People are nice.

"I'm open over here, hun," the check-out lady calls from the next aisle over.
I thank her, back up and steer into her aisle, start unloading my dinner groceries.
"How're you doin' today," she asks as she scans.
"I'm good, thanks!" I respond automatically.
On second thought, "This gray weather is starting to get to me a little, though." Something easy to commiserate over with a friendly check-out lady, I assume. But no sounds of empathy are forthcoming.
"Just ready for a little sunshine, ya know?" I continue. Who wouldn't "amen" sunshine? We've had three clear days in as many weeks; the rest have mostly been dark, still and gloomy.
"Beep," responds the check-out scanner.
"I guess you get used to it," I conclude lamely, finishing my unloading. Maybe these Midwesterners don't even notice the winter gloom anymore.
"Beep," from behind the conveyer.
Hmph. So much for friendly check-out ladies.

I tell her I have the store card, which she scans, then squints at.
"It's from the Smith's in Utah, that's what Krogers are called there."
"So you're from Utah?" She looks at me with interest. "You're sure a looong way from home!"
"Yeah, I'm actually from Calif--"
"You ever been to the Grand Canyon?" She interrupts with childish enthusiasm. "I always wanted to ride down there on a donkey."
I laugh. "You should! It's beautiful!"
"Do they still do that? I always wanted to."
"Sure they do, you should totally go."
She chuckles, shakes her head. "I always wanted to ride down the Grand Canyon on a donkey."
She hands me my receipt.

It's Christmas! Let's be glad!

This has been the longest, loviest Christmas season for me and Chris. I meant to write loveliest, but lovey -- that too. We bought a midget tree and decorated our little Indianapolis townhouse a few days before Thanksgiving so we'd have time to soak it in before leaving for home fairly early in December, so we had almost three weeks of full-on Indiana Christmas (cold) followed by another two weeks of California Christmas (not cold). We actually OD'ed on Christmas music a week before Christmas was here.

Our Indiana Christmas routine was as follows:
1. Walk in door, flip light switch.
2. Plug in Christmas tree and outdoor lights.
3. Press play on whichever Sufjan Stevens Christmas EP is in the stereo.
4. Plug in the candle warmer with Nutmeg and Orange Zest. (Thanks Aunt Kris!)

Instant Christmas.

If you don't have Sufjan's little collection of Christmas songs you probably need it, it's just perfect. Like I said, we listened to a lot of Christmas music this year, but I think our other favorites were the kid-movie soundtracks: Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

We were completely in love with our baby tree, although I'm sure your tree was perfectly nice as well. We found these little woodland creature ornaments and I may have also perched them all over the house. And said goodbye to them before leaving. Individually.

This was my first year doing any Christmas sweet-making, which included a massive batch of really rich and whip-creamy and delicious egg nog, a mint oreo dessert which taught me not to bring anything ice cream-based to a party, and, most notably, an epic caramel popcorn fail. My second batch of caramel burned, and some poor decisions regarding how to keep the boiling burned mess from cementing in our pot led to boiling burned caramel on the floor and boiling burned caramel on Chris' hands and feet. It was the caramel Armageddon, and you are glad you weren't there.

Christmas Part II in CA has been gorgeous and I have been loving, loving seeing my friends and hanging out with both our families and trying to be within view of the Pacific as much as possible. I am such a happy camper right now, and I hope the season is being so good to you, too. Merry Christmas, you guys.

Texting through the ages, a compendium. IDK.

I just sent a text that wasn't particularly funny but had a 'haha' in it anyway, and I thought about how much more texting I used to do, and that little excited feeling that used to come with the buzz of the phone, and the whole game of managing how into someone you appeared by how long you waited to text back, and etc. For the past few months I've been using my resurrected 2005 Nokia (while I wait for my AT&T contract to expire) so using the phone at all is a bit of a throwback.  People give it a little raised eyebrow when I pull it out--it's a little mini-brick--and for the first few days of hearing my old ringtone and text alert I felt like I'd time-warped to mid-college. I haven't changed anything on it, really, it's like a museum piece. I started deleting all the four-year-old text messages as soon as I'd charged it back on, but stopped halfway through, because history! There's one where one of my best friends announces she's an aunt, and this year her nephew is, you know-- four! LIFE. Here, let's go through some illustrative then-and-nows.

"Newcombe just asked me to meet him for hot cocoa after work tomorrow ;)" -Sherstin
Today Sherstin is very married and it is not to Newcombe. Newcombe turned out to be kind of a pompous ass, I think, or maybe I'm just thinking that because, you know. His name is Newcombe.

"Good luck on finals! xoxo" -Sabrina
The difference between now and then, in this case, is that then I had to take finals, and now I do not. Sabrina is still great.

"I will sleep for you, I hope that works... good luck, and you know who to call if you need anything!"-Kent
Kent is the nicest friend you could ever have, and if you live in New York, I recommend him. This text illustrates the fact that I was sometimes (always) awake when other people were sleeping, and that I was still doing school the only way I ever did school.

"Hey I hope you had a merry christmas and a happy happy birthday." -anonymous.
I don't know who this number is anymore, but they seem very nice. Who wished me a merry Christmas in 2005? Please leave a comment and let's figure this out.

"Do you know (so and so?)" -Cassie
I did not know so and so, but I know where this text is going. There was a blind date with so and so in my future! It was so-so.

"Thanks Kristen [sic]. I had a great time. Hopefully I'll see you at (thus and such) tomorrow. Good night."- So and so
By this time, a perfectly pleasant but forgettable date was already in my past.

"Go to a party with me. where are you. you have to go with me." -Brit
Here, the difference is that then we were single ladies who needed single wing-ladies. Today, we are married ladies. Married ladies who also party!

"What are you doing up there this early, you should be in bed for at least 8 more hours."
I think texts making fun of my sleep schedule date back to the invention of the text message.

Oh, look, several texts later, different friend: "I'm so proud of your early day today kris cross." Like I say.

"KRIS. don't be sad cuz boys are dumb right now...we will look back and laugh cuz we will have found our true love...one day...soon or far I just don't know." -Jill
I love that this is saved in my phone and that it's from summer '05 and Jill met Jon like one second later. I don't think she'll mind me sharing. This kind of text is a good reason to save old phones.

"I got soul but I'm not a soldier... fyi." -Shannon

This day in history! These don't showcase the fact that I used to be really, really good at flexting. Hold on... oh no. I was going to make fun of news media latching onto the word 'sexting' but after I wrote it a little voice told me to google it and sure enough! Flirting + texting= flexting is already in the urban dictionary. Yikes, world. We are just going to move forward. Flirting through text sounds annoying and juvenile, which, I'll give you the juvenile, but I'm not talking about back-and-forths that would go on for more than a few texts. I've never supported having actual conversation via text-- I think four on each side is about the limit, probably still a few too many. I don't even know where I'm going with this, so let's get right to the takeaway message: I was clever and not annoying and the best. Now I'm 25 and this 2005 keypad is very tiny. Too tiny for funny. I mostly stick to "ILY mor thN u cUd evr knw +I wntU 2B my soulmate 4evr pls." Stuff like that.

Maybe when I'm in California (In six days. FOR THREE WEEKS.) I'll dig through the drawer that is the grave of several even older phones and we'll all have another good chuckle.

The worst thing in the world.

Midnight snack craving. A few bites of pumpkin pie? No, still craving. Half a slice of pumpkin pie? No. The whole slice of pumpkin pie except for one bite? No. This isn't helping. Zero in on forgotten, unopened bag of lime tortilla chips. Yes. Mmm, salty. Needs something. Needs salsa. No salsa, but we do have tomatoes, onion, even green chilies, and also a mini-chopper! Perfect, but too healthy. CREAM CHEESE. I hadn't been stocking any lately, but this week I bought some with bagels! YES. IT'S ALL COMING TOGETHER. I will warm the cream cheese and mix it with the freshly chopped salsa and eat it with the lime chips and everything will be the best, the empty space in my stomach and in my heart will be filled and then I will sleep like a baby.

The cream cheese is not in the fridge.

I move things around. Sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, all manner of dairy but where is the cream cheese WHERE IS THE CREAM CHEESE. I find and check the grocery receipt. There it is, right there, cream cheese, $1.28, bought and paid for and not in my fridge. I check the "pantry" (food bookshelf) because maybe I absentmindedly stuck it by the bagels? The pasta? I did not. I find the car keys and slide into flip flops and I check the trunk and under-seats, and it is very, very cold outside tonight and if the cream cheese were out there, it would have kept just fine since yesterday, I'm sure it would have, but it is not there.

I have no cream cheese.

I don't have the heart to chop up the vegetables, now. There's no reason to waste perfectly good tomatoes on a 1 a.m. craving they cannot fulfill. (Did I say midnight? I meant 1:30.) I mean, I didn't have cilantro anyway. Without the cream cheese nothing seems worthwhile anymore. Why do we do anything, anyway? When there's no cream cheese.

I scrape a little sour cream onto a few chips to help me feel better.

It doesn't.

Well.

It was a valiant effort. I just couldn't bring it home for the finish.

Maybe it's ok, though. I was feeling like by the end of November I would never want to update this blog again, but after taking a few days off I kind of miss it!

I didn't really do what I was planning to do with NaBloPoMo, which was to finally flesh out some thoughts I've wanted to write down and record some moments before they fade out. I don't know what happened. Or I do, and it's that late-night, 'deadline', everyday blogging is more conducive to everyday randomness than it is to thoughtful writing. Which is fine--the blog looks a lot more fun this month, at least, with all these pictures and video and music floating around.  I usually try to stick to using my big girl words here, but I guess I've come to terms with words living in harmony with pictures and whatever else. These are exciting times.

Thanksgiving in Chicago was lovely. We stayed with one of Chris' old roommates and his family, who are the best and who also just moved into a very cozy house with an attic and a basement and several secret stairways.(!) We went with them to help out at a restaurant whose owner hosts a huge free Thanksgiving every year for anyone who needs it, which is how I ended up bartending for a good part of the holiday. Of course it was "bartending" in the loosest sense of the word. Yes, it was the bar and all the alcohol went through me and my "bartending" partner Juan, but we were definitely not mixing anything hard-- as in level of difficulty or alcoholic content. Really we were more like official wine-pourers, beer-openers and sangria garnishers. But I did finally learn how to uncork a wine bottle! And that is nothing to sneeze at.

We got to hang out with one of my college friends that night (serious envy of downtown Chicago living) and the next day we had Thanksgiving Dinner the Second with a friend from home and her in-laws in LaFayette, Indiana (where Purdue is). I meant it when I said people were the nicest. It's just a good feeling to see old friends when you're far from home. There were also several friends having dinners in Indy if we'd been here, and I'm just feeling thankful for all the good people we know. And also, for another year that I've escaped putting my hand up a dead turkey butt.

Turkey Run

We're off to Chicago for Thanksgiving! This will be the first year I haven't spent this holiday with my family and extended family, but people are just the nicest and we're really looking forward to our first Thanksgiving in the Midwest.

We spent Chris' fall break weekend last month exploring some of Indiana's state parks while the leaves were changing. This one is called Turkey Run. Most of Indiana is fairly flat, but glaciers and their streams carved twisting gorges into this little part of it, making it really fun to explore. The story is that pioneer hunters used to herd wild turkeys down through the gorges and catch them at the bottom. Sorry, turkeys. You got Thanksgivinged.

Consider this the next installment of "Indiana in the Fall: Listen Californians You Can All Stop With the Pitying Looks Because It's Actually Very Pretty Here."

(When a sunbeam pokes through on a cloudy day, you have to soak it up.)

Gray day scoot.

We've tried to be outside as much as possible before winter, and Indiana weather has been really good to us so far. There's lots of gray days, but there's nearly as many gorgeous blue ones, and the leaves! Never have I lived somewhere so leafy.

These are from a drizzly sort of afternoon in October when we needed to get out. We're right on the edge of Indy, and if you head away from the city in the right direction you're in farmland almost immediately. Also, bobblehead.

Quotationing

Sometimes I underline while reading. Not very frequently, but a few of the books in my bookshelf have all my favorite lines marked, and I wish they all did. It makes it so easy to flip back through them and be reminded right away of why I liked them.

Here's a few random lines from a quick flip-through of three random books. From The House of Mirth:

"Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and cherished a vague fear of meeting a bull."

"He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her."

"Lily considered with interest the expression of their faces: the girl's turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled, while the man lounging at her side already betrayed the encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile."

I'm sure I underlined the last one emphatically because, and I don't want to perpetuate BYU stereotypes, but sometimes, yes, there's a lot of empty plate faces being held up to dates at Cafe Rio. But of course there's plate faces everywhere.

These other two books I pulled out aren't turning out as quotable as I was hoping. I thought The End of the Affair was piercingly insightful when I read it, and I'm sure it still is, but none of my underlined bits stand alone very well. When I read it years ago, I kept thinking yes, this is how it feels to over-analyze and agonize over a relationship you're trying to get over. Maybe I was in a more empathetic place then, but these lines aren't doing it for me:

 "If our love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck."

I mean sure, I guess. Or bite your love in the neck and turn it into the undead, same difference. Just kidding. This is basically William Faulkner's favorite book, the back cover would have you know, and he doesn't strike me as a New Moon type. Really though, I loved this book, and I feel guilty about giving you this one line to judge it by. I'm sorry!

The third book, Absurdistan, isn't very good blog material either, because although it's fiction, it's very political and this post is not. And although it's very clever, the novel as a whole turned out to be much too crass for delicate flowers like ourselves. But, ok, here's a few inoffensive hi-lited lines:

"I cried for the children of some Kindergarten No. 567, and for my own impotence and collusion in everything around me."

"Would it be eliminationist of me to say that I wanted to kill him?"

"'See, the way 'Absurdsvani' is pronounced and spelled, it's utterly impossible for an American to feel anything for it. You have to be able to use a country as a child's first name to get anywhere. Rwanda Jones. Somalia Cohen. Timor Jackson. Bosnia Lewis-Wright."

"'I am a multiculturalist.' Except there was no Russian word for "multiculturalist," so I had to say, 'I am a man who likes others.'"

Gobble.

Here are three things I've made at least twice this fall:

 -Butternut squash soup
 -Baked honey-glazed chicken over rice
 -Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Here is one thing I've made at least eight times this fall:

 -Mac n' Cheese

Here are two things our moms sent us because they are going to miss us so much at Thanksgiving:

-Turkey-shaped chocolate truffles.

Oh, that's only one thing? Because that's what both our moms sent us, independently. Having two of them works out quite nicely.

Cry for help.

We saw The Invention of Lying at the dollar theater tonight, and for having all of the funniest people in it, it was not very funny at all. At one point near the beginning the unfunny drove us to check out the only other movie that started around the same time, and although Tim Burton produced Nine, it was not as geared toward adults as one might think. The five minutes we saw were like dystopian Rescue Rangers. Luckily, Lying was much more enjoyable after a few minutes of the alternative. Also, let's talk about Jennifer Garner's lips! They're like a life force, right? I'm so tired. How about that Sandra Bullock, whose newest preview is now playing in the dollar? What are we at, Sandra, eight movies this year? I mean, am I right or am I right?! Oh my gosh. Bed. I'm never posting again.

P.S. No vampires were used in the making of The Invention of Lying, and for that I am grateful.