Makin Sure My Do is Did

We wake up early and head downstairs to the spa area to get our hair and make up done.  It is super expensive.  I feel really bad for the girls about this, but with the grandparents and wheelchairs, it is just easier to do it all in one place.  Hannah doesn't get her hair and makeup done but still looks fucking gorgeous in our photos.  The girls allowed me to give them random bullshit to put in their hair.  Cynthia lets me pay for her hairdoing, Morgan's parents helped her out with hers, so despite being ungodly expensive, our ladies are looking as beautiful as ever.  I wish I could have saved them some ridiculous expense, but everything went well anyway.  Our grandmas get all dolled up, I get a pretty braid, and poor Nancy has to go last so she has literally 10 minutes to get dressed and has to get her zipper up herself because no one is left in the hotel.  God bless you all.  All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

Cynthia was such a good sport, she wore this headband through the entire ceremony even though it was squeezing her brain and giving her a headache.

I loved this flower on my wife

I think this was Morgan's first time having her hair done all curly

Is it weird that all my favorite wedding photos of me are the back of my head?

I may have self esteem issues, but damnit my hair looked good!

MomMom is still angry

Nanny kept telling the makeup woman, "more rouge I think!"

Nancy getting a good daughter-in-law squeeze

Our fabulously feminine hair guy

God Morgan, you are so pretty!

We had my makeup airbrushed on so it wouldn't come off when I had sweat dripping off my face

I should seriously just get one of those myself when I have a bazillion dollars

In retrospect I would have had my lipstick a different color.  

It comes out really brown in the later pictures. Oh well!

Cynthia giving a good demonstration of some of her bridesmaids' gifts.

The applique belt I made, the necklace, earrings, and elbow length gloves.

The gloves were actually Chris' idea, I just want everyone to know that.

Special props to Cynthia for putting up with one of my minor Bridal Bitch moments.

Cynthia had on a large knit kind of shawl sweater over her dress.  For whatever reason, I guess because everyone else was wearing more of a cardigan, I decided to be like, "Can you wear a different sweater?"

And then I tried to dress her in my own black sweater that I had in our suite, which was obviously way too big on her and looked ridiculous, and I just told her to put her other one back on.  Cynthia was all sweet like "I don't have another sweater." And it really didn't matter, I don't think we ended up taking any pictures of the girls with them on and they didn't have them on in the church, so I don't know why I cared.  Chalk it up to crazy bride anxiety.  Even so, sorry/thanks to Cynthia for having to deal with me being an idiot bitch.

Jaclyn's curls looked really damn good if I do say so myself!

How Elise happened to have all these random black hair doodads is anyone's guess.

I'd also like to point out that "doodads" is apparently a word according to google.

I don't have a picture of Mima in here for some reason, but as she was getting her makeup done Elise and I come over to tell her how beautiful she looks.  Her response, ever the dry humorist, "It doesn't hurt to be good looking." One of my favorite Mima quotes.

Rehearsal Dinner

Some of the ladies and I went to get our nails done, and some of the men folk went off to do whatever.  One needed a new vest because the other one was too small, and I think the rest went to Dave & Buster's to hang out with some kids who were there having a bar mitzvah party.  We actually ran into my high school music teacher, Mr. Ezell, at the nail place.  He was getting a manicure.  Love love love my small town ridiculousness.

I go back to the suite we have for our wedding night.  I was going to share it with my sister the night before the wedding, the same as we did for her and Jason's.  I spent an absurdly long time in the large bathtub shaving my legs, listening to music, and just chilling out.  Then downstairs to dinner!
All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

MomMom and PopPop

Married over 65 years

Still Cranky

My darling Cynthia with Chris

Chris' Uncle Bill with his two boys

Chris cutting into his groom's cake.  

His mother got it in Maryland and traveled the whole way with it on her lap in the car.

Elise & Jason

By the end of the night we had drank like 23 bottles of red wine

The one bottle of white that someone opened was still half full

I may have finished it

Just like old times

Chris pouring us all glasses of wine

My mother really loves to snuggle

My brother doesn't really

This looks so much like old times at RPI it's not even funny

Laughing so hard we're crying

Fancy Nancy and Bruce

The boys checking out the cake

Awkward Bruce hugs are my favorite

He seriously is adorable, he doesn't know where to put his hands

Doesn't know how much he should be hugging me

In my head I hear his internal dialogue going like this

"This is my son's fiancee, I really shouldn't be pressed up against her boobs.

She's kissing my cheek... WTF?"

Wedding Drama 3:  Besides my flipout about the nativity scene, which was entirely pre-wedding week, the rehearsal dinner was by far the biggest problem of the weekend.  The Viana is a Feng Shui crazy place, so their restaurant's menu is Asian/Italian Fusion.  They are so snooty and expensive there it really is ridiculous.  I don't think we would have chosen it, except they were willing to give me a really cheap rate on the rooms.  $99 a night for wedding guests is ridiculously hard to beat on Long Island.  Chris' Mom thought that every other hotel we brought her to was "in the projects," so we tried to up our game a bit, as they were the ones paying.  When they came to visit pre-wedding they stayed at the Holiday Inn by my house.  It was over $150 a night and they didn't sleep at all because they were too near the train.  Sorry guys, it's Long Island, we're in Queens, trains come by.  I can practically see the train station from my bedroom window at my parent's house, that's just how it is.  She even still thought the Viana was ghetto because there was a gas station across the street and we were even in like Garden City... anyway!

It is a really small restaurant, like it barely has a full kitchen, much of the food is made ahead of time as far as we could tell.  We ate there for dinner twice, and neither times was it particularly speedy, but the food was good, and we couldn't beat the convenience of not having to take the grandparents anywhere else in the car with wheelchairs, etc., so we had the dinner there.  The sales person at the Viana had changed like 3 times over the course of when we booked things to when they actually occurred.  The first woman was a complete pain in my ass, the second guy was great, but he didn't last long, then the third person ended up being their assistant who had actually be there all along and had dated one of my friends from high school.  Anyway, I went back and forth with them for a really long time about the menu.  It was an expensive place and I wanted to make sure everything worked out okay if I was going to be spending that much of my in-laws' money.  Their menu is Asian fusion.  Asian usually includes nuts.  My co-matron of honor, my cousin Jaclyn, is deathly allergic to nuts.  I had to be very careful to make sure things went to plan.  We were only using the Italian dishes off the menu, there were to be no nuts anywhere near our food.  Jaclyn wasn't even going to eat any of the food at the dinner, that would have been far too risky, she was going to be bringing her own food, but just had to be able to safely breathe the air in the dining room.  

The hotel guy had even talked to me in person earlier that day to make double sure that my cousin was still coming and that she wouldn't be eating anything.  I said yes, but still NO NUTS.  When we sit down to dinner our first course, a caesar salad is sitting at each place setting.  There are nuts on top.  Not only are there nuts on top, but it's not even a real caesar dressing, it's a nut based caesar dressing, like sesame or something along those lines.  Thankfully, Jaclyn hasn't arrived yet, but my best friend Libby's wife is also allergic to nuts, not to Jaclyn's extent, but enough to be very harmful.  I run over to him and all but smack the salad out of his hands.  I am PISSED.  The chef is literally right in front of me because they have no real kitchen, just a buffet window type thing, and I try to calmly explain what the problem is.  He says no one told him about the nuts, and that's just how their caesar salad always is.  So I run over to the hotel guy.  He says oh my fucking god wtf, basically, and I hurry to call Jaclyn, hopefully catching her before she gets there.  I ask her if she can even come to dinner now that there were nuts in the room.  She says she should be fine as long as they're not peanuts.  What kind of nuts are they?  Peanuts.  She is in the parking lot in the car with her husband and baby.  She can't come inside.  My matron of honor who was supposed to be giving a toast at dinner has to turn her car around and drive back home.  I cry.  We try to laugh it off, but my boss and his wife, who were not invited to dinner but were staying there that night are having a cocktail at the bar and are seeing me lose my shit.  I am horrifically embarrassed, and sad, AND mad.  Angie, who knows Jaclyn and my sister already from having photographed them for other occasions understands.  Takes a photo of the offending salad and sends it to Jaclyn.  We try to laugh about it.  Dinner goes on, and it is pretty damn good, but still.  The hotel guy comes up to me after, holding a copy of the menu we had agreed on.  He is so flustered trying to save his ass that he points to the salad description and tries to tell me that it says cashews.  I'm about to tell him that even if it did say cashews, that would have been passable, but they are peanuts, when I take a closer look at the menu.  It says croutons.  Idiot.  

When I return from our honeymoon I try to get some recourse from the hotel people.  They take off the two meals that our guests were unable to come and eat, but that's it.  My mother-in-law is pissed and lists off a bunch of other things that went wrong, trying to give me some ammunition to fight with them about.  It just makes me feel worse that the dinner was so sucky, that things were cold, and they spilled meat juice all over her dress.  I could have lived my life without hearing those important details.  I get sick of arguing with them on the phone.  I stop trying.  Life goes on.

Jaclyn understands that it's not my fault, but I'm still sad about it.  I try to get her to give her toast at the actual reception.  She refuses, but gives me the paper copy to keep.  All in all, still an enjoyable evening, but still quite the disaster.

Wedding Rehearsal

So we packed up our car and drove to my homeland, Long Island.  For the rehearsal dinner, hair/makeup, and wedding hotel we chose the Viana in Westbury, NY.  It is definitely beautiful, definitely small and classy, definitely expensive, but it suited our needs well and the sales manager had slept with one of my friends from High School, so we went with it.  Everyone piles into town and we meet at the church for our rehearsal.
Photos one and five stolen off of Kristen's facebook, the others by Angie Gaul at Milestone Images.

Andy and Elise

At the altar with Deacon Rich

Patrick and Cynthia

Dan and Jaclyn

Jim and Morgan

Jim Scott

PC Men in the Choir Loft

My beautiful church

Dadoo

This go pretty well except I forget what order the bridal party is supposed to go in and end up having to search through my email on my phone to find a pdf of the program so I can tell them what to do.  My lovely Folk Group friends take time out of their day to serve as our musicians, and some of the boys from my a cappella group do me the grand favor of lending me their voices for the psalm.  As we go through the wedding saga, I'm going to label the wedding dramas, because really, everyone loves to hear about the things that went wrong.  These are in no way big problems.  We had a wonderful, beautiful, memorable day.  Only little hiccups happened along the way, largely thanks to our photographer Angie who knew when to herd the masses and when to kap a bitch.

Wedding Drama 1:  We were getting married two weeks after Christmas.  We had always wanted a winter wedding because we really hate to be hot, and there was no way we were doing spring or summer.  We chose the winter break because we knew at least one of us would be in grad school and wouldn't be able to miss class.  My church, St. Raymond's in East Rockaway, NY, is beautiful at Christmas.  The wreaths and trees are lovely, BUT, I hate poinsettias   I was hoping that some of them would have died off by then, but they hadn't.  I asked the deacon and pastor to let me move them for the ceremony and them move them back, but they wouldn't hear of it, not even after I tried to convinced them that Jaclyn was allergic to them, which is true, but not to the extent I was making it out to be.  The poinsettias stayed, they didn't look bad, I didn't fuss, and life went on.

Wedding Drama 2:  Our new church pastor put up this gigantic nativity scene the Christmas before.  As I It was about 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide (see picture above), had straw all over it, and had spotlights lighting it up with their wires taped down to the floor in front of the altar.  I hated it.  I seriously BEGGED the church to let me move it off the altar.  It was seriously huge, we couldn't stand in front of it at all.  My mom and I had noticed it the year before and had already been worked up about how it would look for the wedding.  I don't know what it was about this nativity scene, I guess I just thought it was ugly and gigantic and was getting straw all over the floor, but that added with poinsettias just made me snap.  I am not proud of it.  This was by far my biggest bitch moment of the entire wedding proceedings.  I begged Deacon Tom, my mother begged him, I explained that half my family was Jewish and having the wedding in a Catholic church at Christmas was already a sacrifice for them and I didn't want to shove it in their faces.  I actually CRIED.  In the Deacon's office with my mom and my fiance there, discussing our ceremony.  Something broke in me and the floodgates opened.  I was sobbing over this stupid fucking nativity scene.  The nativity scene stayed, life went on, the world continued to turn, but I seriously flipped a shit over that one.  My apologies to the church for being a total crybaby psycho.

Our photographer Angie came to the entire rehearsal the day before the wedding to check out the lighting and such, so I even have awesome pictures of the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner... coming up!

Interesting Revelation

I think I just noticed who Chris' parents remind me of.  It's the Dursleys.  Or at least if the Dursleys were about 20% more relaxed and really liked red wine.

Happy Thanksgiving!  and a Happy Birthday to my lovely best friend Morgan <3

Pre-Thanksgiving Post

I do not have much to report here this week.

This weekend, Chris and I went to his parent's to put up their Christmas tree, do some decorating, and some holiday baking.  We played pool for a bit, drove all the way home to bring back the correct type of walnuts (I wasn't aware there was a wrong type of walnut), and went out to dinner.  I like going out to dinner with the in-laws.  It's usually at a really nice place and we eat and have some wine and usually have a very serious conversation about whatever, which ultimately boils down to a hilarious relaxed conversation, but always only after we've paid the bill.  I don't understand why his parents suddenly get hilarious at the end of a meal, and we start having a good time, then it's time to go home.  Very odd.

I'm doing really good on the calorie counting this week.  I'm down a whole 3 pounds in one week.  Not too bad if I do say so myself.  The goal is around 2 pounds per week or at least 5 pounds a month, which would put me at 50 pounds lost by the time our wedding rolls around in one year.  That leaves me with eating about 1500 calories a day, which is really not very much.  Granted, we were eating a ridiculous amount of calories before, but I'm in a bit of a cranky-hungry mood this week.  I'm thinking it will start to get better and pass altogether once I get my body used to it.  Also, I'm planning on joining a gym after Thanksgiving, so if I do any exercising I can up my calorie intake a bit that day and still reach my weight goal for the week.  I started this journey at 220 pounds.  I'm at 214 right now, and hopefully will continue to drop steadily from now on. 

Elise and Jason are coming for Thanksgiving!  I am so very excited to do all of our holiday baking.  I have so much fun when my sister comes to visit and we have a lot of wine and dance around the kitchen.  Our baking list for Thanksgiving is as follows:

• Apple Pie
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan-Caramel Cheesecake
• Chocolate Mousse Cake
• Cinnabons for Friday morning breakfast

It should be majorly delicious.  Jason is planning on moving in with us when his lease is up at the end of the year, so we will be planning a trip down to Virginia to help him get his stuff and put most of it in storage.

I'm really feeling the Christmas spirit and have started listening to Christmas music already.  I know it's early, but I was in the mood. I'm dragging Chris with me to Target later so we can buy a tree and put up the ornaments that I brought from home. 

I checked out one of the local Roman Catholic churches on Sunday.  I need to become a parishioner somewhere around here so we would be eligible to sign up for our pre-cana or pre-marriage classes that are required for us to get married at my church back home.  It was epic and modern and so strange.  Much different from things at St. Raymond's.  There was preachy music played by a guy that sounded like John Denver, 2 jumbo trons and video cameras everywhere showing slide shows of the readings and whoever was talking at the time, inspirational videos shown before mass and as part of the homily.  There's a cafe that looks like a Starbucks in the lobby and a lounge with a fireplace, and they had so much staff.  There was a person like every 10 feet with a little ID badge on.   There was a street entrance that looked like the big stone facade thing of a country club.  You could tell that they had a lot of money to blow on updating and maintaining the place.  I e-mailed the info address to find out about becoming a parishioner and they said they already responded to me.  They have a program set up for you to hear about the church and have dinner before filling out your registration.  Seriously, it's intense.  I'm going to take Elise with me to mass on Sunday for moral support while I sign up for the program thingy.  It should be pretty interesting. 

Can it be Wednesday yet?  I miss my sister.

Julibean <3

I Don't Like Mexican Food

There is only one kind of food that I can honestly say I don't like.  I do not like Mexican food.  With the exception of fake Mexican food like nachos and taco bell.  I think a large part of this is that I simply hate beans.  Any kind of beans, I don't like them.  When they're in chili or some other kind of dish I can deal with them.  I'm not the kind of girl that picks something out of anything; with the exception of ripping the crust off of my sandwiches.  I do not like black beans, I do not like re-fried beans.  I can deal with the occasional fajita because I like grilled vegetables, but that's about it.

Chris' parents own a beach house in Ocean City, MD.  I swear to God they only go there to eat Mexican food.  Sure, they go to the beach or whatever.  Bruce will go around to hit golf balls and leave his wife sitting around doing nothing, but really, I think they only go for the Mexican food.  Every other weekend, if Bruce doesn't have to work Saturday, they drive down to the beach.  Mind you, even though both of their houses are in Maryland, the two of them are about three hours apart because you have to go around the Bay.  Anywho... Every Friday they head down to the beach and go to their favorite Mexican spot, La Hacienda, affectionately known as LaHa's.

As is every other restaurant I have ever been to with the in-laws, LaHa's is rather expensive.  Most of the entrees are over $20, the nachos are probably $15, and a side of guacamole is about $7.  The real kicker is the margaritas.  If you order a margarita on the rocks at LaHa's it costs a whopping $8.50.  But that's not all folks. 
Papa B usually drinks manhattans, but he makes the exception to have margaritas at LaHa's.  That being said, they don't just have one or two.  I've seen each of them drink up to four of these $8.50 margaritas.  This alone would be pretty ridiculous, but Bruce likes to get a little carafe of Grand Marnier on the side.  He probably adds about two shots of orange liquor to each of these margaritas.  I have no idea what that costs, but it's probably quite a bit.

The other thing is... if you know you're going to have upwards of 10 margaritas in one sitting.  Why not order the pitcher?  Wouldn't that make sense?  Hmm I think not.  The in-laws never order pitchers of anything, nor do they order bottles of wine even if all four of us are drinking the same kind of wine and have upwards of two glasses each.  I'm not quite sure what the rationale behind any of this is, but there you have it.

So a few months ago we went over to the in-laws for dinner.  What were they having?  Mexican!  They made chicken fajitas.  Not my favorite, but okay, whatever.  Also, they do not just make a bunch of everything and have a couple little fajitas each.  They make at least one chicken breast per person and you are supposed to fit it into one monster fajita and eat it all at once.  Also, I think why we are always having Mexican is that B&N just plain really like tequila and don't have any other outlet for it.  They are far to classy to just announce that we are having margarita night for no goddamn reason and you're gonna like it.

Now I'm not going to begrudge any girl her day with tequila.  But why not mix it up a little?  Have margaritas with pizza, have them with veal parm, hell, just have them just because you fucking feel like having a little tequila.  It really doesn't matter to me, you never need a reason.  In fact, just the other day my mom drives into a massive puddle and basically totals her car.  Her response?  Calling my sister to ask if we have any margarita mix in the house.  That's my mama.  I guess it runs in the family.

We had some fajitas.  No biggie, I filled mine mostly with vegetables and fed most of the blackened chicken to the dog.  The next time we go over for dinner we're told to bring Cynthia along.  So we arrive, and what is sitting on the table for us?   MARGARITAS!  In none other than the famed cactus margarita glasses.

I love those fucking things.  So we have a few drinks and I start to forget that we're going to have fajitas.  The next time we go over to the in-laws for dinner?  It's fajita time!  I mean come on.  They had chicken going bad in the fridge.  Obviously there is nothing else you could possibly do with chicken that might allow you to drink tequila out of cacti so we have to make fajitas out of it.

Fast forward to today.  Here I sit at the kitchen table of the in-laws.  We got a call from Mama N at around 10:30 a.m.  We are still in bed, not dressed, it is a Saturday.  Not only is it a Saturday but it is the first Saturday I have ever had after a week of working a full time job.  On top of that, Chris is having a minor apocalypse at work and did not get home on Friday night until about 8:40 p.m.  So I'm like oh crap, it's time to go to the in-laws and put together their new desktop computer.

Easy right?  Hmm no.  It is 5 p.m. and I am still sitting at said kitchen table and said computer is still not working properly.  At this point N has been on the phone basically the entire afternoon trying to sell her parents' house.  They've been back and forth with the grandparents, her two brothers, and the Realtor and there is still really no deal in sight.  She suggests that we stay for dinner since the computer still needs a few hours and guess what they want to have for dinner?  Oh yes, the infamous chicken fajitas...

Currently we are striking a compromise for Italian instead.  Maybe I can get them to have some margaritas too.

Julibean <3

I Can Haz Job?

I am employed! I am now working as an administrative assistant for LBC Solutions, LLC, which is a government contractor that comes up with ways to implement new initiatives of CMS which is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The work is dull. I spend most of my time sitting around proofreading extremely boring and seemingly insignificant articles on the Medicare Learning Network website. However, I will be getting a paycheck next week if the payroll goes through, so I can't really complain. The pay is decent, the working environment is nice. It's quiet, I sit alone for the most part and can play music on my new computer. No one calls and no one really comes into the office either. The upstairs office is new and we spent most of this week putting together furniture and hanging walmart pictures on the walls. Those would be pictures bought at walmart, not actual pictures of a walmart building, for those of you who were wondering.

I'm finishing up my first week here and so far so good. LBC Solutions is owned and operated by Cynthia's grandparents. They have fewer than 10 employees and the owners mostly work from home so there's not really anyone in the office except Cynthia and me on any given day. Hopefully this isn't the end all be all job for me, but it has benefits and pays really well for my first full time job, so I will be sticking it out here for at least until after Chris and my wedding.

Speaking of which... our wedding has officially changed dates to Sunday, January 8th, 2012. It still sounds really far away, but I suppose it will creep up on us ever so slowly. Since Chris was baptized in a Christian religion we were required to be married in a Christian church. We were thinking that my church would not be an option because it was almost an hour from the wedding reception area and I had given up on it being there anyway since we agreed to have the ceremony in the reception hall. Once we realized that getting married in the Thatched Cottage wasn't going to be a legit Catholic wedding (which is required by my mother), I put my foot down and said that if we had to get married in a church anyway, I wasn't going to get married in just any church just because it happened to be closer to the north shore. That just seemed silly to me. I have a really great connection to my church, I have been going there since my mother had me baptized there, I'm a well known parishioner, and I wanted to be able to include my Folk Group buddies. Also, did I mention that it's beautiful? Here's a picture.

This is what the alter looks like on Christmas.  I'm hoping there might not be quite that many poinsettias, but the trees and lights are really beautiful that time of year.  

Here's one of the outside.  It's actually quite a large church.  If you ignore the red traffic light, it's rather nice.  So our ceremony is scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. then we'll take pictures and everyone will be able to return to their hotel for an hour or so.  We will be chartering a nice bus to pick everyone up from the hotel and take them to the reception hall.  This way, no one gets lost or hurt driving if it happens to be snowing, and then whoever has been drinking will have a sober right back to their room.  The reception starts at 6 p.m. with a cocktail hour, and then a 4 hour party ending around 11 p.m. 

I'm pretty excited in the first place that the wedding isn't going to be in the afternoon.  I want my college friends to be able to get completely drunk and have an awesome time and I don't really expect that to be happening at noon.  Well I'm sure some of them would hit it pretty hard at 10 a.m., but not everyone. 

The next thing on the wedding planning agenda is to look for a photographer.  There are a few in the area that we could definitely take a look at if we ever actually took the time to sit down and decide on a few.  Word on the street is that Chris' parents will be paying for the photographer and we're going to try to keep it around $2,500.  That sounds like a lot of money, but when it comes to wedding photography, it really isn't.  Both my sister and Jaclyn's wedding photographers were in the ballpark of $5,000, but Chris and I didn't feel the need to go that crazy with it. 

Today is the first day of October and later this month Elise and I have an appointment to go look at wedding dresses at Kleinfeld's in the City.  I think it is going to be a lot of fun.  Elise is losing a lot of weight and looks great, I am not really.  They say that they have a really great selection of plus sized dresses, so hopefully we will be able to find something that I feel good in, nothing has really been fitting or looking that good lately.  It's really discouraging to try to fit in a wedding dress sample that is clearly like 3 sizes too small for you and then try to make a decision based on how you think it will look if it was the right size. 

Elise is hitting the job applications pretty hard and will hopefully have a few things to look at in the next couple of months.  She is really needing to get her stuff together and move down to Virginia to start helping Jason out.  Chris and I are really happy in the condo.  We could use a little more space, but in a few months or however long Cynthia will be staying with us we will not have use of one of our bedrooms and half of our living space.  Once we have that taken care of we may decide to get a puppy, which would be really exciting. 

Our tasks for this weekend are to install the Ensor's new family computer, pick a few photographers to make appointments with, and get the addresses filled out on our wedding guest list.  If we can get all of that done it would be great.  I am really loving all of the fall air around here and hope it starts to get cold soon.

Until then

Julibean <3

Sick in Maryland

After my stunning digestive pyrotechnics on the Meadowbrook, I was still not feeling very well at all. I should really learn to just stay home one extra day before venturing back into my daily routine. I always push myself a little too hard and end up sick for twice as long because I didn't take the time to heal properly. Anyway...

We spent the next two days making apple pies and fruit tarts. They were delicious and looked absolutely amazing.

I really enjoyed making the fruit tart.  I like the very meticulous and creative projects the best.  Also I just like using knives.  For some reason I really enjoy the manual labor parts of baking.  Whenever we have something annoying to do I like to ask Brooke things like "can I chop the nuts?" or "I want to grate the carrots!"  I guess I'm just weird like that.

I was still feeling really shitty but I hadn't seen Chris for a few weeks so I was determined to make it down there somehow.  I contemplated taking the bus, but trekking into the city with my bags is pretty exhausting and I tend to get sick from all the random people and germs, so I was really not feeling like adding to my sickness.  Fortunately, Casey needed to go down to Maryland to visit her Uncle and cousins, so she offered to travel with me and drive my car down so I could rest.  In return I gave her family 3/4 of my cheesecake (I let Chris eat the rest).  Chef Katie was nice enough to bake and un-mold the cheesecake that I had made before I left for Seattle so I was able to get it out of the freezer and bring it home.  I got rave reviews from K's family about the cheesecake.  Apparently it was better than Junior's bakery cheesecake, which means a lot if you're from Brooklyn!

Casey dropped me off at Chris' parents where we would be spending the weekend dog-sitting for Abby while his parents were away in Phoenix for the week.  I lent her my car for the rest of the weekend since hers had recently been totaled in that stupid car accident.  I felt like such crap that I basically moped around in sweatpants for the majority of the weekend whining about how much my throat and stomach hurt.

Andy and Becky came up for dinner and a movie Friday night.  We had some pizza and watched The Proposal, which was surprisingly amusing, and then went to bed.  They left early in the morning because Andy had to be back in D.C. for a robotics competition.  Saturday I was determined to try one of the recipes that I had missed while I was absent.  I didn't want to get too far behind so I decided to make eclairs which included three elements that I had missed that week; pate a choux, pastry cream, and ganache. 

Even though I had asked Brook and Chef Katie about the recipes, copied Brooke's notes and basically made her act the process out for me like charades, I still could not manage to get it right.  I attempted pastry cream 3 times before I decided to call it quits for the day.  I felt so terrible that I was not concentrating at all.  I called the emergency number for my doctor's office and left a message.  I really needed to know if there was anything I could take for my upset stomach because all of the drugs I had picked up at the pharmacy told me not to mix with antibiotics.  Thankfully, my doctor got back to me and wrote me a new prescription for a different antibiotic which he called into the local CVS.  At this point all I was thinking about was how long I could stay on my feet before I needed to lie down.  So instead of baking anymore we went downstairs and watched Crank.

Chris' parents got home and we went out to dinner at Red Lobster.  I had never been to a Red Lobster and honestly, now having been there once, I think I'm all set for the rest of my life.  Granted, I was ridiculously sick and weak and feverish, but the food really sucked, and the waitstaff was not that great.  On the way to dinner we realized that the local CVS that was located in Sketchville, MD had closed early.  So I had to wait another day to get new drugs.

Casey showed up at Chris' on Sunday morning after breakfast while I was completing my eclairs.  I had finally gotten the stupid pastry cream right (apparently I had it right all along but I kept thinking there was something wrong with it.  Go figure.) and was filling my eclairs.  Since K is an amazing sisterfriend, she went to the sketch CVS and picked up my drugs while I finished the eclairs (which were delicious).  I packed up my stuff and the three of us had lunch before Casey and I left for home.

More to come... Julibean <3