People in Madison.....

Today is Steve's birthday and I'm so bummed that I can't celebrate with him! I sure am looking forward to hanging out with him this weekend though.....even if the entire time we have together will consist of ripping up carpet, cleaning and unloading a moving truck. I'm ready for next week to start now.

Anyway, on to some topic other than moving, job hunting or missing my husband. That gets rather boring and depressing.
I was working on my laptop in a coffee shop this morning and I couldn't help but be reminded of just how different life is here in Madison.

Here are some of the observations I made:

- People in Madison like to wear a lot of tie-dye. Since I'm a tie-dye fan myself this thrills me. My husband on the other hand hates my collection of tie-dye apparel and I've caught him in the past on more than one occasion trying to "hide" (aka throw away) some of my tie-dye apparel. It's nice to be in a place where I'm not discriminated against. :)

- People in Madison just kind of make themselves at home with others. For instance in the short 6 weeks I've been here there's probably been at least 6 occasions where I've been minding my own business working on my laptop at a coffee shop when a random person decides that they'll sit down at my table and join me. Sometimes they start up a conversation and other times just plop down with their laptop and work quietly to themselves. Sometimes it because there are no free tables in the whole entire coffee shop and other times the place is hardly busy and they just must not want to sit alone. People in St. Louis just aren't like that. It doesn't bother me, but it sure is different than what I'm used to.

- I don't feel like an idiot when I go into a grocery store here and bring in my own shopping bag. The folks in Madison are really into recycling and I love it! Back home I sometimes felt like people used to look at me like I was funny when I brought my own bag into the store rather than fill up a landfill with plastic bags that can never be broken down in the recycling process.

- People in Madison are a lot more casual - I love that I can go out in public in a jeans and a t-shirt here and not feel out of place

- People in Madison really bundle up before it gets cold here. Obviously I'm not looking forward to the dreadful Wisconsin winter, but I've noticed a lot of folks walking around in winter hats, scarves and coats already and it's not even got below 50! I don't like the cold but I think they're gearing up a little to early. I've been wearing a light hoodie sweatshirt and have been comfortable here. I thought maybe it was just me being weird with the weather until Steve mentioned that he thought it was kind of odd last weekend when he was visiting as well.Maybe the winterizing when it's not cold out has something to do with another point....people in Madison seem to have a lot of B-O....I'll save that one for another day though....

just an update...

I've been a blog neglector lately. Life hasn't been all the exciting, but it's been kind of fun. Last week Steve, Dale & Jacqueline came to visit me for a few days and that was a lot of fun. A few days later I hopped in the car and headed to St. Louis to welcome Caleb into the world. Isn't he so sweet?

I had a great weekend in St. Louis visiting with friends and it was SO hard for me to head back to Madison. I made a pit stop in Chicago to do some shopping at Ikea on the way home so that made me feel a little better.
It's worked out really nice this last month where almost every weekend I've had one friend or another come up to visit so it's been fun to see friends and Steve has come along with them.
This weekend Steve is coming up with Pat & Julie and I'm so excited! The weekend after that is moving weekend so it will be my Steve and Steve M and from what I heard Chris, Dan & Amy are maybe going to be stopping by to Madison to see us and help with unpacking the moving truck.

That will be one busy weekend! Because the house we're buying makes me want to vomit with the dog pee smell we'll be tearing out all the carpet and giving the house a good clean before we move anything in. Two weeks after we move in Dale & Jacq will be heading up here to live in the basement, so I'm hoping i can get everything in order by myself before they get here.
I'm super excited about our nice kitchen! Our house in Dupo had such a small kitchen and although this one isn't huge it's quite a bit bigger and has brand new stainless appliances! All we need is a dishwasher. If any one has suggestions on where to get a good deal on dishwashers let me know!

The place we're buying has so much potential, it just needs a bit of work and a really good cleaning! Most of it will be minor though and totally worth it for the good deal we good and hopefully the money it will bring us in a few years if we choose to sell.

All in all life is good. It's been rough living with out Steve. We're going into week 5 now. We didn't think it would be this long that he would have to stay back in St. Louis, but we know that God has plans in store that we don't yet see and He's given us a lot of grace for this rough season. Does it suck? Yes, totally....but we're learning a lot and learning what it really means to say that we put our trust in God in a totally different degree than we've had to trust Him before.

dreaming of scientology....

Last night I had a dream that I was at a party and stumbled upon Suri Cruise (Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes daugher for those of you that don't read Perez). Anyway, it was such a weird dream, she was scared because she lost her parents, so I was carrying her all over town trying to find Tom & Katie for her, I even stole someone's moped and drove it around with her looking for her crazy parents.

Anyway..the dream was very weird and very random and I had to chuckle at myself a little bit once I woke up.
I don't dream very often, so when I do and it's so random and crazy like this I just have to wonder where that could have come from. HaHa!