One Small Hop For Frog- Kind...

Two years ago destiny had an amphibious hand in my decision to adopt a trio of small African Dwarf water frogs. You know the saying about how the best things come in small packages--well this Christmas present became an instant source of entertainment.

It became very obvious to me early on that the frogs, whom I named Clarence, Harold, and Maude (after the unique 70s comedy) were not the brightest tadpoles in the pond. While they were fun to feed and fascinating to watch, they had a bizarre habit of launching themselves at their food pellets several times and missing their targets entirely, swallowing water or gravel or occasionally each other while the pellets bobbed happily untouched. When they actually managed to accidentally get food in their tiny mouths, they would immediately spit it out, then re-swallow it, and then repeat the process. It was a wonder to me that they matured to frog-hood at all, and a miracle when their tiny frog bellies began to swell over time into healthy tiny pot bellies. It took several months before I realized that along with their lack of frog marbles and gracefulness, the frogs also happened to be blessed with the ability to escape.

While it's pretty impossible to know for sure which frog was which, the one I believe to be Harold escaped early in their first year and proved to me that lurking behind those tiny beady eyes wheels were turning. He flung himself from my hands one day when I was scooping him out to clean the frog-tank, hitting the ground hopping he headed in a straight bee-line for the door. The thing about frogs is that they happen to be very slippery, particularly when the person holding them has soap on their hands, and he managed to get halfway down the hall before I got a good grip on him, the eyes of my amused hall-mates watching the whole show.

The frog I thought was Clarence got picked on by the others as he matured, and it wasn't long before he stopped eating entirely and had to take the porcelain express to frog heaven. Another year passed without too much excitement, and I settled back into my comfortable assumptions that my two frogs were nothing more or less than adorable little morons.

One day I noted that Harold had stopped eating. At least, I think it was Harold. Maude had grown rather fat at this point, and had slightly better aim when it came to feeding. It only took him half a dozen tries to catch a pellet, where it took Harold several dozen. In an attempt to give poor Harold a fighting chance I separated the two, putting Maude in a Tupperware container on my desk for the night. It occurred to me that Maude may actually jump out, so I loosely taped a piece of printer paper to the top of the Tupperware as a make-shift lid.

The next morning I knew something was wrong. There wasn't enough movement in the water. I peered down into the tank and saw Harold happily swimming away, but the Tupperware was empty. I stared for several seconds at the water, looking at it from every angle in hopes that Maude was simply hiding or had learned to be invisible. But there was still no frog. In a rising panic, I searched the desk-top but found nothing. No spilled water, no frog-sized puddles, not even a pebble of gravel. I began to search in earnest then, looking in and under everything that was frog level, combing my floor several times to no avail.

It occurred to me suddenly that my door had about an inch of space underneath it, a perfect frog-sized exit for a bite-sized desperado to crawl through. I felt a mixture of horror and, I'll admit, respect for the little monster. To have enough strength to propel himself out of the water, squeeze under the paper, fall off the desk (a fairly decent drop for an animal only a half-inch high) and be on the lamb in my hallway...it was obvious that Maude was on a mission. But to where?

I alerted my hall's RA to the situation and asked her to spread the word, and did the same in the boys' hall on the same floor. After asking the janitor to keep an eye out for Maude ("a WHAT?" she said, like she'd never heard of pocket-sized water frogs before) and being laughed out of the room I stopped asking people to aid in my search. Instead I made a "Missing" poster complete with a sketch of Maude and my name and phone number in case he was found. I was under no delusions at this point that Maude was still alive. Even if he had escaped moments before I woke up, unless he had found water and found it soon, he was a goner. And time had run out for my search.

I had to be on a bus heading home for the holidays soon, and after twenty more fruitless minutes of looking I left Caldwell, dark thoughts of a matchbox casket and tiny funeral services filling my mind. I had already imagined a thousand ill fates for Maude, and each one ended with a webbed pancake, dime-sized. Several days later I returned to college and found a note stapled underneath my "Missing" poster on the dormitory billboard: "Frog Found," it said, "ask Hillary."

I found Hillary and there learned of the last adventures of Maude. He had indeed escaped under my door and waddled into my next door neighbor's room, where he took refuge in her laundry basket. Not necessarily being used to watching out for miniature frogs in her clothing, my neighbor had dumped the load into the washer, where Maude had evidently had the ride of his little life. She found him an hour later after pulling everything out of the dryer, his crispy body mummified next to her socks.

Word spread like wildfire around the dorms until it became a common joke to warn people of frog attacks in the laundry room, and quite a few people came up to me to offer their condolences and to visit Harold, who seemed oblivious that his tank-mate had just kicked the bucket. After a few weeks of swimming solo he seemed to know that something was up, and with a broken heart he too--excuse the pun--croaked.

Now I suppose I should have grieved a little more for Maude who, true to the character for which he was named, longed for adventure beyond the confines of a small plastic box. But I can't begrudge him his last great escape; it's a story that might have been passed down from tadpole to tadpole for generations, (providing Maude had ever met a female,) and stands to me as a testament that he was smarter than I gave him credit for.

As Junior year looms I'm considering getting another pet...

...preferably one that's too big to fit in the laundry.

The Summer That Almost Did Me In

Guido fist pump! School is over! Grades are in! I SURVIVED!!!

I returned to Idaho Falls in the middle of May with the assumption that I was in for a long, relaxing, much-needed stress break…but alas…the whole first month of my summer break has done its best to kill me.

Within a few days of arriving home, I came down with a double ear infection and dust allergies from cleaning out all the old crap in my room to make room for my new crap from college. I awoke each morning with my throat and ears on fire, and went to sleep in the drugged out haze that rides on the back of allergic reactions. A large red rash began to spread along one side of my forehead, and assuming it was allergies or acne, I ignored it.

By the end of the week my room was clean and organized, but the unidentifiable rash had spread and developed an odd sensation similar to sandpaper rubbing along the nerves in my skin. That week was also painful in other ways: after a frightening night an old friend wound up in the hospital, my two only job interviews ended with a “thanks for trying, but we don’t want you,” I had to say goodbye to another friend—probably indefinitely, a couple of family feuds unfortunately heated up, and my insomnia came back.

I’m not sure if the soul has an immune system, but if it does it was just as shot as my physical one by week two. Even the weather seemed to be against me, raining every other day until flood warnings were being issued up and down the Snake River.

I finally went in to the doctor to check out the rash, which by then felt more like a sandblaster against my head and had the puckered, pot-holed appearance of severe sunburn. It took one glance for the doctor to identify my problem: Shingles, the adult version of chicken pox. The scientific name is Herpes Zostra, my medical-school brother Ryan told me with a laugh—is there anything more humiliating than having Herpes on your face???—and it could be “easily taken care of” with antibiotics. (Coupled with pain pills and my prescription for the ear infections, there were a couple of times I took upwards of nine pills daily!)

For two days I stayed home with a fever and slept, hiding my scarred face from the world until I couldn’t take it anymore and dragged myself out for more fruitless job-hunting. My other brother Jordan was getting married in a few days, and our whole family was in a tizzy trying to make the arrangements and organize the receptions. Except for my blemished face in all the photographs, the wedding was nothing short of a beautiful success, and by Monday all the time with family and friends had left me more confident to go back out and look for employment.

It was on just such a search that I hit another hitch in my perfectly-sane-and-normal-summer-plans. Or rather, it hit me. While pulling out into an intersection by a Common Cents gas station on my way to drop off applications, a large van that had been hidden by a turning truck seemingly came out of nowhere and smashed into my parent’s poor Ford Taurus—with me inside.

I closed my eyes and felt my heart stop as it hit me, and distantly I heard one part of my brain say “I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead” while another part of my brain laughed from the impossible irony of it all. The airbags were deployed and luckily I had my seatbelt on, and the people in the van were extremely kind and understanding. Somehow I walked away from that accident with no damage except for shock and a strong desire to never drive again. The Taurus faired a lot worse, and was declared “totaled” and towed away.

Two weeks later, the scar from my Shingles is all but faded away, my household has settled back to normal, and two restaurants have taken pity on me and hired me part time. But I can’t help thinking: “What next?? Pneumonia? Atomic bombs? Rabid squirrel attacks??”

While I’m finding out, I think I’ll turn to writing some fiction. Although as I’ve learned lately, life can definitely be stranger.

Word of the Day: Happy-Ever-After

Everywhere I turn it's staring me down; the poem "Wedding Gown" shouts to me from the pages of our poetry class textbook, my favorite characters on Hulu are all getting hitched: Michael Scott and Holly, Andy and April, Mayor West and Lois' Griffin's sister...Train's hit single "Marry Me" blares from every car radio. It's as if the cosmos are determined to celebrate the cliche Spring twitterpation with or without the sunshine Mother Nature has forgotten how to display. Even the rain seems to have a kind of romance to it--couples huddle together under umbrellas and walk around the parks with hands linked.

It seems to be the year for weddings. I'm attending three this summer: one as a bridesmaid, one as a cousin and one as a good friend. Engagement pictures, all smiles and tender moments that seem almost too personal and pure for the public eye, are filling my Facebook feed to the brim. Brief time capsules of a decision that will affect these young couples for the rest of their lives.

I look at these happy pairs and can't help but envy their "happy-ever-after." But what does it take to make a happy-ever-after? Do they even know themselves?

After this last season's LDS General Conference, family and marriage have taken a huge amount of my mind hostage. There have been small moments when I've longed to walk into a dress store and look for something ivory, or caught myself seeing a flower arrangement in the Coyote front office and thinking it would look nice at a reception.

But for me, the day I say "I Do" is still a distant dream. I'm the girl who has always joked with my friends that I'll be the Old Cat Spinster, the crazy neighborhood broad who never found true love. I'm the only one of my siblings who have yet to take the vows (my brother will in June) and, as the youngest, I can feel the eyes of my family turning to me, present, past, and future. I come from a long family history of little or none divorces, big families, and the community strength of Christian tradition...and at times, this can seem like a lot of pressure. As if my ancestors are pleading for me to continue their line, and my unborn children are waiting with their hands reached out for me to pick them up and swing them high into the air.

My Grandpa Juchau would always say that marriage was the most important decision, aside from building personal faith, that one could make in this lifetime. After he passed away this last fall his words resounded deeper with me. Marriage is serious. It's not something you can just jump into, eyes closed, and hope the parachute opens. I've lived long enough to see for myself the Disney happy-ever-after fade; to know that divorce is real and heart-breaking. And I've grown cautious.

In my mind's eye I am reminded of an experiment my science class did in Jr. High. We had to build contraptions that, when dropped from a height of thirty feet or more, would protect a small hen's egg inside from smashing upon impact. My friend and I came up with a small cardboard box lined with bubble wrap and those marshmallow Easter peeps, held together with about a pound of scotch tape. Our egg thrived.

So what does it take to make a happy-ever-after?

In the chick flick "Runaway Bride," Julia Roberts' quirky friend Peggy describes it with geese. A perfect V of geese flew overhead on her wedding day with Richard Gere--a wedding which ended abruptly with her climbing out a Sunday School window to take a FedEx van out of town. Peggy explains that the geese, half of a "W," (for Wedding) are representative of Julia's mental state. "You just gotta get the rest of your geese in a row," she declares, to which Julia's character is able to turn her life around and eventually find happiness by the time the credits scroll.

If marriage is that little egg, then I just have to get all my ducks, er, marshmallow peeps together before I launch it.

So for now, I'll sing along to Train, throw flowers for my friends, embrace my new sister-in-law, and celebrate the coming of Spring. My day will come. And I can wait.

The Snot Time Machine

Sometimes I really miss being twelve.

I woke up today in the early hour of 1:30 PM, the buzz of Maria, our dorm janitor, vacuuming the hall outside slicing into my skull like a power saw. My nose is running marathons down my face and I'm gripping my bed to keep from being seasick as my head spins in that dizzy nausea limbo between dreams and reality. After about ten minutes of staring glassy eyed at the clock on my microwave, trying to decide if it's morning or night, a dim memory bubbles to the surface: vaguely I recall slamming my alarm on the counter to silence it. Everything after that eight o clock act of violence is a tangle of half-remembered nightmares, of the typical Robyn-realist variety.

My unconscious and I need to have a good talk one of these days; the rationality of my dreams is driving me crazy. Every ballet dream leaves me just as awkward and ungraceful as I ever was in ten years of dance classes. Every school dream emphasizes my worst student habits--procrastination, forgetfulness, tardiness and choking on a difficult test. Just once I'd like to have a dream where I ace a paper, win the Nobel peace prize, or sail across a stage with point-shoed elegance. But my waking insecurities seem to be strong enough to snuff out my potential, even in Wonderland.

I'm sick today. And there is nothing on earth that can make a college student long for a time machine to grade school years more than a gallon of snot and a temperature. In grade school, you can lie in bed until your mom comes in demanding why you're not getting dressed, weakly pronounce your condition, pass the forehead test and get to spend the rest of the day watching cartoons and sipping chicken noodle soup through a twisty straw. No such luck in college. After laying in my bed for half an hour waiting for a stampede of concerned students, friends and professors to come calling with flowers and get well cards, I have to bite the bullet. The pamper days that made being sick remotely bearable ten years ago are over.

At age twelve, my mom always called the school for me to tell my teachers why I was missing class. A sympathetic voice on the other end would respond with care and understanding, and I was free to spend the day in my PJ's. In college it's a different story. Professors are far less understanding for a student who decides their body is more important than four chapters of reading and a thesis paper, particularly when that student gets sick long after flu season. Which means that those of us who weren't lucky enough to puke when everyone else had Strepp in January are under suspicion of faking it now. I e-mail both my professors an explanation and apology and can almost imagine eyebrows raising skeptically for the student who frequently shows up tardy or sleeps through her alarm. There is no sympathy for a slacker.

At home my mom had a stockpile of chicken soup, 7up soda, animal shaped crackers and DVDs. She would check on me every few hours to see how I was doing, provide the Tylenol and the blankets, and usually spend a few hours watching chick flicks or the latest season of Gilmore Girls with me. In this way being sick didn't ever feel like a burden, it was a girl's night in. Now that I'm twenty, I've got to do my own grocery shopping, try to keep my ancient heater running steady, and there's no one to watch slow-loading videos on Hulu with me except the care bear on my bed.

Feeling hideous in a sweatshirt and jeans, my hair falling out of its messy braid and my acne showing through its thin layer of weak make-up, I walk across the street to Albertsons to get some contact solution and tissues with my last few dollars. While I'm there I pick up a cheap can of soup and Spongebob shaped crackers in a weak attempt to recreate the kind of meal I might have had in sixth grade. I can't find any twisty straws, and halfway through my search I have to give up to find a store clerk and ask her if she has some tissues to slow the torrent of mucous exploding from my nose. She can't find any tissues, but hands me a sandpaper square of paper towel to use instead which blocks the flow long enough to finish my shopping and get back home.

On the way back I run into a friend on the street, who takes one look at my chafed nose and watery eyes and offers a smile. "Me too," she says, pointing to my soggy sandpaper mess. I see the same exhaustion and disorder mirrored from her face to mine and smile back. I'm not alone.

Everyone says that their college days were the best years of their life. Maybe when I have the clarity of ten years hindsight I'll be able to agree with them, but for now, I think there is a lot to be said for twelve year olds.

*image by Google*

Broken Things

I've been thinking a lot lately about the necessity of broken things.

It takes just one shift in tectonic plates to shatter our perceptions of safety. To send us scrambling to the phones to see if loved ones are ok in Japan. To fill every classroom, every office with the small talk of those who are caught in that tangle of helplessness called distance: "Did you hear about the nuclear radiation? Did you see the pictures? They're saying the country moved a few inches. They're saying the death toll is climbing." *Shake of the head* "but what do you do?"

I've been spending a lot of time wondering how my country would prepare for massive disasters. Whether or not our nuclear power plants are half as secure as Japan's. If there's enough food to go around. My Sunday School class reminded us all of the importance of food storage, 72 hour kits, and having a plan. I close my eyes at night and listen to the trains speed past my window and wonder, what if, instead of steel barreling past that pane, it was a wall of water. Or wind. Or fire. Or men. Wars. Tragedies. I feel overwhelmingly sheltered in this safe town in Idaho, and yet it seems that these disasters and genocides are only increasing in number the older I get. Egypt. Libya. North Korea. Maybe it's not that they're increasing, maybe it's just that I'm paying more attention. (Not to mention the technology that increasingly brings the world in to us; who would have thought five years ago that news stations would be using Twitter, Google and Facebook?)

Distantly, I know that this is important. It's important to be reminded how fragile our society is, how infinitely tiny one person is. It forces us to prioritize, to plan, to find faith again. In this sense, broken things are important.

In my poetry class we are reading a collection of poems by Jana Harris about women on the plains in Washington in the 1800s, some from pioneers, some from orphans, some from Native Americans. In nearly every poem I find something breaking. Children die of fevers, livestock freeze to death, Indians raid, lawlessness prevails. But from each breaking comes a healing and strengthening that my 21st century mind cannot comprehend. A woman getting her teeth pulled without anesthetic calmly looks out the window and counts her blessings over the year--the children who are still alive, the swans who sometimes come to visit. The girl who loses her mother in an avalanche grows to adulthood in a matter of hours, taking her responsibilities as head of the home. The woman who survives a bitter winter works tirelessly, half-crippled with fever, and keeps her family and cattle together enough to thrive decades later.

These women had their lives broken a thousand ways, yet found a way.

In my church there is the concept of developing a broken heart. I don't think I fully understood the significance of these words until this week, when my own was finally rent apart. To have a broken heart means to be humble enough to take all the parts of yourself, good bad and ugly, and give them to God. Not to say that you're beyond repair, or above it. But simply to know that you need it.

I think I have the tendency to act broken. I place one toe in the wrong direction, wait for lightning to strike, and when it doesn't I put another, and a foot, and a leg, until I'm sprinting the opposite way I want to be going. And by the time I stop to catch my breath, looking behind me to where I began, it seems too far to backtrack. So I just stand still and wait. For what I don't know. I'm tired of being that person.

Just once I want to be like the women I'm reading about. Like the tens of thousands in Japan who are somehow getting by and finding strength. I'm allowing my heart to break at last, and pray it doesn't heal crooked this time.

*picture from Google*

Snow Kisses

Poetry draft for my journal--the assignment was to take something cliche and abstract, like heartbreak or regret or dreams, and create a concrete scene. This one was inspired by the winter storm we had today:

Smudging through
gray and white,
tracks of muddy gold
in a March flurry. I
glaze through slushy sidewalks
feeling heavy in
big chocolate boots.

Eyes find the
treetops;
gray green reflecting
silver blue,
reminding me of your
oceanic gaze
which never fails to
melt my world.

A single snowflake
ice crystal tender
rides the wind
right
down
my sweater,
committing suicide
on my collar bone;
burst of
frigid bliss.

Shivering,
I think of
this selfless kiss,
cold where you are warm.
Brief and unexpected
where yours are rare,
absent,
mechanical.

When I think
of all the ways you
hold back
push away
build walls
flare with
sudden temper
sizzle...

I think I prefer
the frozen
kiss,
selflessly unassuming,
to
your

empty

one.

*picture from me*

The Guilty One

I am a very guilt driven person. I'll be the first to admit it. I'm a sucker for the guys who stand outside Walmart with cardboard signs saying "God Bless." (I cried when Ted Williams, the man with the "Golden Voice," was plucked from poverty and given a home and a several thousand dollar contract to Mac and Cheese, even though he used that money to promptly turn to alcohol again.)

I apologize when I cut someone off on the freeway, even as they flip me off. I had to quit my volunteer job at the pound in Jr. High because I learned they euthenized all the animals that didn't get adopted, and looking into those sad brown eyes every Saturday pleading for me to take this or that furball home was simply too much. When my family traveled to Peru in tenth grade I witnessed true poverty for the first time, and upon our return to the States, I hated myself for having "luxuries" like clean underwear and two-ply paper in the bathroom.

So what does a person like me--who beat herself up for a month because she forgot to donate blood last fall and the Red Cross won't stop sending those "we NEED you" e-mails--DO when an actual damning event occurs, and offense is taken, and consequences are severe? Like say, being involved in an awful affair. Or single-handedly altering three different lives in a negative way.

When something like this happens, my guilty alter-ego, "Victim Girl," steps in. She shoulders all responsibility, attaches all blame and discouragement and hopelessness with steel velcro to her person, and marches herself and me straight to an abyss.

She's not fun company, by any means. And she always seems to make an appearance when I am at my highest peak. For example, right after finishing the best ice cream of my life. Or after an evening out with friends. Or when an entire week goes by where nothing fell apart and I'm just beginning to believe in myself again.

SMASH. SHATTER. KAPOW.

Everything's blown to hell.

It's like this at the beginning of every new semester. I measure up my new classes and look at the workload, and just barely finish convincing myself that it's doable when She appears. At first it's just a virtual tap on the shoulder. Hey there friend, I don't want to startle you but, um, you're going to fail miserably. Then the tap gets stronger. Soon it's a choke hold. GIVE UP. LAY DOWN. EIGHTY SIX IT.

Sorry Alter Ego, but I'm not buying it this time. I know that I can pass these classes. I know that I can continue to change myself and be happier, be selfless, and make peace with the past. I'm ready to let go of some of that weight. I'm ready to let go of YOU.

In A Beautiful Mind, Russel Crowe plays a Professor plagued by schizophrenia. His own personal demons take the form of his best friend, an imaginary jokester; a FBI agent, his imaginary antagonist; and a little girl, his imagined innocent return to childhood. Throughout the movie you come to love, or at least trust, these characters undisputed existence, and you are almost thrown out of your seat when you learn that they aren't real. Fake. Phantoms. When the Professor, Nash, finally recognizes the hallucinations for himself, he struggles to turn his back on them, taking years and years of practice until finally he can ignore his best friend, his enemy, and the little girl who stretches her arms up to him for comfort. It's a bitter sweet victory for him, and in my mind, a similar situation for depression.

My personal demon is not physically manifest, and there is no real person whispering real doubts into my ear. But the crushing weight of guilt IS real, and it's something that, like Nash, I hope I can learn to live with. My favorite scene in the movie is at the end, when Nash gives an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. In the audience he sees his wife, his kids, his friends and colleagues. And, of course, the three hallucinations. He meets their gaze, falters in his speech for a moment, then turns away. He recognizes them as an equal. Something he can choose to pay attention to, but won't.

Today I recognize my elephantine guilt, rooted both in truth and lies, as an equal. I know my past is not spotless. I know I still need to make my peace with a lot of it. I can choose to constantly give my life to this grief, but I won't. I can choose to be constantly self-absorbed in a pity party, but then I will have nothing left over to give to those around me. Those who still stand by me.

I owe it to them, and I owe it to myself, to stand tall. To give myself just enough credit so that I can give OF myself, again and again and again.