not roses

Fall made a dramatic, overnight appearance here in the CO. This morning on my walk the sky was grey and geese flew overhead, heading for the south (I assume). It felt as though I were in a 90s Brad Pitt epic film about the past with voice over narration saying something like "Autumn arrived early that year, and with each passing day Pa grew weaker", cut take to a worried Ma standing on the porch of a log cabin beneath the same gry skey and geese flying overhead. I may be watching too many movies.

ETHICAL DILEMMA: Target sent me an email today, apologizing for an inconvenience. Apparently friends and family can't access my bridal registry, and Target is offering me 20% off my next online purchase. I would be outraged if my wedding weren't a year and a half ago. As it is, I forgot I had a registry and really haven't been bothered at all. So do I pretend to be inconvenienced and redeem the discount, or do I pay full price for that stroller I've been eyeing. Guide me, internet.

so special

Brad (Dad),

Brad and his older brother Eric, fascinated.

I feel like one of the most valuable things you've taught me is the ability to be amused by very little. I've never met anyone who can find so much humor in so little, and it certainly makes life worth living. I hope it's something Baby Walter inherits, and if not, I hope you can teach her that garbage trucks are just as entertaining as television.
Happy last birthday before grandfatherdom.

all the stars are fixed up in the sky

A Stylist article lists 50 important books that were once banned (Click here to see the list). Some of the reasons for banning are pretty hilarious. My personal favorites are The Canterbury Tales, banned for obscene language (if you can understand The Canterbury Tales enough to know that the language is obscene, my hat's off to you), Where's Waldo, for the possibly topless sunbather in one of the scenes (probably harder to find than Waldo himself), and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, banned for its anthropomorphic portrayal of police as pigs.
After reading this list I feel relieved to know that my educators were not fascist dictators, and I was required if not encouraged to read most of these titles. I don't know if there's anyone who reads this blog that doesn't already know that I attended Brigham Young University, or doesn't already know I'm a Mormon, Just in case, I did and I am. Before starting my college education, I was a little worried. BYU has a reputation. I was worried I might not learn everything that a fully educated person should learn. That censorhip might stand in the way of free thinking. But I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe the BYU English Department is special. Or maybe all of campus is more well-rounded than it's given credit for. All I know is that I never once thought "Why aren't we reading this book?" or "I wish we could take a more open-minded approach to this text."
In my short stories class we were assigned to read The Storm, a story about a woman having a brief affair. The next class my professor asked if anyone's sensibilities were offended by the reading. One poor soul, bless his heart, raised his hand and declared that he was not only appalled by The Storm, but also by The Edgar Allan Poe story we read the week before. My professor looked this student in the eyes and essentially said, "Dude, you picked the wrong major."
I don't know. Maybe that student was right. Maybe we should all be offended by the grotesque and the emotive. But I really don't think so. I think there is such thing as being too sheltered, and the world swallows those people whole.
I remember another class taught by another English professor. We were discussing a particularly racey text, and my professor conceded that if this text were translated directly to film, it would be rated R. Many Mormons do not watch R rated movies, so, my professor asked, where does that leave the reading? Should we not read any questionable material? Should we see all the R Rated movies? Is there a difference? Is there a middle ground? If so, where? My professor, being that wise man that he is, did not draw a conclusion, and I doubt any of us students really figured it out that day either. But I suspect most of my peers, like myself, gave a little more thought to not only what it means to be educated, but also what it means to be a Mormon. It's something that I think about every day. What does it mean to be the Mormon minority in a new place? What does it mean to raise a Mormon child? What does it mean if I watch a certain movie?
So thanks for the Education, educators.

how does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

Would ya look at that! A real blog header. I'm lucky enough to be related to some talent, and my aunt Taia, a real artist, was kind enough to design the above masterpiece.

This morning on my walk I crossed paths with a jogging shirtless middle aged man wearing a gold chain and carrying a walkman. I wonder if he never takes the gold chain off, or if he wears it only when jogging shirtless.
It reminded me of another jogging man I once saw carrying a walkman.  He was either incredibly hungover, or incredibly plastered. and was having a hard time standing upright, yet still seemed to determine to exercise. I imagine he polished off his bottle of vodka, then thought to himself, "You know what I need to do? Run." He grabbed his walkman, put in his favorite cassette tape (maybe Final Countdown, or Eye of the Tiger), and headed out for some cardiovascular activity. I sat at a bus stop on the other side of the street and watched this man slowly jog a few steps, fall over, stand up, and repeat. It took him five minutes to move a hundred feet. I was laughing so hard that I fell off the bench.

We're running out of things to watch instantly on Netflix, so we decided to try The Kennedys, an eight part made for TV miniseries. It was just as stupid as you might expect, but for some reason we couldn't turn it off. It was like eating fish sticks. While eating them, you think "why am I doing this? I don't like these fish sticks," and then you take another bite.

float upstream

I never thought I would post pregnancy pictures. I rarely like pictures of me, let alone pictures of me getting fatter. But I've decided that someday, I'll probably want to remember what it was like, growing a a baby, and this is the closest thing I have to a journal. So I'm sorry if it's too much and if you're tired of reading about morning sickness and maternity pants, and tired of looking at what appear to be post-Thanksgiving dinner portraits. I don't blame you. If it wasn't me it was happening to, I probably wouldn't care. Pregnancy, however, currently occupies about 80% of my thoughts, and there are only so many things I can write before I end up mentioning the human in my belly again. Am I going to make a point with this rambling, you ask? Um, I'll try. Sometimes I pull up a blog entry from a year ago, just to see what I thought was worth writing about that day. It usually makes me cringe because there are quite a few typoes and I often think I'm funnier than I actually am. But I still value the record, even if it reads like a diary of the insane. And if there's anytime to keep a record, I think it's these nine months.  



all my friends were vampires

Yesterday we received roughly 1/5 of our deposit from the Provo apartment management company with the following letter:

"Additional cleaning at new residents request: kitchen cupboards, drwares (their spelling, not mine), sink, floor, behind appliances, oven, shower, tub, sink, medicine cabinet, etc 5 hours at $35 an hour. Total charge against refund: $426.53
Amount of Refund: $73.47"

This is outrageous for many reasons, since we passed our cleaning check, were constantly told how clean our apartment was, scrubbed the sink raw, blah blah blah. But what really gets my goat is that I spent five years and thousands of dollars on a college degree when it turns out that I could be making $35 an hour cleaning medicine cabinets. That's nearly double my current earnings. EDUCATION FAIL.

baby darlin dollface honey

I could be wrong, but what I've learned from my various interactions with professional animal people is that those who choose to work with animals for a living are usually not great at interacting with humans. For example, yesterday I was buying dog food at Petco and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Do you sell heartworm medication here?

Nice Teenage Boy Cashier: Um, I think it's on aisle 5.

Scary Eavsdropping Dog Trainer: We don't sell it here, but if your dog gets heartworm he will die.

Wow. Super helpful. Thanks.

A few hours later I had another customer service adventure. I was just wrapping up a gift card purchase on oldnavy.com when my session timed out. So I called the toll-free hotline and was sorely disappointed when a robot answered. The most horrible kind of robot, a "voice recognition" robot. A voice recognition robot who only sort of understands english. After answering Yes and No to 20,000 questions Ms. Robopoopface asked for my phone number. I recited 555-555-5555 (changed for blog safety, obviously). "Ok," she said, "Did you say 792-583-4639?" Not even close. It was late and I was in one of those moods, so this struck me as the funniest thing I had ever heard. When asked to repeat the number, all I could do was giggle. Then laugh hysterically. Five tries and ten minutes later, I was finally pulled myself together and repeated my number with perfect clarity, and then Ms. Robopoopface determined that my number was not on file and transfered me to a flesh and blood representative, just like always.