Conference As Usual

when i log in to my blog, it tells me it wants a new look. i agree. i was just thinking myself that i need a haircut. i suppose my blog feels the similar need to switch things up or thin things out when they're getting out of control.

but before my little blog can get a new look, it needs to be more disciplined in updating itself. ahem. it's not my fault, it's the blog's.

every 6 months my church holds a General Conference where our leaders give counsel and encouragement. if you live in Utah, you know about this even if you're not Mormon, because the bullet points are reported on the news. when i came back to Utah after living away for a few years, i thought this was weird.

i love conference. i love the messages shared, i love the updates on numbers and people. i can't help it, i'm a numbers person. i especially love Temple Square. it gets very dressed up for conference and smiles at everyone.

if i were still an English teacher, i would expect my students to ask me why i keep using so much personification in this post. well, it's just my mood. "Who needs an excuse for literary elements?", i would retort.

i have a couple of friends that love conference at Temple Square as much as i.

(speaking of English teaching, the previous is a good sentence to explain when to use "I" or "me" at the end of a sentence. if i said my friends love TS as much as me, it would mean they love it as much as they love me. when i say they love it as much as I, i mean they love it as much as i love it. excuse the mood, dear readers.)

i have the confidence to say that these friends likely love conference at Temple Square also as much as they love me, so in this case it really doesn't matter how i said it. so there, Miss Bankhead.

i digress.

one of my fellow TS lovers is Camilla. when we were in college, we would drive down to SLC from Logan and sleep on the sidewalk outside Temple Square to make sure we could get a good seat. most teenagers/young adults do this for concerts and parades. we did it to see the Prophet and the flowers. i think we liked that it made us feel like pioneers. now, every conference Cam and i have some sort of communication during it. this time it was a text from her telling me one of songs reminded her of me (not I) because it's my favorite, and to see if i liked President Monson's "Hello." i had to confess that i had been cleaning the bathroom while listening, so i heard the song but missed the facial expression that came with hello. it's all bueno, she assured me. neither of us had slept on the sidewalk the night before, but we still love it.

Christy is another of my conference friends. we committed after we got back from our missions to always meet up for fall conference somehow. we are usually successful at this, even though both of us have lived in states outside of Utah for a large portion of our adult lives. this past weekend we met up Sunday afternoon. Christy picked me up and we drove down to our typical parking place. the open space that day happened to be on a hill. Christy parked and then as a second-thought asked me which direction the wheels are supposed to be turned on a hill. i told her, she already knew and did it, and we got out. as we were walking back down the hill, we heard a loud POP! and turned to see the car start rolling. there was not enough time to panic, we just both started running back to it. because the wheels had been turned toward the curb, the car backed itself right into the driveway next to it, and started heading toward the garage of the house belonging to the driveway. by this time, our purses had both been thrown into the flowers and Christy's very-cute high heels were kicked off, and we fumbled to get the door open. we both realized that cars are heavier than we'd ever imagined. my brain was trying to predict how hard the car would have to hit the garage door to seriously damage it, and was relieved that it was heading for a garage and not a bedroom. blessedly, the driveway was on a slight incline and the car lost its momentum going toward the house. it rolled back down toward the street a moment, and then stopped. it was perfect, just as if it were stopping by to pick us up. we grabbed shoes and purses and hopped back in, found a flat spot, and made it to Temple Square.

the adventure of conference never ends.

(the English teacher is back: please name the onomatopoeia in the narrative above. 10 points.)

The Curious Incident of the Dead Bird in the Bathtub

The other day I found a dead bird in my bathtub. Here's what happened:

Monday my friend and I took an accidental hike up a little road in the mountains that we imagined led to a really cool house. It was accidental not because we broke down, but because we couldn't find our FHE group who must have been on a different mountain.

In the middle of the road, the friend noticed an ant-covered bird--a bird with a broken wing that had minyons of ants crawling all over it. The bird was still alive and involved in a horrific scene. We quickly decided to defy nature and save the bird. It's bad karma to let stuff die from ant suffocation. As we grabbed for it, it flapped and squawked to get away, drawing the attention of the dog that was with us. The dog was faster than we were and snatched that poor bird right up. We hesitated a moment, hoping the dog would hurry and put the bird out of its misery, but it turned out the dog just wanted to swing it around a bit. We eventually saved it again, wiped the ants off it and ourselves (but let the dog fend for herself), and took it home.

I put it in a little drawer, complete with a magazine-shredded bed, some bread and water, and a little washrag blanket and then covered the drawer with a towel. Bird tucked its little head into its shoulder and fell peacefully asleep. Relief. The next morning, I awoke to a little chirper a few feet from my bed, which I thought was cute.

The two most important things you can do for a bird with a broken wing are save it from being someone's dinner, and keep it in a place where it won't further injure itself. So I left it in the drawer and put the drawer in the bathtub as double protection. I opened the shower window nice and wide so Bird would have some fresh air and made sure some of her magazine bed could double as reading material in case she got bored in the drawer. I left for work expecting to return to a refreshed, grateful, and current-event-apprised bird (she had Time magazine, after all).

Later that night, I ran up the stairs in the dark with my newly-purchased meal worms, hoping hoping hoping the bird was still alive.

A person ignorant of what a bathroom serving three girls is like would likely think they walked into a corner store in a small country when they stepped into the girls' bathtub. In it are all varieties of shampoos, conditioners, and other things that I don't even really understand. Our unmentionables sit on the window sill. The sill of that same window that I had left wide open.

When I went in to deliver dinner, much to my horror, I found the following things lying spread-eagle in the bathtub: one ginormous bottle of super-smoothing shampoo, pomegranite dream body wash, frizz + death defying conditioner, and a dead bird.

I was sad she was gone, relieved I didn't have to open up the meal worms. I wondered how long I had to dispose of the body, but when someone said the word "carcass", I pulled out my head lamp and camping shovel and buried the bird under the bushes.

How Bird passed will forever be a mystery. It could have been old age. It could have been sustained injury. Maybe despair. It may have been death by the bottle. It could have been a heart attack caused when wind threw everything down. We will never know.

The moral of the story is this: sometimes when you're focused on little things, you forget to look at the big picture.

Determined?

I'm right now reading The Chosen for the second time. It sits on the bookshelf in my living room. Sunday morning it winked at me so I picked it up with the intent to skim a few pages while waiting for church. I got hooked pretty quick and ended up taking it with me to church and had to fight not to read it during the lulls. I am now giving it the good, thorough second-read excellent books deserve.

You might think I am talking about a guy, but I swear it's just a book.

The story is about two Jewish boys and their friendship (to put it lightly). Last night I read a portion about a period of time when one of the boys, Danny, really needed to talk about some weighty things on his mind with the other, Reuven, but Reuven was too busy with school and illness and student government to take time to have more than a fleeting conversation with him. Because I've read the book already, I can anticipate the later-described struggle that Danny was going through at that time, and know how speaking with Reuven could have relieved some of his burden. This morning I was thinking about it again, and feeling very annoyed with Reuven for not taking the time out of his schedule to give his best friend the conversation he needed. I was feeling frustrated and sad about the situation and its consequences. Maybe you could say I was brooding. Eventually it occurred to me that the story is already written and no amount of feeling I have about the situation is going to change the outcome that I know is coming (I'm aware that another reason I shouldn't stress over this while driving to work on an early morning when I have lots of other things to stew upon is that it's a fictional story. I can't help it--I get into stuff).

So then I wondered if this is true about non-fiction life. I wonder if consequences/outcomes/endings already exist, and therefore worrying about them or thinking about them or planning them is pointless.

Over the past bit of time I've been settling upon an understanding of the importance (and freedom) of releasing expectations of others. This means letting people be who they are and where they are when they are. I've found that when I let people be themselves and accept them for who they are I'm able to love them better. To be clear, I feel that accepting a person for who he/she is can be concurrent to believing in their greatest potential.

I'm getting off the subject. I guess I wonder whether I actually influence outcomes in my life, or if I am just a vehicle for fate.

Ragnar Relay

i'm writing about my recent Ragnar Relay experience soon. it's a long story so it's taking me a while. in the meantime, here are some pictures.

don't read this if you get grossed out easily or are afraid of flames

lately i have been training to run a Ragnar Relay. over the past 2-ish years, i've given running some half-sassed attention, but the past 2 months have been serious business.

here's what'll be happening: Ragnar So Cal

i'm following this: Training Schedule

i've typically been pretty much a sissy with running, but with steady training, i'm amazed at how far i've come. with such effort, however, come some basic maladies. i really couldn't care less about sore muscles or cramps or shakey legs; the problem is the toenail issue.

i've started to develop blisters underneath most of my toenails, causing a bit of...alarm. not to mention a lot of pain. my roommates can attest to this because i tend to talk about it a lot. actually, i just recently figured out they were blisters, which is sort of a relief because i was starting to get worried that my toes were just warping. i'm a girl, ok? we don't like stuff that's not pretty.

i found out about the blisters when one popped. it was unexpected, and as i noticed a mass of bloody, gooey, serum flowing out of my toe i almost passed out. luckily my cousin, the aspiring MD, swooped in and took control of the situation. after the gore was gone, everything felt much better.

another blister has started to outgrow its shell and i noticed this morning is causing an infection. i was just trying to suck it up until this morning, at work, when i noticed i could barely walk down the hall. it was time to get the inevitable popping over with.

i asked the front desk if they happened to have a needle and a match. they referred me to the janitor. i asked him and he answered with a mischievous smile, "Yes, I have something." when you read that sentence in your mind, please attach a Hungarian accent to it, as the janitor is not only well-equipped, but also Hungarian.

5 minutes later, he came in with this:

i'm not sure what's worse: my throbbing, incapacitating toe, the blow torch, or the biggest freaking safety pin i've ever seen.

it did the job. amazing.
this running thing is obviously not the business of sissies.

Gag

i loathe worms.

i was properly and thoroughly traumatized by them in about second grade, when my teacher read us How to Eat Fried Worms. i am still sicked-out by this book as an adult. one of my middle school students in Philly once had it and i warned him it was super-sick and that he couldn't read it in front of me (i'm not that ridiculous, it was just a ploy to get him to actually read it. Manipulative Reverse Psychology--a great thing to use on developing brains.)

i'm happy about Springtime, but can't walk down a sidewalk without gagging. why, why, why do the worms have to hog all walkways?

about ten minutes ago i unsuspectingly ran outside to get the mail for my school. i was halfway down the sidewalk with no escape in any direction when i noticed i was surrounded by plastered worms. i tried my best to plug my nose and ignore my plight, finish the mailbox business and run back in.

it was bad.

then i was sitting in my office and the receptionist came in to hand me stuff. she asked why i was looking so weird, and i said i was afraid to put my feet down on the floor because i didn't want worm guts to get on my carpet. she looked at me like she looks at her children and told me to show her the bottom of my shoes.

see, when i freak out about stuff, people like to try and minimalize it, acting like i'm exaggerating or something. i know she was planning on looking at my shoes and appeasing me by telling me i was worrying over nothing.

i lifted up my feet, and she says, with concern, "OK, you have some worms on there."

i only knew the shriek i let out was inappropriate because i simultaneously saw the principal cock her head down the hall. i leaped out from behind the desk in as few carpet-worm-shoe contact points as possible as the receptionist suggested--"Go wash your feet in the snow."

i did my best to scrub. it's so gross. i only stopped when she came out to get me saying, "Can you please come back in here? Someone wants to sell us a copy machine."

elchchchccchhkckck.

Anjelica Huston Has Weird Hair

my poor parents. they've been waiting so long for me to give them a grandchild. since they are kind and sensitive in general, they were patient and unassuming for the first 13 of my childlessbearing years. but that didn't work and they are taking a different approach these days.

a phone conversation at Christmastime, while in a car with my pervy friend Steve:

me, unsuspecting: "Hi, Dad."
Dad: "Heather, I need a grandson."
me: "I know, Dad. I'll work on that."
Dad: "Soon. Just get it done."
me (foolishly): "I'm with Steve right now. I'll see what he can do."
Steve gets the jist of the conversation and recognizes a window of opportunity.
He attempts to get in the driver seat with me.
me: "Steve, get off. Dad, because of you Steve is trying to jump me."
Dad: "Lay back, relax, and open up."
me: "I'm hanging up now."

then, yesterday, from my mother via text:

Mom: "G'mornin. I decided what we can name your daughter. Angelica."

it was waaaay too early in the morning for such talk and i was unamused. the only response mustered was, "?"

Mom: "Yeah. I watched a movie last night with Anjelica Huston and like the name. We can nickname her Little Angel."
me: "Mom please name your own kid that."

let's review the problems here.
1. "WE"??
2. my daughter? that's called counting your chickens before they're concieved.
3. ANGELICA? any name consisting of four or more syllables is old before it gets out of your mouth.
4. she wants to name her progeny after a vampire? let's face it, at the rate i'm going she's likely not going to get very many granddaughters in the first place. you'd think she'd not want to waste names.

the conversation went on.

Mom: "What should we name your first son?" (again, "WE"?)
Me, giving in: "I have no idea. What do you suggest?"
Mom: "How about Lane, Layne---like Lanet (her name)? As in Heather Lanet? Huh yeah!"
i'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she was simply in a weird punk mood.
i told her the closest i'd get to either of those is "Lint."
she vetoed and the discussion is over.

if you ever need to end a crazy conversation with your mother, you just act more crazy and she will stop talking so as to not encourage you.

Differences of Opinion

When you tell people that you're going on a 7-day, 7-night cruise with someone you barely know, responses will vary:

Me: "I'm going on a cruise with a man that I sort-of know."

Friend A: "Of course you are."

Friend B: "You didn't meet this guy online, did you?"

Grandmother-figure: "Please bring me back a magnet."

Mom: "Do you think you're going to fool around?" followed by my first real Birds and the Bees Talk.

Co-worker: "I'll get you the best-ever waterproof mascara."

Boss: "Are you going to end up moving somewhere? Because I just got you trained."

Friend D: "What if you get chopped up and thrown overboard? Haven't you seen Dexter?"

Guy friend: "Sweeeeeeeet."

Friend E: "Am I supposed to talk you into your senses or be supportive right now?"

Boss #2: "Exactly how funny is this guy?"

Friend D: "There are a lot of places you can go on a cruise ship to get away from someone."

Co-worker #2: Glare.

Aunt: "I have a velvety, sparkly dress for you to wear in case you have dinner with the captain."

Cousin: "What did your mother say?"

Cousin's husband: "hee hee hee..."

Parents: "Please get pregnant."


It's against my religion to get pregnant on a cruise ship, so no worries there.

I am back and unchopped; maybe a little bit sparkley, as the sun will do that to you.

the cafe´

i´m sitting in a little internet cafe´ using a keyboard i don´t understand to write this. just to give an idea of what it´s like, i´m not correcting any typos from now on.

i´m in mexico, and definitely the keyboard is not the only thing i don´t understand. despite that, i am very surprised by the high amount of English-friendly signs, menus, etc. around. we just ate at a great little restaurant <(whose plants that were hanging from the ceiling were real, not fake like we are used to.) it sort of bugs me when English overtakes a country´s language, even if just for a few streets. oh my heck. in my attempt to not correct the typos, i just deleted half of this post. lame. buttons that erase that are so close to my pinky fingers are scary. i typed most of my blog posts in brazil from various internet cafes. i was better at it then because i´d had more practice. these are some of the characters i miss<<<<<<<<<<<<< i can´t find the shift key, otherwise that would have been a colon. ªº?¿ñÑçÇ okay, i have to get out of here. more stories later.

this computer just told me to ¨´ESPERE´´. my favorite Spanish and Portuguese word. please ignore my punctuation.

When It's Light

dating details and experiences rarely if ever show up on my blog. i've realized lately it's a shame. my and my friends' dating lives are a breeding ground (not really) of amusement.

a story about ________ (blank pseudonym to protect the awkward).

_______ is my good friend. she is normally of classy, feminine behavior, which is why the following story is so odd, yet funny.

______ had just begun dating a particular guy, and was in the midst of the deliriousness of a great new relationship. she calls me one day, contempletive.

_____: "Heth, i'm in the middle of a funny text conversation with (New Guy). he sent me one telling me he's sick, and asking if i was, too. i responded 'why would I be sick?' (insert _____'s throaty giggle). he said he assumes i didn't get that hot a grade in biology."

me: "ha."

_____: "so then i said, 'i have explosive diahrrea and rashes.'"

me (alarmed): "did you already send that?"

_____: "yes! but i'm not really sick, i'm just kidding."

me (confused): "no, you are sick. why would you say that?"

_____: "because it SOOO funny. i know he'll laugh. but he hasn't responded yet and it's been a while now..."

me: "i have to say i'm not surprised."

i'm not a bathroom-humor appreciator. so, i could not laugh with her at her little joke. but i was definitely laughing at her.

the conversation continues, she telling me about their latest emotionally-heavy conversation and other things of serious nature i won't mention.

me: "______, i think you need to ease this up a bit. it's getting too intense too fast. keep it light, keep it light!"

______: "i know! i am trying--that's why i said the diahrrea joke."

awesome.

A Kickin' Christmas Present

i'm a bad gift-giver in general, and an especially bad one when it matters most--Christmas and my Best Friends' Weddings. this is apparent in my loved ones' lives in two ways: they either get nothing or they get something they don't like. my dad, for instance, has recently told me to stick to only giving him golf balls.

he already has buckets of balls.

there is one person that i am particulary good at giving presents to. it's Rachel (this girl), and she makes me. Rach is a great gift-giver. i realized the implications this would have on my life when we were new friends and i prepared her taxes for her, in return (haha) she gave me VS lotion as a thank-you gift. since then i've come to understand that i always am supposed to give presents.

this past Christmas we met up for a little Christmas shopping. something about Old Navy made us both realize neither of us needed any more clothes. so we decided to give each other a kickboxing class instead.

oh, yes.

tonight will be our first class. to find it, i had this conversation:

"hello. this is Master Tom."
"hi. i'm looking for a kickboxing class for my friend and i to take. do you do that?"
"miss, how did you get this number?"
"from ilovekickboxing.com"
"of course we have classes."
"okay, but i just want, like, a cardio class. i don't want to beat anyone up."
pause.
"well, it just depends on what you want ultimately, miss. just come on in. you can get a free pair of boxing gloves and three intro classes for $19.99. ask for me, i'm Master Tom. i call myself Master because i got credentials."

since i don't like extra stuff laying around my house, and i am not interested in punching anyone, the free gloves almost turned me off.

but instead, we signed up.

i'm not quite sure exactly what we signed up for, but i'm sort of excited.