snow in the south

one of the things i always loved about snow when i was growing up (other than days off school) was how quiet everything got outside when it was snowing. like, the crazy, busy world just came to a halt for a few hours or days.

our house is like that now. the quarry and factory are shut down so the constant hum of their work is gone. and it's just cozy and warm inside, but blustery outside. i can't remember the last time it snowed here. certainly not since we bought our house which was 2 years ago. we'll see how much we actually get.

so far, here's a peak:

everything you hear about dss

7 phone calls
over 5 weeks of waiting
2 of the same application packets received in the mail

still no movement forward with the fostering process

ahh, dss, i would like to defend you, but so far you're everything we've always heard about you.

another thing for the list

i told you i was going to be adding to the list. here's another thing that people say that really bothers me:

5) when i say to someone that i'm not feeling well, have a headache, or any sort of minor ailment and they respond with "ohhhh!?" wink, wink. nudge, nudge. "that may not be a bad thing!" meaning, if you're not feeling well you surely must be pregnant. i've gotten these types of responses starting immediately after i got married. and they've steadily continued. in fact, someone with whom i work and who even knows that we have fertility issues said something along these lines to me yesterday.

sheesh!

66th

wishes today for a happy 66th wedding anniversary to my grandparents! i tried to find a picture in my flickr collection where just the 2 of them were together. i found this old one from the year before they got married:


aren't they beautiful and happy!?

but i couldn't find a more recent one. maybe that's their secret to a successful marriage for this many years? they're never alone together!

so instead, i found this shot of the whole family at my first cousin, nick's, marriage in october. this picture might actually be more appropriate than one of just them, since without them this whole family wouldn't be here.


obviously, grandmom and grandad are the 2 elderly people on the right. they still look beautiful and happy!

thanks, gradmom and grandad, for our family!

why don't you have kids yet?

not that i have many readers. but a good many of the small number who read this blog already know this. but i've never actually written about it publicly and some people don't know. baldman and i are "sub-fertile." this is a major part of our lives and i've had times where i've wanted to write about it here, but hadn't because i'd not formally "unveiled" it to the larger community. so i'm just going to state it clearly so i can choose to either write or not write about it as i'm in the mood. and i'm writing about it not because i expect or even want sympathy. it's just that it's part of our lives and i'm trying to deal with it.

i'm not going to go into the details because...well... it's private. but basically we've been trying to have a baby for over 3 years. we finally went to the doctor this year and were told that there are issues that make it not impossible, but difficult for us to get pregnant. we could use "technology" (so-to-speak) to assist (i.e. intrauterine insemination or in vitro fertilization) but we're fairly certain that those are not routes we are interested in going.

believe it or not, there are a lot of good things that have come out of this whole "ordeal." but sometimes it's easy to get stuck in our own little world and think of only the difficulties. at times it feels like everyone's gain is our loss. or that all that exists in the world is us and our "problems." so we are working really hard to not let this happen. we have to make a conscious choice every day to remember that there are bigger things in the world and more important things than just our issues. it's so easy to become insular. and we try to remember that there are things we can do to turn our frustration and sadness into something good.

one of the ways that we are trying to turn our frown upside down (without going to toys r us) is that we are thinking about fostering a child. we're still in the very early stages of this process so we don't know where it will lead, but i'm super excited about this possibility and it just seems like something that is so important to do. i'll write more about that in a later post.

i want to end this post with a list of some of the most annoying, frustrating and insensitive things that people can say to a couple who are having fertility issues (whether those issues are known or unknown by the questioner). i think it's important for people to know what we find offensive so people will just stop saying these things:

1) "why don't you have kids?" or "when are you going to have kids?" or "have you thought about having one of these?" (as they shove their kid in your face)
when is it okay to ask about people's sex lives? cause i kinda feel like that's what people are asking when they ask this question. by the way, there's an assumption in this question that everyone wants to have kids and that's not always true. there's also a weird sigh of relief that people have when we say that we want them but we are having issues. it's almost as if people are relieved that we're "normal" in wanting kids because there's a reason we don't have any yet.

2) "do you not want kids?"
again, there is an assumption here and a judgment. as in "why would you not want kids?" and "if you want kids, why don't you have them yet?" and, let me say here. yes, i do want kids (obviously). but that being said, i will not feel like my life is incomplete without having them. i will certainly be sad and i will mourn that loss, but i will still have a good life. many people before me have survived without kids and many people after me will do the same.

2) "just stop trying. i knew someone who couldn't get pregnant and then they adopted and got pregnant"...or..."they were told they couldn't have kids and stopped trying and got pregnant"...or any variation of this.
it's really obnoxious when people say "just stop trying" because it totally negates the fact that there are reasons why people have troubles. it's not because we don't know how to get pregnant or because we are trying too hard. yes, there are people who get pregnant after they stop trying. but it doesn't make me feel better to know this.

3) "oh, you're having difficulty getting pregnant? have you tried.....?"
unless you have dr. before your name or md after your name, and those credentials are associated with with medical science related to fertility, you're not an expert so please keep your advice to yourself. plus, people who say this generally don't know what the issues are. how do they know if it's problems on the man's side or the woman's side or both sides?? and how can they give advice when they don't even know the problems?

4) around the holidays when someone says "do you have kids?... oh you don't? you know, the holidays are really not the holidays unless you have a kid around."
most of the holidays i celebrate are about Jesus. so maybe they mean the baby Jesus at Christmas??

i'm sure there are more things that people say that annoy me but this is all i can think of right now. if i think of more, rest assured i'll probably post them.

are you aware of the girl cell in you?

julie and julia

tonight i just finished watching julie and julia. i think it might be my new favorite movie. so cute.

look what's new

i'm not a "new year's resolution" type of person, generally. i am all too aware of the fact that i'm just as likely to stick to or not stick to a new idea, diet, regiment, etc at any point in the year. so i tend to just skip the ceremony on the 1st of the year.

but this year, it suddenly hit me, i'm not getting any younger. well, duh. and i'll just say right here that i don't think that i'm particularly old. that's not the point.

i had a lot of driving time to think to myself over the holidays. and i realized that if not now, then when? there are a lot of silly little things, and some bigger not-so-silly things, that i've been wavering over for years. so i'm going to try to make a concerted effort this year to charge ahead and do some things that i've been wanting to do for a while, despite what i might fear people will think about me.

so, today, after 10 years of wanting to do it but feeling silly about it, i went and got my nose pierced. such a trifle thing to spend so much thought on. and, in the end it was just so easy. but here it is, my new nose ring (and my little (big) kitty):



and a close-up:

wtf

i seriously love these guys. i mean, their videos are amazing.

when they first came out with this a few years ago i thought they were great.

then i saw this one. and i was mightily impressed again.

then, when we were in chicago erica introduced us to this one. more brilliance.

and tonight, she posted about them again on her blog and linked to this video. seriously, people? it made me so happy. i got teary.

can you give?

man, this haiti stuff is really upsetting. that country just can't catch a break can it. so devastating. since last night when i first heard about the earthquake i just can't get it out of my mind.

if you can donate anything, now's a time to do it. i'm partial to partner's in health. but npr has a good listing of other reputable places to give here.

post holiday holiday party recap

i'm still behind on posting pictures from our trip. but i wanted to get these few shots from our party up before too much time passed.

this years party was a blast, as it always is. this past saturday we had friends come from as far as the upstate to take place in the festivities. the hubby and i haven't done a count, but we guess we had maybe 35 people show up throughout the course of the night. and the cold did not deter some people from enjoying the fire in the back yard and having a s'more or 2, though we didn't get any outside shots.

thanks, everyone, for the great times and for making the holiday party a success!

christmas in chicago

even though the holidays seem long gone in some ways, we're still in the christmas mode here in our house. tonight is our annual post-holiday holiday party. (7:00 tonight at our place. please stop by.)

and in honor of our holiday spirit, here are some shots of our christmas in chicago.

we broke our drive up into 2 days (well, more accurately an evening and a full day) so the drive was much easier. and it was a very scenic landscape to watch pass by as we went from mountains to plains. very beautiful. so we pulled into chi-town around dinner time on the 23rd. speaking of dinner time, big shout out to team gerdes for making such fantastic meals for us! steaming hot red beans and rice awaited us upon our arrival. yum, comforting.


what's a visit to the gerdes house without playing with toys?

christmas eve was great. other than a little grocery shopping, we mostly spent the day hanging out around the apartment. then that night everybody went to evening mass and then out to the most delicious ethiopian food! yowza!


check out my man toasting with some chai.


the family at ras dashen


ok, i know it looks like doody here, but seriously, folks, that stuff is good eats!

christmas day was really fun. santa was good to everyone. and we had another fantastic home cooked meal. we spent much of the afternoon playing the wii. that was hilarious. we played rayman raving rabbids and me and the hubby spent the next 2 days with sore "wii-arms." we also did some of the wii fitness stuff and i got my wii age. i was the youngest in the group, i'm proud to say, and i clocked in at 38 years old. guess that's still not great considering that i'm 6 years younger than that. we also watched a few movies, because what is christmas without a christmas story?


erica and tricia excited to open presents!


opening gifts


dinner, yum!


the siblings playing the wii


me and fuzzy in a serious competition

when people hear that we were in chicago for christmas they always ask, didn't it snow? so, yes, it did snow. see:



the day after christmas we took a trip to see goober, the dog that tricia gave away to a man in chicago. we also had another fantastic lunch, this time at an algerian crepe place.


goober, the snow dog


outside the crepe place

and on the last day that we were there, erica and fuzzy threw a party in our honor. it was so sweet. a bunch of their friends bared the cold to come and see us. what an honor!


the kitchen was the place to be because it had the mulled wine!


of course, the array of food was delicious


megan especially liked the pickled okra


katie and rine-stone chatting it up


the kiddies running wild in the house full of toys!

more pictures from chicago in my flickr photo set.

spicy tofu bento bowl

thanks to vegetarian times, last night i made one of the *best* meals ever. my original thought in making it was so that the hubby could utilize the mae ploy thai sweet chili sauce (which was a christmas gift to him from yours truly). but the meal was so good, he didn't even use the sauce. truly yum.

make it tonight:

spicy tofu bento bowl

spicy tofu
1/4 c. soy sauce*
1/4 c. chile-garlic sauce**
2 tbs dark sesame oil (i used light)
14 oz extra firm dofu, drained and cubed
5 green onions, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
1/4 c. plain yogurt
2 tbs lemon jice

salad
1/4 c. soy sauce
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs mnced fresh ginger
1 tsp. chile-garlic sauce
2 c. cooked brown rice
4 1/2 c. mixed baby greens
2 carrots, peeled
1 cucumber, sliced (1 1/2 cups)
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
1 tbs. toasted sesame seeds***

1. to make spicy tofu: whisk together soy sauce, chile-garlic sauce, and sesame oil in bowl. heat skillet over medum heat. dip tofu in soy sauce mixture; place tofu in skillet and cook 10 minutes, or until browned. cool 10 minutes. add green onions, yogurt, and lemon juice to remaining chile mixture, toss with tofu.

2. to make salad: whisk together soy sauce, lemon juice, giner, and chile-garlic sauce in bowl. mound rice in serving bowls. top with greens. shave carrot strips over top with vegetable peeler. top with tofu, cucumber, and avocado. sprinkle with sesame seeds; serve with soy sauce mixture.


*surprisingly, this was the only ingredient i did not have in my kitchen. but i didn't realize it until i already started cooking. so i had to cut open all the little take-out packages of soy sauce that we had in the cupboard. guess we eat take-out chinese a lot because i had more than enough packets to make this recipe. (i used about 10 packets, if you find yourself in the same situation as me)

**i don't know if they had a specific chile-garlic sauce in mind, but i just happened to have kikkoman thai style chile sauce in the fridge and that worked great.

***i actually forgot the sesame seeds when i originally made this. i put them in the toaster, but forgot to turn it on and then totally forgot they were there until after dinner. it was just as good without the seeds, but i'm sure they would've made a tasty addition.

professor reid

congrats to the hubby who just got an adjunct teaching gig at the university in town!

i'll revel in a few days of celebration for what an amazing, talented, and smart husband i have before i start to freak out at how much work he has ahead of him.

christmas past

we finally returned from our cross-country family road trip. i didn't explicitly state on the blog that we were going anywhere. i'm always a little overly cautious about putting too much info on the blog before or during a trip saying we're out of town. i'm just a little paranoid that the information will be used against me and someone will rob our house. too many robberies growing up in philly, i guess.

we drove to chicago and spent 4 days at chris's sister and brother-in-law's place. and then we drove from chi to mississippi to spend some time with the extendeds. then, we returned on saturday. it was a whirl-wind trip but we had a fantastic time in chicago, and got a lot of visiting in and a lot accomplished in mississippi. i'll be posting pictures and sharing stories over the next little while.

before we inevitably head out of town each year for christmas, the hubby and i always open the presents from the other side of the family, those gifts that are not coming on the trip with us. here are some shots of that sweet little mini-early christmas.

getting nice and cozy to open gifts


baldman opening a gift


he got a target gift card which also doubles as a cool board game from my brother and his family


he also got a pepe the king prawn book. he's infatuated with that muppet these days.


mokey got a catnip shaker that she LOVES! (you're supposed to use it to shake catnip on things and let her roll on that. but we just put the whole shaker on the ground and let her go to town.)


a tired me models and shows off the waldie family gifts (the book was written by my brother)

there are more pictures of our pre-christmas christmas at home in columbia on our flickr page.

merry christmas

merry and blessed christmas to all my friends and family!

we have been eating and enjoying family and eating and watching movies and eating and playing the wii and eating. oh, and drinking tasty bevs. and did i mention eating? it's been a fabulous christmas so far!

we'll post pictures and share more stories at a later date.

happy birthday, hubby

i like this post that baldman's sister posted in honor of his birthday. so i'll just re-post it.

happy birthday, sweety. i love you.

christmas party

on saturday the hubby and i went to a costume christmas party. we had to dress up like our favorite christmas movie characters. baldman went as flick from a christmas story. he wore his coat and a scarf, gloves, and hat. and he constructed a big pole out of christmas wrapping paper empties*. and he pretended to get his tongue stuck on the pole. he was a hit of the party.

i got some amazing polyester pants, a yellow sweater and created a dickey out of a black turtleneck and went as cousin eddie from national lampoon's christmas vacation. i even went so far as to have a little "package" because of that hilarious scene when he and clark are grocery shopping and he's sticking out everywhere.

well, first of all, my costume didn't look exactly like what uncle eddie wore, and i didn't really know anyone at the party. so most people didn't know that i was in costume. so for, like, the first 1/2 hour - 45 minutes i was hanging out not only in costume, but also with a penis! and NO ONE said anything to me about it! not only that, but i could see people checking it out! i felt like such an ass, so i finally went to the bathroom and took it out.

after a while, people caught on to the fact that i was in costume. and eventually i brought up the subject of my "little christmas vacation package." turns out, most people noticed. but they didn't say anything about it! i made a lot of jokes about it and it ended up being a fun time.

there were also 2 other cousin eddies, one other flick, and someone dressed as the leg lamp from a christmas story. come to think of it, most of the people who were dressed up were either santa (sexy, lady santa of course) or from vacation or a christmas story. either we're unimaginative or people of our era all have the same favorite movies.

i stole these shots from someone's facebook page.





*wrapping paper empties are affectionately called "ha-ha's" in the reid family

gringo star plug

my talented cousins make up two of the four band members in gring star. they're amazing and you should check them out live if you've not done so previously. (or buy their album. whatever.)

gringo star was recently approached by tommy hilfiger asking them to put their song all y'all in an ad of theirs. the boys (as we in the family call them) were a little reluctant to "sell out" to advertisement, but when they realized that they could fund the recording of their next album with the profits, they went ahead with it.

check out the ad:


(thanks to my brother for making the copy of this video available.)

we're ready for christmas

i finished all my shopping and put the packages in the mail yesterday (100 bucks, thank you very much). our tree is up and most of the christmas cards have been mailed. soon we'll be setting sail to colder climates to celebrate with family. woot woot!

when we were home in nj for thanksgiving my (just turned) 8 year old niece made us a beautiful picture of a fireplace with stockings hung with care. so we added that to our cozy, christmas living room scene.



mmm, doesn't that just show the warmth of the holiday?

thanksgiving in nj

sorry for the delayed post on this. i finally uploaded pictures onto flickr from our thanksgiving trip to my mom's. we had a great time seeing everyone. we were fortunate to have my sister come down for thanksgiving and then my brother and his girls come down for the weekend. so we got a good visit in and enjoyed eating, running around downtown cape may, and resting.

you can see the pictures i took from our visit here.

week's end treat

this was a tough week in our household so last night the hubby and i decided to treat ourselves to dinner and a movie. unimaginably we'd lived in columbia for 6 1/2 years and had yet to have dinner together at gervais and vine.* i'd been bugging baldman for a while to go and last night was the night!

of course, it did not disappoint. we enjoyed garlic-parmesan fries with spicy aoioli, marinated manchego cheese with thyme and garlic, ensalada de la fresa balsamico (mixed greens with balsamic strawberries, candied almonds and gorgonzola), and the roman pizza (pesto, goat cheese, roasted red peppers and olives with marinara). my mouth is watering just typing this.

after dinner we retired to our couch to watch rudolph the red nosed reindeer online. i'd not seen that probably since i was in elementary school.

the only unfortunate part about the night was that sometime during the movie my throat started hurting and hasn't let up since. i've turned into a little sicky since last night. but at least we were able to enjoy our treat before this came along.

*in the interest of full disclosure, i had been there one time without the hubby for a slow food meeting. but that was still like 2 years ago!

my new favorite food

jerusalem artichokes.

smokey, yet subtle. just like i like my men.

?

seriously though, so good.

last week i made this. then i went to the market this weekend to buy more so i could make this. deeeeelish!

smitten kitchen never steers me wrong

i made this for dinner tonight and it is fantastic. i tweeked it a little based on what i had in the fridge and cut it in 1/3 because i didn't want to spend a gajillion dollars on gruyer and then not like it enough to feed myself 12 times. turns out i couldn't made the whole thing because i really like it!

lady's weekend

the hubby's out of town. i have a six pack of beer in the fridge and publix sushi for dinner. i'm psyched!* i'd be even more psyched if the library didn't close so dog-gone early on a friday night so i could've picked up my reserved dvd of sex in the city season four.** oh well, carrie, samantha, miranda, and charlotte. i'll have to do without you for one night. i'm sure there's something on hulu that i'll enjoy instead.


*by the way, i don't mean this to sound like i'm psyched that my husband is out of town. but in all honesty, as much as i love him and his company, it's just kind nice to have my own agenda for a few days. it'll make me appreciate him that much more when he comes home on sunday.


**i missed the library because i was out shopping. what else is a woman to do when her man's out of town, but shop? those who know me know that that comment was my attempt at sarcasm. i was actually christmas shopping, thank you very much.***


***full disclosure though, i did buy myself a dress at ross.

it's not finished, but...

it's getting closer.





we've still got to paint the trim and touch up the paint around the entire bathroom, hang the towel racks and curtains, and have the grout refilled. but it sure looks good.

and it's great to shower in one's own house. that's an understatement. it's fabulous!

though, let me just take a moment to say that one of the major bright sides of this whole ordeal was experiencing the generosity and kindness of our friends in this community. we had many doors (bathroom doors that is) opened to us and for that we are so so grateful!

maybe i won't get typhoid

it's nice to know that there's a boil water advisory for the area around my office and i was drinking tap water all day. ironically, i never drink the tap water from my office. but today i had to because our water is turned off at home* so i filled my water bottle at work instead. mmmm.


*the fun of home ownership is really thrown up in our faces on weekends like those that just past. not only is our bathroom still not finished but we discovered what we think is a broken water pipe in a wall in our kitchen. good times.

i'm not gonna say i told you so,

but in the last post when i said i didn't think he'd be done by wednesday? well, i was right. the tile still hasn't dried 100% yet, so he's not laid the grout. so we're still bathroomless.

this week in bathroom rennovations

they worked all day saturday and finished up the drywall. so all the sheet rock was in and at least mudded once.





they took the day off on sunday while the spackle dried and baldman and i trudged all over columbia in search of the perfect mirror. which we found here, by the way. but it was too big to fit in the space we needed. so we had to settle on one from home depot which is just okay. i think it'll look nice though.

today he sanded and put another layer of spackling on and laid the tile. we can't go in there because if we step on it the tile will set crooked. so we had to rig up this contraption to keep the cats out.



so you will have to settle for a complete surprise when we take more photos later in the week. he says he'll be done by wednesday. i'm thinking most of it will be done by then, but that it'll be more like thursday before all the little things are completed.

of course, whenever he is finished we'll still have to paint and add all the rest of the "fixin's," like the mirror, the towel bars, shelving, etc....