Cool Cucumber

Rob and I are Big City Burrito’s biggest fans in Colorado Springs. We got in the habit of calling it “Burrito Barn” a year ago when we started going to choir. Every week after we work out at the Y, we grab a burrito (which gives Rob a chance to try a new hot sauce) before choir practice.

Tonight, as a treat (since I can’t attend choir this week), I drove downtown to get burritos for when Rob got home. I was shocked and alarmed to see the lights out and all of the refrigerated cases cleaned out. Oh no! And not even a sign on the door explaining the situation. Just last Thursday, I was telling Rob as we ate our potato burritos, “I hope their business isn’t in trouble… they’re never busy.”

One thing that gives me hope is that I found a web site listing the business for sale. Maybe they sold the business and someone else is renovating it. But would they really not put up a sign or note in the window? I am very upset about this, in case you can’t tell. I can’t even imagine going to choir next week without a Big City burrito. At least we recently used up our Free Burrito punch card…

4 Comments »

I’m at home today with Rob, whose a sickie. I’m furiously using Zicam nasal swabs in the hopes of not catching what he has. Our weekend has consisted of:

• I had my first class of the semester called “The Principalship” Saturday morning (I have lots of friends in this class, so it will be fun, especially since the class is very discussion- & group project-oriented.)
• Roasted 2 cups of coffee beans for the upcoming week
• Made a half-gallon of yogurt
• Saturday night, went and saw There Will Be Blood with Rob, Melissa and John (Some of my favorite people!), then ate Vietnamese food afterward
• Made Potato Leek Soup with Arugula for lunch Sunday
• Did lots of laundry (4 loads- yep, it’s been a while)
• Made beet salad- SCRUMPTIOUS, but now my hands are pink
• Worked on grading math tests and writing homework
• Ran with Royal outside- 50 degrees and shorts-weather (although there was still snow on the ground)
• Played Scrabble with Rob- we are so addicted

I’m trying very hard to be deliberate about work and play in my life. I can easily be drawn into things that I enjoy doing (even things for work or school), and let the time slip away without noticing. Weekends are sometimes stressful if I try to work the whole time, making lists to check off every item that needs to be done. On the other hand, sometimes Mondays can feel awful when I haven’t done anything to prepare for them, and then my whole week stinks as a result.

I’d like to think that I’m doing a better job than I used to, where I’d go in to school and work all day Sunday. How do you balance these opposing forces in your life?

5 Comments »

One result of trying to recover from my recent trip to France and England is that I am waking up ridiculously early and wanting to fall asleep at 8:00 PM. While I’d love to be sleeping right now, I think the next best option would be to tell about the West End play my group saw while we were in London. It was called Whistle Down the Wind.

On first glance at the advertisement you’ll notice that Andrew Lloyd Webber did the music- so it must be quality, right? I’ll touch on that later. And you also see that right after the title of the musical, they’ve added “the hit musical”. Um, not so much. I’m also very amused by whomever made the comment at the top of the poster…. “don’t miss this musical triumph”. Were they taking drugs when they saw it?

Let me just start out by saying that I’ve been to my share of weird/crazy churches in my life. I’ve also attended a lot of genuine, warm, non-showy churches, but the memory of those bad ones will always stick. This musical made me feel like I was in a dysfunctional church again, like I couldn’t leave before the final alter call. The opening number was a virtual sermon about hellfire and damnation and that’s where my squirming began.

The basic plot that follows is this: Three children are in rural America in the 50’s, trying to cope with their mother’s recent death and their family’s lack of money for a proper Christmas. Did I say America? Yes, the London actors and actresses did their best to imitate an American accent; however, it just ended up sounding like they were talking with rocks stuffed in their mouths. The family is a devout bunch of Christians; the type that bring Jesus into almost any conversation, nauseatingly so, such as, “If you prayed to Jesus then maybe he will give you ______________” (fill in the blank). I guess as a Christian, I felt that these ones were portrayed as hopelessly moronic. Maybe it was poor acting- or perhaps it was other things.

What follows the awkward opening number is a number of stiff songs with hardly any choreography in which the characters, with arms stiff at their sides, lift their heads dramatically and open their mouths with passionate song to the audience. It doesn’t work. I felt nothing. They didn’t give me any basis from which to like them or feel their story, so when they got emotional in the first 10 minutes I tuned out. Okay, I may have started giggling. Next, the righteous townfolk (everyone is stereotyped in this musical) are spreading the alert that a murderer has escaped from the local jail. The oldest girl, who is 15, discovers a strange man sleeping in her family’s barn, whom she startles when she asks who he is. “Jesus Christ!” escapes his lips when he sees her, and from that moment on the play does a nosedive. The children are all called in the barn because they are convinced this is the Savior’s return and so they sit at the murderer’s feet. They notice that his hands are bloodied… and so are his feet. DEFINITELY Jesus. “Don’t you remember, they tell us every Sunday that one day he will return and those that fail to recognize him will burn in a fiery hell.” The children devote themselves to the confused murderer, saying they will do anything he wants them to.

The play doesn’t get much better from here. “Jesus” sings with noticable problems staying on pitch, and the other problems which are presented (racial strife, coming-of-age issues) don’t seem quite real. The lack of choreography really stood out at me as well. While I think that the director probably wanted something stark and simplistic, the end effect was fluff and overemotionalism. The songs were equally ineffective as they used almost every cliche in the book in the most insipid plot known to man. Here’s one example:

No matter what they tell us, no matter what they do
No matter what they teach us, what we believe is true
(Hmmm, this seems to be the theme of Whistle Down the Wind- blind faith in anything. Lovely.) Another gem:

The devil doesn’t rest
So wrestle with the devil till you take him, until he’s finally, cold and dead
He’s there in the reflections on the river skimming by
He’s there in the clouds as they blacken the sky
He’s there in your bedroom, He can crawl into your dreams

And the finale:

So try and stem the tide, then you’ll raise a banner
Send a flare up in the sky, try to burn a torch
And try to build a bonfire
Every signal that you send, until the very end, I’m there
So whistle down the wind, for I have always been right there

Low point in the play: when “Jesus” tries to make out with the oldest daughter. Yuck… the kids in my group couldn’t stop talking about the creepiness of that one.

I admit that hearing things like this made me giggle and shake my head in astonishment that all of the actors on stage were sincere. They truly believed in this play, with a blind “no matter what they tell us” faith. As for me- I wanted everyone in the musical to just quickly say their lines and sing their songs so we could all go home. When it finally DID end, the crowd (composed mostly of tour groups like ours… likely the reason this play is still running) erupted into scattered, confused applause as if to say, ‘I never thought this moment would come.’ I have never been so grateful to leave the theater.

3 Comments »

Two weeks. 39 middle-schoolers. Two of my favorite co-workers. One nasty cold (still recuperating). That’s about all I have to say about the trip I just returned from. Nah, just kidding. I have some things to share, but I will try to be brief here. No one wants to read my entire travel journal, do they?

The trip that our students signed up for was centered around the highlights of Paris and London, with a little bit of Caen (France) and Oxford (England) thrown in. I’ll show some of my best photos and experiences here:

Below is an example of one of the delicious meals we had in France. These pasta tubes were fried and filled with ricotta and bolognese. We finished the meal with an equally yummy pear/almond tart.

A favorite moment was eating frog legs and escargot (and convincing almost every kid to try both!) at Cafe Montmartre.

There was HEAVENLY cappuccino at every turn in France. Liz and I made it a goal to get high quality espress at least twice or three times daily. This plan worked quite well in France, but disintegrated upon arrival in England.

There was true joy in finally getting off the overnight ferry from Caen to Portsmouth. We had shared a cabin with our other leader from Florida, and due to our large bags, found that we had to store our luggage in a locked room. This was one of the lowest moments because it was a complete surprise and we were all exhausted from the homesick phone calls that the students had made just before boarding. This night on the ferry involved sleeping in our clothes, no brushing of teeth, and hardly any sleep due to a strange beeping sound that came from the walls.

Sitting across from me in Oxford were Liz and Melissa as we went punting (in other words, sitting in a low boat while a standing man at the back pushes you along, using a long pole).

Here’s a photo I snapped in the flower garden outside the birthplace of William Shakespeare. It had been raining all day, which was a welcome change from the heat wave that we had previously tolerated.

Riding the London Eye (largest Ferris wheel in the world) was a bit terrifying for a girl who doesn’t appreciate heights to the fullest, but I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying the scenery.

These don’t seem to completely tell the stories I would to like without the kids in them, but just try and imagine 39 students, ages 11-13, in these photos.

If you’d like to see more, please visit my photos page.

To conclude, I saw a lot of wonderful things in both France and England. I grew to appreciate England more than previously. I saw a lot of things that I couldn’t do with the kids, but would like to experience the next time I visit (for example, the little sidewalk cafes in Paris; the complimentary bottle of wine that comes with a punting trip). Even though I was on-duty 24 hours a day, for 2 weeks straight, and I never quite got 8 hours of sleep, I am glad I had this experience. I think that the kids we took with us learned a lot and were able to get out of their comfort zones to see that they enjoyed things that they never thought they would. So the trip was certainly a success.

Next blog post: the most horrific London West-End musical ever!

3 Comments »

I had the distinct pleasure last week of supervising a boy at camp who couldn’t go outside due to life-threatening pollen allergies. So I sat with him each day while he ate. The first day, however, I witnessed something that made the back of my throat do a million front flips.

He took out of his lunch cooler a plastic bag with a strange-looking cylinder inside- a pale translucent item that was bleeding all over inside the bag. You can see where this one is going- yes- a peeled, whole cucumber. I remember the odor so precisely.

So this kid takes it out and just crunches into it like an apple, chewing madly and then biting it again. Cucumber juice rolls down his chin and collects in little droplets, and I see all of the sad vegetable as it is being chewed because his mouth is WIDE OPEN and preparing to take another bite.

This was a child who didn’t really take personal space into consideration, so as I was turning my head, trying not to watch the slaughter of the innocent cucumber, he put his face inches from mine and asked, “What are we doing for a craft today?” in his awful, awful, cucumber breath.

This boy brought in a cucumber every single day of camp and ate the whole entire nasty thing in front of me!

Isn’t it just great that the most adamant gourd-hater in the world got to supervise this little cucumber aficionado?

7 Comments »

Today I had the entire day to myself… well, sort of, except for a few fun things in the afternoon. Other than that the day was mine, all gloriously mine. Well, I spent most of it messing with this whole new WordPress thing. Very complicated for a former Blogspot gal. Amazingly, I think this blog is finally presentable and I can begin tweaking it now that it’s got the basics. Rob is great for help on WordPress- he spent over an hour tonight giving me a phone tutorial!

I was talking with two friends today and it was mentioned, probably by accident, that one of our mutual friends is having a party Saturday. Which I wasn’t invited to. I was very aware of my body’s response when I realized that I was not invited; I felt a very literal clenching in my stomach, which lasted for about an hour. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. While I’m not sure of the reason, I am very aware of the feeling that I’ll be missing something. There’s going to be fun and jokes and experiences that I will be left out of if I’m not there. And that’s a very silly reason for being sad.

But I see married couples all around me, and since I’m going to be part of a married couple in less than 2 months, I wonder if we should be out with different friends every evening. I know that’s not me or US; I need quiet and introspection and tinkering at home more than I need to be out. But I catch myself comparing me to my friends sometimes, wondering if I should have more acquaintances and friends. I make myself crazy picking at me like that.

4 Comments »

Fresh from our Dallas trip and after a strenuous first day of Camp Invention, I settled in at home to complete some long-overdue laundry. But in my stupor, I seem to have put the wrong things in the wrong places, and I’m stumped for a solution. Here’s photo evidence:

I googled “put detergent in the fabric softener spot” and “how to get detergent out of fabric softener place”, but I’ve not found anything useful. Do you think I’m the first one to do this?

I could use a turkey baster to get the detergent out, but the problem is that I don’t HAVE a turkey baster. But I hate wasting good Tide Cold Water by simply letting the machine run its course without any clothing. If I put clothes in the washing machine now, it’ll release the detergent during the rinse cycle and then the soap won’t be washed out completely. Right…?

I can’t figure out what to do. Help me, please!

5 Comments »

Last week, Rob and I drove to Arizona for my former roommate’s wedding. One result of the 12-hour drive, each way, was a sort of deliriously loopy mood that developed in both of us. Rob became very excited at the idea of taking a photo alongside these dinosaur statues near Holbrook, Arizona. (I will say here that he is a very nice traveling partner and excellent tourist.) Frugal that we are, we chose not to pay the stinking overpriced admission fee to enter the park and take photos legally. Instead, we pulled off the interstate and squeezed under the barbed wire barricade, braving the thorns and burrs that would later lodge into the soles of our feet, in order to capture this lovely photo.

I’m quite proud of it.

6 Comments »

For the record, it is impolite to greet an acquaintance with,

“You lost weight! You look great.”

12 Comments »

It seems that in Rob’s Lenten blogging-leave-of-absence, I have not been posting much. Oops. I’ll try to do better at updating.

My schedule is full and my mind racing these days, but I’m happy and determined to have fun and not feel overwhelmed. The CSAPs (Colorado big-ol’ standardized tests) start tomorrow. It’s a nerve-wracking experience every year because of its formality, and I will breath a sigh of relief after our 9 days of testing are over. I’m hosting my friend’s bridal shower on Saturday, and after 3 years since buying my townhouse, I realized that this will be my first party. Oh, I want to do it right! The good news (for the bride) is that everyone I invited is attending. Therein is also the bad news. 23 women in my townhome… I hope they’re ready to get close to each other.

For your viewing enjoyment, here are a few photos to illustrate the fun we had last weekend.

Made sushi later… yum. Of course, cukes were left out of my maki zushi.

10 Comments »