Car talk

01 February 2010

...And though dogs rush to bury their owner's radios in the backyard when they hear it: this [could have been] National Public Radio.

Click: Hello, you're on Car Talk!
Me: Ahh- yeah, hey, I just want to say I love your show, guys-- I've been listening since I was three,
Clack: Ah, I see they're startin' to brain wash 'em early these days!
Click: What can we do for ya?
Me: Well, my family has this van--
Click: Ah! the family van!
Clack: Do you remember driving around our old woody?
Click: Remember?! I still have nightmares about that old jallopy-- hunkachah, hunkachah, hunkachah!
Me: Yeah, that's the problem.
Click: You have nightmares about the family van?
Me: No the Hunkachahs-- our van makes this horrible racket like we've got the whole scrap yard INSIDE our van.
Clack: As opposed to the whole scrap yard that IS your van?
Me: Exactly.
Click: Now, what sort of van are we talking about-- have you got one a' those suped-up Asto Vans on hydraulics?
Clack: Are you kidding me? She's been listening to NPR since the cradle! I bet she drives a Volvo.
Me: A Dodge Ram, actually, and I'm not sure what year, '95, '96? but it's older then half the kids. And it's a 12-passenger.
Click: You COULD have the whole scrap yard inside! [chuckles]
Clack: You MIGHT! Ever thought about poking around back there to see? [cracks up]
Click: No but seriously [calming himself a little], what sort of trouble is it having?
Me: Well, besides the creaking and clanking of all the loose nuts and bolts, and the hideous paint that is slowly giving way to rust, it sounds like a time bomb to drive it. When you accelerate it sort of sounds like, well first it sounds like an airplane taking off--
Click: Ah, the typical 747 Syndrome,
Me: --and then, you know when you tape a business card to the fork of your bike so it makes that flip, flip, flip, flip against the spokes? That's what it sounds like when you really give it gas.
Click: Let me get this strait- you drive your kids around in an enormous scrap heap that sounds like a 747 with business cards in its spokes?
Clack: That's a lot of business cards. [chuckles]
Me: Yeah, except they're not my kids-- I'm the kid
Clack: And your parents are making you do the car repairs?
Me: Repairs? This van is beyond repair! I need your help convincing my parents to get rid of the thing!
Click: Mutiny! [chuckling again]
Clack: Well for starters, call the local scrap heap and found out how much they'll take for a ton and a half of scrap metal!
Click: You're going to assist this uprising?
Clack: Of course! It's the family van! Kid, you should sell it on e-bay! [chuckling harder]
Click: Hah Hah! Yeah, call it a vintage collectible!
Clack: Or tape cardboard wings to it and see if the Smithsonian wants it! [snorts]
Click: Or tape cardboard wings to it and sell it on e-bay! [cracks up]
Me: I don't know if my mom will go for the fake airplane on e-bay plan.
Click: I know! Shuttle the whole soccer team back and forth until you track enough mud in to make a giant planter! Get some flowers growing in there or somethin' and park it on your front lawn! You could get those crawling vines to grow out the windows! [cracks up again]
Clack: And all the rusted through parts will be great for aeration!
Click: Kid, what you've got to do is sit your parents down and just tell it like it is.
Clack: [chuckling] Yeah! 'Mom, Dad, our car sounds like a 747-business-card machine.'
Click: Honesty is always the best policy.
Clack: Let us know how it goes!
Click: Yeah, and I'll be keeping my eyes open for that airplane on e-bay! [chuckling]
Me: Uh, yeah. Thanks guys.
Click: Ah, Poor kid!
Clack: Yeah, honesty is the best policy, except for that one time when you...

Ride UTA

27 January 2010

Tuesday was lovely. A deep fog curbed the icy crisp of gray snow that had been melting and freezing and melting and freezing for a week now. Daddy dropped me off on his way to the office, 5 blocks west of my regular bus stop. An older woman stood by the wet, grimy bench in gloves and a few scarves, her cargo pants tucked into short snow boots. I 'goodmorning'ed and she smiled quietly back.

'Pretty amazing this fog, huh?' I prodded her silence.

'Yes,' she nodded.

She looked the part of a quiet grandmother: gray hair and thick glasses that ought, in such a case, to be respectfully called 'spectacles.'

We waited and even our silence was muffled by the still, white fog that swallowed the world all around us.

Two canvas bags hung from her arm, and 'Teaching English to Spanish Speakers' was tucked haphazardly into the bag decorated with puff-paint daisies and a singing sun.

'Oh, do you teach Spanish?'

Stupid question, I know, but I have found the obvious questions to be poor conversation starters.

'No,' she smiled again, 'I teach English to Spanish-speaking parents of local students.'

I smiled, encouragingly.

'It's actually an amazing program, started by the Ford company...'

Now it was my turn to be quiet.

Inspiration: stream of conciousness

02 December 2009

Sometimes, when my listlessness has oozed into the very tips of my fingers and begins to itch just beside my nose, I like to click through my favorite blog: Design*Sponge. She is everything I want to be someday, a thrifty, clever and no doubt beautiful San Franciscan who fills her charming apartment with decoupage, home decor, and crafts for my kids.

She lives in Pottery Barn Land, where all the rooms are bright and cheery, the table cloths are always pressed, the kitchen is continuously spotless and all the children are above average. Sometimes I pretend I live there: I have such plans for that exciting day when I am making my own life in my own home with my own things, I usually think about this as I wash and dry and sort the dishes in my dim little apartment kitchen.

Sometimes I forget that now will always be Now and my Someday will never start if I always expect it to start Tomorrow.

Martin Luther said, "This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise; We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified."

Which is why I made a Star Chart to hang in my room: to count the ways that I can grown and to measure the things I am learning.

I think I will decoupage a frame for it.

The girl in 261

13 November 2009

I sat next to an artist today. Late for class, I slipped in the back and into an empty seat. Dr. I. was explaining the implications of Apple’s new (imaginary) invisible i-phone on the current markets as I pulled out my notebook. The girl next to me was already scribbling away in hers—in long broad strokes of pen on heavy paper. I watched, enthralled, as the lines bent and converged into a girl in a trendy polka-dot dress, coat thrown over her arm, hair flouncing as she walked.

Inside, I longed to make my pencil strokes come alive like these. In fascination I watched her fill the page spread with doodles of dancing models in chiffon dresses, silk pants suits, taffeta party dresses.

I was sad when she closed her sketch book and tucked it into her pink backpack. She was unassuming, even plain, and no one would particularly notice her walking across campus. But I knew there were dancing pictures hidden in her grubby bag, and in her stubby fingers, nails cut down to the quick, there was real magic.

Wild west: part i

27 October 2009

I remember crying when the moving van pulled away from our Midwest house and turned onto the westbound freeway. In the rear view window, the dark green forest framed the yard that had been my playground for so long. We were leaving this verdant paradise for the desert, for a tiny old rental home perched on the edge of a hill of dead grass and snow. I hated Utah. The brown and gray of desert landscape: rocks and dead trees, tall, dark buildings that reach to the perpetual smog of the Salt Lake winter.
I cried because there was no green, and I was sure nothing would be beautiful again.

Simple joys

01 October 2009

1. I get sick with the flu every year around Christmas time so I am now classically conditioned to get the same excitement and anticipation from a fever and chills and that slimy youreabouttothrowup feeling as I get from the smell of gingerbread and Christmas candy (think Pavlov's dogs crossed with the King Singer's Christmas Album). I am always a happy feverish kid.

2. On a different note: I love the radio scan function because I never like what's playing on the radio, but I don't like driving in silence, so instead of listening to every lame song for 5 seconds and then changing the station, the radio does it automatically for me.

3. On the same note: At 5:00 pm, every 3rd station in Utah valley is playing Taylor Swift.

Concerning vampires

02 September 2009

We started chatting, Sam and I, about the usual: Howwassummer? How'sschool? Whatareyoustudyingagain?

We dabbled in ward gossip, and swapped post-graduation plans (distant dreams in my case). And then somehow, the conversation wound around, like some circuitous and serpentine creek (that suddenly thunders over the edge of a waterfall) to Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.

I have not read Meyer's romances, except for the last page of the last book which I read solely, I think, to spite the general masses of vampire-worshiping Meyerites.

But. Sam (who, may I point out, is not of the aforementioned Cult of Meyer) spoke with such eloquence on the symbolism and archetypal overtones of this substantial modern work of mythology, that I was thoroughly convinced of Twilight's literary merit.

Whether or not I will every read this saga, is still unsure, but I will certainly from now consider it in a different light-- perhaps even an academic light.

As we finally wound down our chat, I thanked him from the enlightening conversation and apologized for having so little to add to the conversation-- just my opinion, nothing of real import.

"Oh no," Sam replied, "Your opinion is of infinite value to me, because I could never have your thoughts."

Perhaps that attitude is the secret to his appreciation of Meyer's great body of work.

English 315

30 March 2009

There is a plague
called jargon,
or academeese,
which, in the event
of a formal request
for information
regarding and/or
pertaining to the
expertise of the
speaker, may, with
a vicious infection,
permeate every
syllable of the
communiqué which
was intended to
educate the mind
of the lay-man
and, while causing
the speaker to
adopt an attitude
of total disregard
for the foolish
and otherwise
ridiculous sound
of the string
of misplaced
verbiage,
may elicit
a significant
increase
in confusion--
an increase
incidentally
proportionate
to the length
of the speaker's
sentences.

A Seurat scene

10 March 2009

I love jigsaw puzzles because they are a metaphor for my life; 500,000 nearly indistinguishable pieces of pressed cardboard scattered on a coffee table for the casual puzzler's perusal: doesn't look like much.

I like it when sometimes you dump out the pieces and a couple are stuck together already-- a double length of picket fence, the front legs, mane and left eye of a palomino.

I always start by spreading them evenly, face up--push the edges to one side, the sky pieces to one corner, grass gathers in another, red brick pieces, grey wood pieces. And slowly this confetti world begins to grow into townhouses, a lamp post, an electric street car.

And sometimes the pieces suddenly all fit neatly into place, each fragment of flower petal matching into a hydrangea bush which lines the lawn along the lane which disappears beneath some sets of feet.

And sometimes the pieces--some grey shards and a few scraps of unearthly yellow--just sit and stare up at you, refusing to suggest usefulness. At which point the whole delightful exercise sputters to a halt, and I step back to view an unmapped archipelago of puzzle.

I know it will become that charming summer scene, complete with a hopscotch game and picnicking lovers, but today I'm more in the mood for scrabble.

100.2°

10 February 2009

I tried counting sheep
1, 2, 3... 4.. 5,6... 7...
But traffic patterns were erratic, and a few confused sheep caused a wooly pile-up.
Somewhere, I started singing Happy Birthday.
I wonder, when this fever has completely usurped my conscious, if it will put up roadsigns: reduced sheep-limit, no ewe-turns, soft shoulders ahead.
...Happy birthday, dear Cathy... who is Cathy?

I scraped my brain for some remnants of coherent thought and made from it a trebuchet to help with the sheep launch.
34... . . 35... . .. 36.. . . 37... .
At which point I ran out of sheep, and the large Over-the-Moon Black and White was called on to substitute, then a killer whale swam underneath.
Yin and Yang.
like that ad in Modern Bride for a 40 ft cake platter, 41 ft cake platter, 42 ft cake platter...

I woke up several hours later, cold and sweating and still counting.

Jelly doughnut

21 January 2009

I am simply bursting with things to say.

And you, my dear reader, like an early customer at the local bakery, are likely to be overcome with the yeasty smell of rows and stacks of fresh and tasty good things to read.

Petits fours of my wisdom, still glistening with icing florets.

Of course, I can't quite remember what I had to say, but just the thought of it looks so lovely sitting in the display window of my ever-receding memory.

A small thought

18 December 2008

My pal asked me yesterday what I needed in my life to be really happy-- he corrected himself, "--to be really content?"

I laughed it off, not sure how to respond: friends make me happy, avocados make me happy, good grades make me happy, Christmas will make me happy.

"I think I need to study my scriptures better." he answered his own question.

I love friends that quietly, intentionally or no, point out that I need to reevaluate my priorities.

Pieces of me

01 September 2008

I saw some old friends today: dinner with my best buds, dessert with my old neighborhood, and I realized these friends are a piece of my soul that I had forgotten I had lost. And now I am found, Back home.

Home is where you keep the most boxes.

Also. Home is where you are whole.

Pumpkin pie and the friendship-day present

27 August 2008

Once upon a time is a good beginning for a story, particularly a Pumpkin Pie story, which this is, because it’s a story about Pumpkin Pie.

Pumpkin Pie lived with her mother and father, her three sisters, Peach, Plum, and Pecan, and her brother named Chicken.

One day a new family moved into the house next door. They had a pet boa constrictor and a toucan, and books and books full of pictures from all the far away places they had lived. But most importantly they had a little girl just Pumpkin’s age.

Her name was Annabelle, and she and Pumpkin Pie became best friends right away. They had tea parties and played Monopoly. Annabelle taught Pumpkin how to sing songs in a funny language, and Pumpkin taught Annabelle how to jump rope double-dutch.

One day in school, Pumpkin’s teacher announced it was National Friendship Week. Pumpkin Pie ran home after school. She wanted to do something special for her best friend, Annabelle

“Mommy, It’s Friendship Week! Can we make a present for Annabelle?”

Together Pumpkin and her mother made a delicious batch of cinnamon rolls. They wrapped them in pink cellophane with a note: “Happy Friendship Week!” and tiptoed over to Annabelle’s house. They set the plate on the front porch, Pumpkin gave the doorbell a hard ring, and Pumpkin Pie and her mother ran back to their own house.

It wasn’t too much longer before there was a ring at Pumpkin’s door. She opened the door so fast, she caught sight of Annabelle running across the lawn. Pumpkin smiled, there on her front porch was a box that said “For Pumpkin, my best friend!”

Pumpkin carried the box to the table, and carefully lifted off the lid. Imagine her surprise when she found only a pile of mud in the bottom! Pumpkin Pie began to cry.

“Why Pumpkin, what ever is the matter?” her mother asked.

“I thought Annabelle was my friend, but all she gave me was a box of mud!”

“Oh, I’m sure she is your friend, maybe where Annabelle comes from it’s nice for friends to give eachother mud.”

“I don’t think so! I think she’s mean!”

“Maybe you should ask her, I’m sure Annabelle would explain.”

But Pumpkin Pie was so angry she didn’t even talk to Annabelle all day. Pumpkin dumped the box of mud out her window and she just sat in her room and sulked.

All week Pumpkin Pie wouldn’t talk to her best friend. She ran home from school fast before Annabelle could catch up. When Annabelle came by to play with her, Pumpkin Pie pretended to be busy. Pumpkin didn’t answer the phone, and she wouldn’t sit with her at lunch.

It wasn’t until the next Friday that Pumpkin Pie looked out her window and saw some little green seedlings growing out the pile of mud.

And it wasn’t until much, much later, when the small seedlings had sprouted into a bed of beautiful flowers, that Pumpkin Pie finally understood: there are many different ways for people to say “I love you.”

My mommy told me this story or something like it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently for a number of reasons; I hope I have changed much in the 15 years since Mom made it up the first time, but I’m still not sure how the story ends.

Mommy talk

23 July 2008

This one's for Jo.

I see now that I've oversimplified the thing. Mommying I mean. With all due humility, I confess I've been foolish and naïve. A few years of changing diapers is hardly qualification. Of course this too will be foolishness in years to come, when I have some. Kids of my own, of course.

But this summer's been good preschool for the degree no one is ever awarded— you never graduate from being Mom. You just have tests all the time, 24-7 homework and laundry to do besides. Textbooks are hard to come by, and the study group is just you and Dad. Course objectives? I think I'll start with keeping the little darlings alive: Mark crashed his bike and Cal cut open his food, I stopped Ava from eating paint today and four-year-old Tommy from jumping in the pool. I'm sure my own children will be at least that creative.

But then I have to wonder, am I protector first or teacher? Maybe a little paint would do Ava good. Do I make their beds because I love them or do I love them enough to teach them to? If I just fought the TV-battle and the homework-battle and the jumping-off-the-garage-roof-battle, should I really ask him to pick up his socks right this minute? Should I ask an hysterical child to say her bedtime prayers? Is time-out really for his good, or should I be the one sitting in my room?

There are no answers yet, really. Even kids know "maybe" means you weren't listening. Or it means you're lying and "no".

So I just have questions but what more can you bring with you to the beginning of a new school?

Common cents

04 June 2008

A penny for your thoughts is a steal in this information age.
A stuffed shirt with business cards can charge 10,000 times that to give you his two cents.
But I'll just take the penny.
Today my thoughts are buy-one-get-one-free.

Mad-lib

06 May 2008

“How’re you doin’?”

Spencer first pointed out to me that, in honesty, this question can have many answers—many conflicting and contradictory answers.

In fact, I can think of a hundred honest answers on a day like today.

Out the window is __(weather condition)__—so indicative of my mood. The ___(mood)___ sunlight is unexpected, _(conj.)_ so is every day’s hum-drum, so I guess the fault is my expectation’s.

I’ve been ___(gerund)___ a lot on that. On _(personal pronoun)_ expectations. When do ___(adj.)___ dreams of ___(noun)___ begin to warp reality? __(verb)__ they? Sometimes I ___(verb)___ that I ___(verb)___ too much in my ___(adj.)___ reality. _(interjection)_, Balance, I ___(adv.)___ forget how ___(adj.)___ you are.

The birds are ___(gerund)___. No time for ___(gerund phrase)___.
It's time to ___(action verb)___.

Chasing paper cups

18 April 2008

I sat with friends on the lawn behind the Maeser. The conversation had evolved from the Economics of Gift Giving to the True Love of God, and no one seemed to notice the paper cup. It had escaped from someone’s snack garbage and encouraged by the gusty wind was making a break for the free world.

I considered stopping it. I would clamber to my feet, and hunching to avert attention, scramble around the circle to intercept the runaway. Bending down (ungracefully of course, for it is difficult to stoop and collect garbage with any measure of finesse) I reach as it stalls then follow as it tumbles on—a sequence repeated across the grass in an unaccompanied and increasingly complicated Charleston Swing: two-step-jog bend reach ‘n’ miss again, follow the lead of the little paper cup.

I didn’t move. Instead I watched it stumble-trip alone across the lawn and out of my peripheral vision. I heard it scuttled across the sidewalk and onto the asphalt; the clatter like a herd of crabs—a pod of paper cups—skittering for the ledge and stairs and then trees.

It went and I sat and listened to them talk of God’s Love—saturated with His Goodness. He never requires only gives and gives and gives. He is never depleted for giving selflessly, infinitely. We can never return, let alone pay in full. Even if we tried; we are too human. But still God never stops reaching.

A nod to A. Maslow

20 March 2008

A good friend once asked what of the things I feared did I most want to do? I answered rather patronizingly, that I didn’t want to do anything I feared because I don’t like the things I am afraid of because I am afraid of them.

Since then I have realized how many fears I confront each day and strangely enough I have found a masochistic pleasure of sorts in digging from the depths of my soul the things I fear the most.

Then I take a deep breath and jump.

My greatest fears are, ostensibly, the dark and boys. The first seems too cliché to be true, the second too ridiculous, but there is nothing that frightens me quite so much as walking home in the dark, and there is nothing that makes my quite so uneasy as looking a boy in the eyes. I am sure, dear reader, you can only imagine my utter dread at the prospect of a safe walk! But I digress; it is enough to say that these have become rather commonplace fears and facing them a rather mundane exercise in self-actualization.

So I dig.

On my birthday my Dad set the beautiful dark chocolate raspberry torte in front of me and handed me the knife, at which point I panicked. I am 20 years old, and I am afraid of cutting my own birthday cake. I looked at it sitting there innocently on the plate:



I’m pretty sure that's undefined. Which might explain why it scares me. It's the same thing with pie:

yep. Irrational and imaginary.

Dig.

The Darfur Action Committee was the most unorganized band of six people I had every seen crammed in a HBLL study room. To my query regarding authority one quiet girl answered, “I think there was a president. Maybe named Ben? He’s been MIA for about a year.”

I don’t mind sitting in on meetings, I sign petitions, and I donated my $10 to Ralph Nader’s Alternative Commencement, but I am terrified of responsibility, of standing in front of a crowed, exposed for their criticism. What if I have to answer questions? What if they want information I don’t know?

I raised my hand and said I could organize a petition. Nikki asked me to be co-president. Sure. And I volunteered to speak on China’s Policy on Darfur.

Dig.

I made dinner for my roommates last week.

I called a friend for no reason yesterday.

I walked in the dark.

I blogged.

Train of thoughts

29 February 2008

I woke up late and decided to dress in last winter’s olive green. My hands looked for my Gap-long-sleeved in the colorblind dim of 7:15, feeling and weighing any darkness with arms.

But. I’ve developed a habit of putting away clothes in my laundry bin, or in the Rubbermaids under my bed, or sometimes in the bankerbox on my closet shelf. Rarely will I fold clothes into my chest of drawers, and only with great patience and soji will I ever hang up a thing. This makes dressing more like treasure hunting, the excitement of which is usually enough to entice me out of bed. This morning, however, the excitement was lost on me as I rummaged, grumbling, though all my worldly possessions.

The brush-teeth and out-the-door hour ticked past as I emptied my drawers and repacked them.

I don’t particularly like olive green. I didn’t like it last winter either, but since I had decided upon the thing, I couldn’t see much sense in reconsidering. In fact, at 7:45 it’s still difficult to see much of anything.

Five blocks away, the bell rang delivering students from 7 am class, and I found my gapstretchT folded between two pair of jeans—incidentally, right where I put it Saturday.

I was late to for Greek, but what’s a few minutes on a lovely spring morning? Some students get a week of spring break—you wouldn't begrudge me 10 minutes?

Though it was a bit cool for a real spring break. Fortunately, I wore a sweater buttoned up warmly all day.