The First Day Is Always the Worst Day

I needed a vacation.

I hadn't gone on a real vacation since Disneyland eighteen months ago. I've gone out of town, sure, but always for reasons fraught with family obligation. I've taken days off work, but always for illness or holiday or church reasons or special events. I never get a chance to recharge or relax, and my ability to hold myself together has worn thin.

In January, I was investigating a possible trip back to Europe; I'd been tentatively planning to go in spring of 2018 for a while. So I didn't vacation at all in 2017, and I saved...and I saved...and I saved. I had plenty of money to go on a trip! My plan was book and pay for the trip in January...go in the spring...and buy a new car in the summer. I couldn't find anyone to go with, but I wasn't giving up; there was still time.

I ended up buying a new car in January instead, and I was hesitant to dip any more into my savings for an expensive trip. I felt like Heavenly Father was saying, "DON'T GO TO EUROPE THIS SPRING" because nothing was coming together. So I didn't book anything, though I was still toying with the idea of going later in the year. Then my appendix had to come out, and I had to pay the people who took it out, and it quickly became apparent that this year was just not going to be my year.

Little Sister and her husband went back to NYC around the same time I bought my new car, and she could only gush about the awesome Jim Henson exhibit that I'd wanted to see in New York City three years before. So when I was weighing the idea of going on vacation, I decided: what the heck? Why not go back to New York City so that I could finally see the dang exhibit, eat whatever I wanted, and spend time with Older Sister? The idea appealed to me, particularly because Older Sister would be working, so I could do whatever amused me. The subway system is easy to use; I could get around with no trouble and generally have a good time. And I could stay with Older Sister, which would be very inexpensive.

So (after several weeks of hemming and hawing), I finally committed to Older Sister to come and visit. However, after I'd done so, my mother cornered me and said that I should take Little Brother with me.

That kind of killed the point of the vacation, especially since Mom wanted me to take him to the Statue of Liberty and to Trinity Church and to her favorite restaurants and generally do a bunch of things that I had no intention of doing. So I laid it out straight for Little Brother: this was my trip, and while he could come, he would more or less have to do whatever I wanted.

He said okay, and the plans commenced.

Now, before you think I'm a mean older sister, let it be known that I made sure to include Little Brother in the plans. I made room for the things that were non-negotiable for him: going to the Times Square Disney store, going to the 9/11 Memorial, getting dim sum in Chinatown, a museum called the Museum of Jewish Heritage. He also wanted to go to the Jim Henson exhibit as much as I did.

The flight was booked and the musical tickets were purchased, and in what seemed like no time at all, the day of the trip had arrived and Little Brother and I were waiting at the airport late, late at night.

A few things to know about Little Brother:

• He loves Disney and knows the most about it. Of anyone. On earth. Probably.
• He loves theming.
• He loves beautiful things.
• He loves our Jewish heritage and taught himself to make delicious challah bread. Unlike me, he looks like a full-blooded Jew.
• He loves most of the things I love, except for Harry Potter, and his appreciation for Jim Henson has turned him into an accomplished amateur puppeteer.
• He secretly kind of wants to be YouTube famous.
• He has about a million original stories, musicals, and TV shows hiding inside his brain. They come out if you listen to him talk long enough.
• After our sibling date where I introduced him to sushi, sushi became his most-favorite food.

While we were waiting, he showed me a bunch of his Snaps from Snapchat, something I've never used. It would appear that Little Brother mostly uses it to send droll pictures to his friends.

As usual, we were red eyeing it out to New York. The flight was uneventful, but...odd. First of all, when we were loading onto the plane, a man with an accent I couldn't identify asked me (I think) to check one of his items in my name. He said (I think) that he and his wife and his two kids had too many items to check even though the flight had just announced complimentary checking since there was plenty of room.

They were a cute family, but they were strangers, so I refused. I felt bad, but it's basic airline safety not to accept things from people you don't know! Luckily, we saw later that the flight had checked their extra items with no fuss.

The other odd things about the flight were as follows: 1) The plane was abnormally loud. Little Brother was sitting next to me, but I could barely hear him all night. 2) The flight attendants were weirdly sneaky. I was half-asleep the whole flight, so I barely remember, but I seem to remember that they...didn't really talk? They just communicated with a series of gestures mostly, so that they didn't wake up passengers, I guess. But it was really hard for me to see said gestures since I was trying to sleep and wore no glasses or contacts! 3) The girl sitting next to us promptly fell asleep about as soon as the plane took off and barely moved all night. I even climbed over her to reach the restroom, yet she didn't stir. (Note: I went to the restroom barefoot. That was a mistake. The floor was gross.) Then, just moments before we landed, she woke up like clockwork. ???!

Neither Little Brother nor I slept well. I don't know about Little Brother, but I'd gotten up pretty early the morning of the day we'd left, and I was miserable and exhausted. I do know that at one point I accidentally squirted hand sanitizer in his eye, and he screamed at me. But it was a controlled scream. No one heard it but me. Not even the sleeping girl; she didn't move an inch.

I was adamant that we book our flight to JFK so that we could utilize the air train. Once we'd disembarked and gathered our luggage, we took the train, no problem, to Jamaica Station. Then we took the E Train to Times Square, walked a very long time through the subway to get to a connecting station, and took a 1 Train uptown.

Finally, we made it to the Upper West Side, where Older Sister lives in a beautiful 100-year-old building with 11 roommates. Yup, count 'em—11.

A few things to know about Older Sister:

• She's crazy ambitious. She took a double courseload and finished her six-semester graduate school program in three semesters, something that had never been done before.
• She's always wanted to live in New York City.
• She's always claimed to hate "Asian" food, saying it all tastes the same and is gross.
• She works for a non-profit that teaches underprivileged kids to dance.
• She, too, looks like she could be full-blooded Jewish. When she first moved to the city, she did some babysitting for a Jewish family and would sometimes be mistaken for a relative. On Saturdays, she wears her Sunday clothes to the Manhattan temple for a shift as a temple worker, and on the streets she's often mistaken for a Jew from a more conservative sect.
• She, too, secretly wants to be famous, but not YouTube famous.
• She loves the finer things in life and has never cared much for discomfort.

So even though I knew that she was living in a crowded apartment with no space to herself, it still amazed me. It's a testament to how much she loves New York City, because she's always been the kind of person who's always wanted to live somewhere that was nice and cutely decorated and very much her own.

Not that the apartment wasn't not nice, it just barely had room to exist at all. The whole thing, square-foot-wise, surely didn't exceed the amount of space I share with my two roommates. And her bedroom, which sleeps two people, is about the same size as my bedroom minus the closet. My bedroom is okay, but on the small side, for a single person; for two people, it would be pretty cramped!

The roommate had kindly stayed elsewhere so that Older Sister could have us in her room with her. I got the top bunk of the bunk bed. Little Brother got a cot-type bed on the floor. We could hang out in the apartment, but we couldn't wear shoes while we did so. We could shower in one of two bathrooms (except if it was after 11:00 p.m., in which case we had to shower in a tiny little bathroom—more on that later). Before she left for work, Older Sister presented us with a brassy-looking set of keys. One for the apartment building; one for the apartment. We were cautioned to be very careful not to break the lock, which had apparently happened before.

We crashed for an hour or so. Then...the city.

I gave Little Brother a first day similar to my first day on my first trip. First, the Disney store, which was everything Little Brother had dreamed of. Then lunch at Junior's. I'd heard that the food was better if you ordered something Jewish-style.

Sadly, it was still kind of meh. However, it pleased Little Brother to order a brisket sandwich with a latke and applesauce.

After, we took a subway downtown. At this point, we discovered that while the subway was easy to use (seriously—this was the first trip where I was the subway navigator, and there were hardly any bumps), our smartphones didn't seem to operate properly on the streets. (Over-saturation of people sucking up data?) It took us approximately six million years to find the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

The museum was not what we were expecting. The lady at the front desk asked us how we'd heard of it, and I breezily said, "We were just looking for a good Jewish museum!" But whether it was a good Jewish museum is...up for debate. There was some good stuff, but it wasn't very well-presented, and they kind of brushed over the Holocaust, mostly focusing on Jewish culture before it and how said culture recovered after. There were some cool artifacts, but I didn't learn very many new things. The most interesting tidbit was the fact that in some countries during Hitler's regime, Jews who didn't have "Jewish" names were required to take on the name or middle name of Israel or Sara.

Following the museum, we crashed. I was incredibly exhausted: dead on my feet and barely aware. I had no idea how I was going to stay up to watch Anastasia that night. But after lazing in Older Sister's apartment for a bit, I summoned the energy to arise, dress, and lead Little Brother to Tonn Ramen.

Older Sister, she who hates all Asian food, picked Tonn Ramen for dinner. She'd tried it and actually liked it! However, she ended up staying at work late and then babysitting afterward, so she didn't join us for our first taste of restaurant ramen.

Tonn Ramen is one of the more eccentric places I've been in New York City! Little Brother described the restaurant as "in a garage." It was below street level, tiny, and crowded. Everything about it seemed to be designed to make diners as uncomfortable as possible so that they would order, eat, and leave. The whole front of the restaurant was open, so we could feel the breeze from the street. The bar stools were difficult to keep a seat on, and I could never quite get myself into a position where I didn't feel I was about to fall off. The waiters whisked from place to place, quickly collecting orders which were then assembled in a matter or minutes. Not that anyone was rude or made us feel unwanted—but there was a slight feeling of, "Oh, we're very busy, so you should be glad we could squeeze you in!" Coupled with the fact that the restaurant was open during limited hours, the general air was one of exclusivity.

In any case, we quickly ate our ramen and paid. Mine is pictured below. It was tasty, although it was still ramen.

The vegetables and spices woke me up a bit. By the time we got to the Broadhurst Theatre, I was feeling much more excited about taking Little Brother to his first Broadway musical!

However. While Anastasia was delightful, it was rough. They completely rewrote the plot and dialogue, losing a lot of what made the animated movie so good. There also was a nice opportunity for them to tie up one character's philosophical qualms (his father was one of the guards who shot the royal family to death, so he is committed to making sure Anastasia is actually dead; his turn of heart would have been more realistic had it been revealed that his father actually helped Anastasia escape), but they passed that over for some unconvincing mumbo-jumbo. Overall, the movie, with its magic and demons and sold souls, actually seemed a lot more realistic than this historically accurate version. The special effects were dope, though, and the performers did do a good job with what they had.

We briefly stage-doored so that Little Brother could get a quick video of Christy Altomare for his friends. Then we took the subway home, utterly exhausted. (Confession: I'd fallen asleep for several seconds during the show.) As I showered (in the big shower) and hauled myself up the bunk bed ladder, I was wondering if this trip was a good idea or if I would regret it.

Easter Weekend

Context: This post is about a trip to San Diego.

This year, General Conference and Easter fell on the same weekend. I was reluctant to go to San Diego partly because of this. My parents said we would listen to the radio during part of the drive but that we might not listen during all of it for various reasons. I did not like this. My life was not going very well, and I was desperate for words that might assist me.

I agonized over the decision. Then I agonized over my decision-making agony, because I am usually very decisive, and it troubles me when my decision powers abandon me. Finally, I agreed to go. But. I made a plan, which was that I bought two portable phone chargers. My phone tends to eat up a lot of battery, especially when I'm streaming. Each charger was supposed to last a few hours, so even if my phone was particularly voracious, I hoped to get four hours' of power to listen to General Conference. I also bought a backup pair of ordinary headphones for my chargeable, wireless Bluetooth headphones. Just in case.

Saturday involved a lot of driving. We were in a hurry as we drove through Utah, Nevada, and into California. We only stopped a few times, which was tedious, but to my delight, my parents did end up playing most of General Conference over the radio.

It was an excellent conference. We had the opportunity to sustain the new prophet, President Nelson, through a solemn assembly. There were also a lot of really, really good talks.

It was hard for me to tear myself away for even a moment. During bathroom breaks at the gas stations, I kept my headphones in and the audio streaming while I waited in line.

Did I get what I needed? Yes. I'd say that at least sixty percent of the talks throughout the four general sessions related somehow to my Interpersonal Crisis. There were so many talks about kindness, forgiveness, and love; about treating people the way the Savior wants you to treat them; and about giving others the benefit of the doubt even when they have wronged you. I felt chastised, but I also felt peace and understanding. I felt that renewal of Easter.

During the Sunday morning session (which we watched in our hotel room while eating breakfast), my mom remarked that a lot of the talks seemed to be about her situation with her brother! We were listening to the exact same thing and getting rather different takes on it. I think part of that is just due to human nature, but I also think that it's partly due to the way that the word of God works. Different scriptures, even when interpreted in a doctrinally correct manner, may resonate differently with one person than with another. Same thing with talks. They individualize themselves to us. The first time I heard Sister Wendy Watson Nelson (who is a superior human being, IMO) speak, she said that years ago, when she was struggling to know if she should marry her fiancé, every talk in a session of General Conference was about marriage, and what she heard led her to break off the engagement. Later, when she went back to reread the talks, none of them really seemed to be related to marriage at all! But her ex-fiancé ended up leaving the woman he did marry for another man, so it worked out well for Sister Nelson.

Besides listening to General Conference, our Easter weekend celebration was a little unconventional. On Saturday night, we arrived at our hotel around dinnertime. My parents went to visit my uncle while my brothers and I rested and refreshed. A few hours later, my parents returned with delicious Shake Shack food. Then bedtime.

Sunday morning, as I mentioned, we watched General Conference on my dad's laptop. My mom had brought little Easter packages for us—cellophane bags with jellybeans and chocolate. She even sort of hid them around the hotel room for us to find.

After the morning session and our sort-off Easter egg hunt, we piled into the rental and headed for Old San Diego. It was a visual riot! Many of the shops and restaurants were built in a Mexican style and selling Frida Kahlo merchandise and southwestern cusine. Everything looked so bright and happy and appealing.

We found an LDS visitors' center (for the Mormon Battalion), but it was closed. It looked kind of like an old Catholic mission. Across the street from the visitors' center was a synagogue! Even though my brothers and I are one-eighth Jewish, none of us had ever been in a synagogue. We ventured inside to respectfully look around. (I thought this was an especially apt activity for Easter weekend/Passover.)

Apparently, this is the first synagogue in San Diego.

We also found some other cool historical buildings.

Speaking of which, you might notice the leafy green foliage in some of the pictures. It turns out that San Diego is kind of like a jungle. Our hotel was nestled in a bunch of palm trees and other foliage. It reminded me a decent amount of Animal Kingdom at Disney World. 

Lunch was at at our hotel bistro. I had a delicious chicken pot pie and half of Baby Brother's grilled cheese sandwich. Dad hugged us all goodbye and went to the airport, and then Mom hustled us kids to go visit her brother.

Even though seeing our uncle was the main reason for the trip, I don't have a lot to say about it. I don't feel like I can say much. It's hard to explain how he's living from day to day and how depressing his place of residence is without violating his privacy. I'll just say that being there was physically and emotionally taxing for all of us (including him, I reckon).

After that, we were on our own. Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the rest of our day.

Our reply was unanimous: "Go back to Old Town San Diego!" So we went back to Old Town San Diego, where we passed a pleasant evening learning about the Mormon Battalion (the visitors' center was open since General Conference had ended). We enjoyed the interactive exhibits, including a small courtyard where Baby Brother and I panned for gold. Afterward, we went to a collection of shops that Little Brother wanted to browse. The shops were closed, but the Mexican restaurant nearby smelled so good that Little Brother persuaded those of us who dislike southwestern food (Baby Brother and I) to try it.

At home, we never eat out on Sundays, but when we travel and have no place to prepare food, we do. So we wound up having Easter dinner in a pleasant courtyard at Casa Guadalajara with chips and salsa in front of us and mariachi music around us.

Baby Brother: (texting our siblings) Literally everybody and their mariachi band is at this restaurant.

I liked the food way more than I thought I would. I enjoyed seafood chimichangas with grilled vegetables, and Mom even let us get some dessert to take back to the hotel.

Happy and content (and full of churros and ice cream), we got into bed and slipped away. I was technically still in recovery from my appendectomy, and the soft hotel beds were a huge blessing. I got much better sleep in San Diego than I was getting at home.

Festival of Lights

As you know if you've been reading this blog for a while, the Obnoxious family observes some of the aspects of Hanukkah every year.

Just as non-Christians can celebrate the hope, light, life, love, peace, and goodwill of Christmastime without being believers, I would think that non-Jews can celebrate parts of Hanukkah without being believers (though I may be wrong, but so far, no Jews have told me otherwise). Especially since, unlike Christmas, Hanukkah isn't actually a major holiday. Or so I hear. Anyway, religiously speaking, we're not Jewish, so we always try to keep our celebration respectful and appropriate i.e. not do anything religious that would be a mockery to those who actually practice Judaism.

The big differences between Hanukkah last year and Hanukkah this year were a) we all bought matching Hanukkah sweaters earlier this year and b) Mr. Little Sister is now an official part of the family.

Last year, Mr. Little Sister got waaaaay into Hanukkah. He told Little Sister that he wants to celebrate it with their future children and suggested buying a menorah. Little Sister talked him out of the menorah idea (re: celebrating Hanukkah in a respectful and non-religious way), but that hasn't kept him from embracing his new Jewish heritage. He was very excited for Hanukkah this year. He and Little Sister bought a chocolate dreidel at some kind of arts festival they attended a few weeks ago, and he also picked out a dessert called "jujus" for the party "because we're Jew-Jews!"

Rosebud and Mr. Rosebud also came to the party last year and also got way into it, so they requested to be invited this year. Plus Little Brother got way into challah bread last year, and he has since mastered delicious homemade challah.

Alongside the challah, we enjoyed brisket, latkes, applesauce, and a chocolate bundt cake that wasn't bad for a bundt cake. We did not enjoy the jujus as they were kind of awful. We also played dreidel for prizes: caramels, chocolates, plastic instruments left over from the year before, sticky dinosaurs, and Star Wars and Christmas Peanuts pencils. Then Little Brother led us in some Jewish dances that he choreographed on the spot and made us listen to his favorite Jewish song, "Hava Nagila," over and over.

So it was a pretty good time. While it made me miss Older Sister and Baby Sister, it made me incredibly grateful for a wonderful family with a strong heritage. And I can't wait until we're all together for Christmas! (Older Sister will be here, and we'll be able to talk with Baby Sister on Skype.)

Sick Day

I'm sick.

Again.

I have a cold right now. I had a cold a few weeks ago at Little Sister's wedding (more on that later). I had a cold over New Year's, over Christmas/Hanukkah, and over Halloween.

The awkward placement of these colds means that I keep getting colds when I have work off and then calling in sick on the day I'm supposed to be back in. It look bad. It looks like I'm extending my time off, but I'm honest-to-goodness sick. I took yesterday off, but I went in today even though I was dying because I had a deadline that day but also to prove that I really took the day off for a legitimate illness and not because I wanted a four-day Memorial Day weekend.

It's not like I even have good sick days. I usually sleep a lot and read a bunch of stupid stuff on the Internet. Mom usually brings me some lunch when I'm sick, and that's nice, but other than that I lie around in a feverish haze and contemplate my mortality.

But I digress. When I went back to work, I was still pretty sick. My supervisor advised me to leave a little early. Probably because I was sniffling so hard my brains were about to drop out of my nose. Or because I looked like a hot mess but without the hot part.

Hope Memorial Day week was better for everyone else.

What Are the Brothers Doing?

Little Brother sent me a screenshot of a text exchange that he had with our mother.

Hanukkahmas

Guess what, everybody?

Hanukkah and Christmas fell at the same time this year, that's what!

What's an ethnically 1/8 Jewish, religiously Christian girl to do?

Celebrate them both, of course!

The first night of Hanukkah fell on Christmas Eve. Older Sister's flight got in that morning. Then we had our annual tradition of lunch on Christmas Eve, followed by our other annual tradition of dinner, a nativity scene, and a slideshow of the previous year, all with extended family.

The second night of Hanukkah fell on Christmas Day. That morning, we opened presents. I got a sushi cookbook, a sushi-making kit, chopsticks, and sushi pins, among other things.

Then we all went to church. Afterward, we visited with family and enjoyed our gifts.

On the third night of Hanukkah, the family went with Favorite Cousin to see La La Land. Favorite Cousin and I already saw it the week before, but Older Sister hadn't yet because the movie prices in New York City are too much for her modest arts administrator budget. (While we're on the subject, it's a pretty good movie. There's kind of a bait and switch where you think the movie is about how a person has to close their eyes to some harsh realities to make an arts career work, but surprise! At the end you realize it's actually about how a person has to close their eyes to some harsh realities to make a relationship work. Plus there's a dream ballet sequence and a couple other moments straight out of a film musical from the 50s or 60s. So that's fun/unexpected/odd.)

On the fourth night of Hanukkah, we saw the LDS church's production of Savior of the World. That was actually a really good Hanukkah activity, as the production is about Christ's lifetime and is therefore steeped in a lot of Jewish traditions.

On the fifth night of Hanukkah, we actually got around to celebrating Hanukkah. All of my immediate family came to my apartment, along with Little Sister's boyfriend, Rosebud and her husband, one of our cousins and her new husband, and another cousin's four-month-old baby, whom my parents was watching for the evening. Together, we celebrated. This meant a dinner of brisket, latkes, applesauce, challah bread, and less traditional foods...

...some Hanukkah tales...

...and playing dreidel! (Spoils pictured below.)

We also sang and danced to songs from Fiddler on the Roof and Prince of Egypt. Rosebud's husband did a bottle dance. We picked Baby Brother up in a chair and danced with him around the living room. He hated it.

Hanukkah continues through New Year's Eve aka tomorrow. If you haven't celebrated and you want to, you still can. Although maybe you can't if you're not at least 1/8 Jewish. Maybe those are the rules.

The Genetic Makeup of an Obnoxious

Like most LDS people, I am obsessed with my ancestors. I constantly ask questions about them, such as "Who were they? What were they like? Where did they live? Why did some of their parents name them Saloma Bisbury which is not a good name?" and so on and so forth.

My dad's brother recently submitted some of his DNA to an ancestry company. For a fee, the folk at this company analyze DNA to figure out a person's racial makeup and where their ancestors come from. Here are the results for my dad's brother (and, by extension, my dad):
25% - Ireland
20% - European Jewish
18% - Europe West
12% - Italy/Greece
10% - Scandinavia
7% - Great Britain

Before you begin to judge the company on its math skillz, I should explain that each estimate is +/- 4%.

This pretty much matches what I've always known about my dad's family. My dad's grandpa is Jewish, so my dad is a quarter Jewish. +/- 4% of 20% goes right along with that, especially if some of the Jewish ancestors chose to intermarry with other members of the Roman empire (uncommon for faithful Jews but not impossible; that could be where some of the Italian/Greek comes in).

The Irish was a surprise. And then, at the very bottom of the image my uncle sent my dad, there was a little note explaining that trace amounts of East Asian ancestry was found in my uncle's DNA, adding up to less than 1%!

That means that I am half of less than 1% Asian! Which, actually, is still less than 1%. But no matter. All of those times that I joked that I should have been some kind of Asian persuasion because I love so many types of Asian food, and it turns out that I actually was, somewhat, all along.

Anyways, I found this to be pretty marvelous. I'm hoping that someone in my mom's family will choose to also try it so that I can get a full picture of the other side of the family. We'll see.

Fighting Back Against Hitler

Older Sister, Little Sister, and I are all attending an institute class dedicated to family history.

At the first class, Little Sister and I perused our family tree on familysearch.org.

"Did you find any royalty?" this other girl asked us. It's not uncommon for a well-researched line to turn up some cool stuff. In the past, we've learned, among other things, that we're not-so-distant cousins of FDR and that we're direct descendants of Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of history's most powerful and fascinating women.

"Not today," Little Sister said. "But maybe we'll find some Jewish royalty or something."

"Esther," I suggested.

"Yeah, it will just say 'Esther,'" Little Sister said. "And then we'll be like, 'Oh my gosh! Esther, queen of Persia!'"

Joking aside, we really have no idea what we might find on the Jewish eighth of our family tree. That line is not well-recorded. But I don't think this is because my relatives didn't keep track of their ancestors. If you get anything out of the Bible, it's that the Jews love them some lineages. No, I think that Hitler is the person that we can thank for the lack of documentation. Except I don't want to thank him; I want to slap him in the face. With a glove. Because that seems particularly humiliating.

My grandmother is the link between me and her grandparents. My mom never met them. But I feel like I know them because I've heard stories about them from my grandma.

I can't say the same of the Jewish great-something-great-aunts and great-something-great-uncles and cousins who died in the Holocaust. I hardly know anything about them. I don't know of anybody living who knew them or even anybody who knew anybody who knew them. With these relatives' murders, any information they could have shared about their ancestors is gone. A whole link in my family line has vanished.

This bothers me particularly in that Hitler tried to destroy the Jews. He lost the war, but if by killing a whole generation he wiped our ancestors from living memory, then in a sense he succeeded. Oblivion differs from destruction only for the victim. For everybody else, well, all they know is that there's no trace of the victim. Or, rather, they don't know that there's no trace of the victim, because for them it's like that person never existed.

All I know is that I would like a breakthrough so that I can learn more about the men and women that I came from. I pray that something useful will turn up.

Eight Days of Hanukkah

In honor of Hanukkah, I have written you a song. Or rather, I have written new words for an old familiar song.

And before you're all, "Ooh, Awkward Mormon Girl! You're a practicing Christian even if you are of Jewish descent! It's probably not, shall we say, kosher for you to write Hanukkah songs!"

Well, guess what? A weirdly large percentage of Christmas songs were written by Jews. So...you know.

Also, I want you to know that I almost titled this post "On the First Day of Hanukkah My True Love Gave Me Absolutely Nothing Because I Don't Have a True Love," but I decided that was too long and whiney. So I didn't do that and you're welcome.

On the first day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
A Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the second day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the third day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
Three kosher pickles
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the fourth day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
Four prayer shawls
Three kosher pickles
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the fifth day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
FIVE GOLDEN SHEKELS (dramatic pause)
Four prayer shawls
Three kosher pickles
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the sixth day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
Six plates of latkes
FIVE GOLDEN SHEKELS (dramatic pause)
Four prayer shawls
Three kosher pickles
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the seventh day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
Seven Stars of David
Six plates of latkes
FIVE GOLDEN SHEKELS (dramatic pause)
Four prayer shawls
Three kosher pickles
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

On the eighth day of Hanukkah, my true love gave to me
Eight days of miracles
Seven Stars of David
Six plates of latkes
FIVE GOLDEN SHEKELS (dramatic pause)
Four prayer shawls
Three kosher pickles
Two games of dreidel
And a Zealot named Judas Maccabee

Jerome Shalom and the Ham Sandwich

We were raking leaves when my brothers asked me what my NaNoWriMo story is about.

I briefly sketched out for the plot. Seeing that they were unimpressed, and feeling the need to defend my worth as an author, I said, "I've never been very good at plots. I'm more of a character person myself." Then I proceeded to tell them that sometimes, nothing really needs to happen in a book for it to be interesting.

"So somebody could write a book about someone going to buy a ham sandwich?" Little Brother snarked.

"Sure," I said. "It depends on who he meets on the way and what happens. Like if he loses his change on the way and then has to find it."

Baby Brother laughs. "And then the whole book is about him looking for his change and he meets a whole bunch of villain and doesn't even end up buying the ham sandwich!"

Little Brother named our character Jerome Shalom, which caused me to sketch out his backstory. "He's Jewish, and his parents make him eat kosher, but he's always wanted to eat a ham sandwich. So one day he sneaks out of the house to buy a ham sandwich-"

Baby Brother quickly sketched out about fifteen books of the Jerome Shalom series. First Jerome Shalom goes to buy a ham sandwich, but he loses his change on the way. While he's looking for his change, he discovers that his father is involved in a plot to rid the world of ham sandwiches. Then Jerome Shalom learns that his father actually stole his change. So Jerome Shalom recovers the change, but then his father puts him in prison. But then about three books later he escapes prison. Then he has to actually find a shop that sells ham sandwiches. And while Jerome Shalom wanders around looking for a sandwich shop, World War II starts, and he has to escape Hitler.

"We're not doing that," Little Brother said. Then I said that I had to go pick Little Sister up from the bus stop, so we all dropped our rakes and wandered inside and never figured out how Jerome Shalom escapes Hitler.

What I've Been Up To

Last night, I got an exceedingly angry-looking iPod message from the one and only Little Sister.

Little Sister: POST ON UR BLOG

Little Sister: DAGNABBIT

I assure you that I have every intention of posting on my blog. Currently, I'm working on a post about the Sunday I spent in New York City.

BUT. Practically every second of my life is scheduled every day, and it's been exceedingly hard to write.

Like on Tuesday. First I worked. Then I came home and briefly exercised before practicing for a luau that we are putting on in front of a significant portion of Hometown.

Yes, a luau. My mother's family, who is about 75% British and 25% Danish, is made up of professionally trained hula dancers. I am also a trained hula dancer, although far from professional. We have all danced many times together in various locations around Utah, we haoles.

Anyways, my mother and her brother take these luaus very seriously, while the rest of us take them not-so-seriously. (I suggested to Little Sister that, given the circumstances, we could call them Jew-aus. She was not terribly amused, but her reaction was nowhere as horrified my mother's would have been had she heard me.) The point is--we rehearse for these things. I don't know if your family just gets together and rehearses stuff, but mine does.

After rehearsal, I made dinner. It was chicken satay with a peanut sauce. It ended up well, except for the fact that the wooden skewers ended up being more decorations than anything. I was unsuccessful in affixing them in a way that would actually hold the meat's weight.

Also, the recipe called for fish sauce. The Internet warned me that fish sauce smelled bad, but I didn't believe the Internet until I smelled it. Forget bad. Fish sauce smells like pure evil.

Later, I was narrating my cooking skills out loud because it's a lifelong dream of mine to have my own cooking show. As I scraped half a cup of peanut butter into the pan, I said, "This is where things get weird!" Then I remembered that things had already gotten weird when I added the fish sauce and that I was essentially lying to my imaginary studio audience. This is why they'll never give me a cooking show.

By the time I'd quickly eaten dinner, I was late for institute. By the time institute was over, I was very late for my improv comedy workshop. By the time my workshop was over, it was time to go to bed and rest in preparation of doing pretty much the same thing the next day.

The point is, I haven't really had time to write a poorly written blog post, much less a good one. But I'll update again soon. I promise, Little Sister.

Waiting for Elijah

I finally made it to a Passover.

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.

Hobbits and Hanukkah

You're surely aware that the new Hobbit movie came out this past week.

You likely aren't aware that the start of Hanukkah was that same day.

Little Sister and I went to see the movie with Favorite Cousin. I wore the cloak of Lothlorien from my Frodo Baggins Halloween costume. Favorite Cousin bought a special promotional cup for his very large soda. I liked the cup but I never drink that much soda. Especially not in movies. In fact, it just so happens that the last time I ever drank a large soda was when my dad bought me one at The Return of the King. Within an hour, I had to go to the bathroom incredibly badly but I didn't want to leave lest I miss something. I spent the rest of the movie with a burgeoning bladder. At the end of the movie, there's a scene where Frodo says goodbye to this friends at the Grey Havens. It is very emotional.

And very long.

So, no. I did not wish to drink any soda. But I did want the cup. So I purchased it along with a small portion of the chocolate-hazelnut gelato I got hooked on when I was in Italy.

Hmm I thought, eating gelato whilst holding the very expensive cup I did not plan to drink from and wearing my single hobbit costume piece in a crowded movie theatre full of people dressed like people going to a crowded movie theatre normally would be. I can't tell if this is the epitome of adulthood or a low point.

After the movie, Little Sister and I could not remember where we'd parked my car.

This wasn't momentarily forgetfulness, either. We seriously walked around the parking lot for twenty minutes, unable to remember where my car might be.

There was much confusion.

"This must be what it was like in Mirkwood," Little Sister said, referring to the previous hobbit movie. "We'll have to climb a tree to see above the cars."

"What if we can't find my car and we miss Hanukkah?" I asked.

"Maybe," Little Sister said, "we'll have a Hanukkah miracle and your phone battery will last for eight days."

Oh the Suspense

When one of my professors asks me to meet with him next week, he either wants to discuss

A) my inability to pay attention in class for longer than four point six eight minutes.

B) how poorly written my last paper was because I spent like three minutes on it except shhh because he doesn't actually know about that part.

C) something completely unexpected but rather terrible. Like that he is going to kick me out of his class because I'm a scholarship student and DISCRIMINATION. Or because I'm a Mormon and DISCRIMINATION. Or because I'm one-eight Jewish and DISCRIMINATION. Or because unbeknownst to me, my last paper is completely identical to a well-known thesis on the same subject that somehow managed to get published (some surprisingly terrible things get published) and I am going to be kicked out of college for accidental plagiarizing.

D) I am his favorite student and he wishes to give me an award and a penguin is also a possibility, but I tend to gravitate towards the negative in this instance.

You know that scene in the third Harry Potter where Hermione bursts into tears because the boggart turns into Professor McGonagall and tells her that she's failed everything?

Yeaaaah...Hermione and I have something in common here. I can't even begin to tell you how many dreams I've had where I fail college because I haven't been going to my math class THAT I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT.

Awkward Mormon Hanukkah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's the story. More or less.

Step Two: Know what to eat..

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

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

Something you should not eat on Hanukkah: Pork chops.

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

On Hanukkah.

Nope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It all makes sense now.

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

FRIENDS: What

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

FRIENDS: Get out of our lives.

Dachau

As a person of European-Jewish-Slav descent, I have a lot of interesting heritage to draw on. For example, one of my ancestors is this fellow named John Howland whose descendants include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Christopher Lloyd. He came over on the Mayflower, as did a bunch of other people I'm related to. One of them even fell off the Mayflower--which shows we're related more surely than a slew of DNA testing would.

There's a common theme in my ancestry: religious persecution. Somehow groups of people who were hated and scorned because of their religious beliefs all came together in the living, breathing forms of my siblings and I. We're descended from pilgrims and Puritans. My mother's father's family is almost pure Mormon pioneer stock. And on our father's side--we have the Jews.

My dad's family, the Obnoxiouses, came over from Germany to America in the late 1800s. We had Great-Great-Grandpa Obnoxious, who was married to Great-Great-Grandma Obnoxious, nee Generic-stein. Her father's name was Generic Jewish Name Generic-stein. Not even kidding. If I wrote a story with a character who had the same name as the father of Great-Great-Grandma Obnoxious nee Generic-stein, you would accuse me of choosing the most stereotypical Jewish name possible.

A while back, one of my father's sisters and my grandfather decided it would be jolly to head back to Europe and scope the place out, maybe see if they could find any interesting ancestral records for the Obnoxiouses or the Generic-steins or for specific offshoots of German-Jewish families that we know intertwine with ours.

Well, they didn't find any ancestral records. They didn't find anything to witness to the people who lived there and who must have left behind family members that would have produced multiple descendants. There were no Obnoxiouses or Generic-steins around. There was nothing.

How can this be? How can whole families and records of whole families and the least, tiny traces of whole families simply... disappear?

I'll tell you how. The Holocaust, that's how.

The Holocaust. It means something to everyone, I think. To me it meant knowing that had my family still been living in Germany in the 1930s, I would have been put in a concentration camp. It meant knowing that had Hitler not been stopped, eventually he would have made his way over here to the Land of the Free and put me in a concentration camp.

Never mind that I was born in the 1990s and that had either of those things happened, it would have been my great-grandparents and grandparents, not me, who would have suffered the consequences. Logic had no place in this kind of waking nightmare. It was always me I saw in the concentration camp, my face and my siblings' and my parents'. And so I read about it, and was horrified by it, and asked myself, "What would I have done? Would I have borne it well? Would I have made choices I could have been proud of?"

And then I would be glad, so glad, that I hadn't gone to a concentration camp, and that my branch of the Obnoxiouses, at least, had escaped the Holocaust by fifty, sixty years. We American Obnoxiouses get to lead safe lives. Hitler never touched our country. We don't go to concentration camps.

Well, most of us don't, anyways.

One of the first things I did when I went to Europe was visit Dachau, the first concentration camp in Germany.

The original building where they processed prisoners is still standing, toilets and all. It's a sort of museum now. We walked through and there were some displays but mostly I was looking at the aged walls and the fixtures, thinking of the people who walked through the gates all those years ago but didn't walk out.

The crematoriums are also still standing and completely furnished. I went in and looked at the gas chambers and ovens. The ovens are left open.

We looked at the memorials and ended up near the crematorium again. "It's awful in there," said one of my companions. "It's awful. You can feel it in the air..." She shivered. "Have you been in there?"

"Oh yeah," said another. "Let's not talk about it."

"Let's not."

Let's not.

Sushi Problems

Remember how even though I'm European-Jewish-Slav aka ethnic white, I'm secretly also an Asian? I know this because I crave Asian food way more than I crave European, Jewish, or Slav food. And everybody who doesn't live under a rock knows that the type of food you crave aligns with your racial background. It's genetics, people. Even monks who spend all their time growing pea plants know about genetics.

One of the Asian foods I crave most often is one called sushi. There are many great things about sushi. Sushi is Japanese. It usually involves seafood. It's delicious. But. There are dreadful things about sushi, too. I have compiled a list of the ones that bother me the most.

Problem #1: You have to use chopsticks to eat sushi.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Why is that a problem for someone who's secretly Asian, like you? Aren't you a chopsticks-using whiz?"

And I'm thinking, "Excuse me? Don't you know anything about genetics? Genetics clearly prove that secret Asians can't use chopsticks. When secret Asians try to use chopsticks, we look like schmendricks. Schmendrick being a Yiddish word that here means, 'more like a European-Jewish-Slav aka ethnic white than like an Asian.'" But in addition to the wrong genetics, I have other problems when it comes to chopsticks.

Once upon a time when I was in elementary school, I was unable to hold a pencil properly. Yes, that's right, I was unable to correctly use a pencil, one of the simplest utensils in the world. I don't know how I managed to accomplish this feat, but I did. In order to make it possible for me to use a pencil, my mom had to buy me this little doohickey:

Behold, the corrective pencil grip. Mine had little diagrams and stars engraved in them to guide me in proper finger placement. Eventually, I was able to hold a pencil the right way without deep thought and major confusion, but it took years of the pencil grip, the training wheels of writing instruments.

Aside from pencils, I was also unable to hold scissors properly. Sadly, there are no corrective grips for scissors, so that's something I struggle with to this day. Now you know my shameful secret: I can't fulfill the basic dexterity requirements of kindergarten. Also, I can't jump rope.

Using chopsticks is kind of like using a pencil. Or maybe more like using scissors, because there are two chopsticks in a set just like there are two blades on a scissor. Except scissor blades are attached, and chopsticks aren't. Each chopstick does something different yet works with the other in harmony. It's very confuzzling to my poor, uncomprehending fingers, who have the wrong genetics and just aren't good at this kind of thing anyways.

Problem #2: The world is divided into people who love sushi and people who are afraid of sushi.

If you don't believe me, go and watch the news. They're always covering the Great Sushi Divide. And if they're not, they should.

Whenever I talk to people about sushi, I almost always get one of two reactions: "I love sushi!" or "I've never tried it." And the people who've never tried it cite their fear of raw fish, or of seaweed, or of wasabi, and so on, all of which clump together into one big fear, the fear of sushi. Sushiphobia.

Why does it matter that like half the population suffers from sushiphobia? It matters because in the sample size of my friends, like half of them suffer from it also. So when I want to go grab some sushi, I can't just call up a bud. I have to call up one of my buds who isn't a sushiphobe, like Porch or Viola. Porch and Viola, though, aren't always available. That seriously inhibits my ability to get sushi as often as I would like.

And no, I can't go get sushi by myself. On account of The Neediness. Getting sushi while suffering from The Neediness is like putting butter on a burn: it's a terrible idea. And it just makes things worse. And what about all the mashed potatoes you could have made with that butter if you hadn't rubbed it into your skin? Bet you didn't think about that, didja?

Problem #3a: Sushi is expensive.

It's very expensive. A plate of sushi costs some serious moolah.

Now, I am more than happy to spend money on food. I love food. There are some types of food I would never get if I didn't buy it myself, of which sushi is one. However, I am less hesitant to spend that food money on, say, some coconut chicken kurma at an Indian place or some honey walnut shrimp from a Chinese one than I am to buy myself some spicy tuna or Vegas rolls at a sushi establishment. The reason?

Problem #3b: Sushi isn't very filling.

It comes in small portions. In order to get full, I'd have to spend a fortune. And I'm a college student. A fortune is something I simply don't have.

One fine summer evening, my BFF Viola and I went for sushi together.

VIOLA: (looking at menu) This is pretty expensive...

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: How many pieces do you think we should get?

VIOLA: If we get three rolls, that will give us each twelve pieces. That's enough, right?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Definitely.

Talking and laughing, we ate our sushi, savoring each bite and sopping up every last bit of spicy mayo. It was truly delicious, and happily I only dropped my food, like, six times.

The check came to the equivalent of one dollar per piece of sushi.

VIOLA: It's totally worth it, though.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: For sure.

VIOLA: I feel pretty full, don't you?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh, yeah.

We paid the bill, left a tip, and drove to the nearest Arctic Circle, where we then proceeded to blow ten more dollars on shakes and value menu chicken sandwiches.

Younger Siblings That Talk Back

Sometimes, I just start craving Indian food.

Or Chinese food. Or Thai food. Or Japanese food. Even though I come from a racial background that's European-Jewish-Slavic aka ethnic white (and yes that is a thing and no I'm not making it up), sometimes I feel, deep down, that I'm actually an Asian. Especially when I start craving all sorts of Asian-y food. Like Indian food.

So the other day, I decided to take a break from homework and to go to an Indian restaurant for a little while, maybe an hour or so. At first I was just going to go by myself, but then The Neediness overcame me.

The Neediness is a sensation of acute loneliness. Acute loneliness meaning not the kind of loneliness you feel when you want someone to hang out with, but more of a feeling that if you don't find someone to hang out with, you're going to be alone forever. So you surround yourself with people as often as possible and have psychologically scarring dreams about going alone to the grocery store.

You know what's almost as bad as going to the grocery store when you have The Neediness? Going to an Indian restaurant.

Even though my sisters and I have the same parents, for some reason they don't feel the whole Asian thing, just the European-Jewish-Slav thing. To my sisters, going to an Indian restaurant seems both like a terrible waste of money and downright repellant. Therefore, to stave off The Neediness's effects on my homework-weary soul, I had to exert all my persuasive capabilities to convince Little Sister and Baby Sister to accompany me to lunch.

"The lunch special is only ten dollars," I wheedled, "and to save money you guys can just have water, and maybe some naan bread. You'll like naan bread, it's really-"

At which point my sisters burst out into fits of hysterical laughter.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What? What did I say?

SISTERS: Naan bread. Non-bread! Bwahaha!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Naan bread. N-A-A-N. It's Indian. Not non-bread-

SISTERS: BAHAHA!

We ended up going for Italian.

A few days later, when I got home from a grueling day at school, I saw that as part of her redecoration project my mother had placed a mirror just inside the front door.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh no!

BABY SISTER: What?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: This mirror. My face is the last thing I want to look at right when I get home.

BABY SISTER: Then look at your face last.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

These are just two brief incidents in a recent outbreak of younger sibling insubordination.

I don't know if it's that Older Sister has been gone for so long or what, but the younger siblings seem to have forgotten their place in the sibling hierarchy. I mean, okay. If I was going to give my family a fake last name for this blog I would give them the fake last name of Obnoxious. And aside from having a reputation of bursting out into song and being able to reference obscure Jim Henson productions, part of being an Obnoxious is being, well, obnoxious.

However. My younger siblings are getting to be too much, even for Obnoxiouses. They seem to have forgotten that you never, ever talk back to your older siblings. Talking back to parents, teachers, church leaders--that's not such a big deal. But older siblings, particularly your awesome older sister? Unacceptable.

Hopefully when Older Sister gets back from her mission, she can whip these little rebels into shape. Otherwise, they're just going to get further and further from the unspoken rules of society, until they end up as high school dropouts who live under a bridge and eat newspapers for breakfast.

Either way, I predict Baby Brother will prove unsalvageable. His level of sauciness far outweighs his number of years.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Baby Brother. Don't put so much butter on your roll. You're going to get a heart attack and die.

BABY BROTHER: But everybody dies.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: *involuntary facial twitch*

BABY BROTHER: Well they do.

I hope Baby Brother doesn't turn out to have the Asian strain in his blood. There's precious little Indian food under a bridge.