Caught.

So my brother's on an LDS mission and I wanted to mail him a Halloween package, right? So I made a quick stop to Rite Aid for some chocolate splendor and some wicked candy so he will love me. I picked him up a bag of brachs pumpkins, the mini bag for $1. I also snuck in a mini-bag for me. Jared has school until 10pm on Wed and Thurs, which is prime time to sneak in a treat. Patience is not one of my strong points, so right when I got in the car I popped the bag open - before dinner, mind you. I astonished myself by how many I was able to eat in the 3 block drive home. Twisted the bag up and headed up to the apartment to make dinner. Then I put my brother's package together, which involved me eating more pumpkins, of course. I spent an hour making a crib skirt, all the while popping one pumpkin in my mouth after another. Until I started getting sick. But I just drank some water and kept eating the pumpkins. They were so gosh darn good! I get a call from Jared telling me he's on his way home. I look guiltily on my wilting pumpkin bag. Only hours ago it was plentiful; now there are only a handful of clumps of dyed-orange-sugar-molded-into-pumpkins left. For the first time in our marriage, I hid something from JO. I quietly tucked the remainder away in my nightstand drawer. I'd finish the bag off the next day so he would never know.

At approximately 10am this morning, I received a text:
Mr Oakden: haha you are too funny
Me: huh?
Mr Oakden: You...
Mr Oakden: I bet Moe is gonna love those pumpkins you got him.
Me: Oh, did you see my stash!?
Mr Oakden: Haha. I went for some of your chapstick. Nice dear.

Blast! I got caught...

I think I just have the urge to write.

But I don't really know what about. If I had a house, I would probably write about how kick-awesome we are for growing a garden and hosting a Halloween party in our 3200 sq ft home. If we had kids, I would write about how messy they are and how one of them said an inappropriate thing today and I was roaring with laughter. If I had an awesome wardrobe, I would probably be a fashion blogger and post for you all my creative outfits with articles from Anthro, JCrew and rock Steve Madden heeled boots. If I lived somewhere that had seasons, I would probably post about apple picking on Friday and the pumpkin patch we went to on Saturday. And if you give a mouse a cookie, don't, give it to me instead. Because I could use some cookies on this bleak overcast Monday.

...My cookies never turn out. The plain chocolate chip kind. I've tried Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker, the fundamental source for cookie baking but none worked. I've researched blog after blog, yet none of them seem to rise. Weird. I keep telling myself that it must be the oven, but the oven cooks everything else just fine but rejects my cookies. Then I think that maybe it has something to do with living 2 miles from the beach and the moisture in the air is affecting my mix?? I'd like my husband to think of his wife as anything BUT a failed baker. So to make up for it I keep buying Nestle's pre-made cookies. What a kick in the ego-pants. I guess I'm done writing now.

Duped.

Are Jared and I the only people who have fallen into the VonTrapp trap?! My whole world has been upset to know that the singing family, comprised of precious children with dainty names and a dashing colonel father and beautiful mother who somehow escaped over the Alps, isn't true? Ok, the midnight venture over the Alps was a bit hard to swallow, but I definitely prefer that to truth that they just rode away in a train, and not even to Switzerland but to Italy! Oh Wikipedia, why did you have to destroy my naive vision with the truth that there were actually 10 children, not 7. And that their names were awful like Agathe, Joanna and Hedwig Maria! Save your eyes from looking at their real pictures; keep your minds pure with images of cute Gretl and Kurt. I know, maybe I was a sucker for Hollywood's limelight on the Von Trapp's, but who would do such a thing and fool us all?! Sure, I guess the Von Trapp story is still noteworthy, but they're just another immigrant family to the US now as far as I'm concerned. I bet there are a million more interesting migrant stories other than an Austrian family who leisurely imported themselves to Italy and took the ferry to Vermont and opened their own little hotel and sang to their guests. Hardly as captivating.

I hope in 20 years I can sell my life off for millions of dollars with an alternate truth. I'll make sure it has catchy tunes and gorgeous children running across the screen too to make it all the more captivating. Maybe Jared and I will be suffering here in the years of Obama's economic depression and we can barely feed our children, and to make a living we all play the fiddle and do the... jive?? [not sure I even know what kind of dance that is, but it sounds like we'll be the life of the party and big screen if it's thrown in there.] Eh, I'll have to give it some time, but in the mean time, I'll try not to come down too hard on the VonTrapp's. I doubt they had much to say in what Hollywood made of them anyways... but still. Cheated, I feel. Cheated.

Hollywood Land

Yes, I saved you all from having to look at my ridiculously disgusting face by replacing it with a loving heart. Much better, no? Jared and I "hiked" the Hollywood sign on Saturday. Quotes are surrounding the verb because I wouldn't really consider it a hike, but rather a gradual winding incline with horse poop infested dirt switchbacks. Nothing really beautiful about it, but we did it in the later afternoon so the sunset was nice. It took us about 30 min to climb to the bottom of the sign, which apparently ends at a neighborhood that we could have driven to and skipped the walking. Oh well. I was kinda disappointed because the closest you can get to the bottom of the sign is by standing a hill away. Helicopters are constantly patrolling the area to make sure no one passes into the restricted zone. You can also climb up the backside of the sign and look down on it by the tower, but we I was too fatigued for that. Perhaps another time. [Trivia for the curious at heart: I just did some googling about the Hollywood sign to see a history of its origins. Hollywood got its name from the wife of the developer who owned the land. Daeida Wilcox gathered the name from a woman she sat beside on the train, who had a summer home she called Hollywood. Wilcox told her husband, who named his subdivision "Hollywood Land." The sign used to read the whole thing, until it was in shambles and Hugh Hefner of all people held an auction in 1977 to restore the sign. Then it just read Hollywood. There you go.]


I celebrated my 24th year of living on this earth last Thursday.
Birthdays were much better when I was in elementary school.

What's in a name?

Before being pregnant, I would ask other pregnant women the infamous question "Do you have a name picked out?" At the time, it didn't seem like that big of a deal to ask. No, I wasn't going to steal the name or anything, and in all sincerity I could care less what that person names their kid. It's not mine, so no matter what the answer they gave, props to them. Pretty much just a conversational element I would toss in there. Now that the game has switched and I'm the one being asked, why do I find it such a bother? #1 - I'm not terrified that someone will steal the name, not in the least. #2 - I don't care if people judge the name, because I already know its awesome. #3 - I am going to name my child ____ no matter what, so what does it matter if I tell them now or when the child is born? #4 - I ask people the question nonchalantly all the time, so what is it if someone does the same to me? It's getting to the weird stage where random strangers are gravitating to my tummy and people less than acquaintances are asking the name of my girl. I don't think it's intrusive in anyway, just funny. I think the real factor of it all is that I feel kinda silly giving a name so openly to a child that is yet unborn. I feel right now that I'm giving a name to just a baby doll, something that isn't 100% real yet, even though she is very much alive and kicking my gut throughout the day. What if something happens and I can't carry her to full-term? Even if that tragically were to happen, then she would still be given the name. So.... yes, Jared and I have a name, a name that we love and pretty sure it will fit this girl perfectly.

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I'm still scared to share for reasons unknown.

Any one else have this dilemma??