Work was crazy this week. We had a huge tenant event and I’m exhausted from it. However, it went really well, so that is worth it.

Brett and I had a fantastic anniversary. We had dinner at Carmelita, an all-vegetarian restaurant that we’ve been wanting to go to for a long time. It was soooo yummy. I had the lemon-asparagus-fava bean risotto, and Brett had this pasta-y thing that looked so rich and cheesy and good. We really enjoyed it! I need to write some more about the dinner and about our new philosophy toward eating out…maybe next week.

Now, we’re in the midst of the Seattle moped rally — Blood Drive V. Since I can’t ride a moped this year (SO SAD!!) I am driving one of the breakdown vehicles. What a freakin adventure that is, trying to navigate a 15-passenger van through Seattle traffic, trying to stay behind mopeds, and trying to abruptly pull over when someone breaks down. I am just praying I don’t get a ticket…I’ve had to do some, uh, not-so-legal things already, and it’s only been one day.

I have been telling myself for months that after this weekend, I could relax a bit. We’ve been down to Portland a ton, participated in Amy and Seth’s wedding, had a ton of stress at work, and now the rally. But now, we just found out this week that our application was approved for a house we are going to rent — so we’ll be moving as of September 1.

Very good news, and we are super excited, but OMG, life is just never going to slow down, and that thought is overwhelming.

Anyway, more about the house and our dinner and the rally later — we are off to breakfast and then to a day of me watching everyone else ride while I drive a cumbersome vehicle around since I can’t ride this year. **sigh** I know it’s worth it not to be able to ride, but it’s so fun to ride in a big group, and it’s so not fun to drive a chase vehicle…maybe another year.

But Brett’s at work (hooray, work!), the house is quiet, and I’m just hanging out. I slept in this morning for the first time in a long time, which was lovely, and now I’m being lazy. It’s kind of nice. I wish I had something to read, though — I desperately need to go to the library. Too bad the library and the video store are in opposite directions.

I had about 12 (non-miscarriage-related) ideas for posts yesterday and now that I’m typing on my blog I can’t remember any of them. Crap.

Oh, yes! One thing is that I’m very excited for this Thursday night. Why, you ask? Oh, because I am going to meet Isabel and Babboo for dinner! We’ve been trying to get together for months now, but as I am a flake, it hasn’t happened yet. We just randomly found each others’ blogs last year, I believe through comments on Amalah’s site, and realized we have quite a bit in common — including our birthday, which I just realized we share as I read her archives yesterday. How random and funny! I’m really looking forward to meeting her in person!

Part of why I’m going to meet Isabel and Babboo for dinner on Thursday (besides the fact I think they’re kewl) is that Brett is going to be out of town at a moped rally. I also plan to get together with a few more friends while Brett is gone. I had originally thought I’d go down to Portland to hang out with our families and maybe go maternity clothes shopping, but, obviously, not gonna be doing the last one. So I just decided to avoid the whole thing (and the requisite emotional baggage) and stay home.

I posted back in November when Brett went out of town about how I kind of enjoy and kind of hate it when he’s gone. Of course, I miss him, but I also really love the quiet time and the time with friends. Hopefully it will be a good weekend, and not one where I end up missing him unduly.

Yeah. That one.

Well, that’s pretty much why I haven’t been posting here lately. I’ve been feeling pretty meh, as we call it around our house. (Meh is one of my favorite words. Brett and I, depending on the inflection and tone, can use meh to express indifference, grumpiness, frustration, or even anger.) It’s been a rough few weeks, and Lord knows I have used up my sharing-my-grumpiness-with-the-entire-world quota for the year. So I just haven’t been posting.

I’ve started like eleventy-jillion (translation: five) posts, none of which I’ve finished (Obviously.) because, well, meh.

Anyway.

I’m just grumpy. And I hate it. I snapped at a ton of people (co-workers) (Brett) (my mom) today; I just didn’t have the patience to deal with them. I felt like screaming, “BITE ME!” to the world and going and hiding. But, unfortunately, I am a (somewhat) mature grownup, so I just sucked it up and dealt with it.

I have to say that the day ended better than it began — sort of. After work, we all went to The Garage for a happy hour celebration because some people were promoted. Two pints of Mac & Jack’s, and one strike and two spares later, I was a much happier camper.

But then the “sort of” part comes in: I had to come home and say goodbye to my Brett, who is now on his way to San Francisco for the weekend, to go to a moped rally. I hate it when he’s out of town…I feel all lonely and sad. Ah, well, that’s ok. I’ll get over it, and he’ll be back sometime on Monday, so that is good. I am just going to try to have a fun weekend hanging out with girlfriends, having some alone time, and trying to study the Bible some. It should be nice.

So anyway. Not much more to say. It’s late, and I’m tired, and our freaking apartment has no freaking hot water AGAIN (this happened right after I got home from France) so I have to go into work early to take a shower in the fitness room there. Gah. So irritating. I have no idea why the water isn’t hot, either. It’s just…not. I checked the circuit breaker in our apartment as well as the master hot water heater one in the basement. Nothing. Grrrr! I hate cold showers.

Yeah. So see, there’s that whole griping thing again, which I said I was going to try to curb.

Ok, my bed is calling me for reals. I will try to post more regularly in the weeks to come…

While we were there, a guy walked past the back door. I heard him start to walk by, and just after my mind registered that he was there, I realized he was talking/yelling at a girl who was also back there. For the first four or five seconds after he started talking, I was really taken aback by the fact he was speaking in English instead of French.

It was completely strange, and made me realize that I guess I was more entrenched in French culture and language while I was there than I thought.

Honestly, though, it shocked me how easily I adaped to speaking in French, thinking in French, reading in French. Even the first night we were there, when I was completely jet lagged and exhausted, I was able to communicate on a purely automatic level in the language. I barely had to think about what I was saying…I didn’t have to think it in English and then translate it into French…it was just there, in my head, in French.

Weird. And extremely exhilirating.

I guess part of the ability to merge with the language sprung out of the knowledge that I was it, that I was the one everyone was relying on to figure things out. That responsibility motivated me to be much more bold than I would have been otherwise, I think. And that’s a good thing: I know my French improved a great deal while I was there, largely because I gained a lot of confidence in speaking it and reading it.

Not to be a total braggart, but I had several people, many of whom were native French speakers, and some of whom were complete strangers, tell me I spoke French very well. That is a huge compliment coming from a French person. I even had one French woman think I WAS French.

All that simply rekindles my desire to continue to grow in my knowlege of the language. I know that while I do speak it well, there is so much I need to learn in the way of vocabulary, idomatic elements, and finesse. I’m hoping I can find people here in Seattle with whom I can talk and learn from. There’s a cafe in the U-District that does language conversation nights, and Wednesdays are for French. I am going to go, maybe this week or the next. I really miss hearing the language since I’ve been back.

Anyway, while I was in Paris the last weekend before we came home, I wound up being by myself a lot, which I enjoyed. There’s something about being alone in a big city that gives me a sense of…I”m not sure how to describe it. Maybe it’s a sense of freedom and independence and, well, possibility, a feeling that the world is a really big place and I am just one small cog in it, and that anything could happen and I could go anywhere and do anything.

It was rainy that weekend, and cold, which was a welcome change for me since it had been extremely hot the whole time we were there. On Sunday, I got up and went to mass at Notre Dame with a few of the girls on the trip. (That was an amazing experience in itself.) The girls I had gone to church with went their own way after the service, and I went to do a few errands (relating to my duties as the French speaker on the trip). After that, I had the rest of the day by myself, since I had no way of getting in touch with any of the students.

I had wanted to do some last-minute shopping, so I left our hotel on the Ile St. Louis and walked across the Seine to catch the Metro Ligne 1 up to the Champs Elysees. I was standing in the train, near the door, as the train stopped at one of the stations; I don’t remember which one — maybe Franklin D. Roosevelt. As the loudspeaker sounded the tone that indicates the doors are closing, I recall looking out the door at the station, seeing the artwork on the walls, the advertisements, the people — the entire scenario — and feeling completely a part of the culture, and feeling like I could live there forever.

I wish I could describe it better. It was such a surreal and wonderful moment and something I’ll remember my entire life.

All of that is to say that I feel like I’ve been so busy just living life the past few weeks that I haven’t really updated much. There’s a lot I want to say, but I haven’t found the time to sit down and write about it.

Anyway…I suppose that will come soon, once we’re back from France and I’m working my permanent job.

Speaking of France, we leave THIS WEEK!!! I’m so excited. After some drama with our passports (which, $284 later, is now resolved), we are now getting ready to go. I leave on Wednesday evening, and Brett leaves Thursday morning. We’ll be there just in time for Bastille Day, which it looks like we’ll be spending in Deauville, a resort town on the Normandy coast. Fun!

I am so looking forward to having Brett experience French culture. He’s never been out of the country, with the exception of a few trips to Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, so this will be a whole new world for him, one I know he’ll love.

I know I’m looking forward to sharing certain experiences with him: walking through cities, buildings, and churches built when North America hadn’t yet been discovered, eating pastries (tarte au citron is my favorite; I know he’ll love the pain au chocolat) and drinking thick, syrupy espresso, swimming in La Manche (The English Channel), exploring Mont St. Michel, and visiting Paris.

It’s going to be great.

But for now, I need to get busy with doing laundry and figuring out what to pack, which is kind of a daunting task. I haven’t given it much thought, which is out of character for me…usually, I plan ahead for weeks with regard to packing. This time, though, I just haven’t really thought much about it. I guess I need to get on that.

I should wrap this up — Brett’s sisters, Rachel and Amy, are on their way up to visit for the weekend. They should be here any minute. I’m looking forward to spending some time with them; with the exception of last weekend, we hadn’t seen either of them in nearly a year. So it should be a good time, hanging out with them this weekend.

Anyway — watch this space while I’m in France. I’ll do my best to post more regularly while I’m there, with photos and written descriptions…

So — a bientot, mes amis! La prochaine fois que j’ecrire ici, je serais en france!

Anyway…it’s been a few weeks since I’ve been on here. And what a few weeks it’s been…

It’s a lot to write about, and to think about, that in only two-and-a-half weeks I’ve loaded a 16-foot moving truck with everything I owned, drove 3,400 miles, attended a four-day moped rally, unpacked the moving truck, unpacked the boxes, putting their contents into our new apartment, worked several random jobs, been to Portland for 24 hours to see our families and a bunch of old friends…

My life feels so different from what it was two-and-a-half weeks ago. That’s not a long time, and yet to me, it feels like an eternity.

Anyway.

The trip out was fine. Long, really long, but fine. The moped rally was good; it was great to see friends from other branches. Moving in was pretty easy, although we had a few small snags. But that’s ok. More about all that later. I have lots of stories and pictures to share. We don’t have internet at home yet (stupid Comcast is being ridiculous and I am fed up with them, so it might be a while) so we are relying on the library and friends’ houses to stay connected, which means we have sporadic access at best.

Things have been good since we’ve been back. We love, love, where we live in Ballard. It’s perfect. I have walked more in the week-and-a-half that I’ve been back than I would walk for months when we were in Maine. (I hope that will help me drop some of the weight I gained in Maine…that is, if I can restrain myself from gorging on all the foods I’ve missed.)

The library, the grocery store, restaurants, coffee shops, the drugstore – basically everything we need is within a 10-minute walk or a 2-minute moped ride of our apartment. I’ve found myself startled by that convenience at odd moments since we’ve been back…after living in Maine, where going to the library meant making a 15-minute trip in the car, or where it was a 20-minute drive to get to any restaurant we liked…it’s really strange, but wonderful, of course, to have all of these amenities, so close at hand.

We love, too, being so near so many of our friends. Nearly all of them live close by; most within a few blocks. It’s so fun to hear mopeds whizzing past the house on a regular basis. And it’s not just moped friends who are close – lots of other people are, too, which is fun.

Being near our church is nice, too. It’s maybe a four-minute moped ride from our house. We’ve been going with some friends in the evening, to the 7 p.m., so it’s a nice way to end the day and to start the week. (Plus, that way, we get to sleep in, which is always nice.)

It’s nice, being so close to everyone and everything, especially since we don’t have a car. The mopeds are the perfect form of transportation, though. Quick, easy, no need to search for parking, just a post or tree to lock up to. We just need to get mine registered and I’ll be good to go. For now, though, it’s the bus for me.

This morning, I walked to the bus stop from our house so I could catch the bus to downtown, where I’m working this week. When I left the house, it was a gray, cool morning, and I thought that it looked like it could rain at any moment. (That’s typical Seattle weather…) It’s about a 10-minute walk to the bus stop from our house – not long, and a good way to start the day, with a little exercise. It felt great to walk through the coolness of the morning and the emptiness of Ballard before 8 a.m. Anyway. I started to walk across Market Street toward the stop for the #17 and looked to my right, toward the west, checking for cars before I crossed the street.

What I saw took my breath away and nearly brought tears to my eyes. It reminded me how much I love this place. The Olympic Mountains – tall, regal, snow-covered – were silhouetted against the horizon, and the morning sun was reflecting off of their snow-capped peaks, despite the damp, gray day I’d seen so far. It was gorgeous.

That picture encapsulates how I feel, how we both feel, to be back here.

The bottom line is this: it is so. freaking. good. to be home.

Ok, here we go.

I will be so glad when this whole moving adventure is over.

I feel like I have been going non-stop for a week, packing, organizing, throwing stuff away, running errands. Yet, at the same time, it feels like I’m not getting anythng done. It’s as though the stuff that needs to be packed just keeps multiplying or something, and the list of phone calls I need to make just gets bigger, and the list of errands to run increases.

I’ve been trying to set goals, like: pack everything in this cabinet, or everything in that closet, or consolidate this to take to Goodwill and the recycling center. For the most part, that seems to be working ok. The problem is mostly that I’m essentially doing it alone, with a little help from Brett when he gets home from work in the evenings.

It would go so much faster with even one extra set of hands…but alas, I don’t have two sets of hands and most of our friends seem to be busy this week. Which, fine, I get that people have lives and that helping someone else pack probably isn’t how they want to spend their spare time, it’s just that it’s tough to be doing this with little help, especially knowing that we have multiple offers for help on the Seattle end of things, and none on this end.

If I could, I would fast-forward until this packing up portion of moving were over and we were on the road already, on our way to the moped bbq, ultimately on our way home. The road trip part of moving is kind of fun: being in the car, seeing new places, hanging out with Brett, listening to good music…that part, I like.

This part? Going through all of our stuff, packing, throwing away, living in a state of chaos…this part I don’t like.

I guess I should stop complaining. Overall, even though it’s getting increasingly hard to be motivated, it’s going pretty well, and I’m making good progress.

I took this picture earlier tonight. (There are more boxes there now.) So anyway, welcome to my chaos.

Only four more days, and we can load the truck up and have this part of the move be OVER. Thank goodness!

I’m still in Seattle; right now I am sitting in the gorgeous and fantastic Seattle Public Library, which wasn’t finished when we lived here before. It’s really cool, and I can’t wait to come here. It’s right across the street from where I’ll most likely be working…but more on that later.

Anyway. I fly back to Maine tonight, and will arrive at 6 a.m. tomorrow into Boston. I’ll then take a bus back to Maine and Brett will pick me up at 10 a.m. My in-laws will then arrive at 4:30 p.m. That evening I am going with Brett and his parents to see Jon Shain play at Chicky’s, which should be fun. And then it’s graduation goodness for a few days, and then I’ll be in major packing mode.

So, that’s what the next few weeks look like for me.

Ok, now about the trip.

I can’t even describe how amazing it feels to be here, to be home. So many amazing things have happened over the past few days. I don’t have much time left on this library computer, but I’ll do the best I can.

It was wonderful to see my mom, and I have also been able to see several good friends. I was able to sit down with my journalism professor for a while and chat (he was completely thrilled I stopped by). I’m hoping to see some more of my old profs today.

Also, in the flukiest fluke ever, I have run into two families I used to regularly babysit for.

One of them had been on my mind a ton lately, but the email address I had for them was bad, and I googled the dad and found his work email but never sent one there. Anyway, I was talking about them to my mom all day on Friday, about how I really needed to call them.

Well, my mom and I were at an intersection in Ballard (a completely different neighborhood than they live in) and I SAW THEM!!! I jumped out of the car and screamed the mom’s name. Her mouth dropped open and she yelled, “OH MY GOD!” It was fantastic. So now I have their info and they have mine and we’re going to get together when I get back here permanently.

Also, I signed a lease this morning on a 1 bedroom apartment in Ballard. My mom and I had seen two, both of which we liked a lot. One of them was bigger than the other, not in as great of a location (still the same distance from the library and the neighborhood’s downtown but not near our friends), and more expensive. We liked that but then we saw another apartment, literally a block from some of Brett’s best friends from the Moped Army. (Whom we later saw in front of their house as we were driving by…again, another kind of random sighting of some friends.)

There were 2 available in that building, one upstairs and one downstairs. The upstairs one wasn’t very nice, but the guy on the phone when we called said they wouldn’t consider renting the newly-remodeled downstairs one to us b/c we have a cat. The guy said he was sending his rental agent over to meet us at the apartment. Well, the rental agent drove up, and it turned out to be a good friend from college!!! After we saw the upstairs apt — which was gross — we decided we didn’t want it.

My friend called back an hour later and said that they would offer us the downstairs apartment anyway, and that they would knock $50/mo off the rent if we’ll sweep the common areas (which are not big at all) and keep our eyes peeled for maintainance issues. The apartment is a lot smaller than the first one, but I think we can make it work for a year or so since it’s cheaper and we like the location. It is remodeled, has 10 units, and is pretty cute, AND it has a dishwasher!!!! There’s onsite laundry, free storage, and free parking. Plus, it’s only 8 blocks from the library, the grocery store, coffee shops, a movie theater, a drugstore, etc, 2 blocks from the bus stop, about a 25-20 min walk to church (5 mins on a bus), and like not even a full block from our moped friends. You can see their driveway from the driveway of this building.

So, that left us free to play on Saturday. We went shopping downtown, and my mom got me some adorable shoes at Nordstrom for my birthday, and then my mom and I went to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner.

Sunday, we went to church, which was great, and I got to see several friends there. After church I got a haircut (finally!) and my mom went back home to Portland.

Yesterday, I interviewed with two temp agencies, both of which said they would be able to give me work if I need it when I get back, and had lunch and then went window shopping with my friend Minda, which was so very much fun.

While we were in Anthropologie, one of my favorite stores ever, we ran into the mom of the OTHER family I used to nanny for!!!! And, she and her family are living five blocks from us this summer, while they are having an addition put onto their house. HOW COOL! I swear, you’d think Seattle wasn’t a big city the way I’m running into people!

This morning, I interviewed for a job working for the company I worked for before I moved out here. It is similar to what I was doing before (commercial property management in a downtown skyscraper) and working with a lot of the same people. As of right now, if the property manager can work some things out timing-wise, it should work for him to hire me — even though I’m going to France for a month!!!

I think I need to buy a MegaMillions ticket or something with the luck I’m having this week.

So, everything is great. I absolutely love being here. This is so cheesy, but I was standing downtown at a bus stop yesterday, waiting for the bus, looking at people, and listening to The Postal Service on my iPod and I teared up. I just can’t believe that our time in Maine is over and that I can come home. I don’t feel a sense of belonging anywhere else like I do here. It is so wonderful being here; I can’t even describe it.

Well, I need to go meet my friend Bree and then hang out…I’ll update more when I get home!

Just like with the wedding, his moped-building crises have mounted, first occuring monthly, then occuring weekly, then daily, and now, occuring hourly or even minute-ly.

It seems like every minute there’s something else that’s going wrong, from the paint chipping off, to the front wheel not spinning like it should, to the handlebars not fitting properly and needing to be drilled out and notched so as to fit around the forks. (I type to the sound of the drill behind me, which is making me sooo nervous, becuase this is the second pair of handlebars he’s tried to make work, so if he screws these up, he’s out of luck.) Those are just the crises in the past hour, since I got home from the Westbrook City Council meeting.

This situation also reminds me of planning our wedding because I know that in the end, it will all turn out ok, even if it’s not exactly like the perfect vision in his head, just like our wedding wasn’t perfect — right down to missing tuxes for the groomsmen, a screwed up hem on a bridesmaid dress, no forks for the cake, and no liquor insurance-license-thingy until 5 hours before the wedding. But it all didn’t matter at the end of the day — tuxes were found, a seamstress came to the rescue, forks were bought (even if they were plastic), and by some miracle, a liquor insurance-license-thingy was able to be obtained on such short notice.

But just like I was a basket case even up to the morning of the wedding, right now, I know it’s really, really stressful for Brett.

I’m not sure what I can or should say or do in this situation. My MO as of right now is to listen to his moments of panic and depression, to smile and say, “Sure,” when he asks me, “Do you wanna come help me for a sec,” and to generally try to encourage him that he can and will get it done, and that it will be wonderful.

On top of all of that, he’s getting a migraine tonight, and no wonder. The stress and worry and problems and his desire for perfection are all getting to him, and all I can really do is just to be there if he needs me to hold this bolt or tighten that nut, and to hand him Advil in copious quantities.

It’s not that I mind helping, I should say…I’ll just be glad when all of this is over.