Abbie's Real Life Blog

It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood!  I am just kinda aglow after a wonderful weekend and feeling pretty much on top of the world.

Part of all this happiness is just bouncing back (way back) from a bout of strep throat that took me down last week for several days.  Most of the week, in fact!  I was really sick.  I got back to work by the end of the week and was able to do some email catch-up before the weekend.  And the weekend was busy in a normal sort of way, so I was able to recover entirely.

It was Homecoming weekend for MU, the 100th anniversary of Homecoming.  A huge big deal.  Campus was buzzing by Friday afternoon.  I walked downtown to eat lunch with a friend and the line for Booche’s hamburgers was out the door.  (We didn’t eat at Booche’s, of course- we had Main Squeeze.)

I have never been to any Homecoming event as an alumna.  Well, possibly there was a high school Homecoming at some point in there, but I don’t remember attending it on purpose, except maybe to support my younger sister or younger brother after I’d graduated.  Anyway, I usually avoid Homecoming activities as they are not usually directed at people like me.  I wasn’t into sports or sororities or traditional student life.  But it’s not like I wasn’t in any groups or clubs or didn’t have any friends.  It’s just that I had the kind of friends who would not go to Homecoming activities.  There was a reason we were friends, after all.

But this year was different.  A college friend who was involved with the LGBT Center on campus decided to put together some Homecoming activities, and I decided to go to one of them.  I was only on the periphery of those activities, but it was definitely part of my college experience.  So it was kind of exciting to see some people I knew from back in the day.  We are all old and grown-up, with kids and mortgages and responsibilities.  I am not sure if any of us are the people we thought we would be, back in college when there was a lot of fight to fight.  But it was really cool to see that, too.

So that was Friday night, drinks with old college friends.  Then I went home and crashed with my boyfriend while we watched a documentary about the Ramones.  I love the biopic documentaries about bands I don’t know very well.  So many questions get answered!  Like, I was under the impression that the Ramones were all related to each other.  But that is the very opposite of true.  In fact, none of them have the last name of Ramone and none of them are related to each other.  A few weeks ago, we watched a biopic of The Who and another documentary about the making of U2′s The Joshua Tree.  I don’t even love U2, and I still found it pretty interesting.  Music is a whole world to me that is kind of mysterious and unexplored.  Netflix Instant makes it easy to access documentaries that fill in some blanks.

On Saturday, I was out and about in the morning, getting caught in Homecoming traffic.  Ran back home to listen to NPR shows on the radio, a favorite Saturday morning activity.  After lunch, I went shopping again, and with the game on, no one was really out and about.  I got to run several errands and felt very accomplished.

My boyfriend and I have been dating six months as of this weekend, so we had a little celebration on Saturday.  I made lasagna and apple crisp and we listened to records.  I got to look at a scrapbook of baby pictures too, and of course I was very pleased about that.  I don’t like to get very personal about stuff on here, but things are going great in this relationship.  We are making plans to spend the holidays together.  Our Halloween costumes are vaguely related.  We are a very happy couple.

On Sunday afternoon, I went up to my parents’ house.  They did BBQ and I brought some pumpkin bars & candy apples to share.  We had a nice time chatting about all kinds of things, and then we took a walk through the woods.  I got a few pictures with my phone, though I was too lazy to get my real camera out of the car.  It was a great time.

It was a beautiful weekend, weather-wise.  I think we’re a little past the peak of autumn color, but I haven’t seen a good show of reds in the trees yet.  Temperatures were in the low 70s.  But today is different!  Today is chilly and rainy, and we’re supposed to get our first frosts later this week.  I will have to make some room indoors for all the outdoor plants.  And I will need to make a date to mow the grass one more time, and to do a big clean-out of the flowerbeds to prep for winter.  I guess I still have some weeks for both of those activities, but I’m so happy to have the yardwork over for the year that I’m rushing it in my excitement.

So that’s what I did over the weekend.

Everything is pretty good these days.  The house is still on the market, and will be for about another month until the realtor contract expires in late November.  I have definitely let things slide in the last few weeks, though.  And my vacuum cleaner broke last week, so that’s not helping the situation.

I did dig my comforter out of the garage, though I have not unearthed my winter clothes yet.  The comforter got washed and dried and the duvet cover got washed and dried, and I put it all on my bed last night and slept very well.  I still have not turned on the heat in the house, though with the frost coming, I will likely have to do it pretty soon.  I’ve still enjoyed a few weeks of very nice weather that does not cost me anything in terms of utility money.

Heading up to Kansas City this coming Saturday with my mother to visit my grandmother, who had shoulder surgery last month and has been in a rehab facility for the past few weeks.  It will be good to visit.  I finally ordered print copies of photos to take to this grandmother, who is not online and never ever will be.  I always forget to make prints, but she won’t see the pictures if I don’t.  My other grandparents made that switch already.  Yet those grandparents are politically conservative and my offline grandmother is politically liberal.  What’s that about, exactly?

Happy mid-October!

 Yes, yes, it’s a beautiful Friday in October.  Beautiful!  It’s been a warm and sunny October already, all blue skies and light breezes and the leaves are turning colors in front of our very eyes.  And no end in sight, says the Weather Channel.  Maybe some rain next week, but all seventy degrees and pleasantness, as far as the eye can see.

Last weekend was spent at the Lake of the Ozarks with my family on the annual vacation.  This was our fourth year for the fall trip somewhere together, and it was a good one!  My father rented a large house on the water.  It had four bedrooms, two huge decks, a foosball table, and a dock.  It was plenty of room for eight adults (including my boyfriend).

We had dinner together and played foosball on Friday night after everyone got in (though we were all coming from the same place, we mostly arrived separately).  On Saturday, our first outing (after breakfast) was Bridal Cave.  I’d never been there before, despite seeing the billboards all over Central Missouri.  It was an okay tour; our guide seemed to rely on making stuff up when she didn’t know the answer to our questions (but we did have a lot of questions).  After the cave tour, we went to lunch at a place that was literally on the water (a large dock), and then we went down to the Strip to play some of the ancient video games in the arcades (similar to what is available at Logan Hardware in Chicago, only you pay for these and it’s not ironic).  After that, we had some rest before dinner and then board games afterwards.  On Sunday, we had breakfast together before we split up and some of us headed home.

It was great, as always!  The house was beautiful and the weather was gorgeous.  The hills down there at the Lake were already showing some signs of color.  In Columbia, the yellows are gorgeous and we’re starting to see peeks of red and orange.

I don’t know what’s on the tap for this weekend, except for a party tomorrow night to which I’ve promised to bring pumpkin bars.  I guess I will need to do some baking tomorrow afternoon!  I also have another couple of cooking projects in the works, as well as a couple of costume projects for Halloween (though that is still a few weeks away).  My costume is coming together and I only have a few things that have to be assembled.  I took the rare, dreaded trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday for something.  I hate Hobby Lobby, but I hate most that their checkout processes are so slow.  It’s not the equipment, it’s the customers.  Every customer seems to want to argue about prices, and it takes forever.  But I got out of there after only having to wait about twenty minutes in line for a couple of dumb things.  Huzzah.  But I will probably put off assembling these things for the costume for another week or two.  Why do it now when I can procrastinate?

I am overdue for some serious house cleaning.  There have been some steady house showings, and though the house is uncluttered, it is not clean.  I am ashamed at the state of the floors, specifically, and it’s about time for the annual clearing-out of the flowerbeds.  Bah, gardening!  I do not want to do any gardening.  Anyway, I ought to do some dusting and floor mopping and weeding, and we will just see about that.  We will just see.

I had a grand time watching Downton Abbey this week on Netflix.  I love me some BBC genre drama.  There have been several movies in the theaters lately that I wanted to see, but somehow I haven’t had time for them.  I need to keep better track of what’s around so that I can take advantage.

Life is good.  Life is great!