This might make you laugh.

(I actually started writing this a while ago and then because of finals and whatnot I saved it and now I'm finishing it...just fyi)

Have you ever seen Clue? At the end it gives you three alternate endings. That's how I'm going to tell this story.

Let's start off with a little background. Chris and my bed is up against a window looking over a beautiful view of the valley. We used to have our bed on a frame but we moved the frame into the guest bedroom to put our extra mattress on for when Chris' family came to visit.So instead of having a headboard in between our bed and the windowsill we just have a big windowsill. It's a pretty big windowsill so we always keep a glass of water (or two) on it for when we get thirsty in the heat of the middle of the night. (Yeah I know it's December but I think we have the heat on too high or something because I always wake up in the middle of the night completely parched because of the heat.) And obviously we can't get up and get water in the middle of the night because it's common knowledge that there are monsters and other creepers hiding in the shadows of the house (they disappear at the light of day). SO last night we had two glasses of water sitting on  the windowsill above our bed, one from several nights ago that didn't get drunk (drank? drinked?)...that no one drank (there we go).

Well Chris has to get up at 5:30AM (a whole hour before me). And I can tell that he's jealous that I get to sleep a whole hour longer than him. So this morning he woke up in a fit of jealousy. "Why do I have to get up an hour earlier than she does?! How is this fair?!" He thought in that cute little head of his. That's when the wheels started turning. "You know what, it's not fair. She should wake up right now...with me." And with that he dipped his fingers in one of the cups on the window sill and flicked some water on my face.But that didn't do the trick. I'm a deeper sleeper than that. Well then he got frustrated at that point, and took it to the extreme. He picked up the cup in his fist full of rage and then he proceeded to pour it on my head. The water was very cold. I sprung out of bed, just as he wanted and yelled to first word that came to my head which just happened to be the 'S' word.
"SOCK!"
"That's what you get for sleeping an hour later than me." Then he got up, stormed out of the room and headed off to work.

That's how it could have happened...


...But what about this?


We went to bed at a reasonable hour and, like always, Chris got a cup of water to put on our window sill for those scratchy throat kind of nights. And lalala we fell asleep. Then in the middle of the night (what actually constitutes the 'middle' of the night? Does it depend on when you go to bed and when you wake up? Because technically most people consider the early AM's the middle of the night but obviously that's actually the morning. Well all I know is at this point I had been sleeping for several hours at least.) I arose to hear such a clatter. And there in the middle of my bedroom was a small furry green monster. His eyes were yellow and he reminded me a lot of another furry green monster with a heart two sizes too small. Well I immediately pulled the covers up to my chin (because everyone knows that monsters are afraid of covers, why else do we always pull them up over our heads when we're scared?) and I yelled, "I knew you were real! This is why I never get up in the middle of the night!"
Then, as though he had just noticed me, the little monster got a smile on his face showing off his jagged teeth full of holes and little bugs that skittered in between each yellowed tooth. I couldn't stand the terrifying look on his face, so I pulled the covers the rest of the way over my head, but the blankets didn't seem to phase him as I had hoped they would. The next thing I know I could feel his little hands hoisting himself up onto the foot of the bed, then slowly but surely he pattered his way up the center of the bed in between me and Chris (who was asleep through the whole thing). When his little feet reached the level of our shoulders I could see little claws poke through my blankety shelter where I was still hiding. And then with a little bounce, he jumped onto the windowsill and I can only imagine that he somehow flew through the glass of the window and outside. However in the process of getting through the window, I imagine this to be a tedious task...even if the little thing did have some sort of magical power that granted him the ability to do so, he kicked over the glass of water which splashed all over me.
"SALT!" I exclaimed, as the icy cold water droplets worked their way from my sopping hair down my forehead and began to drip off my nose.
"Jocelyn! Watch your language!" Chris said. Sure, now he's awake. Trust me yelling the word salt to wake him up but not a freaky little monster crawling on our bed.

That might have been how I ended up sopping wet in the middle of the night/ early AM...
but this is what really happened.


It was a night like any other: no little monsters or vindictive husbands. Chris and I went to sleep, not especially excited about the next day since it only meant more school and work and overall BLAH. Nonetheless we went through our whole night routine, complete with at least three cups of water sitting on our windowsill. Thankfully only one of them actually had water in it. As tends to happen during the sleep cycle, Chris began to dream. There he was in some epic battle fighting who knows what (I wasn't there myself) and naturally he was winning...he is my husband after all. And then the battle came down to him and the ultimate person to defeat, if this were a video game he'd be fighting the boss, an over sized ogre type thing wearing little clothing but with a huge club, and Chris would only have his pillow to fight with; it was a dream after all. Then suddenly Chris realized the only way to defeat the horrendous thing... he held tight to his pillow and threw his arms over his head preparing to beat the ogre with it, but before he could let the beating commence, he woke up to a loud,

"SNOW!" I yelled as I got over the shock of the freezing cold water. Chris of course was as dry as can be. I had to completely change my clothes. Then, since the bed was so wet, we moved into the guest bed room to sleep for the remainder of the night.

Epilogue


Unfortunately, we did not learn our lesson. Chris figured since he was the one who had splashed the water on me, if we just moved the water on my side of the windowsill it would be fine. Naturally a couple nights later I woke up once again to a cold shower of water on my head, this time from my own hand. Who knew that we both tend to randomly throw our arms over our heads in our sleep. I was in such a daze afterwards, still half asleep, that I just rolled of the end of the bed and went back to sleep in a ball on the floor, mumbling about being damp and confused (new movie title). And once again, Chris was completely dry.

Needless to say...we don't put water on the windowsill anymore. Ever.

Monday Night

So I'm sitting here at work bored out of my skull because there is no school today and therefore no one on campus so I really don't have anything to do. I worked on my Christmas list for my mother who wants it before black Friday, I made a list of books I'm going to check out from the library when I get off work, I've checked facebook and pinterest...the next step is to catch up on my blogging.

So this is a story about how I married the most incredible man in the world. It's called:
"If only I could really LMAO, I'd be a much skinnier girl"
And it goes a little something like this:

Nobody likes Mondays. This past Monday however, wasn't especially bad. I went to work and school knowing that I didn't really have anything to do and in a couple days I would be on Thanksgiving break. Looking forward to the free time I would have in the next couple days, and the stress I wouldn't have, I was able to actually enjoy my Monday. I headed home from work at around 5pm to get started on dinner. I stopped by City Market to drop off our latest Redbox and pick up a new one. (My choice this time.) After standing in the cold for 10 minutes I narrowed it down to 'Just Go With It'. I hadn't even seen the previews but the synopsis sounded funny and it had Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston, both of whom I like, so I went for it.
At home I tossed the movie on the table/Chris' desk since we no longer actually have a table, and went to the kitchen to start cooking turkey for our turkey tacos.
"I got a movie that you may or may not like," I said as I walked in.
"I already know, you got a girl movie."
"Just look up the trailer, it's called just go with it."
"I know what it's called: Girl Movie, I'm looking it up right now."
Chris thinks he's soOOoo clever. But it did make me giggle a little bit. Check out the trailer he watched:

"It's a romantic comedy," Chris reiterates.
As if I needed any convincing since I was the one who picked out the movie. Back to the kitchen.

As the turkey cooked I chopping onions and Chris, being the nice (and obedient) husband that he is, started unloading the dishwasher. All was normal until Chris opened a cupboard door right above my head and as he opened it he sang an opera style 'Ahhhhh' in one high pitched tone but immediately stopped when he closed the door. Then he opened the cupboard right next to that one and repeated his opera singing for that cupboard with a different pitch but the same loud 'Ahhhh'. Then he slammed that cupboard door, stopped singing and opened them both with an even higher pitched 'Ahhhh'. And before I knew it my kitchen had turned into some sort of orchestra with Chris as the conductor, running from cupboard door to cupboard door and producing a somewhat strange yet hilarious song to say the least.

At this point I was crying not from the onions I had given up cutting, but from laughing so hard. And Chris was kind of like a child in that the harder I laughed, the more inspiration he had to continue his orchestra conducting. I ending up sitting on the floor and begging him to stop as if he were violently tickling me instead of just making my cupboards sing.

Eventually I finished cooking dinner and we watched our movie. Aside from laughing at the movie it was a pretty normal dinner and a movie sort of event.  That was until after the movie when we felt the need to reenact the funniest parts of the movie. Like this scene where you meet the man who has had way to much botox.

After we finished the movie we kept trying to laugh like this guy to make fun of him but then we would start real laughing so hard that we couldn't keep a straight face. In our fits of laughing Chris fell over (we were already sitting on the floor) and knocked over a glass of water. I yelled at him to watch out but I was impossible to understand in between fits of giggling. 

"Hurry get a towel, clean it up!" I said with a huge smile on my face.

Chris looked over at the large puddle of water, and then up at me, then reached over and proceeded to rub the water into the carpet with a goofy grin on his face. I was partially annoyed at the fact that he was making the puddle cover a wider area carpet but that annoyance was outweighed by how incredibly hilarious it was.

I grabbed a towel just in time to watch Chris attempt to reenact his scene:

 

Now I'm sure you're wondering...how could he mimic this scene by himself. Well he wasn't trying to get a coconut up to his mouth...he was trying to pick up the remote with his butt. Ha. That was funny. However the remote was so small that he couldn't squat down low enough to pick it up, and he fell over. So obviously we erupted into fits of laughter again. and again. and again.

"Are we weird?" Chris asked me. And you know what...we are. And I know we are. But it always makes me think of this quote: 

If there were ever a quote to describe Chris and I, this would be the one. We are weird. Both of us in our own weird way. And since we've been married I think we have actually gotten weirder. But we have so much fun with our weirdness. It's brought us closer together. He is the only person who will let me let out my crazy, wacko side but he still finds me attractive somehow. I love that about us and our relationship. I love that we could never act the way we do around each other around anyone else. 

SO this is my advice to anyone currently or who will ever be husband shopping. Look for someone who will make you laugh without trying but still tries to make you laugh. Look for someone who will tell you how much he loves your hair when you wake up in the morning and it is up in so many different directions that it looks like you just got out of a wind tunnel. Find the guy who asks you not to put make up on...A. cause it takes too long, and B. Cause he thinks you look better without it. But most importantly find the guy who will let you be you and doesn't mind your crazy quirks and someone who's crazy quirks you love and don't want to change.

I thank God everyday for my amazing husband and the incredible relationship we have. He is my best friend through and through. I never used to believe in soul mates or anything like that. But I think "maybe, we were made for each other."

Nostalgia

Nostalgia. Noun. a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a formertime in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time. (Dictionary.com)

I have been feeling very nostalgic lately. It's not especially fun. Today for instance, I am home sick. I can't remember the last time I stayed home sick. While I was in school growing up, staying home sick meant that any time I could convince my mom that I was indeed sick enough to not go to school. Now in college, unless I am dying or bleeding out the eyeballs I suck it up and go because I have too many responsibilities to miss class, work, etc. (Just in case this past statement made you terribly worried for my well being thinking that since I am at home I must either be dying or bleeding out the eyeballs...let me clarify. I am neither dying nor bleeding out the eyeballs but I feel as though I could start doing either at any moment. Does that make you feel better?)

I seriously miss the days in elementary school when if I stayed home from school my mom, to make sure that I was actually sick and not faking it, wouldn't let me leave my bed unless I had to go to the bathroom. That way staying home wasn't fun at all (no TV in the bedroom) and I wouldn't fake it. (Ha.) I remember staying in bed all day reading Calvin and Hobbes and wishing that I had actually gone to school because since I'd stayed home I'd forfeited doing anything remotely interesting the rest of the day. Because obviously I was faking it...

Well maybe that wasn't quite as fun. But I do miss actually being sick when I was in high school. I would sit in my beautiful bedroom and watch TV (I learned from my mistakes of not having a TV in my room) and do things like make bracelets and eat anything BUT dry toast. For some reason I always associate dry toast with being sick which is maybe why I never want it. Or that it doesn't make sense. Why not just eat bread? Toast is so dry.

Anyway, I digress. I think I'm just feeling homesick. Not necessarily for my family, I mean I miss them too, but more for simpler times. Times when I didn't have so much responsibility. Times when I could hide under my covers for a day and it wouldn't effect anyone else or my future for that matter. Times when I could sit in front of the TV watching Gilmore Girls for hours at a time scrapbooking or making some random craft and the only thing I'd get in trouble for is not putting all the dishes in the dishwasher or something equally as trivial. 

Today at work I needed to order more triple A batteries for Dr. Spencer. I needed to order everyone's desk copies for next semester. I needed to call in everyone's Chinese food order for the annual department dinner this year at Shoots. But I didn't. At school I had a live shot open in my broadcast class. (A live shot is when you see a reporter on TV at the scene of some crime or accident, etc. A live shot open is a couple facts to start off the story before they play the package you have made with footage, voice overs, and interviews. In  my broadcast class we have been taping live shot opens and closes to practice.) I also should have gone to my Russian class since we have a quiz tomorrow and I still don't exactly understand what cases all the adjectives and nouns take for cardinal numbers. But I didn't. I have been here. At home. Trying to keep down food and watching Gossip Girl.

 And the worst part of all of this is...I feel guilty. I feel like I should have been doing all those aforementioned things. And if nothing else, working on homework here. But it's just too much to think about. It's just too much. College is not what I expected. I don't have time to think. I think it's making me more stupid. (Or should I say stupider?) I read somewhere that it's not wasting time if you enjoy it. But if I don't enjoy something that society is telling me I need to do to be successful at life...does that mean it's a waste of time. 

Life goes by in the blink of an eye. Heck I'm already in college with just a year before graduation. Why should I waste any moment of my time doing something that doesn't make me happy. Now sitting around on the couch watching Gossip Girls doesn't make me happy, not in the long run at least. But when school is taking so much out of me that immersing myself into meaningless television is the only way I can relax, is it worth it? I only hope that with one more year of school left, I'll get back all that I have put in. I think that education is important, I really do. But why does it have to come with such a big price? (I didn't mean literal price but now that I think about it, that's very fitting as well.)

Well enough of my silly rantings. I'll stick it through I guess. What else can I do? Any suggestions??

In Provo, Jocelyn Langford, thinking of simpler times.

The Boy Who Lived...Come to Die.

It was more than just a story for me. It was my home away from home; my escape. The letter I was waiting to get from the owl I was sure to meet. It was the possibility that I was more than just me.

I remember the first time I read a Harry Potter book. I was about 8 I think. Dad had driven me all the way to the Dr's office...an endless drive for an 8 year old. I remember I was young because I was still sitting in the back seat of the car. Then again I've always been short so I sat in the back seat for a long time. Anyway, we took care of everything we needed to (Dr's visit, I think I had strep throat, and I got a new military ID card while we were there) we got in the car to head back home and Dad stopped at a gas station on the way out. Me, being the impatient person that I am, could not bear to sit and wait the 5-8 minutes it would take to fill up the car with gas. So I looked around to find something to occupy my time with. And that's when I saw it, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I specifically remember studying the cover of the book for a while before finally deciding it was worth my time to open. The rest...is history.

I found myself waiting for my 11th birthday when I would inevitably get an invitation to a secret school.When my birthday came and went, my imagination filled in the holes. I carefully read every book and became good friends with Ron, Harry and Hermione (In my head I pronounced it Her-me-own-ee). I remember waiting in line for one of the books to come out so we could buy our family copy.I remember that each book got exponentially better. I remember that when I read the 4th book I got half way through and took a 3-4 month break before picking it up again.

And then the movies came out. It felt that they always came out around Thanksgiving time and Harry Potter is closely related with my memories of family Thanksgivings. The weather was always wonderful and Maddie and I would head out in search of the perfect stick, or rather, the perfect wand. We would play 'Hannah Potter' (since we were both girls) and I would be all the characters except 'Hannah' (that was Maddie's part). We wrote each other invitations to Hogwarts and sealed them in wax.

And then Dumbledore died. I was sitting on the couch in my bedroom reading. My Aunt Darla had just arrived at our house for a visit right as I read about his death. My cute little cousin Sierra ran into my room, excited to see me and was very concerned when she found me bawling my eyes out in front of a book.

The last book tugged on my heartstrings. It had such a beautiful ending. It was so much more than the ever so common, Good Triumphs Evil. The end of the book talked about how the witches and wizards, gryffendors and slytherins, goblins and trolls and whoever else all gathered and celebrated together with no prejudice between them. The perfect world. The world where everyone came together to fight for a common goal, for the good of the world and won and that's all that mattered.

Tonight Chris and I went to see the last movie FINALLY. And once again, there I was bawling my little eyes out (in the second row of the dollar movie theater craning my neck with those stupid 3D glasses, trying to get comfortable). Because I watched my favorite oasis, my home away from home, my escape: Hogwarts, get destroyed. I saw my favorite teachers and best friends fight to the death. I watched them all pull out their inner strength that they had been suppressing (Neville much?) and kick some ass.

So go ahead and say it, I'm a dork. But these stories bring me back to my childhood. And still now they are making me remember how I felt then: I might not have a magic wand, and I might not be a witch going to Hogwarts. But that doesn't mean that I can't make incredible things happen.

Those who don't look for the magic,will never find  it.

Take Two.

For those of you who don't actually want to read my hilarious witty remarks, I put the video at the top to save you from the carpal tunnel that you would inevitably get if you had to scroll all the way to the bottom to watch it.

For the rest of you....

I daresay this second go round was more difficult than the first. This time I didn't have an advanced reporter helping me. Plus the professor I was going to interview as my professional on the topic wasn't available and so my story fell apart a little bit.

CUE: Me bawling

CUE CHRIS THINKING: She's gonna have to quit.

CUE MY INCREDIBLE MOTHER: La La La I have the answers!

My awesome mom gave me a little motivational speech (It looks like I'm going to need one of those weekly. Good thing my dad will be in town next week.) and directed me towards another source I could use for my story. Thankfully the woman I called was super sweet (or super excited to be on tv) and helped me set up a whole interview and I got some great B roll. 

My main interview took me all the way to the University of Utah and with rush hour by the time the interview was over it was dark outside....which meant that I couldn't get any more B roll. So I pretty much just had to hope that there were some stories in the archives that had footage that I could use.

I really enjoyed talking to Lexie Kite who is one of the creators of Beauty Redefined. I wish I could just do an hour long feature on the campaign she and her sister have designed. It really is incredible. Lexie is such an empowering person and I felt good to be around her. She gave me all kinds of info about why and how the media is portraying images of women that cannot be achieved by a real person. So as a result women have horrible body image, horrible self esteem, it leads to eating disorders, and unhealthy women when they realize they can't actually be as "beautiful" as the images they see in the media. YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE: beautyredefined.net

They are also on Facebook and twitter.

Anyway...since it took me so long to get back to Provo (also since we had to make a pit stop for Chris, who was my awesome camera man for the night, to get him some new baby frogs from his supplier in SLC) I only had a little over an hour to ingest my video into the computer and write my script.

I got the ingesting part done and even found some footage I could use for my story for b roll. (Sort of. Just watch the story. I bet you'll be able to tell what doesn't exactly fit.)

I got home and went straight to bed by 11:30 only to wake up at 4am to write my script. 

**Please note all the work I am doing in order to make deadline on Thursday.

CUE: Story meeting Thursday morning- "Jocelyn you are a floater today"

CUE ME: thinking "A what?!"

CUE PRODUCER: "That just means that since this other girl's story didn't work (her camera didn't record anything) we're sending her out to do a live story on the career fair and that will take longer than a regular package would so we have to cut your story. But we will keep it just in case something goes wrong with her story and if not then it will stay in our records in case we ever have a hole to fill."

CUE: resentment, jealousy, annoyance, etc.

So yes. That could have been me. My story fell apart too. I mean not that bad but still...I could have been the one getting the fame of doing the live shot. Okay Okay...So this was a good learning experience for me. I'm in this class for the experience, not for the fame. (since so many people watch KBYU and all...)

So this whole floating thing was good and bad. Good because I didn't have any deadlines to make...bad because since I didn't have to make any deadlines Bro. Curtis kept pushing my aside when I wanted to get my script approved so he could help other people.

So I understand that those people needed to go on the air so obv he had to approve them first. But I was left just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. I couldn't edit my script since he hadn't told me what to fix. I had already cut all my video the way I wanted it. So by the time I FINALLY got my script approved (granted this was after about 6 or 7 rewrites) the show was airing and I didn't have a lot of time before class ended.

In the long run I guess I'm kind of glad that the story didn't air. Because of my lack of B roll, it isn't my best work. Plus I had to cut a lot of great stuff about the beauty redefined campaign since my story had to be so short. Well this week I'm taking the bull by the horns and doing stuff early. Even if that means that my story might not get approved at the story meeting at least I will have the peace of mind of knowing that I am working on it and have done my best.

Well I should have that peace of mind but for some reason I'm still stressing out about it. BLARGHH! Only 76 days until finals and if I counted correctly only 9 more stories I have to do. I'll probably be pro by then. Ha.