A Memory Where My Mother Told Me I Was Not Good Enough for John Bytheway

Long before the days of tank tops being a mandatory undershirt-wardrobe item, I had bought a shirt that had a somewhat deep V-neck in the front. I was living at home at the time (this being the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college) and it was during that transition when I was starting to buy my own clothes. It felt so weird . . . so adult. I felt a little awkward spending money on myself (wish I felt that way still).

It was Saturday night and darn it if I wasn't going to go out wearing my new purple, V-neck shirt.

Except it was a little lower cut than I realized. I spent the whole night pulling my shirt up trying to cover up the girls. If my face didn't show it, I was feeling more than a little self-conscious.

The next morning (being a Sunday), instead of our usual fare of Disney TV in the family room (for my younger siblings . . . duh), my mom was playing a John Bytheway talk. I sat down, ate my breakfast, and watched it. I mean, I was a more enlightened person at this point in time. I had sat through all of the sessions of General Conference while at college and did not immediately curl up in my blanket and fall asleep. If this isn't definitive proof of my enlightenment, I don't know what is.

And then my mom turned to me with the clear intention of teaching me a lesson.

My eyes widened in surprise and then horror as I realized the lesson being taught.

"That outfit you wore last night was inappropriate. I can't even believe it. How can you be worthy of someone like John Bytheway when you wear shirts like that?"

Um . . . I don't know. I didn't really intend for it to be that revealing.

"Melissa, if you're going to be worthy of someone like John Bytheway, you cannot be wearing clothes like that."

Um . . . John Bytheway? Really?

I find this all extremely ironic since I wonder from time to time if I had pulled out the purple V-neck shirt a little more often if I would have been a little more successful at the dating game. Sadly, it's been donated to the DI where I'm sure another girl is flaunting her goodies much to the dismay of her mother.

**Clearly, this is a funny story, Mom. Perhaps you remember it differently. If so, you should start your own blog with a rebuttal statement.

The Day In Which I Earned the Title of Rico Suave

My cousin Tracy and her family moved on Saturday. Being the kind, benevolent, good-hearted people that we are (read: nothing else was going on), Kaylin and I volunteered our services. Even better, Tracy served doughnuts. It takes so little to make me happy.

I planned on making myself useful. Instead, I found the box of doughnuts on the counter. I grabbed one just as Tracy's husband Matt came up from the basement carrying one end of their very large couch. I couldn't see his face as it was hidden from the arm of the couch but I could see his arm. It was flexed and impressively showing off some well defined biceps. "Nice biceps, Matt," I called out.

Opposite me stood a friend of Matt and Tracy's, I think his name is Kyle. He just stood there and gave me this strange look and then mumbled something that I couldn't quite hear. It was weird. Didn't he know I was just joking? Matt's my cousin, okay? You can say those things in jest.

And then finally Matt's face came into view. Only it wasn't Matt, it was someone I didn't know. Another friend . . . named Wade. Who happens to be married and have children. My eyes widened in horror and I hissed to Tracy, "Oh, my gosh, I just hit on your friend!"

I had to apologize, blushing face and all.

Turns out though, he took it as a compliment. I guess these moments are hard to come by when you're married. Regardless, I had a hard time looking at him in the face the rest of the day.

Found On Twitter

The worst thing you can be is a liar . . . okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but THEN, number two is a liar. Nazi 1, Liar 2.

My Kind of Home Teaching

Last night our home teacher came over (notice that I said home teacher and not home teachers).

We fed him dinner. Then we let him practice his med school studies on us. He was checking for occlusions in the nerves in our head. He did things like ask us to clench our teeth together, check our eyes, ask us to open our mouths and say Ahhh. I have no idea what exactly he was looking for. Funny thing is, he didn't really either. He said they would teach him that later.

And once he was done, he packed up his gear and grabbed the plate of food that we made him. Just before leaving he asked if there was anything he could do for us. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that we all said no.

To be honest, this question wasn't insincere. He may not have come with a lesson, but I appreciated that he came over. I think we underestimate the purpose of home teaching and visiting teaching--yes, gospel discussions are important but I think it's much more important to build a relationship of trust however that may be.

Funny though that our idea of trusting someone is to let us feed them and then send them on their way.

A Little Gift

We got a surprise last night from our landlords . . . a Christmas tree! Like I said, I have the best landlords. They feel like family which has to be one of the nicest things.

I came home yesterday to see Troy standing in our dining room with a Christmas tree in the corner. His wife Keri and oldest son (Little Troy) had chopped down Christmas trees and had an extra. Troy brought it over.

This may make you ask, where was Troy? Out golfing. Keri officially wins the bad-A award of the year.

I haven't had a real Christmas tree in forever. We never had them in Alaska because Christmas trees aren't exactly indiginous there. So if you wanted a real Christmas tree you had to have one of the trees that were shipped up north from somewhere in the Lower 48--obviously, I'm hazy on the details. So far, this doesn't sound so bad. But do you know what kind of critters will take up residence in a Christmas tree that is being shipped up north? Spiders, snakes . . . bleh. My mom didnt' even mess with that.

When we moved to Washington and had just finished building our house, my mom was thrilled with the idea of a real Christmas tree. She tantalized us with the anticipation of the fresh pine scent that permeated the house. Sadly, we got a tree with no fresh pine scent and the needles fell off about two weeks after we bought it. But it was okay. We had a "spare" in the living room, although we never got a real tree again.

So the new addition to our household has instantly filled me with Christmas spirit. It was already bubbling somewhere under the surface but seeing the tree in our house inspired me to make an executive decision: I'm putting up my Christmas decorations this weekend.

Of course, I still support Thanksgiving. But with a Christmas tree.

DVR Is Dangerous

I may have deleted last week's So You Think You Can Dance from the DVR. And I may be in the dog house.

I am now on strict orders to not delete anything from the DVR without checking first with the entire house.

Well, then. I guess that's settled.

Oops! I Tweeted!

I started a Twitter account. I'm not sure why.

I feel like I hurl thoughts out into the universe and they just sit there . . . floating . . . doing what? Perhaps you could argue that blogging or Facebook is the exact same thing, I would certainly see your point although not entirely agree with it. But Twitter limits you in a sense. It's like you're living your life in sound bites.

Today's tweet:

Reading Gone With the Wind--filled with words I don't know. Lese: to lose. I lesed my mind, y'all.

You Know It's A Success When the Cops Shut You Down

I know it's been two weeks since Halloween and that you have probably seen these pictures on Facebook. Sue me. I haven't had a chance to upload my pictures, and actually, I think Kaylin beat me to the punch and already did it. Whatev.

For Halloween, we threw a party--the party to end all parties. In truth, I am not really a fan of parties. Tons of people I don't know and I somehow find myself clustered around the four people I do know. I cannot conjure up a conversation out of thin air, mostly because I just don't care enough to do so. They ask us to network all of the time at work and I just loathe it. I can't be fake with people I don't know and pretend to be interested in them when I'm just not. I don't believe in making friends just so you can say you have friends. Anyway . . . this one turned out to be super fun.

Our house went as the characters of Clue which was surprisingly hard to pull together. There was one long night when Kaylin and I were at the mall trying to find stuff for Mrs. Peacock and I just wanted to yell and Kaylin just wanted to go home. We were literally out the door when we found my peacock shirt. Surprising.

With the sisters. Kaylin went as Professor Plum. Funny thing is, nobody realized she was dressed up. I think she should have told everyone she was a naughty librarian to get their attention. Alicia was Audrey Hepburn (brilliant!).

My pipe was a spray-painted wand. Nobody was impressed. And someone actually said to me, "Um, you know you could have gone to Home Depot and just asked them to cut you a pipe."

Oh.

Another thing that's interesting . . . nobody knew the characters of Clue. When I told people to guess who I was, they would inevitably say Professor Plum? Um, Colonel Mustard? No, you morons. Look at me, I'm dressed up in effing blue.

Here's where the party gets interesting. We invited everyone we knew, we had friends invite everyone they knew . . . turns out we had about 200 people show up in our small house. Talk about beyond crowded. It was going great until the sorority crew showed up in their skin tight leather dominatrix-styled outfits complete with kitty-cat ears and tails (because, duh! They were cats!) that I really felt the party lost its cool flavor. All available guys zeroed in on them. A little disappointing, if you ask me. It was seriously a scene out of Mean Girls. Which again illustrates my point that men are retards. And if you think I'm sounding a little more jaded than normal, you're probably right. I feel a huge wave of cynicism crashing over me.

Everything was going well until Mr. Police Man showed up with a chip on his shoulder and a gun in his holster. No, he was not here to dance. He looked pissed. Apparently one of our lovely neighbors called in regarding noise, lol. Which brings me to my next goal: taking Christmas cookies to my neighbors this year. I don't know if they like us. In our defense, it was Halloween, a Friday night, and only about midnight. And there was no bong in the den, no drunken maniacs running up and down the streets--it was merely dancing and food. Pretty tame if you ask me.

But I got a SEVERE talking to by the cop. He ripped me a new one and then proceeded to do it again. I was not offended that he showed up at our door; I was, however, mad as hell when he talked to me like I was an idiot about noise ordinances and citations and eventually took my information down. I don't appreciate intimidation tactics especially when I would have shut the door and turned down the music. What a tool.

My landlords were also pretty mad, but not at us. They were mad at the cop and wanted to call the mayor because they "know the guy" and report the cop's name and the disrespectful way he treated their tenants. How funny is that? To quote Troy my landlord, "Melissa, please don't let this be the end of your gargantuous parties." I promised him I wouldn't. And then he got a mischeivous look on his face and said he was going to report us to the cops tonight. We got razzed for about a week from them. Needless to say, I love my landlords!

Thank goodness Thanksgiving is so relaxing because I need a break!

You Were (Mostly) Right!

Mrs. Peacock with the lead pipe in the kitchen.

More pictures to come . . . and of course, I've got stories.