Not Bragging, Just Sayin'

Today I pulled the quilts off my bed, folded them, put them in storage.

Remade the bed--no easy job--putting on a blanket and different quilt.

Checked my email thrice.

Played, and won, of course, a game of Just Words.

Played, and lost, a game of Solitaire.

Scolded myself for wasting my time.

Stepped outside and kicked a lantern on.

Mixed up five little bottles of protein drink and took them to the outside fridge.

Cleaned two sinks, two toilets, parts of one bathtub, the parts I could reach without falling on my head.

Weighed myself. I know, I know. Shouldn't weigh myself every day. But, hey, the scale is right in front of the toilet, so why not?

Killed the spider who has been trying to make my bathroom his/her home--spiders can hear, you know.

Took a bath in the partially cleaned tub. It wasn't terribly dirty.

And now it is 7:58 AM.

It's Not Just About Electric Trains, But It Is About That

All my young life I wanted an electric train. Not that I thought about it every day, but I thought about it often. Certainly at Christmastime I hoped, and I know I spoke of it to my mother more than once. I never got one. Was I told that electric trains were not something girls could have? Don't know. Perhaps I just figured that out later, based on my experiences with "boys get everything; girls get to watch," trying to find a reason for never getting one. My older brothers never had electric trains either, but I don't know if a train was something they ever wanted.

It may have been a money issue. Our family was big, five children, and we weren't wealthy, although I never heard any talk about not having enough money. But perhaps money was too scarce to afford expensive toys like trains.

And there's the question of where you keep the train and where you set it up to run. I can only think of setting it up on the dining room table, but that would be terribly impractical. We ate at that table. And we played ping pong on that table. I'm still amazed that our mother let us do that.

Obviously, I'll never have the answer, no matter how much guessing I do. I don't remember if my own children ever asked for electric trains. I do remember hearing complaints about what so-and-so had. You know, "Why can't I have that?"

Why I think of this now, I'm not sure, except that last night was another sleepless night, and I do mean sleepless. That's what you do on such a night--think, worry, remember. All sorts of things pop into the brain.

Everyone has a story. Believe me.

Quonelia Epa. It's a Samoan name, the name of the young woman who walked near me last week. Monday, to be exact. She began talking to me, which is something I do, talk to people I don't know, and so I liked her right away. We were headed to the same class, as it turned out, "Women and the Gospel of Luke." It's a big campus, so we had a few minutes to talk, and when we got to the Hinckley building, Nelia wanted us to sit together. I was glad.

She was at BYU that week for the same reason I was, Education Week. We were two of the 23,000 who came for five days to learn. She was scouting out the place, too, finding out that she really does want to go to school there, and because she is a bright young woman and was nearly finished with the application process, I thought it very likely she would soon be a BYU student.

But the story is not so simple.

She is 26, lives in Hawaii, has Rheumatoid Arthritis, and, even if she is accepted to BYU, must go home to Hawaii and work to save money so she can pay for school. Clearly, she is patient and determined. If she gets in and is a conscientious student, which, in my brief acquaintance with her, I became convinced she would be, she will graduate and be the first in a large Samoan family to do so.

I did not see Nelia after the two classes we had together last Monday. I will likely never see her again. But I love her, though we are strangers, and my hopes are that she will be well and able to do all--and I mean all--she wants to do.

Isn't it peculiar that such things can happen? A few minutes with someone can show you that you share much. Nearly fifty years difference in our ages, different skin color, hair color, cultural heritage. And we will never meet again. But no matter. We are friends.

What To Do About It? Part 2

But we do want to be known. It's part of being human. And yet we hold back. We want to be private about some parts of ourselves, too. Is that not right? Or is it only a matter of trust, of finding the person you can trust with your soul?

I said it was a contradiction. We often contradict ourselves, we human beings.

But wait. Do I have to take it all back? Because of Facebook, and MySpace and Instagram and Google+ and whatever else, which facilitate the revealing of those very personal stories, of secrets. And millions of us feel quite comfortable these days telling everything to the internet, to the air, to strangers--yes, I know, they're all our "friends." And, I suppose, Facebook and other social network facilities have caused us to believe our stories are of interest to strangers, to everyone. More's the pity. Because they're not really.

Facebook aside, and interest aside, have you never found yourself telling your story to someone on a plane? That stranger who seems to be listening, seems to want to know what you will say next. And you show your soul to this person you do not know. Or perhaps you have been on the other end. You have listened as a stranger poured something you thought terribly personal into your ears?

Perhaps we simply want to hear it or see it told. The story that means the world to us.

Obviously, I have not settled anything here, and obviously, I contradict myself from beginning  to end. Besides, there is much more to be considered. For instance, I haven't even brought up the subject of how fragmented and disjointed our lives are, which must have bearing on something.

I have figured out one thing. It's about me. This is about me. I cannot speak for anyone else.  And, speaking for me, I have no intention of laying open my soul, writing my story, on Facebook. Or even, I suppose, in my own journal. 

Yet there is something in me that wants to tell it, write it, before I die. To someone.

What To Do About It? Part 1

Shall we (not in the sense of "Let's do," but rather in the sense of "Is this what will happen?") go to our graves with our sweetest thoughts, our deepest feelings, our hopes and aspirations left unspoken, unwritten, unknown by anyone outside ourselves? I believe my husband did. I believe I will.

Yes, I have blogs, and I post to them. But much of what I write there is superficial. I have kept a journal sporadically through the years and have filled little note pads with whatever came to  mind. Even so it is not "an hundredth part." And sometimes not even the real part.

And who on this earth will, not shall, ever read it? No, an hundredth part or not, I do not see all that I have written being read. That is why we write, isn't it? And, trust me, no one is listening.

Besides, and here is a contradiction, I have never said or written what is in the deepest part of myself. Never written those secret thoughts or confessed those secret deeds. I write what is on my mind, or what comes into my mind. With limits. Perhaps it is self-censorship or simply good judgment. Whichever, it's a fact that there are self-imposed limits.

I believe we want to be known--not by everyone--by those few people we love and trust. I do not know if I speak here for others or for myself alone when I say we want to be known, but that has long been my belief. Oh, how could I forget? I know people who will tell everything to anyone and leave nothing out. I am not one of those.  

Ponderables

• I misplaced my phone today. When I had a home phone (land line) I never misplaced it.

• I made yum-yums today. They require 12 whole graham crackers. I had only 11 3/4. The yum-yums are just fine. Maybe I'll change the recipe.  Just kidding.

Back story:The first time I tasted yum-yums was decades ago. My mother-in-law made them. They're good. We all like them. So I began making them

In those days, graham crackers came twelve to a package. Three packages inside the box. So you could just crumbled up a package. You see that, of course.

One day I bought graham crackers and found Nabisco had decided to put only 11 crackers in each package. Oh yes, they still charged the same--or more. Made me mad. And you can see what it meant to making yum-yums--not that I make them all the time. I don't.

Then one day it was ten to a package. Brother!

So how do you think I feel about nine crackers in the package? That is what we have now. Nine.

• Okay. I'll mention mayonnaise. Quart-size jar. Well, guess what. The jar is no longer a quart jar, which means I no longer get a quart when I pay for what kind of looks like a quart of mayonnaise. If you look at the bottom of the jar, you will see that they make a large indentation in it so that it will hold only the 30 ounces they're now selling for a lot of money. This is Best Foods I'm talking about. And Kraft, too. The jar of Kraft mayonnaise says this on the label: New jar, same amount of mayonnaise. Same meaning 30 ounces. Oh this kind of stuff is not new. Just crummy.

The Big Wind. Think Bigger.

Who knows about the weather?

Richard says being a weather person--you know reporter and prognosticator--is the only job where you can be wrong most of the time and still make a good living at it.

Maybe. I'd list doctors next. But let's pretend I didn't say that.

All of this to introduce my post about last night's big wind. And I already know you're not thinking big enough. When things finally died down, about nine o'clock, I saw leaves all over the lawns and pine needles and pine cones and those other nasty little pine things everywhere--lawns and driveway.

But wait. It gets bigger.

A branch from one of my ash trees had been blown off, one end sticking in the ground, the other propped up on the chain link fence. The branch was big, and you're not thinking big enough, maybe fifteen feet long. And I can't know how such a big branch could break off, and I can't tell which of the trees it broke off from.

Andrew sawed and cut and I carried sections of it to the trash can, which is now full. But neither of us thought at first that we could get all of it in one can. We did, though, and the thing is cleared away.

Thank goodness for Andrew, because I worried about it much of the night, thought we'd have to borrow somebody's chain saw. He used the little Back Saw, which in my hands would have been useless, and the long-handled pruner, and we pulled and so on.