Chicken Coop

I'm not really an animal person. Ok, that's an understatement. What I meant to say is that I hate animals. Not in a heartless, I want to cause animals harm kind of way. Just in a leave-me-alone-and-I'll-try-my-best-not-to-cringe-when-I'm-forced-to-come-in-contact-with-them-and-they-invade-my-bubble kind of way. They're so smelly, and messy, and needy, and expensive and unpredictable. I just don't want anything to do with them. The closest I'll ever come to having a pet is within my brief daydreams/daymares that I'm a 40-year-old woman from the 80s with over-sized glasses, bushy hair, and 15 cats curled up around me as I read a book. Incidentally, I'm always a hoarder in these daymares.

However, tonight I went to an RS activity (shock!) about cooping chickens, and I'm absolutely hooked on the idea of owning chickens (double shock!). First, this would finally satiate my unfulfilled desire to grow up on a farm Little House on the Praire style. Second, I'm a sucker for a good project. Third, the idea of producing my own food is really cool to me. 

Here's some info: it's only about $10/month to keep chickens. They're much lower maintenance than dogs or cats. They lay about 1 egg/day. They're very obedient and stupid. You only have to clean the coop about twice a year if you use a deep layer method where you add layers and layers of straw to the bottom of the coop regularly (when you clean out the coop, this stuff is great for fertilizing your garden). Chickens help reduce weeds. They're not very noisy. They don't smell very much. 

Kind of cool, huh? Unfortunately, it's kind of illogical for me to own chickens because 1. I hate eggs, and 2. I don't have a house/yard.

Every time I dream, all my hopes are crushed. 

Some pics from tonight: 

July

All I ever want to write about during the summertime is YA lit, otter pops, sprinklers, and picnics in the park. None of these things are really part of my daily life, but at the end of a warm summer day it feels like they've all been so constantly present in my summer intentions that they're all wrapped up in a deep breath on the back porch. amiright?

But instead of doing summer things, I spend all day long in my chilly office building, occasionally glancing outside, always looking for excuses to walk to Starbucks or Fred Meyer. There's something about the blasting AC and sunshine that has increased traffic around the ping pong table at work. I may or may not be egging this on by planning ping pong tournaments and office BBQs.

I think it's time for me to admit that my ping pong obsession has become a little unhealthy. Tonight I found myself on Amazon looking up ping pong paddles, thinking to myself $80 seems like a completely reasonable price to pay for a paddle. And I realized that I've turned into one of those people at work. I've worked up a ping pong strategy. I play daily. I even got mad when I lost the other day. I'm becoming a monster. It's a problem.

But I'm getting so good. And I must get better. This will be me:





In the meantime, the current song of my summer: 

Summer Cookin'

Today finally feels like summer. It was in the 80s here, I wore shorts and flip flops all day long, and I passed a lemonade stand while driving. Plus, the air had the slightest hint of mowed grass and Elmer's glue sticks.

It was the perfect weather to sit on my back deck and brainstorm all of the reasons that I'm convinced my neighbors are cooking meth.

I have some really compelling evidence.

First, when I was in high school one of my friends (who has a little more drug knowledge than me) casually opened the lid of my neighbor's garbage can one day while we were walking to my house. He glanced in, chuckled, and said something about drugs. I don't know what he saw, and I don't know what drugs he was referring to, and I don't know what drug knowledge he really had, but this doesn't not support my thesis that they're cooking. (Double negative!)

Second, they are hoarders. Their whole yard looks like an untamed jungle, and I can see junk piled up in their windows. My most recent two Google searches suggest that hoarding and substance abuse might be linked. Also, my cousin's drug-busting husband says that it's common for meth cookers to be hoarders. Compelling!

Third, they have a huge white truck parked in their driveway that says "Mobile Wash" in large blue letters. But the truck almost never leaves the driveway. Breaking Bad has taught me that this must be both a traveling meth lab and a fake business through which they launder their meth money. It's the only explanation.

I suppose I should admit that my only meth knowledge comes from wikipedia and Breaking Bad.

As I become more and more convinced that they're cooking, I imagine elaborate sting operations to catch them in the act. Well, by "elaborate" I mostly mean brief, simple and ill-thought out plans. Like calling the number on the mobile wash truck and saying, "hey is this where I can buy some meth?" Or walking up to them while they're outside and saying, "you guys look like the type that could hook a girl up with some meth."

Unfortunately, neither of these plans would work because this childlike, wide-eyed sense of wonder has yet to really wear off

and, more importantly, I'm unfamiliar with the terminology. Do people still call it meth these days? Would a real user call it "glass"? Or "crystal"? Or "ice"? According to wiki these are all possibilities.

I just don't know.

The Moment

I never win contests or prizes or raffles. I always sit as the winner is announced, palms sweating, pretending like it's nbd, but secretly wishing that those concert tickets, or that bike, or the iPad 3 will become mine. But it never happens. And after the winner is announced, I always feel cheated because a small little part of me has already envisioned myself taking home the prize.

Well, ok. I did win that iPod at an apartment raffle at BYU. And that jar of gum balls at a carnival last month (major score). So maybe it just feels like I never win anything.

But as I was sitting in the crowd at the Rose City Roller Derby season 7 championship last night (naturally), and they started shooting tshirts into the audience, I knew with every fiber of my being that one of those shirts was coming directly to me.

The girl shooting the tshirt gun slowly made her way around the stadium, shooting off tshirts one by one into  groups of cheering crowd members. And then, standing in front of my section, she loaded the gun and pointed it straight at my row. That shirt was destined for me. I knew it. All I had to do was stand up and reach out my hand. She shot the gun, it sailed through the air, everyone around me jumped to their feet, hands raised, grasping the empty air. And then the plastic-wrapped shirt made contact with my right hand, and my fingers clamped onto it amidst the mess of flailing hands.

It was the sweetest moment of my life.

Magic

It's time to blog about my magical childhood. It's May, the days are getting longer, the outside air has a hint of mowed grass, and when I sit on my back deck and close my eyes, I can almost imagine myself in jellies pretending to get the milk from behind the waterfall like someone from The Boxcar Children. I am obsessed with my childhood. 

I had an exceptionally magical childhood. First, I was always creating something or pretending things. I made American Girl crafts, moccasins out of paper towels, tacos out of leaves and dirt, scrunchies, slingshots, friendship bracelets, beaded geckos, a bow and arrow, forts, accurate blueprints of my house to try to discover secret passageways, yarn dolls, teepees, and puff-painted t-shirts to name a few of my projects. I was really into wood creations too. I made a wood go-kart that actually rolled down the hill that you could steer with a rope, and I made multiple tree houses in our poor plumb tree, complete with rope ladders, hinged doors, and a rope bridge to the neighboring playhouse. And I was always pretending to be characters from books. Imagining that our playhouse was a boxcar and I was Violet from The Boxcar Children was a favorite. I had a pretty long Harriet the Spy phase where I would walk around all day taking notes in my notebook. I desperately wanted a dumbwaiter. I associate elementary school with getting off the bus, dropping my backpack in the kitchen, eating a chocolate chip cookie, and then diving into a project. 

Second, my mom is a genius and established a summer reading program. With seven children, I'm sure to her this was something like a last-ditch effort to stay sane in the summer, but to me, it's one of my favorite childhood memories. It's called The Box. For every x number of pages that we read, we got a ticket (think carnival ticket). The number of pages varied based on reading levels, but it was typically 100 pages per ticket. And then each week we had The Box where we could redeem our tickets for prizes. These weren't cheap plastic prizes either--there was legit stuff in The Box. And you could request things to be put in the box and then read away for a couple weeks to save up. I read so much. Granted, some of this reading was purely motivated by the It's a Small World jewelry box that I desperately needed, but most of it was just motivated by summer boredom and genuine interest in books. The books I read during the summers of my childhood are still some of my favorites. Some stand-outs: Great Brain books, From the Mixed up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler, Nancy Drew books, The Key to the Treasure, Boxcar Children, Babysitter's Club, all Ramona books, Tuck Everlasting, A Wrinkle in Time, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and The Trumpet of the Swan. 

Birth to ten years old was a dream. I was totally nailing it. 

And then it all got terribly awkward. 

The Panel

Guys, I just couldn't bring myself to go to FHE tonight. I've mostly sort of been really good about going for the last couple months. But tonight I was feeling tired from work. And, most importantly, I heard it was going to be a dating panel. I have only been in this ward eight months, and I have been to no fewer than three FHE dating panels. They are all the same. And they all make me furious.

We all know what went down. First, someone gave a generic speech about the importance of dating and marriage. One of the bishopric members told a story about how they started dating their spouse and how they had an awful first date, but then their spouse's sass and hair flip won them over. Insert additional offensive gender stereotype here. Then someone asked for positive dating experiences. Someone told a story about how they went on a double date where they made pinwheels and then ran around a park waving them. It was so simple and so cute. Then someone told a story about how they went out to ice cream on a Thursday night. It was short and sweet (no pun intended!!!). The discussion leader then asked the women directly, "What could the men do better?" And the women responded with comments like "ask girls out!" and "open car doors!" and "be honest!" And someone asked the guys what they think about girls asking them out. Half the guys responded with "If I like the girl, it's cool and flattering," and half the guys responded with "Girls who ask me out are weird--it's my job!" Then there was an extensive conversation about how men and women communicate differently. Some woman said something like "Men are so dense and can only speak in grunts." Insert additional offensive gender stereotype here. And some man said, "When a woman asks you to roll the car window down what she really means is that she wants you to pull over immediately and get her a drink of water! You just have to learn how to decipher their language." Insert additional offensive gender stereotype here. At some point, someone said something about how going to a movie is an awful first date. And someone mentioned something along the lines of "I know looks aren't everything, but . . . " 

And the conclusion? I will happily remain single. 

Good thing I skipped FHE, got a milkshake from Top Burger, and watched a Little League baseball game in Camas with a friend. Summer is coming. Delicious. 

La vie est tres difficile

Well, my Ann Arbor/Boston/Cape Cod trip was a huge success. This was my first extensive trip in the US that involved multiple hotel reservations and a car rental, so I was a little nervous about it all coming together, but it was magical. I spent about five days in Ann Arbor staying at Christie's house. We went to the movies, the farmer's market, canoeing, to various church activities and social gatherings, watched Gilmore Girls, and took a ferry to Put-in-Bay, which is an island in Ohio where we rented golf carts and rode around the island all day. Second leg of the trip was two days in Boston. We flew into Boston Thursday night and spent all day Friday and Saturday morning in downtown Boston. Boston was incredibly beautiful--it's a really walkable city with great public transportation (we were able to take the subway from the airport to our hotel and were able to walk everywhere we wanted to go). We ate delicious food, toured the freedom trail, shopped at various old book shops, walked through Boston Common, walked through old cemeteries, went to the harbor, saw the traveling broadway tour of West Side Story, went to a photography gallery, and toured Fenway Park. It was beautiful weather almost the whole time (minus some rain here and there). Saturday afternoon we made our way back to the airport to rent our car. With a zippy Ford Focus at our disposal we drove North to Concord to tour Louisa May Alcott's house. We were both starving and tired during our tour and our tour guide was crazy, but in retrospect I really loved the tour and the house. Definitely worth the drive. After an emergency stop at McDonald's, we drove two hours to our classy Travelodge in Cape Cod. After our 3 1/2-star Sheraton in downtown boston, the down-grade to a 2-star Travelodge was a little bit of a shock, but we survived. Sunday we found the Brewster branch and enjoyed an interesting sacrament meeting with highlights including Alec Baldwin and Sarah Palin's genealogy. Sunday afternoon we drove to Providence, Rhode Island and walked around Brown University, which is a lovely campus, and then spent Sunday night walking around the beach near our Travelodge. Monday we took the ferry to Martha's Vineyard and spent the day wandering along the beach, Main Street, and through the conglomeration of gingerbread cottages. Tuesday we were pretty exhausted from a week and a half of being in vacation mode, so we spent a couple hours on the beach in the morning and rented bikes in the afternoon and rode along a trail through some beautiful ponds. Tuesday night we took our last evening trip to the beach--I was so sad to leave. Wednesday we left our trusty Travelodge at 7:30am and made our way back to Boston to return our car and spend the day travelling back home. I finally made it back to Provo at 9:30pm (11:30 EST), completely exhausted. Overall, it was a fantastic trip. I'm really sad to be giving up my life as a student soon--you can't beat the flexibility of the academic schedule. Below are some pictures from the trip.

 Christie and I on the ferry to Put-in-Bay.


In front of a carousel on Put-in-Bay (yes, we actually rode it).


The swan boats at Boston Common.


Boston Harbor.


Fenway Park.


Fenway Park.


Fenway Park.


Louisa May Alcott's House.


Brown University.


Cape Cod.


Cape Cod.


Cape Cod.


Martha's Vineyard.


Ferry to Martha's Vineyard.


Martha's Vineyard.


Beautiful houses on Martha's Vineyard.


Gingerbread cottages on Martha's Vineyard.


Final sunset in Cape Cod.