Pop quiz; or, why I haven't posted for a while.

Time for a pop quiz!


Which of these situations contains actual irony?

1. Rain on your wedding day.

2. A traffic jam when you're already late.

3. You grow up in Utah and love it there. Love the dryness, love the seasons, even love the snow as long as you don't have to shovel it or drive in it too much. You marry a guy who grew up in Florida. He complains about the lack of humidity in Utah and any hint of a snowflake (what he terms "the enemy from above") causes him to frantically scour the Internet for job openings in Florida. This goes on for seven consecutive winters, you watching him search for jobs that are in close proximity to palm trees while you're curled up on the couch with a blanket, a good book and some hot chocolate as the snow falls gently outside. Every winter, you worry a little bit about what would happen if he actually found a good job in Florida, because, as previously stated, you love it in Utah. And then the eighth winter comes along and . . . it's like winter forgot to arrive. Christmas is brown and green and dry. You get a little bit of slushy flakes in January but no real snow until late February/early March. For the first time, your husband isn't constantly searching for jobs in Florida, because the snow isn't driving him to extremes. And then, out of the blue, a sister company for the company he works for says, "Hey, we have an opening for a job in Tampa. Do you want it?"

4. You live in Utah where it usually snows all the time. You have a toddler who likes to play outside. You'd rather keep the toddler and the snow from having too much direct contact so you start shopping for snowpants (he's already got a coat and mittens and a hat in the shape of a penguin). You find the exact kind you want—cheap, durable, not pink or purple—and the store is ALWAYS out of his size. You wait and keep checking because it hasn't snowed much yet this winter so it's not urgent that you have these snowpants right now and by waiting you can avoid having to pay shipping by ordering through the store's website because paying for shipping just kind of seems immoral to you now that you've got Amazon prime (and why doesn't Amazon make it easier to find size 18m snowpants in non-girly styles, anyway?) but finally there's a forecast for a big storm and you really want your little guy to be able to build a snowman so you just bite the bullet and order the boots and the snowpants and pay the shipping and then they arrive and the snow sort of comes and you build a snowman with your waterproof toddler once. The snow all melts the next day and within a week and a half your husband calls you and says that a sister company for the company he works for has just told him out of the blue, "Hey, we have an opening for a job in Tampa. Do you want it?" It snows a couple more times in the next few weeks but the snowpants don't see any more use either because you're frantically packing for a cross-country move or your toddler is sick or both.

5. A sister company for the company your husband works for tells him out of the blue that they have an opening in Tampa and asks if he'd like the job. You say yes and start planning for a quick but organized cross-country move. Then your toddler gets a major ear infection, contracts the stomach flu, and gives that flu to you and your husband. Your family spends the better part of a week and a half recovering. Then your husband is flown out to work in Tampa early, leaving you alone with a toddler and a house to pack. Your babysitters get a nasty bout of illness. Your son gets RSV and ends up in the hospital overnight so they can observe his difficulty breathing. Husband comes home the night after toddler is discharged from hospital. All semblance of organization in packing and moving goes irrevocably down the drain; the only overarching theme of this cross-country move is "If it can go wrong, it will." We should just call it Murphy's Move to save time. The day you start packing the moving van, you get the worst cold of your life (because, let's face it, it's probably actually your son's RSV) complete with nasty cough (like unto one which hacks up a lung) which hangs on and hangs on and hasn't left yet.

6. You somehow manage to get to Tampa with your husband, your toddler, two cats, and the bare essentials which you took on the plane with you to tide you over until your furniture and other stuff arrives hopefully on Tuesday. Immediately your air mattress springs a leak.

7. You have a palm tree growing outside your bedroom window and a tiny lizard lives on your deck. Your toddler loves the new apartment and even though you have uprooted your entire life, have no idea where anything is in this town, have to learn an entirely new city, have no friends and are miles away from your family, your home and everything you've grown up with, you start thinking, hey, maybe living in Tampa is going to be fun after all.

8. Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. (Note: you are not in any kind of silverware factory.)





Hint: By my count, only one of these is actually ironic. The others involve bad timing, bad luck, Murphy's law, odd coincidences, frustration, facepalms, and, thankfully, a bit of fortuitousness.

One of those days.

When the first Lord of the Rings movie came out in 2001 I went to see it on opening night (the roommate of the guy I was dating had gotten tickets for all the guys in his apartment and their dates). I loved it, and gushed and raved about it at great length to my dad when I went home to visit the next weekend. My dad had introduced me to the books when I was in tenth grade and I could tell he was excited to see it, too.

My mom, because she loves my dad, took him to see it for one of his Christmas gifts. After their date, my dad and I joined in a mutual gush session, and at one point I turned to my mom and asked her what she thought of it.

Now, my mom is one of the cutest, sweetest, most awesome people ever. Period. She doesn't like to say bad things about people or things. She also, if given the choice, prefers to watch things like musicals and chick flicks where the swooning is more the result of hunky Mr. Darcy saying romantic things rather than because someone's head got cut off by a really ugly and probably very smelly orc. Just one of her little quirks.

So when I asked her what she thought of it, she paused for a couple of seconds and then said, "The scenery was really pretty." She thought for a moment. "And Bilbo's house was cute."

* * *

Flash forward to my day today. How was it, you ask?

Sigh.

Well, the scenery was really pretty.

And Bilbo's house was cute.



My mom once observed to me re: Viggo Mortenson: "Why does such an attractive man have to have such an ugly name?" She's got a point there. (Love you, Mom!)

In Which Books Nearly Lead to a Disaster; or, The IKEA Incident

This is a story that should have made it into the 2010 in Review post the first time around, but somehow slipped my mind until now.

As you may or may not know or remember, our car broke down in November 2009. At the time we didn't have the money to fix it, so my cousin and his wife let us borrow her car (which they weren't using at the time) until we could get ours fixed in January, when we would have an influx of cash.

Along with fixing our car, we used a bit of said influx to get some badly-needed bookshelves from IKEA on which we could put our massive collection of books. And it occurred to us that Bertha (my cousin's car—I'm just going to refer to my cousin's wife as my cousin from here on out because it's so much easier and that's how I think of her anyway) was bigger than our car was, so it would make more sense to pick up said bookshelves in Bertha. Accordingly, we sallied forth to that great Swedish furniture store, which is located about half an hour away from our house.

At the store, we wandered through the showroom checking out furniture (half of which looked like someone hadn't gotten the memo that the seventies ended several decades ago), enjoyed a cinnamon roll, picked up the bookshelves we wanted from the self-serve warehouse, checked out, brought the car around to the loading zone, and started to fold down the back seat so we could load up our purchases.

It was at this point that our brilliant plan hit a major snag.

We couldn't figure out how to lower the back seat. We hadn't needed to lower it up to this point in our borrowership, and so it hadn't occurred to us to check on that prior to going to IKEA. Because of course the back seat would flip down—and it would be pretty self-evident how to do it once we started trying.

Except it wasn't. We poked and prodded and pulled and pushed (gently, as it was a borrowed car) on anything and everything that looked like it might be or contain or hide a mechanism for lowering the seat, all to no avail. So we called my cousin to see if she could tell us how it worked.

"Huh," she said when we asked her. "I don't think we've ever tried lowering the seat before in that car, so I really don't know." (Proving how amazing she is, she even offered to come pick us up in their other car, which we politely declined, as we were certain we could figure it out, and besides, IKEA, not to mention our house, is waaaaayyyy out of her way.)

The next step was, obviously, to call my brother and ask him to check up on the internet to see if he could tell us where the seat release was on the car. (Yeah, we don't have smartphones.) He said he'd look into it and call us back in the next five minutes or so.

Let me pause here for just a moment to mention that at any given moment there is a 75-ish% chance that Shallow Man has no idea where his cell phone is. Also, with the particular phone he had at the time, at any given moment there was a 90% chance that the battery was dead. I'm no statistician, but even I can tell you that this leads to a large amount of time spent looking for Shallow Man's phone with no way of finding it in the traditional way (i.e., calling it and following the ringing) because the battery has just died. This is what had happened earlier that morning, meaning we had one cell phone between us, namely mine. And right after I hung up with my brother, my cute pink phone gave out that ominous beep that puts fear and trembling into the hearts of strong men (and women): Low Battery.

I tried not to think about it too much, but as we continued poking and prodding while we waited for my brother to call back, it became increasingly apparent to me that his response would be unnecessary because I already knew what he was going to find:

This seat did not flip down.

It had never occurred to us that such a thing might happen. Bertha was a good 9 years newer than our car. Our car, even when it was new, had a definite paucity of features. Our car is not and never was (and, let's face it, never will be) the coolest, most tricked-out car on the block. So if our back seat folded down, obviously it was the most basic of features and would come standard on every car.

Apparently not on a 2005 Chevy Malibu.

My brother finally called back (I'm sure it was a much shorter time than it felt like to me) and confirmed my suspicions. I thanked him for helping us and then asked if by any chance he could bring his SUV and come help us out. I felt bad for even asking because he lives about 20 minutes away from IKEA in the opposite direction from our house. As it turned out, though, he was watching the kids and waiting for his wife to get back from grocery shopping and couldn't come right then anyway. So I called my mom and dad, who live maybe 3 minutes away from my brother.

They weren't home. My little sister, who answered, told me they had gone to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," and that the show had started maybe 15 minutes earlier so it would be a long time before they were done.

I was getting a bit nervous at this point, and tried calling my cousin back to take her up on her offer of a ride after all.

No answer.

To recap:
We are, at this point, 30 minutes away from our house, with three large Billy bookcases (say hello!) and other assorted purchases, a back seat that won't flip down, no rope or bungee cords, the only people who I know for sure have cars big enough to help us are unavailable, and our only means of communication with the outside world may die at any moment.

So we do what any self-respecting people in our situation would do:

Call for backup.

Lost in Translation and her husband live just past the halfway point between our house and IKEA and also happen to be awesome.

I took a deep breath, said a little prayer that my phone wouldn't die before they answered, and dialed.

When LiT answered, I said without thinking, "Hey, would you guys be able to come bail us out?"

Stunned pause on the other end.

I realize my mistake. "No, no, we're not in . . . I meant figuratively bail us out, not literally." I explained our plight, and she said they'd be there as soon as possible.

I thanked her profusely but tersely as my phone beeped again, and told her, "Yeah, my phone may die at any minute, so if you call and no one answers, we're just waiting in front of the store at the loading area."

It took them a little longer to arrive just because they had to clear out the trunk of his car, but they got there soon enough and then all that was left was to wrangle three bookcases and assorted other purchases (I think this was the same trip we got a new desk/table for Shallow Man's office, but I can't remember for sure) into their little-ish hatchback and our unexpandable trunk. I don't know how—maybe Mary Poppins or Hermione Granger was watching over our cars—but we managed to squeeze it all in. LiT ended up riding in our car with us because the hatchback was packed to the gills (not that a car has gills, really; maybe if it was an amphibious vehicle. . . .) with bookcases. This was harder on her, just because it meant she had to listen to our repeated thanks for the 30-minute drive to our house.

We ended up taking them to dinner at our favorite Italian place as a token of our appreciation (we're always glad of an excuse to eat there anyway), so it all turned out okay in the end. My phone had continued beeping at intervals during the entire time we were waiting in the parking lot and on the drive home. It finally died as we pulled back up to our house after dinner, and I have no idea how it lasted that long. (This actually led to another adventure, when we discovered that when Shallow Man's phone had walked off it had apparently taken the phone charger with it, so we did end up being incommunicado for the next couple of days until the charger turned up.)

So the moral of the story is: Having a back seat that flips down really should be a standard feature on all cars. Also, LiT and husband are awesome.



Or maybe it just means that there is such a thing as having too many books.

Something about names and roses and something that smells.

Yeah, I spent a long time trying to think of a good, clever name for this post and all I could come up with was that old overdone Shakespeare quote. So yeah. Whatever. (Today was another no-nap day. That may have something to do with it.)

Following up on yesterday's discussion about words that are tainted by association, I just want to take a moment to talk about names.

Everyone, I'm sure, has had the experience of a name being "ruined."

In elementary school I met a girl named Lizzie. I won't go into details, but the experience was so unpleasant that I've had issues with the name ever since. The only reason I'm still okay with Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is that when people call her by her nickname, it's spelled "Lizzy."

Another example is that several of the boys' names I liked growing up ended up going on to be the names of boys I dated.* So I could never use them for a child, which made our quest to find a name for the Little Guy that much harder, since most of my favorite names were now off the table. (Also, Shallow Man didn't particularly like most of the others, but that's neither here nor there.)

I'm also pretty sure I could never name a child any variation of Isabella now.

Of course, name associations don't have to be bad. Positive associations with names are what lead to namesakes. Which are pretty awesome. The Little Guy's middle name is actually in honor of one of our dear friends (who was not only Shallow Man's roommate, but also his best man, our wedding photographer, our chauffeur, our bouncer, etc.). My nephew is named after my maternal grandfather, who passed away a few months before said nephew was born, and now I have two awesome associations with that particular name.

I don't really have any grand conclusion about this. It's just something I've thought about in connection with the rest of my word musings. So if any of you has a pithy way to end this, please feel free to share it with the class.



*Oddly enough, almost all of them also had a sister named Amy, or some variation thereof, which was also one of my favorite girls' names. Go figure.

That's it for Day 23—we are now entering the final week of NaBloPoMo, yo. (Okay, sorry for that. Couldn't help myself.)

Three weeks.

At a time when most of my fellow 3Ls are waxing nostalgic about this being the last week of classes, probably EVER for most of them, I'm too busy and stressed to be nostalgic. I will be nostalgic later; I'll think about it tomorrow. Whatever you like.

For right now, I'm just repeating my new mantra:

Three weeks. Three weeks. Three weeks.

Three weeks from today it will all be over. I will have my JD. I will not need to write any more papers. I will not need to read textbooks. I will not need to stress about how I keep missing class because I'm still sick the majority of the time.

I will have graduated.

And what's more, I will officially be in my second trimester, no matter which way you count it. Which means, with any luck, that I won't feel so sick anymore, either. I might even have some energy by then. (Of course, I really could use some of that energy now to get through the next few weeks, but that's another story.)

So. Three weeks. Three weeks. Three weeks.

I can do this.

Wouldn't You Know It; or, "It's Possible Pig."

So yesterday Shallow Man had an unpleasant sore throat. He even refrained from yelling at all during the football game we went to, and was popping cough drops for most of the day. But we didn't think much of it.

Until I woke up this morning with a really bad sore throat. And not the kind you get from yelling at a football game—I can tell the difference. No, this was the full-on sick, swollen lymph nodes, have-fun-because-you've-caught-a-bug type of sore throat. And I was all achy and my cough was a lot worse than usual.

I was ready to blame Shallow Man's stupid "my-immune-system-made-it-through-South-America-for-two-years" habits, which dictate that if there is an illness to be found, he'll have it for 8-24 hours and I will catch it twice and be sick for at least a week.

Except he was WORSE today. Fever, chills, sore throat, cough, etc., etc., etc., every single symptom listed on all those YOU WILL CATCH SWINE FLU AND DIE websites. Which means, if he's really sick, that 1) it is actually something, 2) I'm going to be even more of a melted puddle of misery in 24 hours, and 3) well, so much for school or work this week, since all the YOU WILL CATCH SWINE FLU AND DIE websites say you need to stay away from large groups until 24 hours after the fever breaks.

So we're staying home. Because even though I'm not [usually] the [extremely] paranoid type, if it involves something serious and contagious like potential swine flu or pneumonia or what have you, I believe you should stay home, even you don't care about your own health, out of consideration for those around you. Don't be like the girl sitting in class behind Shallow Man at the law school last week who was, between fits of coughing up a lung, telling how her doctor had tested her for pneumonia and the results would be in that afternoon.

No, folks, if you potentially have something serious, please do me the courtesy I am now showing you and stay far, far away from me.

Which is my short way of saying, we'll probably see you next week.

And now I'm going back to bed.


P.S. Many enthusiastic thanks to the MotionDeSmiths team for braving the nest of germs and bringing us all the essentials for proper recovery: delicious dinner, yummy dessert, and a bunch of old Star Trek episodes. You guys rock.

P.P.S. I also do be ashamed to own that yesterday passed without my sharin' a hearty chorus o' "Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day To Ye" with me hearties. Here's a bottle o' rum lifted in hopes that yer plunders were bloody, yer wenches pulchritudinous, yer decks properly swabbed, and yer planks well-trod by scurvy lubbers. Avast, me mateys! Belay that yargh-ing!

P.P.P.S. And no, this post's title is NOT missing a comma.

And I ask myself . . .

Why is it, do you think, that smoke detector batteries only die, thus causing the smoke detector to beep periodically until you unplug it, between the hours of three and five in the morning? Why is it always during the hours where you are most likely to be in deep sleep mode, causing you to wake up to a beeping alarm in a state of intense confusion and grogginess, leading to disorganized panic? Why can't they ever die at, say, 6:20 p.m.? Hmmm?

The sad thing is, this happened very early Saturday morning and my sleep schedule STILL isn't back on track yet. Grrr!

Okay, this seriously stinks.

So along with every other load of bricks that got dropped on us, metaphorically speaking, at the beginning of the summer break, our air conditioning broke. (Yup, two weeks after the home warranty expired.) Which hasn't been tooooo much of a problem yet because the weather here in Provo seems to be convinced that it's, say, March or October instead of May and June. So we've been all right while we're waiting until we can scrape up enough money to fix it as long as we leave some windows open.

Until now.

Our little townhouse faces west onto a fence, on the other side of which is a trainyard. So lots of trains going past and making a fair amount of noise, so we try to leave the windows on the front of the house closed. This is fine because downstairs we have a big kitchen window in the back which lets in a lot of fresh air, as well as two big office windows in the back upstairs. These three windows have been doing a good job of controlling the lack-of-AC situation, with help from the fan in our bedroom.

Until my next-door neighbor started sitting on the back step and smoking a few days ago. Since these are townhouses, their back step is approximately 7 feet away from our back step. We of course have a fence separating the backyards, but it doesn't keep smoke out of our backyard. Or, by extension, out of our back windows. Or, by further extension, out of my house and out of my lungs.

Our house is an end unit so we also have two large south-facing windows downstairs, but we try to leave these closed because 1) the air on that side is much warmer and doesn't help the cooling off so much and 2) a road runs right past them which also doesn't help as much with the noise. Aside from these, we have one other tiny window in the upstairs bathroom -- and I mean tiny -- which we keep open all the time but which can't do the job all by itself.

So now I'm faced with several unappealing options:

1. Keep the back windows open and poison my already-gimpy lungs with second-hand smoke.
2. Close the back windows, open the front ones and go deaf from passing train screeching.
3. Open the side windows and fry while letting in car noise and exhaust (best of both worlds, I guess).
4. Leave all windows closed and die in the ensuing stifling heat.

Unfortunately, 5. Fix the stinking AC is not an option at the moment unless some long-lost rich uncle dies and leaves us a lot of cash. (Thanks to the law school for making all the students not work during the school year, then do unpaid internships during the summer and then not providing us with access to any sort of financial aid. Also thanks to the stupid AC for procrastinating and missing that warranty deadline. Oh, and let's not forget the car breaking down, the mortgage company making unauthorized withdrawals from our account, or having our one source of income start bouncing the checks they send us.)

Murphy, you stink.