Randomalities: The Memorial Day Edition

(I am super tired, so if this post is kind of wonky...well, I'm kind of wonky, so no wonder. Consider yourself warned! It's hard for me to speak a sentence when I'm tired, writing should be interesting.)

****Although I don't have a picture, I love seeing our flag waving in the breeze in front of our house. We had two this year - the scouts stake a flag our in the park strip for every holiday. It looks so pretty to look up and down the street and see multiple flags!

****The weather made me crazy all weekend. It was super cold, windy, and rainy up until today. Today was gorgeous, but not very warm. I was hoping all day Saturday to do 2 runs in preparation for Ragnar. At 4:30 I finally gave in and got on the treadmill because I realized that the wind gusts would not make an outside run pretty. Ugh, treadmill. Then yesterday we had a barbecue - we let the kids eat outside in the cold, but the adults stayed inside where it was warm. Mean? Possibly. I should just expect rain on Memorial Day, I guess.

****I took a picture of all the kids last night during our BBQ (we had our old neighbors who ditched us and moved across the valley over) just to document how big all the kids are getting. Then I lost the picture - where can a picture go from a memory card, I ask? Ugh, again.

****My dad's headstone is now in place. I was so excited to go and see it today. It turned out so nice. My mom put all of her children's names along the bottom - kind of strange to have my name on a headstone, but I'm glad that me and my sisters are accounted for. I hope my dad was pleased that we visited. I have to also say: this is the first year in more than I can count that I have actually visited a cemetery on Memorial Day. Go me!

****Last year, I got approximately 3 iris. This year, they exploded in my front flower bed - they are gorgeous! I took a few of the best blooms down to decorate my dad and grandparent's graves. My grandma would have loved the dark purple ones. (You can just see one over Ben's shoulder in the background of the picture above. Iris are my very favorite flower!!)

****My kids have been dying to go swimming, so swimming we went. It was cold, but they had fun.

****I have decided to do a triathlon in August. I want to write about this, but I am too sleepy to come up with the right words. But, today I swam 200 meters. I wanted to die each time I got to about 30 meters, but I kept swimming. More about this later.  But, those 200 meters boosted my confidence that I won't end up on the bottom of the pool during the tri. Wahoo!

How was your Memorial Day?

I miss him.

Yesterday I walked up to the park with my kids after school. It was a nice day and we didn't have any homework and I couldn't stand being inside anymore. Plus, I always find myself being the Nazi mom - do your homework! No you can't have another snack! Stop fighting! - after school, so it was a nice break from the norm.

The park was relatively empty when we got there. Only an older gentleman and his granddaughter and dog were playing. Thomas rode his bike around the pathways and Ben and I settled into kicking the soccer ball around (I was really trying to be Mother of the Year or something.) Then the little girl decided she wanted to play and so I sat on the bench and watched. The grandpa was watching the kids as well while he threw a ball for his dog.

My friends used to always say my dad looked like a Mexican. He had darker skin, black hair, brown eyes. He had strong, muscular arms. I remember how the skin on his elbows looked - sun-darkened from the hours of mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, walking in the desert while looking for arrowheads. As I watched this grandpa throwing the ball, I noticed his elbows. They looked so much like my dad's. And I saw his quiet, patient nature, so like my dad's. And then, as the granddaughter drifted off to the playground and Ben was playing by himself, he started to kick the ball back and forth with my son. I watched him chase down the ball and then kick it hard so Ben would have to chase it down. He drop-kicked it every now and then just to see if Ben could return the kick. I could tell he was enjoying himself.

It made my heart hurt. My dad was never the one to kick the ball with the grandkids. He always walked a little bit to the side, favoring his back - I never would have imagined him running the way this man was. But I still saw the similarities. The man's quiet smile, the way he didn't make a big deal out of the fact he was playing with someone else's kid, the way he didn't mind when it was over, just smiled and went back to throwing the ball for his dog. I teared up a little, wishing my dad had done more things like that with my kids. Or that he was still around to do them. But I was glad, too, for remembering.

The ones that we love never really leave us. I never knew that until the past year since he died. I find my dad with my on my runs, in little reminders like grasshoppers on the path and flowers in cemetaries and bits of snow that fall out of trees onto my head. No, I can't see him or touch him or even hear him, but I believe he is constantly around me. I found him again yesterday in the elbows of a kind old man. Maybe my dad was whispering in his ear - kick the ball to that kid over there  - I just don't know. But I loved being reminded of him. As many times as he wants to send me reminders of his love, I'll take them.

Sometimes, I learn.

For the first year of my marriage, I had nothing to do with church. I'm sure that I went to a baby blessing or baptism or two for my nieces, and I showed up to my "ward" one Sunday 2 months before we were to move. I wasn't sure how to balance my prior testimony with my current life.

When we moved into our house a year after we were married, I had a friend who lived in the ward. She immediately sent the relief society president to my house and before I knew it, I had visiting teachers. I showed up to church for years just to keep those relief society teachers from thinking that my life was anything less I thought they thought it should be (does that make sense?)

I spent a lot of years with two masters. I was afraid to tell people no at church and yet I knew that what they expected of me wasn't possible. I didn't want to let them down and I didn't want to let my husband down and I kind of let myself be pulled in more directions than it was possible for me to be pulled in. In trying to do what everyone else wanted me to do, I forgot to try and figure out what I wanted to do. It sucked and I ended up feeling twisted and turned and not very happy. And worse, I didn't feel like I did a good job on either front.

Two years ago, I was asked to be on the committee for our ward girls camp. I told them up front that I probably wouldn't be able to go to girls camp, but that I was happy to plan it. (Yes, this is unrealistic. But that is what I knew I could handle and my family could handle.) I was a little wishy-washy, saying (even as I knew it would never happen) that maybe I would come to girls camp for part of the time. That word "maybe" resulted in not everyone got the memo that I was a planner and not (possible, part-time) attendee. It caused tension in me and therefore tension at the planning meetings. I had people coming up to me in the hall at church and telling me how much fun I would have at girls camp and when I said - well, I won't really be there, I'm just planning it - I got some strange looks that all said - well of course you will be there! That's what you do! It sucked. (This may or may not be part of the reason I moved. Kidding, kind of.) A few phone calls sorted it out, and I moved, so my girls camp planning calling was suspended.

But I learned. I learned that I had to stop trying to please everyone. It did me no good all those years trying to be the perfect Mormon I thought people at church wanted me to be and then going home and trying to downplay my Mormon-ness. I learned that if I came clean up front with people, they would respect it, even if they didn't understand it. Maybe some would think it's turning down a calling to tell the one extending it what your reality is and the ways you will fail them in their expectations of you, but I don't. I feel like it is being honest with myself, with my husband, with God, with the bishop. It never did me a lick of good to try and pretend, it only made me feel stuck in the middle of church and home, and that happens enough. Realizing and voicing my limits makes me feel stronger, which is the exact opposite of what I thought during all those years of dancing to everyone else's tune.

History has a way of repeating itself. Today I met with a member of our stake who posed a very similar question of me: could I help with the food for this year's stake girls camp? I told him: yes. But this is my way of helping. I can plan. I can buy food. I can prepare food. I can come up for an afternoon into an evening. I want to help, but I can't pretend that my life is like (fill in the blank.) It was different from the time two years ago because I told them exactly what I could do in no uncertain terms: I will not be there and everyone needs to know that and be okay with it. It felt so much stronger to do it my way. I explained I was not turning down the request, just informing him of the conditions of my assent. I think he was okay with it. And if he wasn't? It doesn't bother me. Take me or don't, I kind of wanted to say. I knew I could come home and explain what had been asked to me to Shane and what I would do for it and know that he knew I would live up to my end of the bargain. Not because it's what he would want me to do or because of what the rest of the planning committee would want me to do, but because it was what I wanted to do.

In short, it felt good. It felt like something I could accomplish. For once I wasn't pretending my life was anything other than what it was. And I think that is kind of the point.

Friday by the numbers

Time woke up: 7:19 (to the sounds of The Early Show [I think], which I never watch. Listened to Stephen Colbert verbally sparring with the show's host. He sounds annoying at 7am, by the way.)

Shoes worn: 3 pair. Church shoes this morning, running shoes (3.13 miles in exactly - EXACTLY - 30 minutes, zero seconds. How does that happen?), and flip flops (worn to Sam's and the library.)

Books picked up from the library: 3. Girl Reading - Katie Ward, Me and You - Nicolo Ammaniti, and Obedience - Jacqueline Yallop.

Miles driven: approximately 35 in two different trips. There are people who think that just because it's in the Salt Lake Valley, it (whatever "it's" is - Cottonwood Mall, The District, the airport, Brighton ski resort) is right around the corner from me. Well, "it" isn't. Humph.

Number of Batteries bought: 48. AA if you really want to know.

Number of chip bags purchased from Sam's: 50. I went a little crazay and got the Flavor Mix that includes the chili cheese Fritos. Wild!!

Gallons of milk: 4 - Maid o' Clover.

Loads of laundry: 2.5. Two are even hung up - that ever-present white load that is my nemesis is still in the dryer.

Cokes purchased: 0. I stopped drinking it on Tuesday. But I'm reeeeaaaaalllllyyy wanting one today. So far I have resisted.

Bathrooms cleaned, floors swept and mopped: again - 0. It's my first day in 3 weeks that I have to myself. I'm not going to spend it cleaning. Well, yet - I have it on the schedule for this afternoon.

Songs listened to: 19 - in the car and on my run.

Hours Shane has worked at his new job: 36. I keep hoping he will come home early today.

Eaten: 1 banana, 1 apple, one turkey sandwich without cheese because I forgot to buy some yesterday.

Drank: 8 oz hot chocolate this morning and 20 ounces of water after my run.

Number of minutes wasted laying in bed before I went running: 18. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my bed?

Temperature when I went running: 55. I wore a running skirt and a long sleeve running shirt and I despaired of the long sleeves because the sun was warm.

Dreams about Ragnar: 1. I had to crawl up this hill that was shaped like a giant ball. Then I ran down these bleachers that were really stacks of different colored chairs, but I was immensely proud of myself for not falling. Then I yelled at the Ragnar staff because I couldn't find the route I was supposed to be running and there weren't any signs. Bad sign when Ragnar is creeping into my subconscious.

So what numbers are significant to you today?