being cindy

Well, between being assured that I will have at least two readers and becoming more and more excited about my new layout, I've made the move official. From now on, I will be posting here. Not much will change besides look and location; as always I will be essaying and journaling and observing (and occasionally judging) profusely when time allows. And, as always, comments and discussion are welcome!

For awhile now, I've been wishing I could put more pictures into my posts. Nothing spectacular, but I like the idea of spicing up entries with a little bit of color. However, LiveJournal is HORRID at posting pictures. Absolutely WRETCHED.

So it is that I'm contemplating a move. My question being this - if I DO move from LiveJournal, and therefore am no longer updating peoples' friendlists, will anyone still be interested in my humble writerly offerings? It sounds vain to ask, but you know. A girl has to have at least one or two readers.

A pelican falls, sharp as a stone, meeting the water below in a silent splash that sends salty spray high into the air. My breath catches in my throat: I watch in awe, unspeakably touched by this dazzling display of beauty.

The breeze, gentler than usual but just as stickily warm, teases strands of my hair from their neat updo. The beach is the one place on earth where even my normally docile hair is rendered absolutely unmanageable - but I don't care. If I could live here, I wouldn't mind being totally bald.

I am sitting in my favorite position: curled in one of the Captain's chairs, my feet perched on the deck rail, facing the grey-green-blue expanse of the ocean. Seabirds wheel, noiseless and graceful, above my head - stately pelicans, grey gulls, and small, swooping white ones with black heads whose name I don't know. Though midsummer, it is Sunday, and so the beach is sparsely populated; a small group of simmers here, an abandoned canopy there.

"Hey, Ninny," Benjamin asked me earlier, as I stood on the deck watching faraway dolphins gliding through the waves. "Is there such things as mermaids?"

"Yup," I answered, my eyes still on the horizon. "Of course. They just don't like to show themselves to humans."

Being here, in my truest of homes, takes me back to my most essential self. For the moment I shed all the insecurities, the doubts, and the superficialities of the modern grown-up world. For one shimmering moment I am myself: Not Cindy, the adult, or Cindy Lynn, the child, or Ninny, the sister, or even Cynthia, the writer - I am none of these, and all of them, and more. Once, I wrote a poem about my grandfather's swing. "If ever a man were to love me/I think it would start on a swing," I wrote then - "For there, I am most truly Me." But I was forgetting, then, the even truer truth that is the sea, and what the sea does to me. No one could ever pretend to understand me who had not sat in silence by the ocean with me first - or at least been willing to try.

Each time my life moves from a moment of busyness to one of calm, I have to relearn - to remember - everything I've forgotten.

I have to recall what it means to rest, and what it means to be idle, and how those differ. I have to remember why it's important to seek a moment of solitude and reflection - especially after such a hungry, lonely semester. I have to keep hold of the days that have a tendency to slip by, silently, speedily, worthlessly. I need to take this time to stretch out my soul that has become so cramped in the rush of routine over the last three months.

I am a new person this summer, a different woman than I was in the spring. Now I need to pause, to take the time to explore this new me. Above all, I cannot let myself slip back into the petulance and pettiness of my fifteen-year-old self, now that things are easier again.

Growing up, whenever I left the house Dad would remind me to "Remember who you are." For so many years I've laughed that off, not realizing how easy it is to forget. In the heat of the moment it's frighteningly simple to forget all the things I've learned, forget the changes I've undergone, forget the God whose creation I am. It's too easy to let the sleeping snake of natural-girlness wake up and shake its ugly head, blinding me to my true identity, potential, even to my true feelings.

One of my goals over this break is to write. A lot. I want to write everything - stories, poems, songs, my Virtuous Woman book; I want to edit and rewrite the MaeNo (and, oh yeah, give it a title). I want to bury myself in fiction-writing this summer, and not come up for air.

But I think I'm not ready for that, not quite yet. This has been a year of transitions, of questions and answers and more questions, of revelation and beauty and pain and did I mention questions? And I think that, before I can dive into the stories of Maeallyn or Hytharan or even the woman of Proverbs 31, I've got a lot of writing to do for myself. There's a good bit of journaling, and pondering, and poetry-ing, and essaying that I've got to do on my own story, before I'm ready to tackle anyone else's.

And so it is that I make new goals on this, the third day of my break. I make a goal to keep an hour or so of each day to myself and the Lord. I make a goal to sketch everything - tastes, smells, sounds, thoughts - so that I will always remember this summer and the miracles that will happen. I make a goal to fulfill the measure of my creation. And, last and perhaps most importantly, I make a goal to live in full accordance with my beliefs, my values, and my truest self.

This is going to be quite the summer.

Later

This is what summer is supposed to be. Sun-child that I am, the heat of mid-July makes it impossible to spend too much time outside early in the day. It is only after sunset that the temperature is bearable again, and so, like owls, we all slip outside into the summer night.

In Idaho, even in July, nights are crisp and cool and quiet - as different as possible from the hot summer dusks we have at home. Here, the air is warm and heavy and full of the sounds of summer creatures - crickets, cicadas, tree frogs - all joining in in a chorus that is loud enough to keep you awake at night. I am sitting in the hammock chair, my fingers twined into its colorful threads, rocking gently back and forth and listening to the summer sounds. Along with the wildlife, I hear voices from next door - the cat begging to be let into the sanctuary of the porch (where she would promptly proceed to dig her claws into every soft surface available and leave long hairs all over the chair cushions) - children playing somewhere in the neighborhood.

The night around me is dark, rendered completely black by the porch lights, but unfrightening. Unlike the wild desert nights in Idaho, this dark holds no menace. Mine is a tame jungle - nothing worse than snakes and a quintillion species of insect lurk in the trees; the only howls are those of the neighborhood dogs in their constant quest to outbark one another.

The door to the house opens: Two blond pirate-hatted heads and one plastic sword peer around the doorframe. It's nearly ten, but bedtimes later in the summer, when the heavy Southern heat encourages afternoon naps and makes the night more interesting, anyway.

The invaders look around for a moment, seeing only Jason and I sitting each in our own shell of silent journaling, and pop quickly back inside. I am left with only Jason's intermittent observations and Tiger's plaintive wails.

I look at the words I've written, ten minutes or so of steady streaming, dotted with crossings-out and hasty corrections. Most of it, I know, isn't very good - I'm rusty, overdescriptive, after a semester of neglect. I'm full of cliches, of worn-out words. I've forgotten how to be spare, and sparsely beautiful.

And yet: I'm smiling like I haven't smiled in - well - awhile. It's not much, I know. But it's a start. And for tonight - as the deep, thick dark of a Carolina summer night hangs around me almost palpably - it is enough.

Reason #1 I Am Glad To Be Home:

Hearing the little kids run around the house singing in deep, sonorous Ben Folds voices, "Oiiiiii am, Oiiiiiiii am, Oiiiiiiiii am, the Luckiest."

When I write, I like it to be in a still moment, when all of my senses are attuned as delicately as possible to the world around me. (There is an inexplicable but very real link, at least for me, between sensory functionality and poetry.) So it is that I have a much harder time achieving verbal beauty when I am sick and sniffly and sore.

Still - despite the congestion and the allergies and the hovering headache, sitting out on this porch makes me positively serene.

They say you can never come home. I've disproved that theory twice now: Two times in the last twelve months, I have come home so completely that it feels like I've never left. (Luckily for everyone concerned, this second homecoming has been much less neurotic than the first.) Each time, I have slipped easily back into the pattern of my old life, so seamlessly and effortlessly that a part of me wonders if the last months really happened.

This time, I know that they did. Not because my hair is longer (though it is) or because the seasons are different (though they are) or because the triplets are showering me with gifts and drawings (though they are). Because I have changed so much.

I am a completely different person than the one who stepped off of a plane and into the Salt Lake City airport three months ago. I like to think it's an improvement, personally, though only time will tell. (Nah, who am I kidding? I love the person I've become. It's like discovering that your next-door-neighbor is actually your best friend. We get along great.)

But it's still good to be back.

I'm sitting on the porch, in a butterfly chair that wasn't here when I left (one of the many superficial changes that have taken place in my house over the last three months), my feet in the hammock swing. Swimsuits and pool towels drape over the clothesline that is strung above my head, evidence that it is midsummer in North Carolina. Clamps, paint, wood glue and two-by-four blocks litter the table to my left, proof positive that my mom has been busy while I've been gone. Around me, the jungle that is a Carolina July hums around me (I'd forgotten until I went to sleep last night just how loud those cicadas can get). I can see why those who've grown up in deserts get claustrophobic when they come here, but I love it.

It's been a weird, wild summer, full of confusion and loneliness and even a dash of heartbreak. (Nothing too serious, but - still.) All week, I've looked around with a dazed sort of expression, proclaiming every day or two that "It's over! It's actually over!" Which exclamation is usually met with the reply, "Well, you're going back in six weeks." And I know I am. But I have a hunch that it will be different - better - that it won't have that sheen of this-is-a-test glittering over every experience. And I'm excited for that, excited to go back.

But for now, it's good to be home.

I told my roommate the other night:

"If I had been gambling with money this summer, instead of just placing bets on how my semester would go, I would not only be broke this semester - I would be deeply in debt."

At this point, I'm just doing my best to sit back and never, ever make guesses about how things will turn out ever again. I feel like I'm on the world's most unexpected roller coaster and it keeps getting more unexpected by the moment. Sometimes good changes, sometimes less-good.

Maybe going home for six weeks will calm things down a little.

I am a history girl. I go through obsessions with different historical periods, reading and studying them as much as I can (read: as much as I have time for). I have often wished for a time machine.

I used to be head-over-heels for the era of the Revolution. I loved it all - the stories, the ideals, the dresses, the heroism. Once upon a time, all I wanted was to grow up to be an indentured servant in a colonial town around the time of the Boston Tea Party. (This is, of course, before I got a little older and realized that really, the life of an indentured servant was not all that fun.) Something of that same spirit still catches me when I see red and white stripes snapping in the breeze - I start to hear the vague strains of "Yankee Doodle," and think about Deborah Samson. History is grand, I think.

But it wasn't always that way. I'm fairly certain that the people actually involved in all those massacres, all the intrigues, all the long days of tramping through the mud, weren't quite so starry-eyed about their ordeal. I'm sure they groaned, and cursed, and I wouldn't be surprised if one or two decided that taxation without representation really wasn't that bad, after all. The bullets were real, the nights were cold, and the agony felt at a loved one's capture or death was nothing to make light of.

Today, this country is all grown up: A world power, a force to be reckoned with (and not just because you could die eating our fast food - yuck). And yet, I'm guessing that getting to this point involved some significant growing pains.

I came into this semester with high expectations for my first Rexburg summer. Everyone said it was the best time to be here (and I won't contest that - it's beautiful). I had strong hopes; it would be like last fall, only even better, because it would be sans negative temperatures.

As the weeks went on I watched as each expectation slowly dried up, like Hughes' proverbial raisin in the sun. Time went by - weeks, then months - and nothing changed. I still had (almost) no friends. No dates. Nothing. I have become, as I told someone the other day, the Amazing Invisible Woman. The summer has been full of pumpkin bread, day after day after day. (When I went on a geology field trip Monday and it turned out that nobody had actually ordered our bus, I wasn't surprised. You see, that's been the way my whole social life has gone this semester.)

Now, the semester is (finally) almost over. Fifteen days, and I will be living it up at Education Week. Twenty days, and I will be on an airplane headed home (at last). It cannot come too soon.

And yet: I know that it's been good for me, in a non-trite, deep-and-spiritual sort of way. I am, quite literally, a different person than I was three months ago. I have learned so much in this summer of tears: Patience, faith, trust, hope, independence (while still being totally dependent on God). I have found new passions, and reconnected with old ones. I have come to take a deep, vibrant joy in just being me, no matter what the circumstances.

Some day, when I am a force to be reckoned with, a world power (ha, ha) I will look back on this cold-mud-and-gunpowder summer and smile indulgently. "Yes, it was difficult," I'll think as I wave my little flag and watch the fireworks. "But really, all it was was growing pains."

People (mostly people who don't dance) laugh at me when I say this, but it's true: I would be a much better person if I had the chance to dance every day.

BYU schools are good for dancing. Really good. Every Wednesday there is country and swing dancing, and every Thursday there is latin and ballroom. I never went to either one last semester; I wasn't confident enough in my own skills, and none of my friends liked to dance. (The latter being the more pressing reason.) This semester, as I have only about two friends anyway (and one of them is my uncle), I said "what the heck" and started going to Thursday night dancing by myself.

Now, I arrange my schedule around it. Those three hours on Thursday nights are sacred. Even tonight, when I had an orchestra concert that didn't get over till 9, I zoomed over to the student center as soon as my violin had made it into my locker. I only got an hour of dancing in before it ended, but boy, it was good.

Dancing makes me happy. All kinds of dancing, but partner dancing more than anything, because that combines both dancing and social interaction (which I need). And the more involved in it I get, the more I love it. I've lost count now of how many Thursdays I've gone dancing; nearly all semester, and now I know all of the "regulars" by face and many of them by name. It's also quite the ego-boost - though a couple times a night I end up with a partner I just can't dance with (those of you who dance will know what I mean), I am usually able to follow guys who have been dancing for many years more than I have. I'm even told fairly often that I'm a good follower.

This is pretty high praise, considering that this girl couldn't follow worth beans at the beginning of last fall.

And then, of course, every now and then someone tells me I'm "amazing." OK, well, it actually only happened that once. But you know. I'm still riding the wave.

I was putting on my street shoes after class when Taylor came up and started talking to Ben.

"Do you know your partner is amazing?"
"Yep."
"She's really cool."
"Yep."
"You should feel honored."
"Yep."
"Blessed."
"I do."
"Good."

And it was at that point that I looked up and realized hey, they're talking about me! And it was at that point that my day was MADE, man.

I am a simple person. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. Being told I'm amazing will take me a looong way.

I told them they could build a statue of me on the Taylor quad. I'd be OK with that.

sometimes my thoughts run
a little like an e. e. cummings poem:
disconnected, h a r d t o f o l l o w
losing the point and
picking it up again two lines later.
they twist and turn
through byways (some pleasant, others not so much)
and hidden doors
until finally,
abruptly,
they reach epiphany.

I look at the bag of pumpkin-chocolate-chip bread sitting on my refrigerator, and realize that it is a metaphor.

We members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints do many peculiar things (including hosting jello bake-offs and wearing bonnets on the 24th of July). Among these are the venerable traditions of Home Teaching (for the men) and Visiting and Teaching (for the women). Home Teachers are men, and are assigned to families (or, in the case of college kids, both men and women); Visiting Teachers are assigned to individual women. Both sets are supposed to come around once a month - with a lesson, yes, but primarily to provide a support system for the people they are visiting.

Obviously, the programs have highly uneven success. Sometimes people do it; sometimes they don't. We're all busy, after all. Sometimes people put it off till the very end - on May 31st there was an enormous scramble in my apartment complex. You could hardly find anyone when you wanted 'em; they were either out visiting teaching, or being visit-taught.

Last month, one of my visiting teachers came by on the 31st with a note that said "Sorry we haven't been able to see you this month!" and a gift card for Cold Stone Creamery (yum). This month, I came home from class one day to find pumpkin bread.

Don't get me wrong - I love pumpkin bread. And I have the greatest sympathy for my visiting teachers and their hectic schedules. I don't know about one of them, but the other is getting married next month and so is understandably frazzled. So I'm not mad, or angry, at them.

It just strikes me: This bread is a metaphor for my life right now. It represents the fact that the one pair of people who I should, in a perfect world, be able to depend on to pop in once a month and see how things are going, haven't. But it's not just them. This seems to be the Semester I Can't Count On ANYONE (But God), in the most literal sense. Everyone has flaked on me this summer, in big ways or small. All nice people, people I still like - but all of them, individually and collectively, have let me down.

The girls who welcomed me into their life one night, and invited me back, but were never there when I need someone. The friends who enthused about a movie night, but didn't show up on the night of the movie (not a single one). The guy who for one week wanted to spend every day with me, and the next week stopped e-mailing and cancelled plans and lied about the reason. Even the student who taught the dance workshop that was my backup plan if last night's date fell through (she didn't show up).

Every area of, every person in my life right now seems to be giving me pumpkin bread. You know - "Hey, you're a nice girl, and I don't mind talking to you when I'm not busy, but you're never going to be a priority to me. Here, have a treat instead."

I know I'm not alone, never alone. I know I'm learning really vital things in my life right now, things that will prepare me for the rest of adulthood, things that will make me a better and a stronger person. But I just have to say: I'm getting tired of pumpkin bread.

Life is such an interesting thing.

Nearly everything I expected (consciously or unconsciously) from this summer has not happened - and many things I did not expect (writing for the newspaper, falling in love with dance) have. It's been a rough, lonely semester.

To those I owe letters: I will get them to you. Soon.

And that's all I have to say for tonight.

Driving home from Idaho Falls with my aunt and uncle and a friend, sitting in the backseat, talking and leaning my head against the window as I watch the most spectacular sunset I have seen in I don't know how long. "It's the farmers," says Sam. "Crop dust. I hardly notice the sunset anymore; it's always like that in the summer."

How sad, I think.

Realizing, in a quiet moment, that my life actually makes sense: That yes, things may be hard right now, but they're hard for a reason. Figuring out how things fit together, like playing connect-the-dots. Feeling flooded with sudden understanding, like watching the color appear on the water-paint books we all had in kindergarten. Knowing that the struggle will continue, but that at least I'll know why.

Reading Proverbs 31:23 for the millionth time and actually understanding it, in one exciting "click."

Sitting on the grass at the end of a terrible, terrible day, and being able to cry it all out. Finding peace, when the tears had dried. Deciding that yes, I may come out of this season of my life with "many wounds," but I will be stronger than I was coming into it. Perhaps understanding the Lord's timing just a little bit more than I did that morning.

Trying (imperfectly, but in brief shining moments actually succeeding) to live as directed in Doctrine and Covenants 6:36 - "Look onto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not."

Remembering that I am not actually unforgivable. Whatever I may think.

Spending six hours (yes! six!) on the most fabulous first date in the world. Yes, I will feel ever-so-slightly-neurotic later on when it's been a day and a half and I haven't heard from him (I tell you, I can be ridiculous sometimes!) - but oh, it is a wonderful night. Talking for two hours on a rooftop. Almost missing curfew, because the time flies by so fast.

Filling four pages in my (monstrously huge) journal with new insights and learning when my post-great-date neurosis drives me again and again to my scriptures.

Watching a funny movie with friends in a comfortable evening, with just the right amount of talking and just the right amount of laughing. Going to a dance workshop and talking, talking, talking with the instructor for a full hour after it's over. Sharing my testimony, hearing the testimony of others. Feeling strengthened and uplifted.

It's been a really hard week. I've been sick and hormonal, and spent much of the week feeling neurotic in various ways. And yet - as I look back on this moments, from last Saturday to tonight, I realize something.

There have been beautiful moments too.

There are long moments
(days, weeks, months even)
where who I am seems lost,
obscured,
melanized by the press of all my shortcomings.
I find myself again
only for brief moments,
shimmering dazzles
like droplets sliding off a dolphin's back
forgotten as soon as they hit the ocean surface.
Lucky for me
that my God is also the God of the sea,
ready to catch my shining moments
and reflect them back to me in purer form.

Don't go see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 when you're PMSing. Really. Don't do it.

I don't know if I've ever cried that hard in a movie theater, before. I don't know if I've ever cried that hard in a movie that was not about World War II, ever. It was tragic. Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Awful. Wrenching. Bitter-bittersweet (as opposed to just plain bittersweet, which isn't quite enough). Wow. I'm ready to tear my heart out, after seeing that.

Of Being

by Denise Levertov

I know this happiness
is provisional

>the looming presences
>great suffering, great fear

>withdraw only
>into peripheral vision.

but ineluctable this shimmering

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

>this mystery:

There are moment, even in the middle of a trial-time, when the world is perfectly at balance. The stars sing more loudly, the sun is more beautiful even when it is covered in cloud. These are the golden days, where all I can do is sit back and breathe in glory, feel my posture straighten and my heart lighten. These are the days that - even though I, like Denise Levertov, still firmly see sorrow and suffering in my peripheral vision - I am brought to my knees in awe and wonder instead of in pain.

Not all of today was golden (I didn't get enough sleep last night for that to be entirely possible), but there were moments. Oh, there were moments! Learning the tango without any problems, and feeling graceful and beautiful. Tripping over Ben's legs as he taught me Viennese waltz, feeling like a klutz, and loving myself anyway. Walking, flushed and exhilarated, out of dance class into the cool winter-in-midsummer air and breathing deeply. Putting together my resume for English class and realizing that I've accomplished more in my short life than I realized. Talking to the cute boy who sits behind me in the class; borrowing his pen. Getting everything done that needed doing. Seeing a wonderful stage play, sitting between two beautiful friends. Coming back and getting a call from my (wonderful, ego-stroking) editor; being asked to write the front-page article for an upcoming Scroll.

I know this happiness is provisional. Loneliness and frustration with my body and covetousness of others' energy are still right there, in my peripheral vision. And yet: For tonight, at least, the world is an okay place to be.

Today I'm blogging over at the Rexburg Voice. Click to learn why I think numbers are a bad idea...

In Which I Become A Momentary Scroll Celebrity, Have A Bad Day, And Dance Really Well

I know, I know - you are probably staring with shock and awe at your computer screen right about now, wondering what happened to turn the world so dramatically upside down. Because yes, people, this is another chapter in the Chronicles of Cindy that is actually arriving more or less on time. What can I say? Having no life* may not always be the most exciting thing in the world, but it does make for reliable e-mail updates.**

As many of you probably already know, I decided to try something new this semester - writing for the Scroll, our official student newspaper. Things got off to a slow and rather sticky start; first of all, it took a good week and a half to track down the professor in charge of signing up staffers (we played lots of rounds of phone tag that gave him the very mistaken idea that I am a busy young lady). Then, it just so happened that Scroll staff meetings coincided exactly with orchestra rehearsal times, so I can't go to those. Which means that I generally end up sending annoyed e-mails to my editor, asking why I haven't been given anything to do. Whether this is because I like writing for the newspaper, or because my editor is big on the effusive and slightly flirtatious praise, I'll leave it to you to decide. (Okay, I admit. It's both.)

Last week, the bugging of the editor paid off big time. Thursday night he called me up, in all his newspapery fresh-from-a-New-York-internship intensity, and gave me an assignment. Earlier that night there had been a serious house fire outside of Rexburg, and I was to write a story on said fire. And get it to him soon. As in, really soon. As in, by the next Monday at noon.

To put this in perspective, on a normal week's schedule story assignments are given out on Monday-ish, due that Friday-ish, returned to you after they've been read by two copyeditors, and due in their final draft form in another day or two. A rather relaxing, leisurely experience, quite unlike the slightly-harried-but-very-fun experience that was my last weekend. Because I got the assignment late Thursday night, and because most people don't answer their phones on Fridays or Saturdays (as I learned the hard way), the weekend involved a lot of calling. And a lot of voicemail messages. And a lot of being told to call other people. Sunday marked the only lull in the activity; Monday morning I was up at nine and dashing off to the Rexburg fire department to pick up a packet of information. Two hours and fifteen minutes later, my initial draft was on my editor's desktop. Two hours after that, I went in for a quick hour of revision and then, with not a minute to spare, my article was slipped into the paper and readied for printing.

I hadn't realized this, but the article was actually sort of the focus column for the News section - you know, not the front page, and not the one with the most text, but the one that your eye went to first when you flipped the Scroll open to the News. I thought that was pretty exciting - until, that is, yesterday morning.

I knew from my editor that one of the girls two doors down was also on the News section staff. I hadn't really talked to her (she's one of Those Girls, you know, the ones who are Never There because they are With Their Boy) and so when I went over to 201 to borrow some waxed paper to make no-bake cookies, I introduced myself. "You're on the News staff, right?" I asked. When she nodded, I continued, "So am I - I just can't come to meetings because of orchestra."

"What was your article?" she asked. I told her. She screwed up her face in a concentrating look.

"I think you got an award," she said.

"Huh?" (I didn't know the Scroll had awards.)

"Yeah," she said, nodding. "I think you did. You'd better call Tony."

Which I, of course, did. Posthaste. And, to my immense surprise and excitement, it turns out that I had won Story of the Week for my article! (I didn't know the Scroll had a Story of the Week.) There's nothing quite like a pat on the back when you absolutely aren't expecting it to boost your ego and turn an otherwise bad two weeks into an okay day.***

And oh, yes, the last two weeks have been bad. In fact, they've reached the point at which they are now just comical. I have had nearly everything happen in the last two weeks - a fire, sickness, two major pharmaceutical goofs that made it so I was without my most important medicine for two days and therefore couldn't eat (yeah, that was not pleasant), the guy I was beginning to crush on showing up at a ward party with another girl. When the cornstarch exploded all over my kitchen, there was only one thing to do. I blasted Daniel Powter's Bad Day and cleaned it up with equal parts tears and hysterical laughter.

But, I guess that's life.

There was one other thing that made me grin like a convict on parole yesterday. (And no, it wasn't guy-related. Well, it was but it wasn't, if you know what I mean.) As you probably remember, I'm taking Social Dance 280 this semester. Last fall I took Social Dance 180, which was fun, but unfun at the same time. Even putting the horrendous teacher aside, it just wasn't all that exciting. The class was very basic, and rather slow, and kind of odd in general. When I came out I had a really good grasp of the basics of several dances (and tell me here: why does everyone hate Foxtrot? I think it's kind of classy!) but not much else.

This semester, on the other hand, is totally different. Different professor, different teaching style, different course objectives. Sure, he says quite often that the main purpose of the class is to give us skill in social dancing - to give us the skill we need to go dancing and have a good time. To my delight, however, he slips in some serious technique on the side. (It's so nice!) And the steps. Oh, my, the steps. They are SO. COOL. We just finished up our unit on waltz, and boy, was it amazing. Let me add here that my dance group did waltz for our 180 final last semester, and so I'm familiar with it - but this waltzing is a horse of a different color, baby. We're talking sweeping, swooping, twirling, whirling Disney princess waltzing here. Fast spins, slow spins. Elegance galore. Last semester, everyone complained about how simple and simply boring the waltz was. This semester, half the class is struggling to keep up. It's so much fun.

And I'm good at it. (Yes, my humility shines like a beacon, I know. I don't believe in false modesty.) Part of the fallout of last week being so bad was that I missed not one, but two dance classes; so it was that, when I got to class Tuesday and was told that we'd be testing waltz Thursday, I was ever-so-slightly panicked. But, instead of wringing my hands or bemoaning my fate (or begging the teacher for an extension), I grabbed a friend and had him teach me the steps I'd missed.

And by yesterday, the day of the test, I had it down pat. It was fun. Extremely fun. And yes - I think I aced the test.

One last note: To those of you who are still shaking your heads over my slightly dangerous absent mindedness of two weeks ago, I have to say. I learned today in geology class about a man living on a mountain who turned on his sprinkler system and then left on vacation without turning it off. Those of you out there who happen to be geology-savvy will understand that this was a really, really bad idea: When he came back, he had no house. The water had oversatured the ground and caused a landslide. So - it really could be a whole lot worse than leaving chicken on the stove and going to class.

Now that I've been working on this off and on for about thirteen hours, and filled who-knows-how-many pages with the story of my rather humdrum life, I'll let you all get back to your regularly scheduled programming. And just wait - unless something drastic happens between now and then, I have a hunch that your next chapter will arrive in your Inbox two weeks from now - right on schedule. Ciao.


*Regarding having no life: Yep, that's me this semester. Whereas last semester started out right away with dates and boys and friends galore, this semester has not taken that path. (I have been on two dates. Blind dates. Set up by a friend. Sigh.) And, most of the time, that's okay. I'm not bitter about my lack of life. Much.

**I confess, I haven't been quite so reliable about responding to snail-mail over the last two weeks. To those awaiting letters, I promise I will get right on that this week. And, thank you to all the really wonderful people who have sent me mail. I have felt so loved, even in the midst of my ridiculously bad two weeks.

***Have I mentioned, I love working for the Scroll? And not just because they gave me a candy bar (the physical reward for Story of the Week). It's fun. It's exciting to call people up and introduce myself as a reporter for the Scroll in Rexburg, and have them take me seriously. (Bwaha.) I feel very Lois Lane, minus Superman. Minus men, in general.

My body doesn't digest food. Sometimes, this can be a bit of a problem.

It's a common part of CF: My body doesn't produce the pancreatic enzymes necessary to break down and gather nutrient from the food I eat. It's usually not a big deal. Because I was born when I was born, all I have to do is pop a handful of pills every time I eat and - voila! - body malfunction bypassed. If I forget the enzymes, well, I spend a day or so moaning and groaning in pain. But it's usually not a big deal.

Until, through equal parts pharmaceutical goof and my own absent-mindedness, I run out. Then I have a problem.

There are several brands of prescription enzymes for CF. Each brand comes in many strengths. Are you sensing the problem yet? Because there are dozens of possible combinations, and only my particular combination works for me particularly, it takes a minimum of twenty-four hours to track down my Ultrase MT 18 capsules when I need them.

I ran out yesterday morning.

When I'm out of enzymes, I have two unsavory options: I can eat only the infrequent apple (and be dizzy and ill from lack of nutrition), or I can eat something more filling (and end up curled in intense pain as my body freaks out over its lack of digestive preparedness). Neither choice is much fun. Yesterday, I did both - I starved for awhile, until my vision started to blur and I was feeling generally woozy, and then I ate dinner. I spent the rest of the evening tucked into the fetal position on my bed, feeling pretty sorry for myself.

And yet: Even in that moment, I knew I was lucky. Unbelievably lucky. Won-the-lottery lucky. You see, fifty years ago synthetic enzymes were weak, unpredictable and ineffective. Fifty years ago CFers with major pancreatic issues (like yours truly) were plumb out of luck. Fifty years ago I might have lived for five years in excruciating, constant pain before literally starving to death because of my inability to gain nutrition from the food I was eating.

Instead, I am eighteen-and-a-half years old. I am coming to the end of my freshman year of college, seven states away from home. I am blessed with medications that, if not perfect, are usually fairly effective. I am only in the hospital once every few years. I can eat nearly anything I want to - not without any side effects, but in comparison with what could be, they're small. I even gain weight like a normal human being (a mixed blessing, let me tell you!).

I am so lucky, it borders on the ridiculous. I can take a few days of pain. After all, I'm alive.