Well my first week off was great. Of course, it's not a very good representation of what it will be like since both Scottie and I decided not to do anything productive and to not recognize that I've had a salary reduction, so we just hung out and spent money doing fun stuff! It was my little vacation at home! But it was much needed so I don't even guilty, I'm just happy about my new life! Here's the cliff notes to our week:
- Slept for 11 hours on a couple of different days and never got up before 10am.
- Rolled out bed just in time to watch Roseanne (my guilty pleasure that I usually reserve for sick days)
- Often went out on the town: shopping; to my favorite coffee shop, Inside the Bungalow (that has previously been closed during times I was off work but now has longer hours!
- Watched movies at home, watched movies at the theater
- Went to lunch with friends
- Stayed up late every night talking
- Helped my cousin make an Elmo cake for her 2 year old daughter's birthday party
- Went to the birthday party at a gym and watched 2 & 3 year olds roll around in leotards, attempting to stay on balance beams, jumpy things, and such (I think their heads are a little too disproportionate to their bodies for that kind of coordination yet- reminds me of watching kindergartners play soccer when every kid on the entire field somehow ends up in a massive dog pile at least 7 times during every game)
Are you jealous yet?
The downside to this flexible schedule is that my body is not used to waking up at a certain time (not that it ever did get used to 6am) so when my alarm clock didn't go off on Thursday for my first day back at work, I had no idea. I woke up to my boss calling me 30 min. after I should've been there! Good thing I work at a grace-based place, even if everyone there does think they're hilarious and enjoys putting little alarm clock signs all over my desk and mocking me for the rest of the day!
I also need to update on our first Apartment Life (Cares Team) event! We did "Popsicles by the Pool" which means we brought an ice chest down to the pool and watched about 10 unsupervised kids under the age of 7 (most of whom couldn't swim, mind you) drop their otter pops into the pool about 100 times and gorge themselves on Drumsticks. At one point a kid rode his 10 speed bike into the pool (I think on accident) but we were just relieved that he missed the gigantic Bull mastiff that was swimming with us. Can you just picture the chaos here!? It was a ton of fun though.
Later that night, some of our neighbors (2 out of the 4 grown ups that were at the pool helping us rescue drowning kids) planned an impromptu BBQ. Unfortunately, it takes several hours to get 8 totally wasted people in one place with all the right equipment. So at about 10pm we settled down for dinner, using the plant pot as our table (since there are no outdoor tables or chairs in our entire complex except for in the pool area and I don't think we'd be as successful at rescuing drowning adult-sized drunks as we were with the kids). Since sober adult conversation was out of the question, I spent the entire night playing with 2 little girls on the jungle gym, making up stories, and drawing hop scotches with sidewalk chalk. I have to say that my favorite part of the whole night was when I asked a beautiful 3 year old girl to tell me a story and she said to me, "Did I tell you about the time that a star fell out of the sky and hit me in the head?!" I am willing to have a child for the sole purpose of hearing her say that to me one day and I will consider that my success as a parent.
So obviously, we haven't really gotten to the whole spiritual part of Apartment Life! But we've had a lot of fun getting to know all the residents around there, and I still don't think we could've picked a better place to live. I have to remind myself of that every time I vacuum up 50 dead baby cockroaches at a time from my living room floor.
I promise I will have pics of our apartment up very soon!
