well, i can't say that i met him, but...

(this all happened last friday at my cousin's wedding:)

The first time I saw him, he was giving a bottle of water to the homeless woman standing at the corner, showing her cardboard sign to tourists and temple-goers.  I looked away to check that my sisters and brothers were with me, and when I looked back, he was walking away, back to where he'd come from.

I led my sisters and brother onto the temple grounds, where we met up with my dad and older sister.  After a while, the heat and things had us all feeling impatient, so we decided to wait for my mother inside the visitor's center.  As we walked around the outside wall ('cause you can't go straight from the temple grounds to the visitor's center.  You have to go out and around) we clung to the bit of shade that the wall provided.  This made it harder to walk side by side.  I ended up behind most of my family by the time we got to the visitor's entrance for Temple Square.  It was right outside that entrance where I saw the man from before.  The one who'd given that woman a bottle of water.

I looked at him and smiled.  He smiled back and said, "Spare something for someone in need?" as he held his cardboard sign.
I apologetically replied, "I'm sorry, I don't have anything,"  which was true, unless he needed a fine-tip pen, or a blank black book full of words a stranger had written.
He continued to smile with a new understanding look, and then said in the same friendly tone he'd used before, "Pray for me then." 
My smile got even bigger.  It did.  I felt it.  I didn't control it, it did it all by itself!
I said "I will!" and continued trying to keep up with my family.

I had to take a few long strides to walk next to my younger sister's again.  They both have longer legs than I do, darn it.

It was a while before my smile returned to a normal size.

I mean, that guy is COOL.  He has nothing, but he's incredibly generous.  (He gave half of the water he'd obtained to that other woman!)  He sees plenty of faces every day that belong to people with much more than he has, but he's still so friendly!  I couldn't offer him anything tangible.  But whether or not I happened to be the praying sort, he asked me to pray for him.  He understood that I couldn't give him something that day, but he knew of another way I could help him.  He asked, without hesitation.

That guy is COOL!

I really respect him.  And admire him.  He seemed to have so much happiness in him, and he just wanted it to be spread around.  Generous!

Man, that guy is cool.
That's that.
Josie

i don't do anything on the computer these days

It's not like there are a shortage of computers in my house. 

It's not like I don't write.  (LOTS.)

It's not like I have nothing to do on the computer.

I just don't.  

Olivia has been using my computer while she's staying here....  

Ummmm, That's all I've got.

As far as saying stuff goes, I officially have nothing.

... That doesn't happen very often.  

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd, five minutes later, that still hasn't changed.  So I'll just click publish.  Yup.

That's all.

jos

"... anyway, so that's when the aliens showed up."

Once, I was talking to my brother.

More like he was talking at me.  And I listened and enjoyed.  And then he just sort of...
ran out of words on the topic.  But I hadn't finished listening.  So after a well-timed pause, he said:

"Anyway, so that's when the aliens showed up."

And I just laughed.  And then we talked about that comment for a while....

Now I'm gonna sidetrack myself for just a bit:
     I really miss Calvin.  I'm glad he is where he is.  And I'm glad I miss him.  Because that means that he matters to me, y'know?  It means we were tight before he left.  And we're tight now.  We come from a tight family.  That's what happens when you try to squeeze so many people like us into one house.  (I almost mean this literally.  In my old home, there was a point where 5 of us kids shared one bedroom, and my parents and youngest sister slept in another.)  We may reeeeeeeeeaally bug each other, but we're tight.  We spend time with each other.  We know each other.  It's good.  Hard sometimes, but good.

Okay.  Back to whatever was going on before the sidetrack:

He and I both used the aliens comment pretty often after that first time when we came to a point in conversation when we didn't know what to say.  I still use it.  He might.  Dunno.  Anyway, I use it differently at times, but usually it serves as a variation on supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Here's another digression:
The same discussed Calvin wrote a variation on the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

"When no one can stand your breath, my friend, that's halitosis.

H-A-L-I-T-O-S-I-S spells 'halitosis'.

If your breath is rank, then this might be your diagnosis:

H-A-L-I-T-O-S-I-S spells 'halitosis'!"

You know, you could spell it backwards which would be S-I-S-O-T-I-L-A-H, but that won't really do much for your breath....  
Try to sing that song.  It still takes concentration to get that O and final I to stay in the right place.

Okay.  Enough digression.  Now I'll regress so that this post can progress, and maybe actually conclude successfully.

I had no idea what to say.  I sat, just watching the cursor flash on and off in the title bar, trying to write something.   And that was about when the aliens showed up.  (Thanks for the inspiration, guys.)

Also, Calvin's birthday was last Sunday, and I felt like talking about him.  Now I have.
So now I'll go.
End.
Jos

Poem of the day

Poem of the day:

And now the day is done:

A bright full moon has come.

Knudsens left. They're gone.

And Calvin's twenty-one.

lacking wisdom

This is what I typed yesterday after my teeth came out:

Quick surgery. Maybe ten minutes. The stitching up finished at 9:17. I had a tooth with six roots! The oral surgeon said he'd never seen anything like it before. Crazy.

now it's 1:31, and I'm getting loopy. After a long while in pain, like, two and a half hours, I was given a different medicine. Lortab. It's lovely. I'm soooooooooooo sleepy, but I want to finish my lunch before I sleep. :)

This is how I looked:

There is a very, very big chance that I will regret putting this picture on here. But I look better in that photo than I do now.

So that picture will stay, and...

I will regret it less than if I would regret posting a current photo.

The swelling generally gets worse for the first 48 hours...

I'm on Lortab again. Maybe that's why I decided to finish this post...

Lortab is lovely. I've got some decent bruising going on. Artistically, it could even be a morbid masterpiece of colors. The Lortab is really helping me out.

My family is helpful too. Ashton has been willingly ensuring my comfort all day. Right now we're watching Iron Giant together. Earlier we played the Pokémon card game. He barely beat me. I was ahead for so long but then at the very last minute, he plowed through a ton of my Pokémon. We were both on our last one, and he beat me by one attack. But it's only 'cause he had two Richus in his deck, and one of my special cards....

I have a great family. Por ejemplo: My dad made me soup earlier, and last night my mom made me a bed on the couch downstairs. Maya has been super willing to get me ice and leave me alone, or get me water and talk and joke, depending on what I seem to need. Sean bought me a milkshake after picking me up last night, and then he stayed up late with me letting me eat some of his coveted ice cream and we watched a really cool documentary on helvetica (called HELVETICA) while I was having trouble going to sleep.

That's just to name a few of the favors from family. It's always a strange experience for me to re-realize that 'best friends' and 'family' are not universal synonyms.

They are synonyms for me. The members of my family are my truest, closest friends.

And thus concludes the wisdom teeth post rant on family.

fin,

la cuarta