Ball of Bugs

I love that my husband does the dishes! He doesn't do them all the time, but he pulls his weight in that category. I'm so fortunate! The only drawback is that when he's done doing the dishes he takes the washcloth rings it out and leaves in on the side of the sink in a tight ball. I inevitably find it hours later or the next morning smelling of bacterial growth. Why doesn't he hang it up to dry? I don't want to criticize him because he just did the dishes. I want to encourage that sort of activity. It drives me nuts that he does this though. He's taken microbiology, he knows what can grow in a warm, moist environment. It's really gross. Do I just be quiet and learn to live with the fact that everytime he does the dishes I will just need to take that washcloth and put it in the laundry? Should I bring this up to him? I know it's really not that big a deal. It just grosses me out.

Crash

I realized yesterday that I've felt more stress than I thought I did. This is because yesterday I finished everything that really would keep me from graduating. After class I got home and crashed. I fell asleep at about 4 and didn't wake up until about 7, and I still had no trouble going to sleep at my regular time. I feel so liberated.

Refresh

Last weekend was AMAZING! And it gave me enough energy to catch this blog up with my life. So here goes:

• I realized this weekend that I was more excited to see my family than getting out of Corvallis or anything we were doing. The amazing part is that I was thinking of them as my family, not my husband's. I was excited to see everyone and just listen to their stories and hang out.
• The wedding was so much fun! Definitely not traditional, but when thinking of the bride and the groom, nobody would expect traditional. The weather was great and we just sat around on the river bed with a camp fire and ate amazing food. The downside is now I have to clean everything I brought because the smell of camp fire smoke filled my entire bag. The upside is that they had a side dish that was DIVINE! Pastry crust on the bottom with a cream cheese mixture above that and topped with broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. It was so good I made myself sick on it. Thinking back I should have asked for the recipe, but as I didn't know anyone there or who fixed it I wasn't inclined to ask.
• I have finally come to grips with not knowing about Loma Linda. The Logan plan is a good back-up and I like it because it's safe. Loma Linda could be fun though. The only downside is that I have no idea how to look for a food science job in California. On the other hand, I don't really HAVE to get a food science job. Maybe it would be nice to take some time off like genius, that way I could get my footings under me before I decide my next move.
• I was watching the food network yesterday (I only get to do this when my husband is busy with something else. For some reason his love of food only goes so far as eating it--not preparing it or knowing anything else about it. Maybe that's why he's so forgiving when I get thinking about other things while making dinner and mess it up.) Anyway, I was watching the food network yesterday and I decided that a new knife would be great! We got our knives that we have now for our wedding and they're nice, it's just that they're serrated which means that it doesn't cut just up and down. It's a hassle and I wish I had a really sharp knife for chopping veggies and the like.
• Today the weather was is so nice that I wore a dress to school. This is great! I love it. All except for the part that I burnt my chest just walking from my apartment to class. I guess it's time for SPF 50!
• I was thinking about money the other day and how I don't like to spend any of it now that I'm married and sometimes I blame it on me being married. I realized this weekend, that's not true. I wouldn't be blowing money on fun stuff right now even if I weren't married. Granted when I was single it was easier to just blow $40 on a really REALLY cute shirt, but I only did that if I had the money. I knew if I did that how long it would be to the next paycheck and if I could make it on the money left over. If I didn't know all that stuff I wouldn't buy it. That's just how I was raised. You only spend money if you are really sure where its coming from and that you have it already. That's how my whole family is (well, not my dad, as much).
  
• Speaking of how I was raised, I think my sister is right about my need to do everything for this class because it's a list. I love lists. I love checking things off lists. The best thing is to put everything you do in a day on a list and then checking them off. The worst feeling is not getting to check something off. It gives me just as much satisfaction to check of, say, "eat breakfast", as much as "write 10 page research report."
• Now that the sun is out I'm bringing my houseplants out to see the sun (I have a cactus, a spiky plant that I don't know the name of, a primrose, and ranuculs). They all looked cute on the front steps of our apartment. One of the best feelings in the world is to discover some new growth on plants that you've been taking care of. My mom sticks with flowering plants, but I like my cactus just as much as my primrose, maybe a little more since it has been with me longer.
  

That's about it for now I guess.

Leaving

This weekend I'm leaving Corvallis!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This has made me so overcome with joy that I'm going nutty. I have about three things to do on campus and I'm going to blow them off to go home and pack. Also I'm going to clean. Here is my opinion on the condition to leave a house/apartment in. I hate coming back from a trip to a messy house. Usually I don't even want to be coming home at all so coming back to a mess that I have to clean up is the pits. That is why the day I leave for a trip (big or small) I run around like a mad person cleaning everything. My husband is not of this same frame of mind. What are your opinions?

Wine Pairing

So in sensory evaluation class today we have a guest lecturer talking about wine pairing (that means what wine goes with what food). I informed my prof that I don't drink and she said, "That's ok, just go and enjoy the session." This means that I don't have to drink. That wasn't really my concern though as I knew I would be drinking whatever she said. My question is who would think that someone that doesn't drink and is never around alcohol would "enjoy" a lecture about wine pairing? I have no idea what it means to have a wine tannin be over-powering. How does a "nutty" wine taste? Or a buttery wine? I know what grapes taste like and I know what butter tastes like, but I assume that's not really what the wine tastes like. If it were, that would be gross. Now we're going in for an activity, which I assume is drinking wine, describing it and eventually matching it with food. At least I can eat the food so I guess all is not lost.

Mediocre

I'm taking this class pass/fail because I need the bacc. core requirement to graduate, but I don't need any more credits than I already have. You'd think this would make me relax about the class. It's a 100 point class so I only need to get 70 of the points. I thought this would be great because I wouldn't have to work as hard. Now I am finding out that I have this insane drive to do the checklist of things the professor posts each week. This would mean that I'm getting a 100% so far. I sometimes have to stop myself from doing the work and tell myself I'll get the same grade if I get a 70% as if I got a 100% so I should just slack off. It surprises me that I'm having trouble slacking off. I would never have predicted this outcome.

Is it really that odd?

So I was waiting for my lab to start today in the student lounge in our department with a group of about six of my classmates. A friend there that likes to bring up my religion brought it up again. This wasn't a big deal. Today though somebody started talking about how one of their Mormon friends got married and she couldn't go to the ceremony. Then someone said, "I heard that once you get married you wear special Mormon underwear." To that I replied, "It has nothing to do with getting married, but yes we do have special underwear." After that comment complete silence filled the room. I then said, "It's not that wierd, I'm wearing it now and you wouldn't even know unless I told you." Complete silence again and then a girl said, "Awkward moment." Then we just changed the subject. Man that made me feel really weird and then frustrated at my inability to explain myself. I knew they all thought I was some sort of sketchy person that wore weird undies. After thinking about it though I still think they shouldn't have thought it was so weird. Like Heather, my friend said, nuns wear special clothing to show their devotion to God and their covenants with him. I also though about the Jewish religion that wears special clothing to show respect for and devotion to God. The Sikh religion has five different articles of clothing that they wear as part of their religion. I'm sure that none of the kids in the room are bothered by any of those items. They understand them because they've encountered them before and they can see them. The only thing that makes them think its weird for me is that they've never seen it. So my devotion is on the inside not the outside. Is that really all that odd? I don't think so. Do you?

Because I don't.

Drivin' Me Nuts!

So just about every major life decision has been dropped in my lap in the last year. I got married last summer. Also now we need to decide what we're going to do about moving, going to medical school, taking a year off, having a family, and on top of that I need to take 19 credits successfully, and finish my extra work in order to graduate.

None of this would really be all that bad if I could just make the decision and live with it. The problem comes in the indecision. We found out yesterday that we probably wont hear anything from Loma Linda until the middle of May! The national deadline to declare what school you're going to attend is May 15th and we wont even hear from Loma Linda until the middle of May. Plus, we're deciding if we want to take the year off and spend it in Logan so Dan can get some research experience. That would look good on his application next year. One minute I want to go to Loma Linda and he wants to stay in Logan. Just when I decide that it may be a good thing to go to Logan, he's really wanting to get accepted to Loma Linda and head there! And I'm supposed to go to school like this? I don't think so.

Anyway I don't have time to think about all that today because I have tons of schoolwork to do. Maybe the school work is keeping me sane. I can't think about how I have no concrete plans for my life after June because getting to June will be hard enough.

The Goal

I just read my sister's post about goals and it made me think. I may not necessairly know what my sister's goals are right now, but I am always inspired by her drive for them. My goals right now are pretty concrete, I know what they are and I know why I made them that way. My frustration is that I'm not as driven. I have these great goals, but right before I get to the finish line I'm ready to give up and scrap the whole thing. I feel like since I got back from Spring Break I've worked as hard as I possibly can both academically, and emotionally, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I can't float up for a breather because if I do something wont get done and not doing just ONE of those things could be the difference between achieving my goals and failure. I hate this situation. I like my work, I like my goals, I like where I am, I just don't like the pressure to be so driven. It feels like I might miss something pretty important on my way to success. I'm not sure what that it, or even if it exists, but I'm still upset about it. Oh well, at least it's semi-sunny today and I'm wearing a cute outfit.

Who wants that anyway?

Well yesterday my husband got a rejection from Creighton. Who wants to go there anyway? We're down to the last straw and I'm starting to get nervous.

The Computer

So I'm taking a women's study course. I have to if I want to graduate. At first I wasn't really happy about this for many reasons. I will list them below:

• It's only a bacc core class and I don't feel this particualr category should be mandatory. That or I feel that they should have taken something from my BYU credits and said I didn't have to fulfill this requirement.
  
• I know that my personal views on what I want to do with my life and what is the best course of action as far as the family/carrer decision is concerned are drastically different than the major population of the women's study program, if not OSU in general.
• I would really rather NOT debate these views with agressive people. I have learned, especially in the last few years in college, it is better to steer clear of the agressive "debators" when talking about subjects they are passionate about. Perhaps also it is best to steer clear of the debate when its something I am passionate about.
• I have to post comments on the disscussion board for EVERY CHAPTER. This means I have to write personal insights, which leads me to believe that there will be no avioding a debate about my views.

So these are all negatives to this class, but I am keeping an open mind about it too. There are several things that have caught my attention and I am looking forward to. They are as follows:

• Our textbook is all about questioning whether being technologically advanced really means having an advanced society. This is a question that has been presented to me before, but never really vocalized so clearly and precisely. I'd like to hear more about these theories.
• Also we have six projects to complete that use technology in different ways. At first I was unhappy about this, but then I realized that these will be easy projects and they're just designed to get us into the technology and explore. That's easy enough. Plus, they're things I either already know how to do or have always wanted to know how to do.
• The text has a whole section focusing on technology in the home. In the introduction it talked about how there has been great advances in home technology ( something as basic as the washing machiene) to help with housework, and yet women still spend as much time cleaning the home now as they did 50 years ago. Why is that? I'd really like to know that answer.

So anyway, the jury's out on this whole class. I'll tell you what I think later. I probably shouldn't have used bullets for this, but oh well.

The Pope, The Love, The Let Down

Well, I haven't posted this past week because I was up in Puyallup looking after my two nieces while my family was in England. I will have to say that it was TONS of fun! I enjoyed myself immensely. I realized that you don't have to have things planned to have fun with kids/pre-teens, you just need to be creative. One day we went to the park and found a little stream. We decided it needed boats to float down it so we went home and made boats a couple of days later out of cardboard, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, popsicle sticks (yes we had to eat two popsicles each and that's why it took a couple of days to make the boat), glue, and wax paper. They were great fun!

Also I learned the real reason that Santa lives in the North Pole is to escape from the hammer head sharks. They can attack people and hurt them a lot/kill them, but they can't live in cold water. Naturally it follows that Santa is one smart cookie for living in the North Pole.

I also forgot to post earlier that I found out my friend Holly is getting married to her highschool sweetheart in September! YEAH! I hope I can attend!

Just a little tidbit, I found a lovely photo of the pope on my brother's fridge. Kind of confusing, but whatever.

Lastly, my husband heard back the final decision from UW the other day. He's an excellent candidate, but the competition was tough this year so they can't accept him or put him on an alternate list. What a let down! My initial, and childish reaction was, "UW is stupid! Who wants to go there anyway!" I almost cried on my train ride home, but I was surrounded by very chatty women so I didn't really get a chance to worry too much. Today, after digesting the news, my Sweetie said to me, "I didn't really feel like I was going to get in there. When I went to Loma Linda I really felt good about everything." So obviously we've moved our sights to California. (Not my favorite, but I'm pretty sure it's better than living in Nebraska. Although I've never lived in either place.) It would have been better to know about his thoughts and feelings earlier so I didn't invest so much energy in UW! I had already made plans in my head and I had to put them aside. Still I know that we're doing the right thing with our life and it will work out for the best no matter where we go. The worst part of the whole thing was that my family was out of the country so I couldn't call any of them!

Speaking of the train I was supposed to get from Tacoma to Albany at 7 pm last night. Guess what time I got in. 10pm! Yes, I was on the train from 2:30 to 10 yesterday. This is because we got stopped by all conceivable traffic. We stopped 5 times for freight trains to pass! Also we had to stop because a bridge had been lifted to let a tug boat through. For about an hour we had to go around 10 mph because we were following another stupid train. And to top it all off we had to stop because there was a woman laying on the tracks! Well, I'm glad we were able to stop on that last one, but all the others I could have skipped. At least I was sitting by some fun and interesting people! Plus there was a lounge car where I bought some cranberry juice.

To end on a good note, I realized when I got home how much I love my husband. Last night he was pretty much as down as he could be, and yet he was still the greatest person ever in my eyes. He is so great! I love him so much and I'm so glad to know I made the right decision when I married him!