engaged

Last week our "friend" Carolyn Stone found this picture somewhere in a dusty old box full of spiders and gum wrappers and posted it on Facebook where four million people were able to view it. Sometimes you can't control who sees what online, and let this be a cautionary tale to you all. Someday you youngin's will probably experience someone posting your twenty year old wedding invitation photo online, and I promise you won't think of yourself as hot or attractive as you did when you took that picture.

Actually, I didn't think this was a good picture of me even then. But Lisa and I had to take a photo for our wedding invites and this was the best one we got. You have to remember that there was a time, in the early 90's, where wedding invitations didn't look like pottery barn catalogues and you didn't really get to include twelve pictures of you and your fiancee laughing and walking down an aisle of fruit trees. You put on your church clothes, went to a "portrait studio," and smiled into a bunch of lights.

Lisa made the appointment for this photo, and to this day she regrets making the appointment at 7:30 in the morning (I swear.) For some reason I showed up late, and had been awake for about 30 minutes. I had not showered. I did a really half-hearted shave and did what I could with the wispy feathers I had for hair. For some other reason, I had a split lip. Maybe I was in some kind of grungy college fistfight? I don't remember. But I had a split lip, and there was no hiding it. This was a time before photoshop, before you could take "cute" wedding photos of you and your lover running from dinosaurs.

Speaking of hiding things, at this epoch in my life I was wearing braces. From an orthodontic standpoint I was truly a late bloomer. But at that time we were given an option of something called "clear braces" which meant that your braces would be invisible and nobody would see them! I opted in. Too bad that they weren't clear at all and basically just made your teeth look yellow. These braces fooled nobody, so you learned to talk through a small wedge of mouth. You hid the braces nicely that way, although your articulators had to work overtime if you wanted to sing in the singles ward choir! It was hard, you guys. When it came time to smile for this photo, I did what I could to hide my candy corn teeth, retaining the tightest and most strained grimace in all the land.

I still don't think this picture is that bad, though. Even though we look 12. It would have probably turned out better if I had been awake and tried a little harder. Our friend Jjana claimed that this was a terrible picture even back then, and accused Lisa of looking like a relief society president. I think she looks pretty. Her hair is super coiffed and she has dark lips and eyebrows, just like Lea Thompson in Caroline in the City. But is it weird to say that, now in our forties, we both look way better? Or is the mind just playing tricks? Will I someday look at pictures from 2014 and be embarrassed at how I look now? Or remember what it was like to be bald? In the future they will cure baldness, by the way.

Goodbye, comments!

Does it make me sound shallow if I say I do things mainly for praise and recognition? I am not someone who wants to labor silently in the shadows where someones "smiles are thanks enough." If I do something awesome I want people to tell me loudly and boisterously how awesome that thing is.

I served my LDS mission in Rome. (The one in Italy, not Idaho.) And while I was there, I learned to make a pretty killer lasagne. (Yes, it should be spelled with an "e." Lasagna with an a is singular and would refer to one lasagna noodle. It why you say you ate spaghetti and not spaghetto.) The sauce has three kinds of meat and cooks for a minimum of 5 hours. The noodles are made and rolled by hand. And the creamy beschamel sauce (where your mom would have used cottage cheese) is lightly seasoned with black pepper and nutmeg. Even old Italian women have told me my beschamel sauce is amazing. It's topped with freshly grated parmiggiano and baked to perfection. And while I enjoy making it, it is definitely a labor of love. It takes pretty much and entire afternoon.

Over the many years since I have been home, I have made this lasagne for various friends, family and loved ones. Some are kind enough and say "Thanks" or "This is good!" but you can tell they would be just as happy with a frozen Stouffer's Lasagna. And others rave and sing praises and go blind with happiness. They proclaim that this is the greatest lasagne they have ever eaten. They never want to eat anything ever again. Surely the very angels in Heaven wept at the creation of this masterpiece and their tears are what give the lasagne is subtle umami flavor. Guess which group I am more likely to make the lasagne for a second time?

I'm not saying this is something I am proud of. I recognize that it is a character flaw. You should do nice things for no reason at all. And I try to. But, boy, is it more fun when there is a lot of praises sung after you do a nice thing.

As a writer, you do most of your work in anonymity. While we know a lot of the people who read this blog (Thanks, Connie!) many of you we have never met. And it blows my mind that there are people in the world who have no personal connection too who take time out of their day to read this blog. It's flattering and humbling and lovely. We have received nice messages, emails and comments over the two years we've been doing this that have been incredibly heart-warming. So thank you for reading and thank you for sharing. You are all great.

This blog has never been a great generator of comments. (Not to be confused with generator of great comments. We've have plenty amazing comments. We just don't get that many.)  We've even tried begging people to comment, and it worked somewhat. And truthfully, I don't know why we have been so desperate to get people to comment. On most websites the comments are full of trolly statements, meanness and bad spelling.  They are the last things anyone wants to read. I guess it is because as a writer you want to know someone is listening. So you put up your post and you check a couple times throughout the day to see how many comments were made. And then you do math and calculations in your head. "Well, I did get this up later than usual, so maybe people didn't read it in the morning and had to read it on their phones and it is harder to comment on the phone so..." or "Well, my post last week got 3 comments and I didn't spend hardly ANY time writing that one, but THIS on was a real labor of love, so SURELY it will get lots of comments!" It's silly.

So, as of today, we are shutting off the comment section. Mainly so I can stop measuring my self worth that way. But also to consolidate the effort. A lot of great comments are being left when the post is shared on Facebook. So rather than having the comments in two places, we are shifting them all over there.

Also, some people have asked where the "like" button has gone from the bottom of the posts. It has something to do with Facebooks new graph search feature and blah, blah, blah...Basically I need to write new code to get it back up and I haven't been able to figure out how to do it yet. So, hopefully it will be back soon.

So, what if you were a regular commenter (Hi, Seashmore!) and you still want to share the love. What can you do?

1. Like our Facebook Page. We try and post links to all the new posts there. And you can then just comment on the link. 
2. See those little social media buttons at the bottom of the post? Click on those. You can tweet about us, share this on your own Facebook page, +1 us on Google+ (sidebar: $10 to the first person who can explain Google+ to me.) And we would LOVE if you did that. Help us spread the word about this little labor of love.
3. What if you are not on FB, don't have Twitter and don't believe in social media? First of all, I applaud you. Surely you are writing the great American Novel or curing cancer with all the time that you don't waste liking photos of people's food. And secondly, feel free to click on the picture of an envelope at the top of the page and send us an email. We've gotten a few lovely emails over they years and they are truly wonderful and moving.
4. Lastly, just keep reading. As I said, I'm working on not being validated by praise, so if you don't do any of these things, that's OK too.

If you like this new policy, please share in the comments below!! Kidding...Old habits...there are no comments below. 

Non-Incriminating Evidence

Katie and I when we were dating. 

Sometimes when I really want to freak out the youth at church I tell them about when Sister Craig and I were dating, back in 1995. I weave tales about how I would sometimes, unannounced, just pop in at her apartment. And how sometimes…she wouldn't be there! AND I WOULD HAVE NO IDEA WHERE SHE WAS OR WHEN SHE WAS COMING BACK! So I would have to do something crazy like LEAVE A HANDWRITTEN NOTE, TELLING HER TO CALL ME LATER!  And then sometime, later that day, she’d hopefully get that note and call me. And MAYBE I would be at my apartment to answer my land-line phone, and MAYBE I WOULDN'T! Maybe I’d be out, and I actually wouldn't have any communication with her that entire afternoon or even that day! No communication! Like we were animals! And can you even stand the suspense of when we would see each other again?! I know!

Seriously, I sound ancient to these youth when I tell stories of living before every soul had a cell phone with texting or Find a Friend capabilities. And you know what? I totally feel archaic, too! I find my own self sitting there in a daze wondering how we lived so crippled by our lack of technology. I swear in 1995 it was like we had evolved one measly step from chimps playing with sticks. “And then to show Sister Craig I was interested in her romantically, I thumped my chest and handed her a branch that was on fire. She prayed about it, and we got married.”

Doesn't it feel as if society has so quickly adapted to all of us being absolutely accessible at all times, we can’t fathom a time when it wasn't that way? You may even find yourself thinking back on moments when you would have saved time, resources, and emotional anguish if we were all using Smart Phones and texting and apps. I've done that.

But the upside is this, my ancient friend, you also lived out your pubescent years at a time when the entire world didn't have video camera/phones on their person 24 hours a day; and then a medium to immediately distribute that video to the public. How can I know how awesome anything I did was if it wasn't immediately broadcasted and validated by the public! I know, we were animals!

But for those of us who are products from the 70s, 80s, or 90s…I think we are actually grateful for that. I know I am. My family bought a home video camera in 1984. I was 13. THIRTEEN! The only wise decision I ever made in my adolescent awkwardness (besides keeping my crush on Olivia Newton-John a secret) was to completely avoid being on camera. Sure, it was a fascinating new technology, but I knew better. In fact, the only two documented video sightings of me as a teenager is one of me yelling at my cousin to stop videotaping me, and  the other  is of me at age 16, at a ward Roadshow practice. And people, believe me, it is obnoxious! Probably because I was obnoxious at 16! I am on stage chewing a piece of gum like I’m doing it a favor and supplying more eye rolls than is legally allowed by the FCC.

Think on your own teen years, but imagine being surrounded by friends who are constantly prepared to video whatever foolishness you are prone to! Here’s a list of what you and I were spared by me being a teen of the 80s and as a result, no rogue video floating around:

*I played water polo. Nobody needs to see what that looked like. (This was before the “hip,” less-offensive Speedos you see in the Summer Olympics now.)

*Once during my sophomore year of high school I had to go up to the board to diagram a sentence in my English class. My pants caught on a broken part of a desk as I walked to the front and ripped a hole on the area of my jeans covering my bum. Not cool.  It was a YouTube moment waiting to happen…but mercifully, there was no YouTube!

*My first kiss was at a Youth Conference, on a bus, in front of millions of people. Whew, dodged a bullet there.

*My freshman year I played the clarinet. In the marching band. At football games. Nobody beat me up or gave me a wedgie. But they should have. And that would have been on Facebook for sure. (There wasn't the anti-bullying movement that you see nowadays. I guess it was an era when people figured if you were in the marching band then you had it coming. And it’s hard to argue with that logic.)

What about you? What bullets did you dodge by not having adolescent moments caught on video and distributed to the world? COMMENT! 

Find us on Facebook!

Our little blog is a couple of months old now and we have decided to branch out a bit into the world of social media. We now have our very own Facebook page! I know, right?! It's like it is 2004! 

So if you are reading this and you like us, feel free to like us on Facebook too. It will keep you up to speed on what is going on on the blog and give you a place to comment on and discuss posts. And please, tell your friends. We love to find new readers.

We've also added a handy-dandy "like" button at the bottom of each post. Remember when Patrick spelled out an entire conversation he had with his brother about votives and the mean things they were going to say to the drive through girl? And remember when Chris made fun of crying pre-teens in The Hunger Games? And remember when Ken brought us all together in our hatred of vinyl lettering? And remember how you laughed and loved all those posts, but you didn't feel like leaving a comment because you hate those word verification things? Well now, you can just click on the like button and let your burning love for those posts be seen by the world. Remember: don't hide that love under a bushel.