ANOTHER EINSTEIN REPORT

I've done it again. Yesterday, we had been in Salt Lake City and when we came home I got undressed and went right to bed. I slept three hours and then got up at 9:30 to make buttermilk pies--well, cookie sheets full of buttermilk pie. One was for the luncheon after a funeral, today, and one was for the luncheon after the baptism of our grandson, today.

When I got redressed I put my shirt on backwards and inside out. Phil didn't bother to tell me. He likes to play around with my ego. I wore it that way all night. Luckily no one came to our house. How would I have felt, not only being a slob but showing the size of my shirt too, right there for anyone to read?!

Making a cookie sheet full of buttermilk pie is tricky because you blend everything in the blender and let me tell you, it is FULL. I had the first cookie sheet, full of unbaked goo in the oven when I found the melted butter--that was supposed to be in the goo--still in the a pan on the stove. So, I opened the oven and dumped the goo into a bowl, spilling a whole lot of it on the stove door and even on the floor. I added the butter, stirred like crazy and poured it back into the pan.

I guess it worked okay but really. How Einsteinish can you get in one night? My journal entry will read: "Slob, showing shirt size--which is a whole lot of sizes bigger than she wants it to be--dumps pie filling on floor. Floor needed mopping--no one used straw to slurp up goo. Even though some slobby inside-our-shirt wearing person wanted to."
Recipe here.

THE EINSTEIN AWARD

Story one:

A man in our ward was talking to a client the other day. "I have a new cell phone and a new number," he said. "Let me find my the phone and I'll give you the number. Hold on." He then proceeded to try and find the new phone. It wasn't in his office/studio, which is next door to his house. Maybe it was in the house. He kept the man on the line while he searched. Not in the bedroom. Not in the kitchen. Not in the house office. He tried the car. It wasn't in the car. He was frustrated. He looked by the pool. He looked everywhere he could think of. "I'll have to call you back when I find it," he said and went to hang up and found he was talking on the new cell phone.

Story two:

A friend of mine had misplaced her cell phone. She looked everywhere. She had a deadline and needed to leave the house soon. Then she had a brilliant idea, I'll call my cell phone from the home phone, and when it rings I'll be able to find it. So, she called her cell phone. All of a sudden, from across the room her cell phone rang. This irritated her. Now just who could that be! she thought. I don't give my cell phone number to ANYONE.

Story three:

My mom had a friend who went upstairs for something. When she got up there she couldn't remember what it was. She wandered in and out of all the bedrooms, hoping something would jog her memory. Finally she thought, I guess I'll have to go downstairs and see if I can remember. So she went all the way back downstairs and into the kitchen where she was before she went upstairs. And then she remembered. She had gone upstairs to have a nap.

This same friend was taking care of her elderly dad. She kept track of his medications. One pill was for his memory loss, another for arthritis, another for some other condition. There were about six pills in all. She went into the kitchen, got all of the pills he was supposed to take, ran a glass of water and took them herself.

The EINSTEIN CLUB--SPEAK UP, WILL YOU?--IRONING THE SKIRT FOR CHURCH

My hearing is good. It's just when people speak and I am thinking of other things--important thing--fascinating things--it takes my brain a second to come back to earth. As seen in the following examples:

"Thanks for lunch, Mom," Gilmore Girl said on Friday.

"What'd you say about relish?" I asked.

Everyone looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe the pizza soup needed relish, what do they know?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her Excellency of Mousehole said something tonight about "Dante's Inferno."

"Donkey's in flannel?" I asked.

Actually, my version would be a comedy.

The world needs more laughter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

So last week I was preoccupied with getting my lesson for Relief Society when I was ironing my skirt for church. I sprayed on the spray starch and it looked and smelled funny. I looked at the aerosol can. Wow, it has a different top but I ironed anyway.

All done and then I took a good look. Not spray starch. Woolite Self Cleaning Rug Cleaner.

So I vacuumed my skirt and it was fine. Ironed and clean.

Okay, so the top is a LOT different. I had other things on my mind.

Einstein understands, I'm sure of it.

THE EINSTEIN CLUB, part 3. STUCK ON A FLY STRIP.

We have moths in our house. We've seen a dozen or so in two or three months. I am worried that they are some kind of "grain moth."

I don't want weevils--or whatever the pupa stage of this moth is--in my pantry. And if they ever got in the basement it would not be good.


So, I bought something I would have never thought I would ever need. A fly strip. Yes, I know. Disgraceful, but what do you do? Let one grain moth live and later be faced with the plagues of Egypt.

This happened to a friend of mine. She and her husband teach at BYU. They were taking a group of students to Spain for a semester abroad. They left a clean and tidy house. What they didn't know is that in some product they brought home from the grocery store there was a hitchhiker--a grain moth. Pregnant. They closed the house and in several months, when they opened the door and turned on the lights the whole room took flight--a plague of Egypt.


I have no desire to participate in a plague experiment, no matter how educational and historic.


So, up went two fly strips, one behind the pantry door and one in the basement. The pantry strip caught three moths or maybe three parts of moths. It's hard to tell.


The basement fly strip didn't catch any moths. It did catch something else. Me! Let me tell you, those suckers are sticky! No moth is escaping, unless he leaves his wings behind. I nearly tore the fly trap in half, getting my hair out of it.


I had to go upstairs and wash that part of my hair. And my hands. Again and again. Fly trap goo is stubborn.


So, I went to lunch--I was a few minutes late but she was a few minutes late plus one more minute so I didn't have to explain. I chatted and was charming and never said that I was a fly strip victim. I mean, how embarrassing is that? First, admitting you have a pest problem and then admitting you actually put up a fly strip. And then, admitting it caught you.


Here is why I don't want moths in the basement. I can see I was going to make some serious Chex mix over Christmas. Or some muddy buddies. Now what do I with all that cereal? We don't eat cereal. Anyone think Chex Mix or Muddy Buddies are a stupid thing to serve for Easter? Yah, me too.

And looking at these photos I know I need to clean and organize the basement. I think I will take down the fly strip first. No sense in tempting fate.

DUMB INC. CHANGING IT'S NAME TO THE EINSTEIN CLUB, PART 2

An alert reader--who is also possibly brilliant--said that it isn't dumbness that gets us into all these rather interesting predicaments--like walking into the men's bathroom--Sheesh!--but rather our minds are so occupied with interesting/perhaps brilliant thoughts that the normal, mundane things go, "whoosh," right over our heads. She called it Einstein-itis. Thanks, Shan. It sounds so much better than feeling dumb.

Here Einstein is in the early years and later, when he got even more interesting. But look at the eyes. Exactly the same.

Einstein was so preoccupied with interesting things that, well, he probably walked into the Ladies bathroom. I heard a story about him once, that reminds me of Kraut. Kraut is also interesting. It is his fault I am a night owl. He was so interesting as a teenager that I couldn't leave and go to bed. Therefore I had a case of terminal sleep deprivation. Now it's a habit.

See how this works? You start with one thought and pretty soon you are galloping off, in a complete different direction.

Back to the story: Einstein was sitting at his desk, visiting with someone and Einstein got thirsty. So he peeled an orange. But his guest was fascinating and their talk was lively and he forgot to eat it. Later, he noticed that he was thirsty. So, he peeled an orange. Then: interesting talk, thirst, orange. By the time he finally realized what he was doing he had seven oranges peeled, and uneaten, on his desk.

Kraut is like that. He gets distracted by interesting things. He once told me he looked a word up in the dictionary and then, because it was surrounded by other interesting words, he didn't get back to what he was doing for a l-o-n-g time. I don't remember for sure but I think it was an hour.

Okay, today's Einstein-ish moment:

The other day I was at Day's Thriftway buying groceries. I ran my card through the terminal. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. My favorite checker, Shawn, said, "turn it around." I did. Nothing. He took my card and he ran it through. Nothing. He turned it around. Nothing. Then he looked at it, handed it back to me and said, "This is your Border's Reward Card."

I am not alone. My favorite checker is also a member of the Einstein club.

DUMB INC., PART 1

Do you ever feel dumb? I'm going to make you feel better.

Last week I went to the library to check out a zillion books by Claudia Mills, who is an author who will be teaching at the BYU Writer's and Illustrators for Young Readers workshop on June 8-12, 2009. I am going to be Claudia's assistant and want to read all her books the library has. (She's a brilliant author, by the way. You should buy her books for your kids/grandkids.)

While I was at the library I needed to go to the restroom. Funny, I thought, only one stall in the restroom at the library? Surely the library is big enough to have more than one stall? And what's this? A urinal? In the women's restroom?

And then it dawned on me.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another instalment of Dumb Inc., a feature designed to make you feel better about yourself.