Elephants CAN Jump

          I don’t know how often Roland has asked the following question to various people: “What is the only mammal that cannot jump?” 

          The answer is, “an elephant.”

          Whether it is accurate or not isn’t relevant – not to this post anyway.  Corey liked the title “Elephants Can’t Jump” and thought he would use it for a future post – although he didn’t know what.  I imagined some profound analogy that had nothing to do with elephant at all, but would leave his readers thinking, “What a great post.” as his posts are usually quite thought provoking.

          This is neither great nor profound.  Needed fun to lighten up the mood from many of my most recent posts.

I had memorized Eletelephony by Laura Elizabeth Richards.  It’s a fun little nonsense poem.

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)
Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

I don’t know why I always pick the elephant when playing guessing games. But somehow I find myself using the elephant as part of my outrageous answer, and yet I always do.

Jenna:          “Guess what we did at school today?”

Me:              “I don’t know, what?”

Jenna:          “Guess.”

Me:              “you all rode elephants around the classroom and now the school has a large hole in it where the classroom used to be because the elephants did so much damage"

Jenna will laugh and tell me what really happened.

It wasn’t too long ago when she wrote the following story:

Pg1:   My name is [Jenna].  I never seen an elephant draw.   

         But I’ve read that they write.

Pg2:   Did you know that elephants could write? It’s true.   

         They can write.

Pg 3: Have you ever seen one?  I’m sure you haven’t.  

         They’re really hard to find.

Pg4:   I really want to see one but I’ll never get to see one!

Pg5:   I think Kangaroo’s swim.

(I had added the pictures once I deciphered her first grade handwriting)

And today she asked, “What should I draw?”  

I used to suggest simple things, but today’s suggestion was:  “Why don’t you draw an elephant trying to climb into a keyhole.”

The result:

How great it is to encourage and enjoy imagination.  Because it is through imagination that elephants can jump and fly, read and write, dance and swim.  And that’s such an awesome thing!

Blame It on the Ghost

          Almost every household in America has at least one ghost living with them.  Since being married to Roland, I have encountered three.  Their names are “It Wasn’t Me”, “I Don’t Know” and “I Didn’t Do It”.  The ghost who gets blamed the most in this house is “It Wasn’t Me”.  “I Don’t Know” received most of the blame in our last house – though “It Wasn’t Me” seemed to share a lot of blame as well.

          I find it interesting that about 20 minutes before Jenna returned home from school yesterday, I retrieved a hand mirror from the coffee table and put it in the bathroom.  She couldn’t have been home more than five minutes before I found the mirror on the coffee table again – in almost the exact same position it has been only 25 minutes earlier.

          “Why is that mirror on the coffee table?” I asked.

          She didn’t even hesitate.  She immediately pinned the blame on “It Wasn’t Me” – a ghost that she and Tony seem all too familiar with.  Tony was also a big fan of “I Didn’t Do It” while Randy and Biff seemed more inclined to blame “I Don’t Know” 

          Once in a while Jenna and Biff try to blame one another – which usually doesn’t go over really big as they rarely ever spend time in the house during the same hours.  Of course she is asleep for the most part while he is at work.  And he tries to sleep during the time that she is gone to school. 

          I wouldn’t be surprised if “I Don’t Know” has moved in with Randy and Carrie. Though it’s just the two of them, I think he still tries to pin the blame on “I Don’t Know”  Fortunately Carrie is onto him.

          “I Didn’t Do It” shows up once in a while.  Perhaps that ghost is just a friend to “It Wasn’t Me” who has not actually shown any kind of responsibility.  No one does.  Responsibility?  What’s that?

Nostalgic Reminders, Scanning Photos

          Shortly after my mom had Corey, she went to a Relief Society activity where the sisters were making ceramic picture frames.  They were decorative white oval frames with gold spray touch up.  They would then house all of the 8X10 school (and pre - school) portraits which came home with us.

In order to make them fit into the frame, mom would cut the corners of our school photos and tape them to the back of the frame.  By the time Kayla came along, another frame had to be added.   

It wasn’t quite the same.  The mold itself seemed to match but rather than white with gold spray, it came out more like white and gold mixed producing an antique white or an ugly urinated looking almond/cream type color.

The frames were arranged in a circle.  I think I was at the top.  My brothers at either side and Kayla’s yellow frame at the bottom. Over the years mom would update the photos – even after we each got married and left the nest.  For a while they were displayed over the stairs.  Unfortunately each of us seemed to bump into them.  Eventually one did get knocked down and broke. 

A new frame was purchased.  But it wasn’t ceramic. It was still the same oval shape as the rest.  But it appeared to be wooden – though I don’t think it was (is).  Patrick’s photo was put into the new frame as he had been responsible for the broken one.  His picture hung at the bottom.

Kayla’s frame got moved to be over my photo which remained at the top with Corey and Kayla on either side.  After we added a room to the house, the photos and frames were moved to a wall next to the sliding door and remained there until last week – just before the move to assisted living.

Sunny had taken down all the photos to put them up in mom’s new room.  Sunny did an awesome job with decorating and arranging the photos.  It is one of her MANY talents. 

Corey wanted the photos and photo albums and shoeboxes of photos and so forth.  I offered to scan them for everybody.  I have found most of his school (and before school) pictures.  I had scanned most of mine already – though not as many 8X10.    

Many of those school portraits came out with a more butchered shape than some others.  Funny to go through them now and have all these cornerless school portraits.  I’ve scanned them as they’re the largest.  I find the wallets don’t always transfer with the pixel difference.

There was a power surge last night.  The breaker switch went off twice.  I stopped scanning after the second time.  And now my machine doesn’t want to scan.  I hope Roland’s got the magic touch to make it work.  I still have so much left to scan.

I’m not going to do all the baby pictures of me.  Good grief!  How many baby pictures does one need?  I mean – I realize that babies grow fast and are forever changing.  But that’s day to day – week to week.  I just don't find it necessary for me to hang onto 27 photos that were obviously taken during the same 12 minutes.

For the most part I enjoyed being in the spotlight.  The camera became my friend and I embraced it.  Perhaps I hogged in the glory as I do believe there may be more pictures of me than my other three sibs put together.  I know for a fact that there are many more pictures of each of us than of Patrick.  If it weren’t for school pictures, we'd have even less.

As a child, Patrick hated getting his picture taken.  Or maybe my parents just got bored with photographing their baby on a daily basis.  It is uncanny how many of his older photos look just like Kayla’s two children.  It is also weird to see how major blond we both were.  I don’t even remember Patrick ever being blonde.  But we have evidence.

The photos are not being scanned in any certain order.  I will sort it in the computer – except for the ones I don’t scan – and there have been lots.  And with the mother lode of baby photos I just retrieved of myself – I certainly don’t want to scan all of those.

Corey said he wanted the originals, but I ended up with seven piles – three which I’d be giving to him.  Anything related to Kayla in one pile, anything to do with Patrick and his family in one pile, anything to do with me or my family, every other photo went into a box (for Corey) after I scanned it.  

 And then there was the pile of either scenes or unfamiliar faces that I didn’t scan that went into an envelope marked “Not Scanned” and the final pile went into the garbage initially – but Corey said he wanted ALL of them.  Oh, right.  We’ll just see about that.

Mom was horrible at marking photos.  HORRIBLE.   She doesn’t remember things.  How could she possibly identify the people in the photos now?  I did manage to scan some photos last night (before the power surge/scan mess up) of a group of people on the beach.  I don’t know how many total.  I chose a few of them to scan and email to a few of mom’s friends to ask if they could identify the people in the photos.

One has not only answered, but enthusiastically thanked me for the trip down memory lane.  So I now have names for Corey. I don’t know that having the names will have all that much meaning for him.  He may not want them.  If that’s the case perhaps I should send some of the originals to Erin?  I wonder if she’d even want them.

I’m not through.  I haven’t even made a dent.  It would take so much longer if I weren’t so selective.  I would have started out more selective if I had taken the time with it.  This project I’ve assigned myself is huge.  But I think it will be worth it.

Corey’s got the largest house of my mom’s four children.  He has no clue what he’ll be doing with everything he took back – or is taking back rather.  He’s still on the road right now.  Still in Utah, I’m sure.  And may be for some time.  He still has to drive through that icy canyon.  The department of transportation said they haven’t seen this kind of weather for over 30 years.  I don’t recall ever having seen it – not in Utah anyway.

Well, those are today’s thoughts.  I will be going through pictures and labeling the backs of them and sorting them into what will be scanned and what won’t.

I’ve also come across an attempted biography I had done on my very first word processor.  A "Brothers" that I truly loved.  The printer was less than desirable.  It seems almost humorous to look at the print right now. 

Perhaps I will challenge myself and typing skills and type it into Word.  I saved it upon floppy disc initially.  But I don’t have access to a Brother’s Word Processor so that I may open it.  Well if I still had one.  I find that floppy discs haven’t worked out all that well for me.  I had saved many throughout the years.  I threw them all out just a couple of years ago.

More to come.  May not be soon, however. It is kind of fun going down memory lane. But some things that were saved have turned out quite pathetic from my point of view.  My 50 year old point of view as opposed to my naïve twenties.  Boy, was I clueless growing up.

What an Uplifting Post That Was (NOT)

          My apologies folks for my last two downer posts.  They felt like downers anyway.  I started one about easing my way back into a normal routine.  Started.  I had to record the words that made my last post just to get them out of my head. They were haunting me.  Now I don’t feel so haunted.  Writing is good therapy! (well for the most part anyway)