Steinbeck and I have always been friends. We had a brief frosty period brought on by Grapes of Wrath, but overall, we are chums. This friendship has been reinforced this day.I just finished the biggest longest thing on my reading list. East of Eden by John Steinbeck ( who is a prime participator in my author schizophrenia, by the way) has officially been crossed off the list, four long years after its placement there. And this is a big ginormous deal, everybody.

When I came to North Carolina I made a specific bucket list for North Carolina. This is an ever-evolving animal, this list, because I keep readjusting my ideas about what I want to actually do with my life in general and my time here specifically, but the single thing that has not been questioned and reconsidered at three in the morning is that I want to finish my reading list while I am here. And this, my friends, was the first big effort to check stuff off that list.

As a result of this triumph against my own procrastination and the time sucker that is netflix, I feel alive. I feel like I just played sudoku with a pen. I feel like I just had the most productive day of my life. I feel really really good. My brain is awake and kicking and spitting out essay ideas from this fabulous and beautiful piece of literature. And I have to write about it right now or I will forget everything and going back over it will bring only halfhearted impressions that will never be able to adequately replace the fresh emotion of book discovery. So I thought I would type really fast instead of scribbling in my Jimmy book and invite you all to the party of lit analysis. Interested? If you aren't, stop reading and don't tell me. Here we go...

This book was first described and summarized as a retelling of the book of Genesis, replayed out by the generations of the Trask and Hamilton families in the Salinas Valley of California (where else, Steinbeck?) right before the first world war. I suppose that is the only way you could describe it in a book cover  without giving the whole thing away. But it really is a whole lot more than that.

- In a book where the generations "helplessly replay the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel" I find a lot of beautiful evidence that this book is, in fact, a sort of paradox where the characters do indeed play out the same fall and tragedy all over again but are at the same time a uniquely powerful testimony of the power of agency.

- I know a few feminist writers who would have a field day with all the unexpectable female characters here. The eve character? She's a murdering psychopath, y'all. All the other female characters barely even exist. There is only one female character who is a decent human being and is actually a person. She grows out of her natural manipulative nature into a wise and controlled woman of unbelievably deep perception. I like here so much I might name a child after her. "...For though I called another, Abra came." The rest of them though. Wowza. I want to write essays about it, and when I die I want to meet Steinbeck and ask him specifically to explain to me what was going on in his brain when he chose to present this view of women. Either that or go talk to McCuskey about it. Probably both.

- This is a fascinating view of the story of Cain and Abel. I have always thought of them as such black and white characters, as I suppose is common. Cain was  plain wicked, a murderer. Abel was straight up righteous, right? What if that isn't true? What if Cain was the realist and Abel was severely hindered in his abilities to  deal with the truth when it shatters the pretty pictures he has invented about all the world around him? What if Cain was wrong, but he didn't mean to kill his brother? What if he actually loved him? This is a picture of Cain and Abel which fascinates and frightens me, because I identify so much more with the Cain character even in all his badness and vindictive instincts and I don't really like the Abel character in spite of his lofty gonna-be-a-minister ideals. This alerts me to the danger that is in my own character of judging based on blacks and whites. It is easy to condemn Cain and vindicate Abel. But tell another story. Can I so easily do the same with Cal and Aron? I feel that I must not.

- Translations are vital and dangerous. One Hebrew verb, translated three different ways, can change a whole life.Thou shalt. Do Thou. Timshel. Thou mayest.

One of the best passages in the book which will demonstrate how beautiful this thing is, whilst not giving away too much of the plot: (Because the optimist in me hopes and believes that someone will decide to read this someday)

"Don't you see?" he cried. "The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel- 'Thou mayest'- that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'- it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.' Don't you see?"
      "Yes I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?"
"Ah!" said Lee. "I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and lives of innumerable people is important.....These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. The know that these sixteen verses  are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and succesful lives. But this- this is a ladder to climb to the stars."
   Adam said, "I don't know how you could cook and raise the boys and take care of me and still do all this."
   "Neither do I," said Lee. "But I take my two pipes in the afternoon, no more and no less, like the elders. And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing- maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed- because 'Thou mayest.'"

See? Do you see? The glory of the choice, as Lee says, is what makes a man a man, gives him stature with the gods. I read this part while I was sitting in the rain on my favorite rock in the middle of the stream at Ayr Mount. It was stormy and damp and there was no one around. I sat in solitude, nursing a bad mood, and suddenly stumbled upon one of those concepts that seems old, that you have always known, when really, you know that you have suddenly just felt the sacredness in it in a very new way. I left my rock in the middle of the river and got ready to go home. And while my body climbed up the bank to the path, my soul was coming down from some high mountain, clinging still to the unexpected shrine I had found there.

That, my friends, is why I read. It is also why I want to write. Words give me gifts. Or rather, they help me accept them. Those moments of holiness which are often inspired by books that change my life, sometimes come through my own self. And someday I will learn more fully how to transcribe such a thing and send it out to do what good it can. In the meantime, my Jimmy book is full of such things in raw form, and I am practicing, and learning to practice harder, because "Thou mayest".

Disillusionment?

Here in this adventure of self discovery which I embarked upon when I moved to the South, I am learning whole heaps. (aaaaaaaaaaaannd, sometimes I am absorbed in my mind processing the sheer amount of new stuff going on there that I get distractified and forget to blog about it. I suck. Sorry, siblings. Sorry parents. Sorry the two other people in the world who read this....)

One especially unexpected thing I have learned from this Carolina venture is that trips to Walmart often spark surprisingly strong emotional responses from me. I find that a whole lot of memories are wrapped up in this place. That's right. The superstore that is slowly taking over the world with minimum wage jobs and shameful amounts of planned obsolesence is now strewn about with sentimental value. Who have I become? 

You know what really bothers me about this? I came here expecting everything in my life to be completely different, and I planned and hoped that the one exception to this total new slate would be the Church. It's the same gospel everywhere, right? Wherever you are, there is a ward or a branch. You move. You find your ward. You belong there. This is a unique and wonderful thing about the organization of the gospel! It will be an underlying coloration transferred from my old life to an otherwise new canvas! This is the only possible thing that could posess such magical qualities of over-arching life sameness, I told myself!

I was wrong. And I feel slightly.... what's the word?  Yucked. There is exactly one other thing here in this totally new place which is exactly the same but with a new building. And that one thing is Walmart.

It was hard to feel hope for myself and humanity when I realized this. I feel torn when I go there, not only the regular feelings of tearing that come from the conflict between the fact that they are destroying the world and the fact that shampoo is super cheaper. This was the conflict that comes from my deep rooted distasteful feelings about Walmart as an institution and my feelings of sudden comfort when I find another place I can walk into and find anything, often encountering sudden memories on the way.

Did you all know that I spent a lot of time at Walmart when I lived in Logan? These days, I shop with my sister in the middle of the night, frequently. And it's this thing now. We shop, I tell stories about walking around my with my roommates playing the "Do you really need that?" game, and the time Katie and I both held one of Shane's hands around Walmart cause we had to outdo ourselves at the awkward game, or the time(s) I laid in my car in the parking lot with my music turned up way too loud as a coping mechanism for stress. I cannot suppress the nostalgia which washes over me when I walk down the juice aisle and think of Stephanie and I taking turns at choosing flavors, and I love love love the amount of endorphins that are realeased to this day when I walk past the berry colossal crunch and banana split ice cream that kept all of us in Apartment 27 alive and well. The peanut butter ice cream makes me think of Stephanie and Lance and the time we ate a lot of that stuff sitting on the floor of our living room passing the carton around with a single spoon. I love that they still have displays of ninety nine cent french bread and how it was a commandment of the gospel according to amy that you can't not buy ninety nine cent french bread. There are even reminders of stress so awful I thought I would crack and fail at school and work and life, none of which happened. And the reminder is actually uplifting. Like when I walk past the tea and think of that time I was really sick in week twelve of the semester with the nastiest part of the work week looming ahead, but instead of sleeping I was at walmart in the middle of the night on the phone with my mom asking which teas are allowed cause I wasn't coherent enough to remember. Seeing as how I survived, this has become a good memory.

Walking around Walmart is now a concentrated memory injector. So much so that last week when Daxx was here visiting and we went to Walmart to buy Mountain Dew we spent an hour and a half strolling around telling stories, and he commented on how Walmart is an oddly good place to learn about someone. 

I don't know if this is good or bad. All I know is I feel like holding up some permanent awkward hands when I realize that I just made a comparison between the Church and Walmart on the internet in any small way. ("I feel like I just found out my favorite love song was written about a sandwich!")

This piece of writing will never go on an application, that much is certain.

My diet coke intake has been erratic of late. I think this confuses my body chemistry, cause my brain is all wonky.  But I do have a lot of things running around in there, so this is what you get, world.

Preoccupation Numero Uno:
Steinbeck. John Steinbeck. As in, I have been reveling in the pages of American Literature, specifically East of Eden. But I am not taking five lit classes this semester and this is the only big thing I am reading, so.... new brain phenomenon. My author schizophrenia has lessened and somehow transformed into a bad case of Professor Schizophrenia. Like, I wanna go write a paper about the many diverse female characters presented in the Trask family as foils of each other and most notably, of Eve. And then I want to go speak rapidly about it with Crawford and Dr. Smitten and really really Dr. McCuskey. Because they are all shouting at me in my brain. I can see Crawford spilling his coffee and pacing the floor yelling about the comparison of these women to Faulkner's  slightly twisted presentation of female gender roles. I can hear Dr. Smitten asking me to dig deeper, to analyze why exactly the point of view keeps randomly switching from limited omniscient to third person and how that helps us better understand Cathy Ames as a freaking psychopath. Most of all, I can hear McCuskey ranting about the meaning of Adam's feelings and how we should compare this to that one creepy poem where the guy murders his lover because the reversal of gender roles is fascinating. He would then invite us to bring our Bibles to class next time so we can pick apart genesis line by line and then  wonder, "Is that allowed? No one tell Dr. Jensen!"

I miss my crazy professors. (Also. Throwback to last week. Notice how they are all men. Did I ever bond with my female professors? Heck no. I barely survived Dr. Jensen, and Parkinson makes me want to jam a spoon in my eye. Someone tell me why this is!)


Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, the pretty sky!*
Aka, the leaves are starting to turn colors. Which is a big deal here in the Carolinas, folks! Seeing as how everywhere you drive, you are walled in by forty foot trees, it is kind of awesome. It makes me feel like praying and singing all at once.


More Brain emissions:

Seventeen days til Daxx comes! I'm counting, I'm counting.....

 We are going to the fair. It's gonna be the bomb.  I love that boy, and I love frequent flyer miles and fall breaks, and I love airport reunions, and I love that we won't have to have a piece of electronics between us for four whole days. Heaven. Basically.

And speaking of airport reunions, even though I won't be there for this one...

Less than three months until Elder Nathan Hansen comes home! Oh, Snap!Remember two years ago when we talked on the phone for the last time and I cried my way home from campus, and he wrote me a letter three days later in Spanish like a champion and I thought I would not last for two years because "We are nothing without each other!"?* I am super excited for him to come home. I am excited to see who we turned out to be without each other.

Also. It is three thirty three. Make a wish, world.

I feel less hectic in my brain. The diet coke must be kicking in.

Love you. Kay bye. 


* Name that song for 376542 points and a prize. For reals.

In which I have a Revelation

There are some basic facts about me which will never change. My inability to expose my neck, a near-constant desire for diet coke, how I get excited to eat pizza I didn't make myself, you know. One of the strongest of these inexplicably odd personality traits is my overall preference for the company of males over females. Don't get me wrong, I have four sisters who I love and many dear female friends and it isn't that individual relationships with women are difficult. But throw me in a room full of women and I won't know what to do with all the estrogen floating around. Throw me in a room with boys and that I can handle. You all remember that time I was the only girl in the boys dressing room and Caleb Jones told me I was "one of the guys"? For better or worse, he was kinda right. The vast majority of all my best friends have been boys. Whether this tendency was the result or the catalyst, my time spent in these friendships have resulted in lots of bug smashing, furniture building, set lifting, and power tool using, among other activities which are generally acknowledged to be testosterone driven.*I was even given a "man card" over the summer. Which I kept consistently by eating a really huge hamburger, roofing a house, and "rubbing some dirt in it," among other things. I've even been known to chronically overtake the male role in potential dating relationships when the boy decides to be whiny and needy and use manipulative communication styles.  (Another epiphany in the middle of the night, this time with my siblings during a laughing fit. We're cool. Anyways....)

But when I came to North Carolina, something weird happened. Maybe it is living in a house that is overwhelmingly female, or maybe it's that I somehow project this innocent little white girl image at work and it is sticking, or a thousand other things. Maybe I'm just not as cool as I thought. But I have lately been reacting in uncharacteristically female ways.

For example:
 Yesterday, Libby was brushing her teeth and discovered a roach in the bathroom. (Good old south!) I was immediately called upon to "smush it!", which thing I fully intended to do. That was the ugliest bug I've ever seen, and I fished up the first shoe I could find and went after the thing. Once there, however, I realized that I wasn't sure which kind of roach this was and Erin would inevitably want to know. Accordingly, I cornered the thing and told Libby to go get Dad, who was closer than Mom. That's right. I was confronted with a bug, and I sent for a boy. ( Sound of a thousand heart breaking, right Brogan?) I did this with no intention of pawning off my bug smushing duties, and yet, we see here a fine example of giving an inch and taking a mile. Ben came, saw, and declared it a wood roach. He then seized my shoe and went after it, stealing my job like the chivalrous man he is. And that's not even the worst part! The big ugly sucker came running  away from the shoe-wielding man and straight at my bare feet, and I instinctively jumped on a nearby footstool and let my brother do the dirty work. The shame I feel whilst typing this is of great magnitude, I assure you.

It gets better, or worse, or whatever. More extreme. Ongoing.
Today, I was mowing the lawn. ( Redeeming factor? euhhh...) I have yet to get used to the fact that spiders wind thick webs, strung with a surprising strength between adjoining trees and fences. This happens in my backyard. I also tend to mow straight between them, an action which consistently brings huge spiderwebs into direct contact with my body. So there I was, mowing along minding my own dang business when I suddenly thwapped a spider web with my EYE. BALL.

Thus commenced a dance of desperation, an odd mixture of repeatedly slapping myself in the face  and trying really hard to keep a hold of the lawnmower. I eventually calmed myself, at which point I glanced ashamedly at the living room window I happened to be standing beside, hoping really hard that no one saw that.

And then it happened again. Only this time, the spider web was wispily and yet somehow fixed firmly around MY. NECK. That's right. The thing in life I am most unreasonable about. Somebody's face in direct contact with my neck is intolerable, but I didn't know until today that foreign substances, especially the sticky and determined substances kind such as spiderwebs, are even more so. The dance of desperation commenced once more. You know in the Hunger Games when the one girl dies whilst flapping desperately around trying to ward off the tracker jackers? That image. I think, I think I looked like that.

Guys. I'm being a girl.


Something must be done. 




Solutions? Causes? Too much relief society, not enough apartments full of boys across the way to buffer all the estrogen? Should I start a subscription to Car and Driver? I just don't know.




*Once, we were redoing my Grandpa's bathroom, and dad handed me a sledgehammer and told me to knock out a wall. That hour of my life definitely makes the top five list. So maybe there's hope?

Smiling Indulgently

My Father and I recently drove across the country. Adventures ensued. In this, the epic roadtripping extravaganza, I have been getting to know myself and my dad on a whole new level.
For example: Who the heck knew I would have such an extreme and irrepressible desire to put my feet in all large famous bodies of water? Not me. But there we were, in Nebraska, driving past and over and beside the Missouri River a whole bunch of times and I suddenly knew that I would never be satisfied with life again if I drove past that river and left the state without putting my feet in it!

And so my long suffering father walked with me over a seriously charming suspension bridge that started in Nebraska and ended in Iowa. He took pictures while I stood over the state line and shouted with glee, and he hiked down a dirty and dusty unfinished, concrete half-poured type of  parking lot area down to the banks of the Missouri. He smiled indulgently while I burned my feet and danced in the smelly wonderful waters of the river. He even held my shoes while I washed my sanded, dirtied feet in a fountain over on the Nebraska side.

Before we continue, a word about said fountain. This is the kind of fountain that is actually a bunch of jets shooting up from the ground in only semi-predictable ways. This floor of shooting water  (also known as pure joy, hello!) was occupied by a whole heap of little people, surrounded by a whole heap of big people yelling things like "Jimmy! Don't hold your sister in that water!" Or, " It's time to go home and have a nap now!" Guess which sphere I chose. Absolutely I played with the little people. Only I was really a big person, and the other parents surely thought us an odd duo. Dad was my big person, standing on the outside of the circle, but instead of telling me to come in for a nap or to stop drowning my sister, he informed me that I am the sort of person who will inevitably find trouble, always. This observation might have had something to do with the fact that I was standing over one of those spraying holes trying to aim the spray at a small child with my foot but only really succeeding in getting wet while dad dodged my circle of potential wetting.  It is perhaps one of my more cherished memories involving my father. Ahem. Tangent over.
 
The adventure continued on a freeway somewhere in Iowa when I decided once again that I would never be satisfied with life if I drove past the Mississippi river without putting my feet in it. So when I yelled, "Dad! Do I take the Davenport exit?" he said dryly "I don't know." But then dug out a map and confirmed that I should take the Davenport exit, like a champion. And then he smiled indulgently once more while I climbed up and over the levee to put my feet in the river, saying as I sort of bouldered my way down in flip flops, "Just don't kill yourself, okay?"

And I said, "Please! I'll be fine. Mmm. Except the rocks move."
And then I put my feet in the river and slipped on a scummy rock, like a champion, and thought to myself, "That really hurt. But shut up about it cause dad just told you not to kill yourself."
And then we were driving across Illinois some more and I realized that my foot was sticking to my flip flop with some sort of wetness that felt a lot like blood. And there was this long stretch where we were holding still cause a Semi had a couple tires explode, and I lifted my foot up and saw the gash. Yep. It was blood.

"Oh Good! So you know how you told me not to get hurt? well..."
"Outstanding." said Dad.

(The important thing to remember is that Dad never ever uses this word with real intent. There is a scale for dad's verbs when he uses this word. It starts at "tease" and ends at "wither" or "destroy". But this was the mildest use of "Outstanding" I've ever heard from his mouth. What a pleasantly small and concern-filled reprimand!)

The next body of water I had to put my feet in was Lake Michigan, of course. Of all the things to do in Chicago, we skipped the bean and the L train, instead paying twelve dollars to park by the pier and go play in the water with a sliced open foot, while dad stood on the beach in his dress shoes and smiled from behind the camera some more, and found yet another fountain to wash all the sand off, which was a blessed thing, cause then sand was all in the gash and that felt less than stellar.

(When I told my sister Erin about the plan to continue wading in various iconic bodies of water regardless of an open wound, her immediate response was, of course, "Hhhhaaaaa! Parasites!" Raise your hand if you are surprised. It doesn't even matter that there's an internet between us, I still know with a perfect knowledge that nobody even twitched.)

By this time it was pretty settled that I was gonna put my feet in all the big waters. So we went to Cleveland and got lost for a while finding Lake Eerie. This is when we were sure that we have a gift for ending up in the bad spots of town. Like, dad made me lock my door and we weren't even parked. So that was fun, but then we got un-lost and I climbed down the boulders again.
And this was the point where dad said, "If you go down there, you're gonna get wet."
"Of course I am. I'm gonna stand in it."
" No, I mean wet. Wet, wet."
And I said, "Psh! No I'm not!"

So I got down and was sitting there basking in the absolute perfection of that sunset over that ginormous lake, and I got distractified. Who could blame me, right? Apparently, the huge wave that splashed me all over. Dad told me so. But he was nice about it and got in a car with me, which sounds easy enough but was actually a significant sign of love and patience.  Have y'all smelled Eerie water? I didn't exactly smell like a botanical garden is all I'm saying. Dad simply smiled indulgently and drove on.

And then we went to Niagara Falls. And I didn't so much put my feet in that one. But I did get the best picture of Dad in my whole life. And I saw Canada and took pictures of it for Daxx. And Dad, seemingly disturbed by the unusually high level of coupleness going on there, had this gem of an outburst:
"Is this supposed to be romantic? Niagara Falls is some honeymoon destination, right?"
"Yeah! This is where-"
"Mark and Amy came on their honeymoon here! I just don't get it. Why is it romantic? Why? Why?"
Priceless, right?

Continuing on, I put my feet in Lake Ontario where Dad also smiled indulgently and let me play in the sand and take pictures. That was pretty heavenly. We walked around the docks and I made a sand ball while I was squshing it in my fingers (cause I am very texture oriented. I wonder where I got that, Erin.) which I then did not throw at my father in spite of ridiculous temptation. Mostly cause I made dad pinkie swear me before we left that we would still be friends by the time we ended this trip, and it would have been bad form to sabotage such an arrangement when I made it in the first place. That being said, I mourn the loss of that sand ball joy which was never experienced.

Thus ended the escapades in major bodies of water. I can rest easy knowing that I have bacteria spanning seven states safely tucked inside the now- healed Mississippi gash on the bottom of my foot. The tales of adventuring are not completed, and I realize now that I may have to write a whole lot of individual posts for a long time coming if I want to tell the whole story. But this part of the story is my favorite. The part where Dad smiled indulgently, where I learned that my dad thinks I am distinctly unique, the kind of person that was inevitably get splashed. I learned that he is okay with that, and may even offer to hold my shoes. He will tell me not to get hurt, but he'll let me climb down the levee. And if I get hurt anyway, he'll find bandaids and wait for me to put real shoes on before trekking down to Niagara falls so I don't have to keep limping around New York looking for a bathroom. He'll absolutely let me figure stuff out and take perfect care of me at the same time. He will ask me if I want to stay, and hug me goodbye before he leaves. He may even install a GPS in my car so he can still take care of me via technology while I am figuring some stuff out some more.

Dad is a good sport. I love the indulgent smile even more now than I ever did. I think of it every time I see that empty picture frame, and smile myself knowing that it will soon be filled with a picture of my dad, smiling indulgently in the pouring rain next to a Schenectady sign.

George Banks and the Non-Hallucination

Libby and Emma were playing in my closet today. While Emma was staring through the crack in the door waving to me while we both yelled "Hi! Hi!" Libby was having "a shoe fashion show!" She really likes my high heels, several pairs of which are what Justin refers to as my "streetwalker shoes." I always laughed at this, almost taking it as a compliment, because he says that about any really fabulous specimen of shoe.

But today, as Libby modeled my metallic silver heels, the black pointy stilettos which my family refers to as "Witchy shoes", and the black boots which reached mid thigh on her, I wondered if my immediate facial expression was similar to the one my parents gave me the first time I came home in those awesome pointy heels.

Of course I was seventeen instead of Libby aged. But I gained some empathy for my parents preference of conservative shoe choices.  Cause Libby, Libby looked (how do you say?) ummmmmm WOWZA! in those shoes. it was a shock to my system. She really like my streetwalker shoes. A lot.

I had this vision of George Banks sitting wide eyed at the dinner table, only it was my own face.
Next she'll be saying, "I met a man and he's wonderful and he's brilliant and we're getting married!"Except that our Liberator isn't twenty two. She's six.  And that was for real.

Perhaps in my current residence, I should advocate more conservative shoe choices. If Libby is this way with my shoes, there's no telling what will happen to Little Lemonade.

It's been One Week!

( since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side and said I'm angry! Five days since you tackled me, said get that together, come back and see me. Three days in the living room, I realized it's all my fault but couldn't tell you, and yesterday you just smiled at me, but it'll still be two days til we say we're sorry!)

What? You mean you don't want the lyrics of the best Barenaked Ladies song ever? Weird.

This first week of North Carolina has been quite interesting. And I have a lot of semi-related thoughts that just aren't gonna be such a cohesive thread at 1:25 a.m. So get ready for the whirlwindish, late night, slightly inarticulate version of me. Speaking of which, here is story number one!

Ahem. Story Number One.

I need a desk. And I have been faithfully looking at thrift stores all week, a search which has yielded nothing of any desk value, although I did find an extremely fabulous pair of Shiny Silver Heels at the goodwill, the kind Justin would call streetwalker shoes.I bought them for three fifty and felt extremely pleased with life. Now if only I could find my dang dress which would go perfectly with them. You know, the dress, the one single item I couldn't find and left behind in Utah. See? Tangent. The point of that was that I was out desk hunting with Erin this morning at garage sales and thrift stores, and when I tried to tell her something about this one desk, I found my brain suddenly blank and uncooperative. At this point, my tired, cranky, headachish self said, "Erin! I am so inarticulate!"
She told me that inarticulate people wouldn't probably call themselves inarticulate. Whatever. I still don't know what word I was searching for.

Story Number Two

I got a job today! Tashma! I didn't quite make it out of the food service industry as was my goal, but I did get hired within the first week of moving, which was my goal. And they are gonna let me work full time and train me as a supervisor right from the off, so I'll take it and be giddy. So I am starting work at McAllister's Deli on Monday. Snap!

Seriously, world. Can't tell you the amount of panic versus the amount of relief swirling around in the pool of my emotions. It was getting ready to be Hurricane season. Now it is pleasant and warm, sort of like Lake Michigan.


Story Number Three!

Libby was watching me fill out an application this morning and said, "You're a Robinson?" Yep, I said. "No you're not! You live here now, you're a Newton!"

Whilst I shall not so casually give up my Robinson status, I do like my Fig Newtons an awful lot, and I'll be one of them gladly. I miss my Utah people a huge amount. But there are worse things than to have Emma yell "Hi!" and run to you with outstretched arms in the morning, or catching  "Flierfies" with Liberator, or playing email tag with Ben, or going to Walmart in the middle of the night with Erin. Kay, family. This is a good story. Can't you just picture this happening to Erin and I in the middle of the night?

So we are grocery shopping, right? And it is late. But we both have a craving for, shall we say, recreational calories. So we tromp around for a while discussing all manner of foods and finally settle on Blueberry toaster streudel. And after a few mishaps with a spilled carton of kiwis and actual crawling around on the floor of a Walmart, we got outta that place and drove home. So there we were, in the driveway unloading groceries from the trunk in the darkness, when my foot is smacked by a flying glass jar of pickles! And it surprised me, and it hurt a lot, and I was just processing this when there is another crash! And down on the driveway shatters our jar of salsa verde! The one we stared at last time we went, the one we got this time and talked about and got excited for! SMASHED! All over the driveway, and on us.

Exciting.

So there we were, cleaning up a mixture of salsa verde and glass with paper towel and a flashlight when Erin slices her finger open. And then it was a Christmas colored mess. And we decided it was lucky that my foot broke the pickle's fall, even if it was a painful surprise. I am pretty sure the smell of salsa verde and dill pickles would not be appetizing.  We finally got it all cleaned up and went inside to eat our toaster streudel in the wee hours. And that is how it's done!*

Also. I never finished the whole blogging about the epic roadtrip of my life endeavor. Sooooo!
Coming soon to a blog near you:

Roadtripping with Daddy, including but not limited to,

• Panera Bread excursions, aka the best carbohydrates I ever put in my mouth
• That one time I knocked the car into neutral with my knee and we thought Jed's transmission fell out on the freeway
• Church sites galore. It was awesome.
• How I randomly run into Brighton Staffers spanning the country.
• Dad and his Stamina/ Amy tanks and falls asleep and
• Quotebookage
• How dad is the nicest man on the planet when you are sick 
• Radio Koolaid and Muppet Manners

Mazeltov. Also, look at the time stamp and don't judge.
(And here is my addendum. That time stamp runs three hours slow. Heads up. 12:43? Not so much an acceptable time for such rambling. 3:43? That's more like it!)

*As long as you don't want song lyrics, do you want Hot Rod quotes? (Ancestors protect me!)

Sometimes

you dive off the deep end and move across the country without a job, and the job search is making you stressed, and then your two year old niece come and puts her little arms around your neck and presses her slightly sticky nose to your cheek until you stop typing and kiss her.

And you stop panicking for a second. Bliss.

Boom! Winning!

 It's an Epoch in my Life. Schenectady has been accomplished. Proof!

I felt like death warmed over in this picture. I am faking healthy, but I was really happy.

"What's so funny over there?" "You are." "What's funny about me?" "Your face."

I tried to lay on the ground for this one but Daddy said no. Go figure.

"Dad, we went to Schenectady cause we are big kids and we can!"
"Really? Is that why we went?"
" Yep. That's why."

While we're at it, let's share some other highlights from the Quote Book of the Roadtrip of Epicness.
These gems all came out of Dad's mouth.  ("I am not even joking! I'm really not kidding!" Name that redheaded nephew.)

" You know you're in trouble when you search for salad bars and all you come up with is Dairy Queen."
"You're a brat. Most of the time you're a cute brat, but you're always a brat."
and the crown jewel:
"Sewer rats do not drive Porsches!"

It's been a good week. 

Better or Worse

Hey everybody, I am moving across the country tomorrow. Wait a tic! It is two in the morning and I am moving across the country today! (Hullo! Breathe deep!)

I am a creature of mixed emotions.

Erin asked me the other day, "So are you ripping your heart out a little bit every night?"
Absolutely that is a dead on accurate description. Ripping, for sure.I said the first goodbye today when the Banks family left for a camping trip. I think that one I did okay with. Justin and I are veterans at this separation thing. But then Matthew cried and it made the hole in my heart tear a little deeper, and I wonder how I will handle it when I have to leave for real. It will physically hurt to leave behind all these people I love and adore and need. I know this, because it already does. There's this weird feeling in my chest that won't go away, and it is uncomfortable, and unceasing.

At the same time, the feeling is precious. It means I have something to leave behind. It means I have something to come back to. And I think it means I am willing to go off and find something just as good because my Father told me to, and that makes the pain in my chest seem like a promise instead of just an ache. It will get worse, I think, and stronger, both the difficulty and the hope. I have this feeling that if I can just make myself get in the car and drive away, there will be things waiting for me at the end of this three thousand miles, and it is exactly where I'll need to be.

It's kind of a miracle, really. Someday where I am going is the place it will hurt to leave, and I'll know just the same that I need to go find something new, for better or worse, and maybe just both. Because happiness comes from better and worse, and it's only exciting to live because we get to ride the swells between the better and the worse.

So tomorrow, I am getting in my car and driving away. And it will hurt, and I may find myself in the middle of a state where I know four people filled with terror pretty soon, but it will be okay. It will even be really good. Cause terror is good for us sometimes, and the more uncomfortable things are in the moment, the better the story sounds later. As much as I love comfort, I'd like to have some good stories when I die.


A ship is safe in the harbor, but that's not what ship are made for. Here we go.