Nightmare

I think we can all agree that I'm a bit of a spazz. I had a nightmare this morning. I tossed and turned stressed out about the dream I was having but couldn't bring myself to wake up from it because I, 1) wanted to see what was going to happen and 2) wanted to keep sleeping through the howling wind and ringing wind chimes the neighbors have. (I knew if I woke myself up I wouldn't get back to sleep and I had stayed up too late last night watching Women's Figure Skating.)

So why was I stressed about the dream? I dreamt I was getting married but there were two major problems.

Problem #1. I wasn't getting married in the temple. I was getting married in a carpeted LDS church cultural hall.
Problem #2. I didn't know who I was getting married to.

Now you see where the nightmare begins. So I show up to the church and receive a cold reception from my family. My parents are fake happy, giving me hugs and so are my friends. I don't even know if my sisters are there. My parents have tears in their eyes. I see sitting in the audience all the boys I ever liked. And they're all sitting with their wives. The wedding felt more like a funeral than the happy, joyous occasion it should be. I feel anxious and sad.

Next thing I know (because it's a dream and they change really fast without explanation), I'm married but I still don't know who my new husband is. Everyone is sitting around in a big circle in the cultural hall and ignoring the fact that I'm married. I'm avoiding the room trying to find anywhere to go but in there. I'm stressed out and confused and sad. I finally come back to where everyone is because I have to know who my husband is. When I get in there, there are two empty metal folding church chairs set up next to each other. I come in and say, "Where is my husband?" Next thing I know, an old man (like 60 or something) gets up and walks over to the chairs and sits down. He motions for me to sit next to him. And I knew then that he was my husband.

(Cue screaming)

I woke up to my alarm, feeling sick to my stomach, relieved that it was only a dream, but still agitated. I laid in bed for a bit, breathed and got up and in the shower.

Though even now as I think of this ridiculous dream it still gives me anxiety. Why couldn't I have had a crazy dream like my roommate Katie who sold pot to Shaun White? That would have been a lot more interesting, and less stressful!

I got another mission story for you...

My sister Jess gets home from her mission April 14th and I get to go out to Oregon for a couple days after she gets back with my parents from Malaysia! Hooray! I'm so excited I keep thinking it's already March and have to stop and realize it's still February! (Luckily it's a short month!) Anyway, in Jess' letter this week she talks about Elder Nelson coming to East Malaysia where she's serving. She got to go down to the first city she served in where the conference was being held. This brought back a memory of Elder Holland coming to my mission in Poland.

I was serving in Warsaw at the time which meant that I got to go to both the meeting for the missionaries with Elder Holland, but if I had an investigator come, we got to go to the member meeting too. Two of our favorite investigators came: Kasia and Zbyszek (though two Elders asked if they could sit with us and our investigators since their investigator didn't come but they wanted to stay for the meeting and they didn't want to get in trouble for being there without an investigator, so they "borrowed" one of ours and I agreed because I felt bad for them).

Anyway, Zbyszek really liked us. He loved having us over. We always got fruit tea or some kind of compote when we visited. We had met him because I wanted to tract the street the American Branch President lived on in hopes that we could get to know them and maybe they would invite us in for dinner or something fantastic like that. (Oh the things you do when you never get dinner appointments or invitations to visit by members.) Actually, I really liked the name of the street: ul. Truskawska, or as I liked to call it by it's English name for some reason- actually, I probably thought it was funny- Strawberry Street. Well, we didn't know where the Branch President lived and if they had been home and we had found them, we never would have met Zbyszek. After ringing his gate bell and yelling from the street to the door (we were separated by a short brick wall, a gate and a small yard), Zbyszek realized that we weren't "JDubbs" and he talked to us for a while, still from door to sidewalk, but asked us back the next day.

Fast forward a few weeks Elder Holland is coming, Zbyszek has been making progress. We invite him to come and tell him it's a big deal. Zbyszek shows up all the way up in North Warsaw from his house down in South Warsaw (it was probably a pretty long drive, I know it took about an hour by public transportation so it was probably about 45 min for him). He wore a sport coat that was a too small to fit over his big belly. He joked about how long it had been since he wore it and that he had definitely gotten fat.

So today, as I read Jess' letter about Elder Nelson coming to visit, I couldn't help think of Zbyszek standing outside the chapel in Warsaw wearing his navy sport jacket with the gold buttons that was clearly tight on him, and remember the overwhelming happiness I felt seeing him there and seeing him in his jacket and knowing he took what we said seriously.

And clearly Poland missionaries get excited about the simplest things!

(PS: I know I already posted the picture HERE. Zbyszek is one of my favorite people I met in Poland. And, an unfortunate side note about him, I was transferred to Bydgoszcz and he stopped meeting with the missionaries shortly after. He didn't like the idea of paying tithing...)

Toast

The last two mornings at work I've walked past a cluster of desks and smelled toast. And it smelled delicious!

I love toast. I love toast with butter. I love toast with jam. I love peanut butter toast; nutella toast; and peanut butter and jelly sandwich toast. I like toast dipped in hot chocolate or soup. I like french toast (although different, it's still technically toast).

Toast makes me think of my month spent in the United Kingdom with my sister and cousins in May 2005.

left to right:
me, I look like a mom in this picture;
cousin Ashley who got married in December;
sister Jess who gets home from her mission April 14;
and cousin Olivia who is having a baby in July and to whom I will be godmother (right Liv??)
--you wanted all that extra info didn't you?

We went with BYU-Idaho's British Literary Tour. It was fun to do that trip together. We were all known as "the cousins".

But, what do toast and our trip have in common? LOTS!

Every morning we ate toast. Lots and lots and lots of toast. I remember Liv mmm-ing and saying, "I LOVE TOAST!" frequently. The toast accompanied our full English Breakfasts (eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans-yep, baked beans for breakfast, hash browns, and black pudding-although that only came at one hotel somewhere in the middle of Ireland and once we found out it was made with blood we were not eating it). I don't always have flashbacks to our trip when I smell toast, but for some reason both yesterday and today I thought of toast and breakfasts in Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh, and our bus rides through the British countryside as I walked through the maze of cubicles in my office.

(Thank you Country Living for the picture of toast. And yay for me for having the cousin's picture at my desk so I could scan it in for blog adornment!)

Girl crush

I loved Torah Bright (middle) when I saw her cute smile after she fell on her first run in the Women's Halfpipe on Wednesday.

And I was happy for her when she won gold despite not being an American.

So, because I liked her so much I started doing a little research. Read this article. And found out she's Mormon.

Now I have a total girl crush and want to be her friend.

Isn't she just so cute? She has such a happy smile and she's a good example of our church. I love that so much!

You can read more about her HERE.

(Picture borrowed from NY Daily News.)

Deal breaker

"Sister missionaries talk about their missions way more than elders."
-Whispered the good-looking guy in front of me in during sacrament meeting while a sister who just got home from her mission described an experience she had had

I know I'm biased.

I know I talk about my mission a lot.

I can't help it! I have two sisters out! I get their emails twice a week. I email them the night before their P-day too. I'm thinking about "my missionaries" four out of seven days a week. I can't help it.

Really.

I read a funny blog post about deal-breakers today. And was asked by a friend what a deal-breaker for me would be.

A Lauren Kay Deal-breaker:
Someone who generalizes sister missionaries in a negative way.
Or, "sister-haters".
Or, someone who thinks girls shouldn't serve missions.

For me, that's a BIG time deal breaker. And practically unforgivable.

You know why? Because I love my mission. I didn't always have the fondest feelings for it, but I love my mission and I realize I always have. It means a lot to me and I don't want to feel belittled or demeaned because I gave up that time in my life to do something I truly believe in.

And, I can tell you now that I probably will not be friends with the cute boy who sat in front of me during church.
(Even if he did have glasses and attractive scruff and a nice colored gray suit.)
It's still a deal-breaker and left a bad impression.

Cabin fever

I'm finally going back to work tomorrow. Last time I was at work was last Friday. It's been a whole week! And, I have a three day weekend too! Sounds pretty posh. But, I'm ready for a little more structure in my day so this is good.

What did I do today?

1. cleaned my room really good-- it now NEEDS that chaise for the corner
2. shoveled the trash cans out so the garbage man can get them tomorrow
3. made the driveway opening wider so my roommate can get her car out, luckily a LOT of work was done before us
4. watched Law and Order--I just like that show

My new roommate Rebecca is a photographer and took some really pretty pictures yesterday. Check them out HERE. (P.S. Those are my galoshes in the picture. They look so cute!)

Enough snow already!

Done:

Shoveling followed by Sense and Sensibility (Part 3, Parts 1 & 2 were watched last night)

To-do:
Build a snowman

Snow Day Number 3!