Restaurant Rant

So tonight we went to Hires Big H, which has to be one of the best hamburger joints in Utah. The main reason was because I was craving a root beer freeze and cheese fries, and no, I'm not pregnant so don't ask. Being that we're in Utah, and that its November, it's no surprise that the rain turned to snow. So I had very little sympathy for the chick at the restaurant who was wearing a tube top. We get snow from October to June at random. Tube tops are not a wise wardrobe choice here. Sweaters and boots, that's what you want. And if you are stupid enough to wear said tube top in the snow, you don't have any room to complain about being cold.

On a different topic, if you are a parent potty training a little boy, you really should wipe the seat off after your little spawn of satan...er little guy piddles all over it. I mean, it's really irritating and disgusting to be the next person to use the can if there is pee on it. And maybe the little guy should sit down for his business if he's using the ladies room. Or lift the seat if he must stand.

Also, if you are a waitress, unless you are working at Hooters wearing jeans low enough to show off your thong isn't going to get you a bigger tip. Seriously, they sell belts for ladies.

This is Halloween

What has happened to Halloween? Back when I was a kid (you know, when we were walking uphill both ways to school, barefoot, over shards of broken glass, just to work geometry with a broken pencil) Halloween was one of the best holidays of the year! Of course, we only had the one day and night to celebrate it, so our parents didn’t get burned out after taking us to three trunk-or-treats and trick-or-treating down main street.

This year H was sick, so she only went and trick-or-treated a few houses. And to be fair, she doesn’t really like candy, so the high point of our Halloween was playing Infamous Festival of Blood, which is awesome, albeit really short. Brent took her to about five houses, then she came in and had some Papa Murphy’s jack-o-lantern pizza (our Halloween tradition since the year dinner got burned up while I was trying to cook and hand out candy at the same time), and then I took her out and we hit another five houses. We walked past around 15 houses, as most of them had their lights off.

Brent had an old man moment when we realized that a lot of trick-or-treaters were skipping our house because the porch light was off, even though the pumpkins were lit. Back in the day if the pumpkins were lit it meant they were open for business. I did suggest to Brent that he go out and yell at the kids to get off his lawn.

I got annoyed with the fact that I had one more pumpkin to carve, so I carved a stupid face on it and stabbed it with my sheetrock saw, which has been an awesome tool for cutting into pumpkins. Usually I go all out on my jack-o-lanterns, but honestly this year I feel like I just called it in. I was going to do some really awesome pumpkins, but my wrist hurt so I didn’t really try. I did make an Edward Cullen pumpkin, and a snot shooting pumpkin, and H designed her very first pumpkin, and carved most of it herself.

Brent got into a car accident at the beginning of the month, so he didn’t feel good enough to decorate the front yard. I had foot surgery in September, and then had a bad reaction to a prescription, so I didn’t feel like decorating the house. I didn’t even dig out H’s trick or treat pumpkin, so she had to use a gift bag. We did manage to take her to the ward Halloween party, and she got to play some carnival games and trunk or treat. The party gave me a migraine, so I spent half of it in the foyer, and the other half in the Durango.

Back to my original rant, we had hardly any trick-or-treaters this year! I spent almost $30 on candy this year, candy bars even, and we have about 4 bags of it left. At least I only bought stuff that we like this year, so we shouldn’t run out of Hershey bars or Kit Kats any time soon.

I read the other day how many towns are legislating that Halloween be celebrated on last Saturday of October. As a parent, I can see the value in this. Of course, as a parent I can also see value in trunk-or-treats and trick-or-treating down main street. But as a parent, and neighbor, I like having the neighborhood kids dress up in costumes and stop by my house. I like giving H’s friends extra candy, and seeing how the kids grow. I also like keeping an informal tally of popular costumes—this year it seemed like there were a lot of Bumblebee’s from Transformers. Surprisingly, I didn’t see a lot of Rapunzels, and H was the only Darth Vader that we saw, although her friend Joey was dressed as Yoda.

I Will Always Remember

Brent and I got married on September 9, 1994. I remember what we have done for most of our anniversaries, but I have no idea what we did for our 7^th anniversary.

Like every American I remember where I was when the Twin Towers fell. I had hit the snooze alarm more times than I should have, and was going to be late for work. Brent's dad called the house to see if Brent was home, and was extremely relieved to find out that he wasn't traveling that day. Then he told us to go turn on the tv. All I remember of that week is watching CNN and being in a state of shock.

We've been married for 17 years, and it's the ten year anniversary of 9/11. It's hard to be excited about celebrating our anniversary when the entire nation is focused on a life changing event. Brent was home that day, but he travels most of the time. For years I have lived with the possibility of Brent not making it home from a trip, and I am relieved each time I get a text from him letting me know he arrived safely.

This has been one of the hardest blog posts to write, because I keep tearing up. Since going on my antidepressants after my mom died, I hardly cry. But I don't know anyone, even Cylons like myself, who doesn't get emotional when seeing footage, photographs, or reading articles about 9/11. On September 14^th I ended up spending most of the day at my chiropractors office, as I had a terrible headache and was in a lot of pain. He told me he'd seen people who had been hit by trucks who were in better shape than I was. If I, who was out in Utah and not in any imminent danger, could internalize that much stress, how hard was it (and is it) for those who survived the attacks or who lost loved ones?

The world changed on 9/11, and it's never been the same since. There is so much more I'd like to say, but emotionally I can't handle it right now. So I'll just say God Bless America.

Doh!

I spent a good portion of last summer working on the perfect mac and cheese recipe, and I have no idea where it is right now, and I'm going to have to start over and I'm not pleased.

Too Soon

School starts in less than 20 days. I'm not ready. It took me until April to get used to H being gone for half a day. This year she'll be gone all day, and I really don't want her to go. However, since I really don't want to home school her (that would be a fiasco) I guess I'm going to have to suck it up and deal. And perhaps up my Prozac.

Summer Dreams Don't Mean A Thing

Okay, I really am not a fan of Grease, but I couldn't resist that title.

We have 19 days until school starts. Most of our summer we have wasted...er spent playing video games. I can just imagine what H will say when the first grade teacher asks what she did this summer: I spent the summer beating Infamous and Infamous 2 on the PS3. The other kids will be all talking about camping, Disneyland, swimming, and my kid will be rambling on about Cole and all the bad guys she got to fight.

We have managed to go bowling, we have gone to a couple of movies, but we haven't run away to the swimming pool yet, and we were planning to make a geocache, and it looks like that ain't going to happen. And for the third year in a row we didn't garden or paint the doorframe on the deck. Maybe next year...

Fiesta Days 2011

I look forward to Fiesta Days in Spanish Fork all year long. For anyone not familiar with Fiesta Days, it is the town celebration for Spanish Fork, Utah. It's held over the 24^th of July weekend, which is also Pioneer Day here in Utah. There's a rodeo, carnival, craft show, parades, and everything else that goes along with a town celebration. We even have a fish rodeo, where kids catch fish with their bare hands.

The funnel cake stand at Fiesta Days has the best funnel cakes I have ever had, and I have tried funnel cakes all over the United States. This particular stand puts pudding and whipped cream, and chocolate syrup on top of the funnel cakes.

There is a pulled pork sandwich stand that possibly sells the best pulled pork available in Utah, if not the Western US. And there is another booth that sells tri-tip steak sandwiches that has a line worth waiting in.

Usually the Fiesta Days Grand Parade is a really fun parade. This year, not so much. To start with, the powers that be, aka the Spanish Fork City Council, decided that people in the parade could not throw candy. So almost every child who was attending the parade was disappointed, and bored. My niece and nephew ended up fighting through most of the parade, because they didn't have candy to scramble for.

I went to Spanish Fork High, and it pains me to say this, but what happened to the SFHS marching band? There were 9 people in the band at the parade. Nine. I don't know if that was all the people who are in the band, or if the bulk of them didn't show up. At any rate, it was rather pathetic and embarrassing. Especially when you compared it to the other high school bands that showed up.

Most of the local royalty were wearing gowns that were a disappointment. The worst dresses, however, were those worn by the Lehi royalty. No sure if they were actually made of khaki, but they didn't look like dresses any self-respecting beauty queen would wear. They looked more like something you would wear if you decided to wear a dress while you plowed the back 20.

I will give the local town royalty a break, and only say that Bob Marley and beauty queens don't really mix. Also, if I never hear Whitewater Chopsticks again it will be too soon.

I would give this year's Fiesta Days a 3 out of 5. The food was great, as usual, the carnival was pretty fun, I'm sure the rodeo was great, but the parade brought the score down. Not sure if I'll go next year.