future plans

My husband is a police officer, and he has gone to the police memorial week celebration in Washington DC twice. It's always on the same dates, which are horrible for me since they land in the week before last of the school year. In 2011, however, they land on a weekend. So I am going to take off the Friday, and we are going to fly to DC Thursday afternoon/early evening. D's flight and hotel will be covered since he is on his department's honor guard; the union is going to pay to send all the honor guard members. Which means we only have to pay for my flight and portion of the hotel! I am totally psyched for this trip. I've never been there before, so D and I have been talking about where we want to go and what we want to see.

My dad went there not too long ago, and he was telling me that he was very disappointed in the Arlington National Cemetery. He is a Viet Nam vet, and within the last few years has gotten in touch with his troop, and now they have get-togethers very frequently. One of these was to see the Viet Nam Wall memorial, and naturally, they went to see Arlington. He said it wasn't very well-kept, and it made him sad at the state it was in. I know I will go see it too, and I'm hoping it was just an off-time for it, and that it actually is as impressive as it always looks in photos.

Anyway, DC is our next big-ish trip, and again, I can see the advantage to not having children so that we can go. Otherwise, we'd have to figure out who was going to watch the kid(s), or we'd have to take them with us, and then figure out who got to go out and party at night while the other stayed at the hotel with the kid(s).

I'm really looking forward to being a part of the police officer family. When D was telling me about his most recent trip, I was amazed at the level of family and comraderie (everyone is referred to as a brother or sister) that they all have because of their shared profession. There aren't many occupations that have that, at that level. And now that I am a police officer's spouse, I am in the family too. So I can't wait to be there, and see how it feels to be a part of something like that.

end of semester

It's been a crazy busy, stressful few weeks finishing up the semester. Today was our last day until January 6th, so I get a nice two weeks off. To celebrate, I am treating myself to a hot stone massage tomorrow afternoon. Then D and I will have Christmas Eve lunch with his parents at a Chinese food buffet. Weird, I know. Since we will be driving to my parents' house Saturday morning (to avoid the nephew opening gifts Christmas morning), I thought we'd do Christmas Eve with D's parents. But, again, since we will be leaving the next morning, we didn't want to cook a big dinner and have a bunch of leftovers to sit in the fridge while we were out of town, so we thought we'd go out to dinner with them. D's mom didn't want to go to dinner somewhere, so instead wanted us to meet them for lunch at the China Buffet, that she and D's dad eat at once a week. Totally special. Have I mentioned how bat-shit crazy I think she is?

I'm looking forward to the visit with my parents; it's going to be several days instead of our usual quick three day weekend visits, so that will be nice.

Since today was a half day for the students, I basically just showed them their final exam scores, and their final semester grades, and then we watched Dr. Horrible. It was awesome.

100!

So a few weeks ago, I noticed that I had 99 posts. I kept thinking that I needed to do something special for #100. Of course, by thinking this, I kept procrastinating the "special" post. So I'm just going to post everything that I've thought of in the past few weeks, so this might get a little long.

1) Our Halloween party was a success. Some pictures of our costume (The Dude and Maude Lebowski from the Gutterballs scene) and some of the food:

Apple mouths:
Gelatin eyeballs in blood sauce:

"Finger" cookies (my sister added the 'dirt" and "blood" details):

Our costume (the dress took FORVER to make, but it turned out pretty well):

2) While my sister and her husband were visiting, they told us that they had decided to move here to live closer to us (and our parents who live about 6 hours away)! They will be moving here in March.

3) November 15th would have been our approximate due date if IVF had worked. D said that we needed to do something special just the two of us. I loved that he was the one that suggested it. He even was the one to bring it up in the first place. He told me he had been thinking about it, and it made him sad. The day didn't turn out according to plan (something I've decided must be the theme of my life). D was working on his beloved Jeep the day before, on the leaky gas tank, with a friend of ours. They didn't get finished, so needed to finish on the 15th. While they were working, another friend came over to help. Then his wife called and decided that she and their 7 month old needed to visit. Then D's parents kept sending picture after picture of D's sister's new baby. So instead of us getting to spend time alone mourning what could have been, we were instead inundated with other people's babies. After they left, we cuddled on the couch with the fireplace on, drank hot cider, and watched How I Met Your Mother. So all in all, not a horrible night, just, again, not exactly what we had planned.

4) A student asked me if I had any kids, I said no. Then she asked if I was going to, I said no. Then she asked why not, so I told her we couldn't. That finally shut her up. Then a week later another student asked me WHEN I was going to have kids. This time I just said "that's a really personal question, don't you think?" That at least made her feel awkward too. After class, she told me she asked because she couldn't remember if it was me or another woman she had talked to that had said she didn't want kids ever. I told her if she had led in with that, that would have been a lot better.

5) I went to see the new Harry Potter, and liked it, but still think the book is WAY better. I've seen all the movies with the philosophy of "I'll see it once, but I don't need to own them to watch over and over." This one is a lot darker, and more people die, so it made me cry. And then I saw a little boy running back with some popcorn, and I cried some more knowing that I will never have a child to share Harry Potter with. That made me think about all the other things that I won't get to pass on.

6) My brother sent me a picture of his son cuddling with my dad for an after Thanksgiving nap. It was cute, but made me sad that I won't ever see my dad cuddling with my kid.

7) D and I are going to visit my parents near Christmas. At first I was thinking we could be there ON Christmas, but now I'm thinking maybe we should do Christmas just the two of us (maybe dinner with his parents), and then go to my parents the day after. I just don't know if I'm ready to be happy watching my nephew open gifts from Santa, knowing that I will never watch my child doing that.

8) The last three things make it sound like I am not doing well at all with this whole childless not by choice life. Most days I am totally fine, and can even see some perks to it, I just know that certain images really press my buttons. And I think, for this first year, it's okay to avoid them when I know that they will only make me sad. Now the hard part is explaining to my parents why we won't be there on Christmas when we could.

good music

Superchunk has a new album out! I just saw the video for "Digging for Something" and it's awesome (both the song and the video). I can't wait to hear the rest!

mother in law

My mother in law is a whack job. I won't ever be able to express to you how insane and intrusive she actually is, but here's the latest.

She knows all about our infertility troubles and knows that we are not going to have children. She talks non-stop, and was rambling about the latest movies she has seen. She said she saw "Up" and loved it and thought it was adorable. I piped up with "I thought it was depressing." She goes "why??" In my head "really? you have no idea why I might think that movie is depressing?" In reality, I said "well, the couple couldn't have kids, so they planned to take this awesome trip together instead, and never got to." Her response was "well, at least he got to go, even if it was later in life." I said "but they didn't get to go TOGETHER and that was their whole plan, and it was sad that they didn't get to do that." Her response was "yeah, I guess some of the kids in the audience were sad." What?? I don't know of any CHILD that got how sad that movie was. You'd think an adult who actually knows someone with a similar life (can't have children, plans to take an awesome trip instead...) might see how the movie might be depressing as hell. But she didn't.

So I just shook my head, and bitched about her later to my husband. I love that he is okay with that (well, especially since he thinks she is insensitive and crazy too).

Halloween

My husband and I LOOOOOOOOOOVE Halloween. Today, we bought the fabric to make my costume (top secret* until our Halloween party on the 30th), and a few props, and a few decorations, and a couple Halloween themed serving dishes.

On the menu for the party:

alien autopsy shots
hot apple cider (alcohol can be added by guest)
bright green punch (alcohol can be added by the guest)

witch finger cookies
spiderweb peanut butter rice krispy treats
marshmallow eyeballs in blood (cherry) sauce
"candy corn" trifles (angle food cake, orange colored vanilla pudding, lemon jello)

apples shaped like mouths with almonds for teeth, carmel sauce for dipping
bean dip served in a skull dish
mummy hot dogs (wrapped in crecent roll strips)
pizza topped with jack o lantern pepperonis
some other hearty dip served in a crockpot

*I will post pictures once it has been revealed. I know I still owe pictures for my redone roller derby tank top. I kind of suck at the whole loading pictures on my computer in order to upload them to a post.

trips

So I have a conference I might go to in Denver on a Thursday and Friday. D said if he can get off work that weekend, he'd meet me there, and we can spend the weekend in Denver. So then we spent an hour looking up stuff to do.

Then I got the idea that a road trip in the fall to look at leaves changing would be fun, so I started looking up within a day drive spots. I found some cool things in northern Kansas, and then D found some cool stuff in southern Nebraska, so we have a whole round trip planned out. Some of the cool things we found are a pony express station, the biggest porch swing in the world, the center of the contiguous United States, the biggest ball of twine (and staying the night at the Ball of Twine Inn), although Weird Al misled me: I've always thought the biggest ball of twine was in Minnesota, when really he was singing about the biggest ball of twine that was IN Minnesota, not that the biggest ball of twine EVER was in Minnesota.

Now we just need to decide when.