*My favorite time of day*

I don't know if this seems silly, but my favorite part of time day or night is those tender hours when I lay in bed next to my Pooh bear. He is tough to track down at other times of the day, but at night, when we are finally asleep, I love that we are close together. I think about what it is in our daily routine that keeps us from being the couple we once were, but I take comfort in the fact that I feel we express our truest selves when no one else is around, sometimes we aren't even fully there. It makes me smile that rough as it can be after being married for almost 8 years, we still sleep with our foreheads pressed together, our legs intertwined, or lovingly in an arm nook. So, though days may be long and we may seem tough, at night and in the morning, the place I want to be most in this world is snuggling back in bed.

*P.S. I Love You*

I love it when you search my eyes. I love feeling you breath on my ear. When I hear the steady rhythm of your heart, I am daily grateful for the simple fact that I am in possession of it. I marvel at the way I fit into your arm nook, and that though we have been snuggling for thirteen years, each night we drift towards each other in our sleep, and each morning we find our arms and legs twined together as if they are only comfortable when colliding. I am the one with whom you have chosen to share your heart and hopes since we were children and I am learning to be a loving steward of those dreams. You are the most gentle man I know, and I am sorry that I have been the cause of callouses in your heart. I pray for our marriage to be the completion of our joy in this life. Thank you for accepting the fact that though I may be perhaps a touch dramatic, I attempt to use that gift to issue dramatic and true apologies. Thank you for being mine for the last seven years. Happy Anniversary.

*Souvenirs*

My father traveled to Asia on a fairly regular basis when I was a child. I recall that though it was tough to see him go, it was always tempered with the satisfaction that when he returned, he came bearing gifts! I lived for these sorts of physical evidences of his love for us. A souvenir was his way of showing us that even when he was across the globe, we were there in his thoughts. I recall him bringing home paper fans, seaweed candy sticks (also known as yucky I taste like death sticks) and mega pumped up business class travel kits. I loved it when it was my turn to get the little black travel bag stuffed with mini toothpaste and toothbrush, sleep masks, floss, etc. This is something that I still look to see as an adult. Brian learned long ago, that when he goes on a trip, I delight in seeing (and have sadly come to expect) a token of his affection upon his return. In high school after a trip to Mexico, he came back with little rocks he collected over the week in every color of the rainbow. I would have never known it was possible to find a blue rock, or a yellow one let alone a perfect pink rock. After we were older and married, he went on a business trip to a work convention and knowing how obsessed I am with quality ink flow pens, he brought me home, to my utter glee, two gallon sized Ziploc bags of nothing but quality pens. It is now roughly 6 years later, and I still have an enormous box full of them, even after allowing a few sisters to raid my stash. Now that I am taking trips on my own, I have elected to continue this tradition myself. I have come bearing chocolates, books, and then most recently, a gecko.

Don't worry, you read it right. I returned from my latest romp to the humid land of Houston, and marvelled at the little critters that I just don't see in Utah. I was wooed by the lush grass, completely forgetting that in Texas, the grass fights back with an invisible terror-chiggers. I remembered that I was once again in the land of the cockroach and lizard. When I know that though I am in their territory, it is a temporary situation, I am able to enjoy the exotic nature of their existence. After returning home to my dry life in Utah, imagine my utter amazement then when I opened my suitcase two days after getting home, and something odd caught my eye. Right there, on top of my patent leather stilettos was an actual living creature. A gecko just ran onto my shoe and watched me, likely just as amazed that he had made it through the non-pressurized stowage cabin of the airplane as I. When I finally determined that I was in fact lucid, and this creature was here watching me, I went to get a glass to remove the new found friend. Returning just a moment later, he was gone. He may be in a nook of the still untouched suitcase, or perhaps scurried off to create a home for himself in the living room, maybe is is now fast friends with Mary Morey. Ooh, poor thing. I have a house of four bored kitties who love to chase flies and bugs.

*My only thought to my new house guest is good luck buddy*

*Listening is an act of love*

Yesterday I chose to sit quietly and just listen. Shutting the world out, I luxuriated in omniscience. I spent hours with voices filling me with the most beautiful confessions of love, sickening recounts of ignorance and hatred, and anecdotes of the splendor of decades past. I welcome you to one of the truest forms of love for our fellow man, StoryCorps. This is a project I came across through NPR (National Public Radio) which documents moments of every day Americans' lives. Those seemingly trivial moments and memories which slip away with age, illness, and pain. These are three minute excerpts of interviews between individuals who know each other intimately. I listened in on mothers and children, parents and teachers, sisters and neighbors, laughing with them, sobbing, and learning from them. One of the many that I repeated over and over again is a simple one called "Mom teaches Son That "Love is What You Do." It is from March 5th and the whole episode is about 2 minutes. There are a few things she said to her eleven year old son that were so beautiful to me, I thought almost instantly of how important it is to share them with you. I bring you a reply from a Florida mother to her son's query of her happy and hard times with her husband.

"Marriage isn't always pretty. I think sometimes we act like children and we need to be more mature about it because it is a privilege to be married to somebody and you need not to disrespect it like that, like sometimes we get angry and we do. . .I think your dad has taught me the meaning of love. Love is as much a feeling as it in an action. . . to love somebody is not just how you feel about them, but what you do also."

I am sure it may seem silly how moved I was but these few phrases, but I was struck with images of my own marriage of seven years. How over the years, truthfully, we have not changed. In our actions towards one another for the most part we are the same as we ever have been, but rather now, we have found peace and love through our treatment of one another.

At work, I chat. Clients come in to discuss their personal finances, and because of that, we often diverge onto other matters of importance in our lives. We begin a true conversation of the battles we face "choosing in" to this life day after day. One such conversation was held last week with a stunning and loving client Lillian. Lily is married to her second husband, and she wants passionately to be well matched. She loves him. She wants to be with him, and yet, she often feels a sense of lacking. I shared with her a similar time in my own marriage, and how I was able to escape that empty feeling towards my spouse. I told how there was a time when I just decided to pretend that Brian was the man of my dreams. I pretended that we had a well suited partnership, and that I wanted nothing more than to be in our home together, and treat him as the man of my most intimate prayers. I shared with her that as I treated him as my supreme match and love, eventually, I forgot that I was acting. Despite the years of pain, sorrow, and loneliness, he became that ideal match for me. As I treated my spouse, so he became in my eyes. It isn't that he has changed himself, only that I chose to shift my focus to those divine qualities he possessed rather than those I found fault in. How magnificent to be in a relationship with someone who chooses to see the perfection in us, rather than the failings. After all, that which we seek, will always come true.




Please enjoy listening to this beautiful interview which caused me to contemplate what love looks like in my own life as I am sure it will cause you to do with yours.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101507281

StoryCorps website states, "StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening."

*Final Goodbyes*

What if this was the last time? My mother told me of a time she spoke to a cancer specialist who determined that of all the ways to die, he would chose cancer. I was horrified for years after only having shortly lost my grandfather to a prolonged painful battle with pancreatic cancer. It took until I started thinking of the family I began creating to revisit my stance. Shortly thereafter, I flipped. Though his perspective at first sounded so vile, so sacrilegious somehow, in this new role in life, it made much greater sense to me. No, I am not a person who is oblivious to the often horrific pain cancer causes its patients and therefore families. I have known people young and old who have died of it leaving their families. What I will say is that I also know those who have died in a moment. Those fathers who went to sleep, their snores alerting the family to their presence on a mundane day, who an hour later, ceased to be. Which is preferable? What an absurd question. It is one that haunts me though.

When my grandfather finally scummed to his cancer, it was time. We had all prayed that he would finally be able to move on. That he could be released from his broken body. Friends and family were able to spend months asking the questions they deserved answered, saying those whispered goodbyes, creating those final moments. We could sit with him in the bed, read allowed his life's stories, sing to him to bring comfort, quietly serve and honor him. Seeing myself now as a family member over an individual, this is my choice. It gives time for hurt to be mended, resolutions to be made, and plans drawn up. What about our friends and family who disappear from this life? Those who drift away in their sleep? I had always wanted to simply twinkle away. Painless. Instantly. Hmm.

Tonight I awoke disoriented. I was petrified. What if I never saw my husband again, my sibling, my spouse, my parent, my friend? What do I do with my time? What is my legacy for this world? What have I been doing with my life each day to honor those I live for? How have I let them know that I feel only adoration for each of them? How have I demonstrated that each of these people has made my life worth experiencing? Have I taught children around me to love? To laugh? To forgive? Have I demonstrated that true power is found only in the power that we have to serve others?



Yes. . . I am certain that each of you has pondered these things. I am no philosopher, and have no unique perspective to share. I know that none of this is profound, but at times in life, I have felt such intensity of "the moment" that it has choked me. I know that some who read this may consider it trite, but tonight the possibility of losing a loved one awoke me with shuddering sobs, heartache, and terror. I frantically called my husband over and over again until I awoke him on the other side of the country. I had to fill him with everything I wanted him to know should we be separated. So now what? What makes this any different than any other supposed epiphany? Nothing, unless I chose to make it different. So what am I doing? I am reaching out to all of you and letting you know how true the influence of family and friends in my life have been. I have little interest in acquaintances, those superficial passers by who refuse to be known, or allow others in to know them. I thank each of you for choosing to connect with me heart to heart and spirit to spirit. Thank you for forgiving me my folly, the pains that I have caused, the distance that I have shown.

Life is beautiful. People are my life. You are my life.

*Mental Health Day*

There is nothing that bothers me quite so much as sick days at school or work. I know that this may seem odd, but it is so unfair! I never really get sick, and so while my colleagues all get a week a year that they can just sit at home vegging out, I go in day after day the picture of perfect health. Don't worry. My mother raised me right. To equalize this, my mother taught up the importance of "mental health days." You must know what these are... those days that you could not be paid to work. Those days where if you are there, you are secretly obsessing about, well today it was the state of my kitchen sink. Oh, and my house was sloppy, my laundry room deserved some attention, and the furniture placement in my front room is just wrong! So I did what I was raised to do. I went to work at 7:30 this morning and then left sick at 11.

I was mentally off today and kept feeling that I was going to throw up (though it is possible that rather than being ill, it had something to do with the fact that I was wearing a turtleneck and occasionally those make me gag). Regardless of the reason, it is time to move on. So, what is on the docket for the rest of the day then? Well, first is a blog post. Gimme a break, I don't do confession so this is my new forum for playing out my guilt. Next I am baking snickerdoodles, and another batch of homemade pizza for dinner as I want to use the leftover pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese. Oh, and it was perfect that I got to come home and see Brian off to the airport and make him a great lunch so perhaps that is karma telling me that I made the right choice? Ok, I know, it is a bit of a stretch! Well, off to baking!

*I recognize that the picture seems a bit off for this post so I will proffer an explanation. When my mind is blurry and overwhelmed, Brian leans his forehead against mine, and every time, life is clearer/better*

Whats cookin'

Tonight before Brian leaves town, I decided to go ahead and make him a rather basic dish to make him lonely for home cooked food. So, for dinner, I ended up making him a beautiful homemade margarita pizza. I am working on preparing things completely from scratch as Mme Julia Child's cooking philosophy has penetrated my heart. The dough is a simple recipe out of my Williams-Sonoma Savoring Italy book (pg 58). I chose to make the pasta sauce by hand, but really to keep it very simple with just some crushed tomatoes, oregano, garlic, a nice chiffionade of sage, salt and pepper. I will let you know how it ends up. After all, there is nothing like simple beautiful ingredients to make a perfect meal~

Ok, the update! The pizza "simple dough recipe" was more a labor of love than anticipated. Hah! This is why I love to practice recipes and then mark up the pages of the cookbook as I go. (Yes, it might be said that I have more notes in my cookbooks than bibles). Regardless, I failed to do something so basic, Mme Child put it in her foreword to her Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The true delight is that I JUST READ AND HILIGHTED IT LAST NIGHT!
It reads:

"We urge you, however much you have cooked, always read the recipe first, even if the dish is familiar to you. Visualize each step so you will know exactly what techniques, ingredients, time, and equipment are required AND YOU WILL ENCOUNTER NO SURPRISES."

Had I done so, I would have known that the dough is kneaded and then rests not just for the 2 hours I anticipated, but after punching it down, it needs to rest for ANOTHER hour! Why I didn't think of this very basic dough rule is beyond me. Anyhow, who doesn't want to eat dinner at a quarter to eleven! There is a rather remarkable comment to report, Brian actually said that it was good! I know that this doesnt seem signifigant, but in the almost seven years that we have been married, I can think of no other time this has occured. All that Brian has essentially ever said, is that the food was "fine". Tonight I got a "good!"

*Marriage is all about little victories*