From Trash to Treasure

We had a yard sale yesterday. It was a great thing! I've been perpetually de-junking for the last three months, and was telling my sister-in-law about the excitement of it (mm-hm). And she mentioned that she needed to go through her own kids' playroom and clean out the six hundred bins of toys down there....

And then the lightning struck. Why not sell the goo that we don't want to people who do want it. It's a win-win! Getting money for junk you'd gladly donate, and having someone do the hauling for you?! Excellent!!

So we got things rolling. We doubled our de-junking efforts, combing through corners of our homes we haven't ventured for a year and a half! And we got our next-door neighbors in on the project as well. Now it was becoming a multi-family project--what could be more promising?

I'll tell you what--a Bake Sale on top of the garage sale! Our plan was quickly reaching epic proportions. So Friday was spent in a baking frenzy (which was actually quite fun for me, and a tad more stressful for my sister-in-law.... Sorry, Ciara!). 

And then Saturday morning unfolded in a glow of dewy, seventy degree loveliness. We woke up bleary-eyed (thanks to a total of five hours of sleep the previous night after staying up to finish yard sale signs). Chad went cruising around to post the signs. Family and Neighbor showed up, and we fell to our tables and our baskets of stuff. The lawn was overspread with all of our treasured-once-but-long-forgotten items, and customers started trickling in early. The bake sale table was piled with cookies, muffins, chocolate-covered popcorn (an addicting piece of gloriousness!), Chex muddy buddy mix, homemade turtles, and even bags of home-grown cilantro. Our neighbors, Jim and Kayla, provided sno-cones as well. We were a buzzing hive of activity for the next five hours.

And the results were impressive! We surpassed our goal, and we whittled everything down to two baskets of leftover stuff to take to Savers. A successful morning for one and all. It's true what they say--one man's trash is indeed another man's treasure. And isn't the cycle wonderful?! 

(On a personal note: I did have to say goodbye to many dear old friends. Yes, I finally parted with my unicorn collection! It was a bittersweet parting for me. I reveled in a half-hour of nostalgia. I picked out a few of my favorites, and the rest have gone on to better places. I guess we all grow up sometime.... although I kept all my notes and papers for the unicorn book I'm still planning on writing someday. So maybe we never let go completely, which is as it should be.)

Classifieds/Personals

To the handsome gentleman looking for his missing wife:

Five feet, nine inches. Crazy strawberry blonde hair. Blue eyes. 

One hundred seventy-ish pounds.

I may have found her.

I can’t be sure. There are a few characteristics that don’t quite fit…

“Patient and sweet.” Doubtful.

“Keeps the house clean.” From what I have seen….??

“Great in bed.” Umm….

“A thrill to be around.” Could this really be the same person?!

Still, the physical description fits. And she does answer to the name Charity. 

And perhaps the lost characteristics are a direct result of her displacement.

Quite frankly, she seems more trouble than she’s worth. 

And you appear to be a rather tall drink of water (literally and figuratively)…

What I’m saying is, you could do better.

But as you seem to be in earnest about finding her, here’s my deal:

I can’t in good conscience return the sad version of your wife 

I stumbled upon in my garage.

I will take the half-wife that I have, and I will comb the county over 

until I find the other half.

A great guy like you deserves the complete package, 

not the sad semi-imitation this wife seems to be.

And I will personally deliver to your door, by this evening, 

the patient, sweet, tidy, thrilling, vixen of a wife 

you’ve been missing the last few weeks.

In one hundred percent tip-top shape.

Guaranteed.

And if she isn’t the wife you’re looking for, well, 

we’re having a garage sale this weekend.

Drop her off on my curb.

Sincerely,

A concerned acquaintance… 

who’s madly in love with you and thinks you deserve better.

My husband and I had a chance to do Trek this month with the youth of our ward (for those of you unfamiliar with the event, Trek is usually a three-day camping/hiking/pioneering experience to gain a deeper appreciation for the pioneers who made the long journey from Iowa to SLC to find religious freedom). I confess that I was dreading the event a little... Really only because youth kind-of terrify me. Not because they're crazy hormonal teens (well, maybe a little that), but because I find myself getting awkward and self-conscious around them again--like being the high school wallflower nerd all over again! (Which in itself is funny, because that wasn't even me when I was in high school--nerd, yes, but certainly not a wallflower). Anyway, we went, and mixed with my trepidation was some genuine excitement for the weekend.

I was not disappointed. I was thrilled, actually! It was a weekend--an experience--to savor! And I did gain a deeper appreciation for the pioneers. I did one of these when I was a teenager myself (two, actually). But I think having children of my own made all the difference. This time, as I heard how the majority of the deaths in the Martin handcart company were the young, able men--men who were doing all the work and giving all their food to their wives and children--I imagined Chad plodding through the snow with little to no sustenance, falling exhausted beneath a wagon and letting the cold lull him into a permanent sleep. We kept little journals along the way, and I wrote about my thoughts in that somber place:

"I wonder whether I could bury my sweet, perfect husband here, beneath a few inches of snow; if I could discover his cold body beside me in the night and lay there next to him until morning. How I would cry for help from the neighboring tents, and there would be no answer--everyone sick from starvation and exhaustion, without even the energy to respond to one another's tragedy. If I could rally my...whatever it was--spark, courage, something--what little of it I had left, and gather Coren and Risa to me and press on.

"And thinking on that makes me start to see other inspiration that has come to me this weekend; inspiration that I didn't recognize as such at first. But I am seeing it now. I want to go home and hug my children tightly. I want to tickle Coren and make him laugh until he has a terrible case of hiccups. I want to wake up to his yelling "Mom-Mee!" from behind his bedroom door. I want to see Risa's cheesy gap-toothed grin and feel her bury her face against my shoulder. I want to tell them I love them often every day....until they're tired of it! I want to appreciate being with them every day, just being home with them every day. I want to never, never take my little family for granted."

It was a moving family experience for me....even missing half of my family, ironically (we left the kiddos with my uncle's family). It was worth the travel and the giving up of some of our vacation time and the schedule-rearranging and the broken-down van (yep) and more. It was a wonderful trek!

....Oh, and the teenagers were great, too. I loved them! And I think they loved me--when they saw me at church, they ran up to me yelling "Ma!" in one big mass.... It's nice to be loved.

Other highlights:
--Endless snacks (our "road trip #1" snack and "pre-lunch" snack and "midnight" snack and "post-snack" snack.....)
--"You have dysentery." (Yes, I got the flu one of the nights...just to make it more authentic, you know.)
--The wind nearly blowing down our tent--and demolishing the boys' tent--one of the nights.
--All the tender couple missionaries that made Chad and I decide we want to do our mission at Martin's Cove.
--Chad's red, tear-streaked face when we crested the top of the hill during the women's pull.
--The long road home--breaking down on the highway, the ride with the highway patrolman, the tow truck, the never-ending paperwork to rent a tow trailer, etc (which was also rather fitting for the experience, right?)
--The reverent quiet of the Cove itself....and how thirteen crazy, hormonal teenagers even recognized the reverence and walked through quietly, pondering.
--The river crossing, where I actually fell (yep, in knee-high water) and Chad carried me the rest of the way.
--The testimony meeting, and Emily's tearful looking into my face across the fire (tender!)
--The other, less reverent moments, where I was reminded that, oh yeah, they are crazy hormonal teenagers... and I could laugh along.
--The extremely precarious, giant, blazing bonfires built by our resident pyromaniac, Spencer.
--The peaceful sense of just being, out in the grass and brush, dressed in our thrift-store find pioneer garb, passing deer and antelope, without the noise of traffic or the distraction of endless media options, and enjoying the feeling of it.
--My new-found resolve to not take for granted the blessings that I enjoy so abundantly because of the bitter sacrifices others were willing to make before me... as one sister missionary said, "We are who we are because they were who they were."

Oddities

I am discovering oddities in myself.

Yes, I know I have my OCD things. Those I've noted.

But these.... these have crept up on me the last few weeks.

After 28 years.

Shouldn't I have noticed them before?

Oddities like....

How I catch myself counting things that are absolutely inconsequential,

Like the number of cucumber slices I put in the salad.

Or the number of children's clothing articles I fold and put away.

Or the number of morning glory weeds I dig out of the planters.

What in the world am I cataloguing these things for??

 Oddities like....

My arranging of things precisely.

Which wouldn't be odd if I was a neat-freak in other areas of life as well.

No, just certain things.

Like how my tupperware is stacked on the lazy susan.

Or how the toiletries are lined up in the bathroom cupboard.

Or which kids toys go in which bins,

When there is no set toy system.

It's just how I like these certain things to fit.

Oddities like....

How I make lists of everything.

But then I forget about most of them.

Lists for grocery shopping I use. That's fairly normal.

But to-do lists that I never actually check off?

Lists of books that I want to read....that are already sitting in my bookcase!

Lists of names for children that are not yet born,

When I probably won't like most of them by the next child anyway.

Lists of letters I need to write, but never do.

Lists of songs I love.... why? for what?

 How were these oddities born?

And how did they sneak up on me?

After 28 years?!

Really?!

How the Sorensens Roll....

Before I became a Brooks, I was a Sorensen.... and pretty much 1000% of my makeup declares that I still am a Sorensen. Of which I am grateful. We have our flaws (do we ever!), but life is fabulous as a Sorensen! For example, the way a Sorensen prepares for, and executes, vacation plans:

Monday, May 30, 12:43 pm: (Text from Tera to me)
"Hi girlie, we're in Cedar City for the day. If you're feeling crazy spontaneous you could meet up with us and come stay at our house for a couple weeks."

And around 8:30 the next morning, this Sorensen was off to New Mexico for a week with her sister, kids in tow.

That's how we roll. Prep time? Planning? Never heard of it!

And it was a lovely week. All of it. We fixed cars, celebrated birthdays, visited zoos and gardens, watched baseball games, swam in jacuzzis, ate food, watched movies, played Pictionary, took naps, went shopping, gave kids lots of naps, wished for naps ourselves, talked till 2 am, and let Megan dress/change/hold/feed/etc Risa all she wanted! We just had fun. I needed it. And I loved it.

I Capture the Castle

I, Charity Brooks, twenty-eight years old, wife and mother, still dream of castles....

Of high walls and vaulted ceilings, with gold leaf and trim on the columns and panels.

Of immaculate carpets and giant, ornate rugs.

Of enormous, rich, warm paintings in every niche and down every hallway.

Of stories-high windows, etched and colored, that fill the rooms with light.

Of massive chandeliers, made of thousands of crystals, shining and pristine.

And I, Charity Brooks, have been there.

This is my castle:

And I, Charity Brooks, anti-girly-princess-ness, felt like a princess!

And it was wonderful!

And, quite frankly, it had nothing to do with my gown

(which, let's be honest, was really perfect!).

It had to do with being inside its walls,

castle walls,

learning about how I am a queen in embryo,

how I am worth all the world.

It had to do with sitting with my husband--

a Prince, if there ever was one--

And knowing that together,

with hard work and many years,

We would make a happily ever after.

And I thought about that last night,

lying in bed next to Chad,

reading nothing special,

and being grateful for my life--

which, honestly, sometimes, is nothing like a fairy tale,

but more often than not, it is.

And it's because I've been to the Castle.

And I go back.

Again and again.

And I am happy.

Busy Week...

and 5. Rapture

Well, it just didn't come.

Too bad, because I have a busy summer.

And some of my self-imposed deadlines are coming up.

And it would have been nice to let it all go, right?

Oh well, maybe in another seventeen years...

(Oh, am I awful?)