I have a bunch of different tabs in my Firefox bookmark toolbar. I have Design, with all my cool design web site links, Me--all the essentials, Music--all the music reading essentials, News--self-explanatory, Blogs, Church, and now...Mission clothes. I made it last night after posting my last entry.
I don't think I've mentioned that my adorable nephew is here at my parent's house this week. We just had a great photo shoot. Look at how amazingly handsome and wonderful he is!
Oh woops! I got mixed up! They're both so amazingly wonderful and handsome, I couldn't tell them apart!
Yay! I love le Trev Trev.
Also, I am listening to my sister talk to her husband on the phone right now, and they are hilarious. Their conversations consist of "The Apprentice" recaps, the new restaurants opening up, shopping, Broadway Plaza's upcoming expansion (the yuppie shopping place in Walnut Creek that is apparently getting a Saks Fifth Avenue soon), and where we're going to dinner tonight. "I want to go to Yankee Pier," says Becky. "That will be too expensive," says Mom. Neither consults me, and I don't even like fish!
Anyway, this week at home has been good and I am tempted to stay longer. Except that my dad keeps giving me "homework" assignments, none of which I have completed, because he thinks I'm not doing enough preliminary preparation for my mission. I think I'll be fine!
Now I am going to run some errands, including getting some pizza from Cheeseboard! YUM!
Today marked day one of two important things. First: Day One as a G-wearing individual, and Second: Day One of mission clothes mania. The former is amazing and I love it. The latter feels like a bad episode of What Not to Wear.
Today I got four blouses. One is sky blue with these cute buttons on the cuff. Two more are from BR. They are the same style--short-sleeved with cute, puffy sleeves. One is white and the other is a fuschia color. The last blouse is gorgeous. Lavender (not my favorite--remember, I loathe wearing pastels). The detail that makes it all worth it, however, is the french cuffs. French cuffs are the hippest thing since Kristal, so I'm totally digging this blouse.
Next, I got two nice skirts and a nice suit jacket to accompany them. The jacket really goes better with the longer of the two skirts, but I think I can probably work it with either if I have to. They're black, of course.
This is the jacket. I won't be buttoning it all the way to the top, however. What do you think? Do you think a more traditional jacket with lapels would be better?
Next is the skirt that hits at mid-calf, and then there's a long skirt that has a little flounce at the bottom.
Basically, they're all just all right. I look very missionary-like in them. I was looking on nordstrom.com tonight and found some nice skirts that I like better. We'll see what my mom says. I'm picky and testy and I should probably just chill.
Tonight my friend Grace called to say she received her mission call! Betcha can't guess where she's going! NO! Not St. Louis, MO. She's going to Independence, MO! Right next to me. Also, she enters the MTC a week after I do. I can't wait to hang out together!
I am in probably 75 percent mission mode. Wish me luck.
Number one: There are four--count 'em, FOUR--Trader Joe's in the St. Louis area. FOUR! Do you know what that means? It means I won't have to have my mom ship me my favorite foods! Well, as long as TJ's is in my area. But with four, there are pretty good odds for at least a portion of my mission.
Number two: I have found my foodie soulmate. I stumbled across her recipe blog this afternoon while searching out a new recipe that included black beans and cilantro. My new friend Kalyn is located only a short distance away in Salt Lake City. I'm thinking I might just have to pay her a visit one of these days and learn how things are done in the kitchen. My favorites I found while searching today are baked Swiss chard stems and black bean and rice soup with lime and cilantro. Basically, I have never met anyone else who so honestly expresses their undying love for cilantro. She is amazing.
I have countless other things to mention, but I would prefer going to bed.
I returned home from Alex's tonight (He's back!) to find this note posted on my door.
Now, I take some of the blame for this. Up until a few weeks ago, I had an open network! That's like giving away money. But just because I was an idiot doesn't mean Peter's no crook.
I am not sure where Peter lives (creepily enough, he knows where I live), but I'm definitely calling him tomorrow. I think the first thing I thought of to say to him is the best: "Sure Peter, we can share my internet. You can start by paying me for all the months you've been leeching off of me."
I have failed to mention up until this point that St. Louis, Missouri is the place where my mom's side of the family, the Moody's, joined the church. Of course, they were Lockhead's back then. Or Lock's. Or some other name I don't know. I just know that my great-grandma Marie, who I am named after, joined the church there thanks to a young Spencer W. Kimball. It is no coincidence I am being sent back there.
I am taking the next step in my spiritual progression on February 27th. I am excited. I haven't had the chance to surmount any quantifiable benchmarks since I was eight, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Most of you don't know that I hate using public restrooms. I put up with them like everyone else does, but I really hate them. There is nothing worse than smelling a stranger's excrement. Today I had a most unpleasant experience at Provo Town Centre. Luckily, Dear Bob was with me, so I had someone to complain to when exiting. Men don't have this problem.
One time Capree found a gigantic something-or-other in an HFAC toilet. It was so other-worldy and impossible that, after she'd told me about it, we actually went back to school to get a better look at it. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot because there's a lot of gross stuff created in the HFAC. But this was unsurpassable in terms of grossness.
I don't know why I'm talking about this. Mostly because it's 1 a.m., and by 1 a.m. I apparently digress into an 11-year-old boy.
May 9, 1910. St. Louis, Mo. "Newsboy. Little Fattie. Less than 40 inches high, 6 years old. Been at it one year." Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy of Shorpy.
I knew my mission call would come Wednesday, today, my mom's birthday. I just knew it would. But 6 pm rolled around and it still wasn't in my hands, though neither was the day's mail. I was about to go console myself with a milkshake when I heard a knock at the door. A knock? No one knocks at my door except the UPS man. So I went down the stairs and saw a hooded man through my peep hole. A hooded man? With a messenger bag! What? I opened the door and that man, my postman!, was holding the most beautiful white envelope I've ever seen. Sister Lisa Marie Ruefenacht, it said, from the Office of the First Presidency. "Sorry it's so late," he said, his eyes gleaming, his mouth smiling. "Thank you so much!" I said breathlessly. I ran upstairs as fast as my still-fatigued-from-Jump-On-It! legs could go, clutching those precious papers to my bosom. I ran like a scared mouse for the next minute, called my mom squealing, began making a mental list of people to call. By 6:30, I'd called everyone in the Provo area, and even had a webcast set up for my friends who couldn't make it. (My degree IS worth something!) So with that, I opened my call around 7:15 pm among excellent company. There was Regan, Carl, Britt and Brett, Katie, Andrew and Liz (Alex's brother and sister), Sam, Jim and Laura, Dave and Chris there with me; plus Alex, my parents, my Aunt Diane and Uncle Jack, my brother Michael, Jeff, Bob, and Becky, Brandon and Trevor by phone; and then there was Megan, Luke, Capree and Brady by webcast! Wunderbar!
Megan captured the whole thing perfectly in her blog. My oh my, do I love that girl. She is a champion blogger!!
Even though Alex wasn't there, Robert won't know until probably Saturday when my letter reaches him, and my parents were 850 miles away, it was the best mission call opening I'll ever have, and I can't wait to do it again when I'm older!
I think it's easy to be disappointed when one isn't called to a foreign mission, but where in Europe can you buy Rap Snacks? For the record, I'm not disappointed one bit! The St. Louis mission will be my home for 18 months and I can't wait!
I am so excited and honored to be serving in the St. Louis mission!! Sister Home Girl--here I come!
I'm not sure what prompted me, but today, for the first time in at least four years, I listened to Death Cab's "The Photo Album." Why I've stayed away from this album for so long, I can't tell you. A mental lapse I suppose. An interest into more avant-garde, more obscure names to drop alongside my IHOP pancakes after shows. A genuine interest. I mean, what rejuvenation! Heart, mind, body and soul. I know my remedy for the blues now. But tonight I reconnected with this old friend, and I think we will be friends at least until the end of the week.
Tonight Bob, Page, their roommates and I went to Jump On It!, a miraculous place in Lindon, UT that features wall-to-wall gymnastic trampolines for your jack rabbiting pleasure. I loved it. I absolutely loved it and I can't wait to go back. I flashed back multiple times to my childhood days spent pounding on neighbor's and friend's trampolines; to be back in that realm soothed my soul. It also made me flash back to the multiple times I got hurt on trampolines, like the time I sprained my knee, and the time we were playing popcorn and I was a kernel and got bounced right off the tramp. And then the time my piano teacher's teenage son landed on a five-year-old me because he was jumping too high to remain in control. But like I said, I can't wait to go back.
Then we went to IHOP and got free pancakes. Did you know it was free pancake day? Betcha didn't. We all got a free short stack, on the condition we'd consider donating to the Children's Miracle Network. But I'm sure you can guess what I did.
Every once in a while I get this one lick from a song Frank Sinatra made famous in my head. It's from "Somewhere Along the Way." Frank croons: "I try to forget, but in the loneliness of night I start remembering everything. You're gone and yet there's a feeling deep inside that you will always be part of me." The only part I ever focus on is the loneliness of night, because some nights I just start feeling lonely for no reason, sometimes for a reason but sometimes for no reason, and I remember that if I just go to sleep that loneliness will be gone the next day. And it almost always is.
I want to serve my mission on Coney Island--the Coney Island mission, Freak-speaking. I would go tracking to all the carnie shacks and game booths. People would be in the Freak Show and I would come around with church materials and Books of Mormon. They would be in line at Nathan's and I would come around with a pamphlet that had a picture of a hot dog with the caption: "Fulfills the body temporarily," and then on the inside would be a picture of Jesus Christ with the caption, "Fulfills the soul permanently." People would eat it up! I would stand on a wooden milkcrate at the corner of Surf and Mermaid and let everyone know what they were missing. It would be so nice. But it would never really happen.
There are other things on my mind and I want to write about them, but I don't want some of you to read them. So this is all I will say about those things, and I hope they will stop bothering me after this. They won't though.
Last night, Alex, his brother Andrew, my sister Katie and I (it was a double date!) saw Persepolis. You must see it if you haven't! We got back to Provo and we built a fire on Utah Lake! I was the usual party pooper for the first bit, skeptical and scared and altogether lame, but I must say, if anyone wants to have a fire out there again, I'm game. Whatever happened to my old, don't-give-a-darn self? I am bringing it back.
My mission call most definitely arrives this week. It is both surreal and very scary. I am signing my life away for 18 months but to a source I trust and love and am so devoted to. My dear friends, I am sitting here crying with fear and faith, with excitement and anxiety. I had no idea how hard this would be, how right everyone was who said it would be hard. I lay in bed last night, thinking about how painfully I miss my dear brother Robert who returns from his mission in August. I won't see him for such a long time. He is my best friend, like all my siblings are to me, and I won't see him for so long. Today is the first day I've actually thought, "No! I don't want to go!" But then I settle down and I remember the feelings I had when I first decided to go and the accompanying confidence and motivation and peacefulness. I think about my future children and how I will be a better mother. I re-read letters sent to me by my dear, best friends who are serving missions right now. They all agree they have never done anything better with their lives. Am I strong enough? Am I faithful enough? Am I qualified enough? Will I be effective? I want to go and I am going to go, and it will only continue to be hard. Difficulty builds character! If I've learned anything in my 22 years of life, it's that. Every time life has delivered some blows, I've risen above and conquered and become even more of the person I want to be. I can't wait to tell you where I'll be serving! Just to know that there is one, single-most important place for me to be is intensely humbling.
My family used to live in a house on Clarkson Court. It was white with blue trim and had a tree that shed little pods all over the place. Our neighbor hated how it encroached on his property and soiled his lawn, so one Saturday, he took out his chainsaw and cut all the branches that passed the property line. Our automatic garage door opener didn't work, so every time we pulled up to the house, my mom would have to get out of our "Mickey Van," as Robert called it, and manually yank the door open. One summer, my dad, a notorious do-it-yourselfer, jackhammered out the concrete walkway and porch and laid a stone one. He dug a well in our backyard and I'm not sure we ever got water out of it. But my earliest memories are in that backyard. One the right side of the yard, Dad built us a gigantic sandbox that doubled as the neighborhood litter box. On the left side, we planted corn and tomatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, brussel sprouts and broccoli, and when harvest time came, we kids would sit among the corn stalks, picking ears of corn wearing nothing but diapers. One day there was a solar eclipse, so Robert and I sat outside and watched it all day with special glasses Mom got us. We were so young. I was no older than four. Another day when Dad was working in the garden--I think it may have been the day he decided to finally lay sod on the barren dirt--Robert and I sat at our fire orange Little Tykes table and ate dirt all day. I had a broken radio antenna that I used to break up the dirt clods. Mom has photos of our feast so I can prove this. I liked to eat things I wasn't supposed to a lot. I ate probably five cans of Play-Dough as a child. To this day I am a sucker for brightly colored foods.
I have been accused of being a romantic before. Being a dreamer or an idealist (though I'm also a renowned cynic--a realist, I say). Maybe I am romanticizing these events to an extent, but really, I don't think I am, because when I'm home with my family and we start reminiscing, our eyes glaze over simultaneously and suddenly we are transported back to Clarkson Court and I am three wearing only a diaper in the corn patch and then I am four and Robert is three and he's running out on the street wearing his underwear on his head and then I am three reading a book about Cinderella and I'm in the hospital with my mom because she just miscarried and then Michael is born and he has to have tubes put in his ears so he can hear and then Katie is a baby sitting in her car seat and I watch her umbilical cord fall out and it's so gross and then Becky and I put Robert's curly locks into pigtails and then we are wearing our matching Minnie Mouse shirts and our parents are tucking us into our bunkbeds that Papa Walter made and after they leave the room we laugh about how Becky made me steal baby Robert's bottle from him while he napped in his crib wearing the neon green Batman sunglasses he stole from Orchard Supply Hardware because he didn't know it was wrong.
I would never go back and do this again because it could never be done as well. But I can't wait to do it when I am in my Mom's shoes.
Some nights I wish I could freeze myself in one moment and let time continue around me until the morning. Things are always better in the morning.
My papers officially went in last Tuesday, which is great, except now I play the waiting game. The thought has crossed my mind to move home. Waiting here is excruciating, at least it is tonight. I feel like I'm in some netherworld limbo. I'm caught between transport bays on a Starfleet ship. I'm swimming upstream in a rushing river. I'm lost in the Delta quadrant. I've been watching too much Star Trek.
I wish I had more thrilling things to say, but I'm pretty boring right now. Nothing new to mention.
