A Divergence

So here's the deal. I left this blog very open at its inception about what direction it would take and I'm very glad I did. While I set off with grandiose ideas to somehow shed light on the mundane and show it for beautiful, I realized that in the process I had started writing drab little pieces about nothing at all. I mean really, where's the meat and potatoes? Where are my citations? Why is this all just a little sass for your day? Frankly, you don't need that from me, you get it everywhere else, and I refuse to add my voice to the din. So here's the deal. I'm making a divergence from this blog. If you want to continue to read updates about the (sometimes) daily hilarity of Josh and I lives as we enter into blissful matrimony 38 days from today, you can do so at:

[Young Married And Out Of Control]
http://ymaooc.blogspot.com/


If you are a meat and potatoes reader and want researched information on scientific breakthroughs, political situations, and pop culture delivered with my signature sass and a works cited page for your personal enrichment, you can start following me at :

[How's that, Heather]
http://howsthatheather.blogspot.com/

I hope to see you all at one of the two sites. Thank you for riding with me while I worked to find my post college voice. I hope you enjoy what's coming for you and if any of you happen to discover the scientific secret to being in love, I'm sorry that I burned this web address for my personal enrichment.

xoxo
Heather

The Shoe Selection

This past weekend, my mother and I took our opportunity, with Josh out of town and my father occupied hanging drapes in the basement (they will make it so much more cheerful, like real rooms!) to make tracks to Bay Brook Mall.

After battling our way through the pre-Christmas crowds and finally securing a spot by completing a very impressive back-up-the-row-and-then-put-the-truck-in-backwards-ahead-of-a-young-hip-teenager-in-a-mustang parking maneuver, we made our way into the mall. Our first stop was Macy's, land of excellent discounts and high quality cardholder benefits. Alas, we were assaulted by the noise and bustle on the Macy's shoe department and came up empty with just one pair of silver, sparkly, heels we thought, "might work".

We decided to take our business over to Dillard's, land of fabulous finds with slightly fewer crazy bargain hunters. initially, this too looked like it may be a wash with only one pair of slightly multicolored, silver sparkly heels on the front display, however, as we delved further into the department we were rewarded with several other options. The first pair I tried on didn't do anything impressive. Our sales associate, a large black, gay man wearing a striped sweater, tie, and obviously fake hipster glasses, name Tyrique, gave them only an, "eh." The next pair however was gold (figuratively, the shoes themselves are silver, obviously). As soon as I slipped my feet into the gorgeous metallic leather outer and felt my soles touch the soft cushioned foot pad, I had a good feeling. I stood up, and strode over to the mirror to survey my feet. "DAYUM girl! Even I was looking!" came the commentary from from Tyrique. Bingo.

I looked over to Mom, who gave our secret signal for success (an excitedly bouncy thumbs up, big, open-mouthed smile, and wink) and then coolly instructed me to go walk on the hard floor, since, "You'll have to be able to dance in them all night."

I made the loop and triumphantly amid the deserved stares of appreciation from passersby informed Tyrique that I would take them. "Good Call Honey, his jaw will DROP."

And isn't that really the goal when buying silver high heels, ladies? Just wait until December 28th, Josh, because apparently, these shoes will make you lose your marbles. Tyrique guaranteed it.

The Pumpkin Progression

I'm a Halloween child. With my birthday falling a mere six days before candy bar d-day, I actually was not aware until elementary school that non-Halloween themed birthday parties were done, much less, that they were acceptable. Excuse me, what kind of party is worth having in which the guests don't dress up like princesses, carve pumpkins, and eat only orange and black candy? If I had enough time I could get in to everything that is wrong with our society from that one sentence (lack of imagination leads to lack of progress, lack of work leads to a degraded moral system which begs for a handout, and lack of clear choices leads to a corrupted system of loopholes, to name a few). Moral of the story, I love Halloween.

As a young padawan, I was trained by my father, a great jedi master of pumpkins, in the methods of carving. My father believes in having a plan, drawing it out, planning effectively for pumpkin thickness and size, and even choosing the perfect pumpkin, the one which calls to you and your art. There is no time limit, only a quality limit. It's getting dark on the driveway? No problem, he installed lights. You're having trouble getting that knife to cut? Here, let me get you one of his specially designated pumpkin carving knives. You cut corners and your product is sub par? I pity the fool. It was with this background that I embarked on creating my orange, perishable, masterpiece for HW2013.

Josh and I assembled our tools on the patio and designated a central pumpkin waste area and carefully crafted our templates.

Beverage, carver, pumpkin, tool storage, waste management site.

We then hollowed out the artistic vessels with precision, achieving the perfect thickness to allow for the "pumpkin glow" phenomena.

Look at that technique! All in the wrist.

Finally, we got down to the business of carving.

Utter concentration

When all the steps had been completed, there was an air of anticipation and nervousness. You see, the thing is, you never know what the pumpkin will actually look like until you light it up. Many a beautiful daylight pumpkin has fallen short of its intended purpose under the harsh test of candles and absolute darkness. It's sort of like offering a slightly-less-than-virgin sacrifice at a pagan bonfire, candles and darkness do not lie. Josh struck a match, we waited with baited breath. I had to cover my eyes. I heard Josh's gasp as the candles struck and whipped my eyes to the glowing orbs. They were beautiful! exactly as we had envisioned, glowing with the light of one thousand worlds through all of space and time. I'd call them the heart of the TARDIS, but I don't think that does them justice.

The doctor is in.

*Note: Josh's is the more professional looking one on the left. Sorry Daddy, I still don't have the gift, but I do have a really great system and you can be proud of that! 

Scottish Statistics

I recently found myself seated at Chuy's, one margarita and one pina colada in, with my dear friend MA. We had been chatting about her life in Austin, my life in Houston, and how exciting this whole wedding thing was, when she very seriously leaned across the table.

"Heather, here's the deal: statistically speaking, you will definitely out live Josh and I will definitely out live whoever may be in my life."

"...okay...?"

"I think, when our husbands are dead, and you and I are alone in our old age, we should pick up our things and move to Scotland. Just picture it! We could buy a little cabin in the middle of a field of heather plants and dry herbs from the ceiling beams and make tea. Maybe you will have some medical skills and we could market ourselves as the local witches and sell herbs brewed together into survival potions. Also we will obviously only wear plaid and sweaters. Are you in?"

"Hmm...can we have a few sheep? That way we could harvest the wool and knit our own sweaters. We only need three you know, just enough for wool and companionship."

"Absolutely."

"Okay, I'm in!"

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to Chuy's and good friends, I now have a life plan for the worst case scenario, and really, it's not so bad. I think I would make and excellent old, shrived, Scottish witch. With or without the pina colada.

Secret Keepers

I cannot keep a secret. Ever since I first discovered the concept of gifting, my extreme excitement has caused me to let approximately 93.8% of cats out of the bag. For me, the most fun part about giving a gift is the excitement, which I discovered with most people, can be exacerbated by dropping hints. My issue is that the hints are usually more like spoilers. For example:

H: You wear it, it's made of cotton, and it has your favorite animal on it.

T: You got me a sloth T-shirt??? 

H: YES!! I mean uh...no...

H: It will make your skin awesome and you will smell like flowers.

M: Bath and body works lotions??

H: YAY!! What? I mean...no...

H: It has paper, a story, and an author.

D: A book!!

H: WHAT IS THIS? HOW ARE YOU ALL SO GOOD AT GUESSING?

As you probably picked up, I have a problem.

This last weekend was Josh and I's wedding shower. It was awesome. Most of my family and most of the adults in Josh's family along with a large sampling of our college friends and the wedding party came up to Houston to play games, open presents, and visit. It was lovely, except for one thing, every time I would walk up on a group of my female friends, conversation would cease and all of them would avert their eyes and bite their lips. This went on for the beginning of the party until I was able to single out the weakest member of the heard, my college roommate, R.

"So hey, R, what's going on?"

*shifty eyes* "What do you mean?"

"Do you have a secret?"

*sweating* "Ss-secret?"

"Yeah, maybe about me?"

*hyperventilating* "IF YOU DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE I WILL GIVE AWAY ALL THE SECRETS OF YOUR LINGERIE SHOWER AND ALL THE OTHER BRIDESMAIDS WILL MURDER ME IN COLD BLOOD.

I may have a problem keeping a secret, but apparently I'm not the only one. As I looked around at the guilty faces of my guests, I was overwhelmed by two conflicting ideas, Sherlock the snot out of these weak fools, or let them keep their secret and patiently await the party. I decided on a compromise. I would ask her one simple question and if she divulged anything I wouldn't stop her, but if she held strong, I wouldn't press her.

"Will it be awesome?"

"Oh yeah."

"Perfect."

Here's to you ladies, for keeping 6.2% of the cats in the bag, for this week.

The Car Charger

So I have a habit of forgetting to charge my phone. Most of the time, this really isn't a big deal since I spend a significant amount of my life, "off the grid." However, this can become a problem when I'm carpooling to work with Josh and am supposed to be letting him know when I'll be arriving at the plant. It also may occasionally cause a small issue when I'm at target and my Dad needs me to pick up something he forgot. Perhaps it could even be construed as a small mishap when I'm supposed to be pressing the button to let my brother into Josh's apartment. But besides that, it's really not a big deal, really.

Approximately three months ago, Josh started mentioning, "hey Heather, you may want to get a car charger." I told him if I thought about it while I was at the store I would look at them. A few weeks went by and my Mom asked politely,"Why do I bother paying for phone service if you never answer?" I answered equally as politely that it was dead.

About a week later Josh went on his first business trip. He had been selected from the engineers to go to College Station (WHOOP!) and recruit at the Engineering Career Fair. (AKA: where the highly intelligent, and sometimes-but-not-always-awkward individuals get jobs) This was a big deal for several reasons, firstly, he would get to represent the company for the first time in public, secondly, he would be responsible for helping to determine who got interviews, and thirdly, because the level of free swag at the ECF is out of this world. I watched Josh prepare boxes of mechanical company pencils, t-shirts with a (classy?) company logo on the front, and even Eddie Bauer jackets (yes, I got one. Perk level: Expert). As he pulled off for his first, big, professional, adventure he looked like the picture of success and I waited anxiously to hear what life was like in our college town as an important adult.

He returned a few days later full of stories about different recruiting tactics employed at the fair, (examples: listing starting salaries on a poster, having the most epic goodies, and sending the most beautiful women in the company.) the people he had interviewed, and the friends he had seen. Oh and he also brought home some goodies. After dinner, Josh, with gravity, informed me that he had brought me back something special from the fair. Immediately I got excited. He reached into his bag and regarded my excitement as he slowly extracted a small plastic bag. He handed it to me a declared proudly, "I brought you a car charger." Sure enough, inside the bag was a small cigarette lighter to USB converter proudly emblazoned with the logo of a large chemical company. He continued, "it has this little blue light that can be kind of annoying, so I blacked it out for you so it wouldn't be quite so bright when you are driving in the dark."

Yes, I am marrying  a wonderful man who not only brings me back presents from business trips, but also does his best to make sure that I'm not stranded or lost without any hope of communicating with others, or annoyed by a little blue light. It's certainly not hard to love that.



UPDATE: Heather has gone from an 80% chance of phone death to a 5% chance, significantly lowering the chance of being killed by a chainsaw murderer on the side of the road and having no one know.

Pony up?

"Hey, would you still love me if I had a ponytail?"

After taking a moment to process this question, gazed up from my tea to survey my fiancee, Josh. At that moment, he was staring at me intently from the driver's seat as we drove though rural Texas on our way to God's country. I took in his deep chocolate eyes framed by his square glasses, his strong jaw and lovely cheekbones, and his perfectly formed, unbroken nose and for a moment entertained the idea. I mean Josh is a handsome guy, but really, the ponytail could only go one of two ways.

Josh without Glasses

Ponytail #1:

It's the turn of the century and Josh is astride a large black stallion, bareback (obviously), racing across an open field. He is wearing soft leather boots, those tight riding breeches which leave nothing to the imagination, and a white shirt, open to reveal his chest hair. as my eyes travel up I see his handsome features displayed in the sunset with his dark, lush hair pulled back in a leather thong revealing his powerful neck. Rawr, ponytail.

With this image in mind I turned to tell him I would absolutely adore him in a ponytail when suddenly, a second image of Josh flashed across my mind.

Ponytail #2:

Josh is strolling down the lane of a quite country town. He is wearing jeans and a hand-knitted sweater to ward off the chill. Suddenly, he turns into his home and what appeared to be a slightly shaggy haircut is revealed to be a tiny awkward ponytail. Yikes.

Having had two very different visions, I again took stock of my fiancee.

"Darling, I would love you no matter what your hair looked like, but maybe you should stick with what you've got."

Sometimes, it's better not to know which of your fantasies would actually come true.