Green and Sparkly

Well, to interrupt the commentary on physics I thought I'd let everyone know of the new vaccuum my husband and I recieved this weekend! My mom and dad were at Costco and saw a little vaccuum and, remembering me telling her I didn't have one, my mom bought us one! Isn't that GREAT?! It's just a little inexpensive one that I'm sure wont last for a long time, but the fact of the matter is that it's ours! It is green and sparkly and has a telescoping handle for easy storage! Plus, it doesn't have any bags to empty. When you vaccuum you can see all the stuff you're picking up! I'm such a dork, but I love this little wonder! It made my day! It was a nice rest from physics to put it together and try it out! I brought it home to show my husband and he said, "nice." I'm not quite sure why I love this so much. I mean if my husband had said he bought me a present and it turned out to be a vaccuum I would not be happy at all. As the matter stands right now it's a present for BOTH of us and I'm elated! We needed one and I love it! YEAH!

PS. Should I really be this excited over a new vaccuum? I don't know and I don't really care.

Day 2

Just so everyone knows, my wonderful sister sent me a link to a site that is basically some professor teaching me about the subject I was having trouble with. Athough it was very helpful and I was incredibly greatful it still did not help me answer the stupid problem. I came to the point where I decided that since it wasn't a question that had to be graded anyway I would just skip it and try to move on with my life (something that is very hard for me to do when I haven't figured out a problem that I SHOULD know). I have learned quite a bit today, but I think I'm still going to need another day to review the problems I did today and try and complete them in one go. Today I had to start each question over three times before I could get them right. Stupid algebra and physics. Anyway, at least I'm moving in the positive direction. Plus, today I was in a better mood about my life, which you wouldn't think had any relevance to physics questions, but it did somehow.

Physics

If any of you were wondering whether or not it is a good idea to try and teach yourself physics let me inform you of my attempt at it. I'm getting pretty frustrated at this point. Most of the material is fairly straightforward, but then there's always 1 or 2 sections per chapter that I'm just confused about. The chapter started off with an entire paragraph to tell me that emf means battery or something that produces a potential difference (to all of those that actually know physics and that I'm totally oversimplifying the situation, I only need this class to graduate and thus don't really care) Today the confusing section is the "branch-loop method" of solving problems in DC circuts. Also I'm struggling through the idea of RC circuts. I hope I figure this out soon, like today, because I need to be taking a test over this chapter and two more by next week! YIKES!

One of the things I think I missed the most about my home when I moved out for my freshman year in college was the music. My mom and sister and me dancing in the kitchen, my dad breaking out into song in the middle of the grocery store, or the little game of word association into song that my family plays with my dad that rubbed off on me. I love them all! I wanted that musical spirit to be part of my new home and family with my husband. I was worried, but honestly now I have no idea why. My husband is the one that will sing to EVERY song he knows on the radio. And even now, as I'm typing this I can hear my father-in-law in the kitchen making up a song. I think it's about one of his dogs. Probably Romie since that's his favorite.

Anyway, the other night I was really sick after eating dinner and I went down and laid on our bed. My stomach hurt so much it had cramped up and I was sitting in a ball in the middle of the bed. My sweet husband came down and was sitting with me trying to think of something he could do for me. I told him I wanted him to sing me a song while I was laying there. (I'll usually do that or have him read something in Spanish, I love the way that sounds.) He started to sing the Happy Birthday song, but I stopped him and told him to sing a hymn, since I figured those were songs he would know the words to mostly. He found his spanish hymnal and started singing. On the songs I knew the words to I started to sing along. Then he got me the english hymnal so I could get all the songs he wanted to sing. Sometimes we would sing together in english sometimes I would have him sing in Spanish alone. We would try to harmonize on some songs. We spent over an hour just sitting there singing. I don't know when my stomach stopped hurting because we kept singing for long after that. He doesn't even mind when I get the giggles because our "harmonizing" is pretty gross sounding sometimes. I love that man! He is so fun! He loves me so much!

Aargh

So I was thinking about health insurance, as I'm still sick and wondering about such things. I looked on the OSU website. When my husband told me that OSU charged $400 a term for ONE person for health insurance I thought he must have got it wrong. I went on just to check and it turns out he did get it wrong. It is $554 a PERSON a TERM. That means I would have to pay that much just to cover me for three months! That's crazy! The only way I would pay that were if I were preg-o or had a chronic disease!

T v. W

Well, I've been married a little over a month and have run full force into a huge difference between the two families. Here is the story:

I got sick on Saturday. I told my husband I wasn't feeling well in the morning during breakfast. He still really REALLY wanted to go to the gun & outdoors show so I caved and said I'd go with him. (Don't get me started about that last sentence.) Anyway, we went with his parents and left around noon. John, my father-in-law, decided he'd get us lunch and when we stopped at the place I was so sick to my stomach that the smell of the Mexican food was torture! (Probably a bit of an overstatement.) So everyone else ate while I just sat there. We went to the fairgrounds and found out that it was NOT as my husband had though and gun & outdoors show but merely a gun show. Since nobody was REALLY interested in paying the money just to go look at guns we decided to bag the whole idea. I was very grateful thinking that I would be able to return home soon. John had the alternate activity of going to look at the Saline (I'm not sure how to spell that one), which is some type of Mustang. I was perfectly happy with that since I figured it would be quicker than the gun show anyway. Little did I know what was ahead of me. I got SO SICK on the way to Coeur d'Alene that we had to pull over at the first gas station he could see so I could throw up in the restroom. Then we STILL MADE two other stops after having established how sick I was. I was so very upset at this I just made myself sicker. Plus, the motion of the car was making things in my stomach even worse. I was really glad at this point I had not eaten any of the Mexican food at lunch. I am still feeling a little under the weather six days later. I have calmed down and just realized that the reason my in-laws are acting like this is a basic philisophical difference between our families. I thought it was just because they didn't really think I WAS sick. I thought it might be because they didn't CARE that I was sick. No, no. The reason is that in my family the focus on a sick person is making them feel the best they can while on the road to recovery. You make sure they have enough blankets, you give them time to sleep and make sure they have the food they need. In my husband's family the focus is on making you feel as normal as possible to help you focus on BEING recovered. Therefore they treat you as much like you are not sick as they can. This means they don't really check in on you (this included my husband for a while) or anything of the sort. While neither way is wrong it certainly did hurt my feelings until I understood that I had to ask for any help I wanted. Now I ask and they are more than happy to help me. What a fiasco! Next time I must remember that I'm not with my parents before I get my feelings hurt.

PS. I can't wait to be better. I'm so tired of being sick at the moment.

Pure Green Comfort

Just so everyone knows, my mom and dad are getting a new leather sofa this afternoon. The important part of that is that my Sweetie and I got the old one. It is pure green comfort. We moved it into the basement and for some reason Daniel thought I could carry half of it from the driveway around the house to the back basement door without needing to put it down. He's crazy. I got a rug burn on my wrist. And we had to take the door off the hinges to get it inside. Now it is set up under some windows and I love it.

Pretty OK

Just so everyone knows this post will be mushy.

My life is just one rolling stress ball of things that I have yet to get done. The other day I was particularly wound up about everything. I was worried about having money for school (a big one since we are about $8000 short right now). I was worried about needing to call Brother Shelby to ask for help filling out my FAFSA ( I looked at it with Dan and got physically ill because I have no idea what I'm doing). We don't have a place to live at school, which I shouldn't worry about because we will eventually have one, but we don't right now so I'm a little stressed about that. Also, I haven't yet got everything moved into our place in the basement-everytime I go down there I just get overwhelmed with all the stuff we have ALL OVER the place. We still needed to go return things at Macy's and also we have a four page list of people to send thank you notes to. I have to make sure I have everything for work. I have to go to the bank. And on top of that I had just done my first real day of working on my Independent Study physics course. Just so you know my goal is to get it done in 7 weeks and now I'm thinking that maybe when I made that goal I was INSANE. Well, I was working on physics when Dan came home and we had dinner. John, his dad, had been asking me about all our financial stuff and it just made me realize that we really have no idea what's going on there. It would be nice just to know, you know? So I was pretty upset by the time that dinner was over. Dan said that instead of going down and cleaning the basement or going to the bank or checking anything off my list we should just go and watch a movie in the basement together. I am so glad that he did that. I just had time to relax and be with him. At one point in the dark room I turned and looked at him and my love for him just washed right over me so strong. I love how calm he is! I love his sense of humor! I love his eyes! They are so beautiful. Did you know he has a freckle on his ear? I love that too! He works so hard and I know that he loves me too! I love being cuddled next to him and making it so hot that he is sweating buckets. He never says anything about the heat. So I decided that night that I like my husband pretty ok. Boy am I blessed.

Super Powers

I have had a kid in my classes for two weeks now. The first week he went the full day, which includes two classes then a lunch finishing off with two more classes. The second week his mom only signed him up for one class then lunch then the two classes to finish the day. He came into class in the middle of the second week and declared I was his favorite teacher. Then he said, "Do you know why?" I told him no. He responded by saying, "Because this week you made lunch come sooner." I have now found my super power....controlling lunch.

A to Z

I have had TONS of funny things happen at work this week. The only problem is when I get home to write them down I've completely forgotten all of them! DRAT! Anyway, the only thing I can remember right now is from my "Fun From A-Z" class. The other day we were doing the letter V. I asked what begins with V. Apparently none of their parents have made it this far in the alphabet because none of them knew what begins with V. I told them vegetable begins with V. Our project was doing a vegetable garden. The first vegetable we did was a carrot. Because of this they were hooked on the carrot the WHOLE time. I asked them several times, "What does V stand for?" They would all shout back to me, "CARROT!" I was SO nervous when the moms came to pick up their kids. Then while I was walking down to lunch I overheard one mom ask her son, "V is for...?" And he made my heart soar when he said to her, "VEGETABLE!" I was so happy! Nevermind I had heard, "V is for carrot" about a billion times before. At least one kid remembered.

New Insights

Ever since my sisters boyfriend has come on the scene he has been stirring stuff up. First of all he's a really manly man in that he played football and wrestled and recently has had some kickball fame. These are all very masculine things that I'm sure my dad was excited about from the start. On top of that he swing dances, sings (at least for Katie) and, my dad's new favorite, plays the piano. These are things I'm sure my mom loves. So he has been the topic of a few conversations lately, just because of his many talents. The one thing that has really stirred some controversy is his position on Q-tips. He is studying to be an ear doctor of sorts and thus is my personal expert on this topic. He thinks they are the worst invention ever. Nobody should use Q-tips for their ears...ever. I remember a conversation about cotton and ear wax and water hardening like and adobe brick inside of your ear and then you having to have that pulled out. OUCH, and YUCK all at once. Ever since hearing that I have had an internal struggle. I don't really like to live on the edge or do things that I know have a possibility of causing me pain, but I love Q-tips. I hate to have my ears in the wind or the cold or wet. The Q-tips solve that thrid problem. I used to use them everyday after I got out of the shower. When I heard what he had said I stopped using them completely. Cold turkey. In case any of you were wondering it wasn't a will power thing, I just ran out and was too lazy to buy more.
The story gets better because ever since I've come home I've wanted to buy myself some Q-tips. I mentioned this to my husband and the internal struggle turned external when he said, "You remember what Garrett said." So my husband is anti Q-tips as well. Tonight I was unpacking some of my things while moving into our place for a while and I opened a box of bathroom stuff and found a WHOLE BOX of Q-tips unopened. I must have purchased them and shipped them home before having heard of the wax brick that could form in my ear. Now the problem is do I open the box and experience that wonderful feeling of clean? Do I just leave the box there? I'd hate to waiste them! Anyway, I have to go do laundry now.

Starting Out Young

Two funny things happened at work today. A little boy decided that his hair needed to be cut so he cut it. Those scissors we give them wont cut paper at all, but apparently they're great for cutting hair. I was lucky that his mom wasn't mad at all.

The other one has to do with a little boy in my class. Today we made windsocks. We drew on them with markers before putting the foamie pieces and glitter on them. He told me that he had drawn words, but it just looked like a bunch of scribbles to me. Then he asked, "Do you want to know what it says?" I told him sure. So he read from the page (finger pointing along with the scribbles), "Dear Diary, today there were more new kids in my class at school. Love, Brianna" I said that sounded wonderful, but was confused about who Brianna was. He proceeded to take 3 minutes describing Brianna (a six year old girl) in great detail right down to the address she lives at. Then he told me that she was his "girl." I think he's pretty proud of having a girl. It was so cute!

Just to Catch Up

I have so much to write! AHHH! It seems like I can't write it all down! Here's my main thoughts, or at least the ones I think my mom and sister will like.

The Leapord has spots too
Yesterday I again had to explain what freckles are. Here is how the conversation went:
Grant: "What are those brown spots you have?"
Me: "They're freckles."
Grant: "What are freckles. Where do they come from?"
Me: "They're spots you get from the sun."
Grant: "The sun has spots?"
Me: "No. Do you see how in the summer, when you go outside your skin gets darker?"
Grant: "Yeah."
Me: "Well, my skin does that same thing, only in spots."
Grant: "Like a leapord?"
Me: "Yeah, I have spots like the leapord."

Marital Bliss
I have wanted to do a sort of post wedding/honeymoon wrap-up, but now that I'm here sitting thinking about it I'm not really sure what to say. As far as the actual day goes, I felt so blessed. So many people were there to support me. I felt so loved. I also kinda felt bad because I didn't get a chance to talk to everyone I wanted to. I wish I had had more time in particular to talk to my sister, and my two friends Heather and Mary. I miss them already.
My honeymoon was so much fun. We stayed in a cabin up in Canada about 40 minutes from Victoria in a resort called point on point. It was fun. Dan let me do all the touristy sightseeing things I wanted to including Miniature world which boasts the world's smallest WORKING saw mill. We didn't get to see it working though because of fire regulations. We just watched a video under the diarama. We also went to the Royal BC Museum, which is reputed to be the Canadian Smithsonain. It only had about 5 rooms in it total.
I also found out how inclredibly funny my husband is! Since we've been married its like this wall has come down and I know him so much more (I'm not just talking about sex here for those of you perverts) He is so much fun to be around and I love him so much. He is my hero.
My sister is the best ever. Everyday she amazes me. I wish I could write more now, but my train of thought has just dropped off because my sister just called me on the cell phone. Maybe I'll finish this later. Probably not.

Word Scramble

Yesterday in my clay and construction class I decided that we could work on learning shapes and cutting by making a moblie and hanging the shapes on it. I started out the class saying, "Who knows what a mobile is?" Evan raises his hand but it too excited to wait for me to call on him because he blurts out, "I know the batmobile!" Then Katie says, "Yeah! And there's a snowmoblie!" Then Nicholas says, "We're gonna make CARS!"

Boy the shapes mobile was a let down after that!

Two Pats on the Butt and a 72 Hour Kit

In case you were wondering, today was indeed my first day of my most favorite summer job ever. I am back to teaching art classes! YEAH! Here are the highlights of my first day back:

• It is so great to see the little kids that I have been teaching in previous years come back and recognize me!
• I noticed today that when you take roll and call out a little kid's name and they raise their hand to tell you that they're here, they also smile a great big smile-even the shy ones. It's just great to see.
• I forgot that my butt was the perfect height for little kids to tap to get my attention.
• A little barely 3 year old girl in my class was having troubles getting down the stairs today so the 5 year old girl walked back up to hold her hand and help her down without any prompting by anyone. It was so precious!

In other news, tonight Daniel and I went in for an interview with our bishop. He had previously talked to Dan about having an "emergency plan." I told him that when the bishop asked we should just say, "Don't worry we have our 20 pounds of wheat storage." Dan thought we should say, "We're living in the basement so we don't need to have ladders to get out of the windows in case of a fire." It was so funny to me that the bishop was planning on our failure! Anyway, we went and the interview was actually pretty good. All positive. He didn't even bring up the emergency plan. I am SO EXCITED to be home, and to be working, and to be getting married! I just love my life right now! YEAH!

Reflections

I drove home this weekend with my cousin. She is so funny! I didn't even know until I had to spend 10 hours with her in the car non-stop. We stopped at a rest stop on the way home because I was so full of pee I thought it might come out my eyes. We went into the "restroom" that had wet floors and those airplane style toilets. You know the ones with the flap that opens to let the waste out of the bottom and use the least amount of water possible. She was in the stall next to mine when she yells, "Ahh!" After we got out I asked her what happened. She said that as she flushed the toilet the flapp opened, the water sprayed the stuff down and then the flap shut, WHILE THE WATER WAS STILL SPRAYING! Needless to say the water sprayed all over her foot! GROSS! In other news a friend of mine just got home from his mission this weekend. He left the summer after our freshman year in college. The question in my mind is how the heck did time all of the sudden jump forward? I went to his farewell! It's too bad I didn't get to go to his homecoming. He always was an amazing person and I'm sure he'll end up doing simply amazing things in his life! Anyway my leaving BYU and starting a new life away from everything I've known for the past three years has really given me a lot of stuff to reflect on. His homecoming hit this idea home to me in more concrete terms. It seems ironic to me that as my friends are coming home and back to school, I'm leaving it. Now I can't be sure of this, but I think I've changed tremendously over the past three years. Not that I've changed per se, but that I've grown up. My freshman year in college I was so naive in my understanding of things. I kind of regret how people viewed me after that year. I always kinda felt misunderstood. I realized this past month that the way people saw me that year was a direct result of what I let them see. They say that you can change who you are from high school to college, which is only sort of true. You can change what you let people see and percieve about you. You will always be you deep down inside, it is my opinion that doesn't really change. You can change the ficade though. When I decided that I wanted to be friends with someone I let them see in me what I thought they would like the most. Unfortunately I showed the lesser aspects of my character. The ones that were superficial. Somehow I went from one of the best good girls in my high school to one of the "easier" girls in college. (That's in quotes because I went to BYU and the general public would never think anything I had done was "easy") The reason that happened was that I showed that side of myself to the people around me and once you are percieved that way it is really easy to act that way too. I never told any of them how I didn't kiss a guy my entire high school carreer. I never told them that until my senior year the parties at my house were all girls. I never told them that I was always "one of the boys" with all the guys I knew. I never told them about telling boys I wouldn't date them until I was 16 and once I was that age they had stopped asking. Don't let this post make you think I didn't love my freshman year in college. I look back on it with fond memories. I think the people I met there are some of the most amazing people. I can see them being the future leaders of businesses and organizations, families and nations. I just wish I had shown them something better of myself. Now I have someone that thinks the world of me! He thinks I'm better than anyone else. His perception of me is so precious and dear to my heart. I realize now that is because I showed him everything about me. If he doesn't know everything about my past, he certainly knows all the parts of my personallity that were created from those. I am so excited to be with someone forever that loves me so much and that thinks I'm so amazing! So as scary as moving into the great unknown is, I am so glad to know that I will get to do it with him by my side. With someone that thinks so highly of you, how could you not work to achieve the best?

Infernal Tapping

I'm in the library writing a review of this paper and the girl opposite from me has been tapping on the enter key for the last 5 minutes. She has ONLY been hitting the enter key. Over and over and over. If she doesn't stop soon I may have to move. I just have a lot done on my work already. Oh good, she stopped. Now I don't have to kill her. Earlier today this guy just flipps open his cell phone and starts talking on it. Did I mention I'M IN THE LIBRARY?! I stared at him without even blinknig until he said to the person on the phone, "Oh sorry, I'm trying to be quiet because I'm in the library." Did he get up and go to the talking section? NO! Did he stop talking on his phone? NO! Grrrrr.

About to Cry

This is safe to write on this post because my Sweetie doesn't ever read this. I don't even think he really knows what a blog is really.

Today I got him the second half of my present to him. The first half of the wedding present is a nice Seiko watch. It's just beautiful. I ordered it at overstock so a watch that would usually cost $150 ended up only costing $50.

The second half of the present requires a little more explination. He went to Chile on his mission and had a nice Spanish Book of Mormon complete with that requisite leather case that all South American missionaries seem to come home with. A couple of months ago he lost it. Since then he's moved twice and it's still missing. I was talking to his mom and she talked about how much he really liked to use them to study rather than his english ones. I thought it might be nice to get him a Spanish set of scriptures. I know I can't replace his mission scriptures, but at least he could use them to study or something.

Today I happened to get an hour break between work and class so I went and purchased the set. They are black leather bound and I had his name embossed on the covers. I was so excited to not only have found a present I thought he would like, but also to be able to check that off my list. I didn't want to just leave them in my car (I've had scriptures and other items stolen from my car so I'm pretty paranoid about what I leave in there now) so I put them in my backpack. Well, on my way back from the store I dropped by Wendy's and got their delicious Mandarin Chicken Salad for a lunch.

I got back with just enough time to go talk to one of my professors before class so I figured I'd have to eat my lunch in class. I put the salad in my backpack and went up. I dropped by my professor's office and it turns out I didn't need what I thought I did so I had extra time. I walked to my class sat down and opened up my salad to eat it before class started.

It was right at this moment and earlier conversation I had had with my mom that flashed into my mind. We were at Wendy's several weeks ago and she talked about how the salads always have EXTRA WATER in them that she has to dump out so the dressing isn't runny. At the time I had said that I didn't care because I don't use dressing on my salads anyway. Well, I'm sure you've all already made the connection, but this time I CARED. The water had run out of the salad and onto the BRAND NEW set of scriptures I had purchased for my Sweetie. The bible is ok and the Book of Mormon only has water on the corner of some of the pages, but I am so upset by this.

I think I may be under some stress because after I got out of class I sat down in the sun to further inspect the damage and I started to cry. I don't know what to do. Do just give him the scriptures with water on them? Do I get a new Book of Mormon? If I get a new one then what do I do with this one? I thought I was done with this task! I'm just so upset right now. I tried calling my mom to vent about it and she isn't answering her phone, I tried calling Katie, but she never answers her phone and I can't very well vent to my Sweetie! Well, now I'm late for my next class so I'll just have to figure this out later.

2 Dozen

I was walking down the hall in the new JFSB after class today. All the doors were lining the sides. I was thinking about the next few days ahead of me when I suddenly felt a lot like Donald Duck in Mathemagic land. Not after he finally understands all the math around him. Do you remember right in the beginning when he feels totally surrounded by all these numbers and doors and had no idea where to go? Well, my life right now seems to be swirling with numbers

4-days of class left
2-statistics assignemnts still to finish
1-present still to buy
12-hours of lecutres still to sit through
2-final exams still to take
24-days until my wedding
227-dollars left in my bank account
1-present to return
20-pages of my final paper left to format
12-hours of work left to go to
1-final paper of someone else to grade
2-books to sell back
5-minutes of an oral presentation yet to write and give
5-days my granparents will be out of town
2-grades to recieve
10-days until I get to see my Sweetie

And only 1 me to live through it all.

Humor

Maybe it's just that I have a weird sense of humor, but I think that my Statistics professor is HILLARIOUS! Here is a sample of the things he's said (I hope they're still funny written down):

• This quote was taken as he was giving an exam review. A kid raised his hand to ask the steps to do a complicated problem. The professor didn't really want to go over that particular part and he said, "I'm just doing this general review because who knows what's on the test? Well, I do because I just wrote it, but you don't."
• "In statistics you want the truth, but you want the simplest form of the truth."
• This last quote was taken as we were discussing the use of some statistical tools. We wanted to know if our model matched and he was talking about experimenting until you were "happy" with the fit. Then he says, "We'll define happy later."

Anyway, I love sitting through that class just because it is so funny!