Feats of manliness?

20 February 2013, 11:14 am by Giggles
Categories: Random

I remember watching the boys in elementary school play “wall ball.” They used a racket ball and threw it at the wall and when it bounced back they tried to catch it. I always thought the point was to catch the ball because if you tried and missed then you had to stand against the wall, facing the wall, while all the other players took a turn throwing the ball at you, trying to hit you as hard as they could, of course avoiding the head if at all possible.

Watching highschoolers play while I’ve been substituting though, I changed my mind about what the point of the game is.

The point of the game is to get pegged with the ball!

The boys I watched were bragging about the welts they had from having missed and getting pegged by everyone throwing the ball at them. The bigger the welt the bigger the brag. Everything else in the game is just an excuse to throw balls at each other as hard as possible.  The boys who normally wouldn’t be the first picked when dividing up teams because of their lack of athletic coordination were kings of the wall ball game because an enthusiastic eagerness to display their lack of coordination meant they were dropping the ball more in their efforts to catch it and thus getting pegged more.

There are no teams in wall ball. Nobody is keeping score. Sure some of the boys were real good at catching and liked to show off. But the biggest winners of the game were those who could brag the most about getting hit.

Talk about a lack of pre-frontal cortex!

3 Shared thoughts

Drinking from a hydrant

18 February 2013, 8:03 am by Giggles
Categories: Gospel

The past two Saturdays I have spent 12 hours each with the young women in our ward listening to almost the entire Book of Mormon. Prior to that the most time I had spent studying the scriptures in any one go was four hours I spent one afternoon when I had graduated from college and did not yet have a job so I went to the library near my apartment for an afternoon. And I thought I’d gotten a big picture view of things at that time. That was nothing compared to the big picture of the past week.

First, it was scripture study with teenagers, specifically teenage girls. Which meant a lot of unrelated giggling, breaks to run around in the dark of the cultural hall (gym), and a general sleep over feel to the room. I will be the first to admit that I have had experiences that were more reverent and spiritual. However, it was still an experience I will never forget and one I am grateful to have had.

I came home from the first day and told Brett I felt like I’d been drinking scriptures from a fire hydrant. The scriptures had been blasted at me and I felt overwhelmed. However I was also amazed at the connections I was able to make that I had missed before and the insights I gained because of the largeness of what we did.

Certain connections between seemingly unrelated stories seemed perfectly obvious this time because I was reading the chapters in much closer proximity than I have ever read before. Suddenly Jacob 5 and 1 Nephi 8 were connected in my mind because rather than reading them weeks apart as I have in the past, there were only a few hours separating them. In fact, the general themes of 1 Nephi 8 kept popping up over and over again throughout the two days.

As I listened to the recounting of the Savior’s visit to the Americas and his review of the records they had kept, I wondered about my own records. Would the Savior have to point out spiritual experiences and revelations I had received and had not written down previously, or have I been keeping a good record of my spiritual growth?

It took a lot of faith and organization to set it up so that I could spend the time I did doing that. Carving out two 12 hour blocks like that is not something that happens in my life regularly, so I’m not sure if that is something I will ever be able to do again. But I am very grateful I had the chance to do it now.

3 Shared thoughts

Perfect in our imperfection

14 February 2013, 1:53 pm by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Relationships

What do we have over here?Is it possible that Brett and I are too incompatible to be together?

I mean, right off the bat we couldn’t agree on what the purpose of a bathmat is. I think it’s there to keep my feet warm when I get out of the shower. I think the purpose of most things is to keep me warm actually. Yet he thinks the whole purpose of the bathmat is to keep the floor from being wet. Which results in a really wet bathmat. Do you know how cold a sopping wet bathmat can be? Cold. Really cold. Which defeats the whole purpose of the bathmat if you ask me.

And then we have books. Yes, we both love to read. There are full bookcases in just about every room of our house, with more boxes of books we don’t have room for. But we can’t agree on just how to read a book. I think you are supposed to read a book, finish it, and move on to the next one. I’ll read several thousand pages a year. He might read a book or two. Just read the darn book already!

Not to mention socks. When I fold the socks they look like a hoagie bun. He ties his socks in a knot. Literally. How can we be expected to get along when we can’t even agree on how to fold socks?!

There’s the fact that when I clean a mirror I use up-and-down strokes and he uses side-to-side strokes. When I crack a raw egg I bang it on the side of the bowl and he hits it with a fork. When I crack a hard-boiled egg I wrap it in a napkin and roll it between my hand and the counter while he hits it on the counter and then peels the shell off piece by piece. I floss before I brush. He flosses after. And you’ll never catch him wandering the house doing small tasks while he brushes his teeth either.

I’m a night owl. He’s an early bird. I stretch after I run. He stretches before. I like a computer desktop free of icons. His computer desktop has icons across half the screen. When he watches TV that’s the only thing he’s doing. When I turn the TV on I can be up doing the dishes, or in the other room trading out the laundry, or even in the kitchen fixing myself a snack, and still follow the plot of the show. He likes bar soap at the sink and I like soft soap.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg with how incredibly different we are! How could we possibly be soul mates when we are so fundamentally different?

Yet we’re perfect for each other. Because he’ll dry his feet as he steps out of the shower now so the bathmat stays dry for me. And we each fold our own socks. Of all our differences, neither of us is doing any of them wrong, we’re just doing them differently.

The bulk of the little things just aren’t big enough for us to make an issue out of. Plus, they keep things interesting. The perfect person for us isn’t perfectly like us. How boring/annoying would it be if we mirrored each other all day long?

We agree to love and respect each other, including, and especially, our differences. That’s really one of the most important things we need to agree on.

That’s what makes us meant to be together. (Well, that and the whole long list of posts I could write about all the things we do that are similar.)

10 Shared thoughts

A heartfelt quilt

12 February 2013, 12:43 pm by Giggles
Categories: Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

The last two years I lived in Utah I worked a few Saturdays a month at a fabric store near my house. I never made any money, but I at least broke even the second year.

While it’s been five years since I last worked there (the last fabric I bought was two yards of the cutest turtle fleece, little did I know the role turtles would take in my life), I’m still working my way through my stash. I’ve actually enjoyed the challenge of seeing just how little I need to buy to finish a project, generally notions like buttons, snaps, or zippers.

We have the perfect place in our front room to hang wall quilts. And so I’m working on making quilts for all the holidays and seasons. Last year I made a top for a Valentine quilt, but I never got around to backing it and putting it all together. I had some pink scraps from the Valentine fortune cookies I’d made in 2010 that I wanted to use for the front and do a scene rather than blocks. But I didn’t have enough of a piece of white to be a background. So I pulled out two pieces and pieced together a white brick wall to put some heart flowers on. I pieced the border and that was as far as it got last year.

I didn’t have enough of any pink fabric to back the quilt either though, so that was going to need to be pieced as well. This year I finally got around to that, using pink fabrics from some baby girl quilts I made years ago and trying my hand at crazy blocks. It took an entire afternoon to piece the back, but I really like it.

I machine quilted it around the scene on the front, adding leaves and a butterfly with stitching that aren’t there with the appliqué. I got some binding on it. And now it looks great in our front entry way. In fact, we might alternate which side we hang forward each year because the back is just as fun as the front.

My next holiday quilt in the list is a Autumn/Thanksgiving one, which will also be made entirely out of fabric and batting I have in my stash. I feel better about storing my stash when it’s in the form of a quilt than in a box as flat fabric.

6 Shared thoughts

Expensive Hobby or Cheap Pets?

30 January 2013, 11:28 am by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things

With it being cold outside lately, I replaced our hummingbird feeders with suet feeders for now. I can’t put the suet feeders out during the summer because they melt, and that’s not pleasant. We have a thistle sock in the tree year-round and then a hook in the front and back to hang other feeders on, normally the hummingbird feeders.

I’ve discovered that the suet feeder in the back generally lasts about three days while the one out front lasts about nine. The birds up front get spooked a lot more with neighbors coming and going often, so the birds don’t spend as much time there as they do in the back. But all that means that we’re going through a lot of suet blocks right now.

I was at the store buying more suet blocks a week or so ago and commented to the cashier that the birds were going through them quickly. She replied by saying it could quickly turn into an expensive hobby.

An expensive hobby? Each suet block costs less than a dollar. With two suet feeders we are probably going through them a lot faster than if we just had one. I bought my bag of thistle seed so many years ago that I can’t remember when I actually bought it. And the hummingbird feeders take less than a cup of sugar a week, even in the summer when it goes quickly, and even with two feeders.

I tend to think of it as cheap pets. We didn’t have to purchase the pets in our backyard. We don’t have to take them to the vet. We don’t have to provide shelter for them (although that is a definite possibility). We don’t have to take them out for walks or clean up after them. And if we stop feeding them, it isn’t a case of animal cruelty and they won’t die.

In my opinion, back yard wild birds are the best pet ever. All the enjoyment without any of the responsibility! And they’re a lot of fun to watch, especially when they get suet all over their faces.

 

10 Shared thoughts

The McBlatt

28 January 2013, 7:30 am by Giggles
Categories: Food, How To

Brett likes BLT sandwiches. I must admit that I had never had one till we got married.

But I have issues with the BLT. There is a lot more than just bacon, lettuce, and tomato in the sandwich. If the name of the sandwich is a list of the ingredients, then they need to acknowledge all of them, like the bread. I also think the sandwich would be better with cheese. Because cheese is good stuff.

When we got down to making them at home, I insisted we add cheese and acknowledge the bread, and it would probably be good toasted. Brett insisted that if we were acknowledging the bread we needed to acknowledge the mayo as well. At that point we had a BLTTMC, which is really hard to say because it is all consonants.

We had an avocado sitting on the counter. Brett really likes avocados. Avocados start with a vowel. So we cut up one of those.

Then we rearranged the letters a little. And we ended up with a McBlatt – Mayo, cheese, Bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato, on toast.

Random Giggles - The McBlatt Sandwich

Yum!

12 Shared thoughts

A new do

24 January 2013, 8:08 am by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Life

Back in June 2010 I cut my hair and donated 14 inches to Pantene Beautiful Lengths (8 inches is the minimum required for donation). I appreciate the business model of Pantene Beautiful Lengths more than any other hair donation company, particularly because they are partnered with the American Cancer Society and donate all wigs at no cost to women fighting cancer rather than sell them at a reduced cost the way others do.

I think I’ve had one trim between then and now. A lot of people say that regular trims are important to growing your hair long, but that doesn’t make any sense. You actually only need a trim when the ends get bad. As long as the ends are healthy, it doesn’t need a trim (growing out layers would be the exception). My hair had grown till it was definitely past waist. And I was having a lot of fun braiding it into different types of buns. But I was also ready for a change.

I’ve been cutting Brett’s hair each month since August. It’s needing fewer touch-ups after I’m done now. It was time for him to return to the favor, kind of.

The Saturday before Christmas we pulled my hair back into a ponytail and measured up from the bottom. I gave Brett the scissors and we took a fun picture. Then he hacked (appropriate word) off another 14 inch ponytail. And then I went to the salon to have them straighten out the ends.

Giving Brett the scissors That's a long hunk of hair

Here’s some before and after shots (taken a few weeks before we cut it off and a few weeks after). To give you an idea, each of the squares on that wall are 12 inches square.

Before After

My hair is longer post-cut than it was in 2010. Looks like it takes a little over two years for me to get a real good donation going, even less time if I went with just the minimum donation (closer to a year probably). I plan to keep donating as long as my hair is healthy and doesn’t have too much gray (or sparklies, as I’m calling them). Cancer sucks. Anything I can do to help, even if it’s just helping a woman feel better about herself (and attitude actually means a lot to your health), I’m going to do it.

6 Shared thoughts