Go Speed Racer!

Yesterday, Daniel's helmet for his new bike came in the mail. He was so excited, and walked around the house wearing it most of the day. I had to get pictures because... well... see for yourself.

There are few things cuter to me than when my husband gets new toys and behaves like an 8 year old.

Disclaimer: Mom, if this is the first you've seen/heard about the bike, I had nothing to do with it. Upon Daniel's purchase of the bike, we agreed that he is subject to all complaints, wrath, concern, etc. of any mothers involved. So call him. I wash my hands of this.

Before and After

I have had several requests to post photos of the new house, so Daniel and I finally got around to it this morning even though we've had the house pretty much set up for a month. Me and procrastination are tight.

I am going to post a few crappy before pictures that I took on my iPhone, mostly to show changes in paint.

Living room before

Living room after

Daniel designed and built this nifty TV mount out of shipping crates. Gotta love a creative man.

Dining room before (the rug came with the house... I don't know.)

Dining room after

Our dining room chalkboard wall- the best thing that ever happened to Daniel Meigs. Including me.

Master bedroom before

Master bedroom after

That's all for now- I will probably post pictures of the kitchen and office on here at some point, after we've made a few more improvements. We're also planning to paint the rest of the walls in the bedroom red, so whenever we get around to it I'll post pictures of that.

In other news, my brother Ryan is getting married in a week! I'm headed to Mississippi on Monday to spend some much needed time with my family and to finally meet my nephew Isaac for the first time. Daniel is shooting the wedding (which is sure to be gorgeous) and will post pictures on his blog before long, so stay tuned for that!

Alleged "Coffee"

I am very old.

Aged.
Decrepit.

So old I have to drink decaf coffee now. Decaf.

In my youth, caffeine had no effect on me whatsoever. I remember the days fondly. My relationship with coffee peaked when I was working at Starbucks. We were allowed to have as many drinks as we wanted during our breaks. In retrospect, I believe that this tactic on Starbucks' part is to obtain lifelong coffee-addicted slaves, much like crack whores. They provided us with as much of our drug as we wanted so long as we worked for them. This was the happy chapter of my life. I would drink as much as 6-8 cups of coffee per day. Once I was turned out into the streets, though, a sinister spiral took place as I tried to live my life apart from my pimp, a mere shell of who I once was.

I was soon forced to abandon my dignity, showing up unkempt in my pajamas at the nearest Starbucks drive-thru with blood shot, begging eyes looking up at the happily supplied Barista who greeted me. "Please. C-coffee." I would croak, holding out a trembling fistful of change.

In those days, caffeine didn't necessarily give me an energy boost, and it most certainly didn't keep me awake at night. I would lull myself to sleep with a warm, comforting double shot of espresso. I simply needed it to survive. Without it, I would have withdrawals, but the high had worn off long ago.

In the past year, a change has taken place which I can no longer ignore. I can't drink coffee past about 2 pm if I hope to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. One wouldn't think that once I realized this, it wouldn't be that difficult to simply adjust my habits accordingly. It is. I can't explain why, but I constantly make excuses to drink coffee after dinner, or while hanging out with friends in the late afternoon. My most common excuse is that it's a "special occasion." As though the effects of caffeine can be reasoned with. My definitions of "special occasion" is becoming terribly broad. A special occasion could mean that I have friends or family in town whom I am entertaining, and I feel that coffee would be a nice touch. It could mean that I'm in the mood to write if I can sit still and focus, which, for some reason, coffee helps me do. Or that I'm quite sad, and coffee would cheer me up. Or it could simply mean that I want to "appreciate" and "celebrate" coffee at 8 pm. My idea of what constitutes a "special occasion" is ever-expanding, and I've reached a point where I can expertly, almost without thinking, render any given moment of any day a special occasion. Then, I invariably lie awake until dawn, riddled with regret and self-loathing, wishing more than anything that the occasion hadn't been so danged special.

In response to this, Daniel has started buying me decaf coffee, or, as I like to call it, placebo coffee. I have never understood the point of decaf coffee. It's kind of like non-alcoholic beer. I have reached a point, though, where I am willing to brew decaf coffee just to satisfy my craving, helping myself maintain the illusion of fulfillment.

So Yes.

I am old.

Back with a Vengeance. And some baby pictures.

Alright friends... It has really been too long. But where to begin? Can I just write an outline until I feel like filling in details? I think that is what I must do.

• April 23: Our new baby nephew, Isaac Daniel Wachdorf is born!
  
  
  Click here to view more pictures and videos of this adorable baby boy.

• May 1: Daniel leaves town for the weekend.
  
  
• May 2: Ryan and Rebekah get engaged! Woohoo! August 14th!
  Also, Hannah and Daniel's apartment floods. Remember how Daniel's outof town? Yeah.
  
  
  
• May 3: Hannah's finals week kicks into full gear, and Daniel returns to Nashville.
  
  
• May 5: Hannah and Daniel sign lease on a new (much cooler, much bigger, miraculously cheaper) house.
  
  
• May 6-7: Hannah and Daniel move everything worth moving to new house, with much help from beloved friends and family.
  
  
• May 8: Daniel leaves the country in the morning, Hannah graduates college in the afternoon.
  
  
• May 8-26: Daniel travels the world while Hannah unpacks and cleans at the new house.
  
  
  
• May 21-23: Hannah goes to Oxford, MS for Clark Rice's baptism, and gets a much needed family fix.
  
  
• May 26-June 2: A happy time in Hannah's life. (Daniel is home.)
  
  
• June 2: Daniel leaves again, Hannah cries and cries.
  
  
• June 4: But not for long! Hannah is off to Mississippi to visit her sweet friends Racheal Burnett and Rachel Purser in Jackson, MS.
  
  
• June 6: All good things must come to an end, however, and Hannah cries some more until she picks Daniel up from the airport the same evening.
  
  
• June 8-9: Hannah and Daniel go to Oxford to shoot engagement pictures for Ryan and Rebekah.
  
  
  
  View more pictures of the gorgeous couple here.
  
  
• Today: Things are winding down and getting back to sweet, comforting normalcy.

So... that pretty much covers everything important.

So far, we have replaced most of the essentials that we lost in the flood (living room and dining room furniture, kitchen appliances, etc.) We are so proud of our cute new house and have been having a lot of fun painting and decorating it. I will post pictures when things get a little more presentable around here.

I have been on a reading frenzy since graduation. I'm like a kid in a candy store- the whole world of literature has just opened up in front of me. You might think that completing my English degree would have satisfied my literary appetite for a while, but let me explain. For the past four years, I have had very little free time to read what I've wanted to because I've always been reading for school. I have been developing this mental list that I can't actually keep track of in any organized fashion of books I've been wanting to read, and now every time one of them pops up in a conversation or a book store or my head, I can just... read it. It's so exhilarating to be able to read whatever I want to- it's like discovering reading for the first time all over again. The only problem is that I am getting sucked into too many books at once. I'm reading five books at the moment, and have five that come to mind that I intend to start reading any minute now. At this rate, I wonder if I'll ever be able to actually finish another book in my life.

Meanwhile, I'm looking for a job. This is a much less exciting topic for me, so I'll probably be brief. Or maybe I'll rant. We'll see.

So far, all I've done is browse online classifieds day and night, write cover letters, tailor my resume ever so slightly for some positions, and email strangers asking for work. I am starting to feel like a lunatic because not one person has responded to an email I've written. I must have applied for at least 20 jobs by now. At least. And no one has answered. I am starting to secretly believe that Craigslist is actually the Matrix, and Craig just posts ads day and night to maintain the illusion that there are actual people out there looking for employees, and stringing me along as some sort of cruel joke. Maybe I'm the only person who buys the whole Craigslist thing anymore, so Craig has deserted the other communities and mostly just focuses on Nashville, occasionally posting ads in Hendersonville, Spring Hill or Murfreesboro to keep things believable for me. Meanwhile he's got cameras set up all over my house and he's broadcasting my job hunt like the Truman show, and everyone is tuning in to watch me shuffle into the office in my p.j.s every morning to tinker on the computer, drinking my coffee and applying for imaginary jobs in my naivety. "Will you look at that idiot??" they all jeer. "She really thinks that someone's going to answer! Look at all that hope... that pathetic hope. I almost feel sorry for her."

Sigh.

Before I go, I have a prayer request to make: Tomorrow morning, Daniel's mom, Jerri Meigs is having spinal surgery to hopefully correct some severe pain she's been having. Please pray that the surgery goes well and is successful in alleviating her pain.

Well, that's all I've got for now. I promise to post a little puppy montage sometime soon to break up some of the heavy, intimidating blocks of text on here. :) So tune in for that...

My Final Finals Week Marathon: Surviving on Cheerios, Neglecting Hygiene

I have had a few complaints about my failure to blog for the past few weeks. My response to this is to direct you to another blog, where something very exciting is happening. My sister Haley gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Isaac Daniel Wachdorf, last Friday. Daniel and I are so proud of our precious new nephew, and can't wait to meet him. There are pictures on Haley's blog. Go forth and swoon.

In the meantime, I'm smack dab in the middle of final papers and exams, so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to that. I'd also like to warn you that it would not be advisable to stand within 500 feet of me for the next week or so, as I have temporarily given up bathing.

Tune in sometime after my graduation on May 8th to find out what has happened recently in the lives of the Meigs.

Attention! Spoiler Alert!

Not very much, actually.

Ah, what a day.

Today has been eventful, to say the least.

As those of you who have recently had a phone conversation with me know, my little Samsung Blackberry-rip-off has desperately needed replacing for some time. I didn't get any reception in my house, I rarely got it anywhere else, and if we were talking long distance, you could forget about me understanding more than half of what you said. So when I returned from a trip to Mississippi last weekend, Daniel (probably out of sheer desperation after trying to fit in a decent conversation with me between "what?"s and "hold up, I'm going down a hill"s,) decided it was high time for a trip to the good old AT&T store. We weren't able to make it in until this morning, and in the meantime, Daniel silently mulled over the pros and cons of an iPhone. He eventually concluded that if we were buying me a phone we might as well get an iPhone, and that we could swing the bill if we took texting off our plan for now. When he pitched this proposal to me, I agreed and said that I was definitely willing to sacrifice texting for all the perks of an iPhone, so it was settled.

This morning I had to go to class first thing, but Daniel said he would be able to do everything at AT&T; he would just need my old phone. I handed it over, happy to see it go, and went on my merry way to class.

Or so I thought...

As I drove and drank my seriously amazing cup of coffee Daniel had fixed me, I thought about what a beautiful morning it was, and how glad I was to be up to witness the birds chirping, the cool air and the sunshine. I felt a renewed motivation and gusto for life, and decided that I was going to start working out. And writing more. And keeping up with the news. And that, in spite of never having been a morning person- ever- I would make time for my new goals by rising earlier to greet the day.

I was so lost in this euphoric daydream that I barely noticed when my car started to decelerate. As I started up a hill, I was startled awake when the pressure I applied to the gas pedal elicited no response. "Oh, crap," I thought. "Oh, well. Don't panic- it's no big deal... just call Da.... OH CRAP."

I pulled over to the shoulder of I-24, sat there for a few minutes to collect my thoughts, and then I got out and started walking. I figured I'd walk to the nearest exit and find somewhere I could use a phone. I didn't get very far before a good Samaritan pulled over to help. He was a really sweet man named Otis, and when I explained that I didn't have my phone, he let me borrow his. It was only then that I remembered that Daniel had changed his number less than 24 hours earlier, and I didn't know his new number.

Luckily, Otis had internet access on his phone, and I soon recalled that Daniel had updated his facebook status with his new number. I really have no idea how I would have gotten him on the phone today otherwise. In the end, Otis dropped me off at a Starbucks off the next exit, where I waited for Daniel.

It turns out that my timing belt snapped. We have a neighbor who is a mechanic and he is going to fix it for us for a very reasonable price once we can afford the parts. In the meantime, we're going to have to figure out some sort of schedule with Daniel's car that will allow us to be everywhere we need to be. The good news is, I will have a super cool phone to play on while waiting on my ride 5 hours after my classes end...

In other news, Daniel and I have become very popular in our neighborhood since we acquired a puppy, which is, apparently, what it takes to be the coolest kids on the block. I have a little gang of 5-7 kids who run squealing to greet me every evening when they see me pull up. I first met them when I was taking Naavah out to play in the front yard. Now, they just show up at my house, puppy or no puppy, hugging me, asking for candy and requesting that I read them stories. They also like to come inside and explore our house; they are fascinated by the mac mini hooked up to our TV ("why is that TV a computer?"), the fact that we have christmas lights strung across the ceiling in our half-bath down stairs, ("are you decorating for next Christmas?") and my hair ("who braids it?")

It's been a while since I've been around kids this age, and I guess I had forgotten how disarmingly sweet they are. It has been so much fun to read them the story books I got for my campers when I worked at CRS, offer them each a piece of candy when they come over, and let them crawl all over our furniture and my lap. Kids have a unique way of making your day so much brighter when you see how they embrace and love their world with no restraint. It's really sweet to see that and to be a recipient of it.

Today, the new phone was the center of attention. They especially liked playing with the "voice memos" app. Here are a few samples:

Haley

Angena Pledge of Allegiance

I don't feel like this post is complete until I mention something Daniel did while i was out of town that made my week. We have a shed attached to our house where our washing machine and dryer live, and it has become home to many other odds and ends. It had gotten to be a chaotic mess, and somewhere along the line we got a leak in one of the hoses going to the washer. I always dreaded going out to dig for something or trying to do laundry without letting any clean clothes fall in the big puddle under my feet. While I was gone, Daniel fixed the leak, and organized the shed beautifully. I have no before pictures, which is probably for the best... I'd rather pretend that none of it ever happened. But here are the afters:

Oh, and he got me flowers, too. :)

One more thing: This summer, Daniel's off to see the world! Again! If you don't already know about his upcoming job with Passion Conferences on their World Tour, you can read about it on his blog. He is so honored to have been asked to shoot this year, and I am thrilled for him.

Well, that covers just about everything. Consider yourselves fully updated. I know the suspense must have been killing you. Well, you can all just compose yourselves now. Take it easy. Calm. Down.

Puppy, puppy, puppy, other stuff, puppy.

Okay, so I am realizing that for the next few weeks this blog is going to be much less about me than it is going to be about Naavah and how freaking adorable she is. I feel the need to warn those of you who have been reading that there will be nothing substantial going on here. I'm just going to update constantly about her hic-ups, her relationship with Wilco, her house training, etc. Feel free to tune me out.

Naavah sleeps most of the time, which I don't think will last very long. We got Wilco when he was about 6 weeks older than her, and he was wildly energetic, displaying symptoms of ADHD and/or demon possession. I hope that her cuddly nature will last into adulthood, though. She loves to snuggle more than anyone I've ever met. She loves being held, and if there's no one to cuddle with, she will burrow under a pillow or between the couch cushions. Today, she and Wilco cuddled for the first time, and I felt like my wildest dreams had come true. I want them to be good friends, and so far it's looking like we can expect just that. They've been playing so well together- he's been so patient, and she has learned quickly that she can trust him not to chomp her head off, even though he is 10 times her size.

With Babs, Naavah is having no such luck. I'm not planning to leave those two in a room unsupervised, since I keep catching Babs assuming hunter's stance while staring crazily at Naavah and swishing her tail. Sorry Babs... it's not gonna happen.

For the most part, however, everyone is living in harmony. Daniel and I have noticed that if we stay in the same room for a substantial period of time, all three of our pets will join us. Today, we brought Naavah with us to take a nap and left the door open. Wilco wandered in looking pitiful, so we invited him to get in the bed, which never happens. He was too excited to sleep at first, and kept turning in circles, lying down, standing back up, turning the other direction, etc. Babs wasn't far behind, and hopped up on the footboard to observe the chaos. Eventually, everyone in the house was asleep in the same full sized bed. It was a bonding experience.

Meanwhile, I'm afraid I will never complete another productive task. I try to wash the dishes, but then I "take a break," pick Navaah up, and don't set her down for several days... rinse, repeat.

Yesterday we took Naavah to Petsmart, and after finding the only collar that fit her, we went to check out. The cashier pointed to Naavah and asked, "this for that dog?" When we answered yes, she responded, "You know this a cat collah, right?" "No, we didn't," I answered, "But that explains the bell. We'll take it."

In other, more newsworthy news, the Meigs came through town last night and we enjoyed a short but sweet visit with them. Mary and Joe are on spring break this week, and so they were heading down to Gulf Shores for the first trip in their new pop-up camper. When they got to town, Daniel, Nate, the Meigs and I all went to The Family Wash. We enjoyed good food, good conversation, and, in little Hannah's case, a very refreshing nap in Daniel's lap. Since they were delayed by a flat tire, they camped in our driveway overnight.This morning, we got up and had coffee with them before they got back on the road. This was the first time for them to see our house since we've been married, and we were really happy to have family in our home.

Speaking of people in our home, I have a strong desire for everyone to see Naavah before she gets any bigger. If you're planning on coming to Nashville soon, or just crossing town for a visit, you are more than welcome to- the sooner, the better. I want to share the joy of a pocket sized puppy while she's still so tiny.

Can you imagine how absurd I will be when I have an actual baby? Food for thought...