Random Ramblings

It's only been two months, but so much has happened. I've been fighting to try to get back this blog. When I wanted to do it, I didn't have time, when I did finally have time, I didn't want to do it; the internal struggle has been horrendous, believe you me, but don't worry. I survived just fine.

I'm only going to attempt a few snippets of things that have happened, most likely forgetting something important, but I can hardly do more.

After the fateful trip to Tahoe where our van experienced severe heartburn and torched its own transmission, I had about a week to relax/prepare for the next adventure. The van took longer than anticipated. It's complex work repairing transmission suicide. We got it back on Friday, a week after we had returned home, and it has been working smoothly thus far.

My next escapade was to return to Utah with Mitchell(I was just there, with Mitchell, at the end of June for sister Amy's wedding). This time I was enjoying my birthday present from my mother-in-law who had enrolled me in a week-long Choral Academy at BYU. It's a class to help choral conductors of all abilities do more than just look like they know what they're doing. I had my camera, but I don't have any pictures except those of my mom and Sarah who had come to watch Mitchell while I was in class. All other pictures taken of me looking studious in class, sprawled atop Judy's rented shockingly turquoise PT Cruiser fondly knighted by her as the "Pimp Mobile", and even sitting right in the middle of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during one of their rehearsals, all of these pictures were taken by others, and I don't have them.

Speaking of BYU, I noticed something funny while I was there. My time at BYU, while very meaningful and fully enjoyable, has always been inseparably connected with the feeling of stress. As I was walking through the Wilkinson center and observing all the tense and dazed faces of the mentally-burdened summer students who passed me, I suddenly had the feeling that there was some deadline I was missing.

Since my college days, I've had a recurring dream that has always forced me to acknowledge that I'm feeling overwhelmed with my current tasks (I had this dream more than once during my time in Primary). I'm back at BYU and I'm trying to find a class that I'm enrolled in, and can't find it. Or if I do find it, I realize that we're near the end of the semester, and I have missed too many classes, completed no assignments, and have no notes ready for the final. And in the middle of coming to that realization, I realize that there are yet more classes that I'm enrolled in which I've never even been to.

So here I am, back at BYU, strolling around my former haunts, surrounded by the faces of the living dead (okay, I'm being melodramatic)and that old feeling creeps up on me: "There's something important you're forgetting to do." Then I laugh, because it's not true! I'm not a student! You got nothin' on me! NOTHIN'!! I celebrate this feeling by putting off an assigned choral analysis until the last minute, hurriedly finishing it while listening to a lecture on the drama of the changing adolescent male singing voice, only able to numb my horror at not being a fully attentive student by succumbing to the multi-tasker's lie and convincing myself that I was doing each task perfectly well. Ah yes, there's the feeling I remember.

I don't know if that experience caused some sort of crucial transition for me, but my stress dream has been replaced. Now that summer is over and school has started, the time of year has come when it seems the whole world becomes hyper-intensive in giving you the feeling that you've been slacking off for three months and it's high time you get your backside back in gear. Obligations come a'flying from hither and yon, all giving you one night to figure out whether or not you will commit yourself for the next several months, all laden heavy with guilt in case you should be considering refusal, and not a single one understanding that a simple 'yes' or 'no' just isn't that simple.

Actually, I think they do understand, and the whole process is somewhat of a necessary evil, but I needed to set the stage. In the midst of this, I had my new dream. I'm in the grocery store, trying to find everything on my list, but I keep realizing I'm missing ingredients and have to constantly back-track. In the middle of the cereal aisle I realize that I left the cart with all the vegetables back in the produce section. I turn around to go get it, but I don't think I ever made it because I'm quickly back to finding ingredients, this time for soup. I'm figuring out how much I need of each ingredient by throwing it all into a large pot inside my cart as I go along, basically mixing up the soup right there in the store. I'm almost done, the checkout line is in sight, the soup tastes fabulous because I, of course, have been sampling it the entire way (makes sense), when suddenly, I no longer have a cart, and I am running towards the checkout line with nothing but my pot of soup. Then I trip. The pot turns out to be nothing more than some kind of thin aluminum metal which immediately crunches when I fall on it, and I get up to leave the store completely empty-handed.

I woke up from this dream and two conclusions came drifting to my mind. 1) Okay, once again, I am stressed, and 2) I have graduated from being a student to being a mom in a grocery store. I am officially a big girl now.

Having thus transitioned, my ultimate stress question has also transitioned from "What am I forgetting?" to "Where is Mitchell?" Mitchell is now 1 1/2 years old with an active curiosity and an active body to match. His hijinks have reached a new intensity of late, and I need to vent a little, after which I'll hopefully shut up and just ride it out. It began with me finding him in the laundry room with OxyClean spilled all over the floor and inside the dryer. I was in the middle of trying to figure out a phone conversation with what must have been a telemarketer with a heavy accent, and had told him twice that I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Being confronted with these two aggravating circumstances at the same moment caused my brain to quit moving forward. The person on the phone eventually said "good-bye" (I think) and hung up on me, and Mitchell was strongly pushed from the laundry room without me checking whether he had eaten the soap (which he has done). In the course of the following week he has climbed into the sink three times and squirted dish soap all over himself, gotten into vaseline and caked it all over his clothes, gotten a hold of powdered Comet and spilled it all over the bathroom, and taken his babywash soap with a squirt pump and pumped it into a puddle on the carpet. Today, after pulling down two decorative curtains, he fell off a stool in the bathroom where I'm staining cabinets, knocking over a trash can which knocked over the container of dark walnut stain I was working with which splashed all over our new tile floor and recently painted white beadboard wainscot. I got that cleaned up, but in the meantime he had climbed on top of the counter in the kitchen and helped himself to the garbage (sitting on the counter to keep it out of his way) shoving a lot of last night's spaghetti into his mouth before I found him. Meriel must be feeling that her title as The Most Troublesome Child is up for grabs so, not to be outdone, she got into Rheanna's paints and painted one leg red. Naturally that got on the carpet and Rheanna's room boasts a new pink spot even though I thought I got it all wiped up.

I'm sure that as you're reading this, you have by now asked the question, "Where on earth were you?" Well obviously I was too busy getting spa treatments to pay attention to my children, most importantly, finally getting my hair cut. I honestly can't remember the last time it's been cut, and it's gotten pretty long. In the past, I've kept it on the short side. When I was first married, one of the first things I did was chop my hair off, as seen in this very unflattering picture. Which caused one of Tim's roommates to say, "so I guess since you're married you don't have to try anymore." I was also mistaken as a guy and called "sir" by a store salesman who only saw me from the back. He quickly apologized when I turned around, but the damage was done. I grew my hair out to chin-length.

Having less and less time to figure out when to cut my hair, the length has slowly moved from my chin and started quietly creeping down my back in a subtle, but frantic attempt to reach the same length of its glory days before I become fully aware of what it's up to and chop it off again. I caught it, and someone (who has asked to remain nameless) cut it. But not too much was taken off the length (that "sir" remark still smarts), it was mostly a thinning job. I took a picture of the aftermath lying beside Mitchell's feet which shows you in brutal detail how many hairs must grow on my head in order for me to freely dispose of this much of it. Now I literally feel that a huge weight has been lifted from off my shoulders. I don't think I'll be having a grocery store dream anytime soon.