spring break

spring break came up on me suddenly this year--yet when i was faced with the prospect of a free and open schedule with no driving to ballet or field trips, i realized i was quite ready for a break. a whole week with nothing i had to do. so much freedom lay before me. a week full of possibilities. now sitting at the other end of the week it feels as if the break was just as busy if not busier than any other week. i guess it is just that stage of my life. the busy stage. which, i think, is the longest stage. as much as i despair of it, i'd much rather be busy than have nothing to do. but i do wish i had more time to get everything done. i've been busy but my housework is not done, i haven't read to the girls all week, the flowers are sitting outside waiting to be planted, the laundry and ironing is piling up, i need to go grocery shopping, i haven't done the girls hair since last sunday, and i'm not going to say anything else about what needs to be done. what did i do?it all started with sunday. (weeks have a way of doing that, you know) i got home from church and only had time for a hurried lunch before i was out the door again for a meeting. in typical meeting fashion we didn't end quickly and so brent had to pick me up for caleb's baptism from deb's house. he had called and deb said for him to bring me something sexy to wear and i said no not sexy but apparently he only heard the no part and brought me nothing to wear. he was rather grumpy about it too. i was supposed to lead the music (all caleb's organizing--poor guy didn't know that we aren't all so musically talented) and i was not going to get up there in front of everyone wearing jeans and running shoes so i went to sarah's. sarah met me at the door wearing track pants. i asked if she had a skirt and shoes i could borrow. unlike some sisters we know, sarah was perfectly willing to share her clothes with a sister in need. she lent me her sexy swishy brown skirt. i inquired as to why they weren't dressed up and it turns out they thought the baptism started 2 hours later. i'm not sure why she thought i was so desperate to borrow a skirt for something that wasn't about to begin. so i guess it was a good thing that brent grumpily didn't bring my clothes because sarah and kyle would have missed the whole thing. the attendance at the baptism was fairly scant. so scant in fact that there was no one to play the piano. layne was supposed to and he didn't come. esther didn't come. evan didn't come. i looked around desperately for someone who could play. dad meantime kept saying i could play. i said i had never even tried to play the primary songs. dough said they'd sing whatever i knew how to play. i told them that was "how great thou art" and that was it. at one time i knew quite a few hymns and could even sight read relatively well but one can't go for years without even touching a piano and keep up that skill. i was not going to give in and play now in front of a bunch of people. how could this happen? so many people in the family play better than me and yet there i found myself sitting on the piano bench with my hands shaking crazily and playing "how great thou art." so the baptism was nice in its only little way. it definitely had an air of disorganization to it. on the program i was listed as a clarke. i've been married for almost 10 years and people still call me sister clarke. it seemed that the baptism just wasn't that important to some people because they didn't show up even though they had a part in the program. evan and esther were supposed to sing but they were sick. so it was good that sarah and kyle found out the real time because kyle was supposed to give a talk. he gave a pretty good one too. (not bad for someone who is on the high council if you know what i mean) he translated a story from a japanese storybook. i love going to baptisms. i always feel the spirit. it didn't disappoint.after the baptism brent wanted me to invite sarah and kyle over for dinner. i didn't want to. i don't like having people over when the house is in complete disarray. i had been helping mom in all my spare time and my house really showed it. and i hate it when brent makes me do something that he can do himself. YOU invite them over if you want to have them over. he had some lame excuse as to why he couldn't so i reluctantly did. so reluctant was i that sarah and kyle didn't realize that the invitation included dinner. i called them later and sarah was in the middle of cooking up perogies. they gave up their dinner of perogies to eat some of brent's cooking. i kept completely out of the kitchen and left all the cooking and cleaning to brent this time. and he did even do the dishes. well what he could fit into the dishwasher--and since our dishwasher is the size of a large microwave and he is not nearly as expert as i am at packing as much as possible into it, there was a lot of stuff not washed. brent made caramel popcorn for dessert. we asked s&k to bring the popcorn because we didn't have enough. kyle must of really wanted some because he made a second trip back home to get it when he forgot. i mean, i told him to go back and get it in quite a bossy and presumptuous fashion but i never expected him to listen to me.brent cooked pork chops, sweet potato, corn and instant potatoes from our food storage--the potato pearls that we bought from the bishop's storehouse and then dry pack canned. he says this is what food storage is for. i could never get myself to open those cans unless we had no other food. (we are different that way. i save and he spends) catherine and patrick came over and we played the iron rod (i think that's what it is called.) it is the lds version of cranium. it was fun, but carried on a little long. in the end brent and kyle cheated to finish the game. i don't know what we were thinking pairing those two together. sarah and pat were very unlucky in their rolling and catherine and i were unlucky in our questions always being allplays. when we got an easy question catherine always asked if we could have another question. obviously her and my approach to games is completely different. anyways, it was a fun night and a good start to spring break

i'll try again

so yes i know it has been a long time. and i do feel like throwing in the towel with the whole blogging thing. you see it seems like it takes me a long time to write an entry--and i don't mean in between entries. but the real thing is probably that i don't journal in a personal journal and so my feelings here can spill out uncontrolled and may be too brutally honest. and really i don't feel like this is the place. yet there are things i wish i could say about my hurt feelings, the sense of betrayal and rejection but i know it to be too hot button of an issue. i don't think i've ever been one of those kind of people that does good at not dealing with issues. i mean i can go on and pretend like things are normal to avoid uncomfortable confrontations, but i don't like to. it is uncomfortable to not deal with it either. i guess what i'm saying is that it feels a little dishonest to come on here and to talk about the fluff of my life but not the things that are truly troubling me. probably if i was up to date in my real journal i wouldn't have a problem. but maybe if i wrote more i would overcome it. so i shall try to get into it again.