Yesterday was Bruno’s 1st birthday. He had a party. We got him a doggy birthday cake from the craziest store in the world, Lulu & Luigi. It was like wheat wafers and yogurt or something. Here’s a picture. He and his friend Casey split it, and it sort of ended up all over our basement, but what to do, a dog only turns 1 once! Casey’s mom and dad, Sonja and Greg, gave Bruno a squeeky ball and a doggy energy bar for when we take him hiking or something like that. Nicole and Gretchen brought him a bacon and cheese biscuit and an awesome tug rope with a bone attached to it. There was also people cake – I’ll try to post a picture of that soon – it said Happy Birthday Bruno and had candy bugs and worms on it, because Bruno likes to eat bugs and worms. hee hee. All the people friends in attendance also got to sample some of Nate’s latest brew, Bruno’s Porter. mmmmm. And of course, there was much admiration for our awesome new skylight and recessed light in the kitchen. Bruno also got another present in the form of the first snow of the season! We were wondering how he would react to cold and snow, and it seems that he is a big fan. Last night and this morning on his walk he was bounding around, playing in the snow and flying around on the ice, happy as could be. Yay! And we may not ever have to shovel our deck or back walk, because he spent quite some time eating the snow off of it. Best. dog. ever.

So I took too many classes this semester, then my classes turned out to be really hard, then I ended up HATING one of my classes on so very many levels, then I found out last week that I’m doing all of this for no reason because it turns out I don’t actually need these credits, but it’s way past the deadline to drop a class or even change the grade basis. So instead I just get bad grades. I’ve never gotten bad grades before. It’s a humbling experience. In addition to all of this, my research project has seriously picked up, and I was already behind with it so now I’m waaaaay behind, and getting behinder by the day.

So I had an exam this morning. I knew I wasn’t prepared well enough going in to it, but it was like my brain just sort of decided it had reached capacity and wasn’t interested in letting any more in, so my efforts at studying hadn’t been very helpful. Let’s just say that the exam didn’t go well and leave it at that. To ward off the impending tears I immediately took off after it was over to go run some errands. And of course the coldest rain imaginable was coming down. And just as I started to let myself get all oh poor me, I got my much needed reality check.

As I was waiting at a stoplight, I saw a blind woman get off a bus and make her way to the corner. She was having a hard time pushing a little cart of her things with one hand while using her cane to find her way with the other, all the while getting soaked by the coldest rain imaginable. She stood at the busy corner, trying to figure out if it was safe to cross the street. She decided to go and stepped off the curb right into a deep puddle of the coldest water imaginable. It startled her and she paused, and then kept going. And there were my tears again, but this time not the poor me kind. I imagined how terrified I would be if I were her, just trying to cross the street, even on a less busy corner or without the rain or the puddle. The courage it must take.

I have another exam on Thursday, this time in the class that I hate. I feel pretty certain that it too will not go well. But I also feel pretty certain that there are more important things in life than grad school. Sometimes you need to just buck up and quit your whining, and sometimes you need a little help seeing that.

Well I’m glad to see that Nate at least had a good day. Sunsets, Boston, Ducks and all. I on the other hand have had somewhat of a challenging day. It consisted of the following. Driving Nate to the airport at 4:30am (he was planning on taking the light rail and I insisted on driving him. Not sure why). Intending to get a couple more hours of sleep when I got back home, but not having that happen because a certain dog was just plain ready for the day. Taking dog for walk #1 and ending up pulling something out of his mouth that I thought was a wood chip, but realizing once it was in my hand and I got a whiff of it that it was in fact poop. Gagging for the rest of the day every time I thought of it, which I did often. Having dog drop his 80 pound bone on my pinky toe. Spending a lengthy time trying to encourage dog to pee so I could leave for work as he just sat and stared at me. Getting to work 10 minutes late. Being on my feet for 8 hours. Spending a good portion of my 1/2 hour lunch break (not nearly long enough to actually eat a meal in my opinion) trying to solve a friend’s crisis. Coming home and taking dog for walk #2 in the cold rain. Singing Guns n Roses "Cold November Rain" in my head the entire time. Coming home and finding an enormous centipede on the wall in the basement waving its front legs at me. Killing said centipede and having half of its body drop into a pile of stuff below, I’m sure to be found at a later terrifying date.

But the good news is that things improved. Katie and Gretchen had their housewarming karaoke party, and it was soooooo fun. I have now been up this morning for hours. I have fed, trained, walked and played with Bruno, and am now sitting waiting impatiently for Nate to wake up so we can go to the Chatterbox and have brunch and bloody marys! I think someone is about to get steamrolled…

So here’s the spidey I was talking about in the Bugs post below. This isn’t a very good picture of it, but it’s so weird. During the day it tucks all it’s legs in, more than this even, until it looks like a little frog up in the web. Then at night it spreads them out and looks like a big bad-ass.

And then here it is at night, although this soooooo doesn’t do it justice. I couldn’t seem to get a picture that captured the creepiness or the perfection of the whole thing. You’ll just have to use your imaginations.

Well here it is, my long-awaited first entry on our blog. Ta-dahhh!! Since this is a momentous occasion, it would probably be appropriate to write about something very profound. But instead, I want to write about bugs. I get along alright with bugs, with the very serious exception of centipedes, and the moderate exception of cockroaches. I have a long, dark history with centipedes, because for some reason they seem to have a magnetic attraction to me. If there is a centipede in a building, guaranteed that I will be the one to encounter it. If I was climbing around in a waterfall in the Ivory Coast and there was a centipede on one teeny tiny spot on an enormous boulder, guaranteed that that would be the one spot where I would put my hand down. Ugh. One of our first nights in the house, we came home and turned the light on as we entered the dining room and saw an enormous (for real) centipede in the corner. Access to the corner being blocked by piles and piles of boxes, we weren’t able to get to it to squish it before it crawled into the heating vent and out of sight. (By "we" I actually mean Nate, because now that I have a Nate I let him do all the centipede squishing. It’s good for him, he gets to assert his manliness.) I was upset that it got away, because I knew based on all my previous life experiences, that I would be the one to find it later. I don’t think Nate quite believed my stories of centipedes stalking me, but sure enough, a couple of days later, there it was, sitting in MY nightstand, not his, waiting for me! Uggghh. The very next night we opened the front door and another huge centipede scurried across the screen door. I was a little concerned about the way things were starting out, but I am happy to say that we haven’t seen another one since.

Our first issue that we had to deal with as homeowners was wasp nests. I discovered nest #1 as I was dumping stuff into the composter where said nest was located, which the wasps weren’t too happy about. One stung me and then I realized they were all swarming around me. I ran into the house, accidentally letting one in with me, and stood at the door watching them swarm, with conflicting feelings ranging from ouch wasp sting to Yay! We have wasps because we have a yard to have them in! We later discovered another nest close by, which may be the same… colony? is that what you call them? Anyway, Nate in all his MacGyverness built a trap out of a 2-liter Coke bottle which worked well, and I really dug it – the first couple of days. Now it’s gotten kind of old. It’s still there, it has like hundreds of bees, wasps, flies what-have-yous in it, it’s full of rainwater and it’s like a vat of death. Gross. How does one dispose of such a thing? Anyway, the wasp nests themselves have since been dealt with, and they are no longer taking over our entire yard.

And now that I’ve already written a novel I get to the part I originally intended to write about. The spiders. They’re everywhere! Big ones too! Every time I walk out the door I walk through a spider web. They build crazy webs the likes of which I’ve never seen in all our windows. One built this cool tunnel thing at the intersection of two walls. One was huge and bright red and built a big ol web from above our front door to the tree. Every time I have to get the lawnmower out of the shed I have to break through the spider web that is continually rebuilt on the door handle, carefully avoiding the big mama spider that’s always hanging out there. Nate and I both have sort of an affinity for spiders since they eat other bugs and are just cool, so we pretty much let them do their own thing, except for the ones in the house.

So a couple of nights ago I was trying to use some of the massive amounts of veggies we’ve been neglecting from our CSA veggie share. I pulled out a whole bunch of Chinese cabbage from the crisper, and to my surprise came upon a big ol green caterpillar! I watched it for a little while, realized it was still alive, and then opened the back door to take it outside. Now. We have a motion detector light outside our back door, so when I stepped outside I waved my hand up in front of the light so it would go on. And then I got another shock, because built directly in front of the light was a big, beautiful, perfect orb spider web with a big ol fatty spider sitting right inthe middle of it. I had almost stuck my hand right in it! (I recently had the experience of walking face-first into such a web in the Boundary Waters, and I just don’t need to relive any part of that.) It was pretty amazing, and pretty spooky, like too Halloween perfect. When I told Nate about it later on, it was mostly about the spider web. But upon further reflection, I realize that the really amazing thing is that that caterpillar had been living in the crisper drawer of our refrigerator for a week or two! It must have been moving reeeeeally sloooooww… occasionally munching Chinese cabbage…

Well I think I’ve written enough now to make up for the last couple of months. Watch what you ask for Nate…