“The End is Near… Here.”

The bearded men have been at it again. Marching around in my head with that crazed look in their eyes, obtrusively waving their wooden signs at my cerebral cortex, advertising, “The End.”

Don’t jump to conclusions. This isn’t the end of the world that they’re campaigning; it’s not even the end to anything significant. (And, just for the record, I have nothing in particular against bearded men, not even those with crazed eyes… Shifty eyes… Now, shifty eyes I take note of and cross the street.) But it is, nevertheless, an ending.

We warned you from our blogg-ed infancy to “get ‘em while they’re fresh,” and more importunately, to “get ‘em while they’re still Lemmons.” Well, we are Lemmons no longer. Cecily jumped ship, or rather, fruit stand, summer of 2009, leaving my softening rind behind to slowly ferment my way towards expiration. But with a generous helping of sugar, a bit of yeast, and an extended period of aging, I finally achieved a potency capable of inebriating any unsuspecting male. Enter tall, dark and handsome. Jason never had a chance… Try as he might to pass me by, and rest assured, he tried, he took to the concoction like uh… mother’s milk? (“Not her. Gin was mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.” “Do you mean that he drank?” “Drank! My word! Something chronic.”)

Haha, My Fair Lady. Oh hi. It’s Cecily, in the flesh. Or, rather in the blue ink. I was about to choose red, but we all know how heinous that would’ve been. (lemmon/lews/claytons…well at least one clayton…bleed blue. Go cougs.) Just wanted to cut into Jessica’s writing, like when our whole family gets together and we talk louder and louder to be heard over one another’s story-telling escapades. Caution, you may want to turn down the volume on your computer now. This blog could get loud. Okay, back to Jessica’s much more sophisticated, (and slightly weird, I mean bearded men?), writing. So, we couldn't do blue ink... you'll have to live with the bold thing.

“Is this it, then?” the question you are no doubt asking yourself, and you are not alone. (Because our Mom at least is reading this and tearfully choking on the same inquiry.) The answer: Yes. And No. I mean, honestly, won’t our legacy endure in the minds and hearts of every devoted and beloved reader. How could we possibly go silently into the night when champions such as Randy Punjab and Pink Felt Jesus live on? O rise up, dear readers, and be men! Fresh courage take! Every time you think about home cereal dispensers(oh man, all the time), employ the 10% rule, attend a candlelight vigil at the skatepark with skating to follow, get pooped on by rogue seagulls; we will be there. Together we will rise above the indifference and injustice of this harsh world and, yes, we will live on through all of you!

Can I get a “what, what?!”

…
Bleak. Ok, so, nope, it looks like this is it.

But let’s face it, we never wrote that much in the first place. (True.) Most of the comments and emails we received pertaining to this blog were along the same vein of complaint regarding our lack of generation, and requests for more consistency. Well, no. We will be your slaves no more! No taxation without representation!

It doesn’t matter anyway, the world will end on May 21st of this year anyway and with our track record there is no way that we’d produce another entry between now and then. Oh, yeah, you haven’t heard? Jason and I were driving down some obscure road cut through fields somewhere between Vacaville and the lush and prosperous Wheatland, California (our new home… well, at least for a few months, before it burns into oblivion with the rest of the world.) (“Summer Wheatly?! How the heck are you going ot do that?!”) when we saw the billboard floating about 3 feet off the ground, flushed in a glorious halo of light, trumpet equipped cherubim circling overhead, “MAY 21, 2011—The Bible assures it!” Below this prophetic proclamation a radio station was cited. We immediately knew that this was the biggest load we’d ever seen, so naturally, we tuned our radio to the suggested station. I wish I could share what we learned, but I honestly remember nothing… I just looked up the website for a true journalistic edge (Cecily is much better at that) and I don’t know that I got much out of that, either. It was like “Blah, blah, blah, You’re all gonna die, Blah, blah, May, 21st, Blah.” But from what I can tell the “rapture” will begin on May 21, followed by complete annihilation five months later on October 21st. All I can say is that my birthday is safe (the 5th of October, mark it down), so let’s make sure those gifts are good. Cecily and Bob... eh, not as lucky… Go ahead and return those gifts. (We’ll be celebrating my half birthday, mark it down, April 23rd, which will now fall before Jessica’s, so feel free to spend the bulk of your best gift ideas on me).

I’m not really sure what else they claim, and mostly I got bored looking at their site after about 2 minutes. But it got me thinking… I need jic (just in case) bucket list. So, here it is in it’s sixth revision:
- Skydiving- This is a popular choice, but need not be excluded simply because of it’s commonality.
- Children- Multiply and replenish, baby. Multiply and replenish--- scratch that, no time.
Run a marathon- I mean who doesn’t want to try something that killed the first guy who did it? Maybe I’ll do mine in mid October so I don’t miss out on much.
Cecily’s:
Eat an entire carton of ice-cream in one sitting-not such a popular choice, especially for the lactose-intolerant.
Own a season pass to Disneyland
Become a pre-teen Disney Channel Star-eh, probably missed the boat on this one

Now an interruption by Jason...
While we’re on the subject of the world being all topsy turvy, I saw in the news that the Astrological signs we’ve all been basing our professional and personal lives on are off by about a month (from here on out I’m sticking to Fortune Cookies to guide my future, just another example of China’s growing influence.) Even more disconcerting than the astrologers’ inability to use a calendar was the fact the 25% of the population believes that your sign has any bearing on anything. (Interesting side note: Given the anguished posts by some of my Facebook friends, I know more people than I thought that fall into the “25%.” Ahh, the wonders of social media.) Anyways, add that to the .0001% of the population that believes the world is coming to an end in 10 months and this is shaping up to be a pretty rough year for 25.0001% of the population. Just keep that in mind the next time someone cuts you off on the freeway or splashes all over the toilet seat in the PR’s, maybe it’s just not their year.

Well, this seems like a good place to end… I’m not saying you killed it, Jason, but… well, honestly in some sense you did. You and Matt…. Regular old ruffians and murderers... And so, it is with a heavy heart that we bid thee farewell, from the golden fields of aspiring adults, stretching our wings in a sky of dreams and possibilities and… hey, there’s Icarus! Cool spiraling down move, man! But as they say, “When God closes a door, he opens a window.” (And when Jason opens a drawer, I close it… over and over and over… :) So, we open for you two windows… windows into whole new realms of ridiculousness. So, here are our family blogs... check them out, add them to your bookmarks, hope for humor, pray for regularity, expect… the end of the world.

http://www.yourlewsnews.blogspot.com/

http://theresponsiblehaircut.blogspot.com/

Blah Blah Blog is Back, but ProBlahbly Not for Long

The real problem is I only blog when I feel sad or funny. Jessica – Cecily = Not so funny and Jessica + Not at Disneyland = Not Sad. Not Sad : No Blog :: Not Funny : … No Blog. (I’m studying for the GRE… fyi- : stands for “is to” and :: stands for “ as”) Additionally, the blog is LemmonPeelS— emphasis on the plural— and currently I’m the only peel left on this rotten rind. But I did want to let the world (or the two people who may read this blog) know that “it (dland) is funny now” or at least behind me, although still somewhat embarrassing. Don’t bring it up around me.

So, what do I write about now? Maybe my job as a substitute teacher and the day that an eighth grade history class went “Freedom Writers” on me? Because the last 25 minutes the class started a debate on racism and attitudes toward color today, with questions about racial profiling, the term “nigger” (nigga), and reverse discrimination, which culminated in the class’ emphatic declaration that the solution was to stand united, if only in that class— to have each other’s backs and to “hold hands across the world”. The entire class, boys and girls from varied backgrounds, held hands in a big circle, cell phones out recording the moment. “We are One” was then written and signed on the whiteboard (nothing against blackboards). None of this was prompted by me… I was just lucky enough to witness it and I hope I never forget.

Or I could bemoan the Dating Awareness Month (D.A.M. or Dating Awareness Month Nonsense) that the Bishop of our singles ward has implemented, encouraging dating as a serious priesthood responsibility.

I live in fear.

Friday and Saturday nights are my junk food and pj, relax-at-home nights. I miss you, Disney Channel. I wish you existed, Saboyf.

Or I could brag about the rad distance team I’m coaching with Kay Nekota and how fast they’re going to be this season.

But the most intriguing thing I can think of writing about is the hot pink, foot-tall, felt figurine of Jesus Christ sitting on the desk of the FFA teacher I’m subbing for right now. It’s almost as cool as the Jesus band-aid that Everett sent me from New York (Jesus Heals!), which Jordyn won by default in our Real-Life-Wii-Sports-Competition that we never finished.
Wiffleball didn’t count, Jordy.

I was so moved I composed my feelings in verse. I’d love for someone to put it to music. I’m thinking big-band or jazz. It could be in the next edition of the hymnal.


Jesus, in felt

The incline
Of your humble head
That I climb
To reach the
Beckoning hands
Laid at your breast,
Soft as felt.

Neon like a zealot—
The intensity of
My Hot Pink faith.

The Divine inspiration
To erect and endure
The didactic statuette—

The Apogee of the Veracity
Of the Grandeur of our Lord—
Whose Dread hand did thou form?


Don’t worry, I asked Mr. Johnson where he got it on my sub report. If it’s on sale, I might be able to pick one up for my mom (she loves pink… and Jesus). And just in time for Valentines Day!

Not Funny Yet

My first favorite book was Go Dogs, Go: An absolute feat of literary genius. A triumph. Between its orange bindings twisted a plot paramount to any Alexandre Dumas, poetic styling not unlike that of the masters Donne, Hopkins, and Wordsworth, the human awareness of Jane Austen and humorous satire to rival that of William Shakespeare. You can imagine my horror then upon one day finding this prestigious classic besmirched with the graffitious pen of my toddler sister. I calmly and matter-of-factly informed my mother of these crimes, as I was not the sort of child to explode with overly dramatic storms of emotion. Obviously a characteristic still maintained to this day. I also reminded my mother that I never displayed such behavior when I was at so chubby and slobbery an age. She attempted to ease my suffering with a phrase I would come to hear often and know well... “Some day we will look back at this and laugh”. I found this lack of punishment and justice frustratingly insufficient. However, as predicted, I did eventually look back and laugh, even if with the occasional shadow of a sigh. The masochistically ironic rub is that indeed we often do look back and laugh at these pain-filled moments of grief and trauma. And while laughter may in fact be the best medicine, I find it a rather insulting remedy in the midst of heartache.

So I find myself again in a less than desirable position that will probably be funny at some future date. It may even be funny to those removed from the situation now. Feel free to laugh at the following. I live in Anaheim California. I work as a custodian at Disneyland. I scrap gum off of things with a metal stick. I clean up after a code v, a code u, and a code h… I’ll let you guess at what those could stand for. I live in a little room with two other girls. I sleep on the top of a bunk bed. I have three drawers. My roommate hacks her lungs out all night. I rode a city bus for the first time. I haven’t been on the city bus a second time. I wear white pants at my belly button with a white shirt tucked into them and a maroon belt. These pants would be considered by the world to be extremely short/high-waters, but Disney is convinced that above your sock is an appropriate length for pants. There are 20 people in my singles branch. Actually, there are only 18. 16. The number dwindles as I type. I ran by a foul-mouthed lady arguing loudly with her hairbrush in the middle of the sidewalk. I run by much scarier things that I will not list. I don’t get to see my sister, nieces, friends, or any of you other goons (a.k.a. family). I pray everyday that I will still be the favorite aunt when I get home. The one day I went to Disneyland with my roommates to play, I got a migraine. I only eat cold cereal… okay, not much has changed there.

One day I hope to be able to look back at all of this and laugh.

It isn’t funny yet.

Okay, okay, the pants are a little funny.

partiplog (participation blog)

Blogs. They’re pretty cool. A fun way to keep people up-to-date on your life or just a way to say whatever the heck you want and then tell your friends to read it. But some blogs have become so much more. For example there are vlogs (video blogs), qlogs (question blogs), artlogs (art blogs), photoblogs (photo blogs), and sketchblogs (if you aren’t catching on to how this works by now, it’s time to walk away from your computer and go read some books.) Discovering these other types of blogs got me thinking, I wonder if they have advicelogs or supglogs (support group blogs). Or maybe, huplogs (hook up blogs… they would be like the personals section in the newspaper… oh wait… we’ve already got facebook.) The point is that we’ve had this blog going (on and off… and by that I mean mostly off) for over a year now and there is so much we haven’t done. There is so much untapped potential… sportlogs, techlogs, weathlogs, fashiologs, polilogs, scielogs, cerealogs, disnelogs, hotlogs… the list goes on.

We’ve decided it is time to branch out. Stretch our limbs. Peel back the rind and find the bittersweet juice that makes this citrus fruit so much better than grapefruit and way worse than oranges.

I’ve stumbled across qlogs in the past, usually when I’m looking up something really important, like the song in that cool sprite commercial when the guy dives into the basketball court. I love that song. I love the way mom gasped when she first saw the commercial. Anyway, I came across about a thousand qlogs that had postings from people that restated my question, “where can I find that song that plays in that cool sprite commercial?” And then there would be like four responses that said: “I don’t know, but I love that song.” “I don’t think it is a real song.” “Yeah, I don’t know either.” “I hate sprite and your grandma.” I still don’t know what song it was and I love my grandma.

My favorite kind of qlogs are the those in the medical genre. It always has some name like DrMDlog. I know because I had a freaky rash a couple months ago and I was scouring these sites looking for possible diagnoses for my symptoms. I ended up reading questions like the following:

“My son came home with a red rash on his forearms and has been complaining of an upset stomach. The rash has persisted beyond a week now and I am unsure what it is or what to do. -Deliriously Unaware Mother”

The first answer is always by a “real” doctor:
“Dear DUM,
From what you have told me, your son is experiencing a mild case of uradermatolopolio. Soak forearm in cool water. Apply moisturizer every twenty minutes to affected area for the next seven months. If symptoms persist see your local doctor. –Dr. Watergate”

The next few comments are by just about anyone:
“Do you have any witchatock spiders in your house? Because the same thing happened to me two years ago. I thought I had some rash, but it ended up being these spider bites. I tried everything and eventually had to move out of my house. I would start looking for a good real estate agent now.”
“My good friend had a similar experience and she didn’t do anything about it and it just went away in about four weeks.”
“Have you tried peanut butter?”
“My uncle died from something like this. Turns out his spleen exploded and he died.”

In my case, and probably in DUM’s case too, despite the sound advice gained from my research on the internet, I ended up going to my doctor to get a real diagnosis. And I gained a valuable lesson: qlogs are good for absolutely nothing. Which is precisely why we would like to try it out here on our blog for a little while. Sound fun? Yes. It does.
So, here’s how it’s going to work… you submit a question, any question, to us and we, using our vast library of knowledge and life experiences (and maybe the internet), will answer your questions right here on our blog. This is the chance of a lifetime, people. The chance of a lifetime. (Repeated for emphasis.)

Just post your questions here on the blog. If it’s a medical question… might I suggest DrMDlog.

NYT (notyourtypical) lemmon peel

I realized today that pain is a relative term when I smacked my own face with my hairbrush. I won’t even try to explain how this took place. Let it be known that I am hazardous to my own health and occasionally the health of the nation. Or at least my apartment. I should be required by law to come with a warning label. The point is that I ended up with a fat lip and enough blood to make me woozy. It hurt a little, but it wasn’t what I would really call painful. At least not compared to the hip/I. T. band injury that is currently plaguing my life. The injury itself is less painful than the pain of being unable to run. Still greater is the pain of feeling out of shape and being left behind while the team travels around the country to race. It’s all relative. I’d rather smack my face with a brush twelve times a day for the rest of my life than miss another race. But fortunately we can’t pick and choose pain. Or else I would always choose that sick stomach pain that comes after eating a pint of ice cream. Because that is always a worth-it kind of hurt. Or maybe the pain of guilt that would come after running over the bike gang that constantly sits in the middle of the street in front of our apartment, because I hate them with “every fiber of my being”. But they do some pretty awesome stunts on those baby bikes. No, wait, they don’t.

The worst kind of pain is the type that you can’t just stick some ice or a band-aid on. Like this morning when our friend got the call that her grandma had passed away. When it comes to pain like that we use euphemisms like “grief “or “sorrow”. But dumb it down and it’s all just pain. Raw, yawning, gaping, open-wound kind of pain. Tears like that sting a whole lot worse than any fat lip.

But whether it’s a leg injury, a death, or just a stupid fat lip, it’s nice to know that there isn’t any kind of pain that we have to bear alone, because there isn’t any pain that hasn’t been felt before by a loving Savior. I know we don’t usually do serious topics, because rarely can a couple of Disney-channel watching, cereal eating, wanna-be 12 year olds be serious, but in a world of unavoidable hurt it is important to remember the one we can always rely on. Because although pain is relative, God isn’t. He is constant. I am grateful for a loving and attentive Father in Heaven, and His perfect son Jesus Christ. I’m grateful for prayer, for the scriptures, and for a Mere who is a pretty dang good example to me because she understands all this and is pulling through like a champ.

In addition to heavenly help there are usually friends and family in your corner when things get bumpy. In that back-stretch of the track where the crowds aren’t cheering and the race starts to hurt, there are always those few that you can count on to be there pulling for you. This is just a little shout out to those still there in my corner. And to you, Mere, I’d take a fat lip for you any day, I’m on your backstretch, and you are running one heck of a race.

Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years…

So, Cecily wrote a blog last night and ran it by me. It was pretty funny. I contributed like .000001% of an idea to it, and so I figured I had better write a little something something myself... I mean we can't all get pooped on, but I've got stories... oh, let me tell you, I've got stories...

Like... did you know that the word poop comes from the Latin term Puppis, which is that raised part in the back of a boat, aka the poop deck. I always thought that it came about the other way around. I guess I just figured that those poor pirates had nowhere else to go on the boat; so when nature called they took it to the back of the ship... swabbing the poop deck just isn't as gross anymore.

Speaking of Latin, I have a test on Friday. "O Latine, Moriere! Moriere! MORIERE!" I hope none of the originally intended sentiment in that statement gets lost in translation. Although I do hope that my translations on the test get lost in my professor's office so that he is forced to give me an automatic "A". And so that he doesn't laugh at me when he grades it.

But a overweight and classically nerdish professor laughing at me alone in his office isn’t quite as bad as my whole nerdy rhetoric class laughing at me to my face, as they did a week ago when I came to class with two bags of ice strapped to my butt. It wasn’t the bulge under my sweatpants that was so bad, but the puddle that filled my seat by end of class. I stood up, my saturated rump sagging behind me, and tipped my desk as a river of “water” spilled onto the floor. In the midst of shocked expressions and stifled laughter my only defense was to pull down my pants… okay, so I was wearing spandex underneath. The point was to show melted ice was the responsible party and that I didn’t need depends. Yet. Still, because of a strictly enforced honor code, the spandex exposure didn’t go over well either. Needless to say, the desks around me stay strangely empty these days.

Hopefully we’ll have more luck keeping people around our blog… but I’m not holding my breath. I’m not holding anything. Except when I’m in rhetoric… I’m holding it.

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's a blog... nope it was a bird.

So, the lack of our blogging is such that we’ve probably completely lost readership. Sad? Yes. Mostly because, our lives are still pretty hilarious and worth documenting. We keep talking about potential blog topics, but because of this Cannon Center trip, or that new episode of Hannah Montana, they’ve never become reality. So what is the inspiration for today’s post after such a long lemmon peel drought? Well, I became the sad, innocent, and completely unsuspecting target of some airborne creature’s waste yesterday. In other words, I was pooped on by a bird, or some kind of UFP: unidentified flying pooper. Or perhaps UFC sounds better: unidentified flying crapper. I don’t know, you decide. The point is, I haven’t been pooped on since 7th grade. For all you who were fortunate enough to attend, or have seen Willis Jepson Middle School, (ah, such a gem. Nay! A diamond in the rough), you know about the unusually large population of seagulls who stalk the school waiting to crap on pubescent, self-conscious, pre-teens, and/or eat the left over lunches that litter the quad every day. It is in this setting that 12-year-old Cecily is enjoying her lunch, proudly wearing her Twisters soccer team sweatshirt, in preparation for Jepson’s team try-outs set to begin right after school that day. Somehow that poor seagull, sick with half-eaten chick fil a’s and pizza, managed to poop both on the front and back of that sweatshirt. Talk about a good omen for the beginning of try-outs. The rest of the day was spent sweatshirt-less, and my locker quickly adopted the seagull poop as its new aroma of choice. The real hero of the story however is mom, who had to wash the sweatshirt when I got home. And she had to comfort me when I was cut from the team a few days later. But yesterday’s encounter with crap was softened by the fact that my WHITE winter coat, is surprisingly easily cleaned. Seriously though, do those birds aim? What cruel fate attracts disaster to white clothing and recently washed cars? Aren’t birds migrating right now? I ran in 15 degree weather this morning, shouldn’t I be migrating right now? I suppose it isn’t always the bird’s direct doing. Let’s not forget mom’s legendary poo-flicking accident which resulted in some absorbed reader’s yogurt getting a little something extra (if you know what I mean). All in all, I decided it was a sign: It’s time to blog. So welcome back lemmon peelers. Welcome back.