Rerouting: A California Blog

To say I love vacation would be an understatement. When I was growing up, each dinner conversation about daily activities, friends, and homework was put on pause as I practically yelled from excitement, “Where are we going on our vacation?!” We usually only traveled in the summer, and I would ask beginning in the fall, so my family had many dinner conversations of this to endure. Traveling has been a passion of mine for many reasons, ranging from not having to go to work to the delicious waffles you can prepare for yourself at continental breakfasts. Traveling is also enjoyable to me because you get to learn things about a place that you may not learn by a simple Google search. For Fall Break, Tyler and I went to Los Angeles, which I hadn’t visited in years, so I compiled a list of things I learned there.

The fact that the traffic is not deemed a national emergency is shocking to me. I would say traffic is terrible, but the word “terrible” is too positive to describe it. I had been told traffic would be bad, so my expectations were low. Once we got to LA, however, I realized how optimistic I had been. How do people get places there? I spent the majority of our trip trying to figure out how many celebrities live there. How are you on time to your movies you are filming? Do you have some sort of elite celebrity underground freeway system? How does every Hollywood red carpet interview not start off with a celebrity desperately trying to fan the sweat off their face from having to run the last 19 miles in their formal wear? (I know there are a lot of A-list celebrities that read my blog, so please either comment or drop a pin for me so I can find said celebrity freeway.)

The witches and wizards of Harry Potter are apparently all children of Jeff Bezos. On our first day of adventuring through Los Angeles, Tyler and I went to Universal Studios. As we are both Harry Potter fans, we reread the books last summer and decided we needed to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Perhaps it was written in magical invisible ink in the margins of one of the first chapters of the series, but somewhere it must mention that the wizards and witches attending Hogwarts are secret billionaires. Why do I say this? Because when we stopped in to the Three Broomsticks to order lunch and some butterbeer, the cost of our meal came to the same price as OUR GROCERY BILL FOR THE WEEK. FOR ONE MEAL. WITH NO LEFTOVERS. I remember watching The Sorcerer’s Stone and being in awe of the scene where Hagrid takes Harry to Gringotts to find that his parents left him stacks and stacks of gold. I thought they must have left him millions, but turns out they left him just enough to buy one butterbeer, but certainly not enough to get that butterbeer in a collector’s item cup. 

Warner Brother’s Need to Invest in Plastic Mugs: Anther fun stop we made was to the Warner Brother’s Studio Tour. We got to see sets for TV shows, props for movies, and drive past a lot of people I thought were celebrities until I realized that the celebrities were probably all enjoying their underground freeway. Unfortunately I am not allowed to disclose much of the information I learned on this tour as it may spoil shows that are not out yet, but all I will say is that when you see the bookshelf that is in the revamp of Lizzie McGuire, you will all go *CRAZY*. We also got to sit in the set of Friends, where an employee kindly took our picture. She was telling us how to pose and told us to clink the ceramic mugs together. As the good people are, we obliged, and as the good but apparently oblivious people we are, we practically smashed the mugs together, almost breaking them. We quickly thanked the employee and hurried away before they made us pay for damages in butterbeer. 

California Needs More Music About Itself. (Yes, this is another traffic rant): There are a lot of songs dedicated to California. We found a playlist to listen to while we were driving from place to place, and it was great!...for the first portion of the trip. Sadly, not enough songs about California exist that we could listen to en route to the beach unless we listened to “It Never Rains in Southern California” 78 times on repeat. One night, we decided to go to the Griffith Observatory, which is in the movie La La Land. Obviously we had to listen to the soundtrack on the way there. It was less than five miles away, but we listened to the whole soundtrack, from start to finish, BEFORE WE EVEN GOT OFF SUNSET BOULEVARD. Not only is the traffic bad, but using Google Maps there is like being part of a weird, intense game of telephone. I would put a location in Maps, it would give us the directions, and we would be on our way. Once we got on the freeway, Maps would very quickly reroute us, claiming it had a faster route for us. I would go from telling Tyler he was fine to get in the far left lane to 13 seconds later panicking, “You have to get off this exit in 7 feet!!!” Once Tyler had maneuvered around the cars and safely gotten us of the exit, we would go on the new route for no more than 4 minutes before the phone chirped again, “REROUTING!” By the 819th reroute, we decided we would not be moving to California anytime soon. 

All in all, it was a great trip that gave me a greater appreciation for the warriors who work in the California division of Google Maps. 

Ode to Summer

Labor Day always feels like an end of summer celebration to me. It’s a final goodbye to the lazy mornings, hot days, and long nights of the past couple of months. (Even though the blazing hot summer seems to continue right up until the first snowstorm of the year) Although autumn is clearly the superior season, summer has given me a lot to be thankful for: 

Thanks for the water still stuck in my ear: There are many things I am not good at. (See also: tennis) Perhaps this is why when I find something I’m great at, I celebrate it even if it’s weird or unimportant. For example, the eye doctor I had growing up always told me I have amazing retinas. After every eye appointment, I took it upon myself to let every family member know that even though I am blind as a bat, MY retinas are incredible. (Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when I went to a new doctor this past year and the doctor didn’t use any words like “spectacular” or “marvelous” or “America’s Top Retina Model” and instead used words like “You can see our secretary for your payment” and “Please get out of the chair. We have other patients.”)  Along with great retinas, another odd thing I am proud of is my underwater handstands. I can’t actually do a handstand on land, which is maybe why I’m pleased as punch that I can do one underwater. I always beat my siblings at handstand contests, and when Tyler and I went to the pool this summer I was eager to show off my skills. After coming up from the water, however, one of my ears was all plugged up. This didn’t worry me too much, because usually it drains out of my ear in an hour or two. Alas, a few hours later my ear was still plugged, and it felt like the entire Pacific Ocean, sea creatures and all, were residing in my ear canal. The next morning it felt like I was still underwater, with a bowling ball somehow lodged inside. I sadly realized I would need to call the doctor. How many people in their 20’s are calling their doctor because of an underwater handstand incident? Am I aging too quickly? How is someone mature enough to pay their bills and floss consistently for the two weeks leading up to a dentist appointment so they can claim they floss “all the time” calling for something seven year old Rachel was doing all summer? Luckily the doctor refrained from laughing, prescribed me with some medication, and I spent the rest of the summer going through a midlife crisis.  

Thanks for the 40 Lost Tennis Sets: My family is a group of very casual tennis players. When I was growing up, we would go play on the summer holidays, like Memorial Day or the 4th of July, but I never played regularly enough to actually be any good. In fact, I didn’t even take the time to learn the scoring or rules until this year, as hitting the ball back and forth was good enough for me. This summer, my brother Tim and I decided we were going to play more often, so every morning we would walk over to the park and play some games. At the beginning I was truly awful, and I would only win one or two games against him. The more we played, the more I improved. I would go as far to say that I moved all the way from “tennis novice” to “inexperienced tennis player”. I started winning more games, but would still lose the set. As I started to get better, my goal was to win at least one set before the end of the summer. That’s how every Disney movie ends, right? Someone is incredibly untalented, they work hard, and they finally succeed during the big game, usually with a marching band and fireworks to accompany the win, along with a flash forward of the main character playing in the major leagues. Unfortunately, it turns out this aspect of my life is one of those sad dramas where there is no uplifting message and on your way home you accidentally knock your popcorn refill all over the front seat of your best friend’s car. I took Tim to a tie-breaker a couple of times, but I never was able to win an entire set. No marching band, no fireworks, but I still haven’t ruled out the idea of playing professionally. Not tennis of course, but ESPN now shows professional corn hole matches. So while I will continue to enjoy tennis, I think my professional career of corn hole may be taking off during the 2020 season. 

Thanks for my continued world domination: In the end of July, Tyler and I were able to join my extended family in Steamboat Springs, Colorado for a family reunion. It was great to be able to see family, and I was able to slowly increase my army of followers as my adorable nephew decided he would name his new stuffed animal Rachel. We also hiked up Fish Creek Falls, which was fairly steep, and when we made it to the top I was completely exhausted, not wanting to take another step. As we turned around to begin the hike back, I saw my 80 year old grandpa hiking to the top with the same amount of energy a child has the night of Halloween. I’m not sure if I was more impressed with my grandpa or concerned that my hiking ability is declining as quickly as my ear.

All in all, it was a successful summer. Now that I have all the Hulu commercials memorized by heart, I’m officially ready for school to start. 

Winners and Losers of the 2018-2019 School Year

When I catch up with family or friends, often people ask me, “How’s teaching going?” I usually say things are going well, and we move on to other topics like the weather, or my new book idea, Rachel’s Art of the Deal, which is of course based on Donald Trump’s book and includes lots of tips and tricks about deals including pinky swears, crossing your fingers under the table, and obscure but totally legal deal tips. (So far no publisher has been willing, but when I get this printed, it will be HUUUGE.) I don’t avoid the topic of teaching because I’m not willing to share my thoughts, it’s more like I rarely can find the words to adequately explain it. How do you simply put into words what spending eight hours every day with a classroom full of eleven year olds is like? Of course, like many things, there are both joyful and difficult times. So, without further ado, I present to you the winners and losers of the 2018-2019 school year. 

Winner: My Students

After a few of my students consistently came to class tardy because they were talking to their friends in the hall, I had a chat with them about being on time. Unfortunately, the chat happened no more than half an hour before I was stopped on the way to class by one of my friends who wanted to catch up for a minute. By the time I made it to my hallway, the students I had talked to were standing in front of the line right outside my classroom with gigantic grins as they watched me speed down the hall as the bell rang. Luckily they were kind enough to leave a note on my computer, and neither of us was late after that. (That’s a lie. We were both late some days, but who’s counting?) 

Loser: Toll House

While we were reading a book in which a girl is dared to drink a raw egg, I felt the need to take a serious adult moment and let the kids know that they shouldn’t go around drinking raw eggs. I explained they could get salmonella poisoning, but also admitted to the fact that I certainly enjoy a good batch of cookie dough. (Excellent teachers contradict themselves, right?) I expected for the kids to also chime in about how they like cookie dough, but instead I saw a bunch of disgusted faces staring at me. Eventually a kid raised his hand and said, “Mrs. Neeley, you eat cookie dough? Someday we’re going to be looking in the newspaper and see you DIED because you ate COOKIE DOUGH?!” The unimpressed looks on their faces was almost enough for me to give up cookie dough for good. Good luck Toll House, but these kids will never be enjoying your finest product. 

Winner: Science Youtubers

After showing my students a video on Youtube of a guy doing a science experiment to start off our lesson, one of my students raised his hand and asked if he could see how many subscribers the Youtuber had. After checking, the boy burst out, enraged, “Seven thousand! WHAT?!? I post ACTUAL content! This guy is just posting science!!” My reply that maybe the student could start posting about science was quickly filed into the “boring adult comment” section and quickly ignored.   

Loser: Me

In the spring, a few giant trees were cut down on the field where my students go out to recess, and large branches were scattered everywhere. It was no concern to me at all, which was my first mistake. The students ran outside and began play colonists/American Indians which is apparently impossible without holding five feet long branches as walking sticks. Ah! My heart! They actually were paying attention in social studies! It took no longer than 7 minutes for the students to start arguing about who got to use the BEST sticks and who would be destined to the short, broken ones.  Sadly, my favorite management strategy of “let the students figure this one out” failed miserably as one day I noticed my students getting their lunches from the kitchen, walking straight to the garbage can to dump the entire tray, and sprinting outside to be one of the elite stick holders. I realized this was a time for me to step in. I followed the students outside, but regrettably I didn’t realize Usain Bolt was in my class, because once they were out the door they were already on the other side of the field, waving the sticks above their head like the Tusken Raiders from Star Wars. I called them over, along with the rest of the class who had just dumped their freshly made lunches into the dumpster and heartbreakingly realized they were too late to enjoy a blissful half hour of playing with branches, and let them all know that they were going to need to find a way to cooperate and share or the sticks would be banned. After a few minutes of healthy communication (yelling at each other and calling names) they came up with an agreement, and they were happy campers. I went inside feeling pleased as punch we worked that one out as a class, and there were no more problems with sticks after that. (Sidenote: there were MANY more problems with the sticks. After approximately 683 fights, 5 trillion tears, and three weeks of having discussions of  WHEN students could retrieve the sticks, WHO could use which stick, WHERE the students could hide the sticks, WHAT games they could play with the sticks, HOW they were going to locate the sticks after the pesky 4th graders had hidden them, etc. etc. etc., the sticks were banned and I made them play really boring and terrible things at recess like kickball and four square.)

Winner: Me

Teaching is the most difficult thing I have ever done. (This is a lie. After day 13 of the stick fiasco, I came home, discouraged and exhausted to find a PILE of snakes sitting on my porch steps. Going back outside was the most difficult thing any human being has accomplished to date.) But teaching is a lot easier when you’re surrounded by teammates who will go along with your Emperor’s New Groove Halloween costume, a room mom who thinks of the exact perfect way to decorate the classroom door, and a parent of a student who constantly brought me sodas after long days. I’m lucky to be surrounded by amazing people and an incredible class of students who were patient with me and taught me something new every day. The students I teach will always have a special place in my heart.   

HAGS!

2018 Christmas Card

Dear Friends and Family,

The annual argument continues in the Hardy household: who will get the most facetime in the family Christmas card? With my siblings having kids, applying for grad schools, baking mouth-watering treats for every family event, and my brother actually playing the clarinet that my parents bought for me after I abandoned it after only one year of use, it became clear to me that I would need to write my own card if I wanted to have my turn in the spotlight.

We began the year by moving into our new home. There are many perks of this wonderful apartment:  plenty of space, nice neighbors, homemade cinnamon rolls every Saturday morning, a seemingly never ending pantry, and a free trash service. I know what you’re thinking…. “Rachel, where did you find such a wonderful place? Can I put my name on a waiting list (because with a place that grand, how could there not be hundreds, if not thousands, of people wanting to live there) so I can live there, too? The simple answer would be no, because we live in my parents basement. (But a more complicated answer would be maybe, because technically there is a second bedroom we don’t use, and if my parents don’t read this letter then maybe we could lease out the bedroom for $3000 per month without them knowing, and I could quit my teaching job and become a retail tycoon) Anyway, we really did move into the basement, and whenever I mention it to my fifth grade class they all laugh because they imagine me as the stereotypical old person living in their parents basement, playing video games, and stealing their parents food. (I do go upstairs for random ingredients quite frequently, so they’re not too far off base) I know that living with your parents/in-laws gets a bad rap, but I was not joking about the cinnamon rolls. My dad makes them every Saturday and they are divine. Needless to say, things are going swimmingly.

The rest of the year brought some great things. In the beginning of February, my sister tried to get us tickets to see Hamilton, but was unsuccessful. Later that night I told Tyler that I had accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be able to see Hamilton until I was very old. Little did I know that he and his family had tried getting tickets for us that morning and had actually gotten some! For the next three months, there was an unspoken agreement with me and everyone else in the world that Hamilton would be the only thing I would have conversations about unless there was a dire emergency. Being able to see it was a dream and the perfect surprise.

2018 included some fun trips for Tyler and me. We visited Denver in the spring, and Arizona in the fall. While in Arizona we went to the BYU game, which we expected them to lose but they did not, which gave us false hope for the rest of the season. We visited Washington D.C. in October, where I was dismayed to find that President Trump does not wander around the National Mall as he tweets. I had some things to chat with him about, and now my only hope is that the people with camp chairs and  sound systems outside the White House will yell my ideas to him with their microphones.

Fall also brought Thanksgiving, which Tyler and I have both agreed is truly the best holiday of the year. I spent the day before making pies, and when everyone was devouring them my mother-in-law told me they were so good that I could open my own bakery, so I was feeling pretty good about myself, to say the least. It was somewhere around the time I was debating what I should call my new bakery (I believe I was deciding between the names “Pies...because that’s the only thing I can bake” and “Mediocre Meals”) that my sweet nephew, who is allergic to eggs,  threw up all over the couch. He was having an allergic reaction. To the pies. An allergic reaction to the pies that had egg in them. An allergic reaction to the pies that when I was asked if they had egg in them, I said no. EVEN THOUGH THE FIRST STEP IN PUMPKIN PIE IS “BEAT EGGS LIGHTLY.” Yes, I had totally forgotten they had eggs in them, and if I had a time machine I would use it to go speak with past Rachel, who at 9 years old gave a church talk that discussed how President Gordon B. Hinkley once said that “Now is the time for revolution!!” instead of “revelation”, and inform 9 year old me that a moment a LOT more embarrassing than that would be coming. Actually, I guess I would probably just use the time machine to go back an hour and remind myself there certainly IS egg in the pie, but whatever. Luckily, I married into one of the greatest families of all time, and they were all very nice about the whole thing. If I had a time machine, I’d go back to when I was worried about my dating life and tell myself, “Don’t worry! Eventually you’ll find the greatest person ever and he has the kindest family ever!” I think the moral of this little tale is that we need to let whoever is in charge of inventing time machines know that I need one ASAP.

Merry Christmas! May you all get plenty of coverage in your family’s Christmas card.

Love,

The Neeleys

The New Karate Kid

When I was in college, at the beginning of each school year I would always joke with my friends that then would be the perfect time to “rebrand.” Most people moving into the apartment complex we had never met, so if we wanted to change something about our personality then would be the time. We would always joke about becoming the person in the complex who throws all the parties, or the person who has a very loud, controversial opinion on everything. The emphasis, of course, is on the word “joke” since every year of college my brand was almost always “only attend social gatherings that have plenty of food, leave early, and spend the rest of your time in sweats watching TV with your roommates and perfecting the lifelong quest of making a non-burnt quesadilla.” Now that another school year is almost upon us, I have been thinking about rebranding. There are a few different ways I’ve thought I could rebrand myself:

Karate Kid: Emmie’s awesome room mom had given her free passes for a karate class for teacher appreciation week, so this summer we went. This would be an excellent time to let you know that I know NOTHING about karate, except people break wooden boards and make loud “Hi-YA!” noises. I wondered on the drive over if anyone had every actually broken their hand trying to break the wooden board, or if I would be the first, and if they would put my picture up on their wall. (Hopefully the picture would be taken before the resident karate master got word of it and was jealous that somebody was finally getting their picture on the wall and challenged me to a karate duel) After one class I’m not quite sure if I can truly rebrand myself as “the karate kid,” and instead might be rebranded as the “please don’t make me stand in front of the class” person, but I do know some self-defense moves, and during meditation time while everyone had their eyes closed I made sure to peek around and check out who all the black belts were in case I ever find myself needing a sensei to aid me in an Ocean’s 11 scenario. I also learned that at the end of the class, everyone bows to each other and says, “Courtesy”, so sometimes I like to bow randomly to people and when they give me a confused look roll my eyes and say under my breath “Oh...must be a white belt.” (Hopefully the fact that I had to google the lowest karate belt while writing this doesn’t hurt my karate street cred)

The Movie Person: After this summer, it’s hard to imagine not rebranding myself as cinematic expert. Tyler and I love to go to the movies, and we always get popcorn. As we all know, concessions at the movie theater are astronomically priced. The popcorn is so expensive that I have often wondered if Cinemark is coating my popcorn with extra butter, or liquid gold. We found a new movie theater in Pleasant Grove called Water Gardens. We were first interested because the price of the tickets was cheaper, but as we got in line to get our popcorn I felt as excited as my 9 year old self when my dad told me he would show my how to use dial up internet if I cleaned my room. This movie theater lets you bring in any bowl you want from home and FILLS THE ENTIRE THING FOR ONE DOLLAR. I wasn’t quite sure if I was supposed to hug the manager or let him know that they could charge at least 6 dollars more for the purchase, but chose to instead say, “Thank you!”, but not the kind of “thank you!” that you say after getting your oil changed or your groceries bagged, but instead the kind of “thank you” which really means “This is the best day of my life and I will be returning every day to buy myself popcorn for dinner.” I was so excited about this theater that within the next 24 hours I had contacted almost all of my closest family and friends to share our exciting news. (Sure, when we said we had “exciting news” some people thought we had bought a house or were pregnant, but I keep insisting that this piece of news is just as life changing.)

A Tech Guru: I’ve never thought I’m really ahead of the curve with technology. I know how make spreadsheets and documents, and I know how to work my phone well enough to send my sister 30 different Snapchats of me singing “Talk less, floss more,” as I was creating a Hamilton parody while waiting for my dentist appointment. However, I always have to google how to take a screenshot on my computer, and whenever I see the rainbow wheel of death on my mac I usually take a nap or scroll through Instagram in the hopes that “it will figure this out on it’s own.” It was not until I was at the gym that I realized I might be a tech genius without even knowing it. I was biking on one of the stationary bikes with my earbuds in and my phone sitting on the handlebars. As an older woman sat down next to me, she looked at my earbuds and said, “Wow! I need to figure out how to connect those two.” She showed me her iPad and said, “I think headphones connect somehow.” She shrugged, and the conversation was over, but for the next little bit I kept thinking, “Am I a tech goddess?? Am I the only one who knows the hack of plugging the earbuds INTO the phone to hear the music? Am I about to become a BILLIONAIRE by sharing my skills with the world?!?!” But then I looked around the gym and saw that 99% of them were already listening to music through their headphones, so that pretty much ruined my plan to success.

While my knowledge seems to be subpar in each of these areas, luckily I’m pretty good at googling something and acting like it was something I knew all along, which will probably always be my true brand.

Courtesy.

2017's Best Google Searches

The end of the year is the perfect time to reflect on the previous 365 days: your favorite moments, times when you grew, and the buckets of movie theater popcorn you consumed. Some families look through pictures of the past year, others look through their journals, but I look through my Google searches. While pictures are usually posed for and filtered, Google searches show the true me: the me that knows Google can solve all of my problems.

When I was in 6th grade, my teacher put each student in a reading group. Mine read The Chessman of Doom. Another group read The Westing Game. 12 year old me was VERY miffed at this because I had a suspicion that my teacher had not placed me in the highest reading group. Now that I’m a teacher and put students in reading groups with different levels of text, I remembered back to that moment and decided to check if I was right. Although it turns out I was just a mediocre reader, at least I have an A+ in holding grudges.

Sometimes my Google searches are very lengthy and detailed, like this one:

What to do if you went to church for 3 hours and you accidentally put your roast on “low” in your crock pot instead of “high” but you want to eat as soon as you get home?

Often I forget that Google is not an actual person and you can’t ask incredibly specific questions. But in case you were wondering, the day I forgot to turn my crockpot on “high” was fast Sunday, and yes, there were tears.

Something I should have Googled, but I didn't:

This summer, Tyler and I attended a family reunion in Yellowstone. Although I love using Google to look up things, for unknown reasons I never look up the weather. Now this is not because I don’t believe the weather forecast or I’m taking some odd stance against global warming, but mainly I just forget that checking the weather is a thing people can do. Before our trip to Yellowstone, we didn’t look up the forecast. The first day we were there, the weather was nice, and we went on a long hike. During the last mile, it started to pour rain. No, it was not drizzling. It was not a trickle of rain. It was POURING. An ocean-worth of rain was being dumped from the sky and probably all the bison in the park could hear me yelling as we ran towards our car, “No one told me to bring a rain jacket! I am never doing this again!!” The next morning, it was sunny. We went on a few hikes, and in the afternoon we started walking around the boardwalk (people who are familiar with Yellowstone ask me which part of the park we went to see, and I am informed enough that I can tell you that this section of boardwalk is one of the parts of Yellowstone that does NOT have the lodge with the ice cream shop in it) and it started to HAIL. So just like the day before, we sprinted back to our car while everyone else with rain jackets walked around. Although we weren’t prepared for the rain, I am pleased to say I hardly noticed the puddles of water sloshing around in my shoes when we finally made it to the section of boardwalk in Yellowstone that DOES feature an ice cream shop.   

This year, Tyler and I were happy to have season tickets to BYU football. Unfortunately, they were absolutely terrible this year. At the beginning of the season they looked bad, but we would say, “At least they should be able to win some of those other games” and “Their schedule will get easier.” Then they played a few more games and we said, “They’re pretty bad, but at least they can win some of the easy ones.” Spoiler Alert: They did NOT win the easy ones. But we went to the games, and it was hilarious and fun in a kind of “this is the worst BYU football team that has existed in my lifetime” sort of way.  

This year for Halloween the staff at my school decided to dress up as food. Emmie and I went as bacon and eggs, but when my egg costume arrived in the mail it had been folded, so there were lots of deep creases in it. The next two weeks were spent trying to figure out how to unwrinkle my costume that specifically said “Do not iron” on it. (Solution: Iron it.) I don’t think Tyler knew when he agreed to marry me that he would come home one day and I’d jump out from around the corner wearing my egg costume yelling, “THE IRON WORKED!”, but I suppose marriage is full of surprises.

When Tyler and I were first dating, I introduced him to one of my many well thought out  theories: an athlete is better because of their name. Do we really think that Usain Bolt’s parents thought “Hmm...let’s name him Usain Bolt. The name has a nice ring to it...the “nice, average, never win any gold medals” kind of ring.” Of course not! His parents knew EXACTLY what they were doing. Coco Crisp. Metta World Peace. Tiger Woods. Andrew Luck. How could you possibly go wrong when you’re literally wearing the word ‘Luck’ on your jersey?! These names were no accident. Tyler didn’t believe me. Luckily this year a VERY scholarly article by Bill Simmons came out this year, suggesting that perhaps Blake Bortles, the quarterback for the Jaguars, doesn’t perform as well because of his name. This has been the first time one of my bizarre theories have ever been backed up, so it was definitely a highlight of 2017.   

May your Google searches of 2018 be even more bizarre than 2017’s. Happy New Year!   

1 Year, 2555 Oreos

Last week Tyler and I celebrated one year of being married. One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of my married friends is that they move a lot. They’re young, their jobs take them different places, and they’re not quite settled yet. Frequently I’ve seen couples posting about their anniversary on Instagram with a cute picture of them and a caption breaking their first year into numbers like “4 apartments, 3 states, 2 dogs, and 1 year of bliss!” Unfortunately, I am neither cutesy enough to write a caption like that nor do we have enough events in our lives going on. If I were to make a caption like this, it would read “1 state, 1 apartment, 1 year of marriage, and 2,555 Oreos.” (Yes, Tyler eats 7 double stuf Oreos every night. I had a friend once say, “Tyler..that’s the guy who eats the Oreos, right?” So yeah, he’s the Oreo guy. I know what you’re thinking: How did Nabisco choose Shaq to advertise Oreos over Tyler? Does Shaq even eat Oreos? When will this injustice be corrected? All are obviously questions that keep me up at night.) I decided this caption didn’t really include some of my favorite memories from our first year, so I’ve broken it up into a few more numbers:

50 fake Donald Trump tweets: My favorite website I discovered in this past year is a place where I can generate my own Donald Trump tweets. I send them to Tyler regularly and pretend they’re the real deal. This one I sent during my summer break in attempt to get Tyler to stay home with me: 

Luckily President Trump helps us settle some debates as well:

10 trips to Cafe Rio: There’s no secret that this is one of my favorite restaurants. What most people don’t know is that when we bring our leftovers home, I insist on labeling them if there’s a chance anyone else will eat them. 

3 trips to Rexburg: In the past year we’ve been able to take a few trips to Rexburg to see my family, one being the weekend before the 4th of July. I thought it would be perfect, because Rexburg was going to be having their big fireworks show while we were there. I use the word ‘big’ loosely, because the fireworks show is shorter and not as grand in comparison to other shows we’ve seen, but we still thought it would be a fun night out. My family spent the whole day trying to get Tyler to lower his expectations, since he hadn’t seen the Rexburg firework show before. “The firework show is much longer in Utah,” they warned him. “But it’s still fun to go.” My family and I went out to the park that evening and set out our blankets with the rest of the town, waiting for the show to start. We waited as the sky got dark. The fireworks never came. Some of the families with younger children gave up and went home. The fireworks never came. Some of the older families and teenagers packed up their things. THE FIREWORKS NEVER CAME. So yes, after a day of telling Tyler to lower his expectations, it was only fitting that we waited for hours in the dark until realizing they were canceled.   

8 Utah Jazz Giveaways: One thing we love doing together is watching the Utah Jazz. We always try to attend a couple games during the season, but something that is on our bucket list is to sit front row at one of the games. Luckily, the Jazz sometimes host Facebook giveaways for front row tickets, so we enter them. ALL of them. Not only do we both enter them, but after entering them we always pretend like we’re going to win, even though the chances are incredibly slim of actually winning. We remind each other we’ll need to leave work early the day of the game, we discuss having to cancel previously made plans, and every single time we don’t win we act surprised. “Maybe they forgot to call us, and our tickets are waiting at will call” we wonder, as we search for another contest to enter. 

3 Orange Chicken Attempts: Before getting married, dinners for me mainly consisted of quesadillas, spaghetti, and whatever my mom made the family for dinner the previous night. Once my parents moved further away from me (and my GoFundMe project to purchase a private jet so I could still use food from my parent’s pantry epically FAILED) and I got married, I decided to learn how to cook. One night I decided to try making orange chicken in the crock pot. I put the ingredients in the crock pot before going to work, came home to a delicious smelling apartment, sat down for dinner, and it was TERRIBLE. The chicken was so dry it was essentially like eating the Sahara Desert covered with orange sauce. We both pretended it was fine for a moment, but it was clear the next day after work when we both brought home our tupperware still full of orange chicken that we were supposed to eat during lunch how terrible that meal had been. I swore off orange chicken for months, promising Tyler I’d never make orange chicken again, and used it as a reference point for other meals. (On a scale from orange chicken to 10, how good was the new recipe we tried?) A few months later, I went over to my aunt’s house where she served a delectable orange chicken. Apparently I had temporary memory loss and forgotten the first orange chicken fiasco, so I asked for the recipe. I made it, telling Tyler, “If this turns out bad, I’m never cooking again.” We tried it. IT WAS STILL THE SAHARA DESERT OF CHICKEN. How was this possible? I promised Tyler again that I would never try making orange chicken for as long as I lived. A few months passed, and “Easiest orange chicken you’ll ever make!” and “Orange Chicken: If you can’t make this, you probably also got a D+ in your middle school cooking class for burning those pancakes” recipes started showing up on my Pinterest feed. So yes, I tried making it AGAIN. It actually turned out pretty good! (But don’t think I didn’t warn Tyler beforehand to order a pizza so it would arrive just minutes after the chicken destroyed our taste buds for the third time in a row.)

1 Cubs/Braves game: Over Labor Day, Tyler and I were able to visit Chicago to see my grandparents and go to a Cubs vs. Braves game, who are mine and Tyler’s favorite teams, respectively. The trip also included touristy places, like the Sears Tower, and the Art Institute, where half the time I stood in front of a painting in awe wondering how it’s possible for one person to be so talented, and the other half I stood thinking “That’s it? I could do that. I probably have done that. Don’t I have a painting exactly like this in my kindergarten portfolio? Did the artist copy me? Did the artist break into my home and underneath piles of random papers and childhood artifacts my mom has been asking me to sort through for the past 7 years that I’m too lazy to actually sort through find my masterpiece and submit it to the Art Institute?” I assume that’s what most people are wondering about when they’re looking thoughtfully at paintings. The trip also included deep dish pizza (which I have spent every day thinking about since, which is why I now know you can order deep dish pizza through Amazon), my grandpa asking us frequently who won the World Series last year in order to remind Tyler who the better team is, the Botanical Gardens, my Grandpa making sure he used his Cubs World Series mug whenever he sat across the table from Tyler at breakfast, and Millenium Park.

Definitely my favorite 2,555 Oreos ever.