My Great Day

Portland is a great city. I love it here. So yesterday, on my birthday, I wanted to have a Portland day and check a few items off my Portland To-Do list.

I started the morning at the Barefoot Sage on Hawthorne thanks to a birthday gift certificate from Robert. I got the Sweet Feet treatment which consists of an herbal tea footbath (pictured above, but these are not my feet) followed by an aromatherapy sugar scrub, a 30 minute leg and foot massage and a hot rock treatment. It was so relaxing, I wasn't sure I'd be able to stand after it was done.


But, stand I did. I was on a mission! My next destination was down the street to the Waffle Window for lunch. I have wanted to try out the Waffle Window ever since reading about it on Samurai Mom's blog. I walked up and down the street looking for it and was about to give up when I spotted it. I'd passed it twice without knowing. It's around the corner from the Bread and Ink Cafe and is literally a window in a door where you place your order.

There are seats on the sidewalk, but it's January and even though the sun was shining, I decided to eat inside the Bread and Ink at the tables specified for Waffle Window customers. The Waffle Window offers both sweet and savory waffles to choose from and as much as I wanted to try the Banana Rumba, I went with a savory Three B's (pictured above, although I did not take the picture) with bacon, basil and brie. Yum!

Next stop, Voodoo Doughnuts. I'd never been but have wanted to go for a while. It was a fun in a sugary sleazy kind of way, and I got the perfect parking spot right in front (in front of the guy selling the homeless news and next to the porno theater). I got a bacon maple bar, a grape ape, a dirt donut and the voodoo doll (see below.)

I wanted to go to Powell's, but I also wanted to go home. I drove by and the parking garage was full, so I went home. It was a great, great day. So great, that I wanted to do it again today. So I did.

I don't know these people, but they are fans of the new Portland Timbers Major League Soccer team. Downtown in the Timber's store, for the next two days, a professional photographer is doing fan pics that mirror the latest ad campaign (like the one above). I really liked the sound of "professional photographer" and "free" so we went.

The boys were stinkers about it until we got downtown. They wanted to stay home and play the new Wii game we checked out of the library. Did I mention they have a day off from school? Well, they do. They can't just sit home all day and play video games. I told them the trip was mandatory.

They had a great time. We got there right when the store opened up and the line was really short and the photographer was great and the pictures will be emailed to us in a few weeks.

Then we ran over to Powell's. Yay!! I love Powell's. The boys were not so sure. Books are boring, or so they thought. We headed to the Rose Room and found the aisle of video game books and the boys were in heaven. In fact, I left them sitting on a bench reading their books while I went to search for a book for me. I didn't end up getting it because it was kind of expensive and I do have it requested from the library, but it's taking a while and I'm getting anxious.

Before I Get a Haircut...

Tomorrow I'm getting a hair cut. Nothing drastic, just a trim. Still, it's a treat. I love getting my hair cut and styled. Even though the style is never really exactly what I myself would do. With my fine hair, there are really only two styles I could have anyway: flat and flatter. Guess which one I usually get.

It's just nice to have someone fuss over me every once in a while. 

Before I go to get my hair cut, I will do all of the following:

Wash and style my hair - if you show up to the salon looking gross, the stylist might assume this is the look you are going for. She may not put as much effort into your cut and style because clearly you don't care about your appearance, so why should she? Also, by washing and styling my hair I can demonstrate my look and point out what I want different and what I want the same.

Apply make-up - This may be a no-brainer for many women who don't leave the house without it, but not me. I wear make-up one day a week. Sometimes two. I realize that as the years pass, I'm less able to get away with the natural look, but I'm just too lazy to care. But on hair cutting day, I want to walk out of the salon with the total look: hair AND makeup. If my hair is going to be great, I might as well have eyes that pop and eyebrows that don't disappear half-way across my brow line.

Wear cute clothes - Why stop at great hair and make-up?

Think of somewhere fun to go - Hey, it's not every day I've got the beauty trifecta working for me: hair, clothes and make- up. Why not take advantage of it by heading over to the mall. Well, the mall is kind of far away. How about Target? I can walk the aisles passing silent judgement on people who look like they came to Target straight from their workout. 

Surely I can't be the only one who does this.

Monday Night Mobius

It took me a while to figure out what was going on in this cute little story. The kids each watched it several times and really enjoyed it. Then they made a mobius strip to see how the story ended. It's a clever idea! Too bad it doesn't really translate to picture book format because I think this author could sell a lot of books about Wind and Mr. Ug.

Check it out.

Short Story

Thanks to Amanda, I found out about the Three Minute Story contest at NPR. Deadline for submissions was tonight, and Friday I submitted my story. According to the rules, the story had to be no more than 600 words and had to include a joke and crying. They're looking for stories that grapple with human emotion. This story has emotion, but I'm not that great at grappling.

Here it is. It's called Sugar Pie.

“A guy walks into a bar ...”

“Not now,” Jane said. “I’m not really in the mood for jokes.”

“I was just trying to distract you.” Aaron couldn’t figure out what else to do. Or say. “I’m sure Sugar Pie will come home when she gets hungry. She’s only been gone for an hour.”

“Sugar Pie is an indoor cat, Aaron. Indoor! She doesn’t have the skills to be outside. She’s a prime target for predators.” 

“Yeah, but we’re in suburbia. There’s nothing here that will hurt her.” He paused. “Except the coyotes.” Jane gasped, her eyes wide with fear. A single tear slid down her cheek. “But they’re nocturnal,” he recovered. “They only come out at night.” 

“You don’t think a coyote will get Sugar Pie, do you?” Jane took a few, short, exaggerated breaths and blinked as her eyes pooled with more tears. “Why did I open the back door in the first place?”

“Well, you did burn the pizza. There was a lot of smoke.” Jane let out a short sob. “The noise from the smoke detector probably scared her.” 

This was not helping. He should stop talking.

“She’s got a collar on, right? Maybe someone will call,” he reached out to pat Jane on the knee and she swatted him away with her wet, teary hand. He quietly wiped his arm off on the side of his jeans.

“I took it off when I gave her a bath!” She moaned as she stood up, went to the back door, opened it and cried, “Sugar Pie!” over and over, sobbing unabashedly between each call. Finally, she shut the door and walked over to the kitchen sink and let her tears fall onto the blackened, petrified pizza she’d tried to stuff down the drain earlier. Aaron came and stood by her side, but not too close.

“Why don’t we make some signs? I can help you put them up,” he suggested wondering what the boyfriend protocol was in this situation. How long did he have to stay?

“You think that will work?” She sniffed, then ripped a paper towel off the roll and blew her nose with a loud honk. This was her thing--the honking nose blow. He’d thought it was cute when they first started dating. 

“Absolutely. Those signs work all the time. I’ll even put up the reward. What do you think? Twenty-five bucks?” Aaron reached around the back of his pants for his wallet.

“Twenty-five?” she said, her voice full of awe.

“Well, I was thinking twenty at first, but I know how much Sugar Pie means to you.” Finally, he’d said the right thing. It felt good. He pulled the bills from his wallet and set them on the counter, pushing them towards Jane.

“I don’t think you do,” she said.

Later, as he sat on the steps of the front porch, picking burnt pieces of cheese and pepperoni out of his hair, he reflected on the last hour. Where had he gone wrong? A rustling in the bushes made him turn with a start, just in time to see Sugar Pie strutting out from between the leaves.

“Hey cat,” he said, stroking her fur. “Someone’s pretty worried about you.” He looked at the doorbell, then at his car, parked on the street. Then back at the doorbell. The cat sniffed and the crusty bits of pizza before choosing a brown bit of cheese and crunching into it. 

Well, he thought, it is about dinner time. He walked down the front path to his car, got in and drove away.

Not How I Was Expecting to Die

I was not expecting to die in the Marriott Center at BYU

It was the first time I'd had a date to a fireside. All the other times I'd just gone with my roommates. But for this one, I had a date. I was pretty excited. But I have to admit, I was even more excited to hear the speaker, Elder Howard W. Hunter who was practically the prophet of our church.

The Marriott Center had nearly filled it's 22,700 seats with equally excited BYU students, all there to hear one of the apostles speak to them. It was February 7, 1993. After the opening hymn and prayer, Elder Hunter stood and began speaking. Minutes into his talk, someone from the crowd began yelling. He jumped over the railing in the stands and started running towards the dais.

We found out later the man was Cody Judy. Not a student, but a man with a plan.

"I have a bomb!" he shouted as he rushed towards the rostrum. He was carrying a brief case, which I assumed had the bomb. You could hear the confused murmurs in the crowd. I turned to my date. "What do we do?" I said.

By this time Cody Judy was standing right next to Elder Hunter who was standing steadfast and immovable. The other dignitaries on the dais had evacuated. The only other people still left were Elder Hunter's two bodyguards. They would not move either, even though Cody Judy demanded they do so. He thrust a stack of papers in front of Elder Hunter and demanded he read them. Elder Hunter would not.

We later learned that these pages were a document detailing Cody Judy's plan for him to be the church's new leader.

The crowd of students in the Marriott Center understandably became more agitated. I clearly remember thinking that I never would have imagined that I would die this way: in a bomb blast at a church fireside. I wondered how big of a crater would be left in the place of the Marriott Center. I felt a strange peace though--like I was in the right place, and that I wasn't alone.

Out of the confusion of all the students, some rushing for the doors, others crying, a few started singing, We Thank Thee O God For a Prophet. It wasn't long before everyone had joined in. It completely changed the spirit from one of confusion to one of strength. I felt peace.

Cody Judy looked out at the crowd and smiled. He thought we were singing to him! Of course we weren't, but it was enough of a distraction that a group of students who were sitting behind the dais in the stands jumped out and were able to take him down. Security staff then came in and got things under control.

Elder Hunter's own security guards immediately moved him to the floor and shielded him. But it was quickly over and Cody Judy was hauled away. The contents of his brief case, besides his manifesto, were a taped up mobile phone that was supposed to look like a detonator, and some 8x10 glossies of Cody himself. No bomb.

After a few more hymns, now led by the chorister and accompanied by the organist, Elder Hunter stood up to speak. The title of the talk, An Anchor to the Souls of Men. The first words out of his mouth after that 10 or 15 minutes of terror were this:

"Life has a fair number of challenges in it, and that's true of life in the 1990's. Indeed you may be feeling that you have more than your share of problems."

We all laughed at the irony and I think Elder Hunter chuckled too. He went on to give a wonderful talk and we all went home afterwards, changed forever.

Brain Grindings

I started reading my journal today because I thought I might write about the time in college I thought I was going to die. It's a good story that will have to wait for another time because after I read about that night, I couldn't stop reading my journal. It's great fun to see what was going through my head when I was 20ish. I was so ... something. Naive? Young? Clueless? Yes, probably clueless. I was a late bloomer for sure.

But I was a thinker and I was a writer. So I filled up journal after journal of clueless stream of consciousness. It's good stuff.

I came across this quote by Mark Twain that really spoke to me at the time, and I recorded it in my journal on 28 February 1993:

"What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history. These are his life and they are not written. Every day would make a whole book of 80,000 words--365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man--the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

If I remember correctly, I found that quote in a Reader's Digest we were using in the bathroom for emergency toilet paper. (TMI?)

At the time, this meant a lot to me. Maybe because I felt I had so much more to offer than what people were seeing on the outside. I had thoughts and ideas that I wanted to share, but didn't know how. So I wrote in my journal. And as I look at page after handwritten page, and read what was going through my head, I am transported right back to my college house and bedroom. My bed was jacked up on cinder blocks so I'd have more storage space underneath, and I'd sit up there with my pillow and blanket, and I would write my deepest feelings.

On the next page I see this, highlighted in yellow:

Goals for 1993: See a Sting concert, quantity not quality dating (this is how I will feed myself!), spend all spare time in the library, maximize my wardrobe.

(I am so tempted to edit that "dating" bit.)

So, dead Mark Twain, I believe it's best to keep those 80,000 word books off the shelves thank you very much. Although I must admit, it is just as great as I thought it would be to finally have someone who knows and loves my brain grindings.

Dear Quaker Oatmeal People

This week is the 3rd grade Wax Museum. Each student chooses a historical or famous person to learn about. They write a one paragraph biography, memorize it, dress up as their person, and on the big day, they stand quietly around the room like wax statues waiting for parents to activate their memorized speech. This is usually done by stepping on a paper dot on the floor that the kids have colored and labeled with "step here."

Jonah is Abraham Lincoln. In my memory, the mandatory item for Abe Lincoln's costume is the Quaker Oatmeal container hat. I seem to remember oatmeal containers being the perfect size for the Abe Lincoln hat transformation. But apparently, the container has shrunk, or my memories have super-sized. Either way, wearing the stovepipe hat requires a precarious balancing act whose difficulty is only marginally reduced with the help of ribbons to tie under the chin.

Quaker Oatmeal, is it too much to ask that your oatmeal containers be the size of 3rd grade heads? I believe this change could be a win/win situation.

Think of the increase in sales around President's Day alone! Every elementary school class in the nation would probably request parents to save their oatmeal containers to send in for special President's Day craft projects. Sales would skyrocket.

You could even include directions on the back of the container for how to make not just the Abe Lincoln hat, but a magician's hat, a straw boater and much more. Get Martha Stewart on this and I'm sure she'd come up with 30 winning ideas before lunch. Quaker Oatmeal could be as synonymous with hat crafts for 3rd graders as Rice Crispies is with Rice Crispy Treats for lunchboxes.

And Quaker Oatmeal people, if you are reading this and like my idea and decide to make your change, could I ask one more thing? Just give me a little heads-up so I can go out and buy Quaker Oatmeal stock. Or you could just send me a nice big check for my idea.

You're welcome.

*Update*
I took Natalie's suggestion and have notified Quaker of my great idea.


*Update 2* (In which I stop holding my breath for that big check)
Afton:

Thanks for thinking to use our containers for your son’s school play costume. We appreciate your suggestion; however, we're not able to accept any ideas for legal reasons.

We appreciate you choosing Quaker Oats, Afton. Good luck with your future craft projects.

Lindsay
Quaker Consumer Relations
A Division of PepsiCo
Ref# 027408567A