Change of scenery

We made it! After 4 days of driving we arrived here in LA on Tuesday.
So let me tell you about our trip:

First off, I am SOOOOO glad we went through a moving company.  Packing up everything was a pain but it was worth having all that other weight off our shoulders.  Literally.  This guy wrapped up my coffee table in a protective blanket and hoisted it over his shoulder and carried it to the truck.  Dang, it always took us 2 people to carry that thing.  Plus they had everything in the truck in about an hour.  Normally it would take DH and I (and our parents) all day to pack it in a U-Haul.  And I couldn't imagine DH or myself trying to drive a moving truck across the country.  Thank you moving company.

Friday after the movers loaded everything up we spent the rest of the day cleaning, and then went out to eat with my family.  My nephew was being silly and of course not understanding that his aunt and uncle were leaving.  My little sister said a prayer for us and after she was done my nephew was all "Ca-li-FORN-yah?"  He thought it was some silly word.  So we're all telling him that aunt & uncle are going far far away to California for a long long time.   "NO WAYYY!  You can't go!"  Then saying goodbye I said I wanted "all the hugs and all the kisses" from him.  And he says "No! You have to cry!"  That's because he always pretends to be mean to me when I want a hug and he says "No, I don't like you Aunt Ruth," then I pretend to cry and he gives me a hug.  Believe me that I shed quite a few real tears this time.

Well Saturday morning after having some breakfast (McD's, bleh I know) we started the drive.  But fortunately my big sister saved the day before we got too far.  About 45 mins from her place she texted me and even though I hate it when people text/read texts while driving, thank God I decided to look at it.  Because I had left my expensive new prescription glasses at her house and would be blind without my contacts if I didn't have my glasses.  So we stopped at the next exit and her boyfriend and her drove out to bring me my glasses. *Whew!*
The rest of the day it rained and rained and rained all through the Texas panhandle and New Mexico.  I was soooo tired and my eyes were so fatigued from trying to concentrate on the road through the rain all day.  I'm so used to trading places with DH when we go driving and I was trying to figure out how to cope and stay awake.  My little sis, who was used to driving from Nashville to OKC in one day, suggested those 5 hour energy drinks...Yeah it did NOTHING to keep me awake and alert except make me sick to my stomach.  I eventually just had to convince DH I needed a power nap to rest my eyes for about 20 mins, and with that and some hot cappucino I was ready to go.  I had originally planned that we should aim for Gallup, NM the first night, but we ended up just staying in Albuquerque.  Which is a much nicer view and turns out was a better starting point for our next day's trip.  (Guess I need to plan better).

Sunday we headed for Tucson, AZ to visit one of DH's friends he hadn't seen in 5 years.  It rained a little bit off and on but not as much as the day before.  The scary part though was when we were going west on the I-10 in New Mexico, and then for some reason the border patrol blocked off the highway, forcing everyone to take this little road south directly towards the border.  I was like wtf is going on and where are they sending us??? My gps didn't even know where we were and kept showing me roads that didn't exist.  But fortunately after 1 1/2 hours of wasted time, we got back to the I-10.
We got to Tucson and DH was really excited to see his friend.  So after showering and freshening up at the hotel, we went to the friends place and his roommates cooked up some REALLY good Bangladeshi food.  I mean DH cooks really good, but IMO his khichuri is nothing compared to how they made it, so he's got some learning to do.  The food was really really delicious, but I knew we would regret eating so much before another long drive the next day.

Monday we left Tucson around 11 and headed to San Diego to stay with another good friend of ours.  I checked how the weather would be and of course, it was extremely hot through Arizona.  So I wore a tank top and hoochie shorts and was still burning up on the drive.  And then when we drove through the mountains just inside of CA, the sign says to turn off the a/c to avoid engine over-heating (but don't avoid human over-heating :P   When we finally got to San Diego I got out of the car....and was freezing!  Ok maybe not freezing but this Okie is not used to 60 degree weather in July.

So on Tuesday we left San Diego around 11, stopped in San Clemente for lunch and then got to our apt here in LA.  Of course it's only been a few days but I am really liking it so far.  It's obviously much busier than OKC (duh) but somehow it feels "normal" to me.  Now I'm going to give it a little more time before I update you and how the city has met my expectations, but first off I am going to say that driving here came so ridiculously easy to me that it almost put me to sleep and I needed to be stuck in bumper to bumper traffic to wake up (and driving in that is not as hard as I thought).  I blame it on DH for trying to scare me into thinking I couldn't drive here after he visited the first time.  ("People in Oklahoma can't drive.  My friend wrecked both rental cars.  You wouldn't know how to drive in LA.")  Plus now that I've studied the map quite a bit, I realize that when we came here last year on vacation we were kinda dumb because we were staying in Anaheim and visited UCLA, Santa Monica pier, and Venice Beach on I think 3 different days (or at least there were 3 different driving trips....D'OH!)  Now I know better.  And I'M the one that has to keep telling DH that he needs to change lanes and watch what he's doing.  So much for me not knowing how to drive.

So now we're trying to settle in but sometimes it still feels like only a vacation and I know we're acting like tourists lol.  Like the first night after we were exhausted from driving and unloading the cars I was like "we need some In-n-Out"  Yum.  Then Wednesday after running some errands, we wanted to go to Pothead City Venice Beach.  Now I would have just worn my normal clothes, but had a little problem getting some cleaning supplies at the store because I realized too late that the bottle of Drano I was holding was leaking.... So I wanted to go home and change out of my ruined clothes and then thought "Hmm, maybe I should wear this sexy beachy dress."  Well that was a bad idea because I didn't have a jacket so I was FREEZING again, plus I had quite a few Marilyn Monroe moments.
Yesterday after we got our new fridge delivered, we went grocery shopping at 3 different places and I'm sure we looked like a couple of crazy happy fools astounded by low prices.  Like "Whoa! Look how cheap these strawberries are!  Whoa! Look how fresh these vegetables are! Whoa! Look how cheap these steaks are!"  And DH is really excited that there's a halal meat grocery just down the street from us.

Ok can you tell we're excited about LA yet?

But I have to make one more mini-pitch for this great little restaurant we went to last night called Little Dhaka.  It took us about an hour to drive there in heavy traffic but it was definitely worth it for REAL Bangladeshi food.  DH said he heard a lot of good things about it.  I read some reviews online and there were some "iffy" reviews, but mostly from people who only know Indian food and were disappointed that it's not the same.  (A lot of people think the food should be similar because it's in the same geographic region, but the spices and method of cooking is totally different.  Indian food typically uses a lot more yogurt and a lot more "sauce" per meat.  Bangladeshi food uses different spices, a lot more onions, and you get much more meat or vegetable than gravy).  Oh plus some reviewers complained about plastic silverware, but come on- you don't need silverware for this food-you just eat with your hands! Anyway, it's just a little place and also has a little market for South Asian groceries, but the guy at the counter was very nice and friendly and the food was awesome.  DH said the whole place is just like back home.  Well even though I don't know what "back home" is like, I guess I've been around Bangladeshi company enough that the place just felt comfortable and normal to me.  And the food was just like real homemade Bangladeshi food.  Definitely worth the drive out there.

T minus 5 days to take-off

Ok maybe now it's more like 4 & 1/4....Still I can't believe how fast time has flown and here we are already, ready to start the drive on Saturday and move into our new apartment next Tuesday.  This last week has been filled with not us much packing as there should be, and much MUCH more time spent with family and friends....I am still not ready to say goodbye.

I'm having an especially hard time thinking of leaving my brother, SIL, & 3-yr-old nephew behind.  They live an hour away from us right now, but DH and I are really close with them- I'd say closer than any of our other family members.  We're just so much alike, share the same values and generally the same life philosophy.  DH and I have gotten to watch our nephew grow up and he's really close with us too.  But...he's only 3...and he doesn't quite grasp the concept of what it means that his aunt & uncle are "moving" or "going far far away for a long long time."  I'm sure he still thinks that he'll get to come to our house all the time or that we'll still come visit him and play with him a lot.  I hate that I'm going to miss watching him as he continues to grow.  I'm afraid he may start to forget us the longer we are away.

On a slightly different topic, I know a few of my family and friends are equally unhappy with my departure.  Maybe that's where technology can come in with it's sorry, pathetic, not-even-close attempt at filling the void.  I'm considering starting a separate blog so that my family and friends can follow up with us if they like.  I like this idea better than mass emailing, especially since it seems like a lot of times those emails will go to spam and never be read.  The thing is, I would need to keep it completely separate from this blog, using a different profile (we don't exactly want ALL of our family and friends reading our personal IF business, know what I mean?) But then I don't really want to "abandon" this blog while there's no IF treatments happening.  Actually, I know that won't happen because this blog is more personal with all my emotional ups and downs, and the one I'm thinking of starting would be a more cut-and-dry-this-is-what-we-did-this-month kinda thing.  I guess I just need to re-focus on what I want to use THIS blog for so I can devote time to 2 different blogs........

Ugh, this post is too depressing.  Please excuse my late-night ramblings.  I'll end it with a silly story about DH:
So for the past 3 &1/2 years, DH has had a wonderful time with all the glitz and glam of working at a gas station.  Yeah so what, it helps pay the bills.  Plus, the benefit of being able to get anything he needs from the convenience store (say, drinks and snacks and other necessities for going on road trips) and just subtracting it from his paycheck (or sometimes for freeeee).  Well everytime we've gone on a long drive, he'll always OVERSTOCK up on snacks and drinks from work.  He always does good on making sure I've got plenty of cold coffee and teas.  He'll ask me what kind of snacks I want.  Now usually if I'm on a long trip, I will be craving [unhealthy] stuff like gardettos, chex mix, pringles, wheat crackers, those little cake donuts, and sometimes honey roasted peanuts.  Every now and then I'll want fruity candies like skittles or gummy worms. (Ok yes yes I KNOW this is all very very bad stuff that I don't eat on a regular basis but it tides me over on a long drive).  Well then he comes home with oh maybe 1 or 2 packages of donut, a package of skittles, maybe 1 or 2 bags of chips that I like...and a buttload of either cheese flavored or extremely spicy flavored chips or nuts(which I don't much care for) and tons and tons of CANDY...and most of the candy he stashes up on is....CHOCOLATE(!!???!!!) Ok I love DH I really do, but he can be a dufus sometimes.  He still hasn't figured out that you can't bring chocolate on a long hot car ride.  Yesterday was his last day of work and he came home with the stash of drinks and snacks. So I look to see what he got and sure enough, there is the bag full of chocolate bars.  I grabbed a kit-kat bar mushy package and asked him how long this had been in the car.  He said 30 mins to an hour...then he says "Hey we can just put these in the freezer and then they'll be solid again"...... *SIGH*  For someone who tries to logically analyze everything, you'd think he'd figure out that if his favorite chocolate bars won't last an hour in the car, they won't even last 1 day of driving.  The candy is still in the freezer.  I guess he'll get to handle that chocolate surprise in his car if he still wants them.

Infertility-friendly Songs

Lately, as I've been doing stuff around the house while listening to my diverse and random playlist of songs on itunes, I get to thinking that what this world needs is a lot more lyrics for the infertile.  Especially those sappy love songs about getting married and having a baby.....Or especially sleazy rapping lyrics about contraception.

I mean, don't you all think Gin & Juice would have been much better if Snoop said:
"So what you wanna do? Sheeit,
I got a missing pair of tubes and my homeboys do too!"




Then my thought about infertility-friendly songs got me curious, and with a quick search: Voila! Someone has already made a MUSICAL about infertility and all the fun and exciting invasive proceedings that go along with it.  I could only find 1 video on youtube, but it's pretty hilarious.  I need to find the whole recording of this musical, it looks awesome.

Packrats

I have moved 4 different times in the past 5 years and this one is definitely the biggest pain in the butt, packing wise. All other times we used a U-Haul and/or my dad's truck. We were going to get a U-haul this time, but then decided to go through a moving company because we figure the extra cost is worth not having the hassle of packing/unpacking it ourselves, driving it and paying for the gas for 3 days, plus having to get someone else to drive our 2nd car and pay for their hotel/flying back expenses. But the cost of moving stuff per weight + all the additional "fees", plus the size of the apt we're moving to is forcing us to REALLY cut down on what we're keeping....

And it's making me realize how much of the "trait" I've inherited. My mom is a classic hoarder. Not as bad as most that you see on those TV shows, but it's pretty bad. And I can tell from my other relatives that the justifying of "holding on to things" definitely runs in our family. DH and I used to be pretty messy and lazy and so with the first couple moves it was like just shove random things in a box and take it along. A couple years ago, I finally went through my closet and gave away a lot of clothes-some I'd had since high school! And then last summer I did some serious heavy-duty cleaning out of everything, throwing away unusable stuff, donating un-needed clothes and other stuff, and neatly organizing everything else. I was pretty proud of myself but for the last couple days I've been going through more stuff and been thinking, why did I decide to keep this? For example I had THREE file boxes of papers. One has the most current stuff and I use that but discarded some older things we don't need. But the other 2- well one of them had papers from when I was a freshman in college: why did I keep that??? And I talked DH into helping go through stuff because he kept a lot of papers and notes from college. He got rid of a lot but still wants to keep some. 

Then I'm making some tough decisions about things to keep- whether or not the "sentimental value" is worth the space it's taking up. For example some gifts that I never used, and most likely never will get to or want to, I'm donating. And then yesterday I decided to throw away stuff from my wedding box- I kept the guestbook, napkins, and flower petals (oh and my mom insisted she pay to get my wedding dress preserved so that helps a little with space) but got rid of the unity candle, cake topper, things like that. I know they're supposed to be "keepsakes" but I decided it's just not worth it. 

We've given away a LOT of stuff but I feel like we still haven't made much of a dent in anything. Tomorrow DH wants to go through the kitchen and thinks we can "make everything half." But as we both love cooking, I can definitely see this being an issue. We already had a tiny spat about which big stew pots to throw away. DH says "we're getting rid of everything we don't use" but the tough decision will be about a few glass serving dishes that we have never used, but they were a wedding gift from my friend who died a couple years ago. I don't know if I can let go of them.