This post is about Adam and his accomplishments

The love of my life

Sometimes I ask Adam what I should write about on my blog and he usually tells me that I should write about him. “My name is in the blog address too!” Is how he usually backs up this argument. He says that I should write about him playing intramurals, but what exactly am I supposed to say about that? “Adam sure knows how to kick a soccer ball pretty dang well”-- yeah, I don’t know how well that post would go, I don't have a clue how to make sports sound fascinating.

Last year's amazing intramural football team

But this past week Adam did something amazing and incredible and definitely blog-worthy (not that playing intramurals isn't blog-worthy, but this is a little easier to talk about than intramurals). After three and a half years of attending BYU, one semester short from graduating, Adam Jones checked out his first ever book from the BYU library. He kept telling me that he “rented” a book from the library, which goes to show how often he engages is this sort of activity, because renting is what you do when you go to the video store. And he actually did not check out just one book, but NINE! Nine whole entire books.

The BYU library

Shortly after Adam and I got married I was at the BYU library, with the usual armload of books to check out and I ran into Adam’s good friend, Kurt, studying at a table.

Kurt: What are doing with all those books?

Me: Well, checking them out, isn’t that what you usually do with books at a library?

Kurt: Oh, I’ve never checked out a book from here. And I highly doubt Adam has either.

Kurt. An accomplished student in the highly-competitive accounting program at BYU

I was in shock. My husband had never checked out a book from the library? But sure enough, when I asked him he got this confused expression on his face, like “why would I do that?” My question is, how does anyone get that far in college without checking out a book? That is an accomplishment, to be able to get passing grades without ever learning how to even find a book in the library.

On the other hand, this is how nerdy I am when it comes to the library: for fun I will go to the "oversized book" section of the library. Do you know why they are oversized? Because they are jam-packed with loads of colorful, beautiful pictures of foreign landscapes and architecture, art work, or photos of big events or catastrophes or rituals in other countries (National Geographic style)-- it's so cool! I used to spend Friday nights in high school at Borders bookstore reading. I would stay until it closed at 11pm. To this day I drag Adam to the bookstore for occasional dates. Yeah, nerdy.

One day my life will be like this

I fill my journals with sketches of what I want my life to be like in the future. What I like about this is: it helps me realize what kind of direction I want my life to go in and then I can aim towards that. And it's just interesting to think about. I especially like drawing pictures of the little everyday events that might occur in my future life, things that might seem mundane when I actually get there, but right now seem so cool! And then by drawing pictures of those moments when they actually occur they won't seem so mundane because I'm living my dream! (Trust me, this is true, I've found after living several moments that I had drawn years before). I drew these pictures more than two years ago.

I drew this one on my 20th birthday and I was predicting my life in 7 years (my birthday was on Sunday that year and so in 7 years it would be on Sunday again, which is why we are in church in this picture). There isn't any husband in this picture because getting married was in the too soon future and I didn't want to try and guess what my future spouse looked like. I would meet Adam six months after I drew this picture. That little two year-old leaning against me with the attitude-- I want him! I can imagine exactly what his little stubborn personality is like.

This is another picture I drew around that same time. I realized that I was kind of at a crossroads in my life and I knew that whatever I chose would drastically affect my life in the very near future. These were the three places I could see myself in a year. The first one is me married (there is another person next to me with a wedding ring on in the first picture, in case you can't tell), the second is of me on a mission (I'm in a bunk with my suit coat hanging next to me and a Book of Mormon, and even mormonads on the wall next to my bed), the last one is me at BYU (that's a window behind me with the Y in view). On the side you can see that I said going on a mission was the most likely and getting married was the scariest option. One year from that drawing I was married.

And this is yummy:

Ultimate Hot Chocolate
Recipe from Our Best Bites

2 1-oz. squares of unsweetened baking chocolate
1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
4 c. water
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions here.

Gypsy children and purple nail polish

One of the coolest experiences of my life:

Between the tram stop and our apartment in Romania there is a gypsy camp. It’s not exactly the safest route to travel, because gypsy camps aren’t particuarly known for their security, and it’s kind of tucked back in this maze of alleyway-ish roads. Once while I was walking back there a taxi came through the alley, and I pressed up against the wall of the alleyway to get out of the way, and the passenger in the taxi reached out of the window and grabbed my arm as they passed by and tugged me along for a little bit before letting go, so it wasn’t the safest place. The funny thing is, stuff like that happened to us so often, it wasn’t until I was back in the states and reading through my Romania journals that I read that and realized how unsafe and how bad of a situation that could have been, but at the time it was just one of those things that happens on a daily basis.

The gypsy camp behind our apartment that we walk through everyday

So, we were walking through there and we saw these gypsy children drawing on the side of a painted van. We stand out as outsiders in Romania, and so the children of course started talking to us, showing us their temporary spiderman tattoos and sandals (the few of them that had shoes on). When we couldn’t understand what they were saying they would teach us new Romanian words to help us understand. I had some bright purple nail polish in my pocket that I had just bought for the kids at the hospital (they love having their nails painted) and so I pulled it out and the girls eagerly came forward, holding their fingers out for me to paint. Their little fingers were so grimy! After each painted nail we would exclaim, “Oh, frumoasa!” (Oh, beautiful!). This tiny little gypsy girl with big, solemn brown eyes, came up to me and held out her tiny infant-sized fingers all cover in dirt. I painted them and she held her finger very carefully in her hand, keeping it close to her body so that it would not get smeared. I showed her how to blow on it to help it dry faster.

(This is not the same time that we painted the kids' nails, but this is the same group of children)

(Football in the street)

As we painted the girls’ nails we could feel the boys patting our backpacks and back pockets for spare change or lose cameras, or anything else they could steal. Isn’t that crazy that these kids are trained at such a young age to steal? It’s their means of survival, begging and stealing.

(I love the clothes gypsies wear!)

Anyway, I think that was possibly one of the coolest experiences of my life, to get to paint the nails of gypsy children.

I am pretty sure this is a gypsy camp as well, but not the same one we walk though

Art is a wonderful thing

I know I am always posting art by artists that I am currently in love with, and non-art majors may not find posts like this very fascinating, even art majors may not find it interesting. I'm sorry. But I'm so in love with this artwork I simply cannot contain it inside myself, I have to share it or I might explode with excitement over how incredible these pieces are. For instance, here is the work of Skip Liepke, holy cow, how beautiful are these pieces? They are downright gorgeous!

Look at how he uses green in her skin-- GREEN! And how it contrasts with the pink.

The girls in his paintings have the rubiest lips and the palest skin.

I mean seriously, how gorgeous is this piece? Just the combination of colors and the contrast between her dark hair and pale skin. It's just a painting of a person, but it's so completely captivating. Adam says this one is creepy, which I can maybe see, but I think it's beauty outweighs its creepiness.

And the gorgeous, perfect strokes in this painting, they look careless but are so perfect. I can't get over Liepke's skills (as I'm sure you can tell by now).

And this is Jeremy Lipking. Absolutely lovely.

And Bernie Fuchs. I love his compositions.

Art is a wonderful thing.

The sketches in the margins of class notes

Random sketches from the backs of sacrament meeting programs and the margins of class notes.

I started with drawing a sheep but he wasn't looking so good so he turned into a bear.

Sometimes I draw pictures that describe how I am feeling at the time because I can communicate with pictures better than words. The picture with the girl on the ground is supposed to be me, probably after a really rough week where I felt like I messed up a lot, and that's Adam, helping me up.

The last two pictures are people at the airport.

Characters from some of the Flannery O'Connor short stories we've been reading in my English class lately. O'Connor is brilliant! If you are looking for a good quick read, read an O'Connor story.

Umbrellas

I kind of desperately want one of these. One that actually works in the rain and is this adorable at the same time.

Christmas in September and a Beautiful Song

I will confess to something that I'm sure will earn me some well-earned glares. This last month I started listening to Christmas music. I know, I'm a terrible person! You may glare at me now! I am usually a very firm believer in not even listening to a single note of Christmas music until at least November. But I was desperate! School was slowly killing me and all I could think about was how much I needed Christmas to hurry up and get here so that the semester would be over. Christmas was my light at the end of the tunnel, so I caved and started listening to Christmas music in SEPTEMBER! And oh, it is so glorious! I love Christmas. Who doesn't?

Nightmare before Christmas. If you haven't seen it yet, you must! Right now is the perfect time of year. And Corpse Bride as well.

But when I am not listening to Christmas music (which, I only listen to at the most stressful of homework days) there is a beautiful song, sung by a girl with a beautiful voice that my friend Becca introduced me to. It is called Pitter-Pat by Erin McCarley. I love this song and push "replay" far too many times. It is calming and peaceful. The best way to listen to it is with your earphones in and with the volume up so that you can hear all of the deep, lovely notes.

And here is a drawing of this beautiful girl who poses for one of my classes. The drawing isn't done but that's fine.