setting up transition in the rain (left of, but not under the umbrella).

rounding the bend with my new friend melanie.

my friend, training partner and inspiration, ~j.

my loyal friend and sister-from-another-mother melody, who ran in with me at the very end. on heels, no less.

my loyal family who cheered me on. k~ walked the first mile and some of the final “run” with me.

this is me.

at my first *triathlon.

it kicked my trash.

but i finished.

and avoided coming in dead last…

by a mere .004 seconds.

and a bunch of people who registered but didn’t show.

and a handful of people who started, but didn’t finish.

one woman’s sprint is another woman’s endurance race…

2:35:009

(*technically it ended up being a dualthon last minute, as it was so cold and wet this morning the race administrators were worried about hypothermia and revised the race at the last minute. it ended up run, bike, run; instead of swim, bike, run. that was a disadvantage to me, as the “run” isn’t my best event. but such is life. and, frankly, hypothermia could have been a worse disadvantage.)

woke up this morning and went to gym class.

happy face.

came home to find suze still here, still not feeling well.

sad face.

wasted an hour on the phone with verizon who, once again has found a way to rip me off. thanked the nice cs lady who was as helpful as she could be then escalated the call to a supervisor who was patronizing and rude and only credited me $10 of the $50 they have ripped me off.

sad face.

which meant youngest was late for school.

sad face.

and i was late for work.

sad face.

as i sat in my cubicle i realized something was wrong. very wrong. there was a bad smell. a very bad smell. my shirt was fine. my pants were fine. and i started to suspect that my unmentionables, which had been in the clean pile in the laundry room, were suspect.

suze texted me to tell me that mowgli had been in the laundry room and mistaken the clean laundry for the litter box.

stinky face.

as i debated what to do, youngest calls me from school to tell me his class would be celebrating his summer birthday that very day and he needed treats for 40 (thank you utah legislature for your flaccid support of education and reduced-class sizes) before work would be over.

sad face.

i realized i could no longer be a smelly cat mom and an a-list quality assurance supervisor at the same time so i checked out.

sad face.

i went home and made an appointment for the cat to be neutered, sorted the laundry that needed to be redone, did the first batch of laundry, a batch of dishes, and the second batch of laundry…

happy face.

and then i realized my year-old top loading he washing machine was flashing an error code.

sad face.

i called whirlpool customer service and found someone to help me troubleshoot. she’d never heard of the error code my washer was flashing.

sad face.

we tried to troubleshoot anyway…

and the phone died.

sad face.

fortunately i had registered my product and she called me back. we worked on it some more. i thought we fixed it…

but it’s really dead.

sad face.

i looked at the calendar, hoping to see friday and sure it must be the 13th.

but there was no excuse for this day.

dear subway:

pepperoni will never be the new bacon. never ever.

***********

dear hostess:

what were you thinking?

***********

dear people who think senator bennett is too liberal:

what, are you crazy?

***********

dear people who lump all utahns in with the extremist delegates who voted at convention:

what, are you crazy?

***********

dear aarp,

thank you for mailing my husband a membership card. but retiring at 50? i. don’t. think. so.

***********

dear arizona,

thanks for making utah look good. but not really.

p.s. i was already boycotting you. you’re too hot. plus i’m still not over that awful night in tucson back in ’07.

***********

dear newbie boycotters of arizona,

ariZona beverage co. is out of new york. have you met google?

***********

dear meteorologists:

i actually love it when mother nature mixes it up a little. or even a lot. but your “forecasting” this spring has had all the credibility of oprah.

i’m just sayin.’

i think buttons are, well, cute as buttons. between you and me, i’ve always kind of wanted one of my own.

but you can’t have everything, because just where would you put it?

but i did just pick up this cute little button.

it’s this book, see.

and i have a couple of essays in it. one of them is under my pseudonym, so you might have to look for it.

kind of like a where’s waldo (i know where he is–happy birthday waldo) in essay.

and, well, the other contributors are pretty much AMAZING, so you may want to check it out.

(and let me know if you want one of these cute buttons!)

Have you ever been sitting in a church meeting where something sort of organically occurs that makes the point better than any mere words and you just want to say, “Amen” so you can go home and ponder and put the amazing lesson learned into play?

That happened today.

During our Relief Society meeting.

My good friend Lorien was teaching the lesson. Lorien is a fabulous teacher (she teaches high school in addition to teaching her own children). She’s so fabulous I almost wish I could go back to high school and take science class from her.

Lorien had planned to begin her lesson with a short video excerpt from the very beginning of this beautiful conference talk by Elder M. Russell Ballard.

Before Lorien began, however, something significant happened during a little thing we like to call opening exercises. Something that set up her intro more perfectly than even Lorien could have scripted it.

Lorien’s daughter had been asked to conduct the opening hymn. During the beginning of the hymn she got a little lost in the meter. Sitting on the second row, I had a clear view of her sweet 12-year-old face. I watched intently as she kept grinning while also trying so hard to figure out where she was in the hymn and get back on the beat. At one point she even mouthed the words,

“Help me.”

From my vantage point I could also observe Lorien, who was sitting directly across from her daughter, but in her periphery. Lorien clearly wanted and tried so desperately to help out her daughter. But her daughter couldn’t see her.

I kept watching as another friend, Julie, who happened to be sitting on the front row, started leading, demonstrating the pattern. I might point out that Julie is not only a good friend of Lorien and her family, but also a leader in our local YW program and a talented conductor. Lorien’s daughter, once she noticed Julie, promptly recovered, picked up the beat and was able to lead the rest of the song.

I wasn’t sure who else had observed this scene, the significance of which I somehow sensed from the start. It struck me even more so as Lorien began the video presentation of Elder Ballard’s talk, which I remembered had particularly resonated with me during General Conference.

Especially as she closed the excerpt with this line:

But because all women have within their divine nature both the inherent talent and the stewardship to mother, most of what I will say applies equally to grandmothers, aunts, sisters, stepmothers, mothers-in-law, leaders, and other mentors who sometimes fill the gaps for these significant mother-daughter relationships.

It was not lost on Lorien, who spontaneously and with great depth of feeling described the previous events then brought home her point that there are times our daughters need help, but even when we are there for them, sometimes–for whatever reason–they can’t see us. And we need other powerful, talented, nurturing women to step in and fill the gap.

I am ever grateful for my village.

Amen.