everyone is doing it

I copy people. (Fine. Janssen. I copy Janssen. Who doesn't?) I was happy to see that Somebody ranked way up there in words I use a lot, but also delighted that horrible, ridiculous, whatever, and um made appearances.

You can get your own Word cloud from Wordle.

day 14

The holiday weekend was wonderful. I couldn’t have asked for better weather for spending the day outside than we had. We cleaned the house and the yard from top to bottom, had some wonderful friends over for a BBQ, and then drove to my brother’s for a fireworks show. I missed having Somebody here, especially when his usual job of preparing and grilling the meat was passed along to me, but was thrilled with my first Cherry Day not in the NOG.

The hot, humid Kansas summer weather has apparently taken my skin back to high school, which was pretty much the last time I spent any kind of quality time here. The blemishes are coming back with a vengeance. It seems that Kansas can destroy in 11 months what Utah took 12 years to heal.

I’m watching Enchanted tonight. I watched it last night, too. I love this movie. My new favorite line: “We adore each filthy chore that we determine. So, friends even though you’re vermin we’re a happy working song.” Too funny. Or when Pip is acting out Nathaniel giving Giselle the poison apple and Edward is all, “oh, oh, I know this!” And when Giselle decides to go to the ball and says, “I don't know where to find a fairy godmother at this late hour." Seriously cracking me up.

I stopped at the library after work yesterday to pick up a few of the books that Janssen recommended. While browsing through the youngun’s section I happened to see an Encyclopedia Brown book sitting out and brought that one home with the others. I remember loving those books when I was younger. So far I’ve read through five mysteries and have successfully solved ONLY ONE. I rock.

day nine

The natives are getting restless. A few nights ago when the Alpha Female was picking out clothing for her trip she asked me for some feedback and suggestions. What the? It only took her a few questions along the lines of, "which of these earrings do you prefer?" and "Should I wear these pants with the black shirt or the red shirt?" before she signed wearily and said, "When is Somebody coming home?" And the Alpha Male just forlornly looks around, obviously outnumbered, and putters lonesomely in his garden. I'm not sure they can take much more of this. I, on the other hand, have taken up refuge in front of my computer. While that is not entirely unusually, the length of time I spend here is more than I normally would. My strategy for survival is easy: blogs, more blogs, So You Think You Can Dance, sewing projects, blogs, and some books. I work hard to distract myself from the silence. And you know what is especially difficult? I am very used to being touched and miss the contact.

Other random thoughts:
* I hate it when a song gets stuck in my head. Hate it. Especially because it is never the entire song--it's always just a few words playing over and over again. Like today, for example. A few lyrics from Bleeding Love go around and around: And I keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love. You cut me open. Over. And over. And over. This happened with this same song just a couple of days ago and the repeat was so bad that I actually had difficultly shutting it off so that I could sleep. And when I woke up in the middle of the night it started again and kept me awake for a long while. Does this happen to anyone else? The last time a song stuck so well was The Wizard and I which, quite frankly, made my honeymoon a little less than dreamy. And before that it was These Words which I stupidly had set to be my ringtone. Wow. I learned that lesson fast. Anyway, I'm SO tired of bleeding love and I feel quite cut open.

* The punk teenage boys that live near us (their house backyard touches ours, but in the far corner) were out shooting off fireworks this afternoon. I at first thought it was just a gun, but after repeated loud noises got up to see what was going on. (Do you like that? How I'm less concerned about a gun than fireworks?) Anyway, the noise was kind of annoying and I really badly wanted to yell down from the porch for them to knock it off. But what am I, 87 years old? Seriously. I'm like an old, grouchy woman that stays in her pajamas and yells at the neighborhood kids to quiet the heck down. In case you were wondering, I did NOT tell them to stop and let them continue with their hoodlumism. If there is any damage later I will volunteer a description of the punks.

* I wonder how much of a pay cut I'm actually willing to take to get a job in a field that actually interests me.

* I was using some of my massive amounts of free time to go through some older pictures in my files. These two were ones I almost couldn't stop looking at. Look at those two crazy kids, so young and innocent.

* Have you ever had a friend fade out of your life and then unexpectedly reappear? Well, I did recently. Out of the blue he contacted me, but out of a really nice shade of blue. Almost celadon. Ever since then I've pretty much been blog-stalking his wife**. And can I just say that I find her clever and interesting and someone (although I know this is hard to tell just by reading someone's writing) that I would want to be friends with? Okay, I said it even without your permission. I have nothing but respect for him as a person and am beyond thrilled that his life seems to be going wonderful places and that he has such a lovely family to share it with.

**There is music on that blog. Consider yourself warned.

the day we wasted cake

And not just any cake. A perfectly good red velvet cake. I had seen the blog. You know you've seen it too and were curious. I mean, how can something so stinking cute not also taste fantastic? She was on Martha Stewart, for goodness sakes. And on the blog there were so many great variations and I just couldn't help myself. I had to give it a shot. There is no one better to try experimental cake treats with than Scrumptious Cupcakes and Camera Addict. None.

We followed the directions. Bake cake. Let cool. Crumble. Add can of frosting. Check, check, check, and check. Roll into balls.
Make huge mess on your hands and feel sticky and somehow like it's all wrong, but smile for the camera. Wonder why Camera Addict has way better clothing than you do. Realize it's because she has way better taste than you do. Think about changing her name to Clothing Addict. Console yourself by sampling the cake/frosting mixture. Feel worse.
Place evenly on sheet to firm. Place in refrigerator to speed the process. Attend wedding and then skip wedding luncheon to shop at IKEA. Don't feel guilty.
Cover with melted chocolate. Drizzle some contrasting chocolate for dazzling effect. Sample. Spit sample into sink. Assume you got a rotten one. Notice everyone else is making frowny faces. Wonder what you did wrong. Console yourself with Cafe Rio.
Seriously. These were not tasty. I mean, that were okay. Barely. Not worth the effort AT ALL. All of us wished we had just eaten the cake on its own. If you've tried these, let me know what you thought and maybe where we might have gone wrong.

somewhere out there

It is kind of strange to have so much time go by without talking to the person that I usually talk to the most. Every other trip he or I have taken has either been shorter or involved multiple phone calls. Multiple. My power to drag out a phone conversation is powerful and hard to resist. This time, though, all we have are email messages and today a short google chat. Was it just my luck that a few minutes after we realized we were both online at the same time (it was 8:50 in the morning for me, and 9:50 in the evening for him) I had to leave my computer and attend a long and boring meeting? Yes, it was just my luck. I almost shed a few tears because, well, even though I can sing about us both being underneath the same blue sky, there is just something special about knowing that at the exact moment I was thinking about him, he was thinking about me. And we were almost talking. And it was hard to walk away.

so, what is he doing in china?

Good question. The details are fuzzy, but the pictures are nice. I have no idea what these are pictures of, but let us bask in their, ah, pictureness. Behold, this is CHICAGO.

And THIS is Shanghai. Notice the difference?

Okay, and this last one? Does anyone have ANY idea what this is?
It's duck tongue. To quote Somebody: "I also bought some duck tongues. It was not as good as I remembered so I did not finish them." Huh. That is so WEIRD that it wasn't very good.

me in the spotlight losing my religion

Friday night I went to dinner with the entire Zoo Peters. Somebody is still out of country so it was just me, Miss L, Super J, and the three kids. Our waiter was a clean-cut fellow and I didn’t think anything of him (other than, “thank you for not stooping down so that your head is the same level as ours to talk to us, because that creeps me out”) until Miss L said, “I think our waiter is Mormon.” “What?” “Yeah, look at his sleeves. I think he is showing his religion.” And so I looked. Well, maybe half an hour later I looked. I got all distracted by a DIVINE lemon muffin and Miss L had to remind me a few times before I remembered to check. It only took one serious glance to agree with her. Yes, he could definitely be Mormon. He practically exuded Recently Returned Missionary. But how would be know? We started bouncing out suggestions for how we could find out. Some were designed to be overheard and see if he would respond knowingly:
“I hope we are not late for our RELIEF SOCIETY activity tonight.”
“Hopefully it won’t rain on our ENRICHMENT later.”
“Have you been to the TEMPLE IN WINTER QUARTERS recently?”
“What songs are you going to teach the kids in PRIMARY tomorrow?”
And on like that.

We also came up with some questions that we could ask. Most involved beginning with, “Excuse me…” and then some question that, if he was Mormon, he would probably be able to answer. And if he wasn’t, well, then he would probably respond with, “What? (Blank stare.) What?”
“…did you go to the fireside in the singles ward last month?”
“…what ward are you in?” (I was a little wary of this one lest he think we were referring to a prison ward.)
“…did you serve a mission?”
“…you look so familiar I think I might have seen you in sacrament meeting last week.”
Super J had the best one by far:
“Excuse me, but my wives were wondering…”

We went back and forth and back and forth and basically cracked ourselves up through the entire dinner. By the time we were ready to leave we were pretty sure we had completely freaked our waiter out with all our staring and laughing. But we still didn’t know. Do you think we could have left there without asking? Uh. No. It ended up being a team effort.
Super J: “Excuse me, but we were wondering…”
Silence.
Me: “What church do you go to?”
Silence.
Waiter: “What?”
Me: “What church do you go to?...”
Miss L: “Because you look kind of familiar and we think we might have seen you there. Maybe.”
Waiter: “I go to the blah blah blah up on blah blah blah. But I kind of hop around to different churches. Maybe you DID see me! Which church do you go to?”

And then I realized my mistake. I didn’t want to know which CHURCH he went to, I wanted to know which RELIGION he belonged to. Oh well. A different religion from us, that is for sure. I really wanted the moral of this story to be that Miss L can spot a Mormon from a mile away, but really I guess the ending is that we Mormons don’t have any kind of monopoly on kindness, smiles, clean-cut-ness, or politeness. Or maybe it is that religion, whatever kind you practice, can shine through you. Or maybe it is that I'm really glad that we can find so much humor in both the uniqueness and the stereotypes of our religion.

Stayed tuned for next time when Super J says, “My wives both took some Jell-O to the nursery when…”