It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times...but mostly the Best.

Okay, so, I'm home sick AGAIN. I swear, getting married made my one-time fabulous immune system go flush itself down the toilet. Very un-fabulous. 

So I've been lying in bed not knowing whether I'm going to throw up or not, thinking about all the millions of things that I will have to accomplish in the next three weeks, and realizing that four-hundred-thirty-two hours is NOT enough time for it to be accomplished and still leave room for eating, sleeping, and talking to my husband. (Because he needs to be talked to on occasion. :) I love you, Michael ). In summary, having a very intensified, stress-inducing pity-party. 

So then I decided to read some more Mama Day. It's a novel by Gloria Naylor--who is a fabulous author, might I say--wow, I'm really into the word fabulous today--which is kind of a rewrite of several of Shakespeare's plays together, though primarily the Tempest. We're reading it for my Shakespeare class because she sets the story on this little island in the Georgia sea that isn't a part of any state and is owned by a bunch of people whose ancestors had been slaves there. The idea is that we're learning about connections between Shakespeare and modern culture, but we're experiencing pleasure in reading. Very important. I'd almost forgotten what that was like. My Brit Lit professor even said just this last week that the English major was designed to make you hate reading. He was only mostly joking. 

So imagine my surprise when I totally got sucked in. I haven't done that in a billion billion years. Ask my mother--I used to be the girl that would pick up a book, any book, and you wouldnt' be able to even get her attention for an hour. I could be sitting on the couch in the room that everyone in my family frequents the most, and if I had a book that I loved, you could ask me who was home and I would have NO idea. Time used to be completely irrelevant to me, and now it's so regulated that I only read what I have to write a paper on, and it's always with some sort of question, like how does Prospero's control of Caliban reflect in today's post-colonial view of English empiricism? Or how does James Joyce's Gabriel from the Dubliners personify the turn-of-the-century modernist point of view of being tired of the Victorian purpose of "progress"? It's okay, even I don't completely understand those questions. 

But I was reading, and thinking a lot of things. and I've decided that even though I'm sick all the time, my job is stressful, my schoolwork is draining me beyond all reason, and I'm more stretched than I ever have been before, President Eyring was right. It gets harder, but it gets better. So now I'm going to do something incredibly cliched and make a list of the things that make me happier than I ever have been before in my life. And you're going to have to listen. :)

• Michael. 
• Being able to be in complete control of my kitchen. Even when the breakfast dishes are still there when I go to make dinner, they're MY breakfast dishes. And my husband's...but that's the same thing. 
• Michael. 
• Going into the temple and hearing, "Welcome back, Sister Morgan" from the same lovely old man who checked my recommend the week before. 
• Michael.
• Making the bed. I've always been very fond of incredibly straight sheets and hotel corners. I'm not exactly pulling out the iron every morning, but I like it when the bed doesn't have any wrinkles. And bigger beds are even more satisfying :)
• Michael. 
• Having somebody else there who's slightly braver than I am about bugs that can fly and sting you. I can handle spiders, beetles, earwigs, whatever, but when it comes to hornets, wasps, and other nasty things like that, Michael is my knight in shining white armor. And he's had plenty of occasion to do it since we have a nest of wasps right outside the pipe that leads directly into our bathroom. Yeah, it's really fun to be caught naked in the same room as a giant yellow and black creeping thing that you can just tell is staring at you, wanting to sting you...
• When Michael and I meet someone, and he says, "this is my wife, Brittany." I know, I'm sounding all cheesy and stupid, but when he says my name, it sounds pretty. I KNOW Brittany is not that pretty of a name to say  (think about it, Brittany sounds like bugs and bubbling and bombastic--fun, but not pretty), but when Mike says it, I love it. 
• My yoga mats. They don't come out of the closet very often--because this semester is so ridiculously, disgustingly, horrifically busy--but I LOVE it when I get one out and do some Pilates or something. I'm not that flexible, but I feel more so after I stretch and such. And I'm a LOT more flexible than Mike, so it's a bit boost :)
• Being with my friends from the ward. We have the greatest ward ever. Even though everyone there is at a different stage in their life and marriage (there are newlyweds like us and people who almost have their graduate degrees and have three children) I have become so close to them, and I don't even know most of them very well. But a couple nights ago, they had an activity (which I couldn't get to because I have late classes on Wednesdays) and someone heart-attacked my door, and left the sweetest notes there for me. I loved it!
• Michael, especially when he smells like baby-lotion. :) He's not a desert-baby like I am, so he always feels rough and peely and dry. So we got some lotion, the kind that's super moisturizing and healing, the kind you leave by your sink to use after you rub your hands raw washing dishes. And he uses it religiously. He loves it. But I realized after he started using it, that it smells a lot like baby lotion. So now when I'm cuddling Mike, he smells yummy like babies. :)
• Reading crazy literary criticism and understanding it. Some of you may know, but I'm kind of huge into gender theory and some forms of feminist criticism. And when I can read those articles and understand and annotate them, I know there's hope for my career as an English major yet. :)
• Coming home from the store, school, organ class, relief society, whatever, and opening the door to Mike saying "yay! you're home!" and holding me really really tight. He's so warm and sweet, and I love it when he holds me. It makes me not want to go back to school. 

Sorry I had to spend so much time doing that. I just had to get some things out of my system. But life is really good.