Memories from Childhood pt. 2

In third grade there was this kid that picked on me, I think his name was Travis. I had to sit by Travis during "math hour" and he was kind of a bully to me. He liked to whisper awkward things to me that made me feel nervous and scared haha. One time he turned to me when everyone else was talking loudly and no one could hear him but me, and said "You are a nerd." I said "Am not!" He said "Dont even lie. I know you wear pink barbie underwear and like to watch barney!!!" I turned to him and said "How did you know?!?!!" He just shrugged and just gave me this look like "I just know things." In that moment I was FREAKED OUT, because it was true!!! It was my deepest darkest secret. And the night before I had participated in the very act that he spoke of: Partying in nothing but my pink barbie underwear, watching barney. However I was careful, and about half way through the barney sesh, I closed the blinds because I was afraid people would see, even though I was on the second story, how could they have seen? How did he know? This very thing has haunted me to this very day!! 


It was true though, I was a nerd. A nerd that loved to learn. I remember the day I found out that Don Gaspar de Portola, was the very man who discovered San Francisco Bay, I nearly wet myself with joy. For those of you who dont know who Don Gaspar de Portola is, he was the man that my elementary school was named after. I went to PORT-OLA, portola school (If you haven't heard the song, Ill sing it for you sometime). Very exciting, trust me. After my teacher, Mrs. Rungee made the big reveal of who he really was, I clapped my hand over my mouth and gasped. I was so excited for my friend Emilie Williams to find out too! I knew she would be just as excited as I was. When I got to tell her we both screamed for joy! Best day of our lives.  


Portola was one of the most ghetto/awesome elementary schools you could go to. We were only allowed to go to the bathroom like once a day. And you didn't want to go in the bathroom anyways because it was scary. NO one ever went in there. We also, had all of these red squares on the asphalt, and if you were naughty, you were sent to a red square and had to stand on it for the rest of recess, while every else around you could run, and laugh and play. It was like being banished. And every time the bell rang to go back to class, mrs lowman (with that big wart on her cheek) yelled "FREEZE!" and you had to pretend you were frozen until she told you that you could move again. OH! And Mr. Beitey our science teacher (I before e, except after c, and also in mr. BEITEY, another great song), who made us do all of these inhumane science projects, like dissecting a squid, and than frying it up, and having us eat it. It was the best. 

Arachnophobia

Satans Pets

Since we moved into our cute little house about 3 months ago, we have had 7, I repeat 7 different spiders encounters in our house. At first, we thought they were coming from our attic, because we found the first few spiders around that general area. We thought we could outsmart them, and took some defensive measures. We bought a foam insulating spray and sprayed it in just about every crack and crevice of our house, and sealed off our attic entirely. TRY TO GET THROUGH THAT little demons! But they did. Oh, they did. Since then, we have had 2 show up in our bedroom, one in the window while I was taking a shower (gasp! little pervert), and one by the garbage can in the kitchen.

                The most recent encounter happened when Jesse’s brother Schuylar was over. I was trying to nonchalantly pick up our kitchen, and I spotted this little red bean on the floor by the garbage can. I went to throw it away, and all the sudden it sprouted legs started to move. WAIT, not a bean!! I screamed and did a little hi-ya! Kick in the air, and ran out of the room. Jesse, who is supposed to be my fearless spider killer, is no better than I am, and ran away the moment he saw it. Both of us huddled in the corner together and muttered to ourselves, while schuylar killed and laughed at us for being the biggest babies ever. We’re so lucky that he was there. Haha.

                I learned the true evil nature of spiders while I was in high school. I remember driving to church one Sunday, and out of thin air a spider crawled out from inside my steering wheel. It was like it was waiting there all night for me. In that moment I totally forgot that I was driving, and my entire focus was devoted to 4 pairs of small beady eyes. The spider and I seemed to just stare at each other for like ten seconds. My heart was racing like you wouldn’t believe. I could tell just by looking at it that it was evil. And it seemed to be able to tell that I was a weakling, so it decided to attack. The spider jumped in the air towards me and landed on the lower part of the steering wheel where my hands were. I let go of the steering wheel for a sec, and then had to reangle my hands, into a very awkward position so that it wouldn’t touch me. It seemed to realize that it could overpower me, and it attacked again. It again jumped into the air and landed right between my legs, which had nothing to protect them, because I was of course wearing a SKIRT. That’s when I lost it. I was screaming in utter horror, and arrived at the church parking lot looking like someone who had gone mad!!! I honestly don’t know how I even made it to church, because I don’t remember ever looking at the road when I was driving. In the chaos, I somehow managed to swipe the little demon to the ground and stomp on it. Luckily none of the people arriving at church seemed to notice the meltdown happening inside of my car, it would have been quite the show!

Sew sweet!

So here's the skinny: I have the best husband everrrrr. What did he do this time you ask? Excellent question. It happened Last thursday night. I was standing in my parents kitchen not paying attention to the world around me, deep in thought about a project I was working on. (All of this nonsense was going on in my head like what font should I use on this canvas and blah blah blah) Serious La la land. I was responding on average to about 1 out of every 10 things Jesse said to me, haha, poor guy. Jesse took advantage of that moment to place a huge package on the kitchen table without my notice. I had my back to the table, so imagine my shock when Jesse forces me to turn around and behold a package in the exact shape and size of a sewing machine. I didnt even have to open it, It had sewing machine written all over it. The cute excited look on his face, and the fact that I was going to a quilt retreat the next morning told me so. SO unexpected. I wanted one pretty bad, ill be honest, but I didn't want him to know. It was a perfect little Janome machine, for those of you who speak quilt.

I honestly thought that it would be about 10 years before I'd have enough saved, to let myeslf  buy a sewing machine. Im pretty tight fisted when it comes to money. We set a budget this year for our birthdays to be around 10 dollars each haha. We bought a tv this year, and that was going to be our gift to each other. As we made that little pact, and looked into each others eyes, I should have known he was just saying that to humor me haha. Jesse, you see, cant ever help himself when it comes to spoiling me. He just loves to surprise me. I dont deserve him, he is just such a sweetheart by nature. Every year he goes all out. One year he actually made me a quilt. What man do you know does that? Jesse does. I dont know how I got so lucky. Not because he spends money on me, but because he tries so hard to make me happy. I seriously LOVE HIM!!!!!!!

Love you!

I've gotta take a second to brag about my husband, because he is really worth bragging about. A lot of people probably dont know how sweet and thoughtful Jesse really is to me.

Last night I came home from work feeling a bit nausious and thinking it had something to do with my lunch. I ate a cup of noodles and a drink for an impressive $1.44. I was pretty proud of that, but it wasn't very filling for a 9 hour time period. I realized towards the end of my shift I should have ate more. I called Jesse on my way home from work, and he said he had already made dinner for me, and I was so grateful. He makes dinner for me more times than I should admit. He knows I get home from work so tired, and more often than not, i find a plate of food waiting for me at home. He loves to surprise me, its so sweet.

I started to feel a lot worse around 8:30 and I knew I had to throw up to feel better. Throwing up is one of my least favorite things to do, and in an effort to thwart that, I just curled into a ball on the couch and moaned like a big cry baby. My husband just held me there, put my hair back, and kept telling me how sorry he was. He kept asking me what he could get me. He gave me some chapstick and went in the bathroom and made a hot bath for me. He kept offering to get me things, and basically stayed up the whole night comforting me. Like literally the whole night, even when I was throwing up, he just held my hair back and told me he was sorry still. At midnight he went to the store and got me some pepto-bismal, some coke and seven up. I dont really know why he thought he had to do that, but he always does stuff like that. Even though he had a long stressful day that day, and had like a million projects to do and tests to take. And that is why you are the best husband Jesse Finley! I love you!!

Memories from when I was a kid pt.1

I guess I must have had a pretty great childhood because Im always telling my husband stories from back when I was a kid. I looked at life so much different back then, I think I was a pretty happy kid. Things were so simple. I also was a very very very weird kid growing up, its a wonder that I had any friends haha. And that's what makes the memories so great, because I dont even understand why I was the way that I was.

In junior high, I entered what was probably the most awkward phase in my life, or anyone's life really. I had glasses, braces, a stick skinny body like an ethiopian, and my best friend had an afro. Oh and I was in the band, which funnily enough I did to impress a boy, haha. That didn't really work out. I was so blissfully unaware of my nerdiness. I thought that I had it going on back then! haha. And then I look back on pictures from then, and I am grossed out beyond all belief. There are some so bad that I have started collecting them in a secret pile that no one will ever be able to see again.

Another very awkward thing that I did at that age happened when the Bishop of my ward called me into his office one sunday afternoon. He pulled me into the room, sat me down, and said, "Now Caitlin, after praying carefully about this, your young women's leaders would like to call you to be the Beehive President". Immediately I was on my feet yelling "YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!" I am not exaggerating, like at all. In fact, im probably under exaggerating. I probably did like a victory dance for him, because, I thought that if you were called to be the beehive, or mia maids, or laurel president, it meant that you were "the best". haha. I remember my bishop was actually totally laughing, im sure out of bewilderment that I would be so thrilled about this. He even told my mom about it, and she couldn't believe it.

Anyways, one of the stories I told Jesse the other day, was when my dad was training me how to ride a bike, I was like five years old on training wheels. I was making little circles in my col-de sac, and some how I ended up falling off my bike. It was very traumatic for me, I scraped my knee and even bled a little. But I thought it was the end of the world. I turned to my dad and yelled: IM NEVER GOING TO FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS! and ran inside! hahaha. Like it was all his fault. Poor guy. I didn't legitimatly learn how to ride a bike until I was like ten, which was my deepest darkest secret that I kept from all of my friends. My sister lauren, who's 4 1/2 years younger than me learned on the same day I think. ha! That just gives you a little perspective to how uncoordinated I really am. I sware I have different genes from the rest of my family.  My older brother got some award for being one of the top three most athletic males in his high school! What a blow! :)

The Old Funnybone

Hello folks. Its time for an embaressing story for all of you eager (joke) listeners about my not-so-funny "funny bone". Am I the only person in the world that has hit their funny bone and thought: AM I going to DIE!? Well let me tell you, today I thought I was being visited by death itself after I hit it the ole funnybone on this metal machine at work that we like to call "the baler".


Only two, or three times in my life have I hit it on this very death spot, and everytime I do, I start to have some sort of melt down.

I didn't even hit it that hard, but my body like freaked out. The first couple of seconds I was fine. I thought wow, what a relief that I didn't hit it where it really hurts. Then all of the sudden, Im making faces, and yelling ahhh! (like for reals) and I had to stumble over to a couple of boxes, and put my head between my legs. No one was there to witness any of this, which is kind of a shame because I bet it would have been HILARIOUS. (Last time I injured myself at work by trying to slide a giant ladder under a beam and instead slamming my face into said ladder that slammed into the beam- no one saw that either) These moments of humiliation are meant to be shared, in my opinion. Im always jipped.

Anyways next thing I know, Im staggering myself to the break room like a big drunk person. A thought crosses my mind that I wish I could faint haha. I could feel my face draining of all its color. As soon as I made it into the break room, this girl is watching me as I walk to the nearest chair, and I wondered if she's thinking wow there's something seriously wrong with that chick- aka me. I started feeling nauseous, and I was thinking should I just go on my lunch break 3 hours early and sit this next hour out? As soon as I layed my head down for about two minutes and close my eyes, I felt like the world was dead to me, and I didnt care if I looked stupid.  3 minutes later I realized I was totally fine. It usually only takes about 5 minutes for recovery from hitting the old funny bone, but what a freak show!

Serg-u-man!

You will all will be happy to know that jesse and I have finally stepped up our game in the kitchen, from the everyday frozen burritos, to actual cooking. This was a major milestone that for us. We can actually pretend that we like to cook, so that we will be accepted by society now.

Todays meal: Homeade creamy chicken taquitos, compliments of our new favorite cooking blog: Our Best Bites. Jesse was so excited about it, he made me stop before putting any food in my mouth so that we could time it and eat our first bite together. The look on his face was priceless. I heart you jesse. I could tell he was actually a little disappointed, he thought it was going to make his brain explode from sheer goodness, and it fell short of that. But we still gave ourselves a pat on the back for the effort. Good for us for being little chefs. And when I say we, I mean jesse, but I congratulated myself anyways.

The best part was what happened after the meal. I got a sharp piece of food stuck in the back of my throat that was hurting like the dickens! It just kept stabbing me everytime I swallowed. I tried to identify it with my finger, and each time I did I started gagging. Jesse was laughing at me. Rude. :) I told him its stuck in this weird pocket kind of on the side of my mouth. And he was like, ahh yes, I know right where that is (huh?), let me get that for you. In my head I was like dear heavens! But my little self couldn't take any more gagging, so I let him take the plunge. He pulled it out with his little finger in a split second like a pro. We were both so proud. He said, "IM the MAN!" Then I whipped right back and said "How can I be the man, if your the man!" (Inside joke), at the same time jesse was trying to say I'm like a surgeon! but it came out, Im like a surg-u-man! He got distracted by what I was saying half way through his sentence and just copied what I was saying. I laughed so hard. For the rest of the night I kept getting reminded of it, and I would start laughing again, surg-u-man. Priceless