a different town today

i feel a little bit silly about my finals picks right about now. but watch this and tell me something - how can you not love him? he looks so sad - i just want to give him a huge hug. he's my favorite, and i don't care that the mavs swept the lakers, i hate them.

in other news - camping! this weekend! for real! as long as i can stave off this illness i feel creeping up on me, my dream will come true.

now i just need a road trip...

beneath an orange sky

there are a few reasons i've been dreading summer this year. one hundred and fifteen degrees is one. people moving is another (what am i doing to do without my favorite three and one year olds?)

but i do have some fun things to look forward to:

-thunder and bulls finals (i predicted this before the playoffs started, even though i doubt anyone will believe me. and i know it's probably considered a long shot, but i've got all my fingers and toes crossed. i love me some kevin durant.)

-piles of fabric waiting to be a quilt

-piles of notebooks waiting to be filled

-a swimming pool waiting for dry ice (i forgot to take pictures last year)

-camping? finally?

-playing "mom" for the weekend to aforementioned one and three year olds. it will be an accomplishment if everyone is still alive afterwards. especially me.

-sorely needed new glasses

-sleeping in saturdays. i never knew how much i would love them until i started waking up at five am on weekdays. that is early, in case you were wondering.

-nba draft! jimmer!

-and, hopefully at some point, a road trip. don't care where to, don't care how long, i just want to make it happen

if you find yourself falling apart

question of the day - is it too early to be playing christmas music on the piano? or too late? i guess it doesn't matter what the answer is, i'm doing it anyway...

i've had something on my mind since this weekend that i can't seem to stop thinking about. you see, some friends and i went to scottsdale to celebrate emily turning 30, and we stayed at an amazing resort with 10 pools and a sushi bar and espn (pretty much everything you need to be happy.) and since then, i've been wondering what my idea of the perfect life is.

i think everyone has an idea of it, and i'm no exception, i think. but i can't seem to decide on just one idea of perfect.

emily and i actually discussed this while sitting on the balcony of our resort room. (i forgot to mention balconies in my list up there. and i can't call it a hotel.) sometimes i think perfect would be enough money that i could spend it all on the people i love, helping us all to do adventurous fun things like sail around the world or live on the beach for six months.

but other times, like when i read my favorite book, i think about how having no money is sometimes the best answer. then the politics and the awkwardness don't get in the way. what you see is what you get, and even if it isn't much, it is honest and straightforward and real.

so what to do? having money can cause problems, and being poor is usually romanticized. so i just keep going back and forth, vacillating between both of those ideas, and lots of others. and i came to this conclusion - no matter what, life will be perfect if i have the people i love close to me.

(i've been getting sentimental in my old age, i guess. it possibly has something to do with this little girl. i wish i wasn't 5000 miles away.)

things keep coming

i know i am the wimpiest person in the history of the world, but i would like to know this -


how many things are more scary than being at home all alone with a little six pound dog who wakes you up in the middle of the night barking at something, and then realizing the golf club you kept next to your bed for just such an occasion is back in the bag in the garage where it belongs?


in case you were wondering, just such an occasion occurred in my life last night. i locked my bedroom door and spent the next twenty minutes laying in bed trying to stay awake to listen for intruder sounds and planning the best route to my sewing scissors in my closet. and singing "hide your kids, hide your wife." i'm not terribly rational or coherent when i'm rudely awoken like that.

travel just by folding a map

word of the day: autochthonus (i came across this while i was reading tonight, and it was driving me crazy because i had no idea how to pronounce it.)

i like to think of myself as an independent person - someone who doesn't really need much that i can't provide for myself. i've said many times that my dream is to be a hermit in the mountains somewhere so i don't have to deal with all the junk that comes from real life.

yesterday, i got some very sad sad news that made me reconsider that notion.

i think the older i get, the more independent i get. it's easy to live according to your own whims and desires and not have to worry about anyone else. but what would i do without the anyone else's in my life?

i've received sad news before, and i've turned to my friends and family for comfort. this sad news i got yesterday doesn't affect me directly, but it does directly affect people i love and care about, and that does affect me, at least eventually.

the support system surrounding us is something that is easily taken for granted - it's just around until that moment when we need it and immediately put it to use. i like to think that i'm part of some one's support - that i can be trusted to comfort and help, even in the smallest possible way. and if i'm a hermit, i can't help anyone really.

that's one of the many things i love about the gospel - there is an inherent support system that stretches infinitely, directly to our Savior. and usually with lots of loving people in between.

(andrea, you might not read this anytime soon, but i just wanted you to know i thought about you guys 17000 times today.)

don't you know what i'm thinking

i have to say, and i hope i don't sound like a bad jazz fan when i say this, watching the playoffs is almost a more enjoyable experience when you don't have a horse in the race (or whatever the saying is.) i am enjoying just watching the games (and all the preliminaries/postliminaries on tnt) and experiencing some excellent basketball. i wouldn't call myself an indifferent observer - i still have my opinions on the games (go thunder!) but it's nice to watch without being in danger of having a heart attack.

this weekend i had my first ever public organ performance. i did not have the bells on, sadly. i've wanted to play the organ bells ever since andrea did it for Christmas one year and no one in the congregation sang because we were laughing so hard.

yesterday at 6:00 pm it was 90 degrees in chandler. and it was snowing in parts of utah county (i hear.) az is the place to be.

another thing about this weekend - it was stake conference. i love stake conference. i love any kind of conference, really, or at least the church kinds. the general authority who came was an excellent speaker - very animated and engaging. the saturday night session was the best - he told a story about clinging to his cell phone that was funny and endearing and pointed all at once. i won't think about "clinging to the rod of iron" in the same way again. in a good way.

carried to ohio in a swarm of bees

my friend crapping dawg came to visit this weekend. and i learned it's always a good idea to have a plan b (or c or d or e)

plan a - go golfing
it was too hot for that

plan b - go to a diamondbacks game
someone (me) is dumb and thought it started at 8:10... it really started 3 hours earlier

plan c - go to the temple to watch the easter pageant
it was in spanish that night

plan d - go to the zoo
this never made it past the suggestion stage

plan e - go to joe's farm grill, then walk around the temple grounds during the spanish pageant, then go to bahama buck's for some delicious shaved ice, then watch megamind
this is what actually happened.

i love having visitors. and bahama buck's. and megamind.