My Other Week with HelloFresh

My final two recipes with HelloFresh were Crab Cakes Under a Lemon-Dressed Salad with Fingerling Potatoes and Lemon Aioli and Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Cucumber Tomato Salad. Once again, one of the recipes I'd chosen (the crab cakes) was premium, so I paid $10 extra for the privilege of trying it.

After several days of lollygagging about in New York, cooking for myself again was a little intimidating, so I was pleased I had HelloFresh to ease back into it. No grocery shopping or meal planning required. Huzzah!

The first meal I prepared was the Crab Cakes Under a Lemon-Dressed Salad with Fingerling Potatoes and Lemon Aioli. I've been wanting to learn to make my own crab cakes for a while, so I was annoyed (but in retrospect, should not have been surprised) to see that the crab cakes were pre-assembled. They just wanted pan-cooking. Great for speediness, but not so great for learning crab cake skillz. Boo.

I was also sad to see that "lemon-dressed salad" was actually code for "lemony arugula from a previous recipe but now it's disguised as a salad through the addition of grape tomatoes and chopped scallions." You can't fool me, HelloFresh! Not even for a minute.

Also, I do want to note that while I've never had a problem with ingredient quality in my other food subscription box deliveries, the produce for this recipe was a bit sad. I made the crab cakes the day after receiving the box. The arugula and scallions were already wilty, and the tomatoes appeared to be not long for this world.

As with previous HelloFresh recipes, every recipe step was kind of meshed together into a weird simultaneous rush. I was washing and drying and chopping produce, roasting the fingerling potatoes, cooking the crab cakes, mixing the aioli, and assembling the salad at essentially the same time.

The potatoes were essentially the same as the three varieties of potato I made with Blue Apron except they were fingerlings, not Yukon golds, and the spice blend was just a packet of pure smoked paprika. Smoked paprika was one of the many ingredients in the salmon burger spice blend. I'd enjoyed that spice blend, so I was curious to see how smoked paprika did on its own.

Also like the salmon burgers, the crab cakes were ridiculous to cook. Very difficult to flip over without breaking in half!

Finally, I was dismayed to see that the lemon-dressed salad called for only half the packet of arugula. I didn't want to waste half a packet of arugula! And I don't even like arugula! (I ended up giving the rest to my mom and telling her the recipe for the lemony arugula. She's the kind of person who would think lemony arugula is a treat.)

In spite of my little gripes and the hectic nature of everything, the preparations themselves weren't complex. When all was done (it's been a few weeks, so I forget the exact cook time, but I think it took about forty-five minutes), I plated everything, even following the instructions to put the crab cakes under the salad.

I forgot to garnish the plate with the remaining scallions, but nobody cares because topping food with scallions for no reason is stupid.

The Verdict: Very tasty! The crab cakes were great, I loved the potatoes seasoned with spiced paprika, and the arugula was much more palatable as a lemon-dressed salad. I ended up eating most of it this time around. The lemon aioli was great on the cakes, the potatoes, and the salad. Also, putting the salad on top of the crab cakes did let the lemon and tomato juices soak into the crab cakes, which believe you me was a wonderful thing. The recipe did only make two servings, which were light enough that I had room for dessert after.

What I'd Do Differently: I still want to learn to make crab cakes on my own; I don't want to be reliant on pre-packaged crab cakes (quality ones are $$$). But I would definitely serve them with these potatoes, the aoili, and a salad with tomatoes and lemon (though possibly with lettuce or another viable arugula substitute).

My second choice for the week was Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Cucumber Tomato Salad.

I'm really not a big pork person, especially when it comes to pulled pork. I am, however, a secret lover of fun grilled cheese recipes. And one of the great things about these subscription boxes is that it's easier to get out of your comfort zone when you're only cooking a few servings of food at a time.

I was therefore pretty excited to try these sandwiches, but the day I got my box, Little Sister told me that she and Mr. Little Sister had also ordered this recipe (in a complimentary box I sent them because HelloFresh does that), and it was disappointing. Little Sister loves pulled pork, so I figured that if she didn't like the sandwiches, I wouldn't like them either.

Once again, the produce was sketch. I made the sandwiches three days after I made the crab cakes, and by that point, the tomato and the cucumber were disconcertingly soft.

As I looked at the recipe, I understood Little Sister's disappointment. First of all, I'd been imagining cooking pork in some kind of sweet sauce, like Cafe Rio pork. The pork was actually pre-cooked and pre-shredded with no apparent sauce whatsoever. Also, I was supposed to make an "onion jam" to go with it. What?! Onion on my grilled cheese? No, thank you! Onions in a jam? Definitely no, thank you! Onions do not go in jam.

Regardless of my personal feelings, I felt duty-bound to try the recipe out, so I prepared the produce as usual. I made the onion jam with the onion, olive oil, sugar, vinegar, and salt and pepper. I also crisped up the pork in a pan with more oil and salt and pepper. I then filled the big slices of bread with cheddar cheese, the pork, and the onion jam. Happily, grilling the sandwiches without them coming all apart was not as big of a challenge as I expected.

While all of this was going on, I was also making the salad. Which took like two seconds. Chopped cucumber and tomato in a bowl with more vinegar, oil, and salt and pepper. Done. Again, it's been a little while, but I believe the whole process lasted about fifty-five minutes.

The Verdict: Ummmm wow. This was actually really good! Well, the salad was nothing special. The sandwiches, though! The pork was crispy and salty while the onions were a little sweet and a little tart. I couldn't get enough. While there was only enough bread and salad for two servings, I ended up having enough filling for four sandwiches (I made the final two using bread from the store). If you average that out, this was another three-serving meal.

What I'd Do Differently: I'm just hoping I can find similarly packaged pork to make these again some day! So good! I'd serve them with the salad, too...just with fresher veggies.

Running Away From Your Problems

Have you ever run away from your problems?

Most people have at some point. (Except Harry Potter. Harry Potter seldom runs from his problems. Harry Potter runs towards his problems. The whole series hinges on Harry being a reckless, restless maniac with zero self-preservation skillz.)

Guess what characters do run away from their problems?

Star Butterfly and Marco Diaz do. Constantly.

Allow me to demonstrate. Here we have Marco slamming his bedroom door to escape his problems (coughStarcough)...

...Star leaving a concert early to escape her problems...

...Marco climbing out a window to escape his problems (again, the problem he's escaping is Star)...

...Star trespassing into a city aqueduct to escape her problems... 

...Marco hiding under his suit jacket to escape Star his problems...

...Star jumping out a window and flying away on a magical cloud to escape her problems...

...twice...

...Marco walking slowly backwards...

...running across a beach...

...and sharing his hoodie with this girl he barely knows, all so he can escape his problems.

(I'll give you one guess as to what problems that might be.)

Don't get me wrong; Star vs the Forces of Evil is a great series. But everybody in it does run away from their problems on the regular.

I'm more like Harry, I guess. I like to walk up to my problems and punch them in the face! Metaphorically! Sometimes literally! But one time I did leave town unexpectedly to get away from some stuff.

What problems have/are you running away from? How drastic is your particular form of running away? (These are rhetorical self-help questions. You don't have to respond. Although I'd be curious to hear if you did.)

In Which My Mad Internet Sleuthing Skillz Come in Handy

I was scrolling through Twitter when I saw a photograph from an article in a local paper.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I know those people!!!

That's what I exclaimed, though it technically wasn't true. I only knew one of the people. Which also technically wasn't true. I didn't know him...I'd just Internet stalked him.

Let me explain. A few years ago, I regularly read an anonymous LDS dating blog. I was curious about the authors, so I did some Internet sleuthing on one of them. And let me tell you, I gots some mad Internet sleuthing skillz. I figured out this girl's true identity, and I figured out the identity of her most infamous ex-boyfriend.

I won't explain what made him so infamous, but suffice it to say that after the blog author broke up with him, she mentioned that he married a teenager. (Which, come to think of it, may be enough in itself to cause infamy. But I digress.) I found this man and his teenage bride on Facebook, and sometimes when I'm bored I look in on them.

Anyway. They were in the paper. And apparently I've stalked them enough times that I recognized them immediately. So coooooool.

Little Sister's Wedding

Little Sister's wedding was kind of like a huge game of Boo/Yay.

Boo/Yay is a storytelling improv game where one improviser says something negative, and everyone says "Boo!" Then an improviser on the other team says something positive, and everyone says, "Yay!" It's simple, but effective.

First, the groundwork. I went to my parents' house late the night that Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister got engaged. They were still up. Little Sister showed me the ring.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Do you have a date?

MR. LITTLE SISTER: May 4th. Star Wars Day!

Little Sister is a huge Star Wars fan. Mr. Little Sister likes it, but definitely not as much as Little Sister. In fact, I'd arrived at my parents' house with a Star Wars-themed engagement present for her.

MR LITTLE SISTER: The sealing is at 10:20. We've already booked the temple.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What are you thinking for colors?

LITTLE SISTER: Lavender and wheat.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What about my bridesmaid dress? Do you already have that, too?

They didn't, but it was soon obtained. During preparations, the wedding soon turned from lavender and wheat to more of a purple fest, and the bridesmaid dresses were frothy concoctions of a sort of lavender-and-mauve mix color.

Baby Sister was the maid of honor. Older Sister and I were bridesmaids. The brothers were groomsmen. Since Mr. Little Sister has no brothers but three sisters, there was a swarm of bridesmaids, and the groomsmen presence was a bit thin.

Two days before the wedding, Older Sister flew in from New York. One day before the wedding, Mr. Little Sister's family held a wedding dinner in lieu of a luncheon.

And that's when things started to go a bit wrong.

BOO: The night of the dinner, I found that I had a raging cold.

YAY: At least I was sick and not Little Sister or Mr. Little Sister.

BOO: The next morning, our parents went off to the temple with Little Sister. The five Obnoxious siblings were scrambling around, trying to get ready. Baby Sister was trying to do my makeup and her hair. Baby Brother couldn't find his preferred shoes. Amidst all this, Little Sister was frantically texting Baby Sister, asking for various items she'd forgotten.

YAY: Baby Sister, being a good maid of honor, gathered everything that Little Sister needed. We managed to mollify Baby Brother and herd him into the car. Then we set off, Older Sister driving, me in the passenger seat and hopped up on cold medicine, everyone else in the back.

BOO: Suddenly, we hit traffic very uncharacteristic of 9:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning! It was rush traffic, and then some. Evidently, there'd been an accident. Soon we were locked in a complete standstill. We'd been on the road for at least fifteen minutes, and we'd hardly gone anywhere.

YAY: We happened to be near an exit. I was able to help Older Sister navigate safely out of the standstill and off the freeway! We then found an alternate route.

BOO: By this time, we were running rather late.

YAY: Older Sister used her mad driving skillz to get us to the temple in record time. At one point, we were turning right one a green light. There were a couple old ladies about to cross the road, but Older Sister yelped, "NOPE!" and cut them off as she raced toward temple parking! Soon Older Sister and Baby Sister and I (Baby Sister having recently been endowed) were headed into the temple while our brothers waited outside.

BOO: Although we made it to the temple on time, most of Mr. Little Sister's family did not. Presumably, they were stuck in the terrible traffic. The sealing room was ready early, so when they started ushering us in for the ceremony, many family members still weren't there!

YAY: Because the sealing room was fully booked for the day, we were afraid the sealing would have to start without everyone being there. Happily, things worked out, and almost everyone was in the room by the time the sealer started speaking! The ceremony was lovely. Mr. Little Sister is a sensitive soul, and he wept throughout most of the sealing.

BOO: When we went outside to wait for the new couple to emerge from the temple doors, we suddenly realized that none of us had ever seen the photographer! We didn't even know if she existed! We gathered that she did, since someone had to take the engagement and bridal photos, but we didn't know for sure. But, assuming she did exist, no one had any idea what she looked like.

YAY: After a good half hour of my awkwardly side-eyeing every single passing photographer, the photographer finally showed up just minutes before Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister made their appearance.

BOO: I spilled soy sauce on my skirt during lunch.

YAY: I wasn't wearing my bridesmaid dress yet! I'd just worn a normal Sunday dress to the temple and planned to continue wearing it until we were done setting up for the reception. Obviously, I wasn't happy about spilling the soy sauce, but it was more manageable than it would have been had I ruined my bridesmaid dress.

BOO: Literally as soon as we got to the aviary in which Little Sister's preferred reception center was located, a bird messed a big, brown mess on Little Brother's white shirt.

YAY: Older Sister was able to wash out the bird mess in the bathroom of the reception center, and Little Brother wore a women's shirt while we set up for the reception.

BOO: Not long after we started setting up, my parents found out that the moving van with most of the items would not be coming to the reception center as planned. They decided that both of them would go back to Hometown to get it, taking Little Brother with them. That left the four remaining Obnoxious siblings, the best man, and Rosebud (who is Mr. Little Sister's cousin) and Mr. Rosebud to set up everything. The problem was, only our mother really knew how everything was supposed to look, so we were at a bit of a loss.

YAY: Rosebud is an interior designer! She oversaw us as we frantically ironed things, hung them out, set them up, moved them across the floor, and so on and so forth.

BOO: The reception center was overly warm. Something wasn't quite right about the distribution of the air in the dated structure of the reception center. I went to the aviary office to ask them to look at it, but they said there was nothing they could do.

YAY: Since I was the only one running a fever, I was the only one who found the heat unbearable. Everyone else was just a little toasty!

BOO: The wedding party didn't wear their outfits to the temple, so we hadn't gotten any family pictures. We were supposed to do that right before the reception. However, the time was drawing near, and things still weren't set up. Fairy lights were still being strung. The backdrop for the bride and groom was falling apart even as Little Brother and Baby Sister put it up. Not to mention that no one had changed, freshened up, or put on their various flower accessories.

YAY: When Mom got back, she just told us to set things up...it didn't matter where. I put a few small trees lining the walkway, a formation that nobody questioned. In the end, everything got set up, and hey! We all were ready, too. Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister arrived, and all the bridesmaids got dressed at the same time as the bride. Mr. Rosebud dedicated himself to getting the boutonnieres on the groomsmen, and somehow, everyone was ready and lining up for photos.

BOO: Little Sister loves her record player. She'd put together a selection of records for the reception that we were supposed to play on her record player. However, just moments before the reception started, she discovered she hadn't put the record player power cord into the box of reception equipment.

YAY: When the DJ arrived, she offered to have her dad and brother bring her record player when they arrived at the reception. In the meantime, Rosebud's dad had an amplifier, and Mr. Little Sister had an iPod, so we did't have to go musicless.

At that point, things went mostly smoothly. The reception was set up like a fairy picnic in the woods. It was lovely. The refreshments were delicious. Having the reception in an aviary turned out to be rather interesting. At a couple points, my younger siblings ran away into the aviary. I had to hike up my delicate skirt and trot out looking for them in my cream-colored heels and flower crown.

At the end of the reception, we indulged in a bit of geekery. You might have seen photos of couples leaving their receptions to a send-off of sparklers or bubbles. Well, we'd gathered a good 15 or so lightsabers. We went out behind the reception center, turned on the lightsabers, and crossed them to make an archway. We blasted the Star Wars theme, and Little Sister and her new husband ran under the lightsaber path to the music.

I didn't see this myself, but word on the street says that after they were clear of the lightsabers, Little Sister stopped and said, "Wait! I didn't say goodbye to my family!" and started hugging everyone with arm's reach. And then she and Mr. Little Sister were gone.

We cleaned everything up and, exhausted, went home and went to bed!

The Bus

I was a bus kid for most of my public school experience. Most days after school, I had to board the big yellow monster, endure a ride of several minutes, and then walk several blocks to get home.

When I got to college, I took a Utah Transit Authority bus (or rather, two buses, as I had to transfer) to almost every class. I had to wait in the rain, the snow, the battering winds and the freezing cold. Oh, sure, it was pleasant to ride the bus on warm spring days, when I could sit in the sunshine during my transfer and read a book. Most of the time, though, it was miserable.

After I graduated from Nameless Utah College, I thought that my bus-riding days were over. However, I soon realized that there was no way I was getting to work in the snow. People from out of town scoff and say that Utah drivers don't know how to drive in the snow, but I say all snow is different. I know how to successfully drive in some kinds of snow, but I lack the skillz to grapple with all of them. If so many non-Utah people really do know a technique that allows for driving in all kinds of snow, I demand that they make an instructional course and mass-produce it immediately. The northern hemisphere needs it.

The first winter I worked in Work City, I took the bus for about two months straight. Unfortunately, it was just as tedious as it had been during school. Even more so, perhaps, now that my life had moved on from the poor college student stage.

Last winter, I took the bus maybe a grand total of three weeks when you add all the days together. I just couldn't bear it if I didn't have to.

This winter, I've tried to avoid the bus at all. I just can't do it. However, after my car slid into an adjacent lane on a freeway exit last week, my hand was forced.

Monday morning found me standing in the cold and the dark, waiting for a bus.

It's discouraging yet humbling to find yourself back in a place you keep thinking you've left behind.

Ah well. Maybe someday. A girl can always hope.

What Is Blogging For?

Okay, blog readers. Put on your instructional designer hats for a moment, because I'm going to be talking about instructional design this time around.

I've been reading (in order, from the beginning) a blog by instructional design expert Professor Karl Kapp. The blog begins in late 2006, and I've read a good seven and a half years of content so far.

The professor mostly discusses the developing technologies he believes will change the face of learning. The three technologies he talks about that stick out to me are 1) virtual worlds, 2) video games, and 3) blogging.

The blog starts when virtual world Second Life (which I previously had barely heard about) was apparently in its heyday. Professor Kapp hails virtual worlds as being one of the next great technologies of learning. Was he right? Well, I'm not caught up to the present in the blog, so I can't say if he's still posting about virtual worlds or if any real learning developments have taken place there. But I can share my thoughts. I never participated in a virtual world such as the ones Professor Kapp extols, but around that time I did play a fair amount of Neopets, Millsberry, and Webkinz, which are sort of like virtual worlds for kids. I call them "virtual worlds" rather than "sites" because, in my definition, a virtual world is any website where you can do everything you can do in real life (earn and spend money, eat, change clothes, socialize, decorate a home) plus a few things you aren't able to do in real life (take tae kwon do lessons, search for mythical beasts, make crème brulee like a pro). They are very fun, to be sure.

However, the problem with these virtual worlds is the same thing that makes them so fun: they're like another life. It's difficult to live a real life plus an extra virtual life on the side...but it's hard to play in a virtual world casually...but it's unsustainable to stay active in a virtual world if you're going to take your real life seriously. For that reason, I think virtual worlds are better left alone, and for that reason, I don't think they're the future of learning. I think that, for purposes of putting learners in situations that it's difficult to replicate in real life, virtual realities (using virtual reality goggles) or augmented reality (where virtual images appear in a real-life environment, à la Pokémon Go) would be better. It would be harder to lose yourself in those technologies as they require moving about in real space.

Now, video games. I do believe that people can learn skills by playing video games. As I might have said in the past, my family didn't have a gaming system when I was growing up (and I'm absolutely terrible at Mario Kart because of it). Instead, when we wanted to play games, my sisters and I would play Nancy Drew mysteries on interactive CD-ROMs.

A few months ago, Little Sister and I went with some friends to an escape room. We eagerly anticipated being awesome at the escape room, having played so many games where we were super sleuths. Sure enough, it quickly became clear that Little Sister and I had learned mad skillz from our game. We'd learned hard, physical skills (shading pads of paper to find indentations from previous notes; examining everything in the room; checking doorknobs and saying "It's locked") simply by making Nancy perform them. We'd also learned some soft skills, such as finding connections between seemingly unconnected items, not being afraid to try even the wildest ideas, and stepping away from a difficult puzzle to work on something else for a while.

If we learned all that from playing simple games on a PC, then who knows what else we could learn? I will assert, though, that if you can learn something positive from a game so effectively that you can actually replicate it in real life, then you can learn something negative from a game and also have it transfer to real life. Specifically: violence. I don't understand how some people laud games as being able to teach good skills but deny that games can also teach violence. It necessarily goes both ways.

The last technology, blogging, is the one I really wanted to share with y'all. Professor Kapp's blog begins when blogging was a fairly new idea. I find his view of blogging to be so fascinating. He uses blogging in ways that I would never have considered. For example, whenever he releases a book, he does a "blog book tour"—he schedules different blogs relevant to the book's subject to do a review post on a certain day. The professor then directs the traffic from his own blog to the reviews. This means exposure for the book and new readers for both the reviewing blogs and Professor Kapp's blog.

Most notably, he keeps referring to blogging as a learning tool or technology. My initial reaction to this idea was, "That's not how I think of blogging at all!" But then I remembered that in my first post, I essentially said that my blog was meant to educate people about what LDS people are really like. That being the case, most of the time I tend to think of my blog more as a newsletter...or a diary...or a travelogue...or an entertainment outlet. I guess I think my blog is for a lot of things.

Which begs the questions: what is blogging for? I'm not asking this rhetorically. I'd like everyone, from Baby Brother to my friends to the bright intellectuals I met at college, to tell me why they either read blogs, or write blogs, or both. I'm curious. I want to know. I want to learn.

Go on. Share in the comments: in your opinion, what is blogging for?

How to Use Words

Being the English major that I am, I tend to notice when people are trying to say a thing but they don't, er, say it correctly. I touched upon that briefly in an earlier post. In this post, I'd like to touch upon it less briefly. I'd like to give it a big, long squeeze, so to speak.

Not everybody has mad word skillz. That's fine. Those without may know how to do things the rest of us don't know much about, like playing soccer or kissing. It all evens out. In any case, anyone who wants better word skillz can benefit from my mad word skillz as I explain some commonly misused words and phrases. Ready? Let's go.

Alright. "Alright" is actually not a word. In all instances, the phrase "all right" should be used in place of "alright."

Phase. When someone says "That doesn't phase me," the spelling they're actually looking for is F-A-Z-E, "faze." To be "fazed" is to be disturbed.

Baited breath. "Baited" means to have bait attached to something. If your breath is baited, then you should make good use of it and go fishing. Most of the time, that's not what people mean; they mean that their breath is suspended. In that case, the correct phrase is "bated breath."

Confident. "Confident" is how you feel when you have a cute new haircut or you just said something terribly witty and clever to a group of appreciative people. The person to whom you confess all your secrets is your "confidant" with an a, not an e. Unless, of course, you favor the Frenchified spelling "confidante," which does have an e, but only at the end.

Missus. "Missus" is the phonetic spelling of the abbreviation "Mrs." "Misses" is multiple single women or the singular, third-person present tense of the verb "to miss."

You may be wondering, "Awkward Mormon Girl, what gives you the right to lecture us about correct word usage?" The answer to that question is that I have an English degree. That's why I have an English degree. English majors may say that they're going to use their degree to teach or write a novel, but in reality the only reason a native English speaker studies English in college is so that they have the official right to correct everybody else's grammar.

English majors are jerks like that.

Anyways, I hope this proves useful and/or eye-opening. Now excuse me; I'm going to bed.

My Sports-Related Injury

The universe has a message for me. It's been trying to convey this message to me for the last 20+ years. The message is, "Awkward Mormon Girl, stay away from sports!"

After countless sprained ankles and many collisions of volleyballs, basketballs, tether balls, and soccer balls with various parts of my body, you'd think I'd be getting the message loud and clear. But no. Noooo. Optimism prevails. Optimism, and a sufficient amount of memory loss to make me forget that I'm not very good at sports or, well, anything that requires moving of any kind...but especially sports.

Shortly before I left for my trip, I decided it would be a good idea to go to a combined ward activity which featured the sport of soccer.

Just before the activity, I was at a family dinner at Chuck-a-Rama. By the time I left for the activity, I was stuffed-a-rama. Still I went.

Best Friend Boy and many others were in the middle of a game when I arrived. At first I just watched, because I was too full to run, but I didn't want to be that person who goes to a sports activity and refuses to participate. So I joined a group of guys who were throwing around a football.

One of my very few sports skillz is that I can catch a football. I can't throw it, but I can catch it. As I don't know a lot of girls who can say the same, I'm naturally proud of this skill.

So, essentially, I was showing off. I was being a big show-off. And I guess I got what was coming to me.

One of the guys threw long to me. I scrambled to catch the ball. It bounced off my fingertips. And when it did, it bent my right ring finger in a way that a right ring finger was never meant to bend.

For some reason, instead of paying immediate medical attention to my finger, I caught a few more passes. Then, still full of food and with an aching finger, I ambled over to the soccer game. Then I joined the soccer game.

ME: Wait, why am I doing this? I am so full. I don't want to move.

ALSO ME: Plus your finger seems to be sprained.

ME: Ohhh. Is that what that is?

ALSO ME: Plus, we both know you're just going to get hit by the soccer ball.

I had a good point.

I ended up leaving the activity early and went to my parents', where I proceeded to explain my injury and seek medical aid.

My mother, who is an RN, was all, "Poor, poor baby! Ice your poor little finger, and I'll get you a splint to wear."

My father, who played college and high school sports but has terribly un-sport-y children, was all, "Did you say that you got injured playing sports? Good job!" and hugged me.

Parents are weird.

The Parable of the Pizza

The when I got to my institute class this week, I found a basil leaf stuck to my scripture case.

But Awkward Mormon Girl, why would there be a basil leaf on your scripture case?

Because my scripture case was sitting on my passenger seat. The same passenger seat upon which I dumped basil leaves just a few days ago. Clearly.

I don't get it.

I'll explain.

I am now the chair of my ward's book club. Before this calling, I'd only been part of one and a half book club and was not terribly familiar with them. But my impression of books clubs—now hear me out—was that they are adorable events where everyone gathers in an adorably decorated home and eats adorable treats and says clever, possibly adorable things to each other. After, of course, having read an adorable book.

With those items in mind, I proceeded to plan my first book club meeting as chair.

We already had an adorable book. The previous chair had chosen The Wednesday Wars, a book that I really like. It's deep and exciting and also, yes, very adorable. Check.

An adorably decorated home? My apartment is classy and comfortable, but not adorable per se. The bishop's second counselor's wife volunteered her home, which is all cute picture frames and crafts and matching furniture. Check.

Adorable treats? Check! "I'll make cream puffs," said the second counselor's wife. Cream puffs are a plot point in The Wednesday Wars.

That left saying clever, adorable things was, apparently, my job as chair. I made a list of possible discussion points. That would have to do.

Then I decided to bring pizza. Pizza is not a plot point in The Wednesday Wars, but the book takes place on Long Island. And what also takes places on Long Island? Brooklyn and all the things that happen in Brooklyn take place on Long Island...including the creation of delicious margherita pizza.

Why did I want to bring pizza? It's hard to explain. My whole life has been a struggle between knowing that I don't need people to be happy and wanting to interact with them anyways. A struggle between being able to describe exactly what I'm thinking when I'm writing but never being able to say what I want to say when speaking. A struggle between being confident in who I am but not knowing how to show that confidence in the way I present myself. A struggle between feeling like I wasn't made to be social but, as a human, being a naturally social thing.

I go to social events. And I try. But I'm not good with people. And I'm not good at putting together adorable things like cutely decorated homes and cream puffs. I don't get that stuff. But I do get food. And so, to make up for my lack of skillz in other areas in which a book club chair should have skillz, I was going to make food. I was going to make a darn good pizza!

At least, that was the plan. I'd never made a pizza by myself before. So the week before the meeting, I practiced my mad pizza skillz.

The best way to make a margherita pizza, according to a combination of advice from the Food Nanny and my father, is to use a pre-made crust, a bunch of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and a little basil plant you can leave on your windowsill. You bake the pre-made crust a little to make it nice and crisp. Then you chop the tomatoes, mix them with some olive oil, some salt, and some pepper, and spread them on the crust. You put the crust back in the oven. Then, when the tomatoes are nice and bubbly, you slice the fresh mozzarella on top. You put a little parmesan cheese and a little more olive oil with salt and pepper on top. You bake it some more, until bubbly. Then you pluck some fresh basil leaves from the plant, wash them (because you're not a barbarian), and toss them on top of the pizza. And then you have a margherita pizza, fresh and warm and tasty and ready to be consumed with a bottle of root beer.

That's the theory, anyways. My trial pizza ended up being a little burnt around the edges. But, all in all, a job well done.

After making the trial pizza, I had one pre-made crust, some fresh mozarella, some parmesan, and some olive oil left over. I figured I could use them to make the real pizza a week later. I also still had the little basil plant.

It was the kind of basil plant that you close in a plastic box and then don't touch it and it takes care of itself. This confused me to no end, truthfully. The plant came with no instructions whatsoever. At first I opened the plastic box because I thought it would be better, but then the basil plant (whom I'd named Basil) shriveled up.

So then I looked online to learn more about the care and keeping of basil plants in plastic boxes and learned that the plastic box was, in fact, Basil's greenhouse that kept him alive.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh, a greenhouse! Obviously. How could I not have guessed that?

I put a little water on Basil's roots, shut the plastic box/greenhouse up again, and nursed the little guy back to green, leafy health.

So far, so good.

For a week, I lived in a constant state of anxiety about the pre-made crust. I poked it almost daily, making sure it hadn't gone stale. I kept checking Basil, too, to make sure that he didn't shrivel up again. But the crust stayed supple, and Basil stayed unshriveled, and soon the day of the book club meeting arrived.

With care, I removed the pre-made crust from the pantry. It had become inexplicably cracked, but (I confirmed again) not stale. I spread the chopped tomatoes with olive oil (which I'd mixed the night before) over the crust and placed it in the oven to bake.

Then everything went wrong.

As I chopped the fresh mozzarella, I realized that when it's a week old, fresh mozzarella is no longer fresh. Not that the cheese was rancid or moldy, because it wasn't. But the consistency was a little different than it had been when I'd first bought it. I hoped that wouldn't be a problem.

I took the pizza out of the oven and covered the tomatoes with mozzarella. Then I sprinkled parmesan over the mozzarella. Except wait. Because although the mozzarella was not moldy, tiny sections of the grated parmesan were!

Rapidly, my fingers working like speedily pecking birds, I plucked the moldy bits of parmesan off the pizza. At least, I plucked off the bits that I could see. Because basement apartments are dark. And I'm legally blind. Even when wearing glasses and/or contacts, my vision is spotty at best. At least when it comes to finding grains of slightly moldy, light-colored parmesan on a bed of equally light-colored mozzarella. I think that even someone with perfect vision would have a hard time doing that.

I was running out of time. I shook salt and pepper over the layer of cheese! I drizzled olive oil on all of it! Then I threw that puppy back in the oven and started stripping Basil of leaves.

As I pulled off the leaves, one by one, I noticed something odd about them. Some of them had brown splotches. Was that concerning? Should I be concerned? I decided that brown splotches were probably a normal part of being a basil plant, but just to be safe, I tore off the discolored bits and threw them away.

I washed the basil leaves because, again, I'm not a barbarian. Then I brought the hot and wonderful-smelling pizza out of the oven and artfully arranged the leaves on the bubbling mozzarella cheese.

I may not be into making adorable refreshments, but I thought the pizza looked really good!

This isn't the pizza that I made, but the pizza shown here looks similar to mine.

I took off the apron I'd worn to protect my white shirt from the olive oil. Now to transport the pizza. But how? The pizza pan had little holes in the bottom, which meant that I couldn't just carry it without pizza grease getting all over everything. But I didn't have any sort of thing large enough to carry it in, either. I have a bench scraper in my kitchen. I have a lazy slotted turner! How could it be that I didn't have a pizza-carrying receptacle?!

I decided that it would almost fit on a large plate, so I transferred the pizza onto the slightly-too-small plate. Too late, I remembered the crack in the pizza crust! I almost tore the pizza in half. I definitely succeeded in making it look far less pretty. Then I decided that almost fitting on a large plate was not good enough, so I transferred the pizza back to the pizza pan. Definitely less pretty.

In this process, I touched the cheese and discovered that it was somewhat...rubbery. But I'd cooked the pizza perfectly! If anything, I'd cooked it somewhat less than I had during the trial batch...oh. Was this what happened when the fresh mozzarella was not-quite-fresh? Ah dear. Well...that was disappointing, but it would probably be okay.

By this time, I really needed to get going. I grabbed some dish towels and a sauté pan lid and contrived a way to carry the pizza pan without getting pizza grease on my white shirt. And that's when I took a better look at the basil.

When you put the basil on the pizza, it's supposed to wilt slightly. This basil had wilted...a lot more than slightly. It was almost completely blackened. It looked like it had given up all will to live.

Weird, to say the least.

I pinched a basil leaf from the pizza. I examined it. I put it in my mouth.

Disgusting!

I was in trouble. This pizza was in trouble. I needed new basil, and fast. There was no time to go the store. But luckily, I remembered that I'd seen a bigger basil plant in a plastic box on my parents' windowsill that morning during Little Sister's birthday breakfast.

I ripped all the basil from the pizza. I transported the pizza to my car, put it on the towel I'd set on the passenger seat, and quickly drove to my parents' house.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I'm literally here to take your leaves and leave!

I snatched a handful of leaves from their plant, washed them, and ran back to the pizza in the car. I started to put the new basil on the pizza...

...except...

...brown splotches. I put a leaf in my mouth.

Disgusting!

I tore all the basil off the pizza. It would have to be a plain cheese pizza instead of a delicious margherita pizza. It was too late to find non-splotchy basil. Tossing the leaves onto the passenger seat, I put the pedal to the metal and soon pulled up in front of the home that the second counselor shared with his wife.

I then discovered that the sauté pan lid had slid up onto the pizza during the drive, peeling the cheese away from the crust. Try as I might, I could not fix the lumps created by this mishap. And, when I was getting the pizza out of the car, despite the towels and the lid, I somehow got pizza grease on my white shirt. I was on the verge of tears. I didn't want to go inside. I did not want to go inside.

But I did.

When I walked into the second counselor's home, I looked around at the adorable kitchen area. I looked at the adorable tablecloth laid out for the meeting and the bottles of soda (bottles of soda are also a plot point in The Wednesday Wars) in the bucket of ice. The cream puffs weren't laid out yet, but I was certain that they would be adorable and as close to perfect as cream puffs could get. I looked at my pizza, and I felt depressed.

The second counselor's wife glanced at the lumpy, basil-less, stringy-cheesy pizza and said something like, "That looks delicious!" Then she offered the use of her oven to keep the pizza warm.

I was dazed and confused. I couldn't believe how gracious she was being, to accept the terrible pizza. Not only had she not disparaged it, she'd actually complimented it. She'd offered it the shelter of her oven, as if it were a prize-winning pie and not a paltry attempt.

I decided that maybe the pizza didn't look as bad as I'd thought. But wait until people tasted it! Then the truth would come out. They'd realize that the cheese was rubbery, probably the crust was stale (because even though I'd tested it eleven thousand times, I couldn't possibly be sure that it wasn't stale), the parmesan had been in a container with other, moldy grains of parmesan, and shouldn't this pizza have basil on it?

Ward members arrived for the club. We blessed the food and began to eat.

Everybody took a slice of pizza. I cringed.

Everybody ate their slice of pizza. I waited. But no one said anything. No one said anything. A few people scraped some of the tomatoes off their slices, but nobody seemed averse to the crust...or the mozzarella cheese...or even the parmesan cheese.  And when Pepper arrived a little late, the Seamstress said, "I almost finished off the last of the pizza, but I decided to leave some for you."

They actually liked it. Because the pizza didn't match up to what I wanted it to be, I thought it wasn't good. Yet nobody else thought that. Nobody had a problem with the pizza but me.

And then I realized...maybe I am a pizza. I am a pizza, and social events are a book club. I think that the people at the book club don't like me, but really I don't like me because I think I should be what I want me to be. But nobody else wants me to be other than what I am. People are fine with me. Nay, more than fine with me. They want to eat me, probably.

You know?

Like most people, I learn things about life, then forget them and have to relearn them. For the meantime, though, I've learned this lesson well. Two days after the book club, I went to Jumpin's baby shower. The hostess had asked me to bring "cute cookies or cupcakes."

Knowing her, when she said "cute," I knew that she meant "cute." "Cute" being just another one of the many synonyms of "adorable." "Adorable" still being something that I struggle with.

I bought some Milanos. Two flavors. Milanos are classy and delicious. I even arranged them in a circle on a plate.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: And that's as cute as it's going to get.

But you know what? I didn't really care. I didn't care when I jostled the plate and the nicely arranged circle became scrambled. I didn't care when the baby shower turned out to be oh-so-perfectly decorated and color coordinated. I didn't care when it turned out that some of the Milano filling had melted. I didn't care when someone discovered that I'd taped the plastic wrap to the plate too tightly and we were unable to get it off without turning the whole thing over, so people had to stick their hands under the plastic wrap awkwardly and grasp cookies and get melting Milano filling all over their fingers.

I didn't care, because I knew I was a pizza at a book club, metaphorically speaking, and people would like me even if my plate of cookies wasn't the best or the cutesiest. And by "pizza" I mean "Milanos." And by "book club" I mean "baby shower." But the sentiment remains the same.

Mercury

Speaking of car trouble, Little Sister just got a new car. It's a blue-green Mercury that she is calling Hermes.

We were discussing Hermes through text.

Little Sister: Yeah, it's a weirdly nice but temperamental car

Little Sister: And a shaking nightmare on the freeway

Me: One might say it's...mercurial.

Me: Ba dum ching!

Little Sister: HAHAHAH

Little Sister: did you just come up with that??

Me: Yes. Yes, I did.

Little Sister: I HAVE A GENIUS SISTER

I do have some mad pun skillz.

Little Sister: And I set that joke up literally perfect for you.

Little Sister: Good team

Me: Together, we could rock the comedy world.

A few minutes later...

Me: I have another one.

Me: When you're in your car and you're backing up, you should cry, "MERCURY IS IN RETROGRADE!"

Little Sister: Hahahahaha Okay pretty good but you probably stop now while you're ahead.

Fun Facts About Me

Now that I've had this blog for almost three years, it seems like a good time to tell you some fun facts about myself! Because better late than never, right?

Fun Fact #1: As longtime readers have probably already gleaned, I have one older sister, two younger sisters, and two younger brothers. Bonus Fun Fact: My siblings and I don't really look alike. There are resemblances between some of us, but for the most part people don't peg the six of us as siblings.

Fun Fact #2: I always tell people that I graduated in creative writing, but it's actually more complicated than that. I actually graduated with two majors, English with an emphasis in creative writing and Honors. Having a degree in Honors basically just means that I'm an overachiever. I also minored in history.

Fun Fact #3: I have the mad skill of typing 100 words a minute without using home row.

Fun Fact #4: I got my driver's license when I was eighteen. I was not anxious to take on the responsibilities of being a driver.

Fun Fact #5: I was named after my uncle.

Snow Day

You know how sometimes in movies, when something bad happens and one of the characters lets out a huge "NOOOOO"?

Well, this morning, I woke up, checked the weather, and as soon as I saw that it was snowing my soul did a big "NOOOOO!"

And then it did it again when I opened the door and stepped foot in a foot of snow.

And again when I was lurching through the streets of Hometown.

And again when I saw the line to get on the overpass to Work City.

And again when my car got stuck on the overpass. (A friendly stranger got out of his car and actually pushed mine up the overpass.)

And then I was all snowed out and NOed out. So after about fifteen minutes of crawling on the treacherous freeway, I realized this was more than I could handle and I got off at the nearest exit to drive back home.

When I got home, my roommates were preparing to go to work. We all work in the same city, and when they saw that I was distraught at my lack of mad snow driving skillz they offered to drive me.

But then they stepped outside and saw the snow, and their souls also did a big "NOOOOO!" And then we all walked back into our apartment to wait until the roads were a little more clear.

Back in the apartment, there was hot chocolate and Christmas music and the light of our beautifully decorated Christmas tree. We all started talking about what we would do if we couldn't go into work today. A glorious fantasy of a snow day where we all stayed home began to dance in our heads.

Then the Christmas tree lights blinked off...on...off...on...off.

The power was out.

Immediately, we began to discuss flashlights and candles and emergency rations. This soon turned to talk of the zombie apocalypse, and how we would get weapons, and in which direction we would flee to get away from the zombies.

It was a pretty well-laid out plan. And so the glorious fantasy of the snow day was replaced with the exciting vision of surviving the zombie apocalypse.

But then we checked traffic and saw that the roads were now clear. Which meant it was time to go to work. Which knowledge killed both the remnant of the glorious fantasy and the momentum of the exciting vision.

Like good adults, we went outside to our cars, shoveled the driveway, and headed off to work.

I rode with Pepper to work and with the Seamstress home. And then, in return for their hospitality, I grandly announced that I would drive all of us to our ward Christmas party that evening.

I should now tell you that our party was at our church meetinghouse. Said meetinghouse is at the top of a hill. Hills are known for being inclined surfaces. Inclined surfaces are known for not being compatible with driving in the snow.

Remember how I got stuck driving up a slightly inclined overpass this morning? Remember how I couldn't handle driving in the snow? Remember how I cried? You don't remember that part, because I previously didn't tell you about it. But it happened. I cried quite a lot.

I don't know why I volunteered to drive up the hill to the party. And I especially don't know why I felt so sure that I could do it. But I changed into some party clothes, and I scraped the snow off my Honda, and I hustled my roommates into the car and I drove.

Calmly and easily, I drove the Honda up the hill. We went to the party. We ate. We left. We headed down the hill. We got stuck towards the top and had to be pushed by more kind strangers. Apparently there are lots of kind strangers when it's snowing.

Finally we were on our way down the hill, really down. As we slipped down the snowy hill, at long last my resolve began to break. I was amazed that I'd ever volunteered to go up the hill. I was amazed that we'd made it to the top. I was particularly amazed that I for some reason had also decided it was a good idea to go down.

Why do I do these things to myself?

In a show of bravado, I yelled, "Snow doesn't scare us! Only snow zombies."

But that was a lie, obviously. Because snow scares me. A lot. I would rather have faced snow zombies than snow. We had a plan for snow zombies. I do not know how to plan for snow.

But too late! Gravity had its way with us. We went down, down, down the slippery hill.

Here's some good news: we survived! Here's some bad news: there's approximately ten thousand days left of Utah winter.

I have another party tomorrow, but I'm getting somebody else to drive.

NaNoWriMo

I decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. That's National Novel Writing Month for all you non-writers out there. It's exactly what it sounds like: the month in which everyone in the nation frantically tries to write a novel of 50,000 words in thirty days.

I've tried to do NaNoWriMo before. Viola and the Fearless One and I actually formed a kind of NaNoWriMo support group that met (one time) on my bedroom floor.

It was not a successful support group, and NaNoWriMo was not a successful endeavour. I ended up getting really stressed out that I wasn't meeting my self-set deadlines and ended up accomplishing almost nothing.

I think the most stressful thing about NaNoWriMo is that, realistically, to accomplish your goal you have to write every day. Unless you want to write, like, eight hours on three days instead. Which I cannot do. Unless I want to spontaneously combust. Which I don't.

The last time I finished a novel, I did it using a formula that someone recommended in an article that I read once. The formula is this: don't write every day. In a week, take one day for God, one day for yourself, and give the other five days to writing.

This formula worked really well for me, so I decided to use it again for NaNoWriMo. Therefore, I am doing an abridged version of NaNoWriMo, where I did not make a goal to write 50,000 words but to write one page a day, five days a week during November. I will not finish any novels, but I'll get a good start on something that I can continue to work on.

It's been awhile since I've written any fiction. The process goes something like this:

1. Write two sentences.

2. Delete two sentences.

3. Write three paragraphs.

4. Take a break.

5. Reinterpret the secondary character's motivation.

6. Rewrite one-and-a-half of the three paragraphs.

7. Say, "This is the best thing I've ever written!"

8. Eat a snack.

9. Reread what you've written.

10. Say, "This is the worst thing I've ever written!"

11. Read something else for inspiration.

12. Have brilliant idea.

13. Write seven brilliant paragraphs.

14. Discover plot hole within the seven brilliant paragraphs.

15. Contemplate suicide by jumping into plot hole.

16. Pray.

17. Cry.

18. Solve plot hole.

19. Use SAT-level word.

20. Second-guess self and wonder if you have used SAT-level word correctly.

21. Look up SAT-level word's definition just to make sure.

22. Write three more paragraphs.

23. Conduct research using Wikipedia.

24. Write another paragraph.

25. Realize you have finished your quota for the day.

26. Celebrate.

27. Remember all the other things you have to do today that you have been neglecting.

28. Cry.

And so on and so forth.

Somehow, I made it through the first week intact. Well, here's to another three weeks and then some! We'll see how it goes.

My New Obsession

Several times over the past few years, my mom has said things to me like, "Do you keep a list of all the books you've read? You should. You should keep a list."

And I've always been like, "No, the effort of writing or typing out each individual book I've ever read seems really difficult."

BUT. Last night, I was looking at the Goodreads account that Viola convinced me to get seven years ago but that I've never actually used. And I realized that Goodreads has a super-handy reading tracker system that requires you to only click a picture of a book to put it on a "read" list.

And so I decided to do it. I'm embarking on a journey to record every single book that I've ever read on Goodreads.

At least, I'm going to try. Although I have a pretty great memory, I've been reading since the age of four. It's more than probable that I'll miss a few books here and there. Particularly the books I read when I was around seven and eight. We were given an hour or two of free reading time every morning in second grade. Childhood BF and I were in different classes, but we would frequently meet up in the library to check out books together. And we checked out a lot of books. A lot. The AR program tracked us as two of the most-read kids in the school. We would check out, read, and return multiple books each day. A lot of these books were from really long, really unremarkable children's series. I'll never be able to remember which of the books in said series I read and which ones I didn't. But I'm going to give it a good try, at least.

You guys. Today I added about half the books in my bookshelf on Goodreads plus all books I've read by those same authors. I've added the library books I've read recently plus all books I've read by those same authors. I've added a single shelf of books from my parents' house plus all books I've read by those same authors. And I'm at over 500 books!

I'm excited to see the final total. Stay tuned!

Give Me a Hint

We call the inability to decide "wembling." And by "we," I mean me and the fraggles. And by fraggles, I mean fraggles, the most delightful of creatures save hobbits. (Actually, I'm fairly certain that fraggles and hobbits are related somehow, because they have very similar cultures. But I digress.)

My favorite fraggle, Wembley, is so indecisive that he was named after his indecisiveness. He is so indecisive that he has difficulty choosing between two almost-identical shirts. He is so indecisive that when his best friend asks, "What do you want to do?" Wembley responds, "Can you give me a hint?"

Now, I am not an indecisive person.

I know what I want. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I just know. I was built with a homing device, it seems, that leads me to my desires like a bee to its hive or a salmon to its ancestral spawning ground.

I know what I want, unless I don't. Because after every ninety-ninth moment of decisiveness, there is one moment of indecisiveness. I am unused to indecisiveness; therefore, I do not handle it well.

So when some kind souls gave me a $50 Amazon gift card for Valentine's Day, and when I subsequently realized that I couldn't think of a single thing I truly wanted, it triggered my indecisive skillz, big-time. I have become nothing but a mass of floundering, wembling jelly.

I could get a new dress. There's this dress on Amazon that I was, indeed, eyeing a few weeks ago. But I decided to buy a different dress that was less expensive and which I could try on and buy, personally, from a physical store. To buy another dress would be overindulgence, and not the pleasant kind, but the wasteful kind.

There's this orange toaster on Amazon which I kind of like. But it seems terribly anticlimactic to spend such a thoughtful gift on a boring kitchen appliance.

I don't have many DVDs, so I could get one of those. But I did get three new movies for Christmas, and besides, I spent my last Amazon gift card on the first two seasons of Rocky and Bullwinkle. It would be better to get something different this time.

Best Friend Boy said, "Get a book." But I have so many books. Not that you can ever have too many. It's just that every time I splurge, I buy myself a book. Shouldn't I spend a gift of $50 on something I wouldn't normally be able to afford?

Porch said, "You could buy groceries." Lol no.

I need help. I need lots of help. What should I buy? In the words of Wembley Fraggle, give me a hint. Ready...go.

Sibling Sushi Date

I've been working hard to get my siblings to have a more cultured taste in food.

In December, Older Sister, Little Brother, and Baby Brother accompanied our mother and I to purchase and consume some Indian food. Older Sister and Little Brother were mildly interested in trying some new dishes. Baby Brother, the pickiest eater on this side of anything, mostly just came along for the ride.

Our mother, however, was determined that Baby Brother should try something new. Over the course of the night, he tried lassi, plain naan with a bit of the sweet dipping sauce they brought with our lamb samosas, and garlic naan.

Surprise! Baby Brother enjoyed the naan.

Baby Brother cackled to me, "Now I can be your naan buddy! Your non buddy!" because apparently that joke never get old.

Then a few weeks ago, Little Sister tried a cannoli, and tonight I took Little Brother with me to a Japanese restaurant so that he could try sushi for the first time.

In the almost-two years since I wrote this post, I have gotten a lot better with my chopstick skillz. Over the summer, I bought two pairs of chopsticks at the summer fest and whenever I get Chinese takeout, I whip out said chopsticks and practice. I rarely drop my sushi now, though I still despair of ever being able to use chopsticks to eat rice.

Little Brother, on the other hand, is completely inexperience with chopsticks. I tried to show him how to use them. Then I showed him how to eat ginger to cleanse his pallet and how to mix soy sauce and wasabi together to make a sushi sauce.

I started to mix the sushi sauce for Little Brother, but he decided to try to be useful by helping to add wasabi to his soy sauce. Which meant that his soy sauce had a lot a lot of wasabi in it. Every time Little Brother dipped a piece of sushi in the sauce, he would get a mouthful of wasabi and act like he was going to die.

After about an hour of this fine dining, two things happened. First, our father texted me, asking us to hurry home so we could go for frozen yogurt with our mother. Second, Little Brother, having consumed four or five pieces of sushi and half a plate of calamari, said that he was getting full. On sushi. Who gets full on sushi? The result of this was that he slowed down eating while we really needed him to hurry up.

Having finished my own sushi several minutes before, I begin to outline to Little Brother the game plan for the rest of the sushi.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Just eat those last two rolls and we'll go.

LITTLE BROTHER: (struggles to pick up roll and accidentally breaks it in half)

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Do you-

LITTLE BROTHER: I WILL NOT USE A FORK!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Then put the pieces in your mouth.

LITTLE BROTHER: (manages to pick up piece of sushi with chopsticks and bring it towards his mouth)

PIECE OF SUSHI: (unwinds and drops onto Little Brother's plate)

LITTLE BROTHER: This is really embarrassing.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Just eat the salmon.

LITTLE BROTHER: (tries to pick up piece of salmon that fell out of roll)

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Stab it with your chopsticks.

LITTLE BROTHER: (stabs salmon like ineffective salmon assassin)

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: A little gentler.

LITTLE BROTHER: (manages to flip salmon off the plate and onto his lap)

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Well, I'm definitely getting my money's worth.

Adventures in Housekeeping

The first week in my apartment, I resolved to vacuum the whole place.

The Seamstress had just bought a new vacuum. Very shiny, with a retractable cord. I was enamored of it because vacuum cords are the bane of my existence. I happily vacuumed the apartment, pulling the entire cord out of the vacuum.

Disaster struck when I tried to retract the cord. For the cord would not retract.

Understandably, I panicked. "I am a horrible person who has just ruined my brand-new roommate's brand-new vacuum and I deserve a terrible fate and why am I that person?" I sobbed over the lifeless vacuum cord. "Oh, WHY?"

In a final act of desperation, I began to feed the cord, centimeter by centimeter, into the cord retractor. It would not go in.

In a final final act of desperation, I hit the cord retractor button one more time. This time it worked, saving my honor, pride, and probably also soul from a terrible fate.

A few days later, I found myself out of clothes. It had come time to do that which I dreaded most: laundry.

This may surprise you, but although I had folded and unloaded many a load of laundry, I had never before sorted, loaded, or chosen washing or drying settings for one.

"Did your mother never teach you?" you may ask, aghast.

The truth of the matter is that my mother tried to teach me, but it never quite worked out the way she was hoping.

MOM: Colors. Whites. Light. Dark. Hot. Cold. Delicate. Sturdy.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: So doing laundry is essentially an episode of Sesame Street?

MOM: ...

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Or since we're Jewish... Shalom Sesame.

When I moved out, my mother was very concerned about my lack of absorption of her lessons in laundry. I wasn't, because helloooo. Age of Information. I could just look it up on the internet.

Coincidentally, the washer and dryer in our apartment were brand spanking new. They had moved to the apartment after I had. La Petite had purchased them just days before and they had washed only a few loads.

I emptied my laundry basket and sorted it according to the internet.

So far so good.

I took my first load to the washing machine and put it inside. After some minor confusion about how laundry soap works, I selected the proper settings, poured in the soap, and turned on the washing machine. It started humming, and.

And...nothing.

I frowned in concern. Little though I knew about the machines of washing, I was pretty sure I remembered immediate cascades of water in our machine at home. There was no waiting, and there was no humming.

"But," I consoled myself, "this is a different brand of washing machine. It probably just needs a minute to warm up."

After five minutes: "It just needs ten minutes to warm up."

After ten minutes: "It just needs fifteen minutes..."

After twenty minutes: "Half an hour..,"

After an hour: "I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON WHO JUST BROKE MY ROOMMATE'S BRAND-NEW WASHER AND DRYER."

In desperation, I poured through the internet, looking for information about humming-no-water washing machines. By all accounts, this was not a good situation to be in.

"The machine was working fine yesterday," I sobbed as I read one dire account of broken washing machines after another. "La Petite did a ton of laundry! Why, oh why, do I ruin everything I touch?"

After appropriate hand-wringing and feelings of wretchedness, it occurred to me to ask La Petite if there might be something I, the laundry novice, was doing wrong.

I sent her a text telling her I could only get the washing machine to hum. Was there some trick to using it?

A few minutes later, La Petite responded.

La Petite: Is the water on?

...

Awkward Mormon Girl: It is now.

We Won't Grow Up

I hope you are as excited to see my Halloween costume as I am to show it to you.

First, some explanation. Every summer, my family goes camping in the mountains. And every summer, I pretend that I am Peter Pan and that my younger siblings and cousins are my Lost Boys.

I do not know how this came am about. Actually, yes I do. It was my idea.

Ever since Favorite Cousin grew up and stopped coming camping with us, I've had quite the solitary time camping. There's been no one for me to take a quiet hike and discuss Lord of the Rings, so these past few years I've been sitting among the trees reading instead.

Anyways, one camping trip I grew intolerably bored. I ambled out to the children's hideout in the woods and suggested that we play the part of Peter Pan where they build a house for Wendy. I would be Peter Pan, of course, and...

...and it hasn't stopped since. Summer after summer, it's all the same. We sing our homemade Lost Boys' medley, make beds out if grass, build a house for Wendy, and have a pine cone war with the pirates and Indians (aka our parents) before going to the Indians' camp for a victory feast (aka tinfoil dinners).

Once before the feast, I told the others that we needed to dress up. "I will put this feather in my hair," I said grandly, placing a strand of grass in my hair and then scooping up Pixie Cousin to help her back to camp.

"That's not a feather," Pixie Cousin informed me, giggling. "You cwazy, Peter Pan!"

She thought I was crazy for pretending some grass was a feather, but she had no problem believing I was an obnoxious, pre-adolescent boy who can fly. Go figure.

Anyways, this summer, in the midst of the usual Lost Boy shenanigans, Little Brother was all, "For Halloween I'll be John, Baby Brother will be Michael, Baby Sister will be Wendy, Little Sister will be Tinker Bell, and you'll be Peter Pan."

And I was like, "I'll believe it when I see it." Because Little Brother is a schemer, a dreamer, someone who thinks big but can't always deliver. I know the type because I am one.

But this year, Little Brother delivered. He put together smashing costumes for everyone. He even convinced our parents to get costumes to be Mr. and Mrs. Darling. And he and Baby Brother kept saying, "What about your costume?"

Then I realized that this was really happening. And that although I'm not Peter Pan, to these kids I might as well be. They think I can do anything and that I'll never let them down.

So I made myself a costume. Green tights, green skirt, green polo shirt. Hat, belt and shoe covers from a costume my mom bought for Little Brother once from Disneyland. The shoelace of one of my hiking boots.

And the final product:

I made this with my mad costume skillz. And now I'm excited. So very excited.

Halloween can't come soon enough.

Momish

Today we were driving through the beautiful mountains of Utah when Mom called from the driver's seat to the distant back row of the Mormon Assault Vehicle, "Can you find my red wallet? It's in a Target bag."

I turned to Little Sister. "Mom has a red wallet?"

Not that Little Sister knew of.

In some confusion, we looked around for a Target bag. There was none.

After a few moments, Little Brother asked if the red wallet was blue, to which Mom said yes.

"Where'd you find the Target bag?" I asked. Little Brother replied that he hadn't found it in a Target bag but in a Hometown Marketplace bag.

Little Brother's mad Momish translation skillz: 1

The English language: 0

In Which I Am Right

Hello. How are you?

I'm doing pretty well myself, thanks.

I think there's one thing we need to make clear here: I am not athletic.

Many people have of late been deceived by my constant exercising and athletic-looking build and the fact that I ran track in junior high. They figure, "Hey, Awkward Mormon Girl must be athletic."

Well, those people are wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. WRONG.

Why?

Because being athletic necessarily requires being good at sports, and I am terrible at them.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy playing sports well enough (except for volleyball which is the devil's sport). I particularly like to run and also to play basketball. But I possess absolutely no sports skillz whatsoever. Also, I'm uncoordinated.

Allow me to share a rough approximation of a recent experience that proves just how right I am.

I went to stake sports night . You may ask why an unathletic person such as myself would go to stake sports night. The answer is because I have zero self-preservation skillz which means that I am attracted to rather than repelled by situations in which I'm definitely going to make a fool out of myself.

And then (again, this is a rough approximation) I had this conversation:

OTHER PEOPLE: You should play some sports.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I don't know...

OTHER PEOPLE: You could go play Frisbee.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Maybe.

OTHER PEOPLE: Volleyball?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: If we were the kind of religion that believed in holy water, I would cleanse myself with some right now.

OTHER PEOPLE: Soccer?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Okay. Here's the thing. Whenever I play sports, I get hit by the ball. Often in the face. But other places too.

OTHER PEOPLE: Really?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Yes. I have been hit in the face by basketballs. Soccer balls. Tetherballs. And the devil's own, volleyballs.

OTHER PEOPLE: You should play soccer anyways.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...you do realize I'm just going to get hit, right?

But again, I have no self-preservation skillz. And so I joined the soccer game.

The soccer game was intense. Quite intense. I did my best to, like, run and kick and stuff. Whatever it is you do in soccer. Because actually, I'm not sure I know the rules.

Things were going well. Too well. I was leery of the ball, wincing each time it zoomed past my face.

"Well, I've gotten this far," I said to myself, "and I haven't been hit, so maybe I don't have to worr-"

WHUMP.

The ball and my skull connected. And not because I was heading the ball.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I TOLD Y'ALL THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

Plot twist! The person who kicked the ball into my head was none other than Best Friend Boy. After the game, he approached me.

BEST FRIEND BOY: Sorry about your head.

AWKWARD MPORMON GIRL: It's okay. Now we're even.