Happy Birthday, Jim Plunk!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIM!!!!!

Today is our friend Jim Plunk's birthday!! He is currently serving the Lord in Ethiopia. Jim, we hope that this has been a good day for you!!! Jim is an all around great guy. Any of his friends will tell you that. For one thing, he's probably about the easiest person to make laugh in the world. You feel like a comedian when you're Jim's friend because he laughs at the drop of a hat. Thanks for that confidence booster, Jim. Josh lived with him for 3 and a half years at Covenant. That's a long time. We're looking forward to Baby Desch meeting Uncle Jimmy Jim. Jim, we're wearing party hats for you today!!

Today is a pretty nasty day outside. It's one of those really rainy, overcast days. But I guess these have to happen so we can have the sunny, green, beautiful days. Sometimes it's kind of nice to be inside and hear the rain on the roof. Since yesterday was so nice, we enjoyed sleeping with the window open. I've always been a big fan of sleeping with the window open. Feeling a gentle breeze coming in when you're going to sleep is one of my favorite things. Growing up in Peoria, which is quite a humid little place in the summer, I learned that windows being open at night was the key to any sort of ventilation. My parents fell (and probably still fall) into the category of air conditioning dictators, meaning that they hardly ever turned it on unless we were all about to die of heat exhaustion. Although in more recent years I have been more liberal with the thermostat, I still love sleeping with an open window.

I can't believe it's already Thursday! The weeks have just flown by. It seems like once I get into a routine during the week, the days just slip by without my notice. And here we are at Thursday. We have the Missions Conference at church this weekend, which will be really good.

Enjoy your Thursday!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JIM!!!!

Exciting News from Martinez

Hello Friends! I have exciting news to announce to our faithful readers (all 2 of you). Josh and I have finally joined the burgeoning ranks of digital camera owners! As some of you well know, this is a transition that I have fought against tooth and nail. I have had many debates with my cousin John about the comparative virtues of film vs. digital, and in my mind, film won every time hands down. I still think that digital is a somewhat cheap way to do photography, but alas, the tide of our society has pushed me this way and I find myself as a brand new camera owner. It's almost reaching the point where film developing is just a plain old hassle. So we decided to take the plunge, and here we are. The camera came yesterday quite unexpectedly. You know when you order something online that you're excited about and they tell you it won't ship out for at least a week and don't get your hopes up and then it comes way earlier than they said??? This is cause for great excitement if you're me. The UPS lady brought in a box to work yesterday and I said "what have you got for us?" because I'm always the one to sign for the packages. She said, "This one's just for you!" And I started getting really excited!! It indeed was the camera. I love surprises.

So when we got home last night we took it out of the box and were instantly flummoxed by all of the buttons and twirly things on the top, but we finally managed to take a few amazing pictures. We downloaded them to my computer at home, but we don't technically have wireless internet in our apartment. Every once in a while we can pick up on someone else's network and use it briefly, but I guess no one was available last night, right when we needed it. So the pictures aren't here today for your viewing pleasure.

Here's more news: our basil plant has died. A lady from church gave us a piece of her basil plant in a little clay pot, and we were very excited for a few reasons. First of all, we love basil!! It's so nice to have fresh basil in pasta dishes particularly. One of our favorite pasta dishes is plain old angel hair tossed with olive or canola oil, parmesan cheese, tomatoes, and asparagus. Yum!! Add some basil to it, and it's extra good. I also love the smell of basil. It smells so fresh, herb-y, and exciting. Additionally, it's just nice to have some plants around. I think we were given this plant a few months ago, and ever since we got it, it just has not done well. Many of the leaves have been holey, in various shades of green, and somewhat wilted. We thought maybe the pot was too small, maybe we watered it too much, maybe we didn't water it enough, maybe it didn't get enough sunshine... it didn't matter what we tried, nothing much helped. There was only one point where I thought it was doing well. We unfortunately hammered the nails in the coffin last week when we were housesitting, since we forgot to water it while we were going back and forth. Now it's a pathetic stalk with some dead leaves, a shadow of its former self.

On a brighter note, we have another plant that is doing quite well, in fact, it's our pride and joy. The ladies I work with sent it home with me from the office because they were sick of looking at it. It was probably August when we took it home and put it out on our porch. August in Augusta is not a pretty thing. It's like the worst humidity I've ever experienced. So here's this plant, accustomed to its pampered life in 72 degree, climate-controlled bliss: all of the sudden, it's dropped into hell. Needless to say, it didn't exactly thrive in its new environment. Actually, all of the leaves fell off except for one. It looked really funny to see that giant pot with one little leaf still growing. But we're happy to say that this plant was resurrected!! Now he (we call him Howeous Planteous for some unknown reason) is doing wonderfully and growing like a weed. We're so proud.

Josh is home sick today. He was so tired the whole day yesterday, but we thought he was just exhausted from all of the running around we've been doing. He asked if maybe he should stay home from Lamaze last night, but we decided that we would both go and then go to bed right after we got home. Then when we got home and he started getting really hot and cold and couldn't sleep and felt like he was going to throw up, I felt horrible for not believing him that he felt sick. Oops!! I'm sorry, Baby! He's feeling a little better today, but he had to cancel youth group for tonight.

Well, it turns out that most of this news wasn't "exciting" as our title promised, so I apologize for the false advertising. A more accurate title would have been "Mundane News from Martinez," or "Lame News from Martinez."

Happy Wednesday to all of our friends and family!

Who Wants Potato Soup? Ugh, Not Me!!!

As I'm sitting here writing, I've got that wonderful jittery feeling that results from a good cup of coffee. You know when you've had some coffee and your heart beats a little faster and harder and you feel more alive?? Yeah, that one. I love it!! I actually just had a caramel frappucino, but it's the same effect. I'm just beginning to enjoy coffee again. Right after we found out I was pregnant, my normal likes and dislikes took a vacation, and they are just now sluggishly returning.

Josh and I had been making coffee every morning- enough for both of us to have a cup before leaving the house, and then enough for me to take some to work. I've always loved the idea of a travel cup- I think it's so adult-ish. So I filled up my travel cup and away we went. But that habit came to a screeching halt when I found out that Baby Desch was on the way. Now the objection wasn't necessarily because of the caffeine, although you are supposed to limit that when you're pregnant. It was because all of the sudden I found everything about coffee repulsive. The smell, the taste, even the THOUGHT of coffee. Dwelling on a cup of coffee was dangerous because it made me want to throw up. So that was out for a few months, I guess until just a couple of weeks ago. Now I can happily drink coffee again. (Of course, in moderation- don't want Baby Desch experiencing caffeine highs just yet.)

Another thing was potato soup. I've always liked potato soup. In fact, I think Josh and I made some just a couple of weeks before we found out the news. But after the big revelation, potato soup's name was MUD. I couldn't stand the thought of potatoes, garlic, milk, and cheese in the same pot. Pretty much anything garlicky made me want to be sick. My aversion to potato soup was strong and lasted all the way through the first trimester. Sick. Now while I don't necessarily want potato soup, the thought doesn't make me throw up.

I also really didn't want anything sweet. Now for me, that's almost cause for concern. I LOVE all things sugary. But for some reason, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cake, pie, etc.- all of those things that usually hold such allure- just seemed gross. The only sweet thing I wanted was those orange and vanilla popsicles called Dreamsicles. I really wanted those, but nothing else. Hmm. Strange. Trust me, my sweet tooth has now returned with a vengeance.

Things I really, really wanted? Hot dogs. Green beans. I once asked Josh to get me a can of green beans and bring it to me at work. Strange? Yes. That noodle soup that you mix with boiling water. Frozen peaches. Taco salad. I don't know how to explain the phenomenon of cravings and aversions, but trust me, it's real. I always thought that pregnant women saying they had a craving was just imagination- a made up excuse for something that sounded good. But it's real!!! It's pretty funny, and definitely unpredictable.

But Josh has been more than gracious in this strange time- indulging my cravings, making extra trips to get things that sounded good, etc. He often says, "what the baby wants, the baby gets." And he means it. He feeds our baby well, even now.

All right, in closing I just have to put in a plug for today's weather. It's amazingly beautiful. It really is. I could have days like today for the rest of my life and be happy. We ate lunch today out on our porch and just enjoyed the sunshine. Ahh.

Weekend in Review

Friday night and Saturday morning Josh and I went to the XPRESS Your Faith conference at Perimeter Church in Atlanta along with a few other people from Redeemer. It was one of the most refreshing, encouraging things I have ever done! I'm so thankful that we got to go. XPRESS Your Faith is a method of sharing your faith with people that is very conversational and engaging. Randy Pope (the pastor who came up with the conference) was a very interesting, straightforward communicator. I would encourage anyone to go to that conference- it was so good!! I would like to go again at some point.

Hmm, what else? Ooh, this is exciting news- Josh and I picked up keys to our new apartment yesterday afternoon! I can't believe that we're actually moving. It seems like just yesterday that we signed the papers to break our lease back in January. One of the biggest things we were dreading was repainting our apartment.

When we moved in at the end of May and asked if we could paint, they said we were very welcome to paint as long as we put it back to white before we moved out. Ahh, no big deal, so we thought. We merrily began painting our VERY, VERY vibrant shades of orange and red. At first it was fun. The gray primer coat. The first coat of orange paint. Wow, we thought. That looks terrible. A horrible cross between gray and the beginnings of orange. But we didn't lose heart. The second coat of orange paint. Wow, we thought. That still looks pretty bad. We were beginning to curse the man at Home Depot who advised us to get a gray primer. Tricia Williams came to paint with us at some point in here, and agreed that we needed at least one more coat. The third coat of paint. After this was done, we were getting despondent. It still looked terrible. We had some desperate thoughts at this point... I suggested, "maybe we could just leave it like this and people would think we meant to do this." It looked like a really cheap halloween display that people hadn't taken time to paint very well. Next I suggested, "maybe we could make a mural and paint some crazy things over it." We were both so mad and wondering why we ever started this project. You have to understand that by this point, we had already gone to Home Depot a few times to get more supplies, to get more paint as the number of coats required kept increasing, etc. We were swearing to ourselves all along that it would take 3 coats, but here was the third coat, and it still looked bad. Well, in came Mr. and Mrs. Desch to the rescue. Painters with fresh enthusiasm! They came and breathed new life into our project. The four of us quickly did a fourth coat, holding our breath that when it dried it would finally look finished. And it did! No fifth coat required. Hallelujah.

So you can see why we were dreading painting the walls back to white. I can't imagine how many coats it will take until it doesn't look like a shade of canteloupe. But it's not going to be our problem! We decided to pay the apartment people to paint it back themselves. I mean, by the time you buy the primer, paint, supplies, etc., and factor in your frustration, time, and all of the better things you COULD be doing (opportunity cost!! I learned something in macroeconomics!), the bill is pretty much a fortune. I actually feel like we're getting a bargain. Who knew that painting was so much work? Someone please remind me of this next time we decide we want to paint. It's times like these that I'm reminded of why PAINTERS exist.

Anyway, we're going to start moving some things over this week. It's sad in some ways, but exciting too.

Have a great Monday!!

Fun To Be Had at the Grocery Store

Josh and I really, really enjoy grocery shopping! It's so fun to go pick out things to eat and things that you need to make other things to eat. Now I love to cook, and I realize that not everyone does, but trust me, the grocery store is a prime place to have fun. You just have to look for it.

Let me give you an example. Josh and I were in the produce section at Kroger last week. We found some beautiful Braeburn apples for $1.49 a pound, and they were very hard. I wasn't expecting to find non-mushy apples this time a year, but lo and behold, there they were. I picked out 5 or 6 because apples are one of my favorite fruits, and we love to cut them up and put them on top of salads. The ONLY way spinach is bearable in my book is if it's covered in so much fruit that it's almost not possible to taste the spinach. Horrible, horrible stuff. Anyway, we picked out some pretty apples and were going to look at some white grapefruit. We usually get pink and decided we would get a white one just for kicks. As Josh was picking out just the one he wanted, somehow the bag of apples fell out of his hand and went crashing down to the floor. So all of our beautiful apples were no longer beautiful; alas, they were marred with bruises. But being the ethical people that we are, we still bought them and cut off the bad spots at home. And they were still good! But this is just one example of fun that can be had at a grocery store!! We've laughed about this ever since. It's especially funny when you drop things at the grocery store and they go rolling.

OK, here's another example. This didn't happen at the grocery store, but it happened with food that we had just gotten, so it kind of applies. We were at home unpacking our groceries from that same trip to Kroger and somehow a bag of kiwis got put on the floor. We love putting kiwis on salads too! So good!! I don't know how exactly this happened, but Josh stepped on one of the kiwis and it split open. This was not his day with fruit!! But it was really funny, and we're still laughing about it. (It doesn't take much to amuse us.)

Grocery shopping with my mother when I was younger was always a somewhat nerve-wracking experience. I know that all of my sisters can attest to this. My mother had the strangest habit of throwing cans, cartons of cottage cheese, or even jars of food into the air really high and catching them on the way back down. That is, if you were lucky she would catch them. I remember standing in an aisle on more than one occasion, humiliated because my mom had just dropped whatever she was playing with. Then, the dreaded request: "cleanup on aisle x." This strange habit of my mother's made for some very memorable, face-flushing grocery experiences. I remember being so annoyed with my mom and asking her, "WHY do you have to DO that?????" on each occasion when she made an ill-fated throw. I can't say that I've taken up my mom's habit (thankfully), but I can at least say grocery shopping with her was never boring.

So remember, grocery shopping can be fun. If you don't believe me, just drop some fruit or step on a kiwi or smash a carton of cottage cheese all over the floor. If it's not fun and doesn't make you laugh, at least it might be a shopping trip for the ages.


Have a wonderful weekend!

What's on YOUR ipod?

Have ya'll seen those Capital One commercials where the families take really sucky vacations because they don't have Capital One? Oh man, I think those are so funny. So today's title is a tribute to those commercials, which never fail to make me laugh. (Josh says that it's too easy for a commercial to make me laugh.)

We have been stuck on a select group of musicians lately, and I want to share those with you. You may want to give them a try yourselves. These are in no particular order.
1. Barry White. Barry White has gotten a LOT of airtime in our apartment and car in recent days. We love him! He's got this amazing rich, deep voice, and the songs he sings are just incredible. Very '70s. Love it.
2. Bjork. Bjork is very different from Barry White, but we listen to her when we're in the mood for some somewhat whacked-out Scandinavian music. She's actually really good. We usually come away from her music with some song-induced, drug-like euphoria. She is a very interesting musician.
3. Luther Vandross. Josh loves Luther Vandross, and I've really grown to love him myself. He sings such romantic music with a beautiful voice. Big fan. We sing these songs all the time.
4. Lionel Ritchie. We actually have only gotten into one Lionel song to date, and that's "All Night Long." One night pretty early into our pregnancy experiment we went to Publix because I HAD to have some frozen peaches. Why, I can't tell you. I just HAD to have some. Anyway, this song was playing, and we couldn't stop ourselves from getting down in the frozen foods section. The song was just that good. While we were dancing like crazy, some random shoppers walked by and gave us questioning looks, but we were past the point of caring. After leaving Publix we agreed that we DEFINITELY had to download that song. And ever since then we've been singing it at the top of our lungs and doing some random dancing. If you are looking for a song that will give you an instant good time, look no further.
5. Enrique Iglesias. Josh is obsessed with the song "Escape." We play this song all the time, especially in the car. One time when Josh's parents were in town, we convinced them that this song was frequently played as special music at Redeemer during the offering. We love the part at the end where Enrique goes, "You can R-UN. You can R-UN..." That part is so good. We're usually almost shouting at this point.
6. Music from Dirty Dancing. This music is beyond description, particularly songs like "She's Like the Wind," "Hungry Eyes," and our favorite, "I've Had the Time of My Life." We love all of these songs and sing them with reckless abandon. We get in the car, push play on this list, and sing our hearts out. I remember one round of singing that was particularly memorable. We were driving to meet some friends for dinner at Famous Dave's, which is probably about 20 minutes from our house with stoplights (there are an exhorbitant number on Washington Road). I usually operate as DJ because Josh often drives, and it's a guarantee that I'm going to pick something rowdy for the car. So here we were, setting out from our apartment, and I picked Josh's 80's playlist, which is full of all kinds of good things, including the music from Dirty Dancing. On came some hits, and we were singing so boisterously that I thought my head was going to explode. Hit after hit, they just kept coming. Then came "I've Had the Time of My Life." Oh wow, folks. We sang like we had never sung before (or since, for that matter. Oh wait, never mind.). After all of that we had to rest, and on came "She's Like the Wind." We thought that would be a good rest song, but oh no, we went crazy on it. Sang its heart out, putting Patrick Swayze to shame. So there was no rest for the weary, but we didn't care. Next on came the 80s hit "Gloria" by Laura Brannigan. This isn't from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, but it's incredible. My aunt Martha introduced us to this song when she put it on our wedding reception playlist, and Josh in particular has really embraced it. If you know the song, you know there's lots of background singing and all kinds of other stuff going on. So we really poured our all into that song, even though we were already so drained from all of the other singing we had done for the last 15 minutes or so. We pulled into the Famous Daves parking lot not quite through with Gloria, but feeling triumphant for putting on such a heartfelt show for ourselves. Also very drained. You know how it feels when the blood vessels in your head are almost throbbing because you're laughing so hard or screaming or in our case, singing so hard? Yeah, we achieved that level. That was one of our crowning moments.
7. Cher. Josh might not seem to fit the profile, but he actually is a Cher disciple. Loves that music from the 80s. Our favorite song is "If I Could Turn Back Time." Josh loves all of the horrible cliches that Cher uses to describe things, like this one- "Words are like weapons/they wound sometimes" and "like someone took a knife and drove it deep into my heart." This is another one of those head-exploding songs. We sing this one hard. Actually, that episode I just told you about on the way to Famous Daves was kicked of by this song. Great start to any rowdy round of singing. Josh also loves the song "Emotional Fire."

Well, I guess that's about it for now. I know there are artists and songs that are getting left out, but none are coming to mind right now. We've pretty much been obsessed with this list for the last couple of months, so nothing else is getting much playing time.

My word of advice to you is this: if you're looking for a good time, look no further than these artists listed above. I've pretty much made you a party in an ipod. Download, play, and enjoy.

A Discourse on Household Chores

OK, as we've made clear, Josh and I are not the cleanest people in the world. Our problem is maintenance. MAINTENANCE!! We clean up to the point where it looks great, but then in a couple of days, it's almost back to where we started. So in the interest of all of our readers understanding our plight, I'm going to rank the household chores, going from favorite to least favorite. This way you can see what's more likely to get done by me in the Desch household, and what's more likely to be "overlooked."

1. Vacuuming. I've always loved to vacuum. I think it's the most satisfying thing to sweep up crumbs and other floor debris and see those vacuum stripes in the carpet. I love seeing the kitchen linoleum or living room floor sucked free of its pine straw tracked in from outside, crumbs from cutting bread, etc. I hate that gritty, crumb-y floor.
2. Spraying down the counters. I also love this job. It's wonderful to go from slimy messes on the stovetop, in the burners, and on the countertops to squeaky cleanliness.
3. Loading the dishwasher. I like this job because it's fun to see how many dishes you can get in the dishwasher and still have them cleaned thoroughly. It's also a good job because it's a good return on energy investment- low energy required, big job done!
4. Washing dishes. I also usually enjoy this job pretty well. It's nice every once in a while to get through a big load of dishes to wash, see the wet, sparkling results, and see how you've made order out of chaos. It's also good because if you have a lot of dishes in your sink and you have a garbage disposal, there may be some old stuff waiting to go down the drain, and it's good to get that taken care of. That's gross.
5. Cleaning the toilet. I actually don't mind this job. Although we're getting to the point in my list where I'm not crazy about the jobs, I also don't hate this one. It's nice to have a clean toilet. And cleaning it isn't very hard.
6. Making the bed. We have a beautiful duvet and pillows and they should be visible more often, but all too often they're wadded up and pushed in a corner or something because we're not motivated to make the bed. This job isn't hard, but for some reason, it's mysteriously annoying.
7. Taking out the trash. Not one of my favorite things to do, but only because we have to hike to the trash cans from our apartment. Maybe if we had our own trash cans it would be different.
8. Other bathroom maintenance. Things that fall into this category are like keeping the sink clean, sweeping the bathroom floor, and cleaning behind the toilet. OK, we're definitely getting down on my list. I don't like this job. Bathrooms just get nasty.
9. Cleaning the shower. This is probably my all-time worst household chore. I hate cleaning the shower. I think I hate it so much because it takes too much elbow grease. My mom used to drive me nuts in the days at home when she always bugged me about spraying down the shower with that after-shower cleaner stuff, but maybe she was onto something if that maintains shower cleanliness and keeps you from having to go to town on any one occasion. I remember during dorm cleaning at Covenant that this was ALWAYS the worst job. So much soap scum, so little desire to wash it away. Those silly little RA inspectors. I think I got off easy at times because the RAs usually happened to be my best friends and/or roommates. YES!!
10. Mopping the floor. I'm putting this as the final household chore not because I necessarily hate it, but because it takes too much time getting ready and then cleaning up after you're done. If it were somehow possible to magically get the mop just wet enough and clean the whole floor with just that one mop, it would be OK. But no, you have to keep getting your mop wet and wringing it out. Such a pain.

That is all of the household chores that are coming to mind right now. I'm sure there are others that I'm overlooking, but these listed are the ones most commonly done by either Josh or myself. I'm so thankful for a clean apartment, but too often aren't willing to put the work into keeping it that way. Oh, well! Josh and I are happy even with things not quite perfect.