Some Stuff

Firstly

Brenden leaves for Austria TOMORROW! Sorry we didn't keep you guys updated on that gig. Anyway, exciting stuff. His competition is on Sunday and he'll be in Austria for the duration of the entire conference. I'm kind of a little bit really jealous since Austria is kind of a little bit the main country I wanted to study abroad in and never got the opportunity to. I made Brenden promise to take lots of pictures. And buy me socks. (I really like socks so whenever someone offers to buy me a souvenir, I request socks.)

Secondly

A little update on my illness since people have been asking. I'm doing a million times better. I can actually wake up in the morning and stay up all day. No fevers since April. My finger joints, wrists, and elbows are still achy every now and then but I can actually use them. A new and interesting symptom is that my hair is falling out. It started shortly before I came back to Georgia and I originally attributed it to stress but it hasn't stopped since then and my hair is now visibly thinner (at least to me.) It's made me think a lot about my physical appearance and what it means to me in regards to my personal identity. Like, if I lose all my hair will I still be okay with who I am? It seems silly but it's never been something I've had to worry about before. Anyway, I decided that if this hair loss keeps up, I'm going to shave my head before it gets gross looking and cross my fingers that my shaved head isn't too gross looking. Head scarves and wigs FTW.

And Lastly,

Monday night Brenden and I babysat for a couple who is soon leaving our ward. He passed his dissertation defense that morning and they wanted to go out to celebrate. While they were out celebrating, we made cards with the girls for their dad. I brought over some colored paper, glitter stickers, and fancy markers. When you're a kid, other people's stuff is always exciting and fun to play with. This proved true with these kiddos. They were coloring for about three and a half hours and refused to sleep.

Anyway, the oldest daughter is about seven years old and she was determined to write her dad a letter on the back of the picture she drew him.

The letter went something like this:
"Congrats on the test Dad. I love you so much. I hope your students like you. Did you like the test? I am very proud of you. I think you did very good on the test. I think you worked very hard on the test. You are very smart. I think you will make a good doctor."

And she drew a picture underneath with big balloons and two students sitting at desks while her dad wrote 2+2=4 on a chalkboard.

It was completely adorable.

"Sleep is overrated." *

At 12:30am Saturday night, Brenden and I had the brilliant idea to rearrange all of our bedroom furniture. Yes, genius idea. Let's wait until it's really late at night to lift and move heavy furniture. After finishing a little less than an hour later, we discovered our new arrangement granted us more floor space than our previous arrangement. So the next logical step to discovering this floor space was to utilize it, right?

Brenden went to one of our closets, pulled out his tent and started assembling it.
In the middle of the bedroom. Nearing 2am in the morning.

I kept asking him why he needed to assemble the tent right at that moment and his only answer was, "Because there's room."


"Just don't put up the rainfly."

"But I have to."

* As often quoted by Brenden's dad. Happy Father's Day!

Yesterday Morning

Six AM: We left my parents' home on 77th Street and took Seawall Boulevard down to the ferry. We watched the sun rise over the Gulf and I took a mental picture to hold me over the next few months until I can see it again. It's quiet and peaceful. We could see people walking on the beach, running on the Seawall, doing Tai Chi all against the backdrop of a purple, blue, pink, and orange sky brightening over the water. I like early mornings on the Seawall. This is when the locals come out and reclaim their land. These are the people who belong here. Some people don't appreciate Galveston's beauty, but some people are blind. I thought about how much I'm going to miss this place. 

We took a ferry ride to the Bolivar Peninsula at six-thirty. We saw fishing boats and cargo ships bringing in their haul for the morning. Once our car got off the ferry, I turned around in my seat and took one last look at my island, her buildings grey in the distance. It was just me and Brenden on the little two lane highway bordering the Gulf of Mexico. We like taking this route to get to I-10 rather than battling the rush hour bumper to bumper traffic into Houston. 

Bolivar is a small quiet town. Houses are still missing from when Hurricane Ike roared ashore four years ago and the remaining houses are empty, awaiting their summer visitors. There are locals that call Bolivar home and we could see them walking out onto their wrap-around decks to watch the sunrise over the water while they sipped their coffees. There were flags dancing in the gulf breeze from several of these decks, signaling a friendly hello and good luck. We remained quiet to take it all in.

It was a good start to the long drive back to Georgia. 

"Inspiration at Dawn " by Rene' Wiley (a Galveston artist)