Pity Party

Ha ha! I like that picture! I've been plugging along in a good mood for a while (it's hard to feel TOO sorry for yourself when you get to see the ocean every day...:)), but I think I'm finally to the point where I need to indulge in a pity party. Things I wish were different today:

I wish I weren't still experiencing this over-2-month-long headache.

I wish my sinuses didn't feel like they were exploding.

I wish Seth hadn't poured half a gallon of canola oil on the floor the other day, and that I weren't still finding slimy spots all over the house. (He was pretty cute, though, I have to admit! He found a measuring cup and was SO proud of himself to fill it with oil like when we bake things together....)

I wish the people who did that really passive-aggressively rude nasty thing hadn't done that really rude nasty thing. I really wish.... Or that it could maybe be taken back. But it can't. Oh well.

I wish I weren't on antibiotics again!

I wish my tooth hadn't been drilled into the other day, and that the new medicated filling didn't leak nasty stuff that makes me feel sick.

I wish the antibiotics didn't make me feel sick, too. Or maybe I'm just sick anyway! In which case, I wish I weren't sick. :)

I wish I had been able to sleep last night. And the night before!

I wish our plants weren't inexplicably dying! Sigh. (Not all of them, but enough to make me sad.... What am I doing wrong? I need a greener thumb! :))

I wish Seth hadn't puked this morning. And Matt wishes he hadn't puked the other night.... :)

I wish I hadn't banged my finger four times in the same hour, and right when I was trying to deal with the oil disaster! Hehe.

I wish Seth hadn't emptied out my nightstand while I showered this morning. (Once again...his cuteness is undeniable.... Hehe. Still a disaster, though.)

I wish Jordan could hang out with us today instead of being gone for so long.

I wish I were asleep right now. In fact, maybe I'll go try that....

Good night, y'all. :)

Terms I Hate

Today I had to go to the doctor. And they couldn't get me the CT scan right away so I had to make another appointment to go back. Also, I passed all of the funny neurological exams (now I see why Matt very nearly went into neurology—you get to play all sorts of funny games with people!) which was far less interesting than if I had gotten to see myself failing every now and then [whoa! Look at that! I can't tell if he's pushing my toe up or down! Whoa! I just said "moon" when he asked me to say "boat..."]. Now that would have been cool. Hehe. So, anyway... Boring visit. Another visit on the horizon. And, to add some icing to the cake, a long wait at the pharmacy.

But was that all the icing? No.... The worst was still ahead of me! Trying to get back to the freeway, I encountered some kind of tremendous mess. I inched my way through several blocks, only to be two cars—two!—behind the point where a police officer finally stopped traffic altogether and made the rest of us turn around. Urgh. I backtracked my way to a different freeway and took a long way home. What took 10 minutes on my way TO the doctor ended up being an hour back. Very frustrating. 

And then, in my very tired, very headachy, very hungry and frustrated and sad mood, I heard a term I hate, and it made me reflect on other terms I hate. Hehe. Now I'm home eating yummy homemade french-style flan (using yummy vanilla beans) with tremendously good cherries (some gourmet thing from Costco—they're amazing!) in a pistachio-hazelnut pastry crust (Matt, you're my hero. Again...! :)) and feeling like the only thing left to finish off this catharsis might be to share what I was musing about earlier today. :) These are some terms that make me feel like poor little Mickey here:

Cali • Ew. I used to only hear this at BYU (I never once heard it before I was 20...), but now it seems like there are wannabe-high-schoolers in other places as well who think saying "Cali" somehow makes them cool. California is *actually* cool. Not high-school style cool. So "Cali" really, really bugs me. It always makes me want to stop talking to the person who said it—I stopped hanging out with 15-year-olds a long time ago for a reason....

Reverse Racism • Um.... Are you kidding me?

Prego • I can't handle this one, either. I don't know. It's way, WAY too flippant for something so great. Or even for something that's just so crazy-intense! If someone had dared to call me "prego" while I was suffering through my pregnancy with Seth, I probably would have wanted to punch them in the face. Watch out, people! Hehe.

"At Altitude" • Living in Denver for four years, we got to hear this one all the time. Especially if Kobe came to town. Hehe. "It's just hard, cuz, we gotta play at altitude. But we just gotta execute...." :) But even true Denverites can't help but say it sometimes. The word is "elevation," Kobe! Denver IS a mile high, it's true. But, as far as I can tell, it's on the ground.... (Which doesn't mean you can say "at elevation," either, so help me!! Hehe. Maybe try "at a high elevation...." "An elevation of a whole freaking MILE!" Or, "a higher elevation than the pile of donuts I saw yo' momma eat!")

Trail of Tears • You may think I'm referring to, you know, the actual Trail of Tears. The one where countless Native Americans were forced to travel and die on. The one where they all caught disease and died and then died some more and then kept on dying. The one where just calling it a "Trail of Tears" hardly does its tragedy justice. But if you're LDS (or maybe even if you're not) you've probably heard some Mormons call the trail out of Nauvoo (where they left to go to Utah to finally be left alone...) "The Trail of Tears. . . ." . . . Uh. . . . That's not ok. . . . There's already a Trail of Tears. If someone wants to try to usurp the term (which is totally disrespectful in any case...), they should at least sort of have a similar tragedy. The Mormons suffered, no doubt—but nothing even in the same universe as the suffering on the Trail of Tears. It's an icky, icky thing for a Mormon to say. Let's stop saying it—please...?

"Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit" • Hehe. It's not the phrase I mind. (I guess I'm breaking away from the definition of "term" with this one....) But say "contrite" in another sentence. Or "contrition." Something like [go ahead, say it out loud!], "I was so horrible to throw that banana peel at my bus driver, and now I want to make amends because I feel so tremendously contrite!" Hehe. Now say..."broken heart and a contrite spirit." Did you say "contrite" the same way both times? AH-HAH! I bet you didn't! Everyone seems to know that the emphasis in the word "contrite" is on the second syllable unless they're saying "broken heart and contrite spirit," in which case they mystifyingly put the emphasis on the first. It's mind-boggling, really. Not actually something I hate—not something that makes me feel like Mickey up there—just something that I find mystifying. :) And while we're on the subject of pronunciation, there's no such thing as mischeevious. :) Just thought I'd throw that one out there.... :)

Ah.... I have more, but mischeevious cheered me enough to feel debriefed from my day. Well, at least enough to be ready to get more flan and maybe watch another episode of Lost. Ha! We're so addicted! I'm glad we didn't start watching this show until just now—in fact, I actually really resent that we discovered it this early. It's a highly painful show in terms of wanting the whole thing to be over already. But we're totally hooked! And will be until [gulp!] 2010! All because we started watching it now instead of two years from now.... Bummer. Those of you who haven't started watching and think you may sometime....WAIT! You'll be glad you did!

Potty Training

I remember when I used to think potty-training must be the greatest moment in a parent's life. No more diapers...?! Could I even begin to imagine the JOY...? I think I was always the first—and most enthusiastic—to congratulate a parent whose kid had triumphantly achieved that all-important milestone.

But that was before I actually had a baby and realized that diaper changing really isn't so bad. 

I remember watching my sister-in-law change her 2-year-old's diaper (or maybe he was 3...) when Seth was a baby. After months of changing diapers with little stinkless breastfeeding poo, this kid's diaper seemed totally disgusting and I thought, WHOA, I am SO going to want to potty-train Seth before he has diapers like THAT! Sick!

But the other day Seth asked to go to the bathroom in the toilet—just totally out of the blue—and I sat him there and he actually went. And an alarm went off in my head! Code Everything! Major Emergency! This kid might want to start (gasp!) using the toilet! Bring in the enforcements and stop this train wreck! 

I don't think I want Seth potty-trained! (Not ever. Hehe. Just kidding....) I can see it now.... We're in the car to Grandmother's house we go, and suddenly Seth starts complaining that he has to go to the bathroom.... ARGH! Or what if he has to go when we're hanging out at the beach, and I don't have Matt around to help, and all our sand toys are strewn about Coronado and the disgusting public bathroom is 500 walk-through-sand yards away...? What about when we're in line for Dumbo at Disneyland? What about when we're ON Dumbo at Disneyland...? What about when we're sitting outside Children's Hospital waiting for Matt to finish with that last patient of his who needs a little extra attention than Matt anticipated when he called to say he was on his last patient, and the real parking is a million dollars so we're sitting in the pick-up zone for half and hour, and the last thing I want to do is go park and walk a squirmy bladder-exploding kid into the hospital to find a bathroom...? 

How about the four-hour block I enjoy every single day when I'm not even THINKING about when he might go to the bathroom, or where the nearest bathroom is, or if there even IS a bathroom, or what I would do with all my stuff or all our plans or whatever else if we needed to find that mythical bathroom in a hurry...? My four hours of freedom! Freedom because of my friend, the diaper.... You rock, diaper. :)

Potty-training is not even remotely on my appealing-things radar screen. I love you, diapers. And Seth can love you, too! For a long time, I hope. :) This is one developmental milestone I'm not ready to help you with, yet.... :)

Theory of Relativity

I had a REALLY stupid professor one time (actually, most of my professors seemed to be lacking in the intelligence department—but this one really took the cake) who was supposed to be teaching us about "cognitive development." Sounded awesome to me. A nice, real science class—neuroscience-y to the extreme, I hoped—all about how exactly it is that people learn how to think. Awesome.

Not. What a joke! One of the most profound of his "lessons" was explaining how Einstein developed the ability to do a "thought experiment." Wow! A thought experiment! You could THINK THROUGH something instead of ACTUALLY doing it hands-on...? Where did Einstein come up with this stuff? Brilliant! The best quote of all my years in college came at the end of this mind-boggling (not in the way he meant...) lecture:

"And THAT'S what enabled Einstein to develop his Theory of Gravity. ... And how it's relative.... And, uh, so forth...."

HA HA HA HA!! I paid tuition for this, people. 

I've developed an only slightly better understanding of the theory of relativity (of gravity...) with gas prices. They've been so useful that way. Hehe. Yesterday we bought gas that was a whole dollar cheaper than only a month or two ago, and I thought to myself as we pulled up: "AWESOME!! Only $3.70!" I almost got of the car to do a savings celebration dance. 

Compare this to four years ago.... We lived here, in San Diego, and the gas by our house was almost always $1.81. For some reason, I actually remember that. And I also actually remember—because it was SO ridiculously traumatic—the time we were seriously running out of gas before we could get home and had no choice but to buy some downtown at $2.24 a gallon. I was fuming mad. I even surprised myself a little with how depressed I could get over spending $2.24 a gallon on gas—my bad mood lasted all evening. $2.24?! The INSANITY!! I couldn't believe we were getting ripped off so badly.

Fast-forward a year after that—now in Denver—as gas prices crept up to over two dollars all the time. I worked at an elementary school with a bunch of wannabe socialists—people who thought it was downright WRONG for gas to not be practically free, or for their credit card company to charge interest when they missed a payment. Huh? Whatever. They complained daily about the gas prices (they complained daily about everything, actually...:)) and by then I was thinking, dude. Calm down. The world is NOT going to end because you have to pay a little more for gas. Grow up. $2.24 a gallon—heck, $2.84 a gallon—just didn't bother me.

And it REALLY didn't bother me when we came back from Europe this year to gas that was over three dollars a gallon. Dude, let me tell you! I felt like we were getting the best deal in the world! In England, France and Italy, gas was routinely about $10 a gallon. We drove (and camped! It was AWESOME!!) all over Wales and England for 9 days, filling up every day and a half or so. Do you really want to know how much it cost to fill our tank...? I'll tell you. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. No joke. $200 to fill a tank of gas. (We also drove for a few days in France.... Every other aspect of our trip was impressively budgeted, which turned out to be REALLY good considering how much stinking money we spent on stinking "petrol.") To come back after a month and hear Americans complaining about $3 gas, heck, even $4 gas just made me sick. And every time we went to the gas station to fill up and it was only $50 or $60 or $70, I couldn't help but smile over how glad I was to not have to spend a lot to fill up our car. I also always wondered how long that feeling would last.... Hehe. How long would the memory of $10 gas keep stinging...? Stinging enough to feel overwhelmingly grateful for cheap $4 gas.... 

Well, I guess that question was answered when I started hyperventilating again over gas that got up to $4.70 a month or two ago. I guess a change in perspective can only last so long.... 

Theory of Relativity! Maybe Dr. X should incorporate this into his brilliant lecture.... :)

[However, I must add here that while I may hyperventilate, I do still retain the determination to not complain about it, as well as total disgust when people do. We're pretty lucky people here in the overabundance-of-luxuries department! Beyond lucky. And beyond overabundance-of-luxuries. So economy cynicism still makes me want to puke. Or spit. Or something. :) I only wish we could visit my parents an hour away for a little cheaper! But, there again...! Pretty insanely lucky. So I should even shut up about that. :)]

My New Life Ambition....

Before I die, I want to be able to do this:


If I believed pigs would ever fly, I'd also hope for this:

But pigs will never fly. And I'll never be super-human.

By the way, Seth is majorly impressed with this feat also. Anytime he sees this (and he asks to watch Michael Jackson about 100 times a day :)), he laughs and laughs, then tries to do it himself. Ha ha! His moonwalk, at least, isn't too bad! (For a white 2-year-old anyway.... :))

Recurring Dreams

Do very many of you have recurring dreams...? How long have you had them? Since childhood...? How many recurring dreams do you have? I have several, and I'm curious how typical that is. Some of them are funny and some are pretty nightmarish. The interesting thing about my recurring dreams is that, always, the setting is unique—it's like some other random dream will transform itself into a recurring dream. I'll be visiting a chemistry lab and then, bam! A big wave is going to crush me (big wave dream :)). Or I'll be marrying some chump who is totally different from all the other chumps I almost married in a dozen other dreams, wondering why I'm so sad about getting married and where my friend Matt is (the almost-not-married-to-Matt dream :)). So, another question: those of you who have recurring dreams, are the settings and stories always the same or always unique...?

These are my recurring dreams!

Big Wave Dream

I've been having this one since I was a little girl! It's actually very terrifying—some of the worst dreams I've ever had. It will always start out normally, but at some point I'll notice that a storm is building up (usually from the ocean but sometimes from a river, or a lake, or even a puddle...). As I try to find a way to get to someplace safe, a huge—and I mean HUGE, as in skyscraper tall—wave starts to build up. I always find some fence or something to cling to and I hold on for dear life, my back to the wave, not knowing exactly when it will crash, hoping I'll manage to keep holding on but knowing it's futile. I brace myself while this wave takes FOREVER to keep getting bigger and bigger. Is it going to crash...now? Now? NOW? The dream always ends right before the crash.... I've had this dream dozens and dozens of times! Never been able to figure out why....

Flying Dream

I put Mario on here because I'm pretty sure the way I can "fly" in my dreams is inspired by Mario Bros. 3. Ha ha! I sort of jump in the air, then keep pumping my legs to stay afloat. I can float up and up and up (to get stuff at the top of a Costco building for instance...hehe) or I can jump a great distance (like, over an entire city...) by pumping my legs at just the right moment. Ha! The funniest thing about this dream (another one I've had more times than I can count...) is that always, every single time, I question whether I can actually float like this or is this just a dream...? Because, you know Auburn, you keep telling yourself to remember that whenever you're flying it MUST be a dream—people can't really do this. But wait.... Is it real? I always debate it for about half the dream while reveling in my gift that no one else seems to have, and I always—ALWAYS!—come to the conclusion that . . . it just feels too natural for it not to be real! Hehe. I always conclude it's not a dream.

Almost Not Marrying Matt Dream

This dream started when Matt and I were dating and he left during Christmas break for a trip to Hawaii with his family—a trip where we wouldn't be able to contact each other. I had this vivid, real-feeling dream that for some reason that Matt didn't quite understand (I think his family somehow arranged it...), Matt got married to some random Hawaiian girl. He came back married and totally depressed—how had this happened? I was supposed to marry you! But, a man of his word, he was going to stay married even though he was totally miserable. Later, I went to give him some of his things back and the worst thing imaginable had happened: he had made peace with the situation and was enjoying married life! We talked for a few seconds like you'd talk to your mailman or something, and then he said good-bye and I left alone.... Alone forever...! Horrible, huh? Hehe. I had some variant of that dream a few more times before we got married. AFTER we got married, the dream changed to ME marrying someone else. It's always someone different—sometimes I actually know the person, sometimes I don't—and I'm always trying to pretend I'm happy when I'm actually totally horrified about getting married. I'll sit and think through it: "Why am I unhappy? Shouldn't marriage be fun? But I never want to be married—it's too scary! Wait.... I seem to remember a good friend.... It's coming to me.... Coming to me.... Matt! Wait! I'm MARRIED to Matt!" And then all my anxiety melts away and I realize I'm THRILLED about marriage. Hehe.

Forgetting to Go to Class and Now It's Too Late Dream

Sometimes I'm in college. Sometimes I had graduated from college but have to go BACK to high school to retake a class it turns out I had failed (talk about a nightmare!). Either way, I do NOT want to be in this class. It's usually an English class, but sometimes it's basic chemistry (as in, the stuff I learned in 7th grade...) or, rarely, an American History class. I get preoccupied with a variety of other things and decide, eh, I'm not going to go this week.... I'll make it up next week.... Over and over again...! Sometimes I'll show up to class but then I remember that I have seven or eight assignments that I haven't made up yet. I get totally anxious, red-faced and sweaty, and I sneak out of the class in shame, thinking I'll make them up right away and THEN go back to class without having to feel embarrassed. But then I put it off some more...! By the end of the dream I realize that the semester is nearly over and I never really went to class, and that there's no way to fix that situation. No teacher would ever be merciful enough.... So I give up and get depressed that I'll be stuck at BYU (or high school as an adult!) even longer.... Ugh.... And with a bad reputation, too.

I Can't Run or I Can't Talk (or Both...) Dreams

I'm trying to get somewhere. Fast. Or maybe someone is chasing me. And no matter how much energy I put into it, I just can't get anywhere! I feel like my legs weigh 4000 pounds! Sometimes I discover that if I run backwards I can make a little more progress—but I'm just so tired! And, if someone is chasing me, I'm so scared, too.... 

If someone IS chasing me and then inevitably catches me, or if I happen upon someone about to hurt someone else, or if someone is just plain being mean for the billionth time and I want to finally tell them off, it turns out that my throat is closing up and I can't get any words out. I try so hard! I swallow, breathe deeply, and try to speak slowly.... But I just keep suffocating on my own words. Sometimes these dreams seem to last all night long—me just trying to move or talk and never able to.

And then there's my most nightmarish dream: the I get shot or stabbed dream! Yikes! Always a different situation and, also, I'm never able to anticipate that I'm about to be shot or stabbed (not like the Big Wave Dream where I get a sense of impending doom before it happens...). It always totally shocks me when I feel the force just out of the blue. Once I was even shot by my best friend! Let's just say that, seriously, I feel like I know what it's like to be attacked and left to bleed to death. Ew. [shudder!] Matt thinks, when it comes to these, I have the worst dreams of anyone on the planet. Am I a disturbed soul? Hehe. And why all the recurring dreams? Can any one else relate...? :)

At least some of my recurring dreams are pretty funny. :) Any Freudians out there? Can you read my soul with these dreams of mine...?! That would be awesome! :)

Theory Debunked.

Ok.... So I went to see the dentist. My theory came as an epiphany that could solve all my problems—and it made so much sense! I have awesome teeth—never have to see a dentist—but a few years ago I got a freak cavity in my top back tooth from, he said, my tooth just being malformed. Some kind of freakish shape that made a cavity inevitable. Amazing that it took so long, actually.... Anyway, he had to obliterate a bunch of the tooth and put a little mold thingy on it when he did the filling. I walked away thinking, dude, I'm in trouble. This tooth has NOT had the last of its problems—not with a filling that was so weird and complicated, and had my very talented dentist sighing a lot under his breath. 

So last week, after months of the infernal headache, when I noticed that my filled tooth hurt up in my face, the light broke forth, the epiphany chorus started to play, and I said to myself AH-HA! That's it! An abscessed tooth! It made so much sense...! Of course that weird tooth has been dying over these past couple of years—we predicted it way back in the day. And a tooth abscess can cause really, really intense but unspecific pain. How had we not thought of this before? I called the dentist and resigned myself to the awful, horrible, creepy and disgusting reality that I'd need a root canal. Also that I probably wouldn't get that brain scan after all.... Hehe. But I tried to tell myself that at least I'd get ninja bacteria in my face OUT of my face and stop wanting to chop off my head all day.

Turns out I don't have an abscess. Shocking, but strangely relieving since I could die over the idea of getting a root canal and a crown (I'm wimpy, I know.... Pain is so much more tolerable to me than getting a creepy procedure.... ;)). The funny thing, though, is that they DID find a random extra tooth bud behind my back tooth! They scoured all my previous x-rays and couldn't find it. But there it is now, calcified and everything. Ha ha! The entire office stood around the monitor just to gape at it. Pretty unusual, I guess. :) He doesn't think it's the cause of my headache, though.

So, there it is. I have a part of an extra tooth in my gums. And no abscess. And I still get to get that picture of my brain.... :)

New Theory:

I think it's a tooth....

What a Surprise....

Big news: The drugs didn't work. So they want to get...

a picture of my brain. [Ooooooohhhh....]

I sure hope there's something in there.

I'm It.

Hillary tagged me—as you can see from this excellent illustration of said event. I'm glad it was so well documented. :) I don't always respond to tags, but since I have nothing else to do at the moment, and because I love Hillary, and because I couldn't escape the above evidence of being "It," here I go...!

1. What are your names? Lately we've been going by Burns and Ramòn. We're trying to be more intimidating. ;) (Ok.... We're Auburn and Matt. And Seth. Whose alter-ego is so far nameless.... :))
2. Who eats more? Just the other day I was wondering again how it is that after one of us makes dinner, the portions get split evenly between the two of us. Matt weighs 50% more than I do! Shouldn't he get at least a little bit more? Hehe. But both of us can pack it down when we feel like it. Especially Korean food for him, or medium-rare filet mignon with french onion soup for me.... And a Sinful Sundae.... Mmm.... Outback....:)
3. Who said I love you first? Matt did . . . while I was still wondering when he was going to kiss me! Ha ha! His bravery with that one kind of surprised.... :)
4. Who is taller? Matt is six feet tall, I'm 5'4". When I was 11 and 5'4" everyone still thought I'd grow up to be a tree (I had always been super-tall as a kid!). Obviously we were all wrong. Hehe. (I actually really enjoy being small, though—it's fun to be able to fit anywhere! And I'm somehow still buff—some kind of genetic anomaly—so it's all good. :))
5. Who is smarter? Haha! The most intelligent person we know, Chris Fletcher, once said to me: "Auburn! You amaze me! If there were ANYONE—ever!—who was the SMARTEST, most INTELLIGENT, most GENIUS person who had ever lived, IT . . . would be Matt. BUT! If there were a runner-up! What can one say but, Auburn...? Auburn...." Ha ha! (I have lots of Chris quotes we just can't forget. You're awesome, friend!) He said this in reference to me just packing a trunk efficiently, so...you know.... None of it's actually true. Hehe. But, really, Matt and I enjoy that neither of us feels smarter than the other, and that we also have a few different strengths to draw from one another. I have to say, though, that as genius as Matt is, when we took IQ tests together just for the fun of it, I scored a whole 5 points higher! Haha! 
6. Who is more sensitive? Matt's an INTP. This automatically makes me more sensitive. Hehe.
7. Who does laundry? Six years of marriage and I only just recently found out, during a game of Whoonu, that Matt loves doing laundry more than almost anything else printed on a Whoonu card. :) Which finally answers the question why I hardly ever have to do it. (I'm glad it's not that I'm a loser.... :))
8. Who sleeps on the right side? When we got married, Matt negotiated for his preferred side of the bed. A few nights later.... "Uh, Auburn...? Can we switch?" Ha! Then only a couple weeks later...! "Auburn, you're gonna laugh.... Can we switch again?" Ha ha! But we've been pretty established with Matt on my right for a while now. Is it possible that ANYONE cares about that...?
9. Who pays the bills? Matt. I hate looking at finances—always have. I realize I need to get over this someday, but I think I'll wait on it a little more.... :)
10. Who cooks more? Ok, ok! I confess! He does the laundry AND...[I hide my face in shame]...he does the cooking, too! Unlike laundry, though, I've always known he loves to cook. He's pretty gourmet! And never, ever with a recipe.... 
11. What meals do you cook together? None since Seth came along! We used to cook together fairly often, though. Actually, I guess we still cook holiday meals together sometimes. We love to go all-out with something unexpected and gourmet for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.
12. Who is more stubborn? When one of us admits to it, I'll let you know.... ;)
13. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? About what? A fact? In that case, the person who was proved wrong. Hehe. Otherwise, it's Matt. If I'm stubborn enough to stick by my idea even if he disagrees, it'll always turn out that I was right. Ha ha! Just wait for it.... Wait for it.... 
14. Who has more siblings? Matt has, like...a million siblings. Well, ok, "only" five. Hehe. :) But he's fourth of six which is a heck of a difference from me being first of four. When we got married, two of his siblings were married already, bringing the total "kids" in his family to nine—NINE!—and on my side, two of my three brothers were on missions (one of them had been gone a year and one left just after we got married...) making it just me and Matt and Jordan when the family was together.... That felt like a huge, HUGE difference! Still does, actually, even though my family is getting pretty huge itself....
15. Who wears the pants in the family? We both prefer shorts, actually. With flip-flops. And besides, Seth is too dominant a force for us to even THINK about wearing the family pants.... :)
16. What do you like to do together? Everything! There's no hobby either of us has that we'd rather do alone. Girls' or Guys' nights out...? No way. Hehe. (Luckily, our friends tend to like being with both of us together, too. We don't torture them with a tag-along. :)) We love to be outside doing just about anything pleasant—walking, hiking, strolling around Disneyland or Sea World, snow skiing, having a picnic, watching an ocean sunset.... We both love to read, too, but that's not so easy to do when we'd rather be talking. We definitely don't get to as many books anymore....
17. Who eats more sweets? Matt will eat more in one sitting (you should see him with a bucket of licorice!) but I crave junk food more often. Actually, several times a day.... Usually baked goods. And dark chocolate....
18. Guilty pleasures? Matt always feels guilty anytime he voluntarily eats a hot dog. Ha ha! I feel guilty watching an American Idol episode a second time. Or a third.... So stupid.
19. How did you meet? I was hanging out in the dorm lobby with none other than...Hillary! (My tagger makes an appearance in the tag...! :)) And someone needed to ask me about something, and that someone was hanging out with Matt and Chris who started to chat with me. We kind of ended up just the three of us, talking and laughing about everything from Anne of Green Gables and silly Jane Austen to Dawn Upshaw, food, music and whatever else. I went upstairs and wrote a friend that I had just met the funnest guys EVER, and that I really hoped I'd get a chance to talk to them again sometime. Ha ha! I honestly thought (feared is a better word) it was possible I might not! Hahaha! (Little did I know that Matt had already fallen in love with me! Through the next couple of weeks he devised lots of fun chances to talk to me when I least expected it...! The rest is history.)
20. Who asked out who first? We had gone on a million dates when I finally broke the ice and insisted he start calling them that. Hehe. Everyone was calling us an item but us. Ha ha! (The funny things about dating after being best friends first are totally worth it, I swear! :))
21. Who kissed who first? Well, since I was the one who first admitted we were dating, I refused to be the one to make the first kiss move. :)
22. Who proposed? Matt accused me of proposing when, while talking about how we were going to get married someday, I said, "hey, Matt?!! How 'bout we get married?!!" He wouldn't let me live it down. But he proposed for real (and before we set a wedding date, I'm happy to say! So it was really a for-real proposal :)) on a fun hike and picnic in the mountains.
23. What are your best features? Like we really care about you all taking note of them.... Ha! We're not that superficial. 
24. What is your best quality? Matt's generosity of heart and thought. My reasonableness. :)

I tag . . . that guy running away in that picture up there! :) You KNOW who you ARE! You may have escaped Hillary, but you can't escape ME. Muwahahahahaha!!

So Much Recycling!

Now that we have our own trash cans that come and get picked up, we've realized something amazing: we don't have very much trash! I had no idea. The funny thing is that while they pick up trash every week, they only pick up the recycling bin every other week. We really would be better off it were the other way around! 

Here's our recycling bin this week:

And here's our trash bin in the same period of time (we forgot to set it out for pick-up last week...):

If that old broom hadn't broken, there would just be enough diapers to cover the bottom of the bin. And I figure our trash to recycling ratio can't be so different from everyone else's, right...? Anyway, my waste-print on the Earth isn't quite as bad as I thought.... Hehe. And everything's recyclable! Who knew?

I apologize for the ugly picture of trash. ;)

Infernal Headache P.S.

P.S. It turns out my skepticism is unfounded. Apparently sinus and ear bacterial infections are frequently caused by an initial viral infection. Also, if the bacteria is in the frontal sinus (where, admittedly, my pain seems to originate a lot of the time) there would be no snot issue. Just to let you know.... I guess this is my humble retraction. (Not that the drugs are helping. We'll see...!)

Also, Matt says I misquoted him—that he didn't say there's "no risk," just that the risk isn't that significant when the reaction to that specific antibiotic was a rash. Big difference he says. Therefore, another retraction.... Hehe. (My initial point still stands that he would have given me amoxicillin! :))