A Moveable Feast

I'm in cardboard box hell.

No, we're not homeless, but we are moving which at times seems like it might suck more than actually being a hobo.

At this point I'm an excellent mover, since I've been moving almost every year since I left home for college. I'm not really sure why...I just never found a place I wanted to spend more than 12-24 months and figured I didn't have that much stuff so why not? Up until this point we've lived in Chicago or just north of the city in the Northwestern University town of Evanston, enjoying our urban existence as childless newlyweds, fully capable of seeing the "charm" in the local crackhead or prostitute. However, once Mr. Val knocked me up we grudgingly decided it was time to plunge into suburbia (cue funeral dirge) so that we don't have to jump our sweet baby girl into one of our friendly neighborhood gangs.

Since we first started living in sin almost six years ago, Mr. Val and I have moved FOUR times. This move will be our fifth and FINAL time as we both agree that unless this particular rental burns to the ground or is picked up in a tornado and spirited away to the wonderful land of Oz, we are staying put until the Mister graduates from his Masters program and we finally buy a house. Since this is (knock on wood) the last lease we will ever sign, I'd like to take a moment to look back on some of the humble abodes we have called home:

1. The Studio - Mr. Val and I truly believe that we are capable of surviving anything and everything only because we lived together in a studio apartment for a year. At the time, Mr. Val was finishing his Bachelors degree and waiting tables and I was a bartender at 2 local bars. We were on a SUPREMELY tight budget which blinded us to the fact that we were living in a Frank McCourt novel. I mean this place was bad. Tiny, poorly laid out, old, you name it, it sucked. The only bright spot was that it was located on an awesome little street with cafes & coffee shops, which was good since we wanted to spend as little time as possible in the actual apartment. It was the kind of place where you met the slumlord landlord the day you signed your lease and then never again. If there wasn't a body stinking up the joint there was no point in calling because they simply didn't care. Knowing this, we decided to violate the pet policy and buy a puppy named Beans who lived/loved/peed there quite happily for 3 months. At the end of our lease we moved up and out to the...

2. One bedroom - at the time the one bedroom seemed downright luxurious. Walls separating my bed from my kitchen? I felt like Imelda Marcos. If I went back now I'd laugh...the "kitchen" was a stove & fridge apparently made by and for the wee people of Munchkinland, there was roughly 9 inches of total counter space and the elevator walls were covered in pink shag carpet. But it had nice windows and was in a killer neighborhood and we could walk to the train/bars/restaurants which made it perfect. It also allowed dogs so we didn't have to sneak Beans under cover of darkness to go to the bathroom. I have incredibly fond memories of this place, as it was the site of the following triumphs:

• Boyfriend Valentine became Fiance Valentine
  
• Mr. Val graduate college
  
• Mr. Val and I both finally got jobs that didn't involve the phrase, "Would you like to try some boneless Buffalo Wings?"
  
• I finally got couches that hadn't been handed down through four generations of frat houses
  

We were doing well, in fact we were SO super cool and bad ass that we decided we needed to move into what will always be known as...

3. Our Super Sweet City Loft - the super sweet city loft was just that: a killer loft in an old industrial building that had been converted into condos. We were lured there by the Craigslist add that billed it as the "West Loop". Technically, it wasn't a lie as I think we made the West Loop cut by a few centimeters. Realistically, it was also a few centimeters shy of Malcolm X College, blue light Cameras and a Salvation Army Rehab Center. At this point though, we understood the bargain of city living which is, to put it simply, nicer place in a sketchy hood vs. rat infested tenement in the nice part of town. We opted for the former, since we had garage parking, a scary doorman and at this point a second dog (Jake) that Mr. Val thought we should get for "protection".

A side note about Jake. We rescued Jake from the same shelter as Beans, who to this point had literally been the perfect dog, save for her penchant for licking the walls. We still aren't completely sure what Jake is, but from what we can tell he is part Rottweiler/Pit Bull/Shar Pei/Wildebeest. He actually does serve some protective purposes since he scares the shit out of most people with his little muscly legs and giant head, but in reality, his idea of protecting me is following me from room to room and sitting on my feet. Excellent.

We spent two awesome years here, living it up in the city, getting married and hanging out with our awesome neighbors on the balcony. Unfortunately, we quickly outgrew the place due to my overzealous use of the scanner thingy when registering for our wedding gifts so we moved to...

4. The Hood - no joke, we moved to the hood. Make no mistake, it's a nice place: 2 beds, 2 baths, newly remodeled, basement with laundry, the works. It seemed so lovely a place to put all my fabulous Pottery Barn dishes that I didn't even notice that the realtor would only show it to us in the middle of the day on a weekday or that he had the lease ready for us to sign in less time than it takes Usain Bolt to get to the mailbox. I still don't think the neighborhood is unsafe, it's just full of random happenings and people. Like the neighbor who I'm pretty sure is running a foster care scam out of her house. Or the old man who feeds the squirrels peanuts in his underwear. Or the guy who asked us one day if we had any interest in fighting Jake, you know, in a dogfight. Needless to say, it's probably not the best place to start a family, so this Saturday we move to...

5. The Burbs - It's finally happened. We sold out. We'll be moving to a 3 bedroom townhouse so that we can give our sweet baby a safe cozy place to call home for her first couple of years. It's totally boring, it's totally cookie cutter but it's totally the right choice. It may have some paint spots to clean up, and some ugly light fixtures to change, and one of those awful mailboxes that you have share with your neighbors, but it's the first place my baby girl will call home, which makes me love it already.

So I remain in carboard hell, packing up the last of our child free years and moving to Mom-land, which, to be perfectly honest, sounds a lot like heaven to me.

XOXO,

An ogre and a gentleman.

I have a theory. If you want to know exactly who a person is on the inside, ride public transportation. My interaction with the masses on the Metra every morning gives me more insight into their collective psyche than if I were to direct a Ken Burns documentary about them.

You really see the best or worst when you are among the crush of humanity that is downtown Chicago at rush hour. Take this morning for example. For some presently unexplained reason, the Metra has been running 15-20 minutes late this week. (The Chicago RTA doesn't seem to concerned, so apparently, neither should I.) This has created a bottle neck on all trains and therefore a lack of seats.

As I went to get on the train, a middle aged man literally tried to push me out of the way to get on the train first. I, being my politely passive agressive self swung my giant purse towards him (maybe it hit him, I'm not really sure) and created a fashionable moat of sorts to keep him at bay. I heard him huff and puff and say something under his breath to which I cheerfully chirped, "I'm sorry, what was that?" He just stared at me and shuffled to the next car. Problem solved.

I interupt my discourse to encourage you ladies to use this story to illustrate the importance of accessories the next time your husband questions your need for another purse. A well placed purse can be the difference b/t a happy fetus and cankles. Just sayin'.

I successfully navigated my way on the train only to find that there were no seats. You learn quickly in a big city that being with child/elderly/infirm does not apparently engender the type of chilvary one would hope. I resigned myself to my fate and moved towards the front of the car where I could at least hang on to a bar for dear life as the train hurtled toward the Loop. All of the sudden someone tapped my shoulder and a young man, about 20, told me to take his seat.

And just like that, my faith in humanity restored. It's good to know that there are still people in the world who don't suck. I hope the universe sends some kindness your way dude because you seriously made my morning.

XOXO,

If Virginia is for lovers, than Utah is for Teetotalers.

I will say that I have an evil self-satisfied glint in my eye as I write this. I love my husband but sometimes it makes me giggle when the universe exacts its justice upon him.

Mr. Valentine went out to the West Coast this weekend for his little brother's 21st birthday. In short, this weekend is devoted solely to the purpose of drinking his face off. He left last night, which would have been fine if not for the following:

1. He flew out of O'Hare airport. If you haven't had the pleasure of flying in and out of O'Hare, go buy a lottery ticket. It's the busiest airport in the U.S. which means is packed with impatient people, the flights are never on time and the TSA people who don't look like bored fifteen year olds in study hall look like they should be getting shipped off to Gitmo. On its best day it's the gates of hell. Days like yesterday and today they should just shut the damn place down. We are in the middle of a massive snowstorm, so everything that already sucks about O'Hare has been ratcheted up about 6 notches.

2. He flew Northwest Air. If O'Hare Airport is Hell on Earth, than Northwest Air is the dark mistress of that bottomless pit of despair. Simply put, you should never, under any circumstances fly Northwest air. They lost my bag once for 2 weeks and sent me home with a tiny tube of baking soda toothpaste and a XXXL t-shirt with their logo on it. You know, because after an airline has RUINED your day you totally want to wear their shirt like a billboard.

Needless to say, this is not a recipe for travel success which is why my sweet little Latin love found himself in a Courtyard Marriott in Salt Lake City, Utah last night. It's the usual story, delayed flight, hour of de-icing the plane, missed connection, yada yada yada. Now, getting stranded is never fun, but Utah might be the worst place ever to be stranded in the middle of the night. Apparently there was no food available at the hotel so my poor hubs ate Hot Pockets from the sundries store. None of this would be all that bad if it weren't for Utah's Draconian alcohol laws. I'm no expert, but from what I understand you can only buy alcohol b/t the hours of 1:00-2:00, Egypt Standard Time and you have to go to one of 4 liquor stores in the entire state where your fingerprints are put into the "drunken infidel" database. Bad news.
Especially bad news when your intended destination is drunkytown, U.S.A.

It did lead to my not at all over dramatic hubs wailing that he should know better than to go away without me. Apparently the universe is on my side afterall. I knew it.

"After three years in Chicago, I decided to call it a career." - Ted Lindsay

One of the challenging parts of living in a major metropolis like Chicago is finding an apartment where you can a.) stand to live b.) afford the rent c.) not want to murder your neighbors. Since Mr. Valentine and I lived in sin for years before going legit, we've navigated these waters for some time with varying degrees of success.

Our first place was a studio that was roughly the size of a prison cell and half as charming. But it was clean and cheap and most importantly got us out of our mom's basements.

The next place was better, in the sense that our bed wasn't in the living room. It was small & old, but was an awesome location that allowed dogs, which was important since we had illegally adopted Beans already.

A lot had changed by the time we were ready to move out. Mr. Valentine was a recent grad with a real job! I had stopped tending bar and started working a 9-5 job and we were engaged. By this time Ikea/hand me down furniture no longer had a strangle hold on my decorating sensibilities, so things we're starting to look more like us and less like a gang of Scandinavians fought a roving band of frat boys in a knife fight for the right to decorate.

This time around we decided we needed a sweet city pad which introduced for the first time to the Faustian bargain of city living: apartment vs. neighborhood. Unless you've had the good fortune to be born a brainless, talentless trust fund idiot like the Kardashian/Hilton/Hills losers, you will be forced to decide weather you want a lesser apartment in a cool neighborhood or a nicer apartment in a less desirable 'hood. We went with the latter.

Our third apartment was in an old warehouse building that had been converted to loft condos and it was oh so cool. Vaulted concrete ceilings, exposed pipes, stainless steel, floor to ceiling windows. It was very urban chic and much cooler than we are. It was also located smack dab in between a Salvation Army boarding house, a crack re-hab facility and a homeless shelter. But we were 5 floors up, had a doorman and a private garage, which was a good compromise. We lived there happily through 2 years, another impulse dog adoption and our wedding. We realized soon after the wedding that we'd outgrown the condo due in large part to the insane generosity of our friends and family and my overzealous use of the registry scanner at Pottery Barn.

We started looking to move with the following criteria: 2 beds, 2 baths, dishwasher, in unit laundry, central heat & air, covered garage & some sort of outdoor space. Anyone who's lived in Chicago will tell you that those specs don't come cheap unless you are looking to live in an "up and coming" area. Miraculously we found a place with all our amenities, within budget and moved. It also is conveniently close to a liquor store, pawn shop and blue light cameras. But I don't mind, because I've got my handsome husband, my health, a gorgeous Christmas tree with presents overflowing, a full wine cabinet and a dog that looks like he came from Michael Vick's house. Which helps.