How I Ended Up Doing the Dishes

So the other day I came home from work.  It had been long, hot day and work had been full of grumpy customers. I started the usual routine I go through when I find that the husband is not home yet. I dropped the constant, ridiculous pile of junk I am always carrying from the car and zombied over to the computer to indulge in the mindless entertainment of Reddit and FB.

I began cooling off from the long day and just as I started to relax I thought I would like a snack. This reminded me of the mountain of dishes in the kitchen. Defeated by that thought I kept facebooking.

Somehow I came across a video about this really dedicated wife whose husband had been in a  tragic accident and she cared for him even when he now can no longer walk or communicate in the same way.

This inspired me and I decided that if she can work and take care of her husband I can BUCK UP and tackle the dishes!
Just when I was going to get up, my mind took one of its regular tangents on the meaning or origins of phrases. What on earth does BUCK UP even mean?

Does is mean you become like a buck and be all tough and stuff?

Or do you get tough enough to lift a buck?

Or do you just get skin tough like a buck?

The thought of how doing dishes would make me need to look like I had buckskin suddenly irritated me. A crippling word slipped into my thoughts:

That was all I needed. An all-out pity party was at hand. I thought of how awful life is going to be with having buckskin. How all the hours of work I have to do is making me wrinkly and soon I will be just hideous, and how all the buck-uping will wear me down. That I was all alone in my bucking up and that no-one else has to put up with as many hours of work as I do and then come home to dishes. And how terrible heavy bucks are.

After wallowing in my self-pity for who knows how long, I was still hungry (which I felt very sorry for myself about). I somehow crawled to the kitchen despite my fear of those wrinkle causing dishes. 

I paused for a long time discouraged (and yet feeling more justified in my pity party) about the large pile of dishes.

Still thinking all my woeful thoughts, I began hunting for food.    


While sad about not finding "anything" to eat, I spotted a piece of paper with my husband's handwriting.

"Dear Lindsay, I was not sure what time you would be home, but I made you dinner. Check the fridge..." The note included all the nice things about love and stuff that I needed to hear. In the fridge was an entire dinner with salad included. Nothing like someone who is actually just as busy as you doing something loving to snap you out of a self-pity attack.
And that is how I ended up cleaning the entire kitchen after a long day of work.

The Saga of the Shelves

Our apartment was seriously lacking in space and normality. The largest obstacle in the way of having a nice looking apartment was our hideous metal bookcase that really should have been garage shelving.

After much convincing, my husband got on the bandwagon to replace our bookcase with shelves. We left our apartment with great expectations for the outcome of such an undertaking and headed to the Habitat for Humanity Restore to find some shelves.

Little did I know that our idea for the projects outcome would be so different... Zeph, in his engineering/large family mindset, wanted indestructible shelving. I wanted something cute (after all, what other reason is there?).

When we got to the restore we were so lucky to find a lack shelf and two corner shelves. Zeph, however, did not feel the same about the lack shelf (if all men are like Zeph I have no idea how Ikea sells any of these!).

While Zeph was calculating the inevitable doom of our books, I was already thinking of how many awesome things could go on that shelf.

Needless to say I convinced him in the end, although I think he still had plans to add reinforcements. We got home and began working furiously for what seemed like a lot of hours on painting the shelves, taking down our old shelves and prepping a corner of our living room.

After getting the shelves painted and ready go on to the wall I started feeling like it was time to wrap-up for the night. But when I started hinting at such I noticed that Zeph was now really into the project. He was now determined to finish the whole project that night and I was going to stay up and help him.

After trying to hold up a shelf for him for a little while, I gave up and collapsed on the couch. Zeph kept working which made me grumpier by the minute. When I reach either a point of great hunger or tiredness there usually is no going back from an explosion of emotions and great despair about life in general. I begin to fill Zeph's ears with complaints that we are doing nothing with our lives and it is all so meaningless, etc.

Zeph hears the key word. Meaningless. Suddenly aware that the situation is about to get messy, he looks at me.

After assessing my overall body language he decides that tonight is not a good time to finish the project.

I process.

And the wiser Zeph and less tired Lindsay finished a stylish (and earthquake proof) set of bookshelves another day.

The Wedding

Our wedding was such a special day. The weather, the venue, the time of day, the food was perfect. We had the wedding party come down early so we went rafting one day and then had to prepare the rest of the time. It was amazing to have all our family and friends send us off at the end of the day. The best way to start our life together:)

BTW: The kiss at the alter was both of ours very first! Ask me more about how we did it and why.

Engagement

I am going to jump ahead a bit just because I am anxious to be up to speed with this blog (I don't know why because all I really want to say is what we ate for dinner or other very interesting things).
Finals week of spring term, Zeph said he had planned a date for an end of the school year. I didn't suspect anything because I was still thinking he had not asked my dad. We went out to dinner at a cute pub downtown. I had just decided I needed a new picture of the two of us so I kept taking photos. Then we drove out to a wildlife reserve. We wondered around as I was taking pictures of the beautiful pictures. Zeph was marching toward a broken over tree out in the field of flowers. We got out to the tree and he turned promptly around and heads back through the field. I contently followed him back to a bench. And he sat down. I followed thinking it was one of his "lets sit and enjoy life" moments. He seemed really impatient though as he was twitching his knee up and down. He asked me what I was thinking and I said that I was just in awe of the beauty got had made and how he had put it together. He then turned and said how he was amazed at how God had put us together. He knelt and I was already saying yes. He asked and opened the box...and the ring fell out. He scrambled and caught it before it went between the cracks of the walkway we were on. We laughed and he put the ring on. We enjoyed the rest of the beautiful sunset, super happy.

The Road Trip to No Where

I was thinking of things that have happened to Zeph and I over the two years before we entered a live together in marriage. One event stuck out in my mind and I decided to put it up in the journal.
A couple of winters ago a group of our friends at Oregon State University and we decided to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon over Christmas break. Our friend Craig borrowed his parents Honda Passport. we named it Rosa and loaded it to the max with our stuff. We even had one person in the back hatch area and a car top carrier. The beginning of the trip started slow as there had been freezing rain all over Oregon the night before. We noticed on the way down that the transmission light was on but Craig's parents informed us that the transmission had been replaced but the electric indicator had not been re-attached. Long story short, while I was driving and my sister-in-law was in the passenger seat we began to smell something just south of Redding, Cali around 10:00 PM. I saw a large factory ahead and asked Ariel if she smelled it too and we thought that it must be the pollution. All of a sudden the transmission slipped. That told me that smell was coming from us and I pulled over. Black smoke instantly puffed out the sided of the hood and Ryan got out of the car. He took one look at the Rosa and said, "Guys, get out!".
Ariel and I looked at eat other and instantly hopped out while the guys in the back took their sleepy sweet time. I saw a flash of light and thought for a second that Ryan had a flashlight out. The flash fell down and turned into a burst of little flame in the grass along the road. I leaned down to see that the entire underside of the engine was dripping fire. "Guys!" I yelled. "For real, get out, the car is on fire."
They grabbed a few more things and then got out to see what was going on.
We suddenly panicked because we didn't know that cars don't explode when on fire and we ran a few hundred yards and watched as the flames enveloped the entire engine.
Our thought process from pulling over went from "Bummer, now we will have to get the car fixed" to "the road trip is definitely over" to "how do we get back?"
By now the car was on fire enough that we began to feel bad for ourselves as we were basically watching out lap tops, cameras and other items facing their melted doom. Suddenly, like out of a movie, a semi truck screeched into the gravel as a man with a fire extinguisher jumped out before it stopped and rushed to our car. Before we knew it the front flames where down to a drip again. The driver of the truck was out and, approaching us he hollered, "Well, ya want your stuff out?"
We were already to accept the loss of all our stuff so it took us a second to follow after him. We couldn't get the back latch open and the driver had the for sight to see the car was totaled and asked Craig if he could smash the window in. They smashed it in with the empty fire extinguisher and we took one load a hundred yards back. By this time the flames reached the front of the car again and that is went I remembered the propane tanks for the stove in the car top carrier. I yelled that we had to get it of and we ripped the straps and pulled it away from the flames and off the back end. The truck driver yelled, "Last load!" and we ducked under the black, lung burning smoke and pulled out what we could. Somehow before all of this we had called 911, and in the 15 minutes it took them to get there Rosa went from barely burning to totally enveloped. Rosa began to beep the alarm as her emergency lights turned on. The beeping went on like she was crying for help. Eventually the beeping faded as if she had died. We all looked at each other chuckling for a second because Rosa had gone out with style and with so much drama. Suddenly there was a loud bang and we all instinctively ducked. The tires, super heated, were exploding. The fire trucks had arrived, but the car was too hot for them to extinguish with what water they had, so let let her burn out. The final pop was from the fire extinguisher as it shot out the car after exploding from pressure.
After the flames died down the firemen sprayed the deceased Rosa down. No longer red, but a solid black, she looked like nothing but a shell. The steering wheel had melted off, all the seats were nothing but metal and my camera which had been in there had left no trace. We lost quite a few items, but not as much as we could. The fire marshal didn't know what to do with us as we were quite cheery. The way we looked at it was we were alive and had most of our stuff.
The very nice police officers of the area drove us to a hotel where we soon realized we smelled of burning everything. Luke's parents came and got us and we all made it home safely. We have yet to go to the Grand Canyon.
We never got to thank the truck drivers or even learn their names. They drove off as the fire trucks arrived. But they really are our heroes.
Safe in the hotel.

Note the missing steering wheel.

You can see the fire extinguisher shooting out.

One of the truck drivers.

Our start

I just came upon pictures from our 6 month dating anniversary. I had the idea for this journal a while ago and am finally getting it off the ground. I am going to start with our 6 month of dating where Zeph took me on a romantic hike through falls and then read me a letter he wrote to me. At the end of the day we had driven high to the crest of the Columbia Gorge. My head rested on the corner of his shoulder and I could suddenly feel his heart beat faster as he told me for the first time that he loved me.
I then told him, "I think I love you too."
We laugh now at my 'thinking' I loved him.