toss, turn, repeat.

one of the things i have prided myself on my whole entire life long is my ability to sleep.

seriously.

it's pretty impressive.

i can basically sleep anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances for pretty much any length of time. this includes on airplanes and during rehearsal dinners. i feel no guilt when i snooze until almost-noon on a saturday. i am pretty much permanently on the outs with morning. my family used to draw straws to determine which unlucky soul was in charge of waking me up.

like i said, i can sleep.

except for last night. and, actually, a couple nights last week as well. even though i was drop-dead, prop-your-eyes-open-with-a-toothpick tired, i simply could not fall asleep.

i tried everything.

i fluffed my pillows. i listened to soothing music. i put on more blankets. i took them off. then i took off my pants. (what? sometimes that helps.) i ate a girl scout cookie. i went to the bathroom. i tried to read.

no luck.

i was so frustrated and exhausted i wanted to cry. ok, ok. i did cry. i wanted to sleep so bad! i must have finally headed to dreamland around 3 a.m., because that is the last time i remember looking at the clock.

people.

what is going on here? what?

this insomnia thing is a totally new experience for me, and i am ill-equipped to handle it. given my aforementioned sleeping skills, i am crossing my fingers and toes that it was just a random fluke. but, just so i am prepared, any remedies you have would be much appreciated.

for now, i have a stack of really boring reading material at the ready.

just in case.

and all eternity

{editor's note: a temple recommend is a card, signed by you and your ecclesiastical leaders, that shows you are worthy to enter a mormon temple and participate in all the things that go on there. to get a temple recommend, you go through an interview process. the recommend is good for two years, and then it needs to be renewed. and hopefully, for reasons you will soon see, you don't wait to renew your recommend until the day before a wedding.}

i woke up with a start in the middle of the night on thursday because i all of a sudden remembered that my temple recommend was expired.

i tossed and turned all night and as soon as i felt like it wasn't too early in the morning, i started making frantic phone calls and sending frantic e-mails trying to track down anyone in the bishopric and stake presidency who could help me.

and now i have another reason to believe that prayers are answered because by friday afternoon, i had a new temple recommend in hand.

normally it wouldn't have been such an urgent emergency (redundancy?), but in this particular case if the stars hadn't aligned so perfectly, i would have missed all of this...











... which i wouldn't have missed for anything. (except for an expired temple recommend.) and luckily, i didn't have to.

idolize

let it be known that i have never watched a full episode of "american idol." i prefer my reality TV to be of the humiliating and devastating dating variety, thankyouverymuch.

but, let is also be known that tonight i am off to a david archuleta concert, because i don't think it is ever a good idea to pass up free tickets to anything, especially not to concerts put on by an aw-shucks, squeaky-clean "idol" sensastion who finished last season as runner-up but still, apparently, can draw a crowd. especially here in his home state of zion.

just between us, i am a little terrified, given my nearly paralyzing fear of tweens, who will surely be out in force. i feel like every time i see a tween or teen they think to themself, "i am way cooler than that girl." and they are probably right. though sarah points out that they will probably be so busy texting eachother and taking pictures on their phones, they won't even notice i am there.

plus, i am a total sucker for lyrics like, "i know this crush ain't goin' away" and general teen angst. click here if you dare see what you're missing.

be still my beating heart. (and yours, too. no?)

smell me (revised)

driving down to moab with two lawyers yields many hours of scintillating legal-style conversation, including a debate about the merits of fingerprint and DNA databases. no laughing. it's pretty interesting stuff. though it would have been significantly more interesting if i had already read this article. (will the fact that the headline is "csi: your armpit" make you more inclined to click the link?)

the piece examines the possibility of using body odor (aka: an "odorprint") to identify criminals. no laughing. it's pretty interesting stuff. though the technology doesn't appear to be very reliable. at all. endless b.o. jokes scattered throughout the article sort of make up for that, but i don't think b.o. jokes would come in very handy in a court of law.

the conclusion is that odors, which can linger for days, and which are also invisible, making it nearly impossible to determine their origin (despite the classic verdict, "he who smelt it, dealt it"), will not become part of our crime fighting any time soon, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

it did get me to thinking, though, about that sneaky olfactory sense, and i am starting to wonder if smelling does us more harm than good.

for example, did you know that when you think you are tasting something, you are actually probably smelling it instead? this is particularly true with fast food. because fast food is so highly processed, and then submitted to all kinds of chemical processes, like flash-freeze-drying, to make it last for so long, it has lost almost all its natural taste by the time it's ready to be eaten. so, fast food companies infuse their food with what amounts to culinary perfume, a manufactured scent that smells how the food should taste. because our sense of smell is much more highly developed than our sense of taste anyway, our brains buy it. 

like i said. sneaky.

or consider this study, which posits that the birth control pill reduces women's ability to select optimally  genetically compatible mates because the pill changes women's odor preferences, and not for the better. women on the pill become increasingly attracted to men with genetically similar odors, which is bad news for life-sustaining genetic diversity. (i dated my cousin. i should know.) i won't get into the complicated scientific reasoning for the phenomena here, but rest assured it's (all together now!) pretty interesting stuff. it's also more than a little bit unfair. as my friend natali puts it, "now i can't even sniff out the right man because i want shorter, lighter periods and better skin?!" 

i have one word for that.

stinky.

but wait! there's more! i just now, this very second, came across another smell-related article, this one claiming that "twilight" actor robert pattinson, though easy on the eyes, might be less so on the nose. edward, say it ain't so!

moab-ulous

one thing i am learning is that, a lot of the time, being a grown-up means doing whatever the h-e-double-hockey-sticks you want, which is pretty great, especially when what you want to do is take a weekend getaway to moab with the girls.


and it is even better when those girls include jess and dana, in from d.c., and susan in from california, plus local favorites ck and sallee. and even though it is sort of inconvenient, it is also sort of awesome when the hotel loses one of your reservations and you all six have to cram into one room, because girly sleepovers are the best.


and it gets even better than that when the weather is perfect and you get to spend the whole weekend wearing a tank top and hiking through some of the most stunning places in the world.


like, the windows in arches national park, at sunset no less...

and also the chesler park loop in the needles district of canyonlands...

and also up to delicate arch, even though the wind threatens to quite literally blow you away...

even just the view from the car makes you want to stay forever...






i guess the downside of being a grown-up is, you always have to come home.

let them eat cake

{what does this have to do with anything? read on my friends, links and all.}

i was guest poster over at segullah on friday, something i have been dreaming of doing for some time now. so, one moral of this story is that dreams really do come true.

for the other morals of this story, i guess you'll just have to read the post for yourself.

the visitor

{camera cord found!}

when mama bear comes to town there is no time to blog.

no time to blog because you are too busy.

busy with brunch and potlucks and dollar movies ("twilight" is just as good the third time as it was the first and second, btw), and also with shopping and decoding complicated family history (too many aunt nellies!), and also with cooking and sleepovers and watching "the office" in bed.

and also with family concerts.






and also with unexpectedly lengthy sewing projects (that luckily yield unexpectedly darling results).





and also with early birthday celebrations.





and also with lots and lots and tons and lots of laughing.

whew.

i need a nap.