The Great Break-In 2008

Kenny brings me an apple with a bite taken out of it yesterday. He asks me if I am responsible. Of course I am not. Who would do that--take a bit of an apple and then put it back in the fruit bowl? I am ticked off that he is accusing me and then I quickly freak out at the realization we must have mice. Kenny goes back into the kitchen and I see him looking at a little bowl. The little bowl used to have almonds in it. It had been sitting next to the window and near the fruit bowl. It is now empty except for a few shavings of almond skin. "Well it's not a mouse," Kenny yells to me. You see, he found this.


A squirrel had scaled the wall to our second floor window and gnawed through the screen so he could break in and steal our nuts. He was doing nothing to help squirrel stereotypes. We think Jack caught him in the act and scared him back out the window.

Nothing to see here

So I've been doing this whole professional organizer thing since the beginning of the month. I've been enjoying it and the accompanying lifestyle quite a bit. I get to help people and I get a good workout. It's nice to have a legitimate outlet for this need to organize. When I temped I always had to fight the urge to "fix" peoples' desks and really too often I would lose that fight. As of today, however, I have had too many days off in a row (haven't had a job since Monday morning) and I'm getting a little stir crazy. It's 3:00 in the afternoon and I'm in PJs. I got a library card yesterday. That was my big errand for the day. It's getting so bad that I am actually giving serious thought to joining a gym and also going to the gym.

I continue to feel the need to reorganize my home. Following last week's job I absolutely had to reorganize my kitchen. I must say it is now so much better. I'm really close to running out of things to clean out around here. Jack and I are going to have to go on an adventure tomorrow or something so that I'll have something interesting to write about. For now, he unashamedly wants to let you know what he's been up to:


There used to be a very cute stuffed hamburger filled with all that white fluff.

Emily does kind of begin with M

Last weekend there was a monumental reunion of the 3 Ms (Molly, Megan, and M.ily) in Chicago. I've been best friends with these girls for over 20 years. We all lived in the same city for the first 16ish years and I lived in the same city with Molly up until May (because she follows me and I fully expect her to move to Chicago in a matter of weeks). It's been quite a while since we had uninterrupted time with all three of us. There is nothing quite as familiar and perfect as spending time together.

They were fortunate enough to be here for Chicago's rainiest day in history (or the rainiest day since they've been keeping track of that sort of thing). I made sure they had plenty of fattening Chicago food like pizza and stuffed French toast since they're both looking rather skinny what with having gym memberships and all. And they took turns making sure I didn't drink entire bottles off wine by myself. We went shopping of course. I'm not sure how I've been bumbling through stores without them. I bought my first ever real-life makeup counter makeup. For years I have been wearing brown eye shadow when I really should have been wearing purple eye shadow. Why has nobody told me this before?

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that didn't cry during the weekend but only death, my brother (I think it's a deeply ingrained little sister defensive response), Oprah, and Extreme Makeover Home Edition can make me cry. Molly ate olives (which is really the quintessential image of Molly for me and no, I don't know what that says about her or me), and Megan somehow skated away without plucking my eyebrows. She is the best eyebrow plucker I know, and I can't believe I missed the opportunity.

Because I am a fool, I have no pictures of the weekend. Clearly it only occurs to me to break out the camera when Jack is wearing funny clothes. Luckily, this is not the first time the three of us have been in Chicago together. I scanned these pictures from a trip we took over winter break in college 5 or 6 years ago and we can pretend they apply. The first is of course Megan and Molly posing with mannequins in what was at the time Marshall Fields. The second is in the Rock 'n' Roll McDonalds.

In which she still fails to really post

Kenny just informed me that the cookie dough I made and fed to him gave him a tummy ache. I'm a little worried about the cookie dough because I think the eggs I made it with are old. I made cookie dough and not actual cookies beacuse I thought the cookie sheets would be too many dishes.I hope I didn't give us salmonella or rotten egg disease or anything. Enough about the cookies though. What I really wanted to say is that I want to write about my awesome weekend visiting with my friends. I also wanted to talk about my new job and how it's seriously kicking my ass this week. But all I can think of is whiney and incoherent. I've been working hard labor eights and also commuting about an hour each way. The mapquest directions say 30 minutes, but really it's an hour or so. I failed to meet up with friends last night and also tonight. I do like the new job though. Oh, and another thing--my mom told me tonight that she likes Sarah Palin. This is to be expected and troubling on a variety of levels. She likes her glasses. My brain will work again soon and I hope to write a real entry then.

On my day off

The Sunday before last I started my new job as a professional organizer. While I went off and got degrees in other things, this is something I've always enjoyed doing. It nice to enjoy your work I think. The work has been exhausting so far, but thoroughly rewarding. I worked at one job from Sunday until Thursday. Thursday on my way home I went on a mission to find new hangers and a storage solution for our guest room. So yes, on my day off from organizing I decided I absolutely had to reorganize my closet. You just can't make other people's homes look nice all day and then come home to this:



And then it had to get worse before it got better:


And finally, ah...


...all better. And then I couldn't stop there. I had a physical need to clean out the guest room and the storage space downstairs and oh my drawers. So that was our weekend. Sorry Kenny! I'm gonna wait until tomorrow to clean out the linen closet.

Julie and Ben get married, Part 3: The Wedding

Ah, the wedding. It was a beautiful and touching affair. The ceremony and reception were at the Milwaukee Yacht Club. The colors were red and black and there was of course a bicycle theme. For those of you who do not know Ben and Julie, they are avid bikers and met when Julie rescued Ben after he got hit by a car on his bicycle. As explained in their ceremony, it's kind of a damsel in distress story except Ben was the damsel.

The pretty cake. Note the aforementioned red, black, and bicycle:



The happy--no ecstatic--couple during their first dance. Julie looked gorgeous!




This was the view from my seat--if you were really short:

Obligatory photo of Kenny dancing. This one with our friend Audrey.

And this is the bar we went to after the wedding. It was in the wedding hotel and it was hilarious! It's called the Aqua Elegant Restaurant and Lounge. It's hard to see in this photograph, but there are bubbly tanks all along the bar. This place took the contemporary/water theme and went as far as the lucite and fountains could carry them.

This concludes our three part series. Tune in next week when we see what work is like outside of the cubicle walls. I start my new job this Sunday as a professional organizer. Yikes!

Julie and Ben get married, Part 2: The Essence of Wisconsin

Ben and Julie's wedding was in Milwaukee and no trip to Wisconsin would be complete without paying homage to the state's two pillars: beer and cheese. We of course did our duty with great fervor and deference. Our first stop was the Sprecher Brewery. They are famous for their root beer, which apparently the owner developed so that he wouldn't have to buy somebody else's soda products to give to kids after brewery tours. The tour guide pointed out that you can get quarter kegs of the rootbeer for kids' birthday parties--and that it was a great way to get them used to the tap concept early. I didn't take notes or anything during the tour, but I think you make beer by taking some of this:




And then putting it through things that look like this:

Then adding some of this:

And voila! You have beer. I really like the idea of a yeast room. I imagine that to be much like a living room or a dining room as in, there's two bedrooms on your left and on your right you'll find our yeast room.

On our way back, we also stopped at the Mars Cheese Castle. With a name like that, how could you not? I find the name to be very coercive--so much so that it should probably be illegal. I'm not sure it's possible to see the name and continue driving. I'm sure some people have attempted it. I just don't know how they lived with themselves afterwards. We bought some smoked string cheese, white cheddar cheese that is older than Jack, and cheddar bratwurst. The brats were made by Klement's and probably due to the fact Kenny lived in Wisconsin for 11 years, he is not capable of just saying Klement's. He has to say, "Klement's, easily the best." Sometimes he tries to just say Klement's, but invariably 15 seconds later he has to add, "easily the best." You may notice the Mars Cheese Castle looks oddly like an amusement park. That's because it is.