The price you have to pay

Wading in the [in the US: Persian, here: Arabian] Gulf in December while my friends are buried in snow: Priceless

Having sand in my socks for the rest of the day: TOTALLY worth it. :)

P.S. I'm not ready to go home yet. This place--this experience--is just incredible!

Hey - I'm in Paris!!

We made it to Paris - phew! This was after our flight to Minneapolis was canceled (…the day before we were to fly, but we didn't find out until we arrived at the airport; apparently they got some snow, or something? ;) ), and we got rerouted through Detroit and the Dulles airport in DC on our way to Paris, where we'll get on our original flight to Abu Dhabi in a couple of hours. We ran through Dulles - "it's not far," the airline lady told us about our gate, so we ran through hallway-escalator-hallway-BUS!-escalator-hallway and finally made it, barely!, on the flight to Paris! (I think "it's not far" will be one of the jokes from this trip - we've already used it once since then. :) ) One of the flight attendants saw us coming down the entryway hall thingy, and must have been able to tell how harried we were, because he moved to block the doorway, with a big smile - "I'm sorry, we've taken the final passengers!" When I teased him back in French that that wasn't nice, he then tried to tell me that this was actually a flight to Mexico. :)

So I've been able to use my French a little, and even! a little Arabic! Very little. :) We sat next to a nice Frenchman, and in getting to know each other a bit, J (the prof I'm traveling with), said that she speaks German, and in German she said, "and a little Swahili." And our new friend said something in German and then, in Arabic, said, "Do you speak Arabic?" And I said "Na'am!" and then tried to say something else - FAIL - and we went back to English. :) Ah well. :)

So one more pretty long flight, after not much sleep the night before departure (ask me about my new hairdryer sometime) and not much sleep on the flight to Paris, and then, luckily, we arrive in Abu Dhabi in the evening, and "sleep" is the first thing on my agenda. :)

So the plan is:
Monday - meetings with big names at the university and visiting classes
Tuesday - a speech by J and 2 poetry competitions (no I will not be competing :P )
Wednesday - a tour of Abu Dhabi, more class visitations, and another speech by J
Thursday - tour of Dubai!
Friday - 2am departure back to the States

Woohoo!

Just in case you forgot...

...this is what I look like when I'm talking:


And also - this:


And for those of you who need it - photographic evidence that I DON'T actually talk ALL the time:

The end.

Sharing

A beautiful poem by a dear friend - here.

Enjoy.

They learn so young. Or something.

I was chatting with my namesake-niece on the phone last night, asking her about her first couple of weeks in Young Women (she just turned 12 - !!!!!!!!!), and she said something about how since next week is a combined activity with the young men that means the girls will have to, groan, be in the same room as the boys for the mid-week activity.

Me: C'mon, boys aren't THAT bad.

My namesake-niece (who just turned 12, remember!): I have to hate boys now, because in a few years I won't have that option.

Ahem.

Wow.

and now...good-bye for 2 months

I just officially registered to take my PhD exams (we call them "prelims" here) in January. Two months from this week.

I'm frightened. I have my schedule of what I need to read and study, and it's a LOT. And will take a LOT of time. And my friends who've already gone through this process and passed prelims have told me that I need to give up on having balance in my life until after prelims are over.

Sigh.

And I've been feeling a little of this recently.

Send help...??

So...being lifelike is a GOOD thing??

And I quote Shylina, about some game called "Animal Crossing":

"If I wanted to play a game where I'm constantly in debt, I'd just live life."

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