Last night, JUST LAST NIGHT, I had said to Joey, “I hope they don’t pick me and that the lady never calls me back. I’m not sure I want to sing in that wedding anymore. It sounds…high maintenance.”
“Well, we’ll see,” he said.
“That recording stunk anyway, bad sound quality. I bet they won’t pick me.”
Well, I JUST GOT A PHONE CALL.
I’m in.
“Welcome aboard” were the words used, actually. I’m not sure that comforts me.
About 15 years ago when the Grandparents Laird went to Australia, they brought all us girls back Opals. Sister and I both got necklaces and Mom got a ring. When Mom came down to take care of me after surgery, she mentioned that she had recently re-discovered her ring and has been wearing it. I remembered how I had looked and looked and looked for my Opal necklace the last few times we were in Iowa, and never found it.
On Saturday last week, right before we girls were going to go out and pick black raspberries, Sister was all up in arms about the fact that it was wet and cold outside, and that she’d likely get her clothes all wrecked. So I suggested she go look in the dresser in the blue room upstairs where Joey and I were staying. (I keep a homely pair of cow flannel pajamas in there to keep me warm on cold Iowa nights when we are at home.)
“There’s nothing in there,” Sister said.
“I bet there is,” I told her.
We went upstairs and began opening drawers. She was right, the first two were empty. Upon opening the third drawer, though, I gasped.
“Oh.My.Gosh. Where did this stuff come from?”
Inside the drawer was my old George Washington doll, a backpack full of Boundary Waters clothes, my poster of the Istanbul skyline, my plaid wool purse, and…MY OPAL NECKLACE.
“I have been looking for this since before I went to college!” I gasped.
“OH! Mine is broken,” Sister wailed. “Plus I always liked yours better.”
“That’s funny, I always liked YOURS better!”
I happily and carefully put my Opal and its box in the suitcase that was coming back to Texas with us, and Sister and I began to dig through the backpack with Boundary Waters clothes to find something suitable for Sister to wear.
We wound up finding many things, so soon Sister was suited up in my junkiest of lounge clothes, and Laura was wearing my green Eddie Bauer thermal.
After picking berries, we all wound up in the blue room again, going through boxes of our old-timey things and memories, reading old journal entries from elementary school and laughing, looking at favorite old stuffed animals. Mine were all named logical things like Pinky (a pink bear), Sad Sam (that was his brand name), Mouse (a mouse) and Teddy (a musical teddy bear).
We also all found read my depressing poems I wrote in high school. They’re not bad, just all very depressing. “If I had known about these I would have worried about you,” Mom said.
“But Mom, I wrote them for Creative Writing class. And plus, every teenager is required to write depressing poems. It’s how it goes.”
“I suppose,” said Mom. But I could tell she was unconvinced.
“On the whole I was a very well-adjusted teenager, Mom. Really these poems are the only gloomy parts. Every teenager has to have some gloom, plus cheery poems are really cheesy and lame.”
Mom still looked uncertain, Sister agreed with me, and we all decided to move on to Sister’s boxes.
Sister was on the hunt for her Opal. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” she said. She dug and dug through her boxes, getting distracted many times by the collection of garnets and small things she had saved.
Then – success.
“I FOUND IT!” She yelled. “Do you think I could get it re-set? The setting broke on the gym floor at church a long time ago but the Opal is still fine.”
We were unsure if she could get it reset or not.
What I couldn’t figure out, though, is how all of my Boundary Waters stuff, the poster, the purse and my Opal got in the drawer in the blue room in the first place. We had used that whole dresser at Thanksgiving, and none of it was there then. I asked Mom, who knows almost everything about the contents of drawers in her house.
“Oh,” she said, “The Kid found all that in the bottom drawer of his dresser and wanted to clean it out. I told him he could put it up here.”
The Kid’s dresser used to be my dresser, so it makes sense.
In any case, we had fun reliving memories, reading depressing poems, convincing Mom that I wasn’t an angst-filled teenager, and FINDING OUR OPALS.
I’m wearing mine today, for the first time in over ten years.
Thanks Grandparents Laird!
Joey leaves for his week in Virginia and NYC tomorrow, so tonight we were packing. Well, he was packing. I got distracted by my closet.
I haven’t put my shoes away in two months. Now, granted, for one of those months I didn’t wear anything but flip flops or something I could easily slide into, but over the last month I have gotten more shoe adventurous. I can successfully wear a pair of heels now, and three times I have worn jeans. (Take that Scar, MiniScar and Minions.)
But back to the shoes.
They were all over the floor, in a mountain by my ironing board. It’s been bugging me for weeks, but I haven’t had the energy to do anything about it. Tonight, though, I unwittingly drank a TON of Barq’s Root Beer which, SURPRISE, has caffeine in it. And I drank it at 7:00, so I’m planning on being up all night; I have energy to spare right now.
So, quick as a wink, I decided I’d put my shoes away. I did so, and in record time. It looked so nice, I thought I’d re-organize my closet. Ideally, my closet is organized by clothing type (skirts, dresses, pants, capris, etc) and within each type, they are organized by color, lightest to darkest. My shirts were pretty good, but the pants, skirts, jackets and dresses were a disaster.
(If you think I’ll post before and after pictures, you have another think coming. No matter how tidy my closet an drawers get, I still always feel like they are cluttered and messy. So…NO PICTURES. Duh.)
Once I finished that, I moved on to my drawers. I had been putting my clothes away by just putting them in the drawer, not by putting them in the sections of the drawers they belonged in. I know, I know. Not like me.
While organizing, I weeded out a bunch of old shirts and stuff, and they’ll find their way to Luke’s Closet shortly. (Aside: you know what’s weird? Running into someone who is wearing something that you donated to Luke’s Closet. When this happened to me I said “Oh! I had ______ just like that!” And then they said, “I got this at Luke’s Closet.” Awkward moment.)
But now my closet is tidy, shoes are put away, drawers are organized and laundry is thumping around in the washing machine. I baked cookies for Joey to take on his trip, we went on a walk, and Joey’s sitting on the couch reading Harry Potter; I think I’ll join him.
I almost feel normal again.
Due to STRESS and LIFE not being my favorite right now, my eyes have been burning lately. And my limbs start feeling like I exercised very strenuously about 8:30 every evening, although odds are that I haven’t because I’m too tired to exercise mildly, much less strenuously.
Anyway, last evening Joey and I were driving home. The weather was doing a creepy weird thing, a storm appeared to be blowing in from the East, but it was kind of a spotty storm with lots of sun. Just about the time we arrived home, the hail began.
And not just any kinda hail, this was GOLF BALL SIZED hail.
To protect our one and only car, we slid into one of the covered spots at our complex (because we aren’t going to pay $20 a month for covered parking when it only hails a few times a year, duh) and hoped that its owner wouldn’t come home while we were sitting there.
The hail was coming down in large, bouncy blobs from the sky, and I really wanted to go run around in it to see how bad it hurt. But I was wearing very long pants and heels, and the likelihood of me ruining my pants was high, so I refrained.
Joey and I sat in our car for awhile, watching the hail come down and bounce off the roof, grass, and other cars.
Then he said, “OH MY GOSH. Your eye is twitching.”
“NO!” I wailed. “It’s not! I can’t feel it!”
“Well, that doesn’t appear to matter because it is TOTALLY TWITCHING. Really bad. Have a look.” He pulled down the mirror for me and I opened my eyes wide and stared into it.
“IT IS!” I screamed, slapping my hands on my face to cover my convulsing eye.
“It’s not that gross,” he said. “Let me see it again.”
“No!” I said, pressing my hands in harder. “It’s creepy.”
Joey peeled my hands off my face and looked at my eye. Then he laughed. “That’s awesome. You really can’t feel it?”
“No, I can’t feel it. And it’s not awesome, it’s disgusting. Quit looking at it.” I put my hands back up over my face again since Joey refused to turn his head away.
“It’s not that gross,” he repeated. “Remember when my eye twitched for like three days and only stopped twitching when I accidentally overslept my alarm?”
“I remember that,” I said. “But I’m still not letting you look at it again.”
Somewhere between 6:00 and 10:00 my eye stopped twitching, to my great joy and delight.
So, I woke my burning, twitchy eyes up this morning and then proceeded to infuse them with caffeine, on an empty stomach no less, and my eye twitch is back. I have serious jibblies on top of the eye twitch, but at least it’s Thursday. Right? It IS Thursday?!
For some reason currently unknown to me, Brother decided to listen to the entireity of Michael Jackson’s funeral yesterday. I called him last evening to get the DL from him, and he mostly just said it was speech, song, speech, song, speech, song.
I could tell Brother was online while we were talking, and just about the end of the conversation, he started chuckling a very evil chuckle. The kind that usually means Bad News.
“You have to promise me you’ll do something. Promise.” More evil chuckles.
“Uh, what is it,” I asked, warily.
“I’m not telling you until you promise. But you have to do it next time you’re in Chicago, so promise me now.”
“Uhhhhhhhh, maybe…” I paused. Then I remembered something I had heard on NPR earlier in the week, the only something I could think of that would make Brother cackle and chuckle with sinister glee and then I yelled “NO, I WILL NOT PROMISE! I know what you want me to promise!”
“Too late, you promised,” Brother began laughing in earnest now.
“This is that thing in the Sears Tower where they have a new Skydeck that has a glass floor,” I yelled.
“Yep. And you promised so you have to do it.”
“Not doing it. Plus it costs $15 extra bucks,” I said.
“Oh. Well then I’m never doing it, but you still have to,” he said, triumphantly. “I’m looking at the pictures now. You’d probably pass out just looking at them.”
I decided to look up the pictures he was talking about.
ABSOLUTELY NOT. I WILL NEVER GO ON THE LEDGE. The picture is making my feet hurt and I have the jibblies really badly now, and I haven’t even had my Pepsi yet.
Having an irrational fear of heights is one thing, but I think that’s crazy in a box to want to go stand out on a GLASS LEDGE hundreds, nay, 1,353 feet in the air. What if someone super fat was in the glass box with you and the glass broke off due to their massiveness?!
I have to post this now before I completely freak out and have to go home. I have enough trouble being in tall buildings as it is without thinking about glass boxes.
I had to go pick up some stuff at the mall last night, mainly hair products at Aveda. Joey forgot his shampoo and conditioner in Iowa, and I was almost out of mine.
Let me just take a moment to unabashadely plug Aveda’s Scalp Benefits shampoo. OH MY GOSH. I started using it in January. Because I inherited a really finicky scalp from one of my parents (I will not say who, lest I get removed from The Will again) I can’t find a shampoo that keeps my head happy for more than a few months at a time. Once my head gets unhappy, then the rest of me gets unhappy and my hair starts disappearing. Seriously, people.
Anyway, the Scalp Benefits has miraculously changed that. I haven’t been so comfortable with my own head in a long time.
So I waltzed into Aveda yesterday evening and quickly found Joey’s stuff and some hairspray for me. Since I got the hairspray that was considerably cheaper than the aerosol kind I usually get, I also threw in some travel shampoo and conditioner for Joey so he doesn’t have to leave his in Iowa again.
I noticed that this was getting slightly expensive, but I had my double points coupon and Joey had told me to get all this stuff.
I stood there in front of the Scalp Benefits display for, oh, probably five minutes. Should I get the small bottles which are cheaper NOW…or should I get the large bottles which are much cheaper LATER…I debated.
After two rounds of this internal debate, I left the store with two very, very large bottles of Scalp Benefits shampoo and conditioner.
“The pumps are free,” the sales clerk said when I asked him if they sold any, because there was no way I was hefting a heavy, one liter bottle of shampoo in the shower. I could already see that would be a disaster.
Unfortunately, I parked much further away from the store than I realized when I did it, and lugging a large, heavy bag of hair products is not an easy thing to do.
I began feeling guilty on the way home for spending so much money. I could have gone with the smaller bottles, that would have been fine.
“Uh….I’m home,” I said, after dragging myself up the stairs. My right arm was killing me and I was dreading taking the large bottles back to the store. “I…spentatonofmoney,” I mumbled.
“How much?” Joey asked, looking at the LARGE bag I carried.
I told him.
“WOAH!” he laughed. “WHAT did you BUY?”
I displayed my purchases on the kitchen table (he was very pleased with his travel bottles, I think they may have distracted him from the shock of my large shampoo bottles) and explained the save money now vs. save more money later bit about the liter bottles, and how they will last me for at least two years.
“You don’t have to justify your purchases to me,” Joey said. “You’re a smart girl, this helps your scalp, and I know you don’t just go blowing money to blow money. You figured it, this saves money and it makes sense to you, so it makes sense to me. I trust your judgment.”
“Oh.” I said.
That was not what I had expected.
Here I had myself all worked up and nervous that he would be like, “YOU ARE A WASTEFUL AND SPOILED PERSON!” (Actually I don’t know why, he’s never said that to me before.)
It’s nice to know that Joey trusts me, even when I spend a ridiculous amount of money on two years worth of shampoo and conditioner.
I was craving wild black raspberries. Not to be confused with red raspberries, black raspberries are more mild, more staining, and more difficult to find because they only grow wild. They’re almost growing-up-in-Iowa rite of passage.
Two weeks ago, I called The Kid and made him go out to the wild black raspberry bushes near my parents’ house to ascertain if the berries were ripe yet. He said they were.
I had visions of thick, juicy clusters of black raspberries dancing in my head.
The red berries are not yet ripe and taste dreadfully sour. It's the black ones that are the jewels.
I picked a whole bunch of black raspberries at the bottom of the hill at Joey’s parents’ house, and I only shared less than half of what I picked. (I was super greedy.)
I felt about 50% sated of my black raspberry craving, and Sister and I had plans to go forage in the woods across the street from the speed limit sign in Yonder (that’s the part of my parents’ yard that’s way, way, way over yonder; hence the name). The Fourth of July dawned wet, rainy, and altogether gloomy outside. We were unsure if we would get to go into the woods after all since everything was so slippery.
The rain finally stopped about 1:30 and, in between near-fatal experimental rocket launches, we three sisters suited up in the ugliest, warmest clothes we could find, linked arms, and walked down the seal coated road. You can walk arm in arm on my parents street without getting hit by a car, even though it’s technically Main Street. It’s awesome.
(We used to have “how long can we lay in the middle of the road” contests as children.)
We discovered the raspberries by mom and dad’s house weren’t as ripe yet as The Kid had led us to believe. But, consistent with our lemons to lemonade outlook, we decided we’d pick as many of them as possible. Down the soggy ditch we slid, and it was right about then that Sister started whining rather uncharacteristically.
“I’m going to get wet,” and “These pants are uncomfortable,” and “It’s cold,” and “I don’t want to get scratched.”
Poor Sister.
“Fine fine, I’ll go in the thicket,” I said. “There’s barely any good ones in there anyway, you stay along the edge.”
Laura went back to the house for her boots and camera, and said she’d get me some boots too. It’s not easy to climb over wet logs and down hills in soggy flip-flops when you’re trying to contend with raspberry briars.
We picked one large, red plastic cup full of berries. By the end of it, Sister was mainly just standing there holding the cup and we were dumping our berries into her cup so that it looked like she did all the work.
As I said, POOR SISTER. She was not a fan of the rainy weather.
We all went back inside, displayed our berries to the moms, who were sitting in the family room talking, and then promptly went for towels and dry clothes.
I discovered many, many long scratches on my legs and arms from the berry picking. It pleased me. Until we moved to Texas I was always thoroughly scratched up all summer, due to black raspberry picking and suchlike.
Unfortunately all the black raspberries will be ready in about two weeks, and they will be PLENTIFUL. I told Laura if she doesn’t go back and pick them all, it will be a sorry day indeed. Perhaps The Brother and The Kid will help her.
(Although I rather doubt it.)
I’m not usually the kind of person who wishes away days, weeks, months. But that’s currently me. I just noticed it’s July 7, and my first thought was I can’t wait for July to be over.
I have no reason to dislike July, other than the fact that maybe once July’s over then August will be over, and then first semester and then second semester and then maybe, just MAYBE, by then I’ll feel Awesome again.
Or at least not bad. I’d totally settle for not bad any day.
Aside from gloomy loomies on my horizon, there IS the Mexico trip to look forward to. I have a countdown on my iGoogle homepage. As of press time, I will be leaving in 10 days, 16 hours and 14 minutes.
Hopefully when I come back I’ll be tanned, relaxed, rejuvinated.
I’m so tired of thinking that maybe this thing or that event or by May 2010 I’ll be “normal”.
Maybe I just need to find my new normal. And maybe it’s not yet time to go looking for it.
I love the Fourth of July. I love fireworks, launching rockets, flying the plane (which I missed out on this year because it was too rainy), eating hamburgers and pie, sparklers, and waiting around for something exciting to happen. The Fourth of July is a great holiday because you don’t have to get all riled up about presents and making sure your turkey is done so everyone stays salmonella free…it’s just one of those delicious holidays where you can just BE.
Be together.
This Fourth was perfect.
It was just what the doctor ordered.
About 7:00, we all headed down to get ready to watch the fireworks. The Cedar Rapids Municipal Band was playing at 8:00 and, while I like to be downtown no later than 5:00, we managed to get great seats to listen to them.
Mom and I made sandwiches and everyone munched on chips, chocolate cake while they waited.
(Oh, oh. This is not related but still awesome. I don’t like sandwiches, so I picked out the lunch meat from mine and put the bread back on the plate. The Brother wanted another sandwich, so he picked up my meatless bread and started eating it. HALFWAY THROUGH he started freaking out, like “GAH! What happened to this sandwich!” It was worth the price of admission. I was so proud.)
The Kid smoked on some of Laura’s chocolate-dipped pretzels even though the festivities were a No Smoking Facility.
You know, I just realized that I never got to eat a single one of those things. I need a weekend do-over.
Anyway, the sun began to set, the band began to play, and we all pretty much talked while we listened.
“Look, there’s an old guy sitting down there reading a sheet of music. Do you think he’s the backup conductor in case the real one dies or something,” Brother asked.
We all agreed that that must be the situation.
“Joey, take a picture of Sister and I,” I asked. He obliged. Then, we heard snickering behind us…
It was BROTHER…RUINING our picture.
This may be my favorite picture from the entire weekend. It’s just so classic. Sister looks righteously indignant, Brother looks sinister, and I am obviously appalled.
Poor Stephen hurt himself very badly playing softball last week, so he spent much of the evening relaxing in a camp chair and trying not to be in too much pain. This is actually one of the only pictures of him from the entire event, poor thing.
By the time the band stopped playing, we had discovered that our seats were going to stink for the fireworks. So we picked up all our stuff and started walking until we found a spot that seemed just right. We plunked our blankets, chairs and loud laughter down on a nice, dewey grassy spot and waited.
We attempted to take a sibling picture, but somehow Brother blocked everyone’s view. So we moved out to the road and tried again.
We actually look like very nice, normal people in this picture.
Do not be deceived.
I was thrilled to run into my friend Sarah from HIGHSCHOOL, and we both agreed that it has been nearly 10 years since we saw each other. She moved to Uganda today, so we had a great time catching up and filling each other in on everything that we have missed in the last ten years.
Isn’t she cute?
It was great to see her. (THANKS FOR MEETING ME, RAH!)
Then, it was finally, finally time for the fireworks.
I am not ashamed to admit that I nearly cried through the entire national anthem, but I realized that my tears were screwing up my ability to view the fireworks, so I cut that out as soon as possible.
Joey had his tripod set up and had a great time taking pictures of the fireworks instead of watching them.
I, on the other hand, sat in the back by my parents and clapped way more than anyone else did when there were pretty fireworks. Oh well.
I loved the dark, misty, smoky ambiance the fireworks provided.
(This is Joey’s favorite firework picture.)
The fireworks were the best I’ve ever seen. And I’m not just saying that because I was so happy to be home, they really WERE the best.
When the show was over, we all picked up our blankets (I wore mine) and chairs and coolers and headed back to the cars, which were much further away than they had been before we moved.
Joey lagged behind to take pictures of things that caught his eye, so it wound up being me, Mom, Dad and……………….Joey.
We did get this sweet picture out of the deal, though. The smoke and glowing lights cast a really orange aura over everything.
By the time we finally made it back to the car, it was obvious that none of the cars were going anywhere. It was a Traffic jam with a capital T. So…we made the best of it. We got the camp chairs out and sat around while we waited, until Joey suggested we go try to take some crazy pictures.
The Kid and I are up for anything, so we went over to the grassy area where we were least likely to get ran over by a road-rage-filled Fourth of July reveler. Joey set up the time delay thingy on his camera and when he gave his signal, Hunter aimed the flash of another camera up in the air…and The Kid and I jumped.
The effect is pretty cool.
Soon, everyone was getting in on the action.
The Kid has major ups here.
This is the one where everyone jumped too early…and I didn’t jump at all.
And this may be the world’s best picture of Brother and Laura. They look amazing.
This kept us amused for awhile, but soon, everyone was kind of feeling like this:
Poor The Kid.
So we rowdies went back over to the car where the adults were still sitting, talking about whatever it is that adults talk about. Joey still had his camera out, so we sisters requested a sister picture.
How nice we look.
Oh wait…what is that back there…something seems different…
IT IS POPS…the picture crasher! (This picture is amazing. I will save it for when I am having a bad day, because every time I look at it I laugh.)
He cracks us all up real bad, as you can see.
Joey set his tripod up for one group picture, and we all squished in, big happy family that we are.
We finally got home at midnight.
I never once went to bed when I was supposed to this entire trip home.
We’ve been launching rockets at my house since before half of us were old enough to ride a bicycle. The Brother and Pops are almost always the ringleaders.
This trip to Iowa was no exception.
The Brother made what he called an “experimental rocket” from a poster mailing tube that he purchased from the US Postal Service, a soda bottle, and a whole bunch of D engines. Before he clipped his rocket to the launch pad, he walked over to all of and explained, in true Brother fashion, a little bit about his experimental rocket.
He also warned us all that, due to the potentially unstable nature of the rocket, he had absolutely no idea what it was going to do.
Here is Brother’s rocket, the US Postal Service. As you can see from this picture, my parents have an ideal backyard for rocket launching, especially when Randy plants beans instead of corn. (Randy’s soybean field is the darker green bit halfway back. The lighter green field is our pastures.)
And so, Brother hooked everything up on the US Postal Service and began the countdown.
“Ten…Nine…” he started.
“Can we skip a bunch of these numbers and just cut to the chase?” Paul asked.
“Eight…Seven…Six…” Brother ignored Paul and continued counting, in true NASA fashion.
And then…
BLASTOFF!
The rocket went up!
With Space Shuttle like finesse, the US Postal Service lifted majestically off the launch pad with a WOOSSSSSSSHHH and lots of smoke. And that’s about when things started to go wrong.
Brother wasn’t kidding when he said his rocket may be slightly unstable.
The thing got about as high as the trees, then it started doing loops and twirls in the air. All twenty of us were laughing so hard by this point that not a single person managed to catch the rocket’s erratic flight pattern on camera, but The Kid did manage to catch its crash landing in the pasture…right by the poor cows, who all bolted off for a safer bit of grass.
Smoke was billowing everywhere and Dad and Brother went shooting off through the electric fence (which Pops had wisely turned off for the occasion) to go retrieve the US Postal Service.
It was intact.
Brother immediately began gluing fins onto the base of it, claiming that “this will stabilize it”. (He was right, by the way.)
Marshall had also made an experimental rocket, and his appeared to be a 2 liter bottle of soda around a rocket body. I wasn’t sure quite what it was, but I did know that it looked dangerous.
Dad, Paul and Brother prepared the soda bottle rocket for launch.
(This is our launch pad. The grass is starting to burn out from all the launching…by the end, it was black.)
Final tweaks were made to the soda bottle rocket, and Brother placed it on the launch pad. Marshall did the honors and only counted down from five, which I believe that Paul appreciated.
When Marshall depressed the BLASTOFF button, his rocket went up and then turned sharply and began aiming itself at all of us innocent bystanders. (This is why they were called experimental rockets.) There was much screaming and scrambling before the rocket veered off and crashed into Dad’s White Pine trees.
I’m hoping Kid cuts his videos down of these rockets soon so I can post them.
I have not laughed so hard in…seven weeks.
We were doubled over, leaning on each other and gasping for breath as we all laughed and recounted the effects of “DID YOU SEE THAT THING COMING STRAIGHT FOR US!”.
I tell you what, nearly getting killed by an experimental rocket provides quite a decent adrenaline rush.
Mom and the other ladies moved to the screened in porch for safety.
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