Wrapped around my finger

"I've got the world on a string, sitting on the rainbow
Got the string around my finger, what a life, Mama, I'm in love.
Life's a beautiful thing, as long as I hold the string
I'd be a silly so-and-so if I should ever let you go."—Ted Koehler

It's a momentous day folks. I have now had this piece of floss tied around my pinkie for one year. It doesn't really seem possible that so much time has gone by, and yet it has. I can't quite decide what to do in regards to the string, because there's a chance that it may never come off. I thought about cutting it off today on its one year anniversary, because to be quite honest there's no good reason for it being on there. I tied it on and then decided to see how long it would stay. I rarely even notice it's there most of the time. I had better think about it some more.

In recent news, we celebrated Optimistic.'s 25th birthday this weekend with a party on Saturday and a family dinner on Sunday. Each was a success. Sunday I made some lasagna that will have to be eaten as leftovers for several days to come. Saturday we spent some of our gift cards and now own a lot more stuff than we did before. About $400 worth more. I really need to get those thank you cards out.

So like I said, Optimistic. turned 25 yesterday, and that fact kind of hit me in the face last night as I was falling asleep. I'm married to a 25 year old man. I'm married and living in an apartment a thousand miles from where I grew up. I share an apartment with a man. I own a toaster oven with him. Toaster oven nothing, we own a car together. And someday we'll have children. I feel really old and really young at the same time, and sometimes that scares me deep down to my core. He didn't seem to care that he was another year older (and wiser too), maybe because he's at that age where age doesn't matter anymore. I still feel each year as it's added on, feel my youth slipping away, and wonder how I can be not quite twenty one and already married. I haven't played in the snow this year. I haven't played much at all.

That said, I have a fun story from yesterday when we went to our new married ward for the first time. The bishop had all the new couples come and meet in his office during the second hour so we could get to know each other and introduce ourselves. At the end of Optimistic.'s turn the bishop asked if there was anything else Optimistic. wanted to share. He replied that he had a cold. The bishop then said something along the lines of "well, that won't do" and got up to retrieve a tall can from the table across the room. Then he had Optimistic. hold out his hands while he sprayed some foam into them. He'd been sanitized.

The bishop rubbed some of the foam on his own hands as he extolled its virtues, saying "I just can't stand alcohol, so I found this sanitizer that isn't alcohol based. I love this product. I bought a case of it. It feels great going on and it keeps the germs away for more than three hours." One of the other two women in the room piped up, "well that's great for the two of you, but what about the rest of us?" so the bishop went around and had the rest of us hold out our hands as well. I didn't really want to, but it seemed like there was no way out of it. So that's my little story, that our new bishop sanitized us both before we were let out of his office. What a welcome.

As a point of business, I have names for about half of my family members on this blog. The other half I've just used initials for, so over break I decided on what I'm going to call everyone.

My parents are simply Mom and Dad, although my dad has signed himself as Daddy No Bucks before, and seeing him in his tuxedo at the wedding with his neatly buzzed head made the connection to Annie even more apparent.

Us kids in order are:

-First Draft (Because she's the oldest. Formerly called F2)
-Audrey (because she has her own blog and goes by her own name)
-Bony M (Named after the band. Watch Touching the Void if you have any questions)
-M-Lite (Short for Miller Lite, so named because of the two of us she's the lighter one while I'm a bit stouter. Get it? Stouter?)
-Me. Genuine Draft. Hearty and robust in flavor
-Miller High Life (formerly called H, and now to be abbreviated M-High)
-Rough Draft (my only brother, formerly called F). I don't mean for his name to imply that he's a work in progress or anything like that, just that he's the manliest sibling I have and so deserved a draft moniker worthy of his guyishness. I also thought about Tough Draft, Scruff Draft, Buff Draft, Snuff Draft and Guff Draft. I'm still kind of undecided. Maybe I should ask him what he wants to be called.
-Final Draft (formerly H2), so called because she's the last Draft. I also considered calling her Huff Draft because she's an asthmatic.

And thus concludes this post.