Too tired for pictures

Hi Everybody!!! (psst...this is where you say, HI DR. NICK!) I just got home from work and I feel the need to tell you all about how much I love my job. No really, I do! The new location opened yesterday, and it's beautiful! It's in an office building in an area kind of like Sandy or Fort Union (only brand new construction), so the area is nice, the building is nice, all that stuff. I've been getting the place ready for about a week and a half now, cleaning and organizing and moving stuff in...made all the more difficult because last Tuesday (right before Thanksgiving) we were moving a cooler from the kitchen in Powell into the car to take it to Easton for the new cafe, (it's one of those glass fronted half size Pepsi cooler things), and something went wrong the first time I picked it up and I sprained my back. Yes, I said the first time I picked it up. I picked it up a few more times that day as well. I never said I was smart. so I've sprained my back really bad, and by the time I get home from work I feel like throwing up or passing out or just dying. But it's almost worth it to get this store going! I took some pictures of it on Wednesday, but the cord for the camera is not sitting next to me on the desk and I hurt too bad to go looking for it. so you'll have to wait a little longer for pictures (I'll get better ones on Monday anyway--we've added stuff).

But I have to say how much I love my job. We didn't tell anyone we were opening on Thursday--we just wanted to open our doors and see what happened while we're training ourselves on procedures and what these particular people are looking for. But we had people coming in before we even opened the doors and they never stopped! Today we frequently had lines out the door and down the hall (we're in our own little suite right by the door to the courtyard between buildings where an inordinate amount of people go to smoke--so they all see us), and we barely kept up. we ran out of soup on both days, roast beef, parmesan, provolone, buffalo chicken, and nearly out of containers. It was awesome. I hope this keeps up because all day, even though I really was in a lot of pain, I kept thinking how lucky I was to have this job and how satisfied and happy I am. Also my boss has already had several problems and surgery on his own back, so he's very understanding and careful that I'm doing what I should be doing (I'm not allowed to lift more than 15lbs, etc). I'm just really really happy!

Oh yeah, and because I mentioned this in the last post I thought I should let you know that we caught things in time and Zoe is Spot Free! Hooray! She's a snotty little thing, but I'm told that that's genetic...^_^

Jimmy's Birthday Party is tomorrow--I told Chris that I'd need more help than usual because I can't move very well and he said, "oh yeah, I forgot to tell you I have somewhere to be at that exact time..." and I said, "that's okay, you can take all 7 five-year-olds with you then!" I hope 7. I only had 2 people tell me yes, so who knows if the other 4 will come or not?

Speaking of that, I need to actually stand up now so I can take Zoe to Walmart with me before Jimmy gets home. Poor kid. I've NEVER actually made his birthday cake. ME. NEVER. He doesn't care though, and thank goodness for that because a big cake hurts my back on the best of days...I can't even imagine what would happen if I tried now!

update

Sorry sorry sorry. I'm very busy. And I'm sick. I'm very busy and sick. And I found a new version of online sudoku which takes up all my computer time. (I mean lets be honest here).

I don't have a lot of time, I have to go to work in ten minutes, but I feel bad I haven't said anything about anything for weeks. so here's a really fast update from Ohio:

My job is great and perfect except for the fact that the new location hasn't opened yet, which means much less money than there should be. Hopefully that will all change very very soon and we will be able to breathe a little easier! Chris finally got a paycheck though, and that's very nice indeed. Also my boss has agreed to sell my faerie cakes at one of the other locations as well as the new one that I'll be in charge of, so that's really cool. I brought in the first bit of them yesterday so I'm anxious to see how they do.

Halloween is MESSED UP here, we were lucky that our neighborhood had trick or treating actually on the 31st, a lot of places didn't, but even then, the time was restricted to 6-8pm, so it wasn't even dark. And on top of that, the whole process was jacked. The best part of Halloween is the walking around the neighborhood in the dusky darkness, knocking on doors and waiting suspensefully for them to open up so you can yell "trick or treat" and then the nice old people say "oh how cute you all are! you scared me!" but no. no fun surprises here in Ohio. You walk along the sidewalk, and every driveway has people in it sitting in lawn chairs with a bowl of candy. You walk up to them, maybe say trick or treat if you feel like it, and they give you candy. then you walk to the next driveway, and the next, and the next. It was weird and dumb. I was thinking all of this as we were going, but I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't think the kids would care all that much (I mean, they were getting a TON of candy for no work at all), but then they both started complaining that it wasn't any fun because they weren't surprising anyone, and Zoe said it was like the cafeteria at her school (which I thought was pretty astute of her). Then they decided they were tired (after only about 30 minutes) and they wanted to go home and go to bed. Early. Oh well, good for me I suppose.

I also had my first choir rehearsal on sunday (I'm the new choir director in case I forgot to tell some of you) and it went very well, I had 4 TENORS and even 2 basses. Unfortunately the Bishop didn't approve all the music I wanted, he said that even though "Though in the Outward Church Below" was in the old hymnbook and was very pretty and upbeat, it still had a "little too much Hell and Damnation" for sacrament meeting. So I said, "but what's Easter without some Damnation?" I got a rather interesting look for that one. Oh well. We're still doing "Come thou Fount of Every Blessing" for Thanksgiving so I'm pleased.

Zoe is out of school (yesterday and today) so I'm taking her to work with me. Poor kid, doesn't even get a vacation! At least it's better than sending her to school with Chris!

Oh yeah, and I have strep, and as soon as I was officially diagnosed I called and got Zoe an antibiotic too, but I found a bunch of spots on her head last night so lets all hope and pray that we caught it in time...I really really don't want her to have to deal with a full break out this first year at the new school.

And last but not least, it's November 4th, so go VOTE!!! I know there's an election because in the last week I've had at least 4 calls EVERY DAY from Edward Norton, Michelle Obama, Obama himself, several Kennedys, and lots of random people from Obama's campaign offices. All with the helpful information of where my voting location is. Funnily enough, I haven't heard a single word from the republicans. I want this over just so everyone can calm down.

mmm...food...

I know right? Stare at it long enough and you start drooling...or noticing that the burger looks rather dry which only leads to fantasizing about the many different ways to dress it up that happen to be in your fridge RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so we're dieting. kind of. Alright, Chris is dieting and I'm too lazy to not to. Why is Chris dieting? Cause I'd rather not put him through school just to have him die of heart disease and diabetes the minute he graduates. So we're watching calories and cholesterol and sugar, and we've learned a new appreciation for our wonderful friend Tivo that lets us fast forward the food commercials. We're doing well, probably mostly because Chris is too busy to eat anything at all, and I'm, again, too lazy to cook with him gone all the time so I just eat salad.

Which reminds me that I haven't written in so long you guys don't even know about my job! My job is completely awesome and I honestly don't know how I got so lucky to get the perfect job, but I did. I work for Dish Mobile Cafe, which brings food into small office buildings that don't have their own restuarants. I'm helping out at a few different locations right now, but in a few weeks I'm going to be managing a new location closer to my house with more hours and better pay than right now, but I'll still be able to put Zoe on the bus and be back with Jimmy by the time she gets home.

Which, in turn, brings me to Zoe. and the bus. The school bus. The big mean school bus full of bullies. I opened the door to meet the bus this afternoon and found that it had just come and all the kids were converging on my lawn (with their mothers) around my poor crying baby. My first thought (other than that the bus was insanely early) was that she'd been hit by the bus, but no, she'd been hit by another kid. It's raining a lot today, and at a big turn she'd lost control of her umbrella and it got a little too close to a bigger girl across the aisle. When this girl passed Zoe to get off at her stop she punched her several times in the leg while yelling unintelligibly. When I got her inside and looked at it it was red and swollen and fist shaped, but it's gone down considerably. Now I know that lots could have happened as far as provocation, but since all the other kids were telling me this girl completely flipped out over nothing, I have to believe them. I called the school and the bus driver supervisors and they said they'd figure out which girl it is (it shouldn't be hard since the buses have assigned seats and we know which stop she gets off at) and talk to the principal. She didn't tell the driver at the time because her regular driver wasn't there and she says they don't do anything anyway. I suppose this is just regular kid bullying and all, but this is my BABY and I'm going to make a big stink about it.

Also, I'm coming to SLC weekend after next to testify at the hearing. I don't remember if I've said much about that here, but Judy (shudder) is suing Buffy (from Haxton Manor), saying that she broke her wrist at work and so Buffy and the state should pay for it. I'm really really unhappy about the whole situation, but I get to go home for a couple days (and Jimmy's coming with me) so that's good. I'm still not sure that it makes up for the inconvenience and uncomfortableness and mess of it all though.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now though, and maybe then I can wake up when Chris gets home from rehearsal instead of falling asleep right when he gets home.

Whew!

We're fine!!! You've all been waiting so patiently for news of our safety, sending all those care-packages and cards, the email alerts for "hill" in the columbus obituaries, the prayers for our safety, well it all worked and we're ok!

No but seriously, that was, um, fun. This first picture is actually from a few weeks ago in a bit rainstorm. It's taken from inside my garage a little before noon. the water flooded everyone's yard up the street from us but it stayed in our ditch where it goes so that was lucky. There's a pipe under the driveway and the water was just as high on the other side.

Then, on Sunday, (Chris' Birthday), we met Ike. The wind was getting pretty bad, but when our cable went out we went outside to see what was going on. The first thing we saw was the shingles flying off the roof as fast as they could. Still not realizing this was Ike Chris borrowed a ladder from a neighbor to climb up and check the damage to the roof before the rain came and soaked through. While he was up there (with me holding the ladder), this happened:


I was standing with the ladder right in front of Zoe's window there, and when I heard it I thought it was the close tree and I couldn't figure out whether to run and have both the tree and the ladder fall on me, or stay where I was and hope it didn't hit me. Unfortunately, my neighbor (who was helping me hold the ladder) decided to run and flung the contents of her coffee cup all over me in the process. I didn't notice at the time because I was so relieved to still be alive. So Chris wisely got off the roof and we all went inside to huddle around the windows.

Here's a better picture of my poor tree. We lost part of another on on the north side of the house, tons of shingles, our cable/internet/phone for a week (which explains why I haven't posted in a while), and our water was rationed. However we never lost our power for which I am extremely grateful considering there are still people in the city without it. We had more that 350,000 people lose their power and it was pretty scary for a while. Ice was in major demand, people were buying it right off the truck, bottled water was flying off the shelves (lots of people here are on wells so they didn't have any water at all). We had potable water but it was such low pressure it took forever to shower and I was really happy I'd already done all our laundry that morning. It was cool though, to see people come together. People were driving around with chain saws to help remove downed trees, businesses were making room in their freezers for other businesses product so it didn't go bad, people had extension cords hanging out their windows so their neighbors could have a microwave and a lamp. Apparently it was a category 1 hurricane still when it reached us, 75mph winds, and though we didn't get the rain the rest of the mid-west got we got harder hit with wind than they did. I think I'm going to get a kit together to keep in the garage--water at least, but a full 72 hour kit wouldn't go amiss I think. I've heard too many horror stories about the freezing winters here.

Ta Da!!

Okay. Here's my house. Half of it anyway. We'll start with the kitchen, since that was put together first. This is looking from the corner where the garage door is over toward my lovely stove and dishwasher. The little cabinet on the right has my microwave on top and it holds my cake pans and pasta dishes. I haven't decided exactly how to set up the little dust catcher on top of the cabinets--I'm using it to store my less used pretty things, but I WILL NOT be putting dumb decorative crap up there that gathers dust and breaks when you clean it. Maybe a plant, but that's as far as I'll go. I like my cute little curtains over the sink, and it's just nice to have a window there at all! When you turn to the left in this picture you come to the next picture,

my Dining Room! No but really it's a nice space for my table and that's the sliding door to the back yard. When we're not using it I push the table more into the corner, but when the Missionaries came over we brought out the 6 foot folding table so we could seat everyone and that fit in the space too, so it's bigger than it looks. The door to the left is the door to the office/laundry room which I don't have a picture of yet because we're using it constantly. I really need to post a picture though because my washer and dryer are the most awesome things e-v-a-r EVAR!!!


Except possibly for my couch. Okay, so when we were here in July we found a great couch at a store by our house and it was on sale for $277, so we put $50 down on it to keep that price until we got here. So we'd been looking around at other stuff to go with it and finally decided we needed to get the couch in the house first. We went to pay the rest and pick it up, and thought, we need to sit on it one more time. We walked over to the corner where it lived, and sat on it, and promptly bought the one next to it instead. This couch, we decided, is the one we would always regret not having bought. It's leather and suede, and the best part is it only cost $20 more than the first one!!! The ottoman was a great find too--we got that from their clearance area for cheap cheap cause it was the last one. It has a little drawer in it and it's leather too. The paintings are from Chris' mom, and I like them the best of anything I've seen from her.


Here's a slightly different view with my piano in it (yes it made it all the way here!) so you can see how cute that is. We still need a few chairs and maybe a rug, but that's going to have to come slowly. I also want a tree in that corner. I don't know what kind of tree, but a tree. and maybe a lamp.

And I just accidentally deleted the other picture for the living room, so I'll have to put that in another post. It was of my front window with the cedar chest and drapes. oh well.





here's the other wall in the livingroom, the front door is on the right, and the door you see on the left is to the water heater and furnace. That's Grandma Matheson's stereo (that was in her kitchen) and it works great AND has a plug in the back that we can plug in our mp3 players!








This is the family room, I'd like to point out how clean it is. We need something on the walls, but other than that this room is very nice and cosy. Well, there's that other thing too. The intake for the a/c is in that room. sooo, everytime the blower kicks on you have to turn the TV up really really loud. We played around with it though, and it looks like if we put a piece of furniture in front of it it will quiet down without blocking the air. Now we just need to find something big enough to block it and thin enough it doesn't block the hallway.


So that's my house, stay tuned for the other half of the house, including Jimmy's race car room and Zoe's new and improved Tinkerbell fabricated room.

Little Boys

Well, not to be outdone by his cousin Sam, Jimmy decided to have a golden speaking moment today as well. Chris is under the weather right now with a bad sinus thing. (either that or he blew out his vocal chords and entire respiratory system at the Utah-Michigan game). So he's coughing stuff up. We were in the car today, and Chris said, "sorry, this is going to be gross" and he leaned out of the door and spit on the street. Jimmy wanted to know what he had in his mouth that he spit out. Chris told him "gross stuff. Mostly boogars." Jimmy got a big smile and said, "Hey! I eat those!!"


Oh yeah. Like I'm gonna kiss him again!

The Gateway Arch

So they're not of the house, but at least they're pictures. This is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. When we were discussing the trip to Ohio, the subject of the arch came up and I immediately laughed and said NO WAY am I going up in that thing! But then we got there and I realized I simply couldn't waste such a golden opportunity, and what kind of sightseeing traveler would I be if I didn't take the chance to get out of the blasted car! So we went. This is a picture of where we parked. Yes. It really is that far away. And yes that is the Big Muddy. And yes, it is big. and muddy. And quite gross. If you'll notice, the parking area isn't next to the river, it's IN the river. The ground was wet under my car. Very odd. It was also trying to decide whether or not to storm, so the air was so thick with humidity you could chew it.

This is a picture of me on the inside of the arch. I know it's hard to tell but you can kind of get a hint of the weird tiny slanty space up there. It looks like I'm leaning over because I am--nothing up there is a 90 degree angle. I had to beat out two grade schoolers and a toddler to get this picture too, they wouldn't move and since the windows are only big enough for one eye to see out at a time there was a bit of intimidation required to get a good picture.











This is a picture looking straight down from the very top. You can see the shadow of the arch and those triangle things at the sides are the feet of the arch. You'll notice the angle...creepy.












This is a picture of my cuties trying as hard as they can to get washed away into Lake Erie. It was a pretty lake, incredibly big, and lots of sand which surprised me...I don't know why it should but it did. Lakes around Salt Lake worth going to are surrounded by rocks. Little smooth rocks to be sure but rocks nonetheless.







This is our trip to the Zoo. We took more pictures of the zoo, however this one portrays the spirit and theme of our visit so succinctly that I just didn't feel the need to add any more.

We left after 5 hours having seen less than half of the exhibits.


We had to hurry VERY quickly past a certain group of monkeys...doing monkey things...that monkeys really shouldn't do...especially RIGHT in front of the glass...with really smug expressions on their faces...

One final note, the rain last night was crazy! Chris and I were in the laundry room and we heard a weird rushing noise like a plane was landing on the house so we rushed to the front door and couldn't open it because Noah was sailing down the street. I wanted to take a picture but we literally couldn't open anything-windows, doors, anything. There was a big flood warning on the tv telling us not to let our children play in the water. Pretty cool.