279 hours til her husband comes home! Not everyone reads her blog, so I thought this would be a great place for her to post her daily preparations as she readies her house, her cats and plants for her man's arrival. Congrats Julianna on him finally buying that ticket! We want details, like what is the first meal? And which wedding invitation won out?

Jackie

How exciting! Congrats!

That's great news! CONGRATULTIONS!!! I wish you both a happy reunion!! and a long and happy life together!!



AJ1

LOLOL! I was being sensitive of Moody and not making anything here I remember her saying she disliked updates in multiple thread format So OK, any and all updates will be contained in here and not in multiple threads about what I ate and which spot I cleaned on the wall, OK? Deal?

Well, so far I have cleaned the blue goldfish bathroom and organized under the sink and realized I possess, in total, 6 bottles of un-used and brand new lotions from bath and body works. Yet conditioner? I am down to half a bottle. No idea. I also cleaned and organized my office and moved my betchy computer back into it and off the livingroom floor where we were living because of the MFing wireless card that pisses me off and died finally. Well good riddance. Now? new wireless card and I are happy and holding hands and twirling in a circle in the office where we belong. Office kind of looks like it needs a tree in it, but I am resisting until I finish. Maybe I can move the AV collection in there. Actually, that sounds kind of good-- pink plant stand doesn't match ANY room, so it's not like it can't go in there! (holy crap and score!!!! totally just found peanut butter cookies here at work. Shut up, I will so loose another 5 lbs-- I can eat 6.) Last night I washed all the diningroom windows and glass plant shelves, and I watered everything and repotted BA (big-a$$, yes it's my stunning internal name for that plant, and yes, I really do think of things like that! Like the binder for immigration in my mind was always called "GA white binder.") plant into a 15 gallon pot. BA plant takes up about 25 square feet or so, maybe more like 30. I arranged the chaise lounge next to it again and an orchid and sat in it to make sure he would have the optimal view of me cooking while he laid around and ate bonbons.

I managed to cancel out Shabbat with my invitees, so thank God no one will see my dishes and whatnot. Today is kitchen day and maybe? the livingroom.

For those who don't know, I witnessed my husband clean around the baseboard of one of our apartments with q-tips. I tend to not do dishes for like 5 weeks and laundry is about once a month. Therefore, I have a few days in order to pass the q-tip test. He is freaked out about cats being in the house and mostly just wants to eat and do what everyone knows is going to happen but we're just not going to talk about, OK? I have the iron down from storage so he can iron everything we own, and I'm thinning out my closet to only the presentable things, since my days of lounging on the couch and scratching myself are over. (that was a joke.)

I've decided we're going to have kitty-bath-day and carpet-cleaning day on the same day. That sounds like it's going to be one, extremely awesome day. I am thinking to just wash the livingroom carpet, although the bedroom is kind of in my mind as well.

You know he totally whined about how the price raised? And I was like suck it up! I told you to buy it earlier! Good God! But yes, I am so glad he actually did it. he was waiting for the university to either accept or reject his resignation, and I am glad they accepted it.

I haven't decided on the first meal yet, although if I have the time I would love to do the chocolate truffle egg cake I was planning. He eats mostly chocolate and kinofa anyway, so real food doesn't matter. I figured I would make my wraps and have somehting else ready to be heated up in case he was hungry, and also I would have a real meal in mind in case he was really hungry... but if he makes his connection in Chicago, he will have been traveling for about 24 hours and he will be arriving at 10.50pm CST and I just can't imagine him wanting more than a snack, shower, and that other thing I mentioned we wouldn't talk about. He's an insomniac, and I picture him likely not sleeping for 2 whole days before he comes.

The final thing you asked about is the inviation. Haven't decided on an exact date yet so this gives me time to still decide about the invitation. I haven't asked him, and he's the final factor in it all (he expressed extreme non-interest in being involved in the general process until I could hand him a choice between two things.) So in order of popularity:

option one

option 2 (formerly known as "option 3")

option 3 (formerly known as "it's silver not gold people.")

Option 4 (formerly known as "option 2")

We'll see how this goes. If anyone here wants to vote, go right on ahead.

first of all, you're an absolute phreak!!!
secondly, all the invitations are nice, but heLL, why not break the bank and go w/ choice #4! what are these for anyway? aren't you already married?

OMG !!!!!!!!!!



OoooooooOOOooo.. I saw these before..
I am tossed between Option 1 and 2

Isnt red and Gold supposed to be Good marriage colors.. Good luck and what not??

Hi Noura! Well the invitations are for our reception we're having on Catalina. It sort of went like hey, I want to take you to Catalina and I have no money and sold my house to my parents and promised to pay rent but never did. How can I make an excuse for this trip and still not pay rent? Oh right, we can have a "reception" and invite the family to meet him and pretend that I care if you all come and awesome! Now we're on a roll. So I am inviting a few friends and my whole family (all 28 of them, this is all the way out to 2nd cousins) to this thing. We're going to have "cake smackdown" soon enough. I want a green cake to match the cymbidiums I want. I have a wedding dress and some other crap too.

What are the cards for exactly? I vote for #4, then #1.


I have to laugh because I just know that will be me preparing for him to come here. He's not a q-tip kinda guy but still......my house is a mess!!!!!

Ok I just wanted to add that Option 2 is my favorite. Wow Catalina is so beautiful I ahve been there twice and not sure what the fires did but i am sure it is still very awesome.

My friends are going to come over and help me take everything out of each roon clean it and then only but back in the stuff that is really needed. I know I never did as much when I was getting ready for my children to come home from the hospital.

That's kind of what I thought.. also I liked the boldness of the colors. But for some reason, epople seem to like #1 and think it's more us. I don't know? I mean I like them all, obviously, which is why I chose them

They are for my reception which is my excuse for a vacation with Ammar (see my reply to Noura above, I just smooshed my thumb in the freaking drawer.)




LOL! Well kids are small and don't notice as much The fires didn't touch the area we'll be in so we're good!

I think I like option 2, although it WAS formerly known as option 3.

Ya'll see now why this girl needed her own thread?

Kitty-bath day and carpet cleaning on the same day? Gonna be smelling like wet cat at your place for awhile! Better get a bottle of Febreze!

Jackie
272 hours-you better get busy

LOL Jackie! Wet cats don't have a smell unlike wet dogs! They just smell like whatever shampoo you used on them. They keep them there anyway (I'm doing it at the vet so they can have vaccinations and generally have a great day of course) until they are mostly dry. I still am not sure about the carpets. I do have the solution carpet cleaners use to clean carpets and I may jsut spot clean. I'm more worried about the cats and the wet carpet.. like them peeing or something like that. These cats have never peed on anything but their litter box, but wouldn't just be the time they'd decide to make a change?!

Thanks Sara! Vote is tallied in that column

You know it would figure that this is when my advisor would decide I should, like, graduate or something and work on my thesis. Now I'm having to play e-mail tag with OSU and get some programs ironed out. Just had to go break down and buy Microsoft office. Why is it that the stupid student version doesn't have Access? I mean who uses access except some poor sucky grad student who has their data locked away in Access? Gah! Anyway, NOT PAYING $500. No way. Just got cheap office because open office isn't working for me at the moment. Files are too weird and formatting is too specific.

I hate you, office and office-like programs.

I love you, youtube, for having songs on your which I already own but am too lazy to get out of the CD bin in the closet.

Hey, wait a minute. Are you implying I talk too much Jackie? He's going through chicago, need me to send him over with q-tips and you can enjoy the love?

Haha! I remember on our wedding night and he saw me toss some clothes into a pile and he said, "It's OK habibti, you have English, but I have organization."

You? Talk too much? Whereever would you get idea from? That reminds me, I better get up and clean something. I am making stuffed grape leaves for dinner and a chocolate flan cake. (Some things rank over Qtips )

Jackie
269---times flying

Ok don't shoot the messenger but if you have wet carpets and a dry cat........won't the cat hair stick to the carpet more? Just a thought. I tried washing my cat myself once. She stood suprisingly still in the sink while I hosed her down and shampoed and rinsed her but as soon as I sat down with her wrapped up in the towel she FLEW out from my grasp and ran like a maniac around the entire house about twenty times until she settled under the couch from which spot she did not leave for the rest of the day. Kitty doesn't like baths. Haven't bathed her since either. Do you normally bathe yours a lot?

i think animals fur itches really bad and their skin after baths. Fluffy used to run all over like madddd after a bath.....

Good luck with the getting ready.
Oh, and I was going to vote #1 until I saw #2.
Nice.

MMM Jackie1 I want to try making those sometime, except I can't get grape leaves here.

Doodle-- no, because they groom them. I bathe them every few years. Cats don't need baths more than once a year-- their skin is too sensitive and too dry.

thanks Melly!

Where do you live? You can order them, too.

NW Arkansas. We don't have much selection here That's a really great idea. I know I ordered halal meat a few months ago for him since he's pretty strict about it and didn't want to be stuck with fish every day (I'm vegetarian so it doesn't matter to me at ALL), I don't know why I didn't think much about the grape leaves. I remember at home (Las Vegas) they were just in the store in a can. We wanted to grow some grapes on the pergola out back, so eventually the problem will be solved, but in the meantime... I will take a look Peezy, thanks!

Ah, I see, I wouldn't normally ask, I assumed you lived in CA b/c of the Catalina stuff, and then wondered where in the heck in CA you can't find grape leaves.

The dinner was delicious. I used a little too much rice and a few of them kinda burst open, but they tasted sooooooooo good. The chocolate flan cake is awesome! (He didn't even notice the thin layer of dust on the baseboards. )

Jackie
256 hours to go ...........

Jackie-- do you have a recipe?

Peezy-- yeah, I'm originally from CA/NV, that's why I am used to Catalina-- we used to go there all the time for the day. I came here for grad school. If anywhere in AR had some, it would be Little Rock which is about 3 hours south of me, and that's not worth driving for a can, you know? Or even suspicion of a can! I did find them online. i can't get tahini here either and so I think I am going to round up a list of crap I can't get and then order all at once.

I'm voting for option 4.

Do cats really need to be bathed? I've never bathed mine. I did wash my previous cat when he was old and sick and didn't take care of himself, but my cat now seems to keep herself pretty clean.

No, they don't unless they get into something or someone in your house has allergies. Ammar has really bad allergies to dust and pollen and I was going to wash the cats to make sure they didn't have much latent dander.

Well yesterday I did jack squat-- I just fell asleep at about 6pm and then stayed asleep until midnight, then went back to bed at 1am and got up to go to church/synagogue. Anyway, now I'm back. Called my husband and asked him if I can use his stuff on a lecture I was asked to give on life in Jordan as I saw it, which i tried to get out of in an insane, caged-animal kind of way because WTH do I knwoabout life in jordan? i was only there for like 190-something days.

My total Jordan time was 34 days, over 4 trips....I don't stay long, do I? Life is changing alot in Jordan these days. A few of the reasons would be an influx of people from Iraq and Lebanon. Oh, and the falafel got smaller.

Jackie
248 hours

Jackie! but you never said if you have a stuffed grape leaves recipe? (Which I would 100% call by their Arabic name if I wasn't having some kind of blackout at the moment, probably due to trying to figure out if my data is automatically transforming or not. Are you transformed m-f-ing data? Can I use your spreadsheet instead of my Palm pilot? Hmmm?)

245 more hours!

I got a few food items already, stuff that will sit just fine. So far all I have accomplished today is talking on the phone to my ex-husband for like 3 hours, hearing about his engagement trip, and getting him to say he's going to remove all his junk from my garage this week! Yay!

Bought a smaller kitty tree. Need one more kitty tree. Figure I will work on 2 more rooms tonight after I eat. Am making my wraps. I've been so off on my sleeping schedule that I have hardly eaten for 3 days. Actually, I think I ate twice in 3 days? Something like that. I have to get back into it.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to do a bit of shopping. I'm going to go out and get chocolate and pyrex bowls and totally make those chocolate egg truffles I PMed you about Jen! Also got the luster dust, so I am on my way to having something special. Luster dust looks suspiciously like eyeshadow.

Oh! And got a watering can today. I told my husband I could not believe I was actually standing in the plant section looking at watering cans and wondering which one would be optimal for him washing his @$$.

Make sure you cut off the long spout if you use a watering can style!

Jackie
232 hours

Woo! So we have 168 hours!

Yesterday I came home and promptly fell asleep and accomplished jack crap. I did wake up at midnight and managed to shampoo the carpet in the livingroom and some of the bedroom.

I must confess, I am in love with the carpet shampoo-er I borrowed from work. I may have to get my own. It totally concealed the fact I spilled soy sauce on my carpet and also? Old lettuce goo. I am totally going to pretend that I am a clean person and maybe he will never figure it out! Yes!

I need to call and schedule a junk pick-up. I also need to run by the thrift store and dump off a couple bags of clothing including my first wedding dress.

Tonight we're aiming for having the majority of rooms cleaned and then tomorrow we can work on the garage and the junk room.

God. The junk room totally blows. Anyone want to come over and help me move out a futon frame from a futon I never owned? I swear I will kill someone random on teh street before I EVER let another Jordanian house-sit again. Never in my life have I run across a more worthless house-sitter. he piled stuff on top of my CAR, scratched the paint, let my cats scratch my brand-new couch and then said "oh just get a cover," which was met with the death-look because I had just paid $900 for that couch, why would I want a cover MFer!?! He left all of his belongings in my house and over-stayed by two months, never paid a cent, and still has crap in my house. He lost all my keys (mail, house, etc), and has never once bothered to try to get out this freaking frame or his bookshelf or any of his crap. Now I have to pay a few hundred dollars to have it removed because where I live they don't do free removal. I should find out where he sleeps.

This has got to be the longest freakin' countdown thread ever Whatever happened to counting down at like 48 hrs or something?

Blame Jackie. She started it! I wasn't even going to have a countdown thread!

I don't know about anyone else but I'm taking notes!!!!!! I totally am going to need a junk truck before he gets here AND I need to get rid of all ex stuff since I know that will bother him. I like reading this 'cause 1) you crack me up girl and 2) you are doing things that I wouldn't have thought of before.

"I swear I will kill someone random on teh street before I EVER let another Jordanian house-sit again."



Surely this is just as ridiculous a generalization as the comments about arab women being greedy.

Surely she realizes this is a generalization bashing her husband's culture.... how uncooth!

let's not ruin the thread with fighting, k?

oh charles... really... since when have you become the peacemaker??? And I'm not starting a fight, I'm merely pointing out the obvious. Since she'll never let a Jordanian housesit again, I guess that means she'll never let her husband alone in the house.

oh never mind then. carry on.

thank you... now that's the charles I know

Now I know ya'll didn't mean to send my topic off track............

How long now Julianna? I let my Jordanian 'house-sit' while he was home on his K3 visa. waiting for EAD...burned a hole in the kitchen floor, learned about metal and microwaves all by himself when it comes to learning about lawnmowers and oil and gas.........true magic.

Jackie

179 hours

My Egyptian housesitter is doing a great job so far. The only slight mishap was when he turned on the a/c and set it at 60 degrees...I got home and the house was freezing! I warned him of the dangers of putting metal in the microwave so no probs there.

Mine was frying eggs in a frying pan and set the pan on the vinyl floor.....I guess he was used to real ceramic

Jackie
177 hours

But why was he putting the pan on the floor?!

Claimed to have lost his grip and it was the most convienant place to put it

Jackie

MABROUK JULIANNA!!!!

I shouldn't talk. We have a hole in our wall from where Wadi decided it would be a good idea to test if our plunger was working correctly. Of course, I just stood there and watched him do it. LOL

Thats priceless Jenn! Seeing if the plunger worked...........

Come on, those who are reunited, share your stories.

Jackie

adding my own MOTHER put a hot skillet on the CARPET leaving a black whole burned straight onto the flooring.