Despite certain stereotypes...

Last night, playing Catchphrase:

Sidney: Um, all mormons are this...bread can be too...

About five of us simultaneously: WHITE!!!

Sidney (looking disgusted): No...

Turns out the answer was "wholesome."

How High the Moon

Sarah and Trish very kindly wrote nice things about our party here and here, so I don’t have to boast. Suffice it to say I enjoyed it lots, and it made us want to do it all over again and invite all the people I forgot to send invites to this time. I also wish I’d taken more and better pics, but here are a couple.





As with most parties, I often enjoy the set up as much as the actual event. This one was a good team effort. We met at noon, and began cleaning, stringing lights, and pulling tables around. An interesting piece of trivia: the tables at Lindsay Gardens pavilion are the heaviest in the western hemisphere. Who knew? (And may those who helped us put them back in position after the party be blessed with happiness and green traffic lights for the rest of their days).

Our (I use “our” loosely) greatest feat of athleticism, however, involved getting the overhead lights up. We had big white globes, that you can't even SEE in those stupid pics, attached to miles of extension cords, and Rachel the arborist was in charge of climbing into the rafters minus ropes, while Marie and I looked on nervously and (at least I did) calculated our ability to catch her weight if she fell, and thought about how it would put a bit of a dampener on the party if they main hostess was in hospital with a cracked skull.

Then we took “shifts” at the site, watching over our efforts until party time. I had the most beautiful nap lying on the sun on one of the tables (another trivia fact: Lindsay Gardens pavilion tables are extremely comfortable to sleep on when you’re filthy dirty and tired).

And getting filthy dirty only makes it more pleasant to shower and get all tarted up and dance the night away…

We’re famous in Japan.

So, my favourite Jock and I were helping Rowan with some music workshops for a group of kids. Basically, R was leading them in singing exercises in parts, and we were trying to keep things going without messing them up too much. It was great; the kids were enthusiastic about everything, and clapped wildly at any opportunity. As R was introducing one of the exercises, she started telling them the story of how she learned it. Our group was all Japanese, and had one woman interpreting. So, R got as far as "I sang at Carnegie hall a month or two ago," when the interpreter decided to take a phone call and ran out of the room, so she had to skip the rest of the story and go straight to the exercise. The kids all applauded enthusiastically, and didn't seem to see anything untoward in R apparently just randomly boasting of her accomplishment for no obvious reason to a bunch of kids from Japan.

As they were leaving, R gave them copies of an arrangement she’d written, and some of them wanted her to autograph it. The next thing we knew, one of the kids wanted me and Tricia to sign, too – and not being up to “I really don’t have anything to do with this music and I’m not even a musician – you don’t want my name scribbled over your nice new copy,” in Japanese, we went ahead and signed. So of course all the other kids wanted us to sign. So we ended up with the bizarre experience of signing about thirty autographs that night.

Lena Gets Herself Some Religion

Sometimes three hours of church seems like a long time. I’ve been blessed with a long attention span since kidhood, but still, three hours sometimes just feels like three long hours of people telling me to be better than I am. The clock ticks slowly on, I’m sleepy, I’m hungry, whether I’ve eaten or not, my attention fades in and out of the lesson, while I resist the temptation to check my phone for messages and facebook status updates, I think about what I’m going to eat later, I have side conversations with Rachel and Marie about whether or not my ensemble of teal and lavender works (we say yes!), and I experiment, surprisingly successfully, with independently moving my second toe.

Sometimes I go home, dive into the fridge, and don’t feel like I got anything out of it other than reinforcement of a good habit – like when you have a horrible morning running, but you feel good that at least one got one’s rear out of the house. I know that lots of people say that you get out of church what you put into it, and on one hand, yeah, sure. On the other hand, they must never have sat through a REALLY BORING lesson. But thankfully, there’s usually enough moments that make it worthwhile even on the THREE LONG HOURS days. And today, I appreciate the people that helped give me those moments. The lessons were not boring, despite my almost complete inability to focus on them. And I now actually want to be a somewhat better person, which we can all be thankful for. That want will probably have faded by next Sunday, by which time I’ll be ready to stick on a dress again and go through another three hours of soul work.

California, oh California.

California was so sunny and warm and pretty, it just makes a girl laugh with joy. To wit:


We got some culture at the Malibu arts fest. In between making catty remarks about all the real-life Malibu Barbies.



We ate.







We made decadent dessert.









We went to the beach. We saw lots and lots of dolphins playing in the water. I failed to get a picture of any of them.






So here are a couple more artsy shots of rocks and water instead.






I surfed.




Ok, maybe that was someone else surfing. But it's Malibu, I had to get a surf shot in.


And a highlight of the trip: Cher's house! We know it's Cher's house because someone said so.



Cher! Famous Cher!



Wait a second, that headdress is reminding me of something.



Who'd have thought that outfit was inspired by nature?