A Bride.

At what point does one become a bride?

I know. What a seemingly stupid question. What a seemingly UNNECESSARY question. Why does it matter? Who cares?

But I'm serious. I thought about it for a moment. I don't really feel like some higher being on her way to marriage, carted into a new life or statehood. I just... I just feel like Lisa, a Lisa who is pledging her life to a Jared. Her Jared. My Jared.

Is that what being a bride is supposed to feel like? Just as it's always felt? Since this relationship started, somehow I knew this is what I was getting into and I just accepted it in a single stride. Does that mean I've been a bride the whole time? If so, I kind of feel a little ripped off. I don't feel any more special than I did before I got engaged. (Though I do feel more special than I did when I was single. Jared makes life more amazing than I could have ever expected.)

Or is a bride supposed to be a superficial jerk who spends her engagement bossing people around and feeling like a goddess because everyone is bending to her every whim? I mean, come on, she is "the bride." Right? Is the bride supposed to be ruler and queen and goddess until her wedding day when it's all over? She's SUPPOSED to be a bridezilla, right?

I really hope that's not what a bride is supposed to be.

Maybe you don't even become a bride until your wedding day. Maybe bridehood is when you're in your dress, prettied up and dancing your newly-wedded heart out with the man to whom you dedicated your life.

In that case, when does bridehood end? Does it end when you come back from the honeymoon and you've settled down? Does it end when you've consummated the marriage and then no one is interested anymore?

On a random tangent: I have this dark feeling inside me that no one legitimately cares that I'm engaged. I know my family is enthralled, but I feel like the friends Jared and I had/have, suddenly have grown upset or absent. I know that's a bounding accusation, but for some reason, I feel like everyone's just... apathetic. No one seems to really care about it. The only non-family person who seemed to genuinely care was the lady at the Disney store who asked me about my wedding when I told her I was buying the Rapunzel and Flynn Rider wedding dolls for a reason. Other than that, the only thing people seem to be interested in is why we're waiting "so long" to get married. Then when I tell them why, they only comment on how they're sorry that I have to wait ten months. JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME.

Also, it bothers me that people only have to say "You guys look related"when they comment on our pictures. You can just say "Aww cute." Even if it seems cliché, it's better than making me feel weird.

Anyway. Back on track.

Bridehood. The state of being a bride.

I guess I only thought about this because I've been buying things for the wedding in small amounts. (We do have time) And I thought it'd be more exciting than it's been. I thought people would be more willing to help or to come with me to these things, but so far it seems like my engagement has alienated me. I really don't care if people agree with it or not, but... I don't know. It'd be nice to at least have some  one telling me how cute we are and making me feel like I'm not just crazy for thinking this is the cutest relationship ever.

Ehh.

Putting Two-and-Two together.

I honestly don't care much for page views on this blog, as I really do tend to enjoy my privacy, as hard as it may seem to believe. (But I do mean it. Believe me, half the stuff I say in my head would NEVER even be considered to be posted here.) 

The insights that google gives me, however, are still interesting to look into every so often. I usually use that section to look and see if any posts have new comments and if I should bother to reply to them.

I think it's odd, though, that I finally decided to care about pageviews, and when I did, I found something interesting.

The posts with the most views are the ones in which I talk about my break up with Jared Whitmer, and when I talk about my wedding to Jared Dalton....

The outliers to this are two; my post about personality tests and my post with quotes that my friends and I had in 2011. Both of these have explanations. When people asked me about the personality test, I would link them back to my blog so they could find the test and take it themselves. The quote book post is one that my friends, Levi, Matt, Brent, and Nina, have a tendency to check back to often.

But as for the other posts, I have no reasoning behind them.

Of course my mind is coming up with a myriad of reasons, but I don't know anything for certain.

But I'm still wondering why. 

Things That Bo-.... well you get the picture.

I try my hardest to not do this, because normally I feel like people who primarily complain are not as fun as those who look at things realistically; taking in the good and the bad. I've been known to complain a bit, but I suppose as long as I include a good note at the end of this little blog post, I'll redeem myself of any bad karma associated with my little rant of Things that Bother Me.

I'm thinking of changing the name of my rant-posts from "Things that Bother Me" and turning it into "Things that Bother Me About Facebook." Inevitably all of my TTBM posts have been about people that do stupid things on Facebook. In this case, it isn't a list of things that have bothered me, it's one specific event.

It bothers me how public people can be about their relationships.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the hopeless romantic relationship. The mushy-gushy love that some people have can be rather poetic, especially if it's accompanied with a fantastic story. It's the Buffy and Angel, it's the Rapunzel and Eugene, it's the Taylor Swift songs and the Michael Bublé. It's the cheesy lines and the things that sound like crap out of romance novels that make the hopeless romantic relationship so intriguing.

I love the hopeless romantic relationship in movies, songs, novels that would never make sense if they happened in real life.

But I can't stand seeing my news feed riddled with "your effervescent beauty invigorates my soul" crap that makes me want to throw up and then choke on my own vomit. I think the hopeless romantic relationship should be stuck with the movies and in private. I swear I think I've seen over a hundred posts like this on my Facebook wall in the last few months, and although I think it's nice that you love your significant other, It just... it makes me so awkward to see these strangely worded love letters on the walls of people that I assumed would never fall into this kind of thing.

I kind of see it like public indecency. Every time I see these cheesy, gag-worthy letters of mush and ick, I can't help but feel like I've seen something at which I shouldn't look. I understand that for the couple, it may be completely acceptable. In my head, I see it like I saw Edward talking to Bella before they had sex in Breaking Dawn. It was all awkward, fake, forced, and everything seemed like it wasn't going to last long.

Yes. I read Breaking Dawn. Shut up.

Anyway, back on topic. In relation to Jared and I, we hardly ever post on facebook like that. I tried to do it once. I honestly thought that was how couples were supposed to act; like this hello-is-it-me-you're-looking-for type relationship. I learned the lesson against this in a quick moment after our facebook affair ended. I instantly felt awkward, and it made him awkward too. At the same time, however, Jared and I can get pretty mushy towards each other. It's gotten to the point where we've made each other cry tears of joy before, and I couldn't ask for anything more beautiful by that.

I think about those moments, those times where we cry in joy together because we're so glad we have each other, and then I think about everyone watching us, and instantly I'm relieved that we were able to have that just be a moment between the two of us. I know I'm telling you about it now, but saying it now doesn't do the moment nearly enough justice for how it felt to be there with him.

And I don't want the world to see us like that. Not because I think it's shameful, but because I think it's... well, in a way, sacred. We're going to the temple to share this love for time and all eternity. There's a reason those sacred moments aren't widely discussed either. I'm not trying to sound uppity or better than anyone else. I'm sure if someone else feels like being all hopeless-romantic-y on facebook and feels its appropriate, then I fully commend them to go ahead and do it, so long as I can block it out and not have to see it. As for me, I intend to keep the intricacies of my heart to the one man that deserves to see them the most.

And I do realize the slight hypocrisy there; that statement in of itself is a little romantic-like, but I honestly couldn't word it any other way without derailing the meaning behind it.

Anyway, I feel good about having my slight admission of love for Jared as my good piece of karma, so I'll end this here :)

<3 Night!

The Avengers, Draper Temple, and WHERE DO I START?

So I'm gonna tell you our proposal story because, as I'm sure, a lot of people want to know. It's a wild, romantic tale of grand... okay well maybe not that big. But it's very "Lisa and Jared"-esque.

Well it started out with just... calmness. Jared's brother and his brother's wife were coming down to AF from Logan, so we were waiting on them until we could go see The Avengers. We saw it at the Cinemark in AF with Taylor (his sister), Sean (his brother), and Jessica (his sister-in-law).

Avengers = Awesome. I feel bad if you haven't seen it yet, because it is the most amazing thing ever.

Anyway, after that, we went up to the Draper Temple. It's my favorite temple in the area because of all the color around it, and how at night you can see the valley all lit up below it.

His dad took a bunch of pictures, and I realized what was happening.

He was gonna propose.

I'm ten months away from becoming Mrs. Lisa Dalton. 

(March 30th, 2013)

Now comes the hard/interesting part... wedding planning.

I've essentially already picked out my dress. I have had it stuck in my head for the last few months and now it's just become an issue of when I can go with my mom and grandma to go (hopefully!) purchase it. I'd post pictures, but I don't want to run a chance of my fiancé seeing the dress :P

I've already decided I want to get married in the Draper Temple for the aforementioned reasons, and now that the date has essentially been set, it seems like now my head is wanting to plunge headfirst into this.

I just don't know where to go from here. I've already asked the girls I want to have as bridesmaids if they'd like to be my bridesmaids. (Sorry to those who I didn't ask. With exception to Nina, all my bridesmaids are local, thus cutting out the hassle of long-distance dress shopping. I don't really want to deal with that.)

I suppose I could figure out the wedding band, but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the next step? I just don't know WHAT the next step should be... Favors and decorations, perhaps? Should I just chill out and wait until the date is closer? Venue, maybe? Who knows. Right now, I'm just confused.

So if someone would like to clue me in on how this whole thing works, I'm sure I'll need the help.

Personal Revelation comes in all Shapes and Sizes

I admittedly love that a bunch of people I know are getting married. It used to bother me, and I mean that in a pretty big way. It used to bother me because I feared getting older. I feared getting older so much that I had almost forgotten that I'm not seventeen anymore. Anytime I'd introduce myself to new people, I'd forget that I'm already more than halfway to nineteen and would slip out seventeen instead. Now, I realize that there's no reason to fear getting older because it happens whether I like it or not, and although I'm still not fully comfortable with the fact that I'm gaining responsibilities that I didn't have before, I'm finding ways to enjoy it as much as I fear it.

This isn't my personal revelation. This is leading up to it.

On a handy little website called "FaceBook", I can see whom of my friends is getting married. This time it happened to be a girl from my drama class. I had long deleted her in one of my we-don't-really-talk-anymore purges and, out of sight, out of mind, I hadn't thought about her much until recently.

She had a gorgeous ring. And I'm talking RING, like, the rock on that thing rivaled rings I couldn't even DREAM of owning. Okay, so maybe it wasn't QUEEN OF ENGLAND grand, but it was still amazing, and would take ANY girl's breath away to have it presented to her.

I'll admit, I was jealous at first. I sat there and thought about Jared and I, and how little our ring is.

No, he hasn't officially proposed yet, but the reason I know what the ring looks like is because my mom gave it to us.

It's little. This is a bigger picture of it. When I actually get engaged, I'll show you the real thing. Mine also has a little bit less of a shine to it, due to age. This one pictured is platinum, also, and mine is white gold. Little differences, but differences nonetheless.

Anyway. I looked at this girl's huge ring. I thought about mine. I looked at her ring, and then thought about mine.

Initially? Jealous. Insanely so.

But then I stopped. I looked at the ring again and then looked at my hand. I looked around and saw a few things around my floor and then looked at the ring

Her ring wasn't me. It wasn't sentimental. It was a huge rock with a shiny sign that read "NOT LISA" on it. I looked back around my room and then back at my hand. (Although the ring wasn't/isn't there yet, I've grown a habit of gesturing to my hand whenever I think about Jared and I.) My MOTHER gave us our ring. She didn't have to. 

So this is my personal revelation: People come in different shapes and sizes. So do things. And when the things reflect the person inside is when you find really valuable things, not because they cost a million dollars. When you find things that carry sentimentality and meaning to you is when you've found something amazing.

I love my ring, and I love my Jared. and I wouldn't want any of this any other way.

Also, I wish my friend the best of luck with everything! <3

Stressful? You betcha.

I'm starting to care less and less about school. It's kind of sad to say, but it's true. I honestly don't really care. I get so bored in my classes, and then they pile stress onto me about it. Yes, homework is important, but I just don't have time. And I feel like I'm not learning anything new half the time.


I mean, sure, I could learn something new in these classes, and I'm certainly not going to just quit school.

But I don't think I've ever had such an extreme lack of motivation to do anything. Work isn't this bad either, but then again, all I have to do for work is show up and then not worry about it when I get back home.

Things are tough. I hate that time seems to be moving slower than anything else, and that I can't seem to find a comfortable spot to just... relax in.

Mom suggested telling my boss that I can only work one day a week, which would be sufficiently nice, but at the same time, I don't know if I can handle that much of a pay cut. I don't know if I could do that to the center either. At that point, they might as well just let me go and find someone that can work more hours. I couldn't handle leaving the kids either. Although they're hardly angels, I'd feel like I was letting them down by leaving them.

I guess that's why so many people feel like they're stuck in this line of work; They could leave at any moment, but they love the kids and it makes them stay. 

On a side note, I might be carrying one or both of the two viruses that cause Hand Foot Mouth. Wonderful.... Did I mention that I love my toddlers?

PROMISE RING?!

It's so adorable I might die O___O


Just a promise ring for now while we get the money to actually get married. :P <3