I'm horrid

So, it's been a month since I last blogged which means I've pretty much killed off all 12 readers I had in my extensive membership. Oopsadoodle. I'm getting back on the blog train NOW though, so today's post will have an update of the past few weeks in the life of Colie and Kev. Details are supplied to you with the help of the OTHER love of my life, my trusty dusty planner.

May 31- June 6th: Kev and I spend Memorial Day weekend outside and eating about 32804 hot dogs each, and hold our last porch drinking and grilling on the sidewalk at our old place on Roscoe. Oh, Roscoe...scene of many parties, pettings of puppies, and pranks. Also the place where Kev popped the question to me a week after we moved in. It was also grad school finals week and the beginning of the Hawks being in the Stanley Cup. Kev about keeled over when he realized he was already taking his first finals 10 weeks after he started grad schools. These are the joys of a university with a quarter system. We also find out that the closing date on our fancy new condo has been pushed back indefinitely, due to the condo association not providing updated docs. Freakin A, we are bummed.

June 7th-June 13th: We send out frantic emails to postpone our painting party, as we will have no home to paint. It is also the last week of my school year, and I am plunged into a frenzy of report card finishing, room packing, and glue-stick padlocking to prevent the shady teachers using my room for summer school from stealing all of my glitter glue, markers, and googly eyes I have hidden in my cabinets. Oh, yeah, and the books too....cause I would be almost as upset about that. My work friends and I celebrate the end of the year with a Metra bar crawl (one bar and one beer at every train stop, then run back to the train to get on the next one), and the Hawks win the Stanley Cup at the exact moment I am felled by a sinus infection that leaves my head feeling like it is full of cement.

June 14th-June 20th: Classes start for summer session I. Due to the joys of the quarter system, each summer session is 5 weeks long and moves twice as fast. Kev takes an online class that makes him miserable and forces him to be chained to group conference calls with his strangers, I mean classmates, and I tiptoe around while he completes a giant marketing simulation that sounds complicated. We close on our new place June 14th and spend the last part of the week painting the with my parents. My dad primes and paints our new kitchen entirely on his own, and climbs on top of our refrigerator to do so. I've never seen the man more flexible. Our kitchen is blue, and the living room turns out a strange shade of grayish lavender pink. Whoops. We stagger around and pack, and somehow I manage to do my homework for my two summer classes. I am repeatedly thankful I decided to work on my masters some more instead of teaching summer school, as punk kids inside on a hot day would surely put me over the edge. On Sunday, June 20th, we hire movers (best money I've ever spent) who invade the Roscoe apt and our new place like hispanic worker ants and move us in under 3 hours. The movers discover I speak Spanish, tell me I have a beautiful body, and ask me if my husband is being good to me "en la cama." My sinus infection turns into some kind of goop that invades my lungs and leaves me hacking like a 90 year old pruny smoker, which is triggered often by running up and down the stairs as I move.

June 21-Present: We spend last week doing the 2380432908 chores that come with moving, setting up our new place, emptying our old. The cats move to our new place and alternately sulk around, get lost and cry, or hide behind boxes and attack us as we walk by. I mow through The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's nest, and decide I'm going to write twitter-sized reviews of every book I read from now on. I do about a billion more pounds of homework, since we are now in summer session midterms for session I, and Kev continually laments the amount of stuff we have filled our new place up with. Last weekend, we have a weekend of glory which involves sushi at a byob where I brought and consumed waaaay too much of the B, went to the cubs/sox game and sat 9 rows behind home plate with Kev's dad, went to a birthday party, got sunburned and rowdy at pride, and saw the Stanley Cup at the parade. This week, I'm going to try to finish unpacking and detox after last weekend's mayhem. I'm also still coughing and need a new planner. Sigh....

So, as you can see folks, I might have been a teensy bit busy, but I'm back. You can all sleep soundly tonight knowing I'm back, and if you are lucky, I'll even post some pics of our new place, and my awesome pics of Lord Stanley's cup at Pride. Also, I just realized our ONE YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY is Sunday....holy crap, people. Holy crap.

Whoa!

As I've mentioned before, we've been looking to become first time homebuyers, and we're getting pretty close to moving into a new, big kid place. I don't want to write too much about said place, for fear that I will jinx it, except to say that it is conveniently located by awesome public transit, it's still close to our family and friends, and it has a kitchen and dining room that will be awesome for our dinner parties. However, there is one truly amazing thing about our new place, and that is Sven.

Our lovely realtor, Kevin and I have visited the condo complex several times, looking at various units, weighing the pros and cons, and trying to figure out what the best for us will be. Each time we visit, we pass through a gorgeous front courtyard, where we are immediately shadowed by a small black cat. He has white paws, a dapper red collar, a perpetual scowl, and quiet feet that stalk us up multiple floors, across decks, and underneath trees. The first time we visited, he followed us to the front door of a building, then quickly darted around the side of the home, only to be waiting on the deck of the THIRD STORY UNIT when I opened the back door. Every time we visit, the cat is there waiting. He's like our home buying conscience, and he may be the fastest cat I've ever seen in North America.

When we returned to the complex a few weeks later for our second showings, the cat was waiting. At this point, I grew a bit concerned and checked the kitty's collar. It read

SVEN-OUTDOOR CAT- _____ ADDRESSS- DO NOT CALL OWNER IF FOUND NEAR HOME

I have a lot of questions for Sven. Does his owner just let him out each morning as he leaves for work? What does Sven do all day? Does he go back home when he is hungry? Does he have a cat door? Does he worry about getting hurt- we live in a big city! How far from home has he ventured? Will he taunt our cats when we move in? I'm utterly mystified as to how he became an outdoor cat in one of the biggest cities in the world, and I plan on stalking HIM once I move into his hood. Watch out, Sven. The tables are about to be turned.