Major Change #4: I got married.

Well, not really. Not like the "I'm-in-love-with-you" marriage.

But when I moved into the apartment here with Megan and met with her parents a couple times, there was one weekend when they came down to visit us and take us out to breakfast. I'll always remember, Megan's mom was talking to us, about how she was telling other people how well this year was going for Megan and I. We each finally found a roommate that we enjoyed!! Megan's mom put it as, "Megan got married." Meaning, she is living with this other person and living maturely. Together, the two clean together, cook together, take care of each other, etc.

To be a part of this is remarkable! I love having Megan around; she is so handy!!! She is very clean: at one point we probably had about 37 different bottles of cleaning solution under the kitchen sink to use, and every weekend we clean the place from head to toe. She knows how to cook and teaches me a lot of fun little tricks, like how to knead bread, or how to use her breadmaker to make home-made bread, and what her purple Jasmine rice looks like. (Actually, it is purple rice...can't get any more purple than Barney the dinosaur!!)

She knows how to fix things around the place too: one weekend we were hanging curtains and she just climbed right up into the ceiling to help pin a brad into the wall to hang the curtain. I turned around to grab a dining room chair to stand on, and BOOM!, she just took the hammer right to the wall and took care of the curtains for me. The same thing happened when we hung our Christmas lights, she pulled through and made them look all pretty. Oh, AND when we were installing these hooks on bathroom #2's wall, for us to hang our towels on. She even found these cool little drywall plugs that you fit your screws into, so that they don't just fall out of the drywall after a certain amount of use, when it crumbles off of the threads of the screws and your apparatus falls out of the wall. God, she kicked my ass -- and I'M the one studying to be an engineer! *Whimpers* ;)

She has a great sense of humor that lets me feel at home around her! I can crack sick jokes, slump around in my pajamas, go take a duece, or take off my makeup at nighttime instead, so it doesn't seep into my skin overnight and create zits. (Elsewhere, I'd leave the make-up on all night, so I wouldn't have to feel self-conscious and wear it all through the night, only to wash it off in the shower the next morning, so that anytime anyone would see me I would have my "face" on, including those odd nights where I might wake up to go take a piss and someone else might have been up at the same time as me, in the bathroom by the sinks, for a split-second.) Hell, she's even created a blog in my honor, citing all the gross things or phrases I say, because I admit I can get to be pretty original with how I say things. :)

She is a non-traditional girl; no frills, grills, or trilly little catty games. It is great. She is honest and to-the-point, but also does not hold a grudge. I like that. Just spit out your business and get it over with! We click great together, there is nothing we have to hide from each other, I love it.

She is very sweet, too. At the beginning of the year I wrote her a note on a sticky-bound pack of reminder notes, and once she read it, I made a move to rip off the used reminder note page to throw it away. Funny thing is, as I was about to pull it off, I thought to myself, This would actually be kind of neat to keep, for us to look back on and read about all the little things we would do during the course of the year. Cooly enough, she piped up from the other side of the room and said, "Wait!! Leave the page on, I think it'd be cool to keep these, for us to look back on and read all about what we've done."

So that settled it, and we now have this journal-esque notepad thing with a cat-print at the top of it on our "mail desk," with a few used pages curled back, storing funky little events like "Dishwasher is clean!" or "I put our candy in a cute white candy bowl!! Happy Birthday!!!!!" When she first started her job, causing her to leave before me every morning, I'd leave her notes the night before, while I was still up and she was sleeping, so she could find them in the morning. She'd write me back, go to work, and then I'd get up, to find the note, and write back, and so on. It is fun, and she is so thoughtful.

When she's out on her own she'll see a Volkswagen Beetle, scoff at it "for looking like an egg," but then later tell me that she thought of me and considered calling me just to tell me about how she saw it. She does the same each time she sees a SWEET-ass Milwaukee Fire Department fire truck, in honor of all the times I see one and whoop, "LOOK MEGAN!! A FI-YAH TWUCK, A FI-YAH TWUCK!!!" (Said in joking little kid voice)

She'd go home on the same weekends as me, and I go home on the same weekends as her, so neither of us have to be alone here in the apartment for the weekend. But while I am in Green Bay and she is in her hometown of Sheboygan, we'll still miss each other, and have our moms take us out grocery shopping, all the while picking stuff off of shelves in excitement, claiming how "Megan is going to like this so much!!" or "Ooooh, Ashley eats these all the time, let's get these for her!"

She helps me eat my Craisins, cheese sticks, sugar snap peas, and cookie dough ice cream, all the while teasing me for being a health-food nut, even though I am slowly turning her on to my foods. ;) She will watch my favorite TV shows with me, and ask me to help terrorize her cat Penelope as we chase her around or hide her in a blanket or in my hollow ottoman. She'll sit and talk with me about how weird boys are, and how twisted each of our histories with boys are as well. We'll also talk about our parents, and how...different?...it feels now to go back home, since we have our place of our own now. She'll go grocery shopping with me, and me with her, and she shows me how to get around Milwaukee on the city busses! Thanks to her, I am now a pro at catching the busses at the right times and the right directions! She has even taken me downtown to the Milwaukee River Walk, where we just quietly go through the heart of downtown Milwaukee on its gorgeous boardwalk along the river and "skyscrapers," taking in the pretty lights and landscaping.

Who'da thought that in my first week ever of being in Milwaukee, that I would have met all I ever needed to survive down here? Surely, you know that is how we met??

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It was that first odd week of freshman year, before classes started when you were forced to attend all those lame new-kid orienations. I had to attend one for the Honors College, in the huge Wisconsin Room in the UWM Union. There were round tables all over the place, but I picked one towards the front and just plopped down.

She plopped down at the same table, directly across from me.


I think four other girls, and one guy, ended up sitting at the table around us, and we all made small talk; but it was Megan and I that kept on joking and jostling with each other, as well as teasing this terrified little freshman boy about sitting at a table with all girls. Ha, by the end of the orientation, we had him sitting sideways in his chair, with his legs sitting out, ready to spring him up for escape at any minute!

When it was time to go, we all stood up, but she ripped off a page of her program, scribbled her name, e-mail, and phone number on it, and swooshed it across the table towards me, meekly saying, "Don't forget me!!" The rest is history: I e-mailed her later to hang out, and we kept in touch since then.

But really; how do things even just click like that? How do things just work themselves out to something you sensed should have happened all along???

We got to talking about eating Play-Doh when we were kids, for crying out loud!! Who does that??? Who gets onto that weird-ass of a conversation upon first meeting each other?!

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Those who hit it off, do. And Megan and I hit it off real well. I like it, she has saved my skins and created a safe haven here for me. :) Thus, major change #4 for my life, but good major change #4.