Saturday, February 27, 2010

Hole in the Mouth

So one of the fourth graders lost a tooth a couple days ago. I was a little confused - aren't kids usually done losing teeth by ten-ish? I'm pretty sure I was. That said, my tooth losing experience was a little . . . unusual.

I lost my first tooth when I was - I think - five. I was stuck in "quiet time" (now that's one parental mystery that makes a lot more sense now!) wide awake but pretty sure it was too soon to try reappearing outside the bedroom without getting in trouble. So I had to occupy myself with just what I could find on my top bunk bed. That would probably be tough now, but little kids are pretty creative. Well, my mom had this gloriously eighties-tastic aerobics cassette that she used all the time, and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I'm laying on my bed and I end up doing these reverse crunches sort of thing where you bring your knees to your chest instead of chest to knees. Now as we all know, little kids are a lot more flexible than adults too . . . at least I was. So eventually I knee myself in the mouth. Not particularly hard. But hard enough to knock front tooth out.

Important notes: 1- I'm the oldest. 2- This tooth was not noticeably loose beforehand. 3- Ergo, my parents had neglected to mention that teeth fall out.

So, naturally, I panicked. I was absolutely certain my parents were going to kill me. Seriously, if you get in trouble for snapping off an easily reattachable barbie head what's going to happen when you break yourself?! And then there's the fact that I now had a permanent gaping HOLE in my mouth and how was I going to eat for the rest of my life without this tooth?!?!?

By the way, I developed a ridiculously over-active imagination pretty quickly. Can you tell? :-)

So I'm trying to figure out what to do and for some reason I decided to go with the "maybe they won't notice" route. So I carefully hide the tooth amid my blankets and eventually get up the guts to head out to the living room. Where I held my hand in front of my mouth every time I spoke, with the vague plan to talk like that for the rest of my life. Because nobody's going to notice that, right? :-) Good times. And you know, I'm not really sure if my parents actually didn't notice initially or were just trying to figure out what the heck I was up to somewhat tactfully. (I was also staying on the opposite side of the room - not that far away, but I thought it would help.) Eventually my mom got me next to her and pulled my hand down whilst I was talking. At which point my panic dissolved into sheer terror at the trouble I was about to get into and started sobbing about how it was an accident and I didn't mean to and would glue work to make it go back in and I would never do those reverse crunch things again and I'm seriously sitting here cracking up because of the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing. And this was one of those times that the parental units couldn't hold in the laughs until later - I remember my mom laughing right away while I was sitting there all distraught. I think my dad might have actually even laughed . . . and those of you who know my dad know just how big a deal that is.

So everything got explained and I was enormously relieved and the next morning there was a quarter under my pillow (and can I just say - how the crap did that little tradition get started? So bizarre . . . ). But from what I hear, payment for teeth has really gone up. Kids are apparently getting as much as five bucks per tooth or more! I call totally gypped!! Totally need to hunt down Dwayne Johnson and get me some tooth-interest money. :-)

Then a few months later I was at school running behind the swing set at recess. Someone jumped out of their swing whilst still going massively high and I got hit in the face, and my other front tooth - which was also not loose yet - was still attached, but at a ninety degree angle to my gum. Yeah . . . that was unpleasant. And made pretty much everything difficult for, like, two months until that tooth finally decided to fall out. I really hope there aren't any pictures of me from those couple of months. Good times.

Moral of the story: tell your kids that teeth fall out. (I'm thinking Sammy . . . Nathan . . . Katie . . . Trevor . . . Alessa . . . )

P. ost S. cript
Dude. Teal'c. On MacGyver. Smiling . . . LAUGHING!!!!! This is quite possibly the weirdest - yet coolest - thing I've ever seen. Ep. Ic.


Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Fantasy Skatewheels

So I've been pretty much glued to the TV for eight of the last eleven nights. I absolutely adore the Olympics, but the only sports I make certain to watch are gymnastics and figure skating. Honestly, they're really the only ones that can hold my attention for more than about five minutes. (Although snowboard cross is pretty cool.)

I always get a little nostalgically depressed watching them though, especially figure skating. I always wish I could have gone to the Olympics - in either sport. Yeah, in case you couldn't tell my fantasies back in the day were about as girlie as it gets. :-) And let me tell you - Atlanta and the Magnificent Seven? I was this close to flat out changing my name to Shannon Miller. You know, if you can't beat 'em . . . pretend you are 'em.

I wanted both gymnastics and figure skating lessons so badly when I was younger. I did get a little bit of gymnastics - one summer when I was sixish Ashli and I both got to take a class, and then I got to take another when I joined the school gymnastics team in eighth grade. Well, it was actually just a floor exercise team. Which is probably a good thing. Because I sucked. The most difficult skill I ever managed was a cartwheel, and I was never particularly magnificent at those. Strangely enough, I am/was much better at left-handed cartwheels than right-handed. It would always confuse people when they saw me do one. I would get all these weird looks and "Aren't you right-handed?" 's, and I would just sile and nod and they would look at me like I was some sort of mutant or something. Good times.

As for skating - well, I've been ice skating twice in my life. Correction: I have worn ice skates on ice twice. I didn't really do much of anything that could be considered "skating." Or moving . . . yeah. It's nothing short of a double miracle that I haven't broken both ankles twice. So I ge really jealous when I see all these girls in sparkly outfits landing triple axels. Grrrrrrrrr!!!! I coulda been a contender . . . yeah, uh, no I couldna been. But I wanted to be, dangit!!

And going along with the pathetically girlie fantasies, the last few Olympics I've really wanted to be either a pairs skater or an ice dancer. I"m guessing that one's at least slightly influenced by watching The Cutting Edge a few too many times. (Toe pick!) It's such a perfect story . . . perfectly high school daydreamish, anyway - boy meets girl, boy and girl skate, boy and girl win Olympics, boy and girl fall in love . . . *sigh* :-) In fact, to this day my favorite skaters are Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, and I'm willing to bet that almost nobody else even remembers who they are. But holy crap, do I remember. First there was the screaming at the TV after the Russians scores were posted. Then there was school the next day. My first class was social dance II, and we were learning a bunch of lifts and tricks, one of which happened to be similar to a lift one of the pairs had done the night before. The teacher made the mistake of trying to bring that up, but all she was able to do was ask if anyone had watched skating last night, which caused the gym to explode with the massive, echoes of female rage (seriously, every last one of us started ranting!) while the guys just looked at us like we'd lost our minds because, naturally, none of them had any idea what we were talking about. Good times. :-) All day that was pretty much all we talked about. We were MAD!!

I'd more or less forgotten about the whole thing . . . well, not forgotten exactly, but moved on I guess. I didn't realize just how vaguely bitter I still was until pairs finals last week, when I discovered I was ecstatic that the Russians weren't even on the podium - yay! And can I just say that the pair who won? Holy. Freaking. AMAZING!

It's so weird to think that most of the skaters are younger than me now. Sooooooooooooo not right! It's really depressing too. As long as they were older or the same age as me I could always pretend that some coach would discover me and I would suddenly get good enough to make it to the Olympics after just a year or two of training. yeah, I know, totally unrealistic, but that's the whole point of a fantasy, right? But that's so not gonna happen anymore. Sad. :-(

Weird addendum: Evan Lysacek was in my dream last night. So random.

P. ost S. cript
Well, this is quite the . . . golden . . . performance. Really funny in a "holy cow, am I seeing what I think I see?!" sort of way. I think it's meant to be pretty racy (PG-13), but I find it so ridiculously over-the-top that the sexy factor plummets. Basically, if you don't have a problem watching Michael Phelps swim this shouldn't be an issue either. But seriously - giggles. Lots of giggles. And there will be no taking Plushenko seriously ever again.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

An Anniversary

Disclaimer

Anniversary: n, the annual recurrence of a date marking a notable event, such as the date of one's birth.

Today is someone's birthday. Specifically, it's Kyle's birthday - the guy whom one could technically consider my first boyfriend. I'm kind of surprised I remember that . . . I haven't seen or spoken to him in years, haven't even thought of him in quite a while either. But for some reason, looking at a calender yesterday that little piece of trivia popped up in my head, and over the course of the last 24 hours or so has brought with it a bunch of memories.

It's kind of a long story, so I'll abbreviate some and forgive anyone for skimming. Kyle was my completely platonic date to the junior prom. He played the bass, and joined youth symphony our senior year, so I saw him six days a week. Even so, he developed the habit of calling me on Sunday nights - the one day we didn't see each other, but even then our wards met in the same building so sometimes we did - and we'd talk for hours. Until we both had parents standing over us telling us to hang up the phone. My mom highly approved of this development, so much so that no one was allowed to use the internet after dinner Sunday (this was back in the days before ubiquitous cell phones and crappy dial-up) so that "Lacey's phone call" would be sure to get through. He was my date to Senior Hop right before graduation. We went on symphony tour to Hawaii together, literally spent almost every waking moment together, and on the last night before we went home, we were each others' first kiss.

Summer came, and although we were both working and didn't see each other, the Sunday night calls continued. He made a lot of promises - he'd come to Cedar to visit me, especially if I got into a play (this is when I was considering a theater minor), we'd talk all the time, we'd get together on every school break, etc. And being the thoroughly indoctrinated Molly Mormon and too-romantic-for-my-own-good 18-year-old I was at the time, it seemed to me there were a few other promises implied. (Yes, my best friend and I were planning our double wedding for after both our guys got off their missions. Go ahead and laugh. I do, now.) Then one Sunday in July Kyle told me he and his family were going on vacation to visit his brother in Michigan or Minnesota or somewhere . . . one of those states in the middle/top . . . so he wouldn't be calling for the next couple of weeks, but he already couldn't wait to get back and see me again. So those two weeks went by . . . but the calls never resumed afterward. And then it got really awkward when mom started asking questions I couldn't answer.

I had a farewell party a few days before I left for Cedar, probably the most well attended party I ever threw. Kyle showed up late - very late - because he'd been at a party with the people he worked with at some science day camp thing in Ogden. He also didn't stay long because, as he said, he needed to catch up on sleep before he went back to Ogden the next night for the last week of camps. The next night, Sunday, he finally called again. It was a short conversation that he concluded by saying something like "I just wanted to say have a nice life and maybe I'll see you at Christmas." Obviously, I was a little puzzled by all of this but didn't have the guts to say anything.

So two days later I go to Cedar and get moved in to the uber-ghetto dorms and get started living the college life. Never hear from Kyle once. I go home for a long weekend at the end of October and hang out with a high school friend who has the same major as Kyle and a new friend of hers, both of whom see him a lot. And find out he's been hooking up with (in the Mormon sense) a new girl almost every week. They start going off and ranting about how annoying it is when he makes out with the current girl while everyone is eating lunch together and I can only sit in shock wondering if they're talking about "my" Kyle or another one. Then she remembers (I imagine she saw the look on my face) and apologizes profusely for the fact that I found out that way, but reaffirms the story's accuracy. I go home again at Christmas, and as it happens one week we do sort of cross paths at church. Kyle pretends I'm not there. His mother, on the other hand, gives me a very warm hug (both our mothers were really pulling for this match, if you couldn't tell).

Then in March there was the first wedding of a friend from high school. Naturally, I had to go home for the reception. Now, all this time I've been alternating between the crushing pain of one's first broken heart, and just plain numbness. At the reception I'm thoroughly enjoying myself hanging with a bunch of high school friends, not thinking about Kyle at all for once, when he comes strolling in wrapped around the NCMO-partner that became a girlfriend somewhere along the way (side note: we were never "official," although there was one "neither-of-us-know-how-to-do-this-but" attempt at a DTR by email shortly after we got back from Hawaii). Again, for him it was like I didn't exist as they breezed in and out in only a few minutes, but for me . . . well, I'm pretty sure I might have had a mild panic attack. Thankfully, I was with some great friends who all knew the story and were on my side, and basically surrounded me so we couldn't see each other at all until I got a grip again. A few of them actually chewed him out pretty thoroughly (again, via email, this is way back in the day when email was still cool), but I never got up the guts to say anything.

Fast forward three years - August 2006. Kyle's finished a mission in Paris, which really hurt since, as we apparently weren't even friends anymore, not only did was it that the guy who dumped me was spending two years in my number 1 travel destination, I couldn't even practice my French with lighthearted "just friends" letters. However, by the time I graduated college I'd finally gotten over my freshman year. So I go to the after church dinner party for another friend who'd just gotten home, and as I'm coming out of his sisters' room after changing my clothes, holy crap, who's sitting not five feet away from the door and facing toward me? Yeah, I hadn't seen it coming, but at least there were no panic attacks this time around. And still no acknowledgment from him.



Okay, this is the part where you start actually reading again. :-)

Everything about this whole story hurt a lot for a long time. I'm not kidding when I say it took about two and a half years to completely get over it. (the pathetic lack dates during my college years probably prolonged things, but that's a story for another day. and probably a funnier one.) And it definitely did a real number on my self-esteem, which didn't fully recover until I got to Florida and suddenly was getting hit on by just about every guy I worked with . . . well, except for the one I crushed on a little . . . I was soooooooo disappointed when it was confirmed he was gay! But that was exactly what I needed - male attention, and suddenly I was feeling pretty enough and deserving of male attention. And then a year later . . . well, we all know how the story ends, don't we?

And I'm so glad it did. I think about what I thought I wanted when I was 18 - what I was convinced I was supposed to want, and I really did want it. And I'm so glad it didn't happen. So glad I'll be celebrating my first wedding anniversary this year instead of my fifth. So glad I finished my degree at SUU instead of transferring up here or - horrors!! - not finishing at all for any reason. So glad I"ve only lived in Logan for a year instead of five. So glad I got to go all through college and then go to Florida having fun being single. So glad I married someone who reads and is goofy and dorky sometimes and makes me laugh every single day instead of someone who sings bass and knows how to ballroom dance (those are the only real pluses I can recall about Kyle . . . surely he had more, right? I honestly can't think of any).

Kyle pops up occasionally on my facebook "people you may know page." I haven't added him, and don't intend to, but I also don't delete him so I can facebook stalk him on occasion. Of all the high school friends I have on facebook, we only share three, which I find interesting. Are people still so staunchly Team Lacey that they won't add him? I found out as everything was happening that a few of my friends didn't really like him - is he actually a less pleasant person than I thought when I was blinded by crush-ness? Has he chosen to break away from our old crowd? Or does he see that people are friends with me and choose not to add them because of it? So many questions . . . I don't care either way, but I will admit I'm curious about the answers. He's still single, not even dating anyone apparently, and I can't help but smirk a little at that since everyone seemed certain he would be marrying the girl he brought to the reception as soon as he got home, and apprently there's a bit of Molly Mormon left in me yet. He's here in Logan, and although Ashli sees him every now and then I haven't yet. Sometimes I kind of want to, just to see how he would react - to seeing me, to seeing my left hand . . . would he even recognize me? I've changed a lot, but not that much . . . I don't think.

And in spite of what I'm sure this whole post sounds like, I am fully over him. I'm very, very happy, and hardly ever think about the whole situation. Once in a while I'll see or hear the date and it'll send me back - today was junior prom (March 17) or Senior Hop (May 25), heck the whole second week of June is ripe for Hawaii remembrances. It's not just Kyle-centric dates that take me back. (August 21 - I checked into the college program in Florida. May 6 - college graduation. June 30 - we left Idaho Falls.) But I will admit, I still want to know why. What happened. I would love to have just five minutes either inside his head or an actual conversation where everything is explained. How did things go from seeing each other every day and talking all the time and making promises about the future . . . to no contact, replament girls, and pretending I don't exist? While it doesn't matter to me romantically any more, it's still a little bit of a blow to my ego and self-esteem on the occasions when I do think about it. Just to know what he was thinking that summer, and our freshman year - I think that would bring the little bit of closure that would make my subconcious stop noticing "our" dates.





Completely-unrelated-but-much-more-fun: Experiment number one is a success!!! Root beer cookies are a go!! :-) Granted, they smell a lot more root beer-y than they taste, and the dough was a lot more root beer-y too, but I kind of saw that coming. For one thing, the main character talked about exactly that in Extract, and I always put two or three times the vanilla the recipe calls for in the cookies, but I stuck with the exact amount this time around. But they still tasted sooooooo yummy . . . YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm thinking next up will be maybe banana or lemon cookies. And of course, I'm still taking suggestions. ;-)

P. ost S. cript
Put down the cookies and prepare for cuteness overload. Baby tiger, awwwwwww!!!!!!!! Did anyone else ever play the board game Wildlife? It was kind of Monopoly-ish, but you bought animals and saved them from extinction . . . or something like that. I haven't played in years, but we used to play it all the time when I was a kid. We always fought over the cute animals - it took the longest time to figure out that mom and dad always won because they didn't spend all their money to get the baby panda or something. :-)

Edit: I have no idea why it embedded twice. Or how to make one go away . . .


Disclaimer

I think I'll just make this one a separate post and link to it every time. It's just easier.



Sometimes I blog about personal and potentially . . . "controversial" . . . topics. A lot of times those topics involve other people, some of whom I mention by name, others remain a little more anonymous. I have a lot of reasons for these posts, some obvious and some not so much.

I realize that once something is out there, it's open to interpretation and people can infer anything they want, and I can't do anything about it. That's fine with me, that's the way it's supposed to be. I would, however, advise everyone to keep something in mind - unless I say something outright, there is no way for you to know for certain that what you're seeing between the lines is what I meant to have there. Talking about a rosy glow outside does not mean I think the sky is orange . . . but everyone is, of course, welcome to think that.

So what's my point in these posts? Catharsis, a lot of the time. Different perspectives, perhaps advice if it's an ongoing situation. Validation and sympathy sometimes - I'm only human after all. Reassurance that I'm not crazy.

I won't go the Bambi route and be all "if you can't say something nice (or complimentary, or yes-man-ish, etc.) don't say anything," but I would like to request that everyone keep in mind whilst reading these posts that there is always the possibility that what you're getting from reading them is not what I meant to leave for you to read.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

A Conversation

Specifically, a conversation I had today with one of my fourth graders during reading time whilst she was reading the Civil War episode of the Magic Tree House books. And it went something like this:

Angelica: Was the Civil War a real war?
Me: Yep.
Angelica: How long ago was it?
Me: About 150 years ago.
Angelica: Sooooo . . . in 1980?
Me: *blink blink* She's not calling me old, she's not calling me old, she's not calling me old, she's not calling me old!! . . . Ummm, actually, 1860.
Angelica: Oh. . . . Were you alive then?
Me: (note: thought voice is about as shrill as it gets) Just how old do you think I am, girl?! Yeah, uh . . . no.
Angelica: Your grandma?
Me: Maybe my great-great-great-great grandma . . .
Angelica: Oh.

I'm clearly a dinosaur. Someone just put me out of my misery now. ;-)

P. ost S. cript
So apparently some of the older kids get string instrument lessons in the middle of the school day (which makes kind of a lot of no sense to me, but hey) because I can hear them when I'm out in the hall with the second graders. And between that and these little (well, not so little technically I guess . . . ) girls walking around balancing soft-cased cellos on their hips just like I used to I've really been thrown back to my first couple of years learning to play the cello. And then a friend sent me this video and all I can say is . . . so. Freaking. True. I feared for my life sometimes walking to school with my cello - even though a lot of people were convinced it was a gun. Yeah, never got that one. Anyway, here's some laughs.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Experiment Time!

Confession: I'm kind of a crappy cook. Well, I'm probably not that bad a cook, I just don't know how to cook anything. I have a very limited "actual food" repertoire. I feel a little bad for Luke . . . but at the same time, I know the kind of bachelor meals he was eating until recently so I figure even my hamburger helpers are at least a little bit of a step up. (And I make an awesome hamburger helper, if I do say so myself!) However, I am a pretty good baker, and I kinda love baking (not to mention the results!). And I've been baking a little more than usual lately - partly because I really have nothing else to do in the evenings, and partly so Luke can have some cookies to take to work to break up the monotony of baloney sandwiches all the time (I know, I'm such a '50s housewife, right? :-) However, I wear neither pearls, heels, nor cute-sy apron whilst baking.). Last week I made some chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips - my specialty, mostly because whenever I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies growing up there were no chocolate chips. It was the weirdest thing - whenever someone else decided to make cookies there were gobs and gobs of chocolate chips, but when I went to make cookies they all disappeared. I think I must have really offended the chocolate chip gods in a previous life or something. :-)

Anyway. The cookies I made last week. I decided to experiment a little, so I tossed some cinnamon in the mix. I thought they turned out pretty good, and Luke declared them the best cookies he'd ever tasted after one bite. Yay!! I'd been thinking about how to vary up the cookies and brownies and adding stuff like nutmeg and ginger and stuff seemed like a good idea to start with. Then last week (same day I made the cookies, actually) we decided to get a bold and splurge-y and rent a movie (side note - you might want to stay away from us for a while as I'm fully expecting one of our cars to quite literally blow up sometime soon now). We rented Extract because we'd seen the trailer a couple of times on other movies we'd rented and it looked pretty good. Long story short: amusing, but not nearly as good as the trailer looked. One of those movies where pretty much all the good/funny parts are in the trailer.

Anyway, the title comes from the fact that the main character is the owner of an extract plant - you know, flavorings. And at one point he mentions that his mom used to make root beer cookies. And, as I'm sure you all could immediately guess, my first thought was something along the lines of "Root beer cookies?!?! Holy crap that sounds fantabulously amazing!!!!!! How do you make those??!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!" And after a few more minutes of thought I recall that the cookies I made just a few hours before called for - *drum roll* - vanilla extract. Stroke of genius, let me tell you. So, (I thought) what if I just switched that one little cookie ingredient with, say, extract of root beer? Pineapple? Cherry? Almond? And now suddenly all these visions of amazing cookies are dancing in my head a la Christmas Eve sugarplums, and it was all I could do not to rush out right then and by out every type of flavoring to be found at both Walmart and Smith's and maybe a few other stores along the way.

And then Aunt Sandra posts this awesome recipe on her cooking blog (oh . . .yeah . . . belated plug alert!), and that recipe is pretty much the only reason I want this book, so pretty much the rest of my year has been made. I can't wait to start experimenting with random/crazy/yummy/sweet tooth satisfying completely original (because even if you've already thought of it, I'm going to claim it as my own) concoctions! This is going to be so much fun!!! Although I have to admit I'm a little hesitant to try out cherry almond cookies, because just the idea reminds me of that one lotion - I think it's Jergen's . . . ? - because that's their standard scent, and it smells so yummy that I can practically taste it whenever I use the lotion. So would the cookies be absolutely amazing, or taste so much like the lotion smells that I would psychologically gross myself out. These are the problems with being an insatiable sweet tooth. Go ahead, be jealous. :-)

So. This is my official call for flavor suggestions, recommendations, and dares. Any that turn out especially amazing or nasty just might end up documented here. Things are going to get interesting . . .

P. ost S. cript
So, so funny. If you haven't seen the whole thing, you really should. Good times.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Teacher-bie

K, so I hadn't planed on blogging today, but I have a story just to cute not to record somewhere for remembering/posterity. And since I haven't written in my journal with any sort of even faux regularity since college (I know, I'm a terrible human being, right . . . lol!) I figured this is as good a place as any. I do feel a little guilty though, as it is yet another work/cute kids story. I feel almost like I'm turning into one of those mombies - you know, those women who have a baby and it's like the outside world no longer exists, all they talk about (and will talk about for the rest of their lives) is their kids. And while there's nothing wrong with talking about kids a lot . . . ummmmm, how 'bout that global warming? The state of things in Israel? Avatar? Paris Hilton's latest boytoy? Anything? For crying out loud, anything that will make you sound like you pay attention to something - even if it's just one thing - that goes on outside your nursery room. I mean, I may have pretty much no life outside of work, but at least I try to follow what's going on . . . most of it makes no sense to me, but at least I'm paying attention.

Thankfully I only know one mombie personally (and it isn't any of you!). And while I love the girl to death I finally had to block her updates on facebook because seriously? Five status updates a day about what your kids are eating/pooping/playing? Was driving. Me. Nuts.

Anyway, onto story time. So yesterday Ellis Elementary celebrated Valentine's Day, because today was a half day and there's no school tomorrow. And it's a good thing people mentioned those facts in passing yesterday, otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue. BTW, what's up with all these days off? I've only worked one full five-day week since I started. We sooooo did not get this many breaks when I was a kid - I fell GYPPED!!!!! *insert pouty face here* :-)

Aaaaaaaanyway - V-Day. The pink, heart-encrusted one. Apparently all the kids have been practicing some dances or something and also performed them for the parental units yesterday too. (another thing I never got to do . . . sad . . . ). So everybody was all dressed up all fancy-like and stuff. It was really interesting to compare how the girls were dressed according to grade. The second grade girls were all wearing miniaturized prom-style dresses, probably their mostly-new hardly-worn-yet Christmas finery. And they all looked very sweet. (side note: Aunt Sharon, Sage looked absolutely adorable!) The fourth grade girls were dressed a little more . . . casually isn't quite the right word, but I can't think of the one I want. Trendy, maybe. Stylishly. Skirts and blouses or sweaters, mostly in some combination of black and red. And heels! I was amazed when I saw how many of these little girls were wearing heels - some higher than I typically wear. My fourth grader self was immensely jealous - I didn't get to wear heels until 7th or 8th grade! My 25-year-old-self wondered what their parents were thinking letting them wear shoes like that. I mean, this is prime growth spurt territory, and judging by the fact that every last one of them took their shoes off they must have been in pain, which isn't surprising considering they'd been wearing those shoes ALL DAY! I mean, I absolutely love and adore my stilettos, but I still can't do much more than three or four hours in them, and I imagine stilettos all day for me to be about the equivalent. Holy. Crap.

By far, the two best parts of the day were listening to the fourth graders and watching the second graders pass out Valentines. Mostly because I got a better Valentine haul than I've gotten since . . . well, since sixth grade when everyone in my class had to give me one. It was so sweet I just about melted!! I wasn't really expecting anything since I've only been there about a month, and not all the kids had one for me, but from the moment one of the little girls I work with handed me a chocolate rose I was a bit shocked. I also got a little heart shaped box of chocolates, a pink lady apple (my favorite! yay!!), a couple of suckers, and a handful of cards, one handmade by a little girl who'd been enthusiastically telling me for a week how hard she was working on it. And I don't even work with her at all! Seriously, made my year. Kids can be so sweet.

On a semi-related note, I was a little bit shocked/jealous to see just how much has changed in the valentine giving department since I was in elementary school. Back then probably about 30% of the kids included candy, and it was usually a sucker stuck through the card or a box of those valentine hearts (which I adore, chalky as they are - YUM!) with your name written on it. But it looked like just about everybody was giving candy this year, and most gave more than just a sucker. In fact, the girl who gave us teachers apples was handing out sandwich bags stuffed with pink wrapped Halloween style candy with a valentine card stapled to it. Ummmmmm . . . when did Valentine's Day become Halloween 2.0? Holy crap, forget about Christmas being to commercialized - that's nothing compared to the intense sugar consumerism I saw yesterday! (Of course, that said - what I wouldn't have given for Valentine's Day to have been like this when I was their age!!)

Then I got a huge laugh with the fourth graders. They came into the after-school-club on a major sugar-rush, so I don't think much was accomplished, but it was still an amusing day. the girls who are usually clamoring for me to read with them as soon as they come in instead had to tell me all about their dance performance and how they had to dance with Braden or Kevin or whoever and they had to touch them - GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Never having really gone through a boys-have-cooties phase myself I found it a little hard to sympathize, but I think I faked it pretty well, and I was more than successful at keeping my giggles on the inside until I was safely in my car. I'd honestly completely forgotten about "opposite gender = ick" thing so it kind of took me by surprise when they started telling me their stories. And I still don't get it. I mean, I didn't "like" boys until about 7th grade, but I always saw them as perfectly acceptable playmates - better than most girls in fact, since not many girls played foursquare and I was quite the foursquare queen back in the day. (Oh, how I loved that game . . . ) Good times.

Anyway, that was my marvelous day at work. Hopefully by Tuesday the kids will have had enough time to come down from their sugar highs. I'm off to cure cancer . . . or at least read about something the government is doing . . . or something. :-)

P. ost S. cript
I'm sure you've seen this one, but it just seems to fit the tone of the blog. And it's freaking hilarious. Plus it's hard not to love any video with a Princess Bride quote in it. :-)

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

What's Up

~ I seem to have won myself a significant amount of street cred with the second grade boys I work with. Because, you know, nothing says "hard core" like shredded, blood soaked jeans. One of them keeps asking about them even. He thought the massive band aids were awesome. And yesterday - well, my left knee currently looks like I've had a dinosaur skin graft and my right knee . . . you know it looks ugly when even an eight-year-old boy thinks it's gross. That said, things are healing nicely although I must have also bruised the right knee pretty deeply because it still hurts to put much pressure on it.

~ Even though this is our third, I still find it a little weird to celebrate Valentine's Day as opposed to "Single's Awareness Day." Not that we really do anything super special - it's just the idea. Some days it's still a little hard to believe. Yay for not being single!

~ Pajama jeans? Really? I for one would not be caught dead in them, and we all know just how much that is saying. Okay, genius inventor - I'll give you an A for creativity if that means I can forget they exist.

~ Apparently people want to make the super bowl a national holiday. Ummmm . . . what? You really need a day to "recover" from spending a day sitting on your butt and stuffing your face? This philosophy probably explains a lot about fat people in America. Not everything, but a whole heckuva lot.

~ Our apartment is amazing at retaining food smells. Which is kind of awesome when I make peanut butter cookies, or brownies, or pretty much anything of the yummy and generally less than amazingly healthy variety. Other food on the other hand . . . while it may smell good whilst cooking, who wants to smell last night's dinner when you get up? Good thing the scent stays (mostly) in the kitchen. I may have to start using my candle warmer more often . . .

~ Another facebook update? Seriously?! What is up with this "give them time to get used to things, than change it all around again" policy they've got going? LAME!!!! It's not like they actually improve anything - they just move stuff around. Honestly, it's been almost exactly three years since I joined facebook, and if I could I would go back to the way it was then with maybe three or four exceptions. I gotta wonder - are they trying to see just how much they have to mess with before they really do start driving people away. I'd go back to myspace if there was anyone left there.

~ Luke did our taxes recently, and the refund we're getting is about five times bigger than what we were expecting! Granted, five times a pittance is certainly not a small fortune, but it's a start. And considering we've gone six whole weeks without any car problems (watch, I've just jinxed us), I'd say things just might be turning around. Or at least peeking over their shoulder. Can't wait til the refund gets here!! :-)

~ Back in October/November-ish we made our second bedroom into a sort of living room because the actual living room's heater didn't work. When it got fixed we stayed in the bedroom because it's smaller and cheaper to heat, but I gotta say that after about four months of mostly staying in one room in order not to heat the others, I'm kinda getting cabin fever. (Sadly, we do not have Muppet Treasure Island, the watching of which would go along way toward both distracting me and making me feel warm, lol.) I soooooooo cannot wait for spring! Grandma Barnes keeps posting status updats about how the flowers are starting to appear in Puyallup . . . jealous!! Much as I love snow and missed it in Florida, if we get another storm I just might cry.

P. ost S. cript
Seriously, who doesn't love the muppets? They are quite possibly the most awesome characters ever created (along with Fraggle Rock, the Gummi Bears, and Jack Sparrow). I swear everything muppet related gets funnier and/or awesomer every time I watch! :-)

Friday, February 5, 2010

Time Well Wasted

So one thing I forgot to mention is that silence really ramps up the freak-out factor when I'm alone. So pretty much as soon as Luke leaves for work I open up itunes. And a couple of weeks ago I discovered/rediscovered a most amazing thing: podcasts! Two words: Awe. Some.

Okay, backtracking a little bit. When I finally got my first car my senior year of college I discovered the joys of being able to change the radio station whenever I wanted. (Well, technically I discovered that my senior year of high school when I was pretty much the only one driving the MAV, but I tended to get in trouble when the station was not the one and only station it was ever left on. Anyway . . . ) And I kind of fell in love with the "seek" button, so whenever a commercial or a song I didn't absolutely love came on, I would just hit the button until I found something else. I discovered a lot of music, which was awesome, and pretty much the only thing I (almost) never listened to was talk radio. It just bored me 95% of the time.

Fast forward a couple of years. Lacey finds out that Luke enjoys listening to NPR. Lacey kinda wants to impress Luke, so she starts listening once in a while. And lo and behold, Lacey kinda rather enjoys NPR now! Crazy, no? (note: this is not the point in time where Lacey starts refering to herself in third person. That one just comes and goes, lol.) Seriously though, it's really interesting . . . maybe not all of the time, but a lot of the time. It's amazing what you'll do to impress people, isn't it? :-)

So anyway, a couple of weeks ago I'm browsing the itunes store just for kicks and giggles and I notice a button that says podcasts. And then I remember how back in the day before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out and I was a daily (and often several times a day shortly before a new HP book came out) visitor to mugglenet. And I was always so sad that I couldn't download Mugglecast, the mugglenet podcast, because it sounded so awesome. But those were the days that I had a laptop that I named the Craptop (wholely deserved, believe me!) and later on not at all. But now . . . well, Lacey has access to a much higher quality computer - yay!! So I browse around the podcast page of the store, and it turns out that PODCASTS ARE FREE!!! :-) SCORE!!!! So now I've subscribed to 19 podcasts - mostly NPR stuff. And seriously, I was psyched to find out that I don't have to be up'n'at'em early Saturday morning in order to listen to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." There are no words to express how utterly delightful this is. And it gets even better - The Soup has a video podcast! Sadly, it's super short . . . but it's The Soup! Of all the time-killing shows I loved watching when I had free cable, this just might be the one I miss the most. (Well, after The Daily Show and The Colbert Report . . . )

And I can finally listen to Mugglecast. *sigh* Somehow, the world just seems right again. :-P I need to read those books again - I haven't since DH came out. Actually - and I'm a little ashamed to admit this - I still only have copies of the last three. The horror, the horror!! I didn't have money until the fifth one came out. :-( Really need to catch up on that.

Okay, I know I had a point when I started this blog . . . but I seem to have lost it somewhere along the way. So . . . ummmmmm . . . hooray for The Soup!!

Edit: Check out the posted time on here. I think this blog post = the end of the world, lol.

P. ost S. cript
I would totally watch televangelists all the time if it was always this . . . "pastor." Make sure you watch the whole thing!