Recruiting Season

I meant to blog today about Halloween and all the associated festivities, but John is currently at the Notre Dame football game with our camera (lucky boy!), and so that post will have to wait at least until tonight.
However, I have another small story I would like to share. It's recruiting season right now for residencies all over the country, and as the wives of residents we must do our part to make a good impression on the candidates (as we call applicants) and their wives (or husbands, as the case may be). We had Candace and Ryan Slater here last week (so much fun) from Toledo, so I was really excited when I remembered that Dusty and Cortnee Watson (also from Toledo) would be here this weekend.
Cortnee (for those who haven't met her) is a girl who is beautiful, stylish, and very kind. She and Dusty just got married last December, and every interaction I have ever had with her has been delightful. She is so complimentary about my girls and so nice to me and I shouldn't be intimidated at all. However, whenever I am trying to make a good impression, I get nervous. And whenever I get nervous, I talk faster and faster and think less and less clearly, and pretty soon it's just like verbal vomit, really. Sentences spewing forth faster than I can recall them.
So my conversation with Cortnee went something like this:
C.W.: So, do you like South Bend?
E.W.: I LOVE South Bend, I love everything . . . blah. . . blahdity blah. . . .
C.W.: (too polite to look bored) What made you pick to live here?
E.W.: Blah. . . blahdity blahdity blahdity. . . . faster faster faster
I think it was 99 words Emilee:1 word Cortnee. But really, I was doing okay. I think less than half of my sentences were completely nonsensical, and that's saying something for me when I'm trying to be impressive. But then this is how we ended the conversation:
E.W.: I love your sweater--so cute!
C.W.: (sweetly) Thanks!
E.W.: Where did you get it?
C.W.: T. J. Maxx.
E. W. : Oh, I love T. J. Maxx. Such a great store. Such a wonderful store, you can find so many great things. I'm so proud of you!!
I'm so proud of you?? What kind of adult says that to another adult? What did I mean? I'm so proud you can shop for yourself? I'm so proud you know how to find something cute? It's one of those stock phrases that I keep as a mom for those times when I don't really want to have to think what I'm saying to my kids, but I want them to be happy. And it slipped out when I really would have preferred it stay in.
She looked only mildly confused when I said it, and my backpedaling from that statement just got more and more incoherent, so I let it go. Thinking about it makes me turn red all over again. I think I should be officially off the recruitment roster.

Frustrations

Our new camera (thank you, Mom and Dad, and luckily you didn't have to pay that price.), which takes such lovely pictures, does not seem to take pictures that can be uploaded to the blog. Certainly, there are also possible deficiencies in the computer (which is old) and the internet connection (which is often dysfunctional), but being irrational as I am tonight, I want to place the blame squarely on the camera. John took a fantastic video of Mimi in one of her most fantastic flaming fits this afternoon (I think that girl has a monthly quota of tantrums that she absolutely must fill), and it cannot be shown. The blog mourns.

Boring, boring, boring.

I've been tagged by Brittani to reveal six interesting/uninteresting/unique/perhaps unknown things about me. There are just a few problems with this: a) I talk so stinkin' much that there aren't many things that are unknown about me; b) I am incredibly typical and boring; and c) refer back to (a). If ever there is a conversational opportunity to slip in a story about myself, I capitalize on that and monopolize the rest of the time. Sorry everyone! These are the things I could come up with, and I'm sure you already knew most of them.
1) I was a sober, sober child. I never smiled in public. My uncle told my mom when I was 14 that she should get me to smile and laugh more. (Did it work?) Almost everyone that knew me only casually didn't think I ever laughed. When the seminary council traveled to a rural branch (yes-even more rural than Monticello), I started my talk with an account of Jesus healing the lepers. Only I said "leopards" and started to giggle. Then I started to laugh so hard that I couldn't get control of myself. (In Sacrament Meeting!!) I kept trying to regain composure, but when I looked to the side, the entire bishopric and seminary council were all in hysterics. I didn't want to leave the pulpit on that horrible note, so after five minutes (really--5 MINUTES!!), I finally worked it out and finished my talk. Afterward several people approached me from the congregation and said it had done them good to see that I actually laughed every so often. That really makes me laugh now.
2) I play with numbers in my head all day long. I try to make license plates and highway signs work out in equations. I try to add up words if a=1 and b=2, etc. I try to figure out the ratios of different sides of rectangles. It's weird, and I'm sorry to admit it.
3) I hate hamburger, in any form. It's one of the very last of my picky-eater childhood hangups.
4) I know most of the buses in La Paz, Bolivia. They are organized there by color. Both the dark green and pale green would take us down to Obrajes to the orphanage. The blue buses would go up to San Francisco Cathedral. The orange buses went all the way to the cemetery. However, my favorites were the combis/minibuses. They weren't organized by color, but they each had a "shouter", someone who rode next to the sliding door of the van and yelled where that bus was going. I wanted to open my own combi business in Provo when we got back. John would drive and I would yell "University Mall, Cougar Stadium, University Mall." Isn't that a great idea? Oh, and I once rode under the bus from La Paz to Cochabamba, in the luggage area.
5) I was on drill team in high school. Drill Team! I'm the least coordinated girl at Monticello High School, and I'm on the drill team. Says quite a bit for how desperate they were.
6) I'm the first cousin four times removed of President Hinckley. My grandpa (his first cousin twice removed) looks just like him. Not much of a claim to fame, but it's all I've got.