The Land of the Cockroaches and Ants

It really is! Two nights ago, I got up in the night to get a drink of water. When I stepped up to the kitchen sink, my big toe crushed something soft. I ran to turn on the light and found a cockroach still alive and twitching... It was NASTY!

I can't believe all the bugs here! Our house is way clean, too. It's not like there's a bunch of trash just sitting around or food left uncovered. I've seen four different kinds of ants within five feet of our house. There are the huge black ones that are all over the trees, the fast scary red ones that feast on dead cockroaches, the little brown ones that infested our car our first night in Georgia, and the tiny ones that you can barely see that seem to like the porches. Who knew so many kinds of ants could live in the same place?

Did I mention the hornets just outside our window, about twice as big as the ones in Utah. There are also the cicadas that keep up a constant cadence. It's a loud throbbing hum that rises and falls all night long. (It's a little hard to describe, but it's not unpleasant.)

We've had a busy week, spending a lot of time at Augusta State University. Paul had an orientation with everyone from his master's program, and he is one of three men. All the rest are women! He made friends with a girl from Colombia who invited us to come to a fiesta tomorrow. I'll let you know how the Colombian food is. I was happy that everyone was nice to him and he feels excited and welcomed into the program. We love Settlers of Catan, and he found some girls who would like to play with us with their husbands.

It turns out that I will be going to school this semester, but my schedule is random. I'm taking most of the generals that will not be covered by my transfer credits, so that I can get them out of the way. So I'm in these classes:

-Fundamentals of Human Communication
-Spanish 1001
-American Government
-Introduction to Weather and Climate (Lab Science credit)
-Cultural Anthropology

That last class is for my minor, which I had to choose yesterday. I figured if I was required to have a minor, I might as well study human cultures. That should help me with my fiction. So now I'm an English major with an emphasis in creative writing and an Anthropology minor. I'm really excited, although I just found out that my text books will cost over $700! If that's not robbery, I don't know what is.

A big, long move across America.

I know. It has been an eternity since I last blogged... It's a little hard to do without my own working computer. With my blogging job, I have not had time on limited-use public computers to do this blog. But I have a few minutes right now, and hopefully there will be more time in the future.

Hopefully this won't be too surprising for most of you, but... we're in Georgia now! Paul did get into an Experimental Psychological graduate program here at Augusta State University, and here we are. I had three stressful weeks after we found out before we moved. We couldn't afford any moving van at all, so we ended up stuffing all we could into our car and leaving the rest. It was hard (made me cry), but we left Provo.

The journey was LONG and exhausting, but it was fun too. We stayed at my mom's house for a day and a half and then headed out for Denver. My cousin Lindsey and her husband Nick live there. (I realized just now that I don't know for sure if that's how she spells her name...) They were so nice to us! We had a bed to sleep in and great food to eat. I was sad to go. We drove from Denver all the way across the eastern part of Colorado and the broad expanse of Kansas. We loved Kansas because it was so open, green, and beautiful. The roads were almost empty, and the other drivers were polite and relaxed. I thought it would be a good place to live, although I had to laugh at all the religious billboards that said things like "I trust you, Jesus" and "Christ heals; pornography destroys." We flew through that state into Missouri. We veered from the freeway in Kansas City, Missouri, and headed north to a little town called Kidder, where a friend from Paul's mission lives.

His friend was Ammon Galbraith, and we stayed with him, his wife, and their four little boys. Ammon had taken the next day off work to spend with us, so we stayed in Missouri for a day with the Galbraith's. They took us to Liberty Jail, where the prophet Joseph Smith was imprisoned. It was a sweet heart-breaking experience to go there and see the tiny little basement where he was held. The Galbraith's, too, gave us great food and a bed to sleep on. I loved being there.

The next day was the long one. We drove from Kidder back down to Kansas City, across Missouri, into Illinois, through Kentucky, and finally through Atlanta, Georgia and we stopped for the night in Newnan. We stayed with some friends of Paul's from his old home ward, the Royle's. They were awesome, and once again, made us delicious food. (This time, it was a white chicken chili with corn bread!) The Royle's are actually an older couple whose children have all married and moved out, but their kids don't live far, and they called them home for a lunch with us. It was fun!

Newnan is about three hours from Augusta, so we had to make that last drive before we could find a house. Finally we were able to get a cute little blue house in a very quiet neighborhood. The house hadn't been lived in for months and it has required some cleaning on our part, but I love it and I'm so happy to be here. We have yet to meet a mean person here. Seriously everyone we meet is relaxed and nice, even if their accents are so strong that I can't understand half of what they say. And there are A LOT of bugs here, which is something I'm going to have to get used to.

I have had some trouble with my financial aid, and I'm not sure if I'm actually going to be able to go to school this semester. I might have to wait until next semester in order to get the financial aid that I need. That's kind of a pain in the butt, and it might just work out anyway, but in the meantime, I'm looking for another online writing job. I've spent the last hour and a half responding to Craigslist postings for writing jobs, so hopefully one or two of them will be interested in me. Please pray for me! I don't know what's going to happen, but on the bright side, Paul has his financial aid taken care of and he is registered and set to go in his program. I'm really proud of him for getting in, and I'm excited for him. We found the Psychology Department here and met another grad student who was way nice and made Paul feel good.

Well, that's enough for now. Blogs really shouldn't be this long... I'm going to re-do my blog background now, to fit the new settting. This is a different world, after all.

Stupid graduate program people.

With our computer not working at all now, I can only get online at the library. So there isn't a lot of time to do my private blog. I'm doing the ones for my job, of course. It sucks to not have a working computer at home, but it has had a few good affects. I've been spending more time reading with Paul since we don't have the computer to occupy all of our attention. That's kind of nice. We read together a lot when we were first married, but then it kind of fizzled out. Now that we're doing it again, it just feels like we're closer.

Sometimes I get so depressed that I wonder if things will really work out for us. We've been waiting for a month to find out if Paul will get into a graduate program and we still have no news. It's so frustrating. After a whole month, two of the schools let us know that they hadn't recieved all of the parts of the application, even though Paul had them sent. And they don't even start considering an application until they have all of the parts, so they've basically been sitting on his applications without giving him a second thought. Meanwhile, we've been so nervous, hoping he would get in and wondering where we could live. It's so aggrivating! I can just see these people snickering maniacally and taking pleasure from our anxiety.

Anyway, we could use some prayers. We've prayed a lot for ourselves, but some outside help would be nice. Maybe if tons of people pray for us, something miraculous will happen. Otherwise, I don't know what we'll do.

Accountability.

I'm at the library and my session is about to expire. So I have about two seconds to get a blog done. I don't even know what I want to talk about...

Well, my mom got me a new blood glucose meter and a whole bunch of test strips. That was one of the best gifts I have ever recieved. Thanks Mom! In the few days since I've had the new meter, I've been testing my blood sugar twice a day. It is doing just fine, which gives me peace of mind.

I was thinking about the reason why testing blood sugar is a good thing. It's because it forces me to take accountability for my choices. If I know I will test my blood sugar after dinner, I will be much less likely to eat too much at dinner. I have to answer for my choices and that encourages me to make better choices, to be more responsible and to think before I act. That's why it's good to have the gospel, because we know that someday, we will have to answer for all of our choices. And that helps us to make better ones, doesn't it?

A smidgeon of good news.

So the hardest thing about blogging is just coming up with something to talk about. I'm at no loss to have something to say when I know what I'm supposed to be talking about.

Well, the good news is that Paul has finally found another job! It's about time one of us did. My blogging paychecks will be too little to survive on by themselves. He'll be working at another girl's group home for the evening shift. For us, it's pretty dang good news. I had given up hope that it would ever happen, after all the jobs we've tried to get.

The clothing industry has happiness all figured out.

My friend Ashlee is going into the MTC soon and she was in the area, searching in vain for a mid-calf length dress. She asked me to go shopping with her at some of the big department stores. We spent a couple hours and she tried on tons of really cute dresses, but none of them were long enough to take on the mission. I don't know what she's going to do if she doesn't find one soon!

I have clothes shopping, mostly because the industry doesn't seem to believe in making cute clothes in plus sizes. If I want to dress like I'm fifty and wear huge gawdy flowers and hideous colors, I can find plenty of things to buy. Otherwise, it becomes a lot harder. Needless to say, I don't go shopping very often.

As we were traipsing aroudn the mall, I suddenly had this huge desire to buy something myself, to find cute clothes and great jewelry. I wanted to have hundreds of dollars to blow and a great body that would look great in whatever I tried on. I was mourning the fact that I didn't have money and starting to feel really miserable.

Then it hit me how stupid it all is. These people that design the clothes are trying to make all their money by making us feel bad about ourselves. "You're not stylish enough. Come buy from us." "You're too fat. Lose some weight and then you can buy our ultra cute clothes!" "Look how happy all the girls on the posters are. Buy from us and be as happy as they are!" What a load of bull! Clothes do NOT make you happy. Real happiness comes from the inside, not the outside. And no amount of having or spending money can give you peace if you can't find it through the life that you lead. They spoon-feed us lies designed to drag us down. I don't want to buy into them anymore.

I wear a mask.

Yesterday morning I woke up early and somewhere between being awake and asleep, I saw the image of a young man sitting in a prison cell. I began immediately to weave a story around him. I knew that he would die the in the prison and that he was a prisoner of war. I don't want to give the story away and I haven't even decided the war yet, but I'll definitely be writing a book about it. I can't be sure if the story came from a dream, but I suspect it did.

It led me into some serious introspection into the nature of prisons and that greatest prison of the mind. When it comes to progression, be it emotional, spiritual, or physical, the greatest obstacle is always some error of the mind. It is impossible to change if you don't know that you need to. Those who don't accept a Savior don't believe that they need to be saved. Those who purposefully hurt others don't understand that hurting others hurts the self.

It is interesting to see the blindness of people. They walk around wearing a mask that only allows others to see certain parts of them. But the same mask prevents them from being able to see because wearing a mask always covers some part of your own vision.

I've seen this in myself. I, who value genuineness above most other traits, very rarely show my true self to anyone. By nature, I'm silly and whimsical. I love to laugh and come up with the most outrageous stories and situations to make others laugh. I could sing all day long, no matter what I was doing, and there is never a time that I am not thinking very seriously about some concept or another. My true self is a strange contradiction of the most extreme silliness and profound introspection-- almost to the point of melancholy. That's who I am.

But who do I show that self to? My husband and about no one else! My immediate family, especially my mom and sister, have seen more of me than most. But I put up a barrier between myself and most other people. With my church friends, I'm all seriousness, all small talk. We talk about daily life, school, and housework, and I enjoy their children. But I never let them see the person that I am on the inside.

What am I not seeing because of the mask that I wear? If I don't let others see me, will I ever be able to really see them? I don't want to be a prisoner of my mind.