I’m crazy busy tonight studying for a test I have to take tomorrow morning. Y’all remind me to tell you the story behind this picture tomorrow. It’s a good one.
The Good Times Are Killing Me
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Tag Archives: sarahthe
The Hippeastrum Stop Motion Video
Thoughts:
1.) Scout bumped the tri-pod several times, so the continuity of the camera placement isn’t 100%. While this makes me sad, I’m not THAT bummed about it because,
2.) DAMN those plants bloom fast. I’m learning about stop motion photography — something I never thought I’d bother with. I needed something slower so that when you do things like, oh, SLEEP AT NIGHT, the plant doesn’t run away with itself while you’re not watching. And
3.) speaking of watching, next time, I’ll add a little zoom to the equation. I guess I’m too used to being able to crop.
I’m incredibly proud of myself — not for taking the pictures well (because I didn’t) or streamlining the lighting or any of that (again, because I didn’t. In fact, Zack actually pressed the “go” button on most of these pictures for me, since I was at work) — but because I figured out how to make a stop motion movie. I’d never used any movie editing software before. In fact, I had no idea what software I was even going to use until I hunted through my Applications Folder for something that said “Movie” in it. iMovie was reading and willing to work with me, and within 20 minutes I went from uploading the pictures to iPhoto to finishing the (teeny, 8 second) movie. How crazy cool is that? It’s as if they want their applications to be easy for people to use. NOVEL.
*The internet (and my internet savvy friend) have informed me that this flower is a Hippeastrum. Commonly mistaken (and mispackaged, even!) for an Amarylis, yes. But not an Amarylis. It’s a Hippeastrum. Which sounds like a drink that Jonny Depp would ironically drink at a Pirates of the Caribbean party on the East Coast.
Scenes From Life
In the house:
Me: “Zack, I have to go to Walgreens, do you want to come?”
Him: “Sure. What do you have to get?”
Me: “Oh, I have to pick up a prescription. (Whispering) And a pregnancy test.”
Him: “And a what?”
Me: “And a pregnancy test.”
Him: Stunned Silence. “Really?”
Me: “Yeah. I’m pretty late.”
Him: “Dear God, If you love us, please, let Sarah be barren.”
In the car on the way:
Him: “What’s with all the baby clothes in the trunk?”
Me: “MP was giving them away, so I grabbed them to give to Sarah1 and the girls.”
Him: “Oooooh.”
Me: “I guess it does look weird, me taking you to Walgreens for a pregnancy test with a trunk full of baby clothes. I bet you were all, ‘Woah, she’s thinking ahead!’”
Him: “Hardly. Babies don’t even need clothes until they’re 2 years old. Before that you can just dress them in paper sacks. It’s not like they’re going to remember it anyway. And if they do, when they turn 2 and you start dressing them in real clothes, they’ll be all, ‘I LOVE YOU, YOU’RE THE BEST FOR GIVING ME THESE SNAZZY CLOTHES!’”
Back home again:
Him: “How long ’til we know if we have to start saving up paper sacks?”
(for the record: not pregnant.)
Disaster Dream
I had insane dreams last night that were something of a mad cross between The Day After Tomorrow and The Happening starring me and co-starring Jared Leto. I woke up in the middle of the night, crying, having just informed my dream-father on my dream-cell phone that I wasn’t going to survive the Giant Tsunami that was about to wash me out of NYC.
Zack went into his normal nightmare disaster control when he woke to hear me crying my way through my REM cycle. Since usually I only cry in my dreams when he dies, he woke me up, assuring me that it was okay, he was there and alive and well. Typically, that’s quite comforting to me. This time, however, I was like, “GOOD FOR YOU, BUT WHAT ABOUT NEW YORK?”
Actually, I didn’t say anything out loud cause I was still crying. But I totally thought it.
When we woke up this morning, I told Zack what I could remember of the dream–about the natural disasters and facing my own death and all of that. He smartly observed that maybe being in an earthquake effected me more profoundly than I realized. I agreed. And then I secretly wished that I could have at least traded Jared Leto for Jake Gyllenhaal. Cause, you know, Jake has some experience in these sort of situations.
On Hollywood
We are so in California, and we’re not wasting any time. Here are some highlights for you:
Yesterday Zack, Galen and I jumped into the Hollywood culture full force by taking a hike up Mount Hollywood. I thought, after reading the information about it, that it was going to be a gentle easy hike. And, as usual, I was totally wrong. It might have been an easy hike if we had done it before or had any idea about how to do it. But we hadn’t, and we didn’t. So we blindly started trudging up hills until we found the right way on the 3rd try. Zack (who knows full well how weepy I can be while hiking) made me hike up 2 hills unnecessarily. Once we were done with about 2/3rds of the climbing, we crossed paths with a couple coming down the mountain. We asked them about the path’s direction to double check that we were moving towards the intended final destination. She assured us that we were going the right way. She told us to keep going until we came to a water tower, then there was a short trail that went almost straight up, and it would land us at the base of the HOLLYWOOD sign. We walked for about 5 more minutes and then came across a path by a water tower that went almost straight up. We were like, “Hey, this must be it!” We soon found out that the “almost straight up” trail ended after about 10 yards. After that point there was nowhere to go but back down. Zack and Galen were like, “Hey, that’s kind of a trail, isn’t it?” as they pointed to the SIDE OF THE CLIFF. I was like, “I’m not sure that’s a trail, as much as it’s a place where the water has just formed a run-off path.” Not one to back down to a challenge, I agreed to climb STRAIGHT UP THE SIDE OF THE CLIFF upon the boy’s suggestion that the DIRT CLIFF-SIDE was really the “right way” to get back on track.
The three of us barely scrambled up the side of the mountain, dirt and sand clods breaking underneath our weight the entire way up. Once we were to the top, we saw that there was a weak pseudo-trail that went straight up the hill (more hill, less cliff, but still very steep) and we all chose to follow that. At that point the boys had realized that we were in something of a predicament. We had barely made it up the cliff face without falling, and getting down was going to be really difficult. They basically relied on me to choose if we should go up further or not. I was like, “well, how often are we really going to be on Mt. Hollywood having to make this decision, right? I guess we have to keep going until we can’t go anymore.” The boys agreed and we trudged up until we came to a place where the “power line trail” (and I use that term loosely, it was more like a water gully) ended and it was no longer safe for us to continue. By that point we had landed ourselves fantastically close to the sign itself, but on the bottom side instead of the top side. Before we left, we read that there was a fence that you weren’t supposed to cross, and if you did and were caught, you would be charged a $103 fine for crossing the fence. From where we stopped climbing the hill, we could clearly make out the $103 fence that we weren’t supposed to cross. And we were on the wrong side of it. Whoops.
The successes of the trip are as follows: I didn’t cry, we got really close to the Hollywood sign, we did something outdoors and athletic, we were adventurous and brave, and now Galen thinks that Zack and I are some Foliage Identifying Bad-Asses. The failures are weak in comparison. I got my new shoes dirty, and we broke a few laws. PSH. TOTALLY WORTH IT.
After our trip to Mt. Hollywood, we met up with David and went to a comedy club to see Galen’s girlfriend perform. She was doing a 10-minute bit in a little club called Smiles here in LA. What I didn’t realize was that David, Galen, Zack and I were going to be the only actual patrons there. The rest of the dozen-ish people in the audience were comics themselves. David and Galen had inadvertantly invited us to our very own private comedy club viewing. The four of us sat at our Lone Ranger of a table for over two hours, smiling like goons, being the target of (and sometimes the brunt of) every single joke. When a comedian wasn’t funny and they said, “Tough crowd,” THEY WERE LOOKING RIGHT AT US. One comedian even took to giving us lessons. “Look,” he said, “we’re comedians. And these lights are bright. So the only way we know if you think we’re funny, is if you laugh. So if you think something’s funny, laugh. And we’ll make more jokes in that vein. And if it’s not funny, don’t laugh. Then we’ll change the subject.” It was completely bizarre and perfect and memorable and I can’t believe we had the whole place to ourselves.
The best one-liner of the night came from a comic whose name I can’t remember. He said, “I tried to be hot, but it didn’t work. Man, if I brought SexyBack, all I’d get is in-store credit.”
Today Galen, Zack and I spent a while in the afternoon hanging out in Hollywood. We saw the Chineese Theatre, Kodak Theatre, and all the stars in the sidewalk. I took a picture of Kenny Loggin’s star just for my mom. We went to the world’s largest music store (Amoeba) to drool over CDs and we barely escaped with our bank accounts in tact. After we went to Amoeba, I wanted tacos. Galen suggested that we go to a place called Sharky’s. You know who else wanted to eat at Sharky’s today? Nichole Richie. That’s right. Homegirl walked in right after we did. She even at there, sitting at the table right next to ours. Her proximity to our location caused me to have to keep my usual “OMG, FAMOUS PERSON, AM LOSING MY SHIT NOW” routine to a dull roar. It was difficult. I could barely speak in complete sentences. Galen, who’s almost a 4-year Hollywood veteran tried to soothe my OMG nerves by reassuring me that he, too, still thought it was totally badass to run into famous people. This helped 6%. 94% of me continued to lose my shit over a Hollywood Starlet that I really care 0% about. Also, she seems to be preggers again. How did I miss that? Apparently 2nd children are way less tabloid-worthy than their older siblings. And then people wonder why 2nd born children have such complexes. Pshaw.
Last but not least, this evening Zack and I traveled south to the town of Brea to see one of Zack’s BFFs and his lovely lady. They took us to dinner at a very nice, very up-scale restaurant that her dad owns. While we were in the middle of the first course, I noticed that my chair started bouncing, as if the restaurant floor was something akin to a highway overpass or a bridge or something. Then the chandeleers in the restaurant started swaying. I looked up to Natalie and she was like, “Wow! Earthquake!”
WOW EARTHQUAKE?!?!?!?! PUNCUATION OVERLOAD?!?! Holy freaking crap. At 8:27 p.m., I was in a 4.0 magnitude earthquake. I was giddy for about an hour after the shake. Zack and I had been informed that there were little tremors happening all over Southern California that day, and we had been disappointed that we had missed all of them until that point. So OH MY GOSH, you can’t even imagine how stupidly excited I was to have really and truly FELT one. What was I thinking during the earthquake, you want to know? I was thinking, “Wow. Someone really fat must be jumping nearby, cause they are totally shaking my chair.” God, I’m eloquent.
So there you have it. I have hiked the Hollywood Mountain, seen the sights, had lunch a table over from Nicole Richie and been in an earthquake. We are SO California, and we’ve barely even started.
On Speaking To A 5 Year-Old
We’ve been staying with my cousin Amy, her husband, Sam The Army Man, and their kids, Sadie and Seth, plus one bun in the oven.
Sadie is 5, and just starting to master reading and writing. As a result, she’s paying closer attention to what people say, the words that are on signs, etc. This makes for some entertaining moments.
Yesterday my Aunt Karen (dad’s sister, Amy’s mom) and I were in the backseat of the suburban with Sadie when Sadie started talking about names. “My name is Sadie,” she said, “and your name is Sarah. Sadie comes from Sarah and Sarah means princess!” I was all, “Wow, I didn’t know that Sadie was a derivative of Sarah.” And Sadie said, “what’s derivative mean?”
How do you explain what ‘derivative’ means to a 5 year-old? Karen and I blubbered around for the next 10 minutes trying to come up with an understandable, accurate description of the word ‘derivative’. After that situation, we have made a pretty solid effort to make sure that the words that we say out loud will be words that she’ll be able to understand, if for nothing else, to avoid the 10 minutes of bumbling around trying to figure out a more apt way to communicate.
We were doing pretty well until this morning when Zack and Sam snuck into the ‘grown-up’ living room to watch some Discovery Chanel. They were watching Bear Grylls’s Man vs. Wild when Aunt Karen and I meandered into the room just in time to watch Bear bite the head off of a live frog and swallow it. As I was dry heaving into Zack’s lap, Karen said out loud, “This show is just TMI.” Sadie the Sponge quickly asked, “What’s TMI spell?” Le Sigh. That one, thankfully was easier to explain.
But the question that easily reigns supreme as the best Sadie question came this morning when Sam turned off the TV during a commercial to watch a video on his lap top. Sadie asked Sam if he would turn on the TV, and he said no, that he needed to watch this video really quick because (he’s about to be deployed to Afganistan and) he’s going to be working with the Canadians. To which Sadie quickly replied, “What’s a Canadian?”
How We’re Doing
I have depressingly little to say, but the good news is that my wordlessness is not directly indicative of my mood.
Zack and I are in Colorado Springs spending time with our family. Rosalyn’s memorial service was this afternoon at 1:30 and it went quite well. It was a lovely service where a large crowd of family and friend gathered despite the 1/2 a foot of fresh snow that was accumulated to talk about how charming and entertaining and enchanting Rosalyn was. After the service we spent time hanging out with family. Then for dinner a handful of our crowd trekked to On The Border for margaritas and nachos and COME ON. Doesn’t get much better than that.
Despite the fact that I’m here for a memorial service, the happiness that comes from catching up/spending time with family members that I love and don’t get to see very often has far outweighed the sadness that we all feel about Rosalyn’s death. We’re sad, of course, but through the sadness we have laughed and told stories. We have recounted all the hundreds of sayings that she originated in the family, and we lacknowledge how much she would have appreciated how much fun we were all having together.
So don’t worry about us. We’re here, and we’re happy, and we’re on vacation. This would admittedly be better if Roz was here to enjoy it with us, but we’ll take what we can get; we’re just happy to know that she’s moved on to her next life, the life where she’s cancer free, the life where she knows no pain.
Zack Wrong About Something, World Stops Spinning
Sometimes Zack and I like to play games. We don’t always play games like normal people play games. Whereas a normal game might be something like Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit, our games are more along the lines of me playing a game of “see if you can move me back to the bed, even when I’m unable to flex any muscles/unable to bend/not cooperating at all” and Zack begrudgingly playing along until I give up and make out with him.
Even though Zack would describe this fun, dazzling, entertaining activity as “frustrating as hell” and “truly bothersome,” I really, really enjoy it.
Fact: last night I drank 2 mojitos and a margarita. As discussed earlier, I’m still trying to make the most out of my pre-nursing school social life. (I am having a blast re-discovering the sociability that is possible when you only have a job where you work 40 hours a week, and that’s all.) After the 2 mojitos and a margarita, I was still fine. I really was. I came home, I watched some TV with Zack, we chit chatted for the better part of an hour and a half. Good times all around, right? Then Zack gives me the signal. The signal that It Is Time. Time For Things. You catching my drift here?
So I decided, hey. It IS Time. Time for a rousing round of Zack’s favorite game, “See If You Can Move Your Stiff-As-A-Board Wife To The Bedroom.”
That game is HILARIOUS. Even on the average, non-mojitorita’ed day, I giggle uncontrollably while Zack is lugging me around the house, trying to make sure that I don’t injure myself (possible ways that I could and might have already injured myself playing games of this sort: flop off the bed while pretending to be paralyzed, slam my head into the door frame as he’s carrying me around if I’m pretending to be unable to bend any joints, etc.). I can’t help it. It’s a funny game. But last night. Oh. Last night, after 2 mojitos and a margarita, I was a flat out mess.
Zack swears that I laughed for 20 solid minutes. It was around this point in the evening that my exhaustion+alcohol+delirium added up to = memory loss, so I am not able to confirm or deny the exact amount of time that I did or did not laugh at how utterly hilarious it was that I was pretending that I couldn’t move. I can assure you, though, my husband is not a person who is prone to exaggeration or any other form of light-hearted, white-lie, story-enhancing un-truths.
Today while we were having lunch, he and I started rehashing the evening’s events to help clarify some memories that were a little fuzzy on my end. During our conversation, he explained to me that he was ever so slightly disturbed by my 20 minutes of maniacal laughter while he was trying to be romantic towards me. I was like, “Disturbed?! Why? That’s totally normal!” He went on to say that it was not, in fact, normal for a person to ever laugh so hard that they couldn’t stop. He even went as far as to say that he was pretty sure that nobody else in the planet had ever felt that way.
Let me tell you what I did at that moment: I stopped, I held my palms to the sky, and I soaked up that moment. You know why? Because Zack is so very rarely incorrect. When he is wrong about something, I really have to take the time to soak it up, make a good lasting memory out of it–cause it’s going to be a long time until the next time that it happens.
So here it is. Internet, please help me tell my husband how wrong he is. Uncontrollable, can’t-stop, usually-about-nothing giggling/laughter is ABSOLUTELY something that is not JUST ME. There’s a lot of us non-stoics out there. Let your voice be heard. If you need me, I’ll be in the backyard, relishing this Easter Miracle of Sarah Being Right And Zack Being Wrong.
Note: Zack has, since this afternoon, changed his position to, “Well, maybe girls, but no guys ever get the giggles. Ever. And especially not sober guys.” See? He’s already backtracking. BWA HA HA.
She Calls Me “Tia”
Yesterday I stopped in to take some pictures of Kate, the younger of the nieces. She’s 17 months old now. She’s also stunning, fantastic and beautiful. See why I might be distraught at the thought of missing 15 months of that face?
25, with a pile of laundry to do.
Update:
My dad just called, saying a.) happy birthday, and b.) that he couldn’t wait until my NEXT period to see if it is better/worse than this one. I’ve been trying to get my parents to read my blog for years. Awesome dad has obviously started reading it consistently. Hi, dad. I can’t wait for my next period, either. Love you.
