Contacts and new church callings

On our walk tonight Paul commented to me that it was time for a new post.  "After all," he said with mock affrontery, "I got contacts last week and you haven't even mentioned that yet!"  Which is true.  Nine years ago when Paul and I were engaged, Paul decided to try out contacts.  He only got glasses for the first time shortly after we started dating but he thought he might as well give contacts a go. 

It was a fiasco.  I remember him struggling with those suckers to get them in and out of his eyes and I recall breaking the rule about "no girls allowed past the living room" to go back and help Paul in front of the bathroom mirror as he got more and more upset when one of the flimsy lenses got stuck in the crevice of his upper eyelid and he panicked while trying to get it out.  His brief stint with contacts is one of the reasons we have only one picture from our honeymoon - his manual film camera had been calibrated to his diminished eyesight and everytime he looked through the lense while we were in Costa Rica he thought that the high humidity was causing the blurriiness in the frame so he just put the camera away out of frustration.  Needless to say, he has worn glasses for the vast majority of our marriage and it is a little weird for me still to see him without them and I miss them.

There is one reason Pablo decided to try out contacts again of his own volition:  trout.  Paul is planning on fishing in Yellowstone next week and has a big fishing trip planned with his dad for September and he can't wear his polarized sunglasses and still have the clarity of vision that he needs to land the coveted trout that he has been dreaming about unless he is sporting contact lenses.  It tickles my funny bone that Paul would brave contacts again (especially when I remember how traumatizing contacts were for him the first go-around) for a little fly-fishing but that is one of the quirks that I love about him.

Another change that has happened in the last week is that Paul and I were both released from our callings and asked to take on new responsibilities in our ward.  I am sad that I don't get to work with the Beehives any more but am strangely looking forward to being a gospel doctrine teacher.  When I told my mom she said that she would have been in tears to be given that calling, but I sort of like being in front of a group of people imparting knowledge to them.  Besides, I always want to have more in depth, meaningful scripture study and this calling will certainly require that of me. 

My new calling and release were actually occasioned by both the fact that the entire Young Women's presidency was being reorganized and due to Paul being called to be the ward executive secretary, which is a much more demanding calling than ward employment specialist, which was his previous calling.  As ward executive secretary, Paul is now a member of the bishopric and has more demands on his time than he had before, including early morning planning meetings on Sunday before our regular three-hour block, ward council meetings after the three-hour block on Sunday, and Tuesday evening bishopric meetings in addition to his other responsibilities like scheduling, etc.  I still don't know what all his calling entails but I think that Paul, while a little intimidated, is looking forward to the working with the bishop and his counselors.