I know I’m not the only one who leaves town for two weeks and comes home to this.

Right?

“OH! But it’s just an exercise bike and a weight bench!” you say.

Yes, it is an exercise bike and weight bench.

Hanging.

From.

My.

Ceiling. (and walls.)

And in case your worried about coming to my house and having an exercise bike fall from the sky and render you unconscious, don’t worry, it’s being held in by SIX BOLTS AND A CHAIN.

After seven years I’ve come to expect nothing less.

I’m so in love with someone so unbelievably odd.

********

I guess I should explain the stuff hanging on the walls…it kind of explains why I’m not peeved about it.

Whilst I was gone he found a big cherry wood desk on CraigsList for $100. (a $1500 desk mind you.)

The desk is so huge it took over where the fancy “home gym” used to reside. It also left six enormous holes in my walls and knocked out a door jamb. *sigh*

He got it so that he could come home at night and have a place to be with his “girls” when he studies.

So instead of him being at school from 6am to midnight I get to have him home a few extra hours and in exchange I get to have sporting goods on my wall. Both of which he can reach quite easily (my baby is all kinds of strong) and uses regularly. And yes, this really was the last (not necessarily logical) place to put the stuff.

Did I mention I married a packrat? Because I totally did, despite trying to beat it out of him for the last seven years the pack rat has clung on tight and refuses to die.

Kevin Bacon is married to Kyra Sedgwick.

Kyra Sedgewick was in Phenomenon with John Travolta.

John Travolta was in Hairspray with Zac Efron.

Zac Efron was in High School Musical with Tyler.

Recognize him? He’s on the geek squad with Taylor.

Tyler is my dad’s neighbor. We used to play together all the time.

And this is how we play six degrees of Kevin Bacon ending with (starting with?) me.

That, and High School Musical was filmed at my high school.

In Salt Lake, not in Albuquerque.

One more reason Hollywood is to never be believed. Anyway.

If you have a child in the house you’ve most likely seen this movie and if you’ve seen this movie chances are you’ve seen it more than once. It’s addictive like that. It just so happens I had an errand to run at my old Alma Mater and I took my trusty camera along to show you how Hollywood can turn a place that was a nightmare to me into a dream for the tween set.

The entryway, where everyone found out about Troy and Gabriella getting a callback.

Sharpay’s locker, I wish they would have kept it pink.

The commons. Better known as the place where everyone busts a groove and dances on the tables in perfect synchronization completely out of the blue. Just like when I went to East. I do love musicals.

This hallway was only in the movie for a second. But it needs to be shown for I believe it to be a form of teenage torture.

I’m not even taking this from the end of the hallway, this is about 3/4 of the way down. The school is four levels and three of the four hallways are this long. And as fate would have it I would somehow end up with classes on the second and fourth floors at opposite ends of the school every other period. Have I mentioned that high school was not my most glorious of years?

So there you go. You can tell your kids you know a lady who WENT! to EHS. A real live WILDCAT! (P.S. Hollywood, we were the Leopards, Wildcat is kinda lame.) And I’m even willing to sell my last honest to goodness EHS shirt to the highest bidder. That, or you could go into the Disney Store and buy a brand spanking new replica. Needless to say I don’t rock my EHS shirt in Indiana, I look too much like a Troy groupie.

When Cody and I moved across the driveway of our first apartment into the one next door there was a morning where the food was in one apartment and the dishes were at the other. I was eight months pregnant and still vomiting quite regularly. I needed to eat within a half hour of waking up or my vomiting would get even worse.

Ah, pregnancy.

On this particular morning Cody woke me up and took me to IHOP immediately to feed me. I ordered some sort of pancake or french toast with no frills and Cody ordered some enormous plate of meat, cheese and eggs. My breakfast came with eggs also, but the very thought of eating an egg, even ordering an egg made me ill. Cody ordered for me and had my eggs poached so that he could eat them himself.

Fine.

Now if you’ve been to IHOP then you’re probably aware of the syrup caddy on the table, four different kinds of syrup for your enjoyment. When Cody got the poached eggs he picked up a syrup bottle, poured in ON THE EGGS and stirred them into a lumpy yolky syrup soup which he ate with a spoon.

A. Gross

B. When your wife is still violently ill eight months pregnant and dry heaves at the thought of cantaloupe, THIS IS EVEN MORE GROSS.

Thus began the great egg/syrup debate of the moosh family. I cannot, CANNOT, let syrup touch my eggs. Cody pours it on his eggs. My in laws don’t mind if eggs and syrup touch and I have a friend who won’t even eat them in the same meal.

So who’s the majority? Who’s the minority?

Eggs and syrup are one edible issue I have strong opinions on.

That and vegetables masquerading as dessert (I’m looking at you sweet potatoes.). But that’s an entirely different post.

 This post was inspired by a tag I got weeks ago from Not A Mean Girl.

Until I moved to Indiana I had lived in five different houses all within the same five mile radius. Crazy right? It’s not like Salt Lake is an itsy bitsy little city.

This is the house I grew up in. My dad did a lot of the work on it and I had four doors and two light switches in my bedroom, I always thought that was so strange. I miss this house, to see the disrepair it has fallen into breaks my heart. I would buy it and renovate it in a heartbeat if I had the chance.

Next is the house we moved into my sophomore year of high school. It was on this mountain.

I had to look at this everyday when I drove home.

Is anyone beginning to see why I’m having such a hard time with the Midwest? Okay, the house.

Not much to look at right? But wait until you see the view I had to look at every morning.

This picture doesn’t even to  it justice.  When I left home in a fit of rage at 17 I ended up living at the seediest little apartment in the history of seedy apartments. My neighbors sold drugs, the ones below us had eight kids in two bedrooms and a couple of them even slept in their stolen U-Haul when the weather was nice. The other neighbors just ate a lot of “special” brownies and handed them out liberally to all the neighbors. Oh little brothel, so many memories.

Mine was the upper left unit.  When my sentence at the brothel was complete I moved in with my sister and her three (boy) roommates.

I had to share a bathroom with two boys here. Eww. There was also an impressive collection of Playboy to the right of the couch. And several dogs, and a cat or two. Good times. This is the place I was living when Cody came into my life. Well, it’s the place I should have been living. Cody and I had an awful lot of sleepovers. (SORRY IN LAWS!)

Enter the newlywed shoebox apartment.

This is the shoebox apartment I found out I was pregnant in, the one I overdosed in and the one we could never manage to keep clean. Since I was going to be staying home with the moosh after she was born we moved to a smaller and much cheaper apartment next door. Literally, next door.

That is the apartment I went into labor in. It is also the one  where we shared a room with the moosh for the first six months of her life only because there was no where else to put her. I loved this apartment. All 400 sq. ft. of it. It was sunny and cozy and charming and where we started to feel like a family. Everything I could have ever wanted or anywhere I needed to go was within a ten minute walk of my front door. This was heaven sent for a new mom. I miss this about my old ‘hood.

And now I live in Indiana. Flat, flat Indiana.

But I have good news. I’m getting turned around in Utah. I find myself wanting to go to stores that are only in Indiana. I’ve forgotten about things that are in Utah. Is this good news? I don’t know. Maybe. I know I’m going to cry when I watch the mountains fade into the distance when we leave in a week, but maybe this time I won’t cry when we land in Indiana.

I have been staying with a family for the past few days whom I’ve known for a couple of years. They have three of the most well behaved teenage daughters I have ever come across. I’ve been able to help them with their homework over the past few days and it’s coming back to me so fast how much I loved algebra and Shakespeare.

I didn’t just love them either, I was good at them. Grade A bookworm dork who loved school. And Shakespeare.

I have a whole other reason to go back to school and to keep learning. Somewhere in twelve or fifteen years the moosh is going to come to me with Othello confused. Or biology. Or anatomy. Or calculus. Or quantum physics.

I don’t want to be confused too.

Right now it may be all about the ABC’s, but before I know it those ABC’s are going to turn into (a+b)-c=x.

I want to be ready.

******

What have you forgotten you’re good at?

Say hello to the Dentist and Attorneys of the class of 2008.

(Except for the really pregnant one and the one with me, they’re the attorneys of the class of 2009. *grumble* one more year *grumble*)

We all went out to treat ourselves to fancy dinner before heading off to different corners of the Nation to become grownups. (snicker) Our reservation was at what I think is the most famous steakhouse in Indiana. Imagine our surprise when they led us down into the basement to our private table in the wine cellar.

We’re all Mormon. None of us drink. Instead of giddy anticipation we were all overcome with a general sense of confusion at our surroundings. Me being the not wine drinker that I am badgered our waiter with all sorts of wine related questions (after I ordered a Coke of course)

“What’s the oldest bottle in here?” I asked

“That would be the 1902 blah blah something in French blah blah over here that sells for $8,500.”

Folks, that right there is a bottle of hundred and five year old wine that is worth half a semester of Law School.

Then I learned about the limited edition bottle of champagne that is promised to the owner of the Dallas Cowboys if it doesn’t sell by January 2009. It was only $8,000. And it came with a fancy box. That locked.

Then came the menu. The hunks of beef at this place weren’t cheap. BUT WHOO, they were good. (Sorry PETA)

I had prime rib. I had 32 oz. of prime rib. I ate 1/60th of my weight in cow.

Does anybody know about the legend of the tomato juice? No?

Well supposedly steak houses at the turn of the century would serve you a glass of tomato juice as an palate cleanser and to aid in digestion. The tomato juice supposedly helps your body digest steak. Did I say supposedly? IT TOTALLY DOES. Someone my size who is used to eating string cheese and Cheetos should have been miserable after that much cow. But I felt just dandy. Even Cody, the self proclaimed meat eating champion of 2000 couldn’t even keep up with me.

If I was anemic before Saturday night, I guarantee I’m not anymore.

So that was our dinner.

I’d be letting you down if I didn’t tell you what the server’s face looked like when he realized that the enormous table IN THE WINE CELLAR ordered nothing but water, Coke and lemonade.

It was somewhere between a kid who got coal in his stocking on Christmas and someone who’d just been told his Pony Christol had died.