We interrupt your regularly scheduled NYC review to bring you this super-important story!!!
Recently, Pepper invited me and the Seamstress to a dance event that she, Pepper, was clogging in. I saw Baby Sister in clogging competitions a half a million times, and Pepper, from what I know, seems to be a very good clogger.
BUT. This blog post is not about Pepper. (Sorry, Pepper.) No, indeed. This blog post is about someone else.
Pepper's performance was scheduled for the end of the program, so the Seamstress and I had to sit through quite a lot of children dancing before she appeared. Some of it was better than others.
Six numbers in, a tumbling class consisting of one small boy and two small girls came out and began to tumble on mats.
Partway through this tumbling, I noticed that the boy, while not clumsy, was definitely not graceful. He would do a perfect backbend but then sort of flail about at the finish. He would do a somersault and keel off to the side at the last second. What's more, he was around ten years old--too old for his inexpert tumbling to be adorable. It bordered more on the edge of amusing instead.
The Seamstress and I were, indeed, amused. We were more amused when he returned to the stage a few numbers later to dance a jazz number with two different girls.
This is when things really got good. The young dancer, it became immediately clear, was very into his dancing. He proved to be very flexible, very uncoordinated, and very uninhibited. This made for a glorious combination. There was more flailing as he spun and danced around the two girls.
Not long after, the young dancer returned onstage with a junior ballroom class. He danced as he had before, this time with a small girl around his own age.
But the crowning glory was at the end, when the young dancer's ballet class performed to "Colors of the Wind."
He came onstage first, a bunch of pastel flowers in his hand. The music began, and the rest of his class--all girls--danced onto the stage. They passed him one by one, and he handed each a flower until only one was left. He sniffed it thoughtfully, then violently cast it aside. Then he took his place in the center of the girls.
As the only boy, he was a soloist in this number. He leapt about like a crazed grasshopper, his expression dignified and serene. Then, as the girls danced a bit by themselves, he waited and watched with his hands behind his back. He was contemplating his mortality or whatever it is that serious artists such as him do when they have a bit of downtime. Then he spun in a drunken imitation of a top and leapt some more.
The music swelled. The girls circled around him in the formation of a trickling fountain and he, the statue at the center of it all, danced and danced passionately. Then they uncircled--the girls walked offstage in single file, handing him their flowers--and he sniffed the bouquet in a beautifully soulful manner as the music ended.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen.
THE SEAMSTRESS: There are tears in my eyes from laughing.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
The Lion King and I
This post is about the fourth day of my New York City trip, which was our third day in the city.
On Saturday, we woke up very excited because we were going to see two musicals that day: a matinee and a normal evening show. The matinee was The Lion King and the evening show was The King and I. You will notice that I have combined both of these names to title this blog post. I hope that you will leave comments telling me how clever I am.
We all got up quite early and accompanied Glory uptown to the Manhattan temple, because she desired to worship there. While she did that, my sisters and I ate breakfast at Starbucks (I wanted to order a bagel with lox, something that New York is known for, but they were out of lox) and then scouted out the Lincoln Center, the home of The King and I. Our excitement to see this classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical grew.
We also stumbled across Central Park, but we didn't go in because we had plans to spend most of the next day there.
When Glory came out of the temple, we all headed to the American Mvsevm of Natvral History. At least, that's what a sign on the outside of the building looked like it said. It was an engraving in stone that looked pretty old, presumably from a time period when it was fashionable to write pointy "u"s that look like "v"s.
In any case, the American Museum of Natural History was a very interesting place. It's the museum featured in the first Night at the Museum, but beyond that, there are some seriously cool exhibits there. Of course, we were only there for a few hours, so we didn't get to see everything. Not even close.
This is where a big difference between my sisters and I and Glory can be found. We Obnoxiouses, realizing that we only had a few hours, immediately planned out the exhibits we wanted to see and began to power through them. Glory, on the other hand, wandered aimlessly throughout the museum as if she had all the time in the world. I wouldn't say that Glory is necessarily more interested in natural history than we are, but I would definitely say that she is much better at living in the moment.
Anyways, there were lots of interesting exhibits. Like there was this one exhibit replicating a burial site from some culture I can't recall. It was the burial site of some guy, and then around him were laid some women and a few other guys. Then there was another guy who had been set cross-legged in a niche in the wall. Some cultures, like the Ancient Egyptians, believe that you take what you're buried with into the next life. In that case, I can understand wanting to take your women and a few manservants with you. But I cannot for the life of me think why you would want a guy specifically sitting cross-legged in a wall.
Another exhibit was about the people of the Caucasus Mountains, otherwise known as the group white people are supposedly descended from. I showed Little Sister the exhibit, and she said, "So we're all descended from Jedis?" and pointed to the clothing in the exhibit. It was very Jedi-ish.
The Lion King started at 2:00 p.m., so as it neared 1:00 Older Sister hustled us out of the museum.
We'd made a plan to get lunch from one of the food carts in front of the museum. All said food carts were called "Halal." I don't know if that's the name of the type of food or just the brand of the cart, but we saw tons of 'em all over the city.
Please remember that the night before we ate a light dinner at Pret a Manger and that the day before that we'd had no breakfast, a sandwich apiece at Junior's, and no dinner at all, just cheesecake. Amazing cheesecake, it's true, but still cheesecake.
See, I am like Ron Weasley. As long as I am fed three good meals a day, I can withstand anything and crack jokes the whole time. But if I have to skip a meal or don't get enough to eat, I am not a happy camper. I become grumpy, succumb to the whisperings of a Horcrux, and/or abandon people in the woods.
So I was pretty excited about the chicken over rice I purchased at the Halal cart. It looked like the most substantial thing I'd eaten in days, even counting when I was back home in Utah. Meat, vegetables, some carbs for energy--perfect.
"Let's find a place to sit down," I said, balancing my container of food and my grape soda and my purse in my hands.
"We can't sit down," squawked Older Sister. "We have to eat while we walk!"
"We can sit down for fifteen minutes," I said. I guess Older Sister saw in my eyes that I was about to succumb to the whisperings of a Horcrux and/or abandon someone in the woods, because she quickly acquiesced.
We sat and ate. The spices on my chicken were unique but amazing. What really made the dish was what the vendor called white sauce. It was, indeed, a white sauce. Possibly yogurt-based? It was very good.
Feeling much fuller and happier, I continued on to the Minskoff Theatre for the matinee performance of The Lion King.
Y'all know I love Disney. So it pains me to say this, but I've seen the Broadway touring company of The Lion King before, and I was just as disappointed that time as I was this time. The added music in the stage version gives you chills, thrills, and everything in between, and there are some fun puppets, but other than that I think it's somewhat inferior to the movie. The musical is overburdened with special effects that distract from the action and make the storytelling uneven instead of supplementing it. It's still a good time, though, and if you're looking for pure Broadway spectacle and don't mind shelling out $100+ per ticket, be my guest. Whoops--wrong musical.
Anyways, after that, Glory and Older Sister went to the hotel while Little Sister and I went back to Junior's and obtained these strange things called black-and-white cookies that New York City is famous for. White frosting on one side...chocolate frosting on the other...I don't know why this is a thing, but they tasted okay. Not amazing, though.
We all met up again and headed uptown to this place called Ed's Chowder House. It was deceptively casual on the outside, but pretty swank on the inside. There we had another New York dish--Manhattan chowder, a seafood chowder with tomatoes in it. I'd had it before but never, of course, in Manhattan.
Then we went to the Lincoln Center for The King and I. And wow.
Wow.
If The Lion King was a disappointment, The King and I was whatever the opposite of a disappointment is. It exceeded expectations. Tremendously.
I've seen The King and I before: one high school production, one community production, and the excellent though much-altered Rankin and Bass cartoon production. It's a musical I really like, and when Older Sister proposed we see the new limited Broadway revival, I agreed immediately. I just didn't expect so much...magic.
Was it the actors? Kelli O'Hara, noted Broadway soprano, and Ken Watanabe, whom I recognized as the Japanese businessman from Inception? Was it them that made the musical so much better than usual? Or the adorableness of the royal children? Or the talent of the kid who played Louis, who charmed me within the first few minutes of the show?
Was it seeing Oscar Hammerstein's book and lyrics delivered as they were meant to be, by trained professionals? Was it, for the first time, fully understanding the subtlety and beauty of the story? Marveling at the way he presented this story as a love story using entirely subtext and no declarations of love at all?
Was it hearing Richard Rodgers' score played, as it was meant to be played, by a live orchestra? Was the difference in that added fullness and sound?
Or was it being in a theatre, on Broadway...with amazing actors, on Broadway...performing an amazing show with amazing music on Broadway? Was it that in the space of a few days I'd already seen revolting children and squeamish singing murderers and singing lions and now I was watching a musical with one of the most iconic moments in musical theatre history where a tutor does a polka with a king and who even thought of that and was there ANYTHING this town COULDN'T do?
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! But I do know as we walked back to our hotel, there was a song in my heart and a polka in my feet.
On Saturday, we woke up very excited because we were going to see two musicals that day: a matinee and a normal evening show. The matinee was The Lion King and the evening show was The King and I. You will notice that I have combined both of these names to title this blog post. I hope that you will leave comments telling me how clever I am.
We all got up quite early and accompanied Glory uptown to the Manhattan temple, because she desired to worship there. While she did that, my sisters and I ate breakfast at Starbucks (I wanted to order a bagel with lox, something that New York is known for, but they were out of lox) and then scouted out the Lincoln Center, the home of The King and I. Our excitement to see this classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical grew.
We also stumbled across Central Park, but we didn't go in because we had plans to spend most of the next day there.
When Glory came out of the temple, we all headed to the American Mvsevm of Natvral History. At least, that's what a sign on the outside of the building looked like it said. It was an engraving in stone that looked pretty old, presumably from a time period when it was fashionable to write pointy "u"s that look like "v"s.
In any case, the American Museum of Natural History was a very interesting place. It's the museum featured in the first Night at the Museum, but beyond that, there are some seriously cool exhibits there. Of course, we were only there for a few hours, so we didn't get to see everything. Not even close.
This is where a big difference between my sisters and I and Glory can be found. We Obnoxiouses, realizing that we only had a few hours, immediately planned out the exhibits we wanted to see and began to power through them. Glory, on the other hand, wandered aimlessly throughout the museum as if she had all the time in the world. I wouldn't say that Glory is necessarily more interested in natural history than we are, but I would definitely say that she is much better at living in the moment.
Anyways, there were lots of interesting exhibits. Like there was this one exhibit replicating a burial site from some culture I can't recall. It was the burial site of some guy, and then around him were laid some women and a few other guys. Then there was another guy who had been set cross-legged in a niche in the wall. Some cultures, like the Ancient Egyptians, believe that you take what you're buried with into the next life. In that case, I can understand wanting to take your women and a few manservants with you. But I cannot for the life of me think why you would want a guy specifically sitting cross-legged in a wall.
Another exhibit was about the people of the Caucasus Mountains, otherwise known as the group white people are supposedly descended from. I showed Little Sister the exhibit, and she said, "So we're all descended from Jedis?" and pointed to the clothing in the exhibit. It was very Jedi-ish.
The Lion King started at 2:00 p.m., so as it neared 1:00 Older Sister hustled us out of the museum.
We'd made a plan to get lunch from one of the food carts in front of the museum. All said food carts were called "Halal." I don't know if that's the name of the type of food or just the brand of the cart, but we saw tons of 'em all over the city.
Please remember that the night before we ate a light dinner at Pret a Manger and that the day before that we'd had no breakfast, a sandwich apiece at Junior's, and no dinner at all, just cheesecake. Amazing cheesecake, it's true, but still cheesecake.
See, I am like Ron Weasley. As long as I am fed three good meals a day, I can withstand anything and crack jokes the whole time. But if I have to skip a meal or don't get enough to eat, I am not a happy camper. I become grumpy, succumb to the whisperings of a Horcrux, and/or abandon people in the woods.
So I was pretty excited about the chicken over rice I purchased at the Halal cart. It looked like the most substantial thing I'd eaten in days, even counting when I was back home in Utah. Meat, vegetables, some carbs for energy--perfect.
"Let's find a place to sit down," I said, balancing my container of food and my grape soda and my purse in my hands.
"We can't sit down," squawked Older Sister. "We have to eat while we walk!"
"We can sit down for fifteen minutes," I said. I guess Older Sister saw in my eyes that I was about to succumb to the whisperings of a Horcrux and/or abandon someone in the woods, because she quickly acquiesced.
We sat and ate. The spices on my chicken were unique but amazing. What really made the dish was what the vendor called white sauce. It was, indeed, a white sauce. Possibly yogurt-based? It was very good.
Feeling much fuller and happier, I continued on to the Minskoff Theatre for the matinee performance of The Lion King.
Y'all know I love Disney. So it pains me to say this, but I've seen the Broadway touring company of The Lion King before, and I was just as disappointed that time as I was this time. The added music in the stage version gives you chills, thrills, and everything in between, and there are some fun puppets, but other than that I think it's somewhat inferior to the movie. The musical is overburdened with special effects that distract from the action and make the storytelling uneven instead of supplementing it. It's still a good time, though, and if you're looking for pure Broadway spectacle and don't mind shelling out $100+ per ticket, be my guest. Whoops--wrong musical.
Anyways, after that, Glory and Older Sister went to the hotel while Little Sister and I went back to Junior's and obtained these strange things called black-and-white cookies that New York City is famous for. White frosting on one side...chocolate frosting on the other...I don't know why this is a thing, but they tasted okay. Not amazing, though.
We all met up again and headed uptown to this place called Ed's Chowder House. It was deceptively casual on the outside, but pretty swank on the inside. There we had another New York dish--Manhattan chowder, a seafood chowder with tomatoes in it. I'd had it before but never, of course, in Manhattan.
Then we went to the Lincoln Center for The King and I. And wow.
Wow.
If The Lion King was a disappointment, The King and I was whatever the opposite of a disappointment is. It exceeded expectations. Tremendously.
I've seen The King and I before: one high school production, one community production, and the excellent though much-altered Rankin and Bass cartoon production. It's a musical I really like, and when Older Sister proposed we see the new limited Broadway revival, I agreed immediately. I just didn't expect so much...magic.
Was it the actors? Kelli O'Hara, noted Broadway soprano, and Ken Watanabe, whom I recognized as the Japanese businessman from Inception? Was it them that made the musical so much better than usual? Or the adorableness of the royal children? Or the talent of the kid who played Louis, who charmed me within the first few minutes of the show?
Was it seeing Oscar Hammerstein's book and lyrics delivered as they were meant to be, by trained professionals? Was it, for the first time, fully understanding the subtlety and beauty of the story? Marveling at the way he presented this story as a love story using entirely subtext and no declarations of love at all?
Was it hearing Richard Rodgers' score played, as it was meant to be played, by a live orchestra? Was the difference in that added fullness and sound?
Or was it being in a theatre, on Broadway...with amazing actors, on Broadway...performing an amazing show with amazing music on Broadway? Was it that in the space of a few days I'd already seen revolting children and squeamish singing murderers and singing lions and now I was watching a musical with one of the most iconic moments in musical theatre history where a tutor does a polka with a king and who even thought of that and was there ANYTHING this town COULDN'T do?
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! But I do know as we walked back to our hotel, there was a song in my heart and a polka in my feet.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
A Pizza Grows in Brooklyn
Context: this post is about the third day of my New York City trip, which was our second day in the city.
Our second day in New York City was a Friday. And on that Friday, we did three main things.
We ate dinner at Pret a Manger, which was okay. It's one of those places where you grab cold wraps, sandwiches, and salads off refrigerated shelves. I'm more of a hot food person myself, as my parents can attest. They always hated it when I heated up their house by using the oven or making thick soup for dinner on a hot summer's day. So Pret a Manger was not my thing, and it also didn't really fill me up.
After dinner, we went to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which was fun. This musical won Best Musical in the 2014 Tony Awards, and let me tell you--it deserved it. It was well-written and well-presented. The premise is that a distant relation of an earl starts killing off his relatives so that he will become the next earl. I expected this show to get dark quickly, a la Jekyll and Hyde, but incredibly it stayed light and hilarious the whole time. More incredibly, the murderer remained a sympathetic character throughout the show. However, should you be interested in seeing this show, know that there were some inappropriate jokes and one terribly inappropriate song.
But. Before we ate at Pret a Manger or attended A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, we experienced the best part of our day, otherwise known as A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.
This tour, this tour--where do I start when telling you about this tour? At the beginning, I suppose. Well, in the beginning, when we were planning the trip, one of Glory's stipulations was that she wanted to go on a bus tour and be typical tourists. In her wisdom, Older Sister decided that the best bus tour would be a pizza bus tour. And thus she reserved us places on A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.
Glory was excited for the chance to be bus tourists on a tour bus. While we were looking around Times Square the day before, she insisted that we all buy I <3 NY shirts to wear the next day on the bus tour so that everyone knew we were tourists. She also produced a pair of pink pajama pants covered with miniature I <3 NY designs to wear with her shirt to be even more touristy.
You may be confused as to why this excited Glory so. Well, in her senior year of high school, all of Glory's girl friends asked someone to the school Halloween dance. When Glory couldn't find anyone, she decided to go to the dance stag, dressed as a blade of grass.
Either this story will help you understand Glory more, or it will just confuse you. But if you're confused, you're not alone.
On Friday morning, we all put on our I <3 NY shirts to placate Glory. Glory added her pajama pants. Older Sister and I added cardigans over our shirts, which we pulled shut while on the subway. Being dressed as tourists on the bus tour was all very well, but it seemed best not to do it on the subway.
By this point, we were beginning to understand the ease of the subway. Yes, our passes continued to be plagued with issues, but the actual subway was quite simple to use. If we were on 42nd street and wanted to go to any street with a higher number, we got on the subway heading uptown. If we wanted to go to a street with a lower number, we got on the subway heading downtown. Easy, no?
In this case, we went downtown to 14th Street and Union Square. Union Square was lovely--there was a little farmer's market, a park with a statue that was probably Mahatma Gandhi but which looked like an airbender, and some fun shops nearby.
We didn't spend a lot of time there, though, because we had to meet up with our tour guide. And as lovely as Union Square was, once we met our tour guide everything became 10,000,000 times better.
"Hey, how you doin'?" she asked us once we were all on the bus.
"Good," everyone on the bus chorused back.
She told us that in Brooklyn, if someone says, "How you doin'?" you say, "How you doin'?" back. Then she told us to "fuhgettaboud" the rest of the city, because she was going to show us Brooklyn and its pizza.
Her name was Paula. She said that she was half Jewish, half Italian Roman Catholic, and that she grew up in the same apartment building as both sets of her grandparents. She had an amazing Brooklyn accent, made casual references to her cousin Tony, and threw Yiddish phrases around like it was no big deal. I don't know if she exaggerated her Brooklyn-ness for the sake of the tour or if she acted like this naturally, but we loved it. I would have gladly donned a t-shirt that instead said I <3 Paula. Or maybe even I <3 Brooklyn, because her obvious enthusiasm and love for her borough were rubbing off on me.
Speaking of the I <3 NY shirts, everyone on our tour kept saying that our matching outfits were cute. So, apparently, did Paula, who kept calling us the "cute Utah girls," and saying we all had amazing hair. She told Glory that she'd been to one city in Utah before, but that she got a much more positive impression of the state from us than she had from the people she met while she was there.
Paula took us to a perfect photo op spot looking over the harbor. She took us to Coney Island and to places in Brooklyn where movies were filmed. She showed us the houses of wealthy people in the upscale neighborhoods, telling us that she'd knocked on the owners' doors to find out more about their houses for her tour. She shared local gossip and stories about the mafia with us. And, then, of course, she took us for pizza.
Included in the price of the tour were four slices of pizza and two drinks each. First, we went to Grimaldi's for famous coal-fire margherita pizza.
All that was on this thin-crusted pizza was tomato sauce, basil, and some "fresh mozzarell," as Paula called it. "That's it," she said. She said that pizza doesn't need anything else on it, and she was right. All my two slices needed was a bottle of root beer to wash them down.
Then we went to L&B Spumoni Gardens, where we had a thicker-crust, Sicilian-style, square pizza. This pizza had the mozzarella cheese underneath the sauce and a second kind of cheese on top. If possible, this pizza was even better than Grimaldi's. There were little dishes of Parmesan on the tables to sprinkle over your pizza and an ice cream parlor that sold spumni. I ate gelato every day when I was in Europe a few years ago. I've been crazy about it ever since, but I'd never tried spumoni, a different type of Italian ice cream. So I bought a cup of rainbow (chocolate, vanilla, and pistachio) spumoni to try. I was glad I did.
After our amazing tour, we were all full, which is why we ended up at Pret a Manger for a light (too light, for me) dinner instead of eating somewhere else. And then we went to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder etcetera, etcetera; you know the rest.
But for the rest of the trip, we kept talking about that tour and, unabashedly, would try to imitate Paula's amazing accent. Little Sister and I did it a few nights later with the condiments at the dinner table:
LITTLE SISTER: Do you want salt in ya watah?
AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want salt in my watah!
LITTLE SISTER: Do you want peppah in ya watah?
AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want peppah in my watah!
LITTLE SISTER: Do you want red peppah in ya watah?
AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want red peppah in my watah!
I guess it doesn't take t-shirts to make us look like tourists.
Our second day in New York City was a Friday. And on that Friday, we did three main things.
We ate dinner at Pret a Manger, which was okay. It's one of those places where you grab cold wraps, sandwiches, and salads off refrigerated shelves. I'm more of a hot food person myself, as my parents can attest. They always hated it when I heated up their house by using the oven or making thick soup for dinner on a hot summer's day. So Pret a Manger was not my thing, and it also didn't really fill me up.
After dinner, we went to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which was fun. This musical won Best Musical in the 2014 Tony Awards, and let me tell you--it deserved it. It was well-written and well-presented. The premise is that a distant relation of an earl starts killing off his relatives so that he will become the next earl. I expected this show to get dark quickly, a la Jekyll and Hyde, but incredibly it stayed light and hilarious the whole time. More incredibly, the murderer remained a sympathetic character throughout the show. However, should you be interested in seeing this show, know that there were some inappropriate jokes and one terribly inappropriate song.
But. Before we ate at Pret a Manger or attended A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, we experienced the best part of our day, otherwise known as A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.
This tour, this tour--where do I start when telling you about this tour? At the beginning, I suppose. Well, in the beginning, when we were planning the trip, one of Glory's stipulations was that she wanted to go on a bus tour and be typical tourists. In her wisdom, Older Sister decided that the best bus tour would be a pizza bus tour. And thus she reserved us places on A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.
Glory was excited for the chance to be bus tourists on a tour bus. While we were looking around Times Square the day before, she insisted that we all buy I <3 NY shirts to wear the next day on the bus tour so that everyone knew we were tourists. She also produced a pair of pink pajama pants covered with miniature I <3 NY designs to wear with her shirt to be even more touristy.
You may be confused as to why this excited Glory so. Well, in her senior year of high school, all of Glory's girl friends asked someone to the school Halloween dance. When Glory couldn't find anyone, she decided to go to the dance stag, dressed as a blade of grass.
Either this story will help you understand Glory more, or it will just confuse you. But if you're confused, you're not alone.
On Friday morning, we all put on our I <3 NY shirts to placate Glory. Glory added her pajama pants. Older Sister and I added cardigans over our shirts, which we pulled shut while on the subway. Being dressed as tourists on the bus tour was all very well, but it seemed best not to do it on the subway.
By this point, we were beginning to understand the ease of the subway. Yes, our passes continued to be plagued with issues, but the actual subway was quite simple to use. If we were on 42nd street and wanted to go to any street with a higher number, we got on the subway heading uptown. If we wanted to go to a street with a lower number, we got on the subway heading downtown. Easy, no?
In this case, we went downtown to 14th Street and Union Square. Union Square was lovely--there was a little farmer's market, a park with a statue that was probably Mahatma Gandhi but which looked like an airbender, and some fun shops nearby.
We didn't spend a lot of time there, though, because we had to meet up with our tour guide. And as lovely as Union Square was, once we met our tour guide everything became 10,000,000 times better.
"Hey, how you doin'?" she asked us once we were all on the bus.
"Good," everyone on the bus chorused back.
She told us that in Brooklyn, if someone says, "How you doin'?" you say, "How you doin'?" back. Then she told us to "fuhgettaboud" the rest of the city, because she was going to show us Brooklyn and its pizza.
Her name was Paula. She said that she was half Jewish, half Italian Roman Catholic, and that she grew up in the same apartment building as both sets of her grandparents. She had an amazing Brooklyn accent, made casual references to her cousin Tony, and threw Yiddish phrases around like it was no big deal. I don't know if she exaggerated her Brooklyn-ness for the sake of the tour or if she acted like this naturally, but we loved it. I would have gladly donned a t-shirt that instead said I <3 Paula. Or maybe even I <3 Brooklyn, because her obvious enthusiasm and love for her borough were rubbing off on me.
Speaking of the I <3 NY shirts, everyone on our tour kept saying that our matching outfits were cute. So, apparently, did Paula, who kept calling us the "cute Utah girls," and saying we all had amazing hair. She told Glory that she'd been to one city in Utah before, but that she got a much more positive impression of the state from us than she had from the people she met while she was there.
Paula took us to a perfect photo op spot looking over the harbor. She took us to Coney Island and to places in Brooklyn where movies were filmed. She showed us the houses of wealthy people in the upscale neighborhoods, telling us that she'd knocked on the owners' doors to find out more about their houses for her tour. She shared local gossip and stories about the mafia with us. And, then, of course, she took us for pizza.
Included in the price of the tour were four slices of pizza and two drinks each. First, we went to Grimaldi's for famous coal-fire margherita pizza.
All that was on this thin-crusted pizza was tomato sauce, basil, and some "fresh mozzarell," as Paula called it. "That's it," she said. She said that pizza doesn't need anything else on it, and she was right. All my two slices needed was a bottle of root beer to wash them down.
Then we went to L&B Spumoni Gardens, where we had a thicker-crust, Sicilian-style, square pizza. This pizza had the mozzarella cheese underneath the sauce and a second kind of cheese on top. If possible, this pizza was even better than Grimaldi's. There were little dishes of Parmesan on the tables to sprinkle over your pizza and an ice cream parlor that sold spumni. I ate gelato every day when I was in Europe a few years ago. I've been crazy about it ever since, but I'd never tried spumoni, a different type of Italian ice cream. So I bought a cup of rainbow (chocolate, vanilla, and pistachio) spumoni to try. I was glad I did.
After our amazing tour, we were all full, which is why we ended up at Pret a Manger for a light (too light, for me) dinner instead of eating somewhere else. And then we went to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder etcetera, etcetera; you know the rest.
But for the rest of the trip, we kept talking about that tour and, unabashedly, would try to imitate Paula's amazing accent. Little Sister and I did it a few nights later with the condiments at the dinner table:
LITTLE SISTER: Do you want salt in ya watah?
AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want salt in my watah!
LITTLE SISTER: Do you want peppah in ya watah?
AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want peppah in my watah!
LITTLE SISTER: Do you want red peppah in ya watah?
AWKWARD MORMON: No, I don't want red peppah in my watah!
I guess it doesn't take t-shirts to make us look like tourists.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Just Got Here This Morning
Context: This post is about the second day of my New York City trip.
As soon as the plane descended, things went wrong.
I mentioned in my last post that I was getting over a cold. When we left, I felt slightly sick, but not so sick it was worth mentioning. Which is a figurative expression, since I just mentioned it. Also I mentioned it in my last post. As I mentioned. The word "mention" is starting to lose all meaning for me.
Anyways, shortly after we began to descend, someone committed murder on my ears.
The pressure. The pressure! It was like being in a black hole, or 20,000 leagues under the sea, or on a blind date with a friend's favorite cousin. My ears were screaming. Sobbing. Cursing their existence.
My face, however, was placid.
I don't know why this is, but anytime I am in a public location and I feel any kind of physical or emotional pain or discomfort, I immediately think, "No one must know!" and then do my best to not give any sign that I am in distress. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't.
In this instance, I was very stoic. I said nothing to Little Sister nor made any sign to her that I wanted nothing more than to rip my ears out of my head and/or chew a stick of gum.
I know what you're probably thinking. You're probably thinking, "Ear pain is a common symptom of flying, Awkward Mormon Girl! Surely an experienced traveler such as yourself must have prepared for this possibility by bringing some gum."
Well, you'd think I'd think of that, but I've been on many, many airplanes, and the last time my ears bothered me was ten years ago or more. I thought I'd outgrown it.
But apparently that was a foolish thing to think, because my ears felt like victims of Lizzie Borden. Since I didn't have any gum, I resorted to opening and closing my jaw repeatedly as if I were chewing on some. Then, when that didn't work, I reached into my carry-on for some beef jerky.
"Ooh, can I have some?" Little Sister said brightly. Still stoic, I silently tore my salvation in two and handed her half.
Except not even chewing on a tough piece of beef jerky made my ears pop. The pressure was building and it hurt sooo bad and I just couldn't wait for the plane to land so that my ears would pop and it would all be over.
Well, presently the plane landed. And the pain on my ears subsided, but they did not pop. They remained clogged with pressure.
Has this ever happened to you? It had never happened to me. I was flabbergasted and extremely worried. So worried I didn't say a single thing about it until Older Sister said, "The pressure didn't pop in one of my ears and now I can't really hear out of it."
This confession led me to share that the same thing had happened to me, but in both of my ears, and that I could scarcely hear anything whatsoever.
Glory, who is an RN like my mother, determined that these phenomena were somehow due to the fact that I was almost over a cold and Older Sister was in the midst of one. She then gave us both a lot of medical advice, which was well-meaning but which didn't really seem to help.
We gathered our luggage and took the airtrain to Jamaica Station. This is an approximation of an actual conversation Older Sister and I had on the airtrain:
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (says something)
OLDER SISTER: What? What did you say?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What? I can't hear you.
OLDER SISTER: What?
So there we were, about to head into a large, crowded city where you can be perfectly safe as long as you are careful and alert. We could still be careful, but it's hard to be alert when you can barely hear.
At Jamaica Station, we bought weeklong subway passes. Then we ventured onto the subway for the very first time.
These passes worked in a simple manner. We were entitled to an endless amount of subway rides for seven days; however, I found out that if you swiped your pass at a turnstile and pushed your luggage through said turnstile ahead of you, you couldn't swipe immediately after because the card would tell you it had just been used. This was probably meant to deter people from going through the turnstile and handing their pass back to others behind them for repeated use, but it was quite problematic for me. I solved this problem by vaulting over the turnstile. Interestingly, no one seemed to notice or tried to stop me.
We encountered various other problems with using our subway passes over the next week, and we continued to solve these problems in increasingly creative ways, including one instance where Little Sister and I went through a revolving door entrance as a single person.
This first day, we found the subway train that would get us to Times Square and rode said subway train for what seemed like an eternity. We'd barely slept on the plane, but there were no available seats on our subway car so we were standing the entire ride. C'est la vie.
Once we got off at Times Square, we hauled our luggage up a long (and dirty. The subway stations in New York are just as dirty as people say) flight of stairs, and then emerged from the famed mode of underground transportation into Times Square, Manhattan, and New York City!
Immediately, we set about to find our hotel. It was on Times Square, not too far from the subway at all, but it took us a while to grow accustomed to the layout. We got turned around a few times, which meant that we crossed a lot of streets.
Nobody in New York City seems to know how to cross a street safely. When the Don't Walk symbol is up at the crosswalk, the pedestrians glance around for any cars and then walk straight through. When there's a Do Walk symbol, they walk across in a long, thick stream of humans that continues long after the light turns green.
I had a conversation in my head with the New York City pedestrians, which went something like this:
I said, "Don't you know that you're supposed to stay on the sidewalk unless there's a Do Walk symbol at the crosswalk?"
To which they replied, "Sidewalk? This city is our sidewalk. The world is our sidewalk!"
This clued me in that you just can't do anything with New York City pedestrians, at least not the ones in my head. To be fair, though, the drivers were about the same. Red lights, green lights--it didn't matter. They continually pressed forward in an effort to somehow get through the masses of people.
Because there were so many people. Especially during the evenings. Everything was crowded, though not unpleasantly so, I thought. However, on this first morning I was unable to fully appreciate this interesting sense of being crowded, or much of anything else that was around me, due to my ears.
Some people say that when one sense of theirs is damaged, the rest are heightened. That was not true in this case. It seemed like when my ears became impaired, the rest of my senses became impaired too. As the sounds of the city were muted, so, it seemed, were the sights and smells and feelings.
Eventually, we made it to our hotel. We'd landed around 6 a.m. Now it was around 8. Check-in wasn't until 4 p.m., but we were able to drop off our luggage and head out into the city to be tourists.
First adventure of the day: the Empire State Building! We walked to said building, got in line, and used our New York City passes to obtain tickets.
By this point, my ears were popping at random. Which would be good, except that they would immediately clog up again. Also, the popping was extremely painful. I had long since abandoned the stoicism and would give a little shriek each time the pressure ruptured.
All the signs and the attendants bragged that it took the elevator less than one minute to get to the 80th floor. Indeed, the elevator took us up quite high quite fast. The elevation change caused my ears to pop rapidly.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
Then we looked out over the city, which was impressive, but which didn't require a lot of time. So we took the elevator back down-
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
-and headed to Junior's for lunch. On the way, we checked out some shops at Times Square and bought postcards, t-shirts, and other souvenirs.
Lunch at Junior's was okay. The city was pretty chilly our first day, but the inside of Junior's was even chillier. On the up side, this kept us awake, but on the down side, it was, well, cold.
I had a BLT. BLTs all taste about the same, but this one brought to mind the one that Viola's parents bought me at IHOP for Viola's fourteenth birthday celebration. Both that sandwich and the one I ate at Junior's were too tall to fit in my mouth easily. This made both of them difficult to eat.
After lunch, we looked around Times Square some more. Glory, who was totally beat, and Older Sister, who was heading that way, sat on benches while Little Sister and I, who had a little more energy, checked out the Times Square Disney store.
It was just like the Disney store at home, but bigger, and with bigger things. There was a Snow White doll the size of a small child and a wall mural with the silhouettes of beloved Disney characters that stretched all the way up the stairs.
LITTLE SISTER: This sign says that there's a Frozen wonderland upstairs.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: They have a Junior's up there?
At this point, our hotel had prepared a room for us early (it was around 1 p.m.), and since Glory was so tired, we soon went back to the hotel and napped. Even though Obnoxiouses don't nap on vacation...going all day on just a few hours of sleep was too much, even for us.
After nap time (which lasted like four hours), we dressed up in preparation for dinner and Matilda. Except that Older Sister decreed that we would not get dinner, but go back to Junior's and get cheesecake in lieu of dinner. This second trip to Junior's was a lot more successful. My chocolate mousse cheesecake looked so good that a lady asked me, "What are you eating?" and it tasted so good that I told her she should buy some.
Then we went to the Shubert Theatre to see Matilda, a perfect choice for our first Broadway show: wacky and joyful, with great music, great lyrics, a great book, great characters, great set, great choreography, great special effects, and a great cast of talented children. In a word, this show was great.
At the end of the last ensemble number, a shower of confetti was released from the ceiling. It felt like a celebration not only of the Trunchbull's exit from Crunchem Hall, but of our very first day in New York City.
Upon exiting the Shubert Theatre, we pushed through the crowded streets to get back to our hotel. I showered, got ready for bed...and prayed that in the morning, my ears would no longer feel like Jack the Ripper had done a number on them.
As soon as the plane descended, things went wrong.
I mentioned in my last post that I was getting over a cold. When we left, I felt slightly sick, but not so sick it was worth mentioning. Which is a figurative expression, since I just mentioned it. Also I mentioned it in my last post. As I mentioned. The word "mention" is starting to lose all meaning for me.
Anyways, shortly after we began to descend, someone committed murder on my ears.
The pressure. The pressure! It was like being in a black hole, or 20,000 leagues under the sea, or on a blind date with a friend's favorite cousin. My ears were screaming. Sobbing. Cursing their existence.
My face, however, was placid.
I don't know why this is, but anytime I am in a public location and I feel any kind of physical or emotional pain or discomfort, I immediately think, "No one must know!" and then do my best to not give any sign that I am in distress. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't.
In this instance, I was very stoic. I said nothing to Little Sister nor made any sign to her that I wanted nothing more than to rip my ears out of my head and/or chew a stick of gum.
I know what you're probably thinking. You're probably thinking, "Ear pain is a common symptom of flying, Awkward Mormon Girl! Surely an experienced traveler such as yourself must have prepared for this possibility by bringing some gum."
Well, you'd think I'd think of that, but I've been on many, many airplanes, and the last time my ears bothered me was ten years ago or more. I thought I'd outgrown it.
But apparently that was a foolish thing to think, because my ears felt like victims of Lizzie Borden. Since I didn't have any gum, I resorted to opening and closing my jaw repeatedly as if I were chewing on some. Then, when that didn't work, I reached into my carry-on for some beef jerky.
"Ooh, can I have some?" Little Sister said brightly. Still stoic, I silently tore my salvation in two and handed her half.
Except not even chewing on a tough piece of beef jerky made my ears pop. The pressure was building and it hurt sooo bad and I just couldn't wait for the plane to land so that my ears would pop and it would all be over.
Well, presently the plane landed. And the pain on my ears subsided, but they did not pop. They remained clogged with pressure.
Has this ever happened to you? It had never happened to me. I was flabbergasted and extremely worried. So worried I didn't say a single thing about it until Older Sister said, "The pressure didn't pop in one of my ears and now I can't really hear out of it."
This confession led me to share that the same thing had happened to me, but in both of my ears, and that I could scarcely hear anything whatsoever.
Glory, who is an RN like my mother, determined that these phenomena were somehow due to the fact that I was almost over a cold and Older Sister was in the midst of one. She then gave us both a lot of medical advice, which was well-meaning but which didn't really seem to help.
We gathered our luggage and took the airtrain to Jamaica Station. This is an approximation of an actual conversation Older Sister and I had on the airtrain:
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (says something)
OLDER SISTER: What? What did you say?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What? I can't hear you.
OLDER SISTER: What?
So there we were, about to head into a large, crowded city where you can be perfectly safe as long as you are careful and alert. We could still be careful, but it's hard to be alert when you can barely hear.
At Jamaica Station, we bought weeklong subway passes. Then we ventured onto the subway for the very first time.
These passes worked in a simple manner. We were entitled to an endless amount of subway rides for seven days; however, I found out that if you swiped your pass at a turnstile and pushed your luggage through said turnstile ahead of you, you couldn't swipe immediately after because the card would tell you it had just been used. This was probably meant to deter people from going through the turnstile and handing their pass back to others behind them for repeated use, but it was quite problematic for me. I solved this problem by vaulting over the turnstile. Interestingly, no one seemed to notice or tried to stop me.
We encountered various other problems with using our subway passes over the next week, and we continued to solve these problems in increasingly creative ways, including one instance where Little Sister and I went through a revolving door entrance as a single person.
This first day, we found the subway train that would get us to Times Square and rode said subway train for what seemed like an eternity. We'd barely slept on the plane, but there were no available seats on our subway car so we were standing the entire ride. C'est la vie.
Once we got off at Times Square, we hauled our luggage up a long (and dirty. The subway stations in New York are just as dirty as people say) flight of stairs, and then emerged from the famed mode of underground transportation into Times Square, Manhattan, and New York City!
Immediately, we set about to find our hotel. It was on Times Square, not too far from the subway at all, but it took us a while to grow accustomed to the layout. We got turned around a few times, which meant that we crossed a lot of streets.
Nobody in New York City seems to know how to cross a street safely. When the Don't Walk symbol is up at the crosswalk, the pedestrians glance around for any cars and then walk straight through. When there's a Do Walk symbol, they walk across in a long, thick stream of humans that continues long after the light turns green.
I had a conversation in my head with the New York City pedestrians, which went something like this:
I said, "Don't you know that you're supposed to stay on the sidewalk unless there's a Do Walk symbol at the crosswalk?"
To which they replied, "Sidewalk? This city is our sidewalk. The world is our sidewalk!"
This clued me in that you just can't do anything with New York City pedestrians, at least not the ones in my head. To be fair, though, the drivers were about the same. Red lights, green lights--it didn't matter. They continually pressed forward in an effort to somehow get through the masses of people.
Because there were so many people. Especially during the evenings. Everything was crowded, though not unpleasantly so, I thought. However, on this first morning I was unable to fully appreciate this interesting sense of being crowded, or much of anything else that was around me, due to my ears.
Some people say that when one sense of theirs is damaged, the rest are heightened. That was not true in this case. It seemed like when my ears became impaired, the rest of my senses became impaired too. As the sounds of the city were muted, so, it seemed, were the sights and smells and feelings.
Eventually, we made it to our hotel. We'd landed around 6 a.m. Now it was around 8. Check-in wasn't until 4 p.m., but we were able to drop off our luggage and head out into the city to be tourists.
First adventure of the day: the Empire State Building! We walked to said building, got in line, and used our New York City passes to obtain tickets.
By this point, my ears were popping at random. Which would be good, except that they would immediately clog up again. Also, the popping was extremely painful. I had long since abandoned the stoicism and would give a little shriek each time the pressure ruptured.
All the signs and the attendants bragged that it took the elevator less than one minute to get to the 80th floor. Indeed, the elevator took us up quite high quite fast. The elevation change caused my ears to pop rapidly.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
Then we looked out over the city, which was impressive, but which didn't require a lot of time. So we took the elevator back down-
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
-and headed to Junior's for lunch. On the way, we checked out some shops at Times Square and bought postcards, t-shirts, and other souvenirs.
Lunch at Junior's was okay. The city was pretty chilly our first day, but the inside of Junior's was even chillier. On the up side, this kept us awake, but on the down side, it was, well, cold.
I had a BLT. BLTs all taste about the same, but this one brought to mind the one that Viola's parents bought me at IHOP for Viola's fourteenth birthday celebration. Both that sandwich and the one I ate at Junior's were too tall to fit in my mouth easily. This made both of them difficult to eat.
After lunch, we looked around Times Square some more. Glory, who was totally beat, and Older Sister, who was heading that way, sat on benches while Little Sister and I, who had a little more energy, checked out the Times Square Disney store.
It was just like the Disney store at home, but bigger, and with bigger things. There was a Snow White doll the size of a small child and a wall mural with the silhouettes of beloved Disney characters that stretched all the way up the stairs.
LITTLE SISTER: This sign says that there's a Frozen wonderland upstairs.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: They have a Junior's up there?
At this point, our hotel had prepared a room for us early (it was around 1 p.m.), and since Glory was so tired, we soon went back to the hotel and napped. Even though Obnoxiouses don't nap on vacation...going all day on just a few hours of sleep was too much, even for us.
After nap time (which lasted like four hours), we dressed up in preparation for dinner and Matilda. Except that Older Sister decreed that we would not get dinner, but go back to Junior's and get cheesecake in lieu of dinner. This second trip to Junior's was a lot more successful. My chocolate mousse cheesecake looked so good that a lady asked me, "What are you eating?" and it tasted so good that I told her she should buy some.
Then we went to the Shubert Theatre to see Matilda, a perfect choice for our first Broadway show: wacky and joyful, with great music, great lyrics, a great book, great characters, great set, great choreography, great special effects, and a great cast of talented children. In a word, this show was great.
At the end of the last ensemble number, a shower of confetti was released from the ceiling. It felt like a celebration not only of the Trunchbull's exit from Crunchem Hall, but of our very first day in New York City.
Upon exiting the Shubert Theatre, we pushed through the crowded streets to get back to our hotel. I showered, got ready for bed...and prayed that in the morning, my ears would no longer feel like Jack the Ripper had done a number on them.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
I Had My Tray Table Up and My Seat Back in the Full Upright Position
The last time I was on a red eye flight, it was a Lufthansa flight from Chicago to Munich. I wrote an email to my parents (which I later repurposed as a blog post), ate a delicious dinner, and slept.
I wanted to have a similar experience on the flight to New York. I wanted to write a blog post so that I could brag to you, "This blog post was written at tens of thousands of feet in the sky. I bet you've never read a blog post written tens of thousands of feet in the sky before." It also would have been nice to eat a delicious dinner, and to have a relaxing sleep. Alas, it was not to be.
The week that I left, there was quite a bit of work that needed to be done in my place of employment. Instead of being a sensible person and taking my coworkers' offers to finish my work for me when I was gone, I determined to do it ALL before I left town.
I got up early. Each day, I went to my place of employment, did a heap of work, then spent the rest of the day jumping from obligation to obligation--social, familial, religious, and necessary for my trip. Did I mention that I also had a very bad cold? Well, I did, and sometimes I felt feverish and only half-aware of what I was doing. It was not ideal, but I was going to get all the things done, dangit!
The day I left, I went straight from work to finish packing and straight from packing to the airport. I arrived at the airport satisfied that I could leave for New York City with peace of mind but also exhausted, mentally spent, and not quite over the vestiges of my cold.
At the airport, we met up with Glory, a family friend who went to high school with Older Sister and me and the fourth member of our New York City party. We sat around waiting for our red eye flight: Glory talking animatedly to Older Sister about her (Glory’s) boyfriend, Little Sister braiding my hair and doing homework for her online class, and me having my hair braided and watching a Youtube video for the Weird Al song “Albuquerque.” This is a song where, among other things, the protagonist survives an airplane crash by having his tray table up and his seat back in the full upright position. Little Sister and I have referenced this song every time we’ve boarded an airplane for the last five years. We are quite fond of it.
By the time we boarded our flight around 11:00 pm, I was too tired to write anything coherent. I was too tired to eat much, and so all that was left to do was sleep. I put on my complimentary sleep mask and snuggled up against the window.
I slept fitfully for about forty-five minutes, woke, repositioned myself, and went back to sleep. I then slept equally fitfully for another hour and fifteen minutes, only to wake to find Little Sister’s head resting on my shoulder.
“Time to wake up!” my body said.
“What gives, man?” I said to my body. "We’ve barely slept in a week. Please let me sleep. I really want to sleep.”
But you don’t always get what you want.
I looked around inside the dark airplane. Earlier, the flight attendants had walked up and down the aisles, offering drinks and snacks and rapidly turning their heads to see which passengers were going to take them up on these offers. (They seemed to have very flexible necks.) However, at this point they weren’t walking around very much, because most of the passengers were asleep. As they slept, most had their arms folded tight against their bodies. It made them look like a contingent of super grumpy people.
I looked at my iPod. There was actual Wi-Fi inside the flight, sorcery the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I watched a few videos and did some random internet surfing.
I looked straight outside the window. There were bands of gold on a blue horizon as we flew eastward into the dawn.
I looked down outside the window. There was a lot of water and fog below us. “Ah,” I thought. “The…famous New York State marshes?” It wasn’t until later that I realized we were probably over the Great Lakes.
I looked at Little Sister’s legs, which had found their way onto my lap.
I felt quiet inside. I was heading into a city with tons of people and buildings and vehicles all packed into a relatively small space, and it would not be quiet there, but I was quiet inside. I was taking a deep breath before plunging into the unknown.
I wanted to have a similar experience on the flight to New York. I wanted to write a blog post so that I could brag to you, "This blog post was written at tens of thousands of feet in the sky. I bet you've never read a blog post written tens of thousands of feet in the sky before." It also would have been nice to eat a delicious dinner, and to have a relaxing sleep. Alas, it was not to be.
The week that I left, there was quite a bit of work that needed to be done in my place of employment. Instead of being a sensible person and taking my coworkers' offers to finish my work for me when I was gone, I determined to do it ALL before I left town.
I got up early. Each day, I went to my place of employment, did a heap of work, then spent the rest of the day jumping from obligation to obligation--social, familial, religious, and necessary for my trip. Did I mention that I also had a very bad cold? Well, I did, and sometimes I felt feverish and only half-aware of what I was doing. It was not ideal, but I was going to get all the things done, dangit!
The day I left, I went straight from work to finish packing and straight from packing to the airport. I arrived at the airport satisfied that I could leave for New York City with peace of mind but also exhausted, mentally spent, and not quite over the vestiges of my cold.
At the airport, we met up with Glory, a family friend who went to high school with Older Sister and me and the fourth member of our New York City party. We sat around waiting for our red eye flight: Glory talking animatedly to Older Sister about her (Glory’s) boyfriend, Little Sister braiding my hair and doing homework for her online class, and me having my hair braided and watching a Youtube video for the Weird Al song “Albuquerque.” This is a song where, among other things, the protagonist survives an airplane crash by having his tray table up and his seat back in the full upright position. Little Sister and I have referenced this song every time we’ve boarded an airplane for the last five years. We are quite fond of it.
By the time we boarded our flight around 11:00 pm, I was too tired to write anything coherent. I was too tired to eat much, and so all that was left to do was sleep. I put on my complimentary sleep mask and snuggled up against the window.
I slept fitfully for about forty-five minutes, woke, repositioned myself, and went back to sleep. I then slept equally fitfully for another hour and fifteen minutes, only to wake to find Little Sister’s head resting on my shoulder.
“Time to wake up!” my body said.
“What gives, man?” I said to my body. "We’ve barely slept in a week. Please let me sleep. I really want to sleep.”
But you don’t always get what you want.
I looked around inside the dark airplane. Earlier, the flight attendants had walked up and down the aisles, offering drinks and snacks and rapidly turning their heads to see which passengers were going to take them up on these offers. (They seemed to have very flexible necks.) However, at this point they weren’t walking around very much, because most of the passengers were asleep. As they slept, most had their arms folded tight against their bodies. It made them look like a contingent of super grumpy people.
I looked at my iPod. There was actual Wi-Fi inside the flight, sorcery the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I watched a few videos and did some random internet surfing.
I looked straight outside the window. There were bands of gold on a blue horizon as we flew eastward into the dawn.
I looked down outside the window. There was a lot of water and fog below us. “Ah,” I thought. “The…famous New York State marshes?” It wasn’t until later that I realized we were probably over the Great Lakes.
I looked at Little Sister’s legs, which had found their way onto my lap.
I felt quiet inside. I was heading into a city with tons of people and buildings and vehicles all packed into a relatively small space, and it would not be quiet there, but I was quiet inside. I was taking a deep breath before plunging into the unknown.
Monday, May 25, 2015
I Don't Even Know
I'm back from New York City! I plan to tell you all about it. But tonight, I'm going to share a weird dream I had last night.
In this dream, I was at a wedding reception for a family member of Runner Bean's best friend/Best Friend Boy's third cousin. This wedding reception then turned into some Broadwayesque show that bore some similarity to The Lion King. At least, there were some very tall giraffes, one of whom was played by Mr. Shutterbug on extremely high stilts. These stilts were so extremely high that Mr. Shutterbug could place them on the auditorium floor yet still be able to reach the balcony. Strapped to his chest was his and Shutterbug's infant child, who used chopsticks to give us all miniature chocolate chip cookies.
As Mr. Shutterbug stilted away, I turned to Older Sister and said, "I would not be comfortable carrying a baby on those stilts!"
But apparently I was comfortable endangering the lives of older children, because the next thing I knew, I was driving recklessly through the streets of Hometown with Little Sister, Baby Sister, Little Brother, and Monkey Cousin in tow.
I wasn't driving recklessly on purpose, however. I was having a very hard time seeing where I was going and what was around me because I was a backseat driver. Literally, I was driving from the back seat. Even though there was no steering wheel there and no brakes.
It was probably due to the no-brakes thing that we crashed into some cement thing. Not that the dream showed the part where we crashed from the cement thing--I just knew that we had, the same way I knew that the reception was for Runner Bean's best friend/Best Friend Boy's third cousin's family even though I never saw Runner Bean's best friend/Best Friend Boy's third cousin, or Runner Bean, or Best Friend Boy at the reception.
The next scene in the dream was me waking up from a coma in a nursing home where they were caring for me. My nurse had been so kind as to write down on my medical chart the legal charges I was going to face--six counts of attempted murder, even though there were only five people in the car including myself.
A nurse came and started asking me questions, and I knew she was mentally evaluating me. Then my family was allowed to visit me, but the only person who seemed happy about this was Baby Brother.
Then I woke up.
If you're Sigmund Freud and/or some kind of dream astrologist person, you can probably have a field day with interpreting this dream. All it's done for me is make me really paranoid about my driving skills.
In this dream, I was at a wedding reception for a family member of Runner Bean's best friend/Best Friend Boy's third cousin. This wedding reception then turned into some Broadwayesque show that bore some similarity to The Lion King. At least, there were some very tall giraffes, one of whom was played by Mr. Shutterbug on extremely high stilts. These stilts were so extremely high that Mr. Shutterbug could place them on the auditorium floor yet still be able to reach the balcony. Strapped to his chest was his and Shutterbug's infant child, who used chopsticks to give us all miniature chocolate chip cookies.
As Mr. Shutterbug stilted away, I turned to Older Sister and said, "I would not be comfortable carrying a baby on those stilts!"
But apparently I was comfortable endangering the lives of older children, because the next thing I knew, I was driving recklessly through the streets of Hometown with Little Sister, Baby Sister, Little Brother, and Monkey Cousin in tow.
I wasn't driving recklessly on purpose, however. I was having a very hard time seeing where I was going and what was around me because I was a backseat driver. Literally, I was driving from the back seat. Even though there was no steering wheel there and no brakes.
It was probably due to the no-brakes thing that we crashed into some cement thing. Not that the dream showed the part where we crashed from the cement thing--I just knew that we had, the same way I knew that the reception was for Runner Bean's best friend/Best Friend Boy's third cousin's family even though I never saw Runner Bean's best friend/Best Friend Boy's third cousin, or Runner Bean, or Best Friend Boy at the reception.
The next scene in the dream was me waking up from a coma in a nursing home where they were caring for me. My nurse had been so kind as to write down on my medical chart the legal charges I was going to face--six counts of attempted murder, even though there were only five people in the car including myself.
A nurse came and started asking me questions, and I knew she was mentally evaluating me. Then my family was allowed to visit me, but the only person who seemed happy about this was Baby Brother.
Then I woke up.
If you're Sigmund Freud and/or some kind of dream astrologist person, you can probably have a field day with interpreting this dream. All it's done for me is make me really paranoid about my driving skills.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Pass It On!
I’ve purchased pass-along cards to take with me to New York.
Pass-along cards are little cards that direct people to mormon.org, where they can learn more about my religion.
My general understanding is that one of the things other people don’t like about us LDS folk is that we can’t shut up about our religion. Some think that the entire religion is horrible, let alone the sharing of it, and should be stamped out. Some think it’s all well and good for us to live what religion we like, but that there’s no need for us to share it with others.
My best explanation for why I feel I should share my religion is best explained in a song sung by Fraggles. I’ve never posted a video in my blog before, because videos can be deleted, but I really want you to see this one, so fingers crossed that this video stays on YouTube for a long, long time:
As the Fraggles explain in their super-catchy song with Wembley’s super-adorable scatting and rhythmic throat noises, a good thing needs to be shared. I’ve got a good thing. I’m going to (uh uh) pass it on.
Pass-along cards are little cards that direct people to mormon.org, where they can learn more about my religion.
My general understanding is that one of the things other people don’t like about us LDS folk is that we can’t shut up about our religion. Some think that the entire religion is horrible, let alone the sharing of it, and should be stamped out. Some think it’s all well and good for us to live what religion we like, but that there’s no need for us to share it with others.
My best explanation for why I feel I should share my religion is best explained in a song sung by Fraggles. I’ve never posted a video in my blog before, because videos can be deleted, but I really want you to see this one, so fingers crossed that this video stays on YouTube for a long, long time:
As the Fraggles explain in their super-catchy song with Wembley’s super-adorable scatting and rhythmic throat noises, a good thing needs to be shared. I’ve got a good thing. I’m going to (uh uh) pass it on.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Update on Tabitha
Tabitha does not seem to be thriving.
It's been difficult to bond with her, because since I obtained her it has been raining constantly. So usually I'm indoors, and Tabitha is outdoors, and we don't spend much time together.
Apart from keeping us separated, the rain is having somewhat of an ill effect on Tabitha's health. It is not a gentle rain, oh no. The best way for me to describe it would be the ride of Paul Revere, with Tabitha being the colonists and the rain being Paul Revere. Only instead of Paul Revere repeatedly crying, "The British are coming!" he repeatedly drops from the sky onto the heads of the colonists.
Needless to say, Tabitha has become quite battered.
Every time I step out the door and see the raindrops assault her, I have to convince myself that this is a natural part of nature by chanting, "Rain is good for plants! Rain is good for plants! Rain is good for plants!" over and over inside my head. It's the only way I can prevent myself from snatching Tabitha up and bringing her into my bedroom to stay.
After the fourth or fifth rainfall, I could stand it no longer. I rigged my umbrella to protect Tabitha from the rain:
What happened next is probably my fault.
Our landlord has some overly friendly dogs. They enjoy investigating/destroying everything they can find. Bags of trash, balloons, my feet--you name it, they just can't leave it alone.
So far, Tabitha has managed not to draw the dogs' attention to herself. But, I think, the bright green umbrella drew their attention to her...because the next time I saw her, she was lying upside-down on the concrete.
There's some New Age-y parenting tip going around, which is that if your child falls flat on their face, you shouldn't react except to say, "You're okay! You're okay!" Whether this is a good idea I'm unsure, but one thing is for certain: I would make a terrible New Age-y parent. When I found Tabitha flat on her face, I didn't exclaim, "You're okay! You're okay!" I freaked out.
I squatted in the rain in my pencil skirt ( I had just arrived home from the temple), trying to repot Tabitha while inflicting the least amount of damage.
The next day, I tried to rearrange her mangled and broken branches. But in the end, Tabitha looked like what she was: a defeated pansy plant who had been abused by nature.
A day or two later, the storm clouds gathered once again. I bemoaned the coming rain and the injuries that Tabitha was sure to receive.
PEPPER: Why don't you just bring Tabitha inside?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: She gets too wet and dirty to come inside.
PEPPER: So why don't you bring her in now, before it rains?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...oh.
It's been difficult to bond with her, because since I obtained her it has been raining constantly. So usually I'm indoors, and Tabitha is outdoors, and we don't spend much time together.
Apart from keeping us separated, the rain is having somewhat of an ill effect on Tabitha's health. It is not a gentle rain, oh no. The best way for me to describe it would be the ride of Paul Revere, with Tabitha being the colonists and the rain being Paul Revere. Only instead of Paul Revere repeatedly crying, "The British are coming!" he repeatedly drops from the sky onto the heads of the colonists.
Needless to say, Tabitha has become quite battered.
Every time I step out the door and see the raindrops assault her, I have to convince myself that this is a natural part of nature by chanting, "Rain is good for plants! Rain is good for plants! Rain is good for plants!" over and over inside my head. It's the only way I can prevent myself from snatching Tabitha up and bringing her into my bedroom to stay.
After the fourth or fifth rainfall, I could stand it no longer. I rigged my umbrella to protect Tabitha from the rain:
Our landlord has some overly friendly dogs. They enjoy investigating/destroying everything they can find. Bags of trash, balloons, my feet--you name it, they just can't leave it alone.
So far, Tabitha has managed not to draw the dogs' attention to herself. But, I think, the bright green umbrella drew their attention to her...because the next time I saw her, she was lying upside-down on the concrete.
There's some New Age-y parenting tip going around, which is that if your child falls flat on their face, you shouldn't react except to say, "You're okay! You're okay!" Whether this is a good idea I'm unsure, but one thing is for certain: I would make a terrible New Age-y parent. When I found Tabitha flat on her face, I didn't exclaim, "You're okay! You're okay!" I freaked out.
I squatted in the rain in my pencil skirt ( I had just arrived home from the temple), trying to repot Tabitha while inflicting the least amount of damage.
The next day, I tried to rearrange her mangled and broken branches. But in the end, Tabitha looked like what she was: a defeated pansy plant who had been abused by nature.
A day or two later, the storm clouds gathered once again. I bemoaned the coming rain and the injuries that Tabitha was sure to receive.
PEPPER: Why don't you just bring Tabitha inside?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: She gets too wet and dirty to come inside.
PEPPER: So why don't you bring her in now, before it rains?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...oh.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Shop Til You Drop
My family isn't wealthy. We don’t get to have whatever we want. We don’t get to do all the things we want to do; we don’t get to travel all the places we want to travel. However, through example my parents taught us that when you do get to do things, you make the most of them.
You get invited to a fancy party? You should wear a fancy outfit with nice shoes, jewelry, hair, and makeup. If you don’t have a fancy outfit, you should buy one. If you can’t afford to buy one, you should find someone who will let you borrow one. And if you don’t have the knowledge or means to do fancy hair and makeup, you should get your mom, your sister, or a friend or neighbor to do fancy hair and makeup for you.
You graduate from college? You should get a nice frame to display your very expensive piece of paper. If your school invites you to some special graduation events, you should go to at least some of them, even if it means spending a little extra money. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You should take advantage of the experience.
You go on a special trip? You will not be relaxing on that trip. You will get up early every morning and go to bed late every night so that you have ample time to see all the sights you can, eat all the food that you can’t eat at home, and attend any special events that you can afford to attend. And when you go on that trip, you will bring along fun trip clothes that you will enjoy wearing and taking pictures in.
That is why this past Saturday, Older Sister, Little Sister, and I were joined by our friend Rosebud in a quest to purchase new summer clothes/clothes to wear in New York City.
I am rather excited about some of these clothes. So excited, in fact, that I am going to tell you about them. So if you hate clothes, this would be an opportune time for you to go read another post. You can try this one. Or this one. Or this one. But please note that if you leave now, you will never find out what I am going to wear while in New York City. And you will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and wonder about it. And you will curse yourself for not reading the rest of the post.
Make your decision now…
…
…
…
…Okay, is everybody who’s staying still here? Okay. Moving on.
First off, please note this beautiful Wembley Fraggle t-shirt my brothers gave me for my birthday:
I am a fan. Please also note that on our trip to New York City, we are going to stop at THE MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE!!!
If that sentence doesn’t fill you with excitement, you probably don’t know what the Museum of the Moving Image is. Heck, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that they have a JIM HENSON EXHIBIT!
With FRAGGLE PUPPETS!
So there is no way that I am not going to that museum. And there is no way that I would not wear a Wembley Fraggle t-shirt when I am no way not going to that museum.
Older Sister advised me on the best way to wear such a t-shirt in a fashionable manner. Apparently, you wear them with this cardigan thing:
Which I will hereafter refer to as the Mokey Fraggle, for obvious reasons:
And with the Mokey Fraggle and the t-shirt, you wear a fun pair of shoes:
I like these shoes. I don't normally wear yellow, but wearing these beauties will be like walking on sunshine all day long. I've been wearing them around to break them in, and they're also surprisingly comfortable.
I have a few other t-shirts to wear with this ensemble, including my Awkward Mormon Girl shirt, and I think it will be a fun thing to wear while tromping around a city I've never seen before.
Older Sister desires that, as part of our New York City trip, we should dress up each night as we go to our Broadway shows.
On my birthday, my parents gave me a bright blue dress and a polka dot scarf.
OLDER SISTER: Are you going to wear that on Broadway?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Well, I thought I might wear it--
OLDER SISTER: On Broadway.
Broadway it is.
My other Broadway clothes include a pink lace dress with gold jewelry that I purchased on Saturday.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, I bought these earrings:
New York City, here I come!
You get invited to a fancy party? You should wear a fancy outfit with nice shoes, jewelry, hair, and makeup. If you don’t have a fancy outfit, you should buy one. If you can’t afford to buy one, you should find someone who will let you borrow one. And if you don’t have the knowledge or means to do fancy hair and makeup, you should get your mom, your sister, or a friend or neighbor to do fancy hair and makeup for you.
You graduate from college? You should get a nice frame to display your very expensive piece of paper. If your school invites you to some special graduation events, you should go to at least some of them, even if it means spending a little extra money. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You should take advantage of the experience.
You go on a special trip? You will not be relaxing on that trip. You will get up early every morning and go to bed late every night so that you have ample time to see all the sights you can, eat all the food that you can’t eat at home, and attend any special events that you can afford to attend. And when you go on that trip, you will bring along fun trip clothes that you will enjoy wearing and taking pictures in.
That is why this past Saturday, Older Sister, Little Sister, and I were joined by our friend Rosebud in a quest to purchase new summer clothes/clothes to wear in New York City.
I am rather excited about some of these clothes. So excited, in fact, that I am going to tell you about them. So if you hate clothes, this would be an opportune time for you to go read another post. You can try this one. Or this one. Or this one. But please note that if you leave now, you will never find out what I am going to wear while in New York City. And you will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and wonder about it. And you will curse yourself for not reading the rest of the post.
Make your decision now…
…
…
…
…Okay, is everybody who’s staying still here? Okay. Moving on.
First off, please note this beautiful Wembley Fraggle t-shirt my brothers gave me for my birthday:
If that sentence doesn’t fill you with excitement, you probably don’t know what the Museum of the Moving Image is. Heck, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that they have a JIM HENSON EXHIBIT!
With FRAGGLE PUPPETS!
So there is no way that I am not going to that museum. And there is no way that I would not wear a Wembley Fraggle t-shirt when I am no way not going to that museum.
Older Sister advised me on the best way to wear such a t-shirt in a fashionable manner. Apparently, you wear them with this cardigan thing:
I have a few other t-shirts to wear with this ensemble, including my Awkward Mormon Girl shirt, and I think it will be a fun thing to wear while tromping around a city I've never seen before.
Older Sister desires that, as part of our New York City trip, we should dress up each night as we go to our Broadway shows.
On my birthday, my parents gave me a bright blue dress and a polka dot scarf.
OLDER SISTER: Are you going to wear that on Broadway?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Well, I thought I might wear it--
OLDER SISTER: On Broadway.
Broadway it is.
My other Broadway clothes include a pink lace dress with gold jewelry that I purchased on Saturday.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, I bought these earrings:
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Waiting for Elijah
Every year at Nameless Utah College, I would see signs inviting all and sundry to a Passover celebration. And every year, I would think about attending so that I might connect with my Jewish ancestry.
But I never did until this year.
The prophet Malachi said, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:
"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."
We have a simple interpretation of Malachi's prophecy. Elijah returned to the Earth at the dedication of the Kirtland temple. He brought the sealing powers back to the Earth. The sealing powers allow us to perform saving ordinances for and be sealed to our ancestors, turning our hearts to our fathers. They also allow us to be sealed to our descendants, turning our hearts to our children.
I've been spending a lot of time in the temple lately, doing proxy work for and thinking about my Jewish ancestors. My heart has never been so fully facing them, and so it was that this year of all years, I was drawn to the Passover.
I contacted the person in charge of Nameless Utah College's Passover and asked if it would be appropriate for me to attend. She said I would be welcome.
My two very non-Jewish roommates, bless their hearts, volunteered to accompany me to this very Jewish and rather expensive event with ever so much alcohol at which they would be even more out of their depth than I would be. And thus, the Saturday night before Easter, we set forth.
Upon arrival, a college student walked up to us, greeted us, and said, "Sit anywhere you like! That table over there is Cattle. The table with the sunglasses is Darkness. And the table with the plastic swords and baby feet is Death of the Firstborn, if you think that kind of thing is funny."
And we were like, "Erm... uh... huh?
Looking around, we realized that the decorations on the tables representing the ten plagues from the Book of Exodus. And I had an internal monologue that went something like this:
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Is this…okay?
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Well, I guess so. If anyone has a right to poke fun at the Book of Exodus, Jews do.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: But do they always do this at Passover? Is it common?”
I thought that no, it probably wasn’t, and having reached this conclusion I thereupon took a seat at a table that wasn't Death of the Firstborn, because I didn't think that kind of thing was funny. Our table was decorated with combs, to represent Lice, and plastic locusts, for obvious reasons.
Soon the Seder began. The rabbi alternated between reading passages from the Haggadah (the book of Passover scripture) and having those of us attending the Passover read passages of the Haggadah.
Part of the Haggadah said, “If God had not redeemed our ancestors, then we and our children and our children’s children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.” I thought about that and was surprised to realize that it’s true. I think sometimes we think that slavery is uniquely American, that it happened to only one group of people at one time and in one place. But that’s not true at all.
In between passages of the Haggadah, the rabbi led us in Hebrew songs, which were lovely and stirring. He also gave brief addresses of his own devising.
In one of these addresses, the rabbi commented that someone rises up in every generation with an intent to destroy the Jews. He mentioned Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and other names I didn’t recognize. He also talked at length about the suffering of the Holocaust. As he talked, I thought about my own family. I thought about relatives who died in the Holocaust. We’ve been trying to find the names of these relatives and to learn exactly what happened to them for years. Recently, we learned that many of our European relatives were living in a village called Sassmachen. Some were killed there on July 26th, 1941. The rest were taken on a pointless excursion out of town only to be shot on August 7th.
I say it’s a shame. It’s a shame on the world that such things ever happened, and are happening, and will continue to happen. Living in a fallen world is part of the mortal experience, but oh, how fallen a fallen world is!
Throughout all the reading, and the singing, and the rabbi's addresses, there were places where we ate and drank ceremonial food. This included cups of wine (grape juice for the Seamstress and Pepper and me), parsley dipped in salt water, horseradish, and pieces of matzah. After the first part of the Seder, there was also a full meal of matzo ball soup, chicken, brisket, herb potatoes, and vegetables. An unleavened strawberry sponge cake followed.
Then there were some silly activities. The rabbi hid a piece of matzah and made us all look for it, something that is usually done by children. He also led us through what I can only describe as a Jewish version of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." It started with "An only kid, an only kid, my father bought for two zuzim!" and ended with God destroying the Angel of Death who killed the butcher who etcetera etcetera you get the idea.
The rabbi assigned someone to do a sound effect for each line. He told me that every time he said "an only kid," I had to make a noise like a goat.
And I was like, "Somehow I feel like all of my improv comedy training has led up to this moment where I was asked to make a goat sound in front of a bunch of strangers at Passover." In other words, I was well prepared for this experience.
After this fun, we finished the Seder from the Haggadah.
Now, the Jews are also mindful of the words of Malachi. They know Elijah was to return, and they are waiting for him. Jewish tradition holds that Elijah will return at the Passover. (Interestingly enough, when Elijah appeared in the Kirtland temple, it was during the Passover.) A cup of wine is filled for the prophet, a chair is left empty, and the door is opened to let Elijah enter.
Around the time that the door was opened for Elijah, the rabbi gave another address, one to this effect: "The Orthodox Jews still believe that the Messiah will come, but I don't believe that. At least, I don't believe that an actual person will come to us. I believe that if things are going to get better, we have to make it happen ourselves."
I don't know what the other people in the room thought of that statement. I didn't agree, but seeing as I'm Christian and my whole religion began with the coming of the Messiah, that shouldn't surprise anyone. And I can't even begin to guess what the Jewish people in the room were thinking. So I will just say that I think it would be hard to see your people be persecuted and destroyed and not have the expected warrior-king Messiah swoop down from the sky to stop it, but I think it would be harder to have nobody to look to for deliverance.
We finished the Seder. One of the last things we said was, "Next year in Jerusalem." Then we left through the same door through which Elijah was expected.