Nose clips

This morning Derrick was vacuuming the accumulated cat litter and dust from the carpet after our week-and-half absence and he asked me a question. "Do you know where the nose clip things for under the bed went?"

"What?" I asked. Meaning, what are you talking about? What are nose clips for under the bed anyway? I didn't know beds needed nose clips.

"The nose clips thing for under the bed?"

Derrick and I do this fairly regularly--he asks me something while the car windows are down, or when the water or the vacuum, or some other white-noise producing implement is on and some amusing misinterpretation of what he's asked. Usually my interpretation at least rhymes.

"Ask me again when the vacuum is off," I instructed. So, he finished and asked again.

"Do you know where the no slip things for under the bed went?"

"No slip? I thought you said nose clips."

We both laughed. It's hard not to laugh about nose clips for the bed, even in the most serious of discussions.

Anyway, we're back from Utah. It was a good trip--Sylvia met a lot of family, and Derrick got a lot of work done. We spent weekends with my mom, and stayed at my dad's house Monday through Thursday. Derrick went to the U basically every day, while I spent Tuesday at my Mimi's house and Wednesday with Elisa. Elisa gave me another haircut (which Derrick says is much more of a mommy cut and doesn't like) and badgered me (as much as that was necessary--which is to say it really wasn't) into buying a new infant car seat, which Sylvia likes much better than the convertible seat we originally bought. In fact, she'll even sleep in the seat when we're not driving, which was awesome when she got congested again.

Derrick gave FOLK (Friends of Lord Kelvin--his group's weekly lab meeting) on Thursday, which I spent most of feeding Sylvia. That night we had a very nice dinner at Dave and Inga's house, which I also spent mostly feeding Sylvia. Friday we did a bunch of running around--going to MacBeath's for holly wood and ash for Derrick to turn; turning in a travel grant for Derrick for AGU; trying (unsuccessfully) to pick up brine shrimp and water samples for me--and then went out to Grantsville for a tasty dinner of stuffed pork chops, corn, and fried potatoes (Wayne, my mom's husband, is an excellent cook!). Saturday Derrick made chili for my Uncle Alan's chili festival, and then we hung out with my Aunt Valerie, who I didn't expect to see because I thought she still lived in Toquerville (turns out she recently got a job further north and is living near Bluffdale). We spent the evening at my Grandma's house hanging out with family during the chili fest. I didn't take nearly enough pictures, I realize now, but I did get a few--one of Mimi that I really like, and a few of Lara showing her 19-week baby bump.

Sunday Derrick and I took Sylvia on a short hike up the Loop trail to Deseret Peak. We didn't go the whole way because (according to Derrick) the trail has a roughly exponential profile, so we only did the easy part at the beginning. Sylvia seemed to enjoy the hike--or, at least, she enjoyed the napping during the hike--and I was glad to spend some time outside. It would be a shame to go all the way to Utah and not spend at least a little bit of time in the mountains. That evening we had a family dinner with my mom and Wayne, Kim, Eric, Damien, and Orion, and David. Wayne cooked again--cube steaks with mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, and more corn--though this time Derrick and I were responsible for desert. I made a date cake with a caramel topping that was supposed to be broiled before serving. As it turns out, the broiler on Wayne and my mom's oven doesn't work well, so I ended up leaving the caramel sauce off the cake until time to serve it. It's funny how similar in color caramel sauce is to gravy. Similar enough to confuse both David and Eric into thinking the caramel sauce was, in fact, gravy. Kim, Derrick, and I realized the error and managed to keep that information to ourselves long enough for Eric to take a bite. He managed to not spit it out, and just said it "wasn't what he was expecting." Damien and Orion really liked the caramel sauce on mashed potatoes--something David was quite willing to hook them up with.

Monday Derrick and I walked around Grantsville with Chewy (Wayne's Yorkshire terrier) and Derrick took pictures of old cars, then we ran out to the DWR and actually picked up the brine shrimp and water samples. We went out to the Red Iguana for lunch, where I had mole amarillo--very spicy and very tasty. We spent the rest of the afternoon running around doing other errands, then went home, finished laundry, packed, and got ready to go home. The next morning as we drove to the airport, the Great Salt Lake was almost white against the pinkness of the sunrise. Ah, I miss the beauty of Utah.