Day 3. What were your top 3 favorite movies growing up?

So we didn't really watch TV when I was little, nor a lot of movies. So I guess this post is easier because there aren't a lot of options to choose from.

We'll start with the #3 favorite movie and then work to the top.

3. I think I'd have to put Mulan here. Not necessarily because it was my brother's and my favorite per se. But it was probably the movie we watched the most. See, my dad would buy us whatever kids movie was big at the time, and we'd watch it with him, and then when we went back to our mom's we'd bring it with us. But when Mulan came out, he really loved it. He loved it so much that he wouldn't let us take it back to our mom's with us. So it became the one kids movie that he owned. And since both of us were too young to drive or go out on our own, and we didn't have any games or toys at our dad's house, watching movies was all we had to do all day while dad was at work. Which meant that when we went to visit him, if we didn't make it to the video store early on in the trip, all we had to watch was Mulan. Over and over and over again. Luckily, we both really liked Mulan. To this day I think Dan and I can probably quote 78% of the movie word for word. Below was our absolute favorite part. Start at 2:57.

2. I'm gonna say this one is The Brave Little Toaster. My mom gave me a copy of The Brave Little Toaster a year or two back for Christmas and my brother and I watched it again. We were left with the conviction that Blankie is literally the most annoying character that has ever been, Lamp and Radio are by far the best characters in the movie, and whoever thought of a movie about a little boy's household appliances Incredible Journeying it back to him was definitely high on crack. Also, as with all our movies that weren't bought for us by our father, this one was a recording off TV by someone who was...over-zealous in their determination to skip commercials, and with an incredibly short attention span. So about 20% of the movie was cut out around the commercials, and then they just stopped recording when the appliances hit the city. Or maybe they were just doing some judicious editing, because when my brother and I watched the DVD we were suddenly seeing all these scenes we'd never seen before, including a horrifying dream sequence and a terrible pre-Toy-Story-3 junk yard scene ending that were legit disturbing. Seriously, watch this and tell me this was not made by a bunch of people out of their minds on cocaine

1. The number 1 movie is  by far.....Mickey and the Beanstalk. Also recorded off TV, but with a lot less [accidental] editing, this is hands down both my brother's and my favorite movie of our childhood. We still quote it constantly. And unlike The Brave Little Toaster, this movie holds up into adulthood. I literally just rewatched it a few weeks ago because I still love it. Apparently there were two versions of the movie, with two different framing devices. I never saw it, but I guess there's a version where you have live action people on a picnic or something, telling the story of Mickey rescuing the magic harp through the use of puppets which then turn into the cartoon? It is terrible, or so I've been told. On the other hand, the One True Version, which is the one we grew up watching, is all animation; Ludwig Von Drake (Scrooge McDuck's brother I believe because that's how accents and names work in families) telling the story to his best friend, Herman the Cricket (no relation to Jiminy). Professor Von Drake is explaining to Herman how fairy tales are expressions of the unconscious and attempts to explain unusual phenomena, hence the existence of magic. Herman insists that he believes all the stories actually happened exactly as they are told, including the magic. Herman is, of course, proved right at the end when Willy the Giant himself shows up, lifting the roof off Ludwig's home. Ludwig has a mental breakdown. Seriously, if you've never seen this movie, you should watch it. It is delightful. And the scene of the vine growing up to Willy's castle in the sky while Mickey, Donald, and Goofy sleep, remains one of my favorite animation sequences of all time. But the whole thing is amazing. I offer you this clip:

Seriously. every line is quotable. "If it was one man and three beans...but one bean, AND THREE MEN! Anyway, what a nice thing there are no bones in it!"

Day 2: Where did you grow up? Share some memories...

Well, it's 1:40 and I have to get ready for work in just under an hour, so today's post will be an exercise in speedy writing. I am not good at speedy writing. Here we go.

I grew up in two places, really. I was born in New Mexico and we lived there till just before my 8th birthday.

Several years ago I drove a roommate down to New Mexico for a wedding and on the way back we were able to stop at my old house. The woman who lived there was so kind, she let me wander around the property and even let me come in the house to use the bathroom. I don't know if I've ever had a more surreal experience than that trip. Finding the house (I had to call my grandpa for directions) I kept driving past unexpectedly familiar things that would jump out of the background of an otherwise completely strange place. Things like an old bridge with odd wire shapes on the side, or the street up to the church building. Or the ice cream place my grandma took me that I thought for years after was Orange Julius, but is in fact called the Vanilla Moose (we stopped and got the very same drink and it tasted exactly as delicious as I remembered it, which was freaking magical). Then getting to the actual house where everything was both incredibly familiar and also so different. My grandparents' house had fallen into complete disrepair and was basically a rundown shack. Our old place now with a closed in porch all around.

But what are some specific memories I have of that house? I remember standing on the porch down at the end by the driveway. I think the porch was still level at this time; it hadn't yet been been left all akilter after my uncle had to excavate a skunk out from under it (I remember so many skunks having to be removed out from under our house, which was a single-wide trailer with an addition built on). I'm standing there on the porch and someone....I think maybe one of the Hinke children, which would have made it Heber since he and my uncle Jesse were best friends...has just given me a piece of candy.  I put the candy in my mouth and almost instantly begin to cry. It was a Warhead and it felt like it was burning through my tongue (this was not a lesson I learned as I later on developed a great love of Warheads and did in fact burn a hole in my tongue from eating an entire bag in just a few days). I cried, but I didn't spit it out. I remember getting to that last tiny burst of sour in the center.

I remember my mom making us popcorn in her black and white and orange air popper. We would sit around the stove up in the living room and listen to records. Bible stories that were in black and gold sleeves, or the soundtrack from Popeye (whenever that came out). Mom would scratch our backs and I don't think anything in my life since has ever been that cozy.

I think the top on my mom's was much more yellow. But otherwise it was just like this

oh my gosh. I actually found one. I freaking love the internet.

I think we must have been incredibly frustrating children, my brother and I. We would play these games at night. Mom would tell us we were not to get out of bed, so we would take our blankets and sheets and our silkies (my mom's old nightgowns which we were absolutely obsessed with and each had our own collection of) and we would stretch them out end to end. And at the very end we would be stretched out, literally one toe still touching the chain, laying on the floor declaring that we were still technically in bed. We could make it almost to the kitchen that way. I am not sure how mom didn't strangle us on those nights.

I remember so clearly the day my brother came in after crashing on his bike. His knees were bright red, though thinking back they must have just been thoroughly skinned. There was no blood running down his legs. But that was the moment I became terrible afraid of bikes. Instead of learning to ride my own (I got a beautiful white and pink and purple one for Christmas one year) I would run along pushing it. Or I would just run along with Dan as he rode his. That was back when I liked to run...

I didn't actually learn to ride a bike until we moved up to Oregon. This is where I finished growing up (did you see that segue? maximum smooth!). I eventually forced myself to learn to ride my bike on the dirt road behind the house. I think I must have been 10? I don't know. But I would push myself along and coast as long as I could keep my balance. It took a while before I got up the courage to actually pedal.

In the Union house I got my own bedroom for the first time. Up till then Dan and I had shared a room. In high school I decorated by putting up pictures of wild animals salvaged from calendars. I lined them up in a border around the ceiling. It was very hard for me to throw those away when I moved out for college. I have the heart of a hoarder.

pretty sure I had the 1999 version of this exact calendar

Mom has always loved rearranging the furniture, but when I was 9 or 10 she put together a configuration that left a tiny alcove between the couch and the wall. This became my little hiding place for what felt like quite a long time. I would hide in there and write. I wrote an incredibly stereotypical story about a girl who found a magical horse by a river and tamed it. I don't remember why, but eventually mom banned me from hiding in that little place.

I started public school in Oregon. Up till then I had been home school. There were kids my own age. More than that, there were girls my own age. I experienced my first sleep overs, my first birthday parties, my first experiences with the politics of childhood friendship. I was not good at it. When asked which boy I liked the most I did not know that the correct response was to giggle and drop hints. I just said I liked Remington the most because he was quiet and shy and seemed nice.

It's almost time for me to get ready for work, so I have to wrap this up. Of course there are so many more memories. These just happened to be the first to pop into my head. And very unedited because I didn't have the time. Ah well...

A Woman of a Certain Age...

So today was my 28th birthday.

All my life birthdays have been a big deal.  When we were little my mom would go all out.  You would wake up on your birthday and find the dining room decorated with streamers and balloons and a preliminary present waiting for you at the kitchen table.  Because mom wanted to make sure that we were always excited for our sibling's birthday, she would make sure that whoever's birthday it wasn't also had a small gift at their place setting (this remains to this day one of my mother's most brilliant parenting ideas).  She made us these intricate, amazing cakes that were works of art.  One year she constructed a whole clock tower for me, complete with columns.  I could not tell you a single birthday present I ever received but I still remember those cakes.  Of course we have no pictures.  We were the anti-hipsters before anti-hipsters were a thing...

I'm not even joking when I say that my first birthday at college was a bit of a blow.  Nothing quite made the point that I'd left home like waking up to a sad empty dorm room with no streamers in sight.  To be fair, I'm having a vague memory of a possible party thrown for me later that evening by the girls on my floor.  Maybe combined with other September birthdays?  Idk.  But still, that "first thing in the morning surprise that wasn't actually a surprise" hadn't been there and I'll be honest: I still wake up on the morning of my birthday with a teeny tiny hope that somehow there will be balloons and streamers, and every year that there isn't I am a very small, reasonable adult level of sad about it.

The early college years all were rather underwhelming like that.  It wasn't till I came back to school after my study abroad that birthdays began to regain their former glory.  It's amazing what happens when you start having friends...

When you have friends birthdays become a big deal again, even in the absence of breakfast streamers and balloons.

Fun fact: my first ever blues dance happened to be on my birthday.  I had no idea what a "birthday jam" was and I was terrified; when they announced it I kept quiet and thus missed out on one of the best parts of being a dancer.  Had to wait an entire year for my chance to roll back around.  Tragic.

I was the happy recipient of one not-so-surprise party, and another party that was such a surprise that I didn't even show up till I was called and frantically begged to come to Slab "because".  Both experiences were delightful.

I think it was at 25 that I started planning my own birthday party.  That year I asked everyone to bring me something wrapped.  I didn't care what it was, I just wanted to unwrap things.

that is me about to unwrap a sled and my own butcher knife

enjoying a birthday dance which I have never been so foolish as
to pass up ever again after that first poor decision

The next year I asked for flowers.  Fresh, paper, plastic...I would accept anything but those nasty craft store fabric ones.  I got some really silly ones and some really lovely ones and it was absolutely perfect.

Last year Anneke volunteered to throw my party.  She did such a good job!  All my friends stopped by and even though I hadn't asked for anything at all that year, several of them brought gifts (some less "serious" than others).  After the party we went to Red Robin.  Again, amazing.

But last year also felt a bit like an ending, at least in retrospect.  Between 27 and 28 the last of my closest dance friends moved away.  Other friends graduated and moved, or got married or made babies, or got adult-type jobs.  At 25 I had literally a crowd of people I loved and who loved me and bringing them all together was simply delightful.  I must confess that at 28 the crowd has, with all reasonableness, dwindled.  The currents of life have swept a great number of that crowd down different paths to different places.

So this year I didn't throw a party. It just didn't feel right, as idiotic as that sounds.

Instead I dressed up for work, makeup included. I clocked out early. Kara and I ordered pizza and watched some Gilmore Girls and then went to institute.  I ordered a slice of cake from The Chocolate, ate the cake and left the frosting, and questioned who I even am anymore.

And now here I sit at 12:30 am feeling apparently incurably contemplative and wondering if this is what people mean when they talk about "feeling old".  I've never dreaded old age.  My personality is, in fact, far better suited to an old woman than to a young adult.  No one tells grandmothers that they're wasting their lives because they prefer hot chocolate and a good book to an afternoon's hike.  But "28" keeps running around in my head knocking into the bookshelves and disturbing the cats.  "28" tells me I don't want a party this year because it will just remind me of how few friends I have left and how many I haven't made to replenish the pool.  "28" says that I should have, if not a solid plan for my life, at least a definite direction.  "28" says I should stop talking about being an adult and just go ahead and be one.  "28" says that old age might be something I'll enjoy when it gets here, but that the middle bit that I thought was annoyingly long is perhaps not nearly as long as I thought.

When you're little you experience finite eternity, measured in endless summer days.  I suppose "getting old" is the realization that school will come eventually, and each day, no matter how glorious, is NOT endless, but rather one day less before the end.  And 28 is the year that I am realizing that summer cannot last forever.  The day I thought would never come.

The day when I worry "I'm getting old"

Prompt 4: A Favorite Photograph of Your Best Friend[s]

The most challenging element of this post is determining who is my best friend.  Answer: I don't really know.  But I think the two top contenders at this point in my life are Kara Baxter and Matt McDonald.

First, Kara.  Kara is definitely my oldest friend, and by oldest I mean in terms of the age of our friendship.  I'm actually friends with people much older than her.  I think my favorite thing about our friendship is the amount of crap it has been through.  But despite those rough parts we remain friends, and are, in fact, better friends now than we've ever been.  Besides my brother, the only person here in Provo who has any idea of my history and development as a human is her.  Unfortunately, we neither of us have a favorite photo of her, so instead you're going to get a small sampling carefully collected from facebook.  Do enjoy:

because this was high school

because this was the trip where we became adult friends

because running is part of who she is

because she is beautiful and has a very unique style

because obviously

because that expression is my favorite expression.  

And then Matt.  Technically Matt and I go way back to my days in Russian class.  However, since we literally never interacted there, that hardly counts.  Then for a time our relationship consisted of him running in to me when I was at dance things like booth or the Malt Shoppe where I, this random girl he barely knew, would try to coerce him into dancing with me.  This was a frightening time for him.  Then at last he moved into my ward in Campus Plaza and we became real friends.  Then, after he moved out of Campus Plaza, and then back in, he became my best friend.  I love Matt because he listens to me and because he trusts me.  Aside from those few months in Campus Plaza, the bulk of our friendship has existed online.  We talk about whatever we want or need to talk about.  We watch movies together via netflix and chat.  We share whatever we're interested in or working on with each other.  Matt tries to help me be healthier and I try to help him be more confident.  This is a picture I took of Matt during one of our many summer evenings in Campus Plaza.  He's wearing the tie I gave him and being happy and annoyed with me for insisting on taking his picture.

I miss this human

Coming up next we have prompt #5: A Photo of Myself 2 Years Ago.....(*dun dun dunnnnnn*)

Day 1: Are Writing Prompts Always Stupid? I Hope Not...

You guys, I'm already behind.  This is so sad.

Ok, so I am officially starting the 30 days of prompts.  Prompt #1 was to post a picture of something I ate today...or, in this scenario, something I ate yesterday.  That is the world's stupidest prompt and since facebook is already swamped in food selfies, I refuse.  Also, I ate very little yesterday and have pictures of none of it.  So I shall instead write about...

Day 1 [as suggested by Kara]: my most poignant/evocative smell

I've never really considered my sense of smell to be terribly keen, to be honest.  But I can tell you that there were two smells that instantly came to mind when Kara gave me this prompt, and they both come from my grandparents' old place in New Mexico.

The first is the smell of my grandma's food room.  Imagine a dark, mysterious room out in the barn that you've only ever been inside a few times.  In my memory it was lit with a single low-wattage bulb, giving me only partial view of lines and lines of jars from ceiling to floor.  Those jars held magical things like canned peaches and pears and cherries and surely many many others though I have no idea, now, precisely what.  We lived in New Mexico, but that room was always cool, no matter how hot it was.  I'm realizing now, thinking back on it, that she must have packed oodles of insulation on the walls, which would explain why I remember the door being so thick, like the door to a vault.  Somehow it smelled cool in there.  I don't know how.  But it was the smell of cool, just ever so slightly damp soil, mixed with glass, and a hint of dust.  As a child it was purely exciting to me, signaling my presence in a room as mysterious and promising as Lucy's wardrobe must have felt.  Now that I'm an adult, I still get that same feeling of expectant excitement, as though I can find a treasure if I explore long enough, but I also feel utterly comforted and at home.  I judge all food rooms based on the presence or lack of that smell.  My mom's food room in Union has it.  The last time I was in my aunt Marge's it also had it.  Those are the only other places I have found it.  But it makes them two of my favorite places in the world.

As for the second smell...let me tell you a story.  Perhaps the most revolting of all of my habits as a wee toddler was the intense joy I had in sucking on my grandpa's watch.  Mind you, my grandfather's primary business, as I remember it, was selling bolts and nuts, and his spare time was devoted to manly tasks like clearing land or simply washing his hands with grease and machine oil.  Thus, his watch was absolutely caked in years of collected oil, dirt, and other grime.  Sitting on his lap and sucking on that disgusting watch I apparently absorbed, all unknowing, the scent of machine oil straight into my amygdala where it lurked in secret till last year, when Caleb bought his CnC mill.  He put it in his garage, where it sat for a day or two seeping the smell of machine oil into the entire room.  I opened the door and it was as though I was walking into a hug from my grandpa.  I literally stood in the doorway inhaling deep breaths for minutes.  It smells a little bit like gasoline mixed with dirt.

Thusfar, those are the two smells that have had the most profound visceral effect on my memory.  Interesting that they both are related to my grandparents, and I described both as reminding me of dirt.  I don't know what that means.

Coming up next time (later today) is prompt #2: Post a picture of yourself and describe your day (seriously, who is writing these???)

Hal Steinbeigle

It was my dad's birthday last week.  I've been thinking about this post for a while now, but I think it was his birthday that finally prompted me to put everything into words.  I'm kind of nervous to share this because, while I meant it to be happy, and I feel like I said the good things I wanted to say, I am aware that there's a long of hard stuff here.  And I don't want to hurt my dad's feelings anymore than I already have in the past.  But I also really feel like I want to say all this aloud, so...dad, please take this as I meant it--and that is with the very best of intentions...

Several years ago I had a different blog on a different website.  There were only about three people who read that blog and to be honest, I thought of it more like an online journal that a couple of my friends happened to read than a public forum.  But apparently I had, at some point early in the blog's history, given the address to my dad and, unbeknownst to me, he was reading at least some of my posts there.  He read one, in particular, that I regret to this day.  I'm not really sure what it was about, but in it I talked about how sad I've always felt that I never got to have the doting father/daughter relationship I would see in movies or books.  I talked about it at some length because it honestly has been a sore point to me for most of my life.

Some time after that, during one of his weekly calls, my dad brought that blog post up.  He had read it and he was sad and I think a bit hurt by what I'd said.  Understandably so.  He told me that he'd always loved me and doted on me.  I don't remember exactly what I said to him but it was something along the lines of "it's ok dad, don't worry about it" and I left it at that.  I don't think I particularly believed him, but I didn't really think about it.

You see, I've long believed that, despite what they say about divorce--how it's so terrible and hard on the children and it inevitably leaves scars--my parents' divorce was the lone exception to that rule.  I didn't think  that I had any of that baggage that they say every kid picks up.  That might sound stupid, but that is legitimately what I thought for many many years.  But you're right.  It was stupid.

I say that with all due respect to my mother.  I know that she and my dad both did the very best they could to keep me and Dan out of the divorce.  But unfortunately, there's only so much you can do in a situation like that, and so some of my mom's feelings got passed along to me.  And I think I picked up a few on my own.

Because I had a hard time with my dad growing up.  Not a dramatic hard time.  We didn't get into screaming matches or have knock-down-drag-out fights.  But that may just be because that is neither my style nor my dad's.  Instead, I just didn't like him.  I went through a very distinct phase of disliking my dad at every age.  I remember explaining that, though I loved my dad--you have to love your dad--I didn't like him.  I hated it whenever anyone would tell me I was like him in anyway--that I looked like him or acted like him or thought like him.  I didn't want any part of him.

And I thought I didn't have any baggage from the divorce?

Once I hit college I thought I was over my childhood issues with my dad.  We talked fairly regularly and I didn't dislike him anymore.  I didn't really have any opinion about him at all.  He was just there.  I could honestly tell him not to worry about it when he called upset about a blog post where his daughter complained that she hadn't felt loved by her daddy...

I'm sad to say that it wasn't until these last few years that I've finally begun to really look at my relationship with my dad.  Rather, I've finally begun to really look at my dad himself.  Because I think that has been one of the biggest problems for me...

I haven't ever looked at my dad as an actual person.

Some several months ago I asked my dad for the first time ever why he went inactive after he and my mom got divorced.  I was surprised when he told me that it was because he felt ashamed and embarrassed...just like my mom had felt.

During a Thanksgiving visit (either last year's or the year before) dad and I were walking together, just the two of us.  I think I asked him about how my Uncle Phil and Aunt Vickie had started dating, but he ended up just telling me stories about all of them in college.  I had never heard any of them before.

And then there was the time maybe a year or two ago.  We were talking on the phone.  I have no idea how it came up, but dad told me about one of his favorite memories of me when I was a baby.  He said he loved to come home from work and put on music and sit with me on the floor and I would "dance" the way babies dance.

That conversation was the turning point for me.

I know it was probably just a bit of conversation for my dad, but the fact is...I cannot remember any sweet simple moments like that with my dad.  Beyond that, I can't remember him ever even telling me about any thing like that.  Until that conversation.  At that moment I realized that I didn't really know anything about my dad, either when I was a baby or at any other time in his life.

I had an epiphany about the divorce and my baggage, and it was that I had it.  I had picked up my mom's pain, and my own, and from a very young age my dad had ceased to be a person and had instead simply become a sort of blank figure that had failed to be around.  And for the first time I could see that and how it had warped my opinion of him from my earliest memories till that moment.  And I realized that I was not happy with that fact.

I can't really explain a process or describe an overt effort.  I don't even know if, should you ask my dad, he would be aware that anything about our relationship has changed in the last few years.  But I can tell you that it has.  Because I like my dad now.  And I love him--not just because everyone has to love their father.

I found some letters over Christmas that he and my mom had written to my Uncle Adam while he was on his mission.  I discovered that my dad's cursive handwriting (at least at that time) looked exactly like mine, and it made me happy.  Because I no longer hate the idea that any part of me comes from my dad.  I am sporadically and strangely left-handed, which I can only assume comes from him.  We both enjoy walking instead of driving.  We both like debating with people (some might call it arguing).  And we have a shared love of books and movies.  I know that my love of analyzing and evaluating stories comes from him; he is the best and only person I call to have those sorts of conversations.  After twentysome years of rejecting any similarities with my dad I am at last appreciating each and every one I can find.

I know this seems like more of a painful blog post than a happy one to dedicate to someone for their birthday.  Unfortunately, the past is the past and I cannot change what was.  But I wanted to make it clear exactly where I have come from so that it would be in context, with it's full significance, when I say that I love my dad and I am grateful to have him as my parent and friend.  I may not have known it growing up, but I know now that he loves me.  I am sorry for my behavior as a child, a teenager, and a young adult.  I'm sorry for my insensitivity and ignorance.  And I want to thank him for enduring all of it.  He has stuck with Daniel and I the best he could and I am lucky.  I admit, sometimes I'm a little bit jealous of my little brother Seth.  He's getting the childhood with my dad that I never got to have.

But the good news is that we get to have the rest of our lives to make up for that.

My story...

A few days ago I posted a link on facebook to a blog post from the website FreeBYU.org.  As the site was created by and maintained in large part by one of my best friends, I've become more involved in their movement than I likely would have otherwise.  So I came across these two profiles: Travis and Tucker.  I know both of these guys, but I had not previously heard their story in terms of the church.  Reading their stories, so similar to so many other stories I've heard, made me want to try and put my own experience into words.

When I was younger I had this reputation for being quite a scriptorian.  Whenever we'd play games in primary revolving around Book of Mormon stories my team would always turn to me when it was our turn.  And I almost never disappointed.  Clearly I had a deep love of the scriptures.  Or, something neither I nor anyone else around me considered, I might instead just have an amazing ability to recall stories.  Years and classes later, after being the go-to student to summarize the reading we were all assigned for homework last week, I've come to believe it was most likely that latter explanation.  Because one thing I don't remember growing up is ever doing a single thing to deserve that reputation I had.  I mean, I read my scripture with some regularity because my mom made me bookmarks and charts and any number of other devices to remind me to do so.  But I don't recall ever particularly loving them.

I can remember one and a half times in my life when I've ever felt what could be called The Spirit.  The first was on some teenaged birthday (perhaps my sixteenth? I don't have the journal from that time to verify).  It was late enough in my life that my grandma was already starting to show the earliest signs of dementia.  She and my grandpa had given me a card with some money, perhaps $20, and as I laid in bed that night I had one of my first ever panic attacks as I worried over whether or not they could afford to give me that money and what was going to happen to them both as they continued getting older and their lives continued getting harder.  I was so afraid for them, and I felt so helpless to do anything about either their futures or my own current anxiety.  And though I cannot now remember the actual feeling (and I am actually often tempted to discount my memory of what happened), I do know that that night I felt comforted.  I was finally able to stop worrying, trust that my grandparents would be ok, and fall asleep.

The other time, the one I call a "half" time, was when I was about 20.  I was living with my dad and my step mother and my two step brothers and I was, all things considered, not in a great place in my life.  I'd come home from my study abroad completely broke and I made the decision to leave school for a year and try to earn money.  In retrospect I can say without reservation that it was the wrong decision, though a few good things did come from it.  So I spent a year and a half living with family, working at Target, and literally doing nothing else with myself.  I would wake up between 11 and 1 every day and surf the internet till I had to go to work.  I would work from 3 to 11 and then come home and stay up till 3 or 4 or 5 watching movies or TV shows.  I avoided my family and had almost zero social interaction.  Literally the only good things in my life were my cat and my ward.  I loved that ward (and the cat, but that's not relevant to this story).  And it was eventually my ward and my bishop that helped me get back on my feet.  I started thinking about serving a mission.  I was nearing the age and I can't even count the number of times I'd heard that if I wasn't married by 21 it was my duty to serve a mission.  I talked to my bishop about it, and we discussed the preparations I would need to make for a mission to happen.  I knew I didn't feel like I was spiritually "fit" enough for a mission yet, but I was hopeful that I could become so.  But as I considered the mission I kept thinking about school.  I was thinking about all my friends and how I was already a year behind them now.  If I went on a mission I'd be another year and half on top of that.  Basically all my friends would be done by the time I got back.  So one day I was praying about whether or not I should go on a mission or I should go back to school.  Now, depending on who you talk to either I just had a moment of clarity or I received an answer to my prayers.  Either way, I realized that when making my decision it was ok for me to factor in what I wanted to do.  School and mission were both good, worthy choices; this wasn't an issue of right or wrong.  So I wasn't somehow sinning to consider what I wanted to do as I made the decision.  And what I wanted to was to go back to school and all my friends.  Which is what I ended up doing.

If you ask me right now to tell you about all the times I've felt the spirit, those are the two stories I'd come up with.  I would also tell you one more.

The actual decision to come back to Provo was somewhat abrupt and I ended up moving into the first place I could find.  I moved down in the middle of the summer of 2008 and I lived in the place I found through winter semester of 2009.  I can't tell you exactly when this event occurred besides sometime while I lived in that house.  Essentially, one night I had a...spiritual breakdown shall we call it?  It began simply with loneliness.  I've always been susceptible to the latenight lonelies.  But that night it got worse and worse.  I remembered all those New Era articles I read about how other people had felt lonely and then they prayed and they "felt the arms of [their] dear Savior surround them and His love fill them."  So I asked God to let me feel that love.  Let me feel those arms around me.  I didn't feel anything at all.  And as I waited to feel the love I'd been promised was there waiting for me I started to ask myself a question.  It was the question that I think a lot of other people my age are also asking themselves.  What if none of it is true?  What if it is all just a big lie, or manipulation, or even just a well-intentioned wish?  What then?  I think I can say that it was the worst night of my life.  Because as I asked myself that question, I also asked God.  The God who, in all my twenty-some years of life had only had anything to say to me maybe two times.  And all this time I'd been ok with that.  I knew I wasn't good enough or devout enough to warrant the sort of constant spiritual intervention that I'd heard about other people having.  I didn't blame God for thusfar leaving me be.  But that night was different.  I needed something, anything at all.  I would have been content with a brusque "get over yourself" even.  I just wanted the tiniest shred of reassurance that my entire life hadn't been built around the world's greatest self-sustaining con.  I eventually cried myself out and fell asleep exhausted.

I woke up the next day with the the question in my head "What now?"  What was I supposed to do?  I'd been let down by God.  I had asked and He had said nothing.  But on the other hand...I had survived.  I'd made it through that awful night, and, thankfully, in the light of day I didn't feel the same passionate anguish I'd felt the night before.  I was just confused.  I didn't know what was supposed to happen.

A few days later in one of my classes we were assigned to read a book of poetry called The Stream and the Sapphire by Denise Levertov.  In it I found this poem:

Suspended
I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.

I have never ever cared for poetry, but that poem practically slapped me in the face when I read it.  There it was.  I had grasped at God's garment that night and my hands had slipped.  But what she said appealed to me.  "For though I claw at empty air and feel nothing, no embrace, I have not plummeted."  Neither had I.  I had made it through my night of pain and abandonment and I came out the other side.

There were many more hours of thought that went into it, but this is where I ended up.  God didn't answer me.  Not even when I was desperately begging Him to do so.  I could interpret that two ways.  God couldn't or wouldn't answer me because He either doesn't exist or doesn't care, or He didn't answer me for reasons of His own that I don't know but trust to ultimately be for my own good.  I have at least one friend who, upon reading this, will quickly point out to me that those two options are actually the exact same thing, except one includes me basically making things up to make myself feel better.  And to him I say yes.  He's exactly right.  Because those two options ended up being a microcosm of my entire attitude toward religion.  Which is this:  Either God doesn't exist and everything I've been taught and believed in my entire life is a lie and I've been wasting all my time and energy on nothing more than really persistent myths.  OR.  It's all true and there are things I don't understand and probably never will and I accept them and try to figure things out as best I can.  Those may not be the options for everyone, but that's what they were to me.

So I made a decision.  I chose to believe.  I chose to tell myself what may well be a straight up lie because when I weighed my options, my life looked better through that lens.  In the church there is a lot of talk about faith.  I doubt a sacrament meeting goes by that doesn't have at least one mention of it.  Faith, we are told, is the foundation of our testimonies, and through it we progress to knowledge.  Well, knowledge is something that I have accepted to be pretty much beyond my reach.  Because I just don't think I could claim knowledge unless God or the Spirit told me something straight out.  And that doesn't appear to be something that's going to happen.  But if I'm being honest, I have to say that I wouldn't even classify what I have as faith.  What I have is hope.  Hope is the very lowest rung on the spiritual ladder in my head.  I have hope that this church I've committed myself to is true (though certainly not perfect).  I have hope that one day I'll understand the world and my place in it.  I have hope that God loves me.

That was five and a half years ago.  Things haven't been easy since then.  I've seen a lot of friends go through similar experiences to mine, but with very different endings.  They couldn't accept hope as a good enough reason to stick with the church.  I don't blame them.  In fact, I often worry that the real reason I stay with the church is simply because I don't care enough about topics that should be much more important to me.  Maybe I just lack enough conviction one way or the other.  It's actually a pretty constant issue in my mind.  But whether that is the case or not, I will say that I have thusfar stuck with my decision.  I may have doubts and questions and hurts and plenty of issues with the church...but I have decided to stick with it.  I think the hardest thing for me these days is jealousy of my time.  Lacking the devout conviction of my fellow saints I find it difficult to sacrifice my time so willingly.  I'm working on that.  But I will also say that having an...academic? reasoned?  well, either way, a far less emotional attachment to the church has had its upsides. I think I have been able to offer a supportive and understanding ear to my friends who have suffered through the disillusionment and pain that comes with a lost testimony (at least I really hope so). I am able to hear a lot more criticism of the church without getting angry or defensive (unless that criticism is idiotic and unfair ;).  And I am able to look at the church more objectively and see places it needs improvement without writing it off entirely.  And that is, I think, the biggest "blessing" that has come from my story thusfar.  Because if the ones with questions and concerns just leave, and all that is left are the devout and unquestioning, then how will anything ever change?  Each side serves it's purpose, and you need both of them.  So I am grateful, I guess, that I can be a questioner.

I told my bishop an abbreviated version of this story a few weeks ago.  It is something I've mostly kept to myself.  I've been ashamed of the fact that I can't claim to have faith or knowledge.  It is hard not to think that, if I was a better person--a better Mormon--I would have those things.  But my bishop, instead of calling me to repentance, said "I think that is a great story."  Small as it was, that little bit of acceptance was so comforting to me.  It inspired me to try and look at my story in a different light--to recast it from a failure to a success.  It's hard to even write that.  And maybe I'm not quite at success level.  But as I've gone back through it all and written it all out, I have been able to see more goodness in my story than I ever have before.  Enough that I can hope to call it a success one day...

To my brilliant, beloved, and wonderful grandmother...

I went home for Christmas and was lucky enough to see my grandmother right before she drifted off into the sleep with which she will end her life.  I spoke to my mom this afternoon and she confirmed that grandma hasn't woken up and will likely die within days.  I can't begin to explain how I felt the first time I saw her there at Wildflower, the home we've had to put her in.  This is a woman who I have looked up to my entire life and she was diminished to a skeletal creature in a wheelchair.  I couldn't stop crying that first visit.  It got better the next day, and the next, but only because I was able to disassociate and disconnect.  The woman in that chair was not the grandmother in my memory.  They were two different people.  

But finding out that she is leaving for good, that the end is here (mercifully sooner than anyone expected) is not as easy as I thought it would be.  Certainly I am glad that she (and my mother, who has born the entire weight of her care as well as my grandfather's) will be spared the years of senility that her own mother suffered.  But that doesn't change the fact that my grandma is dying.  She's going to be gone forever.  And in the end I find that I'm just a little girl who misses her grama and doesn't want her to leave and can't understand that it's better this way.  

I wanted to write something here to commemorate her.  Something that would represent what she was in my life.  But I couldn't think of anything better than the final that I wrote for my English Literature class on my study abroad in 2007.  With some minor alterations and additions, here it is

            The assignment was to write an essay that related the class readings to the places they’d visited.  My fingers hovered above the keys expectantly—waiting for inspiration to strike.  All that struck was a hand on my bedroom door, giving me a distraction from my un-inspired thoughts.  The harder I tried to focus the more my mind wandered.  I asked myself how ideas might relate to places…

            I’d heard of memories being related to smells, and smells could be related to places.  For instance, I remember very distinctly the smell of my grandmother’s food-room back in New Mexico.  It was a cold smell and somehow pleasantly musty.  Like the smell of damp earth, even though the room was above ground.  Whenever I smell that smell I remember the room, cool and dark, even when the light was on.  It was one of my favorite places at my grandmother’s house, especially when it was my grandmother who took me there.  And because I loved my grandmother’s food room, I loved the food-room in my aunt’s house, and then finally the one in my mom’s new house. 

            The connection, then, was food-rooms to the idea of my grandmother, I supposed.  But really, that was not an example of an idea being connected with a place, except in barest technicality.  In actuality it was simply a fragment of my definition of my grandmother.  It was part of what made my grandmother in my mind.  She was many places and things and actions and ideas. 

I considered the idea of my grandmother and saw a kaleidoscope of things:  My grandmother teaching my addition; admonishing me to “burn the sums into my brain”.  My grandmother giving me raisins out of a Tupperware pitcher with a yellow lid as I sat on the wooden stool in the corner of the kitchen.  My grandmother bringing me a golf ball-sized blob of peanut butter cookie dough as I played in my uncle’s room on the green fuzzy carpet.  Then, more, after they all moved to Oregon.  I saw my grandmother’s small brown dish, or the blue plastic one, with two small scoops of Tin Roof Sundae ice cream in it and her sneakiest smile that told me this was a treat just for us.  I heard my grandmother teaching me and my brother one single phrase of Latin to say to the kids at school when they were mean.  There was my grandma sitting with my mother and uncle, singing “Dooley”.  Overarching them all were the bookshelves full of carefully organized and jealously guarded books.  Endless shelves hiding tempting treasures.  Sherlock Holmes and Freckles and Wind in the Willows.  That part of my grandmother that was a passionate love of books was also a part of me.

            I thought about these aspects of my grandmother.  I thought about the things that I refused to accept as part of her.  Those first years when the most articulate woman I knew started forgetting words; joking in the yellow light of our kitchen about the time when all it would take to entertain her would be the magnets on the fridge.  We’d cackled all the more at the looks of others who couldn't understand our morbid sense of humor, that it was better to laugh than cry.  Then the breathtakingly quick crescendo from a disoriented woman who wandered ceaselessly around her house and still harmonized at the family singalongs even if she couldn't remember the words…to a stranger huddled in a wheelchair in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar building, mumbling indistinctly from lips that were no longer quite under her control.    

None of these memories were places, though places were a part of the memories.  Yes, there were places in my mind, but to limit my grandmother to one place was like limiting the ocean to one grain of sand on one beach.  Would that be the same for anything? 

I remembered when we read “A Room of One’s Own” in class; how, before I even began to read, my mind resolved to like the story, based only on the fact that, long ago, my grandmother told me that someday I needed to read it.  Now I had read it, and liked it very much.  I thought it was brilliant, in fact.  But the only thing I could remember distinctly was that the book was everlastingly bound to my grandmother.  So, it seemed that a book could be connected to one single thing; perhaps if that single thing contained many things within it.  Perhaps it was only because it was my grandmother to which it was connected, and my grandmother contained all of me.

My mind floated back to the beginning.  There were my fingers, still expectant.  There was the screen, still blank.  Another hand was knocking at my door.  I smiled at the thought of my grandmother and began to type.

Dancing holes in the soles of my shoes...

Ages back my mom and I concocted a plan.  In this plan I was going to go home for a weekend sometime towards the end of summer and I was going to teach a dance workshop to the youth in my home stake.  Then I was going to DJ a dance for them and suddenly the kids would go to stake dances and they would dance and everything was going to be awesome.  It seemed like a good plan except for the part where we completely ignored that we're talking about a bunch of kids between the ages of 14 and 17 and who are we kidding? The day they dive into a dance workshop and learn to dance is the day Snooki buys herself some pearls and joins the DAR.

so much class happening here!
(photo courtesy of People.com)

That is what I thought about during the bulk of the two hour drive up to Pine Valley.  Lured with the promise of a good time (yes, sometimes I lie to people...I had no idea if it actually would be a good time), I had convinced my friend Mike to come with me to help teach.  As of our arrival in the parking lot that was to be our dance space we still hadn't agreed on what style of dance to teach.  I wanted to teach west coast so that the kids would be able to dance to the regular music that would be played.  Mike was doubtful that was going to happen.  I was forced to agree with him when I was finally confronted by over 150 kids huddled in front of me.  There was no way we were going to teach these kids west coast.  Blues it would be!

I then proceeded to give the most rushed, un-inclusive, non-helpful lesson of my life.  In my own defense, it was enough of a challenge just getting the kids to alternate boy/girl/boy/girl and touch each other.  But Mike and I, in about 25 minutes, went over very basic connection, pulse, and taught them how to do a basic, a right turn and a left turn.  With my mother gesturing me to hurry up every few seconds in the background, we wrapped up the pathetic excuse for a lesson and got the music started.  

The rest of the evening, however, was great fun.  Though I played almost every request I got, I also tried to gently broaden musical horizons.  Of course, this had mixed results as, towards the end of the night, a girl pleadingly asked for a "fast song".  Bemused, Mike and I questioned her what sort of fast song she wanted since we had played quite a few fast songs, including two lindy hops, several country swings, and even some line dances.  She looked at us like we were slow and said "I mean some normal music!"  

I really like that knife...
obtained here

For me, however, the entire experience of the Stake Dance was redeemed.  

When I was in mutual I would go to dances and awkwardly sit off to the side.  Rarely, some intrepid young man would tremblingly approach and ask me to dance.  We would rock back and forth, one sweaty hand slipping embarrassingly between shoulder and waist whilst the other encircled my own in a clammy whisper of a grip.   For three minutes, as our eyes circumnavigated the ceiling, the walls, the floor...anything but look at our partner, we would tamp down a tiny circle on the dance floor.  At last the music would end, releasing us, and we would mumble thanks over our shoulders as we hurried back to our respective places. 

Some intrepid boy just like this one...bless his heart
photo from here

But there I was, on a Saturday night, back at a stake dance.  Only I am now 26 years old.  I know how to dance now.  And best of all, I had a partner there with me who was both willing and able to dance with me.  And dance we did.  To the insufferable and eternal Cottoneye Joe we danced the Polka.  When Open Arms was requested we waltzed.  We even threw in some Cha Cha, though I don't remember which song that one was.  And of course, there was blues and west coast (and some very westified lindy).  It is amazing what a difference those small changes can make in the same event...

We danced the whole night and our post-dance energy buzz completely confounded mom.  I think just listening to us talk was making her and dad tired.  

The next day me, dad, and Mike drove up to go shooting.  Walking across the rock pit to set up targets I realized the full extent of my fun the night before.  

Yes.  That's right.  I danced a hole in my shoe.  

Happiness is in the little things...

In my blog post about the Descendants I mention at the end how I sort of created this future memory for myself.  That is, after watching that scene at the end I decided that I would have such a moment in my life someday, and I became nostalgic for a memory that has not yet happened.  The thing is, I have a lot of these future memories.  I look forward to the rest of my life avidly and I have so many ideas about how I want it to be.  Does anyone else do that?

Last night I had this beautifully displacing moment where I created a future/present memory that fulfilled that anticipatory nostalgia.  I was driving to the airport with Matt to pick up his roommate.  It was late at night, the windows were down and my hair was blowing like crazy, my feet were up on the dash, and Matt was, in his words, "indoctrinating [me] in some of the best music on earth".  That is, he was playing me his favorite songs by New Model Army, telling me how he felt about them when he was in high school.  It was warm outside and there was a great big, orange, half moon rising over the mountains.

Are you ever in the midst of a moment and, just for a flash, you slip outside of yourself and look at where you are and what you're doing and realize that everything is perfect?  Sitting in that car, listening to Matt talk about how much he loved this song and the next song and the next song, with the warm wind....it was a perfect moment.  I was absolutely happy.

And then, it was like I slipped even further back and looked at my life like a story rather than a living breathing series of events.  This moment I was in, it was the sort of moment that people write about in stories or try to depict in movies-- a sort of Platonic Form of a College Memory.  The sort of fabricated "memories" that you almost resent in stories because they're too perfect and too staged and they make you long for things that aren't really even real.  And yet, here I was living in one.  I knew, in that second, that this was the sort of thing that I would look back on, when I have kids getting ready for college, and I would tell them about it to explain to them why college is such a wonderful place and they should be so excited to go there.  And they wouldn't really understand, but I would glow a little bit within myself remembering how happy I was.

After that my night continued to be utterly lovely.  On the way back from the airport we progressed from New Model Army to They Might Be Giants, and then to Nickel Creek.  Matt and I both love this song and we sang it with enthusiasm.  Then, because Matt's roommate Brenden wanted to thank him, we tried to find a Wendy's that was open.  We succeeded at the third one.  Over salted fries and vanilla frosty...

Then we came back to my beloved Campus Plaza and we sat in front of my apartment in the twilight glow of the lamps and we talked.  Matt is leaving soon.  In fact he is leaving on Friday, though he will come back a few times before he leaves forever at the end of the month.  I can't begin to explain how much I will miss him.  He's been my best friend, one of the best I've ever had.  And I'm sure we will continue to be good friends, but it won't be the same.  He won't live 30 feet away.  He will live two thousand miles away.  So when we stay up till 3:30 talking I appreciate every second of it.  And I guess that's how I want to end this post.  With a dedication to Matt (though he'll probably laugh at me for this) and a thank you.  I know it's rather wretchedly sentimental.  But thanks, Matt, for listening to me whine, and for trusting me so much, and for introducing me to Avatar, and for laughing at Frasier with me, and talking to me, and just for being you.

Reminiscing

So, as I was walking home the other day I happened to look down upon the ground at exactly the right moment to see a little pink tube of chapstick laying under a shrub.  Instantly a memory popped into my head from way back in my freshman year of college.

*cue rippley flashback screen*

So, my freshman year of college was spent in the dorms, specifically DT, U Hall, 2nd floor.  I came to a school that actually practices curfew, which in practical terms means that precisely at midnight all the doors into the buildings lock up tight and the only way to get in is if you have your ID card and you're supposed to be in that building.  Swipe the card and you're in...forget your card and you're basically SOL.

Pathetic as my life was my freshman year, I did manage to find a couple of friends who were willing to overlook my extreme social eccentricity and hang out with me.  We established my freshman year tradition of walking to the Dollar Theatre for the midnight movie (we walked because none of us owned a car).  These were good times.  Let's face it, a girl straight out of high school...the freedom of staying out till 3 in the morning with no parents to object was a heady thing.  I cherished those Friday nights.

I cherished them, that is, after I got the hang of my new dorm.  Our first expedition went well until I got home.  It was at this point that I realized that I didn't have my ID card.  And it was 3 am.  And both my friends were gone, to their own respective homes.  Ahhh.......

Lucky for me, I discovered that I had a fellow nocturnal creature on my floor--recall I was lucky enough to live on the second floor.  There was one light on.  But how to get her attention?  Being the intelligent, problem solving, straight A student that I am, I came up with a great solution!  Throw something at her window!  Now I just needed to find something to throw.

If you care to know, there was a shocking dearth of small rocks in the general vicinity of Deseret Towers.  All I could find on the ground was wood chips and they lacked the necessary mass to create any sort of sound on impact.  On to things on my person.  There was not much.  There were my keys and my chapstick.  The keys I thought perhaps too heavy, but the chapstick...

You have to understand something about this chapstick.  You see, while I was giddy with the freedom of college life, I still missed home.  Quite a lot.  To assuage my melancholy my mother sent me the first and only care package I was ever to receive from her (no point in coddling me, after all).  Within said package were useful things like chicken soup, lime green plastic cups, and a potato peeler.  My mother is a pragmatic soul.  Also included was a tube of strawberry chapstick--I'm not quite sure why it was there considering the fact that I had never used chapstick my whole life, but she thought it prudent to include.  Perhaps because I was so unfamiliar with the product, I was deeply struck by the flavor...strawberry!  Who'd ever heard of strawberry chapstick?!  You couldn't find that anywhere!  My mother must really love me to find strawberry chapstick to put in my package.  I will carry it with me everywhere as a talisman of her love!

Remember how I said I was a touch eccentric back then?

The point is, I had a sentimental attachment to this chapstick.  Ridiculous, yes; real, very.  So here I am at 3 in the morning, stranded outside of my dorm, with this tube of chaptsick in my hand, preparing to throw it at one of my dorm-mates' windows.  I haul back and throw and...it hits the brick next to the window and falls back to the ground.  No problem, I'll just go grab it and throw it again.........I'll just grab it........hmm.......I know its here somewhere.............Let me just look a little bit harder................perhaps if I get down on my knees I will see it more easily..................

It was at this moment that some nice couple, out enjoying each other's company perhaps a little later than necessary, walked around the corner to discover me rooting about in the shrubbery that surrounded the building.  Judging by their expressions, they had several ideas of what I was doing, none of which were remotely close to the truth.  However, bless their hearts, they stopped and asked me if I was ok and when I pathetically related to them the fate of my beloved chapstick--because this was IMPORTANT--they both came and squatted down and helped me look.  And yet, even with all three pairs of eyes looking, the chapstick remained lost.  Finally, in despair, I sent them away.

Of course, as soon as they were out of sight it occurred to me that not only had I lost my chapstick, but I was also still locked out of my dorm and now I was again without a projectile.  Aw crap.  But, putting my keene problem solving mind again to the problem, I quickly found a solution.  The beauty of living in the dorms your freshman year is that your RA gives you magnificently useful things to "keep you safe".  Like the Rape Whistle.  This clever little device is given you to prevent your imminent rape.  Because, on the off chance that your rapist approaches you from a distance and alerts you in advance "I'm going to rape you, so if you have any means of defending yourself or summoning aide, you should probably get that out now," you can pull out your trusty whistle from the depths of your pocket and blow gustily till he punches you in the face.  Yes, its a handy tool that no freshman girl should be without.

Being the good, rule following girl that I was raised to be, however, I had dutifully attached my rape whistle to my key chain.  It was not without some satisfaction, then, that I pulled it off that night thinking "you know, I thought this would come in handy some time,".  After several tries (I've never had particularly good aim) I finally managed to hit the window with the whistle...and after a few more, I managed it with enough force that I actually produced a sound.  An ID card changed hands, and I quickly let myself into my dorm.

The story doesn't end there, however.  You see, I could not abandon my chapstick so easily.  Yes, I really was still stuck on that.  Having gained access to my room, I procured a flashlight (and my own ID card) and returned to the shrubs to hunt.  15 minutes later I was still doomed to dry lips forever.  It was no good.  My chapstick had vanished from the face of the earth.  I was, needless to say, quite heartbroken.

But never let it be said that I gave up on something without giving it my full effort (ok, so I've done that several times...but this wasn't one of them).  The next day I sprang forth out of my bed with a mission.  I was going to go back down there in the daylight and reign vengeance down on those shrubs until they yielded up my strawberry chapstick.  I was determined.  I was energized.  I was powerful and nothing could stop me.  I marched forth out of my dorm and over to those shrubs with what I imagine was much the same sort of resolve a firefighter might feel as he returns to the burning building the third time to find the last stranded victim he knows is in there.  And there, lying innocently on the ground, with what I imagine to be the nearest thing to a smug grin an inanimate tube of plastic can manage, was my stupid chapstick.  It wasn't even hidden.  Nor was it in some alternate location to where we'd been searching.  No.  It was right there.  Right in front of my face.  It had caused me so much anxiety and now it thought it could just waltz back into my pocket as though nothing had happened.  Geez.  Some people's kids...

*Rippley flash-back effect brings us back to the present*

I didn't pick up that chapstick I saw under the shrub yesterday.  After all, someone might miss it.