My new bucket list

My husband called to ask what we could do to honor my dad on what would have been his 65th birthday. I had to laugh a little when all I could come up with was:
1) Work hard all day long
2) Eat leftovers from the back of the fridge
3) At night, settle in with the History Channel or a BYU game.

Lol.

So, I will continue the list with some more funny things, then maybe some serious ones.

*Read the newspaper. From cover to cover. Seriously. (I used to call my dad "Interactive NPR.")
*Tell a REALLY corny joke with a completely straight face.
*Take your daily trip to Lowe's.
*Cook up some venison, and try to get each of your kids to take a bite.
*Go on a fishing trip with no tent and no food, just a tarp, a frying pan, and fishing gear.
*Rub someone's feet.
*Lie in the middle of the floor while your children run past you -- try to grab their feet.
*Chase your tween girls into the path of a porcupine, then stand back and watch as hilarity ensues. Do not tell them until afterwards that porcupines CANNOT shot their quills.
*Pretend to be an opera singer.
*Make animal sounds, especially a cow.

But seriously.....,
*Read scriptures
*Help someone
*Read something that expands my mind
*Listen to someone's problem, then come up with advice that is nothing you would have thought of, but is exactly what is needed.
*See something from someone else's point of view.
*Take in a stray -- usually a person.
*Tell a story to a child.
*Teach someone to understand the gospel in a way that they have never understood it before, and that makes it delicious to them.
*Fix a car, an appliance, a plumbing or electrical problem, a house, or whatever else might be broken.
*Give compassion to someone who doesn't deserve it.
*Spend time in nature.
*Go to the temple.
*Do Family History work.
*Tell mom you love her.

Today would have been my father's 65th birthday, so I am fasting. I read in The Book of Mormon this morning about people who were mourning a great loss because of war, and they fasted while they mourned. I remember now, too, that fasting and mourning often go together in the scriptures. So I am praying that the fasting will help me get through today. Maybe it will help my family, too.

How did I miss that?

9:30 on Saturday night, starting the dishwasher so the baby has clean bottles, I decide to play some music. Josh Groban was top on my playlist, so I picked a song I'd liked before, "To Where You Are." I'm scrubbing bottles, listening, and I realize for the first time that the song is about a loved one who passed away. How did I miss that? Then I am heaving, sobbing as quietly as I am able, so I don't wake the kids.

Oh, how I miss you, Daddy.

I'm back!

I have absolutely nothing to write about. Or, I have absolutely nothing about which to write. (The second sentence is grammatically correct, but it sounds funny.) When my students are struggling to write, I tell them to start with this sentence after setting a timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. I tell them to freewrite whatever comes into their head and pay no attention to sentence structure, punctuation, or grammar. Clearly, I already broke that rule. Still, I have nothing about which to write.

Wait, I recently celebrated 5 years at my job. Well, technically, there was no celebration. (Why do people say they celebrated something if they never even had a party? Paul, I think I should be taken out to dinner.) I'm hoping for my watch at our meetings in July -- I'll wear it proudly, even if it isn't my color. I love that I can work from home, part time, and still get to train the next generation of teachers. Dream job!!

Spring fever has hit hard, and I'm trying not to shake my fist at the sky that keeps bringing spring snows. Samantha found "daffodillas" in a corner of grandma's yard. A four-year-old running around calling yellow spring blooms "daffodillas" is one of the small joys of life. She put it in her hair, then mine, and cried when she thought it died. I'm not sure I've ever seen her as happy as when she found our the next day that grandma had cut off the bloom and put it in water. "My daffodilla is alive!!" You'd think it was a pet :) Grandpa said he may forever change his vocabulary to include Samantha's version of this flower.

COUNTDOWNCLOCK

Welcome to the South, Hon!

Installment 2

One of the things I hate about moving is finding new radio stations. It takes me a while so scan through the entire FM and AM bands, finding the stations that sound interesting. Then, I must whittle the interesting stations down to 5 -- the exact number of radio presets I have in my car.

The first week I was in Knoxville, I scanned the FM band and found a radio station that sounded like it had about the right beat and tempo. I recklessly set it as radio station number 1 on my preset buttons, expecting songs I recognized to be played any minute.

Two weeks later, I realized I hadn't yet heard a song I recognized. Why two weeks, you ask? Because when you are new to a place, you spend your time worrying about not getting lost, or arriving at places late because you got lost, or just responding to Samantha's every day request, "Mommy, let's go home!" (I tried to tell her over and over again that this was our home now -- no dice. It took a full three weeks for her to stop asking. The first time she said "We're almost home!" in response to our pulling up to our apartment complex gate, I nearly shed tears of joy.)

So, after I learned some of the basics of getting around in Knoxville, my attention once again turned to the radio station that had been playing non-stop for two weeks. I listened carefully. Yes, the beat and tempo were familiar, but none of the songs were. I listened more carefully, then laughed out loud. (Samantha laughed, too, though she had no idea what she was laughing about). I had inadvertently found a Christian Rock radio station and had been listening to it as background noise since I moved into the area. In most places, this type of mistake would be impossible, as no Christian Rock radio stations exist. Welcome to the South, hon!

I never did change the station.