Parting ways

I said goodbye to four of our fellow orphans today.  Dave, Annie, Matt, and Ryan are all headed back west tomorrow morning.  Technically, Wreck-It Ryan moved back to Oregon a while ago, and was back in Texas just to pick up his pickup and the rest of his belongings.  Everyone spent most of the day packing up Dave's house and trying to fit everything in a giant U-haul, the trailer, and the back of the Raptor, along with Annie's stuff, Matt's stuff, and some of Ryan's.  They have a lot of stuff, and it has been moved around quite a few times in the past few months, and I think everyone will be happy to feel settled again.  Hopefully they will be able to go back home and not be shuffled around as much.  But I will miss them.  I hugged both Dave and Annie before I left today, and I felt like I should try to say something nice to them, but nothing normal came to mind.  I wanted to thank Annie for befriending me, and explaining things to me when I had no idea what all the guys were talking about.  I am glad that she was here, and she made my transition a little easier.  I wanted thank Dave for everything he has done for us.  Making sure we all had Thanksgiving dinner, taking us wake boarding, seeing that we are all taken care of.  I wanted to tell him that I understand why Jesse would follow him anywhere, and that I have a lot of respect for him, and I appreciate what he has invested in my husband.  But I'm not good at talking, and I figured it would be awkward anyway, so I just told them to drive safe, and went on my way.  I tried to get everybody to come have dinner, instead of just eating the last cold hot dogs that Dave had in the fridge, but it was to no avail, even though my house is now full of their food.
Jesse and I inherited a giant tote filled with the contents of Dave and Annie's freezers, a good portion of Dave's cleaning supplies, four stone coasters that apparently will ruin anything you put them on, effectively defeating the purpose, a new refrigerator, and a bag of cat food.  I was strongly leaning towards taking a cat, hence the cat food, but when the time came I didn't feel like chasing one down and I just wanted to go home, curl up with hot pockets and redi whip, and watch whatever I could find in redbox.
And so tomorrow morning I will be one of four Oregonians in Breckenridge.  That's not counting Jesse, because he is still in Ohio.  His week was stretched into three, which meant he was stuck in a hotel room, all by himself, on his birthday, and I had to drive to Fort Worth without him so I could go to Costco and buy things like 10 lbs of onions, which seemed like a great idea at the time....

"It was a....great deal!"

My plan was to chop them up along with carrots and celery and freeze them in little bags so that when I want to make a pot pie or a shepherds pie or soup or something I have all my veggies ready to go!  Of course, 10 lbs of onions is still going to last like, 6 months, and now I have no freezer space, thanks to Dave and Annie and Costco.  I have so much food.  It makes me a little bit ashamed, especially since right now I am all alone and working enough that I  basically have stopped cooking.  But it's all canned or frozen, so it'll last forever, right?

My kingdom for a hot tub!

Even better if I could have a couple sisters to hang out in it with me, some ice cream, and fantastic jazz music...Or we could add a southern flair and sip sweet tea and listen to good ol' country.  Either way, it would be beautiful.
There was a big cheer competition somewhere this weekend, and some baseball thing, too, so all the regular weekend people for party planet are out of town.  Naturally, I volunteered to work Friday night, and Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night, which then lengthened into Sunday afternoon as well, and now I am tired.  I was wanting to come home and soak in the bathtub whilst reading some good
historical fiction (as a substitute for aforementioned hot tub), but when the pipes upstairs burst last time Jesse shut all the water off up there, so I no longer have a bathtub, and he won't let me turn it on while he's gone.
Ah yes, Jesse's off again.  To Ohio and temperatures around 15 as the expected high.  He wasn't really looking forward to that, especially as it's finally getting back into the 70's here.  But he made it alright, and so far has not reported any frostbite.
My husband, the hero, off to save the world, one rifle at a time!  Meanwhile, I am feeling like a bachelor.  He's been gone for ten hours and I just finished eating a can of mini beef raviolis with my last clean fork.  Thank goodness for the foresight of my husband, who bought 10000 cans of them and spaghetti O's for days like this.  Without them I'd be finishing off the oreos for dinner, and maybe the last slice of two day old pizza.  At least I probably would have drank some of the milk with them, though.  I should have known better than to buy a whole gallon right before Jesse left for a week.  Oh well.

Anyway, that's the update so far.  I had fun at the birthday parties and stuff this weekend.  My feet are swollen, but it was good.  I spent an hour or so this morning playing monkey in the middle with a bunch of girls that have decided that we're buddies.  It's nice to know that the kids like me.  Even when I dump full cups of pickle juice all over them.  These kids buy cups of pickle juice for a dollar.  How crazy is that?

"They're so happy they don't know how miserable they are!"

It was cold here in good ol' Texas yesterday.  Didn't get above 20 all day, to the best of my knowledge.  Which, of course, meant that the pipes in the kitchen froze (again) along with a mixing bowl full of water.  Did you know that when you make chocolate chip cookies with frozen shortening, the dough ends up very dry and crumbly?  Not daunted, you have made cookies many times before, and know how to handle dry dough, you add another egg.  And it's still dry and crumbly.  So you stare at the recipe for a while, and think about it, and then realize that frozen fat isn't very sticky, so you put the whole bowl in the microwave for a while.  Anyway, short story kept to its proper length, the cookies turned out okay, once they were baked, but my hands got incredibly chilly in the process.  Apparently, when you know the right people, a batch of cookies can get you all kinds of things.  Like your taxes done!  We are very fortunate to be good friends with a good accountant who likes good cookies.  We did have some issues, trying to find all the paperwork (neither of us seem to have any information about the previous year's taxes...oops), but in the end, after 9 phone calls from Jesse, a trip into town, a batch of cookies, and an extra hour spent at work (on Jesse's end), it's all done!

Life is good.  But it is still cold, hanging out in the high 20's today.  And real snow!  Not that nasty sleet that we got over the weekend.  It was so nice and crisp I went for a nice little jog this morning (just to remind myself how out of shape I am), and thought my fingers were going to freeze off, even with the hobo gloves!

"ooo baby it's a long way down to the end of the ro-oad-a long way down, and long way doooowwnnn!"

 Side note: This blog looks incredibly different when I am writing it in the little writing space and when it is actually published.  Getting these pictures lined up in any orderly fashion is no cakewalk!  I should go back to writing all the HTML myself.  It would probably be easier and make me feel smarter.
Back to life in Breckenridge.  The ladies at the library now not only recognize me, know that I read incredibly fast (aka have no life), but also notice when my hair is done differently than usual, and now have my name and number taped to the counter so they can just punch it in and not have to look me up every other day.  So I guess I am getting to know people.  I'm also working at Party Planet tonight and allllll next weekend, too, which will be good for my sanity.  And by "allllll" I mean from 10:30 am to 11:30 pm on Saturday.  Woot!  It was going to be great when I thought Jesse was going to be out of town, but now he's not leaving till the next week, so all I'm really accomplishing is totally using up my entire weekend right before he leaves.  That and getting out of the house and getting paid for it, of course.
Yes, they are shipping Jesse off into the Wild Blue Yonder yet again.  This time to Ohio, or something, to work on somebody's guns.  I don't know.  This time also for an undetermined amount of time.  I've already polished all the floors and scrubbed the refrigerator and started my tiny garden (which is actually growing!!
Yes, growing in the bathroom, trying to keep them from freezing), so I'm not sure how I will occupy my life this time, but I'm sure I'll find a way.  Hopefully I'll work a lot.  Maybe I'll actually leave the house of my own accord and go hang out with Mel and Kian.  Social encounters?  What a novel idea!

Anyway, that's about all the excitingness I have to share in my life.  Except that I can now plank for 5 minutes?  These are the accomplishments of a bored Rianna.  Parsley and planks.  Could be worse.