First of all, we had to be at the airport at 5 a.m. Need I say more? Apologies to our hosts and chauffeurs, Jesse's parents! Second, there was the couple whose questionable genders and embarrassing public displays of affection obstructed curbside traffic for several minutes; while waiting for them to take a breather and kindly get out of the way so we, and the 20 vehicles behind us, could get out and unload the van, we tried to determine whether they were a man and a woman, or two men. One of them had a beard... Finally, after winding through the labyrinthine security lines and observing the new full-body scanners--which were, by the way, just sitting there unused--it was time to divest ourselves of all coats, shoes, and metal to walk through the standard detectors. I walked through without beeping. Jesse beeped. The TSA officer made him walk back through three times, insisting that Jesse had something in his pockets, even after Jesse turned his pockets inside out all three times. So Jesse was herded over to the pat-down area and had to listen to variations on the theme of "Okay, sir, I'm going to squeeze between your legs now..."
Five minutes later we all discovered that Jesse had been wearing his watch the whole time. (Jesse's note: "I was very disoriented by the fact that the TSA worker INSISTED I had something in my pockets!")
We had three connecting flights: Ontario, CA to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage. Anchorage to Kotzebue. In each airport and on every plane, someone had hit the replay button so that all we heard was "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Santa Baby," the two most ridiculous Christmas songs in the universe. The Seattle to Anchorage flight, a three-hour ordeal, is the longest leg of the trip. On the Seattle to Anchorage flight, Jesse sat next to a portly Asian man whose eyes, when closed, disappeared into multiple folds of forehead and cheek fat; his nonstop snoring--a bubbly, sputtering sound of saliva trickling out toward an open corner of his mouth and then being sucked back in again--and his halitosis made him a delightful traveling companion.
We then faced the prospect of spending the night in the Anchorage airport because of low visibility during a snowstorm that had been raging all week in Kotzebue. For several days all three daily flights had been cancelled due to inclement weather. But the storm cleared up just long enough for us to land on time, and all was well. Our suitcases came off the plane caked in snow, it was 9 degrees with 35 mile-an-hour winds, and I started off my Christmas vacation in a jolly humor with frostbitten cheeks from the snow machine ride home!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thanksgiving in a box
"We are so lazy," Jesse said as we recently watched our parade of neat and tidy prepackaged hunk o' kettle fried turkey, the pre-sliced smoked ham, and the pumpkin cheesecake inch forward on the Costco conveyor belt.
"Wrong!" I countered. "We are not lazy. We are busy." Or at least, that's what I told myself as the nondescript turkey was loaded into a box. "This is so much more convenient," I thought, "No need be up to my elbows in turkey innards, poking the pale, goose pimply skin and extracting stringy, purple giblets..." The stuff "gives me the shivers," as the main character says in A Prayer for Owen Meany. When we have a house without concrete slabs for a backyard and a table big enough to accommodate our ten kids, then I'll happily get up 24 hours in advance to stuff a turkey and begin the brining process, basting every half hour to achieve the golden perfection of the bird on the cover of the special Thanksgiving issue of Martha Stewart Living. And then, I might even make my own gravy, too, instead of following the instant packet's directions to "just add water!"
All these thoughts wandered through my mind as Jesse swiped the credit card in the checkout line. But later I thought more about it, and decided Jesse was right. We are lazy. We are so busy that laziness has become an inevitable consequence.
Lazy
–adjective
1. averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
Yeah, that's us. After a day of staring at a computer screen crunching data for project managers in Boston, then listening to lectures from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. at the U, then enduring the hour-long ride home on Trax trying (without an iPod) to drown out the surrounding conversations of cell phone junkies loudly publicizing epic tales of last night's sexual exploits, or their latest break-up, the last thing Jesse feels like doing is more work.
My commuting is less thrilling. I drive 40+ miles to get to BYU. Then drive 40+ miles to get home. The end. After teaching 80 students and sitting in seminars listening to discussions of the vices of alcoholism in Victorian England, I feel like doing only one thing: taking a nap. I am disinclined to exert any mental effort whatsoever. This includes cooking. I don't remember the last time I cooked--not reheated a frozen pizza, or bought dinner at the nearest deli, or persuaded Jesse to take me to Cafe Rio. When we were even too lazy to do any of the above, I thought Jesse would get tired of eating cereal and root beer floats for dinner in mid October.
I suppose this is why I'm allowing us to "host" our first Thanksgiving "out of a box," courtesy of Costco. This, and the fact that I have to write about 100 pages before December 14th. I haven't started yet. Now might be a good time...
As usual, I'm missing the point of the whole holiday. It's easy to get caught up in the preparation of trying to get everything just right, even if it's precooked. All that really matters is that you're grateful. And there is so much to be grateful for.
P.S. Our fish died on October 8th. We were too lazy to have a funeral.
"Wrong!" I countered. "We are not lazy. We are busy." Or at least, that's what I told myself as the nondescript turkey was loaded into a box. "This is so much more convenient," I thought, "No need be up to my elbows in turkey innards, poking the pale, goose pimply skin and extracting stringy, purple giblets..." The stuff "gives me the shivers," as the main character says in A Prayer for Owen Meany. When we have a house without concrete slabs for a backyard and a table big enough to accommodate our ten kids, then I'll happily get up 24 hours in advance to stuff a turkey and begin the brining process, basting every half hour to achieve the golden perfection of the bird on the cover of the special Thanksgiving issue of Martha Stewart Living. And then, I might even make my own gravy, too, instead of following the instant packet's directions to "just add water!"
All these thoughts wandered through my mind as Jesse swiped the credit card in the checkout line. But later I thought more about it, and decided Jesse was right. We are lazy. We are so busy that laziness has become an inevitable consequence.
Lazy
–adjective
1. averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
Yeah, that's us. After a day of staring at a computer screen crunching data for project managers in Boston, then listening to lectures from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. at the U, then enduring the hour-long ride home on Trax trying (without an iPod) to drown out the surrounding conversations of cell phone junkies loudly publicizing epic tales of last night's sexual exploits, or their latest break-up, the last thing Jesse feels like doing is more work.
My commuting is less thrilling. I drive 40+ miles to get to BYU. Then drive 40+ miles to get home. The end. After teaching 80 students and sitting in seminars listening to discussions of the vices of alcoholism in Victorian England, I feel like doing only one thing: taking a nap. I am disinclined to exert any mental effort whatsoever. This includes cooking. I don't remember the last time I cooked--not reheated a frozen pizza, or bought dinner at the nearest deli, or persuaded Jesse to take me to Cafe Rio. When we were even too lazy to do any of the above, I thought Jesse would get tired of eating cereal and root beer floats for dinner in mid October.
I suppose this is why I'm allowing us to "host" our first Thanksgiving "out of a box," courtesy of Costco. This, and the fact that I have to write about 100 pages before December 14th. I haven't started yet. Now might be a good time...
As usual, I'm missing the point of the whole holiday. It's easy to get caught up in the preparation of trying to get everything just right, even if it's precooked. All that really matters is that you're grateful. And there is so much to be grateful for.
P.S. Our fish died on October 8th. We were too lazy to have a funeral.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Halloween Memories (for lack of a better blog topic)
Now that Halloween has been over for several weeks, I thought I’d write a Halloween post—in classic Sarita fashion, everything is late. Don’t worry, the Christmas post will probably come in February, along with a Christmas card. If I get around to making Christmas cards.
My dream version of Halloween appeared in the pages of Marc Brown’s Arthur’s Halloween where the kids (or, I should say, anteaters and rabbits) walk down sidewalks kicking at big piles of dried, brown oak leaves, and find the little old lady with snow white hair hiding in the upper stories of a decrepit Victorian house with shingles on the roof, waiting for trick-or-treaters to knock on her door so she could give them chocolate donuts and apple cider.
In reality, Halloween was a test of endurance. In northwest Arctic Alaska, we were lucky if it was warmer than -20 for trick-or-treating. But one of the few redeeming qualities of Halloween in Kotzebue was that we could walk wherever we were going, so if we felt the onset of frostbitten fingers and toes, we could be home in a matter of minutes.
Halloween was also very unstylish. In elementary school we had to wear costumes on top of layers of sweaters and snowsuits, fur hats, hoods, scarves, mittens, and bunny boots. That meant our costumes always had to be one or two sizes bigger to stretch over the bulk of the requisite insulation. This was not cool. You could not be a graceful angel/princess/witch/fairy waddling down the street with puffy snow pants and clompy boots exposed beneath the hem of your costume. We also had to stuff hand fulls of Kleenex in our coat pockets so we could stop every five minutes to wipe our noses that dripped incessantly from the cold. Blowing your nose outside was inconvenient. You had to stop, put everything down, and hike up the costume fabric to find your pocket, unzip it, pull out a tissue without the whole clump falling out and blowing away, etc., all before your hand got numb. The whole process of nose blowing wasted so much time that it was easier to just wipe snot trails on the back of your mittens. It was even more fun when you had to go to the bathroom.
But the prospect of being able to gorge on candy that our parents would normally never let us have dispelled all fears about looking dorky while making the rounds through town. Merella and I joyfully knocked on as many doors as we could before we froze, and were careful to avoid the following: 1) dentists, because they’d always give kids toothbrushes--lame; 2) anyone who was a doctor, because they’d only give you apples—Washington Reds—gross, it totally defeated the purpose of trick-or-treating; 3) any houses that belonged to boys who were the subjects of our latest infatuations--for obvious reasons relating to our appearances; 4) the Senior Citizen Center, because their idea of a “treat” was to make an industrial-sized bowl of fat free popcorn and mix in raisins and unshelled peanuts. When you said, “Trick-or-treat!” the staff member in charge of distributing the goods would toss a handful of the disgusting stuff into your bag. Without plastic gloves on their hands.
When we got home, before we’d even taken off our winter clothes, we’d each dump out the contents of our bags and turn the living room floor into a sea of silver and gold candy wrappers. We would barter with each other for our favorites. Nobody liked Tootsie Rolls so those were the first to go. Dad gladly took those off our hands for free. My favorite candies were the finest specimens of cavity-inducing genetically modified sugar: Blow Pops, Dots, Nerds, and anything else with red 40. Once the bartering started, it had to be gotten over quickly, because we were ordered to hand over the loot to Mom, who would then magically make it disappear. The candy would reappear only after dinner, or the completion of chores or homework.
For the rest of the year we would spend hours searching for our hidden treasure. We never found it. But we suspected it was buried in a snowdrift outside, because it was always cold and rock hard when Mom brought it out.
I suppose the benefit of this miserly distribution was that our candy didn't permanently disappear until March.
My dream version of Halloween appeared in the pages of Marc Brown’s Arthur’s Halloween where the kids (or, I should say, anteaters and rabbits) walk down sidewalks kicking at big piles of dried, brown oak leaves, and find the little old lady with snow white hair hiding in the upper stories of a decrepit Victorian house with shingles on the roof, waiting for trick-or-treaters to knock on her door so she could give them chocolate donuts and apple cider.
In reality, Halloween was a test of endurance. In northwest Arctic Alaska, we were lucky if it was warmer than -20 for trick-or-treating. But one of the few redeeming qualities of Halloween in Kotzebue was that we could walk wherever we were going, so if we felt the onset of frostbitten fingers and toes, we could be home in a matter of minutes.
Halloween was also very unstylish. In elementary school we had to wear costumes on top of layers of sweaters and snowsuits, fur hats, hoods, scarves, mittens, and bunny boots. That meant our costumes always had to be one or two sizes bigger to stretch over the bulk of the requisite insulation. This was not cool. You could not be a graceful angel/princess/witch/fairy waddling down the street with puffy snow pants and clompy boots exposed beneath the hem of your costume. We also had to stuff hand fulls of Kleenex in our coat pockets so we could stop every five minutes to wipe our noses that dripped incessantly from the cold. Blowing your nose outside was inconvenient. You had to stop, put everything down, and hike up the costume fabric to find your pocket, unzip it, pull out a tissue without the whole clump falling out and blowing away, etc., all before your hand got numb. The whole process of nose blowing wasted so much time that it was easier to just wipe snot trails on the back of your mittens. It was even more fun when you had to go to the bathroom.
But the prospect of being able to gorge on candy that our parents would normally never let us have dispelled all fears about looking dorky while making the rounds through town. Merella and I joyfully knocked on as many doors as we could before we froze, and were careful to avoid the following: 1) dentists, because they’d always give kids toothbrushes--lame; 2) anyone who was a doctor, because they’d only give you apples—Washington Reds—gross, it totally defeated the purpose of trick-or-treating; 3) any houses that belonged to boys who were the subjects of our latest infatuations--for obvious reasons relating to our appearances; 4) the Senior Citizen Center, because their idea of a “treat” was to make an industrial-sized bowl of fat free popcorn and mix in raisins and unshelled peanuts. When you said, “Trick-or-treat!” the staff member in charge of distributing the goods would toss a handful of the disgusting stuff into your bag. Without plastic gloves on their hands.
When we got home, before we’d even taken off our winter clothes, we’d each dump out the contents of our bags and turn the living room floor into a sea of silver and gold candy wrappers. We would barter with each other for our favorites. Nobody liked Tootsie Rolls so those were the first to go. Dad gladly took those off our hands for free. My favorite candies were the finest specimens of cavity-inducing genetically modified sugar: Blow Pops, Dots, Nerds, and anything else with red 40. Once the bartering started, it had to be gotten over quickly, because we were ordered to hand over the loot to Mom, who would then magically make it disappear. The candy would reappear only after dinner, or the completion of chores or homework.
For the rest of the year we would spend hours searching for our hidden treasure. We never found it. But we suspected it was buried in a snowdrift outside, because it was always cold and rock hard when Mom brought it out.
I suppose the benefit of this miserly distribution was that our candy didn't permanently disappear until March.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Replace "Jesse" with "Sarita" and "he" with "she"
If you thought something was fishy about my last post--but were too polite to say anything--you were right. If you know Jesse, you understand that the last thing he wants is 300 pictures of himself. So, there's no way he's taking credit for my brilliant idea; since Jesse's too busy to post his rebuttal, I thought I'd do it for him. If you do as he said in his last comment, you'd have the right story, although I did not find the maternity photos inspiring.
Jesse was probably secretly glad that it rained; it meant he didn''t have to change into his second outfit. In this picture, he's probably thinking, "My butt's wet. Are we done yet? I'd rather be watching Macbeth!"
The moral of the story is that Jesse likes me a lot. Or, I suppose you could look at it this way: I remained level-headed enough not to feed the chipmunks or fall off the edge of Angel's Landing, so I deserved a reward. Take your pick.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Anniversary Photos
We had our pictures taken on July 30th while we were in Cedar City. It was all Jesse's idea. He tried hard to convince me that the following were good ideas: packing two separate outfits to wear while traipsing around the farm towns surrounding Cedar City, posing awkwardly for a stranger we had never met, but whose photos he had seen here andiwatkins.com (the maternity photos on this site inspired him to make an appointment with Andi). He may have been fooled by the website, but I was not.
Three hundred pictures of myself is the last thing I wanted. I tried to explain how awkward this would be, with closeups of kissing and walking into the sunset, but he insisted we do it. He finally sold me on the idea that the photos would commemorate our five-year anniversary. Although I hate getting my picture taken, how could I say no to that? So I finally gave in and tried to find an outfit that would coordinate with the colors he chose to wear.
The day our photos were scheduled to be taken, it rained. All afternoon. The rain only confirmed my initial suspicion that this was a bad idea. Oh, the things I do for him! He agreed that the photos will serve as birthday and Christmas gifts for the next five years.
Three hundred pictures of myself is the last thing I wanted. I tried to explain how awkward this would be, with closeups of kissing and walking into the sunset, but he insisted we do it. He finally sold me on the idea that the photos would commemorate our five-year anniversary. Although I hate getting my picture taken, how could I say no to that? So I finally gave in and tried to find an outfit that would coordinate with the colors he chose to wear.
The day our photos were scheduled to be taken, it rained. All afternoon. The rain only confirmed my initial suspicion that this was a bad idea. Oh, the things I do for him! He agreed that the photos will serve as birthday and Christmas gifts for the next five years.
This last one reminds me of the painting, American Gothic. Jesse wanted to bring props--overalls and pitch forks--and suggested I wear an apron and my hear in a slicked back bun, but I refused. Also, the sheep were being uncooperative and would not pose with us.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Eviction Notice
This week I was “kicked out” of my classroom. I only teach two periods at Elk Ridge, and the teacher who’s been filling in the rest of my schedule has been teaching four periods in my classroom. We have enough seventh graders to give her two more classes. So a move of Machiavellian pragmatism was made to relocate me to a “portable.” These are classrooms outside of the school, lined up like one-room houses on the East side of the main building. They are divested of any technological equipment, they have regularly malfunctioning air conditioning and heating, and they have orange carpet and the lingering odor of wet dogs—at least mine does. I can see it now: For the rest of October, the room will be swelteringly hot, with kids slumped over their desks, half asleep; in December and January, we’ll all be huddling in a refrigerator, wearing our coats and gloves with icicles sticking to our snotty noses.
I was told last week to expect an official notification from the administrators. It never officially came. I knew it had to happen soon, and got tired of waiting for a definitive answer. I got suspicious on Thursday morning, the last day of parent-teacher conferences, and therefore the last day of the week because Friday would be teacher comp day. On Thursday, several of my students told me they would be switching out of my class and that I wouldn’t see them anymore. The counselors told them to expect their new schedule to take effect on Monday. On Monday! So when was someone planning on telling me?
This meant I would have to move out of my classroom and into the portable, and make it look presentable as soon as possible. I’m not sure how people expected me to magically move into my new room without coming in on Friday, or Saturday, or 5:00 AM on Monday. My solution? Skip out on parent-teacher conferences. At my designated table in the gym, I left a note for parents to come see me in the portable.
The portable’s previous inhabitant must have been a Spanish teacher, because an assortment of classroom furniture still bore laminated labels with Spanish phrases emblazoned over colors of the Mexican flag with sticky tape peeling off. So as a result of my relocation, I now know how to say “trash can” in Spanish.
I was told last week to expect an official notification from the administrators. It never officially came. I knew it had to happen soon, and got tired of waiting for a definitive answer. I got suspicious on Thursday morning, the last day of parent-teacher conferences, and therefore the last day of the week because Friday would be teacher comp day. On Thursday, several of my students told me they would be switching out of my class and that I wouldn’t see them anymore. The counselors told them to expect their new schedule to take effect on Monday. On Monday! So when was someone planning on telling me?
This meant I would have to move out of my classroom and into the portable, and make it look presentable as soon as possible. I’m not sure how people expected me to magically move into my new room without coming in on Friday, or Saturday, or 5:00 AM on Monday. My solution? Skip out on parent-teacher conferences. At my designated table in the gym, I left a note for parents to come see me in the portable.
The portable’s previous inhabitant must have been a Spanish teacher, because an assortment of classroom furniture still bore laminated labels with Spanish phrases emblazoned over colors of the Mexican flag with sticky tape peeling off. So as a result of my relocation, I now know how to say “trash can” in Spanish.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Timpanogos Hike
Last weekend, Joey and I hiked up to the top of Timpanogos. We started around10:00 pm or so on Friday night and didn't get back until around noon on Saturday. We slept for a few hours in the early morning in the permanent structure (not really a shack or a cabin) near the base of the mountain before climbing up to see the sunrise. It was a fairly grueling adventure but satisfying nonetheless.
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