Yay!

So when we were making the drive from natchez, MS to Broomfield, CO, I started feeling this tickle in my throat.  You know, the one you get right before your lungs betray you and you get bronchitis?   Yeah, that was what was happening.  Directly on arrive I had full blown bronchitis.  The hacking, coughing, snotting, choking, and even a little barfing as a result of all the hacking.  It was not fun.  On top of that, was the adjusting to the altitude.  Also, not fun.

I'll flat out say it, I'm fat.  So straight off, I already have things against me while adjusting to the altitude.  In Mississippi, I had been walking just about every day with a fellow teacher.  We walked about 4 miles a day.  Not bad in the sweltering Mississippi heat.  But then the walking slowed down as the busyness of the end of the school year picked up.  

The last couple of weeks, hell even month, I may have walked once...or twice, since I'm trying to be positive.  Then there was a buffer time in Natchez while I was packing up everything there and reorganizing things to be loading onto the moving-trailer.  Then of course the drive here, which now, looking back on it, wasn't sooooo bad.  I mean, there were miles and mies of nothing at some points of the drive, not something I want to do again any time soon.

Upon arrive and a week or so after, we were still trying to figure our apartment out.  Get all the necessities out of the way, get over bronchitis, and do the general I-just-moved-to-a-new-state-what-the-fuck-? stuff.  Now, almost five weeks since our arrive in on fire sunny Colorado, we're pretty much settled in.  We did the Craig's List/Furniture Search (you can read about that in the last post) and feel pretty good about the way the apartment is looking.

So now for the big Yay! that is the title of this post.  Finally, FINALLY, after settling in and getting over bronchitis, I almost feel like me again.  So much so, that I begged Ed to go for a walk with me after he got off work....and it felt GOOD.  

We didn't walk for long and we took Ebba with us, which meant a couple stops to potty.  But I had fun and want to make it a routine.  The biggest YAY of this whole post, I CAN BREATHE AND WALK AT THE SMAE TIME!  Not a big yay for many people and some people may even roll their eyes.  But it was a small accomplishment for me.  So Yay!

p.s. These posts always end up longer than I imagine when I start writing them.  I imagined this one to be like, four lines...

On being stuck in a rut…

with no where to go and no way to fix it...

Hookay, so we had to get a rid of a lot of things for this move.  We don’t have a lot of furniture per se, but things still needed to be gotten rid of so that we could do the more economical thing and pull a U-Haul trailer behind the Xterra.   So things like my patio furniture, outdoor lanterns, storage containers (?), and some small pieces of furniture as well as other items, were discarded/given away/etc. 

So upon arrival to the wonderful (slight sarcasm) city of Broomfield, CO, we didn’t have much in the way of making a home.  We DO have just about everything needed for the kitchen though.  However, minus the broken wedding dishes, we still have kitchen stuff sitting all over the counters.  Why? Because we have about 20-30% less cabinet space than in our previous apartment.  So I was thinking, I’d get a china cabinet from Craig’s List and DIY redo it.  Maybe paint it a funky color with a bold pattern in the inside. 

That’s all wonderful…if we had some cash flow.  See we both spent all our dough moving out here to the land of altitude and dryness.  Both of our last paychecks went to moving, leaving us virtually nothing once we got here.  So even though the whole china cabinet idea would only cost about 150-200$, there’s no cash.  So what doesn’t fit in the cabinets sit on the counters, for now.

It’s kind of that way in every room. We have a crap ton of books.  But no book shelf.  So we can’t unpack.

Some of the china is in the TV console/buffet for protection (did I mention the destruction of our wedding china?).  So the items that usually go in there are either still packed up or displaced.

We also do not have a guest bed yet.  Nor do we have the filing cabinets that were in our precious guest bedroom that we used to store our, duh, files.  Those were gotten rid of as well…  So that stuff is still sitting in boxes. 

It seems like there is a lot we need in order to make this place (or any place) feel like home.  I need yarn/craft storage.  Or hell, I guess I could just get of all that too.  Seems to be the trend around here. 

Not all has been bad.  We did manage to buy a couch from Ikea.  

Ektorp

Not the best couch in the world, but hey, we have a place to sit.  We got it in white 1) because we didn't like any of the other colors and 2) because we figured once we decided on a design scheme, we could dye it.  We had bought an ottoman, which made sitting on the couch more enjoyable, but we took it back because after only a few short days of using it, it was showing signs of wear.

So we’re kind of in this circle of “can’t really do much until we get a _____.”  For example, I can’t unpack the books until I get a bookshelf.  I guess I could just stack them in corners in the guest bedroom…

So I sit here.  Seemingly bored.  But I have TONS to do.  I just can’t do it yet.  I keep finding awesome ideas on Pinterest, but I can’t do those either for lack of funds. I also still can’t breath.  Between bronchitis and the change in altitude… I feel like I’m dying all the time.

I have been applying for teaching jobs.  I’ve also started applying for part time jobs for the summer. 

One little thing that makes me happy and that makes this place feel more like a home than just some blah apartment, I made Ed let me use 25$ of our food budget to buy fresh flowers.  I bought peonies.  They are amazingly beautiful.  However, in the middle of next week, when we run out of food, I’ll just have to look at my peonies (which will probably be wilting by then) and be happy.  They smell really good too!

So soon, as in a week from this Friday, we’ll be able to start putting things together in here a LITTLE bit more.  Just in time for Ed’s family to visit (I’m thinking of putting Ed’s mom to work helping me to DIY some side tables and maybe more, we’ll see).

We made a list, broken down room by room, of the things we (mostly me) want in order to make this apartment a home.  So here goes:

Master Bath 

-wire shelves 

My Closet

hanging sweater     

Ed’s Closet

drawers  

Master Bedroom

curtains

lamp

side table  

chair

under bed boxes

Dining Room/ Kitchen

china cabinet

knife block

Living Room

shelves/media storage

two accent/armchairs

side tables (want to DIY)

curtains

ottoman

lamps

rug

Entry-ish Way

small half circle table

lamp

Guest Bath

Little basket for guest supplies

Guest Bedroom

bed and mattress

curtains

and I'm sure there's more

Balcony

patio furniture

plants

grill

General

ironing board

art/frames

tupperware

storage boxes

The crossed out items are ones that we have just purchased.  I don’t expect to make this all just appear one day.  I kind of want to take it slow and actually have things look nice and like they belong….to make it a home and not just a place to live.  Now only if we can get out of this rut.

Broomfield is actually not that bad...I mean, we do have wonderful views of the mountains:   

More on Christmas with an addition of New Years and Austin, TX

(for those of you who only care about one aspect of this or another, I’ve labeled it accordingly, scroll til you find what you want.)

Christmas 2011

Christmas was filled with high’s and low’s.  We had the Burton’s come down to Mississippi from Iowa (high).  Ed and I have been trying to make this happen for years and it finally did, YAY!  It was very sweet to see Grammy, Karen, and Charles experience our huge Christmas tree and in general, Christmas in Natchez.  It was also great to see the brother and sister, their significant others, and all the babies (high).  Of course there is always a little family drama (low) involved when you get that many people together.  However, everyone survived and Christmas was a success. 

It was a great first experience for me to see all the babies opening their gifts at Christmas (high).  My family has kind of adopted this rule that only the babies get Christmas presents, which leaves Ed and me out completely L (low), but I understand that money is tight with everyone.  And just to be….nice (or an ass, depending on how you look at it) I got everyone presents anyway.  They were not expensive presents, but something that could be cherished for years to come (frames family photos).  But back to the kids!  They were so cute and it’s always so interesting to see how they differ in their little personalities (high).  Elizabeth just tore through her presents, while Brody methodically unwrapped and took in each one.  I think I liked Evie’s approach best though, she just slept through it all (she’s only about 9 weeks old).

I think everyone enjoyed Christmas lunch (high).  I guess it’s lunch.  It’s not at lunchtime, slightly thereafter, and usually before 3 p.m.  There was plenty of food for all (even for me as a vegetarian) and it all tasted nummy!  Something that has become a sort of family tradition is William Sonoma Pumpkin Butter as a dip.  You cover cream cheese with the pumpkin butter and sprinkle with green onions and bacon (for the meat eaters).  Sooooo tasty!  For some reason broccoli-rice-casserole is another big hit with our family.  It’s always the first dish to go. 

After Christmas, Mom took the Burton women down to Antique Alley in Natchez (high?).  I’m not sure if it’s what they had in mind for antiquing (it’s a little different in Iowa), but I think they had fun and at least found it interesting.  Ed and I joined them later and actually picked up a couple of things.  A wicker basket-bowl that I thought could be useful, a teapot that Ed thought was interesting, and a little “silver” tray for shits and giggles (it’s not actually silver, not sure what it really was) all for right at 30$, yay (high)!

I think we were all starting to get “cabin-fever” (low) because we all decided to leave ahead of schedule.  Plus, Karen owns a business and evidently needed to get back to it.  Ed and I made plans to visit the Ludlum’s and Theilen’s in Austin, TX for New Years.

New Years in Austin, TX!

So after seeing the Burton’s off, Ed and I immediately jumped in the MINI and headed to Austin, TX.  It was our first road trip together in the MINI and I was a little nervous that it wouldn’t work (too late, cause we already bought it!).  It’s one thing to shoot around town, something else to sit in a car for 9 hours and like each other.  But we did it! 

The trip there wasn’t bad at all.  We took the back roads the whole way and it made it more interesting and it seemed to take less time.  Once there we were treated to the Austin Experience by our lovely friends, Mr. and Mrs. Awesome (a.k.a. The Ludlum’s).  We also got to hang out a little with Betsy and Trever Theilen, YAYAYAY!  We did a lot of bar/beer trying, food experimenting, and a lot more of getting to know Austin on our own. 

The Ludlum’s just bought a house and they were so nice as to allow us to stay with them for New Years.  The first night we stayed in, but got some lovely pizza from their neighborhood pizza place.  We also participated in some beer, pretty good!

(I’ll go ahead and admit that a lot of this is fuzzy, not from drinking too much, but from raging allergies and what turns out to be a crappy high temperature.  No wonder my brain felt like it was baking!)

The next day, since Alisa had to work and Matt wasn’t there yet, Ed and I ventured out on our own and did some shopping and exploring.   That’s when I basically realized Austin would be my next more permanent home (more on that under Austin, TX).  After being out and about for a while, we headed back to the house for some relaxing until Alisa got home and we went to dinner to one of the “food carts.”  It was an Indian food cart, and even though I’m not that fond of Indian food, I found it all pretty great!  Afterwards we went to a pretty awesome bar, The Gingerman.  We eventually retired to ready for our next adventure.  Now this is where things get fuzzy.  My head was spinning and baking, so I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but here’s a list of things we did do, in no particular order.

-       went to the grocery store for food and beer

-       hung out with Betsy and Trevor (they were there the first night, too)

-       went to another bar with Betsy and Trevor and on the same night, went and met their new puppy, Landry…sooooo cute!

-       We went to the Kolache Factory and tried Kolachies (sp?)

-       For new years night, we went to Mother’s (a vegetarian restaurant) for dinner and then back to the Gingerman.  We did a not so verbal countdown at the river near Gingerman, where we hugged and kissed our significant others.

-       And I totally forgot that Alisa’s sister and soon to be brother and law joined us on New Years Eve eve.  (They actually got engaged New Years Eve!)

So that’s the New Years Eve rundown.

Austin, TX

At first, my verdict on Austin was…meh.  But then, with a fresh pair of eyes, the next day, Ed and I went into town on our own.  The more places I went and longer I was there, I started to try to figure out what constituted a “place I want to live.”  So Ed and I cam up with:

-       Small town feel

-       Big city stuff (availability of items we love, stores we like, food that can be acquired, variety of things to do, the arts, something for everyone!)

-       Variety of things to do

-       Being able to not live in the city, but be in the city…difficult to find

And I’m sure there was more, but that’s all I can remember now.  I think we actually stopped there as we felt that the list was already unattainable.  But the more we experienced Austin, the more we realized it fill the bill almost to a T. 

Even though Austin is a big city, they keep a small town feel.  They have one of the best camera stores I’ve ever been to (both online and in person).  There is such a variety of things to do there, we only really did one..er two… (the drinking and eating variety).  We’ve also got a strong friend base there already as well.  Which only adds to the awesomeness. 

So the plan now is, Austin or bust!