The Dork Dot

I just realized this afternoon that today marks my TWENTIETH anniversary of entering the MTC (Missionary Training Center, for any non-Mormon readers). Whoa! TWENTY YEARS?!? How did that time pass by so fast?

My ward had fast and testimony meeting this morning (rather than last week on the 4th), and one of the full-time missionaries got up to bear his testimony. As he spoke, I thought about how amazing missions are. Here's this young 19-year-old (okay, maybe almost 21) fired up about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, spending all day every day teaching about it and basically living and serving others like Christ did. The part that's most amazing to me is that missions happen right at the point where you're making key life decisions and really figuring out who you are as an adult. Missions are key in shaping that.

Then I started thinking about missionaries from MY mission (lo, so many years ago-- see above) and wondering what they're lives are like now. And of course I started thinking about what my life has turned into in the past 20 years since I entered the MTC. I've come a long, long way from the scared little sister missionary trying to find her new companion in a sea of white shirts and ties.

So back to the title of this entry: I'm not sure if they still do this, but when I entered the MTC, someone greeted me at the door and put a little dot on my shirt collar (I was wearing a floral jumper-- stylin', no?). That way everyone who saw me would know I was a brand-new missionary and go out of their way to help me. We called the sticker the dork dot. It found its way to the back of my mission name tag, and that tag is in a box somewhere now.

After I got my dork dot, my family and I got ushered into a huge auditorium. I don't remember what we did, mainly because I was really nervous and emotional, but I'm pretty sure we listened to the MTC president welcome us, and I'm pretty sure we sang "Called to Serve" (later known, thanks to a mission companion, as "The Missionary Fight Song"-- we clapped it sometimes instead of singing it). I do know that a few years later, when I was dropping off one of my BYU roommates at the MTC, we all sang "Called to Serve" before the missionaries left out one door and families left out the other. My other friends who were there all spoke a different language-- Spanish (Miriam), French (me), Dutch (Felix)-- so we sang the hymn in our languages. The new missionary sang in English. A poor, scared elder sitting right in front of us turned and looked at us in horror. I could read his thoughts on his face: "Oh NO! Everybody else already knows their mission language! I'm behind and it's only day one!"

Back on track with my story: When all the new missionaries left the auditorium, I remember filing through some lines, picking up my name tag, picking up some books and my Missionary Guide, things like that. Mostly I remember seeing nothing but white shirts. My thought, "What if I'm the only sister missionary in the entire building? Where's my companion? What if I can't find her?"

Fortunately, I found Soeur Tollestrup just fine, and we had a fabulous MTC experience, leading into the best mission ever.

One last thought: a couple of months into my mission, when things weren't going as amazingly as I'd hoped, a sister missionary who was just getting ready to go back home was staying overnight in our apartment. Here's the comment that stayed with me: "I had a perfect mission. Not perfect in the sense that nothing bad happened, but perfect in the sense that it was exactly what I needed to have happen for me." I think that describes life pretty well, too.

Lessons from knitting socks

I've been knitting since I was 10 (thanks for teaching me, Mom!), but socks have always seemed mysterious and impossibly difficult. At the same time, there's always been this wish of mine to learn to make them. Kind of a "if I can knit this, I can knit anything" mentality.

So two years ago, Mom and I got matching sock pattern books for Christmas and I started to knit. Last Christmas, I had maybe an inch worth of sock cuff done. Here's where I'm at now. First on my foot (I promise those knitting needles aren't puncturing any foot tissue):

Then off the foot so you can see the pattern:

As I was working on the main part of the sock, I kept looking ahead to the pattern directions and thinking, "How in the world am I going to figure out how to do the heel? That part of the pattern makes absolutely NO SENSE!" Mom couldn't remember how to turn a heel, so I looked online for some help. The main message I got from every sock site was "trust the pattern, even if you don't see how it can work."

So I got to the heel and started following the pattern directions. I had to take out a whole section and try again after I realized after the fact what part of the directions were really saying, but it worked. I knit and knit and thought, "Nope, this won't work," and then all of a sudden, it did! Who woulda thunk it? Those crazy pattern designers know what they're doing after all.

Then I thought bigger. How many times does the pattern make absolutely no sense to me and I try to make my own version that I think will work even though I don't know what I'm doing? I see something happening in my life and think, "Nope, this won't work" or "Why would I move in that direction instead of this one?" It comes back to trusting the pattern. Or rather, trusting the pattern designer. My job is to knit and follow the directions.

I can do that. And maybe next Christmas I'll have one sock done of the pair.

Meet the newest member of my family

Isn't she pretty? Her name's Colette, and this past week I drove to Hattonfield, New Jersey to pick her up. For those who don't know their East Coast geography (which would include the author of this blog entry), Hattonfield is just across the river (I forget which one) from Philadelphia. Since I have friends who live less than an hour from Philadelphia, I turned this trip into a play opportunity. It was also helpful that my friends have a van, because if we'd gone over in my VW Bug, which was the original plan, somebody would have had to walk home from Jersey.

Here's me in the store, pretending I know how to play the harp:



Six weeks of lessons over three years ago definitely doesn't make me a harpist. Tracy: I apologize publicly if your children now beg you for harp lessons after my harp was sitting in your living room for a couple of days.

Note to self: always be sure the tuner key is on the string you actually pluck before tuning. Otherwise, you might overtighten and break a string.

So back to the harp purchasing adventure. As we were driving across the river whose name I don't remember (Delaware, perhaps?), I commented that I'd never been in New Jersey before. Here's how the conversation went:

Tracy: Well, this part of New Jersey's the armpit of the state.
Me, as we drove through an industrial district: Yup.

Then we turned a corner and found this cute, Norman Rockwell-esque neighborhood. Tree-lined streets, nicely maintained yards, kids with a lemonade stand at the end of the driveway. So fun! This was the neighborhood where the harp store was. Nice!

I know what many readers are thinking: how did you get the harp in your VW? Answer: strategically. I folded down all seats besides mine and laid the harp as flat as I could. So if you want me to play a gig sometime, anyone else who comes along has to drive separately. Or Colette the harp needs to drive herself, which somehow I don't think is possible.

So here's the scary part: this is a SMALL harp. If I had a spare $15 K hanging around, I could get one of the big concert harps, but then I'd have to also buy a minivan. And probably a new house.

In other random news, here are my piano keyboard toes, courtesy of Niki:

Maybe next time she can paint harps.

Decker's Creek, Take Two

Two years ago, I decided to run the Decker's Creek Half Marathon. I won the caboose award for taking a whopping 3 hours and 45 minutes to cross the finish line. It was hot. I walked nine miles of the race.

Last year, I wanted to run the race again so I could do better. Unfortunately, health circumstances interfered.

So as soon as I was cleared by the doctor to start running again, I set my sights on this year's race, which happened this morning. Training for the long runs went pretty well for a couple of months, but then the random pain issues started popping up: an injured right hip during yoga (no more downward dog for me!), a mysterious tightened right calf that literally stopped me in mid-run one morning, a sore right ankle-- from wearing heels, of all things, a mis-step on a long run that hurt my left knee two weeks before the race. I worked through them, telling myself that I'd worked too hard to let anything get in the way. I was going to run this race no matter what.

For years I've compared running to how we need to deal with life: no matter what happens, you just keep moving. It's all about progress and enduring to the end. There are lots of factors you can't control. I got on the bus up to the trail head this morning wondering how this race would turn out. Would my knee be okay? What would the temperature be like by the end? I'd done everything I could to be ready.

Wasn't ready for the rain that started just as the race started. Correction: I was ready in the sense that I had a rain coat (which I didn't put on for some strange reason) and a hat (which I did put on). What I wasn't ready for was how hard and long-lasting the rain was. Usually rain only lasts a few minutes here, and usually it's a few drips. Not today. Today it rained for the first three miles of my race. If I had been home when the rain started, I would have considered not running. I've never run in this hard of rain. My shoes starting making schlooshy noises. My shirt stuck to me. Water dripped steadily off the brim of my hat. The trail got very, very muddy.

But you know what? I was going to finish this thing! I actually did pray for the rain to stop, and it did. Hurray! The rain made things cool and fairly comfortable. Well, until just after mile 11, when I hit a wall. Good thing friends were cheering from the sidelines at that point. I kept going. I reached mile 12. My feet were tired of being wet and wrinkly by that point. My quads hurt. I walked-- maybe a quarter of a mile. I hit the half-mile mark and made myself keep moving.

Final time: 2 hours 21 minutes. Yeah!! 362nd place! I'm just glad I finished, and I finished 20 minutes faster than I thought I would. Other than being wet, the first 10 miles felt GREAT! Most of all, I'm proud of reaching my goal: finishing.

Now ask me if how well I'll be walking the next few days.

Here's a picture to give you a sense of how muddy the trail was. You know how bike wheels splash up mud on rainy days? Kinda the same effect:

How I Celebrate Memorial Day

Time for a quick trip down memory lane. Two years ago, I decided to tear out the lawn and terrace a hill so I could have some garden space. Here's what it looked like last year at this time:



I should remind readers that while building said wall, we dug up a four-foot-wide section of porch steps, thrown in as fill. (There's a whole entry on it-- go check it out!) On my birthday last year, the young men from both Morgantown wards descended on my yard en masse and finished the wall. Medical issues prevented me from actually prepping the soil and getting the garden ready.

But not this year! Here's what the final project looks like:


Hurray! I have a little garden! Actually, a fairly decent-sized garden. It's my first "grown-up" garden, not planted in pots on a deck. I've grown tomatoes every year, but they've never actually had ground space until now. When I was a little girl and it was time to plant the garden, I always begged Dad to plant some flowers. He always said no, arguing that the garden was for vegetables. Now I have both. The top row is dahlias, snapdragons, and a lavender plant (English, not French, unfortunately-- I would have preferred French but couldn't find any).

Bottom row: tomatoes are the star! I went to the farmers market and hit up the heirloom tomato people for some seedlings. I intended to only plant two plants, and I stood there debating: red tomatoes or purple tomatoes? I saw a green zebra seedling, and I LOVE those, so I had to get one. That made the second deliberation even harder. The vendor helpfully pointed out that I could get FOUR plants for $20. That's when I saw the black cherry tomato seedling and thought, "Hey, I have room for all of them!" So, the final tomato count: one Cherokee purple, one super Sioux (red), one green zebra, and one black cherry. What filled out the vegetable row? Two basil plants, a row of bush beans, a row of beets, and an oregano plant.

Here's what I realized as I was digging ditches around my new little tomato plants: planting tomatoes is what I did with Dad every single spring. I know the rest of the family was involved with the garden, but when I think of Dad, I think of tomato plants. I don't remember helping him prep the soil, and after how much work I went through this week hauling wheelbarrow loads of clay OUT of my garden area so I could mix in manure, peat, and top soil (400 pounds worth), I have-- besides better abdominal muscles-- a new-found respect for my dad's love of gardening. Somewhere along the fifteenth wheelbarrow load of clay, I wiped my face and thought, "Why am I doing this? Are tomatoes worth it?" I thought about President Spencer W. Kimball's counsel to plant gardens. I thought about Adam being told to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. What is it about gardens that's so important?

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, tomato gardens are about remembering my dad. Yes, I'm getting tomatoes that I love to eat. I'm also learning to work really hard and really consistently for those tomatoes. If I want tomatoes in August, I have to water those little seedlings every day now. Most of all, though, I think about my dad and how happy working in the garden made him. How happy he was when he brought in buckets full of tomatoes and then made a batch of homemade French dressing. We would slice up a whole plateful of tomatoes and eat them until we were stuffed. When Dad retired and he and Mom moved into their dream house, they didn't have a big garden area, but they had enough space for tomato plants: 15 tomato plants. For two people. I think Dad would approve of my tomato seedling choices. I'd like to think that if he'd been with me at the farmers market yesterday morning, he would have whispered, "Why not get one of each? You've got room."

So maybe I'm too far away from Dad's grave to go visit for Memorial Day. I'm okay with that. I can water my tomatoes and remember him just fine right here.

graduation . . . a year later

Yesterday was graduation. I got home after the requisite photo session with new grads and thought about how sick I was (unknowingly at the time) last year. Then I thought, "Huh, I wonder if you can tell from last year's graduation pictures?" Other than that I'm generally not photogenic, what do you think? Here's last year:




And here's this year:

Maybe I'm just creating something that's not there, but I can see a difference in skin tone. Or maybe I just THINK I can.

It's scary to me that I could be so, so anemic and have no idea. How can your body get used to something like that? Anyhow, this is just a post to mark almost a year of the return of health! I feel GREAT!! Running the Decker's Creek Half Marathon on June 5th, and hopefully this year I won't win the caboose award. Yay!

Springtime in West Virginia: Ramps Festival!

When I had a West Virginia-themed housewarming party three years ago, one friend brought me two gifts. One I recognized: a little vase of lillies of the valley. The other I didn't recognize: it looked like a cross between oversized green onions and leeks. That was my first encounter with a West Virginia native food: ramps. Here's what my friend said: "When you eat these (handing me the ramps), you'll want these to balance out the smell (handing me the lillies of the valley)." She also cautioned me to have windows open when I cooked the ramps.

So then I dug out my Joy of Cooking reference book to find out more about ramps. Here's what it said: "These and the strong field garlic . . . in your lawn are not recommended by us although we frequently see them praised by others."

Apparently, people either love or hate ramps. People who hate them talk of ramps seeping through your pores and stinking up rooms for days at a time. People who love them talk about how ramps are part of their childhood memories of West Virginia. My take is that the people who say they hate ramps are really saying they hate anything that could be linked to a hillbilly image.

Today was the annual ramps festival in Mt. Morris, PA. Some friends and I piled in the car to check it out. I'd eaten ramps before, and I kinda liked them, and I'm all about a small town festival. We wandered around the various booths, looking for some kind of sampler plate, when we saw this sign:



Bingo! I mean, who wouldn't want to eat food cooked by Walter the Ramp Chef? (I'm pretty sure the sign meant to say "horseradish" rather than "horserash." I don't want to know what "horserash" might be.) So we stepped up for our ramps platters, after a brief photo op:

You can tell which one is Walter, right? So what do ramps look like? You can kind of tell from this picture, although the ramps are in some kind of bacon/sausage shish kabob dealie (which I think ended up in the beans on the sampler plate):

Here's what the actual sampler plate looked like. From left to right, top to bottom: baked beans with ramps and some kind of sausage, a ramps roll with ramps butter, a ramps chocolate chip cookie (I know, sounds gross-- but it really didn't taste bad), a deviled egg, a pickled egg (pickled in ramps vinegar), some kind of French toast dish with ramps gravy, and a ramps potato pancake.

The verdict? Most of the food was pretty good. I didn't try the ramps mints (honestly, isn't that an oxymoron?), but my friend did. I didn't buy any ramps for home cooking, nor did I buy a ramps cookbook, but it was kind of fun to be part of the festivities. We went home pretty early because my friends' kids were cold and tired.

And as soon as we got in the car, one of my friends passed out gum. So, um, maybe you don't want to sit next to me tomorrow morning in church.