Fair-ly good Friday

This summer I'm living with Karen and Ray, a nearing-retirement couple whose children are grown and gone and have kids of their own (who come over at least once a week). I had never met them before coming out to Minnesota; I got in contact with them through a Church-service missionary I met during my internship with the Church this winter. He used to go to football games with Karen's parents. He put us in contact, and they offered me a place to stay (rent-free!) for the summer. Their home is about 15 minutes away from my work in downtown St. Paul.

Karen could have died while driving home yesterday. I guess we could all die any time we drive anywhere, but she was actually in imminent peril. She was going east on I-94 when a tire came bouncing down the road and hit the corner of the hood of her care. Fortunately, it missed the windshield and flipped over the car after hitting the hood. It reminded me of a time Sarah and I saw a tire bouncing on I-15 in Utah. (I didn't realize at the time how dangerous it was.) I'm so grateful that Karen's okay, even if the car is not. And I'm grateful I wasn't in the car, because just hearing about it was enough to freak me out. The older I get, the more poorly I cope.

The battery was smashed, so all the electrical stuff was still running even with the keys out of the car.

The words on the side of the tire were visible on the hood.

I spent a couple of hours playing with (or rather, being ordered around by) 2-year-old Hazel. She is a huge fan of me. I am a huge fan of her when she's cheerful.

A little after noon, I went with Ray and Karen and two of their grandchildren — Hazel and Nate, who's 6 — to the Ramsey County Fair. It's a very smaller fair, about the size of the one in Crook County, OR, that I went to with my family a couple of years ago. They had a special on rides ($2 each, which really isn't that special, but whatever) until 2, so I bought some tickets and Karen bought Nate some and we went on rides for about an hour. He was 2 inches too short to go on the Zipper or the Tornado, so we did the Hang-gliders, Tilt-a-Whirl, "Sizzler" (Scrambler) and "Pharaoh's Fury" (Swinging Ship; and he was actually 2 inches too short for this one, too, but the ride operator let him on anyway, and I still can't decide if that was nice or not, because if Nate had fallen out of our bench he would have died). And he went through the fun house and on an obstacle course.

I love rides. I need to get to an actual theme park one of these days.

People thought he was my son. I'm officially old.

After the rides, we went and looked at exhibits in a barn. Hazel ran around declaring everything to be pretty, and wanted to smell all the flowers (which means rubbing her face in them, a trait she developed from watching Bambi way too many times). There weren't any animals at the fair, except for a small petting zoo, so we went to that and the kids bravely fed some goats (which freak me out).

Fearless.

Nate got bored with the animals pretty quickly and went from booth to booth spinning all the wheels for free gizmos and sunglasses. We all then went to the 4-H tent for crafts. They had Home Depot kits for making birdhouses and planters, so we went to work building those with the kids. Meaning we built them while the kids whined (Hazel) or made faces with newly acquired fake vampire teeth and said they were bored (Nate).

It's been years since I've tried building something like that. The Bones took me to Home Depot the last month before I turned 12 or 13 or whatever age it is where you're not supposed to go anymore, and I made something there but don't even remember what. Sometimes I encounter situations that I add to my unofficial mental list of things I should probably do with anyone I'm ever in a serious relationship with, just to see how they go about it. Building a wooden birdhouse is one of them. Let's just say it took more than three attempts to get the roof basically right. And not because of me.

We all headed home at about 3 p.m., giving me enough time to take a quick shower and change my clothes and go to work.

He said he wasn't tired. A minute after I took this, his head was on my shoulder.

One of the good things about working nights is how easy it is to get to work and to find parking. Because most of the downtown area goes home between 4 and 5 p.m., I am going the opposite direction as everyone else and parking spots are usually vacant right in front of the 8-story building I work in. The parking meter only charges until 5 p.m., so if I park at 4:20ish I only have to pay about $1.50 for the spot. I usually leave work between 11 p.m. and midnight, but I just cross the street to get to my car. Plus I carry mace. But St. Paul is a pretty safe place (despite the shooting stories I seem to edit at least once a week).

Yesterday Val invited me and Alyssa to go with her and Tim (another copy editor) to get dinner at a taco shop a couple of blocks away. We both went, and it was such a nice change to go outside and have delicious food and be able to talk, instead of microwaving a TV dinner to take back to my desk to try to eat quietly as I continue working. The food was good, but not as good as at Bend's Tortilleria Reyes. After getting tacos, we walked down to Candyland, which is (you guessed it) a candy store. I ate all of my "maple nut goodies" while still at work, but I had the chocolate (two chocolate-dipped caramels with sea salt and a pecan turtle) for breakfast today.

Work was interesting yesterday in ways good and bad. I was editing a story about political scandals for Tim and could not come up with a headline for it. In despair, I wrote something like "Political scandals don't scandalize like they used to." I almost sent a follow-up email apologizing for its lameness. But instead I got an email from him, telling me it was a really good headline. Sweet.

Three hours later, Cathy had given me and Alyssa each a story to edit and headline. Alyssa's was a display hed and cutline. Mine was 30 inches, three cutlines and a hed. I had edited the story and was working on the headline when Cathy told me I needed to let her take it because we were too close to deadline and she needed to get it done quickly. So I gave it back unfinished and basically felt like a failure. But then I got over it.

When I left work at 11:55, I was shouting goodbye to Alyssa when I got to my car and found two people sitting by it, a man and a woman. They told me they had just been admiring it and that it was a very nice Toyota. They wanted to know what year it was. I said '97, thank you, then I got in my car and drove away.

I threw away the contacts I got Wednesday. They were uncomfortable and stupid. I put in a new pair of my old ones, and will have to figure out a different brand or type to get on Monday when I go back for my follow-up. Why do people always feel like they have to change things to be doing a good job? An optometrist can't just say, "Hey! This prescription is still perfect!" Instead she has to try tweaking it to feel justified in her profession. Seriously. That's like if I started changing words in a perfectly good story just to feel like I was editing. It's dumb. If it's not broken, leave it alone.

There was another big thunderstorm last night. I'm not usually afraid of thunder and lightning, but I was (in my half-awake delirium) very afraid last night.

Here's Rennie yesterday, to break up all the text. He later got a haircut, which I will try to digitally capture soon.

This morning I woke up at 7:30 so I could take a shower and make it out to the St. Paul Stake Center half an hour away in Brighton for a baptism at 10 (I move really slowly in the morning). The gas light came on in my car as I left the driveway, so I had to stop and put a couple of gallons in to make it to Brighton. By some miracle I was on time. I realized I haven't been to a baptism in years and years. I can't remember the last one, but I was probably still in primary. Maybe it was mine and Sarah's.

I was happy to look around the room and see so many people I know. I was happy for Annie and the two guys who decided to take that step in their lives. I'm happy to be a member of the Church and for the peace the Gospel brings to my life. The blessings far outweigh the sacrifices.

Brock sat by me and asked why I hadn't come to his awesome movie night with 30 other people on the roof of his apartment building in Minneapolis last night. And that is why, despite the fabulous traffic and parking conditions, working nights sucks.

I headed back toward home and went to the Marshall's near me to check it out. It's the same thing as Ross. I didn't buy anything.

I head to work in 30 minutes. I need to get advice from my coworkers on what I should put for salary expectations on my job application for the St. Cloud Times. I still need to finish updating my resume, but applying for the position should be super simple from there. I wish I knew what chance I stood. But it's good I don't, with this and with everything, because I'd do a lot less and learn a lot less if I didn't have to try.