A first time for everything

This evening, I used a mop for the first time in my life. You may ask how I've lived nearly 27 years and never had the honor (chore) assigned to me. Well, odd as it sounds, in the house where I grew up we have carpet in our kitchen. Yes, carpet. After spilling a whole pitcher of grape juice on the floor, as well as bowls of Teriyaki chicken and ice cream, I've often asked myself why mom chose - and kept - carpet all these years. If you know my mom, the answer is simple: tile and linoleum are too cold. So we had carpet instead. I never mopped. I vacuumed.

Going off to college, it was my admittedly strange love of cleaning the bathroom that protected me further from the mop. I was often known to clean 1 bathroom in exchange for the entire living room and kitchen. Just my luck, I always had roommates who loathed cleaning the bathroom, so I skimmed through another 4 years without honing my mopping skills.

On my mission, there was only mopping since there was certainly no vacuuming to be done. Carpet is a rarity in Chile. Again, somehow, I never mopped. I did clean a lot of bathrooms though. I even have pictures of my companions mopping, oddly enough. Since most of my companions were Latin, they grew up mopping a lot, so they would often come home and start mopping their hearts out.

Then I married Paul. He loves having clean kitchen floors. He always cleans his mom's floor when we go home. So, since at age 24 when we got married I had still never held a mop, he took over. He'll often walk in the house at night and say, "Gosh, these floors are nasty," and whip out the mop, saving me yet again from having to tackle a new skill.

But this week Paul has been studying like a madman for his first exam. And the floors had certainly gotten out of control, particularly underneath Hattie's highchair (confession: we haven't mopped since we moved in a month ago). After dinner, I was determined to conquer my fear of mopping. I couldn't wait for him any longer to do it on his own (I'd gotten used to him getting around to it eventually). So while he was off memorizing nerves and arteries on his cadaver, I mopped. It was actually kind of fun. It took me a while to figure out how it worked, the whole twisty/wringy thing. But I got the hang of it. I'm just glad no one was watching.

Utah and Texas

At the bike shop yesterday, I heard about a triathlon here at Texas Tech. I was getting excited to sign up, when I discovered that the race was on a Sunday. That experience inspired the following list.

What we miss about Utah:
- mountains and the outdoors

- races and other events are usually on Saturday
- having lunch with Shannon, Miranda, Kristin, Lindsay, Barb, and others.
- air conditioning the works (ours broke AGAIN)
- Sunday dinners with Aaron, Tandy, and Michael

- having Robyn, Josiah, and Rebekah upstairs to visit when I need company
- friends to play games with
- P.F. Chang's
- there aren't Christian Rock stations on every other radio station

In fairness to Texas, I made this list.

What we love about Texas:
- no more bad Utah drivers
- my in-laws can be here in 3 hours from Dallas, door to door
- cool clouds and thunderstorms

- our Bodyworks memberships (that's my only link to the Olympics and tv)
- gas is only $3.45
- Blue Bell Ice Cream

- service roads
- Texas pride
- Orlando's Italian Food
- super friendly people

Husband Tag

1- Where did you meet? The first time was in the Clubhouse at Stadium Terrace where he lived at BYU. He was sitting on a couch and refused to move since that was where the air conditioning vent was blowing.

2- How long did you date before you were married? about 9 months

3- How long have you been married for? 2 1/2 years


4- What does he do that surprises you? He loves to cook with me...and he's obsessed with board games (which obsession, oddly enough, I initiated by introducing him to Settlers).

5- What's your favorite feature about him? His legs. In high school they called him T-Rex because his legs were so strong from playing soccer so much.

6- What's your favorite quality about him? His love of learning. I love how excited he gets when he's explaining something he learned...whether it's astronomy, anatomy, something in sports, or anything random. He gets all excited and worked up and is just dying to share everything he knows about it with you.

7- Does he have a nickname for you? What is it? Wif or Wifity or Love

8- What's his favorite color? Blue

9- What's his favorite food? Iverson-style burgers

(they look good, eh? No other burgers compare)

10-What is his favorite sport? to play: soccer; to watch: football, men's soccer, pretty much anything, but NOT baseball

11- Who said I love you first? I think it was a tie.

12- When and where was your first kiss? 4 days after we started dating. On the swing on the back porch of the Stone House where I lived.

13-What's your favorite thing to do as a couple? Go rock climbing. Too bad we live in Texas now...we need to find a new one. Lately it's been eating Blue Bell Ice Cream, a wonderful part of being in Texas.

(that's me, not him)

14-Do you have kids? How many? 1, if you couldn't tell

15- What's a hidden talent that he has? Hidden...hum...not sure, but there's some unique stuff he does: makes bread, bakes pies, knows all the constellations, knows how to basket weave, and has an amazing memory for details.

16- How old is he? 28 in one month - that means he'll be almost 37 by the time he's done with med school/residency

17- What's his favorite type of music? Er, rock? We don't listen to music all that much

18- What do you admire most about him? I love how he thinks deeply about things and is constantly analyzing how he is doing in all aspects of his life.

19-What's his favorite past time? Reading. If he has any time to read, that's what he'll do.

20- Do you think he is going to read this? Yes.

6 years later

I'd like to dedicate this post to Courtside 202. That's where I lived my sophomore year at BYU with Eden, Melissa, and Karly. It was certainly an unforgettable year. I think few people have marked my life in the same way those three girls have. They are all now far away from me, but I want them to know that I love them and that I'm thinking about them today.

And Paul the Apostle said...

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Honestly, this was the first thing that popped into my mind when Melanie changed the license plate. Weird... maybe fitting... but definitely funny.

Confession

I love the Olympics. And we don't have a TV.

In 2004, I was in Chile on my mission, with only two weeks before I came home. All the Chileans were talking about them, especially since a Chilean won a tennis gold. I was sad to miss them.

In 2006, we found ourselves recently married and without a TV. I would try to catch a few events here and there on campus, or at the old folks home where we visited. But I missed watching NBC every night like I did growing up.

So this year, knowing we didn't have a TV, I resigned myself to not being able to watch any of them. Then, because our AC went out, we stayed at a hotel for two nights. I got spoiled. The addiction came back. Once back at our house, although grateful for the AC, I missed the TV! We almost rented one, until I realized that I could just go to the gym at night to watch while I exercised. So on the night of the women's gymnastics final, I rode a bike for just under three hours, going 35 miles total. I went at a nice slow pace that I knew that I could maintain that long. Gratefully the competition ended just minutes before the gym closed...at midnight! So the next day I was exhausted and could barely walk. Good thing USA won, or else I would have been bitter!

I went another time and sat in the dressing room for an hour after exercising, watching a few final swims. Too bad the gym closes early on Saturday nights. How will I motivate myself to exercise once they are over?

O Happy Day

Here's proof of what we've been suffering. It was finally fixed Wednesday afternoon. And there was great rejoicing.

It's crazy how life stops without the internet. How did I ever live before the days of Facebook, email, online shopping, YouTube, online reviews, blogging, Google, online news, and Wikipedia? I have felt completely disconnected from everything. I've been calling my family all month to look up recipes or start times of Olympic events (more on that tomorrow). But now life can start getting back to normal, because, por fin, we have the internet at home. Heck, I turned down watching the Olympics so that I could spend hours on Google Reader catching up on everyone!

In other news: We made an offer on a house. We'll see what happens...the last one didn't pan out, so cross your fingers

AC + internet + house = happiness

Hot with no AC

My sister called the other day and asked if I had disappeared since my blogging has been greatly neglected. For those of you who still read my blog after such an absence, I am still devoid of the internet. Our housing situation is...trashy. We say, "WE NEED TO FIND A HOUSE!!!" at least three times a day. We've been in our apartment for less than two weeks, and in that time the water hasn't worked two different days, the hot water didn't work for another day, the internet hasn't worked at all, and now the air conditioning has broken. Our house is nearing 90 degrees. That's even getting a little hot for me, who is usually a little cold blooded. So after suffering through a sleepless night last night and a very long, hot Sunday afternoon, we decided to get a hotel room tonight so that we can all get a good night's rest. Thus, I have the internet for the night and am catching up on things.

Good news though...we made an offer on a house! If all goes well, we'll be moving in a few weeks and getting out of our current housing nightmare.

Paul started school and has liked it a lot. He has anatomy right now...it'll last 11 weeks and then he starts biochemistry and cell biology for about 10 weeks (his classes are in blocks like that instead of having 7 classes at a time). So he smells like formaldehyde when he comes home every day and tells me all about his dissections of his overweight cadaver. It's usually pretty foul. I'm just glad we're finally on the road to doctorhood.

Here's a clip from our week at Paul's parents. Hattie loved chasing Tang around the house. She would just look at him and laugh.

Life in Lubbock

Alas, we are in Lubbock! We don’t have internet at our apartment, so blogging may be sparse for the next few weeks.

The drive from Utah was long, with Hattie in the backseat and our bikes on the back. We had to stop to feed and entertain her and adjust the bikes. We got to Dallas and stayed a few weeks. With all traveling Hattie has had sleeping problems so we cherished any naps she could get.

We arrived in Lubbock on Monday night. Paul’s sister Christina came along to help out. We signed a 6 month lease at an apartment complex. Of course, the internet made it look way nicer than it is. We thought it looked like a cheap motel at first. There is no internet, the water shuts off occasionally, there is a huge gap in the front door, most of the people who live here are undergrads (undergrads = beer and parties), and the neighborhood looks questionable. So we haven’t unpacked anything besides clothes. We are living off plastic plates and silverware and bought some cheap pots and pans. While Paul has been off at orientation all week, I’ve been house hunting like crazy. We hope to find something soon so that we can get out of this dump.

Since we got here, Hattie has taken to putting large things in her mouth and crawling around like it’s a pacifier or something. Here are two of my favorites.

I’ll add more later when I can get to the internet again.