So it's been a bit since I've had time to write because we've had quite a bit of life-changing stuff happening at Casa Rizzbanik. For starters, the engagement. Followed only two weeks later by the purchase of our first house. Yes, I know. We're insane. We didn't plan the timing that way, but cest la vie. First things first, the proposal story:
During the never ending Snowpocalypse of 2010, there was a State of Emergency that started at midnight on February 10th. Since neither Alex nor I have companies that close during state of emergency, we both waved goodbye to our respective PTO days and opted to spend the day in our pajamas. I started my day by emailing work to tell them that the four feet of snow outside would be keeping me from getting in today and then promptly calling my Mom so she didn't freak out and think I was insane and attempting to travel to work. I also remember in this conversation telling her that she should be jealous because in light of the fact that we probably wouldn't have power for some portion of the day (as there were already 6,000+ power outages in NCC alone at that point), Alex had bought her most favorite game and we were planning to play a few rounds. My mom is a Scrabble fiend. She actually was a little jealous.
So after breakfast, we both sat down and played a round or two of good ol' Scrabble. Since there was really nothing better to do, I think we were actually working on game three when Alex pensively stared at his wordbank for quite a while. I was getting annoyed because he was taking forever. Eventually he tentatively threw down his word. I glanced at it and was all prepared to get mad because one of the "letters" he threw down wasn't a letter at all...but then it registered. He had spelled out "L-O-V-E" with the engagement ring as the "O." I know I looked at him puzzledly, but I couldn't tell you much of what was said after that because I was totally overwhelmed and happy. Once things had calmed down a bit, I got the whole story which he had been bursting to tell me for about a week at that point.
The previous Thursday, Alex had gone to the jeweler and picked up the ring after work (Again I had no idea...I just thought he was teaching at the Kung Fu school like always). Being excited about his new purchase, he decided to go over to his parents and tell them that he was planning to propose and get their blessing. Unfortunately his Dad was away on business, but he did get to have dinner with his Mom.
After dinner with his own Mom, he then headed over to see my Mom. Apparently she wasn't home, so he waited ("like a stalker" is how he put it) in his car outside. She came home a short while later and he got out of the car and her immediate response was first, "Do you need to borrow the second car?" quickly followed by "What's wrong with Annie, is everything okay?". Being the wonderful lady that she is, she took the news very well and was supportive of Alex's decision. So two important people down, two to go. Mom-mom and Pop-pop.
Alex headed there on Friday. but Mom-mom wasn't home, so Alex talked to Pop-pop. Pop-pop of course gave his blessing along with lots of other marriage advice including what to look for in a house and the benefits of a joint bank account. The one thing he made sure to throw in was the fact that he was glad that Alex was going to ask me to marry him because he thought that was what my Dad would have wanted. I cried when Alex told me that.
So it turns out that Alex told all these folks (and Pop-pop told Mom-mom who was PISSED that she missed Alex's visit) that he was going to propose on Thursday, Feb 11 — our third dating anniversary. Well, it turns out that the ring was burning a hole in his pocket and he absolutely couldn't wait any longer, so he put his plan into action a day early. It was a lot of fun to call friends and family that day because even though they knew it was coming, they were expecting to hear from me the following day. I think I spent literally 5 hours on the phone that day telling different people and eventually had to give in and send a mass email. I really wanted to be able to call everyone individually, but it was literally impossible. Especially when after the 3rd phone call, I was getting phone calls! I guess good news travels fast :-)
Working from home today, so I only have a minute to update...but here's a reenactment picture of our engagement by Scrabble. It's totally nerdy, so of course I loved it!
All I have to say today is that I have the best adopted family in the entire world, and that Delaware State Troopers are by far the nicest, most helpful folks you could ever ask for.
So my morning started off a little shaky at the start because our neighborhood is still a bit on the icy side. I made my way carefully to Route 1 and breathed a sigh of relief to be on dry road with a bit of traction. Sadly, that calm didn't last for long as I noticed my left front wheel starting to wobble. I was already past the 40 exit going South on Route 1, so I figured I'd slow down, put my flashers on, and get in the right lane to try to make it to 72 to get off and get help.
In the short amount of time it took me to slow a bit (appx 40 MPH) and start making my way over, my tire went completely flat. Not the usual hiss and thunk thunk thunk sort of flat, but the exploding, tire shredding, shrapnel kind that you hope tractor trailers never have happen when they're in front of you. So now I'm at least in the right lane, but I can't drive on the rim of this busted tire so I have to pull over. This would have been significantly easier if there weren't literally 2-3 feet of snow piled up along the shoulder. So I pull over as far as I possibly can but the tires on the left side of my car are still touching the white line denoting the beginning of the right shoulder of the road. All I have are visions of someone clipping the back bumper of my car and sending me spinning into oncoming traffic. Talk about terrified.
Flashers on, I go to inspect the damage. Waited until there was a lull in traffic and went to look at my left, front tire which was absolutely shredded. Great. And it looked like all the bumping around had probably effed up my alignment as well. Double great. So I go stand in the snow on the passenger side of my car to try to call for help, shaking because I'm scared and getting passed by semis that shake the car and me alike. Can't hear because of said traffic, so I opt to sit in the passenger's seat on the safer side of the car and call. Tried Uncle Barry but I must have the wrong number. Next was Uncle Joe who happened to be on the phone. Third was Aunt Maryann. Of course now that I'm finally getting someone on the phone, I start crying like the little girl that I am and explain to her where I am and what's going on. She took down the info, called it in, and had a police car out there within ten minutes. She also said she would double back since she was just a bit over the bridge and would make sure everything worked out okay.
So true to her word, a car came with lights flashing and pulled up to my rescue. Officer O'Leary, my favorite person of the day, met me at the space between the two cars and I started thanking him for coming out immediately, noting with the eye of the niece of a state trooper that he had remembered to put on his hat before exiting the car (Aunt Maryann and Uncle Joe are always upset when we're watching the news at Mom Mom's and their younger officers forget that they always have to be in full uniform).
So Officer O'Leary helped me haul the spare out of the back of my trunk (politely ignoring the immense amounts of crap I have in there including blankets, dresses, and other stuff that I'm too lazy to bring into the house). Although I know how to change a tire (since Alex just taught me) all he would let me do was help find the support point under the car where the jack can safely hoist up the car. Then he asked me to wait on the other side of the car so I would be safe. Definitely a stand up guy. He then changed my tire like such a pro, that Maryann didn't even have time to get to us before I was on the road again.
She caught up with me around Middletown and tailed me down to Smyrna (I wasn't hard to catch up to since you're supposed to go at max 55 MPH with a donut...especially in cold weather). She actually ended up coming with me to the tire place and helped me get all straightened out before bringing me the extra mile down the road to work. So now despite being a bit shaken, I'm here. I have been well taken care of, and am happy to have such great people in my life that care so much about me. I still maintain that being an adopted Papili child is one of the greatest things in the world and I'm lucky to have such a great family.
So even though I'm not sure if I want to go through with the whole process, I've been gathering some information about how to go about finding my birth parents (with Mom's blessing of course...). Today I looked up a bit on information online and found out that all adoptees in Delaware have two birth certificates, one that was used from birth to adoption and one used after.
More often than not, the original birth certificate contains the name that the birth mother intended for their child. In other words, I could have a totally different name and not even know it.
Mind you, not all birth moms bothered giving their newborn a temporary name (Just "Baby Girl Insert Last Name Here"), figuring that the adoptive parents would take care of that, but it is something to think about.
The cost to have my original birth certificate mailed to me is $25. Chances are it will have no useful information on it, but now I'm dying to find out for sure. The form says it could take up to three months to be mailed back to me, and I don't doubt that based on my conversation with an employee there. But it's something to look forward to.
So as part of trying to keep life normal when my dad was sick, my Mom and I began taking an Oldies line dancing class. She's a bit of a Motown fanatic as it is, so it seemed like the perfect escape for an hour every Sunday. Dad was well enough at that point to be on his own for an hour plus travel time, so I would come over, spend the morning with him while Mom ran errands and then she and I would go off to the fire hall to learn how to Chez Vous, MJ shuffle, Wagner Walk, and Tush Push.
Mom is by far a much better dancer than me — or at least where this stuff is concerned. I guess she has Uncle Pat to thank for that because he was the one that taught her back when she was in grade school and he was in high school. It's always fun to see those two at a wedding because they can cha-cha with the best of em and their Chez Vous to "You Can't Hurry Love" is unbeatable. One of my favorite stories is hearing how exciting it was for Mom to go to her first high school dance. At St. E's back in the day, you were allowed to go to the Friday night high school dances as soon as you graduated eighth grade. So the first Friday night after the last day of eighth grade was sort of a big deal. Mom, I've been told many times, got all dressed up in her brand new sailor suit (apparently all the rage back then) and her patent leather dancing shoes and headed up through Canby Park to dance the night away with the high school kids.
So now when we go to these classes, every so often I get a glimpse of that excited eighth grader all ready to go to her first dance. Mom is sans the sailor suit at this point (a major improvement) but there is such an unencumbered joy when she does these dances. And you can tell they're just a part of who she is at this point because she's always throwing in spins and turns and extra stuff all over the place. It's really something.
So even with Dad gone and dancing now on Tuesday nights, we're still going pretty much weekly to learn all the newest (old) dance crazes. This week (after a wild goose chase to the Elsmere fire hall before I realized I told them the wrong place) Katie and Aunt Maryann came with us. I'm hoping that they'll come back because it was a blast sharing this with others.
Actually another motive of mine for keeping up with these classes is to be able to have a whole block of Motown music at my wedding and actually be able to dance to it. I'll never be as stylin' as Jerry Blavat, but I have to aspire to something, don't I? I think it would be neat to invite anyone who plans to come to the wedding (when I get around to it) who wanted to learn these dances to come to these classes so that they could do a few along with me and Mom and Uncle Pat. If nothing else, I'm going to make sure my Chez Vous is up to par so Mom and I can knock out "Can't Hurry Love" with the best of 'em.
Well it's official. We've become those somewhat endearing, slightly annoying "pet" parents who post Facebook pictures of their "children."
We've been working with the gliders to get them to trust us over the past four and a half weeks with mixed results. Mathilda (the smaller of the two) has been pretty receptive from the start and although a few bumps in the road (and a few nips of the hand), she has gotten to the point where we can handle her. Fiona on the other hand, is a bit more of a handful, but that's a different post.
When I came home last night, Alex had her out of the cage and they were playing! Sitting on the floor in a pile of change that was falling out of his pockets (making it "hail in the club" he told me), he was holding her in one hand and she was jumping back and forth.
In this shot I think Alex is watching NCIS -- he looked happier in real life. But anyway, that aforementioned dorky pet parent thing? Well, of course we have videos. This a particularly cute one of Mathilda sitting in Alex's hand eating an apple. It's funny because they don't seem to actually eat the apple so much as shred tiny pieces off, suck the water out, and spit the pieces all over my carpet.
After a little snack, she got to exploring. Here she is trying to figure out how to get into Daddy's hoodie. (Yes, we refer to each other as Mommy and Daddy...again with the pet parents thing).
They are actually little marsupials and they bond to you by being next to your skin, so they like to try to be in your pockets and under your clothing. They actually gave us a pouch with a screen on one side and we're supposed to keep them in in with the screen side against our skin while they're sleeping during the day so that they get used to being around our scent. I actually have both of them on me right now which is sort of hilarious because I look like I have a little preggo belly under my tank top. It's even funnier when Alex grows his little preggo belly. Seriously strange looking. No pictures of that yet. Don't need to be freaking people out with this dual pregnancy thing. We're already sort of a weird couple.
Well anyway, apparently now that Mathilda is getting used to us, she also likes to groom us. She actually licks Alex's hands like they're covered in sugar glider crack. Apparently my hands don't hold any particular interest, but she did seem to like to lick my forehead. She actually sat on my head and groomed me for a bit. I'm totally jealous because Mathilda is a Daddy's girl, but she did warm up to me after a bit.
And of course one of the most fun things about these little guys is the fact that they "fly." This is by far my favorite video but of course it's not oriented correctly. So everyone turn their heads to the side until I get around to figuring out how to do that and see how cute this is.
She actually jumped right on my camera. So now that we've gotten this far with Mathilda, the hope is that Fiona will join her sister in hanging out with us soon. And of course there's more pictures here.
Dan McWilliams and I have an ongoing battle to see who can create the most outlandish MS Paint images, but this week Dan just took the cake. Here's a very sweet picture of Sam and Skylar climbing all over Alex in the sort of crazed ritual that happens every time we're over there.
Now here's what Dan did with it in Paint. Genius. His caption reads, "Learning from Tokyo's mistakes, the city of New York unleashed their secret weapons against Alex-zilla before any serious damage occurred."
Priceless.
