The tropical storm off the coast of Florida gave me a perfect evening lying on my bed, listening to the rain.

Did you see it? Here:

It looks suspiciously antenna-like. In fact, if we were to zoom in really close, you would see this:

I had no idea cockroaches would crawl that high. I wasn’t sure the best method of dealing with this little visitor. Above all, I knew that I didn’t want it to fall on me. So I started throwing flip-flops at it to try and get it to fall off or move somewhere I could smash it. But it wouldn’t budge. I finally realized that I broom would be more effective. But not until after I made my wall look more like this:

And then, the wretched thing got away anyway. It scurried into some unknown crack in the dark. I’ve gotten used to looking for them on the floor (if you think something moved out of the corner of your eye, chances are pretty high, you did), but now they’re turning up in unexpected and unnerving places.

I’ve had a goal for a while to go through old photos and delete a portion of them. I finally went through my folders for March and April tonight and came across several events and photos that never quite made it onto the blog. I feel bad about leaving photos to waste away on my hard drive, so I thought I’d share them now even though they’re a few months old.

There was a haircut. Amanda’s secret? Give Peter a candycane or sucker to keep him occupied.

There was the best Mardi Gras tree in New Orleans on Tulane’s campus.

And later when the leaves came in.

An Easter activity, complete with egg hunt and picnic.

An afternoon spent at the Fly with Pete and Penny.

A rainy drive along the Avenue (this is with my old car… )

And Pete, relaxing in front the fridge, working on the alphabet.

Now back to deleting photos. I still have several months to work through.

Just noticed that my last entry was 666 (and it was photos from a cemetery? coincidence? i don’t think so), and I’m nothing if not superstitious.

Peter loves visiting the cemetery because it has lots of green space to run around in and lots of in between spaces perfect for hiding.

I recently found out about a blog called Coffee Shop, that has lots of free tutorials and actions. I’ve never played around with that kind of stuff before, but I decided to give it a try last night. Here’s the result:

It’ll be fun to play around more with some of their tutorials.

Did I scream? Did I jump out of the bed? Nope, I simply brushed it off the bed and tried to go back to sleep (so tired). But this passage from a short story by Sherman Alexie that I read in the New Yorker last night was haunting me:

Then I recalled the man who went to the emergency room because he’d woken having lost most, if not all, of his hearing. The doctor peered into one ear, saw an obstruction, reached in with small tweezers, and pulled out a cockroach, then reached into the other ear and extracted a much larger cockroach. Did you know that ear wax is a delicacy for roaches?

Yeah, I couldn’t sleep again after that. I decided I better take care of the cockroach, but woudn’t you know, I couldn’t find it anywhere.

You would never know this is my water bottle at close range and with lots of condensation. I love that deep cobalt blue. It’s been my favorite color for as long as I can remember.

I’ve been thinking a lot about last year around this time and even more so with these new additions. I didn’t tell them at first that I had done a similar program last year and only lasted three months, but it came up. I felt so awkward telling them. It’s still hard for me to admit that I quit, and even though I know quitting wasn’t necessarily an admission of defeat because it was the right decision for me, I often worry that to an outside observer it looks an awful lot like defeat.

And I remember how last year around this time, I never thought I’d be one of the ones who quit. I had such an awesome experience at my summer institute. It was hard work, but I loved what we were learning. I loved my summer teaching experience where the 3 teachers to 9 students helped keep everything in check. I knew at the time it wasn’t reality, but I hoped my real life situation would be similar. But it wasn’t.

I have a really bad memory about some things. A year later, I often think that maybe it wasn’t that bad (but it was). And the appearance of these 5 new teachers has kind of stirred up all those memories, the good and the bad. I can empathize with their excitement and anxiety. I really hope their experience is better than mine, and I definitely hope they stick around for a while. I like to see our little congregation growing.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how seldomly I visited the mountains when I lived in Utah. To me, they were simply something to be admired from a distance. I enjoyed having them surround me. I like how comforting they are. I like driving along the foothills and seeing the valley lights below. But I don’t really like hiking. And my family and friends never really went camping. Other than girls’ camp for church, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have slept in a tent. I guess sometimes I would go for a drive up the canyon. I know, it’s pretty sad. I took them for granted. So on my visit to Utah (yes, I’m still blogging about it), I wanted to at least visit the mountains. Did this mean camping or hiking? No. It meant a nice drive up Big Cottonwood to Silver Lake, where we could take a leisurely stroll across a boardwalk. Hey, it’s still the mountains, right?

And bonus, I even went to the mountains twice on my trip. I met up with friends in Millcreek Canyon for a cook out that included peanutbutter smores, Mexican cokes, delicious hotdogs, and great company but I didn’t get any good pictures of it, so obviously, no dedicated blog entry.

We stopped by the visitor center before walking out to the lake. There, Claire got to learn more about what animals you find in the mountains.

And what those animals leave behind.

There are plaques and stuff that explain about the ecology of Silver Lake, but I skipped over those and headed outdoors to see it.

As mentioned, there’s a boardwalk that surrounds the lake, so we followed it.

There are beautiful wildflowers along the way.

And the most delicate flower of all:

hehe.

Hey look! Brothers!

Claire!

Izzy didn’t want any photos taken because she had just woken up from working the night shift.

That’s the kind of mountain experience I enjoy. Nice and relaxing.