Look, you get porridge!

When my alarm went off this morning I pushed Optimistic.'s nose in an attempt to turn it off. He did not seem very pleased.

James Earl Jones is a little girl in my ward

Today in Sunday School, during the prayer when everyone had their eyes closed, a small child was crying. Then there was a loud thud and the crying stopped. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say that there are some very ugly kids in my ward. One little girl in particular reminded me of somebody I couldn't place until I realized that she looked like a boiled egg, and the only other person I equate with looking that way is Darth Vader with his mask off. Yeah, no amount of elastic bows on her head is gonna cover that up.

Shooting the craps

Optimistic. and I have gone crazy for poker since my birthday, so last week I bought a poker table top thingus and it got here on Friday! It has cup holders, a reversible top for blackjack and, wait for it......CRAPS! Craps is incredibly fun to play, just so you all know -I've never lost so much fake money in all my life!

I also started my new job last month, but I'll write more on that sometime later. For now just know that I'm getting better at my job, which entails making phone calls (I hate talking on the phone) and using a computer 9 hours a day (I hate using computers). Thank goodness for gambling or I'd go crazy living day after day with the endless drudgery of...I mean... I love you Optimistic. and the life we share together! Well, gotta go folks, there's church to be had!

Not the crappy play by Edward Albee, but the real American Dream

My sisters and I were talking the other day about the ice cream man. I said it was one of those things that's supposedly a part of every person's childhood, but that I didn't really think it was. It's just something the kids on T.V. do, which doesn't mean it's an accurate representation of how things really are. I'd never gotten to buy anything from the ice cream man growing up, so there was a good chance a lot of other kids hadn't either. I was never able to buy anything from the ice cream man because it was too expensive, and why buy a popsicle from a strange man in a van when we already have some in the freezer, was the reasoning my mom used. And she's right - it's not practical.

So in my head I entertained the idea that maybe only a small fraction of the population has purchased ice cream from the ice cream man. It's a myth I said- an "all children get their ice cream from the ice cream man" type myth. Except my sisters squelched that right away - they'd gotten something from the ice cream man as children. Apparently my mom gave them money one time when he came around. I have no idea where I was when this happened, but it was rather upsetting to think that they had gotten to get something and I had not.

Anyway, yesterday I went to buy groceries. I returned home, parked, took one loads worth of food inside, plunked it on the kitchen table, and headed back outside to get more, and then I heard it. The ice cream man music. I looked about wildly until I saw the van. He was coming right down my street.I didn't even hesitate - I took my wallet out of my purse and marched purposefully down the street, right toward him. I stayed close to the curb at first, so as to not be directly in the road, because Optimistic. said his dad handles a lot of insurance claims dealing with children who have been run over trying to cross the street to get to the ice cream man. So I waited until he was close, stepped out a little further into the street, and stopped. His eyes got big as he realized that here was someone who wanted to buy from him, and he stepped on the brakes.

To be honest, I was a little unsure of what to do. I told him I was trying to decide what to buy, and then asked him if I was on the right side of the truck to buy my ice cream. He assured me that I was. I didn't want anything too expensive, but at the same time I wanted to make the stop worth his while, so I settled on a $2.00 Jolly Rancher Watermelon sno-cone type treat. I knew as soon as he handed it to me that it wasn't really what I wanted, but I didn't actually care. I had bought something from the ice cream man. I was living the American dream.

I walked back over toward my house, tearing open my treat as I went, and I saw a little girl across the street playing in her yard. Or rather, she had stopped playing and was staring open-mouthed at the ice cream truck. Toy garden spade in hand she turned and ran for her mother, no doubt begging her to let her get a treat. I gloated a little in my head. I had a treat. Granted, I'm a grown up and I had to pay for it myself in order to live out a life long childhood fantasy, but I still had a sno-cone and she didn't - sucker face!

With Bony M's permission, I may tell another ice cream man story another day. It involves deception and enraged Canadians.

Moses, Moses!

I, Genuine P. Draft have a job for this summer. Most likely. Anyway, it's kind of exciting to be employed, so I'm going to focus on that fact rather than the fact that I don't exactly know what my new job entails. I'm going to be an Area Office Coordinator for a company, and from what I've been told it means I'd be bossing around people who are in Texas and various places. We'll see if I'm up to it.

More importantly, I found a mustache yesterday while I was at work. It was left behind after a language fair and probably belonged on the sweaty lip of some 13 year old kid, but I snatched it up and am considering wearing it when I go to take my finals. I truly am tempted.

And more important than that is that there was a giant hairy spider in my shower this morning, right on top of the shower head, which is where the last shower spider I encountered was almost six years ago. It was frightening. I had to club it with various empty bottles. I may never shower again friends.

Also, Optimistic. and I are going to St. Louis next month for a whole week of spectacular goodness. There will be a wedding of a Leaps to a Krys, a Radiohead concert, some staying with friends in Indiana, and possibly some six flags, Chicago, Muncie, and Louisville thrown in for good measure. It will be amazingly good times.

Today we had a small party at work because it was Nichole's last day. It was interesting because we decided to have it in one of the freight elevators. We brought in a table with a tablecloth and had doughnuts and milk and cookies while we were purposefully stopped between two floors. Tomorrow I'm going to do laundry, maybe take some finals, and maybe hit up a garage sale I know is going down a block from my house.

I haven't written about any of the things I did this last month. I turned 21, had an Easter egg hunt, accidentally changed the time on my alarm clock and woke Optimistic. up at five in the morning, had Freyja and a friend come stay with us over conference weekend, wrote a song about Wafflepants (it's very catchy), finished up all my classes, had an English professor say that I was presumptuous when I asked him for help, drank Jamba Juice, and was tutored by my friend who taught me everything I should have learned about statistics throughout the semester but didn't in just a few hours. I also ate at Tucanos recently and wanted to die afterward I was so full. And I bought The Ten Commandments to commemorate the passing of Charlton Heston. I'm half way through; he has seen the burning bush and is about to head to Egypt to give Yul Brynner what for. Go get 'em Charlton!

Today I took an Easter egg out of someone else's bushes, opened it up, ate a malt egg out of it, and put it back. Then I hit a friend with the Easter basket I happened to be carrying with me in the library on my way to read Ice Cream Larry books. And before all that Optimistic. and I went on a walk to the duck pond and carried on our Easter tradition of rolling our decorated hard boiled eggs at the ducks. I also went back to my old apartment and reclaimed my favorite blue rocking chair from off the balcony. Just walked off with it after having left it there for almost a year. I hope they wonder about it, whoever lives there now. I chased ducks, and almost caught a slow one. People across the street were having a picnic on their lawn while I did dishes with the window open. This evening the temperature was perfect outside.

I have plans for my tax rebate - I'm getting a tent - a big one that sleeps a dozen people with enough room to stand up in and stay up all night playing cards by lantern so that when I say "Let's go camping" and someone says "I don't have a tent" I can say "I have a tent - a big tent - and you and seven other people can come and camp with me, if I like you and your seven other people well enough."

It is Spring outside, and close to being Summer and I will camp and picnic and play croquet and lay in the park at night being eaten by bugs and be wildly happy.

License to kill

Walking home from work yesterday I saw a license plate that read KELLBEL. I concluded that its owner must (a) be a fan of the movie Kill Bill and (b) be a native Utahan.

[sic]

I am home sick today, with a throat thing and a heavy head and some aches and pains. So far I have accomplished emailing a paper to my TA that was due today, watching several episodes of Grey's Anatomy online, and putting on deodorant, in that order. I may go watch Pollyanna now because it is my sick day movie. Also, it turns out drinking 72 ounces of water in one sitting will make you have to go to the bathroom. Who knew?

along the trail to fame and glory

It was a night of firsts. I went to my first BYU sporting event last weekend, the shocking part of that announcement being that I've been here for 3 years. I'm a junior, and I had been to nothing, so when M-High called me up and asked if I wanted to go to the men's volleyball game I said yes. We walked over together and upon arrival I informed her that I expected the works - I wanted "the overpriced hot dog, the snack foods bigger than my head, everything! The sky's the limit! "

"Okay, but either way, you're paying for it."
"What? You asked me, remember? I can't believe you expect me to go dutch on this!"

We got good seats in the blue chairs (I insisted because the benches hurt my back so much) and headed off to the concessions stand, where we discovered, get this, only reasonably priced concessions*. I was shocked. Anywhere else would have charged upwards of seven dollars for a hot dog, and BYU had the nerve to charge only $2.50. This definitely threw my plans for a loop and resulted in me buying a lot of food -namely nachos, a tub of popcorn bigger than my head, and a flavor pop, which is seven times bigger than an otter pop and not nearly as tasty.

The game was good -very exciting stuff, this volleyball. Except that when BYU won a game everyone stood up all of the sudden and I had no idea what was going on. I hurriedly emptied my lap of the popcorn, the nachos, and the flavor pop and stood up to find that everyone was singing the fight song. I was aware we had one, I'd just never heard it before, and even with the words displayed on a giant screen I had no idea what tune I was supposed to be singing it to. And when it got to the end, it turned out to not be the end, because there was a whole Ra Ra Ra-Ra-Ra bit that I didn't know was coming. My fist/air pumping was sporadic to say the least. Stupid ra ra ra. I did much better the second time around, and by the time we won the last game I was a seasoned pro. Not enough to be able to tell you now what the words are to the fight song, but enough that I can do that air punching thing without looking like I'm having a heart attack.

Other firsts from that evening -

(1) I considered tossing a nectarine pit down the collar of a semi-acquaintance sitting one row in front of me and three seats down. I restrained myself.

(2) I tried flossing my teeth with a granola bar wrapper. Eating popcorn always leaves those pesky brown thinguses in my teeth, and my fingernails aren't long enough to get them out. I even propositioned M-High by gesturing to my open mouth and saying, "You've got nice long nails, would you mind?" She did, in fact, mind.

I consider the whole evening to have been an absolute triumph.


*Every time I hear the word concessions I get it confused with the word indulgences, so when the billboard at the movies says "Impress your date, buy concessions" I think of some sort of catholic market for paying off past sins going on behind the popcorn counter

Happy VJ Day (six months in advance)

Optimistic. bought me a copy of Space Jam for Valentine's day. And that, folks, is how I know it's meant to be. On another note, M-High called me up just to say "What time is it? It's Valen-times! What time is it? It's Valen-times!" That is all.

bahee ya ee ya....wah wah wah (or the theme music from High Noon)

I needed to get up early this morning to finish some assigned reading, take a quiz, and write a five to seven page paper. I normally get up around 7am, so I set my alarm for 5am, which I knew was going to be brutal when I woke up. This is after going to bed late because I was up reading and then just couldn't fall asleep. I probably fell asleep sometime around 1:30 am at the earliest. So I woke up, looked at my clock, and saw that it was 5:10 already, because I had woken up 15 minutes earlier, seen that it was almost time to get up, and had turned off my alarm. I got up and showered, only to realize halfway through that I had misread my clock, and it was actually 3:10am. I finished my shower and went back to sleep, only to get up at 6am instead of 5am, so I managed to both get up 4 hours earlier than usual and 1 hour later than I had intended.

The thing is, this sort of thing happened to me all last semester. I had both a digital alarm clock and standard wall clock in my room, but because they were across the room I had a hard time making them out. As for the digital alarm clock, it was impossible for me to read its display first thing in the morning. Eyes straining against the darkness and a moderate case of myopia, I would often see things I shouldn't have, like

6, IT IS!
or
the square root of 6 ; the square root of 3 (in mathematical symbols)

On the wall clock, 8:00 looked much like 9:00 and so on, and I was forever getting mixed up. I always had to take a third look to figure out what time it actually was, so I was very much surprised once when after at least five looks the 9:00 wasn't changing back to 8:00 as it should have, only to have it dawn on me that I had actually read the clock correctly for once and was late.

Baconic

I had my cooking lab today and made soup. The best part of the lab was when my teacher was checking to see if each group had picked up all the ingredients to make their salads, so she was yelling out, "Who needs bacon*? Does everyone have bacon who wants it? Who still needs bacon? You all should have gotten some bacon!" All I could think was that she was a married woman who shouldn't have been propositioning us in such a way. Also, I want to say that I'm very proud of my soup, and even prouder of myself for eating some of it. That is all.

*This is a euphemism, but not a terrible one

101

Apparently that last post was my 100th and I didn't even realize it. How very anticlimactic.

Wrapped around my finger

"I've got the world on a string, sitting on the rainbow
Got the string around my finger, what a life, Mama, I'm in love.
Life's a beautiful thing, as long as I hold the string
I'd be a silly so-and-so if I should ever let you go."—Ted Koehler

It's a momentous day folks. I have now had this piece of floss tied around my pinkie for one year. It doesn't really seem possible that so much time has gone by, and yet it has. I can't quite decide what to do in regards to the string, because there's a chance that it may never come off. I thought about cutting it off today on its one year anniversary, because to be quite honest there's no good reason for it being on there. I tied it on and then decided to see how long it would stay. I rarely even notice it's there most of the time. I had better think about it some more.

In recent news, we celebrated Optimistic.'s 25th birthday this weekend with a party on Saturday and a family dinner on Sunday. Each was a success. Sunday I made some lasagna that will have to be eaten as leftovers for several days to come. Saturday we spent some of our gift cards and now own a lot more stuff than we did before. About $400 worth more. I really need to get those thank you cards out.

So like I said, Optimistic. turned 25 yesterday, and that fact kind of hit me in the face last night as I was falling asleep. I'm married to a 25 year old man. I'm married and living in an apartment a thousand miles from where I grew up. I share an apartment with a man. I own a toaster oven with him. Toaster oven nothing, we own a car together. And someday we'll have children. I feel really old and really young at the same time, and sometimes that scares me deep down to my core. He didn't seem to care that he was another year older (and wiser too), maybe because he's at that age where age doesn't matter anymore. I still feel each year as it's added on, feel my youth slipping away, and wonder how I can be not quite twenty one and already married. I haven't played in the snow this year. I haven't played much at all.

That said, I have a fun story from yesterday when we went to our new married ward for the first time. The bishop had all the new couples come and meet in his office during the second hour so we could get to know each other and introduce ourselves. At the end of Optimistic.'s turn the bishop asked if there was anything else Optimistic. wanted to share. He replied that he had a cold. The bishop then said something along the lines of "well, that won't do" and got up to retrieve a tall can from the table across the room. Then he had Optimistic. hold out his hands while he sprayed some foam into them. He'd been sanitized.

The bishop rubbed some of the foam on his own hands as he extolled its virtues, saying "I just can't stand alcohol, so I found this sanitizer that isn't alcohol based. I love this product. I bought a case of it. It feels great going on and it keeps the germs away for more than three hours." One of the other two women in the room piped up, "well that's great for the two of you, but what about the rest of us?" so the bishop went around and had the rest of us hold out our hands as well. I didn't really want to, but it seemed like there was no way out of it. So that's my little story, that our new bishop sanitized us both before we were let out of his office. What a welcome.

As a point of business, I have names for about half of my family members on this blog. The other half I've just used initials for, so over break I decided on what I'm going to call everyone.

My parents are simply Mom and Dad, although my dad has signed himself as Daddy No Bucks before, and seeing him in his tuxedo at the wedding with his neatly buzzed head made the connection to Annie even more apparent.

Us kids in order are:

-First Draft (Because she's the oldest. Formerly called F2)
-Audrey (because she has her own blog and goes by her own name)
-Bony M (Named after the band. Watch Touching the Void if you have any questions)
-M-Lite (Short for Miller Lite, so named because of the two of us she's the lighter one while I'm a bit stouter. Get it? Stouter?)
-Me. Genuine Draft. Hearty and robust in flavor
-Miller High Life (formerly called H, and now to be abbreviated M-High)
-Rough Draft (my only brother, formerly called F). I don't mean for his name to imply that he's a work in progress or anything like that, just that he's the manliest sibling I have and so deserved a draft moniker worthy of his guyishness. I also thought about Tough Draft, Scruff Draft, Buff Draft, Snuff Draft and Guff Draft. I'm still kind of undecided. Maybe I should ask him what he wants to be called.
-Final Draft (formerly H2), so called because she's the last Draft. I also considered calling her Huff Draft because she's an asthmatic.

And thus concludes this post.

Hugh Laurie/Playing House

This is just a quick update on my life to get me back into the blogosphere before I get really busy. I've just finished up my first week of classes, and I have to say it feels good to be back in school. I hadn't been enrolled since last Winter semester, and just working was starting to wear on me. I'm getting back into the swing of things -the walking, the sitting, the not paying attention -it's like riding a bicycle. Some of the classes I'm looking forward to more than others are Intro to film and Creative writing. I'm even taking a food prep class, which promises to be highly informative, seeing as how I don't really know anything about cooking.

Mostly I've been settling into our new apartment. We spent a good two days unpacking everything and trying to find places to put everything, but we have a lot of closets so it has all worked out beautifully. Our place even has a spare bedroom, so Bony M and A and baby Andy are going to stay with us when they come to town in April. Tomorrow is going to be spent shopping for all the necessities we didn't get as gifts, like dishes, cookie sheets, and pot holders. I went to make a pizza the other day and had nothing to put it on or take it out of the oven with. And we're celebrating Optimistic.'s birthday tomorrow so there's some baking that needs to be done. That's all that's new with me really. I'm back in school and back at work and just trying to make do until we get some real dishes to eat off of.

Was that English?

I'm married. Whee! Also, my brother won the eat off with a total of five fajitas and five glasses of lemonade to his credit. And half an Ooey gooey chewy sundae. I really do love that family of mine.

The Great Escape

My pre-wedding movie countdown might go something like this:

The Wedding Singer
The Corpse Bride
Runaway Bride
Father of the Bride
Four Weddings and a Funeral
My Best Friend's Wedding
The Princess Bride
The Bride to Terabithia
The Bride on the River Kwai
A Bride Too Far

Wallace and Davis

I came home today, took off my shoes, went over to the computer, and opened up the itunes before realizing that I didn't even want to listen to anything except the sound of the rain outside.

Also, I went to the dentist yesterday, and there's a very good chance I'll be having three root canals as well as all of my wisdom teeth taken out. There's nothing ahead for me but blue skies, vicodin, pudding, and vicodin in pudding.

The garbage called in dulcet tones

My last day of restaurant work is fast approaching. Next Wednesday. That means that today was my last day of Friday-type work, and tomorrow will be my last Saturday of working, there or anywhere else. I was a bit apprehensive about today, because weekends at work can be a bit crazy. I usually get completely stressed out and end up crying all over the place once I leave work. A few weeks ago there was some sort of state sports thing going on, and guess where all the teams came to eat afterward? I had a line of 180 people come through, and it was far from pleasant. But today was remarkably peaceful, and I enjoyed myself a lot.

I saw a man go through the salad bar with his small son. The man went on one side, so his son wandered over to the other side and promptly reached up and grabbed a whole handful of sprouts. My manager saw him do it, but it was too late. The deed was done, and the kid happily munched on his fistful of sprouts all the way back to his table. I got to talk to customers a bit as they came through, which I don't normally do, and I realized that I could have liked these people all along if I hadn't been so busy hating them. I hated everyone who came through my line for a while. They had committed the mortal sin of ordering pasta, and what's more, they enjoyed their pasta enough to come back for seconds and thirds. How dare you love my fresh made fettuccine made lovingly from scratch with the finest ingredients!

There are two people that come through my line often enough that I know who they are, if not their names. One man comes every Monday and chats with me and asks me about my life, and is fairly up to date. He asks me clarifying questions, like "Now, you guys have already found a place to live down here, is that right? And you're getting married in Portland?"
I don't even know his name. He comes every week and orders at least 4 platefuls of pasta. Next week will be my last Monday, so I think I will ask him how he got started coming every Monday, and what his name is.

The second guy is younger, probably around 23, and he's very enthusiastic about pasta. This is what he said to me today, almost verbatim.

"Genuine, I don't think you really appreciate this pasta as much as you could. I mean, I love this pasta. Do you appreciate it? This is my favorite pasta in the world."

I asked him if he liked it better than his mother's pasta. The answer was an emphatic yes. He extolled the virtues of my pasta a while longer, and then asked me for four meatballs.

A woman who came through today and it went like this:

Her: I'd like fresh fettuccine
Me: The fresh made fettuccine? (and I started to scoop out some of the fresh made)
Her: No, I wanted the black pepper, the pasta that I saw you extruding earlier. That pasta. I love my pasta al dente, and everything that's out here has been sitting around for a while.
Me: I haven't cooked that pasta dough yet.
Her: I'll wait.
Me: No, the Garlic and herb fettuccine and the Black pepper rotate, so I'll be cooking the Garlic and herb next. I won't be cooking the Black pepper I made today until tomorrow.
Her: It's just that I love my pasta al dente, you know? There's nothing like eating pasta that's just been tossed in.

I eventually agreed to lay all my other cooking aside, take a small portion of the Black pepper, and spend six minutes cooking it especially for her.

Also, the dish machine was broken for a bit today, as it often is, but I happened to be downstairs in the break room while they were fixing it. The door to the machine room was open and I could see inside to where the pipes are, and it was remarkable. This one set of pipes I was looking at kept jiggling about, up and down, and all over the place, and I realized that it looked for all the world like that one bit in "The Goonies" where they're pulling on the pipes of the country club and they start to go haywire. I ran a scenario in my head of what I would do it that pipe burst.

It's also been a lot nicer at work now that Uffish works there too. Occasionally I'll look over and she'll make a face at me, which is a nice reminder that I take my job too seriously. Just today as I was leaving work I gave her a nice big goose. I suppose I should have waited until I clocked out, but I don't think anyone will sue. Another girl who works there asked me the other day when my last day was, so I told her it was on Wednesday. "Oh sad", she said, and I'm starting to agree with her. As much as I sometimes hate it, I think I'm actually going to miss my job, because the fact is, I've gotten to be pretty darn good at it. But I won't miss working Saturdays, coming home tired and spent and weeping, or smelling like restaurant, so I think it's for the best that I leave. Besides - there's a custodial job I've been sorely neglecting, and piles of trash and vomit calling my name, ever so softly.

All your eggs

I'd say that I've had my laundry basket for as long as I can remember, except I remember getting it. It's green, about ten years old, and very boxy without any of those newfangled curves designed to fit around your hip. One Easter we found that instead of our usual baskets, our mom had bought each of us a laundry basket for the folding table in the laundry room. She sent us on a treasure hunt around the house and yard that ended in the basement where our new laundry baskets were waiting for us.

My candy didn't look like much when it was spread over the bottom of such a huge container. And with these baskets came the news that our mom now expected us to be in charge of our own laundry. At least the folding and sorting of it. And if she was doing laundry, having these baskets would help her to get the right clothes to the right people. There were a few problems with the system, one being that it was hard to know whose clothes were whose. At one point we all had dots on the tags of our clothes. Being the fifth child, I had five dots on mine, and so on and so forth. But another problem was that some people had too many clothes to fit in their basket. H's clothes were always spilling over into F's basket and he didn't much care for that. And there were too many of us for us to all have differently colored baskets. Mine is green, as was Bony M's, so baskets occasionally got mixed up.

And then there was the extra basket that stayed on the floor next to the washer where the wet clothes were emptied into if there was a wait for the dryer. Mine ended up in that spot in place of the regular basket for a period of time before I managed to rescue it. The basket that had been there three baskets ago had a most unfortunate fate; it was used to carry pieces of wood in from the backyard and I found it one day behind the playhouse, nothing but splinters of plastic, decomposing into the Earth. I wasn't about to let that happen to my basket. I never let it away from me after that realization, that if you don't take care of your basket there are serious consequences.

So I was more than a little miffed when I found a small crack in my basket recently. Right in the top corner where there's a great chance of it expanding into something more serious. I've had this laundry basket for a long time and was planning on having it for many years to come, and then this happened. I don't want another basket, no matter what people are always saying about having more than one basket to put your eggs in. You know what? This laundry basket has been a big part of my life, and it's seen me through a lot of poor fashion decisions. In sickness and in health right? Ten more years laundry basket, you and me!