Here, take this barf bag

Scott went to a party tonight without me. I could have gone; I opted not to. I was just feeling tired and not in the mood. I'm a human.

The party was in Cambridge. That means that Scott is driving alone. Fine. I guess.

It's funny, I never got this nervous or worried about anyone driving anywhere before I met Scott. I just don't want to lose him. I can't imagine my life without him in it. The idea that he is hurtling down a highway alone makes me worry.

When his parents were moving, he was delivering some stuff from his parents in NY to his sister in VT and was driving around quite a bit for a few days. I basically had to take to the bed I was so out of my mind. Right now, I'm just in a mild state of worry. It's not even worry so much as a strong desire for him to be home already.

Okay, maybe saying I never got this worried before meeting him is a slight exaggeration. One time a long time ago - I think I might have been in college - I was dropping my parents off at the airport because they were going to Florida to visit my grandparents. I became convinced that they were going to die on a plane. I cried in the car all the way back home. Then when it was time for their return trip, I cried about it in a booth at Bickford's of all places (it is breakfast anytime, after all) and an old lady turned around in her booth to tell me that I shouldn't worry and that it is all in God's hands.

She said God like Gaud. Like the vowel sound in gauze. In case you want to imagine it. I should mention that I was wearing pajama pants in public at the time. I went through a bit of a phase with that.

I guess what this is proving is that I sometimes get worried. And my state of worry about Scott driving home is no where near crying out loud in a Bickford's. That said, I will be hella relieved when he gets his honkey ass home.

I will now turn my eyes upon the TeeVee to distract myself with the SNL.

Present - card = ?

People showered us with gifts at our housewarming party. I was stunned by the generous outpouring.

Despite a few gifts and cards getting mixed up, I was mostly able to match the gift with the giver. Several gifts came without cards at all, and, thanks entirely to my wits, I was able to sherlock my way into thanking the right party. I wrote the last thank-you notes tonight, which means the whole bunch can finally be set free. But.

But!

I've got two gifts for which I cannot track down a giver. 1) Cactus shaped serving tray. According to the picture on the box, we should be using it to serve tortilla chips. It comes with a little bowl for dip and two spice mixes for making salsa or guac. 2) Lavendar bath salts in a little decorative metal holder.

If you or someone like you gave such gifts as these to us on the day of our housewarming, please do me the giantest favor and drop a dime so that I can send a proper thank-you note. We're trying to have a society here.

Thanks, and with love, your friend,
-Jennifer Myszkowski

Sweet success!

Despite a few early setbacks (everyone arriving on time (this has never happen before), blowing a fuse), Primates and Pancakes: A Housewarming went off without a hitch.

A few highlights (i.e., all the times I cried): My identical twin grandmother and my aunt and uncle arrived first, gave me presents I wasn't expecting, and I was so overcome by the generosity, I had to cry a little bit. Kelsey and I had a moment to chat about how we used to see each other and actually talk to each other regularly, and could we do that again please, and I got all verkelmpt. Then The Primate Fiasco played their medley of Muppet Show songs and my sister and I both got our weep on in earnest.

I'm the person that gets made fun of the most for my out-loud-and-in-public weep fests, but I'm by no means alone when my eyes leak.

Kristen took a bunch of photos, which she's sharing here. This is lucky, because it didn't even occur to me to take photos myself until after nearly everyone was gone. I got one photo of the band towards the end of their second set, which I took with my camera phone and have no idea how to retrieve. Hooray!

I was running around like crazy during the party, particularly at the beginning, and there was a moment when I turned away from the griddle and looked outside and the band was playing and everyone was sitting in the yard enjoying the show and it was exactly how I imagined it.

It's happening!

I just got off the phone with Dave from the Primate Fiasco. Everything is happening! I had this irrational fear that they would bail and our Primates and Pancakes party would just turn into Pancakes. Which would have been fine, but still. I'm so excited to learn my irrational fears are irrational and foundless!

If you're coming, consider bringing an outdoor chair or a blanket to sit on in the outdoors. Our grass is plush. If you lie on a blanket on our grass, it's practically like lying on a bed. I'm not even kidding. That's how plush it is.

If you didn't get an evite and you're our personal friend, please do e-mail me as I'm sure your missing evite was a terrible oversight.

I can't wait. I've got toilet bowl cleaner in the toilet this instant as preparations begin in earnest!

Raising the bar

Our housewarming party is on September 7. It's going to be an awesome time. The Primate Fiasco will be playing in our yard while I serve up hot pancakes for our guests. The party is called Primates and Pancakes.

Is that the best name of a party ever?

I don't think I'll ever have another party as cool as this one is going to be.

So many things

I've been making a list of things I want to blog about. Alas, the time to blog is so hard to come by these days. Here it all is in brief:

1) If you want to sound like a moron, a great place to start is to confuse averse with adverse. Averse means disinclined. Adverse means harmful.

Words that are related to adverse include adversity and adversary. See how words are related? See how you can keep track of them in your head?

Actual people with actual college degrees who work in actual companies that are very big can't seem to get this one right, so it turns out that if you get this one wrong, the only person who will think you're a moron is me.

I'm a terrible person.

2) We've looked at more houses. Get back on the horse and all, you know? Here's what I've discovered about myself: I'm not averse (look! it's our vocabulary word!) to working on a house. I am averse to having no time or money to do anything because I'm working so hard on a house. I don't want to spend my entire life working on a house. I know there will always be niggling details to iron out, but I don't want my life to be a constant house project.

I realized this about myself when we looked at a house on Sunday that had so much potential, but would take years and years and years to right.

I want a house where people have made stupid paint and flooring choices or have maybe put up a stupid light fixture or two. These are the kinds of things I can handle.

I do not want a house that has a hole cut into the ceiling with a ladder in it to provide an emergency exit to the people who live upstairs (who will access this de facto fire escape through what used to be a closet and now is a hollow-core door with a deadbolt). I don't want to make up for people cutting a hole into the floor of the entryway of a formerly grand home, and installing an extremely narrow circular stairway to access a dingy basement. I don't want to have to uncover whatever terrible thing is happening now because someone took out a window and never replaced it and the house has been effectively open to the elements since the last tenant moved out.

These are the kinds of things I'm trying to avoid. These are the kinds of things we saw in just one house.

I think I don't want a multi-family. For a while, I was thinking it was the way to go. Now I think I want a single-family home for us to live in. We will buy a multi-family home that we can fix up and rent out later, one we won't have to live in, but will use as an investment.

That's the ticket.

3) Did you know people still smoke in the house? Yeah, we looked at a house on Sunday that had people smoking all casual-like in the house. They didn't even bother to air the place out for potential buyers. Insane! Especially in houses with kids. What are people even thinking?

4) If you got an invite to the Best Party Ever III!, RSVP already. If you didn't get an invite and want one, say so. This year's movie is Flesh and the Devil, and we've already ordered Herrell's ice cream and hot fudge for our ice-cream-sundae-ing pleasure.

A better photo of my glasses is just a click away...

Amy took an awesome photograph of me and my glasses, which is much better than the photo we took with our camera (which is not as fancy as hers). See it here.

She took it at Matt and Kristen's engagement party, which was really fun (also, check this closeup of Kristen's awesome hair). The love was all around us. I cried during the toasts. Show of hands: who's surprised by this?

Nobody, that's who.

Other highlights from a variety of event photo galleries:

Here's a side view of my glasses, a silhouette of my head, and a smiling Count.

Here's J.Bo and the Human making us want them.

Jeremy and The Count having a snack.

The cake I made is on the left.

Flora's bracelet helping her get her cry on in fake earnest.

Kelsey looking rather feline.

Jaime's in a commercial for tasty snacks.

Good times.

New neighbor update

I think maybe things are okay and my new neighbor doesn't think I'm a total psycho. I'm sure you remember how I rolled out the red carpet for my new neighbor. Good god. Even now just thinking of it, I'm red with shame.

Remember how Margaret suggested I wait several days and then casually present a welcome-to-the-neighborhood baked treat and then back away? Well, I tried to do that. I went so far as to leave a banana bread at her door, but she never picked it up. I finally took it in when I became concerned that I was now presenting a stale banana bread to a new neighbor.

Nothing says lovin' like something rock-hard from being several days out of the oven.

I ended up waiting and just giving her a box of baked goods when I gave all the neighbors a box of baked goods. And get this! She replied with a tin of baked goods immediately. How about that!

So then I replied with a thank you note and invited her to Open Pancake Hours, our new New Year's Day pancake open house. We'll see if she attends.

The weather (holy sweet mother of god)

Okay, so yeah, the weather today is supposed to be bad. I don't care about that because I took today and tomorrow off to bake for my party, which totally rocks because I'll be baking for Christmas while it's actually and factually snowing! The weather I'm concerned about it Sunday, the day of my party -- the Wrapping Party^tm.

Maybe it won't turn out as bad as it seems like the National Weather Service says it will. Maybe the National Weather Service is, like, totally blowing smoke.

Well, I'm baking up a storm whether people come or not. We are hardy New Englanders. We do not postpone our party because of a little crappy snow! Ninety percent chance of precipitation my ass!