Nostalgia

Nostalgia - a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and  friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time

What is happening to me? As I age, I find myself getting more and more, dare I say it, sentimental about a lot of things. That odd transformation manifested itself this weekend as I found myself in the desert I once called home.

I've seen family and friends, some visits planned and some by happy accident. It's all made me a bit nostalgic. I had lunch with two friends, one I have known since we served as missionaries more than twenty five years ago. The other I have not seen in nearly fifteen years, but we picked up right where we left off. Well, we are both a lot grayer. We're both grandfathers and one of us has expanded the real estate known as his waste line more than the other (guilty as charged). Both lunches, at dueling taco joints, were great opportunities to connect and reminisce. During one of the lunches, I ran into this great friend:

Years ago, she and her husband and the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML and I were in cahoots all the time. We had children the same age. We had a lot in common. We had a great time together. Today, we are grandparents. We still have a lot in common. Such a great surprise!

It's been a good time with family as well. My sister and I met for waffles from the awesome My Waffle Crush truck (this place rules - Arizonans, run to this truck when it's in your 'hood!) and had a great time together. It was good to catch up. I'm really proud of her. We were sorry our brother couldn't join us but it's spring in Arizona and he needed to take advantage of it for spring landscaping. He's a new dad too, so a lot going on.

I can't believe how nostalgic this weekend has made me. Lots of good stuff happened here in our family / friend history. It's been good to revisit it. Really good. That said, I'm really grateful for all that we've done since we lived here all those years ago. The experiences have been for our good. Even the never-ending winters. Really. I mean it. Really.

Time Change

What? We're still farmers?

Having been raised in Arizona, I didn't experience the semi-annual ritual of springing forward or falling back in honor of Daylight Saving Time (DST) until I fled the desert for life behind the Zion Curtain in my late teens. That was an easy one - just an hour. No big whoop. Since then, everywhere we've lived, we've been in the DST party. You know what, I'm over it.

The reasons for DST are myriad but it just seems outdated to me. To quote the great Jack Donaghy, "What am I? A farmer?" It's not like I'm plowing the field and could use a few more hours in the day to get all the chores done before heading home to read from the Good Book and listen to a fireside chat on the radio. I would say that I'm firmly in the Arizona, and that weird little pocket of Indiana, camp on this one. It's totally OK to sit the time change out.

Maybe it's because as the grip middle age has on me grows ever firmer and heinously unrelenting, but the time change is liking to kill me. I am simply exhausted by it. We're nearly five days into the "spring forward" change and I feel like I've aged exponentially without that extra hour this week. Awesome. Being middle-aged rules!

Accepted

He's in!

My apologies for being tardy in updating the activities of late here in the Den. Suffice to say that professionally, it's been a week. Let's not speak of it again. That's my story and to it, I am sticking.

I did want to let you know that once again, everything that The Boy touches turns to gold. He was initially notified that his acceptance to Summer Term at BYU was on hold. He took the news well but we still felt a bit bad for him. So for a few days the focus was on what we need to do to get him ready for leaving on a mission later this year. He remained in the camp that he was still going be accepted. He was right. A few days later, he was notified that he was in for Summer Term. Happy does not begin to describe it.

It's been a flurry of activity since. He has, sans consulting us - his parents and financial backers - his summer mapped out. Apparently, since we are in the winter that never ends, he's skipping graduation so he can be in behind the Zion Curtain a little early. We'll see about that. We'll see about a lot things between now and the beginning of Summer Term.

We are excited for him. This completes the trifecta now - all three of our children will have called a "Y" campus home. The stunningly patient and mighty fine SML and I know from experience how great summer term is. He's going to have a great time. Our Lady of Awesome is fifteen minutes away and CAL just over four hours away. But it will be fast. Then he'll be home for a brief time before he heads out on a mission. It's what he wanted - a time away from home before his mission. Like I said, everything The Boy touches turns to gold.

Thrilled that I get to give more money!

Assistance

Assistance. In America's highly polarized political scene, the word 'assistance' is a highly-profane, dirty four-letter word, so to the Mittites and Beckians, this isn't a post about providing assistance to the poor, so calm down. No heads need to explode this Sunday morning.

Rather, this is about roadside assistance and my steadfast rejection of it until an incident this past Friday night. The stunningly patient SML and I had gone to see a movie (Note - the movie was 'Non-Stop' and it was mindlessly entertaining and it has the Beckians all up in arms - good times) and upon leaving the theater and slipping into yet another freezing night that has characterized this endless winter in Connecticutistan, we discovered that our Yukon had a flat tire of epic proportions. Not Awesome!

Now it's no secret that I am, at best, mechanically challenged and at worst, with a power tool in my hands, am a danger to society like unto Jason Voorhees with a blood-soaked chainsaw. That said, I've always managed to change a tire on any of the cars that we've owned. Until now. I thought I'd be able to do this job. I could not have been more wrong. I knew it wasn't happening when I opened the owner's manual and saw the instructions for the first step of the process, the removal of the jack. It looked like a schematic for the repair of the Fukashima Nuclear Power Plant and it clearly required the commensurate Doctorate to get the job done. And that was just the first step. I was done. So we called The Boy and had him come pick us up.

As we drove home, pondering just how I might be able to change the tire in the following morning in the freezing light of day, I remembered that our insurance company had enrolled us in their roadside assistance program. I may or may not have heard a choir of angels singing an ode of joy at that moment. The path to salvation, or at least flat repair, was now clear. I would call them first thing Saturday morning.

Call them I did. In less than ninety minutes, they were on scene with all the requisite equipment. It was clear that there was no way I could have done this job. Note to GMC - um, you might want to rethink your whole spare tire process on your SUV's trucks for its current state is a nightmare of Biblical proportions. It was all done at a very reasonable cost and with minimal fuss for me, the owner. What a relief!

That relief was a tempered with a sense of regret as I pondered why I had waited all these years to take advantage of this kind of assistance. In the 'post-game' analysis, there are a couple of drivers (ugh, bad pun) here - A) being cheap and for so many years, particularly the early years of our marriage, roadside assistance plans were a luxury not in the cards for us; B) ego - I'm a man! I can fix a car. Um, no I can't. But I could change a tire; and C) another thingy on my key ring with the assistance phone number on it was the last thing I needed. OK, "C" is not valid. It was the first two that kept me from enrolling all these years. Seriously dumb. Now I've been chastened and know better.

Roadside assistance - I salute you!