Shimp Home for the Holidays

This year is my first year not going home for Christmas.

.....I KNOW. Hash tag, big girl.

Instead of Baltimore lights twinkling up into my airplane window on Friday, I experienced the lights of Indianapolis for the fist time.

Then I experienced:

-some delicious cheesy bread, sugar cookies, peanut butter fudge, and cold medicine
-getting tackled by little boys who quickly stopped when they realized I was not their sister
-using all of Natalie's makeup since I apparently left all of mine in Utah
-going out Christmas shopping in the middle of Indianapolis flooding

{I'm serious. I got an emergency weather alert txt telling me to stay away from potential flooding areas}

-sleeping with Stephen in the bed his parents assigned to us. Oh, with his brother in the same bed.
-the Christmas program in the Indy 1st ward, which included a fabulous special musical number and donuts after the meeting
-a Christmas dinner at an interior designer grandma's BEAUTIFUL home

-a conversation that went like this:

me: Brandon, are you taller than me now?
We stand up to measure ourselves and find that he is a good 3 inches taller.
Diane: Oh yeah, I can't keep him in the same pair of pants for more than a month! He just grows out of them so fast!

-followed by a riveting game of boys vs. girls Catchphrase

-in which I got "growing pains," and the timer was speeding up, and it was up to me to help my team guess it, and I blurted out: "Okay, this is what....Brandon keeps doing this out of his pants."

-and my team didn't guess it and instead just got really confused.

-so I said, "Diane was just telling me about it!"

-and then people just laughed instead of guessing and I had to try something else.

There's no place like home for the holidays, but there's an H on one of the stockings here, and Natalie drew me in the family picture she put in Eric's room, and I'm surrounded by people I love. Besides which, there's a huge ball of mistletoe that I can stand under whenever I want. So for my first Christmas away from home, it's going to be a pretty nice one :)

Swearing After Midnight

So, I love my family. Soooo so so much. I think they are the best family in the entire world.

But this last weekend, I hung out with my pretend family here in Utah, who I told you about before, and it was very different than when I hang out with my Connor family in Maryland.

For example: my Connor brothers tackle me about 50% of the times that I try to tackle them. My Utah brothers tackle me whenever they walk past me. My Connor dad likes to go to bed before 11, 12 at the latest. For Uncle Wayne, the party is just getting started at 11 pm.

Here's a summary of the weekend, in dialogue form:

Me: So what's this game called?
Steve: This is Screw Your Neighbor.
Grandma: I think we should call it, Trick Your Neighbor, or Cheat Your Neighbor. Those sound nicer.
Uncle Wayne: What, Grandma, you don't want to screw your neighbor?
Grandma: You mean my grandson? No.
Valen: Kill your neighbor?
Me: Bum-squeeze your neighbor!

"Now we've gotta sit here and watch him play with them all night...." -a very unhappy Grandpa while Caden was shuffling the cards

"Oooh, sorry. You didn't hear that, right? Sorry....I swear after midnight." -Uncle Wayne

Uncle Wayne: Hey, put those away! I got those for breakfast tomorrow.
Grandma: Tomorrow's Fast Sunday....
*Everyone pounces on the donuts. Someone gets out milk. And chips. And another bag of chips as well.*
Steve: *pushing the chips towards me* Eat some NOW! Didn't you hear? Tomorrow's Fast Sunday!

"Be nice to your SISTER!" - any of the boys when one of their brothers punched, poked, tickled, squeezed, and harassed me in any way

Brad: Girls don't fart, they whisper in their panties.
Caden: Grandma, do you whisper in your panties?
Grandma: No, I scream.
Uncle Wayne --> Grandpa: She's your wife....

"You should know they're just doing this because you're here. So they all have to flex their hormones." -Grandpa

Valen: I'm flirting with her! We're txting and flirting right now!
Steve: Yeah, maybe you can shut up about it and take your turn....
Valen: Shut up, just because you don't have a girlfriend!
Steve: You're not gonna have one either when she comes over and sees how wild you are....
Me: Steve doesn't have a girlfriend because he's waiting to take my sister on a date in the fall!

"Next you'll be saying you yodel in your panties. Here come the yodelers! Boy, that'll ruin girls for you. I never would've wanted to get married if I had heard about this before." -Uncle Wayne

Steve: Noo-no!
Me: Noo-no? You mean Uno?
Steve: Noo-no what I meant!

And here is a list of the nicknames I earned, names I don't recall ever having been called by my own family:

- Woman
- Mama
- Sugar
- Toots
- Steering Wheel
- Four-wheeler

...............................don't ask. 

The charmed life

sometimes involves.....

- waking up, going outside, picking raspberries and blackberries, and eating them with your cereal.

- breaking world records in all Track and Field events after 2 hours of playing Kinect Sports with your sister.

- tackling your siblings in a concerted effort to get stronger.

- becoming addicted to the Big Bang Theory, simply because there is so much time around here.

- eating all the caramel in the world. Literally. ALL THE CARAMEL.

- saying, "Julie! / Joseph! / Jacob! / Sarah! How come.....you're so cute?" every time I see one of those cute people.

- becoming a pro at shooting a basketball backwards.

- narrowly avoiding vicious scams by people who don't live charmed lives like stupid Patricia J. Hall.

- listening to this song on a loop:

  

- following up every family prayer with 12 push-ups and 21 crunches (or however old you are).

- trying to tackle your brother only to bang your head on the wall.

- wondering, "but why is the jam gone?"

- laughing hysterically because Pluto isn't technically a planet.

- blasting this song every time it is on the radio and singing along with Baby Sister:

 

- going to Rita's whenever I feel like it, because it is just like 5 minutes away instead of 2000 miles away like it is when I'm in Utah....

- having friends over who cover your brother's eyes when an inappropriate part comes on in the movie you're watching.

- having brothers who cover your friend's eyes when an inappropriate part comes on in the movie you're watching.

- phrases like "Screw you, Tower of Babel!" coming up in scripture study.

- spending a morning watching Steve Irwin videos on YouTube with Baby Sister.

- stacking up significant fines on your library card and feeling really embarrassed about that since they just waived $18.40 in fines from the last time you checked something out (February of 2011).

- lunching with the Padre.

- hacking into my grandma's Facebook. getting nice posts on Facebook clearly written by my grandma who loves me.

Twenty-One

I know last year I turned 19, but somewhere between then and now, I turned 20. And this year on October 9, I turned 21.

My birthday this year included:

1. Lunch at Tucano's (obviously, we couldn't break the tradition!) with Winnie, Aimee, Christine, Kristen, and Jacob. Very different group than last year's, but I loved it just as much :)

2. a delicious dinner at Mimi's Cafe with Jacob. Sooo good!

3. a movie in the Water Gardens theater with Jacob.

4. a surprise waiting for me when I got home! Complete with cake, ice cream, friends, streamers, and handmade surprise signs. I have the best friends!

5. pancake breakfast made by Jacob on Sunday morning, my actual birthday.

6. church in my own ward.....weirdly, since I haven't been there since the first Sunday of the semester. Still, it was a lovely day at church and Kelly and Dahl came, too.

7. presents :)

8. dinner at the Salmons, which was delicious as always.

9. phone calls from my Grandma Connor, my siblings, and my mom.

10. a birthday package from my family! Nice-os :)

It was a wonderful birthday and I hope next year's is just as good!

Chopin and Show'n-a-shan

Before you start to read this, I should warn you: this is going to be a really weird post. I'm just thinking a lot about bathrooms at the moment, and this post definitely reflects that.

OK.

When we were younger, my sister Kelly told me that every time she flushed the toilet, she thought in her head the following chant: "Show'n-a-shannnnn-ba-da-dam-bam-bammm-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw! Boom, ba da doom boom. WOO!-bang." Try and say it. That's what a toilet flush sounds like. Ever since then, I have also heard this chant in my head every time I flush.

Today, I went to the bathroom in the library. Fourth floor, outside of the LRC. For those of you that aren't aware, the front room of this bathroom can be a magical, posh room of luxury if you want to take a nap, and is completely furbished with couches, pillows, and arm chairs. I myself have been there on many occasions between classes to catch a quick snooze, and I've always had a pleasant experience (barring the time I was rudely awaken by someone with explosive diarrhea). However, if you are not going there for a nap, and instead to use the facilities, you might feel like you are walking into an important audition, which you will give from a confessional booth instead of from a stage.

I was going there to use the facilities.

I walked in to find three of the couches occupied with sleeping girls, one of the armchairs occupied by a girl studiously doing her homework, and the other armchair invitingly unoccupied. Duly noted. I made my way to the confessional booth bathroom stall, acutely aware of the heavy silence. As I walked in and closed the door, not a sound could be heard other than the irregular scratching of pen on paper. I'm sure all the girls in the heavenly foyer area were concentrating on their own activities, but I was squeamishly diffident to the idea of four utter strangers knowing exactly how I spent the next minute or so.

Let's just be clear: I've never had a shy bladder. My sister cannot pee in a cup to save her life, contrary to sound science that states that the contents of four water bottles all consumed in quick succession must come out one way or another. I, on the other hand, apparently have a closer relationship to camels than most people and don't need much water. This is nice for many reasons--for example, I hardly ever get thirsty, and I don't have to carry a water bottle around with me. However, there are also a few downsides, the most relevant being that pretty soon after I do have a drink of water, I had better be on the lookout for a bathroom. So I've never really suffered from Kelly's complex.

But today, as I sat in my stall, wishing the girls in the foyer would kindly put in their headphones for a minute, I would like to think that I at least felt some of her pain. It wasn't all bad, though; because of this, I thought of a wonderful idea.

Classical music should always be playing in the restroom. I mean seriously....why are bathrooms so quiet anyway? No one wants to hear everyone else doing their thing. I appreciate such innovations as loud hand dryers, clunky paper towel dispensers, and over-eager automatic flushers that help eliminate some of the awkwardness. But day after day, because none of these modern conveniences exist in the primitive bathroom by the LRC, girls are forced to shuffle abashedly from their stalls past four or five girls who may as well have been in the stall with them.

If classical music was playing throughout the bathroom, this would no longer be such an ordeal. You could time everything perfectly. Cymbals would benevolently cover up every unseemly sound that might come from your stall. Gone would be the days of awkwardly waddling past your unintentional audiences. Classical music would put the pleasure back in peeing.

Now I'd like to go back to the anecdote I brought up earlier about "Show'n-a-shannnnn-ba-da-dam-bam-bammm-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw! Boom, ba da doom boom. WOO!-bang." When I thought of this idea of having music in the bathrooms, I thought it was brilliant. Now that I have thought about it a little more, I've come to the conclusion that I associate music with going to the bathroom. Here are the reasons I have come up with for why this might be:

1. This whole "show'n-a-shannnnn" chant. I've thought it ever since I was little. Is it anything, really, other than adding music to a typical bathroom routine?

2. The "pee-pee in the pot" song. When we were potty-training, my mom would sing the following song:

"I am learning how to pee-pee-ee in the potty,

Pee. Pee. Pee. Pee! In the pot.

Pee. Pee. Pee. Pee! Go right in.

Pee. Pee. Pee. Pee! Do it again."

There's another bathroom-music connection.

3. One time when my grandparents were visiting, my grandma spent 5 minutes to describe a "lovely, musical" episode of flatulence she had recently experienced. So I guess it runs in the family to connect the two.

4. When I was in orchestra in high school, my director, Mr. O'Bryan, would frequently tell us that our performance had sounded like poop. In one particular case, he told the oboe that she should embrace her role as "the kid who comes along and pees in the sandbox and ruins it for everyone." (In other words, she was supposed to play as obnoxiously as possible.) Well, well. Music and bathrooms.

5. I remember one FHE when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I left to go to the bathroom. For some reason, as soon as I got in the bathroom, I had to sing. I hadd to. So I sang my little heart out for the entirety of my visit, and when I was done, I went out to see that my whole family had left and hidden in the laundry room. It was a funny experience and yet another reason why I associate the bathroom with music--it just seems natural.

So in conclusion. All I'm trying to say is, if elevators can have music in them, shouldn't bathrooms, too?

And just while we're on the subject of bathrooms, I'd like to make a note for the boys, too. Apparently, there are three unspoken rules of using the men's restroom. I've heard that they are:

1. Don't talk to each other.

2. Don't look at each other.

3 If there is a urinal open that is not immediately next to a urinal being used, use that one.

Here's what I think they should be:

1. Don't poop in the urinals.

2. Don't urinate anywhere other than in the urinals (i.e., on the walls, ceiling, etc.)

3. No racing. Everyone should be allowed to comfortably go at his own pace.

Of course, I have no authority on the matter whatsoever. I'm a girl. I've been in the boys bathroom a few times, I will admit, but never to use the urinal. I never plan to use a urinal. These rules are just things that I think sound good, and if I were a man, I would appreciate everyone adhering to them.

I think I've touched on enough awkward subjects for one post. Good night :)