I am wild about boat art

Don't ask me why.

Afloat by Stephen K. Sheffield

Stille Nacht

Bean & Heff are staying home for Christmas this year, then braving all this horrible Western snow to join us in Utah after the actual day, and we've been talking about what of our family's traditions she's going to include for her kids.

Our family made some changes to the traditions over the years, necessitated first by our move to Fresno and then somehow cheese soup on Christmas Eve got replaced by the Bethlehem dinner, which Pops does somewhat begrudgingly since it involves lying prone on a vinyl Christmas tablecloth in the middle of the living room and eating sandwiches, dates, olives, and grapes, and drinking Welch's white grape juice out of our Christmas mugs. It's a simple meal that's easy to prepare, and is meant to call our minds back to Israel and away from Santa or the Food Network. I could do without the lying on the floor, like Pops, but it's hard to object to how the change in altitude lends itself to a different kind of family unity. And it's the only time of year we drink white grape juice, which Buddy would probably tell you is the best part.

I have come to believe that every tradition Mom instituted has been motivated by a desire for her children to feel connected to each other; when we were younger, that meant putting aside animosity and saying out loud why we loved each other before we opened the simple gifts of a notepad or a basket with hotel shampoo purchased for a dime at the Nelson sale. I think I was the most unlovable then, because the kids usually said about me: "I love Lis because she gives me rides."

Now that we're adults, we get along fundamentally and are generally terribly fond of each other -- in-laws included, which I find to be no small blessing -- but we can be reticent about being demonstrative and can be easily embarrassed by overly emotional displays. I suspect it is our German guarding, but the trouble is that these kinds of traditions call up all this love that Mom has been fostering all these years, so we are presented with an emotional conundrum.

Never was that more obvious than the year that, on Christmas Eve, before presents, instead of visiting the Living Nativity in a nearby Central California town whose name I don't think any of us kids could tell you (we called it Pootown because of, well, the cow population), all of us went downtown to a hospital to visit a dying German woman with whom Pops spoke their shared native language and took care of spiritually. When she was more well, she had been on our Christmas caroling route, along with her other fellow widows and elderly people from the ward, but that year we took our Stille Nacht to the hospital room.

Though it is our heritage, we did not sing it with great accents; Pops would print out these papers with the lyrics and we'd have a quick pronunciation lesson before we left, which helped a little. The problem in the hospital room wasn't our pronunciation or our singing, but that once we started and were moved by the promise of the words and the sadness of her looming death, we were forced to sing over tremendous lumps in our throats, and eventual crying. This was, of course, embarrassing for teenagers and almost-teenagers, so we looked away and let our parents do the comforting words to Martha, but I think if you surveyed the Muelleck kids, it would be included among our sweetest Christmas memories. We will likely always think of Martha Lehwalder when we hear Stille Nacht.

One day,

. . . these girls will laugh about behaving this way. Hopefully. In the meantime, just laugh at them. It's not exactly timely, but man, it's hilarious:

When I was ten, I wanted to run away and find Robert Plant*

Photo from here.

I listened to the Led Zeppelin XM station for awhile on Tuesday and I forgot how much I love Robert Plant. His voice could not be more dreamy, and those jeans are wearing him. Me-ow.

* From the spoken intro of a super ghetto live version of Tori Amos singing "She's Leaving Home."

Overheard on the plane

Redneck Man, to his sister in front of him: "Y'all should renew y'all's vows."

Sister: "Who?"

RM: "Y'all!"

S: "Where?"

RM: "Vail."

S: "Hell?"

This can't be real, can it?

Clearly that image is . . . sketchy. But it's an eBay listing with 4 bids. Wha?

Facebook makes me homesick

I feel a little dumb writing about Facebook on my blog, since I joined, like, 5 months ago and it's kind of grandma to talk about it, but I'm still in the finding people phase of Facebooking, and it makes me miss Fresno in a heart-achy way. It's not like I want to go back, exactly, but it's just a recurrence of that wistful feeling when you find someone you used to babysit and watch Golden Girls with who's all grown up and beautiful and successful and 28, for crying out loud.

Man, we ragged a lot on Fresno growing up. I know I told my parents a million times I would never come back there, never want to live there as an adult. In high school, I had this huge crush on Virginia. My best friend Erin went on a trip to DC once and did the Virginia tourist sites and her family made this corny home movie for me, complete with suggestions of buildings I should live in and a shaky-cam tour of the outside of George Mason University, where I was going to get a BFA in Creative Writing.

I can unequivocally say that North Carolina is a much better fulfillment of that particular dream, and though I am living as far away from Fresno as is possible and still in the continental United States, I feel drawn back. I am surprised, surfing Facebook, how many people I know stayed or went back or have plans to go back (said BFF Erin, in fact, and her Fresno husband Scott). It's not that it's amazing or great, just that it's pretty good, and it's home. Distance from home feels unbearable sometimes, and worse when your parents sell the house and move somewhere it snows and leave behind the pool and the fat cat Soph[t]ie.

North Carolina is confusing old school

Sometime between 1905 and 1915, someone made this postcard (which, was irony a thing at the turn of the century?) and it's sort of what you expect of old school prisoners, with the stripes and the dirty faces and the working on the railroad. It's all very mythic.

So now, North Carolina puts their prisoners in this outfit:

It's kind of an exercise in humiliation. It's comical in a way that seems inappropriate for hearings and court appearances, and it's . . . clownish. The black and white stripes are one thing, but this is a creamsicle. I object.

I like old buildings

Cedar Grove, NC

This is a very good list

Oxford University has come up with the Top 10 most irritating phrases, and I do love a good bit of judgment and mocking. Here we go:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7
10. It's not rocket science

Hear, hear! And I would add these:

11. Literally (as in ValleyGirl style, when it is most decidedly not literal)
12. Mom and I's trip is coming up (as in, should be Mom's and my)

Sometimes my job is like this

Ask yourself,

Etemity is a long time . . .

Prop. 8 and the Backlash

I do a lot of fluffy talk on this blog, with an occasional foray into something deepish re: books or whatnot, but ever since Donnie posted about opponents of Prop. 8 banding together to boycott Utah for being 60% Mormon, I am all tore up, as they say. I didn't have to exercise my vote on the issue this time, but one day I might need to, and I need to figure myself out. I'm awake at 7:30 am on Saturday, so clearly I need some sorting.

Of course I am hurt on the first level, because I am a Mormon, but I have gay friends and I love them and I want them to be happy in their lives just as I want that for my heterosexual friends and myself. When I was in California for that wonderful wedding with my immediate and extended family, our conversations naturally gravitated towards Prop. 8, and I will admit to expressing reservations. Not about its content, because that I believe, but about changing the Constitution. I do feel better about changing a state's Constitution than the Federal one, and in general, support a State's rights to handle the problems of its constituency vs. making it Federal.

But knowing that many members of my church were backing it with their time and their money, in addition to the fact that our church's leadership encouraged its support, left me unsettled. It's uncommon for them to choose a side, and in general, our church leaders extend the all-encompassing message to exercise your civic duty and vote your conscience. For plenty of people that is Democrat and for plenty it's Republican; we have Senators and Congressmen of both parties in office, and I've certainly not polled it, but if my circle is any indication, Republicans are not necessarily a dominant party within the American church like Utah seems to indicate.

Nonetheless, the defining of marriage solely between a man and a woman looks and feels like a Republican issue (if the parties are even recognizable anymore), and certainly many people who are socially conservative are registered Republicans. Abortion is the same kind of issue: both are things which are considered morally in opposition to God's commandments - from whatever scriptural or church source you receive them - and therefore, people assert, ought to be legislated away.

From a voting standpoint, I am more comfortable with my personal rejection of those actions than I am of supporting legislation against them solely for morality's sake. In the case of marriage, I think it's useful to factor in some legal or secular argument that it would be in a state's interest to keep the definition of marriage status quo. I like what I read here, in a piece written for the MIT newspaper in 2004, when Massachusetts was having its own battle over the issue. (Thanks to my cousin Cam for the link.) The gist of Adam Kolasinski's piece is that states have a compelling interest to permit marriages that could result in offspring; of course it's not accurate to suggest that all heterosexual couples will have children, but, he argues, "without mind-reading technology, excluding them is impossible." His ultimate point is that it is not the state's obligation to guarantee you a marriage based on your "sexual love."

That may be oversimplifying a tremendously nuanced issue, but it is a compelling point to me, and certainly one that I would research further if my state were to put this measure forward for my vote. So to lump me, and others who have reservations about law-changing, into a mass of people (Mormons and not) who you, Mr. John Aravosis, consider to be bigoted and discriminatory, is wholly unfair. It's one-sided discrimination and it's damaging to your cause.

I understand why people think it looks like discrimination against them; in some cases, it might be. If you look at the long list of churches and organizations and individuals who publicly declared their support of Prop. 8, I'd venture you'd find some people in there who do fall on the side of bigotry and small-mindedness, just as you would find people on the other side of the cause hating Christians en masse. If you are not religious and don't have any interest in that side of the argument, I understand why it looks cruel.

But the whole thing is based on a fundamental truth that we (Latter-day Saints) hold sacred, and I'll explain it as I see it: marriage between a man and a woman only is the unit God has outlined for His children to live in on earth, so that we may also have children and live together as families. Sex is for unification and strengthening of that marriage and for the potential creation of children, so men and women who are not currently in a marriage are celibate. No one is going to tell you that being celibate is easy, not by a long shot, but if you come to this spiritual conviction, then that is what you choose to do, if you are straight or you are gay. If that's your choice, you figure out how to live a happy and fulfilled life regardless. (Those are my own words of the Church's official stance, which you can read here, if you want.)

Barack Obama won this election for a lot of reasons, but I've read over and over that it was in large part because of his supporters' presence on the ground, in getting people registered, out to vote early, and voting for him because they found in themselves some kind of conviction that he was the right candidate for the job. The same thing was done here, this time by sympathizers and members of churches with myriad reasons to support Prop. 8, finding people with myriad reasons to vote for it themselves. So, with the same kind of free speech and democracy in action, it passed, and I know it feels devastating to its opponents. I understand why it does, but people vote on their convictions, be they religious or otherwise, and it's the fabric of our system. Now I've told you mine.

Missing Provo

Just a little, especially after I heard it snowed this week, ugh. I bet Doge is beyond thrilled.

I was reminded by the internet how sometimes (I can't remember why; is it for homecoming?) someone or another hikes up to the Y and puts lights on it, or turns on the lights that are already there. I don't really know. But I used to love that. Those mountains at dusk are nothing if not inspiring. Enjoy for yourself.

Here we are

"You were in there a long time," K said to me. He came with us to his school to vote, and he was right - I stood there at least 5 minutes trying to choose my presidential vote. Ultimately, it didn't make a difference for the electoral outcome, but after being categorized with people like myself (that is: the great expanse of moderate "Undecideds," thrown off voting Republican despite being registered as such by the choice of Sarah Palin for VP, among other concerns) on the news for a million years, I have to say that I was, nonetheless, thankful that I could have a choice.

It was a strange feeling to be not entirely passionate about either candidate (though not the same kind of strange as last time, when it was more like dread), but it still felt important. I liked that it felt important, because it's easy to dismiss your vote. It's a number in the giant machine, sure, and since it's just a directive to an elector, it sometimes seems middling. But it's also your offering to the founding fathers; it's your call to say one thing or the other, and it's your right to keep it to yourself or splash it all over your car and Facebook page. Whatever happens, it's the way we collect everything we've synthesized about someone's ability to lead, make good and moral choices, be a good representative for the millions of us, and do whatever they can for at least 4 years, and to allow a reset to be a motivator for turning some things around.

I don't really want to get into specifics, because the time for debate is passed (not that I really got all that involved in the cause while it was happening), so now what we do is just wait and see what happens. Some of it is sure to be good, some of it might be disastrous, and having the Democratic party in control of the entire free world makes me shake in my boots a little, being a Republican and all, but doing the process is meaningful, and I'm thankful for it.

Alltel's Revenge

Officially, the Alltel wizard and Chaaaad are fifty thousand times less annoying than the newish Verizon commercial with the dude asking his secretary what's on his schedule and she lists all the stupid texting whatnot and moves his real meeting. It sucks so bad it's not even on the internet.

Trav gets the last laugh.


(Boozie just says, "They made me wear this shirt. I'm really a Carolina fan at my deepest level, see?")

Who would suspect a bunch of ding-a-ling dames?

In honor of Cloris Leachman finally getting kicked off Dancing With the Stars, please enjoy this clip from her finest performance: Phantom Fox in The North Avenue Irregulars, one of our favorite Disney films when we were kids. This scene is amidst the zaniest of antics this fine film offers: it's the demolition derby at the end.

Cam & Rebecca are MFEO

My fabulous cousin Cameron and lovely, lovely Rebecca got married in Sacramento this weekend and it might as well have been shot for Martha Stewart. Their invitation was the greatest thing you ever saw, and the whole day was perfectly lovely. Thanks to California for the killer weather.

Sacramento Temple.

The bride is wearing burgundy shoes which she didn't remove the whole day, bless her feet. Also, she made her dress. She is that kind of cool.

That's love jam. Peach.

Local apple pie (still warm) and also local juice, donated by the juicers for a wedding present. The pomegranate-berry juice had crack in it.

Their fun band o'hippies did not play the chicken dance. That's Rebecca's brother singing a song he wrote.

My aunt Kathie sewed all that bunting out of vintage fabrics. Totally fabulous.

Rebecca collected vintage dishes & silverware for dinner and chose gorgeous fall flowers.

If I had a boat

Eudora Welty, by Curt Richter

If I could be reborn and exist wholly immersed in a different place, it would be Eudora Welty's Mississippi. Excluding the racism, the world from which she came and the one she put on paper have surpassed for me, suddenly, even the beloved world of Flannery O'Connor's creation. Mississippi has a bad rap these days, accused of backwardness and redneckness and other dismissive terms of the outsider's perspective. I haven't spent much time there, other than driving through, so I can't defend it properly, but I suspect the Mississippi of Delta Wedding didn't get a whole lot of respect either, not that you'd know it once you become immersed in it.

Once you arrive in the Delta with the Fairchilds' outsider cousin from the Yellow Dog train, on the day of Miss Dab's wedding, you are tasked with staying put until the end of the wedding, at the very least, and certainly until you've popped in and out of the heads of the various children and adults making up this plantation legacy family and the servants who bake cakes and tend to their whims. I've read Delta Wedding three times, and I'm still not sure I totally understand it, but such is the wonder of Eudora Welty.

In both this novel and her short stories, two of which were read recently on the Selected Shorts podcast, she possesses two gifts which make a story vibrant and exactly as I like them to be. First, she is a master of presenting place, but it is revealed slowly, in bits and pieces in between a usually omniscient narrator's character mind-reading and casual physical description. It is almost always summer, hot, and the characters move at a languid pace, even when they're hurrying. They talk to one another with equal parts of fondness and exasperation, and always proper decorum and manners. People are just this side of surreal, and it lends to the writing a significantly slowed pace, which leaves the narrator free to give copious commentary of the smallest things whenever she sees fit. (I am assuming - she usually feels like a woman; though it’s not how I was taught, I have a hard time picturing anyone other than Welty herself. That face is so regal and lived in and captures what I am describing in her prose.)

Second, she writes wonderful and complex women - or, more precisely, Southern women, which are a class unto themselves and a class I adore. I am sure Southerners tire of incessant analysis of their lifestyles and mannerisms from outsiders, especially if they are done without sympathy. I hope that I can say this without reproach, because I long to be Mrs. Fairchild for a week, or Robbie, the shadowy and judged Fairchild (by marriage only), married to the most beloved Uncle George. Each woman fulfills expected 1923 Delta woman roles, obeys tradition, is loving and nurturing in her own way. But what I like about trips inside their mind is that we don’t find subversion there, but a deepening of the psychology of this kind of woman, and revealed in language that takes its time to get to the heart of it, and then steps back quickly so you’re left with a little more than before but also a little more wonder. It’s writing to the tune and speed of “April the 14th, Part 1” or “I Dream a Highway” by Gillian Welch. You might never get there, and then suddenly you do. It’s exactly what I look for in fiction.

I’ve been accused of being too esoteric when I talk about this kind of thing, but I feel discontented these days (maybe because my house is such a mess) and I want to time travel to become one of these women, managing the men around her without them knowing, keeping them anxiously intrigued, sipping lemonade in a white lace dress and a straw hat on the wraparound porch in intense Delta humidity with only a slow fan to cool me down, no BlackBerry, DVR, car, plane, or email to answer in sight.

Paula Deen has outdone herself

Spotted on Tastespotting: The Lady's Brunch Burger. (Yeah, those are Krispy Kremes. Hot Now, I would hope). I'm not saying I wouldn't eat it, but I wouldn't feel good about myself.

There are bags and there are bags

Margey and I looked at a lot of bags recently, and I am ready for a change. I have had my eye on the hobo shape of this Coach bag for awhile, but I hate logo fabric and also: $398. So . . . no.

In the meantime, though, I found this bag on etsy and I'm about to die to buy it. The only reason I haven't yet is b/c I'm not sure I want a red or black bag, and I'm holding out for gunmetal gray.

Also, I've been known to drop up to $80 on a lark, but $121 feels like a real choice, considering that what I want the most right now is a new couch.

Which one? This one. Not sure on the color yet, but maybe the Walnut (chocolate brown) velvet-like microfiber.

This concerns you if you've been a guest of mine recently and were forced to sleep on the chiropractic nightmare that is my current sofa bed. Because: new bed with no bars in the spine.

Well, sure

Now that I've invested all this coin into buying 2 million smaller and smaller containers that can be wedged, puzzle-like, into a freezer bag, the TSA is thinking that bombs aren't likely in your foundation after all. Or at least, they'll be able to tell a little better. Wonder what this will do to sales of nasty-topped VASA water in the airport? I bet that old woman in a wheelchair we saw recently at JFK would have appreciated it being 2009 already. She was clearly a novice flyer, and when they opened her ratty bag, they pulled out 4 brand-new bottles of liquor. Guess she didn't get the memo.

On an unrelated note, I really, really, really, really hate landscaping machines. The pitch of their motors is absolutely unbearable, like to the point where I spend most of those 3 days per week that they're outside with their blowers, mowers, and edgers feeling like I'm descending into madness. I sorta wish I lived in a desert where there would be nothing to blow but sand. And who would do that anyway?

Hi, I'm Boozie

I'm storing nuts in my cheeks for the winter.

I'm a businessman. I love money, I love power, I love capitalism.

And I love movies about assistants. Or, more accurately, I have a soft spot for movies about assistants, even if they don't turn out to be that good, movie-wise, like "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Twenty-seven Dresses."

Tonight, I was watching "Annie" on TCM, which I've seen a million times, but not since being a grown-up with this particular career, and aside from so many things suddenly making sense (Miss Hannigan's gin-filled bathtub, when Daddy Warbucks says, "Everything's urgent to a Democrat") now that I have a touch more historical and contextual awareness than I did when I was 10, I also discovered that Grace Farrell is the greatest assistant ever.

She's probably called a secretary, but nonetheless she's totally glamorous and competent and a great dancer and has fabulous suits with swinging skirts and hats. She's totally present and attentive and unselfish, and beautiful and sympathetic. She knows when to push Daddy Warbucks into, you know, adopting Annie, and when to sit back and watch him be his blustery self instead of intervening, like in my personal favorite scene of the film: The Iodent Hour. She interviews all the fake parents and bows out of the FDR visit, probably knowing full well that sending Daddy Warbucks with Annie to Washington would shake the Republican out of him. I think we're supposed to embrace The New Deal optimism and all the millions, which is kind of a beautiful simplistic perspective.

Now that we're in the midst of our own modern-day New Deal (if you will) I'm pretty sure America just needs a Grace Farrell to take care of business in kicky heels.

Fall Festival

Those are sweet pickles purchased this morning from the Orange Chapel Methodist Church Fall Festival, which is a lovely morning of kind neighbors, really good country breakfast including biscuits and spicy gravy, grits, country ham, and Diet Pepsi, baked goods, and gospel music sung on the back of a flatbed trailer. It always falls the same weekend as General Conference, and it's all together a very life-affirming and uplifting series of days. If Pops was still here, I'd share those pickles.

If I had an extra $1200

I would immediately buy this chair from Anthropologie. Holy cow.

Shuffle Junkie

View of Utah Lake from Squaw Peak

The trouble with being a shuffle junkie is that sometimes songs you've forgotten about can pop up and what happens depends on whether it's a busy day and it produces just a little twinge, but if it's a sultry fall night just after a rain storm and the windows are down, that's when it smacks you in the gut with a little more oomph. And I remember that one fall Saturday night in 1995 when we went up Provo Canyon for a little wholesome campfire and guitar-playing under the clear, Western sky.

T & I rode up in the back of Korb's Nissan Sentra, with Dave in the front, 1/2 of the four boys of the Briar Avenue basement apartment that we were collectively and individually madly in love with. (Not specifically Korb & Dave for me, and with T there would be an eventual realigning of affection, but that night Korb had a little advantage with her, and our friend Brooke would later capture Dave.) Korb put in the Hootie & the Blowfish disc and skipped it to number 3, which is "Let Her Cry," of course, and he said, "I know I have an economy car, but this stereo was the best thing I ever did." I'm sure it sounded great or whatever, but for me with that song it's more about the tragic first chord and the lonely girl by the lamp post.

We met J & Chris up the mountain, where the fire was already toasty and crackly and J already had his guitar out. There were more girls waiting, too - Kari & cute, ditsy, flirty Kiersta, who were also collectively and individually in love with the Briar boys, and lived across the hall from us. They were a little older, and Kari, anyway, possessed the hippie no-makeup, long blonde hair confidence that seemed very much the right thing to have in that group. I was really jealous of her, despite the Birkenstocks; she was at ease around these boys, who were much older than us. I was wearing a big Eddie Bauer pullover, and whatever the real story, how I felt was that unlike the rest of these girls, I was liked fine but unadored. I felt unsporty and uncool and Kari could run a room in an effortless and breezy way that was never obnoxious somehow.

So the night for me was fun in theory - it was perfect with cute boys and marshmallows and guitars, but the perfect made me crazy and insecure and I like I wanted to go deep in the dark canyon and find my way back alone with no one to see how dumb I felt. I don't hate this memory; Hootie starts singing and I have to close my eyes for a second and take a deep breath, because it's that young and hopeful combination of joy, anticipation, embarrassment, and the overwhelming crush of the moment, long since passed and been replaced for all of us by other people, other friends, other loves. But I can also pretty easily tap into that odd girl out, even if that perception is tainted.

Now that Darius Rucker is trying to start a country career, he pops up with more frequency, but nothing he does can replace the heartbreaking pathos of "Let Her Cry," those first few guitar chords, the sad girl by that lamp post. She's destined to stand there forever. I can hear her tale from high up the canyon, looking down.

B&E

Okay, so you know this commercial, right?



I hate it. It's totally alarmist and awful. But it certainly does its advertising job, because it leaves you unsettled and like you really can't afford to not have Brinks.

So last night at 2 am the downstairs alarm was tripped, and we have the same kind of deal with the calling to see if it's a false alarm or we need the cops. The speaker for the alarm is right outside my bedroom door, so it didn't take long to wake me up, but I got all discombobulated and it became part of my dream for a minute, so by the time I could figure out what was happening, the phone was ringing and I still had my teeth-grinding mouthguard in when I answered it and I had to go outside on my front porch to even hear the woman on the phone asking me for my password. And then I realized that I was outside and possibly unprotected from the possible murderer, so I asked her (um, after I took out my mouthguard) if she would stay on the phone with me while I checked things out.

Mind you, we still weren't communicating well because I actually have to go down the stairs to turn off the alarm, but I was faced with quite a conundrum: knowing that it is very most probably a false alarm, do I still risk going downstairs? What would I have done if I had met a murderer on the steps? Sure, Security Central lady would have sent the cops, but out here that recently meant 45 minutes, so I'm pretty well dead and in the Haw River by then.

With the being not awake, I didn't have the presence of mind to think too long, especially because it was SO LOUD and so I just crept down the stairs, my heart beating like nobody's business, and finally got the thing silenced. Then she told me it was an outside closet door (why it's connected to the system, I don't really know, because it doesn't actually lead to access to the house. It houses the water heater, so we're guarding against shower espionage, I guess?). This particular door doesn't have a doorknob on it, so you can imagine that a little wind can make it blow right open. If I had asked her what tripped the siren, I would have known that there was no murderer, but the truth is that I watch too much Law & Order: SVU and I'm just so suspicious.

And in point of fact, going downstairs without at least a kitchen knife was potentially pretty stupid, but is it dumber to let the Sheriff come out for a false alarm? I guess these are not questions you can ask if you're dead, so thank goodness I don't have to be in the tragic victims section of the Chatham County Record today.

Dear Summer,

Don't let the shade deceive you. It's not cool on the porch.

This is my statement: I am over summer. Over the humidity, the cicadas, the fogged up windows from a/c, over always needing a/c, walking face-first into a billion spider webs. Over the constant sweating, no real breeze, no shade that feels like shade, hazy skies, 80-degree nights.

Summer's not even that fun when you're a grownup; it's just hot. I can't discount the lovely vacation, but it's bookended by two stressful events, so it's hard to relax.

Let's be done already.

I don't get it

Do you?



It does make me want to eat a churro, though.

For Girls Only

Not to perpetuate stereotypes and make any boys feel awkward, but let me just tell the women I know out there to go immediately to mon.thly.info and see what helpful scheduling and reminding it has to offer. The internet is our BFF.

The Saints

My fun friend Holly, whom we like to call The New Holly since we already had one who left us for some seriously prolific and literary adventures, was explaining how she did us a solid this week (being a kind Mormon apologist among those who think we are weirdos) with some of her co-workers by paying us a great compliment about the strength of our community. She was referring to the one she has the most experience with, which is a little Triangle contingent, with special dispensations for our Boston, New York, and Portland arms. (Ditchers.)

She observes -- and often helps with, bless her -- the myriad things we Mormons do together; some relaxing and fun, some extremely stressful and tremendous amounts of work, some worshipful and quieter and calmer. While it's true that not all of us feel connected to our larger ward community all the time, there is always someone here or there with whom you can find a connection. Mormons don't have a corner on this market by any means, but, like in other close-knit communities, deeply-felt spoken and unspoken beliefs entitle you to belong.

The universe of blogging has added a new dimension to that dynamic. There is a tremendous network of (mostly women) Mormon bloggers with all kinds of angles: Design, Sewing, Cooking, Mommying (this is maybe the biggest category, unsurprisingly), The World We Live in and Life in General (every good Mormon girl's favorite slow song, at least where I come from) and these women wear their beliefs with varying levels of transparency.

I don't read too many of them regularly, but I do stop by now and then, and among the happysad times of cjane (whose husband I know from college, in a bit of common Mormon kismet), there was this tragedy of her sister and brother-in-law being critically injured in a plane crash. Reading this news does no favors to my distrust of small planes (ahem, Donnie), and among the sympathetic feelings stirred up by helplessly observing the sadness of strangers -- particularly because it's someone's family -- I have been frankly surprised by the response of the regular readers (certainly not all Mormons) of their family's blogs. Balloon releases, prayers, cards, auctions, and what's looking like lots of money, and that's just the stuff we know about.

I don't mean to be skeptical, because it's really moving, but I can't stop analyzing the phenomenon. I am trying to put it in the context of something else outside of the internet, and I thought of the time when I went to a hot dog supper & bluegrass concert at a school to raise money for a teenager's leukemia treatment. He was (he passed away not long after, bless him) a friend of a friend, and part of my neighborhood, such as it is. But it's not exactly the same, because for one thing, I got a tangible item (hot dogs, mmmm), and it wasn't like I personally heard about it from a flyer at Jerry's and showed up with $50, if you see my point.

A reward is not why we ought to be altruistic, certainly, but there is often something given in return (advertising, a tote bag) for donating to a cause where the person or need is not personally known or connected to you. There is a grand tradition of making donations to strangers or global needs in the name of empathy, but in my experience, that has been more commonly achieved through the vehicles of organizations like the Red Cross or our church's Humanitarian Aid fund. Or, like in the case of Katrina or 9/11, a not-personally-known to me celebrity-type has been the one asking for it on television, and strangers' donations were at least partly in response to seeing your favorite musician or actor ask for it. The anonymity of a large body doing the collecting and dispersing, and possibly mailing your mug to you, has seemed more safe and effective, if you will; it's the traditional model.

All of which is not to say that I think it's weird or that anyone is running a scam, just . . . something new to me in the internet world. I guess people's support in whatever way reflects how they have come to feel a part of cjane's and nie nie's lives, which is, at times, probably both a blessing and a burden to them, but one that comes with the territory of opening at least some portion of your life to the internet, and especially to a community which thrives on shared experience. People like when others say what they think, only better, funnier, with more gravitas, and the compliments flood in via the comments. And I've come to the conclusion that people like to see where their charity is going and believe that it will make a personal difference, especially in the continued shared stories through the blogs.

So I guess why not, right? Why not try to give something back in a time of such need; why not, when, in our experiences with people's sadness in our real lives, we often feel helpless and unable to find anything to give to real and complex grief. Maybe joining this community with an offering both builds it and stands surrogate for the time when we couldn't find the right thing to do.

Product Review: Givenchy Phenomen'Eyes

For the past forever, I've been using Great Lash Very Black over the top of Shiseido Mascara Base. Great Lash is cheap as can be; Shiseido is not, but I am sort of anal when it comes to mascara application. I haven't tried tons of expensive mascaras, mostly because I thought the base was doing all the work and Great Lash was making up the minimal difference. I have certainly tried pretty much everything you can buy at the drugstore, which is how I landed where I did.

Turns out now there exists in the world this most crazy-looking brush coated with marvy mascara and costing more than you would ever think is reasonable to pay for such a thing.

Givenchy Phenomen'Eyes (I have NO idea what is going on with that punctuation there) for a cool $27, looking for all the world like a Viking club doohickey with spikes.

But it does some seriously good work, as evidenced by my scary closeup here (PS that little hole on the bottom lashes is a chicken pox scar, not a miss by the mascara club):

It's pretty much exactly what I expect from a mascara: pretty extensive coverage of all the different lengths and extension of the outer corner lashes with very minimal clumping. That has always been my problem with Great Lash - lots and lots of wiping off the brush before application to avoid some serious clumps. Also: really messy tube. This brush might seem like more of a hassle, but its shape pretty well mimics how I use a more traditional brush, anyway - I tend to just use the end to cover smaller swatches, so this shape really facilitates a more even and careful application. And did I mention no clumps?!

I don't know that my eyes are phenomenal, because I have kind of wimpy lashes. Everyone knows that mascara advertising is filled with devious trickery and fake lashes all around, so to have something (especially something this expensive) actually perform is quite refreshing.

We've had a little rain

6.12 inches, in fact. Water was gushing like mad on a downward path to the river, but before I knew all that, I woke up Wednesday morning to its pounding on the tin roof and I had a feeling of utter contentment, which I haven't felt for a few weeks. And I had two memories, one recent, one ancient.

I remembered a similar rainstorm one weekend in Paradise. It was probably a weekend trip for someone's baptism and it was dark early, but not winter, because T and I opened her bedroom window to hear the rain fall. It was at the Rocky Lane house, with its Victorian (was it?) sensibilities and am I carzy or was there wallpaper on the gable ceilings in the girls' room? I know we found The Carpenters Greatest Hits tape and played "Rainy Days and Mondays" a few hundred times. Probably wore the tape out.

The other one that calmed me in my semi-sleep was just a few weeks ago in Oregon. On our trip back from Tahoe, Bean pulled onto a frontage road for me to take what could have been one of the greatest photos ever, but to get the right compsition I should have gone further into the field and I was already over the barbed wire fence on their private property and I could see a body watching from the screen door of the house trailer. So I chickened out and only got close enough for this:

Amazing subject, sad composition. If you click on it, you'll see why. I was really disappointed because we were discussing art at my house recently with Bean, and she was saying she doesn't really have the fire to think too hard about art for her walls, and if that photo had been awesome, she would have hung it up. I wanted it to be awesome for her, but instead when I got back to the van I saw, on the ground, a broken piece of 1x6 with nails sicking out of it - pokey side up, do I need to say? Her back tire was dramatically perched on the board between the 2 nails, and I thought we dodged the flat. But the next morning, we found that the front tire had already had its day with the nails and it was deflated - "soggy," according to Owie.

So Bean, Heff, and the boys and I took a trip to Costco for flat repair and lunch. It was totally packed with Eugenians (?) in their bad clothes but we found a table and had some pizza and hot dogs, churros and berry sundaes, and plenty of Coke and Owie's "picey stuff" Sprite.

We were there for about an hour, and I can't tell you exactly why it was so nice, but it was perfect in that way that unexpected family plans can be the most memorable. I remember it with the kinds of feelings that are peaceful, truly happy, free, and eternal in that way that there aren't words to adequately describe.

Frogs and snails

Northgate Mall, July 14, 2008

With no offense to my Pops,

And no offense to the Reader's Digest "Humor in Real Life" division, this I received from a person younger than I with the subject line "Funny Email" which just tells you right there something not at all funny is coming behind the click.

What I do think is amusing about it is not the subject matter or the way in which it is presented like it actually occurred, but the path it took to end up in my inbox.

I like to think it happened like this: someone FWD: Fwd: fwd: FWD: fwd it to John Beahan, who is most definitely of the generation before ours, and let's say his sister-in-law is a features editor at the local paper somewhere in the Midwest. So John sends it along with some sort of addition at the top: "SCROLL DOWN YOU WONT BE DISAPPOINTED HA HA HA LOL" and it was so funny, Judy the features editor was so tickled, she had to print it in the newspaper. An email forward. In the newspaper.

And then the next baby boomer read it, got a chuckle, shared it with Martha over breakfast, folded his newspaper up and asked his granddaughter the second-grader to scan it and FWD: it back to him so it could begin its journey as a bad scan and end up here, where I will mock it. The end.

At the track

Something just happened - all the Formula cars slowed down by where I'm sitting, and then all the emergency vehicles + one backhoe (and two old-school cars, inexplicably) just drove by.

If the announcer man would speak slower I might have caught what the emergency is, or at least the gist, but he's done talking about it, so while we wait, what's coming through the horribly crackly speaker zip-tied to the fence is a medley of oldies 50s to 90s, not sung by their original musicians, mind you, but by French speakers, so that some verses are in French or sung with a French accent. We were just treated to "The Times, They Are a Changin'" and "Roll Out the Barrels," and now it's "The Marcarena." And a girl is doing it on the bleachers. There aren't enough words in either language to describe the pain. And I'm wearing ear plugs.

Bobble

So, yeah, Alicia Sacramone lost the gold for the Americans and totally fell apart under the horrifying gymnastic pressure, but the whole debacle was made worse by the Debbie Downer, doomsday commentators Elfie and Tim and that other guy who doesn't actually seem to have ever been a gymnast. I'm watching the all-around final on Canadian NBC from this hotel in the Québec countryside and these commentators are just so much more zen about the whole thing. They tell us the mandatory eight-tenths deductions for falling on your booty on the vault, sure, but without the gasping and the proclamations of disaster. Tim and the other dude are so grandpa-cynical about it all (they hardly ever let Elfie get a word in), and most of the time the score doesn't match the drama-queening. And oh my gosh, shut up already about the disappointing Romanians. We get it.

Also, they just said Naaaadia (as in baaa) Comaneci like good Canadians.

(P.S. That one Chinese girl is 12 if she's a day, but I still wish not-Tim would shut the h up about how we need to decide for ourselves if they're lying their heads off and they forged a birth certificate when they pulled her out of the circus to train in the scary gymnastic machine.)

Back from vacay

Here are the reasons my trip to Lake Tahoe and Oregon were in the category of awesome, very:

Funny little boys

Plenty of Diet Coke

Grandmas in funny swimsuit cover-ups (who haven't yet discovered the beauty of board shorts)

Breaking Dawn (ohmygoshitsfinallyhere!!!!thebestbookever!11!!!) (with my apologies to Trav)

The Hall of Mirrors in the House Built by Leprechans
(possibly 2-way with cameras behind them? What say you, Robert Whilhelmy?)

Super fun times taking family pictures on a bench which broke soon after

Fabulous cousins and siblings and goodbye hugging

The Lake (Wateeee!)

Swimming in clear, refreshing snow melt

Cutest baby boozies

Cutest little blonde girls and Opa

Clean mountain air and clear blue skies

California (sigh)

Oregon, through the windshield - even Pacific Northwest-y through filthy glass