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.

I Am a Broadway Musical Married to a PBS Documentary

I love this thought--almost a perfect metaphor describing Brent and me. I burst into song at odd and irregular intervals. Brent is careful and methodical and makes sure that he has all of the bases covered. I often forget where I put my bag/phone/glasses/keys/books/shoes. Brent gets up on Saturday morning and gets dressed and puts on his socks and shoes so that he is ready to go at a moment's notice.

I have much more to say about this. I am too tired right now. It is 2am Eastern Standard Time.

Cleaned up photo that Nathan took at Pelican Lake in Juno Beach FL in June or early July 2010.
I was outside dumping used bunny litter where I let it get rained on before I use it as mulch and potting soil. It had been raining; I saw a neighborhood of these mushrooms. Running back into the house, I grabbed my camera and took a series of mushroom family "groups". I like this little bunch.

I love being surrounded by new things--growing things. Even when I am stagnant--propped up on the couch with my knee up--waiting to heal, the rest of the yard is busy growing and changing.

An invitation to encourage my body to to get on with the process of healing.

Happy Fourth of July!

It is the 4th of July and it has been thundering and lightening-ing and everyone around us has been setting off fireworks. Lots of wet and lots of noise and I am glad that I am inside listening to it all and watching old movies and eating pretzels and petting the cat.

Expert on: Post-Op Rules

After Church this morning, I spoke with a wonderful woman who is going to have to undergo surgery this coming week. As we talked, I realized that I had been operated on for the same problem. She asked me about what to expect after the surgery. Her doctor had told her that she was to stay completely flat on her back in bed for 12 weeks to allow the new tissue time to completely heal and settle into place. She asked what problems I had--and I explained that I was not as wise as she was and had felt pretty good after just 3 days in bed--so I got up and went into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher. Someone came to pick up some music and I sat with them in the living room and talked until (wonder of wonders) I began to bleed and to hurt-- A LOT. I listed for her some of the liquid-ish things that were OK to eat--and others that would seem to be OK, but that contained high amounts of fiber--which was NOT OK to eat. I recommended that she stockpile a dozen or so movies that she could watch on her laptop--so that she didn't have to get up and change the DVDs. She is smarter than I am and I am sure that she will stay down and let her body heal.

It occurred to me this evening that I am really good with infants since I have no infants to take care of myself. In the same vein, I am great at telling people what to do after surgery since I am not recovering right now myself.

Well, actually I am recovering from knee surgery.

Never mind.

I Gotta Get This Show

Curly would have been labeled as a "dangerous jumper" because he did not bring both knees up together to go over the jump. I have never had more fun jumping, though, or felt safer than when I was riding him. Texas 1990

Jon loved seeing himself in the viewer screen on the back of my camera. I got this one of him, looking at us, reflected together in the mirror backing a Chinese ceramics display in the Smithsonian. Maryland 2010

Brent and Nate and I went on a road trip to Fort Lauderdale. The art museum was a WAY BIG disappointment, but at a museum collection of old Packard cars, there was more to see. Florida 2010

I did this one while trying to get ideas for a "self portrait that you didn't look like yourself in it" assignment for a black and white photography class I took at PBSC. Florida 2009

This is one of the first shots I ever took of myself in my kitchen window. After dark it is as sharply reflective as a mirror. I was wearing my favorite shirt. Florida 2008

This is a photograph, also a reflection in the kitchen window, that I took and think of as my "50th Year Old Portrait." Florida 2009

"Kiss today goodbye and point me towards tomorrow . . ."

"Every Little Step" is an old film, a retrospective (their word) on the casting process in preparation for the revival of A Chorus Line. It is a slap in my face that yells at me that I never could have done what those people did. I didn't start dancing soon enough or seriously enough. I didn't. I was too chunky as a teenager. I was. I would have killed myself had I broken through the constraints of my father's advice and lost myself in the mirror that frees and contains a dancer. I am preoccupied now with my own reflection.

Our kitchen window looks out over the sink onto the lanai and, at night, reflects my own face back at me--but softly. I have taken dozens--maybe hundreds--of photographs of myself looking back at myself. Perhaps it is the dearth of ("women's tears"--"dearth of women's tears" is a line from a war poem I studied at BYU) images from all the years when the children were growing up. Perhaps thousands of photographs--the majority of them thrown out or lost or ruined in the flood--I took. An acquaintance once said that she took so many pictures of her kids growing up so that when she got old and got Alzheimer's, she'd still be able to look back and know that she had lived a life full of people and places--even if she didn't remember that she had been there or was related to the faces in the photographs.

Nikki from Fleetwood Mac put photographs of herself posing in toe shoes and ballet costumes on the covers of her record albums (back when there were photo albums) and anyone who ever danced could tell that she's never had any real experience as a ballerina or even tried to stand "en pointe." I had. I had worn and bled into real toe shoes. Though I never got paid for dancing, after class one day, I was told by a fellow dance student at BYU: "It's beautiful to see you. I love watching you dance."

And that has always been enough for me. I am a dancer.

But I am not a professional dancer. Actually I'm not a professional anything. After finishing my Masters, I did get to teach a few semesters of college English and worked as a Legal Assistant while Brent was in law school. I have played organ and piano and sung and played flute. I have written hundreds of pages of prose--and half again as much in essay response and/or literary analysis. If I lived by "Publish or Perish," I'd be long gone and buried. My mom loved my letters and Megan is doing amazing artwork to accompany a children's narrative that I composed.

Seeing anything about the theatre always makes me feel morose and begin to self-assess based on my teenage need to face myself by losing myself in the character of a play. I got lots of chances to do that. There was little competition from others 15-to-20-year-olds who could not exist without a ready-made façade to hide behind. Desperation breeds excellence.

Especially in front of a full-length mirror.

Am I depressed tonight? No. I am just upset that I did not have the chance to ruin my body sooner in a more dramatic way. At the end of "Every Little Step," one of the actresses who got a major part was the daughter of a ballet dancer. He danced for 20 years and then blew out a knee. He thought that he was finished as a dancer--and then Baryshnikov called him and told him to get back to the theatre. In six weeks he was dancing again. At the end of the evening's performance, his dance slipper was full of blood.

But he ended his comments by telling the viewers to ask any dancer, any gymnast who participated in the Olympics--would they give up the ruined shoulders, damaged ankles, arthritic knees?

It was worth it. What ever was lost--it was worth it.

And really . . . I feel the same way about all the injuries I sustained from my horseback riding time. And even now after surgery on my left knee, I hate laying on my back on the couch, with my knee above my heart, doing needlework and watching old movies and writing in my blogs and trying to remember when to take the extra meds and make appointments for the doctors and physical therapy. But . . . still, offered the chance, I would not have given up a single moment of flying over the earth, of becoming all the mass and grace of a 700 pound horse. I would not. Blood in my slipper. Scars on my shoulder. Bone spurs on my spine. Concussive bruise marks on the inside of my skull.

I would do it all again.

I have not gotten any wiser as I have gotten older. Half a century and I still cling to the memory of the feeling of being on a horse--of having someone who thought it was beautiful when she saw me dance.

One moment of being a dancer.

"Kiss today--"

I don't want to be pointed only toward tomorrow--not if it means that I have to leave my past behind.

I feel much better now.

It's Friday Night and I Got Me a Bum Knee

I am sitting at home, in the family room, with my feet in my husband's lap, and we are watching (a past season of a thriller series called) Kidnapped. It is a collection of episodes based on the kidnap of a wealthy man's son where everyone has a shady past and the most unexpected friendships surface at the most unexpected moments. The rich man had an affair with a less-rich woman who adored him while he and his wife were separated. The separated wife apparently visited the less-rich girl and no one ever saw her again--the wife paid the girl to walk away--"to save my family." This is day 9 and Leo (the kidnapped teenager who seems to be the only one in the whole show who knew what was important in life) is appearing to everyone and talking to them--especially the dad. Everyone--FBI especially (the ex-FBI and FBI)--there's this one young FBI agent who looks really open and honest, but he has just been bumped up the ladder from Alaska to NYC. Since he looks squeeky-clean he has to be someone who has already done something crooked. People get beat up and then beat up those people who beat them up.

It is all a bit over the top for me. I am one of the little people who would have sent $10 and a sympathy card to the rich family telling them that I was sorry that their son was kidnapped and that their $40 million got blown up.

Now they've got smoke bomb in a bottle of water. I understand now why they wouldn't let anyone even take water with them onto an airplane after 9-11.