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Readers, this may be the most honest thing ever posted on The Apron Stage. Ready yourselves.

This is live from Guatemala City. Tomorrow morning, we will get in a rental car and drive up to the Guatemalan Highlands where we will stay at a hotel in Salama that boasts hot water on the upper floors. The day after that, we’re heading farther up the Polochic valley. We’ll stay in Senahux, a Q’echi village where women still cook over open fires.

It’s a nine-hour drive, on roads so battered and cut up that the last time we tried it, within five minutes the car seat had been yanked from under the seatbelt and turned upside down.

When I got home I posted pictures of me learning how to make tortillas, of me in front of a wall of Mayan weavings. I knew, instinctively, that these are cool things to like. I talked about them superiorally in social settings and I’m confident it all sounded fantastic.

But here’s the truth: I have spent the last two weeks begging Levi to let us go to Salt Lake or Florida instead of coming to Guatemala. Read the rest of this entry »

Lisa for Sarah

Sarah sent me the following text message a few minutes ago:

Will one of you post for me telling the world that because of snowpocalypse 2010 I don’t have internet? Thanks Team.

We miss you, Sarah. Stay warm.

GUEST BLOGGER: SHELLEY MCCONKIE

Shelley wrote this post late one night while living smack dab in the middle of southern U.S. suburbia. She has just moved to NYC and after having spent a solid two weeks trying to find suitable housing in the city for three kids, she is now craving a large dose of daily and a smidgen of sanity.

It’s 12:02 a.m., and I can’t sleep. I am up thinking about Taco Bell in June. And the media. And how to get smashed pumpkin pancakes out of the carpet.

Every year when I was a kid, on the last day of school my mom would take us out to eat. It must have been a big deal—it didn’t happen very often. I have this freeze-framed memory of sitting on the lawn outside of the Taco Bell on 39^th South with the next door neighbor kids eating puffed cinnamon twists, baking in the newly minted summer sun.  I remember the glee of being able to order as many 79-cent tacos as I wanted. I had eaten a crunchy beef taco. I was contemplating eating another one.  And there was this feeling there—this overwhelming feeling of anticipated joy and unfettered possibility—that is still palpable in my consciousness. The feeling of good things—unknown and unmentionable yet vaguely familiar—to come. Life, in all its glory, sprawled out in front of me in a moment.

I catch wafts of this feeling every once in a while at the oddest times. Pushing the swing. Driving the Interstate. Sitting in Sunday school. I am back on the Taco Bell lawn, sipping a small Sprite and smiling at my future. I am giddy.

Back in the day when Apron Stage was a wee website I wrote a post about how painful it was to be hit over the head with a picket fence. Read the rest of this entry »

Louise

Wednesday I met a friend for lunch at BYU and while I was there, I walked into a bookstore sale in that huge glass room in the Wilkinson Center. The books were laid out on long banquet tables and one table had a sign over it that said “Text Department: 95% off.”

That is how I came to buy GENERAL, ORGANIC AND BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY by H. Stephen Stokes.

I bought it because I like the artistry of the charts and formulas. Many of them look like the inside of a beehive coded with OH or CH2 as in the case of Formaldehyde-based polymers.

There were several copies of this text and, at first, I thought I didn’t want one that was too marked up with notes and underlinings, not wanting to be influenced by the previous reader.

As if.

In fact, I bought one that was quite marked up with charming asides like a big “Cool” and a smiley face and two asterisks in the margin next to a paragraph on Molecular Collisions. And another COOL!! along side the paragraph on Chemical Equilibrium. I wanted to meet the person who was as excited about Oxidizing Agents and Reducing Agents as I used to be about the poetry of Alexander Pope and John Dryden.

I wanted to meet the chemist/artist who drafted a portrait of Paco on page 217.

I guess what I’m saying is not only was I attracted to the strange graphs, language and formulas in the book, but I fell in love with the student who personalized its margins.

I think he was a guy, back from a Spanish-speaking mission—he’s written “mui importante” in a margin—handsome and slim, now in medical school somewhere, maybe St. Louis, with a wife who misses her mother and a baby boy named Cooper.

Such an entertaining volume for only $3.99

What cheap thing have you bought lately that makes you happy?

Lisa

I think Louise might have taken a vacation today. So… if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love some help. I got a Goldendoodle this week. Surprisingly, this is not a type of cookie. It’s a dog–a mix between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle. He’s 9 weeks old. And he’s pretty darn cute.

For all our creativity, we can’t seem to come up with a name. You guys are so wonderfully brilliant that I’m sure you’ll save us.

So, please, suggest away!

Rebecca

In my high school newspaper, the last issue of the year always had a space where seniors got to “will” things to the underclassman. In the spirit of Palmer High, I’d like to use a public space to leave Mehrsa the length of Central Park on the hottest day of the year. I’ll leave the Jacksons a come-as-you-are breakfast, and the Gardners can have eight trumps in one hand. Sunny, though she’ll fight me on this, can have the middle back seat (and anything else she wants).

So yes, in two short weeks we’re joining the Foreign Service. Levi will work for the State Department and every couple of years we’ll move to a different country. I will handle this, without question, as gracefully as Julia Child. Read the rest of this entry »

Lisa

When I was single, I used to scour my date’s bookshelves and movie collection to see if we’d be a compatible match. You can tell a lot about a person from the movies and books they choose to keep in their home, I reasoned.

I remember going out with one guy who I didn’t feel like I hit it off with. But when we got back to his apartment I saw that he had a copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and The Little Prince on his bookshelf. When I asked him about the former, he blushed, “I didn’t have sisters growing up, so I figure I’m behind the curve when it comes to understanding women.” He kept the latter because his mother read it to him as a child. Our bookshelf conversation saved the not-so-exciting date and lead to another.

Tagg had about half his book collection on display when we first started dating. I loved that he had a copy of the Apocrypha, of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. (I actually started to fall for him based on the way he punctuated his text messages. “This man knows how to use a comma,” I gushed to a friend. Yes, I am a huge nerd.)

I knew he had more books in storage, but until this week, I hadn’t seen them. Yesterday—as I really started to unpack post-move—I decided to tackle those 20 book boxes.

A sampling of the titles I came across: Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah

Sometimes I like to think about what forensic scientists would say about my body if I were dead.  Conclusions about my diet and exercise would be a no brainer.  “Clearly, she ate too much,” they’d conclude.  “A sedentary job, certainly.  Look at the lack of callouses on anything but her mousefinger.”

But what about this?  I had an orthodontist once say to me, “You’re left handed.”  No, I’m not.  “Really?” he asked.  “Because the teeth on the right side of your mouth are cleaner than those on the left.  And that’s usually only true for left-handed people.  Right-hand dominant people have cleaner left-side teeth.”

I tried to figure out why this would be true—then I remembered one of my profound and secret weirdnesses: I like to hold my toothbrush with my wrist arching backward.  My default toothbrush position is on the right side of my mouth, and I brush back and forward in (what feels like) a graceful, violin-playing sort of motion.  I’ve always loved the way that felt.  I brush the left side to be thorough; I brush the right side because it feels lovely.

Ha! forensic scientists.  My idiosyncratic preferences fooled you! Read the rest of this entry »

GUEST BLOGGER: SHARON HARRIS

Sharon Harris has eight inspirational quotes on her Facebook wall and then this: “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you’re a mile away, and you have their shoes.”  She is an editor by profession and a choral director by passion.

A few months ago I saw the sign advertising one of my favorite sandwiches on special—$2.69, just two seconds before I saw the parking ticket on my windshield—$50.

“Dang it!” Money was already tight, and there went the prospect of the sandwich. I would have to figure out how to fit another $50 into my budget, and so I really couldn’t justify three bucks more when I had snacks in my bag. I put the ticket in my purse and went on with a typically busy day.

Heading home that evening, I pulled up behind a couple of cars at a stoplight and saw a ragged-looking man amble across the street. He seemed kind of disoriented with loose strides and widely swinging arms, his shirt partially untucked from the back of his dirty pants. He stopped in the middle of the intersection, stooped to pick up a discarded cigarette butt, and then continued. Even after the green light I watched him and felt sorry for the attractive young student he approached a few steps later. Read the rest of this entry »

I know I shouldn’t be posting a picture taken with Photo Booth, and I know this is not in focus, but you get the idea of the state of my desk.   I worked here tonight and I will work here again tomorrow.

I have been making a tiny scrapbook for Tom for Valentine’s Day.  (Notice I did not use the word “scrapbooking,” which is an abomination, but who cares?) It is the most time I have ever spent on a gift for Tom (I don’t think it took me this long to knit him a sweater).  He is going to love every tiny detail of it.  My hope is it will make him cry with joy.  I love to make Tom cry.  With joy.

I haven’t made a scrapbook or a photo album since digital cameras took hold.  Whenever I ask Tom to run me a picture, it takes way too long, because he wants perfect photographs, while I only want snapshots.  He likes to run them off in large sizes.  I want them in large quantities.

I know, I should learn my way around Photoshop, or at least Iphoto, but I prefer my cutting and pasting with scissors and glue sticks.  How did we live before glue sticks?

Making this scrapbook has been like returning to elementary school art class, and I loved art class.  It has been one of the activities that has gotten me through January.

Other things that got me through were lunch dates with a myriad group of women, young and old, who like to laugh; the symphony, the theater, late night runs for Rittersport dark chocolate, exercising on the stationary bike, reading an inspiring book called SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA by Lynne Cox, playing Scrabble with Tom and working in the temple.  And, oh yes, going to the library to write.   Oh, and I got up late every morning and didn’t beat myself up about it.

Mostly, I refused to hibernate, which is my first instinct.

I only had one small melt-down one Sunday morning.  I had it after I was up and dressed, and after Tom and I had been asked to come to the church early before Sacrament Meeting, and after we were called to be family history consultants—we said yes—after that, but before Sacrament Meeting.  I had my meltdown.  It only lasted a day.

“I’m going back to bed,” I told Tom.  And I did.

But really, I have to say I got through January without much collateral damage.

How have YOU gotten through January?  Did you have a meltdown?

I am planning to drive to warmer climes the last two weeks of February.  Maybe Arizona.  I’ve never been to Arizona.

How will YOU get through February?