Movin' on Down

I've moved! But just a little. Now you can find me at I Heard Tell on Wordpress.

Come! Find me! There.

-Molly

Wedding Mania.

Last night Brian and I went to our third wedding of the summer. Interestingly enough, all three weddings were for couples that had been together for around seven years. I think that seems like a good length of time to be together before you tie the knot. My parents were together for at least 5 years before they got married, thirty years ago. I'd much rather it be something where everyone says, "Oh, you're finally getting married, good."

Anyway! I always have fun at weddings, because I like to DANCE. That's right, I am one of those wedding guests. I will do the bump with your grandma, I will spin your 5 year old niece around, I will slow dance with your weird uncle (probably only once though). I will take my shoes off if they hurt and keep dancing. I will do the electric slide, the Twist; I will YMCA.

And that's the great thing about weddings, is that they are perhaps one of the few times when you are encouraged, nay REQUIRED to get out on the dance floor and shake it like no one's watching. Nobody wants to throw a wedding where no one dances. I am just doing my part. My gift might not be pricy, but my funky chicken will be priceless.

Movin' on Down

After my last move, into Brian's house, ten minutes away, I swore I would never move again. Well, that was a lie. I am moving in approximately a week. This time not across town, but across coast! Along coast. Something.

Brian and I are moving to Garner, which is just outside of Raleigh, NC. I am excited about this change. Excited and terrified. I go back and forth between two extremes. Moving somewhere new, starting over and making new friends and finding your way in a new city and state, is fun and scary. Quitting your job without a new job lined up is inadvisable, but it's what I'm doing. My last day at work is Friday, and my next day of work after that is up for debate. On the one hand, I enjoy having time off of work. On the other hand, I also enjoy eating. Which of these enjoyable things will be in my future the most? We shall see!

Mmm, Sandwiches

I have begun a small side-blog.

It's about sandwiches, because who doesn't love sandwiches?

A few weeks ago a group of friends and I emailed back and forth for several hours about different sandwiches we had loved and eaten, and I got to thinking. I decided to start collecting a list of these different sandwiches, in order to inspire the creation and digestion of yet more new and wonderful sandwiches.

Please, email me your favorite sandwiches, to molly.schoemann@gmail.com, and I will list them here:

www.mmmsandwiches.wordpress.com

May it serve as a sanctuary for lovers of bread, cheese, and everything in between.

Back in North

Hi! I've been away! It's been awhile! I am sorry.

Holy Bat Museum!

I spent the last week in Louisville, KY for a conference. I have to admit that I LOVE traveling for work. At least, the traveling I have done for this job, which is the extent of my traveling-for-work experience. The only conference I go to lasts almost a week long, and the last two years, it's been in a neat city that I never would have visited otherwise. Last year it was Minneapolis, and this year it was Louisville. Last year I ended up having dinner with a friend of the family who convinced me to start this blog, and thus was born I Heard Tell. I also toured the Walker Art Center's Sculpture garden, home of Spoonbridge and Cherry:

Spoony spoon spoon

And visited the Mall of America. There were a total of FOUR "Lids" stores in the Mall of America. That's right, four of the same chain of baseball hat stores in one mall. It boggled the mind. In response, I bought a Mall of America shotglass.

Conference also means a week of high-class hotel living. This year my room had two beds in it! On the first night I started out in one bed, and then hopped into the other in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. I awoke in the morning confused, but somehow smug. This room also had two sinks, but no closet or fridge.

Which leads to the downside. Hotel living is not perfect. I don't love eating out for every meal, because I miss planning my own meals, cooking, and having a refrigerator. There is something bizarrely rustic about buying a bottle of cranberry juice and keeping it cold by storing it on a frigid air conditioning vent. And by rustic, I probably mean wasteful. You're kind of roughing it, but not really, but you're still not really comfortable.

You do get to expense your meals, which is exciting, although it still makes me feel guilty, because I work for a small nonprofit. Although last week one of my dinners consisted of cookies and pretzels, so I don't think the lifestyle to which I am accustomed was really a serious drain on my company's bank account.

During the one-week trip I suffered a fever and sinus infection. (Another thing I love about hotels is that you can pick up the phone in the dead of night and someone on the other end will tell you where you can buy Tylenol at 2am. ) I also endured a harrowing late-night illness after dinner at Joe's Crab Shack (perhaps I should have known that I was tempting fate by ordering the crab-stuffed shrimp; in any event I'm glad I didn't also buy a t-shirt from there because I now have enough memories from Joe's Crab Shack).

Despite all this, I had a fun time in Louisville. It seems like a city that's working hard to attract tourism. There were all sorts of cool museums that my convention-booth hours did not permit me to visit-- although I did get a chance to peer into the windows of the bat factory at the Louisville Slugger Museum. I think I gained about as much insight and entertainment by doing that as I would have by actually going on the tour, because they're bats.

The Strongman

How do you go to the circus for the day and come back pregnant? Mrs. Bescombe asked her daughter. It was a good question. Sheila wished she could have answered it. However, she had
taken a vow of silence and did not feel at liberty to discuss what had happened with the Strongman.

His name was Stanley, and he was as charming as a monkey dressed as a dentist. Which is to say, that he wasn’t very charming, and there was definitely something unnerving about him.

When Stanley was a small boy, his father’s favorite thing to do was torment his son cruelly and
ingeniously.

“Stanley, you’re going to be a shrimp all your life,” he’d told him. At age six, Stanley’s father had his son convinced that he was in fact twenty-four.

“You’re certainly not a boy,” he’d say. “You’re a man all right, but a tiny one. Your mother and I don’t know how it happened, but the day we found out you were never going to grow to be a proper size was a sad one for us indeed.”

Stanley would listen, round-eyed. Had his father been a good man, Stanley would have worshipped him. As it was, Stanley spent a lot of time feeling conflicted.

“We kept it from you for as long as we could, but upon your twenty-third birthday” (actually his fifth), “we decided that it was high time you knew the truth.”

As was only natural for a boy in his circumstances, Stanley developed an unhealthy obsession with size. Once he figured out that he actually was a boy, a little boy but a growing boy, he stopped trying to worship his father and began to work on growing large enough to beat the living snot out of him. He achieved this goal at the age of 14.

His mother found this note on her husband, who had been left unconscious on the living room floor one Sunday afternoon. Dear Mom-I love you but it’s time I set off. Love, Stan

And that was that.

Stanley didn’t start out as a Strongman in the circus. He drifted from job to menial job and traveled from town to town looking for excitement. He stayed in motels when he had money and slept in bus stations when he didn’t. Eventually he got a job selling movie tickets and rented out a tiny one-room apartment above the theatre. Stanley didn’t mind the size of the apartment, though. It made him feel bigger.

Lots of things made him feel bigger by then, though. His favorite thing to do was eat, but his second favorite thing to do was to lift heavy objects. A large-framed young man to begin with, he was consumed by the need to make his body as towering and muscular as possible.

The manager of the movie theatre liked Stan because while he was rather insecure in person, he absolutely loomed behind the ticket counter. Nobody ever complained about the movies or the price of tickets or popcorn during Stan’s shift. The two of them got along nicely, then, and when the manager was given two free passes to the circus (which was in town for that week only), for lack of a son, he invited Stan.

Stanley had never been invited to anything before, and was delighted. He found the circus fairly amusing, although there were lots of little kids there, and little kids always made him feel uncomfortable. They reminded him of his childhood. When the Strongman came out, however, he was mesmerized.

Tim the Terrific was his name, and he had arms like cannons and pectorals like cannonballs. Three large barrels made of iron were rolled in from the sidelines. He hefted them up onto his shoulders one by one and then juggled them. Tim the Terrific signaled the end of his act by tossing the three barrels into the air and catching one on each hand and one on the bottom of his left foot, which he thrust out behind him.

But on the night Stanley was there, Tim, distracted by a pretty young mother in the first row, miscalculated slightly and kicked his foot out when the third barrel landed on it, sending it barreling out into the audience. A collective gasp rose from the stands.

Tragedy would have ensued had Stanley not acted immediately. He flung himself across the
bleachers and caught the barrel just as it was about to flatten a small boy and his dog.

There was complete silence in the tent. The boy’s snow-cone was crushed and he was badly scared, but otherwise unharmed. The dog had fainted, but it was a little dog and easily carried.

Stanley was a hero. The circus administration thanked him profusely and offered him a job as their new Strongman.

That is where he has worked ever since.

As for Sheila, she had been in the audience during the barrel-throwing incident. As a matter
of fact, she had been sitting right next to the little boy and his dog. The little boy was her brother, Charles.

Sheila and Charles lived with their mother in a tiny, run-down house on the corner of a run-down block in the less popular and more run-down part of town. But they were happy. Her mother sold cosmetics and her father was in jail for insurance fraud.

Stanley’s sheer enormity had awed her, as had his obvious pride in it. Most men as large as he walked awkwardly, as though they were ashamed of how tall they stood. Stanley, however, carried himself with the puffed-up, exaggerated manner of a much smaller, more insecure man. Sheila found it incredibly appealing.

She had gone home that afternoon with Charles’ hand in hers and his dog fainted away in her handbag. In the ensuing weeks, she found she could not get the picture out of her mind of Stanley crouched above Charles, his great strong legs planted on either side of her as he caught that barrel. Sheila knew she had to meet him.