You know things haven't always been rosy, and sometimes I've had moments when I've found it difficult to be optimistic. I can hear all of my children deliberating whether or not they would ever call me optimistic. I suppose what I am and always have been is pragmatic to the hilt and sometimes my mega sensible self comes off as critical or negative or even insensitive. I can assure you, I am really so sensitive and so caring that I put up my guard to not show it, or bend over in very strange and often misunderstood contortions to try and please everybody while, of course, still getting what must be done when it must be done.
   Ok, after the preamble what I want to tell you about is one of my moments of desperation that led to an epiphany and a life defining philosophy.
   I had to get out of that one bedroom apartment! It was absolutely essential to my sanity and the well-being of my family, and Wynn seemed to be totally oblivious to my pain. For him, everything was working just fine. He was gone nearly every waking moment, out getting an education, working 40 hours a week, talking with interesting people, making money, enjoying the changing scenes of his outside world, and I was stuck in four tiny walls with 3 little people who couldn't say much more than "I want this, I need this, and give me that."
   If I wanted to get out, say to somewhere absolutely essential like the grocery store, it was a major effort. No meditative, solitary, peaceful walks in the park for me, no siree, I was the mom. I had made my bed so to speak and now I had to sleep in it. Well, I was determined I wasn't going to sleep in it in a one bedroom apartment for much longer.
    I know I have jumped ahead of the chronological story, but I have to strike while the iron is hot and today is the day for this confession. This desperation happened after we found Mink Creek which maybe made it all the worse because I knew that my dream was waiting for me, and I seemed to be making no headway against the winds of adversity that were keeping me from it. I promise to jump back onto the proper timeline tomorrow and talk about finding Mink Creek but for now we're at the pity party.
   While Wynn was in Blanding helping his friend build a log house, I got fed up and made my move. We had talked about Wynn going back to school and Utah State University had been discussed, so I decided on my own that if I found a place to rent in Logan, he would be willing to move. It started out as a harmless idea. I drove myself and the three girls to Logan and looked around all day at potential apartments, but apartments that were big enough were more money than we had, and he was going to be jobless again until he could find a job that would work around a school schedule. As darkness fell and the three girls were getting tired and whiny and I was facing returning to Salt Lake with no hope of escape, I decided to look at one last place. It was an old house in Hyrum. I went to the address in the ad and a woman came to the door. She looked me over and took a look at the three little faces staring out of the car windows. "It's not a really great family place," she said. "It's too cold."
  "Can I look at it anyway," I asked.
  "Sure," she said, "but it's really cold and I haven't got the electricity on."
   We carried flashlights and she took me around the corner to her ancient childhood home. It was a two-story house, with a bedroom downstairs and two more upstairs. From what I could see in the beam of my flashlight, it didn't look that bad. In fact, it was a mansion of space and certainly it would be warmer once the electricity was back on and it had a family living in it. Empty houses are always cold.
   I rented it there and then, in the dim light of a battery powered torch, I signed the papers. Without my husband's knowledge, consent or even reluctant agreement, I committed us to moving to Hyrum.
Like our bibilical ancestress, Eve, I made a life-changing decision without consulting my better half and then I had to live with the monumental consequences.
  Utah State would not accept Wynn's degree from the University of Utah. They wanted him to take more psychology classes, before they would let him enter the education department. So, the school idea was a bust. The Hyrum house really was the coldest house on the planet, bar none. You could freeze your hiny onto the toilet seat if you sat down on it. Wynn and I slept in our down sleeping bags. I put the kids to bed with hats and gloves on. I sewed up the bottom of some over-sized bathrobes and put those on over their pyjamas, and they still woke up red and swollen and chafed. Wind blew right through the place. It blew the candles out on little Josie's birthday cake before she even had a chance to exhale.
   We did have one of the prettiest Christmas trees ever in that house. We didn't have any money and we had waited until Christmas Eve to even look for a tree. The man at the tree lot, looked at our little family and pulled a big beautiful tree up out of the snow where it had been lying.  "Why don't you take this big one for free," he said, "and Merry Christmas!" His generosity warmed our hearts (which were the only warm parts of our anatomies that Christmas). We put that majestic tree up in the living room with the snow still on it and it never melted. The ice crystals on the pine needles twinkled with the lights and never dripped.
   We moved out the day after Christmas and moved in with Wynn's folks down in Ogden. I went from a one-bedroom duplex of my own to the basement of my in-laws house. I got exactly what I deserved. But, Mink Creek was waiting for me and someday I'd be ready for it.