Time-induced heartburn

You win.
All of you who supposedly obsessed over my repulsively descriptive missionary letters. You win. I've joined the blogging world. 

One of the hardest rules for me to follow as an LDS missionary was this: "Don't write any letters unless it's on your Preparation Day." 

How I interpreted that rule:

"Sister Willardson,
We know your life is full of erroneous happenings that seem virtually unrealistic — however, you do experience ridiculous things that nobody else does. So, in order to not flood the Internet with your exaggerated discourses, just write once a week. K? Thanks. 
Signed, 
President Monson." 

The rule made sense — I had a particular focus of teaching families about Jesus Christ and eternal families. If I were distracted by writing home too often, I would cheat the Lord. My alternative was making bullet points in my daily planner, reminding myself of all the little, irrelevant details that I felt were life-threateningly important. 

Oh, and on an "unrelated" note, I have acid reflux ... and here's why:

On preparation day, we had one hour to email our families. 

I repeat, 60 minutes. 

My missionary companion Jones — who I will throw under the bus on many glorious occasions — used to say that I just "pretend pounded" on the computer keys because "surely no one could type that fast." Well I did, and I still do. I felt like I needed a shower after every email because I was so worked up. Over time, this resulted in reflux which became a close companion. (Or maybe the reflux companionship came from my obsession with Flaming Hot Cheetos? Either way.)

So here I am: Free to write with no time constraints, free to embellish and free to entertain. And by entertain, I probably mean annoy.

There. I said it.