Dainty Kitty

Forward

It's only nine o'clock but I've already toasted the new year and am more than ready to settle down on the couch with the knitting I've wanted to work on for days and a few episodes of Spaced. 

It was my first (and last) webcam New Year's Eve party.  I put sparkles in my hair and even wore lipstick for the first time since Matt's known me because, sadly, he couldn't kiss it away.  We blew kisses at the stroke of midnight - midnight there in Salisbury, that is.  It was really as perfect as it could be, considering.

I'm not going to say what my future is going to be like or make any resolutions this year - instead I'm going to take the advice of a few blogs I read and focus on a word.  My word is simple, "Forward".  Everything in 2009 is about moving forward.  Moving forward to things that I've been waiting years, maybe all my life, to do.  Big things, teeny tiny things, but all very meaningful - and this is the year I'll, hopefully, get to accomplish some of them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful new year!
Love and cheers,
Emily

Back Only to Leave Again

My unintentional blog break was actually nice even though the silence was contagious and made me a non-commenting lurker - even on my very favorite blogs, the people I call my friends.  When I get back, recharged and reGeorged (a story for another post), I'll be back to normal. 

Until I get back, I'll be blogging here at Find Yourself a Cup of Tea - home of the banner that only cooperates forty percent of the time.  Anyway, that's where I'll be - a place that's friendly not only for Matt's eyes but also those of my family and my coworkers.  I'm hoping to be able to put together a few words but I'll at least (hopefully) be posting photos every couple of days.

Only one more day of work (and tons to do there so it should fly by).  So much to do - so much to pack and so little room.  I can't believe I'm leaving in less than forty-eight hours.  I'm nervous and a little scared but you also couldn't beat the smile from my face and I literally tingle when I think about any aspect of the trip.  In just a little over two days I'll be in a car in another country, sitting next to this person that's meant so much to me for these past few months. 

Even though we'll talk tomorrow night I ended our call tonight with, "See you in a couple of days" just because I could.  I really can't wait to call from the airport and say, "See you tomorrow." 

Anyway, since I washed six loads of laundry and nearly packed my ridiculously full suitcase I think I deserved a little mint chocolate chip ice cream.  It really should be polished off before I leave anyway....

More Good News for People Who Love Good News

 

I'm moving up my trip to meet Matt, thanks to my overly generous brother who has offered to front me the money to travel.   For two weeks, hopefully at the end of October/beginning of November, this will be my view.  At least for a few days - until our Adventure takes us to other parts of the country and then, hopefully, underwater and out of the country. 

The next month is going to be so stressful that the thought of getting to meet him several months earlier really hasn't sunk in yet. Once I've booked my ticket it'll seem real.  Right now it only seems sort of real - just enough to make me nervous - but not really.  The past month - it's only been a month - has just been so surreal. 

Just have to get through the stress first...that's going to be the hard part.

Time to Start Collecting Boxes

This is what's sitting in the corner of my office area.  Boxes.  Ready to be taken home and filled up. 

Because I'm moving on September 12th. 

I tried to work with my current apartment complex.  I offered to sign another 12 month lease if they'd move me over to a smaller apartment before November without the $250 transfer fee but it seems they'd rather have an empty apartment than a person who is guaranteed to pay her rent on time every month.   It took them three months to fill my old apartment because they had to turn down five applicants who had had prior evictions. 

So today I went over to a complex five minutes from my office and signed a lease for a quiet two bedroom apartment with a cute patio, a large laundry room and attic storage space.  The carpets are nice (the ones in my current apartment are stained and riddled with cigarette burns), the appliances look new (the crisper drawer in my current fridge is broken and there are no bars to hold anything in place on the freezer door) and there's lots of closet space. It's a little bit more than I wanted to pay but it's going to be worth it - if only for the fact that I know I only have three more weeks of living with The Asshole.

Thank goodness.

Weekend Recap

At some point this weekend I really did start a post - a whole three or four paragraphs, actually - but I hit the wrong key and...gone.  I have bad blogluck.  My goal for the week is to pick up a wireless adapter so I can use my own damned computer.

This weekend was a brilliant combination of alone time, girl time and email time.   Ginny and I did a bit of shopping on Friday night - it's been ages since I went clothes shopping with a girl who wasn't my mom. 

Then we hit a rummage sale Saturday morning where I came home with loads of crochet and knitting magazines from the forties and fifties as well as some fabric and hooks.  I'll have to take pictures at some point because some of the styles in the magazines are crazy.  I have to admit, though, I did find a couple of things I wanted to make that fit with the whole seventies kitsch thing I want going on in my next pad.  Groovy. 

And lots and lots of emailing with Matt.  :-)

I got my hair did right before Ginny, Lisa and I went out of our Thursday girls night so here's a gratuitous faux-hawk shot:

And Ginny has a terribly terrific shot of Tom - a man at the bar I chatted with and then I took pity on and invited back to our table after he wistfully glanced that way and said, "You guys are sitting over there, right?" 

I need to take some advice from Pam Beasley: "I have decided that I'm going to be more honest. I'm gonna start telling people what I want, directly. So, look out world, 'cuz 'ol Pamy is gettin' what she wants. And, don't call me Pamy."

And no, you can't come back to our table.  It was kind of funny, though.

Sigh, I fear that I have moved to SquareSpace and lost my blogging mojo.  I'm kind of not feeling it for some reason and it's kind if a struggle to come up with things to post about.  Sigh. Weird.

Silver Lining

I let my emotions and my general miserable-ness get a bit out of hand and everything boiled over when I - reluctantly - got home tonight.  Big fight - blah blah blah.  I really need to learn to say things when they bother me because, now that we've had it out, I feel much better. 

That's pretty much all I'm going to say about it because I hate thinking about it so writing about it is out of the question. 

Last week I decided I needed some kind of male interaction.  Not dating because that would just be crazy - but some form of attention.  Something to look forward to.   So I signed up with a pen pal website.  Seems safe, right?     Right before I left to go camping with my parents last weekend I got another email from a guy named Matt in England.  

We've corresponded four or five times a day ever since.  I'm 100% smitten with this man and I think he's smitten, too, but what the hell?  Why couldn't I just meet some yahoo who was fun to email, the end?  No, I had to meet a guy who's cute, creative, family oriented, sweet as hell and only a couple years older than me.   You know, pretty much exactly what I'd like to find here.  

So not fair.

But it's been really good. They say some people come into your life for a reason and I think that's the case with Matt.  He's what I need right now and I know I'm helping him in return.  I realized today, though, that our loneliness might make us dangerously alike so I'm going to try to keep my emotions in check and the fantasies to a minimum.  Oh yes, there have already been fantasies....

You know, honestly, I'm not even really sure why I'm posting about this.  Sometimes, I guess, some things need to be said out loud.  Or posted on the Internet.  I don't know.  I'm kind of an emotional wreck today and I feel like I really haven't made sense all day....

Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Emily is Single!

It's done, done, done.

The Zoo

I picked up a very distracting splinter on the bottom of my right foot while I was at the park for lunch today.  This is why everyone should carry a Swiss Army knife, I guess.  And - note to self - putting rubber cement on a splinter does not have the same effect as Elmer's Glue. 

Saturday I took a trip to the Columbus Zoo.  Unfortunately, I didn't get very many good photos because a lot of them they were taken through glass and I desperately need to clean my camera lens so everything kind of has this white glow.  I will share a couple, though.

It must have been near feeding time for this Bengal tiger because he'd travel from one side of the window to the other, turn around and then wait at each of the doors that you can't really see up in the left hand corner of the photo...and then start all over again.  This is an example of a not so good photo but there's a reason why I'm posting it.  I was crouched right where he made his turn so I came face to face with him several times (because I couldn't pull myself away, "One more time, one more time....").  I know there was several inches of heavy duty glass between the two of us and he probably wasn't really looking right into my eyes but...it seemed like it and it was amazing. 

The lorikeets, I think, are my favorite part of this zoo.  They don't have a hippo, after all (although I do love the manatee exhibit).  For a buck you get a tiny cup of nectar and the chance to really get close to these beautiful birds.  This little guy hopped up onto my hand without hesitation.  Lots of poop-dodging in this area, though. 

We also went down to the Short North for dinner at Betty's (I get to cross #43 off my 101 list - sans the PBR - I had Betty Beer [vanilla vodka and rootbeer] instead).  They had an Art in the Park festival going on and it was crazy busy.  A lot of the little shops that I loved when I lived there have turned into restaurants which was kind of sad.  I did find one shop - Flower Child - that I'd like to visit when I have a fat amount of cash to spend on 60's and 70's memorabilia...and when it's not so crowded.  The mad bubble machine outside the door really set the tone - it was an amazing place with two floors and I forget how many rooms...lots.  I managed to only walk out with only a four dollar shot glass for my dad, though, and my frugalness paid off a block or two later when I found a crumpled twenty on the sidewalk!

So that's my weekend in a nutshell.  I have some other photos to post including this amazing crewel picture I picked up at the Salvation Army on Friday but they'll have to wait.  I actually have work to do!  :-)

Worn Out Weekend

It's terribly hard to get halfway through a post and have it lock up so much that you have to finally just Ctrl-Alt-Delete to get out of it.  It seems that photos are the problem - by about the time I add the third photo, TypePad decides it's had enough.

This weekend was pretty exhausting for me.  My great-aunt died last week so I traveled to Kentucky with my parents on Friday afternoon for the viewing and then the funeral on Saturday.  There’s nothing like a down home funeral – I think the hymns about “Momma” were specifically designed to make sure you cry no matter how hard you fight it.

I wasn’t really close to my aunt but it was still very emotional.  It was hard to see my granny cry and when my dad broke down a little bit…ugh.

Saturday morning, before the funeral, we walked around my Aunt Peg and Uncle Dale’s yard.  Peg has continued to grow and amazing array of flowers just like her mother, my great-granny did.  I especially remember the peonies from when I was little...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also walked through the garden….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I came home with a large bag of amazing fresh peas.  I’d tasted them the night before and, even though I’m not a great lover of peas (or green beans for that matter), I could have eaten an entire bowl of them all by themselves.  I had them last night and I can’t wait to have them again tonight!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the old barn.  Isn’t the rose bush that grows on top just beautiful?  A few years ago my aunts put together a family cook book for the reunion we have every June and this was on the cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve nearly finished my first Marigold sock – I need to find a good cast off – but I’ll save that and a little bag I crocheted on the way down for later.  So far, typing this post in Word and pasting into in to TypePad between photos seems to be working (other than, now that I've posted it, I see that it's leaving gaping holes in the post) but I don’t want to press my luck!

 

Cleaning and Knitting

Holy cow, you can see the floor of my craft room!  I just spent about two hours getting it in good enough shape to leave the door open.  There's still stuff to organize and find places for but the stacks look neat enough for now.

I have a lot of stuff/junk.

I got just past the heel on my first Oktoberfest sock but, on my third row of the leg pattern, a stitch slipped off and - poof - there went one of Reverse Irish Knots from the first row.  I ripped it back to the beginning but I'm thinking I might go back further and redo the heel.  One side turned out perfect but I think I blanked out on one purl row or something because the other side looks a little funny.  The socks are going quick enough that I think I have time to really make them look good.  Not that I'm looking forward to tearing out an entire heel...yuck.

I'm going to go reward my cleaning with leftover chicken soft tacos and American Gangster.  Hope every one had a lovely weekend!