New Rules for Living

1. If you drive in the fast lane and drive at or below the speed limit, and have a long line of impatient cars stuck waiting behind you, the Giant Magnet of Death will pick up your car and deposit it on the side of the road.
2. If you leave your blinker on for miles without noticing it, your license will be revoked.
3. Pedestrians are allowed to either jaywalk intelligently or cross at the crosswalk while the walk sign is on. Stupid jaywalkers are banned.
4. No persons of any age or social class will be allowed to pay with a check at any place where a debit card may suffice.
5. All baby names will be subjected to the Baby Name Review Board before being assigned to a child. The Baby Name Review Board will be headed by me. All stupid names will be rejected.
6. Email forwards no longer exist.
7. Smoking in ALL public areas is banned.
8. Guns are banned. All people who own guns can move to Texas and secede from the United States.
9. Celebrity magazines that have stories about reality TV celebrities that I've never heard of are banned.
10. Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are banished.
11. Checked bags are once again free of charge, and airplane flights are half-priced forevermore.
12. All people who write anything, ever, will be forced to take basic grammar tests before they are allowed to use a computer. Anyone who cannot tell the difference between you're/your and their/they're/there are banished.
13. All Facebook users who post about political topics will immediately have their accounts deleted forever.
14. People who use British spellings without actually being British are not allowed.
15. Hashtags (except when used in their proper Twitter function ONLY) and emoticons are abolished. (example: :( #becausetheyarestupid).
16. The Mommy Wars are over. So are endless feuds between Democrats and Republicans. All people will be able to talk about these issues intelligently and compassionately.
17. Grocery store wheelchair carts are only allowed to be used by people with legitimate disabilities. People who use them because they are obese must use regular carts.
18. Cowboy hats are banned. So are those stupid little lap dogs that women carry in their purses.
19. All fruits will always be delicious and in season all year round, particularly peaches.
20. Shipping and handling will always be included in the price of the online item being purchased, so that it's not a surprise when you're buying at the end.
21. Apple is not allowed to release any new operating systems for five years.

(Inspired by Bill Bryson's "Rules for Living" from I'm a Stranger Here Myself)

a real young women's gem

yesterday, i went home to do some laundry, have a dermatologist appointment, and hang out with the fam. while i was there, i pulled down the remaining four boxes of stuff that i had left at my house from their spot at the top of the garage and started to sort through them. these boxes were filled with all sorts of memorabilia: high school yearbooks and photo albums, my letters for my non-existent letterman's jacket, my baby dolls from eons ago, my (very, very numerous) soccer trophies and medals, AP US history notes (apparently i couldn't bear to throw them away when i packed the boxes five years ago), young women's binders and laminated quotes, random postcards and decks of cards and keychains from costa rica and canada and niagara falls, and all sorts of forgotten gems that i greatly enjoyed seeing and remembering.

and then i threw most of it away. we condensed the four boxes into two, took pictures of the to-be-trashed, and called it a good day's work. the two boxes will hopefully squeeze into our car for the road trip back to north carolina and the yearbooks and photo albums will go onto our bookshelves and everything will be where it belongs.

as i was going through my beehives binder, though, i found something that i had thought had been lost. it was dated 10/13/02 (almost an entire decade ago!), written in my own fourteen-year-old handwriting (original spelling and capitalization has been preserved), and was titled

Qualities I Want My Future Eternal Companion to Have:

• loves the Lord, Jesus, and the gospel
• believes in the gospel; testimony
• believes in me; has faith in me
• intelligent
• interesting to talk to
• fun to be around and hang out with
• return missionary
• trustworthy and honest
• loves me
• will love our kids
• understanding
• respects me
• not overspending/frugal with money
• good sense of humor/funny
• good temper
• physically fit
• patient
• won't rule over me, will let me be his partner
• lets me make my own decisions
• humble
• not criticizing or complaining
• hardworking and ambitious
• loves art and music/cultural
• knows me well enough to order my dinner for me
• is my BEST FRIEND
• I LOVE HIM
• he protects me
• courteous and polite

first of all, don't think too highly of my fourteen-year-old self: i'm pretty sure the accompanying YW's lesson was about how the first thing on your list should be that your future husband has a testimony and that you shouldn't have things like "tall" and "handsome" on your list (because i'm pretty sure this was a revised, after-lesson version and "tall" and "handsome" were prominent features on the original one with a testimony as more of an afterthought instead of item number 1).

and, not that i had TOO high of expectations as a brand new miamaid or anything . . . but i don't know if tommy could really order my dinner for me reliably. he said he could probably do it 50% of the time. 

otherwise, i think it's pretty much spot-on. 

swimming as an metaphor for life? MAYBE.

i started swimming for exercise a few weeks ago, after my poor knees refused to let me keep running and i was not ready to give up exercise completely. i bought a 20-swim pass at the santa monica swim center and have been going several times a week. i've never actually swum before--swimming to move and burn calories and go fast instead of just float around in the pool and play categories. the first time i went, i was totally out of breath after my first fifty meters. i had to take a break after every couple of laps before i could go on.

but it's gotten a lot easier really quickly. i started building up and trying to go longer distances and timing myself so that i could improve my times. every time i go, i set a long-distance goal that i try to hit (400, 600, 800 meters) and try to stay on my normal pace for longer and longer times. really, i started competing with myself and was feeling guilty any time i didn't go farther and faster than i did the day before.

today, i just swam. i didn't count or time or measure or even try to go particularly fast. i just hopped in the pool and lost count of how many times i turned around, how many meters i covered, how many minutes went by. i didn't think about my strokes or try to keep up with my lane buddy when he swam past me. i just kicked and pulled and thought and thought, and i kept going forever. i didn't need to stop until my goggles started boring holes in my skull and i felt like i was giving myself two black eyes.

it's not that trying hard and working to improve my exercise and my swimming times is a bad thing. it's just that sometimes i forget that right now, when i'm six months pregnant, is probably not the best time to train to become an olympian in a brand new sport.

it's okay to let go of my pride and just swim every once in a while.

FUN weekend FUN

we were eating dinner with my cousin andrew on thursday when he mentioned that this friday was a first friday celebration in venice. i know they have those in raleigh, a sort of art walk thing, but apparently here in venice they're all about the food trucks that line up along the street--there were probably 20 or 30 options to choose from. so we decided to go and see what it was all about. we were looking for the ever-popular grilled cheese truck (which always has an hour-long line and is beloved by many), but it apparently wasn't there, so we settled for some other food. 

the sidewalks were CRAZY crowded. you could tell which trucks were the most popular by how bad the crowds were around the truck.

we got the pota-tornado, with a giant sausage in the middle. there was an entire food truck dedicated JUST to these tornado potatoes. definitely seemed like such a boy thing.

andrew insisted that we needed a picture in front of the medical marijuana dispensary. please ignore my swollen face--i am six months pregnant.

we also bought some giant nachos and we were pretty much filled up. we ended the night by visiting diddy riese and getting some more ice cream sandwiches. all in all a VERY successful night, i would say.

and then today, saturday, we were determined to hit up some other la sites. first up was the original LA farmer's market, which has apparently been going since 1934. it did not seem like a farmer's market to me, since it had BUILDINGS instead of just canopies and clearly the people working there were not farmers selling their produce, but i'm not complaining. it was still great. AND we broke out our fancy new DSLR for this trip, so admire the quality of these pictures! TA-DA!

we were awestruck and amazed by the genius of these band-aid strips. mustache-shaped band-aids? SPAM BAND-AIDS!? there were about 10 other awesome kinds that we ogled and tried to think of reasons to buy. we ended up buying some as early christmas presents for siblings because they were so awesome.

and last but not least, we finally went on our bike ride down the bike path that goes for some-twenty-odd miles along the beaches up here. we went about seven miles each way, stopping to relax on the beach for a while in the middle. it was FUN and definitely something i wanted to do this summer--and probably a good thing we didn't wait any longer or else i would not have been enjoying it as much.

we walked our bikes a good ways on our way back down the venice boardwalk, which was INSANE, crowded, marijuana-smelling, and super classy. i couldn't believe how long it went AND how many cannabis dispensaries there were. go venice! stay classy.

  

and finally you all know what we've been up to all this time! and there are some great baby bump pictures in there to satisfy all you curious people. 

4th of july

we spent most of our 4th with our favorite other summer los angelenos: the busbys! we went to a traditional fourth of july parade down by tommy's work in the morning. we were kind of expecting it to be like the freedom parade in provo, where people camp out overnight to get a good spot on the road, so we were really worried about being able to find parking and a spot along the parade route. so we showed up an hour early, and we were the only people there until about 45 minutes later. but we did get some free flags, and kylie and emmy raked in the swag from the parade-goers.

we didn't actually SEE any celebrities at the parade (still one of my goals for the summer that is yet unfulfilled) but we pretty much became celebrities. we were filmed and interviewed by a local news girl (see her in the corner of the picture above!) and we had SUCH interesting things to say on camera! check it out. we are famous.

later in the day, we went over to the busbys' house and barbecued--steak, corn, and pineapple, a real feast--and then went down to the santa monica pier to enjoy the crowds and hopefully steal a glimpse of some far-away fireworks. we knew they didn't actually do any fireworks at the pier, but were too lazy to drive in crazy traffic to a city that did have them.

and there were the fireworks! that small red dot next to tommy's head in the picture below! (they were doing them in malibu, pretty far up the coast.) people were LINED UP along the pier and the beach to stare at these tiny specks in the sky. but we didn't feel totally obligated to stay for the whole fireworks show, really.

look at how patriotic we were--although you needed both of us together to complete the color scheme. (i don't have anything red that i fit into at this point in my life, and tommy insists that his gray shorts are blue, although they're not.) but anyways, happy independence day!

things we've done lately

SO MANY FUN THINGS.

i went to the la zoo with the busbys (while the husbands were busy working).

and also hung out with the younger busbys and got stickered up.

we drove up to fresno a few weeks ago to visit tommy's grandma. we left on saturday morning and made the trip in less than four hours, and then came back sunday night. we got to go to the temple with her and i got to meet an aunt and uncle and cousin of tommy's that i'd never met before. it was a really nice trip AND we got to appreciate the weather in santa monica even more (it was over 100 in fresno the whole time we were there).

we've had several picnic lunches on the beach. i go pick tommy up and we go down to the beach to eat together. i even bought pringles to celebrate eating together--and strawberries, our constant companion this summer.

we got diddy riese ice cream sandwiches--the original smart cookie, for all you provo-ites. we've now gone again, and plan on going many times more since they are only $1.75 (cheapest dessert around!) and delicious.

we were lucky enough to be visited by hermana chelsea williamson, visiting her old missionary stomping grounds in the la mission. i got to spend a lot of time with her, chatting and catching up and hearing all about the last several YEARS of her life since we've lived together. we even got to spend her BIRTHDAY with her--we ate at bj's, went to the temple with rique, and went to yogurtland. it was a grand old reunion. THANK YOU chelsea for hitting us up!

this summer is officially HALF OVER.

the year of the dragon

i went on a walk with my dear friend emilie wong while i was in irvine last week. she said, "i'm so excited that you're having a dragon baby! if i were married i would totally be having a baby this year too!" and the wongs are definitely the coolest chinese people i know.

the year of the dragon is the luckiest of all the chinese lunar years. it's the best year to be born in, so chinese folks all around the world want to join in our good fortune. dragons are the strongest, smartest, and luckiest. i'm not even making this up.

and would you guess what? i am a dragon along with our baby. that has to be doubly lucky. (poor tommy--he's the year of the rat.)

according to yearofthedragon.org, dragons usually have these characteristics:

-innovative
-enterprising
-quick-tempered
-tactless
-self-assured
-brave
-passionate
-conceited
-flexible
-scrutinizing
-unanticipated

although i can't decide whether to be pleased or offended, it also says that dragons are "usually very successful" and "free-spirited creatures" who are "always ready to lend a helping hand to those who need it." so i'll take it as an all-around pretty good year to be born in--and it definitely sounds cooler than the year of the pig.

i'm so grateful to be in santa monica this summer

thank you, santa monica, for ALWAYS HAVING PERFECT WEATHER.