It seems anymore that plans are meant to be demolished with the world's largest wrecking ball. Justin and I left work early last Friday to head down to visit my mom only to be thwarted 5 minutes before arrival at her house. My stepdad called to say she needed to go up to her doctor's office which is 4 hours away from their home and would possibly be staying at the hospital for several days and if we were close, he'd wait to leave until we got there. (This hospital is 40 minutes from our house). We made it just in time to say goodbye and have them leave back in the direction we came from.

Justin and I spent some time cleaning up their house for them and then headed to visit his parents and stay there for the night after just driving the length of the state of Utah. The next afternoon we headed back to our home to get a good night's sleep in our own bed.

Just as we were getting close to home, one of our tires felt wobbly, and we had to pull off the road to check it. A lug nut was missing, and it felt like some were loose. We had just bought new tires a few days before and were pretty frustrated that the guy hadn't screwed our tire on properly, and we could've been in a serious accident. Thankfully, we were close enough to home that we could take city streets home and not be stuck driving on the 80mph roads we were on before.

We got home, and decided to take the car back into the tire store to have them check all the tires and make sure they were secure. The only problem is, it was the weekend and nothing was open in the morning since it was Sunday.  We have two vehicles, but one is not registered because we're selling it. We didn't want to drive the car with the loose wheel up to the hospital on Sunday to see my mom, but we needed to get up there to see her. Also, apparently the train from our area to the hospital where she was doesn't run on Sundays. THANKS FRONTRUNNER. We decided we would just drive the unregistered truck and hope and pray that no one in a police car would notice.

Luckily, we made it up there and back with no further problems (or traffic tickets) and my mom was improving quite nicely from where she was on Friday when they  left. We took the car into the tire place today and they fixed it as well, without making us pay for any further work.

While I didn't get my weekend with my mom that I've been trying to have for over a month... I did get an afternoon with her, and I will have to be grateful for that right now.

I swear life is destined to demolish any plans we make. I think its sole goal is to teach us to laugh and roll with things. Although, after all the madness, I just want to crawl into my bed and take a long Autumn nap. I'm tired of rolling with things, but is there really another option?

It wasn't all a bust though. Justin got a sleeve tattoo from our seven year old niece. See for yourself.

I'm obsessed with art lately. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh. Someone, please stop me from looking at the Society6 site. I CAN'T MAKE MYSELF.

Here are a few of my most recent discoveries on there. (Click the art piece name to see the artists' gallery/store.)

Bill Murray - by replaceface

Tonari no Totoro - by Victor Vercesi

Pulp Street - by Beery Method

Moon Flight - by rubbishmonkey

It was so windy in this picture that it looks like I'm in a 1970's jumpsuit instead of my wedding dress.  I SO VERY MUCH LOVE BAD PHOTOS OF US! (this photo has nothing to do with this post, by the way)

I'm obsessed with this print ---- Bon Iver - Analog Zine, by Hugo Barros

I am a sucker for all things artsy. I recently discovered an art site called Society6.com. When I first discovered the site, I sat gushing tirelessly over the pages and pages of art prints for days. I finally became obsessed with one in particular (pictured above) and ordered the largest size of it that was available.  (The artist's Society6 page is here if you want to see more of their work. They are ridiculously talented.) I am now searching for the perfect frame for this piece.  I have the spot picked out for it in my living room so I just need to find the right frame. Maybe I'll thrift store one and paint it to match.

After researching the site a little further, I found out I can have a page on there and sell my own artwork without losing the rights to my pieces.  After battling my "I'm no artist" and "who am I to think I can sell my stuff?" thoughts, I figured, "why not?", and created one myself.  I mostly have it loaded with photos I've taken while traveling and just a few things I painted myself. I'm currently in the process of drawing and painting more, so keep checking back on my page because you never know what you'll find! I definitely feel vulnerable to this, because letting the world judge what you consider to be a masterpiece is opening yourself up to rejection. But... I'm going to be bold and see what happens.

Still can't get my domain name to point to my blog. Apparently I chose the only domain name service that struggles with blogger. HOORAY! So I will let you know when it's time to update the blog address. :) More posts coming next week.

So... I painted the image for the new blog header a while ago. Some of you may remember it from THIS post.

I scanned it tonight and tweaked it with some cool edits, and came up with the lovely new header you see above! I happen to love it. It's weird, but it's my own creation, and I like that.

Also... the blog address you visit each time you come to my blog is changing. I am getting my own domain name! YES! I don't know why it took so long to do this before now. I guess I just had other things to do at the time... or I'm lazy.

Anyhow, by this weekend, you will need to update your information to my new blog address.

Details to come soon!

This photo has nothing to do with this post. I just love it. Yes, that is a Sea Lion named Shanna.

So... I'll be honest... I HATE THE PHRASE "TENDER MERCIES".

Maybe it's not used much in the outside world of regular people that aren't Mormons. But here in Mormonland, it's used all the time. Sometimes to describe finding a shopping cart abandoned at the grocery store when you are carrying more than your basket can handle... i.e. a gallon of milk on top of produce. (Totally done that before. The gallon of milk thing, not the describing it thing, that was someone else.) Sometimes it's used to describe things that aren't tender mercies... they are just things, like remembering you have no clean undies and you gotta do laundry so you don't go commando in the Lord's house.

Sometimes it's used to describe real, simple happenings that have helped a person out on the worst day of their life, or in the pits of despair. I totally get that tender mercies are real, but something about the phrase just makes me feel like someone's standing in front of me using their "this is my talking to puppies" voice, and their eyes have gotten all glassy, and their pupils have turned to flowers, and all they see are hearts in place of people's eyes.

I know... cartoon morbidity. But really... that's what that phrase does to me. It oozes of soccer mom jeans creepy over the top gushy happiness.

But anyway... Justin and I experienced this very thing one night this year.  And we reminisced about it tonight and both started laughing at the thought of it. Justin happened to bring it up while I had a mouth full of Scope and I nearly swallowed it because I was laughing so hard at the memory.

Here's the rundown:

It was mid-March of this year. (I'm laughing before I even tell you guys what happened... aaaah....)

I had spent the better part of my week crying to Justin, or being tough at the U of U hospital with my mom who had just undergone brain tumor removal on a tumor that had just suddenly appeared and turned out to be a very rapid-growth type of brain cancer. I had spent the day walking around the shops in downtown SLC with Justin as we waited to hear if she was doing ok after surgery. They told us that anything was possible and we shouldn't expect the worst or hope for the best... aka... normal-life or vegetable-ness. So naturally, I couldn't hang out at the hospital waiting. I had to get out of there.

To give you an idea of how awful a week this was, I was walking like I was carrying a backpack equal to my own weight. I'm serious. I passed a mirror in a store and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw my reflection. I was hunched like Quasimodo. I carry all my stress in my shoulders, and this particular day it was obvious that something was going on in my life that was awful.

Justin and I were in bed later that night just kind of decompressing from the madness. We fell asleep for about an hour and then he got up to pee. When he got back in bed, he readjusted to a position of comfortable sleep, and then things were quiet. I started to fall back to sleep and right before sleep hit me, something else hit me... well, hit my ears. The loudest possible fart that has ever been heard ripped through the quiet of the night.

A couple seconds of silence lingered before we both busted up laughing so hard that we couldn't contain it and practically started snorting. I had tears streaming out of my eyes and couldn't breathe. And we just kept giggling. Things would die down and we'd be like "ok we need to sleep," and then we'd bust up laughing again. It didn't even smell bad. It just ripped through the night like a chainsaw.

On the worst week of our lives, we were laughing uncontrollably.

I sometimes wonder if God sent that bedsheet-ripping fart to Justin to help us in our time of need, or if it just happened. Either way... as blasphemous as this might seem to you Mormons out there, that is my tender mercy story.

And you can't tell me it wasn't one.  I mean, it was one incredibly mercilous fart.

But seriously.

Life isn't fair, that's one thing I know for sure. It seems sometimes that it's dead set on beating a person down. Someone that didn't deserve it, and really wasn't expecting it.

I wrote this poem tonight during an angry-at-the-universe journaling session. It feels like sometimes that faith isn't enough. I will keep at it though. But honestly, it's not enough sometimes. Things happen and regardless of the faith you have, they will happen and that's life. That's the grit of life. You can't magically erase someone's pain. You can't magically heal cancer. You can just love the person that needs the love, and you can put your head phones on and zone out for an hour with sad music to help you get your emotions out so you won't take them out on your husband in the wrong way.

This is part of what came of my angry-at-the-universe journal session. Analyze it how you wish. This was my very first poem I've ever written just for the hell of it. I don't know why but part of my brain was thinking poetically tonight. Sorry guys, my life is full of greatness and hardships and that's reality. Today happens to be a day with some hardships and I happened to really need to get it down on paper... er... internet paper.