Dear Kelsey, Skylee, and Megan,

Follow this step-by-step guide for the quickest route to Sculpey insanity!

1.  Volunteer to sculpt the cake toppers for your sister’s wedding. Agree to sculpt the closest likeness you can possibly create with the dexterity afforded by your own fingers and a box of toothpicks.

2.  If your sister is marrying a guy from Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, make sure you find pictures of the correct attire he might actually wear, courtesy of Google Images or vigorous Facebook stalking of his photo albums. Don’t try to make him a white suit with a yellow sombrero and Falsa blanket draped over his shoulder. If he’s from Jalisco, he wears black. Think Three Amigos. Sort of.

3.  Bake the figures in stages. Attach the head and neck and all extremities to the body with toothpicks. Don’t add hands, ears, or hair yet. If the Sculpey people look like extras on the set of A Little Shop of Horrors with toothpicks poking out of their sleeves, don't worry. I forgot to take pictures of this stage for you, sorry.

4.  Cool the baked figures. Then add hands, ears, hair, fur, etc. The most important thing to remember is that if you are attaching one piece of Sculpey to another, simply sticking it to the surface probably won't work as well. To optimize durability, blend the edges of the piece into the surface with your trusty toothpick. Does this make sense? Maybe not. I’ll have to show you in person. Oh wait, I made a video. Recorded one-handed, and without sound!

5.  If your figure is wearing a sombrero, prop up the hat with a ball of clay and bake it like this in the oven. This way, the brim of the hat will keep its shape and you can remove the prop after baking. 

      Or, if you’re making an animal, like a goose that has a heavy body and really skinny legs and you try to bake the figure in the oven by standing it on its legs, the legs will break. So, stick toothpicks into the goose’s body and mold clay around the toothpicks. This is my best trick and it works great. Now that I think of it, you could also do this to make human fingers, but of course I didn’t think of it for the cake toppers, so the groom just has stumps for hands…oh well. 

6.  Paint! Use basic acrylic colors (red, yellow, blue, green, white, black) to mix any color that anyone has ever conceived of in the history of the universe. I've had this paint since high school. It lasts forever!

 

7.      Present sculptures to happy bride and groom.

Love,

Aunt Sarita

P.S. don’t make the cake toppers so heavy that they fall over and their noses and ears break off when placed on top of a practice cake.

But Camp

There will be body odor and ticks, greasy hair and flatulence, and unflattering color-coordinating t-shirts designating our ranks and unit numbers. There will be circles around the campfire with lilting choruses of “Sinner Man,” “A Woonie Koonie,” “Cannibal King,” and “Mormon Boy.” For four days Twilight Woods eau de toilette will be traded for bug spray and iPhones turned off, the better to compose with pen and paper spiritually uplifting, warm, fuzzy love notes to friends. This is what I expected from my very first Girls Camp, the elaborate LDS ritual of bonding, bonding, and more bonding for female youth ages 12-18. And I was not disappointed! Except maybe in the musical department; the camp songs were not nearly as stupid.

We set up camp in Tabiona, UT; a.k.a, somewhere on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Except for the pavilion covering the picnic tables with their red and white checked table cloths, the kitchen from which steaming Dutch oven delicacies were served, the flushing toilets with cupboards neatly stocked with a year’s supply of toilet paper, and YW leaders who brought their spray on tans and a different pair of ginormous dangly earrings to wear every day, the camping might have been authentic. I obviously missed the “Look-Cute-at-Camp” memo because I was in the Caribbean getting a real tan, so I just wore the same shirt every day.

Here’s what happens when you deprive 16 girls of Facebook and text messaging for an extended period of time: They entertain themselves with “the cup game,” an intricate series of coordinated hand movements that involve banging a cup upside down on the table, tapping it with your palms, and flipping it over, tapping and banging some more, and passing the cup to the left in an assembly line while the series of banging, flipping, and tapping gets progressively faster until someone in the line throws the whole operation off course because she can’t keep up. They wield glue guns and pieces of scrap fabric to make cute headbands and necklaces and hairpins that look like merchandise you'd find in on an online boutique. They write camp-themed skits (the theme was “Put on the Armor of God”) and design and construct their own props. One group wrote a “musical” with a medley of parodies of popular songs rewritten to suit the theme—one of their songs was a new and improved version of Rebecca Black’s Friday song: “Sunday, Sunday, wanna go to church on Sunday…Laurels in the front seat, Mia Maids in the back seat, Beehives in the trunk…”

All the girls were united in the spirit of dispensing warm fuzzies. Each sister and YW leader was given an award. My award was for being an “Eskimo Princess named after Rosarita Refried Beans.” One of the girls made me my very own boondoggle during craft time. And, everyone also had a “secret sister” she stealthily delivered gifts and notes to daily before the appointed meeting during which we all revealed ourselves to each other. Before camp we were given information about our secret sister’s hobbies, favorite movies/books/music, etc. and during the unveiling, one girl suggested we each get up in front of everyone and say something we admired about our sister. I had my whole speech planned out—how I thought it was really cool that my 12-year-old loved 80s movies and a memoir called The Glass Castle (that I later found out was about a girl who grew up with an alcoholic father and an abusive uncle), and that her favorite hobby was gardening. My secret sister had such mature tastes for being so young! But then something went wrong during revelation process. Someone else got up and announced that they’d been giving gifts to my sister. Somebody had obviously screwed up!

I soon realized that it was me. I’d given gifts to the wrong person! Obviously, I misread the name on my paper. My sister’s name was MINDY, not MISSY. How awkward would it be to have to explain this in front of everyone, and then tell Missy that those gifts weren’t actually for her and could I please have them back and I’m really sorry? Luckily (but still embarrassingly) for me, Mindy, who came to help cook, is Missy’s mom. Ha. Ha. Ha.

There’s something about leaving mascara and deodorant at home and going for days without showering that draws the girls closer to each other. That, and the testimony meeting held just before sunset that lasts into the late hours of the night while the campfire burns down and the stars slowly blink into focus. During testimony meeting, I was the keeper of the Kleenex box, charged with the duty of passing tissue to those (including myself) whose tear ducts are directly connected to the Spirit that moves people to stand up and explain how they’ve come to know the truth of the gospel and Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation.

During testimony meeting I shared too much information, including a deeply private anxiety that I’ve had since coming to YW. My anxiety is that I can’t get over feeling that I will never fit in with the “cool” leaders for several reasons: a) I don’t watch TV; b) I don’t have a baby the girls clamor to coddle during the YW lesson; c) I don’t tell embarrassing stories about my husband that make everyone laugh; d) I’m not a masseuse, like the most recent addition to the YW leader group, who saw, nay, spoke to Ryan Reynolds at her Park City gym/spa one day when he walked by the front desk to ask her where the nearest exit was; e) I am not this same masseuse who has also met Reese Witherspoon; f) too many other reasons to mention.

The gist of my testimony was that I still haven’t figured out why I’m in YW. What those three days of camp reminded me of though, is I’ve been placed in a circle of exceptional girls. One of the miracles of camp was that we witnessed no petty girl drama whatsoever. I have never seen girls braver and kinder, and more considerate of their fellow human beings (given that they're teenagers). I know that if I’d had friends like them growing up, my life would have been so different. Which led to my other point: while I don’t totally know why I’ve been called to YW, I know what I’ve experienced so far is a result of our Savior’s love. Calling me to YW is one way of showing me how much I’ve missed, and how I can be part of something so vitally important as helping to strengthen the testimonies of his choice daughters.

I walked around camp in a mental fog, tired of feeling inadequate. So, without further ado, I’m going to find out who the Hemsworth brothers are. I’m going to raid the public libraries within a 20-mile radius of Murray for all the girlie movies I can find; when Jesse comes home from work and finds me watching movies like She’s the Man, I'll say, “See, the universe hasn’t imploded yet because I brought chick flicks into the house,” and “Look, I’m magnifying my calling.” I’m going to take up Ashley’s offer and let her loan me her baby on Sundays. I’ll talk a lot more about Jesse, even though I don’t have embarrassing stories to tell about him because he’s too sensible to run on the treadmill in only a jockstrap to cheer me up when I’ve had a bad day—true story, but alas, or maybe thankfully, not mine. And maybe I’ll quit teaching and seek out Taylor Swift, get her autograph, and learn the art of Brazilian honey waxing. But until then, I’ll do a lot of praying and just be grateful for what I’ve been given.

*For lack of a better tile, this post is called "But Camp" because the camp t-shirts we had to wear were supposed to say "Boot Camp." The leaders were trying for the effect Google creates when it changes its letters to little pictograms or appropriate holiday graphics. Except the Os in "Boot Camp" are two clunky little boots with socks and legs sticking out of the top. The ink on the shirts smeared the boots together so they look like one big "U," hence "But Camp," like Butt, misspelled. Ha ha ha--of course I had to point this out to everyone because I'm a middle school teacher well versed in the vagaries of potty humor... Okay, I'm stopping now. Good night.

The Stupids Go On A Cruise

Remember James Marshall’s children’s book series about a family aptly named “The Stupids”? They celebrate utterly ridiculous, silly, and stupid things—like sleeping with their feet on their pillows, bathing without any water because an empty bathtub won’t ruin their clothes, and celebrating Stanley and Petunia’s bad report cards by inviting all their relatives to a costume party.

Here’s my version of a Stupid adventure:

One day Mr. and Mrs. Stupid booked an exotic seven-day cruise. They had never been on a cruise before. Stupidly, they chose Carnival cruise lines because Norwegian and Royal Caribbean were not cruising during the only week the Stupids could go on vacation (and because they had miniature golf on the top deck). But Mr. Stupid was determined to do something different for once. They flew to Tampa and then sailed to Cozumel, Mexico; Belize City; Mahogany Bay, Honduras; and Grand Cayman.

Mrs. Stupid was too busy working for the Central Utah Writing Project to read any of the fine print on the travel itinerary whatsoever. If it weren’t for Mr. Stupid, she wouldn’t have packed any formal wear at all—which came in handy, especially since there were two formal evenings of dining on her cruise, instead of one, like her friends told her to expect. Once on the boat, Mrs. Stupid was glad to see that she had overdressed for the cruise because she brought a one-piece bathing suit. Everybody else was wearing bikinis—whether they weighed 30 pounds, or 300.

On the first day at sea, the Stupids met the couples they’d be forced to dine with for the next six nights: Freddie and Ashley were celebrating a successful long-distance relationship (they made it through one year of living 2,375 miles apart in Boston and Las Vegas). Freddie played rugby and did something with computers and Ashley graduated from MIT, did something for the military, and was so physically fit that she could bench press Freddie with one arm. Walter and Angela were on their honeymoon, hours after getting married in a pirate ship, dressed as a Disneyfied Jack Sparrow and a cross between Moll Flanders and the Mad Hatter (they wore their pirate garb on formal evening). Freddie and Ashley and Walter and Angela’s favorite conversation topics revolved around everything they could remember about their respective drunken escapades, and regularly included their token phrase, "f@$% yeah!" The Stupids were thrilled to have so little in common with their new friends!

Mrs. Stupid ate too many cheeseburgers on the second day at sea and got seasick.

In Mexico, the Stupids hiked all 128 steps up Nohoch Mul, the only Mayan structure fully accessible to tourists. Mr. Stupid took lots of pictures and was proud of Mrs. Stupid for not falling down the pyramid—because there were no handrails or safety features to protect uncoordinated climbers like her. One misplaced step would have sent her tumbling, the first in a trail of Dominoes, into the line of people carefully descending the pyramid in front of her.

In Belize, the Stupids went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. This was a stupid idea, since Mrs. Stupid hates salt water and can’t swim (even stupider, the Stupids signed up for scuba diving in Grand Cayman). Mrs. Stupid thought she would die when she took her first breath through her nose in Belize. But Mr. Stupid was patient and waited for her to get the hang of it. She got so good at breathing through her mouth that snorkeling became her new favorite thing to do. The Stupids saw fish with neon-pink stripes and managed to avoid crushing any coral with their flippers. Mr. Stupid was delighted however, to find a nasty sunburn on his back—in all the places where Mrs. Stupid supposedly rubbed in sunscreen.

In Honduras, the Stupids took a boat ride to a private island with 50 bazillion parrots. It rained the whole time and blew some kind of unidentifiable hard fruit out of the palm trees that hit Mr. Stupid in the head while he was watching leopards from the island’s animal rehabilitation program cough up ten-pound hairballs. Mrs. Stupid learned that the Mayans regularly used hallucinogenic drugs absorbed through enemas.

The Stupids went scuba diving in Grand Cayman. Mrs. Stupid thought she was going to die because she wasn’t sure if she had agoraphobia, one of the things the scuba instructor asks you about in the pre-scuba training session, and which requires you to refrain from scuba diving if indeed you have it. But the Stupids found that neither of them suffered from agoraphobia, and they commemorated a successful scuba session with unlimited ice cream on the lido deck.

Stupidly, Mrs. Stupid brought these two books to read on the cruise: 101 Places Not to See Before You Die, and The Help. The former is a travelogue of things to avoid seeing and doing in life because they are unhealthy, death-defyingly risky, a total rip off, or stupidly anticlimactic. The Help is about the unfair working conditions of black maids who worked for white families in the 60s in Jackson, Mississippi. All the bad vibes made Mrs. Stupid feel guilty for being an American capitalist on a boat with a crew of 900, the majority of which were Indonesian, Filipino, Indian, and Croatian who apparently could not be happier to clean other people’s messes for $70 + tips each month.

The Stupids’ favorite part of the cruise was waiting to see what towel animal would appear on their bed after dinner.

And There was Much Rejoicing

Even though classes have been pretty much over for a couple of weeks now, I still had the exit exam to pass before I was officially finished with the MS Finance program at the U. of Utah. This past Thursday--yes, one day before graduation--I finally took the exit exam. Later that afternoon I received the following message:

Dear MSF Student:
CONGRATULATIONS! You passed the comprehensive exam requirement for your MSF degree. If you are "walking" in the graduation ceremony tomorrow, have a great time. You deserve to be proud of your degree. [I will spare you the further details of my awesomeness.]
 
So with the exit exam successfully passed, I was all set to walk on Friday. While convocations aren't known to be that exciting, it was great to see some of the people from the program. It feels great to be done with the MSF program, but I still have a lot of studying ahead. In June I'm taking the CFA Level II test (there are 3 levels and I have already passed Level I). It will be very difficult so I need to stay focused a bit longer. At least now I have one less thing to worry about.

Here are some pictures from graduation:

 

Greatest Con

Let's see who can follow this article. It's one of the best that I've seen on the subject in quite a while. Of course, you always have to take these types of articles with a grain of salt, but it is well thought out and explained. Questions?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-heres-setup-con-decade

My Brief Stint as a Grad Student

"Education is a form of self-delusion."
~Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915, American author, editor and printer

I don't remember exactly what I was expecting to feel like doing after passing my thesis defense. Something along these lines: indulging my vanity with an extravagant shopping spree at Banana Republic. Or flaunting a wad of cash (not mine, because I don't have any) during a celebratory dinner at Log Haven Restaurant, one of those places in Salt Lake City where the main courses sound like this, "Shinshu miso grilled Japanese eggplant with Thai chile ponzu," and the waiter brings out a tablespoonful of odd-colored fare on a square white plate with a 12-inch diameter. Or the spontaneous purchase of plane tickets to Jules Sea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida, described as follows:

Located at the bottom of the Emerald Lagoon in Key Largo Undersea Park, Florida, this undersea lodge invites you to spend a night sleeping with the fish. Located 30 feet below the sea, the only way to get into your room is with scuba gear. Once you dive down and swim into this underwater ‘cottage’, you can relax and enjoy views of the marine life through windows in both bedrooms and living room. The facility also comes fully equipped with refrigerators, sinks, enclosed shower and toilet, entertainment center with VCR and DVD set up, mini kitchen with microwave, telephone, intercom and marine radio.

Instead I felt like a deflated balloon. Defending my thesis was anti-climactic. Like waking up on your 26th birthday and expecting to somehow feel new and shiny, invigorated with the mental acuity and clarity of perspective that supposedly comes with one more year's worth of living. I sat through the defense thinking one thought every time a professor asked me a question about postmodern deconstructionist theory or Shakespeare's inheritance of Ovidian metaphor: "IDK." Fortunately, my answers to such questions were slightly more articulate. Slightly.

And when my committee asked me to leave the room so they could confer, I felt, momentarily, like the last contestant in a beauty pageant, huddling with her fingers crossed and uttering a silent prayer in the soundproof booth while watching her fellow contestants answer the final question before the judges announce whether she has won the title of second runner up or Miss Universe. And when my committee called me back in and said, "Congratulations, you've passed your defense, sign here, goodbye!" I thought, "That's it?" 

Yes. That's it. The end. No more literary criticism for me. If I've learned anything in the last two years, it's this: "Education is a form of self-delusion." Which is different than admitting that the master's degree was a waste of time. I think I simply expected to feel distinguished, or, erudite, or much more accomplished at the end of those two years. Truthfully, I've mastered nothing, except for maybe the art of pretending to look interested in someone who's talking to me about things I will never understand.

The highlight of my graduate education is encapsulated in this quote from an email exchange between me and my thesis chair, in which my thesis chair responds to my last-minute acknowledgment, the day before my defense, that reading the collected works of Stephen Greenblatt in all my spare time might have made me feel more prepared for the impending onslaught of nebulous questions I was about to receive: "But as you say, at some point you just have to get on with LIFE, which is enhanced by books but not found in them." Four semesters of graduate tuition was worth it, to get that advice, I suppose.

At least that's my current assessment of the situation. Perhaps I'll know, years later, the real reasons for going through all this.

My brief foray into the trenches of academia--or rather, my cautious tiptoeing toward the edge of the trenches--has shown me that I am meant to do other things, and to write things that people can, and will actually read.

If I hadn't bothered to apply to the program, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering "What if?" with John Greenleaf Whittier's lines perpetually gnawing my conscience: "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Now that I know, I can get on with life, as my thesis chair says. I think I'll fare better in the company of hyperactive prepubescent people who may or may not be able to write complete sentences.

Cautionary Tales

While Sarita and I were in Kotzebue this past Christmas, we passed some time organizing and going through old photos, artwork, pictures, and books. One of the books that I tend to gravitate towards each time we visit is Struwwelpeter: Fearful Stories and Vile Pictures to Instruct Good Little Folks, written by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann and illustrated by Sarita Vendetta. Sarita was kind enough to get me this book for my birthday along with The Gashlycrumb Tinies, by Edward Gorey, a grim abecedarian of rhyming couplets, as well as Slovenly Betsy, also by the good Dr. Hoffmann.

While Sarita and I like to amuse ourselves by reading cautionary tales for children, we have been waiting patiently for an opportunity to share these lovely adventures with actual children. Well, the other day two of our little neighbors came over to play for a while in the evening--two girls aged 7 and 3. Since Sarita was entertaining herself by working on her thesis introduction, I took it upon myself to entertain our guests. Aside from playing Killer Bunnies, we also found time to read some of the stories from Struwwelpeter. But the book that really got their attention was The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which we read in its entirety. At first I started reading the books as a joke and I didn't think the girls would like them, but we talked about the morals of the stories and they loved them. I'll have to ask their dad what he thought of their new-found interest in reading when they showed him some of their favorite drawings (shown below)! I admit that I had forgotten how graphic some of the pictures are!

Hopefully our kids someday will be just as interested in reading these stories together.

On another note, Sarita got a wonderful book for me for Valentine's Day that was written by someone who was in one of her reading endorsement classes with her. It is entitled The UnValentine. We'll have to read this one with the girls next time.