Inconsequential Meanderings

 The other day, Husband showed me this cartoon. He couldn't stop laughing. He laughed for a solid ten minutes. Of course, the longer and harder he laughed, the more it made me laugh, too.

You know how it is when something just hits you right. 

....

The other day, I was in the shower when I heard the bathroom door quietly open and close. A moment later, Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" started blaring through the room, and since the bluetooth speaker was all the way across the room (and I was soaking wet), I couldn't throw the speaker against the wall. There are a few songs I just can't stand, and Husband knows that is one of them. 

A few minutes later, Neil Diamond's "I Am, I Said" started up. I gave up shouting at Husband to shut it off and started singing along at the top of my lungs, lamenting with Neil that our furniture refuses to acknowledge our existence. Husband just giggled to himself from the bedroom. 

....

My Italian friend, Marco, and his wife are visiting family in Italy at the moment. He sent me this pic from the white beaches south of Livorno to make me jealous. 

Jerk.

Wait, is he flexing his legs to show off the muscles he has from playing tennis? Probably. I would, too, if I had any muscles.

And this one.

He lives in Seattle. I guess I can't begrudge him a little sunshine. 

....

I thought of a good plot for a story: a girl excels at a sport and gets recruited to professional competition teams only to discover that, at those levels, the entire system is rigged because there is entirely too much money to be made to let anything happen by chance--or even skill. Once she learns this, she faces a serious choice.

....

My son, Gary, asked me today what my earliest memory is. It is when I was two years old. My dad brought me into my parents' room to see my newborn baby brother, whom my mother had given birth to at home (on purpose). I remember some mild curiosity but no attachment to the small thing lying next to my mother.

Don't worry, we got to be very good friends as we got older.

My next memory is when that brother was now two years old and I was four. We had a gerbera daisy in a vase, and the stem had split in two, and both ends had curled up in opposite directions. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world, so I took the daisy and my little brother outside to show it to any of the dozens of kids who lived in my neighborhood. The first kids we encountered were a group of older boys (probably about seven or eight years old), and when I showed them the daisy, they grabbed it and stomped on it and laughed. I remember being a little sad about the daisy and curious as to why the boys had felt the need to destroy it, but I don't remember feeling fear that the boys would hurt me, too. 

Also from that time period: my parents owned a lot of 5-gallon buckets--probably for food storage, which they have always taken very seriously. I would stack the buckets in the living room and sit in the top one while watching cartoons (in the brief time that my parents actually owned a TV before I was a teenager). In my memory, I was so high up off the ground that it was like sitting in the top of a teetering tower, but I was probably only three or four buckets high at the most. 

This isn't an early memory, but I very clearly remember the satisfaction I used to get as a tween by arranging my mother's spice cabinet several times a month. Also taking all the ornaments off the Christmas tree and rehanging them in a different (more beautiful) way. I often wonder where that deep sense of satisfaction in organizing and arranging things went to. 

....

I had to go to the high school today to get updated class rosters for each of our seminary periods. The counseling office was too busy, so I went and bothered one of the secretaries in the main office. They are all still struggling with the new system the school district is using, but she took some time to learn how to get me the information that I needed, which was very kind. On the way in and out, walking down the very long hallway to the exit closest to the seminary building, I encountered some seminary students and actually remembered their names. Small wins! There are plenty of times when I'm helping a student and know the student has been at seminary for a couple years, and I know their face, but I just can't remember their name, and I have to ask, and I watch them be just a little disappointed. 

Today I also enrolled Gary in seminary, even though he is still homeschooling. That means I have to run home and get him right before his class, but he enjoyed his class today. I put him in Kim's class. I wasn't playing favorites with the teachers. Kim's class had the lowest enrollment number at the time, so that's where I put Gary. 

Thanks. I'm done rambling.