a tending Sabbath

Good news: The girls’ parents come home this week, which means I’m almost finished watching their girls. I should be back in Idaho Falls by this Friday, and rarin’ to go by Saturday.

Bad news: Yesterday was about the worst day of my life — certainly the worst Sunday.

Things started off all right. In fact, it was quite a blessing that Daylight Savings ended (even though I hate this government-induced mass delusion, but that’s another post), because Mom and I woke up at 7:40, and church starts at 8:30. The time-change gave us a much-needed extra hour, and we got to church in time to catch the last of the announcements before Sacrament Meeting started.

Church went fine, for the most part. We had to sit in the overflow section, on the hard metal chairs in back of the chapel, which made it no easier to keep the Princess occupied. But when Mom went to take the Queen to her Primary class, someone told her it was OK if we wanted to take the Princess to Nursery this week. So we did, and Mom and I were both able to hear and enjoy the Sunday School and Relief Society lessons.

After church was where things started going sour. After we ate, we put the Princess down for a nap and Mom gave me a little break, so I also spent a few hours in my bed. I heard Mom get the Princess up for a short time, and later learned she had changed her diaper. By the time I got up again, the Princess was back in her crib.

I got up because I could hear the Queen screaming at the top of her royal lungs (a favorite pastime) and decided I’d better get up and help Mom out.

Upon coming downstairs, I found the Queen sitting on the couch, apparently in time-out, and Mom in the kitchen looking particularly harassed. During lunch we had made grape juice, and the Queen had refused to put hers away. Just as Mom was about to tell her again to put it away in the fridge, she kicked it off the table (while climbing onto the table in order to color), and it went tumbling all over the floor. She had graciously offered to help clean it up, but she had thrown a soaking-wet dishcloth in the process, and Grandma found it necessary to put her in time-out.

Mom said she was all right for a few more minutes, so I went back to my room, intending to take another 20 minutes and then come help her with life. I ended up staying a full hour, quite inadvertently. I then came back downstairs and offered to take care of the two girls for a while so that Mom could continue her cleanup efforts.

I had heard the Princess in her crib earlier, so I took the Queen with me to get her up from her nap. As I opened the door, the Queen exclaimed, “She’s stinky!” I agreed, turned on the light, and took a look at the Princess. She was sitting up in the corner of her crib, no pants on (Mom had left it off after the last diaper change), crying. I thought that was odd, since she’s usually very happy when someone comes to get her up. Then I noticed the goopy poop all over her crib, shirt, face, and hands.

I gingerly picked her up, trying to minimize the contact of her poop with my clothes, and took her into the bathroom, where I started a bath for her. In the meantime, I sent the Queen downstairs to get a washcloth so that I could get the goop off her face and hands as much as possible. I asked the Queen if she wanted to take a bath.

“Why?” she asked, standing as far away from us as possible in the small bathroom, backed against a cupboard door.

“Because I need to put your sister in the bath to clean her.”

The Queen’s eyes widened as she looked back at me and said quickly, “No, I don’t want a bath!”

I cleaned the Princess’s poop off her, drained the tub, and then put both the girls in for an evening bath, the Queen having changed her answer when she saw that I had drained out all the ick.

In the meantime, Mom had been making more cleaning efforts with the grapey carpet downstairs. When she heard about our dilemma, she came upstairs to help a little. We started a load of laundry with all the infected garments, and when the upstairs problem had been pretty well taken care of, we went back to the downstairs dilemma again.

We did an internet search to find some suggestions about cleaning grape-juice stains out of carpet. Then Mom called my sister and sister-in-law to see what advice they might have. She started cleaning with some specially formulated carpet stain remover, the Queen helpfully offering her services in the endeavor. After a few minutes of watching this process, I had the happy thought to put on a movie, thus capturing the girls’ attention and allowing Mom to make unimpeded progress.

In the end, she decided to head to the store (we figured it was an ox in the mire) for some club soda and a special stain remover my brother had recommended. I put both the girls in bed first — a process, I might add, which always takes a great deal more time and effort than I appreciate, in the Queen’s case — and then made some brownies while she was out.

Unfortunately, the spill had sat too long for the club soda to work, the stain remover my brother had recommended was not to be used on carpet, and I had put the brownies in too small a pan and were therefore too thick and didn’t cook in the middle until the edges were burnt.

Oh yes, and to top everything off, the special “filling” on the side of Mom’s tooth came off while we were researching our stain on the internet.  So now she has a big gap between her two front teeth.

All in all, a peaceful, relaxing, and spiritual Sabbath.

 

so here’s the deal, part 2

I didn’t sleep too well at C & B’s house the other night. More importantly, when I came back home the next day, I discovered that there is no dead-bolt on the house door. Apparently, it just got stuck a little, and I panicked and assumed that it was still locked. I guess the joke’s on me.

I’m at a complete loss for an appropriate quote right now, so we’re going to do something different this time: You send me your best quote, and I’ll choose my favorite one and award 100 points to the winner. (Also, for my own entertainment, I’ll do my best to guess where each one originated.) The last quote was from The Lake House, which I watched on Sunday with C.

 

so here’s the deal

First off, I just want to apprise everyone that I did, indeed, take the Master’s Comps Exam. It was this past Friday (June 8), and I’m now trying not to think about it, or else I’ll drive myself crazy trying to figure out how it did.

So, right now I’m staying with Margo near Wichita — and Margo it staying with her parents — and her parents are living in their parents’ house. But Margo and her family left on a week-long vacation this morning, leaving me here to house-sit. At the same time, though, Margo’s grandparents are in town for just the weekend, leaving tomorrow or the day after. They arrived this afternoon while I was at church, and they were out for a family gathering when I returned, and then I was out all night with some friends from the local singles branch.

When I got back to the house tonight, around 11:00 pm, I parked the car quietly out at the curb, noting the unfamiliar car in the driveway — which, as I rightly assumed, belonged to Grandma and Grandpa. I turned off the ignition, gathered my things together, got out, and walked up to the front door, taking out the house-key that Margo had left with me for my week alone. Moving as quietly as possible, I placed the key in the lock and turned it — the wrong direction. Other doo-dads on my key-chain hit the lintel as I did so, and I quickly stifled them. Working even more carefully, I turned the key the other direction, pleased to hear the soft click of the bolt sliding back. But when I pushed on the door, it wouldn’t open.

They had locked the dead-bolt.

Not knowing what else to do, I re-locked the bolt I had just loosened, and then walked around by the side of the house to see if, by any chance, there might be a way to get into the backyard from there — like there used to be at my parents’ house when I was growing up. I soon realized, though, that even if I could get into the backyard, I still wouldn’t be able to get into the house from there. So I stood stock still in the middle of the driveway, trying to decide what to do.

As I saw it, there were two options. I could ring the doorbell and wake up Margo’s grandparents, apologize profusely for getting them out of bed, and then feel like a jerk for making a fuss when I’m already staying in their home for free. Or I could return to friends’ apartment I had just left and ask to spend the night on their couch.

I decided to first call Margo, to find out if she had any particular advice or wisdom for the situation. She might be able to tell me whether it would be a bad idea to wake up her grandparents. Walking back to the car, I got in, unrolled the windows, and called Margo on my cell phone. No answer.

So I called the only other person whose advice I felt I could trust — and who I knew would still be awake at eleven o’clock in the evening. Erin’s sister answered on the third ring and handed the phone over right away. Erin laughed with me about my quandary, and eventually we decided it was better to spend the night at C & B’s place than to wake up grandparents I barely knew.

And thus it came about that I am spending the night away from my new Kansas home, in the apartment of a couple of brand-new friends — people I hardly knew until about three days ago, and who have very kindly taken me on as a friend during my Kansas stay — with no toothbrush, no pajamas, and whole lot of gratitude.

Great — our first fight. You can write a song about it and go sing it in San Francisco. (23 points; the movie we watched tonight, which was just all right — not great, not terrible, just OK)

 

plenty

There’s a lot to talk about today, so I’ll try to make it all fairly quick.

props to my bro
My brother Kip is a self-titled “big fish in a small pond” — which suits him just fine, apparently. He recenlty has starred in some commercials for the local Pocatello bank Potelco. (The name always cracks me up!) The most recent is now on YouTube, so I’m sharing.

going for muse
I managed to get tix for the Muse concert in Orem this fall. The site I bought them from cites September 12 as the date, so that’s what I’m currently planning on. They weren’t nearly as expensive as I was afraid they’d be, so that was quite a blessing. And I’ll plan on at least seeing elliespen while I’m there (if not staying at her newly-acquired house, as she so magnanimously offered), which will be great fun. And, most importantly, I’ll get to see Matt! And Dom! And Chris! *sigh!* Can life get any better?

I submit that it cannot! (82 points, especially since I’m not sure myself where this is from; I have an inkling it’s Adam Sandler, though

wildlife in wyoming
Well, I’m now in Idaho Falls, at the home of my youth. I arrived on Wednesday after a long and arduous drive through the wilderness of Wyoming. Harold (my faithful companion and car) performed very well. I promised him a good wash as soon as we could unload him — he’s very dirty — which should be by the beginning of next week at the latest.

While in Wyoming I saw a baby elk frolicking by the highway-side. He made me very nervous, in fact — I was afraid he would frolic into my path, causing a major highway disaster. Kind of like the (presumably adult) vulture I nearly hit earlier that day. As I came around a bend of the highway, this vulture was feeding on roadkill in the other lane. When he saw me coming, he decided to fly off — right into my path. Bird-brained bird! He very narrowly escaped Harold’s windshield, coming within a few inches of it.

I suppose that’s all — not as much as it seemed when I was getting ready to write. The last quote, correctly identified by elliespen, was from the film IQ.

 

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone enjoyed the celebration of the Resurrection yesterday. I know I did.

Our bishop’s brother spoke in Sacrament Meeting, and as soon as he started, I turned to my roommate and said, “He clearly has the same dramatic streak in him.” At times, it almost felt like we were watching a televangelist preach to us. And he made reference to a couple of things that only Mormons would have understood, which made me sincerely hope that we had no investigators with us (I don’t think we did). In Sunday School, our teacher had a sinus headache and had taken some Zyrtec for it, but was “learning the hard way,” as he said, that it is a drowsy medicine. Relief Society was wonderful, on the other hand. We recently called a new teacher, and this was her third lesson, I think. It was really amazing. She puts a lot of time and effort into her lessons — much more than I do when I teach in church.

I had been planning to make strawberry pie with our dinner, in celebration of Easter, and I offered to take some to our missionary couple — the wife hasn’t been feeling well lately, and I wanted to let her know that we appreciate them. But I’ve never been much of a pie baker, and things didn’t go as well as expected. The pie crust shrank together badly when I baked it, and it really didn’t look pretty when I took it out. But, not one to let the aesthetics of my baking deter me, I decided to go ahead with it. However, then I made the gel filling that holds the strawberries together, and it didn’t seem to be setting up like it should. Again, I was hopeful, so I went ahead and poured it into the pie crust. But because of the weird shape of the pie crust, the filling ran over its sides that it was between the crust and the pie pan in several places, and it just didn’t look at all pretty. Even then, I would still have taken it to our missionaries, but I still couldn’t see that the gel filling was setting up, and it looked like the pie was going to be really difficult to try to eat. I decided to put it in the fridge, in hopes that the cold might help it set up, and I looked at it and thought today’s quote:

It was a disaster, Faye! (33 points)

So, I made some chocolate-peanut butter brownies for our missionary couple instead, which seemed to turn out just great. When I came home from their apartment, I took another look at the pie in the fridge, and although it still didn’t look pretty, the gel did seem to have set up after all, so we ate it later ourselves. At least I have some helpful notes to add to my recipe now.

With dinner, we watched Ben-Hur, which I had never seen before. It was pretty good, all things considered, though I couldn’t help but think that I would have preferred to read it as a book.

(I’m leaving the last quote un-identified until the next post, when I’ll reveal both that one and today’s.)

 

more stories

Before starting, I want to mention that I wasted most of the day today, and the little book The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker was of great help in that accomplishment. I read it in about four hours (though not until after watching Jeopardy! — which, unfortunately, is currently in their Teen Tournament). It was cute, though I couldn’t help thinking how fun it would be to re-write the thing as an adult novel. That’s one of the results of my Scholarly Writing class, I think. I also woke this morning with dream-memories about revising a paper … a paper I’ve never written in real life.

Dr. Pepper at Goodyear
I finally took Harold (my white Buick Century) in for a check-up today — got his oil changed, his brakes inspected, his windshield wipers changed, his tires filled and rotated. While there, I watched the Travel Channel on the TV in the waiting area. Shortly after I got there, a woman brought in her three small sons to wait with her. I’m certain they were no older than 3, 5, and 7 years old. She herded them over to the waiting area, informed them that she would allow each to have a soda from the soda machine, and then read them their choices. They each chose a Dr. Pepper. And then they proceeded to sit on the other end of the bench from me and pump their little bodies full of sugar and caffeine. And I thought to myself, “Oh yeah, this is a good idea.” Clearly somebody didn’t think something through. By the time they had finished sipping from their cans, they were crawling all over each other, vying for each others’ positions on the bench, tearing pages out of the complimentary reading material, pushing their hands up into the candy vending machine. At one point, I heard a tinkling noise of water in water coming from behind me, and only realized what was going on when the mother turned her head and hissed, “Shut the door!” When her son reappeared a few minutes later, she hissed at him again, “Go back there and flush the toilet and wash your hands!” Her exasperation increased in proportion to their rambunctiousness. As did mine.

Loch Ness
In the meantime, I found myself watching a show on the TV about the Loch Ness monster. I was surprised at how strongly the show affected me, resurrecting in me the uneasy feelings I had when I visited Loch Ness in 2005. While there, I went for a hike to the top of a hill, situated a mile or so from the village where I was staying, armed with only a tourist-map of the trails around the hill. The hill, Craigmonie, is supposed to have been the site of a major battle between a Viking warrior, Monie, and the Scots. Monie was killed in the battle, and there is still a monument to him there. The trails were not marked particularly well, on the map or on the ground, but I managed to make it to the top. After I’d been there about 2 minutes, it began to rain, so I headed back down. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the right trail, and I began to worry. Here I was, all alone in the back-woods of Scotland, without even someone who knew where I was, no cell phone, and on the wrong trail. The hill is in the Balmacaan Wood, which only added to the eerie feeling I had, and since I was on the far side of the hill, I couldn’t even see the village I was trying to reach. I remember seeing some cows grazing in a field a mile or two further away from the village and thinking that at least that meant there were people living nearby. Hoping to cheer myself, I tried to sing “The Lord is My Light” to myself, but I couldn’t even remember all the words. “The Lord is my light, then why should I fear? Hmm hm-mm hm-hm hm-mm hmm hm-mm hm-hm hmmm …” Eventually, the path I was on merged with the path I had meant to be on, and it wasn’t long before I was around the hill far enough that I could see the village, which relieved me considerably. But it’s amazing how strong those uneasy, queasy feelings still are for me.

Getting Hit by a Car in Switzerland
The other night I went to IWA (which I usually avoid, but decided to give it a try), and while there I got to tell one my favorite personal stories, about the time I got hit by a car in Switzerland. I thought that, since I’m telling stories tonight anyway, I would go ahead and throw this one in — after all, it is one of my favorite personal stories. But it’s late, and I’ve decided I’ll have to keep it for another day.

Quote
The last quote was, indeed, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. For reasons beyond my own comprehension, I adore that movie. The following quote is one that’s been on my mind a lot lately, since I’ve been investigating and dreaming about apartments in Chicago, and several of them indicate that they’re close to the Blue line or the Yellow line of the El.

Believe me, I work at the El, I know. (21 points)

 

some stories

The other day, as I was heading toward the library to do some research, I found a woman standing by the door of the building where my office is. I was about to go out the door, but she stopped me by asking whether I had a phone she could use. So I let her use my phone, and tried to focus on the music coming through my iPod and pretend that I wasn’t listening to her conversation. But of course, I was. After some time, she finally seemed to reach a real person. She asked about a traffic ticket she had received in 1983, and then whether she would be allowed to come in and do her time in jail for that, instead of paying the fine. And that was the whole conversation. She gave me back the phone matter-of-factly, and I went to do my research.

My research these days includes text mining, characterization through verbs, characterization through reference, the creation of personal identity through reference, and the concept of a nation in the Anglo-Saxon period. It gets frustrating, because there’s so much to do, and so much I want to do, and very little time to do it in. I would love to be able to spend a few hours a day in library for research, but I just can’t afford the time. Oh yes, along with everything else, I’m trying to translate Wulfstan’s Sermon of the Wolf in my “spare” time. Just one more thing I want to do but don’t really have the time for. I’ve pretty well made up my mind that I’m not going to be able to do my own personal reading this semester — I’m doing well if I can finish my reading assignments for my classes every week.

In the meantime, though, I’m really enjoying my classes this semester. Scholarly Writing is turning out to be very useful; it reminds me of how much I love writing, and of how much more I should be doing to write well. Medieval Literature is also interesting — even if it does require a lot more reading than I can usually cover in one week. We just finished reading Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and are now about to start on Asser’s Life of Alfred. Reading Bede has given me a whole new perspective on the early Christian church in Western Europe. I have a new respect for the men and women who were involved in church affairs.

I recently bought several three-ring binders so that I can organize all the papers I have. There’s a whole binder just for Haj and the handouts I get every time I talk to him. And I’ve got a rainbow array of binders for all the articles I copy in my research. They’re pretty empty for the time being, but I expect to fill them most of the way before the end of this semester.

Hmm … So I really didn’t intend for this to turn into a rant about how much I have to do this semester. It’s just that that’s what I think about these days. Here’s something else for you –

I found out the other day that Muse is supposed to be coming to the US on tour this spring, supporting My Chemical Romance in their Black Parade tour. (And a lot of fans are really ticked about that; they hate MCR, most of them, can’t believe that Muse have to be a support band for anyone else, and many are upset about them getting “more exposure” in the States — since that makes it harder to see them here — and playing such large venues.) Assuming this is true, they should be playing in San Antonio and Houston, as well as Dallas for the Edgefest concert. However, I can’t find any confirmed information about any of this. When I found out the other day, I just about hyperventilated, trying to figure out how to get tickets. I finally asked NM, since she and her man frequently attend concerts like this, and I thought she’d have a better idea. Neither she nor her man could find anything more concrete than what I had. But, she did mention that her man is quite good at getting scalped tickets for a really good price (say, 1/4 of the regular price), so if we find out that they really are coming, she suggested that we just go and let him do his thing to get us in. That thought has me grinning foolishly even now.

Oh, and along with everything else I’m doing, I’ve been working on converting my protected music files so that they’re just plain old MP3s. Sometimes that’s quite fun, others it’s just tedious.

The last quote was from “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” by Cake. Congrats to Erin.

So much time, so little to do. (Pause.) Strike that — reverse it. (42 points)

 

hail the conquering hero!

So this weekend I went to Lafayette (laff-ee-yet), Louisiana for a conference on Language and Literature, where gave a presentation about the research I did for my Master’s thesis. I rented a car here in Denton and drove down (about 7 hours) on Friday, presented my paper on Saturday, and drove back again on Sunday. I was really nervous about it, but knew it was something I had to do to start getting used to presenting my research, start getting my name out there, and work my way around in the world of Academia. In the end, it was a really good experience for me, and I’m very glad I went.

The conference was quite a bit smaller than I had anticipated. I knew it wouldn’t be that large, but there were only about 60 people there in all, I’d say. That meant that during my panel, only about 12 people were in the audience. I was very OK with that. I was the only person there to do a PowerPoint presentation at all, which surprised me. Most of the other students there were working on degrees in English, Rhetoric, or Folklore, and apparently these disciplines still just read their paper from the lectern. I, on the other hand, didn’t even stand behind the lectern at all, and I used the computer for my notes, and didn’t even have a fully-written paper with me. In fact, right before the panel started, I got super worried that I might not be able to get the computer to work and would have to just do the presentation from memory. I had written up an outline in a Word document as back-up … but I had never printed one out to use, so that would have been a problem.

Anyway … to make a long story short (“too late!”), the presentation went very well. People seemed fairly interested, although there weren’t any questions for me (or for anyone else — there was very little time left). I got to talking with the guy who presented before me, and it turned out he was also Mormon, so we bonded on that level. We sat by each other for lunch, which was right afterward (Mom asked me later if he was single, cute, nice, etc … oh, those moms!). Almost as soon as I got into the room where they fed us lunch, one of the professors came over to ask me some things about the computer program I had used for my research. While I was talking with him, one of the other professors came over and said he was hoping to sit by me and ask me some more questions about this research. And, in one of the afternoon sessions, someone told me that he had really enjoyed my PowerPoint presentation, that it had just the right amount of information to keep him interested and engaged, but not so much that it was overwhelming. So all in all, it went very well.

Dr. Rice, who talked to me during lunch, also reminded me of just what a unique position I’m in. He mentioned, first of all, what a small area stylistics is in the US, which in many ways is a huge advantage to me. He also got talking about the unusual combination of interests it takes to do corpus stylistics, since you have to have an interest in computers, analysis, and mathematical things, but also in literature, language, and art. And he also brought up the point that that is a very marketable combination of skills, since they are necessary for a lot of jobs in, for example, information mining and other software-related jobs. One of the many reasons why I think I need to do more with computer-y stuff.

OK … Erin also wants me to talk about the time, a couple of weeks ago, when I was going home for Easter. After we got on the road (and Erin was gracious enough to drive me down to Dallas to the airport), I realized that I had no idea what gate I needed, or what flight number I was on, or even the airline. I had to call about 5 people before I got hold of our friend Matt, who looked up the info for me. I had taken my confirmation number, but I forgot to look at any of the other stuff. Oops. Lucky for me, I still made it.

The last quote was from Stan Freberg’s “The United States of America.”

Never confuse efficiency with a liver complaint. (82 points)

P.S.: As you can see, I have also changed my template. Time for a change. I am still working on getting my sidebar content staightened out, so you’ll have to bear with me for a while.

 

adventurous sabbath

Last night, there was supposed to be a YSA fireside in Plano (north of Dallas). So Margo, Hector, Jim, and I tried to go down there for it. “Tried” is an operative word in that sentence. And really, the whole thing could probably be put down as my fault. Here’s what happened.

After church, Jim asked me if I would get directions for the meetinghouse in Plano, since he’s the ward clerk and therefore had to stay after church. He usually gets done by around 6:00 pm, but we needed to leave here around 6:30 to make sure we had enough time to find the place. So I readily agreed to find the directions. I asked around a little after church, and no one was entirely sure where the fireside would be, but someone thought it was probably at the Roundrock chapel. That sounded all right to me, and from what I could tell from the bulletin board at the church, there seemed to be only two chapels in Plano. When we came home, I got online and found the address for the Roundrock chapel, along with the driving directions (thanks, GoogleMaps!). I also found that the Roundrock chapel is the stake center, so that seemed likely to be where the fireside would be held. Just to be on the safe side, I thought I’d get the directions from Roundrock to the other chapel, in case we got there and found that wasn’t the right place.

Jim and Hector (who is also a clerk in our ward) came over about 6:00, and we decided that Margo would drive. We set out, with directions in our hands and hope in our hearts. But fate seemed to be against us. First, there was a whole debacle with the tollway … but that’s for another day. In any case, we got off at the correct exit in Plano and followed our directions until all we had left was to turn onto Roundrock Trail and find the chapel. But we couldn’t find Roundrock. After several miles, we decided to stop at a gas station and ask for directions. The man at the counter didn’t know where Roundrock Trail was, but he did have some maps that we were able to use to figure out where we’d gone wrong.

We finally found Roundrock Trail and the chapel … but there was no one there. In fact, there was some kind of construction going on, at least in the parking lot, if nowhere else. So we figured it must be at the other chapel. Good thing we wrote down those directions, right? We followed the directions with no trouble, until — once again — all we had left was to find a street called Legacy and then find the chapel. But we couldn’t find Legacy (does this sound at all familiar?). We did eventually find the chapel, and there were at least a few cars out in the parking lot, so we got out and went inside. It didn’t take us long, though, to figure out that this wasn’t actually the chapel. We think it may have been a Korean church — we’re not sure. We got back in the car and continued down the street … and finally found the chapel. For real, this time. There were some cars out in the parking lot, and there was a group of three young adults standing outside, which seemed to us like a good sign. So we went inside.

There were people there in the building, and we thought we were in the clear. We were about half an hour late, but hey! at least we’d made it, right? Wrong. About the time we got to the chapel (where you’d expect the fireside to be held), some folks sitting in the foyer asked if we were looking for something, and could they help us? We explained that we were looking for the fireside, and they all looked a bit blank. Apparently we weren’t in the right chapel, after all. One of them finally found an events calendar that actually said which chapel the fireside was being held in, and they gave us directions to get there. Margo prudently asked them, though, how long it would take us to get there, and they estimated about 20 minutes. By the time we got there, the fireside would be over.

So we went back home instead. And ate cookies that Hector had brought us. And life was good.

At least we can say that we made a darn good effort to get to the YSA activity, next time the bishop asks.

“Look, Daddy, a bear!”

“No, honey, that’s a frog. Bears wear hats.”

(21 points)

I’m a bit disappointed that no one seems to know the last quote, but if you get this one, it might help. In other words, the last quote is still open for point-getting. I also have to add that Erin is barred from guessing on today’s quote, since I just quoted it to her the other day, but she can still get points for the last one.

 

the toilet incident

I admit it, the toilet incident was my fault. It’s just best to get that out of the way now. It makes the whole story that’s about to follow much easier to tell.

Sunday night we had some people over for dinner, among them our home teacher Jim. When everyone had left, around 10:00, Margo and I went to find Erin. She had disappeared an hour or two earlier, when the phone rang, and we assumed it was this guy she’s interested in, who lives in Colorado. Wanting to satisfy our curiosity, we found her sitting on the floor of our walk-in closet, talking on the phone. When we asked who it was, she told us it was her sister, and that they were having a serious conversation. Knowing as we did that Erin and her sister have plenty of material for serious conversations these days, we respectfully left her there on the floor of the closet and cleaned up the kitchen and dining room.

After a half hour of cleaning, which was punctuated by a brief but loud argument between Erin and her sister from our bedroom, I decided it was definitely time for bed. So I went into our room, where I found that Erin had come out of the closet and was still talking on the phone. Realizing now that everyone had left for the night, she moved out into the living room to continue her conversation. In the meantime, I changed into my pajamas and started my bed-time routine. A few minutes later, I ran at full speed into the living room, pausing just long enough to yell at Erin, “Help! How do you stop an overflowing toilet?!” I then proceeded to find as many towels and rags as I could to at least sop up some of the water, while Erin followed, laughing, into our bedroom. There she also helped to find some more towels, while I awkwardly positioned myself in our Cracker-Jack-box of a bathroom in such a way that I could hold up the auto leveling assembly in the toilet’s tank to stop the flow of water, whilst and at the same time attempting to hold up the cuff of my pajama bottoms so they wouldn’t get wet.

By this time, Margo had come in as well, and she suggested that we try calling one of the guys who’d just left our apartment — surely one of them would know how to take care of this problem, right? So, I called Jim, our home teacher, worrying that he wouldn’t even be home yet, as he has a good drive from our house to his. But he was home, and he explained to me where the emergency shut off valve was, and Margo managed to get it turned off. So, now there was no longer any water flowing out of the toilet onto our floor. Jim offered to come over and help us unclog the toilet, since we didn’t have a plunger (and, in fact, have still to buy one). I thanked him profusely, hung up the phone, and turned to the business of getting all the water soaked up from the floor.

While Margo and I did what we could with the rags, I realized that the conversation Erin was having on the phone didn’t actually sound her sister was on the other end. “Are you actually talking to Eric?” I asked.

“Yes,” she responded.

“You’ve been talking to him this whole time?”

“Yeah.”

“And you told us you were talking to Christine? You lied to us?”

“Well,” she explained, “I didn’t realize everyone had left already, and I didn’t want you to go back and tell them I was talking to Eric and make fun of me.”

“So, you just said it was Christine so that we wouldn’t tell anyone it was Eric?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe you’d do that!” I exclaimed with indignation.

“Oh come on,” Erin laughed, “ you guys should know me better than that.”

“Right,” Margo contended, “and you actually thought that we would go back there and make fun of you with everyone? You should know us better than that!”

Erin, who was feeling particularly amused that night, laughed at Margo’s quick come-back and continued to find more towels for us.

“So what’s going on then?” she asked. She had, understandably, missed most of my conversation with Jim, being caught up in her own conversation with Eric.

I explained that Jim was going to come try to unclog the toilet for us, adding just how embarrassing I found the whole situation. I didn’t like having to rely on anyone else to fix our toilet, and for reasons of my own, I found it particularly galling to have to confide in Jim for that help. Erin offered to claim that the whole thing was her fault, if it would make me feel any better. I answered her only with a laugh, thinking she probably wasn’t serious, and also feeling unable to lie so blatantly to Jim.

Eventually, Jim arrived, with two plungers in tow. By this time, we had sopped up all the water from the bathroom, wrung out all the cloths into the bathtub, started a load of laundry, and thoroughly rubbed down the tub and the bathroom floor with a Clorox disinfectant cloth. When Jim arrived, then, Erin and I were both in the living room, and Margo had gone to bed already. He started to make for the guest bathroom, but we quickly disabused him and led him into our bedroom to the smaller (“Master”) bathroom. I stood just outside the door (I would defy anyone to get two people and two plungers into that bathroom, ever, with enough room left over for a sneeze) and watched while he went to work. As Erin wandered back into the living room, I tried to think of something to say to Jim, and came out with the first thing that came to mind: “So … have you plunged many toilets in your life?”

I could hear Erin in the other room, guffawing at my masterful conversational skills. Jim stopped what he was doing, turned to look at me squarely, and replied, “No, not many. How about you?”

Feeling about as idiotic as I ever have in my entire life, I made some mild answer to this and kept up as a good a flow of mundane conversation as possible while Jim continued to plunge away. However, as both of the plungers he’d brought were too small for our toilet, he didn’t make much headway after getting the water to drain out of the bowl. Eventually, he had to give it up, recommending that we put in a work order the next morning. I again thanked him profusely, offered a grocery bag for his now wet plungers, and saw him to the door.

As soon as he had left, I found Erin, who was still sitting on the couch talking to Eric, and explained to her the epiphany I had about half-way through Jim’s attempt at clearing our toilet.

“So, the toilet is not in Margo’s bathroom — clearly, you’ve been on the phone for hours … Jim is a smart guy, whose fault is he going to think it is?”

After a few more hearty rounds of laughter, assurances from Eric that this is a situation where it is perfectly acceptable to call your home teacher, and some anecdotes about toilets in general, I managed to get myself in bed, though it was a full three hours later than I had planned. In the morning, I called the office to put in a work order, and they were able to come by before the end of the day to fix things. Ah, the joys of a flushing toilet.