Memphis

Several weeks ago we went to Memphis for our friends,' Emily & Joel, awesome wedding. Ben, despite, having lived in Germany for a summer and traveled Europe extensively has only been west of the Mississippi River once. I have just never been to Memphis.

We left Saturday morning from Atlanta, driving through 4 different states arriving just in time for Barbecue. We went to Rendezvous which is by far the BEST barbecue I have eaten. And just in case you are such a fool as I, do not ask for unsweet tea. They don't have it and I don't think they liked being asked. :) But it is a delicious dry rub and I highly recommend the place. Even, I, pseudo vegetarian, ordered ribs and licked my fingers.





We walked down Beal street and Ben sang, "Walking in Memphis" unabashedly on repeat for about an hour. Okay, we both sang it. :) We walked along the Mighty Mississip and then, just to say we did, we drove over to Arkansas to complete our five states in one day travel spectacular.



We went to Emily & Joel's wedding at the Memphis Zoo that night which was truly fabulous. I'll have to do a post soon on the homemade decorations which I plan on recreating and decorating our apartment with. (It will go with our 'stick art.')

The next morning we drove to Shiloh, Tennessee. For those of you who aren't married to a Civil War buff, the Battle at Shiloh was the deadliest to date in the Civil War. There is a national park in Shiloh commemorating the battle and we spent probably four hours retracing steps of the confederate and union troops. Mind you, this is after we had already listened to 6 hours or so of a lecture series in the car from iTunes U from a Yale professor. He made me wish I were still taking college courses so now I listen to him, Professor Blight, on my commute to work.



Things have been pretty busy around here. I don't know if I am doing something wrong or if this is just the way life is or just the way life is in your mid 20's without children living in a big city. I kind of just feel succumbed to this life, someone else's plan for my life. Hmmm. More on this later, or hopefully sooner. :)

Hello world

Where the heck have I been? Well, in Atlanta for starters since last month was NO TRAVEL month. What have I been doing? I'll give you the rundown in the following photos. Also, this blog is a good commentary on my good intentions in general. They don't always pan out the way I plan or desire. So goes round three of my good intentions of blogging weekly. A renewed commitment...once again :)


Hives...I went to the ER (after going to a full day of work). I looked SO bad that the woman behind the counter at the ER STOOD UP when I came in and called the charge nurse. I didn't even get to sign in. This picture shows me 95% BETTER! I looked like one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's vampires.

Minus the scary teeth


Then, Benny and I and Ben's sister--my sister :) went camping in N.C.


We played a ton of Settlers of Catan (love it...though I didn't...and hardly ever...win)


And ate lots of delicious camp fire food (s'mores and silver turtles!)


And even went to the Biltmore courtesy of my sweet Grandma.


And then visited Ben's grandmother's childhood home in Forest City, NC.


And then we exploited staying in Atlanta by:

Going to Chateau Elan with my parents and sister, Chelsea

Our wine guide even shared with us how to make your own port...delicious!

Going to a Drive-In movie:


Going to the local high school football game a couple of blocks from our apartment (for their homecoming) with an awesome view of the midtown skyline.


And going to a Brave's playoff game


I'll update soon about October: no running month.

World's Best Brownies

I am NEVER making brownies from a box again.

This shows you how far I have come. When I was in college I thought the quality of your brownies was determined by how much fudge came in the box you bought at Publix. I didn't even know you could make brownies not from a box (isn't that absurd!) And lest you deduce anything about my mom or her cooking/baking from this travesty...don't. She was always inviting me into the kitchen but I was never interested in anything kitchen-related until I was a senior in college.

The learning curve has been steep.

Anyways, my mom has this AWESOME brownie recipe that I almost don't want to post. I sort of want to keep it for myself so that I when I bring brownies to your house you will ooh and ahh and invite me back just so I will bring more brownies. And then you will think that I am a FANTASTIC baker and you will tell everyone you know how fabulous I am...yada yada yada. All of those reasons really stink so I am going to post the recipe with altruistic goals. It is easy and SO delicious and you can then bake brownies and bring them to your friends and they will think you are fabulous :)



Chunky Chocolate Brownies (Serves 9)

Ingredients:
2 T water
3/4 c granulated sugar
1/2 c butter
1 (11.5 oz) package semisweet chocolate chunks (I use chocolate chips)
2 large eggs
1 t vanilla extract
3/4 c all-purpose flour
Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)


Instructions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine first 3 ingredients in a 3 1/2 qt saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in 1 c chocolate chunks until smooth. Let cool 5 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, stirring just until blended. Stir in vanilla. Stir in remaining chocolate chunks. Combine flour and salt in separate bowl then stir into chocolate mixture. Spread into a lightly greased 9 inch square pan. Bake at 325 for 23-28 minutes. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Dust with powdered sugar (optional) and cut into squares. May freeze baked brownies.

The hardest part is determining when they are finished. Because of the chocolate chunks, if you do the tooth pick test, the tooth pick always comes back gooey. I tend to bake the brownies closer to the 28 minute side. I make sure that they are starting to pull away from the edge of the pan before I take them out. The good news is that if you under cook them (which I occasionally do) that brownie goo tastes fantastic with vanilla ice cream and if you put the ice cream on top, your guests don't even have to know :)

No Cable Month Analysis

August 31st: 30 days without cable (We cheated one night and watched an hour of the US Open)

Going without cable might have been the best decision we have made all year. We have read books, talked over dinner, played cribbage, gone to bed early, stayed up late, watched some movies, gone on bike rides through the park, baked more goodies, so many things that we couldn't seem to find time for before.


This is a proper Sunday lunch after church. A novelty pre-No Cable Month.

And we're actually not going to continue it (Ben's watching the US Open right now). We're not going to promise to raise our children without TV's. We're not going to make you feel guilty if you watch 4 hours of TV per day. But we learned some really valuable information: like what a hold TV really did have on our lives, how it made me cranky when I felt guilty about it, how it made me believe that reading a book after work would make me feel exhausted...which as it turns out isn't true, that spending time together watching TV together still leaves me feeling like we haven't seen each other all week. So I know we will be watching a lot less TV from now on and we are both really excited :)

And now for this month's new subtraction: NO TRAVEL MONTH. Thank God...Really.

And one more thing...

And one more thing I love about Benny...he sacrifices...whole heartedly. We have been lamenting all summer that we haven't grilled out as much as we would have liked. So Wednesday night Benny planned dinner and planned to grill. I knew that as he drove to our fabulous farmers market he would be salivating the whole way there thinking about the giant beef selection.

I arrived at home in the evening before he did. I open the fridge expecting to see a 20 ounce steak for Benny (probably a ribeye) and 6 ounce NY strip for me. However, there was no beef to be found--not even any MEAT. There was TOFU in the fridge. Yes, Benny, the man who LOVES a good steak and loves a good grilled steak even more had purchased and marinated and researched grilling tofu...all for me :)



And lest you scoff at the idea...it was delicious and even Benny really loved it! (And we both really loved the price)

He marinated the tofu in a little red wine vinegar, soy sauce, a dash of fish sauce, and honey. He served it with grilled corn on the cob and grilled Anaheim peppers with blue cheese crumbles. Yum!!!

Happy Anniversary!

Two days ago (a little late on my blogging) was our two year wedding anniversary! This November will be 7 years of dating. Whew! I can't even remember being an adult without Benny and I guess I wasn't...we met my freshmen year of college when I was a lowly 18.

We both always say that marriage is both the best and the hardest thing that we have ever done. And it's really true.

And I am so thankful for him for SO many reasons. Here are just a few:

He is a GREAT cook (much better than I am)


When I have to do laundry downstairs, he carries the heavy hamper down and back up.

He makes me adventurous (makes me try new things like Greek beer)


He goes to bed with me at 9:30.

He's brave (drinks out of water fountains in foreign countries)


He watches Enchanted, Jaws, Shakespeare in Love, and Elf with me over and over :)

He trained for (and ran) a half marathon with me last year even though he HATES running. And he had to cheer me on!


He makes the bed when I forget.

He's romantic.


He's really good with kids.

He wore my light weight pink robe all winter so I could wear his warm winter robe.


He makes really good coffee (and makes it for me every morning)

He's not afraid to act like a kid :)


He really loves me.


He's my best friend.

August 1st: No Cable Month

Here are my upcoming blog posts: "Day of the Jobs," "Sleeping on the family room floor because it's 80 degrees in here," "Homemade German meal," and "Brand new bike." But first, because it is August 1st today, is "August 1st: No Cable Month." This concept has three real inspirations.

1) The store where I bought my new bike today has a postcard that quotes Ghandi saying, "The goal of life is not to increase its speed."

2) My friend Amanda and I were leafing through a book at Anthropolgie (since I can only leaf through books there and not try on clothes...$$$) about one woman's year long pursuit of happiness. Each month she had a new endeavor: exercise, friendship, etc. But it all sounded like a lot of work: a more fulfilling life via addition versus subtraction.

3) One of my favorite blogs, of which I made reference to recently, smallnotebook, discusses how she has a "No spend month" once yearly where she and her family remarkably cut down on their expenses for one month a year.

Well, Ben is back from Germany and we are both dreamy over the European way of life: biking for transportation, sitting down to dinner at a table every night and not at the couch where you watch Seinfeld with your spouse but don't really talk, rushing from church to the Farmers market to vacuuming the apartment, to weeding through the files for outdated documents...etc. What happened to cooking and eating a breakfast together, riding our bikes to church, coming home for lunch and reading a good book, to taking a 20 minutes nap (I know...we don't have children yet). I spend all week long exhausted, waiting for the weekend which usually wears me out. How did this happen? How did I get so busy? How did I get so busy with stuff I don't even care about? Like TV.



Which brings us to No Cable Month. This is what a typical Wednesday looks like for me: wake up at 6:45, shower, make coffee, make lunch for Benny and me (while I listen to the morning news show), make breakfast, leave the house at 7:45 and eat my breakfast in the car on my 1 hour commute to work, start work at 9:00, lunch break 1:30, end work at 5:00 (or later), drive one hour home, stop by grocery store for something I inevitably forgot on Sunday, get home around 7:00, promise myself I am not going to watch TV, kiss Benny, make dinner (or kiss Benny an extra time or two because he made dinner), turn on Seinfeld, eat at the couch, turn to Law & Order: SVU at 8:00, watch one episode (maybe two if I had a hard day at work), get into bed at 10:00, feel guilty for 15 minutes that I didn't read or pray or go for a walk or pet my cat but instead watched the TV bleary eyed for 2 (ALMOST 3 HOURS), go to sleep and vow never to do that again. Thursday: repeat.

TV isn't the problem. I am the problem...I keep choosing things I don't want to do over the things I do want to do and then feel guilty about it later. There are so many books I want to read, I have Rosetta Stone Spanish I want to use, kitty wants to be petted, I (now) want to ride my new bike. I so often don't do what I think would be most fulfilling and rewarding because it's new or different or seems like more effort (or just some effort).

So I don't want to watch TV in the evenings but I watch TV every evening. And I don't want to drive everywhere but I never ride my bike or walk. I don't want to travel every weekend but we are never home. It's amazing how easily I forfeit the way of life I dream about for a lesser version so I don't have to be creative or blow up the bike tires or suggest staying home for the weekend. Well, yesterday, Benny and I decided to actually do all these things...or rather NOT do them. Slow down. Read a book. Walk to church. Eat at the table and laugh with my spouse instead of at Jerry Seinfeld. So we made some commitments. August: NO CABLE (sorry brothers). Coming up: NO SPEND, NO TRAVEL, DO IT YOURSELF, etc.

I also just realized how challenging this was going to be this month when today I remembered...it's shark week!


Photo credit

So stay tuned and pray for us. We are treading on unknown territory (life without TV, and later...a car?)

Wall art...from your own backyard

I really want to have the cutest apartment ever. But having the cutest apartment ever requires money of which is not in our budget and of which I would rather spend on travel or on a date with Benny or giving it away to people who need it more than us. But that still didn't help the fact that I was totally devastated that our beautiful mantle (and above wall) in our family room was unadorned. I didn't want to "just buy something" and the artwork that we own that I do love (all made by our good friend Niky, check out her out here) didn't work above the mantle.



I also really didn't want "clutter" (anyone who has actually been to my apartment won't believe that I don't want/like clutter, but it's true). I don't want to go to Target and buy a picture of turquoise pots that I don't even care about. This other blog that I read, (check it out, it's one of my favorites) posted today on only having things in your home that are personal or functional--cutting down on meaningless, functionless clutter.

Well, in April I was visiting my friend Loren in Philadelphia and she took me to an awesome restaurant (name?) that was in a greenhouse and had it's own florist. Well, part of the decor were these sticks, covered in white lights and framed by copper plumbing. I thought they were SO beautiful. I thought that I could do something similar above our mantle. Well we don't have any outlets that are close by and I found out that copper wiring is very expensive but I was still inspired.



Around our parking lot are lots of trees and therefore also lot's of twigs/branches laying around, just waiting to be chosen for a beloved art project. So one Thursday, before work (and hopefully before my neighbors were awake) I collected a LOT of branches and dragged them up our stairs onto our family room floor, then I was off to work. Benny was very confused when he got home from work, and explaining to him that I was going to make something to go above our mantle did not provide much reassurance.

Well, that weekend, or maybe next, I got to work: sawing four branches to nearly equal size and tying them together at the ends with hemp using a figure eight motion (like you are wrapping a twisted ankle). I then glued a bunch of twinkly beads on the ends with a hot glue gun that don't really twinkle because we don't have the right lighting. BUT, this project was free and I like it and our family room certainly doesn't look boring any more, though I don't know about the cutest apartment ever.





Cheers to your own free home improvement projects!

Keeping up with the Moser's

This is our TV.



Which is just fine with us. Especially since, (much to the dismay of my brothers-in-law who have affectionately nick-named me "cable hater") we are about to cut our cable .

So when my good friend Amanda was in town for the weekend I really wasn't too ashamed about planning to watch several movies on our TV from our Netflix "view instantly" via our Wii. If this sounds like a confusing process to you, it was for us too. We spent at least an hour trying to get the movie to play on our TV to find out later that I need a free DVD from Netflix that ships in one business day (one day too late for Amanda) in order to watch live Netflix movies on our Wii.

So our next best option was watching the movies on my work lap top. So this is how Amanda and I spent the weekend, curled up on the couch with kitty in our 80 degree apartment.



Notice the surround sound.

But let me tell you, the power of Food Inc. was not lost on my tiny lap top. If you haven't seen it, it will make you either want to become a vegetarian or buy and eat all organic food. After watching it I told Benny we were going to become vegetarians (much cheaper that way). That was until I went to Kroger today and my moral back bone became osteoporotic in the face of chicken on sale for $1.99 per pound.

Anyway, I ate organic bulgur wheat with organic button mushrooms for dinner tonight (no meat) since Benny still isn't home from Germany. Which, by the way, is a great single lady meal (or side dish for when the men are home). I'll post the easy and delicious recipe soon.

Eating like pigs...I mean cows

Okay...I know that was a really cheesy title...and maybe it's also way cheesy to post some material on something that happened over a year ago (back when I didn't even know what a blog was). But as much as my blog has lately been about espousing on all things serious I want it to be catalogue of memories for Benny and me. And this is one of my favorites.



We both really love chick-fil-a. Really love it. We had been traveling a LOT lately and inevitably on Sunday after we start driving home one of us (usually me with a really pout-y face) will lean over and say, "Oh no...do you know what I just remembered?" And the other one of us will knowingly nod our head say, "Yes, I know it's terrible...it's Sunday and chick-fil-a will be closed." We are instead going to have to eat pre-packed sandwiches or stop...I don't even like thinking about it...somewhere else.

Well, last summer the stars aligned and Benny and I were traveling on a Friday on chick-fil-a's dress like a cow and get a meal for free day. We were driving after Ben's work to my parent's place in Ponte Vedra, Florida--about a 6 hour trek. And Benny and I, dressed like cows, stopped at every chick-fil-a from Atlanta to PV.



Ben and I missed this year's opportunity for free chick-fil-a because we were in Europe but I hope next year we will be on the road again :)

What Now?

Christianity is not for the faint of heart.

Ben got his new MCAT score a few weeks ago...which is exactly the same MCAT score he had before. So we are in the same position of no man's land that we have been living in for several years. We have been praying all along for direction: a stellar MCAT score that would assure a position in a medical school and confirm to us that this is God's plan AND/OR we have been praying for such an atrocious score that we would KNOW that we could never get into medical school and hence know that God's plan is to stop pursuing this dream. But the same score...what does that mean? And maybe I am just playing a contemporary game of casting lots and reading tea leaves but I thought the score was going to tell us something.

And maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. And maybe what's more important is not that whether or not we decide to keep chasing after medical school but whether or not we keep praying. Sometimes I feel like giving up on prayer, like I'll just do it--just figure it out myself. It's like when Ben says he will fix something around the house (and I know he will do a better job than I am going to do) but I don't want to wait because I am in that kind of mood so I fix it myself and turns out to be a mess. Maybe that's what it looks like when I grow impatient.

But I do really trust that God has a better plan than I do (most hours of most days). So whatever happens...more tries at medical school, getting a job as a line chef, moving to Germany for a bit of fresh air...we are going to keep praying. After all, no one said this life was going to be easy. It was never promised that we would always understand everything that happens to us. We have been promised that we aren't going this alone. Thank God for that.

Onward

So the update I promised ages ago...Ben quitting his job.

Ben quit his job at the beginning of June. It was something we had talked and prayed about for a long, long time. We didn't necessarily have an answer to prayer (no lightening--my expectations were high) or even a conclusion we felt good about but for a thousand reasons it was the thing we had to do. We were rolling down this hill towards the American dream without any chance of adventure. I could see our 2.5 children with our well behaved dog in the horizon, framed by our white picket fence. Now don't get me wrong, I want children nearly more than anything. And I am actually a big fan of white picket fences. But I want to chose those things in my life and not have them thrust upon me. And I felt like these things were along the trajectory of someone else's life. Someone whose goal in life was to hit all the milestones on time because "it's what you do."

This has been very difficult for me. I follow the rules, painstakingly...I don't ruin my dinner with dessert, I call my grandmothers every week, I drink 8 glasses of water a day and eat 4 servings of vegetables, I write thank you notes, I vacuum under the bed. I am neurotic. I people please. So when Ben quit his job (with my full support and prodding) I panicked inside, "What will people say?" "People will think I am irresponsible. People will think I am a bad wife."

But I could feel it in my bones that if I didn't grab onto a tree along the downward slope towards suburbia and alter my path I would miss out on the desires I have carried inside me for as long as I can remember and amazingly that Ben has had too. We want to meet people of different cultures, examine our own from a different lens. We want to know God and worship Him from a worldview that isn't seasoned with materialism and American expectations. And ultimately, our desire is to please God, to live a life that is most honoring to Him. The fumes of selfish ambition are already wafting up our nostrils here in our apartment. I catch myself longing for, I mean obsessively thinking about, that new pair of cowboy boots I want and I forget that I don't even need those and that there are people in my church, people on my street, patients in my office that have actual needs. The older I get, the better I become at justifying my selfishness...but I really do need that pair of boots...what if I go horseback riding next fall...and everyone else I know owns a pair...and...me...me...me.

And maybe this all doesn't jive for you. You might think it's okay to shake your fist at the American dream but what does that have to do with Ben quitting his job? Ben wants to be a doctor--not a scientist. And when he talked to MCG on the phone they said his job was NOT helping him get in. So Ben is using this time away from work (in Germany right now for a month) to try and help his med school application. He is also scoping out Germany as a possible place to live. He is also saying no to a career that is safe but unfulfilling. We just couldn't let it go too far.

My greatest fear in writing this post is sounding ungrateful...that I don't recognize the sacrifice and love my parents put into raising my two sisters and I. If there is anyone I could be like in my life, it is my two parents. So I am most definitely not criticizing family and children and working hard and working hard to provide even if you don't like your job. Ben and I just have to take this chance, just have to walk out in faith at this time in our lives. The season is right.

So our future is unknown. Benny is in Germany right now: praying, thinking, immersing himself in the German language (of which he is already prolific), spending time with his brother, Bruce, improving his tennis game, and missing me terribly, I'm sure :) He is still waitlisted at MCG. He will probably get his MCAT score tomorrow.

So pray for us and forgive me for such a long post and no pictures :)

A cookie only a microbiologist could love

Humble Pie

Ben quit his job last week (I know, I know, another story for another blog post) but in any case his last day was this past Thursday and I wanted him to have an appropriate send off: cookies! I had this great idea to use someone else's great idea to make petri dish cookies to celebrate Ben's work at the CDC. Please see Not So Humble Pie who made BEAUTIFUL petri dish cookies. I just knew mine would turn out as well.

I made from scratch old fashioned sugar cookies. Then I made royal icing for the agar (a full bottle of red food coloring...is that bad for you?) and decorative bacterial streaking. Benny provided the appropriate muscle I needed for sifting the seven cups of confectioners sugar (which ended up breaking our sifter). But the dough was delicious and the icing colorful and sweet. And then finally, decorating with my fancy pastry tool: a Kroger brand plastic bag.

Now get excited about the reveal...



Now, I know if that you have never taken a microbiology class you will have no idea what this cookie is supposed to look like and then again, even if you have taken such a class the decoration is probably still indiscernible.

After the cookies turned out so poorly I was devastated: and only half because I didn't have anything to send with Benny to work. I was also sorry that my come-back blog post (after a three week hiatus) was not going to proclaim my prodigiousness as a baker.

The funny thing is, Ben did take two cookies to work to our friend June because she likes sweets even if they're not pretty. And guess what, they were a big hit at the office! All of the scientists knew what they were! Unfortunately, with only two cookies there was only looking no tasting.

So, next time I bake themed cookies for Ben's going away party at work, I will send the cookies with him no matter what they look like!

My husband, Sisyphus

I have been MIA for a few...weeks. It's because the only thing I have really been thinking about lately is the one thing I really don't want to write about...because it's hard. It's about Ben's application to medical school. The abridged account (very abridged) is that Ben has always wanted to be a doctor, majored in biology in undergrad--pre-med, took his first MCAT in spring 2005, his second in 2007, and has been applying to medical school ever since. In the last 3 years he has been wait-listed 3 times. And here we are now, round 3, waiting, waiting for a letter in the mail, for a phone call, a lightening bolt, something, anything. We could hear an answer off of the wait-list up until the day before classes start...in August. An MCAT is only good for 3 years so Ben is already studying for an MCAT for a med school application for a class that will start in August 2011. These are the circumstances. The day-to-day is that Ben goes to work, 40 hour weeks, and then studies for the next MCAT when he gets home from work until we go to bed (when he doesn't find a letter in the mailbox). I drive home from work and when I see the lamp lit in our dining "room" I know he is studying at the kitchen table and know that, "today, he didn't get in."



Our friend Niky told Ben that this process, Ben's life, is like the life of Sisyphus, a king in Greek mythology. If you don't know the story, it's very despairing. As a punishment, Sisyphus is cursed to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down, every time, for eternity. Now, I don't hang my hat on Greek mythology, or luck, or bad luck. I hang it on faith and hope in God, who loves us like children. But I don't always know what that looks like, practically or even theoretically. Sometimes we are negative about this whole process, "Why doesn't God answer our prayers (and not just prayers to get in, prayers for His will to be revealed enough to us that we would walk on the path He desires for us and know that we are doing so). Sometimes we are positive, we thank and praise God for our jobs, our marriage, and that all of this hardship is developing in us patience and character and is preparing us for an unknown future. Sometimes, we don't know what to think and we crawl into bed with bowls full of ice cream, delirious from study and prayer and watch Pirates of the Caribbean until it's way past our bedtime. Sometimes we are guilty because these times are so trying for us but we remember we are healthy and employed and married and feel foolish because there is so much heartache around us in the homeless that live on our street and families in our church. But God, in all of His wisdom (and for reasons I don't understand...yet) has laid this before us at this time in our life. It is our current burden, our current call to trust in Him for our fulfillment instead of in an acceptance letter that may or may not come, and MCAT score that may or may not be high. This is where my head and heart have been the past 2 weeks, the past 7 years.


Benny studying for the MCAT with kitty

Our Favorite Game

So it's not really a game...but it's one of our favorite activities that we play at. We call it "Gift of the Magi" which is not so cleverly named after the short story by O. Henry entitled "The Gift of the Magi." This short story is one of my favorites. I remember having it read to me as a child by librarians and my mom and it's poignancy has never left me.



(Spoiler Alert) In the story a young couple: Jim and Della, very much in love, are struggling at Christmas time to buy each other meaningful gifts with only dollars in their pockets. In the opening pages, Jim is still at work and Della is agonizing over this dilemma. She wants to give him something to match her love for him. There are only two possessions of any value that they together cherish: Jim's watch without a chain that belonged to his father and grandfather. The other is Della's hair, the most beautiful hair that kisses her knees and looks like a waterfall of silk down her back. And after musing on these two 'items' it becomes clear to Della what she can and must do: she leaves to sell her hair to buy Jim a watch chain. (This part of the story gnaws at my stomach). She comes home, proud of her purchase but now nervous, 'Can Jim still love her without her hair?' She waits anxiously for him to arrive. When Jim returns home Della rushes out to meet him, eager to see if his love for her will wane. Jim is taken aback but then tells her why: his present to her is a set of beautiful, exquisite combs for her hair, her previously long hair. But Della, not hesitating for a moment remembers that Jim has not even see his present yet. And she thrusts the box to him and he unwraps a chain, a chain for his watch, which he tells Della that he has just sold to purchase her gift, the hair combs. Ahhh, can you believe it? Doesn't this just tear at your heart and warm it in the same moment?

Well, like I started with, Ben I play 'Gift of the Magi.' Our play is not nearly so penetrating but it is always warming, just the same. Here are some examples of recent 'play:'

Some laundry desperately needed to be done before going out of town and I had to work and couldn't get it done: Ben would need to step in as resident laundress. Ben is fully capable of doing the laundry, no problem there. However, about 1/3 of my clothes I don't put in the dryer: delicates, jeans I don't want to shrink, sweaters, etc which makes it difficult for someone else to launder my clothes. The morning before I left for work I pulled out everything that didn't go in the dryer and put that pile in my closet. I left the hamper with all of the other clothing to be washed by the door. When I got home that night, Ben proudly showed me an assortment of clothes on the drying rack: a delicate looking shirt, a pair of jeans, some underwear...He had painstakingly gone through my clothing item by item at the laundry mat and pulled out anything he thought I might not put in the dryer. I just smiled and went to my closet and produced all of the true delicates: we just laughed.

Another story: we needed some sugar (last minute). We had meant to pick it up all week for some baking for someone's birthday. Thursday night, we both return home late from work. I walk in the door and Ben shows me the sugar, he has gone to the grocery store (his least favorite chore) and picked up the sugar and I have taken a despised detour from my one hour commute home to pick up the sugar. Now: two bags of sugar and laughter.

A final vignette: Company is coming over and the wood floor needs to be swept. I come home from work and Ben is not there. I sweep the whole (450 square foot) apartment so he won't have to when he gets in. He walks in on me cleaning and asks what I am doing because he has already swept the floor today: so I wouldn't have to :) These are some of my favorite moments in marriage.

A place for everything...well...almost everything

The Saga of our Shrinking Kitchen

First of all, as an aside to this new post, are some thoughts on this blog in general. A) I need to blog more often--I am going to blog more often. I really enjoy blogging and, thus, because I enjoy it I relegate blogging to the "if I have time category" of my life which is like 7 minutes a day. Boo :( C.S. Lewis said that we should spend our time doing things we either need to do or love to do. And frankly, I spend a lot of time doing things that are neither, i.e. watching TV, checking facebook, cleaning incessantly, sleeping more than eight hours a night, etc. But I really love blogging: there should be more of that. B) I need to blog more about things that Ben and I will want to look back on: memories, things we have learned, things we have unlearned, life events and the like--a catalogue of our life as it happens and what we think about it.

But onward to our post for today: our kitchen! This is one of those things I want to remember: the size and idiosyncrasies of our kitchen: tiny and lacking in the appliance department. But I am NOT complaining because I love our apartment and our miniature kitchen. Some day I want to do a blog on our apartment in general: somewhere between 400 and 500 square feet I would guess. It's half the second story of a large 1920's home and it has character. But today, we appraise and applaud our kitchen!

There is little more Ben and I love to do together other than cook, which by that I really mean, he cooks and I act as his sous chef. I'm not bad but he really thrives in the kitchen. And our kitchen is just big enough for the two of us.



It has a teeny tiny oven which we have unbelievably cooked a Thanksgiving turkey in.


Looks like our oven needs to be cleaned...


This is our "dishwasher."


Our kitchen also has artistic flare...notice how the traditional black and white checkered linoleum is actually a black racing stripe through the middle of our kitchen.


And our pantry...

(Which, I know you won't believe me, is actually pretty well organized. Benny can't find anything but I know where everything is in our cupboard :) Also, you may have noticed there are at least 4 bags of flour in the picture--and there is more. They were on sale, a really good sale, which still drives Benny crazy because we clearly don't have a lot of room for buying in bulk. But I couldn't pass it up.

And lastly, our garbage disposal...

Which actually comes in pretty handy, Benny that is. We don't have a lot of leftovers around here and we wouldn't have the space if we did. And yes, he is drinking a glass of milk with whipped cream and a cherry. There is no one quite like my Benny :)


This is our first place and I really don't think I have loved any place more!