on my potential as the carrier of the plague

I think that if biomedical warfare ever needed to be started, I would be a good candidate for the initial carrier of the disease.  Why?  Because my immune system is perhaps the wimpiest part of my body and I'm 99% guaranteed to catch it, and catch it good.  Or bad, depending on how you're looking at it.

My immune system used to be a champ!  I would stay up all night, wake up early, eat nothing but ravioli out of a can, and never take vitamins.  Good old IS didn't even bat an eye.  Every fall and spring, he would remind me that he and Allergies were still in cahoots, leaving me with the equivalent of whooping cough for about a month.  About once an academic year I would catch a virus from a roommate, what I always took as routine exercise for my faithful IS.  I didn't mind it so much because he had kept me out of the hospital my entire life.  I hadn't even thrown up since age 12!  If there was an award for solid, reliable immune systems, mine would definitely be a candidate.

Until 2009.

You'd think that three years in college, with roommates continually in close proximity and late nights a routine, would have been the worst time for my immune system.  It wasn't.  In fact, looking back, I'm pretty sure IS was feeding off the antibodies produced by said roommates and maybe even classmates, because as soon as I graduated and spent a summer away from classes, he started sleeping on the job. 

"Pneumonia?!" I exclaimed--or I would've if I hadn't been a dishtowel lying pathetically on the couch for days on end.  "Who gets pneumonia in the summer?!"  (Which is also the question that everyone else posed, as if I had chosen a really bizarre time to have my lungs fill with fluid.)  For the first time in my life, I was in the hospital for myself.  My deathly fear of needles drew a few tears when they put in the IV--I had never had one before--but I was so desperate to feel better that they probably could've cut off a finger with no complaints from me (and at Stonewall Jackson Hospital, I wouldn't have put it past them).  A few hours later, I was back home, too weak to sit up long enough to change my clothes.  Obviously, it all ended well (thanks to Sam, Kirsten, and Ashley, who bought my groceries and made me soup), and I even made it to Robin's wedding that weekend, even though I did feel a bit like Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after he hasn't set foot outside the bed in years.

That was my immune system's first treachery.  I made it through the fall without major incident, leading me into a false sense of security, and then a few days before my wedding in January I started feeling weird.  Naturally, I wrote it off as stress, and even a definite fever in the hotel room the night before didn't tip me off to what was coming.  My wedding day went without a hitch (thankfully--can you imagine a feverish bride in the middle of January?) and I had about five days of Costa Rican awesomeness before my appetite disappeared.  I would feel ravenously hungry, and then take two bites of food before feeling full to the point of discomfort.  (Ricky wound up eating double for a few days!)  I attributed it to sun poisoning, and stayed off the beach for a while.  Long story short (most of you already read the honeymoon story), I wound up having mono.  And strep.  And an excruciatingly long, painful flight back to America, where it took me a week to feel strong enough to open a wedding present and another week before I could stand up long enough to make a sandwich.

That was the second blow.

Since mono/strep ended in March, I've had a hospitalizing kidney infection (delirium at 104 degrees, anyone?) and a UTI.  Ricky caught a virus recently, and it took me a whopping three whole days to catch it, and catch it better (worse?) than he did, leaving me powerless against the productivity of normal life and schoolwork.  I think my white blood cells have just started throwing down their arms at the first sign of illness.  "We surrender!" they cry pathetically. "Take the red cells!  The red ones!"  If I could shrink down to cell size and enter my own body (a la Magic School Bus), I would definitely give them a good talking-to.  Maybe even some well-placed punches.  Maybe then Immune System will straighten up and remember who's boss.  (Me.)


As a side note, I feel the need to say that I'm very fortunate to have avoided life-threatening illness, unlike so many friends and family members.  I'm not trying to demean their sicknesses in any way.  Instead, I'm just making myself feel better about my own by adding some cool mental images of me punching blood cells like a beast.

on lots of things

When I have a lot on my mind and need to organize it, I would like to say that I refer back to one of those handy Venn diagrams and/or flow charts that I spent countless hours of my grade school life trying to understand.  As we all know, they actually have some use in 1% of real-life situations, none of which I have ever found myself in, so I resort to something that is obviously much more primitive and appeals to most species of mammals...specifically, a list.  So this is what you get, all you mammals out there.

1. Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally

If there's one thing that irks me more than radical liberals, it's the banking-so-hard-to-the-right-you're-going-in-circles conservatives.  And circles, quite honestly, are what I feel like a good number of conservatives have been going in.  I hear a lot of griping and not a lot of game-planning.  Yes, from everything I've seen, the country has taken a conservative turn since the Obama administration, but that doesn't mean the Republican party can just point fingers and dump figurative tea all over the place without giving me some answers.  Saying "Obama hates God and once he's gone the country will be better" is not enough.  Also, while you're on the subject of actually coming up with solutions, can you please remove Sarah Palin from your agenda?  I've heard her speak a few times before, but this rally was the last straw.  She said zero useful or pertinent things--which doesn't surprise me, because I don't think I've ever heard her say anything useful or pertinent--and is about as motivational as late-night infomercials.  Hillary Clinton may not be someone I want to eat at my dinner table--EVER--but I at least have confidence in her ability to get things done.  I barely have confidence in Sarah Palin to tie her shoes.  Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but can you imagine if the president died and SHE were our first female president?  I would probably die from shame.

Also, Glenn Beck, I pretty much rank you with Stephanie Meyer.  By that, I mean that when people say, "Oh, you're Mormon!  Like Glenn Beck, right?" as if you are part of our theological canon, I grit my teeth a little and say something like, "Yes, I am...and no, I'm not like Glenn Beck.  No, I do not like Twilight.  No, I do not support Mitt Romney solely because he is a Mormon.  But thank you for asking."  Don't get me wrong--I agree that our country would benefit from tapping further into its religious roots.  This is, after all, a country founded by (and majorly occupied by) a God-fearing people.  However, I feel that holding your rally on the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march was wholly distasteful and inappropriate.  I also feel that giving your remarks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, on the site of "I Have a Dream," was conceited and, again, inappropriate.  I listened to you speak, desperately trying to find out what the heck "Restoring Honor" even means, and all I got from you was a call to pray more fervently.  I probably don't need to remind you that faith without works is dead, and that God expects us to act on our prayers; however, I didn't hear much advice on what those actions are supposed to be.  We have brains and bodies for a reason.  Another reminder: the Founding Fathers were pretty set on separation of church and state...obviously.  So what exactly are you trying to restore America TO?

If this was all about the fact that Obama pulled troops out of Iraq just days later, save your breath.  That was long overdue.  And for the record, Ricky and I just registered as Independents in Florida.  No, seriously.

2. Ricky is cheating on me with law school

Ok, ok, I expected him to be studying all day, every day--I really did.  The only problem is that I have about 1/2 a friend here in Florida, if you count Zelda the cat.  I would seek refuge in befriending my grad school classmates, but they all live a good distance away and most of them are older with grown-up jobs and backyards.  All the couples at church have 2+ children and are subsequently never, ever available to do things like jump off a bridge or play Catch Phrase. (We did find one young, married, childless--YMC, for short--couple at church last week who seems hip and cool.  Friendship pending.)  You'd think that being home by yourself all day with no responsibilities would be awesome, and it is...for like, a week.  Then you lose all motivation to do anything and sit around in pajamas all day.  I'm the kind of person who needs structured days to function, because once I start feeling productive (like at school or a job) it's easy to steamroll through all my other tasks and feel super awesome about myself.  If I have nothing to do all day but load the dishwasher, I'm going to waste a lot of time playing Super Smash Bros. on the Wii.  And I do.  Does anyone else feel like that?

3. The cat is still alive

Go me!  I can't grow plants or keep fish alive for longer than a month, but it's been two weeks and I have been a model cat parent.  I even bought her a hugely giant scratching post online because the one we bought her from the pet store was so pathetically short that she had to lie down to use it.  She likes to climb up said giant scratching post and cling to the side, reminding me of King Kong and Ricky of Spiderman.  She doesn't bother with her cat bed (I should've known better than to even buy one) and instead likes to sleep in the bathtub, under the bathroom sink (she opens the cabinets with her head), and in our boxspring.  Yes, IN the boxspring.  Apparently there's a little flap of fabric that opens into it, and once she discovered it she would disappear for hours before we discovered where she was hiding.  Zelda is the weirdest and most awesome cat I've ever met.

4. Rich people in Florida give a lot of practically new things away

If I thought living near W&L was awesome for thrift store shopping, it was because I never dreamed of the extravagance of southern Florida.  Yesterday, I bought Kenneth Cole NY heels for $5.  A few weeks before that, it was a pair of Marinelli heels for $7.  Before that, the 2nd season DVD set of Seinfeld for only a couple dollars.  See what happens when I have nothing to do all day?  I bargain shop.  It's not as expensive as regular shopping, but just as addicting. 

5. THE MOLD IN MY LIVING ROOM IS GONE

We pulled up the carpet, found nothing, sprayed mold killer on every crevice, and steam cleaned the heck out of the corner area of carpet.  After (very) periodic checks, we're still mushroom-free!  Yay!  (Elizabeth, I will grudgingly admit that you were right and I was over-reacting, but I don't care because there was fungus in my house and it was super gross.  So there!)               

6. Grad school is not the same as SVU

And by that, I mean it is not as awesome.  One of my professors is great, but the other one never asks the right questions for discussion and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be learning.  Plus, most of my classmates say things like, "I don't think this is right, but..." and "I don't really know, but..." before they answer a question.  It drives me crazy!  You can tell they weren't fostered in a discussion kind of environment, so hopefully they'll grow into it.  In the meantime, I munch forcefully on Cheez-its and try not to lecture anyone on giving assertive answers.  You're all judging me right now for being a huge jerky snob, but I'm not going to pretend like you don't expect a certain degree of classroom elitism from me already, so here it is.  I don't even share my Cheez-its with them or anything.

7. I'm super uncomfortable around extended family that I hardly know

I know this because Ricky and I spent last Friday and Saturday at my grandparent's house in Miami for Labor Day weekend, and there were a lot of people there (whom I did not recognize in the slightest) who kept saying things like "You look the same as you did 12 years ago!" and "You're 21?  You look 17.  You're married?!" and "You have the same hair as your Aunt Rachel."  I know that everyone has these relatives, so if you've come up with an appropriately polite response for these remarks, please--I beg of you--share them.  As it stands, I throw out something like "thank you" with a slight rise in inflection at the end to indicate that I'm straddling the offended fence and flash a smile just genuine enough to appease but not full-blown enough to signify pleasure.

I probably should've warned you that this post would have no pictures and probably nothing to interest you, period, but disclaimers take all the fun out of everything.  Plus, aren't you impressed by my list-making?  It's not a Venn diagram, but maybe next time if you're lucky.

on THE MOST DISGUSTING THING EVER

Everyone will be happy to know that we have successfully been living in Florida for three weeks.

Everyone will NOT be happy to know that THIS IS GROWING IN MY LIVING ROOM:

GROSS.

Excuse me while I hurl my guts.

Yesterday, Ricky spotted a lizard crouched under the edge of the lovesac.  Excited (we like lizards), we moved the lovesac out of the corner to capture said lizard, thereby revealing these lovely moldy creatures growing out of my carpet. We told the property manager, who seemed really unperturbed by the whole thing, and someone's supposed to be coming today to look at it.  In the meantime, every time I take a breath my brain convinces me that I'm sucking in super-deadly poisonous spores and my lungs will collapse at any moment.

It turns out that our washing machine connection was leaking in the lanai next door...which probably means that we're going to have to pay for the repairs.  The lanai is outdoors, which means the water would've evaporated if it wasn't so dang humid!  I'm hoping it's not as bad as it looks (because we're really quite poor), but we all know that mushrooms are a sign of a well-developed mold system, which means replacing carpet, floorboards, etc.  Feel free to send prayers our way.

If you need me, I'll be sitting here wearing a surgical mask.

EDIT: We never did find the lizard.

on playing catch-up

You know that feeling after you haven't blogged (or journaled) for a long time?  That feeling where you look at your most recent entry and realized all the stuff you've done since then?  Being completely overwhelmed at the thought of writing all those painful play-by-play descriptions of life events that will, inevitably, take hours to accomplish?  Procrastinating the inevitable blogging for that very reason?

Yeah.

Luckily, technology has provided a useful tool for blogging procrastination: the digital camera.  With this handy device, you can take pictures of everything you do, storing these photos neatly on your hard drive and telling yourself that this makes up for not writing about said life events....because look at all the pictures you have!!!

I looked at a picture on my computer the other day, and I had no idea what it was of or why I took it.  The only indication I had of its identity or value was the iPhoto album it was in, and that wasn't much help.  Cool, huh? 

As far as record-keeping goes, Katie's writing > Katie's picture-taking.

I realized this morning that I have been fastidiously updating my other blog and leaving this one woefully neglected.  So, utilizing my pictures (ha), here is a recap of the last month:

We went to Philadelphia!

The weekend before we left for Florida, we drove Ricky's car up to my parents' house to leave with them until my dad can drive it down to FL on Labor Day weekend. While we were up there, we decided to visit Philadelphia!  (SUCH a good choice.)

Ricky had a cheesesteak!  (I had a gyro.  I'm unconventional.)

We met up with Angela! :D (In line for the Liberty Bell...)

We saw the Liberty Bell!

Ben Franklin's grave!

The churchyard was closed, but when has that ever stopped someone from taking pictures through the gate?

We waited in a super long line to see Independence Hall!

We saw Independence Hall!

And the inside! 

These are the stairs from the musical 1776, which happens to be the BEST MUSICAL EVER.  A security guard was eying me suspiciously as I snuck away from the tour group to take this. 

George Washington's original chair! (Excuse the blurry--there was some crowd jostling.)

We saw Valley Forge!

We saw a free "Shakespeare on the Green" play (Much Ado About Nothing) at the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge!  (And it was awesome!)

And this, at the Washington Memorial Chapel used bookstore.  HAHA!

We took pictures with these right before we left BV for FL:

Really, we were driving the moving truck out of town when we stopped to take these.  How could we not?  And yes, I am wearing the same shirt from Philadelphia, but all my clothes were packed!

We moved to Florida!  

And man, is it beautiful or what?  You forget what the sunset looks like when you've had mountains in the way for three years.  Cameras never do them justice.

Whew.

Again, I know pictures don't do my life justice, but that's a whole lot to catch up on.  I'll try to do better from now on. :)  In the meantime, Ricky's first day of law school orientation was yesterday (yes, I did take a picture of it) and my first day of grad school orientation is TODAY!  Hopefully it'll mostly be students my age, because so far all the people Ricky and I have met are a lot older than we are;  surprisingly enough, all the law students that we go to church with are in their 30s...plus, they all have at least one child, so 24-year-old Ricky feels pretty young, and 21-year-old me feels practically like an infant.

While we're on the subject of Floridians, Ricky and I are also trying to find someone who understands our sense of humor.  Just one person would be great, really.  All the married-with-children couples here kind of smile politely when we, the Jensens, start some sort of verbal banter that the dear Bagleys or Ondriceks (or any of our VA friends, really) would pick up on.  It's like playing Wii tennis when the other person can never reach the ball in time to hit it back. 

In the meantime, I'm in the process of refinishing our dresser and finishing the apartment decorating.  And by "finishing," I mean "putting up stuff we already have," which isn't a whole lot.  Further decorating will come when I find a job, hopefully at a Books-A-Million or Barnes and Noble or Borders or something equally up my ally, and have a little extra money.  Between law school books, grad school books, and buying off doctors to give me prescription medication (a.k.a., spending $130 to sit in the room for five minutes, tell them what's wrong with me, and have them sign a piece of paper), we're not too eager to spend any more money.  Unless it's on dark chocolate ice cream, because I could REALLY go for some of that right now.

on church history

There are a few shocking realizations that begin to sink in during the final weeks before a big move.

"Ricky!" I wailed two weeks ago. "I have to leave the antique mall behind!"

"Ricky!" Last week. "What about autumn?  What about the mountains?"

"Ricky!" This week. "We're going to be so far away from everything!"

And by "everything" I meant "all the cool sites in Virginia and the northeast," of course.  Including the LDS historic sites in upper New York, which Ricky and I have both wanted to see for ages, but it's not exactly like Idaho and South Carolina are right next door.  So before we shoved ourselves all the way in the bottom corner of the United States, we decided to take a road trip!

Luckily, before I married Ricky, I considered the length of time I could spend in a car with him before going crazy.  Even luckier, that time extends well past nine hours, which is the length of time it takes to drive from Buena Vista to Palmyra. (In case anyone is concerned, no amount of time with Ricky would ever drive me crazy.  Duh!)  So on Wednesday, we loaded up the car (mine--Ricky's doesn't have cruise control, and that wasn't about to happen), started up The Three Musketeers on the iPod, and drove to the very edge of the country to a bed and breakfast on the shores of Lake Ontario.  

 

It looks like the edge of the world, doesn't it?  They don't call them the Great Lakes for nothing.

We got to the area just in time for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and I was practically jumping up and down with excitement, so we grabbed some seats and spent some wonderful time talking to the actors roaming the audience.  

It was a long wait.

 (You don't have to tell me that he's the cutest thing you've ever seen.  I already know.)

Once the pageant started, it was awesome!  It was exactly what I was expecting, which is good, because I was expecting a lot.  The pageant covers a condensed version of the story of the Book of Mormon, and it attracts hundreds of people each day of the performance.  We met people from Ohio, Utah, Idaho, Canada...it was great times.

The funny thing about large gatherings of Mormons, however, is that they often attract people who are upset about large gatherings of Mormons.  I don't get it.  These people didn't just disagree with my beliefs--they were yelling hateful things over a megaphone at families walking by with no provocation at all.  It wasn't an attack on the religion, but on the people.

I am blessed with the knowledge of my Savior, Jesus Christ.  I believe He is the Son of God.  I grew up singing a song in church that's become one of my favorites: 

Love one another as Jesus loves you,

Try to show kindness in all that you do,

Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,

For these are the things Jesus taught.

The man with the megaphone didn't think I knew these things.

"Jesus died for you!" He screamed it like it was a curse. "He died for you, and you don't care!  You're nothing, Mormon!  Nothing!"

What that man failed to realize is no one is nothing to our Savior.

While Ricky and I waited for the crowd to clear before we left, we could hear the man's megaphoned voice become louder and more enraged over time behind us.  It was an interesting contrast to the pageant set in front of us, where somewhere offstage a track of "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need" was playing just loudly enough for us to hear it under the screaming. 

Where does someone learn so much hatred?  Learn to lash out at strangers he's never met and doesn't know, not out of welfare for their souls but only to ridicule them?  I don't know, and I'm glad I don't.

I didn't mean to spend so much time on unpleasantries, but it was a thought-provoking incidicent--overall, the pageant was wonderful.  I don't regret a second of it. 

Since it was late by that point, we drove back to our adorable bed and breakfast, admired the antique sheep decorations (I was thrilled) and slept until a home-cooked New England breakfast the next morning...complete with a welcome from the resident cat!  We drove back down to Palmyra to visit the Sacred Grove, the Smith Family Farm, and the Palmyra temple:

 It's a beautiful place.

 The farm!

(The doors of the temple have a depiction of the Sacred Grove in stained glass.)

After our fill of Palmyra sites, we looked at the clock--2:30.  It was a nine-hour drive back to VA. 

"Well," I said to Ricky. "It's a two-hour drive to Niagara Falls from here, and who knows when we'll ever be this close again."

You can guess what we chose to do.

I'll be honest--I was expecting Niagara Falls to be an over-hyped tourist trap.  And it was, indeed, very touristy, but TOTALLY WORTH IT.  Seriously, people, I could not take my eyes off this spectacle.

Canada (as seen behind our heads two pictures ago) has the better view, of course, but since we didn't have our passports we weren't complaining.  I wish I had taken a video of it, because the picture really doesn't do it justice, but whoa.  So cool.

SO COOL.

Deciding we had probably get back to VA in time for work the next morning, we left...at 5:30 in the evening.  Oops!  The GPS didn't know how to handle all the back roads in PA, so we were left with atlas navigating.  A couple wrong turns and gas station slurpees later, we were home at 3:00 a.m.  20 hours of traveling in two days.  Again, I repeat: so worth it.

I'm sorry this is the longest blog post ever, but it had to be done.  At least there are pictures this time, right?  Right?

on being torn to shreds

Ode to Long Pants

Long pants, long pants

Keep me safe from crawling ants

And attaching vicious plants

Oh, long pants.

Long pants, long pants

Wish I'd given you a chance

Even just a passing glance

Oh, long pants.

Long pants, long pants

If I had to take a stance

On climbing trees and rocks at slants

Wear long pants.

Beautiful, huh?

On the fourth of July, Ricky and I went on a hike with our awesome friends, Kathryn and Steve, up Little House Mountain.  (This mountain, for the record, is not that little.)

The trail is basically straight up the mountain.

I wasn't joking with my ode, either--a good portion of the trail is indistinguishable except for marks on the trees, so we spent a lot of time wading through sharp bushes and climbing over sharp rocks.  I lamented the lack of leg covering...two weeks later, I still have marks on my shins that haven't healed.  I'd like to think I'm not a complete weenie, but I was seriously glad to reach the overview.  We set up camp on the rock outcropping, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and watched no less than 10 fireworks shows from our cozy spot on the mountain!  All in all, it was a pretty epic way to spend the fourth of July.

 (All picture credits go to the lovely Kathryn, due to my neglect to charge batteries for my camera.)

The next morning's descent had all of our ankles shaking, but it was definitely preferable to climbing!  Also, I escaped tick-free, which is always great news.  On the way down, we passed a teenage couple who had taken up residence scarcely five feet from the trail...and hadn't bothered to put on clothes that morning.  Or, at least, that was my assumption, seeing as their arms and shoulders were bare and they had a tarp clutched up to their necks as we approached.  Yeah, it was a little awkward.  It got even more awkward when we temporarily lost the trail and had to double back from the other direction, pausing briefly to say hello and comment on the nice weather.  

For the record, Steve and Ricky decided to prove themselves true mountain men and forge their own trail.  While Kathryn and I were exchanging pleasantries with the now-clothed couple, those two were attempting to rejoin the trail without backtracking.  After a short game of "Marco Polo" and some ax-swinging by Ricky, we were reunited.  Oh, the wilderness.

on goal-setting

my 99 in 999 list

Updates to follow!

Feel free to make your own.  It takes forever to come up with 99 things, but even making the list is rewarding!