This offer commenced multiple hours of conversation in our marriage that took the general form of my whining about how much I wanted to go to Mexico and Adam anxiously pointing out all the obstacles in our way (like his job interview and my lack of a current passport). Needless to say, my whining was more powerful that Adam’s worrying and here we are (apparently you can get in and out of Mexico with a birth certificate and license as long as you’re driving). While it did take a bit of running around (including a vet visit so Sadie could come too), I believe we are both very glad we put in the effort because Mexico is delightful.

Last night we had dinner in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. This morning we slept in, went for a walk on the beach, hung out, went to eat cheap tacos, hung out some more, took some naps, made dinner, and played Monopoly. It has all been very relaxing and unexpected – and even better, Adam got a job at the Apple store and I got a second interview with Kaplan.

We have to head back Saturday so we can work on Sunday, but for tomorrow, we will sit on Erin’s porch, eat scrumptious food, and watch the ocean while we remember that there are good things about living in California (like being able to drive to Mexico).

Date: October 25, 2007
Time: 10:19pm
Fact: My husband, Adam Walker Cleaveland, in listing off the litany of chores he no longer wanted to perform mentioned taking care of the dog; after which he said (and I quote), “I’ll clean up her messes inside, I don’t mind, I just don’t want to take care of her anymore.”

Leaving aside his loss of love for the dog, for which you may feel free to berate him, there is a cheerful atmosphere in the house tonight as I relish all the future dog pee in the house I will no longer have to clean up.

Should he go back on his word, which he is desperately trying to do at this very moment, we shall all know the date and time of this proclamation and hold him to it. Life just got a little bit better.

Clearly many things we discovered after the first of many 12 hour days, but we were on a schedule, so while we whined and complained, grumbled and moaned, we drove on. For the third, and perhaps final, year in a row we made a vacation out of the fact that Adam has to be in Idaho at the end of every summer to meeting with his Presbytery about ordination. This year, rather than flying, we decided to be frugal and drive ourselves out to Idaho staying with family (and some lovely motel folk) along the way. Rather than taking our time meandering across the mid-section of our lovely country, however, we booked it in order to have a few days to spend at Yellowstone, a few days in Idaho, and a day in Missoula. While the 12 hour days were not in any way enjoyable, I’m glad we did it that way so we at least had some time out of the car and some time in places we enjoy being.

All in all it was a decent trip given the circumstances. The weather held up well for us, the forest fires kindly stayed out of our way most of the time, and we saw some very cool wildlife at Yellowstone (the orange moose above was actually tame, not wild, and in Wisconsin not Wyoming, so that’s not a good example, but who can resist an orange moose? Clearly not Adam). Probably not a trip to do again at the end of an already stressful summer, but hindsight is 20/20 and far more comfortable now that my butt is comfortably planted on the couch and not in the car.

Disclaimer #2: We do have a budget. We are generally good at sticking to it. We don’t often make large purchases (I mean, minus like the car and stuff)…

This past week was what I like to call a ‘go big or go home’ week. It sounds very sports-related, but fortunately there were no sports involved (except for Adam’s frisbee game and the numerous times we went bike riding because it was almost 70 degrees outside, not that I’m bragging, I’m just saying…). Rather, it was a cultural week of sorts.

It all began last Saturday night when we finally, after months of random conversations and whining (that would be me) and debates, bought TiVo. It is a completely frivolous purchase that is in no way necessary to our well-being and the money could have (should have) been put to a better cause; but, that said, whoever thought of TiVo was genius and deserves a prize (I suppose the amount of money we paid for it might be prize enough).

Do you know how much good shit is on TV at like one in the morning?  Stuff you would never see unless you can’t sleep and then you don’t appreciate it because you’re wishing your asleep and instead your stuck watching this movie … you get the picture. TiVo knows though. TiVo knows what is on ALL the time and it records it for you. You tell it to and it does. Every episode of your favorite show, it’ll get it as soon as it comes on TV. Don’t want reruns? It’s skip those and only get the new episodes? Not sure what you want? It’ll record things for you it thinks you might like, just in case. You should at this point be hearing the heavenly angels singing behind this post because I am sure this invention was heavenly inspired. It’s not that we need more TV to watch, we really don’t. But TiVo will grab all those shows we do like to watch and save them for us. So on Wednesday night when I have a crap-load of work to do for Thursday, I don’t have to watch Lost. I can watch it Thursday afternoon when I have nothing else to do and nothing good is on TV anyway. Clearly this is amazing and I could go on and on, but really it was only the beginning of our amazing week.

Next we saw High School Musical (the movie) and Adam danced and sang along with it ALL week.

Then, we saw Billy Joel. Again with the angels singing. He was amazing. The show was amazing. Really all I can say is amazing. Adam has more to say, so you can read more there.

Then, Adam surprised me with tickets to Spamalot. Why all in one week you ask? Well, Adam bought tickets a long time ago and then we found out Billy Joel was coming for only one night, and I didn’t know about Spamalot so of course we got those tickets and then it was all at once and phew, it was a cultural extravaganza. But back to Spamalot. So funny. Way funnier than the movie, which I fell asleep to the night before. So good.

And, to top it all off. We finally finished the worst book ever written on the Holy Spirit in my theology class and now we are on to a much better book that I actually enjoy, rather than dread, reading.

Oh, and for a final note. We bought a GRE study book so I could start learning vocab for the GREs. Woohoo. Big week!!

Meanwhile, crazy things have been happening in the cleaker household (yes, cleaker is a combination of our last names AND our new nickname among some of our used-to-be-best-friends).

1. Adam has a small problem of laughing at me when I get hurt. I am naturally clumsy so this has been something we’ve been working on for quite some time now. I’m telling you this because it reached an all-time low on Tuesday when we went to a Mediterranean Restaurant for lunch. We were having a perfectly lovely lunch with my parents when Adam and I decided to throw out our trash and dispose of our trays. A reasonable plan until Adam dropped a small cup of Tahini sauce (think white cream sauce) onto the floor. Rather than spilling all over however, the Tahini sauce flew up in bubbles and landed first on my forehead, then in my hair (three bubbles landed there) and then down the front of my jacket. It was amazing. It all happened in slow motion and set Adam laughing so hard I had to drive home. Hillarious. You might not be able to tell, but I am still laughing …
2. We sold our car. Finally. We are a one car family. This has improved our financial situation drastically and made life far more enjoyable for me as I get to watch Adam scramble around and realize he didn’t think far enough ahead to say he needed the car for such things as Valentine’s Day presents until the night before when then he must rush out in time to be back to go workout before the gym closes. It’s all very frantic and amusing from my vantage on the couch. I think this shall be an interesting experiment.
3. I went from the most lame semester (required Jan term class) to the most hectic semester ever. Literally I went from laying on the couch staring at the ceiling because I was bored out of my head to reading and working non-stop (hence the very long absence of blogging: first nothing to say but the number of speckles on my ceiling and then no time to say anything).

So. There you have a month’s worth of updates. Hopefully life will calm down from here on out so I can tell my exciting Tahini stories in a more timely fashion. But, if not, I’m sure you’ll understand and find more productive things to do with your time than staring at a computer screen. Off you go then.

Seven months later and we’ve finally ordered our wedding photos. Oh the feeling of relief. Just in case you want to order some wedding photos (for yourself or us, either way), here’s the link. And, should you not feel inclined to order pictures, you should go look at the engagement gallery on their site anyway because the pictures are really amazing. It’s a cool site and should you need a photograher in Western New York, I’d go with Argento – amazing.

We watched An Inconvenient Truth Saturday night when we got home and I now am of the belief that everyone should watch it. I think the work Al Gore has done and continues to do is amazing and incredibly important. (I feel like if I had lost the presidential election to Bush I might still be moping, but this man has definitely done something productive with his time) Not only is it an incredibly relevant (and urgent) topic for our day and age, but the film is really well done and very engaging. Definitely a must see. Definitely.

This is my husband. He looks easy going, but he can be very stubborn. Unfortunately, for him, not as stubborn as his very tenacious wife. Adam almost always goes to bed after I do; so, when we’re sharing a room (like on vacation) it’s Adam’s job to turn off the light before he goes to sleep. Well, one night Adam decided to go to bed when I did, so we had no one to turn off the light. The result was both of us lying in bed waiting for the other person to get up and turn off the light. We both tried to pretend we were sleeping so the other person would have to get up, but inevitably after five or six seconds we’d start giggling. Adam held out almost five minutes, but in the end he decided to take the “high road” and turn off the light. And victory is mine. Thank you.

Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh may not be great literature, but considering I read it all on the plane ride from Rochester to Seattle, I think it’s pretty good. It is an engaging story and definitely worth picking up should you want to escape your own life for a little while, or simply pass time quickly.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, on the other hand, might be consider great literature. Or perhaps not, but still a great book and definitely worth reading. The novel blends “case histories” or glimpses of different people’s lives into one story with a murder at the heart of it all.

Caroling. Mmm. Adam’s family is big into caroling. Every year they carol through nursing homes and hospitals and to elderly folks who don’t get out much. It combines both holiday cheer and good outreach. It also goes for four hours. Adam can tell you that I’m not much of a caroler. I once sang in choirs and did all that good stuff, but have since put it behind me. I am, perhaps, the most reluctant of carolers. But, tradition is tradition and so we caroled.

My brother’s girlfriend got Little Miss Sunshine for Christmas and let us borrow it, since neither of had seen it. Probably you’ve already watched it, but if you haven’t, you should. We both laughed, cringed, and stared in abject horror sometimes all at the same time. Good movie.

Well, there was more, but that’s enough for now. Two more days until class starts (Adam, sadly, decided not to take a class this Jan term and will have to stay home while I get up every morning for class; but, it’s okay because he’s going to do all the cooking and cleaning for us – yay!!! (if I write it on a blog that makes it true right??))

Adam loves conferences. He gets an amazing amount of energy from lots of people and meetings and lectures. Sarah hates conferences. She gets incredibly exhausted when forced to be around a lot of people and attend lectures. Sarah feels as though she hears enough lectures in school and does not particularly want to spend her free time hearing more, academic though she still believes she is.

Aside from this objective difference in our personalities, we have also discovered that Adam tends to forget he’s married when he’s at conferences, which is awfully enjoyable for his wife. There are many examples from this weekend that could be cited, but our favorite is when Adam was introduced to someone’s wife, proceeded to introduce his two friends who were standing with him but failed to introduce his own wife who was standing next to him. Whoops. It’s been an interesting weekend for our marriage.

P.S. Do you like how Sarah sometimes writes in the third person and other times in the first person (albeit plural? Yeah, she does too, but she probably won’t do it anymore, so don’t worry if you don’t like it).

We’ve had our ups and downs with it all. One of the major food changes was trying to eat more raw food and some days I’ve definitely felt like a bird with my seeds and nuts. And there was the Friday night we just completely threw in the towel and ordered pizza and man was it good. And the fact that beer and avil is still the best solution to cramps I’ve found. But, aside from our few setbacks, we’re going full steam ahead.

Mostly it’s kind of fun. I made a household cleaner from vinegar and water that is way cheaper than the bleach one we were using and it doesn’t ruin our towels with pink spots like the bleach did. And we got a fun salad spinner that makes keeping salad around so easy. And we eat only organic meat, which while definitely more expensive than we can afford, tastes amazing.

Today, however, I believe our crunch has gone a step too far. Adam went to the store to get some much needed groceries and came home with a piece of beef liver. Amazingly, he didn’t mention it to me when he dropped the groceries off in the kitchen. Let me tell you, even without knowing what it is, liver is disgusting. Disgustingly gross looking, and disturbing (and perhaps telling) in the fact that it only cost twenty cents.

Why? Why would my otherwise normal husband come home with a piece of liver? Apparently eating beef liver is good for your liver. Mm. yum. I say drink less and eat no liver. Blech.

I decided to teach Adam cribbage this weekend (which of course meant calling home for rules since I had forgotten myself). We like playing games and cribbage is a good one for two people, so I thought it would be fun. The trick to cribbage (in my opinion), however, is seeing the various combinations in your hand that can get you points. As it turns out, Adam fairly well stinks at this. At first I chalked it up to him being new at looking for it and I helped him by pointing out all the points he was missing. But, as we reached our third game, he was still missing loads of points. The nice wife that I am, I point them all out to him. But every time I do, he ends up winning the game (barely). He does his little happy dance while I point out that without my help he never would have won. Somehow he doesn’t seem to think that makes me the winner. Very frustrating. I don’t think I like cribbage etiquette.