True Life: I live in Omaha, NE

DISCLAIMER: This post is not funny. It's just my life. If you're here looking for the usual Emily hilarity, wait for another post, this one is not for you. If you're here looking for updates on our lives, read on!

People have been wanting to know what life is like for Dane and me, so here it is! Here's a smidge of a day in the life of us:
6/6:30am (depending on how much I have to do before work): Eddie wakes me up for his morning walk. This involves him coming into our bedroom, shaking so his collar makes jingly noises, then sitting on the floor by my side of the bed and whining. This is the "wake up, I have to pee" signal. I get up, take Eddie for his morning walk, feed him, say hi to Heidi, and take a shower.
7am: Dane's alarm goes off and I get out of the shower so he can get ready for school. He makes himself a quick breakfast and then eats it... IN THE SHOWER. I've always known that Dane likes to shower and would spend a lot of time there if he could, but his level of multi-tasking is a little extreme. However, it works for him, so who am I to complain? While he gets ready for school, I prep that night's dinner, make us lunches, or do some quick cleaning, etc. around the apartment.
7:45am: Dane leaves to get to school by 8 and I snag the bathroom again to finish getting ready for work. I get dressed, do my hair and makeup, and make sure the bedroom doors are closed to Eddie doesn't have a urine heyday in them.
8:30am: I leave for work and enjoy my 20 minute commute down to Bellevue, NE. It's all highway and I'm leaving Omaha, so am never stuck in heavy traffic. This is also where I have seen several road-killed raccoons lately. It's the little things people, the little things... Once I get to work, I make deposits and withdrawals, cash checks, sell cashiers checks, and make my daily to do list. This list includes what I'm going to make for dinner, what errands I need to run on the way home, and what light cleaning, etc. I'm going to do that night. I love these lists, but rarely actually look at them after I leave work.
12pm: Dane's lunch hour! He usually comes home to eat and also lets Eddie out for his afternoon walk, but sometimes he has extra classes during lunch. On these days, I race home from work, toss Eddie out the front door, grab some food and eat it in the car on my way back to work. This only happens a couple days a week, MAX so it's not much of an inconvenience for me. AND it makes sure that I'm not stuck with the super late lunch hour at work :)
3pm: The time Dane is usually done with school on Tuesday and Thursdays. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are later because he has anatomy lab, so it's usually 5ish. He comes straight home and starts studying.
6pm: I get off work and head home to make dinner!
6:30pm: I make dinner, tidy up, load the dishwasher, and settle into my nightly sweatpants. (Dane is still studying while all of this ensues).
7ish pm: We eat dinner. Lately we've been eating on the couch while we watch whatever is on ESPN at the time, but I'm going to try to make our dining room table more inviting so we can actually sit down together and have a real conversation. One of us takes Eddie out after dinner for his evening walk and Dane goes back to studying.
Primetime: I watch whatever gems Bravo has to offer that evening with Eddie on my left, Heidi on my right, and my computer on my lap. The "kids" (aka Eddie and Heidi) are getting along very well now. They've learned to co-exist by simply staying on their own sides of the couch and generally leaving each other alone. (Dane continues to study while I veg out and turn my brain off entirely).
11pm: Dane calls it a night on studying and goes to bed. I wrap up my uber important facebook stalking/online shopping and do the same. However, my time-management skills aren't fully developed and I sometimes make this a 12-1am bedtime or have to get up at 5:30 to get everything on my list completed.

We live in a super cute two bedroom apartment about 3 blocks from Creighton. It needed about a million repairs when we first moved in and it took many a week to get it all back to where it needed to be, but I love it now. However, apparently no one in Nebraska has belongings because there is NO storage space here! Our kitchen has literally HALF of a lower cabinet for storage. So our cutting boards have a home! As for the rest of the food/kitchen supplies, I had to use my ghetto college storage cube thing as a pantry. And all of the closets are packed to the brim, but we got all of our stuff in!
Clearly, Dane studies all the time, but we're both doing well. I usually see him at dinner (except for the nights that he eats in his office while he studies) and on the weekends he is sometimes able to make room for football study breaks. I know people have been worried about us fighting and not getting along now that we share the same abode, but we see each other so little, we don't have anything to fight about! And I honestly am really happy to get to be here to take care of Dane and make sure that his life runs as smoothly as possible while he's so busy. It's taken a while to get used to him looking like a zombie all the time, but with all of the work he's doing, it's to be expected.
We've changed as a couple, but it's been a good change. It's less about us each as individuals and more about working together towards a common goal. We really enjoy the time we do get to spend together and even if we do something as simple as watching a football game, it's nice to be able to take that smidgen of time to do it together.
I found a church here that I really like, so I'm becoming a member this Sunday! It reminds me a lot of our church in AZ and I found myself looking forward to Sunday mornings, so decided it's probably worth joining. I'm hoping to do a dual-membership so that I don't have to re-join our AZ church when we move back. But I'm very happy to have found a good church home here in Omaha. And eventually, when Dane gets a more regular schedule with school, I'll drag him along with me as well. For now, I kind of enjoy my hour of sitting in church by myself :)
I'm working on my cooking skills and trying out new recipes when I have the energy. Tonight's menu was salmon with wild rice and green beans. Pretty darn yummy for my first shot at fish! I'm going to tweak a few things next time around, but I was pretty proud of it! (My meter for success is how much Dane consumes. Tonight he asked for seconds!)
As of last week I've decided to turn over a new leaf and really embrace Omaha and my life here (don't get me wrong, I'm not genuinely unhappy, I've just been whining and bitching and it's kind of made me grumpy). So I'm planning on adding a work out into my morning to start my day off on the right foot and stay on top of my housework and our finances so I have the time and $ to go out with friends whenever possible. I need to make more of an effort to build my own life here because Dane doesn't have the time or energy to do it with me. I'm going to reach out to the Omaha alumni chapter of Gamma Phi and also try to get more involved in the church here. So here's to my new life plan and hopefully some more menu successes!