Well, Hello There

When we first got our rabbit, Fishy-Nipper, he seemed like the perfect pet. Quiet, friendly, reasonably low-maintenance, cute...and theoretically house-broken. If by housebroken you mean 'only pees in my closet but poops constantly everywhere else', then I guess he is housebroken.
We tried having him live in the attic, but he eats fiberglass and chews on the electrical wires. We've had him on the back porch in a little hutch recently, but it's starting to get hot for a little guy with fur. So, I had this big idea that i would 'accidentally' leave the hutch open, and if he hopped off to greener pastures, well, I would have Fished My Wish. After leaving his cage open all morning, I wandered by the back door to see this:



Anybody want a bunny?

Gregory Kid Update

New member of the family. Isn't she lovely?

Lucy's entry at the local Artist's Market

Why are little kids playing soccer so cute?

Most Embarrassing

so... i have a hard time retaining in memory my most embarrassing moments. i am sure i have had some good ones. i can even remember thinking "this! this will be what i remember and tell..", but nope. they fly away. i can remember a few that have great stories attached, like when tim swung the headlights around on me (let me know if you want to hear that story and i'll decide whether or not our relationship can stand it), but mostly i get over it and forget.

but not this time.

so i have a crush on a woman in my ward. she is very beautiful, very put together, long, amazing hair, and very well dressed. she is also 6'1". she is very nice, but not friendly, in a shy way. she is so TALL and cool, and the wife of our first counselor in our stake (also super cool and very funny). i can get along with just about anyone, but this woman throws me. we don't cross paths much, and i get embarrassed really quick, and have a hard time thinking what to say to her. she is SO nice, but not helpful in a conversation. she mostly just stands there, looking amazing and smiling.

ANYWAY...

you know how humbling it is to look foolish in front of someone you are trying to get to like you, even worse if it is some one you feel awkward around anyway.

well, i was up at the store at 8:30pm one night (read: past bedtime) with 4 kids (read: tired and cranky). i was pregnant (read: wiped out and hurting) and i had a huge cart full of food that had taken 45 min to collect. i live about 20 min away from the grocery store, and i had just found out after waiting in line that the new store i picked didn't take discover cards, i didn't have my bank card for some reason, and they didn't take checks. these nice friends live just down the street. so i swallowed my pride and called her. she graciously came over and paid for the groceries, and i wrote her a check, blabbering the whole time. no big deal, helped me out so much, but it still flustered me and i worried that it may have put me on the "slightly incompetent/non-self sufficient" team.

But i still hoped that she was charitable enough to give me a bye. i may be able to have enough other positive contact with her to "prove" that i am not on that team.

so a few weeks later, i am in madera in another grocery store, and it is my first run out with new baby colin and jack. i am only 3 weeks post baby (read: no sleep/borderline crazy). i see her with her 3 children in the store. we smile and i try hard make sense (read: not gush) and answer her intelligently (read: finish a sentence and not stutter).

you know how in a store, when you see people you know, you say hi/good bye, but you run into them over and over again as you walk the isles? so awkward! do you say hello again? do you pretend not to see them? do you make small talk about what ever you are holding ("how about this lettuce!") ? do you try to hold your breath and do a flip turn at the end of the lane?

so we end up at the check out together. her children are smiley but silent and waiting, just like their mother. i fumble through unloading, crying baby, jack "helping", paying and putting the groceries into bags, all the while trying to force casual, friendly competence (read: short, manic bursts of me trying to be likable).

i get finished, make sure i have my card back, load jack up, and get my receipt. i toss out a friendly (or was it crazed?) good bye and run out, wondering what it is in my brain that i need to surgically correct in order to have a normal conversation with this woman.

i am taking deep breaths to calm my self down as i push my cart to my car and start unlocking the door when her 14 year old runs up to me.

"sister lawrence! sister lawrence! you left all your groceries at the check out!"

i stare at her for 3 clicks, then slowly turn and look in my cart. sure enough, there is nothing in there that i didn't give birth to. no grocery bags, no milk. nothing.

to make it worse, i saw her husband (i have a crush on him too) the next day and i shook my head as i told him about running in to his wife, and he said,

"oh yes! that was the topic of conversation around the dinner table last night."

i am totally on that team. sigh.

American Idol Saved My Life

Well, not really. But last night when I called Claire at midnight, literally hiding under the covers in my bed, scared of a thunderstorm for the first time in my life, she calmed me by holding the phone up to her television so I could listen to American Idol.

I felt silly, being scared, but then less silly this morning when I read this news report:

Yikes!

So I have mixed feelings about the AI remedy- it certainly distracted me at the time, but what if I had died spending the last moments of my life with Ryan Seacrest?

Take It Easy

I need a new job. It turns out that working in an Emergency Department is:

1. Noisy
2. Full of strangers who want you to talk to them.
3. Full of other medical personnel whom I am supposed to direct.
4. Full of telephones I am supposed to use to call people. People I don't know.

Any one of these things makes me uncomfortable, so all of them together is kind of hideous.

At the same time that I've been stewing about my job, I've been admiring people who actually put their minor super hero talents to work. My neighbor's super power is getting kids to eat vegetables, and she has been organizing Farm to School projects, and Eat Your Carrots! day at the elementary school. My other neighbor has this way of listening that makes me want to tell her all kinds of stuff. I seriously don't shut up when I'm talking to her. She, of course, is a psychiatrist.

So, what's my minor super power, and how can I put it to work? I'm a decent story teller. I'm a quick reader. I can fall asleep easily. Oh, Oh, I know! I'm good at staying calm. I am Unflappable Girl! That could come in useful somewhere I bet, somewhere...like...like...like the ER.

Dang it.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Drive-By Charity

I was driving with a couple of friends when we saw a homeless man standing at a stoplight with a sign stating "Anything Helps". As we were stopped a few cars away from him, my friend in the front seat remarked that she wished she had some food to give him - I remembered that I had a banana in my bag so I quickly dug it out.

"Do you want me to stop so that you can hand it to him?" my friend that was driving asked.

"Well," I said as I considered the traffic we were in, "just do a drive-by".

I was thinking we could slow down long enough for me to hand it to him out the window then quickly drive off before causing any drivers behind us to get irritated. I rolled down the window and held the banana outside the window to get his attention and expedite the process of handing it over. As the traffic started to slowly move forward, the man noticed my hand holding the banana out the window, walked over to the curb and stretched out his hand with a grateful nod and smile.

His hand was two inches away from the banana when my friend hit the gas. She had thought the handoff was successful, and wanted to stop blocking traffic. I had just enough time to look up and see a bewildered look before we sped away.

Now there I was, realizing that I had just taunted this poor hungry man with food. I had literally dangled it in front of his face before snatching it away, leaving behind only a squeal of tires and a cloud of exhaust. How cruel is that?? I had a split second to think of how horrible it must have seemed to him. So I did the only thing I could think of to attempt to ameliorate the situation - I leaned out of the window and boomeranged that banana from our speeding car.

We were probably already twenty feet away from him, but man did that fruit sail through the air. For a split second I was afraid I was going to hit the poor man with my projectile fruit, adding injury to insult. But instead it flew past him and landed behind him in the dirt. Which just added insult to insult.

When I suggested we do a "drive-by"*, little did I know we would actually be conducting an attack. I just hope that our good intentions outweigh the callous and violent manner in which we distributed our charity. I didn't see what the homeless man did next or how he reacted to having food thrown at him (I had collapsed on the back seat, half in tears of mortification and half laughing hysterically), but I'd like to think that he just laughed and enjoyed the banana.

"*A drive-by is a form of hit-and-run tactic, a personal attack carried out by an individual or individuals from a moving or momentarily stopped vehicle. The objective is to overwhelm the target by a sudden, massive amount of firepower without attention to accuracy (Wikipedia).

gordon's going to school to be a WHAT?

hahahahaha

me - "well gordon doesn't have a real job yet. he is still going to school."

sydney - "isn't gordon a rockstar?"

me - "you mean a rock scientist?"

sydney - (really embarrassed)