The Lights Go Up & The Cat Goes Down...

(A Post meant for November. It was saved in a forgotten word document.)

This past year has been full of so many things! So many wonderful and beautiful things.

1. We got married

2. We moved into our apartment

3. We started the quick morph into more-like-adult creatures

4. We both had birthdays (Will's 19th and my 20th)

5. Will won full tuition honors scholarship

6. We got new fish

7. We got a beautiful cat

8. We are one step closer to Bachelor Degrees

9. I got a full-time job

10. We got our first Christmas tree

So many wonderful blessings. (I know our two favorites, besides marriage, are the cat and the tree. )

The Gravel Drive

I ran out of creativity to this blog from the last and I'm unsure if I will finish that poem...


On Thursday I celebrated an amazing birthday with my family. Everyone was there and we had delicious Chinese food and lots of great bonding time. It is great having a birthday close to Christmas; the parties never end at our house in December. It is a month long bonanza! Easy to say Thursday was an amazing day.

Today I woke to drive my husband to work and successfully made it out of our slanted driveway and up onto the streets of Mapleton. I went up to my parents house and chilled with my bro for a few hours, (actually I watched him, as a zombie, make other worldly Halo players into zombies. I wouldn't want to play against him. I'd not stand a chance!) , returned home to get some coffee to warm the fingers, then returned to the car to get William. I revved the engine and felt the car drift and swing opposite of the steering wheel. I guided it gently to the edge, revved and got half way up and onto the street before the car slide back and off into the grass, wedging itself in seven inches of snow. I revved. And Revved. AND REVVED. Nothing. I turned and revved again to no avail before remembering our good friend Daniel Parkins was cozy and reading on the couch. I accepted defeat and went to ask for assistance. We pushed and dug around the tires (Looking like this...that is most certainly not me falling.)






After a few accidental snow angels and lots of pushing we got the car on to the road and I was off. (Only forty minutes late!) We got home without incident and brought along some delicious pizza too! To avoid digging the car out again I parked on the side and we went to get Dan and head over to the in-laws for some food and molasses cookies! DELICIOUS, might I add. Some time later we went home and parked the car. I work at nine but both men are getting up with me to dig the car out and properly position it while I eat and dress for work. What gentlemen!

Upon hearing there was going to be a full lunar eclipse tonight I timed showers, snacks, and bed time accordingly. At the proper time I zipped my boots up, put on a few extra layers of clothing, grabbed my camera, and tromped out into the night to witness the first full lunar eclipse since February of 2008! I scanned the sky, camera at the ready...

Oh well, no Lunar eclipse for me this year, I will have to see the next one if at all possible. Every day is a new day with something eclipsing something else. At least the snow was beautiful, once everyone was safely inside and out of the weather.

A Very Merry Christmas Time

T'was three weeks before Christmas and all through the house

All the creatures were scurrying even the 'mouse'

The stockings are hung by the T.V. with care.

In hopes that the cat would let them stay there.

The Gliders were nestled in their bag of a bed

While visions of mealworms danced in their head.

And me in two sweaters, sweat pants, and my hat

Pulled my husaband from W.o.W. he's had enough of that.

Then out in the orchard there rose a great clatter

So I had to run out to see what was the matter

I ran to the door and opened it fast

it swung back behind me and made a loud crash

The absense of snow on the dead grass

made everything darker like tinted glass

But what I looked for didn't appear

Yet I imagined a sleigh and some cute, brown reindeer!

Was I imagining a red dressed man

I thought it was so but it was just my friend Dan

He said his hello and walked in to greet Will

I changed him back to St Nick to fit my appeal

Now Dancer now Dasher now Prancer now Vixin

On Comet on Cupid on Donner and Blitzen

My imagination guided them on the Brook's porch onto the wall

Then my desire to create seemed to just fall

(Continued next week!)

Pumpkin Carving Time!

Yes it is pumpkin time again. We got so carried away showing off the guts of our pumpkins we forgot to take pictures of the final project. Nyrie and Dan carved the traditional pumkin. ( Triangle eyes and nose with jagged teeth. I carved a wolf into mine.)

Now, just a few days later, we are tossing our poor pumkins into the dumpster outside. Ah, pumkin season is over too fast.

Happy Halloween!

Autumn Shearing

Again it has come to the time where I pretend I can cut hair and William graciously dons the do-it-yourself hair cutting cape of shame. I carefully adjust the shears to the correct length and Will prays that the hair cut is swift and fairly even. I tell myself to keep my eyes open as I attempt to make sense of his tangle of curls. Our friend Daniel runs lines for his acting class tomorrow morning with William. The razor turns on...and the first snip is done, then another, and another. Fairly soon we are all comfortable with this event so far. I begin making awful late-80's style haircuts for William to look in the mirror and act out personalities for. Then I shave it into a Mohawk for the last effect before shaving off the last, long row of curly hair and smiling at my work. It is a bit shorter than we prefer. (I don't mind but Will likes it a big longer.) It looks good though. We have another two months until the mid season shearing when we pull it out and start all over again.

Salmon in A Bag

Today started like any other day. I heard William trying to coax me out of bed, glanced at the alarm clock, realized I slept in an extra ten minutes, sat up and had my clothes on before William could finish searching for something clean to put on. I shoveled some Captain Crunch Berries in and rushed to put on shoes. (We've discovered that if I drive William to school three hours early he can do homework, I still get to work in time, and we don't have to drive the Jeep to Orem.

Today we left in one car and I panicked. If I was late to work they would not be pleased. Will stopped by his parents house to pick up some art supplies and drop me off at my car. I would be very early to work but anything was better than being late for the second time. (I had never been late to work until I transfered to Provo.) After running in William returned to tell me there were fresh cinnamon rolls inside and cold juice. We left earlier than I would have and we were able to sit and relax for ten minutes. Naturally, being me, I pushed the time I needed to get to work an hit traffic on the freeway. Not to worry though. I clocked in at 8:00 on the dot! Work was super slow, it always is at the Provo store, but there was pleanty of things to due thanks to the rush to close quickly and get to the work party the night before. It was nice to feel busy
again at work. Orem is an easier store to work at, if only because time passes quickly.


Things never seem to slow down right now outside of work. After work I went to UVU for school. I came home after school and realized Will had not cooked anything for dinner. It is probably better this way; sometimes I'm afraid Will's cooking might be toxic. I decided salmon was a good thing to have after a long day. I checked the instructions. Thaw for 1 hour in warm water. I looked at my salmon. I had nothing big enough to hold this delicious, yet large, fillet of salmon so I thought. I have a large sink though. I looked white trash but I opened the protective wrapping and put my salmon at the bottom of a 20 gallon trash bag and submerged it in the steaming water, leaving the opening hanging over the sink. T'was a great dinner to eat around 11:00pm.

(I may insert said picture of salmon in a trash bag but at the time I was not quite thinking of blogging about this eventful night.)

I was so glad we ate Salmon that night because the night after I made some brownies in the morning and went to make tea in the afternoon. It smelled of glass and tin foil and chocolate for about 30 seconds until I ran into the kitchen to find the wrong burner on and directly under the glass pan of new brownies. I learned not to pick up high-heated glass pans because their structural integrity has been comprimised by the heat...our pan shattered and I experienced a glass explosion. A peice got lodged in my foot and bothered me for a day or so but no harm done and an awesome, eventful few days of zest to add to our life.

It is never boring here at the Bailey home.

Not So Bright

I applied at Petersen's Medical for a retail sales position and had a great interview! I began thinking about all the things 10.50 and hour and insurance could bring. I saw a little house in Provo with a hardwood floor entrance and out lab, Tofu, lying on the carpet we would use to keep dirt off the floor. I saw our olive-green couches facing a new, much-better-than-before television. I saw a cute little kitchen decorated with a few potted plants and a mass of Will's favorite types of food, that we could now afford, on the not anymore broken kitchen table. I saw a little bedroom with lace curtains and our queen mattress adorned in a new bedspread to match the feng shui of the new, little room. I saw a little back yard, just big enough for the two of us and our giant dog. I saw the little houses around us and all their people. We might have had some crazy-fun Mexicans next door who threw fiestas late into the night. We might have neighbors who left their house for church at precisely 10:00 every Sunday. We could watch them through the lace curtains and admire their Sunday best while Will played video games and did homework and I sat on the couch, trying to punch out the next chapter in my novel, Road to Freedom. We could stay up late and invite friends over to share our good fortune with.

I got a call back from Petersen's Medical. They decided to go with a more experienced candidate. I saw all of my house dreams fading and leaving me with the okay situation i am in now. We have five meals at a time in the fridge. Our dog lives at the in-laws house. Our basement apartment has heated floors and pretty walls. Will has an office and I have a jacuzzi bathtub. Our landlords are very kind to us. We have a great deal on our little home and yet I am discontented. Being so far away from family is not good for my emotional health. One day I will get there. William will go on to get his PhD and I will publish my novel. We will be fine, or even well off; I've just got to wait until then. It's going to be alright. You know it's going to be alright.

God in my living, there in my breathing. God in my waking, there in my sleeping. God in my resting, there in my working. God in my thinking, there in my speaking. God in my hoping, there in my dreaming. God in my watching, there in my waiting. God in my laughing, there in my weeping. God in my hurting, there in my healing. Be my everything. ~Tim Hughes

What's That Feeling Settling Over The House?

(This picture is a great representation of my feelings and mood at the moment, that is, a little off.) That feeling, my friends, is a pleasant mixture of tension, excitement, and yes, back to school fever. It seemed like yesterday I was lathering on the sun block and walking out into the June sun; a glance at my calender pulled me back into reality relatively quickly. August 24th. Something important is around August 24th, something very important. School. We return to college on the 25th, for me, and the 26th, for William. Usually I am excited for school but

this term is a different story. Maybe it was the whole getting married, and trying to figure out what goes where, who we hang out with, and on what night but my summer seems to have been cut into a fourth of its usual time frame.

No worries, I thought, you are going part time! I looked at my schedule. Two classes on Monday and Wednesday's I could handle that easy pie. Next I looked at my class times, 5:30-6:45 and 7:30-8:45, perfect again. I checked to see if I would have to run across campus to get to class. LA 219 and WC 220. This was something I hadn't expected. When it comes to UVU building layout I like to think I'm pretty hot salsa and yet I had no clue where WC was or which building it meant. I would swiftly remedy this problem. I logged on to UVU's website, confidently clicked the campus map button and began scanning for WC. I couldn't find it. (I'm not a prideful person but the bit I have hurt upon not finding WC.)

Different solution. Plan B. I found the phone number for OneStop and asked them about the elusive WC.

"Oh, WC stands for the Wasatch Campus up in Heber!"

My councilor had signed me up for classes this year because I was running out of time and didn't know what to sign up for. I realized all this today and put myself on a waiting list for a different astronomy class, one on the Orem campus, and anxiously check the UVU Student Link to see if anyone drops out and helps my college education along.

Today is the 24th and I have class tomorrow. My bags are unpacked, my mind is not ready, and my classes are not set in stone as they usually are. In the mean time, William made up a 'Back to School' list and has purchased everything on his list. He bought a new backpack, one with an extra pocket to hold his laptop and his in between class stuff (such as Starcraft 2, League of Legends, Bio Shock 2, and an assortment of DS Light games), organized all his pencils and pens into their respective holders and slots, labeled and organized his binders and folders, printed a class schedule and slipped it into a plastic cover on his main binder, and loaded all his textbooks, which he bought days ago.

Here I sit, staring at my laptop, wondering if I will get the classes I need or if I will just have to take one to ward off the school loans this term. What ever happens, I will go and I will go smiling with my best foot forward.

A New Day

It's been two and a half months already since we said our "I do's" and life is great. It's odd how many perks you don't know about until you live together! I remember the first time I walked in from work and found a man in my house, let along one decked out in tight boxers! The dishes never end and the living room couch is usually adorned by our college friends or clean clothes I can't find it in my heart to fold. Video games, all 27 of our movies, five belonging to my parents and three to his, and Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoons lay strewn about the general TV area. Our bed is usually made but the shock to the moms about a made bed will be disarmed by the amount of dirty and discarded clothing on the floor. ;)

Our dining room has Will's guitars spread through out, a marble chess set sitting on a TV tray dinner table, and the dining table has our two computer chairs on either side, they are the only chairs we have. Ha! I won't touch on the copious amount of boxes we already have in storage along with the rest of our various lives mixing in the house. My Barbies and their assorted outfits lay in a popcorn tin with Will's "Doll" a G.I. Joe action figure he calls Cobra. We have my princess coloring books and childhood stuffed animals lying on his forgotten works of literature, the stuff not good enough to sit on one of our three bookshelves, and boxes piled full with who knows what that goes who knows where in this little house.

I won't even touch on the Guinea Pig and Glider cages. It's gotten to the point where I won't pick my lovely orange pig up. Today they get cleaned.

The office should, in all reality, be called "Lair de William." I'm fairly sure he would never leave it if it were not for the kitchen and our cozy bed. I, for some reason, can not be creative in the confines of a structured place like the office. I tried to make it more creative-writer-friendly but upon returning to the house after working Will walked into my mess and I put it back into order for him. I gave him my desk, the dust screamed when I cleaned it off, and made him a large work area for his 'studies.' I'm more of a couch novelist anyway.

We have two bathrooms in this one bedroom place and the one attached to the office holds my favorite feature, the jacuzzi tub, but more importantly it hold Will's favorite feature, the urinal. He wakes up and passes the bathroom attached to our bedroom, walks through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and office to use his urinal in the morning before coming back and begging for an sunny-side egg sandwich; a recently discovered favorite.

I still have not invited my family over since moving in due to the chaos that took over the above text. Once I clean it, hopefully I can get most of it done after this blog, I will be able to invite them over sometime during the week. It would be nice to show off our little home with its best face forward. So it is with the hope of finally having them relax in my little place that I sign off and continue to the almost cognitive stuff around the house I have neglected in favor of fun and games with the in-laws the past few days. Signing off!