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…about Daniel.

1. When you turn on a video camera, he turns into a goofball:

2. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, he’ll jump up for no reason and start moving around in a funny way. I suppose you could call it “dancing.”

3. He’s super smart. In all the areas that I’m not.

4. He loves both Fergie and Exodus.

5. His favorite radio stations are KDAY, which plays old school hip hop, and Christian talk radio. He generally laughs at one of them. I’ll let you figure out which.

6. He has recently taken up knitting and makes really cool beanies. I’d post a picture but I don’t have any…I’ll work on that.

7. He makes me laugh.

8. He never does anything halfway.

9. He makes me a better person. As irritating as that can be sometimes.

10. He tries to build up the people around him. Consciously tries. And does.

11. He understands me. He knows that when I need time alone it’s not in any way a reflection on my feelings for him.

12. He’s a good dad. And he tries to be. The other day he was asking the kids what he can do to make them feel loved. The answers were things he already does regularly: hug them and tell them he loves them.

13. He shares my taste for bad TV. Tonight we’re watching Criminal Minds. And we’re excited about it.

14. He’s fearless.

15. He actually likes my cooking. And no, there’s no particular reason this comes after #14.

16. He will occasionally admit to liking a chick flick. But only if it in some way is relatable to us. Isn’t that sweet?

17. He’s got amazing hair. And he’ll do unexpected thing with it, like this:

Get a perm

Bleach it white

Get a mullet

18. Need I say more?

19. He once dressed up as a priest for Halloween, and suggested I dress up as a pregnant nun.

(Actually the pregnant part may have been my idea. But note the black hair–we can’t remember him dying it black, but apparently he did!)

20. He’s my favorite person in the whole world.

21. After 21 years of being married, our favorite thing is still to spend time together. Happy anniversary!

Daniel in high school:

Daniel now:

Last night Daniel and I were watching TV and a commercial for the new movie, Valentine’s Day, came on.

Daniel: “That movie has so many big stars in it and it looks so stupid.”

Me, all disgusted: “That’s cuz it’s about Valentine’s Day. Who cares about Valentine’s Day?”

Pause.

Me: “Am I like the most unromantic spouse ever?”

Daniel: “Yes. And it rules.”

In case you missed his farewell on the Tonight Show last night. Very classy. And what he says at the end is very powerful.

I don’t. Usually.

This week I’ve had two nightmares about killing people. They weren’t really horrible nightmares—like I didn’t wake up totally freaked out. I just woke up enough to think “that was unpleasant, think about something else” and then go back to sleep.

I can’t remember the details of the dreams either. Probably a good thing.

My husband Daniel has really violent, vivid, gory dreams. We were talking about nightmares we remember from being kids once and he said he had a dream where he was playing a game with his best friend. As part of the game, he reached over and dug his thumbs into his best friend’s eye sockets. Then he thought, “Uh oh,” because it was his friend’s turn.

I had recurring nightmares as a child about a midget that was trying to kill me. His murder attempts were always right under the noses of the rest of my family, but for whatever reason they could never hear me screaming or see what was going on. Once or twice it wasn’t a midget, instead it was a robot. Midgets, robots, both can be terrifying.

You’ve never shopped for clothes online before, but you decided to try it. Where would you start?

I desperately need some new clothes but I have no time to go shopping. I’m very picky about the clothes I wear, they have to be comfortable. I have one band tshirt that I love, it fits exactly the way I want all my shirts to fit, so I looked up the brand online and ordered about 6 pairs of tshirts in various colors, I think they cost $3.00 each when you factor in shipping. Here’s what they look like:

Although I did not order that color.

I looked on Target’s website, but didn’t find anything. Looked on Old Navy, still not happy. I want something a little more funky. So I googled “hippy clothes.”

I ended up getting this skirt:

Isn’t that cute? I got the blue one. On sale, of course. I like the clothes at this website, it’s called Soul Flower.

Where do you shop online?

After going to the best store in the world, I had to try my hand at making some gyoza.

Gyoza are like Japanese wontons.

I used to work at a Hawaiian teriyaki place when I was a teenager, so I knew how to make them. At least I knew how to fold and seal the wrappers. I looked up a recipe online. I didn’t have all the ingredients but that didn’t stop me. I won’t post a recipe, but I’ll tell you what I put in it. Look up a recipe online and use all the ingredients and yours will probably be tastier than mine.

I chopped up some cabbage, some onion, and threw it in a skillet with some vegetable oil. When it was limp, I tossed in a bunch of ground pork and cooked it till it was all browned and crumbly. Then I drained it and used it as the filling for the gyoza.

Nathaniel took pictures but they came out kind of dark.

The wrappers are called dumpling wrappers and I got them at the Asian market.

They’re like dough or pasta—not hard like noodles you buy for spaghetti. But soft like noodles you’d make from scratch yourself.

This is probably a little bit too much filling. You only want the center to have filling. Then you dip your finger in water and moisten a ring around the outside of the gyoza, fold it over, and crimp it together with your fingers, making pleats.

Make sure you pinch the entire edge together tightly.

The recipes I found said to fry them in a little bit of vegetable oil and then add water and steam them. I like them entirely fried, though, so I just fried them about a quarter inch of vegetable oil, flipping to get each side. I used extra virgin olive oil, I think.

Before frying:

While frying (note my Sponge Bob Squarepants oven mitt):

Nathaniel helped me make the gyozas as well as took pictures for me.

All done:

They came out yummy! We had them with soy sauce/teriyaki sauce and rice. You’re supposed to dip them in a gyoza sauce, which is soy sauce plus some extra stuff, but I didn’t bother with that. I’m too lazy—this was already way more work than I normally put in on a meal!

What’s nice is I made enough that I could freeze another batch (before frying, I’ll just toss them in and fry them right from the freezer) and I’ll probably serve it to the missionaries when they come for dinner next week.

Daniel designed the board.

My daughter just told me about a site called FML. It stands for f* my life, and people post gripes and bad stuff they’ve had happen on it.

Well someone started an alternative called GivesMeHope.com.

Check it out.

Lately I’ve been really busy. With work. And when I’m not working, I’m going somewhere to take pictures. Every weekend has been packed with going places and taking pictures. It’s keeping me really busy.

And I’ve been neglecting my blog. And also neglecting reading and commenting on my friends’ blogs.

I started to feel guilty about it last week. No one was commenting on my blog when I was managing to post something, so I thought people had stopped reading because I wasn’t able to comment on their blogs. Which is probably true.

And then I had this dream. I was over at my blogger friend Shaz’s house. She lives in Utah and I’ve never met her or been to her house, but this is the second time I’ve dreamed about being there.

We were out in her front yard and she was showing me these cute planters she had with lavender plants in them on the corner of her yard next to the sidewalk. Then I saw a tiny little spider on the sidewalk and thought, I can handle this. So I stepped on it and started spinning in a circle, grinding it into the concrete beneath my foot. I kept saying, “Pretend it’s an ant, pretend it’s an ant.”

Then I lifted up my foot and the spider crawled away. Except it was now an ant.

I apologized to Shaz about not keeping up with her blog, and she said, “Oh, well, here, you can catch up.” And she indicated her lawn.

Her lawn had a giant blog post written on it. I was like, Oh, cool—and I sat down and started reading.

It was a really long blog post, and I wish I could remember what it said. But I don’t.

Then I woke up and thought ok I really need to get caught up on everyone’s blogs. So I went and checked them, and guess what? Most people had hardly posted anything lately on their blogs, either.

Then I remembered—it’s summer, and blogging always slows down in the summer.

In other news, I’m finally starting a photography group with the women at church. Should be fun.

Here’s some recent pictures:

I’m too busy to blog much of anything today, but check out this poetry my nephew wrote (on my sister-in-law’s blog).

http://audrajensen.blogspot.com/2009/06/isaaks-poetry.html

Genius, or what? (He’s autistic, BTW.)