Feeling refreshed in 2007

Okay, I’m going to force myself to sit down and write even though I hardly ever feel like keeping up with this blog anymore. See, I’ve started a new blog and well….it’s quite popular you know. I get like a gazillion comments and must respond to each and every one of them in great detail. People are asking me to make guest appearances on their blog and talk shows and everything. I’m actually getting quite overwhelmed with all of the attention. Puleez people….you’ll have your chance to get a piece of me. There’s plenty of Frecs to go around. What? You don’t believe me? I couldn’t write interesting and thought provoking words? Dang. You do have a good point, but you know you believed me for a split second.

For real. I just don’t have a lot to say. Do you really want to hear every stupid thing I say or think? I know it’s crazy seeing that these words are coming out of one of the most talkative people on the face of the planet. Believe it or not I really can be quite quiet you know. In the virtual world.

Since the Holidays began we have seen family, some friends, eaten lots of good food, and I have gotten more than enough sleep…so much so that I haven’t been able to go to bed until 4 or 5 in the morning. I think my schedule is out of whack. It all began on Girls Night Out with Autumn and her peepéttes (Bridget, Raphie, Natalie, Dana, and Kristine). Was that accent in the right place?Hmm. I decided it would be a good idea to grab a coffee after dinner before heading over to the Creative Arts Center to create the masterpiece that I will be selling on eBay for like a bazillion trillion dollars. Or for you…for $20. Hey! I gotta make my money back somehow. For real….I’ll sell it on here when I get it back. If it didn’t explode in the oven from all the layers of paint. Now, back to my story. After leaving the Art Center, us girls decided (well..it was Raphie’s idea actually) the night would not be complete without coffee. Yes, I contemplated whether I needed MORE coffee while staring at the menu, but before I could convince myself that another dose of caffeine might not be such a good idea seeing that I was already talking Autumn’s friend’s ears off, I had a freshly brewed and oh so tasty Green Tea Soy Latte in my hands. It was to die for. Not only did it add 5 mph to rate of my speech, but later I would find myself with hours upon hours of free time twiddling my thumbs. Boy, there is just nothing good on TV at 3 AM. It was also the beginning of multiple late nights. Tonight I am hoping to go to bed at a decent hour. Midnight maybe. I go back to work tomorrow. Not until 12:30 pm though. Which means…..I could still sleep in if I want.

Damn I’ve been spoiled with all these days off work.

Did I tell you that Jeff got me a nice and comfy duvét for Christmas? That his parents got me the matching sheets and duvét cover? Umm yeah. I think they all want to make it harder for me to get out of bed in the morning.

BTW – You can see the original cup of coffee that started my sleepless nights in this picture. You will also see “the girls” working hard on their beautiful art pieces. Maybe someday (if you’re lucky), you’ll find one autographed on eBay. Maybe if I’m lucky….Autumn and her friends will invite me out for another Girl’s Night Out sometime. It was so nice to finally meet the friends she speaks so highly of. Jeez..did I just end that sentence with a preposition? Who wants to tutor me on grammar?

Woo hoo!

I found this picture of my friend Claire and I on the Burt’s Bees website.
We took it at Detroit’s Tastefest a few weeks ago. I love how my purple bra (ummm..why did I wear a purple bra with a green shirt again?) is showing while my green shirt falls sloppily off the shoulder as if screaming, “Bring back the 80’s!”

Too bad you can’t see my jordache jeans with the comb in the back pocket.

Yesterday (Sunday)

The last shot is from the Madison Heights Fireworks display. Jeff and I went (despite me sleepier than sleepy the dwarf).

Girl Time

Okay, so we never made it to the zoo. Instead we went to Royal Oak, ate lunch, got appropriately tipsy (haven’t drank that early since St. Patrick’s Day 4 years ago), window shopped, and got a pedicure. This was only my second time getting a pedicure and it was absolutely wonderful. I would love to have one of those pedicure chairs in my house so I may use it all day every day. So NICE!

In the future, when the day comes that Jeff wants a Lazyboy chair to sit in while he watches/surfs TV (which won’t happen anytime soon, cuz our TV blew the other day), I will have a pedicure chair.

I can’t wait till I can say……”Honey. Can you pass the remote? My feet are wet.”

Stay Tuned- Pics from the day to come later.

Date 2…..I meet Hayden

Autumn and I had our second “date” together tonight. We took Hayden to the park. On the way home I pushed him in his stroller. Autumn and I’s relationship is moving awfully fast as you can see. So on Autumn and I’s next date I’m thinking Hayden might actually let me pick him up (despite the fact that he is perfectly capable of walking). He gave me a lot of shy smiles today so I’m expecting him to just put his arms out for me. Perhaps that is wishful thinking?
The boy is SUPER adorable. Biggest smile in the world and he has the most beautiful eyes I’ve seen on a kid this side of Texas. He’s certainly going to be a heartbreaker one day.
That’s it! I’m totally changing the name of my blog to Everything about Hayden.

Call us crazy but….

Jeff, Mitch, and I all rode bikes from Hamtramck to mid-town Detroit Saturday night. We called Mitch up because after a day of hard core cleaning, Jeff and I craved a nice cold beer. Mitch suggested we ride bikes; me on his wife Gina’s bike, Jeff on the old Ten speed, Mitch on his fancy new mountain bike. We left at approximately 10:30 pm headed for Downtown D. We took the side streets, carried our bikes over some railroad tracks, ended up on St. Aubin (south out of Hamtown), and biked on through what most people would call the “sketchy parts”. Abandoned houses, grass so long one could hide cars in its brush. However, it was truly beautiful. It wasn’t scary. It was just…. peaceful.
It was unlike driving a car through Detroit. We were on a bike, taking in every smell… some of dead animals….and some of the most fragant flowers you could ever imagine. The warm wind was blowing making it impossible to hear one another when looking straight ahead, we looked to our left and right to hear while also taking in all that we passed. We saw people having bond fires in the backyards of their house, parties going on in delapitated buildings, laughing in the distance….it was truly wonderful experiencing Detroit in a new way. I know how naive that might sound, I mean we know how dangerous it is to go riding at night (considering most people wouldn’t even do the same even in the suburbs). But it was sort of reassuring for us. Detroit gets a bad rap and while it is not totally crime-free (like any city really is) it was safe enough for us to go bike riding through at the scariest of hours. Just goes to show.

Eventually we made it to Cliff Bells. It’s a great new bar in Detroit. We stayed there a good while, drank a couple beers and listened to an old swing band before jumping on our bikes to ride through the city some more. We stopped into the Magic Stick for a slice of pizza before heading back to Hamtramck.
We made it back to Mitch’s at 2:30 am. I was pooped. 14 miles on a bike and I had no recent excercise to prepare me. I slept like a baby that night.

My rear end is still sore, but is was well worth it. A bike ride through Detroit at the midnight hour. Who would have thought it could be so sweet?

Same place, same time…neither knew.

Thursday night Jeff and I went out looking for an air conditioner in Birmingham. Why Birmingham? Well, if you know Jeff, he likes to do his research when it comes to purchasing most anything. The one he wanted is last years model (this years models haven’t been rated yet-summer just began) and it got over the top ratings. It was apparently only available at this particular store on Woodward. Anyway, we went and found out the sales person was confused about the model we wanted, they didn’t have it afterall. So we decided to wait it out longer and do more research to find “the one.”

We decided to stick around Birmingham and get sushi. Then after that, ice cream. $8.40 for each of us to have one scoop of ice cream. Only in Birmingham right? Well….and Disney World, and most likely any festival. After that, we were walking back to our car when we saw a flyer that jumped out at Jeff. He thought the flyer was of someone he knew. It wasn’t. However, upon further scrutiny I noticed it was for a fundraiser that was being put on for MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) and it just happened to be going on down the street from where we were standing. I thought it was a coincidence because we NEVER go to Birmingham and although more often than us, Mitch (Mitch is the curator for the upcoming MOCAD) never goes there either. This just happened to be the 2nd fundrasier for the upcoming museum. To make a long story short(er). We went and stood across the street from “Shades” (where the event was being held), staring in at Mitch who was in mid-discussion with someone, we ate our dripping and melting ice cream cones smiling. Soon enough Mitch noticed us staring in at him through the window from across the street like two apparitions. He excused himself from his conversation and came outside to greet us. We joked about how we caught one another in Birmingham, and then joined the last moments of the fund raiser.We don’t see Mitch and his wife Gina very much despite them living nearby. This was just a nice “small world” moment for all of us.

The next night after work, I had to go to Ann Arbor’s library (downtown branch) for a tour I scheduled with them. I have an assignment where I need to compare two different types of libraries. Not thinking, I never called any of my handful of Ann Arbor friends in advance to see if they might like to hang out afterward. After the tour (which was nice….it lasted about an hour and a half) I took some time to talk to a couple of the library’s tech assistants when I happened to look over at some of the patrons on the computers. One patron stood out to me and I immediately got all giddy inside. I wanted to scream “Nuh-Uh!” loudly, but I refrained. I calmly thanked the tech assistants for their time and excused myself while I went over to the patron on the computer, put my hands over her eyes and said, (smiling estatically) “guess who.” She turned around and reacted the way I was about to react initially. “Ohh My Gosh! Sarah! What are you doing here?! ” It was my friend Jessica. Jesssica and I were inseparable our first few years of college at Eastern. I met her at orientation at Mckinney union when there were no seats available to sit and we somehow ended up sharing one to eat. We were both like a size 1 back then so it worked out rather well. We ended up talking forever and I think we shared our entire life story in that one sitting. We went on to share a dorm room together and then an apartment. Many memories together. And..I hate to call her this, since it might sound so childish…but she was my bestest friend (and still is in many ways). With time, and distance, we have gradually grown apart…but not in heart. You know how life goes… it gets busy. My girlfriends and I try to get together monthly, but it hasn’t worked out the last few. Later this month we plan on meeting up. After many e-mails, one day worked for ALL of us. They will come out my way visit Hamtramck and then head over to Royal Oak, where we will go to the zoo, shop, eat and perhaps even get some drinks. But let me get back on track.

So after the initial moment of shock (she very rarely goes to that library and I never make it out to Ann Arbor), we decided we needed to go do something together. I was starving but she already ate. I talked her into letting me buy her a margarita while I got me some dinner. We chose an Irish Pub on Main street. I mean where else would YOU go for a margarita but an Irish pub? After that, we headed over to Babs where we took pictures in a photo booth that got screwed up by photo chemicals. We got our money back, but stubbornly decided to try again, and again..there were odd chemical streaks through our faces. The one you see here is the only one that DIDN’t have the streaks. Is it cute or what?

For a finale and in celebration of our evening together, we went to Star Bucks and had coffee. We talked and talked and talked some more. It was SOOOOO nice to see her I can’t tell you enough. I miss having girl talk and since moving out to Hamtramck I really don’t have that. You meet some of your bestest and closest friends when you are young and now as an adult I find that “making friends” is different….it’s actually hard. At least making the really close ones that you make when you are young. Why is that? *sigh*

Anyway, I just had to share these wonderful moments with you; these two “small world” moments that you may not think are a big deal, but which are considering the circumstances. I embrace and treasure them when they do happen since they are usually few and far between.