Memories

When I was about five or six...back in the days when it was fun to ride in the 'way back' of the '90 Dodge minivan, we were on the way back from an excursion to the City library. My sister and I were harking back to the gunslinging days, using our index fingers to as gun barrels and making shooting noises as we 'shot 'em dead' ('em' being all the drivers of the cars unlucky enough to travel in our wake). There was a guy in an old Ford Ranger behind us who looked eerilyl like Gordon Lightfoot...the version of Gord on the Gord's Gold LP. He followed us for a long time, all the way down Capitol Hill and Victory Road, and we shot him enough times that by all rights he should have expired several imaginary bullets ago. But he was still alive, and perhaps was getting annoyed, as later, we both swore that he pulled something black and shiny from the dashboard and pointed it at us. We huddled behind our 'cover' (aka, below the window) and did not come out to peek at the competition for a very, very long time.

I used to stare at the Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits album cover for hours. I wonder how exactly Garfunkel's hair got that texture, and wondered if Simon was really holding a golden egg in his hand. I'd listen to the songs and really feel the mournfulness of the boxer, and the despair of Mrs. Robinson, even though I had absolutely no idea what the song was about at the time, and wonder what the devil difference it made between being a hammer or a nail, as both came with pound-a-trucks which were to be guarded jealously against the stealings of younger siblings.

I remember the first time I went to the subpar Robintino's grill on Highway 89. I had been elected Student of the Month, and my fellow cohort, Paul, and the principal went along. We had pizza which I had heard rave reviews of, but which I remember thinking looked and tasted exactly like the pizza cafeterias used to serve before Ambassador Pizza got the contract to provide the little people with greasy carbs....that is, it didn't taste appetizing at all. Remember, how it was cut in squares, and had canned mushrooms on it, and dripped grease everywhere? (No wonder I brought my lunch from home so often!) Later, Paul gave me a small beanie-baby (yes, this dates me) lamb for Christmas, which I named, but I cannot remember its name to call my little sheep home. Help! what was its name? He (Paul) delivered it to my neighbor's house on Christmas morning, and it had snowed, so I put on my boots and trudged in my pajamas (no coat, as it was bright and not too cold) to the neighbors...the pristine snow glinting. I was so surprised...it was the first time a boy had ever given me a Christmas present, and I was totally overcome with happiness that someone had been so thoughtful...and it was so unexpected! What a great surprise!

My favorite baseball players are Derek Jeter, John Smoltz (what a great last name...I think if I chose a last name, that would be it), Orel Hershiser (I nicknamed him Oreo Hershey), Chipper Jones, Mariano Rivera, Greg Maddox, and Kenny Lofton. I saw Lofton, Jeter, and Rivera in action four summers ago at a game at Camden Yards. (Bet you can't guess who I was rooting for...) When Jeter got up for his second at-bat, I silently willed him to hit a home run with all my little heart...and on the third pitch, that's exactly what he did. I jumped up and down, shouting, shaking my roommate and shouting, "He did it for me! That one's for me!" So all you people, the homer he hit on June 24, 2004 is all mine.

HMPM and I used to eat 'cheezits' from the side yard. Cheezits come from weeds. Yes, I ate the 'fruit' of a weed. The plants usually grow to be about a foot high, but can sometimes be higher, and the leaves are wrapped tightly around a very tiny pumpkin-shaped green fruit. We ate them, and actually thought they were good.

I told Shanelle in my 2nd grade class that her crayons were toxic, because they weren't Crayola and didn't have 'non-toxic' written on them. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and after I explained that she would be poisoned and die from using her crayons, she started to cry. I don't know if I was being malicious or just trying to show off that I knew what 'toxic' meant. I don't think I want to know, either.

Before having the Internet at home was common, my siblings and I all had Juno accounts because you could access email without actually having an Internet connection...you just dialed up, and it made the little fax machine noise, and then a bar would appear and it would jump forward in lime-green increments. If it went straight from 0-100%, chances were really good that you had no mail waiting for you; however, if the bar took even a few seconds to load, you almost certainly had mail. I played the old game Lemmings on this computer, too. The graphics and layout of the Juno page stick in my mind...wish I had a printscreen of them to show you.

We used to get Mario and Luigi points for reading back in elementary school. We had a schoolwide reading contest and my older sis was mad because third graders had to read 20 minutes to get a Mario head on the classroom poster chart, whereas first graders only had to read 10. Therefore, I racked up a lot more points than she did, and due to my overzealous competitive edge and my love of reading, our grade managed to win. Mario and Luigi. My kids (if I ever have any) probably won't even know what dot-matrix printers, record players, modems, typewriters, or land lines are. Sad. Most of me wishes I could go back to not being so 'connected.' Seriously, do I have to be looking at a screen ALL THE TIME??????????? I realize that was shouting. I meant it to be.

Ah, a trip down memory lane always takes too long to type. Gotta go to bed now or I won't be able to get up to take my trooper of a car into the stinky dealership to get my headlamp and oil changed. Timeconsuming and tiresome, but necessary, nevertheless.

Music & Lyrics

Clarification: not the movie. Although I have to say that the film, starring the terribly terrible Hugh Grant, and the somewhat dopey Drew Barrymore (not to be confused with Drew Carey...had a really hard time with that one for awhile, just because their names sound so similar), is HILARIOUS because of the music video in the opening credits, which may be viewed here. Seriously, hilarious.

Anyway, so recently I wrote a song. A rather simple song, but decent. The lyrics go like this:

My heart was shuttered and I walked along the street, head down

I was trying to decide whether to try to fly or stay on the ground

To stay safe on the curbside or to give myself a new start

And then I stumbled off the sidewalk and fell into the path of my heart

Where are you? I've been searching for you

Where are you? I've been looking for you

Where are you? I've been waiting for so long

to find you so I can belong with you

My path to you is set like a story in a fairy-tale book

I want a love to fill my whole heart, not just the breakfast nook

My eyes and heart are open and I'm starting to see color

Life was dull and grey before but now I know I want you and no other

chorus

Sometimes I wonder if I'll know you when I first see your face

Or if I'll bump into you one day showing off my lack of grace

Until the day I find you I will daydream of your smile

Hope you're also searching for me or I'll be in this sad state for awhile

I'm going to perform at Rocktoberfest tomorrow night. There will be video of the performance forthcoming.

"Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair"

As the 60s song goes, I went to San Francisco. No flowers were present, but millions of sea lions, ubiquitous seasickness, and one girl with a bright-red-sunburnt face were.

Saturday in San Francisco: Whalewatching in S's
seasickness: what I experienced all day. I would receive an A if seasickness were a class and our boat trip was the final exam.
sunburn: the result of being a redhead out on the water for eight hours, one of which was fully sunny. Note to self: hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen application do not matter: you will be lobster-faced the next day regardless, so come prepared with aloe and lotion!
sea lions: a gajillion of them. First in the bay, following the boat, then in the ocean, on the buoy, then on Pier 39, barking away. Sea lions, not to be confused with seals, have an 'elbow' joint and very small ears.
shivering: what I did on the boat. Layers on the Bay are good...the more, the merrier. Undershirt, then shirt, then jacket, then coat, then blanket, are all good. More is better. Further note: shivering consciously is a good way to distract your body from being nauseated.
swatter: what I wished I had for the millions of flies which descended on our boat at the Farallon islands.
small islands: the Farallons. okay, so I cheated. Give me a break; one cannot be perfect at alliteration. Commonly known as the Devil's Teeth among sailors along the SF coast, the

Farallons are basically small mountains of pure bird droppings about 20 miles west of San Francisco. Millions of birds roost on the islands. No non Ph.D people are allowed.
Shark, great white: what we did not see at the Farallons. :( Their breeding ground is very close, and the captain saw one earlier in the week, but our luck was not with us.
species, new fly, discovered: The flies on the islands are very odd - they're football shaped. That is, most flies are paper-airplane shaped, but these flies folded their wings over each other, instead of side-by-side. Apparently bird leavings are excellent for fostering exotic fly species. Who knew? They also flew different. I'm no physicist so I'll leave the velocity stuff to others.
smelly: what I was at the end of the day. Nothing beats being on the ocean, seasick (praise be fore boat railings to lean over), and an all-you-can-eat-cook-it-yourself-Korean barbeque.

So here are some pictures of the trip
1. Passing Alcatraz
2. Sea lions on a buoy (if I were a sea lion, I'd be one of the ones on the buoy, not one of the ten or so hovering around waiting for one to get off to have a turn)
3. Going under the golden gate bridge

What's in a Name?

So, taking a page out of my sister's book, I decided to make a post. each picture represents a name of mine, or a nickname i've been called at one time or another. I just googled the names, and here they are! Got some quite interesting results. Just have one thing to say: about the picture of the man and the woman, I hope I look more like the man (he's got a soft, contented look about him) than the woman in fifty years!!!

The Secret of Life

is enjoying the passage of time...
right. So James Taylor is not really my favorite, and I think that song is kind of lame, but there is something to being able to enjoy the moment. Lately I've had a few 'moments.'

Events: Saturday, I went to my first MLS game ever. I used to play the glorious game a bit when I was a kid - never got really good at it though. Something about aiming while moving was just too difficult to master...:D to those of you familiar enough with me to know that that's how it's always been for me, and it's not gonna change anytime soon. It was at the Home Depot stadium...Galaxy vs. Real Salt Lake. Beckham wasn't there though. World cup qualifier, shmollifier, is what I have to say. Let me see a cute man who's ace at what he does run around in shorts and look attractive while doing it! (He is one of only a few people I would actually encourage to wear shorts.) In the end, it was a lackluster tie. It was interesting to note that the better team (Salt Lake) had control of the ball almost the whole time, and yet they didn't win. Weird how those team sports work! Also, I thought it was weird how many of them had long hair. I've played soccer with long hair, and trust me, it is no fun. So why these people who get paid tons more than I do would run around all day after a ball sweating in their super long hair when they could conventionally wear it super short makes absolutely no sense to me (the hair part, and the salary part).

Complaints: Today, I'm tired. My throat feels like it got scrubbed with acid, I didn't perform super well at work, and I slept oddly - woke up knowing I had slimy, unnatural dreams. Ick. Made me want to take a shower. Usually I don't even remember a thing about my dreams, but this time, i just remembered the feeling. My room is a mess, and my resume won't tweak properly, and I found a rather large flying bug in my shower. further, there is no decent food in the fridge OR in the pantry.

Plans: Saturday, I'm going on my first-ever (and, depending on how well my stomach performs, the last-ever) whale watching cruise with my brother. Whee! I'm so excited. He's going to be my personal documentary narrator, and I'm going to bring the blanket and the snacks, and we're going to drink lots of fizzy ginger ale and have a general old good jolly time. I'm seriously praying that we get to see a blue whale. Of course, it would be nice to see anything at all, but I would really love to see a blue...they're so big and awkward, but so rare and unique. Kind of like me, only downsized about a hundred feet and about a hundred thousand pounds. Imagine this: blue whales are 23-27' long when they're born. They gain an average of 8 lbs per hour for the first few months of their lives!

Things I would like to be, professionally, theoretically speaking:
1. a photographer
2. a gardener
3. a writer
4. an organizer
5. a professor
6. a mom
7. a storyteller
8. a listener
9. a singer
10. a sleeper

Which do you think I'm most likely to actually break loose from the banking noose and do?

Keep on tryin'

/I'm tired of lying/ just like the sun above, I'll come shining through

Well, lately my sun has been shining, but rather weakly...I think I'm running out of hydrogen to turn into helium...but I digress. Here are some things I've been trying lately...I figure I've got to shake the mix up a bit in order to dislodge the permahaze that's been in my head for the last eon:

1. Auditioning! Last week I tried out for "Don't Forget the Lyrics," hosted by Wayne Brady and shown on fox, for those of you who don't know what it is. It had been a very long time since I'd auditioned for anything and frankly, I was a bit nervous. I passed a written test, got in a tiny box-room and sang a few songs and interviewed in front of a camera, and then had my picture taken, and was told they'd call me back if the producers liked me. Apparently they didn't, since I didn't get a callback. But I'm totally fine with it, because I really thought I did well, and was happy with the audition, so I'm not crestfallen that I didn't make it. Thankfully, I do have a day job, so I wasn't pinning all my financial eggs on the Fox basket (yes, I realize that was mixed). It was in Hollywood, and it took forever to get there.

2a. Making it to Sea World: Okay, I still haven't gotten there. But at least I have now found a partner in crime willing to make the hours-long trip down there to see the oceania!

2b. Well, in order to get down to San Diego, I wanted to ride Amtrak...something I've never done before. Ha ha, I totally choked when I saw that prices, one-way, from Union Station to Sea World was $40! talk about adding up quickly. I mean, I guess parking is $12, plus gas...let's see...well, perhaps it comes out even, but still. eeps! Snack car aside, I am a bit shocked at the price.

3. Thawing out. My apartment is growing permafrost. Seriously. I am a little icicle. I am threatening to become the little egg on March of the Penguins which cracks and freezes the tiny chick inside within seconds. Okay, well, not. It's taken me months to get here, but I'm sick of paying to be cold, and my roomies keep turning the stupid thing on. garbage.

4. Recycling. I have to do it clandestinely, so my roommates won't know. Sometimes this involves picking their diet coke cans out of the top of the garbage can. Seriously, people, the recycling bin is 30 feet further than the trash...can we not help save our environment? I go to extremes just to get a few pieces in the bin every week. I'd tell you how I went about it and why, but that's really embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as the fact that I published that I feel like I need to get my would-be non-trash out the door under the radar!!!!!!

5. Making lists on my blog. I would like for everything I write to be either a poem or a list. That way I'm outlined and organized (supposedly). The posts, I think, will be more meaningful because I will really have had to ponder each line and each item, instead of letting my fingers rocket along typing babble, nonsense, and hearsay (NOT heresy) in Dickensian proportions and sentence length.

These are a Few of my Favorite Things

1. cinnamon stack biscuits, hugs
2. flannel pj bottoms, snuggling
3. cell phones / chargers, gardening
4. homemade spaghetti sauce, laughing
5. corn on the cob, clean hands
6. singing with katherine, Christmas rumpuses
7. going to bed after a good day's work, a good day's work
9. quilting, reading
10. scrapbooking, photography
11. guitar playing, time with family
13. gaming (includes: Thistle, Ticket to Ride, Blokus, Rook, and Settlers, not to mention StarMunchkin, Mario, etc.), alone-time

Neverending Story

Things which seem interminable but which (hopefully) produce positive results:

1. Job hunting, also known as: (a) the art of tweaking & fine-tuning resumes for each application, (b) not getting cover letters mixed up, (c) finding jobs that one is actually qualified to apply for, (d) not admitting that to be qualified for one’s dream job is often a dream.
2. Weeding a garden, or rather, persevering through: (a) the bugs and the bees, (b) the sun and the sweat, (c) the aches in the back from bending over.
3. Practicing the Piano—“torturing the siblings”: (a) chopsticks, (b) heart & soul, (c) the opening five bars of Fur Elise, (d) the first two lines of Moonlight Sonata (e) freedom to play whatever! (Note: I never did get this far; I never even properly learnt my scales—see next entry.)
4. Learning theory: the endless vis a vis marker ‘erasing’, the constant scales, sharps and flats
5. Reading Numbers in the Bible: benefits include: (a) math skills improved (b) concentration span is broadened (c) nap time provided.
6. Listening to CCR: the only bright spot I see in this cloud is perhaps the fact that the next ten airtime minutes are free of the stuff.
7. Scrapbooking: one page, even in the bare-bones version that I do, seems to take forever! But if my kids get a laugh out of it, it will be worth it.

Everyone Knows it's Windy

and Windy has wings to fly/above the clouds...

this is how I feel about the air in LA and the ingenius, if elementary, scheme I devised to survive the hot weather here while my A/C is broken.


the brownish yellow haze, hydrated, leaves a caramel colored glaze
on the rolls of Beverly Hills, and Valley choc-smog pools o'erspill
their contents on the drab, dry flats of downtown, which lingers for days;
obscuring views, clouding moods, choking jobbers like me with workdays to fill

i join the throng of worker bees hovering on the interstate
to give their honey (worktime) to the Queen of Life (the Industry),
while our lifesource (petrol) drains, we perpetuate the smogful state
our vehicles are streams of large black beetles, glaring painfully

teamed with eastern sun, the brackish air robs me of my vision--
my ventilation's busted; hot sun boils me as I inch forward
I must choose between inhaling laden air and suffocation.
Overheated, I inhale and push the the window buttons downward

Front and back, passenger side: two three-inch vent cracks should do the trick
suddenly the traffic breaks-- I sigh, relieved, then accelerate
at sixty, traffic peaks; the odometer starts its quiet tick
the physic phenomenon starts its workings-- cooling down can't wait

The roaring road noise is eclipsed by airy, cool, pleasure tendrils
as a swirl of softserve ice cream (air) begins to lick my elbow
No wind-whipped hair for me today! I crow as my lungs start to fill
Genius! I will drive my faithful, ailing car until tomorrow.

Time in a Bottle

I've been thinking about time lately, and how time means absolutely nothing to most of us until we don't have enough of it...just like sugar when you're making cookies, or air when you're at the bottom of the pond. For example, if I'd been even a half second faster on August 9, 2007, my car would not have been totaled by a garbage truck.

But it's come to my attention recently that timing is everything. Example: two months ago I went to the beach with some friends. It was a zillion degrees out, and I was super hot and sweaty, and looked horrid by the time I got home. While I was fishing all my beach junk out of M's trunk, a car pulled up behind us, and a couple guys jumped out. I thought nothing of it, and went on piling my towel, bag, book, and other beach necessities onto the lawn, and I waved at my friend as she drove away. The guys approached me, and said, "Are you Mormon?" which I thought was totally weird, but I nodded, and they said, "Oh, we saw the BYU license plate holder, so we pulled over."

Turns out they in town for the weekend, and were looking for a place to live, and there just happened to be a vacancy in my building. They wanted to get a feel for the building, so I (foolishly?) let them in and showed them my apartment, and they called the manager and got a quick show-through of the empty unit. They flirted it up, and said since we had 3 apartments of LDS girls in the building, we needed some guys to protect them, blahdyblahdyblah, which I thought was an odd stab at a pickup line, but whatever. In the end, they didn't get on the stick, and the place was taken...end of story.

Or so I thought. A month later I had just parked my car after getting home from work, and I was totally amazed because the same guys were sitting on the side of the road, doing nothing. I walked up to them and said, hey, fancy meeting you here (was tempted to add "Judith Tremaine", for those of you familiar with Thoroughly Modern Millie, but refrained)! They were STILL looking for a place, as all the others they'd looked at had fallen through. So I recommended some places to look...none of which worked out, by the way. I was beginning to think that they were (a) cursed, or (b) had no idea how to lock in housing. (Notice it didn't even occur to me until just now that I might be giving them bad advice.)

However, through the grapevine, I heard they found a place in Inglewood (better them than me). On Sunday, I was invited to dinner, and couldn't get in because the doorman said the inhabitants weren't answering the phone, so we (two other girls and I) decided to wait around for ten minutes. Ten minutes expired, and lo and behold, as we were walking out the door, starving, who is standing there, but those guys! Turns out by some weird fluke the guy whose apartment we were having dinner at had only had met those three dudes in LA, and no one else...so I randomly had dinner with them.

If I'd gotten home from the beach a few minutes later, I never would have met those guys. If I didn't take so long deciding what to wear in the morning, I would be earlier to work. And if I don't take time to say "I love you" to the people who matter most, it may be too late. Because you can't keep time in a bottle to save it for later, as if it were a jar of home-canned peaches, so I'm going to stop blogging and go tell them how I feel, because if I don't, it might be too late.

What was I thinking?

I know what I was doing / But what was I thinking?

Yesterday I went to Costco with a friend of mine, and I foolishly bought way too much fresh stuff, especially fruit. I bought:
1 pineapple
13 lbs oranges (in a box)
4 lbs grapes
2 lbs sugar snap peas
2 bags of lettuce

and then something not so fresh, but still too much:
1 carton creampuffs (96 ct)

I'm gonna be eating a lot of salad and snap peas in the next few days. Maybe I'll write about my experience and create some fangled diet called the "Rabbit Imitation" and I'll get put on the NYTimes Bestseller List.

I Can See Clearly Now...

...the rain has gone. I can see all obstacles in my way/ Gone are the dark clouds that had me down/ It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day!

Well, it's not really that the rain is gone, it's that I managed to rescue my glasses from the DMV where I'd misplaced them on Saturday when I went to get my driver's license. I didn't even have to wait a million years...a very un-DMV-like experience, I know.

It was hotter than blazes this weekend...over 100, and it's only June! It's killer because the A/C in my car isn't working, and since the car's life is almost over anyway, I don't want to pay to have it fixed only to have the car die a week later. I was sweating everywhere I went, and the DMV was no exception. It was really hard to concentrate while I was taking the written test, and few of the questions were about driving--they were more about other laws, like smoking and cell phones, etc. Oh well. So you can miss 6/36 and still pass if it's your first time applying for a CA license, and I missed 6, and just barely squeaked by. Everybody around me didn't even pass, so I felt extremely lucky.

I lost my glasses because I thought I misplaced my keys, and emptied my purse in pursuit of them, but then forgot to put my glasses case back in my purse, so I only had my sunglasses with me for the rest of the weekend and had to wear contacts, which I hate, because my eyes are so dry. I even watched a movie with my sunglasses on, so now I know what movie stars must go through when they try to go to a film incognito.

Later in the week I had another heart-stopping moment when I went to the library on my lunch hour. After circling the stacks of DVDs several times, I finally made up my mind, and was in line to check my items out, but then I realized I couldn't find my library card...which means I couldn't find my keys, either. But I didn't start panicking until I got back to work and the drawer where I keep my purse had no keys in it, either. So I walked across the street to the parking garage to check on my keys, and lo and behold, I'd locked them in the car and there they were, plain as day, sprawled for all to see on the front seat. In the end, I had to call AAA to come (thank goodness for that $45 I paid a year ago!) and rescue me, and after some confusion with locating the driver, my keys were restored to me. whee!!

Hopefully I can keep better track of my stuff this week....

Journey of an Organic Marble

I stood on the beach yesterday, and watched beams from the setting sun
filter through the smog-filled air and cause the sea to glint in welcome.
Squishing my toes in the sand, I waited for the surf to send its fingerlings of foam
rushing toward my legs; then watched as the tide was forced to retreat
smiling as I heard it hiss in displeasure as it left me behind.

I watched the gulls pick at the kelp left stranded by the tide,
sorted through my own snack: red grapes, firm and juicy
that burst in flavor upon my tongue with a slight "pop" as they gave way,
their soft flesh melting down my throat, leaving crunchy skin behind.

I wanted to throw a handful of grapes into the air in jubilation
to celebrate life, glory in the sea's scent, dive into the waves.
But I was hungry, and my grapes were few, so instead, I threw one...
a solitary sphere, that didn't pass the texture test
and watched as it sailed in the air and landed without a splash:

the organic marble tumbled pell-mell toward me, dancing
driven by the wind and tide, its progress was quick, unhindered
till the waves' grip failed--left it bereft, alone, upon the shore.

It lay there, sad and lonely, quite red amidst the cooling sand
like a lady whose eyes endlessly sweep the skyline, watching
for the ship carrying her sailor love to hove into view.

But fate deemed she was not to wait: not one, but two waves emerged,
and raced toward the preening grape and tossed and swirled and jostled
she rolled and danced, but did not choose, and selfish were her motives.

The waves got bored, and couldn't wait--their retreat call soon sounded
and she, who tried to play two beaus, was scorned and pushed far ashore
the grape was left, quite high and dry, to contemplate her actions.