst. despite the fact that i knew she was no longer in pain and that i would see her again in heaven, the pain of my loss overshadowed the joy that was brought by that knowledge. i was not ready to lose her. i wanted her to be at my wedding, and get to meet my babies, and keep being my Gramma. but the cancer made her a shadow of herself, and then she was just gone. it was so final, and the intense grief hung around for a long while.

mountains and valleys.

on Saturday evening, the hubs and I had the pleasure of witnessing the joy of a couple who shared an obvious love for one another and also for God be joined in marriage. we shared their joy, celebrated their union, and sang and danced the night away. toasts were given. cake was smashed in faces. laughter was plentiful. and at one point, a slow motion chicken dance happened, Zooey Deschanel style. (anyone else out there watching The New Girl?) it was a great evening, and we felt blessed to be a part of it.

this morning, i learned that on Saturday evening, the wife and preborn daughter of one of the hub's college roommates were killed in a head-on collision in Georgia. i didn't want to believe it. i still haven't quite let it sink in. we had celebrated their wedding with them just a few short months ago. we wished them the very best and looked forward to all that God would do in them and through them, and we prayed that they would share many years together. but it is painfully real. the brevity of their marriage, and of hers and their child's lives. and it absolutely breaks my heart.

i guess the mountains and valleys have to meet somewhere.

the juxtaposition of the mountaintop joy and deepest valley of loss, both simultaneous and yet separated by time and space, is difficult to swallow. as one family is created and celebrated, another young family is devastated, torn apart, and mourned. i cannot begin to comprehend the meaning behind it all, or the divine plans and purposes that are served. instead, i pray for peace. for healing. for daily reminders of the inherent goodness of our God. i pray for love and joy to be continued, and also restored.

because the valley won't go on forever. Psalm 23:4