Does This Bumper Make Me Look Fat?

I have a confession.

I am a very self-conscious driver. I am also incredibly impatient, and let's just say the combination adds up to a type of driving my brothers consistently mock me for. Which doesn't help the self-consciousness. You see a pattern here?

Another confession. I adore Las Vegas, and chose to move here for a reason. But to put it mildly, Las Vegas drivers are to road safety what matches, alcohol, dry brush, and outdoor cooking are to forest fires. And that is coming from a native Utahn. I feel like the drivers in Las Vegas have meshed perfectly the obliviousness of Utah drivers with the aggression of L.A. Don't even get me started on what happens on Vegas freeways when it rains. (You'd think they'd never seen rain before. Oh wait...)

All this is to say, on my half hour commutes to and from work, I am constantly torn between fear for my life and a stubborn, competitive self-consciousness that flares up whenever people go faster than me. The impatient, competitive side of me hates that one driver going slow enough to be annoying but too fast to easily pass. The self-conscious part of me is pretty sure I am that driver.

This internal dichotomy has created a habit of constantly checking my rear-view mirror, especially when I slow down. I'm pretty sure drivers are supposed to focus on the cars ahead of them, but I have become hyper-aware of the cars behind me. I am both terrified that every time I slow down the car behind me is going to ram my bumper, and paranoid of being that driver with a line up of cars behind me. I try and maintain a good distance between me and the car in front of me (I've had too many close calls with sudden slowing...oh Vegas freeways), but apparently this isn't aggressive enough because then cars will cut close in front of me and then I have to tap the breaks and then I have to check to make sure no ones going to ram me from behind and then spend the drive feeling self-conscious about being that annoying slow car you have to cut in front of.

Okay, maybe I'm seeing why my brothers tease me.

There is a bright side. Yes, I am ridiculously self-conscious about what the car behind me is thinking. But sometimes, the car behind me has a mustache.

Sarah Allen

U is for Urinetown

Yes, Urinetown the Musical is a real thing.

I know every family has their own sort of culture, including what music they listen to, whether it be jazz or classical or 80s rock. We had a bit of those things, but in my house, it was Broadway. (Also twelve-year old boy humor, so...there you go.)

Before I knew the words to anything I knew the words to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I saw my first Broadway show (Cats) in Salt Lake City when I was probably seven or eight. This is all due to the fact that my mom is the most true-blue brand of theater geek there is. Some of us (me) adore theater and loved having show tunes playing all the time, and some of us (my brothers) did not. Whatever my teenage brothers think, Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest living writers, period.

Anyway. Urinetown. I have a horrible memory for relative time so I couldn't tell you when or where it was that I saw it, but was probably about a decade ago (geez its been a long time) and probably either in Salt Lake or Los Angeles. I know, I'm terrible. But guys, let me just tell you. It was awesome.

The premise of Urinetown is this: Due to a water shortage everyone must pay to pee, and you can get arrested and sent to "Urinetown" for peeing anywhere other than the paid, public toilets.

That's it. Seriously. And as you can probably guess it is an irreverent, low-brow, hilarious romp. And the cool thing is, at the Tony Awards 7 years ago (which I guess means I saw it sometime that year, not ten years ago?) they put together the best song from the show with some of the funniest clips that totally pokes fun at itself. This clip features the band of rebels fighting for the freedom to pee for all, and the officer whose job it is to arrest them.

I know Broadway isn't everybody's thing, but just give this a shot. I'm betting you'll get a good laugh.

What music did your family listen to?

Sarah Allen

C is for Comedians

I just wanted to put it out there that comedians are some of the most underrated genius writers working today. If any of you watch Jimmy Fallon, Steven Colbert or Ellen Degeneres you know what I mean.

So I thought I'd just leave you with three of my favorite comedians.

Brian Regan

Jim Gaffigan

Mitch Hedberg

Enjoy the laughs!!

Sarah Allen

The President and the Helper Boy

The four of us gather in the "secret" attic room behind the wall of my bedroom in our old California house. I am ten or eleven, my sister Becca is nine, sister Rachel is seven, and poor little brother Jordan is five or six. We are in this room because when you have a secret attic chamber behind your bedroom wall in an old California house, why would you have club meetings anywhere else?

This is the opening meeting, as most of them are. (I had lots of ideas and no follow-through). This club was of course, my idea. Also I am the oldest, so I am the President. I am always the President.

Rachel is vice-president. It bothers me just a teensy bit that she's the vice-president because she's not the next in line age-wise, but Becca likes taking notes, so she's the secretary. I always make her the secretary. 

"And you're the Helper Boy," I say to Jordan.

"But I'm always the Helper Boy."

"We need a Helper Boy," I say. I made the title up just for him, because he wanted to be included and my knowledge of actual professional titles had been exhausted. "Go get chairs."

That is the Helper Boys main duty. Going downstairs and hauling four of the plastic white picnic chairs up to our meeting room. Apparently it's a good idea to give that task to the five year old.

My sisters and I wait patiently while the Helper Boy lugs the chairs from the front porch through the kitchen up the stairs and into our secret attic room. When all the chairs have been brought up we sit in a circle and Becca takes out our club notebook. There are a few torn out pages in the front of the notebook from previous false starts, but today I'm confident--as I always am--that this idea will stick. My clubs are always a strange mix of things. Like selling lemonade and our old beanie babies on the street and making a website about endangered species. We spend most the time talking about club names.

"I'm hungry," says Rachel.

I look at the Helper Boy. "Go get us some snacks," I say.

For his sake, it's a good thing my clubs never lasted more than a day.

Please excuse the crazy lady mooing at cats

So my parents have a cat. His name is Jasper. This is him.

He is fat and fluffy and has more personality than any cat I've ever encountered. He will literally roll on his back and meow and flail his paws when you walk in to the room. Not in a doggy way either, in a very twisty pathetic feline way. My parents have a drinking fountain, and if he hears anyone pressing it he will run into the room and jump up to watch. He lays on the drinking fountain all the time, making squirting him a constant temptation. And if you're in the bathroom with the door closed he will swipe his paws under the door until you let him in. He only likes to be pet on his head or behind his ears, and will snap at you if you try to pet his back or belly, which is ironic considering how much time he spends doing what looks like begging for belly rubs.

Anyway. Yesterday we were all about to leave my parents house, and he escaped into the front yard. He's not exactly the hardest cat to catch, considering that if you start cooing and sweet-talking him he rolls onto his back, but yesterday he was anxious to stay outside and had barricaded himself behind a bush.

Backstory: My little sister has a stuffed cow that makes a horrendous mooing noise. For a school psychology project she used tuna fish to condition Jasper to come when he heard the noise. And it worked.

We were in a hurry, and I didn't know where the cow was. So yes, I mooed at him. And not just once. Needless to say, it didn't work, and I had to crawl through the bushes and sweet-talk him, which is, of course, much less ridiculous.

I'm not even sure how, but I feel like mooing at cats is a metaphor for life sometimes, and that I've been doing it a lot lately. But either the cats start mooing back or the cows come home, right? Or something...

Sarah Allen