For Tim Curry Lovers Only

I realize I haven't said two cents since getting married, but David and I have been swamped with grading compositions; we have 220 students between the two of us and every spare second we have we've spent eating pumpkin cookies and birdwatching at Rexburg's Nature Park.

In fact, I'm trying to plan a lesson about the Gothic revival for my Romantic literature class this afternoon, but while I was trying to find a church-school-appropriate clip from The Rocky Horror Picture Show on YouTube (it's a companion piece to William Beckford's Vathek), I tripped over this gem of a historic pearl and couldn't help but post it here, where hopefully three or four of you will mutually appreciate the Curry's tambourine. God bless the person who uploaded it for all of us to enjoy. I know Halloween was last weekend, but the song does mention Christmas, too.

Scotland

Bride and Groomals

*click on the pictures to get them super-sized*

Last Saturday, David and I picked up our wedding dress and tux in Provo, then went immediately to Saltair with my mom and Stephen Phung, an amazing photographer friend of Greg Fox, and sandied up our new dandies taking bridal/groomal pictures. Here's some of our favorites. Tell us which are your favorites because we can only pick five for Stephen to ultra-super-detail-touch-up. Also, if you're interested (I'm speaking to you, my lovely sister-in-laws-to-be), all of the photos can be found here here here. David and I certainly can't decide the top five on our own.

I like this Heathcliff of the Moors shot. Very rugged/surly/handsome.


Here's that accordion I got David for his birthday this year.



David thinks I'm pulling a weird face in this one, but I like it.

These next ones are ridiculous.....David should have been the one to hold the guitar. I know all of four chords, but I still look like a dummy for those in the know.





These are our post-apocalyptic wedding photos.

A HUGE thanks to my Auntie Paula for making a veil for me, especially on such short notice.

There's a whole slew of these umbrella pictures...we have no idea which one to pick.



I can't lie--I'm a huge fan of the Tiger Lily kiss pictures, even though David insists that any and all kissy pictures must remain strictly in our own private collection (and this blog, because I can do whatever I want).






And these are our Indie band CD cover pictures.








Stephen Phung was incredible to work with--David and I aren't always the most photogenic people and it only took him two hours to come up with almost two hundred pretty decent photos of us. I highly recommend his work, and he was surprisingly affordable. Many, many thanks go to him and also my friend Stephie for doing my hair and makeup during her lunch break. Also, a huge thanks to my mom for her help, and for holding her breath (and her tongue) as she watched me run all over sand and rusted metal in the most expensive dress I'll ever wear (collecting gnats in my lace as I went).

If you want to see more Stephen Phung work and check out his pricing (he does family, kid, personal, and engagement photos, too), his website is www.phungphotography.com.

P.S. Sorry that this posting was ridiculously long and self-advertising, but we need help picking our Top Five!! Please leave your input!

"The Chinks in my Armor" or "All Work and No Play, etc."

Uh, this is going to be fast because I have papers to grade, and chicken to Shake n' Bake, and dreams to sleep, and a carless boy back home waiting for me to get home. However, it's been a good long while since I've had a real good violent anger posting on here, and I aim to make good on this month's quota right now.

I have been in a consistently foul mood since I woke up this morning. I spent the next several hours scowling, cursing under my breath, and frantically trying to figure out what was wrong so I could fix it. It was the darnedest thing. I couldn't decide what I was mad about and why I couldn't let it go. Chan and Jen drew me pictures as I shot daggers at the poor man giving the Tuesday Devotional today. Jen wrote: "Don't stress out. Don't be discouraged. Satan is PISSED that you're getting married. He's gonna try real hard to keep you in this mindset."

Below this she drew the outline of a goldfish with a speech bubble that said, "Hi, my name is Emily, and I'm gonna keep swimming."

Next to the goldfish, Chandler drew Satan waving his fists and stating, pretty matter-of-factly, "I am so pissed."

After reading the note and looking at their silly, expectant little faces, I felt the bones in my angry face start to relax, and all these wound up little muscles I didn't realize were wound up started to loosen and calm down.

Maybe it is just as simple as a pissed off devil. I mean, why shouldn't Satan be after me? I'm a goldmine of truth and virtue. My sister Amanda says the theme of my wedding should be "Purity," though Mom won't let us write it on the cake.

If it is Satan, he sure is sneaky about it. All David has done is send me kind texts and bring me food. It's a bit difficult to come up with reasons that marrying him is a bad idea. So I'm being attacked in different places....little overlooked holes I didn't expect to be shot into. So I'm writing a list. My Top Ten List of Armor Chinks that put me in a crummy mood all day:

10. Weird dreams. I have no control over my dreams, most of the time. And I had weird ones last night. Fuzzy ones. I can't place my fingers on the details, but I woke up disappointed and ashamed. It was something about not fitting into my wedding dress and having to show up to an important board meeting and everybody hating me there.

9. I've started worrying a lot about wedding dresses. I have one. I haven't seen it in weeks. I don't remember what it looks like or what I look like in it. I know nobody is really going to care what I look like (or will remember it in a year, anyway), but I have this nagging worry that I'm going to look like a pastry. Or a polygamist. Or a frump. Like "Purity" really was my theme or something.

8. I'm getting disproportionately heavy. And this real fancy friend of a friend is going to take my bridals in this real gourmet style and I'm afraid I'm going to end up looking like a pop tart on a golden platter. A bloated pop tart. They will look less like wedding photos and more like political cartoons. ("What could the metaphor be?" they'll ask, then chuckle as if they already knew.)

7. I'm allergic to all this cotton. I keep sneezing. I keep sneezing just when a thought starts to sound good, but I lose it with the sneeze. It's bugging me.

6. This girl ushering people into devotional today kept walking up and down the aisles with her nose in the air, like she was approving of everything going on inside the room, or rather that everything going on inside the room needed her approval. That bugged me.

5. I made a typing error on my wedding announcements. They're all printed. There's no going back. When you get my announcement, it will say I am getting married on the "Fourtheenth of August." The fourtheenth. Have I ever misspelled fourtheenth? I'm marrying an editor, for crying out loud. We're English majors, for crying out loud. I have to send these announcements to people in my thesis committee, for crying out loud.

4. Did I mention I wrote "fourtheenth" on my announcements and no one noticed until they were all printed? Maybe we'll get more presents this way, out of their pity for me.

3. Nobody thinks I can cook anything, but I can. I'm sick of people pigeon-holing me into this scatter-brained whelp of an incompetent housewife without evidence. So I burned macaroni and cheese last semester. So Sharon had to throw away that pot. That doesn't mean I can't learn real fast how to make all kinds of real fancy crap! Quit pointing out my motes!

3 1/2. I'm also kind of bugged that people keep saying I'm going to be a housewife now. I mean, I guess it'll probably happen, and I think I even want it, but the fact that people keep assuming really gets under my fingernails and behind my face. I burn there. If I'm a housewife, it's because I chose it, damn it.

2. I'm irritated that I can't do anything I want to do for this wedding because I have so much to do at school. I feel like I'm shouldering everything, but I'm too prideful to set any of it down. I'm drowning in a sea of "To-dos" and I go to bed each night exhausted and lisping. I've started to say things like, "fourtheenth."

1. Today I used the phrase, "chinks in your armor," to my English 311 class while referring to solidifying their argument by anticipating the opposition. A corner of the class erupted into snickers and whispers. "Sister G!" they called out in priggish, cocky confidence, "do you realize you said 'chinks' instead of 'kinks'?"

The dumb kids think that the word "chink" is only used as a racial slur. A "kink" in armor? What the hell would that look like? They really had never heard of the phrase "chinks in our armor." That's the last straw. I was kind to them in class, but I had to really rush out of there to spit fire into the empty vacuum of my office and rant out this little list of bothers.

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

I'm going to go be sweet and make decent food now. Because I'm perfectly capable and perfectly calm. And I will grade these papers. If I'm up until three a.m., I will grade these papers. And I'm going to fix pollution for once and for all! Quit telling me I can't!

August 14

Top Ten Most Important Facts About My Engagement Story
(Click on the pic to see it zoomed up and in close.)
(Sorry my fingers look so chubs in this picture--I took this tonight after my run so they are all pumped up.)
(Also, I'm going to try not to gross everybody out like I did a few posts back. But believe me.......I could....you all have no idea how gross I can be....)
(Yes, that was a threat.)

1. David did not use roommates, video cameras, scavenger hunts, blindfolds, balloons, or goldfish to ask me to marry him. He didn't hide the ring in my food, he didn't light candles, and he didn't line the walk with rose petals. It was simple, surprising, and legit. Thank goodness.

2. Earlier that morning, I got a $75 speeding ticket for going 87 in a 75 zone. David was in the passenger-side seat.

3. He proposed under a vast and clear mess of stars, and we were sitting on my Anasazi wool blanket that I always keep in the trunk of my car. (To my fellow TrailWalkers: Best blanket stepping EVER. Someone mail me a Making of the Marriage Engagement bead for my remembrance pouch.)

4. He had already asked my dad in secret. He got his phone number after adding Nick as his Facebook friend.

5. For my Layton, UT, friends: he proposed at Fernwood in that area by the castle, if you can believe it. Ten years ago I had a Young Women's pre-Girls-Camp activity in the very spot and went home with stinging nettle all over my knuckles.

6. The stones are emeralds--I didn't want a diamond (no offense to you diamonders out there.....it just isn't a good fit for me, and David didn't particularly like them either). David picked the ring out on his own, secretly, craftily.

7. Emeralds are my birthstone.

8. The first postcard I ever got from David had a P.S. that mentioned if he were a girl, he'd rather get an emerald or a ruby engagement ring than a diamond. That was before we were dating. In fact, it was mere days after I had broken up with my former fella. ......Sly dog.

9. I haven't told this to David yet, but I secretly love that my ring reminds me of Lavar Burton's eye visor from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Haha, I hope I can say that and not have it detract from how beautiful I think it is and how undeserving I still feel about owning it. I never knew a ring could carry such weight--I am surprised at how happy I am to feel taken, to have dibs called on. I am oddly in love with the outward symbol of dedication and commitment. Forgive me for saying two horribly nerdy things in one bullet, but I feel like wearing the ring gives me +25 protection and +10 luck and +50 charisma. Look, I'm not a gamer. I just know the general drill of it.

10. I said yes. The date is the 14th. August. Bountiful Temple. Reception in Layton. Be there. I'm trying to track you all down to get addresses. You can email me your address now, or wait until I call you. If you're peeved like a buzzard that you are finding this news out here and not through a personal phone call, listen, Bub: I am literally, right now, sitting on one hundred essays to have graded by the end of the weekend and I am drowning in the waters of work and appeasing my mom by saying "yes" to all of her various wedding planning ideas.........sheeeeeeeeeeesh. I haven't called a soul. Forgive. Forgive. Let live.

Ha! I digress. I said yes! I said yes! That is the meaning of all this! High falutin' rooty tootin' jingo jangin' shim sham jimmy shimmy doo dah day. How the hells bells did this all happen so fast?!

Soon to be a Grover,
Em G.

This Darned Color Scheme

I can't for the life of me figure out what colors I want this blog to carry. Nothing matches the header photo and while I want the subject matter of an upcoming post to be sunshine and cheer, the colors I keep picking are all dark and misty. Until I figure this out, I refuse to write my next post. That, and I can't find my camera, which I need.

All this is to say stay tuned. And sorry it's so dark in here.

Undercover Super Sleuths

Every early morning, a faceless team of student employees unlock my office, take out my trash and recycling, and vacuum the floor. I occasionally consider what these groggy unknown undergrads must think of me, if they think of me--if they've guessed my age or my temporary status at this university. I feel I ought to leave apologetic explanatory notes about why I'm leaving my office in the state it's in, why I have countless candy wrappers strewn about the desktops and cluttering around the floor where I've missed the garbage can (sometimes these missed wrappers get taken with the trash anyway, other times I show up the next morning and see my trash has been taken out but my missed wads of gum wrappers or Hershey Kiss foils have been left spitefully, shamelessly on the floor around the can).

Well, this post is meant to demystify some of the more irregular corners of my office. If you nameless, faceless student employees are reading this, I am the woman who owns office 294C in the Joseph F. Smith building. And while I'm sure you are all too tired to give much thought to anything while you de-bag and re-bag and shuffle out again, maybe this post is dedicated to the one of you who still carries fond memories of the Hardy Boys, of Nancy Drew, of Rocky, of Bullwinkle, of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

DEMYSTIFICATION #1: The Secret of the Pillow and Blanket Next to the Temple Bag

Possible Explanation: Sis. G. might be a spiritual hobo who sleeps in her own office and goes to shower in the Hart building while the morning crew takes out the trash. She obviously has a cheap standard of fake Navajo blankets likely bought for seven bucks on the side of the road just outside of Flagstaff, AZ. There are bits of this blanket stuck in the wheels of her chair at her desk from which we may deduce that she tries at times to sleep while reclined in her very uncomfortable and not-even-really-all-that-rolly rolling chair.

The Truth: I have never spent a full night at my office. Sometimes I take naps. I was taking a nap in my not-even-really-all-that-rolly rolling chair the day the tassles jammed up the wheel, forcing me to cut my blanket free. Sometimes I'm here real, real late and I pretend to fall asleep with my pillow and blanket, but I've never been here past 1:00 a.m.

DEMYSTIFICATION #2: The Case of the Broken Lamp


Possible Explanation: Sis. G. gets angry: glass-breakingly angry. Or she is highly creative and enjoys the light cast by broken slabs of milky glass from a blue-sky/transparent-cloud light bulb. She's obviously embarrassed or guilt-ridden from the busted up lamp because she hides it behind the file cabinet where she also hides her burned CD spire. Possibly there was a bar fight in here. Possibly Sis. G. is a victim or predator of domestic violence (Is it domestic if it involves a household appliance? Is it domestic if it happened in an office? Does it make a difference if there is a cross-stitch on the wall?).

The Truth: I love this lamp too much to toss it and so I'm not sure what to do with it or if it is replaceable/fixable. The story goes: I was participating in a Scary Story Swap via Skype with a tall, dark, handsome, faraway fellow who eventually broke character and spat something surly but witty at me, causing me to react with a typical too-loud laugh that resulted in me mule-kicking my leg into the lamp (I had it on the floor next to me for the extra-spooky effect) which subsequently shattered on the berber carpet. This made me laugh harder. I was going to superglue it all together the next morning, but the faceless morning crew must have thought I had missed the garbage can again and threw away the largest and most important glass shard for me. A hex on them for going the extra mile!

DEMYSTIFICATION #3: The Unsolved Mystery of the Old Man Kicking a Can

Possible Explanation: A grandfather?

The Truth: Behold, the finest picture of Ernest Hemingway ever taken, the old surly scoundrel. Jen, Trev, and I discovered it during a Steinbeck field trip to Ketchum, Idaho (where I am heading tomorrow for the English faculty retreat....aren't you all jealous). The museum curator gave us permission to take it off the wall and make nice copies of it on their own printer/copier machine. In retrospect, I can't believe they let us do that. I really can't. No copyright? Really? I'm pretty sure Ole' Samuelsauce still has his hanging somewhere in his office as well. I raise my cup of nostalgic spirits to ye olde thymes.

DEMYSTIFICATION #4: Cracking the Flower Bouquet Riddle

Possible Explanation: Whoever she is, Sis. G. is loved and loved a lot. Somebody romantic is in her life and the love is heavy duty enough to drop a wad of cash on some pretty exotic looking flowers which just happen to include snapdragons and tiger lilies. Did the fellow pick these flowers carefully, asking the ladies at the flower shoppe what might be done with these select names he had heard his girl mention in passing over the weeks as flower favorites? Does Sis. G. keep them on her desk because she can't bear to always be pining for them at home? Does she keep them here by her napping blanket and pillow because she knows they will keep her in her office longer, doing more work because she is accompanied by a small garden plucked by her lover vicariously from long-distance for her 27th birthday? That the flowers are emblematic of all things to come, to work hard for, to make proud of? That to gaze on the vibrant oranges and muted purples is to gaze on "I love you" objectified, florafied? That to press fingers against the cheeks of the yellow snapdragons to make them "talk" is to hear the words: "I pay attention to you; I listen to and remember your likes and your dislikes; I intend to make you happy whichever way you show me"?

The Truth: Yes. Story checks out.

"But where is Faith?"

I've been doing a lot of thinking. So I want to say a few words before my office hour starts in forty-five minutes (I refuse to do a lick of official work or lesson planning until 11:30 a.m.). One of my best friends Audi took this picture of me when we took a midnight trip to Mesa Verde during the summer of 2006 ("midnight trip" meaning, we decided to drive from Mesa, AZ, to Mesa Verde, CO, at midnight and drove all night). Audi is still pretty proud of this picture, and we both feel it owns a striking resemblance to that old LDS journal cover that everyone insists is a painting of me: Walter Rane's "Add to Your Faith Virtue; and to Virtue, Knowledge."

Ironically, this photo that insinuates my 24-year-old self climbing towards goodness, truth, and light, was taken during the first and only spat I ever had with Miss Audrey N. I'm sure it had to do with lack of sleep, as well as upset stomachs from having only eaten several Jack-in-the-Box Monster Tacos and a whole Fry's Grocery bag full of summer cherries in the previous 48 hours. Regardless, the situation sucked. We tried to ignore the funk between us, running around trails barefoot and appreciating Native American rock drawings, stacking rock cairns to throw tourists off the right trails, chewing perfectly brown sugared juniper berries strewn along the borders of ancient cliff dwellers' walls. But the funk persisted. Conversations were strained, forced. Grins were a little too toothy, a little too quickly faded. I hated it.

A tangent: Nine months ago, I taught Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" to a group of at-risk girls at the boarding school where I taught English. I was nervous because I never really liked or had paid much attention to that particular short story--I was more excited to skip ahead in time to Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver. But my girls surprised me.

I read the first two pages in a shamelessly burlesque fashion to get the girls interested. I acted out Faith and YGB's dialogue suggestively, bawdily, ridiculously:
"Dearest heart," whispered--more like panted--Faith, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes."

[. . .]

So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him (Oooh la la!) with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons [for some reason "pink ribbons" began to be interpreted as "hot pink lingerie"].

"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. [. . .] Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven, hubba, hubba, hubba."

I felt some chagrin about it then, and I kept trying to séance-speak to Hawthorne on the other side, pleading with him not to roll around too much down in the earth there, that I really wasn't purposely trying to country line dance on his tombstone. Plus, ultimately, it worked. Even the ADHD girls calmed down to giggle at the sexiness of it. Then, oddly, they started to get into the narrative. They repeatedly shared personal experiences relating to Young Goodman Brown as he realized his Sunday School teachers and leaders in life and truth were no more than sick sinful hypocrites themselves, and where's the hope in that? How could he continue to swallow the truths from his youth after hearing the woman who taught him his catechisms laugh with the Devil over him because of his naivete, his gullibility?

My girls began to relate so much with YGB that I feared they would be tempted to follow his same fate--that they would lose trust in their Faith and her no longer sexy-funny or innocent-sweet pink ribbons, that they might begin to see "the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot." I wanted to weep when we read together, this time solemnly, this time with all the girls staring at their printed and stapled copies of the story and not at my no longer rolling eyes or shimmying body, the part when Satan reveals all the sin and wicked arts of all the members of Goodman Brown's Puritan congregation and asks God's children to "look upon each other" in their nakedness. It is here that Hawthorne writes this aching and mind-destroying passage:

" 'Lo, there ye stand, my children,' said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. 'Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.'"

The story finishes with Young Goodman Brown never being able to look at his wife Faith the same way again--all hope in goodness and mankind was forever swept from his spirit and "they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."

I looked up at my girls with worry that I had just further ruined them, that I was going to hear from all their therapists shortly for magnifying their cynicism and rebelliousness. But I was mistaken. Surprised, I watched these 14 to 17-year-old girls pause, think a moment, and then chorus out with shouts of "What a moron!" "What a dumb ending!" "Geez, Hawthorne, way to give us a downer," etc.

But I asked them what ending did they expect? How could Brown have kept his Faith after so much disillusionment, so much sorrow and hypocrisy and sin and secrecy? And my girls spoke truth--despite their dirty, filthy pasts and their own secrets and hypocrisies, their lips and tongues bled honesty like honey onto their plastic desktops. We talked about the dangers of cock-eyed optimism (a favorite topic of mine since my freshman year at BYU-I) and about how ignorance couldn't truly be bliss, depending on how you define bliss. The girls felt strongly that Brown could have accepted the sins and stains of his neighbors, even the imperfections of his own Faith, but that he could have chosen to focus on their light, on their goodness, on what they do right. That the red blood stain would be shadowed by the light and glitter and shininess that each friend and neighbor also held. Because we are multitudes, we contain universes.

I guess when I realized my friendship with Audi wasn't perfect, I got scared, because I thought it was. We had told each other repeatedly that we were perfect friends, perfect soul sisters, perfect fits. I feared hopelessness and cynicism and forever screwed-up-ness when we finally fought, and I always secretly hated this MormonAd-worthy photo that I found so misleading, so dishonest.

Apologies for the length of this post. I suppose I just wanted to tell the world wide web that I am a fan of disillusionment, a fan of optimism, a fan of truth and a fan of goodness. I am a fan of forgiveness and hope and the cores of souls. Audi is getting married soon and we have continued to bear the blessed name of bosom buddies all through the past four years. She is my kin and my heart and my blood. And I have a shiny countenance and shit on my hands at the same time. And I aim to keep on a-washing those dirty, grubby paws of mine and scrubbing them clean every day for the rest of my livelong life, dirtying them, washing them, dirtying them, washing them, and hopefully I'll be able to cyclically get myself somewhere good before I finally keel over and kick the bucket. And I aim to recognize the cores of the souls of all my friends and favorites who are running, trudging, sauntering, meandering, and frolicking this worn path with me.

In other words: Back off Satan, with your fears and your doubts and your cynicism. I'm having a great year.....the best year of my life so far. And don't it feel good.