1. Writing is going much better today. I'm getting back into the groove. I think I might actually get this first scene done before I have to submit to writing group tonight. Sometimes deadlines are my friends.

2. For Valentine's day, rather than making a huge fuss or completely ignoring the holiday--both alternatives that are unappealing to me--Drew and I shared a pistachio shake and a large order of fries at the Malt Shoppe. We spent an hour debating about mormon lit, infanticide, and abortion...not all at the same time. Very romantic, let me tell you.

3. My toes are pretty. Yesterday Emily and I went for pedicures (late bridal shower gift...we meant to go before my wedding, but it didn't work out that way for either of us) and I had my toenails painted black with two red flowers. The flowers have white jewel centers and green leaves. I want to go barefoot because my feet make me happy, but it's way cold, so I have to wear socks.

To two things, actually: Facebook and Kingdom Hearts. (Warning, this post also contains a long discourse on the unfortunate combination of thumbs and knives. Not for the faint of heart; hidden behind a cut.)

I created a Facebook account because a friend I hadn't heard from in three years sent me an invite, and I wanted very badly to talk to her. Since then I've mostly used it incidentally; there are some people I only have contact info for through facebook, so I used it for that, visiting the site at most once a week.

This weekend I idly sifted through lists of friends of friends, plus ran a search for friends based on my email account, and came up with the profiles of many, many people I had not talked to in years and had abandoned all thought of ever coming into contact with again. All of these people are fabulous, but I've had a lot of friends and acquaintances over the last eight years, and I couldn't possibly keep track of them all.

And now I'm back in touch with quite a number of them, which feels really, really good. I am converted. Facebook is my friend.

#

Also, I spent most of the weekend playing Kingdom Hearts. Drew and I are going through it together (or we were, before the unfortunate accident...more on this in a moment) and once you get past the beginning (I'm told it's common for beginnings of longer games to be slow) it's really, really fun. We've only had to use a walk-through to get unstuck one time, which is not bad. We're 13 hours into the game, or something ridiculous like that, which may not actually mean anything because I am SLOW.

( Sad Story of the Thumb and the Knife )

[whilst arguing over why Drew can't address envelopes for thank you notes]


Janci: If I got a letter that looked like this I would think the unibomber had sent it to me.

Drew: I have terrorist handwriting? [looks at envelope] I have terrorist handwriting!

I've already written about going to Disneyland for New Years, which was much more eventful than the rest of our trip to Newport. Which was exactly how we wanted it.

We stayed at the Marriot in Provo the night after our wedding, and then drove down to Newport Beach the next day. The drive was fun, as drives with Drew always are. I read him Alcatraz, we talked about random things. We got to the Ramada in Newport Beach around 10, which wasn't bad time, considering we didn't check out of the Marriot until noon that morning.

We took the X-box with us (cause we're awesome like that), but never got around to playing Fable because we watched most of the sixth season of Buffy instead. (Sixth season is my favorite. We're working our way through seven now, which is less cool.)  We generally lazed around and did nothing, which was fantastic after how busy our engagement was.  It was nice not to have to be anywhere at any particular time. 

Other than that we went to the beach and took millions of pictures in the city of Newport Beach; I've started posting some of them in my photo journal. I don't think we actually got any pictures with us in them, because we were too busy being goofy artists.  (I got some great shots, though.  Totally showed Drew up.  I'm good at that, with the camera.)



And hooray! Now I'm all caught up on my to-blog list! Yay me!

No, there are no pictures yet. My photographer has some, and my mother-in-law has the rest. As I've said before, you'll see them when I see them. :) I really think other people are in much more of a rush about that then I am.

I do have my bridals, but I just haven't posted them yet. I'll probably do a big picture post when I have everything together.

So, here's the whole ramble, in words-only version:

( Cut for those who don't want to read my long ramblings )

Drew, on talking to me when I'm in a bad mood:

"Everything I say makes the logical quantum leap to me leaving you. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure that only ends in death."

His life is so difficult.

There's lots of wedding stuff I never wrote down. I'm still working on getting it out a little at a time. This one's about New Years:

( New Years, 2008 )

Drew loves chess. He used to play competitively when he was in high school, and on our last trip to Denver he brought back his Nigri chess set--the pieces are Louis XIV, and very beautiful. We have the set displayed on a table in the corner of our living room.

Because it's there, we've played a lot of chess in the last few weeks. I didn't really know how to play, meaning that I know how the pieces move, but I had no clue how to build a strategy. Drew started teaching me when we were dating (he taught me endgames one Sunday afternoon, but we didn't get much farther than that. The beauty of this chess set makes the game much more interesting to play, aesthetically, so I've drawn him into games several times this week.

We're playing teaching games, which means we spend most of our time discussing the merits of different moves. I'll see something, try it, and then we'll discuss why it's a good move or a bad move. We might play a couple moves up to see what happens next. Then we might decide it was a bad idea and step back again, so I can pick something different. Drew isn't trying to beat me (goodness knows there's no glory in that); he's trying to teach me.

And I'm learning, I think. I'm certainly enjoying it. The other night I started a game against myself while Drew was painting. He knows openings well enough that he could help me with it without looking at the board much, which was nice. After I got through the opening and into the middle game it became too hard to play both sides, so I let the game sit there for a while.

Last night at midnight I told Drew it was his turn. I told him which side he was and he picked it up and we played. We didn't get to sleep until two as a result, and only then because he said, "This is where it starts to get complicated" and I said "That means we need to quit for tonight." But our game waits for us on the table. I think the pieces look nicer on display mid-game anyway.

I married the right guy.

Living with someone else has a tendency to cause you to realize irrational things you do that you've never noticed before. At least, it does that to me. Probably because Drew thinks I'm hilarious and points these things out to me at every possible moment. It's not that I mind, but the new level of self-awareness is disturbing sometimes.

I have some very strange fears. I am afraid of spiders, for example. Many people are afraid of spiders, right? But I'm not afraid that the spiders might be poisonous. I'm not even afraid that the spiders might bite me. Spider bites are rare. It seems silly to me to be afraid of something that happens so rarely. I am, however, afraid of seeing the spiders move. Spiders move so creepily, gliding along on all their little legs. This happens nearly every time I see a spider, so to me, it seems like a much more rational reason to be afraid of spiders than being bitten by one. Drew, of course, points out to me that seeing a spider move creepily will not actually do any harm to me, so it's a silly thing to be afraid of. I reject his reality. Clearly my fear very rational. ;)

I also don't like swimming in the ocean. Lots of people don't like swimming in the ocean--especially in Northern California, where I grew up--because it's cold. But I don't mind the cold. Other people don't like swimming in the ocean because of the sharks. They are afraid of being attacked. But, though there are predatory sharks in Northern California, attacks are very, very rare. It seems silly to me to be afraid of shark attacks when you're more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the beach than you are to get attacked by a shark. That, to me, seems like an irrational fear.

I am, however, afraid of kelp. The kelp forests in California rub against my legs, and they feel slimy and creepy, like all these kelpy arms reaching out and molesting me. I hate it.

I get molested by kelp nearly every time I swim in the ocean, so to me, this seems like a very rational fear. It is likely to happen. I'm not being paranoid.

Drew, of course, points out to me that the kelp doesn't actually hurt me, so this is an irrational thing to be afraid of. It think this is because he's never been molested by kelp.

So the other night I had the first nightmare I've had since I've been married. I don't have nightmares very often at all. Drew made me write this one down, because he said it was worth remembering.

In my nightmare, Drew and I realized that the rent for our new apartment would be more than we could afford. We got into a fight about it, and I ran away to cool off. When I came back, Drew was at his parents' house with his parents and my parents. During that time they all decided without me that we were going to live in Drew's parents' basement. I was upset and yelling, but Drew ignored me, and our parents said that they thought I was hysterical and we were headed for a divorce. Then Drew and my parents rearranged our furniture. They wouldn't let me help or listen to me, and they were making the furniture unusable by putting the bed in the closet and the couch in a narrow corner where no one could sit. I was hysterical, and Drew wouldn't listen to me.

I woke up angry with Drew for rearranging the furniture and ignoring me, so I told him about the dream when I woke up. He laughed hysterically. "So what you're saying," he said, "is that your deepest fear is that I'll rearrange the furniture. Badly."

I took these last night when I was screwing around with my camera. I used the flash (something I never do), so Drew was super-annoyed at me in all these pictures. But he's still hot.




( Cut )

The other thing I did this weekend was coax Drew into sorting out the boxes of stuff he had sitting at his parents' house. I'm tired of hearing "Oh, I want to show you this book...but it's in Denver." Honestly, if you own a thing, why keep it in a box forever?

What we found, in addition to several boxes of books, we also found box after box after box of minis, stored in heaps and jumbles of parts. Drew sifted through them, exclaiming over the cool pieces he found, and being disgusted at the storage methods and the state of some formerly-presentable minis which were now in pieces. I could not believe the amount of random mini bits that he'd managed to collect. The boxes were in such a state that the useful stuff was completely unusable, being buried and lost under masses of junk.

So we went through them. We collected boxes of things that were worth keeping, that needed further organization. We collected a box of random crap that isn't worth keeping, but that could be handed to children to paint and glue and mess up and keep them away from Drew's important stuff. (We'll be saving that for a while, but you can't just accumulate junk like that overnight. Drew had 16 years worth of junk in those boxes. Holding on to a bag of it for several years isn't going to hurt, and could be very useful in the future.) We also threw away a lot of stuff.

Tonight after we got home we went through the bits and sorted them into bags. There's still more to sort, but he's down to a reasonable amount of usable stuff, rather than stack after stack of boxes of mess.

I am very psychotic about organization, so it was really good for Drew to see this side of me. At least he knows what he's getting himself into. He really wants to have things findable and organized, and isn't opposed to keeping them organized, but he doesn't want to have to do it. He got pretty annoyed and sardonic at the task, which was completely hilarious, as always. It's a good thing he thinks it's hilarious when I'm annoyed, because it makes him more understanding when I mock his bitterness and sardony.

Drew is mildly obsessed with a tabletop miniatures game called Fairy Meat. The cool thing about this game is that the figure scale is 1:1--the minis are fairies and gnomes of actual size. Subsequently the game is played using every day objects as terrain.

My lawn has been growing mushrooms this week. On our way out one day Drew commented that the gnomes would look awesome having a battle in the middle of the mushrooms.

So he brought over a gnome and a leprechaun, and we had a little photo shoot.

Yes, I am a geek. But the ( pictures are awesome. )

I am so tired of not being married. Getting married in December was a terrible idea. I want to be married now. I hate being engaged. It is SO overrated. And unnecessarily stressful, and not for the reasons I thought it would be.


Grrrrr.


/whining

So much for a less crazy week. I filled it up today with things that need to be done. Oh well.

One of the things I need to do this week is finish my dress. It's looking like a dress these days, rather than a pile of fabric, which is fantastic.

( A long ramble about my wedding dress, which is in fact not white. )

All I have left to do now is hem it and put the sleeves in. I've got the hem half pinned up--I'm going with an invisible hem which I've done before, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult. I've left the sleeves for last, because I hate putting in sleeves. It's the most frustrating and difficult part of the whole process. These sleeves have to be gathered and eased, which only makes matters worse. I also have to put on a whole bunch more trim by hand, which doesn't thrill me. I should probably do some of that before I put the sleeves in.

*sigh* That's still a lot of work to do. At least it's turning out well, even if it isn't white. The awesome thing about it is that everyone who knows me hears about it and says, "that is so you!" and all Drew's relatives keep asking me how I let him convince me to put dragons on my dress. They'll figure it out eventually, I guess. :)

For the first time in many years I am loving fall.

It rained this weekend, and the weather's turned cold. There's snow on top of the mountains. I'm looking out at the cloudy sky, wearing fleece and closed-toed shoes.

My plans yesterday fell through at the last minute, so Drew and I hung out at my house and played Buffy. We're almost done. The weather makes me feel domestic, so we made chess pie (magegirl's recipe) from scratch, and experimented with chili in Quesadillas and on homemade french fries. All the results were yummy.

Drew also taught me strategy for the endgame in chess, which was fascinating. My dad's version of teaching me chess was to whomp me, so I've never liked the game very much. Drew started me at the end, though, so I could learn strategy with fewer pieces on the board.

Oh, and I got some awesome news this morning, but I'm not posting about it yet. How's that for cryptic? :)

Today was a perfect day. I slept in until eleven, then cleaned my house (read: did something productive!) and talked to Sandra and then to Kristy. Drew came over and vacuumed for me, because he knows I hate that. We spent more time talking than cleaning--about everything from what makes a musical to conspiracy theories. It rained off and on all day, so we went for a walk in the rain and Drew called his parents. I talked to his mom for a little while. She's awesome.

Then went and got more invitation inserts from the places we registered (read: something else productive!) and then went to my Stake Conference and listened to a bunch of awesome speakers, culminating in an address from Elder L. Tom Perry. (This is why I love Drew. He thinks going to my stake conference is a cool thing to do on a Saturday night.) Drew told me a joke about giving a frog a loan that I'm still laughing over, even though it has no right to be as funny as it was. (Don't tell jokes in stake conference unless you want to bother everyone around you.)

We came back; it was raining again, so we went for a longer walk in the rain and talked some more. We had hot chocolate (him) and chamomile tea (me) and chocolate pudding (both) and then played a round of speed scrabble (which works better with more people.) I pulled out my Victorian lit anthology to read Drew a Hopkins poem involving the word "shod" (God's Grandeur) and ended up reading from Tennyson (In Memoriam, Ulysses) and Clough (The Latest Decalogue) and Newman and Rossetti (No Thank You, John) as well.

We were going to play some more of the Buffy X-box game...but we were too busy being goofy and laughing to actually turn the thing on.

I wish every day could be like today. I so needed this.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon/evening goofing off. I hung out with Drew. I played some buffy on the X-box I need to get around to returning. (I'm 3/4 through the game now, Eric!) I really needed the break, but as a result my thesis is not getting written. I am having the hardest time starting this one. Hopefully that means I'm getting the struggles out of the way now. This seriously better not be an omen.

Several people have commented to me that engaged people are always distracted and think of nothing but each other. My response is that I wish I had that kind of luxury in my life right now. I can't afford to think of nothing but Drew; I have too many little balls up in the air, and I cannot just drop them and be engaged.

This week I have had a million things on my mind. I have been concentrating on my classes, teaching, outlining my thesis, getting to all the places I need to be on time, and trying not to completely ignore my friends. I've seen Drew quite a bit, but every time I see him I am distracted and thinking about other things. I was really, really worrying about this. After all, I'm supposed to be focusing on building a good relationship, right?

Then I talked to him about it this morning. He hadn't even noticed that I've been so focused on everything else. He didn't think I'd been ignoring him at all. Turns out, having a good relationship with him doesn't require my attention all the time. There are times when he needs me to focus on him, but then there are lots of other times when I can focus on other things, and he'll still be there when I come back.

This is a very cool discovery. I wonder if engaged people have a reputation for being batty and self-absorbed because most people don't figure this out until after their married.