Manly Deeds, Womanly Words

At the beginning of the summer I wrote that I was determined to find happiness in the state of Maryland. My last memories with this place were less than pleasant, and I didn't want to have negative feelings toward it for the rest of my life.

Well I think I succeeded. On Sunday I was getting the farewell song (If you're sad and you know it, wave goodbye ... yeah) and my face surely showed it because I started crying right there in front of the entire Junior Primary. No matter how rowdy they can get at times, I love my CTR 6's more than I could ever have imagined. They are such bright, wonderful children who have the most wonderful testimonies. I will miss all of them so much and I hope that they will remember me for at least a few weeks and miss me as well.

Besides those beautiful kids, the rest of the people in my ward are just really super. That seems like such a lame adjective, but I'm talking super like Superman super. And that's super. The women in the ward are welcoming and loving and so fun. They are some of the most service-oriented ladies I have ever met. I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to know them.

Also, I got to spend one last summer with my family before I have to be a grown-up and move on. My brother and sister-in-law are pretty much mega fantastic and so fun to be around. I am so glad they were around to make me laugh all the time.  Pretty much anyone who has met my parents likes to tell me that they are the best people they know. I happen to agree. I couldn't have asked for better role models in my life to teach me how to be a successful human being.  They have motivated me a lot to work on being a better person and focus on the important things in life. I could gush about them a lot more, but I don't really have a desire to cry anymore.

So, Maryland. You win. I like you now. I hope you're happy.

My brother is a weirdo

I've been researching sea cucumbers. Here's what I have learned:

• There are over 1500 species of sea cucumber.
• Some have an endoskeleton that is kind of like armor and some don't have any skeleton at all.
• North American and European sea cucumbers are generally around ten inches long.
• They sometimes eject stringy, webby stuff in self-defense. 
• They can be red, brown, green or a few other colors. Regardless they pretty much all look like poop.
• They eat mud. 
• They are gross.
• Some people like to eat them, and I think those people are probably sick in the head.
• I don't like sea cucumbers.

I found this one that I thought looked kind of cool: 

It is often called a sea apple, but it is really just another species of sea cucumber. I shall call her Sally. She can grow to about 8 inches and often feeds at night. When put in aquariums (or aquaria ... I guess. I don't believe it), they tend to starve to death. That's rude.

This is Blorb:

He is a Red Sea Cucumber and I gave him the name Blorb because I couldn't be bothered to think of a better one. Blorb is gross. He looks like I would never want to meet him in real life. If I did, I would probably have nightmares for the rest of forever.

If you hated this post, blame it on my brother. I sure am.

Fire and Rain

I was writing in my journal and enjoyed my own writing so thoroughly that I thought I would share it with the world ... or something like that.

Here's a thing: I love James Taylor. I think if a person doesn't love James Taylor, they are wrong. Or perhaps they don't know him. In which case, what the heck? Listen to James Taylor, hypothetical jerk! (I don't really think you're a jerk, I'm sorry) What's your problem? (Again, you're probably a wonderful person)

My point is that James Taylor is great and I think his greatness should be spread around. He makes me want to go to an unspecified Carolina. North or South, sounds great to me. He usually helps me sleep. Sometimes he distracts me from sleep by making me want to write about how much I love him, which is what is happening right now. I feel basically the same way about Cat Stevens except for that when I listen to "Here Comes My Baby" I want to walk around with a little jaunty step.

This very night I was having a brilliant conversation with my sister-in-law, Kimba. (We are completely switching gears here, by the way. I hope you're all following) All our conversations are brilliant because she is brilliant (and has a college degree to prove it). We were both lamenting about the fact that we love to write, but sometimes work more effectively when assigned a topic rather than having to think of one on our own. Like recently I have been wanting to write a new post, but I couldn't think of anything to write about. Thank goodness for James Taylor. He can do it all. So then I had an idea! Just five minutes ago actually.

Here is where you come in. I think that you, my dear readers, should give me some topics that you would perhaps want me to write about. If I like them (and by that I mean, can think of anything funny and awesome to say), I will write about them. And then I will feel accomplished for writing things, and you will feel important for contributing to this blog. Everybody wins! Unless nobody wants to participate. That's called a lose-lose situation and Michael Scott would be very disappointed in all of us. So please, comment! Message! Smoke signal! Morse code it! Although if you do those last two, I won't understand it, so maybe just tell me or something. I look forward to your super great suggestions!

Achievements

If you were to ask me today, "Hey, Erica. What's going down?"
I would say, "My weight." ba-dum ch!

I am super excited to tell you that this summer I have lost a grand total of twenty pounds! I just looked up "things that are twenty pounds" on Google and noticed that there were many other fine people in the blogging community who have already gone down that road, and I, like Robert Frost, choose not to. You may think I'm going to do something else new and creative instead, but I'm not. Because I'm not creative.

But I am so very proud of myself! Twenty pounds. That is more than a few. Agreed? Yes. You want to know how I did it? I will tell you. I was a little ashamed at first, for reasons that I don't really know, but I joined Weight Watchers.  So essentially I just don't stuff my face every waking minute anymore. And that's all I really want to say about it. Go me.

In other news ... remember that time I told you that I will name all of my computers Alfred? Oh. That was two days ago? Ok. So that means you remember. Perfect! Well congratulations double to me because there is an Alfred II in my life. Here is how I feel about him:

Also I pretty much only referred to him as Alfred II to show that he is not the first, but that's not what I will ever call him. I don't play favorites due to chronology. Yep. We're doing pretty good. I mean, look at the quality of that webcam photo! It's brilliant. I am so very happy. And I'm wearing those glasses not because it's cool, but because I am nearsighted. But also because it is cool.