Don't we all?!

Me: Wow! One of the students in my program got a $12,000 grant to support her dissertation research!

My supervisor: That's awesome! I LOVE $12,000!

Weeping and wailing and...what? Oh.

I just got a phone call from my sister, and I panicked--I couldn't understand a blessed word she was saying! She sounded garbled - like she was sobbing uncontrollably or there was something horrendous happening in the background. Possible explanations flashed through my mind as I left my office and ran to a place with better cell phone reception - her husband lost his job? Got a better job? One of the kids got hit by a car? She broke her leg??

None of the above.

She was laughing. Uncontrollably.

She just called to say that she got my email with this link in it.

Well. I'm so glad she enjoyed it. :)

Jealous, shmealous

Me, showing off my yummy dinner to my roommate: You should be jealous of me!

Her: I'm eating bacon right now.




Well, dang. I take it back.

AND ALSO!!! My 9-year-old nephew can recite the "Betty Botter" poem. IN PIG LATIN. I'm just sayin'...

Tree hugger?

Me: If I save paper by printing 4-pages-to-a-page but ruin my eyesight trying to read it, is that an overall win, or an overall loss?

My supervisor: It depends on how much your eyes would help the environment later.

Location, location, location

I was there Monday:

He was there Tuesday*.

Doesn't that make me famous?

Or something?

...please...?

*Click "gallery" in the bottom right corner of the picture, and then click to picture #17. It's the same podium, I swear.

Thanks for the picture, Jae! :)

Reason #1,900,889 that I completely adore my family

My aunt, my dad's sister, sent out the following email:

Because of an unfortunate event involving a demonstration of water safety to horses, my phone drowned. My new number is .... It's a Verizon cell with a two year sentence.

The horses did not snicker out loud.

My dad responded with:

I'm sorry, but you cannot leave the story like this.

I can picture you lending your cell phone to a horse who, texting while water skiing, ran into a wombat in a canoe being chased by a feral chicken. I can see the chicken, distracted, catching the cell phone dropped by the horse and, preferring a live cell phone to a wombat sharing a canoe with a horse, crossing the road and disappearing from human ken with your phone. But why would this cause your cell phone to drown?

I can also picture another, less likely, scenario, which ends up with your cell phone breathing its last (with a smile on its face) in a vat of molten (not moulted - that is a detail that goes with the other story) Ghirardelli chocolate.

Which of the two happened? And did you really mean drown, or did it just run off with some chick?

:) :)

Happy Vacation, people! :)

So there pretty much isn't anything cuter than my 4-yr-old niece strutting around in her little blue jeans and pink sunglasses. And I do mean strutting. Pretty much makes me want to die...of...her cuteness...

So here's what I've been up to:

- one week at sister #3's house in central CA with her and her 4 kids, Mom and Dad, and sister #4 and her 2-yr-old. 900 degrees outside--ugh.
- two weeks with sister #4 in southern CA. 60 degrees outside--aaah.
- now--partway through another two weeks with sister #3 and her fam
- then--2 weeks in UT with the parentals and sister #1 and her 7-yr-old

WOOOHOOO! :)

So there's been a lot of the following:

- being pleasantly awoken (waked up?) by cheery little 2- or 4-yr-old faces and giggles :)
- snuggling with small, and not so small, children at bedtime and in the morning and at random times during the day
- reading books to some of my favorite people on the planet
- enjoying air conditioning, someone else's cooking, and garden-fresh produce
- otter pops :)
- thinking, thinking, thinking
- organizing sister #3's house. Heehee! :) You think I'm kidding, maybe, but I'm not. I suggested that we do some big project while I'm there (here), since having another adult around can be really helpful. So she suggested, giggling, that we reorganize her ENTIRE HOUSE--new containers for things, labels, the whole shebang. Woohoo! :) So far we've done her junk drawer, the games/linen closet, and her walk-in closet. SO FUN! :) I just hope I don't get burned out of cleaning and organizing such that I won't want to unpack into my new apartment when I get home.

Um, what else? OH! Girls night in southern CA with Sarah and my sis, and dinner with her and Nathan and cute little Molly. Molly and my niece are almost the same age, and pretty much totally hilarious together. Friends like Sarah are rare, and hence a treasure.

OK, I'm off to shower and clean a closet and shuttle kids to playdates. :)

Gardening

So my sis has a garden. Well, ok, ALL of my sisters have gardens. But this afternoon my 2-yr-old niece and I walked toward the garden of my niece's momma, the sister of mine that I'm currently visiting, who has a garden. Ya with me?

And she was coming toward us, from the garden, with 2 little round squash (squashes? squeesh?) in the pocket of her hoodie. Her squash plants have been transplanted twice this season, due to some unforeseen circumstances, and my sis has been worried that they're not doing too well, so she explained that she picked those two squash, which are a little small for picking, in order to allow the plant to put all its energy into recovering from the most recent transplanting experience, rather than into producing those squash.

And I thought...I wonder how often Heavenly Father does that to us, and we don't recognize that that's what's going on. We think, "Hey look, I'm producing this great fruit!" and then He picks that fruit, takes it from us, and we mourn, not recognizing that what He has in mind is for us to be bigger stronger plants.

(And as I'm writing this, I feel like it sounds like I'm really depressed, but I'm not. :) It was just a cool thought, and I thought I'd try to capture it in writing before I lost the feel of it. :) And I'm not sure I captured the real feel of it, but there you go.)

They ARE listening...

My sister wasn't feeling well, and said, "oh I feel like poop on a stick." Her precocious 2-yr-old copycat daughter said, "Yeah, yeah, poop on a stick."

heehee

Too corny

I was jokingly praising myself for doing such a great job shucking the corn for dinner and my BIL Chris said, "Yeah, Margaret. You really shuck."

Um, thanks?

scheduling

Haircut: check
Returned stack of library books: check
Arranged ride to the airport: check
Got new calling in the YW presidency: check
Wrote last check to pay off bed: check (pun not intended, but still oh-so-clevah)
Packing for 7-week vacation that starts tomorrow: no way, Jose.
Packing so that I can move out of my apt the second I get back here in August: ugh. I still have to do my bathroom, bedding, and all the "little things" that get left to the end, which then take 3 boxes and 14 hours to pack. :P But my aforementioned ride to the airport gets here in 12 hrs, so I can't take longer than that. ;)

Happy summer, everyone!

It really is uncanny...

Yesterday I woke up with a stuffed and runny (yes, BOTH) nose. Apparently the boy-going-through-puberty voice that I've had for the past week was NOT just from talking too much. :P

The uncanny thing is...guess what I did the day before yesterday?

Made an appointment to get my hair cut next Monday.

I didn't think they were allowed to coexist...

My sister knows...

...these people. Those are her friend's kids.

And yes, the baby really is duct-taped to the window.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!





heehee

Um, okay...

So if you have multiple bumper stickers on your car, and one of them says:

Friends don't let friends vote Republican.

...and another says:

Buckle up! It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car.

...then you should know that the latter makes it hard for me to take the former, or really anything about you, seriously.

Just so you know.

Sean Voyage

So yesterday marked the departure of a good friend. He finished his Master's degree and left town, moving on to life as a, um, grown up?, with, you know, a "real job."

He has certainly left his mark on those of us who knew him here, if not for his good heart, good work ethic, and cheerful attitude, then certainly for lines like this:

"It's really hard to hide things under the bathroom signs at the State Capitol Building."

He would know.

We'll miss you, Sean.

This really touched me today.

http://itswhatmakesmeme.blogspot.com/2010/03/worst.html

It's about the daughter of a friend of a friend of mine, and I wonder--how often does that happen with us and our Heavenly Father? How often are we in the middle of a trial, and He's trying to help us, with all the resources available to Him, and He KNOWS He CAN help us, and we struggle and cry, "I can't breathe!" as we gasp, frantically for air? And then, eventually, finally, desperately, we listen, and we hear, and we breathe His healing, and we are OK, as He knew we would be.

Maybe the lesson is:

Struggle less; listen, hear, and BREATHE more.

You might be in the south if...

A friend of mine recently got back from a trip to Tennessee. This is an ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH she took down there.


And that's all I have to say about that.

Delivery!!

I received these in the mail yesterday...


Hee hee!!!! knee-high, awesome colors, super soft, and accompanied by a hilarious note from my dear aunt, and the best part is...

They're...


That means I can wear them with ANYTHING!!

And oh baby, I plan to. :)

Thanks, Aunt Cathy!!!

Happy summer vacation!

So it's been a week now.

heehee

To celebrate my freedom from classes I have...

• read a good stack of books--fun books, not school books, just to clarify ;)
  
• watched a few movies
• stayed up WAY too late too many nights
• submitted a research proposal that got turned down :(
• found out about 2 As in classes from last semester :)

... and decided to maybe move to CA for the summer???

How's your summer going so far?

I just...

...turned in my last paper of the semester. It was the right length, and I had a topic. And sources. And on the way to print it out and turn it in it occurred to me that I might not have actually SAID anything in it.

Oh well.

And I called several members of my family to celebrate and none of them answered.

I feel like spending a lot of money.

Those two facts are not related.

I think.