Ashbloemstraat

In sickness, apparently little health.

Wow. This has been quite a day.

Last night I had an entire schedule for our last day (today) written out, starting from when I dropped David off at work at 10am this morning. Running errands for the morning, finally finishing my handouts for tour in the afternoon, picking him up, making dinner, packing, cleaning the house a bit, both in bed by midnight-ish? Plenty of time for a decent amount of sleep but not SO much so that we are not sleepy enough to doze the whole way there tomorrow.

About 2am last night, David woke up violently ill, and remained so the entire night until easily after 10am today, blowing those plans to smithereens. I never saw/heard someone so ill (including myself) for such an extended period in my life. Neither one of us slept a wink - finally at 6am I went out to get him Pedialyte and Popsicles to battle his dehydration, and somewhere around noon he was able to sleep a while. I began to fear it was the flu, which would have put a severe cramp in our travelling. But around 4pm today the color came back into his face, and while he is still very weak we think it is food poisoning of some sort. We're still a bit baffled as there was very little we didn't eat in common the past couple of days, but enough that it seems to be sort of likely.

I have to tell you, this "in sickness" bit is not so fun. Is there some way to inoculate your loved one against any and every illness before you commit your lives to each other? I am not a queasy sort in the least - hearing/watching him puke his guts out did not bother me nearly as much as how desperately I wanted his suffering to be quelled. Please. Dear God. Let this be the worst I ever help him through.

So anyway. The day was shot. It's about 2am now and I'm just finishing the packing/cleaning part of the process. I have two more quizzes to write for the kiddos but I am sort of hopeful my friend in Switzerland will have a printer. I only have two more I WANT to do. If I have to just live with the three I have then that's ok.

What else. Well, I've been a little obsessed with the registries lately because my sister and future mother-in-law keep talking about showers and I'm all WHOA! WHAT THE HELL. Apparently when you get married people WANT to throw you parties and give you presents! The main issue with this is I feel sort of like an asshole doing it. Like, so selfish. (I know I keep talking about it to you guys and I know I'm repeating myself and therefore you can tell I have issues, so all apologies.)

My sister is very good at explaining these things to me, coaching me through them, and urging me into what sounds like a really fun party, but basically I feel this is just a call for gifts and I am having a very hard time with this idea. Finally after several conversations with her and a few friends I am coming to terms with the idea that this is all OK and I'm the only one who feels weird, but I'm still so super uncomfortable I have to hope the Showers are wild and crazy and fueled with plenty of booze so I feel better about the whole thing the next day, despite the goodies sitting on the kitchen table.

In other news.

This is the first time in a long time I've been nervous about a tour. Still, I think it is pushing me to do better. In Boston, NYC, and Washington DC it was easy to be lazy since I know my way around so well, but since I haven't been to any of these places inside 5 years I'm really applying myself.

Oh kay, gorgeouseses. I wish you were all with me. That we were having an alternative punk tattoo party across Europe, and I was leading you through the Mitte with no cares, no cares. I'll check in when I can. Plenty of photos to phollow. I love you. Dream the pleasantest of dreams.

Livejournal.

Hey LJ folk - you can add me on syndication here.

Revisiting the past.

So. The past few days I have been studying like crazy. Ask me when Berlin was founded. Go ahead. Ask me. Ask me about the communist years in Prague. Do it. Do it. What's Heidelberg famous for? Name eight famous Germans, and I don't include members of the Third Reich, though I'm happy to include a certain Project Runway judge.

My apologies for being the worst kind of blogger recently. I've been only ever so slightly better with my Flickr project. Of course, when beginning all of these personal projects, I conveniently forgot we are going away. Away, away.

I've made no secret of the fact my time in Luzern was not the happiest time of my life. In retrospect, I realize that had so much more to do with my relationship with Mr. Non-Committal at the time, and not necessarily with Luzern itself. And also my deep deep grief over leaving Amsterdam over what ended up to be incorrect assumptions.

This said, I'm really EXCITED to go back, and show David everything. If I can talk to someone about a job at the same time, all the better, though I have not made this a priority. What a lovely place to have a family and friends if one feels happy and supported, really.

I will touch base tomorrow, and with luck I will have some time to get online whilst away. My friend Christine reminded me that most hotels have internet now - this is true; but so often I get back after a very long day in charge and before I can make it back down the stairs I am fast asleep.  So I won't promise too much.

Please pass this on.

Well, I had made my own decision that Obama is the choice here if for no other reason than he can beat McCain, but Lawrence Lessig makes this graceful argument here. Please forward to everyone, everyone. Everyone, that is, who shudders at the idea of McCain in the White House. While I think we could have done worse on the Republican race (Giuliani, Huckabee, Thompson, and Romney all give me hives), any Republican is really a continued step in the wrong direction.

Slow.

David had a little bit of a meltdown yesterday, and I realized we are really putting a lot of pressure on ourselves and that needs to stop forthwith. He is working non-stop, and therefore getting a.) little time to himself; b.) little time to have fun; and c.) little sleep. I am giving myself daily crap for not having a job yet (though thankfully I will get paid for the tour next week). Right now I am insisting that we calm the fuck down.

It feels like we have these looming costs, but really, we don't. The wedding is so reasonable at this stage, and while I am sure something will come up, I feel very good about our finances on this thus far. Our hopeful trip has been giving him some stress, but as I told him - hey, we've created a honeymoon registry, and if it doesn't look like it will cover everything we DREAM of doing, certainly it will cover part of it and that's just the part we will do! Right? Right.

I've created a first draft of my NEW RESUME. However, it's still mostly my old resume, cleaned up. I'm going to keep working on it, but at least I have one now that I feel a bit better about so if I happen to see a job I'm interested in right now I'll have that one to send off.

Wedding-wise, the honeymoon registry is done and we'll hopefully finish the Amazon one before we leave. We are having a hard time with that one because we don't need anything, really, but I don't want people buying us random crap at showers or whatever either. Tour-wise, I'm reading and studying, and really getting excited now. Also very excited because we'll spend the first few days in my old town of Luzern with my friend Sara who just had a little girl three days ago! That may be the littlest baby I have ever held, unless I hold a younger one before next week. Which is unlikely. I'm going to take David sledding on Mt. Pilatus. Hope we don't break any bones; that would be bad.

I am hoping this little bit of time away is going to help restore my creative impulses. I've been sort of trapped in the job-search/wedding-details hamster wheel recently. Being in new air and languages always perks me up. Maybe when I return this blog can get a little creative again, instead of just being a daily journal. BOOOOR-ing.

I've totally just bored the crap out of myself, but I'll post this anyway. Woo hoo!

Daily bread.

Yesterday I housewifed it in the kitchen for the day. I started out just wanting to scrub it down and it get it ready for painting, but then as I started putting dishes away I said, "Hey, while I am doing this I should whip up a couple batches of pizza dough to have on hand". Two batches of pizza dough, a loaf of wheat bread, and four quinoa/mushroom/black bean stuffed bell peppers later, the kitchen was no cleaner than it was when I started, and quite a bit more flour everywhere. Mind you, I cleaned everything that was there before I started, but left the kitchen with all the things I got filthy. Then David came home and we decided to eat said peppers and warm bread whilst watching Eagle vs Shark, and then, well, I was just too sleepy to deal with it. So much for cleaning the kitchen.

It is only about two weeks before my tour starts. I have not been good about studying. Today I bought the books I need and will be cramming as though an exam looms. Which one does, in a way, I suppose. But I did drop the two east coast tours I had agreed to for March. I feel enormously better because of it, though considering that's the only bit of income I have lined up right now I wonder if I was being foolish. I just don't feel much like touring this year. And I can't help but think if I'm really applying myself to finding a job here if it makes sense to be away half of March. I can't see that it does.

The weather here has been remarkably warm for February. Or maybe it is not remarkably warm in February for TEXAS, but remarkably warm for ME. I continue to have the windows open during the day when I am here, much to the delight of the cats. Spike, the dog next door who has no respect for his fencing, wanders to the open front window and looks in, bemused by the cats. This riles them greatly; Ronnie the Bear keeping every hair on his body on end while Spike is around so that he appears twice as big. Once Spike trots away it is all lounging in the sun, however.

Choices, choices.

Up until he withdrew, I was a Kucinich supporter. I have been for some time, though I know supporting Kucinich each election is really just my choice to live in my own political dream world for a while, imagining myself in a country that will choose a leader that reflects my values and beliefs 100%. I know it will always end badly, but that's ok. It's nice while it lasts. Maybe I need to move to Ohio.

Since I already know I am in agreement with Kuchi on everything, it has made me thus far very lazy about educating myself this election season. I spent the first few months in my little Democrat reverie, not reading up enough on the other candidates. Which is too bad, really, because in every online quiz I take to find out who I align most with it always comes up Mike Gravel. And I'm all, WHO? (Kuchi always comes in second for me on those, by the way.)

So this week I've determined to do said educating. Which I just found out is actually quite pointless, as I missed the deadline for registering to vote in the Texas primary (I thought the Texas primary was in like, May, and I had plenty of time. Ends up it is MARCH.). But I like to have opinions on these matters, and since this election is very very very important I need to be able to encourage people to vote correctly.

(I desperately wanted to jump in on a conversation a couple of girls were having at Doublewide the other night. They were talking politics, and one said "Oh yeah, Hillary totally got the most electoral votes this week." Oh, sweetheart. Delegates. They are vying for delegates. But I am really working on not poking my nose in and correcting people and being a smarty-pants so I clenched my fists and stayed quiet while she also stated the U.S. has a great health care system. It was very hard.)

I was starting to lean Edwards but oh well, so much for that. So now we have Hillary and Barack and I am generally sort of ambivalent about the two of them. Their policy differences are not great ones. If I am going to make a purely academic choice, I am just going to have to compare their healthcare and Iraq plans side-by-side and go with the one that is slightly better. Those are the two topics I am most concerned about so I guess those are the areas where I would split hairs.

I love the idea of a woman being in the White House (and a Wellesley one at that), but I have some serious issues with Mrs. Clinton. Firstly, that she voted to go to war - she voted to let George W Bush, the village idiot, use force as he saw fit. No matter how she tries to wiggle out of that one, it is there and it cannot be forgiven in my book. Secondly, she has a slippery political style that I am not comfortable with. Lastly, she does not want to change the lobbyist system, which in my mind is one of the great flaws of our government.

Everyone is in love with Barack Obama, but I don't know if I have a heart of stone or what because I just haven't fallen under the spell yet. He is undeniably charismatic. I guess up until now he was just speaking too much in generalities for me. I just keep looking at him and thinking about The Candidate.

But today I saw something that made a very convincing case for Obama on Lawrence Lessig's website. I watched it here, but if you prefer to read it is transcribed here. I believe all the points Lessig makes are fair. I was particularly disturbed by Clinton's allegations that Obama is anything other than 100% pro-choice. Still, no one is ever completely honest in an election, right? But Lessig definitely has me swayed on why Obama is the right choice for the U.S.

Fuck it. I'll just vote for Brian Moore.

 

Things that make me happy right now.

1. I just dropped a container of cottage cheese and its contents are now all over the kitchen floor and one of my sneakers. This itself doesn't make me happy, but the descent of felines upon it did. They are all OM NOM NOM NOM in there right now and the smacking is pretty hilarious.

2. We had drinks with Josh and Leslee last night. I always feel so happy around them; it is like they have an aura of cheer and it just takes over me as well. I mean, just look at that photo. Adorable.

3. Today I applied for some jobs and asked some trusted friends to help me with my resume. Job searching is never fun, but I feel like I made some important steps today. I am definitely blind to what my resume needs, so hopefully this will re-energize my search.

4. I finally printed up everything I will need for the Germany tour in a couple weeks and I am finally getting excited. I cannot believe it is so soon. I have a lot to remember and review but I have good materials, and I'll have a nice boy to lean on during the flight to Zurich - where we will see Sara and her new baby! More reason to be happy!

5. I dyed my eyebrows and eyelashes. 

6. Today I went to Whole Foods and got all kinds of items we were out of at home. I freaking love that bulk foods aisle. All I needed was one item from that aisle but of course I bought about five because SO CHEAP! Which is funny because it is Whole Foods, which is decidedly not cheap. Today I bought 2 bags of groceries for $100. When we go to Fiesta, we can fill our entire back seat for $100. OK, that $100 part does NOT make me happy, so I'll keep focusing on the bulk items I purchased.

7. We've decided on entrance and exit music to our ceremony, as well as pretty much the outline of what will happen in between. We're still working on the vow bit, but just having all that sorted puts a smile on my face.

8. This post-workout glass of red wine is invigorating! MMMM, the antioxidants!

9. I found a penny.

10. I am about to walk out the door to go see Will Johnson play at Doublewide! Even his sad songs make me happy, in that weird way that sad songs do.

I need to update my blogroll

but I really haven't been paying much attention to it since I finally succumbed to the Google reader. Don't ask me why after four years of blogging and even more of reading blogs/news feeds I still refused to do it any other way but go individually to each site, but there you have it. I mean, people like, built their sites and shit! They have a personality they are trying to communicate through their web design! Oh well. It is true, but I can read so much more if I just use the reader. So here I be.

So, I'm finally reading Jen Garrett and Mihow regularly, after having actually met them in person long ago. Way to stay on top of nice people you meet, Ash; I don't know what took me so long. I'm also following Lauren and Ariel (whom I have already mentioned), and several people on LJ who keep most of their entries locked. And brand new from my dear Kat (and friends), The Collective (hooooooray to The Collective for funny!). I think there are a couple more, but I'll get that blogroll updated once I'm not worn out from being up too late and you can keep an eye on it yrself. All the above blogs recommended for myriad reasons; find one that speaks to you.

Wedding review.

So we now have just under four months until the wedding. I feel like I should be more stressed out about it that I am, but everything seems pretty easy. Well, I take that back.  Figuring out the logistics of the day itself is not super easy - since we aren't having a caterer we will need to rent dishes and flatware and such, and if it needs to be washed before we return it how/when will we do that?  We need to call the city still about parking! How can I organize the ceremony and toasts EXACTLY around sunset? And Jesus, please do not let it rain. But everything leading up to it seems ok. Here are ten things about our wedding planning:

1. I got my dress. It was a little bit of a production, because my mother wanted to be really involved in it, and go looking at different places with me, and I absolutely had no interest in drawing out this part of the process. I hate shopping normally, and wedding dress shopping was no different. Just as I am when I go, say, to H&M, I knew exactly what I wanted and eschewed trying on a million other styles just for the sake of it. I did try on a couple others just to be sure I was certain, but in the end I bought the very first dress I tried on. It is tea-length and white; I am going to sew some bright pink tulle underneath and wear some bright pink shoes. Personally, I think it is perfect. Also, I did not spend an ungodly amount of money on something I can't wear again - in fact, I'm going to see about having it dyed once this whole shebang is over and I'm going to wear the fuck out of it. I'm going to wear that shit until it falls apart! Take that, bridal gown industry.

2. My "bridesmaids" are awesome. I put that in quotes because I am not certain that's exactly what I want to call them. The should be billeted in the program as, like, Grand Dames of Awesomeness, or something.  Dabney is working on invitations; Annie is Miss Organized and reminding me of things like registries; L has ordered all this awesome tissue for my pom-pom decorations; and everyone is in on a little surprise I'm trying to plan for David on the BIG DAY. I was a little wary of the whole "bridesmaids" tradition, but then I thought - hey, these are just the ladies I entrust with helping me, and also, I want an excuse for them to stand up there with me and have lots of photos taken together. And I keep hearing about these beautiful dresses they are thinking of getting. i'm so excited to see what we will look like that day! Ha!

3. We're in need of goblets/glasses and blankets for the day of the ceremony, so I have put my mom, cousin, and sister on the garage sale/thrift store/estate sale beat. They like that kind of thing, and I don't, so this is using their skills to maximum.

4. Sloppyworld is confirmed, and Wells and John are so great - they are no only letting us use the space, but they want to hire a local karaoke DJ for the after party. I'm totally chuffed. We had been speaking with Scourge of the Sea about coming to play, but it is going to just cost us way more than we can afford. It's kind of heartbreaking, but until we win the lottery it just isn't to be. But between donated playlists and karaoke, it should be a fun evening nevertheless.

5. I've submitted rental request for tables, chairs, etc. That shit is entirely reasonable. I mean, we have a lot of people, so it ends up being a lot, but a chair for under $2? We'll take it!

6. We have decided to do two registries - though we feel a little uncomfortable with it, we know if we do not we WILL get gifts and they won't be something we want or need. So we have decided to have our main registry be a honeymoon registry, and then we'll do some bits and bobs over at Amazon. Those should be done by the end of the week. That reminds me that our website is being updated regularly - I've created an FAQ I am adding onto slowly. That's been fun to see the guestbook and folks signing in and such.

7. A good friend has offered to take photos for us (omg, THANK YOU Angela), and with all our other photographer friends (including Terra and David's dad), this seems to be covered now too. Oh yes, not to mention me. I'm going to have to figure out how to not have my own camera in front of my face all the time.

8. We're narrowing down a simple but delicious menu which I think will be very easy for all of us to make. I've lifted some of it directly from a friend's sister's wedding - grilled corn on the cob, a heirloom tomato bread salad, israeli cous cous salad. Maybe also a bunch of grilled veggie but we'll see how that goes. A huge cheese and veggie spread. My mom's husband will make a couple briskets for the carnivores, but for the most part it will all be vegetarian or vegan. Then ice cream for dessert. No cake for us; we aren't really cake eaters. So probably very few things but a lot of it. We do, however, need to figure out snacks at the afterparty - don't laugh but we are considering a hot dog stand (including veggie dogs, yo).

9. We've handed the rehearsal dinner over to Davey's parents. I felt a little bad about it, but they really wanted to do something, so it seemed to make sense. For some reason that did feel a little overwhelming to me as well; we just couldn't decide what to do. We told them the couple ideas we DID have, but told them to do whatever. It feels nice to have that off our plate.

10. Crafty items are still not done. This is entirely me. I figure I can't really do the table runners until the place confirms the table reservation, but they REALLY won't take long. Carrie has kindly offered to help, and she's a much better sewer than me, so between the two of us I bet they will be done within a couple weeks. L and "bridesmaids" are helping me make about 300 pom-poms. I need to knit my bouquet, that's the big thing. Just trying to decide actual colors right now. Kat has donated paper cranes. Actually, now that I write it all out, it doesn't seem that bad.

So for those of you that care, that's the whole scoop on the upcoming nuptials. Am I forgetting anything REALLY important?