I remember the last Easter that we celebrated before we became Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was so excited, I woke up early and looked around the house. I opened the curtains to look outside and found a little colorful toy on the windowsill. I realized that I shouldn’t do Easter without my parents, so I left it alone on the windowsill and lay back in bed, waiting for my parents to wake up.

In my mind, I waited a long time, but it was probably only a couple of minutes. I woke them up and they sat on the couch while I looked for “what the Easter Bunny left me.” I headed straight for the front room window and moved away the curtains. My mother said, “It’s like she knew it was there.” I did, Mom. Sorry I never told you.

After the divorce, Mom always gave us Easter baskets. They were beautiful creations with plastic Easter grass. I always had enough candy to last me for weeks, saving the best parts for last. The chocolate Easter bunnies that we sold in junior high to earn money for choir became the focus of the baskets. I always ate the solid chocolate from the ears down. They suffer less when you eat the head first.

Now, as I walk down the Easter aisle with Mike in the grocery store, I am untempted. He stocks up on Robin Eggs and Cadbury Eggs and even eyes the Peeps, but I’m unphased. I had enough Easter candy as a child that I never feel deprived. I let Mike fill the cart with his treats and none of them tempt me because I am full.

Apparently, some folks think feet first are better.

• The Joy of Tech comic… laughter is the best tech support.

Barbarians…

My friend Braidwood posted this lovely picture of me that she created herself for my birthday. It just made me SO happy to see it!

• Braidwood’s (B)log: Happy Birthday, Bella!

I think this is the first time anyone has drawn a picture of me except those few times Stacey included me in her drawings during childhood and that one time I caught Chris Hamblin drawing a picture of my legs.

Before Mike and I went to Hawaii, I was under the impression that when you get off the plane, you automatically get a Hawaiian lei. I thought there were people at the airport that give you a lei when you get off the plane, just like on Fantasy Island. I guess I had seen that image so often on television that I believed it was true.

Mike tried to convince me that it wasn’t. I’m sure he was worried that I would be disappointed when I got off the plane and there wasn’t a Hawaiian ambassador to give me a necklace of flowers. I wasn’t worried about being disappointed and after analyzing where my view of Hawaii had come from (Fantasy Island?!) I realized that Mike was probably right and that there wouldn’t be a group of women and men in flowered sarongs placing leis on the necks of everyone who walked off the airplane.

We left for Hawaii on the opening day of the 2002 Olympics. There was a huge snow storm and extra security because of the fear of terrorists at the time. We ran to our plane, carrying our shoes and ended up sitting on the tarmack for two hours waiting for de-icing. As our plane landed in San Francisco, our connecting flight to Hawaii lifted off without us on it.

I wasn’t worried. I knew that they would get us on another flight, even though we might be a little late. Mike, however, was near tears. At one point it looked like we might have to wait twelve hours in San Francisco and Mike nearly lost it. I tried to console him, “It’s okay, we’ll call Cory and ask to crash at his place. We’ll take him out to dinner or something.” Nothing would calm him down. When they said, “We can get you on a plane, but they’re leaving NOW. RUN!” We grabbed our bags and ran as fast as we could. We didn’t even know which island we were heading to. All we knew is that they told us to run.

For the seven hour flight, we sat apart. They were the only two seats left on the plane and no one was willing to trade. We passed notes to each other for about five minutes, but that became too cumbersome. We found out that our plane was landing in Maui instead of Kona. This seemed to devastate Mike, but I was just glad we didn’t have to spend twelve hours in San Francisco.

When we got to Maui, we changed flights to Kauai, finally able to sit together on the quick jaunt between the islands. That’s when Mike told me. He had arranged for a company to give me a Hawaiian lei when we landed in Kona. They would have been waiting for me to get off the plane when we had a layover there, but we missed that flight. He was so disappointed that I didn’t get my lei. I looked out the window and saw the emerald green island below us and felt a wave of love hit me. Mike had tried to make my fantasy of Hawaii come true and the rotten snow of Utah ruined it for him.

That was the most romantic thing Mike ever did for me and I will love him forever for it.

This was the first Valentines Day that I was able to celebrate. I had a great idea for a Valentine’s box. It was going to be a mailbox. I had already started making it and showed it to my friend. The next day at school, my friend showed up at school with a mailbox Valentine box. It was, by the way, much better than the one I had been working on. It was made out of a real mailbox with a slot cut in the top. It was shiny metal with hearts on it and far better than the one I had been making out of posterboard.

Everyone was oohing and aahing over her box, and I very quickly realized that if I showed up with my box, it would look like I was copying HER instead of the other way around. I was heartbroken. I held it as long as I could, but as soon as Mom and Carol came home from work, I burst into tears trying to tell them the story of the Purloined Valentine Idea.

Carol helped me make this box. We called it “Laura’s Love Bouquet.” I ended up winning first place for originality. My friend didn’t win a prize at all. I’m still smiling about that. I can’t believe that was twenty-five years ago. I remember the betrayal so vividly that you would think that it was yesterday.

I got an email from Jim Hardcastle, Calvin’s little brother the other day and I thought I’d share it with you all.

Hi again,

I have been reading this for awhile now and I am positive that it is my big brother that affected you so much. First, you probably didn’t know Cal had a little brother, but he does. I was adopted by our dad about 15 years ago. I enjoy reading these stories about him. It makes me feel good to know that after all these years he is still in your memories. I would love to hear more if you could spare the time.

P.S. The purple and gold was for the Minnesota Vikings. He was a huge fan.

P.P.S. Calvin was moved shortly after his funeral to the cemetery on 7800 South and 1300 West

Jim,

It’s so nice to hear from you. I didn’t know Calvin had a younger brother. I only knew about his sister because he lived with her. He was pretty tight lipped about his family. In fact, it was rare that he ever talked. I think I was only blessed with what I heard because I was the only one awake at all those parties.

I wish I had more than what I put on my weblog, but every one of my memories went down there. Since I’ve written about him, I feel so much better. It’s like he was able to leave me at peace when I finally told my piece of his life to the world. I wish he had lived longer. He was a funny guy.

Good Luck, Laura Moncur

P.S. Is it okay if I post your email on my weblog so that the rest of the world can hear the rest of the story? Is there anything you’d like to add?

Yes that would be just fine if you posted what I had to say and thank you for reminding me about just how great my big brother was and still is.

Receiving this email made me feel even better about posting my experiences with Calvin here. I am so glad I was able to make a human connection with my memories. Thanks for emailing me, Jim. Sorry you lost your brother when you were so young. We all lost a great friend when Calvin left us.

If you didn’t read the entries I wrote about my old friend, Calvin Hardcastle, you can see them here:

• Pick Me! » Calvin Hardcastle

This is the last picture I have of 1980. Luckily, it shows all of my presents right there in one place.

I am opening the BEST present that I got that year. It was called the Fashion Design Center. I can barely describe how fun and cool it was. There were plates of heads, torsos, pants, skirts and footwear. You could choose whatever you wanted, place the plates in the center and put a piece of paper over it. Then you go over the plates and paper with a black crayon. It would show the outline of the model that I had created. After that, I could color the model with colored pencils, water colors or crayons. Honestly, the colored pencils worked better than anything, but having those options was really cool. I played with that toy until about ninth grade. I have no idea where it is now, but it served me well for the years I had it.

I think the SuperCurl 3 in 1 was a hair dryer. I don’t quite remember anything except hoping that it would finally be the magic tool that would help me make my hair look cool. It didn’t. It would take me about ten years before I learned that if I didn’t brush my hair, it would be just fine. No fancy blow dryers or curling irons are necessary, just leave my hair alone, and it will look so much better.

The next present is the Fresh n’ Fancy Perfume Making Kit. I made many smelly concoctions with that thing. The next year, I would get a chemistry set for Christmas. You can’t imagine the smells that I made with that thing. It’s not pictured here, but that same year, I got a fingernail polish making kit. I very quickly learned that I could make red, pink or orange polish and no matter what I did, the polish would peel off my nails in one rubbery piece.

The last present pictured there are my Fireball Roller Skates! I loved those things! Chelly Bird, my friend, had a pair of tennis shoe roller skates, so now I would finally be able to skate with her. Sure, those skates were more like roller derby skates, but they were better than nothing! I wanted to skate with them so bad that the next day, I skated on our covered patio in the backyard. There wasn’t much room, but I wanted to be able to play with my new toy. I skated all that winter to school.

That year, I got a lot of presents. I think that year we got past the “Don’t Celebrate The Holidays” technicality by opening presents on New Year’s Eve instead of Christmas Morning. It didn’t matter to me. For once I was more like normal kids. I got to come back from the school break and say, “I got roller skates for Christmas.” We got a pretty Christmas tree with lights and pine smells. It was a great Christmas that year. I’m smiling just thinking about it.

I love this picture. This is the first Christmas Stocking that I ever had. It’s not fancy velvet like the ones I have now. It was made of felt and Carol wrote our names on them with glue and glitter. Over the years, our names cracked and fell off the stockings. Eventually, I got married and moved out of the house. I have no idea where those stockings are now, probably at the Salt Lake County dump. Doesn’t matter. I can remember them clear as day.

I am smelling the Jovan Musk perfume that came in my stocking. This was half-way through sixth grade. Soon I would be in junior high school and my mom would let me wear makeup. For now, though, all I could do was wear perfume. I thought it was really grown up. Jovan still makes that perfume. Whenever I smell it, I think of trying to prove I was grown up.

To the left of the photo is the old black and white TV on its TV stand. I will never forget the shock of pointing at an old black and white photo of my mom in her younger days. In the background was OUR TV. I had such a hard time believing that my mom could have owned that television for longer than I was alive. She said it was hers when she lived in an apartment before she met my dad. I couldn’t believe it.

Also to the left is an end table that my dad eventually got in the divorce. Every once and a while I see one of these end tables at the trendy retro furniture stores in Gallery Row. They cost over a hundred dollars. My dad ended up damaging that table so much that it went in the garbage bin years before it could have fetched such a great price.

To the right of the photo is our fireplace. We pretty much only lit fires during Christmas time. Carol would always have those Duraflame logs that we could light so easily. Once she even let us light three at a time. It was a huge fire, but it didn’t burn any hotter than a one-log fire. I remember sitting on the hearth and feeling the heat of the fire on my back. It was always so warm in the family room.

In honor of the holiday, I brought out my photo album and scanned in the photos of my first Christmas that I remember. My dad had been really into the whole Jehovah Witness thing when I was a kid. We technically weren’t supposed to celebrate any holidays after the divorce, but my mom missed Christmas, so she said she was going to celebrate it no matter what. We didn’t need to participate if we didn’t want, but she was going to have a tree. She said she would get us presents if we wanted and that year, both Stacey and I really wanted.

Here is a picture of Stacey and I in front of the Christmas Tree. Stacey is on the left looking like a commercial for Christmas itself and I’m on the right. I hadn’t learned how to do my hair yet. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to flow like Farrah Fawcett’s hair. Check out the Holly Hobby pajamas. I wore those until they didn’t fit anymore, I loved them so much. They stuck to the sheets because they were made of flannel. At night, under the sheets, when I moved in the dark, I could see little static electricity sparks.

The presents we are holding are some toys that Marieva Richie gave us. Marieva was a friend of my mom and she used to always give us little presents. The curly pencil that I’m holding on the left was something that I actually still have. It was so cool that I didn’t want to use it as a pencil. It’s in my memento box with my old journals and letters from girlfriends.

I can tell so much from this picture. The cabinet on the right of the picture is the china closet. It is an antique from my grandma in Montana. I guess Dad didn’t take that piece of furniture until after December 1980. It ended up in my dad’s apartment. He eventually gave it to me. Right now, it’s stored in the basement because the house we are living in is so small that I don’t have a place to put it.

Also to the right is the bookcase with the National Geographics. My grandpa in Montana had a subscription to National Geographic for us kids. We got every one from 1978 to 1982. I got custody of them when mom sold the house in West Valley because no one else wanted them. I kept the cool ones (I have ALL the National Geographics on DVD, now, so I don’t really need the paper) and gave the rest to The DI. It’s funny to see them there. I don’t think any of us really pulled them out and read them. They weren’t organized usefully like an encyclopedia, so I couldn’t really use them for school reports.

Last time I drove past the house in West Valley, it looks like the new owners have removed those shutters off those windows and removed the huge bushes in front of them. I remember that room always being so dark because of the bushes and the shutters. That didn’t bother me, though, because we had privacy.

On the Christmas tree, those white balls were made of plastic and were covered with silk or angel hair. The cats loved them and one by one, we had to throw them away over the years because a cat had torn it apart. There were also some fabric ornaments that showed Victorian-Era Christmas people. Mom sprayed them with pine-scented air freshener because she missed the smell of a real Christmas tree. Christmas smells like Lysol to me.

I remember 1976.

That was one of the summers that we drove back to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to see my mom’s side of the family. We were Jehovah Witness by then, so we weren’t supposed to celebrate any of the Independence Day stuff. I remember going to Auntie Doris’ house and being allowed to play with sparklers. One of my cousins was so scared of them she cried huge hysterical tears. They told me she had been burned by a sparkler once, so I followed all the rules so I wouldn’t be scared like she was. I was embarrassed for her. Crying like that when all she had to do was just stay away from them. Sparklers were never as good as those ones in Wisconsin. I felt like I could write letters in the sky with their flame forever.

Milwaukee was decked out for The Bicentennial. I remember that every fire hydrant was painted to look like a drummer in a colonial band. Each little fixture was painted in bright red, white and blue. They were pretty. I remember asking my dad why they had painted all the fire hydrants like that and he told me it’s because they worshipped their country instead of Jehovah. That was enough of an answer for me.

We watched the fireworks on television. They were special Bicentennial fireworks and they lasted too long for my attention span. I couldn’t understand why the grownups were watching the fireworks on television. They weren’t that interesting. I hadn’t really seen any fireworks in real life, so they didn’t seem all that different than the fireworks on Love American Style. They were just colors on the TV screen.

The Bicentennial was a big deal to the grownups, but it didn’t really affect me all that much. There were some different quarters to collect. They had one of those colonial drummers on it just like the fire hydrants in Milwaukee. I wonder if there are any patriotic fire hydrants left. How I would love to take a picture of them now.

I was seven years old

My hair is starting to get annoyingly long. It gets in the way and is flopping around my shoulders. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it. It just means that I’ve finally noticed that it’s long. It has felt short for years.

I used to have short hair. My hairdresser, Jackie, was so wonderful that I would let her do whatever she wanted to my hair. It used to be this long before I found her and we cut it all off and sent it to Locks of Love. When she was doing my hair, I kept it short and had a haircut every four to six weeks.

Then, Jackie’s cancer came back.

I kept going to her until she was unable to cut hair. I kept visiting her at her home and when her hair fell out, I took her to buy a couple of wigs. When things got worse, I sat with her, talking about her past or in silence. She talked to me a lot before things got their worst. she told me of her respect for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She grew up in Las Vegas and the Reverend came to her city to march. She and her mother marched with him. He had a huge impact on Jackie’s life. She had a framed poster of him in her small apartment.

When she died, I took in her two cats, Andrew and Maddie. It took a while, but we were able to find a home for them. Months later, I called the girl who adopted them. She loved Maddie and her children loved Andrew. They were very happy and she never considered giving them back.

I have found a new hairdresser, but I don’t have the same relationship with her as I did with Jackie. Before I met Jackie, my hair had the exact same cut as I have now. When she died, I started growing it out into a simple bob, which turned into this long mane. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a hairdresser I trust as much as I did Jackie. I don’t even know if I want one.

I guess I’ll just let my hair grow and grow until it stops growing. It’s just easier that way.

The worst part of paranoia is when you’re right.

Five months ago, I was laid off at my work… No, I have to start this story earlier. Five months and three weeks ago, I found out that my grandpa has prostate cancer. For about 32 hours, I considered moving to Billings, Montana. I was going to ask for a transfer from my employer and move up there to help my grandpa. That idea ended abruptly with my realization that living in Billings would NOT be good for me. After summers of starvation up there, returning would be a BIG issue for me. Not to mention the fact that my grandpa does not want me to move up there to help him. He doesn’t want any help, which is really hard for me, but that’s another story. We’re talking about my paranoia.

I let it slip to my immediate supervisor my problems and my hopes to move up there to help. A couple of days later, the Vice President asked how were things with my grandfather and would I need to be moving up there? I told him that I couldn’t I wouldn’t be able to live in that city and my grandpa didn’t even want me to come. That conversation felt like a test. I didn’t know what I was being tested for and I had no idea if I had passed.

Over the next couple of weeks, people stopped looking me in the eye. I could tell you the order in which they stopped looking me in the eye if it meant anything to you, but the important thing is that I noticed that certain people had stopped seeing me. I’m pretty sensitive to these kinds of things, so this was my first indication that something was going on. Maybe I failed that test, whatever it was.

I knew for a fact that I was going to lose my job on my birthday. One person acknowledged my birthday, my immediate supervisor, who sat across from me and had to stare at me every day. She gave me bath items in a ripped gift bag. I tried to thank her politely and hid it under my desk. “I’m just paranoid,” I kept telling myself.

Two days after my birthday, they called me into the Vice President’s office. “Should I bring a pad to take notes?” They shook their heads. “Maybe they are just bothered by me and want me to do some things differently,” I told myself. Nope, they were laying me off. They gave me a generous severance and a glowing letter of recommendation. Even though I knew I wasn’t needed, it felt like a kick in the gut. Even though I knew it was coming, it felt like a surprise. I spent the next week looking for a job and found another that quickly. I struggled to learn a new job with a huge bruise on my abdomen from my previous employer.

It was Mike who noticed it. In a fit of paranoia, he checked the computer logs. Approximately two weeks before my lay-off, my employer had started hitting my weblog heavily. At first I thought he was just over-reacting. I thought that maybe the hits had come from me, not someone else, but I was wrong. The Billings office had looked at it. The Salt Lake office was still looking at it, even after they laid me off.

At first, I didn’t think it was significant. I had told my immediate supervisor about my weblog. She knew that I wrote in it every day. After Mike gave me a close look at the logs, I realized that this type of activity wasn’t normal. The entries that they looked at over and over were the ones where I talked about work. I had been very open with them about my lack of work and I had been very open on my weblog about it. Nothing that I said should have been a surprise. To any observer in that office, not one word should have been a surprise.

I immediately made those weblog entries private. If you were one of those people who have been reading since the beginning, then you’re lucky because they aren’t coming back. The amount of times that they hit those entries was excessive. I mostly pulled them to get them to stop obsessing over it. Last time I had Mike check the logs, they still come here every couple of days.

This is what I think happened. (Continue Reading…)

Sometimes I think about typing up all my old journals. I have them in a box. I started writing when I got a diary in fifth grade. It was a small light blue book with a lock. I find passwords to be slightly more secure now, but I realized that any lock can be cracked. I wonder if I should unlock them all for the world to see.

I can’t imagine that they would be interesting to anyone but me and my friends. Of course, I can’t imagine that this weblog is interesting to anyone but me and my friends. I guess my circle of friends has opened up to the world and you find all my silly little thoughts of today to be worth a daily read. I’m wondering about my thoughts of yesterday.

Would you be interested in the trials and tribulations of Laura Lund from fifth grade on? Leave me a comment or drop me an email. Would you read it if I posted it?

“You’ll never guess what I found when I was moving.”

“What?” Dawni had called me in the middle of the day. I was at work and uncomfortable about having a conversation.

“It’s one of the tapes you sent me when I was a nanny in Chicago. You talk about Mike on it.”

“Mike?”

“Yeah, your husband.”

“Were we married then?”

“No. You were in love with some guy from K-Mart called Doug Monson.”

“Oh yeah, Doug… I really liked him…”

“You taped some music off the radio, which isn’t good, but when you talk, it’s really funny! I’ll let you borrow the tape when we meet for lunch. It’s hilarious!”

“Ok…”

With a quick phone call, Dawni sent me into a worry. I was offered a visit from my past self and I wasn’t entirely excited about letting her stay. Would she soil the furniture?

“That tape is so funny. You were so much happier then.”

I knew for a fact that I wasn’t. “I actually feel much happier now.”

“Well, you were more hyperactive then!”

I held my tongue. If I had spoken, I would have said, “I’ve worked really hard to get some peace in my life. That hyperactivity was actually mania and the depression that it hid hasn’t hit me for a long time. I wouldn’t go back to that time for a million dollars.”

Even after Dawni loaned the tape to me, I was filled with trepidation. I tried to joke about it with her, “Dynatone. I really splurged on you, Dawni.” We laughed, but I looked at what I had written: 10-8-87 from Laura.

The tape was full of nearly forgotten crushes and old gossip. After finishing the first side, I wanted to shake that girl from eighteen years ago. I bragged about how easy college was, unaware of the hell that student teaching was going to be. I was blindly following the convoluted path that I had made for myself. The plan was: I want to be a writer, but I can’t make money as a writer, so I’ll get my teaching degree. Then I’ll have all summer long to write.

I felt like shaking her and saying, “If you want to be a writer, be a writer! Don’t try to cram your dreams into a little box of practicality!” I was sitting in my car thinking about that girl from eighteen years ago. She was exactly like I am now. I am cramming my full-time writing into my life with a full time job. There isn’t quite enough time for both, but I am STILL acting as if I can’t make money as a writer.

That girl from eighteen years ago is lost. I can’t go back in time and force her to major in Journalism instead of Mathematics. I cannot change the decisions that she made back in the Eighties. All I can do is make sure I don’t make the same mistakes right now.

Dear Stacey,

We never talk about the time we almost lost you at Raging Waters. I don’t even know if you remember it. Our family only went to Raging Waters once. I don’t know how old I was. I don’t remember how old you were. I remember thinking about boys and liking them, but I was far more interested in learning how to stay afloat on the raft when the waves were turned on. It must have been before I was fourteen years old, so you were no more than nine.

Mom and Carol took us to Raging Waters. I remember being surprised that Carol had come with us and equally surprised that she didn’t want to swim. Why would she come if she didn’t want to swim? Now I understand the desire to want to be part of a family outing without necessarily wanting to participate in the activity, but back then, I couldn’t fathom it.

Mom and Carol didn’t swim. They set up a base camp in the shade and let us slide down the huge slides and swim in Wild Wave all day. That was the plan at least. I remember climbing the stairs to get to the top of the slide: stair after stair after stair. It felt like we would never get to the top. The higher we got, the more nervous you got. We convinced the guy at the top to let both of us go at that same time. I should have known you would have never chickened out, though. When we got to the bottom of the slide and splashed into the pool at the end, we knew that the long climb up those stairs was worth it. We must have gone up those stairs at least fifteen times that day.

Before there was Raging Waters, there was Wild Wave. It was a big pool that periodically would start acting like the ocean with waves. Families could rent little rafts to ride on, or you could try to body surf the waves. Raging Waters bought Wild Wave and turned it into the water park that it is today. Dad had taken us to Wild Wave once, so the big wave pool felt safe and comfortable compared to the huge water slides. In a rare splurge, Mom and Carol got us each a raft to ride. I felt like a surfer in California.

It wasn’t long before Mom was calling me out of the pool. The waves were almost finished, but I didn’t want to leave them early. I got out and you were sitting by the side of the big pool. Next to you was a lifeguard and my heart fell into the bottom of my stomach. You were ok. The danger had come and gone while I pretended I was a surfer. I hadn’t even seen you go under. Luckily, the lifeguard had.

Mom and Carol tried to let us stay and play for the rest of the day, but neither one of us wanted to go back in. I remember trying to convince you to go back in, but you wouldn’t go. We left the park far earlier than any of us thought we would. Our family never went back to Raging Waters and we never talk about that day.

I pass Raging Waters every day on my way to work. When I ride my bike, I have to be careful because there is a huge crack in the sidewalk that could throw me from my bike if I’m not paying attention. I can smell the flowers at the entrance and sometimes the lifeguards wait for the bus. They smell like coconut oil and I send a quiet thank you out to the lifeguard who saved you that day.

Your sister,
Laura

I remember it vividly. I was sitting on the powder blue toilet lid looking at my mom putting on makeup. I probably was eleven years old and in the middle of grade school hell. It was a Peanuts cartoon that scared me.

“Mom, I was reading a Peanuts cartoon and Charlie Brown was talking about being a kid and falling asleep in the car.”

“Hmm…”

“Well, he said that he wanted to be a kid forever because when you grow up you’re the one that has to drive the car and no one is there to carry you into the house when you fall asleep.”

I went on to express my fears about growing up. I told her that if these are the best years of my life, then I’m not enjoying them very much. She stopped putting on her makeup and looked at me. I think she said something about how she was proud that I would understand that comic at all. I don’t remember the compliment, but I remember what her answer to my fear of aging was,

“Every year I’ve lived has been better than before. All those big birthdays haven’t made me feel older and I wouldn’t go back to being your age for anything. Growing older has been nothing but good for me and I look forward to each year.”

That was enough for me. I felt better. If my mom was happy being 33 years old, then I could be happy knowing that when I’m 33, I’ll be happy too. I thought that maybe the women of our family are late bloomers. Maybe the best years of our lives come when we’re in our sixties.

Because of that early morning conversation in the bathroom, I have never been fazed by those major birthdays. While my friends rejoiced at 21, I was happy that I could go to Wendover and dance clubs. I felt the same as I did before, I just had more privileges. Would I trade with being eleven years old and tormented by school peers? Hell no.

When my friends lamented turning 30, I had the same quiet birthday party as always. I was happy to add another year on my age. Would I trade with being a skinny 21 year old who was alone and confused about her future? Hell no.

I haven’t hit forty, but it is a mere four years away. I’m not scared of it. My mom was right. Every year has been better than the year before. Even when I’ve been in the middle of hard times, I would never trade with time from my past. Even my most miserable at 36 is better than my happiest at 19. And seeing my mom at her birthday this year, made me really look forward to my fifties.

They lived in Idaho Falls. It’s not halfway between Billings and Salt Lake City, but that’s where we stayed when we took the trip in two days instead of one. We stayed overnight at Aunt Babe’s house, sleeping in the basement, which felt better than any hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Sometimes we would stay there a couple of days, playing with Uncle Wayne’s rabbits (“Girls, they’re food, not pets.”) and Aunt Babe’s supply of toys.

Aunt Babe was my grandma’s sister, so technically, she was my dad’s aunt and my great aunt, but we never called her Great Aunt. Her name wasn’t Babe either. That’s just what the family called her. Her real name was Ann. I have no idea where her nickname came from. I just took it at face value that she had two names, one just as valid as the other.

Aunt Babe had a parrot. He could say lots of phrases. I thought it was strange that he would say, “Polly wants a cracker,” when his name wasn’t Polly. I can’t remember what his name was, but I knew it wasn’t Polly. He also said, “Babe has a nice butt.” Uncle Wayne had taught him that one. Aunt Babe didn’t like it. He would laugh when we laughed.

My favorite memory of Aunt Babe is the day that she played a Yogi Bear board game with me. She let me make up my own rules, even when I did it to win the game. It was the first time I had ever played a game not according to the rules. I felt such a freedom and gratitude to her.

She died suddenly of a stroke when I was about ten years old. She and Uncle Wayne had been loading rocks for their landscaping. Her last words were, “Oh my head.” It was the beginning of summer. We had only spent a couple of weeks in Billings. I remember coming to Grandma when she heard the news. She was sitting on the edge of her bed. I remember trying to comfort her, “Just cry, Grandma, you’ll feel better.” She shook, but tears wouldn’t come out. “I can’t. The medicine Grandma takes makes it so I can’t cry.” That was the moment in time that I hated the pharmaceutical industry. They took away my grandma’s tears when she needed them.

I remember going back to Idaho Falls for the funeral. My parents came up from Salt Lake and there was talk of us going back with them, but my grandma decided she was able to keep us for the rest of the summer. We stayed at the same house, but it was suddenly only Uncle Wayne’s house. Aunt Babe’s parrot was quiet. There was no way to get him to talk or laugh with us. He knew more than we did what had happened. In the end, Uncle Wayne had to send him to the San Diego Zoo.

Uncle Wayne married again to a lovely woman named Lois. She was nice, but she never played the Yogi Bear game with me. She got colon cancer and died soon after the colostomy. He married again to a woman I never met. When Uncle Wayne died, she inherited the house on a living trust, which meant that she could live there for the rest of her life, but she couldn’t sell the home and it would go back to Uncle Wayne’s children when she died. I don’t know why I know this, but it was mentioned to me in whispered voices.

About a month ago, we were reminiscing about Aunt Babe and Uncle Wayne. Stacey asked me, “What was Aunt Babe’s last name?” I drew a blank. I couldn’t remember it for the life of me. It felt like the moment that I realized that I didn’t have the recipe for Rhubarb Crunch after my grandma died. Something that should have been carefully logged in my memory was missing. There was a hole where knowledge should have been.

Two nights ago, it came back in a flash. I was almost asleep, relaxing in the strength of Mike’s arms. I bolted up, looking at him. “Wilcox.” He looked at me like I was dreaming or talking in my sleep. I clarified myself, “Aunt Babe’s last name was Wilcox.” He smiled uneasily at me and I continued, “Stacey asked me Aunt Babe’s last name a couple of weeks ago and I couldn’t remember it. It was Wilcox. Wayne and Ann Wilcox.” Mike nodded and tucked me into bed again. “You have to remember it because I won’t.” He comforted me and I fell back to sleep, dreaming of laughing parrots and Yogi Bear board games.

• Anna Myrtle Lipe – Aunt Babe’s Geneaology Records

• Wayne Wilcox – Uncle Wayne’s Geneaology Records – It hasn’t been updated since his death.

Today is Pioneer Day here in Utah. I just read what I wrote about The Days of ’47 last year. Lucky thing because I was about to tell you the same story as I did last year. The only difference this year is that I now work for a Utah-based company, so I have the holiday off.

Tomorrow, when the rest of the country goes back to work, I’ll be sleeping in. After working for companies that didn’t recognize the holiday for years, it feels good to look forward to a three day weekend. I never minded working on Pioneer Day, but I sure enjoy having the day off.

I think I’ll go to K-Mart and get one of their hogi sandwiches. I wonder if they taste the same…

I can’t believe that I have been writing for two years and I haven’t written anything about 7-11 Day. It was so important to me when I was a teenager and now it flies by just like any other day.

In the late eighties, I worshipped at the altar of the convenience store. I had a car and the best excuse to leave the house and go driving in the car was, “I’m going to get a Swig.” My favorite convenience store was Holiday Oil because they would refill my 32 ounce Big Swig cup for only $39 cents. I used to save enough money so that I could have a couple of swigs every day. I would dispense a squirt of Cherry Coke and fill the rest with Diet Coke. I loved to go Swigging.

Mike Pinkston was the first person to mention 7-11 Day to me. One year, we drove around until the appointed hour, waiting until exactly 7:11 pm to stop at the nearest convenience store that the gods had lead us to. All we did was buy a swig, though, and I had to count out my pennies to do it.

I never truly celebrated it until I started hanging out with Mike Moncur. We created a whole religion around the Cult of the Convenience Store. July 11^th was the primary holiday, but there was a lesser holiday of November 7^th. One year, the two of us bought a cake at Albertson’s. We had it decorated with the phrase, “Happy 7-11 Day!” We drove around the city until the appointed hour and then entered the nearest 7-11, presenting the unimpressed clerk with the cake. I don’t even think we bought a Big Gulp while we were there.

Recently, 7-11 caught on to the fact that they could celebrate and promote themselves on that day. Two years ago, they gave a free small Slurpee to anyone who came in. When we arrived at 7:11 pm (or so, our devotion isn’t as strong as it used to be), the floor was a sticky mess and the clerk looked miserable and tired. I think I bought a bottled water and we refrained from mentioning anything about 7-11 Day.

Ironically, I rarely drink soda anymore. We still hit the convenience stores several times a week for Mike’s caffeine fix, but they have become a place where I feel like I can’t get anything healthy to eat. I guess I’ve fallen away from the Cult of the Convenience Store. I still celebrate 7-11 Day, though.

God, I love this stuff. I remember being a kid and being so excited to work with computers in the future. Check out the huge floppy disk she’s holding!

How It Works…The Computer

Now, I work with computers all day every day. My Zodiac Tapwave is probably more powerful that the monstrocity she is sitting at. I can’t even imagine a day without it. How would I keep track of my food? How would I play my music? How would I tell what time it is?

Via: Boing Boing – Kids book about computers from 1971 scanned and posted

I was at the Utah College of Massage Therapy, waiting for them to call out my name. I rode my bike here and I was a little winded from the ride up the hills and happy for some water and a seat to rest on. It felt good to write and listen to their relaxing music.

I just heard some one say the words, “chug-a-lug” to someone else. It was the brown-haired girl manning the computer. That was the name that the kids in elementary school made fun of me with. It hurt a little to hear it. I looked up and identified the girl who said it. She hadn’t been talking to me. She hadn’t even noticed the glare I threw her. Of course, she had no idea that I had been tortured with that name for years.

(Continue Reading…)

I just finished covering the Red Chair. It matches the couch and the living room but it seems a little more bland to me. Something about that red velvet that makes it just look over the top fabulous to me. Sage chenille just makes it seem… I don’t know… boring, somehow.

It’s a nice comfortable chair for sitting at the computer typing my fingers off. I’m sure the DI will take the fashionably ergonomic chair that used to be in front of my computer. Mike is willing to live with the sage green version of the red chair, so it seems that all of us are happy now. I just need to make sure the cats don’t use it as a scratching post, though…

We moved out of Stonehedge Apartments in 1996, so we’ve had the chair for almost ten years now. It was sitting by the dumpster. The owner hadn’t been willing to just toss it in the garbage. Whomever they were, they loved the chair too much. Mike wasn’t home. Kathleen Bennett was with me and the two of us hauled the chair into the apartment. I loved it instantly.

The cats loved it instantly. It was obvious that it had been a favorite scratching post at its previous home and our cats furtively tried it out. They very quickly learned that it was ok to scratch it if Mike was watching. Only Laura would scream at them for scratching the red chair.

Mike, and everyone else who has ever seen it, has thought of the red chair as a joke. “She pulled it out of the dumpster.” The truth was that I found it lovingly set by the dumpster, but the image of Laura pulling the ratty thing out of the dumpster was funnier, so I let the slip go. “It’s horrible. Put it back!” No matter how much I tried to convince them, they couldn’t see how fabulous it is.

When we moved to Sugarhouse, we went from 3500 square feet to about 900 square feet, so a lot of our furniture ended up in storage. That was two years ago. In that two years, we paid $2400 to keep that furniture in storage. We could have bought a house of new furniture with the money that we spent to keep our old stuff, so we have decided to give it all away to save money, including the red chair.

The huge pile of our personal items was sitting on the driveway, waiting for Deseret Industries to come pick it up. We allowed our neighbors to pillage the pile for whatever they wanted. They took the imitation Tiffany lamp. “Don’t you want this red chair? It just kills me to let it go.” They looked at it in disgust. “We don’t have room for it, sorry.” I sighed and hoped that someone would find it at the DI and love it as much as I have.

“Did the DI pick up the stuff?” I asked Mike, hoping that they took everything. “They took everything but one. Guess what they left.” I cringed at the thought of trying to dispose of that huge, broken treadmill on my own. “The treadmill?” “Nope.” “The red chair?” “Yeah,” Mike laughed, “They said it was too crappy for them.” We laughed because we have seen the wreck of furniture that they WILL take. If they left the red chair, it must truly be horrible.

“It’s a sign! I need to keep the red chair.” I didn’t want it to go to the DI and I breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t take it. I could hear Mike shaking his head on the end of the other line. “No, Laura. It’s a sign to throw the chair away.”

As of right now, the red chair is in front of my computer desk, taking the place of the ergonomically correct computer chair. I have plans of recovering it and changing it from a cat scratching post to a unique and interesting piece of furniture that will be the envy of everyone who sees it. Why am I the only one who can see how beautiful it is, right now?

I used to live at 4505 South White Cherry Way in West Valley, Utah. My parents moved to West Valley in the middle of third grade and I stayed in that home until I married Mike. My mom sold that house several years ago, so it’s off limits to me now. A nice young family lives there now, embedding more happy memories into its walls.

My friend, Sceverenia, lived just down the street, also on White Cherry Way. Her parents sold their house and moved down south to Fairview a few years ago. I think about their house a lot and I keep dreaming about it. When we were teenagers, we used to beep our horns when we drove past each others’ houses. “Hello!” the horn would say.

To this day, Mike’s family still lives on Palmer Drive. I tell him how lucky he is that his parents still live in the house that he grew up in. We visit every few Sundays. Sometimes after the weekend visit, we drive past my old home on White Cherry. They wrapped the bushes out front with “Caution” tape for the winter. The three little bushes look like tiny murder scenes with all that yellow tape. I refrain from beeping past Scev’s house. It’s vacant and the real estate sign taunts me, “Your childhood is up for sale…AGAIN.”

Google Maps just added satellite images to their Maps feature. To this day, I use the old West Valley address when I test things. When I typed it in, I felt the rush of it all. There’s my house. There’s Scev’s house. There’s Mike’s house. There’s the house that Matt Strebe lived in when his mom was married to Bud. There’s Mike Pinkston’s house. There’s Chuck’s house. There’s Dylan’s house. There’s Kennedy Junior High. There’s Academy Park Elementary. There’s Hunter Elementary. There’s the Circle K where Scev and I sluffed school for the first time. There’s the Holiday Oil where Pinkston blocked my Beetle with his huge Ford 450 so I couldn’t leave. My whole life was in that one square. My world was that small.

Ironically, the largest single lot of land in the square is the cemetery…

It’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep. I tried warm milk and it’s just not working. I woke up at midnight with that horrible sleep paralysis. Mike was snoring next to me and I couldn’t move. The adrenaline kicked in and I was wide awake by the time that I could move. I thought that I might be able to go back to sleep, but by one am, I realized I had a problem, so I let Sid outside to pee and sat down at the computer with a mug of warm milk. I still haven’t felt drowsy. I have to work today. I need to get some sleep. I must be stressed or something.

I dreamt about Sceverenia’s house in West Valley again. It was still for sale and vacant. All of us were there reminiscing about old times. The house was in a state of disrepair. My mom showed up at the end and wanted me to come home. My cat, Maggie, was there and I was having trouble scooping her up to bring her home with me. I was stealing whatever I could out of the house (even though those strange appliances weren’t ever in her house). I was just packing that stuff into my car. In the dream, Scev’s dad, Dick, was dead, but I kept saying that he was there. I think this all has to do with him somehow. I guess I never got to say goodbye to her dad. I didn’t think that the last time I saw him would be the last time ever. I can’t even remember the last time I saw him.

I used to wish he was my dad. He never went insane. He was quiet. He would pretend that he couldn’t hear us because he was “deaf.” Really, I think he cultivated that idea because then he could listen to our conversations. I always thought it was hilariously funny when he could hear some things we said just fine, but others, he would pretend he couldn’t hear. I think I heard him say the word, “What?” more than any other word.

One time, I watched him eat. He left a bite of each kind of food on his plate: one bite of meat, one bite of potatoes, one bite of vegetable. I asked him why and he said, “That’s for the gods.” He went to his room and left the plate on the table. A few minutes later, I caught the cat eating the food that he had left on the plate. I had this shining moment when I realized that the cat was one of the gods. Suddenly everything around me felt holy and god-like. I could be a god. Spanky the dog could be a god. This time, the god was the cat. It was as if the spiritual world commingled with the terrestrial world in a strange mix of color and beauty.

I guess I keep dreaming about her house because I needed to claim all those memories as mine. I feel really bad that I never got to tell Dick how much I loved him. He was a great dad to Scev and me. I feel like the world is less because he’s gone and he never even knew that I thought that way about him. He was always patient and willing to lend a deaf ear.

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.

“Have you read the Da Vincio…”

His voice trailed off, but I knew what he was talking about.

“No, I haven’t read The Da Vinci Code .”

“I was watching something on The History Channel about it…”

I could tell that he wanted to talk about a book he didn’t read and conspiracy theories he has only had a passing glance of. I went through my conspiracy theory phase in the early nineties, so I had no patience for him.

“I heard it was a cheap rip-off of Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I read Foucault’s Pendulum, so I didn’t bother with The Da Vinci Code. Foucault’s Pendulum was written in Italian and translated rather poorly, so maybe that’s…”

The phone rang and I answered it professionally even though I was in mid-rant. We never got back to the conversation and in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t get to finish. I was about to talk about Portuguese, Latin and Italian. I was about to tell him how I regretted that I didn’t write the translations in my book so that my friends could read it. I was about to tell him about Dylan’s rant, “Bring me the head of Umberto Eco!”

I just looked up The Da Vinci Code at my library’s website. They have 10 books and 49 holds. Anyone who has stepped into a Barnes and Noble in the last year has seen the huge display of Da Vinci items. Apparently, The History Channel even has a show about it. All that popularity makes me recoil from it like a Britney Spears concert.

Yet, at one time, I was so intrigued by the idea of conspiracy theories that I was willing to slog through Foucault’s Pendulum. I looked up the Latin. I muddled my way through the Portuguese. I did my best with the Italian. I consumed the Templars. I was intrigued by the Kabala. I even chuckled at the thought that Mickey Mouse had a part in it all. I didn’t go all Illuminati or anything, but I enjoyed the ideas for a brief month or two in my life.

I liked the ideas in the past. Why do I recoil from them now? Is it just the popularity of them that makes me dismiss them with a “cheap rip-off” jab? I’m feeling guilty now and my words from this morning sound callous and hollow. I guess I should read the book. It’s not like it’s going to tax my intellect like Umberto’s did. I could probably read it over a weekend. I’m not waiting in line behind 49 people, though. I better buy my own copy.

The fiber optic lights on my small Christmas tree pulsate at a rate that could cause seizures, but my contacts have been carefully placed in their proper containers. I am blind, so the lights are soft round balls of color to my eyes. They look almost fluffy.

Being blind always seemed like a detriment to me, but now, I pity the perfectly sighted. My cheap little tree looks like a wondrous joy of light and flickering. I want to reach out and touch the fluffy lights, but they don’t exist. They are merely tiny specks in the real world. In blind world they are large, round and almost feathery.

Only the blind can experience this. I am amazed at the beauty and call Mike to see, but he can see too well. He takes off his glasses and squints his eyes, but they are just lights to him because he is not blind.

I forget how blind I am sometimes. The gas-permeable contacts go into my eyes within minutes of my waking and stay there until right before I sleep. My eyesight has been aided since the age of ten on that beautiful day when I got my first pair of glasses. The world was suddenly sharper. I could see things that I never knew other people could see. Each leaf on the tree was visible and flapping with the breeze.

The MOUNTAINS! Oh dear Jehovah, the mountains! I could see every crevice, crag and gulley. My lovely mountains of soft billowy snow were transformed into a crisp backdrop worthy of any episode of the Brady Bunch. The white blobby clouds looked like cotton fluff and angel hair.

In that instant so many years ago, I realized all the best in the world that I had been missing. I remember taking my glasses off and comparing the two images, filling in the details. After years with corrected vision, however, I had forgotten. The beauty and softness of the world when I was blind was lost to me that day and replaced with the crisp details and never ending minutia.

When I am blind, the world suddenly becomes smaller and softer. The lights loom largely over me with hazy halos. My reaction time is slowed, so my walking is slower. The world closes in on me when I am blind. I had forgotten how cozy it could be.

From the Get Up and Move DDR Forum Topic: Jealousy, Both Positive and Negative

Author: iamjay 09/20/2004 at 16:35:43

This girl I met from midnightmadness in my town about a month ago the night ended with us two together on the couch her in my arms. the nxt time she came over she was surrounding my friend like crazy she stayed with him the whole night so i said @$!^ it and went to bed early. I was dissapointed and jealous. I found out afterwards by her that it didn’t mean anything since she was drunk and all that (yeah rite) we hung out a few more times afterwards and she would hang off my arm, but when my friends were around she would talk to them and all that. Last sat. I tried to my arms around her and she didn’t want to come over cause there wasn’t enough room or something (it could of been tru we were at the park in a lil area with me my friend (that she cuddled with last month) and her friend. After that happened I got mad and said $crew this i’m hitting on her friend. 20min later I took her to the rocks and I was really attached to her, then I invited her to the house and we cuddled some more then we got on the floor and made out and stuff and went to bed. I think that really made her jealous since she was trying to rest her arm on me the nxt morning and I sorta just shifted away. we hung out the whole day and all she did was walk with my friend and on the car ride back I tried to get sleep and she was trying to put her head on me again but it never happened.

now the question is, why the heck are we playing these games. What should I do, I dont like her friend I just wanted to get back at her. And I know she doesnt like my friend she just wants to get back at me. HELP ME lol

Author: abrannan 09/21/2004 at 06:59:48

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say talk to her. I mean really talk to her. Explain how you feel, what you’re thinking. Phrase everything in terms of yourself. (i.e. I feel jealous and disappointed when… Instead of, you made me angry when you did this…) Then listen to what she has to say. And I mean really listen, don’t interrupt, don’t start planning your retort, just take in what she has to say and try to see things from her perspective. Relationships CANNOT survive unless you both are willing to communicate openly and honestly with each other. I speak from experience on this one.

Author: Laura Moncur 09/21/2004 at 13:45:28

Good advice, abrannan.

The only thing I would add to it is: make sure the two of you are alone when you talk to her. If you try to do the serious, heart-felt talk in front of her and your friends, it’s going to get weird.

You don’t want to look like a whipped boy in front of your friends. She doesn’t want to look like a dominated girl in front of hers. Plus, everyone will want to put their two cents in because (as you can see) we all have our opinions.

By the way, the whole “I was drunk, so it doesn’t matter” thing is just a cop out. When people are drunk, they let themselves do the things that they wouldn’t normally allow themselves to do. Sometimes, that means that they talk to the person that they’ve had a crush on forever. Sometimes, they hit on every person in their path. Don’t allow it as an excuse with other people in your life and don’t use it as one.

Sometimes I think I frequent these forums just so I can lecture people anonymously. I guess I don’t have the balls to lecture people in person.

I remember the day my cheerleader friend explained it to me. “You know, when you’re drunk and you try to set your head down on your hand and you miss,” she demonstrated the move for me, “it doesn’t matter because you’re drunk. Everybody laughs and you don’t feel embarrassed.” She, of course, was drunk and trying to explain the intricacies of the theory, “I was drunk, so it doesn’t matter.” I said to her, “When I try to set my head down on my hand and I miss, it doesn’t matter because I’m clumsy. Everybody laughs and I never feel embarrassed.” She shook her head and dismissed me as her silly nerdy friend. If only I were cooler, I would understand.

I was going to tell a couple “I was drunk, so it doesn’t matter” stories, but I don’t have the stomach for it. I have so many that I would fill the page with them. I think I was twenty years old when I refused to allow “I was drunk, so it doesn’t matter” as a valid excuse. Almost all of my stories come from those early years and there are so many that I would bore you with them. I may have already bored you with the subject.

I’ve seen “I was drunk, so it doesn’t matter” so many times in my life that I have no patience for it anymore. My tolerance is so low that I have specifically chosen my friends because they never fall back on alcohol to do the things that they really want to do. I gravitate toward people who do what they want when they want all the time. They say what they want to say. They do what they want to do. They don’t even understand people who don’t live their lives this way

I wonder about those people. Those ones that can’t say “I love you” without a beer in their gut. Those ones that can’t go up to a woman in a bar without liquid courage. Those ones that desire the affections of many, but only allow themselves to pursue many when they are under the influence. If you love them, tell them. If you want them, go talk to them. If you want them all, get them all. Don’t put your life on hold until you can no longer control yourself. Lose control right now, sans alcohol. There are no rules to this game. Just pick yourself up and do what you are afraid to do. If you fail, you can always blame it on your clumsiness. It’s as good an excuse as drunkenness.

Sometimes it all smacks me in the head like a sledgehammer. Friday night, Mike and I were walking to the Farmer’s Market in Sugarhouse and it hit me. The vision of it was so striking that I couldn’t speak. Mike was talking, but I didn’t hear him. There they were, piled up and forgotten by Lifestyles 2000. There was a pile of unread and yellowing Wall Street Journals, forgotten and ignored.

I immediately stopped walking. I handed Mike my purse while I fished out my camera. I needed a picture of it. Mike panicked, imagining the brawny and the buff inhabitants of the gym protesting at his wife turned paparazzi. When he saw me bend down to the ground, he quieted. I wasn’t pointing the camera at the exercising minions. I was taking a picture of garbage.

Not just any garbage, mind you. This was weeks’ worth of a newspaper subscription that was never read. The hope and inspiration of the open market was yellowing and untouched in front of the local gym. The vision of it said it all to me.

I remember. I remember when the Dot Com industry was skyrocketing. We placed our bets and hoped the big slot machine back east would pay off. We watched CNN religiously and checked the market on the Internet until 3pm every day. We thought we were investing, but we were gambling. That’s what the stock market is: gambling. Anyone who tells you any differently is lying, even if it’s The Wall Street Journal.

I was only twenty-five years old. Vegas and Wendover held no power over me, but Wall Street struck a core in my bones. I was investing in America and just like our great country, my investments would pay off. Gambling can look like investing if you’re young or a little stupid and I fell for it. I fell right off the cliff for it.

When the Dot Bomb happened, we not only lost our investments, Mike’s income was severely changed for the worse. I worshipped at the great altar of the Computer Industry and I found that my offerings were never eaten. They just rotted and attracted flies and maggots.

A funny thing happened when I stopped worshipping The Wall Street Journal. Things picked up for us. Mike found other avenues for revenue. Web advertising started to pick up again. I started publishing my writing every day without a thought about how much money it would make me. I could be silent no more. It didn’t matter to me whether it was profitable. I had sacrificed to the God of Profitable only to find myself selling my house and using the funds to pay off the IRS. I was finished with Profitable and all I wanted was to tell the world that I survived.

The minute I stopped hoarding my writing, my writing flowed far easier than it had for years. Sure, I’ve had days when I was tired. Sure, there are times when I feel empty. Sure, there are times when I shun the keyboard and the notebook for the video game and sci-fi. On the whole, however, I have been far more productive over this last year than I have in my entire life. I owe it all to abandoning The Wall Street Journal.

Seeing those papers on the sidewalk, yellowed and forgotten by their owner said it all to me. Come here! See the spectacle! See The Fall of The Wall Street Journal! Follow me and enjoy the bliss that I have encountered for the last year! That’s why I had to stop. That’s why I had to pull out my camera like a proud mother or starving paparazzi. I had to share the vision with you.

Read Part 1

Years later, Mike and I were at Lagoon and I tried to reminisce with him, “Remember that hall of mirrors thing that they used to have here where the Jet Star II is now?” He looked at me with a blank face. I tried to jog his memory. “You know, the summer before they put up the Jet Star II, they had a huge slide thing that you had to climb and climb and climb. You would carry these rug things and once I got stuck at a spot. A kid said that I got stuck because I was fat.”

Mike’s eyes opened, “I remember the big slide. You had to carry your carpet up with you.” I was onto something I knew I would be able to get him to remember it, “Well, the year before they put up the huge slide thing, they had a hall of mirrors thing. It had a big monkey out front and there was a skeleton playing piano. I thought it was going to be a haunted house like the Terroride, but it wasn’t. It was kind of like the Fun House, but not so fun.” He looked at me like I was insane. “No, the big slide was always there until they put up the Jet Star II.”

No matter how well I described the ride, Mike couldn’t remember it. I began to think that I had imagined it and the story that vilified my dad in my mind. I asked my mom about it, “I remember a hall of mirrors thing at Lagoon, but Mike doesn’t remember it. Do you?” I knew that she had been there. She thought that I had been too young for the ride, when in reality, it was my dad who was too immature. She drew a blank. I tried to prompt her memory with the location of the ride and the fact that it was replaced by a huge slide, which was replaced by the Jet Star II. None of it helped, “You just remember more than I do about some things.”

All of this fermented in my mind for a few years. Mike didn’t remember it. Mom didn’t remember it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask my dad about it. I just let it lie dormant and hoped that I would find someone who remembered this ride.

We were going through Mom’s old photographs, dividing them among Stacey, my mom and me. “Oh my God, Mom! Look at this!” I held up the picture for her to see. It was a picture of Mom in front of the hall of mirrors at Lagoon. It wasn’t a professional picture. It wasn’t a beautiful picture, but it was proof. “What is it?” I was truly surprised that she didn’t recognize it, “Mom! It’s that hall of mirrors thing that they used to have at Lagoon where the Jet Star II is now.”

There it all was. It was blurry, but the big monkey was there. You couldn’t see that his eyes were red, but they burned brightly in my imagination. The clapping monkey was actually a cymbal playing monkey toy. It was the kind that were popular in the seventies before Monkey Shines came out. You can’t see it in the picture, but it was behind the guy who took the tickets.

The skeleton band was behind huge monkey. I didn’t remember the rest of the band; I had only remembered the skeleton playing the piano. His bony fingers weren’t even touching the keys. I didn’t understand how the music worked if his fingers didn’t even touch the keys. There was a whole skeleton band that I had forgotten, leaving only a piano player in my memory.

I felt comfort in having proof. In my hand was proof that I hadn’t made it up in my mind. My mom looked at the picture, “You just remember more than I do about some things.”

I remember being lost. I was with my dad and he was lost too. At first, it seemed like he was in control, but the further we went, the more I realized that he didn’t know how to get us out. I think I was four years old and suddenly I was in charge of rescuing my dad and myself because we were lost.

When we started out, I was confused, but he was still in control. Every time I thought I found a way out, I ended up staring at my own face. My dad explained that he knew that there was a way out. He seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but then he couldn’t find the way out and he was touching the mirrors just as I was, trying to find the path. That was when I understood that I was in charge. I had to find the passageway because, once again, my dad was bullshitting me.

I refused to panic. My dad didn’t deal well with crying kids, so I kept my fear tucked in my gut. I tried to keep my eyes on the floor because that was the only thing that made sense to me. It was the only part of this hall of mirrors thing that seemed connected to reality, but it didn’t help me. We wandered. Sometimes I found the path. Sometimes he found the path. He was wandering away from me when I saw it. It was that monkey thing that was clapping. It had been clapping while I waited in line to get in and I wondered if it was the baby of the big monkey out front with the red eyes. If I could see the clapping monkey, then we must be close to getting out.

He had wandered off, so I had to retrace my steps back to him. I told him that I found the way out. I took his big hand and pulled him toward the clapping monkey. He touched the mirror, “See, it’s just a reflection. Now I think I found the way out back here.” He tried to head backward, but I insisted that we were close to being free. I tried to think about where the exit would be if this mirror was reflecting the monkey and looked behind us. He had already started heading the wrong way again when I called to him. “Dad, I found it.” The exit was hidden around a slim mirrored corridor and I could see the feet of the big monkey and the guy who took our tickets when we came in.

My dad didn’t come when I called him. I considered for a moment that I should go back and get him, but the fear of being lost again after finally finding my way was too intense. I ran out of the hall of mirrors, finally allowing the tears to flow. My mom was waiting for the two of us out there and asked where Dad was, but I couldn’t tell her. All the terror of being the only one able to get us out of there had been released and I couldn’t tell her what happened. I considered going back in to save him, but the man who took our tickets wouldn’t let me back in. We just had to wait until he found his own way out.

I had calmed down and stopped crying by the time that my dad finally found his way out. My mom was livid, “See, I told you she wasn’t old enough for this. She came out crying.” My dad looked at me and I could tell that he knew. He knew that I had found the way out when he didn’t. He knew that he should have listened to me. He knew that he shouldn’t have let me get separated from him. He knew that HE was the reason that I was so upset, not the ride. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe next year she’ll like it.”

Read Part 2

I spent my summers with my grandparents when I was a child. We enjoyed Independence Day frugally by watching the fireworks at the park. I always felt guilty because my dad had convinced me that if I received any pleasure from the “pagan” holidays, I would die in Armageddon. It didn’t stop me from enjoying the colors and explosions.

My first true summer in Salt Lake came when I was seventeen. I had gotten a job at K-Mart that year, so Stacey went to Billings, Montana without me. I stayed in Salt Lake. I went dancing at The Ritz. I worked on Pioneer Day.

The other employees complained. They thought that we should be closed on Pioneer Day. I thought they were stupid. Pioneer Day didn’t exist in Montana. July 24^th was just another day. It might be a little too hot and we might get a Popsicle on that day, but that was the extent of celebration that Billings, Montana had for Pioneer Day. Days of ’47 was something that happened on those Utah television stations in Billings.

I worked on the 24^th of July and I had no problem with it. It was just another day to me. We sold a lot of hogi sandwiches heavy with onion and banana peppers. Other than that, it was a pretty slow day. I didn’t mind being there. It was just another day to me, except that there were fireworks at some of the parks.

It’s like that for me now. I make sure to celebrate the day with Mike. We don’t let the holiday go by without setting off some fireworks. We like to watch the fireworks from our house. If we stand in the street, we have the perfect view of Liberty Park’s show. Other than that, I don’t do much of anything else. There’s a big parade that I ignore. There’s a rodeo that I abhor. There’s probably lots more, but it all passes me by.

Happy Days of ’47, to the rest of the world! Utah is celebrating itself while you have to have a hot summer day. Sure, you have your Christmas in July, but how can that compare with obligatory parades and rope-bound cattle?

I’ve been brooding about this since March. I know this because I wrote the phrase, “My dad is brave” in my Moleskine on March 8^th, 2004. Each time I scan through my little black notebook, I see the phrase and think about writing an entry about it. I have been brooding about it a little bit here and there for over four months. Yesterday in the shower, I decided that I needed to write about it.

What prompted the phrase written hastily in my notebook was a conversation in my meditation class. I haven’t attended meditation for months and I don’t really miss it, but I do miss the intellectual stimulation I got from it. One of the members of the class talked about a book she had read. There was a man whose life was used as an example in the book. I don’t know if he really existed or not, but she presented it as fact.

The man found out he had cancer. He had always been a health nut and spurned medical science. Rather than change his views, he refused the chemotherapy and surgery that would have saved his life. Her point was that some people are more scared of being wrong than dying. Death is less fearful than being wrong to some people.

After she told us this story was when I pulled out my Moleskine and wrote, “My dad is brave.” My dad isn’t fighting against cancer. The demons he fights are far larger than malignant cells, even if they are also invisible to the naked eye. I have only seen glimpses of his demons and there are times when I worry that I am fighting similar ones.

One of the weapons that my dad has used to fight his demons is religion. We joined the Jehovah Witness religion right before my fourth birthday. I remember this vividly, even though I was so young. He vehemently followed the letter of the law for over twenty years to the detriment of my childhood and the emotions of many others. It was only a year or so ago that he realized that the religion wasn’t helping him and in many cases, it harmed him.

So, he gave it up. He had temporarily disowned me as a daughter because of the religion and he gave it up. He had irrevocably damaged his relationship with his mother because of the religion and he gave it up. He had sacrificed his time and money to this religion and he just gave it up. He stopped going. He stood up to the elders. After all he put me through, he abandoned it.

This made me angry. He had clung to the Jehovah Witnesses and rejected me, my grandmother, and even Stacey because of them and now he was quitting it. He wouldn’t quit it for me, but he was willing to quit because of some Ayn Rand book he read twenty years ago that finally sunk into his thick skull. I was pissed.

Then I sat in my meditation class, listening to a member talking about healing yourself with the power of your mind and I realized that my dad is brave. After over twenty years of clinging to something, he was able to say that he was wrong. Rather than hanging on to something that had damaged his life so substantially, he was able to say, I quit. Unlike that guy with cancer, he was able to say, yes, give me the chemicals, cut into my body, whatever it takes to get me healthy again. And for that, I think my dad’s brave. I’m still untrusting, but I believe you can forgive without trusting the person again.

Good luck, Dad. I hope you heal quickly.

I never really bonded with my dad. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was because he was in the Navy when I was born. I really don’t know why I didn’t bond with my father, but here I am today and I never went through any of those father issues with my father.

Instead, I bonded with my grandpa. I had all of those “Daddy’s Little Girl” moments with him instead. My grandma babysat me during the days when my parents worked. I remember waiting by the window for him to come home from work. The television was always on and when the MASH song came on the television, Grandpa would be home soon. To this day, those first few notes of the theme song to MASH give me that excited feeling of knowing that Grandpa is almost home.

I remember one time we got to make cookies. He said we could make the cookies from my <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Sesame Street book. They were some sort of Surprise cookies that had many different candies in them and you wouldn’t know what kind of candy you would get until you bit into the cookie. He let me stand on the step stool while we stirred the cookie dough. I remember thinking, “I’m tall enough to marry Grandpa when I stand on this stool. We just need to get rid of Grandma.”

Of course, I am the kind of person who says those things out loud and when I did, Grandpa looked at me funny. I learned very quickly that it was weird to want to marry your grandpa. Pop psychologists always talk about the Oedipus complex. I actually remember feeling like that, so I know that I bonded with my grandpa some time before that day.

I still believe that he is invincible. I remember when Bobka sold her house in Pembina, North Dakota. Grandpa got her piano. He and three other men moved it into the house in Billings. It was my grandpa on one end of the piano and the three guys on the other side. I was sure that my grandpa could have moved the piano all by himself, he was that strong. It was just that Grandma insisted that he have help. He didn’t really need it.

I still believe that he is immortal. Bobka is still alive and celebrating her 100^th Birthday this year. My grandpa has longevity in his genes. Even though he turns 75 this year, I still believe he will live forever. Even though Grandma died almost ten years ago, I think he’ll outlive me. Even though he is my last living grandparent, I still believe he’s immortal. I have no trouble facing my own mortality. It’s facing his that’s the problem.

Today we recognize the fathers in our lives. I have a father. He has always done the best that he could with what he had. I have a father-in-law and he is the glowing reminder of where my husband came from. To hear him tell a joke is to see my husband encased in another body. I have a step-father. He’s new this year, but he has already jumped ahead of my dad in the race for my affections.

There is one person who will never fall behind, though, and that’s my grandpa. He will get his Father’s Day card and scold me for the Costco gift card I sent him just like he scolded me for the emergency car kit I sent him for Christmas. It doesn’t matter as long as he knows that he’s remembered this season and every season. Happy Father’s Day, Grandpa!

Part 1 ? Part 2 ? Part 3

Dylan was the hero for one day in fifth grade. Everyone watched him with bright eyes and for one brief, shining moment, he was The Man.

We had been presenting our reports. I have no idea what my report was on. It was probably on bees. I think I wrote the same report over and over my entire school career. I did reports on bees and diabetes and got good grades every time. I thought that I shouldn’t bother learning anything new when I can specialize. Unfortunately, I didn’t major in either bees or diabetes in college, so all that specialization was for naught. Yeah, my report was probably on bees and boring as hell.

As I remember it, we had been bored all day. The entire class was presenting their reports and every damn one of them had been mind-numbingly boring. I couldn’t tell you the subjects of any of the reports, not even Scott Crookston’s or Greg Wagstaff’s. Now that I think of it. I think Scott talked about some biography he had read. The library had an entire section of biographies about American Heroes. I think Scott read every single one of them. I remember noticing that the only American Heroes that were female were Betsy Ross (for sewing the flag, LAME) and Harriet Tubman (for saving hundreds of lives, ok, that was cool). That makes me really mad right now. How come there weren’t cool biographies about Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth or Katherine the Great? Sure, they weren’t American Heroes, but they were women who kicked ass just as much as stupid old Davy Crockett. Yeah, I think Scott’s report was probably on Davy Crockett and boring as hell.

Dylan’s report was on medieval armament. After a brief explanation of common weaponry during medieval times, Dylan revealed the miniature catapult that he had made. We were thoroughly unimpressed for thirty seconds. He set it up, placed the small wad of paper in it, and set it off. The paper flew across the room. The power of the catapult disrupted itself, turning the medieval machine on its side on the desk. After the release of the device, the room cheered. Dylan set the catapult up on its legs, reset the spring load and prepared it for another shot.

I was completely shocked. He had kept the fabulousness of his report an absolute secret from me. I imagined that his room at home must be filled with tiny weapons of war, lined up neatly on shelves. While the class cheered, I remember looking at Dylan, surprised and proud of how popular his report was. Yeah, Dylan was the hero that day.

Part 1 ? Part 2

Being Dylan’s friend was hard for other reasons. He was an outcast. Even though I was an outcast myself, I didn’t particularly want to be. By fifth grade, I had noticed boys, most importantly, Greg Wagstaff and Scott Crookston. I started following them around at recess like a drugged puppy. To their credit, they were always nice to me.

Scott Crookston taught me how to spit properly. Don’t scoff; this is an important skill that is rarely taught to girls by their parents. Anyone who has ever gotten a bug in their mouth knows how vital proper spitting technique really is. Thanks, Scott, for teaching me how to spit and for letting me follow you around like the love sick little girl that I was. I have no idea where you are right now, but I’m sending a little good karma your way, man.

In fifth grade, I thought I was the luckiest girl because I got Mr. McConnell’s class. His class was a city and you could have various jobs in the city to earn money. I don’t think I learned anything in that class that year. I learned a lot about archaeology because that was what I was obsessed about at the time, but nothing was covered in class. I remember listening to Hooked on Classics and being asked to draw a picture that felt like the song. I could do that now, but at ten, it was beyond me to try to paint what I heard. I think that concept is beyond most people in general. I learned that I never want to work in the Post Office because it’s just moving a lot of papers. I learned that the whole city concept of a classroom was just a way for Mr. McConnell to get through the school year without having to teach very much.

I wanted to be like Sabrina Martin in fifth grade. She wore really tight pants and the guys liked her a lot. I wanted to wear tennis shoes like hers so bad that I saved up the money to buy some. My mom was surprised that I would rather buy tennis shoes than Barbies and offered to buy them for me. They cost $9.95 at Gibson’s Discount Stores. They were blue and white.

One day in fifth grade, Greg Wagstaff, Sabrina Martin and Scott Crookston were laughing. It was that controlled and hushed laughing that meant that they really shouldn’t have been laughing at all. I feared that they were laughing at me, “What are you laughing at?” Scott turned toward me and replied, “Your boyfriend.” I was clueless. More than anything, I wanted Scott Crookston to be my boyfriend. They were quiet and waiting. I followed their line of sight; they were watching Dylan.

He was reading a book. We were all supposed to be reading books. My biography of Benjamin Franklin hung in my hands while I watched them. Scott pretended to read his biography of Davy Crockett. We watched Dylan. I was appalled as I saw his hand go up to his face. He was picking his nose and even worse: he ate it. I thought, “Even kindergarteners know that you don’t pick your nose and eat it!”

All of them burst into laughter while Dylan read on, oblivious. I was embarrassed by him. I was embarrassed for him. They looked at me to see if I was laughing, but my stomach was sick. All I could say was, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Part 4

Part 1

After the pitcher’s mound incident, Anita and I decided that maybe Dylan just needed some friends. Being fellow outcasts, we decided to be his friends whether he wanted them or not.

Sometimes that was easier said than done. I remember trying to explain what I wanted for a knitting box, “What I need is a cylindrical box so I can have the yarn come out the top.” Dylan argued with me, “You can’t have a cylindrical box. Box implies a cube. You need a cylindrical container.” I didn’t have any proof that box didn’t imply a cube, but my instincts told me that he was wrong.

In the end, it didn’t matter. What I needed was an oatmeal container. My family didn’t eat enough oatmeal to empty a box, and I was hoping that maybe Anita or Dylan had access to something like that. I never got to that part of the story because we spent the rest of recess arguing whether the word box implied a cube.

Sometimes being friends with Dylan was difficult, but he always had interesting ideas. I had never known anyone who categorized things so minutely that the simple phrase, “cylindrical box” was enough to cause an argument. I just looked it up and Dylan was right. The first definition for box listed states, “A container typically constructed with four sides perpendicular to the base and often having a lid or cover.”

Part 3

Gifted and Talented (Part 6)

I just found out that Dylan and his wife, Joan, are going to move to Boston soon. May 10^th was Dylan’s birthday, so I reminded Mike to give him a call and wish him a happy birthday. We haven’t seen Dylan and Joan for a while and I thought that Mike could open up the doors of communication.

Dylan is one of the original Gifted and Talented friends, but I knew him long before we were placed in that class. Dylan wasn’t the first friend I had when my parents moved me to West Valley, but he was the most memorable. When I described him in the Gifted and Talented class, I said that there were so many stories to tell you about him that it would take you several blog entries to catch you up.

I guess I’m trying to catch you up before he moves away. He’s another in a string of friends who have left Utah to find his fortune. He’s going to get his Masters in library stuff. It all sounds so incredibly boring to me, but I’m sure he’s going to be needed. Can you imagine how the Library of Congress is going to look when they try to archive everything that has ever been on the web? They need some good people trained quickly to get this thing saved for posterity.

I’m sitting here, stuck and unable to start. There are so many stories about Dylan to tell that I have no idea where to start. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. When I moved to West Valley, I immediately became friends with Anita Park. She was an outcast girl in need of a friend and I was a new girl in need of a friend. The only problem with being friends with an outcast is that I became an outcast in the process. I shrugged my third grade shoulders and figured that it wasn’t a big deal.

The first time I saw Dylan, Anita and I were standing outside at recess. It was a dry, hot Utah day and the activity level of all the children was pretty low. There were no frenzied games of kissing tag. There was no fighting for the swings or tricky bars. The entire third grade was just standing in the shade of Academy Park, watching Dylan.

Dylan was on his hands and knees on the pitcher’s mound about 50 feet away from the school. He was spinning madly and a cloud of dust surrounded and engulfed him. It reached higher and higher until it was a six foot tall swirl of dirt, stirred up by Dylan. “What is he doing?” “That’s just weird.” “That’s just Dylan.” They all stood there, questioning his actions. I decided to find out.

I walked the fifty feet from the tepid shade of Academy Park to the blistering sun of the pitcher’s mound. “Hey,” I called out to him, “what are you doing?” Dylan stopped spinning and came to rest on his bottom, “I’m seeing how high I can get this dust.” I looked at him, sitting in the dirt, and I wanted to know what short-circuit made him wonder such a thing, “Why?” He was leaning back on his hands, “I don’t know.”

I tried to convince him to stop twirling like a dervish and to come back to the shade of the school, “People are going to think you’re nuts just spinning around in the dirt like that.” He didn’t seem bothered with that at all. I don’t know if he had given up and assumed that everyone thought he was nuts already or if he just didn’t care what other people thought. He stayed on the pitcher’s mound and continued his experiment.

“Why is he doing that?” they questioned me when I got back to the shade. I shrugged, “He wanted to see how high the dust would go.” It was decided. Dylan was a nut. There was no questioning it now. He was a complete nut. Anita and I looked at each other, knowingly, if he hadn’t been an outcast before, he surely was now.

A few years ago, Mike and I were driving in the Las Vegas desert between Jean, Nevada and Vegas. The wind was hitting our car in bursts: a hot, dusty wind. On the side of the road, about fifty feet from the car, a dust devil raced us to the city. I sat in awe at the height of the twirling column of dust and I thought about Dylan’s experiment.

Part 2

In other parts of the country, people donate their used items to the Salvation Army. We have some Salvation Army stores in Utah, but a much more prominent and influential monopoly has control of the thrift market here in Zion. It’s called Deseret Industries, but the populace calls it The DI for short.

The DI is sponsored by the LDS Church (you know, the Mormons), so it has a stronghold over this area. Plus, it’s so darn easy to donate. There is a DI within walking distance of my house. There was a DI within walking distance of my last house, too. They are everywhere.

Their prices are good, too. It’s not like some thrift stores which mark their items high and then systematically keep marking them lower until they finally get to a price that someone will buy them. If it’s a pair of jeans, it’s going to be six bucks whether they are Calvin Kleins or Wranglers. Shorts are three bucks, no matter what. Just like their new billboards say, they have “Bargains to DI for.” Imagine me yuck-yucking and slapping my knee right now, please.

Growing up Jehovah Witness in this city, there have been so many times when I have felt antagonistic toward the LDS church. The Klingon within me says that I shouldn’t donate my old clothes to The DI because that is aiding the enemy. This Klingon has no problem with me shopping at The DI because I’m just taking advantage of their incredible prices, which makes no sense because in that scenario, I’m actually giving money to “the enemy.” Go figure. The Vulcan inside me reminds me of how convenient it is to donate to The DI. I just swing by the place and drop the stuff off. They even give me a receipt for my taxes if I’m willing to wait for it.

Kathleen Bennett, my friend who lives in San Francisco, always goes DI shopping with me when she comes back to town. She used to live here and it’s one of the few things that Salt Lake City has over San Francisco. We have DI thrift shopping and lots of flavors of Jello in our grocery stores. Last time she was here, she was looking for a pair of Lucky Brand jeans (remember, for only six bucks!). We didn’t find any in her size that time, but we did find some cool things for her, namely a bitchin’ pair of shoes (only six bucks). I’m always excited when Kathleen comes to town because she is one of the few people who have the stamina to DI shop with me.

Since I’ve been losing weight, the DI is a blessing to me. I can get a whole new wardrobe every few months on very little money. I don’t have to swim in my “fat” clothes and I can get rid of those oversized clothes as soon as they start to hang on me. There is no temptation to gain the weight again because those clothes are gone back to The DI from whence they came. When I get to my final goal weight, I’ll buy myself all new clothes, but until then, I’m hitting The DI every couple of months for clothes I can shrink into.

I don’t know why I feel the need to tell you about The DI. This entry is almost like a commercial for them, which is really making the Klingon within me boil. I guess I just wanted to make sure that you knew what the hell I was talking about if I say something like, “I’m going to give that away to the DI” or “Stacey and I are going DI shopping for some skinnier clothes. I’m too small for those size 7 jeans I bought a couple months ago.” That sort of thing.

If you ever find yourself in Salt Lake City, the two best DI’s are the one on 45^th and Main and the one in Sandy on 7^th East by the Sandy Mall. You are pretty much guaranteed to find really good brands there like Calvin Klein, Old Navy, Gap, Mossimo and I’ve even found the illusive Lucky Brand jeans there before, but they wouldn’t have fit Kathleen. They were way too big.

I just found out the news today. “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parents both died on April 9^th from carbon monoxide poisoning. They started a fire in their fireplace and forgot to open the flue and both died of asphyxiation. Someone I respect and honor is grieving and there is nothing I can do about it. Weird Al has posted an official message to everyone about the entire thing, correcting press errors, thanking his fans and explaining his actions for the near future.

I’d like to say that everything I’ve learned about life, I learned from Weird Al, but that’s not true. He has kept me happy during sad times. He has kept me happier in happy times. He has taught me three things: Everything You Know Is Wrong, Dare To Be Stupid and I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Sure, the song is silly. When you read the lyrics, it is really easy to lose the message in the stories and vivid descriptions. When you listen to the chorus, however, you hear it all. Don’t assume anything. The theories that were presented to you as facts before have changed. Just keep your mind open because it might be that everything you know is wrong.

Everything you know is wrong.
Black is white, up is down and short is long.
And everything you used to think was so important
Doesn’t really matter anymore
Because the simple fact remains that Everything you know is wrong.  – “Weird Al” Yankovic, Everything You Know Is Wrong, 1996

Plus, this is the song with the phrase, “prosthetic lips” which sounded so insanely funny to me until I saw Michael Jackson’s nose fall off in court.

Dare To Be Stupid

From the first line, “Put down that chainsaw and listen to me” to the last line, “Dare to be stupid” repeated ad infinitum, this song just makes me want to get up and do something important. There have been times when I’ve been heading to an unpleasant activity and I’ve had the strength to survive it because Weird Al blared that phrase at me enough. One of the few stickers that live on the Beetle is the phrase, “Dare To Be Stupid.”
The future’s up to you,
So what you gonna do?
Dare to be stupid!  – “Weird Al” Yankovic, Dare To Be Stupid, 1985

The song tells me to not worry about looking stupid and to risk it all. It’s ok to fail as long as you’re out in the game and working your hardest at it. Quit worrying about what other people are thinking about you and go out there and follow your dreams.   I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead

I’ve never heard him perform this song live. I don’t think he does anymore because there are a lot of words in that song that he would have to eat, in particular, “Don’t want no part of that vegetarian scene.” Since he’s a vegetarian now, I’m sure it’s hard for him to sing that song with a straight face anymore.

Since I’m such a hippie in some respects, I’m sure that my friends would be amazed that I love this song. It’s so dismissive to healthy eating, exercise and quiet time that it sounds like a protest song against the California Culture, but if you believe that, you’re not listening to the chorus.

I may as well be hyper
As long as I’m still around
‘Cause I’ll have lots of time to be laid back
When I’m six feet under ground.  – “Weird Al” Yankovic, I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead, 1983

There is no time to waste. I have to live this life to the fullest now, while I can, because tomorrow I might be dead. I have to do all that I wanted to do today, because I might be pushing up the daisies tomorrow. Someone must have taught him this wisdom.

So, thank you to the two people who taught Al to live life in the moment, to get the job done despite fear and to keep his mind open to possibility. Thank you for bringing “Weird Al” into the world. Thank you for buying him an accordion instead of a guitar. Thank you for teaching him that morbid humor can heal.

Al, may the force be with you, man. I hope you find comfort when you need it and distraction when you need it. May your music heal you as much as it has healed me.