Stories From The Past

At work the "children" ask me to tell them stories, as children do. Haha. Anyway, I thought of a couple stories from my life that were interesting and that I had almost forgotten. I wanted to place them here to remind me later in life.

Story 1:

I was driving downtown late one night on my way home. I was heading towards the freeway and was stopped at a red light next to apark which is a park of ill-repute after dark. All of a sudden a man came dashing at me. I thought I was going to be murdered. He was knocking on my window. I wasn't going to answer him, but then I noticed he was disheveled...maybe bleeding? I cracked my window (a surprisingly safe move for someone as street-naive as me) and he said "I just got mugged. Call the police! He just ran into the park!" So I called 911 for the first time in my life. However, I was in the middle lane of the road. The light turned green. I couldn't get over to the side of the road to help him, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to. What help could I be to him? This could be a ruse to get me to feel bad for him so he could brutally murder me. So, while still talking on the phone to the dispatcher I drove down the street, leaving him behind. I told the dispatcher everything I knew and drove home. Mostly guilt free. I'm pretty sure I did everything I should've...right?

Story 2:

Fall of freshman year me and the new friends decided to take advantage of the beautiful mountains and go camping one weekend. It was probably October, and the campground was closed, but we went in and set up camp anyway. It was great because the campground was absolutely empty, and you had to walk probably 200 yards before you could see the road.

That night as we were sitting around the campfire and singing (yes, we were doing that) a jeep cherokee pulls into our campsite. Now, it's about 11:00 at night. We're curious to see what's going on. This girl, looking about 21, gets out and explains that she's a little lost and she was supposed to meet her friends camping, but they bailed on her. She didn't want to drive the 20 minutes into town. So I say, "Sure! You can stay here tonight! Have some food!"...like an idiot. When we're back in our tent playing cards everyone starts discussing how weird this is. That hadn't occurred to me....because I'm an idiot. They had a point though. She said she was going to meet her friends and that she was from the city, but why was she all the way down here if they bailed on her? And why oh why did she come through the canyon the back way, instead of taking the main freeway through the state? And what kind of young girl just stops to spend the night with a bunch of strangers? Why wouldn't she continue the 20 minutes into the safety of the nearest town?

Freaked out, we partitioned off a space in the girls' tent and made the 3 boys stay in there with us so they could fight off the homicidal psychopath when she inevitably came to spill our blood. When we woke up the next morning she was gone. We weren't dead, but it was still just weird.

Not an informative post

My usual cop-out for not blogging is the "I have nothing to say," excuse. I realized today that this is false. I mean, obviously. I never shut up. So my real excuse is, "I am so opinionated that everything I would like to say will offend someone." We all know how it goes in the movies. You say something about someone, then your relationship changes and you feel awful about what you used to think and then they find some trace of it. So, I am going to keep things as vague as possible. We all know that makes for fantastic reading.

The other day the husband and I were presented with some choices. Mostly one big one. A life-altering one. It was met with hardly any enthusiasm, even though he and I feel very enthusiastic and confident about it. I mean, this is way bigger than the whole "How high of a thread-count are we willing to buy?" or "white or wheat?" kind of thing. I feel that we have already made our decision, but it is sort of a change of pace that those around us aren't as supportive as we thought. We are very blessed to be surrounded by people who love and support us, in most cases :). We are both the youngest children, so I feel like that is part of it. This is going to be a slow process, for this decision to take effect, and we have already done oodles of research. We've weighed the pros and the cons, we've taken a spiritual approach...but we're still the babies in the family, so I'm sure it's disconcerting for everyone to see this decision and think that we can understand the depth of it. We sure can.

Besides, if it all goes to crap, what's the worst that could happen?

Babies and Books

I love summer! Team Dorius loves summer. We have so many plans! Dave is gobbling up books like crazy. I think he's read about 7 in the last couple weeks. I am in a close second with 2. Ha. Relating to that, let me give you my critique of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

The Da Vinci Code was fast-paced and intriguing. The Lost Symbol was fast paced. It has some interesting twists, but (SPOILER ALERT!) I just found the whole thing redundant, over dramatic, and pointless. Exactly why is it necessary to keep different pieces of the puzzle separate, because they are "too powerful" when at the end they are simply a tool of piquing interest? It's full of "man-is God" doctrine and complicated clues loosely tied to a non-solution of metaphor. All in all, I kept waiting for it to hold my interest and attention the way The Da Vinci Code did, but we never reached that. Sorry, Mr. Brown, but the book stunk of desperation. It seemed so forced. You took a good shot, but you probably should've just quit while you were ahead.

In other news, we have a new little person in our family! Dave's sister had a little boy on May 4th. His name is Trenton. He was born with a little cleft palate, so when we went to visit him he was in the infant ICU (NICU), simply because he needed a little feeding tube, because he had to be taught to eat. He was carried full term, so he is normal sized. Next to all the other NICU babies he's a giant. It broke my heart a little to see these tiny things. Trenton's roommate had the most adorable hiccups, followed by an alarming (to me) attempt to rip out his feeding tube. Mommy and baby should be coming home today.

Seeing all those teenies reminds how far I still am from being ready to have my own. I think there's still a lot Dave and I need to do first. Not in the have a career, buy a house, get a nice car sense, more in the emotional/spiritual sense. I know that nothing quite prepares you for being a parent, but I would like to do the best I can and skip any regrets. I will NOT let my child read The Lost Symbol. What a waste of time.

Life is good and hard.

Maybe this stuff is too heavy for a blog that is basically visable to anyone (though I'm sure no one really looks) but I just feel like I need to have a vent session.

For the last 8 married months of my life I have never felt happiness like this. I have never felt poverty like this, I have never felt wealthy like this. But at the same time I feel like now that I am in my "real life" things matter so much more, which has also created an un-before-seen amount of stress on me.

First it was the money. That was such a great lesson. We literally had nothing. We would've gone down to steal food from family more often if we could've afforded the gas. We got to a point where we had eaten all of our ramen, mac n' cheese, and spaghetti noodles. We were hungry, but somehow managed to have just enough for bills, after tithing, of course. Never had either of us struggled like that before. Dave really stepped up to the plate and turned into this wonderful money manager, despite a history (for both of us) of a casual approach to money management. Once we finally had some more money coming in we felt so overwhelmed(in the "my cup runneth o'er" kind of way). We could buy milk. Every week if we wanted to! That was a wonderful and HARD thing we went through. I am so grateful, but at the time I would occasionally break down into tears with fear, pressure, and the arguments that came from it.

Now we are onto an entirely new lesson. Dave and I are having some health problems. Dave more than me, but I'm sure it will all work out eventually.