It's that time of year again!

The time when my toes start getting calused, I seem to always run out of enough clean socks, and I get turned away every time I try to give blood b/c my iron is too low. Its training season!!

I decided to take it easy and only do a half marathon this summer, and maybe the 10k next week in SLC. I just love the excuse it gives me to be outdoors, b/c goodness knows I'd be completely content to stay inside for weeks, cooking and sewing and I wouldn't mind in the least. Somehow, as soon as I post on my fridge the schedule of how many miles to run on what day, I feel so committed to it! I love having obtainable goals! I love the big reward of race day!
I love my tan lines from being outside all the time! 18 miles last week, 21 this week, and 25 next! And its just the beginning!

Starvation Could be Fun

I've found myself in a humbling situation. With my new job lined up in the Fall, I knew I'd still have to make some sort of income this summer to make ends meet, so I did some substituting back in May and recently some EFY sessions. The sub system pays direct deposit on the 25th of every month, so when I looked this morning and found that this very substantial, life-sustaining deposit had never been made, I began to panic. Turns out, they did send a check, but to a completely random address in Draper! The payroll office has canceled the check, and will send me another one, to my real address, but they won't be able to get to it for 3 weeks or so. In the meantime, I have $20 to my name!! I AM GOING TO DIE!!

Ok but really, it could be a fun character-building experience, seeing how it feels to live from paycheck to paycheck, having bills that you have no idea how you'll pay. Looks like I'll be donating a lot of plasma this month!!

Especially for Me Too

What an experience that words cannot even express. I was expecting to give so much to these girls, to my youth, and didn't realize that they'd be giving so much to me in return. How very strengthening it is to be given that leadership role, to have to opportunity to bear testimony at any moment, to really share with these girls what I know is true, and how I've come to know it for myself. It surely is in the bearing of testimonies that ours are strengthened immensely. I knew that I was supposed to be at EFY this summer, for reason that each of the 20 different things I auditioned for and applied for all fell through or didn't accept me or didn't work out. Clearly, I was supposed to be there for someone, or they were supposed to be there for me.

In Indiana, I saw myself in so many of these girls. I was in fact, in their very place exactly 6 years ago, at the Bloomington session! I remember being so enthralled with the gathering of hundreds of zealous LDS youth, unlike anything I'd ever experienced before, and just feeling the power of so many of us in one place was the reason I longed for it every summer. So in being their counselor, I got to take a step back and let these youth teach other, to bask in the light they all have and brought with them. They were all so eager to talk with eachother and share what they know and bouy eachother up. They are so weathered and so strong because of it. The youth of the Midwest are doing great things for the Church.

And then Nauvoo was just a week of pure peace and wholeness. Just to be walking in the city brought such happiness, and then to be teaching and testifying on the temple grounds, Joseph's city, I couldn't have asked for a more perfect summer experience. My favorite part of the week was being able to share my love for Nauvoo, my home! For the first time in my life, I was the educated tour guide that knew the city like the back of my hand! I could share every story and detail and memory everywhere we went. Isn't that how life works, though? You enjoy something so much for yourself first, and then you go back and you lead others along, as their parent or their teacher, paving a little way for them, but still gaining so very much out of the experience for yourself while you're at it. Shaking the hands of President Uchtdorf while I was there only put the icing on the already sweet and delicious cake! Goodness, so much of me is in Nauvoo. What a connection I have and will always have with that sacred little town.

And so I'm hooked. I would absolutely love to devote my entire next summer to Especially for Youth. There's just something about draining yourself physically, spiritually, and emotionally, week after week for these little sponges, and I can't quite put a finger on it. Perhaps its because it makes me feel a little more like the Savior, who was the greatest teacher of all, who loved the children with all His heart, and who showed by His example how to come unto Christ.

I Enjoy Being a Girl

Mmm I feel pretty. I dyed my hair a little darker brown (somewhat unseasonal) this morning to fix some grown-out highlights, then grabbed the scissors and cut some more layers so my hair would flip better. Then I went out to lunch with my mom to Mimi's Cafe, and then we both got pedicures! I got "Season's Greetings" red (also quite unseasonal). I feel like this is the first time in my life that I've had pretty feet! Oh what running marathons will do to your toes. Glory, it feels good to get done up.

Home

Home is so healing, isn't it?! Its not like I've been lazy here; I've actually had my fair share of household responsibilities, seeing as my parents left for Germany for over a week. They always seem to conveniently leave town whenever I come home to visit :)

And so in taking the kids to swimming lessons, softball games, trumpet lessons, physical therapy, horse lessons, church, and doing the grocery shopping, gasing up the van, cooking meals, and dates every night with an old friend, I should be exhausted and long to get away. But I absolutely love it. Even the part where I had to take one of the twins into surgery yesterday to get a wood chunk out of his foot. I'm just glad kids come one at a time, and not 7 all at once.

But really, there's something about going back to where you came from that makes you see what you've become in the time you were gone. I'm surrounded by pictures and scrapbooks and videos and momentos of me from before I left for school, I know, a mere 4 years ago, but I feel like a completely different girl. Like that skinnier, more rebellious, simpler version of me had more of an idea of what she wanted than I do. And so the older and wiser me is just so intrigued by that frame of a girl who had her whole life planned. And some things happened just the way she wanted them, and some things, not at all.

Wow, I sound like I'm going through some mid-life crisis! Maybe its because another chapter of life ends this summer--that of being a silly college girl. And now I go off into the real world of having a real job and that small Ohio town "High-School-Camille" never thought she'd see the "College-Grad-Camille" as a single girl, a Home-ec teacher, settled in Provo, still the hopeless romantic she always was.

Garage Sale

What luck to be back home for the annual Autumn Creek neighborhood garage sale! Every year, the week after school gets out, the mothers of our neighborhood pull out the price tag stickers, the lawn chairs, and the fans, open their garage doors and set up camp. Then they'll sit for a solid 3 days, with their coke and iced tea, and chat with everyone and anyone who comes their way.

Garage sales are a wonder to me. We sit outside, in the humid and muggy Ohio-ness, melting in our garages, no less, selling what we don't have room for, what we should have thrown out years ago, things that we bought on mail order that didn't really work, things we forgot where they came from, things we don't want the kids to see we're trying to sell, and for junk change. For a mere quarter, for a dollar here or there.

And as I walked home this morning with the little ones, a bag full of eyelet lace and ribbon that I had paid $.25 for, I realized that its not about making any money at all. Its for the sense of Midwest community in walking the whole neighborhood over and seeing everyone that you haven't seen all winter. Its to catch up on everyone's life, to see how big their baby has gotten, to see what they've done with the house, to welcome in the summer after a whole season of staying indoors.

I guess its sweet how they've all kept up on my life, though I haven't really seen the neighborhood like this for atleast 4 years. I think I babysat for atleast half of the neighborhood; they've seen me outside getting pictures for Prom or Homecoming, they've heard me giggling on the phone on our porch swing for hours, seen me on the steps when I was dropped off after dates, after curfew. They've gratiously bought grapefruit and oranges when the choir was fundraising, and let us use their driveways when we hosted parties.

And with every friendly comment along the lines of "Camille, you know you have to get married soon, because your dad's almost done with the gazebo", I smile and think, "I know. I'm working on it. I'd love to be inviting you to my reception in the backyard, I'd love to settle down in the cute little house next to yours, and then I'd be buying all of your baby swings, and high chairs, and footie pajamas at next year's garage sale. "Do you have a boyfriend yet?", "I should set you up with my nephew while your in town", "You better get started soon if you want a big family too". Oh, dear neighbors of Fairborn Ohio, thank you for watching out for me. You're cute. And I just never get tired of hearing it, I guess!

Ring my Belle

So I really should just chill out on the shows, seeing as I did just finish Smokey Joes last month, and I'm leaving for the next 4 weeks to visit home and be an EFY COUNSELOR!!! But no, with every end of a show, the emptiness burns a whole in my heart and it seems the next audition, any audition will putty it back up!

Last minute I auditioned for Beauty & the Beast down at Center Street last week, and...got the part of Belle!! This time last summer, I did a Disney show there, where all the princesses sang a couple songs from their movie and it was just magical! So knowing that the directors had seen me as Belle before, if only for 3 songs, I hoped they would remember me, and that the dress fit me oh so well :)

And strangely, I feel whole again! Its like there are so many avenues that make up one's lifestyle, like a part each for work, family, church, relationships, etc. And part of me has to always be performing, and when I haven't sold my soul to any given theater or group or event, a part of me dies inside!

So come see "Beauty & the Beast", opens Sept 5th through Oct 3rd!