Going Pro

So, we’re going to go ahead and skip that awkward part where you’re all in shock that I’m actually blogging again, and I have to come up with some cute excuse for my four and a half month absence and then bring it around and smoothly transition into the subject of this blog and act all cool like I totally meant to not blog in forever… because it certainly wasn’t that I couldn’t come up with anything creative or inspiring to write about, and clearly, it wasn’t that I was just lazy… definitely not… lazy. I mean I could have one of those hip mom blogs that stylishly show off their creative decorating/cooking skills and that get updated every other hour. It’s just that… wait… I said we were going to skip this bit!  Officially skipped.

Modesty. Never been a big fan. Let’s just say that I’m hoping that the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet’s dress and grooming standards in the next life can be summed up in two sentences: “No worries. This is heaven.”  Which to me would mean constant beach attire.  (Preferably we’ll have some gorgeous California weather to accompany that.)

I’ve never been real great at the other aspect of modesty, either.  That is, I have a hard time being humble and not bragging it up, when I (or a family member) does something awesome—a constant.  It’s wrong, I know, but I don’t beat myself up about it, because I can’t—if I could then I wouldn’t have the problem in the first place, and secondly, it really isn’t my fault… it’s genetics.  Fighting this vice is like trying to change the color of my hair (oh, wait, I do do that… every two months.)  At age very small, my oldest brother offered the primary closing prayer: “Thank you, Heavenly Father, for my dad, because he’s such a stud.”  (Unfortunately, back then, in the hick town they were living in at the time, stud didn’t mean “real cool guy,” like it did in California.  Try looking it up in Merriam-Webster, not the Urban Dictionary.)  For those of you familiar with Air Force personalities, my dad was a fighter pilot.  Yep.  Meaning, Bobby, like most children, was probably just repeating a prayer he’d already heard.  “Thank you, Heavenly Father, that I’m such a stud.”  

In case you’re wondering… he is a stud.

Another one we like to tell… And you may have heard this one already… I have a habit of repeating stories.  If you have recently been a victim of my multiple-retelling-early-onset-Alzheimer’s *cough, Jayci and Mark Reeder, cough*, I apologize.  So, another one we like to tell, is about how my cousin, Whitney, was a Blank-Blank. (A Hinckley Scholar… they called it blank-blank because that branch of the family is a little more modest and well, classy then ours.  The Hinckley scholarship is a full ride given to a handful of ridiculously genius BYU students.)  I was sitting in my Latin class one day, trying not to die, probably drawing Man-Man on the empty lines provided for translations of The Aeneid, when my teacher, who in her day was a Blank-Blank, now searching for a kindred spirit among us, asked the class if any of us were similarly distinguished, “Is anyone in here a Hinckley Scholar?” My hand shot up.  Now, I don’t mean to say that I was the village idiot, but most people did look pretty surprised at this revelation.  I don’t think it helped that I looked just as baffled, myself.  I slowly pulled my hand down and mumbled something about how my cousin was one of those guys.  One more reason for the smart kids not to let me into their study groups… or copy down their translations… “I just want to check and see if we got the same answer… just to check… and see.”  I guess that’s what I get for half-listening, and for being ready at any opportunity to brag-it-up.

Did I learn my lesson? 

Do I ever?

Is anyone in here a pro athlete?

Oooo!!!  Oooo!!! (Jumping up and down, both hands over my head.)  Pick me! Pick me!

Heck yes, my sister is now a professional athlete. 

After I graduated from BYU (miraculously passing my Latin courses), I ran the Memorial Day 10k in Orem and won 100 dollars and a big fancy watch that I never wear.  And since I was no longer racing for BYU, I actually got to accept my winnings.  Woot! Woot!  That day I considered myself a pro athlete.  I mean, I got paid for racing. But I didn’t have an agent and a shoe sponsor. 

Nor did I have a particularly fast time.

Eh. Details.  

Details that Cecily now has securely attached to her name. Her agent lives in New Jersey and has smoking-hot races all lined up for her.  Her shoe sponsor?  Saucony.  Yeah, I’ve heard of them.  And her 10k PR is faster than my shower PR.  Okay, that’s not saying much… it’s faster than my making Rice-a-Roni PR.  Still not working. It’s fast. It’s like 33 minutes fast. Rice-a-Roni can be tricky sometimes.

The pattern of my life is as follows: I do something kinda cool… run cross country in high school… and Cecily does that same thing a thousand times cooler… run cross country for BYU.  Then, once she’s done it up all stellar-like, I brag about her and then try and copy… run cross country for BYU with her.  So, according to that arrangement, I am doing my prescribed bragging and now need to find a way to copy her.  

I was pretty convinced that my best bet for attaining pro status was to take the marathon route. I tried that about a month ago.  I can still picture scenic vistas of Northeast Idaho.  I can feel the rush of adrenaline.  And I can still taste the Gu I threw up.  What I can’t recall is the finish line.  I never saw it.  I’ll probably blog more about that later. Okay, maybe I’ll blog more about that later. Fine!  Go read your hip mom blog, they just posted a new one about how to make old underwear into cute coin purses.

I might go the triathlon avenue.  I did run and swim today.  And I own a bike. A decent start. 

The truth is that will probably be hard, too.  And now that I am the proud owner of a white I-phone (with sick hot pink bumpers), I have come to the sudden realization that going pro is as easy as downloading a free app.

On Saturday, a friend introduced me to Songify.  In an instant, I went from being a regular white girl into a ghetta thug rapster.  You can call me 2% (Cecily came up with rapper names for us one day in the grocery store… my mom’s is Enjoyce. Her name is Joyce.  It has nothing to do with groceries and she hates it.  So, naturally, we use it all the time.)  I’ve already recorded a few tracks.  Here’s a demo for my upcoming cd, titled: “Ripp Van Wheatland: Can’t get no sleep here.” A bitter diatribe on life on the streets of Wheatland, the hustlers, the horses, the trains that run through the middle of our two-stoplight town that keep us awake all night.

Or there is my new favorite app, Instagram.  This miracle worker turns anything you could possibly take a picture of into a photographic work of art.  After two days with this app, I’m thinking about advertising myself as a professional photographer. Check these masterpieces out.  

If you want to hire me for weddings, engagements, family portraits, or just want to purchase copies of these prints for your home or office, leave a comment below.  Keep in mind that I’m probably going to book up fast.

Actually, I just got off the phone with my Dad, he’s running a triathlon at the end of the month and used an app that set him up with a personalized 12-week training plan.  Maybe I’ll try the triathlon thing, after all.   

Of course, If it all works out, you can be sure you’ll hear about it.      

Views from the Copper Vu

We’ve debated whether or not the content of the following blog ought to be available to the general public. After some deliberation, we decided that it was simply too good not to share, if not for tourism/vacationing information then possibly just for its scintillating shock factor.  Still, for legal purposes we’ve included the following warning and urge our readership to carefully consider and proceed with caution.

—Warning—

The following material may not be suitable for children or those with a weak constitution or strong morals.  It should be avoided by children and the elderly.  If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, have a heart condition or any other serious condition please consult doctor before use.

I suppose it began down a random and relatively remote street in San Fran.  We were on a hot date and we were on foot.  We were looking for the Golden Gate Bridge.  We were hopelessly lost.  And we were falling in love.  The street we chose to pursue our course on apparently had specific building codes and business requirements.  You may or may not be familiar with the animal services/dirty motel district in East San Francisco.  Well, we were traipsing through its hub and somewhere between Fido’s Grooming, TenderPaws Vet, Sweetheart Inn and Suites, Pay-By-the-Hour Classy Motel, and the slowly setting sun, we decided that solely for the sake of survival it might have become necessary to find a vacancy… Completely innocent.  Completely.  (The only thing really dirty in this scenario would have been the room…)  Which then got us joking about how funny it would be if you did actually spend your first night together in some dump.  Picture the blushing bride, radiant in her unblemished, white dress, whisked away by her handsome prince amid the farewell cheers of friends and family, driving off into the sunset of their dreams, only to park in the dimly lit lot of the Queasy Bottom Motel— neon light from the vacancy sign casting obscure shadows, a cat screeches and jumps from a behind a group of metal, overflowing trash cans in the side alley.  A dirty, yellow smoke hangs in the air as Mr. Newlywed carries his wife from the car to door #3A (crookedly hung, of course), “Here we are, Honey!”

At the time the prospect of marriage was still at a safe distance and the joke was, therefore, comfortably hilarious.  Fast forward a bit, we’re engaged and planning the post-reception activities… it still seemed like a good joke…  fast forward a bit further and we’re driving away, me the blushing bride, Jason the handsome prince, absolutely no reservations with our names on it anywhere in the state… No longer a joke and no turning back.

After driving around about 45 minutes through the dankest parts of town, we found our gem… we’ll spare you too many details, but enjoy the following photo journal of marital bliss via the (-5 star) Cooper Vu Motel.  

Air conditioning and color tv!  I’m sure the only reason the “No” before “Vacancy” wasn’t lit up was because it wasn’t tourist season.

We stayed in room 10, of 10.

We had to put down a separate deposit to get the remote… $5.

Bed bugs? Probably.

Stains? Obviously.

No, we didn’t use this shower.

Gross.

Mmmm… memories.

Who wouldn’t want to wake up and step outside to this view everyday?  Truly, we spared no expense… we wanted it to be special… and oh, it was.  It was.

Not pictured, and possibly the most disturbing thing about the whole night, the two eleventeen year-old girls who decided the Copper Vu would be a good place to come trick-or-treating after dark (yes, for those of you detail-oriented readers, we did get married the day before Halloween, but in Utah, when Halloween falls on a Sunday they celebrate it on Saturday night).

*If you are a friend of Jessica’s and you were offended, then Jason wrote this.  If you are a friend of Jason’s and you were offended, then Jessica wrote it.  If you’re both of our friends, then you weren’t offended… you know better already. 

We could have called it "Clayton Clabber"

It turns out that the hardest part of setting up a blog is coming up with “perfect” name… or any name for that matter.  This morning I woke up, failed to find a sub job, started the crock pot for dinner with the missionaries tonight, and decided to seize the day and create our family blog.  The moment Jason woke up and stumbled out of the bedroom, I pounced. 

“What do you want to call our family blog?”

“Huh?”

I know, “good morning to you, too..”   But, poor boy, I wouldn’t let it go and we sat there through the morning thinking of names.  Well, actually, I thought of names, while Jason checked stocks and good-naturedly submitted some cheese-ball titles of his own.  When I expressed my frustration over the pathetic names we were generating, his response was, “Well, Sweetie, crap in, crap out.”  Gross. And I’m not really sure what “crap” we were ingesting to accomplish such a yield, but I won’t deny that I felt an odd urgency to come up with the name right then and there.  Patience has never been the shining star in my sky of virtues… can lateness count? Procrastination, maybe?  Or how about never finishing what I’ve started?  Fail. 

The thing about a naming a blog is that you want it to be cute, without being hoakey, cheesy, or flat out lame.  Blog titles with your name and some rhyming word or a word that begins with the same letter is very tempting, because it’s fun, but can just get a little too, um… much.  Yes, an extreme muchiness… not good. Things like:  The Clayton Crier, The Clayton Chronicles, A Compilation of Clayton… you see where this is going.  Here is a short list of some of our more ugly, weird, and gag, I just threw up a little in my mouth, names:

    

The Clayton Calamities

Sculpturing with Clay-tons

Cup’o Clayton

Chili Cheese Fries and Oreos (Maybe just “Fat and Sugar”… can you guess who is who?)

Homines vult decipi (To show off my near non-existent Latin skills.  It means “Men want to be deceived.”)

Two J’s in Love

J and J juxtapositions

New text message (Our entire relationship was based on these…)

The Casual Clayton

The Once Yearly Update

The Neverland Claytons

Hop on Pop

Clayton Crude; oil that is (We like The Beverly Hillbillies)

J squared n’paired (no, not impaired)

Too bad our name isn’t Lemmon

Satan rhymes with Clayton

The Storytime Circle (It’s where we got engaged)

The Clayt Night Show  Staring, Jay Son…

The Clayton Quibbler (We actually liked this one, but it was too reminiscent of Harry Potter)

Submitted by Cecily:

If there’s a Clayton, there’s a Way… ton. (Waiting?  You will wait for these posts.)

Thank you for that gem, Cecily.

When I suggested “The Responsible Haircut”, I received a pretty skeptical look from my husband.  And he wasn’t even sold after the byline “Clayton News and Clippings”, which I felt was a sure hook. You may be wondering what a responsible haircut is.  Let me begin by telling you what it isn’t…

So cute!  I think I’m in love with this boy.  Okay, so, I like longer hair on guys.  Not the pull it back into a ponytail ridiculousness, but just enough to curl up a bit on the ends, blow in the breeze, run your fingers through.  In our early dating days I used to drop subtle hints… As Jason’s hair would grow out a bit, I would say things like, “Have you done something new, you’re looking especially hot.”  “I like the way you’ve done your hair today.”  “This is a nice length for your hair.”  “I’m in love with Zac Efron.”  Inevitably, his hair would be sheared to the appearance of a thin layer of brown dust atop his head by the next day. (It retrospect, it may have been the Zac Efron comment.)  This is what Jason refers to as, “the responsible haircut”.

I know, and have been reminded on many occasions, that the military expects a clean, off-the-ear, hair style… but this somehow gets confused with “go find a clan of Indians to scalp you.”  I can’t give Jason too much of a hard time, because he grows his hair out a bit more these days, and truthfully, I love my responsible man, with his responsible hair… it’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with him in the first place… that and gorgeous blue eyes, and a dang cute bum.

So why not make it the title of our blog?  It’s not too cheesy, only slightly hoakey, and merely borderline lame.  So, what can you expect from a blog thus named… in my experience as a blogger (once yearly at best), absolutely nothing!  But with any luck our infrequent post will probably contain some news, possibly some clippings, and hopefully some sanity.   Most importantly, as this blog will likely be authored by me, and therefore will be found wanting in the responsible department, please keep in mind that at least one of us has a haircut that epitomizes just such a characteristic.