Valentine's Eve

I'm going to remember as many details as I can about February 13.

2012. My roommate Ammon's girlfriend had pasted paper hearts all over our door. So Ammon was making something for her. I was watching A Charlie Brown Valentine on my computer when he came in and asked if I had markers or something. I knew I had some colored Sharpies, so I started looking. He was blasting the Katy Perry "Part of Me" lyric video, which had debuted the day before:

I asked him if it was from her Teenage Dream album; he said it was just a new single. As I was pulling stuff rapidly out of a box to find the markers, he told me I didn't need to tear my room apart.

2011. I was wearing my gaudy Valentine tie. After church my roommate Zach and I delivered cookies to our home teachees; Briana commented on my tie.

2010. In the morning we went to Mr. Mac so I could get a new suit. As they were fitting me for it, the man commented on my Snoopy Valentine shirt, and said I should wear it the next day. My mom said that the next day was church. Allie got some toys from Matt for Valentine's Day, including a squishy caterpillar. I think on this day I was trying to play a bunch of songs from my Peanuts piano book, but since I don't play piano, it didn't work too well. I even played Christmas songs, and my mom was surprised when I was playing "The Christmas Song." Then we went to Trolley Square to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory. I kept reminding my family about the shootings that occurred there three years before. My mom ordered the menu item called potpourri for my dad and said he always pronounced it "pot poury."


2009. Elder Betenson and I were talking to a guy outside when a member drove up to us, joking that he was running us over. It interrupted our discussion with the guy outside, although he obviously wasn't interested anyway. Elder Betenson was complaining about the member, saying he was really weird. We met a potential investigator named Don and went in and had a lesson with him. I had an awkward moment when I was telling the story of the First Vision and accidentally combined "hearts" and "far" into one word, but thankfully no one laughed or said anything. Then that night we had dinner with Johnny, who wasn't a member but was very friendly to missionaries. He was moving out. Elder Betenson told me about how smart their little daughter was. We took our shoes off at the door. The Isaksens, some members who lived down the street, came over too. Sister Isaksen said to us, "This is a joke I heard from a returned missionary on the radio in Salt Lake City." Then she told a kind of dirty joke and said she didn't get it until she was married. I wondered why she was telling it to us. Johnny gave us ties as a farewell gift, and we took pictures.

This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today we walked all over checking up on new names. We street contacted a guy and a weird member interrupted us by driving right up to us. It's like, 'Can't you see we're doing missionary work?' Normal people would leave us alone.

"But the best part was following up with a potential, Don, who became a new investigator! Then we had dinner with a nonmember named Johnny, who is moving out."

2008. I think this was the day that Elder Chun was finally feeling well enough again to come back to our area after being sick for a week. It might also be the day that I got a Snoopy valentine from my mom. 

2006. I was wearing my Snoopy "Cool Love" shirt, and my sister pointed out that the red splatters on it looked like blood. (They really did.) This might have been the day that she had bought a Valentine red velvet cake at the store because Allie wanted it.

2005. I remember sitting on the stand to bless the sacrament and noticing that Wendy Moosman was wearing a Valentine's Day tie with Peanuts characters on it. I wondered where she got it and I was envious. I remember getting Allie out of her carseat when we got home from church. She was eating a red heart-shaped cookie she had gotten in nursery. It was so cute to see her eating it. She was brand new to nursery. This is one of my memories that kind of makes me sad.

2004. I lent someone my VHS copy of Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown to show in seminary. After school, Daniel Bitner told me that she had my movie, but I had to get on the bus, so I didn't get it back. That was OK with me, because I wanted to watch the newer special, A Charlie Brown Valentine (which was on DVD). My mom brought home all the Valentine candy she got from school. I think that night they gave me my Valentine present, the first season of Gilligan's Island. Then I think we went to Shopko so I could pick up my new glasses. It sure was weird wearing a new prescription; everything looked distorted and small.

2001. This might have been the day I sprained my wrist, but I think that happened the day before. They gave us lists of our partners for the Valentine dance the next day. They said that everyone got to dance with everyone they requested, except for Andreia Dixon, because too many people wanted to dance with her. I was therefore surprised that I got paired with her for one of the dances, since I didn't request her and I found it unlikely she would request me.

2000. I wore my gaudy Valentine tie to church. After church we lit our fireplace and my mom made mini cheesecakes with colored Nilla wafers. I read the final Peanuts strip in the Deseret News. When my sister came over for dinner, I showed it to her and she said Schulz had died. I didn't believe her, but it was true. My brother was talking about how he was sure one of his roommates was going to propose the next day. My cousins might have come over; if they did, I know we watched Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown and ate conversation hearts. I remember my dad watching 60 Minutes and it talked about Charles Schulz. Maybe this was the night I made my box for valentines out of a shoe box. I don't remember the specific day for that, but I can't imagine I would have done it any earlier, since I tended to procrastinate.

1998. It was Courtney Brown's birthday and it was also Friday the 13th. Her parents came and talked about her birthday being on the 13th. (At the time I remember thinking she was born on Friday the 13th, but when I look at a calendar that's not possible.) That day we handed out valentines. When I gave one to Skyler, the boy with the mullet and earrings, he said, "Great, a valentine with no candy." I was confused because I had put candy in each valentine. When I finished handing them out, I noticed some extra Kisses in the bottom of the plastic bag, so I realized that some had fallen out of the envelopes. Then I went home and watched a Valentine episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

1997. I remember filling out my valentines to give to everyone the next day.

1996. Same story as above.

Related posts:
 Remember Every Detail, Volume 6: Valentine's Day
A year of holiday memories

Martin Luther King Day

I'm going to remember as many details as I can about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

2012. I remember going to Walmart with my mom. I think this might have been the time that we were talking about someone's marital status and as we got out of the car, I said, "The only good thing about her husband is the money," and I wondered what the man walking by thought. I said that I wanted to get some candy for my Jar of Hearts that I would take to Provo. I got some large conversation hearts. My mom wanted some gummy cinnamon hearts. She liked the color of the cherry ones better (a brighter red) but preferred the cinnamon flavor. I think we bought a printer, but I actually didn't take it to Provo. When we were driving home, KSL was having a recap of some awards show and they said they were pleased when Madonna called out Lady Gaga. (Incidentally, I don't think that "Born This Way" plagiarizes Madonna.) Then my mom started talking about the Celtic Woman CD my dad got her for Christmas, saying my dad is "so funny" because she had never expressed any interest in anything like that. We started listening to that CD, and I was telling my mom about how one of my mission companions had had it. Then I drove back to Provo.

2011.I think this was the day my windshield was replaced.  I think this was also the day that my cousin Joey came over for some reason and he was hiding from Allie. I was paranoid about driving back to Provo in case it started snowing or I hit a pothole or something but I didn't know where the emergency light button was. Joey went out to the car to find it. When I expressed my worry about it snowing or something, he said I could take State Street all the way to Provo. We laughed at that idea.

2010. I went to Kohl's with my mom, sister, and niece. I found a clearance Christmas shirt with Oscar the Grouch. I got it, along with a St. Patrick's Day t-shirt. They found a red hooded jacket that they all really liked, but Nan worried that it was too small and Allie would soon outgrow it. Allie had a fit because she wanted it. But my mom said she would get it for her if she would calm down, because my mom liked the way it looked. At the checkout, my mom offered to get Allie a stuffed animal instead of  the jacket, but she still wanted the jacket. On our way home, we went to the Atlantis Burger drive-thru. Allie was being kind of crazy. She was shrieking, so my mom and her mom told her she couldn't do that. She started giggling a lot, saying there was an owl on a car outside. I looked and I saw the bird. I said, "I don't think that's an owl, but it is a big bird!" It was a grouse or something. When the owners of the car came out, they just drove off, and the bird stayed on their hood. It might have finally flown off when they got on the road. Then I drove back to Provo. I think I went to dinner group and they had bought bagged Valentine cookies that had little messages on them. I was glad to have a dessert I could eat. They started talking about how conversation hearts are hard and unpleasant, but I said that they had changed and they were no longer hard.

2009. I suspect that Elder Wilson and I stayed with the elders in Airway Heights that evening because of zone conference the next morning, but I don't recall details.

2008. We went and played dodgeball at the church where the Franklin Park elders had church. Elder Ashton and Elder "Ech" had come down from Deer Park. I kept getting hit in the head with the ball; sometimes it knocked my glasses off. After the fourth time, I didn't want to play anymore. It was a full moon that night, so I was talking about how I couldn't stay outside too long or else I would turn into a wolf. We were in a car wash when Elder Chun asked me if I really thought I was a werewolf. I neither confirmed it or denied it but simply said, "What do you think?" We visited the Cunninghams.  The Cunninghams were a family that shifted in and out of activity and they had been fellowshipping a woman named Debbie who was almost baptized but couldn't be because she was living with her boyfriend. They had just had dinner, and Sister Cunningham offered us some, but we declined. Sister Cunningham was cleaning (or maybe she was actually making dinner) and they stored their pans in their oven. Brother Cunningham started lambasting Elder Chun about the incident with Debbie, that we had not made it clear that she had to be married and that his wife was the one who had to tell her. (In fact, we had previously discussed it with Sister Cunningham, and she said she thought Debbie knew.) Then he started making an excuse that they weren't going to church to recover from the incident. It was kind of awkward, because I could tell he was addressing Elder Chun (since I was a greenie) and I had my back to him for a lot of the time, but then eventually I turned around. In retrospect, I think Elder Chun did do a lot of things wrong, but that was no excuse for the Cunninghams to go inactive. Here is my journal entry for the day:
"The preparation part of today was fun. We went and played dodgeball with the other elders. I got hit in the head several times, each by a different person, and after the fourth time I didn't want to play anymore. I did join in a little later, though.

"Then we went to the Marks's where Elder Johnson and Elder Spahr are. We played a game called Bang! and I got in an intense, long game with Sister Marks.

"After that we came home and cleaned our car since we are trading it in tomorrow for a new one.

"We had a dinner and then were supposed to see the Parrishes, a formerly less-active family, but then they cancelled. Then we went to another appointment but they weren't there. Then we stopped by the Cunninghams and Brother Cunningham chewed us out for setting a date with Debbie. That with the fact that it was a full moon made this not the best evening."

2007. There are two possibilities I can think of for this day. One is that my dad asked me to help him move the new elliptical machine from the Suburban. We had to wear gloves, since it was cold and it had been sitting in the car. The other possibility is that my mom's friend Jackie was over and Allie was sitting on one of the feet of the elliptical. I moved it to give her a ride, but she fell off. She got mad at me for going too fast, but Jackie said that maybe she wasn't holding on tight enough. [This entry was taken from my last blog post.]

2004. We were in Fillmore visiting my grandparents (my grandpa called the holiday "Black Monday") and I was wearing a Snoopy shirt. We went somewhere; my mom rode with my grandma in our car, and I rode with my dad and my grandpa in theirs. My grandpa sat in the backseat and let me sit in the front. I kept closing my eyes, and my dad kept asking if I was falling asleep, but I wasn't.

2003. This was a very eventful weekend, but I can't specifically remember what happened on the Monday.

1996. My cousins were all over at our house. They were playing some raucous game. I said I wanted to play a Martin Luther King game. My brother said that then we could play someone getting shot. Even at seven years old I recognized that as kind of insensitive. [I also took this one from my last post.]

January 15

January 15 is the birthday of my youngest nephew, "Baby" (Nathaniel), and it is also the day I start the Valentine's Day season (although this has not always been the case).

2012. It was a Sunday, and I was at home. I think it was the first time I'd been on Facebook for eleven days. I remember working on my blog on the computer downstairs when Allie came down and told me that my mom was making a dessert; she was making it Valentine-themed so I could eat it. I think she asked whether I wanted cake or cookies. It ended up being sugar cookies. I made a cynical Valentine image for the background for my blog. The blog post that night was a memory post, Remember Every Detail, Volume 6: Valentine's Day. After I posted it Jesse told me he liked my background. Then on Facebook he shared a version of Vince Guaraldi's "Peppermint Patty," one of the best songs ever.


2011. I remember that the night before I stayed up late and when it was midnight I added my Valentine music to my playlist. I know I drove home that morning, but I can't remember specific details about the day.

2010. It was a Friday. I was just about to go into my Music 101 class when my mom texted me, saying that my new nephew was coming early. I was quite surprised--he was very early--and a little sad, because I wanted him to be born in February. (That way, David's family would have birthdays in October, November, December, January, and February.) Then I drove home that afternoon. I think we had pizza and I was doing my math homework that was due by midnight. Susanne mentioned to me that I could call my cousin April for help. I noticed that David had updated his blog with pictures of the new baby. Of course, I don't think newborns are that cute (Baby is adorable now, but he wasn't then), so I preferred to watch an old video of Preston.

My mom heard it and correctly guessed it was one when he was in the bath. My parents went to bed, but I wanted to stay up. Previously my sister had mentioned that even though her bed was in the family room, she didn't mind if I did stuff in the room, but now I realize she probably didn't mean I could stay in there when she wanted to go to bed. So when she wanted to go to bed, I was on the elliptical watching an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. She told me that Allie had been really funny recently. When Susanne was getting her engagement ring, Allie confused karat and carrot and said she wanted her ring to be a six-inch carrot.

2009. We went and visited Allie Vetch in the morning. That afternoon we helped a pseudo-investigator named David chop wood. I'm not coordinated, so he kept worrying about my form in chopping the wood and worried I was going to chop myself. Then we had a lesson with Cassandra Johnson. We asked her if she had prayed about baptism. She said it was something she felt she should do. Then we went home to make preparations for the baptism, and someone threw something at our window and sarcastically said something like, "I worship the devil!" This is my journal entry for the day:
"Even though Elder Wilson was sick today, we had a good day. This morning we had a lesson with Allie Vetch. Later we helped David. That was awkward; my ineptitude became ultra apparent. He is extremely ADD. Then we had a lesson with Hailey, which went all right. Lastly we put Cassandra on date. I was somewhat questioning it, but the rightness of the act was confirmed when some obnoxious person threw a rock or something at our window and yelled something sarcastic."

2008. We were going on an exchange with Elder Spahr and Elder Johnson that night. Elder Chun asked me to call them. He said that we were probably distracting them during a lesson, so I left a message saying, "This is the devil." Then we got to their house. Elder Spahr told me not to wet the bed.

2007. This was Martin Luther King Day, and there are two possibilities I can think of for this day. One is that my dad asked me to help him move the new elliptical machine from the Suburban. We had to wear gloves, since it was cold and it had been sitting in the car. The other possibility is that my mom's friend Jackie was over and Allie was sitting on one of the feet of the elliptical. I moved it to give her a ride, but she fell off. She got mad at me for going too fast, but Jackie said that maybe she wasn't holding on tight enough.

2006. I think this might have been the time I asked Allie if she wanted to watch Bewitched, since I had gotten the second season on DVD just two days before and wanted to watch the St. Patrick's Day episode. She said she did, but then when we were watching it she lost interest. But maybe it was a different Sunday.

2000. I invited my friend David Christensen over to play. He seemed incredulous that I had put up Valentine's Day decorations the night before. We went outside--it was kind of a warm day--and I wanted to improvise a song about spring. I wanted him to do background vocals, like saying "ooh buds" when I sang lyrics about buds on the trees. We played charades in the front yard. I was pretending to be a ballerina right when Austin Anderson drove by, and I wondered what he thought if he had seen me.

1999. I came home from school--early out--and set to putting up Valentine's Day decorations, including putting the wire heart garland on the stair railing.

January 4, 2008

I could remember things about all sorts of January 4s, but I'm going to focus on one particularly unusual and sad one.

January 4, 2008, started out as a fairly typical day. We probably visited one Denise Beltran in the morning, and then a little later in the day we went home for lunch.

We lived with the Welshes, an elderly couple who are some of the funniest people ever. Elder Chun and I were up in the kitchen having lunch. Brother Welsh was gone somewhere, but Sister Welsh was home. The phone rang, and Elder Chun went downstairs. I was still in the kitchen while Sister Welsh answered the phone in the secondary sitting room. I remember her saying that her husband wasn't home, but that we missionaries were. Then she came out of that room calling, "Missionaries!" She seemed frantic and said to me that her son was on the phone, and she said, "I have the feeling something terrible's happened."

So we went and sat down on the couch. She held my hand. Her son said something, and she said, almost angrily, "What!?" Then she started squeezing my hand and crying. I heard her say that she didn't want any of hers going before she did. Then Elder Chun came up into the room. Sister Welsh told her son that the other missionary had just walked in and was wondering why we were holding hands and why she was crying. I think she then started telling her son about us, that I was from Utah and that the other was from California.

What had happened was that her youngest son had been killed in an accident while working on the newly renovated Utah capitol. Apparently he was underneath the building in a crawl space, and there were some electrical cords hanging down.

We were sitting at the kitchen table when Brother Welsh came home. She took him into their bedroom to break the news to him. When they were out of the room, Elder Chun said, "Awkward!" It seemed a little insensitive to me.

The Welshes' oldest son, Harold, had been in prison, and his bedroom was directly next to ours. Yes, that was kind of odd. At one point we heard him calling legal authorities--the parole office?--saying that it was an emergency. His brother had died in Utah, so he needed to leave the state.

We went tracting that night. At the first house we knocked on, the woman said, "JWs," as she shook our hands. I didn't know that stood for "Jehovah's Witness," so I thought she was saying her name. She talked about walking with God. At one point in the conversation, Elder Chun said, "As a Jehovah's Witness, do you..." He thought that when she said "JWs," she was saying she was a JW, but it was later evidenced that she thought we were the JWs. There was another house that was dark, but there were dogs barking. Eventually someone answered and said we were persistent but stupid for staying on the doorstep so long. (I probably had not wanted to knock on the door, since it was dark.) We tracted into some members, who invited us in. I think we didn't know them but we did figure out that they were members. One house had the phone ring right as the woman came to the door, so she conveniently used that as an excuse to say she couldn't talk and closed the door.

We went home that evening and some of the Priesthood from the ward were giving the Welshes blessings. We missed Sister Welsh's, but we went up for Harold's and Brother Welsh's. For some reason the people thought it was an occasion to use consecrated oil. I knew that it wasn't, but I didn't think it was the proper situation to say so. The Lawtons from across the street were there; Sister Lawton was an active Mormon but her husband was a Catholic. I don't think I knew that, and I wondered why he wasn't helping with blessings.

What surprised me about this experience was that of all the people this could have happened to, it happened to the son of the random couple I was living with in Mead, WA, right at the time I was there. After that, Sister Welsh seemed to have a sort of soft spot for me--she once said about me, "He was my friend when I needed a friend." I feel really bad for them.

Here is an article from the Deseret News about what happened.

This is my journal entry for the day:

"Today we taught a less-active lesson in the afternoon and a recent convert lesson in the morning. Our investigator cancelled, so we checked up on less-actives and part-member families this evening.

"We went tracting as well. The first house was a lady who thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses. We were able to convince her otherwise, but her attitude was definitely 'We have got a Bible." Another person lived in a dark house with barking dogs. He answered the door and said we were persistent but stupid. We knocked on a member's door, and then we went to a house where the lady told us she couldn't talk. Conveniently for her, the phone rang just as we got there which was why she couldn't talk.

"Today's various events, however, were overshadowed with sorrow. This afternoon, Elder Chun and I were up in the kitchen making lunch and talking with Sister Welsh. The phone rang so Sister Welsh answered it and Elder Chun went downstairs. Soon Sister Welsh came out of the room calling for us. She got me and told me she had a feeling something terrible happened and she wanted me with her. She grabbed my hand and brought me onto the couch, and squeezed my hand and cried as she heard the news that her youngest son had died in a construction accident. Needless to say the rest of the day was a downer. The tragic irony is that he was working on the Utah Capitol Building, and today is Utah's birthday.

"We gave Harold and Brother Welsh blessings with other men from the ward. We missed giving one to Sister Welsh because we had just come home and came upstairs after they had started. They're all headed off to Salt Lake tomorrow."