time wasters!

Well, friends, I am officially--as of last night--finished with my semester of class and work at Grand Valley. That puts me at one (1) full time job! woohoo! plus a small contract, but that's not as big of a deal.

So what am I going to do with all my new-found free time? well, I'm rediscovering my love for cooking and baking [just in time for Christmas, I might add]; I'm planning on starting P90X on Monday; and, of course, I'm going to return to wasting the perquisite amount of time on the internet. I have to know what's going on in the world, ya know.

Here's a list of my favorite sites in no particular order:
1. salon.com--highbrow news, of a sort. the kind you can tell your friends you read about. for example, under tech, the winning tweet of the week: "In honor of oil-soaked birds, 'tweets' are now 'gurgles.'"
2. wired.com--techie stuff, good for knowing what's going on at work. the blogs are especially fun--that's the best way to learn about new gadgets & sites like this [http://www.teachparentstech.org/] that are super useful for sending to grandparents.
3. thenest.com--shhh, guilty pleasure. lots of good pets information on the boards, though.
4. facebook.com--no description necessary.
5. dearblankpleaseblank.com--check it out, it's hilarious. e.g.

Dear Windshield Wipers,

Can't touch this.

Sincerely, That Little Triangle.

6. cuteoverload.com--the name says it all.

have fun wasting time!

blog work

Well, you're in luck, readers--working on the blog at work has reminded me that I have a rather sadly neglected one sitting right here!

Because Mia is just so darn cute [and so much cuter than me--it's the fur], let's look at the last few months through Mia's eyes:

[this took forever because my Mac's hard drive crashed over Thanksgiving nothing is set up like I want it anymore, so appreciate it!]


Mia, that's not ladylike!
Playing with Aunt Kelly
Being a biker babe
after Mommy feels about 10000x this tired--Mia goes for a brief nap.
Me? Chew on the carpet? Never.
'Cause all the fun stuff happens outside.
Women's Fall Retreat 2010! We left Mia at home. And now she's an it, so she never gets to go.
family fall photo
PLEASE play with me.

What? Food?


So now that I've completely AW'd my beautiful puppy, here's a quick update to our lives: I'm putting my MBA on hold & will probably finish it up at UM in a couple years; I've moved full time to Mavin Global and am super excited about it! and Mia [as you can see] continues to grow both in poundage and in stamina. the little monster can run forever.

Happy holidays, all, if I don't 'see' you before then!

like mother, like daughter-ish

To update you on Mia, our monster is now 4 mo. old and fully formed terror-inspiring 26-lb puppy.

Her favorite activities include digging up mommy, "grandmommy," and the neighbor's plants--her preferred method is to excavate all dirt in the area and then pull plant out by the leaves and run with it, strewing dirt as far as possible--tearing, esp. shoes, socks, and fluffy things, running around like a crazy/possessed thing, and any other possible mischief. possibilities, of course, are limitless.

it's not that she doesn't know what she should be doing--if anybody happens to have food and orders her to do something, it's amazing the number of commands that she knows. but if you don't have food and there's something more interesting around, forget it.

one of the things we do to try to eliminate excess energy (because a sleeping puppy is the cutest puppy) is play fetch, which usually turns into throwing the ball/frisbee/rock/tree limb and then running around trying to get it back from mia. she's very good at bringing it almost back to where you are.

one sunny afternoon this week, we were outside playing with the frisbee. as we're running back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the houses, i finally got the frisbee back, looked at mia--jumping frantically up and down, literally, of course--and said, "Mia, go get it!"

This inspired even more frantic hopping like a rabbit.

I then turned around and chucked the frisbee in the opposite direction.

Unluckily for Mia, however, she was positioned a couple feet behind a lamp post, and when she took off to get the frisbee, she forgot to avoid the obstacle directly in front of her.

THWACK.

Don't worry, she's fine, she has a skull like a rock.

I just think it's funny that we're so definitely not possibly related and yet she seems to have inherited my grace and poise :)

long time no see, friends!

Most of the reason that I don't write (other than my horrific schedule) is because I feel guilty posting if I don't upload any pictures, and I'm absolutely awful at remembering to upload pictures from my camera to my computer.

I don't feel guilty any more!

If you really want to see pictures, most of you can see what I'm tagged in ('cause I'm sure not uploading them) on facebook. Lots of pictures there.

As for an update, lots has gone in my life in the last few months. Mia grew big enough to jump on furniture and get into even more trouble than when she was small, which has pretty much put Brad's and my problem-solving abilities to the test. She's either very smart or just dumb enough to get into all the bizarre stuff (think: used Kleenexes) that we don't want to particularly have her eat and digest. It's totally TMI, but she has the WEIRDEST looking poop. Like seriously, Mia? Where did you find little bright blue balls to eat? What even is that?!

On a less digestive note, I have gone to depressingly bored to overwhelmingly busy--because what's the fun of living somewhere in the middle? School started up at the end of August, and although Grand Valley certainly doesn't expect as much as UM, three classes keeps me pretty busy. I'm taking Econ, Accounting, and Business Ethics, which is so far removed from any of the classes I've taken in the last three years that it isn't even funny. Like, I'm using numbers. Real numbers. Sometimes I add them. Sometimes we even multiply.

I'm also a research assistant in the Marketing department, which means that I am the personal slave of roughly 15 professors who obviously can't grade their own papers, record their own grades, or upload their own quizzes because that would be menial work, and far below them. Of course, they can't do their own research or draw their own conclusions, either, some of them, because that would be my job.

I'm slightly bitter about this position. I do like being there, though. Sometimes I get to do my homework if there's nothing to do and it's nice to be surrounded by students and learning again. I love the academic environment.

I also still have contract work to do for Gale (yay, a job that pays well!!), so that takes up spare moments. But....da da da da!! I also got a real live job, too, which doesn't pay but is very interesting. I'm working as a technical writer (intern) for a start-up IT company, which means that I get to do all sorts of things that I'm absolutely not trained or prepared to do. I get to learn every day and make actual contributions to work. I never planned to work for such a small company, but I really love it.

So to recap: I'm going to school full-time, and I have three jobs: one covers my tuition, one pays well, and one is interesting. Now if only I could find one job that covers all three categories!

da puppy!

There are now THREE dots in da house, counting the particularly furry one that came home with us about a week and a half ago at a ridiculous 5 weeks old--too young to be separated from her mother, but due to some sad circumstances, she came home to spend a little extra time with her new family.

it's hard to believe it has only been a week and a half--she's already growing [we had to let out her collar], and she has already mastered sit, come, and down [when she feels we're offering her an appropriate amount of food], housebreaking [to a limited degree], and gnawing on her favorite chew toy, fingers! not to say that she discriminates--basically anything that moves slower than Mia, as we call our new addition, is at risk for chewing and possible total destruction. it's a work in progress.

having an extremely adorable and ridiculously needy puppy around the house all day has certainly altered brad & my way of life. instead of having no one require my attention from 4:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., i have a furball capable of untold messes asking for every second of my time!

less work is getting done, let me tell you.

one of the hardest things, for me, was crate-training; in my heart i know she's just an animal and she doesn't REALLY need anything, but the crying cuts right to my heart!

on a much lighter note, here are some of our many joyful and hilarious moments with mia in the last 10 days:

Here's one for size comparison; you can see that the day we brought her home, she wasn't much bigger than her food dish! Good news is, she no longer needs to step in her food dish to get all the food out.


Last week we took her swimming in Mom and Dad Dotson's pool--good news is, she swims great! bad news is, she doesn't seem to like swimming that much [at least not yet]. destination is ALWAYS dry land!


This is Mia on the stairs. Usually she's a very smart girl, but with the stairs, we're not sure what's going through her head. She gets UP the stairs just fine, but on the way down, she has to stop and bark at the stairs, try to chew/attack them, and sometimes cry. Then she falls down the stairs. Apparently up is a lot easier than down!



I'll try to update a little more regularly so you can see this little one grow & learn [& drive her "parents" insane!].

Ick, Ow, and Fun!

Last week I had the stomach flu for the first time since I don't even remember when. Mainly, this meant that I couldn't eat anything without feeling ill and puking out my toenails (sorry for the graphic). If I didn't eat anything, I was fine. Starving to death started to look pretty attractive, let me tell you. Convincing Brad to let me starve to death, however, was more difficult. I, on one hand, was convinced that I could survive (or starve to death peacefully, take your pick) on fruit punch-flavored gatorade and water. He was going down the Ensure path, which means gross protein drink. Good grief, as if being sick with the flu isn't bad enough, you want to make it worse?!

The stomach flu also brought up all sorts of fun married things. Brad has seemingly decided that being sick for two days is just about all anybody needs to be sick for. Day 1 he was very attentive, worried, did all the laundry, and brought me water. Very helpful. Day 2 was about the same, with a small increase of rolling of eyes. Around Day 3 (and especially day 4), his efforts grew increasingly desperate. He bought large quantities of things he was sure would cure me--and I'm not entirely convinced that he was worried about my stomach more than he was worried about the fact that I hadn't gotten groceries or otherwise fed him in four.days. and he was reduced back to taking sausages for lunch and getting chinese take-out.

We all feel very sorry for Brad.

To his credit, he brought me water to the very end and expressed GREAT relief at my improvement on day 6.

The other interesting thing about have the stomach flu when you're married is that everybody and their aunt hear "married" and "puking" and think PREGNANT! BABIES! YAY! FUN! which, in general, freaks out the newlywed and certainly-not-wanting-a-baby me.

I.am.not.pregnant.

On a completely different topic: we went to Tennessee to see Mike and Katie last weekend! I have a good friend who swears that the more you hurt afterward, the more fun you had. With obvious notable exceptions (see: torture/stomach flu), I find this is generally true. It was certainly true on Monday, after Brad, Katie, Kelly, Mike, Adam, and I beat up our bodies in the water just about every way we could come up with.

We went tubing! Tubing is when you get out of a perfectly good and reliable boat and hang on for dear life to an inflatable device that would probably be better used to rescue someone from drowning somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Then we tie this device with a 70-foot rope to the perfectly good boat and take off at completely unreasonable speeds.

This is fun.

In the picture, you can see that my compatriots are grinning like idiots. I don't know how or why their faces would contort that particular way in their travails. My head and neck, when tubing, is completely locked into position to avoid biting my lip (which I did anyway), biting my tongue (which I managed to avoid doing), or allowing my head to hit my tube (which I also did). I also figure that it minimizes the amount my brain jiggles around in my head. Less movement is less movement. Plus I'm in pain, in which case I don't usually smile.

I have no idea why we do this for fun.

We also wakeboarded. I like wakeboarding. You're above the water instead of skidding on top of it, although we do run into the same problem of the rope and the abandoning of a perfectly good boat. I try not to do anything stupid like trying to jump to great heights (like my husband), resulting inevitably in much crashing and hurting, and so generally I manage to hurt no more than my muscles and my pride when I fall.

The next day, we abandoned the good boat altogether for the simple inflatable--the tube--down a river. Down-river tubing is awesome. It's exciting, all you have to do is float, and you can even talk between rapids!

Unfortunately, it has not rained for about a month and a half in Tennessee, and the water level was very low. Rocks had been sharpened. Stones were jutting out as much as they could possible reach. Everything was a little more dangerous than usual.

Especially dangerous were the inhabitants of the river: every single citizen of Tennessee and their extremely overweight aunt were on this particular river on the fourth of july--every.single.one. Every hillbilly and redneck for miles around was, I swear, floating down at the exact same time at us.

So not only did we have to avoid the rocks and scoot our butts over the ones we inevitably hit, we had to avoid the large and often very stuck rednecks! AH!

Bumper tubes galore!

Honestly, I've inherited the greatest family. It wouldn't be nearly as fun with anybody else. Well, maybe not so painful. These people are hard to keep up with, man. But they sure feed ya good!

Suffice to say that the four of us slept a lot and driving was not a popular election of activity all the way home.

Two dorks together

Since my husband and I [that still sounds SO good] are self-admitted dorks, I have no problem admitting that we are video game-aholics. Everybody already knew this about brad--what you may not have known is that I am a very willing conspirator and buddy when it came to beating Super Mario (for SNES) two and a half times on our honeymoon, Ratchet & Clank about three times afterward, and Jak and Daxter--all within three weeks of being married.

We're currently working on Jak 2, yet another adventure/shoot-'em-up game. I have to say, it's good marriage practice to 1) take turns and 2) be patient when the other person keeps dying and you know that you could totally take those metalheads better. and hey, it's something we love to do together--mutual hobbies are important!

In other news, we entertained dinner guests for the third time in two weeks last night, and I'm developing quite a love for feeding people that I am sure is honestly inherited from my mother. It's not just about the compliments on the cooking, although that's nice too--it's just nice to feed people and take care of them!

It's less fun when they beat you in phase 10 after dinner, but that's another story.

I'm BACK!

Yes, I'll get better eventually at posting on a more regular basis; for now, life has finally calmed down a bit and I have time to sit down and type some of it out!

[pause while Bethany locks herself out of the house and her neighbor breaks her back in with a credit card.]

It's been that kind of week--for the last two weeks!

Anyway.

First off, I got married--no pictures yet from the professional photographer, but here's one that pretty much expresses the emotion of the day (courtesy of Larry Counts):


It was a wonderful day, and I am now officially Mrs. Bethany Dotson. It took me a good two and half weeks to let the Social Security Administration know, but that's another story.

More relevant now is the hilarity, love, and adventure that has saturated my first two weeks of caring for my own home and husband. Let me just say that it's a good thing I married an engineer! I bet he never imagined how many ways I could possibly break appliances, doors, and drawers! Some of it was all of my fault--most of it was a combination of living in a townhouse that has been through many hands in a short period of time and miscommunication between two people not used to living together.

Take the tea kettle. I keep a tea kettle on the stove at all times because 1) it's pretty 2) I use it on a regular basis and 3) there's no cupboard space to store it anywhere else. I know my own clumsiness when I'm cooking a many dishes simultaneously, esp. on a new stove, so I keep water in the kettle at all times just in case I turn on the wrong element.

Brad has a different system. Brad sees water in a kettle and thinks oh, Bethany forgot to empty the kettle. I should take care of that for her!

So when I'm rushing around frantically on Friday trying to prepare for a rather overly ambitious dinner for an older couple from Brad's church and turn on the wrong element, per my normal operating standard, the water doesn't boil.

Instead, the kettle melts. Literally. The rubber melts, the kettle turns all sorts of pretty colors, and I am completely oblivious--until it starts to smell.

This is when Brad hears from the living room a desperate call--BRADLEY!--and instantly comes to the rescue.

But it's too late for the poor kettle, which we buried [in the trash] on Saturday. His replacement is currently in the mail.

I love being married.

thursday's realizations

today has been a day for realizations.

today i realized that the man i love is a boy at heart, and no matter how much it can bother me i'd never have it any other way.

today i realized that i am that person at starbucks: the one who has so obviously been there too many times, evidenced by the ridiculously complicated, rapid-fire order that confuses the wait staff and leaves them shaking their heads ruefully as she walks out the door with her 2 percent green tea frapuccino with a pump of raspberry and no whip.

today i realized that i will never be able to go too long without reading a book for reasons i can't fully comprehend and certainly can't explain. i realized that although i am not an author, do not have the necessary drive to write, someday, when i have enough to say, i will write a book that will be, in many ways, a compilation of the thousands of books that i have read.

today i realized that i am a night thinker, probably a night lover, and certainly not a night owl.

and today i realized that facebook is a potent distraction, but, more dangerously, also the halter of deep thoughts and dreams into unimportant gossip and happenings. not that connecting is bad, not at all; it is just not conducive to creative process or intelligent ruminating.


love.

endings--late tuesday night musings

well, as fast as it came and went, my undergraduate career at UM is over. [and WOW, can you ever tell that I've been studying a lot lately in this picture.] I'd like to have some wonderfully profound and yet clever and somehow hilarious comments to add to this, but honestly, it hasn't even really sunk in yet that I'm graduated.

what seems to be happening is a syndrome that i like to think, egotistically, that i am the sole sufferer of, but in reality i believe is probably fairly common. i'm running. perhaps out of a fear of stopping to think what i'm leaving or perhaps because i'm so focused on what's ahead, i haven't even paused to think about what graduating signifies or what is happening here. i'm never going back to live in ann arbor again. if i have dorm food again, it'll probably be because i'm visiting a friend (unlikely) or a child (more likely, but hopefully much farther down the road).

at twenty years old, it's hard to leave the safe bubble that college at least partially is. sure, the threat of real life looms close, and some of us feel it more than others, but mostly, mom&dad are still there to catch you and your phone bill--and your groceries, if you're lucky--and instead of office drama, promotions, bills, and benefits, you have to worry about homework, professors, and group projects, which, if not pleasant, are at least familiar.

if you think about it, i've spent the last seventeen years of my life in school; different schools, same patterns. same teacher, homework, test routine. sometimes they get different names and they always get harder, but it's the same idea. this next step is completely different, completely foreign, and completely scary. and at once i'm so relieved that i don't have to do it alone and petrified at the additional, very complicated addition that getting married is.


I'm also calling this one "endings" because I'm promising myself to call any final wedding-related post "beginnings." it's very tempting to look at the wedding [because i am a fairly depressive, nostalgic personality] as an end [once again] to my childhood, my safe environment, my position as my parents' daughter, and my life here on the east side. and it is an end; but it is also the beginning of an adventure that i hope lasts for a very, very long time--we're talking diamond jubilee, here. as romantic as it is, though, the realist in me knows how very difficult, conflict-filled, and emotional the next few months, years, and decades will be. marriage is work!

but we'll make it work, and i'm still confident that my life will be fuller and happier with him than without.

Back in Black

Since I have been horrifically neglectful, I have decided to take advantage of the occasion of finishing school to claim that I have been much to busy to post because of school. Now that I'm done, I can start posting again!

At this point, you're either laughing at me ruefully or rather confused; either way, I'm glad to be back [in black--the text is black; get it?]

Besides spending my life planning the wedding and writing essays, I've had tons and tons of fun [this is at least partially sarcastic] starting to move into our new townhouse! It was totally empty when we started, but Brad quickly found a couple important things to put in it:

Brad moved in pretty quickly after the TV arrived and he could hook his xbox up. Go figure. Quickly, however, I [thanks to my grandparents!] found lots of OTHER stuff to put in it. Then it was even more of a mess.


We're still working through the "it's-a-mess" stage, but I hope to get it all organized and rearranged and reorganized [and reorganized, and reorganized, and reorganized] when we get back from the honeymoon in june. It's hard to think that far ahead, but I've heard that it's not far off!

In the meantime, I have just five days left 'til I'm officially a college graduate [can you imagine? they're letting me graduate!]. I have four weeks left 'til wedding insanity is over and I can go lie on the beach in Florida with my new husband--the future's looking bright!

And then I get to come back and clean my house.