Praguetastic

Remember how I complained that logging into the blog in France was hard? Well, it was nothing compared to the Czech Republic. At least French uses the same alphabet. The only words I understood in this were "Google" and "Groups" and "Gmail."
Tímto procesem vytvoříte účet Google, který můžete používat také v dalších službách Google. Pokud již máte účet Google (např. ve službě Gmail, Google Groups nebo Orkut), nejprve se přihlaste

But obviously I figured it out. Eventually.

All this Czech pilsner is making me so bloated. I'm enormous. Move over, Audrey Griswold because Augustus Gloop is here.

Huge or not, I am absolutely thrilled to be here (unless anyone takes pictures and posts them on Facebook) as Prague is simply one of the most beautiful cities I've seen. Truly lovely. Getting here, however, had some interesting hurdles of its own. All of which I'm about to get into right now just like the woman in Pee Wee's Big Adventure got into explaining the Alamo....

So yeah, maybe I didn't give myself a lot of extra time to get to JFK but I got picked up at my usual time- two hours before departure. It's always calling it close but i absolutely cannot stand just waiting around at the airport. I actually believe you get through faster when you're late. CASE IN POINT- i was trying to print my boarding pass from the self-ticketing machine but my password wasn't working and I had to get help from this weird old attendant dude. Hey took my passport and fiddled with it for a good 15 minutes before proclaiming "you are not going to make your flight!" which of course induced 1) terror 2) butterflies 3) anxiety 4) sweating. I tried to play the "nice young clueless gal" card back and it actually worked and he pulled me to the front of the line and checked my bags for me, et cetera. AND THEN, terror moment, part 2. The other attendant dude was like "Who's Joanne?" and I was like, duh, it's me. And he was like "but this ticket is booked for Annie not Joanne" and I was like, duh, "it's a nickname." Let me just tell you, JFK security does not take kindly to nicknames especially if they are super crazy ones that require any sort of thought beyond Jen as nickname for Jennifer. I was interrogated by five different people, put into a clear glass tank where I was not only observed but made to feel like a terrorist then pulled to the side by a plainclothes officer who also interrogated me then proceeded to feel down, and not in a good way. This all would have been fine and super enjoyable had I not been running a bit late and told that I was going to miss my flight about 20 minutes prior to the shakedown. I came closer than you can imagine to just calling it quits and heading back to my apartment to sleep for three days rather than be frisked in the airport by some big ol lady, but I stood my ground and explained how "Anne" is a large part of the name "Joanne" and that "Annie" is a very common (and pretty obvi) nickname for "Anne". After more groping and patting of my bodily parts, I was finally let through and ran to Gate 27 where I found the biggest shitshow of all time. There must have been 70 people gathered around the information desk and oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my ticket had now been marked with a stamp that said "special request ticket" after all the drama. I was 100% positive that I was not going to be flying to Prague but in my state of defeat, decided that I had nothing to lose and walked right to the front of the line of people who were boarding and said to the dude "hi. I don't know what this stamp means but I have a feeling I don't have a seat." He merely looked at it and then handed me a crumpled ticket that I was sure had to be a fake and said "here you go, ma'am." I said "thanks?" and boarded the plane. Only as I was walking down the final tube tunnely thing before you actually get on the plane did I look at it and notice that I was in sit 5E. Row 5???! That has to be business class, doesn't it? no way. NO WAY. But lo and behold, it was! So I proceeded to order all the free champagne and wine that my little belly could tolerate and rolled my big old seat back with a smile. I woke up in Prague and the rest is history.
Now I am off to go have dinner with a bunch of people! Dumplings! Watch out, Aud

MEN OF STEEL

Again, hard not to talk about men moving steel without it sounding somewhat homoerotic, but this time, I’m honestly just talking about the hardworking fellows who put in the structure for the new building this weekend. So we went from this last week....

to this:

I was honestly blown away when I rolled up on Saturday morning. Those beams literally went up in 5 hours. Pretty insane. Or maybe I just don’t understand the process of construction. Oh right, I don’t...

THE END RESULT:

Amazing to me. But again, what do I know.

So yeah, I slept through the 5:30am call time- SLACKER!- but helped out for the rest of the day. Which was grueling. There were only two injuries, both minimal. One of the victims was me of course- I actually got sandwiched in a big hole under a giant board of plywood. It was actually pretty comical since a) I was stuck there for a few minutes because I couldn’t lift it up off myself and b) I didn’t get hurt . Well, other than this little bruisey cut...

My real injury is the poison ivy all over my back and neck. And yes, I have a long flight tomorrow to Prague and can’t wait to sit there and itch. 

The other injured person was my poor Timmy who sustained two cuts from those long steel thingess that you see all over the place. They are actually sharp. Who knew? He is okay even though the cuts are pretty bad. I dressed them with these fancy blood stoppers made of toilet tissue. Don’t worry! I poured rubbing alcohol all over them first so no, he will not be getting tetanus. Plus, his shots are up to date. I think

This is maybe the most rambling and difficult to follow blog post of all time, but there was so much that happened and so little time to recap it all, that I hope you can just roll with it. Stay tuned for tomorrow's *VIDEO POST*. First video post ever for old CityGirl. get excited 

The Steel Erection

Erection is not a a dirty word, we were literally erecting steel for the frame of the building yesterday.  Which really couldn't be less sexy if it tried.

...or so I thought until I came home last night and started looking at my photos and found this bunch of overtly homoerotic snapshots.

A more thorough and professional journalistic report on the steel erection coming tomorrow but for now, seeing as though it is Sunday after all, I'm still deep in the trenches. 

The Floor that Changed Everything

Tim finally taught me how to drive this thing! I think it's called a skid steer.

I took off work Friday so I could spend part of the day with Tim on the farm before heading off for Girls Weekend (he was sad without me :() and also because I was so excited to see the new floor. They poured the cement after last weekend's radiant flooring debacle and fortunately the pour was much smoother than installing that terrible hot pink tubing because it looks great.

I guess it's kind of hard to tell in these pictures and well, it's a floor, but I swear it looks amazing! I have honestly never really had an emotional reaction to a floor before. I think the enormity of what we have accomplished so far finally hit me and I was really able to visualize the final building. It is really and truly not that far off at this point. Let's examine the progress up to now, shall we?

Just a few months ago, it was this building:

and then it was this terrifying pile of rubble:

and now, it is this:

...which means we are really close to having a building. Seriously amazing.
And btw, when I say that I am impressed by how much "we" have accomplished, I should really emphasize that my hubby did the majority of the work and while yes, I broke a few nails and got poison ivy (twice) and spent so much time in the sun that I'm now trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for a facelift, Tim did the majority of the work and oversaw everything. I knew he was pretty incredible before, but this really hit it home for me. Ok, I'm going to stop getting sappy now but I felt that he deserved some major credit here. He is really creating something amazing and I can't wait for the finalized project. True, it might not be finished before I am dead, but we will at least have Phase 1 which is this building done in a year or so. Exciting.


and yes, we carved our name into it...

(Tim drew the heart)

I also must admit that I had a nice Walden moment when I sat down on the edge of the floor here and just listened to the birds for a little bit. Haven't felt that peaceful in maybe, well, ever. OMG, i'm getting so Thoreau. 

Uggh, maybe I should sneak over to Barney's during lunch and detox from all that natural wonder. I don't want to get soft. 

Man Shoulders?

I bought a beautiful silk tank top on Gilt the other day and it arrived in my office yesterday. I was soo excited because I'm hanging out with my girl friends this weekend (farm freedom!) and it came in time to take with me. One. Major. Problem. I couldn't get the damn thing over my head. Okay, I could get it down to my neck but then it got really tricky around my shoulders and I would have ripped it if I pulled it any farther. I actually started hyperventilating and came really close to destroying the shirt when I couldn't get it on, but finally gathered myself and pulled it back off. Three attempts later, I finally had to accept that it was too small. OH. MY. GOD. It was the size I always wear. WTF. I started trying to calm myself and said, hey, you, you're not fat, you weighed yourself just last week and while you ate a lot of those damn cookies that Oscar left in the kitchen at work, you couldn't have gained an entire size. And then I tried the ol' rationale that the designer is just one that runs small. You know what they say about Vena Cava? Their clothes always run small. NO! They don't say that! Back to panic.
What I finally realized is that I have been doing tons of push-ups lately in all these body sculpting and Physique 57 classes and while yes, they have toned my flab and I actually have some biceps now, agggh, they have also given me Man Shoulders!!! LOOK!!! it's horrifying

 If you didn't see that blonde hair hanging down and that (ever so slight) cleavage, you'd think that was a man. I am laying off the push-ups for a while. Looks like it's back to those old 5 lb wussy weights.

Guns, bullets and... chardonnay?

Tim's desperate attempts to get me to like guns have gotten much craftier. He forwarded me this link today:

http://www.nrawineclub.com/

Yes, that is the official NRA wine club where they donate a portion of every bottle purchased to support your second amendment rights. 

Hate Flowers Update

So the flowers that Tim didn't throw onto the side of the road (we left a few in the barn) are actually still alive, and as this pic demonstrates, thriving. I'm not sure what that means except maybe that our love is turning back around. Wow, how soap opera. I feel like singing a song

My Thighs are On Fire

...and unfortunately, no, it's not from that. Get your mind out of the gutter.
It was from squatting up and down, up and down, all day yesterday and no, not from a specialized Pilates class at Equinox either. We were laying down these pink tube things-

that will provide radiant heating for the floor of the house. The cement guy is due to come Tuesday to pour the floor which means, holy shit, we're about to build! BUT- that also meant that we had to put those tubes in the ground yesterday which was beyond difficult and torturous. It was also a giant clusterfuck as you can see from this photo-

taken just moments before Tim, his mom, my dad, and his dad got that thing so knotted up we had to cut it. Which caused to Tim to have a conniption fit because it was already cut for the floor in specific lengths and that would screw up everything. And then it poured, soaking us to the bone as we were trying to finish. But I'd like to describe the actual process for my own edification and perhaps also for posterity.

Okay, so we unwound this giant roll. Then we laid the tubing out in three long coiled rows at 8" all the way around the perimeter of the building, then gradually expanded the rows so they were 12" apart. And every few inches, we had to bind the coil to the mesh wiring laid over the thermal sheets. This specifically means that Tim and I (being the youngest and most limber) were crouched down on our knees tying these things down every foot or so. To give you a better sense, we ran through thousands of ties. Thousands. And then my dad (shown here in some killer shades) followed behind us and clipped the extra plastic on the end of each tie.

Final result:

Meanwhile, Tim's dad held the tubing so that it would lay flat. I honestly worry some times that we might be killing our 60+ year old parents with all this hard labor but that is a whole other blog that I'll get to one of these days...

Back to the tubing. So while the process wasn't particularly terrible in short spurts, it was terrible when done in the blazing hot and humid sun for 6 hours at a time. An additional factor of pain were the thermal sheets that we were standing on. They are designed to capture sunlight and radiate heat. Let me tell you first hand, they work. And they work well. So basically we were being cooked alive while squatting up and down and blowing out our knees and cramping our backs all day yesterday. Thank God for the insane thunderstorm that finally shut us down. We worked through most of it until I was like, okay, I'm now getting frostbite from being soaking wet. Lots of extremes out there, lots of extremes...I honestly can't believe my friends don't want to come down and help out! It is such a wonderful and empowering way to spend one's weekends.

and then I worked so late that I had to stay down there and woke up at 5am today in order to beat the rush hour traffice (I didn't) to get to work on time (I didn't)/

I can't wait until Tim and I are old and have grand kids and are like "kids, your grandpa and I built this house from scratch. Hell, I even fastened the heating tubes into the very floor you are standing on." And if my grandkids are anything like me, they'll be like "that's awesome, Grandma, but you've told us that story like seven hundred times. Can I get some money?" Come to think of it, I really hope my grandkids are nothing like me.

The storm brewing:

Expanding Wart and Groper

Sniffer and Groper were up to their classic old tricks again last night. Tim was pretty excited about a new move that he created when (WARNING: THIS IS DISGUSTING AND WAY TMI) I was tying my sneaker laces and he straddled my head. This riled Sniffer up quite a bit and she added her own move where she got right in my face and rubbed up on it with her nasty expanding wart while Tim's balls were softly grazing my hair. This happened twice of course (two shoes) and I must say they had that routine pretty down pat. It was surprisingly well choreographed. There was even the song "Ballsack Dipper"  which goes to the tune "Love Rollercoaster." You know that one that became famous when the Red Hot Chili Peppers remade it and it was in the Beavis and Butthead movie I think. So the song goes "Ballsack Dipper" to the beat of the lyric "Rollercoaster" and then it just repeats a lot. Ballsack Dipper of love...
Ballsack Dipper, woo woo woo
Ballsack Dipper

And more on Expanding Wart. Poor Zelda has this giant wart on her lip that keeps growing. I tried to take a picture of it but it just wouldn't come out. I'll spare you the graphic images of warts that pop up when you do a google search as most of them are genital related close ups.

happy saturday. Hope all you single ladies out there find a nice man to dip his balls on your head tonight. 

The "Just Because I Wanted to Make You Feel Bad" Bouquet

You know how those flower websites like FTD and 1800Flowers sell special occasion bouquets for reasons beyond Birthdays and Anniversaries like "Just Because" and "Thinking of You" and "To Brighten Your Day"? Well, this morning, I was presented with a nice bouquet of Hate Flowers from my husband, the "Just Because I Wanted to Make You Feel Bad" Bouquet.  

We stopped at the grocery store to pick up some flowers for a family friend who is terminally ill. I waited in the car with the dog while Tim went inside. Earlier in the morning, we got into a huge fight that was a hybrid of Tim's dreams and the reality of a fight we had the day before and we were still on rocky ground. When Tim emerged from the store with armloads of flowers, I was like "wow, you sure got her a lot of flowers." He responded by roughly pulling 4 bunches of lilies and alstroemeria out of the pack and throwing them at me with a gruff "these are for you." I couldn't even say thanks because it was obviously a gesture of hate and instead replied "why did you buy me flowers?" He replied angrily "you're welcome." The anger that I felt towards those stupid ass flowers as we drove in a rare form of hate-silence was an anger that I didn't really think could be applied to inanimate objects. Why would he buy me flowers when he's mad? It was a twisted form of guilt that was so obvious that it made me even more furious. 


When we finally arrived at our destination, I was like "can't we just give all of them to Cindy? Where am I supposed to put these things? The dog will eat them" and he grumbled "just put them outside in the shade." Fine. I angrily laid them down on the lawn (in the shade) and put a big rock on them so they wouldn't blow away and we went inside. For the next 45 minutes we put on a pretty good show of being a happy couple for the sake of Cindy whose condition was pretty bad and definitely made us stop and reassess....


As we got back in the car, I was pretty sure that seeing someone so sick and close to dying had provided a profound experience for both of us and that we had invariably overcome our silly fight which in the grand scheme of things is pretty insignificant. But I could not read Tim at all and he still seemed very angry. So rather than kiss and make up, we drove in silence for a good 30 minutes with the flowers wilting and dying in the heat on the floor. I finally caved and put them on the dashboard because they looked so pathetic smashed on the floor like that and they were once living things for God's sake-even though they were a symbol of anger and resentment. We drove in an unbearably long silence while the red in the flowers continued to grow an angrier hue by the moment and they even began to give off an energy of hatred. Even the crazy dog was shamed into silence. 



The silence was finally interrupted when Tim spoke up and said "can you hand me those flowers? They are providing a glare and I can't see" and because I certainly didn't want to cause an accident and also because, let's be honest, I was really starting to hate those damn flowers of shame, I handed them to him. And before I could even blink, he threw them out the window. I started to cry. The cries quickly became sobs. The flowers are now on the side of the road somewhere in New Jersey, just waiting to ruin someone's day. 

Camping with the Eagle

Here I am brushing my teeth Saturday morning without a sink or water after a long night of sleeping on a cement slab. Okay okay, this time wasn't even close to as torturous as the last camp out. Yes, we did eat steak with our hands but it was NY Strip and I'll be damned if that meal didn't cost $70 at the local farm store. I guess you can't buy class. Or maybe they just smell a sucker. And I don't know if it was because it felt so wrong (and yet so right) to eat with my hands, but that steak was one of the best I've ever had. I have a feeling that the two bottles of wine may also have influenced my assessment but seriously, it felt great to release all the rules and just get caveman with it, it really did. 

P.S. don't be fooled by my pink dress that looks semi-fancy. I just put that thing on because we had friends stopping by and it was one of the only dresses I have that is super old that I don't care about anymore and am willing to just roll up and stuff into a bag next to a seeping can of dog food. 

P.P.S. that dress makes my torso look really long and it's actually not

P.P.P.S. it's not! 

The camp out was uneventful in terms of war stories and Tim torturing me, but I must say that I had a few moments of terror when I heard a pack of coyotes chattering in the trees and attacking a neighbor's dog.  I swear to you, one of them followed us when we went to collect firewood. We could hear something undeniably huge following us through the tall grass. And then I actually had to touch wood that had been sitting in a barn for years which means it definitely had spiders on it so picture me walking with big pieces of wood in my hands (AWAY from my body, uch) while coyotes are stalking us hungrily and now you might understand my terror. 

here's the campsite at dusk...

and the fire pit...

As far as the progress report on the building (because isn't that what this blog is supposed to be about?!), I had the pleasure, and I say "pleasure" without any note of irony, of designing the loft. It was fun- I took measurements, drew a scale, laid out the scale in real square feet so I could feel it out, then we marked it all off with string and plywood and sent the new dimensions to Tim's office where they are going to input them into Autocad or whatever. This was the first time I felt like I was a real part of the building process and of course am I now terrified because that means I will have real responsibility if anything is flawed. Like if the bathroom is only two feet wide and the toilet juts out into the bedroom, I only have myself to blame. eek...

And if you're wondering about The Eagle, ask me in person because it's far too personal to blog about. Let's just say it's a nickname that Tim attributes to "soaring" and leave it at that. 

White Knight and Black Dog

As Tim and I were sitting in Central Park with the dog the other night, watching the sun set, we had a good laugh as we reminisced about what shall heretofore be known as The Seagull Incident. He was making fun of the fact that I had girly personal items in the bag to top everything off and I was laughing about how angry I was. Then he reminded me of White Knight again and how he was born in that very moment. Now this is not the first time that he has reminded me of White Knight, in fact, Tim has actually been referring to himself in the third person as White Knight ever since The Seagull Incident. Whenever there is an opportunity to "save" me, no matter how small, he will talk about White Knight in all his valor and how his sole purpose for existence is to protect me. The best part is that he likes to recap every instance of White Knight in a Who's On First or Ghostbusters (depending on your preferred era of stupid humor) repartee as in "Who was there with cash the other day when you forgot your debit card? White Knight" or "Who was there to pick you up after work last night?  White Knight." He has gotten so carried away with being this imagined Arthurian superhero of sorts, that he is going out of his way to do nice things for me just so he can pat himself on the back. Like the pickup I just mentioned. In the 10 years I have known Tim, he has NEVER picked me up unless I was literally within a 100 foot radius of his car. He justifies this by saying that a car in the city is not like a car in the suburbs where you can just pick someone up from their house and it's not the biggest deal in the world. I buy that to a certain extent but it has definitely caused a few fights here and there like when I'm 150-200 ft outside of range. Cut to last night. He actually volunteered to pick me up after work, even though he was literally no where near my office. Granted I had to walk a few blocks but it wasn't that far and he really did come through, on time even. Now I'm no dummy so as much as I'd like to believe that he did it out of the goodness of his heart and that he is a changed man, the reality is that he did it solely so that he could say "Who was there to pick you up after work last night? White Knight".
Back to Central Park last night. As White Knight sat and reflected upon how gallant he is and held me in his arms like a prince, the dog came and interrupted our moment by licking my face as we were about to kiss. So gross. He then made a reference to Sniffer and Groper being back and I asked where Groper fits into this whole new identity. He was like, duh, we're White Knight and Black Dog. I was like okay, but what happened to Sniffer and Groper? Another DUH back at me. White Knight and Black Dog are Sniffer and Groper's altar egos, hello. He then went on to explain something about sniffing and groping that included the term "meat pie" somewhere in it that I don't care to recount. The bottom line is that my husband and dog have not only one, but two different and bizarre identities and that my husband is crazy.

WHITE KNIGHT. BLACK DOG. A BUOY. 

The Merman/ Lone Wolf

Ommm....fuck you, Annie...ommm, i hate you....ooohhmmmm