The Super Sonic

For those of you who thought I would be posting about Sonic the Hedgehog (cute little feller, never could play the game) or Sonic the restaurant (Vanilla Dr. Pepper mmmmm), I am sorry to disappoint.

No instead this is a post devoted to my new toothbrush. That's right, a toothbrush. But not just any toothbrush. Mr. M has been having some dental problems and upon recommendation of his dental hygenist, we purchased the Sonicare a4100 with superior plaque removal, extra soft bristles, smart timer and patented sonic technology.

Well, I don't know if it will help him out, but I love this thing. I have only used it 3 times and my teeth are whiter then they have ever been (and have done numerous teeth bleaching kits). When I floss after brushing, there is nothing to get out between my teeth. Did I mention my teeth are white? Do you people know that I live on tea, Dr. Pepper, and coffee in that order? Have you any idea how embarrassed I was all through high school about my yellow teeth (before I lived on tea, Dr. Pepper and coffee)? And now after 3 uses of this magical machine, I am tempted to try out to be a tooth model.

I was just lamenting to Lonnie last night as we brushed our teeth (excuse me, sonicared our teeth) that it was to bad I had already bought a toothbrush holder since we don't need it anymore. But He kindly pointed out that it was cheap to begin with and he needed a place to store his gum cleaner. I guess it wasn't a total waste of money.

Wedding Pics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did I mention my wedding pictures? I have to say that I really love these pictures, Brooks and Leighanne did a fabulous job! Here is the web site: http://www.deborahandlonnie.com

Watch the slideshow first, then look through the rest of the pictures. To get into the rest of the pictures, you will have to put in a password. It is: deborah+lonnie.

I am so excited that you all get to see them! I hope you enjoy!

Please don't bite me!

In this town there is a weekly publication called "The Mountain Trader." This is where the local folk advertise such things as cars, land, couches, snowblowers, firewood, used spas, fill dirt, cinnamon rolls, amps, postal jobs, jogging stroller, prom dresses, butcher pigs, colonics (yes, it is what it sounds like), bread machines, welding, fresh honey, and well, you get the idea. It makes for very interesting reading if you have the time. http://www.mountaintrader.biz/

Well, I saw some dressers in there that I thought maybe I would buy. They were only $75. So I call up the number and find out that the lady works night and will give me a call back. Turns out that she is a bartender. So she gives me directions to come out and take a look at the dressers. The address is 527 ____. So I make my way to BFE and the place is getting scarier and scarier. See I have been trailer parks before, but these are ones that people donated for tax purposes, I think. I find the street and find 533 and right next to it is 519. Hmmm, I pull out my trusty cell phone and give the woman a call. I have to go down an ally and there is 521 and 529. (I am still not sure where 525 is. If I go between both 521 and 529 shacks, I come to 527 1/2. That is really the address on their trailer! 10 feet further down I finally find 527.

As I attempt to park my car (except there really aren't parking places) a large German Shepard comes bounding out to greet me. His tail is not wagging and I wait a few moments in anxious expectation that another human of some sort will come out and call off the dog. No such luck. So I proceed to open my door and make my way to the house(?). The lady comes out and shows me into a shed where she has the dressers except they look to big to fit in our bedroom, and the bottoms are not even real wood. Meanwhile the large German Shepard is breathing down my pant leg the entire time. I tell the woman that I will go home and measure my room and attempt to get out of the situation as quickly as possible without being rude. This is the recorded attempt of me trying to use The Mountain Trader to find a deal.

Arrrg to Sofa Mart!

About 3 and a half weeks ago, Mr. M and I ordered a red sofa from Sofa Mart. Last week it got to the store, but since they only make deliveries to Kalispell on Tuesdays and they didn't have room on the truck last week. So we wait another week for our couch to arrive.

Yesterday was the big day. The red couch came and the two moron delivery men couldn't even get the couch in the door. They didn't even try to take our door off the hinges to get the couch in! In the process they tracked mud over my new rug, got dirt on the couch cushions and scraped paint on the frame of the couch. And then decided that they couldn't get the couch in the door!

I spoke with a manager today and he was upset with his delivery men, especially after I told him they didn't take the door off the hinges. So kind of him to offer to order a new couch (3 more weeks) and not charge us again! Aren't they generous?

One Month

We have been Mr. and Mrs. for exactly one month today. I got my wedding pictures last night (to be posted on this website soon) and thought that it seemed like a lifetime ago. It was sunny and warm in Texas when I got married. It got up to 30 degrees today.

But overall, I am very pleased with married life. It has been just lovely. I highly recommend it if your husband is at all like Lonnie. He is a most wonderful husband. It is even worth moving to Montana for him.

I Spoke to Soon

A few days ago, my lovely mother asked me about the cold weather up here and how I am handling it. "Oh, it's really not to bad, it get up to the 30 or 40s most every day, I just dress warmly, we have a good heater, la, la, la. Well, it was true at the time.

Yesterday I woke up to the radio saying that it was 6 degrees outside and our thermometer on the porch said 0 degrees. In a moment of being a total wimp, I tell my husband to just take the car to work, I will not venture forth on this cold morning. He does and is very non-critical of my aforementioned wimpyness.

Today it is -16. Yeah, that's a negative sign. I decided to get over my Southern wimpyness and attempt to function in this land I live in. So I got up and put on numerous layers and drove my husband to work (stopping to pick up his co-worker who's car won't start) and will run errands this afternoon, even if my nose hairs freeze within seconds of stepping outside.

I don't understand how you have a normal life in this weather. School is still on today. So you let your kid wait outside for the bus in this weather? Isn't that close to child abuse? What do you do with kids in this kind of weather. I remember playing outside in the winter and we would huddle around the dryer vent and it was nowhere this cold. When I have a job, I am really going to have to function and not huddle in my condo all day. Grocery shopping is a huge ordeal for me that I make my husband go with me. Little things in life just seem like so much more work then they should be.

Where is the Drama?

I was thinking the other day about my life and how it seems so uhh, hmmm, well, regular. It got me thinking, but why? What is so different about this stage of life? Then it hit me. Most of my friends are married. Why should that matter? Well, let me remind you the ever pressing questions going through young women's heads. Who will wind up with who? Will she dump that jerk? Will the blind date work out? Will he get her flowers for her birthday? Will he propose (and will it be a good ring)? Will I be needed for the next two hours to help my friend sort out the remains of her life? What kind of bridesmaids dress will she make me wear? Does he like me, or is he just nice? Do I like him? I don't know,should I? Aggg, my feelings are all over the place!!!!! You get the idea.

Yeah, so my friends all marry nice, wonderful guys who treat them right and I couldn't be happier for them. But all the anxious drama is gone. It explains why my mom's friends were always so interested in my life, drama.

Not that there isn't still drama, but it isn't the fun kind. Even when your best friend's heart is broken, everyone knows at some level that it will be OK. She will recover, she will move on, and she will find a wonderful man (and marry him in 9 months). Now the drama is parent's dying, crappy jobs, crappy grad school and such things like that. Not the fun drama. The question of who my friends will marry and how it will happen, are for the most part answered.

I did get some beautiful yellow roses for Valentine's Day (does my honey know his Texas wife or what?) Really wish I had not lost my camera so I could take pictures for you all. Kind of strange celebrating Valentine's Day as a married woman. See I know my hubby likes me and we want to do something special together. No pressure, no is this to much? Nice and relaxed, no drama. But I like it that way.

Some have a milk man....

Background: my poor husband started vomiting at work so I had to go pick him up and drive him home in the backseat. That evening we are watching a movie in our bedroom.

Knock-Knock, I get out of bed to answer the door.

UPS man standing at the door: "You are on my bad list."

Me: "uhh, OK"

UPS man: "You have 14 boxes."

Me: "Wow! I didn't think they would all come at once."

UPS man: "I am going to bring them to the bottom of the stairs, but not up the stairs."

Me: "OK, fair enough"

I then drag my poor sick husband to help me drag the boxes up the stairs.


Next day: Knock- Knock

Me open door to find UPS man standing there with a package.

UPS man: "I feel like I should ask what's for dinner."

Me: "Do you want a Dr. Pepper?"

A Winter carnival (with a short treatise on childrearing)

First, a very happy birthday to my brother Calvin. He is home from Germany where he had been posted for 13 months.

This past weekend I went to a winter carnival in the town up the road. In honor of the Katrina victims their parade had a Mardi Gras theme. Picture this: I am standing on a patch of ice to see this small town parade and everyone is dressed up in Mardi Gras things over their winter coats. By the end of it I am wearing beads over my ski coat (no, I did not earn them). An especially memorable part of the parade would be some singing nuns called "the bad Habbits." I leave it to your own minds what they sung about.

In other news, we are still sleeping on an air mattress, but our real bed should be coming tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I appear to be fully over my UTI, yeah and I am popping the cranberry pills like a drug addict.

Last night, Mr M and I watched the movie "Radio." I had never seen it before. Quick summary, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a retarded guy and Ed Harris plays a football coach who takes an interest in him. One of my favorite actresses, Debra Winger, makes an appearance as well. Now I really enjoyed the movie, but it got me thinking about the way that people raise children.

Now I grew up in a neighborhood with some drug dealers and my brothers and I were very protective of each other and my brothers did not have a problem using fists. (Come to think of it, they still don't, but that is another story.) But all of us were also raised going to a nursing home every week and looking out for the weaker guy. When my brother, Calvin, was 7 and the best t-ball player on the team, he was adored by all the 5 year olds on the t-ball team. Calvin didn't think he was too cool for them, he encouraged them and played with them and helped them to became better ball players.

When my brother Paul was captain of the wrestling team in high school, he took an interest in the guys who weren't the best. Not only did he encourage them in wrestling, but life as well. He would get up extra early on Sundays and pick up Carl and take him to church and helped him with schoolwork.

When my family moved to Dallas, the church we attended has a woman (Mrs. Smith) in a wheelchair. My brothers and I didn't think anything about it and within the first 2 weeks, all three of us on our own had gone up and made her spoken to her without our parents saying anything about it. (We were all in junior high or younger).

But the real issue here is that this was all behavior that my parents encouraged. My mother later told me that she felt that she had succeed as a parent when Mrs. Smith told my mom that all 3 of us had gone up and spoken to her, and shown an interest in her without my parents saying a word. To paraphrase my mom, she knew a that point that all of us were caring. [Aside: yes, by becoming a nurse, I am not as nice as I once was, BUT I still do have a place in my heart for those truly in need, not the whinny drug abusers.]

Now to get back to the movie, there is a point when nine of the guys on the football team tie up the retarded kid and lock him in a shed. What horrified me about the scene was not that they did it (I do believe in total depravity), but that their parents would not see it as a big deal. That their parents were more concerned about them playing in games, GAMES, then they were about the moral development of their kids.

It horrifies me to walk though the malls of Dallas at times and see the parents with their children dressed to the hilt and hear the kids TELL the parents how they treated so and so at school that day. They have their kids volunteer at their favorite charity once a year and they got their lesson on kindness. Granted, this is a vast generalization, but when I have children, I hope to nurture a tender heart to those in need. Most people with the right help can raise a smart kid. But how many of us can raise a kind one?

Surreal Moment

Since I don't have anyone to talk to about this at the moment, I am posting it here.

Mr. M and I have been surprised that we didn't get any towels for a wedding present. We have been using my college towels that are maroon and white (Whoop! Aggies). So imagine my surprise today when the Fed-ex lady shows up at my door with a box from Neiman Marcus. Don't worry, I did not register there. You have to dress up in a black suit to even walk through the store on your way into the rest of the mall.

So a little petrified, I open the box to find another snazzy box full of white monogrammed towels. I haven't taken them out of the box, I am a little scared to touch them. They look like freshly fallen snow only nicer. As I touched the top towel, I could feel the Neiman spirits disapproval that I will be using these towels. I KNOW I am not that high class. I think I will wait for my husband to come home to convince me to take these towels out of the box. Meanwhile I am going to scrub down my linen closet, so that my humble closet will be as nice a possible for these towels.

Bridal shots

Here is the link to see my bridal pics for those of you who would be interested.

http://www.rebeccalorrine.com/deborahbridal/index.htm

That was such a fun day with my mom, Liz and Becky. We had a blast walking around Texas A&M with a wedding dress. Heck, random people even stopped and took out pictures!