Old me, meet now me

Direct quote from my journal, February 17, 2003: "I just spent a whole entry talking about boys. I am so lame! I hope I'm the only person who ever reads these journals. But who can blame me? All my friends are getting hitched, so it's kind of a boy-focused stage of life."

Oh, ho ho...do you think the Me of Ages Past would be embarrassed to know that I just shared that with the entire world? Not much she can do about it.

There are several indicators that I have a little too much free time today (besides the glaring fact that I'm blogging at 9am), one of those being that I just read my entire journal from the years when I was 19 and 20. Those were very formative years for me--The pages are filled with stress and worry about what to study in school, where to spend my summers, how to stretch my thin income, and....boys. Boys boys boys. See my previous blog entry for more information about that trend. Reading one's former self is not a comfortable experience, if you're me. It's cringe-worthy, most of it. I have to sift through a lot of mess to get to the heart of who I was and to see if that girl is still in me. I simultaneously conclude that I have both changed completely and haven't changed at all.

And then, right in the midst of laughing and shaking my head at the things I used to say, I come across a list. In October, 9 years ago, I made a spontaneous wish list of sorts, declaring all the things I wanted and wanted to become. I still do that sort of thing today, so not much has changed there. But as I read about the deepest desires of my 20-year-old heart, I was taken back to that time of my life. I remembered what it felt like to want those things and feel like they were so far away. Pipe dreams. A wish list is just that, right? Dreams that you fling out to the universe and longingly pine for, with no expectation that even half of them will come true. I remember that feeling--the taste of  frustration at my own weaknesses, combined with a barely-containable excitement about all possibilities that lie before me. I remember that feeling because I still have it, all the time. But what's crazy about today is that I can check so many things off that list I wrote in 2002. Without knowing it, the last 10 years have brought me really close to all of the things I wanted to be. Of course there is much more work to do and infinite wish lists in my mind, but I'm amazed at how far I've come in realizing my dreams. In that entry I said "How much of that will really happen, or is even possible?" I love being able to answer that question now.

Time is a funny thing that way. I tend to wish it away, or want it to speed up to help see me through some current frustration. I found myself doing that just yesterday. I used to do that all the time--wish that I could just fast-forward a few months, a few years, or whatever. Well, it turns out that wishing away time is one wish that always comes true. I feel like I've just fast-forwarded to 2011 and am wondering where the time has gone. I feel sad about that, but also I am overwhelmed by gratitude for my life. I have been blessed with experiences that seemed like crazy dreams ("I want to go to Italy and learn Italian" or "I want to do weddings and floral design") and I've also learned through the hard things ("I don't want to work somewhere that I don't love"). Some of my dreams have changed ("I want to weigh 110 pounds") and some will never change ("I want to be an amazing, memorable writer" and "I want to be a positive influence" and "I want to be really, really good at something, like guitar or piano.") I'm glad to see that much of who I was is still who I am, and that at the very least I know I've been passionate.

I am filled with hope today. I hope that I continue to hope. My wish lists are less specific now ("I hope I'm learning what I should" and "I hope everyone feels loved by me") but no less real. And, thanks to my abundant free time today, I've learned that my wish lists are actual possibilities. Just give me another 10 years or so.

Fisher of men

Confession: I have been boy crazy my entire life.

This statement, of course, comes as shocking to nobody who knows me. Being a boy crazy girl has its perks, you know: I always have someone(s) to talk about, think about, dress up for, get excited about, analyze, etc. And I always had little boyfriends growing up (before junior high happened). Even now the laws of statistics determine that with so many objects of my affection, I'm bound to get at least a little flirting in every coupla days or so. But I'm thinking today about some of dark sides of crushing (gosh, that word "crushing" should really only have dark sides when you think about it).

The ratio of nets cast into the waters of love compared to actual fishes caught is alarming. I figure that over the years I've invested some of my heart in roughly...435 boys (15 per year x 29 years) and I've ended up having that affection returned roughly...75 times. And of those who've returned my affections, only maybe 15-20 of those have netted a relationship of some sort. Don't question these numbers, by the way--it's science.

So, to sum up:
Boys desired: 435
Boys desiring me: 75
Boys following through with desire and actually dating me: 15
435x=15
x=15/435
x=.03

I'm batting a 3% rate of return on this particular investment.

Now, maybe if this were a money market account, I could feel good about that. But it's not, and I don't. So, math whizzes, life coaches, summoners of the dark arts (Jenny Morrow), ask yourselves what you would do in my position. I need to boost my rate of return to, say, 100%. No big deal.

I have questions:
--I'm still young, so the finance guys say "take risks". Done, doing, will do, thank you. Does that mean I cast more nets? More and more and more nets?
--The emotionally scarred would say that a heart can only be fragmented so many times before it ceases to function (actually, I'm pretty sure doctors would say that too), so perhaps the best course of action is to pull in the line and work on patching up the leaky spots until I'm in safer waters. ?
--Economists will tell me to use not more nets, but better ones. Part of my problem is that I run around gleefully throwing around anything that remotely looks like a net and then I might catch a little fishie who remains caught only long enough to find the nearest hole and wriggle away. Or, sometimes when I'm on a roll I'll catch too many fish in one net and, a la the Faithless Disciples, my net breaks and sends them all a-scurrying. How does one improve the net?
--I think most people would probably tell me to never, ever take an analogy this far.

Sigh. You're right. Maybe I just need to grow up and realize that it's possible to choose who to invest in, and that not having crushes on everything male with a heartbeat is something to consider. But even as I think that I feel sad, like a huge part of me would just be snuffed out by the part of me that finds it prudent to be cold and unfeeling and careful. NEVER! Ahem. Never.

Hummmuna hummuna hmmmm.....
Meh. I think probably I have less control over this than I think I do. I am me and apparently, that means I am a fisher of men. Analogy back on, yo.

As of today, I am debt free!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I were a rich man, yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum

Late-night blog rant that I'll probably regret in the morning....ready....go:

I had a little 6-year-old student I'll call D for just about 5 weeks. Cutest thing ever, but let me tell you about the rollercoaster ride she put me on. I asked her awhile ago to list some songs she likes so we could learn them on the piano, because students will usually get much more excited to practice and/or perform a song they know, right? Well, she had recently seen Fiddler on the Roof and fell in love with "If I Were a Rich Man". So I went home and listened to it about 65 times, and came up with a little kid arrangement that I knew she could do if she worked hard. When I came to our next lesson and played it for her, she lost her mind with excitement. She threw her arms around me and thanked me and promised to do everything she could to learn the song in time of for our fast-approaching recital. And during that lesson, she sure kept her word! She was focused. She was working. She was very unlike a 6-year-old in her tenacity. I left that lesson rejoicing, considering a musical connection made and a testimony born of hard work and dedication.

That lasted until our next lesson, where D could barely play a short three-note section of what we'd learned, and spent the whole lesson exhibiting ADD like I'd never seen, repeating "piano is hard" about every 5 minutes. My little, naive heart broke. It really broke. I left that lesson feeling like such a failure. The scariest part of that feeling was not that I'd failed as a teacher, but that one setback in my student's progression so easily broke my heart like that. It took the wind right out of my sails. Instead of taking it in stride and chalking it up to a bad day, in one fell swoop it cut my motivation right out from under me and I wrote her off. Just like that.

Frightening, isn't it?

Then comes the inevitable onslaught of questions: Am I an idiot for thinking she could play that? Did I push her too hard? Is this simply a lack of experience kind of thing, since I've been a teacher for about 5 minutes? Are all children rotten little monsters who hate doing anything that requires work?

I'm learning that I have very high expectations for people, including myself. I realize the story above is embarrassingly dramatic, but I really did experience those highs and lows based on a little thing like Fiddler on the Roof. It may not be so bad to have such high expectations, except for the part where those expectations are not met (which they rarely are) and the resulting crash into despair. Tell me, mothers, how do you handle this with your children? I'm terrified to have children because I'm terrified they'll disappoint me.

That last line made me a little terrified to post this...we'll see if I actually do.

God hasn't blessed me with children yet--which obviously is a very good thing for now--but what I have been given instead is a Relief Society full of women for whom I am now responsible to be a good example to, to care about, to pray for, and to hope for...which I do my best to do. The problem is that I don't think I've really learned about agency yet. Two months into it and I'm already bitterly disappointed when I see girls who don't try very hard or who just...aren't that awesome at churchy things, you know? It's not like I feel they've disappointed me personally--I know they don't owe me a thing--but it's like they've betrayed my hope in them. It's difficult for me to avoid sometimes feeling like my efforts to get people to change (or to get myself to change) are an exercise in futility...that in the end, that little girl doesn't want to practice piano, or this girl just doesn't feel like coming to Relief Society today. Heck, sometimes I don't feel like going to Relief Society, so it's not the end of the world, right? I'm not any better than them and I have plenty of examples of girls who blow me away with how amazing they are. Still, disappointment will come throughout my life. What I need practice in is shaking it off. I need to be able to maintain hope in the face of disappointment. I don't want unmet expectations to mean that I have no more desire to try. If it's having that effect on me, then I am much more impatient than I ever thought. Sigh.

Not my best day, you could say.

Today

Today was a good day. I got a glimpse of what it would be like to be a stay at home mom with no kids. A little of this, a little of that, total freedom, yada yada. I liked it.  Once upon a time I had a really gross schedule that looked like this. Here's the new me:

9 am - We begin with some roof time. Reading, contemplating, gardening. Take a look at some of my babies:

10:30am - Some church stuff. It's my busiest job.

12:0pm - Lunch. I have time to make BLTs!

1:30pm - Temple. I love my little pink temple, but I do not love going in the afternoon. I forget the overwhelming power of sleepytime.

3:30pm - Temple photoshoot. Why not?

5:00pm - By the sweat of my brow shall I eat my bread. *Translation: Yes, I do have to work some today.

7:30pm - More church stuff

9:00pm - Hang out. Blog. Watch Modern Family. Visit a friend.

11:30pm - Go to bed smiling.

Can you believe this fairytale? Me neither. And you shouldn't, because this is by no means a typical day. Though my life is sooooo much better than it was, my semi-retirement has actually been much, much busier than I thought (thank you, Bishop) and that makes today a nice little treat. I really love where I live and I love when I have the time to love it.

I went to Yosemite last weekend! Remind me to blog about that. I've learned much about California and hiking vs. Utah and hiking. Remind me, ok?

I think the post below is possibly the worst blog post of all time.

A Bedtime Story

Forgive me for my long absence. 

I honestly haven't had much motivation to blog lately, mostly because things are great and I'm busy and somehow I like to keep all that goodness to myself. But yesterday I was flirted with by a 9-year-old on a school bus, and I realized: People need to know about these things. I have plenty to write about.

 This is what the kid did to me, I swear. The whole back of the bus was eating it up.

So now, a bedtime story.

Not sure how this has happened, but I have purchased 3 beds in the last few years. The first is my favorite: a queen that resides in my brother's basement, begging me to get married and finally reclaim it from storage. The second is the subject of this story. The third is the bed I now sleep in, a full-size that dips slightly in the middle but otherwise perfectly suits my needs.

The second bed has been on a quite a journey. I rescued it from some man's garage at what I thought was a good price, but has proven otherwise. It was advertised as a twin, but some exacting friends have determined that it is in fact a single, which is smaller than a twin. Did you know that there are beds smaller than twin size, that aren't cribs? Yeah, me neither. Anyway, my little kid bed and I have been through a lot together. She and I, hand in hand, fled the snow and cold in Utah and arrived in humid Huntington Beach a little torn up and soggy, but happy. When I placed her in my current room, she and I both realized this move was bigger than we thought. As in...my giant room dwarfed my little kid bed and made me feel like I was sleeping in a warehouse. That was fine with me for awhile, but then I purchase bed #3 off a friend and determined to send the little kid bed to live somewhere else. Like maybe with a deserving little kid. But I had underestimated the popularity of Hotel Stef, and my many guests have enjoyed her firmness instead of the firmness of my bedroom floor for about 9 months now.

Why am I going on and on about this? I don't know.

Anyway, I determined a few weeks ago to finally part ways with this bed. I had a mini yard sale where the bed was one of only 2 items I needed to sell. I sold the other one, but not the bed. So I posted the bed on Craigslist, to no avail. I called a place to see if I could donate it, but they wouldn't come pick it up. So yesterday, at 6:30am I put the bed in our alley by the garage, having been told that people come through there looking for free stuff all the time. I made an airport run and returned about an hour later and made a sign that said "FREE!" to put on the bed. But when I went to the alley to put the sign on the bed, it was gone. Gone! It took just over an hour to rid myself of it. Heck, it could have been claimed 5 minutes after I put it out there for all I know. I wish so badly I could have been there to see who picked it up, because the speed at which they came is blowing my mind. I'm a little suspicious that somebody has been stalking my bed, just waiting for me to offer it up for free. Well played, alley cats, well played.

Thus ends the story of my little kid bed. 

 This is the current bed. We'll call it my adolescence.

I know this is not very interesting to you or answers any of the questions I've received about how my life is going these days, but...here it is. This is what I'm doing with myself lately.

 PS I'm extremely happy. Things are going just fine. I'll write about it sometime.