Why Savannah did the dishes.

My apartment is a wreck.  It kinda reminds me of when I was a kid, how I couldn't keep my room clean.

Well... I still can't keep my room clean.

But this isn't about my room!  I mean, at least when the clutter and debris get out of hand it really bothers me and I clean it.  That's a vast improvement from the room I cleaned semi-annually as a teenager... the room that caused my mom to say, "Hey, let's finish the basement so Savannah's room can be two floors below mine and I won't have to wear a hazmat suit to walk through my house!"

Anyway, remember what I said about out-of-hand debris bothering me?  Well...

IT'S BOTHERING ME!!!

Unfortunately, my room is the least of it (especially now that I've cleaned it).  See, one roommate had a huge project that took up residence in the front room, and another roommate has her school stuff in the front room, and one roommate has all her school/work/life stuff in the front room, and there is a bunch of unclaimed mail that hasn't been removed from the table yet, somebody unloaded the contents of the storage closet into the front room, and somebody decided to move all the flower vases onto the table but not put flowers in them, and the pitchers that were in the way of the vases made it onto the table too, and the dishwasher exploded and flooded the kitchen and the carpet in the front room so the padding under the carpet has been removed and the carpet is all pulled up, there is shredded padding all over the house, the dishes have been piling in the sink and on the counters and table and stove top, and the whole place is in desperate need of a solid vacuuming.... but it's kinda hard to vacuum when so much clutter is in the way.  With all the stuff on the table, there's no where to sit when I eat, and with all the stuff on the couches, there's no where to sit period.

Basically, if my 13 year old self saw the level of bothered I'm getting over this, she'd look at the path she had carved in the clutter on her floor, shrug her shoulders and say, "Huh.  Weird."

And that is why I did the dishes.

Once upon a pasta

So, the servers crashed at work today.  It wasn't just any server.  It was the server that allowed us to charge credit cards, which meant that for half of my shift I sat there taking orders by hand.  It was nightmarish, but then something started to happen.  The call center swirled around me, and I suddenly realized I was dressed in a skirt, puffy sleeves, Victorian boots and those poofy pants things girls wore under their dresses, and my headset had turned into a tin can.  The tin can was attached to a string, and it ran through a hedge, and was attached to another tin can, which a customer was speaking into, telling me their order.

Then the hedge swirled.  I started to wonder what had been in the chicken leg I ate for lunch.  Maybe the chicken was a 'shroom addict before it got its head whapped off and its legs dipped in Barbecue sauce.

Anyway, when the technology continued to decrease, until I was dressed like a nun, dipping my feather in ink and scratching the order onto a piece of parchment.  Then the parchment disappeared and turned into a rock... and I lost ALL my work!

GRRR!  I should have waited for the technological digression to stop before attempting to record the order.  Anyway, at that point, I had two rocks, and I attempted to bang the order into the bigger rock.  The customer was grunting at me and pointing.  I think it had something to do with the wooly mammoth fur I was wearing.

Then I realized.

The customer was ordering a rock.

I stopped chiseling.  I gave the customer the rock.  He gave me a tuna fish as payment.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when the servers crash at work.  Be grateful for technology, for someday it might leave you.

Cars and problems and all sorts of whining and stuff

So, I'm kind of an idiot.  I mean, I love myself and I have lots of confidence, so don't go worrying about my self esteem or anything, but really... I'm kind of an idiot.

I'm also idealistic and demanding, and dramatically chicken and really good at running from things that scare me or make me think I'm gonna get my heart stomped on.


And then, when all is said and done, I just wish I knew how to make it better. 

The Historian

I've known for a very long time (like, since I was 13... I can pinpoint the moment exactly) that someday in the future I would be neck deep in the history of my family, researching it, discovering the people, and chronicling their lives.  I've dabbled in it a little - hearing stories from my mom, and occasionally my grandma, going on vacation to Colorado where my great-great grandfather was a doctor in a mining town, or visiting the cemetery just north of my home where my great-great-great-and-everything-else aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and all sorts of relatives are buried.

I've never really known when this was going to happen.  I remember once, I helped my mom in her family research, looking for names of our family who settled on the east coast back in... 1600's?  Maybe it was 1700's.  Something like that.  She discovered Jane of Nanjemy, and I found Elizabeth Jones.  It was SO exciting, and I had a wonderful feeling.  It was this overwhelming feeling of "right."

But, it only came once.  I didn't really go back - just helped her once, and then did temple work for the people we found.  I've wanted to do it more, but never really had the time... or felt like it was time.  I've always sort of felt there were other, more relevant to here and now things I should be doing. 

I took a class on family history about a year ago.  Yep, leave it to BYU to have a class devoted 100% to family history, that is completely devoid of anything else related to the study of history.  This class isn't a part of the history department.  It's religion.

Which basically means that while choosing classes not related to my history major, I chose a class related to my history major.

Anyway, when I took that class, I wondered if it was time to make my family's history a focus in my life.  My intuitive answer?  Nope.  Not yet.  I kinda felt like the class, while it presented a lot of useful information that would help me in the future (assuming I could remember it), but it wasn't particularly relevant to my present life.

Well, at least my present life if you were reading this about a year ago.

Flashing forward to the real present.

Today is General Conference.  I'm glad - I could use a solid dose of spirituality right now, and there have been a lot of really good talks.  One of the talks, by David Bednar, was on family history.  He talked about finding our family, and using the church website to get started, and doing temple work for them.  It was all pretty interesting.

The mostly interesting part, however, was the feeling I got.  It was exactly the same as all those years ago (I think it was about 6 years ago), when I was researching with my mom.  It was an overwhelming feeling of "right."

I think it's time to get started.

The best place to start is with what I already know - my own life's history.  It's where my story starts, and when I'm writing things I already know, I can learn and figure out what I'm doing.  I can also write about my immediate family, and then closely extended family.  When I have that chronicled, I can move to great-grandparents, and then farther up, so on and so forth.

But, where do I put all this research?  It's gotta be digital so it's searchable, and it's gotta be in a format I can enjoy working with.  But, it's also gotta be something I can print out and have a hard copy of.

So, I recently discovered that blogger will publish your blog posts into a book.  I love blogging.  It just made using the Internet to chronicle life and family history plausible.  Hopefully they'll keep offering that service for as long as I'm using it.

Anyway, I'm thinking about starting a new blog where I write my life's stories.  It wouldn't be a public blog - I'd have to approve readers first.  I'd include stories from my memories, and things from family members.  For example, last time I was at home I stayed up until about 2 in the morning (after thinking I was going to bed at about 9) talking to my dad, hearing the history of the computer and the Internet from his own experiences.  It was SUPER fascinating!  His playing with computers in high school, college where data was transferred with punch cards!  Yeah, that one blew my mind.  There wasn't a cable or anything.  You programmed things into a punch card.  I spent the whole time wishing I had a recorder or something to get all those memories down, so I could write it all out into a permanent form.  Maybe I can get him to email me the story or something. 

Anyway, stories like that are bits and pieces of the history of our world, from the lens of actual people who are living in this world.  I want to write them down.  Then I want to research other family members, and hopefully find their stories.  I want to keep going back and back and back until I find as many stories from as many different time periods as I can.

Now... where to begin...

Dear shoulder, what did I ever do to you???

Oh, that's right.  I took you tubing and dislocated you again.  Alright, I'm sorry.  I'll be more careful in the future... probably... as long as a fun tubing activity doesn't come up again.  Can you please let me get to sleep now???  If I can't sleep, I'm going to write boring stuff on my blog and annoy people on facebook.  You don't want that, do you?
Maybe I'll just go eat a cookie.
Love,
Me.

Muah ha ha ha.

Sometimes I appall myself with how evil I am.  Really, I'm scared of myself right now.  I'm afraid to go to bed, for fear that I might be hiding in the closet.  I'm in my worst nightmares, and my subconscious suppresses memories of me. 

What if I do go to bed, and I find myself hiding under my bed???  Or worse, what if I find myself in my bed???  Morning can't come soon enough!

Actually, morning is coming far too soon, which is a huge part of the problem.  Why am I even awake right now?  I've got class.  Go to bed, me.  Sheesh.