Walter May 7, 2011

Our beloved Walter went to kitty heaven a week ago today. He was 14 (we think) and had lived with Jami for 11 years, arriving unexpectedly and never leaving. He was the most loving cat I’ve ever met. He loved to be near you or on you. Within 5 minutes of meeting you, he would be on your lap, snuggling in. Everyone was his best friend. He loved open windows and would sit on the back of the couch, watching the world go by. He slept in my arms many nights, including the night before we had to put him to sleep – an absolutely heart-wrenching decision I have never had to make before. I am so grateful to his vet who was luckily working on a Saturday and who helped us understand what his kidney failure meant. He was the best cat, my own personal heater in winter, as energetic and happy-go-lucky as a kitten up to about a month before he died. It seems hard to believe that he’s gone.

Wedding Memory: The Boutonniere January 12, 2011

Photo by Eva Russo.

Jami really wanted a boutonniere for the wedding. I called a florist near the Inn a few weeks before the wedding, but they said I didn’t need to order in advance. They were open on Saturdays and would be able to make up one boutonniere in just a few minutes. So after breakfast I decided to walk over  the block and a half and get the boutonniere made up. My dad and uncle saw me leaving and asked if I wanted company. Sure, I said.

I was very worried leading up to our wedding that I would find the day stressful (and that the stress would lead to bickering.) While I have no doubt that stress and even bickering are normal things on a wedding day, I am happy to report that for all my worries, I found the day calm, even relaxing – starting with this fun little wander down the road with two of my favorite men and a whole city full of pink-clad breast cancer walkers. Thanks, Jami, for giving me an excuse to do just that.

Gratitude December 1, 2010

I didn’t get  a gratitude post up on Thanksgiving, but since I am feeling especially grateful today, this seemed like a good time to give thanks. I am grateful for:

Days off, and having a job that I both enjoy and that provides good benefits including leave.

My wife, for taking care of the pets this morning and letting me sleep in.

Our new basement, providing a nice place to do the ironing.

The pets, especially the hound for having a nice sleepy morning and not barking when I snuck downstairs to do the ironing.

Time to both be lazy (as I write this I am watching the Price is Right in my pajamas. I can’t remember the last time that happened!) and get things done. I have been feeling a little stressed about the holidays. Not the day itself, which I am happy to be spending with that great wife I mentioned before, but the fact that I have to mail all the presents this year. I am happy to have had a few minutes of quiet to figure out when everything has to get done by in order to get the presents there by Christmas.

Life is good.

Mr. Bill July 22, 2010

I found out yesterday evening, on my walk home from metro, that one of our neighbors had died. Mr. Bill lived in one of the apartment buildings on Fort Totten Drive that we pass every day and most evenings I would see him hanging out on the sidewalk or sitting on the curb watching the world go by. He always said hello, and often had a remark or two to make, usually about the weather, sometimes about his life. He put his sister through secretarial school because “you have to have a trade”. He got in a fight with his father-in-law once, which ended with him being shot in the foot. He lied about who did it in the hospital because he didn’t want his father-in-law to get in trouble. He was a veteran. He loved Charlie. He turned 64 at the beginning of the month and he will be missed.

Wedding Memory: Something Old July 19, 2010

Photo by Eva Russo.

For my “something old” I wore this necklace of my mother’s. She had given it me over the Christmas holidays with the thought that maybe I would wear it at our wedding, which I was thrilled to do. It was an anniversary present from my dad to my mom. She couldn’t remember for which anniversary, she thought maybe 30th. My parents have been married for 43 (!) years, and to wear something that was a token of that relationship seemed like a little good luck for our wedding day. I’m looking forward to having spent that much of my life with Jami.

Mighty Life List #7: Marry Jami June 1, 2010

Photo by Eva Russo of photoladylove.

A month ago today, we got married. Married! (There we are above looking in amazement at Jami’s wedding band.)

It’s been a good (if somewhat expensive) month, and I hope it is just the start of many good months and years ahead. It’s pretty great being married. In a lot of ways, it’s no different than before – we wake up next to each other, same as before, eat dinner together every night, worry about our pets, plan our garden. In ways both practical and profound, a shift has definitely occurred however. How does marriage feel different? The best way I can describe it, as unromantic as it sounds, is that marriage feels solid. It feels like a foundation on which we can build. It feels like the start of something. Marriage so often seems to be seen (at least in movies) as the happy ending, but I think it’s really the beginning: the start of the rest of our lives and all the amazing things, both extraordinary and mundane, that we can accomplish together. Let the adventure begin.

Today – 4.1.10 April 1, 2010

Today was the most beautiful day in DC. Highs in the 70s, sunny with the most gorgeous blue sky. Walking home from work, all the neighbor kids were out – riding bikes, pushing scooters, being happy, active kids. It was the kind of day that feels like a gift. DC is famous for cherry blossoms, but the trees I pass on my walk home are apple trees, so for me, a beautiful spring day looks like apple blossoms.

I took this picture for the Communal Global photo contest. Communal Global is a great photo blog that a friend of mine from college contributes to. I recommend it.

Mighty Life List March 20, 2010

Do you read Maggie Mason’s blog? You should. I’m always happy when I see a new post in my reader. Anyway, Maggie has a “mighty life list” – 100 things that she wants to do before she dies. After months of reading about her crossing items of her list, I thought it might be interesting to see what I came up with if I thought about all those things that I want to do “some day”. So here is my Mighty Life List. It’s only 50 items. I got pretty close to 50 before I started counting, so that seemed like a good goal. And it gives me lots of room to add, as I discover new and exciting things that I want to do before I go.

1. Learn to bake bread.
2. Read Ulysses.
3. Eat sushi in Japan.
4. Learn Spanish.
5. Visit all 50 states (Layovers in the airport/driving straight through doesn’t count): Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland,  Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

6. Eat a lobster roll in Maine.

7. Marry Jami.
8. Become knowledgeable about wine.
9. Make mayonnaise from scratch.
10. Buy a new sewing machine and learn to machine quilt.
11. Write a snail mail letter once a week for a year.
12. Go hiking in Acadia National Park.
13. Have dinner at Chez Panisse.
14. Learn how to make 5 different cocktails.
15. Go for a carriage ride through Charleston.
16. Eat beignets and muffeletta in New Orleans.
17. Go to Opening Day at Nationals Park.
18. Can pickles.
19. Go skiing.
20. Visit every library in the DC system, take a picture, and check out a book.
21. Be completely debt free (including the mortgage).
22. Learn to knit socks.
23. Host a crab boil.
24. Have a book review published.
25. See a movie at Screen on the Green.
26. Take a walk in the National Arboretum.
27. Go to the Kite Festival.
28. Tour Lincoln’s Cottage at the Old Soldier’s Home.
29. Go ice skating in the Sculpture Garden.
30. Attend a DC United game.
31. Make truffles.
32. Make homemade ice cream.
33. Donate 10% of my income for one year to charity.
34. Take my sweetie on a weeklong trip to Italy.
35. Sell a quilt.
36. Catch a fish.
37. Visit Fallingwater.
38. Hire a (well paid, very appreciated) biweekly cleaning service.
39. Host an exchange student.
40. Do the 365 day photo project.
41. Eat at Nora.
42. Fly first class on a cross-country or international flight.
43. Find someplace to volunteer regularly.
44. Read at least one book by every winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature:

Tomas Tranströmer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Herta Müller, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Doris Lessing, Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Elfriede Jelinek, John M. Coetzee, Imre Kertész, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, Gao Xingjian, Günter Grass, José Saramago, Dario Fo, Wislawa Szymborska, Seamus Heaney, Kenzaburo Oe, Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, Nadine Gordimer, Octavio Paz, Camilo José Cela, Naguib Mahfouz, Joseph Brodsky, Wole Soyinka, Claude Simon, Jaroslav Seifert, William Golding, Gabriel García Márquez, Elias Canetti, Czeslaw Milosz, Odysseus Elytis, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vicente Aleixandre, Saul Bellow, Eugenio Montale, Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson, Patrick White, Heinrich Böll, Pablo Neruda, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Yasunari Kawabata, Miguel Angel Asturias, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgos Seferis, John Steinbeck, Ivo Andric, Saint-John Perse, Salvatore Quasimodo, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, François Mauriac, Pär Fabian Lagerkvist, Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell, William Faulkner, Thomas Stearns Eliot, André Paul Guillaume Gide, Hermann Hesse, Gabriela Mistral, Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Pearl Buck, Roger Martin du Gard, Eugene Gladstone O’Neill, Luigi Pirandello, Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, John Galsworthy, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Mann, Sigrid Undset, Henri Bergson, Grazia Deledda, George Bernard Shaw, Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, William Butler Yeats, Jacinto Benavente, Anatole France, Knut Pedersen Hamsun, Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler, Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan, Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath Tagore, Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann, Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck, Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse, Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf, Rudolf Christoph Eucken, Rudyard Kipling, Giosuè Carducci, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray y Eizaguirre, Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson, Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen, Sully Prudhomme

45. Stay at the Library Hotel.
46. Listen to live music in Austin.
47. Go to a comedy club.
48. Learn how to identify 10 birds found in DC.
49. Visit Barcelona and photograph 5 buildings designed by Gaudi.
50. Go to a professional conference, not held in the city in which I live.
51. Ride the Wuppertal Schwebebahn.
52. Tour the Pope-Leighey House.
53. Visit the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.
54. Have dinner at Palena.
55. Have dinner at Komi.
56. Pop Popcorn on the Stove Top.
57. Make Homemade Peanut Butter.
58. Go to a performance of the Washington National Opera.
59. Visit all the Presidents’ Homes/Libraries: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, James Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama.
60. See a show at the Woolly Mammoth Theater Co.

It’s a Small World March 10, 2010

Yesterday was the first day that same-sex marriages were celebrated in the District. (Couples could apply for licenses starting on the 3rd, but the District has a mandatory 3-day waiting period for all couples). Imagine my joy when I watched the video accompanying this article this morning of three of the first weddings and saw… the woman who previously owned our house! Lorilyn (also known as Candy) Holmes, the woman wearing the black suit in the image you see, was the seller of our house, which had been her childhood home. It’s a small (and this week, quite happy) world.

The Snowiest Week of My Life February 12, 2010

A week ago today, it started snowing:

When it ended more than 24 hours later, we had 26 inches of snow on the ground in our back yard.

It wasn’t so bad this first snow fall. It was a lot of snow. Jami was a shoveling champ – but I had had a long and busy two weeks previous, and wasn’t sad to have an excuse to stay inside and be a little lazy.

Monday morning the Federal government was closed, but my office was open and Jami and I trucked into work.

Tuesday afternoon, the second snow storm hit. (Jami and I are still at work, the Federal government is still closed.)

Wednesday morning, my office was still saying it was open. I did not go. This is what it looked like:

It was officially a blizzard. I’ve got a good work ethic, but I’m not crazy. We got at least another foot in that storm.

Thursday, metro was underground only, with trains every 30 minutes. I went to work. Our street has still not be plowed since Saturday night. The power in one of our two office buildings wasn’t working (luckily not mine). Need I mention, that the Federal government was closed?

This morning, we got our newspaper delivered for the first time in a week. The Federal Government reopened. We have high hopes for the mail having been delivered by the time we get home (the only day it got delivered this week was Tuesday). I am no longer the only research librarian in the office. Things are looking up. Now if this snow they are calling for on Monday could just go somewhere else, I’d be a very happy girl.