Twenty

Dear Braeden,

You're twenty today.  And your gift from me won't be there in time.  I don't know whether to blame Amazon or the Pleasant Grove Post Office more but the fact that your gift is late makes me very sad.

I guess it's just one of those things.  When you're an adult, your birthdays are different.  Your mom has a smaller role in the celebration.  That makes me sad too.

Someday your wife will hopefully pick up the slack and make you feel loved and celebrated in a big way.  (You know I have candidates in mind for the job and the list is growing.  These are the hazards of having a mom who is Young Women's president.)

Or you can live next door to me and I'll make you a big chocolate cake with mint frosting every year.  I'll shape it like a frog and dye the frosting green.

Also, I'll do that next year.  ( You won't be next door but you'll be at BYU and that is close enough.)

I'm glad you were born.  Your existence and the blessing you are in my life make me feel like Heavenly Father loves me.  He gave me you!  What a gift.

I've messed up and fallen short and continue to (your gift will be late) but despite my faults, you are spectacular.

I thank my lucky stars that I had you as my sidekick when we moved to Connecticut and I got lost every time I ventured into the streets of New Haven.  I appreciate what you taught me about teaching school that made my degree in elementary education feel like only an introductory course.  I like that you taught me that teenagers are the best and all the people that don't like teenagers haven't met the right ones.  I'm thankful for the ways you continue to inspire me with your dogged determination to do your best and stare down challenges.

I'm grateful for the one million times (ballpark figure) you have made me laugh.

I'm grateful for the ways you have challenged me and have caused me to turn to experts for wisdom and to Heavenly Father for help.  It wouldn't be the same if motherhood were easy.  It just wouldn't feel so Big and I wouldn't be learning so much.

I'm grateful for your peace loving and huge heart.  You love full throttle and those of us lucky enough to be in your line of fire are never the same again.

And people love you back.  Yesterday I was reduced to tears--a big grateful ugly cry--because the Justesens wanted to know your favorite treat.  They wanted to acknowledge your birthday.  You aren't in their area any more but they're not the type to let details get in the way.

Amazon and the PG post office may let me down, but the world is full of good people that make up the difference.

Mark said to celebrate your birthday, he's going to hide twenty pairs of your socks all around the house.  I don't think we have twenty pairs of your socks.

I miss you.  Every hour of every day.  But I don't miss your socks.

Happy Birthday sweet boy.  Thanks for being mine.  Thanks for loving me even when I disappoint.  Thanks for being you.

Suffering

I've had suffering on my mind lately.  Perhaps because every single member of our family has been sick (well, except Horace...that guy has the immune system of a metal goat).

Every Christmas someone ties a bow around Horace's neck.  He likes to be a part of things.

Adam had the worst of the sickness.  I was feeling smug that I didn't get it.  I was thinking that by taking zinc, I had been very smart.

I now view the box of zinc sitting on the table with derisive thoughts.

Thanks for nothing, zinc.

I'm at the worst stage of sickness, when you are tired of it already and want to get on with life but you don't feel well enough to do anything.

Suffering.  There's all kinds of suffering.  Public and private.  Short term and long term.  Severe and mild.

There are positive aspects of suffering, it just doesn't feel like it when you're in the midst of things.  So here I go, trying to cheer my sick self up by contemplating the upsides.

1- Empathy.  When you've been through something hard, you get it.  Adam started feeling better as I started feeling worse.  He texted me on his way home from work:  don't worry about dinner.  I'll take care of it.  He probably would have done that anyway since he's that sort of guy, but I know that he understands how I feel and that matters.

2- True colors.  When you are suffering, you see people's true colors.  Some people pat you metaphorically on the head and want you to get over it.  Some people stay by you.  Some people flee.

3- You get stronger.  You just do.  Whether you like it or not.  Sometimes you think, this is horrible and I hate every minute of it, but it isn't killing me.  I'm surviving.  Sometimes that in itself is amazing.

4- Relationships get stronger.  On Sunday our lesson in YW was about how we could strengthen our relationship with our Heavenly Father.  The teacher asked the girls how they strengthened relationships in general.  The girls started talking about their best friends.  Inevitably, it was true that their friends had Been Through something with them.

Also, I think it's incredible that suffering fades away.  Hard times pass.  What a blessing that is.  It is nice to remember.  This won't last forever.

Random

1.

Deer apparently never sleep.  I see them all the time, any hour of the day.  They frolic in our yard at 3:00 in the morning.  They meander the streets of Pleasant Grove in broad daylight.  They dart in front of cars.  Get some sleep, deer.  It may help you not have the urge to dart in front of cars.

2.

I finally succeeded in "killing Christmas" as some members of my family call me putting everything away.  Adam commented that it seems to take a lot longer to put it all away.  There is one reason for that:  I don't have eager helpers.  Everyone loves to open up boxes and exclaim over Christmas bears and set up the Christmas village.  No one wants to put it away.  (Although Mark and Emma did help with the trees.  We had a folding table set up that had been used for Lego building.  It was fabulous for ornament sorting.  I'm never going to decorate or undecorate a tree again without a folding table!)

3. 

I dreamed the other night that I couldn't pronounce armoire.  In my dream, Emma told me with great disdain (no one can do disdain like Emma), that she didn't know how I expected to go to France if I couldn't speak like I was French.

I can't speak like I'm French.  Not even close.  I know that I'll have anxiety before the France trip.  Airports cause me anxiety.  I think my subconscious mind is getting ahead of me and feeling anxiety early.  Way to be...on top of things subconscious mind?

4. 

I have been watching the weather in Virginia Beach.  My boy is there again and the forecast was 8-12 inches of snow.  He is on a bike.  Oh, and he doesn't have a winter coat.  The weather in his mission is relatively mild and like the Davis side of the family, his blood runs pretty hot. 

Speaking of the weather, no one will accuse of Utah weather of being relatively mild.

We have yet to have a snow day or even a two hour delay.  We've had the kind of storms that would shut Seattle down, but I guess just like Seattle can handle a lot of rain, we're set up to handle the snow.
 
I have mostly been loving the weather around here.  Besides how dry it is and the cracking and then glued fingers, snow and then sparkling sunshine are divine.  I was following behind a car that had snow on the roof.  The dry snow crystals were blowing off the roof and the sunshine was so brilliant that it looked like glitter was flying my way.  Magic.

It doesn't matter when the temperature is in the teens.  When the sun is out and the sky is that blue, I'm a happy kid.

American Fork Canyon.  That looks like a UFO in the sky but it was the moon.

5.

Adam and I have been watching Stranger Things on Netflix.  I don't think I can recommend it.  It scares me.  I may or may not be brave enough to continue.  The other night I asked Adam to give me something happy to think about when I was going to sleep.

He said, "How about land grant colleges?"

I gave him the sort of look any normal person would after that suggestion.  He said, "Or the national debt.  Or you could think about how you would balance the budget...what programs you would cut."

Then he said, "Hey, you asked me...."

Land grant colleges?  I love that guy.

Books I read in December 2016

You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott *

This book was intense.  It was well written but I guess I didn't love the subject matter.  It was about a group of people who had children involved in competitive gymnastics.  It mostly made me glad to have nonathletic children.  I didn't like the people or how they interacted.  Also, there was no satisfying resolution.

The Girl in the Green Raincoat ** by Laura Lippman

This book was about a woman who was in her third trimester and on bed rest.  She was a private investigator and apparently there is a whole series of books about her character.  If I'd read those books I'd probably have enjoyed this more.  There was very little time devoted to character development because maybe you are already supposed to know the characters.  She has nothing to do as she's on bed rest so she people watches out her window which overlooks a park.  She becomes concerned when a woman in a green raincoat stops showing up at her regular time to walk her dog and of course gets involved in solving the mystery.

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker ***

I liked this book.  It was about a woman with a thyroid disorder that made her giant.  She lived in a small town and was treated with cruelty.  She ends up living in a horrible situation but ultimately triumphing over her circumstances.  The book had a great variety of characters.

Love in a Nutshell by Janet Evanovich ***

If I judged a book by its cover I never would have picked this one up.  I really dislike a cheesy book cover, but it was a pretty good book.  Just light and easy.  It's about a down on her luck woman moving to a small town to get a fresh start.

Southern Charmed  by Melanie Jacobson**

This book is about a young single LDS woman who feels social pressure to get married but also feels obligated to stay with her recently widowed mother.  I mostly liked this book but it also kind of bugged me.  She was way too attached to Baton Rouge.  I've never been there, it's probably a lovely place, but there are other places in the world too....

Not my email

Another round of emails that weren't intended for me.  I've got variety this time, people.

Random:

A prodigious use of punctuation:

No punctuation:

Disappointing (because I didn't really get cookies delivered) and perhaps a little passive aggressive because Karen is working all day yet you still are expecting cookies:

 

And now for the international flavor:

(Thelma Guyot made this purchase on Christmas day.  This makes me curious.  Did she forget Christmas shopping--in addition to forgetting her email address?)

More international email:

Here's the translation:

And even though is was based on Chinese Feng Shui (?) no money truck has shown up yet.  Maybe because I didn't share within 11 minutes....

Finally, I think we can call this revenge of the Thelmas.  My email address was used to sign up for coupons.com.  I predict a whole lot more email not intended for me.

Sigh.

Snow removal

Yesterday I woke up early to help Emma dig her car out before school.

There is a reason that I usually don't talk to her much in the morning. She was super cranky and contrary.  (It didn't help that it was the first day of school after a break.)

Adam showed me how to use the snowblower before he went to work.

Look at that, just a few days into the new year and I'm already learning something.

The mismatched ensemble I was wearing:

snow boots
sweat pants
my pajamas hanging down to my knees
a sweatshirt
a scarf
Mark's hat with ear flaps

I looked like I had just rolled out of bed and put on whatever I could find.  (Because I did.)

It was dark when I started but daylight by the time I stopped.

Times like that, you're glad you don't have a lot of neighbors.  (Although the across the street neighbor was out shoveling.)

In other/related news, my hands have started cracking again.  My secret weapon is superglue.  It lasts a few days.  Sometimes, you're shoveling snow in your pajamas or gluing your skin back together and you think, "Is this my life?"

Yep.

Return

Oh it is so painful to try to re enter your life after a vacation.  I want to swipe my hand over everything and have it all magically put away and in order.

But alas.

Christmas surrounds me still.  Except now it's completely disheveled because I've started putting things away and that always gets a lot worse before it gets any better.

An aside:  Emma told me yesterday that when she has her own house she's going to be a bit more of a minimalist at Christmas.  She said, "I love all of this, but it is a lot of work."

(She has always been smarter than I am.)

We went to Seattle.  It was wonderful.  Every last bit.  My cracked and bleeding hands healed, my hair was curly curly.  Everything was green and dark and gloomier than we remembered.

Here are some highlights (with pictures, of course--mostly stolen from other people, of course).

We went to the Sheraton downtown which has gingerbread house displays every year.  

We soaked up a little Seattle atmosphere at Pike Place Market:

Raelyn, Emma and Mark...one of those pictures where you take a picture when they're all looking at someone else for a picture.

We went to dinner to celebrate Geri's birthday:

Mark in his natural habitat:  eating

I bought Mark some new pants and asked him to go try them on.  Megan said, "You can come and model them for us."

Mark put Careless Whisper (boy loves 80s music) on his phone and came out wearing this getup:

You've got to be careful with some people when you ask them to model for you.

 We had lunch with these cute kids:

And laughed a lot with this crew:

We happily got to spend a lot of time with the Jorgensens too.  They invited us over for dinner and we played games with them a few times and Janet and I got in several hours of visiting and I'm pretty sure we could visit for a few more weeks (years?) before we felt like it was enough time.

I don't have any pictures of them.

Why don't I have any pictures?!?

Geri very kindly let us invite them over for New Year's Eve.  Adam did take a picture of these two beauties, hair and hearts and souls woven together.

I love those two girls together.

I also loved seeing this at midnight:

That's what you do on New Year's Eve.  You watch the Space Needle fireworks.

It all went by too fast.

My eyes are open in this picture.  Red. Letter. Day.

We loved being with Geri.  She is a very gracious hostess.  She spoiled us and fed us well and made our stay wonderful.

We went to church in our old ward and it made me happy.  I hugged a lot of people and talked to a lot of people, but not enough.  I could have stayed another three hours after church chatting with people.

I was doing very well with it all then Amy hugged me goodbye and she started to cry and the floodgates opened.

I love my friends.

We left the green algae and returned to the frozen tundra.  It snowed almost all day yesterday.

Re entry.  Not for the faint of heart.