Fawsonisms

So the Fawsons (Bob's family) have a number of strange phrases. Here are a few:

- Giggins = These are presents of any flavor. Birthday Giggins, Christmas Giggins, Sorry-I-Called-You-Fat Giggins, you get the picture.

- Dippy = A specific kind of dip (Hidden Ranch dry seasoning + sour cream + cottage cheese ??? As a grafted Fawson, I am not allowed the exact recipe and can only guess at the ingredients.) Traditionally is served with Lays Ridged Potato Chips, and rarely is used with vegetables.

- Lippy = Chapstick, lip balm, any lip-applied cosmetic. Traditionally is referred to as a moisturizing agent, as in, "My lips are so chapped! Can I borrow some lippy?"

- Bousht = Carter Fawson (aged 15) the youngest Fawson. Devolution: Carter --> Buster (Don't know how that one came about) --> Bustier, until there were some awkward questions about what this actually means --> Bousht. Also can be known as Cartier (pronounced the traditional French way).

- Lushy = Shortened form of luscious. A certain extended family member says this word quite often, so the family followed suit. Luscious soon proved to be too long, so lushy came to be.


I love these Fawsonisms, and they stand out especially because they are shiny and new to me, not growing up with them all my life. (e.g. I find it perfectly acceptable to refer to the remote as the 'Mee-mo.') It's one of the best parts of joining a new family, getting to know all of their quirks and intimate details, and the Fawsons are always surprising me with more!

Rumor Mill

There have been some misunderstandings lately, so I would like to clear a few things up:

1. Bob is not gay. I know some of you think that he carries a purse and we're married for appearances. I know that there has been some gossip going around at work, but it's not true. Bob is straight, I think that I would know!

2. We are not cruel dog owners. Sometimes the most dire of circumstances requires us to use force on our dogs (kicking, spitting, name-calling). Don't judge us, we're smarter than you!

3. Storing human waste and yard clippings in a giant barrel and then leaving it for the next owners of your house is not cool. Don't do it. It's disgusting. We will hate you for it.

4. 40DDD bras make nice hats. Especially yellow ones. This isn't really a misunderstanding, just an awesome factoid.


As you can see, we've had an interesting week and hopefully we'll see more of these things.

Thank you for your time.

Mini Golf

Yesterday, while hanging out some family, we decided to go mini-golfing with the rest of our evening. It had been raining all day, so the heat was bearable, and an evening out on the course with fun people sounded quite pleasant to all of us, so we headed out!

I hadn't been mini-golfing in years, perhaps I had been on a bad mini-golfing date more recently, but mostly my memory of mini-golfing was from Unni (my grandmother) taking me during the summers of my childhood. I recalled the long afternoons mini-golfing and going to the local cheap water park with her and my cousin-friend Lisa, rushing home afterwards to raid the candy drawer, eat home-cooked churros, cruise around on Gramps' 4-wheeler, and play the marble game.

Now I spend my summer afternoons working hard, or occasionally sneaking away with my mom and sister to buy these matching shoes. Those times seem so simple and so far away. I have an excellent life now, and I remember wanting to be old so badly when I was young, but sometimes I yearn for simpler times when my biggest worry was who I would hang out with tomorrow, and which of my new outfits from the Nordstroms sale would I wear on my first day of school?

I did come in third out of five mini-golfing though. So congratulations to me!

Regret

We keep our dogs' food outside in the garage, storing a small amount (about 1/4 of a bag) in a sealed bucket in the house for convenience. This bowl also serves as a serving platform for Maggie's food, because Bob claims it is too difficult for her to bend all the way to the ground considering her height. As much as I mock him for these claims, Maggie does eat a lot better when her food is higher, and perhaps she just likes the idea that her food is higher than Sammi's.

When we left the house on Sunday to attend our 'Sunday Party' (aka That Hot Building Where I Listen to Children Sing About Jesus) we accidentally left the aforementioned food bucket sitting out, and not hidden in its usual closet. A plastic bucket with a snap-on lid? Piece of cake for a famished Weimaraner.

We came home and she had cleaned out the entire bucket, approximately 5-8 of her regular meals in a three hour period. We found her laying on her side, her stomach ridiculously distended. She spent hours laying underneath the evaporative cooler and panting.

Bob said, "I feel so bad for her! I know exactly what she's going through, having done it to myself so many times."

Working For the Weekend

It's a pretty chill day here at work. During a meeting, we ended up talking about nerdy science videos found on the BioRad (a science products vendor) website promoting some of their more expensive products/machinery.

Rumor on the street is that a man from the FBI is coming to redeem our security clearance and then we will have a 'party.' I do not know what that entails.

I'm pretty darn excited for the weekend. Excited enough that I have nothing much to say other than to leave you with a Bobism to make your day like he makes mine!!!


Bobism: Maggie, you deserve a MacArthur Panting Grant for excellence in panting! You're like a genius but with being hot and coping with it. Congratulations! The prize is one dog biscuit.

Mao and the Sentinel

Bob and I have a route we tend to use for our dog-walking. It is a loop through the neighborhood and at the far end of the loop there is a house. (somber music) A house wherein lies Mao and the Sentinel. (Scary music crescendos.)

As we approach the house (usually about two houses away) our dogs' mo hawk fur goes up, Maggie starts growling, Sammi slinks lower to the ground, and everyone starts walking slower. Suddenly, we spot the Sentinel (an adorable Australian Cattle Dog type of sweetheart) whose tail starts wagging and starts barking the meanest, most ferocious bark I've ever heard in my life. Then Mao, an adorable Beagle, runs up to the fence and howls repeatedly at the top of his 14-lb-dog lungs. (Note: Mao is the Beagle's real name, but we don't know the name of the Sentinel.)

This is considered an affront to our girls who lunge at the end of their leashes. Maggie growls and barks while Sammi does this high-pitched whine that I haven't quite figured out since usually she has no qualms about barking her head off like a fool.

An epic battle of scratching and barking ensues with us yelling our heads off and the dogs on the edge of their seat for the next block. It's a harrying experience, but one that the dogs look forward to on every walk. It's like saying to yourself, "Oh goodie! I didn't call my wife to tell her I would be late for dinner, and now we're going to have a gigantic fight about it! I can't wait! I hope that she calls me a worthless fattie and I get to call her a bitch!"

Stalking Lessons

We have new neighbors. Our old neighbors, who we liked well-enough, but didn't want to associate with outside of church, bless their little hearts, have moved out and someone else has moved in...

We're happy with our friends here in Salt Lake, we've got great friends who are supportive and fun; but there's just something about having neighbors whose house you're excited to go over to, or whom you can rely on for an early Saturday morning bike ride.

So we've been asking around and we've found out the following:
-They are Mormon (+ So are we)
-They own a Subaru (+ Perhaps outdoorsy)
-They have a kiddy pool (- Perhaps have children which wouldn't be as ideal/+ Perhaps have a dog, awesome!)
-They are high school teachers (- Kind of bland)
-He is the swim coach at Alta High (+ Athletic, perhaps will could be persuaded to be outdoorsy)
-He teached American Government and Politics and she teaches science and math (+++ Matches our own specialties very well...)

Every opportunity we get, I insist on driving or walking by these people's house in attempt to gain more knowledge. (Will they be pretty, Will they be rich? Here's what Bob said to me.... Que sera, sera! Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see, que sera, sera!)

Today's Bob-ism: "We should bring them [refer to above] cookies to invite them into the neighborhood. But the cookies will have poison in them, and only we will have the antidote. Then they will have to be our friends or else we won't save them from the poison!"

Birfday

Yesterday was Robert Matthew Fawson's 26th birthday (aka my husband). I think this was the first year of our marriage in which he hadn't already bought a kabillion (actual term meaning a ka of billions) dollar item, claiming it would be his birthday present.

The point is that I went down to have lunch with him during his work, which would be standard for most people, but since he works in Soccer Mom Mecca and I work in Tofusville Hippytown Research Park, and there is about an hour of driving between the two, this is quite the present from me to you. You being Bob. Bob works in a scary place. Strip malls and Mormon movie billboards; everyone has a glazed look to their eyes and cuts you off with their BYU-style-personalized license plated minivans.

I digress. What I'm trying to say is that I realized yesterday, more than ever before, how differently Bob and I spend our days. I'm up on the east bench of Salt Lake City, working on science and ebola and stuff, while Bob is down southernly way in the realm of the "Zoobies" working on 'market research,' a vague euphemism for bs-ing with people all day long. When we were in college, we spent all day together. We would each go to our separate classes and then meet in his office to do homework, or more likely to go get Scotsman dogs and Diet beverage refills. (see picture of Scotsman dog for reference) We only owned one car, and we mostly biked places. We both worked on campus, and would go out for afternoon hikes when classes got too rough.

So it's sad that now I barely know the route to his work and he's never been inside mine. I spend so much time here, and he spends even more there, and we'll never again have the proximity that we did in Logan.

Packaging

My boss is out of town, and a package came in today for her, so in her absence, Jamey and I got the pleasure of opening it. This package stated that the contents 'needed to be refrigerated at -20C upon opening,' so we opened it immediately for the sake of the contents. The package was about three feet long, a foot wide, a foot tall, and made out of Styrofoam; basically a cheap cooler. Also, the box was heavy. Very heavy.

Jamey and I were excited to see the contents, we weren't expecting any packages, and I was worried about where we were going to find the freezer space for this gigantic find.

We opened the lid to find a mountain of dry ice (expected in this sort of delivery) close to the top we found a small box, smaller than my iPhone (though thicker than it). We dug through the rest of the box finding nothing but dry ice, and nearly burning ourselves several times on it. All of that space for dry ice to freeze a cell-phone sized box?!?!?!?!

I realize as I write this that it in no way captures the hilarity and bizarreness of my afternoon... But it will have to do.

Rocky Mountain High

This weekend we (we being my family + a few tag-a-longs) went camping up in the Uintah Mountains, by Marsh Lake to be more specific. Run down of the bests and the worsts of my 4th of July.

10 things I loved: (no particular order)

• 14 mile hike to the Big Meadow/Beaver Lake
• The shower I took in the trailer after said hike
  
• Watching Maggie swim and the other dogs (Sammi and Izzie) attack her
• Canoing out to the Heeb-Jeebs
• Playing a ton of Nertz
• Eating Raspberry/Strawberry/Blackberry/Rhubarb pies made by yours truly
• Delicious, delicious foods
• Cheating. And then failing, failing horribly.
• Sitting around the campfire and telling tall tales
• Watching three boys change a flat tire on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere
  

10 things I hated: (no particular order)

• Mosquitoes
• DEET
• Sunscreen
• The sunscreen/DEET film over my entire body
• Mosquito bites
• Spraying the dogs with DEET when they hated it
• Being sprayed with DEET ("Mama, I hate it!")
• Gigantor flies
• Having everything taste faintly like DEET
  
• The diseases (cancer, etc.) I will now get from having all that DEET in my bloodstream

These are just some of the many reasons I will look fondly back at the memories of this weekend as I return to my life as a city slicker.

Politicos

I finally got around to changing my address and registering to vote with the Utah League of Bureaucracy (after a mere ten months) and I'm ready for the presidential elections coming this fall (perhaps the most anticipated event of this millennium, or so it seems).

To get the dogs pumped up, we've been encouraging them to endorse John McCain. These two bitches may be the only creatures in the world that become excited when they hear the words "John McCain." Everyone else is apathetic or mildly adverse, which is what our political system boils down to, the person that wins is the person that creates the least upset reaction, perhaps a man weeks away from a nursing home!

Regardless, everytime we come home or we're about to give them a treat, we shout out, "John McCain!!! John McCain!!!" Naturally, they jump out and freak out as they are prone to do.

We then took this a step further and gave Maggie Bob's old wallet. So for a time (before they chewed the wallet into tiny leather bits that clogged the vacuum for months) we would shout, "John McCain! John McCain!" And Sammi would jump up and down in the air while Maggie would run to try to hand us the wallet (she wanted to play fetch).

The point is, they've transferred $5,000 in funds over the internet to John McCain's campaign due to this training. I guess it worked a little too well...

He/She

My boss recently found out that her long-time ex-boyfriend Kevin made the decision to undergo a sex-change operation and became Karen. We spent a long time pouring over pictures on Facebook, trying to determine what happened to his/her Adam's apple and where the boobs came from. It was incredible.

Ever since then, I can't help but wonder what I would do if that same thing were to happen to me. What if Carson became Carmen, Jer became Jen, Andy became Andrea (pronounced Ohn-drea, surely), and so on. I would surely question my sexuality; I don't necessarily fall for weight-lifting, truck-driving, rednecked 'macho' men; I like my men smart and funny (like Robert Matthew Fawson), though my husband is a superb handyman.

So ex-boyfriends beware: If you change into women on me, I'm going to go beat you up. (And scratching will count this time...)