Category Archives: deep thoughts

I’m so vain, the post is going to be all about me…

Got a surprise package in the mail yesterday. It was a bundle of old letters that I’d written to a former beau (D). This particular guy I dated, off-and-on, for about 7 years.

At first I was delighted. The silly little cards, odd stationary, the doodles drawn in the margins and the photos (yah, this was all back in the stone ages when long-distance romances had to be carried out in paper and not via email or voice messenging). Fun.

But then I was horrified–for awhile I had, um…ditched D in favor of a mutual friend. The ditch was mean and purposeful. And I gloated about in my letters to D afterwards. (Ok…I have to say here that the ditch was short-lived and D and I were soon back together, but I was, nevertheless, quite cruel in my letters.)

So, hoping to feel some sense of redemption, I mentioned to John that I thought I had changed a lot since I was 16. I made the comment hoping for a bit of validation. Something along the lines, of “Yah, you’re nothing like that nowadays.”

Instead, John said something more like: “Jana, you can be completely self-centered. You think the world revolves around you.” [Note to readers: John’s comment sounds tough here, perhaps given the context–he’s actually a super-supportive husband. But he’s also good at guiding me through moments of self-introspection].

That stung. But deservedly so. I realized that I hurt people every day through my self-absorption. I have a huge ego. I am cocky and smug. My little jabs at D about the other guy might be old news now, but I do similar things all the time. Like answering emails while my kids are begging for my attention, continuing painful threads of conversation w/John even after he asks me to stop, not giving extended family members attention until I need something from them, dominating conversations with my opinons, taking over meetings where I’m not in charge, asking others to do errands for me that I can do myself, etc.

So, for all those people out there that I hurt with my selfishness, I’m sorry. I can’t erase awful things like the foolish letters I wrote 20 years ago, or undo the biting comments, or take back my moments of inflated self-importance.

For those whom I have hurt, please accept my apology…I’m sorry. I’m sorry to have caused you pain. I promise to do better. To be less self-focused. Less of a drama queen/ heartbreaker/ selfish person.

And to D: thanks for the letters and the CDs (such memories!). Thanks for not holding it against me. 🙂

making tracks


Those who know me well know of my rather morbid preoccupation with death. Perhaps because of my own brush with cancer, I think about dying a lot and I’m quite paranoid about my own death, and the possibility of that of my loved ones. I often have dreams about death.

So, I’m spending most of my time these days thinking about mortality and morbidity as a result of 19th century railroads (sorry to those whose eyes are already glossing over or are already clicking away from this blog). I know that few people care about this odd topic.

But there’s something about the human drama of it all–the thrill of speed (of trains) combined with the fear of derailment (or some other type of accident) that drove people to try this technology, and to eventually depend on it for so much of their lives. Even when it was so unpredictable and unsafe. When the possibility of crashes or robberies or some awe-some adventure lay at the end of those maddeningly predictable parallel lines stretching off into the horizon.

To me, RRs are a lot like life. We check the schedule and try to get on the right train going in the right direction. We expect that we’ll get there somewhere near to what the timetable predicted (unless, of course, we’re riding Amtrak–so let’s pretend we’re on a train in Europe instead). But we also know that there are so many variables that will affect our path: detours, weather conditions, broken couplings, possible injury or illness, etc. But it’s the possibility of reaching that depot at the end of one’s journey that motivates us to hop up onto the train in the first place. And the view is so amazing along the way. There are some great friends to ride along with, and some yummy snacks in the club car. Sometimes the rhythmic swaying of the train lulls us to sleep. We awake and see it’s only dark outside w/a few random streetlights passing by to mark our progression. And when the sun rises and the train bends around a curve we can see the track that forever lies ahead…

five things

(a meme from Holly)

Select five people to tag:
1) madwoman
2) brookewill
3) laughtear
4) dora
5) chudacek

What were you doing 20 years ago?
I was a freshman in high school. I had a buzz cut (my hair was just growing out from chemo), that I spiked up sort of punk-like. Was dating Brady S. and writing for the school paper.

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Conceiving Baby #2. Enduring another awful Utah winter (do these somehow go hand-in-hand?)….

What were you doing 1 year ago?
Sweating through my first year year of full-time PhD coursework. Writing an article about Civil War amputees. Reading Marxist theory.

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. cookies (esp sugar cookies sans frosting)
2. ohagi
3. tea & scones
4. green olives stuffed w/pimento. straight out of the jar.
5. whatever john is eating (as long as it doesn’t reek of meat)

(more than) Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. “The Queen and the Soldier,” “Calypso” and “Ironbound/Fancy Poultry,” Suzanne Vega
2. “Wuthering Heights,” Kate Bush
3. “Roxanne” and “Russians,” Sting
4. “Annie’s Song” and “Rocky Mountain High,” John Denver
5. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Sounds of Silence,” Simon & Garfunkel

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. travel to the Isle of Man
2. hire a personal masseuse
3. build a straw house (eco-friendly)
4. buy some beautiful bookshelves
5. master the French language

Five bad habits:
1. gnawing on the sides of my tongue when I’m nervous
2. piling books and papers (and shoes) on the table and in the corner of the LR
3. not giving my full attention to my kids when they’re talking to me
4. driving to school when I should take the shuttle
5. not answering the phone, even though I am often home (I hate talking on the phone)

Five things you like doing:
1. talking w/my outhouse friends
2. sitting in my garden and watching the bees in the lavender
3. eating fruit
4. being with John and my kids
5. exercising: lifting weights and swimming

Five things you would never wear again:
1. a cast (I hope)
2. 80’s glasses (like the clear round-ish ones I wore my soph year)
3. earrings w/dangling fruits (my 1st year of college–ACK!)
4. can’t think of anything else….

Five things that scare you:
1. Something awful happening to the kids or to John
2. rodents
3. gophers
4. ROUSS’s
5. my computer dying…

Five favorite toys:
1. ellycat and tobyjoy
2. junebug
3. retro turntable
4. dig camera
5. ingenuitea

meme (from John)

Four jobs I’ve had in my life
-Legal Secretary (blech)
-Guardian (read: babysitter) for foreign high school students
-Janitor (for LDS Institute)
-coffeemaker/server for UCI cafe (funny, a Mo girl doing this job–the first day all of the coffee was full of grounds because I didn’t know about coffee filters. One customer told me that he really did like “chewing” his morning coffee)

Four movies I can watch over and over
 -It’s a Wonderful Life
-George of the Jungle
-Princess Bride
-Lady Jane
-Moulin Rouge
[couldn’t stop at just 4…]

Four places I have lived
-Tulsa, OK
-Englewood, CO
-Salt Lake City, UT
-Bakersfield, CA

Four TV shows I love to watch
-What Not to Wear (what can I say, it makes me cry…)
-Deadwood (not for family viewing, but a must-see for a historian of the Am West)
-Thin Blue Line (super-funny Rowan Atkinson sitcom)
-Moonlighting (it’s a classic!)

Four places I have been on vacation
-Suzhou, China
-Paris, France
-The Isle of Man, UK
-Canterbury, England

Four of my favourite dishes
-Oatmeal w/fresh fruit from The Stand (vegan restaurant in Laguna Beach)
-Healthy Crunchy roll from SushiWave
-Portobello and ‘Sausage Burger’ at Native Foods
-anything John is cooking

Four websites I visit daily (besides mindonfire)
–dooce
–eee
–freecycleirvine
–chudachek

Four places I would rather be right now
-Cambria, waking up to the morning sun from our campsite in a grassy meadow, then heading off to the TeaCozy to get warm
-Paris, in the Rodin garden. With John, C & E at my side.
-Canterbury, enjoying the dawn chorus and seeing the morning sun reflecting off of the cathedral spires
-lying in a patch of sun taking a nap w/a cat on my back
-riding the electric train down the coast from Laxey, IOM. Where huge fuschia bushes grow wild along the tracks.

brown paper packages…

I was wrapping up a (belated) holiday box to send to my in-laws last week. I piled all the stuff inside the box and pulled out a couple of rolls of wrapping tape (one tan, one clear) to tape it all up.

I realized as I was wrapping, that for me wrapping tape has really ruined parcel post. I long for the days when packages were all wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. And I think the string is what made it really satisfying.

That magical string–that was knotted in places and could double as a handle when a package was to bulky to carry otherwise. I really miss it.

In my 19th-century fantasy life (the one I live when I’ve leapt headfirst into some primary source documents), everything is tied with string. When I go to the local store to stock up on essentials the shopkeeper ties string around my paper parcel of tea, my carefully chosen spices, and the newly-milled packet of whole wheat flour. Even the length of calico that I buy E’s new dress is tied up with string. Of course I carefully untie the string from my parcels and add it to the ball that I keep in the back of my bureau drawer.
🙂

I am so not a football fan

When I was 13, Rich Karlis  (the then-famous barefoot kicker of the Denver Broncos) kissed me in front of my entire middle school. Rich was visiting the school to speak at an assembly, and I had walked in late to the gym, and…voila, he spied me sneaking in (‘cuz it’s hard to sneak on crutches, which I was using at the time), and planted a big kiss on my cheek.

We’d been friends for about a year. He often came to the Denver Children’s Hospital to visit us cancer patients, to cheer us up. Sometimes he even brought his buddies–like John Elway–to visit, too. He got us tickets to Broncos games, brought us Broncos T-shirts, etc.

Of course all of us teen girls on the cancer ward were completely smitten with the handsome and famous football player. We especially appreciated his hugs and kisses. What a great feeling to get attention from a hunky athlete!

During the time when I was kissing Rich I was an avid football fan, though I never bother with such things now. But when I do hear that the Broncos are having a good season, I get a warm fuzzy feeling. And, the last time they won the Super Bowl I watched the game and cried. Rich was long-gone from the Broncos, but my tears were still ones of gratitude for the famous kicker who gave so much love to us kids with cancer from the 4th floor.

old flames

Do you ever wonder what happened to your high school sweetheart?

Today I met up with my boyfriend from my senior year of high school. We had an intense and somewhat stormy relationship–but isn’t that what high school romances are always like??

We were both very different, yet perhaps too much the same. Strong-willed, passionate, idealistic, and very, very young. Also, he was a good Methodist boy and I was a Mormon bishop’s daughter. As such, it wasn’t a relationship destined for longevity.

We met for lunch. I didn’t feel so self-conscious about my own grey hair when I saw the threads of silver in his beard. 🙂

I guess we’re both getting old. But I guess that’s okay if getting old means that you can remember the past fondly–like a pleasant dream–and we can now move on and enjoy getting to know the ‘adults’ that we’ve each become…

It was also a treat to meet his SO and to introduce him to John 🙂

revolution, part II


So I did set a few New Year’s revolutions.

The first one is that I will eat more fruits & veggies each day–at least 5 servings of different f&v, and most of them raw.

Might sound like a funny resolution for a vegetarian, but it’s one that I need. I’ve gotten into a rut of eating a lot of processed foods–mostly starches or simple carbs–and I need the vitamins and fiber from the real thing.

The second part of that resolution is that I need to eat more organic produce. It’s a bit beyond our budget to _buy_ all or even lots of organics. But I really should (and will) grow more myself, year-round.

The odd thing about keeping this resolution so far this year is that I’m not cold anymore. I am almost _always_ cold–so cold that I carry a cardigan sweater with me and wear it most all the time. So cold that I can rarely go sockless, and anytime I read I have to have a blanket to cover me up. So cold that I can’t sleep at night w/o John next to me because he is my only source of heat.

But the last few days I’ve been warm, even downright hot. At night I’ve been scooched way over to my side of the bed–not even touching John. I’ve been wearing shorts and short-sleeves. It’s a lovely feeling to be warm.

Maybe it’s not a side-effect of the increased veggie consumption. But I feel like it is because that’s all that’s changed in my life/diet lately.
🙂