Pluralizing and Mormons

I'm sure people assume that this blog is going to be about the plural marriage of mormons...WRONG!!

An interesting topic occured tonight at the Terry home (yup, we're enjoying Christmas in Washington). Linda is an English teacher at South Kitsap High School and the topic of how to pluralize certain words came up. The result was that I learned there are 13 rules to pluralize words. One of the most commonly missed plural words are the plurals of "sister-in-law", court martial, etc. etc. Most would pluralize it by saying "sister in laws", but the correct way would be to say it "sisters in law". Hmmmmm.....interesting? Probably not very to some of you. (OK Linda, correct that sentance for me).

The point is, four us Mormens who talk about Book of Mormons being past out wood the correct weigh to say that be "Books of Mormon" or indeed "Book of Mormons". Is it a hole unit and theirfour pluralized at the end or should books be pluralized?

What do you think?

All I know, is the next time I'm driving through a neighborhood I plan on pointing out how nice the "culs de sac" are.

Amazing Gate

*Picture Pending*

I saw the most amazing thing the other day at KMart. It's a swinging baby gate that does not need any hardware (meaning you don't have to screw it into the wall). Which is great because no matter how hard I've tried I've never been able to get a nail into cinderblocks. It's a tension gate, similar to most baby gates, with a "door".

Ashlyn loves our kitchen drawers and all the knives and lysol that are in them. We've tried the normal baby gates, but we don't necessarily enjoy jumping over them all day or putting them back in place once we've moved them to avoid jumping over them.

So now it's up and has been for about a week. As I look over at it, the door is not latched shut, in fact it's swinging open and has been in that position all day. However, it still does the trick. Instead of keeping Ashlyn out of the kitchen because she's blocked from the kitchen, it keeps her out because she's busy swinging on the door!

Price of product: $35 (with special holiday coupon $15)

Ease of putting it together: 2 1/2stars (Rust did it, he's so much better at knobs than I am)

Overall satisfcation: 4 1/2 stars (there's the slight problem of it peeling off our paint)

What's so great about living in Hawaii?

We pay more in rent each month than we even make. Our brand new silverware started rusting after a week. Cockroaches are frequently seen amidst our apartment. And the ants have something wrong with them mentally.

*Side note on the ants. Occasionally I find mass hords of them hanging out in random places. I can understand it if there was a piece of food that fell into the bottom of my dresser, or a piece that somehow got stuck to the ceiling in our bedroom (which happened to be the only room in our rental), but with none of that - why would there be hundreds and HUNDREDS of ants hanging out in them. Building a home, maybe? Probably. Oh, and they swim here.

Let's see, you can't decorate a palm tree very well with Christmas lights, although people do every year. I have to remember that when someone says, "Auntie" I have to turn and look to make sure they're not talking to me, even though I have no relatives over here. It doesn't take long to figure out what "talk story" means and to avoid it whenever possible. When someone says, "Ho, my Muddah. I come home late, she ony had geev me da Stink Eye" I'm supposed to know what that means and the grammar behind that. "Customer service" is a word that has no Hawaiian translation.

But isn't this a nice tropical relaxing paradise?

Well, I don't sleep well at night because I hear everyone coming home until 2AM, then I hear them as they start to leave for work at 4AM. Shut my windows? Windows here don't actually shut. They're plastic slats, and if you shut them all the way they rattle when the wind blows. Just to get anywhere (even the local grocery store) I have to get on a 6 lane freeway. Speaking of grocery stores, be prepared to spend big bucks on food, especially perishable items that spent so long on the boats coming over here that they only last a few days. So if you spend that $4-$8 on that gallon of milk - chug that baby!