True Story

Did you know you can be kicked out of the Wendy's drive through for inappropriate language? Even if it's not directed at anybody, it's just kind of being...shouted...in the car while you're trying to order?

You can be, FYI.

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

So, I've been doing a lot over the last 4 (FOUR!) months. And taking pictures. And making notes to myself that all start "Update blog!"

Has that happened? Hahahhaa - no.

I've begun building my own furniture! And, thanks to living on a nice, proper street in Suburbia with lots of little kids around, have been learning to say, "Shoot!" "Dangit!" and "Fudge!" when I cut myself or accidentally try to hammer my thumb into a board instead of a nail. The last thing I need is little kids learning from me the language I've spent 24 years picking up from various sources. Especially not D. D is my favourite. D wears his dinosaur costume and his frog galoshes and runs up to me and says, "Miss Sarah! Miss Sarah! I'm a DINOSAUR!" Or, on a gorgeous February day, "Miss Sarah! God made it SNOW for my birthday!" He's four. And adorable.

We got another dog. Yeah, so my blog title/URL is officially incorrect. We basically just inherited my parent's dog, a 10 year old Basset with a freaking TON of attitude. Let's see....house with another dog and 2 active people who can walk and cuddle her little heart out, or a condo in the desert where it's too hot to go outside half of the year? Charlotte gets hot, but it doesn't get THAT hot! So while the rest of the family moves to Dubai, Grace moved to Charlotte.

We've been living together for over 6 months. How weird is that? It's been so wonderful. I started this blog thinking that it was going to be a Challenge (note the capital "C"). "The first year is the hardest," I thought, "So I'll keep a record and maybe make my 4 readers laugh while we figure things out." Only it turns out it's been a cake walk. Okay, we're not GREAT at figuring out chores. And I'm cranky when I'm sick, and he talks to his mom a lot more than I thought he did. But it's been so wonderful, that even when we are frustrated I'm SO thankful that we are living the life we're living. I sit around and think, "How lucky am I? Can I get happier?" and then I wake up and get ready for work and kiss him goodbye and am just a little bit happier than I was the day before.

But that kind of happiness doesn't make funny blog posts. And I'm horrible at writing serious posts. (Confession: I think they're kind of boring.) And so I haven't written anything. Oops. Sorry!

I'll try to share some of the baking/building/decorating/finally moving into our own place and not live in my parents' house anymore (okay, not yet...but soon!) hilarity. There are funny moments, I swear! I laugh so much more now. And yes, the 2 of you that know me in real life probably don't think that's possible. But I do! I swear!

So that's life. I hope everybody's as insanely happy as I am. It's a pretty cool life when you're this happy.

Date Night

For the first few years of our relationship, we struggled a lot with making time for each other. We hung out a lot, and basically filled the cracks of our day with each other, but we never really focused on spending time together. It used to frustrate me so much that we never focused on spending time doing something together.

Lately we've gotten into the habit of spending Monday nights together. We go to movies, walk the dog, or do something just to get out and be together.

Only that's kind of failing. Tonight I got home, read, and decided to go to the gym. He went with me and we ignored each other for an hour, then came home, grabbed our laptops and turned on the TV.

Once spring comes, he'd better get ready, because there is no way in hell this will be an acceptable date night.

It's just more proof that winter hates me just as much as I hate it.

So Happy I Could Burst

Sometimes I think about what my plan for life was. I was going to work hard, go to grad school, play the field, and travel all the time. I was eventually going to settle down (as much as us nomads can "settle down") with somebody from another place, and we would learn each other's language and laugh at all the little misunderstandings we ran into.

Confession time: Sometimes, I'm really sad that my life didn't turn out that way. Usually it comes towards the end of winter, when I'm feeling as dreary as the weather.

And then, like spring, happiness comes creeping back around, bud by bud, dew drop by dew drop, and suddenly happiness is blooming again.

And there's rarely anything that can put words to how I feel, but right now this is pretty close: Sitting there in your pajamas & all the time in the world & if I could keep any moment it would be this: watching you & holding my breath with the wonder of it all.

If this bubble ever bursts and I'm left on my own, I hope I can still remember what it's like to feel this way.

One Ultimate Weekend

So, while I'm a social person, I'm not usually the type to cram my weekends full of things to do. I need to relax. I need to recoup.

But apparently I forgot ALL of that when I planned out this weekend! Holy crap.

Saturday:
8:45 (yes, on a weekend - sign number one I'm nuts): volunteer at local food bank.
1:00-ish: Go watch the Queen City Tune Up
5:00: Hat Tourney for Haiti
After that: Hopefully going uptown to party with the QCTU kids

Sunday:
SLEEP
1:00: Practice with Charlotte Women's Ultimate
SLEEP

Okay, maybe Sunday isn't so packed, but I'll have to recover sometime, right????

I am a God-awful blogger

I admit it. I'm a terrible blogger.

But for now, I'm going to blame this girl:



She's pretty fantastic, and she surprised M and me with a trip to visit us. She came on Monday, and had to leave on Friday morning to avoid getting stranded by Snowpocolypse 2010.

Also, I'm going to blame my horrible blogging on these guys:



Ezra's being a jerk and sitting on my lap, making it nearly impossible to type, while Bodhi is curled up next to me, pinning my arm to my side:



As you can tell, he's terrified that I'm going to get mad. But instead of getting mad, I just give up and cuddle.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The Suegros Are Coming! The Suegros Are Coming!

M's parents are coming for the weekend. Don't expect any kind of amusing blog post until they leave.

Not like you've had an amusing post in a little while...so I'm not actually certain this announcement is good for anything. Oh well.

In other news, there will be an exciting announcement coming up, so be sure to watch this space.

DIY? I know how to S(hop)B(y)M(yself)...

I love projects. I love arts and crafts, and doing things with my own two hands. I've scrapbooked, knitted, crocheted, painted, and done everything short of Bedazzle everything in my life.

For all of my craftiness, though, I'm an impatient person. Knitting was great when it was just scarves, but the instant I couldn't finish something in a day, well, that was it. Why bother? I'm all about instant gratification. While M loves his French press, I will crack open a Diet Coke for my caffeine so that I don't have to wait. Why wait for coffee when there's another source of caffeine readily available? Likewise, it just doesn't make sense to make a scarf when I can buy a perfectly good one at Target for $12.

Well, this is about to change. Thanks to Ana White at Knock Off Wood, I'm inspired. I will take my DIY love to new heights - furniture! Home Depot will cut the wood for me, I know how to paint, and nail guns only terrify me a little bit. Besides, M's house growing up was basically a construction zone, and his dad does construction/carpentry/y'know, handy shit. We can do this!

So I'm pumped. I'm ready. Let's git 'er done!

Oh, but apparently we need to wait. We need a day together, we need to figure out what kind of stain we want (um, dark?), we need to wait until it's not cold (hello, it was 64 degrees today!), we need money to buy the tools (okay, legit), we shouldn't start before his parents come...blah blah blah. It all adds up to waiting, and I really, really hate waiting.

This is why I shop.

Z to the UMBA!

I have recently salsa-ed my way onto the Zumba wagon. I have very little dance background - two years of hula taught me how to get the most out of a good old hip shake, but that's about all I've got to offer. But somehow, with hula and my innate sense of rhythm, I was a natural.

I shimmy, I cha-cha, I salsa, and I merengue. I swivel my hips and I pump my arms and I look fantastic. I know I do. I can feel the music dance it's way through my veins, and as I slide to the right I bend at the waist, squat, look up, and search for myself in the mirror.

I look past the skinny girl in the front row, packing exactly no junk in her miniscule trunk, around the girl in the green running shorts to...nope, that can't be me. No way. No how.

In my head, I'm smooth and graceful. I glow. In the mirror I'm clunky and awkward, my knee bends look like my puppeteer cut the strings, and sweat is pouring down my face. In fact, the only way I'm able to spot myself is by looking for my day glow pink sports bra. My chest is flushed, my arms are red, and my face - well, due to the amazing power of MAC's foundation, my face is still perfectly made up (ridiculously so, actually).

Gone is the Zumba goddess of my imagination. Gone is the graceful movement, the smooth shimmy and salsa, the effortless glow that I just knew that I had. Gone is the natural talent. Welcome back to reality, Sarah. It's a bitch.

Next time I'm hiding in back.

Home Sweet Home

So you know that dream you had as a kid? The one where the grown-ups left you alone and you got to hang out with your best friend, eat what you want, and run around and play? Yeah - my life is kind of like that. Only, you know, with a job and bills and more vegetables than I imagined I would ever eat willingly.

So after almost 5 years together, my boyfriend and I decided to take the plunge (not The Plunge, you crazy people. But a plunge; a safer, nicer, less-likely-to-kill-you-if-you-fall-the-wrong-way kind of plunge) and move in together. We wanted to make the move, combine residences, bills, and pets and get our own place. How exciting! How wonderful! How - wait, did I say get our own place?

Rewind. You see, due to an odd combination of circumstances, I was living in my parents' house (though without my parents) when we decided to move in together. And I couldn't really leave their house while they're off traipsing the globe, so I had a decision to make: just how awkward would it be to take over the master bedroom?

Not that awkward, as it turns out.

So this blog will be the story of our adventures in Living In Sin Land. Not only do we have the usual fun topics to cover (there was The Great Bed Debate, Adventures in Opening a Joint Account, and other assorted discussions), he gets to have a crash course in Living With the In-Laws (just the summer session, though - no yearlong courses for us!) while I struggle with how to be a girlfriend and a daughter at the same time. So, you know, it'll be all sunshine and daisies over here!

I should probably give you your cast of characters, though, right? Just for reference, of course.

To start with, you've got me, your noble narrator. Blogger. Blogarrator? I'm Sarah, and I'm a travel junkie, jewelry enthusiast, and a not-so-crazy cat lady. I can be a bit of a fuddy duddy (yeah, I crochet - what of it?), but oh well. I'm rapidly approaching my mid-twenties, but still in denial. Really, I'm a little kid with a driver's license and the ability to buy wine.

There's my boyfriend, M. He's a Virginia boy (born and bred) who followed me down to NC and is (I think) absolutely hilarious. He's an Ultimate devotee, quiet(er than I am), and responsible. He is the peanut butter to my Nutella, the ice to my cream, the Rioja to my sangria - nothing's quite as delicious without him around. And yes, I admit it - I'm a cradle robber. M is a whopping two weeks younger than I am. What can you do?

We've got three pets - Lola, a 7 year old cat with MAYJAH attitude

Ezra, a 2 year old cat who comes when he's called

And Bodhi, a 1 year old dog who runs away from people and tries to purr.


So if you skipped that whole post to get to the good stuff, here it is:


Ummm, yeah. I got nothin'. Keep reading, though. I'm sure I'll think of something.