a list

1. Long time no type. Buried in schoolwork and life. Not necessarily in that order. Attempting to force myself to come up for air.

2. Chemistry is hard. Like, fail-out-of-class hard. (Not me, but you know what I mean.) I knew there was a good reason to fear it back at Penn State! Anyway, I’m doing alright, but a recent bombed quiz has shown me I need to devote more time to Chem and less to Anatomy.

3. In all my busy-ness today, I decided I needed to make bread. That’s so like me. Why? I had to “revive” my starter that’s in the fridge. And have I forgotten about the GAJILLION things of bread we brought home from our Thanksgiving trip? (No fewer than 1.5 loaves of rye bread, 10 bagels, 8 onion rolls, plus crackers.) Our house is carb central!

4. My Thanksgiving pumpkin pie was the ugliest thing ever (thanks to my impatience with store-bought crust), but tasted great. Get the recipe here.

5. Speaking of recipes–I just managed another blog post for the co-op. It’s about cranberries and I included the cranberry brisket Andrew loves so much. Read it here.

6. I am now “officially” a New Yorker; I took care of getting a new license and registering the car. License should be here in about a week! It’s kind of exciting, in a really anti-climactic sort of way. I think if we’d moved into a house we were excited about, everything would feel different. Instead, everything still feels very temporary. But, nonetheless, it’s still neat to see the Pilot with its new yellow and blue license plate.

7. We named our plants. Well, I named our plants. Andrew just went along with it good-naturedly. My dear friend, Emily, inspired me. She has such beautiful, healthy, vibrant house plants. I am so jealous. She and I recently traded some plant clippings and she mentioned one of them was named ‘Stella.’ Now, I’ve heard of people naming their plants before, but I just never have. I mean, mine don’t normally last that long…it was never a good idea to get attached. However, I do have one that has lasted FOUR years now! Andrew and I were in disbelief when we realized it. So, on the way home from our Thanksgiving holiday, I used my phone to look up names and their meanings (again, such a ‘me’ thing to do–we’re talking the significance of the names of HOUSE PLANTS) and we decided to call the big, four-year-old one “Gerard” which means ‘hardy.’ (We’ve been calling it ‘hardy’ since I hadn’t killed it yet, so we figured why not?). I have one other plant, an orchid Andrew bravely got me for Valentine’s Day this year. (I don’t know what he was thinking.) Anyway, it did alright for awhile, then the blooms fell off, then I panicked until I found out that was normal, and just when it was growing another stem and bloom, one of the movers bumped into it on our table and broke it off! I was heartbroken. I looked up ‘long-suffering’ and ended up with “Patience.” She’s been through a lot, that one, and just the other day I noticed a tiny bud getting ready to sprout from the moss–hurray! And now, I have Emily’s purple one to re-pot, who I have been calling “Stella 2.” Between the animals and now anthropomorphic plants, we have one full house!

8. I’m supposed to be working on psychology homework. Must hurry!

9. Hadrian has been down for the count all day today–GLORIOUS! I’ve been so productive. (In case you’re wondering, any time he returns from ‘puppy camp’ he sleeps 24/7 for about two days. Totally normal.)

10. We have 7 pints of ice cream in our freezer, plus the remnants of two Jeni’s that Emily and Dan brought us, plus a tiny bit of homemade Jeni’s vanilla. SEVEN unopened Graeter’s and Jeni’s pints. That’s like $45 in ice cream (hey, don’t judge my expensive taste in ice cream!). My brilliant plan: tiny scoops, both to make it last and keep it off my hips. I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’m not terribly optimistic…

the rental

My latest Eat This column is up! Winter Squash 🙂 I included two of my favorite recipes; both for butternut squash. I used Ina’s roasted squash recipe, which is great as a side dish or as a first-step for using squash in other recipes, like a salad or soup. I chose Foster’s Market’s butternut squash soup recipe because it’s one of the only ones I’ve made that isn’t overly sweet or curried, which are probably the most common types of butternut squash soup.

And now, without further ado, is the REAL point of this post…

Here it is folks, the house we’ll be renting for at least the next six months, if not longer.

While renting certainly wasn’t our first choice (hello, moving TWICE), this house is truly a blessing in so many ways. In fact, we weren’t even looking for it; a friend from the hotel took a wrong turn on their way to dinner one night, drove by and wrote the address down for us.

I grow more convinced every day that God has a special plan for Andrew and me in terms of our housing arrangement, and I know that this is just part of it. I said before that renting wasn’t our first choice; I’ll just come right out and say that until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t want to rent AT ALL. I DID NOT want to move twice. I didn’t want to give up on finding a house at the 11th hour. But, in the end, I truly think God had to bring us to this point–all the anxiety and disappointment and losing that ‘perfect’ house and now renting–so that we would truly surrender ourselves (and our desires) to Him and His plan. It’s been a looooooong summer, full of activity and “noise,” and I think we’re finally ready to “be still and wait.”

Countdown to move-in: 10 days!

It may not be much to look at on the outside (it’s in a super cute part of the Orchard Park village, but it’s definitely missing the TLC that only a homeowner can give), it has three bedrooms and a big, dry basement–which is important since much of our stuff will be down there!

Here’s our “short list” of things we’re looking forward to:

-a REAL trash can: just the other day Andrew was rhapsodizing (literally, with gestures and everything) about our big stainless steel can with the foot-operated lid

-a kitchen! the baking bug has bitten HARD and I cannot wait to get back into the kitchen with all my gear and cookbooks and go to town… Too many recipes have gone unmade this summer!

-having enough room that I’m not (literally) tripping over the dog every time I turn around

-our coffeemaker–the hotel coffee may be free, but it isn’t that good

-NOT having to change out of my pj’s to have my morning coffee or let the dog out

-Hadrian NOT barking at every passing person outside our door or hotel window

-Hadrian NOT barking at housekeeping EVERY DAY

-a desk for studying

-a door to SHUT while studying

-being only five minutes away from East Aurora, instead of 25

-did I mention the cats? We can have them back, too. (I’ve all but forgotten we own cats at this point….)

Yay for my “off” day! I love Tuesdays, but they often get booked-up with lunch or coffee dates and various errands. Today, my coffee date had to reschedule and Andrew is out of town, so I have the ENTIRE day (and night!) to get ahead on schoolwork, organize details for the move and other various ‘tasks.’ First up: the gym!

still blue

Actually, I’m wearing blue today. How appropriate. Except that most of my wardrobe IS navy blue, so I guess it isn’t so coincidental…

I wish I could say things looked better in the morning. They don’t. Not one bit.

In fact, they look worse. I had thought we were completely at the end of our rope a week ago, before we found the house. We were depressed, hopeless, upset, discourages and fatigued with the house-hunt. And then we saw ‘our house.’ Now, it feels like the bottom has dropped out from under us–not only do we have no prospects for a house; we’re faced with an ever-hastening deadline and fewer new houses on the market. We don’t know what in the world to do.

But God isn’t in the business of giving us every little thing our hearts ‘desire.’ All He promises is His love, and all He wants is our joy. And that thought has been going through my mind since yesterday morning, BEFORE we found out we didn’t get the house. Go figure.

And after doing my first day of my new Beth Moore study, Living Beyond Yourself: The Fruits of the Spirit, this morning, in which it talked about Paul getting stoned and Christian martyrs all over the world, I got a little perspective.

Are we still terribly disappointed and completely unsure of what to do next? Certainly. But I am trying, desperately, to keep my chin up look on the bright side. We are happy, healthy and we will be taken care of. We will figure something out. God WILL open a door.

And I’m trying NOT to analyze it. It’s such a trap to fall into… Maybe we weren’t supposed to spend that much, maybe something better (my pessimistic side says that’s doubtful) is just around the corner, maybe we have to move in with Andrew’s parents for a month and we’ll all grow spiritually and emotionally because of it and we won’t know it until five years later… I don’t know! And we can’t really know for sure.

All we know is that (as my wise, WISE friend Emily Wilhelm says), God has us exactly where he wants us. (I love her. Her words of wisdom are often just what I need to hear in times like this.)

We are so thankful for all your prayers (here’s a special shout-out to the Simones, Wilhelms, grandma and both sets of parents) and well-wishes. We love you all so much.

In other news, I treated myself to half a blueberry bagel and cream cheese for breakfast this morning. I LOVE blueberry bagels with plain cream cheese. (Unfortunately, the hotel bagels leave a little to be desired, but it was something.)