Awkward Mormon Girl in the Big Apple

Last spring, Older Sister said to Little Sister and me, "This time next year, we're going to New York."

It is a lifelong dream of Older Sister's to go to New York City. In her lifetime, she's been to the East Coast and the West Coast. She's visited Mexico. She lived in South America during her mission. Yet she has never, ever made it to New York City.

Little Sister and I were all, "Yeah, cool, Older Sister." This was said with about 53% skepticism. We thought it would be fun to go, but we sort of doubted it would actually happen.

Then, suddenly, we found ourselves buying plane tickets, and we realized that we are legitimately going to NYC in the spring of 2015.

This had been surreal to me, and I believe surreal to Little Sister, but not so for Older Sister in the fact that she seems to have envisioned her trip to New York for so long that she knows exactly what it will be like.

Broadway shows, restaurants, historical sites, department stores, sightseeing, three museums and three city tours, the temple, Central Park--Older Sister is planning it all to the minute.

Little Sister and I have been helping. Sort of.

OLDER SISTER: (after spending ten minutes trying to decide what sights to see while waiting for our Brooklyn pizza tour) I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Yeah, the Brooklyn Bridge.

OLDER SISTER: Do you guys care if we don't go to the top of the Statue of Liberty?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: If we're already going to the top of the Empire State Building and the top of the Rock, then I see no reason to go to the top of the Statue of Liberty, too. Unless there is a singing French pigeon up there. In which case I am all for that.

OLDER SISTER: I just had an idea. What if-

LITTLE SISTER: We reenacted all of An American Tail? Yes.

Then Little Sister and I high-fived.

The Battle of the Washing Machine

I mentioned about a month ago that I had a struggle known as the Battle of the Washing Machine to relate to you.

One night, before I started preparing fresh clams for dinner, I sorted my laundry and put the first load in the washing machine. 'Cause I'm an adult like that. And not only did I put the clothes in the machine, but I actually added soap and started, it too. Word.

The idea was that I would put a second load in while the clams were cooking, and then another after I ate/before I prepared to go to the temple.

However. I got so fascinated by the death throes of the dying clams, I forgot to put in another load of laundry. Nor did I notice that the usual washing machine noises were not issuing from the laundry room. Or laundry hall, which would be a more apt name for the extremely rectangular laundry space in my apartment.

It wasn't until after I'd finished devouring the clams that I remembered my laundry. I stepped into the laundry hall and opened up the washing machine, expecting to be greeted by clean clothes.

I was instead greeted by a washing machine full of articles of clothing floating in cold, soapy water.

First I thought, hey, maybe there's too much laundry in there, even though I've washed more laundry than this at a time. So I proceeded to pull out about half of the clothes. This was a very wet decision.

Then I restarted the washing machine and went to change into my Sunday best. When I returned, however, the washing machine had stopped again.

I pulled out some more clothes. The floor was quickly becoming very wet and very slippery, so I grabbed the towels I was planning to wash in my third load of laundry and spread them on the ground.

I changed the washing machine settings, added some more for good measure, and started it... again. And it stopped... again.

I began to wonder if something was stuck in the inner workings of the washing machine. So I plunged my arm into the icy depths of the cold water and felt around for anything that seemed out of place.

I was unpleasantly reminded that I have no idea how the mechanics of a washing machine work. Baby Brother probably knows, but I don't. What would my hand find when it touched the bottom of the washing receptacle? Spinning blades? Sharks? Grindylows?

None of the above. There was nothing interesting in the bottom of the washing machine, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, either. Naturally, I restarted it once more.

Naturally, it stopped once more.

Pepper came home to find me in the laundry hall, dressed in my nice clothes and on the verge of spontaneous frustrated combustion.

Pepper was all, "Have you tried--?"

And I was all, "DON'T MOCK ME. I'VE TRIED EVERYTHING."

Like all battles, the Battle of the Washing Machine has statistics. By the time I got the washing machine to properly wash my clothes, I had racked up quite a few statistics indeed.

Number of Total Hours I Spent Tinkering with the Washing Machine: Several

Number of Gallons of Water Upon the Floor of the Laundry Hall: Enough to reenact the sinking of the Titanic.

Number of My Towels Used to Clean Up the Water: All of them. And some dish towels, and some sweaters.

Number of Times I Kicked the Rather Newish Washing Machine: More than a civilized being should.

Number of Times the Washing Machine Started Up After I Kicked It: Once.

Number of Casualties: One, namely my confidence in my ability to do laundry without turning it into a theatrical production.

Another Anniversary

It was 10 o'clock pm on March 24th when I made a phone call from my California hotel.

Ring ring.

Viola answered. Groggily.

Had I awoken her?

Yes, I had.

Wasn't it 9 o'clock back in Utah?

No, it was actually 11 o'clock.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry," I said, breathless and embarrassed. "I just wanted to let you know that I decided that I like Runner Bean."

Viola gave me her official best friend approval. Then she went back to sleep and there I sat, alone with my phone, reveling in the quiet excitement of crushing on Runner Bean.

ONE YEAR LATER
"My anniversary is coming up," I explained to Etch-a-Sketch and Best Friend Boy. "It will be one year since I decided I liked Runner Bean. Therefore, I need an engagement ring."

They couldn't argue with logic like that. So one night, after a stake dance (a dance thrown by the Church for fourteen-to-eighteen-year-olds), Best Friend Boy drove me and Etch-a-Sketch all across town in search of an engagement ring.

The quest kept us up fairly late into the night. At some point, all three of us affected British accents, which we used for the remainder of the night.

"How did your parents meet?" I asked my friends in my British accent. That curiosity called marriage was on my mind.

I was in the back seat and they were in the front, so they twisted around to tell me their parents' tales. It wasn't the most exciting conversation we'd ever had, but I remember how it made me feel. Something about the combination of the nighttime drive, and the British accents, and my friends' support of my ridiculous desire to buy an engagement ring to mark one year of unrequited love made me simultaneously giddy and utterly content with my lot.

We looked at every one of those machines that vends little prizes in little plastic space saucer egg things in hopes of finding a sparkly ring. We looked and looked, but we couldn't find one. I ended up buying a garishly huge ring at the Princess Faire on a Disneyland trip a few days after.

ONE YEAR LATER
Best Friend Boy texted me.

Best Friend Boy: Happy Anniversary!

Awkward Mormon Girl: Haha. Thank you very much on behalf of myself and Runner Bean!

ONE YEAR LATER
Someone else was on my mind.

The day after my anniversay, I wrote in my journal, "A girl can only hang on to someone who won't let her in/she feels unable to let in for so long."

PRESENT DAY
Crushes aren't fun anymore.

Celebrating 2 Years of Awesome

Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of my first blog post aka the beginning of this whole entire blog aka the beginning of an extra dimension of my life.

It would be easy to flatline at this point in my life. I'm done with school, I have a job, and I'm out of my parents' house. Marriage, kids, my own house--all that is ahead of me, yet currently unattainable. So what do you do when the next big steps of your life cannot be reached?

You make stuff up. Specifically, you ask your roommates if they want to have a party on a Saturday night to celebrate your blog with you.

And then they say yes. So you make plans to go for Chinese food at Hometown's second-best Chinese restaurant.

And you're excited to surprise your roommates with the party favors you made for them.

But then your roommate Pepper surprises you with your very own custom t-shirt, which is even more exciting.

And then you go home and play games and introduce your roommates to Fraggle Rock. And then you all eat a delicious ice cream cake your roommate the Seamstress bought that you name your blog post after.

And now that you have actual blog merchandise, you know that you have to keep going for another year at least. I have some exciting stuff planned for the upcoming year, and I look forward to sharing it with you.

Happy two years, everyone!

Rite of Passage

Well, friends.

I am now an adult.

Not because I have passed both my 18th and 21st birthdays, respectively.

Not because I have graduated from college and have a real job.

Not even because I don't live with my parents anymore.

But because I bought Girl Scout cookies. From an actual Girl Scout.

There's nothing more grown-up than that.

How I accomplished this feat is a tale worth telling.

First, know that I had no interest in buying Girl Scout cookies.

Yes, yes, I know. Girl Scout cookies are the best. I have a high interest in the cookies themselves, but not in the purchasing of them.

Why's that? Well, consider the cookies. There are trefoils, which is the word Girl Scouts like to use instead of the equally confusing but actual name of shortbread. Though trefoils are very delicious, I can buy better shortbread cookies elsewhere.

There are samoas, which are concoctions made of shortbread, chocolate, caramel and coconut that unless I am very much mistaken have nothing to do with a lovely Pacific Island nation that is split between the United States and itself. E. L. Fudge makes a darned good samoa, so why should I buy them from the Girl Scouts?

Then there are thin mints. Which, surprisingly, are exactly what they sound like.

As a child, I loved thin mints. Now, however, I strongly dislike them. Thin mints just pale in comparison to all other mint cookies. Like mint Oreos, which are the food of the gods. And these other cookies I found that have a thin layer of mint cream on top of a chocolate wafer and then the whole thing is coated in chocolate. It's all the deliciousness of a Junior Mint but in a cookie. This is what, in a perfect world, a thin mint would be. Thin mints wish they were the cookie version of Junior Mints, while in reality they are the cookie version of Junior Mints' stingy grandfather.

So, obviously I had no need of any Girl Scout cookies whatsoever. When a lady at my workplace said, "Here's the order form of a Girl Scout I know and here are some samples," my response was akin to the "begone, foul Dwimmerlaik" speech Eowyn gives before she kills the Nazgul. Except it was about having no need of purchasing Girl Scout cookies, which I suppose ties in but distantly.

Even though I had no intention of buying Girl Scout cookies, I decided to sample one of the chocolate-covered peanut butter cookies because curiosity tells me to do things and then I do them.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Wow, these are good.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Like, really good.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I'll have another.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: And another.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Maybe two more.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Fine. I'll just buy a flippin' box.

I went to the order form and ordered a box of what are apparently called tagalongs (which is exactly the word that comes to mind when I think of chocolate-covered peanut butter cookies). Of course, I then had to order a box of trefoils and a box of samoas as well. Ordering one box of fundraiser cookies looks cheap. Ordering two boxes makes it look like you're trying not to look cheap. So three it was.

It was with much anticipation that I awaited the delivery of the Girl Scout cookies so that I might receive my portion of adulthood and peanut butter.

After a few weeks and some delays (one of the only snowstorms all winter happened the day that my cookies were going to be delivered), I exchanged twelve dollars for a bag of three boxes of cookies.

Very excited, I untied the plastic bag to find one box of trefoils, one box of samoas, and one box of disappointment.

Excuse me. I meant disappointmint.

Disappoint thin mint. S.

I could go on, but by the time I finished, the Girl Scout that mistakenly gave me these disappointworst cookies ever except for oatmeal raisin would be graduated from college.

Teenagers Are the Worst

Writing this post about surprise birthday parties reminded me of a few things about being a teenager/almost-teenager.

At that age, I suffered from--well, a lot of things, but three particular delusions come to mind.

1. Life was controlled.
I didn't understand just how much of success was out of my hands, how much of the stuff that happens to people just, well, happens. Boys liking you just happens. Surprise birthday parties just happen. And so do negative things, like death and disease and accidents.

2. The things that I could control should not be controlled.
I can't even begin to tell you how many times I thought things like, "I want to talk to that person but they're not coming over to talk to me, so I can't."

Why didn't I just go talk to them myself? Because if teenagers talk to people they want to talk to, they die.

3. I couldn't be honest.
If teenagers are honest, they also die.

Basically, teenagerhood is one big giant death trap.

Really, though. Teenagers are masters of double-talk, of saying one thing but meaning another and of "hinting" instead of frankly speaking their minds.

Case in point:

When we were in high school, the Chess Master and I would email fairly frequently as we went to different schools and saw each other but rarely. One fine February day, the Chess Master began an utterly bewildering email conversation that lasted the better part of a month. Here is the gist of what was said.

THE CHESS MASTER: I was just at a military ball. Military balls are fun. Maybe I will take you to one sometime.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Okay!

THE CHESS MASTER: I want to go to my school's prom.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Okay...

THE CHESS MASTER: You're a girl.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: That's a clever thing for you to say.

THE CHESS MASTER: You know what girls like. Help me ask a girl to my prom.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I don't know how to do that.

THE CHESS MASTER: The girls I might take are named Madison or Kristina. If you help me ask one of them, I will help you get a guy to ask you to your prom.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I'm so confused and annoyed.

THE CHESS MASTER: Why are you annoyed? My sister will send you an email telling you some things about prom now.

THE CHESS MASTER'S SISTER: Let me tell you some things about prom now.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Why is this happening.

THE CHESS MASTER: Tell me about some guy you want to ask you to prom. I will tell you how to get him to ask you.

In a moment of unteenagerish honesty, I replied to the Chess Master and said that I had no interest in coercing some poor boy into taking me to prom thank you very much.

The Chess Master responded by saying, "I wish more girls were more like you."

Then he asked me if I wanted to go to prom with him.

I stared at the email, feeling emotionally exhausted and drained. I wondered if this is what he had in mind the whole time and if so, why he hadn't just said so in the first place.

Then I quickly banished the thought. I knew at some instinctual level that if I thought that way, I would not survive being a teenager.

In Which McDonald's Does Something Right

Context: Little Sister and I both had rehearsals at our local theatre one night. There's a McDonald's near the theatre. When I headed home after rehearsal, I texted Little Sister.

Awkward Mormon Girl: Happy day! Let us rejoice.

Little Sister: Happy day about what?

Awkward Mormon Girl: McDonald's brought back their chicken fingers.

Little Sister: WHAT let's go get some right now

Awkward Mormon Girl: Are you legitimately being serious?

Little Sister: well i'm about to leave the theater. But i AM hungry.

Little Sister: And does that mean the one by our house has them already?

Little Sister: Mom's here to get me...maybe we could drive over and check?

Awkward Mormon Girl: I was just at the theater. I stopped at McDonald's to grab a sandwich to bring to work and I saw the sign.

Awkward Mormon Girl: And then texted you immediately so that you wouldn't have to live without this knowledge any longer than necessary.

A few minutes later, my phone rang.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Hello?

LITTLE SISTER: Do you want to come to our house right now and eat chicken fingers?

There was only one answer to that question.

(And in case you couldn't tell by the rest of this post, that answer was "yes.")

Surprise! Or Not.

I decided that for my thirteenth birthday, I would like to have a surprise party.

I like surprises, but the problem with them is that you can't give yourself surprises. They depend solely on other people.

Well, theoretically, anyway.

In the months leading up to my birthday, I would occasionally comment on how much I liked surprise parties and, gee, wouldn't it be great to have one? I thought I was being fairly transparent about this, but I guess my mom was only catching on in some ways. Little Sister told me she and Mom had this conversation:

LITTLE SISTER: You do know Awkward Mormon Girl knows about the surprise party, right?

MOM: No, she doesn't.

LITTLE SISTER: There's a note on her rehearsal calendar from her friend Viola, asking if she can hang out on Saturday. Awkward Mormon Girl literally wrote, I can't. My parents are throwing me a surprise party in response.

MOM: If you say so, Little Sister.

LITTLE SISTER: The calendar is hanging on the kitchen bulletin board if you want to see for yourself.

MOM: I can't. I'm too busy planning this surprise party for your sister.

When my sixteenth birthday approached, I dropped hints to Viola and Little Sister that, hey, sixteen is pretty special, and wouldn't it be nice to have a surprise party to commemorate the occasion?

There was many a discussion after this manner:

VIOLA: If you had a surprise party, what would you want to eat?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Pizza is cheap and easy.

VIOLA: If you had a surprise party, would you want people to be invited by phone or through invitations in the mail?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Invitations, of course. The phone is the devil's way.

VIOLA: If you had a surprise party, who would you want to come?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: You, Little Sister, Baby Sister, the Chess Master, the Fearless One, Etch-a-Sketch, Shutterbug, Best Friend Boy, and, let's see...Porch.

Porch and I had known each other for years, but he is an elusive sort of human, and he didn't spend much time with anyone, myself included. Still, if I was going to have a surprise party, I wanted him there.

I decided that the most anxious-making thing about birthday parties is not knowing what sort of present to get the birthday person. It seemed that if Porch knew exactly what to get me for my birthday, the likelihood of him coming to the party would be increased. So, during our World Civ class, I laid the foundation of an ingenious plan.

A FEW WEEKS BEFORE THE PARTY
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Wow, Porch, is that pencil you're using to do your schoolwork sparkly? That's pretty cool.

A WEEK OR SO LATER
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I wish I had a sparkly pencil like yours.

THE WEEK I ESTIMATED THE INVITATIONS WENT OUT
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: For my birthday, I'm going to ask for sparkly pencils of my very own.

Finally, the long-awaited party arrived. I went to Viola's on some fool's errand, and when I arrived...

"SURPRISE!!!" Everyone jumped out from hiding places.

Viola, Little Sister, Baby Sister, the Chess Master, the Fearless One, Etch-a-Sketch, Shutterbug, Best Friend Boy, Porch, and a quantity of pizza were all there!

Oh good I thought. This all went exactly as planned.

PORCH: Surprise! I got you these sparkly pencils for your birthday.