Weekly Chronicle October 8, 2006

If my life this week could be objectified in a painting--it would be a Jackson Pollock! And please forgive my crassness, but Henry has contributed all of the brown--he must have a stomach bug or something; at the rate we're going through diapers we'll be pilfering on the street by the end of the month. This week has brought a smattering of everything from the elation of finding the deal of the year on a gently used fridge for our new house, to confronting the doldrums that hit hard for me on the 4th of October (when my cravings for Autumn were getting so strong I was boiling cinnamon on my stove just to create a sense of harvest) but the temperature outside was a sweltering 97 degrees and there was not a golden leaf in sight.
Nate and I both admitted to each other just tonight that this was a week of wondering--why are we here? How did we end up so far away from everything familiar? And when will this start to feel like home? Fortunately, though, our lives maintain just the needed level of comedic relief to keep those pity parties fairly short, though they can be painful.

For example: Nate told me, as we were driving out to look at the fridge, the funniest story I have heard in a long time--it happened to him at the regional training he recently returned from. His company put all of their new-hires up in the hoity toity Hilton resort for 2 weeks and some rumors of free massages started cropping up among the newly hired professionals. Nate had been wined and dined so extensively, I guess the notion of a free massage didn't seem so outrageous, and if there ever was a man who loved to be rubbed--it is surely Nate. With the idea of a free massage lingering in his subconscious, Nate was walking down the hall of the hotel and passed a door marked, "Message Center." He gave the sign nothing more than the expected quick glance, and walked in anticipating the royal rub down. He walked up to the desk, to ask where he could get his massage, but there was no clerk there to assist him -- (a total blessing in disguise which spared him a great deal of embarrassment) -- because, as he looked around a bit more carefully, he realized there wasn't a massage table in sight and that he was, in fact, in the message center--where patrons would come to retrieve important correspondence/communication from the company--not a day at the spa.

My comedic moment this week didn't seem so funny to me at the time that it happened as it does now. I was having a pretty hairy morning, I think it was around noon and I still hadn't showered, but Henry didn't show any signs of slowing down for a nap, and there's just no way that I can have a shower while he's awake and at large. So I decided I would just wash my hair in the faucet, kneeling by the side of the tub, just getting my head wet. This way I could keep my eye (or at least my ears) on Henry and if there was a disaster that required my attention I could leave the bathroom with only dripping hair (as opposed to dashing out of the shower stark naked and soaking wet.) Everything was going fine until, unbeknownst to me, some of my hair got wrapped around the little knob that you pull to shift the water to the shower head, and I pulled my head away from the faucet and the shower came on...full force. The bathroom floor and I were soaked...and my hair was tangled, inextricably, around that little knob. I ended up having to yank a substantial chunk of it out just to free myself.

The highlights of this week were finding our fridge, getting the latest issue of my Real Simple magazine, Nate finally being able to schedule the first section of the CPA exam, seeing a very large frog on our walk this evening, getting three free music downloads with my new tube of Aquafresh, and sharing delicious Polish cakes with our neighbors across the hall last night.