Emily and Socks 2

This kid is hilarious.  If I didn't already have her Christmas present I would get her leg warmers.  The only problem is now she always wants to pull my socks off.

Emily Wearing my Socks

I was playing with Emily the other night and put my socks on her just for fun.  For some reason Emily actually liked wearing my socks and even came back to me to pull them back up when they started slipping off.  I've seen those baby leg warmers for sale before, but always figured babies wouldn't like them.  Who knew?

The Witch on my Door is Actually Scary

So I am sitting here watching TV.  It's been getting dark early and I've been watching scary Halloween movies lately.  Did I mention I'm watching a show about zombies?  So in between the weird zombie noises and gunshots on TV, I keep hearing what sounds like someone twisting my doorknob.  The first time I just ignore it because sometimes the little kid across the hall will ring my doorbell or try to open my door.  I think he gets confused about which side his house is on.  But then it keeps happening.  So I turn the TV off and I'm sitting there waiting to see if the doorknob turns.  I go up to the door to look through the peephole and see if I can see someone out there.  But my porch light doesn't work so it's all black out there.  And then while I'm looking through the peephole it happens again.  But because I was so close to the door this time I can tell it isn't the doorknob being turned.  It's that stupid witch scraping on the door in the wind.  It gets really gusty at my place because we are so close to the lake.  I think I will be taking the witch off the door tonight if I can work up the nerve to open the door and get it down.

Bad witch.  I managed to bring her inside.

Witch on my Door

The witch on my door.

For some reason it took me forever to find some sort of Halloween thing to put on my door.  I kept finding cute ones, but then they were missing pieces or had chipped paint.  I guess a lot of Halloween decorations are made on the cheap.  So I ended up with this witch.  I think she is pretty cute.  I like how her feet are on little springs so they move around.  The only thing I don't like is that the sign just says "Halloween."  It seems like it should say "Happy Halloween," maybe with an exclamation point too.  Because it looks like a label instead of a greeting.  Like Halloween is here inside this door.

Another Reese's Review

I decided to continue my Reese's reviews.  The last candy bar reviewed was the Reese's Whipps bar back in 2009.  You can read it here if you would like to reminisce.  Just for the record, I think the ultimate Reese's creations are the holiday shaped ones.  I don't care if it's an Easter egg, a pumpkin, or a heart, those things are dang good.  The perfect peanut butter to chocolate ratio for me.

So here are the two contenders:
A.  Reese's Fast Break:  Peanut butter and nougat covered in regular Reese's chocolate.

B.  Reese's NutRageous:  Peanut butter, caramel, and peanut all covered in some thick nasty chocolate.

I think you can see where this is going.

Nutrition-wise
Both have the same number of calories.  NutRageous has 4 more grams of fat, but it also has 1 more gram of protein if that is important to you.

Taste
A.  Reese's Fast Break:  The same taste as a Reese's holiday product, but a bit chewier due to the nougat.  Altogether a satisfying alternative when there isn't a holiday going on.


B.  Reese's NutRageous:  The delicious Reese's peanut butter is there, but that's about all this thing has going for it.  The peanuts seem like a good idea, but they taste kind of over-roasted, and why add peanuts to peanut butter?  I couldn't really tell the caramel was there at all. 


The Ultimate Champion
And the winner is Reese's Fast Break obviously.   Although NutRageous would totally beat the nasty Whipps bar, it didn't stand a chance against Fast Break. 

I'll be back again with more reviews once I've burned off enough calories.

Why the Utah DMV is CRAZY AWESOME

They are so awesome that really does need all caps.

I had to get my car registered on Wednesday.  I was dreading it because the last time I went to the DMV in California it took me 3 hours.  One hour waiting outside and another 2 inside.

So I wasn't looking forward to another DMV experience.  This is how it went.


I walked right in.  No line outside.  This lady handed me a slip of paper with #529 on it.  I walked into the room.  The loudspeaker said, "Number 528 at window 7.  Number 529 at window 1."  I stood there in shock for a second and then headed over to window #1.  The lady at the window was smiling.  I handed over all my paperwork.  She typed some stuff into her computer.  She held up 2 sets of license plates and asked me which design I wanted.  She told me it was $79 and I swiped my card.  I signed for the registration and title.  She handed me the plates.  I left.

This all took maybe 5 minutes.  I was absolutely giddy walking out to my car carrying my new license plates.  The people I passed probably thought I was crazy because I had a huge Joker-esque smile on my face, but I was so amazed.  The DMV lady was cheerful and nice.  That's definitely a first for me.  And they just handed me my plates.  I expected to have to wait several weeks for them to come by mail.  And it was only $79 for registration, title, and the new plates.  My California registration was $93 by itself.  And who ever heard of no wait at the DMV?  I asked the lady about it and she said the longest wait she'd ever seen there was 25 minutes.

I'm used to the DMV being this harrowing experience you have to psych yourself up for where people are rude to you and you're lucky if you make it out alive.  I was panicking while driving there because I forgot to bring a book with me and I didn't know what I'd do during the inevitably long wait.  I even considered stopping to buy some reading material.  But instead it was a blissfully simple and pain-free process.

I have to get a Utah drivers license sometime, once I find my birth certificate.  I will be looking forward to seeing if they are as good the second time around.

P.S.  I got lost looking for the building due to some confusion over east and west.  I ended up walking through this huge quilting convention at the Utah County Convention Center.  Room after room of quilts and quilting ladies.  Even the hallways were packed with booths and ladies with sewing machines.  They had this exhibition room you had to pay $3 to enter.  I was seriously tempted but figured I needed to find the DMV since they would be closing in 3 hours and I was worried about the long wait.  If only I'd known.  I should have gone back after the DMV, but I was still on my DMV high and didn't think of it.

The View from my Dumpster

Pretty, right?  That's Utah Lake out there.  Someday they're going to build the rest of the complex out there in that field, but for now it's a great view.

People with cats should . . .

A.  Be banned from the library.
B.  Only be allowed to read library books after going through a decontamination chamber.
C.  Have a separate library from the rest of the human race.
D.  All of the above.

I couldn't figure out why I was sneezing all day yesterday.  Then I found a short black hair in the new library book I had just started.  My first thought, "Oh gross."  My second thought was that this had happened before eight years ago with an Agatha Christie book from the BYU library full of cat hair.  You can tell it scarred me because I still remember it so specifically.

If you google images for "cats" and "books" you will find hundreds of pictures like this.  Obviously cat people think it is cute when their cats infest books.

What is with this shirt?

Why did I buy this shirt?  What would possess me to buy a shirt with a bicycle and butterflies on it?  Why have I been wearing it in public?  I have seen two other women wearing this shirt and they were both 30-40 years older than me.  My only excuse is that I had a coupon that was going to expire and I was really tired when I bought it.  My excuse for wearing it?  That's a little harder to come up with.  I am too poor to just throw it out so I hereby swear that I will never leave the house wearing this shirt again.  Maybe if I wear it inside out I can use it as a pajama shirt.  I need to go on What Not to Wear, but I think I am just slightly not crazy enough for them to pick me.  If you disagree, feel free to nominate me.  I won't hold it against you.

Baby Book Observations

I've been trying to get the paperwork together to register my car in Utah and get a driver's license here.  I ended up digging through a box of stuff my mom collected over the years and then gave me a few years ago in order to try and find my birth certificate.  I made the following observations/discoveries.

A.  My baby book is no longer in this box.  I assume my mom has it somewhere, which I totally understand.  Unfortunately I know that my birth certificate is with my baby book so I guess I won't be keeping my driver's license appointment on Thursday.

B.  Teachers are crazy.  I found a report card of mine from my freshman year where I had all A's and a B+.  Not too shabby.  But 5 of my 6 teachers gave me a #4 in the comment box which equals "ATT/Tardies Affect Work."  Why is that all capitalized?  I don't know.  Was I absent a whole bunch during my freshman year?  I don't remember being sick a lot.  And seriously, how much could these supposed missed classes have been affecting my school work if I just had the one B+ in geometry?  It just seems crazy that 5 of my teachers checked that box.  Maybe it was a computer glitch.

C.  My arch nemesis Mr. Jones really was evil.  In 6th and 7th grade I played percussion for Mr. Jones in the school band.  I hated band primarily because of him.  I even had a nightmare once where he was a Nazi and I was hiding from him.  He would lose his temper randomly and just start screaming at people.

His instrument was also percussion and he was always trying to get me to take it more "seriously."  He had all these dreams of me getting a college scholarship and going on to become a great percussionist.  My own band dreams went no further than junior high.  He was always trying to get me to come to the band room during lunch to get some extra practice or play around on his drum kit.  He also always wanted me to take home this portable xylophone over the weekend to practice more.  I don't think he realized that I had to lug that thing about a mile to get it home and back.  I only took it home one time when I knew it was raining and my mom would pick me up.  Plus when I played it at home it was super loud which I'm sure my family enjoyed.

So anyways, while I was looking through my box of baby stuff I found a certificate from Mr. Jones where he had named me "Challenger Band Outstanding Musician" for my 7th grade year.  I started feeling kind of bad about harboring this negative view of Mr. Jones all these years.  Maybe he wasn't a totally crazy individual who shouldn't have been allowed to interact with children.  Maybe he really was just this frustrated musician who was trying to pass his passion for music on to his students.  Or maybe not.

Later when I was looking at some old report cards I found one from 7th grade where he gave me comments #3 and #6.  Those equal "Achieving Below Ability" and "Assignments Not Completed Regularly/On Time."  Again with the capitalization.  And he only gave me a B.

Now what made him suddenly make me "Outstanding Musician"out of the whole band that very same year if I was such a lazy slacker?  I will tell you.  It was a bribe.  After 7th grade I had so had enough of that crazy teacher.  Unfortunately he made us fill out these forms a couple weeks before school got out where we committed to being in band the next year or not, and I was brave/foolish enough to write that I would be leaving for greener pastures.  He made me stay after class to talk about it and tried to talk me into staying.  Fortunately 7th grade me realized that it would be easier to face his immediate wrath rather than spend another year with him and I stuck to my guns.  And lo and behold, Mr. Jones suddenly got super nice and gave me the award at the end-of-year awards assembly and even an A on my final report card.

So have I been misjudging him all these years?  That certificate almost tricked 31-year-old me, but luckily I was a bit more perceptive at age 11 and managed to escape Mr. Jones.

D.  I don't have anyone to share my baby box with.  This one is a "woe is me/pity party" one so feel free to skip.  Whenever I looked at this stuff before (old report cards and awards, funny stories I wrote, pictures of me growing up, etc.), I thought about how fun it would be to show this stuff to my kids someday, and then tonight it hit me that I don't have anyone to show my box to and I probably never will. And I know it's totally my fault, but it still sucks.

Blanket #7

I finished Ella's blanket just in time for her birthday.  I think it was my fastest one yet.  I drove down with Heather and her family that week so we all got to go to Ella's birthday party.  It was nice to be able to see Ella get her blanket in person.  Now I just need to finish Emily's unless someone has another kid soon.

Blanket #6

I finally finished Jane's blanket. It's my sixth one for the kids. Only two more to go for my existing nieces and nephews. Good thing we have been having kids so slow because it seems to take me forever to get these things done. This one is pink, green, and purple. The purple looks kind of brown in the picture but it is just a dark purple. I can't take picture of Jane with it because I shipped it to her instead of giving it to her in person since I am not sure when I will get to see them again.

I had an epiphany with this blanket. I normal cut the tassels out one at a time and I was totally dreading it. Then I thought, "Why in the world am I cutting these things out one at a time? There has to be a better way." So I grabbed my napkin holder, took out the napkins and then wrapped the yarn around and around the napkin holder. Then I just had to make 2 cuts and I had all the tassels I needed. I have no idea why I have been doing it the hard way for so long. It only took me about an hour to do all of the tassels. Makes me wonder what else I have been doing the hard way.

Paint By Number

No that isn't a clever title, this post is actually about painting by number. I got a paint by number kit (the dolphin one) in my stocking for Christmas and it was super fun. Mixing the colors and filling in the blanks is really relaxing for some reason. There have been a couple failures -- one of a lighthouse where I painted a huge chunk of the sky the wrong color and another of a dog that was just super ugly. But these three turned out pretty well. It makes me feel arty in spite of my lack of talent.

Random Stuff & Clogging

Here's a picture I took on my way home at about 9:00 p.m. at night. It stays light here crazy late. Which is good for me since I don't get off work until so late.

Funny Emily trying on a hat at Blickenstaff's, a cool toy store in Provo.

I got to go see the kids clog about a month ago. It was fun to see them actually perform. They have shown me their clogging at their house, but it's more exciting to see the whole thing with the costumes and all.

Here is Laurel doing her thing. Heather would probably want me to tell you that her skirt wasn't always so short. It's the end of the clogging year and Laurel has grown a few inches since the original costume fitting last year.

You can see both Laurel and Lindsay in this one. Don't worry, they aren't supposed to be synchronized for this one. It's more just a demo part where they get to show their stuff.

I have a video of Evan and his group but I can't get it to upload for some reason. Unfortunately my camera died in the middle so I didn't get anything else. I'll probably get to see them again sometime so hopefully I get some better pictures then.

Freedom to Inject Yourself With Coffee

Today I typed a report for a woman who had injected her arm with coffee because she thought it was cocaine. She had been to several free clinics and tried antibiotics and was now in the ER with a major infection. My first thought, "What in the world!" My second thought, "This could never happen to me because I don't use crack." My third thought, "Even if I used crack, this could never happen to me because I don't drink coffee." Just another example of how keeping the commandments actually gives you more freedom--freedom not to inject yourself with coffee. Feel free to use it in your next Sunday School class.

p.s. I often consider whether or not the patient's situation is something that could happen to me or not. Probably not the best practice, but I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Netflix

According to Neflix my favorite types of movies are:

1. Romantic period pieces based on a book.

2. Conspiracy movies.

3. Visually-striking movies.

4. British movies with a strong female lead.

5. Violent suspenseful Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

Three observations:

1. I think #1 and #4 are the same.

2. These are pretty much also my book preferences too.

3. It's kind of creepy that Netflix has figured this out about me so fast (I've had Netflix for about 3 weeks).

Point of View

Here's a little taste of what living with Ryan is like.

Me: Worst day ever today.

Ryan: Did you have diarrhea?

Me: No.

Ryan: Probably not the worst day ever then. The worst day ever would involve diarrhea and maybe some vomiting.

So true.

Moving

So I moved to Orem a couple of months ago. I miss my California family and the weather of course, but it is good to see Heather's family and Ryan so often. Mom and Dad bought the condo and I am living here full time and paying the bills and paying them a little rent. So far I am handling living alone pretty well. I keep pretty busy between work and taking care of the condo. My ward is pretty weird. It is just my complex and another one across the street. So it is all condo sort of people. Lots of young couples with 1 or 2 kids and then some older retired types and older singles. Our sacrament meetings are seriously loud with all of the babies and toddlers. Here are a few pictures. Not too exciting but I have been really busy. I didn't have furniture until a couple of weeks ago so here I am sitting on the floor watching TV. It looks like I was watching NCIS at the time. Sitting on a couch seems really luxurious now.

Woohoo! The new couch. It's really comfortable. I have some pillows now so it doesn't look quite so brown on brown on brown.

Here are a few of my favorite Orem things:

There is a boat dealership right by my house and I drive by this houseboat several times a week. It always makes me think of my freshman Y-group. But that's another story. It is kind of an ugly houseboat.

This is Stonehenge of Orem. Apparently this is a nursing home. I don't know why they built their own Stonehenge or named their facility Stonehenge of Orem. But it's fun to drive by.