How To Pet My Peeves

Disclaimer: People who have known me for a long time know that this list is mostly in jest and also mostly true. So I guess it's a funny truth? Don't get offended. If I've ever said something that has been offensive to you I guarantee you I will be a repeat offender after this so just...okay?

So without further ado, and in no particular order, things that are annoying to me:

1. People who are off-put by this list.
2. People who take a shower but don't wash their hair.
3. Knuckle Cracking (!!!!)
4. People who sweat when they eat.
5. When the Asian nail tech talks to the other asians in the salon and you know (you just know) it's about you.
6. Girl's Camp Songs.
7. Flip Flops at church.
8. Hoodies at church.
9. Close talkers.
10. Unnecessary punctuation within a name.
11. "Uniquely" spelled names. Just stop.
12. Those who think "funner" is not a word.
13. People who say they have a "dry" sense of humor but in actuality just don't have a personality.
14. People who don't understand that I have a personality.. my sense of humor is just dry okay.
15. Shrillness, in almost any form.
16. Slow drivers.
17. Basically if I'm driving on the road and you are too, you're probably bugging me.
18. Spandex at Disneyland. (Usually found by the funnel cake and/or corn dog stands).
19. People who don't listen during the instructions and then promptly ask for clarification.
20. Dramatic LDS pop music.
21. Loud yawners.
22. Dating couples who try to pass off as married couples. Stop it.
23. People who don't kiss till they get married.
24. "Cool" moms.
25. People who don't take their screaming kids out of sacrament.

To be continued.

All The Really Cool Single Ladies

So by now I've pretty much solidified my stance on blogging (only posting when friends demand it of me). Thank you, Christina for striking fear into my heart of what might happen if I went much longer without posting something.

P.S. if you want to follow a super adorable and candid blog by a beautiful girl who has a gift for writing hilarious things... http://chrissyjohansen.blogspot.com/

You'll thank me, so you're welcome.

Anywayyyy. Right now I should definitely be studying for my MathEd 305 final or cleaning my house or out on a run or wearing super amazing J. Crew outfits or cooking a gourmet meal for my husband to come home to because that's what other wife bloggers are always doing! Right? (Haha blog humor). 

Instead I've found myself watching not one, but two episodes of Newlyweds the First Year on Oxygen. It's not even good. Actually it's pretty trashy. I hate myself? Okay the point is it has made me reflect on how truly awesome it has been to be married to this guy.

Not a humble brag. I'm going somewhere with this. We have a lot of great friends who are at the time in their life where they want to get married. And I can't blame them. It is pretty great and in our culture and where we live it's pretty much the singular crowning glory haha. Disclaimer: Yes I got married when I was 19 so maybe in the eyes of some people I lucked out and didn't realllly have to play the dating game (disagree) so maybe I should be the last person to give out dating advice? For what it's worth though here it is. 

Throughout conversations with the above-mentioned friends we've determined that one of the reasons there are so many unattached great people inexplicably wandering around single is that they're getting too wrapped up in the dating game. 

Dating Game example #1:

In this scenario we see a really great guy and girl act really stupid. Let's watch!

Awesome single guy: guy met girl through friends/at church/at work/it doesn't matter. He has been wanting to ask her out but wants to seem just aloof enough so he has waited for like 3 weeks. "Hey girl I'm interested in. Want to hang out?"

Cool Single Girl: girl thinks 'okay I'm interested in this guy. He's great and I'm really looking to get into a relationship and I've been wanting him to ask me to do something and I would love to see where this could go...' and yet she responds "Oh Hey! Well yeah I guess I could maybe do something sometime." Yes perfect. Act disinterested!

ASG: "How about Friday?"

CSG: thinks 'yeah I'm free Friday but I don't want him to think I'm available! I need to appear to be super busy. I'll tell him I'm going to a concert friday. No! I'm opening at a concert friday. No no no. I AM putting on a concert Friday. Yeah. I'm a musical superstar.. That's good. "Umm Friday isn't good. I have a thing..."Yes vague. Vague is always good. Keep them guessing.

ASG: "Oh okay another time." Well I can't offer Saturday instead. Then she'll think I don't have plans on either Friday OR Saturday and then she will think I am a Social Leper and then I might as well kill myself. Well, on to the next one!

We've all done it. Let's all think about this though. How did acting disinterested, too cool, too busy, too mysterious, etc., work out for these two? I know this is how it goes because I've watched friends painstakingly create the most overly cool, disinterested texts they could muster in the hopes of being just intriguing enough to get someone to notice them.. And it just doesn't work. 

More on this later. :)

Down with Men?

This post is going to be a little uncharacteristic of my usual social media habits but after an AMAZING Relief Society lesson last Sunday I'm going to have to jump up on my soap box and vent a little about something that's been on my mind.

If this started going around on Facebook would anyone laugh? What would most of the comments say?

It's not even clever right? I like a little saucy humor and can appreciate a pretty wide range of jokes but this just isn't that funny. 

So then why is this funny?

I found this on Pinterest under a search for "men". When did men become such a joke?

For example here's what's on TV right now. I'm not talking about Homer Simpson or Al Bundy from like 20 years ago. Airing on TV right now in this modern age of "equality" we have Phil Dunphy, the admittedly hilarious but unarguably incapable dad on Modern Family. We have the new ABC show "Watch Dad Run." Truthfully, I haven't seen an episode but just from the previews I think I can pretty much summarize the premise. Smart, competent mom goes back to work and dumb, oblivious dad has to become a lowly stay at home dad and struggle with difficult tasks such as starting the dishwasher and running carpool. Hilarity and amusement ensue. Don't even get me started on the parents we see on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. It seems like half of those kids don't even have parents to begin with. The ones who do make appearances are portrayed as idiots whose kids always know best or who are completely oblivious to their kids shenanigans. Phineas and Ferb anyone? 

(I love Phineas and Ferb. I'm just sayin'!)

Let's all close our eyes and use our imaginations. You turn on the TV and there's a commercial where a man is trying to trick his chubby wife into exercising. Maybe he even bribes her with shoes or money or something. Not cool? A little distasteful? Flip the scenario. Oh hey it's a Cheerios commercial. Or that one Fiber One Bar commercial. 

Here's what I'm getting at. I was raised by a perfectly intelligent and able Dad who I respect more than anyone in the world. Except maybe my Mom, because he taught me that she deserved respect. Because that's what good dads do. Don't men deserve the same? Are moms doing enough to teach their kids that their dads deserve respect? I see way too many wives belittling and speaking badly about their husbands in front of other people, even their kids. Don't be surprised then moms when your teenagers think dad is someone who can be ignored and disobeyed. I saw it all the time from my own friends in high school and I see it all the time from families I know now. How many Relief Society lessons have you been in where the women sat around and laughed about how terrible the Smith girl's hair looked because mom is out of town and Dad is an idiot? Trust me. Women are not the butt of the jokes in Priesthood. The topics of conversation at Enrichment Night shouldn't be whose husband did the most idiotic thing this week.

I was once in a devotional where the speaker said "We have a Heavenly Father who could have taken any title he wanted. We could be addressing him infinite different prestigious, lofty titles. For some reason though, our God chose simply to go by the title of "Father."

When counseling Laman and Lemuel, Lehi's last advice to them before passing away was to "Arise from the dust my sons, and be men." 

Let's let our men be men and embrace our role as women. We have special talents and responsibilities and as much as feminists try to prove otherwise, we are fundamentally different. But equally important. Let's all try to show the men in our lives a little more respect. 

We're Back!

Okay so my first order of business is to thank Marykate Barrett for getting on my case about being such a miserable blogger. I wanted to do a post on our amazing honeymoon to Cancun but we haven't even taken the pictures off the camera so I guess that shows where our social media priorities have been lately. So in no particular order here are some things we've been up to during the 5+ month hiatus:

At the beginning of last semester we went sailing with Sam and Jess Pugmire on the Great Salt Lake. I highly recommend it. It's by far the best setting to reenact pretty much any scene you want from Titanic. For Halloween we decided to see if our love could really stand the test of time. We looked rough but hopefully by the time we look that old our vision will be failing so we won't really mind anymore. One of the highlights was definitely Christmas break. We weren't prepared for how time consuming our jobs and school were going to be our first semester married so Christmas Break provided some much needed time to "chill for a minute" as Stu would say. We started it off by going to Disneyland with my family for a few days and then got to go to spend Christmas with Stu's family in Toppenish. I wish I had pictures of the adorable PJs that Lucy made for everyone or the incredible Duck Dynasty shirt that she got so I'll have to make a request for those. 

 Our bed was just a mattress on the floor for the first 4 months (which is fine when you're single and just couldn't find any cinderblocks to use as bed stilts) but we had really been wanting a big kid bed for a while when I found the frame and headboard for $100 at the RC Willey outlet. Steal. The deal just kept coming that day though and I also found this table for $20 at Confetti Antiques in Spanish Fork where we live and my mom and I made this gallery wall from things I found at the antique store or things I had stashed away in closets. Thank you, Pinterest. 

Stu turned the big 26 on the 17th and so I thought it would be fun to surprise him with a party at his favorite restaurant Maria Bonita. I underestimated how hard it would be to keep a secret and I'm almost positive that he knew exactly what was going on. I had a back up surprise though and remade the Ninja Turtle cake that his mom made for his 4th birthday and I think I really did it justice!

Yeah, I wish. 

Harmon's to the rescue. Maybe Lucy can give me some cake decorating tips for next year.

The night was so fun and I was so impressed by my husband's friends. I've always known he had a really awesome group of friends but almost every single person I invited came and wished him a happy birthday and I appreciate them making it such a great day for him. :)

And for those of you who didn't come, feel free to send gifts, money, treats... really anything expensive or tasty will do.

It's the Final Countdown..

I really love the title to this post and you would too if you watch the greatest show of all time, Arrested Development. I'd like to give a shout out to my favorite character Gob Bluth (not Job, thanks Bryce) at this time. I'd also like to give a shout out to the month of July for going by so fast! Something I'm pretty happy about. I realized something awesome yesterday while Stu and I (and Megan and Tyler) were in Temple Prep. I go through the temple one month from Sunday!! Which means we get married a month from today! Which means we will be in Cancun a month from tomorrow. Not sure which of those I'm more excited about haha, for Stu I'm pretty sure it's Cancun. Today I put on my white pants and thought "only one more month of worrying about underwear lines. This is the best." Obviously not the only benefit of getting endowed but one I've thought about probably more than I should. So, in honor of the last 30 days of being unmarried and in the hopes that they pass quickly here is a list of 10 reasons I'm excited to marry this fiance of mine. 

10. Because I've been pinning adorable decorating ideas for the past 5 months and want to see our little home finally come together! We (I) picked our bedroom colors and bedspread out the other day and I was about to die of joy. It was so fun. Registering was a blast as well and it was surreal to look at the different household items you never even realize you need, even though I've been living away from home for over 2 years. Stu and my mom have been making fun of me because I registered for an extension cord. One of these days when he needs to plug something in and he's not near an outlet we'll see who's laughing!

9. I'm stoked to change my last name. I love being a Barlow and I think I have a pretty great cursive "B" but I will gladly kiss it goodbye here in a few weeks. I always said I wanted to marry someone whose last name was at the beginning of the alphabet because in elementary school I got this kind of strange pride out of always being called first on the roll and I wanted that for my kids! So thoughtful. Despite the demise of this childhood dream, I'm still very excited to become a Reynolds.

8. I'll leave this one blank since I think my grandparents read this sometimes. But, you know...

7.  I love Stu's family. I haven't met a single person in his family that I haven't instantly loved. I think it's funny how often I get asked "So what do you think of his family?" People often ask that question expecting a negative response. I feel so lucky that I'm getting such an amazing family! We were saying the other day how our kids are going to have 2 sets of AWESOME grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We both lucked out in the in-law department. :)

6. We made a goal to go to the temple at least twice a month for our first year of being married. The temple has been on my mind of lot since I'm going through in a month so this is one of the things I'm most intrigued and excited about for sure.

5. This one won't happen for a while, but... babies! I want a baby so baddddd. Stu and I have gone through almost every online baby name site and have only agreed on 2 names. And we can't remember one of them. So our kids may not have names. Another bonus to marrying into the Reynolds' family: Adorable freckly babies. If our kids don't have the Reynolds' freckles I might have to tell the doctor to put them back.

4. I've heard it's easier to get good grades and focus on school work when you're not dating or engaged. We're both really hoping that this rumor is true...

3. I will have successfully avoided any chance of teen pregnancy. Let's go!

(Thanks dad for taking this picture, and thanks to my mom for her hilarious reaction upon seeing it).

2. While dating and being engaged Stu has been pretty tolerant of the state I tend to leave my car in. (Messy, very messy). I have a feeling this tolerance is going to come to an abrupt end as soon as we seal the deal. I welcome the extra organizational help.

1. I think there's only a certain amount of progression a pair can go through while dating or even engaged. I can't wait to be married because it comes with so much potential to grow. My best friend Chelsea and I always used to say "we know each other so well and have so much fun together. What if we never find a boy who we love as much as we love each other?!" Our moms found this a little creepy...it was a legitimate concern for best friends of 14 years. I'm happy to say that I had no need to worry about it. :)

10 Things I've Learned Since Being Engaged

Narrowing this list down to ten things was not easy. I learn new things about Stu, myself, and what it really means to be on the brink of making the biggest commitment I'll ever make. All good things of course. :) Here are a few of those things pertaining to being engaged, and some others that I just felt like  other people might like to know, such as...

#10. Basketball finals takes place in several series of 7 games. "Finals" is plural for a reason. After the Heat beat the Celtics in the playoffs after 7 games they moved onto the Finals to compete against the OKC Thunder for the 2012 Championship. Now, I was under the impression for some reason that after the basketball nation had determined that the Heat and Thunder would be playing in the Finals, that they would determine the championship after playing just one game. Lucky for me, there were in fact SIX more games after that one. I do mean it when I say lucky, reason being that the Thunder won the first game in the series and if they had taken the championship I would have had a very disappointed Heat fan of a fiance. And now the Heat are up 2-1. :) Only 3 more games!

So here's what I've really learned. I used to dread watching games with Stu. I tried hard to not complain but it was starting to get the best of me. Just when it was starting to get really bad, like a game every single day bad, I noticed that I had started to figure out the game. And I actually cared who won! Haha for someone who has watched more sports in the last year than in the rest of my life combined (x100) that is saying something. And I have to admit, I'm pretty proud that I am now able to explain playoffs/finals to the blogosphere. So, take time to learn about the seemingly boring things your main squeeze enjoys. You hate it, then get used it, then if you're lucky--you might start to enjoy it too.

#9. I dream about the wedding literally every single night. This never happened before there was a ring on my finger even though we knew we were getting married. It was as if now that there is a piece of hardware on my finger, my brain magically knows that it needs to solve wedding problems in my sleep. They have ranged from really stressful (all my teeth falling out), to REALLY weird (having a mexican fiesta and then watching rated R movies inside of the temple).

#8. I hate being at my apartment. I can't wait for us to just live together already. Being with Stu at his town house feels more like home than being at the apartment I've lived at for a year. I don't even leave food there anymore except for breakfast haha. August can't come soon enough. And by August I mean September since that will realistically be when we will actually be able to settle in. We found this really great apartment in Orem and are waiting to hear back on whether or not we got it. Cross your fingers for us. :)

#7. Savings are suddenly important. I've never cared that much about money and have just been content in the past as long as I had money to fill my car up, pay for my gym membership, and hit Costa Vida occasionally. All of a sudden, it's not just about me haha. I'm more grateful than ever that my parents made sure I developed my ability to play the piano as well as encouraging me to start teaching piano lessons in high school. It is an awesome job and I'm so glad that we can always have that to cushion our income a little bit.

#6. People are more accomodating to me when they know I'm engaged. It's like everyone thinks that I'm planning my wedding every minute of every day. If I'm running somewhere late, "It's okay, I know you're getting married." If I forgot to register for an essential class Fall Semester, "You're engaged?? Don't worry about it!" Banana Republic didn't have something in my size, "It's for your engagment pictures?? I'll have it rushed here!" It is awesome. I'm going to keep pretending I'm engaged after we get married, because I doubt anyone cares after the deed is done. I can't wait to see what it's like when there's a kid on the way...

#5. Planning things isn't as fun as I thought it would be. That's why I'm so glad that my mom and Stu's mom are both in wedding planning beast mode. I really haven't had to do much. I just show up when I'm told to and tell them when I like stuff. They both have incredible tastes so I don't have to worry too much about the way things will turn out.

#4. Every day I get more excited to just be married and care less about the actual wedding. This is one of the best surprises. I've never liked when girls get caught up too much in the stuff that goes into that one day. When it really comes down to it, it's just a party for other people. I know that day I'm going to be completely oblivious to the shade of pink of the flowers in the centerpiece. I'll be way too focused on the handsome boy next to me. :)

#3. My perception of us as a couple is gradually changing. I've started to mentally view us as more of an unofficial little family. This is super cool. Maybe if you've experience it you know what I mean but if you haven't, I don't really know how to explain it and even if I could, I wouldn't want to ruin it for you. :)

#2. I love doing wifey things. I've been cooking a ton and it's so much fun. I was telling Stu the other day that I used to totally pity my mom when I watched her make dinner every single night. I thought it would be so inconvenient to have to interrupt what you're doing every day around 5 o'clock to go make some food for everyone. I look forward to it now though. I love finding new recipes and trying them out and we've loved some of the healthy recipes I've found. Stu is an awesome cook too so if I ever do need a break, I'm lucky I found a good one who knows his way around the kitchen.

#1. Dating is fun. Being engaged is lame. I always said I wanted to date for a year before getting married. When we get married in August, it will have been almost exactly one year since we started dating. I'm glad we're having a relatively short engagement, but it cannot pass fast enough. Sometimes it seems like we're going to be stuck in engagement purgatory forever. Only 2 more months though and Stu assures me it's going to fly by. :)

WTS??: Not What You Think It Stands For

If I tricked you into reading this by titling this post after an abbreviation for an inappropriate curse phrase, you may now leave this page. WTS, in fact, stands for Wedding-Triathlon-Socks.

1. Wedding

Okay for those of you who have planned weddings and used the conveniences of Facebook to spread the word, let's talk about creating an event to get addresses. I am so confused by this. You create the group to get addresses and then people say they are "attending"...and then they don't post their address...Haha. So am I now supposed to track down all these people and get their addresses? I don't quite understand this phenomenon...Stu and I are getting a good laugh out of it as our event says there are about 100 people attending but we probably have less than 50 addresses. It's a mystery!

2. Triathlon

My dad just did his 2nd Ironman in May and it was so BA. That does stand for what you think it does. Ironman's are insane (as in cool) and the people who do them are equally insane (as in CRAZY)! When we went and watched him compete in this last one we caught the triathlon bug. Stu was hooked pretty instantly, it took me a little longer to get on board. When I heard that the one he wanted to sign us up for was the week before our wedding I decided that I'm in. I figured it would be a super fun thing to get in to and also that it couldn't hurt to be on a vigorous athletic training schedule in the 3 months leading up to the wedding. :) The training schedule that we do is sweet because unlike the schedule I used to train for the half marathon I did last year, this one tells you to train for a specified amount of time, rather than distance. Example: Today we run for 50 minutes. Tomorrow we will swim for about an hour. Wednesday we will bike for 97 minutes. (I made all that up. I hope it isn't that long...) But you get the idea. I love this so much better than just going to the gym and doing random cardio and weight lifting. The only problem is that we don't have bikes. Those long bike rides are KILLLLER indoors. It is so boring and so hard to sit and just spin for long than 45 minutes. You start to loathe all of the music on your ipod. We need bikes. Yes, need.

3. Socks

There has always been one mystery of the universe that I just cannot understand. Where do all the missing socks go? Where?!?! I used to get upset at allll the socks I lose but over the years it's gotten to a point that it is just plain comical. Observe:

This is my Sad Sock box. It is full of lonely, single socks. Whenever I can't find a sock match, the single sock goes in the box. I refuse to wear mismatched socks, so these outcast socks are put out of commission, perhaps forever if their partner goes undiscovered.

Occasionally I will open up the Sad Sock box and see if the partners of any of the forsaken socks has snuck its way in unnoticed. These were the contents of the box a couple of days ago when I decided to give it a try. I know. It's unreal. How does this happen??

This is the outcome. Out of all those socks, only 8 pairs were reunited. Only 8! Once again, How does this happen?! There are sneaky elves breaking into my apartment at night and stealing my socks, I am sure of it. Or there is a black hole out there in the universe that is acting as a home for a host of my beloved socks. I've looked in my car, at my parent's house, behind the dryer, under my bed, through every drawer, through my sister's drawers...Everywhere. But no dice. Maybe someone in the witness protection program needed some mismatched socks. I don't think they're coming back.

The silver lining in this otherwise dreadful situation is that it seems that the vast majority of my lost socks are green. And green is my least favorite color of sock.