Graduation, anyone?

It just occurred to me that some of you may want to come to my graduation. Don't feel any pressure to because I'll definitely post pictures and stuff when it happens so that you don't have to sit through the whole thing. Because that's how I think I'd prefer to do it if it wasn't my graduation. In any case, if you want to come spend the day celebrating with me, it's on April 26th and you should email or call me for more details.

Graduation gown

Today was the Grad Fair at school, which meant I could go pick up all the ridiculous graduation clothes. It's getting closer, which is an exciting thing. I cannot tell you how done with this semester I am, but that's a whiny story for another day.

The master's program at UVU is very new and we're only the second cohort to graduate. Seeing as how the program is so new, I was hoping that our hoods would be some kind of iridescent fabric or have flashing LEDs or something equally awesome. So I went to the bookstore to pick my stuff up, they looked at my email confirmation of graduation and the guy behind the table looked at it and said, "Grab a drab hood and I'll get this drab tassel right here." The color for the business school is called drab. Seriously, why couldn't it be something awesome like "burn your retinas blue" or "Philip K. Dick's VALIS pink?" I mean, sure, business majors aren't as flamboyant as drama students or visual artists, but they're not exactly subdued like engineers or computer science majors.

Drab? Ugh. Anyway, I tried it all on and decided it looks pretty good with UVU's green color. And while I had it all on, I wondered why no one wears the hood. It just hangs down your back, totally useless. So I put the hood on my head. It looks way more awesome that way and I'm more annoyed that we waste that display than that the color for the business school is "drab."

No, I didn't take pictures. You'll just have to wait for next month for those.

Clearly my boy

"Come on, dude. It's bath time."

With a weary "Oh, maaaan," he made it sound like the biggest drudgery ever. "I'm so tired of taking baths." He's four.

And clearly my boy.

Our bison friend, Timmy

You probably heard that a few months ago, Max lost his stuffed bison, Timmy. He loved Timmy and took him everywhere, but at bedtime, Max expected Timmy to be there with him. That was hard because Timmy got put in all kinds of clever places during the day as they played and one day, Timmy went somewhere that none of us could see. There were days of panic and tears at bedtime until I got the brilliant idea to look for a new one on Amazon.

I ordered the exact same one and the few days it took to get here gave me a chance to think about how to handle the transition. Should I say "Hey look, I found Timmy!" and try to pass the new one off as the well-loved one? No way. That kid would totally see through the lie and that would be worse.

So I used my English major skills and concocted a story in which Timmy had to take care of some important things and would be back as soon as he was done. While he was gone, he sent his nearly-identical friend to keep Max company so that Max didn't get lonely. There was a suspenseful moment as Max thought about my story and considered its plausibility. Would it be a good enough explanation? Or would he melt down and be doubly upset about losing Timmy and this obvious ploy to replace his friend?

It worked! "So what are you going to call him?" I asked.

"New Timmy!" And they've been friends. It's been great.

The kicker is that we knew that Timmy was in the house somewhere, we just didn't know where and we had resigned ourselves to not finding him until we either cleaned everything or moved again.

Well, I'm avoiding writing a paper for my accounting class right now and just turned around toward my bust of Lenin, sitting on the bookshelf by the computer here. Lenin's shadow seemed oddly shaped and a split second later, I realized that it was also uncommonly brown. Like a missing stuffed bison.

Holy crap! I just found Timmy! And the two Timmys are friends now that they've finally met. There's a very happy monkeyboy in the other room. And I'm writing this instead of my accounting paper. I'll post a picture of the happy meeting as soon as I can get it off of Chelsea's phone. But for now, I'm a hero.

Cinnamon Caramel Brownies

Yesterday this little boy said, "I'm ready for my breakfast dessert now. What do we have?" "Breakfast dessert" isn't really a thing, so there was nothing ready-made. We decided to bake something. And I knew I had most of a can of sweetened condensed milk in the fridge so I suggested caramel brownies.

It turns out that caramel brownies take sweetened condensed milk AND caramels. Whatever. I was already emotionally committed. I asked Max if he wanted to run to the store for caramels or just try a baking experiment. He chose doing an experiment. (Science FTW!)

In addition to not having caramels, we substituted graham flour for some of the white flour. Then, as we were about to add the "caramel" layer Max said, "I like cinnamon. Can we add cinnamon?" "Sure!" I replied, and handed him the cinnamon. I can't really duplicate the recipe because he just added spice until he felt it was sufficient.

The brownies are "ooey and gooey" (Max's description) and really yummy. But you should eat them with a fork because they fall apart in gooey goodness the second you try to take them from the pan.

Moral: Science is AWESOME!

And "breakfast dessert" is probably going to become a thing at our house.

Visiting Edlira

Oh, so Chelsea came home and everything was great, but this post isn't about that. Some of you know my "adopted Albanian cousin," Edlira. She's fantastic. And she recently moved back to Provo, which is great for me because I can still visit her without having to skip classes. (I'm so close to done, y'all. Temporally. Mentally, I'm fighting the entropy already.)

So a couple of weeks ago, I called her up and we decided to get together. It was a fantastic night. She hadn't cleaned everything up within an inch of it's perfection, the kitchen was a very busy work space full of dishes and food and more dishes, and there wasn't a centerpiece. Kids were running around, screaming, but having a good time. I had to run to the store to get something we didn't have. It was beautiful simply because it was so imperfect.

The reason is because Edlira said if you wait until the timing is perfect or the house is clean or the kids aren't hopped up on sugar or whatever, you'll never get together. The key is to spend time with people you care about, so as long as that's happening, the evening is a success, regardless of how clean your bathroom is or what dinner tastes like. Honestly. And as Dr. Seuss said, the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind.