Thursday, January 27, 2005

Snow, D.C., and Catnip

Howdy-Ho strangers,

It has been quite an experience over the past few weeks, juggling with work, Pete's jobs, trying to keep a tidy apartment, and pleasing two used-to-be-outdoor kitties while it is snowing outside. Of course, we're still very happy, with each other, ourselves, and our surroundings; but also a bit excited at all of this adult stuff we get to do now... like, cleaning the bathroom and cooking dinner after working a 12 hour day.

I can't tell you how happy I am to see Pete's pride bursting out of him over having a place of his own now (and of course a beautiful wife to share it with, if I do say so myself, ahem). I came home from work one day and found the apartment vaccuumed, tidied, and he was mopping the bathroom floor! Wow, if I had known he did all that stuff, I would have married him sooner! Joking, I'm really the lazy one and Pete is great at the housework. I'm better at laundry, cooking, and doing the shopping (I clip coupons!). He's best at kitty box cleaning, bathroom cleaning, and floor cleaning... oh and decorating as well. He's quite a decorator when it comes to his own place. He has all these ideas of what we need, where it should go, and what projects will let him bring out his man tools and hammer things into walls.

The cats still love us of course, are always under our feet, and when it is bedtime, they are the first in our bed, warming up the foot spots for us and meowing for us to hurry up and get in there! We thought they might like a little treat of catnip, so we brought some home, and I put some in a few toys and part of a sock and sewed it together into a little ball. Charlie absolutely loved it. He rolled around in it for hours and had a crazy-eyed look about him as he took every toy and bounced it up in the air with his paws. Max, on the other hand, looked dismayed and disgusted with us for bringing home drugs for his brother, and told us that he was above it (I saw him sneak in a few sniffs later on though). They're still obsessed with getting outside, especially with this new white stuff and cold air outside, but I'm hoping that soon that will wear off.

Work has been crazy-busy since it is the start of the semester. Students think that it is okay to apply for a Master's program well into the first week of classes and get angry with me when I tell them that there is no time to process their application in time to register. Actually a lot of students get attitudes with me, but I don't mind because it isn't my fault. I do my job and go well beyond that to help the nice non-attitude ones (as advised to do by a professor), but I can't help if someone doesn't qualify or if the main campus in Blacksburg is slow. Not my bad. So, I still love it. Pete loves his job too, but I think he's glad to be done with chauffeuring and back to couriering. I'd rather it be the other way around so that I could drive to work myself (and I like the bigger paycheck as well) and Pete wouldn't be putting all that wear and tear on our truck and use our money for gas that won't be reimbursed. However, it makes him happy...and for right now he has begun working a little later so that he can drive me into work an hour early so I won't complain about taking the bus and metro in below freezing weather. Good Husband.

Last night we drove through D.C. b/c Pete had to pick up two packages, in the ghetto. The ghetto of all ghettos...and I didn't like it. Neither did Pete, b/c the streets weren't exactly as the map said, so we were lost several times and it was frustrating. Plus I had to pee so bad, I almost made yellow snow in someone's front yard (thankfully I held it but it was painful). I've decided that while I love D.C., that's only the downtown bit with all of the important buildings and newspaper corporations...the rest of it can be thrown away b/c it's dirty, hard to navigate, and not enough public toilets about.

We also bought a new mattress set from Sears as they had a 50% off sale and we're in desperate need of a decent bed so that we can sleep an entire night. I'll tell you more about that later. It's time to get to work.