Word of the Week: Reticent

reticent  /adj./  habitually silent or uncommunicative, disinclined to speak readily.  reserved.  taciturn. having a restrained, quiet, or understated quality.  bashful.  hesitant or shy.  tight-lipped.  clammed up.

reticent  /adj./  1.  Not being a reticent person myself, it might surprise you to know how much I really like this word.  That first syllable is so quiet you hardly know what's coming before it's already upon you, and then the last syllable bashfully quiets the word back down, as if it's sorry it spoke at all.

reticent  /adj./  2.  For whatever reason, I've been reticent to talk about last week, as I don't know how to capture it accurately.  In many ways it was just a dumb week, with a number of wasted days thrown in the mix.  But last night at dinner, David said something like, "We need to post those pictures of..." by which he meant I need to post those pictures.  And this only made me even more reticent to share any of it because its my blog after all, etc.  But here I am, reticently repenting. 

Maybe one reason I'm so disinclined to be reticent is that I look just plain weird with my mouth closed.  I need more lip to cover my teeth properly.

reticent  /adj./  3.  We had our family picture taken on Monday and Tuesday this week.  Yeah, that's right, it was a two-day affair.  I will only say that this was not by design.  (I will not say why...I am determined to stay reticent on this point.)  But this felt like a couple of wasted days because of all the prep it takes to get us looking presentable.  It's a job, believe me.  Our last good family picture was taken when Ethan was one and I was bound and determined this year to get a real live, official family picture taken.  Now we are anxiously awaiting the proofs.  I am two parts gleeful anticipation and one-and-a-half parts fearful trepidation.  I wanted it to be colorful...and it was.  David is quietly concerned about this and would have preferred us to all match.  Luckily for me, in our whole married life he has never once said, "I told you so."  (Even though he could have about a million times.)

reticent  /adj./  4.  The kids had Tuesday off school and so we went to the drive-in movie after our almost-family-picture on Monday night.  We blew up an air mattress for the back of the car and let the kids lay on that, while David and I sat on camp chairs outside and were, surprisingly, plenty cold by the end of the show.  (Though I'm reticent to complain about the cold because we've waited so long for it to arrive.  In fact, we're back to hot again today and I was boiling in bed last night.  It's not beginning to feel anything like Christmas.  The flannel sheets are going on the beds in a week...we're all going to have to sleep naked.)

 

reticent  /adj./  5.   Tuesday was spent family picturing (again) and playing games (it was a minor holiday).  Wednesday I had to go to the school to help with scenery for the upcoming 2nd grade play and the rest of the day was eaten up with mothering interruptions.  By Thursday I was starting to panic about my upcoming talk and the state of my house.  (My usual cleaning day is Monday, so by Thursday even RIM couldn't think straight.)  I am reticent to admit that I am pretty much a non-functioning human being when my house is a mess, or even (dare I admit it) when I "feel" like it is dirty.  So I scrubbed my way to sanity and then spent the next couple of days working on my talk for stake standards night on Sunday evening.  And my kids asked several times, "Aren't you done with that yet?" (I told you it was a dumb week.)

reticent  /adj./  6.  On Friday night we went to the Fall Festival at Caleb's school.  It's mostly a fundraiser, but they have dinner and a few carnival-like games.  We didn't stay for long, but the kids had a good time and got their fill of cotton candy and snow cones, which has to last them until the Lehi Rodeo in the spring.  Savannah asked David to hold her cotton candy while she frosted a cupcake at one of the booths, and he was reticent to admit that it was significantly smaller when he handed it back to her.  There was a gorgeous full moon that night and on the way home I pointed it out, to which Olivia said, "That's a perfect moon for running away."  What the?  Just when I was planning to ask her if she was happy at home she followed it with, "If I was an Indian that would be a perfect running-away moon."  I have no idea what happens inside her mind.

reticent  /adj./  7.  For a post on reticent, this certainly isn't very, is it?  I won't be a bit offended, if you stopped reading at number 3. 

Word of the Week: Sagaciously

sagaciously  /adv./  with acute mental discernment or keen practical sense.  shrewdly.  wisely.  sagely.  intelligently or keenly.  perceptively.  prudently.  judiciously.  cleverly. 

[torridly:  /adv./  with intense heat, subjecting something to scorching heat.  with so much heat as to be parching.  very passionately.  ardently.  zealously.] 

sagaciously  /adv./  1.  Last week when I posted the new word of the week on my sidebar, I had every intention of spotlighting the word "torridly," but when I went to type in the definition I started having second thoughts and ended up with the word "sagaciously," which is ironic since this was not a wise choice in any way.  I lived my entire week "torridly" and not a bit "sagaciously."  So in the most sagacious move of the week,  I'm going to sneak "torridly" in here as well.  This is also ironic since the passionate little "torridly" has never snuck anywhere before.

sagaciously  /adv./  2.  I spent lots of hours this week in my kitchen "putting up peaches for winter." (This is how Caleb refers to my canning and I LOVE it.)  The big question is always how many boxes to buy.  This year I sagaciously bought three for canning and one for eating.  This seemed to be about right, as I only really enjoy canning for about three boxes, any more than that and it starts to feel like a chore.  My favorite part is the eating though.  We've had peaches at every meal since I picked these up.  They are so good, and I've been torridly filling bowl after bowl of them for me and my darlings.  Yesterday we had them with whipped cream on top of our pancakes.  The kids asked what holiday it was.  It's peach season, lovelies.

sagaciously  /adv./  3.  The lady who sells me Utah peaches also has an in with the tomato farmers up there.  She had a couple of  boxes of gorgeous beefsteak tomatoes for sale and even though I'm getting three boxes of romas this week, I just couldn't help myself.  When I wasn't eating peaches this week, I was torridly eating tomatoes on crusty bread.  (September is quickly replacing November as my favorite month.)  I canned all the ones we didn't eat and sagaciously decided to make spaghetti sauce with the romas.     

sagaciously  /adv./  4.  Olivia finished her latest Laura Ingalls Wilder book a couple of weeks ago and has been positively destitute without something to read.  I sagaciously pointed out that she has shelves full of books she hasn't read yet, but she is madly in love with Laura and couldn't bear to start something new.  I finally took her to the bookstore on Thursday afternoon after her viola lesson and she has been torridly reading ever since.  She almost wouldn't let go of the book long enough for the man to ring it up.  Every night as I tuck her in she gives me the update.  (Mary's on her way to college and Laura's working in town, by the way.  They had to sell the calf for Mary to go.  I thought Olivia was going to swoon when she told me they were going to buy Mary a trunk.  "A trunk, Mom, a trunk!  Oh, can you imagine having a trunk?") 

sagaciously  /adv./  5.  I found out (through sagacious deduction) that our water softener hasn't been working since we moved into the house.  We've been here nearly three years, but I'm just discovering this.  Anyway, on Saturday I asked David to replace the salt in the softener so that we could turn it on.  He did and we ran the cycle and felt quite proud of ourselves.  Then the water pressure in the kitchen faucet and the shower went to practically nothing and the water softener, which hadn't run for three years, started leaking all over the garage.  I decided I was perfectly fine with "hard water."  We spent part of Sunday trying to stop the leaks and fix the pressure, but didn't get it all solved until last night.  This is how home improvement projects go at our house.  I not-so sagaciously think something will be easy, and it's always a hundred times more work and complication than it's worth.  It is only an indication of how torridly David loves me that he agrees to any of these projects in the first place.

sagaciously  /adv./  6.  David and I went out to dinner on Saturday night at our favorite restaurant.  (I sagaciously ordered the Oscar medallion with blue crab on top, oh my.)  And then we stopped by the grocery store on our way home.  A good date night always includes a torrid stop for bread and milk.  I find David loading the car with groceries among the most romantic of gestures.

sagaciously  /adv./  7.  You do not want to know how my gospel doctrine lesson went on Sunday.  I stand up there dying a little death with every word that comes out of my mouth.  But I have sagaciously formulated a new plan.  I told David I need him to get a substitute next time I teach so he can come and hear it.  I need his gorgeous, blue eyes looking at me, torridly telling me that no matter what I'm saying he thinks I'm H.O.T. Hot.  He said he'd see what he could do. 

*Boy Howdy* Revisted

As a follow up to yesterday's post...here are a few more things I don't know:

This morning at scripture study we were reading 3rd Nephi, chapter 11...when Jesus visits the Nephites.

Savannah asked (about resurrection), "But how does that work?  I mean, I don't get it.  How exactly does our body actually come back to life?"

And then Olivia, "And how old are we going to be?  I hope I'm nine.  I want to be nine forever.  Can I be nine when I'm resurrected?"

And among these imponderables, there was also this.  Do you remember this quote by Sister Hinckley?

"...the only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it.  You either have to laugh or cry.  I prefer to laugh.  Crying gives me a headache."

This morning my head and cheekbones and swollen eyelids wonder why (especially given my lifetime of experience) I still haven't learned this.

Word of the Week: Deprecate

deprecate  /vt./  to express earnest disapproval of; to urge reasons against. to depreciate or belittle. denigrate.  underrate.  pooh pooh. 

deprecate  /vt./  1.  I've always loved this word, especially the "self deprecating" combination, the way it defers and shrugs before it even really gets going, but I'm happy to see its week end.  With "deprecate" on my mind, my inside voices have been too negative and whiny to stand for much longer.   

deprecate  /vt./  2.  I spent much of the week deprecating Squarespace's new V5 version and the difficulties it created in my life.  But by Friday, I had worked out most of the bugs, created a new banner, and figured out the best way to upload pictures.  Whew.  Now if I could only figure out the other issues my computer is having...is it the memory, the modem, or the 10 million megabytes being taken up by Caleb's computer games?  I know just enough about blogging and computers to be dangerous. 

deprecate  /vt./  3.  One of things that David finds most aggravating about being married to me, is the way I deprecate big birthday celebrations.  (I ascribe this to nature and nurture, by the way.)  I find regular life taxing enough, and so I always quail a little bit at the monumental effort required for birthdays.  Especially the parties.  Despite all this, I encouraged Savannah to invite her friends over for a swim party (at my parents' house) on Friday afternoon.  I picked up a pizza and grapes and ice cream bars at Costco and we had an impromptu party with three of her best friends...no invitations, no presents, very little expense, just fun.  I'm expecting my Olympic medal any day now.

deprecate  /vt./  4.  Yesterday I taught my first gospel doctrine class.  And I'm not being the least bit self-deprecating to say that it could have gone better.  For the most part, people just stared at me, like, "Okay lady, go ahead and teach me the gospel.  I'm just going to sit here and watch you make a fool of yourself."  And we had really good material yesterday too...tons to talk about, but apparently I don't inspire that kind of really good classroom discussion.  The highlight of the lesson was when I used colored chalk to diagram the wars and epistles that went back and forth between the four main characters (Moroni, Helaman, Ammoron and Pahoran [my personal favorite]), but that was over in the first ten minutes.  David ran to Walmart for me at 9 o'clock on Saturday night for colored chalk.  Bless his heart.  He wanted to help, but there was just no help for it.

deprecate  /vt./  5.  My sister, Rachel, and I taught another body image class on Tuesday night and had another round of serious technical difficulties.  You'd think by now we'd have it down, but no.  This time we showed up without a cord to connect the proxima to the computer (an fairly important part it turns out) and so I had to call David to come to our rescue.  Even after he brought the cord we still couldn't get it to work and so he came in and tried to help us while I started the presentation.  I told Rachel later that it's either the devil or the Lord trying to stop this presentation and I'm not sure which one it is.  I was immensely grateful for David's expertise and IT support, and felt I ought to take back all the deprecating remarks I've made over the years about not having a "handy husband."

deprecate  /vt./  6.  One of the highlights of my week, again, was watching the Olympics.  I intended to go to bed early last night (I mean really intended), but I thought the closing ceremony was just so incredible that I stayed up and watched.  And then I couldn't leave without hearing Mr. Costas sign off one last time.  We have quite a relationship now and I just couldn't help myself.  (Did you hear the comment about laying the egg in the bird's nest?  Classic.  Be still my beating heart.)  And no matter your feelings about the Olympics in general, you just can't deprecate the efforts of Beijing and the Chinese people in their hosting of these most spectacular games.  I am quite at a loss as to what to do now.

Lost

David told me that he keeps checking my blog only to find that we are still driving west.  He wants to make sure you all know that we are not stuck somewhere outside of Albuquerque and that he had us home in just two days, all the way from New York.  (I pointed out that that may not be something to be proud of, but he disagrees.)

And while we made it home, I have felt a bit lost for the past couple of weeks.  Lost somewhere inside my head.  And this post does not indicate that I have finally "arrived," but is more an attempt to somehow "find my way" again.  A garmin for my mind, perhaps:  Make a u-turn as soon as possible.

Re-entry has been difficult.  For me.  And the looming school year has me despondent and slightly panicked.  Not to mention that CIM, who after having a month off, has made up for her absence by dogging me morning til night.

Plus there are all these old posts I still need to write:  Niagara Falls, Palmyra, Kids Quilt Retreat, the Fashion World's Attack on my Girls, Prepping for School, old SPT's, not to mention the backlog of Word of the Week and 52 Blessings posts.  But all of these would require me to find my camera and my SD cards and load them onto my computer.  And that seems like a monumental feat.  And I just don't have the heart for feats of strength these days.  I'm using all my energy to steel myself for next week...we're at day 74 after all.

Olivia just asked me, "What are you writing about?"  I said, "I don't know."  And it's true.  I have no idea what I'm even saying.  For those of you who just packed up your entire house and moved across the country, my complaints will seem pathetic and self-indulgent.  (Perhaps to the rest of you as well.  Let's be honest.)  But this is where I am.  Lost.  With very little will to follow my bread crumbs backwards, I'm just going to plow forward.  Maybe tomorrow I will write "about" something.

Where I've Been

David called me tonight and after he informed me he would be working late (big surprise), he asked why I hadn't blogged since my return from Girls' Camp. 

[He has started relying on my blog to know what I'm thinking...his little window into "my crazy"...and he likes to stay updated.]

I told him (not really very nicely) that if he needed me to blog, then I was going to need a little domestic help. 

Yes Tiff, the post-trip piles have gotten the best of me.

And the worst part is that people here were making piles for me to come home to as well.

But tonight I finally got the bathrooms finished and whittled the laundry down to one final load (not including the three more that need to be folded) and somehow this has made enough space in my brain for blogging.

Plus, I'm tired.  My sister asked me if I was depressed.  No, just tired.  My mom said it was probably "low iron."  I live my whole life on "low iron."  No, I'm just tired.  Four days of hard labor and emotional exhaustion catching up with me.  Recovery has been slow.

An Overabundance of Cortisol and Other Problems

I'm officially stressed.

My cortisol is now running the show.  And she always makes a mess of everything.

I told David this morning, "I don't think I would be near this stressed if I wasn't going to Utah today."  He said, "I would agree."  Just that.  Just calmly, mildly agreed with me.  Maddening!  I've got enough cortisol in me to fight or flight my way through Armageddon, and he just agrees with me.  Argh.

And the whole entire point of going to Utah in the first place was to get recharged, rejuvenated, destressed, and filled up.  I'm seriously contemplating not going, and David can't understand this.

"What do you have to do?"  He asks this as if he is completely mystified.  As if my life is just one breezy, delightful whim after another.

The problem is I've got youth conference on Saturday morning...5:30 a.m. at the church...and I don't get back home from Women's Conference (at BYU) until late Friday night.  And I need to have t-shirts, food, games, permission forms, 40 bicycles and helmets, sunscreen, and water ready to go.  Before I get on the plane this afternoon.

It's all the little things that are plaguing me now.  Don't forget spatulas to turn the hamburgers.  And matches.  Oh, and hamburgers. 

As he left, David said, "Are you okay?" 

No.  I am definitely NOT okay.  I'm freakin' out, people.