Bad choice, Pacman

My family has a long-standing tradition of leaving notes in the suitcases of family members that go on trips. I remember going to 5th grade camp (my first trip away from home) and finding notes rolled up in my underwear, toothbrush case, and scripture bag. The highlight of the trip was having a scroll delivered to me that contained a big yellow blob, with the phrase "Who will make German pancakes for us while you're gone?"

Last month, Heather went on band tour. Sage and I were drafted into the "notewriting department," and Sage produced quite the masterpiece. My mom scanned it before sending it with Heather, and included the artist's interpretation.

"This is the bad guy that won't let us read the scriptures. He has a mouth and eyes and hair, but he doesn't have a body or a bum 'cuz he made bad choices."

What this has to do with band tour, I don't know. But I think our next FHE topic will have to be "What is a body?" Perhaps we'll even give "the bad guy" a name. Or maybe we'll just keep sniggering about Sage's idea of a "good luck on band tour" note involving a satanic Pacman ghost.

Ding dong, the beanbag's dead

I think I melted the Wicked Witch of the West in my microwave. Last week, Sage asked me to warm her up an old beanbag she found. I put it in the microwave on the green plastic plate I use to warm up my own bigger beanbag. [Bringing a warm beanbag to bed is a trick I’ve recently discovered for curing my eternally cold toes in bed at night.] Since my beanbag heats in about 6 minutes, I put Sage’s little pink beanbag in for 2, and went to use the bathroom.

Well under 2 minutes later, Sage barged into the bathroom (not an uncommon occurrence), and said somewhat vaguely, “Mommy, come see.” I hadn’t washed my hands, so I told her I’d be there in a minute. She disappeared, then reappeared in about 5 seconds, and admonished, more urgently, “Please come see the kitchen, Mommy.” Something in her voice set off a bell, and I hurried to see what was going on. I’m not sure if it was the smell or the big yellowish green clouds billowing out of the microwave that hit me first.

Honestly, I had to think to remember what I had even put in the microwave. Luckily, my lightning-like reflexes kicked in, and I scooped up the girls, ran quickly out the front door, and started looking for a new place to live. Well, that’s not what happened, but maybe that would have been a good idea. Another good idea would have been to unplug the microwave and rush the entire thing out to the trash can.

Instead, I rushed towards the crime scene, past Sage, who was torn between her dislike for the stinky odors emanating from the microwave, and her interest in the smoke bomb that was still heating up. Wait a minute, I thought…the two minutes aren’t even up yet, and the microwave is still going! I stopped the microwave and yanked the pasta off the stove, desperately hoping it was done. I knew better than to think I would get it in two minutes, when its cooking time was up.

The smoky smell was overpowering. Or was it those now-puce-colored clouds that were fogging up my brain and crippling my ability to act quickly? I grabbed two hotpads, took a deep breath (figuratively speaking…in reality, we were all trying to not breathe), and plunged my hands into the microwave, which was filled with mysterious opaque gases. I couldn’t see anything, and I wondered in what condition I would find the plastic plate. I grabbed the entire microwave glass plate, and rushed the smoking mass outside. When the smoke finally cleared, I saw the ghoulish face of the offending beanbag. I swear to you, I was staring at an angry face--perhaps the face of the Wicked Witch of the West, reincarnated in the form of a (now very burnt) beanbag. Had her last words been “I’m burning” this time, instead of “I’m melting”?

I returned back inside, glad the fiasco was over. But this time I was hit with another wave—less yellowish green, but equally foul smelling. The Wicked Beanbag’s gases had spread to fill the living room.

Now began the LONG process of de-odorizing my microwave and my house. I propped open all the windows, wondering why our smoke detector had never gone off. The stiff breeze coming in the windows was refreshing, but very chilly. A quick glance at the computer showed me that it was 28 degrees outside, and I heard our furnace crank on, in response to the sudden drop in our apartment’s temperature. I dug out sweaters for Eliza and Sage, as I was unwilling to trap in the still foul smell just yet…I’d prefer hypothermia to going to bed in this gas chamber. I found Eliza trying to close the front door, something she tried to do 10 more times in the next half hour. Sage was harder to find. I finally located her, trying to seek refuge from the smell, in the bathroom. She had spread out her game pieces on the bathroom floor. When I opened the door, she turned to me and asked, “Is the beanbag done yet?” I laughed and said it was long past done. Then she told me, “I’m in here so I don’t smell it.” Then she decided, “I’m ready to get out of here.”

With five minutes between us and the fateful microwave job, and the air only slightly less offensive, I realized it was time to move into Phase Two: Detoxify the microwave. What this means is, my sister, Danielle (bless her soul) came and enacted phase two. Equipped with my new white dish gloves (which will never look white again), she brought out a slew of cleansing agents. If only they had science fairs for mommies. This would have made a wild science project: What kinds of foul odors can we make by mixing burnt beanbag smell with various cleaning agents?

Test #1: Microwaved lemon juice and water. Result: Lemon juice absorbed color and smell of smoke after 2 minutes.

Test #2: Microwaved vinegar and water. Result: cigarette smoke smell changed to vomit smell.

Test #3: Microwaved pinesol and water. Result: Vomit smell changed to paint thinner smell. Concentrated paint thinner smell. And we blew the breaker. Nice.

We abandoned phase two, and opted for Phase three: aromatherapy by aerosol products. Amongst the short-lived options were Febreze (it smelled like a chain smoker on a date), Williams-Sonoma vanilla peppermint spray, and Glade airfreshner. These all brought a 30 second wave of relief before sensory absorption kicked in, and I resumed residence in my chain-smoker apartment. Danielle donated a “clean clothes” candle, and I found that as long as that was burning all day, the mailman resumed regular postal deliveries.

Perhaps at this point in time, I let out my first (uh…fiftieth) sigh of disgust. Sage told me with concern, “Mom, it’s okay. I have another beanbag.” I laughed, and she continued. “Can you warm this beanbag up? But don’t let it smoke. This time, please don’t leave the kitchen.” Right.

It was at this point in time, when I thought it could not POSSIBLY get any stinkier in my kitchen, that Eliza decided to let loose in her diaper. That showed me. It was stinkier.

I don’t know what we ate for dinner that night. I don’t know if anyone has been to my house since the incident two weeks ago without grimacing at that first whiff of smoke. I don’t know if the inside of my microwave will ever lose its mustard yellow color. I don’t know if I’ll ever know how a green plastic plate, a pink beanbag and 30-year-old beans make yellow-green fumes that stain a microwave and contaminate a house in under 2 minutes? And most of all, I don’t know how the Wicked Witch got reincarnated in the form of a beanbag.

But now I DO know that my smoke detectors don’t work. So I guess I should be grateful I learned that important lesson the “easy” way. Now I can replace the batteries, and when our house doesn’t burn down in a fire next month, then I’ll be able to be totally grateful for the cigarette smoke smell. I think.

The result of eating cocoa puffs

Last week Sage noticed a correlation between the carrots she ate at lunch and her evening excrement.

Today after breakfast she told me “Mom, did you know what happened when I ate chocolate cocoa puffs? They were brown, and then my poopies were brown.”

It's fun and amusing to watch children try to make sense of nature and the world around them.

Six quirks

In an attempt to fill my yearly quota of being “tagged,” and appease my guilty conscience for previously ignoring many generous tags by friends with much more interesting life details than me, I have chosen to expose myself in one fell swoop.

Six Quirks That You May Not Know About

Fingernails on the chalkboard is like music to my ears…compared to the sound of metal scraping against metal. At a family dinner last month, I was sitting at one end of a long table, where there were various conversations going on. Suddenly my teeth started to hurt. My mouth began to fill up with excess saliva. I grimaced involuntarily, and then I notice Krista at the far end of the table. She was grinning like a Cheshire cat as she scraped the prongs of her fork against her plate, and waited for my certain reaction. She was playing my pet peeve, and I literally had a physical reaction to it. The noise of silverware rattling around in the sink is something like torture to me. I hated mealtimes at my grandma’s house because we always ate out of metal bowls with metal silverware. I do not own any stainless steel bowls besides my Kitchen Aid.

When I was pregnant with Sage I heard an alarming rumor that pregnant women shouldn’t eat more than 2 hot dogs per week. I asked my midwife about it and with a look of disgust she asked, “Who would want to eat two hot dogs per week? I shrunk down in my chair, and tried not to think about the two hot dogs I’d eaten for lunch that day. The only thing better than two hot dogs for lunch is two black, burnt hot dogs for lunch (no condiments, just bun and dog). Yum.

I have a stash of left-handed dish gloves in various colors. If I had a budget, which I should and don’t, it would include a separate category for dish gloves. Washing dishes is not my favorite task, but it is absolutely my least favorite task when I don’t have dish gloves to wear. I hate getting pruney dishwater hands and soft fingernails. Somehow the right hand glove always gets a hole in it first. But just in case the hole decides to grace a left hand glove someday, I’ll be ready.

When I was in elementary school, my family got our first computer that had games. My parents made a rule that we had to log 30 minutes on the typing program before we could play games. To deter our obsession with computer games, they instituted a second rule stating that after an hour of games we had to type for another 30 minutes. This was no problem, especially since our typing program gave tests and reported the user’s words per minute at the end. Once, on a line containing only the letters a, s, d, and f, I typed 128 wpm. I’m not that fast anymore, but on a recent test, I scored 109 wpm. (How about you? Anyone else train on Mavis Beacon in their youth?)109 words

I have a deep and abiding hatred for the song “Santa Baby.” On second thought, this is not quirky. This is a normal human reaction to a ridiculous “song.” I therefore strike this item from my list of “quirks.”

I love fresh peaches, but have a hard time stomaching anything with peach flavoring. This dates back to the day in my youth when some of my family hiked Mt. Timpanogos (11,000 feet). My sister, Krista, took one of the first swigs from the newly filtered water and accidentally dropped her peach jolly rancher into the canteen. We all enjoyed exotic peach-flavored water for the next hour, and detested the peach-flavored water for the following 8 hours.

Well, there you have it. A recipe for tormenting me. I can just envision myself in a torture chamber where “Santa Baby” blasts through the speakers all day long while I’m forced to eat peach jolly ranchers and wash huge loads of stainless steel bowls and silverware without gloves. [shudder]

A picture of love

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Please accept this 5000 word essay on my thoughts about love.

Sage and Eliza

My parents, 1979

The late Sister and President Hinckley

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

She's a lover

Yesterday Sage told me, "I'm a book lover." Then she quickly added "And a library lover. And a movie lover. And a Dora and Diego lover. And a Little Einstein's lover, on the computer [Playhouse Disney website]. I love you."

Maybe we should move to Virginia.

I voted

When I got back from the polls, Sage asked what my “I Voted” sticker was for. (I think she wondered why it didn’t have Dora or Strawberry Shortcake on it like all the stickers do that she gets from our doctor’s office.)

I decided a little political education was in order. I told her “This tag says ‘I voted’ and that means I told them who I wanted to be President of the United States--to be in charge.” Please don’t ask who “them” refers to, I thought.

She accepted my explanation. Perhaps she was wondering if someday she could vote for Dora or Strawberry Shortcake.

A few minutes later, I wondered if our little political discussion stayed with her, and I asked her what my sticker said.

“It says you voted,” she replied happily.

“And what does that mean?” I asked encouragingly.

With certainty, she replied, “It means you’re going to be the person you want to be.”

Uh…well,…okay. Maybe that’s good enough for a three-year-old.

But then Sage’s response got me thinking. Maybe I do vote so that I can be the person I want to be, because I am choosing the leaders that I want to lead our nation. It’s pretty amazing that I can have a voice in our national government. And it’s pretty petty that I considered not going to the polls tonight because it would be annoying to entertain the kids in line for 30 minutes.

When I think about the remarkable privilege it is to vote, I can’t help but remember the book Wild Swans: Three daughters of China. (Please put this on your reading list, if you have one and haven’t read this book by Jung Chang.) I cannot show enough gratitude to be a member of the United States of America, with its representative government. Casting my vote is the least I can do. And I could do better at passing the voting legacy along to my kids. So, instead of throwing out my sticker, maybe tomorrow I’ll let Sage “vote" for a president from the candidates pictures on cnn.com, and encourage her to proudly bear the words “I voted.” By letting our voice be heard, that’s how we ensure that we really can be the people we want to be.

Ban on blogging

I banned myself from blogging until the Christmas decorations that are cluttering the living room (not decorating, but cluttering in piles, awaiting their boxes) are put away. I tried to get Sage to repack the decorations for one of her chores, but she didn’t want to. Like mother like child. February 1^st seems like a logical day for cleaning up from December, right? I had a hard time getting rid of our tree, so around mid-January I propped it up outside in our yard. It was gone the next week. Go figure. I wonder if our next door neighbors from England took it (the neighbor who blow torched his and our steps to “melt the ice.” My dad would flip out if he knew.)

Unfortunately, my self-imposed ban has only kept me from blogging, and hasn’t necessarily enacted any changes in the problematic lack of empty chairs and abundance of half-filled boxes in the living room. So, I am resorting to Plan B, which involves blogging about my unfinished chores in an attempt to spur enthusiasm and action by means of self-embarrassment. Let’s see if it works.

Other tasks I’ve been busy with this past week:

--finishing Wild Swans: 3 daughters of China (An incredible book! I’d recommend it to anyone.)

--reading Wicked (A disappointment, unfortunately. I’m anxious to hear the soundtrack, though.)

--laughing my head off at this

--shoveling our driveway 300 times

--exercising regularly (This takes SO much time! But I am on my 9^th consecutive day of running, not counting Sunday. Forrest Gump is a fun treadmill movie.)

--apologizing to people who Sage and Eliza called on my phone without me knowing (including, but not limited to, family members and renters!)

--testing out two delicious new bread recipes (Cinnamon Raisin and Banana-Pumpkin) in an attempt to avoid eating sweets by binging on carbs.

I get hungry every time I see this picture. It makes me think of cinnamon, and Christmas smells and Christmas decorations.....oh man...