Valentine's Day Hearts

My children like to make their own valentines. Every year around this time my Mom says, "Well what are we going to make this year?" When I was a kid we made our own valentines too. Usually it was something made with red paper doilies or construction paper hearts. Nowadays things are fancier. Last year it was airplanes made out of smarties and sticks of gum.



This year they have outdone themselves. When we were at the store collecting supplies I passed the boxed valentine cards. I said look we could just get those, they only cost $2.50. Asia said something to the effect of:
No way mom, we are way too cool for that.
Here is this years invention.



If you can't tell it is an Ipod. Well actually it is a box of conversation hearts and a couple peanut butter cups made up to look like an Ipod.

25 things no one wants to know about me.

So this was something I was tagged for on Facebook and I usually ignore such things, but was feeling introspective. Then after I had searched my soul for 25 random, interesting, facts, goals, habits or whatnot about myself, I didn't really feel like sharing it with everyone on Facebook, so I will put it here instead.
Of course you can use this opportunity to go through the same exercise for yourself, the tag is really not neccessary.


1. Coming up with 25 things about myself seems really daunting. Really daunting.

2. My daughter is a better cook than I am. My husband is better cook than I am too.

3. I love cities. One of my favorite things to do is walk through a city. You see things and feel things when you are walking, that you miss in a car. Moscow is the biggest city I have walked. There are still a lot of cities out there I haven't walked yet. But I have a few more years of walking left.

4. I think brown and black match. You know the old brown belt, black shoes problem? I don't care about it. Most of my wardrobe is one of those two colors, so it works out well for me.

5. I like movies that make me cry. Movies about people.

6. I like riding motorcycles, and other things that involve speed, like snowmobiles, waverunners, etc.

7. Almost every time I ride a motorcycle I have that moment where I think, "this is it, I am going to die." I still like it. Does that make me sadistic, or just stupid?

8. I designed my own wedding dress.

9. I am REALLY sick of the internet ads with the jiggling fat stomach. Not cool.

10. I have 6 pairs of winter boots.

11. I like riding the bus. If it was practical to ride the train, I would like riding the train. It is so much less stressful than the car. One time I was on this river cruise with this girl, who was going out of her mind, because we didn't really have a destination, we were just cruising, and would end up where we began. After two days she was about to lose it. She couldn't handle the journey, just for the sake of the journey. I am NOT that girl.

12. I don't like asking people to do things for me, for two reasons. 1. I can't handle disappointment, and... I don't remember the other reason.

13. I wired my bedroom myself. I have framed a wall, built kitchen cabinets, and shelving units. I can do drywall, roofing, demolition, paint, carpet, finish carpentry, and vinyl flooring.

14. I suck at coming up with scenarios for Would you Rather, and Balderdash, and the Story game, and any thing else that reminds me of Creative Writing class.

15. I am going bald. Someday I am going to buy a bunch of exotic wigs in different colors and it will be cool. But, until then, hair is kind-of a great big hassle.

16. Once, I could play the piano, and the clarinet, and the guitar.

17. Everyone at school knows my name, not because I am the only Demi on campus, (which I am) not because I am really social, (which I am not) but because I talk too much in class so my professors always learn my name. (It is freaky when someone on campus says, Hi Demi, and you have never talked to them before.)

18. There is nothing worse you can say to me than, "time to get up." It doesn't matter if it is true, it doesn't matter if I am already awake and pretending not to be, it doesn't matter if you are the person I love and adore and have committed my life to.

19. I can tell you the doubling time of a population based on growth rate. Give me the data for education level, birthrate, religious attendance, ethnicity or whatever and I will have a wonderful time mapping a correlation.

20. I love ethnic food, and finding a small "mom and pop" restaurant with authentic chefs to make it for me.

21. It is really hard for me to sit still and not multitask. I crochet while I watch movies (and in church). I read while I am on the bus (or in a car, a plane, or snuggling my husband).

22. Once I learned how to throw pottery. I will always dream of having a kiln and making my own bowls and vases.

23. I am kind of a hippy. Only in the sense that I make my own granola, and I sold it at the farmers market this summer. I bore my children naturally and one of them at home. Breastfeeding is kind of like a religious thing for me. I buy honey from a beekeeper. And I give away homemade tie-dyed onesies at baby showers.
NOT in the pot-smoking, free love sort of way. Communes are OK, but only in an idealistic hypothetical setting.

24. I can't do it, I can't think of anything else.

25. I own a swimming suit that could double as a female 80s wrestling outfit.

And...That is all.

The tap class, the scholarship and all that

I should tell you the rest of the story.

There were other options to the tap class, but none of them were really working out.
I sent a request to the scholarship committee begging them to make an allowance and allow me to only take 11 credits. But they never got back to me.
I went to a "Natural Hazards" class that I have to take sometime, but I just couldn't bear the thought of adding another class that would actually require something of me.
I tried to get an internship real quick, but it seems to take more time than that.
I didn't officially add the tap class because I wanted to wait and see if the scholarship committee was going to get back to me, But I started going to class anyway.

This wasn't exactly a beginners class, but I wasn't worried. It was called Tap Techniques I. I have been tapping my whole life, right? I am not exactly a beginner. Well excluding the last ten years that is. Ten years since I have so much as shuffled, and I am not really sure where my tap shoes are, and I missed the first two days of class, but no problem.

Ten years is actually a long time.

It was like those dreams where you are in the school play and you can't remember your lines. Even though I was wearing soft soled shoes I was sure everyone could hear my lack of clarity in my "shuffle stamp" and my "draw backs" and every other step that everyone did perfectly without any instruction. She split us into groups of three so everyone could watch us perform the "simple" routine she taught us. I came very close to sneaking out of the room before my turn. I am sure no one would have noticed.

After class I went to the computer lab and found a very nice letter from the scholarship committee.
(Can you tell I take my cues on the meaning of "nice" and "mean" from Taio. If someone is being nice it means they are doing what I tell them to do and telling me what I want to hear.)

This is what it said:

We understand that it is hard for you, so we guess you can have your scholarship and you don't have to go to that dumb tap class anymore.

or something like that.

I hope the teacher doesn't feel too bad that I just never came back.

The I-15 makes a better parking lot than a freeway.

I saw Camille today. On the freeway. Talked to her for a couple minutes.

Sometimes everything is going wrong, you wonder why you even woke up that day, and you find yourself saying, 'what am I doing wrong? Is God mad at me?' Then God sends this little sign that he is there and he hasn't forgotten you.

It was a hard morning. I can't really tell you what was hard about, just one of those mornings. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't really want to be driving all the way to Provo for one little class. Maybe it was because I was still bitter at BYU for making me take that one little class. But, that is another story. On second thought that is actually this story.

Half way in the middle of my wonderful Christmas break, I got a nasty email from BYU.
--Don't forget tuition is due Dec. 29th.
'Ha ha,' I thought, 'tuition is due for those sad folks who didn't get a scholarship.
Pride cometh before the fall.
For some reason I went to look at my financial account just in case. There were two entries with big fat 0 next to the names of my scholarship givers/benefactors/solicitors/or whatever you call them. That is when the panic started. Of course that was also during the BYU-shut-down-for-the-holidays time. So I got to panic for a while. The first day they were open for business was Dec 29th. So after waiting on hold for 45 minutes I got to talk to a sweet little student who told me, "Duh, you are only registered for 11 credits. Your scholarship requires 12"
Duuuuuh!
Curse you 2 credit class!!! Two credit classes are a joke anyway. No professor assigns less work to his 2 credit class than his 3 credit classes.
So.... there I was destined to loose 2000 over one little credit.
To spare you the details....
The absolute best solution to the one credit deficiency was found in a tap class that I have to make a special trip for cause all the rest of my classes are on the other days.
So that brings us back to our story.
I left at 9:20. Plenty of time to get to BYU, find parking, find my class, and convince the teacher she should let me add it even though I missed the first day.
Fast forward 10 minutes to Benjamin.
Brake lights.
Lots and lots of brake lights.
I am think, 'I knew this would happen, didn't I tell you all in my letter to the Daily Herald!"

Fast forward 32 minutes and 2 miles to Spanish Fork.
Forget the brakes, you might as well put it in park.
I remember one time on Public radio the DJ said "If you are having trouble finding parking just head over to the I-15 cause it is just like a parking out there."
That is what today was like.
I was up on the top of an overpass and from that vantage point it was obvious we were going nowhere. I couldn't see the cause. But I could certainly see the lack of movement.
After a while people turned off their cars. The guy behind me took up chain smoking. I was thinking 'so much for tap dance.'
I don't really know what time we started moving, but I got to BYU 1.5 hours after I left home.
Apparently there was a big accident, bad enough they had to shut-down traffic and clean it up, so we didn't have to see it.
But that is not the end of the story.

So I am driving along, 2 miles an hour, when the person to the side of me starts honking and waving. It was Camille, I haven't seen her in a couple of years. It was so awesome to see her. We were hardly moving so we could chat for a few minutes before we got separated. For some reason it made me laugh, and made me feel tons better about the whole thing.
I made it to the class at the very end. The teacher was really nice and it all worked out.
I shouldn't blame God, it isn't His fault someone got in a wreck. He didn't make someone get into a horrible accident just to make my life hard.
In fact, I am sure He wasn't too happy about the whole thing either.


Or.... Maybe He just doesn't like tap dancing.


I think I better start riding the bus.