3 weeks ago tomorrow

3 weeks ago tomorrow I married my man.  I could say it in a thousand more poetic ways, but there it is, simple, and true, and inadequate.  3 weeks ago tomorrow I got married.  Since that day, and more accurately since the day I realized I loved him, I have been thinking about how I could possibly write about it, to write about my wedding day, to write about a love that grows so quickly that words can't keep up with it.  And I have yet to come up with anything.  I can write about our poop stories, and our first FHE seeing Michael Jackson: This is It, and our first fight being over whether liquids are measured in the plastic cups or the glass ones, but for some reason, it is impossible to write about the way I want to cry sometimes when I look at him looking at me, about how I can't help but smile when I see the wedding ring on his finger, and how I can never ever get tired of hearing him call me honey.   

Ernest Hemingway wrote, "All you have to do is write one true sentence.  Write the truest sentence you know."

Well the truth is, that after those two years of being together, and also being apart, after the hell of being separated by an ocean, of not speaking, of wondering if the love would ever stop burning or if it would ever make sense, the day I knelt across from him at the altar, tears streaming from both of our eyes, I was so glad that that was my ending.  That we will never be separated ever again, not even by death.  That not a second of any pain I have ever felt in my life meant anything at all compared to the pure joy, the eternal happiness, I felt at that moment and have continued to feel since.  I told Brad a long time ago that I knew I would only ever love one person my entire life, and I was right.  My heart and my life are so completely his, and I have never wanted to belong to anyone else.  Other people in life, they can disappoint me, get me down and out, make me feel like the slime gooping off the railing in the movie version of Super Mario Brothers, even though nobody else has ever seen that movie, but my husband, my eternal husband, loves me more than I deserve, every minute, every day, unconditionally, forever.

It's crude, and maybe it's cliche.  But that's the best I can do.  Bradley, my husband, I love you.

Poop Part II

If you haven't read part one, it was posted a few days ago, and you should do so now.

This weekend, Brad and I were in Arizona for one day and traveling there and back for two days.  In that one day, we rode on a tandem cruiser in the Tour de Tucson bike race, then raced back to his parents house to transform me in the twenty minutes we had before our Open House from sweaty nasty biker chic to beautiful, peachy-smelling, blushing bride.  It involved sisters-in-law curling my hair while the other curled my eye lashes and mother-in-law trying to get me to also step into my wedding dress and brother-in-law seeing me in my slip.  Cool.

But to the real point.  To the poopy point.  On the drive home yesterday, it was complete deja vu.

Me: Hunny, do you think we should stop and fill up here?  We're going to be going through the desert now, we don't want to run out of gas.
Brad: No, I bet we can find it cheaper, let's wait.

(Next gas station)

Me: Hunny, this is the same price, but we really need to fill up.
Brad:  We can find it cheaper.
Me: Yeah.... but this is sounding a lot like last time where we end up stopping at some hole in the wall place, the only gas station for miles around, charging us $4 a gallon.
Brad: Oh yeah, true...... oh man, and then I'd have to poop on their toilet seat again.


Maybe it's not even as funny to you any more.  But it was still funny to us.

Death cannot kill what never dies

This morning, I have been thinking about Swan Lake, my favorite performance I saw while in London.  Obviously, this isn't the specific production I saw, but watch this final scene anyway.  Doesn't it give you chills?  Beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.

They that love beyond the world
cannot be separated by it.
Death cannot kill what never dies.

William Penn

Oh well.

We would like to inform you that your work was not selected for publication.

I just thought you should know...

So, Brad, my husband, and I have this ongoing thing with poop.  Allow me to share a couple of anecdotes:

While we were still engaged, Brad was living in the apartment where we would move into as a married couple (even though a couple of days before we got married, we decided to switch apartments, involving lots of moving, and we still haven't unpacked any of our boxes, our places is a mess, yada yada yada).  So there's Brad,  living in the apartment that is elaborately furnished with a battered TV (with no remote) on the living room floor in front of an always at least partially deflated air mattress and the pumpkin pillow we bought to spruce the room up a bit.  There I am, home from school, we're about to make dinner (pasta again, probably) and watch Conan, and Brad has to take a huge dookie.  He talks about it over and over and over, and I tell him, well, why don't you just poop then.  He grabs our People magazine and goes into the bathroom, reemerging about ten minutes later, and I think he must have had to poop for a while because that didn't even take him very long.

Wondering why I'm telling you this story?  Don't think too much about it.  So I give the bathroom about another ten minutes to air out, and then I go in there myself to do a little pee pee.  I walk into the bathroom, towards the toilet, the bathroom still stinks a little, I turn around so my butt is facing the toilet as is proper when one is going to use it, and just as I'm about to undo my pants and do the deed, I spot it.  In the shower.... a.... giant..... turd.   I couldn't believe it.  Is that what men do??  Is that how men live??  Was I supposed to be able to learn to deal with that sort of disgusting male habit of pooping in the shower??

I march slowly out of the bathroom back into the living room, where Brad is facing the TV.  I try to keep my voice under control, but it's shaking, and so am I, and I have a feeling my eyes are getting crazy big like they do sometimes.  "You.... POOPED.... in the SHOWER?!?!"  Brad doesn't say anything.  Or maybe he does, but I'm so angry slash disgusted that I don't hear it, and I repeat myself a little louder and a little more frenzied.

"What?"  Brad asks, "What's the big deal?  It's just poop.  Just wash it down the drain."  He's still not looking at me, and every time I think of that slimy brown turd I get a little louder and my eyes get a little bigger.

"No!  You get in there and clean it out!  I can't believe you pooped in the shower.  You are SO disgusting.  YOU clean it out."

After a little more of the same, Brad reluctantly agrees to go clean it out, and just as I am calming down in the living room, he comes back out, turd in hand.  "See Connie, it's just poop."  I'm pretty sure at this point I screamed.  What happened next was a blur of him trying to tell me poop is no big deal and of me screaming and shuddering and telling him to flush it down the toilet right that instant, and then the next thing I know, he's thrown the turd at me, and it's hit me, and I'm screaming, and he's laughing, and then he goes over and picks up the turd that had just soiled me, and......... it's fake, and Brad has a really good laugh about how clever he is and proceeds to do impressions of my initial "pooped in the shower" reaction, an impression he continues to do to this day.

I'm just saying, thank goodness it wasn't real.

(a face made out of toilet paper rolls... cool, huh?)

And another little anecdote:


Brad and I were driving back from our honeymoon in California to make it to Utah by midnight for school and work.  We didn't want to fill up the gas tank completely in CA since it's much more expensive there ($2.89 as opposed to the $2.67 we knew we could get elsewhere).  By the time we were reaching the outskirts of CA, though, we were on only a quarter tank, and I suggested to Brad that we fill up before we hit the desert and have to frantically find a gas station before we ran out of gas that would seriously overcharge us.  "No, we're fine, we'll fill up later," Brad insisted.  "Okay..."  I wasn't totally convinced.  Sure enough, about an hour later, we are in the middle of the desert, the gas light is on, and the only thing that's near us is cacti and dirt roads.  Great.  We make it to a gas exit in the nick of time -- a dirt road exit that lead only to a single gas station.

"Okay, Connie, we'll see how much gas is here, and if it's less than $2.89, it was worth it.  If it's more than that, then you were right, we should have filled up."  The tall, green price sign comes into view, and we both squint at it for a long time to make sure we got it right.  $3.99.  Now, one of the things that Brad hates is "being taken."  This was definitely being taken.  He put enough gas in to get us to Vegas, all the time raging about how it was "highway robbery," and I go in to use the bathroom.  As I am coming out, I hear the owners of the gas station looking out the window to see us and one other car filling up, and they start laughing and saying, "Money making!!!"

I walk toward the car, and Brad is sitting in the driver's seat.  I open his door and squat down to talk to him and tell him what happened.  He gets angry at their laughing, just as I thought he would.  "So," I conclude, "I think we should get back at them."  "How?"  Brad asks.  "I think you should go in their bathroom and poop on their toilet seat."  Of course Brad thinks it a marvelous idea, and he does it, then hears a line of people outside, wipes the poop off the toilet seat, then poops in a paper towel and hides it in the bathroom.  Revenge is stinky.

Red carpet divas

I have been thinking, as of late, about all of the unfortunate looks we have all seen in our lifetimes on the red carpet. I decided, then, to give people a little lesson on how to dress for the red carpet with class. The following are some of my favorite classy looks from recent red carpets:

The little yellow dress:

The silvery/grey dress:




The pink dress:


The Grecian dress:

The elegant black dress:


But my #1 favorite:

NOBODY can pull off red like Nicole Kidman can.

One Week.....

I am getting married in one week from tomorrow.  And speaking of tomorrow, tomorrow I am going through the Temple for the first time.

Can you believe how quickly time has gone?  Granted, we have had a relatively short engagement, but everyone told us that it would still feel so slow -- wrong!  I guess it might have if it was during the summer when there was no school so all we would think about would be that Date.

The two of us, my hunny and I, have been making the rounds, visiting our bishops and stake presidents.  On Wednesday, we visited my amazing stake president, and he had us talk specifically about what we love about each other, and we both had so much to say, he had to cut us both of.  So, I figured I would record that list and add to it those things I was going to say but didn't have time or I would have kept the stake president there all night.  Keep in mind, this list is not exhaustive.

• Brad (He gets a name now, not just Boy.  He will be so happy to hear that) is so funny.  He really is.  He can make anyone laugh, and he makes me laugh all the time, especially at myself.  He keeps me more light-hearted and from taking myself too seriously.  I can't even say how lucky I am to have someone who will always keep smiles and laughter in the household.
• Brad doesn't have those archaic views of what a man's role is and what a woman's role is, i.e. he's always doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen.  Granted, he doesn't ever want to mow the lawn or do handyman stuff, but I guess I can figure that all out, and I have a feeling we'll be doing all sorts of jobs, together.
• Brad is so, so supportive of me.  He supports my desire to get an education -- he's even putting medical school off for another year so that I can graduate, and he's told me that if I want to work when we have kids, he will support that, and if I don't want to, he supports that.  What a rare gem of a man.
• Brad is very, very intelligent.  We have always been able to talk and talk and talk about any subject, and we both end up feeling enlightened, and we're always interested.
• Brad understands his role as a husband, father, and priesthood holder.  Ever since I met him, he has always talked about how he wants to provide materially for them so they don't have to worry (but not in a work-obsessed or I want to be rich kind of way), and also about how he wants to have an easy-going, loving household, where everyone feels comfortable coming.  He works hard to always be worthy to give blessings when needed and to be able to go to the temple.
• Brad is very, very patient with me.  I am a really emotional person with a tendency to overreact in the moment (even though I don't feel as strongly about something as I appear to at first), and Brad doesn't get mad at me, he waits it out.  Wow.  Can't tell you how much I need someone like that.
• Brad is motivated.  He is goal-oriented, and he has a plan for where he's going in life.  I like that.
• Brad is open-minded, and he doesn't mind thinking about my differing views, or anyone else's for that matter, and possibly changing his if he thinks that is best.
• Brad is easy-going, and he makes me more so, too.  
• I know that Brad's top priority is my happiness, because he makes that clear every day.
• Brad is always willing to change.  Whenever we have any friction in our relationship, he's always asking what he can do to change, to be better, and then, get this, he does them!  
• Brad is also quick to say, "I'm sorry," whereas it takes me, stubborn as I am, a bit longer usually.
• Brad is very loving and caring, not only to me but to all of his friends and acquaintances.  He makes their comfort and happiness a priority for him.
• Brad loves his family.  That is also something that struck me from the beginning.  He has nothing but wonderful things to say about them, and he says them a lot.
• Brad loves and accepts me as I am, in all ways, but one way that always stands out is physically.  All girls have a tendency to feel self-conscious, but Brad makes it very clear that he loves everything about me. 

To be honest, I could keep going.  And going and going and going.  But I think you all get the point.  I have one amazing dude  (Oh, and he is so handsome, too, so handsome).  Why he is interested in me I don't know if I'll ever understand.  But I love him.  Oh hannah, do I love him.