A Moving Birthday

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. -- Unknown

That's a pretty sappy quote, even for me. But I like it anyway. Plus, it's shorter than the one I really wanted to use, which I paraphrase: For pessimists, change is stressful because things can always get worse. For optimists, it's welcome because things can always get better. For confident people, changes are challenges where opportunities live.

Warning: My life is totally crazy right now, so this post will not be very organized. Bear with.

Work has been insane lately. Luckily, Boss Lady is on vacation, so I can goof off a little this week...hopefully I will be able to post some more.

This weekend has been full of so many changes. Luckily, they were all excellent. My move went very smoothly, thanks to K's family, who were so sweet to me about moving all my stuff. I tried to buy them dinner, but they wouldn't let me. After a couple of glitches, we got the washer and dryer in and working. By "glitch" I mean a loose hose and water all over the floor. Oops. But so far, it's all good.

As usual when you move, you think How did I acquire so much crap? and Why didn't I throw this junk away? so now I'm dealing with re-organizing everything. I have to find a spot to store my magazines. I subscribe to 5 and I'm behind on reading them by about...a year. I know. I'm ridiculous. I moved all of them. Normal people would throw them away. But I love my mags! (I am definitely my father's daughter--he was King Packrat!)

I have much less storage in the bathroom and kitchen than before, but I'll figure it out. I have no idea where anything is. It takes me 20 minutes to find socks that match. I have some food, but nothing that will make a meal. I have very little time to remedy these problems before Saturday, when K and I are having a party. It's a Happy Birthday/Housewarming/Congratulations on Being Bigfoot-free party.

There are so many great things about this move. I'm loving the fact that there is no Bigfoot and I get my own bathroom! And a bigger room and even bigger closet! K is a super roommate who is always up for Target trips and has a gigantic DVD collection. K and I have fairly different schedules, so we are not on top of each other all the time. One of our coworkers, The Coupon Lady, has a ton of stuff at her house, so she gave us a whole box of dry goods today. (Hey, she's called Coupon Lady for a reason.) K and I are both living closer to our boyfriends now. Soon the pool will open up. We have a hot neighbor. We realized after we moved in that our patio has the perfect view of downtown. It's gorgeous at night! Eventually, with K's awesome decorating skills and my 6,583 home decor accessories, we will have our apartment "cute-ified". It's coming along.

So far, there are only minor problems. I'm worried about my plants because this apartment has few windows and is darker than their old home. And the cable guy told me I cannot have Internet access in the dining room, the only area where I can fit a desk/computer. (Repo says there is a way around it--some kind of special wire or something. I told him that's why I keep him around.) Hopefully, I won't have to buy a wi-fi modem. *VB crosses her fingers.*

As far as my birthday was concerned, it was excellent. K gave me the prettiest decorative box ever. I love it. K's mom made me a huge and delicious birthday cake as a surprise. Mmmmmm...homemade pound cake with cream cheese icing!!! (I will try to get the recipe and post it on Virginia Cooks.) I had not gotten a birthday cake since I was a kid, so that was really great. It made my birthday, in fact. For some reason, The Czarina and Fat Dog decided to send me disgusting birthday cards. Czarina's makes a reference to the night I was conceived (ewwww!) and Fat Dog's was a rather long poem about farts. Typical. Especially when he referred to me as an old one.

At least K, my little sister Smurf, and Repo gave me nice cards. Repo's was actually kind of...mushy. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, my family doesn't do mushy. Ever. Mush makes my whole family feel uncomfortable. So I'm not used to birthday cards like that. On the other hand, I want to say, "Awwww....!" and smooch on him. Instead, I told him I would tease him incessantly about giving me this card. And I would try and find an even mushier one for him at the next opportunity. Then I smooched on him. He thinks I didn't like it, but I've read it about 7 times. It makes me feel all warm inside. But I hate to admit that!

He has not surprised me yet with my birthday present since I was too busy this weekend. He has a couple of spots in mind for where to take me, but hasn't decided yet. I asked him if any of them required protective clothing (ie, paintballing) or no fear of heights (ie, skydiving). Nothing like that, he said. Whew!

Since things were crazy with the move and our boyfriends were helping us get settled, K and I went to a lot of restaurants this weekend: Bojangles' for Cajun Filet Biscuits, Mellow Mushroom for pizza, more pizza at a Mom n Pop, Moe's for burritos and Jimmy John's for my birthday dinner. (They copped an attitude when I informed them that I always get a free substitution--no chips, sub cookie--and despite being informed that it was indeed my birthday, they still charged me extra for the cookie. I might write a letter...I have been getting free cookie substitutions at JJ's for two years.)

Because of all of this junk food, Repo and I are trying to eat healthier this week and go to the gym. He's at the gym right now, actually. I'll join him as soon as I have time and as soon as I find my gym clothes. Tonight he's coming over for a healthy dinner cooked by moi and then joining me for the weekly Heavy Petting Trivia Night. (Heavy Petting didn't meet last week due to scheduling conflicts.)

Luckily, I took my birthday off. I needed an extra day to get organized/totally moved in. To get myself out of bed early, I cooked breakfast for K, K's boyfriend and Repo. Yes, I cooked for other people on my birthday when I could have slept in. I'm nice like that. We all got to start our days with french toast, OJ, bacon, fruit salad and scrambled eggs. Yum! Then I unpacked/organized most of the day.

When everyone left to go to work, I checked our new mailbox. Not surprisingly, it was full of a lot of mail for the old tenants. One was a generic flyer from OfficeMax, complete with $20 off coupon. This is perfect because I need to buy a desk, pronto. I got Czarina's perverted birthday card, complete with Target giftcard. And I got a letter from my dermotologist, Dr. Nazi. My tests came out just fine. No skin cancer here. Yessss! That was a great birthday present! (I'm telling you, it was a great birthday!)

I talked to JB, my oldest girlfriend in the world--she always remembers to call me on my birthday. She is coming to visit me in May and I can't wait! I haven't seen her in about five years!!!

Things are still going swimmingly with Repo. He is amazing. As you can probably tell from above, neither one of us wants to date anyone else. Hence my use of the B word. He's great. I cannot even tell you how much help he has been with this whole move and how sweet he is to me. To show my gratitude, I got him a book he has been wanting to read. And some smooches. A lot of smooches, actually. I'm as happy as a pig in mud. *VB sighs...*

But my inner pessimist is getting freaked out. This can't last forever, you know. Eventually he will start to take you for granted and morph into a below-average boyfriend. Either that or you will feel he is too clingy and start to become irritated with him. So I just tell her to shut up because he makes me really happy. And I think I do the same for him.

Ok, that's pretty much it for now. You should be sufficiently updated. My next post will be more meaningful--this year's birthday kind of inspired me because I turned 27 on the 27th. So I'd like to take stock of my life as soon as my brain is calmed down and organized. Moving makes me crazy!

Have to run...making dinner for cute new boyfriend and then tackling trivia!