I am right-handed. Extremely. In other words, I'd be a total loss if ever I had to rely solely on my left hand. It would be disastrous. I can write in cursive with my left hand, but only when I am mirroring my right. You know, when you have a pencil in both hands and write in opposite directions simultaneously. That works. Otherwise, not such a great plan. Strangely, however, my left side seems to dominate in unusual ways. I'm curious if this is a normal phenomenon. It seems a little weird to me.
- My left foot is larger than my right, which is so very unfortunate since my feet are enormous enough as it is.
- My left pointer finger is longer than my right.
- I wear my purse or backpack on my left shoulder. It just feels wrong the other way and usually falls off when I try.
- I put my sock and shoe on my left foot first. I'm almost compulsive about this.
- I fall asleep on my left side.
- I am left-eye dominant. So when I shoot a gun I have to close my right eye to aim. Apparently about 30% of all mammals are left-eye dominant [in case you like to store random and basically useless facts].
- I recently took a test which determined I am center-brained with a trend toward left-brain dominance. I don't think this is strange, nor was it a big surprise, but it goes with the theme.
So what? I have no idea. I will tell you, though, that if we ever play basketball, just guard my right side. Even with that extra big foot, I have no hope using my left.
Look out, Bobby Flay. I've got an up-and-coming food network star on my hands.
While I was getting dinner ready this evening, Marissa was moping around the kitchen. She was bored and hungry, so I decided to put her to work.
Me: "Go pick some radishes."
[Yes, we planted radishes, more as an experiment than because we like to eat them. Actually, it's because Morgan went with me to the farm store and picked them out, and I thought, eh, why not?! A bit unfortunately, they grew nicely and have become rather prolific.]
Marissa: "What are we going to do with them?"
Me: "I don't know. Whatever you want."
Little did I know what we were in for. I suggested cutting smiley faces into them and told her that Grandma knows how to make radish roses. Well, that was not sufficiently creative. Here's what she did instead.
Step 1: Hollow out the center of the radish and chop up the meat.
Step 2: Fill the radish with honey and stuff with chopped pieces.
Step 3: Sprinkle with parsley. ["It needs something green and pretty."]
Step 4: Wrap with a strip of ham.
Now, I was admittedly dubious and tried one out of obligation. But, honestly, it wasn't bad at all. Jeremy said, "That made radishes edible."
So, like I said: Look out, Bobby. Iron Chef Marissa is on her way! I can't wait to see what she'll come up with for our other garden experiments. We've got sunburst squash, sweet banana peppers, tomatillos, and white pumpkins all growing this very moment. Oh, goody!
Normally by June 21st ...
... long sleeves, sweatshirts, and fleece p.j. bottoms have long since abandoned the laundry pile.
... the kids have thoroughly exhausted an inflatable pool and sprinklers.
... the air conditioning runs more often than not.
... sitting by the pool doesn't turn you purple.
... a rain storm invites playing in the puddles rather than bundling up.
... you wouldn't say, "Hot chocolate sounds really good right now."
... considering the current temperature brings dread of July and August.
... we've gone through a substantial amount of sunscreen.
... you wouldn't wonder how much snow will be on the ground when you send your scout to camp.
... you don't have to bring jackets to a baseball game.
... popsicles don't bring on the shivers.
Let's just say I'm ready for a little bit of normal. Thankfully, the day after the summer solstice has been beautiful and sunny and given me hope that summer is finally on its way.
Although I've lived in Utah for almost half of my life, I still think of myself as an Oregonian in certain ways. Such as: I still speak like one. I grew up never thinking of Oregon as having an accent of any kind, but Jeremy likes to point out a few northwest peculiarities [not peculiar to me, I must clarify]. According to him, Oregonians put a twangy a in words of the ants family. I guess it comes out a little like "aynts." So a sentence like, "The ants from France wore pants to the dance," ends up sounding [to him] like, "The aynts from Fraynce wore paynts to the daynce."
I've also held on to some words and phrases. We have an ongoing debate over the use of high waters vs. floods to describe pants [or paynts] of the awkwardly short variety. Out of habit, I call them high waters. My argument, which I feel legitimate, is that someone from Oregon should be able to differentiate between high water and a flood.
Now it's not like Jeremy has much room to critique how us Oregonians speak. Utah has its fair share of verbal humdingers. I am raising 4 Utahns, which came abruptly to my attention one day while I worked on spelling with Aiden. I read his spelling list while he wrote the words. We came to the word sure and I watched him write shore. Feeling a little puzzled, I tried again. "No, the word is shoor." He said, "That's what I wrote." So I tried another approach. "It's shur [almost neglecting the vowel sound completely]." And he wrote it correctly. Oh, the dismay!
From time to time I do slip into some characteristically Utahn pronunciations. For example, I have caught myself saying fur instead of for and feel rather horrified. [Just as long as I don't fill horrified.] Maybe it's inevitable. After all, in another couple years I'll have lived in Utah longer than I lived in Oregon. But at least so far, supposebly I still haven't warshed my hands in the crick or put my house up for sell!
Ten years ago I became mother to a daughter. I swear Marissa was beautiful from the second she was born. Now I look at her and marvel that she is a decade old. I think she's still beautiful. But we've also discovered that she is funny and kind and athletic and creative and gentle and smart and a little kooky.Somehow we unwittingly established a tradition for the decade milestone that the birthday kid receives a Nintendo DS. That basically caps off the birthday gifts, but Marissa was so excited she didn't really care. We decided to upgrade to a DSi because of the camera feature, which is well tailored to Marissa's creative personality. Ten is also an off year for friend parties, so we had a family celebration which included her choice of dinner 
[crepes] and cake [teddy bear] and ice cream. We kept everything fairly low key, but there were smiles all around.
I remember thinking it was kind of cool to say I was a decade. [I'm also kind of a nerd, but you already knew that.] Unfortunately, I can now say I'm 3 1/2 decades old. My family made my birthday a happy day. I got just what I wanted -- a new potato peeler! That might not sound very exciting, but have you ever tried peeling potatoes or carrots or cucumbers or etc., with a defunct kitchen tool? It's unpleasant. My other request was to take a family trip to the zoo. So we headed up, along with the entire population of Utah [may I suggest avoiding the zoo on a major holiday weekend?]. We had fun despite the crowds.
In honor of both of our birthdays, and to document Marissa's kookiness, here is a sampling of her birthday card to me. She'll probably hate me for this someday, but I choose to exercise my motherly prerogative.
Dear Motha, We bring to you a happy day that is not a girl. A ha ha ha a berba dito mano fergivity gerb. Dear mom, I hope you have a great birthday and a bob. I am going to clean something. It is ...... something. Love, Marissa
It's a puzzle, I know. But I firmly believe I should add "fergivity gerb" to my permanent vocabulary. Try feeling grumpy when you say it. I dare you. And for the record, she did clean something. It was ....... the bathrooms. What a gem. Looks like the last decade was good for something.
