my dreams turned to pumpkins

[This post is dedicated to Tim H: Future pastor (though he doesn't know it yet), hide-and-seek player (check your closets), and independent of Brandon R.]

The most amazing thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago.

I got on my work email between church services and ignored all unread emails except one with this subject line:

candy

Just like that.

candy

So I opened it, thinking maybe it had something to do with the Halloween Festival we were about to put on the next day in our parking lot. But this is what the email said (in this font, too):

meijers in hamburg has your zachary pumpkin candy their on a shelf right inside the front door they have candy corn pumpkins and something else i was there saturday nite and bought a bowl and they only had about 5 bowls of pumpkins left so if they run out you may have to wait till they restock the shelf or try a different store around town in case your wondering i live out here in dixie subdivison where vineyard church is and was looking at their website and stumbled on to your blog and read about the candy your looking for so quit reading this email and get to meijers before they sell out

        p.s. dont eat so much that you make yourself

         sick i've already  eaten half a bowl just while

         typing this email        bye  bigjoe

I read it three times, and my eyes actually watered with emotion.

After church I drove out to Hamburg with the same feeling I'm sure I'd have if I'd had many long talks with my boyfriend about marriage and was about to propose, but was still a little afraid of that tiny bit chance he'd say no.

Please marry me, mello creme pumpkins. Please.

And they did.

It was a huge shelf, right inside the doors, and it was filled to the brim with Zachary candies. And Big Joe was right. The pumpkins were there, smiling, orange, happy to be so creamy and delicious and in my paws. And I bought them and took them home with me, and we are so happy together.

Thanks, Big Joe.

Rhett & Scarlett are caught up with emotion, too....

gone, but not forgotten

It's autumn.

This means that it is time for Zachary to start producing tubs of mello creme pumpkins. Except for that I can't find them anywhere anymore. Last year I wrote that I was going to on a candy pumpkin hunt. This year I figured I'd save the gas and write to Zachary themselves.

Wal-Mart has stopped selling your mello creme candy pumpkins, and I don't know what to do. I've looked other places, but I still can't find them. I've tried Brach's, but they don't even compare. I love the creamy honey texture of Zachary candy pumpkins, and I look for them every fall, but I can't find them. Please help. I'm contemplating driving the 4 hours up to Frankfort, IN, just to buy them. Watching football is not the same without a tub of candy pumpkins on my lap. I'm not saying I need them, but I do really, really desire them. Thanks.

 I was hoping they'd offer to send me a free tub because of my profuse gushing of my love for them. Instead, they emailed me this response:

Heather,

Thank you for your interest in Zachary Confections!  I'm so sorry you're having difficulty finding our product.  We do however have some options for you.  Currently you can find the mello crème pumpkins online at George Howe and the link is below.

http://www.georgehowe.com/fall-candy/

I will keep searching and if I find any in your area I will let you know!

Have a great day!

Beth Randall
Zachary Confections

In which case, with shipping, it would cost me $9 for an 18-oz bag. At Wal-Mart, they were $1.88. So I'm putting out an alert.

Have You Seen Me?

I am an creamy mixture of honey and sugar shaped like a pumpkin. If you have information as to my whereabouts, please alert your local pumpkin connoisseur [that'd be ME] immediately. Also, do not mistaken me for Brach's, or you will never be trusted again.

I miss you.

come back to center

There is a woman in my building who drives a yellow station wagon, somewhat the color of a melted banana popsicle. She has a license plate on the front of her car that says "Namaste" in the same letters as Disney uses for Aladdin. All I know about "namaste" is that the woman in the yoga videos on FitTV says it at the end of her yoga episodes. Namaste to you, too, yoga lady.

Well, one evening, Banana Popsicle Station Wagon Woman, pretty close to the start of my residence in my apartment building, took up two parking spaces with her bananamobile. And they were the two parking spaces closest to the dumpster, which may sound unappealing, but they're my favorite parking spaces because they're so easily accessible.

And she took up both of them.

It's okay, I told myself. It's a weekend. I'll give her some slack because she was probably drunk when she tried to park.

But then it happened again.

And again.

And I'm telling you, she does it almost every time, weekend or weekday.

So the other morning I looked out my window and caught her little station wagon in its crime.

Proof.

That's not even like an "Oops I accidentally leaned across the white line a little but oh well I'll just leave it for now" parking job. That's like a "Take THAT apartment dwellers, now you can't use EITHER of these spaces! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha I am evil" parking job. How does she think that this is okay?

Next time she does it I'm going to write a little note and stick it in her windshield wiper.

Dear Resident,
       I am a quadriplegic who also suffers from epilepsy and ADHD. The closer I can park to my front door, the easier it is for me. Please stop taking up these parking spaces, as you put my life in jeopardy each time you do. And if I die I will come back and haunt you.
       Hanging on by a thread,
               A fellow resident

Namaste my eye.

with them we praise & curse

Remember that part in Hamlet where Hamlet is reading a book, and some dude (I don't remember who it was) asks him what he's reading? Hamlet replies, "Words, words, words." He's such a smarty pants. Or, I guess, back then it would've been smarty tights. Smarty leggings?

When I was in youth group, my youth pastor, Josh, told us all to stop being so sarcastic and negative to one another, and instead to tell each other what we appreciated about one another. Of course, obviously, we then made fun of him. I distinctly remember turning to my friend Erin and saying with an overly-genuine lilt in my voice, "You're a bright young woman, Erin. I appreciate you."

Once on a retreat, Josh had us all sit in a circle. Then he gave one of us a ball, and told us to, without saying a name, describe what we appreciated about another person in the room. When we were done, we threw the ball to that person, often surprising them that the kind words that were just spoken were directed at them.

I've been pondering the power of words. A young lady I worked with in the food pantry in Salt Lake City a couple of summers ago was volunteering there to fulfill court-appointed hours. She had a daughter and lived with her mom. Sometimes she just made poor decisions.

One day I told her how much I enjoyed her company; how genuine and thoughtful she was; how much I liked her. A few weeks later I'd forgotten I'd even said anything to her. To me, I was just speaking my opinion. (I do this a lot.) But she came in to work and told me she'd been having a horrible day the day before, but she remembered my words to her, and they changed her entire day.

WORDS have POWER.

And not just the words we speak to others. I've also been thinking about the words I think about others.

During my spring break trip to Atlanta last spring, our group of twelve college students sat in a circle in a small attic room that we couldn't even stand upright in. One group member sat in the middle, and sporadically people spoke words of encouragement to that person. Good things we saw in that person. What impact that person has had on our week/team/lives. We were supposed to be in there for an hour and a half; we finally emerged three hours later. And after sitting in a room where nothing but encouragement, good, and positive was spoken, my entire thought processes were changed as to what I thought about my teammates. We were all different, and some of us had more in common than others. But either way, when we focused on the good, we saw more good.

WORDS can be LIFE.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. - Ephesians 4:29

This is a challenge to me. Let it be a challenge to you, too!

Why I Had a Great Birthday

The pastors at VCC gave me an edible arrangement. I've ALWAYS wanted one. And they didn't even know it!

This is me feeling very loved.

See those things that look like marshmallows? Those are white-and milk chocolate-covered bananas. See all those empty protruding white spears sticking out? That's where more white-and milk chocolate-covered bananas used to be. I ate them.

See that sheet of paper on my desk? That's the receipt for my edible arrangement that I have to file. The perks of being an administrative assistant. (What you don't see on the receipt, because they happened later, are the smudges of white and milk chocolate because I accidentally dropped a banana on it.)

Then, later in the afternoon, Leiza sent me ANOTHER edible arrangement! Because I've ALWAYS wanted one, and she knew it. It was a veritable orchard of strawberries and chocolate-covered apples and pineapples. There's not a picture of that one, though, because I didn't unwrap it until I got home. Then Katie helped me eat it, while talking about prayer and watching the Packers game. (The two were unrelated.)

Let's just say I have basically filed a restraining order against scurvy for the next 10 years, at least.

It was a great birthday. 

And I'm 24 now. When my mom was 24, she was pregnant. When my grandmother was 24, she'd been married for seven years. This morning I accidentally started dancing in my car when Jackson 5 came on my iPod, and the man in his car next to me at the red light looked at me like I was probably mentally unstable.

I'm pretty content with where I am.

cuppycake day

This morning I woke up at 6:45. My alarm is called "Voices of Nature," which is a lovely mix of a soothing (as soothing as computerized music notes can be) melody and birds chirping in a rainforest. So if you're wondering what Nature's voice sounds like, LG has captured it and put it in my phone.

However, when I looked outside (my "I don't have Internet or cable so this is how I check the weather" technique) I saw that it was windy, rainy, and cold. Autumn is coming! Autumn is coming! But not the most inviting conditions imaginable for an early-morning jaunt.

So I decided to do Pilates instead. (Don't be too impressed. I do Pilates just often enough so that my muscles are sore for the next three days & make me feel like I've gotten a really good workout in ["Boy my arms hurt...I AM SO FIT RIGHT NOW"], but not often enough to be of any actual benefit for my body. ["If you did this more regularly, we wouldn't be screaming out in pain every three days. Sincerely, What Are Trying to be Your Abdominals."]) The thing about Pilates, though, is that sometimes I love it, and sometimes I hate it. Today I hated it.

Lara Hudson, sitting with legs splayed like a road-killed frog: "Slowly turn to your right, bend at the waist and lift your arms, flipping up your palms...."
Me, hugging my knees with 3-lb weights on the floor next to me: "I don't want to do this."

Then I remembered it's meeting day at VCC, and I decided to bake cupcakes.

They are possibly my new favorite thing in this world. That's not true, I like a lot of things more than these cupcakes. But if you like chai, you will love these little buttercream babies. Now to get an actual frosting piper so I can stop cutting holes in my Ziploc bags, and so that my frosting doesn't come out looking like those enormous grubs that Timon eats in The Lion King.

Frosting, anyone?

Happy almost-birthday & VCC Meeting Day.

today I met the dress I'm going to marry

I went to Goodwill last night with my fellow Vineyardite, Karen. Amidst the yellow shirts with billowy lacy sleeves and the Noah's Ark-embroidered jumpers, I found my wedding dress. The sparkly beads and sequins along the neckline were what captured my eye. The yards of stiff fabric bunched into jellyfish-like sleeves and an enormous bow on the back that stretched the entire width of the butt were only bonuses. I walked out of the dressing room, giggling, and called to Karen across the store.

"That's cute," a woman from behind me said.

I giggled some more and poked the inner tube of fabric around my waist. "This part is my favorite."

"You only laugh because it's different," she said. "But it fits you perfectly." Karen arrived in time to hear the woman add, "You'd have to wear different underwear, though."

Okay, look, lady. Number one, no one would seriously consider buying this dress for any serious occasion. Number two, my fashion sense is not restricted enough to think that the purple plaid bra straps showing in the back were an acceptable addition to this outfit. I didn't particularly come to Goodwill thinking about what undergarments might go well with whatever sea creature I happened to try on that evening.

Karen and I mocked the dress for a while, until finally I turned to go back into the dressing room. I passed the lady and she sighed, "It looks like it was made for you."

Nothing flatters your waistline like wearing an enormous doughnut on it.

Maybe she was right.

Now to find a groom with broader shoulders than mine.