I didn’t mention it here because it was only an order. It wasn’t quite the real thing. And there was this little voice inside my head that said not to say anything just in case. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents. Usually I’m the one that has a hard time keeping a secret, and there really never was a good reason why this had to be a secret. It just…was.

It was back in October; the weekend before I started the new job at the-company-to-be-nicknamed-later (yes, one of these years it will get a nickname, I swear). I remember filling out the credit approval paperwork and laughing about the fact that I didn’t know what my work phone number was, so couldn’t provide that information to them. They didn’t seem to mind. They took our deposit check, and told us it would arrive in three to six months, and we went home to wait. And then later that week Richard was laid off and I thought briefly about the order, but I didn’t give it too much thought. The order was not binding. And with the popularity of this model, they’d have no problem finding a new buyer if we decided not to get it after all.

The week after Christmas the call came. “Your Prius is in,” the woman said. She went on to tell me that it had arrived on the east coast and would be delivered to my dealer sometime in mid-January. Truthfully, I’d nearly forgotten that we’d ever placed the order. There were a lot of other things on my mind these past few months.

The dealer called yesterday. The car arrived. When could we come to get it?

We drove down this morning. I didn’t want to see the car, but I couldn’t help it; they had it sitting right out in front. Dark green, with a spoiler and tan interior. I didn’t have to look through the windows to know that it had cruise control and a CD player, just as I’d requested. There was a tiny voice in my head that wanted to go out and peek inside, just to see, but I made the voice hush.

The man at the dealership was pretty understanding about it. He asked if we were sure, but I have a feeling we probably weren’t the only ones he’s had cancel their orders because of the slumping economy. He handed us back the deposit check, uncashed, and shook our hands, wishing us well. The car, he said, would most likely sell by the end of the weekend.

We don’t need the car. The Maxima I’m driving is in great condition. The Prius was only because we really liked the concept of the hybrid, and not because it was necessary. I reminded myself that entering into a car loan on only one income was a dumb thing to do. I repeated over and over that wanting and needing are too different things and that this is the best decision for us right now. They’re going to keep making this car, and they’ll continue to improve it as the years pass. It’s not like we can’t order another one later, when things smooth out for us financially.

But that didn’t make it any easier to drive away from the dealership, leaving the Prius behind.

The office where I work is located in a small office complex, with several companies per building. All the companies in one building share the same bathroom. I started working here in October. Since that time, one stall in the women’s bathroom has been out of order consistently, no matter what. I have begun to get the distinct impression that the cleaning woman unclogs it each night and then someone uses it the next morning and it promptly clogs again. Three months it has been and there seems to be no end in sight for the pattern. I do not know exactly why I find this so gosh darn funny, but I do.

********

The blood bank finally tracked me down today. When I left the Big Fish I changed the message on my old voicemail, giving my new number just in case anyone tried to get a hold of me. Today they called, wanting to know if I would come in to do a platelet donation. They like us A-positives for platelets, apparently, since they’re usually calling up a storm if I haven’t been in a month or so…and I honestly haven’t had much time to donate in probably over six months.

I made an appointment for next Friday, which will involve me getting up even earlier than usual to get to the center and be done before heading off to work, but oh well. I’ve been feeling a little guilty about how long it’s been anyway, so what’s a little inconvenience when there’s free doughnuts involved. The amusing thing about this is that this means that my old voicemail is still active. In fact I have a sneaky suspicion that no one in that tiny office has any clue how to reset that particular phone. That voicemail may be up for a very, very long time.

Both of our glider rockers have finally been delivered. One was delivered yesterday and the other came today. When we purchased them, we were told we could either take some directly from the warehouse, or we’d have to wait up to ten weeks. Being the impatient sort, we elected to go for the warehouse version.

The upholstery is a dark green and blue mottled sort of affair that won’t show dirt. Cat hair will, of course, show, since cat hair has the amazing ability to turn the opposite color of whatever it is sitting on (except, naturally, the cat), but that is to be expected. Amazingly, and through no planning on our own, the dark cherry stain of the chair is nearly identical to the color of the table we bought to go between the two chairs.

The other chair came today, as I said, because they made a mistake, and there really weren’t enough in the warehouse. One very annoyed phone call later and suddenly we get not only the floor model from the store, but they’re throwing in an ottoman for free for the inconvenience. All we wanted was the chair, but one doesn’t turn down free otherwise expensive furniture.

I can see that on lazy days we’ll be sipping coffee and reading books in the bay window of the bedroom now. Adding furniture makes the room look a bit smaller, true, but it’s cozy and inviting now, which was just what we were hoping for.

This weekend was extremely productive. Because of the party Saturday night, we cleaned the house; even going a bit beyond what normally would have been required simply to get it party-ready. I managed to get the kitchen counters almost completely cleared of all non-kitchen related items, and wiped them down to remove all traces of cat hair. I put up three switch plate covers we’ve had for a while that I keep meaning to install. Heck, I even managed to clean off both desks in the computer room – although truthfully this was only because Richard cleaned off his desks and I didn’t want to be the messy one. Heh.

The guest room has been a kind of catchall for everything that didn’t have a home these past few months. We got a futon and put it in there but the way it was situated, it meant getting into the closet was a hassle and besides, the futon itself ended up covered with an untidy pile of all the remaining wedding presents. Plus there’s all my sewing stuff that had been living either in crates, boxes, or in a huge armoire in the corner.

I emptied out all my sewing stuff from the armoire (and all the stuff in there will eventually be put on shelves, really it will), and moved the furniture around so now access to the closet (where all holiday decorations live) is perfectly easy. I should point out that the lack of carpet in the house makes moving heavy furniture around extremely simple. Phew! We then dragged the armoire across the hall into the master bedroom and Richard has been in awe of how much storage space he has now for his clothes. It does loom a bit in the room, but I think once we do a bit of rearranging it won’t loom quite so much. Rebecca thinks the presence of the armoire is absolutely marvelous, because it now is the tallest thing in the room. This meant she immediately had to climb to the top as soon as we put it in place so she could sit, vulture-like, and glare down at the rest of us lowly peons.

The problem with rearranging and organizing is that I get one area sorted and cleaned and it opens up other possibilities. I’ve got a short list of projects, most of them small (like putting shelves in the master bedroom closet), but once I finish one (like clearing out the armoire) and cross it off the list, another comes immediately to take its place. For example, we found some shelves in the garage and now one needs to be repainted, one needs a coat of finish, and then they need to be hung. Plus I sorted through all the needlework projects I’ve done over the past twenty-odd years and put aside a huge pile to give away. This just means, of course, that now I’ve got an excuse to go sew some more things to hang on the walls, but knowing the sporadic nature of my sewing, that won’t be a huge problem for at least the next few decades.

I realize that our house will be a continuing black hole of projects to organize, clean, rearrange, redecorate, and remodel, but that’s okay. In a way, it’s kind of fun. Granted I may do my fair share of whining as I work up to the task at hand, but once it’s done there is a feeling of satisfaction far beyond anything I felt when I cleaned or organized stuff in the rental houses.

We had a party last night. It was a post-holiday party, in that this was as good an excuse as any to have a party, and it was relatively close to the 12th day of Christmas, and we’d planned on having a party in December and then never got our act together enough. So anyway. The party was last night.

We cleaned the house, but that didn’t take too long once we recovered from the bike ride in the morning (again, I say ow). Then we sat down and rewrote the cards for our little game we created a year or two ago for a Halloween party. It was a rousing success at that party, so we decided to do it again, with a few modifications (after all, one must play test these things a few times before one can approach a game manufacturer and sell the concept for the cost of a few trips to Starbucks. Whee!). I started on the characters, but then Richard started having way too much fun with the scenes so I let him do the rest. I think he got the ultimate compliment as a result, from someone who hadn’t played the game the last time and mentioned that he was warped. Of course, in our little group of friends, this is a compliment.

The party was a success. Everyone seemed to be having a grand time. The game went over well, with such memorable lines from the scenes acted out as:

• Steam! Steam like you’ve never steamed before! (from Captain Obvious to the espresso machine)
• Ah! You have invoked the wrath of Sumo Bob! (from Sumo Bob, of course, shortly before he was undone by Stump-foo)
• Gak. Tweezers. To neck. Can. Not. Yodel. (as the overly polite fighter pilot killed the evil yodeling man)
• Good Putty. Gooood putty. (from the very disturbing kindergarten teacher after she smothered the televangelist).

Now that we both have bikes, and both these bikes actually work, I decreed that Saturday trips to Starbucks would have to be by bike (barring nasty weather like the rain we’ve been getting on and off lately). Richard gave me a look and noted that it was an awfully long way to the coffee shop and did I maybe want to start off smaller? Nonsense, I replied, full of idiotic enthusiasm and blithely ignoring the warnings of impending rain. So, we hopped on our bikes and off we went.

I discovered two things very quickly. The first was that we lowered the seat on my shiny new purple bike too far, but I figured I could put up with it for the one trip and raise it later. The second was that I haven’t ridden a bike in years and my butt has apparently lost all the bike seat calluses it used to have. I am sore in places a woman should not be this sore. Ow. I mean that in the most sincere way.

But we did it – there and back, and aside from the sore rump and a determination to raise that seat so maybe next time I’ll actually be able to get a little bit of power on the pedals, it wasn’t bad at all.

We also made a decision. We’ve been toying with the prospect of taking our honeymoon trip to Ireland this year. But with the uncertainty of employment and the fact that it might be difficult to get that much time off so early in a job for either of us, I wasn’t sure if it would work. However, now that we’ve got the bikes and (yes, despite the sore butt issue) I’m remembering how much I used to like bicycling everywhere back in college, I made a suggestion. Postpone our honeymoon til next year, and take the time in between now and then to get us into biking shape. We don’t need to be able to do speed races; all we need to be able to do is to ride cross-country all over Ireland. And I think if we work at it a bit, we can actually reach that goal.

Now that I’ve rearranged my work schedule so I go in an hour later (and come home an hour later too, but that’s okay), I’ve got lots more time in the morning. I figure if I can get out in the mornings and take a very short ride for the next week or so, I should be ready for next Saturday’s trip to Starbucks. And maybe by then my butt won’t be yelling at me the rest of the day for plopping it onto a narrow little seat and making it exercise. Or at least that’s the current working theory.

I’d intended to take Richard out for dinner to our favorite restaurant Sunday night (his ‘pseudo-birthday), but unfortunately it was closed. So we did that last night – a bit late but ah well.

csIt was a lovely, romantic dinner. We held hands across the table and smiled at each other. And then we started discussing our next escapade in the ‘how odd are we’ category of our marriage.

See, we’ve both noticed that preponderance of useless little personality quizzes that have lately seemed to take the web – and most especially, the journaling/blogging community – by storm. They range from determine what type of squirrel you would be or which pokemon character you resemble, to determining what eating utensil you would be.

Not to be outdone, we sat at dinner and plotted out our addition to this blinding world of quizzes. It took us a while, but we hashed out questions and worked out some sort of logic (and trust me when I say there really is logic involved here).

So go ahead. Take the quiz. Your life will never be the same. Or something.

At some point in the last two years or so, we managed to acquire a certain toy for the cats. They have a lot of toys, I should point out. Far too many toys, in all likelihood, but what can you expect from seven spoiled-rotten felines? But I digress. This one particular toy is a stuffed black bat, with little glued-on felt eyes and felt wings. What makes this toy stand out from all the others is that not only has it withstood the normally destructive forces of she-who-shreds-all-things-fuzzy, but it travels.

We know this, you see, because Richard is, in his own words, studying its migratory path (back off, girls! He’s all mine!). He tosses it down the stairs every few days and then we get to watch it slowly work its way back up the stairs, a few steps at a time before it appears somewhere in the bedroom or the computer room.

Richard is betting that Sebastian is the travel ‘agent’, so to speak. But I have to admit my vote’s on Rosemary. Not only does she like to carry things around in her mouth (while beeping in her most pathetic manner), but also I think she’s simply lulling us into a false sense of security. One of these days we are going to find the bat in a million teeny little pieces, same as the rainbow pompom toys and my poor little dish sponge before it. All cat toys that enter this household are destroyed eventually. I just have to be patient.

My new end table is cool. Very very cool. There is more surface area on top so the Kleenex box doesn’t have to wrestle with the alarm clock and the phone for space, and there is even enough room for me to have a small stack of books waiting for me to read. The three drawers are practically empty; in fact one of them is completely empty and I’ve no idea what to put in it. True, the bedroom smells faintly of finish, which indicates that perhaps we didn’t let my end table dry quite as long as it needed to, but I’m going to ignore that for now because finally I have a table by my side of the bed that the cats can’t tip no matter how hard they try.

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The first day of the new year started off slow, but then reached the pinnacle of excitement as we took a trip to Wal-Mart. This excitement came after we wandered over toward the deodorant and the razor blades and the toothpaste. And then there they were – a dazzling array of toothbrushes. Manual and battery operated. Spinning heads and brushes with color sensing bristles. Brushes made for kids with pokemon handles, and brushes for teenagers that looked like tacky plastic pastel cell phones.

Faced with all these choices, we knew what we had to do. We picked out toothbrushes together. Not just ordinary toothbrushes, mind you; no, we splurged for a pair of the battery operated ones, with little spinning heads for the ultimate in plaque control.

I think this is when you figure out you might be an adult – when you spend quality time with your significant other pondering dental hygiene in a large and overcrowded discount store in the middle of poor white trash town.

It doesn’t get any better than this, I tell you.

Okay, so to make up for the monotony of buying battery-operated toothbrushes, we also got me a new bike (electric purple, no less!). Saturday trips to Starbucks are never going to be the same again.

Unlike a lot of people, I do not view 2001 as a bad year. It was, all things considered, a very good year for me. Our house was completed in April and we finally got to move in. Richard got to take his dream trip to the British Isles in May. In July, we had our beautiful (and eventful) wedding, and in October I finally escaped consulting (and the Big Fish) for good and found a new job. It was a substantial pay cut for me to leave, but it was worth it.

We’ve had a few downs in this year. Richard lost his job, true, but that’s given him time to finish up his online class, and do a lot of other things he’s wanted to do. And it meant he was home to take care of Tangerine when she was so ill. But overall, it has been a very good year. Yes, there was September 11th, but neither of us knew anyone involved, and aside from a heightened awareness of planes in the sky these days, I don’t think it’s had much of any impact on our lives. Our families are happy and healthy, and so are we, and that means more to me anyway.

Last year at this time I made one resolution, and I’m relieved to say that I *did* stick to it, mostly. I’m nowhere near my goal, but the main things is that we changed our eating habits and are both on the road to a healthier lifestyle that we accept (albeit grudgingly) we’ll need to follow for the rest of our lives.

So this year I’m going to forgo making any new resolutions. I’m sticking to the one from last year; losing weight. Comparisons of our engagement picture taken in March to pictures taken in November show a significant change already, but there’s more work to do and I’m confident we’ll make it.

Actually, I’m not being exactly truthful. I *am* making a new resolution, but I’m going to take a page from SecraTerri’s book and make a private resolution. It’s not a huge earth-shattering one, and it won’t impact anyone but me if I do or don’t manage to keep it. But it’s mine and I’m going to keep it personal, as she has suggested, and next year, I’ll let you all know how I did.

2002 promises to be as good to us as 2001. No weddings or new houses, true, but I think I’d rather it be a bit less hectic. Instead, we’ve got a few possible trips to take. Looks like most of my cousins will be going to the family reunion this year and I’d really like to introduce Richard to Lakeside. And we still have a honeymoon to take – perhaps this May.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. But first, I have an end table to sand and finish, ants to kill, and an office to clean. Off to a good start already!