I unintentionally did not succeed in decapitation.

Child Six has not awakened early in the morning covered in poop up to his armpits the last couple days, Child Five's ear seems to have stopped hurting so much, and no one is throwing up any more, so I guess I can manage to get a post written today.


I thought I would go ahead and clarify some of the things you commented on in my birthday post. I'll simply go in order of the list.


#3: Why do I want to live in an underground house? Well, for the novelty, I guess. I also want to live in a straw bale house, a rammed earth house, and I love many different styles of traditional houses, as well. I would just love to build and build. When I go back and get my degree it will probably have something to do with construction.


#9: What song did Michael McClean sing about me? I'll give you a hint: you've never heard it and you never will. What happened was that one summer I worked for a family camp up in the mountains above Provo, Utah. We had all kinds of guest speakers, and one week the McClean family came up. When the weeks' campers went home on Friday, we staff had free time until Saturday afternoon, when the next batch of campers arrived. On the Friday night when the McCleans were there only three of us staff were still at camp. The McCleans hadn't gone down into the valley, so we looked all over camp in vain for the one VCR the camp owned so we could watch Anne of Green Gables. After a long and fruitless search, the three of us and the McCleans sat around in a room with a piano. Michael proposed a game. He started out with a story line and passed it to the next person, who told some of the story and then passed it along. It's a little intimidating to be telling a story to the best story teller ever and I think he got frustrated with us. After a while, he took over and told a fantastic story that he made up on the spot. Don't ask me; I don't remember it. I just know it was great. Then he sat at the piano and sang a song about each of us. Again, don't ask me because (sadly) I don't remember his song about me. It was short, it rhymed, and I was very pleased that for one moment, he knew my name. That is my big brush with one of the most famous LDS songwriters.


#13: Google my name and find out what band I played in. The Father of Five knows. That's how he found me after all these years. He's a fan of this band, who are native Minnesotans, and was looking up the band when he saw my name. If you don't know my real name (Barbara, I'm sorry. Eva Aurora is really the name of one of my Swedish ancestors), leave me your email address if you feel comfortable and I'll tell you. Or email FOF. He has my permission to tell you.


#16: Yes, my attempt to decapitate my brother was intentional. My next oldest brother (not the one whose birthday I wrote about recently) was my guinea pig as we were growing up. When I was about 7 and he was about 5, we were interested to know what happens to someone whose head has been cut off. We had chickens, and they do funny things when you cut off their heads. Was it like that for humans, we wondered? Standing in the kitchen, I took a serrated knife and began gently sawing away at my brother's neck (he helpfully stuck his neck out). I hadn't yet broken the skin when my mother, who was cooking at the counter, turned around, shrieked, and snatched the knife away. We were both disappointed at the time not to have our curiosity satisfied, but now he is married and has three beautiful children. It would have been a tragedy had I succeeded.


#18: When was I 100 feet from a tornado? My dad picked me up from ballet class on his motorcycle during some dicey weather. As we were motoring home, the air went still and the light turned that particular shade of green that always means tornado weather. Dad pulled over and pointed to the top of a hill that was just across the street. We watched the clouds swirl faster and faster, finally funneling and touching down briefly onto the hilltop. The funnel immediately went back up, much to my relief. I did not ride the wind of death that day.



#19. The bear. I was 15. I was babysitting in a house in northern Minnesota in the spring. The house sat right next to a large wood. After the kids were in bed, I was in the living room with the windows open and I heard a rustling of grass outside. I figured it was the dog. A moment later I heard the garbage cans on the back porch rattling and I went to the back door, thinking I would let the dog in. As I reached for the doorknob, a voice (I am NOT making this up) said, "Don't open the door!" I was quite taken aback. Then, after a moment, thinking I must have imagined it, I reached for the doorknob again. Again I heard the voice, only louder, "DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!" It hit me then that if Heavenly Father was warning me not to open the door then something bad must be on the other side of it. Completely freaked out, I walked shakily into the living room, sat down on the sofa and fell sound asleep almost immediately. It was weird. Later, I awoke to the sound of the mother pounding on the window to wake me up. She was really mad. "Who did this to my screen door?" she asked heatedly. I looked at the screen, which was shredded. I told her about what I had heard. She called the police, who failed to arrest any bears (though they found some incriminating footprints).


#20. My favorite pizza topping is pepperoni. I like most kinds of pizza (I even enjoyed St. Louis-style pizza when we stayed overnight there. I didn't know that there even was a St. Louis-style pizza before.) I enjoy gourmet pizzas and pizzas loaded with everything, but I always come back to the classic pepperoni. The best pizza is Papa Murphy's Pepperoni DeLite. I have to be careful with that because I could suck down the whole thing myself. Also delicious is their Mediterranean DeLite. Yum.


#23. I won a chicken in a chicken race way back when I was living in Idaho. Every year for Pioneer Day (that's July 24th for you non-Western, non-LDS folks), our ward would hold a big party at someone's farm. There were greased pole climbs, hog races, cow-pie throwing contests, all things pioneer. I raced with maybe five kids for a chicken. I won because I realized we were all playing follow-the-leader, stepped out of line and grabbed the chicken. We added her to our flock and she became a productive member of her society.


And now you know much, much more about me than you would ever have thought you could ever want to know. It's like I'm wearing a see-through backpack, hee hee.