Help?

I started this blog because I wanted to be able to express who I am and say things that are personal, almost as a therapy. My problem is that I don't know how to do this. The fifty things post was good like that, and the ritual one, but I am stuck and don't know what to write about. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them!

Brrr!

We have had a lot of snow lately, and it has been cold. I grew up in California, and the cold is something I'm not really used to yet. One good thing I can say about the snow is that it is really pretty. I took this picture a while ago, but it is still one of my favorite snow pictures. The snow makes me want to stay inside and not leave my house, which you would think would make it easier to study, but it doesn't. I spend way too much time just watching it fall. It's so peaceful and lovely. I have been extraordinarily busy lately, with loads of things to get done, but I can't stop watching the snow.

This is a painting of the LDS temple in Oakland California. It is perched in the Oakland hills, overlooking the bay. On a clear day you can see the Golden Gate, the Bay, and the San Mateo bridges from on top of it. At night it is a field of lights. My dad proposed to my mom at a bench on top of the first tier. They were married there a few months later. I will probably be married there too. I think it is very pretty.

The Ritual

I check the clock; good, I have two hours to get ready. I hop in the shower to shampoo my hair and scrub my face. I stand in my robe with a towel on my head trying to decide what to wear. I pick the cutest outfit I can, try every pair of shoes I own with it, and get dressed. Then it's time to blow dry and curl my hair. Then on goes the makeup, no rush now, not like in the mornings. I take my time, relaxed and unhurried. Next it's time for contacts; I check to see I have the essentials in my bag, then put on my coat and shoes. I have 10 minutes extra, so I decide to leave early and walk slowly, to the Testing Center.
This sounds like it should be for getting ready for a date, but it isn't (I haven't had a date in about a year and a half, 17 1/2 months to be exact.) This is my pre-exam ritual; I never do as well on the exams if I skip this routine. When my roommates come home in the afternoon and see me putting more effort into my appearance than is usual, they always ask if I have a test.
This week was the first wave of exams this term. Next week will be midterms. Twice this week I primped for a bubble sheet, and next week I will again.

If you liked Brokeback to the Future

You'll love these recuts:
Sleepless in Seattle
Psycho
Shining
Titanic (this one's not as good)
SOTU

Update: the psycho clip doesn't seem to want to work quite right so here's the URL:
http://www.movietrailertrash.com/views/demos/psycho_hi.mov

Rhymes With Orange is probably my favorite comic strip because I can relate to it so well, and to today's strip in particular. There was one a few months ago that was so like an experience I had that I wish I'd saved it. It was of a woman opening her freezer and being attacked by falling frozen bananas. She then decides that it would be a good time to bake banana bread for "the entire [church] congregation." I had a roommate for the past year that would buy bananas, never eat them before they turned brown, and then put the icky banans in the freezer. It got to be that every time I opened the freezer bananas would fall out. I threw away any banana that dared to land on my feet. She moved out the the day before the strip ran and I was finally able to throw all the bananas away and reclaim space for food that belonged there, like frozen potstickers and ice cream.

Recipe Time!

Cinnamon Rolls
3 ½ cups flour
1 1/4 c butter, divided
1 T yeast
1 ¼ cups milk
½ c sugar
1 tsp salt
1 egg
In mixing bowl combine 1 ½ cups flour and yeast. Heat milk, sugar, ¼ butter, and salt to 115 , stirring. Add to dry mixture, add egg. Beat at low speed for 30 seconds, then at high for 3 minutes. Stir in remaining flour to make a soft dough. Shape into ball. Place in lightly greased bowl, turn once to grease surface. Cover, let rise until doubled (1 1/2 -2 hours). Punch down. Let rest 10 minutes. Roll into a 14-20” rectangle (about ¼” thick). If the dough is too elastic let rest for 5 minutes, then roll again. Melt about 6 T butter, spread over dough. Sprinkle sugar on top until the butter cannot absorb any more. Sprinkle cinnamon over this and roll up. Cut into 1-1 1/2” slices, put in greased glass baking dish. Let rise 10-15 minutes. Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes. Melt remaining butter, brush over tops of rolls.
If you must frost them, I usually only use a glaze, but often leave them completely bare. For a glaze I start with about a cup of powdered sugar in a zpper bag and add milk, one smidgen at a time until it is thin enough to squeeze over the tops, but not too runny to soak in. This is the easiest way to make them pretty with the least amount of mess.

Someone suggested that I occaionally post a recipe that has won me some sort of award. This can't be a weekly thing (I haven't entered that many cooking contests) so I don't know how often I will. I have entered (and won) two bake-off competitions with this recipe and it is one of my most requested. Sometimes it feels funny to be only 21 and have enough recipes requested to have a "most requested" list. Even my mom switched to my recipe, which started out as hers but has been changed gradually over the past 10 years to what it is now. It's kinda crazy that I started cooking for real when I was 11, huh?

50 Things About Me

I know everyone is doing these, but I think they are a pretty good way of fitting a lot of personal information in a small place without the pressure of needing to be clever or funny or really profound.

1. I am a 21-year-old student at BYU, which makes me almost an old maid here; I have not quite two years until I really am.
a. BYU joke time—Did you know that if you don’t graduate with both a BA/S and an MRS they refund your tuition?
2. I am LDS
3.
4. I love to read
5. Favorite books include “No Doubt About It” by Sherri Dew, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, “Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell, the Harry Potter series, and “Daughter of a King” by Rachel Ann Nunes.
6. I have all of the Harry Potter Books on CD except the fourth
7. I use them to fall asleep when I am worrying about something; they’re a great prelude to dreaming.
8. I really enjoy Oscar Wilde as well.
9. My favorite colors are blue and white, which is convenient here in Cougar Town.
10. The perfume I wear every day is Victoria’s Secrets’ Very Sexy, the original, not the second one.
11. I have never dyed my hair, which people often don’t believe because I’m the only one in my family to keep the blonde after age 12.
12. The one store I grew up with that I wouldn’t mind having here in Provo is Trader Joe’s. Fresh produce and great pre-packaged foods for less than normal grocery store prices.
13. The broccoli at Trader Joe’s is the only store-bought broccoli that I can eat. I grew up on homegrown veggies and broccoli is the most different.
14. I am an avid scrapbooker, when I have the time.
15. I have never been skiing, even though I know one of the US Olympic skiers.
16. I have been sewing since forever and got my first sewing machine when I was seven years old.
17. I learned to sew from both parents.
18. The fact that my dad sews was our family's best kept secret until I let the cat out of the bag at a church girl’s camp in front of more than one hundred women and girls, many knew him and called him to “ask for help” after camp let out. I was telling them about my worst date: the junior prom. When my date arrived my dad was finishing the hems of my dress, but that's a long story, so I'll have to save it for later.
19. I’ve been dealing with depression since I was thirteen years old.
20. In that time I have hit four major low points and am always afraid of finding myself in the fifth.
21. I found in the past year that I also have ADD- attention type (not hyperactive)
22. I spent $120 on prescription co-pays in the month of January, more than normal, but not by much.
23. I have really bad allergies to anything that grows, which is why fall is my favorite season- everything is dying but not too cold yet.
24. I have a dream of decorating my home in a nautical theme, with sailboat artwork and a color palatte of blues (navy to pale), tan, white, and red accents.
25. I am a very girly girl, but not in the shopping/beauty parlor way, I'm more practical than that, but I do wear makeup.
26. The only jewelry I wear is a necklace I got in the seventh grade and small silver hoop earrings.
27. I am the oldest of six kids, the youngest is 9, so there are twelve years between oldest and youngest, but the three after me were born before I turned 5.
28. My favorite comic strip is Pickles. I especially enjoy the “secret jokes” like the pictures on the wall, the magazines Nelson reads and the shirts he wears (CTR!)
29. I’m a recent Mac convert
30. I play the piano and the flute.
31. Yes I was a band-geek, flute section of course.
32. I joined the marching band because they were going to Hawaii my sophomore year, but my parents made me keep doing it for the rest of high school.
33. I’m strictly an amateur musician, not very good at all.
34. I have a wide variety of musical interests. Basically I like something of everything (except rap, which, IMHO isn’t music) and everything of nothing.
35. I have been listening to classical-ish music more than anything else lately- especially William Joseph (piano, album “within” is AMAZING) and Joshua Bell, also amazing.
36. I really like mellow music, it's calming.
37. Probably the strangest musician I listen to is Badly Drawn Boy. My favorite of his albums is the “About a Boy” soundtrack, followed by “Have You Fed the Fish?”
38. I think Utah is a funny place. People here actually think Salt Lake City is a “big city”! HAHAHAHAHA!!
39. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, an area that has like 3 times the population of the entire state of Utah.
40. People go to the symphony in Utah to feel cultured and then clap between the movements!
41. I feel like that one was cheating so I’ll add extras past 50.
42. I would really like to go to a pastry school in France right after I graduate.
43. My favorite person I have known was my Grandpa Max. I feel really blessed to have been able to visit him so often in the last year of his life, and am looking forward to reading his autobiography, which I don't have a copy of here in my posession, but they have one in the library.
44. I really enjoy learning about my family history. I recently found out about an ancestor that experienced severe persecution in Missouri that I have been trying to read more about. I also found out that I have Huguenot ancestry.
45. I really enjoy photography, something I got from G-pa Max, former professional photographer, lithographer, printer and ceramist.
46. I have a special place in my heart for England, especially London and west Yorkshire, a couple of my favorite places ever visited.
47. I liked England way better than I liked Hawaii.
48. I hate dirt to the point that sand is my least favorite thing about the beach and I refused to sit or play in it when I was small.
49. I miss "my baby" more than anyone else from home.
50. I also miss my family’s bird and wish I could kidnap him and bring him here. He’s a blue and white Australian Grey Wing Budgerigar, and he’s gorgeous and behaves better for me than anyone else.
51. I am more likely to marry an accountant than someone with any other profession.
52. I don’t really have any friends here in Provo, and I keep telling myself there are just three months until I move to a new apartment and ward.
53. New- I think this picture is kind of icky and I look blah. It was taken while I was being a wedding photographer at a wedding I helped to plan and organize, so it makes sense that I don't look my best. Even in "bridesmaid attire" one must never look better than the bride, (whom I have lots of pictures of, naturally, and she looks great in all of them!)

Questions?

Am I the mom of my apartment? Some days it feels like it. It has been this way in every apartment I have lived in, even when I was the youngest of the roommates, which was most of the time. But the questions... Here's a sample of the strangest, funniest, and stupidest (yes there is such thing as a stupid question):

- How do you cook ground beef?
- What should I look for in medical insurance?
- What are the costs involved in planning a wedding?
- Will you be my wedding photographer? (asked the morning of the wedding, I said yes)
- What is the best way to clean a countertop?
- Do you need to refrigerate Skippy™?
- Which is harder: organic chemistry or microbiology? (I don’t know anything about science, I'’m a FaCS Ed major)
- How do you say, "“I feel like I have a cold coming on,"” in Spanish? (I don'’t know any Spanish, I took 6 years of French in middle/high school, and would have to think for a bit before I could say something like that in French, it'’s been a while)
- Questions about calculus- the last time I took a math class was in 2001, and it was algebra, I have never even attempted calculus, so I would not be a good person to ask.
- Where country is Frankfurt in? I can'’t remember?
- Is Albania by the Ukraine?
- Which war was McArthur in?
- Who discovered penicillin?
- How do you spell lawyer?

Keep in mind that this is only a sample, and that I can answer all of the questions except the ones I have indicated I do not know the answers to.

Utahisms

Generally Utahisms are funny things that people say here, either due to the culture or the accent (yes Utahns have accents).
The accent makes them sound like this:
"I was barn in a carn feld in Saint Jarge and I live in the farty-farth ward." Also the guttural stops that replace consonants: Mou'ain, sa'wich.
"Culture" ones can be things like:
"Fer cu-ute"- how cute, or "Fer ignern't"- how rude (?). Also "sweet spirit"- the best thing he/she has to offer is a sweet spirit, pretty much means ugly.

But of course, you know you've spent too long living in or are from Utah when. . .

Green jell-o with carrot shreds mixed in doesn't seem strange.

You can pronounce Tooele. (you know you're in Tooele when there are cattle guards at the driveway to the church, the gas station, and the high school)

The U is not just a letter - Neither is the Y.

You have actually eaten funeral potatoes.

You've gotten both heat and frost burns off your car's door handle in the same month.

You are not surprised to hear words like "Darn, Fetch, Flip", "Oh, My Heck" and "Shootdang". (and in cases of extreme disgust/surprise/etc: Oh my freakin' heck")

Hunting season is a school holiday.

The largest liquor store is the state government.

30% humidity is muggy and almost unbearable.

Somewhere in your family tree is a polygamist.

You know the difference between a 'Steak House' and a 'Stake House'.

The elevation exceeds the population

You have a bumper sticker that says "Families are Forever." (or even worse a license plate frame that says "RULDS2?")

You were an aunt or uncle before you were three.

Your spouse's mother was pregnant at your wedding.

You have more children than you can find biblical names for.

Your first child was conceived on your honeymoon.

hurricane isn't something you worry about coming, it's a city, and it's pronounced "Hurecun"

You feel guilty when you watch Monday Night Football.

Your kids believe the deer hunt is a national holiday.

You drink Coca Cola from a brown paper bag.

You wonder why fire truck drivers honk when you drive 35 mph in the left lane on the freeway.

There is a similarity between a church basketball game and the L.A. riots.

You think Jack Daniels is a country western singer.

You can make Jell-O salad without the recipe.

You've heard about BYU football over the pulpit at church on Sunday.

You have two gallons of ice cream in your freezer at all times, in case of emergency.

Your father-in-law thinks Ronald Reagan was a liberal.

A member of your family wrote in Lavell Edwards for president in the last election.

Cars in the slow lane are traveling the fastest; cars in the fast lane are traveling the slowest; cars in the middle lanes are always trying to exit, and the turn signal tells other drivers to speed up.

Sandals are the best-selling shoes, and are often worn with socks.

You have to ask for the uncensored version of "Titanic."

You learn about the Mormon Church by taking history in elementary school.

You live in a state where Democrats always come in third place, unless a zoo animal is running. Then they come in fourth.

You're on your own if you are turning left.

Schools stay open, even if two feet of snow falls overnight, but close for the opening of hunting season.

People wear shorts and T-shirts if the temperature rises above 32 degrees.

There is a church on every corner, but they all teach the same thing.

People drive to Idaho (or Arizona) to pick up a gallon of milk so they can play the lottery.

In-state college football rivalries are bigger than the Super Bowl.

Beer drinkers don't shop on Sunday.

Every driveway has a minivan and a pickup truck.

When you buy a new vehicle, cigarette lighters are optional equipment but gun and ski racks are standard.

Every time a new family moves into your neighborhood, the local elementary school has to hire a new teacher.

Your paycheck has an additional 10 percent deduction.

"Temple recommend" is acceptable identification for cashing a check.

More movies are filmed in your town than in Hollywood.

Your neighbors complain about where they live, yet refuse to return to the state they moved from.

You make a toast with red punch at your wedding reception.

You have more raw wheat stored than some Third World countries. (As well as a year's supply of TP ready to be raided by any willing youngster)

Your idea of a wild party is a six pack of Pepsi and a PG-13 movie.

You think "You're an 8 cow wife" is a compliment.