One of my shortcomings as a reader: I can't read graphic novels.

I've tried many times. I've even tried the graphic-novel-interpretation of books I've already read and loved (The Graveyard Book, for example) or TV shows I already watch (The Walking Dead).

There's just something about what is required of my brain in order to simultaneously turn words and pictures into a story. I know it's strange—I can, after all, do this with children's books—and it makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable about myself.

Mostly I think it's a cool factor, and I'm just not cool enough to read graphic novels.

Which became a problem when I had the assignment to read a graphic novel as part of my library duties. I wanted to cheat and count the book Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, a graphic novel with five fairy-tale-based horror stories which I read back in February for LTUE, but as it took me less than an hour to read, it really did feel like cheating.

Instead I read Roz Chast's memoir, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast does cartoons in the New Yorker, so maybe being familiar with her quirky figures made this easier to read for me. Or maybe it's less of a graphic novel than a story told with pictures. (I think there is a distinction.)

One of my favorite illustrations. We want to be gallant...but we usually end up on the goofus side.

It tells of Chast's experiences with her parents as they are aging. They've lived on their own in an apartment in Brooklyn well into their 90s, but eventually they start needing help, and this is where Chast's story begins. Except for flashbacks to her childhood, growing up as an only child with a dad who was...let's say mellow and a mother who was...not. (Or, in other words, parents exactly like mine; I think I would be far less mentally stable had I not had sisters to deflect some of my mom's redness.) It was perhaps not an idyllic childhood, and her relationship with her mother remained strained throughout her adulthood.

When things start getting difficult—Chast's father's memory starts to go, and then several different accidents start impacting their health—she, as the only child, is the only one who can help. But, it turns out, her parents are entrenched

"perhaps opium, or heroin. So you become addicted. So what? All-you-can-eat ice cream parlors for the extremely aged...EXTREME palliative care."

in their house. Really, really entrenched. They have all of their old stuff and they like it, thankyouverymuch, and aren't interested in getting rid of anything in order to change where (or how) they are living. Even though they can't go on like they are.

Maybe I was drawn to read this mostly because of the topic, as I'm going through something similar with my mom. She is still living in the 2800-square-foot house we grew up in. It's too big for her to manage, the yard is overwhelming, it's a half hour away from me and/or my sister, and it is so full. So full of stuff. And all the stuff means so much to her. It breaks my heart a little bit, honestly, every time we go out to help her sift through some stuff. (She will never sell her house until she gets rid of stuff.) Out of a box inside of a Rubbermaid container in the closet in my old bedroom, she pulls out...a bedraggled doll, the kind with plastic arms and legs but a soft stuffed body. It's nearly beheaded, its skull hanging on with just a ribbon of frayed fabric. Its cheeks are caked with dusty and dirt, its cloth body frail now, and flimsy. But it still giggles when you shake it, and "Oh, I can remember how much Michele loved playing with this doll," and so she can't bear to get rid of it; it goes right into the keep pile (which is obviously much larger than the throw away and donate piles).

My sadness happens because of how desperately she wants to gather all of the memories to herself, and how the objects only really have meaning as triggers to the memories. I can understand that wanting to keep the memories (I'm pretty much the queen in that department), but the way she discovers the triggering objects, remembers the memory, and then puts the object back into another box—that is what makes me sad. So many boxes of old stuff that has memories for her and no one else. (Que segue into why you should write stuff down but I'm just going to skip it.)

A list of things Chast kept. Notice that photo albums are the first on the list. Just sayin'.

Roz Chast's parents' connection to their old stuff has to do with use. Why get a new butter container when this strangely-melted one we've had since 1977 works perfectly fine? Ad nauseum. We might need this __________. One day we could use that ____________. And there is a hilarious section about their attachment to all of their old bank books (for accounts that no longer have any money in them, some of them at banks that no longer exist).

She nails this accumulation of stuff so well (as proof that I understand: every time I come home from helping my mom clean out her stuff, I do two things. Declutter at least one closet and then make a whole bunch of scrapbook layouts. Which might be a problem all its own). After helping your parent(s) with the cleaning-out of a lifetime's worth of stuff,

you start to look at your stuff a little...postmortemistically. If you've lived more than two decades as an adult consumer, you probably have quite the accumulation, even if you're not a hoarder. An ergonomic garlic press and throw pillows and those stupid sunflower dessert plates and seven travel alarm clocks and eight nail clippers and a colander and a flatiron and three old laptops and barbells and a set of fucking bocce balls [Editor's Note: this is how I felt when I uncovered a kiln in my mom's garage. A kiln. You know. In case you want to bake up some ceramics or cremate some mice], and patio furniture and an autoharp for God's sake, and your old flute from high school and a zillion books and towels and sheets and a wok you never used and a make-your-own stained glass kit you never opened, and martini glasses and a yoga mat and what is THIS??? a cuckoo clock???? And so many clothes and hats and shoes and then there's all the KIDS' old stuff and don't forget the furniture and four cameras and ice skates and whose tap shoes are these? and all the crap in the drawers and...THAT'S JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG."

(And when you're going through your parents' stuff, everything, every item, means everything to them and after a while you either want to rip your hair out, punch someone in the face, or weep—or you start making jokes, hence Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?​ and really: some of the negative reviews have said the book is too mean to the parents but honestly, sometimes that's all you can do. Draw some snarky comments or get put in jail for elder abuse. Which is worse?)

And that's just the topic of cleaning out the stuff.

The book also covers stuff like:

• getting your parents to realize they can't live by themselves anymore.
• figuring out how to broach the topic of finances.
• ugly, ugly medical details.
• the impossibility of paying for decent live-in care or residences.
• the way your history influences your present.
• all of those old grudges you never managed to put behind you.
• guilt.
• filling out forms.
• making peace.
• not making peace.
• DNRs and other conversations about medical wishes. (IF YOU HAVEN'T EVER HAD THIS CONVERSATION WITH YOUR PARENTS, YOUR SPOUSE, YOUR SISTER, YOUR BEST FRIEND, AND YOUR NOT-LITTLE CHILDREN, PLEASE: DO IT NOW. ​ No one will know what you want if you don't tell them. It is best to know. Becky, for example, knows that if I can't feed myself or go to the bathroom on my own, she is free to smother me with a pillow or anything else that's handy. Ditto if I can't read or write or communicate.)
• the realities of being old and dying in America. There really is no easy, good way to do it, unless you are rich. Filthy rich. Otherwise it will be ugly, painful, humiliating, and always faintly tinted with the smell of old pee.
• Death.

How can I say I loved this book? When it has so much ugliness and sadness and remorse in it. Loss of bodily control. Looking at your relationship with your parents and realizing, with an unfettered truth, that it was a faulty and imperfect one, and that it wasn't only your parents' fault. People—people who, despite their faults and mistakes and quirks and illnesses and stubbornnesses and all of that stuff they own, are loved—die.

They leave us forever.

But maybe that is why I loved it. Because my dad died and the process of it was long and ugly and took a deep gouge out of my soul, but it also held some transcendent moments. Because my dad left before I could tell him all I should have told him, before I apologized for the mean things I said when I was a teenager and for taking my mom's side and for the time I yelled at him when I was learning how to put my contacts in. Because I never said thank you for taking me to Lake Powell, for shouting at my boyfriend that one time, for always making a beautiful yard for us to turn cartwheels in. Because he died, and I witnessed it, and because once you know what that is like, you want to know what it is like for other people.

Roz Chast's account of her parents' process of dying is more clever than mine could be. It's also more sarcastic and maybe even a little bit caustic, but it's also honest, and yes: I did love this book.

And that feels like an accomplishment for this non-graphic-novel-reading reader!

Last SundayI taught a lesson in church. I almost always love teaching or speaking at church (yes, even sacrament meeting talks) because it reconnects me with the skills I worked so hard to develop as a teacher. The lesson I taught was in Sunday School, which is a meeting with adults, where we focus each year on different scriptures. Speaking in sacrament meeting is not a hard thing for me because it’s just public speaking. Teaching in Relief Society (the women’s meeting) is one of my favorite things to do at church because it is discussing important things with my peers. But I’ve never taught in Sunday School and I was—well, not nervous. But unsure, because A—I’m not the world’s strongest scriptorian and B—men.  I had a fear that I would get a scriptural detail incorrect and that one of the men in the congregation would call me out on it.

I worried about this for the last week.

And honestly, if the teacher I was covering for wasn’t out of town, I might have called her and had her find someone else to teach. I’m in this strange place, spiritually. In one sense I feel like my testimony is very fragile. I am full of questions, concerns, and doubts. On the other hand, I feel very argumentative over the things I feel passionately about…and these topics are the ones that I don’t agree with the majority on. I was afraid that someone would say something that would get me started, and then I’d lose it and start ranting.

But I put on my big girl pants and I prepared my lesson. And I am so glad I did.

The topic was the hours between Christ’s experience in Gethsemane and His burial in the tomb of Joseph of Aramathaea. I read all four accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and what stood out for me this time was the people who were involved. Pilate, the Sanhedrin, Caiaphas, Peter, Mary and John, the Roman Centurion, Judas, Barabbas, Herod, Nicodemus, the crowd following Christ and mourning as they went—so many people, each of them with something to give us. Something to teach. (There are entire sermons of knowledge to be gained just from Peter, aren’t there?) But the person who haunted me the most was one I hadn’t ever really paid attention to, or maybe even noticed, and that is Simon of Cyrene.

He was a man from “the country” (Mark and Luke tell us) who is chosen, seemingly at random, to carry Christ’s cross for him. Carrying your own cross was part of the process of crucifixion, but at that point Christ, weakened by his experiences in Gethsemane and the midnight trials, was physically unable to do so, and so Simon was given the task of carrying it for Him.

This small detail—only a few verses in each gospel, and not even mentioned by John—takes my breath away. It makes me need to weep in that ugly and painful way that weeping comes when I am ashamed. Sometimes I feel like Christian religions get in the way of following Christ. We each have our rituals and traditions and observances, but sometimes they obscure what should be our goal, which is to follow Christ and to act like He would act. Reading these parts of the New Testament with such intensity stripped everything else away and reminded me again: we are about Christ’s business and nothing else.

Or we should be. I should be.

What would Jesus do? should be our constant restraint, but Simon of Cyrene makes me ask myself a different question: what can I do for Christ?

Simon, in the right place at the right time, was given a difficult, painful task, to literally take up the wooden cross for Christ. If he had decided to stay in the country that day, someone else would have been chosen in his place. Someone else would have carried Christ’s cross. So the events that lead to Simon being there have meaning only to Simon himself, who had both the work and the privilege of that experience. What Simon did for Christ was both to be there—to be present and ready—and to lessen His suffering.

What can I do for Christ?

I cannot literally carry the cross for Him. But perhaps by helping other people carry their burdens, I can, in a circuitous manner, be like Simon. Which is why I felt that ugly, ashamed cry coming on: because I haven’t. I haven’t carried enough, especially for my children.  “Adolescence is an illness,” my grandma used to say, and “an illness that happens to one person in a family happens to everyone in the family,” I have learned. I have made their adolescence about me, about how much damage they have done, instead of trying to see what damaged place they are abiding in. I have tried to lift up their burdens, but not well enough.

I could extend this outward as well. I have complained to friends about my problems but not listened well enough to theirs.

I have been angry at some family situations when an attempt to understand would have been better.

Even at work, I have been annoyed and short tempered with people who haven’t had the opportunity to learn what I have learned, instead of just sharing what I know.

Like Simon, I have been in situations where I could have helped others—when I could have carried someone’s cross. Unlike Simon, I did not take them up.

But I also find myself thinking of Christ, and how even He had his moment. That time when, physically exhausted, his body literally could not do what He wanted it to do. Of course, I am nothing like Christ, only striving. But that gives me a sort of peace, a place to pause in the self-flagellation and to remind myself: all I can do is move forward. All I can do is, like Simon, be present. Or actively find ways to help others.

On Sunday evening, when I was cooking dinner, a neighbor knocked on my door. He’d stopped by because he wanted to thank me for my lesson. He said that I had said some things that had helped him with a struggle he had been having. He didn’t tell me the details and I didn’t ask—I didn’t need to know. And he thought he was stopping by to thank me, but really what he did was give me courage. Remember: I did not want to teach that lesson. And yet, by teaching it anyway—despite my fears of looking stupid or losing my tempter—I was able to help someone else. Or, more precisely, God nudged me a little bit to be in the right place to help someone else.

I am more ready now, after studying those scriptures, after saying yes to a hard thing I didn’t really want to try. I want to carry this new knowledge with me, to not forget. To not even be asked, but just to rush, to hurry, to notice more quickly who is struggling with their weight and to know how I can help them. I want to know the answer more and more profoundly:

What can I do for Christ?

I can’t say that I am a dedicated fan of The Beatles. I don’t hate them, like some people I know, but I also don’t have a deep and abiding affection for them, either. My second-grade best friend Amy Hendrickson’s mom loved The Beatles, and I have some pretty clear memories of helping them clean their house on Saturday mornings after sleepovers, with Strawberry Fields as our soundtrack, but that was literally the only exposure I had to them as I was growing up.

A few years ago, though, I fell in love with Sheryl Crow’s rendition of “Blackbird.” And then I made one of my favorite scrapbook layouts about Haley with “Blackbird Fly” as the title and the song’s lyrics as the mood/inspiration. So when I spotted the book Blackbird Fly, by Erin Entrada Kelly, on our new books display at the library, I decided to check it out before I even picked it up to read the cover copy.

 (In other words, it is sometimes a strange and convoluted path that leads to our book choices.)

Blackbird Fly tells the story of Apple, who immigrated to America from the Philippines with her mother, after her father died when she was four. Apple doesn't remember much but living in America; her mom, however, wants her to continue to act like she is from the Philippines and not America.  When they left, she took just one thing with her, a battered cassette copy of The Beatles' Abbey Road ​that belonged to her dad.

Eight years later, she's living in Louisiana with her mom, trying to survive middle school with the most amount of normalcy as possible when your mom still acts Filipino. Despite the fact that she loves and adores The Beatles, and wants nothing more than to play music, her mom won't let her get a guitar, but things are OK enough—she has some friends at school and always is on the honor roll. 

OK until she finds out she's on the school's "dog list," a top-ten list put together every year by the 6th-grade boys, ranking the ten ugliest girls. Of course, that's the end of her social life, as her seeming friends abandon her and she has to figure out what steps to take next. (While still trying to talk her mom into getting her that guitar.)

At my library, we have this book shelved in the junior fiction section, which is for kids about 8-13 years old. I feel like this book is sort of in the middle, between junior fiction and YA. On one hand, it's a pretty fast read and isn't very long, so in that sense, it's totally a junior book. The resolution also felt pretty junior to me. But the situations Apple finds herself in feel bigger than what really happens to 12-year-olds. Do they really go on date dances in fancy dresses? (Utah culture is kind of strange, so honestly, I don't know what's normal!) The dog list seems like an older teen thing to do, and the worries about boys also felt too old for 12-year-olds.

But that is a minor quibble over a sweet book. Even if it's not music that I love, I nearly always love books with music in them.  And Apple's transition from being ashamed of her heritage to at least understanding it was beautiful to watch. And it made me interested in getting to know The Beatles better.

"Write what you know" is an old adage for fiction writers. I think it can be taken in the sense of "know what you write," meaning if you want to include details about something you haven't experienced—or don't personally know—you can, so long as you do the proper research.

Sometimes I come across details in novels that drive me nuts because it's obvious that the author did not do the proper research. If I were the editor I'd write a note: you need to know this topic better to make the writing make sense.

Such was the case with Hilary T. Smith's YA novel, A Sense of the Infinite, a book I otherwise enjoyed immensely. Except for the fact that it includes gymnastics, which of course would be lovely if the author actually got the details correct. For example:

1. Say your best friend Noe has been in gymnastics for forever. You don't decide to join the gymnastics team as a high school senior and then just sort of, you know, do gymnastics. You especially don't get to compete in gymnastics meets when you're 17 and just started the sport a month ago. It takes years​ to develop gymnastics skills, strength, flexibility, and hand toughness. Even if you were a gymnastics savant, your body requires time to be able to execute gymnastic moves.

2. The competition for gymnastics scholarships is fierce. The girls who get them have competed at elite level for many years, not in high school competitions.

3. For that matter, there are almost no high schools with gymnastics teams anymore. It is almost entirely club teams now.

4. Vault doesn't make your hands rough. You touch the vault for approximately 1.5 seconds. Bars make your hands rough.

OK. I feel better having vented that frustration, because aside from those (entirely wrong) gymnastics details, I enjoyed this book. It tells the story of Annabeth and her best friend Noe, and their transition during their senior year from absolute best friends to sort-of enemies.  Annabeth discovers a secret about herself—she was conceived when her mother was raped in college—just before high school starts, and that news makes it seem impossible to be "normal." Until she meets Noe, who seems to make the world good again. They form a fast friendship that lasts all through high school. Until senior year, when things start to fall apart.

In a sense, this is a sort of standard-issue teen plot: friends figure out the breaking point of their friendship. So some of the plot was expected. This is when I have to stop and remind myself that I'm not really the audience for the book. Teenagers who are living through friendship troubles would like this because it mirrors and reinforces their experiences, and hopefully lets them see that they will survive. For me, looking back, it created something I didn't expect. It made me think of some of my own teenage friendships that exploded and see how I wasn't only the victim—how my thought processes and actions might have contributed to their decisions. It actually brought me a sense of peace, which is strange as I didn't consciously realize I was still carrying around some of that weight. (Maybe that's why we adults continue reading YA fiction...because we're never completely done with processing our high school experiences? Or, at least some of us.) My favorite paragraph was this one:

We stood in the hall, people flowing past us like water. It seemed like the kind of moment in which we might have forgiven each other, in which two people with a history of friendship might reasonably be expected to forgive each other. I could see the moment of forgiveness blowing past us like a flowered dress tumbling in the wind on the side of the highway. Either of us could have said, Pull over and grab it! But neither of us did.

But the story also went in a way I didn't expect. (It seems like almost every YA novel I've read recently has thrown teenage pregnancy in, in some form or another.) It isn't just about friendship, or only Annabeth's with Noe, but about the process of finding new friends and letting people into a seemingly-closed circle. It's about how choices influence more than just us. Teenage depression, anorexia, bulemia just a bit, but also some coping as well. And how forgiveness really can change things for the better.

So, a few expected plot turns and those entirely wrong gymnastics details aside, I'm glad I read A Sense of the Infinite, if only because of the clarity it brought me about some of my past.

One of my favorite running blogs is the Hungry Runner Girl. Her posts always make me laugh, and plus, we live in the same valley. I read this on her blog a few days ago and I liked the questions, so I thought I'd answer them here, just for fun.

1. Would you rather run along a beach path or on a mountain trail?
While I love, love running on the beach, I will always choose the mountains. I love, love, love running in the mountains.

2. If you could choose the flavor of Gatorade at your next race’s aid stations, what would it be?

Gatorade gives me a stomach ache, so I choose none.  But, my favorite flavor of Gu is the espresso. (It's actually the only one I can stomach, mostly because the texture is more like caramel than snot, like the rest of them.) Can they have that at the aid stations?

3. If I gave you a $100 gift card to a running store, what would be the first thing that you would purchase with it?
Running shoes. I hate feeling like I'm wearing them out all the time, but I also feel guilty every time I drop $100 on running shoes. 

4. Do you prefer to follow a training plan or wake up and decide then how far and how fast you want to run?
I almost never wing it. I usually go on a route I figure out before I leave. I use mapmyrun.com to figure out my routes and keep track of my workouts. Putting in my time so I can see my pace makes me feel like my workout is finished.

5. Would you rather start your run with the uphill and end on the downhill or start your run with the downhill and end with the uphill?
I like any sort of hilly route, but I do love finishing with the uphill. It feels less like cheating. Sometimes I'll park at the top of the Provo River Parkway and go downhill first. And two of my favorite routes involve parking at the Provo Temple and going downhill first. But honestly, it's harder to find uphill-first routes so I don't to them often. 

6. When you can’t run, what type of cross-training do you choose to do?
Hiking or walking. If I have to go to the gym, I've developed an affection for the rowing machine.

7. What is your preference—> Out and back, point to point or loop runs?
I like different things about each one, unless it's a race, and then I want point to point or loop. I don't mind a small out-and-back portion in a race, but seeing the same scenery twice seems like a waste of my registration fee.

8. If you could recommend ANY running related item to a new runner, it would be a—>
Skirt sports running skirt. (Unless the new runner is a dude!) They are my favorite. The inner shorties seriously do. not. budge, even on, ummmm, thicker thighs. Plus the pocket on the leg holds a data phone with no worries of it falling out. Why a skirt? There's something about feeling pretty or cute or just a little bit kicky on a run, especially when you need to run but are feeling sort of blah about it.

9. Do you ever see any wild animals while out on your runs?
No! And I'm sort of disappointed about that.

10. Ever gotten lost while out on a run?
No. I'm pretty rigid with my routes.

11. If you could have one meal waiting and ready for you each time you got home from a run for the next 30 days… what would that meal be?
I always have a protein smoothie after a run, and I can't imagine having anything else. It would be nice to have it ready for me! I put in: 10 ounces milk, I scoop vanilla protein powder, a splash of something citrus (orange, lemon, or lime juice), and 1/2 cup frozen mixed berries just in case anyone wants to make me one.

12. Capris or shorts… what do you run in most often?
I wear running skirts most often in the summer, since it's hard for me to find shorts that look OK on me and are long enough to stop the chafe. In the fall and spring I love capris.

13. At what mile (or how many minutes) into your run does your body start to feel like it is warming up and ready to go?
About 4 minutes in.

14. What do you do with your key when you run?
Ideally, leave it at home! If I have to do something with it and I don't have a secure pocket, I take it off the ring and tie it to my shoe.

15. If you could relive any race that you have done in the past, which one what it be?
The Moab Other Half Marathon. Even though I've since run several sub-two-hour half marathons, I still would like my first one to have been that race. Plus, it was beautiful. 

16. What type of run is your least favorite type of run?
I know this question means tempo, or speed work, or long run, etc. I actually really like them all though, so I have to go with this: my least-favorite type of run is anything on a treadmill. I hate running on a treadmill!

17. What has been your biggest motivation lately to get out the door to get your run on?
The fact that my legs are starting to feel better. Not completely normal, but at least a little bit better. So I'm motivated by the sad and frustrated Amy I was when I couldn't run at all.

18. When you go for a run, do you leave right from your front door or do you drive somewhere to start?
I usually start from home (after walking to the corner where I start all of my runs), although my first choice is to run starting from somewhere else. I just can't always swing the time to drive somewhere AND to run.

19. When running in daylight—> are sunglasses a must or an annoyance?
In running, so as in life: sunglasses are always a must for me. 

20. When you get tired, what keeps you from quitting? Sheer stubbornness. I might get slower but I almost never stop. I don't want a bad or a hard run to beat me. I read somewhere that we runners take our self esteem from how our runs go, and this is true for me at least. No matter how slow, if I finish I feel like I accomplished something. If I am really, really tired, I think about Kendell, who can't run at all (because of his artificial hips) and I keep going for him, since he can't.

If you are a runner, I think you should answer these questions on your blog and then link me up to your answers!

I sort of feel like I didn't accomplish much in June. Jake and Nathan both had two trips: Nathan went rock climbing in Zion, Jake went to California for his HOSA competition, and they both went to Moab to go white-water rafting. So I couldn't ever really get us into a normal summer schedule...so I just sort of let June pass by. However, I did get a few things accomplished:

• I survived the great shower remodel. Our master bathroom shower was leaking...so we replaced it. It is so pretty now! I will post before and after photos once we also get the cabinet, counter top, and mirror replaced.
• I had a hamstring breakthrough. I decided that since NOT running isn't helping my hamstrings, I might as well run. One morning they were especially twingy, so I asked Kendell to rub them for me. When he started rubbing them, I started crying. Not just crying, but ugly crying. I have a theory that my hamstring pain is related somehow to my psyche and my levels of stress, and while I can't prove it, I will say this: Kendell kept rubbing and I kept bawling and twenty minutes later I let him stop, and my legs have felt so much better ever since. Not 100%, but manageable. I am paying attention to how they feel in relation to how *I* feel and what levels of stress I'm experiencing, and they definitely get twingy-er when my level is high. (PS, I know that "twingy" and "twingy-er" aren't words, but there isn't another word to describe how the pain feels. It twinges in electric twangs. Sort of like my legs are guitars. Anyway.)
• I ran more this month than I have since September. I got in 48.91 miles. Lots of trail miles, including one day on the Jordan River Trail. I love this photo I stopped to take:
• I hiked the Y mountain trail every Wednesday. This is my cross training day, and I love it. I always go up the trail past the Y, as far as I dare by myself. (The trail up to the Y is super crowded but almost no one goes past it.) One day I turned around when a rattlesnake shook its rattle at me! Here are the flowers the first time I hiked. They changed every week:
• I survived: Kaleb's 10th birthday party (I am the worst mom ever when it comes to birthday parties!), Kaleb's heart check up (he is doing just as well as can be expected), Kaleb's soccer camp (well, all I had to survive was getting him there on time; it bugs me that they start soccer camp at 9:30. It's too hot!), and our 100+ heat wave.
• Haley visited twice.
• I helped my mom start getting her house ready to sell. I hope she's really going to follow through this time!
• I mowed the lawn three times (Kendell did it once), planted a bunch of new flowers, and tried really hard to stay on top of the weeding and deadheading.

I'm going to try to be more productive in July. My goals:

• Spend some alone time with each of my kids each week.
• Exercise in some way every day.
• Finish Nathan's quilt.
• Put my Italy album together.
• Get back on the no-sugar horse.
• Scrapbook a little bit.
• Finish the essay I've been working on and submit it somewhere.
• Keep up my Wednesday morning hikes.
• Blog more. I have so many things I want to write about but I've felt so distracted.

How was your June? What's up with your July?