Swimming

Memorial Day is one of my favorite holidays for one very specific reason: it is the day that most swimming pools open.

I'm not lucky enough to have a pool of my own, so I have to depend on community pools. Every summer when I was growing up, we went on a family vacation. I didn't care where we went or what we did, as long as we stayed at a hotel with a swimming pool. There was one summer during college that I went swimming every single day.

My husband thinks I'm crazy because I love swimming so much. I have to force him to go with me and he can't handle swimming longer than an hour. We made a deal that, someday, if I get a swimming pool with a dunk tank, he can get a motorcycle. I think motorcycles are stupid, but if I have a pool, I don't care.

I am so looking forward to this weekend so I can grab my Aqua Skimmer and my flip-flops and find a pool!

Sudoku

We have a ward newsletter that we get during church once a month. There's always a Sudoku puzzle in it, which really isn't a good idea because I think 97% of the boys in my ward spend Sunday School doing the puzzle. (My husband is included in that 97%).

I've never been a fan of video games because, to put it nicely, I think they make you stupid. However, I think Sudoku is great. I know that some people would argue there is no difference between an Electronic Sudoku Game and video games, but those people are wrong. There is a difference.

Sudoku makes you smarter because you actually have to use your brain to figure out what numbers go where. I will admit that it can be addictive and waste a lot of time, but at least it's time spent using your brain.

Right? Right.

And So It Begins...

With the exception of hairy spiders, I've never really been afraid of bugs/little things that crawl or fly. That is, I've never really been afraid of bugs/little things that crawl or fly up until two years ago.

Two years ago I discovered a bug that makes me want to vomit every time I see one. And unfortunatly, I see one at least every other day during the months of May-October. This morning I had my first encounter of the year.

I live in an apartment that is quite nice by married housing standards in the college town I live in. When I first got married and snagged this apartment, I was so excited and I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get such a nice apartment for such a great deal. And then a few days after I moved in, I realized that I really was not so lucky because there are Satan bugs (AKA house centipedes) that call my beautiful apartment their home.

I wouldn't mind so much if the Satan bugs wanted to crawl across the floor every once in a while, but crawling across the floor isn't good enough for them. They have to crawl around my dishwasher and do who-knows-what all over my newly cleaned dishes and they have to crawl all around my towels in the bathroom and hide in the folds until I get out of the shower and discover them crawling up my arm. Being a slow, little Satan bug isn't good enough for them either. Instead, they have to be two inches long and super fast. They're disgusting and even my manly husband who isn't afraid of anything freaks out when he sees one.

I believe that every person who lives in or gets near my apartment should be armed with a durable flyswatter or a water gun filled with poison.

I Hope I Wasn't Abducted By Aliens

One summer, when I was in middle school, I went camping for a few days and when I came home, I was looking in the mirror at myself and I knew there was something really weird about my face. I couldn't quite place my finger on it, but there was something abnormal about the way I looked. (Before my brothers leave a bunch of rude comments, I'm talking about there being something different than the way I usually looked, not just that my face in general is weird; I'm much more attractive than all five of you).

After staring at myself for like 10 minutes, I finally gave up on figuring out what it was that was weird and started to walk away. Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced back in the mirror and I realized that my forehead was sticking out an inch. That is no exaggeration; my forehead was seriously sticking out an inch. I looked like some weird alien person on Star Trek.

I freaked out and was positive that I was dying a very slow, soon-to-be painful, death, until my mom assured me that it was probably some weird, hopefully non-permenant, reaction to a bug bite. My little brother was sure that I had somehow been abducted by aliens and the thing in my forehead was an alien's baby.

I could make this story very long and dramatic, but to make it a little shorter, whatever it was that was in my forehead slowly moved down my face (making me look several different ethnicities) and was gone after two weeks.

I still have no idea what bit me or if I was actually abducted by aliens, but next time I go camping, I'm taking a stellar outdoor survival kit.

It's Sad, But True

I've been thinking a lot about this and I've come to a conclusion:

I think I like dogs better than people.

Of course there are certain people that I would choose over a dog like my husband, my family, my good friends and the prophet, but I really think that, in general, I prefer dogs to humans.

These are just a few reasons why:

1. A lot of times when I'm out somewhere, I see people from a distance (some that I know and some that I've never seen before) and I try as hard as I possibly can to avoid them. But when I see a dog from a distance, I will go through any obstacle I have to go through to see the dog and to say hi to it.

2. Dogs love me. Pretty much every time I even look at a baby, it starts crying. But when I go up to a dog, 99% of the time, their tail starts wagging and they want to jump on me and lick me.

3. There are a decent amount of people that scare me, but besides the evil, possessed Dobermans that lived next door to me most of my childhood, I have never been afraid of a dog.

4. I have lived with many, many people and I am totally disgusted when someone leaves their hair in the drain or doesn't cover their mouth when they cough or sneeze. But when my dog sheds his hair all over every piece of clothing I own and slobbers on me, I don't mind at all.

5. When I see someone out walking their dog or when I go to their house, even when it's someone I know and like, I would way rather hang out with the dog than the owner of the dog.

6. I've actually been really good about this the last couple years, but sometimes I forget people's birthdays until a day or two after their birthday has passed. But I spend weeks planning what I'm going to buy or make my dog for his birthday. I'm pretty sure the only reason I remember my brother's birthday is because it's the same day as my dogs'.

7. I spend way more time thinking about my future dog than my future children.

8. Deciding who to marry was pretty easy, but trying to decide if I should get a Mastiff or a Black Lab first has caused huge levels of stress for me.

Things That Cause Stress

There are two kinds of people in this world that I really don't enjoy:

1. People who work for the United States Postal Service.
2. People who stop or go really slow on the freeway just to look at an accident.

Both of these kinds of people cause great stress and mental anguish for nice, good, innocent people, like myself.

Yesterday, I was expecting a package from Amazon.com (the fact that Amazon sends things by mail instead of UPS is their one HUGE downfall). I tracked the package and saw that the mailman (who is new and very incompetent) had "supposedly" tried to find my apartment and had decided that my apartment didn't exist, so he sent the package back to Amazon.

I have had packages delivered to me dozens of times before and I was a bit confused as to how if there are just letters and paper mail for me, my address does exist, but if there is a package with the exact same address that is on all my mail, somehow my address doesn't exist.

So, I called the post office and told them the situation and told them exactly what the tracking number on my Amazon.com account said and the guy at the post office said to me, "I don't know where you are getting this information from. I think you're making it up." So, I proceeded to tell him that I don't appreciate him calling me a liar and I think he's a jerk. He told me he couldn't help me with anything and that I should stop making up stories.

I left an unkind note in my mailbox this morning that I'm hoping will make my mailman feel stupid, but since it's a requirement that in order to work for USPS you have to be a horrible person, he'll probably laugh and put all my mail in different mailboxes.

And people who stop to look at accidents and cause stop-and-go traffic are just annoying. Most of them probably work for the United States Postal Service.

The Sleep Cycle

Most nights it takes me a decent amount of time to fall asleep. My husband gets frustrated with me because since I can't sleep, I get bored and I think he should stay awake to keep me company. Then I get frustrated because he falls asleep while I'm in the middle of telling him a story. So I get mad and I wake him up and he gets mad, not because I woke him up, but because I'm mad and he thinks that because I'm mad, it will take an even longer time for me to fall asleep. Then, while he starts listing off all the reasons that it's important for me to calm down and go to sleep, he falls asleep and the cycle starts all over again. Sometime, in the middle of all the drama, I fall asleep and everyone wakes up happy.

I've tried a lot of things to help me fall asleep faster like a sleep mask, a CD with calm music, and a more comfortable pillow. Once, I even resorted to taking an herbal sleep medication, which is something I will never do again and the story about the time I took an herbal sleep medication is a story my little brother told me I shouldn't tell people, so I won't on this blog.

I always come close to falling asleep when someone talks to me about mutual funds, stocks, physics or Lost, so maybe I'll have my husband tell me a story about how during a conversation about physics, all the characters on Lost decided to put all their money in to stocks and mutual funds. Then I'll sleep like a baby.

Why I Love The Nickelcade

Even though I really, really, really hate video games, I love going to the Nickelcade. The reason I love going to the Nickelcade is because they have two things there that I love: Dance Dance Revolution and Air Hockey.

If anyone has ever met me, they know that dancing is not one of my talents and that coordination is something I lack. (My husband once told me that I remind him of Elaine on Seinfeld, who is known for her less than stellar dance moves). Provo is a place where "dance parties" are abundant and after attending several of these dance parties because there isn't a whole lot else to do in Provo, I came to the realization that most people look really stupid when they dance and dancing in general is pretty stupid, so why not enjoy it? Now I LOVE Dance Dance Revolution and since my little brother has his own DDR set, I can even convince my husband to do it with me every once in a while.

While dancing is not on my list of talents, Air Hockey is at the top of my list of talents. I usually downplay the few talents I have, but I am so good at Air Hockey that there really is no point in just saying I'm decent or pretty good. I'm awesome. I rock. I'm like the Michael Jordan of Air Hockey. My husband thinks he's beat me a few times, but the truth is that I let him win. His ego is bruised when he gets beat by a girl, so for the sake of our marriage, I throw a game every once in a while. I really am that good.

I Love Wheat

In the last couple of years I have become almost obsessed with all things wheat. I LOVE wheat bread, wheat pasta and wheat tortillas. I even found wheat stuffing a couple months ago. All I need is wheat Premium salt crackers and I'll be set for life.

About five months ago, I got sick of all the bread at the store and I decided to make my own wheat bread. I found a really good recipe on the internet that called for things they don't sell at the grocery store, so I forced myself to go to the scary weird health food store, which was definitely an interesting experience. I wasn't sure if wheat gluten was the same as gluten flour, so I asked someone at the customer service desk. The girl at the desk actually said to me, "I don't have authority to answer that question. Let me call one of our Nature Specialists to help you." Then this girl, who if I wasn't in Provo I would really have thought was high, came over. She was wearing a bandanna and crocs and no make-up and she was definitely special. After some spiel about how great her knowledge of nature and health is, I asked her if wheat gluten is the same thing as gluten flour. She stared at me for about a minute straight and finally said, "I don't know." Then she walked off.

(In case you're wondering, I went home and did my own research and wheat gluten is the same thing as gluten flour).

Now I make homemade bread twice a month and when I have to go back to the health food store, I know exactly what I need, so I don't have to talk to any wacky Nature Specialists, who apparently know nothing about nature or health anyway.