The Abominable SkoalMan

At a past job, one of my coworkers was THE most disgusting man on earth for many reasons, the most glaring of which was his chewing tobacco habit and all the delightful things that came with it. For some reason, the company we worked for didn’t opt for a tobacco-free workplace, and this individual took full advantage. He carried his spit cup all over the office (though sometimes leaving it in the conference room for me to find later) and would regularly stop mid-sentence to clumsily dribble tobacco juice into it then wipe the remnants out of his scraggly goatee with his sleeve.

His excessive tobacco use gave him problems in the bathroom as well. I’ll spare you the details, even though not a day went by that I was spared the gory details by the poor souls who had to share the one-stall men’s bathroom with him. I’ll just say that with my desk sitting in the lobby only a few feet away from the paper-thin wall of the bathroom, I didn’t even need the delayed commentary of white-faced coworkers to know that terrible things were happening each time he entered.

Then one day he took to bringing the newspaper in to keep him company during his pleasure-hour in the bathroom, and it became my duty to keep track of whether or not the paper had made the daily trip yet or not. I was questioned before anyone would get within 5 feet of the coffee table where it was stored.

Fortunately I didn’t have EXCESSIVE contact with him (he wasn’t my boss or anything), but unfortunately my computer was the only one in the office with certain software on it. Sometimes he’d stand right behind me while dictating directions, holding and spitting into his cup right above my ear. On one of these occasions, he pointed to something on the monitor and there was sticky brown tobacco spit ON THE BACK OF HIS HAND. He noticed it, too, said something like, “ohhh, lookie there”, then licked the fingers on his other hand and rubbed the stain away right in front of my face.

But the worst day of all was when he spit on MY hand.

I was showing him how to work the copy machine for the thousandth time. I situated the document on the glass plate and just when I reached across him with my left hand to press the “start” button, he opened his mouth to ask a question. My hand was drenched. I stared at it in horror. Someone was screaming. Was it me? Was I screaming? No….no, it was the sound of every molecule in my brain recoiling just before my skin turned to maggots. I left him there to run into the bathroom and scour my hand raw. Fingernails were employed.

So. In conclusion, here are some words of advice to anyone who chews tobacco: You are revolting. Everyone hates you.


Okay, so it’s not really advice.

Here I go again

Corinne pointed out that it’s hard to tell how tiny the baby goats are in the pictures I posted, so yesterday we tried for some person/goat comparison photos.

They kept running away from Jon. They knew he didn’t really want to be their friend and that he just wanted the picture-taking to end. Me, on the other hand. They knew how much I loved them. We had a connection.

And here I am snuggling them, and here I am dressing them in clothes, and here I am carrying one in a baby sling....

I promise this is the last baby goat post for at least a day.

Animal Miscellany

I'd been trying to get a picture of this little fuzzy baby donkey FOREVER and finally succeeded:

My favorite house on the island (and this picture counts - look closer).

Now baby goat overload:

They've taken a liking to our yard:

Those ears!!!!

(Taken from the stairs. They squeeze in through the vertical bars of the red gate. I don't know how they're still so tiny....maybe they're deformed.)

Their owner asked me (as I was setting out a bowl of goat drinking water…) if we minded them in our yard, and I answered, “We love them they’re so cute ahhhh!” But I’m pretty sure I screamed it. So capitalize the whole thing and add a few more exclamation points.

Kthxbai

The Priscilla and Benji Show

More than halfway up Rosemary Lane there’s a giant tree that we’d always wondered about. The fruit on it looked like kiwi, but when Jon picked one and stomped on it, it wasn’t. Then the other day on our way up the hill we saw an old local woman was using a rake to collect the fruit, so we stopped to ask her about it. It’s called sapodilla, and she was tickled pink that we were interested in it. She instructed us to come back in a few days and she would give us a couple to try – the fruit won’t ripen on the tree, and she wanted to make sure it was ready to eat right at the moment she handed it over. Ohhh myyy gossshhh. It was so good. Yet so weird. It had the consistency of a baked sweet potato mixed with a pear. And it tasted sort of like a sweet potato, too… we stood eating, juice running down our arms, trying to figure out how to describe the taste, and we never succeeded. We just agreed that it was the most unusual food we’d ever eaten, and that it was delicious, and that when we ate it it went into our stomachs, so it was overall a great experience.

The woman that gave them to us is named Priscilla, and she shares the house adjacent to the tree with her sister. They’re both super friendly and have always grinned and waved at us each time we pass their home. I love nice people!



This is Benji, their tortoise. He’s 60 years old – Priscilla’s had him for 40 of those. He follows her around like a dog. The other day when we stopped by, she was trying to weed the yard and Benji kept getting underfoot. She chuckled to herself and said his name with so much affection that my little heart melted into a puddle. When I asked her what Benji eats, she responded, “Fruit…porridge…anything, really”. Porridge! For a tortoise! Named Benji! I can’t be the only person who thinks that’s hilarious.

I blame his parents

When we were living in Rexburg while Jon completed his undergrad, we had a small circle of married friends. Making friends while you’re married is tough. For starters, single people typically avoid married couples. I know I did when I was single. My sister Annie said it’s because they assume that all that married people want to do is hang out with each other and do the wild thing all day. Even finding a married couple worth socializing with is tricky, because if I happen to get along with the female counterpart of the relationship then chances are good that the male counterpart is a serial collar popper that abuses the word “shiz” and worships Glenn Beck. Then there’s the issue of kids. Once your married friends start having kids, they’re in another space. They can’t stay out past 3 in the afternoon, which means either you’re hanging out at their place, again, or nothing at all. So as I was saying, we had a small circle of married friends, and at one point, one of these couples decided they needed to branch out. They dug up this boring, G-rated husband and wife duo, Jaxon and what’s-her-face, who by chance belonged to the same ward that Jon and I belonged to. Considering how many married student wards there are in Rexburg, this was quite the coincidence. Anyway, eventually our married couple friends were spending almost all their time watching Disney movies with these new nerds and hardly any time with the rest of us. THAT IS, until Jaxon got arrested for stalking a coworker YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT. And thanks to another crazy coincidence, one of our other married friends WORKED in the same office as Jaxon. I call that simply providential, because this friend had the inside scoop, pulled up a picture of the stalkee on the company’s website to show us, and OH DEAR. She was terrrrrible. Think of a 60-year-old chain-smoking wall-eyed child of incest. THAT BAD. Unreal, because his wife was actually a really cute girl. But the woman pressed charges and the last thing we knew, Jaxon and what’s-her-face had “moved out of the ward” which everyone knows is married student ward code for “got divorced”. And that’s the story of the wholesome couple’s fall from grace. Things went back to normal with the other couple after that.

And the MORAL of the story is…..don’t ever be friends with someone named Jackson spelled with an X.

On that note, the 2009 Rexburg baby name newspaper insert should be coming along in the next couple of weeks. So we all have THAT to look forward to, assuming the Statia post office doesn’t confiscate it like they tried to confiscate our friends’ Christmas presents.

so bendy

I just barely noticed the General's leg placement in this photo from Christmas. Glad to have it documented.

Me being awkward and unsightly, but not on purpose

For some reason the waves were ENORM the other day. I headed into the water for some body surfing (not to be confused with actual surfing). Jon stayed on shore because he’s nursing some weird eyelid infection and was worried about the salt water irritating it. Luckily for you, this resulted in lots of ugly pictures of me. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

Oh my poor broken body - I never realized I was so flexible.

In my defense, the camera adds 300 pounds.

kids these days

I feel about these twin baby goats how I felt towards a certain baby giraffe last year. They live in the yard of a neighbor down the street, but are constantly escaping with their mother and raising as much of a raucous as tiny little bleating baby goat voices can possibly raise. Every time we spot them, I race outside with my camera hoping to snap some pictures. The other day we heard them as we were nearing home after a grocery shopping excursion, and sighted them in the vegetation right by the side of the road. My voice immediately went up nine octaves and I sent Jon the rest of the way home by himself to retrieve the camera. But before he could return, their barefooted owner came running over in a threadbare bra and gathered them up to bring home.

Pictures! These are all from a few weeks ago, when they were brand spanking new, umbilical cords and all. They’re a little bigger now. Also, the sun was setting, so the lighting was weird and my camera really let me down.

I’ve yet to get a picture of the two of them together….weird.

I set my size 8 flip-flop there for size reference. I mean….I found this gross old discarded flip-flop and kicked it over next to it……….oh gosh, this is embarrassing. These are the terrible flip-flops I bought out of necessity in the Chicago Midway airport in August. It’s not my fault they turned out to be really comfortable. They have since been washed.

hallelujah

Right at this exact moment Jon is buying my flight to DISNEY WORLD. In case you glossed over the last word in that sentence, it’s WORLD. The glory of Disney World is hard to describe to people who have never been. You know Disneyland? Disneyland fits inside of Disney World with FIVE kingdoms left over. It’s sort of overwhelming, actually. In the best sort of way. Not to rub it in Jon’s face, who will be unable to attend :( My parents organized (and are subsidizing) this little family venture, but my dad’s break between semesters (at BYU-I, where he’s a professor) coincides with Jon’s week of finals. Of course I’m sad that he won’t be able to make it, but my excitement level is still around a 10. PLUS, thanks to a brilliant plan hatched between Corinne and me, we’re roadtripping down to Ft Lauderdale right afterwards for a couple more days of wonderful sunny family vacation time. Made possible by her friend’s generous beachfront condo-owning parents. This, combined with the fact that Jon’s brother Darcy has been accepted to the med school here and WE WILL HAVE FAMILY ON THE ISLAND, means that April cannot come fast enough.

That’s the news. OH - I cut myself on an egg yesterday – AN EGG! I was peeling them for egg salad sandwiches and all of a sudden there’s blood in our meal and the time it takes me to ever shell an egg again just tripled. Who knew they could be dangerous?? This is a real shame, because we have egg salad sandwiches for dinner at least once a week. I’d apologize to my husband for that, but he knew what I was when he married me.

Kthxbai

Favorite conversations of late

Commercial: Do you ever feel like everyone else is having more fun than you are?
Jon: No, but I feel like everyone's having more FOOD than I am....



[Overheard] Guy hitting on girl at the beach: Yeah, I went surfing at Zeelandia yesterday, the waves were AWESOME.
Girl: Cool, did you bring your own board here?
Guy: ...No...I was just body surfing...