A True Democracy

One of the plus sides to living in These Unprecedented Times is many of my friends realized all at once that they could actually just go ahead and get really cute puppies. Key among these was Emily, who lives down the street from me and who decided to get a cavoodle (same as Duncan) named Jude.

Since we're all working from home, apparently in perpetuity, it made sense to us to start our very own little doggy daycare, which means every other day we each send our own dog to the other's house so Duncan and Jude can wrestle and nap for 9 straight hours. 

Hedgy

A couple years ago my friend Anna got Duncan a little stuffed animal hedgehog. She called it "Hedgy" and this quickly became Duncan's very favorite toy. My little man was obsessed with Hedgy. He would carry him everywhere he went. One time Sky and I were out of town and Anna was watching him; she sent us a picture of Duncan and Hedgy sitting on the front porch looking off into the distance together.

When that first Hedgy started looking worse for the wear, not at all helped by the fact that some of Duncan's friends got ahold of him and ripped his guts out, Anna got Duncan a replacement Hedgy. We tried to get rid of the first Hedgy carcass, but Duncan flipped out when we attempted to take it away from him. He would go stand in front of the garbage can, somehow aware that that's where we had thrown it, and cry. He loved the new Hedgy, but he loved the old raggedy one, too. 

A Good Finder

A couple years ago I found this film about dating and marriage produced by BYU in 1956 and I talked about it on Strangerville when I did the four-part series on old Mormon films. Well, I finally built up the stamina to recap it, with screenshots so you can see how exceptionally hot one of the protagonist's suitors was. 

You can read this real doozy of recap here. Also, shoutout to Josh Fowlke, our artist at The Beehive, who once again created the perfect piece of art for this recap. 

In other news, my husband, the man who vowed before God to love and worship and support and never criticize and always agree and suffer in silence for me, attacked me out of nowhere the other night. 

There's an ongoing debate in my home about whether or not I'm a bad "finder." Skylar includes "good finder" at the very top of his list of positive qualities he believes he possesses. This topic comes up every single day.

Skylar: Will you please hand me the cumin?

Eli: I don't see it.

Skylar: Did you move stuff around?

Eli: I don't have to because it's not here and that would be a waste of time.

Change

Ok nobody panic but I changed some stuff. I know. I know. We're not supposed to change things. Change is not a thing we handle. There's a reason we're all still here hanging out on blogger in 2020. 

TWO THOUSAND TWENTY YOU GUYS.

But we're all still living in 2006 over here. The only thing that could make this site more 2006 is if I inserted one of those widgets that automatically blasts a Jack Johnson song every time you visit Stranger. Don't worry. I'm not going to do that. Because lazy.

I changed things because our super talented artist at The Beehive, Josh Fowlke, messaged me and was like "you do realize you have like 19 different and conflicting brandings you're using across all of your various projects, right?"

Then he sent me some new images and fonts and I had to go in and do stuff with internet code and dark magic and I think I may have accidentally launched bombs at Thailand at one point but eventually everything ended up looking how it looks now. Which is good. I think. Probably. 

I'm so very tired right now. Skylar woke up at negative 3:00 AM screaming. Then he flew out of bed and started running through the house in a full panic. Duncan and I were going to follow him to see what was going on but we didn't because lazy and tired. Eventually he came back into the bedroom, climbed into bed, and whispered "the house is secure."

Physical Exam

I heard it before I saw it. It was coming from the next room over. A one-sided medical based conversation by my exhausted spouse who has been working graveyard shifts between long days.

He comes home when he can and traps himself in some corner of the house, a space heater at his feet, and he studies until he falls asleep. "I'm just so tired. I'm just so so tired," he'll say to me if ever I happen to see him.

But on this evening three nights ago he wasn't studying quietly. He was instead practicing physical exams, and he was doing it loudly.

"Now I'm going to check your heartrate," I heard him say to what I thought must be an imaginary patient. I thought it must have been imaginary because I was pretty sure we were the only two people in the house.

But then he continued: "your heart rate is about . . . uh . . . hundreds of beats per minute. That's either very alarming or completely normal."

At this point I became curious enough to put down my knitting and pause my shows, for I was engaged in equally important tasks as Skylar.

Baby Clothes

Cashier: These little t-shirts are cute! Who are they for?

Me: Oh, uh . . . my . . . uh . . . my baby. They're for my baby.

Cashier: Boy or girl?

Me: Boy.

Cashier: Wonderful! And how old is he?

Me: He's fou--uh . . . [looks at tag on shirt] he's eight to ten months.

Cashier: Hard to keep track, isn't it! Especially when you aren't getting much sleep!

Me: He actually sleeps through the night pretty well.

Cashier: Terrific! How's his appetite? At that age they can become so finnicky.

Me: Fine. He's pretty much eats the same thing for every meal.

Cashier: Is he crawling yet?

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Mamma's tired but here are some pictures and a few quick distractions for your perusal. 

I don't want no bunny banana frog ok no way.

Duncan and Jude taking a nap.

Dead Rat

Our greatest neighborhood allies are the Perfects next door. When I bought this house in The Year of Our Lord Eleventy Hundred, I was too intimidated to talk to them because they were, well, perfect. So instead I just spent like three years doing a lot of embarrassing things in front of them without affording myself the opportunity to explain.

A big part of the reason I didn't cultivate much of a relationship with them is because I just assumed they wouldn't want me to bother them with my boring self. This is a thing I assume about everyone always. It's very healthy and for sure not in need of therapy.

Then Jon Skylar Westerdahl moved into my house. Skylar is the opposite of me. It doesn't even occur to him that someone wouldn't be interested in talking to him. And it's not like he's arrogant about it. He doesn't necessarily assume everyone will love him either. He just doesn't care. He barges into the lives of everyone he sees and decides that if they don't want him, it's their burden to get rid of him. 

Within days of him living in this house, he was in the Perfects's''ses' front yard arm-in-arm with all four of them and the dog, laughing and creating memories. Suddenly they were coming to parties at our house and helping us with our gardening. We became "can you water the flowers while we're out of town" neighbors for each other. They texted us immediately after the earthquake earlier this year to make sure we were ok. 

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

We are so very overdue for a Pictures & Distractions post and I have some fun stuff to share with you. So here it is. 

Matt turned 40. The birthday bash wasn't quite as big as we had planned, but, you know. Pandemic.

Indogpendence Day

Yesterday was Independence Day (happy birthday, America. Sorry your party sucked.)

Normally we throw a Fourth of July party where all of our friends come over and lick their hands and touch each other and cough into our open eyes but we decided not to do that this year because, you know, Rona.

The lack of social engagements in 2020 has been a super interesting thing for this extrovert who has knitted two sweaters, three scarves, a hat, and has run nearly 1,000 miles in the last three months and I'm sure none of these things are related. But honestly, I've settled into this and I've been able to find joy in the lessened social chaos.

I'm still working from home and plan to maybe forever? We've seen my family here and there, but not much because Bob & Cathie don't want us to give them the Rona. I have a lot of friends who are worried about their parents and grandparents because they don't feel like they are taking social distancing and mask wearing, etc., seriously enough. I'm grateful that I haven't had that problem with my own parents, but I wouldn't mind having Cathie come over and make comments about my yard that are definitely compliments but worded just so I'm not confident about that ("Oh! I would have never thought to plant a rose bush that close to that tree that I didn't realize people liked!").

We miss our old folks.

Skylar Looks Good In Sweaters

A couple months ago I called my knitting store down the street #supportlocal #citizenoftheyear #It'sScaryToTalkOnThePhone #bravery. I had picked a new sweater to knit, something that would be the most difficult knitting project yet, besides, perhaps, The Scarf That Shall Not Be Named.

The knitting store (Blazing Needles woot woot) was shut down, just like everything else on planet Earth at that time, but they were doing phone and internet orders and then either shipping product or letting you come pick it up on their front porch.

They helped me figure out what I needed, took all of the money I've ever had in my life, and I walked over that very day.

The knitting project ended up being extremely fun to make. Skylar had picked this sweater out online and I was hesitant because I thought it was hideous but I forgot the great Skylar rule, which is that literally everything looks perfect on him and he should have to spend some time in jail for this. (Where he'd look great in an orange jumpsuit he is so infuriating.)

I finished it over the weekend and I wanted you to behold my endless talents so here you go:

Quite A Lot Of Pressure

Skylar is supposed to get his test scores any day now and I simultaneously need it to happen immediately and not for a while. He is antsy and it is A Lot. He has been waking up throughout the night, gasping, and informing me that he just had a series of dreams in which he got his score and the score is always "average" and he doesn't know how to feel about it. I need that to stop. But also, it's kind of fun to anticipate something exciting during The Great Covid, which has produced few opportunities to anticipating something exciting.

I asked him, mostly as a joke, whether I could look up his score and read it to him, like Warren Beatty announcing the Oscar for Best Picture. It sounded so glamorous when I suggested it. I got shot down initially but then later in the day Skylar came back to me and said that actually, yes, he did want me to read it first and break it to him because "you're really good at sharing news."

Obviously I was flattered by this completely true observation. I am fantastic at sharing news. I get teary-eyed and emphatic over good news, celebrating achievements like they're my own and empowering the people responsible for them. I like to be the one to extend job offers for my law firm when we make a decision because I am so phenomenally good at it.

But more importantly, I am honestly the Meryl Streep of delivering bad news. I'm not kidding, you guys. If you ever have bad news, you should call me and have me tell it to you. I once got distracted while messing with people on Yahoo! Answers when I saw someone ask a question about whether they could sue their boss who fired them for a totally good reason and I left such a thoughtful and inspiring answer for that person about how they didn't have a legal avenue for recovery but that they had so many important qualities that mattered more than the job and that person emailed me to thank me and we are literally still in touch five years later.

Sand Dunes

Skylar finished his test a week ago yesterday and listeners, I now have a husband with too much time on his hands.

Remember last week when I wrote to you and I was like "I'm an ignored housewife who can't get her man's attention" and you all felt really sad for me and you sent me presents that haven't arrived yet but I'm sure they're on their way because you aren't the kind of people who don't send presents at a time like this?

Well, now Skylar Westerdahl is spending his days following me around the house asking me on a never-ending loop "now what are you doing" and when I don't answer him right away he follows it up with "why aren't you talking to me?" and look. I love attention. But apparently I have my limits because sometimes I pretend to go to the bathroom to poop now just to have a minute to myself. AND I HAVEN'T POOPED SINCE 2012.

I asked Skylar if he had any hobbies he might turn to since he now has like three weeks off, which in COVID 2020 time is the same as eleventy millennia, and he said his only one is "being a good husband and loving you" which is so annoying but also I'm obviously not going to try to talk him out of that as a hobby.

He really is getting more manipulative now that he's in his 30s.

The Thing About 2020

I have two friends who tested positive for the Rona recently. I won't say their names here because of HIPPO or whatever. I don't know. I don't really know anything about law.

The point is, this was kind of shocking because these two friends live together and they've been sequestered in their house since just before the war; they've been taking social distancing very seriously and they have jobs that have allowed them to work from home. Neverthenotwithstanding, they were marked with the great 2020 curse.

They were fortunate because their symptoms were never really all that bad. Just coughs and fatigue. But the thing is--no matter how bad your Rona is, you really have to turn yourself into a pariah because you aren't any less contagious. Apparently. I don't really know that either. Because science.

Knowing this, Skylar and I offered to deliver groceries and so forth but these friends are good pioneer women with eleventy decades of food storage so they were actually pretty prepared. But after a week of this they thought of one thing they could use so I picked it up at the store and took it to their house.

They were sitting out on the front porch, feeling not too bad. I stood out on the sidewalk and chatted with them for a while, a full 30 feet away. I didn't touch anything. I even left the groceries on the sidewalk for them to come out and pick up after I left.

I know that I didn't get coronavirus from them. I know this. It's honestly impossible. If I somehow got sick from that, we are all doomed.

Micromanager

Happy weekend, one and all. It's Thursday afternoon but NewYearNewMe so I'm going to start considering Thursdays part of the weekend. And maybe Wednesdays. And entire tubs of caramel pecan ice cream.

This week I published a piece on The Beehive about our tendency in national crisis to fold under the weight of not knowing what to do and why we need to put in the work to figure out how to take actions now that are more than symbolic gestures. I agonized over how to write it and thanks to a lot of help from our team at The Beehive, I think we landed in the right place. Please check it out.

Please also check out this really wonderful piece from Liese Rodger published on The Beehive this week. Liese is a black woman living in Salt Lake City and in this piece she writes about some of her experiences in Utah over the years and what she believes her white friends can do to make a difference right now. It's a really important account that helped give me more perspective on this.

In other news, we are now just two days away from Skylar taking his big board exam test thingy, which I think is the official name. If you all could wear your lucky jersey or pray to Cher or sell a soul to Lucifer to help him do well, we'd appreciate it. We're not picky. We'll take help from your higher power of choice.

The other day he asked me to go to the grocery store and get some snacks he can take with him to the test since this thing is so long he'll basically have five full meals and two birthdays during it. I almost asked him what he wanted but then remembered that the last time I asked him a basic question it stressed him out so much that our health insurance premium automatically doubled.

So I Guess I'm Vegan Now

In 2019 I decided I was going to try to eat less meat because I was basically personally responsible for the slaughter of millions of animals each year and I thought I ought to try to reel that in so I can hopefully go to heaven or gay heaven or heaven minus or at least hell plus some day. It was the first time in my life that I actually thought about how much meat I was consuming. Normally I would skim past vegetarian options on restaurant menus, like those weren't even available to me.

I didn't make any drastic changes or anything, but I did try to get myself in the habit of considering non-meat options for meals and get myself out of the habit of eating meat every day. What happened was I started regularly choosing the vegetarian options at restaurants (and finding out, to my great surprise, that a lot of veggie burgers are actually better than the beef option). Sky and I found a few vegetarian recipes that we liked to include in our rotation. We also tried to choose fish instead of chicken or beef (we already don't really eat pig).

In the end, I still ate a lot of meat, but maybe only like 75% of usual. So I was only responsible for the slaughter of 75% of millions of animals. Which at least gets me on some sort of waiting list for possible afterlife not terrible jobs.

Anyway, while I obviously never got anywhere near vegetarianism, by the end of 2019 I felt like I generally understood it. It was one of those things where I thought, "yeah. I could do that, if I was willing to put in the effort." Like paying taxes or reading books.

I'M JUST KIDDING I READ A BOOK LIKE 18 MONTHS AGO.

Good Parents

You all know that I have the cutest dog in all the land, right? Like, yours is cute, too, I'm sure. But mine is like the supermodel of dogs. Much cuter than yours. Much cuter than your children, too. Exponentially cuter than your grandchildren. I'm sorry. It's just true.

The People of Lagoon

As you know since you are all experts on my life, I have gotten a Lagoon season pass every year since 2013.

Why do I do this? I don't know. It's very confusing. Lagoon is our local theme park and it's like . . . how do I describe this . . . it's like if Walmart started a carnival.

Now, am I better than Walmart or carnivals? No I am not. I would submit I'm not even as good as Walmart or carnivals. One time when Duncan was a puppy and he had just gotten neutered I took a day off of work and went to Walmart in sweats the moment it opened for the day and I pushed Duncan around in a shopping cart trying baby onesies on him so he wouldn't lick his crotch.

What are you watching?

We're all binging TV shows and movies right now and that's ok. If there is anyone in your life telling you that is not ok, you should get new people for your life.

I can't imagine what social distancing would be like without streaming. You guys. We would have to read books and talk to each other and stuff.

I've honestly been a little surprised that I haven't been watching really that much more TV in the last few weeks than I was previously consuming. Then yesterday I thought about it and realized it would have been kind of hard to starting watching more than I already was. And that made me a little sad about myself. And empty inside. So I filled that emptiness. WITH MORE TV.

I know y'all are already aware that Meg and I record a podcast called Hive Mind where we talk about what we're watching. Bonus this week, Skylar joined us so we could blab about Survivor. And by "we" I mean "I, while Skylar supportively nodded like a good Stepford wife."

By the way, Meg and Clint Betts are doing these daily live shows from The Beehive, mostly to give Utah updates on COVID-19 stuff. They've been amazing. You can find them at noon on The Beehive's Twitter or Facebook accounts (or watch them after the fact). Sometimes they have me on so I can tell stories, usually about poop or vomit. I was on today. You can find my story below around the 20-minute mark. Sorry my hair looks so great.

Beehive Live - April 7, 2020 https://t.co/HNSbYfSZ6Q

— The Beehive (@TheBeehiveHQ) April 7, 2020

This Supposed End of the World

On Friday night Skylar started having a meltdown.

To give you some perspective, his meltdowns don't look like mine. Mine are like the Chernobyl disaster. His are more of a "I've slightly burned the crust."

But since he has them so infrequently, they are very unsettling when they do happen.

I was recently trying to explain to some coworkers what it's like to live with him. He's unlike anyone I've ever met. Somehow simultaneously productive and accomplished while also blissfully unaware. "He's the only perfectly calm and easygoing person I've ever met who is completely frozen by crisis," I said.

We're lucky that we're different in this way. I'm a constant stress case. Every muscle in my body has been constantly flexed since at least 2008. His daily energy, on the other hand, is very much like those old Mickey Mouse cartoons back when he looked much creepier, but was usually seen briskly walking, his arms swinging in front of him in enthusiastic propulsion, a chipper whistle coming from his puckered lips.