The Carrier Pigeon

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am getting a touchscreen Kindle on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Actually it turns out that the don’t know where it is.  They already sent it and can’t find it.  Anyway, HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I hope you had a good time!!!!!!!

Last night at Matt’s reception for a solo show at the LSMSA gallery (it looked great, by the way!), one of his old colleagues whom we hadn’t seen in a while, came up to me (Julie) and said, “Wow! You’ve really grown up!” I didn’t really know how to respond to that and was just kind of laughing, “Yeah, ha-ha…” Then she said, “Now, point out all your siblings to me.” I looked at her, kind of dumbfounded, then said, “I’m not the daughter. I’m the mom.” Needless to say, she felt a little embarrassed. Genevene walked up right then so I said to her, “I can see how you may have been a little confused. She is taller than me now and quite grown up.”  She laughed, mumbled something and walked away.
I thought it was pretty funny, but come on, 13?!?
A couple of months ago, Matt, Genevene and Atticus went shopping one morning and this man asked Genevene how old Atticus was. She looked at Matt, “I don’t know, 10 months?” And the guy says, “Come on, Mama. You should know that!” Genevene said something like, “I’m his sister!” The guy kind of laughed awkwardly and left. I thought it was pretty funny! I wish I could’ve been there to see the reaction!       And so far, she’s not mortified to be mistaken for her mother.   

Willie and Sally had some of their poetry published in “Fire in the Pasture,” an anthology of twenty first century Mormon poets. I got the book in the mail this week and loved reading the poems: Willie’s, Sally’s and others. I have  been stressed and worrying about paying bills and growing my dental practice lately, and it was refreshing to my soul to sit and read poetry – especially that written by my family members.

Poetry feeds my soul. Much of it I don’t get, like jazz. But the poems that speak to me, I love. A few years ago Willie gave me a book of poems by the National Poet Laureat at the time, Ted Koozer (from Nebraska), whose poetry is “accessible.” Accessible, meaning even I can understand it and enjoy it’s message. Some poetry, like some jazz, seems to be a private conversation I’m not understanding. I’m not that interested in learning more about jazz, but I am interested in learning to understand poetry better. I remember years ago when I first started reading the Bible, it all seemed so complicated, and now that I’ve read, studied and pondered it over the years, it makes much more sense and I enjoy the messages and the language. I think I will study and ponder more poetry so I will become more familiar with the language. And then I can graduate from “accessible” to being a part of the private conversation.

I made the Quiz Bowl team at school!  I’m so proud of myself!!!!!!!!!!!  I tried out with about 20 other people and I got on!!!!!!!!!!!!  If the actual thing is as fun as the tryouts, then I will LOVE it!  So, what’s going on in your lives?

I’m going on my yearly New York trip the day after tomorrow. I’m so excited.  We are excited to see Papaw tomorrow and my mom is also coming to help care for the boys while Willie is at work.  This year I am going to rent a medium format film camera and only bring a small 35mm film camera and a small digital camera. Whenever I go anywhere my camera choice is very important.  I am going to attend two photography seminars while I’m there.  one on making fine art prints and the other is called 12 things to improve your digital photography (things like screen calibration, using histograms and things like that).

I also have a friend who is the bass player in a pop band called Neon Trees.  He served in the same mission and he married one of my friends.  His wife will be in New York for one of their concerts and she invited me to come to the concert.  I think it will be fun. They are playing with the band Duran Duran at Madison Square Garden.

I’ll share pictures and let you know how it goes. I miss you all. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving when we’ll see at least a few of you.  Here is a picture of Willie from last year that I like.  It will be a lonelier trip without him this year.

We got a kitten!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Some of our friends from church have a cat that had kittens!  We got the only girl out of the whole litter!  She is a little calico!  She is so sweet and playful.  We named her Mabel.  She jumps around and has so much fun with us. 

If my hand was a living being all on its own, it would have been long dead by now.  She doesn’t like being left alone, whenever we take her out of the clubhouse in our backyard and leave her to roam free, she comes to our back door and starts meowing.She is sooooooo cute!!!!!!

This morning, Dad got home from running and he said that he saw a little kitten on the side of the road.  We took it some food and milk.  Leah, Bess, and I were all traumatized that we would have to leave the little kitten on the side of the road.  We cried and complained for a long time.  We finally got in the car and went home.  As soon as we got back, we started making phone calls to find it a home.  Someone finally called back and said that they had a friend that wanted a kitten.  They came by to pick it up.  We went back to where it was, but we didn’t see it.  We looked for a while, but we didn’t find it until Bess made a meowing noise.  The kitten responded.  It had gotten caught in a bush of thorns.  I had my purse on me, and I cut the thorns with my scissors until I could reach it.  When it saw my hand, it started trying to scoot away.  I got it out by pulling it out by it’s leg. They took it back to their house and it turns out that we’re getting a kitten too!  We’re getting one that looks exactly like the one that we rescued.  We’re naming it Lucky Fred after the one that we rescued.  We’re soooooooooooooooo excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In 6th Grade, the kids read the book Hatchet then can choose a big project to do about it.  Three years ago Genevene chose to make a little stop-motion animation movie of a scene from  the book and yesterday Leah made one too.  They both turned out awesome!

Here’s Leah’s.  (ps. The skunk is digging.)

And here’s Genevene’s.

They had so much fun making them and were so proud of themselves for how well they turned out.  Us too.      Love our great kids!

I scrapped the beard when my indie americana band broke up and I’ve started a hair metal band. Check out my poster.

Just kidding.