I must be dreaming.

When Cj and I first started dating we would talk about our yacht a lot. 

Besides the fact that "yacht" rhymes with "a lot," you might have noticed one other thing about that statement: 

We don't have a yacht. 

Which is fine, really. We just like to talk about it. 

For example: 

Me: "Hey Ceej, can we get one of these shark shaped submarine jet ski's Mark Titus told me about to keep on our yacht in case it ever sinks/we want to scare the children?" 

OR

Cj: "Boy do I love *Taco Bell. We should get one of these on our yacht."

*RIP the Beefy Crunch Burrito, except not on our yacht. it still exists there.

When we got engaged things shifted a bit. We went from mentally placing things on our pretend yacht, to mentally placing things on our pretend registry list. Again, examples: 

Cj: "We should register for unlimited Honey Nut Cheerios that will be spoon fed to us for the rest of our lives." 

Me: "We should register for not Katy Perry."  

Recently we've developed yet another way to carry on quirky, fake conversations. 

Birth control. 

I may or may not have spent a little too much time lately reading about the side effects of birth control. One night Cj and I got talking about it and decided that the list is so all-inclusive that we should just start blaming all problems on it. 

Here is a list of things that we have determined are a side-effect of birth control: 

being hungry

the irregular heating/cooling system in my apartment

the cough I currently have

insomnia

KONY 2012

ABC's "Once Upon a Time" (Never seen it, but I know it's birth controls fault shows like that exist)

bad weather

losing my flag football game

tired  

these pictures of Kobe Bryant 

Katy Perry 

I'm sure all three of these lists are not even close to an end. 

Nothing like pretending you are rich and/or blaming all your problems on modern medicine.  

All I know is, when I get that yacht we registered for, you're all invited for a BBQ. 

Love, 

Katie 

I mustache you a question...

(***CONFESSION: This is actually a post from over a month ago that I never got around to posting. If this offends you just consider it "vintage" and then it will feel trendy instead.)

So there I am, riding passenger side through Barstow, California on New Years Eve, sicker than a dog. 

I am wearing the same sweats that forced a middle aged man at the last gas station to tap me on the shoulder and say "you have...uh...something on your pants." 

To which I replied, "Thank you. I sat in Mayonnaise."

My head is wrapped up in the new faux-fur-throw (say that five times fast) that my Grandparents got me for Christmas (I'm that hard to shop for,) and I'm periodically moaning between waves of nauseousness as traffic spins circles around my driver who is trying his best to keep things steady and in my stomach. 

Said driver, who also happens to be my fiance, does the only thing he can do in the situation and puts on some calming Disney music, a cure-all for his family as well as for most of Mormon culture, one that produces annoyingly positive results despite my bitter cartoon-networky-protests.

We make it through the basics first: "The Bare Necessities," "Kiss the Girl," "A Whole New World." 

It isn't until we finish a Spanish version of "Colors of the Wind" (an ironic combo) that he can't take it anymore and bursts into song just in time for music from "Tangled" to come on. 

"...All those days chasing down a daydream
All those years living in a blur
All that time never truly seeing
Things, the way they were
Now she's here shining in the starlight
Now she's here, suddenly I know..."

I thought about the words he was singing for a second, thought about my mayo-stained predicament, and laughed until I almost threw up, and then silently giggled to myself for the rest of the drive. 

The ideas Disney puts into little heads.

They are wonderful, and beautiful and incredibly idealistic, and I guess that mayo probably would shine in the starlight, but I just can't imagine a fiance barfing in the passenger seat as they bypass the world's first Del Taco is any little boy (or girl's) daydream.

I guess I should clarify.

My children will definitely watch Disney movies. And I doubt all their hopes and dreams will be determined by what they see and hear in them (most little kids just think the horse is funny.)

I think what I'm trying to say is, I'd rather be laughing my blanket-wrapped head off in an X-Terra in the middle of the Mojave Desert than singing in a 2-Dimensional boat about my sparkling blur of a life to an 18 year old.

Somehow I resist this whole scene:

(sorry Brynn.)

In other news: I'm getting married next month.
Cool for me!

Love,

Katie 

Impossible.

It's like...I still exist, you know? Just because I haven't blogged much, I'm still around. 

Who knew? 

A quick update of the last month or so: 

#1: We took our engagement pictures! One of my closest friends Tracy Hill (tracyhillphotography.blogspot.com) took them for us and she did an INCREDIBLE job.

 

There is a lot more where these came from. These were just some of my favorites.

The rest of the month goes something like this:
- wedding plans
- grad school
- five intramural sports
- teaching freshman english
- craft stores
- urgent care (3x) for the fiance
- relief society stuff
- family

And this week, it is this: the flu.

Influenza, if you will, (and apparently I will) is such a life/fun sucker.
Seriously, all I want to do is throw up on someone I don't like, get this out of my system, and go play in my intramural soccer game.

And, being sick and irrational, I am of the mindset that when it comes down to it, everyone should just get to do what they want.
Except for maybe M.I.A. because that is weird.
Or him:

Because he's mean.

Speaking of celebrities, I was sad to hear about Whitney Houston.
If you know me you know that I know absolutely nothing about celebrities,
but I can't say I don't love the scene in the politically correct version of Cinderella (an asian prince with a white dad and a Whoopie Goldberg mom??) when she flies on a cloud of sparkles next to Cinderella's carriage in order to convey the message that nothing is impossible.

I'm fairly certain my exact thought as a child was, "If Whitney can sparkle-fly, I know that I can one day have a Hairagami snap-bracelet braid-bun."

So inspiring.

Or, at least she has a beautiful voice.

Happy Sunday.

Katie 

Christmas Breaking.

Just now, laying on my couch stressing about a thousand tiny wedding things that really don't matter at all, staying up well past midnight for the billionth time in a row looking at vintage straws and yarn banners, leaving my fiance on the floor to watch Bewitched alone...

...he leans up, taps me on the shoulder and whispers "I want to be with you," smiles like a schoolboy, and lays back down.

Who am I kidding? 

I could have no straws and really ugly yarn banners and I'd be the happiest girl in the world if I get to marry that boy. (Though I won't compromise on the gold cake. A girl's got priorities.)

Today was fun and spiritual. 

This may, in part, derive from the fact that Cj and I have set a goal to do one fun thing and one spiritual thing a day. 

We don't necessarily define spiritual as a "read-your-scriptures" or "pray-for-an-hour-together" kind of thing, though both those things are nice (and long.) 

Today our spiritual activity was to drive around and look at the lights and talk about how we love Christmas. 

Try and tell me Christmas lights aren't good for the spirit and I will spiritually hit you in the face with one of those christmas-light-reindeer things (which I guess would be more like literally hitting you in the face.) 

It's pathetic really how quickly I can go from discussing nice things to violent things in a matter of lines. But seriously, I really like Christmas lights.

Our "fun" activity for the day was going to The Egg and I for breakfast and holding hands while we ate ranch potatoes and then telling each other how much we love each other over orange juice, after which we had one minute of uninterrupted eye contact. 

Have you thrown up in your mouth yet? 

We really didn't do those things. I just never blog about very personal things and thought I would give it a try. It seems to me that a lot of bloggers like it.

I tend to think love, when displayed publicly, is a little embarrassing which is why I chose to beat Cj at "Just Dance" tonight by over 4,000 points per song in front of all of our friends.

I sure showed him.

As a final note, my sister Rachel is hilarious. 

Two conversations she had today:

Rachel: Mom, I need to mail these letters to my roommates but I don't know how many stamps to put on them. 

Mom: Just take them to the post office. 

Rachel: No, Mom, you can't do that anymore. You can only put them in the mailbox. 

Mom: No sweetheart, they don't close until five. 

Rachel: No, Mom, the Post Office went bankrupt. You can't mail letters through them anymore. They shut down. 

I'm fairly certain up until this point she thought the mail fairy took letters out of the mailbox. 

(Later today while watching The Biggest Loser finale we had recorded...) 

Rachel: I bet they have to go to the bathroom a ton since they are losing so much weight. 

Me: Uh...why? Since they drink a lot of water?

Rachel: Oh no, Katie, that's how the fat gets out of you. You kill the fat cells and then your body just takes them right out with everything else. 

Haha We'll keep her around. 

In the mean time, the hunt for my dress is going miserably. Suggestions are welcome. 

Merry almost Christmas. 

Love, 

Katie

Where to start...

Tuesday morning I was fully prepared to drive home to St. George, snuggle up in my bed, and write a nice lengthy blog post about my trip to Belize. 

Oh. Did I mention I went to Belize last week? 

You think that would be my most exciting news right now.
Annoyingly for you, it is not, and updates on that will have to wait.

Readers: But wait. Katttiiieeeee. What could be more important to our life right now than hearing about your trips and caring about your well-being as a traveler?

Katie: Well readers, I'm going to be straight with you...I got engaged.
Readers: Engaged??!? But Katie. You have posted nothing on your blog about this. Was this one of those whirlwind, Mormon romances that happened so fast you didn't even have time to call your mother and tell her you're in love with a real man with a capital "M" like any decent and proper Christian girl should do?
Katie: No sillies. I just try very hard to not tell you anything personal about myself in hopes of remaining extremely mysterious and single.

Boy did I fool you all. And me.
Because I did not remain mysterious. Or single.

I remain engaged.
To this guy: 

Funny, self-deprecating joke: He's the one on the right. 

Also, I'm not sure if there is a direct correlation between getting engaged and this but I seem to have forgotten everyone's names recently.
No really. Everyone.
Like...people I have known for years will walk up to me and I somehow draw a blank.  This has been incredibly problematic since getting engaged because somehow everyone who I have ever met in my whole life wants to hug me and hear the whole entire story and tell me that my ring looks like a "Katie ring" which is always a compliment I am unsure on how to take.
Do they mean it is my style? Do they mean it is not their style? Do they mean they can see a teeny, tiny carving of my face in the center diamond?
The answer is yet to be determined.

All I know is that getting engaged is a lot like the time I got hit in the face with a melon ball:
My head wouldn't stop spinning once it happened and I have to tell the story so many times I want to just write it in a book and sell it at Barnes and Noble for all interested parties.
(*Luckily getting engaged did not have the same impact on my face as a melonball.)

I figured the next best thing was a blog post.So here goes: 
Cj's plan for months has been to go home for Thanksgiving Break (or so he told me.) Seeing as how we hadn't seen each other for the 8 days I was in Belize I was not excited for him to leave again after only two days.
We drove down to St. George together where he dropped me off and headed on his way to California.
In the mean time, I went to dinner at Durangos (a delicious Mexican restaurant) with the sisters and cousins because it is delicious food and I should not have to explain myself.

 So there we were, eating away. If you know me, you know that I am a chatty person.
(Clarification: If you don't know me, I am still a chatty person.)
The point is, we stayed there and talked for nearly 2 1/2 hours. When Cj left a few hours earlier I had been somewhat annoyed with him for driving down to California when it was dark, late and he was tired, all by himself.
I just worry, that's all.
So, I made him promise to call me every hour (controlling? no. why?) which he did not do.
I called him when we left the restaurant but he sounded really muffled and distracted and I thought he was in a spot with bad service so I eventually just hung up. (little did I know he was trying to cover for the dogs barking next to him.)
We drove home and walked in my front door.
The next part went something like this: 
Weird people in my house. Moving around. Confusion. Cj's little brother Cooper hiding behind the counter. My little brother running in and screaming "where's Katie?!?! I saw her pull up!!!" while he was standing right next to me. Me yelling at Cooper. Everyone telling me to go a different direction. 
Quite honestly I think I lost consciousness right around "weird people in my house" because I don't remember any of that, but people say it happened.
With my mind going a million miles an hour Erin took my arm, turned me around, and walked me back out the front door.
At one of the most important and pivotal moments of my life, I turned to Erin, opened my mouth and said: 
"Uh...can I take my jacket off?"
She said yes.
We walked around the house, there were lights, there was candles, there was a lit path leading to the most handsome boy I have ever seen wearing the skinny black tie that his favorite girlfriend bought him.

He took my hand.
I had tears comin' outta mah face. 
We walked through my gorgeously decorated backyard down the beautifully lit path to a porch swing in the center of it all with a TV set up.
He tried to tell me to sit down. I hesitated.
Shaking, the first thing I remember saying to him was, "I...took my jacket off. For pictures."
He looked at me. "Oh. Okay sweetheart. Thank you." Then he somehow forced my knees to bend and I sat down on the swing and he pushed play.
We watched a movie Cj had made of all my family and some of my best friends saying all the things they loved about me. Every single one brought me to tears.
I would think it was over and then the next person would pop up on the screen and they would come pouring down again which is awful because I pride myself in being a tough girl with a dry faucet when it comes to tears.
I guess if I wasn't coherent enough to move past sentences about my jacket then it was the best I could do.
The movie ended.
"Now its my turn..." it said on the screen.
Cj got down on one knee.
He told me all the things he loved about me and asked me to marry him.
I froze for a second (7 to be exact, we counted on the video.) Luckily this was all on film because my brain had clearly shutdown twenty minutes earlier when we walked into the house.
"Of course!" was all I could come up with.
I think the correct answer was "yes" but I was probably making him nervous at that point so I think he was going to take what he could get.
And then, we kissed. Which is always the best part.  

 And as if this wasn't all enough, his whole family and some of my best friends had driven down from far, far distances to be there and they, along with all my St. George family and friends came running out to congratulate us.
Then there was toasting, and crying, and cheering, and phone calls, and texts, and giggling like mad, and so much happiness.

Later that night we all sat down to watch the movie that Cj had made for me with everyone.
When the movie was over I looked around me at all the people I love in the room and thought about all the people who I had just talked to on the phone and texted who I love and I accidentally said out loud,
"This is the happiest room I have ever been in!" 

They may have thought that was extreme, or cheesy, or really loud (I may have yelled it) but sometimes life is that real. There has to be a time in your life when you are in the happiest room ever and...well...there I was.


The best part?
This guy sitting next to me.

He is a man with a capital M.
Love, 
Katie 

As Always, it is Late.

It is 10:48 p.m. and I have been on campus since noon with a few quick trips home for more food and a change of clothes. 

This would all be fine and dandy if I wasn't so exhausted from spending all last night dreaming an entire Zombie Apocalypse from start to finish. 

This is real. 

I really did that.

I even dreamed the part where the last zombie died and we went and got shakes. (Naturally.) 

I also dreamed the part where Cj got bit by a zombie right before we got into our escape SUV.

(Escape SUV. Naturally.)

We were sitting inside and he kept saying "oh no. oh no. oh no." 

Similar to how I sound when someone starts playing country music/tries to feed me bananas

except this was much worse because all the other people in the car were getting worried that my boyfriend was going to start eating them. 

"You have to do something about it Katie," they said. 

So, I stopped the car.

Got out. 

Told Cj to get out. 

Then...kicked him in the face, jumped back in the car and drove away. 

Survival of the fittest I guess. 

Just ask Shane. 

(If you haven't watched the most recent episode of The Walking Dead...do it. And then you will get the reference duh.) 

Anyways, I'm fairly sure this whole dream spawned from two things. 

1. All The Walking Dead I have been watching. 

2. The fact that this was my Halloween costume last night...

Also, I just remembered that I got on here to write one little story and get off. 

No surprise that everything I try to do and say lately turns to zombie conversation. I'm a little obsessed right now. (When am I not a little obsessed with something?) 

Anyways, story...

A few minutes ago I walked up to the periodicals section of the library to find some journals I need to get articles from. After a thorough search I couldn't find the books I wanted so I walked up to the reference desk. 

Only one person was sitting there so I walked up to him and had this conversation: 

Me: "Hi. I'm here doing this huge project and it's due in the morning and I need to find these journals and I have been looking everywhere and I can't find them and I'm really nervous about this project and I played really bad in my volleyball game tonight which is no surprise because I am actually not good at Volleyball ever but I was really hoping tonight would be the night and I'm really tired because I dreamed about Zombies last night and I kicked my boyfriend in the face but not in real life just in my dream I would never kick him in the face in real life or anyone for that matter and I just really wish that someone understood me and would listen you know because I've got big things to say man, you know? Big things." 

Boy: "Uh....I don't actually work here. I'm just using the scanner. The desk is over there." (Points to the empty desk next to him that is clearly labeled Reference Desk.

Moral of the story: I should go home. 

Love, 

Katie

We like sportz and we don't care who knows.

I tried to look up a video clip to post here that would help me apologize for the long blogging-hiatus I have taken. 

Instead, I ended up watching a 10 minute clip from Plato's Apology at 12:49 in the morning. 

This proves 3 things:  

1. I am still an English nerd

2. I still stay up way too late doing stupid things

3. This is a great excuse for not blogging as clearly nothing in my life has changed.

This last things is fairly close to reality. I have done nothing but school and work for so long. 

Until recently, when something awful happened. 

Something I swore I would never do. 

Something that is painful for me to admit to the blogging world, particularly to those who remember this post.

I'm not going to actually say what I'm talking about, but I will say that once a week someone who lives in my apartment puts on cleats and goes to play a sport that nobody on the field can actually play...and she loves it. SO much.
Said person says every night to her boyfriend "Is today my football game??"
And he says "No, it's next Tuesday."
Said person lays in bed every night and says to her roommates "I just...love football...I just....love it."
Said person also retains the right to still make fun of women's flag football as it is still as ridiculous as ever.

Example from a recent game: 
Ref: "Illegal blocking on the offense." 
Girl: "Wait...us?" 
Ref: "Yes...you are on offense right now." 
Girl: "Oh....Wait, no, no, no. We didn't do that." 
Ref: "Yes you did."
Girl: "Oh, uh....no we didn't." 
Ref: "Uh...yes you did."
Girl: "No. This isn't fair! I was just standing here trying to stop her!" 
Ref: "Yeah...and you did it illegally. While you were on offense. An illegal block on the offense." 
Girl: "That doesn't make any sense."

Said person also recently received a tip that there was going to be one extra game offered to whoever called it first after receiving the e-mail. And said person may or may not have spent upwards of three hours hitting refresh on her browser just to make sure she didn't miss the e-mail that was going out to 40 other teams as well. 

Guess who got the extra game? 

And speaking of sports (all I ever want to do these days,) my MFA program put together a Women's volleyball team this semester.

Yes. Creative Writers. Playing Volleyball. 

(I capitalized every word in those last three phrases because as a creative writer I can make these kinds of decisions and nobody can argue with me.) 

Anyways, long story short we ended up in the championship game of D3. 

It was a lot like the Mighty Ducks D3 where they no longer have Gordon Bombay* as their coach and they feel lost and alone without him.

Except for us it wasn't a lack of a coach.

More that we remembered at the last minute that we were a bunch of nerdy English master's students and the whole "sports" thing became too much for us.

We lost by 3 in the fifth game. 

Thanks for bringing it up. 

Sportz4Life.

Love, 

Katie

* One time I was Emilio Estevez's waitress. It was all I could do to resist saying "quack...quack...quack.quack.quack.quack!!"