The Ox in the Mire

What a Sunday it was.  Our hurricane blew through Thursday morning while I was in class and everyone else was at home in their jammies, drinking hot chocolate, and counting the trees as they came down.  Friday I drove home to survey the damage:  a bigger mess I have never seen - signs twisted, massive pines laying everywhere, groups of people standing and staring and hardly knowing where to begin.  My family had already cleared away our debris and that of our closest neighbors so on Saturday it was on to the rest of the ward.  Most of the neighborhood was out and we went from door to door cutting up and hauling away tree after tree after tree.  It was like caroling with chainsaws.  After two million squats it was home for homework and bed.  Sunday, we got a text bright and early:  "The ox is still in the mire, church is canceled."  And so it was back to work, in the snow no less, as we wandered our stake boundaries cutting up anything that looked remotely fragile and ready to come down.  It was glorious.  My thighs are still burning and my toes just regaining all their feeling, but I felt more on this Ox Sunday that I had in the whole month of Sundays before that!

1. Dad's glee over his very loud new toy
2. curbside pizza delivery
3. Brother Davies
4. riding in the trailer
5. "Where's Tyler?!?"
6. Dallin Wright
7. piece-meal potluck
8. cringing every time the men walked under trees being felled
9. Gretchen's ear muffs
10. Seymour, he has good taste in donuts
11. pumpkin spice donuts
12. living my religion

Hopelessly

1. answered prayers...thank you Father that my wallet was at Smith's and not in somebody's greedy hands
2. a new haircut
3. nearly there
4. Todd
5. Christmas tree hunting
6. the kitty at Taggart's
7. reconsidering
8. being always right
9. Phil's M&M machine, especially when he puts Skittles in it
10. being compensated in Oreos
11. three weeks
12. teaching Relief Society
13. 24/7
14. killing warts
15. my man sweater
16. the Christmas books
17. Come, Lord Jesus
18. two choir programs
19. a new Bishopric
20. procrastination

Two Sister Missionaries Looking at Me

1. picking out a pumpkin
2. "You do know that I can't whistle, right?"
3. fugitive
4. flour bombs
5. unexpected gifts
6. cold water from the church well
7. "It's just like hanging out with you before, except you never held hands in high school."
8. four-wheeling for the first time ever and not panicking!
9. weed roses
10. my blue hand prints
11. the V
12. hang gliders
13. man points
14. dirt roads in old trucks
15. rice flour banana bread donut holes
16. Runaway Bride
17. the best cookies ever!
18. waking Jill up
19. chocolate milk
20. Lacey in her Mandarin garb
21. shepherd's trailers
22. a retro dress
23. "I'm assuming that Lacey will want to sit by you."
24. the best lesson yet
25. Alex Boye
26. arriving late
27. sing-a-long with Grandpa, new Christmas music edition

Enchanted Places

1. turning the catch basin into Van Gogh
2. chucking rocks
3. picture perfect curls
4. improvising
5. girls who hike and do hard things
6. forget-me-not
7. discovering a talent for Wii wakeboarding
8. too many highs to list at the dinner table
9. belated birthday presents
10. counting miracles
11. a little person falling asleep on my lap
12. pennies on the carport floor
13. my favorite home teacher
14. bearing my testimony
15. answered prayers
16. five minutes with a full voice in the midst of a cold
17. certainty
18. crying half the way home
19. "It will all be worth it."
20. Lucy cheating at Chinese Checkers
21. aimless minutes spent lying on my bed laughing with Mom
22. watching Dad attempt to pray when he is tired
23. stories from my childhood
24. trying to decipher what Gretch says in her sleep
25. broken nails and stained hands
26. being asked for my aesthetic opinion
27. learning just how many people have helped you along the way
28. Barbara's mint brownies
29. Marilyn Lotz, I want to be just like her when I grow up
30. waiting for Friday

Sunday Night

1. football shaped Oreos
2. being the popsicle holder
3. racing barefoot
4. outraged phone messages from under-informed aunts
5. funnel cake
6. Alice
7. being stuck behind trains
8. fourth in my age group
9. Uncles to rival my own
10. pretending to be an accounting major
11. and somebody's wife
12. too many mothers
13. fat blisters that make me proud
14. mariachi music on the ferris wheel
15. honey
16. the banana slide
17. sitting too long on the bar-stools
18. Kenz coming home
19. Uncle Lew...he's my favorite
20. eating Sunday dinner on the grass
21. not having fever hallucinations
22. the day when I am no longer sick
23. not doing my homework
24. waking to an angry cat on my chest
25. and news of a very big check

The Last Hurrah

1. gospel discussions in the Chuckwagon
2. go time on the river
3. the unsinkable Hall sisters
4. runaway shoes
5. Taylor Swift
6. orange sunglasses
7. four year old girls who can bump their hips better than I can
8. cleaning up good
9. a fireside on life
10. folk remedies
11. knowing there's a spot waiting for me
12. the next best thing to flying
13. church provided ice cream sandwiches
14. Karl's fourth phone number
15. recess
16. the smell of fresh wood chips
17. "Well, that was easy!"
18. mosquito bites
19. somebody who comes over no matter how late it is
20. Todd, who probably has no idea how much I know about him

The Old Man is Snoring

1. a rainy work day
2. Pinterest
3. making the chocolate sauce that makes people ask for straws
4. going away, far far away
5. knowing exactly what tomorrow will hold
6. loving it better than anything else
7. Happy Birthday Salem, I miss you
8. blue shoes
9. puzzles printed with famous art
10. making my packing list
11. wearing Mary's dress without her knowledge
12. curling my hair for the fun of it
13. "Kissing Adrien" and the hunger for France that followed
14. hostessing
15. all my Sundays having a prior claim
16. Black Cherry Shasta
17. the Plaizier secret handshake
18. duct taping a wart
19. lying on my parents' bed to read...under the swamp cooler
20. looking forward to the soundest of sleeps, the coldest of water, and the long lovely road there

Orange Juice

1. going treatless
2. Mom making mint chocolate cookies
3. singing, swinging, and the whole backyard to myself
4. my pink running shorts
5. wispy top knots
6. biting the bullet
7. ironic phone calls
8. texts too good to reply to
9. a neighborhood gallon challenge
10. fireworks a la the Flannerys
11. the coldest green water
12. the crack of dawn
13. running out of gas
14. a Western Grebe
15. the second Chinese fire drill just for the sake of footage
16. Leah
17. picking guys for Gretchen
18. "I'd rather eat carbs than see you in my crown!"
19. Five Finger shoes
20. today and yesterday and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that

Essay Contest Follow-Up

So...remember that really obscure essay contest I entered a few months back?  Well, I heard from them aaaannndddd....I TOOK SECOND PLACE!  My essay will be published in Sunstone Magazine and there's 450$ to be shared between the winners.  How much of that I'll get I'm not sure.  The funny thing is:  of my three entries, they picked the one I thought was least likely to win.  I didn't post it for that very reason, but I will now.  It's called Fawn.  (it's about Gretchen and I and my Aunt Karen's girls, I combined our two families for ease of explanation and flow)

Fawn


Six girls in six years is crazy, it really is. I can tell sometimes from the way Uncle Chuck laughs and shakes his head, or when he asks Pop whether he’s a cattleman or in the business of little girls. Never mind all the little brothers that came along later. But two sets of twins do help hurry things along. First is Abigail Ann, twelve and tall with dusty feet. Not far behind is brown, boyish EJ at ten and we two of straw hair and forget-me-not golden eyes: Jerusalem and Bird. Bird is me and we are nine. Last are redhead Fran and round Mary May Amelia. Despite their seven years all they share are blue-as-anything eyes that trade gleams of thought in our house on the side of a hill.


In a stair step line we sit on the edge of the stair less porch and watch Uncle Chuck mutter and chug: John Deereing the tall alfalfa fields. They stretch to each of the humble hills that surround this empty little valley, green as green, our best playground. Uncle Chuck passes our only real tree—as tall as this valley is wide—and stops. We six exchange looks in an assembly line of authority until we are all looking to Abigail Ann and she is looking at us. We heard the hitch in the mowing sounds and we know. Uncle Chuck sits in the harvester a moment; his brows undoubtedly knit, then continues on. We know that this is the bride price to keep us in rubber sandals and Sunday suppers. We know of chicken dinners that were strutting a few hours ago and where the steers are taken every fall. Farm girls have leather feet and practical hearts. But this is not quite the same: small brown bundles of spindle legs hiding in our almost-hay that will never grow up to have their doe eyes or six graceful prongs; spotted backs obeying their mistaken mothers’ worried commands: never, never move, baby mine; not a muscle, not a nose; I’ll come back for you.


Anywhere but our tempting fields these instructions would be wise, but their mothers never seem to learn this bit of anti-wisdom. As the light dims and we pretend we haven’t been summoned for supper we can see a slim gray figure slip from the hill into the field. We see her daintily, fearfully step toward our tree. She is unnerved by the way the shield of green has been laid flat in watermelon stripes. We can see her tremble in the emptiness from way up here. What she seeks is no longer there. We kick our dangling legs and gulp against the dry heat. Redhead Fran tries not to cry.


I met a mother once, face to face. I was walking the dirt road, leather footed and alone. She looked at me, standing on her stubborn spindle legs and I saw her peaceful eyes in a world of fast, fat, fierce coyotes. So in the morning we will run down that dirt road, kicking off our rubber sandals and leap fawn-like back and forth over those watermelon stripes and smell the sweet alfalfa musk. We will run and bound wild rare in the stubble and say I’m sorry and thank you and I won’t forget. Then we will climb our only tree and somehow unknowing know that we are fawn girls, farm girls and someday, someway we will be chewed up and spit out too. But something, like this thing, a good thing will come of it. And we will have peaceful doe eyes in a howling coyote world. And these fawns will not have been a waste.

Transitory Art

1. drowning a miniscule spider in the fish bowl only to discover that Curly likes live bait
2. a paper lantern floating under the widespread arms of our apricot tree
3. tan=feeling skinny
4. Bart
5. awkward date+worst vomiting moment+nasty jobs=I almost died laughing stories
6. writing in equations, even though I despise math
7. a Jane Austen movie spree with Gretchen
8. eating a whole jumbo box of Gobstoppers by myself
9. Ragnar
10. an exercise in letting go

Puck and Peaseblossom

1. Leah Sonntag...and all that comes with her
2. "who says?"
3. kickball and scraped shins
4. a tattered flag on the mountainside
5. Midsummer
6. the first corn cobs of summer
7. discovering the teacher I've been all along
8. watching America's Funniest home videos with Mom, laughing 'til we cry, then asking why that was so funny
9. warm dirt in the garden
10. cutting fresh spinach
11. my first real/Real soccer game
12. tossing out my guilt reaction when caught lost in thought
13. being happy as I am, happy as the grass is green
14. faith and patience and job hunting
15. flooding/rainstorms=cat living in psychotic fear
16. cooking experiments
17. dancing in my red ballet flats
18. trampoline jumping in the wind as another storm blows in
19. finally proving to Mom that I am not allowed to use her Costco card on her behalf
20. walking on the tar stripes to get the mail

She Lives!!

I survived.  But now the job hunting is killing me! But all this is temporarily distracting me from said frustration:

1. belatedly becoming a Trekkie
2. Zumba and trying convince Dad that the guys who come are not gay
3. organizing
4. plotting my summer projects
5. riding bikes to the library and Smoochies on the way home
6. lying on the trampoline in the sun
7. Alec's track meets and intense basketball games
8. training Banshee to not sleep in my clean laundry
9. Muddy Buddies
10. my own bed
11. a new Phillips!  this one's blond...Welcome to the world Sawyer Abraham!!!  We're so glad you're here
12. mosquito bites
13. training Banshee not to claw the screens open
14. my new set of tea cups
15. barbeque season coming soon
16. the first outdoor parties and freezing cold bare feet
17. wearing my Salt Water Sandals again
18. the new Harmons...it has a gelato bar...what could be better?
19. packing for Moab
20. having no plans whatsoever

Friday Afternoon

When I moved out as a freshman I only had two goals:  1) finish my bachelor's and 2) make sure to be around for my siblings as much as I could.  Numero uno is very nearly accomplished and numero two...well, I think I've succeeded.  Gretch and I are the best of friends again and the boys only pretend to hate me:  Alec carries my stuff to my car with minimal complaint, Sam tells me stories, and Thomas hugs me.  Here's why Friday Afternoon makes me happy.

1. crossing off another week on my graduation countdown calendar
2. hurry!
3. checking things off my take-home list
4. no homework
5. walking off campus as fast as my short legs will take me (it's awkward to run with a backpack)
6. not wanting to even make time to eat
7. the window down
8. singing Taylor Swift or Aretha Franklin or Bob Marley at the top of my lungs
9. looking for the V
10. a nonchalant O-la
11. favorite foods for dinner
12. when no one's there when I get home and I have to laugh
13. begging to go to the DI
14. sibling slumber parties
15. watching TV with Banshee on my stomach
16. cookies!
17. dumping Gretchen's clothes off my bed
18. seeing friends at church
19. leftovers
20. reluctant brother side hugs

Spring Break Scandal...

Buahahaha!  Just kidding.  It's none of your beeswax!  BYU is the epitome of lame and does not have spring break.  So yesterday I skipped my only class and, as usual, spring break came to me in the form of an uber darling girl!  Lacey and I ate Swiss Rolls and Gobstoppers and Mike and Ikes and Nerds and Junior Mints, went to the mall and bought matching swimsuits (mine is pink and hers is...bet-you-can't-guess... black), spent hours at the dollar theatre watching Tangled and Megamind, painted all our nails, swung at the Behind Walmart Park (thanks Corinne!), played phone games, talked for hours, got lunch at Panda, and stayed up way too late.  Then today she and Jill came back after I got off work and we stuffed ourselves silly at Olive Garden.  Sneaky Unofficial Fun-Size Spring Break is the best. :)  So here's the happy...

1. scandal!
2. losing all sense of direction in the mall
3. fake engagement rings
4. re-enacting Made of Honor with our cake
5. shopping show and tell
6. matchy matchy
7. "You broke my smoulder!"
8. squirting peppers
9. "Put it down and walk away..."  (darn that blue polka dotted dress, and the green shirt, and the red shoes, and the other red shoes, and the red sweater to go with them, and the...oh, nevermind)
10. the car smelling of dryer sheets...really badly

I am a decisive person...really

So here's my list of potential things to do with my life when I graduate:

1. grad school - Library Science
2. grad school - Bookbinding/Conservation
3. grad school in Hawaii, Boston, or Halifax, Nova Scotia
4. live the life of a bum on a beach in Northern California
5. hire on as an official ground duty at Centerville Elementary, work my way up to librarian in about ten years
6. return to the Mandarin...dun dun dun
7. charm a semi-retired yet wealthy literature professor from Great Britain into taking me on as a protege and sponsoring a year abroad
8. apprentice myself to a bookbinder
9. throw myself at the first available guy and marry him if he'll have me
10. move to Australia and throw myself at the first available Mormon guy and marry him if he'll have me
11. ask Aunt Karen if I can live on her porch
12. rebuild Sky Haven, which will then strangely prosper, which it didn't do last time
13. search out the old lady who owns my favorite house who will then adopt me as a surrogate grandchild, bestow upon me her old house, and all the money I need to get it up to code
14. fill my backpack and start walking across the continent
15. get a job in a bookstore
16. buy a bookstore
17. move into my cabin at the Pioneer park, spend the rest of my life in long skirts
18. take horseback riding lessons and become a Rodeo Queen
19. write a book and win a Newbery Medal (do you get money for that?)
20. go home and sleep for a year
21. explore every nook and cranny of Lake Powell
22. visit every National Park in the country
23. find a little apartment and adopt many cats, hopefully have Katie as a roommate (sadly Lacey will probably be married or she'd be welcome too)
24. all of the above?

Zippity Doo Dah...

I bet none of you knew I could use the word "hell" in the proper context by the age of five?  (thanks Dad)  Or that I absolutely positively hate my nose?  Or that I like to nap on boulders?  Or even that I can't stand it when people scratch their fingernails on fabric?  What about my changing eye color or storm sense?  I just realized how truly weird I am.  Oh well.  It could be worse.  :)  Or not...I have too much to be happy about.

1. the temple cafeteria
2. 3D Video
3. Ritz Bitz
4. being told you smell good
5. the plastic thing on a six pack
6. oodles
7. the goopy feel of paper mache
8. babies in backpacks
9. slouching in school bus seats
10. grape juice with sprite, Larson drink of choice

Eugene England Memorial Essay Competition

I'm entering.  Each entrant can submit up to three personal essays.  Winner gets a bit of a money and published in Sunstone magazine.  Yay...ish.  I don't really care about that.  I get class credit though.  BIG YAY.  So far I've got two essays.  Doubt I'll get time for a third.  Keep in mind that these are rough drafts. What do you think?

Cherry



I am my father’s daughter and we do not cry or say “I’m sorry” or “I love you.” Rather we hide or give one another blueberry pop tarts or hammed up good-night hugs. It comes naturally most days. But today, today I have to try so hard not to let my taboo emotions leak. I gulp and look out the window away from Dad. If I look at him I know I’ll cry anyway, un-kosher or not. Justy, you are quiet for once, your usual grumbling and good-natured shrieking mellowed to a worried hum. I think you know where we’re going. Oh, my Justy, my Cherry. What will I do without you?


Dad brought you home when I was fifteen: a red-neck’s Mini Cooper; he’d needed a new drive-to-work car after his ancient green truck died. You had ripped seats with the stuffing showing and a healthy helping of dents and rust and the license plate number 815 MJS. You were born the same year I was. Mom and I gave you a racing stripe on Father’s Day. Dad laughed. It felt good. From the beginning, I was always the first to volunteer to ride with Dad in his car: you. One day I went with him to work. I had school, but I didn’t care. We drove with a dented radio sitting on your dash. We had to crank it to hear the country music over your outraged roar: you’re muffler was broken then. We left you to nap next to the tanker trucks and that day I rode with him in a cab higher off the ground than I was tall; he taught me to spit sunflower seeds onto the runningboard. I don’t think he and I said a word to each other all day. I am my father’s daughter and we don’t have much to say.


When I was sixteen Mom and Dad taught me to drive you: my lessons consisted of ten minutes explanation, a drive home from the store, stalling you five times in the same intersection, a lot of yelling, and then a terrifying statement accompanied by your keys that night: “Here you go, drive to work,” he said. I think you were as appalled as I was. But you behaved. I made it to work…and back. I drove you everywhere from then on. I hung a plastic cherry necklace from your rearview mirror. The boys were impressed that I could drive a stick. I thought I had the best car of anyone at school. Oh, I loved you. I still do.


A few years later I went to college and I was petrified. Dad would send you with me for a week or two here and there to save me from walking alone too much in the dark. By the end of the semester he requested two hundred bucks and you were mine. Mine, all mine. You drank oil like a thirsty camel, still do. Dad taught me to check your oil. The bottles piled up in your unused back seat and Dad would give me grief every weekend.


At Christmas I drove home in a blizzard and you broke down in rush hour traffic in the middle lane ten miles from home. Some kind man pushed us off to the side of the road while I cried and called home. I sat in you clutching your wheel with a bag of bagels in the passenger seat. Dad came fifteen minutes later to get us. Your battery was corroded; such a big fuss for such a small complaint. You always were the drama queen. But Dad could fix anything and he taught me to jiggle your cables to coerce you to move again.


Most weekends I’d find your gas tank had been filled or your oil topped off and once there were even new tires. As I’d drive back to school on Sunday nights I’d smile to myself. I am my father’s daughter and we do not say “I love you.” But he took care of my car. He took care of you.


Summers passed with all your windows down—I never cared that your air conditioner was broken and that it got so hot the radio melted; falls too, with drives in the pouring rain. Winters were the worst. You hated it as much as I did. I prayed for the springs and you shivered. Springs came and we passed my favorite house and fields of corn and the corner light. But with every season you got older and more stubborn: gears slipping like old lady joints. Dad tinkered more and I pretended all was well. For a while it was.


Then this last spring you gave up and sat quietly in the driveway. Dad sadly shook his head. I held my tongue and hoped. Months passed. You gathered pine needles. The rain fell through your open windows. The sun bleached your seats even further. I knew you liked the feel of the water and warmth as much as I did. Dad and I and the family discussed funeral ideas: turn you into a convertible, take you to the cabin to be a target for rock rollers, enter you in a demolition derby. We laughed so hard at all our silly ideas; I am my father’s daughter.


But finally, last night Dad shook his head for the last time. This morning he pointed me to the shop-vac. I gulped and did my duty. I sucked up the pine-needles and threw away an armful of oil bottles. I climbed into you again and sat for just a minute. I put your plastic cherries away—to remember. Then I gave the keys to Dad. I wanted to ride in the passenger seat one more time, the way I had in the beginning. And so here I am.


The sun is warm and you are calm and quiet. Dad is a certain sort of silent that doesn’t mean he’s happy. I watch the fields and birds and pond pass away as we drive west. Mom follows behind in the plain, boring Saturn. She’s nothing like you. I lean my forehead against your window. Five minutes more and we’re there.


Turning into a junk yard we stop next to a row of other cars: some cheerful, some morose, and a few that I can feel: someone loved them once. Dad and I slowly get out and walk to a trailer and bang on the crooked door. The man lets us in, he’s expecting us. Dad hands over the title and the man hands me fifty bucks. There’s a grease smear on the bill. We walk out. Neither one of us has said a word. I hand Dad the money. I don’t want it.


Mom is waiting to drive us home and I pass you by to plop my tired body into the Saturn’s backseat. Mom pulls away and I stare out the window. I look one more time: but all I see is an ancient, red, dented, little car. Just a Justy. Not my Cherry anymore. You’re gone. If there’s a car heaven, then you’re there. I smile and face the front again and gulp a little more. But I don’t cry. Mom looks back at me. Dad doesn’t. I smile again. I am my father’s daughter.

the week from you-know-where

You don't want to know and I don't want to think about it.  Can I just graduate already?  So this is me procrastinating.

1. procrastination
2. Spanish friends telling me I always look so cute when I hadn't washed my hair this morning
3. my new mug
4. crackers and cheese
5. Phil taking two weeks to notice the pranks we play on him
6. more or less on purpose starting my second poetry anthology (am I psycho or what?)
7. my New York Princess key chain...I've never been to New York
8. feeling my earring sway when I walk
9. ditto my ponytail
10. pattering my feet

Today I Made Bread

1. making bread meaning that I get to pick whether it's white or wheat
2. laughing because me and Thomas are the only ones still enthused about slumber parties on my parents' bedroom floor
3. eating cereal from a cup instead of a bowl
4. an English riding outfit
5. birth announcements
6. chocolate malts from the hand held shake maker
7. The Road to Avonlea, it has to last long enough for Gus and Felicity to get married!
8. Bountiful Baskets, Christmas morning all over again
9. a sunny day making me tired with relief
10. Alec and Sam being gone at campouts...peace and quiet

L is for the way you look at me...

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!  Can I just say I love this holiday.  Romance is all well and good but I look forward to it thanks to all the people I love.  Not just any particular one!  Why limit the love is my thought on the subject.  V-Day this year brought me a new pair of boots instead of the usual candy and cards.  And also an anonymous note and balloon tied to my car...suspicious no?  I have fifteen for you today!

1. hearing rumors about yourself
2. my new thigh high riding boots (yippee!)
3. red lipstick
4. kissing the boys while wearing it
5. Snuffleupagus
6. the light coming back
7. leaving the room just so I can hear the laughter coming out of it
8. Sheamus' accent
9. Barney the Cat's hugely fluffy tail
10. buds on the magnolia tree
11. a new tube of mascara
12. somebody laughing accidentally blowing out the candles
13. tiny scissors
14. my plastic horses
15. letting popcorn pop all over the room

5th Ed. Happy Book

1. Carl and Ellie
2. Perry babies
3. "If Canada is America's hat, then Mexico is it's beard."  -Erin
4. singing with Grandpa
5. sparkle sorbet
6. substituting Jolly Ranchers for cough drops
7. measuring flour
8. tealess tea parties
9. "Who wants to eat Maren's lips?"  - Jill
10. cinnamon lips

Board Book

Maybe February will save me from my January slump.  But in the meantime:

Board Book

she laughed
not the way you think of laughter:
ha-ha-funny-joke
you're-such-a-wit
guess-I-better-be-polite

that isn't grown
it's contrived

she laughed as if she belonged
in a children's board book
of animal sounds
the dog says woof
the cow says moo

it was her sound
she laughed