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.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Saturday, April 6, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
The Day Before Easter
Easter is coming up, so I'm going to remember what I can about the day before the holiday. In my family, most of the secular celebrating occurs on Saturday rather than Easter Sunday itself.
2012. I went out to my car to head home. My mom called and let me know that they were getting home from southern Utah, and I hadn't even left yet. On my windshield was a wrinkled note from Morgan Crockett that said he had backed into my car. I looked and there was indeed a scratch on the back bumper. But my brother and I both put scratches on both sides of the front bumper, so the back scratch just matched the rest of it. I listened to the MoTab Praise to the Man album on my way home. When I got home, my niece Allie came up to me and said, completely shocked, "The Easter Bunny already came!" We searched for Easter eggs; there were lots. There were plastic candy-filled eggs and real confetti-filled eggs. I of course was interested in the candy eggs, but I was surprised that Allie liked the confetti eggs. We broke the confetti eggs on each other, and we were finding confetti for months after (and filled eggs as well). I think we colored eggs. At some point that day my dad lost a tooth. We ate tacos for dinner and made sugar cookies with blue frosting. That night, after everyone went to bed, I went downstairs and watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail, eating a bunch of candy. I finished my Easter Baby Bottle Pop. After the show was over, I decided to watch some of the DVD's special features that I hadn't seen. They were these cheesy kid stories set to partly animated pictures. I think I did situps as I watched them.
2011. 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 general conference. In the morning 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. I think my dad and I went to the Eagleridge building for the Priesthood session.
2009. Elder Kitchen and I had dinner with a member--none of his family was home, so it was just three of us at dinner. We had a barbecue and strawberry shortcake. Elder Kitchen asked him if he could drive us over to our ward's Easter activity--for some reason they held it at another building in our stake than the one our ward attended. They had an egg gathering activity; we gathered some eggs, and Elder Kitchen got one of the "special" eggs, so he gave it to me. These "special" eggs were for a presentation. Each egg had a little prop and a scripture; collectively it told the Easter story. Mine was a nail to represent the Crucifixion. Someone got a dice to represent them casting lots for Jesus's garment; I thought the dice was a bit of a stretch. (I know that die is the singular form, but that just sounds weird.) Sister Tanner's scripture talked about Pilate, and she pronounced it "pih-LAH-tee," like the exercise program Pilates without the s, but she should have pronounced it "pilot." The Tanners drove us home; we crammed into their van with their three kids. I remember at some point that night Elder Kitchen commented about Sister Tanner's pronunciation of Pilate. I remember walking along Ramsey Road. I kind of wanted to go to the Hico gas station, since it would be my last chance to get some Easter treat, like maybe jelly beans or lavender-colored Sno-Balls, but we didn't end up going there. I can't remember what we did the rest of the night.
2008. In the morning Elder Condie and I helped out at the Greenbluff Ward Primary activity. They put us in charge of one game, and a a little girl who was 4 or 5 came up to me and said, "You're a handsome nice man." I later told Elder Condie about it; he said he noticed that I had been laughing after she talked to me. I asked Brother Mears if we could visit his family to teach his family the next installment of the Member Missionary Training Center. He said they were OK (he didn't like me). There was a nonmember there whose husband was an inactive member, and I think the husband was the brother of Brother Mears. The wife was Jewish, but she didn't mind her kids participating in our Easter party. In one of the places we talked about the Resurrection and one kid talked about how Jesus ate fish and honeycomb. After the activity we went to Subway; a member owned that store and gave us free Subway once a week. One of the girls working there said cheerfully to us, "Do Mormons celebrate Easter?" She said she was going to ask the owner but didn't. We told her we did. She said, "I was talking to some people and they said that Mormons don't celebrate Easter; I told them they do, they just don't celebrate with eggs and stuff." Elder Condie told her that we had in fact just come from an activity at our church involving eggs. That day we were supposed to be helping an inactive sister move stuff from her storage unit into her apartment. We had asked the Northpointe Ward to help us, but no one had said anything about helping us, so I threw a bit of a hissy fit in our bedroom. Then I called Brother Cummins, who was the ward clerk, and asked him if he knew of anyone who would be able to help us. He said he would. So we drove down to Spokane to the woman's storage unit. After we had finished up, we were backing up and I was thinking about how nice it was not to have to back him up (since missionaries always have to stand outside and guide people when they back up). Then he backed into a pickup truck. There was a big dent in it. Then he went back into the storage unit to find the owners of the truck. We were going with him, but he said forcefully, "Stay with the car." I told Elder Condie about what I had been thinking about backing. Brother Cummins came back with the truck owner, who was very nice and understanding. Brother Cummins said, "I'm really embarrassed about this," and the owner said it was OK. When Brother Cummins got back in the car, Elder Condie told him that we all had been thinking that if we had done something different, that wouldn't have happened. We got back home, and I think there was a little snowstorm. I shoveled the snow, but that was unnecessary, because it was warm enough that all the snow melted quickly. The Welshes (whom we lived with) made us an Easter dinner, including strawberry shortcake. That night we had a lesson with our investigators Duane and Vickie. Vickie had made us pink rabbit-shaped sugar cookies and sent them home with us in a large Ziploc bag. I think this was the night we brought our Hispanic ward missionary with us, and we talked about the degrees of glory. The ward missionary said that he thought there were infinite sublevels in the three kingdoms.
2007. My sister and niece and I got on a plane back to Salt Lake from Nashville. Since my ticket had been bought at a different time and it was a full flight, I had to sit near the back of the plane and Susanne and Allie sat toward the front. I was reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my AP English class and eating Easter candy. Afterward Susanne told me that Allie didn't like the airplane and kept asking about me. We came home and were preparing to watch Here Comes Peter Cottontail. Susanne was on the phone with her boyfriend of the time, Darrin, and asking him if he knew that special. Then she started describing it in detail, and Darrin stopped caring when she got to the part about Irontail feeding gum to Peter's clock.
2006. It was our last day in Moab. I remember playing with Allie at the KOA's playground. She put her hands around a hanging bar. I was surprised that I could take my arms away and she was hanging by herself. Then she'd let go and I would catch her. Then we got in the car and drove. I think we took a side trip to Fillmore. Allie got a little restless in the car. When we got home, I got ready to take a shower. I weighed myself and wondered if I had lost any weight on the trip (due to the hiking), but instead I discovered that I had in fact gained weight. It was then that I vowed that I would only eat candies and desserts when they were in season (prior to that, I had allowed myself to eat nonseasonal things in limited quantities.) My new goal was put to the test that day because our home teacher Christian Ulmer brought us a chocolate pie from Marie Callendar's. I can't remember if I ended up succumbing to the temptation or not. We got our Easter presents; I got Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and a deck of Easter-egg-shaped playing cards. I think we watched my new movie and I complained about how it was inferior to Corpse Bride. Then I remember my mom talking to David on MSN chat and she told him that I was disappointed (I think because it wasn't a traditional Easter). He said "Poor Frankfurt." Then she told him they got me the Wallace and Gromit movie and he said "POOR Frankfurt" (because he knew my opinions on the Wallace and Gromit/Corpse Bride thing).
2005. We were in Fillmore. We went to Fillmore's Easter egg event. I remember seeing some kids with jack-o-lantern buckets to collect eggs. I thought that was a good idea to include in the Easter episode of my fictitious TV show. We were talking with my aunt Sarena and my cousin-in-law Kalia (and maybe some other cousins). My mom told Sarena about an awkward incident with Allie that I didn't think was funny. Kalia asked Susanne something about Allie, and Susanne told her, "I found out yesterday that she knows what sound a dog makes" (I had first heard her say "woof" the day before). Kalia talked about her son Damen (who was almost Allie's age) also knowing what dogs said. My aunt Sarena was talking about how they weren't going to go to the sand dunes. Suddenly there was a big wind that blew some snow from the trees onto us. My mom said it was Grandpa Boyd getting mad at us for not going to the sand dunes. Then we went back to Grandma Judy's house; my mom told her about the wind incident and I told her about the kids with the Halloween buckets. We went on a little drive in the Suburban while listening to a Carpenters CD; at the song "Solitaire" I said that Clay Aiken had sung that song on American Idol a few years earlier. We drove past a big sand dune where some people were playing but we didn't stop.
2004. We were at the sand dunes. I got my dragon kite to fly and I buried the base in the sand so that it could fly itself (it was quite windy). I remember driving my grandpa's four-wheeler really slow with Ya-ping on the back. I also had my first driving lesson. I drove for quite a while at probably less than five miles an hour and my grandpa kept telling me which way to steer. Eventually he told me to stop. Then he drove back and I felt dumb that it only took a few minutes to drive back when it had taken me so long because I was going so slow. I remember my aunt Terri liking my nickname for Allie, "Cute-iful." Grandpa hugged or danced or something with my cousin Krishelle and alluded to the fact that he wouldn't be around much longer (it was in fact his last Easter).
2003. This might have actually been on Friday, but it might have been Saturday. I remember coloring eggs in the kitchen and watching Gilligan's Island; it was one of the episodes with Wrongway Feldman.
2001. We took my cousin Joey, from my mom's side, down to Fillmore with us to be with my dad's family. We had donuts in our red Jeep for the ride down. When we got to Fillmore my grandma asked if he was Sue's son. I can't remember what else happened.
2000. I took a shower in the morning before we headed out in our red Jeep to pick up my cousins Peter and Jesse to go down to Fillmore. Before we picked them up, we stopped at a Ream's store near their house and bought some kite string. I also noticed a ball made out of a crystally, squishy plastic material. It didn't bounce well, so I didn't understand why they would make a ball out of it. We picked up Jesse and Peter. Then we drove down. I remember making some comment about smelling my deodorant. Jesse and Peter both seemed disgusted, but I said it wasn't smelly because it was meant to prevent me from smelling. We passed a "G" on a mountainside. I asked what it stood for; my mom said maybe it stood for Pleasant Grove. I said, "Then why doesn't it say PG?" She said that that could stand for pregnant, which I found quite funny. Then I said it could also stand for parental guidance, and Peter said that it could be PG like in movies, and I told him that's what parental guidance was. I had brought the "Official Snoopy Tosserino" (Frisbee) I had inherited from my maternal grandparents and played it with Peter. I kept snapping pictures. David buried Peter in the sand, and then I wanted to be buried. At one point my cousin Terrill talked about how he wanted to go over to the other sand dune. I told him it was cool. Then I asked him if he meant another sand dune or just the other side of that sand dune. I hadn't been to the other sand dune, just the other side of the one we were at. I thought I was so adventurous going to the other side of this tiny barchan sand dune. At one point there was a little rainstorm and the sand got wet and dark. Then Peter was jumping in the sand, and the dry light sand was intermixing with the dark wet sand. He said, "Yay! White skin is winning over black skin!" I told him that was an inappropriate thing to say, and he said that of course he would want white skin to win, since he was white. Then we left and made a stop at my paternal grandparents' house before the long trip back to Salt Lake. We probably listened to tapes of Abbey Road and that tape that had "One Tin Soldier" on it--I was obsessed with that song. I remember being cold, but my mom wouldn't let me turn the heat up because she needed it cold to stay awake.
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."
1998. Intuition tells me that this event occurred in 1998, but I'm actually not sure if it happened at this time. My cousin Rayce and I were hanging out at my family's trailer, which was parked in the backyard of my grandparents' house. He asked me if I believed in the Easter Bunny, because he didn't. I told him I didn't. I said, "I remember thinking, 'How can one man [Santa] deliver presents all over the world in one night?'" Rayce said, "He stops time. I believe in him."
1997. I had wanted my Easter basket hidden this year, instead of just the eggs. My basket was the only hidden one (it was hidden behind some plants). I got a St. Patrick's Day flag since the wind had torn mine. Our Easter grass was this green cottony stuff that was less messy than the typical plastic kind. Then we went to Fillmore; maybe this was the year when I saw my cousins' eggs that had plastic decorative bands around them. I think one egg cracked at the hard interdune (the ground behind a sand dune--I'm glad I know all these geological terms now).
1996. This might be the time I got my springy (as in, it was made of springs) bouncy ball.
1994. I was excited to get a crocodile-shaped bottle of bubbles. I also got a Sesame Street kite and my brother got a more mature kite. We went to Fillmore and I think we participated in the community egg hunt. I got a big marshmallow stick and it was said that I couldn't get it on the seat of my uncle Ken's car. I remember being at the sand dunes and holding my kite (I doubt I was the one who got it in the air) and my aunt Kim talking to me. I think I was a little embarrassed to have such a "babyish" kite.
1993. We got our baskets downstairs. All three of us kids got trolls--I got a worker troll, my brother got a doctor troll, and my sister got a BYU cheerleader troll. We had our egg hunt down there; we had these weird marshmallow-esque eggs to find. There was a blue one in the windowsill of my dad's workroom.
1991. I don't remember anything about this day--I was only two years old--but I do remember seeing a family video that depicted this day. We were at my maternal grandparents' house coloring eggs. We had these rabbit-shaped things that you would put in water and they would dissolve and make the dye. My mom says this was right when we moved into our new house.
I am quite certain that after posting this I will remember more details.
Related posts:
Those Easter Morns
A year of holiday memories
2012. I went out to my car to head home. My mom called and let me know that they were getting home from southern Utah, and I hadn't even left yet. On my windshield was a wrinkled note from Morgan Crockett that said he had backed into my car. I looked and there was indeed a scratch on the back bumper. But my brother and I both put scratches on both sides of the front bumper, so the back scratch just matched the rest of it. I listened to the MoTab Praise to the Man album on my way home. When I got home, my niece Allie came up to me and said, completely shocked, "The Easter Bunny already came!" We searched for Easter eggs; there were lots. There were plastic candy-filled eggs and real confetti-filled eggs. I of course was interested in the candy eggs, but I was surprised that Allie liked the confetti eggs. We broke the confetti eggs on each other, and we were finding confetti for months after (and filled eggs as well). I think we colored eggs. At some point that day my dad lost a tooth. We ate tacos for dinner and made sugar cookies with blue frosting. That night, after everyone went to bed, I went downstairs and watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail, eating a bunch of candy. I finished my Easter Baby Bottle Pop. After the show was over, I decided to watch some of the DVD's special features that I hadn't seen. They were these cheesy kid stories set to partly animated pictures. I think I did situps as I watched them.
2011. 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 general conference. In the morning 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. I think my dad and I went to the Eagleridge building for the Priesthood session.
2009. Elder Kitchen and I had dinner with a member--none of his family was home, so it was just three of us at dinner. We had a barbecue and strawberry shortcake. Elder Kitchen asked him if he could drive us over to our ward's Easter activity--for some reason they held it at another building in our stake than the one our ward attended. They had an egg gathering activity; we gathered some eggs, and Elder Kitchen got one of the "special" eggs, so he gave it to me. These "special" eggs were for a presentation. Each egg had a little prop and a scripture; collectively it told the Easter story. Mine was a nail to represent the Crucifixion. Someone got a dice to represent them casting lots for Jesus's garment; I thought the dice was a bit of a stretch. (I know that die is the singular form, but that just sounds weird.) Sister Tanner's scripture talked about Pilate, and she pronounced it "pih-LAH-tee," like the exercise program Pilates without the s, but she should have pronounced it "pilot." The Tanners drove us home; we crammed into their van with their three kids. I remember at some point that night Elder Kitchen commented about Sister Tanner's pronunciation of Pilate. I remember walking along Ramsey Road. I kind of wanted to go to the Hico gas station, since it would be my last chance to get some Easter treat, like maybe jelly beans or lavender-colored Sno-Balls, but we didn't end up going there. I can't remember what we did the rest of the night.
2008. In the morning Elder Condie and I helped out at the Greenbluff Ward Primary activity. They put us in charge of one game, and a a little girl who was 4 or 5 came up to me and said, "You're a handsome nice man." I later told Elder Condie about it; he said he noticed that I had been laughing after she talked to me. I asked Brother Mears if we could visit his family to teach his family the next installment of the Member Missionary Training Center. He said they were OK (he didn't like me). There was a nonmember there whose husband was an inactive member, and I think the husband was the brother of Brother Mears. The wife was Jewish, but she didn't mind her kids participating in our Easter party. In one of the places we talked about the Resurrection and one kid talked about how Jesus ate fish and honeycomb. After the activity we went to Subway; a member owned that store and gave us free Subway once a week. One of the girls working there said cheerfully to us, "Do Mormons celebrate Easter?" She said she was going to ask the owner but didn't. We told her we did. She said, "I was talking to some people and they said that Mormons don't celebrate Easter; I told them they do, they just don't celebrate with eggs and stuff." Elder Condie told her that we had in fact just come from an activity at our church involving eggs. That day we were supposed to be helping an inactive sister move stuff from her storage unit into her apartment. We had asked the Northpointe Ward to help us, but no one had said anything about helping us, so I threw a bit of a hissy fit in our bedroom. Then I called Brother Cummins, who was the ward clerk, and asked him if he knew of anyone who would be able to help us. He said he would. So we drove down to Spokane to the woman's storage unit. After we had finished up, we were backing up and I was thinking about how nice it was not to have to back him up (since missionaries always have to stand outside and guide people when they back up). Then he backed into a pickup truck. There was a big dent in it. Then he went back into the storage unit to find the owners of the truck. We were going with him, but he said forcefully, "Stay with the car." I told Elder Condie about what I had been thinking about backing. Brother Cummins came back with the truck owner, who was very nice and understanding. Brother Cummins said, "I'm really embarrassed about this," and the owner said it was OK. When Brother Cummins got back in the car, Elder Condie told him that we all had been thinking that if we had done something different, that wouldn't have happened. We got back home, and I think there was a little snowstorm. I shoveled the snow, but that was unnecessary, because it was warm enough that all the snow melted quickly. The Welshes (whom we lived with) made us an Easter dinner, including strawberry shortcake. That night we had a lesson with our investigators Duane and Vickie. Vickie had made us pink rabbit-shaped sugar cookies and sent them home with us in a large Ziploc bag. I think this was the night we brought our Hispanic ward missionary with us, and we talked about the degrees of glory. The ward missionary said that he thought there were infinite sublevels in the three kingdoms.
2007. My sister and niece and I got on a plane back to Salt Lake from Nashville. Since my ticket had been bought at a different time and it was a full flight, I had to sit near the back of the plane and Susanne and Allie sat toward the front. I was reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my AP English class and eating Easter candy. Afterward Susanne told me that Allie didn't like the airplane and kept asking about me. We came home and were preparing to watch Here Comes Peter Cottontail. Susanne was on the phone with her boyfriend of the time, Darrin, and asking him if he knew that special. Then she started describing it in detail, and Darrin stopped caring when she got to the part about Irontail feeding gum to Peter's clock.
2006. It was our last day in Moab. I remember playing with Allie at the KOA's playground. She put her hands around a hanging bar. I was surprised that I could take my arms away and she was hanging by herself. Then she'd let go and I would catch her. Then we got in the car and drove. I think we took a side trip to Fillmore. Allie got a little restless in the car. When we got home, I got ready to take a shower. I weighed myself and wondered if I had lost any weight on the trip (due to the hiking), but instead I discovered that I had in fact gained weight. It was then that I vowed that I would only eat candies and desserts when they were in season (prior to that, I had allowed myself to eat nonseasonal things in limited quantities.) My new goal was put to the test that day because our home teacher Christian Ulmer brought us a chocolate pie from Marie Callendar's. I can't remember if I ended up succumbing to the temptation or not. We got our Easter presents; I got Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and a deck of Easter-egg-shaped playing cards. I think we watched my new movie and I complained about how it was inferior to Corpse Bride. Then I remember my mom talking to David on MSN chat and she told him that I was disappointed (I think because it wasn't a traditional Easter). He said "Poor Frankfurt." Then she told him they got me the Wallace and Gromit movie and he said "POOR Frankfurt" (because he knew my opinions on the Wallace and Gromit/Corpse Bride thing).
2005. We were in Fillmore. We went to Fillmore's Easter egg event. I remember seeing some kids with jack-o-lantern buckets to collect eggs. I thought that was a good idea to include in the Easter episode of my fictitious TV show. We were talking with my aunt Sarena and my cousin-in-law Kalia (and maybe some other cousins). My mom told Sarena about an awkward incident with Allie that I didn't think was funny. Kalia asked Susanne something about Allie, and Susanne told her, "I found out yesterday that she knows what sound a dog makes" (I had first heard her say "woof" the day before). Kalia talked about her son Damen (who was almost Allie's age) also knowing what dogs said. My aunt Sarena was talking about how they weren't going to go to the sand dunes. Suddenly there was a big wind that blew some snow from the trees onto us. My mom said it was Grandpa Boyd getting mad at us for not going to the sand dunes. Then we went back to Grandma Judy's house; my mom told her about the wind incident and I told her about the kids with the Halloween buckets. We went on a little drive in the Suburban while listening to a Carpenters CD; at the song "Solitaire" I said that Clay Aiken had sung that song on American Idol a few years earlier. We drove past a big sand dune where some people were playing but we didn't stop.
2004. We were at the sand dunes. I got my dragon kite to fly and I buried the base in the sand so that it could fly itself (it was quite windy). I remember driving my grandpa's four-wheeler really slow with Ya-ping on the back. I also had my first driving lesson. I drove for quite a while at probably less than five miles an hour and my grandpa kept telling me which way to steer. Eventually he told me to stop. Then he drove back and I felt dumb that it only took a few minutes to drive back when it had taken me so long because I was going so slow. I remember my aunt Terri liking my nickname for Allie, "Cute-iful." Grandpa hugged or danced or something with my cousin Krishelle and alluded to the fact that he wouldn't be around much longer (it was in fact his last Easter).
2003. This might have actually been on Friday, but it might have been Saturday. I remember coloring eggs in the kitchen and watching Gilligan's Island; it was one of the episodes with Wrongway Feldman.
2001. We took my cousin Joey, from my mom's side, down to Fillmore with us to be with my dad's family. We had donuts in our red Jeep for the ride down. When we got to Fillmore my grandma asked if he was Sue's son. I can't remember what else happened.
2000. I took a shower in the morning before we headed out in our red Jeep to pick up my cousins Peter and Jesse to go down to Fillmore. Before we picked them up, we stopped at a Ream's store near their house and bought some kite string. I also noticed a ball made out of a crystally, squishy plastic material. It didn't bounce well, so I didn't understand why they would make a ball out of it. We picked up Jesse and Peter. Then we drove down. I remember making some comment about smelling my deodorant. Jesse and Peter both seemed disgusted, but I said it wasn't smelly because it was meant to prevent me from smelling. We passed a "G" on a mountainside. I asked what it stood for; my mom said maybe it stood for Pleasant Grove. I said, "Then why doesn't it say PG?" She said that that could stand for pregnant, which I found quite funny. Then I said it could also stand for parental guidance, and Peter said that it could be PG like in movies, and I told him that's what parental guidance was. I had brought the "Official Snoopy Tosserino" (Frisbee) I had inherited from my maternal grandparents and played it with Peter. I kept snapping pictures. David buried Peter in the sand, and then I wanted to be buried. At one point my cousin Terrill talked about how he wanted to go over to the other sand dune. I told him it was cool. Then I asked him if he meant another sand dune or just the other side of that sand dune. I hadn't been to the other sand dune, just the other side of the one we were at. I thought I was so adventurous going to the other side of this tiny barchan sand dune. At one point there was a little rainstorm and the sand got wet and dark. Then Peter was jumping in the sand, and the dry light sand was intermixing with the dark wet sand. He said, "Yay! White skin is winning over black skin!" I told him that was an inappropriate thing to say, and he said that of course he would want white skin to win, since he was white. Then we left and made a stop at my paternal grandparents' house before the long trip back to Salt Lake. We probably listened to tapes of Abbey Road and that tape that had "One Tin Soldier" on it--I was obsessed with that song. I remember being cold, but my mom wouldn't let me turn the heat up because she needed it cold to stay awake.
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."
1998. Intuition tells me that this event occurred in 1998, but I'm actually not sure if it happened at this time. My cousin Rayce and I were hanging out at my family's trailer, which was parked in the backyard of my grandparents' house. He asked me if I believed in the Easter Bunny, because he didn't. I told him I didn't. I said, "I remember thinking, 'How can one man [Santa] deliver presents all over the world in one night?'" Rayce said, "He stops time. I believe in him."
1997. I had wanted my Easter basket hidden this year, instead of just the eggs. My basket was the only hidden one (it was hidden behind some plants). I got a St. Patrick's Day flag since the wind had torn mine. Our Easter grass was this green cottony stuff that was less messy than the typical plastic kind. Then we went to Fillmore; maybe this was the year when I saw my cousins' eggs that had plastic decorative bands around them. I think one egg cracked at the hard interdune (the ground behind a sand dune--I'm glad I know all these geological terms now).
1996. This might be the time I got my springy (as in, it was made of springs) bouncy ball.
1994. I was excited to get a crocodile-shaped bottle of bubbles. I also got a Sesame Street kite and my brother got a more mature kite. We went to Fillmore and I think we participated in the community egg hunt. I got a big marshmallow stick and it was said that I couldn't get it on the seat of my uncle Ken's car. I remember being at the sand dunes and holding my kite (I doubt I was the one who got it in the air) and my aunt Kim talking to me. I think I was a little embarrassed to have such a "babyish" kite.
1993. We got our baskets downstairs. All three of us kids got trolls--I got a worker troll, my brother got a doctor troll, and my sister got a BYU cheerleader troll. We had our egg hunt down there; we had these weird marshmallow-esque eggs to find. There was a blue one in the windowsill of my dad's workroom.
1991. I don't remember anything about this day--I was only two years old--but I do remember seeing a family video that depicted this day. We were at my maternal grandparents' house coloring eggs. We had these rabbit-shaped things that you would put in water and they would dissolve and make the dye. My mom says this was right when we moved into our new house.
I am quite certain that after posting this I will remember more details.
Related posts:
Those Easter Morns
A year of holiday memories
Sunday, March 17, 2013
March 18
I'm going to remember what I can about the day after St. Patrick's Day.
2012. It was a rainy day. I remember I was making an image to use for the background of my blog for Easter. I tried to make egg shapes, but I couldn't very well. I asked my roommate Bryton if the image looked dumb; he said it looked like it was made with old technology. So I decided not to use it. I made a blog post about St. Patrick's Day; this blog post got some of the best critical reception I've ever had. I found out that Peter Moosman from my home ward was in one of the pictures and I didn't even know it.
2011. I made a Facebook status about my roommate Zach not realizing that I wore glasses. I remember more about March 19 and 20 in 2011 than I do about this day.
2010. I walked slowly to school and lots of people passed me because I sprained my knee the day before. That night I went to my dinner group at Collin Allan's apartment; we were having a ward movie festival that night, so he bought Little Caesar's and then we drove up to the Wilk. I had brought a plate with me and I had to keep it in the car. We went to the Varsity Theater, and I sat on the right side by myself. Sara Cushing told me I could sit by them, but I told her that I had a sprained knee and I wanted to be able to spread it out without people walking past me. Collin Allan came and sat by me. There were some great videos: One about a search for Waldo who emerged from a book, one that parodied popular YouTube videos, one about Batman, one remaking country videos, etc. Not one but three videos featured Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA." My FHE group's little video was pretty terrible. In our credits, I identified myself as the prop supervisor. Collin asked me about that; I told him that I carried the bucket.
2009. It's possible this was the day I got a package from my mom, but I actually think that was March 19.
2004. I remember coming home from tutoring Melissa, the girl I tutored in Spanish, and putting Easter eggs on top of the buffet in the living room.
2000. It was a nice spring morning, and I had to go to a practice for singing in stake conference. Evan Stewart's mom drove me home. I mentioned that I was going to put up Easter decorations. She told me how whenever they decorated for Easter they always found pine needles and when they decorated for Christmas they always found Easter grass.
1999. I remember telling my classmates that I was going to go home and decorate for Easter. My classmate Eric said, "I thought you hated Easter," and I told him that I only hated Easter before St. Patrick's Day. (Now I don't get mad about Easter before St. Patrick's Day, because Easter's a meaningful holiday but St. Patrick's Day is not. But I do get mad when Thanksgiving is overlooked, because it has meaning.)
1998. I came home from school and my cousin Jesse was there for some reason. I was getting ready to decorate for Easter, and Jesse was telling me about how they had bought a bunch of Easter stuff just a few days earlier. I remember putting our Easter wreath on our door. Then the rest of my cousins came and we jumped on the tramp and played some egg-themed games.
2012. It was a rainy day. I remember I was making an image to use for the background of my blog for Easter. I tried to make egg shapes, but I couldn't very well. I asked my roommate Bryton if the image looked dumb; he said it looked like it was made with old technology. So I decided not to use it. I made a blog post about St. Patrick's Day; this blog post got some of the best critical reception I've ever had. I found out that Peter Moosman from my home ward was in one of the pictures and I didn't even know it.
2011. I made a Facebook status about my roommate Zach not realizing that I wore glasses. I remember more about March 19 and 20 in 2011 than I do about this day.
2010. I walked slowly to school and lots of people passed me because I sprained my knee the day before. That night I went to my dinner group at Collin Allan's apartment; we were having a ward movie festival that night, so he bought Little Caesar's and then we drove up to the Wilk. I had brought a plate with me and I had to keep it in the car. We went to the Varsity Theater, and I sat on the right side by myself. Sara Cushing told me I could sit by them, but I told her that I had a sprained knee and I wanted to be able to spread it out without people walking past me. Collin Allan came and sat by me. There were some great videos: One about a search for Waldo who emerged from a book, one that parodied popular YouTube videos, one about Batman, one remaking country videos, etc. Not one but three videos featured Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA." My FHE group's little video was pretty terrible. In our credits, I identified myself as the prop supervisor. Collin asked me about that; I told him that I carried the bucket.
2009. It's possible this was the day I got a package from my mom, but I actually think that was March 19.
2004. I remember coming home from tutoring Melissa, the girl I tutored in Spanish, and putting Easter eggs on top of the buffet in the living room.
2000. It was a nice spring morning, and I had to go to a practice for singing in stake conference. Evan Stewart's mom drove me home. I mentioned that I was going to put up Easter decorations. She told me how whenever they decorated for Easter they always found pine needles and when they decorated for Christmas they always found Easter grass.
1999. I remember telling my classmates that I was going to go home and decorate for Easter. My classmate Eric said, "I thought you hated Easter," and I told him that I only hated Easter before St. Patrick's Day. (Now I don't get mad about Easter before St. Patrick's Day, because Easter's a meaningful holiday but St. Patrick's Day is not. But I do get mad when Thanksgiving is overlooked, because it has meaning.)
1998. I came home from school and my cousin Jesse was there for some reason. I was getting ready to decorate for Easter, and Jesse was telling me about how they had bought a bunch of Easter stuff just a few days earlier. I remember putting our Easter wreath on our door. Then the rest of my cousins came and we jumped on the tramp and played some egg-themed games.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
The Ides of March
The subject of today's post is March 15, two days before St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, there's not much to remember.
2012. I was wearing my t-shirt with Snoopy and Woodstock with Irish hats and clovers. I was walking to my Doctrine and Covenants class when I saw Hillary Ulmer. I said hi. She said she didn't notice it was me because she was staring at my shirt, but then when I said hi she said it made sense that it was me. That afternoon, I stopped at J-Dawgs on my way home. In line was a Nathaniel Johnson from the first area of my mission. He had left on a mission while I was in that area. I was going to say hi to him, but he was ahead of me and was with some people, and I didn't think he would remember me, much less recognize me. When I walked in to my apartment, Alyssa Kekauoha was talking to my roommate Cameron Haas. They saw my J-Dawgs and I told them it was my first time getting it that semester. Alyssa saw my shirt and asked if it was St. Patrick's Day. I ended up getting J-Dawgs sauce on my shirt. At some point that afternoon, Cameron told Alyssa that I said we weren't friends. I confirmed that, saying that I don't make friends.
2009. I had to speak in the Hayden 4th Ward. I spoke about the Book of Mormon, and I think I talked about how all fifteen books testify of Christ. I used a quote by President Benson from Preach My Gospel about how the Book of Mormon can be used to respond to objections. After sacrament meeting, the McLuskies, an older Scottish couple, told me that I did a good job. There had been a Sunday School lesson a few weeks earlier in which the teacher asked everyone what their talents were, and I said I didn't have any, so on this occasion the McLuskies told me that I could have said I had a talent for knowing the scriptures. During Priesthood opening exercises, we practiced an idea we had heard of. We stood up and said, "We have a Book of Mormon here, and we want someone to give it away." We were pleased when Wayne Timonen, who had only recently started coming back to church, volunteered to give it away. My journal tells me we ate at the bishop's house. I suspect this was the time that some other ward members came over and we shared our object lesson about fortifying our families. The bishop's son was a little hyper, and he got a little carried away rearranging the pieces. I asked Elder Betenson if my talk was boring. He said it was informative, but when I pressed him he said it was a little dry. Here is my journal entry for the day:
"Today I spoke in sacrament meeting. It was probably the most boring talk I've given for a while. It had a lot of good information, but no personality. We also had to teach in Sunday School. We had dinner with the Bishop and his family. During Priesthood meeting we asked who was going to give out a Book of Mormon, and Wayne Timonen accepted the task.
2008. In the morning we went to give a blessing to some people that the zone leaders had told us about. They were actually in the sisters' area. We drove over there and the mom wanted her kids to get blessings, but the kids didn't seem too interested. After we left there, we told the sisters about them and told them they should stop by sometime. Here is my journal entry for the day:
"Today we gave a blessing to some nonmembers, Larry and Claudia. They each got one and were very appreciative. They weren't in our area but the sisters can't give blessings.
"Then we taught Duane and Vickie. They want to fast and give tithing and all that good stuff. Malheureusement, Duane has some legal complications. He stole a computer from Wal-Mart and fell asleep in the car, so he was caught. He was also caught trying to steal thirty lawnmowers. They let the mowers go because he was going to jail for the computer but now they have come back up and he has a court hearing. We hope that goes well so he can get baptized."
2003. My mom bought balloons and black stuff for my uncle's birthday the next day.
1996. It was a day to wear a green hat to school. A boy in my class was wearing a hat with pin/buttons on it, one of which said, "Let's Party at the Top O' the Morning." Our teacher, Mrs. Taylor, picked someone with the best hat and sent them to get their picture taken with the other green-hat people in the school. Mrs. Taylor told us that the rest of our hats were cool too, but she picked the one that was homemade and had a lot of work put into it. The school also had a contest where they put a picture of a leprechaun in different places in the school and if you found it you got a prize. I went searching for it with my friend Kelsey Bodily. She found a shiny thing that she said would help her find the leprechaun. I said it wouldn't, and she acknowledged she was just pretending. I didn't want to play with her because of that silliness and because she was playing with a kindergartener.
2012. I was wearing my t-shirt with Snoopy and Woodstock with Irish hats and clovers. I was walking to my Doctrine and Covenants class when I saw Hillary Ulmer. I said hi. She said she didn't notice it was me because she was staring at my shirt, but then when I said hi she said it made sense that it was me. That afternoon, I stopped at J-Dawgs on my way home. In line was a Nathaniel Johnson from the first area of my mission. He had left on a mission while I was in that area. I was going to say hi to him, but he was ahead of me and was with some people, and I didn't think he would remember me, much less recognize me. When I walked in to my apartment, Alyssa Kekauoha was talking to my roommate Cameron Haas. They saw my J-Dawgs and I told them it was my first time getting it that semester. Alyssa saw my shirt and asked if it was St. Patrick's Day. I ended up getting J-Dawgs sauce on my shirt. At some point that afternoon, Cameron told Alyssa that I said we weren't friends. I confirmed that, saying that I don't make friends.
2009. I had to speak in the Hayden 4th Ward. I spoke about the Book of Mormon, and I think I talked about how all fifteen books testify of Christ. I used a quote by President Benson from Preach My Gospel about how the Book of Mormon can be used to respond to objections. After sacrament meeting, the McLuskies, an older Scottish couple, told me that I did a good job. There had been a Sunday School lesson a few weeks earlier in which the teacher asked everyone what their talents were, and I said I didn't have any, so on this occasion the McLuskies told me that I could have said I had a talent for knowing the scriptures. During Priesthood opening exercises, we practiced an idea we had heard of. We stood up and said, "We have a Book of Mormon here, and we want someone to give it away." We were pleased when Wayne Timonen, who had only recently started coming back to church, volunteered to give it away. My journal tells me we ate at the bishop's house. I suspect this was the time that some other ward members came over and we shared our object lesson about fortifying our families. The bishop's son was a little hyper, and he got a little carried away rearranging the pieces. I asked Elder Betenson if my talk was boring. He said it was informative, but when I pressed him he said it was a little dry. Here is my journal entry for the day:
"Today I spoke in sacrament meeting. It was probably the most boring talk I've given for a while. It had a lot of good information, but no personality. We also had to teach in Sunday School. We had dinner with the Bishop and his family. During Priesthood meeting we asked who was going to give out a Book of Mormon, and Wayne Timonen accepted the task.
2008. In the morning we went to give a blessing to some people that the zone leaders had told us about. They were actually in the sisters' area. We drove over there and the mom wanted her kids to get blessings, but the kids didn't seem too interested. After we left there, we told the sisters about them and told them they should stop by sometime. Here is my journal entry for the day:
"Today we gave a blessing to some nonmembers, Larry and Claudia. They each got one and were very appreciative. They weren't in our area but the sisters can't give blessings.
"Then we taught Duane and Vickie. They want to fast and give tithing and all that good stuff. Malheureusement, Duane has some legal complications. He stole a computer from Wal-Mart and fell asleep in the car, so he was caught. He was also caught trying to steal thirty lawnmowers. They let the mowers go because he was going to jail for the computer but now they have come back up and he has a court hearing. We hope that goes well so he can get baptized."
2003. My mom bought balloons and black stuff for my uncle's birthday the next day.
1996. It was a day to wear a green hat to school. A boy in my class was wearing a hat with pin/buttons on it, one of which said, "Let's Party at the Top O' the Morning." Our teacher, Mrs. Taylor, picked someone with the best hat and sent them to get their picture taken with the other green-hat people in the school. Mrs. Taylor told us that the rest of our hats were cool too, but she picked the one that was homemade and had a lot of work put into it. The school also had a contest where they put a picture of a leprechaun in different places in the school and if you found it you got a prize. I went searching for it with my friend Kelsey Bodily. She found a shiny thing that she said would help her find the leprechaun. I said it wouldn't, and she acknowledged she was just pretending. I didn't want to play with her because of that silliness and because she was playing with a kindergartener.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
St. Patrick's Eve
I'm going to remember as much as I can about March 16.
2012. My roommate Cameron Eaton and I had to get up early to go help one of our home teachees, Katie Steck, set something up in the Wilk. I was wearing my Snoopy "It's cool to be Irish" shirt. When we were waiting at the stoplight at Campus Drive and 900 North, a woman stopped and asked us where the pool was. Cameron redirected her, for she was way off. There was a high school swimming thing going on; I think Cameron knew that because he often went swimming. We helped Katie, but we just had to carry some things from her car. She didn't need much help from us. So with that extra time in the morning, I went into the library to do some last-minute studying for my Semantics and Pragmatics test. I opened up the Google doc study guide I had made, and some people had made some very funny comments. I would put them here, but I don't think anyone would get them ("You had to be there" kind of thing). I sent out a message that said, "Red writer [because the person had written in a red font], you have made my morning." Then I went to our classroom in the RB. We saw all the people there for the high school swim meet. There were lots of booths set up near the windows that overlooked the pool, which I had to pass on my way to class. I was almost finished when our time in the classroom was up. Those of us who hadn't finished had to finish in the hall. I was standing up, because I was just doing a final review of my answers, and I think Dr. Oaks told me I could sit down, but I was almost done. I might have seen my former companion "Elder" Duncan." It was a nice spring Friday, and I was feeling quite pleased that my test was over, and I felt like I did pretty well on it. I went to Sugar 'N Spice in the Wilk. I got a chocolate-chocolate donut with green sprinkles and a sugar cookie coated with green icing with a little shamrock design on it. The girl who rang me up told me she loved the cookies. I ate the donut while I walked home; I walked a way I hadn't walked before. Then when I got home I ate the cookie, and the frosting had melted and stuck to the bag. It was pistachio flavored, and I hope they have them again this year. I read my scriptures and took a nap before I went back up to my Editing class. This might have been the day that they passed around candy because of the game we had played the week before. They gave out candy in Easter wrappers, but I picked out some that had gold and green wrappers so that I could eat them. Then I went home. I told my mom I wanted to get some green shoes or green pants. So we went out looking. I couldn't find any green shoes at Famous Footwear. We went to five stores, but I can't remember what all of them were. As we were driving to Smith's Marketplace, my mom told me about the restaurant Granny Annie's that was where Marie Callendar's had been. She said she had wanted to try it because she loved the name, but it was terrible. I looked at the shoes at Smith's Marketplace. They had green Converse shoes, but they only had women's sizes. Then I looked at men's clothes. I found some clearance green pants. There were some that were the right waist, but they were too short. I ended up getting some that were big at the waist but the right length. We had to get someone to open the dressing room, and she asked if I was getting the pants for the next day. My mom told me that she liked the pants when I had them on; she thought they were ugly before she saw them on me. We bought Hugo on DVD. When we were checking out, the cashier asked if we had seen the movie, and she also asked if I was getting the pants for St. Patrick's Day. Then we went home, and I ate some key lime pie frozen yogurt, even though it was after 9. Then I got on my computer. I remembered hearing that Jan Terri had some holiday songs, so I checked them out. First I watched "Get Down Goblin"; I was pleased with the reference to The Munsters and The Addams Family. Then I watched "Rock N Roll Santa."
I was sad that it skipped (I later discovered a better version). I thought it was really funny. My mom wasn't really paying attention and thought she was saying "Whack-a-Mole Santa." My mom thought it was funny how much I thought it was funny. Little did I know that those songs would end up changing my life.
2011. I went to institute that night. There was an older couple that always provided food. That night it was "St. Patrick's Day split pea soup." The wife was wearing green. I thought about showing them my shirt (which was under my hoodie), but I didn't.
2009. We played dodgeball at one of the Coeur d'Alene buildings. In my first area we had often played dodgeball, and I liked it, but we played "every man for himself." On this occasion we were playing on teams, which I didn't like. Elder Betenson later told me that he was surprised at how bad I was, considering how much I had often talked about dodgeball. This is my journal entry for the day:
"This morning we went and played dodgeball. It was fun but I had forgotten how appallingly bad I am. I'm kind of embarrassed now. It's one of those nights I know Elder Betenson hates me, and I was simply trying to explain my past reasoning for being desirous of vampiric qualities.
"But this evening after dinner we went and saw Wayne Timonen, who is excited for us to teach him the lessons." Wayne Timonen was a man who had been inactive but had recently started coming back to church. I think we saw him that night to ask him about his commitment to give someone a Book of Mormon.
2008. It was Elder Condie's first Sunday in our wards. In the morning we went to the Northpointe Ward PEC, and Bishop Larson reproved us that we didn't have many names on our progress record. I remember at some point that day, Brother Palmer, the Northpointe ward mission leader, told us he was glad Elder Chun got a baptism before he left (since Brenna Carlsen had been baptized the previous week). Brother Mears from the Greenbluff Ward asked me if we had seen the Johnsons, an elderly nonmember couple--they were his special project. I told them that I had talked to Sister Summer (their daughter) and she said that we should wait to see them because her dad was having surgery. Brother Mears said something about how I should ask Vickie Summers about giving her parents blessings. I think that Elder Condie went to Greenbluff ward council while I went to the Northpointe Ward's ward council. Our investigator Duane came to church in the Northpointe Ward that day. I remember him telling someone he was investigating. When we were leaving church, Sister Pugh asked if Elder Condie was a new missionary. To think that I would ever train a new missionary is laughable! Here is my journal entry for the day:
"The wards don't trust me. It is quite frustrating. President Miller [the elders quorum president in the Greenbluff Ward] I guess said some stuff to Elder Condie implying I don't know anything. And Greenbluff wants us to continue working with the Johnsons even though I called Sister Summer about them and she said not to stop by for a few weeks due to recovery from surgery. It didn't help that our progress records were bare.
"But Duane came to church. Brother Welsh sat with him for Sunday School and priesthood opening exercises. He participated, and we set another date for them. I'm so excited!" (Duane and Vickie were golden investigators, but for some reason they never got baptized.)
2006. I walked into school wearing my Snoopy "Cool to be Irish" shirt and carrying a dish with a cake in it for my French class. I heard one guy say, "Is today St. Patrick's Day?" It was the day that our cultural projects were due, so we brought different desserts for the requirement. In France they eat bûches de Noël at Christmas, which are yule log cakes. But I made a bûche du jour de Saint Patrick-- I put green sprinkles on it and a little pot of gold. A girl in my class had had the same idea. But while mine was a chocolate cake with decorations on it, she made hers a different kind of cake with a mint filling. After class I went and put the dish in my car. I went to my Pre-Calc class, and Josh Roberts said he wondered if it was St. Patrick's Day because of my shirt.
2004. I was wearing a white polo shirt with a shamrock tie. Someone in my science class asked if it was St. Patrick's Day. I said no, and they wondered why I was dressed that way. I think this was the night I had to go to Trevor Young's house to work on a project in which we were presenting news stories from Samoa or one of those islands. My mom dropped me off, and she later said that a kid in the yard (Trevor's younger brother) had been on my soccer team when I was 9. We met in Trevor's basement. Greg Gabbott came, and Trevor's mom knew him, but she didn't know me. One of Trevor's little brothers came in and wanted to know who I was. Trevor seemed annoyed with this brother, and told him I was just one of his friends. His younger brother said, "He talks funny." We all found that hilarious. I told them about the article I found about someone robbing a house "armed with fishing spears." Trevor wanted to film us reporting our news articles in front of an outdoorsy wallpaper, but I didn't like the idea. Then my dad picked me up, because my mom was at mutual. I went to the Joneses for part of mutual, where we were making pizza. Then that night my mom went and bought things for me to take to seminary the next day. I wanted those Pillsbury cookies that you cut that had shamrocks on them, but she just bought plain ones. We tried to put green sugars on them. She also bought a loaf of bread with green stripes for our dinner the next day.
2003. It was my uncle Paul's fiftieth birthday, so we had a party at my house. There was a balloon that had people dressed in old clothing and said "Welcome to the Middle Ages." My aunt and my mom were quite amused by a balloon they had bought Paul ten years earlier. It doesn't sound like a very clever balloon to me, but to this day they still bring it up as if it's the funniest thing ever. After church I changed into an orange polo shirt. Then I had to go home teaching with Brother Naylor. The Spencers commented on my orange shirt. When Brother Naylor dropped me off, he pointed out that we were having a party.
2002. We went to Winegar's to buy things to make cookies for my cousin Hiram's farewell. I noticed the green mint chips, so my mom bought them. We made two kinds of cookies that night. We made regular chocolate chip cookies with green dye in the batter, and cookies with mint chips instead of chocolate chips. My mom said that people wouldn't want to eat the green dye cookies, but it turned out that they ate more of those than the mint ones.
2001. It was our sixth-grade mini-society day (which was basically a day where we ran stores). Since I had a quite lucrative business selling homemade window clings, I had a lot of money that I used to buy a stovepipe hat from Jaydon Bean. Mr. Williams, my teacher, said that I bought the hat he wanted. A girl named Brittany in my class wore a St. Patrick's Day hat, since they usually had hat contests for St. Patrick's Day, but they didn't that year. I wore a green shirt to bed that night.
1996. My parents took me to the Salt Lake City St. Patrick's Day parade. I was probably wearing my little plastic green derby hat. I noticed that they had painted clovers on the street. There were lots of bagpipers. Near to us there had been some people with picket signs that had St. Patrick's Day messages. When they left, they just left the signs on the ground. My parents told me I could take them, but I didn't want to. (Maybe it was because I thought those people must have been wicked, since they littered, and I figured that anything they had must be wicked too.)
Related posts:
Green Days
A year of holiday memories
2012. My roommate Cameron Eaton and I had to get up early to go help one of our home teachees, Katie Steck, set something up in the Wilk. I was wearing my Snoopy "It's cool to be Irish" shirt. When we were waiting at the stoplight at Campus Drive and 900 North, a woman stopped and asked us where the pool was. Cameron redirected her, for she was way off. There was a high school swimming thing going on; I think Cameron knew that because he often went swimming. We helped Katie, but we just had to carry some things from her car. She didn't need much help from us. So with that extra time in the morning, I went into the library to do some last-minute studying for my Semantics and Pragmatics test. I opened up the Google doc study guide I had made, and some people had made some very funny comments. I would put them here, but I don't think anyone would get them ("You had to be there" kind of thing). I sent out a message that said, "Red writer [because the person had written in a red font], you have made my morning." Then I went to our classroom in the RB. We saw all the people there for the high school swim meet. There were lots of booths set up near the windows that overlooked the pool, which I had to pass on my way to class. I was almost finished when our time in the classroom was up. Those of us who hadn't finished had to finish in the hall. I was standing up, because I was just doing a final review of my answers, and I think Dr. Oaks told me I could sit down, but I was almost done. I might have seen my former companion "Elder" Duncan." It was a nice spring Friday, and I was feeling quite pleased that my test was over, and I felt like I did pretty well on it. I went to Sugar 'N Spice in the Wilk. I got a chocolate-chocolate donut with green sprinkles and a sugar cookie coated with green icing with a little shamrock design on it. The girl who rang me up told me she loved the cookies. I ate the donut while I walked home; I walked a way I hadn't walked before. Then when I got home I ate the cookie, and the frosting had melted and stuck to the bag. It was pistachio flavored, and I hope they have them again this year. I read my scriptures and took a nap before I went back up to my Editing class. This might have been the day that they passed around candy because of the game we had played the week before. They gave out candy in Easter wrappers, but I picked out some that had gold and green wrappers so that I could eat them. Then I went home. I told my mom I wanted to get some green shoes or green pants. So we went out looking. I couldn't find any green shoes at Famous Footwear. We went to five stores, but I can't remember what all of them were. As we were driving to Smith's Marketplace, my mom told me about the restaurant Granny Annie's that was where Marie Callendar's had been. She said she had wanted to try it because she loved the name, but it was terrible. I looked at the shoes at Smith's Marketplace. They had green Converse shoes, but they only had women's sizes. Then I looked at men's clothes. I found some clearance green pants. There were some that were the right waist, but they were too short. I ended up getting some that were big at the waist but the right length. We had to get someone to open the dressing room, and she asked if I was getting the pants for the next day. My mom told me that she liked the pants when I had them on; she thought they were ugly before she saw them on me. We bought Hugo on DVD. When we were checking out, the cashier asked if we had seen the movie, and she also asked if I was getting the pants for St. Patrick's Day. Then we went home, and I ate some key lime pie frozen yogurt, even though it was after 9. Then I got on my computer. I remembered hearing that Jan Terri had some holiday songs, so I checked them out. First I watched "Get Down Goblin"; I was pleased with the reference to The Munsters and The Addams Family. Then I watched "Rock N Roll Santa."
I was sad that it skipped (I later discovered a better version). I thought it was really funny. My mom wasn't really paying attention and thought she was saying "Whack-a-Mole Santa." My mom thought it was funny how much I thought it was funny. Little did I know that those songs would end up changing my life.
2011. I went to institute that night. There was an older couple that always provided food. That night it was "St. Patrick's Day split pea soup." The wife was wearing green. I thought about showing them my shirt (which was under my hoodie), but I didn't.
2009. We played dodgeball at one of the Coeur d'Alene buildings. In my first area we had often played dodgeball, and I liked it, but we played "every man for himself." On this occasion we were playing on teams, which I didn't like. Elder Betenson later told me that he was surprised at how bad I was, considering how much I had often talked about dodgeball. This is my journal entry for the day:
"This morning we went and played dodgeball. It was fun but I had forgotten how appallingly bad I am. I'm kind of embarrassed now. It's one of those nights I know Elder Betenson hates me, and I was simply trying to explain my past reasoning for being desirous of vampiric qualities.
"But this evening after dinner we went and saw Wayne Timonen, who is excited for us to teach him the lessons." Wayne Timonen was a man who had been inactive but had recently started coming back to church. I think we saw him that night to ask him about his commitment to give someone a Book of Mormon.
2008. It was Elder Condie's first Sunday in our wards. In the morning we went to the Northpointe Ward PEC, and Bishop Larson reproved us that we didn't have many names on our progress record. I remember at some point that day, Brother Palmer, the Northpointe ward mission leader, told us he was glad Elder Chun got a baptism before he left (since Brenna Carlsen had been baptized the previous week). Brother Mears from the Greenbluff Ward asked me if we had seen the Johnsons, an elderly nonmember couple--they were his special project. I told them that I had talked to Sister Summer (their daughter) and she said that we should wait to see them because her dad was having surgery. Brother Mears said something about how I should ask Vickie Summers about giving her parents blessings. I think that Elder Condie went to Greenbluff ward council while I went to the Northpointe Ward's ward council. Our investigator Duane came to church in the Northpointe Ward that day. I remember him telling someone he was investigating. When we were leaving church, Sister Pugh asked if Elder Condie was a new missionary. To think that I would ever train a new missionary is laughable! Here is my journal entry for the day:
"The wards don't trust me. It is quite frustrating. President Miller [the elders quorum president in the Greenbluff Ward] I guess said some stuff to Elder Condie implying I don't know anything. And Greenbluff wants us to continue working with the Johnsons even though I called Sister Summer about them and she said not to stop by for a few weeks due to recovery from surgery. It didn't help that our progress records were bare.
"But Duane came to church. Brother Welsh sat with him for Sunday School and priesthood opening exercises. He participated, and we set another date for them. I'm so excited!" (Duane and Vickie were golden investigators, but for some reason they never got baptized.)
2006. I walked into school wearing my Snoopy "Cool to be Irish" shirt and carrying a dish with a cake in it for my French class. I heard one guy say, "Is today St. Patrick's Day?" It was the day that our cultural projects were due, so we brought different desserts for the requirement. In France they eat bûches de Noël at Christmas, which are yule log cakes. But I made a bûche du jour de Saint Patrick-- I put green sprinkles on it and a little pot of gold. A girl in my class had had the same idea. But while mine was a chocolate cake with decorations on it, she made hers a different kind of cake with a mint filling. After class I went and put the dish in my car. I went to my Pre-Calc class, and Josh Roberts said he wondered if it was St. Patrick's Day because of my shirt.
2004. I was wearing a white polo shirt with a shamrock tie. Someone in my science class asked if it was St. Patrick's Day. I said no, and they wondered why I was dressed that way. I think this was the night I had to go to Trevor Young's house to work on a project in which we were presenting news stories from Samoa or one of those islands. My mom dropped me off, and she later said that a kid in the yard (Trevor's younger brother) had been on my soccer team when I was 9. We met in Trevor's basement. Greg Gabbott came, and Trevor's mom knew him, but she didn't know me. One of Trevor's little brothers came in and wanted to know who I was. Trevor seemed annoyed with this brother, and told him I was just one of his friends. His younger brother said, "He talks funny." We all found that hilarious. I told them about the article I found about someone robbing a house "armed with fishing spears." Trevor wanted to film us reporting our news articles in front of an outdoorsy wallpaper, but I didn't like the idea. Then my dad picked me up, because my mom was at mutual. I went to the Joneses for part of mutual, where we were making pizza. Then that night my mom went and bought things for me to take to seminary the next day. I wanted those Pillsbury cookies that you cut that had shamrocks on them, but she just bought plain ones. We tried to put green sugars on them. She also bought a loaf of bread with green stripes for our dinner the next day.
2003. It was my uncle Paul's fiftieth birthday, so we had a party at my house. There was a balloon that had people dressed in old clothing and said "Welcome to the Middle Ages." My aunt and my mom were quite amused by a balloon they had bought Paul ten years earlier. It doesn't sound like a very clever balloon to me, but to this day they still bring it up as if it's the funniest thing ever. After church I changed into an orange polo shirt. Then I had to go home teaching with Brother Naylor. The Spencers commented on my orange shirt. When Brother Naylor dropped me off, he pointed out that we were having a party.
2002. We went to Winegar's to buy things to make cookies for my cousin Hiram's farewell. I noticed the green mint chips, so my mom bought them. We made two kinds of cookies that night. We made regular chocolate chip cookies with green dye in the batter, and cookies with mint chips instead of chocolate chips. My mom said that people wouldn't want to eat the green dye cookies, but it turned out that they ate more of those than the mint ones.
2001. It was our sixth-grade mini-society day (which was basically a day where we ran stores). Since I had a quite lucrative business selling homemade window clings, I had a lot of money that I used to buy a stovepipe hat from Jaydon Bean. Mr. Williams, my teacher, said that I bought the hat he wanted. A girl named Brittany in my class wore a St. Patrick's Day hat, since they usually had hat contests for St. Patrick's Day, but they didn't that year. I wore a green shirt to bed that night.
1996. My parents took me to the Salt Lake City St. Patrick's Day parade. I was probably wearing my little plastic green derby hat. I noticed that they had painted clovers on the street. There were lots of bagpipers. Near to us there had been some people with picket signs that had St. Patrick's Day messages. When they left, they just left the signs on the ground. My parents told me I could take them, but I didn't want to. (Maybe it was because I thought those people must have been wicked, since they littered, and I figured that anything they had must be wicked too.)
Related posts:
Green Days
A year of holiday memories
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Leap Day
I'm going to remember as many details as I can about the Leap Days of my life. But since there aren't that many of them, there's not a lot to remember.
2012. I remember it snowing and I was thinking, "It's fitting for it to be snowing, since it's still February." But then I thought about how it could just as easily be March 1, and that our month designations are totally arbitrary. Since I could eat anything I wanted (since the day only happens once every four years), I bought some gummy worms from a vending machine in the JFSB before my editing class. That night, I told my roommate Bryton that I could eat anything I wanted, so if he had any candy he wanted to get rid of, he could give it to me. He went to his cupboard and pulled out a bag of "Sweet and Sour" jelly eggs (candies with tart sugary stuff, like Sour Patch Kids) and said I could have them. They were from the previous Easter. I ate a bunch of them while I did homework on my bed, but they were kind of stale. I told Bryton that I was excited that in three weeks' time that I could eat Easter candy again. I debated saving the eggs until that time, but I threw them out that night when I was done with them because they were stale. I asked Bryton if he wanted them, but he was fine with me throwing them out.
2008. There was an elderly couple, the Baumps, who were inactive but friendly. We would visit them occasionally, and on this occasion they had some friends over. These friends said they had been talking with missionaries from another area just recently. They lived next door to the house in our area where the missionaries had lived for years until a few months earlier. They said that they wished we missionaries would live there again. Their new neighbors threw lots of loud, wild parties (think alcohol, etc.) with all sorts of people showing up, and even police would end up showing up. I think they said that these parties would go on even when the neighbors' kids were there. We asked these friends of the Baumps if we could talk more with them about the gospel, and I think we arranged a time to meet there at the Baumps' again the following week. That night we went to the Northpointe Ward pinewood derby. We just went at the beginning to try to meet and talk to some people. We met some people who had multiple piercings. They were friendly, but we didn't get to talk much to them. After they had walked away, we asked someone who they were. He told us that the woman is the daughter of the Relief Society president and the man was her boyfriend. Then he told us that they lived in the house where the missionaries used to live. Elder Chun looked at me and started laughing.
This is my journal entry for the day: "Today we stopped by the Baumps, a less-active family, and their non-member friends who live next to where the missionary house used to be in this area. The friend said she liked having the missionaries next door, much better than their current party animal neighbors, who are noisy and frequently have police showing up.
"Then we went to a pine wood derby and there were people we didn't recognize who had piercings. We asked ward members who they were, and they said, 'She's Sister Schurtz's [Relief Society President] semi-active daughter and her non-member boyfriend. They live in the old missionary house.' We immediately started laughing.
[At this point I wrote in a squiggly font to indicate that I was thinking of something that happened in the past, like they do the swirly screen in movies before a flashback.]
<flashback font>Sunday, February 29, 2004.
The next time we have leap day, I'll be on my mission.</flashback font>
I couldn't fathom that four years ago. And here I am.
2004. It was a fifth Sunday, and my dad was talking about how utterly unusual it was to have a fifth-Sunday lesson in February. My cousin Shane, who was born on Leap Day, and his wife Sarah came to our house and we played games. They talked about how there had been a party for Shane in which he got gifts that a six-year-old would get, including a Spongebob t-shirt. My mom said, "Should we tell them what Spongebob thing you have?" and I averted an embarrassing situation by saying "Cards" (which was true). I think the rest of my mom's family came over. We had soda, which I drank since it was the special occasion of Leap Day. I kept thinking about how crazy (and I thought sad) it was that I would be on my mission the next Leap Day.
2000. You would think that since this day only happens once every four years, I would do a better job of remembering it. But nope, I don't remember anything that happened this day.
1996. I remember my dad coming home from work. I talked about how it was Leap Year, and he, in his typical silly manner, asked if we should do some leaping. I had a ridiculous mental image of us going outside and jumping ("leaping") up our rock path.
2012. I remember it snowing and I was thinking, "It's fitting for it to be snowing, since it's still February." But then I thought about how it could just as easily be March 1, and that our month designations are totally arbitrary. Since I could eat anything I wanted (since the day only happens once every four years), I bought some gummy worms from a vending machine in the JFSB before my editing class. That night, I told my roommate Bryton that I could eat anything I wanted, so if he had any candy he wanted to get rid of, he could give it to me. He went to his cupboard and pulled out a bag of "Sweet and Sour" jelly eggs (candies with tart sugary stuff, like Sour Patch Kids) and said I could have them. They were from the previous Easter. I ate a bunch of them while I did homework on my bed, but they were kind of stale. I told Bryton that I was excited that in three weeks' time that I could eat Easter candy again. I debated saving the eggs until that time, but I threw them out that night when I was done with them because they were stale. I asked Bryton if he wanted them, but he was fine with me throwing them out.
2008. There was an elderly couple, the Baumps, who were inactive but friendly. We would visit them occasionally, and on this occasion they had some friends over. These friends said they had been talking with missionaries from another area just recently. They lived next door to the house in our area where the missionaries had lived for years until a few months earlier. They said that they wished we missionaries would live there again. Their new neighbors threw lots of loud, wild parties (think alcohol, etc.) with all sorts of people showing up, and even police would end up showing up. I think they said that these parties would go on even when the neighbors' kids were there. We asked these friends of the Baumps if we could talk more with them about the gospel, and I think we arranged a time to meet there at the Baumps' again the following week. That night we went to the Northpointe Ward pinewood derby. We just went at the beginning to try to meet and talk to some people. We met some people who had multiple piercings. They were friendly, but we didn't get to talk much to them. After they had walked away, we asked someone who they were. He told us that the woman is the daughter of the Relief Society president and the man was her boyfriend. Then he told us that they lived in the house where the missionaries used to live. Elder Chun looked at me and started laughing.
This is my journal entry for the day: "Today we stopped by the Baumps, a less-active family, and their non-member friends who live next to where the missionary house used to be in this area. The friend said she liked having the missionaries next door, much better than their current party animal neighbors, who are noisy and frequently have police showing up.
"Then we went to a pine wood derby and there were people we didn't recognize who had piercings. We asked ward members who they were, and they said, 'She's Sister Schurtz's [Relief Society President] semi-active daughter and her non-member boyfriend. They live in the old missionary house.' We immediately started laughing.
[At this point I wrote in a squiggly font to indicate that I was thinking of something that happened in the past, like they do the swirly screen in movies before a flashback.]
<flashback font>Sunday, February 29, 2004.
The next time we have leap day, I'll be on my mission.</flashback font>
I couldn't fathom that four years ago. And here I am.
2004. It was a fifth Sunday, and my dad was talking about how utterly unusual it was to have a fifth-Sunday lesson in February. My cousin Shane, who was born on Leap Day, and his wife Sarah came to our house and we played games. They talked about how there had been a party for Shane in which he got gifts that a six-year-old would get, including a Spongebob t-shirt. My mom said, "Should we tell them what Spongebob thing you have?" and I averted an embarrassing situation by saying "Cards" (which was true). I think the rest of my mom's family came over. We had soda, which I drank since it was the special occasion of Leap Day. I kept thinking about how crazy (and I thought sad) it was that I would be on my mission the next Leap Day.
2000. You would think that since this day only happens once every four years, I would do a better job of remembering it. But nope, I don't remember anything that happened this day.
1996. I remember my dad coming home from work. I talked about how it was Leap Year, and he, in his typical silly manner, asked if we should do some leaping. I had a ridiculous mental image of us going outside and jumping ("leaping") up our rock path.
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