When the receptionist met the janitor.

Four years ago today I was scrambling to write a few lines of vows on the way to my wedding.  I remember there was something in there about how I felt like I could be myself around Jesse, my then fiance.

I also remember finding out on our honeymoon that the reason so many people were honking at us in our decked out car was because someone wrote "Honk if you're straight" on the back of it.  Surprisingly?  There are a lot of straight people out on the road.

After less than a week of dating Jesse I called my sister up and told her I was going to marry this guy that I hadn't even said I love you to yet, and her... well.  Thinking I was insane.

Jesse and I met when I was 18 through a mutual friend at church.  If you would have told us we would get married I would have laughed in your face and I'm pretty sure Jesse would have disappeared. So, we knew who each other were, and after time both of us attended different churches and over a year passed without us seeing each other.

Three and a half months before our wedding, Jesse was playing with his friends in a band at a coffee shop, and my friend Jenna and I decided to meet up there.  As stated, it had been over a year since I had seen Jesse and he nearly accosted me when I got there and wanted to hang out with me so bad.  I didn't really understand since I figured he thought I was obnoxious (which was true, but who could stay away from this?) (apparently a lot of people).  It would be another week or so of hanging out amongst friends before Jesse tricked me into getting "ice cream for everyone" which meant "let's get ice cream and then park the car for two hours and talk".  And, indeed, that is where we had The Talk.

The Talk was stopped abruptly when a policeman came up to the window and asked how we were doing.  He said that two girls had gotten off their shift at Subway something like 45 minutes prior but saw Jesse's creepy truck with the camper on it across the parking lot and were afraid to leave so they called the cops.  Katie and Jesse, harassing Subway employees since 2007.

And what splendid harassment it has been.  I have never doubted for a moment our decision to get married.  Wait.  There was that time I found chunky (and decidedly NOT creamy) peanut butter in the pantry.  Turned out I was the one who accidentally bought it, and I was resolute once again that Jesse and I were a perfect match.

So, toots, thanks for killing spiders for me and telling me I'm pretty and that you're sure no one noticed the booger hanging out of my nose the entire time I was out. Here's to another four years of going "No, YOU'RE cuter!" and making my parents gag.

Why is there yogurt in this hat?

Let's go back to the time when I had raccoons living under my mobile home as a teenager.

I was about 17, still driving Ford Escort #1, and I was leaving my sister Christy's house late one night after what I am sure was a riveting evening of playing Crash Bandicoot.  Immediately after getting into my car, I smelled something rancid.  There were some kids playing outside and since my windows had been rolled down I wondered if maybe they had thrown something dead into my car to mess with me.  I didn't want them to have the satisfaction of seeing me freak out (spoiler alert, they did not put anything in my car), so I stopped around the corner, and pulled the driver's seat forward.  And then, AND THEN, I remembered.

Weeks earlier I had purchased a bottle of chocolate milk and didn't finish all of it.  I threw it behind the driver's seat.  Before long... well.  Time makes fools of us all.

Apparently the mystical chocolate milk gasses had built up and blown the cap from the top of the bottle.  There was this thick, horrifying brown sludge-like mess on my back window and it had covered the floor of the driver's side back seat.

Here's where the story kind of fizzles out, with me gagging while scraping out the mire that once was chocolate milk, meanwhile trying to avoid the giant raccoon that lived under my neighbor's house.

So here's a video that my dad, Mark, made.  Oh calm down, it's only 33 seconds.

"You know that I'm not allowed to wear hoop earrings, right? Two years ago she told me hoops earrings were *her* thing and I wasn't allowed to wear them anymore. And then for Hannakuh my parents got me this pair of really expensive white gold hoops and I had to pretend like I didn't even like them and... it was so sad."

I have a problem with my earrings.  I've tried a lot of things to keep them in order, but I have hated every single version.  When I first got my ears pierced at 16 (I know, scandalous), I strung a piece of hemp above my door and would hang my manageable collection of earrings on it each night.  Which is shocking, because this is what the rest of my room looked like.

I KNOW RIGHT

I'm more embarrassed to put those pictures up than I thought I would be.  Did anyone notice the totally-not-out-of-date-in-2003 lava lamp splayed on the bed?  Me neither.  (In regards to the mess on the bed that I am SHOCKED I SLEPT IN, I think I was cleaning that day and decided to take pictures of how horrifying I was.  I used to put as much of my stuff as I could on the bed and then go through each item one by one without putting it anywhere if it didn't have a spot.  I know, in theory it's a really great idea because I should have found a bunch of stuff to get rid of, but I always started cleaning like this around 11:30pm and by midnight I would shove it all onto the floor because I needed to go to sleep.  Back to the earring thing.)

As I collected more earrings, I bought and/or made multiple variations of earring holders, kind of like this one:

Source: kojodesigns.blogspot.com via Ashley on Pinterest

Except mine never looked that tidy.  Or maybe it did because every time I touched it all the earrings would fall off.  Has anyone else had this problem?  I feel that maybe we just don't talk about it.

I thought I would do an experiment and buy something new to hold my earrings.  The technique to putting them away is similar to what I do now, which is drop them on the coffee table, but I will try and aim for one of these little egg cubbies.

Cute, right?

But first I thought I would go around the house and see where I found my earrings, and I am less embarrassed than I thought I would be to post these after posting pictures of my teenage bedroom.

This next one is a planter (planter? Is that the right word?  Obviously I do a lot of planting) that I filled with my jewelry which was a stellar idea.  It got knocked over and rolled under the bed (also, the marks inside of it are from it being filled with pens previously.  Again, with the planting).

Which leads to:

And I am in love.  Jesse is too because he would constantly be picking up my earrings and going, "If you had a place to put these I would put them away while I'm picking up."  Obviously he doesn't pay attention because I already HAD a place under the bed, but anything to make his life easier.

Did anyone notice the Larry Boy earring?

One time during an assembly in high school I noticed this plunger looking thing sticking out of the wall, and Amy was sitting in front of me.  I leaned forward in that wood seat, pointed and said, "Larry Boy got stuck in the wall."  She started giggling which made me giggle and while leaning forward like that and pushing down on my abdomen in a laugh, I farted and the sound cascaded through that auditorium.