our thing

a few weeks months (because it takes me forever to finish a blog post, apparently) ago,  i needed to get my car inspected (since it was embarrassingly illegally overdue), and since there were still two feet of snow on the ground (remember the great blizzard of '09?  and then '10?) we decided to make it our "trip of the day", if you will.  we dropped the civic off at the car place and headed over to one of the fine arlington county libraries.  he serached out a few detective novels (he has read all of the pattersons, grishams, and theotherguywhoican'trememberrightnows) and i gathered some photography books.  i managed to score a chair next to the window and sat turning the pages and drooling over talented photos until andy was ready to leave.  it felt so good to get out, and it sort of felt like i was participating in the elusive thing they call "the community".
in the weeks since, we've loosely made it our habit. i'll be the first to admit that he is more likely to go than me (shocking because i'm more the bookworm type - or so i thought) and sometimes i find it hard to muster up the strength to walk all that way if the weather is not 72 degrees and sunny.  we've also added breakfast/coffee to the mix, and occasionally a stop at cvs. 
i've always wanted a routine.  i didn't want to force it upon anyone, because i'm not sure at what age people start adopting routines (i've always been all too eager to grow up).  i always just hoped that one day i would be one of those happy people who does things like go to the library and get coffee on weekend mornings.
and while sometimes i let my laziness get the best of me, on the mornings that i do drag myself out of bed and put clothes on before 10 a.m, i'm glad that i'm finally at least a little closer to having a normal life.

he's a little bit country

when we moved in together about 2 years ago, the first thing that was painfully obvious was that we both (well, mostly me) had accumulated a lot of crap over our short lives. my boxes were mostly full of books, cds, a handful of dvds, kitchen gadgets, photo albums, and lots and lots of clothes. his boxes were full of country cds, hundreds of dvds (he's mostly an action guy, with a soft spot for the occasional chick flick), football t-shirts, video games, and more football t-shirts. i'll be the first to admit it: we didn't have much going for us.

the "theme" of my apartment is what i like to call "shabby". not to be confused with "shabby chic". excluding the kitchen table and bedroom set, everything is made out of particle board. moreover, most of the said particle board is being held together by copious amounts of carpenter's glue. i like to think that i was striving for something pottery barn-esque, but my attempts at being the apartment decorator type have proven futile...so i stocked up on neutrals and beiges, threw in the occasional red pillow and called it a day.

then andy began adding his own decorating style to the apartment, such as the bed pillow on the couch, because it's much more comfortable than the red pillows (don't worry, i hide the pillow when people are over), and the bright purple football helmet that is proudly displayed on an end table. little bursts of maroon, orange, and purple suddenly popped up all over the place.
while i can't say that i've always dreamed of having a football helmet on display in my house, i can say that it's now part of the room.  i could even say that it's growing on me tolerable.
we turned in our lease renewal last night.  i have mixed feelings about it, i guess.  i really thought we'd be out of the apartment by this time, but neither one of us is dying to put a down payment on a house/condo in dc...what with the atrocious house prices and all.  so it looks like we'll be sticking around for at least a little while longer.  i'm going to try to keep these years ingrained in my memory.  Hopefully we'll look back on our time spent in little 308 as "just the beginning".