Last Words

"Ummmm... Timbri, are you sure this is safe?"

"Hey Sister Barker, you were right! This isn't so bad! In fact, it's kind of fun."

"Wow. Lacie and Lisa are coming at us kind of fast, but they're not going to hit us, right?"

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Phew! That was a close one. I thought we were all goners!"
"It should be smooth sailing from here on out though....right? RIGHT?!?!?"

"Hold on girls! We're going in!" And we did.


But it was OK.


Turns out, being dumped out of a watercraf is no where nearly as terrifying when rapids with sharp rocks aren't involved.
Who knew?

Thanks to the Hobsons and the Barkers and everyone else who made my latest near-death experience possible.

And a special thanks to Sister Barker who pulled off this daring stunt.

Sister Barker, you are the wind beneath my wings.
And Brother and Sister Hobson, you are the speedboat attached to my inner tube.
Love ya!

Spelling Desaster...Desaster....Disaster....

Common sense tells us that certain people are not cut out for certain jobs.

For example, someone with a serious wool allergy shouldn't herd sheep professionally.

A highway patrolman who gets car-sick would also be somewhat less-effective in his chosen field.

As would a politician with a conscience and/or moral center. They just wouldn't be able to function in the accepted manner of their professions.

I have enough common sense to see the problems with the scenarios I mentioned above, but not enough to stop me from taking a job that requires a skill that I do not possess...spelling.

Yes, I am an English teacher who can't spell. Feel free to mock me. You wouldn't be the first. I have always had a great deal of trouble with spelling. If not for spell check, you would need a urim and thummim to read this post. I kid you not.

I was in 6th grade before I learned how to correctly spell two of my brother's names, and I still have to stop and hunt out old family newsletters when I have to write or type one of the other brothers' names.

One year, I wrote a letter to Santa asking for my own dessert that wouldn't have to share with my four piggy brothers, but I accidentally left out the second "s" and ended up opening a big box of sand on Christmas morning.

Today in Sunday school, I was writing on the white board and knew I wouldn't be able to spell "enemies" without stopping to think about it, so I wrote the "e" and the "n" and then just did a bunch of cursive scribbles behind it.

Experiences like those have inspired me to agree with former President Andrew Jackson that, "It is a damn poor mind that can't come up with more than one way to spell a word." If I could cross-stitch, that would be on every pillow in my apartment...and the phrases would be spelled differently on every one of them!

When I was a Junior in high school, the Post Register started paying me to write cute little feature stories and short, funny columns for the paper. I was so excited to have landed such a prestigious first job, that I practically tackled my old 5th grade teacher to tell her the news when I saw her in Walmart. When I told her that I would be writing for the biggest newspaper in our part of the state, she got a sad look on her face, put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Sweetie....do they know that you can't spell?"

I wanted to tell her that the Post Register Computers had spell-check (which was true) and that I had gotten much better at spelling since 5th grade (which wasn't true), but I did neither. Instead, I flashed back to having that very same teacher hand back yet another one of my failing 5th grade spelling tests and was completely overcome by a flood of pre-teen angst right there in the hosiery department (clean-up of a mental break-down on aisle 15!)

Now that I think about it, maybe I became a junior high English teacher because of my spelling issues, and NOT in spite of them. Maybe I wanted to help other kids learn to spell without having the same emotionally crippling experiences that I had as a child. Or maybe I just wanted to surround myself with people who were worse spellers that I was....hummmmm.....

But even though my motives for becoming an English teacher are not clear, one thing that should be perfectly obvious is my empathetical attachment to my fellow poor-spellers. Take my nephew Max.

I have always loved Max, and will always love him no matter what. But when he brought this drawing home from his genius kid summer camp, I immediately called my attorney and had my will rewritten so that Maxwell is my sole beneficiary (which may have been a mistake considering he is the only one of my nephews with the temperament, resources, or connections to put a contract out on my life) .

But all joking about Max's fondness for contract killers aside, I feel and deep bond with the kid because of his adventures in spelling.

I feel the same way about the person or persons who typed up this flier, made hundreds of copies, and then tacked them up from one end of the valley to the other. In fact, I think that we spelling-challenged folks should organize and form some sort of support group. BAD SPELLERS OF THE WORLD UNTIE...I mean UNIET....or is it UNITE...

Hummmm.....Perhaps all official "Habitual Bad Spellers Club" business should be conducted over the phone.

Yeah. A phone call would be much better.

What a Difference Five Years Makes

I live here.

Really.

It's OK if you're jealous.

I completely understand.

I would be jealous too, except that I DO live here.

So instead of feeling jealous, I get to feel happy, contented, and oh so very lucky.

Oh... and windblown. Very windblown.

These days, feeling happy, contented, lucky, and windblown is my default state.

(Which is not to be confused with the equally true statement that my "windblown look" is THE FAULT of my state... that statement is the basis for a completely different blog post.)

But I haven't always been the happy, contented, lucky, windblown rural school marm that you see before you on your screen today.

Five years ago, on this very week, I was preparing to move to this cute little southern Idaho town.

Five years ago I was a very, very different person.

Before moving to this little manure-scented corner of heaven, I was a naive but idealistic student teacher trying to make a difference in the lives of troubled inner-city kids. Of course, the "city" was Idaho Falls and the the biggest problem the kids had was that they lived on the west side of town and had to go to Skyline High School instead of the True and Living Idaho Falls High School. But "troubled" is "troubled", right?

And before that, I was a spunky reporter trying to make the world a better place by trading cranky e-mails with a college president would later become an apostle. It's a shame I didn't keep print-outs of those emails, but I am pretty sure that the main gist of most of them was something like, "Dear Mindy, You've got spunk. I hate spunk. Love, President B."

Ahhhhhh...those were the days (...that I am still currently repenting of).

And before THAT, I spent four TV seasons marooned on an island after setting sail on what was supposed to be a three hour tour.

Or maybe I was just a kid who watched a lot of TV.
Hummmmm.....


But regardless of my previous profession and lifestyle, I have changed a lot since moving here five years ago.


My first summer in this adorable little town was spent unpacking my stuff, finding my way around the area (you wouldn't believe how many times I got lost in Heyburn. IN HEYBURN!) and, because I didn't know anyone, reading in my nonairconditioned living room.



Almost five years to the week later, I have spent my summer organizing my stuff, finding my way around the area (dude! Heyburn is really, really confusing!), and reading in my nonairconditioned living room.


Wait a minute.


That sounds awfully familiar.
Hummmmm........
But I am reading a different Harry Potter book and have a fleece throw on my couch instead of a knit throw.
Oh what a difference five years makes, eh?


Ha! Ha!
Just kidding.
I am not that pathetic.
This summer really has been very, very different from the first few months I spent here. I have changed, and those changes have come from living here in the Magic Valley.


The Magic Valley really is magical.

Where else can you open up a news paper and read a police log that is made up of one single entry :
Law & Disorder in Cassia County
From May 28 police reports:
Miscellaneous:
Somebody killed a cow in Almo.
(I did not, would not, could not make that up!)

You know a place is special when irrigation systems make it possible for people to have a combo front yard/duck pond. These photos were taken at the house where my friend Lisa is staying. Lisa spent last summer selling and installing home security systems in Florida. This summer, she is working in town at the health club since she could not, in good conscience, convince people to spend a ton of money on a state of the art security system when she now knows that two good guard ducks work just as well.
When you take into account the aquatic security options, a police force skilled in investigating hom-moooooooo-cides, kids riding tractors to school, and the annual fall flaming food toss (where excess garden produce is set on fire and then catapulted into empty fields) is it any wonder that transplants like me and my friend Elizabeth can't imagine living anywhere else?

And I really have changed a lot.

This year I overcame my fear of a painful death-by-four-wheeler fate and rode an ATV for a whole five minutes.And that wasn't the only change.

My first summer in the valley, I spent a lot of time in my apartment.

This summer, I have spent a lot of time outdoors visiting waterfalls, lakes, rock-strewn hiking trails, scenic overlooks, and a few other of Mother Nature's most beautiful death traps (And that sentence is proof that you can take the irrationally fearful girl out of her apartment, but you can't take the irrational fears out of the girl) .

When I first moved over here, I didn't know a soul except for my very sweet and very elderly great aunt and uncle.

This summer, I am having a very hard time continuing my beloved anti-social lifestyle because I have so many sweet and persistent friends who are constantly inviting/forcing me to put down my books and venture out into the real world.

And venture out I have!

In fact, I have done so many things that are out of character for my anti-social, phobia-riddled self that the people closest to me are trying to figure out exactly what happened to the Mindy they used to know. That Mindy wouldn't dangle her feet in the river, let alone swing into it like Tarzan's long-lost sister.

Or ride the Hobson's giant slip-n-slide into the river over and over and over on a Saturday afternoon.

The truth is, I don't even know what has happened this summer to make me so much more adventurous. I do have a couple of theories, though.

Theory #1) Due to the fact that I will be exiled from my YSA branch on my next birthday, I have decided that I have nothing else to live for.

Theory #2) Five years of alternately breathing in horse manure scented air and cow manure scented air has caused my consciousness to split, creating a separate personality who enjoys freaking out my original personality.

Theory #3) I was hypnotized at the county fair last year and now have to do extremely out of character things whenever anyone says the secret trigger word (and judging from the circumstances surrounding my extremely out of character adventures, the secret trigger word is either "Jones", "Barker", or "Hobson") .

Theory #4) The inhaling a mixture of chalk dust and preteen angst has finally driven me stark raving mad.

Theory #5) I never really "lived" until I discovered that my local laundromat is filled with color-sorting, pre-soaking cowboys during fair/rodeo week.

Or I guess it could just be that I got tired of taking pictures of people doing fun stuff and wanted to have a little more fun myself.

Naaaah. That can't be it.

But on an unrelated note, I want to remind you all that the fair rodeo is swiftly approaching and I would be happy to do any washing or drying you need done that week. Really. It's no trouble at all. In fact, you would be doing me a great service by letting me do your laundry.

I LOVE laundry. I do.

Honest.

But you'd never catch me saying that five years ago.

Exercises in Humiliation

These are my friends Elizabeth and Lacie. As you may recall from THIS POST , it is their fault that I have spent the last two years waking up at an obscenely early hour to exercise.
When we started our masochistic workout routine nigh unto two years ago, I thought it would eventually get easier to drag my lazy carcass out of bed at 4:50 a.m.

Twenty three months later, I am still waiting for "eventually" to roll around.

At night I go to sleep in my comfy bed in my cute apartment, but every morning I wake up to my own personal Gitmo with Major General Elizabeth McPain as the self-appointed head torturer.

Of course there are perks to speed walking through my cute little cow town at 5 a.m. For example, the cool/cold weather creates an opportunity to cover up my early morning ugliness with layers and layers of clothing. Of course, the layers aren't really all that necessary considering that we are pretty much the only people awake at that time of the night/morning who aren't milking cows or dodging the police.

Not that it matters, because at 5 in the A.M., layers or no, the view looks an awful lot like this...

I have given both Elizabeth and Lacie a whole lot of grief about "forcing me" to get up that early over the past two years. This summer, however, I discovered that waking up at 4:50 a.m. is NOT the worst thing in the world.

No. That honor belongs to "waking up at 5:50 a.m."

Elizabeth, bless her hard-working-heart, decided to start teaching her private lessons a hour later this summer. That meant that we could sleep in a full 60 minutes before hitting the road each morning. I was pretty darn excited about that until my first post 5 a.m. wake up call rolled around and I realized that...

...THE SUN IS UP AT 5:50 a.m.!
At 5:50 a.m. I have no cloak of darkness to hide behind or cold-weather-excuse to justify my 6 a.m. hideousness under layers of sweatshirts and hoods.

Oh, and did I mention that there are other people awake at 6 a.m.?

Because there are.

There are a lot of them.

And they do not have swelled udders or flashing police lights to distract them from the not-so-beautiful results of my beauty sleep the night before.

Over the course of our first 6 a.m. walking session, Elizabeth and I crossed paths with our favorite shared student who was riding with her mother to soccer camp, one of the most distinguished musicians in our stake who was out for a walk of his own, my branch's missionary couple out for a stroll, a former kidlet on his way to swim team practice, and about eight other folks from the top of my "people who I NEVER want to see how I look when I roll out of bed" list. I may have burned a few calories walking those miles that day, but that is nothing compared to the water weight I lost crying countless tears of shame later that morning.

The big problem for me at that time in the morning is the toxic level of bedhead that I wake up with. I had no idea that, when I asked Tricia to chop off my longer locks, I was sentencing myself to countless mornings of near-fatal morning hair freakouts.

For those of you who have been lucky enough NOT to see me speed walking through your neighborhood at 6 a.m. this summer, here is a "visual approximation"

Wait.

That's not quite right.

When you combine my bedhead with a lack of eyeliner and toss in a healthy dose of oily skin and sandy eyes, my early morning exercise look is closer to this...

OK. So maybe I'm not quite THAT bad, but dude: I am NOT kidding about the bed head.

I've tried brushing it, combing it, and wetting it down. It's not long enough to subdue in ponytails, and ball caps just can't contain it.

I was actually very close to giving up my much-needed morning exercise time until I found out that the city pool offers an early morning lap swimming session. It was the perfect solution! Now, a few mornings each week, Elizabeth drives down my street, slowing down just enough for me run down my steps, across the lawn, and jump into her waiting car. The only people at the pool when we arrive are a few sleepy staffers, who are either setting out chairs on the far side of the pool or napping on the front counter wrapped up in towels. We leave our money on the counter and slip unseen into the locker room where the high-pressure pre-swim-showers force my bedhead into submission long enough for me to jump in the pool and successfully drown it for the rest of the day.

When our buddy Krystal started joining us in our early morning splash sessions, lap swimming became the perfect post-sunrise exercise program: visit with friends, burn calories, build muscles, and tame unruly hair follicles with out any of the bedhead induced humiliation that I continue to face on our walking mornings.

Aren't we lovely?

And for those of you who think that it is illogical for me to be so concerned with being seen with freaky hair while being not at all embarrassed about being seen in my swimming suit please consider the following: 1)I am a public school teacher at a junior high school 2)I live in Idaho and am not at registered republican 3)I willing provide my nephews with water guns and Nerf swords when I know that the minute the weapons are unwrapped I become the chief target and 4) I let my friends talk me into getting up at 4:50 a.m. for the last two years to walk around town in the dark. In short, the logic train hasn't made any stops in Mindyland for quite some time now. But I do have a lifetime pass on the crazy town express, and most days I get one heck of a ride...and I wouldn't want it any other way.

I Dreamed a Dream

Early Saturday morning, I had a dream.

No.

Not THAT dream.

But it was a wonderful dream, nonetheless.

I was in the most beautiful place...

...and I was surrounded by people I love.

(And YES, I have dream photos.

My blogging skills are THAT GOOD.

It's a gift, really. A gift that benefits all humanity.

So don't question it. Just sit back and enjoy the post.)

At first I thought that I was in heaven.

I tried to think back... had I let the branch talk me into riding on that blasted tube behind the boat? Had I passed on to that great singles branch in the sky?

I saw angels preparing the most delicious food...

... and comforting visions of those those," which I have loved long since, and lost a while." (name that hymn!)

Then President Jones appeared and the "heaven" theory got shot strait to heck.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I don't think President Jones has a shot at heaven. Personally, I think his chances at exaltation are exceptionally good, no matter what the stake president says.

Its just that when he announced that he had only brought helmets for the people he loved, and I remained thoroughly helmetless, Heaven seemed like a pretty unlikely scenario.

That's when I slowly began to realize that I wasn't dead, I was dreaming.

And it was a good dream.

Sure, I was helmetless, but I was being chauffeured around the countryside by Princess Smooth-Ride McSpeedster herself. Who needs safety gear when you've got 4-wheeling royalty at the wheel?

I knew for certain that I was dreaming when the cowboys appeared.

My dreams always include cowboys.
Cowboys in jeans, hats, and chaps.

Yeeee Haaaaaaa!
It really was a good dream.

But, as with other dreams, things eventually started to get a little wacky.


Krystal turned into a raccoon, Lisa suddenly grew a uni brow, and Jill and Elizabeth stated looking a lot like lamanite women... lamanite women who co-own a tanning bed. At that point, I started wondering what I had eaten before bed to cause such disturbing images to haunt my dreams. I mean, I've heard of "dirty dreams" before, but this was just plain ridiculous.

I saw other strange things as well. Dreams can do that to you.

At one point, President Jones and Brother Hobson gave a mini class on mining techniques and homesteading laws.

I dreamed that their lecture was so persuasive, Lacie and Elizabeth decided to give up nursing and teaching (respectively) and stake a claim themselves.

We left the girls in their gold mine, and suddenly I was driving a 4-wheeler through the mud... WAIT A MINUTE. That can't be right.

Even in my wildest dreams I wouldn't be driving a 4-wheeler through the mud!
Hummmmm.......

Something is wrong here. Very wrong.

If I was really driving a 4-wheeler in my dream, there would be a whole lot of screaming going on....

Wait....

There we go!

Thanks Elizabeth.
That's much better.

I dreamed that we all took turns riding the 4-wheelers up and down the mountain and NOBODY was maimed or lost....



Well, some of us got a little bit lost, but that is to be expected in dreams, right?

The dream ended with Brother Hobson buying us lemonade from some little blond kids who magically materialized in the street. Random? Yes. But randomness in dreams can be oh so refreshing!

And then I woke up and immediately started to write down my dream in blog post format so that I wouldn't forget a single, fun-filled, dust-covered second of it.

And now that my dream has been recorded for posterity, it is time to turn my attention to decoding the symbolic messages and meanings hidden within my my dream... and de-manuring my not-so-symbolic poop splattered shoes.

Maybe, if I go to bed early tonight, I will dream of handsome chap-wearing cleaning cowboys and wake to cow-pie-free footwear.

A girl can dream, right?