Mother's Day

Mother's Day is soon, so I will try to remember what I can about that day. I know I'm going to forget stuff.

2012. At church, during Priesthood I sat next to David Christensen. He told me he was amazed at my memory on my blog, how much I could remember going so far back. He told me about a TED talk he had seen about memory. That afternoon we had a family gathering at our house. I think my mom and grandparents ate on the patio, but my aunt Sue ate inside. Jesse and Peter raved about my memory. Peter said, "Do you remember your birth?" and joked, "'Well, there was a bright light...'" or something like that. Sue found that really funny. Jesse said that he liked on my Year of Holiday Memories post that not only did I remember the Fourth of July ads that popped up on Facebook but who liked them. I said, "Well, it was less than a  year ago." So then they tried to remember what they had done the previous Fourth of July. They couldn't even remember what state they were in, but I think they eventually determined that they were in Utah. They asked me what I did on the day five years previously, so I told them some of the things that are found in 2007 below. I mentioned that I was thinking of starting this blog, and they said it would be awesome. Jesse found a plastic Easter egg. I told him he could eat the candy, since he found it and the candy was out of season anyway. Eventually I returned to Provo and wrote a blog post.

2011. In the morning we gave my mom the flowers we had bought her the day before. I seem to remember my extended family coming over to our house, and the flowers were on the fireplace. Then I returned to Provo and wrote a cheesy blog post.

2010. Allie's esophagus was blocked, so she couldn't eat solid food. She was excited that she would be entitled to milkshakes at my grandparents' house when everyone else wouldn't be. My mom let her eat frozen Cool Whip in the car on the way to my grandparents'; Allie said it would be like ice cream (except that Cool Whip is just oil). I was going to be going back to Provo after the family dinner, so we loaded my groceries in the trunk and put my milk in the cardboard box it came in (from Costco). As I was pulling out of the driveway, I noticed how cool the crabapple tree looked in blossom, so I snapped a picture on my phone. When we got to my grandparents' house, my mom said that she and Allie had been listening to the Cherie Call CD I had given her. My cousin April asked me, "How is it at the devil school?" I said, "I don't go there." After a pause in the conversation, she said, "No, really, how is school?" At some point I changed my phone's screensaver to the crabapple tree and I showed my mom. It wasn't that interesting, but then my grandma and aunt wanted to see it too. When I showed it to Sue, the little house icon was lit up in front of the picture, and she said that when she first saw it she wondered why we had a little house in our yard. Some of the boys were taking Allie to feed the ducks, and they gave her bread, which she started eating. My mom had to yell at her that she couldn't eat it, and Sue said "Never give bread to a starving child." (That sounds really funny out of context, doesn't it?)

2009. It was my first Sunday in the Lewiston 2nd Ward and the Lewis-Clark YSA Branch. During Priesthood, the second counselor in the bishopric introduced me. He introduced me as "Elder Medville" and said I'd been out about a year. (I had actually told him over a year, not about a year.) Then in the singles branch, we had to bless the sacrament, and then we spoke in sacrament meeting. I told them that I was shocked at how quiet their meeting was. (Little did I know that every single guest speaker in the branch would make the same comment. That's the quietest congregation I've ever been in.) I think I was assigned to talk about fast offerings. At some point I talked about James 2 and faith without works, and how some people would tell us missionaries to stay warm but would do nothing to help us stay warm. President Landeen (the branch president) laughed. That afternoon we went to the Biglers' to make our Mother's Day phone calls. Elder LaPratt (I can't say his name without my blood boiling) called on a cellphone and I called on the landline. The Biglers had a family member who kept calling and knocking me off the line. Once I talked to that person, and she felt bad for kicking me off. Allie told me something about her bike. I told her, "I can't believe you are five," and she corrected, "Five and a half." Toward the end of the conversation, my cousin Quin got on the phone, and I was annoyed because it was supposed to be an immediate family call. His voice had changed, so I didn't know who he was at first. Toward the end of the conversation, I said, "I'll see you in six months," and my mom and sister cheered, but I didn't feel the same way. I heard Chancey yell goodbye at me, but he didn't pick up the phone. That night we met with our investigator Kim [Last name withheld for privacy] at the stake center. She wanted to get baptized, but her family was opposed to it. We taught with one of the Ball boys. Tyson was her boyfriend, but it seems like it could have been Brock. We talked about baptism, and Kim told us that her family wanted her to wait (I think like two years). Tyson (or Brock) said that he thought she should wait. Elder LaPratt and I looked at each other in frustration and Elder LaPratt said, "That's reasonably good advice, but..." and we talked about how she should get baptized sooner. At some point in the lesson I brought out Doctrine and Covenants 20:37 and Elder LaPratt said, "I think Elder Melville has a scripture." After I read it, Tyson said, "Will you explain to her what that means?" It seemed clear to me that he was asking for himself more than for her. We went over the baptismal interview questions. One of the questions was, "Have you ever participated in a homosexual relationship?" She said she had made out with a girl, and we didn't know if that counted. We set a baptism date for her for May 23, and talked about what songs we could sing. Elder LaPratt suggested "All Creatures of Our God and King." I tried to plunk it out on the piano so she could hear it, but it was harder than I expected. We went home, and Elder LaPratt called President Clark and asked if kissing a girl counted as a homosexual relationship. President said it had to be more intimate. Then I think that night Elder LaPratt reported Kim's progress to other missionaries, and there may have been some Katy Perry references (but I didn't know any Katy Perry so I wouldn't have gotten the jokes.) Here is my journal entry for the day:
"Today was my first Sunday in the units. Once again I was called Elder Medville, a term I hadn't heard since my greenie days. I spoke in sacrament meeting for the singles branch. I don't think I did a very good job. I was really nervous, and I think I was short.

"It was pretty weird making my final phone call home. I only have six months left :(. Allie was specific about being five and a half. I was shocked to hear the Christensens divorced back home.

"We had a lesson with Kim, to put her on date. She has family opposition. We were annoyed when her fellowshipper was advising her to wait. It was also weird when she said she'd made out with a girl. But hopefully she'll be baptized May 23." 

2008.  Elder Condie had made a dinner of a bean burrito, but then the Welshes (the couple we lived with) made dinner and let us have some. I ate their dinner, but Elder Condie ate his burrito. Except that he didn't. He was so trunky that he couldn't finish his dinner because he wanted to call home. His family told him that they weren't going to get cable after the government changed it. After dinner it was my turn to call home. I was kind of nervous to call home for some reason. I didn't get to talk to Susanne but I talked to my parents. My mom told me about Susanne's boyfriend Matt. I played on the Welshes' ridiculous piano for my mom. I avoided looking at my watch so that I wouldn't know how long it had been. Then it was time to say goodbye. Here is my journal for the day:
"No one [investigators] showed up at church today.

"But I had a very nice talk with my family. Allie is sounding so old. Most of the conversation was trivial but it was wonderful to talk with them. Mom, of course, cried a lot. They said Allie is talking a lot. I can't believe how much more clearly Allie talks. She's almost five! Grandpa apparently said he's feeling old. He just has to wait for me." 

2007. I think this was the year I got one of the Work and the Glory movies for my mom. We had the family over. My mom was telling them that a newspaper article made her sad--it was about how missionaries got to call home for Mother's Day, and it reminded her that the following Mother's Day I would be on my mission. We had my senior picture in a frame in preparation for seminary graduation the following Sunday. Allie saw me in my tux and said, "Oh, when did you get married?" Later that night her mom showed up and parked on the street. My grandma or my aunt said to her, "Allie, who just showed up?" and she said excitedly, "Susanne!" They thought that was hilarious.

2006. I got my mom the DVD of Mary Poppins. I think that day I cut up strawberries for strawberry shortcake. I asked my mom if I could take a nap and she said I could, and I think I even double checked. But then I found out later that she was mad at me for taking a nap. But I had asked her! That night we watched the special features on the DVD.

2004. I think I got my mom some Snoopy socks and other socks. She got a black pearl for Susanne with a note that was supposed to be from baby Allie that said "Maybe when I'm 25 I'll have enough money to buy you a whole string." The family came over. I think this was the time I was in the kitchen buttering garlic bread. I said something about not wanting too much butter on the bread. Wayne said, "It's good for you," and I wondered how he could possibly think that garlic butter was actually good for you. That evening Wayne was a long time in the main bathroom. Then it was discovered that he was downstairs in Susanne's bathroom, even though he had just been in the upstairs bathroom. It was deduced that he just wanted to snoop in Susanne's room, and when Susanne found out she was furious and creeped out.

2002. I think this was the year I made French toast for my mom. I picked tulips from the garden, but I did that several years.

2000. I gave my mom a hooked garden pole. I snapped pictures when David gave her the flower arrangement he had made from the dried yellow roses that my late aunt Darleen had given her. I also took a picture of my grandpa. That night my siblings asked if I wanted to contribute to the picture book they had bought my mom of the "Touch of the Master's Hand" poem. I hadn't heard it before, but they told me my mom loved it.

1999. I wonder if this was the year I gave my mom the garden gnome with daisies.

1998. I think this was the year Susanne had to work but she left a mug full of candy for my mom.

1996. I think I gave my mom a garden gnome and a birdhouse I had painted myself. In school we had made our own wrapping paper and I drew flowers with glow-in-the-dark crayons. I had drawn something with a story about my mom, and I think my mom was a little embarrassed. I had heard this story and I thought that my mom had said an acceptable word but one of the kids in her student-teaching class misheard her and said, "Mrs. Melville, you didn't have to swear!" That was the picture I drew. But I later found out that my mom had actually said the swear word, and when she retold the story she said the acceptable word because it sounded similar to the swear word.

Mother's Day was a hard holiday to remember.

Pre-preschool

I'm going to try to pull together the memories I have between the time I moved into our new house and the time I entered Wishing Well Preschool--basically, memories from between the ages of 2 and 4. Inevitably I'm going to miss something, since I have many memories. I'm also not going to include things that are included in other memory posts (but there aren't many of those). I'm also not including memories where I don't know whether it was before or after I was in preschool (for example, my sister's "crazy years").

I can remember some early church memories. I remember playing "Ring Around the Rosie" in nursery with Martha Steagall and other kids. As a sunbeam I remember singing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam," only I thought it was "sunbean." Every time I sang "A sunbean, a sunbean!" I would laugh hysterically because I thought it was so funny to be singing about beans. When I started laughing, another girl would start laughing. Sometimes I didn't like going to my classes, so I would go to Relief Society with my mom. I remember looking at the curtain against the back wall and resting my head against my mom. When she sang, it sounded really funny, since it was muffled with my ear next to her body.

I can remember one night being in our family room and David pulled a seed out of my belly button. I'm not sure whether this was a dream or whether I really did have a seed in my belly button for some reason. Regardless of whether it actually happened, I thought it happened, and sometimes I would say, somewhat distraught, "David took the seed out of my belly button!" I thought that I was supposed to have a seed there, and he ruined my body.

I can remember sitting in my bedroom, listening to the train whistles from the bottom of the hill, playing with various toys. I had a little red duffle bag and a plush Ernie that you could practice dressing. I can remember reading a little pink book called The Rose Petal Place that had an evil spider woman with an assistant fly. I would look at the back and wish we had the tape and the purple and green books in the series. I remember looking at the package for the Pull-Ups I would wear and imagined that the kids on the package lived in a special room that was out of the picture and I would go visit them.

I can remember my dad putting me in a backpack when he went jogging. I remember him giving me some fruit snack or gummy candy on occasion, which I loved. I would hear the bird call that has a high pitch followed by a lower pitch, and I imagined that the birds were saying, "Big Bird!" They were friends with the Sesame Street character. On one occasion my dad pulled some papers out of the post of a gate near what is now the Eaglewood Golf Course (I don't know what was there before). I thought it was a special mailbox for him.

When I was mad, I used to lie down on the ground and say dramatically, "I'm dead!"

We had a gold Subaru that would make a beeping noise if you had the door open with the keys in. I always said it was saying, "Dave don't! Dave don't!" That would make David really mad. 

Once I remember being at my aunt Susie's house, and she was offering me a candy or a popsicle or something. She asked what color I wanted, and she made fun of me for saying "lellow."

I remember going to my grandparents' house. They always had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fruit snacks, and we would always ask, "Can I have a turtle snack?" We called them turtle snacks even if they bought other fruit snacks. Sometimes they would get pizza from Pizza Hut, which came with little plastic things to keep the lid from smashing into the pizza. We would fight over who got to keep the little plastic thing. While we ate pizza we would pretend we were Ninja Turtles and would argue about who should be who. Our cousin April was always April. (I actually don't remember anything about TMNT, except that I used to know all the characters.) Grandma and Grandpa also always had apple sodas that we loved to get from their basement, but they had bottle caps so we had to have someone open them for us.

Once I spent the night at my grandparents' house. The next day, my grandma took me to a store and bought me a Pinocchio book and some Tic-Tacs (both were things I wanted). Then we came back to their house and I fell asleep in their family room while watching The Jungle Book. My grandparents had lots of movies we would always watch. I used to laugh and punctuate my laugh with a dramatic sigh, and all the adults would laugh. Once while watching Robin Hood, one of the kids in the movie sighed like I did, and all of our parents laughed, probably because they realized that's where I got it from. But I thought they just thought that kind of laughing was funny, and I didn't understand what was so funny about it.

I remember wearing my Mickey Mouse slipper socks at my other grandparents' house in Fillmore.

One day my mom presented me with a gift of a St. Patrick's Day troll. It had little plastic, green shamrock-shaped glasses. I broke the glasses twice because I wanted to see what color the troll's eyes were. After that, I had a great liking of trolls. 

Once, on one of the days after Easter, I was watching cartoons in our family room, eating Easter candy. I liked to bite the ears off of my Peeps bunnies because when they didn't have ears, they looked like snowmen.

My mom worked at a preschool/daycare called Kids Klub. I had a class of my own, but I was so shy that I rarely went to it. I remember once I got to choose a prize, but I wondered why I got a prize since I didn't go to that class often enough to have very many stickers. They used to feed us macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. There was a girl there who would wear a dress that was like a watermelon slice. I remember playing on the monkey bars in the back, and some girls once made mud pies. Once I remember a kid crying because he got hurt, and my mom told him there was a bone called a tailbone. Once my mom found a lock of hair. She took the kids one by one and asked them if they were the ones who had cut their hair. They each denied it, but when one boy said no (I think the same one who hurt his tailbone), she knew he was lying and he got in trouble.

We used to take field trips. On one occasion, we went to a park, and when we were walking back, one of the older kids said, "Quit stepping on the cracks! You're hurting your mom's back!" I hadn't heard anything like that before, and I felt guilty. On that same trip some kids had tried to burn ants with a magnifying glass. I had also brought one of my trolls in the car, a special one that stuck its tongue out when you squeezed it. One of the delinquent kids broke the tongue and I was really upset. On another occasion we went to the zoo. When we were back at Kids Klub, we were drawing pictures. I said I wanted to draw a picture of a little boy listening to the radio. A girl drawing a turtle told me we had to draw pictures of animals we had seen at the zoo. So I drew a picture of a fish listening to the radio.

I'm sure that I'm going to remember more things after I post this, but this should be a good sampling of what my life was like as a 90s kid.

April 23

I'm going to remember as much as I can about April 23. What is significant about April 23, you ask? Well, nothing really, except that I happen to remember things from the last few years about it.

2012. During the day, I gathered my stuff to go back to Provo for spring term. I pulled my bike out of the garage and rode it around the driveway. Then I took the front wheel off so that I could load it into the car. I loaded up and headed out while listening to Taylor Swift's Speak Now album. When I got back into Provo, I stopped at In-N-Out for dinner, since my Distribution job had given me a gift card there for my birthday seven months previously. I kept a close eye on my car, since I didn't want anyone to steal my bike. Then I went back to my apartment and unloaded everything. That night our ward was doing a ward Capture the Flag game, and we were meeting in our parking lot. It was my first time playing Capture the Flag since September 15, 2006 (I think). While we were in the parking lot, we were talking about how warm it was, and I said that that year was the first time that Salt Lake City ever hit 80 degrees during the month of March. We walked up to campus for our game, and on the way my roommate Cameron was talking with Krista Roy about marathons. At first we played near the library, but Bryan Clark and some others were cheating, so we moved the location. TJ Maxwell was wearing a light blue shirt. He was on my team, but there was one point when I was running after him and he had to remind me we were on the same team. I'm a slow runner, so I was unable to get some people, but I did get some. One was easy because he was trying to climb over a wall, and I was able to get him when he came down. Then we went home. I wanted to go running, and I didn't want to drink too much water because I didn't want to have to pee the whole time I was running. It was around 9:00 and I was getting ready to go running when Kat knocked on the door. She invited me to go watch What's Up Doc? with her and some ward members. I really wanted to go running, and after some research I determined that the movie probably didn't fit my standards, so I went running. It was shortly before 10:00. I think I first ran up by the Eyring to see if I could use the restroom there; I can't remember whether it was open. My plan was to run for an hour, and near the end of my run I went down 700 North before coming to my apartment to lengthen my time. I ran past Pickup Place (the house in my ward across from my complex) and Chris Rostrom and some others were standing outside. I didn't feel well, but I looked at my watch and I only needed two more minutes to hit my hour, so I ran past my complex for the final two minutes. But at 59 minutes, I felt even worse, and I knew I had to stop. So I stopped and I wanted to lean against a sign until I felt better. The next thing I knew I could feel my skin breaking, but I didn't care because it felt good to be lying down, taking deep breaths. Then I came out of my less-than-conscious state and thought, "Why am I on the ground?" Then I opened my eyes and thought, "I've got to get out of the middle of the road!" I was glad no cars were around to run me over, and I wondered how I got there, since I was so far from the sign I wanted to lean against. I wondered if anyone had seen me. I walked up to my apartment and got a drink. Instead of doing my usual post-run pushups and situps, I decided to watch Green Acres instead, since I was all scraped up, and I didn't know why I fainted. I made a Facebook status about what happened to me. I was sitting on the couch watching Green Acres when my roommate Cameron came home. He saw me all scraped up and asked me what happened, so I explained. A little later Bryton came home. As he opened the door, he said, "Is someone bleeding?" I said, "Oh, did I get blood on the door?" My hands were bleeding, but I didn't realize that I got blood on the doorknob. I felt kind of bad, but at least I don't have AIDS. I didn't have any bandages of any kind, so I tried to tape some paper towels around my knees. They didn't end up working too well, but maybe it was better than nothing.

2011. This is taken directly from my Day Before Easter post: I actually don't remember much about this day. We got our Easter baskets and Allie got some Disney Princess Squinkies. I suspect this was the time that my aunt and cousins came to our house. My mom gave my cousin Quin the toy sword he had asked her to buy at Disneyland; he began playing with it. We showed them all the Nightmare Before Christmas paraphernalia I got; Quin said, "Best deck of cards ever." This might be the year that when I was watching Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Susanne said that Grandma Judy always let them watch it on TV and she hated it.

2010. It was a rainy Arbor Day. I sat on the couch in the living room and wrote an episode recap for It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown on TV.com. I might have watched that special as well, but I can't remember. I was wearing jeans and a red t-shirt with black collar and sleeves. That evening we had a get-together in honor of my sister's marriage, since she had had an exclusive wedding. When the Thompsons came over, we played Apples to Apples, and then I think we started a game of "ethnic" rummy. A little later my grandparents came over, and so did the Gildersleeves. They had brought Ryan's son Brennon, and I kept asking, "Is this Ryan's kid?" but no one answered me. Allie had fun playing with Brennon, and at some point he tried to kiss her. She was a little weirded out, and Rick Gildersleeve said that Brennon wasn't used to having his kisses rejected. They had been there for some time when my grandparents turned the conversation to how my cousin Tammy's kids had had a lockdown at their school; she had written about it on her blog. My mom asked me to get my laptop. At the mention of my name, Debbie said, "Where is Mark?" since she hadn't seen me since I'd been home from my mission. I stood up and Debbie was surprised. I had been in the room the whole time, but she just thought I was another Thompson. She said, "Well, look at you!" since I was so much thinner than the last time she had seen me. I went upstairs and got my laptop and brought it downstairs. I looked at Tammy's blog and I think I might have looked at some other stuff online. Rhys showed me the burned CD he had brought with him and told me he liked to listen to Marilyn Manson. Later that night, after the Gildersleeves had left, we were all upstairs in the kitchen and talked about Rhys. My mom also mentioned that she thought it was hilarious that Debbie didn't recognize me even though she'd been in the room for so long.

2009. This is what my journal says about the day:
"Today we had cold weather and rain and sleet/hail. We just walked around and most people weren't home. We had a good lesson with the Williamses. I think we'll really be able to help them progress. Their dad basically taught them the law of chastity, and he wants to quit smoking and take the sacrament." 
Ah yes, the Williamses. The Williamses were an inactive family; the parents had been baptized a few years earlier. We were teaching Michael and Travis, who were 9 and 8 respectively; neither of them had been baptized. Our lessons with them were hilarious; they always had fun insights. Brother Williams was a very nice but kind of odd fellow. I vaguely remember this particular lesson. He brought up the story of the woman taken in adultery. He then explained what adultery was; I can't remember whether the kids had asked or if he just decided to explain it to them. Later Elder Kitchen and I talked about how we were glad that he had the chastity talk with them so that we didn't have to.

2008. This is what my journal says about the day:
"We had district meeting this morning. Then we had a long visit with Cindy. She gave us food from Zip's. Then we contacted a referral and hopefully he'll be a new gator tomorrow.

"We taught the Davises and Sister Davis had a seizure while we taught." 
 Oh yes, a bunch of interesting people. Cindy Neely was what we call an eternal investigator. She had been taking lessons off an on for more than ten years but never got baptized. She was an incredibly lazy person and could never give up smoking or leave her low-paying job (which consisted of her doing nothing most of the time, quite literally). My second companion was a bad companion, and we spent way too much time with Cindy. On this occasion, she had just gotten paid, so she asked us if we wanted food from Zip's (a gross, overrated fast food joint in Washington). We went with her there and I kind of felt bad, since Zip's was overpriced and she didn't have a lot of money. But she was very kind. I think that the referral I'm talking about was a man named Jeremiah. He was married to a less-active member. They lived in the massive apartment complex at the southeast corner of our area, and when we knocked on the door, Jeremiah was very nice and invited us in. Then the Davises were an interesting family. The mom had a lot of health problems and had two teenage daughters. Her caretaker, Shane, also lived with them...but we think he may have been more than a caretaker. I can't remember whether this seizure incident was unique or not. I imagine that what happened was that the fourteen-year-old daughter was a little concerned, but the seventeen-year-old daughter and the caretaker weren't too concerned, since she frequently had seizures.

2000. This is taken from my Easter post: Easter dinner was at our house this year. It was supposed to be at 5:00. My mom told me and David she wanted to have a discussion on the true meaning of Easter before everyone came. But before it was even 4:00, the Thompsons all pulled up in their van. I said, "What are they doing here!?" I think I remember wondering why Sue was driving instead of Wayne, because my dad was always the one to drive in my family. Because they arrived early, we didn't get to have our Easter discussion.

Pet crabs

In 1994, my grandparents got me a ten-gallon aquarium for my birthday. Throughout my elementary school years, we kept various fish in the tank.

Occasionally, we would buy our fish from the J&L Garden Center, which had a better selection than the Bird World pet store. They even had little crabs. These weren't like hermit crabs or something like them; these were small crabs that spent most of their time in the water. They sold two kinds. One had white claws and the males had one claw larger than the other (the females only had two small claws). I think I once mentioned that we should get a male and a female so they could have baby crabs (we did once have fish parents have babies), but we only ever had one crab at a time. The other variety had red claws. Usually we bought the males of the white-claw variety (the females weren't cool enough), but sometimes we bought the red-clawed varieties.

With one of our first crabs (perhaps our first), we one day found its pale shell lying lifeless in the bottom of the tank. My mom regretfully told me that the crab had died, and I was a little sad.

But a few days later, one night I was in the living room with my mom and brother. You can imagine my surprise when I looked in the aquarium and saw the crab alive and well, even though we had taken its empty shell out a few days earlier! "Mom!" I said, "[Whatever name I gave the crab] is in the tank!" She reminded me consolingly that the crab had died, so it couldn't be there. But I kept insisting, and she and my brother didn't believe me. Finally David looked in the tank and confirmed that I was right. Then my mom believed the story and came to see for herself. I don't know whether she needed another witness or else just trusted a thirteen-year-old over a six-year-old. She subsequently did some research and learned that crabs shed their exoskeletons, much like snakes shed their skins. Apparently we had kept the crab shell (even though we thought it was the real thing), and we put it in a plastic bag so that I could share it for show-and-tell in my kindergarten class. I can't remember if I did share it with them, but I do remember that I kept it in my backpack for a long time, so eventually it became a bunch of pink-colored broken shards in the plastic bag.

One day I remember being in my grandparents' pool, floating on something. I told my mom I was pretending to be a crab, and I may have done something to imitate claws. My mom said something about how I had one claw bigger than the other, but I told her I was one of the red-claw crabs, so both my claws were the same size.

We learned another interesting thing about crabs. We kept our aquarium upstairs in the living room, and one day--maybe Memorial Day 1996--we came home from camping in Fillmore for the weekend and were surprised to find our crab, dead, downstairs in our family room! (At that time our family room was on the opposite side of the room from where it is now.) When we bought crabs, they told us that the crabs needed air (even though they spent most of their time in the water), so we needed to have fake plants or something that they could climb so that they could get to the air at the top of the aquarium. Well, it just so happened that there was a small hole in the lid of the aquarium, and the crab had somehow managed to crawl up the fake plants and out the hole, fall off of the aquarium, walk over to the stairs, fall through the railing and survive (I find that more believable than it actually going down all the stairs), and crawl into the family room, where it expired from thirst. I know at one point we covered up the hole in the lid with some masking tape to prevent the crabs from escaping, but I don't know whether that was before or after we found another dead crab on the floor in the dining room. Unfortunately, we never saw one of the crabs alive outside of the tank--I say unfortunately because we could have saved it and because it would have been amusing to see it walking along the carpet.

But being aware that crabs shed their skins and knowing to cover up potential escape holes, we didn't have too many memorable crab incidents after that. I remember once when I was twelve looking in the tank and seeing the crab lying upside down on the gravel. I knew it was the crab itself and not the exoskeleton because it was dark, whereas the hollow shells were light. A few days later, in my sixth-grade class, we were talking about things that ended up at the wastewater treatment plant. I think it was mentioned that floss was a problem, and it was brought up that lots of dead fish ended up there. I also threw out that my crab, which had died just a few days earlier, ended up there too, since we had flushed it down the toilet. I think my teacher didn't know how to respond.

April General Conference

In the midst of watching conference sessions, I'm going to recall the past April conferences of my life. (Last fall I made a post of the October conferences I have experienced.) Some of these years are lifted from my Easter memories.

2012. Saturday was a really warm March day. I remember looking outside and seeing people running and wondering why they weren't watching conference, since most young people in Provo go to BYU. I was eating Easter Dots and grapes to stay awake. For the afternoon session, my roommate Cameron Eaton and his girlfriend came and watched; she had made cookies but they didn't offer any to me (which was fine by me because I didn't want to share my stuff, and the cookies weren't in season anyway). During the last song, she said, "That's David Archuleta!" And indeed it was. There were lots of Facebook statuses about him. I changed into a blue shirt and put on my Snoopy Easter tie and walked over early to the church on 900 East. There was a backyard adjoining the church parking lot; a guy with no shirt asked me if the Priesthood Session was being broadcast at the building. I was early, but the building was later filled to capacity and I wasn't alone on my bench for long. During the session, I doodled in the empty spaces in the calendar in the back of my planner to stay awake.

Sunday was April Fool's Day, so there were plenty of fake engagements and baby announcements on Facebook. One person even said something about a crime at Yellowstone, but that was fake too. I was amused by Google's jokes, like all the YouTube videos on DVD and the Google Maps video game theme. That night I wrote a blog post.

2011. My roommate Derek slept through all of the first session. And then he slept through all of the second session. I walked up to the Marriott Center for the Priesthood session, and when I walked home, I stopped in at South End Market to buy some grapes. The cashier told me she liked my Snoopy tie. I think I looked at the display of Easter candy, but I didn't get any.

On Sunday it had suddenly become snowy. I was quite amused by the guy at the end turning around and smiling; Lynsey Mitchell made a status about it.
It appears that I actually wrote in my journal that night: "Today was the second day of conference. Derek (Elder Warren) slept in for all of the first session. At least he didn't sleep through both of them like he did yesterday. One of the main themes of conference was dating and marriage. This week I went with Lori McKee to the play Persuasion. I'm glad that happened before conference.

"I didn't leave the apartment at all today. When Tristram came home about 7:00, the door was still locked. I had fun looking at  the Corpus of LDS General Conference Talks, and playing Easter songs on my keyboard.

"I am nervous for tomorrow because I have to take a test and finish a CHum 250 project for Tuesday, and I don't know if I'll be able to figure out the project. I will be glad when the semester is over." 

2010.  In the morning on Saturday I saw my Easter basket that had my new shirts and blue plaid shorts in it. I was kind of disappointed that those were my only gifts, since I had got those the day before--there were no surprises. I think we did some grocery shopping and I got a haircut in the morning before the first session. And I think after the first session we had our Easter festivities. Allie didn't want to stay with us because of general conference; Matt said that she had been telling them all about it. We watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail before the second session, and I think that morning our home teacher Christian Ulmer brought us donuts. I think my dad and I went to the Eagleridge building for the Priesthood session.

On Sunday, my parents were going out of town since it was my mom's spring break. My mom wanted me to eat a quarter of the last donut, a glazed one. I didn't want to, since it didn't have any Easter frosting or sprinkles, but she insisted. I told her that I would have to do ten pushups for it. She told me I was a slave driver (against myself) and said that she wouldn't have made me eat it if she knew I would have to do pushups for it. I told her it was OK. They left, and I watched the afternoon session of conference. Elder Nelson spoke and showed pictures of his grandkids. I thought about how my parents wouldn't see those pictures, since they were listening on the car radio. Then I was texting my cousin Jesse about how I would be coming to their house. It took me a long time to get ready to go back to Provo, and before I left I played "That Easter Morn" on the piano. In the car I was listening to Messiah as performed by the MoTab. I think Jesse texted me while I was driving, asking when I'd be there. I got to the Thompsons' house and they had a banner across their door that said "Welcome Home Elder Mark" that they had taken when I came home. I had been home for four months at this point, and I had actually seen the banner on the floor in their house on a previous visit in December. When I told them this they seemed disappointed. When I went inside I was standing, waiting for them to invite me to sit down (as I had become accustomed to doing on my mission), but I could tell they weren't going to invite me, so I sat down anyway. They told me that Joey had objected to putting the banner across the door because it would make them look like white trash. He didn't mind it being in the window, but he didn't like it across the door. I said that I didn't know how having it across the door was worse than having it in the window, and Sue agreed with me. Sue talked about watching conference, and mentioned the speaker who showed pictures of his family. I said, "Wasn't that Elder Nelson?" They were watching a sports game of some sort. After some small talk, Jesse asked me if I wanted to play Nintendo. I told him that I preferred not to play video games or watch TV on Sunday. I didn't think about the fact that they were watching TV. I didn't mean for them to turn off the TV, but they started to. Sue told me she agreed with me. But Peter insisted on keeping the TV on. I remember Jesse eating his Easter candy and I was a little sad that I had eaten all of mine. Jesse and Peter talked about how they wanted to get a pet penguin, and I started talking about how puffins are better than penguins because they can swim and fly. Sue said, "Penguins can fly." Peter and Jesse said, "No they can't!" and Sue realized her folly. They talked about how they wanted to buy an island for exotic pets, and how our uncle Paul could probably finance such a purchase. We talked about an individual we don't care for. We talked about the mysterious, creepy phone calls my aunt Debbie had received many years previously. Sue said that Wayne had put someone up to it, but she wouldn't say who the caller was because it was someone Peter and Jesse liked. After some coaxing, Sue told them who the caller was, and they assured her they didn't like that person. Throughout all our conversations Joey was in and out of the room. He would say the initial of a swear word, forbearing saying the word itself. He said he hated his dad and anyone associated with him. Sue told him he couldn't hate his dad. After he had left, Jesse was talking about how people believed Obama was a Muslim and that Joey probably believed that too. Sue said that Jesse and Peter believed dumb things too, "like evolution." Jesse retorted about evolution being fact-based. I could have spoken up with my views on evolution, but I figured it wouldn't have done much good, and I didn't want to open a can of worms. Eventually I left. I parked in my parking lot by the storage sheds. Lots of people had Facebook links to the Church's YouTube clip adapted from Elder Holland's talk the previous year. I made a status that said "Handel's Messiah is awesome," but no one commented on it.

2009. We went to our church building to watch. I think after the second session we went to the Days', which was where the elders in the Hayden 3rd Ward lived, and there was a press conference with the newly called Elder Andersen. Then I think it was Elder Stafford and Elder Johnson who drove us back to the church for the Priesthood Session. I was reading funny Bible verses, and I was reading some from Proverbs 23 about how dumb alcohol is. I was reading it, and Elder Johnson was talking to Elder Stafford, and then Elder Stafford told him that he wasn't listening to him because he was listening to me. Before the session started, they showed clips of the Tabernacle Choir, and Elder Stafford made some crude comment about how women shouldn't be at the meeting.

On Sunday we went to the church building again. Elder Nixon had gotten a ride from a member in their area down to the church building. That member had brought food and shared it with us. Then Elder Nixon, in his typical overbearing fashion, insisted that he go help us blitz our area. I wasn't too keen on the idea, since it came out of the blue and because it was a burden on the member, but Elder Kitchen also went along with it. Elder Kitchen went with Elder Duncan and I went with Elder Nixon. We went to see a potential investigator and ended up talking with an old man in the yard. The potential wasn't interested. Then I think we went and saw a member to ask about her neighbors. Elder Nixon seemed annoyed that we weren't tracting, but I told him that tracting was one of the least effective things to do, so it only made sense that we do something more productive, especially since Elder Kitchen and Elder Duncan were tracting. Then we went back to the church for the last session. That evening we visited a less-active woman who rarely went to church, and she told us that that day she had actually gone to church with her son, only to discover that there was no church (because of conference; she must have arrived before conference started). Here is my journal entry for the day: "So I don't know how I didn't write yesterday. In between conference sessions Elder Nixon insisted on blitzing our area. That was all right. Then we saw some people, including Kristine Hart, a less-active. It was good to be back on the bikes after the week-long hiatus from the rain and Elder Kitchen's sickness."

2008. We left our house in the morning. It was a rule for a missionary to guide another missionary when he was backing up, but since we were just in our driveway (and we were backing up so that we could drive forwards out of the driveway), we didn't think it necessary. Elder Condie backed into a cement wall and scraped the back bumper. I worried I would get in trouble since it was my job to back him up, but he diabolically never told anyone. On one of the days, Sister Shinn offered us some of her jelly beans; we declined. Elder Condie later complained that she coughed the whole time, but I had not noticed. They sustained President Monson as the new prophet. There was a solemn assembly, and they had everyone stand up according to the organization they belonged to. I remember feeling a little weird standing up as part of an elders quorum, since missionaries function differently from most elders. After the first session Elder Condie wanted to watch the World Report; I was impressed by the counsel to share the gospel on the internet. During the Priesthood Session, President Monson wiggled his ears in a talk, and our zone leader, Elder Gammon, thought that was ridiculous. Then we had dinner with a couple who had a baby and a little girl. It was fun, and they told us that we should come to their house some P-day to play board games. But it was late, and they needed to get their kids to bed. This is my journal entry for the day: "I thought I'd add some color by adding some blue ink to this journal.

"Nevó esta mañana antés de la Conferencia. They had a solemn assembly where we all stood to sustain the prophet and apostles. It's been a good conference.

"It snowed today but it all melted. That was disappointing. Elder Condie backed into a cement wall and scraped a bit of paint off."

The next day (I think) I filmed our drive to the stake center and narrated about the day's happenings. We ate lunch with the sisters in the church building. While we were eating, our investigator Duane called us. I answered the phone and stepped out into a little courtyard-like area off from where we were eating. Duane and Vickie had driven to our church building, but no one was there. We had told them about conference, but we apparently hadn't explained it well enough. While I was on the phone, Elder Condie yelled at me to come in from the snow. Before the afternoon session, they were playing footage of The Restoration and playing "Joseph Smith's First Prayer." Elder Condie was annoyed because he thought the song and the clip were overplayed. Sister Shaw told him they played it because the event was so important. The Stumms from the Greenbluff Ward showed up with our investigators Heather and Matt. Here is my journal entry for the day: "We sat around the sisters again today at conference. Then we ate lunch at the church building. Heather and Matt showed up for the second session. I really liked the sessions, especially when Elder Bednar said missionaries are full-time teachers and members are full-time finders.

"We came home early because we were out of gas. The Welshes made us brownies." (Ah, the dark days of my mission.) 

2007. We left early Saturday morning on our drive to Tennessee. My parents hoped we would be able to get conference on the radio, but we couldn't. My parents wanted to listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Later that evening I watched Bewitched on my portable DVD player. I watched the fourth-season episodes with the canine aliens and the Japanese client who was worried about losing face. We stopped at a hotel that night.

The next day my mom looked for conference again. We heard some religious choir on a station, so my mom stopped there. But then she changed the station when a narrator said, "Friends in Christ." I wondered why that was so bad--certainly not LDS parlance, but not something bad. So we listened to weird CDs. We listened to this one called Songs for a Mormon Child; I wondered why my mom liked it so much (even she commented about the girl who tried too hard), especially since there were no kids in the car. Then we listened to all five discs of the Children's Songbook CDs, which I thought were awful. (I actually grew to like them on my mission, but now I think they're terrible again.) Then we stopped at my cousin Tammy's in Iowa. I think we had missed all of conference. They told us about how they had set up a blanket fort tabernacle for the kids to watch conference in. When they began putting the kids to bed, I remember Tammy telling her oldest son, Adam, that two-year-old Ben, when saying prayers, had repeated "Uncle Ricky" as "Uncle Ribby." That night we talked with Tammy. We talked about the synesthesia blog post I had made before leaving. She talked about how she wanted to line me up with a girl from her ward who wanted to be an editor, "this girl Candice." I told Tammy I had actually met her. She said, surprised, "Candice Bellows?" I told her that I had met her at Y-Weekend the previous fall. She told me how she had called her mom, distraught, that she was at a play at BYU that seemed to laugh about a girl being pregnant and not married. I said I was a little surprised at some of the content in the play.

2006. I remember that my two-year-old niece Allie was playing with my mom's friend's niece Austin (what a weird name for a girl!), who was a little older. We were trying to concentrate on conference, but the girls were playing. Allie was getting annoyed with Austin, and Austin kept saying, "She's yelling at me!"

2005. I remember watching Allie during conference, and therefore I didn't get to focus much. I remember her pulling a toy paint set out of her mom's dresser. During the Priesthood Session, President Hinckley spoke about gambling. I wanted to use that as ammunition that my family shouldn't go to Vegas. We told my mom about what he said, and she said that she wouldn't gamble five dollars after all on our trip.

2004. I was with my mom and Nan and Allie out doing errands. I think we stopped at A&W for lunch; we had previously bought Starburst jellybeans from a store. We stopped at my mom's friend Jackie's. I wanted to listen to conference in the car, since I had a diabolical seminary teacher who made us do massive conference reports; my mom told Jackie's son Jake about how I had to do a report. When we got home, I put the jellybeans in the various plastic eggs all over the house. During the Priesthood session, they had an Aaronic Priesthood choir, and we were annoyed with the closeup they did on the one black kid, as if they were trying to prove that we're not racist. I didn't like the choir because of all the young boy voices. David said he liked boys choirs, but that he didn't like the song "True to the Faith," which they sang. He was astounded by the figures President Hinckley described about the revenue of the porn industry.

2002. We were at the Fillmore sand dunes, even though Easter was over. We had brought our trailer, but we couldn't use the water without a battery. We would have tried to listen to conference on the radio. On Sunday we were at my grandparents' house; my dad and grandpa slept for much of it. My aunt Michelle talked for a lot of it, even during the prayers. I remember my mom and Michelle being amused by one of the apostles singing "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof. 

2001. On Saturday my mom and I were out in West Jordan and were at a grocery store. They had those permanent small mylar balloons, and one bunny balloon was identical to the one my cousins had got me a week or so earlier when I had seizures. Then we stopped at my cousins' house. Sue wasn't there, but Wayne was, and I was surprised he was out gardening, since most Mormon adults were watching conference.

The next day we were watching conference and I said to my mom, "There's a spider on you!" My dad actually seemed more surprised, maybe because he was sleeping. Then I told them, "April Fool's!"

2000. I remember using the Health Rider during one of the Saturday sessions. My brother told me it wasn't good to do a cardio workout during conference, but my mom reproved him and told him it was impressive that I was watching Saturday sessions. I think it was that day I put plastic Easter eggs on pieces of yarn and draped them around the rearview mirrors of all three of our cars.

The next day my brother's girlfriend Andrea was at our house. My brother was amused that she and my mom were crocheting or something and I was corking a rug. We went to my grandparents' house. My mom and brother were talking about how some of the Apostles had radio voices; I remember Sue talking about how her boys also had low voices. I remember saying, "I thought these were semi-annual conferences, not annual." Sue said, "They are." I said, "But they just said, 'This is the 170th--" Sue cut me off: "Yeah, 170th Semi-Annual General Conference," but my grandparents and I told her that it had in fact said "Annual" and not "Semi-Annual." (Now I know that the April conference is called annual and the October conference is semi-annual.) I think my mom drove David back to Provo from there and I went home with my dad.

1999. My cousin April was with us that morning for our Easter festivities. My mom had bought her a travel reading lamp. I got a VHS of It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. I went down and watched it. As the Easter morning scene started, April said that that was one of her favorite Beethoven pieces. She laughed when Woodstock laid on the egg he got. My brother said something about the line "Never trust a man with a blanket." I remember saying, "I didn't know that girl [Marcie] was dumb," and he told me she was actually smart. Then we drove down to Fillmore; we probably listened to conference in the car. I was wearing a pink Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt, but I covered up the picture with a green sweater vest. I cared about the pink (for Easter), not the picture. While everyone must have been watching conference, I went in one of the side rooms and saw that Here Comes Peter Cottontail was on the Fox Family Channel. I remember getting annoyed with all the commercial breaks and thinking that they couldn't keep doing that, because they couldn't take much out. (Which was false; they actually could take a lot out.) The promos for the special had the scene where Peter skates the shape of a heart into the ice and makes it light up. That night I was playing the Game Boy and my grandparents' friends came over and my grandma said to her friend, "They sure love those games, don't they."

The next day uncle (or maybe my grandma) had thrown jelly beans all over the living room for my small cousins. They told me there were some hidden especially for me. They gave me a hint--it had to do with a piano. I kept looking around the piano. There was a shoe lying haphazardly on the floor near the piano, and there was a jelly bean behind it. I asked if it was the one behind the shoe, and my grandma said, "I'm not telling." Eventually I looked up and looked at the painting on the wall of a woman playing a piano. The jelly beans were stuck in the decorative holes on the frame. I pulled them out and ate them. My Christensen relatives came over. I remember that the kids had these weird candies that looked like colored Rice Krispies that I had received the previous year in my third grade class. Rachae and I were in the kitchen watching Here Comes Peter Cottontail on TV. At one point the adults asked us to turn it down. Later Michelle came in and said, "You must be deaf," and turned the TV down. Rachae said to me, "I can't hear it," and I couldn't hear it either. Then we went to my other grandparents' house. I remember talking with Jesse about a Peeps commercial. He liked it, but I wasn't sure what to make of it.

1998. I suspect this was the year Tammy had come to our house for conference. On Saturday night I went to Deseret Book with my mom. During one of the sessions, one of the people giving the prayers had a thick accent; Tammy admitted that she had opened her eyes to see who it was.

1996. My original Easter post has us going to church on Easter, but I just looked up the date of Easter in 1996, and I see that it was on conference weekend, therefore the original is in error. Having reconsidered what actually happened at Easter, I can remember being at the sand dunes and listening to conference on our little yellow radio.