Don't You Just Hate it When...

You lock yourself out of your house?

Me too.

A Day--Alone--in Tokyo

I tagged along Joe's last business trip to Tokyo. I tried to remember this was only a vacation for one of us and made plans to explore the city on my own. And then I realized how massive it is. And how much cab fare is. And how navigating metros while trying to decipher characters is really hard. So I stuck to exploring the area immediately surrounding our hotel.

I armed myself with a map, and even drew my course as my iphone wasn't going to be of much use. I decided to use the western stores as my landmarks as they were the only thing on my map not written in characters. Unfortunately I discovered that was a flawed plan as there is a Prada, H&M, and Apple on every other corner. 

So I relied on my skills learned from Sesame Street as a kid to match the shape of the characters from the map to the street signs. A lot of those characters were mighty similar to my Elmo-trained eye.

But Sesame Street trained me well, as I was successfully able to navigate the above in order to get the below (among other things).

(Unfortunately Washi tape is just as expensive when you buy it at the source.)

All in all I decided it's extremely empowering to navigate a completely foreign city (largely without Roman lettering or Arabic numbers I might add) all by myself. And I really liked Tokyo. 

Of course, it helped that a few of Joe's business dinners fell through so I got to go to some of the best restaurants Tokyo has to offer. It was incredible. 

(When in Asia...)

(mmmmmm Toro)

Along with discovering the empowerment of navigating, I also discovered the deliciousness of sushi! Up to this point I have been a roll-only kind of girl. What? You want to add cream cheese to sushi and then deep fry it and add mayo? Great! Upon Joe's insistence however, and the spirit of travel, I gave real sushi an honest try. Oh man. I think Joe created a monster. It's just sooooo good. Unfortunately I think I've got high taste and this level of sushi will not be afforded available on any kind of consistant basis.

But some things still remain the same. I do not like large chunks of Japanese clam. And when you are in a restaurant that uses cloth napkins and only seats six, and you are the only non-Asian who is clearly struggling to get a few things down, and it would be very clear who spit out their specialty clam, you wait until the chef goes in the back room to put your clam in your cardigan pocket.

And that's it. Unless you want to see one of the best souvenirs we brought back here.

Speaking of Finishing

This is a picture taken during my first month of collage. I was a contestant in a ward Halloween party rendition of The Fear Factor. (I was a Jackson Pollock painting. Obviously.)

My hair has a teased "bump," and I'm pretty sure there is a zig-zag part separating my braids. I tell you this so you can mark the time passed.

Fast forward four years and 136 college credits later....

And here I am celebrating with my family (on my birthday) my psuedo-graduation at Disneyland. Which was really the completion of student teaching since I still had half of an online class to finish.

Let me tell you. That was one brutal class. I'll spare you all of the agonizing details, just know that it was so brutal it took me three months after Disneyland to even get seriously motivated to finish my class and another two months after that until this...

A sushi dinner, courtesy of Joe, to celebrate finishing my last college essay.

And 25 days later...

 

I take my last final. See how far I've come?* 

Which is to say...I finished collage. 

*Actually, notice how my face is almost the exact same in the first and last picture?

Z--Zero

As in there are not many things to blog about that begin with the letter Z. I'm usually a quitter (although I prefer the term, "non-finisher-because-it's-not-going-the-way-I'd-imagined") and have been sitting on the letter Z for quite a while. I thought about just ignoring Z and hoping nobody noticed, but I'm trying to break my nasty non-finisher status. So here you go blog world and goals. I finished.

Joe and I found this Hey Girl especially rang true as right now one has to step over some empty (though spray painted!) frames to go up the stairs to the bedrooms and weave through some papier-mache bones to go down the stairs to the garage.

This is Not Z

Joe buys me fruit snacks (and other treats) when he goes grocery shopping (a treat in itself)…even though he knows I’ll leave the wrappers lying around. His biggest pet peeve*

I'm pretty sure that is true love.

*I’d like to assure everyone that I am not, in fact, a dirty person. I just find wrappers really annoying. No one likes to eat a bag of fruit snacks standing next to the garbage can.

Y--Peace

 

See, it looks like a Y

As in trying to keep the peace after a particularly nasty round of Canasta. Joe may have been tripling my score. He might have called me a poor loser. I possibly called him an excessive celebrator. I may have been genuinely mad. 

I thought about adding it to our list of banned games (unfortunately that list is growing), but couldn't do that to my favorite game. And I thought Joe and I should take this issue in our marriage head on. So before our next round of Canasta a few nights later, I decided we needed to read a little book together. I read the Berenstain Bears No Girls Allowed out loud. 

You can read my favorite page of this book, and the one I thought most fitting for me and Joe.

Brother Bear and his friends get so annoyed with Sister Bear they decide to not play with her anymore and build an all boys club. Sister realizes the errors of her ways (and builds a club house of her own--complete with tin can phones) and apologizes to Brother Bear and the boy and girl cubs all play happily together.

You can see in this next picture how Joe felt about all of this.

(Joe's middle finger, my thumb)

But! We had a very successful round of Canasta. Consider our home a place of peace...even on Canasta night. 

Xenogenesis

Joe's Christmas present:

 

A labradoodle named Chewbacca. 

Joe has been itching for a puppy for a long time. Since-his-dog-died-while-he-was-on-his-mission-ten-years-ago long time. One time while we were walking around Ikea he even picked out a stuffed dog and carried it around the entire store in his arms, (when he thought I wasn't looking) periodically petting it. He even bought it and kept it on the couch with him while he was watching TV, petting it. It just about broke my heart. That is how bad Joe wanted a puppy.

My conditions were that it needed to be a designer puppy that didn't shed*, that was extremely calm, and would never weigh more than me.

We settled on a labradoodle in August. And my idea to give the best Christmas present Joe could ever dream of was born. But just getting Joe a puppy wasn't enough. It also needed to be a surprise!

So I began telling Joe that I thought we should wait a bit longer for a dog..at leasat another year. We'll talk about it once we've been married for a year. I wasn't ready yada, yada, yada. Non of this came as a shock to Joe as I'd been telling him the same thing since we were dating seriously enough to be talking about theoretical dogs in future homes. But behind the scenes I was making arrangements with a breeder in Yakima.

Fast forward to December 24th when Joe and I are driving out to my parents and I make the turn to Yakima. I didn't say a word to Joe other than we were going to get a Christmas surprise. He asked if it was a puppy. I told him he would be extremely disappointed if he thought he was getting a puppy and to set his sights a little lower. He settled on buffalo steaks (what I got him for Christmas last year) and that we were going to a buffalo farm. So you can imagine his surprise when we walk inside the breeders house and a fluffy puppy was put in his arms.

BEST SURPRISE EVER, RIGHT?!

Chewie has become quite the good little companion. I'm surprised how much we love and enjoy him. (Seriously, who thought I would ever be saying I love a dog?!)

A few facts you might enjoy knowing about Chewie:

• If he hears a rustling bag he assumes it is the sound of treats for him and immediately sits and waits for you to recognize how deserving he is.
• He is a big fan of socks. 
• If Chewie finds something he likes, but knows he shouldn't have, (ie socks, shoes, incredibly large and dirty sticks from outside, hairbands, one of Levin's toys) he makes a mad dash to his bed in the living room. He thinks you don't see him or hear him if he goes really, really fast. Unfortunately for him the opposite is true. If you walk up to him when he has said restricted items, he lays on them quickly so you can't see them and pretends like nothing is going on.
• He knows the difference between his right paw and his left paw. It is his favorite trick.
• We almost named him Tatanka. 
• Dad came up with the name Chewbacca.
• He loves Joe and gets so excited when he hears him coming home at night.
• He loves to take naps with on me.

I was extremely skeptical about getting a dog, but knew Joe would love it. Joe kept saying it was the best Christmas present he'd ever had. And you know, Joe might be on to something. Because there are few things better than coming home and seeing a wagging tail.

*True story: Chewbacca sheds less than Joe's beard.