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.