The Funeral, Part I

I walk into my room and kick off my shoes.  I think of everyone else that was at the funeral today and I think of them in their rooms, kicking off their shoes too.  We've all just spent the better part of our day feeling the other side of love.  There is one side of love that you feel in your heart and it makes you feel happy and giddy and then there is the other side of love that you feel in your stomach, and it does not feel so  good. It is called mourning.

So we go home and kick off our shoes for one more day because we are still alive.  Our journey is not yet over, but one day it will be and then all of our friends will put on their shoes and stand around feeling the other side of love as it relates to us.  I hope in my case, that while they are standing around, they realize what I realized today.  We are symbiotic.  There are no one way encounters or relationships.  We touch each other and affect each other whether we realize it or not. Significantly.  When God places someone in our orbit, it is not unintentional.  I will try to be more deliberate in my interactions now because of this awareness. Thank you for being in my orbit.

"The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well." ( Neal A. Maxwell  That My Family Should Partake, p. 86)

Aspen Grove

The Babylonians had it all wrong.  You don't build a tower to heaven...you drive there.  At 6:26 am yesterday morning I left McHenry County, Illinois and drove to Laramie Wyoming. After a good nights sleep in cowboy country, I resumed my journey and arrived at Aspen Grove, Utah at 2:39 this afternoon. 

You're going to have a hard time convincing me that this is not heaven.  When I got here today, I only had to walk from my car to the lodge to get all teary eyed.  I had forgotten the smell of it, but little else.  Now I'm home, even though I've never actually lived here for more than a week at a time.  As you can see from the photo, it's beautiful and serene, but one of it's most charming qualities is how it feels.  It is inhabited by families that, for just one week, have come here for the sole purpose of being together without the interference of the world.   To eat, to laugh, to talk and to play together. Right now, although I am not doing any of those things with my own family, I can still feel the magic that is happening for those who are... and I love it.  It is so pure, that it even works on a stranger who is sitting in the shade all by herself, typing on her blog.  If this isn't heaven, then it's a suburb for sure.

Drive In Theatre

In commemation of the 79th anniversary of the first drive-in movie theater:

This is the lock knob from our 1978 Ford Ltd. It was decapitated by a clunky drive-in

movie speaker that we forgot to remove from our car before driving away. Oops.

The year was 1990 and we had just watched Dick Tracy. We were probably trying to beat the rush of cars that would soon be lining up to exit. Since we didn't have any kids at the time I'm pretty sure we didn't have a good reason to be in such a hurry, other than chasing the pretense that we all tend to adopt from time to time that implies that making it out ahead of other people somehow merits a pat on the back. Well, haste not only makes waste, but it makes it really hard to lock and unlock your door from the inside.

I'm pretty sure that this is the only surviving piece of that vehicle but I'm not sure why I have kept it all these years.  That car was twelve years old when Mark bought it.  For a car that age, it didn't have many miles, but we soon discovered that it also didn't have many oil changes, or wax jobs, or anything else that lends to the longevity of a car .  When our friends wrote on that car with shoe polish the night of our wedding reception, the over exposed paint soaked it up good.  As a result, we never really could wash it completely off.  We drove around with cute little phrases like: "love hoopty" and "Mark's getting lucky tonight" and my favorite "ball and chain" for the remaining life of the vehicle.  It was a lemon...with a message.  Fortunately, it's life with us was rather short-lived.  It didn't even make it to Dick Tracy the Sequel (but then again...neither did Warren Beatty).

Donut Years

One hour in people time is ten years in donut time.

This donut is 18 hours old, and is therefore already a

candidate for the Smithsonian.

But if you took it to the Smithsonian, you would miss out

on the chocolate icing, which is still quite good.

Performing a simple icing-ectomy preserves this valuable asset.

(A custard filled donut after a custard-ectomy)

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.