Today Is The First Day of the Rest of My Life

If I planned my life from this point out, it would go like this (in some ways, mostly Avram's career ways).

Tomorrow Avram looks into a well paying 15 hour a week job that's intellectual - like his cataloging out of print books job at the Oxford University Press that pays well. They are so impressed they hire him on the spot. (Hey, if you're making things up you should do it well). We now have enough money to eat for the rest of the month.

Monday we receive a letter informing Avram he's up for the top amount (only a couple thousand dollars) for the Hugh Nibley Fellowship he applied for from the Neil A. Maxwell Institute (used to be FARMS). We buy a Washer and Dryer and Avram joins the SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) and goes to their Conference in Boston.

Avram continues to get this fellowship every year until he graduates. Every conference he meets with his old BYU professors, and they love him. They really love him. They sit around with the Maxwell Institute people and have conversations about how up and coming Avram is. (I just know Avram's going to think I'm weird for writing this all out. Not out of character - just weird.)

Next Summer a house basically falls into our lap with a mortgage we can afford that's in our ward, right around here (because we like the neighborhoods where we are). We buy it and the seller pays the closing costs and we got it so cheaply because it needed a good paint job and some landscaping, all of which I wanted to do anyway. It's three bedrooms with some nook or attic somewhere for a study/library for Avram.

Meanwhile I'm excelling at being a stay at home Mom. We eat whole grain everything, including Angel Food Cakes, and we love, love, love it. Avram learns to love eggplant, cooked green beans, cooked fruit desserts and chocolate, and I become acquainted with the joy of pickles. We realize we really love eating oatmeal every morning, instead of just doing it because I'm both cheap and determined to be healthy.

When Avram graduates, one of his old Hebrew (or Religion, whichever he's feeling closer to at the moment) professor retires, and he applies for the opening. Since they all love him so much, he's their top choice, and they pay for us to move to Happy Valley. I'm happy, he's happy, and my mother's ecstatic because her grandchildren with only live an hour away from her. You all are happy for us too.

We buy Representative Clark's home in the tree streets of Utah. I used to take Avram on walks through the tree streets, picking out the houses I would like to buy. This one was the best (and then I saw that a state representative owned it, and I realized we would never be able to afford it). (He also happens to be NieNie's dad. It's a small world.) We sell our home in Columbus at a profit, even through a sluggish housing market.

I become a Utah Democrat, which I think is what I truly am at heart - good morals and good politics (Soren, please still be my brother).

We pay off all our student loans, and then pay off our home early and then invest really well and never have to worry about money again (but we still help all the needy and poor and our kids and stuff).

Avram gets tenure, and he keeps busy writing lots of religious books that you, good little LDS consumers that you are, keep on buying to support me in the manner I'd like to become accustomed to living in.

For our second honeymoon we travel to England and see everything we didn't see the first time (which is basically everything) and we connect with our old ward members, and they love us too.

Avram becomes over/teaches at the BYU Jerusalem center and we travel there lots and are very cultural and our kids grow up as our best friends because we spend so much quality family time there. We also are there when there's finally peace in the Middle East (I like to dream really big).

After all our kiddie-poos are in school (and there are lots of them - I want a big family) then I go back to BYU and get a masters in something exciting like English or Anthropology. Then Avram's department hires me as the department secretary, because secretly when I was a secretary that was my most favorite job ever. I work only thirty hours a week, so I'm home for my kids when they come home from school.

Our kids grow up and get married all in the Temple, and we go on missions to Israel and convert everyone (or at least plan the concerts they have weekly in the BYU Jerusalem center).

We retire, and then die at the same time and are exalted to the Celestial Kingdom.

The End.

What does the rest of your life look like?

(Oh, and Mom, I know that my life isn't really going to go like this. But you and I know I'll just keep planning the rest of my life at once anyway. This is me, the same person who when I signed up for classes for high school planned out all four years of classes at one go, so I would know what to take. When I had a missionary, and he wrote home and said he wanted to be a doctor (he's now studying to be a high school English and German teacher) I planned out the rest of our life together with him as a doctor. I once had to write an obituary for a college class, and it was really easy because I'd already planned the rest of my life anyway. I don't mind if it changes all of the time. It'll keep me on my toes. Besides, then I get the fun of planning it all over again.)