What I don't require from my bank tellers

Chatty-ness.

I had to take the deposit from the store to the bank yesterday and the whole time she was counting out the cash, my teller (v. cute young girl) kept asking me questions such as what I wanted to do this weekend. I could barely answer, so frozen with fear was I that she'd miscount the money.

I know these young people today can multi-task like crazy. But as an old person who can't use her TV remote unless a teenage son is present to do it for her, I would find it comforting if tellers just counted my money instead of connecting as a human being with me.

On the food front, I have decided that my husband and I are going to have a Hamburger Club. Every Friday night, we're gonna try a new place. And I'm gonna make up special little membership cards and invent a secret Hamburger Club Language and buy us some special de-coder rings. We ate at Smash Burger last night. I liked the special fries a lot.

What I'm reading now

I read the real PINOCCHIO by Carlo Collodi so you won't have to. You're welcome! Mostly I read it for my book group--I knew my funny friend Chris Decker was the reviewer and I wanted to support her. You're welcome, Chris! It's not very much like the Disney movie. For one thing, no one's wearing clothes from Switzerland. DUDE! THESE ARE ITALIANS! Also, Pinocchio takes off his shoe and smashes the talking cricket with it. So long, Jiminy!

Here's what I did like--Pinocchio's ADHD-ness and random-ness. He really is kinda like a little B.O.Y. on that front.

Yesterday I read Gary Paulsen's new book set during the Revolutionary War called WOODS RUNNER. I haven't read a book by Paulsen since I heard him speak a few summers ago--he loves to cultivate a salty old sea dog affect and so it was easy for me to forget that, in truth, he writes quite lyrically. I liked the book--the non-fiction bits more than the fictional pieces, actually.

Now I'm reading EMILY THE STRANGE which is a graphic novel/novel for YA readers. It's all goth-y and hip but kinda fun in a really weird way.

So the next time . . .

. . . I go to the store to buy toilet paper, will you remind me to buy toilet paper? And not a twelve-pack of Scott paper towels disguised as toilet paper?

Imagine my shock when I took out a roll today.

I have a history of doing this, actually. When we lived in Helsinki, I took the bus into town to buy a package of 100 disposable diapers. But I accidentally came home with a package of 100 sanitary napkins. Which were HUGE btw. Which I found disturbing.
Almost as disturbing as the fact that i went into town to buy a package of 100 disposable diapers but accidentally came home with a package of 100 Finnish sanitary napkins instead.

Not that this has a thing to do with writing anything.

Semi-homemade and fully scary

This past weekend I read a blog post by someone who attempted to cook an actual meal from recipes created by Sandra Lee, the doyenne of that cooking (I use the term loosely here) show "Semi-homemade." Predictably the food was super gross and I had to laugh because it reminded me of my own semi-homemade-with-Sandra-Lee experience wherein I tried to make a cake in my crock pot.

Which, right there, should have tipped me off to what lay ahead. There are a lot of things on a religious front I don't understand, but I do know that God didn't invent crock pots in which to bake a cake. He already gave us ovens for that.

Anyway. The recipe whereof I speak called for yellow cake mix, a can of cherry pie filling, and oatmeal for the topping. (Brown sugar may have been involved, but I honestly don't think so.) I wondered at the time how that could possibly be good, but I was intrigued because sometimes really unlikely combinations turn out to be surprisingly great. And even though I am in the middle of writing a snotty post about Sandra Lee, I'm not much of a food snob. I'm sort of like the Statue of Liberty when it comes to food, in fact. Bring your poor huddled masses (of food) to me because I welcome them all with my big old Statue of Liberty arms.

Still.

I threw all that stuff in my crock pot, just like Sandra told me to and WOW. It turned out to be this sticky, gooey, non-cakey thing with bits of dry oatmeal on the top. It was completely inedible.

And here's the thing. It didn't save me any money. And it barely saved me any time. And what's the point of cooking something like that?

The kind of parents we are

Last night I made the sons at home (one's 20, the other's 16) dye Easter eggs. Today my husband made them hunt for eggs in the snow.

Yes! That's us! Torturing offspring since 1980!

On the food front we had a yummy brunch with pancakes, bacon, almond bread loaf, hash browns, egg and cheese casserole, and oj. Such a feast.

Hope your Easter is filled with tender insights and excellent food.

It must be said

For my birthday this week, my mother (the woman who wanted me to wear a blinking light thing on my head) gave me the best chocolate cake I have ever eaten ever EVER. It was chocolate with chocolate frosting, so right there we know happiness lies ahead. BUT. Rather than being a decadence-type cake, it was just a rich moist dense old-fashioned-type of cake. Probably the kind those characters ate for dessert on Sunday in that movie POLLYANNA. Anyway. She bought it at Magleby's in Provo. And people I would drive to Provo just for that cake. I would WALK to Provo for that cake. I would walk BACKWARDS to Provo for that cake. I would walk backwards WEARING A BLINKING LIGHT THING ON MY HEAD to Provo for that cake.

In other news, I think I know what's been bothering me about the book I've been working on. More than an issue of not knowing what it's about--many of you rightly suggested that often we don't know while we're writing a first draft--I had the sense that the audience (YA male) I had in mind wouldn't be interested. And I'm pretty sure I'm right about that. But it occurred to me young YA girls might be interested in the story. So I'm going to switch narrators.

Yes. I know. Clever me.

An unexpected development

For years now I've written about my family--first as a columnist for PARENT EXPRESS, now as a columnist for the D-News. I've never felt an ounce of compunction about this, although as my kids got older and I understood that they were really and truly human beings in their own right, I stopped using their names. Still, I wrote about them. And my husband. And my brothers. And my parents. ESPECIALLY my mother who was born to be a character because she. is. just. so. vivid.

Anyway. I wrote a piece about her this week for Monday's paper, based on a conversation wherein she told me I should buy a blinking light thing and wear it on my head so I won't get hit by a car in the morning when Kathy and I walk. The image of a blinking light thing on my head sort of undid me, so I sat down, dashed off the column and e-mailed it in.

Then. I woke up this morning and wondered if my mom's feelings might be hurt. Will she think I'm making fun of her and her infamous ability to IMMEDIATELY whip up a worst case scenario involving homicidal milk trucks and blinking light things? So I called her for the first time EVER and read it to her and she laughed (a little) (also politely) AND then said, "I didn't say blinking light thing. I said reflector."

Only she didn't.

Whatever. I just think it's odd that after all these years I'm starting to worry about what my family thinks. I mentioned this to my mother who said, "You're afraid that one day we're all gonna start writing about YOU, Missy."

See? I told you she belongs in a book.