While the husband is away.....

So how much money have I spent in the almost one week Tom has been away. Let's not discuss that. It's not that he's away....a waxing was calling my name. And while I was there I think it's totally ok that I spent a small fortune on Dermalogica lotion and face wash. I mean come on people - Neutrogena just doesn't do it for me anymore. And I think it's totally normal that I scheduled a facial to treat myself on Wednesday when I have the day off from work. It's just money right?

I have sadly discovered - or realized that I am officially a brand whore. Now I am a BARGAIN brand whore, but nonetheless, a brand whore I am. I was walking Harper and realized I was wearing my Hunter rain boots and my Mountain Hardware fleece and my Patagonia rain coat and my Citizens of Humanity jeans and you get the picture. I was somewhat disgusting by myself, but then I realized that almost everything I was wearing was bought on a SUPER duper sale. Does that excuse it?

In other news at a consignment store in Phinney today I bought two sweaters (one was Cashmere and $25) and a pair of unworn cords. Who knew that private school classrooms would be a full 20 degrees colder than public schools rooms. I am used to teaching in the "tropics" and now I am teaching in the Tundra...ok maybe the Taiga (yes I am planning a biomes unit... hence the vocabulary). I have been buying cute t-shirts and cute short sleeve button downs for all of my teaching and now I need freaking long underwear as well as at least 3 layers on top or I might freeze to death. I might even start wearing gloves to work soon.

What else is new in Seattle. Hm...I met a nice girl at the dog park today who gave me her number so we could walk sometime. Yeah friendly people! I met a friendly old woman (like 80) walking her dog today and chatted with her until I knew a lot about her. Met a friendly mom and daughter with their dog too. Apparently our new neighborhood is super friendly.

Unfortunately the herd of elephants that live upstairs (not big people.... just loud) still bang and slam and clomp around. I was awake on this lovely Saturday morning at about 7am. I pretended to sleep until 8am, but it was not real. It is driving me insane. For instance to try to help I am playing music so loud that I can't hear myself think. It is helping! The worst part is that Harper just cries and whines everytime they make lots of noise. That is almost worse than the noise. We thought (so we heard) that they were moving out this month.... but I'm beginning to fear that will not happen. I have dreams of a quiet couple moving up there and going to sleep at say 9pm and waking up on the weekend at perhaps 10am. Is that asking too much?

Had a yummy lunch in our neighborhood with Lauren (Tom's boss' wife). We ate at Santa Fe Cafe. It was super cute and we had yummy chips and queso and large bowls of soup. Cute cute cute place. Will definitely go back to check out the "main" food.

Sitting by fire enjoying super loud music. Afraid to cook dinner because the fire might go out, and I just can't bare to start another one. It takes way too much time and effort. But it is 4:50 - I should make dinner so that I can go to bed by 8am - that way I can at least get 11 hours sleep before being woken up by screaming children from above my head. Sad what my life has become.

Da Bears

This afternoon we went to the Bears-Seahawks game at Qwest Stadium in Seattle.

First we got a giant hot dog with all sorts of stuff on top and we met one of my students and his dad before heading to our seats.

We were in section 104 and about 9 rows up from as close as we could get! We were right on the sideline on the side of the end zone. They were very cool seats. We were super close, and we were hit by intense amounts of sunshine. I got my first sunburn in months! Both teams played somewhat crappy, but in the end DA BEARS took home the win. We happened to be sitting in an area with lots of Bears fans, so that was nice. Not to mention that we had very nice Seahawks fans around us too who were NOT trying to kill us or swear at us.

Seattle Here We Are!

So I supposed this is day 1 in Seattle, but I can't start calling everything Day 1, 2, 3, 4, etc or I will lose my mind.

We slept a fitful night and got ourselves up. We unpacked in the kitchen for about 30 minutes and then cut ourselves off so that we could walk the dog.

Just to explain the weather - I wore capris, socks, sneakers, a tank top, a long sleeve shirt, and a fleece and I was downright COLD COLD COLD. Tom kept laughing and saying it was nice out. It was like 58 degrees. I was not happy, but I dealt with it.

We walked down the hill toward Green Lake - it only took about 15-20 minutes to get there. We stopped and got a breakfast sandwich and then walked around the lake. Finally after I could not feel my hands we headed off the lake. We walked back to the house and Harper was exhausted. I too could have gone back to sleep all day. We did lots more unpacking (entire kitchen) and started rearranging the living room area. We decided we will try to live without a tv for as long as we can. What with the internet, I almost feel like it's cheating or something. We'll see how long we can last.

Around 2pm I hit a rough patch of being starving, thirsty, and tired at the same time. I tried to go back to sleep with Harper, but I knew that the farmer's market was starting soon. Around 2:45 I gathered Harper, myself, and my backpack and headed to the market. Dogs were not allowed in, so I tied him up next to two other doggies. I walked around, but when you have NO food in your kitchen it can be a little overwhelming to try to get stuff from a Farmer's Market. I bought some yummy goat cheddar cheese, a loaf of sourdough rye bread, some sun gold tomatoes (not the most amazing ones I have had), a cucumber, an eggplant, and I think that's it. At this point in the day the sun was out and it was maybe 70. Nice, but not hot for me.

On the way home from the market I stopped at a little store called Picnic. They had wine and meats and cheese. I got some gooey triple cream cheese and some parmesan. I also stopped into a dog store and chatted with a woman, and then went to a wash-your-dog store and had the woman cut Harper's toenails. It was worth the $8 just so I wouldn't have to watch him HATE me while I did it. I walked behind some high school girls who actually made the comment to each other, "Jeese, if I had known it would be so HOT, I would have worn shorts." I wanted to scream IT IS NOT HOT you crazy people!!!! But I kept it to myself.

I ate a lot of cheese and then made a corn/eggplant/tomato/lime/avocado salad. We continued unpacking and unpacking and unpacking. Tom meanwhile had ridden his bike down to his office and then back. He made it alive although he said he did hit a patch of insane road without a bike lane where he sort of feared for his life.

Eventually Tom went and bought some beer. It took me two times of drinking "Session" beer before I had the AHA moment of realizing that was the bear Session the dog was named after. Boy I was a little slow there. Around 7:30 Tom tried to make me sit on the porch, but it was way too cold out for that. Clark and Megan came over and brought us a super cool poster of Seattle. It's a funky thing with all of the neighborhoods written out. It is really cool. I'll try to put a picture of it up somehow. We drank some beers here with them and then headed out to the Greenwood Ave strip. We stopped at a place called Oliver's Twist. It was super yuppie and expensive. We got beers, but the food was sort of out of control. I will eat just about anything, but this just wasn't what you wanted to eat in a bar. We drank our beers fast so that we could make the other bar down the street in time to eat some food. Second bar was 74th Street Ale House. We ordered some food - gumbo (eh), Mediterranean Plate (yum), and garlic bread (greasy and yummy) and drank some beer. The bar closed super early so we left at around midnight I guess.

On our walk home I came up with the plan for me to go on the Seattle news Weather cast. I wanted to tell everyone that it was very cold and that this was NOT summer, no matter what they all thought. I think I also wanted to call people "Apple Maggots" because on our drive through Eastern Washington we had seen signs on the road saying, "DO NOT EAT HOMEGROWN APPLES! Beware of the apple maggots." This might be my new way of referring to people.

Standing outside our house Harper began his usual howling, so we let him out. Then to sleep for us. Actually that part is sort of funny. We were lying on the bed with all of our clothes and jackets on talking to Harper and then we both fell asleep. We woke up at god knows what time and got under the blanket. We had our window wide open and we are sleeping under our quilt, not our down blanket. I was FREEZING. It will be super nice with that blanket on top of us.

Trip Cross Country Day 10

Day 10-

We actually managed to sleep somewhat late. I don't think we got out of the tent until 9 something. Harper could have slept all day. We made some oatmeal with necatarine and then commenced cleaning up our spot. The Canadian girls came down and petted Harper for a bit and then we were on our way. We drove the rest of the road (like 10 minutes) just to make sure we didn't miss anything (we didn't). Then we turned around and headed back on the same road.

We hit insane fog. You could not see more than 20 feet ahead of you. Honestly we had no clue there was even a car in front of us. It was sort of scary - especially when you factor in the fact that there was a giant CLIFF on the other side of the road. We made it to the Logan Pass and went into the visitor's center to see if there was anything interesting (those of you who know me know that I hate museums....so Tom had to drag me out of the car). There was not much of anything except a LOT of people trying to get out of the rain/mist/fog.

We drove the rest of the way and thank god the fog lifted after the pass. We did not see any more bears or anything. Oh that's not true. On our little jog west to see the rest of the road we saw a huge bird of some sort and then a fox or coyote in the field. Ok so we almost finished the road and we stopped for a picnic of cheese and avocado sandwiches. We also bought giant hot chocolates for way too much money.

We took a picture with the Glacier National Park sign and then we were OUT. We weren't sure where we were heading exactly but we knew it was toward Seattle. I drove for a while through Kalispell and weird small "highways" where the wind was so strong it was hard to go the 70-75 speed limit. I think I stopped right before we got on I-90. We wanted to try these so called huckleberries that everyone was talking about in Montana. They were basically like blueberries - Tom got a milkshake and I don't think I would have known the difference. We ate some french fries and continued on the road.

At this point, thanks to the GPS, we saw that our estimated arrival time in Seattle was about 10pm that evening. That basically meant that we were not going to stop until we got there. Tom drove a while and then we gave Harper some dinner at a rest stop and I drove some more. When it got dark (I swear I'm just suddenly blind on the road when it gets dark. Thanks mom for passing that gene along), Tom took over driving. We hit some construction and going over Snoqualmie Pass it got rainy and sort of gross. We made it though and sort of floated across the bridge into Seattle. We made it very easily to our house and after fumbling about trying to find the hidden key, we were in. It was so odd to have all of our stuff there. My first reaction was, "Who the hell put their junk in our house?" and then I realized it was OUR junk.

Without thinking we started a teeny bit of unpacking, but then I nixed that. We headed out with Harper who at this point had been in the car for about 12 hours. We walked up and down Greenwood Ave (basically outside our door) and checked out bars and stores and whatnot. We figured out that the Phinney Farmer's Market was the next day, and we got a nice feel for the neighborhood.

I think we might have done more unpacking, but then finally we went to sleep on our mattress on the floor. The stupid box spring can't make it up the stairs! It reminds me of when Harper broke his leg and we needed it low to the ground so he wouldn't jump.