My time in MN and TX

I started this blog when I was pregnant so that out of town relatives could see my bloated face and hippo feet and then later see pictures of the baby. I didn't blog much while I was pregnant, because obviously I was too busy peeing my pants as the whole world knows by now. And since everyone seems to be so entertained by these stories, let me share another one really quick- Most of the time when I had these "accidents" I was fully clothed and my underwear was able to absorb most of the damage. However one time I was getting ready for work, had just hopped out of the shower and was blow drying my hair naked (I was in a hurry to get to work) when I happened to sneeze and pee. I had to get back in the shower while Josh had to come clean up the floor.

Anyway I wish I had started blogging sooner because Josh and I had a lot of crazy adventures back in the day when I was young and skinny and well rested. We moved basically all around the country and had a lot of different experiences.

Seriously we did this crazy triangle thing.

So since this blog has become my sad excuse for a journal I wanted to include a sort of back story of how I got to this point because I'm sure everyone is just dying to know right?

Minneapolis, Minnesota: 

We moved to Minnesota in December. Because we have really good timing. This was also the year that their football stadium roof collapsed because of all the snow, anyone remember that? It was the fourth snowiest winter in state history and I drove a Prius all winter when what I really needed was an Alaskan dog sled. On my drive to work I would see people standing on snow banks taller than my car shoveling out their mailboxes. There was also a weird phenomena (I hate that word and can't believe I just used it) where people had to get their roofs like shoveled with some weird de-icing machine? I still don't really understand what that was all about and can't remember what it was called. Snow cave or snow roof or snow dome or something... There was a LOT of ice fishing and weirdly a little less actual fishing in the summer.

*Story time: My friend came to visit so I decided to take her out in the canoe and fish the day away like a true Minnesotan. We went to get our fishing licenses because I am terrified of getting arrested for fishing without a license and being thrown in illegal fishing prison. The lady at the licensing office gave me quite the time and demanded to know what kind of fish I would be catching and how many. I can't even name types of fish, let alone be able to accurately identify what kind of fish I caught, let alone actually catch a fish. I think she thought I had like a commercial fishing boat and a crew and one of those giant traps they catch deep sea crabs in. Whatever lady.

I learned that a "hot dish" is really just another word for casserole. I learned that wild rice is awesome! And it can be made into anything- salad, soup, "hot dishes", drinks, ice cream... I also got a LOT of cooking tips for how to cook my pheasants. Because apparently my freezer is full of dead birds that I shot... Actually you probably wouldn't put a dead bird in the freezer come to think of it, and that information was probably in my pheasant tutorial that I clearly wasn't listening to. I think someone might have mentioned pheasant dressing at one point. I sure hope that didn't go on a salad... except maybe a wild rice salad!

I got a lot of weird looks from my co-workers when I wore my snow boots (that I bought the day after I got there) to work every single day. And I got laughed at when I took a picture of some squirrel tracks I saw in the snow one day. For those of you that don't know, squirrels make up half of Minnesota's population, and the other half are ducks and geese. I don't even think Minnesotans see these animals anymore but I got really really excited whenever I did. One day I went for a run and called my mother in law to tell her that there were ducks on her lawn and drop what you're doing and go see them and there are seriously actual ducks on your very own lawn! My sweet mother in law probably faked some excitement for me and then thought I was nuts. Then there was the time I made my father in law stop the car so I could get out and take a picture of a turtle that was crossing the road. I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm nuts too. I am weirdly obsessed with seeing animals in the wild because I swear Utah is like an animal wasteland. When have you ever seen something besides a seagull? Never. So in Minnesota I saw: foxes, coyotes (I actually chased it up the banks of the Mississippi river because I thought it was someone's dog, I almost got dingoed), turtles, owls, squirrels, ducks, geese, deer, wild turkeys in the Home Depot parking lot...

Then there is "Minnesota Nice" which everyone prides themselves on but which I found to be a complete public nuisance. The first week there I went to the bank and the line took like 30 minutes because the little old lady teller is talking to every single customer about what they did for Christmas and how many grand kids they have and where they were born and what's their favorite way to eat wild rice. And at the movies people don't go out of their way to avoid each other like small pox but people willingly sit next to people they don't even know! Such a strange thing to see. And as someone who is not really nice, it made me uncomfortable..

It was also so so so so indescribably freezing cold. One day I stopped and bought a Diet Coke on the way to work, I felt all of them in the fridge and decided they were all warm and they must have just been put in the fridge so I bought one and planned to put in the freezer at work to get a little colder. One of my co workers saw me and asked what I was doing and I told her my Diet Coke was warm, she felt it and said no, it's the normal temperature that drinks always are. Turns out my hands were so cold that an ice cold soda felt warm to me. So with that cold in mind, it's time for Josh and Paige's next adventure which was the polar opposite of cold.......

Harlingen, Texas:

Ok so this is really South Padre Island but do you really want to see a picture of Harlingen? I don't think you do.

We moved to Harlingen in June because once again we have such awesome timing. We towed a trailer with my Prius all the way from Canada to Mexico. We got a lot of looks, especially once we got into Texas and every single car on the road was a pickup truck, but once we stopped for gas and someone came over to me and said, "Excuse me, did you realize that you are towing a trailer with a Prius?" And then I said whaaat? How'd that get on there? True story. Another time one of my co-workers came into work and announced that he just saw the funniest thing! It was a Prius with a trailer hitch! Wah wah... Unloading that trailer up one flight of stairs into our apartment in the middle of the day in June was to this day, the worst day of my life. After every trip we would both collapse on the floor and would have cried had we any moisture left. It was HOT people. And HUMID. One of our friends described it best when he said when you go outside it feels like you're entering a dryer.I had a headache for like a month straight before I realized I needed to quadruple my water consumption down there. It never dipped below 80 when we lived there, and it only got below 90 for a few days during the tropical storm we had.

*Story time: So in Minnesota there are tornado sirens that go off and there was actually a really bad tornado when we were there and Josh just laughed his little self silly at how scared I got of tornadoes because apparently Josh fears no natural disaster. Come to later find out, Josh greatly fears hurricanes. So I decided to play a little joke on Josh about the hurricane. I text him at work to say someone from church had stopped by to see if we had all of our emergency supplies and to tell us they were setting up an emergency shelter at the church. A little come uppance for laughing at me for hiding under the stairs during a tornado...

So Harlingen's basically Mexico... Sometimes I felt like we were living in another world down there. One hot day at the beach I got excited to see an ice cream truck driving around and playing it's ice cream music, I approached it and nope, it's essentially a taco van that drives around selling Mexican food to people at the beach. Every store in addition to selling normal candy that we're all familiar with would sell Mexican candy that looked like it was packaged in someone's hut. My favorite were the plastic spoons that were dipped in caramel and thrown in a bag. 

Those look extremely safe for human consumption right??

And there were a bunch of candies covered in chili powder. I tell you Mexicans and chili powder is like Minnesotans and wild rice. Apparently there is this thing called Frito Pie, it sounds like a recipe or something right? Nope. You dump some chili and cheese and probably chili powder into a bag of Fritos and shake it up and eat it. Everybody ate this. Fun fact: Harlingen, Texas is the most obese city in America! And it might have something to do with that Frito Pie...

And then there was all the weird meat. The grocery store (HEB) had the world's most entertaining meat section. Giant cow tongues (Do you know how big a whole cow tongue is?? It's like ten pounds! And the tip is black, yuck), cow stomach, the whole leg and foot of a pig, the entire ribcage of a cow. (Jordan I hope you're reading this.) And a bunch of other weird meats too but darn it it's been so long I don't remember all of them. Josh and I used to wander through the meat section for sheer entertainment and then Josh would usually pick up a cow tongue and "lick" me with it. 

One day Josh and I were eating at Pizza Hut, one of the gourmet restaurants of Harlingen, and some kid came up to us at the table and was selling like some light up wands or something you'd buy at like an outdoor festival or something. We thought this was an isolated incident, it was not. Everywhere you go people would just walk up to you and try to sell you stuff like you were roaming down the streets of Venice. So weird.

Then there were all the experiences with church down there. There is this drink called horchata, if you haven't had it, it tastes like cinnamon milk. I neither enjoy it nor possess the talent of consuming something I find gross with a smile on my face. It was the drink of choice at all of our branch parties and we always had some sweet attentive hostess who MADE SURE everyone had a drink so usually I would walk around with it for a while and then dump it in the grass or make Josh drink it for me. One time I left it on a table where I had been talking with some people and had moved to another table thinking I could ditch it that way until Josh stands up and loudly says "Paige you forgot your horchata!" And then our sweet Mexican Relief Society President who pronounced Brigham Young, Brigham Jung, grabbed my full glass and waited in rapt anticipation for me to drink it. 

Half of our hymn books were in Spanish, there were inevitably Sundays where I realized I only had Spanish hymn books in my row and so I'd spend the song playing guess what song title this is over text message to my friend. Half  of our stake conferences were in Spanish and I had to wear headphones for a translation. I was the young women's president and no one in the stake young women presidency spoke any English. One time I had to send them an e-mail and I made Josh write it in Spanish for me. I think my version went something like this: Hola hermanas! Me llamo Hermana Beach! Donde esta el bano? Uno dos tres! Adios! So Josh cleaned it up a little bit.

Then the animals. One night while watching tv a lizard scurried across our wall. Bugs in our house I can handle, they're small, they're insects, but a lizard? Sharing my house with like a full blown, uninvited animal? I flipped out. I tried to make Josh catch it while I stood on the couch and screamed that I was going to stay in a hotel until he did. Needless to say lizards are hard to catch and so I had to make peace with our new housemate. When I wanted to watch a show Josh didn't I'd say Lizard and I both want to watch this so you're outvoted! And every night when we turned out the lights we'd say goodnight to our lizard. Another time I had to sit in my car in our parking lot for like half an hour because there was a giant exotic bird that literally was as tall as my car window was just sitting right outside my car door and I was pretty sure it was going to eat me whole. Animals I saw in the wild- wild rabbits, bullfrogs, armadillos, alligators, stingrays, pelicans, sea turtles, and wild hogs (which are absolutely terrifying).

So those are a few memories of the different places we've lived. Now Josh is applying for jobs again and it's exciting to not know where life is going to take you next. Josh has an interview for a job in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and I'm hoping that life doesn't take me there. Love you Alabama....