There is an important lesson here. When you spend all day doing your laundry and decide to toss all of your clean clothes on the guest bed to sort through later, a mid-sized Frito-smelling dog might come make a nest in it.

J, you listening?

Out with the old

I got up this morning to start the process of swapping my summer/winter wardrobes, and in the process, filling up a load headed for the thrift store. Once I got my closet all nice and cleaned up, and a donation bag completely filled (seriously need to do this more often), I decided to tackle a more sensitive area in my closet: shoes and purses. Oh what a trip to the past...mostly to one place specifically -- Springfield, Missouri.

Here's what I found when cleaning out the 8 purses I'm donating:

- $30 in change. Seriously.

- Approximately 62 bobby pins, all of them the black variety as I had much darker hair in college -- J will be so excited there are more in the house! :)

- Not one, but TWO Harrah's rewards cards. Strange, I don't have any memories of ever being at a Harrah's...girls am I missing something?

- A one-inch by one-inch square picture of LEMonade's face -- I have no idea what this was about?

- A ticket stub from when we went to see Seinfeld.

- The ticket stub from going to see "The Notebook" at Campbell 16 Cine. Ahh I remember that night well. And for the record, it was June 25, 2004, in case you wanted to know.

- An ID card for blood donation -- that was before they decided I can't give blood anymore because I lived in Germany in a certain span of years.

- A punch card for Rock-n-Roll...no surprise there.

- About 10 half-used packs of gum.

- And possibly my favorite: a receipt Trolley's on May 11, 2004, for one Pineappletini and one Sunshine Wheat. I bet that was a fun night. :)

No mint on this pillow

Over the past few days I've noticed something a bit strange going on in my office. My home office. My "office" AKA my spare bedroom-sized closet. Every day when I've come home from work, I noticed that the duvet on the guest bed has been quite literally turned down, like it was a bed in a high-end hotel awaiting a pair of newlyweds. Seeing how we haven't had a guest for a month or two, and how we're anything but high-end, it got me wondering what was going on. Perhaps dear sweet J decided to crash there after an all-nighter at work? But I should've known. Last night I passed by her in the hallway as she trotted out of my office in the dark. She gave me her best "Who me? I was simply looking for my misplaced tussy mussy!" waggle, waggle, pet-me-and-forget-all-your-troubles face.

But this morning, oh I was too fast for her. Caught in the act. Behold the culprit. Miss Mary. Such a lady. She doesn't sleep on beds. She sleeps in beds.

Fallin'

Oh man, I know I'm going to regret it later -- say, in a month -- but I couldn't be happier that fall is finally here! Low: 55, High: 60. And while this year has had its share of challenges, a quick look back in my pictures folder reminds me that this weekend last year I had just found our condo. And ohhh to know that this winter will not involve moving! In all likelihood, next year might. Into a house. Where J can plant our dream garden.

Until then, I'll continue to enjoy the fall things I love the most. Walk the dogs around the 'hood in my favorite royal blue trench. Unearth my fall wardrobe and start wearing turtleneck sweaters again. Read more. Drink coffee on the porch before bed -- decaf of course. Just spending more time at home. Carve the pumpkins that we got on this amazing trip a few weeks back (when fall was masquerading as summer). That's when B revealed she could SAY MY NAME. Best day ever.

Future mom-in-law, future niece, future husband, future uncle

New to the fall lineup: My parents are coming to visit for Thanksgiving! Well, my mom for sure, hopefully my dad. We'll be joining J's fam, throwing two more people into last year's already huge event. I'm so excited for my parents to meet the aunts, uncles, NIECE, cousins, and grandparents I've been telling them about for two years. Oh...and there's a plan that involves wedding dress shopping...

A Lesson in Law -- from a graphic designer

In five more days, it'll be a month since the car wreck I was in. Apparently I downplayed the severity, and people are still shocked to find I'm still tooling around in a rental car. Which means in five more days, that's right, my car will have also been gone for a month...and then some more. So in light of distracting myself from the pain and agony of driving a PT Cruiser, I'll share with you some new words I've learned through the accident/insurance/car repair process.

Subjugate: I don't know what this means other than something having to do with who pays for what. Anytime they say it to me I black out.

Diminution: As in "Diminution of Value" claim. More easily called "depreciation" because I cannot, for the life of me, pronounce "diminution." Say you have two Jettas. Same graphite blue, same lovely interior, same price, same everything. You find out one has been in an accident and had serious body repairs. Which one do you buy? The difference between the offer you pay for the unwrecked Jetta and what someone appraises my Jetta to be worth, that's the diminished value. Yes, I shall be filing a claim.

Tort: This is a refresher, guys, you remember this one from high school. Since future "father-at-law" had been giving me legal advice following the accident, it really inspired me to do some research on my own. Diminished Value claims fall under Tort Law. Or something.

Third Party: This is the ticket. When filing a DV claim, it's most assuredly tossed out when it's your own insurance company (AKA first party). But in my case, since I was hit by another person who was obviously breaking the law, her insurance company has accepted liability. Which means that when I file with her insurance company, it falls under a third party claim -- which they usually always pay. Because they just spent nearly $4,000 fixing your car. How can they tell you that didn't affect the value of your poor car that you officially bought a year ago last week?

I also fear I won't be able to drive a manual when Ludwig comes back.

Get in my collection!

Oh Etsy, you might really be the end of my savings account...but I can't wait for these tiny beauties to come live with me!

P.S. Those last ones are telephone pole insulators. I have distinct memories of my mother telling me how she used to collect them, but I've never seen one in our house. She did however pass down the passion. They'll definitely fit into my collection of "pretty glass things."

Oh, and on this day one year from now, I'll be getting ready to ditch my Five Cents. :)

Black Cloud

It's been a rough couple of months in our house. I try not to linger on this stuff but I feel like I need to get some of it "out there" in order to get it off my chest.

In order:
-A horrible sinus infection / ear infection
-An awful reaction to my antibiotic
-A trip to the ER
-3 trips to the doctor over a 2-week time span
-A week without J & Mary (they went on vacation)
-A car wreck -- not my fault, but it's no consolation because it's turning into a bigger headache than the one I had for the 4 days after the accident.


So instead of lingering too long on the negative, I'm going to try to accentuate the positive:
-A two-year anniversary, that allowed me to give J the "big secret" surprise I'd been waiting to give him for MONTHS...officially the first surprise I've ever pulled off with him. Painting with Cita the elephant at the zoo. I think this picture will always make me smile. Mostly because you can see that he's grinning like a 6-year-old. (It's worth mentioning that Cita is a movie star. She was in PeeWee's Big Adventure and The Color Purple. That's a pretty diverse resume.)


-I missed out on most of beach week this year because I was so sick. But J was a trooper and took both dogs the night the fam just hung around on the sand to relax and watch fireworks. He brought me back this picture, which makes me smile equally as hard. Pictured in the green (guess J and his pops both enjoy green tees?) is my future father in law and his future granddog in law watching fireworks on the beach together. Love it.


-As mentioned earlier, our household was split in two for a week, as J and Mary headed back to Tennessee for a week of outdoorsiness. Because I changed jobs in August, I couldn't take that much time off to go (which turned out to be ironic because I was home sick that whole week???). He came back with a beard, a smile, and one stinky dog. But no ticks, oh, and this picture. I call it "Mary of the Valley" and this is where her heart lives.


-And my prides and joys. My ready-made collection of antique Mason jars. I have had them for a few months now, but here's a picture before I washed them. You can kind of see it on one of them, but a few of them have remnants of old jam labels on them. From the kitchen of Ruth. Blackberry jam. Boysenberry jam. My favorite says "Grape jelly -- ???" That's the kind of mystery I think would've been worth solving. These will be front and center (literally) at the wedding...centerpieces. Some holding zinnias. Some holding mums. But all of them holding a little piece of the past. I love that.