Well I just had one of the darned pleasantest lunches EVER.

It's not often that you can feel justified in taking an entire day off of work just to go to lunch with your family. And, actually, today was not one of those times. However, I DID feel justified because I took the day off to go to my sister's graduation from college, and we stopped and had lunch afterwards. (Happy circumstance!)

The wait was long. Actually, it was really rather horrendous. You see, when we got there, they (those poor, harried restaurant employees) told us that the wait would be about 45-50 minutes. So, my dad put our name down on the list, and we trekked over to a nearby bookstore and browsed for about 20 minutes before trekking back to the restaurant where my mom was sure we'd be seated relatively soon. An hour and ten minutes later, we finally got our table.

The good thing is, the wait was utterly and completely worth it. We got the patio table, and with a near-cloudless sky, and springishly breezes blowing, even the setting by itself was ideal. Then, when our good-looking waiter (my brother-in-law's cousin, by chance) brought us our crusty baguettes and smooth, white butter to spread upon them, along with endless glasses of strawberry lemonade and heaping platters of ceasar salad, followed shortly thereafter by our fabulous main dishes, (mine of course being chicken parmesean--LOVE that stuff), and while the conversation throughout all of this was lively and entertaining, and ranged from observing that wisp of cloud that became a large cloud, and whether that other wisp of cloud would become a large cloud too, and how genetically, my brother-in-law and his waiter-cousin could be considered half-brothers because their mothers are identical twins, I could not help but think that this was one of the best lunches I had ever had.

And so it was. The end.

What the Devil are you all doing here?

I mean, don't you have anything urgent to attend to? Like having dinner, or writing to senators about increasing government spending in schools, or trimming your toenails or something? I mean, here I sit, typ-a-typ typing on my laptop, (okay--so the 'typ-a-typ' was mostly cheesy), trying to think of things to type about, and I'm not coming up with extremely interesting topics, lemme tell you.

Oh! Except that I got called to be secretary in the Primary Presidency in my ward. Whoooo-eeee. We had our first presidency meeting today, and, I was...erm...very lost. Actually, I was more lost than a...than a glove. That's been lost for a long time. Yeah. I was that lost.

It wasn't really all that bad--the other members of the presidency were extremely friendly, and I know them all at least relatively well, so I felt pretty comfortable with them. Except, they've all been in the calling for awhile, and so have a pretty good idea of what's going on, so they were discussing things at a rapid-fire pace, and it was...marginally difficult for me to keep up with what they were talking about. Phew! I barely remember the last names of the people in our ward! Now I have to learn their first names, and the names & ages of all of their children, and also I have to learn how scouting works, and also how often the girls have activity days, and also how you do sharing time, and how to conduct opening exercises, and also how many paper flowers you can fit on the Primary bulletin board at once.

There's a lot to learn.

And, I've already made some mistakes. Like, when I tried to accost the Reverence Children to get the "Reverence Child" banners back after opening exercises, not realizing that they had the privilege of being Reverence Children all through Sharing Time, and through all of their classes. That poor 10-year-old girl! I came up and said, "Do you want to give me the banner back now?" And she very politely kind of bowed her head and said, "No thank you." I was flabbergasted. And panicked! How would I get that "Reverence Child" banner back?!? And then, I thought, "Duh. They keep it through sharing time, you dolt." Yes. I called myself a dolt. And still do, to this day.

But I digress. I have a lot to learn. And I mean a LOT. I have to remember how to interact with children who are not my relatives. While I feel relatively comfortable with children, still there's a bit of an uncertainty that exists when dealing with children who are not your own. (Nor your sister's own.) So, there's that too.

Omyland. I'm scared. A little nerve-racked. And...um...my toes are cold. Which always bodes ill for anyone.

And, I guess I found something to talk about after all.

I'm feeling particularly gleeful this evening...

But not because of anything outrageously wonderful that I've done. No, no. My reason for rejoicing is this: it's Friday, the phones here at work are NOT ringing, and I've just gotten over 300 hits on my blog since I installed the counter on February 9th! Wahoo, frankly!

And you should all "Wahoo" with me. For behold, it is your hitting my blog so frequently that has risen the post count past the 300 mark. Thank you, for I am indeed grateful.

And also there's nothing to do at work. Sigh.

Wow. Man, I mean, just--WOW.

I don't know if you all have had the luck to chance upon one of the recent United Airlines commercials whilst aimlessly channel surfing, but let me tell you, I have never seen "Rhapsody in Blue" put to better use. (Well, maybe once, but I won't go into that here. (Gosh, I love writing vague asides!))

Each commercial is a mini animated feature, and absolutely no dialogue, except for a bit of a United Airlines plug they put in at the end, which, surprisingly, always blends pretty harmoniously with the rest of the piece. Although I've seen a few of these on TV, I could only find the two most current ones on the United Airlines website. However, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Go HERE to see the commercials. My personal favorite is 'Dragon,' (mainly because the animation is simply STUNNING--watch the 'Making of' featurette if you have time--and because dragons are cool), but 'The Meeting' was wonderfully amusing and entertaining in its own right. (There this great laugh-out-loud moment right at the end. Superb!)

So, if any of you are in the mood to be entertained, and haven't had a chance to see these yet, take a moment & do it! Tell 'em I sent ya.

And Now I'm Terrified

So, yeah. I'm feeling a bit nervous at the moment. Weak at the knees, hands trembling, toes cold, you know the routine. I just want the answer to one question: Why in the WORLD do I react like this to things that are a little intimidating? Why am I so terrified that, instead of doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing, I'm sitting here, plugged into an outlet, typing on my laptop (which is working now, by the way), posting to my blog that I'm terrified?

Interacting with people sometimes makes me nervous. And while that's a bit of an understatement, it's nevertheless quite true. So, I've taken the day off of work, and I've come to BYU to search out some people who might be willing to write letters of recommendation for me. Really and truly, I'm going to do this today. (And, as any of you who have talked to me in the past about this will know, it has taken me a long time (really long time) to get to this point.) But, while it's easy enough to take a day off work, drive to BYU, park in Visitor's Parking (it's own little spot of terror--what if they think I'm lying when I say I'm not a student?!?), and walk over to the library, it's much much harder to move from where I am on the 4th floor over to the spot where I need to be--the Juv Lit Department.

So, any of you who may pop on within the next few minutes or so, (and those who pop on later can do this retroactively), please say a quick prayer for me. So that I can be brave. And not stupid. Thanks.

And the pressure is ON

So. Over the past few days, I've been frantically trying to dredge up some topic in my mind that might prove interesting and insightful, and yet humorous and...erm...funny. And guess what I've come up with!

That's right--nada.

I mean, the best think I could think of was how the sight of sunlight glancing off of gently rippling water was, um, pretty, but that's about as far as I got before hitting a bit of a brick wall. (Literally. I was gazing at the sunlight-on-water phenomenon too closely and crunched Jade against a bit of brick & mortar. Poor Jade. (Just kidding, of course.))

Anyway, so here I am, with more comments on my blog than EVER, (Thanks, by the way! You guys ROCK!), and with nothing to write about.

So, I'm writing about nothing. Oyeah. And sunlight. And accidents with my beloved vehicle that never took place. Sooooooo.....................................

There ya go. Um. Bye. I'm going to go.....do................things......................................

Because of Twilight

I've discovered why I don't cry much anymore, and it's not the reason I thought it was.

I thought that maybe I'd grown stronger over the past couple of years, or that perhaps there were fewer things to cry about now than there were before, or even that I was too distracted by other stuff to cry much.

But it's not true.

I rarely cry now because I'm rarely in twilight. At my house (read: "my parents' house") there's always an abundance of light. When I wake up in the morning (at an admittedly late 7:40 or so) there's already sunshine streaming through the windows. However, I've lived here long enough to know that even if I got up earlier (say, at 5:30, heaven forbid), there would already be people up and doing busy things, who have gotten up long before me and left a trail of upturned light switches in their wake from which an astute tracker could trace their steps from their bedroom to the kitchen.

At night, things are the same. As soon as dusk starts to settle in, (earlier on cloudy days like today), some family member or another goes through the house and shuts blinds and turns on lights, moving the house in one instant from the bright garishness of daylight to the bright garishness of well-lit evenings.

I remember that when I lived away from home I was often the only one home during the twilight hours. Either I would (rarely) get up early to (rarely) go walking, or I would sit in the early evening, watching the daylight mix with night, turning the sky a rich bluish-grey, filling me with wonder.

Forgive me. I know this is cheesy and clumsily said, but as I've tried to describe before, there's something in me that loves to pause at things, that likes to take significance from insignificant events. It may be a failing, but there's something in me that loves dark things, or transitions, or...I don't even know how to describe it. I can feel it here, burning in my chest as I type, and I can't put a name to it. I look out our library window and see the way the clouds hide the city lights below from the faintly glowing evening sky, and this thing that's in me longs for something I can't say, because I don't have the words.

I think that if I were a time of day, I would be twilight...(or at least I would want to be twilight. I'd probably end up being some boring time, like 3am, when nothing happens.)

But I've digressed, rather more than usual. I guess my point is that I miss twilight. And while crying is mostly an indicator that you're sad, still, I miss doing it. I miss connecting with my emotions like that--letting them out, when there's only a little light, and no-one else around, when the world is silent, and it's just you and your tears, and your pain, all confronting each other...and being resolved in some way that my current pains are not being resolved now.

It's strange that I could miss times like this when I used to hurt so much, but I think I really miss the quiet that comes after the twilight weeping. It's a quiet in which God resides. And I miss that terribly.

Could it BE? A sign of LIFE?

I have lived with an African violet plant for some time, ever since my roommate Kim (Hi, Kim!) gave me a cutting from her own African violet. However, in all that time, in all that watering, in all that sticking as near a window as I could manage, in all that squeezing old dead leaves off with my bare fingers, the African violet never bloomed for me.

Nay, not once.

But, times are changing, and the African violet is at last putting forth signs of life. (Well, at least a more colorful sign of life than the monotonous green it's been sporting for the last several years.)

Here is photographic evidence of my claims:



And, if you're looking for more evidence, (you evidence-greedy individual), check THIS little baby out:



Awwwww. So cute.

And, um...I think that's it for my post. I really don't have anything more to say.

Except that plants rock. Yeah. That's it.

Historic Trees and Job Hunting

Well, it's official. I'm in the market. I'm looking for a new gig, a new place to hang my hat, a new way of lookin' at life. (Is that a song? If not, it should be. Someone get me a producer.)

In short, I am looking for a new job.

And, I really hope to heaven that my casual mention of this blog many months ago to my current coworkers went largely unnoticed by them, or I'll be apt to find a cold reception to my arrival at work tomorrow morning. But, it would actually really surprise me if they paid much attention to my blog, other than glancing politely at it when I said to them, "Hey, I have a blog. Go to this website and see." So they did, and they saw, never to return again.

It's not that I don't want my coworkers to read my blog, it's just that I don't really want to make them aware at this time that I'm looking for new employment.

Wow. "Looking for new employment." That sounds kinda harsh, like I'm doing something because I feel that the job I'm at now is somehow beneath me, which it isn't. Not really. In fact, there are quite a few aspects of my job that I find extremely enjoyable. The management is wonderful, my boss is a wonderful woman, and my coworkers are, without exception, amiable, kind and patient.

However, I just ain't getting paid enough.

So now I sound like a mercenary.

But the truth is, I need to move on, and thanks to some heart-to-heart conversations with (and wonderful counsel from) my bishop & my parents, I'm feeling a little more focused & driven than I have in the last few months. Of course, that's not saying much. What it is saying, I suppose, is that I spent a good 45 minutes today lying on my back, searching jobsites on my laptop. (Not really a go-get-'em type of picture, is it.) Oh, yes. And I have a hand-written to-do list tacked up on my wall next to my bedroom door just to remind me to do stuff. And actually, that 45-minute job-searching crosses of #2 quite nicely.

Do you ever get the feeling that you fill up most of your time with grown-up busywork? I do a lot of marginally-necessary things to make myself feel good about at least doing something, while still neglecting doing the wholly necessary things--the things that haven't even made it to my list yet, because I'm still so afraid of them.

But, maybe I do really just need to do baby steps at the moment. (I think I've mentioned those before.) I think my usual problem though is that I get so caught up in the baby steps that I fail to realize that I'm baby steppin' in a circle. Or over a cliff. Or into some doggy doo-doo. (Sorry, that was juvenile of me. *Muffles a giggle*)

In any case, at least I'm stepping again. And, I promise to keep my eyes open enough to avoid the crap on the street.

Oh! And about historic trees? Well, go here: http://www.utahcountyonline.org/CoInfo/Tree.asp. I never knew Utah County had an historic tree, but I do now. It makes me proud to be a citizen of this great valley.

I think I'm in love

I've never considered myself much of an opera buff. Not to say that I don't like opera per se, and I'm a little familiar with the more commonly performed works like Madame Butterfly, La Boheme, and The Magic Flute (which I just saw performed this last Friday with my family--woohoo!).

So, I was kind of surprised to find myself falling for a popular opera singer. Go figure. Maybe it's just that time in my life. You know, the fall-in-love-with-a-popular-opera-singer stage, which follows right after the eat-clam-chowder-from-a-can stage. (Man, am I glad I'm over that one.)

In any case, this falling-in-love-ness happened to me suddenly, as I was driving up to my sister's house (which takes about an hour). I was listening to "The Record Shelf," a radio program on the local classical music station, and the host of the show, Jim Svejda, was interviewing a rising opera star, Rolando Villazon. (Haha! I just got it! "Rising?" "Star?" It's totally like a star in the sky, and it rises, and......oh, nevermind.)

So, anyway, Rolando's voice was heavenly. And, when they interviewed him, he was passionate about his music, and funny, and wry, and he had this cool spanish accent. And hey, when it comes down to it, what more do you need to fall in love with someone you've never met? (Heck, the accent by itself probably would've done it.)

So, I believe I'll spend at least the next few weeks pining over Rolando. I doubt it'll last too long...after all, I've never even met the man, for heaven's sake. But, it'll be pleasant while it lasts. Maybe I'll even buy a CD of his. If I feel committed enough to the relationship.

Move over, doggie rescue and sarcastic-yet-brilliant doctors--Gilmore Girls is IT.

Anyone who has read this blog in the past has no doubt come accross my rather too frequent references to Animal Planet. And, although I haven't really talked about it much, I'm also a closet 'House' fan. (It's, er, a little edgy, which is probably why I watch it from the safety of my closet.)

But lately, my TV watching preference has been skewing sharply to the mother-daughter witty repartee of Gilmore Girls. I'm not sure what it is about this show--maybe it's just that Rory & her mom Lorelei have such an obvious best-friend sort of affection for each other, or maybe it's the maybe, maybe-not sort of relationship Lorelei has with the local diner owner. Or, it could be the juxtapostion of the afore-mentioned great relationship between Lorelei and her daughter, next to the really cruddy relationship between Lorelei and her mother Emily.

But I don't think those are the main reasons I like the show.

I like it because the conversations on "The Gilmore Girls" are as snappy as they come. They always have these wonderfully glittery, witty lines that bounce back & forth like a skilled game of (oh, this is such an obvious comparison) tennis. Or maybe volleyball. Except that you play volleyball with a team, and tennis is usually just one-on-one, unless you play in pairs, in which case it would be two-on-two, so tennis would probably be the better comparison. But, long story (or post) short, they have the kinds of conversations I would like to have if I were witty and intelligent, and rather full of good humor. (And also pretty. Those Gilmore Girls are so darn pretty. Sigh. I just want to be like them so much.)

Which is I guess where I'm going with this. I wish that I could have conversations like Lorelei and Rory have. I wish that my brain could come up with fun verbal bouncy-balls that I could send over into the other court, which would then be bounced back, and I'd have to bounce something back again, which, now that I think about it, could get pretty tiring. I mean, I guess people can't really talk like that in real life. Our brains have to pause to process things like what someone just said to us, rather than spend all their waking moments trying to come up with brilliant things to say.

It doesn't matter. I still wish I were a Gilmore Girl. Ah. To be on the WB. Siiiigh.

Death & Healing

About a week and a half ago, a young man in my ward died of a drug overdose. He was 23, and had apparently been struggling with drugs for some time, although he'd been clean for the last 6 months or so. Before Wednesday.

I attended his funeral this past Tuesday morning--the bishop of my ward asked me to conduct the music, since I do that for church on Sundays--and, by the time the funeral was over, I was really grateful for the chance I had to listen in on what this young man's siblings & dad had to say about him, about his struggle, and about what the future holds for him.

Despite the difficult & painful circumstances surrounding his death, (surrounding any death, I suppose), I don't think I have ever heard more heartfelt & poignant testimony of the healing power of the atonement. The testimony of the young man's father was especially strong--he spoke for some time about the overall plan of salvation, addressing his grandchildren in the audience in simple yet powerful words. He expressed the knowledge that his son is now safe, free from the trials & temptations that he struggled with during his life.

I was profoundly moved, and changed, just a little bit by attending that funeral. And, even now, though my regular life has since intruded & erased all but a portion of the spirit of the meeting, still that portion remains, and I find that I myself can put just a little bit more trust in my Savior, and in the all-encompassing power of the atonement.

Of Calendars & Vegetable Gardens

Calendars lie. You may not be aware of this, focusing as you do on the innocent-looking pictures hanging beguilingly above the inflexible square lines of dates & weeks. You see, calendars, when you look at them, encourage you to move your eye upwards, to gaze at the beautiful picture above where the real information rests. For instance, I have two calendars in my room. If I were a sensible person, and prone to be on-time & logical, I would have 2 calendars because, when I'm on one side of the room, I may not be able to read the dates on the calendar haning on the other side of the room. Or, I could keep one calendar for work-related activities, and one calendar for family-related activities.

But I'm not logical, and I am definitely prone to being a wee bit late for things. (My fondness for sleeping is no doubt to blame.) And so, I did not purchase said calendars to keep track of my dentist appointments, or when the next work party is coming up. No. I purchased my two calendars for the pictures, pure & simple. On one calendar, there's a bunch of artwork involving dragons in some way. (Forgive me. I just like dragons.) On the other, there's artwork done by Kinuko Y. Craft, who does the most exquisite work for book covers, among other things.

Where was I going with this? Oh yes. Calendars lie.

My point is that despite the differences in the things depicted in the artwork in both calendars, they both tell the same lie. The month, right there at the top of all of those hard perpendicular lines reads, as clear as day, "March."

Now, I ask you: does March involve wildly fluctuating temperatures, ranging from 60 degrees one day down to 22 degress the next? Does March involve starting out with warm winds & green things & not three days later having 2 feet of snow fall in a single afternoon? Does March give us hope for spring and the continuance of life and just as suddenly snatch it away? Does it???

Oh.

Well, I guess it does.

At least here. Where I live. In this place where March is both warm and cold.

So, how do vegetable gardens come into this, you may ask. (And if so, should I have included a question mark in the last sentence?) They don't really come in much--only that despite the warming & colding & raining & snowing we've had here lately, our little vegetable garden patch in the backyard still has an unvarying 6 inches of snow covering up the remnants of last year's forgotten & squashed tomatoes & peapods. I know. I walked out there on Sunday. And boy, were my feet cold.

So, it's still chilly here. Despite the tantalizing tastes of warmer weather our fickle environment has been throwing at us. (Darn the thing.) And while I'm tired, so tired, of all this winter, still there's a sense of beauty that still breaks through my anti-cold sensibilities as I watch the setting sun cast light & shadows across the snow-covered mountains, turning them from pale yellow to bright orange, to pink, and then to grey. And of course, since there's a gibbous moon tonight, there will be the best thing of all: moonlight on snow.

Not even if my life depended on it.

I'm terrible at explaining things. Well actually, 'hopeless' is rather a better word for it, or maybe 'wretched,' or 'defective.' Okay, maybe not 'defective,' but still, it's a pretty darn bad situation.

That's why I'm standing here in front of this firing squad, actually.

Somebody asked me to explain exactly how you go about adding on to an order that has been sent down to shipping, boxed up & put into the UPS computer without having the shipping department hunt you down and pummel you in a dark alley. And, I said, "You know, you really don't want me to explain that to you. I'm terrible at explaining. Defective even. (Well, maybe not defective.) I probably couldn't explain it to you even if my life depended on it." Which it didn't of course, not at that point.

But the truth is that the avoidance of explaining something is actually considered a crime in the small homey city where I work, and, to my chagrin, the person that I refused to explain the, er, above situation to, happened to be an undercover cop working to root out the explainingophobes among us, of which I, apparently, am one. *Reels from the dizziness of that last sentence*

So, here I stand, cigarette clenched firmly in my teeth. (I didn't ask for it. They just kind of stuck it there.)

Of course, I tried to explain to the police, and the jury, and the judge, that the reason why I didn't want to explain the tricky late add-on procedure was that I was really, really bad at explaining stuff, but of course, I couldn't really get them to see my point of view. As a matter of fact, by the time I was done with my explanation, I had so wrapped myself up in verbal mishmash that I had a hard time seeing my point of view myself.

I've decided I don't like the taste of cigarettes. Fortunately, the unnecessarily tight binding of my wrists together does not preclude me from spitting this cigarette as far from me as possible. Ah. If only I could spit myself away from those steely-eyed young men who face me & stare me down as though they had the power of life & death over me. Er, well... I suppose they do.

So, Why, you may ask, and ask it rightly. Why does she have to suffer capital punishment, by firing squad, no less, for the simple crime of refusing to explain something to somebody else? And who came up with that law, anyway?!? It's a stupid law. I've never heard of a law like that before in all my days. I just don't know what this world is coming to...

Well, the truth is, I would try to outline the reasons for you, but as I've mentioned before, I'm

*BANG*

(Pam, I'll get to calendars next post. That is, er, if I can staunch the bleeding...)

Some of you may be wondering...

I already know I'm going to hate myself in the morning for doing this. I'm supposed to be up at my sister's house in West Jordan by 9:00am tomorrow morning, so with prep time & drive time, I'll need to be up by about 6:30. On a Saturday. (I believe this may be a crime in some countries.)

But, I wanted to take a moment to explain to you, my faithful readers, why exactly I keep posting pictures of flowers in my blog. You probably already noticed, but I threw another one in, by the way. This one I played with a little. Using The Gimp. (Hurrah for free software!)

Okay. So, you really shouldn't be wondering too hard about this one. I mean, there's no deep philosophical reason why I keep uploading pictures of flowers. The truth is, I just have a lot of flower pictures that I like. And, I think that a blog that consists entirely of text is really boring. And also, I feel that it would be dangerous to post too many pics of people. Particularly if I also list their names. And birthdates. And social security numbers.

These are bad ideas in a blog.

So, back to pictures.

Last summer, actually...it was late summer, I finally decided to take my (then) new digital camera on a whirlwind morning excursion that consisted of Beth-figuring-out-how-to-take-reasonably-okay-pictures type of activites. Which excursion was relatively successful. Successful because I got some seriously not-so-bad pictures of flowers, (I found out that my camera has a really, really nice very-close-up type of shooting mode), and relatively because all of the landscape shots I tried to take invariably turned out awful.

I may post some later to prove it.

But, I do have some nice flower pics to show for the day, and I like them well enough to post them here, to liven up my blog a little. Because, if you didn't have the flowers to distract your attention while reading my ramblings, you would invariable notice all the horrible writing that comes out of my keyboard. Which, once you're duly hypnotized by said flowers, suddenly looks remarkably like good writing.

Kind of like a druk person not noticing that the guy he's trying to pick a fight with is 6'10" and weighs 300+ pounds.

Well. At least I'm doing it in self defense. So there.

A Personal History of Valentine's Day

It used to be that when a day like Valentine's Day rolled around (i.e. a day that wallowed in its own gooey ickiness) I used to wallow myself. Usually in a dark room, listening to some sort of depressing music.

Usually I'd spend nights like that remembering, or not remembering, as the mood struck me. But, more often than not, if I remembered, I would remember in a litany--a rosary prayer running through all the lost loves of my life.

I'd start in kindergarten, with that blond-haired firstgrader that I wrote an "I love you" note to, move rapidly through junior high & into the high school years...Travis from seminary, Matt, Dan (Dan I would spend some time on), Jason... It was a litany of loss, it was me focusing on pain, on what I didn't have.

It's strange, but I don't seem to do that anymore. It's not that I've suddenly gained the things that I longed for then--I haven't. I'm still single, and rather overwhelmingly likely to remain so for some time. I don't even think I'm necessarily happier than I was then. I really spend no time at all wandering around in a rosey cloud of joy.

I wonder if I'm just better at distracting myself now. I have easy access to the tv, a laptop with high-speed internet, and my own little mini library to lose myself in. Whenever I feel a spout of pain coming on, do I switch on my computer? Watch an amusing but rather soulless flash cartoon? Grab the latest escapist novel I've purchased from Amazon?

Or maybe, I just don't allow myself to grieve anymore. I'm embarrassed when I'm miserable, as if I don't have any right to be unhappy--as if I know better. And maybe I do. Maybe I realize that, as lonely and unfulfilled as life can be, I'm still okay. I'm way better off than the child in India who works all day in a sweat-shop and comes home at night to a mat in the street. I'm better off than the girl who lives her life at the end of a needle, or under the bottom of a shot glass.

I guess the answer is, I don't know. I think it's a mixture of all of the above. Fill in the bubble for answer "D." Or maybe "E" for 'unknown.' (Man, I've taken too many standardized tests.) I suppose I'm only writing about this because I'm kind of amazed to find myself here, on Valentine's Day, still sitting upright in a relatively well-lit room, eyes & cheeks completely dry, and the only music playing in the background the soundtrack to some tv show my sister's watching in the kitchen. I don't even think I've eaten chocolate today...

And that, more than anything else, really shows me how much I've changed.

No, I'm not, actually.

Um, just so you guys know, (yes, all of you who are currently crouching in the corners of your room, shivering with fear, wondering what horrible self-truths I will reveal in this blog), I'm not depressed.

I don't know if you thought that I was, but I suspect that it may have crossed some of your minds, but I want you to know that you're wrong.

I'm not depressed.

I'm actually quite content. Well, content is perhaps too strong a word. But I am reasonably accustomed to my life, and to its challenges, and really, in mortality, isn't that the most we can ask for? So, I'm not depressed.

Let's all say it together: "I'm not depressed." Er, except, you should say, "She's not depressed," and I'll say, "I'm not depressed," except that we'll all say it at the same time so that it sounds like a jumble of "I'masetshesstnotttdepressedsteChristopherColumbus."

Good. Now you don't have to be afraid to post a comment anymore.

So What's Real Anyway?

The funny thing with being depressed is that you feel like, finally, you're facing things as they really are. (Or not facing them, as the case may be.) You've come to the realization that life really does stink--tremendously--and that the reality of existence is pain.

While depression doesn't usually last that long, when you're on the opposite end of things, (i.e. you're happy), you still have this niggling feeling underneath the surface that you're not really looking life full in the face, that you're brushing over the negative aspects of life just so you can get through the day. Maybe there's even some truth to that. Maybe being happy isn't so much seeing the positive things in life as it is ignoring the negative things in life... At least, maybe that's the happiness that most people have.

However, I don't think that this is the way that God is happy. (And Pam, I know we kind of did this conversation in email a few weeks back--I'm just rehashing it here. Hope you don't mind.)

God is happy in the face of all misery and all joy. Sometimes I wonder how that's possible. Maybe it's because that, while he sees all the sorrow & suffering & sin that exist on the earth, he also recognizes & revels with us in our joy, and in our goodness. Or maybe it's something more than that. I know He feels sorrow too, but I wonder if it's that eternal perspective He has, that He can really see that good does outweigh evil, that it really is triumphant in the end.

Bother. I really shouldn't be trying to philosophize at 10:30 at night, especially when I have a headache, and I don't even know why I'm writing about this, except that I was thinking about this today, and I wanted to put my thoughts out there, where you guys read it. Thanks, as always, for taking a moment to read my meanderings.

An early "Happy Groundhog Day" to you too!

Okay--this post is just for fun. As my family sat together this past Monday during FHE, my mom mentioned that my brother Peter's "Hump Day" (or half-way mark to you uninitiated) for his mission was February 2nd (tomorrow). So, as part of our family discussion, we decided to send him a little something to commemorate.

Attached is what we did. (Well, I did the drawing, and my mom wrote the words. Yep.)

So, it's not deep, and it's not profound, and it certainly won't change your life for the better, but I hope you enjoy the pic at least a little.

(By the way, I think if you click on the image, it'll make it larger, so you'll be able to see the fine details of this near-masterpiece.)

Er. Yah. Hope you likes it.

Step on, Baby.

So, remember that really teeny tiny step I talked about a couple of posts ago? Yeah. I just took another really teeny tiny step. Well, this one was slightly bigger. But it was still a baby step.

I guess I'm steppin' out in style then...Baby Style, stepping things up, stepping up to the plate, taking a step in the right direction...er, I can't think of more 'step' phrases right now...

BUT, I'm very glad. Glad that I have at least the sense now of a forward direction, even though I'm still going much more slowly than I feel I should.

Anyway--enough with the vague stepping references. Methinks my future posts will need to be a bit more definite. Yah. That is, if I can remember how to do that...