Letter to Christian-

Well hello. I would give you a rundown of my week, but it hasn't been terribly exciting. We fed the sister missionaries. We ate chicken with stuffing for dinner. Then we had frosting on graham crackers for dessert. It was nice, we didn't have to make anything for dessert. 

We inherited 6 opened jars of frosting from Charles' brothers fridge and two from Hayley moving away. That's a lot of frosting. We should totes make a cake and frost it half chocolate, half vanilla. I love cake. I bet they don't have cake in Taiwan. Or the same kind of cake. They didn't really in Guatemala. 

I've been slowly packing up my stuff. Luckily, I don't have a lot of stuff to pack. It seems like I live in such a way that I haven't really needed to unpack. Maybe I will when I get married, because it won't matter if it gets mixed in with someone else's stuff. That will be weird. 

Also, because of the house fire, all my stuff is here, with me. That means I'm responsible for getting rid of all the stuff I don't use (often).  So I need to make fancy animals or do something artsy with all that dead weight lace trim I picked up six months ago. Get ready for some gifting amigos.

My dress is at the dry cleaners: $75. That's actually a relief, since the first place I took it to quoted me $180 and the second place said they'd do it for $120. Since some of the lace is glued on though, they could only clean the inner lining- which means it was a lot cheaper than they originally thought. Thank goodness for that. 

Luckily, that dry cleaning estimate didn't give me a heart attack. I also went to the doctor last week. When trying to donate blood two months ago, I was rejected and told I had an arrhythmia, so I went to the doctor to get it inspected. 

After an exercise test, a 24 hour monitor, and a movie taken of my heart, I was informed my heart rate is pretty slow, even after exercising for a while. The doctor also said 1/3 of my heartbeats were irregular- which is kind of a lot. Instead of giving me heart medicine to slow my heart-which would be bad for my already slow heart, she said they'd just redo the 24 hour monitor is 6 months to see how I'm doing. 

She said it's not a problem now, but could cause problems with my heart later. Very strange, since I've never heard anything about an irregular heart beat before this incident, and I've given blood before and had a couple physicals. She said my heart beat is normal when I exercise though, so I should exercise as much as possible. 

I guess the one downside is I can't give blood anymore- an easy service to give usually. Bother. Did you know the first time I tried giving blood they rejected me? It was in high school and I was too nervous. My heart rate was racing too fast. I left the donation room without even taking a cookie. I felt like such a failure. Now I know you can eat the cookies even if you don't give blood. 

I'll find other ways to contribute to society. You are a great example to me. I love you brother! Love, Merilee

P.S. I'm getting married a week from today. Pretty crazy.