Frustration

Grr...

To Be a Kid Again

On Saturday, I needed to head over to the church to get some things ready for choir practice on Sunday. I knew there was a Relief Society things going on for about four or five hours and that I would be able to get in. I get there, and find that two guys in our ward are babysitting 10 kids for five hours. So I decided to pitch in and help.

The weather happened to be really good that day, and a lot of the kids were getting bored being stuck in the same room for hours on end. So we had them outside, but without any structure they were all over the place and not confined to a single area. So we decided to start playing some games in the back lawn of the church grounds.

We were planning on starting by playing tag. The problem was that there was nothing that we could use for natural bases. We solved that by having me be one base, and another adult be the other base. We had played for a little bit and one of the kids needed to go to the bathroom. So the other guy left me alone with about 8 other kids. I had already anticipated something like this and came up with something that they could do.

All of the kids were under 10, so I told them all to line up, told them that all of them were it and that the first person to catch me won. Yes a little chaotic, and I'm sure there's a recipe for disaster somewhere in there, but we did it anyway. Of course I could easily outrun all of them for quite some time, so I would try to get within inches of being caught and get away from them. I'd also try to dodge right inbetween two kids as well. This was usually when they caught me.

After we had done this for several times, I had them all line up, said go, and watched them all come running for me. I waited for the last possible second to leap out of them way and take off, only to find that I ended up tripping over my own feet. Now, I usually have fairly good reflexes and tried to roll and jump up on my feet before I got caught. Well I'm halfway up before I'm hit by the first kid. Well, if all the kids see you on the ground, they know that the chances of them catching me are really quite good, so instead of stopping since the first kid got me, well tackled me is more like it, the rest of the kids saw it in their best interest to do the same.

So now I'm on the ground with eight kids piled on top of me, and the other adult walks around the corner of the church to find a group of kids dogpiled up and no adult in sight. I'm sure it was an interesting to watch as finally the kids got up, since they all certainly had tagged me at that point, to find me crushed under the weight of all those kids. And I loved every minute of it. I haven't gotten to do that in a while. In Kentucky, I would usually babysit my sister's kids and get some exposure to playing with kids, and since I haven't been able to do that in so long, it was fun and a nice change of pace. Ahhh... to be a kid again.

Unbalanced

This once was a cause of concern for me almost three years ago. My obsession for music borders on the unhealthy at some points. It's not just the amount of time I spend with it. In fact that's not really my concern. My concern falls under my love for it. I go to some activity where I'm supposed to socialize, and I will do two things. I will discuss music with you, or I will find a piano or some place where I can enjoy music without having to be interacting with human beings. I do not talk to human beings just for that sake, I talk to them with the intent to discuss music. I made some decisions to try to curb the worst of my tendancies to do this.

Dating somebody has helped, granted, only when I liked the girl as much as music. There was one girl that I had dated for a couple of months, and finally I told her with as much finesse as I could that I would prefer to play music than do anything with her. This is true for just about anyone though. Very few people would enter into the catogory of me liking them more than music.

I find myself doing this all over again. Instead of talking to people, I prefer to go find pianos and play. Everyone who comes up and talks to me, automatically mentions something that refers to music, because that's the way I want it, and I never talk about anything else. One comment recently while I was playing for a wedding at the church was that if there wasn't any music for me to do at church, I would never show up. Okay, yes, that is an exageration. I would go regardless. I just wouldn't hang around the church to play piano since that's my access to a piano right now. I spend about 3 times the amount of time at church than I need to just for the use of the piano.

I send out two to three e-mails a week going over my daily life for my family to read. I recently received something from my aunt asking about my social and dating life because I never wrote about that. Well, I guess there is a reason I never wrote about it. It doesn't exsist because I would prefer to stay with my music from an emotional standpoint. From an intellectual and spiritual standpoint, I know that isn't something I should be doing, yet I do. Now I just need to decide what I'm going to do about it before it gets really bad.

I'm alive

This is a quote that I've often used this past year. Many people often greet each other with something along the lines of "How's it going?" or other some such statement. Everyone has their replies that they use over and over. Mine is usually just, "Doing good" Okay, so not the best grammar out there, but it works. I was more concerned that in saying that, it wasn't really true. So I decided to incorporate another phrase into some type of answer. I now say, "I'm alive" People seem to find this phrase as rather depressing. Now I've never really seen it as a depressing statement, in fact, I really like this answer. It makes me enjoy the little things in life, such as not being dead.

Really, there are many cool things in that statement, "I'm alive" Number one, I can breathe air. You know, it's a really good thing to be able to breathe are. My lungs work, my heart pumps blood, my muscles work. Do you know how uncomfortable it is to not breathe anything, and then, after a short period of time, you won't feel anything at all.

I wouldn't like it if I couldn't feel anything at all. That's another reason I'm alive. I can actually feel things, whatever that would happen to be. "I'm alive" is a declaration that I'm alive, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So for all of you who think it's a very depressing thing to say, it's really not. I'm just thankful for all the little things in life.