The Silver Lining of Funny T-Shirts

Just back from a very tasty lunch with Suzanne. We went to the Milano Bakery in Eastern Market here in Detroit. It's a Michigan version of Geraldine's bakery in Idaho for those of you who know that place. (Similarities: tasty bread made right on the spot, great soups, fresh cookies. Differences: black Baptists behind the counter rather than white Mormons.) It was really good and we will undoubtedly be back.

It's been a weird couple of weeks for me with lots of emotional ups and downs. In some ways, the last little while has been momentous and wonderful. Good things have transpired and I'm in a different place spiritually than I have been in years. I'm speaking in church this Sunday and it will be the first time I've done that in probably four years. It's a good thing.

There have been other, smaller but still very cool things going on. A short story I wrote a couple of years ago got accepted for publication in Irreantum, the literary journal of the Association for Mormon Letters. I submitted it to last year's fiction contest and was told that it was in the final five or six but ultimately didn't make it as a prize winner. Since then, the new fiction editor got a look at it and decided it was something she'd like to include in the fall issue coming out in November. Publication is always nice and it's particularly satisfying this time because it's in a genre outside my area of expertise. Poetry is one thing but fiction is a whole other animal and so it's nice to know I did something right where it's concerned.

My two daughters successfully finished first grade and kindergarten respectively and have commenced a summer vacation that promises to be full of sun and pool splashing and good times.

My older brother sold his old house, bought a new one, and is getting set to move his family up to Moscow, Idaho for law school.

Suzanne completed the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure a couple of weeks back and did a terrific job, getting a great time even though she was running with a crowd roughly the same size as Dallas suburb. (That's a lot for those of you not up on your Texan suburb sizes.)

But life has a funny way of dropping difficulty and fright into your lap without much notice. Bad things happen. Circumstances get hard and suddenly you have to rely on faith and believe that things will be okay, that whatever happens is what is supposed to happen and will be for some good, wise purpose.

There are some health concerns in my extended family and I'm worried. My mom, she of great faith and calm head, tells me not to freak out and, being my mother, it kind of helps to hear that from her. But still. I'm not a fan of uncertainty and even less a fan of my loved ones suffering.

I'm obviously not writing about it because I want to blab all the details just yet but rather because writing about something sometimes brings it down to size. It's as though writing about a problem captures some of the attendant anxiety and fear and somehow keeps it contained in the ink or pixels. It's the same thing I teach my students - writing is a form of thinking and it had the capacity to be a problem-solving mechanism. It's not just something to do when assigned by a teacher.

Anyway, if you're the praying sort, send a few my family's way. I'd appreciate it. I'll fill you in on more details later.

Enough heaviness.

Allow me to share with you some t-shirt designs I came across early today that cracked me up:











(This last one is a line from the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood which almost none of my readers will have seen. The Admiral possibly. Tracy maybe. Anyway, trust me. It's funny to have it on a shirt.)

T-shirts courtesy of Snorg Tees.