What I intended to say

Do you ever feel the need to blog and then sit down at your computer and realize that you have nothing to say. Or more precisely that what you want to say doesn't want to be said. Sometimes words are like that, they just refuse to come. That's how I've been feeling lately. I have something to say, but it gets lost in the saying of it. It sounds strange. I know. And it's got me all confused. So I figure that if I write long enough it will work itself out and I will look back and realize that somewhere in what I have said is the something I have been intending to say all along. So here goes.

Jeff is out of town. That always makes me feel a little out of sorts. He and Jeffrey are in Washington DC with his brother and nephew. They went to the national boy scout jamboree and they have been filling their days full of museums and monuments and all sorts of Americana. I love that they are doing this. Jeffrey will look back when he is old and remember this and remember his dad and tell his own son about the summer he was 8 years old. Every boy needs that kind of a memory. But I am missing them. And feeling a little lonely. Which seems strange with a house full of people right here. The other 3 kids are here and my parents are here and still this little bit of loneliness. My two boys are gone and Chantel is gone and I want them all to come back and life to fall back into its normal pattern. Maybe that is it. I went to relief society on Sunday and there were at least half a dozen new people that stood and introduced themselves. As I looked around the room it was full of newbies. Not that it's bad, but new people mean that old ones have left. And that makes me sad. Especially when the ones that have gone are the ones you love the most. Boo.

I have never really been good with change. The people kind. Or the place kind for that matter. I just get so attached. I grew up in the same house with the same friends and the same schools and the same everything all my life. Going away to college was terrifying. I lasted exactly 2 weeks before I called my parents and made them come and get me. For real. I blamed it on the college. Ricks was just so stifling. Girls in my dorm were getting quarantined every weekend and Rexburg was soooo tiny I felt claustrophobic and I didn't have a car and.... I thought up a million excuses. But it really came down to one thing. It was too much change all at once. I left my home and my friends and my family and I just couldn't do it, I didn't want to do it. So I came home. It was humiliating. But I didn't care. I went to college at home for a year and then transferred to BYU with my bestie Emily and life was grand. Looking back I like to think that was the way it was suppose to happen. You know, if I hadn't done A then B,C,D and E wouldn't have happened. Which is true. And I don't regret my decision. But I did make it for a very specific reason. I hate change.

I was fine at BYU and I was fine going on a mission for 18 months. In fact I was really happy. I thought I had snapped out of it, grown up a little. And I probably did. I got married and moved here and there. And then graduation came and job offers came and it happened again. We got a job in sunny CA and I panicked. Moving away from Utah seemed terrifying. We prayed and prayed some more. Still terrifying. So we stayed. Looking back it seemed like that was the way it was suppose to happen. Jeff got a job here the next month, the business in CA folded 2 years later, I took credit for it all. Thank goodness for that little bit of mania that sets in with every new decision. Maybe this aversion to change was coming in handy. So good with the excuses.

At least that's how I've felt all these years. Lots of excuses for why I didn't stick it out at Ricks or why we didn't move to Cali or why this and why that. It made me feel a little guilty inside. But maybe there doesn't really have to be an excuse. Maybe I can just let it go. I can say that I don't like change. That it's hard for me to let go of the past and grab hold of the present. That it makes me sad. And sometimes it makes me scared. Maybe I didn't feel good about it because it wasn't good for me or for us and that was my way of knowing that. Or maybe I'm just overly sentimental. Whatever it is, in the end it doesn't really matter. It's just part of who I am, part of who I've been for as long as I can remember. And I guess that's ok. Ok for me to miss my two boys and my friend. Ok for me to be a little lonely without them here. Hmmm..... none of that was at all what I had intended. Oh well.