Christmas Time

Jennifer and I are getting our apartment all ready for Christmas. It looks pretty festive, and will likely continue to look so long after the Christmas season is over. We don't have a lot of storage space in our apartment. We don't have a lot of living space either, but less so storage space. So if you see pictures of our apartment in June next year and our tree is still up in the corner, it's not that we've forgotten about it nor are we too lazy to move it. We just don't have anywhere to keep it.

Since this is our first Christmas we're learning all about each other's family traditions. Jennifer's family opens all of their Christmas presents on Christmas Eve while my family is up at 6am opening theirs. Jennifer buys those presents 5 to 6 weeks while I'm planning on picking mine up on Monday. Her family has macaroni and cheese as a Christmas staple and mine always eats grilled cheese with pink lemonade. Some of the new traditions I already love, others... I don't know. I don't think I'll ever appreciate Nascar.

One of the other new lifestyle changes I've been adapting to since getting married is the principle of full disclosure. I work doing maintenance on a group of apartment buildings in Central Bridge, NY. Often when people move out of their apartment they leave stuff behind. Most of the time the abandoned property ends up in a storage facility under one of the apartment buildings. 

The room kind of looks like the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter, only instead of miscellaneous magical baubles it's filled with broken, moldy furniture, like an Ikea that got bit by a zombie. People rarely ever leave behind anything of value. However, last week I did find an awesome leather bomber jacket in an apartment that's been vacant for a few months.  

It's an awesome jacket and I love it. Jennifer isn't as fond of it, mostly because of where it came from. Before we were married, I could get away with just showing up for a date with a new jacket and Jennifer would just be like "cool jacket." It's different when I show up at home after work with a new jacket. Then she's all like "where did you get that jacket?" After she found out it was from the Hillside apartment building (the one that's currently condemned by the code enforcement office for mold) she was less than excited to have it in her home. I wasn't allowed to wear it until I had it cleaned. Professionally. She didn't buy it when I sprayed it with a little Frebreeze.

Later that night in bed I started scratching all over my chest and told Jennifer I itched all over. She rolled over three times, right out of the bed. I'm still allowed to mess with her occasionally, even now that we're married.