Random Muses of Megret

So, I owe a gigantic thank you out to everybody who helped make my 28th birthday so much fun and so memorable. From the early morning breakfast in bed and thoughtful gift from my better half , to the phone calls and e-cards I received all day long (and one "singing telegram" from within a minivan), to the lovely lunch my awesome girlfriends prepared and brought over, to the great, fun-filled evening I had with Mom, Dad , Emily , Rick and the girls.... Thank you, all of you. I am so much in awe. Today is just a day to revel in the memories of yesterday, as well as clean up a little and get our life back on track. Yes, real life beckons once again, and we have two home inspections this week to plan for, as well as numerous other tasks. I feel ready to handle it now, though, after all of the greatness that filled my Monday. View more photos of the day here .

Kudos to the best husband on the planet . Even though he spent the better part of his night tossing and turning due to the dreaded head cold that Gardner and I passed onto him (with weird dreams to boot), he still got up at 7am to prepare me a birthday breakfast in bed. :) I don't deserve a guy like him. But I'm sure glad God gave him to me anyway. :)

Ken and I have been going through every single nook and cranny in our house in order to find items we no longer need or should keep so we can clear it out before our move. Our rule is one that everybody's heard: "If you haven't used it in a year, and you have no future plans for it (i.e., saving it for your children), throw it out." Tough rule, but it's resulted in a mega pile of stuff so far compared to the piddly pile we had a few years ago when we attempted a yard sale, foolishly, wasting our time. We have pulled out old Barbie dolls, GI Joes, records, diaries, school notebooks, college dormitory bedspreads, toothbrush cups, and even halloween costumes. Why, oh why, has so much of this useless muck followed us this far? I am ashamed to admit that there are actually boxes in our attic still taped up, all of which is junk we haven't laid eyes on (much less given a thought to) since our first move in 2001. We are both sentamentalists, and we're both ...

Happy birthday to Karla, one of the planet's coolest people. ENJOY your day, Karla!! We love you!

I've been in hiding for the past 24 hours.... Well, not really. But I did take a break from the computer except for mass emails and trips to various webpages as we sealed the deal. Yes, that's right, it's official. We sold our house yesterday morning by signing a contract....for the exact amount of money we'd prayed that God would let us have out of it. Praying specifically.....wow.....it works. Anyone who's bought or sold homes knows how much you have to do in such a very short amount of time. Our time is even more limited than usual; we close on both houses in exactly a month. This calls for putting our noses to the grindstone and no rest for the weary, yet it will be so much fun along the way. We're still in a state of mild shock, seeing as we never expected to have a contract on our house in less than 30 days. Lots to do. Better get started on my day.

I sit here, completely in disbelief that one week from today, I will turn 28. Yes, it's true; this isn't 30. Yet 28 is a mere 2 years from 30, and that means it's so close I can smell it. I must ask....where has the time gone? I tried my best not to squander my years, yet it seems as if the past ten have been an absolute blur. It still feels like yesterday when I used to come home from school in second grade, throwing my lunchbox onto the counter and shedding my backpack. "I want to be 22," I told Mom many times. "Why 22?" she would ask. It probably did sound completely random to other people when I said this. "Because that's how old Miss Schultz is, our teacher's aide, and I love her. She's so cool. She is done with college, and she's still young and pretty. I can't wait to be 22." "Don't wish your life away," Mom said to me, for the upteenth time in my little life. I nodded, but I don't know if...

We just got back from a quick jaunt for ice cream at our neighborhood Brusters . Oh, man. Some of the best ice cream known to man, I will say. The only thing is that Baskin Robbins still has them beat big time when it comes to mint chocolate chip. It is warm again today, and I am going to take advantage of this weather and go outside and wash my Jeep inside and out. I want to make it sparkle and shine, even if they're forecasting freezing rain (yes, that's right) most of this coming weekend. Ugh. There's nothing quite like having a clean car, Armor-All-ed inside till it squeaks, vacuumed with precision, Windexed, Rain-Xed, and polished. Add a full tank of gas to that and a clean oil filter, and you have yourself a good feeling deep down inside. It's the kind of car that makes you want to go out for an old-fashioned "Sunday drive." (Waxing would definitely top it all off, but that's a whole lot of work. Maybe later.) Every car I've had has been...

We are still in the waiting phase of our house-selling process. A couple looked at it last weekend and came back for a second viewing Monday night. This is usually a great thing; it means they're getting more serious. The problem is that the man loves it, yet the woman has reservations about the storage space. I hope that she will realize in time that all houses built before 1950 have a shortage on storage capabilities. It was a lesson I had to learn myself, and something I had to learn to work with if I wanted the romance of living in a historic home. So, we're waiting to hear back on their decision. Waiting produces strength, and it also forces you to find diversions elsewhere to deflect your attention to something other than the situation at hand. I am always the last person to get my food whenever we go out with a large group to a restaurant. I'm not joking. Nine times out of ten, I am the absolute LAST person to get my meal, and it's usually because they to...

Last night's celebration was so much fun. The best thing about it was that I didn't really plan anything in stone; I let Ken choose what he wanted to do next and where he wanted to travel next, and we just drove. I showed up at his office with six huge red mylar balloons to embarrass him (it didn't; he was excited). After an antipasto picnic at Falls Park , we went to Fresh Market where I asked Ken to pick out six Joseph Schmidt truffles of his choice, his gift from me. Then we got coffee (of course). Starbucks jipped me on my coffee size at the pickup window, and for that, I received a voucher for any free drink at my next visit (nice marketing technique, guys). Last of all, we walked around the mall. (Unoriginal, you might think, but we were there to people-watch. You ought to go by and see how many men flock to Victoria's Secret in a panic at 8:30pm on Valentine's Day. Heh heh.) Anyway, fun times, great memories made. And my iPod playlist of "clas...

I believe my Val. Day post last year dealt with things I remembered about Valentines past. I wanted to reminisce a little more this year, mainly for my own sake, to get these memoirs down on "paper" and help them stick around for a long time. I remember the candies I would find in my stash of school Valentines later that afternoon every year. Oh, you could always expect the usual "conversation hearts," those chalky little nuggets of which 40% of the colors taste exactly like Pepto-Bismol. (Ugh.) Never was a big fan of those, although they were fun to read, at least. I remember the foil-covered hearts made of sub-par chocolate with crisp rice studded within. And my all-time favorite, I must say, were those cherry-flavored heart suckers. I would love to lick off the white "paint" on the front first, coating my tongue with its whiteness, even though I had no idea what that substance was or what it truly tasted like (do kids really care about that stuff...

So, today has already started off with a bang! And not in a positive way, either, but we can still laugh about it all! It began with me opening a bag of Hershey's Kissables candy for Gardner to let him have a piece after breakfast. Over zealous, I opened it rapidly and with more strength than actually needed. Tens of pieces of multi-colored kisses flew all over our dining room, skipping and rolling along the hardwood floors. Gardner laughed, I screamed, the cats had a blast chasing them all. Next, I had to page Ken at the gym to come home for an emergency of sorts. Our fridge's ice maker has been on the fritz lately, not wanting to refill the ice cube tray or empty it out. This morning, I happened to be standing there to hear the water suddenly click on. I opened the door to watch....it worked again! It filled up the ice tray....and then it proceeded to CONTINUE filling it until the contents overran the sides and began to trickle down onto my frozen foods. It kept comi...

I'm making early preparations today for the special evening I have planned for my sweet husband on Valentine's Day. :) All is coming together nicely. I have also taken on the task of reorganizing and cleaning out my cabinets (the ones that store food), and I threw away a bagful of things that were old or that I knew I'd never use. I felt a little guilty until I saw how pristine and straight everything looks inside of the cabinets now. You can finally open them without bags of dried beans falling out onto your head....or worse, a can of soup onto your toes. We had a bitterly cold weekend. I am one of those people who could probably relocate to South Florida and be perfectly happy year-round. I don't even have to have cold weather to make my Christmases feel "Christmas-y." I think it's a lack of adequate body insulation, to be blunt, but the mere fact is that any temperature below 55 degrees makes me clam up and hibernate. When I go outside, it'...

Since Ken has been working mucho overtime this week to prepare for the new building's first services tomorrow, I've been catching up on movies and books. I must say that the guilt-free abandonment I feel when I sit down to watch a movie of my choice entirely (even if the house isn't perfectly tidy) is a little bit fun. Add a bowl of ice cream or olive-oiled popcorn to the mix, and you have one great evening. I began watching De-Lovely , which I was all excited about (it was the life story of Cole Porter). Fifteen minutes into the movie, however, I realized that the underlying subject matter wasn't something I wanted to fill my mind with, so I stopped it (angrily). On to something else. I ended up watching Spanglish , a weird (very weird) photograph of "real life." (Although, it was more or less a hyper-exaggerated view of real life....or else, not the life I've ever lived or known anyone else personally who lived it). Funny, sarcastic, painfully acc...

I think the whole island on LOST will turn against itself, and everyone will slowly kill everybody else off. One will remain, but he/she may still have a mortal wound which leaves only minutes to do a final monologue before the final curtain closes. Sorry. Last night's show just made me start thinking. It also eerily reminded me of that episode of The Twilight Zone (the early version) where a spaceship appears over a small suburban community. One by one, neighbors start blaming other neighbors for being the alien among them, and by the end, they're all fighting amongst and destroying themselves. I truly hope that LOST writers don't follow this same predictable storyline. I've seen it way too many times (namely in school required reading). Speaking of reading, I'm heading to the library this morning to pick up a couple of more books. Hopefully one of them will hold my attention enough for me to complete it. I have been flighty with books lately. What I reall...

I am feeling somewhat discouraged today, and so I reached out for God's Word again and let its words speak to my heart. This is what I read. Same paragraphs, new meaning. "'Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.'" (The Beatitudes, Luke 6 : 20b - 23)

Let me officially say that I dread January for another reason.....taxes. Ken and I have always done our own taxes. This is due to the fact that we don't want to spend money to ask someone to do it for us, but it's mainly the fact that I'm stubborn and headstrong and want to do it all by myself. Well, at least aided by the pseudo-wonder program called TurboTax. I just finished up our federal taxes last night, and today, I begin state. Thanks to everyone along the way who's given me advice and answered questions here and there. Even though our taxes were a ton more complicated this year due to certain factors not present before, I was able to figure it all out in the long run and did not even once consider giving up. I remember the simple days....back when I had my first little money-paying job. I wondered, like everybody has said, who this person called "Fica" was and why he wanted so much out of my paychecks. Yet at the end of the year, when I got that un...

Already today, I've: 1. Seen the most beautiful sight....videos from Rome, Italy as Katie Couric visits and has a personal invitation from Giada de Laurentis' family for an 8-course family feast. Those images only made me pine for Europe that much stronger. 2. Smelled the most wonderful smell....the smell of snow. It is only sleeting here, and they don't predict it to stick, nor for actual snow to make it down to the ground. Yet I can smell the smell of snow, though it still resides miles above my head. It's a dry smell, a clean smell. 3. Tasted something that made me think that it was mid-July instead of early February: a homemade strawberry scone made with imported strawberries. Yes, these berries were shipped here from the opposite side of the U.S., but they truly do taste like the peak of the season. Mmm..... 4. Heard it again....those January birds in the trees. Earlier than usual; maybe the weather patterns are making them confused. I marveled at them...

Check out Ken's new blog design . And on it, his snippet of the opener for this week's sermon, the last one in our church's current building. He's been working a LOT this week, which makes for a wife and 16-month-old missing him very badly. But thank goodness these times ebb and flow, and I'm so thankful he is one of those people who actually ADORES his job. :) I didn't know what to do with myself last night, with no LOST to watch and all. What's up with that? They love to play mind games. Instead, I spent the evening on iTunes making a mammoth list of songs and albums I pine for. The list was two things: 1) very long (longer than I'd predicted), and 2) very, very varied (which didn't surprise me). Let's just say that I had everything from Dolly Parton (don't ask) to Brian McKnight to Sheryl Crow to Cream. I think I covered all the bases. Why, oh, why, do I have to be so spread out in my musical tastes? When people ask me what I like...

The real estate game, I mean. First showing went well. So well, we received an offer within an hour. Don't clap yet. The individual actually offended me as a proud housekeeper by offering close to $20,000 less than our asking price. What? We're currently in the counter-offer battle, and I have a feeling it will end today, probably without either of us winning. But time will tell, and we may be surprised yet. I had a feeling that things would get sticky, I just didn't expect it so soon. You think after buying and selling three two previous houses I'd be used to this process, but I'm not. It still makes me squirm. So that's that. It's finally February, and I'm so glad. It feels great to be one step closer to springtime.