Recap?

Hi blog that I’ve neglected for a year because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I thought a couple times about writing a little post here and there about what I was up to over the course of 2020. Nobody really reads blogs anymore, but why not keep a record of that shitshow, eh? Then I never wrote them. Now here I am with a not-so-quick summary.

January, February, and the first week of March were just fine. You probably remember, even though it feels like 100 years ago. I gained a niece! I saw friends. We went out. There were birthday parties and shopping excursions and I saw a couple musicals, I had a ticket to a concert I was excited for, and some buds and I were planning a trip to the Smoky Mountains. Then March 13 rolled around and all the talk about what COVID was going to do to us was officially more than just talk. I started the day with a text to Eric for his 37th birthday, but things were getting COVID-weird and I think my tone was a little less “Happy Birthday!!!” and a little more “…happy birthday? lol.” I’m a habitual message-deleter which I have since come to regret (that’s foreshadowing).

Anyway, I started the day with that text and went about my business, and by mid-afternoon our shows for the next few months all started canceling or postponing. Those of us who weren’t already set up to work from home were sent laptops and quickly transitioned, but it was for naught because most of us were furloughed as of April 1. That mountain trip had been scheduled for the end of March and obviously didn’t happen.

Later in April, my 90-year-old grandpa – my mom’s dad – died from complications of a stroke (or two strokes and a heart attack) that had occurred a few months prior. My family hasn’t been able to have a funeral. The man was a legend in the tiny village where he lived, and once we can gather again I think all 300 people will turn out for him.

Thanks to unemployment and the CARES Act, I enjoyed a leisurely quarantine summer. My best girls and I started a romance novel book club (virtual, of course), I bought a paddleboard for solo outdoor activities, and I played a lot of Animal Crossing. Eventually a quaranteam formed, and a few of us started occasional in-person hangs, which over the next few months included such highlights as a cabin weekend, a birthday celebration, and a very small Friendsgiving. Darren and I invested in central AC for our house and it was money well spent. Maddie and I went to the dog park a lot.

But, by the time July rolled around, it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to work any time soon. I ended up getting a job as a mail carrier.

More on that later, because at the end of July, Eric died. He’d been living with his family in Georgia for a little over a year, and we had spent our pandemic thus far goofing off via Animal Crossing. If I were A Blogger™, Eric would get his own long, beautiful tribute post, but honestly I can’t bring myself to write it except to say that 17-ish years was not enough time with my friend, but I’ll forever cherish the time we got. His death was sudden, unexpected, and I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. No, not my head. My heart. Tell your friends you love them, and tell them often.

Sigh.

Okay.

So.

So… then I became a mail carrier. Briefly. My furlough from the theatres officially became a lay-off as of September 1, but my training with the post office had started in late July so I was all set. Or so I thought. The job itself was okay, but the schedule was a GD nightmare. I knew it would be a lot, but I didn’t realize it would take such a toll on my mental health. It did, though. Toward the end of my run, I spent too much time crying in the back of my truck. So I quit that shit. The end. I lost like 12 pounds in six weeks, so that was cool, then I promptly gained them back. Oops. Anyway, my last day was on a Saturday in late September, and by the following Thursday I had a new job lined up via a staffing agency, and I’ve been temping since early October. my third assignment starts in a few days. I’m hoping I can just keep temping until live events are able to return and I can get re-hired at what I’ve been referring to as my real job.

Whew. Is that it? It might be. I have not, to my knowledge, had COVID, though I know people who have. I haven’t lost anyone to it, though again, I know people who have. I also know a lot of people who don’t seems to give a shit about trying to prevent the spread of this cursed virus and I’ve lost respect for those people. I’m looking forward to a new president, eventually getting this vaccine, and doing things with people again.

Happy goddamn new year.

Enli

We adopted Enli on August 21, 2010 – two weeks after our wedding, and one day after Darren’s 25th birthday. We started that day furniture shopping, and somewhere along the way ended up looking for a dog instead. We’d been talking about wanting a dog for a while, and were living in an apartment where they were allowed. We had even decided on a name for our future dog, after an acquaintance posted on Facebook about an unusual name she found in a baby book. After a peek at the Humane Society‘s website, we saw posts for a couple Labrador puppies and went to go see them.

We wandered through the kennels at the Golden Valley location. The aforementioned puppies had been spayed/neutered that day, so they were sound asleep. Across the aisle, though, I saw a very excited dog jumping around greeting a little girl who was at the cage door. The girl and her dad moved on and we went over to see this dog, a 7-month-old mix who was called Halie, and we immediately knew we had to take her out to play. We took her outside and threw a Kong around for her, and Darren said very emphatically, “I want this dog!”

“Are you Enli?” I asked her.

Of course she was.

the day she came home

The money that was meant for a new couch or at least part of a honeymoon was spent on our new pup and all the supplies.

The first few months were rough, as anyone who ever had a puppy probably knows. There were certainly “what have we done?!” moments. She did potty train well, thank goodness, and in hindsight wasn’t actually too destructive. She wrestled with Buckley the cat, and learned quickly that Lucy was not to be messed with. When Buck died a couple years later (may he rest in power), we eventually adopted Winston and she had another cat playmate. When we started taking her to dog parks, they were the best thing ever. Other dogs were her favorite thing! People were her favorite thing! Everything was her favorite.

creepin’ on people at the park

Like all dogs, Enli was quirky and goofy and sometimes annoying. She wasn’t much of a barker, until Darren taught her “speak!” and then she figured if she wanted anything, it’s easiest to bark for it. She very quickly learned that sleeping in bed is the best, especially under the covers when it’s cold. Sometimes she would sleep in and skip breakfast, so when she finally woke up she was so hungry she didn’t feel good and we’d have to make her eat peanut butter to show her that eating would make her feel better. When we would take her out into the yard of our apartment building, sometimes she would get into the yard next door because they had a dog she liked to play with, and she always flipped out when she got to see her best friend Tank down the street. When we moved into our house, having a yard of her own was the best because she got to sleep in the sun for as long as she wanted. It was even better when she got to lay on the hammock with us.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVfjH7LBK4u/

She mellowed out as she got older, and was always down to snooze on the couch while I watched Netflix. Trips to the park became less about the other dogs, and more about exploring, sniffing, and peeing on everything. Although when we adopted Madeline in the summer of 2017, playtime was abundant. Enli taught Maddie how to wrestle, but as far as we can tell that was the only thing she taught her.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhRyOVshhDh/

Sometime in late summer, Enli started to wheeze a little when she would get riled up. In the middle of the night one night at the end of September, she started coughing up fluid and wouldn’t lay down. The next morning, she was diagnosed with heart failure. She spent the day at the vet, and came home with some prescriptions. We took her to a cardiologist, who found a mass on her heart. Unfortunately, heart failure made her a poor candidate for any sort of treatment for the mass. Fortunately, her medicine worked very well and for a while you would never have been able to tell she was ailing.

one year ago

In December, all the things going on inside her started making it hard for her to find a comfortable position to lay down. I took her to the vet after Christmas and learned her illness was progressing, she likely had cancer, and soon enough we would have a decision to make. In the meantime, we’d focus on her comfort.

This week it became clear it was time. We gave her whatever food she wanted. I took some time off work. We cried a lot; I wept on the phone with the vet’s office but you know they get it. We took her in last night and said goodbye, and it sucked, and our hearts are broken. But hearing from all the people who loved her has been so nice, she practically had a fan club. Enli was the best girl.

Some good things about 2018

I only did forty. Most of 2018 was pretty good, some of it was the absolute worst (just like any other year). Here are a bunch of the good things:

1. Kate and Mat’s engagement (which was basically the first thing that even happened in 2018)
2. and their wedding!
3. CSP reunion lunch in January when Brenna was in town
4. the Minneapolis Miracle (even though I don’t care about football)
5. becoming a Broadway on Hennepin season subscriber, so fance.
6. Washington vacation/more time with Brenna
7. vacation tattoo gets its own spot
8. #mprraccoon
9. Maddie’s improving behavior and aggressive cuddling
10. my gardens
11. the State Fair, always
12. the Week of Fun
13. Pequots reunion at the WulfSpaan wedding
14. Getting a big hug from Harrison as soon as we got to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving
15. Kate’s goddess-filled bridal blessing
16. Christmas movie marathoning
17. Buddhism
18. decent midterm election results
19. homemade kombucha (does anybody need a SCOBY?)
20. The Thirsty Whale
21. fried chicken at Pearl & the Thief
22. Bobert
23. Hamilton
24. paddle boarding
25. Jaequan’s hot dog stand
26. the announcement of a live action CATS movie
27. witchery
28. dancing my face off with Kate & Mat at Kelsey’s wedding
29. having gutters installed on the house
30. NBC saving Brooklyn 99
31. the taco truck that operates outside the Columbia Heights Auto Zone year-round. Whyyy?
32. they caught the GSK!
33. birthday zip-lining
34. digging into my ancestry and finding cool stuff
35. Cloud Cult + Minnesota Orchestra show
36. hanging dad’s shop sign in my kitchen
37. talking with my dad about the Christmas movies that him cry
38. original Charmed on Netflix
39. building our collection of Chuck U prints
40. the Andy Samberg screaming GIF

05/09/1992

Today is 25 years since my dad died, and it is super weird. Like, I want to talk about it but I also totally don’t want to talk about it. So many feeeeeelings, which I suppose isn’t that surprising. It seems like only within the last year or so it’s gone from “here’s this unfortunate fact about my life” to “holy wow, this is actually a super horrible and traumatic thing.” So that’s been interesting.

Anyway, here’s Wonderwalll Cloud Cult.

2016 – the weirdest year

Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

None resolutions. I should do the burrito one again, that was awesome.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

A coworker & some FB friends.

Did anyone close to you die?

No.

What countries did you visit?

No trips this year.

What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?

A different president-elect. Alas, no such miracle exists.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Paid off one student loan and bought a muthafuckin’ house. Those things are unrelated but both super rad.

What was your biggest failure?

I was hoping it would be a cavity-free year. April’s dentist visit gave me hope, but November’s brought failure.

What was the best thing you bought?

Haus. The car is a close second, though, and has been less temperamental.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

The wonderful folks at Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

He Who Shall Not Be Named.

Where did most of your money go?

This friggin’ house.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Um, our house… there’s a pretty clear theme here.

What song will always remind you of 2016?

Maybe “We Didn’t Start the Fire”

Compared to this time last year, are you:
Happier or Sadder?

I mean, some good stuff happened this year but it has also been pretty stressful. Plus we’re about to enter into possibly a nightmare, so.

Thinner or fatter?

Fatter. Oops. My pants still fit though, so meh.

Richer or poorer?

This is a loaded question.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Adventure/travel, but we just had other priorities. Womp.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Stressin’

How will you be spending Christmas?

Christmas eve was in Pequot, Christmas afternoon/evening was in Farmington. Then we came home and had to smash a hole in our kitchen ceiling- blog post to come later.

Did you fall in love in 2016?

With our new car, lol.

How many one-night stands?

*obligatory joke about nightstands here*

What was your favorite TV program?

I don’t know, maybe Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I’ve still only seen the first season!

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Yeah, probably.

What was the best book you read?

Furiously Happy.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Not so much a discovery, but Cloud Cult’s album “The Seeker” came out this year and it is everything.

What did you want and get?

House.

What did you want and not get?

A million dollars. This answer will never change, until I get a million dollars.

What were your favorite films of this year?

The Seeker. It’s an album and a film!

What did you do on your birthday?

Went to yoga, got a tattoo, ran some errands, then had a nice dinner.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?

Simple, neutral.

What kept you sane?

Netflix.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Hillz.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Um the entire election *crawls into a hole and dies*

Who did you miss?

My dad, actually. He’s been gone almost 25 years but I guess it’s been a long time since I overtly missed him.

Who was the best new person you met?

Some of Darren’s coworkers. I don’t think I can pick just one.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016:

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

There’s no use running unless you run like heck
The best things we’ve learned, we learned from the wreck…

the move! it’s happening!

All the big paint jobs in the house are done, and we have decided that this Saturday is moving day. We’ve reserved a U-Haul, and our internet service is scheduled to switch. Some stuff has already been moved, but boy do we still have a lot to pack.

This past Saturday, Darren and his dad fixed the garage door (again, but probably for real this time?) while I painted the living room. Darren’s friend Justin came over and helped clean up some of the paint dribbles from when Darren was heavy-handed with the paint sprayer during the ceiling-priming process. Dan and Rich came over later, and they painted around the baseboards and trim while I took the roller to the walls. In the end, the ceiling got two coats of white (on top of two coats of primer! Yikes), and the walls got two coats of Tower Bridge.

By the time we finished it was too dark for photos, so all I have is this blurry sneak peek that Darren took yesterday when he was there dropping off a car load of boxes:

I am obsessed. Proper photos to come.

Our post-move-in to-do list is still pretty long.

• Paint closets
• Buy or make curtains in lieu of closet doors
• Most of the windows will need new curtains too
• Touch-up paint in entryway and kitchen
• Caulk baseboards & trim
• Paint a fresh coat of white on baseboards and trim
• Install ceiling fan in dining space (eventually we’ll put one in the kitchen, too)
• Clean out random basement junk
• Repair screens
• Murder all the weeds
• Paint the back porch
• Replace back steps (lol, maybe next year)
• Buy some damn rugs
• ….and so much more!

gettin’ a move on

Our mission has changed from “we have plenty of time to get stuff ready for move-in” to “let’s get the goddamn paint on the walls and we’ll deal with everything else later.” Basically. We’ll see how well that goes.

Saturday I finished painting the half-bath, and got one coat up in the bedroom (excluding the closet. Gotta do that still). That was rough on my neck, but hooray for accomplishment! Yesterday, Darren used his dad’s paint sprayer to prime the living room ceiling. It already looks so much better. Getting that sucker painted a nice solid white will make a huge difference I think. I’m probably most excited for the color that we’re going with for the living/dining room. Of course I left the color cards at the house so I can’t tell you the exact name of the color we’re using, but it’s a Behr paint in the teal family. Ha. I’ll do a whole post about our colors later. With pictures! That’ll be fun.

Also, our garage door broke again. Or, the temporary fix that Darren and Lee used was even more temporary that we anticipated, I guess? We had a guy out yesterday to take a look. Darren is taking charge on that, too… It’ll get fixed, that’s all I care about. At least it closes in the meantime, and the little bit of stuff in there isn’t exposed to the world.

Anyway, we’re hoping to get our stuff all moved over by the end of the month, but we’re out of town for part of this weekend which is just awful timing. Meanwhile, at the same time Darren ad I are moving homes, my office is also moving to a slightly new location. At least the office move is within the same building, and we’re hiring professionals to do the bulk of the work. Still have to pack though. Packing is the worst.

 

you gotta put in work, work, work, work

Saturday we (mostly Darren) made several more house-related purchases, including a good sized charcoal grill and miscellaneous yard maintenance tools. I picked up the pendant conversion kits I had ordered for the kitchen. While at Home Depot, we grabbed some color cards. We decided on colors for most of the rooms we want to paint, and once we decide on a color for the living/dining room, we’ll be good to go.

When we got back to the house I installed the pendants and patched some old nail holes in the walls while Darren grilled dinner. Later I started priming the orange half-bath, and discovered that all of the painting skills I had learned in college have vanished. Between the two of us Darren and I got most of the room primed, but fortunately Darren’s friend Dan is a skilled painter and has offered his assistance, which we will be taking full advantage of.

I also hung this banner next to our front door. I bought it at the fair, from a delightful shop called i like you.

front door is just to the left of the banner

On Sunday a hinge on our garage door broke, because of course it did. The automatic opener does not like this, but we can still close it manually. Darren was Not Pleased. But we went to Ikea as planned anyway. We picked up a lamp, a bench for the entryway, and shades for the kitchen pendants. Exciting.

Yesterday, Darren brought Dan over. Darren’s dad also headed over after work to help repair the garage door, and I went up after work. We ended up being there until nearly 10pm. In that time, Dan finished priming the bathroom (two coats!), the shades were attached to the kitchen pendants, the Ikea lamp was assembled, Darren finished removing the old caulking from the door and window trim in the living room, Darren and Lee fixed the garage door (turns out the automatic opener had been poorly installed and basically broke itself), I built the bench for the entry, filled some more holes, touched up the paint over the previously filled holes, found the grey paint for the upstairs bathroom and used it for the first coat inside said bathroom’s linen/storage cabinet. My painting skills still exist on a small scale, at least. I think that’s everything? Of course I failed to take pictures of any of it, save for this one I posted on Snapchat (username: trinalobax).

Darren has Saturday off, so we’ll probably put some more time in. Lee bought him a nail gun (he also picked up one for himself. They were on sale, haha), so that should help a few projects along. That said, it seems like most of our spare time has been spent working on the house. I don’t mind, but at the same time I’m thinking we should take a few hours and just hang out. We still have a full two months before we need to be out of our apartment, so we can certainly spare a night off.

home is where your rump rests

We bought a house today!

What a pain in the ass, oh mah gah. Weeks of paperwork and waiting, and more paperwork and more waiting. Plus a tiny hiccup at closing today. But we survived and it’s ours. We’re still in our apartment lease until the end of October, so we can take our sweet time moving in – although we’ll be out well before our lease is up, we are SO OVER IT. We have a little bit of painting we want to do, and we need to get the basement ready for the cats (it’s where their litter boxes will be, so we need to cover any spaces they might want to try to crawl into). Really there are tons of nitpicky little things to deal with, but most of them can be spread out over the coming months.

Anyway, it’s a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom, 109-year-old Dutch Colonial in North Minneapolis. We looked at a lot of houses in St Paul because StP4lyfe, but for various reasons this is where we landed. My commute will be shorter, and Darren’s shouldn’t change too much? It’s about the same distance, but time will tell with regards to traffic.

We spent a good chunk of time chatting with the sellers today and it sounds like the neighbors are awesome, which was great to hear. And the next door neighbor has a very nice dog named Norman.

Am I going to start blogging about house stuff? Maybe! I do like reading house blogs, but whether or not I like writing about that stuff remains to be seen.

All right. You want to see pictures? Here are the listing photos in all their flaw-hiding glory. Hooray! Gory details can wait. For now, we are just excited.

porch! the window & door trim are not red in real life.

entryway

dining/living area

first floor half-bath off the kitchen

back porch/mudroom

this will be the office

guest room/yoga space

master bedroom

walk-in closet

view from the garage

no mud, no lotus / happy birthday to me!

Today I turned 31, which is weirder than 30. I had to write my age on a form today and it was bizarre. I’m not entirely sure why, but Brenna suspects it’s because we’re “reeling on 40,” which is probably accurate. Oh well!

My birthday went a little something like this:

• Aerial yoga in the morning
• Birthday tattoo! More on that in a minute.
• Errands. This is not birthday related, just stuff that needs to get done because adulthood.
• Dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack with Kyle, Jenna, and Harrison (Darren requested the wrong day off(!) so he had to work)
• Now I’m watching Fixer Upper, drinking a vodka tonic, and writing this. I need some cake.

It doesn’t sound like much, but I like a good low-key day. I’m going to see Paul McCartney on Wednesday, which was my gift to myself, so I still have that to look forward to!

All right, so here’s the tattoo story and also the meaning behind the design.

Darren told me several months ago that he knew what he was going to get me for my birthday, and it required an appointment. I was like “oooh, massage?” but he said he wasn’t going to tell me and it was going to be a surprise the day of. So I figured, definitely massage or spa day or something. HOWEVER. The day he called to make the appointment, we were IMing. He told me that my appointment was scheduled for 12:30pm on my birthday, but then he said that he had to spill the beans because “she needs some info in advance so… what are you going to get for your tattoo!!??” I was PISSED because who schedules a tattoo as a surprise? You need to be prepared for that shit. After our wee fight, I started warming up to the idea. I had been talking about a tattoo for a couple years, so it’s not like it came from nowhere but it’s a good thing he told me. If I had shown up there with no clue, I probably would not have gone inside.

Anyway, when I first started considering said tattoo a few years ago, I was leaning toward something cat or generally pet related. That’s still on the table for tattoo #2, but I had since made a different plan. I was in a yoga class one day, and the teacher quoted Thich Nhat Hanh, and talked about the idea behind “no mud, no lotus” – the secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not run away from it. So I decided to get a simple lotus tattoo. If I go deeper, it does become a sort of memorial to my father. I could probably do a whole post on that, but the point is that my life (and Kyle’s, of course) was going in one direction, but then dad died and it took a hard, horrible turn… and still ended up being pretty great. You know what I mean?

Side note: there’s a Cloud Cult lyric version of this idea from the song Complicated Creation, and it says “you can’t know beauty if you don’t know pain.” Always happy to incorporate Cloud Cult into everything, forever. That song also includes one of my favorite lines “some days you give thanks, some days you give the finger.”

Whew. Okay, so here it is, and it definitely felt like a being poked by a bunch of needles. At least it only took about ten minutes, although I sure did sweat a lot in that short amount of time (ew):