Hello, Jordan Sandberg

Hello, Jordan Sandberg.*

Remember me? We knew each other way back when. We went to school and church together. You were a year older than me. I don’t remember how we first met, and I have absolutely no idea why you liked me, but apparently you did. And now here I am, looking you up out of the blue and sending you a letter.

Don’t worry. I’m not hitting on you. Happily married I am. Two adorable daughters. So seriously, not hitting on you or stalking you. This is probably making you wonder: why exactly am I writing to you?

Well, I have to make a confession. You may or may not remember this incident, but I sure do. (Although the crazy part of me says, “Of course he remembers it! How could he forget something so life altering as a teenage crush? It probably scarred him for life; I’m sure he never recovered.”—but don’t worry about the crazy voice; I mostly ignore her.) I remember it so viscerally that I still cringe when I imagine it.

So I thought, well, there’s only one way to get past all that embarrassment. Share it really, really publicly! Let everyone else revel in my mortification! Especially make sure Jordan sees it!

And here we all are. The confession awaits…

I think I was in seventh grade, or maybe eighth. You were in the grade above me but not really on my mind. I think I had a crush on Peter Fletcher. My friend and I were at the ice skating rink. So were you.

We saw you there. We glanced furtively, we giggled, we pretended you didn’t exist. But we felt your presence. Boys. Our age. Whom we knew. Be still our beating hearts.

So we skated and we watched you surreptitiously. We tossed our hair. We laughed with just a shade more enthusiasm. We tried to broadcast a signal: “We are awesome and amazing women. We are having a fantastic time without any boys. But perhaps, if you draw closer, you’ll have a fantastic time too.”

But we were seventh graders, so we probably weren’t doing a very good job. You were also in middle school, and therefore also completely clueless.

And then I took a break, leaning against the rail and watching the other skaters zipping by. You must have seen your chance. Following time honored tradition, you sent Peter to talk to me.

“Hey, Jeanna,” he said as he toepicked to a stop.

“Hey.” Awkward small talk.

“Sooo… Jordan asked me to come over here and talk to you.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He wanted to know… will you go out with him?”

Do you remember my response? Did you ever really know it, or did Peter somehow soften it for you? I remember what I said, word for word (granted, two words are not all that difficult to remember).

“No. Never.”

Let us pause and zoom out for a moment, shall we? Let us consider for a moment all the ways in a which a nice girl can reject the advances of an unwanted suitor. “I’ve got a boyfriend in Kentucky.” “My parents wouldn’t let me.” Even “You’re so awesome, I’m just not good enough for you.”

So why would a presumably nice girl like me answer like that?

Let us now rewind a few seconds and zoom in. Let us eavesdrop on the radio chatter in my mind.

“He did?” I said. Even someone as socially awkward as I was knew what “he wants me to talk to you” meant. I was suddenly a deer, frozen, staring idiotically at approaching headlights. My brain whirred fuzzily, my adrenaline glands took over, I was getting stupider by the nanosecond.

Oh my gosh, said the voice in my head. Jordan likes me? I had no idea.

Wow, that’s totally flattering.

And completely unexpected. Agh! What do I do?

Well, I can’t “go out” with him. I mean, yes, it doesn’t actually mean dating like the “can’t date before you’re sixteen” thing. We’re not going to go anywhere really. Right? Doesn’t “go out” pretty much just mean say hi in the halls and, I dunno, send each other dumb notes and sappy Valentines? That’s not a big deal, right?

I think it might be the end of the world as we know it, actually.

Dad would kill me.

Dad wouldn’t have to know.

Dad would know.

I don’t even know if I like Jordan. Honestly, I’ve never really considered it.

But he asked you out! Somehow he noticed you. Let’s just enjoy the ego stroking for a minute here, please.

It can’t last. He’d realize how wacky we are and probably dump us in about a week.

Hey, a week is good.

But it’s so weird. I don’t know how I feel about this whole “going out” thing anyway. I need at least an hour to analyze it.

Really, the best thing would be for us to just say “no” politely and explain to him why we can’t go out now but if he could just wait a couple years, that would be super cool and we could go to a movie or dinner or just on a walk or something. Yes, we’ll just tell him we’re flattered and we would love to go out… in about three years.

“No. Never.”

What? Did we really just say that? My internal jaw dropped. No, we couldn’t possibly have said that. We had a beautiful, polite, even downright poetic response planned. Our mouth could not have betrayed us this way.**

And that, Jordan, is the answer to the question of my, ahem, lack of tact. My voice betrayed me. It really wasn’t my fault.***

I hope you will find it comforting and/or amusing to discover the following:

Shortly after your offer and my rejection, I developed a crush on you.

This crush lasted, to varying degrees, for … oh, something like three or four years. Maybe a little more? I can’t remember for sure, but I do have “Jordan S’s missionary scripture” scrawled in my old copy of the Book of Mormon, and I wouldn’t have bothered with writing that if I’d been completely over you.

This crush caused me to do a number of embarrassingly girlie things, including (but not limited to):

• Frequently walking home the long way so I could go by your house just in case I might accidentally run into you.
• Reading The Chosen (quite visibly, at our ward’s youth conference, where you would see me reading it) just because I heard you say it was good. (Thanks for that, by the way. I really liked that book.)
• Paying attention to pretty much everything about you in a slightly obsessive, but not fully stalkerly, manner (I got to recognize most of your wardrobe pretty well).
• (Speaking of your wardrobe) Deciding that I really really reaaaally liked that olive greenish sweater you owned. Sigh.
• Trying to capture your attention once with this elaborately written out dumb joke about Descartes and sandwiches that I showed you and you were supposed to take and treasure but that you just looked at, read, and handing back to me without even thinking about how you were crushing my soul by your cavalier blank look.

So, I think that’s that. Now you know. Now, if you ever wondered why, you have the answer. And if you didn’t wonder, you can at least accept my massively embarrassing admission as… well… massively embarrassing.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled life.

Sincerely,

Jeanna

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent (you) and the embarrassed (me).

**You may be wondering at this point why my internal monologue is sometimes spoken in the plural. I don’t know. Maybe it makes it easier to argue with myself.

***You may have also wondered why I never responded to that note you stuck in my locker. The answer is this: It fell to the bottom of my locker, was quickly buried in moldering piles of whatnot, and was not discovered until about a month or two later.

Shiny! (literally)

My first handmade wire necklace and earring set. So fun! I gave the earrings to Sister Dear #3 for Christmas, and I just finished up the matching necklace. It was uber exciting, and I think it turned out pretty well. There are definitely some finer points to work out and do better next time, but I'm overall quite pleased. Sadly, I can’t convince her that she doesn’t want it, so she’s taking it home instead of giving it back to me.

fancy

Hey! I have a fancy semi-finalist wife! Hey hey hey! (Mormon Lit Blitz writing competition). You are amazing!

sickly

Sometimes during winter I feel sickly and weak. It seems like someone in the family is sick every third week or so. Colds mostly, but today C seems like maybe she's getting something new. Frown, weak cough, whimper, collapse - woe is us. Beware the frumious viral bandersnatch (or would the alliteration of bacterial bandersnatch be better? Jabberwok wasting disease. Vorpal vector?)

yum

The other day A was chewing on a plastic pinwheel. The she held it up and I happily blew into it vigorously, resulting in a surprise drool spray right into my face from the spinning tips. (S?)pi(n|t)wheel

Warning - intense content:
C was talking during lunch and gleefully told us about how the gummy bears went up into the nose and then had lunch. We ask: On what? On blood! They go right up into the nose and eat just a tiny bit of blood and that's their lunch. J and I kind of just stared at each other for a minute and then she pretty much went back to eating and her usual mild, adorable self. So random!

1Q84 : (

Over the last few days I made the big mistake of reading all of 1Q84. After I finished, I obtained a copy of some of the author's planning notes for the book:
* Repetition is key. Have all characters repeat back virtually all dialog, internal thoughts, and backstory.
** Don't be afraid to italicize or bold entire sentences when you're repeating them for the fourth or fifth time.
** There are 944 blank pages here, you've got to stretch the content to fit, and none of that changing the margins or font busines.
** Example: have you seen the moon? Have I seen the moon? Yes, have you seen the moon. Do you mean, have I looked up in the sky recently to observe a celestial body? Yes, that is what I mean. That is a good question. (Internal dialog): Have you seen the moon, she asked me. What could it mean? I should remember if I looked up in the sky to observe a celestial body.
** For backstory, explain it from the character's perspective, then again from their friends's perspective, then again from their antagonist's perspective, then again from the random PI's perspective, then again from the love interest's perspective. Don't summarize any of these times. You've got to hit all of the same details each time. It's also good to have the character reflect again on how their backstory relates to the world, preferably a few times.
* Throw in a bored, hollow description of sex or a character thinking about the imperfections in their genitals from time to time. Callous extreme violence is also welcome.
* Nothing should be clear. Repetition of vague or contradictory passages is sufficient.
** Characters should sometimes be able to hear and respond immediately (with repetition) to each other's thoughts, but without order
** Characters should sometimes ask each other or themselves to explicitly believe illogical beliefs
* Make almost everything relate to many other elements, but make some obvious exceptions. Like a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces that don't fit anywhere, leaving holes in the landscape.
* Introduce several new subplots all of a sudden near the end of the book, but don't even try to resolve them.
* Fixate on a few meaningless details. Every time you describe the park, the only descriptors should be the mercury lamp and the zelkova tree and the slide. The slide matters, the others do not. Ditto for most scenes.
* Don't forget to taunt your readers.
** Include a character that edits a book down so that it has no repetition and flows well
** the slope of the plot advancement should look as much like a distended staircase as possible: long period of descriptions and introspection, concentrated burst of plot advancement. Repeat. The reader should feel like you know perfectly well how to write gripping storylines, but choose not to due to your desire to make this a "literary magnum opus"

Wasting Time

Here I am, sitting at the computer as I have been for the last… ahem… hour or so, and I have gotten almost nothing done. There’s so much I could be doing. I could be blogging (which, of course, I finally am). I could be working on a novel. I could be working on the project that I need to finish sometime this decade as a gift for Brice. I could be cleaning out my email inbox or working on Primary stuff or fixing my budget or sorting our family photos or… you get the picture. But instead I’m avoiding anything even remotely resembling productivity. I’m reading other people’s blogs, agonizing over the annoyingness that is xxxxxx’s writing blog (name has been deleted, but he’s not anyone you know) (you may also wonder why I read it when I think he’s insane and annoying… I don’t know), writing a pointless blog post like this one, checking my email obsessively.

Okay, no more. I’m going to go do something else. Not exactly sure what, but I hope it shan’t be quite so time-waste-y. We’ll see.

Warning: Excessive Cuteness Incoming

Hooray! Lots of pictures of your favorite people (that would be us)! I couldn't really narrow down which ones I liked the best, so you just have to see a whole slew of them. Or, of course, you could not look. But you and I both know that we're irresistibly cute, so you're just going to have to look anyway.

Update: Yikes, I forgot to mention who took our pictures! It was the ever-lovely and talented Meghan Harrison. Buy her photos! 

These Little Moments

A few tiny moments this week that could bear some remembering:

Addra’s Silly Dream

When we get up in the morning, I often ask Coriel if she had any silly dreams, and she generally tells me something that I suspect wasn’t a dream. But it sure is fun. Yesterday she told me she hadn’t had any dreams, but Addra had. “Addra dreamed that she went up into outer space, and she brought with her milk and cookies and all the other things she needed to grow strong and healthy.”

How Parenting Is Not Always Pretty

I was so grateful for this wonderful post. I have often thought similar things but never really known how to express it without making it sound like I hate being a mom (although honestly, sometimes it’s not on my “favorite things” list). Yes, parenting is awesome. No, it’s not constantly awesome. It’s more like awesome overall with a lot of really deep potholes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glennon-melton/dont-carpe-diem_b_1206346.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Vomit and the Awesome Hubby

I realized today, as I wiped Addra’s barf off the kitchen floor* and tried to contain my gag reflex, that in all the years I’ve been married, I have almost never cleaned up barf on my own. And can I just say that this is yet another reason why I will never be able to measure the sheer wonderfulness that is Brice? I mean, seriously, he has even cleaned up my vomit when I was pregnant and I knew that if I tried to clean it up, I’d just add to it. So yeah, he’s awesome.

Awesome

If you are thinking by now that I use the word “awesome” far too much, you are wrong. If I wasn’t generally surrounded by so much awesomeness, you would probably be right. But I am, so you’re not.

Completing Tasks

We have a whiteboard in our hallway on which we’ve begun to keep a list of the things we need to get done. As you can imagine, the list gets longer much faster than it gets shorter. However, there is this vast sense of satisfaction in erasing anything. And so what a blessing it has been to get to erase several items this week. Including (hooray!) having a handyman come fix our attic step, our front door, and our motion sensor light. *Happy sigh.*

Misnomers

Earlier this day, in a particularly trying moment, I was struck with wondering if—instead of our daughters’ middle names being Felice and Bliss—they should have been Melancholy and Tragic.**

Sympathetic Crying

Sometimes Addra will be doing just fine and then something upsets Coriel. Coriel bursts into tears, and then Addra begins to join in, I think just in sympathy. If this happens on a particularly long day (like today), I sometimes join in too. And if Brice has particularly lucky timing, he gets to arrive home from work to three wailing women. Lucky him.

Clouds

A couple of days ago, we were driving somewhere and Coriel was in the backseat jabbering away. What was she telling me? “Heavenly Father should make his house out of clouds. He could have a cloud chimney and a cloud couch.” I thought that sounded wonderful.

Sleep, Baby, Sleep

Addra has a cold and has been sleeping so very badly. Poor Brice has been taking much of the baby sleep duty (notice, please, more awesomeness) and has been having a rough time of it. Last night, I believe, was the height of the ick when I don’t think he got more than about two hours of sleep before 5 a.m. At that point, I was taking over and dealing with a shrieking eel as well. Finally, though, she fell asleep in my arms but was not settled enough to be set down. So I stayed up and held her and read on the couch. It was sad but lovely at the same time. Her head was so warm against my chest, and she stirred a few times but settled down comfortably again. She was pressed right up against me like she was in a tight hug, just being held and loved. Though I ended up quite tired (not as tired as Brice), I was grateful for those sweet quiet moments when I felt I could give her exactly what she needed.

After she finally fell asleep deeply enough for me to let go of her (it only lasted about 15 minutes).

 

Sandwich Sleeping

Another exciting night of sleep, earlier this week, found me lying in Addra’s room next to her on her bed (a futon mattress on the floor) with my arm under her. I couldn’t move without waking her, so I lay there silently. At some point Coriel came in and wanted to snuggle up as well. So we ended up, all three of us, on a twin bed, with me sleeping on my side and squished between two darling daughters. Not the most comfortable sleep ever, but kinda cute.

The Four Elements

It turns out that, according to Coriel, the four elements are no longer earth, fire, water, and air. They are now peanut butter, jelly, honey, and bread.

*It’s not that she’s vomity sick; she just swallowed something wrong and threw it all back up.
**It occurred to me, after discussing it with Brice, that it would have been better to suggest Tristan and Dolores. 

P.S. I just remembered (whoops!) that I was supposed to link to this post since I posted my link on her site. Hooray for blog hops!

Assorted Projects, 2011

Coriel sewing her first purse. Sort of. So awesome!

Tomatoes from our first garden.

Learning to make balloon animals (FYI, this is a monkey on a tree).

Awesome pirate t-shirts for one and all. Arrr!

Halloween costumes exhibiting Last Avatar geekiness.

The geekiness increases with the homemade Katara
necklace (and yes, I've already been told that it's too dark).

Mimsy. Made for cute baby cousin LS.

Monkey for another cute baby cousin, IM. (We have cute baby cousins!)
(They're Coriel and Addra's cousins, not mine.)

Yes, I do have a copy of the certificate with my name and book title
(it's Turning Left atm). But I am not technologically savvy enough to get that one
on here. And yes, it's still an uber rough draft. And no, you can't read it yet.

Just starting to learn wirebending. Please insert some bad Last Avatar joke here.

More wirebending. Again, insert your own Last Avatar joke.

And the very best project of all!!!! We love 'em.

blitz

Personally, I think J should post her story here for all to enjoy, don't you? It helps that it's super fabulous : ), just like she is.

Five for Friday

1. Sweet potatoes, potato format

Since my dad is, well, my dad, I have a strong predisposition (nature or nurture? you decide) toward avoiding any vegetable that isn’t completely slathered in butter or some appropriately fatty sauce. My general distrust of foods that didn’t once roam around on at least two (and no more than four) feet has taken years to overcome. Until recently, one vegetable that had not joined the ranks of acceptable sustenance was the sweet potato. You see, one of the other rules about vegetables in my world was that you don’t cover them with marshmallows—and that was, of course, the solitary use of a sweet potato—and therefore sweet potatoes were evil. Imagine the revelation, therefore, when I discovered the sweet potato in potato format! As in, just like a baked potato only, well, sweet! A-maz-ing. Seriously, one of the few vegetables in the world that requires almost no butter or sugar or salt or anything else to make it taste good (okay, I put a tiny bit of butter and brown sugar on it, but hardly any). Did I mention amazing? Really, it is, go try it. (And if you’re impatient like me, you can just microwave it instead of putting it in the oven.)

2. Everybody loves a pangolin!

Sister Dear #3 and her three kids are visiting again, and good times are generally being had by all. On Tuesday we went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,* and it was so great. Can you say butterflies? Butterflies! Butterflies! Butterflies! There’s a butterfly enclosure there, and not one of those lame ones where you might spot a monarch or two. We’re talking hundreds, flittering around, landing in your hair, amazing. Plus, on Tuesdays, the butterfly enclosure is free. So really, nifty. Among other fun stuff we saw: the Hope diamond (ooh! aah!), a brown recluse, and (drum roll, please) a stuffed pangolin! And, as is patently obvious, everybody loves a pangolin.

3. La-Di-Da

La-di-da-di-da, unsuspicious-looking whistling, and all that. You don’t notice me, not doing what I should be doing right now. Which is finishing up my entry(ies?) for the Mormon Lit Blitz (http://mormonartist.net/2011/11/mormon-lit-blitz-contest-1-kindle-for-1k-words/). You should do one too!** After all, you’ve still got two whole days! And now I shall continue procrastinating, la-di-da.

4. Happy Friday the 13th!

It’s a throwback (is that the right word here?) to my high school days that I absolutely love a good Friday the 13th. I don’t actually do anything to celebrate it. I mean, in theory I should be reading a good horror novel, scaring someone to death (preferably not literally), or at least eating some brains or finding a black cat somewhere. But actually all I do is say, “Happy Friday the 13th!”

5. Just a couple funny blogs

Two funny parenting blog posts I ran across this week. Had to share:

http://www.modernmormonmen.com/2011/05/guest-post-newborns-perspective.html

http://www.havingthreekids.com/havingthreekids.html

*Please note: At this very moment, I am tamping down the editor/fact checker within, who is really bothered by the idea that I might have the name of the museum wrong. In fact, I can control it no longer… Okay, now I fixed it and the name is right. Curses! I couldn’t resist.

**Not that I really want more competition.

On the metro.

Coriel with Sister Dear #1, holding huge grasshoppers. Lubber grasshoppers.

I think the butterfly was attracted to the incredibly realistic butterflies
on my mei-tai (that's the carrier/wrap thingie that Addra
is conspicuously not riding around in at this point).

It would make a good barrette, no?

There were also common mormons and scarlet mormons. There's a
really good joke in here somewhere about caterpillars and being perfected
as butterflies and stuff, but I just can't come up with it.

The Hope diamond (ooh! aah!).

A tired Coriel resting on her sweet cousin.

Hanging out with the cousins.

Lounging with the cousin. (For some reason, I am always writing
"cousing" instead of "cousin." Ergh.)

arrangements

3 bedrooms, 9 people: simple right? But wait! The baby won't sleep with light/noise so she gets her own room. There's not enough room in the parents room for another matress, so they get their own room. And one person snores - last room. So where does everyone else go? Well, see for yourself (you can also just see the corner of the couch in the picture for the other adult).

ambling > rambling

Last night A was so tired (2 days with no naps) she fell asleep during family prayer. Then she stayed asleep while we brushed her teeth. Then she stayed asleep when I laid her down. Welcome to our family pod-baby!

We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

For the past few years, I’ve done small Twelve Days of Christmas gifts for Brice, and it’s been very fun. Except it keeps getting harder each year to come up with something new and fun and silly (and not costing a gazillion dollars, like it would if I bought seven swans and such) (also, where would I put it all?). But I used to dream that when I was a famous authoress—so ridiculously famous that publishers would jump to publish anything with my name on it—I would write a volume of poetry with just one of pretty much every poetic form I could find. And thus this year’s twelve days were born. And since I was going to be writing poetry, I thought, “Well, why not post it on the blog?”

The answer to that question is probably amply apparent by now. The whole blog thing seemed like a good idea at the time, but by about day #2 I realized something. Goofy, lame-o-rific poems for which my ever-forbearing, ever-generous husband would at least give a courtesy chuckle really may not bear much more public scrutiny.

Never being one to shield myself from mind-numbing, soul-cringing embarrassment, however, I kept on going. And now you know why I hope to write novels, not poetry. However, fortunately, the end has come and we may now return to Brice’s wonderful updates and my random, ambling narratives of life at the Stay household. Stay tuned for the following epic adventures: Sweet potatoes! Toilets! Sun cookies! Gifts! Em dashes, semicolons, and other less common punctuation marks! Far too many exclamation points!! And more!!! (In the improbable event that I ever actually write up all the stuff I’ve been meaning to.)

And in the meantime, happy new year! (!!!!)

trooper, rider, and guard - whoa!