Your Questions!: An innocent inquiry about deserted islands

I never should have given myself that little taste of freedom... that "one-week" break turned into "four-weeks-of-being-in-complete-denial-about-the-existence-of-blogger.com."

Anyway, looks like I've got some questions to answer! Bless you darling amigos who still have things you want to know about me after all the awkward things I've already divulged here.

If you were on a deserted island, what one item or person would you bring with you? (No Hubster, sorry.)
-Ryan @ Woven Moments

Can I say a fully-stocked cruise ship with instruction manuals? Or Hurley?

Or, I could NOT cheat and pick someone/something already in my life:
On those rare occasions when Husband can't fix my mood, he tells me to call my sister. Wise man, that Husband character.

Choosing to bring my sister to my accidental private island certainly has its flaws. The little sister & I tend to feed off of each others' insanity, like when we recently had to drive the EXACT &^%$#! SAME 180-mile stretch FOUR times in SIX days. Without a radio. By the end we were singing duets entirely with growls and chirping noises, and:

Even better zoomed in.

Yes, I was trying to "claw" my way out of the car at 70 mph.

And she was in the passenger's seat, covering the right half of the windshield with toe streaks and likening it to tending a Zen garden. (See bottom right corner of photo... the perfect epitome of Zen, yes? It just... screams it.)

It gets better. She took my car to fill it up with gas a few days afterwards, and the kindly attendant decided to clean the windshields for her. After squeegee-ing the glass like a pro, he flipped the blade over and started dutifully scrubbing the "claw" marks.

He scrubbed harder.

He leaned in to inspect more closely, and got a look of horrified confusion on his face once he realized they were on the inside of the car. He quizzically looked at my sister, handed her the receipt, and scurried off.

So, having made a short story long, I'd bring my sister to share in my maroon-ed-ness. We'd go bonkers, but sometimes it's what you have to do to survive.

Couldn't resist posting some vacation photos

Alternately titled "Two Matthews-ers, Swimsuit edition."

My sister & I just got back from a week in the Southern California sunshine! (So sorry ladies, no Handsome Hubster in this one). 

Our sweet grandma bought us some tickets to come visit her & the rest of our family near LA (yes, I'm yet another California-Oregon transplant kid).

We drove to the airport in true Pacific Northwest fashion-- windshield wipers battling the rain at top speed, bags packed optimistically with shorts & sandals, and pale legs coated in blotchy self-tanner.

Then we enjoyed six long, sunny days of:

-- boogey-boarding for hours (and the resulting traumatic sunburns),

(look! apparently I run like a raptor too) & (I hope Kelsey's okay with her butt on my blog) ('cause I know YOU guys are) (wink wink)

-- visiting with our uncle's family and soaking up all the cousin love we possibly could absorb,

got to see our awesome grandad on Father's day! Schweet. (In other news, B.F. meter has bumped up to a 6.25)

-- doing rascally things like taking a tour of all the nearby In-n-Outs at 1AM, and inventing a suuuuper mature "game" with my grandma's bathroom scale: how much weight can you lose by going to the bathroom? Kelsey won, with 4 POUNDS LOST in one... "sitting" (her strategy involved lots of water, then lots of coffee).
(Sorry. There's another "TMI" tag & "things that happen in the bathroom" tag for the tally.)
(My grandma didn't know we were playing this game. Now she does... Hi, Grandmom.)

-- and last but not least, somehow convincing our 70-year-old grandma to try boogey boarding.

Have I mentioned that summer is my favorite thing in the universe? Just the smell of sunscreen makes me giddy.


(Next up: part two of The Story of Hubster & Me, as told by Mr. Matthews-er himself!)

What's brown and sticky?

About a month ago, Jason & I awoke to see this godzilla-ing its way down the street:

I mean, literally godzilla-ing-- it sacked out an entire traffic light pole, and left a trail of snapped-off tree branches in its wake.

This was exciting. I have this... this thing about branches.

I love them.

No, it's more than that. I ADORE them. I adore a good branch sitting on the ground. If I'm walking somewhere, and I see a nice branch, I can't just let it sit there. I have to "have" it.

I pick it up and continue my walk, savoring its branchishness; its stickishness; its natureishness-- if it's especially large, I drag it behind me on the ground. After a while, I feel satisfied, & I can set the branch back down and continue on my way.

I found an extra special stick in while Japan-- bamboo driftwood! I carried that one for a looong time.

(All of this leads me to believe I was a dog in a previous life. I just feel so happy when I've got an excellent stick.)

Sometimes, as was the case with the sticks I scored from the over-sized house event, I can find a use for the sticks. It's times like these I consider myself a "functioning" stickaholic:

There now. That's kind of nice, isn't it?

But other times, I lose the "functioning" part. Such as this King of All Sticks that I dragged onto our patio at 8am, barefoot & in my pajamas, no less than four months ago:

This, plus the awesome "Trick-or-Treat" mat = no solicitors. Good deal.

It's AWESOME, right? (Unlike the gross wet leaves all over the place). I rationalized that I would find a use for this majestic stick; yet four months later, it's still just sitting there.


I will find a use for it.



(...Other than helping visitors find our apartment.)






(...And drying my suit between daily lifeguard lessons.)






Any other ideas for it, my wonderful and creative amigos??
Support my stick habit. Be enablers. It's okay.

***
P.S. Oh yeah, I guess I should answer the title of this post for you. It's just my favorite joke of all time, you know, NBD:

Q: What's brown and sticky?
....drumroll....

A: a STICK!!!


favorite.      joke.      ever.

Rainbow Recap & R-Rated Pictionary

As per the results of last week's Great Thematic Debate (thanks for everyone's input), Rainbow Birthday Party won the cause!

 Click-to-zoom? Highly encouraged.

(Seeing as I don't drink very often, one glass of beer severely disabled my camera skills, and I completely screwed up missed quite a few individual shots-- so here's the whole crew together.)

Check it out-- even the pizza was colorful.

This place wasn't called "Pizza Research Institute" for nothing-- yes, that's a peach slice. Sitting atop curried cauliflower.

After pizza, we spontaneously decided to cram everyone into our tiny apartment, where we did some serious damage on a giant jug of sangria and played Telephone Pictionary.

Telephone Pictionary, without fail, is THE Most Surefire Way to Get a Group of Six or More People into Complete Hysterics. (Yup. It's so official that it overcomes my laziness about hitting the shift key.)

You sit in a circle, and each person has a pad of paper. You write down your initial message-- for example, we chose to write down "song or book titles." Everyone passes their paper to the right, and the next person has to turn to the next page and draw it.

The next person in line must write what they think the drawing is. As it's passed around the circle, you alternate writing and drawing.

It gets screwed up REALLY fast.

Jason wrote down the song "Citizen Soldier" by 3 Doors Down. By the end, it had turned into the COMPLETE opposite. Flip through!



So from Jason's point of view, he wrote "Citizen Soldier" and, 12 turns later, received happy Jesus playing the guitar. Gooood times.

DON'T flip through this next one if you anticipate being offended by slightly censored F-bombs, and cartoonish illustrations of... uh... the aforementioned F-verb.



So, in the end, we had a good time and I highly recommend this game. My abs are still aching two days later.

Not to mention that sitting in our tiny little apartment, listening to the hysterical laughter of twelve of my favorite people, is definitely my idea of a good time.

Birthday Battle: Dark Side vs. Rainbows

toughest duck face ever.

Even though my name is April, and I like ducks & bunnies, and my favorite color is white, and I've been called "bubbly" on more than one occasion-- I have a punk rocker side.

(Don't laugh! You'll hurt my inner punk-rocker's feelings.)





So considering this, and my favorite pastime (costume parties), I was thinking:

       pre-birthday-party @ my house
     +washable markers
     +colored hairspray
     +lots of safety pins
     +etc. (copious amounts of etc.)                                                   
       a wonderful excuse to have fake tattoos and
       colored hair for a night

And then this is where I get stumped. Go out to pizza and look ridiculous? Go play on a playground? Go bar-hopping and accidentally end up in the middle of a gang war?

ALL OF THE ABOVE??


But thennn, I stumbled across this Cup of Jo post:

Rainbow birthday party!

and became torn with indecision.

Wouldn't it be fun to dress like this and have an Easter egg decorating party? (The ducks & bunnies side of me would have the time of her life.)

So, which shall it be? Decorating eggs or decorating people?
Please help us decide by voting:




And PLEASE don't say, "Whatever you want to do, April, it's your birthday." I am incapable of making heavy adult decisions like these.

Further ideas? Feel free to comment.
(If I only know you via blogging, feel free to chime in as well.)

Surf & Snow

First of all: Want every phone picture you take to look EPICAL? There's an app for that.
Should I feel bad that this Hipstamatic app was 50% of why I replaced my old dead phone with an iPhone? Meh. Bygones.

Anyhoo, welcome to Hipstamatic-opolis (AKA the first post after I've become totally addicted to taking pictures with my phone).

{click to zooooom}

The little sister & I road-tripped ourselves to the coast on a last minute whim. Luckily, all the hotels we tried calling (minutes before we left) were booked, and I say "luckily" because we ended up finding this awesome little bed & breakfast!

Not only was it slightly cheaper than the hotels we'd been looking at, but the owner Eileen offered that we could come downstairs into the kitchen and eat the ice cream in the freezer whenever we felt like it.

Never again, Best Western. Never again.



There were plenty of classy books in our room, but we found the juicy stuff:

I stayed up to 3AM reading that entire damn Elvis book.

The next morning, our homegirl Eileen cooked us this DAAANK breakfast. And by daaank I mean poached eggs, bacon, extra-crunchy hashbrowns, coffee, juice, and two pieces of french toast each. Can I just say:

We made it fit.

And, as promised:
HIPSTAMATICOPOLIS!
(You may have previously heard it called Newport, Oregon.)

To make this day even better, we randomly ran into Jason's sister, Sammie! What a happy coincidence. (At first I tried to write koinky-dink coweenky-deenk cowinky-dink but as you can see, there's just no way to spell that correctly. I'll keep working on it and get back to you.)

And where was Jason this whole time, might you ask? Happily skiing with our pal Kody, with whom he has a flourishing bromance. Seriously, they have a history. Our wedding photographer snapped this shot of Kody trying to steal him away before the ceremony.

Sure enough, at about 3PM Kelsey got a text from Kody saying,

"By the way, I'm taking a nap with Jason right now.

Tell April." 

Apparently they laid down in a corner of the ski lodge, on the floor, and used their boots as pillows. Those two and their curly-haired camaraderie... it's pretty cute.

Thrift Therapy

I recently made a discovery that changed my life.

Goodwill sells randomly-colored coat hangers for 99¢ a dozen.

(And I realize they're just going to get reshuffled, but I couldn't help myself:

...then I re-randomized them, because I couldn't figure out how to get rainbow-organized hangers to mesh with a rainbow-organized closet.)

While my pal Kanette and I were at Goodwill, the coat hangers (and the atypical Oregon sunshine outdoors) inspired me to go on a spring-colored frenzy:

These three things were my sister's birthday presents (lucky shmuck). As far as I can tell, everything is serious vintage status. The shirt's tag is yellowed and totally faded, the cutesey drink coasters (6 of them) were still in their original packaging, and the rainbow lace belt has $*#% glitter on it. Enough said.

And the rest was mine. Damn, I love that soy-sauce spoon thing. This super-lucky Goodwill trip has me seriously considering opening an Etsy shop...

P.S. Jason was totally cool with me bringing home twenty plastic pink poppies. He rocks. However, when I texted him a shot of this mustard velvet chair, I found the limit to his tacky tolerance. The way he oh-so-delicately tried to tell me that it made him gag was pretty hilarious.

Well, color me amazed.

A tiny piece of heaven snuck out last night.
Threw quite the little party.

{You know the drill-- click to zoom.}

People were literally pulling their cars over to the side of the road to just sit and look at it. A man saw me taking pictures, and handed me his business card so I could email them to him.

I couldn't decide whether I should keep taking pictures, or just plop down in the muddy grass and take it all in. So I did a little bit of both.

     Dear Heaven,

        Applause.

        Love, 

        Eugene, OR

This is what we've done the last four months

Jan. 2: Drag our weary butts through the door, unpack for the fourth time in four months, and gaze upon what this packing-unpacking, packing-unpacking, packing-unpacking, packing-unpacking routine has done to our apartment.
 
I mean, we're lucky to have traveled so much, and we're happy to finally get back to our little love nest, but this...

This doesn't even show the SEVEN loads of laundry.

 and this?!

The stuff we moved out of the way for our sub-leaser... but how did it all fit in our apartment in the first place?!

Somebody get me a shovel!! Because now I know what we'll be doing for the NEXT four months.

P.S. (There's always a P.S., isn't there?) Here's my favorite picture from our Florida trip-- Jason is just NAILING that Jack Sparrow impression. Here's another good one. Okay, I'm just going to go make a facebook album.

....Instead of cleaning.

Here's how NOT to combat jet-lag:

Write a blog post in a hysterically sleep-deprived state for all the world-wide-webbins to see.

Dear www,

It's me, again. Jason & I have had a long day. As in, literally, a 33-hour-long thanks to changing time zones. We stayed up packing & cleaning until 3AM, and woke up at 5AM to finish.

On our way out, we left Ruffles at the door of our helpful neighbor, with a note thanking him for being a friendly neighbor, and informing him that he should have a Merry Christmas, and of course, informing him of the plant's name. Fernadine, on the other hand, was given a solemn burial in the trash can (I told you, I have the Black Thumb of Death).

Checking in our luggage at the airport, they told us that we couldn't check three suitcases--only one suitcase per person! However, the typical loophole soon surfaced-- throw cash at them. $150, specifically. We agreed to pay the ransom for our poor suitcase, since there were probably more than $150 of clothes/books inside it. We went to a separate counter to pay the $150, where they suddenly declared that it was totally acceptable for us to check three bags. They said we didn't have to pay. Thank. Goodness.

We flew from Copenhagen to Frankfurt, Germany (I kept accidentally calling it Frankenfurter. Although, frankly, I like my version better.) ("Frankly." Get it? heh.) (Heh, heh.) (Heh. Might I remind you of the title of this post?) I LOVE the Frank(en)furt(er) airport. Old German men with Einstein moustaches pedal their luggage around on little rented bikes, and concession stands vend pretzels, sausages and beer. It's a circus, in the best stereotypically-German way possible.

Aaaand cue 11-hour transcontinental flight. It was fascinating to watch out the window as we chased the sunset westward across the globe. We passed time with Sudoku, movies, and laughing at each other for no reason other than sleeplessness (the best kind of laughing, don't you think?)

We were served strange German sandwiches towards the end of the flight, packaged together with potato chips and a Kit-Kat bar. That's a straight-up BUTTER SLAB sitting on that piece of bread there. Apparently the flight attendants had taken a liking to us over the 11 hours, because a steward returned back with a few extra Kit-Kat bars and a sly wink. Then he came back AGAIN, this time setting a complete package in front of Jason, silently pointing to the food, then to him, with a nod. We considered it atonement for the initial baggage battle in Denmark, happily stuffed the free food in our bags, and landed in San Francisco.

HOME TURF! As we waited for our luggage to circle by, a TSA employee led an adorably cheerful beagle around on a leash as he sniffed everyone's bags for contraband food (I think that I should clarify it was the dog doing the sniffing). They busted one befuddled German who had brought bananas into the States (God FORBID, I know.) The beagle approached our bags and I tried to reassure myself that we wouldn't get in trouble for the Friendly Flight Attendant Food Cache.

The little dog sniffed at our backpack. He took a step back, and tilted his head. After taking a few more cautious sniffs, he moved on. Apparently airplane meals don't quite register as food to his finely-tuned nose.

After re-checking our luggage, we happily hurried to our last connection: from San Franscisco to Home Sweet Home Eugene, Oregon!!!! At this point, we had stayed up until 3AM according to our Sveedish internal clocks and were really, really looking forward to sleeping in our own bed.

Alas, it was not meant to be. The plane is delayed from 7:30PM to 10:30PM, and here I am, wrapping up an absurdly long blog post in a frantic attempt to stay awake.

Gack.

We cheated on Sweden

We went to Denmark last Sunday. Our first stop was the Danish National Art Museum:

Who knew Bob Dylan painted? While living in Brazil?? That wiley old rascal.

Aaand who knew we weren't supposed to take pictures of that exhibit? ...heh.

The bubbles were my favorite installation. There were tubes inflating these plastic bubbles with air, while other tubes watered the plants.

{click. those plants look way better zoomed-in.}

I'm sure there was some message about biospheres, microcosms, and the fragility of life, but they also just looked cool against the old brick building.

We also spent a while watching all the little Danes crashing their sleds in the park outside.

Next, we trekked across town to the National Historical Museum. We spent most of the time going through a series of displays about people of the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age in Denmark.

Throughout all these ages, it seems, people in Scandinavia made sacrifices by sinking valuable belongings in peat bogs. Here's where I get all metaphysical on you: peat bogs just so happen to preserve stuff fantastically well (although they didn't know that at the time).

(Or they did incinerate stuff, and we don't know-- since it's incinerated.)

Fast forward a couple thousand years, and modern-day civilizations discover these prehistoric tribes' most valued possessions: sunken jewelry, intricately decorated swords & armor, viking ships, and even entire chariots from later ages. We study them, attribute them to specific tribes; even specific people; and eternalize them and their treasures inside museums for thousands of people to admire.

So-- DID the sacrifices work, sort of? Either way, I'm glad they chose plopping stuff into swamps rather than incinerating them in bonfires.

We found a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant for dinner, where Jason learned to say, "Somos Americanos, pero aquí estamos en Dinamarca... en un restaurante Italiano... y hablamos Español."

SNÖ!!

I'd be a bad, bad blogger if I didn't share some Sveedish Snö pictures with you guys. (Yes, that's really how they say 'snow.' We saw it written in a snowdrift on one of our walks and I almost peed from excitement over the Nordic-ness of it all.) (No, it wasn't written with pee.) (Although making the 'ö' dots would have required some serious talent.) (Way to start off a blog post, April.)

Apparently, snow rarely sticks in Southern Sweden... so when it dumped powder for twelve days straight, HOLEEE SNOTSICLES. It thrilled our socks off.

I'm refraining from typing a ': )' as the caption for every single image below.

{click to zoooom}

Snögåsbord.

Snow is one of my favorite foods. Seriously. It doesn't quite beat out peas or salsa, but it's up there. This has been limiting how long I stay outside because I CAN'T NOT EAT IT. I've been stuffing myself silly, and then running inside, shivering with bright red hands. It's worth it.

I just want to plop down on one of these benches and bury my face in the table.



Those of you who know Jason can imagine he's up to his ears in excitement over this wintry weather. When we're walking somewhere, about every ten minutes he'll kick up some powdery snow off the side of street, chuckling, "It's so FLUFFY!!" He says those exact three words, every time. (Alllllmost makes me want to move to Colorado, just so I can see this more often. Almost.)

Also: The cathedral produced some WICKED, SEVEN-FOOT ICICLES. There's warning tape strung up all around its perimeter to prevent human ice-kabobs.

WARNING: STAY CLEAR, LEST YE BE SMOTE BY CHURCHSICLES (translation)

Crypts & Christmas Carols

We have only four days left in Sweden! It's making me feel very nostalgic about our stay here, so I feel like I owe 'our' little town of Lund some airtime. I was flipping through all the pictures we've taken, and one building showed up over & over.

(cheater alert! My camera couldn't 'zoom out' enough to capture the first picture, so I snagged it from here.)

(click to zoom)

Lund Cathedral is the oldest church in Sweden; built in 1100 AD! Even the Vikings were still around at that time, amigos. Although, it was at the very end of their era. (Huh, I wonder if those two things correspond.) (Turns out, they do. I looked it up.) (Can you imagine Vikings in church?!) (But... who else could have lifted all the huge stones to build it?) (GACK. Parenthetical thought overload.)

Jason & I had a good chuckle over how tiny its windows are. Even with eight foot thick walls, there were no windows wider than about one foot. In other words, they had zero faith in their engineering skills in 1100. And that's probably a good thing.



When you go inside, there's about as much light as you'd expect from 12-inch windows, but thanks to all the candles it smells like a giant birthday party. Nice planning, 1100 A.D. designers.

No ancient Cathedral would be complete without a crypt, and Lund Cathedral didn't disappoint. You can see Jason on the steps below, descending into its crypty depths... and check out the weird, sunken-eyes-in-the-back-of-its-head column guy! Fabulous.

Last Sunday, Jason & I went to a small party at his professor's house. He made us some hot "gluhwein," which is the German version of glögg!! (Exactly the same thing, only without any sugar added). Afterwards, we traveled through the snow to the cathedral and listened to the University choir sing Swedish Christmas carols. It was a very pleasant (if not slightly heretical) thing to do with a belly full of gluhwein. The hard stone walls gave their voices a beautiful echo, and when the organ chimed in for a few songs it just filled my soul right up. A lot of places in Europe have a 'timeless' feel to them, but for me, that night took the cake.

Well. Embarrassing confession time.

Not that that seems to be the trend around here or anything.
Anyway:

Sometimes I walk around and look at tiny plants and imagine where I would like to hang out if I were a mouse.

This would totally be the party bush.

Better avoid this vicious thing, though.

You can picture the overactive-imagination explosion when I stumbled upon a greenhouse.
TROPICAL MOUSEY VACATION!!!

Mouse-me would totally rock these pink fairy feather boas. While lounging on the lily-pad. I would be a very fat mouse, if that helps your mental image.
That treehouse looks just the right size, too. And of course I would be super tight with the locals.

When I get home, remind me to build a stone mansion and cover it in ivy.

Thanks.

So is this a travel blog or what?

Who knows? Who gave these two a blog, anyway?!

Regardless, Sweden has treated us really well so far, so we'll give it a tribute post. Here are some reasons why Sweden is AWESOME:

Do his friends get to call him Gus-Gus?

Sweden ranks as the #1 democracy in the world. I'm not sure what the exact qualifications are, but North Korea is on the rock bottom of the list. So Sweden's government is the opposite of North Korea's. Well done, Sweden; I approve.

(Here's the whole list for all you Poly-Sci geeks out there.)

Not only does everyone have a fair say here, they also have a king! And his name is Gustaf!!

Ohhh, the excitement this gives my little Disney-brainwashed mind.

You know what I would do if I were king? (...or whatever gender-appropriate equivalent, you technical sticklers out there?!) I would design THE COOLEST MONEY IN THE WORLD!!!

Oh, wait, the Swedes beat me to it.

I know it looks like I'm flashing some serious cash here, but alas... it's only a $15.07 dollar bill.

It's my favorite. It has rainbows, BEES, and Carl Linneaus.

("Guys... GUYS.
This is insanity.
We're discovering all these species right & left, and we need some sort of system to classify and name them all.
Can I get some binomial nomenclature up in HEEAHH?!!"

-Carl Linneaus, 1735.)
(Translated roughly from Swedish.)

Click HERE to drool upon the artwork in all its HD glory. (And then make sure to click again so it extra zoomy-zooms.) (I'm making the "Homer Simpson sees a doughnut" noise.)

Besides binomial nomenclature, and a near-perfect democracy compatible with monarchy, Swedes also invented the Nobel Prize. And even more importantly, they invented the word "SMÖRGÅSBORD." Now that's my kinda country.

Anyway, you know what else King April would do? She would give bikes and pedestrians their own street system! And make it really awesome, with tunnels and skylights and everything, an-- oh.

Way to steal my thunder, Gustaf. Your heiny-highness.