So, I'm a day late doing this meme challenge, but it sounded interesting so I thought I'd do it anyway! So, without further ado, ten things that make me ME:

1. I can stand on my toe knuckles.  Not only that, but I MUST be able to bend my toes underneath my feet when I'm in the process of being creative.  I think better with my toes curled!
2. I can't stand sea food of any sort.  I can barely stomach tuna fish, but anything else is just yucky to me. I joke with Kendell---an avowed sea food lover---whenever he's crouched over a plate of shrimp that he's eating sea bugs.
3. Before I started having babies, I had blond hair.  Every single pregnancy has caused my hair to turn darker.
4. I like diet Coke and regular Pepsi.  The other way around (regular Coke, diet Pepsi) is just offensive to me!  Also, whenever I actually drink diet Coke, I GAIN weight.
5. I really and truly adore running. I know that sounds strange but there is just something about the pounding of my feet on a solid surface that makes me happy.
6. I have an awful habit of cracking my fingers.  This started in ninth grade---I can remember the first, really satisfying pop---and I have tried to give it up, but I can't.
7. I have a tiny little obsession with peeling fingernails. You know when you get a chip on your nail that you can wiggle another nail into and peel it back?  Oh yeah, I love doing that. My kids won't let me cut their nails because I want to peel them first.  I used to have a dream about a really mean, scary witch who nevertheless had great chips on her fingernails that she'd let me pick. I sometimes find myself looking at strangers' fingernails (think grocery-store line) or my students' (when I used to teach) and having to restrain myself from asking if I can pick their nails.  It's an issue.
8. I really, really like reading essays.  Well, good essays! (Bad essays that I HAD to read are one reason I stopped teaching.)
9. I liked and read Tolkein before it was cool to like and read Tolkein. I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy at least five times and I've watched the movies countless times.  I can also tell you how the movies are different from the books, including where they gave actual dialogue to different people.  Definitely a Tolkein geek!
10. I have a little thing for Dr. Martens boots and right now I own four pair.  They make me feel just a little bit connected to my high-school goth-girl alter ego.

Since a couple of you asked, I thought I'd share this layout before I move on to bigger and better things. So, here it is in all its stickered-up glory!

And here's a close-up of those fantabulous Boyd's Bear stickers:

Yesterday I did a scrapbook layout---with stickers. With Boyd's Bear stickers. True---they are alphabet stickers. But in my head I kept apologizing to my own little internal scrapbook editor (the one that laughs at my ideas) for being so old-fashioned as to use stickers. I justified my choice by explaining that I was using Chatterbox paper, the newest line. And a lovely modern design. And ribbon.  Ribbon is very September 2005, right?

But I couldn't help feeling a little silly over using those stickers. So why did I insist?  Well, I was working with a photograph of Nathan when he was nine months old, a photograph from Kiddie Kandids.  In the picture, he's sitting in a wagon and the wagon has teddy bears arranged around the wheels.  Why teddy bears?  Well, I'd found those stickers.  I wanted a photograph to match.  And here I am, five years later, finally getting around to making the layout. I found myself wanting to stay true to that original intent, using the stickers.

Which really got me thinking about how my scrapbooking approach has changed. I've been scrapping for a long time---since 1996---and have seen countless trends come and go. Somewhere in all those years I've lost my inital enthusiasm for product-driven pages like the one I made yesterday. Really, it's become too hard; there is almost too much stuff to buy. I've become a far more careful shopper after a recent purge of hundreds of dollars of stuff I'll never use.  But yesterday, I wanted to reconnect to that excitement. The feeling of finding the exact right paper or stickers for a layout. So I shushed my internal scrapbook editor and made my old-fashioned page.

Last weekend, Kendell and the kids and I went hiking with our friends the Hopkins.  This is an annual hike for us:  Rock Canyon, which is a lovely canyon in the Wasatch mountains, just east of Provo, Utah. I've no idea how long the hike is, but it took us two hours up, two hours back.  At the top is a picnic area, so we hike up with backpacks loaded with food (PB&J sandwiches, Ritz crackers, Oreos, water) and come down with happy bellies.

The leaves have just started to change color here and the hike was outstanding. Last year when we went, it was rainy and cool, but this year? Perfect.  I carried Kaleb in the Kelty and everyone else made it up on their own. This is where I am happiest.  Hot, sweaty, tired; my hair bedraggled and my legs shaky. But surrounded by my kids enjoying nature. Surrounded by these beautiful mountains (anyone who says Utah is an ugly state needs to get off the freeway and experience the mountains), the craggy granite faces, the enormous shale boulders. The trees in their autumn flames. Everywhere you look it seems there is a whisper: time, time, time, time, time.  You can feel, if you pay attention, the way that time has shaped this place, the ancient Lake Bonneville, the crackling fault lines. You hike, quads protesting, through the ghosts of glaciers.

But on a more immediate time table, I had a quick time-traveling moment of my own as we started back down the mountain. Jacob has become a bit obsessed with catching bugs. Everywhere we go he must search for insects, so the mountains were a smorgasbord of possibility for him. At the picnic spot, he caught an old grasshopper and held it very carefully (in his very dirty hands) while we rested and explored and took pictures.  He nearly cried when he had to leave it on the mountain, so he and I walked along, alone, in the back of the pack as we left the picnic spot. Once he was happy he headed on in front of me, giving me a blissful few moments to myself.

So there I was, alone, in a tree-rimmed meadow full of wild purple asters and yellow black-eyed susans. I bent down to take a picture of the flowers and suddenly I caught it: the grasshopper smell. The smell of asters and dry grass and the trees changing colors. The smell that gathers around old grasshoppers like Jake had held, the kind that are so old the sun has leached them to an ivory color and they take slow, painful hops. That smell---dust and worn-out green---brought me to my childhood days when I loved (even then) the outdoors. Brought me to the time when those slow grasshoppers were fascinating, when entire afternoons could be spent watching them hop, seeped in that smell.

So I stood there transfixed until Kendell came back to find me. I felt this sense of renewal, as if I'd found a bit of my childhood self in that canyon, and she reminded me: slowly. Smell. Taste. Smile. Run. Life is a miracle.

(btw...every time I hear the word "tag" I remember a flier I got once from a scrapbook store, advertising their newest class:  "Tag Your It!" and I get annoyed all over again! Just what is my IT and exactly where do I place that tag?)

So, Sophia tagged me with a challenge:  List ten kind things someone's done for you this week.  Here 'tis:

1. A neighbor brought buy a big bag of clothes her son had outgrown, summer clothes for next year. Normally I'm not a big hand-me-down kind of gal, but these were awesome clothes, from the stores I shop in, and well-taken-care-of---no weird stains or tears or missing buttons.
2. Another neighbor called to offer her son's outgrown cub-scout shirt for Jake.  He won't start cub scouts until January and I didn't even realize you had to buy a shirt for cub scouts.
3. One of the women at church brought me a piece of notebook paper on which she'd jotted down the details of Kaleb's blessing last month.  I'd been too nervous to remember my notebook and so am thrilled to have this gift!
4. My neighbor Julie kept Jake with her on Monday while I took Haley and her cousin Madi to dance class, thereby alleviating 40 minutes of "I hate running errands" whining.
5. My other-side-of-the-fence neighbor sent over a bowlful of fresh, garden-grown, ripe tomatoes.
6. Kendell's parents brought us some fresh, garden-grown, delectable zucchini and summer squash.
7. A stranger we passed on our hike last weekend (more details on that tomorrow!) told me I was "a brave girl" for carrying Kaleb in the baby backpack.  I'm not really sure why that makes me brave, but it still made me happy!
8. My friend James, who went on that hike with us, brought me a copy of the pictures he took (with his better-than-mine, awesome camera!).
9. Kendell kept Kaleb yesterday so I could go to the gym.
10. Costco had both sugar-snap peas AND lovely, big, luscious raspberries.  (I know that wasn't a personal kindness, but it felt like it!)

Geez, typing up this list makes me realize that I have some GREAT neighbors.  And reminded me that I've got an inordinate fondness for vegetables and fruits!  I'm now tagging  Kelly and Chris.

Having been challenged by this 2peas post I'm making a list of what is happening in my life right at this moment:

• Kaleb is taking his mid-morning catnap
• Nathan is watching Spongebob against my better judgment
• I'm eating frosted mini-wheats, which has become my daily habit since school ended in May
• My washing machine is already going (a load of whites!)
• I keep glancing over at a layout I did last night, trying to decide if I like it or not
• Aside from that load of laundry I've not yet started any housework, so my bed isn't made and the kitchen's got the breakfast-detrius thing going
• Yesterday I read an interview in Tin House Review about Mark Strand (a poet) and this morning I keep repeating the lines from one of his poems I saw him read once:

I am the last of the platinum
Retrievers, the end of a gorgeous line.
But there's no comfort being who I am.
I roam around and ponder fate's abolishments
Until my eyes are filled with tears and I say to myself, "Oh Rex,
Forget. Forget. The stars are coming out. The marble moon slides by."

At our public library, above the entrance to the Quiet Zone (the young adult and adult fiction, the nonfiction, the poetry) is written this little poem, by Emily Dickinson:

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

(That slant rhyme---away/poetry---gets me every time!) When my horde and I headed into the Quiet Zone, they---or, more rightly, the stroller---were already carrying gajillions of books. I herded them over to a quiet little corner, with a window and three green leather chairs, so they could start reading while I browsed for a few books for me. I emerged from the stacks fifteen minutes later clutching a novel by Iris Murdoch, one by Madeleine L'Engle, and two collections of essays.  I was most thrilled about the essays (told you I'm geeky!), one an assembly of writings about writing from the New York Times, the other from poet Wendell Berry.

It was only as we walked under Emily's quote and up to the circulation desk that I realized how silly we must have looked. I was carrying Kaleb as the stroller had filled up with books. Nathan was skipping along with his special I'm-really-happy-about-this skip. Haley was reading---a retelling of Fin Mac Cool  with luscious illustrations---while successfully navigating around the potted marigolds. Jake was looking at a book about spiders (his current obsession) to find the picture of what a black-widow's bite looks like, so he could show me (because I need another thing to have nightmares about). We ended up checking out 54 books.

And if that doesn't tell you I'm raising a crew of book lovers---all steering their own delightful little frigates---then this will.  As we drove home, Kaleb spoke up in his sweet little voice, sounding his "I'm starting to get hungry" noise, which sounds like "hi!" and Haley said, "Mom! WHAT will we do if Kaleb doesn't love books like the rest of us?" The horror in her voice was akin to someone talking about, say, concentration camps or the nuclear bomb. I think that with the four of us reading to him, he'll hardly stand a chance of feeling neutral about books; he'll either adore them or detest them.  As with all my kids, I'm leaning towards the love feeling.

And with that I'm going back to my already-half-devoured book.

Warning:  I'm not sure this post will have a point!

Today I had breakfast with an old friend, Tracey. She used to live across the street from me. Our daughters are only one day apart in age, and our two middle kids are just six months apart. She was my friend when I was a young mom trying to figure out how to be successful at the motherhood thing.  A few years ago, they built a new house and moved.  We've kept in touch but not as much as we should have.

Seeing her and talking to her made me think about the friendships I've had in my life.  There are definitely some friendships I am glad are over (mean Melissa springs to mind, who stole my high school boyfriend, as did Trashy Tara...but that might be more of a reflection of my choice in boyfriends). But there are some friendships that dissolved not because something bad happened--- just because time happened. Like Michelle, who used to live around the corner from me and who moved to St. Louis so her husband could go to medical school. I still miss her uncomplicated friendship every time I walk past her house. Like Brooke, whose husband's job took her to Denver and then to Phoenix. I photographed two of her babies being born. Our husbands were good friends, too, and very similar, so sometimes when Kendell does something annoying, the thought pops into my head:  if Brooke were here, she would SO get how I'm feeling right now!

As I wrote this, I realized: the friends I valued who I don't have in my life anymore are gone because they moved on to bigger and better things. Maybe I'm feeling melancholy because my life is still the same. Same house for the past twelve years, same old truck parked on the side, same worries and anxieties. Same hopes and dreams, still unfulfilled.  But I'm also at a really, really peaceful time in my life. I'm not complaining. Just feeling like I should be more appreciative of the friendships I have right now. Because who knows what change tomorrow might bring?

I have this silly theory about why I love baby clothes so much. I think that when a baby is born, he brings with him a bit of the detrius of heaven---a few grains of sand, some soil, pollen and petal pieces, crumbs from the last piece of cinnamon toast he ate before he came. And every time he wears those newborn clothes, the first, tiny outfits, little bits rub off and get caught in the folds and seams and buttons. So even after he's grown out of them, there they are, small connections to the angelic baby he once was.

My favorite of all the baby clothes ever are newborn gowns. You know the ones---with the flaps that go over the hands. Carters are my favorite, but the babyGap ones are a close second.  I had twelve of them for Kaleb.

And today I put them all away.

He turned three months last week. And it's the rule I've made with myself: at three months, the gowns must go.  Probably his should have been retired a few weeks ago---he's a chubby, long baby. His arms are so long that I was never able to fold the flaps down over his hands. Now the wrists are too short and his chest is too wide.

Before I put them away, I snapped a few pictures. Nathan thought I was silly for doing this.  "You're taking pictures of clothes, Momma!" he laughed. But it's either take pictures and imagine a scrapbook page or have a complete meltdown. My baby is growing up already. It's not fair how quickly it happens.  So I snapped a picture. Then I snuggled him and rocked him and held his surrendered-to-sleep body. Yep, I cried. A lot. This is his first rite of passage.  It's a silly one, more about his mom than about him. I can't help weighing what comes after this three-month mark with what has come before.  I look forward to him growing and becoming a person, to all his firsts. But I already miss his little days. I already miss yesterday.

On Saturday night, Kendell and I had our homely little version of a date: I ran out for these awesome nachos that we love---I don't want to consider how many calories are in those beautiful, cheese-laden, dripping-with-salsa and coated-with-beans nachos---and came home to watch a movie.  The boys were asleep when I got home but Haley decided that she didn't want to go to sleep.  Instead, she asked if she could look at the scrapbooks I've made for her.

Obviously she knows how to persuade her momma; I'll let anyone stay up 'till midnight if they're reading scrapbooks!  It took her the entire movie to read through the three albums I've made for her. When I tucked her in bed, she was buzzing with comments to share, things she hadn't known or had forgotten until she read about them on the layouts.

Once she was asleep, I sat in the living room and looked at her books, too. I've been scrapping since 1996, so some of these layouts are old.  You know the image---sticker sneeze, photos hacked with scalllop-edged scissors, incredibly cheesy titles. Flipping through these layouts that I've not looked at in at least two years, I realized a few things.  I'm glad we've gotten past the phase of tracing images with colored Zig markers. It's a relief to not have to search for themed products for every single event. And how fabulous is it to have pattern paper that doesn't have a white background?  (Think Paper Patch's first line, which I owned at least three of every single pattern and color!) My gut instinct that, for me, the most important thing about scrapping will always be the words proved true, because I noticed the writing much more than the product or technique (even the horrible ones!).My photography skills have improved dramatically (as the cost of my cameras went up and up and up!) And I was definitely skinnier ten years ago!

I had this feeling of flipping through layers of time. When I looked at any given page, I remembered not only the event itself, but the making of the layout, too.  As if each layout were built of strata, like stone: the person I was in the pictures, the person I was making the layout, the person I am, looking at the layouts.  Different versions of myself. I suddenly saw---for the first time---that I'm not just recording stuff about my kids. I'm also keeping something of myself in my layouts.

Another something to love about this scrapbooking bug that I've caught!