Pumpkinhead

Let the season of happiness, joy, candy, and spirited fun begin!

My Halloween quilt is officially on the bed.


Now I'm going to utilize my quilt in its official capacity, for I am tired and coming down with a cold. I need to sleep. The major headaches of the week are all in effect past tense. But I have a poetry midterm coming up next week. So there is that. But I need to sleep first.

Slam!

OK, I said I wouldn't blog much this week, but dangit if my children don't say funny stuff while I'm on a blog diet.

So this time it was Hayley.

She has a project for health and her topic is "Phobias." We were looking through an extensive list of phobias and laughing at the funny ones.

Then she came across "textophobia" which is the fear of certain fabrics or textiles. We laughed and then she said, "Well, Grandma certainly doesn't have that phobia."

(If you don't get the joke, then let me explain. Grandma has two, yes two, sewing rooms. And huge fabric piles in both of them. And in other rooms. In all seriousness, when my mother tells me to get something for her out of the sewing room, I have to ask "Which one?" Then she scowls at me. Pfffftthbhbht I say back. It's a legitimate question)

Another thing to tease Grandma about!

Other funny phobias:

Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons. (What is a Walloon? A shortened name for waterballoons?) (if you think that I need enlightening on the subject of Walloons, save yourself the wear and tear on your typing fingers. I actually don't care what a Walloon is. I've lived this long without knowing what they are and have managed just fine in my ignorance)
Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat
Geniophobia- Fear of chins
Geumaphobia or Geumophobia- Fear of taste.
Kathisophobia- Fear of sitting down.
Lachanophobia- Fear of vegetables. (Hayley just told me that she has this phobia. My reply: I don't care. She has to eat them anyway. Her fear of the wrath of mother--maternalireaphobia--is much greater, believe me)
Omphalophobia- Fear of belly buttons. (For the love of all that is good and holy, WEAR A SHIRT THAT COVERS YOUR NAVEL!)

And that concludes our blogcast day. Thank you.

Stopping by for just a minute

I'll be spending most of my time this week getting to know my sewing machine better. A friend of mine asked if I could help her sew a few fairy skirts for a community theater production. I also have some pants I have to finish reconstructing.

I love the new set up in the sewing room--I feel much less cramped! And I have room on the floor to cut stuff out. The table also has room for the portable DVD player so I can watch Lark Rise to Candleford while I sew.

Blogging might be light this week. I have a full plate. Don't call me this week, I don't have time to answer. If you need my help for anything, you'll have to pay to have me cloned. And you'll have to feed and clothe the clone.

Shirt story

Saturday was the cross country meet for Paul that I couldn't go to but Jim could. (Wish I could have gone) Jim took pictures and so I will post them now for you and then I will relate an anecdote that proves that thriftiness can attract the girls.

Again: pictures now, story in a little bit.

Here are three running Lakers at the beginning of their varsity race:

One of the boys has something in his hand.
That's right. His shoe. Silly Thomas! The shoe goes on your foot!

(Jim was disappointed that the picture he took didn't include the unshod foot. The foot with the shoe on it was the prominent one. Oh well, it was a missed opportunity that Jim didn't realize was missed until later.)

And here is our Paul, who tied his previous personal best of 18:01. He says he could have run faster but the course was muddy and prone to sucking the shoes off of unsuspecting runners, although that didn't happen to him.
'K, now the story.

Several weeks ago, my mother, in a fit of thriftiness, bought a bunch of shirts (at the price of $1 each) at her local rec center. She gave a pile of them to us and we divvied them up by sizes.

Fast forward to today at the CC meet. Paul wore one of the shirts to the meet. He wore it because the shirt is long-sleeved and today was on the less-hot end of the thermometer. Furthermore, the shirt was yellow and blue (our school colors) (pardon me: GOLD and blue) (but I still think yellow. What is wrong with calling a school color YELLOW? It's a perfectly legitimate color) (um...anyway) and it said "Cross country" in block lettering in an interesting cubic formation that grammarians would cringe at because the line breaks were done without regard to word continuity (if that makes any sense) (nevermind, I'll take a picture of the shirt and post it so you all can see what it looked like).

So he's wearing this shirt all innocent like (because he is, after all, our alien PAUL). Suddenly he noticed that he had caught the attention of a bunch of girls. Girls he didn't know. Girls from Wayzata. They gathered around him and asked him where he got his shirt. Poor Paulie didn't know where it had come from. He had to tell them that one day it magically appeared on his bed. Turns out the shirt was their team shirt from last year! So naturally, they wondered how someone had come into possession of one of their shirts. (Paul just told me that they thought he had stolen it from their base camp)

After the girls dispersed, some of the guys on Paul's team came up to Paul, tweaked by jealousy, and requested that Paul set them up with some of the Wayzata girls.

And there the story ends. Kind of a lame ending, but I had to laugh at the middle part. I don't think Paulie quite knows what to do when surrounded by a bunch of girls who demand his attention. Even more so when he suspects the shirt comes by way of a grandma who likes to buy things on the cheap and give them to grandchildren without them knowing about it.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the shirt (and one of Paul's vacant stares).
And the back side of it (because it has a fun quote)

Band on the field

Last night I endured going to a high school football game by myself just to see a tiny Paul (tiny because he was far away) in a marching band uniform.

I loaded up the Thermos with hot chocolate and grabbed a beach towel to sit on (the bleachers are pretty near to absolute zero so one must take measures to put a barrier between one's tush and the coldness of metal forged in the blistering frigidity of outer space). I had my fabulous new Laker jacket (to show my allegiance to the high school team) that was sewn with thread made from rays of the sun (yes, I am waxing metaphoric in this post. Deal with it) to keep me warm too.

Just to take pictures of Paul so you all could see him with a French horn in his hand and a bottle-brush-topped hat on his head.

Here is the band marching into the stadium. I will give ten bucks to anyone who can tell me where Paul is in this picture.
Here he is on the field. He has that I've-gotta-concentrate-real-hard-on-playing look on his face.


His marching "prowess":
Side note: Our team won by one point. If the opposing team had made their 2 point conversion, we would have lost. It was a nailbiter for the homecoming game. It was so tense, I had to bite the nails of the woman next to me. (rim shot)

No Paul is not going to the homecoming dance. He has to run in a race tomorrow up in Milaca. Which Jim is going to. But not me. Wish I was. But I can't. Jim's taking the camera, though. So that's good. Still wish I were going. But I can't (etc).

Fried-day

Ten things that I thought about today after seminary/work:

1. nap?
2. nap.
3. Nap.
4. Nap!
5. Toast.
6. No, nap.
7. Banana?
8. There aren't any. There are only naps.
9. NAP.
10. ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

There was no Tuesday, only beans.

And with the passing of yesterday, I am done with experimenting with beans. I am still busy this week though. Too much didn't get done while I was puttering in the kitchen and I have to play catch-up. But I don't feel like doing it right now. I'd rather blog. You're welcome.

On to Saturday. As in last Saturday. As in Jim and I took a drive (when I really should have been cooking with beans. But Jim was much better company).

We wandered aimlessly through eastern Minnesota and into western Wisconsin, where we drove past an abandoned building that we found fascinating:
I made Jim turn around (well, actually he offered to turn around and I took him up on it) so I could take a few pictures of it because it was so interesting. What was with the rainbows? And why was this building out in the middle of a very little somewhere? It was a large building--one that reminded me of too many sci-fi movies with E-VIIIILLL corporations housed at buildings that are vaguely ominous and surrounded by very little.
The buildings in the movies usually aren't as meteorologically happy as this building, but the rainbows added to the mystery of it. Upon closer look in the back of the building, we saw what we thought was an athletic field with a giant scoreboard that was mostly obscured by overgrown foliage, but we could make out "St. Croix Meadows." My hypothesis was that it was a failed dog track.

When we got home, I looked it up, and sh0' nuff, I was right. St. Croix Meadows closed in 2001, nearly ten years ago. The building itself looks pretty good for being ten years out of use, and I could tell that the lawn around the front of the building had been mowed recently. But the parking lot was in the process of being reclaimed by Mother Nature.

So on to other parts of Wisconsin, where we got lost in the Neighborhood from Limbo. It surely wasn't Hell; Hell would not have had houses that had been nicely kept up, and above ground pools and apple trees. But it was surely not Heaven, or even Earth either...

Because once in, we could not find our way out. We asked Aunt Roady, but she had been badly misinformed by her sources and the only way out that she showed us had apparently recently been blockaded and turned into a cul-de-sac.

I did take one picture of a tree while in the Neighborhood from Heck:
I love fall colors. Especially fall colors on a sunny day.

FINALLY we found the exit to the neighborhood (after praying to the god of Mapquest) and we decided that we had had enough of Wisconsin in the Neighborhood that Didn't Want to Let Go, so we scurried back to Minnesota. We were not deterred at all by this sign:The hill wasn't that bad. It didn't bite. Not even one growl. No claws were bared, nor venomous fangs displayed. It was a very tame hill.

We were rewarded with a lovely picture of the St. Croix River. In the distance is Stillwater.
Stillwater, closer up.
Finally we stopped in Taylors Falls where we almost ate at this restaurant.Apparently, "eclectic" means "expensive"

So we ate at Chisago House, which looked like a 70s basement, but with better food and bottomless glasses of rootbeer.

Here is Tangled Up in Blue (which is, by the way, a Bob Dylan song), at night. With a smoker out front.
Someday we will drive aimlessly again (only not into Wisconsin. That neighborhood really got to us. Seriously, I was creeped out. Jim and I began to think we were in the Eagles song "Hotel California")

Post Lite

Sorry I have no time to post about the Saturday drive Jim and I took. I'm too busy testing recipes that use canned beans (not green beans; I'm talking about pinto, navy, kidney, etc) or dried bean flour.

I just made strawberry/navy bean smoothies (they taste much better than you think they would)
and I'm going to make a green pea guacamole, a cream soup using bean flour as a thickener, a spicy bean cake, and assorted other strange things.

So no regular post today, or maybe even tomorrow because tomorrow night is when I have to present the bean recipes at a class.

Running Man

'Nother race for Paul.

Statistical information:
New personal record for Paulie: 18:00
Improvement over last race: 30 seconds
Improvement on last year's best time: 8 seconds
3rd Laker in

Paul contemplates his choice of headband.

The new spikes. I am blinded by the orange.
Nearly halfway through the race. I got prime seating for picture taking. Then I had a few minutes to saunter over to the finish line (where all my pictures were blurry).

Labeled picture for Jenni, who likes labeled pictures.

Old Mother Hubbard

Or maybe it should be Old Mother Evans, but skip the dog with a bone thing. The cupboards are bare and poor Old Mother Evans is hungry.

There is no more cookie dough in the freezer.
There is no more chocolate hiding in my pantry.
There are no more cinnamon rolls leftover from seminary.

I need some sugar/chocolate for comfort. I need comforting because I've eaten too much sugar/chocolate in my life.

It's a vicious circle, my friends.

Please tell me that broiled veggies taste just like Hershey's Nuggets with Toffee bits.

Teenagers from outer space

OK not really. I just like to say that I've always thought Paul was an alien. But now that I drive him to school from seminary every day, I see more of the normal teenage Paul as he interacts with a friend (who we also drive to school, along with two girls).

I like to hear the kids laugh. I don't feel the need to get in to the conversation, but I do have to laugh when I hear something I think is funny.

Today I was rewarded with a gem from Paul (and pardon me if you don't think it's funny. Maybe it was just in the animated way he said it. At home, Paul uses a very monotone voice, but in the car with his friend, he actually varies the tone of his voice in a very human being-ish way).

I heard:

"And then your teeth turn into grenades IN YOUR MOUTH."

I have no idea where that came from or what the conversation was about to that point. After that it turned into a horror movie, and I finally had to say, "Too gross! Talk about something else!" And the talk turned to cinnamon rolls, which made me super super hungry.

Time to eat.

Beautify your garbage cans, behind your entertainment units, in the crawl space, and under the sink!

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. My laundry room is filthy. Let me show you!

There are pipes every where on the walls and stuff piled on my dryer (I'd pile stuff on the washer, but the washer throws it all off during vigorous spin cycles)
Two litter boxes and an unswept floor (notice the presence of the broom. It wishes to be used)
Oh look, it's Evil Madge.And here is cat food spilled on the floor. You can't see some decent-sized water marks on the checkerboard floor, but believe me, they are there.

And my dirtiest secret of all. This floor space has been swept and mopped maybe twice since we moved into this house nearly twelve years ago.
See? (actually for my laundry room, it's pretty uncluttered by dirty laundry)

Normally, I shut the door to the laundry room when visitors happen by and no one has to see the filth (and the wet bras drying on hooks on the wall, which I didn't show you because I was too lazy to photograph everything. And I would rather not post pictures of my lingerie on the interwebs).

But as I was surfing my bookmarked websites, I found a post listing 12 decorating ideas FOR THE LAUNDRY ROOM. I hesitate to link to the actual website, because I don't know if I want you all linking over there and the website owner linking back and seeing me roll my eyes in a blog post. (but here's a hint. Google "beautify laundry room tips" and click on the one that has 12 tips. That's the blog I saw)

So here's my eye roll:
IT'S A LAUNDRY ROOM. It's supposed to be filthy, messy, and look somewhat like an indoor garage. Tell me why, oh ambitious do-it-yourself decorators, why does it need to look PRETTY??? Filthy clothing gets thrown in this room! Stuff like boys' underwear that has been to Boundary Waters for a week and never changed ONCE, cross country running warm up gear, towels that have wiped up cat vomit (and worse), and sheets that haven't been changed in [blotted out to save what little dignity I have left after showing you pictures of my laundry room]!!

For crying out loud, the cats POOP in this room!

Not every room in your house needs to scream: I clean all day long and arrange refitted thrift store crap in pleasant triangle-based layouts!

Seriously, if you have time to wallpaper your laundry room and create happy little vinyl signs that say in cheery fonts "Check your pockets!" then you have TOO flippin' much time on your hands.

Rant over.

(I'm gonna go sweep and mop that little area by the water softener now)

(And I'm gonna try to resist the urge to feel inferior to the people whose laundry rooms look like that)

(I bet they don't make home cooked dinners 6 nights a week)

(or get up at 4:30 a.m.)

First day of what?

So I didn't post obligatory First Day of School pictures of my kids wearing their new clothes and backpacks and standing at the bus stop.

We are now a whole week into school and I'm still not posting pictures of my kids wearing their new clothes and backpacks and standing at the bus stop.

I've done the first day of school so many times that I'm all MEH with it now. There are only three left going to school anyway, it hardly seems worth it. Besides, Paul wheedled rides to school from his father the whole first week so there was no bus stop action for him at all. And Hayley and Matt were out the door before 7 a.m. and I was too busy getting ready for my new job that I just kinda waved from the bathroom as they were scurrying out the door, instead of following them around with my camera. They were all relieved.

There was a first day today. First day of seminary. First day of me having to get up at the crack of way-too-dang-early (yes, Jenni, I know you feel my pain) and present a happy made-up face and feet with church shoes to a class full of cranky-as-babies teenagers to teach them about spiritual things.

And I did it. With a smiling face too. And then I dropped off four very nice teenagers at the high school and I went to work to play Mancala with several very nice K-3rd graders.

At 9:30 a.m., I am officially done with the "working out of home" part of my day.

To top it all off with a very large cherry, a mom of one of the kids at the before school care program at which I work brought in a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies for us kid-care workers!!! Breakfast!

I think I have a crystal brain

I dreamed early this morning that the neighbors behind us had a big party in their backyard and there were people all over (including in my bathroom and dining room and I kept trying to get them to leave and they all looked at me like I was off my rocker and totally mean).

And today, those normally quiet and keep-to-themselves neighbors are having a party in their backyard.

Must go check the bathroom and dining room for partygoers. Then I'll lock the door.

Knock on wood laminate

Pretend I am whispering. I don't want to jinx the situation by telling people out loud.

Other Jim got a second job.

(I'm still whispering). He will get close to 40 hours a week and his old job, but now he'll get a variable amount of hours at a new job with someone from church. OJ will be helping at the guy's metal components manufacturing place. He worked there yesterday for 6 hours and he's there again today for 7 hours.

Obviously this is a good thing for a few reasons:
A) more money for OJ for college
B) he'll get experience doing something different than pushing carts around
C) future job reference from the employer
D) he'll be at home less. Not that I mind having him around, but really and truly, does an 18 year old guy really want his mother hovering around him when he's at home? No. And this way, I know he's keeping busy doing something productive.....and....
E) (related to D) he won't have to do household chores on a daily basis if he's working 14 hours a day.

The downside:
The flip side to E--He won't be doing a cleaning job everyday. I was kinda looking forward to a cleaner house. Hmmmm. I guess the house will remain messy.

Logical sequence

It began with me wanting to see if the cross country picture taker had posted any new pictures in her photo gallery.

It ended with a remodeled sewing room/food storage room.

Our computer is a dinosaur (or at least a woolly mammoth. Or Neanderthal man). Despite its slowness, it was fine for our needs and got me where I wanted to be on the world wide web. But Thursday, I could not access the internet. We'd had problems before but had always been able to fix the situation by manually inputting the IP addresses. But that didn't work this time. No internet. I could not get on to see if Julie B had taken pictures at the CC pasta dinner.

In frustration I barked out a few PG-rated epithets at the computer, but it must not have liked my tone and it completely froze up. Rebooting did not work either.

Nothing worked.

Jim finally broke down and on his lunch break on Friday, he bought a new computer. Meanwhile, we had gotten the old computer back up and running, but still without the internet. And Hayley had summer math assignments to do before school started. Luckily, OJ's graduation present laptop could access our internet (we have wi-fi!) and she was able to get her work done.

We decided that we'd still keep the old internet for use as a word processor for kids who needed to type stuff up but didn't need the internet. The kids were always arguing about needing to use the computer so hopefully this will alleviate that somewhat.

Anyway, where to put the old computer?

The sewing room. But I needed to clean off the table. Ever since the Great Room Switch, things have been piling up in there and in its present state, we could not fit anything more on that table.

But I got to cleaning off the toy shelf, since I don't babysit Fake Child anymore, and without the internet, I got up enough motivation to clean off the table too. But I couldn't stop there. Once I got the table cleaned off, I realized that the set up--having the table smack in the middle of the room--was not going to be easy to maneuver around. So I took the leaf out of the table and pushed it up against the window. I planned to put the sewing machine and the computer on the table. But that didn't seem right somehow. I think the sewing machine likes the two sergers much more than the old computer so I put the sergers on the table and had Other Jim transfer the computer to the small roller table that used to house the sergers. OJ then hooked up the computer all by himself (he takes after his father. They are born with the ability to connect black plastic boxes together with mysterious cords without instructions and have everything work) I moved a few more bookshelves around, and now....

I have a whole new room!
In fact, with the table out of the middle of the room, we can actually have people sleep in there if we were to ever have guests. When Katie visitis, she won't have to sleep on the cat-dander-infested couches and get her allergies all worked up. She can sleep on an air mattress in the sewing room and eat granola bars to her heart's content.

In review:
1. Fail to get on internet several times
2. Curse mildly as you fiddle with the software
3. Make sure husband is in auditory range
4. Husband buys new computer
5. Keep old one
6. Decide to put it in overcrowded room
7. Clean a space for old computer
8. Decide to move furniture around and throw out the junk so people don't trip when they want to get to the computer
9. Change location of appliances several times (make sure you have your post-high-school-graduate teenager around to help) and voila, a whole new sewing/food storage room!
10. Buy granola bars

Mystery of life #24435.09a

How did this happen? And how did it happen while still on my finger?

As I was driving some kids home on Labor Day, I noticed something wrong with my ring.

Hang on tight, I'm heading into a tangent.

I don't wear much jewelry, mostly because I will play with whatever jewelry I wear. It's a habit of mine. And by "play with" I mean that I'll take whatever it is off my person and finger it or twist it or fiddle with it or stick it on my nose (not in) or send it spinning on a table. Even rings. One time while waiting for a kid to come out of an ortho appointment, I was fiddling with my wedding and engagement rings and I happened to see a familiar face. As I turned in my enthusiasm to greet her, my wedding ring went flying off the non-wedding ring finger I had put it on and into the toybox. Luckily I had *Fake Child with me and I gave her the task of finding my ring. I find it difficult to leave the jewelry alone, and I can always feel the bracelet or necklace pressing on my skin; even my wedding and engagement rings are noticed continuously by the section in my brain that notices things on my skin. It's like a constant update on the status of my skin. "You are wearing two rings. And a bulky bracelet that makes little divots in your skin if you fold your arms" over and over again until I take off whatever jewelry I'm wearing.

I don't know if it's an annoying habit to play with my jewelry because no one has ever told me it is. But I don't see many others playing with their jewelry, which leads me to believe that it is an activity that is slightly out of the norm. I don't know though, do any of you out there feel a similar need to play with your jewelry? (Rosaries don't count. Catholics are supposed to play with those. Maybe I need a rosary. Then I wouldn't fiddle so much with the other stuff)

[/tangent] Back to my original point.

So when I noticed that something didn't feel right with my ring finger, I held up my hand and saw that my engagement ring was squishing in on my finger. I was totally shocked. I have NO IDEA how that happened. And my wedding ring was still perfectly circular. You would think that whatever bent my ring to the extreme that it squished my finger and made it very difficult to remove (I like my rings loose so I can remove them easily. I feel claustrophobic when I have tight rings on) would have been noticed by me.

I got a little panicky--not too much because I was driving kids home and driving while in full blown panic mode would have been dangerous--because I couldn't get the ring off at first. I thought I was going to have to find a jeweler to cut it off. Finally I managed (but with great pain and a bruise to my knuckle) to get it off my finger.

I've taken it to a jewelry shop to have it fixed. They'll have to replace half the band. Sigh.

Now my brain has to keep reminding me that I have only one ring on.

*Fake Child does not come to my house anymore. I'll have to be more careful with my rings while in the orthodonist's waiting room.

WAX HANDS! Part 2, with pictures

Today was the first day of school. I worked my first shift at my new job. And my engagement ring needs fixing. Which subject shall I address first?

Just kidding (although all three subjects are true, and technically blogworthy).

Where was I? Oh yes, traveling from my freshman year of college to the present.

So Jake said, "Wax hands!"

And after reflecting on my past experience, I asked him, "Where can I get one! My plaster hand broke many years ago!"

He said, "Yeah, I thought you would like to know that I'm trying to get a wax hands booth at my club's annual Labor Day Eve thing." (The country club where he works is open to the public on the day before Labor Day every year and we have gone on several occasions because they have an awesome fireworks display)

I hadn't even hung up the phone and I was already writing in the club party on my calendar. I was SO going to get me a wax hand!

Sunday was the day of the open house and true to the promise I made to myself, I got my hand cast in wax! The process was not painful at all this time. The wax must have been a special kind that melts at a low temperature. I was one of the few adults at the booth, but lines were long--making a wax hand was popular among the younger set.

Matt and Hayley both made wax hands too. Here are the three hands we made. Mine is yellow, Matt's is blue, and Hayley's is red.
The kids have to goof off with their hands. Matt is about to get the double eye poke.
Matt gets Hayley back with a claw to the face, but Hayley is quite the sneak as she gives Matt rabbit ears.
And Matt shakes hands with a member of Blue Man group. The End.

Thanks Jake, for bringing Wax Hands to the club! And for letting me know about it. I love my wax hand!

WAX HANDS!

Late spring. The phone rang. I picked it up, after checking the caller ID. Lafayette Club, where my brother works. I wondered why he was calling me from work. Was Mother ill? Another family member?

"Hello?" I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Wax hands"

"What?" I asked, not sure what Jake meant, and why he was talking in a somewhat aggressive voice.

"Wax hands!" he said, adding a bit more force to his voice.

Wax hands....wax...hands....

Suddenly, my mind reeled back twenty-three years to the basement of S Hall at Deseret Towers, Brigham Young University. I was a freshman in college.

Cori V and I huddled ourselves over the aged stove, the lone appliance larger than a microwave in the whole of our living quarters. Cori had set a pan of water on the electric burner and heated it to a rolling boil.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she whispered.

"Of course. I can deal with the pain," I replied, staring at the churning water.

She gazed at me as if to attempt to see through a lie, though there was none. After a few seconds of the stare-down, she placed a smaller saucepan in the boiling pan of water and dropped several rock-like chunks of red wax into the smaller pan.

We waited silently; Cori stirred occasionally, like a white-haired sorceress over a dire potion.

Finally, the wax was ready. Both of us inhaled deeply and got to work. We dipped the fingers of our left hands into the runny wax.

Oh! the pain and agony! My fingernails felt like they were going to peel off, and I could feel the heat cooking my joints. But no scream escaped my trembling lips. I was focused on the end result: a wax cast of my left hand.

We were going to cast our hands in plaster.

Soon our hands were too hot to dip any further. We resorted to ladling hot wax onto our hands. The worst part was between our fingers and the webbing between thumb and index finger. We yelped a little at that part. But we kept ladling until our hands were encased and immobilized in a fat blob of red wax. As we worked, several other residents of S Hall passed us by, wondering what we were doing. We explained that we were making wax hands, and soon to be plaster casts. Mostly we got in return were the all-to-familiar slight eye roll and a comment that we were strange. We'd gotten all of that and more the time we played Monopoly in the elevator for several hours.

When our wax blobs had finally cooled down, we wiggled our blistered fingers out and let the molds cool further. The next day, Cori took the molds to her art class and filled them with wet plaster. In a few days, she brought my mold and cast to me and I chipped off the wax to reveal a chalky-white, solid hand.

I loved that hand. I faked out several people when I asked to shake their hands. My brothers even thought I was cool because I had a cast of my hand.

The hand only lasted a few years. Moving often caused several fingers to fall off and eventually I chucked it.

--End of Part 1

Tune in tomorrow when I return from my flashback only to have history repeat itself.

(WAX HANDS! sounds like an awesome B-movie title, doesn't it?)

(Certain elements of this post have been dramatized to make for more interesting reading, although the base elements of the story are ALL TRUE!)

What I couldn't blog about yesterday

1. Computer problems. We are getting a new computer because the old one is...well...really old. And it's sick. It can now only be used as a glorified typewriter. We will keep it upstairs in the sewing room. I expect some late night partying in that room because the serger is such a night owl and likes to stir things up, and the sewing machine will do pretty much whatever the serger tells it to do, especially if it means there'll be a party. The computer hasn't had any friends but the TV for so many years and I think it's excited to see some new faces. Plus there is food in the sewing room. I might have to knock a few power cords to keep it quiet so I can sleep.

2. Paul's first race of the season. No pics though because it was raining and I didn't want to get the camera wet. When asked how he did, he grunted. But I saw him talking with much animation to some of his teammates. He did say that he wasn't cold.

3. I have to use Other Jim's laptop for this blog post. (that's how we knew the internet problems we were having weren't with the internet service but with the computer--OJ had no problem getting onto the internet)

4. I had to wear a coat yesterday in the windy cold at Paul's race. I was so happy to be wearing a coat! Fall is almost here! And I have a snazzy new fall coat with my last name embroidered on it and the names of my kids on the sleeve. I got it at the local letter jacket store. When I took Paul's letter jacket in to get more bars put on it, the saleslady showed me the mom's jacket and I rationalized myself into getting one. I didn't have a fall jacket. That was my rational.

5. One more orientation at my new job. I saw where all the Legos go. And the markers. And I get to go into the teacher's lounge! All my life, I've wanted the right to go into a teacher's lounge!

6. OK I've run out of things I was going to blog about yesterday and I still have a few numbers yet.

7. Katie got 102% productivity at her job for the month of August. Go Katie! Bonus time!

8. Typing on a laptop takes some getting used to.

9. I need a shower.

10. And perhaps a doughnut?

We got Weirded out at the State Fair

I love the State Fair. Contrary to popular belief, I don't ALWAYS get lost there. (only sometimes) (cell phones are good)

We don't go very often, but when we do, I love threading through jostling crowds of people to look at stuff and eat food that is very bad for me. (Side note: our local paper had a calorie count for the most popular fair foods, and it turns out that in order to burn off the calories ingested eating a serving of cheese curds, a person would have to walk ELEVEN miles)

We were only at the fair for a few hours last night, most of the those hours were spent watching and listening to this guy:Weird Al Yankovic.

I knew most of the words to most of the songs he sang.

Jake and Dylan happened to be there too! I had no idea they were coming. But Jim was volunteering at the fair (his company encourages volunteerism and allows their employees to volunteer during work hours) and ran across another brother, Dave, with Owen. Dave mentioned that Jake and Dylan were going to the concert too. So we texted and met up with Jake and Dylan before the concert. We sat in different seating areas, but the view was not ideal in both areas so after the concert began, both parties moved to a place that had a much much much much much better view (I mean MUCH better. Much). Dylan sat with Matt and Hayley and Jake had a whole row (practically) to himself behind us.

Other Jim and Paul were in attendance as well. Despite the bored look on Paul's face, a good time was had by all.
Other images from the concert:

Harmonica help from a stagehand
Amish Paradise
Beverly Hillbillies
The encore--The Saga Begins (oxymoronish for a finale) and Yoda
In other news, I went to my job orientation this morning. I didn't get my badge photo taken, alas. The person in charge wasn't in the office. So that will happen later. But I did meet my supervisor and learned a few things about the job. I'm ready to start on Tuesday!

Experimenting in the kitchen

Can you tell what is different about these two loaves of bread (as compared to other loaves of bread that are not pictured here)?

I mean aside from the dent in the top of the cut loaf and that orange spot in the lower middle (which is a crust crumb that I didn't brush off before taking the picture).

I added a non-breadish something to it.

I added a magical (some say musical) ingredient.

That's right. I added BEANS. Actually I added bean flour. I've been commissioned to give a class (for a Relief Society activity) on beans and I'm going the non-traditional uses for beans route.

One cup of flour made out of ground pinto beans was used in this batch of bread that I made instead of a cup of whole wheat flour. I even ground up the pinto beans myself, so I know that there is nothing but beany goodness in the flour that I used.

You would not know by tasting it that I used bean flour. You might detect a slight nutty aroma, but you wouldn't know what it was from.

I'll be testing out other recipes over the next few weeks. Some of you know I have a recipe for bean cookies (which my kids LOVE. Really) and I will be showcasing that recipe in my class as well. I've got a recipe for a strawberry smoothie, some muffins, a cake, cream soup, among other recipes that all use BEANS. (insert your own beans joke here)

I really like this bread. Apparently so do the cats, because I found little fang holes in the crust of the half-eaten loaf. Grrrrrrr!