Not That I'm Holding A Grudge...

I come from a devout Scrabble-playing family.  When I was a girl my mom was my spelling idol; she won that game every single time she played.  Her magic weapon? QAT...a short little "q" word that does not need a "u."  Time after time I'd watch her school her opponent and many times that was the word that I remember shooting her ahead.  I pretty much had a love affair with that word until the middle of 2nd grade.

In 2nd grade I was in a combination class with six 2nd graders and around fifteen 3rd graders.  My teacher was Mrs. Cummings and at the time I held teachers in pretty high esteem.  She was the first to tarnish that image for me.

Every once in awhile Mrs. Cummings would let us have a vocabulary challenge.  Two students were chosen and given a whole day to think of a word that would stump the class.  I have no idea what the reward was for winning, but I was confident when I finally got to have my turn.

Without thinking twice I came to class knowing I was going to win.  I was pitted against 3rd grader Brian Fisher and I don't think I even heard him say his word for the class.  How important could it be?  With  uncharacteristic boldness (I was a pretty shy child) I told that combination class that my word was "QAT! Q-A-T"  Stunned, dumbfounded faces.  Of course nobody knew that one!  Even Mrs. Cummings' expression portrayed silent stupefication.  Then my confidence started melting away.

Mrs. Cummings said she'd never heard that word before.  Was I sure I hadn't forgotten the "u"?  She asked what I thought it was and I proclaimed, "It's an evergreen tree!"  She was still less than sure.  She suggested we look it up in the dictionary.  I wasn't worried-my mom's red dictionary definitely had that word in there.  I'd look it up lots of times.  

The classroom dictionary pages started turning.  The "q" section was located and the page turned back and forth, fingers scrolled up and down.  More than once.  Back and forth again.  No "qat."  Anywhere.  Mrs. Cummings declared that my word was not a word and 3rd grader Brian Fisher was declared the winner.  In an instant my mom became smarter than my teacher.  And of the few memories I have of that combination-class year, being ignorantly stripped of my title as vocabulary challenge winner stands out as though it had happened only yesterday.

(I just looked "qat" up in the dictionary again and discovered that while "an evergreen tree" is a loosely correct interpretation, it's actually the leaves of a middle-eastern plant used to make narcotic stimulants.  Maybe it's a good thing Mrs. Cummings didn't look into it further and call to ask my mom some questions...)

A-P

Back In the Day-Walking Through Fountains

This photo comes from the time in my life I like to call my "fountain days."  What happy memories come flooding back as I think about the free-spirit I was back then feeling the invitation of refreshing bubbling water.  And its impossible to think about fountain-hopping without also thinking of my old friend Jason.

I started college when the internet was still a novelty.  Sitting in the campus library I signed up on a Christian dating site and quickly met two fantastic people.  One of those people was Jason and it was only a matter of months before I hopped on a plane to New Jersey to meet him. My mom dropped me off at the airport a little confused and a lot scared and horrified.  I figured that out when I didn't think to call her upon arrival and she hunted me down by phone at Jason's grandmothers home.(Important clarification: Jason and I were always just friends.  Our hotel rooms always had two beds and we never even held hands.  I'm not sure my family has ever believed me.)

I learned a lot of important life lessons while cavorting around the country to meet Jason.  Here area few of the gems that stayed with me:

Always have food available for the needy.
I met Jason's grandmother that very first weekend.  In her kitchen drawer, where you and I might keep the dishtowels or utensils, she had a full stock of SPAM, just in case somebody ever stopped by collecting for the food bank.

There really is a wrong side of the tracks.
On a business trip in Baltimore, Jason's company put us up in the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in .  One night while out on a walk we crossed a bridge and immediately found ourselves in the most run-down neighborhood I've ever been in.  I was terrified and even Jason gave pause as we walked in one block, over one block, and out one block.  A girl followed two steps behind singing the theme from "Reading Rainbow" until we reached the bridge where she stopped and we high-tailed it back to luxury.

Security guards do a lot of looking at you funny, not much anything else.
Washington D.C. is fountain mecca and where I took my first wet foray.  (Don't panic, I never got up the nerve to actually walk through the reflecting pool on the National Mall!) This is where I also learned that the Benjamin Franklin monument is very slippery and that getting on a subway train while soaking wet is a freezing cold terrible idea.

I don't know why I eat the way I do.
Slipping into a local diner and sharing an order of fries, Jason looked perplexed when I quit eating halfway through.  When he asked why I answered without thinking, "Those ones don't have ketchup on them."  Only then did I realize I had that little oddity.  I pour ketchup all over the top of my fries and quit eating as soon as the ketchup-ed fries are gone.

Any place can be interesting.
Several times Jason's work took him to Killeen, TX, and I'd meet him down there.   Killeen, TX, is to pawn shops what Washington D.C. is to water fountains.  Aside from the military base there is no reason to go there.  South of Killeen, however, is Georgetown, TX, and a beautiful bed and breakfast with rooms in the carriage house.  Heading north halfway to my home in Iowa you'll find Wichita, KS-also a very boring city.  But if you're their on the right night you'll witness the most incredible lightening storm and then have the adventure of getting stuck in flash flooding.

Criminals can look just like you and me.
Jason always told me his older brother had been exiled from the country for bank embezzling.  Once while on a country drive he nonchalantly asked if I'd ever done anything illegal and then told me the details of his entrepreneurial side business producing fake credit cards for teenagers.  One of the last times I saw him he got notice that he was to have a meeting at the Pentagon and shortly after that a letter letting me know he wouldn't be contacting me anymore.  Either the most elaborate "Hey, I don't want to see you anymore" I've ever received, or a guy who got himself into some big trouble.  I'm still leaning towards the later.

And that's a shame.  I will forever look back on that relationship as one of the truest and most free of my lifetime.  The adventures we had and experiences I gained still make my happy heart leap.  We all need that one moment in time where the person we're with and the places we are fit magically into place and continue making us feel giddy, happy, goofy, and free no matter how it ended or where it led.

Now you're heard mine, so tell me, when were your "fountain days?" 

Wandering Still? What It Means To Me

My Past
Small town Iowa girls don't often take far trips from home.  From birth to age 17 the longest trip I had taken was a three-hour road trip to my uncle's house in Weeping Water, Nebraska.  Then my mom blew everything out of the water.  Attempting to get me away from an abusive high-school boyfriend, she loaded me on a plane and sent me 8 flight hours away to the European continent.

Now, don't go thinking this was normal for my family.  We grew up on hand-me-down clothes and Hamburger Helper with twice the noodles and half the meat.  Fate just happened to intervene that year and I became the first student  hosted by our local Lions Club in a Youth Camp and Exchange Program. Traveling to Brussels with 25 Iowa teenagers and then embarking on a 6-week solo adventure with host families in the Netherlands was the most frightening enterprise imaginable.

I came home at the end of that summer an altogether different girl (yes, I did get rid of the loser of a boyfriend soon after).  Wanderlust has been a part of me ever since.  It prompted me to study Hospitality Management and released me from the Midwest to see the world.  Working seasonal hotel jobs, I lived on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and all over the state of Alaska.  Because they were seasonal jobs, and in the tourism industry, I was also afforded months of open-ended travel.  My mid-twenties found me gallivanting around the globe and culminated in a 4-month backpacking/cruising trip that hopped from the Caribbean to western Mexico, from southeast Asia to Australia and New Zealand.  Those are the days that spoiled me!

My Present
I'm married to a native Utahn and that has been my dwelling for the past 7 years.  Within 9 months of moving here I had experienced more of what this diverse state has to offer than a friend who'd been going to school here more than 3 years.  As a married couple, and now as a family with two young boys, we've made it a priority to continue getting out to see what there is to see.

People often give us long sideways glances after hearing of the next trip we're planning or reading about our latest exploits on our family blog, It's What We Do.  What they usually fail to understand is that while they're spending their free money on clothes, eating out, and movies, we're bundling ours together and escaping the humdrum of our every day lives.  The ultimate example of these glances, and our own sacrifices, was a 6-week trip to Europe in celebration of my husband's college graduation and our son's 1st birthday.  More than anything, it proved to me that I was still me and the doors of the world hadn't closed when I said, "I do."

My Future
A day does not go by without me gazing out my window wondering where else there is to be.  Traveling is now inherently in me.  I used to passionately proclaim that, "You don't have to settle down until your kids are in school!"  I want my family to share the world with me.  Some argue that toddlers and infants are too little to even know, that world travel is wasted until they're old enough to read the places they are going.  I don't agree.  My 3-year-old son Beck is a map-lover!  He will stop every 10 steps, lay down his map, and recalculate which way we should be heading.  I want him and his baby brother Peyton to start out right from the beginning with a love and appreciation for exploring.

Peyton will turn 1 in March and I want more than anything to be somewhere exotic on his birthday.  Not to be snobby, but for him to look back in 20 years and know that that is who we were.  Beck starts school in less than 2 years.  I want more than anything not to put him on the bus for his first day of kindergarten with the regret that we never got him out of here.

Ben and I are working on a goal.  By January 1, 2012, we are going to be out of here.  Maybe we won't be continent-hopping like I'd once dreamed, but we will be packed and jet-setting to somewhere more exotic than Lindon, Utah.  And, then, who knows...kids can do complete K-12 programs online now...the world doesn't have to settle in on me!

Am I Smarter Than 5th Grade Me?

I recently let my husband in on one of my most embarassing school secrets...I used to ask my elementary teachers for the extra copies of our handouts so I could take them home and play school in my bedroom. By the end of my grade school days I had amassed a carefully organized, waist-high pile of purple mimeographed math timetables, social studies worksheets, science and reading assignments. I loved school. Well, the learning part of it. I could fill volumes on why the social aspect of public education was not for me, but it was exciting to sit at my desk with my #2 pencil and make something better of myself. I'm pretty sure I wasn't espousing that exact thought as I sat next to the boy on my right incessantly eating carrot sticks or the girl on my left sticking straightpins through her skin, but school was always a great intellectual outlet for me. 5th grade was particularly enthralling. I wrote my first report, on the state of Washington, and was proud that it was the longest report in the class. I looked forward to Fridays when we read Weekly Reader (I learned that one day telephones would have video cameras in them) and I would get all the questions right. Most memorable activity, though, are the scores of books I read and reports I wrote. There were always books in our home. We'd get boxes of them for a quarter at garage sales and carefully stack them on the bookshelf in our upstairs hallway. I organized them alphabetically for a CampFire project and they numbered nearly 200. It was from these that my library of book reports evolved. In fifth grade we had a tri-fold book report form that asked for generic information (title, author, genre) on either outside fold. The inner fold was where I found the gold-a completely blank white space waiting for my humble review. I would write until that page was full and then flip the whole form over and continue writing until not an inch of that paper was bare. I'd fold it up, take it to the teacher, and hurriedly begin the process over again. I don't know how many book reports I turned in during my fifth grade year. I do know I kept them all and will one day find them neatly filed in a folder waiting to be rediscovered. I never lost that unbridled love for learning. For this I am grateful. I've recently found myself once again feverishly looking for great reads. With a new baby and my role in life being redefined, I've found my ability to appreciate a good story invaluable-a rope out into the world I once knew. That's why I've included a list of recently read books on my blog. Take a look at the titles. Some of them were so enrapturing I couldn't put them down; others I unabashedly skimmed over hundreds of pages in order to end the dreadfulness as painlessly as possible. I'd love to know what you think is out there worth reading. And, of course, I'm still ready and willing to give my humble version of a golden book review.