Eastering and the Bestest Gift(s) Ever.

Saturday morning I woke up. And I was already stressing. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! I have a cleaning check at 2 pm! I have to take a biology test before 3 pm, and I've got to get as much homework done as is humanly possible! I work constantly. Aella calls me, says she'll come get me at around 5:30 pm, and I work like a madwoman. Okay, so I did take a break to talk to Ryan, but I am human and need breaks. 5:20 rolls around and I'm not done with my homework. Sad day. I dejectedly pack my bags full of homework and wait for Aella to show up. She shows up a little late, probably because of the Easter traffic.

Before going to Aella's house, we stop and get burgers and shakes (the size of your face) at JCW's. We go home, eat them, and then we doorbell ditch an Easter basket at her friend Kira's house. Then we rented Stardust.

At some point, Aella started wondered where her sons Andrew and Alistair were. Not in the house... not in the backyard. So, we set off on an escapade to find them.

First stop: the home of Tod and Lara Orchard, bestest best friends and neighbors. I have become pretty good friends with them too, especially with their eldest daughter Ivie, who taught me how to roller skate last time I came. But alas, we find my cousins not there.

Okay. Next stop: the church. Of course, since it's Utah, it's only a short walk to the church. We circle it, looking for them. No, not a soul there.

Okay. Next stop: the school playground. It's just a block further. It's getting cold, but it's only a block further. We circle the school, looking for them. No, not a soul there.

Clueless as to where to look next, we head home. As we approach Aella's little house, we hear boys' voices throwing tantrums in the backyard. Well, we found them. We walk thorugh the gate and... well, we get there just in time to witness Alistair locking and slamming the door shut.

Oh crap. Oh no oh no oh no oh no.

All of us are outside. Sweaterless, some of us with full blatters. And... the only one inside is my Uncle Thomas, recently zonked out from some powerful cough medicine stuff. And every single door and window... locked. Locked shut, barring us out forever. And Aella didn't bring her keys.

Cue the wrath of Auntie Aella. I don't know if any one my roommates have ever witnessed this, but think of how tense and easily provoked I get when I am feeling particularly OCD about my kitchen. Multiply that by a thousand, pull the trigger, and you have what I like to think of as megafury. She. Was. Mad. No. Angry. No. Furious. Deathly furious. Especially since she was one of of full-blattered people among us.

Well, soon we are all screaming and banging on the windows and doors. "UNCLE THOMAS! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! Let us in. Let uuuuuuuuussssssssssss iiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!"

Nothing. Apparently, Uncle Thomas sleeps like a rock on his own. Add in some rather potent cough medicine and you've got a deep and dreamless sleep, probably of the caliber sort of sleep Sleeping Beauty fell victim to.

We miserably (some of us cross-leggedly) made our way over to the Orchard house. Everyone's blatters were relieved after they rushed to the bathroom, and then we sat in the living room. And called and called and called Aella's house. "Come on, Thomas! Wake up! Answer the STINKIN' PHONE!"

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Tod Orchard, a humongous big, burly man, comes out with a tool kit. "All right. I'm ready to break into your house."

"Nooooooooooo! I want all my locks intact."

Okay. We're not going to break in. What are we going to do?

Enter Tod Orchard again. Add a key prop: a skinny little ladder, namely a skinny little ladder that looks like it definitely wasn't made to support humongous men like Tod. Well, Tod carries the ladder over to Aella's house. Props it against the house, and climbs up that teeny little ladder. Oh dear, what a precarious sight. Big man, little ladder. Be still my soul.

Flashlight and stick in hand, Tod starts banging on the upstairs window (the bedroom where Thomas is sleeping is upstairs). "THHHHOOOOOOOMMMMASSSS! THOMAS! THOMAS!" Yelling and yelling and yelling. Nothing. Finally... the front door opens, and out creeps a bleary-eyed Thomas.

Tod quips, "Ah! Sleeping Beauty! Next time I'll bring you flowers!"

Once inside, Aella finally started to calm down. We watched Stardust, and then we went to bed. When I woke, I went hunting for my Easter Basket. And... inside... Eeeee! The Enchanted DVD! From my daddy! Yay! I immediately called my roommate Jackie, who was basically all by herself back at our apartment. At the news that we now had Enchanted in our collection... "Eeeeeee!" from her as well. In fact, I could have sworn the news made her day. We were thrilled.

The rest of Easter wasn't too exciting, which is good. We watched Enchanted, ate Easter dinner, and went and visited my grandmother. Then Aella dropped me off back at my apartment.

We went to ward prayer as usual. But afterwards... there was a combined hall meeting: Robison and Shipp Hall. Hm. Well, that ended up basically being... asking the opposite gender things you'd always been afraid to ask. Then they'd attempt to answer. After that was over, Ryan pulled me down into the basement and had me translate stuff girls had said during the meeting ("I don't speak girl!") and report on which girls I had discovered had formal dresses during my espionage escapades. Then I went home.

Today I woke up a little late. And... Well, I must say I felt a little down. Why? I don't know. Do you ever have those days where you just feel like crud and you haven't the slightest clue why? I do. And I hate them, because being sad for no reason is a heckuva lot more frustrating than having a reason to be sad. At least with a clear cut reason to be sad, you have something to think about and figure out how to remedy. But here, when I just feel down, it's a thousand times harder to cheer myself up. Well, I must have been feeling down enough that it was apparent. After choir Ryan wanted to know if I was okay. Having no clear reply... I settled on the ambiguous shrug, because it gives the illusion of an answer without actually giving one. (Which is convenient when you really don't know.) I rushed off to biology, kind of glad that I had that excuse not to talk about it. I walk in there, sit next to Jackie, and she asks... "Are you okay?" Dang it. Strike two. "Uhh... I'm really really hungry. I haven't eaten yet." And since it was one'o'clock by then, and it was true, it seemed like a valid excuse. After biology, instead of dashing off to my usual two'o'clock spot in the JSB in front of my next classroom, I dashed off to get some food from the food court.

Armed with a barbecue chicken sandwich and a banana colada drink, I then came to commandeer my usual two'o'clock haunt, starting to cry and feeling ridiculous. Except when I got there it was occupied. Ryan was sitting there waiting for me. Oh dang it.

"Hi, Jenna. ... Are you all right?"

"Uhhh... I... I haven't eaten all day. I've been rushing around trying to get stuff done... and I haven't eaten yet..." Yes, that's right, blame it on a complaining stomach. I think mostly I was trying to convince myself that that was why I felt like crud.

"Oh. Okay. I'm sorry." He gave me a kind of concerned look as I pulled out my scriptures to finish the reading assignment for our Book of Mormon class, which he appeared to be in the middle of. And I sat, ate, and read, and just generally tried to pretend he wasn't there. But that wasn't helping and every now and then I'd have to stop reading because there was so many tears in my eyes that I couldn't see the words any more. Ugh. Alas, poor Ryan. He is probably feeling completely helpless, because I'm not telling him what is going on and I obviously didn't want to talk about it. I can imagine how awkward a guy must feel when a girl is just sitting there crying in front of him. I've learned that telling myself to stop crying never results in less tears -- somehow, it always makes me cry harder when I try to stop, because I get frustrated about the fact that I happen to be crying. Ridiculous, I know. So I didn't tell myself to stop crying. I just tried to ignore it. I was miserably trying to wipe the tears away as I read, and then I pulled out my notebook to finish writing for class, and then once I didn't need to do anything else... I laid down against my portion of the wall and tried to sleep, like every other student in that hallway. I covered my face with my bandana, but still... My sniffles were obnoxiously loud. Whatever. By the time the bell rang, I had managed to dry my eyes for the most part, and I thought I was feeling (or at least looking and sounding) relatively okay.

Ryan got up and opened the door for me (he still hadn't said a word since I chowed down into my food), and then we went to our normal seats. I sat down. Hm. Maybe by now I look fine. But then a guy named John came in and commandeered the seat on my left. He looks at me, looks away, and then double takes. "Are you okay?"

Strike three. Just when I thought I seemed sane. "... Do I not look okay?"

"No. No, you don't. You don't look okay at all."

Uggggghhhh.... noooo waaaaayyyy.... "Dang it! And I was trying so hard, too!" Hey, at least I sounded okay... in fact, I sounded playful. Ryan and John kind of chuckled at me, and I think at that point they both decided that even if I didn't look okay yet... judging by my voice, I'd be okay soon.

Hillary and I walked home after class and Ryan went to take a test. Hillary and I stopped at the sound of men singing. Oh, look! A men's a capella group was practicing outside the library! We sat and listened to them for half an hour. Then we went home. And... I guess since the depressed person's first instinct is to sleep... Well, I took my leave and crashed on my bed. And I was asleep almost instantly.

I woke up almost four hours later to screams of glee. "Eeeeeeeeeeee! Bubble wrap! Ryan gave us bubble wrap! Ryan gave us bubble wrap!" My door burst open, and Rachel stood in the doorway. "JEEEENNNNNNNNNNAA! Wake up! There's BUBBLE WRAP! Ryan gave us bubble wrap! I found it in the hallway! He must have slid it under the door!" And it was true.

You know those little manila envelopes that have bubble wrap inside? That's what it was. It seemed Ryan had gotten something in that envelope, and he had torn off the address stickers and such to leave the bubble wrap with envelope stuck on the outside. In that same extremely potent-smelling permanent marker he had used before, he had written on the envelope, "Bubble wrap for my 126 Robison friends... enjoy. Ryan Strong." Oh my goodness. Well, he was smart enough to have addressed to all of us to prevent chaos from ensuing. We were now obliged to share it with one another. He huddled in a little circle around it and started popping bubbles.

Pop. Pop. And you know what? I think bubble wrap has therapeutic qualities. It's just like... each time you pop a bubble, a little bubble of joy also pops inside you, releasing euphoria into your bloodstream.

"I wonder why Ryan gave us bubble wrap. I mean, I'm sure he loves popping the stuff too," says Hillary.

I nod. "Yeah... I mean, whenever I get bubble wrap, it's my favorite thing. Just to sit and pop it all by myself, you know?"

"Yeah. Ryan sacrificed bubble wrap fun for us. It's a sign of true friendship," Rachel says, almost poetically.

And it was true. We sat and popped the stuff until the salmon and vegetables were done. We came to a consensus that it was the best gift we had received since the poltergeist brownies. ("Oh... that was him too, wasn't it?") After dinner, I sent him a gleeful email thanking him for the bubble wrap. He replied by asking me on a date. Haha. A sandwich date. (It's just what it sounds like. A date in which we make sandwiches.)

And so now, after some bubble wrap therapy, I think I am feeling happy again. Which is good, because feeling sad... really just sucks.