The Dogwalkers' Dance

 We've been walking our dogs in the nearby field for years. Until about three years ago, it was a vast, empty piece of land filled with foxes, rabbits, the occasional snake, stink bugs, crickets, and ground-nesting birds. All of that wildlife is still in it, but the field has shrunk considerably as developers continue constructing neighborhood after new neighborhood. 

I'm not complaining about the new people moving in--we were new once, too--and some of those people who have moved in have become good friends. What I am saying is that the square footage available for walking dogs has been reduced greatly. This means that those of use who use the field to walk their dogs participate in what I like to call The Dogwalkers' Dance.

If you have a dog who doesn't necessarily play well with others (even if he is a sweetie to us, his family), you know what I'm talking about. You scan the field for other dog walkers and then you decide if now is a good time to take the walk at all or if you can get away with walking the dog by keeping him on his leash or just going nice and slow to let others stay well ahead of you. 

I was doing the Dogwalkers' Dance yesterday, and keeping clear of my neighbor and his very friendly goldendoodle puppy (so adorable!) forced me to stand still and listen to the wildlife in the field until Doug and his dog disappeared over the other edge of the hill. The crickets were particularly loud, and there were what sounded like dozens of meadowlarks and little water birds singing and piping their songs. If I had decent audio recording equipment, I would have recorded the sounds to share with you because it was spectacular. 

The wild grass is really high right now because of spring rains, but as the heat settles in over the next few weeks, the green grass will dry out and die off and leave behind the scrubby sagebrush and shorter, hardier grass clumps and ground-level wildflowers. Then, through the purple and sage-green vegetation, you'll be able to spot the holes and burrows of foxes, snakes, hares, field mice, gophers, moles, and voles. 

In other news, I flubbed up at work. I miscounted how many diploma covers we needed for seminary graduation when I ordered them back in February. I only realized my mistake today as I was sorting diploma covers for each stake. I was at least ten short, and wondering if I could possibly order more in time for this Sunday's ceremonies had me stressed, which distracted me as students came in to have a chat or wanted me to sign their yearbooks. I came back to work later in the evening when no one was around so I could find a solution without suffering distractions. Fortunately, the nice customer service lady at the diploma covers store was able to expedite a shipment to me. 

Graduation season is a stressful time. There is a lot to do, and my workload and anxiety have increased just at the time when the students get more squirrelly and ready for the school year to be over. I love talking to the kids, but now I have so many who feel very comfortable plopping themselves into my office chairs (or on the floor, or even stretched out on my very long desktop) and talking to me that getting work done is more difficult. I enjoy their company for the most part. My work can usually wait a little, and there are class periods when I have no students in my office so I can get things done. What I do really enjoy is listening to these kids tell me what's on their minds or exulting in a triumph or just being silly. 

I talk to my sons the way I talk to the students at the seminary. I have a very good relationship with Joseph and Gary, and I often miss them when the students do something or say something that reminds me of my boys, so I'm always glad to see Joseph and Gary when I get home from work.

~A few days later...

Today was seminary graduation for all the seminary students in the valley. I'm hoping the ones for all the stakes I'm in charge of went well. I'll find out tomorrow...

Mother's Day

 Sunday was Mother's Day, and I was surrounded by almost all my children, my grandsons, my parents, and a couple brothers and a sister (and her SO). It was wonderful. Gabrielle and her husband were sick, which was sad, but I talked to them on the phone.

Little Tyler in a British bobby's helmet

Sleeping angel Nick

Nicholas did wake up after an hour or so and spent a lot of time smiling and cooing, which was absolutely adorable. 

I made sure my mom just sat down the whole time. Her broken foot is still healing, and I didn't want her to feel any guilt for not being able to assist me in the kitchen, so I chose something really easy to make for dinner: crispy black bean tacos and Spanish rice. You can make a lot of tacos and rice in a very short amount of time, and since people were showing up at different times, we just had sort of a constant buffet going. As usual, my living room wasn't large enough to contain the number of people our family has grown into, but that meant that there was lots of talking and laughter and eating in close quarters, which, I think, just forces everyone to socialize. We all get along very well (I'm very blessed to be able to look forward to family functions!), and I was a happy mama/sister/daughter. 

The Season of Change and Song

Edit: I finished writing this last Thursday, so events are slightly out of date.

I offer my editing services for free to my co-workers, and Skyler has frequently taken me up on that offer. A couple days ago I finished editing his last thesis paper for his masters degree in religious education, and he was very pleased with the edits I made. He said, "You blew my mind! How do you take what I'm trying to say and make it crystal clear?" I find it easier, sometimes, to figure out what another person is trying to say and help them clarify it than I do voicing my own thoughts. With a few quick changes to grammar, punctuation, and rephrasing a few sentences, it's amazing how much clearer someone else's words can become. When I'm editing someone's else's work, I'm thinking, "How can this be written in a way where I don't have to struggle to figure out what they want to say? How can this be written so that I want to read it?" 

When I write my own words, I'm thinking, "This doesn't make any sense to anyone else but me. Crap." And then I get bogged down with indecision and dissatisfaction. When I'm writing my own ideas, I have to come up with all the words from scratch, and I'm hardly ever satisfied with them, which is why I have three times as many unpublished drafts as published posts for this blog. 

I haven't really missed being a professional writer and editor, and I would have to think long and hard before agreeing to do any more content writing or other big editing jobs. The amount of research required for the subjects of my content writing was truly exhausting, and I got paid by the piece, not by the hour. Plus, it was exhausting. You wouldn't expect that writing could be quite so physically as well as mentally exhausting, would you? 

Having said that, however, I enjoy helping Skyler. He's already a good writer, which makes my job easy, and he appreciates the skill that it takes to edit. Yesterday, I quickly edited a couple additional pages that Skyler's mentor requested to be inserted into his thesis, and the writing went from slightly murky to brilliantly clear with just a few adjustments, which thrilled both myself and Skyler. Very satisfying. Today I told him that I will be happy to edit his future college papers despite the fact that he is selfishly taking himself and his family to another state. 

Speaking of co-workers taking off, I was just informed today of the changes on the horizon. Now, no one is supposed to speak of these changes until tomorrow morning when the official email is sent from the region director, but Griff quietly filled me in on the news today (I was really the only person in the building who didn't know exactly what was happening). I'm trusting you to keep this to yourself until tomorrow. Thank you.

Tanner is leaving. I was previously pretty sure he would be staying, but I more recently got the feeling that he was going to be transferred. I was right about that, but I was wrong about where. He isn't going to the seminary in the town where he lives (which is about ten miles away from this town) but to another small town in our valley. He's swapping with a teacher from that seminary, who will come here. 

In another exciting change, Denise is also coming to my seminary! Denise, who is also my choir director, has been a seminary teacher for the last two years. She started out as a seminary administrative assistant (or "office specialist," as they called them then) and did that for eight years while she was raising her kids (all now grown) and working on her Master's in mathematics, but the call to be a seminary teacher steered her away from her original idea of being a math teacher. Now we'll work together, which I expect will be a great experience. I envision spending lunch breaks playing accompaniment on the piano while she sings, and both of us sifting through new and exciting choral pieces. She thinks I'm funny, which is endearing.

Speaking of choir, our concerts are tomorrow and Saturday nights at the Methodist Church. The Episcopal congregation in town dried up, so the diocese turned the running of their building over to a property management company, and the property managers have become ultra-paranoid about insurance issues, so they won't let anyone use the sanctuary (chapel), which is where we used to perform. That's so sad because the modern concrete-and-glass structure had such great acoustics. Fortunately, the Methodists have allowed us to use their cosy little chapel that has a stage/rostrum. The chapel is so small that it is still good for acoustics despite the carpeting, and it's a quaint little red brick box whose back halls smell appropriately musty to reflect the extreme age of the building (built in the 1930s). It was originally a chapel for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the congregation grew out of it and eventually sold it to the Methodists. Modern LDS chapels are not great for choral performances, so even with all the LDS chapels around, that was never an option we considered. The only other performance hall in town is the high school auditorium, and performing there would just be silly.

Over the last eleven years, I've invited dozens of people to our performances, and only two or three have ever come. I realize that sitting through a choral performance where you probably don't know any of the pieces or more than one person in the choir is not most peoples' idea of a good time, so I quit inviting anyone except my family. This time I have a small solo, so I had even more incentive not to invite anyone except family. As it turns out, there's so much less pressure when I don't know the people in the audience! 

Update: The choir concert went incredibly well. We sounded really good, and I even felt fine about my little solo part. It was a really fun concert, with drums and everything.