1.31.2012

JANUARY JACKROLL (A RECAP OF MONTH ONE)

You may be wondering what 'jackroll' means. Jackroll is definitely a verb. That's... about it. It would seem that it has negative connotations, such as to take or steal, but it remains ambiguous. The bottom line, though, is that it is a 21-point word in Scrabble, and January sort of jackrolled us.

The beginning days we're quite enjoyable: I lost seven pounds; my uncle Kent was sworn in as a Clearfield City Councilman; we had a fancily-dressed Tripoley stand-off with my parents, Aubrey & her significant other, and Sara & Bob—Tyler even won, even though it was his first time.


I did manage to knock a hole in our living room wall, with a nonchalant fling of my elbow—I guess I don't know my own strength—but other than that, 2012 was looking to be a good year.


It all started with a missed call on January 26, 2012. I got out of a mid-morning meeting and Tyler had left a message on my phone stating that he was in a car accident. At first I thought he was joking, until I noticed how frantically shaken up his tone was. I called him right away to find out where he was. I dashed out the door and sped away to my husbandry. 

Once I pulled up he was with his mom, yards away from the accident. He had been turning left in an intersection and turned when it wasn't quite his turn. Suddenly a white truck hit him in the back passenger door and blew out the tire, window and air bag. 


Tyler was alright, but the car clearly was not. It should be noted that the driver of the truck was not harmed, nor was anyone else—his truck drove away with minor damages. And to put a rotten cherry on top of it, we didn't have insurance.

(Tyler would like to interject here and say that Brooke is kindly sugar-coating his behavior, as a good wife does. He was definitely an idiot for not having insurance, and it was definitely his fault for turning when he definitely did not have the right of way. Everybody makes mistakes, but I am aware and willing to admit that this was one of my biggest. Whoops.)

Oooookay. Anyways, we got the car into a body shop right away. We also took out an insurance policy effective the next day. We ate lunch at Chick-fil-a because delicious chicken heals all wounds. Tyler went to his work and I returned to mine.

You think that was bad, but it was only the beginning. That weekend we had a soup social in our ward. I took on the task of making some famous sweet crockpot chili from my college days. As it was simmering in the pot we realized it would not be done in time for the soiree. We opted to stay in our pajamas, play nintendo, watch 30 ROCK and eat the chili for ourselves. We both had two very large bowls and soon felt the repercussions of our selfish act.

Our tummies felt it right away, but we brushed it aside, thinking that seconds had done us in. Tyler had it far worse than I, so he fell asleep as I cleaned up the chili (putting it in the fridge, like we were ever going to eat that again). Midnight rolled around and Tyler still had the daunting task of writing a talk for church the next morning. 

I went to sleep as Tyler slept on and off while writing his talk and wrestling with the idea of calling in sick. It was clear the next morning when we only felt worse that it wasn't just a stomachache. Unfortunately, even though food poisoning is an excellent reason to miss church, Tyler felt like it was too late to no-show and leave the bishopric in the lurch, so he threw together a talk on hope. 

We made it just in time for sacrament meeting, and while we felt awful, it was pretty priceless to watch the relief wash over the faces of the bishopric. Tyler gave his talk and made it all the way through without throwing up, even though there were definitely times he felt like he needed to. I sat in the back and naively thought he was getting emotional, so I doubt anyone else even noticed.

Then we went home and watched more 30 ROCK until it 'passed.'