xoxoxoxo

Jesse is at the LCMS National Youth Gathering in New Orleans this week.
He calls me every night, and even though he doesn't have time to respond, I've been sending him lots of text messages.

I smiled as I sent one off to him a few minutes ago.  I filled it with all the hugs and kisses that would fit, and laughed as I remembered the first conversation we had about x's and o's.  I've signed many a text message with "xoxoxo" in the 4 years that I've known and loved him, and only this year did I realize my message has not been conveyed.

"What are the xoxoxo's for?" He asked me a few months ago when he got home from work.
"Hugs and kisses!"  I couldn't believe he was even asking me.  Doesn't everyone know what those mean?
"Oh," he smiled and hugged me tight.
"Why?" I asked him, "What did you think they were?"
Jesse shrugged, "Football tactics."

What a guy!!!

I'm an Auntie!

I finally got meet my little Chloe Daniella Barraza on Thursday last week.

Here she is with Mommy and Daddy!

One month old!

I held her the entire three hours I was with them.  It made me so happy.  It's been too long since I've held anyone that little, and this precious baby is close to my heart!

Such an alert little cutie!

Dear friends

Remembering

June Gloom waited until the middle of July, but it has finally broken.
I sigh every time a thermometer reads 95*.  I was spoiled growing up on the coast.  Everyone should grow up on the coast.

Today, I used the cute pink sun shade in my car for the first time this summer.
As I pulled it out of the pocket on the back of the driver seat, a piece of paper stuck to it and fluttered to my lap.  I felt as if I had been hit in the chest when I saw Papa Chuck's boxy, all-caps handwriting on the scrap of paper.  It was a note he had written for me, letting me know in detail the work he had done on my car the last time he fixed it up for me.

CHANGED ENGINE OIL AND FILTER
RADIATOR REBUILT
INSTALLED NEW ANTI FREEZE
INSTALLED NEW FRONT BRAKE PADS
INSTALLED NEW REAR BRAKE PADS
INSTALLED PULL SHADE OVER REAR AREA
ROTATED TIRES
PUT MIRROR ON R/H SUN VISOR
(I HAVE ANOTHER FOR L/H IF YOU WANT)

What an amazing man he was!  I grew up knowing there wasn't a thing in the world my Papa Chuck couldn't fix.  He bought and fixed up used cars for me and each of my siblings (even looked ahead and provided a car for Laura last year when she was only 15!)  Every car my family has ever owned has been one that Papa found, fixed, and maintained for us. 

Last year when he started getting sick, it was a real eye-opener for me to realize what a blessing it had been to have his talents at our beck-and-call.  Man, mechanics are expensive!  These days, it selfishly feels like lemon juice poured in an open wound every time I have to pay for someone to do what Papa Chuck always did with a whistle and a smile.

It was an odd mix of feelings that hit me today in the car, with his note sitting in my lap.  I had thought that my sorrow over his death was gone;  I haven't cried for him in a while.  It came back with a bang, though.  The paper is still crisp and his handwriting so clear that it could have been written last week. 

But it wasn't all sadness this time.  Along with the pain of missing him, there was also this twinkly-eye kind of smile that came at the realization of how blessed I was to have him as my papa.

Not everyone has what I have had.  Jesse didn't even have one grandpa by the time he was 8 years old, and until last December, I had two.  Two grandpas, who, my whole life, have the best fixer-uppers, best inventers, best hearty-laughing, bright blue-eyed smiling, there-for-me-every-time-I-need-them grandpas. 

A girl can't complain about that.

Those Little Teaching Moments

Today, in the middle of 1st/2nd grade math, a little girl raised her hand.
"Yes, Katie?" I asked, expecting her to need help with a math problem.
Instead, she stood, walked up the aisle to me, put her yellow #2 pencil in front of my face and said,
"Mrs. Bluebaker, I don't like the color of this pencil."

Not in this little town...

I began teaching math at First Lutheran's summer program last week.
As one of my ice breakers, I thought it would be fun to do a little math "mind reader" game with them.
Let's see if it works on you:

As quickly as you can, add these problems mentally:

1+1=
2+2=
3+3=
4+4=
5+5=
6+6=
7+7=
8+8=
9+9=
10+10=

Now, quick!  What's the first vegetable that comes to mind?










If you answered carrot, you're among the 95% or so of Americans who think this way.  I thought it would be fun if I could "read the minds" of my students and impress them by knowing they would answer carrot.

Well, not in this little town.

Sometimes, I forget that I'm in the minority around here.

When I asked them to tell me what vegetable first popped into their minds, the number one answer I got was "cabbage."  The runner up was kimchi.  Does that even count as a vegetable?

Blackened Salmon

Just sharing our dinner tonight!  Yum!

We really liked how the blackened chicken turned out, so we were curious to see what something similar would taste like with salmon.  It got two thumbs up!

Serves 4.

♥2 tablespoons ground paprika

♥1 tablespoon ground cayenne pepper

♥1 tablespoon onion powder

♥2 teaspoons salt

♥1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

♥1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

♥1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

♥1/4 teaspoon dried basil

♥1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

♥4 salmon fillets, skin and bones removed

♥1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

1.In a small bowl, mix paprika, cayenne pepper, onion powder, salt, white pepper, black pepper, thyme, basil and oregano.

2.Brush salmon fillets on both sides with 1/4 cup butter, and sprinkle evenly with the cayenne pepper mixture. Drizzle one side of each fillet with 1/2 remaining butter.

3.In a large, heavy skillet over high heat, cook salmon, butter side down, until blackened, 2 to 5 minutes. Turn fillets, drizzle with remaining butter, and continue cooking until blackened and fish is easily flaked with a fork.
 
We served it with brown rice and corn tonight.  Yumm!

The Brandin' Iron

Someone asked me today if I had ever gone to The Brandin' Iron, and I had to laugh.  My one and only trip to to The Brandin' Iron is something I don't often think about these days, but I still crack up when it comes to mind.

Have I ever gone to The Brandin' Iron?  Yes, I have.
Have I ever been in The Brandin' Iron?  Noooooope.

My roommate sophomore year of college decided that she wanted to go to The Brandin' Iron for her 21st birthday.  She made quite the elaborate affair out of it!  All 20 or so of her guests were driven there in style--in a Hummer limo.  She told me before we left that she was planning on drinking a lot, and didn't want to be responsible for her wallet "just in case."

My purse way back then was tiny (which is hilarious because now I nearly carry a suitcase!) and there wasn't room for both her wallet and mine.  You can laugh about my precious innocence, but 18 year old me simply thought, "I'm underage, I'm not going to be buying any drinks.  I don't need my wallet tonight."

So I left it in my dorm.

An hour and a half later, when our fancy-schmancy Hummer showed up at the front of The Brandin' Iron, I realized the dilemma. 

The bouncers wouldn't let anyone in without an ID.  Uh oh.

I assured them that I wouldn't drink, I pleaded with them, I even told them to just brand me with black Xs.

(side note funny story: the only other time I had been in a bar before this time had been to see my friend Liana's band perform on stage.  The bouncers there put big, black, permanent marker Xs on my hands.  5 types of soaps and two showers later, they were still glaringly black on my hands the next day when my grandparents came to Concordia to see how their oldest grandchild's first month of college was going!)

These guys held their ground though, and nothing I said could dissuade them from the fact that I needed an ID to enter the building.  Now, I had a real problem.  I was an hour and a half from school, without a car, and I knew there was nothing that was going to keep my roommate from getting plastered that night.

Thankfully, my friend Emily Jones was also at the party, and she volunteered to keep me company.  The neighborhood around The Brandin' Iron is pretty seedy...the only good reads in the area are found in the Adult Novelty shop across the parking lot.  Thinking we were going to have to tough it for the night, Emily and I went over to a bench and sat down.  Our limo driver saw us, though, and asked us if we'd like to sit in the Hummer.  God bless him!

You'd think this would be a bad memory...getting left out of a party because I was too naive to know that you had to bring an ID to a bar with you.  But actually, it's a really good memory.  It was there in the back of that huge limo, while Emily and I were stretched out across the seats on either side, that our conversation drifted to boys...and we started talking about that cute blond guy that played sax in our band.  She said she did like him (even though he had been very attentive to me lately, I had been hanging back because I was pretty sure Emily had her eye on him) but that actually, she was really falling for this other guy named John.

I remember being filled with the happiest feeling realizing that one of my closest friends was not in love with that handsome Jesse Brubaker, and that he was free for the taking!

Yeah, I missed out on an evening of line dancing at The Brandin' Iron, and maybe that would have been a lot of fun, but when the birthday party crowd began stumbling into the limo, queasy and impaired, I was thankful that I had missed out on whatever had happened inside.

And, in the darkness of the ride home, I smiled to myself knowing that the next time I saw Jesse, I didn't have to worry about hurting my friend's feelings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Emily and John have been dating for 5 years now, and just became engaged last month.  It's turned out pretty well for all of us, hasn't it?   :-)