Come On Down!

Since Will is Mr. Fancy Web Designer, he revamped our wedding website so we can talk about stuff and life and things. And with double the authors, the idea is that maybe there will be double the posts!

So for my few faithful readers (hi Aleta, Colleen & Kath!), and for those that I don't know about, come on over to my new blog to keep up with the latest adventures: www.anneandwill.com.

I Used to Like Shots of Tequila on a Thursday Night

When I first got diagnosed with Crohn's, I went in for a four-hour IV treatment every eight weeks. I got a hefty dose of Benedryl first thing when I got there to prevent any reactions to the medicine and it knocked me out.

My mom was really curious about what went down in the old Ambulatory Surgery Unit at Boulder Community Hospital and wanted to go with me for one treatment. I didn't think it would be too much fun for her to watch me zonk out for four hours, but moms can be weird that way. She thought it was pretty fascinating.

My medicine options have come a long way in the last five years. For a while I gave myself a shot using an epi pen every two weeks, which I wasn't very good at doing. It wasn't even the needle that was scary - it was the clicking sound that the stupid pen made that freaked me out and made me misfire (multiple times). I eventually got the hang of it though. Now I'm on a medicine where a lovely nurse comes to the house to give me a shot every 4 weeks.

The medicine (Cimzia) arrives in an oh-so-eco-friendly over sized Styrofoam package complete with chemical ice packs and bubble wrap. There were a few months in there where I had to fight with my insurance company over medicine and was amazingly relieved to finally see my environmental hazard of a package arrive.

This medicine gets administered by a nurse who comes to the house. At first, I thought this was overkill. I did master the epi pen (eventually). Even knowing that the medicine needs to be mixed together using various needles to transfer from vial to vial to syringe, I thought I could handle it. What I couldn't handle is the hard jab required to get the shot into your skin. And since Cimzia is covering even the copay for my insurance in return for my opinion on the drug, I'm more than happy to have a mad chemist/nurse do the shot part. One less thing to worry about.

The nurse is always kind enough to remark on how little flab there is to pinch for the shot. I think her other patients must be huge, or that's just nice nurse small talk because there is more than enough to grab in my opinion. The jab usually doesn't hurt, but the medicine can sometimes sting. And at the end of the day, I have two little marks on my stomach that I cover with band aids and then watch with amazement as they bruise and then fade over the next week.

I just got a shot tonight - let's hope that it kicks in and coaxes my digestive system into behaving nicely going forward.

My Favorite Hobby

A study in Anne worrying about something

I always find it funny when folks perceive me as a go-with-the-flow, laid back person because that is not who lives in my head. I'm a complete worrier - just give me something to worry about and I'll find every last nuanced detail to explore. I must just have a very peaceful look on my face whilst I worry away.

My latest worry: Crohn's is kicking my ass this summer. I'm taking about 9 pills every night and getting monthly shots of Cimzia. And that's on a night when I'm not in pain. I've had about two good weeks since my doctor put me on a whole lot more Prednisone. Unfortunately for my face, Prednisone does more to make me break out than a heaping dose of hormones when I was a teenager.

So two weeks of a high dose of Prednisone and I'm feeling pretty good. And then last night I start feeling the same pain as before. The truth is, I used to power through the pain and try my best to not let Crohn's get in the way of life. I have things I want to do, and sitting around being sick is not on the to-do list.

I feel better today, but have to admit to being worried about what this means. Dr. Guts sent me in for screenings that aren't showing anything crazy wrong (inflammation and narrowing at a previous surgery site are par for my course). I drank a glass of wine the other night and ate some raw summer squash yesterday. That's honestly what probably set off the pain. I'm a horrible person for wanting to enjoy a few summery things.

I need to give up wine for reals. Not for a few weeks, or for awhile, but forever. I need to become one of those folks that is a pain in the ass about what I eat. And that makes me sad.

I'm worried about not knowing why things aren't improving, and worried about how to make it better, and worried about how to respond to all the folks who have helpful ideas on what to do to fix things, and worried about feeling completely overwhelmed by all those ideas. I have no idea what the solution is. I don't think my doctor has any idea. And I'm fighting a whole lot of inertia (aside from worrying) about what to do next.

I <3 You Paint

I love paint. It truly is the cheapest way to make a huge difference in a space.

Case in point:

Me, seething with hate for the ugly brick fireplace wall

Me, seething with hate for all the mortar lines that needed to be primed and painted by hand

Not shown, me, in love with the final color.

Once we put away the shop vac and paint accoutrements, the room will be completely beautiful. At some point soon, we're going to paint the rest of the walls a light shade of gray. But in the meantime, two full weekend days, a gallon and a half of primer, half a gallon of paint, and a few paint splatters in the hair equal new love for our living room.

Left Behind

The last time I bought a house, it was pristine the day I moved in. The guy I bought it from, Larry, called me a few times in the days before he moved out to see if I wanted to keep anything he was thinking of leaving behind. I didn't want his cooties despite his excellent taste in paint colors so I politely declined and moved into a junk-free house.

This house, however, has lots of prizes left behind. It is like one big treasure hunt - you never know what will greet you when you open up a closet door. I made a few giant donations to Goodwill when moving out of the old house, and I'm collecting lots more for a new humongous donation courtesy of the new house.

Here's a random sampling of what Will and I have found:

Half empty bag of cotton balls - why thanks for sharing these nifty soft things, I've never seen them before!

Cleaning supplies - ironic because I don't think they actually got used before we moved in. I kept the Mrs. Meyers cleaner & the laundry detergent and tossed the rest of the mostly used bottles.

Assorted kitchen stuff - my parents came up to help us on Sunday and I gave my dad the task of taking down the multiple paper towel dispensers and magnetic knife racks in the kitchen. Really, who needs paper towels in two different spots? In the same kitchen?

Super sweet lamp - this nifty little ditty was attached to the wall above my desk in the office. It had a pee-yellow metal lamp shade with a Norwegian type flower pattern on it. I couldn't concentrate on a conference call it was so distracting. 

Iron - perhaps original to the house, circa 1960. My dad thinks I should take it to an antique shop, my mom and I disagree.

Light bulbs - not in light fixtures, mind you. Just laying around the house, in the back of closet shelves, in the laundry room, on the kitchen counter top.

Coat racks - I love coats a little too much, but even I don't need more space than the coat closet allows.

Spiders - seriously wondering if the previous folks bred spiders for research and had an unfortunate escape episode. I'm normally a capture-the-spider-in-a-glass-and-release-it-outside girl, but I have to admit I've become jaded and I squished one last night.

Canadian coins - eh?

And that, my friends, is my assessment of the great moving adventure week 1. 

Totally Worth It

I was a pretty rule-abiding kid growing up. Getting into trouble never really held much appeal. I had some friends that loved to push the limits, though. My neighbor, Marcy, was one of those kids.

I spent the night at her house once and we decided to make her parents dinner. Marcy knew how to turn on the oven to cook our gourmet meal - which consisted of a plastic Sesame Street Big Bird. When the burning rubber aroma filled the house, Marcy's mom ran into the kitchen to see what was going on. I still remember her opening the oven door to the sight of a sagging Big Bird head and twisted, melting Big Bird body. It was gruesome and I was sent promptly home.

Another Marcy adventure involved another neighbor's house in the spring. They were out of town and Marcy was in charge of watering their garden for them. I went over to help her one afternoon. Her brother, Robby, tagged along and I'm guessing that if Robby was there, my brother, Mike, was there too. Given the natural state of the world as it relates to sibling relationships, there was some bickering going on.

The bickering turned into Marcy grabbing a snowball flower off a bush and throwing it at her brother, who grabbed another snowball flower and threw it back, resulting in a regular snowball fight. The puffs burst into a giant flower shower upon impact. Nothing sharp or cold to cause actual harm. The snowball fight ended only after every puff within reach of 6 and under kids had been removed from the bushes. The yard was littered with white flowers and we were all laughing hysterically at ourselves.

The neighbors weren't at all pleased when they returned home. We had to clean up their yard and apologize for our actions. But I got my first taste of thinking that it was totally worth it to get in trouble.

Old Pecos Trail

Will and I headed down to Santa Fe a few weekends ago. Will had never been and our friends, Brian & Amy, invited us to join them for the weekend. We had a great time, and Will even drank a margarita.

Anne & Will

Really, Will wanted a beverage with a salt rim and Brian and I ordered margaritas that were really weak. Amy didn't drink margaritas because, well, see photo below. We convinced Will he could handle a weak margarita, so he joined us for the second round - and the margaritas this time were wicked strong. He toughed it out and tried not to make too many funny faces while he choked it down. 

Will, Anne, Brian, Amy

(I never realized how much shorter I am than everyone else...)

Letter Writing Campaign

I had a goal in high school to get into as many yearbook photos as possible. Being editor of the yearbook my senior year helped, but so did joining a boatload of school organizations. I had a bunch of friends in Amnesty International, so I thought, "I can go to a lunch meeting once a month to protest against torturing people. I mean, that's bad stuff."

One week, we started writing letters in protest of the death penalty. I pulled our advisor aside and told him I thought I'd have to drop out of the group. I believed in the death penalty. I believed that if you killed someone, your death was a logical punishment. An eye for an eye type of thing. Fortunately, the AI advisor said I could stay in the group and focus my efforts on another letter writing campaign. If you look at the 1995 Manual HS yearbook, I'm totally in the Amnesty International group photo, probably rockin' my favorite red & blue rugby shirt and some sweet ripped jeans (ah, grunge).

Fast forward 6 years after high school graduation...

I got a phone call from Jon's mom. Jon was a childhood friend that I hadn't seen in about a year. I knew it had to be bad news because why else would Jon's mom be calling me? I thought maybe someone's dad had a heart attack. 

It turned out that our dear friend, Roberta, had been brutally, brutally murdered out in LA. Her body had been found in a park by some joggers and the killer was still on the run. The police had an ATM photo of the killer from the night before when he'd forced Roberta to withdraw money from her bank account. They knew who he was, they just didn't know where he was.

It took about three days for the killer to turn himself in - he had taken Roberta's car and driven all the way to Michigan. During those three days, I thought a lot about this guy. Was he mentally stable? What happened to him that he could be capable of the horrible things he'd done? What made him so powerless in life that he felt the need to violently dominate another person? 

Faced with the stark black and white reality of Roberta's murder, my stance on the death penalty was all of a sudden very gray. I'd think about what Roberta's last moments alive must have been like and that this guy was responsible for those last minutes consisting of fear and pain. I wanted him to feel those same things. To feel what it was like to know someone else held power over whether he lived. And yet if this guy was executed, it wouldn't bring Roberta back. It wouldn't make me feel any better.

The crime qualified for the death penalty - kidnapping, robbery, rape and murder. The trial was relatively quick. With DNA and photographic evidence and the car, there wasn't really too much to defend. The killer got life in prison, and the relief I felt at his sentence was surprising. The death toll ended there. One life was gone, but another life still held hope for something good to somehow come of it. 

This year, the Colorado legislature has been considering a bill that would take away funding for the death penalty and instead put the money toward solving cold cases. In effect, this would take away the death penalty from Colorado courts without jumping through the hurdles of declaring it unconstitutional. It looks like opponents of the bill will defeat this legislation by providing alternate funding for cold cases. 

If the bill does face defeat, I think I can pick up where my teenage self left off and start up that letter writing campaign.

Happy Gardening Anniversary

The small xeriscape garden bed

I just got an email that made my day. It was from Gardner's Supply Company wishing me a Happy Anniversary since my first order with them was April 18, 2005. 

I ordered a Tomato Success Kit from Gardner's Supply so I could grow some vegetables in pots even though I didn't have a garden. I've had some huge success and huge failures in the 3 seasons that I've grown in the success kit. Cherry tomatoes = OMG I can't eat another tomato by the end of the season. Heirloom tomatoes = it's October and I'd really like one ripe tomato before the frost kicks in.

The gardening project I'm most proud of though is my xeriscape garden. When I first moved to the townhouse, it had two giant, spiderweb infested, fire-hazard dry evergreen bushes straddling the front walk. When I'd leave the house in the morning for work, I'd put both arms straight out in front of me and scissor them as I walked to keep the spider webs from hitting me in the face. I lived with this for three years.

But then, Will moved in and our first project was to tackle the outside - rebuild the back deck and do something about the evergreen bushes. We braved the heat and prickles that summer and spent a miserable weekend cutting back and hauling away the bushes. 

My initial plan was to grind the stumps so we could have a flat garden. But, being smart and responsible we had the utility company come out to mark where all of our pipes were and the gas line went right under one of the bushes. So, Plan B emerged and we used leftover wood from our big deck project to build raised garden beds.

I knew I wanted a xeriscape garden out front because it gets so much heat and sun. I had fallen madly in love with the Xeric Aroma Garden from High Country Gardens. It was sold out for the spring, so I had to wait until the fall to get my plants. They were tiny when they arrived, and Will was embarrassed by our teeny tiny plants randomly spaced our huge planters. But the next spring-summer-fall, they went gangbusters and grew into giant behemoths that gave off the most amazing scent whenever it rained. Rather than defending myself against the plants in the front, I touched them whenever I walked by to release the herby scents from each of the plants.

I can take my Tomato Success Kit with me to the new house, but I have to leave behind my aroma garden. It will be so hard to leave behind something that I've spent so much time nurturing. The good news though, is that I'll have a blank slate (once I clear out all of the new house's weeds & sucker trees) to start over with a new garden that I know I'll love just as much as this one.

The Trappings of Fame

I'm famous at my grocery store. Or, maybe more accurately my reusable bag collection is famous at my grocery store. 

I did a light trip to the store tonight to pick up some essentials and veggies and my ever-refilling Rx. As I cruised up toward the front of the store to ring up my purchases I passed by two check out lanes with the weird cashiers and picked a lane with a bit more of a line, but no weirdo at the helm. 

The cashier gave me a knowing smile as he rung up the rest of the groceries for the woman in front of me. I had a moment of, "Oh my God, he knows who I am. Why does he know who I am? Does he recognize my green coat? Does he think I'm cute? That's giantly weird if he does because I usually shop with my husband."

As the cashier started ringing my groceries, he asked, "Did you get a new bag from another store?"

Ah, that's how he remembered me. We had discussed my vast collection of reusable bags before - and he always gets confused by the reusable wine bag from Zupan's. I try to pick up a bag from every grocery store that I visit for work. Oddly enough, this means that while I have reusable bags from Wegmans, Hy-Vee, New Seasons, Central Market, D'Agostino's and others, I don't have a bag from Safeway, where I do 90% of my grocery shopping.

"How many of these bags do you have?" the cashier asked. 

I had no freaking clue, so I made up a number.  But when I got home tonight, I counted up my reusable bags. I have 12 bags from grocery stores around the country, and six others from other places. And I think I actually have a few other bags in the trunk of my car. So there might be more. I could do the shopping for about a dozen Thanksgiving dinners and have room to pack it all up.

But for tonight, it meant that I had three bags of groceries, and 15 empty bags leftover to haul home. At least the boy scouts would be proud of me for being prepared.

Inching Toward Moving On

At what point do I start the break-up process with my now-under-contract-townhouse? Or did I already start it the minute I signed the paperwork to put it up for sale?

I love this house. I have since the minute I walked in the door while house hunting and saw two Birds of Paradise flowers on the dining room table beneath the orange pendant light. It was totally over my budget and my realtor was only showing me the house because he wanted to set me up with the seller. It was love at first sight with the house, not so much with the guy.

This is the last house my old-man cat lived in. This is the house where Will proposed to me. This is the house where I got really sick, and then got healthy again (and again). I still call the guest bathroom "Carrie's bathroom" after my roommate and dear friend who lived here with me for the first three years. Somewhere in this house is the ring that my mom gave me with the green stone that I'm super bummed I misplaced (okay, lost). Will and I have put a lot of work into this house - we've rebuilt the decks, redone the bathrooms, painted and painted again, replaced crunchy dead evergreen bushes with a xeriscaped garden, and so much more. 

I want to move (believe me, I wouldn't go through all the headache of house hunting for nothing). I want new and bigger projects to tackle with Will. I want potential to make a house a home without an HOA dictating how that can be done and what colors can be used to do it. I want a garden with room for more than a pot of tomatoes. And the new (potential) house is perfect for all of these wants. 

But I'm still wandering around the current house, thinking about all of the things that I'm going to miss. That will go away, right? 

What is this? The 50s?

Dear Financial World,

I find it very insulting that my decision to get married has somehow meant that I leave all decisions about money to my husband. 

I accomplished a lot in this world before getting married. I had my own career, paid my own bills, bought my own car, bought my own house, and I even managed to keep it together through some of the toughest times of my life, all before marriage. I was a complete person, emotionally and financially. 

I decided to get married because I love the guy, not because I needed a knight in shining armor. I still very much value my independence. 

So don't address all mortgage mail to my husband's attention only. And don't list him as the borrower and me as the co-borrower. I'm responsible for half the mortgage, and my ass is on the line too if we somehow can't afford what we've committed too. And when we combined accounts, why did they all go into his name only (I'm looking at you, AT&T)? We're equal partners here in these endeavors - so it would really help my frustration level if you could treat us as such.

-Anne

Whiplash

Why the neck brace, you ask? Well, let me tell you a little story about me and my insurance company...

Once upon a time, a beautiful princess named Anne had stomach pain. A kind doctor recommended some medicine for her, but the evil insurance company told him to suck it because the medicine was expensive. Along came a new year and a new, seemingly benevolent insurance company that offered to pay for the medicine, and there was peace in the land. 

But then the benevolent insurance company came down with a case of the crankies and couldn't decide if they wanted to continue paying for the expensive medicine or not. 

"We're so happy the medicine works," they wrote, "we'll continue to fund your health and happiness."

Later the same day, they wrote, "We've changed our minds, we DON'T want to pay for the medicine. Mwuhahahahaha!"

The kind doctor's kind nurse called the insurance company because she was confused. And they decided to remain benevolent and cover the medicine. And hopefully, there was peace in the land.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

For the last handful of years, Will and I have been putting spare change in old jelly jars. Once one fills up, we start on another. We've jokingly been calling this our "down payment for a house fund." I finally combined all of the jelly jar change into a purple Crown Royal bag (I don't know where that came from or why I have it, but it was hefty and could handle the massive pile we'd acquired). 

I trundled off to Safeway this afternoon with my Crown Royal bag full of change to get it counted. And would you believe that we had $92.58 in change*? Plus a few battered and beaten coins that the machine rejected. Clearly not a down payment on the house, but not a bad total either. We'll put it into the ol' savings account for new house fun.

But that's not even the biggest change around here. Our house has gone through some pretty drastic updates over the last two weeks. Since last Saturday, we've been sprucing, painting, yard selling, installing, cleaning, packing, moving & unmoving stuff, all to get the house looking nice for potential buyers. More than a few times Will and I have exclaimed, "Why didn't we do this years ago?" We're pretty pleased with how things have turned out. I'm especially in love with the laundry closet. Serious love. I want to marry it.

I was hoping to post some before and after shots tonight... but I don't have the after photos just yet. I guess that gives me an excuse for another post soon!

*That's before the coin counter took their 8.9% cut. Grrr....

Nostalgia

We are getting ready to put our house on the market.  So far, "getting ready" has entailed creating a list of the home improvement projects we didn't quite finish or get to, convincing my Mom to be our realtor, and creating piles of stuff we don't want anymore.  Needless to say, we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

I went through my books and CDs today and separated out the keepers from the get-rid-ofs.  It was so much easier to get rid of the CDs than the books.  I get really, really attached to my books. Even books I didn't love, I feel like I'm somehow betraying the characters by admitting that maybe they aren't worth living in my library.  

CDs on the other hand, are pretty easy to get rid of. The good ones I've got on my computer. And the bad ones are the hardest to get rid of because I have to admit that I actually purchased that music at one point (um, Candlebox? I plead the insanity of the 90s).

I also found a whole bunch of tapes that I held onto.  Mostly mix tapes from old friends and a large collection of U2. I know I got rid of tapes a long time ago and I must have held onto U2 because the tapes are all from when they were beyond awesome. I purged the tapes, but found a few that I just couldn't get rid of:

To: Anne From: Chris Keep Jammin' in the Car, Chica. A mix tape from my friend, Christine, from our junior year of high school. Having good tunes in the car in high school was key. I took this mix with me to Architecture Camp the summer between my junior & senior years of high school and the mix became famous in my studio for its awesomeness. Plus, I'm feeling all nostalgic.

Learn Xhosa with Anne Munik. This tape is from my Xhosa language class in South Africa. Anne Munik was my teacher and she was the cutest little white lady. She had grown up on a farm outside of Cape Town and absolutely loved the Xhosa culture and language - enough to dedicate her career to teaching it to other white people so they could appreciate it as well. The thing I absolutely adored about Anne was that whenever we'd learn something contradictory from our host families to what she taught us in class, she'd say, "Well, it is their culture, so they know it best." And she'd make a note. In a country where white people had for so long ruled as oppressors, it was amazing to see this woman who not only loved and appreciated the African cultures around her, but realized that she could never be the ultimate expert despite all of her learnings. 

A Reading for Anne 2003.  I usually get my tarot cards read about once a year, usually around my birthday.  I adore my Mom's friend, Bonnie, who reads the cards and records the sessions for us. She is such a gentle soul and I love that there are people in the world that see things that I don't. I also think that this is the reading she gave me where she said I would have a husband whose birthday was very close to mine. I met Will later that year and his birthday is 5 days after mine. Coincidence? I think not.

An unopened, blank tape. You never know when you are going to need ancient relics like this.

Now that I've decided what to keep, I need to figure out what to do with the old.

Lost in Translation

On Saturday morning, I had a voicemail message from my mom:

"Hi Anne, it's me.  I can't believe they named the baby Costco!  Give me a call when you get a chance.  Bye!"

Some dear friends, Marc & Perrin, had a baby boy late last week.  They didn't share the baby's name ahead of time, just like their last pregnancy with Malia.  I think we were all pretty sure that this baby wouldn't end up with a name like Joe or Bob.  If the mom's name is Perrin, it doesn't really work well to go everyday with the rest of the family.

And Marc & Perrin do indeed have a membership to Costco - I clearly remember that they got their membership before moving to Hawaii earlier in the decade.  But being the Boulderites they are, I'd assume they'd choose a local business name (McGuckin's has a nice ring to it) before a national chain if they decided to indeed name their progeny after consumerism.  

Fortunately for all involved (especially the baby) there was a horrible connection in the game of telephone announcing the baby's name.  I told my dad, who told my mom, who got it all wrong when she called me.  And baby Costco is actually baby Kosmo.

A Hendirks Movie Review

The Illusionist

An excellent study in interesting facial hair.

How Romantic

Scene: Eating artichokes, candlelight dinner

Me: Want to clean off the rest of this and eat the heart?

Will: Yeah, let's rip into this sucker Temple of Doom* style.

Happy Valentines Day!

*My least favorite movie ever.  I had serious nightmares about everything in this movie.

Teh Anxiety, I Has It

Seriously people.  Another plane crash?  This is the second time in as many months that I've landed in Denver, turned on my phone and saw an email alert from the NYT about a plane crash.  And add to that a friend's death in an airplane crash the same day as the Hudson River crash and you get a nervous Anne on a flight.

Flying in and out of Stapleton and DIA over the past 30+ years means that I laugh in the face of turbulence.  Lightening storms are really just good laser shows.  A fun activity with Will is being towed in a glider behind a prop plane.  And apparently donkeys kill more people every year than plane crashes.

But still.  I'm getting nervous.  I've already been on 15 flights since the start of the year.  Big jets and little commuter planes.  I have four flights scheduled for next week alone.  I hope I have an abundance of luck that isn't about to run out.  And some incredibly skilled pilots in charge.  And take-control flight attendants who don't loose their cool under pressure.  And a strong person sitting in the exit row who won't fumble with the emergency exit door. (Yes, I've started sizing up all of these people as I get on a plane these days.)

So, wish me good luck.  More so with the whole not getting anxious part than with the plane part.  That's going to go swimmingly, right?