If you're walking in bluefield, drink juice.

A few days ago G told me an interesting fact he learned while working in the ER.  He said that anyone walking around holding a coke was not thirsty but it is actually the sign that someone is a hooker.  Now that is a harsh word for a family friendly blog but there is no nice way of putting it unless you prefer the Biblical word, harlot. For some reason I found this hilarious.  First of all, I have never met a real live um, uh, ok, I don't like the word so I am going to call it a promiscuous citizen. Ever. So when I think of one I can only imagine a town like Las Vegas aka sin city where that kind of business thrives.  When I think of Bluefield, I can't imagine a less scandalous place in the entire continental United States.  Our main attraction here is the coal mine for crying out loud, not our exotic shows.  We have one movie theater and I think Redbox is ahead of the shows they get.

 (Liv's reaction after I asked her how she felt about living in Bluefield forever...)

Anyway, I also laughed because when I picture a H***er, I think of someone with spangle gold sequins, a cheap blond dye job and Santa red lipstick with curves.  May I remind the reader that West Virginia is third in the nation for the state with the most obesity per capita.  How do I put this?  Let's just say every time I go to Walmart I wonder who could possibly be ahead of us.  What I'm saying here is that the native citizen is not really what comes to mind when I picture a seductress from sin city.  SO, anyway, the only way to really know is if they are walking carrying coke (I still think they should be wearing gold sequins).  Suddenly coke has a whole new meaning to me... 

 

The reason this is a problem is because Liv and I often like to give rides to people.  We call it humanity awareness field trips and sometimes when we just can't do any more homemakerish skills (i.e. cooking things that don't look like the picture in the recipe book, cleaning our hamster cage size apartment,acting like I know how to iron when it just solidifies creases in the wrong places, etc. etc.) we get in the car and go see if we can help our species.  People use the buses a lot here so there are a LOT of people who are just out walking.  Now, G has given me very strict guidelines on the people I am allowed to give rides to because he does not want us to die or get lice.  I respect those guidelines but I cannot give up the practice.  I love it too much.  Here are some folks I would like to give rides to:

Anyway, Liv and I were feeling bad that the missionaries teaching pool was looking a little sparse so we decided to dedicate this humanity awareness field trip to some good old classic OYM time (open your mouth) and try to find them some new investigators.  Well, with this new bit of coke information, it was suddenly much more complex as Liv and I had to do a complete beverage search of each potential ride candidate before seeing if they needed a ride.  You never know who could be hiding a gold sequin dress of seduction under there common coat.  We were morality detectives and suspicious of all beverage carrying pedestrians.  The first lady we saw was holding a water bottle with a brown liquid inside.  It could have been coke. It could have been brown water. It could have been root beer.  How were we supposed to know?  This was getting far more complicated than we originally anticipated.  I thought it would be a bit odd to roll down my window and ask what the liquid was so we drove on.  Unfortunately we did not see a single scandalous sequin anywhere or coke.  We did see someone carrying a water bottle and I didn't know what that meant.  What if she was just a healthy promiscuous citizen?  We couldn't risk it.  We drove on. 

We did meet a 62 year old Protestant minister who tried to save us and luckily had found Jesus the year before. We also met a sweet older lady who looked like Michael Jordan's grandma, and a woman named Larue in a electric jack o lantern orange coat who walks two miles to work every day who had already met with missionaries and said that "no sir, she did not like them."  Oh well. So much for the white field harvesting.  I'm always amazed what people are going through and how resilient their spirits are to just keep walking, to keep going no matter what. 

So, as a word to the wise.  If you're coming to Bluefield, of course don't drink and drive, but also, don't walk and drink coke. If you happen to need a ride, (and you meet G's requirements) then you also know who to call.  Until next time, C&L's humanity taxi service signing off.

Dinner. Nursing home foods continued.

I recently learned that the peaches were a mistake.  That you should NEVER start fruits before vegetables.  How the heck was I supposed to know that? Anyway, after learning this information I promptly went to my friend and social hub, Kroger and bought a nice juicy jar of sweet potatoes, peas, and other various pre chewed puke consistency dinners for my offspring.  Since she seems to get it everywhere when I feed her, G wanted to have a try. 

Do you see the problem with the picture below?  G's mouth is open. Liv's mouth is filled with her hand. Typical. And also very ineffective.

I don't know how the eyebrow smear happened but I thought it was a nice touch.

So naturally the dinner activity led to a necessary bath:

Take a moment to appreciate this discretionary thigh roll shot please. She's also being modest with her hand placement but I do love her bread dough body of rolls.  Bath time is one of my favorite motherhood perks:

Have I mentioned today that I really love being her mother? I thought my life was cool before this. I think I must have had brain damage because this is the best thing ever.  I love this chunky little human being from heaven. So. Dang. Much.

Tree Nudity.

Liv and I have our morning routine down. After a leche-licious breakfast for her, some Tony Horton workout followed by some scrambled eggs by me, we have scripture study and open the blinds of the sliding back door to greet the day.  Usually what our eyes behold belongs on a nature calendar.  The kind that would make Ansel Adams look amateur.  We have the most gorgeous brilliant vibrant leaves I have ever seen here.  This morning I pulled back the blinds expecting to see explosions of stop sign red, pumpkin orange and sun yellow filling the trees as usual but to my horror I saw this:

I call it tree porn because all of a sudden overnight the trees are naked.  They have have shed the reason fall makes you glad you are not blind and become hideous gray naked trunks with a thick layer of their former beauty crumpled into leaf crumbs on the ground looking like someone forgot to sweep the forest floor.  I am devastated.

Liv and I had no choice but to move on.  We decided to make the most of fall by making two fallish treats, chunky applesauce and molasses cookies.  We used the molasses cookie recipe from ourbestbites.com and we are converted. Completely. Supreme quintessential fall cookie delight.  If you want to get your own cookie testimony then try it out for yourselves.  Experiment upon the recipe.

Bill and Ed's excellent home teaching adventure....

I have a new phobia.  I am scared of getting old.  I see 0 benefits and a gizillion downsides to having your bones crack, your teeth fall out like a 1st grader, having white wispy cotton balls for hair, not having a drivers license, going to the bathroom like you're pregnant with triplets multiple times a night, your skin get those brown spots like a potato, and everyone has to yell for you to know what is going on.  Not interested. At all.  I never want to get old.  Now please don't misunderstand.  I love love love (triple love if you didn't catch that) old people.  I am a geriatric fan without a doubt.  I just never want to become old.  I have had plenty of opportunities to contemplate this since the first time I went to our ward I was sure that we had accidentally entered a nursing home.  However, after 4 months I have come to appreciate the white haired wisdom that surrounds us.  Our home teachers are named Bill and Ed (I love one syllable names, except for Gus, I have never liked the name Gus) and we had them over for dinner (see picture above).  Between the two of them we had 138 years eating crock pot chicken.  G's companion is 80.  I have come to love them because when you're that old, you don't do things because they are cool or hip.  You don't do things because you want people to praise you.  You do the right things because you believe they are the right things to do.  There's something remarkable about that.  I have no doubt that when G has Santa hair, a Quasimodo back and takes 17 pills the size of cadbury eggs every morning, that he will still be doing his home teaching too. I love that about him.

Growth at an alarming rate...

I am afraid I am becoming the author of the very type of blog I mock.  The kind of blog that has 213,4320423 pictures of the same baby in different outfits doing the exact same things that causes the average American to roll their eyes and the only person to react and make shrill excited noises of ultimate delight is the mother of the child.  I pledge to stop only posting exclusively and only about Liv.  But, I cannot pledge to stop completely because she is my world.  Liv land. That's where I reside.  She wears 12 month clothes.  She is 4 1/2 months. This is a problem. At this rate she will be wearing my clothes when she goes to kindergarten.  Slightly awkward for her, and for me. For all parties involved.

I've heard of thumb sucking. Liv takes it to the next level.  I can't get her to stop shoving her entire fist in her mouth, or the back of her wrist, or as many fingers as she can cram in at a time.  This is also a slightly awkward practice considering it causes excessive drool to constantly run down her arm, soak her bib and the outfit underneath and anyone holding her.

Soul Friends...

I am not a quality time person. At all. I can think of 23 inventions I love more than my phone.  Answering the phone is one of my weaknesses.  Spending hours upon hours with the same purpose is also not my forte. In fact, it's the opposite of my forte.  These qualities sometimes make it difficult to be close to friends who excel at long phone calls and epic hang out marathons.  I have been blessed in my life to have a few soul friends.  Soul friends are the kind of friends that understand your soul.  They don't require anything of you except to be you.  They take the unedited, no makeup, emotional, unstable, unabridged you and know every weakness and decide that they love you anyway.  They are the kind of friend that even if you went to the Chateu de 'If like in Count of Monte Cristo and didn't see them, stalk their facebook page or hear a single word from them for years, would make no difference when you finally saw them again because you would pick up right where you ended and the truth is, those kind of friendships never end. They only get better and deeper with time.  I have concluded that those kind of friends are next to family and my husband, life's most beautiful and important blessing.   

 Liz Kennedy Williams is one of those friends in my life.  Seeing the Lincoln memorial was nice, sleeping at Liz's designer apartment, soaking up her life, humor, love, and example was a far more inspiring and  significant memorial to what life is, and what I want to become more like.

I suppose our friend CS Lewis had a little something to say regarding this topic that I love.  Without further adieu, I turn the time over to Clive Staples himself:

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

My survival on this planet has been given more value than the hope diamond we saw in the Smithsonian, by such people in my life.  I agree with his quote except for I have come to know that even though we don't have the same DNA, get sealed in the temple, and never write on each other's face book walls, soul friends ARE necessary to my survival and the value my life experience down here. 

Soul friends don't change because you get married, have babies and get love handles, move to the other side of the country or forget their birthday.  Soul friends are the kind of friends that you can call and you don't have to explain yourself because they already know you, the real you, they are the kind of friends you can call and cry or complain like the female version Laman and Lemuel combined and know that you will not get judged, they are the friends you can call and talk for endless hours about nothing and gut laugh with; they are the friends that you can say nothing to and be completely not funny and boring as toast without jam or butter and they could care less.  When you find a soul friend, it doesn't matter how long you have known them because it's just a connection your soul has and you feel like you've known them for your whole life because you let them into your whole life, even the ugly, unattractive, lame, boring, not clean crevices of your life that the rest of the world will never know.  Soul friends are the kind of people that if you had to go across the plains in a handcart wearing and ugly bonnet and eating flour mush cooked over buffalo chip poop fire, you know you could do it if they were in the same company with their ugly bonnet too.  When you find a soul friend, you never let them go because they are one of life's rarest and greatest blessings.  You never know where or when you will meet one, but you know when you have because your life is never the same after that. 


I love the CS Lewis quote because I'm sure I could keep breathing and my aortic valve would keep pumping if my soul friends all died; but my survival would lack the depth, color, joy and peace that I feel just knowing that somewhere in the world, they are there. 

Mexican Date Night.

I love going out to eat. I love the menus. I love the ambiance. I love the food. I think what I love most is the waiter or waitress concept. Think about it. Simply because I am going to pay, making me the customer, their entire purpose for the hour is to take care of my needs. Genius. I love them coming to the table and refilling my glass like I'm a Sultan and asking if they can get me anything.  The only thing that is one level higher is airline stewardesses (stewardesi?).  Anyway, G and I don't really go out to eat since our trek East to the middle of nothing for 3 main reasons.  It costs money, and takes time (2 things that we do not have flowing in abundance at this particular season in our life) and three, there really isn't anywhere good to eat out.  There are 2 small Mexican restaurants here and the one had its lights going out so I figured if they can't afford to keep their sign lit, they probably wouldn't be investing in their enchiladas.  So, we went with the other by default.  The food was a C- but I do always love the chips and salsa prior to the meal.

Liv gets invited on all our date nights be default but she did have the dating etiquette to fall asleep so we could enjoy the Mexican romantic atmosphere de amor but I did want to get a pic of her sleeping so I lifted up her carseat cape to quickly snap a pic but I forgot the flash was on, and the result was this photogenic face:

I know there are cute baby contests but if there was a double chin perfection contest, I would enter this picture and I'm fairly sure she could win.

Two things I love.

When my mom and sister came I realized how boring the west is.  Cars. Bikes. Boring. What we need is a metro across the United States. Except for the fact that I felt like a Tongan in China in trying to understand how to known which ticket to buy and how anyone can figure out where that underground railroad is really going.

I would also like to take this opportunity to bear my testimony of Rosalie Sharp.  I know that everyone is unique and that there is no one in the world exactly like you but that statement is even more true for an elite club of extra individuality.  It's the kind of person that you never think, "hmm, you remind me of so and so..." because quite frankly, they don't remind you of ANYONE because they are so good at being themselves.  Rosalie Sharp is one of those people.  Who knew Em and my old room mate from the heart of BYU singleness in Provo Utah would someday be living in the same city as our president at the same time we come to visit and that in a path crossing more intricate and detailed than any metro system, we would meet up again. It was so fun to see Rosalie. Rosalie that plays the euphonium and has a masters degree from England in archeology.  I'm pretty sure I don't have any other friends who fit that description and have spent their summers in Italy not eating noodles and gaining weight, but digging up old bones. I love her. I love path crossing. Especially on metros.