WHO AM I MARRIED TO?!?!?!

So I had my last day of work Wednesday and I don't start school till Monday. It has been wonderful to sleep in the last two days. This morning I slept in till 9:30!!! Waking up this morning was not so wonderful though.

First off let me say Brett woke me up, not on purpose, at 5:30 this morning. (If I was still working I'd have been leaving for work at this time!! Disgusting I know.) He was trying to figure out what day it was, hoping it was Saturday. No suck luck. He got up and left for work. Immediately after he got up I spread out to take up every inch of bed. (When I finally woke up at 9:30 I was perpendicular to a normal sleeping position.) Well while I was sleeping I dreamed a dream, nay, I dreamed a nightmare... sort of. Well my dream started out fine. We were at a county fair of a small southern Utah county. The area was made up mostly of old farmers so Brett enjoyed playing farmer with them. This part of the dream was fun and enjoyable.

Then my dream morphed. Next thing I remember I was in a gift shop. Now we were taking a bus tour of rural Utah. I was accompanied by a man but this man was not my husband. It was a guy I know and don't particularly enjoy. Let's call him George. Well it appears that I was dating George and he was on this bus tour with me. (Most of the other bus tour people with little old ladies with white pouf hair.) Well in the gift shop I was looking to buy a new ring. All of my rings (in real life) have some story behind them, where I bought them, who gave them to me... In my dream though all my dreams corresponding with a relationship (this caused me to remember various old boyfriends in my dream). Evidently in my dream I was dating George and I was buying a new ring to represent my relationship with him. Well, while I was looking at rings I overheard him talking to the sales lady. Evidently he was going to propose and was thinking that whatever ring I bought myself would count as an engagement ring. In my dream I remember thinking, First off I will never marry George and second, even if I would marry him, like I'll accept my own ring as an engagement ring! Well I ended up finding a ring, it was huge and clunky and way pretty.

Then I woke up. When I woke up I knew I was married but had no clue who I was married to. I was picturing my actual wedding ring but couldn't remember who gave it to me. I thought through all my previous boyfriend that I had remember in my dream and thought oh please say I'm not married to George!!!!! So I stopped and thought, okay who woke me up this morning??? Oh yeah Brett! Oh good I'm married to Brett.

Crazy dream eh? I have 'em a lot!

Thank my lucky stars he is my husband, and an amazing one at that!

Fated by Fire Sauce

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY KATRINA AND BEN!!!

So a year ago Saturday one of my best friends from high school and her high school sweetheart were married. It was such a beautiful wedding. She paid me the honor of being one of her bridesmaids along with our other closest female friends. It was my one opportunity to 'walk down the aisle' since I got married in the temple. The entire evening was gorgeous and beautiful. By the end of the night I was drunk and full off of chocolate fountain. Once everyone had left we filled punch cups with chocolate and drank to our hearts content. Whenever I hear Big & Rich Lost in This Moment it reminds me of that perfect summer evening. (I got married in the dead of winter... sometimes I want to do the whole thing over just so I can have a summer wedding too. YES of course same groom!) Brett came by for a few minutes during the reception but had a softball game that night so left pretty soon after he came. Following the reception I went to the park and watch the last few minutes of Brett's game. After the game we went to what used to be A&W. I don't know how I possibly wanted food after all the reception food, not to mention left over rehearsal dinner food from the night before, I scarfed down. The evening ended with parking... haha... sort of. The purpose of this parking was not to make out it was to watch the a storm roll through. The lightning was beautiful. While sitting there, watching the lighting strike and feeling the thunder reverberate through Brett's truck, we talked about the future of our relationship. We'd talked over options before then but this magical night Brett said he would move to Utah for me. Happy doesn't begin to describe how I felt. His next question was so, um... do you think we should be married when I move down. After briefly remembering how much I enjoyed kissing him, and already knowing I wanted to marry him, I answered Yeah that would be best. So we flipped open his phone and brought up the ever handy cell phone calender. We quickly decided on the six month anniversary of our first date, Dec. 29 as the day. Now thinking back I guess I became engaged at this point but I was stubborn and wanted the ring before I let myself believe it. It took 2+ months for the ring to actually land on my finger. Does this night actually count as our engagement. Did Brett really propose by saying "So, um, do you think we should be married?"? Well its my life so no I'm not counting this as the proposal.

The following evening was to be my last before moving to Utah for school. Brett's brother and his wife were having a BBQ at their house. We went and had a grand old time. I remember whoever brought the brownies failed to cook them all the way and they were amazing. After the BBQ we were driving back towards Brett's house when I saw a Taco Bell billboard. I still don't know how but I hungered for a cheesy gordido crunch. (Really I don't remember what I got/craved.) To this day I'm truly perplexed how I was always so hungry those days. So I forced Brett to drive the 20 minutes into town, to buy me taco bell, and then we drove the 20 minutes back to his house. Where we parked ... this time 90% of the time we were eating or talking I promise... on the bank of the canal that runs by his house. As I was getting ready to scarf down my fourth meal of the day I offered Brett some firesauce and began happily masticating my food. Brett interrupted my taco bell bliss with a simple "Yes". As always with the height of prim and proper poise I replied, I'm sure with cheese hanging from my mouth, "Huh??" He repeated himself a little more forceful, "Yes!". Finally, utterly confused, I say "What are you talking about? Yes what?" He then returned the packet of firesauce I had just handed him. The quote fatefully read

"Will you

marry me?"

I do not recall what happened next. I'm sure laughter, some cheesy kisses (haha total pun intended) ensued. Although I still don't count this evening as our official engagement I still claim I proposed first.

Finally Friday

Well as the weekend converges just like the limit of all continuous functions must converge I'm bored and leaving you with a teaser. Keep up folks and internet permitting come Monday... maybe Tuesday... you will be regale (d??? not sure I'm totally hoping this word fits this context!) will the tale of my proposing marriage to Brett (which of course was accompanied by bolt of lighting and rumblings of approval from the heavans). Well I'm off enjoy your weekend.

F-R-E-A-K, Freak

So I've determined that three people read my blog at any given post. Three you ask? You think three whole people read your piddly diddly little blog? Yes. Three and I'm ignoring you last question it hurts my feelers. Fine so how did you determine three people read your blog? Is your reply *accompanied with an eye roll*. Well it seems that of late I get about three comments per post. Thus it can be determined from the aforementioned findings that three people read any given post. So for you three readings you get a special treat today. You get to hear my deepest darkest secret.

Oh boy, here I go. I'm a freak. This was what I realized a few moments ago. Yes I'm a full blown freak-oid. No, I'm not a fruitcake a freak. And not the kind of freak you see on the street, I don't have multicolored hair, I don't have any piercings or tat's. I don't collect cans from trash bins, and I don't push a shopping cart any further than a grocery store parking lot. And, I have never walked down the street which a group of people dressed in various colors of skin tight, spandex, metalic full body suits.

(Remember She's All That with the dreamy Freddy Prince Jr. and
beautiful Rachel Leigh Cook, who I was always envious of because she was so tiny
and petite. Well at the dance the nerds come as DNA dressed tyvek
(they wear these at work, it's okay if you don't get the
reference) resembling white suites. Then when the long hair pretty one
(wow all sorts of labeling tonight huh?) dances with the jerk (more labeling, I'm very rude as well as a freak) she gets out of her DNA chain (now this is very unlikely, if i remember correcting DNA is held together by hydrogen bonds which are quite strong and I doubt that even the popular boy asking you to dance will break a hydrogen bond [ahhh! revelation popular sounds like polar and polar bonds are not as strong as hydrogen bonds so this scene is chemical illogical). So when she removes her white tyvek suit she has a blue skin tight suite on (luckily she is quite skinny). Imagine that suit more pastel in various colors AND best of all metallic.) This parentbetical side note was so long it deserved its own block quotation style thing.

I kid you not. Brett and I saw a group of people in metallic skin tight suites. But I'm going to let that one slide since it was the same weekend as the arts festival and I pray and hope that they were dressed up solely for the arts festival. NOTE!!!! I'm not calling any of these people listed freaks. I'm not calling them anything because that would not be politically correct, which I always am. But me... I am a freak. Okay this is difficult for me....

I LOVE NUMBERS

Go a head get me a shirt that says I heart *symbol not word* #'s! I've never so blatantly admitted before but I do, I love numbers. Now some of you may have known this already and if so you can applaud me for leaving my denial stage, I only have what 12 more steps?

So you must be wondering what finally brought on this realization. We'll it's been a few months/15 some odd years in the coming. I'm going to take 'the show you climactic confusing ending and then go back and show you the morbid events leading up to my horrific admission of guilt to number loving' approach.

So at work numbers are often used. While I do very little number manipulation (i.e math) I still use numbers daily, nay, hourly, nay minutely! (NO not secondly.) All samples that come to me are on what is called a Chain of Custody. And what do ya know, these chains are numbered! When I first started working the chain numbers were in the mid to upper 40,000 range. I have to include this chain number for every sample I run. I found joy when ever there was a pattern to the chain number. For example I enjoy chain 49909 because well... just look at all those 9's. Or perhaps 49876 because of the descending of the numbers. A few weeks back the chain numbers passed 50,000. I got chain 49998 and 50002 but I was saddened that I never saw chain 50000. Also samples themselves are often number depending on what type of sample it is. Many of the samples I've been running lately are given area numbers. Which are basically AREA####. I am tickled pink when there is a pattern in the area number. For example for quite a while I anticipated the sample AREA6666. Today I got to run the sample AREA6868 and tomorrow I'll likely to get to run a sample AREA6886. Every time I get twitterpated knowing that these patterns are awaiting me. Oh and I also enjoy when they numbers are fun to type on the key pad and the right of the key board. For example 50852 is all on the middle row. I know, you are thinking, wow she is crazy! And I will not deny it nor be offended if you tell me so. But this is how it all started.

My first number memory was a failure. In kindergarden I skipped fifteen. I don't know how this happened. I have nothing against fifteen. Actually I kind of like the number it is 3*5 (aka 3x5). But in my five year old mind the number was no where to be found. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17. Oh what the world would be missing out on if there was no 15. I would have gotten my license at who knows what age, polishing off a dozen donuts and then washing it down with three more would result in how many donuts consumes? infinity. What day would tomorrow be, today is the 14th. There would just be a black whole between 14 and 16 sucking everything into it. Not good, except maybe a black whole of donuts... mmm.

Well this was not the end of numbers for me. No 'mam, siree. I'm not quitter so I took numbers by the horns and learned 'em.

And oh boy did I learn 'em good. Within a few I was doing numbers for fun, long division and multiplication to be exact NO CALCULATOR! Yes you heard me! I did long division/multiplication for fun... Oh dear this is disturbing me. While I go deal with the fact that while other kids were getting high off of sugar cereal and playing four square I was doing long division... I need a moment before I can face this head on... I'm sorry I didn't think I'd get this emotional.

Okay I'm back. Actually I didn't have time to finish my post so I feigned tears and excused myself. But I'm back now. So back to my blissful numerical childhood days. So my mom has a wood shop and upstairs she had a chalkboard. I LOVED writing on chalkboards (still do actually). Now during this time my mom had hired one of her best friends/the mom of my best friend, Amy, to weave rush chair seats. Amy happened to do her work just outside the room where the chalkboard was. So I convinced her to play with my while she worked. So I brought her an old math textbook that was laying around the house, had her give me long division and multiplication problems to solve, and then she would check them on a calculator. NO JOKE! I found this fun. I know what you're thinking, NO! I don't still do this. This is not what Brett and I do on Friday nights. I think back to these math play times with Amy and think wow... I needed to get out and find friends my own age. True friends my own age probably would have beat me up and made me realize my sheer nerdiness. But a small part of me thinks... I want to write on a chalk board again.

I know you are all fearful right now that your kids will be as nerdy as I was but I want to reassure you this was the peak of my math/number loving days. The following anecdotes will not horrify you as the previous on did.

Now in sixth grade (which was still at the elementary school for us) I reached the epitome of cool. Two words people... Fraction fairy tales. So before each new seconds in math class we'd all take a pretest. If we got a high enough score on the pretest we would be allowed to go in the hallway during math and work on alternate assignments. Big surprise, I rarely had to sit through math class. One assignment we had was to write a fraction fairy tale. The basis of this assignment was to assign each character a simplified fraction. And then we wrote the fairy tale out. Every time the character's name was used a non-reduced fraction was used instead. Then when we presented the class had to reduce the fraction and decide which character went in the blank. Confuse? I'll illustrate.

1/2 Cinderella
3/4 Prince Charming
1/5 Fairy Godmother
Before the ball 50/100 didn't have anything to wear. Luck would have it that 20/40 had a 20/100 she didn't know about. 25/50's 2/10 arrived and magiced her a beautiful gown. After a reminder from her 8/40 to be home by midnight (curfews are a bummer huh?) 16/32 was off to the ball. At the ball 90/180
met 12/16 . They danced and talked all night. To 4/8's chagrin 15/20 had nothing beyond his good looks and kingdom so she was home by 10:00 and finished filling out her college applications. 150/300 went on to school and
although she never ruled a kingdom she found self satisfaction and married a
nerdy brainiac from the computer engineering department (those boys are
odd). (That is how The 2/4 story goes right?) (Please forgive math errors this was just to give you an idea of it.)(Oh and this story was written with no help from a calculator!)

See how much of a nerd I truely was. I've grown though, I've learned. I now know how to hide my affair with numbers rational and irrational alike. Because of this the last 8 years or so since sixth grade has not been marred by geeky outbursts of math fun. Although pi day is still a holiday for me I now keep my love for numbers deep down in the corner recesses of my heart.

So everyone. Congrats. The three of you are lucky. You know I'm a nerdite. But please keep this dirty little secret to yourself, please don't ruin my burgeoning social life. (Ha, ha This last part is a joke. I have no social life, just my husband. I like it that way though.)

Words of Wisdom

"Keep your mind in the middle

while your butt swings round and round."

-Garth Brooks The Fever

Those are my new words of wisdom I discovered on my drive home yesterday. While the song is talking about rodeo riding I think it applies to life. I know sometimes I feel like I'm being pulled in every direction at once and you just have to keep your mind centered. Plus the mental image is great. Serious! Close your eyes. Oh wait no don't close 'em yet! You have to keep reading. Okay when I say so close your eyes and imagine a Cartesian coordinate. Now imagine someone with their head at the origin on the circle (that's point (0,0)!). Finally, with their butt trace the equation y^2 + x^2 = 1 (we are assuming the length from the tip of the person's head to the bottom of their butt to be one 1 unit). Okay go ahead and close your eyes and imagine it now. Funny huh, wait no! Stop! Your not imagining it. WHAT!!!! You don't remember your high school geometry. What is this world coming to! Just kidding! If you didn't follow I just used a long and convoluted way to describe someone bent over, spinning their butt in a circle. But come on! Doesn't the math description sound so much more fun.

Any whoo let's move away from math to history... Wait no it would be herstory since its what I did this weekend! I know you're rolling on the floor in laughter.

Now that you are begging me to stop the maddness and tell you what I did this weekend...

So if you remember (or if you missed out read my last post) I told everyone I was pregnant as a total joke. Well I spent the whole weekend doing two things. 1) Pretending I was preggers. i.e eating for two! I had a bowl of ice cream every night! YUM. Double, nay triple YUM!. and 2) Worried I actually was. While I had no reason to think I was I've still heard enough "she was on the pill and ended up pregnant stories" to be scared. However I'm not scared enough to spend money to find out. God gives us a free preg test every 4 weeks or so... I'll wait for that.

So I was also taught my lesson on playing jokes like that. Joanie and Caroline you both got me in your comments. Joanie I believed you when you said you'd told Brett's mom. I had hoped you had also let on that it was a joke though. And Caroline I did believe you when you on a nine month journey. The one thing I'm still curious about is this. My oldest brother called me and left me a voicemail saying "Hey Margaret, I heard you are pregnant congrats!" And that was it. I never bothered to call back so I'm not sure if anyone clued him in that it was a joke. Oh well.

And for any of you (Yaz) looking for a recipe I've posted I moved them all here. Check it out. I've added a few and hopefully with in the week I'm going to add a divine alfredo sauce recipe.

Bun in the oven..

Hello friends... or just empty space which is the internet, I still have trouble believing people take interest in my blog. But, just in case the empy space has noticed my near two week absense from a post I will update. Actually I think empty space is smart enough to know that I started a post on Monday and could have read it even though it had been abandoned as saved draft. Do you even wonder where all this information one puts on a blog is stored? It's not saved on my computer, I can't access it when I don't have internet. Doesn't there have to be some concrete storage of the data. Is there a gaint building, or maybe an underground bunker, where all internet stuff is stored in tiny compartments? And everytime we get on the internet we connect with an extra terrestrial being ( no human being is smart enough to handle the job) who simply waits for our web site requests and then connects us to the compartment where that information is stored. For example everytime I click the perriwinkle-ish blue 'SAVE NOW' button at the bottom of the page more 'bites (or bytes)' are stored. (Okay I really don't know what a bite is, I think I heard through the rumor mill that it is a punch of zeros and ones (yeah any one gossips about computer stuff out side of the computer science cults).) (I try to be very careful of putting period inside or outside of parentheses). (OH NO! I think that last one should have been inside the parenthese because because it was an entire sentence.) (Better that time.) (This is a vicious downward spiral of parenthetical side notes. [I only used the word parenthetical to sound smart] But sometimes I like using brackets within parentheses because that is sometimes done in math. But them I worry that you will start inside the innermost parentheses (or brackets) and work your way out. Dang order of operations. Plus what is the plural of the word for these -->( )?? Parenthese or parentheses?) Oh dear I hope I closed all of my parenthese(s?). Well to say I have digressed would be an understatement. I don't remember what I was saying and I don't want to go back and read through my earlier rambling because I have been inspired -by another blog, more later- (I tried dashes to mix things up) to always be "keepin' it real on here". This means when I'm happy you will be bombarded by mispelled, because I think faster than I type,rambling. (Oh look commas replacing the parenthese(s?). I think it's called an apositive... Mr. Hatch?? It would be weird to find out my senior year high school english teacher reads my blog but if you are can I get a confirmation of what an apositive is. Oh and please ignore all the other gramatical lessons that, judging by my writing, I clearly missed) Oh darn I digresses again. But I've found myself now... I know you all missed me since my last post. So now to business.

I'M PREGNANT

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Just kidding... Ha ha ha ha... Oh boy I crack myself up. I'm really almost crying I'm laughing so hard imagining your reactions. Ha ha ha... tear... gasp. Okay but in all seriousness... No baby on board. My waistline and gut are expanding purely because of food... no incubating. Oh and please remake any phone calls to newspapers, radio/television stations, or anyone else and retract your exclamation that I'm pregnant now that you know I was just kidding. Oh an a warning I think I'm going to go the boy who cried wolf so you'll never know if my "I'm pregnant" announcement will always leave you wondering "Truth or Folly?" For a moment I just thought maybe I'll even get one of these baby countdown things on my blog and then I remembered those creep me out intenesly (please take no offense if you have one on your blog). There is a reason my stomach doesn't have a "see-in-side" portion and that is because the baby has not learned cuteness yet. (Betchya' did realize cuteness is a developable talent.. I practice every night!)

So you all wonder I'm not preggers then where have I been these last two weeks and why do I seem so darn happy today.

Second question first... I had 2 donoughts this morning (waistline expansion) and it was the healthiest part of my just got off the bus snack (we had a site wide safety meeting). I cleverly made the donoughts look healthy by washing them down with non-orange juice i.e Sunny D and then finished off with a unidentifiable juice called Capris Sun. Moral of this lesson donoughts --> still good. Fake "100% juice", "all natural" "fruit" juices --> only good for those with a less refined culinary taste.

So what have I been doing in my non gestating state. (I'm loving using words that probably don't actually fit in my sentences and hoping they mean what I think they do.) (Total side story. I was helping with a cross word at work (even though I'm usually a cross word hater). The clue was like lazy, relaxed (I think). They couldn't get word so I threw out the word languid. They were all pretty sure I had made the word up and I was wondering the same thing. But the word fit. Sure enough the cross word answers the next day confirmed I'm a genius! Let that be a lesson to you parents... make your kids read. But seriously I got the word from reading books, no spelling test contained the word languid.) To recap what this paragraph is actually about it's what I've been up to lately. I made a deliciouso pie. Mississippi Mud Pie to be exact. I went to a ski patrol function with my awesome mother and sister. Worked as usual. And last but not least fallen in love... with a blog.

Joanie thank you. My new found love is all thanks to you. I was innocently enjoying my sister-in-law's blog the other day (see link to left (unless I change my blog template then it will be on the right or delete my blog roll then your s-o-l)). Well she had just learned how to cut up pineapple from an illusive pioneer woman. (I actually looked up the definition of illusive, found that it didn't really fit context wise, but since it sounded good I left. Parents let this be a lesson to you... make sure your kids actually understands the words your force them to read so they can sound intelligent someday.) So I checked out the blog to see if I cut up pineapple the right way. (I'm close on the pineapple algorithm but not exact... I like my way better.) (By the way I just tried using links in my blog and am loving it.) So at first I thought nothing more of pioneer woman until during moments of sheer boredom I began exploring her blog more. First I fell in love with the story of her falling in love with her husband. And then got laughs and giggles out of her ranching stories. So check out her blog (caution some posts are not for the squeemish). Oh and i am also envious of her blogging and photography abilities.
So the answer to your ultimate question... Where have I been... Reading blogs not posting on them. (Now that I'm out of rambling I have to spell check.. scary.) (Acutally spell checking wasn't too bad but I still refuse to proof read. I'm keepin' it real, just like pioneer woman inspired me to, which means no proof reading for me... sorry)