Baby, It's Cold Outside

Our first Christmas season as a married couple has so far been a little on the anti-climactic side. Not to say it hasn't been nice, because it has. I don't know exactly what I was expecting- picking out a Christmas tree in a romantic montage with a great backing soundtrack, decorating it with the help of birds and our other little forest friends while singing a perfectly executed duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," playful snowball fights that induce passersby to throw up in their mouth just a little by our nauseating couple-y cuteness. Well, other than it being the south and not having gotten much colder than 50 degrees outside, I thought they were fairly attainable dreams. Ha.

So far it has been mainly the heartbreaking realization that while the people around me (including Mark) are winding down with finals and looking forward to the prospect of a whole month's break, the real world isn't split into semesters and if I want to have any kind of Christmas vacation I get to take unpaid time off. Woo.

We did have a nice time going to pick out a tree. I am ashamed to say that we did something that I have frowned upon and judged others for doing as far back as I can remember: we got our tree before Thanksgiving. We justified it by saying that since we were going on our trip to see Mark's family the week before Christmas, we wanted to have as much time with it as possible to get maximum bang for the buck. I hardly think I am on the same level as department stores and places like Hobby Lobby, who were fully stocked and pushing Christmas merchandise as I was running around getting last minute wedding things in July. I mean really, that is just blasphemous. But whatever way you look at it, we committed a serious holiday grievance and I can only hope that the Christmas gods will be understanding and one day forgive me.

The only snafu we hit was during the decorating process. We each had a few ornaments from our trees back home, and grabbed some gold ball ornaments from the dollar store (we keeps it real) to fill the rest of the space. We got the tree home and lit while Mark serenaded me, singing "Christmas balls! Christmas balls! I've got great big Christmas balls! Wrap them up like Santa Claus, I've got Christmas balls!"

Lovely.

I took a break and went back to our room to return a call from my granny that I was unable to answer as we were making about the 16th attempt at getting the tree straight in the stand. She and I got talking for a bit, and when I walked back out into the living room I came to a halt as I stood before a fully-balled tree.

"You..." I said breathlessly. "You decorated without me?"

"Just the ball ornaments!" Mark said cheerily before taking in the look on my face. "I got finished with the dishes, so I went ahead and did the boring ornaments too... are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said gruffly. "I'll be right back."

I then went into the bathroom and started bawling. My husband, God bless him, can be completely oblivious sometimes. My family is all about sentiment and tradition, to the point where we are some of the biggest cheeseballs you will ever meet. Mark completely didn't realize how badly he hurt my feelings by decorating our first Christmas tree without me.

Fast forward to a few hours and nasty little fight later during which I fully brought the dramatics, making a case about how this instance was just one in a series of instances that were indicative of a larger problem with the way Mark does things (blame me having a lawyer as a dad- always trying to make my case beyond a reasonable doubt). It was not one of the prouder moments of our fledgling marriage. Finally, exhausted, we chalked it up to having always done the holidays completely differently in each of our families. Neither of them were bad or wrong. They were just different. We each just needed to be more understanding of that and patient with the other one while we adjust.

When all was said and done, the tree is rocking and our apartment is all decked out and fab. Mark even surprised me yesterday by putting up a bunch of blue icicle lights in our room. It is not quite at the point where my family's house in Canton is, which looks like Christmas itself came in and vomited joy and magic all over the place. (Mom is on Christmas crack. No joke. Another rare but addicting drug- decorating your entire house with Santas, snowmen, pictures, lights- anything cheerful you can get your hands on. An intervention has been staged.) But it is hopefully the start of our own little tradition, which is still going to be great.

And we also dressed Grover up like Santa. I sat him on my lap and told him that my one wish was for him to stop waking me up every morning at 7:00 by pawing at my face.

Texting and Blogging with Molly

Well, Mark and I successfully made it through our first big holiday of married life, handling it very diplomatically by spending two nights and each of our parents' houses. And my family actually made (most of) the Thanksgiving meal, which anyone who knows the Johnsons knows that is truly a sight to behold. For some reason, the cooking gene skipped my mom and ever since I can remember, she has simply not been interested in being one of those dash-of-this-dash-of-that, Food Network-watching, new recipe-trying kind of people. We have probably been to every restaurant within a 25-mile radius of our house. Whenever there's a new pizzeria opens, we'll be there. Whenever there's a new Chinese joint, we'll be there. Whenever there's a grand opening of a sandwich cafe- well you get the idea.

So this was a far cry from our normal routine of escaping down to Gulf Shores Beach, Alabama in order to avoid having to cook. Our desperation to dodge home-cooked meal-making transcends state borders. It is truly sad. But really, who can pass up the opportunity to have Mahi Mahi and turkey in the same meal? Nonetheless, it turned out pretty well, and I contributed macaroni and cheese that I made from scratch right down to the cheese sauce. I kicked Kraft's ass and I kicked it hard. I twisted Cheesasaurus' little mascot arm until he cried uncle. It was fantastic.

Another thing I love about being home is getting be around a dog. My cats, though slightly annoying at times as we all know, are my darlings. But my dog growing up was one of my BFFs, and when she died in February it devastated our whole family. Right after our wedding, my parents and Kate got a new dog named Molly. She is a stocky flat-coated retriever mix, which basically means she looks like a Golden Retriever that got dipped into black ink. She is extremely sweet and definitely has her quirks, one of which being the fact that she settles for no less than two walks per day. While our old dog became a nervous wreck at the mere sight of a leash, you mention something about a walk and Molly goes nuts, leaping in the air with such a great vertical that Shaq would even be jealous.

And then there is her other major quirk: she only goes to the bathroom while on her walks. She never wants to be let out to go in the yard, and if you try to go out with her she just sits and stares at you until you give up and take her inside. While out on her walks, she also feels the need to stop and sniff everything, peeing in about a dozen spots along the way. Molly also uses this time to have a little, uh, "extended personal time," if you know what I mean. So Mom and Dad load down with a plastic bag and butt inspection gloves every time they walk her, and often make fun of each other about who had the misfortune of having to take care of Molly's little souvenirs.

The first night I was home for Thanksgiving, Mom came home with Molly from their evening. When Dad asked how things went, she said, "Well, Molly did some texting and some blogging tonight."

Kate and I looked at each other, confused.

"What do you mean she 'texted and blogged'?" I asked.

"Well, we decided that when she pees in all those places during her walk, it is like her equivalent to texting with other dogs," mom said merrily.

"And blogging is just what we say when she poops," Dad said frankly.

"Let me see if I get this straight," I said slowly, completely affronted. "You are using the term blogging to refer to dog feces? Which would therefore mean you are equivocating my blog to poo?"

"Hmm, I didn't think of it that way," Dad replied with a smirk.

"It's not funny!" I retorted, trying to look pains and not crack a smile, because let's face it. It was kind of funny. "What. The. HELL?"

So now I have to come up with a completely new name for this because I inevitably keep thinking about poop every time someone asks me about my blog. I mean, how hard can it be to change the name of a long-standing and well-respected form of internet communication? Oh, who am I kidding? Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your twisted sense of humor. I hope Molly wrote you a nice big blog tonight. ;)

I Got Here As Fast I Could!

I really freakin' hate Mondays. Nothing good ever seems to happen on Mondays. In fact, my experience dictates that Mondays go out of their way to serve up a healthy dose of sadness and despair, and sometimes are feeling a little more aggressive and administer a nice Monday Morning Ass Whooping. Last Monday, I got my ass whooped: I got my first speeding ticket.

I had to make a trip to a nearby town first thing in the morning to visit a car dealership for my ad sales job. We all know how much I loooove car salesmen (ha) and trying to sell an advertising to a salesman is tricky. It's a total game of who can make the biggest power play (ultimately it is me, as I am the one who has boobs) and on a Monday morning I was certainly not bringing my A-game. I was driving down the road, busy feeling sorry for myself and dreading going to the second car dealership, when I came around a bend and saw a cop car in a parking lot on my side of the road.

It was one of those moments where you just instantly know you are screwed. He didn't waste any time whipping out behind me and turning on those dreaded flashing blues. As I pulled over, the first thought I had that didn't contain a large string of expletives was, "Ohmigod, you have to start crying." I proceeded to think of everything sad that I could, but nothing. I watched a middle-aged cop get out of his car, hike up his pants, and saunter over to me.

I had always imagined what I would do if I got pulled over for speeding. One option was to blame it on female issues in the hopes of making the cop so uncomfortable that he just had to let me go on my merry way. The other front runner idea was to blame the high speed on trying to get to a restroom due to digestive issues. It would take a pretty heartless person to not sympathize with that, right?

But nope. I completely choked. He went through the standard procedure of spending an absurd amount of time asking me stupid questions and taking my license back to his squad car to spend as long as possible sitting there with his lights on so that everyone passing by knows that he means business. After waiting for what felt like a million humiliating years, he strolled back up to my window with ticket in hand.

And I burst into tears.

I could tell Officer Monday Morning Ass-Wooping was totally thrown as he came back to someone he had left fairly composed now blubbering like a headcase. He explained the ticket to me as I thought to myself, "Dammit, tears! You couldn't appear just a little earlier? Fat load of help to me now, you bastards."

As he handed me that cursed piece of paper, he gave me this awkward look and asked, "Are you okay, m'am? Are you experiencing some sort of personal crisis?"

I looked at him blankly, biting my tongue as to not say, "OF COURSE I AM EXPERIENCING A PERSONAL CRISIS! YOU ARE GIVING ME A SPEEDING TICKET YOU IMBECILE!"

But I just shook my head and he peaced out pretty quickly. And fittingly, now that the waterworks started there was no turning it off. I pulled into a gas station parking lot to cry and sulk, then thought I had reached a point where I could call my dad.

"Dad, you are going to kill me," I said before bursting into tears again. (Really, the female issues thing may not have been too far from the truth.) Luckily he wasn't too angry, as he pointed out that now that I was married I got to pay my own fine. Fantastic.

Fast forward to Saturday, when I visited Canton and was riding in the car with my parents while ironically enough discussing my speeding ticket debacle.

"You know what I should have done?" I joked. "I should have just let him walk up and been like, 'I am sorry officer- I got here as fast I could!"

Not five minutes later, we turn a corner to a cop car just waiting to catch some prey.

"Oh, dad," I said as the cop pulled behind us with his lights on. My dad let loose of several of the expletives I had gotten to know so intimately just a few days beforehand as he pulled into a parking lot. Apparently it was the PoPo's lucky day because we were not alone- he had somehow managed to pull two cars over. He walked up to our car.

"Sir, do you know what the speeding limit is on this road?" he asked.

"Thought it was forty-five," my dad said defensively.

"No, sir, it is thirty-five miles per hour. Even if it were forty-five, you were still speeding."

I wasn't sure what move my dad was going to make- profuse apology? Disbelief? But he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sorry!"

"Oh, man," I said as the cop visited his other catch. "You are in trouble now. Now what were we talking about? Safe driving?"

Too soon. Dad was not amused.

We waited that everlong period of time while the cop does whatever he does, and finally he approached again.

"Sir, today I am going to let you off with a warning, but pay attention from now on," the officer said. My jaw dropped. After my dad made a little we're-totally-cool-now-because-you-didn't-give-me-a-ticket small talk, we finally continued on our way.

"What the hell?!" I said angrily. "How is that even fair? I can't believe you got off with a warning after totally giving him 'tude!"

"Well, I, unlike you, have not had a speeding ticket since 1984 and am not twenty-two," my dad said, spirits considerably lifted from a few minutes beforehand."Good day, isn't it?"

Hmph.

But It Means We're Passionate!

Last Wednesday was Mark's birthday. Because he is a few years older than me, during our relationship I tried to take every opportunity that I could to remind him that he was almost 25, which was halfway to 50, which was almost dead. Well, this birthday he actually turned 25 and I woke him up with a card expressing that I certainly was not going to remind him of his proximity to being an old geezer. I'm nice like that.

When I got to work, I hopped on the computer and of course the stalker feed had a list of all the people who had wished Mark happy birthday on Facebook. Now, recently Mark and I went to see The Social Network at the movie theater, which is basically the story of how the guy that started Facebook is the biggest asshat in the world and we should be ashamed of ourselves for making him a gazillionaire. Or at least that is what I got out of it. Also that Justin Timberlake is still extremely good-looking. So the fact that movie isn't enough to make me give up Facebook Crack (Oh, yes. Diet Coke is just a gateway drug compared to Facebook Crack.) makes me squirm a little on the inside every time I log on.

But that morning, I automatically typed in my obligatory "Happy Birthday, Husband of Mine!" message on Mark's wall, hit send, and froze. I already saw Mark earlier in the morning and wished him a happy birthday. And I was going to see him that night to celebrate his birthday with him. He was already very much aware that I acknowledged his birthday and subsequently wished him good tidings...so why did I robotically feel compelled to wish him a happy birthday on Facebook as well?

Maybe subconsciously I thought that if people looked at Mark's list of Happy Birthday wishers and saw that my name was conspicuously absent they would think, "Wow, that Beth sure is a horrible wife. She can't even take a moment to wish Mark happy birthday on Facebook, and therefore we can naturally draw the conclusion that she obviously doesn't love him." No, it does not make any logical sense, but how logical can we be if we are addicted to something where we can take care of virtual farm animals, find out which character from Twilight we are, and stalk an ex's new love interest all in one sitting?

I am certainly not going to bash Facebook because it does possess a lot of qualities of merit. Positives: reconnecting with old friends, getting the word out about an event (or a blog!), sharing funny videos or stories. This is the purpose of Facebook for me. But it does come with Negatives: having to involuntarily find out tidbits of information that people mistakenly think are important about themselves (i.e., what they had for lunch, how much they love their significant other, what song lyric they decide to be mysterious and vague with by putting as their Facebook status, etc.), risking your parents and/or other family members becoming your Facebook friends (Love you guys. I have nothing to hide.), getting invitations to fifty things a day that you don't give two shits about.

The biggest downside is that Facebook has propelled us into the Too Much Information Age. Unbeknownst to many people on the World Wide Web, there is such a thing as oversharing and people are getting ridiculous with it. The most recent example I can think of ended up launching me into a tirade of a whole different nature. One of Mark's friends had a convoluted status on Facebook about how he loved his girlfriend but at the same time hated her as well, but that was all okay because it meant they were passionate about each other.

Okay, first and foremost, you really don't need to be displaying your relationship drama over Facebook. Contrary to what you may think to be true, no one cares. If they do care, they will engage into some kind of meaningful interaction with you to find out how things are going with you and your boo and convey that they are emotionally invested in your problems. You know, like a text message saying "R U & sally doin ok?"

Second of all, I don't know where people get the idea that if two people are dating and are ripping each others' throats out every five seconds, it means that they are "passionate." Newsflash- it actually means you are delusional and the rocking make-up sex afterward simply indicates that you are horny. Not passionate. And it makes me passionate about wanting to smack you in the face.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to put the fact that I have a new blog post on my Facebook status...

That Thing Called Compromise

I don't really know where the hell October peaced out to so quickly, but now we are into November and quickly nearing the holiday season. Being that this is the first holiday season Mark and I will spend together as a married couple you would think that I would be all aglow with that newlywed aura, eager to send people Christmas cards with vomit-inducingly cute pictures from our honeymoon and plotting how I can get us into matching Santa hats or Christmas sweaters at every possible opportunity.

Yes, I am thrilled that we are about to spend the holidays as husband and wife for the first time. But marriage and compromise happen to be besties, and that is especially pertinent for us at the holidays. This particular compromise involves me deviating from the holiday tradition I have had with my family every year of my life and spending Christmas with Mark's family in Southbend, Indiana.

Don't get me wrong- after meeting many of Mark's family members for the first time at the wedding I am looking forward to spending some quality time together without the smile continually plastered on my face and the bulk of our conversation being me thanking them for coming to the wedding all the while thinking, "Oh my gosh, what did they say their names were??"

I have just had a routine for the last 21 years that has been both comically and comfortingly consistent. More often than not, it is the only time I get to see my extended family during the year and the predictability of the week-long trip to Kentucky (mom's family) and West Virginia (dad's family) comes all the way down to knowing what stories are going to be told about us when we were little. (A few highlights being the time I dropped my stuffed bear in the toilet and when my Grandma spent hours putting my hair into hot rollers only for me to hate it when I came out looking like a cross between Shirley Temple and a poodle who stuck its paw in an electric socket. She, however, thought it was precious and doesn't hesitate to remind me that it is her favorite hairstyle I have ever had. I was also five. She needs to let it go.)

Mark came along for the ride last year, and the fact that he survived and still wanted to marry me is a testament to his character (or a lapse in his sanity) and the reason why it is my turn to be the outsider on a new family Christmas. So my response has been to throw myself into the new set of plans headfirst and try not to think about how sad I will be when I stop to really think about it. But that is just how being married goes. It ain't no Burger King and you can't always have it your way.

Speaking of compromise, shortly after I wrote my previous post about my downstairs neighbors I ran into the guy as I was leaving for work in the morning. He was shirtless (and no Taylor Lautner, mind you) and rummaging through the girl's car. I pictured several scenarios, all involving me being really sassy and putting him in his place and one even involving me going all hot warrior chick on him and kicking his butt, before finally saying in a resigned and polite voice, "Excuse me. I have been hoping to catch you- I was wondering if you might be able to straighten your cars in the parking spaces. It's been raining nonstop and the last few times I have come back I haven't been able to get a close parking spot."

He looked at me for a second before shrugging and saying, "Sure."

And sure enough, when I got home both of their cars were neatly aligned in parking spaces and have been ever since. True, it may have had something to do with the fact that I had also gotten Mark to go to the landlord that morning to let him know about this problem and later finding that everyone in the building had received a note saying to be courteous and not take up two parking spots. But as far as I know, my last resort of patience and communication solved the problem. Who would have thought that kind of junk actually works?

"I Just Kicked Cat Poo On Her Car!"

For the last three months, I have been feuding with our downstairs neighbors. I am not entirely sure if they are aware of this feud, so it may very well be non-consensual. In any case, this couple (not sure if they are married or not) moved into the building just before Mark and I got married and have been the bane of my existence ever since. The reasons I curse their very names (or at least I would if I knew their names) have been accumulating steadily over time.

It started with them never having their two boxers on a leash, and on more than one occasion they (the dogs, not the people) bounded over to me as I was innocently getting out of my car and harassed me all the way to the stairs. They then had a baby and the boxers disappeared causing me to feel a little guilty that I had ever wished them ill, but that remorse was fleeting.

An ongoing issue is the fact that neither of them even bother to park their cars in the lines of the parking spaces. Now, whoever designed our parking lot was obviously a dimwit that thought they didn't make automobiles larger than a Smartcar and subsequently painted some of the most impossibly small spaces I have ever seen. Still, the rest of the tenants in the lot manage to fit their cars within the lines, but noooooo. Not my downstairs adversaries. I can always count on their two cars taking up three spaces as I drive in and have to park three rows away from my apartment, all the while silently hoping that the ground beneath their self-appointed three parking spaces opens up and swallows their cars into the bowels of hell.

On top of all this, there have been several occasions in the last month of piles of animal crap being left right on the walkway in front of the apartment, which I suspect were a gift from my favorite boxers owned by my favorite couple. After making this unpleasant discovery not once but twice, I finally went to the landlord like a tattle-taling five-year-old and made him aware of the crappy situation (I am very punny). We promptly found notes on all of the doors that afternoon firmly forbidding non-leashed dogs and their inappropriate defecation.

This all culminated to my breaking point. Beevus and Butthead also own a cat, which they recently decided would be more of an outdoor cat than an indoor cat. We see this poor, obviously malnourished cat hanging around the complex, and it recently took a liking to laying right outside our door. Maybe it just needed the assurance that there was a better life out there and wanted simply to gaze longingly at what a loved cat's life looked like, I don't know. But one night last week, I started walking down to my car only to find a pile of cat poop sitting right at the top of the stairs.

As you can imagine, I was outraged. I marched back into the apartment to where Mark was studying Latin and said through gritted teeth, "Just. Come. Look."

I grabbed his arm and steered him to where the pile lay.

"Do you see that?" I ranted. "I can't even believe this! This has just gotten ridiculous! These white trash people have no sense at all and I hate them!"

With that, I brushed the poo off our second story balcony and watched as it landed with a thud...right on the hood of the bitch downstairs' two-space-occupying car.

Mark and I exchanged one open-mouthed, horrified glance before tiptoeing as fast as we could back into our place and carefully shutting the door quietly behind us.

"I can't believe you just did that," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh my God!" I whispered (like they could hear me from downstairs). "I just kicked cat poo on her car! It's not like I did it on purpose! Okay, maybe it wasn't quite an accident per se, but still."

For the next few minutes I was plastered to the window, waiting to see if the neighbors downstairs would realize what had happened. Sure enough, after several minutes the guy came out to examine the gift I had inadvertently left on his woman's car. I watched as he disappeared for a moment then reappeared with a plastic bag to put the poo in.

"Well, I can't go to the gym now," I informed Mark (I will use any excuse to not go to the gym. It was convenient.). "They have me pegged."

The next morning, as I was getting ready I asked Mark, "You don't think they would have keyed our cars, do you??"

This was clearly completely dramatic, and a normal person would have dismissed it as being ridiculous.

"No," was Mark's response. "I checked already."

All things considered, I definitely categorized it as a win for the good guys. We won the battle, and I fully intend on winning the war. So stay tuned.

Who Says You Can't Go Home?

This past weekend, I took a much needed hiatus from the soul-sucking world of ad sales and headed to my hometown of Canton, a glorious mix of country folk and people who want to be out of Atlanta but not be too far out there in case they change their mind. You really never know what you are going to find in Canton- in the same car trip I passed what looked to be a yard sale taking place in the middle of a closed down Save-Rite's parking lot as well as a hand-painted sign in a small shopping center reading "Elvis's Nurse's Book Signing Today!" I only caught a glimpse of a tailgate-style tent set up outside with an Elvis impersonator beneath it before rounding a curve and only being able to think, "What in the WORLD is going on with this town today?"

Mark did not join me in this particular trip, which left me the need to explain several times that things had not fallen apart already and that we, of course, have stood the test of time having been married for a solid almost three months and all. He decided to be responsible (a.k.a. lame) and work on the papers that he has to do for his equally soul-sucking world of graduate school. My dad certainly did not let this go without making a few quips about how "Mark always made the effort to come see us when he was courting you."

The great part about my parents, my sister, and me being together is that we are damn quotable people. This was demonstrated within hours of picking up my sister, Kate, from college. She was explaining how as a freshman she had just landed the understudy role of a character in an upcoming play (she's a music theater major). Referring to the director, I asked "Is it just a rumor or have you heard it straight from the horse's mouth?"

"No," she replied emphatically. "I heard it from him!"

"...He would be the horse in this situation, hon."

Usually my dad is the one that is always saying something completely off the wall:

"Do you see that squirrel there?" my dad quipped out of nowhere one afternoon as we drove through our neighborhood. "That is an evil squirrel."

"How do you know?" I asked him.

"Sometimes you can see their little eyes and teeth and sense the hostility," was his reply.

But one of the most horrifyingly fantastic quotes that has ever been uttered by one of us came from my mother on Saturday evening while catching up with Kate's former high school drama and chorus directors after the school play.

"How have you and Eric been coping with both of your daughters being out of the house now?" one of them asked her.

"Well, Eric and I have recently discovered BJs," mom said.

Now the background on this situation is that I received a call recently from my parents, who told me they were in the throws of their first visit to BJ's Discount Club. They had gotten a free three month trial offer in the mail, and were eagerly buying things in bulk and felt the need to inform me they now had enough toilet paper to last them a year.

These people from Kate's high school did not know that and after a brief pause while we let the weight of what had just been said settle n, the room erupted in laughter as my mom turned a bright shade of red.

"BJ's the store!" she said. But the damage had been done and we were all howling for the next ten minutes.

"Tell Eric I said congratulations," the drama teacher said as we were leaving, starting another round of snickering. It was a glorious moment in a glorious weekend.

Now I am back to the grind of the advertising world. Woo. Good thing I have Grover to help me with my work.

Hunt or Be Hunted

Since graduating college in December, I have not been afraid to work. At one point, I was holding down three jobs- at a Thai restaurant, a garden, and selling ads for a magazine. My resume is going to end up looking like the paper form of A.D.D.

Eventually the magazine gig panned out as a full-time job selling ads for the both magazine and its sister publication, a local newspaper. One of the projects I have somehow gotten tasked with recently is to sell ads for a Hunting and Fishing Guide. Just so that we are clear, I don't like fish and had never even touched a gun before this. Yet I set out with vigor researching taxidermists, deer meat processors, and gun shops that I could pitch the idea to.

This launched me into a whole new world filled with creepy stuffed dead animals and people who clearly were not impacted by Bambi in the least during their childhood: The World of Hunting. Have you ever noticed that there are some things in life that people just don't do half-assed? For example, people that drink Diet Coke don't just enjoy one every once in a while. Diet Coke is like cola crack- its drinkers can't ever have enough and practically don't drink anything else. I have even witnessed people get agitated when they go without it for an extended period of time.

The same goes for horseback riding. Equestrian is like the snobby hobby of the world- if you reveal that you don't know anything about it in the presence of horse people you will definitely get a look of disapproval and feel the judgment of whatever your far less superior past time is.

Hunting definitely falls into this category. In the last few weeks I have been introduced to a way of life, learning all about the lingo, different seasons and regulations, and seeing more pictures of kids with blood smeared on their faces holding the antlers of dead deer than I thought I could stomach. I have held a gun for the first time (the guy at the gun shop excitedly brought me over to a 30-lb monstrosity that he enthusiastically told me was "the kinda gun they have over in Iraq killin' all them terrorists") and have had one taxidermist tell me "I'll have to give you a call later- I am right in the middle of mounting a deer" (took all the discipline I had to not reply with "I bet you are, you dirty old man").

To top it all off, technology and taxidermy are not friends. Trying to get e-mails and ad materials from these people has been like pulling teeth. I gave up on one processing place that did not have an e-mail address or fax machine. I thought by now these were pretty standard when owning and operating a business, but nope. Not if you spend the day with flesh and dead things.

Though I am definitely ready to be out of this carcass-filled twilight zone, it has been informative and I do have respect for the people who are skilled in hunting and all associated practices. Has it made me want to camo up and shoot something? Hardly. For now, I will just stick with my Diet Coke cola crack.

Don't judge me. I control it, it doesn't control me. And I can quit any time I want. ;)

The Fried Okra Experiment

Though I am many things, I never will be Mrs. Suzie Homemaker, queen of domesticity who cooks in heels and has her initially monogrammed on all of her aprons and generally makes all women look bad. I am the girl who hasn't met an oven yet that could resist burning me, actually called the Jell-O company in the tenth grade to find out what I needed to set the stove on to boil water (not one of my finest moments) and generally is a disgrace to all women.

It doesn't help that I come from a family who would much rather go out to eat then cook a meal.We have been to pretty much every restaurant within a 35 miles radius of our house and probably know more waiters/waitresses/restaurant owners by name than it is ever okay to. They even put our picture up at one of our preferred local restaurants because we were such frequent customers. (I was in ninth grade, and my 15-year-old self like so didn't think it was cool. My 22-year-old self, on the other had, thinks it's hilarious. My how I have evolved.)

I think people have picked up on this lack of womanly skills if our wedding gifts are any indication-I got a whole bunch of cookbooks, most of which contain the word "easy" in the title. So lately I have been trying to find the dormant Paula Dean that I am sure resides somewhere deep in my soul. I have had several successful cooking ventures, which Mark either seemed to like or just said he did so that I would stop asking him "what do you think?" every 30 seconds while I watched him eat.

The other day, I decided I wanted to fry up some okra. I looked up the recipe and it seemed reasonable enough, so after getting all of the supplies at the grocery, I got to work. Turns out you about have to have six arms to fry okra- one set to bread them with, one set to put them in the fryer and one to get them into a bowl, so I enlisted Mark's help. While I oversaw the frying process, I tasked him with the breading process.

I was concentrating so hard that I didn't see exactly what happened that led to the thud I heard next. I looked over to see the full contents of a bowl of cornmeal/flour mix on the floor, with Mark standing over the white cloud of flour fog that was starting to rise as he launched into a string of obscenities. I silently handed him the broom, and he swept up the mess still cursing grumpily.

Five minutes and another thud later, Mark had somehow managed to dump a second whole bowl of cornmeal and flour onto the floor. As I looked from and irate and powder-covered Mark, to the disaster on the floor, it took all I had to not burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. But Mark was still in that phase of not finding it amusing in the least.

"I think...we've made...enough okra," Mark aid through clenched teeth. So in a dust cloud of flour we ate our okra in silence, me trying not to laugh and Mark throwing dirty looks at the pile of breading still on the floor. Luckily I got Mark to laugh about it later, but I think that is the last time we will be making fried okra.

No babies....

...a mantra that Mark and I developed early on in our relationship when we realized neither one of us was remotely interested in procreating. At the time, I was 19 and used to say that I didn't know what person my age was chomping at the bit to pop out babies, but I have now seen enough Maury and 16 and Pregnant to know that there are some teen girls out there that need to calm the eff down.

Not having babies was something that was my plan long before Mark came along. Complete horror of the childbirthing process aside, I never really babysat when I was younger partly because I found young kids really awkward to be around. I know that you are just supposed to smile and agree with whatever silliness they say in a voice that is an octave or so above your natural speaking voice, but sometimes I just don't know how to react when a four-year-old comes over to me, pats my face, and says, "Today is your birthday and you're five!"

I've mentally kept a "pros" and "cons" list for years on the subject, with the con column being pretty extensive and the pro column limited to really substantive and deep reasons, like being curious about what a mini-me would look like. So far, con column is winning by a landslide.

The strangest thing is how many people tell me I am going to change my mind when I nform them about my childless plans. I actually have bets going on that if I have a baby by the time I am thirty, I am going to owe several people some money. No one seems to take me seriously when I say I am happy to be a DINK (double income no kids) with Mark and get to travel and have the flexibility that kids does not allow.

For now, I am totally satisfied to be the cool, fun-loving aunt who gives the best presents at Christmas and when my nieces or newphews start to cry get to just pass them along to their parents. And besides, Mark and our kitty kids (who incidently woke my up at 5:30 this morning- a whole new low. I could have killed them.) are more than enough to keep me occupied at the moment.

A Cat's the Only Cat Who Knows Where It's At

Everyone who knows me and Mark know that we are two people who love our cats, who we refer to as our "kitty kids."

Delia is a gray tabby I adopted from the humane society and a lap cat to the point where she will go completely limp if you try to transplant her off your lap. Grover is rambunctious yellow tabby who adopted us after we rescued him from a nearby road as a kitten.

They never fail to keep us entertained, and we have a special bond with them that only somewhat resembles Mark and I melding together to form a creepy old cat lady. But our cats have one fatal flaw, and that is the fact that while they are not overweight, they are still Total. Freaking. Fatties.

It is only a minor annoyance throughout the day when they start chirping (for some reason neither of them can meow, so they just suffice to making the only weak but incessant noises they can muster) and running under my feet whenever I go within ten feet of their food bowl. We try to keep them pacified by feeding them three small meals a day, but they seem to have a huge beef with an empty food bowl, so it doesn't quiet them down for long. But like I said, we manage.

However, lately they have become used to getting fed at 7:15 a.m. when Mark and I wake up for work. Problem is, there are these things called weekends where a person supposedly gets to sleep in. Or so I have heard. Because cats don't have weekends, and for the past few Saturdays and Sundays I have woken up at 7:15 to two cats pawing me in the face and chirping at me.

Every time this happens I angrily get up and pretend like I am going to feed them, then malevolently shut them in the bathroom with their empty food bowl. But by then I am awake, so I lie in bed for a few minutes thinking about how much I hate them at that moment. Then I get up and let them out because by this point they are hurling themselves at the closed bathroom door like feline battering rams.

This past Sunday, I took it a step further and launched a verbal assault on them. It went a little something like this:

Me: "FINE! I am awake now. Are you freaking happy, you bastard cats?
Cats: *Stare up at me*
Me: "If you think I am feeding you right now, you are nuts. You need some discipline to learn that this kind of behavior is just not acceptable.
Cats: *Stare up at me*
Me: "I mean, seriously, I have two days a week that I don't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn, but do you care? NO!"
Cats: *Stare up at me*
Me: "Damn you, kitties. Damn you."

I am sure I was quite the scene, whispering as angrily as I could because Mark can sleep through anything, telling off these two cats who have no idea what I am saying and wish I would just stop making these strange noises and waving my arms around and just feed them already.

Bu they are hard to stay mad at, so usually by 9:00 all is forgiven and I have decided that we can be friends again. But I sure as hell am looking forward to a day on the weekend where I actually get to sleep in. A girl can dream, right?

Riding in Cars with Boys

Mark and I recently had quite the experience. I have always thought that when people describe something by saying, "It was an experience," it was just a loaded, catch-all, cop-out word for people who didn't have a very extensive descriptive vocabulary.

But sometimes, that is simply the only way to describe something. And let me tell you, buying a new car, is an experience.

Another similar type of word is to say that something has character, which Mark's old car had to boot. A 1993 Saturn with manual windows, no air conditioning and rusted paint that Mark lovingly referred to as "two-toned," that car has been the bane of my existence for the last three years. I tried many a time to threaten him that it was me or the car and I simply wouldn't walk down the aisle knowing that particular thing would be included in the "what's yours is mine" part of the nuptials, but he knew I was bluffing and just cranked the subwoofer louder to drown me out.

But finally a few weeks ago the Saturn met its doom, needing a repair that just wasn't worth fixing. So we starting our adventures shopping around for a new car. Mark had been looking at the Nissan Xterra, so we made that our starting point. After meeting an oddly stoic young salesman named Issiah, we took a test drive in awkward silence, then heard a 30-minute spiel from his boss who stepped in when Issiah didn't know the answer to any of our questions.

The visit culminated in us saying that we would think over all of the numbers they threw our way, and we left.

The next morning (which happened to be Saturday), Mark got a call at 8 a.m. He groggily stumbled over to his cell phone, and a look of disbelief washed over his face as he told the caller, "No, I haven't really had a chance to think about it...We were just in last night..."

And that was the beginning of Issiah the Car Salesman stalking us by calling every single day without fail to ask if we had come to any decisions. On the one day that he managed to call twice AND send an e-mail to Mark (how he got the address is beyond me), I snarkily said to Mark, "Oh, Issiah! You are smothering us. You're not even giving us a chance to miss you!"

Funny enough, we ended up getting a Toyota after being completely turned off by Issiah's intensity. Even though we were completely clueless about how financing worked, we finally got to a point where it made sense and took the plunge. Turns out I had the stronger credit history even though Mark had the money, so after several lame attempts at joking how I brought the cred and Mark brought the dough, I signed on the dotted lines and we drove off the lot with a Corolla that had five miles on it.

And let me tell you, that air conditioning is a beautiful thing. Too bad it is the first of October and starting to get chilly, rendering the air conditioning unnecessary...

An Introduction...

July 31, 2010 is that day that supposedly changed my life forever: I got married at the ripe young age of twenty-two. My now-husband, who is getting his masters in Latin and is a few years older than me, proposed before I even turned 21.

In the year and a half we were engaged, I was met mostly with support because anyone who knows us knows that we are not idiots and knew exactly what we were doing. However, we did encounter our fair share of "haters."

One particular instance of this was a visit I took to the university health center shortly after we got engaged. Miserable and pretty certain I had strep throat, I waited way longer than I had the patience for in an exam room covered in literature about how binge drinking and casual sex are detrimental to your health (no shit) and when the doctor finally came in we had an exchange that went something like this:

Me: I think I might have strep throat.
Judge-y Doctor: Okay. Who's the band on your t-shirt?
Me: Oh, my fiancee's actually.
J.D.: Fiancee? How old are you? Don't you know what the divorce rates are for young people getting married?
Me: Um...my throat hurts.

Unfortunately, this was not the last less-than-enthusiastic exchange I had with someone about my choice to get married young. I tend to look like I am not old enough to be out of high school, let alone someone's old lady, so there were many unspoken assumptions by people I didn't know that I was some kind of freak child bride or had gotten knocked up.

But on July 31st I still made it down that isle, and my husband, Mark, and I are learning the trials and tribulations of being married when the odds seem to be against you. In a few days, we will be at the two month mark, and as I keep telling people who ask, it has been a solid two months. I don't really know what would go terribly wrong in the span of two month, but people keep asking so I am sure someone out there hasn't made it this far.

I am not really sure how to end this little preface into my life, so I will just do the absolutely cliche move and leave it with a quote:

"I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life"-Rita Rudner.

Cheers!