The Epitome of Yuckiness

I hate colds. I hate them with a passion. I am presently on my second cold for this winter. You feel so incredibly disgusting when you have one. And really, you are incredibly disgusting. For starters, you have a colored mass of blobs that is dying to explode out of your face but has no idea how to do it so it just sits there. Then, to try and get this colored mass out, you choke down this medicine which tastes like nothing pleasant even though it is supposedly citrus flavored. Next, it naturally follows that the colored mass will begin to flow from your face, which will require the use of much tissue. Said tissue will begin to overflow from your pockets, bags, and purses. It begins to pile and surround you like all of your rolling hills of dirty laundry. Not only is it the cause of a gargantuous mess, but it also tears, dries, and absolutely destroys the skin on your face. You're left with this redness and soreness that doesn't leave until you are long over the cold. No amount of lotion, cream, or goop can make it go away because you just use a tissue again right after you apply one of them. The effort is fruitless. Now, if it's a really bad cold there will also be the hacking up of your lungs and the feel a razor in your throat. When you breathe you feel as though you are breathing out death on all those around you. It would honestly be best if you could avoid all human contact when you contract this horror; however, you cannot because you still have to live your life.

Since it's almost Valentine's Day...

So, since I most likely won't be checking my blog again before Valentine's Day, I feel obligated to share some inspirational quotes with you now.

"Forget love - I want to fall in chocolate." -the bottom of a candy dish

"[Thy] kiss is comfortless as frozen water to a starved snake." -Shakespeare

"When you are in love you can't fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams." -Dr. Suess

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." -Germaine Greer

I hope you are inspired.

Careful Which Buttons You Push

I really do love my friends. They entertain me so. I was with a friend yesterday and she told me of an experience she had a few hours before. Even just thinking of it now makes me giggle. She was a little embarrassed by it, but knew I would get a kick out of it. So, she's not very technologically savvy and sometimes just pushes random buttons to try and fix things. This action has led her into trouble several times. This time, for kicks, she was just randomly pushing buttons on her phone. All of the sudden this screen popped up asking her to key in a code of some kind. She had no idea what her phone was asking for so she tried random codes, which didn't work. She couldn't get out of the screen and PUK Blocked appeared (When she showed me I thought it said PUKE Blocked, and I thought, "Well, that's good."). At the bottom of the screen she saw two options. One was OK and the other was SOS. She thought the SOS would lead her to some technical support from her phone company. Nope. It dialed 911, and they answered. My friend freaked out and tried to calmly explain what happened. Luckily, the lady who answered was nice about it. She now has to talk with her phone company because pretty much every time she turns her phone on it automatically dials 911. I couldn't stop laughing when she told me. I mean, wow. Lesson to be learned for all: If you don't know what you're doing, stop pushing the freakin buttons.

Cookie Decorating Gone Wrong

Since this Saturday is Valentine's Day, I decided to make some cookies for my students. (I realize at public schools you can't do that, but mine is not a public school. So, I make some sort of treat for my students almost every holiday.) Between the three classes that I teach I have about 50 students. A lot of cookies for one person to bake and decorate if he/she isn't a decorator of food. A friend of mine wanted to help and I was more than willing to let her. You see, artistic talent runs in my family; however, mine doesn't quite work in the same way as others' talents. I have a knack for interior design and abstract art. When it comes to anything else, I'm pretty much a failure. This includes decorating food. I can arrange it and make it look nice, but I can't decorate food for the life of me. And yet somehow my friend ended up doing the baking and I ended up doing the decorating. Let's just say that that finished products were beginning to look rather interesting. So, my friend, who loves decorating food, helped. She did the borders while I decorated the middle since the borders and I had been duking it out and I lost...miserably. The cookies looked like they had split personalities, traditional and abstract. Some of the designs I put in the middle looked like check marks with dots, the number 7, distorted smiley faces, the pox, abstract hearts, squiggles that ended up being too squiggly because my friend made me laugh, plus and minus signs, division and multiplication signs, and pi. Luckily I was able to find 50 that look decent enough to give to my students. The rest I will give to my roommate and coworkers. Hey, as long as it still tastes good as it's going down then who cares what it looks like?

The Obvious Winner

So, I live about a 10-minute drive away from where I work. Everyday I pass the university and all the students heading to their classes. Several of the students have chosen to use a bike as a means of transportation. Kudos to them. I mean it's a great workout, it's faster than walking, and it's cheaper than having a car. I personally could never do it for two reasons. The first reason being I got in an accident as a kid and have only ridden a bike once since then. The second reason being that bicyclists share the roads with giant machines of death. I mean, seriously, these students ride their bikes on the side of the road and only have about 2 feet between them and the car next to them. Sometimes it gets even closer, like on trash days when people have their bins out on the street and the bicyclists have to maneuver their way around them. And then you add snow and ice to the whole mixture and it makes for one violently catastrophic mess. No way. If I didn't have my car I would rather walk than ride a bike. It takes longer, but at least I'm on the sidewalk away from the cars (not including freak accidents where cars can and do end up on the sidewalks). I wouldn't want to risk it because the car would win every single time.

Creepy Crawly

I have this insanely intense fear of spiders. I can't even look at a picture of spiders without getting completely creeped out. Sometimes I am forced to "deal" with it. Example, I teach English at BYU's English Language Center. People who are not native English speakers go there to learn English for their job or to enter a university. Last semester, one of the classes I taught was a reading class, and one of the books that we read was Charlotte's Web. I was ok with most of the pictures in the book because they were not so realistic. However, along with the book the students needed to do an expository reading. The one they happened to have available here was an educational magazine on spiders. When I first got it at the beginning of the semester I put it face-down in a plastic bag underneath all of the other magazines and books. The time drew near for us to read the magazine, but I couldn't touch it, open it, or even look at it. I asked a friend of mine if she would be willing to cover up the pictures for me with post-it notes. She said she would, but I kept forgetting to take it home. The time arrived when I needed to make a study guide for it and I hadn't had the pictured covered. I had to do it on my own. I took the face-down magazine out of the bag and placed it on the desk in my office. I put my fingers on the very corner of the magazine, closed my eyes, turned it over, and stepped several feet back. I opened my eyes, freaked out, and threw a piece of paper over it. I used a little tape and some post-it notes to fully cover the picture. I could barely force my hands to do it. It was as if I thought the spiders would jump out at me and grab me. Once it was fully covered I put my fingers on the corner, closed my eyes, flipped it open, and stood several feet away. I opened my eyes and freaked out again at the next ginormous pictures of spiders. But this time I had books in my hand and I threw the books onto the table to cover the pictures. As I very slowly removed the books I would cover the area with a piece of paper. I had to repeat this process over and over again until I had covered all of the pictures. It took around 45 minutes. So, really, just picture me standing in my office, feet away from the desk, stiff, scared, covered in goosebumps, teeth clenched, throwing books on top of a magazine. Who does that? I'm sure it was actually quite a site to behold. I was then able to read through it with few complications and create a study guide.

Then, the time came to discuss the magazine and study guide in class. I told my students of my fear of spiders and showed them my copy. They were quite amused. We started to go through the the magazine and check their answers on the study guides. One thing that I had failed to think of was that their copies would not be covered. To read certain sections some would lift their copies and I would get a full view of the cover and get chills all over my body. I told them to keep their copies down so I wouldn't see the horrifying pictures. Then, I had to collect the study guides. I made them cover their copies so I wouldn't see the pictures as I passed by. I still saw a few and tightened up and got goosebumps.

Now, taking the post-it notes and paper off so I could return it in the same condition I got it in was easy. I shoved the magazine in a plastic bag, tied it tight, and took it home, and had my roommate do it. She was nice enough to double bag it for me when she was done.

What I find really odd though is that I have this incredible fear and yet one of my favorite songs is "Boris the Spider" by The Who. Go figure. And just so you know, I'm not including a picture for obvious reasons.

Underwater Spies

There are certain times in our lives when we really wish people would just mind their own business. Let me give an example. A friend of mine and I do the water aerobics class at the rec center. It is an absolute riot. I mean, you get to splash and play in the water and you're working out at the same time. What could be better than that? The one downfall of this class is that at the same time there is a scuba diving class from one of the universities. Several of the students from the scuba diving class have admitted to the water aerobics instructors that they watch us while they are under the water. So, while we are jumping like cheerleaders, swinging like pendulums, kicking like cowboys, leaping like frogs, walking like crabs, jogging like football players, and running like we are on hot coals, they are watching our every move. Why they are so intrigued by a bunch of women and one guy and all of our jiggling bodies, I have no idea. Let me just say that I am very glad that I wear board shorts over my swimsuit.

Girls' Nights

For those guys out there who read my blog (the few of you), I would like to explain the concept of a girls' night. These are wonderful events where guys are not allowed. There are three different types of girls' nights, all of which in one way or another relieve stress:

1. Self Indulgence
Required activities: shopping, manicures, pedicures, facials, or any other activity that makes you feel prettier or improved (dinner optional).
Required materials: car and money if not doing it at someone's house, refreshments of some sort.

2. Go Crazy
Required activities: dinner, movies, games, and lots of laughter
Required materials: food, movies, games, location where you don't disturb the neighbors too much, sugar.

3. Post Break-up
Required activities: dinner, chick-flick, laughter and/or tears
Required materials: food, chick-flick, a whole pan of brownies (ice-cream and other toppings optional), forks/spoons, comfortable location

Variation and/or combination is allowed. Now, hopefully you have some additional insight as to what girls do.

Elaboration Needed

So, I have been asked to give more elaboration on the dream I had of the scientists. Here we go. Remember I told you that I have weird dreams. There was a disease spreading across the nation, almost like I am Legend (I have never seen that all the way through, by the way. I close my eyes and cover my ears during the super scary parts. I really don't do well with scary movies. I once watched the original Psycho and I had to sleep with the light on for two weeks and I still lock my bedroom and bathroom doors.). Anyways, there were these two scientists trying to figure out the source of the disease. None of the research produced any results. Then, one day I was on a rooftop of a building with one of the scientists, a government official, and several news reporters. While discussions and interviews were going on, I looked at the edge of the roof and saw a dorkfish (If you've watched or listened to Bill Engvall you would know what I'm talking about.) floating/walking by someone's foot. The fish touched that individual and he contracted the disease. Nobody else noticed it. Every person the fish touched got it. The government official had already been diagnosed with this disease, but the fish floated/walked toward him. The next thing I knew, the fish was up by the official's shoulder and it popped a pill in his mouth. All of the sudden, the official turned into a flying devil beast, grabbed the scientist and took off. The fish had disappeared. I ran to go save the other scientist. I reached her and her assistant, but the beast was close behind me. The assistant was able to escape before the beast came, but the scientist and I were stuck. There was a big cabinet in her office. I opened it, threw the shelves onto the floor, and shoved the scientist inside just before the beast entered the room. I wasn't scared, but pretended to be so I could hopefully trick the flying monster into thinking I was the only one there. He started to talk to me and to move toward me. And then I woke up. I told you it was weird. And this is how most of my dreams are. Even if they start out normal they end up as these inexplicable phenomenons.