T-minus two weeks and counting…

That’s right. Two weeks from today I will be entering the MTC. That’s crazy. I had my farewell on Sunday, which went really well. People definitely pay more attention when you tell relevant stories (which makes the things you’ve learned more personal) and bear your testimony from the heart. I’d like to think that the only people not paying attention were screeching children. Actually, a lot of people couldn’t be there for one reason or another. My best friend Allison’s knee went out (she showed up at my house later in a knee brace…which just shows you how much she loves me ). One person had a migraine (poor kid!). Lots of people were out of town or had a simultaneous commitment they couldn’t get out of. And that’s fine, because a farewell’s not supposed to be some big pageant anyway. It’s just a missionary speaking in church before they leave. It’s nice to know that peoples’ lives will go on without me while I’m gone.

I’m just tying up loose ends—like calling Wells Fargo and telling them I’m going to be in Sweden for a year and a half so they shouldn’t worry when purchases start popping up on my card over there—and gathering a few more bits and bobs from my list. I bought towels on Monday, for example. And today I’m going to Costco to order new glasses and contacts—the contacts for the first time ever except for my trial pair, the glasses with a brand new prescription. I think I’m getting emo-type frames so that’ll be fun. I thought my old glasses were cute when I got them, because I thought they looked like little granny glasses (I must have been the only 18-year-old in the world who thought it’d be cute to look like a grandma), but now they’re just kind of blah. Not to mention the right lens keeps popping out in the occasional mad break for freedom.

I also think I’ve more-or-less got the luggage situation figured out. I’ve decided to use my brother’s old suitcases after all. They’re used-looking, but no worse than brand-new ones would look after a few transfers (with an Elder. I think “normal use” by a Sister and “normal use” by an Elder constitute entirely different things). He left his carry-on behind in England, but those are easier to acquire (in my opinion) than a whole big new set. Cheaper too. We have some laying around the house, and I’m not picky about my luggage matching, so I think it’ll be just fine. As long as I don’t go over the weight limit.

You know, and it still hasn’t really sunk in that I’m leaving so soon, and that I’m going to Sweden, of all places. I think that every time I start to feel excited, I squash it down and go back into denial mode. I wonder why that is. Am I worried about being too excited, so I repress the feeling? And why would that worry me? Do I think it’s too good to be true? Or am I getting swallowed up in fears and worries and stress? Stress, in getting everything ready, fears and worries that something will suddenly come up to not let me go, or that I’ll get out there and go back to my lazy habits and fail?

And yet, as I’m typing all of this, I’m completely, totally calm. More emotion-squashing? Who knows. Jitters have always affected me in weird ways.

apprehensions

Well I am now back from a two-week trip to Utah. My purposes for going to Utah were threefold: going to my roommate Laura’s wedding, shopping for my mission, and seeing as many friends as possible before I ship out to Sweden. My mom’s purposes were also threefold: helping me shop for my mission, seeing her grandkids Phillip and Maddy, and taking care of her mother, who was just diagnosed a few weeks ago with breast cancer.

Isn’t it interesting how so many things seem to happen at once? All summer I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting, and then BANG! everything starts going at once. Three of my friends got married within just a few weeks of each other. I got my mission call and had to start preparing right away because I’m leaving in a month. My grandmother has cancer.  And it all gets mixed up in a big ball of emotion that often makes me think I might be getting an ulcer. I have so little time left here at home; what do I do with it? I know that I need to go and I want to go and the Lord wants me to go, but all the same I worry about things I’m leaving behind. People’s lives will move on without me. I’ll come back, expecting everything and everyone to be the same, but they won’t. Who else will get married? Will anyone have children? Will anyone drop out? Will anyone die? I just don’t know. And it scares me. I’ll be changing too, but apart from the rest of everything I know. When you change alongside everyone, you don’t notice their gradual day-to-day changes. But a year and a half is enough time for anything to happen.

It’s bittersweet. Sometimes I have fun predicting who will be married, who will have a baby bump when I come back, where people will end up. And that’s happy. But it’s sad to think of the challenges people I love may have to face, and I won’t be there.

conta–whaat??

In the seemingly endless chain of medical-type updates I’ve been doing to prepare myself to go away for a year and a half, today I picked up my new retainer and had an eye exam.

I didn’t need a new retainer through any direct carelessness of my own. The old one is in perfectly good repair and is still in my possession. But it no longer fits my mouth. Two root canals (and thus two crowns–two completely new teeth in your mouth) will do that to you. That’s right, in the past four years since I got my braces off and got my first retainer, I have had two root canals. Sheesh. Well after the first crown I could somewhat fake it with my retainer but after two crowns I had to throw in the towel and realize that the inside of my mouth just has a completely different terrain now. Goodbye, two hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Then I drove straight to an opthamologist’s to have an eye exam. I got my first pair of glasses two and a half years ago, and they’re just not quite doing it for me anymore. My eyes are pretty good—I can survive without glasses if I have to—but, being an English major who also likes movies and detail-oriented hobbies, it’s nice to be able to see things clearly. In my previous editing job at school I spent hours staring at text on a computer screen. Then for homework I would spend hours staring at printed words in a book. Etc etc. So I thought that, since it’s been a few years since my last prescription, and I’m going away for a year and a half, and my medical insurance will expire before I get back, I thought the eye exam would be a good idea. I went to a new doctor, and he was really nice (and cute. Seriously, they shouldn’t let good-looking people become doctors. Seriously. It’s too distracting.), but he and his assistant seemed surprised that (1) I had glasses at all and (2) I thought they weren’t good enough. I guess it’s a weak-sauce prescription to begin with, and only my left eye has changed since then, a teeny-weeny bit. I felt like an idiot. I’m not a hypochondriac, I swear! I know I can see the tiny letters, if I squint and kinda tilt my head, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to read them all the time like I have to do every day. So anyway, he wrote a new prescription and told me that any action was my choice.

But here’s something new: apparently I’m eligible for contacts. He said that since I just want to be more comfortable seeing what I can already see pretty well, contacts would be a good idea, since instead of sitting a ways away from my eyes, they would rest right on the cornea and, essentially, change its shape (the shape being the problem in the first place—I have an astigmatism). Weird! Contacts have always scared me—touching my eyeball is just kinda gross! Which seems kinda inconsistent for me, since my favorite exhibit at the Exploratorium in San Francisco was the one where they dissect a cow eye in front of everyone every half-hour. But then I thought about it there in the doctor’s office, and I realized that contacts really don’t seem so creepy as they used to. I even took out my roommate’s contacts for her once a couple months ago, as a joke, and it didn’t bother me. This is one of those moments where it’s like, pshh, what was I afraid of?? It’s strange what walls fall down for us when we look past them to something more important.

Well, they’re ordering me a trial pair just to see if I like them. Then we’ll see.

duh

So I was thinking about my blog and about my friends’ blogs. Which, incidentally, I seem to read much more now that I’m a blogger myself. And I was thinking about the discontinuity of my blog. Like, sometimes I’m religious, sometimes I try to be all intellectual about current events, sometimes it’s pictures of my most recent art project. But there’s not much yet connecting the three. Maybe I haven’t done it enough yet, or I don’t do it often enough. but I don’t really write about me. If that makes sense. And, thus far, maybe that’s why no one cares.

Saul Bellow said that a writer is a reader moved to emulation. Basically, if I want to know how to blog, I read other blogs and emulate them, right? But each blog has its own chemistry, whereas mine is still just a bunch of ingredients. So I guess I just need to keep practicing. And now I need to do a little less emulation and a little more me. Otherwise I’ll just sound pretentious, and there’s nothing I hate more than reading the words of a pretentious writer.

(p.s. If you’re wondering who Saul Bellow is, as I did, Wikipedia tells me he’s a Nobel Prize-winning American writer who was born in Canada. He’s most famous for The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Humboldt’s Gift.)

So, for starters (and there’s no way to make a change of voice not awkward), I think I’ll tell you about my day. I was up very late last night talking to a very good friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time, and who I’m excited to see when I go to Utah next month. My parents flew to Maine early this morning and I barely woke up enough to receive a goodbye kiss from my mom and tell her to be safe (at least, I think that’s what I said…I was kinda groggy). I slept in, then I watered the vegetable garden and goofed off all morning, reading Anne of Avonlea. They’ve been showing the Anne of Green Gables movies lately on PBS and I decided to revert to little-girl-ness and read all of the books. I got the boxed set for Christmas a long time ago, but that was the Christmas my brother got Chronicles of Narnia and I kind of read those instead. Needless to say, Anne of Green Gables has (have?) sat neglected on my shelf long enough. I’m actually enjoying them a lot. Anne is hilarious. I worked an afternoon shift at the Hallmark Store, and came home to find dinner in the microwave (my brother is amazing. So is Trader Joe’s). We went to the stake center for institute and the usual afterwards volleyball. And, as usual, I played one game (the warmup game when everyone’s still rusty enough not to get mad at how much I suck), and then went around talking to people. It’s the talking that’s my favorite anyway.

Tomorrow I’ve got a big day. And I don’t even have to work! I’m going to the dentist’s in the morning for a couple of cavities (despite my meticulous habits, my teeth hate me), then splits with the sister missionaries in the afternoon (I’ve really missed having them call me!), then (bum bum ba BUM) my stake president interview for my mission papers!!! I am so incredibly excited. I’ve been waiting since December to get these mission papers done and submitted so I can actually have some concrete plans for the next year-and-a-half of my life. I didn’t tell many people, but I had one new year’s resolution this year (Ben was going over his resolutions recently and it reminded me): to get myself out on a mission. Or at least get a mission call. That’s been the most important thing to me this year. And I am sooo close. So cross your fingers. Hålla tummarna (the Swedish version–they hold their thumbs). Then, after the interview, I have a girls’ night with a couple of friends. We’ll watch a chick flick, do our nails, eat cookies, etc etc. I don’t do that too terribly often (I’m not really a “frilly” girl in general), so I’m looking forward to it.

There. That sounds more like me.

more delightful poison

So they’re dusting my neighborhood for mosquitoes (because of West Nile Virus). Again. I had to rush home from YSA volleyball at the stake center to walk the dog and shut up all the doors and windows so that stuff doesn’t come inside. The dusting should be starting any minute now. At least this time it’s not so creepy because my house isn’t ground zero. But that means someone else’s house is ground zero. And they’re probably creeped out right now. I know that they’re just trying to prevent West Nile Virus, but I can’t help wondering how this pesticide stuff is going to hurt us in the long run. Meanwhile I hope someone out there is working on a cure. Or some kind of vaccine. I read on Wikipedia that there are three possibilities in terms of West Nile symptoms in people. The first and most common has no symptoms. The second (and somewhat less common) is called West Nile Fever, and looks pretty much like the flu: lasts a week, fever, aches and chills, swollen lymph nodes, etc. The third and most scary, but least common, is called West Nile Meningitis, and is as bad as it sounds. This is the one that has got us all paranoid. It can infect the spinal cord (in rare cases) and is mostly characterized by a lower level of consciousness and hyperactive “deep tendon reflexes,” followed by “long convalescence with fatigue.” I imagine it can kill kids and seniors.

Why did I include information about the symptoms (based on only slightly legitimate research)? In my personal experience, knowing more about something makes you fear it less. When I didn’t know what kind of havoc West Nile could wreak on my body, I was a lot more afraid. But now that I know what I’m up against, I’m okay. I can handle this. But I’m still afraid of the pesticide.

knitting pictures

Here’s a quote from the introduction to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Knitting and Crocheting:

Like many crafts, [knitting and crocheting] grew out of necessity: People needed a way to take simple tools and supplies and craft them into usable items. Today, base survival barely figures into knitting and crocheting. Your family members aren’t dependent on your knitting skills to keep their feet toasty; usable socks are easy enough to buy from a store.

And yet, more and more people continue to learn these crafts. In fact, their popularity has escalated substantially in recent years. Young adults are looking for a creative, relaxing outlet are turning to knitting and crocheting as an after-hours escape from life’s hectic pace. The choice to stitch or not to stitch adds a new freedom to the crafts that wasn’t there either at the turn of the century, when women felt compelled to stitch for survival, or in the liberated ’60s, when women felt compelled to make a statement and not stitch. Folks are now knitting and crocheting because they choose to.

I remember reading somewhere, either in this book or another (it could be Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair), that knitting seemed to skip a generation, from our grandmothers who had to knit out of necessity, to our mothers who decided not to knit simply because they didn’t have to, to this generation where people are picking the needles back up. Whoever wrote this also said that it shows that people want to make things with their hands. Sometimes this world of technology leaves us feeling a bit disconnected, but knitting and crocheting, and other activities like gardening, bring our bodies–and souls–back to the good earth.

And another quote from Idiot’s Guide:

Some experts believe that working with your hands, following repetitive motions–such as those in knitting, crocheting, and needlepoint–actually fuel the creative process in other areas of your life. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, believes that by allowing your hands to work repetitiously your brain can simultaneously think through solutions creatively.

Cool! So many of my daily activities (school, work, etc) require both my hands and my brain, especially when I do editing work and my brain is filled with words and punctuation marks. I often feel like when I’m on my own to think, my brain is so tired that I usually just want to sleep instead. But I have found that activities just using my hands, like knitting (or, for some strange reason, scrubbing the bathroom), keep my body busy so I stay awake, but they let my mind roam around so I can actually think.

Okay, enough introspection. Here are the pictures I promised. (You can click on each one for a short explanation of why I think that picture is important)

I’m such a grandma