bubble wrap and cardboard

My parents swear that the moment any of us finds out we are pregnant, we should immediately purchase a quality video camera. My siblings and I grew up with the video camera in our faces, recording everything from holiday mornings to birthday parties to school plays to everyday life. Needless to say, some of our best and worst moments are captured on film for us to relive as many times as we want. One particular video clip recently came to mind.

I was 4 years old and earlier in the day had been to my very first "Mother's Day Out" event at a local kids program. It was two hours of fun things like making cupcakes and finger painting and dancing. My daddy had me sitting in the floor reliving the day for him on camera. I threw my crazy blonde curls around and batted my baby blue eyes at him as he soaked up every word I said while I told him about my adventurous day at "Sticky Fingers." At one point in the conversation, he zoomed the camera in to the nametag still stuck to the front of my shirt. "Chelsey," he read, "Whats that on your shirt?" "My name tag!" I said. He pushed further... "Whats that for anyway?" And I responded, "Hmm. I don't know." So my sweet patient Daddy took the opportunity to teach me something new. He explained, "I bet cause there were so many kids there, the teacher couldn't remember all your names. So she put your name tag right where she could see it so that when she saw you finger painting she could read your name tag and say 'Chelsey! You're doing such a great job!'" I looked down at my name tag, then back at him, pensively. "Nuh-huh, thats not right," I responded, very matter-of-factly. My Daddy chuckled to himself and said, "No? What do you think it's for then?" I studied the name tag again and said, "I don't know. But thats not right."

I was a stubborn kid, to say the least. I've outgrown many things in my 26 years of life, and I'd like to think thats one of them. But then, things like this happen.

Sam and I had been discussing getting a couple of new pieces of furniture for our house. So one evening we drove to Target and purchased a beautiful teal entertainment center along with a wire storage shelf for the garage. When we got home, we tore in to both boxes and soon the living room floor was covered with bubble wrap and cardboard and screws. "Lets race," I challenged. I chose the garage shelf (mostly because it didn't require any tools, and also because not many people will ever see it) and Sam started on the TV stand. We chatted and laughed and hurried, and I finished first. However, my shelf had a significant lean to it. It was upright and definitely usable, but it took very little force to make it slouch to one side. "I don't think it's supposed to lean like that," my future hubs observed aloud. "It's fine!" I said, assuredly. "Once we get weight on the bottom shelf it will stabilize." I was sure.

So Sam hauled the shelf to the garage and we began piling the heavy things on the bottom shelf. To my complete surprise, there was still a very apparent lean. I began suggesting we add more things, perhaps it needs more weight. Sam, so gentle and patient, turns to me and says, "Hey babe, where are the instructions?" My mouth gaped. "EXCUSE ME?" I exclaimed. "Are you suggesting I did something wrong?! Because I KNOW how to read you know! It's not that hard!" Again, so patient. He says, "I believe you dear... I just wanna see them." I fling the manual in his direction and half-stomp inside where I plopped purposefully on the couch, arms crossed.

About 3 minutes went by during which I convinced myself that I was about to marry a sexist pig who assumed that just because I am a girl I can't put together a stupid shelf that didn't even require tools! How dare he question my building abilities! And then he appeared in the doorway, doing his absolute best to cover an amused grin. "So, dear... it turns out you did a good job, but you weren't exactly right. The shelves are all on upside down." I glared at him. And he let me. And then he proceeded to the garage where he took the whole thing apart and put it back together the way it was supposed to be. About halfway through the rebuilding process, I swallowed my pride and held the pieces for him as I mumbled under my breath, "Maybe you were right." Low and behold, the lean disappeared.

Alas, the blonde curls may be brown now and the blue eyes have turned green, but I am still the same hard-headed little girl. And I am still blessed to be loved my a most patient man who not only tolerates but embraces my stubborn heart.

delilah moves [again].

Let me preface this post with this: Sam loves Delilah more than I do. I like her, sure. But he really likes her.

As I mentioned before, we bought a house that Sam is now living in. An estimated 95% of my time is spent either at work, at church, or at the new house. I literally only go to my apartment to sleep at night. Therfore, we felt it only fair that Delilah go ahead and make the transition to her new home so she's not so lonely. Also let me say, the move was Sam's idea.

It began with a traumatic night of me trying to stuff her in her cat carrier tha she rode 14 hrs in when we moved to Texas [I think she remembered it too well], and ended with us both sitting in the floor of the apartment for a good 30 minutes, her giving me the "go to you-know-where" stare from across the room and licking her paws in satisfaction, me nursing a deep scratch on my right middle finger which was the final straw that forced me to give up and let her ride in the car without the carrier.

I drove her over, set up the litter box, food, and water, and let her get settled. She walked around for a few hours meowing extensively, but finally got familiar with it and found her place snuggled in at the foot of Sam's bed. After that, she's been right at home! I wanted to tell you a couple of my favorite Sam and Delilah stories so far.

After the first night of her staying there with him, he called me at 8:00 the next morning. I said, in my sweetest you-definitely-woke-me-up-before-my-alarm-but-I-still-love-you fiancé voice, "Good morning, babe. How'd you sleep?" His response: "Fine. Delilah didn't sleep with me like you said she would. I don't know where she slept. And we are going to have to get rid of the bell on her collar. At 7 this morning she was jumping on the bed, jumping down, running in the living room, jumping on the couches. The bell was just ring ring ringing and it's going to drive me insane if we don't get rid of it." I died laughing.

A few mornings later I got off work at 7ish and called Sam on my drive to the house to see him for a few minutes before he was off to work for the day. "Good morning!" I exclaimed in my I've-been-up-for-14-hours-voice. "Morning." He replied in his best you-definitely-woke-me-up-before-my-alarm-but-I-still-love-you fiancé voice. "Something's wrong with Delilah. She was in here on the bed crying early this morning before I could even get out of bed and use the bathroom. And she was scratching on her scratchpad in the middle of the night! You're gonna have to have a talk with her." I arrived at the house 30 minutes later where Delilah met me at the door screaming. I picked her up and loved her for a minute, then proceeded to the kitchen where Sam was having his morning bowl of cereal. He gave me a cheerio kiss and I turned to see Delilah right on my heels. I glanced past her at her food and water bowls which were both bone dry. "No wonder she's crying Sam! She's starving and dying of thirst!" He felt horrible, and apologized to her repeatedly for not filling her bowls. I stood in the doorway and listened to him explain, "Kitty, I'm sorry I didn't feed you. I've never had a cat I had to take care of by myself before. I'll do better." I died laughing, again.

And finally, the chair incident. We spent two hours in Ikea looking for things to make the new house feel more like a home. We came away with a rug and coffee table, and Sam picked a new computer chair for the office. He sat in tons of chairs, rolled around, tested the head rests, and finally made a decision. We brought it all home and he spent the whole evening putting everything together. The chair looks great in the office, perfect height for someone who's torso is longer than my legs. The next evening I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he went into the office to look over sermon notes for the coming Sunday. Soon after, his voice boomed through the house, "OH MY GOSH. CHELSEY, YOUR CAT!!!!" [of course, now she's my  cat, when she's done something wrong]. I made my way to the office, expecting to find some poop in the floor or pee on a blanket or something. I rounded the corner to see Sam standing over the new chair, tenderly caressing the seat cushion. I approached to find multiple claw marks where Delilah had used the fresh new cushion to sharpen her nails. He stood over the chair in apparent disbelief, and I patted him on the back and said "Get ready dear. Cats, dogs, kids, me... this is the way it's gonna be. Welcome to your life."

He's a good sport, Sam. I think I'll marry him. <3

so, now we know.

I feel like now is a good time for a mostly-photo-blog that will hopefully give you a glimpse in to our everyday life.

I moved into my new apartment, and this is my first craft of the fall! It's homey, right? :)

Sam studying for Hebrew, cause he's hardcore like that.

I started my new job... this is my commute. Lame, but totally worth it. I'm loving it so far.

This is how Sam spends a big majority of his time.. with JH students. And he's great at it. [Wednesday night Chaos]

And I spend a pretty big chunk of my time with students as well. And I love it! [Girls Movie Night]

And this is just one of the many perks of dating this awesome guy... love notes written completely backwards :)

That about sums it up! It turns out day-to-day life is WAY more fun in person that via FaceTime. Who knew?  I have two favorite happenings from the past week that I feel like paint a pretty clear picture of how we are learning each other as we do this crazy thing called life together.

1. Last week I was hanging out with Sam at his host home while he was doing laundry. He brought a laundry basket full of clean clothes fresh out of the dryer upstairs and I volunteered to fold them for him. I know people can be particular, so I thought I would be proactive and ask before I started, "Is there a certain way you like things folded?" "No, whatever is fine," he says. So I proceed to fold all of the t-shirts, undershirts, shorts, socks, etc. and separate them into piles of their same kind. Once I finished, I said "Okay, what do you hang and what goes in drawers?" "Umm... everything can go in drawers except the button downs," he replied. I got up and carried a stack of nicely folded solid colored t-shirts to the dresser. "Perfect. Which drawer do these nicer t-shirts go in?" I asked. "Umm..." he pulls open the second drawer of the dresser to reveal an overflowing perfect mix of shorts, t-shirts, nice shirt, hoodies, and even bathing suits. "Well, this one looks full. Lets try the next one." he says. "Whoa whoa whoa," I say, "you mean to tell me you just throw stuff in all these drawers until they're full and then you move on to the next one? There is no designated space for any particular kind of clothes?" "Pretty much no," he says, with a smile. It was like he was speaking a foreign language. This concept flabbergasted me, which he found highly amusing. Needless to say, he graciously let me spend the next hour meticulously organizing the entire dresser by clothing type and color. So, now we know who will NOT be in charge of putting away laundry for the rest of our lives :)

2. I worked 8-5 Monday-Friday last week, and I was supposed to move in to my new apartment on Thursday. Because I wasn't going to be home in time to pick up my keys, Sam went by and got them for me. And then by the time I got off work on Friday, he and some of our sweet friends had moved every bit of my stuff out of the storage unit and into my new home. Best friends ever. Anyway, so we spent the weekend basically unpacking and trying to get my junk all in the right places. At one point, I was in the bathroom hanging the shower curtain and Sam was in the kitchen attempting to unpack boxes. He hollered from the hallway "Hey, I'm gonna unpack some of this food. On a scale of 1 to 10, how particular are you about where things go in your pantry?" I hollered back "Umm... maybe like a 7." "WHAT?! A SEVEN?!" He exclaimed. Now it was like I was the one speaking a foreign language. He couldn't fathom that I could possibly care that much where the cans of corn go in the cabinet. So, now we also know who won't be putting away the groceries. :)

Missing my fam and friends in Tennessee like crazy. Missing my old job and work friends. But absolutely loving life here in Texas.

Peace and love people :)

confessions

Alright guys... it's about to get real. If you're not ready for it, better leave now. I'm making confessions. Judge me if you like, it won't change me.

1. I multitask while I'm in the bath, and recently I was attempting to eat chips and salsa while bathing and I ended up taking a corn and bean bath when my salsa fell in. And I scooped out the veggies and didn't even run new water.

2. I put chocolate chips in any and all ice cream, tonight it was orange sherbet.

3. I listened to a Christmas song two days ago, on purpose. Three times.

4. I've never seen Forrest Gump.

5. I give my cat daily pep talks when we are about to make a dramatic life change.. it helps her adjust. I think.

6. I only light tea light candles in my house because I never remember to blow them out and they are the only ones that will go out on their own.

7. A few days ago I was craving tasty coffee, so I made some with my Keurig. I poured creamer in it and didn't realize my creamer was expired until it came out in a clump and splashed into my hot coffee. I stirred it vigorously and drank half the cup anyway before deciding it didn't really taste that good.

8. Today I went to a pottery painting place and painted by myself, mostly cause I do what I want.

9. I have had a keyboard set up in my bedroom for almost 1 year and I still don't have a power cord for it.

10. Sometimes [or 95% of the time] when I get off work I'm so exhausted I take my scrubs off and go straight to bed without a shower. Gross, I know.

11. NewGirl is skanky and scandalous, and I'm obsessed with it.

12. Working nights has my sleep schedule super janky, so I'm usually up until 3 or 4 am even if I'm not working. I get super dramatic after like 1 and I have to put my phone out of reach so I don't send super dramatic, girly, clingy, lame text messages. As a substitute, I write extremely lame and dramatic love notes in my journal that make me sound like a 13 year old girl. [Obvs I have the vocabulary of a 13 year old girl also.. I just used "dramatic" 3 times in 3 sentences. Long hair don't care].

13. I only make my bed when the sheets are finally sagging to the floor on the side I sleep on.

14. I frequently check my mail at 7 am even though it is always empty at that time and I am completely aware that the mailman doesn't come until 3 pm.

15. Maybe once a week I stalk myself on social media.

16. I played Pokémon on a Gameboy DS last week. For 3ish hours.

Alright, spill your guts. You owe me something embarrassing now. Tell me. Please.

two situations and a funny.

Ohh mercy... this life. Honestly, I have always thought that eventually crazy random things would settle down, but the longer they go on the more I realize this is just everyday life so I might as well embrace it. Some days, all we can really do is laugh [after we fake a smile and filter out dirty words and grit our teeth and maybe pound our fist on a table or something]

As of late, two situations I found myself in and a funny things that happened.

First of all, I have recently started working some night shifts at work. I'm still doing days too, which makes it even more interesting as far as a sleep schedule and social life outside the hospital. Anyway. I worked this past Tuesday night when we randomly had a tornado warning in the middle of January, of course. We were doing fine, relatively calm night, until about 3:30am when "PHASE GRAY, WARNING." rang out from the overhead and the supervisor came pacing through muttering "A tornado! This is giving me chest pain!" Well, here we are on the 4th floor and the best we can do for the safety of our patients is take them out of their rooms and away from the massive windows in them. So the protocol is to get everyone in the hallway and close all the doors, easy enough. Unless of course you're me and 5/7 of your patients are over 80 years old, can't walk, and have no idea where they are. Needless to say, we spent about 20 minutes rushing to pull beds out of rooms and organize them in the hall so we could still walk through, all the while explaining repeatedly "Don't worry! You're in the hospital. We're having some weather! We're going for a little ride! It'll be fun!"

It was almost entertaining at first, but 2 hours later when we were all still sitting in the hallway looking at each other, 2 hours behind on meds and lab work, it wasn't really that funny. Anyway, no tornado touched down or did us any damage, so all is well [except my arm muscles are sore from pushing beds].

Second event.. I drove home Wednesday morning to Lawrenceburg with the specific purpose of getting my driver's license renewed because it expires on my birthday this year [which is in 16 days, btw] and I desperately needed to get a new picture made because the current one was made a few days before I went on Senior trip when I was 18. Somehow it slipped my mind that I was coming back to Podunk, USA, where everything is 2 years behind normal civilization. This is a short synopsis of my adventure to accomplish a seemingly simple task:
Before I left the house, I ask my mom "Do I need to take anything with me? Birth certificate, social security card, anything?" "No, just about 20 bucks cause it'll cost ya." Great. I leave the house and drive to the DMV. They give me a number and some paperwork, and I sit down in a waiting room of about 6 people. I wait 30 or 45 minutes. Finally, they call my number. I give my paperwork and check card, she asks for my current license. Type type type on the computer. A frown.

The lady: "Hmm.. it seems we don't have your birth certificate on file. We'll have to have that before we can renew this. Sorry."
Me: [Exasperated look] "I brought my birth certificate last time I did this. It should be on file."
Lady: "Oh, we have changed systems and some of them didn't pull over, sorry."
Me: "My birth certificate is an hour and a half away in Murfreesboro."
Lady: "Ohh... well, you can drive right down there to the health department and they will print you a new one for about 8 dollars!" [guess that was her attempt at being helpful?]
Me: "K."

So I leave, and I drive to the Health Department. Go inside, explain what I need to the lady at the desk. She hands me paperwork, again, and tells me to have a seat and wait. I fill it out, they finally call my name. I sit and spell my Daddy's name, she looks me up, yada yada yada, prints my birth certificate. Just before handing it over, "Oh, I almost forgot. That'll be $8." I pull out my debit card and slide it across the desk. A frown. "Oh.. we only take cash or check, no cards." I grope around in my purse reaching to all corners before I come up empty-handed and remember my checkbook is in my bag from work. I open my wallet and count my cash... $6.00.

At this point [in my mind] I'm like "OH MY GOSH if this lady does not give me this paper I'm going to burn down this whole town!!!!!" [I can be dramatic, I know]. And then, low and behold, my neighbor works at the Health Department and she offered me the two bucks needed to complete my payment. I told her I'd bring her $2 by the house later, to which she responded "Oh no, I'm sure I owe your mom two bucks in ketchup or sugar or something." It was in fact this small towns fault that they have just now updated systems at the DMV and no debit card system at the Health Dept, however it's also to this small towns credit that I knew the sweet person working where I was trying to get what I needed. Catch 22, I guess.

Anyway, back to the DMV with birth certificate, two hours after this saga began I finally had a new license in hand[aaaand the picture isn't even that good].

Alright.. if you're still hanging in here with me, bless you're heart.. I ramble, I know. There's this crazy guy that I been knowing for a while now [and his name's John Dansby-- yes, we broke up, we're through the awkward "what are we" phase and are now friends again, in case you wondered], and he's forever been telling me about travel nursing [among many other things] and how I should do it. Nearly every time he brings it up I veto it declaring that I would feel like a gypsy living out of a suitcase and moving all over. Lately, however, I've taken a liking to it and have been doing some research just to see what the options are and such. I talked with this crazy guy today, and this is how this part of the conversation went:
Me: "So, guess what I stayed up til midnight researching last night? It's something you're forever telling me I should do and I always say no."
Him: "ummm.... Umm....." [thinking, thinking] "um.... Ummmmmm...... Oh!! A water birth?!!"
Me: Laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. "No, crazy! Why would you say that??!! I'm talking about travel nursing!"

Geez Louise... now I'm laughing all over again. I tell ya, there's nothing spectacular about my life compared to anyone else's, except that I write about it. You should try it. Until next time... love youuuu!

Lets go somewhere warm, want to?

hysterical lyrics

I believe one of the most hysterical things is when people proudly belt out a song that they clearly believe they know, and a portion of the lyrics sound very similar to correct, but are nowhere near what the song actually says. I mean, hysterical ya'll. Now I want to recount some of these instances that I've encountered, and I want you to tell me some you've heard. Feel free to laugh out loud, especially if you're home alone.

When "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie was super popular, one of my sisters [I think it was Sam, and she was small] nonchalantly sang with all her might, "It's nothing personal, myself and I, we got some straightening out to do... and I'm gonna miss you like a job misses their pay check but I've got to get  move on with my life..." The correct lyrics are "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket..." Creative of my sister's little mind, right? and HILARIOUS.

On a field trip at some point during high school we were being super cool listening to our walkmans on the schoolbus.. someone near me was singing "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks. She fearlessly sang out "I've got friends in low places where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away... but I'll be okay. IIIII'm not big on sausage and gravy, think I'll slip on down to the oasis oohh I got friends... in low places." Correct lyrics are "I'm not big on social graces, think I'll slip on down to the oasis.." Not exacty sure how breakfast food fits in the song but apparently it did in her mind.

And finally, my dear friend Royce who is funny anyway, once upon a time belted out the chorus of "Paint me a Birmingham" by Tracy Lawrence and it sounded like this: "Paint me a bunny hatttttt,  make it look just the way I planned...." Obviously, the correct lyrics are "Paint me a Birmingham." Absolutely no idea what a bunny hat even is, and when I asked Royce, he admitted he doesn't know either haha.

I'm laughing just recalling these situations. Give me more to laugh at, pretty please?!