A Marvelous Announcement

Guess what??!! I'm engaged!!! We're gettin' hitched in June and I am SOOOOO excited!!



Let me tell you the reactions I've had...

Dad: I'm going to kill him. I don't mind going to prison. You're not getting married. Why would you ever do something like that? He's a really nice guy. Are you happy? Are you seriously getting married? Yea, there's something wrong with you.

Mom: ... Me: Um, don't you have anything to say about him.
Mom: ... Me: Mom, can't you say anything about him?
Mom: ... Me: Okay, so that means he's okay, right? If you can't think of anything to say?
Mom: ...he's a good man and he'll take care of you. I had a fabulous time working in Seattle. You know, the workshop went great. I can't wait till you plan a class in Alaska...blah blah blah....
Me: ...(eye roll)...

Amber: Hmmm, AHHHHHH ~~ SCREECHING ~~~ AHHHH!!!!! I LOVE MY ALMOST BROTHER, OMG!!!! Okay, here are links for venues, bridal gowns, cupcakes, decor, photos, bridal gowns, venues, invites, cakes, flowers, flowers, gowns....

Brother: SWEET! Wow! I'm impressed! Does that mean you have to live in Alaska forever? You might want to write that into the marriage contract; that you get to leave. Oh yea, congrats!

Everyone else in my family: Um, is this Sara? Like the Sara we know? Hmmm, well I didn't see that one coming. Um, are you sure? For reals, this is Sara? Okay, um, well, what's your date? Wait, are you sure? Should I get a flight up? Or should I wait, just in case? This isn't a funny joke, right? Cuz I'm laughing right now. Oh, okay, so you are getting married in real life. To a guy you actually want to marry. Hmmm, well, congratulations!

Me: {giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle}

Clearly, my family suffers from multiple personalities and a warped view of life's priorities. Oh well, stay tuned for more excitement as I plan a crazy quick wedding...well, actually, Amber's taken over on the planning...and yes, she's still sending me links and shreaking :)

The Woes of Single-Womanhood!

So, I have been single now for over a year. Let me tell you, it's not easy. I know I sound extremely whiney saying that, seeing as there are quite a few people who have spent much more time single than I have, and whine a lot less about it, but still. It's tough!

This week I am especially frustrated. I suppose I should say first that there are a couple of good things about single-womanhood. Like I never have to share my wine. The bathtub is always clean. Way less dishes to do. No white load of laundry ruined from a red sock. My bedroom can be decorated like a pretty princess if I want. BUT, there are a lot of cons to the situation. Note a few cases in point:

Since I left for Boston in January, I have been craving my delicious homemade applesauce. When I returned home, I was ecstatic to discover an entire jar of it in my fridge. I grabbed a dish and spoon, pulled out the applesauce and attempted to open the jar. Not a budge. I yanked, pulled, pried. Nothing. Grabbed a towel and repeated. Nope. I banged the sides and lid with a knife, spoon, and fork. I ran it under hot water. I ran it under cold water. I walloped it against the side of the counter. That was day one. It has been 11 days since then and I have tried every day.

I am currently in another predicament of the same nature. This morning I decided to cook up some delicious wild rice to accompany a curry sauce I made yesterday. After simmering it down, I covered it with a lid. Would you know that the lid is now sealed to the pan? It's almost as if it was lined with superglue. Is someone playing a bad joke on me? Seriously! I have yanked and pulled and banged the thing against everything in the kitchen. I tried prying it open with a knife. 20 minutes straight I tried. I think I'm going to have to throw the whole pan in the garbage.

Another inconvenience. Taking the trash out. I have had several bad experiences with this one.

One morning I had two large bags of trash to take out. I was in my sweats, hair pointing in every direction possible, and probably a dirt smudge on my nose and some spinach in my teeth. I rounded the corner down the stairs, and coming up were two very cute guys from down the hall. "Oh Lord," I thought, "I look horrid. How embarrassing!" Little did I know that was the least of my problems.

I passed them, got to the bottom of the stairs, and proceeded to slip and fall flat on my butt. I'm pretty sure my legs went over my shoulders, and the two garbage bags went flying. Enter two adorable guys, running full speed at me to help me up, asking if I'm okay, laughing behind those big brown eyes. I was so angry I told them to leave me alone, I was fine, collected my garbage and what scraps of dignity I managed to hang on to, and marched outside. Of course they insisted on holding the door open for me, and I practically had to kick them in the shins to get them to not walk me the whole way around back to the trash bins.

Later that day when I came home from running errands I actually sat in my car ducking for five minutes because they were standing outside the apartment complex. I will forever be known to them as the girl down the hall who tumbled with the trash.

Another bad garbage experience: I live in a locked building, so every time I walk outside I have to take my keys with me. As I was hoisting my garbage bags into the huge round trash bin with the teeny opening on the top, my keys got tangled and were pitched into oblivion. I peered through the opening to assess the damage, and I was delighted to see that the garbage had been collected earlier that day, and my keys were at the VERY bottom of the bin. So unbelievably out of reach.

I sat down to think. How in the world do I get those out? I could try knocking the whole can over on its side and crawling in through the little opening. I peeked back over into the can, and was reminded of the dozens of showers I would have to take to get the god-awful smell of stale bread, rotten fruit, and I'm sure some sort of infant defecation off me if I proceeded.

I started walking, searching for a neighborhood kid to offer $20 to climb in the can. No one around of course. So I began to examine the perimeter of the bin. AHA! At the very bottom of the back there was a tear in the thick plastic. I managed to get my hand and forearm through, gagging at the feeling of nasty trash juice dripping all over my skin. I groped around, pushed aside a mush of something, and clamped my fingers around the cold, hard, gooey metal of my keys. Thank heavens! I only had to use them to get back in the building, in my apartment, and then take them apart and sanitize each key. Then I had to go back and sanitize the darn locks I used them in. So disgusting!

So, add these incidents to the several dishes I've broken trying to get them down from high places. Or the countless burned out light bulbs. Or the shelf that up and ripped itself off the wall in the middle of the night, spilling all of its contents on the floor, leaving several giant holes in the wall, and waking me from a dead sleep to the thought of an intruder (I now have a baseball bat, pepper spray, a nice drill, and a lifetime supply of mollies in the house). Single-womanhood is a hard life!

But I can handle it. And you know what? I just got the lid off the pan.

Almost a Year

This post is a bit more sentimental than most of our posts. Usually, we have a fairly clumsy, optimistic, and normal life, but today will make two days until one of our closest friends has been dead for a year after a tragic accident at work.

If you haven't already checked out the blog his wife began in memory of him and to document a journey she took to Alaska, leaving little "pieces" of him along the way, it's a great blog. You'll need tissue, but it's a beautiful memoir: www.PiecesOfPlumey.blogspot.com.

The reason this is so important to me and has affected me so deeply is because his wife happens to be my sister, Amber, the other writer on this blog. And her husband happened to be one of my closest and most dear friends.

I am honestly unsure how it's been a year already. One of the worst years of my life. The worst year of Amber's life. But we're both here almost a year later.



Death is so difficult when it's someone you love. Sometimes I feel like he never existed. As though he's a great story you tell at dinner or sitting around a fire with your friends. The best kind of story. Who would have thought that a real person could have been loved and liked and cherished and trusted the way Justin was? Who would have ever thought that anyone besides a celebrity could have boasted 800 people at their funeral. What sort of person causes an entire crew to honor him by demanding to carry his body out once he was found? How does a chemical plant general manager become so attached to one of his workers that he stays away from his family on Christmas weekend for 36 hours and continually breaks down in tears with the family? What kind of man has that affect on those around him?

Justin did. He was that man.

I hate how much I took him for granted, but now I realize how much I appreciated and loved and trusted and relied on him. He was one of my best friends, like a brother. It was only natural when Amber and Justin announced they'd be getting married.

Almost year. How did that even happen? This year has been the worst and best of my life. And I can't even begin to imagine how Amber's actually dealt. I've learned so much that I'd have never learned if he wasn't gone. But then again, I'd not have wanted to learn.

I still love and miss my friend. And I love you, Sister.

Please Don't Ask That!!!

I think we all learned in school that there is no such thing as a stupid question. While I understand that teaching this philosophy to our children encourages them to open up and express themselves, it can become confusing in later years when they, as I have, find out that it is a complete lie. There are ALOT of stupid questions. An overabundance, I would go so far as to say.

Yes, from Harry Dunn's classicly idiotic question, "Are those your skis? Both of them?" to the ever-annoying person who asks "What you are doing?" whilst staring right at you, these kinds of questions just keep on coming. Here are a few of my personal favorites I've heard lately:

"How are you going to DRIVE to Alaska?" (Apparently alot of people in the lower 48 think there is a giant body of water seperating Alaska from the mainland. FYI, it's not water, it's an extension of the land we currently reside in. It's called Canada.)

"Is it ok to put hot liquid in that?" (Asked of me while I was pouring coffee into a styrofoam cup. I'm not going to mention a name on this one because Sara asked me not to.)

"You were driving 11 miles an hour over the speed limit...and did I see you talking on your cell phone?" (Seriously? "Why yes officer, I WAS talking on my cell. Please give me an extra ticket for that. Oh and while your at it, I ran a red light about five miles back. Why don't you throw that in as well?")

Really though, the worst is when you catch a ridiculously stupid question coming out of your OWN mouth and you don't stop it in time. Like the other day when I asked my formerly blonde friend who is currently sporting jet black locks, "Did you dye your hair?" Or how about the time I was frantically searching for my cell, while talking on my cell, and asking my friend if she could find it anywhere? That feeling of being completely embarrassed and wishing you could suck those words right back into your mouth is probably the reason we are taught this no-stupid-questions lesson in the first place.

I realize that pointing out that there ARE, in fact, stupid questions is the equivelent of telling a child that there is no Santa, or that sticks and stones may break their bones for a little while, but words will damage them FOREVER.

What can I say? I'm a bubble-burster.

Why Do I Appear That Way?

Okay, when we started this blog, in my eyes it was sort of a joke to say that our lives are completely mediocre. Now I realize that it was no joke. I literally have nothing, NOTHING, to blog about. I rake my mind for anything even remotely interesting, and keep coming up with more nothingness.

Based on my level of frustration at this predicament, I can only imagine how my 15 followers and, I'm gonna go out on a limb here, biggest FANS, must feel.

So today I am just going to ramble a bit about my latest self-discoveries. Because, after all, this blog is half about me. It's the one place where I can talk all about myself and not feel completely self-centered.

Two things have been pointed out to me in recent days that I completely disagree with. 1) I'm extremely impulsive, and 2) I don't finish anything I start. As much as I love the well-meaning people who pointed these things out, I have to admit I was a bit offended. I am NOT flighty! And I finish things!

So what if I've lived in three different places in the last 10 months? So what if I randomly take off for Alaska, Boston, Hawaii, and California? So what if I don't pack for these trips until the morning I leave? And apparently deciding one day that I want a car and bringing it home practically within the hour is impulsive. Who cares if I kinda want to sell it now?

And as for not finishing anything: It's not MY fault that the last ten books I've tried to read have been utterly boring. And learning the piano wasn't as fun or as easy as I expected (neither was the guitar). Oh, and being gluten-free is way overrated. By the way, I have an entire pantry of gluten-free food that is going to waste if anyone is interested.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish people saw me for who I really am: a completely stable, competent, thorough woman. Is that too much to ask???

What Not to Do When Something You Really Want to Happen Actually Happens

I haven't posted in some time and I do apologize for that. Apparently Alaska makes me ADD. Or autistic. Or lazy. Or all of the above. I know, I know, blame it on Alaska, right?

While I was up there, it was brought to my attention that some celebrities were in town filming a movie called Everybody Love Whales. These included Kristen Bell, Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, Ted Danson, and Dermot Mulroney. My personal favorite of course is good ol' John, because I love him so much as Jim on The Office. We had joked about going star hunting downtown in Anchorage because we heard rumor of what hotel they were staying in. It was really only half-joking because every time we drove downtown we were careening our necks searching, and we may possibly have gone down to the shipyard to find the movie set.

Fast-forward a few days. I was posting flyers in businesses all around town for the upcoming bridal event my company was involved in, and my assistant Gabe (he's the guy who carries the tape and tacks) procured the fabulous idea of hanging them in the local hotels. The brilliant idea evolved into riding elevators up to the top floor while hanging a flyer, and then switching elevators to hang another and heading back down. We had to be quick and stealth (two things that I happen to be excellent at) in order to not get caught by hotel management. In one of these hotels, we rounded a corner and stood next to a couple to wait for the elevator. As I glanced over, I had to do a double take, because OH MY GOSH IT WAS JIM! As I realized this, the elevator door opened, and the four of us stepped in. Jim and Gabe stood across from me and the woman stood next to me. I looked at her and OH MY GOSH IT WAS KRISTEN BELL! I was standing in an elevator with them, and there were no other fans to get in my way!

So here's what I did. I took a deep breath, and then asked them how they were enjoying Alaska. I told them I love their work, and then asked politely for a picture with them. They were more than happy to accommodate my request. Jim (whose name is actually John, but do you think I remembered that?) was so sweet. He complimented me for acting normal, because so many starstruck fans freak out and it really makes him feel uncomfortable. And Kristen said she loved my shoes.

At this point you're probably wondering why the picture is not posted. That's because I just lied. What REALLY happened is I clammed up, looked down at my iPhone while staring intently at them with my peripheral vision, and then got off the elevator. When the doors closed, I jumped up and down screaming and scared Gabe practically to death; he had been clueless to the entire situation. It slowly dawned on me that, seriously, I'm an idiot.

The lesson here is, you know what? Who cares if you look like a starstruck ninny pinny? Because you are going to feel even MORE ridiculous when your friends are flabbergasted that you did nothing, and you can see on their faces that they don't entirely believe your story (it doesn't help that your one witness to the situation has no idea who any of those actors are and frankly doesn't care either). And the feelings will increase when the next day, you find out that a friend of a friend saw Jim and Kristen AND Jim's fiance Emily Blunt last night at a restaurant, approached their table, had a great conversation, and got an awesome picture with Jim doing his adorable half smile.

So the next time your in an elevator with a movie star, talk to them. You can't even fathom the deep sorrow and regret you will experience if you don't. I may never be the same.

OMG, I SEE SNOW!

I've neglected this blog for quite a while and now I'm posting because the most spectacular thing happened today! I woke up and there was snow ALL OVER my car, the house, the ground...it's so amazing!

If any of you reading this blog are Alaskan, please try to keep the snickering and eye-rolling to a minimum...we just don't get snow where I grew up and lived in the Lower 48. And that's another thing. I've been here only about 3 weeks and I'm beginning to pick up the Alaskan "lingo". I'm hoping that soon they won't even know I'm not Alaskan.

As a way to fit in, I'm going today to invest in a set of studded snow tires. It will help my driving skills, I'm sure. I also walked the dogs with one of my roomies yesterday, and I found that I was a little premature in wearing them. Apparently, when you have -25 degree boots, you should wear them a little closer to actual winter weather rather than just because there is a slight dusting of snow on the ground. My feet were so warm that I was wishing for vents and my snowboard pants were also a bit excessive. When we got home, I was HOT.

So I bought a pair of North Face cross-country skiing pants and I wore my Romeos out of the house today. Watch out winter, here I come!

And no, I will not be posting a picture of my poor little stuck car ;)