The Rose

Tonight we went to Beulah's "Young Women in Excellence." I've been to many of these functions in my life, but tonight was by far the best. Each of the fathers of the young women were asked to bring a flower that he felt represented his daughter, and then bring his daughter up and explain why the flower reminded him of her. It was so wonderful to hear so many loving things said about all these different girls. I felt like I was on the verge of tears all night. Husband brought Beulah up along with a pale pink rose and said that it was pretty and became even more beautiful when you look at its details.
It's a shame that so often in life I focus on the negative when there is so much to celebrate. Take Beulah for instance. She is such a lovely young lady--so smart and so curious and eager to do her best. She is full of passion and wonder and she can be so tender and caring. It makes us laugh when she mispronounces words like "lyric" and "hysterics" because her first exposure to them was in a book. She underestimates herself so much and I just wish I could rip all that insecurity away because she is a fabulous girl with a lot to contribute to the world.

The other night I woke up suddenly from a fairly intense dream. Everything was very dark and still and then I began to hear whispering. I leaned closer to Husband to see if it was just him breathing, but he was making no noise at all. I tried to go back to sleep but as I laid down, there it was again. So I got up to check the house and make sure no radio was on. I opened the kids' doors slowly, one by one, and everyone was asleep. I went downstairs and checked all the rooms. The house had never been so quiet. Or so dark. I felt completely spooked and I tiptoed through the dark to get back to bed. I closed my eyes and there was the whispering again. I thought to myself that I'm not ready to be going crazy.
And then it hit me. Of course. Husband's audiobook was playing on his mp3 player. By this time I was so annoyed, I turned on the light (barely apologizing to a startled Husband), found the player, and turned it off. As I went back to bed, I felt reassured that I hadn't been losing my mind and hearing voices. But then I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure out it was the player. Maybe I'm losing my mind after all!

Don't Do It

This was red ribbon week for at the kids' elementary school. As part of his homework, T-Bone and I had to listen to a CD of 6 or 7 songs with anti-drug/peer pressure messages on it and fill out a response sheet. I am very picky about my musical entertainment and this process was particularly tortuous for me. But we made it and by the time it was done, T-Bone had already filled out the sheet. "Hey, I thought I was supposed to fill this out," I said. He just looked at me in his unreadable way. I continued, "I see that you gave the songs a 7 out of 10." He smiled and said, "Yeah, and you gave them an 8 out of 10." I was going to change the score just to save my honor, but then I let him make the call and left it. Maybe he did like the music. I saw that he had marked that we had never discussed drug or alcohol abuse before this time. "What?" I said, "What about our lessons in FHE about the Word of Wisdom?" I did change his mark this time to indicate that we talk about it at least 2 or 3 times a year. So maybe this is something I can improve on. I know drugs are everywhere and that it's naive and foolish to think your kids won't ever be exposed to them. And I can't assume that just because my kids are good and smart, they'll always know the right thing to do and do it.

But honestly, if the school wants to hand out anti-drug music, let's go with Grandmaster Flash:

"Little Jack Horner,

Sat in a corner,

with no shoes and clothes.
This ain't funny,

But he took his money,

and he sniffed it up his nose."

This One Goes out to the One I Love

Happy Birthday, handsome.
Of course, Husband doesn't read this blog, so it's going out to deaf ears, as it were. . . .
Hey, if Husband doesn't read the blog, I'll go ahead with my story:
My sister, Fancy, and I had been traveling around Europe, riding the trains with our Europass by day and often staying at youth hostels at night (except for when we were on the sleeper train and had to sleep with stinky feet in our face and a smoker and an obnoxious Finish blonde who spoke four languages). We'd been in and through London, Paris, Lucerne, Florence, and Venice, and we were now heading for Austria and Germany. We had been in several different grades of sleeping establishments--some clean and efficient, others, well, you can imagine. In the hostels I learned that Europeans had a much looser view of modesty; Fancy and I were always covered up but some of the woman who slept in our rooms did it au natural. Anyway, Fancy wanted to go to Salzburg because that was Mozart's birthplace and the hometown of the Von Trapp family (I think) and of course she was cultured (she had had a humanities class, you know). The hostel itself impressed me as very clean and nice; it had more than one floor and I think Fancy and I might have had the room to ourselves. The bathrooms were in the hall, though. (You can't have it all, I guess, for a few dollars a night.) Anyway, it was in the evening and I went to take a shower. So I go in and there are all these showers lined against the wall, with only partitions between them and no curtains or doors to hide behind. These Europeans were so advanced and modern! Good thing the floors were segregated by sex. So I hop into the closest shower I could find and quickly get down to business. A minute into my shower, I look up and there's a man walking past me. He had his hand hiding his face and was looking away, and went down to the furthest shower. I almost blacked out because I was so scared at the possibility of me being exposed in a men's shower that I grabbed my towel and hauled out of bathroom, running down the hall and into my room. I screamed at Fancy that those were the men's showers and that she had to go get my clothes because I could never, ever, ever go back in there again. At first she hesitated, but I was hysterical and finally she left, returning with my clothes and saying the shower was full of men (I never asked her what she saw, actually). So I guess the floors weren't segregated by sex and I was too dumb to figure out the sign by the bathroom entrance meant Men in German.

I am grateful for the gentlemanly behavior of the first guy who came in. There were a lot of creeps that traveled and I think I was both lucky and blessed.

And Husband, if you ever do read this, I love you the most.

The Story of Why I Buckled on Facebook

I woke up Monday morning and did my morning routine. After finishing lunches for the kids, and before Husband called me to the table for some yummy cracked wheat (cooked with raisins so Cheeseball would eat it), I sat down at the computer and did a quick check of my e-mail. My mom had sent me a message saying that she had just attended the baptism of these two children. Their mother was my best friend for a few years in high school and I had completely lost contact with her. She had mentioned to my mom that she had just signed up on facebook. And all of a sudden I became emotional because I've lost contact with so many good people and then I realized that if I joined facebook, maybe I could reestablish communication with some of them. So that's it. Sorry that it's a lame story. Maybe the next time I'll tell y'all about my night in Salzburg (Or was it Mannheim?).

Only Seeing Red Occasionally

I dreamnt last night that I was driving through the canyons looking at all the trees changing color. In particular I kept seeing fiery red maple trees. I don't know if I'll actually get out to see the trees before all the leaves are gone.

I want to take some family pictures out in the fall colors but no one is very excited about it. I wonder if the magic of my whining about it will make it happen?. . .

I feel like I am a very blessed woman. Just having healthy and happy (most of the time) kids is the greatest gift in the world. The boys were doing more creating with legos and spare bionicle parts this weekend. So fun! Now if I could only get all the pieces off the floor.

Goose is having a lot of fun dressing up--tiger costume, leopard costume, twirly dresses. It's fun, unless the costume she wants to wear is MIA.

Beulah is continuing to learn and face new challenges. I am very happy with her effort in piano lately, and my biggest complaint is that she keeps not bringing the lunches I make. (Yes, it probably is a not-so-subtle message that PB&J is no longer acceptable).

Janey is happy and working hard. She needs to find something else to occupy her time with. I wanted to put her in theatre again but we had a hard time deciding which venue.

Husband is my hero for installing a new garbage disposal for us. He also gave a wonderful talk in church yesterday filled with interesting stories. When I try to examine my life for stories, I realize I'm pretty lacking. The ones that come to my mind are either embarrassing or inappropriate for public consumption. Maybe I'll try one out here next time. :)

Being Chilly

I love that it is finally getting cold! We haven't turned our heat on yet--I kinda want to see how long we can go without it. A few weeks ago, I heard a woman on the radio claim that she kept her house really cold--between 61 and 64 degrees--for health reasons. She said that sick germs didn't like to live in that cold environment and commented that she hadn't been sick in years. Then she said that her grown children all kept their houses quite warm and that they were sick all the time. I suspect her kids and grandkids probably got sick because they were involved with school and other germ-sharing enterprises but who knows? Our house hasn't got that cold yet! I'll spray off our filter and then probably turn the heat on when the next storm starts to brew.

I'm in the need of a good book to read.