Calling upon the universe

GH has a job interview on Monday! For a real job like real people have! Everyone please pray hard!

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See?? THIS. This is why I did not want to turn 30!

GH and I both turned 30 this fall. Except I did it a month earlier than him because I am 1) competitive, and 2) a cougar.

For me, counting down to 30 was fine. Piece of cake. GH approached it with a bit more trepidation and apparently he had the right idea. Because since we reached the triple digits, we have both started falling completely apart. First GH's back decided to just quit working. It's most likely brought on by stress, working the graveyard shift, and working the graveyard shift on really crappy chairs. The poor guy can barely get up and down and is using me as a pulling-self-up-on tool. And a poor one at that, if this morning's pained " grumble grumble useless grumble" mutter is to be believed. He is now wishing that someone thought to give him a cane for his birthday. For my part, about the day after my birthday I turned into an insane(r) person who didn't really feel like doing anything (see: blogging, cleaning, being nice to people, etc.). Come to find out I'm having a problem with mah thy-roid. So, you know, will be getting that figured out. Also I'm coming down with a cold and woke up this morning feeling as though someone were trying to slit my throat from the inside.

So after GH got home from work we're both lying in bed moaning and groaning (and no, not in the good way) over our various ailments while we also tried vainly to be sympathetic, comforting people to each other. It was pretty pathetic. Welcome to 30.

That's probably why they kick you out of the singles wards after your 30th year. They don't want the fresh 18-year-olds to be freaked out by all of us stumbling around with walkers and losing teeth and limbs right and left.

Ageists.

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Girl's Relaxation Day, Part Deux

Much, much too long ago (nearly two years) my sisters and I had a Girl's Relaxation Day in Park City, where we retreated from our lives and painted our toenails and stuffed ourselves with brie, which we could technically have done in our own places of residence but felt (rightly) that it would be better to do it somewhere else.

This fall we decided that it was time for another much-needed Girl's Relaxation Day, and since Park City had treated us so well last time we made that our destination. The nice thing about Park City, I think, is that even though it's not that far away it still feels like a different sort of place. This is probably because they have coffee there.

Spitfire booked an amazing spot for us to stay and treated me and Jen to an evening of luxury. For, lo, she is awesome. We were at the Westgate Resort, which was just beautiful and perfect and wonderful.

Resort highlights included:

A full kitchen and living room.

A hot tub in the bedroom. (Aw, yeah. Except, you know, not so much, since I was there with my sisters. No Victoria Secret bubble bath parties here, sorry.)

A huge stone shower with both a regular shower head and a waterfall shower head (the kind that comes down from the ceiling.) The shower also has a bench built in and functions as a sauna. (So, um, all other showers can kind of eat it now.)

An outdoor heated pool (lovely) and two outdoor hot tubs. We chose the one that came with the Speedo-wearing European man. As you do.

In true Girl's Relaxation Night style, there was toenail painting and brie-eating and pumpkin-pie-eating and TV-watching. No no-bake cookies this time, probably because my sisters remember almost being gassed to death last year. There was also much sighing at the catalog of spa services offered downstairs, which sighs then turned to chokes and seizures upon the reading of the prices. We watched the TV channel advertising the spa for a little bit but then had to turn it off because it was just too tantalizing (ahhh, spa porn). Our new plan is that one day when we're all quite rich we are going to book ourselves into a spa for a weekend. It's gonna be great. We then piled into the king-sized bed, which fit all three of us easily, and slept soundly. That is until my cell phone alarm went off at 7:00am, please do not ask me why. It seems that I am alarm-challenged.

For breakfast Jen made crepes. I would have helped, but I was Experiencing the Shower. She did Julia Child's crepe recipe with a savory chicken-bacon-mushroom-leek-pure-crystallized-crack-cocaine filling. And for calcium we added slabs of warm brie. Women need calcium, you know. My bones start to deteriorate this year--gotta stave that off. There were also nutella crepes with fresh raspberries, real whipped cream, and sauteed apples. Because we know how to party.

Once we got cleaned up and I'd done everyone's eyebrows and eye makeup (remember, girlie weekend) we hit the outlet stores. And yes, I'm sure there are some friends out there right now thinking, "Wait. YOU were the one doing people's eye makeup? Uh . . . " But what they do not know is that I've totally figured out how to do one really nice-looking smoky grey-blue eyeshadow thing. So that's what we all got. And we looked hot, I tell you.

Jenny took in the biggest shopping haul as she was on a mission to buy new church-going clothes. I got two nice tops and mentally purchased an entirely new wardrobe for GH at Banana Republic. As a heterosexual male, he would probably object to most of my choices. One day, though. One day.

So yeah. We've decided this needs to be an annual thing. And maybe we should spend two nights instead of one. And we need to check the closets more carefully when we leave because if we don't then the housekeeping staff will steal the black J.Crew shirt Jenny accidentally left hanging in the closet and then the hotel will just pretend like we maybe imagined the black shirt and that possibly Jenny did not actually wear it to the hotel but just turned up to check in wearing nothing but a bra. (I'm kind of glad now that I forgot to leave a tip for those stealers. Except . . . maybe that's why we're in this situation now. Huh.)

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Welcome, and thank you for making Jenny an aunt

My brother and his wife had their first baby this week. My s-in-l was in labor for, no lie, eleventy hundred hours before she ended up having a C-section. Everyone is doing fine and they're home.

And here's precious baby Madeline:


Lookit that li'l rosebud mouth!


This was the conversation I had with Jenny during the Multiple Days of Labor while we were waiting for news.

Jenny: ALSO! I AM SO EXCITED TO BE AN AUNT!
SO EXCITED!
I mean, I know I technically am one already but it doesn't feel like it.
I think I'm going to like this being an aunt stuff.

Me: Oh my gosh, that's right! You've NEVER BEEN AN AUNT!
How did I not realize this? The rest of us have been aunts but you were always the mom!

Jenny: I need to MAIL HER THINGS.

Me: YEAH. Yeah you do.

Now Jenny gets why I was always turning up with baby clothes and accessories and books and toys for Savannah. You become an aunt and some sort of switch goes off and you Must. Buy. Things. For. Baby. It is a very, very real force.

They're coming out in January for coolboy's wedding and I cannot wait to eat that baby's face.

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My new favorite thing

Is when families go to the doctor and their children are diagnosed with H1N1 and are told to go home and get themselves quarantined. The family then leaves the doctor's office to go home . . .

. . . and stops by the library on the way home, where they all spend an hour choosing all the books and DVDs they'll need for the week.

Thanks for that, guys.

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Not pregnant, sorry

Although that would be a fabulous excuse for not posting as opposed to, "Nope, I really am just that lame all on my own without any gestating feti, actually." But thanks for asking.

For those who participated, I hope your Weekend o' Conference was good. Mine was one in which I was a Domestic Goddess Type Person.

Evidence:

Sunday morning made breakfast of pumpkin waffles with real maple syrup (using last year's frozen pumpkin puree, aw yeah), Julia Child's scrambled egg recipe, fresh apple juice, hot chocolate, and really cheap-trash bacon. We invited coolboy and his charming new fie-ance (Yep! Seriously!) over to share in the bounty. Then I lured them into staying longer by making chocolate-chip-Reese's-pieces cookies. Which were amazing, and I am right now eating the leftover dough as my lunch.

Dinner was a crockpot roast with carrots, potatoes, onion, and sides of fresh corn and peas. And a couple of Rhodes Rolls that didn't rise properly and therefore resembled hockey pucks in both taste and texture. Because maybe I need to be kept humble.

GH did the dishes like a champion, which meant that by the time it was all over he had washed nearly every dish and pot and pan we own.

During the different sessions, which were all great, I took notes and worked on Savvy's socks. And I pondered the same semiannual questions I always ponder, such as:

"Is it possible for Elder Scott to not seem like he's peering directly into my soul?"
"Which musical and/or poem will President Monson quote this time?"
"Do these women go to training sessions to learn to talk like that?"
"Should Sister Dibb be smiling quite so broadly when relating the story of a deadly construction accident?" (I'm putting that one down to nervousness at speaking in front of millions of people.)
"Do I need another cookie?" (Answer: no.)
"But do I want another cookie? Or four?" (Answer: Yep and Yep. And they were great.)

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