What I'm Doing Right Now, This Very Second.

I'm sitting on my bed with the just-read Sunday New York Times spread out all over and my laptop resting on my outstretched legs. The kids are all in bed and the dog is wandering, wondering who she'll settle with tonight: Mary, Tyce, or me? (Personally, I think it would be me if the kids didn't keep bribing her with chicken jerky.) Bryce has a case going to trial first thing tomorrow morning, so he had to go into the office. I miss him already in that post-vacation, I-don't-want-to-resume-normal-life longing I always feel. The icy-cold air conditioning is making me wish I had a sweater on, and though I've tucked the white duvet around me, I'm relishing that my bedroom has become my own private December.

Thinking of dreams. While I was gone to Utah I had the strangest and most disturbing dream. I was in my kitchen, when I saw something spine-tingling and heart-dropping at once. "Bryce?" I said, cautiously, "You know how I'm really observant? Well, look at this dishwasher. It's not ours. Someone has come while we were on vacation and replaced our black dishwasher with a 1970s white model. Someone took our dishwasher. They took it! And they must have swapped ours for theirs. Yes, that's it. And there's only one person I know with this white dishwasher: [Random Boy I Hardly Know in Real Life]." And then I proceeded to awkwardly confront this teenager in a crowded park. I don't remember how this got resolved; for all I know he could have morphed into a giant lemur who took me to a rainbow to see baby unicorns sliding into tubs of cotton candy. All I know is that I woke up feeling very violated and disturbed that someone would break into my house, steal my dang dishwasher, and replace it with another.

I must have deep-seated appliance issues. Oh, the things that dreams can tell you.

Now I'm thinking about how today is July 24th, Pioneer Day in Utah and the world-wide LDS church. And how the SundayStyles section of the Times is dedicated to New York's allowance and celebration of same-sex marriages. Sometimes it's like I'm living in two different worlds. Do you ever feel like that? That what is at the heart and center of one community isn't even on the radar of another. In the entertainment world there's no bigger news than the untimely death of Amy Winehouse, and the obsession with the age of 27. I can't imagine anything else as the cover story for the latest issue of US Weekly. All of this on the 24th of July.

In church we sang "They, the Builders of the Nation" which ends each verse with the lines, "Bless-ed, honored, pioneer!" When I studied abroad in Italy, the same knickknacks were sold at every touristy venue. I couldn't help but sing, "Bless-ed Catholic souvenir!" every time I passed another Mary candle. . .  I would like you to believe I sang this song to myself, but being that I was 21 and feeling clever, that was not always the case. I almost bought a strand of rosary beads because things always seem "must-have" when you're in a foreign land. I was not above the pull of the blessed Catholic souvenir. The downside to my alternate wording, of course, is that every Pioneer Day I must force myself to sing the real words to avoid offending and confusing anyone around me. Because let's face it, when you sit as far back as I do, there aren't many people singing at all.

Tomorrow is a new day of doing who-knows-what . . . definitely housecleaning, possibly grocery shopping, hopefully swimming. I've taken my last sip of water. I'm getting up to turn off the lights and whisper one last "Go to sleep" to the big kids. I'm back in my room, ready to say my prayers. I've shoved the papers to the floor because I just got the text that Bryce is on his way home. I have one *eye open and one *eye squinted shut. I just realized that I typed the word "I" instead of "eye" twice--as in TWO TIMES--in that last sentence before I corrected it. Seriously, that's insane. And annoying. Well, the time is at hand for me to sign off and bid you farewell as I write the very last words of this post, which are, finally, at long last . . .

Good Night.

Tyce on his way to YASE registration. I didn't want to leave you photo-less.