The Sleeping Habits of Master Larrie

Here’s a great entry from when I was 20 years old. I went to sleep around two a.m. back then, too. It’s good to know that there are some things in life you can always depend on and one of them is Larrie not going to bed when she ought to.

7/15/2001

The strangest thing happened to me. I woke up—it read six o’clock on my watch. I remembered going to bed just after two (a.m.). It didn’t seem possible to me that I would wake after only four hours. A grey light was settled across the room. I thought it must be 6 p.m. I slept that long? Nobody woke me or bothered me all day?

It took me a while to find my common sense. It was six a.m. The sun was rising.

I went back to sleep.

My First Journal Entry Ever

I have a journal that I started when I was 7-years old. Sadly, it only had one entry from that year: one, laconic entry.

June 14th, 1988

Mom, Maren and I went to the camp-out.

Tales of 4th Grade Softball

Okay. My blogging hiatus is over and I’m back with a winner of a blog entry from WAY back in elementary school. It’s one of the last times I had played softball. I know this because the last mitt I owned would only fit the hand of a fourth grader’s. It’s still at my parents’ with my name written on the side in permanent marker.

This entire entry is written in cursive, in pencil.

March 22, 1991

Today is the last school day of March. Next week is Spring Vacation. I had an easy day at school today. First when we got to school Mrs. Floyd, my fourth grade teacher, did the usual morning stuff. Then we had our final spelling test. There were only a few 100’s in the whole class. Then we played softball for Fabulous Friday. I hit two “groundy” homeruns. Still my team lost. Afterwards it was recess. I spent that drawing a map. When recess was over we went to see a play called, “Hurricane Smith.” It was a good play. Than school was over.

Maren invited Laura and Megan to play. Maren, Megan, and I had a fight. When it was settled I went out to play with Krista, and Rachel. In the game Krista wanted to play that we were enemies. Then she started to truly be unkind. We managed to sort of settle that one over the phone. It was a pretty wild day. I’m glad it’s almost all over. Signing off.

When Bees Attack

It was June 3^rd, 2004 and I was reading a book for one of my last classes I’d ever take to earn my English degree from BYU, The Orchard: A Memoir. Adele Crockett Robertson wrote about her tale of extracting bees from a neighbor’s house and it was surprisingly terrifying and exciting. Reading it prompted me to think about my own encounters with bees and so I picked up my journal and wrote about them. One of them was from the summer I did door-to-door sales in Pennsylvania, back in 2000:

It was nearing noon on Saturday. The humidity and what you could almost describe as scorching sun were sapping me of my energy. My lower back was wet with sweat from the car seat. I felt like I was in the car a lot today and that is not ideal for a door-to-door sales girl. But, it was Saturday. That meant I only worked until five, not nine as the first five days of the week. Also, tomorrow was free for church and rest. Sundays were bliss.

I scanned over my hand-drawn map of streets and houses. So many X’s, I thought, recalling the rejections, but I did not care. Today was already half over.

I looked over my street map, scanning the highlighted roads that I had walked and knocked and noticed a small, unlabeled line. It could possibly represent an empty, dead-end dirt road. There were a lot of those scattered throughout this small, Pennsylvania farm town. I usually pulled onto them when I decided it was time for a nap. Company rules said no returning to “headquarters,” so I couldn’t go home to sleep. Today was too muggy for a siesta, but I planned to check out the road regardless. It was dirt, lots of holes, lots of rocks.

As I pulled through some trees, I saw them: little houses tucked back here, hiding from people like me. I hoped they had a “No Soliciting” sign. I collected those.

The house on the right was tiny with overgrown bushes blocking a path to the front door so I pulled up near the side door. I turned off the car, left the keys in the ignition, grabbed my ugly-green book back and hopped out.

After drawing a little box to represent the house on my map, I walked up towards the door. There was a dirty glass door with a thick, wooden door behind it—no doorbell. I opened the first door, knocked on the second and then saw a small frenzy in the corner of my eyes: bees. Several came rushing out of a tall bush next to the door that I had disturbed with my bag. Instinct made my swat one, duck, grab my bag and skip a few steps back.

I didn’t leave; I wanted someone to answer.

Something crawled on my back. It was inside my shirt. It started to get mad. I could tell because its little body started drumming into my back. A little bee had flown in my sleeve and couldn’t get back out. Feeling frantic, I grabbed my shirt by reaching back over my head. I about pulled it right off, but the little guy got me first.

That’s when I learned it wasn’t a bee. He was a wasp and he didn’t die after the first sting. Several smarts later, we were free of each other and I yelled at the non-responding house: “Nobody’s home! I hope they sting you, too.”

I decided it was time for my nap, got in my car and crossed the little road off of my map.

What a Summer of Sales Smells Like

I came across these random journal entries from the summer I lived in Pennsylvania doing door-to-door sales. I absolutely loved driving down the hill into Hershey, PA. (Plus, there was a cute boy that lived just past that city that I was dating so driving through meant good things.) Enjoy, right…

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We rolled down the windows and smelled Tennessee. It smelled like country music.

“Welcome to Nashville,” I told Deb.

The highway dipped down, hiding between the dense, green forest. I took a deep breath. It was cool and fresh. This state smelled green.

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My first evening of selling in Chambersburg and I wandered into a dirty cul-de-sac. Dirty faces on dirty children, with dirty hair, sat on the dirty porch of their dirty trailer. Their mom came out to talk to me. She was dirty. Didn’t trailers come with showers, I thought? I showed her My Fun with Words. She wanted it. She had no money. Shoot, I forgot that part of the sales speech. I stepped off the porch, stood on the dirt and wondered how I could feel so dull while the sunset colored the sky. The wind picked up, cooling the air, and brought the smell of Chambersburg rushing into my face. It was awful.

“Mama, it smells like poopoo,” the dirty little girl said.

The smell of this city was dirty.

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Every time I drove into Harrisburg, I had to cross the Susquehanna River. It wasn’t like the so-called rivers from back home. The waters under this bridge had power rushing through it. It scared me. It was huge. I imagined it could flood up to the eight lane bridge and gulp up all the cars driving across. I rolled down the windows and smelled the water: cool and moving. The smell of Pennsylvania’s capitol city was blue.

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Hershey was down the hill. The traffic coasted down and we all knew it was going to smell like peanut butter when we saw the Reeses’ factory on the left. Even with the windows closed, you couldn’t escape the tasty scent. When the road wound around and into the city, it started to smell more like chocolate. The lamp posts along the streets were topped with Hershey Kisses. I rolled down my window and sucked in the candy smell. Hershey, PA smelled like chocolate.

A Little Poetry from the Journal

I have a rule about my journals. I’m not allowed to tear pages out. It doesn’t matter if I’ve written something incriminating, if I’ve completely changed my opinions or if I’ve tried to draw a cartoon and didn’t like the finished product ONE BIT. The page must remain.

When I lived with my parents after graduating from college, I had a rushed move from Provo to Salt Lake so I didn’t really go through my stuff or carefully pack up boxes. I found, one day, a very random scrap of paper. It had clearly been torn out of my journal. The handwriting was mine. The experience, I remembered. I didn’t remember writing the poem and I didn’t remember tearing out the page.

I only remember the experience, now recorded as a memory in this poem:

“A Faded Trail”

Nothing’s left but faded memories.
I stopped, ignored the warnings.
I didn’t listen to a word,
found myself awake in mornings
hearing sounds I’d never heard.
And inside the walls had crumbled.
I could feel forgotten tears
all at once, proud and humbled,
full of courage, full of fears.
Welcomed back into the color,
I then wondered what I’d missed,
thought myself filled up with valor
as I searched and I wished
to find a scrap of memory
a taste or smell that might remind.
I could only look in front of me.
The trail faded out behind.

Haunted in Dreams by the Caller ID.

Do you remember caller IDs? Well, it’s not like they’ve gone away, but they’ve become so ubiquitous that we don’t single them out as a technology in our lives anymore. They’re expected. Back when I was 18, though, they were still notable enough to be the subject of a dream and therefore, a journal entry. Also, I wish I was in Lake Powell right about NOW.

7/21/99

I did not sleep much last night. I woke up cold. I woke up thirsty. I woke up sore. I woke up missing a friend. I still remember what I had dreamt just before waking up the last time:

I was home. In my mind, I was thinking I was home from Lake Powell, but the thoughts were confusing. I remember wanting to check the Caller ID. The one in the kitchen was gone. I did not want my dad to see me check the other one. Then—scene change, as is so often in dreams—I knew someone was looking over my shoulder. I could not turn to see who, but felt their presence. All I could see was a blue screen. Not what most caller IDs look like, I know. But there I was, looking over the past days’ callers. I searched for one name in particular. I could not stop myself from doing this although my logic told me I ought to. However, it was not there.

A little more dreaming and I woke up. Still in Lake Powell, still sore, still thirsty, but warm under a thin sheet and one cover.

Senioritis

As I’ve been reading through my journal from my senior year of high school, the BIGGEST thing I’ve realized is that I was not a very good writer back then. I tried too hard. I’m pretty sure that I’ve improved since then and let’s chalk it up to my sa-weet blogging skills. Or let’s not. We could chalk it up to all the money I’ve spent on higher education. I would hope an English BA and a nearly-attained Technical Writing MS would amount to SOMETHING.*

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The following rambling entry was written in class my senior year:

5/27/99

Her seat holds her body in class.
Each hand grips the edges of her desk.
Her crossed legs keep her from running.
Her assignment fills space on her desk top.
She is trapped within her unanswered problems.
However, nothing can jail her thoughts.
They run free
Chasing her raingutter sailboat,
Skipping across rocks that hold the stream bed.
She picks her pen off her desk,
Pictures splash from the ink.

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*However, if the only thing that it amounts to is the one-act play I wrote where Antigone, Ismene, Puck and Linda Loman attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting together, then I can die happy. Big grin.