• Window seat with Ikea bookcases http://bit.ly/Xd1T7 #

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I got an order for a Starling Fitness journal this morning. Honestly, I can’t tell you where my journal supplies are right now. I can barely tell you where my computer is, much less my specialty hole punch. I emailed the reader that it will take an extra week to send out the journal and offered a refund if that’s unacceptable. I haven’t sold a journal for weeks, but the minute I lose track of my hole punch, I get a new order.

Maybe I should move more often.

On the plus side, I’m super excited about the house. I can’t wait to show it to my mom, Stacey and Dan today. They are helping us pack all of our furniture and boxes into a UHaul truck today. I’m wishing for a smooth move.

On another note, this WordPress app on my iPhone seems pretty nice. Writing on my phone is much easier than when I tried to type out entries on my Treo a couple years ago. Nice to know that I can still let words flow from my fingers even when my computer is boxed and inaccessible.

Wish me lots of luck, please. I need it!

After a marathon moving day yesterday, we are in the new house at Daybreak. I brushed my teeth in the new sink and happily watched the water easily slip down the drain instead of pooling in the basin.

Right now, I’m back at the Sugarhouse house, gathering the leftovers. The old sink is looking at me in the bathroom with its rust stains, jeering at me. No matter how hard I scrubbed or what toxic chemicals I used, I could never get that rust out. I almost liked the rust. It gave me an excuse not to clean the sink altogether. The slow drain, however, was another irritant that ate away at my love of the house.

In the end, it was a wish for drains that drain that created all this work. It might have been easier to hire a plumber.

Plaid Stallions asked us to tell our best schoolyard BS story.

• Plaid Stallions : Rambling and Reflections on 70’s pop culture: PS Contest: Schoolyard BS Rumours

My story seemed a little long and I needed to include pictures, so I’ve written it here:

Chris Buttars was the bully who bothered me in the fourth grade. He called me a “Jehobo-Witness” every day at school. Sure, I was a weird kid because I was a Jehovah Witness and my dad wouldn’t let me pledge allegiance to the flag or celebrate any holidays, but don’t you think that should have been punishment enough? I guess Chris didn’t think so and inflicted daily insults to the suffering I was already experiencing.

In fourth grade, Charlie’s Angels trading cards were popular. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me and I don’t really believe this memory, but for a couple of months, the coolest thing were Charlie’s Angels trading cards. One day, I got this card in my Charlie’s Angels set:

At first glance, I thought the man on the right was Charlie. My mom pointed out to me that, no, it wasn’t Charlie. It was Bosley. I kept pointing to the words on the card. They said, “The best boss an angel ever had!” That MUST mean that the guy in the picture was Charlie, right? My mom finally convinced me that I didn’t have a rare Charlie’s Angels trading card that showed the elusive Charlie.

When Chris Buttars was looking through my trading cards to see if there were any he wanted to trade with me, he found the card that fooled me and flipped out. He made the same mistake I made, thinking that it was Charlie who was on the card, not Bosley. I played it cool and said that it was a really rare card and I’d never trade it. Suddenly, he was offering me his entire pack of Charlie’s Angels cards for it. I told him no. He started handing me his Pittsburgh Steelers pencil (unsharpened) in addition to the pack of his cards. I told him no. He started offering me money, but I stopped him.

All I wanted was two of his cards (his best, but that was more than I could bear to take without guilt) AND he had to stop calling me a Jehobo-Witness. He agreed, the trade was made and he went around the classroom showing off his “rare” Charlie card.

Everyone believed him. No one noticed that it was Bosley. And Chris Buttars only called me a Jehobo-Witness one more time after that, but I threatened to take back the rare Charlie card. He never teased me again.

Charlie’s Angel’s Trading Card via: Bubble Gum Cards: Charlie’s Angels

For more Charlie’s Angels memories, read this:

• Pick Me! » Charlie’s Angels Dolls

The Communicatrix has an excellent entry about how to deal with jealousy.

• Ninja trick for dealing with jealousy | communicatrix

Her idea is to look at it like this:

Oh good, that thing is done.

Instead of being jealous that someone has done something so totally cool and you wish you could be that person, you breathe a sigh of relief because you can check that thing off the list.

The first time I experienced this feeling was in 1992. Mike and I had been trying to write a song called “Heart of the City” that never really expressed how I felt about going to downtown Salt Lake City. I felt a connection to the city that I just couldn’t express. I felt COMPLETELY frustrated and impotent to explain myself.

Then The Information Society released “To The City.” In three minutes and thirty seconds, Information Society did what I had been so unable to do. They made a song that conveyed EXACTLY how I felt about driving downtown on the weekends. At first, I felt angry because they beat me to the punch, but within a couple of days, I felt the release of it all. I was GRATEFUL to them for writing the song that I just couldn’t write.

Over the years, my jealousy has abated a lot, but I’m not impervious to it. It’s funny to hear Colleen write about a method of dealing with jealousy that I encountered long ago, but never even thought of sharing it with others. Thanks for reminding me, Communicatrix. I needed that kick in the pants.

There is a woman at Daybreak protesting. She has a sign that says:

Daybreak Dream a Nightmare

Apparently, her complaints are with Kennecott Land and the Daybreak Homeowners Association:

• Resident with signs on Topview and Daybreak Pkwy. – The Daybreak Daily

The resident is a long-time Daybreak resident who lives in Founders. She has been an avid proponent of Daybreak but has many examples of KL and HOA failures to live up to their advertising, promises and obligations. A quick conversation with her was enlightening. She does not seem to be one who just has an axe to grind but someone who sees what needs to be fixed to keep our community great and some suggestions about how to fix them.

After living in Sugarhouse for the last six years, all of these complaints seem superfluous.

• Are you paying $1080 a month for 823 square feet?

• Is your house so old that the drains don’t drain, the power breakers pop if you run the microwave and the toaster at the same time or the colony of mice living in your basement are impossible to exterminate?

• Have you had panhandlers knock on your door asking for money?

• Have you dealt with boarded up windows and waist-high weeds at the two vacant houses on your street?

• Was your supposedly securely locked bicycle been stolen off your front porch in the middle of the night?

• Has a stranger been apprehended and arrested by the police in your backyard?

Daybreak is HEAVEN compared to some of the issues in other neighborhoods, even prestigious ones like Sugarhouse. If the Daybreak Dream is a NIGHTMARE, I think you need to learn the correct definition of nightmare and move downtown for a while. You’ll come back to South Jordan with a whole new perspective.

When I was in junior high, the show that I NEVER missed was Solid Gold. It was on Saturday evening and I made sure that my butt was in front of a television, no matter where I was just so I could watch Solid Gold. Just watching this video of the opening credits brought back all those memories with crystal clarity.

We didn’t have MTV, so I couldn’t watch music videos whenever I wanted, so the next best thing was Solid Gold. I remember seeing Michael Jackson’s video for Billie Jean on Solid Gold and I fell instantly in love. I remember watching Boy George and Culture Club performing Time (Clock of the Heart) on Solid Gold and I couldn’t believe my eyes. He sounded like a man, but he looked like a woman. It was my first experience with any sort of transvestism without it being a joke. Boy George looked exactly like a woman and no one was even phased by it.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that I could see that performance again on YouTube:

I fell in love with the blond guitar player on the left (Roy Hay). I knew lots of girls who had crushes on Boy George, but he never really did anything for me.

I also remembered Marilyn McCoo performing the most popular songs. I thought maybe that this was just a false memory, but no, she really did sing songs karaoke style when they didn’t have a video or live performance to show. Here she is singing Human Nature, by Michael Jackson.

Of course, I loved the Solid Gold Dancers. I wanted to be them so much that I chose dance for my gym credit every year of junior high. Watching the Solid Gold Dancers gave me new ideas and a bunch of wishes for a different body. Here’s a video of the dancers in all of their glory.

It’s funny how much one television show affected me. Looking back, it’s fully of sloppy choreography and lip syncing, but back in 1984, it was the coolest thing EVAR!

I wrote an entry last week about my brush with Schoolyard BS for Plaid Stallions. If you didn’t read it, here’s the link:

• Pick Me! » Best Boss An Angel Ever Had

I really considered it a writing exercise and loved the opportunity to reminisce about grade school. I posted a link to my entry just because I was proud of what I had written about an old memory and really didn’t think anything about it.

Apparently, there was some sort of contest and I was one of the winners!

• Plaid Stallions : Rambling and Reflections on 70’s pop culture: PS Contest: Schoolyard BS winners

Laura’s entry is a tad long, so it’s best read on her blog. Even though she is the spreader of the BS rumour, she uses it to get revenge on a bully, so it’s ok. This story has everything and I’m a sucker for pictures of Jaclyn Smith.

I feel like that time I won the literary magazine contest in eighth grade. I’m THAT happy!

Gosh, I hope the prizes are some Plaid Stallions Trading Cards! Wouldn’t that be so fitting?!

I LOVE this story from Joseph Scott about this year’s Fourth of July t-shirts for the whole family:

• Faded Glory 2009 t-shirt || Joseph Scott

Every time I looked at those shirts though it seemed like something wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t until we were out shopping and we saw them again that it finally dawned on me.

Mike and I never wear matching clothes. In fact, when we realize that we’ve inadvertently worn shirts of the same color, half the time, Mike runs back to the bedroom to change. I think I’m a little jealous of families that all dress the same.

For over four years, this page from Self Magazine has been hanging in my closet.

Our sole closet in the Sugarhouse house was large for a hundred year old house, but it was still tiny compared to modern closets. Mike and I shared it with the dog, who would hide in it when the thunder came. If we didn’t want dog hair on our clothes, then we were stuck with a pretty small place to hang our clothes. We have over THREE times the space to hang our clothing in the master bedroom closet in the new house.

I guess all this moving stress is worth it, but I’m still keeping this flow chart.

One of the good things about moving is that all your stuff is unearthed and moved around and old dusty boxes are opened and investigated. Take this for example:

This was stuck on my filing cabinet in the basement with four magnets. Magnets so strong that it actually STAYED on the filing cabinet despite the moving and traveling in the moving truck.

What you are looking at is a relic from almost ten years ago. Mike bought me a Spirograph for my birthday many years ago. Not a brand new Spirograph, mind you. He found an old one on eBay that looked just like the one I had when I was a kid. It felt like Christmas all over again when I opened that present.

When I was a kid, I tried over and over again to recreate the patterns that were shown in the little idea book that came with the Spirograph, but I was never able to do it. Apparently, all I needed was twenty years of refining my fine motor skills, because as an adult, I was easily able to do all three of the patterns that had plagued me as a child.

When I completed all three of those patterns, making them look JUST like the ones in the idea book, I was so proud! I remember putting them on the filing cabinet when we lived in West Jordan. Suddenly, it’s ten years later and I find myself admiring my handiwork again.

Thank you, Michael for such a lovely gift so many years ago. Not only did it bring back all those memories of my childhood, I was finally able to check a “To Do” off my list.

When I was in junior high, Levis 501 shrink-to-fit blue jeans were the coolest thing to wear. I remember skimping on all my other clothes just so I would have enough money to buy a few pairs of 501s.

These commercials are what were playing on MTV all the time:

This one has Stanley Tucci:

This one shows how we used to wear them: a little rolled up with white socks and penny loafers. I think we were all trying to look like Back to the Future.

In the end, Levis 501 NEVER fit me well. They always had a horrible loose bit at the back that would poke out and show the world my undies, no matter how tightly I cinched them with a belt. They might have been shrink-to-fit, but they never fit me.