the sudoku craze
sunday:
at church amy caught rod's eye. he's a nice english man who is always friendly and welcoming to us. he came by to talk to us and find out the scoop on amy. she told him that she was just visiting and leaving that day. later amy went to get a drink and had a chance meeting with rod by the water fountain. after she came back in, rod came by and said some kind of joke about her being shy. "i don't know why he thinks i'm shy." said amy looking baffled and embarrassed. "he's taken a shine to you." i replied.
jonathon's mother, esther lai, spoke on motherhood. i thought it was a powerful talk and it choked me up. at one point she said "the worst thing for me as a mother is to see my children suffering and in pain, ... so will someone please marry my son." haha that took us by surprise. this stodgy congregation actually laughed. joanna and her sister joylynn also spoke. it was a lai day at the pulpit.
all the women got carnations. the stalk on mine broke right after i got it, making it considerably shorter. then during relief society, olysea's baby timothea (i don't know how they spell it) came tottering into my row. he eyed the carnation that heather left on the seat beside me with caution and anticipation. he pretended to go by it, but he came back to it, he passed his hand over it and then fingered it lightly. and then he dove right in to the exploration of the carnation. olysea was watching from the row behind and grabbed the carnation to save it as soon as the vigerous excavation began. timothea looked up and gave a wail of dismay. "he can have mine." i whispered and pulled out the short stemmed carnation, sticking the petals right up to his face. his face went from woe to delight right away. he's so cute. he played with it for a while but when he began mouthing it and the stem olysea took him away to her mother, who i noticied stuck the carnation in his face every time he went to mouth the tv stand. she would slip it in between his reaching mouth and the audio-visual equipment.
anyways, after church amy and i snuggled on the couch and read outloud from Summer Green. it's a cheap church romance book that takes place in 'ashley valley' in utah in the pioneer days. i got it for christmas when i was a teenager and the twins often read it for fun when they come over. we took turns reading it outloud to each other, laughing at the way it's written. one of my favourite parts was when it said that anne's father 'thumped' her on the nose. it was supposed to be an affectionate gesture in the context of the book. how can a nose thumping be affectionate?? we laughed about that one and then a couple of paragraphs later anne was in tears again, and amy complained about how she was always near tears and feeling hard done by. "well she did just get thumped in the nose." i said standing up for her. "that's true.." mused amy seeing things in a new light. when i read i gave mamma a really annoying voice with a chicago accent and experimented with adding phrases to the text. at first amy caught me but eventually, once i got the hang of it, i had to tell her what i did. i thought we should collaberate and write a cheesie book like that on purpose.
i felt sleepy driving amy to the ferry. it was a beautiful day so on the way back i decided to pull over at the beach for a while. i saw summer green sitting there where amy had left it (i made her read it on the drive out to the ferry) and picked it up. i decided to see how it ended with anne. would she choose peter, the possessive hired hand, or the dashing choir director mark staaton who had a 'mysterious' power over her. and so it happened that i put my seat back and i read summer green until the bitter end. after an hour and a half i raised my seat up and looked around. the sun was almost setting. i better get home, i thought, mamma might be worried and, pappa might thump me on the nose again. er... i mean the sun was setting and i realized i'd been there a long time. as i went to start the car, it didn't. it wouldn't. it couldn't. 'peared to me that i had left my lights on that whole time. i ran the battery out. fatima said that it takes four hours or something to run her battery out and that you have to try to start it and then leave it a couple of minutes and start it again and it will work, but that didn't work for my car. maybe because of the fright it had on the night we almost hit a bear and the car died for a couple of minutes. maybe that weakened her heart, in any case she wasn't starting. oh great, i thought. i sat and thought about who i could call. oh wait, nobody. i decided to look in my emergency car pack that karey gave me one year for christmas. sure enough there were some jumper cables. there was a lady parked near me. i didn't want to approach her. i just really did not want to ask her for help. i didn't want to breach the wall of strangers of seperate worlds. i don't know what the big deal was, and i had no choice really, so i tottered over to her in my church skirt and church shoes, the wind whipping my hair.
"hi... um.. i ran my battery out."
"oh! do you need a cell phone dear?"
"well.. uh.. i have some jumper cables.."
at that she was all which side is your battery on? i was pretty sure i knew where the battery was so i told her it was on the driver's side. she pulled up and i confessed that i didn't really know what i was doing. she said she didn't either. but out of the two of us she seemed to know more. she called me dear about a dozen times during what turned out to be a quick process. when it was done she gave me a high five. then she touched my arm and asked "are you a mother dear?" she seemed disappointed when i said i wasn't so i added, "not yet, but i hope to be." so she wished me a future happy mother's day. she was effuse with advice. she fussed and told me to let it run for a while and then stop at the gas station on the reserve and stop the engine for a while and then start it again to see if it would run and she was so cheery, i thought that she was glad that i disturbed her and it almost made her day to help me out that way. funny hey?
monday:
i drove to work with my car on empty. and my gas had to last until payday which was tuesday. but monday just so happened to be the first day in my save on gas/fight the gouging/save the environment/get exercise plan for the summer. i thought of it on the way to work one day. i was listening to phillip til (sp?) talk about the gas gouging. and it bugs me so much that they think they can do whatever they want and that there is nothing we can do about it. i thought about how i could drive less. i can't car pool or ride my bike to work because i need my car for work and i didn't want to leave my car at work all week because sometimes i'll need it for grocery shopping or whathaveyou. that's when the plan emerged. i decided to drive half the time and walk the other half of the time. drive to work on monday, walk home. walk on tuesday morning and drive home that afternoon. i felt pretty darn smart for figuring that one out and i was excited. i didn't know how long it would take me to walk. i guessed between an hour and an hour and a half.
anyways monday at work went by without much fuss except that i had to do the save-on grocery shopping and i drove with a prayer in my heart that i wouldn't run out of gas, and i didn't. i was totally running on fumes, something i've vowed not to do, but here i was doing it again.
after work i walked out to my car, took off my flip flops and put on my socks and tired old runners. it was a nice day for a walk. i caught up to mark who was on his way to fitness world. he guessed that i could do it in half an hour. 'ya right!" i scoffed. "at least an hour." he shrugged. he obviously doesn't know that i'm not a fast walker. i kept track of the time on my cellular device. as i neared the old train tracks and the dinsmore bridge it smelled like summer. i think it was a combo of freshly cut grass and the fragrant flowers of the chestnut tree. after the dinsmore bridge, i have to walk on the shoulder of russ baker way all the way to the arthur lang. it's not the most scenic walk in the world. i tried cutting across this big field but the grasses were very long and the ground very uneven. i knew even before i twisted my ankle that i wouldn't be doing that again. besides i worried that i may be stepping on bird's nests or something. birds make nests in long grasses you know.
so my walk was pretty uneventful. i sang songs like the ants go marching to myself as i went. i had some trouble finding a way to cross at miller road because there is no pedestrian crosswalk there, but i figured out a safe way. it took just under an hour.
after i got home i took out some chicken to defrost and i soaked some mushrooms and skewers in the sink, then ran a bath. randy and heather were coming over to watch the survivor finale and we were having a potluck. when we decided on the potluck i enforced a 'don't tell' rule. heather agreed reluctantly. i was doing crosswords in the bath when i heard the buzzer. er.. i guess i lost track of time. it was randy. i let him in and quickly dressed. i felt greatly refreshed and when i came emerged from the bathroom i saw that randy brought pizza! what a lovely surprise! we chatted while i made the skewers, and then heather arrived with a salad with cheese cubes in it, and most wonderful--mojos! mojo's AND pizza! this was going to be a good night.
elicia was late because she had an a-p-p-t. at icbc about her car. we thoughtlessly started watching it but decided to wait for her after she called to say she was on her way. so she came and after minimal fiddling, we were all together watching the show we love, survivor and filling our faces with the food we love. my skewers turned out kind of bland because nothing was marianated and the sauce wasn't too strong. oh well. randy was very excited about his round house pizza. he mentioned a couple of times how he like round house because they put so much on it. no sparse toppings with round house. :) nope, no way. of course we were all shocked and appalled when global cut out of survivor at the most pivotal moment, and we only found out yau man's fate after it was all over. suddenly it was clear to heather why sarita phoned her the night before spitting mad muttering threats to phone global etc.
tuesday:
pay day. i walked to work. it was another beautiful morning. it took me an hour and 3 minutes. my runners were incresingly uncomfy to walk in and my feet were sore when i sat on my bumper at work and put on the flip flops. they were glad to be free.
tuesday was the day that we were supposed to boycot the gas stations, but i needed gas badly. i was driving on fumes. i had to buy gas with a car full of members on the way to a group job site that i oversee (i'm one of the ones who oversee). it cost 62 dollars and some cents. ugh.
when i got home from work there was a message from heather saying that she got us a couch (from one of the realators at her work) and that it was in the lobby of her building. she said it had to be out that night. she said it was heavy but elicia and i could probably carry it the two blocks to our house if we took breaks. it was an exciting thought. a new couch! new to us anyways. so when elicia got home, we went right over. heather was at one of her primary functions at the church but we have her extra keys, so we let ourselves in and met the couch that turned out to be the source of much trouble and physical pain. we didn't know that yet however. it looked alright. it had the lazy boy feature at each end. when we tried to lift it and found that it was indeed very heavy, elicia was doubtful. i was opitmistic. i turned out to be the stupid one. "come on! we'll just do it bit by bit." i said. so we pushed it out the door and to the curb. then we carried it across the road, but that was as far that went. then we began walking it on one end. pivoting back and forth. i was the designated 'stronger one' and was on the heavy swinging end. that was ok with me because i didn't want elicia to give up. i wanted to keep going. well we did. we walked that baby through the alley painful pivot by painful pivot. some men who passed us felt the need to tell us that they'd help us but they had a bad back. after what seemed like forever we reached the next road. "let's just push it across." said elicia with exhaustion and desperation that we both were feeling. "we can't do that. it's a busy road!" i said. we somehow managed to carry it across. then we walked it some more. at some point a man carrying a coors beer stumbled up to us. he was so out of it drunk, but he offered to help us. we both imagined how the couch would flatten this guy who could barely even walk. in the end he said if he found a shopping cart he would bring it to us. we stopped and had a prayer. and then we started the endless pivot process again. we had a quarter of the alley left to go when a man on the bottom floor of an apartment said to us over some boxes on his patio, "that looks heavy." elicia and i looked at each other not daring to hope. "it is." we admitted freely. "do you want some help?" he asked. do we! "sure." i called back. and so he hopped over into the alley and picked up one side. elicia and i carried the other side. his daughter drove up and helped us too. we were soooo relieved. we thought our troubles were over. at the apartment the man's daughter said "sorry girls, i aint going up any stairs." and went back to get her purse. but the man and i managed through lots of lifting, turning, pushing, grunting, swearing (not by me of course) and hard manouvering on the always heated stairs to get the couch up to our hallway. and that's where we encountered the last insurmountable challenge. the couch would not fit through the door of our apartment. whether it was the lazy boy handles on the end, or the raised threshold of our doorway or the turn we had to make just inside our doorway or a combination of all of these, i don't know. the man who remained a nameless good samaritan, began to swear in earnest at this point. he was a muscular, fit looking man, and he was dripping in sweat. i was utterly exhausted. like my muscles were more than spent. they were over spent. my arms were lead pipes hanging from my shoulders. we tried a number of ways. he took the wooden arm off but there was a metal thing just as long underneath it. in the end he left us. we assured him that we had other friends who could help us. but the thing was we didn't. we didn't have anyone but we didn't want him to feel bad leaving us. so there we were with a couch in the hallway blocking three other people's doorways. there was no way the two of us could take it back down the stairs ourselves at that point. i decided to try one more time to get it in. we knocked on the lady's door who lives across the hall from us. she allowed us to back into her doorway to get into our place head on. then she shut us out. she had someone on the phone. well that's when we got the couch jammed in the doorway. we couldn't get it in and we couldn't get it out. that's when elicia decided to call proffessional movers. then i suggested she call the bishop and tell him we'd call our hometeachers but that we had none. so we got the number to the church from randy, who has a bad back right now, so we didn't ask for his help, and elicia talked to jay the new executive secretary, and he said that the bishop was in his last interview but that they would come help us when he was done. i climbed over the couch and into the apartment. the series finale of girlmore girls had already started. we had been moving that couch for over two hours.
gilmore girls was really good. i shed some tears at ceratain parts. i wish it wasn't over.
the bishop and his son joe and his friend sam showed up just after nine. at this point we just wanted the couch out. the bishop seemed to be at quite a loss as to how to get the couch out. he kept asking us questions about how we got it there, and what methods we used and so on. a brainy man, but not a brawny man to be sure. i tried to explain the methods to them, of up on end, pull the bottom out, up on end, turn etc that was needed but his face was a blank wall. joe seemed to get things more. but not from my explanation, i must have been speaking gibberish in my exhausted state. he figured it out on his own. joe seemed very protective of his dad. his dad was worried about scraping the walls. "watch the wall joe/sam!" he would say. "we're trying to." they would groan. they had a hard time doing it, but they eventually got it out. i tried to help where i could. we left a big gouge in our door and splinters on the carpet. i didn't say anything about hometeachers because i was so grateful they helped us. i never thought about how alone we are with no fathers, brothers, husbands, uncles or hometeachers before. i always just thought i could handle whatever.
my body was so sore after that night. the night of the couch. i have some good bruises too. bruises that tell my story.
wenesday:
on wednesday we made whoopie pies at work. and we made a lot of them. it was gloria and i, the baking buddies. whoopie pies are two chocolate cookies with some icing sandwhiched between them. i was sooooooooooooo tired at the end of the day and my feet were tired too. i also burned the tender flesh of my upper flubs reaching around a pot earlier that morning. now i have an arching red line coming out of brown freckled birth mark just above my inner elbow. it was tender flesh to burn and i was irked because i don't want any scars on my upper flubs.
wednesday was a walk home day and i wore my crocs this time. which was great until somewhere on the bridge i realized that the rough spot on the button was giving me a blister on the arch of each foot and that the blister was tearing. i realized that all at once. but there was nothing to do but keep going. i was almost home anyways. my feet were grimy with the dust and dirt that flew into my shoe as i walked and sure enough there were two torn blisters on the top of each arch. i soaked my feet in cool water with lavender and did crossword puzzles.
wednesday was turn it off bc! day. so we had candles going and we unplugged everything but the tv. because hello, it was the finale of top model.
thursday:
was unremarkable. i walked to work in the crocs but with bandaids and socks to protect my feetsies. i car honked at me on the bridge. i was walking around some glass but was still well within the shoulder. i tried not to take it personal. i probably scared them.
i worked in the thrift store that day and organized the books with a vengance. i like working in the thrift store when i can organize things and fix problems that have been driving me crazy. it's good medicine.
the season finale of er was traumatizing as per usual.
friday:
i was so glad it was friday when friday rolled around. friday i get to drive both ways. friday is my early day. friday is the beginning of the weekend and the long weekend at that. after work i had a nice long three hour nap. then elicia, heather and i got sushi and king sushi and then we headed down town to the imax. we used our coupons and watched deep sea 3D. we thought that we could use our coupons again to see the mayan one, which was right after the deep sea (they're only 45 minutes long) but the snarky girl wouldn't allow it. we didn't care that much though. as we drove home i realized that i was the only one talking. heather and elicia were pooped but i was full of energy. that's what happens when you have a three hour nap.
heather leant me her lord of the rings dvds and i watched one that night before i went to bed.
saturday:
saturday i finally tried sudoku. and i got hooked. of course i did because if there is anything to get hooked to, i will fall prey to it. so i spent a large part of the morning doing sudokus. i mean all morning. but at one i got my wide flat bum out of the computer chair and began to clean. i cleaned my room, i cleaned the floors, i cleaned the bathroom. elicia cleaned the kitchen. our house looks great and i feel so much better, especially about my room. i put my new sheets on too and that is wonderful. the cats love it too.
after all this cleaning i had a shower but i slipped almost falling and knocking the shower curtain rod off again. the rod bit it. there was no puttting it up again, so we went to ikea and had a little shoperoo. it was fun. i also got summer napkins and lightbulbs for my bedside lamp which i had been going without. elicia bought her mom a drying rack. on the way home we saw signs for the night market so we decided spur of the moment to go. elicia had never been. i went once with karey and pete.
the night market was fun. it rained off and on but mostly just lightly. elicia and i basically went from jewelry booth to jewelry booth, but we found some nice stuff. the food booths were crazy. i mean the booths weren't crazy, but it was crazy there. it was packed with people. i mean like it would be in japan or taiwan, with people crushed together and moving en masse. elicia got a bubble tea and i got some meat on sticks.
we came home and i made some pizzarogies and watched the second lord of the rings and that was saturday.
now it's sunday and i am cutting into my getting ready time with this super long post, but i know how much you all love the super long posts, so eat up, enjoy.
at church amy caught rod's eye. he's a nice english man who is always friendly and welcoming to us. he came by to talk to us and find out the scoop on amy. she told him that she was just visiting and leaving that day. later amy went to get a drink and had a chance meeting with rod by the water fountain. after she came back in, rod came by and said some kind of joke about her being shy. "i don't know why he thinks i'm shy." said amy looking baffled and embarrassed. "he's taken a shine to you." i replied.
jonathon's mother, esther lai, spoke on motherhood. i thought it was a powerful talk and it choked me up. at one point she said "the worst thing for me as a mother is to see my children suffering and in pain, ... so will someone please marry my son." haha that took us by surprise. this stodgy congregation actually laughed. joanna and her sister joylynn also spoke. it was a lai day at the pulpit.
all the women got carnations. the stalk on mine broke right after i got it, making it considerably shorter. then during relief society, olysea's baby timothea (i don't know how they spell it) came tottering into my row. he eyed the carnation that heather left on the seat beside me with caution and anticipation. he pretended to go by it, but he came back to it, he passed his hand over it and then fingered it lightly. and then he dove right in to the exploration of the carnation. olysea was watching from the row behind and grabbed the carnation to save it as soon as the vigerous excavation began. timothea looked up and gave a wail of dismay. "he can have mine." i whispered and pulled out the short stemmed carnation, sticking the petals right up to his face. his face went from woe to delight right away. he's so cute. he played with it for a while but when he began mouthing it and the stem olysea took him away to her mother, who i noticied stuck the carnation in his face every time he went to mouth the tv stand. she would slip it in between his reaching mouth and the audio-visual equipment.
anyways, after church amy and i snuggled on the couch and read outloud from Summer Green. it's a cheap church romance book that takes place in 'ashley valley' in utah in the pioneer days. i got it for christmas when i was a teenager and the twins often read it for fun when they come over. we took turns reading it outloud to each other, laughing at the way it's written. one of my favourite parts was when it said that anne's father 'thumped' her on the nose. it was supposed to be an affectionate gesture in the context of the book. how can a nose thumping be affectionate?? we laughed about that one and then a couple of paragraphs later anne was in tears again, and amy complained about how she was always near tears and feeling hard done by. "well she did just get thumped in the nose." i said standing up for her. "that's true.." mused amy seeing things in a new light. when i read i gave mamma a really annoying voice with a chicago accent and experimented with adding phrases to the text. at first amy caught me but eventually, once i got the hang of it, i had to tell her what i did. i thought we should collaberate and write a cheesie book like that on purpose.
i felt sleepy driving amy to the ferry. it was a beautiful day so on the way back i decided to pull over at the beach for a while. i saw summer green sitting there where amy had left it (i made her read it on the drive out to the ferry) and picked it up. i decided to see how it ended with anne. would she choose peter, the possessive hired hand, or the dashing choir director mark staaton who had a 'mysterious' power over her. and so it happened that i put my seat back and i read summer green until the bitter end. after an hour and a half i raised my seat up and looked around. the sun was almost setting. i better get home, i thought, mamma might be worried and, pappa might thump me on the nose again. er... i mean the sun was setting and i realized i'd been there a long time. as i went to start the car, it didn't. it wouldn't. it couldn't. 'peared to me that i had left my lights on that whole time. i ran the battery out. fatima said that it takes four hours or something to run her battery out and that you have to try to start it and then leave it a couple of minutes and start it again and it will work, but that didn't work for my car. maybe because of the fright it had on the night we almost hit a bear and the car died for a couple of minutes. maybe that weakened her heart, in any case she wasn't starting. oh great, i thought. i sat and thought about who i could call. oh wait, nobody. i decided to look in my emergency car pack that karey gave me one year for christmas. sure enough there were some jumper cables. there was a lady parked near me. i didn't want to approach her. i just really did not want to ask her for help. i didn't want to breach the wall of strangers of seperate worlds. i don't know what the big deal was, and i had no choice really, so i tottered over to her in my church skirt and church shoes, the wind whipping my hair.
"hi... um.. i ran my battery out."
"oh! do you need a cell phone dear?"
"well.. uh.. i have some jumper cables.."
at that she was all which side is your battery on? i was pretty sure i knew where the battery was so i told her it was on the driver's side. she pulled up and i confessed that i didn't really know what i was doing. she said she didn't either. but out of the two of us she seemed to know more. she called me dear about a dozen times during what turned out to be a quick process. when it was done she gave me a high five. then she touched my arm and asked "are you a mother dear?" she seemed disappointed when i said i wasn't so i added, "not yet, but i hope to be." so she wished me a future happy mother's day. she was effuse with advice. she fussed and told me to let it run for a while and then stop at the gas station on the reserve and stop the engine for a while and then start it again to see if it would run and she was so cheery, i thought that she was glad that i disturbed her and it almost made her day to help me out that way. funny hey?
monday:
i drove to work with my car on empty. and my gas had to last until payday which was tuesday. but monday just so happened to be the first day in my save on gas/fight the gouging/save the environment/get exercise plan for the summer. i thought of it on the way to work one day. i was listening to phillip til (sp?) talk about the gas gouging. and it bugs me so much that they think they can do whatever they want and that there is nothing we can do about it. i thought about how i could drive less. i can't car pool or ride my bike to work because i need my car for work and i didn't want to leave my car at work all week because sometimes i'll need it for grocery shopping or whathaveyou. that's when the plan emerged. i decided to drive half the time and walk the other half of the time. drive to work on monday, walk home. walk on tuesday morning and drive home that afternoon. i felt pretty darn smart for figuring that one out and i was excited. i didn't know how long it would take me to walk. i guessed between an hour and an hour and a half.
anyways monday at work went by without much fuss except that i had to do the save-on grocery shopping and i drove with a prayer in my heart that i wouldn't run out of gas, and i didn't. i was totally running on fumes, something i've vowed not to do, but here i was doing it again.
after work i walked out to my car, took off my flip flops and put on my socks and tired old runners. it was a nice day for a walk. i caught up to mark who was on his way to fitness world. he guessed that i could do it in half an hour. 'ya right!" i scoffed. "at least an hour." he shrugged. he obviously doesn't know that i'm not a fast walker. i kept track of the time on my cellular device. as i neared the old train tracks and the dinsmore bridge it smelled like summer. i think it was a combo of freshly cut grass and the fragrant flowers of the chestnut tree. after the dinsmore bridge, i have to walk on the shoulder of russ baker way all the way to the arthur lang. it's not the most scenic walk in the world. i tried cutting across this big field but the grasses were very long and the ground very uneven. i knew even before i twisted my ankle that i wouldn't be doing that again. besides i worried that i may be stepping on bird's nests or something. birds make nests in long grasses you know.
so my walk was pretty uneventful. i sang songs like the ants go marching to myself as i went. i had some trouble finding a way to cross at miller road because there is no pedestrian crosswalk there, but i figured out a safe way. it took just under an hour.
after i got home i took out some chicken to defrost and i soaked some mushrooms and skewers in the sink, then ran a bath. randy and heather were coming over to watch the survivor finale and we were having a potluck. when we decided on the potluck i enforced a 'don't tell' rule. heather agreed reluctantly. i was doing crosswords in the bath when i heard the buzzer. er.. i guess i lost track of time. it was randy. i let him in and quickly dressed. i felt greatly refreshed and when i came emerged from the bathroom i saw that randy brought pizza! what a lovely surprise! we chatted while i made the skewers, and then heather arrived with a salad with cheese cubes in it, and most wonderful--mojos! mojo's AND pizza! this was going to be a good night.
elicia was late because she had an a-p-p-t. at icbc about her car. we thoughtlessly started watching it but decided to wait for her after she called to say she was on her way. so she came and after minimal fiddling, we were all together watching the show we love, survivor and filling our faces with the food we love. my skewers turned out kind of bland because nothing was marianated and the sauce wasn't too strong. oh well. randy was very excited about his round house pizza. he mentioned a couple of times how he like round house because they put so much on it. no sparse toppings with round house. :) nope, no way. of course we were all shocked and appalled when global cut out of survivor at the most pivotal moment, and we only found out yau man's fate after it was all over. suddenly it was clear to heather why sarita phoned her the night before spitting mad muttering threats to phone global etc.
tuesday:
pay day. i walked to work. it was another beautiful morning. it took me an hour and 3 minutes. my runners were incresingly uncomfy to walk in and my feet were sore when i sat on my bumper at work and put on the flip flops. they were glad to be free.
tuesday was the day that we were supposed to boycot the gas stations, but i needed gas badly. i was driving on fumes. i had to buy gas with a car full of members on the way to a group job site that i oversee (i'm one of the ones who oversee). it cost 62 dollars and some cents. ugh.
when i got home from work there was a message from heather saying that she got us a couch (from one of the realators at her work) and that it was in the lobby of her building. she said it had to be out that night. she said it was heavy but elicia and i could probably carry it the two blocks to our house if we took breaks. it was an exciting thought. a new couch! new to us anyways. so when elicia got home, we went right over. heather was at one of her primary functions at the church but we have her extra keys, so we let ourselves in and met the couch that turned out to be the source of much trouble and physical pain. we didn't know that yet however. it looked alright. it had the lazy boy feature at each end. when we tried to lift it and found that it was indeed very heavy, elicia was doubtful. i was opitmistic. i turned out to be the stupid one. "come on! we'll just do it bit by bit." i said. so we pushed it out the door and to the curb. then we carried it across the road, but that was as far that went. then we began walking it on one end. pivoting back and forth. i was the designated 'stronger one' and was on the heavy swinging end. that was ok with me because i didn't want elicia to give up. i wanted to keep going. well we did. we walked that baby through the alley painful pivot by painful pivot. some men who passed us felt the need to tell us that they'd help us but they had a bad back. after what seemed like forever we reached the next road. "let's just push it across." said elicia with exhaustion and desperation that we both were feeling. "we can't do that. it's a busy road!" i said. we somehow managed to carry it across. then we walked it some more. at some point a man carrying a coors beer stumbled up to us. he was so out of it drunk, but he offered to help us. we both imagined how the couch would flatten this guy who could barely even walk. in the end he said if he found a shopping cart he would bring it to us. we stopped and had a prayer. and then we started the endless pivot process again. we had a quarter of the alley left to go when a man on the bottom floor of an apartment said to us over some boxes on his patio, "that looks heavy." elicia and i looked at each other not daring to hope. "it is." we admitted freely. "do you want some help?" he asked. do we! "sure." i called back. and so he hopped over into the alley and picked up one side. elicia and i carried the other side. his daughter drove up and helped us too. we were soooo relieved. we thought our troubles were over. at the apartment the man's daughter said "sorry girls, i aint going up any stairs." and went back to get her purse. but the man and i managed through lots of lifting, turning, pushing, grunting, swearing (not by me of course) and hard manouvering on the always heated stairs to get the couch up to our hallway. and that's where we encountered the last insurmountable challenge. the couch would not fit through the door of our apartment. whether it was the lazy boy handles on the end, or the raised threshold of our doorway or the turn we had to make just inside our doorway or a combination of all of these, i don't know. the man who remained a nameless good samaritan, began to swear in earnest at this point. he was a muscular, fit looking man, and he was dripping in sweat. i was utterly exhausted. like my muscles were more than spent. they were over spent. my arms were lead pipes hanging from my shoulders. we tried a number of ways. he took the wooden arm off but there was a metal thing just as long underneath it. in the end he left us. we assured him that we had other friends who could help us. but the thing was we didn't. we didn't have anyone but we didn't want him to feel bad leaving us. so there we were with a couch in the hallway blocking three other people's doorways. there was no way the two of us could take it back down the stairs ourselves at that point. i decided to try one more time to get it in. we knocked on the lady's door who lives across the hall from us. she allowed us to back into her doorway to get into our place head on. then she shut us out. she had someone on the phone. well that's when we got the couch jammed in the doorway. we couldn't get it in and we couldn't get it out. that's when elicia decided to call proffessional movers. then i suggested she call the bishop and tell him we'd call our hometeachers but that we had none. so we got the number to the church from randy, who has a bad back right now, so we didn't ask for his help, and elicia talked to jay the new executive secretary, and he said that the bishop was in his last interview but that they would come help us when he was done. i climbed over the couch and into the apartment. the series finale of girlmore girls had already started. we had been moving that couch for over two hours.
gilmore girls was really good. i shed some tears at ceratain parts. i wish it wasn't over.
the bishop and his son joe and his friend sam showed up just after nine. at this point we just wanted the couch out. the bishop seemed to be at quite a loss as to how to get the couch out. he kept asking us questions about how we got it there, and what methods we used and so on. a brainy man, but not a brawny man to be sure. i tried to explain the methods to them, of up on end, pull the bottom out, up on end, turn etc that was needed but his face was a blank wall. joe seemed to get things more. but not from my explanation, i must have been speaking gibberish in my exhausted state. he figured it out on his own. joe seemed very protective of his dad. his dad was worried about scraping the walls. "watch the wall joe/sam!" he would say. "we're trying to." they would groan. they had a hard time doing it, but they eventually got it out. i tried to help where i could. we left a big gouge in our door and splinters on the carpet. i didn't say anything about hometeachers because i was so grateful they helped us. i never thought about how alone we are with no fathers, brothers, husbands, uncles or hometeachers before. i always just thought i could handle whatever.
my body was so sore after that night. the night of the couch. i have some good bruises too. bruises that tell my story.
wenesday:
on wednesday we made whoopie pies at work. and we made a lot of them. it was gloria and i, the baking buddies. whoopie pies are two chocolate cookies with some icing sandwhiched between them. i was sooooooooooooo tired at the end of the day and my feet were tired too. i also burned the tender flesh of my upper flubs reaching around a pot earlier that morning. now i have an arching red line coming out of brown freckled birth mark just above my inner elbow. it was tender flesh to burn and i was irked because i don't want any scars on my upper flubs.
wednesday was a walk home day and i wore my crocs this time. which was great until somewhere on the bridge i realized that the rough spot on the button was giving me a blister on the arch of each foot and that the blister was tearing. i realized that all at once. but there was nothing to do but keep going. i was almost home anyways. my feet were grimy with the dust and dirt that flew into my shoe as i walked and sure enough there were two torn blisters on the top of each arch. i soaked my feet in cool water with lavender and did crossword puzzles.
wednesday was turn it off bc! day. so we had candles going and we unplugged everything but the tv. because hello, it was the finale of top model.
thursday:
was unremarkable. i walked to work in the crocs but with bandaids and socks to protect my feetsies. i car honked at me on the bridge. i was walking around some glass but was still well within the shoulder. i tried not to take it personal. i probably scared them.
i worked in the thrift store that day and organized the books with a vengance. i like working in the thrift store when i can organize things and fix problems that have been driving me crazy. it's good medicine.
the season finale of er was traumatizing as per usual.
friday:
i was so glad it was friday when friday rolled around. friday i get to drive both ways. friday is my early day. friday is the beginning of the weekend and the long weekend at that. after work i had a nice long three hour nap. then elicia, heather and i got sushi and king sushi and then we headed down town to the imax. we used our coupons and watched deep sea 3D. we thought that we could use our coupons again to see the mayan one, which was right after the deep sea (they're only 45 minutes long) but the snarky girl wouldn't allow it. we didn't care that much though. as we drove home i realized that i was the only one talking. heather and elicia were pooped but i was full of energy. that's what happens when you have a three hour nap.
heather leant me her lord of the rings dvds and i watched one that night before i went to bed.
saturday:
saturday i finally tried sudoku. and i got hooked. of course i did because if there is anything to get hooked to, i will fall prey to it. so i spent a large part of the morning doing sudokus. i mean all morning. but at one i got my wide flat bum out of the computer chair and began to clean. i cleaned my room, i cleaned the floors, i cleaned the bathroom. elicia cleaned the kitchen. our house looks great and i feel so much better, especially about my room. i put my new sheets on too and that is wonderful. the cats love it too.
after all this cleaning i had a shower but i slipped almost falling and knocking the shower curtain rod off again. the rod bit it. there was no puttting it up again, so we went to ikea and had a little shoperoo. it was fun. i also got summer napkins and lightbulbs for my bedside lamp which i had been going without. elicia bought her mom a drying rack. on the way home we saw signs for the night market so we decided spur of the moment to go. elicia had never been. i went once with karey and pete.
the night market was fun. it rained off and on but mostly just lightly. elicia and i basically went from jewelry booth to jewelry booth, but we found some nice stuff. the food booths were crazy. i mean the booths weren't crazy, but it was crazy there. it was packed with people. i mean like it would be in japan or taiwan, with people crushed together and moving en masse. elicia got a bubble tea and i got some meat on sticks.
we came home and i made some pizzarogies and watched the second lord of the rings and that was saturday.
now it's sunday and i am cutting into my getting ready time with this super long post, but i know how much you all love the super long posts, so eat up, enjoy.
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