The One About My Hands

I went with two friends to the temple in Newport Beach last week. I really like to go by myself. I know that sounds selfish, but I love the time in my car by myself to think about things, and to contemplate and ponder. I love the quiet in the temple with just my own thoughts. But I have become somewhat of a hermit lately, and I suppose it is time to try to break out of that. I just knew that I really needed to go that day.

I sat by my friends before we left to go home. We whispered until a nice lady showed us somewhere where we would be more quiet:). We were still wearing white, and sitting on the benches in the dressing room. One of my friends was struggling with a difficult family situation. I watched her hands as she wiped away tears that were streaming down her face. I looked down at my own hands. I have never had beautiful hands, but there is something about the fluorescent lighting in the temple, that makes all of my scars from the past eighteen months show up, like white under a black light. My burns from last year look sort of purple. I see a deep scratch from last month along the back of my left hand. And there is my poor misshapen finger, with a knuckle red and shiny because the skin is pulled tight over it. No, definitely not beautiful hands.

And yet… here in this place I have just received the most amazing blessings to be found anywhere on this earth… they tell me I am strong enough to bear all the burdens, capable enough to finish all my tasks. My mind is clear, and my hands can do this.

I love hands.

I remember holding my dad’s enormous hands, with all their scars and cuts from being a glazier for forty years. His hands were huge and the strongest I have ever felt. Sometimes it is hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I won’t ever get to hold his hand again in this life. I love my dad so much, and I miss him.

I remember my second date with Kevin some 27 years ago… we went to a play on BYU campus. We didn’t kiss that night, but the way he held my hand during that play was this total weak-in-the-knees, out-of-body experience, where I knew that I actually loved him, even though I had only known him for a single week (don’t worry… I didn’t actually tell him that for a couple more months… haha!).

I adore baby hands. Sixteen years ago, when Dillon was only a year old, he contracted RSV, and they put him in a crib in the hospital that was really more like a tall cage from the circus. They tented the crib with oxygen, and he had to stay in there so I couldn’t hold him. Of course he was sick, miserable and terrified. But I could put my hand through the rails of the cage and hold his hand, and as long as I did that, he didn’t cry... so I sat there all night long holding his little hands through the bars. I can still remember how his one-year-old hands felt, how tightly he held on, how he knew he had to be brave.

There is a sweet lady at church named Marjean. I think the first time I ever met her was when I played the organ for her husband’s funeral three or four years ago. I love Marjean, and I don’t know why, but she lights up whenever she sees me. She says, “Oh, Victoria, my favorite person in the world!”  She gives me a huge hug, and then grabs my hand to pull me down to sit next to her, She has beautiful soft hands, and I love her like my own grandma.

Looking down at my scars in the lights of the temple, I don’t know why my hands seem to get hurt all the time lately, but it doesn’t change anything. I can still do what I need to do. I don’t know if anyone else even remembers those times, but I will never forget them, or the love and admiration that I feel for my friends and family. Hands are my favorite.

The One Where She Was Just Too Tired to Fry

I am soooo tired. I am about to take a couple of aspirin and talk DK into giving me a footrub and taking me to a movie. But first this little goodie. Since Tyler asked for it, AND Jessi asked for it, here it is. It really is so very yummy. Since I don’t have a picture of it, and there is no possible way I am making it tonight, I perused the internet to find a picture that most closely resembles it. I love this coconut shrimp, and most often serve it as an appetizer, for people I really love. I have seen a couple of recipes online that make coconut shrimp into a salad. There is also this awesome little restaurant right on the ocean near Aliso Creek Beach called the Coyote Grill where I love to eat coconut shrimp. They serve it with black beans and some chopped fruit salsa. Someone posted a yummy fruit salsa recipe recently... Our Best Bites. Check it out. Anyway, I don't need anything else to go with it. I could just sit and dip and eat all night.

Enjoy!

Fried Coconut Shrimp With Orange Dipping Sauce

The One With the House Elves

So, if you will remember, Saturday I was catering. I cooked in a big hurry, ran off to dip strawberries, and then back for just long enough to get ready to go to the catering job. I left my kitchen in a huge mess… garlic, bits of parsley everywhere, dirty skillets, dishes… and just hoped that the house elves would have it magically clean before I got home. I knew the odds were against that, since my family was going to a Memorial Day barbecue in my absence. I dragged through the door a little after 10:30 Saturday night, and found the kitchen just as I had left it. Actually… it was worse. I was so tired, though, I couldn’t stay up to clean it. I took some aspirin and went to bed.

At 8:00 Sunday morning I woke up and remem- bered I had the nasty kitchen waiting for me, so I combed my hair, found some shoes and headed, bleary-eyed, down the stairs. Walked into the kitchen just in time to find Elder Felkner wiping the last counter and Elder Murray starting the dishwasher he had just filled. They cleaned my kitchen while I slept! Elder Murray always says his dream is to do something that earns him a place in my blog (the guy is a dreamer, you know... being a famous singer, having a pirate-themed wedding cake... ah, yes... he and Elder Felkner both think big). I am afraid he was hoping for some outrageous prank or dangerous heroic feat to win him blog glory, but he will have to take what he gets, because as of today, they are both officially blog heroes. Of course, they don’t actually get to read the blog... heh heh... but it’s the thought that counts, right?

We don’t get to have the mission- aries for much longer. Cambria is twelve, and the bishops of both the congreg-ations that share our missionaries are looking for a new host family. *sniff* As the search is underway, I find myself surprised, and not for the first time, by how difficult it is to find them a home. Even in such an affluent area as ours, people are very reluctant to leave their comfort zone to make a place for them. We are not the typical host family. The ideal would be a retired couple, not a family with a houseful of kids. I am pretty sure that heaven and earth moved to bend the requirements a little so that we could have them for most of the last four years.

Despite the require-ments, there are plenty of people here in our area who qualify to host the mission- aries, but they all seem to have various reasons why they don’t feel comfortable doing it. One of the main ones is a loss of privacy. And okay...having two people live in your home who are not members of your family is undeniably less private. But do you know what I have decided? Privacy is highly overrated. Or maybe that isn’t even the right way to think about it. I don’t feel that our home life is less private… just that we have increased our family circle to include some amazing young men. And not only have they never breached the family’s privacy, but I have heard about how they have flatly refused to enter into gossip about our family, and have even defended family members on occasion, just as you would hope brothers would do. Elder Felkner and Elder Murray are the just the last in a long line of missionaries who have loved and served our family in countless ways.

I could make this a monster post, telling you all the ways that having the missionaries has been a blessing for my family. It would still not reflect how much I love, love, love them. There isn’t a downside, except maybe that eventually they all move on. But every missionary who has passed through our home has become a lifelong friend and beloved family member. And you tell me… who cannot use more of those?

P.S. You might notice that, left to their own devices, missionaries tend to take a lot of pictures of themselves driving. Why? I don’t know. It is one of the great mysteries.

The One With the Look of Love

Dear iMac,

Have I told you lately how much I love you? I know I am not supposed to love inanimate objects, but let’s face it…you are anything but inanimate! I have been saving files indiscriminately, yet haven’t even occupied two percent of your roomy 640 gigabyte hard disk. Running Logic Studio with more than twenty tracks at a time, you don’t even break a sweat. You escort me through the minefield of the internet as though it is your own personal playground, always shielding my eyes from anything profane or vulgar.

I know you’re watching me, too, because I clicked and you took this picture of me. We like all the same shows on Hulu HD (Battlestar Gallactica, The Closer, 24…did I tell you about my Jack Bauer dream where we were jumping into an empty elevator shaft, suspended from chains…and I woke up with this horrible bruise on my arm…I don’t think it was from the chains, but seriously, where else would it have come from?). We agree on all the important things: (cream cheese frosting does not belong on cinnamon rolls, it’s more important to have a nice piano than a nice car, and having kids is definitely better than having pets). I guess what I’m saying is, BFFs, okay? Love you.
P.S. You look great in silver…all 24 inches of you. Speaking of silver, since you’re so new, we could call you an anniversary present…because you know, DK and I are celebrating 25 in just a week.