Up to my ears in boxes

The move went great, we're settling nicely into our new home--which I love. Blogging has been pushed aside by unpacking and by exploring the neighborhood, but I do have a couple of fun moving anecdotes that I'll post eventually. And pictures! Cats in boxes! Babies in boxes! Everyone in a box!

Don't forget to wrap my collection of tiny monuments in bubble wrap, guys

I feel like such an ass. For the last three hours, three nice Irish guys have been packing up my house. In the 95 degree heat. And what have I been doing? First I hastily threw all of the dry food left in our kitchen and garage into a box (we have Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Mac! Two boxes! Who knew!). When that five minutes was up, I brought a patio chair into the garage and sat there as I caught up on the last 5 months of Overheard in New York. Then I fell asleep. Then I woke myself up by soring, you know, like when you fall asleep on airplane and your head dangles back? Like that. Then I sat in my car with the AC on full blast and charged my cell phone. Then I darted back inside and grabbed my laptop, and now I'm sitting in the garage again. Except one of the movers is five feet behind me, packing up my VERY IMPORTANT THINGS like a dozen kongs and 10 years worth of T-shirts. Because someday, I am going to make that T-shirt quilt.

A little more back

Argh, so I'm over my cold and back into the swing of things. Except that the swing of things includes sitting on the floor with my 6 month old son and playing with puppets and blocks and dolls and balls and napkins and empty boxes and ANYTHING ELSE WITHIN REACH THAT WILL MAKE HIM HAPPY. Unfortunately, the swing of things does not include folding laundry, doing dishes or taking out the garbage. My poor, poor husband.

We are moving this weekend, because, you know, that's what we do every 10 to 12 months is we move. For a year, we acquire more and more things and then we decide it would be fun to pack it all into a moving van and take it somewhere else for a year. Except that when we moved back from Ireland, SOMEBODY ELSE packed all of our stuff and moved it for us. Oh, happy day when you pay someone else to do the crap work for you!

This year, we are hiring a company to pack and move for us again so that I can sit on the floor and make silly voices and play with toys while someone else does the non-baby related stuff. I'm so attentive to my son and there to respond to his every need. So it makes perfect sense that I put him down for a nap so I could call moving companies this morning to find out how many weeks my husband would have to work to pay for this move. Samson cried, and I let him cry it out. Of course he eventually fell asleep and I made all of the necessary arrangements--movers, cleaners, carpet cleaners, etc. When the baby woke up 45 minutes later and I went upstairs to fetch him, I dutifully changed his diaper. And I found SO. MUCH. POOP. Poop that had, for 45 minutes, been squished and sloshed around in his diaper, so much so that I was cleaning poop OFF OF HIS BACK AND ELBOWS. Like I said, back in the swing of things.

Take my sanity, please

Wow, it's really almost time for the wedding. Family and friends started arriving from out of town today, and the chaos has begun. It won't be in full swing until the middle of next week, and by then, I do believe I will have gone bananas. Once the actual celebration starts on Friday, I'll be nothing but smiles--surrounded by friends and family with no prep left to do. But this week it's kind of overwhelming, getting the finishing touches on seating arrangements, flowers, and various bits and bobs. Even for such a small wedding, there are so many little details! And I suppose we didn't have to move into a new place during the same week. Or buy a new car. Or a new bed.

It's been challenging, but it's totally worth it. I am SO EXCITED for this wedding, and I love love love our new place. The transition from Dublin to Foster City has actually gone really smoothly. We kind of treated it like how one treats swimming in Fall Creek in Oregon: close your eyes, hold your breath, and jump in. Then pray as hard as you can that your lungs don't seize up from the freezing cold water. If you just stick your toe in before you jump, you'll never succeed. It's all or nothing, and this week has been an all week.

Other news: my good buddy Tiny Trousers appears to be on the mend! We here at Extra Super Fantastic wish her and her mom all the best.

Life in HD

So here I am, sitting in my new home, blogging from my new laptop, watching our new HDTV, 2 clean dogs curled up next to me. You could say I had a real good weekend. The new place is awesome; it's really coming together nicely. We had 2 sets of extremely helpful parents on hand, and everyone was just great. I've never moved in and unpacked so quickly before, including our marathon trip to Ikea and Best Buy on Sunday morning. and not to mention the fact that I can't actually lift anything! It may not be San Francisco, but it feels really good.

Let's just not discuss the fact that it's now less than 2 weeks until the wedding. Gulp.

Off to the dog park now--these hounds deserve a reward for their good behavior.

New digs

No more apartments for us. Oh, no, we're moving on up. To a townhouse. Mmmm, fancy. We found a nice place in a nice neighborhood that is, sadly, not in San Francisco. We'll be in the proper burbs, where we can afford a yard and a garage and more toilets than you can shake a stick at. Max's commute will be cut in half which will give more time to run around fetching me things like McDonald's french fries and obscure imported root beer. Lucky, lucky, Max.

Expect hilarious anecdotes of moving and going through our storage unit in the near future. and maybe some pictures of the new place. To hold you over for now, here are some pictures of the time a few weeks ago when I went to the Kwik-E Mart in Mountain View with Rosa and Dave.

World AIDS Day

First off all, I have an excuse. I haven't posted to Deborah's Den since last Wednesday because of Thanksgiving (duh) and three cardboard-box-filled days of moving. But I am now officially unpacked, officially done waiting for the phone guy to fix the jack, and officially less crazy. I promise.

Question: How many helpful guys does it take to move a dresser from my second floor apartment to the curb?



Answer: Three. Three helpful guys, and three cheers for Max, APV and Winfield!

I thought that World AIDS Day would be a good opportunity to blog about Klaus Nomi. Those of you who have heard of him know that he was a rising talent in the New York City new-wave-synth-pop club scene. You can hear his delectable mix of pop and opera right here. With friends and fans like David Bowie and the B-52's who knows what might have become of his falsetto-infused performance art, complete with German accent and beat. Tragically, he contracted AIDS--back in the early 1980's, when it was still called GRIDS--and died in 1983. Here is an interesting website which talks briefly about his long-lasting effect on popular culture. He shares the site with his countryman and fellow popular culture icon, Andre the Giant, so look for the Klaus Nomi info on the second half of the page.