I'm rewarding myself

Dear all,

Well, I just got grades in for my BYU classes, which is a wondrous feeling. I've still got to do the Westminster grades, but that won't take long, and that's only one class, as opposed to the three I had to grade at BYU.

Also, the weather's been nicer, so that helps immensely with my health, my mood, et al. We're planning on moving into the condo soon (as I mentioned before, the landlord is sprucing things up), and that's a good thing. In other words, life is splendid.

So splendid, in fact, that I've decided to take a small liberty with the bank account. See, back when I was getting sick every week, M. and I put away some money to cover medical expenses. It was actually quite a bit of money, since, at the rate I was going, we half expected to be paying for a surgery or something. Now, however, I'm feeling much, much better, and the money's just sitting there, collecting whatever interest a checking account gets. "Hey," I told myself, "there's got to be a better use for that cash." And, as it turns out, there is.

I don't know why I never thought of this before--I'm going to get my horns removed.

For those who are scratching their heads right now, you must understand: Members of my church are accused--with alarming frequency--of having horns. Please note that I've never seen any horns on my own head, but I keep hearing this from numerous sources. It's one of the reasons that losing my hair has me so worried: What if, a few years from now, my horns start coming in? What if they're like wisdom teeth or something--you know, one day, everything's fine, and then, suddenly, there's this shooting pain in my forehead and POP! and out come the horns? With my hair loss accelerating, I wouldn't have anything to cover the horns with! I mean, my wife (who doesn't have horns, either, as far as I can tell) has long, thick, shimmering brown hair, the perfect for concealing horns, be they large, small, straight, curly, or even forked like antlers.

Antlers! What if I grew ANTLERS?!? Would I have to RUT?

Such are all the questions buzzing through my head right now, and I'm sick of the stress. I mean, come on, man, I've been sick. I don't need one more thing to deal with. An anecdote I found on the internet says that J. Golden Kimball, the famous obscenity-spouting church leader, was once performing a baptism in a river. When a mob gathered nearby, he supposedly shouted to them, "Watch yourselves[!] [...] We've got horns, and we'll gore the [fetch] out of you if you come across!" Humor, it seems, was his way of dealing with this problem, back in the days before cosmetic surgery. Thanks to the advances of modern medicine, though, no longer do we have to suffer, trying to assuage our embarrassment through jokes.

See, the problem, as I mentioned before, is that my horns haven't erupted--YET. It would be one thing if the horns were already there, sticking up through my sunroof as I drove, picking up radio stations, scaring small children, etc. If that were the case, I'd just borrow my uncle's power grinder and have at--no fuss, no muss. But, no, my horns still lie dormant inside my cranium, waiting for the moment--when I'm giving an important speech, perhaps, or when I'm kissing my wife--to launch out and ruin my day.

Now I just need to find a plastic surgeon...

A couple thingies

Dear all,

After reading the comment (from my dear cousin-in-law, the ex-spy) about the last post, I felt the urge/need to clarify: I would love to move to sunny Southern California--my health does better; the weather makes me very, very happy; and I enjoy living in a cardboard box, since that's all we'd be able to afford.

No, seriously, Southern California is a lovely place, and a place where my dear wife, M. (thanks to J.'s blog, I've decided to start using code to disguise the identities of my loved ones), is okay with (thanks, love!!!). Nevertheless, I confess that, at times, I feel like Moses, able to see the promised land but never enter into it. However, I have faith that M. and I, as long as we live right, will end up where we're supposed to be. I just hope that it's Orange County.

Of couse, there are downsides, such as the aforementioned cost of real estate, and the risk of myriad natural disasters: flash floods, flash fires, earthquakes, landslides, sinkholes, more earthquakes--heck, scientists have even bantered about the notion of a tsunami. And then there are the man-made disasters: flash fires (many of 'em are arson-related), riots, more riots, air pollution, noise pollution, zero educational funding, Hollywood.

But, so help me, I love it. We'll go wherever we're supposed to, though. If this sounds like a mission call or something, I admit that it feels that way sometimes.

My favorite word is BLEACH

Dear all,

Heh. Heh-heh.

So, even though we're moving, it won't be for another fifteen days or so--our new landlord is doing some needed repairs to the condo. (NOTE: For anyone who's seen the condo, I'm accepting suggestions for the condo's new nickname; right now, I'm thinking "The Beachhouse," since it is long and narrow, like a beachhouse, and it's right next to the duck pond.)

Thus, I'm going to have to live with the mold for a few more days. However, I don't have to stand idly by and suffer--no, not in the least bit.

This is where I start cackling maniacally.

So I went to Smith's and bought a large bottle of Tilex--it's the disinfectant spray with the largest percentage of bleach in it, and it'll kill just about anything that moves, given a sufficient quantity. And I vowed to use a more-than-sufficient quantity.

I also bought the economy-size jug of Chlorox wipes, a pair of rubber gloves, a microfiber cloth, a jar of peanut butter (because killing mold works up an appetite), and a tube of toothpaste (so I can look good afterward).

Coming home, I got out my respirator, the industrial-grade one I wear when I spray lacquer on my woodworking projects. Then I got out the Tilex. I went to the bathroom and sprayed the walls, the ceiling, the shower, the exhaust fan, the etagere (the cabinet over the toilet), the atomic clock. YES, I EVEN SPRAYED THE FREAKING CLOCK. And then I scrubbed, hard--the walls, the ceiling (I got some bleach in my eyes with that one, but I didn't care), the lightswitch, the shower-curtain rod. Out came the wipes for a second pass.

Now the whole apartment smells like an indoor swimming pool, and the bathroom's clean enough to perform a heart transplant on the toilet. Will the mold come back? Sadly, it probably will, since we have every reason to suspect that it's infiltrated the walls from the inside-out. However, if it ever peeps its little fuzzy head into my bathroom again, chemical death awaits, painful and chlorine-scented.

A thought: Years from now, when my presently non-existent daughters begin dating, I'm going to have their boyfriends read this post. "As you can see," I will say, as I sharpen a large knife or, perhaps, oil a shotgun, "I take care of the things that harm my family members."

MOLD!!!

Dear all,

Well, there's good news, and then there's bad news. Which first?

I'll go with the bad news: Our apartment is infested with toxic mold. Yep--yellow mold, orange mold, green mold, black mold. I even think I saw some red mold, but that could've been rust from an old bathroom fixture.

The good news: Now we know why I've been sick all winter! The symptoms line up perfectly; I've had chronic sinusitis, swollen lymph nodes, and--the real clincher, as far as I'm concerned--a swollen thyroid gland. Yes, mold can make your thyroid swell up like a football!

So we're moving; we have to, for my health. As it is, we're living with the windows always open, and it's getting a little cold. But we have been blessed, amazingly so--I walk into P.E.C. on Sunday morning, tell the folks about the apartment, and a brother in the ward says, "Hey, Brother ________ has a condo that he rents, and the current renter is moving out at the end of the month." So, long story short, we're taking it, assuming that it passes inspection tomorrow--I want to make sure that there isn't mold within a mile of this place. And, to sweeten things even more, the condo is in our ward boundaries, so we don't have to switch wards!

Talk about being blessed, eh? Glory be. So, yeah, it's a nice condo--kinda dated, judging by its '70s-era decor, but that's perfectly fine. It's bigger than our current place, too, so we can finally put up all our art. Plus, there are two--count 'em, two--duck ponds nearby. Sweet!

Episode IV; or, A New Hope

Dear all,

I went to Orange County last weekend.

Yes, those are fireworks you hear. May I, perchance, get a woot-woot?

It was lovely, lovely, lovely, from the ninety-degree weather to the spotless sky to the blossoming citrus tress in the backyard. Oh, mercy, was it nice. My lymph nodes' swelling went down, my ears stopped hurting--man, it was superlative. Supernal, even. So, yes, I'm feeling much better, although I still suspect I might be allergic to my apartment, in which case I'm going to burn it to the ground out of spite.

NOTE: In case my apartment complex burns down, this will look incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, the semester is coming to a close. I gave my first final last night, and it went well. I'm grading like a mad fury, and things are going well.

Case in point: The University of Southern Mississippi, which is very fun to type, allowed me to apply for fall admission, even though the deadline is a month-and-a-half behind us. Joy!

The Latest Update; or, The Night of a Thousand Urps

Dear all,

I love that we got comments last time around; thanks!

Well, it looks like all the PhD results have come in, and the answer (from all of 'em) is no. Alas. Boo. There are three programs that I've found--maybe a fourth--that admit for the spring, so we'll see what happens.

It's been a bit demoralizing, I confess, since we were really banking on this one. I mean, now we have to extend our lease, and that alone is enough to make me want to apply to law school.

Note: I will not be applying to law school. (Why make millions saving innocent people from prison when you can tell stories for a living?) Or business school.

I don't know if it's because of that--stress can do weird things to the body--but, Thursday night, my body revolted. "I don't care if you shove seven vitamins down my throat every morning," it said, "but I want to lurch." And lurch it did.

"Body," I said, "I try to take care of you. I feed you healthy foods, some of which actually taste good. I take vitamins and, when those aren't enough, I take antibiotics, plenty of them, enough to enable me to lick the floor of a high-school locker room and remain unscathed, such is the penecillin that courses through my veins."

"Fie!" countered my body. "It's time for you to taste dinner again."

I really must thank my downstairs neighbor, Brian Olsen, who came to my aid. I hadn't started reverse peristalsis yet when I called him--all I knew was that my head felt like a giant zit about to pop. Then my kidneys started hurting, and I was very, very dizzy.

Steve "Spoon" Bitter, are you reading this? Do you remember the time when I got really dizzy, that time with the toilet paper and the Mountain Dew and the pickup truck and the paintball gun with Scott shouting out the window about Ultima Online? Really, I was THAT DIZZY this Thursday.

So Brian came over, saw me careening around my apartment like a drunken sailor, and called a nurse in the ward, because, the way I looked, he wanted to know if I should go to the hospital. She came over (thank you, Dana!) and thought I was dehydrated, which I probably was, and told me to lie down.

Long story short, an hour later, Melanie was home, and my body wanted to show off. Thus began The Night of a Thousand Urps.

Okay, well, it was only three, really, but there was a bit of dry-heaving thrown in there for good measure.

I'm feeling quite a bit better now--not perfect, but pretty good--and I'm grateful, really, because the weekend reminded me of all the synonyms for urping: driving the porcelain bus, doing the technicolor yawn, bringing forth the bounty of the harvest, tossing one's cookies, etc. It's fun for a creative writing professor.

For all who prayed for me, thank you very much. Please keep praying.