Maggie, Bailey. Bailey, Maggie.

Maggie and Bailey
Originally uploaded by SarahorNicholas

We are dogsitting Nicholas's coworker's dog Bailey this week. It is actually the first time we've ever dogsitted, which is kind of amazing considering we've been pawning our pup off on people for over 4 years. It has been a pretty easy transition so far. Although, Bailey REALLY likes the couch, which is usually Maggie's territory. She seems to be handling it relatively well and by that I mean she hasn't bitten his ear off yet. ;)

Cherry Blossoms

We had a great time at the festival this year. It was super crowded but super worth it!

Somebody has been drugging my latte

Ok, so there have been a couple of recent developments in my life that I need to confess. They are a little disturbing because they involve me bringing things into my life that I have formerly passionately disliked.

First, I bought a pair of shorts. God save me I did. And y'all I hate shorts...a lot. I always felt that Trinny and Susannah were right on the money when they said the problem with shorts was when you stood up your shorts were still sitting down. I've owned one pair of hand-me-down shorts from my friend Annie that I wear usually once a year when I go to an amusement park. The rest of the time I wear skirts or pants - no capris, petal pushers, no cropped pant of any type. However, Thursday night, we all stopped at Target on our way back to Paducah. Maybe it was the jet lag or time change, but my defenses fell and I got a really cute pair of dark brown shorts, very similar to these. And I really like them! I mean they are not the most flattering piece of clothing I own but for shorts they ain't so bad.

Ok, if the shorts weren't bad enough, I have even bigger announcement. I think I might like Spencer Pratt. Ok, maybe like is strong. I don't want to throw up when I see pictures or video of him anymore. That's definitely progress considering my previous posts about him. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was his downturn of fortune on The Hills or she-Pratt, his attention whore sister, that makes him look like an angel. But I know what sealed the deal and it is his new Radar advice column. This post in particular:

YO SPENCER! How do you deal with weak people and haters?
With weak people, you can only try to give them confidence and pump them up. To be honest, you don't need them around you. I try to put myself around really strong people. Haters you should love. Hatred stems from jealousy at some point. If people aren't hating on you, they don't care, and if they don't care, that means you're not doing anything right. I love my haters. I don't hate them back at all. You can turn so many haters around once they meet you. I'm like, "Thanks, I get it, I'm an idiot," and they're like, "Woo! He's an idiot! He's so cool!" I flipped a couple haters at Benihana just last night.

Seriously, that last line slayed me and I thought, "It's official. I might not totally hate Spencer Pratt." I even said it out loud to Nicholas. Luckily, I wasn't wearing the shorts at the time or his head might have exploded.

Easter 2008

Easter 2008
Originally uploaded by SarahorNicholas

My awesome mom and stepdad flew me and Nicholas home for Easter over the weekend. They picked us up in Nashville Thursday night and we arrived in Paducah after dinner and a trip to Target in Clarksville.

On Friday, I went to my alma mater Heath High School to talk to two classes about my job in the Senate and life in the big city. The kids were pretty responsive. Lots of questions about Hillary and both classes wanted to know if I had any pets, which I thought was pretty funny. After school was out, me and my mom drove up to my grandmother's new lake house to join her and Nicholas. Nicholas was already on the lake fishing when we got there and I am happy to report he caught a smallmouth bass.

We hung out at the house the next morning before coming back to town. We did some shopping during the day and Nicholas made everyone dinner that night. Easter Sunday went off without a hitch (as compared to the dogfight and fire at Christmas) and before we knew it we were waking up early on Monday morning to fly back. :(

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country

This book is described repeatedly in reviews as "a comedy of errors." I think someone switched my book jacket because wow ...
divorce + 9/11 does not so much equal comedy to me.

Joyce and Marshall are getting divorced but are forced to remain with their two children under the same roof of a small apartment in Brooklyn. Needless to say, things aren't going well. On 9/11, Joyce believes Marshall has died in the World Trade Center where he works. Marshall thinks Joyce has died on Flight 93. Both are ecstatic. Only one problem, Marshall was late for work and Joyce's trip was canceled at the last minute.

See how the hilarity ensues? No? Me neither. However, I did think it was a brilliant examination of human relationships and how similar individual conflict is to seemingly mysterious global conflict. On a certain level, I identified with Joyce and Marshall and the way anger and resentment can carry you to a place you no longer recognize. I think every marriage has those moments - when you look at the person and you don't see them, you only see every single thing that has pissed you off since the beginning of time.

Kalfus does a great job of pivoting that moment and putting it in the context of our post-9/11 world, describing Joyce and Marshall's marriage as lost to a hatred that has "acquired the intensity of something historic, tribal and ethnic, and when they watched news on TV, reports from the Balkans or the West Bank, they would think, yes, yes, yes, that's how I feel about you."

Reading this book, it felt so true to our country right now. A tragic fissure that led to consequence after angry consequence. Now, five years later, everyone is left wondering, "how exactly did we get here?"

Kalfus also did an excellent job of conveying New York after 9/11 and the intensity of the experience on the city and all that lived there. He described emotions and reactions that I had never heard about or understood. They were both good and bad, both noble and contemptible and I think that's the real power of his narrative. To say the history of 9/11 has been whitewashed is an understatement and I find myself being drawn to more realistic portrayals. It seems truer somehow - more healing - because you can't heal from something you never really acknowledged.

Before and After

Before: Unfortunately, these pictures make the bathroom seem it better shape then it was, especially since I didn't take close-up shots of the shower tile and the floor - both of which were very out of shape and very ugly.





















After: We painted the bathroom a dark tan to make the granite counter top pop. We also hung new stainless steel towel rack and toilet paper holder to match the faucet. I also took my Aunt Lana's advice to move all my tourist frames to one wall and I really love it.

A couple of things

I just thought I'd share a couple of exciting things that happened to me today. I've been doing ancestry research for a while and I found out tonight that my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Elias Lovelace, who founded Lovelaceville, Kentucky, was a Revolutionary War veteran. How cool is that? I even found the pension record from his service and a witness he swore to prove another soldier's service.

Oh and I shared an elevator with Ted Kennedy. He asked me how I was doing. It was awesome.

So, yeah, sort of unrelated but both pretty cool. ;)

In other news...

I hope y'all are sitting down...cause this is a very big deal...

.. you ready ...

NICHOLAS CAUGHT HIS FIRST FISH!!!

AND HIS SECOND!!!

IN ONE DAY!!!

To say he's excited is a vast understatement.

Flip This Bathroom: DAY SIX

TAAAAAAA DAAAAAAA!!!! They finished today and we couldn't be happier. We are definitely going to have to paint and I promise to post pictures after it's all put together. I have to say as our first major home improvement project it went pretty flawlessly. A few minor setbacks and a little over budget but nothing too major. We even got to return some tile and get some money back!

Flip This Bathroom: DAY FIVE

Sooooooo close...they didn't quite finish today. The shower tile was sealed and the floor finished. They also put up the bead board. Tomorrow they're going to seal the floor and paint the bead board. THEN we should be done.

Flip This Bathroom: DAY FOUR

We have floor!!! Tomorrow the beadboard goes up and we're done! :)

Flip This Bathroom: DAY THREE

So the entire shower is tiled! Wohoo! Tomorrow Kahlil will tile the floor and grout both the shower and the floor. Then it's just sealing and putting up the beadboard and we're done!

Flip This Bathroom: DAY TWO

The walls were repaired today. Khalil (our contractor) filled in the holes with insulation and put up new greenboard, which since there was no waterproofing before is a vast improvement.

He also began tiling the back wall. Is that some beautiful tile or is that some beautiful tile!?!?

Flip This Bathroom: DAY ONE
Today was Demolition Day. It went relatively well. There was a lot more water damage then our contractor expected but we actually thought it would be pretty damaged. You can actually see straight through to the brick around the window where most of the water seeped through.







We met our contractor after work and took a trip to the Tile Shop to pick up all our supplies for the rest of the project. Let me just tell you if you like tile this was the place for you. I could have spent hours and I didn't even know I liked tile. Lucky for Nicholas I knew exactly what I wanted or rather had my marching orders from my aunt. ;)





Tomorrow, they start patching all the missing walls and insulating around the showers. They also are going to begin tiling the shower. I can't wait to see it!

Just when I thought I couldn't love Tina Fey anymore

Can NOT stop listening to Alicia Keys "No One"

It's my new theme song.

As if I needed a quiz to tell me this

Take the Quiz
We are both from Kentucky after all!

Random updates

I know I haven't been posting as regularly but I've been real busy running the federal government so I don't have time to just sit around talking to y'all all day. ;) But here are some exciting and less than exciting updates.

* We are about to embark on some major bathroom renovations. We had planned to only replace a couple of tiles but the original tiles couldn't be matched so we decided to do the whole thing, which turned into a "might as well do the floors too" situation. The demolition starts next week and I'll try to at least post picture updates everyday. My amazing aunt Lana picked out some fabulous tiles all the way from Nashville and I can't wait to see what it looks like when we're finished.

* Speaking of renovations, the major renovations throughout our building are finally complete. We replaced our 100 year old steam system with a brand new hot water system. It's working great and everyone seems to be fairly happy. Our living room is basically the same. However, they had to put in new pipes in our bedroom and build out a soffit. Afterwards, my hope chest no longer fit between the air conditioning and the radiator so we had to move it to the storage space. Luckily, we just raised our bed so we had some extra storage under there and my wonderful father volunteered to buy us this beautiful piece of furniture to make up for the rest of the missed storage.

* We signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture project through Bull Run Farm in Virginia. Basically, we pay up front for a share of the harvest and then every week we have fresh vegetables delivered to us. We also signed up for an egg share. I can't wait!

* Work is going great. You want any more details than that you'll have to email me ;)

* Nicholas and I are trying to plan a vacation for the end of March but our running into some road blocks. We had originally planned on Buenos Aires but decided we might want to spend a little less money. So now we're thinking Belize. That however could definitely change.

* We're having an Oscar party. We skipped last year so this should be fun and I'm ready to celebrate that the writers strike is over in anyway possible.

* Nicholas went on his second fishing outing this weekend. He really seems to be enjoying himself, although I secretly wonder if the trips are just to justify buying more fishing stuff.

Happy Valentine's Day

There has been a lot of posting on the intertubes lately of this article. The author basically argues that romance is overrated and that women should "settle."

"It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way."

Well, this article has inspired me to make a confession about shift from romance to reality...I am a recovering romantic comedy addict.

There I said it.

I watched them all and I've watched them multiple times. I've seen Pretty Woman, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and the vastly underappreciated Only You more times than I can count. I was there everytime with kleenex - ready to buy it all hook, line, and sinker.

And while I'm still down for a Sunday viewing of WHMS or an occasional Notebook, I have to tell you "settling" for the real thing who is not romantic, does not understand the value of a grand gesture, and who functions without the benefits of screenwriters is way worth it. Suddenly his everyday (and not made for the big screen) acts of unloading the dishwasher even when it's my turn, forgiving my sometime nasty attitude and nastier comments, or just plain standing by my side and loving me no matter what seem a lot more valuable.

Happy Valentine's Day, Nicholas. I love you.

My face hurts from laughing so hard...