Photo dump from the past seven months, in reverse-chronological order

 We went fishing at Payson Lake.

 

 All we caught was algae, before I irreversibly tangled the line by scrolling the handle thingy the wrong way. It was my first time.

 Boating at Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. Baby Annie is delectable, especially in her mandatory life jacket.

 My first baseball game! The Columbus Clippers were, uh, not having the best day, but we were. Cause Dime-a-Dog night. We brought J-Dawg sauce from home in 3-oz. travel bottles. Worth it.

 Our cute cabin at Salt Fork.

 Golfing at Salt Fork.

 So, you know, this represents our experience at the Flaming Lips concert. Except it actually doesn't at all, cause you can't smell this picture, and the copious amounts of pot that would come with it if you could. I actually called in sick the next morning cause of my lingering pot headache.

 I don't know why this pic is all stretched funny, but here's Jj having a euphoria attack while watching Neil Peart's 10 minute solo at the Rush concert.

 Flying lessons with nephew Will.

 Kjerst's birthday dinner at Benihana.

 The view from my trailer at work. I only used those honeybuckets once all summer.

 My cute little Paul got married.

 But first, I offered up my husband as stripper and built a giant cake for him to jump out of at the bachelorette party.

But back to the wedding.

 Steph and I took some liberties with the crystal shrimp rolls at Sushi Ya. No regrets.

 Ohio friends get-together back in May.

 Impromptu epic arm-wrestle tournament following our viewing of Over the Top.

 Little Wooden Boy is like family.

June 23rd

It’s been one year, fools.

One magical, sometimes struggled, mostly wonderful year that really does feel like much longer, possibly due to our four years of dating prior. Throughout this year, I’ve often reflected on the strangeness of how easily this lifestyle change came to me. I can’t speak for JJ, but for myself, in all frankness, the transition from singledom to marriage has been near seamless. Living with another person makes sense to me. Checking in regularly with the same person; working, playing and bickering with the same person; having that person ultimately be your everything - makes sense to me, on a visceral level. This perhaps explains the peculiar, barnacle-like friendship that Carol and I have always had. I pledged devotion to her at an early age, it seems, and never looked back.

I also think this accounts for a lot of  the melancholy of my previous adult life.  For a person who clearly lives to be bound with another, I find it little wonder that dating, with all its lightness and impermanency, did not agree with me. Perhaps all the angst and disquiet of that time was merely my inner self knowing that it was not good for Mish to be alone? Perhaps it’s more complicated than that. What I do know is that I feel more at home in this arrangement, more completely myself, than I ever have before. Though it may be new territory, yet it still feels familiar. At the risk of putting on airs, I think it’s a lot like how heaven will feel.

And then there is my cute husband, the object of all this discourse. With all his sweetness and goodness, my love for him frequently brings me to tears. All clichés aside, forever truly doesn’t seem long enough. I sometimes feel even a little anxiety about that. WHAT IF FOREVER ISN’T ENOUGH TIME??? Enough time for what, I don’t know. Love is weird like that.

Anniversaries pair nicely with gelato.

JJ's 30th Birthday and Mohawked Truck!

Last month, to celebrate JJ's considerable milestone of 30 years accident-free, we had ourselves a little surprise party! For those of you who aren't familiar with the show Breaking Bad, you might as well skip to the end cause this really won't make any sense.

 

 

 

In other happenings, last weekend we got to go with our friends Elric, Audge, Mark and Katrina to Monster Jam! All of our first times! So many rattails! Please to enjoy these videos from the evening.

All I care about is aqua

Since being married, there's this thing where I only want to decorate my life in aqua. Aqua and mint, to be exact. It's maybe gotten a little out of hand.

 

 (haha, out of hand!)

Contrary to the poor lighting in our apartment, those curtains are aqua. Maybe more of a light blue.

 Ditto shower curtain.

 At least those pillows used to be aqua, before I bleached them with my harsh chemical-ed face.

 Probably bought this face wash 60% cause I needed it, 40% cause it was aqua.

What the psycho? 10% cause we needed a stapler, 90% cause it was mint.

                                                  

                                        Not pictured: 2 mint shirts, 1 mint skirt, 1 bundle of aqua fabric to be made into a pillow sham very, very soon...

Life is grand!




P.S. I'm giving up pizza for Lent. Sounds like it should be easy, I know, but I'm actually quite nervous about my self-control on this one. Pizza accounts for probably 65% of my weekly calories. Happy Lent to you!

Ode to Winter Scorn

I know it must be getting old to hear all this whining coming from the Utah Valley region. I know those of you in other parts of the country have probably heard enough from your family, friends and FB about how mind-numbingly cold it is here, how freaking many feet of snow we've gotten, and how our freeway looks like that part of a disaster movie when everyone still thinks they have time to flee the flood/volcano/aliens/etc. (Spoiler: They don't! Shame on you for your escapist hubris, flood/volcano/aliens/etc. is going to make an example out of you and kill you before you even make it past your driveway!) I know you must be sick of this. We need to bundle up and buck up, cause this is Utah, dangit, and we have the best snow on earth! (not that I would know?)

So I'm going to keep it brief. It is mind-numbingly cold here. We have gotten freaking way too many feet of snow. The freeway is a mess. I'm tired of scraping ice chips off my windshield with a 3-in. dollar store scraper. My butt and my pride are still smarting from that untimely slip in front of two cars driving by.



In my darker moments, I have started referring to the snow, in my head, as "white poo".





That's how mad I am about this.






January please die.

P.S. JJ would like to add that the snow is too bright and hurts his eyes. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I'll do anything to crucify winter right now, so YEAH! What he said!