The Hood

You may have noticed that I have been suspiciously quiet in the blogosphere. It's mostly because we have been without internet for several weeks (the horror!). We got it up and running today so I look forward to ramping up the blog posting! For now I just wanted to say that life is looking up. I am loving our new place, loving the new neighborhood, loving the summertime and loving having responsible tenants in our house (except for the part where our garage door comes crashing down on them about once a month, but I digress...).

I was out garage saleing the other morning and saw this sign taped to a street sign at the top of our street.

And I kind of had to laugh.

Really hard.


And here it is several weeks later and the sign is still there. I wonder what DVD it is...and more importantly, where it's at!

And I quote....

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Nelson Mandela

"Strength isn't something that you have, it's something that you find"

- Emma Smith (at least it is in the Emma Smith movie)

Now these are quotable quotes. I can see people putting these quotes on vinyl and slapping them on their wall. I can imagine them cross stitched and lovingly framed in the entryway to a home, put on a plaque, embossed on a pillow...whatever. They inspire, they are memorable, and so on.

I hope to say something quotable one day. Something that people will remember and recite and feel inspired by.

Bob Harper (the trainer on my weight loss video) had a similar dream to me. The only difference though is that he has the authority and popularity to make his dream a reality. And the quote that he has printed and framed in size ten billion font? The quote that he shows at the beginning of his video to inspire and motivate?

Can you see it? It's "Are you ready? You bet you are!" - Bob . Really? Really? I mean it's not even really a statement, more of a question really.

I've felt inspired though and have, since seeing Bob's quote, made some plaques of my own around the house.

In the bathroom : "Are you ready to remember to flush the toilet? You bet you are!" -Mom

And the kitchen : "Are you ready to eat all your broccoli? You bet you are!" -Mother

The Family Room: "Are you ready to put away all your stinking tiny sharp toys so I don't step on them anymore? You bet you are!" -Mom

Thanks for the inspiration Bob!

Hugger Mugger

We had an excellent day on Saturday. Actually now that you mention it, it was a pretty rockin weekend. Full of mountains, friends, family and food. Saturday we went up to Park City with some friends and hit the outlets and the alpine slide.

After going on the slide, however, I got a gnarly headache. The kind that makes you want to rip your eyeballs out of your head. You know the kind. We were going tos top and grab a bite to eat before we headed back to Salt Lake. I was driving, it was 8PM but the sun was still shining, fueling the desire for me to rip the said eyeballs out of my head. We were having a hard time finding a place. Probably because my head was pounding so hard that I couldn't tell left from right and was having a hard time following the directions Blaine was offering.

Finally we switched drivers and he started heading towards Salt Lake, we planned to just stop at the first Chili's we came across. Even with not driving anymore, a friends sunglasses and my head buried in my lap I thought my head was probably going to explode at any moment.

By the time we got to the restaurant I was also feeling nauseous. I went inside to get a drink of water (and if we are going to be honest, to have our friend - who happens to be a chiropractor- try to fix my headache with a little head twistin [I am still working on gaining a testimony of chiropractory since I worked for a physical therapists office who was very anti- this experience helped ; ) ]).

After the water and adjustment I decided to go out to the car and lay down while they ate their dinner. On the way out a very Chili's employee, who was a man but had a very, um....distinctively feminine voice, opened the door for me on the way out. I went out to the car, rolled down the windows, and tried to sleep. I felt a little vulnerable, what with all the windows down, but my head hurt so bad I didn't care at all.

A few moments later I heard the distinctively feminine voice once more. Apparently he had walked one of his co-workers out to her car, which was parked next to mine. She thanked him profusely for walking her to her car and then he responded "Oh I always walk people out to there car in the evening, I mean, we just have WAY too many muggings in this parking lot for anyone to walk to their car alone."

I layed there.

I assessed how I was laying down in the backseat of the van, all the windows down, keys sitting on the passenger seat, practically screaming "PLEASE, MUG ME! HECK, STEAL MY CAR WITH ME IN IT !"

And so then I rolled the windows back up, hid my keys, and tried to sleep in a sweltering hot car still somewhat nervous about being all alone in the worlds most mug prone parking lot.

The end.

P.S. Since I know you all love and care about me. I felt better the next morning. And I need sunglasses. Fo' sho'.

Picasa

So....do you use picasa? It's an awesome photo program that google makes. It rocks.


Anyways, the newest version of picasa has a feature where it will go through and do facial recognition on your photos and create albums based on each person you have a lot of pictures of. It puts all the pictures it thinks are of you all together and then you click yes if it is a picture of you or no if it is not, and it adjusts the album accordingly. It's pretty sweet. It makes it way easier to find a specific picture of a person because you can just look at their file of photos.


Anyway, it totally has me pegged. Fat or skinny, long hair or short....red hair or brown or blonde... every picture in my album was identified correctly as me. It probably has to do with my huge schnauz. I thought it was kind of weird because with other people there were usually a few random people in the set of pictures (Blaine looks a lot like his sister Rosey and so it got a few of those mixed up, Max and Nick look a lot a like, etc.), but me? Apparently I don't look like anyone.

Well...except in the middle of all of these pictures of me there were three pictures in a row. There's something about the Bassett girls and our big mouths I guess!




*Um, as a note: If anyone can think of an excellent blog post that would require me to post pictures of myself where I look awesome, I'd appreciate it. The self deprecating photo thing is getting old.

Fifteen Minutes

So, pretty much Gwen is famous. And Ben too. She is in photos 1, 6, and 7

We had lots of fun at the Princess Tea Party yesterday, woot!

History of a mover

5 years ago - Ho hum....we are moving to Oregon tomorrow, I guess we better buy some moving boxes. Holy Moses, they are EXPENSIVE!

4.5 years ago - move back to Utah, grateful to not have to buy new boxes

4 years ago- move to Minnesota, grateful to have those gulldarn boxes laying around

3.5 years ago - move back to Utah. Whew, glad we kept these boxes

3 years ago - move to Texas, woohoo! The company is paying for new boxes! Let's get rid of this heaping pile of crumbling cardboard! Blaine: but, but, but....we might need them again someday! Me: Never! We will never ever move again unless a company pays for it.

1 year ago - Moving back to Utah - really? You really want to haul these boxes back to Utah? The company is paying for awesome new moving boxes. Why? WHY! WHY do we lug these boxes everywhere we go.

Today- moving from Lehi to Lehi. No one is paying for boxes. In humility I would like to thank Blaine for insisting we move our boxes around the country with us.

I went the first 21 years of my life without moving once. I think I have more than made up for it by now!

WDR

WDR is the name of the poem I found tucked away in a box of treasures that I was sorting through the other day. I have no idea when I wrote it, my guess is that it was for our first anniversary or something. You'll need a little background information before the poem will make any sense.

Blaine and I started dating when we were 16. Our sophomore year of highschool (before we were 16) we hung around in the same group of friends. I really wanted to break in to the inner circle of boys within our group, and so I kind of invited myself to play hockey with them in the afternoons and on Saturdays. It was the most fun thing ever! Hockey is a blast.

I am sure it probably bothered them that a girl came out to play, but I really tried hard, even breaking my hand in an effort to impress my friends. Well actually, I broke my rollerblades in an effort to impress my friends, the breaking of my hand was a really embarrassing result of breaking the blades.

So we played hockey our sophomore year and the following summer, we got lagoon season passes. A girl will do funny things when she is in love with the two boys she goes to lagoon with every day. Like the time I strapped myself between them and got hoisted up a ten thousand foot tower, where one of them pressed a button and sent us plunging towards the earth and our imminent death. Any of you who know me at all, know that I must have really been in love with Blaine to do that. Like....for real.

When I was 16 I started working at Winder Dairy. I worked in the "Country Store". A little store that served lunch and sold milk and other dairy products. I also had a night job there answering the voicemails that had come in throughout the evening and changing customers orders accordingly.

Blaine's uncle was a pretty high up manager at the dairy, and Blaine's family lived across a field from the office. So Blaine got the opportunity to do some pretty classy odd jobs. He got to get all the milk that had gone sour and dump it out (which explains why Blaine doesn't like milk!), he worked in the icebox pulling orders, he stapled advertisements to bills (which had to be done late at night and I sat in an office off of the room where he and his cousins would staple the ads on), and most importantly - he got to bag compost.

That's right! Behind the Country Store where I worked there was a heaping pile o' compost. And Blaine's job was to take that heaping pile o' compost and stuff it - with his bare hands - into bags and seal the bags, stack them on pallets and get them ready to sell.

It was a glamourous job.

You may not know this about Blaine, but he is extremely motivated by money. He is a hard worker and always has been. So while my crush for Blaine intensified through playing hockey and going to lagoon, etc. If I wanted to spend time with him, I usually had to go out after work and sit on a heap of cow manure and talk to him while he worked.

Yeah.

That's love.

Flinging yourself off of a giant tower, sitting on heaps of compost, etc.

And now, my poem.

When I Fell in Love or WDR (Winder Dairy Romance)

When people talk of love and various romance

they always mention moonlight and a special sort of glance

they all claim they fell in love with just a look or two

funny, cuz that's not the way it was with me and you.

When I knew I loved you it was no starry night

we were hot and tired, playing hockey in daylight

And if there was a special glance, there was no candle glow

it was likely one of fright, Scott's hockey stick in throw

Though now I see your features with the tenderness of silk

when I fell in love with you, you smelt of sour milk

You'd always wear that old sweatshirt, it looked better than a tux

and ever doing all you could to earn a couple bucks

I dare not think of where we'd be without the aid of Bill*

or conversations in the compost with many bags to fill

Many folk would cringe to think of shoveling cow manure

but my best memories were made while smelling like a sewer

Though the contents of this poem seem silly or untrue

it was under these conditions that I fell in love with you

It did not happen all at once, there were no trumpents sounding

but through the years my best friend started making my heart pounding

Winder Dairy is renown for milk that is quite awesome

I'll remember it, however, as where our love began to blossom

I think I have a career ahead of me in poetry, no?

*Bill was a funny older guy who worked at the dairy late at night and would talk to Blaine and I individually, and much like we were in junior high school would relay messages (without our express permission), and it was kind of through him that we both figured out that the other was interested in us. As a side note, Bill looks 100% EXACTLY like Mr. Noodle from Elmo's World. I am not thoroughly convinced that Bill is not moonlighting from his Dairy job as Mr. Noodle.