Puzzle Frenzy

I probably haven't mentioned that our family has been fairly active in doing puzzles lately. We got into the habit of doing puzzles during the Christmas break, and we've often had a puzzle going under the see-through plastic covering of our kitchen table. Little J and I are the most devoted puzzlers, working a little bit each day. Josh only gets involved when a particular puzzle catches his eye. Everyone else pretends for the most part that the puzzles don't exist.

Strangely, when the end of a puzzle is in sight, everyone starts getting involved. I will work virtually alone for hundreds of pieces at a time. About the time that there are 300 pieces left, Little J starts getting more interested. Then when there are about 50 pieces left, everyone comes over and the frenzy begins. When we finished one off this weekend, it got so crowded that I was completely squeezed out. Everyone was fighting over putting in the last piece. J-girl always tries to put in the last piece, and if she isn't successful, she will take out a piece and put it back in, claiming that she "finished" the puzzle. Then Little J usually starts shouting that it's not fair, and Josh grabs for his own piece to put in last. I just quietly leave the room shaking my head. I don't want to be around when there's blood in the water.

Pig Latin and Preaching the Gospel

Before Matt got his mission call, we were constantly plagued with questions about whether or not Matt had received his call. I kept having to tell them it hadn’t come yet, and then they would ask when we thought it would come, and I would say something about maybe this Wednesday or Thursday, and they’d make a polite comment like, “It’s hard to wait,” and I’d have to make a polite comment back, and it just kept on going. It was all too pleasant, and I just wanted to smack people. So finally, I took the initiative and started to tell people that he had received his mission call even though he hadn't, just to head off all of the unpleasant pleasantries. For example, this is what I said to Brother Dubbie, the second counselor in the bishopric, at church one Sunday:

Me: Hey, did you hear that Matt got his mission call?
Br. Dubbie: That’s wonderful. Where’s he going.
Me: Los Angeles Pig Latin speaking?
Br. Dubbie: That’s gr—wait!

Now that he has received his real call, we no longer have to worry about him learning Pig Latin. But the fake mission call got me thinking--what if one of the other kids got called to a Pig Latin speaking mission? Wouldn't it help if he or she was already fluent with the language?

Which is why I have begun to promote the speaking of Pig Latin around the house. Little J and I started the movement to SYL (MTC acronym for "speak your language") during a game of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Go Fish (Oompa-way Oompa-lay (Oompa Loompa) and illie-way onka-way (Willie Wonka) sounded the funniest). At first, it took us forever to put together a small sentence, and then we would have to repeat it several times before the other person finally understood. It seemed like we might never be ready to teach the gospel to the Pig Latin people. But lately, Little J and I have been able to speak more fluently. We seem to be blessed with the gift of tongues as a family in general, because even J-girl and Josh have begun to understand common Pig Latin phrases, such as "Ont-day easel-way eeze-squay e-thay andma-gray" (Don't weasel-squeeze the grandma). While I don’t think we’re quite ready to teach a complete gospel lesson in Pig Latin, I can see the day quickly approaching. We are so filled with the spirit of missionary work.

Apricot surprises

A couple of weeks ago, I risked life and limb to pick some apricots in a friend's tree. While pitting some of those apricots, I cut into one that had an earwig in the middle. It scrambled to get away, crawling towards my hands. It happened so fast that I gave a loud yelp and dropped the apricot into the sink. My skin was crawling as I watched the earwig drop from the apricot into the mouth of the garbage disposal. My yelp was so loud that Josh heard me all the way back in his room, despite the fact that his music was playing. I’m embarrassed to say that I was so completely grossed out that I couldn’t reach into the sink with my bare hands to remove the pit so that I could turn on the garbage disposal and filet the little sucker. Instead, I grabbed the tongs, gingerly removed the pit, prodded the apricot down the drain, and turned on the garbage disposal. It was not very manly, and somewhat out of character for me. After all, this was not the first time in my life that I’ve cut open an apricot and found an earwig.

Chopping the earwig into little pieces did not do much for my psyche, though. I just couldn’t bring myself to cut open any more apricots. I realized that I would need rubber gloves that come up to my elbows before I would be psychologically prepared to face another apricot surprise. So between my psychosis and J-girl’s busy schedule, the apricots never got processed, and instead rotted away in the side room. Josh and I finally threw them away. And that was even traumatic, because I kept waiting for some of them to explode and hundreds of earwigs to pour out of them. Ew!

New extreme sport: bare-handed apricot pitting.

Gloves only make it slightly better.

"Nah, I wasn't scared a bit."

Matt's going to Taipei

Two weeks ago, I went on record and predicted that Matt would get his mission call to the Taiwan, Taipei Mission. I was even willing to bet a week's worth of laundry on my prediction being correct. Of course, no one blinked an eye at that, because one of my regular household chores is doing the laundry. Furthermore, I'm one of those strange creatures that actually likes doing the laundry. All those neatly folded piles of clothes bring me great comfort in my daily battles with a world in chaos.

But I digress. Yesterday Matt got his mission call.

Matt opening his mission call.

Matt reading his mission call.

Sure enough, the old man was right--Matt's going to Taipei, and he enters the MTC on November 17.

Matt and J-girl celebrating the news.

Seconds after this picture was taken, J-girl was sitting at the table and trying to discreetly wipe away her tears. Being a typical mom, the arrival of this letter felt like her son was being taken away from her at that very moment. Me, on the hand, I'm much better at denial. The boy has over three months before he leaves, and I can spend at least two of those months pretending he will be around forever. It's not until I make that trip to Mr. Macs that my chest will start tightening and I'll start wondering how life can go on with one more empty chair at the dinner table.

Oh, and now that I've been proven right, I also want it to go on the record that no one, and I mean NO ONE, has come out and said how incredibly smart or spiritually in tune I am for having correctly predicted Matt's mission call. I know that if I had been wrong, I would have received a lot of (negative) feedback. I think I have earned the right to be called "O great and wise one." You can call me OGAWO for short.

Living with a 'Tween Shark

Little J has always been a bit of a strange eater. When she was little, she used to stuff her cheeks with food and then keep it there for up to an hour at a time, slowing eating it. That’s why when she was three she had six kazillion cavities. Then she went through the light grazing phase, where she would only eat a bite or two in any given five minute period of time, but would eat continually throughout the day. Recently, she has gone through the Glee phase, which means that between bites, she sings an entire Glee song. On Thursday, she was approaching a ratio of three Glee songs to one bite. She knows so many Glee songs that there weren’t any repeats.

If that weren’t bad enough, she has spent Shark Week carefully watching the biting behavior of great white sharks, and she is trying to mimic it. There have been several shows that analyze the great white shark’s biting behavior, how it approaches its prey at high speed, closes its eyes, opens it mouth, extends its teeth, clamps down on its prey, and then tears it apart with side-to-side motions of its head. She has practiced this technique on goldfish, burritos, and strawberries. It is incredibly terrifying to watch. When she eats like the great white, she is truly transformed into a super predator. I turn my head. Floppy whimpers. Of course, she still eats slowly, with an occasional Glee song thrown in. I think she’s the perfect example of what a ‘tween shark with too much access to popular culture would act like. Maybe she’ll be on shark week next year.

Little J building up speed as she approaches her prey.

A split second before the gruesome attack.

Extreme gore!

She thrashes with the prey locked in her jaws.

Shark Week: Where the Sharks Appear More Intelligent than Humans

This week is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, and it has been difficult to pry Josh away from all of the high quality programming. Some of my favorites:

·      A show about a guy who wants to show the world how harmless sharks are by putting them into a trance-like state, either by turning them upside down or placing his hands right under their snouts. Guess what? It doesn’t work! But then he feeds a shark by hand, and concludes that this proves even more clearly that sharks are harmless.

·      A 20 minute segment about a bunch of guys who are trying to get a great white shark to take a bite out of a tuna on a rope so that they can study the effects of the bite, particularly how big the bite is. Only, the sharks always end up chewing off all but the tail. In the end, they get out the jawbones from a dead great white shark and close it over the tuna to show how big the bite is. Fail!

·      A show about how to survive shark attacks. The retired navy seal, who is constantly jumping into a swarm of sharks, ends the show by locking himself into a shark cage with an eight foot shark. He then shows and explains what to do to keep from getting bit by the shark. He finally wrestles the shark through a small opening in one side of the cage, and I’m thinking, “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do when it happens to me.”

And of course, there are countless other really stupid stunts where divers practically beg sharks to bite them. After a couple hours of these shows, I started to really feel sorry for the sharks, and also to admire them for their restraint. If I were one of the sharks on these shows, I would probably bite someone just to find out what stupid tastes like. On second thought, I don't have to be a shark on shark week to taste stupid. I could just bite myself, since my willingness to sit through these crazy shows suggests I'm not very bright, either.

A Stupid Person at the Grocery Store

We were in line at the grocery store when the woman in front of us asked my daughter where she got her eyes. She'd been watching Little J for awhile, and suddenly began talking to her. Little J immediately sensed that this was a strange woman, as did I. She moved behind me and did not answer the woman. I don't blame her. I had no idea what the creepy lady was asking, either, until she added, "You didn't get them from your dad." Then I knew what she was after. She was making a statement about the racial differences between me and my daughter.

She continued, saying that she bet Little J got her eyes from her mother. Little J slid further behind me, and I smiled awkwardly and gave her an "uh-huh." Even after she commented about how pretty Little J's eyes were, neither Little J nor I felt very comfortable. I think we both sensed that the purpose of the conversation was not about how pretty Little J is. Rather, the purpose of the conversation seemed to be about how Little J's racial mix was unexpected and perhaps disturbing and unnatural. After all, the woman was implying that Little J should have had eyes, and other physical features, more in common with her father.

I have experienced a lot of racism from people when they encounter me (Caucasian) and my wife (Chinese) together. They seem to think that if we were more normal, we would have been able to find someone of our own race to marry. I have learned to ignore such people. But I have a very difficult time refraining from gouging out the eyes of people who extend their racist attitudes toward my children. Yes, my children do not look exactly like me, and yes, they are Chinese-American. Get over it! And by the way, my children are also smarter, kinder, more understanding, more talented, better looking, bilingual, and able to function in two cultures because they are Chinese-American. Deal with it!