reminiscing

yesterday, dustyn and i slept in until about 11:00. we don't usually sleep that long, but we've had so many things going on lately, that we just needed the rest. it didn't help that Go Cart Racing has begun again. the sound they produce is so annoying; i wake up feeling bitter and angry. it's never a good thing to start the day off that way!

dustyn and i have been counting the number of tenants that have lived in the apartment next door to ours. so far, there have been five or six. in one apartment over a course of 10 months, there have been that many tenants. our theory is that no one can stand the race car driving, much less the go cart racing, so they request to move to another vacant apartment. we've had young, single male neighbors. young couples. currently, there's an older, more established, older couple that drives a range rover. we should count the days for how long they'll last before they too leave.

we were invited to go to the little italy art walk with kelley and carie yesterday, but our goal had been to stay at home and pack/organize/goodwill since kim is coming to visit next weekend. around 2:30, they called and said they were on their way. we weren't exactly being productive at home, so we left to meet up with them. yesterday turned out to be so awesome. we got to walk the streets of downtown san diego in perfect weather - it was nice and sunny, i had no more sunburn, and the temperature was still cool - and look at art, photography, sculptures, and taste delicious food. we tried san diego bbq, and it was good, but odd. they asked if we wanted a sweet sauce put on it. i asked if they had spicy - come on! i'm from texas! they said yes, and delivered us a bbq sandwich with pico de gallo on it. that's not spicy! it was still delicious, but not at all what texans would consider sauce. the four of us split the sandwich and then continued exploring.

when things began to wind down, we decided to go to trader joe's and purchase food to grill for dinner. it's been a while - well, since we left tejas - that we've grilled. we don't have one here and it hasn't been very common for people to invite us over for a bbq. at least not a texas style bbq. we made ribs, grilled corn, and grilled chicken. carie and kelley cater for awesome chefs at least once a week, so they have several delicious secrets up their sleeves. carie made cornbread muffins, and dustyn was floating on cloud nine. it's one of his favorite foods.

we sat around and talked until long after midnight. we've never been over to their casa one on one, so it was nice to talk about more specific topics and look at kelley's high school scrapbook... just to really get to know them that much better. they have a cat named aspen that i absolutely love. she's the prettiest color... her color is like a gradient - it starts out light on her face and ears and gets darker as it goes to her tail.

this morning was an early one for us, relative to yesterday. we woke up and got to business. today, our target was our bedroom. we want to clean out as much of our closet as possible so we can store boxes there instead of in the hallways. we purged a lot of clothes that we've been keeping for when we "lose 10 lbs". i finally got rid of some things i'd been holding onto that i had paid too much money for, but didn't wear enough... those clothes that made me feel guilty.

after we tossed clothes from the dressers and the closet, we went straight to goodwill. we picked up jennifer on our way so she could take the things she'd accumulated as well. jennifer is moving back to chicago on saturday. :( when we came home, i started going through two plastic bins we had under our bed. there were notes and cards, pictures, etc. that we'd been keeping, but hadn't looked at in a very long time. i found a thank you note from anne's high school graduation, her senior picture that jennifer took, melissa morgan's college graduation, notes to us from our wedding, paperwork from our honeymoon, notes that dustyn and i wrote while we were dating. even our first married valentine's day cards to one another. as i sat there and looked through all of this, emotion swept over me.

there are nicknames i'd forgotten about. we read through leslie's transcript from the blasig family trip to california and i thought about the very first time i'd ever been to san diego. how did we end up here after that trip? i found a christmas card from my cousin that touched my heart from our very first married christmas. i looked at pictures from when my sister was younger - and now she's about to graduate.

while many of the things we looked through today brought up amazing memories, we were able to organize all of these in a more orderly manner. now they're located in a more convenient place than a plastic bin under our bed. :)