June 29 - July 1, 2012

It's hard to complain about the Great Outage, because I happen to know it was harder for a lot of people than it was for us. We didn't lose any of our cars, our house, none of us were injured...we weren't even on our Independence Day Weekend vacation and then got evicted from our hotel because there was no power like I'm sure happened to a lot of folks.

That said...I mean...no AC? On the hottest weekend of July? Can I squink by with a "bummer."? lol

DZ's parents arrived at around 10pm on Friday night, and we'd unloaded their luggage, sat down in the living room, and had just started eating our orange sherbet, when the wind started blowing so hard, it made the house creek. In the flashes of lightning, we could see the trees tossing side to side, back and forth, like a bunch of wild, club-hopping tree-teens.

Then the lights flickered out and flickered back on.

We laughed. "Woah! What a storm!"

Then the lights died.

Dad Z said, "It sure is hard to eat sherbet when you can't see it."

Now-- it was Dad & Mom Z's first visit with us since DZ and I got married, so I'd been nervous about two things: trying to be a half the host Mom Z is famous for being back in Bryson City, and figuring out what to serve for dinner while they were there. At least I'd figured out which Fiesta plates to use (the peacock and lemon grass look nicest with the burnt orange tablecloth they gave us. what? I'm not type A, how dare you. :P )

So there I was, using my mobile phone as a flashlight, hunting down guest sheets, pillows and towels, so we could set up the parents on the futon in the basement where it would stay coolest without the AC.

Welcome to our home, y'all! :D lol...

Everyone was in decent spirits, however, and I think we all enjoyed the challenge of hunting around in the dark for everything and spending an evening visiting by candle light.

candle-lit Boggle. so romantic. :P

The next day, the house was still quiet. I never realized how much a house subconsciously reminds me of a living thing until all the power was gone and somehow it felt like a giant animal that stopped breathing. We had grapefruit and granola for breakfast, neither of which required opening the great cold air vault that was now our refrigerator. :P


We then unloaded all my left-over-from-home stuff!

...the house really was company-clean before, honest. :P

The Z parents also were kind enough to do a bed-swap with us! We gave them the mahogany-colored frame we'd bought off one of DZ's ex-housemates, and they gave us their Pottery Barn-inspired frame. A happy trade for all. <3

^ old bed, new bed ^

Our original plan had been to re-paint the front of the house while Dad and Mom Z were there, and since it was a decently cool and breezy morning, we decided to at least start on that. We'd just finished the first coat as the sun came over the ridge of the house, and the temperature shot from "aaah, a balmy 70-degree morning" to "wow. 90. quitting now."

taking advantage of DZ's distracted-by-painting-tude to photograph him. 

painting-ness

By the time we'd cleaned our brushes and fled indoors, it was pushing 100, and the breeze had shriveled up and died. :P We ran tree branches and uprooted shrubs to the dump, and then trolled around town looking for a store that still had ice, half because we needed it, and half because we didn't want to get out of the air conditioned car. lol

is there anything better than watermelon on a hot day?
i submit that there is not.

Then I got to serve my first dinner-to-the-in-laws: perishables from our refrigerator on paper plates. I decided we'll get out the seasoned fish fillets and the pretty plates next visit. ;)

The original plan for Sunday was:

• get up early
• go to service with Uncle Jack & Aunt Bev at their church in Maryland
• go back to Uncle Jack & Aunt Bev's house for lunch and games
• maybe head back home in time for Harvest at 7

However, Sunday went like this:

• slept in cause none of the churches had power
• had some devotions in the basement where it was cool
• went to cousin Darin & Charity's house in Maryland (because they had power and are amazingly flexible and generous and pretty) where we met up with Uncle Jack & Aunt Bev, who also lost their power
• had lunch and games
• went out for dinner at Ledo's House of Truly Amazing Pizza (actually it's just "Ledo's Pizza", I added the "House of Truly Amazing" because it's true)

It really was a splendid afternoon/evening; we all felt like it couldn't have worked out better, and by the time we got home, we'd quite forgotten we didn't have power. Until we walked into our living room, which was 95 degrees and sticky with humidity.

That's when we remembered our dear friends, Liz, Marianne and KP.

Now-- Liz, Marianne and KP are three vivacious, lovely, parade-float-worthy gals who live just a hop skip and a jump down 29 from us. They love to host people at their house and give them snacks and ice tea and things. They offered for us to come over if we were interested. We love them. ...and their power was also working, but I just want to point out that any evening is a good evening to spend with the girls of 5 Doors Down. It's just this was an ESPECIALLY good evening. ;)

Dad & Mom Z, Dan, a big, fat watermelon (our snack contribution) and I arrived at their house in time for the last five minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean, followed by the 2012 Olympics Gymnastics trials.

aren't they cute??

I was having the best time, watching them twist and twirl through the air like the little kids you see on the trampolines at the mall. What grace they have! What poise, what focus. What fun it must be to have such flexible limbs and weightless bodies!

And then 22-year-old Nastia Liukin fell flat on her face and the whole thing looked completely different. Suddenly they were sparkly, lovely young girls who were risking life and limb to win a medal. Hurling themselves through the air with only fingertips and perfect timing to keep them from flying away like origami butterflies in a strong wind. Suddenly, they were on the brink of not just crushing their dreams, but being crippled for life.

Whose idea was gymnastics???? Don't they LIKE little girls and happiness? :P

That said, we had a great time watching the trials; every girl was wildly talented, and even the ones who fell took it with grace. It made me want to go buy a sparkly leotard.

We went home, and got ready for another night of heat and stickiness which, by this point, was even seeping into our dark, cool basement.

Then, just ten minutes before midnight, Dan and I were hunting around in the dark for our pajamas, and I looked up at the desk and said, “Dan, your computer’s on.”

Dan said, "The fan is on."

We both said, "The neighbors' lights are on!"

And there was much rejoicing. <3

A lot has happened for just two weeks! But I can't remember what happened when. :P So here goes:

First, got rid of the refrigerator! A guy and his wife came with a dolly and a pickup and paid $40 for it cause they had a third boy on the way. lol Clearing that out of the dinging room got DZ and I excited about clearing out the junk. :P So we took this living room:

...added this bookshelf we picked up at the Salvation Army in Manassas:

...spaced the couches out so the arms didn't touch at the corners any more, cleaned out the extra lamps, the lumber hiding behind the big couch and the unwanted cords and cables left over from when we had Verizon Fios, and voila!

perty, yes?

Also, yes those are new peacock toss pillows that perfectly compliment the coral ones that came with our sofas. ;) I know it's like...decorator geekdom, but if you've ever tried to buy toss pillows you know that they run $25-$40 a pillow for absolutely no reason. These, however, we fond at a thrift shop in Fairfax called Unique for $4.99 each. 0_0 And they've got real feathers in them and everything!

hehehe...being proud of yourself is a fun emotion.

What else did we do...oh! We went for a picnic at Burke Lake park in Fairfax. We set up our picnic blanket right next to the golf course and watched people tee off. A rather soulful park ranger pulled up halfway through our lunch to inform us that getting hit in the head by a golf ball hurts a lot, and then drove away on his little cart thingy. lol

After lunch, we lounged around for awhile and watched a bunch of guys play ultimate Frisbee in the field across from us. We were pretty sure they were playing shirts vs. skins starting out, but it was so hot that afternoon that by the end of it, it was skins vs. skins and DZ and I pondered how they knew who was on which team anymore. :P

When the Frisbee guys left, DZ and I went over to the foot of the hill where they'd been playing, where a park bench was sitting just close enough to the tree line to be in shade. We played Rummikub. He won both times. As you can see, it's clear the double orange 3s that did me in. :P

...somewhere in there we made quesadillas and fried rice. lol By the way, those salt and pepper grinders the Middendorfs gave us have been quite popular with our guests. It's like having giant ballpoint pens that shoot spices out! :D

PAINT! I totally painted a bathroom. lol All the bathrooms, like most of the house, is a sort of non-committal shade of almost-white/close cousin of yellow. So I painted it "Gentle Rain" which is Behr's version of a very mild gray. <3

It was a rainy day, which was a perfect time to be inside for most of it anyways, and I just painted and painted and ate Butterfingers and watched Gilmore Girls. I don't know if it was the paint fumes or the chocolate, but I had the most fantastic time. lol

...took a break to do my "Buffy the Paint Slayer" pose that I didn't even know I had. :P

Also, Stephanie came to visit!! :D We sat in the living room and talked for three hours straight, and then she had to go before the traffic got bad. lol She also brought DZ and I presents, including these Winnie the Pooh-esq little jars with chalk boards on the front:

As you can see, I made them sweetener jars. I've been dying for someone to ask for coffee or iced tea ever since. ;)

Also, DZ and I did some de-junking. Usually, if you have junk that's too big for the garbage crew, you have to haul it to the dump yourself. Which is like...30 min away without traffic. But fortunately for us, the neighborhood occasionally does this thing where right around spring cleaning, the garbage service brings a dumpster to Circle Woods and people get to just throw whatever they want in it for two days! :D

So DZ and I hauled all this scrap building material, no-thank-you busted furniture, an old grill that was so rusted out that when we set down out front, it disintegrated ("I didn't know that could happen. 0_0 Can that happen??") and about 7 cans of old, glompy paint.

We also found a box of doorknobs.

Yup. Doorknobs. :P

So we got it all cleared out, and now we have more of a basement! :D  Awesome. Room for all the rest of my stuff which is coming up in a few weeks. ;)

This last Sunday, DZ and I went to Van Dyke park for the incredibly beautiful warm-and-breezy afternoon. We laid out a blanket, played a few games of Slap (it just sounds fun, doesn't it? ;) and then Dan read the Horatio Hornblower book we got from the library out loud while I relaxed and took pictures...

of the sky...

of the grass...

of the drop of pitch on a nearby pine tree which looked all sparkly...

and of Dan, which it turns out, he doesn't like. Tough. He married a girl with an SLR. ;)

I didn't get any pictures of my adventures in Manassas, but that happened too. I drove all over tarnation and practiced using my GPS while DZ was up in the air getting some flight hours towards his private pilots license. It was fun and adventurous-- I got lost, got honked at, got cat-called by a big fat boombox car...I was very happy to see him when he got back and more than happy to let him drive home. ;)

Oh! Just one more random note on Manassas-- I went to the B&N while I was there, and it is laid out EXACTLY like the one in Biltmore Park Town Square. It was hilarious-- I walked in and I was like, "Um...where am I?" *hehe* In a weird way, it felt like home. ;)

The stores I know how to get to right now:

Basically I can get orange juice, turkey bacon, paint swatches and coffee...I may not need to find anywhere else... :P

When DZ got home, we went to Home Depot and got some wood so we can build our own Corn Hole game! We're thinking we'll play it on the community grass areas in Circle Woods and see if we can lure some neighbors to come out and play with us. ;)

Turns out my car can fit a 24x24" sheet of plywood in the back. Good to know.

And then I stood around while Dan unloaded the car going, "I'm taking pictures of you carrying plywood, haha, I'm taking pictures of yooou..."

...until he got annoyed and hid. :P

Then we went over to The Blake House for an open-invitation dinner thing they do every Tuesday night. SO much fun-- we sat on the back deck and grilled chicken and ate cheesy bread and talked about responsibility in photojournalism and The Avengers. lol I'm glad they're our neighbors. :)

Was feeling industrious, so I put up a shower curtain:

Yay!

Flushed with my success from hanging up a shower curtain, I decided to something brave...

I grocery-shop'd! :D

And if that doesn't entertain you, imagine me getting home and photographing the six grocery items I purchased. :P Then I water the flowers and ran some laundry.

At this point, I was very proud of myself.

   

I looked around at the clean house with grocery stuff in it, and I thought to myself...I'm industrious and pretty much amazing. I'm going to lay on the living room floor.

And NAP.

Woke up automatically around 7, thinking I'd slept in too late. Dan muttered something about "another hour" and "go back to sleep." I lay buggy-eyed for awhile, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of this "get up at 8 o'clock on a Sunday" situation.

And then, if you please, we got up at 8, leisurely got dressed, leisurely made and ate our breakfast, got all our stuff together, and had to actually kill twenty minutes before we left! And DZ was ushering today, so we had to get there "a little earlier."

This will take some adjusting to. :P

Had a fantastic time at church; was nice to see everybody, and lots of people were excited to see us. James appeared out of nowhere and gave us both a bear hug, shouting, "THE ZIMMERMANS!!" He asked how we were doing, we said just fine, he said, "Good! Still together and everything, good sign." :P

Also, I filled out a "keeping connected card" during service (DZ usually does that, but since he was ushering, he didn't sit down till after the offering) and had put it in the little golden tray before I realized I'd written "Chloe Zimmerman" for the first time. I had to refrain from grabbing the offering plate back from the Deacon so I could scrapbook it. :P Fortunately, my nostalgia has its limits. lol

lazy afternoon flowers. <3

Harvest was wonderful. <3 Everyone who had been at the wedding wanted to know when I was going to get my sisters to move to DC. lol I told them I'm working on it. ;)

Shopping day! I don't like shopping. But Dan doesn't like shopping either, so apparently if two anti-shoppers go shopping TOGETHER, it magically transforms into fun. ;)

Our most successful trip was probably the one to Ikea, where we strolled around the showroom picking up ideas for our living room and guest rooms, pretended to seriously consider purchasing everything that came in zebra stripe (that may have mostly been me) and finally, bought two chairs to match the last chairs we bought at Ikea.

Side note: Ikea instructions are funny:

Glowing with our successful shopping trip, we headed to WalMart, where we suddenly and simultaneously decided we were already sick of shopping. Halfway across the parking lot, Dan said, "I'll wait for you outside." at the same time I headed back towards the car saying, "I wanna go home!"

We're pathetic. But we're pathetic together, so it's kind of like romantic.

After shopping, we went to Uncle Jack & Aunt Beverly's in Maryland, where we played Corn Hole (Engels-- we need to get one of these for cookouts! :D), hung out with the fam (including cousin Darren and Charity and their boys) and had dinner, followed by chocolate chip pie. 0_0 Charity makes it. It's kind of like chocolate chip cookies...but with PIE. ...maybe you gathered that. :P

It started getting dark, and since DZ's car was still parked at Uncle Jack & Aunt Bev's house from hitching a ride with them to the wedding, he drove it home while I followed in Kokomo.

My first time driving on the Capitol Beltway!

I didn't know a 45-minute trip could take 2 hours, but narrowing a DC-bound 4-lane to 2 lanes and then 1 lane on a Saturday night sure did the trick. :P It was kind of stressful, and someone tried to merge into the front corner of my car. But a Korean lady let me merge in front of her when no one else would let me in (my lane was ending. thanks, guys.) and Dan was really good at having someone follow him. Plus, I got a well-timed text message from Hannah which reminded me not to sink to the traffic-grousing level of the average DC commuter, and I opened up my windows and shared some Owl City with the BMWs and Benz's around me. ;)

When we got home, Dan felt terrible about the traffic I'd had to drive through my first time. He carried all the groceries in, made me a massive orange-juice-and-St-Germain (a really sweet French liquor made from Elderflower <3 ) nightcap, and then gave me a back rub while we watched Gilmore Girls.

It was the one where Lorelei has to go on a date with Rune. Dan laughed at all the right spots. Honestly, it turned into a really fun evening. lol

Living with just one other person is, at times, hilarious.

Who's going to wash ALL THESE DISHES?

Who's going to wipe down this WHOLE ENTIRE TABLE??

lol...

Woke up, and it was beautiful outside!!! At last, a non-scorcher! I love a good, hot day, but until DZ and I get our passes for the Circle Woods pool, a 90-degree day is basically one where it's miserable to step outside your door before 7pm. :P

Dan told me to take time for a break sometime today, instead of staying glued to the computer, sorting photos, or stuck in a closet somewhere, rearranging shelves.

So I took my beach towel outback and read Winnie-The-Pooh.

"Christopher -- ow! -- Robin?"

"Yes?"

I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important decision. These are the wrong sort of bees."

"Are they?"

"Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort of honey, shouldn't you?"

"Would they?"

"Yes. So I think I shall come down."

lol But 'nuff of Pooh, time to go do photo-sort-y and thank-you-note-y things...

...with coffee!

Had an adventurous day.

Around 9am, I went to get the mail, and turned the bolt on the doorknob to what I thought was was the UNlocked position. But a quick turn of the knob once the door was already shut, proved I was paying nearly enough attention.

So there I was, standing on the front porch in my guitar pajama shorts and a tank top, holding a key that only unlocks the post box, locked out of the house.

Stephanie's voice echoed in my head: "It's okay, we're not panicking-- Chloe? We're not panicking."

We have a spare key outback, I thought. And tore around the corner of our block of houses to the back fence. I'd be lying if I said the scene from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where Brad Pitt is tearing through the bushes in a suit and scaring the next door neighbor didn't scroll through my head at this point.

Of course, I thought, en route, I think it unlocks the back door, which has one of those rods that drops into the track...which is, of course, down right now.

Hoping I was remembering wrong, I scrambled through the back fence and proceeded to check the spot I remembered the spare being the one time I used it. Discouraged by the fact that I found a nail with nothing hanging from it, I went ahead and checked everywhere else in our little backyard.

Between praying and checking under bricks, I tried to think of a logical recourse if no key presented itself: I would need to call Dan at work. On my phone which was inside, sitting on the shoe shelf (laughing at me, no doubt...stupid Motorola...this is the misdirected anger part of the panic process. :P )

That's okay, there's a friendly Korean couple next door who would probably let me borrow a phone if I asked. Oh yeah. I don't have Dan's work number memorized. Well, his mom has it, I could call her. ...except I don't have her number memorized either. Curse you, speed dial!!! Nothing for it but to call my home for Mom Z's number, and then call her for Dan's number.

That will be a fun conversation to have in front of the friendly Korean couple next door. In my pajamas.

Maybe I could just spend the day outside.

...that will be a funny story to share with the guy from Cox when he comes to switch our internet from Verizon in an hour.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, the screen on the living room window popped right out when tugged on, and thank the Lord Jesus, we forgot to lock the window. I turned the recycling bin over, climbed through the window, under the blinds, and tumbled, giddy with successful bullet-dodging, onto the sofa.

I didn't move for a good twenty minutes. I didn't leave the house for twice that, afraid it would spontaneously lock behind me and change its locks.

I didn't mention any of this to Honore, the pleasant guy from Cox, when he showed up an hour later. His proper name is Honor, but he added the E and pronounces it the French way (honor-RAY) because he liked Paris so much when he lived there for a few years.

He was born in the Congo, but he says he's lived so many difference places, that when he goes home all his friends say he has a weird accent. He sounded African to me, but he said there's some French, Italian and Floridian (I kid you not) that didn't used to be there. He said one time he went home after some time in the south with a little bit of Redneck and it completely freaked his family out. lol

The internet is back, I've braved the not-in-the-house-ness of going for another run, it's time to do something fun.

Wedding photo sorting, strawberry lemonade, and Girlmore Gils.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

p.s. DZ came home with lilies. <3

Started unpacking my stuff (don't judge; dressers are just for people who don't like suitcases as much as I do. :P ) and pretty'd up the dressertop:

It's beachy. It makes me smile. ;)

When DZ got home, we sorted out the last of the cabinets and the refrigerator. The fridge, it turns out, is full of nothankyou food which housemates have left behind; we've been enjoying a new game called: Can We Still Eat This? It goes like this:

"Can frozen fish go bad?"

"What's the expiration date?"

"Doesn't say."

"I'll Google it..."

"Well there's a coupon on the box that expired February 2010."

"...toss it."

True story. lol

Another side-effect of having housemates, everybody buys their own of everything. So Dan and I have two shopping lists: What to buy, and what NOT to buy. This list so far includes:

• cooking spray (4 cans)
• peanut butter (3 jars)
• cling wrap (5 boxes)
• Italian seasoning (3 identical shakers)
• laundry detergent (8 jugs...kidyounot)

Works for us-- it's a whole list of stuff we don't have to buy for quite awhile. ;)

Oh, another do-not-buy item:

plastic cutlery. lol

First day all byyyy myself.

hehe.

It was super quiet, and weird. Weird's my new word. Poor Dan, he asks how I'm doing or how my afternoon was, and I'm like, "It was weird."

To quote Megamind, "Look okay, see I don't know where to go with that." lol

But I kept myself more-or-less busy; spent most of the morning tidying up (dude, unpacking a million boxes = a million empty boxes. did you know that??), and went for a run (the new Owl City's have been a Godsend, in the full sense of the word, for encouraging me to get out and run. <3 )

Then, a little while later, I had a loverly, lengthy phone conversation with Hannah-- which was exactly what I needed. YAY PEOPLE!! Puppy, the neighborhood cat, does his best to be social, but believe it or not, it's just not the same. :P

It also reminded me I need to call home more often. I miss my peeps. <3