My Most Handsome Man and a Fairly Cool Beetle That Nathan Saved

I love this photo of Brent.

While Mary was here, Nathan kept an eye out for really cool bugs for her to take back for a friend who is enrolled in an etymology class at BYU. When he found this guy, though, he was just so energetic that Nathan didn't have the heart to immortalize him . . . but he did let me get some photos of the little guy before I let him go.

I put a couple of the beetle on my flash drive for my Digital Photography class. We're assigned to bring in images that will be easy to lift off of one image to use in another . . . everything needs to be our own art. No clip art--I'm excited to see what I can do with the Photoshop 5 program that we'll be learning. I've paid for at least three of the five versions of Photoshop, but I've never taken the time or effort to find out even a small fraction of what the program offers.

My whole life has felt like that. I have been offered so much--and I've been too weird or self-centered or mindless or turned-inward to see all the glorious potential for learning or exploring or listening or feeling. I've missed the opportunity to choose from options that I was too lame to look for--or too afraid to take on. My comfort zone still buffers me. When I'm manic or depressed or stressed, I fall back on what is easiest. It is simple for me to perform in front of an audience and much more demanding for me to approach people one on one. Personal friendships carry an emotional price that I would rather pay off in dollars--send out for pizza rather than make home-made soup--send off cards rather than take time for a personal visit. I think about how our family lives now--pool table and a well-loved baby grand piano instead of a dining room table and sofa and chairs. We don't have family dinners at night--Brent gets home and wants a few minutes to unwind from 12 hour days and then he's ready to go to sleep. Our FHEs are on Sunday evenings and take less than half an hour. Nathan gets an over-dose of me as I follow him around some of his college classes taking notes--then our evenings are spent studying, cleaning up after the bunnies, and folding clothes while Brent does his Stake clerk stuff.

I woke up this morning at 6am and had a wild energy spurt at about 8 and I vacuumed the kitchen and family room. The rabbits went wild . . . noise! motion! ACK! They are tired tonight after such an unreal start to their day.

Actually, I am tired tonight. Nathan just brought me a millipede and I am too tired to photograph it tonight . . . so I need to give it some water and tuck it into the lovely dirt that Nathan's already gathered and it can sleep in comfort tonight until I can get some pictures tomorrow.

A son who takes Spanish, Psychology and Algebra by day and takes out the garbage and brings me bugs to see at night.

No wonder Brent is tired. So am I.

Volvo Transmission Blues, With Chocolate on the Side

I have just gotten off the phone with Brent and feel quite sheepish about the car repairs that will need to be done on his Volvo. The fellow who usually takes care of us called this morning and told me about the AC (which was why we brought the car in to be looked at) and about something else and then something else about the transmission (fluid leaking) and something else about the brakes (I think). Anyway. When Volvo Tony was talking to me this morning, everything he said made sense. When Brent asked me about it, I can’t remember anything that was on the list of things to fix—except the price. I do remember the price. Which was the least ambiguous and most startling thing about the whole conversation. It felt weird, though, because without all the details, the money REALLY seems big. Kind of like someone telling me that I’m pregnant with triplets when I didn’t even know who the father was or that I was married yet.

Not quite that bad.

But close.

On a cheaper note, I have discovered the Family Home Evening notebooks in which we wrote the minutes from each week’s meeting. I remember looking forward to my turn to be the scribe—if the lesson was boring, I could doodle in the margins. Perhaps that is where Meg got her first desire to draw from—a remnant of my own, bored scribblings. I am getting that way more and more now. I have a hard time just sitting through Sacrament Meeting or Sunday School lessons without a notebook and a project. One of my on-going ones is the simplified re-telling of the Parable of the Olive Tree from the Book of Mormon. I read and re-read the verses and try to recount their contents as if I were explaining the story to Meg, La and Nate during our nightly scripture readings—lots of lots of years ago.

Megan calls me now and I hear Jon in the background, sing-talking to himself with a magazine in one hand and a truck (Ca! Ca! Ca!) in the other. She is going to make lentil and onion soup for dinner “because it is simple and delicious!” I never made lentil and anything soup for dinner in my life. Her life is so different from anything that I could have imagined for her—but just in the details. I was able to see her on the floor of her living room and playing/teaching/loving her young children. The important things I have been able to know about for Meg, La and Nathan. Some I see for Brent—but I do not see for me. A good thing, perhaps, since I have trouble remembering what needs fixing on the Volvo only hours after having someone list each item out slowly for me. Much more than that and I would probably overload and need repeated administrations of dark chocolate and warm cookies, just from the oven. WAIT! That is what I need NOW. I hope that someone is writing down all the stuff I have been told and forgotten. Some day, I hope to be ready to hear and remember it all—with a perfected mind and steady focus.

Someday.