We vow to never neglect our blog again

Once upon a time I used to enjoy writing. Actually, I enjoyed it so much I spent most of my days feeling that thesauruses and Sylvia Plath were following me around every turn and through every door. And then one day, they disappeared.

I guess it all started when I got married, graduated from Utah State and tried living in the real world. A world that demanded a money-saving plan, a job that was close, enjoyable and gave me health insurance, and finally it demanded that I let go of a reality where I was my main concern. Leaving school also slapped me into the realization that I needed to readdress an issue I have been living with off-and-on since I was 16. These last few months have been very, well, real.

In a few photos, this is what our summer looked like...

Sling-shotting water balloons onto passing cars.

Me, catching my first fish :)

Backyard BBQs for two

And last, but certainly least... yard work.

We actually did a lot this summer and I'm proud of where we've come in the last few months. Man, being married is so much more fun than I could have ever fathomed.

The Daily Herald picked me up as a correspondent a week before graduation and I started a few days after we settled into Pleasant Grove. My experience with the Herald began when my editor told me to go to a Cedar Hills city meeting, you know, just to get a feel for the council, mayor and peanut gallery. They did not intend for me to produce a story that night, but after calling my editor three hours into the meeting to tell her the residents were using expletives mixed with church doctrine she apologetically asked me to go home and crank out a story in 40 minutes about a city I had basically never heard of.

The $25 I earned from that experience, along the intolerable anxiety, prompted me to email my editor back and tell her this wasn't going to work out for me. With a full-time job it just wasn't going to happen. The end result is I am still writing... because I felt I would be losing a piece of my identity if I quit. However, I do not feel fulfilled, and when I am writing for the Herald I mostly want to punch myself in the face and forget about writing for the rest of the week. But I'm done being mad at writing, and here I am scrambling back to it.

So I have an entirely new game plan. Curious? Well, if you aren't I'll lay out the condensed version: I don't have one, I have ten--depending the course my life takes. I can't have my dream job now, because I cannot leave Utah County. I can't keep going to school right now because it's not a smart move financially. And in all truthfulness, I want more than anything to be a mom, and I do not want my kids getting sneezed and coughed on all day at day care. So there you have it. Yes, it's marriage that did this to me--and I am mentally and physically the healthiest I've ever been because of it.

Dalton just LOVES going to school at BYU.
Not.

In fact, he texts me throughout the day to let me know who he is giving the stink eye to, including a girl he saw who looked like the wheelchair guy in The Nightmare Before Christmas. He complains about how many people greet him by asking where he went on his mission. Soon enough, he will tell them he didn't go on one.

In the Bennett family, it's Christmas every day during football season, so Dalton likes to see the Cougs lose and the Aggies win, unless the Cougs are playing the U. So our house has been full of positive energy and I encourage all of Dalton's teams to continue playing well so that I won't be given the stink eye. Luckily, I wasn't downstairs when the Vikings (Dalton's dad's favorite team) beat the Niners (Dalton's favorite team). The only part of the conversation I could make out was Dalton saying, "Well, I don't even care, OK?"

You know that can't be good.

Oh yeah, and Dalton works at a bank. He likes numbers... a lot, so it works. I am an academic adviser at a massage therapy school, so my job requirements include telling people a decade older than me to do their homework. I've worried about a student getting trafficked in Europe, watched students walk away from school thanks to drugs and I've seen what the diversity of Utah County has to offer. I can attest to there being more than Caucasian Mormons in this area. I love my job. There is so much to say about it, but as I get better about this blogging thing it will all come out, I'm sure.

Well, everyone, there is so much more to say, but goodness I'm behind. I'll have to take this slowly to catch my own thoughts up on everything that happened this summer. It's nice to be back.