Abbie's Real Life Blog

Wow, it got super cold this week!  Crocus are coming up, the mini-daffodils are blooming (they always bloom way ahead of the real daffodils), but we had a real shot of snippy freezing weather the past few days just to remind us that it’s not spring yet!

I have spent the past few nights reading in an effort to get through my quarterly resolution of three books.  I picked a 500-pager (Blue Highways, by local author William Least-Heat Moon) for the first one, and it was very good but it took me awhile.  Now I’m speeding through a pulpier mountaineering memoir (Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer) which I will probably finish by the weekend, which leaves me exactly one book left AND an airline trip at the end of the month, which will make reading it easy.  As long as I go with Portnoy’s Complaint and I don’t try to get through the 800-page Infinite Jest, which is also on the reading list.  I’ll leave that for next quarter.

We’ll see how I do with the rest of the resolutions.  The ground is still mostly frozen, so I’m not cleaning out any flowerbeds anytime soon, and I do have to get around to the garage and attic at some point.  I haven’t even done my taxes yet, which is the second year in a row that I’ve left it really late (for me).  It’s on the schedule for this weekend, though, along with a few other things.  Tracy and I both know that we have to go through everything, sort it out, and decide who is taking what and what needs to be replaced- and doing this in the kitchen is on the list for this weekend.  It’s not going to be cheap to double up on pans, pots, and whatever miscellaneous small electrics are deemed necessary for both of us.  (A microwave, for sure, because the one at our house is built-in.)

We spent last Saturday on another trip to Kansas City to do some apartment-hunting.  It was a very successful trip between the apartments and a stop by an antique mall in Blue Springs.  Tracy bought a chair, a bookshelf, and two end tables, and I bought a set of matching tables and chairs that are just fabulous, in a fakey Heywood-Wakefield type of way.  (I’m pretty sure they’re not actually Heywood-Wakefield.)  It’s six dining chairs and a dining table, and then three living room tables.  So cool.  We got Tracy’s stuff into our car and took it home that day, but my wonderful father is picking up my stuff later today.

Later, we toured three apartments in total, and Tracy was sold on the last- a recently renovated second floor in a huge Victorian house in the Westport area of Kansas City, just a few blocks from her new job.  It’s a nice space with huge windows, but it didn’t feel too enormous.  The neighborhood is pretty residential.  The landlord is fine with the three cats.  I think it will be great.

Tracy is pretty sure she’s taking the place (she hasn’t signed yet, but she has the lease).  Now she knows what kind of space to prepare for, as far as storage is concerned, and she doesn’t have to continue to search throughout the spring.  She’s starting the lease fairly early as well, so we’ll be able to make several trips to set up the place before she starts the job.

So!  That’s the newsy news that was.

This weekend is another trivia night charity event, this time for Columbia Second Chance.  My mother and I are going to it.  I really love those damn things, and I’m glad at least one other person will go with me since I don’t know enough trivia-lovers to put together an actual team of my own.  So we probably won’t win.  But it’s fun anyway.

Next week is my brother’s birthday, on St. Patrick’s Day.  For some reason, this combination makes St. Patrick’s Day a pretty big holiday in our family calendar (less of a holiday than the Fourth of July, more of a holiday than Halloween or even Easter).  Drinking isn’t on the schedule (unless Irish Creme ice cream is found and consumed), but often the family ends up in Kansas City for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and fun is had.  I haven’t been on this outing since I moved back to Missouri, so I am taking off work on Tuesday to attend the party day celebrations.  I probably have plenty of green in my closet to wear this year as well, which is new.  I haven’t always had much green to wear, but I haven’t been able to resist the ubiquity of it in the stores this year and last.  I bought a green woven belt on impulse a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve already worn it five or six times.

Well, it’s supposed to warm up a little over the weekend, which is nice.  I like weather in the thirties and forties and fifties.  Any warmer or colder, and it’s too uncomfortable to be outside doing things.  But it’s best to go out and do things when it’s in the thirties or forties or fifties.  Which is why spring and fall are among the four best seasons of the year, right?