the time i thought i had melanoma.

DISCLAIMER: This story has some gross things in it and all also a buttload of my stupidity, if you don't like one or more of those things, I suggest you turn back now.

a couple of weeks ago i was just minding my own business when i started to itch near my ankle/cankle. it kind of felt like i got bit by something and the skin became sensitive and it started to seem like I scratched it (like as injury rather than the action). The next day it kind of scabbed over and was a little tender. i was sitting in my car waiting to meet up with Tayl for lunch when i looked at it and it looked like I had a small black growth on one of the freckles, and it appeared as though the light part of the freckle was spreading near where I was itching. I asked Tay if it looked like skin cancer and he said yes. I immediately became upset and was looking up stuff about it during lunch on my phone. Of course, this made me more upset and i was nearly in tears at the end of lunch. I tried calling almost every dermatologist in the area and most were closed or couldn't get me in last minute on a Friday afternoon. So all I could do was the worst thing any potential cancer victim could possibly do; research on the internet. After about an hour of research I had self diagnosed myself with melanoma. I watched this VIDEO:





Which obviously caused me to cry my eyes out/curse my teenage self for thinking it was important to take advantage of the free and unlimited tanning at my aunt's salon..

Unfortunatel,y I had to deal with my upcoming and imminent death and the cancerous growth on my leg until I could get to a doctor on Monday. It was hard. I cried a lot and and I prayed a lot, "Please Heavenly Father, if I live through this, I will become a sunscreen/anti-tanning advocate."

I also had Taylor take a picture of it with his backward lens macro technique, for the record, to make sure it didn't grow over the weekend.

please ignore the hairs. i promise i shave. sometimes.
I MEAN THAT TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE CANCER RIGHT?!

So, after a weekend of worrying, crying, making jokes about my death, letting Taylor know that contrary to what people might say, I definitely did not want him to be happy or remarry after I died, and praying; Monday rolled around and I scheduled an appointment for right when I got done babysitting. Then I went to babysit and I went on a walk with baby...

While on the walk I stopped at a park bench to reassess my cancer. I looked closely at it and started to pick at it and suddenly, the black dot just fell off.  IT WAS A SCAB THAT HAPPENED TO BE RIGHT ON A FRECKLE!

I WAS GOING TO LIVE!!

I called my best friend to tell her what an idiot I was, then cancelled the doctor's appointment. 

I decided just to be safe that I would make sure everything healed properly  before I wrote this blog in case I did have skin cancer (Because a wound that won't heal can be a sign of melanoma, something I learned in my extensive googling). That would be real awkward if I was like "I THOUGHT I HAD CANCER! I'M DUMB." But then I really did.

I am happy to report that all has healed and only the freckle remains. 

I realize that it's possible that I DID have skin cancer and because of my excessive prayers I was miraculously healed. But I feel like that would be pretty extreme, but just to be safe, I will keep my word. I will from now on ALWAYS use sunscreen and I will never use a tanning bed again and I will DEFINITELY judge and/or lecture you if you use them. Being tan is not worth getting cancer and dying, nor is it worth thinking you have cancer and spending a few days crying thinking you are going to die before your 25th birthday.

a bee sting, a stupid concert, and the slaying of an armadillo.

I know I haven't blogged in awhile and now that I am about to, I'm going to be complaining. 

you know when you find a recipe you want to make and you have all the right ingredients for it and you're totally excited but somewhere in the process something goes horribly wrong and your souffle (or whatever) turns into basically dinosaur poop? Well that was pretty much how my day went on Saturday.

I can't pin point exactly what went wrong but I know that when we got home in the wee hours of the morn and got into bed I wished I had never gotten out of it.

 Here were the ingredients for my "wonderful" Saturday:

1. Sleep in

2. Receive my make-up stuff I ordered online from Urban Decay

3. Get lunch at Zunzi's

4. Go to City and Colour concert in Charleston, SC

5. Walk around Charleston and get dinner before concert

That sounds awesome, RIGHT?

I guess you could say it all started to go downhill when I got up kind of late and since we were going to eat lunch pretty soon, I decided to skip breakfast. (Chill out health freaks. I know how important breakfast is.) But then we didn't eat lunch quite as soon as I had expected. So naturally, I turned into a monster. Because I am absolutely the opposite of delightful when I am hungry. (FATTY GOTTA EAT!) Zunzi's is a take out place so you walk in, order, pay, and take your food to either sit outside or leave. We decided we were going to stay and I walked outside to the corner to where Taylor was. I had my back turned to the building and Taylor goes, "Hey, watch out." (VERY CALMLY, the kind of tone you would use to say, "hey watch out you're about to step on hundred dollar bill.") and points to the side of me. I turn to see what I am about to step on and right as I look down I see a red wasp and and I get stung on my arm. (Mind you, this is while I am still a hungry monster) I immediately become enraged and obviously put all of the blame on Taylor. Now looking back on this with a clear head, I realized that it wasn't entirely his fault but if he would have just said, "WASP" I would have ran away and probably avoided being stung. So. Kinda his fault.

the victim: my right arm. not pictured: my pouty face.

At this point, my arm was throbbing and I was trying to hold back tears. Have you ever tried to eat while crying or on the verge of crying? It makes food not taste as good. So that was crappy too. Luckily where we parked downtown there was a CVS right across the road so I got some benedryl spray and it helped a lot, even though my sting still hurt a little on and off through out the day.

We arrived in Charleston, walked around. Had dinner. Went to the show which was at the Music Farm. The Music Farm is a very cool little venue. The show was at 9 and the doors opened at 8. We got there at about 7 45. When we walked in there was this spot about 6 inches higher than the rest of the main floor and there was railing so to me, it was as good as being in the very front because I could actually see and not have to be crowded by people. 

Finally at 9, the opener walked on. He plays the guitar for city and colour but he was doing some solo stuff. MUCH to my dismay, it was country. It was absolutely the most torturous opening act I have ever sat through in my entire life. It wasn't that he wasn't talented in his own right, but good lawd, I HATE HATE HATE country music. And unfortunately, I think it set a really bad precedent for the rest of the show, HOW COULD DALLAS GREEN SUBJECT ME TO THIS FOR AN HOUR? I know I'm getting old when I no longer feel that the musicians I adore can do no wrong. He did me wrong, and I don't know if I'll ever forgive him fully.

So basically we had to stand for about 2 and half hours before City and Colour came on. I was feeling really uncomfortable and a little nauseated so I decided to sit down for just a second. I was sitting there when behind me a really drunk troll like guy, came up to Taylor and was barely coherent and sad something about Taylor being too tall. Then instead of walking behind us and around he decided wanted to climb through the railing where I was sitting so he could get down to the main floor. Then he yelled, "MOVE!" at me and I instantly became furious, I turned around and briefly considered punching him in his knee caps. I shouted at him that I wasn't moving one inch until he asked me like a normal person. Then he leaned down and said very calmly, "You're a person." I rolled my eyes at him and scooted over so he could crawl through the rails. I hate drunk strangers almost as much as I hate country music. 

Almost immediately after that, this girl who had been standing down in front of the railing below us with her boyfriend acting like idiots making out and looking at each other dramatically crouched down through the railing and was like "HEY HEY COME HERE" like all excited and she was like "YOU GOTTA GET UP ITS DALLAS GREEN." I stared at her for few seconds and asked her if it was starting because I was really confused about her motives. She said "No not yet but it's about to, come on get up!" And I was like, "No." and I couldn't totally hear her but all I heard was, "Okay look my boyfriend is standing here so it's awkward." Or something and I was like, "I'm not getting up yet, I was here first." But I wanted to choke her and tried to convey that in my tone to her and I think she picked up on it cause she was like, "okay okay" and backed away and then they left. I was kind of hoping she threw a drink on me after the show so we could scrap like Jersey Shore style cause I was in that kind of mood, but it didn't happen. But just so you guys know, if it did go down like that, I would have won.

They finally came out and after one song I was ready to leave. The people in the audience were some of the most annoying and retarded people I've ever experienced in my life.

Where the idiot couple once stood there was now a girl. She was much more concerned about her instagram and facebook friends knowing that she was at the concert than anything else going on around her. She checked her facebook at least 2000 times, and she was texting her friend about how she had slept with this guy and bought them tickets to the show but he met up with his best friend, talked about other girls in front of her, and ditched her to be alone at the concert. But she kept saying how she liked him. WHAT IS WRONG WITH WOMEN IN THE WORLD? More on that in another blog on another day.

Anyway, it was 1 AM before the show got over and we had a 2 hour drive home. On the way home April was driving and she ran over an armadillo. I didn't see it because I was turned around talking to Tayl in the backseat. But I felt like it was a pretty good way to sum up how I felt about that day.

Oh and to answer the burning question, no not even the concert made it worth it. It was way better in London. 

on my soapbox talking about fat brides.

I'm sorry I have to be serious for minute:
Have you heard about the feeding tube diet? [if not, click me]

This story actually made me sick, and really upset. Like probably a lot more upset than it made you. I'm not sure when  the ultimate goal for brides was to look perfect on their wedding day instead of to be married to the love of their life. Brides-to-be everywhere are starving themselves, giving themselves skin cancer, mentally torturing themselves, AND EVEN GETTING PLASTIC SURGERY, so that they can attempt to achieve the impossible standard of perfection on their wedding day. When I hear stories about this going on, all I can think about is their soon to be husbands. Is he cool with this? Did he really only fall in love with what he thought she could be on their wedding day?

Here's the thing about me, on my wedding day, I was the fattest I have ever been in my entire life. But here's a fun fact, I was also the happiest I've ever been and I felt pretty. Isn't that weird? I was so excited to be married to best/coolest/cutest/sweetest/most fun man that I've ever known that I didn't even care about my double chin. Can you even imagine?!

I have no qualms with wanting to look and feel beautiful on your wedding day. But when you put that above all else (even your health) it just seems like it might be time to re-evaluate your priorities. Not to mention, if the fact that someone loves you enough to want to be MARRIED to you FOREVER, doesn't make you feel beautiful, then I highly doubt a feeding tube will.

Large and in charge and in love.

this one goes out to you, parents of small children.

Look, let's just put it out there, as someone who doesn't have kids, I judge parents. It's not like I'm the first. We all know the story; "I used to judge parents until I became one. Then I changed my tune." But listen, I don't judge like most people judge. I'm on YOUR side, kinda. I know that kids can be dicks. I know that the advice from countless parenting books often means nothing once you step out onto the battlefield of parenthood [KIDS vs PARENTS]. I know that in spite of whatever parental instincts you may have as a human, your instincts can not always save you from the tyranny of a child. I don't judge parents when their kids are screaming in the store or on the plane. I actually feel bad for the parent in this case because children are pretty much pre-programmed to throw tantrums. I can imagine it's embarrassing and frustrating. When I'm on a plane people act super rude about screaming babies it makes me want to punch them. With that said, I have compiled a small list of the things I DO judge.


1. If your kid says please and thank you
Obviously this is contingent upon age. But our 15 month old niece says thank you, soooo.... step yo game up.

2. Parental supervision
If they are at an age where they need supervision and it is a place that requires supervision (which is mostly everywhere). If you're at church, a wedding, the doctors office, a restaurant, etc. your children should not be running a muck breaking things and interrupting people. Contain them.

3. Whether or not your kids can entertain themselves WITHOUT technology
I'm not one of those people who judge you for letting your kids watch TV or play on the computer but when it gets to the point where they have no idea how to do anything without their gameboy/ipod/laptop/your cell phone, that's sad. I am always impressed with children who can entertain themselves by playing pretend or coloring or anything that requires creativity. [Kind of like this guy, HUNTER.] This I feel, is one of the things you can control.

4.  Let your kids get dirty
Being a nanny for the past couple of years, I understand that sometimes this can be hard. Not because of OCD but just because when they get dirty, YOU have to deal with it. And it can be annoying. But for heaven sake, they're children, and most importantly they're washable. This is really the only time in their lives where they can be unkempt and still be socially acceptable. BUT they should still brush their teeth and hair and take baths. Don't let them be the smelly kid in class.

5. How much time you spend with them
I've dealt with several kids who act MUCH better when they have adequate quality family time. Don't ignore your kids. (But don't smother them either.) As an outsider, your kids look up to you so much. They just think you are the coolest, best looking, smartest person alive. But this won't last, they will inevitably resent you when they are teenagers, so seriously, spend time with them while they still like you.

the almost entire month of April, condensed.

I literally just stopped blogging for a minute. Well, longer than a minute. And I know it's not like i have some sort of crazy following where I ruined people's lives from not blogging, but I am kind of sad that I didn't blog very much in April, because we kind of did a lot. Including celebrated our 1 year anniversary! Holla.

Welp, I'll start from where I left off. [and I apologize if you follow us on instagram, you will have seen most of these, cause that's what we've been doing instead of using a real camera. SORRY]

Taylor adjusted back to American life nicely.

He joined a soccer league:

Then, ALL of my sister-in-laws and their children came to visit for spring break and we went to the beach for a couple days:

Tayl put Lux in his shirt:

I got surprised with an early anniversary gift:

We spent easter weekend in Valdosta:

Pregnant karaoke!

Laney girl.

On Sunday we were basically all playing scramble against each other. TECHNOLOGY!

From Valdosta the Tayl and I headed down to Amelia Island, FL to spend a couple of days celebrated our anniversary:

My poorly timed cell phone short of the Florida state line.

Tayl & his driving glasses

 Once we got settled, we went for a walk on the beach:

Random sunglasses I found with barnacles growing on them.

Tay was trying to take this picture of the ocean when this stranger's dog ran by.

Crab shell

Jelly fish

The view from our Hotel.

 Our actual anniversary was actually what I would consider a perfect day:

We got up and went to play tennis.

After tennis we went to the beach.

If you can't tell, this is my face smashed up against the beach chair.

awwwww yeeeeaaah.

After the beach we went back to the hotel and showered and went out for dinner at MOON RIVER PIZZA:

WHEN THE EFF DID WE GET ICE CREAM?

Then we went to play mini-golf (surprisingly, our first mini-golf date together):

After our lovely little vacay, it was back to normal life:

I had to spend forever at the DMV to update my driver's license.

I finally got my georgia plates. Two years later.

I  ALSO FINALLY FOUND CORAL THROW PILLOWS!

We went fishing on the boat with Taylor's cousin Zack:

We went to the Earth Day festival at Forsyth park and learned about composting:

Later in the week we went back to Forsyth park to watch the Goonies:

And on an unfortunate note, my Grandpa Coffin (my dad's dad) passed away last weekend. I was extremely sad that I couldn't go to Utah to be with my family for the funeral. Here's his obituary, I thought it was really sweet, and I recommend it. And even though death is never easy to deal with, it's good to know that he is in a better place and doesn't have to be sick anymore. 

Hopefully I will blog more in May so that I won't have to do this again.

hiatus. tayl returns!

it's sad that my life is so that when I don't blog for 6 days it feels like I haven't blogged in 12 years. But, I mean, blogging is really one of my main duties as a wife and I should at least be blogging on Wednesdays and I totally skipped. Sorry to all my dedicated readers of Wifed Up Wednesday (aka just Jen.)

Monday felt like Monday, Then Tuesday felt like Saturday and a little bit of Sunday. So Wednesday felt like Monday and everything was out of control. In a good way.

The real Monday (not Wednesday) is when Taylor came home, finally.

His flight wasn't due to arrive until 3:55 PM so I went about my day as normal as the strong independent woman I had developed into over the past 3 weeks. In the afternoon, I was doing my make-up I got a call from Taylor at about 3:50 PM saying that he had landed, collected his luggage, and was waiting for me. I felt bad that I wasn't there waiting for him, but I forgot that Savannah airport is not like Atlanta.
So I hauled my butt out the door to get my man.

When we got home Taylor and Lux had their reunion and it was like I stopped existing to them.

Lux missed her daddy, and his leg:

The day went on and we relaxed and did normal married people stuffs. I did Taylor's laundry. (The first non-asian to do his laundry in weeks.) Then we went to the Hunger Games (again for me).

Random note, homecoming day also happened to be wildlife day in casa de Taykyns. 

That morning April came over to play tennis with me and she brought the mail in with her and informed me that this was in our mailbox:

 It was dead, obviously, but so pretty. I hope that in spite of the fact that it was dead, it was still a good omen.

Then while helping Tay unpack I went to hang up his coat in the coat closet and I saw this next to the frame of the front door:

And I was like, what the hef is that?

Oh no big deal, it's just a tree frog, in my house.

Don't worry, I set it free. I'm just glad it didn't suffer the same fate as it's forefather. (see:  the massacre of 11/11/11)

Anyway, the next day (Tuesday, which felt like Saturday) I woke up and I couldn't believe that my husband was home. It was weird to roll over and see not just a pile of laundry and a fluffy bed hogging doggy, but a MAN IN MY BED.

Someday I'll show you pictures that he took in China.

lonely lady date. (THE HUNGER GAMES!)

hi.
remember when I just wrote a blog post about being alone?

well, for the first time in my life, I went to a movie by myself on Saturday. The Hunger Games actually. Taylor wants to see but I didn't want to wait for him to see it. (I'll see it again, nobody panic.) And honestly, I didn't really think it was that big of a deal but when I told everyone else about how I went by myself they said things and made sounds that made it sound like they felt sorry for me. But I actually loved it. I'll probably go to movies alone all the time now. I mean, if there's a movie I want to see and Taylor doesn't, which happens.

There's only a couple of things I hated about being alone at the movies:

number one. when you have no one to talk to before the movie & previews start and you aren't eating popcorn or candy, all you can hear the sound of EVERYONE in the theater shoveling popcorn in to their mouths. The sound of people eating popcorn can be maddening. People eat popcorn like barbarians, for real.

number two. when I wanted to cry, I didn't feel like I could. It might be different if I was in a movie that I didn't have strangers RIGHT next to me. but still, I felt stupid and had to hold back.

and number three. when you have to go potty you have no one to tell you what you missed so you have to hold in pee for 2 hours.

but all in all, I had a good time. I pretty much forgot I was in a theater because I got caught up in the movie anyway. I love the Hunger Games. I don't really know what it is but it really causes me to have an emotional response. Even when I'm reading. All I can do is put myself in Katniss' shoes. When Jennifer Lawrence was standing there shaking right before she had to go into the arena I was literally sick to my stomach and holding back tears. Like as if I could imagine that I was about to go into an arena and possibly get sworded to death. It's really nerdy and stupid, but I like it a lot and I don't care.

Do you think it's weird that I went to the movies alone?

 There was also an elderly man with a cane who came to see the movie by himself too. I wish we could have sat by each other. I would have liked to know what he thought about the movie.

wifed up wednesday: "how to be alone"

It's a sure sign that I haven't done anything crafty or domestic this week when I have to resort to youtube videos. But I feel like this is relevant to my situation currently.

My friend Scott of MULLETNSTEPS recently shared this video, and just in time for me really. I guess I hadn't realized how dependent on Taylor I've grown to be over the last year. Which I suppose isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be when he decides to leave me for a month. So, I've had to readjust to being alone again, not that I have been ALL the time (Lux is always lurking). But anyway...

I think it's important to have alone time. Now I'll stop and you watch this video.

wifed up wednesday: DIY "glittering landscape"

I found this project on apartment therapy. I saw it awhile ago but the other day I FINALLY got the last of our wedding gifts and left over decorations in mail from my dad. I found a couple of strands of Christmas lights and remembered this project.

So I went at it.

Here's what you need:

Mini Christmas lights
stretched and stapled Canvas
Hot glue or craft glue
Awl
Pencil
And optionally, you can paint the canvas before working with it.

This took me about 5 hours. Which, as you probably guessed, I was watching Mad Men so I didn't even realize how much time had passed.

First you need to mark where your lights are going to go. You can do this with a pencil on the back of the canvas.

Once you know where your lights are gonna go punch the holes in through the back with the awl (or whatever you have to punch holes). Then stick the lights through and secure them with glue (I used hot glue)


It's a pretty simple process, just time consuming.

 If I were to do it again (and I think I will) I would be a little more careful about where I put my lights AND I would have painted the canvas beforehand. Mine kind of looks abstract and random, but the lights still add a cool ambiance to whatever room you put it in.

The cab driver strikes again.

Taylor spent his Saturday in Tianjin (which contrary to what I thought, he is not staying in Tianjin, just near it.)

He took a bunch of pictures and bought me a "Prada" bag, but unfortunately I don't currently have access to either thing. But he told me a story that I wanted to share.

You might recall from a previous blog post a story about a friendly cab driver who attempted to win Taylor's friendship with promises of beers and women. This same cab driver was taking him to Tianjin on Saturday and decided to let Tayl know that he was "very pretty". Tayl was like, "Thank you, but I'm not really that great." And the cab driver was like, "Trust me I have seen a lot of foreigners and YOU are very pretty. Is your wife pretty like you?" And Taylor was like, "No man, she's a mutant." (OK, OK I'm lying. He said I was pretty, but of course he said that. Guys don't marry girls they think are ugly.) Then the cab driver started asking him about when we were going to to have pretty babies and Tayl said, "We're not sure. But my younger sister is pregnant." To which the cab driver replied, "Is your sister pretty too? She must be if she has the same face as you!"

That's pretty much the story but I find it very odd that the man used the word pretty. This conversation was in Chinese, but there is a Chinese word for "handsome" and this guy did not use it. 

ALSO, Taylor lost his passport for about a day, but then found it. He left it in a cab that he had luckily paid for and had the receipt and phone number to that cab. ITS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. I thought he was going to have to be a Chinese citizen and miss our anniversay.

I have to blog about stuff that happens to him over there because my life is boring without him here.