Chocolate Cake, Costumes, and a Wubbie

Macey wrote a story for me the other night. I was lounging on the couch reading and she brought it to me, smiling proudly behind her new spectacles. It's a mystery called My Secrit Cake, by Macey Bella Haynes. It reads: "My secrit cake. I love IT! But Mom says no. The cake is All gone. The End."

Here are my thoughts after reading her story: First, there is no arc. There wasn't any time spent developing the main character. And I was left with so many questions, namely, where did the cake go? What became of the cake between the time that the main character declared her love for it and its disappearance?

Reading her story also reminded me that I still had one piece of my leftover birthday cake wrapped in saran wrap, hidden on the top shelf of my fridge. I opened the fridge to get my cake, but it was mysteriously missing. There was an empty plate, which had frosting-smeared saran wrap twisted off to the sides. There were chocolate crumbs on the shelves of the fridge, as though someone snuck into the fridge to eat it. But no cake. It was mysterious, just like Macey's story.

Speaking of children and the lengths they will go to in their quest for sugar, lookie here:

This was my kids' school Halloween parade. Three things about Halloween: 1. I love free candy. 2. I love that children really get into character. 3. I loathe the entire costume-selling industry. How is it possible that one can purchase a decently-made t-shirt and shorts at Target for $9 and it will last an entire season, barring unforeseen scissor mishaps, but a Halloween costume costing seventeen dollars (which is made of Velcro and felt, by the way) shreds in the first ten minutes of wear? How do you justify yourselves, costume makers?!

This is part of why I love my nephew Casey's costume. He really sticks it to the costume selling industry. If you can't tell, he's Indiana Jones. What do you need for an Indie costume? Church pants? Church shirt? Fedora? You're all set. Surely he would've had his whip, if it wasn't for the school ban on weaponry. I move that next year we're all Indiana Jones for Halloween.

Finally, here's a picture of Tess with her wubbie. She likes to chew on it when she's stressed out. I need a wubbie.

The Glasses

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Elise, why haven't you ever posted a picture of Lisa Loeb, one hit wonder of the early nineties?"
Well, today is your lucky day. "You say...I only hear what I want to...." (This will be the soundtrack for today's post, since it's stuck in my head now.) Macey got glasses yesterday. She only had to fail three eye exams for us to break down and get them. We were like, "All right kid, we get it. You're blind. What do you want, glasses?!" We took her to the Walmart Vision Center for her fourth eye exam (which she failed). I'll be honest, I had reservations about receiving health care from Walmart. Then I figured, I eat the food that Walmart sells. Is this that much different? And it's good practice for when Obama's healthcare plan gets underway. Anyway, it turns out that Macey is far-sighted in one eye and near-sighted in the other. And she has astigmatism. Whatever that means. I think she looks a little bit like Lisa Loeb, except that she's blonde and a child.

(In other news, DJ got called back on one of the jobs he applied for in Tennessee. The other job. The job that we said we'd definitely take if it was offered to us. He's flying out there to interview for it next week. We got the call the morning after I unpacked the last box, so, joke's on me.)

Important Discoveries

I turned thirty on Friday. Last year I shared Gumwads of Wisdom in honor of my birthday. This year I will share my Important Discoveries, because I'm a lot like Christopher Columbus in that I make Important Discoveries and people celebrate me once a year.

Here they are, my Important Discoveries:

1. Illegal fireworks make an excellent substitute if you forget to buy birthday candles. Anyone catch the illegal firework action around 7:30 on Friday night? Happy birthday to me.

2. Skinny jeans aren't so bad. Yes, I once felt as you do: skinny jeans make the wearer look like a Seuss character and there is no possible way that they are comfortable. Skinny jeans are a silly trend like pegged pants, organic food, and Barack Obama. I tried some on during my birthday shopping, mostly as a joke, but partly because I like to torture myself.
"Ha ha," I thought to myself, "this is going to be a hoot."
I chose a pair two sizes larger than I normally wear, just to be safe. (Safety first when trying on skinny jeans, that's my motto.)
After trying them on, I made three sub-discoveries:
a) The importance of removing your shoes before putting on skinny jeans cannot be emphasized enough.
b) Skinny jeans don't flop around your ankles and get wet in puddles, two attributes of normal pants that I can't stand.
c) Skinny jeans are super comfortable (if you wear them two sizes too large).

3. Nutella. On toast. On bagels. On tortillas. On a butterknife. On your finger. In a box. With a fox. On a train. In the rain. When I die I want to be buried with a tub of Nutella.

4. I'd rather spend the $6 that it costs to eat at Panda Express than spend an hour deep frying chicken chunks, coating them in sauce, and making fried rice from scratch. Another lesson learned the hard way.

5. An easy way to become fluent in conversational Japanese is to watch the entire first season of Heroes in one week.

6. I guess I'm going through an Asian phase, because I also read a book called Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and really enjoyed it. It's about a little Chinese American boy who falls in love with a little Japanese American girl and then she gets sent to an internment camp because it was World War II and in times of war the Constitution can be thrown out the window. Wait...what?!

7. According to my calculations, I go through an Asian phase once every ten years.

8. Thirty is over the hill. At least, according to the bouquet of black balloons my loving mother brought to me it is.

8. Being thirty isn't that different from being twenty-nine, except that you feel really old and you start to see crow's feet and your kids start shopping around for rest homes, despite the fact that you are obviously wearing skinny jeans and there is no possible way that you are in your thirties.

Well, that's it. Those are my discoveries. Maybe I'll think up some more tomorrow.

I love you guys! Thanks for thirty awesome years!

Did you miss me?

I tried to write the nutshell version of what we've been up to for the last month and it almost put me in a coma. And comas are no laughing matter. So, here's the abridged, condensed, pulp-free, nutshell version, which I also ran through a cheesecloth:

1. We drove from Tennessee to Utah. This required us to load our van onto this fancy U-haul dolly. Here's the only picture that I got of our rig. This was a pit stop in New Mexico, whose motto is "New Mexico: You'll like it more than you think."

2. We got to St. George and saw this guy on the freeway:
(I apologize if he is your friend/brother/cousin/husband. I feel the need to repent for taking this picture. Sometimes when I see people, my mind immediately begins to wonder why they do the things that they do. Like this guy. Is it chaffage? Is he trying to get rid of his farmer's tan? Is he just enjoying the breeze? I hate not knowing. I think if you're going to ride your motorcycle like that, at least have the decency to wear a sandwich board with a full explanation painted on it.)

3. Like three minutes after we pulled into St. George the fuel pump on my Tahoe broke. I would like to talk for a minute about God. I don't talk a lot of religion on my blog, but I would like to point out how my car made it from Utah to Minnesota to Utah to Minnesota to Tennessee and back to Utah this summer before this $300 car part went kaput--a half a mile from my awesome mechanic uncle Bill's house. Coincidence? I think not. You know that quote about coincidences being miracles wherein God has chosen to remain anonymous? Well. Thank you, Father in Heaven. I know it was you.

4. Macey is going through the Mandatory Horse Loving Phase, which, if you couldn't tell from the title, is mandatory for little girls age five through twelve. We listened to General Conference on some AM radio station, went for a drive, and stumbled across this farm:

5. Speaking of Macey, she gave Olivia a haircut with my kitchen scissors. I had to cut off seven inches to even it out. Macey may one day make a full recovery.

6. We moved into a new house. I unpacked things that have been in storage for five months and I haven't thought about them once, including:

• half a bag of Frosted Mini Spooners.
• a broken bowl
• really ugly clothes that I haven't worn since 2005
• a stack of Dan Brown books that my sister-in-law loaned me two years ago
  

7. Crow's feet. Crap. When did that happen?! Judging by the picture, sometime before New Mexico.