One Address

Welp, we did it folks. All of my stuff; all of Casey's stuff- all at the same address!! We spent our long weekend corralling my stuff into our (our!) apartment, and Casey's parents brought us a truckload of furniture from Oregon and it has been a lot of packing and moving for the past 48 hours- all capped off by a trip to Costco Home today to buy a mattress.

And of course, though I am still sitting her amongst boxes (hey, I have my priorities straight- must connect Internet so I can blog before unloading freezer food), the place already looks like a completely different than it did a few days ago. I don't know if it is the new furniture (we have a new leather easy chair that I talked my parents out of, it is my new favorite thing EVER. I plan on living in that chair) or the "big-person" bed, but my gosh, it looks like grown-ups live here. Though I am not sure who those grownups are since we spent our evening flopping on the new bed (not the same as jumping, much more mature!) and eating ice cream straight out of the carton.

But I live here now, this is my home. And it is a home I will share with Casey, my husband and I can't wait, because in three (what seem like very long) weeks, we will truly be here, together. Finally five years after spying each other in HIstory of Baseball class and three and half years after a dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, we will be living here as husband and wife- at one address.

Again?

Our office got broken into. For the second time this MONTH. Which means for the second time in a month I am doing major damage control at the office and setting up equipment I do not know how to set up. Which means I have been at the office since 6:45 a.m. this morning which leaves no extra brain function for creative posts about nesting and unpacking our kitchen this week. But I shall return.....

Proud Parents....

.... of a brand new, 4-slice ultra premium Cuisinart toaster.


Yes, last night we broke out and started putting away the first of the wedding gifts! I have steadily been throwing things into the apartment, basically just piling them into the bedroom. When I got the house last night after my last dress fitting (yippee skippy! Oh except for the fact that I probably should stop eating like horse for the next month so it still fits!) I found the darling fiance organizing and cleaning the place- taking apart his bed frame and oh my gosh, there is a God in heaven, one of the foliage trees was gone as well! Well, the organizing became contagious and we started looking around it is was obvious that the toaster had seen better days so off it went and out came the brand-new toaster. After spending about twenty minutes just trying to get it out of the box.... seriously.... out it came and there we sat there staring at the first brand-new appliance either of us ever owned.

Casey: " Whoa."
Kate: " Wow, it has like five different settings. There is even a specific one for bagels!!"
Casey: " Ahhhhhhh," pushes down a clean and shiny lever.
Kate: "Oooh," pushes down other lever.
Casey: "Oh sweet, it has pull-out crumb cleaning trays!"

After this rather noise-heavy conversation (seriously reminiscent of cave people when discovering fire I should think...) we put it in a place of honor on top of the fridge to live for a few days and to get used to its new surroundings. Of course, then I got too excited and starting pulling more things out of boxes, becoming seriously entertaining by the most high-tech salad spinner known to mankind. Casey got excited too and yelled, "I'm so 'cited!!" and hopefully he means about moving in with me and not just about getting to use such a spiffy new toaster. Though I can't really blame him if its true, did I mention it can toast 4 slices at the same time on 4 different settings??? How can a girl compete with that?

Not A Good Sign

You know that perhaps your job isn't the greatest and that just perhaps it is time to start considering a career move when your first reaction to the thought of getting fired is not of sheer horror or panic but this instead:

" That would sure save me the trouble of quitting. Plus I could go home early- AWESOME!"

Yeesh.

Olympic Fever!

So you know how in your wedding vows you promise to love someone in good times and bad, for better for worse, in sickness and in health? Well, yesterday Casey found out my sickness. That's right, I have Olympic Fever.

I'm sorry but I am obsessed people. I don't know what it is but I could spend ALLLLL day watching road cycling or fencing or any type of sport if it has little 5-ring emblem at the bottom of the screen. I spent the entire 3 hours I spent at the trendy W Hotel this weekend tucked into the covers watching beach volleyball. Watching what would become the most depressing Mariner game ever I soon found out that I could see Michael Phelps win gold in the 200m on the TV in the owner's box if I craned my neck, bent over at a 90-degree angle and then sat on my hands to make a booster seat- so I did. I made Casey watch like 6 straight hours yesterday and drove him home at a lightning pace so I didn't miss any women's gymnastics (to be fair at last I was a good enough wifey to make him dinner during all that). I have so much national pride right now and I did a little victory dance when our good ol' boys just flat out beat the trash-talking French to win gold in 400m relay. And now, sitting her mid-day, I wish I could go home and do it all over again tonight or even better call in sick tomorrow, and watch all day as well. I've got it bad.


If we were already married I'd say, "Too bad, you promised to love me in sickness and in health so you'll just have to accept it" but he hasn't actually made that promise yet so I am sincerely hoping that he decides he can deal with my current malady. Hey, at least it only lasts for two weeks right?.... Every two years that is.... for the next 50-some odd years.... for a grand total of 25 more Olympic games..... Gulp....Please still marry me baby ;).

Merge!

I officially dropped off the first box of stuff at Casey's- err, I mean OUR- apartment last night. Nothing grand or big but at the end of the night I LEFT IT THERE and I don't intend on taking it back. I'm going to start shuffling small loads here and there and pretty soon, my presence will be felt all over the place-ha ha ha evil laugh cackle cackle. The bachelor pad (and I mean bachelor people, with movie posters, hand me down couches, an N64 and leftovers from the 3 boys that have lived there this year) is about to get a surprise: a woman.

I admit it feels a little weird to be moving in to the apartment where the boys have roamed the last year. I felt kind of awkward leaving the stuff there last night mostly because I have always tried to be respectful of his space in the way he is of mine. But now (almost officially, we won't actually both be living there until after the 'moon) it is OUR space and well, I certainly doesn't feel like my space at all yet. It will, but not right now. Casey, bless his heart realizes this and bought cleaning supplies to spruce up the place (I'm sorry I'm neat and tidy and I realize its a sickness but I don't like dirty dishes piling up in the sink! Ahh, the horror!) and has promised to clean and move out stuff before I come in.

Which brings me to the real purpose of the post: the merging of the stuff. The question has become what do we throw out? What do we keep? What of his can't I stand and which of my stuff does he want to pitch before it ever even crosses the threshhold? How do we make two separate people's stuff into our stuff for our home? I can tell its going to take some negotiating. For example: the foliage.

I have been told that the plastic trees that have graced the apartment for the last couple of years must stay. Last night, I tried to gently ask whether or not the plastic foliage might be negotiable, in other words, honey can we maybe get rid of these? I might not have come across as subtly as I have hoped (though I am not sure what about "so do we HAVE to keep the foliage? I mean, really do we have to???" isn't subtle) and Casey was crestfallen at the idea of life without his trees. "But I like living things in the apartment. When I come home on gray Seattle ideas I like green things, it brightens my day." Great, so now if I take them away I am the mean lady who won't let him have the ONE thing that brightens his day. So the trees stay, although perhaps not in their current location.

In similar fashion, I have a few things the Musanator could do without as well. Case in point, last year I bought what I thought was a fantastic mirror for us. He took one look at it and said " It looks like the batman signal" which I would have thought was a good thing, but apparently not because the other day he looked at it and said with his nose crinkled up, "So is the Batman mirror making the trip?" in a tone that clearly stated he hoped not. I don't think my obsession with throw pillows is going to go over well either....

It all reminds me of the Friends episode where Chandler and Monica are moving in together and can't decide where to put anything or what to do with their stuff. But, hopefully, just like us, they work out with laughter (oh there'll be lots of that, I was laughing so hard I was crying last night when Casey explained how important the plastic was to him) and figure out how to make two lives into one, a merging of sorts:

Chandler: You know what I was thinking for the bedroom?
Monica: What?
Chandler: You know how they have those signs on the highway that say MERGE? Well I was thinking thats kinda like us, merging our stuff and our lives together. So we could one of those signs and put it over the bed, like MERGE. Get it?
Monica: Oh yeh, that's a great idea.
Chandler: Really?
Monica: No.

Don't get any ideas Musanator- I'll let you keep your trees but you can forget the MERGE sign.