I ran today with my dad in my heart.

On the day he died, I went to the mortuary with my mom and sister. After we had filled out all the paperwork and answered all the questions, the mortician led us upstairs to the coffin room. Imagine a room you'd find in the upstairs of an old home, with that quiet, sequestered, old-wooden-beams feel, a high window and a squeaky floor and a dozen or more coffins on pedestals. Up another three stairs there was a smaller room, with a low ceiling. The coffins there were on lower frames, close to the ground; this made them feel shorter. I had a moment of terror there in that room: my heart pounded and my lungs gasped and I had to go back into the bigger room.

I don't want to be in a coffin. I don't want to be laid on my back, my body stiff, my hands in that doll-like pose. I don't want the lid to close on me, locking out light forever.

I didn't want my dad to go there either.

That moment of panic and heartbreak—for myself and for him—kept me company while I ran this morning. I thought of how, just before the casket was closed at the funeral, I slipped an arrowhead into Dad's pocket. This was to keep him company in the darkness. Under his burial clothes, his thigh was just like a stone. I had expected it to still have some softness, but it was granite.

I thought of a poem, The Truth the Dead Know, by Anne Sexton, which I have long loved but not really understood, especially this stanza:

They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. I still can't tell you what it means, but I know what it means exactly. He is gone—but, yet, he's still there, in the dark, in his casket, the one they closed above the man with the arrowhead in his pocket. And I am still striding the world, running my paths, wearing out my skin in blisters. Breathing and thinking and moving. And he is like a stone there in the cold dark.

The truth the dead know: they teach a little bit of it to us by their very deadness. It is a knowledge there is no words for.

One of my goals for this school year is to make better dinners on Sunday night. Not that I don't usually cook on Sunday nights...but lately it's been thrilling stuff like quesadillas, or pancakes, or even (hanging head in shame) Cheerios. I'm do this to make our Monday nights easier (left overs!) and to give us more time together as a family, eating dinner. My job requires that I work one evening a week, and between that and everyone's various activities and school things, family dinners are growing rare around here. And I don't like that!

The strange way my mind works means that if I add "blog about" to a goal, I'm more likely to do it. So that means I will be sharing a few more recipes on my blog during the upcoming months. I'd say I want to make it a weekly feature but, well, you all know how well I do at weekly features. (See my "Use Your Stuff" challenge for proof. Note that there's exactly ONE challenge there.)

Here's what I cooked this Sunday.

Teriyaki Beef (based on this recipe from my friend Jamie's blog) (adjust amounts based on your family!)

6-ish pounds roast beef
2 cups pineapple juice
1 cup soy sauce
1 can ginger ale
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 bottle of plum sauce
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
6 garlic cloves, pressed

Cut the roast into chunks. Pam your crock pot, then mix the juice, soy sauce, ginger ale, brown sugar, ginger, and garlic together right in the crock pot. Add the roast chunks. Cook on high for 1 hour, then low for about 5-6.

About 45 minutes before you want to eat, pull the chunks of meat out of the broth. Strain the broth through a cheese cloth. (This is to get out any offending little bits of gristle or fat. If that sort of thing doesn't bother your eaters, you can skip the straining.) Stir together:

2 T corn starch
2-3 T of broth

Return the broth to the crock pot. Whisk the corn starch/broth mixture into the bigger batch of broth. Set your crock pot back up to high.

Remove the fat, then shred the beef with two forks. Put the meat back into the broth in the crock pot. Cover and let simmer while you cook the rice.

Start the rice. I always cook sticky rice, and for this dish I substituted one can of coconut milk for an equal amount of water. (I used to do this more often, and with two cans instead of one, back when my favorite grocery store sold coconut milk for .50. Now that it's almost $3.00 a can...I don't do it as much.) The coconut milk adds a creamy, slightly-sweet twist to your rice. (Translation: it's so delicious this way it makes me weep.) You can also make it with your traditional rice preference.

When the rice is finished, serve the shredded beef over it. We had it with biscuits and grapes as sides, but any sort of fruit would be good.

I loved this recipe, and get this: every. single. child. loved it too! Even Kaleb, who is the pickiest eater. (He did not, of course, eat any grapes, which are "disgusting.") It was simple and fast, and I cleaned out the three different bottles of almost-gone soy sauce in my fridge. Sweetness!

What did YOU make for Sunday dinner this week?

A couple of days ago, in an effort to prepare ourselves to hike Timp next month, Kendell and I went on a hike. We've not hiked enough this summer, mostly because of time issues. So we decided to just go and hike. Up for an hour, down for an hour. If we didn't make it to the top, that would be fine. The top wasn't the goal; just the exercise.

For our first get-in-shape hike, we went to the Slide Canyon trail. Here, this is better known as the Y mountain. Because this particular mountain has an enormous Y painted on it. (For BYU.) We've hiked the Y several times, of course, as good Utah County-ites. But we've never continued on. The trail past the Y will eventually take you to the top of Y mountain. We didn't, of course, make it to the top of the mountain in our hour up. But we did hike through a landscape we've never experienced before.

This is an experience I love: going somewhere new. It also frustrates me to think I've lived my entire life within driving distance of this trail and I've never experienced it; it reminds me of how much more fully I should be living my life.

Once you leave the Y behind, the trail slants up and across the entire face of the mountain, until it finally curves around the south haunch and takes you east, into the canyon. The west face of the Wasatch mountains are visible from the main freeway, but the deep canyons are hidden. This one is steep, narrow, craggy with granite and crowded with trees. We didn't see another soul on the trail, save the eight lizards we disturbed. We hardly even talked, just pushed up through the trees.

Now, of course, I'm determined to go again when we have more time, so we can see the entire trail and get to the top. But for now, I wanted to just share this gorgeous sunset we experienced, coming back down the trail:

Tonight, while working on revising some of my Textuality class (which is going to start up again on October 6), I did something I haven’t for awhile:

I ate a big bowl of my favorite ice cream.

(Breyer’s mint chocolate chip, if you’re curious.)

Why the hell not? Because here’s the deal:

I have been running a lot lately. A lot. Like 35-40 miles a week.

I’ve been doing sit ups and push ups and various other calisthenics.

I’ve even done some weight lifting and Pilates classes at the gym.

AND!

I’ve cut way back on my calories over the summer. Barely any sugar-filled drinks. Protein shakes or oatmeal for breakfast. Smaller portions at every meal. A drastic (although, granted, not total) cutting back of the cookies-candies-cakes-and-snacks food group. An increase in fruits and vegetables and whole grains. I haven’t put even a dollop of half-and-half on my berries.

I’ve been taking my daily vitamins. (B, D, E, calcium, and fish oil.)

I’ve been cooking with olive oil.

I’ve been sleeping more.

I’ve been drinking water.

And no matter what I do, the scale refuges to budge.

Before you say it, I know the argument: all that healthy stuff is causing me to gain muscle. Magic how that losing-weight/gaining-muscle balance remains exactly the same! Really, though, I know this isn’t true because my clothes don’t fit any differently.

Well, that’s not completely true.

My bras are now too big. (All of them, even my running ones, which has resulted in the most-unpleasant sort of chafing I've ever experienced.)

Sweetness! The one place I don’t want to lose any weight is the only place it’s melting away.

To say I’m frustrated is to understate the fact. Vastly understate it. Why is none of this working? Why does my scale refuse to budge? What am I not doing that I need to do in order to finally lose the last ten pounds I’ve been battling for two years now?

I was certain the marathon training would help. I mean, if you do the math, I should be able to lose a pound a week, because I am exercising nearly a pound’s worth of calories during my seven days. I’d even settle for half a pound a week. But even that regimen, while improving my endurance and even my speed a little bit—and giving me a wicked watch tan line on my wrist—is not bringing me any closer to my desire.

So tonight, I drowned my sorrows in ice cream. Obviously, that is not going to help my weight-loss goals. But somehow it feels like it won’t hurt them, either, as seemingly nothing can make my scale budge.

Last week, I had an epiphany. My two oldest were away at a youth conference with their church friends. My tween was spending a few days with his grandma Beth. And for two entire days, it was just me and Kaleb. We laughed, we played, we went shopping at Walmart (save me) for all his school supplies.

My epiphany was this: it's much easier to focus on your child's needs when there's just one child doing the needing.

I know! It hardly seems like a noteworthy realization. And it's not as if I want to get rid of any of my kids or anything. I love them each! But I find myself wishing for more one-on-one time with them.

Or, as I discovered today, two-with-one is pretty good, too.

Nathan and Kaleb started school today, but Jake and Haley don't start until tomorrow. Just two kids at home, with a handful of back-to-school errands still left to do. So, after I took the kids to school, went running, and showered, we were off to the mall.

Haley was already mostly set for back-to-school clothes (although she did manage to find a few other things she needed today), but Jake, not so much. Shopping for clothes is not his favorite thing. But doing it with his cool older sister is something else entirely. They laughed and wandered the mall and made fun of odd clothes. She helped him pick out some cool T's. I was there in an advisory role only ("no, he needs a medium because it'll shrink and his shoulders will be too broad"). Well, and the financing, of course.

After the mall, we had a madcap run through Costco, Walmart, and Menchie's frozen yogurt before I had to hustle off to work. Throughout, there was laughing, teasing, quoting of lines from movies, conversation, and that teenage penchant for knowing exactly who is singing the song on the radio.

And there was happiness building in my heart. Sans my two youngest, I could focus on my two oldest and not be torn between the various levels of need. Instead I just immersed myself in the entire teenage experience.

When Nathan got home from school, he was annoyed that we went to Menchie's without him. I promised him that I would take him on his own one day soon. When we do, I'll immerse myself in his experience, too.

My world feels more full of expectation and possibilities and stronger relationships.

On the morning that Dad died, after the gentle hospice worker had come and gone, and the young undertakers had bundled him in their strange covering (thick, malleable plastic on one side, cotton pieced quilt on the other), loaded him into a minivan, and took him away, my sisters, mom and I found ourselves ravenous. As if the process of him dying fueled our innate hunger, our human response to nurture life with food.

So we went to breakfast.

While we were waiting for the pancakes, eggs, toast, biscuits, and immense amount of bacon we'd ordered, Becky realized that she hadn't received a response from one of our nieces, whom she'd texted with the news of Dad's passing. An awful thought crept into my head: what if she'd sent the text to the wrong cell phone number, so that niece ended up feeling bad that we hadn't told her? But then I thought about some unknown person—the one whose cell phone she accidentally used—receiving her gentle text: 
          Grandpa passed away at 6:20 this morning. He went peacefully and we were all with him.

I gasped, and shared my image of some stranger receiving this text. I don't know who started giggling first. Maybe it was simultaneous. But we started laughing. And we kept on laughing. Loud, gasping peals of laughter. Laughter that rose through my body in uncontrollable, delicious waves. Laughter that was just on the teary side of weeping.

Laughter that drew the attention of the other people in the restaurant.

A woman came over to our table. "I have to hear this joke," she said, which only made us laugh harder. After all, there was no joke. We were laughing at the horrible confluence of Dad's death and a missent text. I put my hand on my belly, trying to literally settle the laughter back into my body, and explained.

For a minute, as I told the story, I felt awful. Who can laugh on the day her father dies, especially such long and sustained and tenacious laughter? Who feels mirth on this day? But somehow, as the story wrapped up, I felt the awfulness drain away. What other day is there to laugh so hard? When he was finally free of his entrapment, and at peace? When he would take nothing else but joy in the sight of three of his daughters and his wife, laughing hysterically at something silly?

That experience let him know that we would be fine. That we will not do what he would not want us to do: get trapped in a mire of sorrow. Laughter didn't mean we were already forgetting, or that the sorrow had already dispersed. It meant that we were continuing to live, carrying his memory forward with us. A line from a random poem burst into my memory as the woman patted my shoulder: I have stolen/some of the light which drenches you this midnight/to wish you all the islands in the world/and every one a different kind of peace.

The food's arrival was what really quieted the laughter, although every one of us occasionally pealed out an exhausted giggle. We ate. I thought of a time I sat in that same restaurant with Dad, on Jake's second birthday, and all of us laughed at the sweetness on Jake's face when the staff gathered around him with a little cake, to sing happy birthday to him. We talked about funeral plans. Becky and I talked about running. Life moved forward a bit, with us—remembering, eating, and yes, laughing—living it the best way we could.

One of my favorite parts of working for Big Picture Classes is the summer class we do every year. It's always something new and unusual and fun—and FREE! This year is no exception:

If you're new to scrapping, or if you've been scrapping forever, this little class is something you will love! Each of the teachers focuses on one word each day (my word is cherish) and shares a layout and some scrapperly advice. Plus, if you sign up (you just have to create your account, put the Big Idea Festival 2011 into your cart, and check out—no credit card required since it's FREE!), you'll get to see a video of me talking about things like thesauruses and babies and dictionaries, AND you'll catch a glimpse of my messy scrapbooking closet and revisit my long hair.

Who wouldn't want to see that?

The workshop starts tomorrow, August 15, so hurry and get registered! If you sign up, let me know how it goes for you!

On Friday, August 5, 2011, my dad passed away.

There are so many things I want to write about, but I'm not ready to share yet. Still, I want to say this quick thing.

I've spent hours since Dad's death looking through photographs. Old pictures stuck in those metallic photo pages—some I have never seen before. My own pre-digital pictures. Every single folder on my computer. I've been working on this:

 
A collection of photos of Dad to put in the slide show Becky is making for his funeral.

I have so many good pictures. Photos of Dad with Mom. With Kendell. With my kids, and even by himself.

You know what I don't have? One single, solitary photograph that includes just me and my dad before he got sick.

Not even one.

A few weeks ago, Kendell took this picture of me and Dad in the courtyard at his home:

And of course: I love it. I'm grateful to have one last picture.

But oh, how much I wish I had one photo of the two of us together, before this hideous disease got a hold of him. This realization makes me weep.

So here is what I have to say: just go and do it. No matter how fat, grey, wrinkled, shriveled, or otherwise unattractive you might think you are. Get a photo. Not a group photo. Not an event photo. Just a picture of you with a person you love. Then do it again with another person you love. And then, again. Don't worry about feeling self conscious, or that someone might think you're weird for asking to have your picture taken, or that you want to lose five pounds first, or get your hair done, or at least put some make up on.

None of that will matter when that person you love can no longer be in a picture—because he or she is gone. What will matter is that you have it, that image. You won't look at it and think "look how fat I am." You'll look at it and think: I miss you, so how glad I am to have this picture of just us. 

Unless I am specifically assigned them for a barbecue, I never buy potato chips. That's because I like them enough that when I start eating them I can't easily stop, but I don't really love them. If I'm eating fattening, greasy potatoes, I'd way rather have them in french fry form.

Ditto Doritos: I never buy them. That's because I like them. I like them a lot. They remind me of being a kid, when my sister Suzette and I would ride our bikes down the block to the Little Store, which was a gas station + general store + paint-your-own-ceramics store. We'd each buy a can of Pepsi and a bag of Pizza Puffs, which were kind of like puffy Cheetos, except they were shaped like a slice of pizza and sort-of tasted like, well, pizza. (Does anyone else remember Pizza Puffs?)

Doritos remind me of Pizza Puffs.

This month, Costco had an instant rebate on Doritos. An enormous, gazillion-ounce bag of Doritos for just $3.25? We brought home a bag every time we went to Costco.

And we go to Costco a lot.

The month got even better when our local grocery store had Pepsi throwbacks on sale, 4 boxes for ten bucks. Ah, Pepsi Throwbacks! I curse you as I adore you! I love you so much I hate you!

Doritos and Pepsi: the very core of our July. But in case you were wondering what else I haven't blogged about (but still want to) this month, here is a break down:

• Despite my children's protests (nearly all of which included the word "stupid"), I instituted a no-electricity-before-noon rule. Oh, we had things like lights and air conditioning, and I'd even allow the radio. But video games, mindless computer time, and TV watching were strictly forbidden. While this didn't really result in more efficient housecleaning, it did mean more reading got done, which is an exchange I'll gladly make.
• What I don't understand: how, during the month of no-electricity-before-noon, my electricity bill was $178 dollars. What the? I had to read the bill at least ten times before that number would even compute.
• Our trip to Idaho, which included one day at Grand Teton National Park, one day at Yellowstone, and one day at perhaps the most beautiful cemetery ever.
• Kendell finished his photography class. Here is his final project. We spent a lot of time working on it together.
• Haley was gone 16 days this month: five for girls camp, three for the above-mentioned trip to Idaho, and eight more for another trip to Idaho with her friend Nikki. In between my dreams (which quickly dissolve into nightmares in which I'm sobbing as she walks away) about sending her off to various places (college, jobs, and one particularly strange one involving a sketchy modeling prospect), I've decided that teenage absences are the equivalent of pregnancy insomnia. Just a little taste of what will be coming up. I miss her already.
• Speaking of growing up. One day this month, Jake was very, very, very firmly reminded that if he didn't clean his room he would be facing imminent death. This room cleaning evolved into him giving all of his beloved-as-a-boy toys to Kaleb. K. was thrilled to be the recipient of marbles, a collection of black stones, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and a dozen Bakugon. I was happy Jake was so generous but devastated that he realizes he doesn't want his toys around anymore.
• Nathan got a hair cut and then found the hair gel. He likes spiking his hair in really, really sharp spikes and then poking you with his hair when you hug him. 
• Nathan finally got to go on a long-awaited scout camp out. Since I was working on the Friday he left, Kendell took the day off to get him ready. I don't know about your boys, but for mine? A campout is not complete without a can of spray cheese.
• Kaleb's month consisted of as much of his favorite activity as possible: playing outside with his friends. There is nothing, nothingthat makes him as happy as having someone to play with. Favorite activity: running through the sprinkler or, barring Mom's refusal to let him get wet, spraying the grass with the hose.
• We spent Independence Day like this: I went running in the morning, and then came home and mowed the lawn while everyone else putzed around. I insisted on an early-afternoon nap. Then we went to our friend's house for a barbecue. I brought chocolate sheet cake and blueberry pound cake. We planned on an hour or so of fireworks—these friends always get amazing fireworks—but it started to rain so we lit all of them off at once then ate dessert under their patio cover. I can't remember the last Fourth that included rain, but it was a memorable moment: the air cool and heavy with the scent of nitro, the delicioiusness of cake, and the rhythm of rain on a tin roof.
• July always means shopping at Nordstrom for back-to-school clothes. This year, since Haley is on the fashion board, we got to go the week before the sale started. It wasn't as fabulous as years past, selection-wise, but it was fun to shop early in curtained-off sections of the store!
• Jake landed his first job, doing yardwork for one of my librarian friends. She's commented several times on what a good worker he is. Cue beaming Momma!
• We finally renewed our Rec passes so the kids have been going swimming quite a bit. I confess that I do not love swimming and perhaps had at least one wife/mommy meltdown when I really just wanted Kendell to take the boys and let me stay home. Still, watching them frolic happily in the water and jump off the high dive made me forget the miserableness that is damp thighs rubbing together. (I firmly believe that if my thighs didn't touch, I would love hanging out at the pool.)
• One one of these swimming excursions, Kendell went ahead and took his cell phone swimming with us. Trust me: an hour in the pool, including some time in the hot tub and the sauna, is really not good on your cell phone.
• One day I dared to add chicken to my children's second-favorite pasta salad. You'd think, by their response, that I decided to add boogers to their second-favorite pasta salad. Apparently chicken in pasta salad is a horrid, horrid idea. (Kendell and I, however, both loved the chicken-inclusive pasta salad.)
• I did a lot of running, including five long runs: 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15 miles. Remind me to tell you about nearly being taken out by a bike rider on my 15-mile run. It's a great story involving my stellar ninja moves and cat-like responses. One aching shoulder, one sore wrist, and an enormous bruise later...

How was your July memorable?