Is there a Best Day Ever quota?

Today someone in New York found my blog with the search words: eyeballs stuck on your plate lyrics.  

Could there seriously be another dummy somewhere out there who thinks Sean Kingston's eyeballs are stuck on shawty's plate? 

Do you think it's my soul mate? 

Or do you think maybe, heaven forbid, I'm not as dumb as I think I am (and Sean Kingston needs to work on his enunciation?)

Either way, it's oddly tragic, being as I'm too old to change my self perception or find my soul mate. 

Speaking of eyeballs, last night mine were stuck on John Mayer's plate. NO JOKE! I was sitting across from him at the dinner table. He's not as cute as Jack Johnson, and he spoke to me in scrawny, scruffy tones, which I had to strain to make out.  

"I will see you at my next concert, right?" he said, and then he winked at me.

All I could do was nod and think, I HAVE GOT TO BLOG ABOUT THIS! 

But then I woke up.  

I laid there in the darkness thinking DANGIT and trying to decide if I should blog about it anyway, when my thoughts were interrupted by squeals of delight.  I looked at the clock--4:35 a.m. and my kids were still wide awake. They were having a brat pack slumber party with Martha's kids and two other former rugrats who grew up in the zLaie hood before blowing that taco stand and moving to the mainland. 

So anyways, I laid there in the dark thinking DANGIT and GO TO SLEEP RUGRATS! completely oblivious to the fact that tomorrow--which for you is today and for me was yesterday--was going to be the best day ever! 

(BTW, how many best day evers do we get? Is there a best day ever quota? I vote Utards should get more best day evers since Utah is the most superlative state in the union.) 

So what does a Utarded best day ever look like? 

I thought you'd never ask. 

It's full of friends and flour and four wheelers. And fluffy white snow. Loads and loads of the most bee-U-tiful fluffy white snow. 

And I am barefoot in the kitchen making fresh hot rolls and homemade chocolate chip cookies, and chopping broccoli for my piping hot soup--a few of my favorite things--while the kids run in and out dripping wet and tracking mud all over and saying BEST day ever!

It's as close to living in a Thomas Kinkade puzzle as I'll ever get (unless I find my soul mate or meet John Mayer.)

What started out as a simple snowball fight between old friends this morning . . .  

turned into a full-blown four-hour funfest (with a little help from some of the cute boys in the neighborhood who showed up on four wheelers.)  

Ready . . . set . . .

 

you go, girl! 

One of these boys is not like the others . . .





Not only did I open my blinds, I pulled my blinds all the way to the top so I could have a better view.

So that's what the best day ever looks like.  

At least from my living room window. 

As for the rest of the brat pack back in Hawaii, WISH YOU WERE HERE!  

Or vice versa. 

LY!!!!!!!

My happy holiday hangover

Gosh DANGIT! Christmas is over, and I didn't even post any holiday cheer.

How did that happen? How did the entire season slip away like water through a net? Or more appropriately, like flour through a sifter, or like turkey broth through a colander.

Actually I know exactly how it happened. I was kidnapped. By Santa. He held me captive at gunpoint and made me do all kinds of crazy things--like spread peace on earth and good will towards my MIL.

And then he made me drink eggnog until I was so intoxicated with joy to the world that I couldn't think straight.

(At least that's what I told my hub on Christmas day when he said we needed to go over our finances. (Such a kill-joy, that one.))

Actually I've just been uber duber busy doing the P word. The one that rhymes with fartying like a rock star.

For some odd reason I've been addicted to partying like a rock star this season, which is good because I need an addiction besides Del Taco, but I think I might have major partying issues stemming from my wounded inner-child who always spent Christmas day alone and hungry with her siblings while her poor exhausted mother went to the movies.

I used to cross my heart and hope to die and promise I would stick a hundred needles in my eye before I left my kids alone on Christmas day without any turkey or pie or hot apple cider or homemade fudge or fresh orange slushies.

Is it any wonder my veins now flow with cranberry juice and sprite?

So my favorite party of the season was the slumber party we had on Christmas eve with my in-laws and my silly goose mom, who stayed up all night watching Twilight on our Black Friday big screen TV. We only had one unfortunate incident with my MIL, who was mysteriously mobbed, bless her heart, in the middle of the night by santa's elves.

(I take full responsibility, however, for freezing her bra.)

hee hee hee

She totally deserved it though after she made us finish the peanut M&M's from last year before we could start on this year's bag.

Plus she gave me pineapple salt and pepper shakers for Christmas.

PLUS, she's reading The Undaunted so she kept asking us if we had ever heard of lumpy dick.

Uh-hem! I personally feel it's inappropriate to discuss swedish cereal in public. Especially with your MIL. Ya get me?

Guess what else I've been doing this season? Playing with my x-door neighbor, Martha, and three of her kids who are here for the holidays.

For old times sake I made chili and rice.  And musubi.  But guess what?  Apparently little miss Martha doesn't like musubi because it's too seaweedy. (As my brother-in-law would say, WHAT the CRAP?)

And apparently Martha thought we were homeless because we sell oranges.

And apparently Martha thought I was being krafty because I made a visual aid for my YW lesson.

And apparently Martha thought I needed someone to shovel my driveway.

Since she put herself to work, I decided to put her kids to work as well.

It was a lot of hard work and a lot of misunderstanding, but it was soooo good to see Martha and her kids (looking like Eskimos).

And it was soooo good to see the brat pack reunited.

We took them to temple square because we heard rumors that it was freezing cold and killer crowded and that only half the trees are lighted anymore and that the visitors center closes as you step foot on the premises.

It was all true, but that didn't stop us from pretending to have a semi-good time.

Now Martha is trying to peer pressure us into going skiing.  

Martha, Martha, Martha!  Does your life always have to revolve around FUN! FUN! FUN! 

Frankly, my dear, I'm fatigued of fun. I'm actually glad Christmas is over so I can get back to my monotonous life.  In fact, I can't hardly wait for the new year so I can get depressed and take a long winter's nap.

Not complaining though, I really did have the BEST Christmas EVER! It was so good that this year I didn't even mind buying all my own gifts and letting my hub and kids take the credit. That didn't take away from my Christmas spirit at all. 

Even though I did only ask for one thing: Clean bathrooms. 

Maybe next year, Santa.  (When your elves aren't so busy mobbing my MIL.)  

Seriously, though, I can't complain, because, as we say in Utah, we are seriously SOOOO blessed. 

(We really do say that in Utah, peeps.  Tamn totally plagiarized it.) 

I hope ya'll were as blessed as I was this year!  

LY everyone!

Something borrowed, something true

Well my kids made their first snowman!!!!


How cute is that!?  Almost makes me wish his hat really was magic because this is a snowman I think I could trust.

I think I could trust this snowman too.  If he wasn't out shoveling snow in his PJ's.   

Soooooo, Kute Kasey got married yesterday.  I would have thrown some calrose rice at her if I hadn't been so busy partying like a rock star all weekend.  (And trying to figure out how to braid a cotton pickin' pastry puff into a cotton pickin' breakfast strudel for the cotton pickin' ward Christmas party.  FTR, if I was still on the activities committee there would not have been any strudel associated with the ward Christmas party, but unfortunately I'm just the YW prez and have no power and authority over the ward strudel.) 

So, Kute Kasey, by the time you read this you will FINALLY be a member of the big girl's club. 

Welcome, welcome!

How does it feel?  I should probably offer you some words of advice since I'm an expert and you're not. 

The best tip I can give to anyone getting married is GO TO BED ANGRY!  Don't let anyone tell you differently either, KK.  I do it all the time and it hasn't effected my marriage at all. 

Besides, when you go to bed angry you don't have to deal with all that fortune cookie crap (wink wink).  

 

Most of the time I don't even know it's time for bed unlessl I get angry.  In fact I'm pretty torked off right now so I take that as a sign from the universe that it's time to hit the hay. 

Get it?  HIT the hay! 

Ba dum bum

G'night everybody.  

G'night KK.  Thinking of you.  I'm so happy you're FINALLY married so your mom can get back to acting out in my comment box.  

Hey Sandi, how was the wedding? Huh? Huh? Huh? We will now turn the time over to you to tell us EVERYTHING! 

P.S. Don't forget to bear your testimony that you know Hawaii is true.

Kill your darlings

Usually you have a contest and a winner is born, but every once in a while it happens the other way around; you have a winner and a contest is born.

This happened to me last night while I was sitting innocently on my bed reading a Christmas letter from some dude who married one of my old friends. I found a winner and I was suddenly struck by a brilliant idea to host the first annual Crash Test Dummy kill your darlings Christmas Letter Contest.

(May I not be struck by lightening too, bless my heart.)

Kill your darlings is a well known phrase among creative writers because sometimes writers get so caught up in crafting beautiful sentences that they lose sight of the point they are trying to make. The descriptions may be fabulous, but are they relevant? It's a question every writer must wrestle with. Sometimes when you're feverishly writing you forget who your audience is, or your format, or your occasion because you get so attached to your own words. As a writer your words are your darlings, and yet, there are times when, no matter how painful, you have to kick your darlings to the curb because they're just not working for you.

In some cases they may even be working against you.

So, without further ado, I'd like to read aloud to you the winning passage from my first annual Crash Test Dummy Kill Your Darling's Christmas Letter Contest.

Disclaimer: Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely intentional. This passage comes from an actual Christmas letter, written by an actual person, who I believe was actually severely doped up on Robintussin DM.

Drumroll, please . . .

"I could feel the flu or cold creeping up on me this past Tuesday (Nov. 3) [It's nice to have an exact account of how many days left there were to edit this darling before it was signed, sealed and delivered.] It attacked me during the evening, and I've been wiped out ever since. My wife came down with the bug 2 days earlier on Sunday. Being the good husband, I've followed her example and we have both been down for most of the week. There is now just a cough lingering--perhaps lingering is not the best word to use, lingering implies that it's just kind of there, you notice or feel it's presence, but you don't really see it. For me, I have coughed so much that my whole abdominal wall tightens in painful readiness whenever a cough begins to gather its strength to make a quick retreat. When I start coughing, I can feel the outline of every abdominal muscle as it strains against the 8,000 lb pressure produced by my coughing fits. I say I can feel the outline of every abdominal muscle, but don't get too excited, [Why not, this is exciting stuff, darnit!] I can't see every muscle. In order to see the outline of each muscle would require going below about 3 solid inches of insulated fat molecules that make quite a nice round, me."


Congratulations to this year's winner! He will receive a gold-plated exacto knife, a years supply of white out, and a case of pink pearl erasers.

(Nude) Art and Krafts

There are those among us who see dead people.

I see famous people. And dumb people. And nude people.

It's a gift.

A year ago I was in Maui with my IL's eating mango cheesecake and watching game shows and seeing nude people. Remember that?

And remember this?

And remember how I generously posted photoGRAPHIC evidence of most of it for those of you who don't see nude people?

OMGOODNESS! Those were happy days, full of incredible bee-U-ty (and nudity).

But these are happy days as well. And surprisingly, also full of incredible bee-U-ty. (And technically, a little nudity.)

A lot of nudity actually, being as the trees are stark raving nekked all day long.

But I like it. I like it a lot. In defense of trees, their nudity is more . . . artsy-ish and less . . . p- word-ish.

I respect tree nudity, actually. It's honest. And it takes a lot of guts for those trees to just drop their drawers and let the world see every crook and cranny. But it makes them more authentic to be all vulnerable and exposed like that.

Alls I know is I can't really get enough of their authenticity right now. It's true what they say about nudity: Hard not to stare. And dangerous while you're driving.

Case in point: Yesterday I went for the most tremendous ride EVER from Provo canyon, past Deer Creek, past Heber, through Park City and into Salt Lake and I could hardly keep my eyes on the road.

You know how they say white makes you look bigger? It really does! The mountains are covered head to toe in snow and they look humongous. Especially against a valiant blue sky. It's almost startling how pure and holy they have become in just a few short weeks. If it weren't for the nekked trees I bet they'd be translated already.

What I can't figure out is why the pioneers didn't appreciate it more! All that freakin' awesome endless eye candy--and they got to look at it 24/6 (assuming they didn't walk and walk and walk on the sabbath).

I, for one, didn't take it for granted. The sun was high, and the clouds were low, and I was driving like I had no where to go. It was 40 degrees and bright. I broke out my shades and cranked up the air con and popped in some David Archuleta Christmas. (Best Christmas album EVER, peeps. Smooth like creamy, velvety butta. I would marry David Archuleta right now if he asked me.)

Uhh . . . what was I talking about again?

Oh, yea. And Deer Creek . . . O! M! WOW! Talk about glitter and glam. Mariah Carey's got nothin' on Deer Creek. It looked like someone had been busy with a bedazzler.

(Do you think Gad has a dedazzler?)

Hmmmm . . .

I think I've figured out how Gad makes all the pine trees look like a Thomas Kincade puzzle. Powdered sugar. And I bet he uses a big ole' sifter to give it that evenly dusted look. I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that Gad is a krafter. I would even go so far as to say he's the best krafter EVER!

No wonder us Utard's are trying to be just like him.

Supporting Virtue and Promoting Morality

Not everyone can sell oranges.

Some of us are better at it than others. And that's because some of us have secret weapons--ancient Chinese secret weapons--in the form of two eleven-year-old boys who are about as inhibited as a crate and barrel of monkeys.

Remember this post? The one where my twins were invited up on stage to dance at a Cubworld concert?

Please click on the above aforementioned link to refresh your memory. I can wait.

BUT FIRST, picture this: The same boys doing the same moves, only in puffy coats and bright orange beanies. In the snow. Uphill, both ways. And holding signs that say:

FRESH CALIFORNIA ORANGES

Kinda like this, only in 3-D.

Peoples who were before now unawares that they had a dormant fresh California orange addiction, start coming out of the closet as soon as they see my boys dancing in the street.

The power of suggestion . . . it's trippy. (And entertaining.)

To clarify, we are not selling oranges on I-15. We have a darling little orange stand at Fast Stop gas station in American Fork, which goes by the name of Ohana Fresh Fruit. How cute is that? And even though I've been claiming that we're trying to teach our kids how to work, that's not the REAL reason we're doing it. We're doing it because citrus smells make people more virtuous. A BYU-P professor said so herself!

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm all about supporting virtue and promoting morality. I never went on a mission so in a way this is my contribution to spreading peace on earth and good will towards man--at least until I can scrape together enough money to create my lemon Windex cologne.

Sigh!

It feels so darn good to be so darn good.

And it feels even better to cash in on being so darn good.

The short and sweet post . . .

Today I took my son to the dentist to get a cavity filled.

And then I took him to JCW's to get an Oreo shake.

And then his new filling fell out while he was eating his Oreo shake.

And then I marched him back into the dentist and I said, "HELLO! Remember me?"

And then I pointed to my son and said, "And remember HIM?"

And then I held up the filling and said, "WHY DID THIS FALL OUT ALREADY! Huh? Huh? Huh?"

The dentist look puzzled and perplexed. 

"Can I see it?" he said. So I handed it over with a hmph!

"It does look like a filling," he said.

DUH! I thought.

And then his eyes narrowed and he brought the filling to his nose.  

And then, as Gad as my witness, my silly goose dentist put that filling in his mouth.  

And chewed it.  

He ate my son's filling!!  

And then he had the nerve to tell me that it tasted like an Oreo cookie!  

hmmph!

Okay, you caught me. I'm the one who ate the filling.  But my son asked me to blog about this, so this is my story.  And I'm sticking to it. 

The long and winding post . . .

You know you've made some wicked good soup when you can eat it cold. Like candy. No spoon required. You just can't stop putting your fingers in the pot. And stirring it.

It's just that finger licking good.

I know I've said this before, but I think I've found the ancient Chinese secret ingredient to soup, and it's not cheese or applesauce.

Alls you need is . . . drumroll, please . . . (stewed tomatoes with green chili peppers).

If you're going to try this ancient Chinese secret at home, BEWARE! This soup's got sass. It's edgy. Like a Pablo Neruda poem. (Without the romance.)

Completely unrelated, but does anyone have a plunger?

Anyone? Anyone?

I need to unblog my brain. I'm seriously backed up. There are at least a dozen stories all squished together on the tip of my tongue.

Where do I start? With the story of me grabbing my high school cheerleading skirt and Pom pons to shout YAY as my flamingo daughter scored 10 points and made a buzzer-beater, game-winning shot at her last game?

Or should I start with the story of me trimming the tree. Over and over and over. Trimming and trimming and trimming. Not the first tree. The first tree was easy, being fake and all, and being that it was already trimmed and lighted. Alls I had to do was move it downstairs and photoshop our old ornaments onto it.

It's the second tree that gave me so much trouble, being as it was a special tree--and not in the handicapped sense of the word. Special, as in meaningful. But that's a long, messy story, which I promise to spill as soon as someone gets me a plunger to dislodge all the photographic evidence.

I could tell stories about my silly goose MIL. Oh, my goodness, oh my goodness, she is so entertaining. Which is why I invited her to my Christmas Eve slumber party. Soooo excited! If anybody wants to come over and stay up late watching It's A Wonderful Life and eating homemade fudge and drinking fresh Cali OJ slushies and watching my MIL spend 10 minutes opening her packages so as to save the wrapping paper, which she never uses because why wrap presents when you have perfectly good grocery bags available? then give me a call because, hey, the more the merrier!

My silly goose mom is coming to the slumber party too. She's going to sleep on the couch to see if Santa really does come down the chimney. My MIL says she knows one thing for sure--Santa never came down her chimney. But how can anyone really know that for sure?

She also knows for sure that she had a Santa sighting. She doesn't remember how old she was, she just remembers that she was in a crib with metal bars. (hmmm)

My twins did not believe her. "It was probably your dad," they said, but she was certain she would have known if it was her dad.

"How would you know?" they said. "You were just a baby!"

As it turns out, she says she slept in a crib until she was five years old.

(Do you think all that Golden Corral food is going to her head?)

I can't believe I just spend 15 minutes telling you THAT story, when it wasn't even one of the stories blogging up my brain.

I should have told the story about how I ran into someone at a party who freaked out when she heard my maiden name because apparently my dad was her Sunday School teacher 35 year ago! And she still has a thank you card that he made for her with a picture of jet plane, plus a million stories about what at wonderful teacher he was and how I look just like him when I smile.

Gulp.

That was kinda surreal. You get me? Because sometimes I feel like a fatherless child.

Plus, the only Sunday School teacher I remember was what'shisname who regularly talked about the joys of showering with his wife, (nekked), and who washed my mouth out with soap for calling him the d word that sounds like ildo. (In my defense I was 13 and thought it meant dork.)

Or maybe I should have told you the story about how my boys came home from school on Friday and said, "How come everyone has a bigger house than us?"

Good grief! In Hawaii life was so junk because everyone had bigger sack lunches than them. Now the poor dears have to endure the humiliation of living in a one-musubi house. So to speak.

I told them that it doesn't matter how big their lunch is, or how big their house is, what matters is how big their heart is. And then I dropped my thirteen-year-old off at his friend's--the house with the ballet studio and the basketball court and the outdoor pool and the indoor Sobe fountain.

"Hey, at least you're good looking," I yelled after him.

OMGOSH! Can I just tell you one more story? You will never guess what my hub planned on getting me for Christmas before I (THANK GOODNESS) caught on to him! Fo' real, he was hatching a secret plan in the back of his noggin, until one day we were at Shopko, of all places, and he couldn't contain himself any longer. He directed me to a display and grinned and said, "so which one do you want?"

I looked.

I mean, I stared--with that half stupified, half dumbfounded, half perplexed look I get on my face whenever I do things like try to park the car without turing off the ignition.

At first I thought it was a joke, but he was seriously, so serious.

He was going to get me a Snuggie.

I did my favorite acronym--LOL--and said "I DON'T WANT A SNUGGIE!"

He was shocked. "But you're always talking about Snuggies," he said.

Do you think he thinks he's married to Kristina P.?

Oh, peeps, I feel so sorry for you today. I just regurgitated my entire weekend all over this post, and now you have to clean it up.

I feel so much better though.

Thanks for the plunger.

Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

That's what I'm going to write on the cute little gift tags attached to my neighborhood Christmas presents.

"Orange you glad I didn't say banana?"

Can you guess what I'm giving the neighborhood this year? Huh? Huh? Huh?

That's right, knock knock jokes.

I was going to give them a little take out box full of fortune cookies . . .

. . . with a gift tag that said, "Have a Very Merry Christmas! (in bed)"

(wink wink)

But now that I'm in the orange biz it seems only fitting that I give knock knock jokes.

Speaking of oranges, remember Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story?

I could have been his body double yesterday while I was out selling.

FIFTEEN freakin' degrees! Need I say more?

I was totally decked out in my apple bottom jeans and my boots with the fur. (Plus my under armor, a pair of tights, three pairs of soccer socks, two sweaters, two coats, two pairs of mittens and a thick green knitted scarf.) (It took me ten minutes to get undressed for my steaming hot bath at the end of the day.)

But the sun was my friend, so I kicked back and threw myself a tailgate party. If I had been able to feel my fingers and toes I would've sworn I was at Hukilau beach. When I closed my eyes the sounds of the passing traffic coming and going sounded almost exactly like North Shore waves, building and crashing and building and crashing.

Thank goodness for memory cards and memory sticks and USB ports in our minds.

With a little sun and a little imagination, anything is possible. Even at fifteen degrees.

Although I must admit, things are a little tougher at eight degrees. Especially when my thirteen year old tries to walk out the door wearing only a t-shirt and jeans. I've been letting their inappropriate attire slide, but someone's got to be the mom around here at that temp.

"GET YOUR COAT ON RIGHT NOW, YOUNG MAN!" I screamed at the top of my lungs this morning.

I wasn't trying to be rude, I was trying to be protective. I would have done the same thing if he was laying in the middle of the road and I saw a semi-truck approaching. I want my kids to be warm no matter what's coming at 'em.

Unfortunately he thought I was getting all up in his grill. And so did his mittens. When I marched over to his backpack and yanked out his mittens, would you believe it, those mittens were flipping me off!

I kid not, they were giving ME the finger!

Hmmph! Mittens these days!!

Welcome to my world . . .

This is my world:




And this is me being open-blinded about my world:

(Told ya.)

And this is me getting my kids out of bed before school to shovel the driveway instead of the lawn:

Not to mention the driveway of the cute little ole' lady across the street who's husband, the meat cutter ran off with his meat wrapper thirty years ago. 

(Perfect people are people too.)

And this is me forcing my kids at gunpoint to get cold feet and earn their own Christmas money all at the same time: 

And this is one twin feeling  glad tidings of great joy because he smashed brown slush in the other twin's face and made him cry. 

And this is my daughter wearing the pink fuzzy slippers given to her by her basketball coach who says she shoots like a flamingo.  

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I've never seen a flamingo shoot a basketball so I can't speculate. 

Enuff said!

Open-minded, closed-blinded

I have my theories as to why people in Utah are so depressed, but I'm not one to speculate and tell.

If I was one to speculate and tell, however, I would assert that people in Utah are depressed because they keep their blinds closed all day long.

What's up with that? They're an open-minded, closed-blinded people.

Ba dum bum.

What in the world is everyone doing behind closed blinds? Messing up their houses?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I'm more of a closed-minded, opened-blinded kinda gal.

You just miss so much when you're the other way around.

For example, today was a let is snow, let it snow, let it snow day, and believe you me, it's way more emotionally fulfilling to sit in front of a roaring fireplace, drinking Swiss Miss and watching your entire world turn fluffy white if your blinds are open wide.

Speaking of snow, my kids are still trying to get the hang of it. Tonight my hub asked my twins to go out and shovel and when they came back in the house, the entire front lawn had been plowed clean.

LOLOLOLOL! How cute is that?

And at this very moment all four of my kids are outside (at 10 p.m.) trying to figure out how to make a snowman. "How do you make a snowman?" they keep saying.

"You just . . . make it," I keep saying back.

Have they never watched Frosty?

10:06--I am sitting by the fire watching my kids shovel the side lawn.

LOLOLOLOL!

10:10--One son just booked it across the drive way and did a belly flop into the heap of leftover Frosty the snow blob.

10:16--Wouldn't you know it, they just built a snow volcano! Hmmph.

What's that saying again? "You can take your kids out of Hawaii, but . . . you can't make them stop building volcanos?"

True that.

10:28--one twin is crying because the other twin just smeared brown slush all over his face.

Anyways, case in point: I wouldn't be able to see any of this if my blinds were closed.

IMUA! (and get that corn out of my face!)

In my own defense, for those of you who called social services on me for letting my son wear shoes with no soul, I DID have a pair of brand new shoes on the sidelines which I finally got him to change into during half-time.

Here is the evidence I presented in court:

Speaking of court, I got 100% on my first traffic school test. (Well, technically I wasn't at traffic school, I was at the DMV getting my Utah drivers license, but same diff.)

I also passed my eye test with 20/20 vision!

(Soooo thankful I'm back in Utah where perfection is attainable.)


Okay, so I've had the Red Raiders on my mind this past weekend. Partly because Kute Kasey is getting married in less than two weeks and then she'll do her student teaching at Kahuku high school, which means she'll officially be a Red Raider for life (unless she moves away, in which case she won't be allowed back on the campus.) (See this post if you don't get that inside joke.)

So anyways, I found the perfect wedding present for KK at D.I.

It's a Kahuku-For-Life t-shirt.

Actually I'm not the one who found the t-shirt at D.I, my Rock Star brother and his wife found it, but what KK doesn't know won't hurt her, right? (until the honeymoon.) hee hee (SORRY peeps, I should have warned you to cover your ears.)

Not judging or anything, but ain't giving a Red Raider FOR LIFE t-shirt to D.I. a bit oxymoronic? D.I. is a second hand store. It's for people who want to divorce their clothing.

FOR LIFE is TILL DEATH DO US PART, right? (Unless you move away).

Isn't giving a FOR LIFE t-shirt to D.I. like casting your pearls before the swine flu?

Speaking of t-shirts, last week I got this design in an email from a good friend in Laie who made t-shirts for the Kahuku fans to wear at the state championship football game against Kamehameha.

I lub this t-shirt because the back made me laugh. (oops, sorry, can't see it. It says "Don't be a HATER, cause you ain't a RED RAIDER for life.")

But the front made me think.

IMUA!

Or as the Robinson's would say: KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Great advice!

Unless you are a red raider for life and you just lost the state championship game to your rival school.

Am I right, or am I right?

I don't think my friend thought about the Robinson's when he made his IMUA Kahuku t-shirt, but I did cuz I'm just a dumb haole.

I thought about how if the Robinson's traveled through time to meet the Red Raiders after the game last Friday, they would probably sing that Rob Thomas song about letting things go and letting things slide and letting things roll right off your shoulders.

And then the Red Raiders would probably do a few little animated Kung Fu Panda kick-offs with their little animated heads.

Because fo' reals, shouldn't great advice come with a warning?

WARNING: Do not give the KEEP MOVING FORWARD advice within 30 days of serious disappointment, anger or pain.

Great advice is all about great timing. Otherwise ain't it kinda like saying there are other fish in the sea to someone who just got left at the alter, or you'll have other children to someone who just had a miscarriage?

It's redundant, like the doctor who keeps telling you to PUSH HARDER while you're in labor.

There is a time and a season for every purpose. A time to push harder and a time to keep moving forward.

And a time to put on your stretchy pants and scream GET THAT CORN OUT OF MY FACE!

Maybe great advice is less about great timing and more about great delivery.

For instance, it might be more effective if Rocky Balboa traveled through time to tell the Red Raiders IMUA.

Ya get me?

But what do I know? I'm Just a dumb haole.