On More Slash Down Memory Lane

Yet another entry in the ongoing saga that is the destruction of all my childhood memories . . . Hogle Zoo edition.

(side note: skimming over those posts, it seems I get perhaps a tiny bit melodramatic when this topic comes up, no?)

A little background: the niece-phew . . . which I don't believe I ever mentioned turned out to be a nephew . . .  finally came out west for a visit for the last two weeks.  And since most of my family gets labor day off by default the others arranged to have it off too and we all went to the zoo.

Now.  I knew going in that they had made some changes, and that things would probably not look exactly like they had the last time I went to this particular zoo.  Especially considering I'm pretty sure the last time was when we still lived in Idaho.  But still - I was not prepared to see all these big ole DAK Lodge-meets-Fort-Wilderness looking buildings where once there was a single rinky dink little ticket booth next to one of those rotating door grate thingies.

The first sign that this day was going to be nothing like I imagined it . . .


Anyway.  You know that thing that's all the rage on pinterest these days?  The one where they take the picture from, like, twenty years ago and get the people do pose the way they did then and it looks varying degrees so silly (and sometimes cute)?  And you know how in those cheesy wedding reception slide shows they always have those side-by-side pictures of the bride and groom doing the same thing when they were little, like playing in the kiddie pool or covered in spaghetti or whatever?  Now, I had the genius idea of combining those two things into some fun pictures myself.  Namely, making Luke as an adult pose for all the pictures I took as a kid.  So you can imagine by devastation upon walking in and discovering that the gopher hole picture wasn't going to happen.  Because the gopher holes are now a pile of dirt on their way to becoming the new African safari exhibit.  Yeah, I am so  not okay with that.

On the plus side, the lion fountain still exists, although it's not in the same place.

Is it more daring for an adult to stick their head in a lion's mouth or less?





And the gorilla exhibit hasn't changed much, although it kind of feels like it has since everything around it has changed.

(Rogan [the nephew] was asleep at this point, so sadly no picture of him in gorilla pose)


So now mom just needs to dig up the pictures of me from whatever abyss they've been sucked in to.



The change I was probably most prepared for but most disappointed about was the lack of those wax molded animal making vending machines things (that google has oh-so-helpfully taught me are called Mold-A-Rama machines.  and you'd better believe I'm working on a road trip to collect them all!!)  Because seriously, I loved those cheap, crayon-smelling, melty, not-quite-toys, not-quite-display-things that must have been really cheap considering I remember getting them on, like, every trip to the zoo we ever made.  Even though they come out of the machine still hot and therefore still kind of flexible and just a little bit of a push on them and they'd give way and I'm pretty sure not a one ever made it all the way back to IF with the bottom stand or whatever intact because we'd break them into a dozen pieces.  I don't remember the elephants and gorillas lasting much longer when got them home either, but they always smelled like crayon and we always seemed to get new ones the next summer.  Dude, what I wouldn't have given to have been able to get just one more of those this week.

Anyway.  It was different, and that was somewhat distressing, but things made up for it.  Like the part where it started as the perfect day to get out of town because when we left it was pouring buckets . . . literally.  I kid you not, that was the scariest drive through Sardine Canyon I've ever experienced.  But by the time we hit Ogden it was nothing but clear skies - well, rain wise at least.  It was a little cloudy and a little gloomy, but it really just meant that it wasn't too hot or too bright out and generally made the day better.  Until about mid-afternoon when the sun decided to come out and it shot up, like, thirty degrees in about half as many minutes.  That part was not fun.  And I guess I'm allergic to the sun or something because more or less right as the sun came out my eyes started itching and not long after that they were the epic waterfalls they were last year at Yellowstone.  Blargh.  So we gave back this guy:

(I swear we're friends . . . just apparently only when I'm pointing the camera at him . . . or when he thinks I might let him take the camera . . . )








And headed on out.  Of course, it being September we had a couple of other stops to make - for which I shall just say: ORANGE.  LEMONADE.  LIFE.  MADE.

And we stopped for dinner at In'N'Out.  Now, I had quite deliberately not eaten since breakfast so I wouldn't be full when we hit Centerville on the way home.  (the bad news is that that led to some slight dehydration and a mild headache all Tuesday . . . the things we do for good food . . . )  And can I just say - In'N'Out is delicious anytime, but when you're hungry it is AMAZING!  I'd love to have one closer by.


And so slammed another door onto my memories.  The elephants are mostly the same, the giraffe building is the same (although those are both going when the new exhibit is done) but nothing else is left of the zoo I used to go to.  I wonder what other mental images will get mucked up before we're done.


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Seriously.  Coolest things ever.




Except this one.  Maybe.  Maybe cooler.

Eliot Had the Wrong "A" Month

August is such a month of change.  Every year . . . even after the point where you'd think it wouldn't be such a significant month anymore.  But somehow it shows up again every 334 days and at the very least some tiny little corner of life is turned upside-down.

This week was/is the six year anniversary of me moving to Florida and starting at Disney.  For a week I didn't document in any way at all I remember it incredibly well - I checked in on the 21st, program orientation on the 22nd, Traditions on the 23rd, On With the Show on the 24th, Honey training on the 25th, assessment on the 26th, working on the 27th, and finally a couple of days of on the 29th and 30th . . . but only through an act of God.  And an awesome intervention by a manager because my training buddy and I originally weren't scheduled for a day off until Friday and Saturday, and while ten straight days became something that we did regularly later on, there is no way that we would have made it that week.  Of course, somehow the schedule changed in one program but not the other and when I came back to work on Thursday I discovered I had two no call/no shows on my record.  Which led to a minor panic attack from visions of being fired before I even got my first paycheck, but thankfully that one happened to be a simple and quick fix.

And that's where it began - the two and a half years that would completely change my life.  Of course, it could be argued ones life is completely changed every time two and half years passes, but some are more noticeable than others, and these were definitely the most dramatic of my life thus far.  You may have noticed that I've been on a bit of a nostalgia kick lately.  All year, really.  Turns out high school reunions will do that to you.  Well, that and some old Disney friends posting a bunch of old pictures and videos from the height of the old "glory days" when work meant a couple dozen 20-somethings showing up hungover (either from alcohol or from three hours of sleep for the entire week) and seeing just how much craziness we could get away with before the managers rolled their eyes and said "okay, that's enough."  We didn't generally push the boundaries beyond that - we needed the money to pay for the food we ate and souvenirs we bought spending all our free time at work (so to speak).

After spending this summer seeing things from that tiny stretch of time . . . being reminded of things I'd completely forgotten . . . it's been something else.  It's made me realize how much I miss those days.  I was so burned out by the end, but before that those were days never to be forgotten.  So much so that I actually logged back into my myspace account recently.  I was actually a little surprised that I still could, it's been at least four years since the last time I did.  But there were pictures on there that I lost when my hard drive got fried and two years worth of blogs chronicling the time from just before I graduated college to right around when Luke and I got engaged(slash about the time I stopped using myspace).  I hadn't thought about them in ages, but suddenly I had to have them again, so I spent something like three hours the other night copying the blogs into a word document.  And laughing in amazement and amusement over the detailed accounts of tiny little things, so I'd completely forgotten.  It's crazy to see such stark evidence of what a different person I am now than I was then.  It made a good contrast to the video from the reunion - I could identify with those little freshmen.  I could remember being one of them, and sometimes it feels so much like no time has passed . . . like I'm still 14 . . . like we all are.  But I read my blogs from just a few years ago, and while I remember everything now that I've read it, I see it in my head and it's almost like an out of body experience.  In some cases I even remember the entire outfit I was wearing but I watch it like - well, like Emily in Our Town Act III.  There's got to be some irony in that somewhere, right?

Anyway.  I read those blogs and I'm amazed, not just at how I've changed but at just who I was back then.  On the one hand, I was very aware of just who was reading then and why . . . and it's quite the long story that I shan't get into now.  I'm not ashamed of who I see in them, although some people probably would think I should be.  But if I hadn't been her then, I wouldn't be me now.  I don't know that I can say that I regret nothing, but any list of regrets would definitely be in just the single digits.  It's amazing - and I wasn't expecting it . . . but rediscovering who I was has left me more comfortable with who I am.  It hasn't put all the little issues and anxieties I have to rest, but it has reminded me what it is to feel comfortable in my own skin.

It's been an immensely cheering little trip down memory lane, but a little depressing too.  One of my old friends sums it up best here.  And while all of us who were part of that particular story couldn't read it without copious amounts of tears, the first part won't mean much of anything to anyone who wasn't there.  But I imagine the second half to be something anyone can understand.  Those few years . . . they were something else.  And there's no getting them back, but I'm not sure I even want to.  As we all know, you can't go home again.  :-)

I'm not sure what I might do with the blogs.  Part of me wants to post them all today and give everyone else a bit of a laugh too . . . another part wants them to never see the light of day again.  I probably will post a few here and there when the whim of nostalgia strikes.  If nothing else, the entertainment value is seriously through the roof, lol.  For now though, I think I'll just enjoy a renewed sense of security in myself.  Even if it is tinged with some sadness.


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Now here's a couple of slightly trippy moments I would have loved to see in person!  Hooray for Push! :-)

When It Hits Home

Everybody knows the saying "you can't go home again."  And I would dare say that everyone knows it's true.  Turns out sometimes you have to try to realize just how thoroughly true it is.

For example - this is the high school I went to:

I've actually got a picture of about a dozen classmates standing on the roof next to those letters after graduation floating around somewhere.



This is the building in which I attended my ten year reunion Saturday:

 

And believe it or not, these are the only two pictures of the school I could find on google.  Weird.  Anyway.  Do you see any resemblance between these two buildings?  Because none of us did.  To put it bluntly (and mildly) that is not where we went to school.

But it was good to see everybody.  And, you know, meet everybody.  Because while of course there were those people who don't seem to have changed at all since graduation (and apparently I'm in that group . . . huh . . . ) there were also those who . . . have.  Like the guy who was rather trim to begin with becoming downright wiry and growing just enough facial hair that it took me 20 minutes to figure out who he was.  Or the guy who - how to phrase this delicately? - has decidedly not gotten scrawnier and who's identity I never would have guessed without seeing his name tag.  Which makes me feel really bad, because he recognized me the second I walked in.  On that note - it was great to see how many people recognized/remembered me.  Even though I was pretty heavily involved with drama and orchestra and color guard I still always felt so anonymous compared to, well, pretty much everyone else.  Clearly I was not the head cheerleader.  I wasn't even the head tech whom everyone knew and cheered at assemblies when something inevitably went wrong and they had to come out and fix it.  And I don't begrudge those people their titles, but it was a little surprising to discover that people not only knew my name then, but remember it now.

As far as the group I spent the most time with back in the day, we were represented by a rather small contingent of attendees.  Which was sad, and can I just say - all those excuses like "about to go into labor any day now?"  LAME!!! ;-)  A few of us had a small get together Friday night and we're thinking we'll have to try and do that every couple of years or something, because we have all more or less stayed in touch. And let me take this moment to say, what on earth did you people do before facebook?  I scarcely even had a chance to lose touch with anyone before we got back in touch!  It's kind of weird . . . I was all prepared for Saturday to be the first I'd heard from pretty much anyone in ten years - but not so much.  In fact, I think I'd recognize some of my old friends' kids if I bumped into them on the street.  Crazy.

But I'd have to say by far the biggest event of the night was just walking around the school.  It was so weird - there are small stretches that are so incredibly familiar . . . but they're surrounded by a building that looks like it was designed to be a set of some High School Musical type movie. (fun fact: HSM was the working title of the project and they were totally planning on replacing it when the movie aired.  Obviously that didn't happen.)

Anyway, a few pictures, because words cannot demonstrate how disturbingly trippy this tour was.  For those of you who did go to the same school I did . . . brace yourselves.

'Kay, so here we have the color guard my senior year. 

(slight tangent: the guard is HUGE now!!  And they have a winter guard!!!  A winter guard that goes to CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!  We would have KILLED to have a winter guard back in the day!  Granted, it would have been difficult seeing as most of the fall guard did drama the rest of the year, as did most of the band peeps who would have done winter guard . . . but we totally would have made it work.  Jeal. Lous.)

Now, for those of you who knew the band room, I just have to say the words "guard closet."  For the rest of you, imagine a large closet just to the right of this picture, wherein all the guard costumes and equipment are stored.  And where many a silly hijink was concocted.

Behold:

We are standing more or less in front of the wall/door to said guard closet.  Now it's an art room full of pottery wheels.  The huge picture of back when the band was big/good enough to march in the Washington DC Fourth of July parade?  Gone.  The ceiling tiles that we had Jared Riggs absolutely convinced the word "gullible" was written if he could just squint hard enough?  Replaced.  Senior Row, place of amazing memories involving learning how to do (essentially) two-dimensional spins up against a wall and dancing the night away a week before graduation?  They paved paradise and extended the parking lot.  This might have been the most traumatizing part of the tour.  Good thing we got it over with first.

Moving on - 

My junior year locker is still there, yay!  Actually, my sophomore year locker is too, and only about 50 feet down from this one, but I don't remember which one it was.  This one was on the end though, so totally easy to remember. (Mr. Jones' room is right behind me for a little perspective.)  My senior year locker?  Long gone, and now that the cafeteria (I know, I know, it makes no sense to me either).  I don't much care about that one though, because it was literally at the opposite end of the building from all but 2 of my classes so I never used it.

Anyway.

The sidewalk squares that drama and color guard painted for homecoming week?  There's building there now.  They moved the doors that were there to the other side of the library.  Talk about another move that makes no sense.

On the plus side, the color guard is really starting to finally get some recognition.  Not only on the band trailer, you know how I know they have a huge winter guard that makes it to championships?  They're finally displaying trophies that are awarded to things other than sports!  In the trophy case!  Right by the gym!  There's one that's half volleyball and half guard, how crazy is that?  And there's one that has choir trophies in it!  Seriously, why wasn't this sort of thing happening while we were there?  (yeah . . . we'll not get in to that rant today . . . )

Anyway.  The small gym that was supposedly for wrestling but most everybody remembers as the social dance class gym?

Fond memories of being danced into that corner, let me tell you.

Anyway.  Now it's the band room.  And on the one hand, it's great that the band room is finally close to the auditorium (less fond memories of hauling equipment from one end of the school to the other in the snow, let me tell you!) on the other hand . . . that corner?

Not.  The.  Same.


And the auditorium parking lot is gone - now there's this rec center-club type thing in its place, and I'm not entirely sure what it's meant for, but if the presence of the drum major stand is any indication at least some of the marching band practices happen in there.  Which I'm sure is great to out of the elements and all, but the practice field is still right behind it, and the perfectly good marching band field is still there.  Except, you know, when the football team takes over to . . . I don't know . . . kick a ball around for a while . . . or something.  Needless to say, I went to those games only because I had to and didn't really pay attention to what was happening on the field when I wasn't on it.

Perhaps the most disappointing part was that we weren't able to go into the auditorium.  On the one hand it's not really a big deal, because apparently it hasn't been touched since we left.  Well, except for the horrible idea to move the booth from the ceiling to the floor right behind the house that happened right after we left.  Seriously, the original booth was such a haven.  And just a fun place to be - especially during the lamer assemblies.  And it's not like nobody goes up there anymore now, because dude, that's where the lights are.  You need to change gels or something, you still gotta go to the same place.  Seriously.  Dumbest. Move. Ever.

And since it hasn't changed, it's the one place left in the entire school where everything there is to see would be something familiar.  Where we could be literally surrounded by the Berver we knew and - believe it or not - loved (mostly).  My corner just offstage where I played Gwendolyn the Narrator in Twelve Dancing Princesses in ninth grade . . . the pit where I played in the orchestra for Bye, Bye Birdie in tenth . . . Nancy and I would have run up on stage and done spot on choreography from both Once on this Island and Joseph - even though we were crew rather than cast for both . . . the dressing room where I kept my amazing technicolor dream jeans senior year (I'll have to tell that story someday) . . . the hallway backstage where certain sophomore boys wandered about asking for someone to make them pretty for Joseph . . . the "forbidden zone" . . . the costume closet - full of costumes that probably hadn't been used in years . . .

Yeah, I'm really disappointed that we didn't get to go in.  But maybe it's best that it didn't happen.  That's a place that's not just haunted with the ghosts who's stories we'd tell when we were there late at night.  It also carries the ghosts of all our past selves.  Lacey running the spotlight for the middle school production of Fiddler because there weren't enough middle school techs and the teacher wanted a few high school kids in the booth to babysit.  Dani and Becca as the narrators in Joseph.  Clerie dancing in Island.  Steve bringing the audience to tears in the cancer benefit play that my classmates wrote themselves.  Like Emily in the third act of Our Town, I think I would have seen them all.  And even though we talked about how great it would be if that's what could actually happen at reunions, I think it would have been my undoing.  I've had a super nostalgic month as it is, on multiple levels.

Even just watching the video people put together was crazy.  There was some footage from the end of our freshman year.  I swear it was fake - those were tiny little eight-year-olds in that footage, not the 14-year-olds I'd just met and begun to make friends with.  If some of us look the same now as we did ten years ago, how is it possible that everyone looks so tiny in images from just a few years before that?

Long story short: it's been a fast ten years.

On the agenda for tomorrow: blogging about my 20 year reunion.  Because you know it's going to come up just that fast too.


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I typed in Bear River on a whim at youtube - here's some video of all the new stuff.  It's kind of min blowing.  And check it out - not only does Berver have a winter guard again, they're hosting competitions again!  (and of course American Fork is still winning.)

Saturday Morning Memories: Time to Confess (Or: Grovel, Grovel, *FLASH*)

So my high school reunion is next week.  Allegedly we graduated ten years ago . . . I say allegedly because if I didn't know better I'd say it was only three months ago.  Seriously.  Where does the time go?

Anyway.  Obviously such a milestone has had me remembering a lot of things from back in the day.  And then yesterday a couple of songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat popped up on itunes, and that totally threw me back because we did Joseph my senior year, and then that randomly had me remembering a brief, slightly cryptic reference to our production in a blog post a couple of years ago and never followed up on the story. (okay, it was really cryptic.  Like, only about three people would have known what it referred to then and even now if you go and read it first you won't get it.  So sue me.)

Anyway.  Since the events I'm about to describe will have taken place ELEVEN (holy crap!) years ago this November, I'm pretty sure it's finally safe to come forward.  Lol . . . ish.

So like I said, we did Joseph my senior year.  And being a slightly overachieving high schooler trying to do everything, I couldn't be in the production because fall is color guard season . . . and that just wouldn't work. :-(  But by the time tech rehearsals come around marching competitions are pretty much over so a bunch of us came over to be on the tech crew.  We spent the first rehearsal watching the cast learn the choreography for the last number (and learning it better than some of the cast, as evidenced by when we jumped up and did the whole song with them standing in the aisles and not missing a beat) and getting music stuck in our heads that wouldn't ever come out.  Seriously.  I can still sing those songs word for word even now.

Moving on.  Eventually we got our assignments, booth, stage crew, and the elite quintet that chose to call themselves the Glitter Girls.  I was one of the Glitter Girls.  In case you couldn't tell. :-)  One could argue that we were just the extra tech crew that had to be stuck somewhere and made to feel useful . . . but I'm pretty sure we had the most fun.

Anyway.  There were a couple of spots in the show where our drama teacher wanted sparkles falling on the cast.  And in order to make that happen the five of us - me, Ashli, my best friend Kim, and two girls Ashli's age - climbed up to the top of the auditorium where the pulleys for the curtains and lights are and spent the entire show hanging out and watching the show from the most unique spot in the house.  Except it wasn't technically in the house, since "the house" refers to where the audience sits . . . but you know what I mean.  And we had these big bags of sparkly confetti to scatter, like, twice during the show and the rest of the time we just sat and watched and talked all we wanted because, dude, we were something like 100 feet above the stage, who's going to hear us?

The show was a blast, as such things generally are, and we were careful to save some confetti for closing night curtain call.  We seriously underestimated just how much the phrase "a little goes a long way" applied to this confetti though.  The plan had been to start with just a little bit of glitter falling as curtain call started and when they got to the very last bow to just dump everything we had left.  Which is what we did.  And came back down to reports that confetti was so thick that people in the cast couldn't even see the audience through it all.  Now that, I seriously wish I could have seen from the audience.  (and this is the part where I lament the fact that youtube wasn't around ten years ago, because if it had you know there would be footage of that floating around online.)

But the best part of closing night (and the part that involves confession) actually has nothing to do with glitter.  Now this may come as a bit of a shock, but the story of Joseph involves a pretty significant number of male characters.  Like many drama programs, we did not have enough guys willing to get involved in drama, so while this Jacob did have 12 sons . . . he had something like 3 dozen daughters.  Not quite biblically accurate, but it made for a great chorus.  And some of Joseph's brothers also had to double as Potiphar, Pharaoh, and others.  (I wonder if anyone in the audience noticed that only ten brothers originally showed up to buy food from Joseph . . . the eleventh sneaked in as soon as he was changed out of his pharaoh costume, lol.)

Anyway.  So when we get to the number Who's the Thief there's quite the deliciously low note that the guys hit at the very end.  A note that only a couple of guys in our cast hit.  A note that made every girl in the cast and crew melt.  Every time. A note that caused the girls running the sound board to bump up those couple of guys' mikes just a little bit each night right then so we could all hear it a little better.  And on one of those not-closing nights as we Glitter Girls were up in the rafters talking about how the audience was sure to notice some really odd drips as we all melted in to puddles of bass-noted bliss it occurs to us - there are some rather good looking guys in this cast.  And they spend the entire prior number (Grovel, Grovel) on their knees and bowing down before Joseph.  Only, in the name of propriety - since this was a high school production and all - they're facing the audience as they bow down "to Joseph."  But of course, being so high above the stage we have quite the . . . ummmmmmmm . . . nice, shall we say, view of . . . ummmmmmmmm . . . all the action.

(translation: it was a great view of some cute guys and their cute butts.)

Now that part occurred to us the first time we were up there watching.  What occurred to us toward the end was . . . why keep this pleasant view all to ourselves?????

So on closing night, just as Grovel, Grovel was beginning, Kim handed me one of those one-time use cameras.  You see, due to a fortuitous stroke of luck, my spot was right above one the cutest (and lowest note hitting) guys, in perfect position to capture the perfect picture.

(and for those of you rolling your eyes and saying "SURE, it was LUCK!!" it really was.  We decided where we needed to be to cover the entire stage and picked our spots before we'd seen the show from this perspective.  Because you did not want to be moving around more than you had to up there - crazy high, and you had to step/climb over all the ropes and stuff from the curtain pulley system.  We got our glitter, got up, got to our spots, and pretty much stayed there until the show was over.  In order to avoid splatting.  We couldn't have fallen through the slats down to the stage, but even just tripping and face planting onto the metal slats we were walking on would NOT have been pleasant.)

ANYWAY.  So it's closing night and Kim hands me her camera.  And I aim it straight down . . . and snap a picture.

This is the part where I mention that none of us thought to consider how it's pretty much pitch black up where we were because the only light came from the stage lights well below us.  Or the fact that even though those lights were really bright, they weren't bright enough to prevent the camera from using its flash.  Or just how bright a flash is in almost-pitch-blackness.  Or how far away we really were from the stage.

Yeah.  The flash went off.  We were blinded.  I almost dropped the camera.  And we spent the next several minutes giggling, part out of amusement, part out of shock and panic.  And trying to shush each other.  And talking about how bad it would have been if I'd actually dropped the camera - how crazy would that have been for the audience, for a camera to randomly come falling from the sky and shatter on the stage? (assuming, of course, it did not hit the actor we'd been trying to take a picture of . . . I would still be feeling guilty if that had happened!!)

But we got through the rest of the show and blinded the cast with glitter and went back down - totally sure that everyone had seen the flash and we were going to be in soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much trouble.  Of course, the range of that cheap camera's flash was nowhere near the distance between where we were and where people could see anything, so no one had a clue what we'd gotten up to.  Which was rather a relief.  We asked a couple of techies who were in the booth, they said they saw nothing, and we never spoke of it again.  Except to each other.  The phrase "grovel, grovel, *FLASH*" is still an inside joke that Kim and I will exchange occasionally.  :-)



I wonder if that low-noted cute-butted boy is going to be there next week . . . because oh yeah, he was in my class. :-D


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This is the part where I lament the lack of youtube ten years ago again.  Because there would totally be a video of our production here.  Oh well.  I've been watching the rhythmic gymnastics.  It is seriously AMAZING . . . and not that different from color guard.  I soooo could have been an Olympian, dangit!

I Suppose It's a Trade-Off

So I happened to watch the parade today and as always, it looked at times like there are more Polynesian people in Utah than white people. (the less slightly exaggerated truth, for those who don't know, is that while Polynesians are not likely to get a lot of stares like black people might, but they're still massively in the minority.)  But since I'm always okay with seeing bunches of hot Polynesian guys in nothing but lava lavas, you shall hear no complaints from me. :-)

Anyway.  Watching the Pioneer Day parade on tv is almost like Conference-light because you get all the Utah-centric commercials instead of the national ones.  And because of that, I learned that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Polynesian Cultural Center.  And naturally seeing that particular commercial has totally left me remembering the LYS tour to Hawaii . . . the one that I'm totally in denial about having taken place ten years ago last month.

Decade-old crushes on cute Samoan boys (from ALL the symphony girls!) aside, the thing I'm actually sort of . . . marveling over, I suppose . . . is just how much has changed since then.  It started with me lamenting how I didn't have my digital camera at the time - I don't remember anyone having one, actually - and how I really want to go back because now I can take tons more pictures and they'd be tons better quality too.

And then I remembered how we had a picture sharing party something like three weeks after we got back.  Because, duh, we all needed time to get all those rolls of film (that kids these days think is a can of soda . . . *sigh*) sent out to be developed and then picked up.  I think I spent something like fifty bucks getting my pictures developed . . . I know I had at least ten rolls!  And don't even get me started on the whole some-of-them-didn't-turn-out-and-you-couldn't-even-know-until-you-got-them-back thing -blargh!

Anyway.  Party.  We all got together to check out each other's pictures because, of course, none of us had even seen our own pictures when we split up in the Salt Lake airport.  And on the one hand that's such a weird thought to me because if the same tour had taken place this year everyone would have been uploading their pictures to facebook and tagging everyone in them as we went along, or maybe doing a massive upload the night before we left. (only slightly related side note: yeah, that tour will never happen.  don't even get me started on how lame LYS got practically right after I left it.  I'm still pretty bitter about certain events.) 

I'm not sure which version I like better.  On the one hand, while I did see everyone's pictures at the party, I haven't seen any of them since, and some of them were really great shots.  On the other hand, even though one could assume I could still look at the pictures at the pictures on facebook now (which was still a couple of years from existing in 2002, and I'm not sure whether myspace was a thing yet or not) but the having the party thing was so much fun, and a great way to get in one last farewell get together before a bunch of us left for college and our director moved cross country.

I really can't decide which way I like better.



P. ost  S. cript

Okay, can someone help me out here?  This commercial has been playing out the wazoo the last few months, naturally, and I know I'm hearing it wrong.  Buzz Lightyear is not going to say "There's an entire land here with FLIPPING cars" but that's what I heard the first time, and so that's what I've heard every time since and because of that I just cannot figure out/hear what he's actually saying.

Saturday Morning Memories: Injury Edition

Yep.



So we're going to Yellowstone next week.  And I'm pretty freakin' excited.  Luke's never been, and the last time I was there was 2006.  And there is the tiny little thing of this is the first vacation we've had since forever.  Yay!!

Since IF is only, like, 2.2 hours away from Yellowstone we went all the time when I was growing up.  Six or seven times a year, every year.

(full disclosure: it's not that close . . . but pretty close.  And we didn't go that often . . . but pretty often.  More than once a year, generally.)

We did a lot of things in IF that stopped abruptly when we moved to TremonTon.  Camping . . . hiking . . . fishing . . . chopping our own Christmas trees.  Mostly a lot of outdoors-y stuff.  It all kind of disappeared and instead of enjoying nature I spent my high school years being attacked by evil demon-possessed roosters (true story . . . I'll have to tell it sometime . . . ).

But I guess the summer after I graduated from college and before I left for Florida (obviously, lol) I think it suddenly occurred to my parents that, hey, we haven't done any of the cool things we used to do all the time in, like, forever, and this is, like, the last chance to do them, like, ever.

(side note: can't you totally hear my dad saying that?  using exactly those words? HA!!)

Anyway.  So we hit both Yellowstone and Dinosaur parks that summer.  Sans Ashli, who was nanny-ing in . . . one of those middle states that starts with "I" . . . so there were only three of us crammed into the back seat of the pickup and no one complaining about how dirty dirt is.

This is the part of the story where I mention that bugs - especially mosquitoes -  have always found me particularly tasty, no matter how much bug spray I put on.  Was that plot point as painfully obvious as high school emo poetry? Great.  Moving on.

It was a lovely trip, going from something like the 30th of June to the 3rd of July.  I am painfully aware of those (semi)precise dates on multiple levels.  The morning that we left I noticed that I had multiple bug bites on/around my right ankle.  We did a little bit of geyser trail walking, nothing much on our way out and it was a little uncomfortable, but no big deal.  Then we drove home . . . and it's a little bit longer than 2.2 hours when home is TremonTon and not IF.  So when we finally got home and I got out of the car . . . I nearly collapsed.  After limp-hopping into the house and almost crawling to the couch to get my shoe off I discovered that my ankle was as big as my knee . . . and possibly bigger.  I counted at one point, and there were 16 bug bites in my ankular area for sure . . . and at least half a dozen more that I couldn't tell if they were additional bites or just general puffiness in reaction to what was there for sure.  If they had West Nile in Yellowstone, I'm pretty sure I would have died on the drive home.

So out of this little story comes a crazy thing and a tragic thing.  The crazy thing is I actually had very few bites anywhere else, especially compared to what I usually get camping . . . or even just being outside at dusk.  It's like they all zeroed in on that one spot - but the even crazier thing is that it was, like, the most covered spot of all.  I haven't worn shorts since I was 14 so I had your typically heavy denim jeans on, and tall, tolerably thick funky socks on under that.  But did those stupid parasites go for the easy access bare skin on my arms?  Nope - they went for the ankles.  Mostly the right ankle.  Almost every last one of them.  Gah!

And now the tragic thing.  Remember how I said we came home on the 3rd of July?  That was because Shayla and I had a concert.  You see, the Lincoln Youth Symphony goes on hiatus for the summer so the Lake Bonneville Community Symphony does the fourth of July concert in Brigham City.  Of course, the LBCS is mostly made up of LYS alumni who are still around/home for the summer . . . or at least they were half a decade ago (man, it is so wrong to be able to say that!).  So as usual, Shay and I were playing and we had to be home for the fourth.

But then, after propping my foot up for a few hours and drinking a couple of gallons of benedryl I tried to go to bed . . . and I could. Not. Walk.  At all.  My dad had to literally carry me from the family room to my bedroom because I just could not put any weight on my foot.  Not exactly conducive to cello playing.  It's not impossible . . . but it also wouldn't be pleasant.  So I missed my last concert.  And there have few things more disappointing in my life.  For one thing, I'd finally had the genius idea to copy the sheet music onto heavy card stock (it's an outdoor concert) and the only card stock we had in the house was Easter-y pastel colors, which I found kind of awesome.  And it was some pretty sweet music too . . . Star Wars and Pirates and Lord of the Rings - the Fourth concert is all about the crowd pleasers rahter than the "serious" music.  And of course the patriotic stuff - pretty sure I could play Sousa's S&SF from memory to this day.  And then it was tradition to play the most epically awesome arranged-for-full-symphony-and-I-can't-find-a-version-on-youtube-for-the-life-of-me-and-it-makes-me-want-to-cry version of Lord of the Dance known to man.  Seriously, this arrangement was clearly done by a cellist.  It's one of the few times you can get away with playing forti-ssissi-ssissi-ssissi-ssissi-ssissi-ssissi-ssissimo and the conductor can't say anything because you're SUPPOSED to be pretty much drowning everyone else out.  It is awesome to the trillionth power.  And it was my last time performing it, and I knew that . . . and I missed it.  It was tragic.  It still is.

Luke's pretty certain we're all going to be eaten by bears or trampled by buffalo in our sleep.  Me, I'm just worried about the mosquitoes.   I'm pretty sure that means it's the chipmunks who'll actually do us in.  Or maybe the bunnies.



P. ost  S. cript

Stumbled across this . . . and my year has been made.

I Wonder

My senior year of college I had a job as a reading tutor at an elementary school. (and for those of you thinking I chose the wrong major . . . yeah, no.)  I enjoyed it, although I don't know if I would call it fun, unlike my job now.  I was thinking the other day - I worked with kids from kindergarten to fourth grade and it was enough years ago that I need two hands to count them.  This year . . . the kindergartners are in sixth grade.  As in - older than the oldest kids in the school I'm at now.  The fourth graders?  Finishing up their sophomore year of high school.  Ho.  Ly.  Crap.  How did that happen?

I wonder from time to time if they remember me.  I only saw each of them for about half an hour a couple of times a week, so it was a much more . . . professional isn't quite the word but it;s the best I can think of . . . relationship.  As opposed to the fun, silly, relationship I have with a lot of the kids now.  I try to be fit the "friend" label at the same time as the "teacher" one.  The good cop to the official teacher's bad cop (not that any of the teachers I work with are "bad cops" . . . but in a "if I have to send you to them because you just won't listen to me you know you'll be in soooooooooooooo much trouble" sort of way).  Anyway.  I really wonder where those first kids I worked with are.  If they remember me, even vaguely.

My senior year of high school our band and orchestra went on a short "tour" to Idaho Falls.  It will be immediately obvious to any family reading that my mom was pretty much in charge of the whole trip - mostly because she was, I believe, president of the booster club at the time, and that was mostly because only, like, three other parents showed up to the meeting to restart the booster club.  Anyway.  We went played a joint concert with the IFHS band, and Ashli and I both saw some old friends we'd left behind.  And we played a concert for the kids at our old elementary school.  (like I said, pretty obvious that my mom planned pretty much the whole thing, right?)  It was actually two concerts, one for the lower grades and one for the upper grades, and a little bit of downtime in between during lunchtime.  My first, fifth, and sixth grade teachers were still there so Ashli and I went to see them (two of them had her too).  I remember being a little surprised that my first grade teacher remembered us, I always pictured her in my head as so old.  She wasn't really, she had a son in high school (college?) when I was in her class, but when you're six any lady with white hair has one foot in the grave, you know?  And of course, at the time it had only been four years since my family had been a regular fixture at that school.  But all three remembered us and seemed really happy to see us, and I'm sure my impending graduation made them feel more than a little old.  I wonder if they would recognize/remember me if I went back now.

And I wonder how long these kids will remember me - and how.  As the random mean lady who wouldn't help them on a math problem that I knew they knew how to do?  Or the fun teacher who let them talk as much as they wanted as long as work was getting done?  The one who wouldn't take their crap or the one who would joke around with them as long as it was appropriate?

There are two boys in fourth grade who's class I've been in since I started working at Ellis when they were in second grade.  I adore all the kids, but these guys are two of my favorites.  And it makes me a little sad to know I probably won't be in their class next year because the fifth grade teachers really like the aides they have - and the one I'm with this year is moving back down to fourth grade next year.  And I keep hearing that all the teachers I've already worked with want me in their classes, so the odds of me getting a "new" teacher next year strike me as slim.  But I kind of wish I could "finish" their elementary school years with these two.  It's been so fun watching them for the last three.  On the one hand, it seems like they haven't changed a bit . . . but on the other I can see how much they have, even just from the beginning of this year.

And back we go tot he beginning.  I'm sure they'll remember their teachers ten, twenty years from now.  But me?  I know I've done a lot of good here, and helped a lot of kids . . . but just how influential have I been.  This whole having aides in the room a lot is a pretty new thing . . . I think.  At least, we didn't have them when I was in school.  So I have nothing to go on.  I'm not trying to be self-centered here.  But sometimes I wonder just how much I've done in their minds.  They're the ones I'm there to help - if they've completely forgotten me within five years does that mean I didn't help as much as thought I did, or just that there were a lot of things going on and a person just can't remember every little detail?

I always get a little pensive at the end of the school year . . . this year especially.


P. ost  S. cript
I could seriously watch this longer than watching a kitty on a roomba. :-)

Restless Bookworm

Wanna hear something weird?  You may have noticed that it's been . . . a while since my last post.  Suffice it to say this has been a rather uneventful and somewhat bland month.  BUT - I was looking at my stats page the other day . . . because I'm weird like that and like to see how many people are checking me out online.  Anyway.  For some reason this month has gotten more hits than any other month ever, except last June when I did that 30 day thing.  I have no idea why I am apparently the hottest thing ever in Russia right now . . . but it's a major ego boost, so I'll take it! :-)  (also: привет, мои друзья!)

Also: I despise this stupid new blogger layout.  With a passion.

Anyway.  Onto "real" topics.

I've been having quite the struggle finding good books for the last couple of months.  I've mentioned it to a few people, but it seems like I'm getting really picky about what I like to read.  On the one hand, it's really weird because I've always been the girl who reads everything and dislikes almost none of it - but in the last six weeks or so I've put down, like, five books just because I couldn't bring myself to finish them.

Back in the day I was more like a book-goat.  I read everything, with absolutely no discrimination, more or less.  I remember going to the library during the summer as a kid.  I'd check out a dozen or so books, and approximately five days later I'd've finished them all and be ready to go back for more.  But no one else was done with their books yet, so I had to wait.  And out of sheer desperation I'd read everyone else's library books too.  It was almost like going down a ladder - in the course of about two weeks I'd start out by reading my books - a mix of Beverly Cleary types to Star Wars novels from the adult section of the library (and you better believe nothing could make me feel more grown up, lol!) and then I'd read Ashli's books . . . and Shayla's books . . . and finally Rian's books, and since he's six years younger than me and we're talking about the still-in-Idaho-Falls-timeline here we're talking about a 12-year-old reading the books a 6-year-old checked out due to sheer desperation for something to read.  It was not exactly pretty.  And I may still have this book memorized.  Going on two decades later. (holy CRAP, I'm getting old . . . )

So . . . yeah.  I read everything.  During the school year we didn't go to the library so I read the books in the house over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  Still have some of them kind of memorized too.  We all got books for our birthdays - and I was always getting in trouble for reading everyone else's books before they got a chance . . . but a new book in the house was like manna from heaven!  Christmas was the most glorious time ever because it meant at least twelve new books.  And I'm sure grandma and grandpa remember the time I spent the whole visit doing literally nothing but frantically reading the last five books of the Work and the Glory series.  We had the first four at home and I'd read them at least a dozen times and I was DYING to just finish them already!  Five books.  Couple thousands pages or more.  Four days.  I did it.

That's still one of my proudest accomplishments.  Even if it's not one I exactly bring up a lot.

Anyway.  I guess maybe it's something to do with the fact that I have a library card, a goodreads account, and a car but I am totally losing my patience for so-so books.  There are still plenty that totally hook me right away and blow me out of the water by the end.  But there are more and more  that I just can't bring myself to pick up after a few chapters.  It's really weird.  For me it's kind of disturbingly weird.  Like, what's wrong with me that I can't enjoy all books anymore?  We all know I'm totally over the who LDS fiction thing, but the over all fiction thing really freaks me out.  I know I'm exaggerating, but on the other hand I have had six duds in the last six weeks (literally, I just checked on goodreads) and when I get a string like that it's depressing.  I mean, six out of fourteen is practically half!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway.  I just felt like a little bit of complaining/semi-ranting.  The good books are still out there, they're just getting harder to find I guess. (totally open to recommendations!  and you should totally get on goodreads if you're not!!!)  Back to my current book.  Which is so far, so good.

P. ost S. cript
Tilt shift is seriously the coolest thing on the face of the planet.

Pattern for Forever

Talk about targeted advertising.


So. Jump into the flashback machine with me.

*wavy lines and harp glissandos here*

The time is 2007, the place is Florida. Luke and Lacey are about to go on their first date. In a conversation taking place before that date, Luke asks Lacey what her favorite flowers are. Lacey says roses and marigolds.

First date. Luke brings Lacey flowers. "See, they're mums, you said they were your favorite!"

Awwwwwwww, he tried to remember. And he kind of got close!

As things progress Lacey reminds Luke of this story and explains that it's actually marigolds, not mums that are her favorite. Giggles all around.

Okay, flashback over.

*more wavy lines and pastel colors and dream-sequence music*

So. Saturday. We're talking about Valentine's Day and Luke asks what I want to do. I say he knows what I like. He says that chocolate and roses are just so cliche. Which is true, but doesn't change the fact that I like them. I mean, cliches become so for a reason, right? In this case, I will gladly embody the cliche . . . mostly because it's a delicious one.

Anyway. Luke goes on some more about how he feels like such an unoriginal slacker going the chocolate/roses route and he wants to be original when - "what's your other favorite flower again? Mums, right?"

Maybe it's only funny to me, but I cracked up. We have this EXACT conversation at least three times a year - in February, April, and May. And sometimes at other random times. Meaning we've had this very same conversation at least twenty times. The part that really gets me is that it's not just that he doesn't remember marigolds, but every single time he remembers mums specifically. It's not daisies or violets or petunias or some other random flower - it's not some other flower that starts with M (and I can't think of any off the top of my head, so it's actually not that surprising that Luke doesn't come up with any). No, it's that every time he remembers the same wrong flower and every time he's so certain he's finally gotten it right this time.

Until I start laughing. And then he immediately realizes he got it wrong again. And we laugh together at it might be even better than actually getting the marigolds in the first place. :-)

In fact, one time there was even a declaration of "no, I remember now! I get it wrong every time, but now I've got it! It's not marigolds, it's MUMS!" He was so sure of himself it was rather sweet. And funnier than usual.

Do you think by the time we're both 100 he'll have gotten it straight? :-D

Also: I'm totally craving some powdered sugar donuts now.


P. ost S. cript
Just cool.

Time Really Does Fly

So Luke and I have been caught up int some serious end-of-August doldrums the last couple of weeks. The sort of no energy, just sit on the couch and eat popsicles and snow cones sort of mood that's pretty much inevitable at that point where you're sick of summer and pretty sure it's never going to end. Good times.

In fact, I've been so caught up in the "blah" mood that somehow I completely missed that Sunday marked five years since I arrived in Florida. Which is kind of sad because that one decision, which seemed fairly insignificant at the time completely changed my life - and in more than just the obvious ways. :-) You people are always telling me I'm funny (gotta admit, I can't always see it) so it seems like I should tell more crazy Disney stories. I was REALLY burnt out when we left, but with a little time and distance the sweet memories are crowding out the bitter . . . and great merciful crap I have some cuh-razy stories!

With Team Jayla riding out their first hurricane out in North Carolina I've been remembering my hurricanes. And Shay and I have been trading war stories, as it were, lol.

Anyway. I got initiated into the whole hurricane thing pretty quickly - Hurricane Almosto . . . I mean Ernesto hit before I'd been there a month. It actually down to just a tropical storm by the time it got to Orlando, but you'd never have known that from my mom's reaction. She called every couple of hours almost like clockwork, which got really awkward while I was at work because if I didn't answer she'd call or text non-stop until I did, so I'd get my break and have a gazillion increasingly frantic messages. Which, you know is totally understandable at first for a west coast family with zero hurricane experience. But like I said, it wasn't even a hurricane by the time it got to me . . . but when I told her I'd been more scared of storms at both grandparents' houses (hurricanes are heavy on wind and rain, but short on thunder and lightning) it seemed to freak her out more. Kinda made no sense. Especially when she was telling me to conserve my phone battery in case the power went out, which totally makes sense, but it's a little oxymoronic to have someone call you to tell you that, no? :-) I spent a couple of vaguely unpleasant days at work listening to people ask why it's raining, to which even then I could only think: seriously? I was too much of a newbie and too intimidated at the time, but by the time I left I would have totally given them a lesson in meteorology. And enjoyed watching how long I could string it out before they either got fed up or caught to what a touron they were. And then I had a couple of days off and spent them in the parks marveling at the fact that apparently the one thing that can make Peter Pan drop below a two hour wait is a hurricane. (of course, it was still a half hour wait while Space Mountain was a walk on . . . I will NEVER understand how that works.)

Then there was Hurricane Fay two years later. That one was just miserable - and I still resent that got named after me. I don't think it was actually a hurricane for more than a few hours at a time. It parked itself right on top of Orlando and stayed there for, like, three years. Okay, it was actually about three weeks, but three weeks of absolute non-stop rain feels like three decades. Or maybe three centuries. Seriously, it was awful. I worked at 3 different attractions, and all of them depended on the weather for whether they actually ran or not. So basically the entire end of the park was shut down for almost a month. Oh, you better believe people were damning us to hell left and right for daring to call up a hurricane during their vacation . . . never mind the fact that they scheduled said vacation smack in the dead center of hurricane season. And I had to stand there with utterly soggy feet (they basically didn't dry out once until about a week after the storm finally moved on) and smile and say "I'm so sorry about your utterly ruined vacation in which you've been prevented from seeing one whole show and riding one whole ride, but if you'll just head up to the front of the park that's where the people who are paid to listen to you complain and pretend to care and pretend to fix it are stationed."

You know, if I could have phrased it that way I'd have much happier memories of that entire month. :-)

The kicker was this chick who I have yet to figure out how she functions on a daily basis. All wide-eyed and looking heartbroken and going on about how she just couldn't understand what was going on, there are all these people here and it's been raining so much and it's just been so awful and why are things going like this?!?! So I roll my eyes and pseudo-calmly explain that she chose to take her family on vacation during the summer, which means they are here both during the rainy season, which means it rains at least a little bit everyday, and also during the time of the year when everyone else and their dogs choose to visit so it's going to be crowded. And then she wanders off saying again that she just doesn't understand how we could let it be so crowded and rainy when her family is here and - seriously? The ego-centrism of some people will never cease to amaze me. Forget the fact that most tourons are convinced that CMs are audio-animatronic and there's an invisible dome over the whole place and we completely control the weather . . . do these people actually expect us to clear out the park of everyone else just for them? Do they expect restaurants to be empty when they go out to eat? Is everyone else supposed to just go home if they want to go shopping? Or do they just have to go to a different store in the mall?

I know it sounds a little crazy, but at the moment I would actually kind of welcome a hurricane. Not a big one - just another one of those little ones I got a taste of a few years ago. Rain . . . temperatures lower than a million degrees . . . nice, high speed breezes . . . yeah, I could go for one of those right now. Where's that teleportation device when you need it? :-)


P. ost S. cript
Like tourons, the supply of stupid reporters seems to be pretty bottomless.

19

Day 19 ~ Write a sweet memory from your past.

You know how when people tell you to clear your mind and you're suddenly thinking of everything? Or they say "don't think about this" and then that's ALL you can think about?

Yeah. The only sweet thing I can think of right now, quite literally, is square ice cream. Give me a minute.



*crickets chirping*



*still chirping*



*crickets get bored and go home*



Okay, I know I have a lot of sweet memories, but it's like my entire life is a complete blank right now - which is more than a little unnerving, gotta say - so I'm going the literally sweet route. Because even though it kinda freaks me out, I cannot think of anything else.

So.

Once upon a time there was a Lacey. And she went to college. And she had some pretty awesome friends. And she spent a lot of time hanging out at their apartments, which was great because she'd never really done that before.

And on a few occasions she would go to Celeste's place (Friend Celeste, not Roommate Celeste . . . somehow that ended up being how I differentiated, silly as it sounds) which was a major socialization hub for the English department. It was a little trippy, even though she knew the people there weren't there just because she was there, but she still felt sort of popular. It was a very odd feeling.

Once upon a time there were just a few girls there. And they felt like having some ice cream. So Friend Celeste grabbed her carton of vanilla ice cream and some spoons and Roommate Celeste grabbed Friend Celeste's jug of chocolate sauce and poured it generously on top. All the girls took a spoon and dug in. When the chocolate sauce topping was gone, one of them poured another one. The ice cream carton was about half full. (It was just a quart, not one of those ginormous five quart tubs.) The chocolate jug was pretty full. They finished the ice cream and a good chunk of the chocolate. And they had a few spoon wars when more than one of them went for the last bit of chocolate, which tended to be rather amusing.

It was quite possibly the sweetest carton of ice cream the Lacey ever ate. Because she ate it with friends.

The end.


P. ost S. cript
OMG HIS EARS!!!!!!!!!!! EPIC SQUEAL OF CUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday Morning Memory: Death of my Childhood

So as I mentioned we went to Jackson Hole on Wednesday. In order to get to Jackson Hole one must pass through Idaho Falls. (okay, okay . . . there are other ways to get there . . . work with me here) For those of you who don't know, I lived in Idaho Falls from the age of 2 to the age of 14. Moving away still ranks pretty highly on the list of Lacey's Most Traumatic Experiences.

Except for about 12 hours my senior year of high school, I had not been back since we left. That was 13 years ago. That means that as of this year more time has passed since we left IF than we spent living there. CRAZY!!!!!

It was kind of fun to drive through town and see what's changed. Luke got quite the kick out of the awesome giant Indian head. Sadly, he really didn't get a very good view of the falls, which normally look like this. Those rocks in the center of the picture? Not visible, as the falls are only a few feet high right now. On the other hand, I very much remember the flooding in 1996 when there were essentially no falls at all and benches 20 feet back from the bank of the river were completely under water . . . well, except for the top couple of inches. That was an interesting year. I shall have to attempt to dig up the pictures mom took sometime. This year is seriously nothing comparatively speaking. (side note: how far can helicopters fly on one tank of gas? 'Cause if they could get from IF to Luna . . . )

You know how when you're dreaming you'll be in a place that's simultaneously completely familiar and completely foreign? That was pretty much what it was like. It's been so long that except for the super familiar places everything looked like I should recognize it but I kind of didn't. Seriously, it was trippy. I even had to pinch myself a couple of times to make sure I wasn't dreaming - it felt that surreal. In fact, I'm still not convinced I didn't imagine that part of the day . . . and I kind of wish I had. (more on that later)

So it was a day filled with trips down memory lane. First, the good ones:

SQUARE ICE CREAM IN SWAN VALLEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, for those of you not in on the awesome, there is a store. No, let me back up. There is a tiny little think-about-blinking-and-you'll-miss-it-town called Swan Valley not to far away from IF. In that town there is a little tiny gas station/convenience store called the Swan Valley Commissary. (okay, okay, technically it has been changed to the Rainey Creek Country Store. But that? Is a dumb name, and soooooooooooooooooo not the place where I had my first square ice cream, so the Commissary it is and the Commissary it shall be forever and ever amen. So there.) And at the Commissary they have fabulous ice cream flavors (no lame vanilla or strawberry here!) and super fabulous square ice cream scoops. This place is so legendary in fact, that when YW go to girls' camp (the church owns a camp in the area that a bunch of stakes use every summer. And it is another awesome place . . . story for another day) it is common knowledge that you take a few bucks with you because we're stopping for square ice cream on the way back home. So there I was, 12 years old (because my parents would NEVER stop for ice cream on the way to Aunt Loretta's . . . LAME!), haven't showered for . . . well, a few days, as this awesome camp came with running water, flushing toilets, and showers - seriously, best camp ever - first ever nights spent away from home, having had a pretty great week and ending it with the best ice cream ever made. It. Was. Epic. I kid you not, this ice cream is legendary. So when dad called on Monday asking if we wanted to come and he mentioned we'd stop in Swan Valley . . . well, it was pretty much a no brainer that we'd be going. I'd have taken multiple pictures from multiple angles of the awesome, but as I also mentioned a couple of days ago - battery issues. Blargh.

So I hand mom my camera and tell her it's ready to go . . . and she asks "so what do I do?" Ummmmm . . . take the picture? "But how? Do I push the button or what?"

I couldn't face palm with ice cre-awesome in my hand, so I silently forgave all the Disney guests I mentally mocked back in the day who felt like they needed to explain to me how to use their cameras when I took pictures for them. Apparently, they are not self-explani-obvious to everyone.

Just to review kids - my grandfather? Has a smart phone. My mom? Can't figure out the camera I bought 4 years ago. My head? A splode.

Anyway . . . SQUARE ICE CREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and I suppose I can forgive the lack of zooming in . . . especially since mom's camera has no zoom to speak of)


That, my friends, is my old standby of huckleberry on top, licorice on bottom. An amazing combo if I do say so myself.


Just call me Arorangi, the Maori Warrior Princess . . . the rest of the tribal tattoos will come later. :-)

Also - at the bottom of the cone they put a Whopper(tm) to prevent drips. I'd totally forgotten - best surprise EVER!

Oh . . . guess I spoiled that surprise for all of you (since you're totally going to drive straight to Swan Valley as soon as you're done reading) . . . ummmmmm . . . SPOILER ALERT?

In other delicious news, we also went to The Sandwich Tree, home of the BEST sandwiches in the WORLD. Seriously. Apparently Ashli was recently talking about making the 3 hour drive to IF just to get some Sandwich Tree. I totally would have gone too. It was great - the place has hardly changed at all. Still a tired looking little hole in the wall type place that is so good it was our meal every Christmas Eve for years. YUM!!

Of course, as evidenced by the Commisary's epically stupid name change, the more things change the more obnoxious it is. In the varying degrees of sad changes department:

~ Waremart, the super cool grocery store of my childhood, is long gone. So sad. This store had a 25-foot long 2-tiered soda fountain where one could refill one's 2-liter pop bottles . . . with TWENTY-FIVE FEET OF FLAVORS TO CHOOSE FROM!!!!! As far as I was concerned, this was the best place on earth. As my dad put it Wednesday, it's not hard to entertain little kids. I say? Not when that much soda is involved, it isn't!

~ North Forty, the super cool mini-golf course with the name that never made sense to me - gone. It was seriously the greatest course too . . . Old West themed and lots of fun . . . although the only hole I remember is Boot Hill. You had to hit your ball over a little hill littered with . . . wait for it . . . cowboy boots!! So. Much. Fun.

~ We drove past my old elementary school. When I was in 3rd or 4th grade we planted a tree outside the school for our principal who was moving to a new school the next year. Then - it was a couple of feet tall. Now? It's, like, a . . . tree. A full grown, tall . . . TREE!!!! When did that happen?!?!?!?!?!?! Great merciful crap, I'm getting old!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~ Speaking of driving past old places . . . and also speaking of trees (and this will be most appreciated by those who also remember this) THE TREE IS GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUR TREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE WILLOW TREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE BACKYARD TREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, a little backstory for those not cool enough to know me when I was a kid: the last few years we lived in IF we lived in a cute little house in what was once upon a time the poshest place in town (called Bel Aire - I kid you not) but was sinking in to slummy-ness when we lived there and is decidedly the wrong side of town now. But like I said, it was a cute little house, and it had a GINORMOUS willow tree in the back yard. You could see this tree (and pick it out) from three and four blocks away. The house didn't get super hot very often because by the time it got that hot outside the tree was shading it. (don't get me wrong - it still got hot . . . but there was a noticeable difference between the shadiest parts of the house and the less shaded) There were a few squirrel nests in it every year, and we'd always hear or see squirrels chasing each other around the yard - the best was when they went around and around the trunk of the tree which was easily ten feet or more around. The branches were so long that some of them touched the ground and we'd get in trouble all the time for pulling them down because we'd been swinging Tarzan style on them. Then a year or so before we moved dad put up a rope swing and then we got in trouble for killing the grass beneath it by dragging our feet to stop. It was kind of funny, mom would keep putting grass seed in that patch and banning us from the swing for a week or so, and then as soon as we were allowed to swing again those little shoots of baby grass had no chance. So there we are getting close to the house and I'm all excited to see it and then we pass it - and I almost didn't recognize the place!

For those in the know - the fence by the back door has been moved up parallel to the front of the house, the fence on the other side has been redone (and expanded to include by the side of the garage) the fence between the house and garage is gone, all the flower beds are gone (mom really had a problem with that one), the shutters are gone (which makes the house look really weird), there's a mailbox in the front yard now, and THE WILLOW TREE IS GONE!!!!!!!!! Seriously - google map it. There's a street view. 1210 Johnson Street. I'll wait. Doesn't it look weird? Doesn't the whole right side of the picture look off and bland and EMPTY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

So mom and I are seriously in mourning for the tree and my oh-so-sensitive father says something about what's the deal, it's probably been gone for years. And proceeds to not get it when I say no, it was there yesterday, and as far as I'm concerned I'm not sure how we missed the evil tree removers because they couldn't have finished the job more than five minutes before we showed up! Seriously, there I was wondering if the swing would still be there - it never occurred to me that the whole tree might be gone! Who does that?!

And what about the squirrels?!?! Where did they go? Did they have to move to the (smaller, not nearly so pleasant) willow tree next door? The willow tree in the back yard of the meth house? (well, it was when we left - not when we moved in, and I'm not sure now, but in my mind it will always be the meth house. Or possibly the crack house, all we knew for sure was that there were unsavory characters doing unsavory things over there) My poor squirrels - we always kind of thought of them as pets. Pets we couldn't actually, you know, pet, but still. And now they're crack addicted little squirrels. Poor things. How can those evil tree removing . . . tree removers . . . sleep at night knowing they caused the addiction of the poor crack squirrels?!?!?!

Seriously, the highlight of any day (in every place we lived in IF) was watching the squirrels running around . . . so happily. So cheerful. Such a pick-me-up. And they don't even HAVE squirrels in Utah!! At least, not in any of the places I've lived - haven't seen one since we moved. :-( My poor, poor squirrels.

In slightly cheerier news, the two apartments we lived in haven't changed much. And how's this for crazy? The second apartment is in the same spot in the fourplex that Luke and I are in now, except that one was #1 and we're in #4. What are the odds?! (okay, okay, they're one in four, I know. It was a rhetorical question. Shut up.)

Also - the Candy Man is still there!! At least it looked like he is . . .

So. The Candy Man. Has a name. And I even know it. But he will always be the Candy Man.

You see, in our first ward (whilst in the 2 apartments) there was a guy (an old, grandfatherly guy whom everyone knew and trusted and had no reason not to, I feel obligated to add) who would slip a piece of candy into the hand of a child who shook his hand. Sometimes there would seriously be a line of kids waiting to shake this guys hand after church . . . which is kinda funny as I think about it now. Anyway, it was always those pink wintergreen mints - you know? - and to this day I cannot see, smell, taste, or even think of them without thinking of this guy.

Theirs was always the last house we went to on Halloween. They always gave out these cute little candy trains - a pack of gum, a life saver roll, a little box of raisins, . . . and a few other things I have forgotten . . . glued together to make a train. They were really cute. And we always went last so they wouldn't get crushed by the infinitesimal amount of candy in our baby bags. (okay, that was probably an exaggeration. I think those bags have continued to shrink in my mind.) It was the best stop of the night because we'd usually get a handful of tootsie rolls or something in addition to the train - mega score! :-)

I think my parents got quite a kick out of the fact that I remembered who's house it was . . . probably mostly because my answer was "The Candy Man!" and it took me another moment or two to remember his actual name.

So I suppose the trip, while sad, was not entirely sad. But Arthur Miller could still totally write himself a great sequel based on my day.

P. ost S. cript
Totally feeling this song this week.

Well THAT Was Anticlimatic

True story: I double the recipe whenever I make cookies. I end up with about half as many cookies as a single recipe makes.


When I was a kid I always wanted to go to the arcade at the mall. I didn't know it was an arcade . . . having never heard the word, at least not with its accompanying definition. All I knew was that there was this store at the mall that was really dark inside and really loud and full of these really cool games like Pac-Man and Tetris and racing games and I don't think I even realized what all was there or what was the point. All I knew was it was off limits. And, therefore, I had to get in there.

I honestly can't remember why I wasn't allowed in. It may have been because an arcade is not exactly an appropriate place to turn a seven-year-old (give or take) loose - not, of course, something that would have occurred to me at the time, but something I can completely understand now. It may also have been that my mother thought arcades were the spawn of the devil. Or the actual reason could have fallen anywhere in between those extremes. I really don't know. I think my grandma let me waste a few quarters on the claw machine right inside once or twice. I might have even gotten something out once . . . but again - don't remember.

Luke never got to go to the arcade either. So Tuesday, to celebrate the fact that we don't have to hoard quarters Scrooge McDuck style anymore, we made our way to the mall and wasted the six dollars of quarters we had left after moving.

It was not the glorious dream fulfilling hours of sheer abandoned pleasure my younger self was envisioning.

For starters, it was way to bright in there - just as bright as out in the rest of the mall. Not cool. And too quite - no blaring music, although there were a couple of pretty loud games.

And then there were the games themselves. Either we both suck at video games a lot more than we though - and we both admit that we are not exactly proficient gamers - or about half the games we tried are not functioning properly. That was a little obnoxious.

On the other hand - the plus side - the pinball machine works quite awesomely. I was supposed to get five balls for a quarters, and although I used to be pretty good at this game (on the computer anyway) I'm rather out of practice. Even so, that game went on for a good half hour at least. We didn't keep track because we weren't expecting it to go on so long, but every time that little silver ball sank into the evil abyss it almost immediately reappeared on top of the plunger - woot! That may have kind of made my day. :-) And the awesome Star Wars game was working, which rocked . . . except for the fact that it has been proven once and for all that the Battle of Hoth would not have gone so well had they been expecting me to help out. *sigh*

I feel like I should be disappointed. It was certainly not the stuff my childhood dreams were made of . . . but it was still kind of fun. Even if we did both use copious amounts of hand sanitizer when we were done - something that never would have occurred to me in a million years back in the day. I guess that means I'm all grown up . . . right?

Random side note: Tomorrow is my birthday. I want this. I would be eternally delighted. And I would base all my Halloween costumes around it for the rest of forever. Because with a hat like that, what else would you do with it? And my listening to NPR has totally been justified because if I didn't listen to it for the news on my way to work in the morning I would never have known this was happening. :-)


P. ost S. cript
Missing me some Star Wars Weekends silliness right now . . . I was there for this year, folks. In fact, I may have been at this particular Hyperspace Hoopla (HOOPLA!) even . . .