Meg{Moir}

So friends, I decided to take one more step down the road to complete narcissism and created my very own Amazon shop*, full of things I would really like you to buy me.

I mean, sure, you can buy this stuff for yourself, but your mom always told you that it was better to give than to receive, right?

I just started adding things to the store, so it’s a little bare right now, but I think you’ll agree that everything there is lovely and I have wonderful taste.

So go ahead and do a little shopping, one for you…two for me, and let me know what you think.

*Contains affiliate links.

Let’s see, my weekend went something like this:

Friday night: Patrick got home, we talked about doing something fun but got sucked into Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family.

Saturday: Patrick goes to check on his patients, comes home and we head out to run errands. Patrick gets called in for an emergency and doesn’t get back home until 9:30 that night.

Sunday: Patrick goes to check on his patients, comes home and immediately gets called in for an emergency. He gets home around 5.

But then…but then! there is a going away party for an intern, and we get to go. Social interaction, yay! We had a great time at the cook out, came home and after a little more Harry Potter, called it a night.

The end.

I need a reason to leave the house.  But enough about me, this is for you.

How to Simplify Your Life When You Love Your Stuff – zen habits.  Dear Husband, please read.

An Awesomely Bad Sentence - The Atlantic.  The 2010 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.   You may know the writer Bulwer-Lytton as the daddy of “It was a dark and stormy night…”.  Yes, those words were actually the beginning of a novel, a very bad novel that began like this:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

This year’s winner wasn’t much better, but the competition is now tongue-in-cheek, purposely as bad as possible.

5 Thing to Make with Crepe Paper – How About Orange.  How about adorable.

Carmel-By-The-Sea Is For Me – Centsational Girl.  I’m so glad that we stopped here during our honeymoon drive down Highway 1.  This town is a dream.

One of the unexpected perks of being temporarily (I hope) unemployed is that I get to experience Le Tour de France in all its time-delayed glory.  I have fallen hard for the French countryside, the colorful kits of the teams, and maybe Tyler Ferrar.

At three weeks of racing, the Tour lasts just about as long as my attention span for things I’m interested in on the fringe (see: Johnny Weir, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, and selling everything and moving to a sheep farm).

I’m beginning to think the universe and Google Maps played some cruel joke on us and we accidentally moved to Seattle.  The rain. won’t. stop.

Rain, still.

This has been the view outside our front window all week.  Our grass needs a good mowing, we need to shovel the dirt out from in front of the driveway, and our dogs need to stop coming inside and muddying up my floors.  I have never swept so much in my life.

For some reason, every time I look out the window, I’m reminded of the animated version of Casey At Bat, the last scene where everything is rain soaked and gray…

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

But first, a picture of the happiest baby on the planet, Emmy Jackson, and proud daddy Bryan on his first Father’s Day!

Mom, dad, Patrick and I got to share a big Father’s Day breakfast with Wendy, Bryan and Emmy, who were in town for a baptism.  After fawning over Emmy, who smiled and giggled the whole time, it was time to say good bye and get on the road.

Patrick and I started out in the 26 foot monster truck (we shared room with our friend Molly, who is also interning at LSU, but honestly, we have too much stuff).  As we pulled out onto the highway, I asked Patrick, “So, we just moved out of the first house we shared together.  How do you feel about that?  Are you sad? Are you excited? Can you believe it?”  When I don’t want to think about how I’m feeling, I ask a lot of questions.  It gives me a pass from thinking, and gives the impression that I’m concerned about others feelings.

We planned our morning to include a stop in Belmont for lunch, and a little after 12:30 our caravan crowded into the cul-de-sac of Patrick’s parents neighborhood.  We had burgers and chips, hugs all around, and were back on the road.

South Carolina: not much to say, except that it (the highway) looks just like North Carolina.

Georgia:  still looks like North Carolina, but we did see one really big hill outside of Atlanta.

Driving around Atlanta, I swallowed once and said to myself (I was in the Envoy alone at this point), “well, crap.”  My throat was getting sore fast.  This always happens when I don’t get enough sleep, and sleep had been seriously lacking for the last week or so.  Soon enough we were at our hotel, where our dogs had their first elevator experience.  It was amusing.

Up early the next morning, we continued on through Alabama (looks just like good old NC) and Mississippi (you guessed it) before finally, finally, FINALLY getting to Baton Rouge around 4 pm.  We found the house easily enough and couldn’t wait to get a look inside.

The house is cute.  I can’t say I loved it when we first got inside (remember, we hadn’t seen any pics up to this point except for the exterior.  The biggest downside was that everything was really dirty.  The previous tenant moved out over a month ago, so I expected some dusty-ness, but I don’t think they actually cleaned anything for at least a month, or five, before they moved out.  We had a job.

First though, there was a truck to unload.  Nothing really exciting to talk about here, we sweated off seven pounds of water weight and stacked boxes and furniture practically to the ceiling inside.

Paige came to help (bless her) and we did get the 2 beds set up with sheets and pillows.  After a very long day, everyone slept hard….

Until about 7 the next morning, when I heard the vacuum cutting into my sleep.  I looked for a clock, but we hadn’t gotten that far the night before.  I was pretty confused as to why someone was up cleaning already as I looked to the window and could tell it was still early morning.  I drifted back to sleep until the vacuum woke me up again, this time right outside the door.  Finally I got up and saw that it wasn’t the vacuum, but the carpet cleaner.  Where there was no carpet.  What’s going on here anyways?

Dad was manning the machine and mom popped her head ar0und the end of the hallway to explain.  We had a plumber come out the night before to fix the toilet, which was, I’m sure, original to the house and would not stop running.  Well, he replaced everything on the toilet, except the safety valve, and said that in his write up he would recommend a new toilet.  Good.  That thing was nasty.  So back to the safety valve, which was still 50 years old.  I don’t understand these things, but what happened was the toilet somehow started leaking in the middle of the night, and did so for 7 hours or so until dad got up at 6:30.  By this point there was half an inch of water standing in pretty much the whole house.  Dad had gotten the carpet cleaner to suck up all the water.  Which woke me up.  It all made sense.

This has been a pretty big headache and there’s no need to go into all the details except to say that we still aren’t settled completely into the house because the 3rd bedroom had to have all the carpet pulled out, a humidifer run in it for 3 days, and we are still (2 weeks in) waiting on new carpet.  Yeah.  There are bookcases and boxes and boxes and boxes waiting to go in that room, but I’m beginning to think that we are going to live with all this stuff crammed behind the couch for the next year.  Or until Tuesday, when the carpet people come, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

It wasn’t all fun and games though, on Thursday we took a break from the house and went fishing.

Me and Dad.  Riding on Lake Pontchartrain.

Mom and Dad, still chillin.

Patrick, playing camera shy.

Oh yeah, look who reeled in the big fish.  You’re welcome guys.  Without me, you wouldn’t have had dinner.

Patrick caught this big nasty, but Captain Dustin said when Black Drum get this big their meat gets to mushy to eat and they fill up with worms.  So we put it back in the lake.  And my fish is still the winner!

Me and the momma, who will be so happy I put this picture of us up.  It was a long day.

Saturday we had to take mom and dad to the airport.  We’d been hanging out for a week, and it felt like both the shortest and longest week ever.  Hugs all around, and they were gone.  Just like that.  Boo!

Since they flew out of New Orleans, Patrick and I headed down to the French Quarter for the day.

2 things about mornings in French Quarter:

1) Nothing is open before noon-ish, except the bars.

2) So it is perfectly acceptable to have a Bloody Mary for breakfast.

But first, pictures in front of Jackson Square

And maybe a little pouting because its 10 am and already so. freaking. hot.

Royale Street.

And you know we took the carriage ride.

After our guided tour we headed for home, air conditioning, and our puppies.  It was good to be home.

So that’s where my pictures end, but here is what else we have been up to:

-Patrick has been called in for 6 emergencies so far, including 3 in the past 18 hours

-I have applied for 8 million jobs

-Paige gave us a great driving tour of the city and showed us the best place to watch fireworks

-We bought a lawn mower

-I sweep our floors every single day.  Tile floors shows everything.

-Our dogs love the back yard.  It’s too hot for us to enjoy it.

Ok, I think you’re all caught up now.  Whew.

If there is one thing Patrick and I do well, it is the whirlwind trip.  With this last trip up to Wisconsin behind us, we have pretty much perfected the art.

This trip, as you may have guessed from the title, was for my Disney partner in crime, Melissa’s wedding celebration to Paul.  That’s right, wedding celebration, not wedding.  Because they actually got married on New Years Eve, this was just the party.  If you think I’m crazy for going that far for a party a couple of days before moving five states away, then you have no idea how much this girl means to me.

Our mini adventure started with a 4am wake up call on Friday.  We rushed to get ready and head to the airport for a 6:35am take off.  Everything went well enough, except that Patrick bought his pocket knife and had to throw it away at security.  Oops!  It was too early to think.  We made it to Memphis just fine, but after sitting on the plane there for half an hour or so, we were informed that we had to get off the plane because the toilets weren’t working.  Apparently you can’t take off for a flight without a working lavatory.  Whatever, it was a 90 minute flight.  We could have made it.  Everyone had to get off the plane and we waited about an hour before the little situation was fixed and we were finally on our way.  In Milwaukee we rented a car and got on the road for a 2 hour cruise up to Neenah.  P.S.  The Wisconsin countryside is beautiful in the summer, if you like rolling hills and picturesque barns and windmills.  Too cool!

We planned on getting to the hotel around noon and napping until time to get ready for the wedding, but our toilet delay made us 2 hours late for that.  Instead we walked in to the lobby just moments before Paul and Mel had their first look.  It was fate!  All of the wedding party was down there so it was good to see everyone before the party started.

You should meet Paul.  Really.  He is the nicest guy in the world and despite the fact that his bride was just moments away, he gave us huge hugs, made sure we got checked in ok and showed us where we could get maps of the area and could not stop grinning.

After watching the first look and giving hugs all around we did make it up to the room to crash for a couple of hours.  Soon it was time to get ready for the party.  We thoroughly enjoyed their untraditional (but totally Paul-and-Mel) ceremony, and made our way to dinner.  It was a great night of catching up with Disney buds Brooke and Paige and their respective boy toys.  We ate, we danced, we talked, we took pictures.  By we, I mean Brooke.   Who has not posted them to facebook yet, ahem, cough cough.

I did take these:

Which turned out terrible, but hey, it proves we were there!

Too soon, Patrick and I had to call it a night.  We had another wake up call at 5:15, so to bed we went!

Paul and Mel, we were honored to be there with you, have a ball on your honeymoon and get your butts down to Baton Rouge!

I thought I would mix things up a bit this week and do a weekend in preview since we have a super-stuffed one coming and I can 110% guarentee you that it would be forever before I was actually able to talk about it (which I definitely still will, it’s just going to take a while).

So, here’s the plan:

Friday morning: Flying to Wisconsin.  It’s Hey Mel’s wedding day!

Me and Mel (and Jim being a creeper) circa 2005.  Holy hair, batman!

Friday night: Watching my sweet Melissa get married, partying through the night with her and my Disney roomates that were able to make the trip.   We love a good reunion!

Saturday morning: Flying back home to Raleigh.

Saturday night: Finish loading the moving truck, spend our last night in Raleigh.

Sunday morning: Moving out!  Drive to Atlanta.

Sunday night: Crash.

Monday morning: Atlanta to Baton Rouge. 

Monday night: Move our stuff into our new home sweet home.  Crash.

See what I mean, we’re gonna be busy little bees.  I’m exhausted just thinking about it, but hey, we do what we gotta do!

Hope to see you here by Wednesday, even if just for a quick “We made it!” post. 

Any prayers, good vibes or well wishes you can send our way during our travels would be much appreciated, there’s a lot of road to cover between here and Baton Rouge.

Hot weather and paint fumes and furniture disasters kept us sleeping on the couch for a few nights.  Patrick is hiding there under his blanket fort.

Amos does not approve of being left on the floor.