the squirt can spittoon and other adventures

argh, this blog would definitely be better with pictures. i saw emily's and had blog envy. lisa is probably telling me it is my own fault for not using her awesome computer camera that i use often to send one off stuff to friends and fam, but not for posting. when i get back home where the camera resides i will make sure to rectufy this. that is if i ever manage to not be blogging in the middle of the night in a serious race against the clock. you'd think i was posting important state secrets with the fast and covert nature of my blogging. alas, you are about to hear other secrets...

this morning the Family Hartle left Owen the Brave with his great grandparents and went on a whirlwind tour of Corinne's planning which was basically a morning of reliving great memories from the Hartle past and re-creating them. slightly bizarre. anyway, something happened, i slept poorly and when they finally got me up it was definitely in the wrong part of my sleep cycle because i was as happy as ted kaczynski in a federal building until i perked up at avalanche gorge. anyway, it was about 40 degrees outside and our first stop was at lake mcdonald for corinne to skip rocks, which she is shockingly good at. lauren is not good at it, but announced that she got 3rd place in her softball throw in 7th grade which prompted snarky comments that there were probably only 3 people in the competition. speaking of which, i do distinctly remember us all getting first and second place ribbons when we were in swimming competitions against only one other student. sweet celebrations of mediocrity! one of my friends of late said that she knows a man who is dealing with the fact that he has been too praised in his life and is dealing with the crushing reality that he is not wonderful and perfect like his mom said he was. hysterical. this sounds like a particularly american problem to have. anyway, i digress.

next stop was the gorgeous avalanche gorge, I know the pun is killing you, as it does us. we took about 1000 pictures next to the gorge and lauren put down my grandparents travel coffee mug on the railing and corinne accidentally flailed and knocked it into avalanche creek. might not seem like a big deal unless you know that what a needle is to a heroine user is what the travel coffee mug is to my grandparents. Yeah, serious business. anyway, they took it tolerably well.

our last stop was the Glacier Maze, which is a lifesize maze whose pattern changes weekly and was fun when i was 10 and is still fun now when i am 27. anyway, we left the parents at home to pack and we three sisters went to conquer the maze. we were feeling pretty cocky after 15 minutes and two of the four corners already conquered. 20 minutes later with still only 2 corners conquered we were in a fit of cursing and depression. we took a 10 minute break to lament and then gathered our strength and ended in an hour, and when your time get slower as you get older but it has nothing to do with fitness, you should either praise the virtues of curious youth or curse your already weakening mind. anyway, at the end we bought a Squirt to share from the vending machine--p.s. weigh in: fresca vs squirt?, lauren chooses fresca, i think i choose squirt with its 1% juice. and this is where the story gets really good. i finished off the can of Squirt and then decided i should start day three of my Crest whitestrip brilliant smile regimen. so i put on the strips and sometimes, see, my mouth gets foamy. so i decided to use the squirt can as a spittoon whenever i felt i couldn't swallow during the 30 minutes i had to wear the strip. do you see this coming from 100 miles away? corinne comes in from her smoke break, sees the refreshing can of Squirt and feels there is something in it...and drinks my spit! yes! sooo disgusting. she immediately spits it into my perplexed grandfather's coffee cup (remember a mere few sentences ago I illustrated how important daily coffee is for the grandparents?) and i gingerly hear her ask the question, "Julie...did you spit in the Squirt can?" and after two seconds I realized I hadnt announced that the Squirt can had been transformed into my foamy whitening spit's new home, and then i started laughing hysterically and basically haven't stopped.

in other news, over the last two days I have gotten very serious about huckleberry picking. it's kind of like sudoku or any other worthwhile puzzle. i have learned the berry's terrain, and it hides, see, and so finding it is very gratifying, not to mention delicious. this whole venture has brought out the adolescent in me, fording little streams and tromping over fallen trees in rough forests all to find the desired purple berry. I love throwing caution to the wind and getting caught in webs and flicking off childsized bugs and picking off 100 burrs from my pants.

i had an interview for a position as a production assistant at a megachurch in san diego which means helping with the logistics of their services and their emerging tv and radio ministries. the more i know about it the more excited i am--a full time media ministry non desk job? be still my beating heart. wait, i think i've heard myself say this before...hmm. anyway, i really want this job despite my last job. but they want to fill it and they want to fill it yesterday, so I am in the super unfortunate position of being interviewed over the phone. And even though I think it went really well and even though I think I may actually be overqualified for the position, being at least half admin work, as it were, I still have a nagging feeling it isnt going to work out. I have no idea why--besides, of course, the glaring fact that i won't be in town for the exact ten days during which they have a fire under their rears to get someone hired. I mean, technically I should be really confident. anyway, i have faith that it will all work out. any day i'm not running away from a bloodthirsty warlord has got to be a decent day, right?

in the evening after mom and dad and lauren had said farewells and i had had my good phone interview, we took a risk, took a chance and took owen out to dinner. he was so good. we sedated him with huckleberry iced tea. and then rewarded him with french fries, yum! then we took him to lake mcdonald to watch momma corinne skip rocks on the lake while he threw rocks in the lake. go! big strong baby! yeah, so then we tried to leave and he threw a raging fit replete with tears and this nazgul shriek he has perfected. it makes me want to have one of those dog collar shockers that zaps dogs when they bark, but one for babies. couldn't he just mime something like "but I am so very disappointed that we must leave because I am having so much fun, I love rocks, I love water; this is really my spiritual home" and then we could explain that he should be grateful he isnt running away from sudanese warlords and we will return to the lake tomorrow for him to throw more rocks, or we could always just fill up the tub at home with rocks and let him throw to his little heart's content? do i expect too much from an 18 month old?

i leave tomorrow for indianapolis and amy's wedding. today i plucked off my eyebrows and whitened my teeth. yesterday i used my mother's liquid laser lotion which disintigrated the hair off my legs and didnt work well the first time, so i used it again and acid burned myself in a few places. sort of defeats the beautification and ease aspect of liquid weirdness to shave instead of good old razor in the shower. if you are surprised at the amount of upkeep i am doing recently well, i mean, i am living in the US again, so I may now have the possibility of running into someone i woudl want to look good for. the unfortunate freckling of my face due to sun exposure from CA heatwave and hiking can't be helped. some people think they are cute. i'm just going to have to go with that.