Indulgence

I have a problem. It is getting worse. It especially gets worse every time I happen to go to DI or Borders. Barnes and Noble is the most terrible, so I suppose it is a good thing that I live in a place where I have to drive for 45 minutes to get to one. Amazon.com has made my problem grow by leaps and bounds, especially when I find one I love on sale for just a penny. I speak of...Books. Have I ever told you how much I love books? I love the smell of books. I love to draw my fingers over the spines of a shelf of books and marvel at the mass of information contained in so many pages. I love the feel of those pages as I draw my finger under the words or flip the corners while I read. I love to pile books up on top of each other on my floor, or next to each other on a shelf so they can talk to each other and entertain one another while I am gone.

I love the way words look on a page, all crunched together just waiting to explode in your mind with a story. I get into fights with books when the author has had the audacity to subject the pages in front of me to a poorly worded story or a flat character who won't form in my mind. I laugh with other authors, imagining that I know just what they were thinking when they wrote that line or created this character. It was probably because I was so shy as a little girl that I began to love books so much. Books don't judge you. They don't criticize you for not being good enough. They don't intimidate you. They invite you. They sit patiently there on a shelf waiting to tell you their story--and not just tell you their story but dress you up, turn you round and round and then drop you right into the middle of their world. You open the first page and they greet you with a cheery "Hi!", a somber nod of the head, or a loving and contemplative "Hello my friend. How glad I am to see you again! It has been too long."

Maybe that's also why I've taken so earnestly to journal writing. Looking over the journals I've filled so far, it's strange to think that they are (though completely mundane) filled with thoughts and feelings and breaths that have come out of my own mind. Maybe keeping a journal is a way that you can become your own friend. You can go back and read the things that have spilled from your own mind and look at it as a friend would. You can say "How exciting for you!," or "How sad! I'm sorry it has been so hard!," and even the occasional "Don't cry Dear! Everything will turn out alright!"

In any case, my friends are waiting.

I was off-planet

Okay, not really, but it felt like it some of the time. Let's do a quick update. Thanksgiving was fun. My family and I went to Disneyland for the first time in a long time. It was really fun. And in case you were wondering, the best time to go to Disneyland really is when someone needs to be in a wheelchair. My Mom, who has had problems with her feet for several years now, needed one. However, I think that the fear of running over a small child or a Disneyland worker that is completely dressed in black while it's dark outside totally balances out the fact that you don't really have to stand in a line. The day after Disneyland I spent about 15 hours sitting in my parents bathtub. And despite the fact that I have some plumbing skills it took at least 6 visits to Home Depot in order to figure out how to remove the cartridge out of where the handle went...anyways. That was just a little stressful.

Our theme for the holidays has kind of been "We can celebrate any way we dang please." We decided after the plumbing fiasco that we were all too tired to make turkey, so we convinced my mom that having ribs from Pat and Oscars could, in fact, be just as good as turkey. And we were right.

If you're looking for a new game for the family to play and you also happen to have pretty much no shame, you might want to look into getting the game "Quelf." Every year Santa leaves our family a new board game that we play Christmas evening, and this year he left Quelf. And it's hilarious. The cards direct you to sing, say certain things that make no sense, play Peek-a-Boo with anyone attempting to talk to you, become the personal cheerleader of one of the other players and cheer for them whenever they do ANYTHING, etc. At one point my Dad turned to us all and said over and over: "Chickens are on fire. NUCLEAR Chickens are on Fire!" Still not sure what that was all about. Like I said, no shame.

Last Wednesday my brother and I drove back up to Utah. I left him in Orem with my sister and drove back up to Logan. I really didn't want to get back to Logan four days before school started, but I had to work. Anyhow, turns out I had to go back down to San Diego on Friday. While I was at work Friday my sister called and told me my grandfather had passed away. He's been sick for quite a while now. At the beginning of November he fell and broke his femur. He had surgery to fix the break, but he sort of went downhill from there. His memory/dementia was worse. He slowly stopped eating and drinking. I don't want to go too much into it. He kind of went sooner than we thought he would. Let's just say that I'm glad for knowledge of the gospel, and the plan of salvation that helps us know that we will see our grandpa again. And that, after 24 years of being separated from his wife, they are together again.