Missing Manic Monday

It's a blog revival, apparently.  I find myself missing my old schedule of posts.  I always knew what I would be posting on certain days and that's a good thing for a blogger like me.  I need that.

Mondays used to be my favorite.  There was a guy named Mo who made up a meme called Manic Monday.  For this meme, Mo would choose a random word every Monday and then everyone who played would write whatever they wanted that included that random word.

I am missing this every Monday, not only because I haven't been blogging, but because Mo stopped doing his meme.  His heart wasn't in it anymore, which I can certainly relate to.  I now have no Manic Monday to turn to.  :(

So, I've decided that I'll just pick my own random word for the Mondays that I blog.  I'll aim for getting something regular going, but this blog revival might be a slowish process, or maybe I'm just going to jump right in and blog a lot like the old days??.... who knows.

Anyway, I am using  a random word generator website, so I won't try to cheat.

And today's random word is

LAG



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I remember walking to school as a kid with my little sister.  We were often late in getting out the door so we would be in a hurry as we walked.  (ME late?  Yes, I know it's shocking to imagine, but I am late sometimes in my life)  My dear, sweet Lacy was a dilly-dallying kind of girl sometimes (a lot of times) and she just didn't seem to feel the stress I did about getting to school on time.  Lacy would often lag behind a little and drag her feet stating that she was too tired to hurry. 

Like any good big sister, if she lagged behind I simply punched her in the face.

Just kidding.

When my cute little Lacy would lag (Clancy likes alliteration), I would make up games to try to get her to hurry, because, let's face it, getting mad at her just made her mad back and that would make her move even slower.

Two games are prominent in my memory.  One, I would tell her to RUN!  She didn't like that very much so I would tell her I'd pull her for a minute and then she could pull me for a minute.  Really what we'd do is hold hands and I would pull her foward in a run and when she reached the length of our holding hands arm span she would pull me forward, running all the while.  Then I'd pull her again and she'd pull me and we'd run in that disjointed fashion and make it there faster.

The second game I really remember well was so silly.  I'm just embarrassed to even write it.  In our tardy moments, I tell Lacy to pretend that Dr. Harding, our principal, was the king of our school and Pat, the secretary, was the queen.  If we got there after the bell then we, the lowly servants, would be punished for our crime and get our heads chopped off.  She knew it was pretend, but it always made us hurry just a little faster.

And that's it for today's Missing Manic Monday post... for now... I'm literally falling asleep as I type.  Maybe I'll add more to the post later, or maybe I'll be correcting the typos I've missed while editing.  Just now, as I woke with a jerk sitting up in my computer chair, I was having a dream about laying sandstone rocks on our new patio instead of editing this post.  Pretty soon I'll be drooling.

So, forgive the mistakes.  I'll make it right later.  Or not.

From The Jar... #39

Two weeks in a row!? The Jar is happier. But I don't feel like taking the time snap a picture of his happy face.

And the Jar says...


Tell about a special date you had with a boyfriend.


Nothing's jumping out at me as super "special", but I can think of some that were really fun! The night Dustin proposed to me was special I guess, but it was mostly just fun with a splash of special at the end. It was a Monday and we had "Family Home Evening" with our Singles Ward at the funky, local roller skating rink. I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I LOVE rollerblading, and so does Dustin. We like to go FAST... I love the speed, making my hair blow, cooling me off. Anyway, we zoomed around the rink and had "dances" and played limbo on blades. (Limbo is a very interesting game on rollerblades! I think I got second or third place. Go me!) It was just fun and I remember laughing a lot. I think we went to eat afterward.

(Suddenly I'm having Deja Vu... haven't I blogged about this before? Oh well...)

Here's the splash of specialness... After we (I think!) ate, Dustin took me up on a mountainside in the bitter February wind and proposed to me. That was special, even though I didn't say yes for another 6 days. (evil girl)

Another really fun date was in high school. It was a school dance and the boy I took was not my boyfriend but it was one of the most memorable dates I've had. So, yeah, girls' choice dance. I took Cody Baily. He was darned cute, so we thought. Matching shirts and all that. For dinner, we got Chinese take-out and went to Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. This park has a pond where you can rent canoes or paddle boats. It was early enough in the year that the boat rides were only open on Saturdays and this was a Friday night, but I had an "in" with the owner. I worked for her AND she was my sister's boyfriend's (now husband) mother! So, I got us all hooked up. Josh and Sarah came and unlocked the canoes and we paddled our little way out to the little island on the lake. We spread blankets on a pavilion and ate our Chinese goodness. We all felt so clever!

Then we went to the dance for a minute, got our silly pictures taken, and went on a scare-fest. We visited every freaky place we could think of in Salt Lake. The Salt Lake City Cemetery, the lime kilns, the Hippity Hoppity Lady, and we even sneaked into our church building which was very old and scary, especially at night, in the dark. After being thouroughly freaked out, we took our dates home. I seem to recall the boys saying that was the funnest date they had ever been on. I felt the same way.

Manic Monday: Shine

Today for our Manic Monday fun we have the word shine. Shine brings to mind my high school years. A few of which I dated the lead singer/guitarist of a freakin' awesome high school band known by the name of Clouded Vision. Me and my two best pals Beth and Erin liked to say we were roadies as we'd help haul equipment, set up the drum kit, run cords, pretend to help with sound checks, etc., but in truth we were just glorified groupies. We felt hella cool, regardless of what you called us.

Stashed in some box somewhere are several mementos from those days which, to my embarrassment, I still have. A cracked drumstick that I made the drummer, Matt Orchard, sign for me. He signed it, 'Orch the Torch'. A high school newspaper with Clouded Vision on the cover. (they won the battle of the bands and THAT was a good day to be the lead singer's girlfriend!) A broken guitar pick that my boyfriend tossed aside. Not to mention a list, written in his hand, of the lineup of songs they would be playing during one of their "gigs". One of my favorites on that list was Shine by Collective Soul.

For your listening enjoyment, I was going to embed Collective Soul's music video of Shine, compliments of YouTube, but thanks to someone's "request", embedding has been disabled and I can only give you the link. If you wish to hear this song that brings back so many memories for me, you can click here. If not, that's fine. Just know this... I was once a groupie of a high school band and I loved every minute of it.

Manic Monday: Bird

There was a boy who lived down the street from me when I was growing up. His name was Ian. He was the oldest of 6 children (and he himself was only 8 or 9), only two of which had the same father. He had a hard life for one so young. My older sister and I both babysat these kids on occasion and we both have horrendous stories about our experiences.

So, Ian. Ian was a skinny, short kid with a shunt in his head from a brain tumor when he was young. (his story just seems to get worse, yeah?) He terrorized kids his age, i.e. my brother, Taylor, not to mention many of the adults on the street. I remember Taylor telling me about the time that Ian peed in a pitcher, added some water and ice to it, and brought it to my neighbor and offered it as an apology for some previous rotten behavior. He told her that he'd made some lemonade for her. I don't know if she drank it or not, but these are the kinds of things this child would do.

Ian loved to swear. He would walk around cursing his little head off and flipping the "bird". I tell this story because I have the image of Ian flipping the bird while I, and anyone else who happened to be around, stifled laughter. You see, Ian thought he had it all figured out. He loved to shock people with the naughty things he knew. But he had missed something in the lessons he took on giving the finger. He would come up to you with his face all screwed up in a sneer holding out his hand threateningly with one finger extended above the others... but it was his pointer finger rather than the tall middle finger. No one ever told him his mistake. I just remember feeling relieved that my little brother couldn't learn that particular trick from Ian.

As I sit here and type this, I wonder at the cultural significance of flipping the bird. For years Ian thought he was doing something really mean, which, in actuality, was comical to those around him. Just the difference of one measly little finger shifted the situation from offensive to laughable. I have a lot of thoughts on this, none of which I'm articulating very well, but it's given me something to think about.

I've wondered, off an on through my adult life, what happened to this family. I thought of Ian and his siblings as Devil Spawn when I was young, but I have a different perspective with passing years. I see now that they were shaped, in large, due to their rough circumstances and family dynamic. I feel compassion, where I once felt judgment and irritation. I hope those kids learn that they can overcome their past. They are not doomed to repeat it. Like everything, it comes down to choice.

From The Jar... #34

I'm in a hurry... imagine that I took the time to put the picture of the jar right here, ok? Thanks.

And the Jar says...



Describe your first crush.


Seriously? My first one? I don't know who my first crush was. My youth was so full of crushes, it's a miracle I survived. Incidentally, why do we call them crushes? Does anyone know? I was trying to come up with something quippy about how, with all my crushes, it's amazing that I didn't exit my teenage years flat as a pancake. You get it? Crushes... flattening me? (oh wait... I actually AM flat as a pancake and I left my teenage years married!) As you can see, all the quips fell very, well, FLAT. (Ooohhh. I really need to stop now. Can you tell I started this post late?)

So, yeah... crushes. Ummm... I had a crush on a boy named Sean McKeown in first grade. It was a mild crush. I remember no details about it except that I would chase him at recess and pretend to try to kiss him.

A more vivid crush was on a boy named Zach Cottrell. My best friend and I BOTH thought he was the BOMB-DIGGETY! We went to church with him and I was SOOOO in LOVE! (I think i was in third grade... true love, right?) Once at a neighborhood party I somehow ended up as a target and I was chased by Zach, and a bunch of other kids that he recruited, all over several streets for, what felt like, hours. I secretly loved it and remember feeling like I was the world's fastest runner. I can't remember whether or not I was caught.

I would never want to go back to those years, but I remember how fun it was to develop a new crush. That fluttery feeling... I wonder if my children have that yet? Mac is as old as I was when Zach Cottrell was chasing me around the block party, and Ella is the same age as I during the Sean McKeown crush days. The thought of my children with heart flutters is one part adorable, three parts freaky! I hope I'm up for it, because, ready or not, here it comes!

From The Jar... #28

Dude. I've only done 27 of these babies and I'm pretty sure the Jar holds 365 (or did when I started). I hope your in for it for the long haul cuz if I do these every week, correct me if I'm wrong, I'll be doing Wednesday Jar posts for seven years! Holy crap! I thought it was three for some reason. I'll be thirty-seven years old when I finish them! Mac will be fifteen, Ella will be thirteen and Rohan will be ten! Long haul indeed. I hope I'm in it for the long haul! Do you think I'll really have enough stuff to blog about for seven years, I mean aside from on Wednesdays? AHHHH!! I have to stop thinking about this now. It's hurting my brain. (did I mention SEVEN years? Dustin will be forty-two!!!!!!!!)

And the Jar says...


Did you go camping? Tell about experiences doing it.


Did I go camping? Ha! We were campers to the max! Well, maybe not the max... but we did it alot. I LOVED camping! I still love it, in fact, but I've found out that camping as a mom makes you a little more tired and grouchy than camping as a kid did.

We had this big tent... remember there were five of us kids. My dad called it "The Tent of Many Poles" and there were always swear words heard while trying to get this particular tent up. There were two main sets of poles that held up the very tall roof of this tent. These sets of poles would always come apart as you were trying to get it all looped in the right places. Finally, after several years of this silliness, my genius parents bought bungee cord and bungeed them all together. The swear words decreased significantly when this idea was brought to pass.

My mom was the coolest camper-mom ever. She had (still has, I think) a book called Roughing It Easy wherein you could read about numerous ways to camp, build fires, cook in non-traditional ways, food, recipes and a zillion other things to do with camping. This book had all these great cooking ideas... eggs cooked in a brown paper sack over the campfire, ash cakes (dough thrown on the ashes and cooked on them), a tin foil cookstove heated by the sun or the fire or something... details are vauge on some things, but the memory is clear about how cool my mom was and how fun it was to try all these neat things.

As soon as we arrived at our campsite, my dad would send us out in search of "Red". If you don't know what "Red" is when you're camping, I'll tell you. Red occurs on a pine tree when part or all of it has died and the needles are all crispy and have turned red instead of green. It's the best firestarter ever. It was always the coolest to go hunting for Red. I remember seeing huge trees where the top was covered in Red and I would wish so bad that I could get to it and bring it to my dad. I always hoped to find the big cache and be the "Red" hero for the trip. To this day, when I drive through a canyon, I find myself seeking out Red. The best Red is always at the top of those huge, unreachable trees. *Sigh*

My mom would make all sorts of awesome food. We kids would play non-stop. My memories of camping hold some of the most imaginative times of my childhood. My brothers and sisters and I would explore, pretend, laugh and sing. We were Red Sonja and Kalidor with our swords which were large sticks. We were hikers who got "lost" and would call for help. We would play in creeks with sticks, leaves, and rocks. We kids, camping above Flaming Gorge, UT. This happens to be the very trip we played Red Sonja on.

My dad would sometimes bring his guitar and we'd sing around the campfire. Camping was elation in a bottle, or in a forest or desert as the case may be. My heart was always sad when it was time to leave and I always had a raging headache on the drive home. Still get that headache, in fact. Weird.

I always remember the phenomenon of campsite arrival. You get there and it doesn't look any different from the rest of the landscape, but as you pitch your tent, park your car, get all the coolers out all over the place, and set up camp the space begins to take shape and significance. It becomes familiar. It becomes home for those few days. I always marvel at this. I always look back at the site as we're leaving and remember just a day or two or three before when it all looked so foreign to me. As I'd watch it shrink out of sight I felt like I left a piece of my heart there in the forest because, for those few days, that was my home and I loved it.

Big Cottonwood Canyon, Hoop Lake, Flaming Gorge, Bear Lake area, Dillon Colorado, The Uintah Mountains, City of Rocks, Canyonlands, Moab, Lake Powell, Yellowstone, the Teton area and so many other sites that were before my awareness of our destination. I have been to some great places. It sounds cheesy, but my favorite place could be any of them, as long as I was with my family.

From The Jar... #27

Last night (Tuesday night) we had a grand time at my parents house helping them decorate their tree. It was lovely and the kids were in heaven. No wait, it was I who was in heaven. OK, we were all in heaven... my celestial experience was listening to my kids' exuberant exclamations as they pulled out each of my mom's fun ornaments. (and she has ALOT of them!) I would hear, from the other room, Rohan saying "Wuk, MAC! Wuk at dis widdle house!!!" and then Ella, "OHHHH, Grandma! I LOVE this one!! It's so pretty!" Tender feelings exuded from my weary-of-being-a-single-mom-on-the-weekdays heart. I really do love my kids. Even if I say the words "BE NICE, PLEASE" eight-hundred and fifty-two-thousand times per day. Do you think if I recorded myself saying that and played it subliminally in their sleep that they actually would be nice to eachother? Hmm...

And the Jar says...


Do you remember any special feelings you had as a child? Fears, fantasies, etc.


Uhhh.... well, let's see. I wouldn't call fears "special", but I remember I was terrified of rats. I had never even seen one, but I had dreams about them all the time. A recurring dream, in fact....

I was trapped among a sea of rats on a couch on a random porch and I knew if I got down I would get rabies from one of them rubbing their noses on me. Yes, in my dream, you contracted rabies from a rat's Eskimo kiss. They all left me alone, except the king rat spotted me and came running toward me. He had an extra long nose with a ball on the end of it... like the top of a clown hat.
Ya. Like that. Anyway, he zeroed in on me and ran up and rubbed his rabies transmitter of a nose on my leg. I always woke up screaming from that dream. I was only about 5 years old. There was also an alley up a block from us where someone (probably my evil older brother or sister) told me the rats lived. They scratched up a telephone pole in that alley and lived in a scary garage. I wouldn't go into that alley. Ever. I would run past the opening of it when I had to walk that way.

I was also terrified of the husks that locusts would leave on the trees around my Grandma's house in Houston. They have little grippy things on their legs and my [evil] brother and sister would put them all over their shirts and chase me and throw them at me. I'm pretty sure I'm still scarred from it. ;)

Fantasies as a child... hmmm. Any room I walked into I would imagine myself standing on the wall, parallel with the floor and jumping off of the wall and doing handsprings over and over until I could go through the window on the opposite wall feet first. I still do this in rooms to this day, but not every room and just when I get bored.

I also remember babysitting kids as a pre-teen (12 or so) and pretending they were mine and that my husband would be gone somewhere and I would kiss him when he walked in the door upon his return and my life would be like a scene from Leave It to Beaver.

I remember putting on concerts for my little friends when I was about 5 or 6. I would stand on the stage and they would request songs and I'd sing them. I liked to pretend that I was a real singer on a real stage, and I was famous, and pretty, and grown up.

I remember being Red Sonja with my big sword (stick) when we were camping. I would swing it with vigor and kill all the enemies (little dead sticks on dead, beetle-killed pine trees). That was a fantasy I shared with my siblings.

I remember imagining if I died and wondering if people would really miss me. I wondered what they would say at my funeral. I wondered if I could watch from heaven and see their tears and feel important and loved.

I remember very special feelings when I would turn off all the lights, turn on my family's definitive Christmas CD, The Gift, and listen while I stared at the magic of our Christmas tree. And if the tree was in a certain spot, I would sit by the heater while I basked in the warm glow. I remember thinking that life couldn't get any better.

But, it has.

From The Jar... #25

I've been a slacker on my jar posts lately.


Tell the words of a song from your childhood and the memories it brings.


So many songs, so little time...

We were a singing family. Well, actually, we still are a singing family. I grew up with my mom teaching us all kinds of songs that we would all sing together. We sang a lot on road trips, mostly rounds. A favorite round that we sang was called Man's Life's a Vapor. The words went like this:

Man's life's a vapor, full of woes.
When he cuts a caper, down he goes.
Downy, downy, downy, downy down he goes.

It has a really fun tune and makes some really nice harmonies when sung in a round, but as a kid, I always thought this was the weirdest song. That might have something to do with how I had the words wrong til I was who knows how old... high school, maybe? Here's the words that my child-mind created:

Man's lives of aper, full of wolves.
When he cuts the caper, down he goes.
Downy, downy, downy, downy down he goes.

Ya. I had no idea what an aper was, nor any clue why this guy's life was full of wolves. I didn't know what a caper was either. I pictured it to be some sort of string that this guy cut with big scissors. And when he cut this "caper string" he fell and went down this big, clear tube.... downy, downy, downy down he goes... down the tube. The guy had a little hat and a pencil-thin mustache and a three-piece, pin-striped suit. I always thought of him like a cross between the cartoon Boris Bandenov from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, the evil and inept magician, Professor Hinkle, on the 1960's animated Frosty the Snowman and the Pink Panther. Sometimes his hat came off when he went downy, downy, down...



Weird, huh? So, that's the memories that that song bring back. Wolves, a big, clear tube, and a detective looking guy.

I just now Googled it to see if, by some chance, they would have the words to this song online. (I wanted to make sure I had the REAL words right!) I found them... apparently, this song is written from a scripture in Proverbs. This is fascinating to me that I've known this song practically my whole life and I've never known what the heck it was from. I just thought it was weird.

On a sweeter and less random note... another song from my childhood that I absolutely love and still sing to my own children is called "Old Dog Tray". This is another that we grew up singing. This one we just sang in a lovely two-part harmony. Maybe I'll get my mom to sing it with me and I'll record it for ya'll. Here are the words.

The morn of life is past,
And evening comes at last;
It brings me a dream of a once happy day,
Of merry forms I’ve seen
Upon the village green,
Sporting with my old dog Tray.

Old dog Tray’s ever faithful,
Grief cannot drive him away,
He’s gentle, he is kind;
I’ll never, never find
A better friend than old dog Tray.

This song was written by Stephen Foster back in 1853. It evokes tender feelings of nostalgia and a connection to my ancestors in the deep south. I always think of my grandmother who was born and raised in Mississippi when we sing this song.

I love that my mom and dad instilled in their children a love of music and singing. While I don't sing with my kids in the car as much as I'd like, I do sing them to sleep almost every night and I hope that is something they treasure into adulthood.

Manic Monday: Season

As I was flipping through the idea file in my brain for what to write on for the word season, my computer was flipping through pictures via my screen saver. This image surfaced on my computer:


Ella and my endlessly amazing Grandma Carol.

And this scripture surfaced in my mind:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2


I've mentioned before that my Grandma was sunshine in human form. She embodied all that is good in this world. She has been on my mind.

When we had Thanksgiving at her home, we would often arrive the night before and stay at her house. I would wake up and help her get everything ready. I would set the table, wash and peel potatoes with her, clean the house, make the Jello, make the clam dip or just keep her company as she went about her preparations. Each year she would vocalize a question wondering how she ever did this without me there to help. She would carry on about how it was much funner with me there. I know she managed just fine in my absence, but her praise bolstered my self-worth and earmarked my existence as one that was worthy and absolute.

I lived a season of my life with my incredible grandmother's direct influence and then, as they inevitably do, the seasons changed leaving a vacant hole where once had been her welcoming home and heart... the physical form of she.

I miss her so much. In her season that she filled to capacity with devotion, respect and generosity of spirit, she planted herself into the heart and soul of every person who was privy to her influence. She exuded love and acceptance to all she encountered. She smiled before she said 'hello' on the phone and you could hear her smile in every nuance of conversation. She always increased the value of anything or anyone she touched, and her love was never conditional, but unequivocal and endless.

And, as there was a season for her life, so there is a season for me to "pluck up that which is planted". She planted these gifts for me to nourish and share, a lesson taught in each memory.

If the world could only have a few more Grandma Carols in it there would be more smiles and more laughter. More joy and more acceptance. More tongue bitting and more words of encouragement. More grace and more beauty. More sunshine in human form.

I love you and miss you, Grandma. Thank you for the gift that your life was.

Manic Monday: Ghost

Be sure to visit Mo for more Manic Monday fun!


Slowly the girls walked with their dates down the winding, paved road. The swift moving creek roared somewhere off to the left. The wind blew through the trees, their few remaining leaves hanging on like a drowning man on a life preserver. Erin carried a flashlight, but left it in her pocket as the moon faintly illuminated the black pavement, creating their eerie, declining footpath.

The group huddled closer, dates linking arms as they walked. Erin asked in a hushed whisper, "Have you guys ever heard of the legend of the Hippity Hoppity Lady?" Of course, Beth and Clancy had both been here before with Erin, but they feigned ignorance. Dave, Cody and Cache replied with a nonchalant 'No', and laughed it off. They were too cool and manly to be scared, and they had dared the girls to do their worst when the night started.

Erin began, "It was a long time ago, right in this very canyon. A mother lived with her three children in a small house near the river. They were a happy little family. The children loved to play all the games kids play and they did so every day. It was a simple life filled with simple pleasures."

"One day, the mother was cooking dinner and laughing at the sound of her children's games, when she suddenly noticed that the din she was enjoying had stopped. Smiling to herself and wondering what mischief they were in now, she went outside. Her smile faded as she realized they were nowhere to be seen. Putting down her dishcloth, she walked further in the direction they usually played. She found nothing. No sound of footsteps. No laughing. No children jumping out to say "Boo!". Not even a footprint to mark where they had run. She started calling their names. 'Eliza! Allen! James!! Where are you? Answer me!!!' Nothing. Not a noise. Not a giggle. The silence was deafening. Not even a bird call could be heard. The only sound was her footsteps on the crunching leaves."

At this point, Clancy thought it would be funny to throw a stick into the trees where it cracked against a wide trunk. Dave jumped. "What was that?!" he yelled. Everyone agreed that it must have been nothing as Clancy swallowed a giggle.

As the group walked ever slower and huddled closer, Erin continued. "As the mother was feeling panic rise in her chest that threatened to overwhelm her, she began to run. Franticly, she searched every place she could think that the children might have hidden themselves, every place they could have fallen or hurt themselves. She found not a trace."

"As the evening stretched into night, she continued calling her children, searching everywhere, and yielding nothing. She wiped sweat from her dirt-streaked face. All thoughts had left her, but the lost children. She searched endlessly through the night and into the next day."

"Late that afternoon, as she finally collapsed from exhaustion, a broken and miserable heap, she allowed herself to cry. Her cry shook the trees. It howled through the canyon like the very wind you hear right now." Just then a particularly large gust of wind burst through the tunnel the road created through the trees. Everyone shivered.

"She sat in a stupor for hours. It grew dark, and a small but sudden noise brought her out of her languor. She stood, backing away from the unexpected sound when her foot lighted upon something that was, clearly, not earth. Just as she reacted, trying to pull her foot away, she heard a snapping noise and felt steel shutting around her leg. A bear trap. She didn't care about her leg. Her only concern was finding her long-lost children. She was delirious... manic. Obsessed with the search."

"She lay there unable to move when the unexplained noise revealed itself. Just in front of her was the glinting, wicked blade of what must be the trapper's axe. Why he had left it here and how it had fallen and startled her, she neither knew nor cared. Here was her salvation. She picked it up and began to hack at her leg. When, at last, she was free of the trap, she got up on her leg that was whole, and began hopping in her hopeless search for her children. 'Eliza! Allen! James!!', she called. It was just a breath of what her voice had been two days ago. She was losing blood fast as she hopped along, saying their names as a chant now. 'Eliza. Allen. James. Eliza. Allen. James.' She hopped as long as she could and as she fell to the cold, leaf-littered ground, those were the last words that left her lips. 'Eliza. Allen. James.'

As Erin told the concluding remarks of her tale, she quietly grabbed the flashlight from her pocket. She prepared herself to shine it at just the right moment as she continued the story in a hushed voice. "It has been said that the ghost of the Hippity Hoppity Lady still wanders these woods calling for her lost children. You can hear her voice in the wind that whips through your hair. You can see her ghostly form as she hops, one legged, from tree to tree."

Suddenly Erin whips out the flashlight, shines it on an object just in front of the group and screams at the top of her lungs, "AND THERE SHE IS!!!!!"





Yes, this is a true story of a date we went on for a dance in high school (with some artistic license taken by the author on the actual story of the Hippity Hoppity Lady, and a few other minor details). This was what the pedestrian crossing sign looked like... a leg chopped, or more accurately, sprayed off, not by a trapper's axe, but by a little vandal! LOL! I must tell you that Dave (Beth's ACTUAL date) ran off screaming a very high pitched girly scream and ran all the way back to the car without stopping. For the rest of the night we visited every spooky place we could think of in Salt Lake City, including a visit to the lime kilns.

Manic Monday: Bite... AND Happy Birthday Dustin!

Shall we just have my blog have an auto-message at the top that says, "Better late than never"? I feel like I'm saying that a lot.

Happy Birthday to my sweetie. We had his party yesterday because tonight he is not here. :( Sitting here in this chair I am missing him and trying to think of a story for the word bite. As it is my husband's birthday I've recalled a story involving him and it comes from my archive of carefree and kidfree yellow kitchen days...




I yawn as I straighten out my stiff arm. It doesn't agree, and I wince as I slowly try to move it. I think to myself, 'That's what I get for laying here reading with my weight on my elbow for... wait... how long have I been laying here?' Glancing over at the clock I realize the answer to my question... too long.

It's late, but that's nothing unusual. Late nights and I have always had a beautiful friendship. But, since my recent acquisition of a husband (a few months shy of a year is still recent, right?), I mostly like to go to bed early and snuggle up with him. But, Night and I have become reacquainted as my Dusty got a new job where he gets up at o-dark-thirty every day. This, in turn, requires him to go to bed at a ridiculously early hour, which is simply not cool with me. So, I have been up to my old tricks.

Moving my tired body, I exit the living room to commence with my nightly routine of face washing, toothbrushing, and peeing every last drop so I won't have to wake up later. Walking toward the bathroom, I glance into the kitchen and grin to myself. I still have a chore to do before I go to bed.

I open the fridge and remove all necessary items for my chore completion. Lunch meat, mayo, mustard, bread, apple, orange, cottage cheese. Dustin's lunch box is already on the counter top... my friendly grin-triggering reminder. I even melted his initials on the top with a hot knife tip so it wouldn't get mixed up with the guy who has the same lunch box at work. As if he needed that. I always leave other little clues as to who's lunch box it is.

Cottage cheese in the little plastic Rubbermaid container. Check. Apple and orange in lunch box. Check. Sandwich made with mayo, mustard and meat. Check. Bite taken out of sandwich as a little token of my love. Check. Love note written on sticky pad and placed tenderly on his sandwich. Check. Bottle of water. Check. Love-filled lunch box placed in fridge for overnight coldness. Check. Heart filled with joy for being able to serve my husband and send little reminders of my love to him in the middle of his long, hard working day. Check, check, check.

As I head off to finish off my bedtime routine, I realize that I'm no longer tired. My heart is singing as my mind conjures images of him reading my note, finding my love bite and smiling as he thinks of me. It's amazing what love can do.



Happy Birthday, honey. I love you so much and I'm so glad that you waited for me to say yes. Sorry I can't make you lunches everyday right now because I might after this affectionate post! Love you so much.

Manic Monday: Leaf

This picture is exemplary of our autumn this year in Idaho. A color-shifting leaf in the still-green grass. It has been a beautiful fall this year with crisp mornings and warm, sunny afternoons. Perfect.

My mom has a huge garden... probably a quarter of an acre... in which they have row after row of corn, among other veggie-delights. They have been out of town and asked that I go and pick some corn. I picked. And picked. And picked. I might have picked three of the fifteen or so rows that they have there and I had three garbage bags full of corn! That's a lot, in case anyone was wondering. I couldn't possibly eat all this corn (plus D's been out of town so that's one more corn-eatin' mouth I was missing) so I started giving it away. I gave some to neighbors, friends, and I had something to drop off to one of my tenants so, naturally, I brought corn with me to give to them. There is a point to all of this... be patient.

I was on my cell phone so I was distracted as I walked up to their door . I knocked, realized they weren't home and hung the corn and some smoke detectors on the doorknob. I finished my phone call, and, as I walked back to my car (sans distractions), I heard it and felt it. The perfect crunch of the leaves under my feet. Without warning I was thrown back to the autumns of my childhood. My sister, Lacy, and I looking for those leaves with just the right crunch as we walked ourselves home from school. I never knew which tree they fell from, but they were small and would curl up just so after their descent from their lofty summer perch. We would seek them out and CRUNCH! For some unknown and inexplicable reason, this brought joy to our little child-hearts. The assault of memory didn't stop there...

Sounds were important to Lacy and I. Images were brought to mind of some sort of seed that dropped from some other unknown kind of tree. They were about the size and shape of a pea and we would chase around looking for that little group of seeds. When we found our treasure, we would roll our foot over them in just the right way and grin at each other. Those little seeds had a POP that was, somehow, a little bit of heaven.

Fall came and went and the season changed to winter, bringing it's own set of special sounds. The muted world of freshly fallen snow was a quiet joy that I kept all to myself, but Lacy and I had our very own fun, winter sound too. This one we had a name for. "Fun Ice" it was called. You know where a pock in the sidewalk had a little bit of snow that would melt in the daytime and freeze in the nighttime? Just a little thin sheet of ice would form and it would be hollow underneath. Or it might be in a bigger crack of the sidewalk or perhaps something in the gutter... but the important thing was the certain type of ice that would form on these imperfections in the ground. Our ten-minute walk home from school would often stretch into two hours in pursuit of "fun ice". The noise it made... a delicate crunching and popping sound was far superior to the leaf crunching or seed popping of the fall. "Fun ice" was, by far, our favorite of seasonal sounds.

But as much as "fun ice" was my favorite, I am profoundly grateful right now for the certain crunch of small leaves that I experienced Friday. It's incredible that a simple sound could bring back memories of innocent, quiet times with my gentle sister which, in turn, could have my eyes burning with almost-tears for the simple joys of being alive.

From The Jar... #18

What is a favorite family place to go with your husband/wife/kids?

My little family loves to go over to my Mom and Dad's house. We go there nearly every Sunday and have Sunday dinner. They have an incredible piece of property... 10 acres with lots of HUGE trees, a creek running through it, beautiful shady yard with lovely landscaping, a gigantic garden, chickens, geese and llamas (for a limited time... the llamas will soon live at a new home- McKee's Petting Zoo), and a great spot where we burn fallen limbs and all the burnable garbage. The latter is not an official fire pit, but we often burn stuff and have hot dog/marshmallow roasts there. Their home is just a pleasant place to be. Relaxed with plenty of things for the kids to do. (Trampoline, teeter-totter, tire swing, riding lawnmower rides, chasing chickens... the list goes on and on!) We spend a lot of time there and we are so grateful for such a beautiful, feel-good place to spend time with the people we love the most.

As a child, a favorite place was the many canyons of the Wasatch Front in Utah. We spent many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon playing up those beautiful canyons. I have a lot of joy wrapped up in those memories, and I am forever grateful to my parents for taking the time to do little things like that that probably weren't always the easiest thing to do (as I've learned since my journey of parenthood began). Thanks Mom and Dad...

Manic Monday: Iron

It was the ironing board in the wall that closed the deal. Isn't it silly that something so small could make the difference? It also helped that the kitchen was yellow from floor to ceiling.... yellow is such a happy color. We had been apartment hunting for two days solid and nothing had felt like a fit for us until we saw that yellow kitchen and built-in ironing board. We knew we were home. Our first home.

How strange that in only a week, we would be married and living here together- sleeping in the same bed, washing our hands with the same bar of soap, hanging our clothes in the same closet, and sharing our fears, our dreams, and our love in the same moment. Who could guess at that point what our lives would bring? That all of our early memories would be wrapped up in a basement apartment with a musty room, hissing radiators, a carpeted bathroom, a yellow kitchen, and an ironing board that was built into the wall...


Be sure to visit Mo for more Manic Monday fun!

From The Jar... #13

C'mon kids! Let's all play. Even if it's just a two sentence comment in the comment box! Or, on your blog, do a novel like I tend toward! :)

And the jar says...


Describe a favorite childhood friend and some things you did with him or her.


I'd have to pick my friend Beth, hands down. That would be Beth S. from my comment box. We grew up in the same ward (church) and were best friends by third grade. We were a very silly pair. Sleepovers were our favorite. She had an early morning paper route that I LOVED to go on with her. She thought I was nuts because I liked going. My favorite paper route memory was when it snowed a bunch and we were the first people to disturb the fresh snow, leaving trails of our footprints. We would imagine someone trying to follow our print so we would do funny things like leave two left feet in a row or have one footprint backwards. I loved the still, quiet times of those snowy mornings with my best pal.

We took gymnastics together. It was awesome. I sucked at back flips and back handsprings and she was good at them. I always went crooked somehow. (Nice memory, huh? That's just what sticks out in my mind from gymnastics.) My family had a trampoline where we would pretend to be Olympic gymnasts performing our incredible feats. We would do the whole shebang- stand and put our arms up when we were ready, turn to the right and the left and then do our trick. Then we'd stand again, arms up for our finish. Then we'd give each other a score. Mostly I think we handed each other perfect 10s. Rarely anything below a nine. :) We loved the movie Nadia and I think we watched it one to many times.

I remember pretending we were gang-banging drug dealers. Nice game for kids, huh? Seems like we were in about 5th or 6th grade. We were "Chico and Chino" and we spoke in a Cheech and Chong kind of Spanish accent. We wore navy blue or red bandannas which we referred to as our "colors". She lived on a busy-ish street, and we'd hide from the cars that passed shouting to each other in our Spanish accents as we dove behind bushes, "Don't show your colors, man!" We played this game with her older brother, Eric. I think that he was the one who made it up. We would fill ziploc baggies with powder sugar and dried basil, parsley or oregano and, you guessed it, those were our "drugs" that we would sell. I don't think we ever pretended to "do" the drugs... just sell them. Apparently we were clean drug-dealers.


We would pretend that real-estate signs were gateways to other dimensions. You know the kind that is on a big post and swings freely. Ya. We would run under them and then the other person would be lost to the one still on this side of the sign. We would call out to each other, pleading, "Oh where, oh where did you go! I can't see you!!!" And then the pleading one would take a deep breath and, with a running start, jump through the "doorway" to the next dimension and we were happily reunited. It was beautiful! *tear* :)

We had so much fun talking about boys and dreaming of what it would be like get a drivers license, date boys, kiss a boy, go to college, get married, have kids... you name it, we talked about it. We romanticized something as simple as going to the grocery store or paying bills. I wish I still thought of those things as something exciting!

We were together all the time and we had an incredible friendship that has withstood the test of time. We were best friends all through high school and into our college years. As the strain of being roommates (in the literal sense of the word) in college put a slight shadow over some things, we still talked all the time. Then, last January, our relationship underwent some reconstruction, which was pretty amazing for both of us, and it obliterated the small shadow that we didn't even realize had come between us.

To you, Beth... thanks for sticking by me through all these years. It's a rare thing, indeed to still be close to someone at age almost-thirty who was your best friend as a child. I love you and I admire your courage and your strength of heart. Love ya! :)

Manic Monday: Big

Inscribed

Pulse racing at the memory of words that
Tug my heart across a space as big as my mind.

~CLP

Zoom

I'm sitting here at my little sister's house and we are about to go to the sidewalk art show by the river. This is one of my favorite events of the summer. I don't know that I can explain why. I think it's the dream of being able to buy original art.

A few summers ago I did buy one. It was a local artist (as many of them are) who grew up in the same area as my husband. She had watercolors for sale, and I happen to recognize one of them as a store in a little town close to where Dustin grew up. I asked her if it was the store I recognized and she said yes. As I looked around closer I realized that I recognized many of the paintings from spots around Dustin's valley.

We happened to have some extra money at the time and I indulged. I bought a painting of an old house called the "Reams Mansion". This was a place that Dustin had taken me past many times. He told me stories of how it was supposedly haunted and they used to take dates there and sneak into it and scare themselves. I bought it and saved it until Dustin's birthday came around and gave it to him. He was very impressed and surprised.

I love to look and it and remember that I bought an original piece of art....

Manic Monday: Bug

I glance up at the tell-tale squeak from the spring on the screen door. A glimpse of his hair tells me he went for a ride on his bike. That perfect wind-blown puff is not achieved any other way. I know if I was a little closer I would be able to see traces of bugs on his face or neck. Or perhaps nestled in that pompadour hairdo. His eyes shine as they always do after a ride. After more than eleven years of knowing him, ten of those as his wife, this boyish love of speed on a motorcycle has not waned.

"How are you?" he asks.

"I'm good." I smile back even though I don't feel like it. "How was your bike ride?"

"Good!" he nearly giggles.

He's closer to me now, and I can smell the exhaust on his clothing. I used to hate that smell. His delight threatens to sweep me out of my black mood as the smell of motorcycle plucks, from the stash in my mind, a memory of a time when the weight on our shoulders was not so elephantine...



We drove by that lot a dozen times before he ever said it. "I think I'm gonna offer that guy a hundred bucks for that bike."

"Ummm... okay. Are you sure?" I felt panicky. We had only been married a month and I was nineteen years old. A hundred dollars for a bike that hasn't run for who knows how many years? A hundred dollars felt like a thousand to me. I knew he could get it running though. He proved that with those crappy dirt bikes Josh gave my dad while we were engaged. "Well, if you're sure it's worth it... I guess so," I said skeptically.

My worries were unfounded in the end. In fact, I was grateful for that bike. Hot summer nights found us riding down Main Street on our way to a movie, or to the ice cream shop, or to nowhere-in-particular. Stoplights brought awareness of the asphalt under our feet, still blazing with the heat of the sun, long since set. Those nowhere-in-particular rides left me shivering as we passed fields of alfalfa or wheat with their rainbird sprinklers dropping the temperature but still greeting us with their friendly chatter. Arms wrapped around him and breathing in the scent of him, I would kiss his neck or his earlobes to annoy him. Any other time, annoy would not be the word of choice for that action, but, at sixty miles per hour, a kiss that was even the slightest bit wet made for a cold neck or earlobe and he would growl at me to stop. Laughter would inevitably bubble up from my throat at his hollow threats. Any cares we might have had were whipped away by the wind, leaving us alone in our sixty mile-per-hour world.

"Hey," he says snapping me back to the present moment. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I sigh. I wish I could stay in that memory forever. But my power is not in memories, it is in this moment. I am here, now.