We are almost done with the year and I need to think what I want to do with resolutions this year. I am constantly in a state of working on my goals, so Jan 1 shouldn’t be a big thing for me, but this year, I feel like setting some resolutions. I want to get to my goal weight this year. I want to finish Looking for Christ this year. I want to pay off the IRS this year. I don’t know where I’m going to come up with all the money, but I would like it to show up in my life and I want to put it all on payments to the IRS. Maybe my book will sell and I’ll get enough for a book advance to pay off the IRS. That would be really nice. I could just pay them off in one fail swoop. If there was any left over, I would like to buy a house, but that’s not nearly as important to me as just paying off the IRS. Hell, while I’m dreaming, why don’t I dream that Looking for Christ is a runaway best seller and I make millions of dollars from it. I pay the IRS, I buy a house, and I sock the rest away in an interest bearing account. I go on a book signing tour and end up on national television where I become a sudden star. Out of nowhere, suddenly, Laura Moncur’s face is on every magazine and talk show. I can just keep dreaming, but as the wise Dr. Frank-N-Furter said, “Don’t dream it, be it.”

Resolutions aren’t about dreaming. They are about commitment. I am very reserved about what I commit to. That word is so powerful that I really don’t like to say that I’m committed unless I KNOW I can do it. Even when I half-heartedly jumped into NaNoWriMo, I was committed to finishing it. I know I kept telling myself that even if I don’t finish, I got a lot more written than I would have had I not done it, I knew that there was no way that I wasn’t going to finish. I had come too far and watched myself achieve too much to not finish it.

Knowing that I can do so much is such a strange feeling to me because the truth of the matter is that I haven’t been able to write much fiction all month. I know that I can write 3000 words a day, yet I can’t write that much every day. When I write that much, I need to rest. When I write 50,000 in a month, I end up needing to rest almost an entire month. This month has been frustrating for me because I know that I can write 3000 words a day. Not writing for a month is really hard. I don’t know.

What am I committed to doing this year? What will I do, no matter what? Well, I’m getting to my goal weight. There is absolutely no stopping me now. I am going to get there no matter what. I am wholeheartedly committed to getting to a healthy weight once and for all. I can put that one on the list. As of my last weigh-in at Weight Watchers, I weighed 170 pounds. I intend to lose 40 pounds and weigh 130 by October 1st of next year.

I am committed to finishing Looking for Christ. If I don’t get this story out of my head, I will go mad. I am going to write a chapter a week until it’s done. If there are more than 52 chapters left in this book, then it’s too damn long and I need to start editing. I am fully committed to getting a chapter a week out the door in 2005 until the book is done. I already have an idea ripe and ready for outlining for my next book. I need to get that ready and in place for NaNoWriMo next year, but I’m not even sure if I’m willing to commit to NaNoWriMo next year.

We owe the IRS so much money that I really don’t see how I can dig myself out of it. I don’t know what to put on my list of resolutions about it. I don’t know where to start or what baby steps I need to take to get out of it. All I can see is making payments on it every month, but that just feels like a drop in the bucket. Enough drops will get it paid off, eventually, so that’s what I can commit to. I am committed to paying $2500 a month to the IRS every month in 2005. If I can pay more, I will gladly pay more, but for now, all I can imagine is paying that much. Even paying that much makes us watch our finances closely. I guess all I can do is my best, even if it is just a small installment.

That’s it. I can’t commit to anything else. Those three things are all I can focus on. One more thing would send me over the edge and overextend me to the point where failure was guaranteed. When I look at it, they seem like lofty goals: lose all the weight, write a book and pay a huge debt. Yet, I can see how to do each one of them and I have no doubt that each of them is very doable.

Last year, I gave some lame excuse about how I’m always working on my goals, so I don’t need to make New Year’s Resolutions. I did that and here I am, at the same weight I was last year and owing the same amount of money. If I had put it in print what I was going to do and published it to the whole world, I think I would be at my goal weight by now. So, here is the whole story:

Laura’s New Year’s Resolutions: By January 2006,
I will weigh 130 pounds.
I will have finished writing Looking for Christ.
I will have paid at least $2,500 a month to the IRS.

Here is Chapter Twenty-Six:

(Continue Reading…)

I finally figured out why I love Ballard Street. It’s a comic that is offbeat and strange. There are no real punchlines, but it makes me happy every day that I read it. Partake of the splendor here:

Ballard Street

I love Ballard Street because the characters are so emotional. Their faces fill with pride at their strange accomplishments. Their brows furrough with anger at the disputes. They shiver in anticipation of the next bad thing in their lives. They bounce with joy at their odd activities.

The characters of Ballard Street are living on the edge. They are filled with their respective emotions and they seem like they are going to burst with it. That’s why I love Ballard Street.

I’ve talked before about my belief in randomness. I believe there is a lot to be learned about ourselves and the randomness of the universe is one method of figuring out what’s going on in our heads. White Noise is a movie that starts Friday about another method for gathering randomness.

Michael Keaton plays a man who wife has disappeared. He believes that she is speaking to him from beyond the grave through EVP, electronic voice phenomenon. It’s an interesting premise and something I could write and entire book about, so I’m excited to see the movie. I have never used EVP to gather randomness, but I love to read about it and listen to the recordings. There’s even a company in Utah that will come to your house and record hours of empty air and analyze it for you.

EVP reminds me of the Reverse Speech phenomenon. People will take recordings of spoken or sung words, reverse them and they pick out phrases in the reversed speech. David John Oates, founder of reverse speech, purports that these reverse messages are always the truth. He says that we can subconsciously understand this reversed speech and it explains those times when you can tell someone is lying to you.

With both of these, I tend to think that the voices heard have more to do with the listeners than with phenomena. In both disciplines, they raise the volume and speed up or slow down the recordings in order to find these “messages” from the beyond or the subconscious. They manipulate the recordings so much that finding something is almost inevitable. Many times, others can’t hear the “messages” unless they are told what to listen for.

As far as viable methods of study, I think they are both bogus, but I do think they hold an interesting window into our own psyches. I believe that the reverse messages found in George W. Bush’s speeches have nothing to do with the president and everything to do with the person who “found” the reversal. I believe the phantom voices found on tape recordings of “haunted” houses in the Salt Lake Valley have nothing to do with spirits and everything to do with the ghost hunters. I think reversed speech or random tape recordings would be a great way to find out more information about yourself, but only if you are the one looking for “messages.”

That’s why White Noise intrigues me. Is it a movie about a man slowly driven to a point of insanity by his own obsession with phantom voices in a tape recording? Is it a movie about a man who eventually comes to terms with the loss of his wife by fixating on what he imagines is her voice? I have a feeling that I have thought about this subject far more than the writers of the film and I may end up being disappointed. Oh well, it’s always a crap shoot when you go to a movie.

Here is an interesting article about the psychology of shopping, setting up shop and getting customers to spend their money.

They have ways of making you spend

They love the Apple store. Who doesn’t? They hate the grocery store. Who doesn’t? They have interesting things to tell you about resisting the urge to splurge.

After looking at this site:

Repent America

I’m wondering if Jesus would have incurred the wrath of these folks when he sat down and ate with the tax collectors and prostitutes…

“I don’t know how I opened up Midnight Special on DDR, but it’s unlocked. I don’t know what I did to unlock it.”

Mike responded in song, “Let the Midnight Special, shine a light on me.”

The two of us finished the chorus together and I didn’t bother reiterating that the song on DDR-U2 is a totally different song with the same name.

“What does that song mean?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a…”

“Drug reference?”

“No, a reference to God, but same difference. Either that or a great way to get auto parts.”

“I thought the phrase ‘Midnight Special’ referred to a gun.”

“I don’t know.”

“I think in the 70’s and early 80’s there were these cheap guns, kind of like a revolver or something, that they would sell really cheap on ‘Midnight Specials.’ I thought that’s what that meant. I guess an auto parts store could have a Midnight Special sale too, I guess.”

“No, I think it refers to stealing parts, you know, like ‘Midnight Auto.’ You know, you find a car that’s the same make as yours and you steal the part you need.”

“I did that for a rear view mirror once for my Yugo.”

“You’re going straight to Hell.”

“Hey, it was impossible to get parts for that thing. Someone stole my rear view mirror, so I stole one back.”

“So the entire human race is one entity to you? Someone steals from you, so it’s ok to choose another person at random to steal from?”

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds bad.” I was feeling guilty. I thought of that person in West Valley over twenty years ago coming out to his crappy red Yugo and realizing his rear view mirror was missing. I started singing the chorus of Midnight Special again and Mike groaned. The song was in my head and it was skipping over and over, playing the first line of the chorus in my mind and starting again.

“That song reminds me of that Twilight Zone movie with Dan Akroyd.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard that song anywhere else.”

“Who sings that song, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Alabama?”

“I thought it was Creedence.”

“Who?”

“CCR, but it doesn’t sound like Fogarty.”

“It might be someone different in the movie.”

I planned on looking it up some time later in the day and emailing him all the information, but several hours later, I’m looking at the Google results and I’m just as clueless as I was this morning.

Was it Van Morrison, Creedence Clearwater Revival, ABBA or Paul McCartney? It was Creedence. But, is it a gun, God, drugs or felony auto part procurement? None of the above, apparently. According to The Prison Diaries of Sethuraman Srinivasan Jr, it’s about getting out of jail.

“Specifically, I’m going to explain what the Hell the title “The Midnight Special” has to do with anything. You see, I’ve heard unconfirmed reports that the old blues tune of the same name (it was covered by the Kingston Trio and Creedance Clearwater Revival, among others) was in fact written about this particular pokey. Seems that when the light from the midnight train coming down from Houston shined on an inmate, legend had it that he would be released. Hence the lines ‘Let the Midnight Special – Shine its light on me – Let the Midnight Special – Shine its everloving light on me.’”

Of course, I have been unable to fathom if this website is a work of fiction, an online journal or both. It looks like a primitive weblog (started in 2000) of a pretty interesting guy (he was on Jeopardy!). He teaches history at the University of Houston and in 1998 taught Southern History to inmates in a Texas prison (thus explaining his knowledge of prison-lore). Last entry is dated 2003 and I can’t find him anywhere else except quoted in history journals. After reading through his site, I’m wishing he would revive his blog in a more conventional format.

I guess I believe him. There’s not much else competing with him as far as an explanation. I liked it better when I believed it was a gun. I guess I believe guns will set us free far more than the light from a train. How screwed up is that? I have no faith in superstition, violent tendencies and I was willing to steal auto parts from innocent victims. Sometimes I wonder why I’m not in prison.

I think high self-esteem is overrated. A little low self-esteem is actually quite good…Maybe you’re not the best, so you should work a little harder.
– Jay Leno, O Magazine, February 2003

When I went to school, they told us that Self Esteem was important. We needed to think highly of ourselves in order to succeed. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to really grow an arrogance. Only a crazy person would look at my life and think that there was not room for improvement. I sometimes think that no matter how well I improve, I can always get better.

I just read Scientific American’s article about self esteem:

Scientific American – Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth by Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger and Kathleen D. Vohs

Now, it seems, the pendulum is swinging the other way. Self Esteem has been researched in countless studies. After years of telling people that low self esteem was the cause of all the world’s woes, it turns out that they were wrong. There is little to no correlation between low self esteem and aggression, drug use or promiscuity. There is little to no correlation between high self esteem and excellence. The best the article could give me was this quote: “In the course of our literature review, we found some indications that self-esteem is a helpful attribute.”

Good thing for me, because I have been flunking high self esteem since the sixth grade. Now that it’s out of style, maybe they’ll have low self esteem classes where a gym teacher makes you balance on a Bosu Ball while the rest of the class points and laughs at your butt. I could ace that class.

You know you’ve been to Vegas too many times when you start to tell a story about Vegas and you don’t remember which time it was that you were there…

Not last time or the time before that or, I think, even the time before that, we were in Vegas. Stacey, Dan, Mike and I were exchanging hopes for the trip. I told them in a loud voice, “I want to go to The Gospel Brunch at Mandalay.” I heard mumbling from Dan and Stacey. Mike overheard them and laughed. “What? What did you say?” Stacey smiled at me. “Dan asked what The Gospel Brunch was.” Mike laughed again and I pressed her. “What did you say?” She smiled and said, “You’re trying to eat breakfast and people sing in your face about Jesus.”

They laughed again and I sniffed. “It sounded fun to me.” I thought of all that good gospel music that I wasn’t going to hear. I thought of all that halleluiahing that I was going to miss. I imagined people sitting at their tables, holding their hands up to the singers to “feel” Jesus and realized that my cohorts probably wouldn’t be able to enjoy it on the guttural level like I could. The Gospel Brunch sounded fun to me.

The Gospel Brunch came to my mind when I read Michael Main’s weblog. He just wrote an entry about Subway Evangelism that made my skin crawl.

The Main Point – Subway to Heaven by Michael Main

I read Michael’s site because he’s a good writer. He’s a Christian in the best of ways. Just a couple of days ago, he wrote a wonderful article about the best sort of ministry (God and Guts) that made me nod my head at his wisdom. Then, just a week later, he writes an entry highlighting a bunch of Jesus Freaks that start a ruckus on the subway (imagine a fake fainting spell) and then preach the gospel. I was going to go into the comments and express my opinion angrily, but it looks like his other readers beat me to it. He was even nice enough to explain that he had posted it because he thought it was ironic that they would start out their ministry with deception. So, I’m not angry with him.

In the end, all I can do is sit here. Stewing about Jesus Freaks isn’t joyful, so all I’m left with is how I imagine Stacey would evaluate their ministry: “You’re trying to get to work and people sing in your face about Jesus…”

Every few months, I go on a Disneyland kick. Sometimes it’s the Haunted Mansion that I obsess about. Other times it’s the extinct rides. I remember going on a ride the first time I went to Disneyland. It was a science ride that shrunk us to the size of the atoms. In my memory, Stacey, my little sister, is with me, but she doesn’t remember this ride at all. In actuality, it was probably Travis, a cousin of sorts. He was actually young enough that year to make sense of this memory.

While we waited in line, Travis trembled. He was scared of being shrunk to the size of atoms. I explained to him that it wasn’t real and it was just a ride, but he didn’t believe me. Finally, I figured out a way to convince him. You could see the people getting smaller and smaller as they went into the huge microscope thing. The shrunken atom-mobiles had shrunken people in them, but they weren’t consistent. Every once and awhile, a mobile would go through without people, but the shrunken ones were always full. That was enough to convince Travis that it was just a ride. I remember feeling so smart that I was able to figure the secret out on my own and explain it to Travis. I felt like such a grown-up, calming him.

That’s all of my memory. If you would like a succinct description of the ride, see the Yesterland website. I don’t remember the snowflakes or the eye or any of the other things that people love to reminisce about this ride. It was called Adventure Thru Inner Space and Monsanto (the people who make Round-Up weed killer) sponsored it. Monsanto has sponsored a CGI recreation of the ride: Adventure Thru Inner Space Tribute Site.

You can buy a DVD that recreates the ride experience. There are a couple of online movies that give you an idea of what it was like. I can’t wait for mine to come in the mail because it has been 25 years since I saw it. This time, I won’t have to talk down a nervous four-year old.

These are all the states that I have visited. This thing reminds me of those stickers that you can stick on your motorhome showing all the places you’ve been. The real question is that with so much gray area, why do I keep going to Las Vegas over and over?

Create your own Visited States Map

I am a such West Coast girl! I need to get my booty over to the East Coast.

I’m all worked up about an online argument with Michael Main about Rolling Stone and hip youth oriented bibles. The truth of the matter is that I’m continually tempted to buy one of those youth oriented bibles. I want to look at the passages and see how they explain away the misogyny and hatred. I secretly hope that they will have just the right words to make Christianity sensible in my mind.

Sure, Jesus’ message was sensible. Love thy neighbor. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. I just haven’t noticed a lot of Christians following those noble thoughts. Even the characters in the Bible have a hard time being nice and withholding judgment. How could that be explained in a youth oriented bible?

The problem is that the Christians that are quietly following the words of Christ are ignored while the judgmental Jesus freaks are shouting out their hatred. The best ministry is quietly following your beliefs and allowing others to notice how smoothly your life flows. It doesn’t come in flashy two page spreads in Rolling Stone magazine. I immediately equate hypocrisy with advertisement, so when Rolling Stone rejected the ad, it sounded completely logical to me. The idea of refusing to buy the magazine because they rejected the ad never occurred to me.

It made Michael Main angry and he blames their rejection on bigotry. He thinks they made a mistake to base their rejection of the ad on a religious stereotype. The article doesn’t even mention the word “God,” yet they rejected it. He thinks they should just come right out and admit that they did something wrong. His response took me totally by surprise. I am looking at the ad right now. Why would they want to put an ad in Rolling Stone? They want to sell bibles. It has nothing to do with Jesus or the Word of God. They want to sell bibles. That’s what any company wants to do: sell their product. I guess as a capitalist, I should be angry with Rolling Stone for rejecting their ad. Of course, as an American, I also believe that they have the right to reject whatever ad they want.

I don’t even freakin’ like Rolling Stone. I wouldn’t have bought their stupid magazine anyway. The bible on the other hand… Man, you can’t buy publicity like that. I didn’t even know that particular bible existed before this whole thing happened. Now, I’m thinking about checking out that bible. Zondervan Publishing should thank Rolling Stone for rejecting them. They got an article in USA Today because of them. I guess everything works out in the end. Zondervan gets lots of publicity without even having to pay for it.

My Bud Light billboard has changed over to Michelob Light. It’s the first beer billboard that has made sense to me beyond a guttural “Maybe I could have sex with that guy” reaction. The billboard says, “It’s not a resolution. It’s a lifestyle.” It shows a man jogging in the background.

There’s a girl version of this ad on I-15, which made me think, “God, I want abs like hers.”

Their website is useless, by the way, don’t even bother visiting it. You won’t be able to see the ad. I just took a picture of it instead. First good beer ad I’ve ever seen and they didn’t put it on their website…

Hi,

I am struggling to work out how to phrase my comments without causing offence (non US spelling should be a giveaway!), but I’ll preface my note with a remark that I stumbled upon your weblog after using your collective Quotations.com page…this is very good work and will be a useful, entertaining and informative resource for those occasoins when I’m looking for a catchy tag-line on slide one of a presentation.

The item on your web log that caught my attention, even though it should not have, was your map of the states that you have visited…and its allusion to your having never actually left America: it begs the question: why are Americans such poor travellers (6 out of 7 don’t even have a passport), so apparently reluctant to acquire a bit worldly wisdom that goes with exploration? Setting aside the fact that I’ve visited aobut 50 coutries in my life and lived in two, I think I’ve even seen more of the US than you (although I’ve never been to Utah!)!

I have often heard americans say that they don’t leave the “States” because everything they need is there, but that assertion fundamentally misses the point of travel: to see, to learn and to understand that whereas the rest of the world might be different that difference is worth celebrating.

Anyway, rant over, enjoyed reading but a kneejerk response made me write.

Rory.

Dear Rory,

That map was a United States Map. There is another one for the world, but when I filled out the countries that I had visited, it was woefully gray.

The whole point of my entry was the fact that I am so untravelled, yet I still go to Las Vegas over and over. I was actually making fun of my lack of travel within my own country, much less the entire world.

Thank you for responding. Considering that Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in three rooms, I don’t believe being well-traveled is a prerequisite for a life well-lived. I’ve seen many people who believe they are well-traveled when all they did was step off the boat into various cities along the cruise.

Foreign travel is a difficult conundrum for me because the cost is so exorbitant and I believe that I must spend months in a foreign land to enjoy the fullness of it. Additionally, I fear travel outside my country because I am so ashamed of what my government is doing to other parts of the world. It’s so much easier to jump in the VW Beetle and drive away.

I believe the Internet has done wonders for us hermits. It allows me to explore other lands, concepts and even converse with strangers across the ocean. I realize it is a two-dimensional exploration, but it is better than three rooms. If only Emily could have had a glowing computer screen to keep her company.

Thanks again for responding, Laura Moncur

I am all agog. I’m still waiting for the virtual Adventure Through Inner Space to arrive, but now I’ve found these cool documentaries:

The Extinct Attractions Club

I was tempted to do the 6 DVDs for $60 special, but I think that I should wait. They have films of ride throughs on some of my favorite rides and documentaries with interviews from some of the Imagineers themselves.

I need to stop reading The Disney Blog before I start turning into Cory Doctorow.

I have been working at my present job for over two years. Every day, since October 2002, I have driven past the two oil refineries in North Salt Lake. They sit on the west side of I-15 and the activist inside of me thinks, “They are polluting my city.” I watch the billowing smoke and the dramatic flames jumping from the towers and the hippie in me shakes her head.

The thing is, those parts of me don’t win out. The logician in me thinks, “Sure glad they’re around so that I can drive my Beetle to work every day.” The husband of a friend of mine works at one of those refineries and almost lost his life there. I’m grateful for those hardworking individuals at the refineries.

The artist inside of me looks that the billowing smoke and dramatic flames and thinks, “Sweet Jesus, that’s purty.” My artist has a southern accent. She is a 350 pound black woman who sings like Nell Carter, paints like Rothko and writes like no one else on the planet. She loves the oil refineries. When they are silhouetted by the sunset, she wants to sing. She doesn’t know any love songs dedicated to oil refineries, so she usually just sings whatever is on her mind or MP3 player.

Somehow, the activist and hippie are subjugated by my logician and artist. The oil refineries are one of the two major milestones of my drive home, the other being the beer billboard I pass every day. Once a huge swarm of starlings kept circling one of the refineries. I almost ran the Beetle off the road watching them fly around and through and over the towers and machinery.

I’m never stuck in traffic when I’m driving past the refineries, so I don’t get to just sit and enjoy the grandeur. My attention is always divided, focusing primarily on the road. I don’t know how I would get a picture of the beauty that I see every day to share it with you. You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you, “Sweet Jesus, it’s purty.”

01-13-05 Laura Moncur to Michael Moncur

I looked on WordPress’s website for information about listing the archives in chronological order. This is the answer I found:

Coming in a bit late, but I was able to get ascending monthly archives in WP 1.2 by appending:

&order=ASC

…to the rewrite rules in .htaccess that call index.php with the archive parameters. With my particular permalink configuration, my new rewrite rule is:

RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&order=ASC&page=$5 [QSA]

Does that help any?

It doesn’t make any sense to me. Is this something that’s really hard to do or is it easy and I just need to learn it for myself?

Love, Laura 01-13-05 Michael Moncur to Laura Moncur

I can do it for you – remind me later. (It’s very easy, but I don’t think you have access to the file.)

Love you.

01-26-05 Michael Moncur to Laura Moncur

I finally got around to doing this. Check it out.

Right now the categories AND the monthly archives are in chrono order. Let me know if you want it otherwise. I think it makes the categories look bad except for Looking for Christ, but that’s just my opinion.

01-26-05 Laura Moncur to Michael

It looks great! Thanks so much! That’s exactly how I wanted it. If there is anyone who is obsessive and wants to read everything, this is how it should be set up, which makes me happy. Otherwise, the casual reader will never see those categories.

Thank you for doing this for me. I really appreciate it.

I ate some little carrots on my break. It was 3:05 pm and I ate them so quickly that I barely noticed the taste of them. Sometimes that’s what I do: eat in a haze. I have to eat a number of vegetables and fruits every day to be healthy, so I space them out and scarf them down, barely noticed.

“Where are you going on your break today?” Every day at 10 am and 3 pm, he leaves the office for a break. Sometimes he goes to the post office. Sometimes he runs an errand. “Maybe I drive around. Find people on the street.” His Chinese accent is thick and he is jovial. He doesn’t sound nearly as ominous in person as he does on paper. “What will you do? Throw tomatoes at them? Scream at them?” He laughs and waves me away. “I go to Smith’s.” I call to him as he walks out the door, “You’re so punk rock!”

Smith’s is the local grocery store chain. It bought Fred Meyer a few years ago and now it has been bought by Kroger. I’m surprised they have kept the name. He returns with a see-through bag. He swings it around and catches the fruit in it. He pulls out a dark Red Delicious Apple. “That’s a Snow White apple.” I’m scared he won’t understand me. “That looks like the apple that the wicked witch gave Snow White.” To this day, I don’t think I like those kinds of apples because of that cartoon. He walks to the lunchroom to wash it.

He brings it back, glistening. He is wiping it dry with a paper towel and I try to explain more. “Snow White bites into the apple and she sleeps until the prince kisses her… or maybe that’s Sleeping Beauty.” He shakes his head. “No, it’s Snow White. We bought video for daughter. She watch over and over.” I realize that he is probably much more familiar with Snow White than I am. I haven’t seen the movie since I was a child… and here I am trying to explain it to him. Silly Laura… I ate my last two carrots in shame.