Attention, Mr. Right:

Dear Future Husband,

Chances are, I don't know you yet. Maybe I do. Who knows? But if you're going to be part of my family, I have to warn you about a few things.

First off, if you smash cake in my face at our wedding reception, my mother will never forgive you. My father will probably think you're immature and question your ability to provide for a family. And I'll probably be ticked off as well. So don't do it.

I expect you to be able to make pancakes in the shape of different letters, so our children's breakfast meals will be in the shape of their initials. My father did the same thing for my sisters and I, and it was pretty much the coolest thing ever. So you might want to practice.

I'm planning to take your last name upon marrying you, but if your last name is something truly horrendous like Picklestein or Leech-head, I think I might keep my own last name, thank you very much.

Upon joining this family, you will have a nickname bestowed upon you by either my sister Heather or myself. This nickname will likely be related to a barnyard animal. It's nothing personal. I, myself, am known as Brown Cow. You could very well be Purple Peacock or Beige Llama. Don't worry, every family member has such a nickname. A full list is available upon request.

I could mention many other quirky things my family and I do, but I don't want to scare you off forever. You'll just have to wait and see what tricks we have up our sleeves...

Love,
Jennifer

"Maybe there's a reason why you don't have a boyfriend." -- Jennae

Before coming to college, I considered myself to be quite klutzy -- tripping over my feet, dropping things, and walking into walls happened on a daily basis. Since coming to BYU, however, I was under the notion that my clumsiness was only in effect when I was in California. I began to enjoy the bruise-free days and the lack of aching muscles.

Then, this week, the idea that I had overcome my klutziness crashed all around my feet.

Exhibit A:
Tuesday is laundry day,  so I stripped my bed and decided to head down to the lobby to exchange my old sheets for some fresh, clean ones. I wasn't wearing any shoes, and I figured I didn't need to put any on for a quick trip to the lobby, so I descended the stairs in my socks. Now, these stairs aren't carpeted, and every few steps have two parallel black lines of a sandpaper-y texture. My socks kept sticking to those particular steps, and I shortly decided to skip those steps. I had almost made it to the bottom of the stairs when the slippery-ness of the socks combined with the near frictionless surface of the stairs to send me plunging to my doom. I ended up falling down the last seven steps, entangling myself in the sheets in the process.

Well, I was quite sore getting up, and had to hobble into the lobby to exchange my sheets. You would think that after a fall like that, I would at least get a bruise the size of Texas to show off, but the resulting bruise didn't even show up until a few days later, and it was a wimpy one at that.  Four days later, I'm still sore. Alas.

Exhibit B:
Earlier in the week, I was laying on Cari's bed, chatting it up, when I dropped my Chapstick, which rolled off the bed.  Rolling over, I stretched to pick it up off the ground, and I definitely fell off the bed. I fell off the bed -- for Chapstick! It wasn't even Blistex that I sacrificed myself for. ::sigh::

Exhibit C:
Our ward went ice skating yesterday. Now, I haven't gone ice skating since I was like, 12. And I managed to do fairly well in the not-falling-down department for the most part. However, the one time I did fall, I twisted and landed funny on my shoulder. No bruising as yet, but it hurts quite a bit and I can't really rotate it at all.

Oh, and the ice skates definitely rubbed my skin raw on my legs. That was a painful experience. And it was made all the more awkward because I hadn't shaved recently, and when I made this discovery, the bishop and another guy in my ward came over to investigate. Hopefully they don't judge me on the length of my leg hair. Because that would be most unfortunate.

"Welcome to hell. Have a creampuff." -- Cari

Jennifer's quest to become ambidexterous, Part I
I've always thought it would've been really cool to be ambidexterous -- to be able to write proficiently with both hands. I mean, think of how useful that skill would be: during timed written essay tests, at the point where your dominant writing hands starts cramping up, you can switch hands; furthermore, if you should ever happen to lose one hand in a freak accident, you'd be no worse for the wear (well, you'd be slightly deformed, but at least you'd still be able to write and cut paper and such.)

Anyway, if you weren't aware, I am a lefty. However, I don't use my left hand for every activity -- I use forks and scissors with my right hand. (The scissor usage dates back to an incident in kindgergarten when I was still using my left hand to cut paper and accidentally cut the feet off of a paper cat -- and consequently had to stay inside for recess. Yes, I was traumatized. No, I haven't quite forgiven my kindgarten teacher for that quite yet.)

So I've decided to become ambidexterous. I'm not planning to take on writing anytime soon; my handwriting with my left hand is bad enough. So I figured I'd take baby steps.

As such, this evening I decided to try brushing my teeth with my right hand. Let me just say, it wasn't pretty -- and I wish I was joking when I say that my shoulder starting cramping halfway through the teeth-brushing procedure.

::sigh:: I'm so weaksauce.