Mowing the Lawn: A Romantic Take

I haven't mowed my parents' lawn in 6 years, since I graduated high school, but with my parents and my two youngest sisters out of town for 2 weeks (since one of them usually takes care of it), I had to mow it today. And I was quite surprised at how much I learned while pushing that ancient mechanical vegetarian around.

I hated mowing the lawn as a teenager. If my parent's hadn't paid me for it, I probably would've suffered a lot of nagging for my neglect of the chore. But today I learned lesson number one: Somewhere between now and then, I learned to love physical labor. I'm going to say this was at Jacob Lake, although it had probably been building up since Germany. Working in the bakery at Jacob Lake was the most physically intense job I've ever had, and nearly every other activity at Jacob Lake, that I engaged in, was physical as well. I went running 5-6 times a week, and on my days off I went hiking or swimming for hours almost every single week. Not to mention hiking across the Grand Canyon in one day, which I still need to blog about. After that experience, I can say that I am not afraid to use my body for work because I'm much more aware of what it can do. Karate is helping with that, too. I'm very glad that I changed from a soft, spoiled teenager into a hard-working, borderline-athletic adult. :)

Next lesson was more gradual over the course of 90 minutes of mowing.  See, the lawn hadn't been mowed in a while, and had grown quite tall because of all the rain we've been having here. To give you an idea, the dogs looked like lionesses on the hunt in the grasslands of Africa as they ran around the yard. I remembered as a kid begging my dad to let the grass grow that long at some point, because I just knew it would inspire something fantastic in me, not to mention be less itchy. He never let it grow that long, but I was right, it would inspire something fantastic in me, because it did today.

I had forgotten something very important: I super love nature. Being in the backyard for that long brought back a lot of memories (as a child, if I wasn't down the street at the Cards' house, I was in the backyard crawling around on my hands and knees), especially concerning the cherry tree we have growing on the hill, where I spent many hours reading books among the branches. Back then, it was much easier to just go outside and be happy, and I want to get back to that fundamental value. Whenever life is stressful, take a stroll through the park. Walk the dogs. Fall asleep in some grass. Admire some flowers. Even a few minutes of this is rejuvenating.

I think this is why Germany and Jacob Lake and Rexburg are such happy places in my life. All three of them are surrounded in wilderness. In Rexburg, I lived across the street from a park for most of my time there, plus there were the sand dunes, wide open fields, short hikes, caves, and abundant places for bonfires within half an hour of everywhere. In Germany, the cities are like little pockets of civilization contained in the vast recklessly majestic forest. And Jacob Lake was just a group of maybe ten buildings with 40 miles of forest in every direction before you hit any more buildings. I think I'm a country girl with better taste in music.

So, how is this Romantic? It's "big R Romantic," meaning from the philosophical era of Romanticism. Commune with nature, free yourself from inhibitions, dare to dream...

I've been having a lot of epiphanies around these kind of subjects lately. I guess I'm in a growing period. But I can't talk about them all now, so look for upcoming entries on Glee and Avatar: The Last Airbender. :)

Quotes, plus some other thoughts.

So I've been told to update my blog more often...I promise I think about it. I just don't do it. Haha.

So tonight one of my very dearest friends is getting set apart for his mission, and I just realized that I didn't get his address...and now it's too late to talk to him! This will be the 48th missionary that I write to...because I will get his address somehow. Haha. It's kind of an obsession I have...writing missionaries. This is a random side note.

Anyway, apparently when I signed up for my phone plan, I also signed up for a daily quote message, because I've been getting them every day. And some of them are actually pretty sweet, so I want to document them and I figured why not on my blog, since this is a great place to document random thoughts. So here they are:

1. "The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." - Voltaire (amen, brother.)

2. "The price of greatness is responsibility." - Winston Churchill (dang it! haha)

3. "In the book of Genesis, it says that it is not good for man to be alone; but sometimes it is a great relief." - John Barrymore

4. "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." - Winston Churchill (sad how true that one is).

5. "The measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."  - Samuel Johnson (I really like that one.)

6. "You can put wings on a pig, but that doesn't make it an eagle." - Bill Clinton (ironic)

7. "It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating." - Oscar Wilde (kinda sad but probably true)

8. "So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else." - Goethe (nice testimony. :) )

9. "Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of." - Peter Ustinov (I like this one too)

10. "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." - Shakespeare (classic.)

11. "A compliment is a gift, not to be thrown away carelessly, unless you want to hurt the giver." - Eleanor Hamilton

12. ""A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire." - Francois de La Rochfoucauld

13. "There are many whose tongues might govern multitudes, if they could govern their tongues." - Prentice (love this one)

14. "Whatever you are, be a good one." - Abraham Lincoln

15. "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." - E.M. Forster (now isn't that a thought...)

16. "A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship." - John. D. Rockefeller

17. "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein

18. "It's not only fine feathers that make fine birds." - Aesop

19. "If I'm a cup maker, I want to make the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it." - Densel Washington (love him!)

20. "A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life." - Muhammad Ali

21. "The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion." Frederick Douglass