This is my Blake

At a family and friends dinner last fall my grandparents had us all introduce ourselves. Everyone would say "this is my husband, he's the son of so and so, and is the grandson of so and so."

My cousin, Todd, who is sixteen and didn't have a significant other at the dinner, stood up and said "I'm Todd, and this is my Blake (pointing at a surprised Blake)."

Well, I'm sorry Todd, but he is MY Blake.

He is MY Blake and he is a Law School graduate!

(I made him take the picture above because it shows the size of his head. He has a big head, of which I am very jealous. I was always disappointed in the smallness of my own head.)

You'll have to forgive the way I look in all of these pictures. This was during week one of my month-long illness (see previous post). I was in the sinus infection phase, and it definitely shows. In fact, I wore a dress with pockets so I could keep tissues with me, and I'm pretty sure you can see that my pockets are full.

These are Blake's law school buddies and their wives and kids. We're sad that they're all moving/have moved back to Utah.

My parents came out for the weekend to attend Blake's graduation. It was so much fun to have everyone together. Notice how Blake's mom is a little further away from me than everyone else? Well, that's how sick I was.

My parents are great! I'm so glad they were able to come out. I feel bad that I was sick all weekend, but I think/hope they still had a decent time. It was fun to show them our apartment and my office for the first time.

Blake's lovely parents. Man, do I look sick in this photo or what?

This is Blake's graduating class. He's about six rows back on the right side (though you probably can't even tell one person from the next in this photo). We had fantastic seats for the ceremony, and dutifully listed as all 700+ names were read (yes, 700! That's 540 J.D. students, plus LL.M.s and Ph.Ds...good grief).

Four hours, and about 150 tissues later, the ceremony finished and, well, Blake went from being a "student of law" to "attorney at law."

Now I just can't wait until the Bar is over. July 29th can't come soon enough for me (though I'm sure Blake would rather it not come quite so quickly).

Pottery Barn

I just got a call from Pottery Barn notifying us that our chair will be delivered next week (my parents bought us a super cool upholstered chair for our wedding gift) and it brought back one recent and vivid memory of Pottery Barn. It also may be the memory of the most humiliating experience of my life.

I was sick for more than half of the month of may. About halfway through May (just in time for Blake's graduation and my parents' visit) I got a bad cold/flu, that turned into a sinus infection; then I added a stomach flu into the mix, followed by headaches, more sinus problems, more stomach flu, dehydration, doctors visits, IVs and shots. It was a bad three weeks.

This story takes place during the first round of stomach flu....

I took the day off of work on a Tuesday because of the sinus infection, but decided on Wednesday morning that I was going to brave work (I thought I'd rather be at work than be bored in bed). I started to feel dizzy and claustrophobic on the metro, but thought I was probably just tired from being in bed all day the day before. At work I felt really nauseous and claustrophobic. So, I started working from the conference room where there's a private air-conditioning unit (the fresh air helped it be bearable). Then, I thought it might be because I hadn't eaten yet. So, I ate my lunch early.

That didn't help. In fact, it made it worse. The wind tunnel I was working in no longer helped.

I called Blake at 2:30, and he offered to rescue me (by car!). I put my head down on the conference room desk. It helped a little. Then I went outside and waited on a bench where I could get real fresh air.

Blake picked me up around 3:00. Poor guy braved traffic across town to come put me out of my misery. I really don't think I could have made it home without him.

ANYWAY.

I made it across town, over the bridge, and into Arlington. We had to get gas, and I figured it would be faster to just get gas on the way instead of having Blake drop me off at home and then have him go back and get gas. That may have been the worst decision of my life.

I made it to the gas station, and halfway back home. Right as we passed the Cheesecake Factory I started to feel exceptionally ill. I told Blake that if he could it would be best if he pulled over onto one of the side streets as soon as he could. Well, that's when things got bad.

We couldn't pull over onto a side street, so Blake pulled to the left side of the street (it's a one-way, don't worry!) and I opened my door just in time. I completely lost it on the street. In front of Pottery Barn. In front of Whole Foods. In front of the shoppers and oncoming traffic. I lost it again and again in front of several waves of on-lookers. I was mortified.

I would have started crying, but since I had a sinus infection, I knew that tears would only make matters worse. So I just groaned. I groaned and complained about the state of my now "ruined" business casual, and apologized to Blake who was having trouble not tossing a few cookies of his own after seeing/hearing me.

Blake dropped me off at the side of our building while he went to park. I immediately headed for the hose, where I doused myself, my closes, my shoes, everything to get rid of it. Of course, right then our neighbor decided to walk right by me with her little dog and give me a confused/appauled look.

I must have looked ridiculous. Wet pants, dripping face, hair half out of a pony-tail, pale skin, standing there with a hose turned on full blast, aiming it at myself.

Not one of my finer moments.

Well, I'm better now (finally) and am looking forward to a more sophisticated (and cleaner) interaction with Pottery Barn next week.

Newly wed and, possibly, almost dead

Our neighbors smoke. A lot.

It doesn't seep into our apartment, but it makes our entrance hallway smell like a foul ashtray.

We had to do a lot of investigating to find out who the culprits were, but finally found out when I saw Chancie huffing and puffing her way to the metro station with a dog leash in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and when Blake happened to smell the laundry (and the man himself) that Charles was doing in the communal laundry room.

We think they're newly-weds because Chancie's name appeared, scribbled in red pen, under Charles' on their mailbox several weeks after we moved in. And, we think they're just about the oddest couple you could find...brought together, most likely, by their mutual love of tar, nicotine and lung cancer.

She is large (LARGE!), pushy, loud and walks her little dog like she's imitating Elle Woods. He is small, quiet, sullen, and barely walks at all with his crutches.

I've tried (admittedly) to peek into their apartment as I pass by their living room windows. The room is piled high with boxes and debris. Hardly enough room for two grown people and one stunted dog. I often wonder why I never see either one of them sitting there in the living room. Maybe they're out walking the dog, or maybe making the laborious be-crutched trek to the metro...or maybe they're in the hallway again, smoking more years off their lives and ours.

You, too, can beat slavery

We got Blake his final graduation present this week. Why two weeks late, you ask?:

a. Because I'd been sick for over 2 weeks and couldn't will myself to get to Target.
b. Because it didn't come out in it's full glory until May 18th.
c. Because Blake had to watch some youtube videos of it before committing to the purchase.

Yes. We got Mike Tyson's Punch Out for Wii. Actually, due to the fact that Mike Tyson is a convicted psycho, it's just called Punch Out. It's awesome, interactive, and gives us sore arms (that should tell you how in shape --or out of shape--we really are).

It's better than the original: 3-D opponents, wii-fit board compatibility, and nun-chuck wielding power. After-dinner evenings at our place may never be the same.

We haven't gotten there yet, but I'm pretty excited to fight Mason "the Line" Dixon (seeing as he's the only one I remember from the original). I couldn't K him O back in the day, and I probably won't be able to now, but who am I kidding, I'm just excited to see Blake's face when he beats him.

Oh, and here's my equation for the day: Graduate from Law School, Get a Nintendo game. Attorneys know how to have fun...

May

Sorry I've been away so long, folks. May's a busy (and expensive) month for us:

May 1: Blake's Birthday (28). We had dinner at Acadiana and saw State of Play in Chinatown.
Anyone visiting D.C. with a full wallet and an empty stomach should treat her/his self to Acadiana. It's upscale Louisiana-style cuisine, and it's amazing. We all had the crab cakes, and I must say they were the best crab cakes I've ever had (and that's saying a lot...I've personally taken it upon myself to sample crab cakes at every restaurant I've been to since moving to DC. Verdict: Best crab cake - Acadiana. Best crab cake sandwich - MatchBox. )
State of Play was awesome. I particularly enjoyed it because I'd seen them filming it in my neighborhood last fall and hoped to be accidentally in the background in the metro scene. No dice on being an extra, but still an entertaining show.

May 2: Blake's Birthday, the sequel. Dinner at Ledo Pizza (our favorite DC pizza joint) with the whole gang. Equal celebration of Blake's birthday and graduation from law school.
Good pizza. Great friends. Cake that broke into three pieces while I was away, but still tasted scrumptious. MarioKart Wii competitions. Fitting all 16 of us into our living room. What a great night.

May 9: Dinner with Zach and Alicia Derr and Brian and Kelly Stewart (Blake's law school buddies) to celebrate the end of the law school era. Pizza Paradiso. They're all moving to Utah after graduation, which is a bummer for us.

May 10: Mother's Day. Big family dinner with all the kiddos at Blake's parents' house. Good food. Great fun. Neat nieces and nephews (yes, they're mine now too!).

May 12: Dinner to celebrate Tom Davenport's graduation from Dental school. Asia Nine. Also, we celebrated Tom's moving in with the Georgetown crew. It'll be nice to have him closer than Baltimore.

May 13: Tyler turns 30. Celebrate porch-sitting-style in Georgetown.

May 15: My parents come to town for the weekend in honor of Blake's Law School graduation.

May 17: Blake graduates from Law School (hooooooraaaay!).

May 22-25: Go on vacation to heretofore undisclosed location.

May 25: My Birthday. Memorial Day. No work. Just play.