Apparently I'm long-winded today. Does long-winded need a hyphen?

So. There we were in the middle of the pie contest drama at Thanksgiving: people making last minute spice adjustments and lobbying for oven time, Rebecca sliding her lattice top from an overly floured counter, Matt cutting apples for our secret recipe caramel apple cobbler pie, and me by the stove calculating how I could put more fat, sugar and calories into the crumb topping because everyone knows that in times like these fat, sugar and calories bring home the gold.

Coincidentally, I didn't lobby enough for my caramel apple cobbler pie. It didn't even get baked and Matt and I were forced to enter the contest with a single chocolate pecan which got a few votes in the most deceiving category (i.e. boy this looks bad but tastes pretty good category) but not one vote in the best overall category (i.e. best tasting). It was another disappointing loss for the Matt and Shelley McConkie clan (although chocolate pecan is worlds above our last year's entry of an ice-cream pie with a fruit roll-up cornucopia on top. Although it was popular with the three and under set).

All this background is unnecessary to the point of this blog.

Throughout this whole pie contest bit, Rebecca was directing Levi to take various non-scrapbookable shots like "pie half latticed" and "tasting platter with deflated whip cream" because the whole time she was thinking how she was going to capture it on her blog. (She did blog about it and she is by far one of the wittiest people I've ever known and had the privilege to be related to. Check out her blog at www.smylie.wordpress.com) Anyway, all this detail is still unnecessary to the point of this blog.

So, Matt and I and the two kiddies took a road trip to DC for Thanksgiving to enjoy the annual family pie contest among other things and on the way we stopped by at a general store outside of Fredricksburg, VA. Now you may or may not know this but that general store not only serves salisbury steak and canned green beans but it is also right down the street from the battlefield where Lee surrendered. I know this because a twenty something cashier boy wearing a confederate flag baseball hat told me while bobbing his head emphatically. He also told me in his thick Southern drawl that I, a born and raised Utahan, had an accent. And he offered to help me take out my groceries which consisted of a sack of five apples.

When I met Matt outside the store, he was just finishing up his lunch of bratwurst and cold green beans and I took a bite out of a mushy apple and we both agreed that the general store had crummy food. But I loved it. I loved the the trucks pulling in and out of the parking lot and the man in overalls and a gray beard who scratched his head and said "I don't reckon there is anything else here" when I asked him if the battlefield was the best thing to go see if we only had an hour in town. But most of all I loved the boy in the confederate baseball hat staring at me like I was from the big city.

So, now the point of this blog and somewhat of a confession: I collect people. It is a leftover habit from when I used to write a lot (and one that is evident in people that do write a lot like Rebecca). Like a photographer sees the hours in terms of lighting, writers see experiences in terms of anecdotal tidbits made of interesting people.

I've been collecting characters for years now. There was the fifty something aspiring screenwriter who moved to Hollywood in his twenties and still can't get a break who confided in me that he decorates his room in a mermaid theme (apparently, it was much more fun to do that before Little Mermaid came out because mermaids were few and far between then but now "they are just everywhere"). Or the woman who sat in front of me at a YW meeting the other night with never-had-a-haircut length hair who used her whole body to move her tresses from off her shoulders. She was the 70s in that moment. I have old roommates on file and tidbits of awkward first date conversations. I have people from airport waiting rooms and several women that frequent the Plaza Midwood library story time circuit (like the kick back, somewhat hippyish woman who named her daughter Taloola).

I've been meaning to write a short story and place all of these people on a tour bus and see what happens. Maybe it will be sort of rambling like this entry.

Anyway, all this detail is unnecessary to the point of this blog.