Rainy San Diego

When it rains in San Diego, a goodly percentage of the drivers freak out and completely forget how to drive like a normal person. It’s as if 90% of the city looks up in wonder at the sky, asking themselves “What are these strange wet things falling onto my windshield? You mean windshield wipers were meant to be used for something other than cleaning the dust (and ash) off the glass so I can see?” It’s pretty funny. Especially since I lived up in the Utah snow for 5+ years, driving around in that mess. In case you were wondering, it’s currently raining. It’s also windy. I’m pretty sure most of the city believes that this is what a hurricane must be like.

I don’t remember when the first time I saw lightning was, but I’m pretty sure I was in the living room of my house and I’m also pretty sure that I thought the world was exploding. We hardly ever get thunderstorms down in San Diego, so it was a curious thing. Once upon a time I went to EFY in Utah and I remember going into an hour long class, leaving clear blue skies and a bright happy sun behind me. When I came out of the building there were dark gloomy clouds above, it was pouring rain, and it was thundering and lightning. I remember being shocked. Where did this come from? Who knew that a rain storm could appear so quickly? Certainly not me!

Another rainy day I remember was when I was very little, and visiting an Uncle and Aunt in Arizona. I was probably…eight? I don’t know. It was during my “I hate spaghetti sauce” phase. Anyhow, we arrived at their house when it was dark outside, and it was very warm. As we were bringing our stuff into their house it started to rain. It was hot outside and raining at the same time! How could that happen?! I was fascinated, and wanted to stay outside and play in it, but my parents wouldn’t let me. I didn’t understand why. I couldn’t possibly get sick, right? It was too warm! I vividly remember thinking how astonishing it was, for rain and heat to exist at the same time.

The last great rainy day I wanted to chronicle was when I was in second grade. My sister, Rachel and I were walking home, along with my best friend, Sarah, who lived next door to us. Sarah was crazy and hilarious, and that must have been why we were such great friends. I loved her hilarity, and was so naturally shy that it made me happy inside to be a part of it. We walked home in the pouring rain, getting sopping wet and loving every minute of it. We would sweep our umbrellas up as high as we could, jump and try to float down to earth, like Mary Poppins. As we rounded a corner, there was a bit of tissue or something in a bush that had gotten soaked through and was now a small pile of white mush. Sarah exclaimed "Look! SNOW!" (knowing full well that it was, in fact, a small pile of mushy white tissue-we had great imaginations back then). The rest of the way home we prattled on about how we should have taken the "snow" and built a little mini-snowman out of it, then put it in our front yard for all to see.

I think it was the best walk home from school that I ever had.

“Maybe it’s the music.” “Maybe it isn’t only the music."

I don’t usually like to do Christmas things until December 1^st, because it is possible to get a little sick of Christmas stuff if you jam it all in right after you finish putting away the Thanksgiving leftovers. Unfortunately, ABC Family has played Irving Berlin’s White Christmas for the past two days, and I simply can’t resist it. Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. I remember when we were little and my sisters and I would sing the “Sisters” song. One of my favorite parts is when Wallace and Davis are on stage with their pant legs pulled up, twirling those feathered fans and mouthing along to the Haynes Sisters’ record. If you watch carefully, near the end of the song Bing Crosby is laughing so hard that he can barely finish the performance; and who can resist Danny Kaye’s facial expressions as he purposely starts smacking Crosby with the fan? My favorite two quotes from the movie are as follows: Davis says to Wallace “I want you to get married. I want you to have nine children. And if you only spend five minutes a day with each kid, that's forty-five minutes, and I'd at least have time to go out and get a massage or something.” Then, when Davis is trying to get Wallace to go up to Vermont, Wallace (getting the old guilt trip over Davis’ hurt arm) turns to Betty and says “Miss Haynes, if you're ever under a falling building and someone offers to pick you up and carry you to safety, don't think, don't pause, don't hesitate for a moment, just spit in his eye.” I laugh every time.

Well, my brain is not quite refilled yet, so I’m not sure what else to say. I emptied it this morning all over my GRE test, and I haven’t quite felt myself yet. I did manage to buy new material for curtains earlier. I hope my judgment wasn’t too impaired, or else I’ll wake up tomorrow and detest what I bought.

11:11pm thoughts

I’m up trying to decide if I want to clean up in preparation for tomorrow’s festivities, or go to bed and get up early to do it. I’m sort of getting a second wind, so I’ll probably opt for the former.

There is a bottle of dish soap on the counter. It’s called “planet” and the first sentence of “boasts” states that it is certified biodegradable. Are other dish soaps not biodegradable? Have I been infecting the planet for the past 26 ½ years with non-biodegradable dish soap, and I never knew it? Fact heard from the ecology-lovers that I volunteered with this summer: It takes 1,000 years for your plastic grocery bag to decompose. No wonder California is about to outlaw them. Every time I walk in to Vons I think “I should really spend a few dollars and buy some of those cloth bags, because soon the plastic ones will be illegal, and everyone will be trying to buy the cloth ones, and there will be none left and I will have to carry all my groceries home in my arms, and I’ll probably end up dropping the glass jar of spaghetti sauce, and I just know they won’t give me a refund for that.” I still haven’t bought the cloth bags yet.

The building I work at sits on a hill. Outside of our building is a small grassy area that overlooks the I-15. Yesterday as I sat down for lunch, one of the kids came in and said to two of my co-workers and I “There is a fire across the freeway!” I didn’t think much of it, but I was curious, and considering the scary fires that happened just three weeks ago, we weren’t taking any chances. I walked outside, and lo and behold, the hill was on fire—and it wasn’t a small fire either. It extended from the bottom of the hill, almost the entire length of the entrance/exit to the freeway, and was moving in a triangular sort of pattern up to the top of the hill, towards some military housing. There were three fire engines down at the bottom, and you could see five or six little bitty firemen sprawled all over the hill, shooting little streams of water at the fire. They had it contained pretty fast, and they were able to stop it 15 ft from the houses. Close Call.

When the Witch-Creek fires were going on, our house was boxed in by three separate evacuation zones, so we were packed and ready to go. I made a list of things I didn’t want to forget, besides my emergency pack.

Alvin and his food
Blanket and pillow
Family pictures (I currently have them all in my room. Little project I’m working on)
Purse
Firebox
File box
Journals box
Cell phones/palm pilot and chargers
Computer
Towels
Scriptures

Surprisingly, I left my scriptures for last. I’ve always thought they would be the first thing that I’d grab. All I could think was “I can get new ones. I have my mini set in my storage in Utah, so I’ll be fine. My Patriarchal Blessing is in my file box, so that is safe.” I guess sometimes it’s just a matter of asking yourself, “Can I replace it?” Isn’t it amazing that we live in a world where I can replace my scriptures so easily? Isn’t that beautiful? Gutenberg, you’re my hero.

Seminary vs. Institute

I learned something last week. I substitute taught seminary on Tuesday morning—the sophomore class, which is usually the last class that anybody wants to substitute for, because everyone knows that sophomores in high school are generally the most “annoyed” of all high school students. The kids I taught, though, were actually very good. Half participated, and most of the other half listened, which is good for 15 year olds who had to wake up at 5am to be where they were. I pretty much marked it a success when I finished my lesson and nothing had been thrown at me, and they seemed genuinely interested in the John Bytheway blip that I had with me (I'm pretty sure his talks have saved many a seminary teacher from pulling their hair out). I also learned that if you give teenagers a task to do, they will not do it; however, if you say the words “Ready…Go!” they immediately start. It’s like a magic phrase. My Dad says that it makes them feel as though they are in competition with each other.

Anyhow, that’s not necessarily what I learned. The realization didn’t actually come to me until Wednesday night, while I was sitting (as a student, this time) in my institute class. I was watching Elder Thomas stand there telling us stories about Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee, and I realized that as members of the church taking time out to attend an institute class, we aren’t really half as engaged as we should be. Shouldn’t we be jumping up to ask questions and find out more? I don’t think most of the people in my class even cracked open the lesson manual before they came; they came simply to have the information downloaded into their heads. Isn’t that sort of…inexcusable? I mean, the kids that I taught seminary to are angsty teenagers, so they have an excuse when they sit there staring slightly blindly at me. And they didn’t even really sit there staring blindly at me. They actually participated and asked really good questions. So, shouldn’t the people my age (remember, I’m an adult) be a little more engaged? We’re not computers. The gospel isn’t something you download. It’s something you do. Something you have to apply.

Broken Birthday Cakes

We decided on Friday night that the best birthday cakes are the ones that you completely demolish. Friday was my Dad’s birthday (consequently, my sister Rachel pointed out that my Dad, who was born in 1952 turned 55 this year, and last month my Mom, who was born in 1955, turned 52. Fun trivia). My brother, David, works at Cold Stone and has therefore been in charge of purchasing the birthday cakes for our family since he started there last spring. So after all the presents were opened, Dave went into the kitchen and put two “5” candles on the top. He lit the candles, and then carried the cake in to the family room where my Dad was sitting. We sang, Dad made a wish and blew out the candles, and we all cheered. Then, as David was turning around to take the cake back into the kitchen he must have tripped on something, because all of a sudden the cake ended up face down on the carpet. Whoops =[ We picked up the cake, still intact due to the hardened frozen ice cream inside of it, and took it to the kitchen. It took a bunch of dumb jokes and some hugs to convince Dave that he had not, in fact, ruined either the birthday or the cake. Luckily Cold Stone puts at least an entire inch of icing on the tops of their cakes, so I grabbed a large butcher knife and used the blunt side to scrape a good layer of icing off the top and the sides. Good as new, and with a bunch less calories! I then proceeded to tell Dave about the time that Rachel and I made Mom a birthday cake (we were probably 14 and 12 at the time) and decided that we wanted to make it fancy. We tried to tip the cake out of the 13x9” pan so we could ice it all the way around; unfortunately the cake ended up breaking in half. So Rachel and I decided we should glue the cake back together with icing. Well, it ended up looking ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure that when Mom and Dad got home they found the two of us standing laughing over the gross particles of cake that were still somewhat edible. And we ate that one, just like we ate Dave’s cake. Besides, Dave’s cake was chocolate chip cookie dough. It had to be done.

The USS Midway, on a good day

On Friday, I took four of the kids that I work with to the USS Midway. As the Activities Coordinator at a clubhouse for young adults, I get to go and do a lot of things around San Diego. This last year alone I've been to the Wild Animal Park, the San Diego Zoo, a bunch of the museums at Balboa Park, hiking at Torrey Pines State Reserve, boating out at Santee Lakes, taking a tour of San Diego bay on the Hornblower , horseback riding (yea! I finally reached one of my life-goals!); I've visited cat shelters to play with cats, and the Helen Woodward Animal Center, where they have all kinds of animals that you would never have suspected, like llamas and deadly snakes. I absolutely love the opportunity that I have had to rediscover this beautiful city that I grew up in. It's really quite amazing. The only problem is that the entire time I'm on these great activities I have to practice Prof. Moody's "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!," making sure that the group I am accompanying doesn't cause any devious mischief; especially mischief of the vandalizing or fighting or harassing sort. Most of the time they aren't bad at all, but there are times when my patience is greatly tried, such as our trip to the USS Midway on Friday. Separating people from fighting is not one of the highlights of my job, but sometimes it has to be done. I just wish that fights would not occur on the deck of an almost 60 year old aircraft-carrier-turned-museum; especially near the railings of the flight deck. But I suppose as long as they don't actually start hitting each other, and the buttons they randomly push don't actually ruin the ship in any way, I should count my blessings. Besides, I can always visit the museum on some other day, with my family or something. These kids might not ever get the chance to go again. So I suppose it's worth it.