In Which a Doughnut Makes Me the Most Powerful Being in the Universe

I walked into ward prayer on Sunday night and sat next to my friend La Petite.

LA PETITE: Did you nap after church?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Yes...

LA PETITE: That would explain why you're so much more mellow now than you were earlier.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What do you mean?

LA PETITE: Well...
Flashback to church
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I only slept for four hours last night.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: This morning I ate a chocolate doughnut. You know how when you eat a chocolate doughnut, you feel powerful?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I ate the chocolate doughnut, and I was like, "I am now the most powerful being in the universe."

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL (to choir pianist) Play what you wanna play. I WANNA SEE YOU BE BRAVE.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Turn to page seis.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Pagina seis.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I just decided to be bilingual.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Sporadically bilingual?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I'm going to put that on my resume.

Flash forward to ward prayer
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh. I see.

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

I'm something of a rock star to children. They love me ever so much. And I love them. I want a bunch of my own someday.

Last night, my younger siblings and some of the younger cousins decided to sleep at my grandmother's house, and I decided to join them.

It's been years since I graced a cousin sleepover with my presence. I guess that's why, when I laid my sleeping bag next to little Pixie Cousin's, she got inordinately excited.

She stuck her face next to mine and gave me a beatific smile. "Now we're really close to each other!"

I don't think anyone's said that to me before. If they have, they did not sound anywhere near as happy about it as Pixie Cousin did. So I was extremely flattered/gratified, and I returned her smile willingly.

Soon everyone was settled in bed. We of course did not fall asleep right away, because what kind of a sleepover would that be? W stayed up chatting with each other instead.

"I can't fall asleep," Pixie Cousin said mid-conversation.

"Try counting sheep," I suggested.

"I'll count the lights," Pixie Cousin said, referring to the light fixtures on the ceiling. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve."

There were only six light fixtures; she'd counted them twice. I grinned into my pillow.

After a while, nature took its course, and everyone began to get a little sleepy.

"Count the lights with me," Pixie Cousin whispered as my eyelids began to sag.

No problem, I figured. She thinks there are twelve lights. It'll be quick and easy to count to twelve.

"-nine, ten, eleven, twelve," I counted with Pixie Cousin.

There was a pause. "Thirteen," she prompted me.

"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen...twenty-five, twenty-six," we counted together.

How high could she possibly count?

"-thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three--what was that?" I asked, partly because I'd heard something outside and partly to distract from the counting.

It turned out there were some loud hotshot teenagers roaming the streets. It was distracting, but not distracting enough to last.

"Thirty-three." Pixie Cousin poked my neck with four of her fingers.

We counted those six light fixtures over and over, well into the hundreds. And then we counted them again.

With each number, I grew more and more tired. At each lag in my counting, Pixie Cousin would wait patiently for me to continue. If I didn't, I'd feel her little fingers poking me and hear her high-pitched whisper, "Sixty-three." Or "twenty-one." Or whatever number we happened to be on.

Eventually, thankfully, we both fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, Pixie Cousin beamed at me as I opened my eyes.

I smiled back, remembering it was Thanksgiving. Time to count my blessings...

"Let's count the lights!"

...or, you know, light fixtures work too.

Awkward Mormon Hanukkah

Heads up, everyone: Hanukkah starts on the day before Thanksgiving this year.

Every year, my celebration of one night of Hanukkah is made possible through five easy steps.

Step One: Learn all about Jewish heritage.
Judaism is a) a religion, b) a race, c) a culture.

The title of the blog may have clued you in that I don't practice Judaism the religion. However, I'm still descended from the Jewish race. That's not changing anytime soon or, well, ever.

My parents enjoy telling us about our ancestors. My mom prefers to tell stories about all her ancestors who have lived in America since the Mayflower, but she does make concessions to the Jewishness that comes from the Obnoxious side of the family. One of those was to purchase picture books about Jews when I was a small child.

We had one picture book about Judas Maccabee. For those of you who don't know who that is, allow me to summarize the book as I recall it:

Judas Maccabee lives in some early century. Dudes come to the Jews and start destroying all their stuff. Above all, they're destroying and plundering the Jewish temple, which ticks Judas off. He decides to fight back.

Judas Maccabee organizes guerilla warfare against the dudes who are destroying their stuff. He wins.

Once the dudes are gone, the Jews try to put themselves back together. They start cleaning up the temple. They want to light their menorah, but there's only one jar of sacred oil, enough for just one day. The menorah is lit, and it miraculously stays lit for eight days. And so the celebration of Hanukkah is born. The End.

That's the story. More or less.

Step Two: Know what to eat..

1) Latkes and applesauce, as stressed by the picture book Latkes and Applesauce. The thesis of this book is that Hanukkah isn't Hanukkah unless you eat some latkes. And latkes aren't latkes unless they're eaten with applesauce. And latkes and applesauce are delicious.

2) Gold coins, dried fruit, and nuts won playing dreidel (see Step Four).

Something you should not eat on Hanukkah: Pork chops.

Granted, pork chops with latkes and applesauce are wonderful. Except I didn't even say that, because how would I know? It's not like I've ever tried that particular combination.

On Hanukkah.

Nope.

Step Three: Know what to sing.
This one's a little harder, because I don't know many Hanukkah-appropriate songs. I've solved this problem by repeatedly singing songs from Fiddler on the Roof.

I also like to sing the Hebrew portion of "There Can Be Miracles." I learned how to pronounce all the words in ninth-grade choir, and I haven't stopped singing it over and over again since (much to the dread of my family).

Step Four: Know what activities to do.
My family likes to play dreidel. It's this game with a special top (the dreidel) and a pot of candy. It's kind of like gambling except with gold coins, dried fruit, and nuts.

There are symbols on the side of the dreidel that tell you how much candy to take or give back after you've spun it. My favorite symbol is "nun" because it means exactly what it sounds like.

My blue-and-silver plastic dreidel has mysteriously gone missing. I would think that someone stole it except I can think of zero circumstances under which anyone would want to steal a dreidel.

Over the weekend, I looked online for a replacement. This turned out to be a bizarre experience.

For instance, did you know that there are dreidel Christmas tree ornaments? That seems wrong on so many levels.

Also, dreidels can be bought in packs of eight. I don't know why anyone would want eight dreidels.

Unless...oh! Oh! I've got it. Maybe they're dreidels that self-destruct after each night of Hanukkah. So you have to have eight of them. Because if you don't, you wouldn't have any more festive Hanukkah activities to do.

It all makes sense now.

Step Five: Share the joy of the holiday with everyone around you.
AWKWARD MORMON GRL: Happy Hanukkah!!!

FRIENDS: What

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: It's Hanukkah. Didn't you know that? Oh right, you don't know that because you're not Jewish. I always know when it's Hanukkah. My Israelite senses tingle.

FRIENDS: Get out of our lives.

Philosophical Interlude

I now proclaim to the internet that I think I may be majoring in the wrong field.

My major is in English with an emphasis on creative writing. I love to write, and what's more I love to write creatively. What's even more, sometimes I feel like I'm good at it.

I love the potential that writing has to reach others' lives. The span of my lifetime limits my ability to personally seek out and deliver face-to-face messages to other people. If I wanted to personally seek out people and deliver them face-to-face messages. Which I don't. I'm more of an introvert than anything and I would rather be repeatedly punched in the kidneys than have to meet people I didn't previously know. And don't even get me started on phone calls.

Writing allows me to create something that can influence others' lives--cheer them, inspire them, make them laugh--without leaving the safety of my own mind or sometimes even my house.

All in all, it's a pretty good setup.

However. Recently I've noticed that I seem capable of writing one thing, and one thing alone:

Philosophy.

If I sit down to write about a clever text exchange with Best Friend Boy, my creative arteries become clogged. Instead I start to expound deeply about the nature of our friendship, or the subject matter we were texting about, or something completely unrelated such as the moral implications of the public transit system.

I didn't even know the public transit system had moral implications until I found myself writing about it. And so it goes.

I try to write about Disneyland? I have an essay about the meaning of Disneyland's existence.

I try to write about delicious food? I find myself justifying the consumption of exciting foods even though my nutritional needs could just as easily be met by boring ones.

I try to write a funny story about how weird my life is right now? I end up with this post.

Blast you, philosophy. I will never be yours. I will get my English degree no matter what. Even if my head explodes from unshared philosophical discourse. Even if I DIE.

Which would arguably happen if my head exploded from unshared philosophical discourse. But let's not think too deeply here. I'm tired of doing that.

Calling It Quits

Teenage girls think they're soooo funny, even when they're not. Especially when they're not.

Back when Viola and I were teenagers, we used to get together to write short stories. We would each start a story, write a few paragraphs, and then switch. And switch. And switch until it all came to either a fitting or rather abrupt ending, depending on how well we found we could write that day.

Another thing we did as teenagers was eat dollar frosties from Wendy's. I'm surprised that I've ended up a relatively healthy person with low blood pressure and good teeth, because we ate many a frosty back in the day. And I swear, every time they made us high. After a few spoonfuls we'd be giggling at everything.

One evening, we were writing and eating frosties at the same time. 'Twas a dangerous combination. We ended up writing a story about a guy named Septimus and a girl named Ivory who had the whole love-from-opposite-sides-of-the-tracks thing going on. Septimus had, like, twenty-five siblings (of which he was the seventh--a bit of frosty-induced cleverness on our part, no doubt) and this truly awful car that was held together with chicken wire and string or something else that lent a subtle hint that Septimus was poor.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Let's call it quits.

VIOLA:...the story?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: No! The car! Let's name it Quits!

We practically rolled on the floor laughing at this hilariousness.

When we graduated from high school and I got my laptop, the following ensued:

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Viola! I'm calling my laptop Quits!

More hilariousness. More laughter. Because aside from the punniness of the name, what could be more ironic than a spanking brand-new laptop called Quits?

Years passed. Now Quits has a battery problem.

Every time I unplug him, Quits quits.

Touché, irony. Touché.

Day of Dejection

One day you wake up late and you don't get enough breakfast and it's cold outside and it's November and by the time you get to class it's as if every disappointing, stressful, and difficult thing from the past six months is sitting on your shoulders. Weighing you down. Forcing the shape of your spine into a parenthesis and the shape of your thoughts into a circle of self-defeat.

Of course on a day like this I was working on a project for Nameless Utah College's theatre department.

Don't get me wrong. I love theatre. And I love projects, especially hands-on projects that require building stuff. As a kid, I wanted to be a construction worker. (And an artist. And a doctor. And everything else ever). When I first volunteered in the theatre department, the foreman was all, "Here are some two-by-fours and an impact gun," and then left me to figure out how to use those tools with no previous experience.

It was horrifying, but with trial and error I got it. Since then it's been fun. Now I know how to build and paints things and how to hang, cable, and gel lights. Good times.

In spite of how much I enjoy the work, I find the atmosphere in the theatre project shop to be oppressive. Depressive. My parenthesis spine slouched a little more as I kneeled on the cold floor, taping down carpets.

Except the carpets would not tape straight. I don't know why. Tape is a straight line. The edges of carpet are straight lines. But when I placed the tape on the carpet, the tape got all loopy and weird and then the carpet looked like it had this lopsided black border.

I hated the way the carpet looked, and quickly some of those feelings transferred over to myself.

Wow, awesome, Awkward Mormon Girl I thought in a mature and non-self-indulgent way. This tape job is almost as messed up as your life.

And so it went.

The end of the tape roll is stuck... just like you!

The main difference between you and this faded, ugly carpet is that the carpet is useful.

Something clever about the splinters in that piece of wood over there and your prickly personality.

FOREMAN: Oh, you're finished taping? Why don't you sweep?

So I took a dust bin and a hand broom. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled across the floor, sweeping as I went. Fragments of glass, broken screws, and dirt was everywhere.

Sweeping this dust is like sweeping up the dust of my dreams.

At this point, I just started praying. Not with my arms folded or anything, but in the back of my mind.
"I'm doing the best I can," I said. "You know I'll keep going no matter what. But I need some encouragement to remind me that I'm doing the things I'm supposed to.  Please give me something to encourage me."

Directly after sweeping, I went to the cafeteria to get some lunch. As I wandered around, looking at the options, I noticed this cute boy who's in one of my classes.

He'd never said two words to me. As I passed him, though, he looked directly at me and smiled. Widely.

I smiled back. In that moment, I felt a little less dejected. "Thanks," I prayed in my heart, "for the encouragement."

After selecting my food, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands before eating as any RN's child would.

As I stepped up to the sink, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and froze.

No wonder the boy had smiled at me. I had dirt all over my face! Apparently not all of what I'd swept up had found its way to the dustpan.

"Very funny," I said to Heavenly Father. I swear I could hear Him laughing.

Vehicular Homicide and Other Things I Try to Avoid

I was almost hit by a bike in Verona.

Well, bikes in the plural, really. The bikers would ring these little bells to warn me and my brain would be all, "Oh, a little bell. That's nice" never equating the sound with DANGER. After a couple times of my almost getting hit this girl in the group gave herself the specific assignment of yelling "AWKWARD MORMON GIRL!" every time a bike bore down on me. That got my attention.

Barely.

Then there was the time my family was in a Twenty-Fourth of July parade. We all wore pioneer clothes. Dad pulled a handcart with Little Sister and Baby Sister inside. Mom and Older Sister and I walked.

I was so excited by the experience, waving at the crowds and making my cloth doll wave too, that I wasn't paying attention. I stepped in the handcart's path. Dad pulled it over my foot.
Mom rushed to my aid. She was convinced I was maimed. (I wasn't.) She was swearing up and down and all around. Of course, the stake president was sitting with his family on that particular stretch of street.

Things got awkward.



The Beatles, crossing the street with
grace, speed, and style. A car would
never dare hit them. Not even if they
were jaywalking.

 

In spite of these near-disasters, and in spite of the fact that Mom has always been convinced that I would be hit by a car long before now (she feels that in addition to being highly distractible, I never paid enough attention to the Barney song, "Stop, Look, and Listen"), I haven't even come close. Not even when I jaywalked with the Chess Master after track... by which sentence I mean that I am a law-abiding citizen who has never jaywalked, not even as an impressionable fifteen-year-old who wanted to impress a boy she liked. Capisce?

I definitely wasn't jaywalking the other day when a car simply didn't see me.

I was using a crosswalk near Nameless Utah College. The little stick figure person on the crosswalk light shone brightly. "Place your fate in my stick figure hands," it said. "Step into the street," it said.

"Okay," I said. "I trust you, little stick figure person."

Alas, my trust was misplaced. The stick figure person didn't know that the driver of a car making a right turn wasn't paying attention.

The right-turning car came to an abrupt halt just before the crosswalk. I also halted--luckily I'd seen the car before it saw me. Had I gone any farther I would have stepped straight into its path.

An awkward impasse ensued. The car didn't move. Neither did I. 'Cause, I mean, what are the rules of etiquette in this situation? Nobody taught me the proper way to handle this in Driver's Ed. Or Pedestrian's Ed aka "Stop, Look, and Listen" (which by the way, I did actually pay attention to. Enough attention to appreciate the catchy tune, anyways).

Still no moving.

After a few seconds of this confusion, I moved forward. So did the car.

It didn't hit me...but when it braked its bumper was about to get pretty fresh with my leg. So to speak.

If crosswalks are this dangerous, then maybe I should just go back to jaywalking.

If I had ever jaywalked.

Which I haven't.

Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

Wrong Number

In the five years that I've had my phone, approximately 20.345 squared people have called me asking for Kathryn.

Some financial people have called me. Like credit people and banks.

Also, some guy who called twice saying he was very upset with Kathryn and that she'd better meet up with him "or else."

And a guy who found Kathryn's number on a Frisbee at a golf course. Kathryn was so attached to her Frisbee that she felt the need to write her number on it. And then throw it into some golf course bushes.

Then there's Ryan.

Unknown Number: hi ryan! would you mind texting me to let me kmw what time my apt is tomorrow? thank you! looking forward to seeing you!

I texted back, "I think you have the wrong number," and instantly regretted it.

a) "I think you have the wrong number." Why would I even say that? I know that my name isn't Ryan. I don't think it. If I was going to let the texter off easy, I should have just said, "You have the wrong number." But

b) Why in the world would I say "You have the wrong number" anyways? A wrong number is a golden opportunity to be ridiculous or at the very least, say something interesting.

Yesterday I got this one:

Second Unknown Number: Hi this is Tracy --- I lost your dad's phone number can you give it to me also bishop --- too

Tracy ---: I have a calling in my ward

I prepared an interesting response.

Awkward Mormon Girl: Dear Tracy ---, I regret to inform you that you have reached the wrong number. I do not know any Bishop ---. However, I could still give you my dad's phone number if you want it. My mom is never able to get him to pick up, but you may have more success. Sincerely, Not the Person You Were Trying to Reach

Awkward Mormon Girl: P.S. I also have a calling in my ward! What a coincidence.

I settled back to wait for a responses, certain I would either not get one or that I would get an equally interesting response in return, and then who knows what would happen? This could be a great chance to whet my texting wit!

My phone buzzed.

Tracy ---: Is this Brook

Well. I tried.