To Al, With Love

Happy Birthday to a girl who can hunt with the pros, bowl a 180 (right?), make up on-the-spot fan mail, and writes great poetry. She has the best Mother-Russia/Mexican accent, will call the cops if you try to put lettuce on anyone's car ("Hello? Chess, nine-vun-vun?") and will keep your apartment safe by blocking out robbers with chairs, the TV stand and/or the sofa. She can drive through the Gorge in a thunderstorm, run through Disneyland while holding all diabetic supplies, ride ridiculously scary roller coasters, send amazing packages halfway across the world (just ask Raymond). She can handle a classroom full of kiddos, a house full of men (she's got three) and an apartment full of silly girls. She makes a wicked peach cobbler, killer fondue and will bring a cooler full of treats to any team outing. She's a great listener, gives helpful advice and is a great mother, wife, sister, daughter and friend. She is one of my favorite people and I wish her the best year yet!

everyone do high kicks, Al is now 26.
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y, A L !

a moment's memory

I sat with her in the front room, the light of midday warming our backs. We were facing the chandelier from Italy and the painting from Switzerland. The daylight played tag as it pranced across the wall, bounded off the crystal and leaped onto the mirror above the fireplace where I could see our two reflections.

Before long, she asked if we could re-arrange the furniture and sit facing the window to look at the mountain. I moved the two green velvet chairs right up next to each other. Pulling back the sheer curtains, I revealed the mountain in all her majesty. It's quite bright. Would you like me to get your glasses? I turned toward the kitchen. She sat there as if she hadn't heard me say it; as if I wasn't even in the room. It was as though she had been transported to some other world where time and age don't exist. Where colors are vivid again and the air smells of Evergreens. A place where memories are made in an instant and kept for eternity. Where the first warm breeze of summer floats across porcelain skin and sunlight touches perfect pink lips. He is there with her.

I suppose it is a bit bright, dear. I pass through the hallway with the family photos, all matted and framed with Grandpa's artistic eye. Dark glasses in hand, I approach the entryway. I stop to make a memory of her. Of the way the light hits her bright white hair and softly falls on her pale pink lips. Of the way she sits so straight in her chair, legs to one side. Of the way she longingly looks up at the mountain, as though she sees him in it. Come. Sit here, dear. Isn't it beautiful? I take her hand in mine; we sit together.

wii won't be doing that again anytime soon

A few nights ago, my roommates and I decided it was time to get out of the house. We'd been eating pink-frosted cupcakes most of the evening and worshiping those brilliant geniuses who invented the DVR. Thinking we'd stretch our sea legs a bit (our futon is anything but comfortable. We might as well be sitting on the deck of a boat) we headed out on a late-night jaunt in the hood. K decided we'd head over to her friend H's house. H is out of town and has asked K to look in on the place. After giving ourselves much more of a self-guided tour than was probably necessary and/or appropriate (that girl has the closet of dreams!) we helped ourselves to some otter pops and headed back outside. K also decided we would stop in to see P and D. It would be short and sweet, she said. Sucking the last bit of blue juice out of my otter pop tube, I followed my roomies up the front steps, blowing air in and out of my otter pop wrapper while we waited for someone to answer the door. I looked positively seven years old. I had just come from the perfect house of a very successful single 30 year-old so-on-top-of-her-life girl and I was curling my otter pop wrapper in and out like a snake, blue tongue and all. The only thing that saved upon meeting P and D for the second time is the fact that I bare the name of a 92 year-old German woman.

D answered the door, pencil behind his ear. He was beyond excited to see us (the seven year old included) and invited us in. P slouched on the sofa, and was engrossed in a wicked round of Mario Kart. Sure, I've heard of The Wii. I've even seen one in person (and not just the other night). But I have absolutely NO patience for such things. Give me an otter pop and I'll entertain myself for eight hours. Hand me a Wii controller thingy and you've lost me. Perhaps I was robbed of a childhood, but I have spent 30 minutes of the last 26 years of my life with a Nintendo. This is not an exaggeration. That said, I believe I have more brain cells than 95 percent of the three people who read this blog. I'd rather use them twisting an otter pop wrapper around my finger until it turns blue and matches the shade of my tongue. A color theory lesson at its finest.

However, the other night, I felt like a rude guest. Here P was, offering up his Wii for the taking. I know how much he loves that thing. I see the way he looks at it. It's true love for sure. "Just one round," he begged. After a discourse on why I wished that upon no one (a round of Wii with the likes of me), I found myself with a white control (is that what it's called?) in hand. "Just press two to go, and pull the button underneath to use your Super Powers." That's what P said. This is what I heard, "Blah, blah, blah." Just kidding, P. Love ya! Before I knew it, I was standing up on one leg, the other behind me, knee up on the couch (something about my center of gravity?) maneuvering the white controller, and shouting "Go, Dude! Go! Go Dude! Go!" This was by no means an exclamation of excitement. This was a demand. I was in 12th place behind my other two roommates and P, who got me into this mess in the first place. Twenty seconds of my life I will never get back. I wish I would have plummeted into the brown water (in what backwards world is water brown?!) at 15 seconds. At the latest. We certainly won't be doing that again anytime soon. I'm sticking to uninvited closet exploration and otter pops.

I never ever thought I'd see the day a Super Mario character would grace a page of my blog. My life has taken a deep plunge. I may never resurface nor recover.

Confession...

...I think video games are a horrendous waste of time.

twenty-five

To my dear roomie, I say:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

It's true, Kasi is one year older and wiser (check out here blog) today. You're right Kas, it's about the little things. Here are 25 little reasons why I adore you.

• Your up-for-anything attitude
• Your work hours, which allow us to begin post-work wind-downs at 4 p.m.
• That one night we stayed up for seven hours talking about seven years and came to the conclusion that seven means the same to both of us.
• Sunning in the back yard on Saturdays at 9 am
  
• Your TV watching rules. You. Mean. Business.
  
• Apple pies at midnight and chocolate donut cookies
• Thoughtful comments in RS*
  
• When you say you're going to bed, but really you're watching Jim.
  
• Your love for John.
  
• All the videos you find of John: "...I see really important things out of my periphery. I. Don't. Know. What. That. Was! ... At 110, I was pretty sure I was dead."
  
• "Snap, what a happy sound!"
• Cali roadtripping
• Every Sunday without fail you try to get me to transfer to your ward
  
• Blue Crush - you let us take her anywhere, anytime!
• Your definition of "happiness," and I don't mean what you put on your blog. (You know what I mean?)
• Our CRAZY weekends. (We really need a few weekends in. It's getting out of hand).
• How you want to be Julia Roberts so bad
  
• The morning you thought I was going to die and I thought you were going to die. We're such a good upstairs team! "Call Maren!"
  
• I believe you are the only person on this planet I would allow to call me "Mar"
• That HD TV you're going to win us. "I believe you should start praying about that now."
• You share Robin with us.
• The conversations you and Mare and I have in the "hallway" by our rooms late at night. Topics ranging from Life/Death to carbon monoxide poisoning to heartaches to sleeping in a sauna.
  
• Trips up to the Bountiful temple - we're about due for one of those.
  
• You never complain that I go between every room and my bedroom 95 times before bed.
• Your pep talks. The hurdles you help me jump - Saturday was a big day for us. Are your legs as sore as mine? I think we deserve a hot fudge sundae. I'll drive.
• When you take people to the airport in your pajamas.
  

I'm so glad we're roomies! Have a happy day. See you tonight for all the birthday FUN.

*I'm not quite sure why this is so big. I tried to fix it. Apparently this isn't a little thing I adore bout you. Even Blogger knows how thoughtful your comments are in RS!

doing dishes with zeus

In my office, I have a set of architectural plans which I've inherited. They are meticulously hand-drawn. I have traced the writing. I know the footprint by heart. I could draw the floor plan in my sleep.

My Grandfather was an architect. When he and my Grandmother returned from living in Germany, he built her a beautiful house right up next to the mountains. There is a cascading rock garden out back and a patio to sit on at twilight. Adjacent to the patio are rows and rows of lily of the valley, Grandma's favorite flower. In the late spring, the mountain breeze picks up their scent and carries it along the lawn and into the Chinese money bushes which rustle with summer excitement to the Evergreen trees, towering above the scrub oak.

In the kitchen, Grandpa designed pull-out stools for Grandma to stand on and reach the top shelves. Growing up, my sister and I thought these step stools were very low cutting boards and found them the perfect height for playing bank. Sitting on the kitchen floor, we'd set up shop, stools serving as desks. Grandma would let us use all the paper in the world to make lots of fake money. We would write ridiculously large checks to Aunt Judy or Uncle Robert that couldn't be cashed until Grandma had signed them. Just off the kitchen there is a Utility Room that smells of apricot fruit leather and dried pears. It still houses a freezer full of frozen ginger creams year-round. The ping pong table that Grandpa designed and built is downstairs. It's perfect for Round Robin tournaments on Sunday evenings. Sometimes we laugh until we fall over into the lush green carpet.

The front room window looms large and frames Mount Olympus (Rich likes to call it Grandma's Mountain) perfectly, the top of the window coming to a point, like the mountain does. When the house was built, it was the last thing before the trail-head. Dad used to lace up his shoes on the front porch and run up the mountain for cross-country practice. Grandma can see her mountain from the kitchen sink. Even now, even though she can no longer make out our faces, she waves to us from the window as we back out of her driveway. She stands at the sink and waves from left to right and back left again. She's done this for as long as I can remember. Even now, even though we know she can't tell, we still turn on the dome light of the car and wave back. As we turn down the street, Mount Olympus grows smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

When the architect was working on my parent's house, Mom made sure she would be able to see Mount Olympus from the kitchen window. Just now as I loaded the dishwasher here at my Yellow Brick House, I glanced up at Grandma's Mountain. It looks so beautiful this time of year when there sun lights up the rock and the snow still shimmers. Now I just need a west-facing patio to watch the light at twilight.

quick! hide!

Today I saw a marquee downtown which said the following:

Salt Lake, hide all your women. Kobe's in town!

GO JAZZ!

Confession

My mother makes a mean Chinese chicken salad. It's so good in fact that "Mom's Chinese chicken salad," has, from time to time, graced surveys under the favorite food question. It's nearly next to ambrosia which, in high school we decided was a Butterfinger. (I'm happy to say my palate is a bit more sophisticated at this point. Although Butterfingers are quite delicious. And whatever Zeus snacks on up there on Mount Olympus, I'm 99.9 percent sure it's some sort of combination of peanut butter and chocolate). Mmmm. I digress.

Chinese chicken salad. I'm happy to report that up to this point in my life I've been fairly successful in my attempts to recreate my Mom's Hall-of-Famer recipes. I haven't tried all of them. She makes the best Swedish almond cake this side of The Fjords. I'm not going to touch that one. Why bother? If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Not that her chicken salad is lacking. I just felt up to the task.

In preparation for a small gathering last Saturday, I spent Friday frying won tons and baking chicken in soy sauce. Thinking I was ahead of the game, I settled in to watch the Jazz defeat the Lakers. The air smelled of sesame oil and soy sauce, and Carlos Boozer was on a roll. Three hours (and two packages of won ton skins) later, I was finally finished. And that was just the beginning. Now for the confession: all-in-all, it took me nearly five hours to make that salad. Should I find comfort (or desolation) in the fact that it was devoured in less than 30 minutes? To add insult to serious injury, I don't even know if the Jazz won. I was too busy with my face in a frying pan to find out!

over a week

Anytime anyone says anything about McDonald's, I turn my nose up to them in disgust and snidely retort I never eat at McDonald's. 'Tis mostly true. Ever since I moved a rock-hard grease-infused French fried stone's throw from a Golden Arches location, my roommates and I have taken up some sort of a weekly (sometimes more) ritual. And, truth be told, I gladly participate. For one dollar, I can purchase a low-fat hot fudge sundae. One dollar, folks. Low fat. Hot fudge! Three minutes away! Not since the death of the twist cone has something effected my life in such a way. The beloved twist cone can never be replaced, but I believe this is the next best thing. Add American Idol and I am one happy woman.

Last night, just as she handed over three dollars in change, my roommate stopped and said, "You haven't blogged in over a week!" Kas, does this count? If not, I owe you a sundae. (I'll grab one for myself while I'm at it!)

not a fan

Growing up I had a veritable Zoo in my bedroom. Stuffed animals of every species pow-wowed it in every corner. I received way too many additions to my collection for birthdays and Christmas. Top of the line red-ribbon-around-the-neck-worthy stuffed animals. Cream of the crop. Wait. That's for vegetables. I didn't have any stuffed vegetables. Cream of the...herd? Pack? Pride? Thanks to a tidy and thoughtful mother, they are now stored in a safe, dry place at my parent's (in the food storage room) so I can hand them down to my kiddos. I say hello to them each time I go "shopping" at C & J's General Store. Sometimes, even though the sign says not to, I feed the animals. (Unless Mom's bought animal crackers. That's just plain rude). We catch up over a pack of fruit snacks or mandarin oranges and I leave well-aware of all the good Zoo gossip. (Hippos say the meanest things).

Here at 2186, M has a stuffed pink pig. K has a little stuffed elf. Apparently at age 26, this is still allowed if you don't have a husband and your landlords say no pets. M hugs her piggie, snuggling up to his snout each night. K keeps Hermie under her chin until dawn. All this while I'm in the next room fighting off nightmares of spiders or dealing with the dark...alone. Sure I'm 26. But, there's no written rule that says you can't have a buddy, right? Or if there is, M and K have yet to get the memo.

Last night was one of those instances where a cuddly pal would have come in handy. I woke up in a bit of a sweat and stood up to turn on my ceiling fan. I have never lived in bedroom with a ceiling fan, so as my feet arched to reach the pull-cord, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Upon initial tug, I was blinded by the lovely fluorescent light which streamed out of the fixture. My eyes winced, and with dilated pupils, I reached up to pull the cord again. Out went the light. On my second attempt, blessed air began to circulate about the room. Slowly, the fan began to warm up, whirring into motion as I tip-toed back into bed. Faster and faster it went, until it hit warp speed. The ceiling began to shake. I retracted my knees into my chest as I simultaneously cinched up my comforter around my neck. I looked up. I looked down. I looked to my left and to my right, in a Did you just see what I just saw? glare of awe. But there was no one there. No Suzie Bear or stuffed Tigger to say, "Hooo Hooo Hooo Hooo! Sure did!"

The fan got faster and faster and the shaking grew louder and louder. I didn't dare budge. Papers on the desk began to flutter, nearly airborne. Quotes on my mirror started pulling at the edges. And, in what I can only describe as a cross between the movie Twister and The Wizard of Oz, my tiny little room became a virtual vortex. Before long, my hair resembled the fan blades, sticking straight out at a 90 degree angle from my head, flailing across my face. Papers in flight, and hair that rivaled Pipi Longstocking's, I needed to take action. This situation called for more than paperweights and a hair elastic.

Taking a deep breath (unnecessary, I realized, after the fan literally knocked the wind into me) I stepped back out of bed. I reached my shaky hand up into the wind, directly below the fan blades, desperately reaching for the cord. (It was very Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - the classic Gene Wilder movie - where Charlie and Grandpa Joe are stuck in the bubble room). I was in dire need of some fizzy lifting juice. I couldn't reach! Perhaps in my "We're- not-in-2186-anymore, Martha!"stifled-shrieking, I had been shrinking! Up and up I stretched in distress, trying to stop the spinning. Just as a cow twisted by in a funnel cloud, I was granted a miracle. In an air-Jordan moment, I jumped. Miraculously, I grabbed the right cord. The whooshing slowed. The papers stopped fluttering, and my hair returned to it's appropriate and vertical position. The ceiling-shaking ceased and there were few after-shocks. I got into bed, my eyes sinking shut after sheer exhaustion (and relief) set in.

I'm headed to C & J's General Store first thing tomorrow to pick up a few things, namely Tigger and Suzie Bear in her corduroy dress. I'll hug Suzie Bear and warn her about the dangers of the Real World, which lies outside the Yale Avenue Zoo. I'll grab Tig and tell him this ain't no Hundred Acre Wood, yo, then say, "Let's bounce!" We'll leave canned peas and corn for the others and promise to return soon with all the gossip from 2186. I hear M sleeps with a pig!

sometimes II

Sometimes I think being my own boss wasn't the greatest idea. Like when the dining room is being painted the third shade of green and I'm the one who has to break it to the painter that it's still not quite right. Or when they discontinue every usable color in a certain fabric and I'm left with watermelon or lime to use in a neutral living room. Or when I feel like I have a great idea, but there isn't a sounding board, unless the foam core in my office counts.

Then I have days like yesterday. I stopped to pop something in Nat's mailbox on the way to a furniture showroom, and out popped Nat herself. We spent 25 minutes, pants rolled up, arms out, enjoying the sun and chatting in her backyard. Today I dropped off lunch for Anna at Red Butte Gardens. We strolled right past the front desk with our take-out where numerous parent-volunteers were counting curious little toddler heads while they made faces at each other. After exploring arching arbors of wisteria, Anna introduced me to the perfect spot for lunching, a hidden table off the beaten path. Rice and vegetables never tasted so good. Mid-rice bowl, I got a call from Kas who said she was leaving work because it was sunny. Minutes later, we both arrived home from work, the afternoon and early evening ours for the enjoying.

The next time I'm stuck way out by the airport trying to find the perfect slab of granite, or when my fax spits out the fifth no response warning and the Geek Squad is no where to be found, or when I'm on the phone with Scalamandre, forced to decide between lime and watermelon, maybe I'll just take a long lunch and sit in the sun. I don't think my boss will mind.

super sidekick

He sings.
He's pocket-size.
And he's ready for take off.

i was here.

Around this time two weeks ago tonight, I sat in California, my hair pulled up in a loose French twist, soaking in a hot tub. I drank root beer straight from the cooler, and hollered at Mason to bring "more chocolate donut cookies, please!" Just as my mouth spread wide to make the -ease! of please, a plate of chocolate donut cookies appeared out of nowhere, napkins included, as not to cloud the hot tub with powder sugar fingers. No, Mason is not my butler, and no, he is not for hire. He's just a sweet kid who was ordered around all weekend. He loved it. Who wouldn't love to wait on three hot babes, hand and foot? We should have paid him!

The moon was full, the water 98 degrees, and the air smelled of orange juice. Blossoming vines ventured off, creating symmetry in espallier. A fire crackled and whooshed in the outdoor fireplace, drying wet hands and hair as we lounged on the patio after night swimming. As M and I fell asleep in the guest bedroom, hair still damp and legs pleasurably sore from a morning jaunt in the mist of the California hills, I couldn't help but think, To heck with it all! I'm moving next week.

This week popcorn popped on apricot trees as heavy flakes of snow blanketed spring grass. I arrived home that night to find a note scribbled across the chalkboard. California: May 16-18. Mason, fetch me my slippers.

Confession

Each night as I go about getting ready for bed, I go between my bedroom and my bathroom about 57 times. It's become somewhat of a routine, and my roommates, especially the ones who live below me and get to listen to the floorboards squeak, are angels for putting up with my to-and-fro.