Emuzines

We are all moved in and it is lovely!  So comfortable and pretty and…perfect!  I don’t have time to post pictures or elaborate, because I need to finish packing for Denver and Abby is picking me up in 3 1/2 hours, but I will later on.  JoJo has been a champion although she is confused about why we aren’t leaving the house.  She LOVES her backyard and keeps bringing me rosebush branches that I left out there in the planter.  Ouch.  Just now, she looked up at my desk hutch, where I usually keep pictures but now have my school and work bags.  She sat down, and cried.  The final straw…”‘Why is everything different?!’”

But we’re so happy!  Can’t wait to finish setting it all up.

We’ve sort of been haphazardly packing the last few days.  We are moving the furniture (via movers) on Tuesday, and we’ve been bringing things over, and are going to bring more things over tomorrow.  It’s been kind of tough to pack what we won’t need before Tuesday, plus what I won’t need for Denver, which is Wednesday.  Denver is difficult timing–should I pack for it before I pack for moving, before we move, after??  With classes starting up on Monday, too, kind of busy and disorganized around here.  Jo has been quite amused about it all, chewing on box corners whenever possible, and ninja sneakily sneaking onto the bed when packing activities leave the bedroom door open.  She made sure that we wouldn’t forget her squirrel toy:

Hello!  I have been neglecting my blog–weird how once I get free time, I am so much less productive.  I’ve been on spring break and it’s been so nice!  I will add a general update soon (telling tales of Las Vegas), but this will be an update on the house.  We are done with painting.  We chose a green for the office, a blue for the guest bedroom, and a bold rust for the master bedroom.  I think they all came out really nicely.  The carpets are also done, and I have been working feverishly on trimming the rosebushes and other extremely overgrown plants.  We are officially moving on Tuesday, although we have been moving smaller items over already.  We’re really excited to get in there.  Here are some pictures…

This is the office before, immediately prior to painting.  The picture doesn’t do justice to the dirtiness of the walls and carpet.  The kid must have spilled soda on the walls and floors, and left it for 5 years.  I also found 2 boogers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the office after, with new paint and carpeting.  This is Nik’s favorite room.  Oh, it has pretty new brushed silver outlet plates, too.  That was my doing.  Can’t wait to see it with furniture and decorations!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t yet have official after pictures of the master bedroom or guest bedroom, because we hadn’t finished putting the new faceplates up, and I wanted it to be as complete as possible before I took the after pictures.  But here is a “during” picture of the master bedroom.  The master bedroom is MY favorite paint choice.  I think it will look really nice with our dark bedroom furniture.  More to come…

Here, I am painting the master bedroom.  It has vaulted ceilings, so we had to get this very long extender arm to paint.  We were so exhausted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some general pictures, which you may have already seen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There we go!  I hope you all will come visit me soon :)  E-mail me if you want the new address and don’t have it yet.

I have been so exhausted for about a week!  I thought that I was “crashing” from my stressful midterm that I studied for for many, many, many hours.  It was immediately after that that I became a zombie!  I was nearly useless for a whole week.  Making myself get off of my butt helped a bit, but still I felt exhausted.

Then, I went to Ciocolat with my friend, Maciel.  This is a chocolate/pastry/brunch/coffee/tea shop in downtown Davis.  Since I was sick a few weeks ago and missed a get-together wherein my friends ate CAKE without me, Maciel wanted to take me out for dessert.  What a perfect plan.  I had a gigantic slice of carrot cake and a vanilla latte, and Maciel had a gigantic slice of lemon poppyseed cake and a Mexican hot chocolate.  They were all delicious, and the trip snapped me out of my funk.  I came home with plenty of energy, and have been great today (even despite being woken up very early this morning by construction noises…can’t wait to move…).  Thank goodness for friends and dessert!

So…Nik and I spent the past few days moving in.  The drive up wasn’t bad…actually, it was sort of fun.  I played games with myself such as, “How many miles can I go without having to alter my cruise control?” and “Can Nik and I match our cruise controls EXACTLY, leaving neither of us having to brake?”  I found some good radio stations, I watched tomatoes fall off of tomato trucks, I saw some baby cows, and I talked to Mark and my mom with my Jawbone.  We made a few stops, which helped the body aches immensely, and we arrived happily.  We stayed in my favorite Davis hotel the first night, and got up early the next day to get our keys.

The apartment is really cute.  Certain rooms are a lot bigger than I remembered.  The bathroom has a double sink and is huge, and the living room is going to allow us to get a gigantic 3-piece sectional.  The bedrooms aren’t quite so huge, and we are splitting up the Pottery Barn furniture throughout the apartment in order to get it all.  We’re hoping to move into a bigger place (a house?) after this year, so we’ve been buying with that mindset.  Make it work this year, so we have it for the future.  Speaking of buying, we’re nearly done with purchasing all of the furniture.  We just have to get the nightstands and find some bookshelves.  Like Nik said, our couch won’t be delivered for awhile, but we really love it!  We have done a ton of work on the place (especially Nik), and it’s looking good.  He has been very busy putting furniture together and his hands are covered in blisters.  He got a bit of reprieve when Sarah and Foti came up to help (our first visitors and huge helpers, thank you!!).  I tried to help a bit but I’m better at…washing the dishes…and…coordinating colors in the bathroom towels…than using a screwdriver.  Oh!  And then he bought an electric one, which made his day.

We spent the evenings going out to eat and watching Sex and the City.  It’s been quite fun.  We are now back in L.A. for the week.  My fun Aunt Sharon is coming into town tomorrow, and we have a lot of plans.  I have been cuddling with Logan a lot and he’s such a LoveBug.  And today is my sister’s birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MANDI!), so we’re doing a few fun celebrations.  I’m so excited for my plans.  We leave again on Saturday with JoJo.  Hopefully we JoJo-proofed the place (i.e. picked up spare screws and nails from building desks) enough so that her initial exploration of the place goes well. 

Oh, please send me letters at my new place!  They would make me so happy

Katie and I just got back into L.A. tonight.  Without internet up there im terribly bored and since comcast wont be coming out till the end of September the boredom might last another two weeks.  The majority of our move is complete and we now return home to tie up lose ends and pick up the dog.  All the furniture is purchased and we are only waiting on its delivery which may not be until the end of October for the couch.  Had I known they would take so long id have made that purchase much further in advance.  We are leaving again on Saturday morning for our final trip.  Further posts if I do any will be made from my iPhone and later edited since i cant type a damn on this thing.  Once the we are up and running with Internet on our computers expect many more posts to flood in.

Melissa wrote me a letter (thank you!).  In it, she noted that I handle stress and change serenely, and that if she was doing what I am doing right now, she’d have written lots of “oh my gosh I’m so stressed out” blogs.  I thought, huh, maybe I’m not honest enough in my blogs.  I do, as explained earlier, try to actively ignore the negativities of my move.  But I have had moments of sheer terror (ok, fear…intense fear), I walked into Nik’s room last week, burst into tears, stamped my foot like a 4-year-old denied chocolate (or me as a 25-year-old denied chocolate), and cried, “I don’t wanna move!,” and I have had a pretty consistent stomach ache.  Whew.  There it is.

 

However, I DO feel pretty serene right now and I’m ready to begin my studies.  And I am happy that my perfect school ended up being in California.  I remember considering such places as Baton Rouge and Albany and other northern New York cities I can’t even remember now, and THAT was pretty scary.  Then I walked into the MIND Institute and met with my future mentor.  It just clicked into place.  She is an icon in the autism field, brilliant, friendly, available, and wonderful.  She is enthusiastic about autism and research and even about ME.  She had all these great ideas for me and planned out my involvement and, heck, she brings her dog into work on the weekends.  As I was leaving she said that she hoped to meet my mom one day, and offered me a job.  I left, stunned, and said to my mom in the car, “I think I have a grad school, a mentor, and a job.  At THIS PLACE!” (it’s gorgeous and, risking further bragging, reputable).  It was just perfect.

 

I’ve mostly given up on my obsessive fear of forgetting something I’ll desperately need the moment I arrive.  I am armed with toilet paper, Clorox wipes, detergent, and soap.  I am less stressed and finally get Nik’s point that…Katie, we can buy it when we’re there.  I *am* a little nervous about the drive, not breaking down or anything, but about the sheer boredom of it.  I have not done that drive without being a sleeping passenger.  I don’t even GET how I can drive so far as to use up my whole tank of gas and more.  That’s a lot of minutes sitting in the car, awake.  So everyone, please feel free to call me tomorrow afternoon.  I would desperately appreciate the distraction.  And Mom, I’ll call you when I get there.  You can call me after your classes, too, or at lunch.

 

I took a great picture of JoJo frolicking through our packed stuff tonight (she used Nik’s pile of clothes and brand new suit as a springboard to jump onto the couch).  But, alas, I have packed my camera cord, and I can’t post it.  Lots of pictures to come of moving and settling in.

…is a big one!  We’re moving on Thursday.  I have been slowly getting ready (physically and emotionally, I guess) for awhile, so I’m pretty prepared.  Although…I have to admit I’m still half in denial, and half excited.  I think I listed random things that I’m excited about in another post…it’s the little things that get me happy.  I am also pretty hopeful about fall being a pretty season up there, and Nik said that he’d instruct JoJo to bring Mommy some pretty fall leaves home from her walks.  I want to do lots of fall-y things, not only because the fall scrapbook supplies are so cute (…), but because I loooove all things fall.  I already picked my pumpkin soup recipe.  So…I’m excited about a lot of things.  I’m actively ignoring the things I am scared about…and focusing on happy things and on planning things to look forward to.  We’ve arranged the move so that I get to come and see my Aunt Sharon next week, before out second trip up to Davis.  She’s always a ton of fun (i.e. human pyramids, rolling on pool tables, Scooby Snacks, and Twister) and will be in LA for just a little while for her friend’s wedding.  Hopefully, I’ll also be able to fit in some more birthday celebrations for Mandi (Disneyland!) and as much more fun as possible.

 

So here’s our adorable new front door.  I don’t know what it is that I like so much about it.  Maybe the turquoise frame (which sounds terribly tacky until you see it).  The apartment complex is beautiful and in a great area, and…it has a washer and dryer in unit–my greatest selling point which Nik was pretty neutral about.  I like to wash one shirt at a time…they’re delicate…  We’re within walking distance of downtown Davis and lots of restaurants, but far enough away that it’s very quiet and secluded.  We’re also a short jump on the freeway away from downtown Sacramento, where I’ll be working and which I fell in love with on my first trip up there.  It’s a really cool downtown.

 

Speaking of which, with all of the preoccupation regarding the move, I’ve barely thought about or prepared for what this is all about…getting my Ph.D.  When I think about that I am extremely excited, especially about where I’ll be researching, at the MIND Institute (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders–http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/MINDInstitute/).  This place is the reason that I chose UC Davis.  It is the top-notch research institute for autism in the world, and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be able to work there from day one!  My Memere says that they’re lucky to have ME…but seriously, this place is incredible.  I can’t wait to start there and to find a cure for autism.  That is what this is all about…

Katie suggested we take JoJo on a walk today and for whatever unknown reason, I’m usually against the idea and resist with all my efforts.  Today I lost the battle and gave in knowing that I will have to get into the habit anyway with our new move to Davis, CA.  As usual, JoJo’s excitement is overwhelming at just the sight of her harness and leash.  It takes some effort and we finally get her ready to go.  She tugs quite a bit at first but after some restraint and about half the block, she settles into a more manageable pace.  She does make the oddball attempt at stepping in front of me and this usually ends with me stepping on one of her four little feet.  She picks up that it’s a bad idea really quickly.  We also had brought along her new portable water bowl and bottle to see if she would drink out of it…she failed.  I’m a bit concerned with having to drive her up with us.  I plan to make frequent potty breaks and hopefully she gets thirsty enough to drink.  This picture was taken after her walk and she is clearly exhausted laying next to Katie.  I must admit her behavior does improve after even the shortest of walks.

I’ve got to admit, I’m surprised that Nik’s got me beat 3:1 in amount of posts, as I usually grab onto new fun things a tad obsessively.  I am really excited about this new space, and will love it even moreso after we move and are updating everyone about our new home, how JoJo does without a backyard, working through a Ph.D. program, living near cows, etc., etc.  Hopefully we’ll also be able to post a lot of pictures of our new place and the area, which is really a very cute, quiant little town very close to the pretty darn cool downtown Sacramento.  I want to thank Nik for all of the great work he’s done on this site and, especially, for surprising me with a Scrapbook section (check it out, it’s fun)!

 

We leave in 6 days and I have been pretty productive in getting ready.  I’ve packed a lot and have arranged PG&E, furniture delivery, etc.  Nik and I are very different in that I want it all done BEFORE we get there, while he wants to do it WHEN we get there.  I’m not sure if we compromised or if he gave in, but I feel very satisfied in how we arranged it all.  Many things are done…but once we get up there, there will still be just enough to do to keep us busy but not overly stressed out.  I’m excited to get our new place set up, so that we can cuddle with supersoft blankets on the (not yet found) couch and watch (found) Sex and the City, make fondue in our new fondue pot (thanks to Melissa and Jason), take Jo to the dog park, sleep on fancy and soft sheets, and…oh yeah…start working on that Ph.D…