Closure

It’s funny how one little thing can send your mind somewhere it hasn’t been in years. Somewhere it didn’t want to be. So, as I am unable to turn my brain off, unable to shift focus, and unsure as to how to handle the situation, I’m going to write about it.

Some people say that they prefer to live without regrets because what they’ve done has made them who they are. I hate that. I believe that’s a sign of someone being so overwhelmed with guilt and remorse that they can’t deal with it. Or they don’t acknowledge that mistakes affect people besides themselves, and are just that cold and self-absorbed not to care, or even realize. If anyone took offense to that, please hear me out.

I do not believe the wrong turns I took along the way are what lead me here. I was already here. The path I am on now is the path that I started on. The strait/straight and narrow, the iron rod, the yellow brick road, whatever you want to call it - the path of love and happiness doesn’t move. Only you move. Those missteps were nothing more than a waste of my time. The longest possible route to get where I wanted to be. And getting back here was the hardest stretch of it all.

Maybe your path is different from mine. Perhaps your destination is different depending on your definition of happiness. I don’t know, nor is it for me to decide what is better for you. But I believe you know whether or not the path you walk is the one that will ultimately lead you where you want to be.

There are people and things in my life that have shaped me into a better person, but there are also others that have not. Any good or admirable quality I have because of those things stem from regret, fear, and defiance. They didn’t teach me anything. They only reinforced what I already knew: Don’t leave the path!

So, now that I’m here, I find it difficult to look back. For me, Memory Lane is a dark, dilapidated, dead end, ghetto street. Filled with busted cars parked on tar-patched streets next to cracked sidewalks. Lined with filthy chain-link fences with garbage stuck to it, and as the wind blows, the trash reaches out from the links it’s pinched in, like it’s trying to get away. But if it got away, then the place where it ended up would be filthy.

That’s the way trash works. No matter where you are, if you allow the trash to be there, then the place you are becomes a dirty place. That’s why I don’t want any elements from my past life to be a part of my current one.

(At this point, I should let my family know that I am not talking about them. I pushed them away and they were not a part of my life during the times I’m talking about. I’m writing to my old “friends.” Specifically the friend of mine who was also friends with the person I happened to run into the other day, and got me thinking about these things.)

There was a time when I called each of you friends, but looking back, I’m not so sure you were. And I’m convinced more than ever that today we would not be friends. Sometimes I wonder if we had stayed friends if you would be where I am. But then I am thankful that I did not end up where you are.

I’m not necessarily saying that I regret our friendship. But I am saying that you cannot be a part of my new life. Even those of you that may have been good for me then, you carry bad memories for me now.

The people I am writing to will probably never read this, and therefore, I know we will never have the closure I wish we could have. But I refuse to contact you. I hate the amount of attention I have given you in this post. And I really hate the amount of attention my mind has given you in these last few days.

I don’t think about you. It seems funny to say, and I hate it when people write poems and songs about how they don’t think about someone, yet they have taken the time, energy, and thought to write about them. But in this small moment that I am thinking about you, I want to let you know that I don’t think about you. And I don’t want to think about you ever again.

I have a song for nearly everyone in my life. So, I would like to dedicate these songs to the people that made me write this. (I have put these songs on the music playlist below. If you would like to listen to them, hit the play button. But you'll want to pause the music on the right first.)

Fort Minor - “Slip Out The Back” is to my former best friend. If great minds really do think alike, you’ll understand it.

Britney Spears - “Out From Under” goes out to all of the females that I was once fond of. I tried to find something better, but sadly, you cannot always choose who sings good songs.

Hoobastank - “Remember Me” is for everyone else. Namely the person I ran into.

I didn’t get the chance to say it then, so I’ll say it now: Goodbye.

Big, Big News

As Jenn mentioned in her last post, Friday morning was spent looking at houses with my parents. We have looked at quite a few condos, townhomes, and houses in the last few months. My parents have wanted to invest in some property for quite some time now, and we can’t afford to stay where we are now. So, the solution was for them to buy a place, and we will live in it, fix it up, and wait for the market to rise again.

The first place we looked at that day was a condo, which was fairly nice. Then we looked at a house, which was not so nice. At all! There was absolutely NOTHING good about it. Sure, it had walls and a roof, but those are the only positive things that can be said of that house. Especially not for the price they were asking. It was good that we saw that house first, though. Because it made the second home we saw absolutely shine. But that could have also been because it was, in fact, a nice house.

So nice that my parents made an offer. It wasn’t the first offer they had made through all of our house-hunting, but, oddly enough, this was the first one Jenn and I prayed over. Not necessarily that we would get the house, but that things would work out if this was the right place for us, and for peace of mind if it was not. Previous rejection had taken its toll on us, and we did not want the same thing to happen again.

Well, I never doubted the power of prayer, but now I have more reason to believe in it... The offer was accepted! Within 24 hours, no less. While it’s not a done-deal yet, it’s looking like it will be. And if all goes well, in a month, Jenn and I will be living in a home!

Now, if I may, I would like to express my thanks. Not only to my parents, who have gone above and beyond to help us, but also to the rest of my family for being so supportive. We know that this is not a little thing to happen to us. We are aware of how big of a blessing this is. I don’t know where I would be without all of you, nor do I want to know. The very idea makes me ill.

I love you guys. You may never hear me say it out loud, but please know that I do. And I rarely share my testimony of my faith in God, but I know Heavenly Father cares for me. I don’t always understand why, but I know He does.

MamaLlama Comes to Visit

This last weekend was certainly an eventful one. On Thursday, my mom, Noah, and Tori came down from Colorado for Tori's Senior Prom at Liahona (if you want more details of that, I'm sure my mom will post about it soon if she hasn't already). We didn't see them then, but had plans to visit and go out to dinner on Friday.

Friday morning was spent looking at houses (more about that will be mentioned in another post) and finishing our small "spring cleaning" project we had started a couple days before. It was almost eleven a.m. when Adam noticed that he missed a call from my mom and had a new voicemail. My phone also had a missed call. He began to listen to the message at the same time I called her back and we exchanged looks as we both knew from her tone that something was wrong.

It turns out that Noah went out to the van that morning and saw that the back right tire was flat. All the way to the ground. We grabbed our jack (which ultimately was not used) and rushed to their aid.

We didn't need to rush. With all the visiting we were doing, we didn't even get to the tire for an hour. That was when we found the good-sized pebble lodged very deep into the bald tire. There was no fixing it, so Mom called her favorite tire guy and said she needed two new tires (the other back tire was bald too and she didn't want to risk it on the way home). She said she could get the van there using a spare from one of the many cars at her disposal, which didn't work out.

So we took the flat tire in to replace it, took it back to the van, put it back on, then drove the van over for the other tire to be replaced. That happened just after four p.m. so we decided to go to dinner (just my mom, Adam, and I) while the van was worked on.

We went to Red Robin, one of Adam's favorite places and had a wonderful dinner and great conversation. After that, we had Mom come over to our place to visit and it was well after 8 when we finally said goodnight.

So, we had a great time spending most of the day with Mom and the kids and are looking forward to seeing them again in May.

Happy Birthday, Blackberry!

No, there were no party hats or any celebration for that matter. We’re not THAT crazy. However, we do feel a great sense of accomplishment knowing that we have kept our goldfish alive for a whole year. And even though “she” is just a fish, we sure do love “her.” (It’s Jenn’s fish, therefore, we refer to it as a female - even though we have no fetching idea what its gender is. Nor do we know when she was born, but we bought her a year ago, so she is at least a year old.)

Here’s the story for those who haven’t heard it... Last year, Jenn was given some birthday money to do whatever she wanted with. At that time she wanted a pet, so we spent a lot of time at various pet stores. But between me not wanting a high-maintenance animal, and our landlord being so unfathomably strict about pets, we started looking into fish.

Jenn immediately liked the black moor goldfish. But she was also picky about which one she wanted. We shopped around, and even returned to a few stores days later to keep checking for the right one. After a week of searching, we found her, and Jenn hand-picked her out of the hundreds of fish there. The $5 fish quickly became a $40 fish after the bowl, rocks, tree, and food. Jenn wasn’t sure what to name her, so I said “Blackberry” as a joke, but the more we thought about it, the more we liked it.

In her first year, Blackberry has gotten around. She has lived in two homes, spent some time with the Kenworthys (when they lived in Utah), had a sleepover with Bret, and even spent a week in Snowbird. And although my logical brain says I’m like every other pet owner by inventing a personality for an emotionless animal, she does seem to display characteristics that go against every scientific thing I’ve learned about goldfish. But personality or not, we love her either way.

Happy Birthday, Jenn!

As most of you know, March 25th was Jenn's birthday. As usual, she wants to be the one to tell you all about it. But first, I wanted to say that I love her so much, and I seem to love her more and more each day. There are so many things that I wish I could give her, even though she asks for so little. (Or NOTHING at all!)

I hope you had a happy birthday, Jennifer. I love you with all of me, and I always will.


Adam spoiled me rotten! AGAIN! The thoughtfulness of his gifts is immeasurable and surprising. For my birthday Adam got me the movie "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", the next Star Wars book in the series I began at Christmas, a couple of Pern novels that I didn't have yet (now I am VERY close to having all the Pern books), a sand-filled lizard to replace the one I lost while we were dating, and the best of them all: A First Edition of DragonsDawn with a bookplate signed by Anne McCaffery herself!

The best part of that gift is the reason why he got it for me. When I first met Adam, I was invited to go to Park City with him and his family. I brought with me two books. DragonsDawn was one of them and Adam has remembered that this whole time. On top of that he knew that DragonsDawn is my second, and occasionally first, favorite Pern book of all time.

Even though Adam rolls his eyes at my preference for the fantasy genre, he remembered and got me one of the most thoughtful gifts ever. (I would have to say that the poem and rose he brought me while we were dating was THE most thoughtful, but that is another story.)

Oh...and he got me a pair of jeans and a Star Wars t-shirt too, but I knew about those on account that I picked them out for myself.

All in all, turning 24 was wonderful. Getting older isn't so bad when you have someone like Adam to love and be loved by.

Slackers

We are aware that we have been blogging slackers lately, but we wanted to let everyone out there know that we are still alive and well. We haven’t given up on our blog or J.A. Toons, we just haven’t had the drive to do it for a while.

For all of you waiting for a copy of our DVD, “The Adventures of JennAdam,” I did get the discs I needed. But then I decided I wanted to make a slight change to it, so I stopped making copies. However, the change I wanted to make didn’t work out so well, so I’m sticking with the original version, and production is back up and running. Eventually everyone in our immediate families will get a copy. Anyone else interested, just let us know.