Something to Giggle About

This past school year, I've been teaching Relief Society in my ward. Out of all the church callings I have ever had, it has been my favourite. There have been difficult lessons, awkward pauses where I suspect even if I did a tap dance people would still stare at me with the same dazed expression, and tricky topics; like when I had to teach my peers about drug addictions. However, none of my experiences relate to what happened to a friend of mine today.

Whenever there is a fifth Sunday in the month, we have a combined meeting of our Relief Society and Elders Quorum (ie - rather than split up for that one lesson block, the guys and girls are in the same lesson). Usually this is a chance for our bishop to teach us whatever he thinks we need to hear most that month. Today was a fifth Sunday.

Apparently, the bishopric forgot what Sunday it was, and so they assigned my friend Mike (who just moved into the ward last week) to teach the next lesson in the Gospel Principles manual same as usual. Upon arrival at church, the bishopric sees women filing into the Elders Quorum room, and suddenly remembers how many Sundays have already happened in the month of May. They pull Mike aside and tell him that he will not just be teaching the guys. The girls will be tagging along as well. What is Mike's lesson again? Oh yes. The Law of Chastity.

Welcome to the Ward, Mike! Sundays are always filled with lessons, inspiration, and moments of gratitude. Today I simply marveled at our way of welcoming the new guy, and profoundly gave thanks that I have never had to teach the most uncomfortable lesson in the book to a crowd of mixed gender twenty-something year olds of whom I know maybe a handful.

And for the record, once he stopped staring at the bishop in horror, Mike did an excellent job.

New Methods of Feeling Fabulous

When Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement, I like everyone else, glanced over the articles and promotional photos in the grocery store checkout. When Janine brought home MacLean's commemorative issue, I poured over it. Studying the pictures, the stories and the wedding plans, there was one thing that Kate Middleton had that I really wanted.


Her hat. Every time I saw those photos of William and Kate walking along in that blue dress, I looked at that hat and sighed with envy. Man I wish I had a hat like that. It would define my wardrobe.

In contemplation of our future monarch's coming nuptuals, my friend Leah and I decided we needed to celebrate. We determined the best way to do this would be to PVR the wedding so we didn't have to have our party at three in the morning, invite all our girlfriends over, drink tea, and eat cucumber sandwiches. Dressing up was mandatory. Hats were recommended.

My dad of course told me it was a silly purchase, but I saw this as a perfect excuse to make one of my silly dreams come true. I remembered a store I'd visited in Edmonton called Head Case. It sells practical hats like toques, berets and cowboy hats, as well as an array of classy society hats. I have been eyeing those hats for years wishing I could justify buying one, but I could never think of anywhere to wear it. Leah's tea party gave be a perfect excuse.

On a recent day trip to Edmonton, I stopped by Head Case with my sister Katey. It didn't take us long to find it. It was exactly what I wanted. I hadn't got far out of the store before I started to doubt my purchase. Had I just spent money on something I only had an excuse to wear once? Was this going to be one of those purchases I regretted making because it took up space in my closet and moved with me from home to home until I started to hate it and threw it out? Suddenly I felt incredibly silly.


It's on shopping trips like this that you need a sister or friend along to keep you in the right frame of mind. Katey asked me three questions:

1. Did I love it?
2. Did it make me feel pretty?
3. Had I made any indulgent purchases recently?

If my answers were yes, yes and no, I had nothing to worry about. By the time I was showing off my hat to my mom, I felt great again. Surely I could think of places to wear it other than Leah's tea party. I just had to have the confidence to pull it off.

The tea party was fantastic. Leah went all out, watching the wedding was fun, and I looked fabulous in my hat. The next day at church, we were all talking about how fun it had been and how much we had loved the excuse to wear a fabulous hat. We all agreed it was a shame people never wear hats in our society. Wanting to rectify the situation, we came to an agreement; the next time our ward had a lunch after church, we would all wear hats.

That day in sacrament meeting, our bishop announced the next Linger Longer would be the following week. We spread the word and gathered all the hats we had. The next Sunday, half the Foothills Relief Society was wearing hats. Most of us were too excited to wear them to wait till after our meetings. After some debate, we determined the correct etiquette allowed women to wear hats in church, and seeing our bishop had no objections, we wore them all through our meetings; sitting in the back row so we didn't block anyone's view. Did we get startled looks? Yes. Did the people in the other ward wonder aloud what was with the hats every time we passed them? Yes. Did everyone eventually smile and tell us we had some great hats? Absolutely.

We ran around all Sunday feeling fabulous in our hats. Every Linger Longer Sunday has now been declared Hat Sunday. The Foothills Relief Society is bringing hats back in style!

The Hair Room

My house was built by a man who has difficulty growing facial hair. I can tell this because there are no electical outlets in either of our bathrooms.

When I first moved in in December, I was made aware of the fact that I woul have to blow-dry, straighten, and curl my hair in my room. This can be nuisance when you have limited outlets, shelf space of mirror space lining up with the other two, and I have all three. Doing your hair on your bed while consulting the mirror on the closet door across the room is a nuisance; especially when you are paranoid like me and always think that if you're not careful setting down your curling iron, you will set your sheets on fire.

When Janine moved out in February, we had no one to take her spot, and her room (the one next door to mine) was left empty. After about a week, I looked at my messy room and did not want to face digging my way through to an outlet so I could straighten my hair. Looking at the empty one next to me with an outlet in easy reach of the mirrored closet door, I figured why not, and set up camp with my flat iron inside. Because I am such a neat and tidy person, I decided to leave the flat iron there with hairspray, a brush, and several bobby pins for company. No one else was using the room right away, and if anyone came by to see the room, I would just move it quickly.

The situation was simply too convenient, and so, for the past few months, Janine's old room has been dubbed; the Hair Room - where it's only real function is a place to straighten, curl, and blow-dry.


I think I make use of extra space nicely. I mean how many people can boast that they once in their life had a room entirely devoted to doing their hair?

Lawyer Kate: There is No Nice Ring to It

I always like to make fun of stupid news. I really thought I had seen it all when Dickens' fictional orphan was exposed as being well fed; making a scandal out the line "Please sir, can I have some more?"

Then today happened.

I arrived at work to find the paper on the table in the back room. My coworker Delby and I like to do the crossword, but we don't like to pay for the paper, so our choices usually go to MetroNews and the Calgary Sun; which are both more of advertising catalogues than newspapers. Still, the Sun usually has a few updates on what is going on in the world. You can imagine my surprise then, when I say today's front page headline.

Apparently, there is a lawyer in Calgary who looks like Kate Middleton. A few people have stopped her on the street wondering if she really is our future queen. This also makes sense because if I was about to marry a prince in Westminster Abbey next week, I know I would be hanging out in Calgary.

According to the Sun, this lawyer's name is Kate, has long brown hair, and lives in a British-style house. That is where the similarities stop.

I am pretty sure I ranted about the non-newsiness of this for twenty minutes before I remembered it was just the Sun.

Then I came home and googled the story. Imagine my surprise when I found the same story reported by the Calgary Herald.

What I wonder the most is how this "story" even came to the attention of the media. Did Kate the Lawyer call the Herald and Sun and say "I look like Kate Middleton sort-of-not-really. You should abandon the federal election and other news do feature me." What the hay?

Seriously, we are in the middle of an election, the verdict was just given on the murder trial of two children, and yet the story we led with was a girl who looks like Kate Middleton but not really?

Oh Calgary.

I Hope They Have These Brownies In Heaven

One night this week, my roommate Lou got home around 10:30; shortly after I arrived home and just as our other roommate Jessica was ending a date. Lou came home with a very important purchase; milk chocolate chips. Somehow through our conversation as we all summarized our days, the agreement was made that we would have to use them to make brownies right then and there.

I rushed to change out of work clothes and into pajamas covered with an apron, and when I returned, Lou had pulled out the brownie recipe she had just been bragging about. When I saw the title on the top of the index card, I did a double take.

Celestial Brownies?! Who names their brownies after heaven? I mean, always claim that salmon is the food of the gods, but really? Celestial Brownies? Just what was in this recipe?

Lou explained the story as we mixed together the ingredients. The brownies in the past had simply been called "Chocolate Chip Brownies," but then one day, she had been making them with a friend. This friend was just learning about our religion, and our take on heaven, or the Celestial Kingdom. When this friend first tasted these brownies she raved about them, describing them as a bit of heaven, and celestial-tasting. Naturally, a new, much more interesting name for these brownies was born.

With this guarantee, we concluded it was a very good idea to all stay up till midnight baking brownies even when we all had early mornings ahead of us. I love little roommate moments like this.

And to answer your question, yes; the brownies were very celestial-tasting. Here is the recipe, courtesy of Lou.

4 eggs

3 cups brown sugar

1 cup melted butter

2 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

Combine ingredients and pour into a greased 9x13 pan. Sprinkle with milk chocolate chips. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes. These brownies are food of the gods!

The Greatest Insult You Will Ever Hear

I hate swearing. Not only is it vulgar and rude, but it shows an alarming lack of creativity in vocabulary skills and insult slinging. Older books are always filled with much better insults.

Who didn't go around taking bites out of their thumb in people's faces after they read Romeo and Juliet in grade school? Who didn't want to burst out laughing when Caliban exclaimed, "You Banbury Cheese!" in The Tempest? Shakespeare is a master of insulting with style.

Right now, I'm in the middle of reading R.D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone. The story itself is engaging but sometimes when the narrator, John Ridd, goes into a two page explanation of his cows, I zone out. This pleasant line however brought me right back into the story when John is describing digging his sheep out of a snowdrift while his farmhands complain about the cold. I actually laughed out loud:

"Go, if you choose, all of you. I will work it out by myself, you pie-crusts!"

One day, I would dearly like to insult with this calibre. If only I had a flaky person in my life who needed calling out.

Any other brilliant insults out there?

The Miracle Cure

A month ago, in the midst of Janine's wedding I got horrbily and disgustingly sick. I was at home and not sleeping. Instead I was coughing, aching, puking, croaking, and being all round completely miserable. This had been going on for a week when I was staying home on Friday and in the past five days, the luxury of being able to just curl up on the couch and get cozy had long since lost it's appeal.

Early that same morning, I had called my sister Katey to see if she had any remedies (her children, after all, had lovingly passed on the germs to me) and her best suggestion was to do something I enjoyed that was deliciously lazy, like watch all of Pride and Prejudice in one day. Normally that does sound like quite an appealing option; especially when one does not have to feel guilty about spending all day in front of the TV - but I was feeling too wretched to look Mr. Darcy in the eye and feel properly swept off my feet.

Lucky for me, living with roommates when you are sick has certain advantages. Number one: you have four people's movie collections to peruse when there is little else to do with your day, and consequently have less chance of getting bored.

I do not know what prompted the decision (my head was too fuzzy to really analyze) but I ended up watching The Day After Tomorrow. In terms of a quality movie, it is not one, but I strangely enjoyed myself, and here is why:

When you have the chills, feel disgusting, and haven't had a proper meal in days due to lack of appetite; when you are sleep deprived, can't get rest, and sound like a seven-foot man who has been smoking cigarettes since childhood, there are few things that make you feel better. You may have an entire basket full of rememdies, you may be chock full of vitmain C, and have taken dozens of hot baths, but mentally and emotionally, you are not well. You are sick of being sick, and do not see a light at the end of the tunnel. Are you ever going to feel well again?

When you are watching New York be flooded up past Lady Liberty's neck, and everyone is freezing and fighting for survival, plus Western civilization has been lost, suddenly, your lot doesn't seem as bad. The idea in front of you is the definition of hokey, but watching the world end in a dramatic fashion reminds one that this too shall pass.

I have now found my new go-to genre for when I am sick. Disaster movies are the only cure I need.

That, and vitamin C.