December Musings

I am getting to the point where I do not like Christmas. I hate the WAAAAAY overplayed music, everyone getting sick, trying to go grocery shopping and getting elbowed and kicked every which way cuz too many people are at the store, and don't get me started on shopping for gifts. Obnoxious! Because you gotta figure out what to get people and then you remember, "Oh well if I spend 20 bucks on everyone, I will be out a thousand bucks." Oops! Everything I want to get for people is like $300+ and it's like, they'll just have to settle for a crappy gift this year.... Secular Christmas as an adult sucks. You don't get to just count the days til THE day, you gotta figure out what to buy, how to afford it, how to hide the presents, wrap the suckers, buy a tree to put 'em under, and then feel bad that you couldn't afford to get everyone a little something. Christmas's value has basically de-evolved to being completely based off of the fact that a full-time employee can have a day off from work, so thank goodness I get to celebrate the best Gift of all or I would go a bit nuts. I guess what I really want this year is for Obama to be impeached from office, lower taxes, the good health of my family and friends, and a car with under 90,000 miles on it as opposed to almost 150,000. Oh, and to not get flipped off every morning on the way to work for only going 72mph on the freeway.

Merry Christmas everyone. ;)

Growing Family

I always thought that I wouldn't want to get anymore pets beside Molly. The hair from her alone was everywhere as it was. Lol. But we found ourselves in our new home with an EXTREMELY lonely pup. That's when we decided to get the boys. Sesmu and Bagheera are both attention nuts, thus the need to lock them out of our room at night. They both enjoy sleeping on faces and clawing those who dare to ignore them. Evil little cusses, but I love them. Lol. Having three animals in the house seemed more than enough pets, not to mention the pain of having a cat box (the main reason I never wanted any cats!!). Molly has been a lot better since they came. I no longer come home to a crying dog or anything in the house trashed beyond recognition. She now spends her day happily bullying the two cats and chasing/racing them up and down the stairs. Bagheera just takes the unannounced baths via Molly's tongue, but Sesmu likes to bat at Molly and join in on the races. **In case you're wondering why the cats have bizarre names, when I was reading up on Egyptian mythology, I found out that
Sesmu is the Egyptian demonic god who works for Anubis in the underworld, affectionately known as the "Slaughter of Souls." Lol. I couldn't resist, so I named him that. And everyone knows Bagheera is from The Jungle Book.**

My aunt's friend recently rescued a little one-year old German Shepherd and could not keep her, so my parents took her in for a few days. Poor Abby arrived newly spaded and "sicker than a dog." She is on antibiotics for her respiratory infection and drops for her ear infection, but it's nice to see her gain more energy every day and not cough so much. Not much is known about her history. She is not house trained AT all, does not know simple commands like "Sit" or "Down", and steals socks, shoes, shirts, etc. for a little chew time, so the popular belief is that she has been out on her own for awhile. Amazingly enough, she has the sweetest personality and, if allowed, would sleep at anyone's feet right on the bed. She drinks like an elephant and enjoys flipping the food bowl. Last night we found out about her fear of stairs. She could go up as long as someone was with her, but going down the stairs proved to be a problem.

Since Mom and Dad DEFINITELY do not need anymore pets, Evan and I offered to take her. Molly is going to get a little of her own medicine since Abby is quite talented at "leaning." It's going to be a pain in the butt potty training another puppy, but hopefully it will be worth it since Abby is pretty cute. Oh, my poor white carpets..... Goodbye. *Sigh.

**Update on Abby: Abby decided that she did want to live with Mom and Dad afterall, and while Dad is not thrilled, she is excited to be there and so am I. Lol.

Ahh, Tuesday...

This past week Evan and I celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary. We meant to just celebrate the one night, so we decided to go out to Buca di Beppos with my family over the weekend before our actual anniversary. It was a ton of fun and Evan bought me a Kindle2!! The goober totally went over our agreed budget for gifts. Lol. I bought him a watch to replace the one that broke and he was just as excited.


On Monday, Evan and I still went to work. While I had PTO available to take off the day if I so chose, Evan's still new to his company and doesn't accrue PTO until March '10. I figured it would be a normal day in the neighborhood, but as soon as I got to work, it all went downhill. By the time I got home, I was fighting tears, which is definitely NOT normal since I can usually handle whatever work throws my way. But Evan told me over the phone to at least wait for him to get home before I did any leaking. Lol. I was lying on the couch with my migraine when he finally burst through the door, got down on one knee brandishing a dozen red roses, a bottle of sparkling apple cider, and a card. His expression was so cute that I couldn't help crying. Sounds so funny. I immediately felt better of course and we had a great night together feasting on take out Applebees and my friend who made my wedding cake made us a mini version for us for that night too!

And if that wasn't enough we went to Disneyland this weekend too. Lol. It was a lot of fun just to get away for a weekend since my work week turned into a complete nightmare. What's funny is that me and Evan only went on maybe a handful of rides. If we didn't feel like waiting in lines, we just went and sat in the middle of the park enjoying the weather and ambiance.

My overall point of all this is mostly to say that a year ago this month, I married my best friend who showed me how easy it is to love. He was the answer to my prayers and SOOO much better than the man of my dreams. He's all that I want and more than I deserve. :) Here's to the next 70 years and beyond! (I like aiming high! Lol.)

I suck at this whole "blogging" stuff. Lol.

Just an update from the last blog: I wound up finding my diamond on the counter in my apartment. Having to deal with moving and all that, I just now made it down to my friend's shop for them to repair it. (After my friend's horror story, I made sure to go to somewhere I knew someone who would watch out for my ring!) The sucky part is, my diamond is cracked on the side, and the sales guy let me know that there may be a possibility that they can't reset my stone. The hardest substance in the world and it's chipped, go figure. The reason they might not be able to, is because the jeweler puts the ring in a "seat" to press the diamond back into setting and it might cause it to break or shatter even more. So if they decide not to go through with it, I have a useless diamond. Yay.....

Chaos. What's new?

This morning, to my horror, I found that the main diamond on my wedding ring had fallen out. Mortified, I cried out and one of my supervisors ran over to see what had happened. We tore apart the office and sent others upstairs to check the break room. My boss came over and told me to look in my car. I got my keys and went outside, my boss and supervisor trailing behind. The one thought that kept going through my head was, "Darn it, I wish I had cleaned out my car last night!" They helped me tear my car apart, but alas, the diamond was not to be found. I went straight back to my desk and began working once more, more or less forcing myself not to cry.
I had always known something like this was going to happen ever since the shop we got it from was liquidated and our diamond warranty was lost. I checked my ring everyday to make sure that the diamond was still set firmly. I never found it to be loose, so I still cannot believe that it is gone. I will have to search the apartment later tonight. I'm not expecting to find it, since I am almost positive that the diamond went down the drain with my shampoo this morning when I washed my hair.
It has been suggested to call my insurance to see if it would be covered under my renter's insurance, but State Farm has screwed me over so many times that I do not have the heart to talk to them at the moment. I am just going to pray that it works out. We have a few tricks left, so maybe they'll pan out.
I can't get too upset today. The rates just went down again, and we were locked into a 5% interest rate on our mortgage so that definitely made me feel a little more chipper.
If this next month is smooth, I will be exceedingly happy. This weekend will be irritating having to move and pack, but if it gets me away from our neighbors, so much the better.

Up, down, up, down!

We went to California this weekend to visit with Evan's West Coast family and had gone with his cousins and a friend to Disneyland when we got the call that our bid was accepted on a house. On the one house we liked the most, yet never expected to get! I am still not able to be excited about it because it feels unreal. I keep expecting my realtor to call up and say, "Oops! Sorry! I don't know what happened, but you no longer have this house." I know that the house buying process is far from over. We still have a month left of closing "fun" to get through. I'm nervous and happy and scared and worried all at once. It will definitely be nice to have a permanent address. I am not looking forward to packing up and having to move twice, out of my apartment into Mom and Dad's and then from there to our house after it closes. I suppose I will be excited once we get the keys. Then it will be for real. Lol. I have decided that I want to spend my entire stimulus at Lena's. But Evan would kill me, so I will make a list of the stuff I want the most. AH! Wish me luck!

On another note, I found a website dedicated to only fan-fiction. What is that, you ask? Oh, I'll feed you, baby birds. ;) It is where people get obsessed with a story or movie, or even a picture, and will write a story using those characters. Intrigued, I am now setting forth to do my own. I feel a little silly, but it will be a fun exercise, and I bet I can bring forth a little smoothness and, you guessed it, romance to one of my favorite games in the entire world: Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It won't be what anybody will expect, so at least that will be new- ish. Lol. Hopefully other fans will get a kick out of it too. We'll see!

So tired....

This has been the most frustrating month. Buying a house always drives one over the edge, so I guess there's nothing abnormal there. I am constantly trying not to hate my job so much. I don't want to be in our apartment anymore, but living at mom and dad's for a few weeks is something I'm not looking forward to. We've put four bids in on four different houses and none of them are seem to come through with anything more than an outright no, or "Not sure yet". I feel like tossing in the towel, but the thought of renting another house is out of the question. There is nothing worse in the world than landlords. Will we have to settle for a house we don't really want? Chances of that are definitely rising. Sigh . . . .

Buying a House

The worst part of buying a house is the bidding wars. You want that house? Yeah, well so do 5 other people! Getting approved for a mortgage was the easiest part of the whole process. We've already bid on two houses, and yet, the bank countered our first offer, saying that they would take $20,000 more than we offered and the other has not yet given us an answer. Problem with the first is, the house won't appraise for the amount the bank is countering with so we would not be allowed to buy it, and second, the next bank could just friggin answer us so we aren't chillin' in limbo! That would be nice! So we're going out AGAIN to look at more houses and will prolly put in five more bids. If a bank would friggin accept it then we would have someplace to live after next month. We have the down payment. We have our LSR. JUST LET US GIVE YOU OUR MONEY ALREADY!! Lol.

Our Wedding Day

As with all weddings, some things just go wrong. Mine and Evan’s was no exception, though what did go wrong wasn't all that bad, so we came out of it pretty well. A couple days before the wedding, I decided to get my nails done. Having been arguing with myself for months over whether or not I wanted to destroy my nails with Acrylics or just get a regular manicure and dealing with chipped nails, I was told to try gels. Paying a fortune for the darn things, the woman who did them was a hair person, not a nail person. She put them on crooked and I walked out of the store fighting tears. When I accompanied my attendants later that evening to get their nails done at our usual place, I watched as everyone else's nails came together looking great, while mine made me look like the Elephant Man. I burst into tears and that's when Annie came to the rescue, ordering David, one of her employees to fix my nails immediately for free. Angel Nails rules! Lol. He did such a good job fixing them!
The night before the wedding, our best man was having a serious craving for Krispy Kreme donuts. Not feeling sleepy at all, even with it being almost midnight, Evan, Patrick, Lindsay, and I set out with the hope that the store was still open. We got to our last turn when we heard that dreaded noise: HISS! THUD! Whump whump whump whump . . . . I called for a halt and hurriedly got out of the car to find to my dismay that our tire had popped. Ordering everyone out into the middle of the road, I directed Evan into the driveway of Krispy Kreme, which was in fact NOT open, and quickly called my dad and uncle while the boys set to on the tire. By the time, Dad and Uncle Brian got there, the boys were pouring over the manual trying to figure out why they couldn't get the jack to do its job. My uncle had worked in a tire shop for many years, so the boys stood back and watched him jack up the car and get the deflated tire off and the spare on in less than 5 minutes. I was watching huddled on the sidewalk with my little sister shivering in the cold night air, trying to not freak out. We were supposed to leave for California Monday morning. How were we going to get our tire replaced on our wedding day??
We managed to get home in once piece, donut-less, and went to bed. The next morning I jetted off to get my hair done and Evan headed to Firestone. They took pity on us and made sure to get the car ready to go ASAP so Evan was able to get ready for the big day.
I got to the hair shop (the same lady who ruined my nails!) and got my hair done first. When my hair was done, I had gone to look at it in the mirror and saw that the comb in my veil was completely visible. I didn't try to redo it myself, but the hair stylist saw me touching my veil and threw a fit. "I told you not to touch your hair!" I just gave her the classic "Greene" you-are-so-dumb-look. Through the whole wedding process, I did not have one "Bridezilla" moment, but this was the closest I got. I managed not to tear her head off for basically yelling at me like I was 5 years old and calmly explained to her that my comb was visible. She started to argue with me that no one would notice, and I interjected once more, "Look, it's my wedding day and I don't want my comb poking out in all the wedding pictures." She finally shut her yap and fixed it and went back to doing my mother-in-law's hair in a huff. Talk about an attitude! Lol.
When I got back to Mom's house to get all packed up to go, Mom asked me if I had any nice under things to wear under my dress. I was like, "....no, Mom. Why?" Lol. I was promptly shipped off to the mall with Jess and we headed to Victoria's Secret. Trying not to be bothered by all the stares, (I was all dolled up with my veil in the middle of a mall. Lol!) we made it in and out of the store in less than 15 minutes, rushing back to the house just in time for the first caravan to leave.
The wedding ceremony rushed by. It was pretty disconcerting, not to mention, distracting having all the attention focused on Evan and I, and I can still honestly say, I love NOT being in the limelight. The whole event was a lot of fun. I can't say that I am COMPLETELY enthralled with my wedding pictures, but who is? After the wedding I asked myself, would I do the whole “get married again for an anniversary” thing? And without hesitation, the answer is NO! Lol. Evan and I teased each other, saying that if either of us ever remarried, we would just go see a justice of the peace. Good luck to all the future brides out there. I do not envy you!

How it started...

There's no question that we hate to answer more than how Evan and I met. Not that it was a horrible beginning, but how romantic does it sound to reply with, "Oh, we met on MySpace!" MySpace? Seriously? But that's how it was.
Evan was new to the area. Originally from the East Coast, Evan decided to pursue his education here in Tempe at the University of Advancing Technology. His first year started out pretty rough. Having nothing in common with his roommates, he struggled with severe homesickness and loneliness. That summer, he went home to New Hampshire to help his grandmother with her house renovations and seriously considered not going back to Arizona. Doing a random search on MySpace out of sheer boredom, laced with hope(lol), Evan came across my profile and sent me a message saying that I looked like a nice person, and hoped that maybe I could help him out with finding a local church for him to attend. It was a pretty long message, and I was pleasantly surprised at its length, and its content NOT containing "how cute I was" which was something I had gotten very sick of on MySpace. I liked that he was only looking for friends that did not drink, and knew how to have a fun time. We messaged each other back and forth from July '06 to August before we decided it would be fun to hang out in person, since he decided that he was going to return to AZ. Having had HORRIBLE experiences meeting people online in person, I was not thrilled about it. I decided that if he did want to meet, he could meet me and ALL my friends too. My older sister and I drove down to Tempe to pick him up. I was sick to my stomach the entire trip. Would he just sit there, not talking, in the back of the car? Or would we both struggle to make small talk? I was so happy when it turned out NEITHER. When we pulled up, Evan flung open the door to my parent's suburban and jumped into the back, screaming, "GO, GO, GO!" It was the perfect ice breaker. My sister and I laughed and talked with him the entire trip home like old friends.
We met up with the rest of our friends at my house and he fit right in. We hung out a few more times after that before I went up to NAU, but I was happy that he was still hanging out with my friends even though I wasn't there.
Evan is the funniest guy in the world. Towards October, I knew that he wanted to ask me out, and though I could have just saved him the trouble by asking him first, I was just as shy. Trying to feel things out, Evan asked my best friend how I felt about him. Lucy, with the subtlety of a steam engine, immediately text me out right that Evan wanted to know if I liked him and that I had her approval. I'll never forget the message he sent me, entitled, "Screw this!" The following message informed me that he liked me and wanted to go out on a date, but if I didn't feel the same way, and just wanted to be friends, that's cool. I could forget that he ever sent that email. Laughing, I called him and said yes.
Our first date didn't start out too well. Feeling in a dress-up mood, I wore a skirt, and Evan's look on his face when he showed up in cargo pants and a t-shirt was classic. Evan did not have a car on the West Coast just yet, so I opted to drive. As we weaved our way to our destination (Harkins 25, baby), I came to a stop at a traffic light. I noticed Evan fiddling with his bookbag. When I asked him about it, he said that he had gotten me a present. He proceeded to pull out the softest, cutest stuffed Nemo doll I had ever seen. I loved it! He knew how much I loved Disney, so he had walked from his apartment to the Disney store in the AZ Mills mall earlier that day to get it for me. On the way there, he had gotten hit by a car pulling out of a parking lot, not seeing him on the sidewalk. Poor guy has been hit 3 times by 3 different cars since he moved here!
Finally reaching the theater, we bought our tickets for Employee of the Month, and hated every minute of it. But it was the start of our tradition of going to movies and arguing why they sucked horribly or rocked our socks. We left the theater and went home to where my sister and my then "future bro-in-law" were watching Back to the Future III on the couch. We joined them for the rest of that movie, and Super Troopers right after that ended, so the date was not a complete flop! We've been stuck on each other like white on rice ever since.
It was a little hard only being able to see him on the weekends with me living in Flagstaff, but we made it through that year, and he proposed seven months later at my dad's birthday party. He says he didn't do it right, but it was the most adorable and perfect proposal ever and the best part was that I got to share it with my whole family.
Shortly thereafter, I persuaded him to give up his apartment and stay at my parent's house after the scariest day ever. Walking to school one day, he was held up at gun point by two guys out to scare people. They demanded his wallet, but Evan never carries cash, so they threw it back at him, stole his crappy cell phone, and ran off laughing. They then used the cell to call his mom on it and swore at her and said lots of horrible stuff before we were able to turn it off. We were able to joke about it later because the guys had stolen his phone that was barely working and had no camera or anything, when his ipod nano had been clipped onto his backpack strap at eye level. We said after that, that the ipod nano is so crappy, no one even wants to steal one! Poor Evan has had the worst experience of AZ. He has survived getting hit 3 times by cars, robbed at gun point, and attempted robbery two other times of his laptop and his bike. He's not the biggest fan of Tempe (Lol!).
We were engaged for a year and a half and were married at Regency Garden November
9, 2008. These past 7 months have been great. We had some rough times, such as when Evan lost his job in March, but we made it past that. It took Evan only 3 weeks to find an even better job than before. He works 40+ hours a week and 18 credits at UAT and I couldn't be prouder of him. He is graduating in December with his bachelor's. I'm so excited for him! Right now, we are living in an apartment and saving up money for a down payment on a house. Wish us luck!