A & A

Awkward:
-yesterday at church this guy comes up to me (he's been known to do that), shakes my hand, then stares at my right cheek. I finally had to tell him that yes, I did get my wisdom teeth removed and that's why it's swollen. He then said "oh, ok yeah that makes sense" and then moves right along to hitting on me. again.
- coming out of anesthetics. no matter how hard you try to be "normal" something weird always comes out of your mouth.
- having to have someone tell you that you have applesauce/smoothie/ice cream/bread crumbs all over your mouth.
- long, drawn out goodbyes. Although this one is mostly just sad :( Yesterday 2 of my good friends had their farewells because they're leaving on missions, today actually. Since a ton of people were there it was kind of difficult to say a heartfelt goodbye when they're trying to meet and greet everyone else that was coming and going. They'll be great missionaries though :)
- sneezing when you've had oral surgery. it just hurts.
- being super drugged on Vicoden during church and falling dead asleep.
- explaining to bunches of people for the 2398561049852345 time that you're NOT engaged.
- the bruising that's starting to appear on my jaw. no, I wasn't viciously attacked, but it would make for a better story if I was!


Awesome:
- Vicoden. I'd be in a world of hurt without it. Actually I'm just going to say that medicine in general is just plain awesome. It was a lot more comfortable for me to be knocked out during the surgery than it would've been if I was just deeply under anesthetics.
- being able to eat again today!! yay for no more bread and applesauce diets!
- the flowers Mr. I gave me :) SO BEAUTIFUL
- planning out our summer last night as a family
- Dad finally got a rod installed in my bedroom so I hang up my clothes!! :)
- seeing Carly this past week and being able to spend some time up in Leavenworth with Jill and her.
- less than one month until Mr. I comes to Washington!
- tan lines
- the new shoes that Liz brought over last week; my boots have finally arrived!!!
- one of mine and Mr. I's friends got engaged this past week. Brian and Erin are one great couple and I'm super happy for them.




Anyway, here are some pictures from the trip Jill and I went on with Carly last week. We had so much fun :)

this makes me laugh every time I see it :)

So there's the beginning of my week. Make it a great one people!

awwwww :)

well take away the fact that I can't smile due to the size of my cheeks.... 

Mr. I got me flowers :) he's so good to me :D
apparently "mama knows best... " (see previous post, and yes, that's a tangled quote!)

ending the life of my teeth of wisdom

the title is just a long way of explaining that I had my wisdom teeth removed yesterday. Today I'm doing better than I had anticipated, which is JUST FINE for me!
To do this story justice, I must explain the events in chronological order though so heeeeere we go!
My appointment was at 10 down in Auburn, so we get there right at 10 (gotta love mom and her punctuality) We filled out a couple of forms and then we sat down to wait for like 5 minutes. Breanne then led me back to the operating room where I was told me to make myself comfy (ummmm excuse me? I'm about to get my teeth yanked on and the only thing you can tell me is to make myself comfortable? is that POSSIBLE in a dentist chair?) Then she starts to ask me some of the basic questions (hold old are you, what have you been doing over the summer, have you had anything to eat/drink? etc etc,) She put that oxygen/ laughing gas tube thing up close to my nostrils, took my blood pressure, and put heart monitors on me. Then we waited for the surgeon to come. One of the greatest things ever about having a family of dentists is that they all seem to know each other really well. This guy was no different and the familiarity was comforting. LITTLE DID I KNOW... they were gonna stick an IV in my arm :( It's a good thing the laughing gas was starting to affect me because even with the gas my heart rate jumped from 52 to 80-something. Anyway, Dr. Molen hooked the IV up to some vial of liquid medicine and said "within about 30 seconds your  going to start too feel drowsy". I responded, "oh yeah... I can already....zzzzzz"

I was out in less than 5 seconds.



Ok, now the next part I really remember is me waking up from a nap on the couch at home... but mom has written down everything that happened during the car ride home. From what she's written down I've been able to kinda remember bits and pieces... but she's the one with the full story. No, we did not take a video, apparently mom was laughing/crying with laughter too hard to successfully do that. awesome.
oh, and it's been edited to a G/PG format because it sure as heck was not a PG conversation that ensued from me.


warning: my only excuse is that I was drugged. I have no racial feelings towards anyone, no prejudices against animals, and no recollection of this next conversation


So I get in the car and immediately fall asleep for a good 10 minutes. Keep in mind as you read this that my voice has the drowsy/high/gauze-filled sound to it k?


me: "mooom... is this a new car?" (we're driving our black suburban we've had for nearly 10 years)
mom: no honey, it's the suburban.
me: oh right, right. [pause] THAT is my new car! (pointing to the car in front of us; it's a silver PT cruiser)
mom: I guess so, is that a cool looking car?
me: no it's ugly. I don't want it.


At this point we're coming up the Auburn/Enumclaw highway, and we come to the stoplight by the library. At the intersection, one of the Native Americans was walking across the cross walk wearing all black.
me: MOM! That's a really really bad guy! You have to lock the doors!
mom: ok honey, the doors are locked!
me: I'm just so tired of the Indians thinking they own everything... who the heck do they think they are? gosh dang it.
mom starts laughing and I get offended.


Somehow I ended up telling mom that I wanted to be an elephant because I could have a really long trunk. I completed that with a good wave of the arm to imitate my trunk just so mom would understand what I was saying. I also told her that my lips felt huge; like Angelina Jolie's actually, and that freaked me out.


me: mom, you look like an AVATAR!
mom: really? 
me: yeah... hey can you fly?
mom: can I fly?
me: yeah, where's your animal? can't you fly on it?
mom: oh honey... no I don't have my animal.
me: why not?
mom: well, I didn't pass the test. I'm not a good test taker
me: oh.... but mom (I'm crying for her right now) you don't have your animal? That's so sad. I hate tests. I hate chemistry.
mom: yeah I don't like tests either.
me: WAIT! I met someone in chemistry! Didn't I?!
mom: yeah you did, you met Mr. Incredible in chemistry didn't you?
me: who's Mr. I? oh wait... is he nice?
mom: yeah, he's awesome.
me: OH! he brought me flowers!... WHERE ARE MY FLOWERS?!
mom: honey, they died a while ago.
me: what? (crying again) my flowers.... died? (sobbing now)
mom: yeah, flowers usually die; we can only enjoy them for about a week. But he'll bring you some more flowers sometime.
me: how do YOU know mom?
mom: well, because he's awesome!
me: oh right yeah....


We're passing by the White River Amphitheater now:
me: HEY! I graduated there mom!
mom: yes that's right, you did!
me: .... what did I graduate from?
mom: high school honey
me: .... what's high school?
mom: well, it's where you go to school when you're a teenager
me: oh yeah.... I hated high school.

I'm wearing my  EHS volleyball sweats, and I noticed the logo on the side

me: (excitedly pointing to the logo) HIGH SCHOOL!
mom: laughing
me: MOM why are you laughing? (I'm crying again) That's not very nice.
mom: (reaching over to hold me hand in comfort) I'm not laughing at you honey...


A couple minutes later:
mom: you know that I love you Jessica, right?
me: well DUH mom, you're holding my hand.
mom: well you know who else loves you?
me: (gasp!) Mr. I loves me!!! (mom was thinking of dad in her head hahaha)
mom: yes he does, but your dad does too you know
me: I have a dad?
mom: yes you do honey
me: oh... is he an animal?
mom: no, he's a Decker.
me: oh, so he's not a dog?
mom: no, he's just a Decker.
me: oh.... 




and THAT is the last I remember before falling asleep on the couch in my house.
Clearly I have a thing for animals....


Genetics predisposed me to only have 3 wisdom teeth and the side with 2 of them gone is a lot more swollen than the other side. I also had a sublingual frenectomy which has made my tongue longer. Dealing with a long tongue, and a COMPLETELY numb mouth made yesterdays eating attempts interesting. For example, Alyssa had to tell me that I was drooling. Oh, and I took 2 Vicodin fully expecting to be knocked out because one of those things usually does me in. Well after an hour of feeling totally wide awake, I went to go use the bathroom and I noticed that I'm literally foaming at the mouth. It turns out that one of the Vicodin pills was stuck under my tongue and just dissolving there. GROSS. Good thing I couldn't even taste because that would've been disgusting.


Honestly though, it hasn't been too bad to deal with. I love sleeping, so I'm definitely getting caught up on that. And I'm just plugging away on my "to-watch" summer movie list :)


SO, if any of you are in town, and are feeling bad.... I won't say no to some ice cream :) Liz brought me over some DELICIOUS mint fudge brownie ice cream last night. SO GOOD. And thanks ps.

oh and here's a nice little picture Jilly sent me; it made me laugh :)

of worms and awkward moments.

life's been ok. today wasn't too great but I did have a moment of profound thinking. I was out digging tree wells for my dad, and per usual, it was drizzling, making all the worms rise out of the soil a little bit more. This lead to an increased exposure of these non-arthropodic invertebrates (yes, I looked that up). As I was digging I started to notice exactly how many worms I was slicing in half with the shovel. I wasn't too worried because I knew that each half of the worm would survive anyways but in the midst of my non-worrying thoughts, I began to wonder about the anatomy of worms. If you can slice a worm in half and each part survive, where the heck is its heart? I posed this thought to Ethan and he talked about all the possible answers for a good 10 minutes. Then our neighbor walked by and Ethan asked her. By this point I had determined that worms can't have a heart but I really had no idea how they survived. According to said neighbor, each blood vessel within the worm functions as a muscle too... so somehow this all works to replace a heart. Makes sense I suppose... worms are weird.

ANYWAYS it's time for a good A&A session:

awesome:
- the Kettle on a very lazy morning. Lazy = sleeping in until 10:30
- sleeping in until 10:30
- last night's dream. The details are lost, but I remember it being way epic.
- watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights (tight tights!!) with my parents.
- My roommate Carly is in town today!!! Jill and I are going up to Seattle to see her :)
- having a clean fridge. It's probably one of my biggest kitchen joys.
- parallel lines in the carpet from the vacuum. (you can tell what I've been doing all week)
- being able to force myself NOT to pass out when the nurse sticks a bendable catheter in my vein.
- Ryan Reynolds :} Especially in the Green Lantern. It's a pretty good one!
- Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. I watched it last night with Alyssa and it was pretty good. I really liked the contrast between the neighborhood life and Edward's life.
- crossing off movies on my "to watch" list.

awkward:
- you know when you get put on hold and you're sitting there for what seems like FOREVER? Have you ever not heard the person "click" back on the line while you continued to 'stay on hold'? And then it's not until a good 30 seconds later when you hear them say "uhhhh hello?" that you realize they're there? yeah... awkward.
- that very odd spot that becomes sore after you've ridden a bicycle for the first time in years. ummmm how do you stretch THAT out?
- having to explain how to pronounce your name at a doctors office. (ps: if anyone figures out a different way of saying 'Jessica', please let me know)
- walking around without a bra on. Yes there is an explanation... I had to get an MRI done on Wednesday, and the bra I was wearing has a little metal on the straps, so they asked me to take it off before I got on the little sliding-table thingy. BUT... they've probably seen worse before in their profession. it's no big.
- verbally screwing up a perfectly constructed mind argument. At least it was perfect in my head right?
- having a moment of silent contemplation while gazing into the forest after dumping a ton of weeds, only to realize that your sister is right behind you wondering if you've passed out.

ps: I miss these girls:

I miss that life.

New Beginnings

Yes I know. New Beginnings typically happen in January. But for this kid... New Beginnings happen when I want them too :)
My New Beginning this week was to strive to be more honest- honest in the standard definition, yes - but also honest in my time, motivations and thoughts. As part of this new "honesty kick" I was mulling over some stuff that had happened in the past that I kind of felt bad about. Mind you, it's not stuff that's a huge deal, and I totally could have let it pass by me without saying a word and no one would have been the wiser. But I didn't do that, and I decided to confront the problem.

It didn't go as well as I had planned... but I feel SO MUCH BETTER about it :)
You know in the movie Liar Liar when Jim Carrey is doing his attorney thing in the end and he yells, "AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!" It's kinda like that right now. It's amazing how much freedom comes when you know you've done everything you can to be honest.
Anyways, long story short, I confessed/apologized to someone, and while it could've gone better than it did, I still feel so good about it :)

letters for dayssss

Last Wednesday I had a bunch of friends go into the MTC and I wrote some of them a quick note wishing them luck on their first days. As a result... HALF the mail belonged to me today! :)

missionary mail is just so cool.
All are doing pretty well too if
any of you were wondering :)

I scheduled my appointment to get my wisdom teeth taken out. Sooner is better than later, and I especially wanted it taken care of before HE gets here in July. 38 days! but really, who's counting?

oh right. me. hehehe!

Today I went over to Carol's to help clean and we worked on re-organizing the girls' toy bins. Ummmmm, my kids are NOT having toys I've decided. Are any of you guys guilty of having that ONE drawer/counter/room that you're just terrified of because it just COLLECTS STUFF? (Don't feel bad... our family is!) Well... these girls had about 3 bins full of the most random assortment of toys. Countless numbers of barbie/polly-pocket shoes and outfits, rings, necklaces, doll clothes, McDonald's toys (curse those things...) craft projects, talking phones/microwaves/cameras/ovens, musical instruments, baby doll accessories, little pet shop sets, and who knows what else. Chloe and Safiya are usually REALLY good at putting things back EXACTLY where they got them (I'm pretty sure they inherited the Decker OCD gene) but they had a couple of friends come over earlier last week and things got put back wherever after they were done. Carol's parents also don't have any other grandchildren, so C&S get a lot of gifts from them. Regardless, I was impressed by the amount of STUFF that needed to be sorted through and it kind of got me thinking: WHAT IS THE POINT OF POSSESSIONS? We all live... and then we all die, leaving our THINGS behind and making others have to go through them. Obviously there are nostalgic reasons for the things that we keep; I remember thinking as I was going through my own STUFF before I left for college, "holy moly... what am I going to do with THIS?" Things that I used to think I couldn't live without I haven't seen in years and I'm doing just fine. (Actually, not gonna lie... I'm still hardcore missing my baby blanket. That fabric was SMOOTH man...) Anyways, it's now become one of my personal goals to live a clutter free life.

Well, at least until McDonald's spoils my kids and gives them some 'clutterizing' goodies. I'm pretty sure I'll be singing a different tune then!

time is a funny thing-
an odd paradox
it's endless
yet there's never enough of it.












weird.

unexpected happenings.

Who just gets heat exhaustion these days? I mean seriously? I am a 19-year-old WOMAN and henceforth should be invincible correct???
no. not right.


Yesterday dad, mom and I went on an 80 minute run in which time I ran about 7.5 miles. Cool story right? Yeah I thought so. It's the furthest I've ever run for crying out loud! So I got back home feeling uber peppy and ready to take on life. As a family we went out to the garden to weed out "the redwoods" which had established themselves there for the winter, so that we could start tilling the ground to begin the Decker Farm.
Did I mention that yesterday's high was about 78*???
After a couple hours of weeding we decide it's time for lunch so we all pile up to hit up Subway and McDonald's (for their delicious real fruit smoothies of course!) Right about the time we hit the McDonald's drive thru I start to get the blind spot thing again.


Oh hey ps: I really don't think I posted this update! A couple of weeks ago I went in to our General Practitioners office to explain the weird things that were going on with my body (if you can recall, the numbing, vision loss, metallic tongue, dizziness etc. episode that happened a couple times last semester). Mom and I had originally thought that it might be due to an iron deficiency because she has similar symptoms and that's what the doctor told her. Anyways, so I went in and got some blood work done. That test came back just fine, so it wasn't an iron issue. The Dr. said that my symptoms seem to be classic migraine symptoms, which are sometimes triggered by excessive physical exercise, lack of sleep, or even some foods. (At which point he hands me a piece of paper with all of these "trigger foods" including: avocados, bananas, cheddar cheeses, chocolate, doughnuts, ice cream, peanut butter, pizza, prepared meats, spinach, vanilla, yogurt, and cola beverages. AKA my entire college diet). In the end he prescribes me a medication that supposed to dissolve under my tongue and if taken at the very first signs of the migraine (namely the vision loss) then it should abort the other symptoms.


Ok so with that past experience now told we can continue. So here I am sitting in the drive thru thinking that I'm getting another migraine so I rush back home, take the medication and go to sleep for 2 hours. Well when I wake up I literally am so dizzy that I couldn't tell where the ceiling was. I crawled off my bed, upstairs to the bathroom because *ahem... being dizzy has BAD side effects for me.... and then I get dad. That's when the numbness started to happen and travel up my right arm towards my diaphragm. Once it hit my diaphragm though it kinda felt like I couldn't breathe fully so I started to panic probably a bit too much. That's about that time we went to the emergency room.
Once at the emergency room they hooked me up to an IV, which I can now fairly say that I do NOT like since I had never had to have that before. They took out some blood to test my blood levels, injected me with some anti-nausea/pain medication and ran me through a urinalysis. (ps: I'm not pregnant! If there ever was any doubts before haha) 
Long story short.... the Dr. at the ER said that he doesn't think my symptoms describe migraines... he thinks they are more characteristic of anxiety issues which is slightly ironic too me. However, he did say that anxiety probably isn't what sent me to the ER; that was just straight up heat exhaustion.
It's all just frustrating because now I'm a lot more timid about pushing myself because I really do NOT want to have go through another episode like that again. Avoiding another IV injection would be LOVELY if I do say so myself.
So yes, here's to the unexpected! I'm just thankful for Dr's and nurses who put a ton of time into their professions so that when over confident women (such as myself) push their limits a bit too far and end up sick,  they can get better asap :)




oh and random thought... I've decided that if all of Hogwarts used Facebook, then Harry wouldn't have had to go through the embarrassment of asking Cho Chang to the ball (in the 4th book) and then finding out she was already going with Cedric. Cho probably would've updated her status saying something to the effect of "I'm so excited to be going to the Ball with Cedric!!", Harry would've read this, and embarrassment would've been avoided.
There's probably a lot that would've been much different if Hogwarts used Facebook.... just food for thought!