Dates of the Month: January

The second week of January, Matthew and I did not go on an official date. However, I had a fantastic SISTER DATE with two of my sisters at my apartment while Matthew studied and read at his parents' house. It was sooooo much fun. If you are wondering about how my sisters and I get along, just look at this picture.

Now sing "Sisters, sisters..."

We played this game:

The best part was when we narrowed the murder down to the three characters we were playing...

We watched this chick flick:

Oscar Wilde: The New Nicholas Sparks?

We ate this yummy food:

Serving size: Whatever size your stomach is

And we talked about these things:

BOYS

movies

books

food

BOYS

looks

family

BOYS

love

clothes

BOYS

relationships

TV

BOOOOOOOOOOOYS

It was very therapeutic. And gossipy. And girly. I love my sisters so much and can't believe they are old enough to be a young single adult ward already! They're both going to go to college this year as well, which is even crazier. On the plus side, if they go to BYU, we'll be more likely to run into each other and meet up for lunch and go out to movies and for ice cream together and squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the third week of January, we opted for another group date, this time with Matthew's family, who took us out to eat with them at Golden Corral (Wasn't that nice of them?). Okay, okay, so it was actually all in honor of Matthew's youngest sister's birthday, but we definitely took advantage of the opportunity to scarf down free vittles and ignore school and celebrate with carrot cake and presents afterward at the family homestead.

Here's a picture of our drinks at the restaurant. Everyone got water except for ONE PERSON, who recklessly, luxuriously ordered a lemonade.

 

Can you guess who the guilty party was?
 

Here's a hint...

I am particularly jealous of this scarf that was one of the presents:

It's like a popsicle and a rainbow and a furry pet all in one!

For the last week of January, we guest-ushered for (and thus got to watch for free) Dance in Concert at BYU. Highlights of the evening were:

Me recognizing at least five of my students and a girl from a Spanish class over two years ago

Matthew recognizing two of his cousins

The trampoline in the first number

The second number called "Life is a Bench," with a lot of shenanigans involving moving around, under, on top of, and between two benches

Costumes from "Life is a Bench" - very Huck Finn

Making out with a really cute guy during intermission...

The final number, where everybody wore a short wig and bright clothes and walked around like they were Carmen Sandiego

Finishing the evening by watching Whose Line is it Anyway? and snuggling and ice cream.

It could be worse

One of my jobs this semester, the one in which I am a TA, or teaching assistant, requires me to teach a section of thirty or so students every Friday. This means I am required to be interesting/entertaining/informative/focused for fifty minutes, all by myself. To give you an idea of how difficult it is for me to focus on one thing for a long or even short period of time, take note that I have been watching Middlemarch, eating strawberry yogurt, and planning what to wear for church all in between writing this paragraph.

Anyway, I was feeling frustrated with myself this weekend for not teaching as well as I wished. I felt my discussion section was poorly organized and boring, and that I had tried to compensate for this by sharing too much personal information and blathering on about things long after the entire class was ready to move on.

I continued to mope about this until last night, when I had a revelation. A dream, actually. In this dream, I was teaching my section, and it was absolutely the most horrible worst-case scenario I could have envisioned. It was so terrible, in fact, that I woke up out of pure frustration/terror, and realized how lucky I was in real life by contrast.

So, how lucky am I?

I'm lucky that my students don't leave the classroom in the middle of my teaching.

I'm lucky that my students don't tear up their homework when I hand it back to them.

 I'm lucky that I don't actually teach in a huge, intimidating auditorium where the lights are low and the students are seated high above me, emphasizing my isolation from them.

Well, I'm lucky that one of my students isn't a long-haired disheveled-looking artist with long hair from Russia who apparently can't speak a word of English and cries when I try to communicate with him in English.

I'm lucky that my students aren't too distracted by how dirty the carpet is to pay attention to my lecturing.

I"m lucky that they don't then leave to go and get one of those old-fashioned carpet cleaning machines to fix the apparently dirty, disgusting, smelly carpet in our room (Seriously. This happened. Why? Do I have an obsession with carpet that I am trying to suppress?).

I'm lucky that my students don't pretend they can't hear me when I yell, "HEY! STOP TALKING! LISTEN TO ME!"

I'm lucky that the boys in my class haven't all decided to play a prank on me by insisting that all of their names are "Josh."

And yes, every single one of these things happened in my dream. No wonder I woke up. Any more and I would have committed suicide, Inception-style.

You're all crazy, and I quit!

What are you going to do with your degree?

Everyone in the humanities at some point will be asked this question, typically by a skeptical, judgmental person who has a career that they are proud of and like to flaunt in the faces of others. Personally, my favorite answer is something one of my professors said, which was essentially to respond with blank, flippant remarks, with either an expression of gloomy despair or happy, ignorant bliss.

For example:

"What are you going to do with your degree?"

"Nothing."

"How are you going to live?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you need to make money."

"No, I don't."

"So you're just going to read books and watch movies?"

"Yes."

"You can't make a living from that."

"Yeah, you can't make a living from a lot of things."

"So what will you do?"

"I don't know."

"You should find out."

"Thanks. You should find out too."

Annoying, perhaps, to everyone who isn't a humanities student, but hilarious and refreshing to those of us who are, I assure you.

Semester Snarkiness

Volleyball
 
I worked out my legs on Monday. It feels great to be healthy and in shape! As a matter of fact, there's only one downside, and that is that it hurts like a son of perdition. Especially painful are going down stairs, getting up or sitting down, walking, and playing volleyball. So yeah, I would like to apologize to my volleyball class, and in particular, my team, composed of tiny Indian girl, messy-haired mustache dude, and mystery girl with a ponytail (because I can't remember what she looks like). Maybe by next week I'll be able to move faster than a little old grandma using a walker.

On the plus side, my ability to sense pain right now is so distorted that I barely registered skinning both my knees and getting hit in the head with a ball. I will miss my invincibility.

Humanities 101
 
This class is very difficult, mainly because I have to look like I'm paying attention. I am the TA, after all. But here's the problem: I need to finish reading this super-long book in about a day for another class. And class isn't really that difficult to get, right? So I feel justified in sneaking in a few pages of reading while listening out of the corner of my ear (do ears have corners?) to the lecture. But I also feel guilty about it. So in order to feel less guilty, I always make sure to laugh loudly when everybody else is laughing. And it isn't as if I don't pay attention at all. Sometimes (for example, when she turns out all the lights), I put my book down and actually look at the screen. So I think I'm okay, right?

Graduate Classes
 
There are a lot of difficult things to think about in my graduate-level classes. Difficult, challenging, deep questions and problems, such as: How many comments do I need to make per class period to demonstrate my intelligence, superiority to undergrad students, and completion of the reading? Is it bad to make two comments in a row? Does the teacher like me? How can I tell? How can I get him to like me? Should I bring him cookies? Should I be looking up more references in our reading to cite in class or will the teacher think that I'm just trying to skim the reading instead and that I didn't go over it in depth to prepare for class? What if I got really close to finishing the reading but didn't quite finish it? Should I make this comment despite the fact that the two pages I skipped reading might completely contradict what I have to say?

I also often experience deep emotional responses to our class discussions, such as I'm REALLY hungry right now or WE HAVE A WHAAAAAAT DUE ON FRIDAY!?!?!?!? or WHAT THE HECK THAT GUY TOTALLY JUST STOLE MY ANSWER AND NOW THE TEACHER IS GIVING HIM CREDIT FOR IT! NOW I HAVE TO THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE OR HE'LL THINK I'M UNORIGINAL AND SHALLOW!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Note: These reflections are primarily intended for humorous purposes. No insult to any specific person intended.

What did you do on Saturday?

I read this book. All of it. In one day.

My reasoning went as follows:

It's short (Okay, so it's 377 pages).

My husband had read it over the past week, and was raving about how great it was (and yet, infuriatingly, he wouldn't tell me enough about it to satisfy my curiosity).

The author wrote Jurassic Park. It MUST be good.

Finally, and most importantly, I felt I deserved a break from grad school after spending 14 hours at school on Thursday and Friday.

The good news is that my husband and I can communicate fully and honestly with each other once more.

The bad news is that I now am subject to dreams about talking computers and giant squids in addition to my worries about procrastinating on the nightmarish amount of reading/research/writing required for my two grad school classes.

It's going to be a long January.

And finally, here is a picture for my nephew Robert of something else that happened on Saturday:

Date of the Week: Eating Out

One of Matthew's New Year resolutions for 2012 was to take me on a date (or to at least have a date - taking not necessarily required, since we are cheap and lazy, after all) every week.

A few of his other resolutions, by the by, were to gain five pounds (i.e. "Be healthy"), get straight As (i.e. "Be smart"), and do a triathlon (probably the cheap, short one at the Orem rec center. When this goal was announced, Matt's brother dismissively said, "Oh, that one's easy. You could do it tomorrow." I managed to refrain from mentioning that we have been planning to do this for more than a year now and still always manage to come up with excuses/cramps/overwhelming amounts of homework during the fateful day).

But back to the date per week idea. I think this is a lovely idea. I also am skeptical about its realization.

Part of this is just because I am not much of a long-term resolutions type person. For example, right now I can't even fathom that the month of January will end in my lifetime. Has anyone else noticed how looooooong this month is? Will we ever get out? Are we all going to die here? The longest I can consistently focus on achieving a particular goal is probably over one semester, and even then I usually get burned out, stressed, exhausted, and bored. Especially if I am required to start my th*sis (it's too awful a word to spell out) that semester.

But dating is different, right? Dating should be fun, and frequent, and romantic, and awesome. I committed to marry this guy for eternity, so dating him officially every week should be no problem, right?

So this week: We went to Church on Sunday, went running on Monday, played games on Tuesday, went weightlifting on Wednesday, did absolutely nothing on Thursday (unless you count the few hours Matthew spent consoling me when I realized exactly how awful the semester was going to be), and then came Friday. I was ready to concede that going to the gym counted as a date and let the week slide by. But Matthew brightly suggested that we go out to eat. It seemed logical. We had received three gift certificates to restaurants over December and hadn't used any of them. Plus I had just sat through a 2.5 hour class on a Friday evening without any kind of food and I was starving. So I agreed.

Going Out to Eat

Step 1. We debated going to Applebees or Sizzlers. Matthew declared he knew where we could find Sizzlers. I looked up an Applebees. We decided to go to Sizzlers.

Step 2. We drove to where Matthew believed the restaurant was. Traffic was terrible. When we got there, the restaurant was missing.

Step 3. Matthew called his brother (Triathlon Expert). Triathlon Expert asked if he could call back.

Step 4. The natural result of sitting through a trying 2.5 hour class, being on campus for seven hours without a break between work and classes, cold weather, a headache, and food/sleep/cuddling deprivation occurred. Ruth began to cry.

Step 5. Matthew decided to roam Orem in search of Sizzlers. A miracle occurred and we found one within five minutes.

Step 6. We found the last parking space available and walked towards the restaurant, only to discover a line so long that it nearly led all the way back to the parking lot.

Step 7. See Step 4.

Step 8. Hungry, impatient, and reckless, we went to Wendy's, where we consumed a ridiculous amount of cheap, unhealthy, and delicious fast food, topped off with a vanilla frosty. Adults and children alike drew back from our booth with shock and fear at our atrocious manners, voracious appetites, and the number of times we went back for refills on ketchup.

Step 9. Home for a small treat (fruit-on-the-bottom yogurts), a movie, and cuddling. By far my favorite part of the night. I love my husband.

So the date per week thing is off! Stay tuned for more drama, tears, laughter, and romance next week! It's all on this blog. Hmm. I may need to stop watching The Bachelor.

Times have changed

What I ate for lunch as a freshman, six years ago:

One apple (minus the green leaf).

A little bag of carrots

Four little stalks of broccoli

A sandwich, typically banana and peanut butter

A handful of these

Mixed with these

What I ate for lunch today:

Four packages of these.

It might be time for me to figure out how to cook.

In somewhat brighter news, Matthew and I have arranged our schedules so that we can exercise three times every week. So far we've already gone running and weightlifting this year. Woo-hoo!