A request, a song, and a whole bunch of stories

First, a request:

My nephew James was born last Friday with a congenital heart defect. If you're the praying kind, will you include him in your prayers this week? He'll be undergoing open heart surgery on Thursday. Many thanks.

***

Second, a song:

Years ago, I babysat the most adorable two year old boy ever. And he wanted to watch the Veggie Tales Christmas show at least twice in the span of just a few hours. That was my first introduction to the show, and I just recently remembered the silly song on that episode/video/what-have-you. Naturally, I had to watch it three times yesterday. On the third time, I made Jacob watch it with me. He judged and afterward said that we needed to listen to a real Christmas song. So he turned on Feliz Navidad. Pssh. Men.

***

Third, a story (or two or five):

1. A week and a half ago, our pantry and refrigerator were embarrassingly empty. And for good reason: other than picking up some milk and a few snack foods, we hadn't gone grocery shopping in five weeks. Five! That has to be a new record. Granted, we were in Arizona for Thanksgiving, so that helped, but still. It was clear that we were going to have to go on a shopping trip of DOOM . . . doom . . .doom.

Now, in our nearly two years of being married, Jacob has concluded that a hungry Jennifer is a grumpy Jennifer during shopping trips. And since he's no fool, he conceded when I asked if we could use our coupons to Chick-fil-A for lunch before shopping. With our coupons, Jacob was able to purchase an adult-sized meal of his choice. And I got . . . a free kids' meal, with teeny tiny chicken nuggets. So teeny, that I made Jacob take a picture of me on his cell phone, looking all forlorn and distraught at my small meal.

Okay, so maybe they don't look that small in the picture. Just trust me on this one.

 But have no fear! We also received a free milk shake, which Jacob was so kind to let me have all to myself. The man knows I love milkshakes. So really, it was actually quite a satisfying lunch. And! The kids meal came with the children's classic short story, The Jolly Barnyard. You better believe I read it out loud to Jacob later that day, as well as conducted the guided reading questions located in the back. We had a very stimulating conversation about celebrations and gift giving and such. Be jealous.

***

2. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Heather who found a sweatshirt in one of her apartments during her college days. This sweatshirt was outrageously yellow, and had a small Arizona State logo on the front. Never mind the fact that Heather never attended Arizona State; she wore that sweatshirt with pride.

Until she decided it was too ugly, that is. Then she ceremoniously gave it to her sister, Jennifer. (That's me.) Despite the fact that I, too, had never attended Arizona State, I continue to wear it all the time. (Once, my friend Cari told me that the first time I had worn it around her, she thought it was the ugliest sweatshirt of all time.) What's that? You want to see a picture? Very well.

Talk about yellow.

I wore this sweatshirt for years -- years! -- without incident. But just a few weeks ago, I wore it to Costco and I had a run-in that made me question if I should wear it at all. There we were, innocently approaching the baked goods section, when a middle-aged man called to me. "I was a Devil, too!" he announced. As he did so, he contorted his fingers into some foreign hand signal -- apparently the school sign. I panicked. Should I attempt to mimic the hand gesture? Should I say "Rock on, my brotha!"? In the end, I ended up laughing nervously and steering the shopping cart away as fast as possible, baked goods or no.

***

3. When we were in Arizona for Thanksgiving, two of my oldest nieces were holding their twin 2-3 month old cousins. I asked them if they were excited to be moms when they grew up. Elizabeth (in first grade) said she didn't know if she was going to be a mom, but Karianna (in second grade) said that she was excited. Somebody asked how many babies she was going to have, and she responded "A hundred thousand!" Oh my! (She may have later amended the answer to just a thousand, but still.) She certainly is ambitious!

***

4. The Clam Chowder Story: This story, as well as the following one, is from my collection of 25 stories of Christmas Cheer. Jacob and I read one a night from December 1st to Christmas Day. This one made me sob like nothing else last year. This year, I was able to control the waterworks a little better. Go read it!

***

5. Mother's Christmas Mouse: This one made me sob like nothing else this year. Go read it! If you don't get misty-eyed, you have no soul.

Keeping him on his toes

When Jacob is in the shower, one of my favorite things to do is to stand right outside the bathroom door, wait for him to open it, and surprise (read: scare) him by saying, "Grandma, it's me . . . Anastasia!" Much like this:

It makes me laugh every time. Though at one point he started banging on the door in an attempt to scare me before opening it, on the off chance that I was lurking just outside. But since he hasn't done that in a while, and since it sounds like he's about to finish his shower right about now, I must be off.

Muahaha.

Play games of sorts

Growing up in my family, we used to play a thrilling game at the conclusion of our trips away to Grandma's house for the weekend. As we neared our house, Mom would ask all of us "How many messages do you think we have on the answering machine?" The most popular responses were three and four, and since repeat answers weren't allowed, you had to jump in quickly to pick the number you wanted.

The winner didn't get a prize, per se, but was instead allowed a victory whoop and possibly a victory jig.

I'm telling you, it was some exciting times.

For Thanksgiving, Jacob and I made a last minute trip to Arizona to visit his family. And as we have cell phones instead of a land line, we couldn't play the Answering Machine game. But! We came up with another -- just as exciting -- game. I call it "Guess how much money it'll cost to fill up the gas tank!" This one has a little more strategy than the Answering Machine game, as participants can factor in the price per gallon of gas, as well as how empty the gas tank is upon arrival at the gas station.

That being said, I think I lost almost every single time on the trip there and back. Alas.

Another game that Heather and I used to play is "Guess which Christmas light I'm thinking of," which is fairly self-explanatory. One person picks a light on the tree, and the other person can ask yes/no questions in order to determine which light has been selected. I've tried playing this game with Jacob, but he isn't very cooperative. As in, he refuses to guess which light I'm thinking of, and when I do the guessing, he says I'm right with my first guess. That really gets a girl down.

Any suggestions for other pointless games we can play?

I feel famous.

Today I'm guest posting over at Miss Carrots: Completely Ordinary. Guest posting! Me! Doesn't that make it sound like I should be getting paid for this or something?

Check it out.

Fall festivities

It is my firm belief that October is the best month of the year, for several reasons:

1. Birthday festivities, during which yours truly received Tangled and four (4!) varieties of hot chocolate, to the delight of all.

2. Pumpkin patches are very much in season, which include hay mazes (approximately a foot and a half shorter than my husband), wagon rides, wooden backgrounds with face holes for photo opportunities, and pumpkins. (Naturally.)

 3. My family has our traditional Halloween bag dinner. For this dinner, each item of food and silverware is given a code name. Jello is Ectoplasmic Slime, apple juice becomes Liquid Terror, and so forth. Each person receives a paper bag with the code names written on slips of paper. For each course, individuals pull out three slips of paper and have to eat whatever food they get with whatever utensils they get. My sisters and our husbands had our dinner yesterday. I was fortunate enough to get rolls, dessert, and my drink first, but without any utensils. Such is life. Delicious, delicious life.

4. While the Halloween bag dinner is definitely my favorite fall festivity, carving pumpkins has a spot near and dear to my heart. When I was younger, I would help design the face of our jack-o-lantern and my dad would carve it. Once I was old enough to be trusted around sharp objects of torture, I took over the pumpkin carving gig. I devoted hours (literally, hours) to gutting, cleaning, and carving the pumpkin each year. I displayed each pumpkin with pride. And when we lit the jack-o-lantern and used it as a centerpiece for the aforementioned Halloween dinner, I kept a pitcher of water by my side just in case it burst into flames.

So when Jacob and I delayed our visit to the pumpkin patch to the day before Halloween last year and it was rainy and gross and all the pumpkins were molding and we left empty handed after about four minutes, you can understand just why the situation ended in tears. But not this year!

It turns out that Jacob isn't actually a fan of carving pumpkins. (Apparently, neither is the rest of my family. My parents haven't had a carved pumpkin in their homes since I left for college.) But he dutifully cleaned his out and traced the pattern he wanted, and I ended up carving his as well as mine.

And since I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've carved in Halloweens' past, allow me to present a (not necessarily exhaustive) collage of my jack-o-lanterns from 2003ish to now. (Click to zoom in.):

I should point out that the two pictures on the bottom left may or may not have been entirely carved by Cari Dahl. Although I do recall carving our initials onto the pumpkin of The Cheat. Also, patterns were used for all except the pirate and Old Man Stanley, (bottom center).

5. Roasted pumpkin seeds! I may or may not have consumed an entire pumpkin's worth of seeds in the last day and a half. Minus three seeds, which I practically force fed to Jacob so he could "just try them," which he ate whilst grimacing. Eh, more for me!

Man in the Mirror

Text I sent to Heather a few days ago:

"On a scale from one to Michael Jackson, how creepy is it that when I sub I can pick out the boys I would've had a crush on if they had been in my elementary class growing up?"

(In case you were wondering, she assured me that it was "hilarious" rather than creepy, which is probably the only reason I'm comfortable enough revealing this on the Internets.)

Quarantine.

Are you ready for a tale of sadness and utter woe? I'll wait right here while you grab some tissues -- it's a tearjerker.

Ready? Good.

If you've been a follower of this blog for a length of time, you may recall that in November of last year I was student teaching in a first grade class. Amidst all of the small children and flying germs, I semi-tragically was afflicted with pink eye. It was only semi-tragic because it meant I was required to miss a few days of school, and I did not exactly love teaching first grade.

If you have not been a follower of this blog for a length of time, allow me to repost a picture so you can understand how truly grim this illness is:

If I knew how to add music to this blog, I would post the sound clip of the shower scene from Psycho here. But as I do not, you'll just have to imagine it yourself.

As it turns out, this was not the first time I caught pink eye, nor would it be the last. (The first time, incidentally, was almost exactly a year prior, when I was in a third grade classroom for about four weeks as part of the education program.)

Fast forward to the first weekend in August. Jacob was in the midst of changing jobs, so we decided between the last day of his old job and the first day of his new one, we'd make a quick trip down to Arizona to visit his family. We enjoyed general merriment, swimming, and central air conditioning. We spent quite a bit of time with the nieces and nephews, and one night we went to a children's museum the same evening approximately half the population of Arizona also attended.

The night we drove back to Utah, my left eyelid was starting to feel a little sensitive and swollen. When I woke up the next morning, it was thick and puffy. And it wasn't long before I self-diagnosed that I had pink eye again.

Fortunately for me, I still had my eye drops from last November (and they hadn't expired yet), so I undertook a vigorous regimen of using eye drops, washing my hands almost psychotically every time I touched my face, and switching out pillow cases every night.

It seemed to work. The disease remained isolated in just one eye, and after a few days it cleared up completely.

I enjoyed two glorious weeks of having the scleras (fancy words for whites) of my eyes the same color.

And then -- and THEN! -- two days ago pink eye struck again. In the other eye this time.

I think the fates hate me.