Drives like a Dream

We bought a new (new to us) car! Three cheers for us, hooray! Today hubby and I bought our first car together and we love it. It's a 2006 Toyota matrix hatchback, dark blue, black interior, automatic transmission. It's the newest car either of us have ever driven so we felt really fancy and cool driving it around our neighborhod today. We are really happy with the choice we made, now all we need to do is think of a name for it.

Anyone need a ride?

A lot of December

December proved a very eventful month here in Holtontown. Ricky finished up his first term of grad school and managed to get all A's. We were relieved to have made it through and were looking forward to some quality relaxation time together over the holiday. Fortunately and unfortunately, I finally landed a job in the second week of December. It's not ideal. I never ever thought I would be a waitress, not that I look down on that line of work persay, I just always thought I would be horrible at it because I have no upper arm strength, am rather clumsy, and don't enjoy high stress situations. Anyway, since I'd been out of work for almost 4 months, I couldn't very well turn my nose up at some extra income in this city of high price tags. So I started a week of training at the Pasta Warehouse (this is a faux name, so I can rant about work if I need to later on). That week was hellish. Not only was I the only trainee without serving experience, I had to memorize the menu as well as the full bar (which was, for a Mormon girl like me, extremely challenging). I took my serving test and was thrown right into a busy Friday night just before Christmas as my first shift on my own. I survived and brought home decent tips as well.

We flew (drove) south that weekend to visit our dear Eugenian friends for the weekend. The trip was all together too short but lovely and worthwhile all the same. On the way back to Seattle that Sunday afternoon I started having weird stomach pain. To make a long story short, by Wednesday (the 21st)  my stomach and mid-back pain had grown so debilitating that I found myself in the doctor's office being diagnosed with a moderately advanced stomach ulcer. It hadn't worn a hole all the way through my stomach yet, but was fairly nasty. I spent the rest of the week resting and taking my medicine--what a Christmas bummer.

We travelled again to Salem for our annual four Christmases that weekend. Shortly after arriving Ricky started having a gastrointestinal nightmare along with a high fever. He spent Christmas eve in bed and hardly ate anything on Christmas day. All in all Christmas with our families was lovely but by the end of the weekend we both felt like we had been through the ringer.

Upon returning to work on Monday I was offered a bit of a promotion. Second week and a promotion? Yeah, I'm cool (just kidding). Anyways, now I am doing book keeping for the restaurant Mon-Fri 9-2 and making slightly more money an hour. I am still picking up serving shifts 1-2 nights a week as well, so I can still make decent tips.

Lastly, we sold my car yesterday. This was a very bittersweet event for me seeing as how it was the first and only car I had personally ever owned. I loved that car and I thanked it for its years of dutiful service.  She went to a good home. Now we can get a new car though, one that GOES! Go car, go!

Hopefully we can drive our new car into the new year with happiness and look forward to many great and wonderful things.

Soyons Heureux.

And Those Who Live There Too

As a child I grew up listening to a lot of John Denver. My particular favorites are the Wildlife Series and some of the Christmas albums. There is one track on the John Denver & the Muppets Christmas album in which John tells a story about a Christmas tree named Alfie. The story ends with John Denver asking us to include the wind, water, and woods and those who live there too into our Christmas prayers. This funny little story was very powerful to me for some reason and I did just as Mr. Denver said. From the age of about 6-12 not a day went by that I didn't close my nightly prayers with "please bless the rocks, the wind, the water, the woods, and those who live there." How could my parents not know they were getting an environmentalist for a child?
Our fellow creatures are in trouble, many of them are suffering, please include them in your Christmas prayers this year too. Merry Christmas from John Denver and me.

O Tannenbaum

We drove out to a country-ish place this past weekend to choose, cut, and bring home a Christmas tree. For all of my fellow Salemites, you may know that the Salem area actually exports Christmas trees to other places. One need not drive more than five minutes to get to a Christmas tree farm in Salem so having to drive 45 minutes to get city-free seemed like a lot of effort. Once we arrived at the tree farm we wandered around until we found our perfect tree. I believe it is a Grand Fir, but it's only 5 ft. tall, so it's just a baby. It smells extremely festive. We lifted our tree into the truck bed and headed back to the city to put it in our house. The hour that we were at the Christmas tree farm was the best I've had in weeks. We were in the country and surrounded by wide open spaces. There were other farms and some scattered deciduous trees but no buildings above a story high interrupted my line of sight. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in who knows how long. I have slowly been adjusting to life in the big city; I no longer feel like I'm suffocating all the time for lack of space but visiting that open space made me realize how constrained I'd been feeling before.

When we brought Ollivander, our tree, home that night I immediately began the festive process. I dug out the box of Christmas decorations, strung the lights, hung the ornaments, and made the house look festive and cozy. Ricky and I are both so on top of things that the tree already has all of it's presents wrapped and underneath of it. I've had the Christmas playlist going for over a week and Christmas cheer abounds within my dwelling, it's almost enough. The joy of this season is almost enough to mask my feelings of lonliness and longing for home, almost enough to make me okay with being here. I feel mostly happy but can still feel a little creature lurking inside of me that's grumbling and murmuring. Luckily, December is when I love Ricky the most. I love him all the time of course, but since we started dating during December, the month makes me feel extra great about our relationship. After this next week we will have survived his first term of graduate school and can then do our best to enjoy this time.

I know that this post doesn't really say much or have a point. I've been looking at my blogger dashboard for weeks and telling myself I should write but have been feeling to starved for inspiration to do so. This lame update will have to suffice for now.