Purely Lauren

I was making a beeline for the lunch restaurant yesterday and wasn't thinking and walked over a grate and Marilyn Monroe'd it for the entire intersection.

You know, like in The Seven Year Itch when Marilyn Monroe walks on the grate and her white dress totally blows up and she looks really sexy and provocative while trying to hold her dress down?



But instead of it being sexy it was just really awkward and I threw my arms down to stop my dress from going up. But what do you decide to cover? The front, or the back? I chose the front, which means I knew that entire intersection got a view of my bum. And I know for sure that happened because I felt the bottom of my dress hit my neck. (Yeah... it was really high...)

Basically I looked like the less glamorous and less sexy and less leggy and less everything version of these:

Today is the first day of Autumn. Which means, I change the background of my blog to match the new season and mourn the fact that I didn't get to do as much in the summer as I wished and also rejoice in the fact that I will (hopefully) not sweat profusely every day. (Maybe I'll even be able to style my hair!)

Good thing about autumn is the National Book Festival, and it's this weekend! It's one of my favorite weekends of the year and I'll be skipping the ward service project to go. And, don't judge me, but I'm super, extra excited to hear Sarah Dessen* speak... yeah, I'm like a 15 year old girl.



I've been lacking in my book reading as of late. My New Year's Resolution was to read four books a month. Technically speaking one of those was supposed to be non fiction, but I really struggle with non- fiction, despite feeling like I should like it more. I think it's because when I meet someone who reads non-fiction I think they're smarter, better educated, and more sophisticated than I am. But that's also because I tend to gravitate towards things like Sarah Dessen... But then again, maybe I just don't have a good non-fiction eye to find the good ones. But I'm off subject now.

Back to the resolution. So far I have read 34 books and I'm two books short for this month, and last month I only read one. (Good thing I read like five on my Europe trip this summer!) And I'm going to need to read 14 more to hit my goal by the end of the year.

So, what I'm asking is for a book recommendation from you. I know I have a handful of smart, well read, blog stalkers out there. Please hop over from your Google reader and leave me a comment with a book recommendation. Pretty please? I really want to read some good stuff this Fall and favorite book recommendations are always the best.

I like a wide variety of books, so no recommendation is off. Some favorites and I suppose recommendations for you include: In Cold Blood; Ella Enchanted, Jane Eyre, The Power of One, The Truth About Forever (my favorite Sarah Dessen); The Princess Bride; The Book Thief; The Lost Hero (but perhaps start with Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief--bad movie, fun book, especially if you love Greek/Roman mythology); aaaaand last one, duh, Harry Potter 1-7 (if you haven't read these you're really missing out, even if you "don't like fantasy").


*She writes realistic teen romance novels not vampire stuff. And I like her. Like I said, I'm probably about 15...

Plus: Loving my book. 

Minus: Stayed up too late, I didn't have time for breakfast and barely made it to the bus.



Plus: Lisa has granola bars, so I shoved one in my bag for breakfast.

Minus: I shoved half of said granola bar into my mouth before getting on the metro train.



Plus: The cute boy* in my ward (that I have a teensy crush on) was standing in my metro car, right where I wanted to stand. You know, just standing there, waiting to talk to me obviously.

Minus: I had half a granola bar in my mouth.


*no, you (or any others of you out there who live in DC) do not get to know who it is until he decides he has a crush on me too


Edit: Check out the extra big Plus of last night, with no Minus, Domineau posted on her blog.

Yesterday at lunch I half read my book and half thought of what I wanted to make for dinner. I thought, "I have chicken and tilapia in the fridge, you could bake one of those, add some vegetables and maybe some rice, or something." Then I felt my mind rebel and think, "But wouldn't you so much rather have cookies? Like those Coconut Lime ones? Or what about those Coconut, Toffee, Chocolate chip ones? Oooh! That Raspberries and Sour Cream thing? Mmmm, that would be good." And then I continue to daydream about things I could make and the thought of dinner comes creeping back in and I have to figure out what (whine) healthy thing I should make for dinner.

My name is Lauren and I'm a sugar-oholic.

I love sugar. I love treats. And I love turning butter, sugar, egg, flour, baking soda, and salt into something that looks, tastes and smells awesome. I love baking.





It doesn't help my sugar addiction that I have a rather large amount of cooking blogs I'm subscribed to, and that means I see the cookies or cakes or whatever is made and it's just so appealing to look at. Or, I type in stupid things like "favorite cookies" into google and the thing to catch my eye is Epicurious and I'm a gonner and start thinking of cookies to make tonight.

But I think I figured it out part of my problem, creating something totally out of some basic ingredients is so much more appealing than cooking some veggies until they're soft and a piece of meat until it's no longer raw. It's partially the process of combining ingredients that's so appealing, but the finished product, that soft, chewy center and slightly crispy edge of cookies or the soft, spongy yet moist cake with frosting, that does me in every single time.

Saturday proved to be a first on two accounts.

First, I went to a Sound of Music sing-a-long that ended up being one of the most enjoyable nights of the summer. There's nothing like singing along to The Hills are Alive (complete with people standing and spinning around like Maria does), Sixteen Going on Seventeen, Favorite Things, Do-Re-Mi, The Lonely Goatherd, and Edelweiss with hundreds of other people, many who are dressed up for the evening in dirndls, lederhosen, or as "favorite things". It was an absolute blast. Other highlights of the evening were: hissing when the Baroness Schraeder came on screen; booing when any of the Nazis appeared on screen, including Rolf at the beginning, because we all know what happens to him at the end; and pulling our little firecracker, popper things when Maria and Captain von Trapp kiss for the first time. (Those little yellow bags in the picture were filled with our props for the evening.)

Moral of the story: Sing-a-longs, are totally worth the money. Sound of Music sing-a-longs are even better. I probably need to go to a Mama Mia sing-a-long before I can make a final judgment though.

Secondly, and I don't have a picture because that would just be gross, my pee turned blue after eating some brownies laced with Methylene blue in honor of the BYU football game this past weekend. And you know what? That's the only details you're really gonna get on that subject. Is it TMI to talk about pee? TMI for you? or TMI for me? I don't know, but my pee was blue and I only had a bite. That's powerful stuff.

In honor of today, September 11th:

Leap by Brian Doyle

A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.

Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.

The mayor reported the mist.

A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.

Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people "leaping as they flew out." John Carson saw six people fall, "falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting." Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, "too many people falling." Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.

Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.

But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.

I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.

Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.

No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.

Emailed to me by my sister Cami. Frontline PBS. I tried to find an appropriate picture to commemorate the day but couldn't find one I felt was good enough.

I find this piece horrifying and beautiful all rolled into one. But mostly I find the part about the good so beautiful that it's worth reading again and again and I just keep reading that paragraph because it's so simple and so beautiful and so good. I hope that the good can always be highlighted amid the bad.

Have a good week. Find the good.

Went to the beach last weekend for a final summer hurrah, and it definitely felt like the final act of summer because it hasn't stopped raining all week. I popped by my sister and brother-in-law's place tonight and had to go in the back door (which incidentally is actually really the front door, but the back door feels more like a front door) because they have flooding on their patio ankle deep. 

It's September. Ho hum. I like fall, and hate the heat of the summer, but I still really really like summer. And fall always makes me miss school.

"Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address." Tom Hanks as Joe Fox, You've Got Mail

Anyway, we're going to the beach this weekend for our last summer hurrah. And here are a bunch of instagrams from the summer (minus anything from Europe since I feel like you've probably gotten your fill... and anything else I might have already blogged about), I wish I could tie them up in ribbon like a little summer bouquet. (Like the pencils, get it?)

You might have heard that we had practically back to back natural disasters last week, both of which I was completely unprepared for. And you know what? That's scary.

Tuesday August 23: Earthquake.

It felt like there was some kind of construction going on in the building because the floor started rumbling. Then I realized that the whole building was shaking. What did I do? I hesitated and tried to decide if I should climb under my desk or not. While I was still deciding the earthquake stopped. Had it been worse, I'd have been toast. (Subsequently, I learned that climbing under a desk isn't the smartest thing to do anyway. You should curl up next to the desk.)

What resulted was an evacuation from our building and a walk home across the Potomac back into Virginia. Below are two evidence shots from my afternoon: Pennsylvania Ave. (If you look closely you can see the Capital building at the end of the street.) We walked along to Potomac and got picked up by Erin at Gravely Point, where the planes fly directly over you.


Luckily the weather was gorgeous and not hot. It seems like the perfect afternoon for an earthquake.

August 27: Hurricane Irene.

After spending the evening up around Dupont Circle Friday night we decided we should probably stock up on a few things so we headed to the grocery store. I bought two bottles of water, a can of soup, a box of cereal, a watermelon and four magazines. Flashlights were sold out. But we've never lost power before in a storm so it was no big deal.

Hurricane Irene hit Saturday bringing with her high winds and beating rain. I went to a coworker's engagement party in The District and found myself driving home in heavy rains. That was scary.


Needless to say, I think this is and was a wake up call to get going and to actually have some preparation for the future.

I also found this blog post really good in regards to preparation and natural disasters. I probably shouldn't take them so lightly.