Talk Derby to Me

Did I ever tell you about my Insane Multi-Cultural German Cinco de Derby party?

Let me tell you.

When I studied in Germany, I had a friend also studying there who was from Louisville. I'm from New Mexico. That year, the Kentucky Derby fell on May 5th, aka Cinco de Mayo. We started planning an Epic Party well in advance.

Louisville's father sent a box filled with awesome Derby/Southern Party supplies: white gravy mix, Derby themed toys and shirts, and a bunch of other odds and ends. We raided the local German grocery store for Kentucky bourbon and tequila, and tried to figure out what sort of German cheese most closely resembled the cheese one uses for queso (because Germans don't eat Velveeta, natch).

I'm the one in blue.

We cooked all day, making biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, tacos, and Spanish rice. We made mint juleps and margaritas. We made salsa, to enjoy with the surprisingly tasty German tortilla chips.We also concocted a strange (but delicious) approximation of queso.

We set the table with the Derby party supplies and some random Mexicanish items we found at the Euro Store, which is like the Dollar Store, only weirder as only Europeans can be (there was a large and prominent display of one Euro dildos at this particular store, right next to a bunch of cheap kids' toys. Not even kidding).

The Run for the Mango Salsa.

Our party guests consisted of two other Americans (from Minnesota and Pennsylvania), our septilingual Finnish friend, and a variety of Germans.

We printed off some articles about the race, with lists of the horses running, and everyone bet on a horse. Big stakes here--dishes duty.

The only hitch to the day was that we couldn't find the race streamed live from anywhere. Clearly German tv was too busy airing things like this to air an American sporting event.

Toasting a party well hosted.

We eventually found a replay of the race on ESPN.com. My horse won, because clearly I'm a horse-picking genius.

SO EXCITING.

Meet the Spouse: The DDH

Kathleen at Becoming Peculiar had the genius idea to share posts about our spouses. Because we write about our lives, our children, even our pets, but often our spouses make only cameo appearances on our blogs.

So without further ado...the DDH!

At Pops in Arcadia, OK last spring.

The DDH and I met in college (Blow, 'Cane!). He was the Assistant Resident Director (the student staff member in charge of all the other student staff members) for the Honors House (where we lived) and another dorm. I was a freshman. There was probably a rule against that, oops.

His first memory of me is of a dorky freshman wearing a straw cowboy hat. Admittedly, that is precisely what I was. My first impression of him is probably lost somewhere in a blur of new faces and panic, but I came to know a man who was funny, intelligent, interesting, and a firm Christian (though he tricked me into thinking he was Lutheran, which he wasn't).

After only a few weeks hanging out with him, I said to myself, "This is the man I'm going to marry." And I did.

Ironically, at the time I decided that, I was oh-so-generously helping him woo a girl at a different college. Because I'm tricksy like that.

Oktoberfest 2011.

We began dating steadily October 1 (having just met in August*). We continued dating all through my freshman/his junior year and my sophomore/his senior year.

During this time, we managed to take a couple of courses together (one block level psych class (his major) and one block level history class (my minor)). We were both very active in Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed community service fraternity, and traveled together to Denver, St. Louis, Louisville, and other less exotic places for fraternity conventions, as well as logging countless service hours together. During this time, his parents went through a very messy divorce and his little brother's life spiraled out of control. I considered dumping him because he would answer his mom's phone calls and spend dozens of minutes talking to her while out on dates with me. In retrospect, this demonstrates his emotional stability and empathy, or something, but at the time it was really annoying.

Finally, during my junior year of undergrad and his first year of law school, in a paddleboat on the Schluchsee in the Black Forest, he asked me to marry him (I was studying abroad in Freiburg, Germany at the time). A week later, after spending six days traveling around Italy with my parents and siblings in an SUV that only nominally seated six people, he still wanted to marry me. So, we went ahead with planning a wedding and were married in the November after my graduation from college, in 2008.

He graduated law school and passed the bar in 2011, and has been working as an assistant district attorney in the juvenile bureau for the last year and a half. (That's one reason I call him the DDH on the blog, though many of you know his real names. There are people out there who don't care much for prosecuting attorneys, turns out.)

At the Oklahoma State Capital for his swearing in ceremony.

In some ways, I think we're too similar. We're both painfully shy as well as introverted, and incredibly indecisive. We have had more than one argument about not being able to choose a place to have dinner or a way to spend an afternoon, and somehow we each resent being the one who "always" has to make these decisions.

Over the Main River in Frankfurt.

But in other ways, he complements me beautifully. He is very handy, willing and able to fiddle with everything from electronic gadgets to Christmas lights to furniture to fix, build, or otherwise make it work properly. I, on the other hand, am something of a technophobe who has difficulty following the instructions in beginner Lego kits.

In the paddleboat where he proposed.

He loves and supports me unconditionally, never complaining about the strange dishes I cook (though he does give his honest opinion) or my various other experiments, and always egging me on to write more.

He loves the things that I love, like food and travel and cheesy action movies. He's a gift-giver and a romantic and general all-around thoughtful guy.

At the hospital, waiting for T-Rex to be born.

I mean, he has his faults, and we disagree on lots of things big and small, from televisions in bedrooms to fine details regarding the doctrine of Original Sin. I suppose life would be pretty boring if we agreed on everything. And anyway, the important thing is, he always takes my side against his mother, even when I am, ah, less than delicate about expressing my opinion about her opinions (heh).

In particular, I have always envied him his certainty about his calling. He has known he wanted to be a lawyer since high school. He worked steadily through high school, college, and law school with that goal in mind, and now here he is. He loves his job. He loves the law. He loves being a lawyer, and he loves the kind of law he practices right now. I have never known what I want to do and have never loved a job. I envy him that certainty and sense of vocation, and I am so glad at least one of us has it.

Price Tower Artz Center in Bartlesville, July 2011.

 And he loves T-Rex. Watching him with our son the past three months has been a joy. He plays with him and shows him off and rocks him when he cries. He not only never once questioned my decision to go with cloth diapers, he volunteers to change them. He is a wonderful father, and I can't wait to see them together as T-Rex grows and as (hopefully, eventually) other children join our family.

Cool dudes.

Basically, he's the best. I am blessed far beyond what I deserve.

Linking up at Becoming Peculiar for the Meet the Spouse! carnival.

*Few people, however, can beat my parents, who were introduced on a blind date the day after Christmas and were married the next March, about eleven weeks after they met. And they're still married, almost 31 years later.

I am having a Dragon baby.

One of my coworkers is Chinese. As in, came-from-a-Beijing-suburb-to-Tulsa-for-grad-school, is-applying-for-her-permanent-visa-while-working-with-us Chinese.

Before her, we had a different Chinese student working for us. I've learned a lot of interesting things from them, such as:

1. You don't have outgoing mailboxes at home in China. If you want to mail something, you have to take it to the post office. The old worker wanted to know what the flags on mailboxes were for and was fascinated that you could just drop something in there and the postman would take it away for you.
2. If you are an only child, and your husband is an only child, then you can apply to the government for permission to have two children. But you have to submit all kinds of paperwork to prove that each of you has no siblings and it's a long, complicated process.
3. KFC is more popular than McDonald's in China because they have more successfully adapted their menu to Chinese tastes.
4. Pizza Hut is a fancy restaurant in China--the sort of place you would take a girl for a nice date.

Completely unrelated picture. Though it makes me think I
should ask about nurseries and Chinese baby sleeping
arrangements.

I've really been enjoying our conversations about pregnancy, babies, and child-rearing. We both like seeing how our cultures do things differently.

Yesterday we talked about the foods you should eat during pregnancy. My coworker says that her mom ate lots of apples while she was pregnant, and that's why my friend has such white skin. I don't know about white skin, but eating lots of apples sounds like a good idea--fiber, you know. ;-)

She also said it was interesting because in China, you're supposed to eat lots of fish while pregnant because it's good for baby brains, but here, they tell you to avoid fish because of mercury and other contaminants. I bet fish really is a good food for pregnancy, and it's unfortunate we have to worry about the contaminants now.

Both the Chinese and Americans say you should eat nuts to develop baby brains, but in China it's pecans and America it's walnuts.

Beyond food, she told me that she and her husband would really like to have a dog because they both love dogs, but they're not allowed to because you can't have a dog and a baby in the house at the same time, and of course their parents would like them to have babies (the plural is one reason she wants to stay in the States) sometime in the near future. In China you only get a dog after the child is seven or eight. She's jealous that we have not one but two dogs and wanted to know what our mothers thought about that. When I told her that our parents all had dogs when we were babies, so they certainly don't care, and in fact a lot of people think it's good to have dogs because they help watch and protect the babies (obviously, lots of Westerners take the Chinese line on this topic, but think Nana in Peter Pan), she thought that was pretty much the coolest. I sense a rebellion fomenting. ^_^

And here is an interesting cultural take on the breastfeeding vs. formula debate: Here, of course, it's quite the debate, but even formula companies pretend to be breastfeeding advocates, because there's an assumption that "breast is best." Certainly the online community I frequent loudly advocates breastfeeding. Well. My friend has some friends in China with a baby, and for the past several months, my friend has been going to Target, buying American baby formula, boxing it up, and shipping it to China. Her friends want to give their baby the absolute best, and the absolute best, to them, is American baby formula. It's thought to be much superior to formula sold in China, and her friends are willing to pay American prices PLUS shipping to feed it to their baby. I haven't yet asked her what the Chinese think about breastfeeding; I'm hoping it will come up in the next few months.

She did point out that of course, if you're only having one baby, you are willing to spend a lot to make sure it has the best. You don't have to worry about spreading your money out over two or three or four kids.

My friend is also super excited that T-Rex will be a Dragon baby (which I will admit I think is cool too ^_^). Apparently Chinese couples plan to, as much as possible, have a baby in a lucky year like Dragon or Pig. She was reading on a Chinese website that the big hospital in Beijing has already had more births this year than in all of last year, and since they usually see more births in the last half of the year anyway, they expect this year's birthrate to be more than twice the normal. Her...aunt, maybe?...is a Kindergarten-equivalent teacher, and she told my friend that this year, instead of about twenty children entering Kindergarten at their school, there are forty-four--because all those lucky Pig babies born in 2008 are starting school this year. Correspondingly, many fewer kids are born in less lucky years, like Sheep.

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the one perspective (or two violently dueling perspectives) I get on all this baby stuff, that I forget just how myopic this view is. I vaguely remember noting differences between the German and American approaches to children when I lived there, but it was all very distant and theoretical at the time. Now I'm learning about things the Chinese do (or at least things that the upper middle class, suburban Chinese do) right when I'm making those same decisions for T-Rex.

I love hearing about the things my friend takes for granted, because it helps me see the things that I take for granted, too. And even if I'm not going to be giving up my dogs or importing formula, it's good to know that others do those things--and why.

What things cause you to question your own assumptions about different topics?

Do you have any other fun cross-cultural baby trivia for me?

I am productive.

Work's been crazy. I have some posts in the works that hopefully will get published soon.

Life lately:

Wednesday, my hold on Catching Fire (the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy, for those of you hiding under rocks or with bad memories for book titles) came in and I picked it up at the library.

I read a chapter at lunch on Thursday.

Friday, I ended up not getting a lunch but instead getting to leave work about an hour early. I came home, sprinkled baking powder over the family room carpet in a futile attempt to make it smell less like dog pee, started some pizza dough going in the bread maker, made a very belated lunch, and sat down to read Catching Fire while I ate.

Four hours later, there was still baking soda on my floors and dough in the machine, but I had finished my lunch--and the book.

I love getting swallowed up in a story. I rarely have the luxury of doing so for hours at a time anymore. My soul needed it.

Also, my hold on Mockingjay needs to come in now.

***

Over the weekend, I turned our guest bedroom from a junk graveyard to a welcoming resting place in preparation for some visitors next week.

It's a bit of a novelty for me to have a guest bedroom in the first place. I grew up with three siblings and three bedrooms; my sister and I shared a room not too terribly much bigger than my furniture. Guests were relegated to a pull-out sofa in the living room.

Then my dog ate my grandmother's expensive Italian leather shoes. After that, they stayed in a hotel when they came to visit.

The DDH and I, however, have five bedrooms all to ourselves (and The Roommate), because the DDH bought this house in order to rent out the rooms to other students. So now I have a master bedroom, an office, a craft room, and not one but two guest bedrooms. Or, now, one guest room and one Roommate-room, and soon to be one guest bedroom and one nursery.

These aren't true before pictures, as I took them Sunday, when I had already spent an hour or so Saturday mostly-clearing the bed. I also didn't think to take pictures until after I had reorganized and neatened the bookshelves. Let's just say that when The Roommate moved in, a lot of what was stored in what is now his room simply crossed the hall to this room and has languished there ever since.

The bed used to be worse. Much worse.

Admittedly the stepstool is there because I just finished dusting
and straightening the bookshelves. But the vacuum had been
stored in that exact same place.

Too much furniture in this room. You can't even see it all
because I couldn't photograph from the fourth corner.

But look at these nice afters! Wouldn't you like to come stay with me?

The Neuschwanstein poster is straight; the camera is crooked.

Much better.

I can actually take a picture from this angle now!

Ta-da!

Ok, so it lacks curtains. And pillows. And the walls are just white. But look! There's stuff on them! And not on the bed/tables/headboard/floor! You can get into the bed from either side, and all the superfluous furniture has gone on to bigger and better things.

I was going to frame that horse breeds poster on the bed and hang it on the blank wall, but the DDH had a better idea. He bought some wood, made a frame, and stretched a canvas map we had lying around to make a lovely art piece for the room--not pictured, because he hadn't done it yet. And because his level is at work so he can't hang it until he remembers to bring that home.

So with the map and the Neuschwanstein poster that I bought at the actual Neuschwanstein*, there's sort of a travel theme going, I guess. And look at all these lovely books:

This is where I keep all my "kids' books:" YA/children's novels,
kids' Bibles, picture books, and illustrated reference books.

The MIL and the sweet boy I babysit both donated to our
picture book collection.

There are a lot of books on horses.

Mein liebstes Maerchen Buch, a puppy from the DDH,
and a sketch of balloons by a college friend.

***

There was originally more re-capping that was going to occur in this post, but it's been three days since I intended to write it and this is all I remember.

Everyone loves a good before-and-after picture set, though. So that's enough. ^_^


*Proof:

Famous fairy-tale castle and somewhat-less-famous me.

What are you up to these days? How do you accommodate guests?

Do you have too little space or, like us, too much?

I am dressed (don't ask much more of me)!

I almost forgot it was Wednesday!

I officially entered the second trimester on Monday and go in for a sonogram and checkup today. The DDH wasn't going to come because I told him it was just a checkup and nothing important.

However, I was fretting about something and said something along the lines of, "Well, I'll feel better once I hear Critter's heartbeat on Wednesday" and the DDH flipped. out. "You get to hear the heartbeat? Why didn't you tell me? I thought it was just a checkup! I want to hear the heartbeat too!"

So he rearranged his work schedule, got someone to cover his afternoon docket, and plans to meet me at the doctor's. <3

Anyway! Down to business. I can tell my pants are fitting more tightly, but I still don't look pregnant at all. My skirts and dresses still fit fine, as you can see.

Tank: Old Navy; belt: Goodwill; skirt: JC Penney.

I have rediscovered my love of this skirt. I had stopped wearing it for awhile, but I don't know why. Maybe the white is getting faded? Maybe because I really have to be strict about my "no white/light colors" rule because I'm the clumsiest person alive? No idea.

But it is the most comfortable, pretty thing. I felt like a genius for pairing it with my big patent fake-leather belt I found at Goodwill. A GENIUS, I TELL YOU.

Also, the tank-top is very comfortable (and teal) but weirdly too large for me and I cannot escape sharing my bra with the world when I wear it. Oh well.

Dress: long story; belt: Goodwill.

There's that belt again! It's the same one, just the light from the window makes the buckle look silver when it's not. I was once again inordinately proud of myself for adding the belt to this dress, which I otherwise love and is a story in itself.

This dress. Oh, this dress. It's a cute style, right, simple sundress with a swooshy skirt. But look at that pattern! Not something I would have ever picked out. You may have noticed that I don't tend to wear a lot of patterns. This is because a) I freak out about the colors in the patterns going with the colors of things I wear with them, b) I'm picky and think a lot of patterns look dumb, c) I'm cautious about mixing patterns, and d) I'm a timid and conservative dresser and it's just easier to do solids. And tame colors.

ANYWAY. So why do I have this dress I wouldn't normally pick out for myself? Well. I was living in Germany. One of my housemates, who is from Pennsylvania, had gone with some of our other friends to Spain while I went to Italy with my parents and the at-that-time-DDF. She split off from our friends in Spain to meet up with an old friend in Switzerland, where she went to a giant flea market. I have no idea, really, what flea markets are like in Switzerland or even that they HAD flea markets in Switzerland, but apparently they do.

So Sarah bought this dress because she loved the pattern (the pattern I would have skipped right over). But when she got home to Germany, she discovered it didn't actually fit because she has giant bosoms. She loved the pattern so much, though, that she planned to make it into a bag. For some strange reason, she then asked me to try it on. I could just barely zip it up because a) though I don't have bosoms, I have a big ribcage and shoulders, and b) I subsisted my entire stay in Germany on a diet consisting of Speck (cured pork), potatoes, Haribo gummis, Prinzenkekse (giant delicious sandwich cookies), pretzels, and alcohol. To be fair, I also walked miles each day so I didn't gain that much weight, but I definitely gained some.

Still, it fit, and it looked really nice on me (aka it made me look like I had bosoms, when I don't. Also, it's really amusing me to keep referring to breasts as bosoms), and Sarah told me I should keep it. Then we went swing dancing.

For awhile the dress stopped fitting (because when you come back to college, eat crappy food, and don't walk miles and miles every day, apparently you gain a bunch of weight, who knew). But then I lost thirty pounds and it fit easily and looked amazing and is perfect when it's hot out etc. etc. Alas, pregnancy is giving me bosoms (sort of) and generally rearranging my body, so I think that was the last time I'll squeeze into that dear old dress for awhile. But if all else fails, I'll make a bag out of it and send it to Sarah.

And for the record, it isn't some magical fancy Swiss dress from a boutique or made by a cute little Swiss seamstress. It's from H&M. But a) we don't have one of those here (pout), b) it's H&M Europe so the sizes are in European which makes it automatically cooler than American H&M right?, and c) it still has a cool story behind it. And it looks great on me. So there.

Since I wrote a novel about that dress, I guess I'll stop for now. More next week!

It's Wednesday, y'all. What are you wearing?

Linked up with What I Wore Wednesday at the Pleated Poppy, which I should have been doing for these posts all along except that I forgot what blog I originally found the idea on and decided to just hope everyone else knew what I was talking about. But now I found it again and I'm happy I did, because Poppy is adorable.

Reality Bites at Reality Chef

I know it's an internet phenomenon, to complain about how un-real our internet personas are.

I hear people complaining about it--how they get depressed because everyone's life seems better than theirs when seen through glowing status updates. I myself am prone to shameful raging fits of envy when I see other people's beautifully decorated houses (and then those people complain about them, ugh!), their seamlessly organized and totally fulfilling lives.

Exhibit A: This used to be the view from my bedroom window.
When I lived in Freiburg, Germany.

It seems to be all the blogosphere rage to insist you and your blog will "keep it real," that you're "all real," but all the while we post a carefully edited presentation of our lives. Even our troubles can be giftwrapped and prettied up to seem artfully tragic.

I hate that.

I mean, I am the Number One Fan of the curated personality presentation. I don't mind people presenting me the Best Bits version of their lives--that's more or less what I'm presenting you. I like a juicy secret and I like to know that your lives really aren't perfect, but people go to the internet for the same reason they go to the movies or watch television or read books: for entertainment.*

And mundanity is anything but entertaining.

That's why no one loves the friend who tweets every day's tiniest event: Woke up, had coffee. Heading off to work, blah. Think I'll get Chipotle for lunch. Stuck in traffic and found some spinach in my teeth.

Yawn.

Somewhere, though, there's a balance. There's a balance between the kind of real that tells you what time I brush my teeth every day (right before bed. Yeah, just once a day, don't tell my dentist) and the kind of editing that makes you think I eat nothing but free-range meat and homegrown produce cooked in my four-star kitchen (I wish) to exacting standards for my Hollister-model husband and my 2.5 kids.

Somewhere in there is the version of life that's entertaining without making you (too terribly) jealous. A version of life that's relateable. A version of life--of self--that is a friend.

I've got a series in mind for this little blog, but I'm starting with Reality Chef, because I named the damn thing with this whole concept in mind yet lately have been only posting recipes and meals that make me look good like a skinny-bitch Paula Deen with a smitten kitchen chaser.

Every day from now until Easter (so basically for Lent), I'm going to post what I had for dinner. Sometimes, and in keeping with my New Year's goals hopefully at least three times a week, this will be a recipe that you might want to try. But maybe more often than I'd like, it's going to be leftovers or fast food or whatever reality meal Americans eat these days.

I won't be posting all of these here, because that could be totally boring. I'll just link to the recipe ones the way I've been doing. But if you're curious, keep an eye on the food blog for a taste of reality. Hopefully, it will encourage you and show you that real food lifestyles are doable, without overwhelming you with the impossibility of living them perfectly.

'Cause heaven knows that I'm not perfect, and Day 1's dinner proves it.

*Ok, so that's drastically oversimplified. REALLY mostly people go to the internet to Google stuff on Wikipedia. Also for porn. And to nurture human relationships or buy stuff on Amazon or whatever. But entertainment is certainly a primary purpose. No, I'm not linking to porn with that link, geez, but to the Avenue Q song.

11 Things at 11:11 on the 11th.

By the time I hit "Publish" it won't be, but I would like to point out that RIGHT NOW it is 11:11 a.m. on the 11th. ^____^ (By the time I hit "Publish," it's not even the 11th anymore...oh well.)

I think the entirety of my online existence in middle school (and, honestly, most of high school) consisted of chain survey emails passed around between my girlfriends and me.

At some point I realized that other people didn't enjoy them as much as I did...and my innate shyness means that I cannot do anything that might possibly irritate, offend, or cause someone to think less of me. So I stopped sending them.

But I love love love them. I am endlessly curious about other people's lives, and perhaps because I'm so shy and spend the entirety of my life crafting a persona I think others want to see in me, I spend a lot of time navel-gazing myself.

SO. Megan at SortaCrunchy tagged me in this little meme and I'm going to do it. SO THERE.

RULES

1. Post these rules.
2. You must post 11 random things about yourself.
3. Answer the questions set for you in the post of the person who tagged you.
4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
5. Go to the blogs of the people you've tagged and tell them that you’ve tagged them.
6. No stuff in the tagging section about you are tagged if you are reading this. You legitimately have to tag 11 people.

11 RANDOM THINGS

1. I own or have owned a variety of dogs, rabbits, fish, and rats, but I have always wanted and never owned a guinea pig.
2. I showed dogs for five years or so when I was younger (elementary and middle school).
3. Monkeys creep me out to the point of terrifying me. Ugh.
4. I have lived in five states and two countries. Technically, I'm a Yankee by birth, but I'm a Southwestern girl at heart.
5. I only shower about three times a week.
6. I am the oldest child of two oldest children.
7. I hate Jon Stewart. He's a pompous, unfunny jerkface and I have no idea why he's so popular. (I also don't get The Office. Obviously my sense of humor is broken.)
8. One of my husband's and my old college friends is currently living in one of our spare bedrooms.
9. I don't like olives, bell peppers, or pepperoni.
10. I eat hamburgers and other sandwiches in circles around the outside edge. The middle bite, where there's a bit of everything (meat, veggies, sauce) is the tastiest and I save it for last. 
11. I have an insatiable sweet tooth and the summer I spent nannying, I went through a 96 oz. bag of M&M's from Sam's Club every two weeks. By myself. I didn't gain any weight because I was spending ten hours a day literally running (and biking) around after two little boys, but amazingly once I stopped this habit, I lost thirty pounds.

QUESTIONS

 

1. Which season is your favorite and why? Fall. Harvest season! The weather is beautiful, there's an abundance of fresh produce, and I like coziness and pumpkin spice. I'm a fan of summer, too, though, and spring when it's finally warm after winter. Honestly, more than the season, I just love a clear sunny day, no matter the temperature. Rain and mud depress me.

2. What is the best deal you've ever gotten on anything? Hmm. When I was in middle school, my Destination Imagination team went thrifting for supplies for our skit. At one of the thrift stores, I found and for some reason fell in love with a stuffed armadillo. I don't remember what he cost; maybe a dollar? Little enough that my limited-income middle school self could snatch him up. Armee has accompanied me everywhere since: to dog shows, on road trips, to college, to Germany. He lives in the bottom drawer of my bedside table and even now if I'm feeling gloomy I pull him out and hug him and think of a sunshiny Albuquerque day and an adventure with friends and all the places we've been together.

3. What is your favorite dessert? Ice cream. Anything involving ice cream and/or chocolate.


4. When was the last time you went to the dentist? Just a few weeks ago, actually. No cavities!

5. Do you prefer older homes or new construction? Older homes (though updated plumbing and electricity would be nice). They just seem more solid, somehow. Built to last. And I love love love hardwood over carpet or tile any time. Our house has hardwood that some idiot covered in hideous Berber carpet, and it is one of our fondest dreams to rip it up and refinish the floors beneath. But bringing the electrical system up to code and replacing the disintegrating cardboard sewage pipes should probably come first....

6. What is your favorite social media platform and why? (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, etc) Facebook 'cause my mommy's on it. Ha. No, Facebook seems the most suited for actual personal interaction with family and friends that I don't see every day (or ever), as well as for just sharing those interesting tidbits I find on the web. Though I just started on Pinterest yesterday and it's proving useful so far.


7. Photography: do it yourself or go to a professional? I haven't had a professional portrait taken since my senior pictures for high school. I guess except my wedding pics, which aren't very good. I am a prolific but mediocre picture-taker and would really like some nice, artsy photos of me, the DDH, and perhaps the pets. But, you know, money.


8. What is the last thing you made? Yesterday I made two tortilla pies, beef stew, and some granola bars. Today I made guacamole. I make a lot of food. What was the last non-food thing I made, though? I'm not even sure.

9. Thrifting: love it or hate it? I want to love thrifting. That is, I want to have all these cute vintage clothes for very little money. But I have not found a good place to go in Tulsa and/or I'm just not very good at it. I have difficulty seeing the possibilities of a garment and I never seem to find any treasures (except Armee the Armadillo, of course).

10. Sunrise or sunset? Fiddler on the Roof. ^_^ Sunrise. There's something special about being up and outside at that time of day.


11. What is your guilty pleasure? Long, hot showers, since I am a water Grinch in the rest of my life (desert girl, you know). Also, trashy novels.

I'm not tagging anyone because the only people I know who read me are Megan (who tagged me), Anne (whom Megan tagged), and Sarah, who has an itty bitty baby and negative amounts of spare time. I guess technically I'm tagging you, Sarah, but you can just answer Megan's questions. And, contrary to the rules, anyone else is welcome to play, too.

Yay weekends and middle school flashbacks!

Ich bin Deutscherin!

Well, half German, anyway, and that's more than enough during Oktoberfest!

Tulsa has, perhaps surprisingly, a really good Oktoberfest each year. Usually the DDH and I go on Thursday night with a free admission coupon, but the dealership or whatever it was that handed those out before didn't do that this year. :-( So instead, we actually went during the day, and that turned out to be a lot of fun!

First, before it opened, we went to a worship service put on by the LCMS Lutheran churches in the area. Our DCE led the service, and we got to do the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer in German. Woot.

After an unexpected storm Saturday night and several days in the fifties last week, we thankfully had beautiful weather. The fog cleared for a sunny day in the seventies. Wunderbar! ;-)

A Weiner Dog Races Foto Montage:



Those are some fast little short-legged doglets.



A girl next to us in the crowd with
her dachshund, Fievel.

Some dogs were less into the "running" part of the race than others.

On your marks!

Go!

Run run dachshunds.

The one on the left was the eventual winner, Bolt Speedman.

The black-and-white dachshund in the middle is aptly named "Snoopy."

The Grand Champion, Bolt Speedman, and his human pack.

My early anniversary present: this beautiful market basket.
I've been admiring the baskets sold at this stand at Oktoberfest and the Fair
for several years; supposedly they're made by a group of women in Ghana.
I never know how much to believe those sorts of stories, but the baskets are
beautiful, reasonably priced, and I've seen people using them at the market, so
they seem sturdy and like they hold up well. The DDH kindly noticed my
drooling and told me to choose one for an early present.

Brats, Polish sausage, and kraut. Noms.

Oktoberfest is held at the Festival Grounds of RiverParks.
A view of the river and the syringe building.

Some German state flags. The black and yellow one with
the lions is for Baden-Wuerttemberg, the state where I lived.



And my favorite part--potato pancakes and applesauce!

I am organized: Entryway

Repurposing is my favorite "green" habit. Old, broken items can become something new and totally awesome--who wouldn't love that?

I am addicted.

There is a category of item that I could shop all day for. I drool over catalogs, I stalk sales, I happily wander stores imagining owning--

Not shoes.

Not clothes.

Not purses.

No, I, my friends, am addicted to organization supplies.

When storage bins go on sale in January, I am happy. When school supplies go on sale in August, I am in heaven. Show me a cute box, a bag with a myriad of carefully designed pockets, a desk organizer with a nifty feature and I. Am. So. There.

There are two problems with this addiction. The first is the same problem I face with food and shoes and clothes and purses: money, of course, that bugbear of dreamy housewives everywhere.

The second is the weird old house I live in, where everything from the doors to the drawers to the closets comes in non-standard shapes and sizes. Nifty little drawer organizers? Do not fit. Cool and practical over-the-door storage units? Do not fit. Anything ever in the history of the universe designed to bring the glory of Order to a chaotic closet?

Does.

Not.

Fit.

Between the two, I have gotten rather creative (I hope) with making up and making do, that I might worship Order without going into hock or getting a degree in carpentry.

Let's take a look at one of my little projects.

Flip through any Pottery Barn catalog, and you will discover the Idealized World of the Entryway. These people who live in catalogs always have spacious mudroom-entryway places, filled with specially designed Entryway Organizers of Awesomeness that contain exactly the right number of perfectly sized nooks and crannies in which to store everything from your galoshes to your school books to your umbrellas to your keys to your mail to your everything you could possibly want to store conveniently close to the door. People who live in catalogs, they have these glorious rooms.

Do you know what I have, guys? I have a tiny stretch of wood floor with half a wall and a miniscule hall closet. (Our garage a. has an addition built above it and thus cannot fit a standard (!) automatic garage door and b. opens onto the stairs to said addition and then directly to the kitchen. So the front door is It).



Exhibit A.

Yet, given a budget of half a wall and zero dollars, and with the help of a handy husband, I managed to come up with this nifty mail and key organizer that does at least something to assuage my longing for an Entryway Organizer of Awesomeness:

Exhibit B.

Look at this handy thing! It hangs on the wall right by the door, it has hooks for keys and a decorative Freiburg shopping bag, pockets for mail for the DDH and me and for coupons, and generally is awesome. Best of all, it cost me precisely zero dollars.

How did this come to be, you ask? Well, friend, I will tell you.

The frame with hooks used to hold a mirror and hung above the couch in one of the DDH's bachelor apartments. The mirror fell victim to an Unfortunate Shoe Kicking Incident, but packrat me could never bear to get rid of such an intrinsically useful bit of wall hanging. It has followed us around for seven years now.

Then, the DDH and I discovered that the mirror bit could be removed, leaving the frame intact. We chopped apart a bulletin board (the frame had broken, but thinking, oh, corkboard is so useful! I had packratted it away, again for several years) and inserted it into the space left by the mirror.

For several months, that is how it hung in our entryway: useful hooks, coupons messily pinned to blank, boring corkboard.

Then I had to shred a bunch of old notes at work. The handy plastic pocket-covers of the notebooks just screamed, I can be used for something! as I was shredding their guts. I took pity on the critters and squirreled them away home.

I added a strip of black electric tape so stuff wouldn't fall out, since the pocket didn't go all the way across. I drew some nifty labels on scraps of scrapbook paper (actually, the boring white paper that you get for free with scrapbook inserts), stuck them in the business card viewer pocket, and voila! organizational pockets.

Please note that the labels are yellow on one side, blue on the other, and green in the middle, as if the blue and yellow bled into each other on the coupon pockets. IT'S SO CLEVER.

When I come home on lunch or at the end of the day, I take care of my mail right away, so my pocket is usually empty (I stuck the envelope in so my pocket didn't look lonely). The DDH is happy to let his mail sit for days weeks months, so it is usually full (supposedly everything in it is organized and this is just where he wants to file it. Why he feels the need to file his junk mail instead of throwing it away, you will have to ask him). When I get coupons in the mail each week, I toss the expired ones and add the new ones to the middle pocket.

You will notice that my keys are the only ones on the hook. Obviously one of us is more into this whole organizational thing than the other. I never tell him "I told you so" when he can't find his car keys, though.

A Thing of Beauty

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