Hello Again.

Remember how some people blog a lot? I am not those people. However, I will say, I went to Peru last month. It was awesome. That is the understatement of the year. I wish I was still there. If you are my friend on facebook, you have seen a bajillion pictures already and there are more to come. I wish winter would end. I am moving away from Kentucky this year. I have been watching Planet Earth (again) and loving it. My job stresses me out sometimes. I still teach songs to kids in primary. My hair is still brown. What's new with you blog friends?

The long and winding road(s)

I drive a lot for my job. We can talk about that later. But since I drive a lot for my job, I have a lot of time to think. And listen to the NPR. And talk on the phone. And try out scratched CD's I found in the spare bedroom from 2003. By the way, some of them are pretty cool mixes. At any rate, yesterday while I was thinking one of the cooler things about Kentucky in the winter time is that the world is not so drab, ugly and devoid of all color like it is in Utah, making you less likely to want to crawl in a hole and die all winter long. This train of thought led me rapidly to a couple years ago to a different winter, the Utah kind. I was driving to Honeyville(It's a cute name- not that cute of a town), when I work for Migrant Headstart. It was one of those over the river, through the wood drives and it happened to be that time in the morning that sure wasn't light yet and in the shadow of the mountain. Also, very few cars, so kind of a creepy road. Mental picture painted yet? So I'm driving to work, paying pretty good attention to what's going on and a few feet in front of me I saw something in the road. I can't tell you how many feet it was, but if I swerved I would have been road toast. So I hit something with my car at 55 mph, heard the biggest thud ever and kept driving in the bleakness. And then my paranoid mind began to turn. Since I couldn't see it very well, I thought there was no telling what I hit with my car. Naturally my stupid brain went to the ridiculous, thinking it may have been a human, laying on the road at 6 something in the morning, waiting to be hit by my car. A small part of me thought it might have been a deer. So I went to work, did my job, freaked out until lunch, when I called my sister, and told her what I might have done. I told her she might see me next in the paper or need to post bail, since I just kept driving and couldn't tell from the rear view mirror what I hit. For better or worse, my sister and I sometimes have the same brain. I think she laughed, said I "most likely" didn't hit a human, and we agreed that I should make John look under the car when I got home. However, she understood some of my insanity. Which is why I called her. I told John what happened & made him look under the car. He assured me that humans do not leave matted deer fur in your wheel well. Phew.
Here's to less eventful drives this winter.

Hello October

Once upon a time I didn't like fall much. I thought it was just a terrible season in the middle of summer and winter. This was probably when I was like ten years old and stupid. Now I love fall. Fall here in Kentucky is gorgeous, even though it isn't the crisp feeling I'm used to getting in Utah. I remember getting ready for fall in middle school by having a "Back to School" party. Seriously, what kind of nerd was I? Everybody brought a school supply and we exchanged them through some school themed Bingo on hand drawn cards by yours truly. I remember thinking it was pretty fun. I'm not sure what anyone else thought, but I think it happened several years in a row out of fun or pity. In high school I remember fall seemed to be a time of very little sleep due to early morning musical theater practices and whatever else you end up thinking makes you "busy" when you're 17. Dances, talking on the phone- remember using landlines? Weird. I have some pretty fun memories of football games, breaking old wooden bleachers in the rain and not doing homework. Fall at Utah State is pretty much the best ever. The gorgeous drive through the canyon added to naps in the middle of the day on the Quad, crazy roommates, hot chocolate when it starts getting freezing cold all sudden and all things Aggie makes for remembering one of my now current favorite seasons.

Hearing that USU actually won a football game made me slightly nostalgic (if I can say it even though I haven't been out of college for 50 years yet) for some of the fall fun.

A story that's not really about snakes, but sort of.

So. . . today at church I am the substitute singing time lady. i do my thing for jr. primary. then as they are dismissing the kids to their classes, they realize they are like 3 teachers short (by the way, this is very normal). they ask me to go sit with the 4 turning five year old kids until they round up a teacher for them. so i go sit at this tiny table made for rats, and start hanging out with the kids. there's five of them and a really cute one i've never seen before. i shoot the breeze with the kids asking them what they like about summer, what their favorite animal is and what is up in the life of a four year old. i then ask the one i've never seen before what his name is, and if he's new. we'll say he say's his name is "neal". neal tells me that he moved on saturday. from nauvoo, IL. and there's a big river there. i concur with neal about the general "bigness" of the river. neal said he moved to lovely kentucky because of his dad's job. and what does neal's dad do for work you ask? make dentures. for some reason i thought that was funny; maybe because of the large number of people i have seen sans teeth. after sitting there for ten or fifteen minutes and wondering how i supposed to teach a class and be the singing lady for sr. primary at the same time, the kids got restless, apparently tired of mine and neal's conversation about dentures. lame. i remembered a time at preschool when sara, amy and i were trying desperately to kill time while waiting for something- probably music time or the stupid playground. we decided that since we had thirty 3,4,5 and 6 year old children all waiting and about to rise up and revolt, we would tell stories. about snakes. strangely enough, they shut up (mostly) and listened to our weird snake stories. i'm pretty sure we kept them quiet for about 20 minutes. magic through our words i tell you. so i started to tell these goobers a story about a treehouse. their eyes got big and i could tell i had them. and just when i got to the good part-- their real teacher came. they'll never even know how it ended. until next time i'm there. which will probably be next week.

Well, it cost less than 5 bucks. . .

I ordered a "BBQ on a Bun" this week when I was out to lunch with a co-worker. What would you think you were getting with this order? Pulled pork? Pulled or shredded beef? Probably in a delicious southern sauce that you would need at least three napkins to clean up afterwords? These were my hopes.
What came to me on a plate was *slightly* different. I received two thick slices of an overcooked, slightly gristly pot roast, with pickles on top on a bun. I was a little confused. Looking at the tab, she wrote down my order correct, but something must have happened in the kitchen. Maybe it was leftover day. And is it really a BBQ if it has no sauce, and was cooked in a crock pot or in the oven? Also, have you ever had pickles with your pot roast? Me neither.

Maybe the waitress misunderstood me. Last week I ordered Honey Chicken somewhere else and I ended up getting Hunan Chicken instead. I think it's my Yankee, Western US accent. I find myself being very aware of all the syllables I say. Especially when most of the people around me are dropping about 60% of them. I can't start to drop syllables, or people will notice and I will sound lame by trying to be regionally "normal". The solution maybe to write down my order, have other people speak for me at restaurants, point or learn to be satisfied with my random, sometimes mediocre, meals that are brought to me.