Letter to my upstairs neighbors

Dear neighbors,

Don't you hate it when you can hear everything that the people in the upstairs apartments are doing? I don't. Except for when the only thing that they are ever doing grosses the heck out of me. Five out of seven nights a week I am woken up in the middle of the night (like 3 am) by the rhythmic "squeak, squeak, squeak" of the upstairs bed. "Gross!" I moan, roll over, and stuff the pillow over my head. But no. It only gets louder and more constant, and goes on for at least half of an hour. Seriously. Seriously? Why does it take so long? To make matters worse, after every "event," my kindly and private friends, I get to listen to you take a forty minute bath in a shower that squeaks even worse than your bed. So by now, I have been awake for over an hour cursing the day you said "I do." I really should be more understanding and caring, but I just can't.

Twice I have resorted to chucking books at the ceiling in hopes that you would hear me and become terribly embarrassed, but each time Brandon (who has also woken up) takes the higher road and tells me that you can't help it. Can't help it? If I can hear the bed squeaking through the floor, I am sure that you can hear the noise that you are making in your own room.

Do you even have school or responsibilities? Not only do you do this most nights during the week at 3 am, but the few times I have been home early I have been fortunate enough to hear that this party goes on multiple times a day.

I am glad you love each other but I don't want to hear you love each other.

Thanks,


Your Downstairs Neighbor


This was the best angry face I could find.

Still missin that Italian food!

Tonight I made pizza! First time ever. Thin crust, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, grilled chicken, and pesto. Had to document because it will probably never happen again.

One year

Well we did it. One year. We have made it past everything difficult and have nothing left to work on. To celebrate, we had wonderful Italian pizza, spent the night in Park City, ate our year old (pretty yucky) cake, and spent Saturday at Park City. We rode the Alpine Slide a million times, rode the alpine coaster, the zip line, and mountain biked. It was so fun! We finished off the day at our favorite little dump, El Chubasco-best horchata ever! Although we had to admit that the food seems to taste better after a day of skiing. It has been a wonderful first year!

Gnocchi!

So...we got home from out trip to Italy and Spain on Monday night. And ever since, I have been very much missing the delicious Italian food we had every day. Delicious! Like this.



And this. (I think Brandon gained fifty pounds in this one meal)



For our wedding, Brandon and I got a Williams Sonoma Pasta cookbook. About once a week, I sit and look at the pretty pasta pictures while eating a bowl of cereal. I have never ventured to try one of the recipes. They take a lot of time and I have a very biased husband when it comes to Italian food. I'm a little intimidated to cook pasta for him. But today, I decided I was going to try and make homemade gnocchi (little potato dumpling noodles). First I had to boil the potatoes, peel them, rice them (just learned that term), mix them with flour and seasoning, and then knead them for fifteen minutes. Then, I rolled out the dough and cut the little dumplings from it. For the sauce, I soaked grape tomato halves in lemon juice and olive oil, then roasted them for ten minutes. Next I added garlic and fresh basil and a touch of vodka sauce. All in all, the whole meal probably took three hours; I haven't spent that much time in the kitchen in the last three months combined.
But it was sure yummy!