#9 Zen Garden

Well it is one week until my birthday and I am realizing that I didn't accomoplish my whole list.  But as in this one Build a Zen Garden, I did most of it, just didn't finish before the summer was over.  I had put more summer activities on than I had time for.  So to build a zen garden, I did buy a Buddha and put curbing around the area that is to be the garden.  I shopped all summer for the perfect Buddha.  I wanted a traditional southeast Asia one and not the fat one. I finally found one at Ross I think.  He has been sitting out there since about July.  Then early in the summer I put curbing around all the flower beds in my back yard and where the zen garden will be.  I love it.  I wish I had done it earlier.  I am excited for summer to come so I can plant some flowers in the flower beds.  I did buy a couple of bushes and perrinals and planted them but it will need some more flowers to fill it up.  I kinda like the nature look.  So with the zen garden, I need to dig it out a little and then fill it up with sand and get a wooden rake and maybe a little wooden platform to sit on and zen and it will be done.  So not fully finished but half way there.

Number 23: Read Some Classics

I decided that I wanted to read a couple of classics.  It started with Dracula.  I don't know why.  I think it was around Halloween and it was free on my Kindle so I thought why not.  So I started to read it.  It was alright but I learned a couple of things.  When writers wrote in the 1800's they really take a long time to tell the story.  There are things in the book that you think will be important in the future of the book and then those things don't really come up again.  With Dracula, the first was REALLY scary, when Dracula held the guy in his broken down castle and then the guy saw him climbing up and down the outside walls, that was seriously a little scary.  Then the book travels to England and a couple of women get infected and then there is a crazy guy as part of the story and it takes forever to develop.  When they figure out that it is Dracula and follow him back to Transylvania I am thinking that there will be a big climax and scene where they capture and kill Dracula.  So another endless amount of pages about the journey and following Dracula to his castle, then in about two pages they find Dracula in his coffin asleep and stab him with no problems and Dracula was gone.  I wasn't impressed.  I did learn that Stephanie Meyers did really stay close with the original characteristics of a vampire though. 

The next classic I read was Frankenstein.  I did read this one in high school and remembered feeling really sorry for Frankenstein trying to live and love in a society that abhorred him.  So I was interested again to read that.  I have to say the second time, I still felt really sad for Frankenstein but he was more violent that I remembered against the guy who made him.  I regress, Frankenstein was the guy who created him and he was just a monster without a name.  I did enjoy the book.  It really gives a perspective of a situation that a person can create in which they have no control once they make that initial choice.  Then the monster wanted acceptance and love even from his creator and never being able to obtain that.  Really kinda a tragedy but I liked it.  I am always fascinated that it was written by a women too.  I wonder what inspired her to write it.  

The third was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  I have never read this one and actually hated the story.  The only version I can stand to watch is the muppets.  It was a choice of Phyllis at book club for December.  I came to find out later that she wanted it because her other book club was doing it and she wanted to double dip so to speak.  She also compared it to Elder Uchtdorf's talk about no regrets.  I will make the comparison at the end of the post.  Anyway so I though why not.  So I started it and it is really good.  I love the written story about a million times more than any movie version of it.   Dickens is a really fabulous writer.  He just captures the human spirit.   I found myself wanting to highlight and remember certain passages of it and I hardly ever do that anymore.  I am going to read more of his works just because I loved A Christmas Carol and his writing so much.  

Going back to Elder Uchtdorf's talk of No Regrets in comparison to A Christmas Carol.  The three things that Scrooge needed to do were the three things that Elder Uchtdorf said we should do in life.  Scrooge needed to spend time with people who he loved.  He needed to get to know his nephew and nephew's family.  Scrooge needed to live up to his potential.  He had all this money but wasn't doing anything with it.  He wasn't being who he could be.  Third, Scrooge needed to let himself be happy.  He was always just being Scrooge and not allowing himself to enjoy life and the people around him.  So it was a great book to read and start out the Christmas season for me.  I wish I could claim the credit for coming up with the Uchtdorf comparison but I have to give Phyllis the credit for that.  In her other book club she make up book markers and printed off a bound copy of the General Conference with that particular talk.  She really went all out as only Phyllis can do.   Number 23....check!

Number 31 Learn to make Pumpkin Pie

My mom makes really good pumpkin pies and I really have never had to know the skill.  However I figured that I am now old enough to see if I could do it.  So during Thanksgiving I asked for crust making lessons.  My mom has made so many pies that her lesson is to put about 'this much shortening in' and then 'about this much flour' and then cold water.  The cold water is 'hold the bowl under the faucet' and 'one time in, two times in, and a third time in and that is about right'.  So needless to say it is hard to duplicate her crusts.  My home teacher, Bro Ange, said that his wife loves pumpkin pies and they usually just get the frozen ones, which in my mind is as gross as you can get, because pumpkin happens to be my favorite and I can't even eat the Costco ones, just the homemade for me and really just my moms.   So I thought I am going to make him and her a pie.  So I got all the ingredients and went for it.  The crust as I was making it looked about right so put it in the pie pan and put the filling in and started baking it.  I had quite a bit of the crust dough left so make crust, which is the leftover dough flattened out and then butter and sugar and cinnamon and bake it.  So that baked and I pulled it out and to me it didn't taste good so I thought the pie would be a flop to.  So the pie finished baking and I pulled it out but I didn't try it because I was disappointed because I thought that the crust didn't work out.  Then the next day I thought I should try the pie just to see if the filling at least tasted good.  So I cut a small piece out and ate the pie crust included, and miracle of miracles, it tasted good.  The crust even did.  I was so excited.  Now it wasn't as good as my moms but it was tasty and held together and everything.  So I cut two big pieces out and ran it over to Bro Ange and his wife to try.  I told them I am going to keep practicing and give them a better one when I perfect my crusts.  They were fine with that idea.  

The reason that it took me so long to try to learn to make crusts is when I was about 12ish, my mom wanted me to learn to make bread.  I wasn't really into it and she was so insistent about it.  I kept asking why all the sudden I needed to learn.  She would say because someday she wouldn't be there to make bread and it was something I needed to learn.  I will come back to that story in a minute.  

When I was really young and we read in schools  out of the reader books in a group there was a story about a Navajo kid who needed to finish weaving a cloth, however she didn't want to finish because she knew that when the cloth was finished her grandma would die because the girl would have learned the skill of weaving.  Somehow in my mind the day my mom wanted me to learn to make bread and her insisting that I learn in my mind was the same as that story.  So I figure that if I didn't learn how then she would be there forever.  That thinking continued to other skills that my mom had like making pies.  If I couldn't do it then she would always have to and stay around forever.   I am still a little paranoid but am trying to get beyond it.  I think the lesson I take away from this is some stories that teachers make kids read are not healthy and give kids phobias they spend the rest of their lives trying to overcome.  Unfortunately one story that might effect one kid, another kid probably doesn't even remember.   Through all of this I did make a really tasty pumpkin pie.   So Number 31, make a pumpkin pie...check.

Number 24

Number 24 is "Learn how to make Rissoto".  I often watch Chopped and other cooking shows and they always talk about rissoto.  I wanted to know what the big deal was.  I love rice so I thought that it would be fun.  I got the recipe and all the ingredients and just made it.  It turned out really great.  I have become kinda a pro at it now.  I like to cook chicken chunks and then it is an entire meal.  The last time I put too much chicken bouillon in so it was too salty, but other than that Rissoto....check!  I will add a picture later. 

Number 12 Skinny Dip

This was on the original list.  I didn't know when I would get the opportunity.  I knew it had to be soon because it is getting colder and I am not chunky dunking during the ice fishing season.  So we went to visit my parents in Wyoming and my dad took us fishing on Jackson Lake.  It was quite the eventful weekend.  We came late into the valley Friday night and were passing a car head on when there appeared two cows in the road and the oncoming car didn't see them at all and hit them both head on.  Fortunately the cows died instantly but we were seconds away from having one of the cows land on our windshield and seconds later would have hit the car head on as they swerved into our lane.  We were first responders.  Danielle went and helped the people, who were Chinese and couldn't communicate with on-star, as I called 911 and directed traffic coming up south end until the emergency people could get there.   So that was tramatic.  Then fishing on Jackson Lake a big storm came and my dad being more concerned with catching the fish on the line then the huge wave coming up over the boat.  We almost sunk.  So after we caught the fish, pulled the lines in, and found a quiet place out of the storm on the North end of Donohoe Island, I knew my chance to skinny dip had manifest itself.  So I went for it.  I took everything off except my tevas.  I didn't want to have to worry about walking in and out of the water quickly.  I thought the water would be freezing but it wasn't.  I jumped in and then hurried and got out.  But then I didn't feel like I got the most out of the experience because it was so fast so I jumped in again for another few minutes.   Now skinny dipping might not be for everyone, but you feel so one with nature.  It is so liberating.  It is really hard to describe unless you try it, especially in such a beautiful place as Jackson Lake.  I kinda knew that I would accomplish this one in Jackson Lake.  A lot of years ago, my dad and I went camping at Jackson Lake on the South shore.  It was an out of the way spot and we stayed in his gross camper.  I think one of his friends were with us but other than that we were seemingly all alone in nature.  In the early morning I got up early and went down to the shore to wash my face and brush my teeth.  It was just me and the trees and the lake.  It was a spiritually experience.  It was so peaceful.  The lake was like glass and there weren't any noises.  I washed up and it literally felt like I was the only person in the world and one with all that was around me and so apart of the greater whole.  I was at such peace.  I often visualize that as my "happy place", when I need to.   So skinny dippy there just seemed right.  When I returned to the boat my mom said "Did I see Courtney's white bare butt out there".  I guess it is easy to spot. 

The pile of clothes

Nature shots

Nature.  I liked how the rock was caught up in the roots. 

Number 30

Not pretty but enjoying the moment. 

Morning View

 To enjoy a sunrise and sunset in one day is number 30.  I made this one up at Zions.  We were at a friends house in Springdale and we had arrived when it was dark.  It is up a hill where the road really winds around so I wasn't sure which way was east to enjoy the sunrise.  Come to find out the house was designed to see to the east off the balcony and then shielded from the west because of the heat in the afternoon.   It just happened to be the day of the Fall Equinox which made it all the better.  It was fun to get up early to see the sunrise and just bask in the beauty.  As I sat there waiting for the sun to crest over the mountains I thought routine of the earth and how the sun comes up every day and how now after the equinox we will be having less sunlight and get colder.  How perfect really all that is planned out.  In life there is so much craziness and indecision and change that it is nice to know that somethings are constant and unchanging.  

To the North

First peek of the sun. 

Sunset.  It was beautiful, but not as cool as the morning. 

Number 14 Hike the Narrows

 I have wanted to hike the Narrows in Zions for a long time.  I had planned it with friends a couple of years ago but that was the rainy year so they closed the Narrows down for flash floods.  So this year Danielle and I made a quick weekend trip to Zions and hiked the Narrows.  We stayed in a house of a friend.  That made the trip even nicer with a big house to ourselves.  We started out about 9 am.  We walked the river hike and then once you get to the end of that you just start walking in the water.  The water was cool but it wasn't a big deal to be in the water.  The highest the water level was was about to our waists but mostly mid calf.  There were some people up there but not overly crowded.  Everyone was friendly and enjoying themselves.  I think for me the best part was just the beauty of it.  The cliffs were incredible and the canyon so deep.  It was amazing to think it had been carved out by the rivers constant flow for millions of years.  Then as the sun would peek through the canyon and reflect off the red rocks it was really just humbling to be there and experience the beauty.  Around every bend it just got better.  We hiked until we almost reached the second fork joining the main river.  There was a huge boulder and we would have to really get wet to get around it so we decided we better head back.  The hike out was easier and quicker (as always) but we were tired by then so we took it slow.  We got back to the trail head about 5:30 and then out of the park about 6ish and ordered a delicious pizza from Pizza and Noodles and took it home and enjoyed.  I am really glad that we made the effort to do Number 14 Hike the Narrows. 

Danielle and I at the beginning of the trail.

Me about half way up. 

So amazing.

Us on the first fork coming into the river.  We hiked just a little way up this one and then returned to the main part. 

Just loving it. 

Understanding the flash flood warnings.  No where out. 

Just cool. 

At the finish.  Wet, shriveled white toes.  Next time I will rethink pulling my socks up all the way. 

Our accommodations, Thanks Clark!