Potato Girl in Michigan

Favorite Christmas Picture Books

2011-12-26T18:37:00.003-05:00

Before I take these back to the library, here is a short review of some of our favorite Christmas picture books, in no particular order:

Tree of Cranes by Allen Say: a Japanese mother surprises her young son by teaching him about Christmas.

Good King Wenceslas by John M. Neale & Tim Ladwig: Esther wanted me to read this one every night. It is the lyrics of the classic song set to illustrations. She preferred the sung version.

Apple Tree Christmas by Trinka Hakes Noble: A story of a young artist and the winter she realized how well her father knew and loved her.

My Prairie Christmas by Brett Harvey & Deborah Kogan Ray: a pioneer family's first Christmas on the prairie, away from their family in Maine. Reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck and Mark Buehner: The story of a 15 year old boy and how he first realized his father loved him and tried to give him a gift to express his love back.

Winter's Gift by Jane Monroe Donovan: a widower's first Christmas alone and a miracle of love brought by caring for a wild horse.

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston & Barbara Cooney: A little girl and her mother do their best to prepare for Christmas while the father is away fighting in WWI.

An Early American Christmas by Tomie dePaola: a German family brings many new Christmas traditions to a New England town.

Christmas Tree Memories by Aliki: a family gathers around the tree on Christmas Eve discussing the memories sparked by each of their Christmas ornaments.

Wonder Woman is in the house

2011-10-19T10:12:00.001-04:00

The other night Dan expressed his concern for me and his desire to help me. I was taken off guard because I had not been feeling down-trodden or bad about myself. I analyzed the situation and realized that the house was a mess, I hadn't been keeping up with the dishes, our dinners were of the boxed variety for the most part, and I'd been staying up really late reading and doing Pinterest. Normally, these behaviors would signal a sad Potato Girl in need of help. So why did I not feel that way? Why did Dan's concern seem surprising and somewhat unnecessary?

I have actually been feeling like Wonder Woman lately because I'm still following my new diet. Every day I make many small choices to continue this diet. They are not easy choices for me to make, and I've been making them consistently without flubbing up for...well, today is day 25. I'm pretty sure I've never gone this long without sugar, bread, fruit, milk, yogurt, cereal--basically, all of the things I normally eat.

Today is Adam's birthday. For several years now I have made him Rice Crispie treats to take for his class. I asked him the other day if we could please just send in a store-bought treat this year so I wouldn't have to handle all of that yumminess. But this was really, really the only thing he wanted, so this morning I made them. I had the stuff all over my fingers and I did not have a single little lick. That makes me feel good about myself, and I don't often feel that way. One of my diet books says that you need to give yourself credit for all of your little successes. Dan and I thought that was kind of cute, so we have a habit now of saying to each other, "you deserve credit for that!" It makes us laugh because it is such an awkward, unnatural-sounding thing to say, but at the same time it feels good to recognize those little choices. I do think it makes sense to celebrate and acknowledge all of the small choice you make instead of waiting until you've lost 50 pounds to give yourself any praise. I think a difficult lifestyle change is more sustainable if you recognize all of the little daily things that are going into it, like not licking your fingers when you are making a dessert.

One idea that has been helping me has been thinking of carbohydrates as alcohol, coffee, tea, or tobacco--something that I am absolutely prohibited from even having a tiny taste of. Following the Word of Wisdom my whole life is now making this diet easier for me. This is the first time I've had myself treat sugar as a completely off limits item, but that seems to be a lot more sustainable, in the long run, than having little bits of sugar and trying to not go too far. If I think of myself as a recovering addict trying to stay sober, I can see that "one little bit" of my addictive substance is all it will take to get me back to a place where I'm no longer in control of myself. Feeling in control of this aspect of my life gives me a great sense of success and well-being.

So I think this explains why I was not feeling bad about myself or lost or down in the dumps when Dan thought I was. Take home message for me: if I can focus on one small positive change, and really work on it each day, and give myself credit for the efforts I'm making, it can help me feel good all around, in spite of the fact that there are many other changes I want to get to but can't yet.

A Few More Stories

2011-10-16T18:20:00.001-04:00

Today was the session of our Stake Conference in which the children accompany the adults. Needless to say, I didn't get quite as much out of it as I did last night, but here are my two favorite stories, both told by President DeVries:

The first is the story of Joseph Stanford Smith and his wife, Arabella. This is a story that has been told at least once in General Conference (April 1982, by Elder G. Homer Durham), and more recently by Elder Holland for a regional stake conference broadcast address delivered on September 12, 2010, at Brigham Young University ("Faith to Answer the Call"). The Smiths and their three young children were some of the first members of the church to take part in the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition to San Juan country in Southern Utah. As part of their journey they had to cross the Colorado River gorge. The Mormon explorers found a narrow slit in Glen Canyon, 2000 feet above the river, which they blasted wider with dynamite and then built a primitive, very steep road down to the river. The road was so steep that to get a loaded wagon down it, a dozen or more men and boys would pull on ropes tied to the back of each wagon so that it wouldn't run over the team of horses trying to get it down from the cliffs. Stanford Smith had been helping to get wagons down all day. Finally, only his wagon was left at the top. The rest of the group apparently forgot about him and went on ahead. Here I quote from Elder Holland:

"Deeply disturbed that he and his family seemed abandoned, Stanford moved his team, wagon, and family to the edge of the precipice. The team was placed in front and a third horse was hitched behind the wagon to the rear axle. The Smiths stood for a moment and looked down the treacherous hole. Stanford turned to his wife, Arabella, and said, 'I am afraid we can’t make it.'

She replied, 'But we’ve got to make it.'

He said, 'If we only had a few men to hold the wagon back, we might make it.'

Replied his wife, 'I’ll do the holding back.'

She laid a quilt on the ground, and there she placed her infant son in the care of her three-year-old, Roy, and five-year-old, Ada. 'Hold little brother ’til papa comes for you,' she said. Then positioning herself behind the wagon, Belle Smith grasped the reins of the horse hitched to the back of the rig. Stanford started the team down the hole. The wagon lurched downward. With the first jolt the rear horse fell. Sister Smith raced after him and the wagon, pulling on the lines with all her strength and courage. She soon fell too, and as she was dragged along with the horse, a jagged rock cut a cruel gash in her leg from heel to hip. That gallant woman, with clothes torn and a grievous wound, hung on to those lines with all her might and faith the full length of the incline all the way to the river’s edge.

On reaching the bottom and almost in disbelief at their accomplishment, Stanford immediately raced the 2,000 feet (607 m) back up to the top of the cliff, fearful for the welfare of the children. When he climbed over the rim, there he saw them literally unmoved from their position. Carrying the baby, with the other two children clinging to him and to each other, he led them down the rocky crack to their anxious mother below. In the distance they saw five men moving toward them carrying chains and ropes. Realizing the plight the Smiths were in, these men were coming to help. Stanford called out, 'Forget it, fellows. We managed fine. Belle here is all the help a fellow needs.^'(See David E. Miller, Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1959, pp. 101–18.)

The second story President DeVries told this morning was again related to his recent severe burns. One of his doctors told him to point and flex his feet as many times as he could each day. When President DeVries tried this the first time, he felt a deep stab of pain and started bleeding profusely. He stopped, unsure if the doctor knew what he was talking about. He did not trust him, and could not bring himself to continue the exercises. Soon another doctor came to see him. This doctor is President DeVries' close friend, and one of his counselors in the Stake Presidency. He asked his friend about the exercises. His friend agreed with the first doctor that this was vital for the proper healing of his feet and legs. Because he trusted his friend, President DeVries started to do the exercises and continued them faithfully until they were no longer necessary.

President DeVries tied these two stories into the theme of the conference, "Press Forward Saints." He shared with us the scripture 2 Nephi 31:20

"Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."

He said that because of his trust in his friend at the hospital, he had the perfect brightness of hope he needed to press forward in the agonizing exercises. Sister Arabella Smith was steadfast, firm in purpose, unwavering in her determination to pull back on that rope so that her husband, the team, and the wagon could make it safely to the bottom of the cliff.

He asked us to think of these stories as we sang the closing hymn, asking the Lord to help us see one small step we can take to press forward now. The step Dan and I took this afternoon was to get out the calendar and schedule together which days we will go to the temple for the last three months of the year. That felt really good.

I want to be like Belle Smith. I want to hang on for dear life to the people and principles that matter most, and I want my family and friends to be able to say that I was the help they needed. I hope I won't forget that story.

Good Stories

2011-10-15T23:22:00.001-04:00

This weekend is our Stake Conference. I really enjoyed the meeting tonight for the adults. Here are some of my favorite stories that were told by the speakers:

Our Stake President, Rick DeVries, was severely burned on the lower legs and feet at the end of May. This was our first conference with him since the accident. He told us some of the details of how he was burned. The doctors caring for him at the small local hospital where he was originally taken frankly admitted that they didn't have the expertise to properly care for his burns, and that he should be transferred to the UM Hospital Burn Unit. He was so grateful for their humility and willingness to admit their limitations. Shortly thereafter, a colleague whose son had been severely burned, called. Although President DeVries was on a lot of heavy medication and cannot remember very much clearly from that time, he remembers clearly that this man told him to follow with exactness the instructions of his doctors and nurses so that he would not get an infection and so that he would have the best possible chance to heal. President DeVries did that. His recovery has been miraculous. Not only is he walking without a limp, he is running again (the burns were on his feet and lower legs). He doesn't even have to wear compression stockings. He expressed his gratitude for the principle of obedience and how it can protect us.

He told us of one night after he was discharged from the hospital and was at home recovering. He was sleeping in his hospital bed in the den. It was the middle of the night and he spilled some kind of fluid all over himself. He was in agony. His pain was so severe that he couldn't move a muscle, couldn't raise his head, couldn't even call out. He whispered a prayer to God, asking if He could hear him. As he finished those words, the door to the den burst open and his wife Diana was there. She had been awakened from a deep sleep at 2 a.m. with a sense of urgency and had come running to his aid. He clung to her, sobbing. He described her as an angel sent by God in answer to his one-sentence, whispered prayer, "can you hear me?"

Another story I loved was told by our brand new Temple Matron, Sister Pulsipher. When their daughter Kristen was three years old, she had a beloved bean bag frog that she had received in Primary. She slept with it every night. One night it went missing. Her dad took her on his lap and asked her if Heavenly Father knew where her frog was, and she said, "of course he does!" Then they prayed for help to find the frog, and her father explained to her how God answers our prayers through thoughts, ideas, feelings, and that we also need to use our best abilities to solve the problem that we have prayed for help with. They looked everywhere for that frog, with no success. Then they called the rest of the family together, and an even more thorough search was conducted. Still no bean bag frog. Little Kristen went to bed heartbroken. Her mother couldn't sleep. She was worrying about her little daughter, wondering where that frog could be. Wondering too, I imagine, how to make this experience with prayer turn out all right for her. She finally fell asleep. In the middle of the night she woke up with a very specific image in her mind of that bean bag frog. She got a chair from the kitchen, dragged it into Kristen's room, got a box down from the top shelf of her closet, took off the lid, and there was the frog, inside the box, with a few other favorite toys. The three-year-old, Kristen, is a mother herself now, and the family refers to that incident as the Parable of the Bean Bag Frog.

President Pulsipher told a beautiful story that made me think of my mom. A tiny, frail 84-year old woman named Ida came to the temple for the first time. She was a convert of one year. She had been hospitalized recently and had not expected to live. While in the hospital she was given to know that her time on earth was not yet complete. A woman in her ward (a soul sister of my mom, I believe) helped Ida with her genealogy and then took her to the temple to do the work for her parents and grandparents. President Pulsipher said that Ida could not have weighed more than 90 pounds. They made a special place by the altar for her wheelchair so that she could be sealed to her parents. She told them that she had never expected in her life to feel the way she felt that day. I thought of my mom the whole time he was telling this story. Many, many times she has helped someone to find the names of their deceased family members and then helped them go to the temple to be sealed to them. It is one of countless acts of nearly invisible service that she renders, but I know she is a favorite in heaven to so many people whose lives have been blessed by her diligent work on their behalf. I was bursting with pride just thinking of my mom while listening to this story of Ida and the unnamed, unsung hero that made her trip to the temple possible.

Saying No

2011-10-13T12:16:00.001-04:00

Today I quit my Thursday gig at the agency where I volunteer. This was a big step for me, something I may not have done in the past. Here's the story:

S.O.S. is going through some big changes as of October 1, due to new guidelines from their primary source of funding (the Feds? I'm not sure, this is just a guess). In the past, the doors to this agency were open M-F 10 to 6. People in need of food could come in on Tuesdays, speak to a food counselor, and leave with some food, or a referral to get food elsewhere. On the other four days of the week, people with housing problems could walk in and speak to a housing counselor. As of October first, the agency can only facilitate walk-in counseling on Tuesdays for food. Volunteers from the community who have completed the necessary 21 hours of training can work as food counselors on that day. On the other days of the week, the door is locked, and people with housing needs must first call a phone number and speak with an intake counselor, who will give them an appointment to come back and speak with someone in person.

In the past, I believe, volunteers could work any day of the week doing either food or housing counseling with walk-ins. As of October 1, volunteers can only work as greeters (receptionists) on M, W, Th, and F. This is what I did last week. Many people came to the door without appointments last week because they didn't know about the policy changes. Some were looking for food, and had to be told to come back on a Tuesday (actually, before I found out about the hard and fast Tuesdays only rule, I was able to give food to a few hungry people, which made me happy. Then I got busted and had to be more strict). To those looking for help with housing I explained the new policy and gave them a card with the phone number on it that they had to call first (even though, secretly, the people who answer those phones are sitting at desks right upstairs). I was only supposed to let someone in who had an appointment already (luckily, I also didn't know this right away, and I got to let a pregnant mommy in to use the bathroom :).

I was told during training that with a bachelor's degree I would be eligible to do the housing counseling that people without bachelor's degrees were no longer allowed to do, which is why I showed up last Thursday and again this week. But the housing access coordinator I spoke with last week did not think I would be able to do that, although she promised to ask a higher power about my situation.

I have been thinking all week about whether or not I still want to go in to the agency on Thursdays if I cannot do any counseling on those days. I was leaning against going in. Although it was nice to interact with the various people that showed up at the door last week, it was not a job that really needed to be done, since the door is locked and there is a sign on it explaining that they need to call the phone number first. When there is no greeter working, things seem to work out just fine. I do think it is nicer for someone to have a real person meet them at the door and explain the change, but at the same time, I am the mother of four little people and the wife of one tall person and there are many, many things that I could do with my Thursday mornings. In the end I felt that, although volunteering on Thursdays as a greeter is a way of serving the community, I can do more important work for my own little family by using that time at home.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am doing the depression group at the church for the next seven Tuesday mornings, but after that, I will be able to volunteer at S.O.S. for food day each week and do one-on-one counseling at that time. In January I will take part in the 40 hours of training for volunteer crisis counselors at another local agency (Ozone House), and then I plan to work for them on my Thursday mornings.

I had offered a ride this morning to my friend at S.O.S., an intern from Taiwan named C.C., so I went to see if they were going to let me do intake calls before making my final decision. When I got in, the coordinator said there were no appointments until 12:30, and they would be in a meeting all morning, and left. There was an intern in the greeter's office filing papers, one of the only tasks I had to do last week besides answering the door. I felt awkward interrupting the meeting to speak with the coordinator about my situation, so I took on one last project. Over a week ago a consumer accidentally left her binder and her bridge card (food stamps) at S.O.S. When I asked about it last week, I was told to just keep it in the desk to see if she came to get it. When I saw it still in the desk this morning, I decided to take action. I opened the binder up to see if I could find any contact information. I found an address on a prescription from a drug store, but no phone number. I looked my mystery woman up online, and even called her pharmacy, but still no phone number. So I took the binder out to my car and drove over to the address. After knocking a few times on the door, a young woman answered. It was my mystery woman's granddaughter, and she said her grandmother had been looking for her bridge card and didn't know where she'd left it. Yay! Mission accomplished

I returned to S.O.S., pulled the coordinator out of her meeting, and let her know that I wouldn't be coming in on Thursdays any more unless I could do counseling. She had spoken to her supervisor who told her that in spite of my bachelor's degree, they could not let me do phone intakes because they had to save those experiences for their interns. So I said goodbye, and now I'm here at the library writing this post until it is time to pick up little Tater Tot from preschool.

I feel kind of uncomfortable with what I did today. It seems a bit harsh, like when I told the graduate students at Eastern that I wouldn't be helping them with their TAT scoring any more. But at the same time, I feel really good, because I made a decision about how I wanted to use my time, and then I acted on that decision in spite of the fact that I probably put out the person I had been helping. In the past I would have been more likely to tell the people I was helping that I wasn't sure this was the best thing for me to be doing anymore and try to get them to tell me that I should stop and that they would be fine. But people don't necessarily do that, and why should they? They want what is best for them, and if I'm being super wishy-washy about it, why should they give me an easy out? This time I did not ask for permission, I did not try to get them to give me an out, I just made my decision and let them know what it was. In each case, the decision I made may have inconvenienced the people I was working with or made their lives a little harder (which is why it feels so uncomfortable to me), but it was the decision that felt best to me. In each case, if I had continued on for fear of upsetting the other people, I would have felt angry and resentful about how I was using my time. Now I feel free and happy.

Do you ever do things for other people at the expense of yourself and your little family because it seems too hard to say no to them? Or have you found a good way of saying no even when it disappoints someone else? How do you decide what you can do for others, and what you need to say no to?

Depression Group for Mormons, Day One

2011-10-12T08:09:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I met at the church for Day One of a special 8-week depression group run by LDS Family Services for the women in our stake. One of my heroes, Linda J., is leading the group (she works as a therapist for the church), and I am serving as the mentor for the group. The mentor is someone who has been in group therapy before--a depressed person, not a therapist--that can make the experience a little easier for the other members of the group. I was very tired in the morning, and had a hard time peeling myself out of bed to go to the church. I was thinking that I haven't been feeling very depressed lately, and maybe attending this group for 8 weeks would not be the best use of my time. But after 90 minutes with these women, who were so brave about sharing their private struggles with the rest of us, I felt my heart melted and full of love for each of them. I also felt inspired to continue working on my own unhealthy thought patterns, and to better prepare myself for my next bout, which will no doubt come in due time.

One project I am really excited about is preparing a first aid kit to use when my mood is low. It will be something tangible, maybe an actual box, or binder, with inspiring articles, quotes, pictures, et cetera, chosen by me to help me during dark times. If you have anything like that, or any suggestions for things I might put in my first aid kit, please let me know. I really appreciate LL's tip about the song she listens to every night before bed, "One Little Corner" by Jon Troast. That is the kind of thing I'm looking for.

New "Lifestyle Change" (i.e. Diet)

2011-10-11T22:01:00.001-04:00

If you have known me for a long time, you know that my weight has fluctuated quite a bit since my teenage days as a professional dancer. And by fluctuate I mean going up, up, up the ladder. No one likes to be overweight, especially not former dancers who were, by training, obsessed with their appearance and constantly comparing their bodies to other bodies in an effort to stay at the top of the game. Even back then I felt too big, and my body (in retrospect) was pretty much perfect back then. I remember trying all kinds of fat-restricting diets in an constant effort to weigh as little as possible (without relying on cigarettes or eating disorders). I also remember feeling like my eating was out of control, and worrying that if I ever stopped exercising 5-6 hours a day I wouldn't be able to eat like that any more. I remember looking at people I considered "fat" (back then, "fat" meant "not emaciated") and promising myself that I would never, ever look like that.

I quit dancing after high school and promptly gained about 20 pounds. I was not happy with that, but I still looked fine. As a missionary in the Philippines, I lost those 20 pounds, probably due to a combination of stress and parasites. Shortly after my mission, I married Dan and we moved to Michigan. I got pregnant a few weeks later, and was soon puking my brains out. But then the little guy was born, and I started nursing him. Within a few months I had reached a new all time high weight, 20 pounds above my college weight. That was the first time I really felt like I was "fat". I had said I felt fat before, but this was different. Now other people agreed with me.

Okay, blah, blah, blah, fast forward through three more babies, a weight gain of approximately 20 pounds per baby, and now nobody who sees me can imagine that I could have possibly been a professional dancer, unless it was in a ballet company for obese people. Needless to say, this transformation over the past twenty years from perfect body to lumpy apple body has weighed heavily on me (ha ha). More than once, someone looking at our wedding photos on the wall has actually asked if that is me with Dan (no, that is Dan's first wife, but I love her so much I like to keep a picture of her with my husband on display right here in my living room).

Recently, my weight has crept up to a new all time high. One Saturday night a few weeks ago, I was complaining to Dan about this and expressing my sense of despair at ever being able to lose weight. He mentioned, again, a book he's been reading online about this topic (Why We Get Fat and What to do About it by Gary Taubes), and I asked him to read me the relevant parts. This is another book that pegs carbohydrates, not fats, and not even calories, as the real enemy to weight loss and maintenance. I actually buy this argument and was happy to hear it again. For two and a half weeks now, I've been eating significantly fewer carbohydrates, and I'm losing weight.

The most striking thing about this "lifestyle change", besides the weight loss, is that I don't feel hungry the way I used to, and I no longer feel sick to my stomach if I go more than an hour or two without food. I can eat breakfast and then wait 4-5 hours without additional food and without feeling hungry or sick before eating again. I also don't physically crave sugar when I don't eat any. I think I'm an all-or-nothing girl when it comes to sugar. If I have a little, it awakens a powerful monster inside that tears the earth apart to get more and more sugar. If I have no sugar, I can just keep having no sugar, and my body doesn't feel like it needs it (although my brain wants it).

It doesn't hut that every time I get on the scale I weigh a little bit less--that is extremely motivating. And it is getting easier to bend over and to get up and down from a seat or in and out of the car. So, yay. I am haunted by the knowledge that I may fall off this wagon and gain all my weight back and more, but for now I'm feeling stronger, healthier, and slimmer. And I feel like such a stud every time I don't eat sugar!! Or fruit! Or grains! Or beans! Or carrots, corn, potatoes, or peas! And I also feel like a stud when I have a giant salad for lunch, or a bowl of roasted Brussels sprouts, or a spaghetti squash. And I love that I get to eat yummy, yummy cheese. Right now in the fridge I have Extra Sharp Cheddar, Jarlsberg, Queso Fresco, Smoked Gouda, Parmesan, Feta, shredded Mexican Blend, and Mozzarella. So if you're ever in the neighborhood looking for cheese, you know whose door to knock on.

First Real Day at S.O.S.

2011-10-05T21:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I arrived at S.O.S. at 9 a.m. to start my first morning of real volunteering. They were understaffed, so I was not able to shadow anyone as an actual counselor, so I tried to find other helpful things to do. Until 10, everyone who could unpacked boxes of food onto the shelves in the basement, divided up the food equally into paper bags, carried the bags of food upstairs to the kitchen, transferred small frozen pizzas from the freezer in the basement to the freezer in the kitchen. Then at 10, when food day officially starts, I got kicked out of the kitchen because there was plenty of help there, and sent to try to help with people coming in for food. In case you are curious, one food bag yesterday contained the following: two cans of veggies, a peanut butter, a jelly, two packages of noodles, a box of mac, a box of baking mix, some fruit cups, and two cans of soup. Each person that came in for food also got a flat of yogurt and some frozen pepperoni pizzas. Also, in the entryway there were two tables piled high with fresh produce (farm fresh--still covered with dirt). Anyone could take as much produce as they wanted.

A person wanting food comes in the front door. They are asked by the greeter to present an ID. The greeter then uses the ID to look the person up in the database. Then she fills out a half-slip of paper with the person's basic information on it, including how many times they have gotten food from S.O.S. this year (people are only allowed to get food four times a year). She puts the half slip of paper in a pile and gives the ID back to the person. Now the person waits in the waiting room until a food counselor calls their name. There are three offices for food counselors to use. When a food counselor is done with one "consumer" (this is what S.O.S. calls the people coming in for help--I think it is a somewhat awful term), he/ she gets the next half-slip of paper from the pile and calls that person's name. They go into one of the three private offices and talk to the person about why they've come in, what other help they might need, et cetera. When the food counselor is done with that person, he/she gives that person's food card to the helpers in the kitchen, who prepare that person's food. Some people also need toiletries, diapers, wipes, feminine hygiene products, et cetera, so if we have any of those things on hand, we give them to those in need along with their food. When the kitchen crew is ready, they call the person's name, and give them their food and now the person is done.

If you want the produce, you can just come in and get it, without showing ID or speaking with a food counselor. If you want the other food, you must speak with a food counselor first. After I get some more training, I will get to be one of the food counselors, but yesterday I just hung out in the lobby helping the greeter and talking to people and organizing the produce and trying to get people to take some of it. Yesterday's produce delivery included lots of greens, some romaine, green tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, potatoes, onions, baby bok choy, basil, thyme, little dark purple hot peppers, butternut squash, acorn squash, apples. Most of it was a hard sell. People seemed intimidated by much of it, unsure how to prepare it. I tried to talk them through it, but there were still very few takers for anything besides apples, peppers, and greens.

Two of the happiest parts of my morning: Two mothers came in asking for diapers. They needed sizes 3 and 4. We only had sizes 1 and 2, so they were told there was nothing for them. I took them aside and told them we actually did have size 2 diapers, and did either of them think their baby could squeeze into that size. One mother thought yes, so I went down and got her some diapers and wipes. The other woman's child was 2 and needed size 4. Hey, I thought, that is the size Naomi wears, and I've got some in the car. I asked her if she would like the diapers and wipes from my diaper bag in the car and she said yes. So I went out and got them and she gratefully accepted. It felt so good to give someone something that they really needed. I was so glad I had the diaper bag in the car--so often I forget it! Another happy part of my morning was when I was leaving to go get Naomi from preschool. I saw one of the people who had gotten food trying to load his 6 bags onto his bicycle. He was a young college-aged man who was friends with one of the interns (they were surprised to see each other, but I think it was comforting to him to find her working there). This was the first time he'd ever come in to get food. I offered to load his food into my van and meet him at his house so he wouldn't have to try to carry it on his bike. He accepted, and even offered to pay me for gas. So after I picked up Naomi, we dropped the stuff off and then went home.

I enjoyed my time at S.O.S. so much. I got several people smiling or even laughing with my antics about the produce, and I got to help two or three older people fill out their paperwork because the letters were too small for them to see. One of the oldest people I helped was an African American in her 70s, homeless, no teeth, and she kept calling me "Baby Girl." She had a great sense of humor. When we had to fill out her race on the card, we had a fun joke together about her choosing to be a Pacific Islander and then going "home" to Hawaii. Tomorrow I go back for Day #2. Tomorrow is not a food day, so I will tell you about what a non-food day is like.

Empathy Day

2011-10-02T16:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my 9 to 5 training at S.O.S. on using the Empathy Model in counseling. In this model, empathy is the opposite of sympathy. 'Empathy', by this definition, focuses on the client, or 'consumer' as S.O.S. calls them (I can't bear this term), while 'sympathy' focuses on ourselves. The risk with using 'sympathy' is taking everything the client says and relating it back to one of our own experiences, thus spending a great deal of the conversation talking about ourselves. In 'empathy', we try to leave ourselves out of it, focusing the conversation entirely on what the client has to say and how they are feeling about things. When the counselor speaks, it is to clarify what the client has been saying, not to interject her own take on things.

Our training materials list five steps that we should take when speaking with a client in order to properly follow the empathy model:

1) Listen (to verbal and nonverbal statements the client is making)
2) Ask clarifying questions (to help you fill in the gaps of a client's story; to make sure you are understanding them correctly)
3) Give positive strokes (point out things the client has already done to solve his or her problem; help the client see his or her strengths and successes)
4) Make value clarifications (suggest what you think is of greatest importance to the client, based on what he or she has told you)
5) Summarize what the client has said (recap the main points of their story, the feelings they've shared with you, what is important to them, to make sure that you have captured things accurately)

Yesterday there were ten of us in training, with three trainers (all 13 women). We divided into two groups and spent most of the day with our small group practicing the empathy model. I was very nervous to take a turn as a counselor, but it went well. I told myself that instead of trying to follow the empathy model, I would just try to talk to my client (a fellow trainee) the way I normally would. As it turns out, I used all five steps without consciously thinking about it, so yay. One weakness I have is asking two or three questions at a time, and asking the questions a bit too abruptly (What do you think caused this v. I'm wondering what you think may have caused this). Our small group finished the training an hour early, and our trainer said that we picked up on things faster than she's ever seen with previous groups.

Our last activity before going home was sweet. Each of us was given a piece of paper and a bunch of small stickers. We were supposed to use two stickers per person to write the words we thought best described them. Then we took turns presenting our papers and having our new friends come up and stick the words that they chose for us onto our papers. In my group were two undergrads studying social work (volunteers) and two MSW students doing internships with S.O.S., plus the two trainers, one of whom is an S.O.S. staff member, and the other a long-time volunteer.

Our last training session is this Monday night. The topic is Assertiveness. Tuesday morning I will start shadowing. I can shadow for as long as I want, and when I feel comfortable, I can start counseling while a more experienced person shadows me. Once that person thinks I'm ready to go solo, I will be a real, live crisis counselor for S.O.S.

Capturing Susan Piver's "The Hard Questions for an Authentic Life"

2011-10-02T16:25:00.005-04:00

The Hard Questions for an Authentic Life by Susan Piver, 2004

I picked this book up at the library because I'm interested in learning to ask better questions. The one hundred questions that Piver poses here (on Family; Friendships; Intimate Relationships; Work; Money; Creativity; Spiritual Life) did not appeal to me nearly as much, however, as what she said in her Introduction and Afterword.

Piver on living an Authentic Life:
-Your inner world (feelings, values, gifts, needs, spirituality, passions) matches your outer world (job, relationships, home, community).
-Three goals: 1) discover what you can offer to others 2) find and follow your unique path 3) maintain an ongoing, honest, reliable connection to your inner wisdom.
-Authentic living comes as a natural result of being present today, and focusing on the moment.
-It comes from an ongoing inner dialogue based on inquiry and a commitment to listen to the answers that arise.
-It is impossible to plan an authentic life It is only possible to be authentic and watch as your authentic life manifests around you.
Piver on discovering our inner voice by asking questions:
-Piver's life has been driven by this thought: Tell me what I should do with my life and I will give everything to it. Who am I? Why am I here? What are my special gifts? Often, the last place we look for answers to these questions is within.
-It is difficult to distinguish our own thoughts from the thoughts of others; we are profoundly disconnected from what is real, simple, and true for us. Tapping into our own inner wisdom is difficult. We long for it, yet we lack the ability to hear ourselves clearly. When we try to tune in, often the first thing we encounter is others' voices, telling us what life should look like. Most of us can't separate these voices from our own. If we listen carefully and take the time to trace each voice back to its root, we can almost always identify the strands.
-We begin to tune into our real voice by asking questions.
-Asking a question can be a sacred act. If we can simply ask, wonder, and become curious, an opening for an answer will be created. Questioning is a spiritual practice. We come into dialogue with God/ our true nature/ wisdom whenever we stop, look inside, and take the time and effort to really listen to ourselves.
-If our questions are a genuine inquiry, reliable answers will emerge. Listening requires emptiness and receptivity.
-The only reliable way to cultivate presence (awareness, or the ability to observe our own minds) is through a regular contemplative practice, such as meditation, journaling, walking, yoga. It doesn't matter which practice you choose, but you must set the intention to take time for contemplation and remain consistent with your chosen practice. Having a daily contemplative practice is like permanently installing a satellite dish outside your house--our inner voice requires an unmoving target to receive its broadcasts. Spiritual practice creates a steady, reliable way to receive our own wisdom.
-Ask yourself questions every day to keep fine-tuning your ear to the sound of your inner voice. Come up with a personalized list of questions to help you stay connected with yourself. Ask them in the morning to make sure your day is launched with consciousness. Ask them in the evening to review, learn, and summarize what really happened that day.
Piver's start of the day questions:
What do I need to say today? To whom?
With whom do I need to connect today?
What would I like to see unfold in my life today?
What can I contribute today? To whom? To what?
What can I focus on today that will bring me closer to my authentic life?
End of the day:
What did I leave unsaid today?
What did I allow myself to feel? What didn't I allow myself to feel?
What did I love about myself today? What did I not love about myself today?
What began to unfold in my life today?
What happened today for which I am grateful?
What happened today that wasn't in accord with my highest values?
What did I say, do, think, or feel today that brought me closer to my authentic life?

PG: If anything in here leaps out at you, perhaps you could comment on it, and I will try to respond. Do you have any questions that you like to ask yourself?

Gratitude Weekend

2011-10-02T15:23:00.000-04:00

An unpublished post, written on May 23, 2011:

This past Saturday I attended a women's conference at the church for the women in the stake (Ann Arbor, Ypsi, Saline, Chelsea, Adrian, Howell, Brighton). The theme of the conference was strength in every season, symbolized by a tree. The keynote speaker, Polly Mallory, gave an amazing talk that was very helpful for me to hear. Then I attended a two-hour seminar on gratitude taught by my brother's new father-in-law, Bob Quinn. The seminar was also excellent. I learned so much during the conference.

It is always a bit of a disappointment to return home after an intellectual and/ or spiritual feast. While I am listening to the speakers and participating in the discussions, I feel so full of hope and energy and excitement to apply what I'm learning to my life. I want to hurry home and change the world! Then I walk in the front door and there are the children and the laundry and the dishes and my poor husband who has been alone with the children, laundry and dishes for 6+ hours. All of a sudden, I need a nap! Then I'm sort of plunged right back in to the chaos and semi-darkness of my daily life. The hope and light from the conference seem to vanish, a faint memory. I almost feel worse now, facing the juxtaposition of my hopes and my reality.

But this does not need to be a sad post! What can we do when we are filled with a desire to change, and then faced with the difficulties of our present reality? The answer that comes immediately to mind is this: pick one small thing to start with. The small thing that I did on Saturday after the conference was to apologize to Dan for hurting him the previous day, and this led to a long, good talk that brought us much closer together and inspired me with an even stronger desire to change.

The Game of Life

2011-09-30T18:41:00.000-04:00

Our most recent training session was called "The Game of Life." For this we were asked to wait outside until our trainer and her helpers had set up the room for the game. We were given two rules: 1) get through the four stations and 2) start with station #1 or #2. Before we were let back into the room, Normea gave each of us a name tag to wear with three or four capital letters on it. She had us line up outside, changing our order, ordering some people to face the wall and not talk, telling one girl not to touch anything or anyone. She moved some of us closer to the door of the room, and we could not enter until she gave the word. I was one of the first to be escorted into the room. It was set up with four different tables, and an S.O.S. staff member was behind each table. The first table I was taken to was Employment. I was told that because of my race, I could own a chain of ethnic restaurants. Next I was taken to Bank to get some money. After quite a bit of run-around, I was given five dollars and taken to Housing. The houses cost either 2 or 3 dollars. I bought one for 2 dollars, and was then sent to Finish and Complaints. There I showed proof of housing (a laminated picture of my house), and was given a letter stating that I was now eligible to enter the Resort for $1 and rest. I had completed the game. More on the game soon.

Becoming a Crisis Counselor

2011-09-29T16:21:00.000-04:00

Instead of taking more classes and more tests and doing more research to prepare for graduate school, I now need focus on only one thing: getting experience working in human services. This means volunteering at two local agencies. The first agency, S.O.S., provides services to the homeless, and those in danger of becoming homeless. To volunteer as a crisis counselor with them, I've been participating in their 21-hour training program. The training consists of 4 three-hour meetings on weekday evenings, and one full Saturday. I've done the training sessions called "Homelessness" "Crisis Counseling" and "Game of Life" and next I'll do "Empathy Day" and finally "Assertiveness." There are about 20-40 people in training with me. Some are interns (MSW students), some are volunteers like me (mostly hoping to get into MSW programs, also like me), and some are staff members at S.O.S. Our trainer is a rather gruff black woman named Normea (nor MAY a). She snaps at us if we don't follow the rules, but I'm pretty sure she is secretly a sweetie-pie.

What will I do at S.O.S. once I finish the training this coming Monday? I will start out as a Food Counselor. S.O.S. has a dilapidated old two story turn-of-the-century house in the historic district of Ypsilanti where anyone in the area can come on Tuesdays to pick up bags of food to feed their families. Before getting their food bag, people are required to go into a little office with one of us counselors and help us fill out a few forms. Each individual can only get food four times a year from S.O.S., so we keep a card on file with their name and when they last got their food bag so that we can check to see if they are still eligible. If they need more food, we can write them a referral to a few local churches which also give out food. One of the churches will give each individual food once every three months. Another will give food once a month. Another agency will give clothing and household items (pots and pans, brooms, etc.) to an individual in need once every three months. We keep track of all the referrals we give so that we don't give them more often than the respective agencies are willing to provide. A referral is just a form that we fill out and sign, which the person can take to the next place in order to get their food or household items. I am not sure if these places accept walk-ins without referrals. While we are filling out the forms, we are trying to find out how they are doing, what led them to needing food this month, if they currently have a place to live, if they are in a domestic violence situation, things like that.

I will be volunteering at S.O.S. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings (while Naomi is at preschool) until January, when I will do the training at the second agency I want to work for, Ozone House. When I complete their training, I hope to volunteer with each agency once a week. Ozone House provides services to teens, including a 24-hour crisis hotline, which I think the volunteers man. I really like the fact that instead of doing more and more esoteric things in my quest for a doctorate, I am now doing lots of practical, hands-on things, that are helpful to real live people today. That makes me feel more confident that I have made the right choice.

Minor Change in Plans

2011-09-28T11:23:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago (Tuesday Sept. 6), I was sitting in my Experiemental Psychology class listening to our professor give a lecture about the field of psychology as a whole. One of the things that he said really struck me. He encouraged each of us who was interested in Psychology as a way to become a therapist to also look at degrees in Counseling and/ or Social Work. He explained that those paths require virtually no research, are much faster, and are probably better suited for many people who want to work in Human Services. I was aware of the things he was saying, but listening to him that morning struck me again as something I should carefully consider. Two days later I met with the two psychology doctoral students that I've been working with to score the TAT stories. They were talking about how their professor wanted them to spend even more time on school and less time on their outside lives. They were complaining about their heavy load: preparing for prelims, teaching classes, grading papers, preparing three papers for publications, working on their own research, working on their professor's research, and taking classes. As I listened to them talking I was taken back in time to the years between 2001 and 2005 when I was working on a Ph.D. in history at UM. At that time, I was so overwhelmed with all that was expected of me in school that I couldn't imagine being able to complete all of my work without living as a hermit and devoting every waking moment to school. And not sleeping very much, and drinking a lot of caffeine to stay awake. This was the lifestyle of most of my cohort, but my lifestyle, with a husband and two children, church callings, a household to run, felt impossible to fit into that doctoral program.

I have been nervous and worried about trying to do a Ph.D. again, now with 4 children instead of 2, but I've also been trying to tell myself that it will be better the second time because I've chosen a field that I'm much more interested in and more prepared for. But listening to Alex and Greg talk, it occurred to me that they were under no less stress and had no easier expectations than I had had in History. Their life sounded like a nightmare for me, one that I've already spent several years living.

As I continued to ponder these two experiences, I began to ask myself why I was insisting on the Ph.D. track instead of the much easier and faster MSW degree. I would probably be even more employable as a therapist with an MSW than with a Ph.D. because I would cost less. And my MSW training would all be practical, professional training, as opposed to the Ph.D. with its strong emphasis on training "scientist-practitioners", in other words, people who conduct experiments and do research as a primary focus, with some clinical work on the side, mostly to enhance their efficacy as scientists and researchers. I was willing to jump through the hoop of research, but that is not what I want to do with my career.

I came to see that the reason I was following the Ph.D. was because I had decided that I could not put the family into more debt. Ph.D. programs offer full funding, plus a stipend, while MSW programs cost money. And at the end, a Ph.D. will make more. But when I took money out of the equation, my choice was startlingly clear. I had virtually no desire to do a Ph.D. Sunday night I took this problem to Dan to discuss the possibility of us going into more debt to pay for social work school. He was fine with it! The more I talked to him, the more comfortable I felt about taking out a loan to pay for school, something I've never had to do before.

The next morning, I realized that if were really going to change my plan and pursue an MSW instead of a Ph.D., I would not need the class I was currently enrolled in, or any other classes, for that matter. When I got online to find out if I had missed the drop deadline, I was delighted to see that the deadline was that very day. I called and got a full tuition refund. Later I got a refund for my parking permit, I dropped out of the research project I had been working on (not relevant to social work school), I took back my library books about preparing for the GRE and the Psychology Subject Test (no GRE used in the admissions process for social work program). I was shedding unnecessary stresses, costs, time commitments right and left. It felt amazing to let all of those things that I was doing to prepare to apply to Ph.D. programs go.

Lake Michigan, Sleeping Bear Dunes, M-22

2011-09-19T08:03:00.002-04:00

Dan and I are in Traverse City, Michigan, on another 24-hour date. My parents are visiting, and agreed to stay with the children so that we could have this little adventure together. We left yesterday (Sunday) at noon. Dan wanted to take a road we had never been on before, so we did not take the fastest route. Looking at the map, we could see that on our new route we would be pretty close to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and decided to make a little detour to see it. I have wanted to visit this park for many years, so it was exciting to be headed there unexpectedly. Our first stop was four hours from home, in Frankfort, Michigan. As you approach Frankfort on the M-115, you get the first glimpse of Lake Michigan. This view is framed by a large archway over the highway.

We were planning to turn right from M-115 onto M-22 North, but I really wanted to see the lake up close, so we continued down the street we were on (Forest Avenue) to a tiny culdesac (Sac Street) with beach access. Parking the car, we walked out onto the white sugar sand. The sky was blue and the sun was shining; the beach was almost empty--just a few couples scattered here and there on benches in the sand. Dead ahead was a long cement walkway out into the lake with a lighthouse at the end of it. Lake Michigan is so big it looks like the ocean. There are even waves. We walked out to the lighthouse, which is boarded up and smells like pee, and walked back. There were two port-a-potties on the beach that were leaning at crazy angles down toward the sand. Their doors were hard to open because the sand was blocking them. Dan had to use one, and we were afraid it would topple over on him, but luckily it didn't. The neighborhood we were parked in was so pretty: Tree-lined streets of beautiful Victorian homes. It seemed like a little paradise on the beach.

We got back on M-22 and headed north. Part of the highway goes right along the banks of Crystal Lake, which is lined with vacation homes, many with their own little boat dock. The lake is huge, and from the look of the tidy, well-kept homes, it is a place that people love to live or vacation. The next intriguing-looking place we passed was the Platte River, a large river with boats docked along it and a few canoe-rental shops nearby.

We decided that instead of cutting straight over to Traverse City on the 72, we would wind our way toward it on the 22, which goes up the west side of the Leelanau Penninsula and down the east side of it to our final destination. We continued north a few miles and then left the 22 for the 109, which would take us through the Park.

We followed signs for the National Lakeshore's Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, a 7.5 mile loop with amazing views of the dunes and the lake. When we paid to enter the park, we received a map of the drive with explanations of each of the 12 markers along the road. Pierce Stocking was an outdoorsman who wanted to make some of the beauties of Michigan accessible to people of all ages and ability levels. He created this drive in the 1960s and after he died is was bought by and incorporated into the park. We got out of the car and walked to the scenic overlooks at several of the stops. The most amazing overlook to me was the one perched on a giant dune overlooking Lake Michigan. There were signs all along the cement path leading to the dune warning people that if they walked down the dune to the lakeshore, it would be very difficult for them to get back up and if they couldn't do it on their own, they would be charged a rescue fee by the park. I didn't really understand these signs until we were on the viewing deck and could see the entire dune. It was super steep, almost a vertical drop about 400 feet down to the lake. We could see people at the bottom walking along the beach; they looked like tiny ants. The way back for them was straight up this giant tower of sand. We heard one of the women on the deck explaining that her son is super competitive, and he does this walk every year. This year he is 50 and he told her it was really hard to get back up. After seeing what they were up against, I had no desire whatsoever to make my way down there.

The weather forecast for today was rain all day (yes, it is raining as I write this), so we felt very appreciative for the time at the lake with perfect sunny weather and blue skies. We finished our scenic drive and got back on the 109, which took us through the abandoned lakeside logging village of Glen Haven, which is being restored as a historic site by the park. We next drove through the cute little tourist town of Glen Arbor, full of fun restaurants, art galleries, and bed and breakfasts. A stretch of the road went right along the lake, at a place called Good Harbor Bay, and we saw many beautiful homes between us and the beach. We crossed the Leelanau Penninsula on the M-204 to Suttons Bay (another cute tourist town), and then drove south on the M-22 into Traverse City. It took us awhile to find our hotel (I hadn't bothered to bring directions, phone number, or address with me)--we finally called my mom and she gave us the address. It was on the highway we had been driving up and down (M-31), but it was a lot farther than we had gone, thinking that we would be leaving town and getting farther away from it. After checking in, we drove back up the highway toward Suttons Bay to eat at the Apache Trout Grill, a restaurant we had passed on our way into town with a completely packed parking lot. We were starving, and the food was great. We had fried calamari, Asian shrimp tacos with plenty of cilantro, an avocado egg roll, fried whitefish with a parmesean topping and garlic aoli, a salad of field greens, pesto, a drizzle of balsamic syrup, and an entire round of breaded, deep-fried goat cheese. And chocolate fudge cake for dessert.

After that we sort of stumbled to our car, stumbled to our room, and collapsed on our beds. Dan watched some football and I fell asleep.

These 24-hour dates are so fun!!!!! I suggested the first one to Chicago in July, and it was Dan's idea to do another one just two months later. Our new plan is to do one every other month (odd months). In November we are taking the kids down to Ohio to stay with friends, while we enjoy Cleveland (or maybe Pittsburgh) on our own. In January we want to go back to Florida to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday. In March we might try something really close to home, like Toledo. In May we are going to Norway for a week for Dan's 40th birthday. We were figuring out last night that if we don't go on any dates between these 24-hour dates, all the money we will save on weekly babysitting, dinners, and movies, will make these longer dates a bargain. We're saving money, really, we are. We have something to look forward to all the time now. It has been a huge boost to our marriage and our lives in general.

24-Hour Date, Art Museums, Talent Development

2011-07-20T22:18:00.000-04:00

Dan and I just had a lovely 24-hour date to Chicago. We left on Sunday after church and returned late Monday night. We spent the bulk of the day Monday in the Art Institute of Chicago, and it was heavenly. I love art museums so much, but visiting one with the children is so not fun. We just wandered around looking at all the beautiful, cool, thought-provoking things our hearts could desire, with no one complaining or trying to damage the art, no evil looks from the museum guards, no sounds of tortured animals coming from our giant, overloaded strollers. Ahh.

I see from the date of my last post that my promise to return to blogging after a short break for my brother's wedding back in May has gone unfulfilled. We shall see if I can get back on the blogging train after a few months off. Thank you to my beloved LL for her recent comment requesting that I start writing again. I just finished a great book today, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, and it inspired me to return to my daily writing exercises.

The Art Institute's website allows a user to create their own gallery of favorite pieces from the museum and comment on them. Yesterday I wasn't quite ready to return to the real world, and I spent several hours setting up my own online memento from our trip. If you would like to see it, I believe this link will take you there.

Here is my question of the day, inspired by the book I just read. If someone told you that you could become extremely good at something just by putting a set number of hours of time into practicing it (say 10,000 hours), what thing or things would you choose to become extremely good at? Write in and let me know!

Playing in the Street

2011-05-18T00:16:00.001-04:00

Tonight after I made dinner, I went outside with the tater tots to play. We ended up throwing the frisbee. It was really fun. I had to go inside and change from my clogs into my sneakers so that I could run faster to catch the disc. I am not a fan of the heat, so the 50-degree weather with a light drizzle was just right for me. I was blissfully happy out on the street throwing that frisbee back and forth with them. We played for about an hour, and then came in to eat. I didn't want to stop, ever.

James & Shauri Wedding: Movie Night

2011-05-16T23:16:00.000-04:00

My very favorite part of the wedding festivities, besides watching the actual marriage ceremony, was Friday night at the movies. Shauri had rented an older movie theater in downtown Newport, the kind with just one giant screening room full of velvet chairs, like your high school auditorium. All of the wedding guests had been invited (ordered) to submit a homemade film for this night. James begged the members of his family to do this, probably because he knew we wouldn't bother otherwise. Shauri's sister-in-law, Amy, took all the video submissions and put them together in categories, with 4-6 movies to a category. The categories were "Musicals", "Short Picture Featuring a Bride", "Short Picture Featuring a Groom", "Documentary--Short Subject", "International Picture", and "Mockumentary--Short Subject." We would watch all the films in one category, and then break for live entertainment by various wedding guests, including my brother Mark singing a VeggieTales song with two of my tater tots, and some of James' oldest friends reading made-up entries from his diary (hilarious!). I also loved the performance of Paul & Tamara Doughty who invited James and Shauri to come onstage and sit on stools. Paul & Tamara stood behind Shauri and James, and as they sang a rather cheesy (but beautiful) love song, they simultaneous manipulated James & Shauri's limbs to make it look like they were acting out the words of the song. Super funny for the audience--possibly quite awkward for the unsuspecting bride and groom.

Some of my favorite films: my brother Mark told a joke that he had heard from James when they were in college. It is one of my favorite jokes of all time, but it does not seem to make many other people laugh. Although the film was not universally appreciated for its hilarity, I still got a big kick out of it. My brother Nathan stole the show, I believe, when he came out on stage to sing one half of a duet from Les Miserables while the film version of himself sang the other part. His film self was huge, and looking down on his live self. It was very energetic and over the top, and I was bursting with pride. It easily won for its category. My mom made up the cutest, sweetest song ever, a history of our family set to the tune of "Gilligan's Island." The film went between her singing the song with my dad, and pictures of our family over the years. There was a really nice film submitted by James' friend John who is currently living in Australia. He filmed himself in Sydney harbor with the opera house in the background and apologized for not making it to the wedding. The title of his film was "Australia is a long way from Boston." I also loved a film called "Boise Chamber of Commerce" by our friends the Hansens who we grew up with in Boise. It was a little propaganda film trying to entice James and Shauri to settle in Boise, showing what an easy commute it is between Boise and Washington D.C. or between Boise and Baghdad. It bragged about how many wonders of the world are located in Boise, including the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, et cetera. Us Boiseans were laughing our heads off. We loved it!

Following the final guest-submitted short film, we were treated to a slightly longer film made by Shauri. The music for that film was two love songs written and performed by James. The film had clips of different couples telling how they met and fell in love, and also talking about how we set up Shauri and James on their first blind date. My mom and dad were in that film, and Dan and me, and my brother Mark and his wife Kamis. My mom found out on camera that my dad had only joined the thespian club in high school so that he could spend more time with her (their first kiss was while rehearsing for a play). She couldn't believe it! It was adorable. I did a lot of the talking in the clips of Dan and me (can you imagine?), and it was really funny to watch Dan's expression as he kept his mouth shut and let me go on and on. Kamis made us laugh by listing off all of the significant dates in their courtship such as first date, first hand-hold, first kiss, etc. She stopped partway through and explained that the only reason she knows all of these dates is that they are all divisible by five. That really made us laugh.

Basically we were just laughing so hard all night long that our cheeks were sore. It felt so good to laugh that hard. It was so easy and comfortable to sit there in the theater and watch those cute movies and live performances, all by people who love Shauri and James.

Idaho Boy goes to Harvard, Take 2

2011-05-16T00:11:00.000-04:00

My dad wrote a nice long email today to correct many of the errors in my narrative of his life as a Harvard student. I found the details of his story fascinating. I give it to you in his words:

"My guidance counselor would have never suggested I consider an Ivy League school. He was more or less stunned I ended up there. The Dean of Freshmen at Harvard at the time was from Idaho. Every so often he would come to a few rural high schools in Idaho and try to find someone who would apply and who had a chance to be accepted. I do not know why he came to Meridian HS at the time as no one from Meridian had ever gone to Harvard. One Meridian student I knew who was two years older had gone to Columbia and as far as I know he was the only one who had gone to an Ivy League school until I went off to Harvard.

"It was announced over the intercom that a recruiter was here from Harvard and anyone interested could come down to the office and talk to him. I was the only student who showed up. He patiently explained to me how Harvard would pay me to come because my parents were so poor. I found this hard to grasp and he gave me an application. I filled out the application and then stopped because it asked me to write a 500 word essay. I was stymied by that.

"A few weeks later my Young Mens leader [a church group for teenage boys], a Stanford grad named Bob Woods, [who] would eventually become the dean of the business school at Memphis State and the Stake President of the Memphis Stake, found out from someone (possibly my mother) that I was "applying to Harvard." He had to come to my home to talk to me about it because I was not attending Young Mens [activities] and had not since I was about 13. He had a business partner who was a Yale grad and was trying to get a few Idaho kids to apply to Yale. Bob took me down to his office and I met this man. Yale did not require a 500 word essay and I filled out the application and sent it off.

"Your mother eventually found out from me that I had not sent in the Harvard application because of the essay. She got after me and I wrote an essay about the week I had spent on a psychiatric ward in California when I was visiting my sister who was a social worker there. Teresa helped me with the grammar and spelling so that it made sense (that was not how it was supposed to be) and I sent the application off just before the deadline.

"I actually was a good applicant (except for the essay part). I took the SATs and scored a 750 on the math portion and a 740 on the verbal portion. That actually put me in the highest one percent of college applicants who took these tests. Since I was from a rural HS and not a prep school and not even a school that had AP classes and had never even heard of the SATs before I took them, the admissions committee apparently rated me highly. I was also required to take at least 3 achievement tests. These were like AP tests and I had not had any AP classes. I got a 630 on the chemistry one (the equivalent of a 4 on the AP test), a 520 on the English one ( a 2 or 3 on the AP test), and a 790 on the US History one (a high 5). I was ranked 10th or 11th (out of 200) in our HS class academically. The one boy ahead of me went to the Naval Academy and the rest were all smart girls like your mom, who was co-valedictorian. My application also included my work history (I had an extensive one at that point). That was also unusual since I worked even during the school year.

"I never played HS baseball. I was a good basketball player but I stopped because I didn't like the coach. I had some great teachers who really supported me and wrote great recommendations for me. I was a Harvard National Scholar which is the highest award they give to incoming freshmen .

"I have a couple more things to say about the Dean of Freshmen. They did not actually pay for my travel to Harvard but he did somehow find out that I was staying in the dorms over the holidays because I did not have the money to go home. He showed up at my door with round trip tickets to and from Idaho and took me to the airport. When we were freshmen proctors we were supposed to be on the lookout for people like me. Harvard had a fund to help them out.

"The scholarship was supposed to be enough so you did not have to work while at school. I couldn't deal with that and got jobs anyway. I had extra time because I did not play any sports at Harvard. They were all too big and fast.

"I had a huge amount of academic catching up to do. My education was more like that of a ghetto kid. I had to start at the beginning level of everything. I got As in the beginning science classes but I was lucky to get Bs in everything else. But with your mother watching over and encouraging me my last two years I was able to get As pretty much in everything and actually graduate Magna Cum Laude with highest honors in my department (History of Science). I had a great expository writing teacher as a freshman and she got me to the point I could write a B paper. Teresa, though, got me so I could write an A paper and a "Highest Honors" thesis, something I had to do for my department.

"Your mother, by the way, got a number of A pluses at Harvard. I had never heard of such a thing!

"One last thing--I wanted to major in Chemistry at Harvard but to my dismay I found I was too far behind in the sciences to compete a chemistry major in the required 4 years. I did have the satisfaction of performing so well in organic chemistry that my professors nominated me to be a special tutor in organic chemistry at the Harvard Bureau of Study Counsel. This was the best paying job I ever had at Harvard and I am sure helped me get into medical school."

PG's commentary: Two super heroes stand out to me in this story. First, the Dean of Freshmen at Harvard, an Idaho boy who came back to his home state to search for kids whose lives he could change by sending them to Cambridge for an education. I love the image of him showing up on my dad's doorstep with round trip tickets home for Christmas. And the second, but most important hero of this story: my mother. Her hand in my father's many successes is, to me, a sweet and touching part of their love story.

Boston & Cambridge

2011-05-14T11:01:00.000-04:00

Note to my Mom & Dad: Please feel free to correct the historical errors in what you are about to read.

My parents graduated from high school in rural Idaho. They were both local superstars: my mom for her perfect grades, editorship of the school newspaper, and leading roles in most of the plays. My dad was captain of the football team, a baseball and track star, and senior class president. My dad went to the school guidance counselor for advice on selecting a college. He had pretty good grades and standardized test scores, and loads of extra curricular activities and leadership experience. The counselor suggested he apply to some Ivy League schools since they typically try to get students from every state, and the competition in Idaho was not that stiff. So he applied to two schools: Harvard and Yale. I'm not sure if he got into Yale, but Harvard offered him a full tuition scholarship. His family was so poor, in fact, that Harvard paid for his room and board, books, and even the airplane tickets to get to school and back.

He spent one year at Harvard, and then served a mission for the church in France for two years. He returned to Harvard, and over Christmas break that year, proposed to his high school sweetheart, my mom, who was in her senior year at BYU. That next summer, after my mom graduated, they got married in Utah and then made their way back to Cambridge for my dad's third year of school. They were Potato Newlyweds in Massachusetts!

After finishing his bachelor's degree, my father stayed on at Harvard for four more years of medical school. During this time my brother and I were born in Boston, and my mom completed a master's degree in Education, also at Harvard. After medical school, our family moved to Connecticut for my dad to complete his medical training, where two more brothers were born. His first job was in California (Bay Area), but he left a year later for a position in Idaho to be closer to his widowed mother. My sister, therefore, the baby of the family, was born in Idaho.

Shauri & James' wedding this past weekend gave our family an excuse to visit Boston & Cambridge together. I have only been back once since we moved, and the rest of my family hasn't been back ever. On Thursday the four oldest siblings got the family history tour of Cambridge, led by mom and dad. Our tour began in Harvard Yard, where we rendezvoused with one of first freshmen that my parents mentored as dorm parents. He is now a Pulitzer-prize winning writer and editor for the Boston Globe. He walked with us over to Greenough Hall, where he first met me, a terrifying baby, and my mom and dad. My parents had an apartment on the bottom floor of this building, and the freshmen lived on the three floors above them. I remember this apartment. We told some stories of when I saved my brother's life, more than once, while my father was supposedly watching us.

The rest of the morning consisted of walking from place to place, seeing where my parents lived and worked and listening to stories from this period of their lives. We saw my dad's freshman dorm, the church where I went to preschool, the building where my mom worked--which is now named after her old boss--the corner where she was mugged in broad daylight, the house they lived in as servants until my mother got knocked up and they were kindly dismissed (can't have a pregnant woman serving...). We saw the apartment building where my dad worked as a night watchman, and where they brought me home from the hospital after I was born. I didn't realize that I had come home from the hospital to this place...I had thought they were already in Greenough House when I was born. We saw the building where my dad lived his second year at Harvard, before he married my mom. We couldn't go into any of the buildings, but it was still really fun to see where they had lived and to hear their stories. It is amazing how magical a place can be when you know that your own family members lived and worked there.

Going to a Wedding

2011-05-01T23:09:00.000-04:00

I will be on a blogging break this week as our family makes its way to Boston, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island, to celebrate the marriage of my brother James to my friend Shauri.

Tomorrow we are driving to Rochester, New York, to see Dan's cousin Kevin and his family. Tuesday we will take the kids to see the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah (Mormon church history sites) and then press on to Andover, Massachusetts, where we will spend a few hours with my dear college friend Kirsti and her family. Late Tuesday night my parents arrive in Boston, and we will spend Wednesday doing things in the area with them. My siblings will be trickling in Wednesday and Thursday, and about half the family, including Dan and two of the tater tots, will go to a Red Sox game in Fenway Park on Thursday afternoon. Friday we sight see in Newport, ending the day with a dinner and screening of films made by the wedding guests and the bride and groom (mostly the bride, who is a film maker). Saturday is the wedding in the morning and the reception in the evening, with a photo shoot on trolleys in our 1920s-era outfits in the afternoon. Sunday we celebrate Mother's Day with a continental breakfast in the hotel and a long drive home to Michigan. No cooking or dishes for me, woo hoo!

I hope you have a good week, and I look forward to writing more when I return.

Goldilocks

2011-04-30T21:33:00.001-04:00

Am I the only person that is bothered EVERY SINGLE TIME they read Goldilocks and the Three Bears? First of all, why would anyone walk into another person's house? I'm afraid to knock on a stranger's door, much less try the knob and let myself in. Reflecting back on what I learned in abnormal psychology this semester, I'm concerned that Goldi could be on her way to a full-blown case of antisocial personality disorder. Rules? Societal conventions? These things mean nothing to her.

Next. If Papa Bear's bowl is the biggest, why is his porridge cold? That makes no sense. The porridge in the smallest bowl should cool off the fastest, then the medium bowl, and then the biggest bowl. Papa's porridge, which is always depicted in a giant bowl, should be the hot one, Mama's medium-sized bowl should be just right, and Baby Bear's tiny bowl should be the cold one.

And does Goldilocks weigh that much more than Baby Bear? I honestly can't imagine a human child being harder on a chair than a bear cub. I sit on the small chairs at my children's preschool all the time, and I am quite a bit heavier than Goldilocks, and they have never broken, especially not all to pieces.

What do you think of Papa and Mama having separate beds, hmm? I used to worry about that, but now that I'm not even sharing a room with my spouse, I guess I'd better accept the fact that if one spouse likes a rock hard mattress and the other prefers the sensation of being buried alive, having separate beds makes a lot of sense. What does not make sense is that, in so many versions of this story, Baby Bear's bed is right there by Papa's and Mama's. No wonder the little guy has no siblings.

So Happy!

2011-04-29T22:34:00.000-04:00

I would just like to announce to the entire world that I got an A in my statistics class. Yay!!!

We had our final exam yesterday, and I was late, and I took too much time and didn't finish the test. I was in a very sad and grumpy mood about it, because I had been getting an A in the class, and I was pretty sure I would end up with a B because of that test. But we got our final grade today, and mine was still an A, in spite of everything. Now I feel so happy!

Monday at nine I have my first psychology class at the university, and then at eleven I go back to the community college to take my Abnormal Psychology final. As soon as that is finished, we hit the road. We are driving to Dan's cousin's house in upstate New York to spend the night, and then on to Boston Tuesday for my brother's wedding. I am looking forward to spending a few days with my whole family touring the place of my birth, and then a few more days in Newport, Rhode Island, enjoying time with the wedding party. I am not looking forward to sharing a hotel room with the Tater Tots for five nights, but that is what you get for producing offspring.

Did I mention that I got an A in statistics?

PostSecrets

2011-04-29T00:24:00.000-04:00

Warning: Before you go clicking away on the links in this post, keep in mind that you may be offended or disturbed by the content of many of these postcards, especially if you are my mother.

Are any of you familiar with PostSecret? Frank Warren started this community art project in 2004, inviting every single human to make a 4 x 6 postcard, write a secret on it that they have never shared, and mail it to him in Germantown, Maryland. Warren selects different cards each week for the PostSecret website, and then every year or two, a new book of postcards is published. He also tours the country displaying and speaking about the cards he has received.

I had never heard of PostSecret until recently, when I stumbled upon one of the books at the library. My experience reading through the secrets in that book, and some more on the website, was distinctly uninspiring. It was a lot like being alone with a bag of potato chips or a box of See's chocolates. Just one more, just one more, just one more. In the end you feel sick. The secrets were not particularly nourishing (maybe the opposite, in fact), but it was hard to stop looking at them. So I was surprised to read that Frank Warren sees this public, anonymous secret-sharing as uplifting and helpful to both the sharer and the audience. Warren says that it is good for people to read others' darkest secrets, and to realize they are not alone.

So I'm trying to reconsider my initial reaction to the secrets. What secret would I write on such a postcard? Would this activity be helpful to me in some way? How is it helpful for other people to read these secrets? I wonder if sharing a secret in this way is a bit like offering a prayer, especially for someone who may not believe in or pray to a god. I keep a few secrets from people, but not from God. Maybe believing in someone who already knows everything about me diminishes my need to share these things with the world on a postcard. Or perhaps because I have such a great therapist, who I can share things with that I wouldn't tell normal people, I am already taking advantage of one of the main benefits of the postsecret project--getting the darn thing off your chest.

Now, if I think of these postsecrets from the perspective of a future psychologist, they become a bit more interesting. Many of these secrets are things so shameful to the person hiding them, she has never dared share them with anyone else. As a study in what humans are most ashamed of, what a rich resource. I wonder if any psychology students have asked to use Warren's collection for dissertation research? Hmm...

Read the comments for the Limitless post

2011-04-27T02:06:00.000-04:00

The comments for my most recent post on the movie Limitless are particularly fascinating, and expand the post into so much more than what I originally wrote. Even if you don't usually read comments, please do yourself a favor and read these. Thank you so much to Suzanne, LL, Aunt Elaine, and Jacqueline/ Lybi for writing.

Limitless

2011-04-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

Warning: This post is one big, gigantic spoiler.

Dan and I went to see Limitless Friday night. The premise of the movie (based on The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn, which I have not yet read) is that a pill has been developed which allows you to access the entirety of your brain (as opposed to the 20% that we currently use). Within 30 seconds of swallowing, you have a 4-digit IQ.

The main character is given one pill by a friend of his to help him overcome his writer's block. Prior to taking the pill, he is depressed. His hair is long and scraggly, his personal hygiene sketchy at best. He can't get himself to write even one sentence of the book his publisher has given him an advance for. He spends a great deal of time drinking. His girlfriend has just broken up with him, presumably because he is such a loser. Figuring he has nothing more to lose, our hero swallows the mysterious pill. Within moments his eyes light up. His countenance changes. He heads home to work on his manuscript. When he enters his apartment, he is able to see, for the first time, what a mess it is. The first thing he does with his increased brain power is wash the dishes. Once his entire apartment is clean and orderly, he sits down and writes. He is in the zone, writing all day, and finishing a large chunk of the book he has been unable to work on for months. He feels amazing.

The next morning, when he wakes up, he is back to his same old self--depressed and dull. He wants to feel alive, energized, and powerful again, so he gets himself a much bigger supply of the pills and starts taking them every day. On the pill, with his brain operating at full capacity, he bathes, gets a haircut, starts exercising. He finishes his book in four days. He impresses people with his fascinating insights into basically everything, and makes lots of new friends. Women can't resist him. He gets back together with his girlfriend, who is intimidated by him for the first time in her life. He finds no need to drink alcohol any more.

He is able to recall, in perfect detail, everything he has ever seen, such as television programs, covers of books, etc. For instance, he beats up a big group of thugs based on what his brain has learned watching random commercials and martial arts movies. He becomes fluent in new languages by casually listening to a few tapes. His senses are heightened. He sees connections between things and pathways open up that were not visible to him before.

I take a small handful of pills every night before bed that help with my depression. Dan and I like to joke that they are my happy pills, and I pretend to be overcome by happiness and joy right after taking them. They do not really function in this way of course, but I do think they help take the edge off of the worst of my symptoms. More than an antidepressant, however, the pills in this movie reminded me of the influence of God in our lives.

Here is a quote Dan found for me by Parley P. Pratt that I think is relevant to the discussion:

"The gift of the Holy Spirit...quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates and matures all the fine toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings and affections of our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness and charity. It develops beauty of person, form and features. It tends to health, vigor, animation and social feeling. It develops and invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens, invigorates and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being."

And another, this one by Ezra Taft Benson:

"Yes, men and women who turn their lives over to God will find out that he can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace."

I remember when I first heard that we are not using about 80% of our brain's capacity, I assumed that potential would be unlocked in the eternities. God, I imagine, is already operating at full capacity. Perhaps his spirit helps us access regions of our brain that we cannot yet access by ourselves.

How do you imagine that you would be different if you had access to your entire brain's capacity? Would your emotional state improve? Would you stop procrastinating? Would you wash the dishes and keep your house cleaner? I don't know if having 100% brain power would be enough to overcome certain negative habits that plague me. It seems like I already know many of the things I need to do, and what is missing is the part where I actually do those things. Does that part come from our brains? From our bodies? From our spirit?

Lots to think about, and I'd love to hear from you as well.

Group of Seven Fan Club

2011-04-23T17:02:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, I was searching art.com for beautiful artwork. I was looking specifically for trees, but the search turned up a lot of landscapes as well. In addition to some amazing things by Van Gogh, Klimt, and other famous artists (famous enough that I had heard of them), I found a number of paintings that I really liked by artists I'd never heard of. In particular, I found three different images of an evergreen that almost looked like they could be the same tree. In order to further my art education, I try to look up artists whose work I like and read more about them. When I did a search for the artists who painted the three similar trees, I read in a Wikipedia article that they worked together, and were part of a group of Canadian landscape painters active in the 1920s called the Group of Seven. I wrote down the names of all the artists in the group (there were actually 10 by the end) and went back to art.com to find paintings by each of them. Guess what? I liked everything I saw by them. Hey, my new favorite painters!

In a fit of admiration, I put a bunch of their stuff on my wall on Facebook, and I wrote about them in a gratitude email to my family. Not long after that, I received a book in the mail all about the Group of Seven, a special gift from my sister. As I was reading the book I thought, some day I want to take a road trip to northern Ontario (it borders Michigan, after all) and see the places these guys painted, and their original artwork in the various museums.

Fast forward to about a week ago, when I started searching for art on etsy.com. I found a landscape that looked very similar to some of the things I'd seen by the Group of Seven. When I looked at the information on the artist, I saw that he lives in northern Ontario. I ended up purchasing something from him, and he sent me an email. I responded with a question: Are you familiar with the work of the Group of Seven? Your things remind me of theirs.

The artist, Brian Holden, wrote me back this great message:

"In answer to your question about being familiar with the Group of Seven...indeed I am. It would be a disservice to both them and yourself to say I have not been influenced by their vision and ways of looking at landscape. I grew up as a child in the immediate area on Lake Superior made famous by Lawren Harris (Pic Island) and also depicted to a lesser degree by Franklin Carmichael and A.Y. Jackson.

"I would have to say my first visit to the McMichael Gallery in Toronto was where I really developed a sense of connection to their landscapes and perhaps subconsciously now these influences and color palettes emerge to some greater or lesser degree in my own work.

"The group visited Algoma region around Sault Ste. Marie more so as a collective, but as individuals several ventured a little more west along Superior towards Thunder Bay, Lawren Harris in particular to the area I grew up and know so well in my life.

"I have a bit of knowledge on the group and can also recommend places to view works and also spots where they actually painted if you are interested."

This email made my day! We exchanged a few more messages, and in the end he gave me a great list of places to visit. One of these days (hopefully this fall), I'm going to hit the road, a bona fide member of the Group of Seven fan club.

Maybe I Can

2011-04-21T00:42:00.000-04:00

I have some "allowance" ($20 a month, baby) and birthday money saved up, and I've been spending an undisclosable amount of time (too much) browsing etsy.com for things I want to buy for my room. It has come down to a search for my favorite wood and linoleum block prints. I was talking to an artist friend about my search yesterday, and I showed her a few of my favorites. She said, "oh, you could easily make these yourself." No, I couldn't. "Yes, it would not be hard," she assured me. Later in the day, I continued thinking about this. She may not realize that I can't draw--that I'm not good with detail work, or with my hands. It never in a million years would have occurred to me that I could actually make these things which I admire so much. I have wished I could make such things, but not with any hope of actually being able to do it.

This morning my thoughts had taken a new direction. As I drove to school I saw things everywhere I looked that I would like to make prints of. I was thinking about the print I ordered last night, and how much I love it, and how it is just a simple symbolic, not literal, representation of a beautiful landscape. I might be able to do symbolic. The prints that I am most drawn to, besides landscapes, are trees, some flowers, and lots of abstract geometrical designs. Tonight as I continue my search through the print makers selling on etsy, I can see how willing I am to pay for circles and squares, if they are carved into a block and printed on good paper with vibrant ink. I am thinking, I can draw circles and squares. Heck, I doodle designs all the time on my papers. What I cannot draw is a cat that looks like a cat. The cats I draw today look exactly like the cats I drew when I was four years old. Exactly. Dan sits in church and draw things for the girls that look just like those things. Not me. I guess I have been thinking I could only create visual art through photography, since I can't draw. But I have very little interest in technology and gadgets and figuring out how to use the intricate machine which is a camera. What I want to be able to do is somehow capture and record the beautiful things I see around me: the forests and beaches in Oregon; all of my favorite trees in Ann Arbor; the high deserts of sagebrush and lava rock in Idaho; glorious sunsets.

Maybe I can.

Musical Prayers

2011-04-20T00:50:00.000-04:00

My dear friend gave a talk in church on Sunday about prayer. After sharing some of the struggles she has had with prayer, she told us that there is one form of prayer that she has always excelled in, and turned to Doctrine & Covenants 25:12. "For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads." Music has been her purest form of communication with God. She has often gone to the piano in times of sorrow and joy to play hymns and sing. She then shared some of the lyrics from favorite hymns that mean the most to her. It was such a beautiful expression of her love for God and her faith in him.

Later in the evening, she and I returned to the church to sing in an Easter concert for the community. I thought more about what she had said as we performed a beautiful series of pieces about Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. I, too, have difficulties with prayer. However, when I'm singing sacred music, which I love to do, I find myself focusing the words toward God, telling him that I agree with the lyrics whole-heartedly. I love the hymns of enthusiastic praise. I love many of the somber hymns about Christ's sacrifice for us. I love the hymns about struggling through hard times and finding strength and comfort in God. As a child (and still) I loved the primary songs. I used them to help myself overcome bad feelings. I remember singing them to my siblings at night to help them sleep. Perhaps the earliest spiritual feelings I had, my first feelings of connection to a living god, came from singing.

One of my gifts that brings me the greatest happiness is my ability to sing. I am not a soloist, by any means--and definitely not a soprano--but I have a clear, sweet, true voice, and I can thank God for that. I also thank my parents for singing the hymns so enthusiastically at home and at church, and my wonderful junior high choir director, Connie Branton, for giving me a lifetime's worth of vocal training in the three years I sang for her.

It could not be a coincidence that sacred music brought me and Dan together for the first time. We first met in a History of Civilization class at BYU. He was a student, and I was one of the three teaching assistants. After the first class, Dan came up and introduced himself and we chatted a bit about the hymn that we had listened to that morning, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." He wanted to know if I was aware that it had a third verse that was not in our hymnbook? No, I was not. He shared the words of the unfamiliar verse with me. This made quite an impression, because I had never met anyone my age who even knew that hymn, since it was in an older edition of the hymn book which was no longer in active use. I only knew it because it was one of my dad's favorites, and he had taught it to us.

I remember a time when we were sitting in his truck talking, and he was upset about something. I started to sing "Beautiful Savior", another of my favorite hymns, and it was very moving for him to hear it at that moment, as it was a special favorite of his, as well. People were usually impressed with how many hymns I knew by heart, but it was nothing compared to the hymns Dan knew. He introduced me to all kinds of great ones that I had never sung before (like, "O Say What is Truth"), for which he knew not only all the verses, but the hymn numbers as well (oh, that math brain of his!). We have spent many happy hours on road trips singing together, and it is a sweet experience to now see our children learning to love these same songs.

The benefits are endless!

2011-04-18T08:48:00.000-04:00

Here are some of the changes I've noticed since moving into my own room:

1) Nascent ability to decorate
One of the first things I did in my new room was take some of my favorite beautiful things out of storage and put them on top of my dresser. This includes a Motawi tile by one of my favorite artists, the Japanese kokeshi doll I received as an exchange student, a little blue and white porcelain dish filled with shells I collected in North Carolina and Florida, and the ceramic bowl my sister made for me in high school. I found my favorite quilt (patchwork flannel in earth tones, made by my mother) in the linen closet and put it on my bed. I brought my two favorite Persian rugs into my room.

I have never really decorated my home. I want it to be beautiful, but I have this big mental block about it. I don't know where to start, I don't feel capable of making decisions in this area, fearing that whatever I decide to do I will get tired of or regret. But in my room, it feels much easier. Maybe because it is a smaller space, or because it is just for me, I'm warming up to the idea of putting things up on the walls that I love. I'm wondering if it will be easier for me to do pretty things in the rest of the house after I've had the chance to work on my own little room.

2) A home for my things
Another thing I've noticed is that when I'm trying to clean up the house, I now take anything that belongs to me and put it in my room. I don't know why I now feel like gathering all of my possessions to that room, but did not feel that way when I shared a room. This includes mail. I have never gotten a system down for dealing with papers, and we have a big paper clutter problem. Since getting my own room, I take every piece of paper I find that belongs to me and put it in a box in my room. It is already much easier for me to find things. I don't know that I ever before thought of papers as being either mine or Dan's, but the distinction is easy to make now that we have separate rooms, and I'm taking responsibility for mine in a way I did not do in the past.

3) More reading and writing
I have longed to have my own desk, but there was not room for one in our other bedroom. In my new bedroom, with my smaller bed, I can fit a desk, and I found one that I loved at the local consignment shop, Treasure Mart. I have been reading and writing more. Dan and I have never done a very good job at going to bed or getting up together. I usually go to bed a lot later than Dan since I get to take a nap every afternoon. I really like reading in bed at night, but when Dan was ready to sleep I felt guilty keeping my lamp on because I knew it bothered him. But I also didn't want to read in the living room because it felt cold and exposed compared to my bed. Now I can read and write to my heart's content at night without bothering anyone. I think this new situation has a lot to do with the fact that I have recently started blogging again.

4) More romance
It is more romantic in a lot of ways to have separate rooms. We are more likely to say good night to each other now, since we know we will not end up in the same bed later. Dan makes more of an effort to come and find me in my room before he turns in for the night. We often invite the other to come snuggle and talk with us in our bed. It makes me feel like I'm in college at BYU again, when boys could only come into the girls' dorm rooms on Sundays for two hours during visiting time. That was so exciting! When Dan comes into my room now, I know he wants to be with me. This is quite different from sharing a room and knowing your spouse may not want to be with you, but just to be in his bedroom, which you happen to share with him. It is so flattering.

I also feel better when I'm sleeping knowing that Dan can't hear me snore. It is very hard on one's ego and feeling of cuteness to be a snorer, especially if your true love is bothered by it every night. Now I can snore in privacy. I also like having my own room to change in, especially when we're getting ready for a date, because it is fun to come out all beautified and say, "ta-da"!

5) Private mountain top

For months before getting my own room, I had been thinking about having a mountain top or a wilderness or a closet where I could pray. I did not feel that there was any private space for me anywhere in the house. Even when I am in the bathroom, the little girls are either with me, or banging on the door telling me to open it for them. I now find myself retreating to my room during the day when I need to time to collect myself.

I have never considered myself a loner, but since this change I have discovered that I really crave some privacy and separateness, perhaps because I am at a stage in life with very little of that. Dan has a private space in his office at work, which he has decorated, and where he keeps his paperwork. He spends a large chunk of each day alone. Just knowing I have my own space in the house makes me feel stronger and my head clearer.

Parting the Waters

2011-04-16T01:50:00.001-04:00

This week I got an email from Chris, the graduate student I've been helping with the narcissism study. He said that Dr. H, the head of the personality disorders lab, wanted to meet me and possibly use me as a research assistant. Today I met the good doctor for the first time. His photograph looks rather stern and stuffy, so I was pleasantly surprised to see his office filled with photographs of his wife and children, and pictures that his little girls have drawn for him. We talked for over an hour, mostly about personality disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dr. L, the PTSD researcher in the department, walked by just as we were discussing my dad's book about combat vets, and Dr. H invited him in to meet me. He told us about two papers he read recently about trauma and PTSD suffered by exchange students while living abroad. This of course lead into a discussion of my experience as an exchange student in Japan. Both professors were enthusiastic about my background in literature and history, and Dr. H said that this was why he thought I'd be so good for this project.

Would you like to hear about the new research project I get to work on? This project has to do with predictors for borderline personality disorder. Dr. H's graduate students (including Chris), have collected four Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stories from each of 400 participants. What is a TAT story? you may be asking yourself. The Thematic Apperception Test is a series of up to 31 simple drawings which are shown one at a time to the person being assessed. For each picture, the test-taker is asked to tell a story about what is going on in the picture. For instance, one of the pictures is of a person looking down at a violin lying on a table. The researcher prompts the participant to include in her story what has led up to the event in the picture, what is happening at the moment, what the characters in the picture are thinking and feeling, and what the outcome of the story is. Everything the test-taker says is recorded and then transcribed.

Before the stories can be used for research, they must be scored. There are many different standardized ways of scoring this test. The method we will be using is the Social Cognition and Object Relations scale (SCOR). This scale attempts to uncover how the participant thinks of and relates to other people. I will be in training until I can show, but the way I score a story, that I am "reliable" , i.e. that my scoring is similar enough to everyone elses' that it can be trusted and used for analysis. Even after I have been deemed reliable, I will check in with my team and Dr. H every 20 stories or so to make sure that we are still scoring in a uniform way. I am really looking forward to the training, and, most of all, the story reading.

Just a few posts ago I was lamenting the fact that none of the professors had any interest in using me as a research assistant, and now I'm best buddies with two different professors, all thanks to Chris. Many of the hours we spent in his office were just waiting as one after another participant never showed up. We have talked and talked about his research interests and my background and dreams. I am full of questions and he has happily answered them all. Sometimes I have wondered whether helping in this study has been a good use of my time, especially since I have to leave the girls with a friend during nap time. Now I can see that it was not the role I played in the study (basically sitting in a room pretending to be a participant), but the relationship I developed with Chris (and his fiancee Danielle), that is valuable. I probably learned more about psychology and research from picking his brain than I've learned in my class at the community college this semester. Because of this relationship, when Dr. H said he needed more research assistants to score the TAT stories, Chris recommend me.

Today was the last day of Chris's narcissism study. I was the confederate for the 50th and final participant. I am struck by the fact that today, just as one study ended, I was invited to help with another. I have felt repeatedly that God is parting the waters for me so that I can follow this path toward becoming a therapist. This feeling of working toward something uniquely suited to my strengths and experiences, with God's blessing, has brought me a lot of peace and happiness in recent months, and for that I am grateful. Until we meet again, gentle reader, adieu.

Dream Themes

2011-04-15T00:54:00.001-04:00

I have very vivid dreams and usually remember a great deal from them. Until yesterday, however, I don't think I'd ever really read much about dreaming. The book I picked up at the library and couldn't put down is The Universal Dream Key: The 12 Most Common Dream Themes Around the World, by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who has kept her own personal dream journal since she was 14 years old (over 50 years now). Her first book, Creative Dreaming (1974) was a best seller when it came out, has been translated into 13 different languages, is still in print, and is now considered a classic. She and five colleagues founded the Association for the Study of Dreams. She is a dream collector. She is working toward creating a complete classification of dreams, but acknowledges that this may be several lifetimes away. She compares this effort, both in scope and importance, to mapping the stars, or the human genome, and sees it as a key to understanding the operation of the human mind.

Garfield used four main sources to come up with what she believes are the 12 most common universal dream themes: her own 50+ years' worth of dream journals; the literature on dreaming; the dreams of people which she has been collecting for more than 35 years; and the 500+ dreams that people around the world have submitted to her website. The twelve themes are all negative/ nightmarish--she says these are more common than positive dreams because they are more useful in helping us identify and solve problems--but she gives the positive version of each theme as well. So, are you ready to hear what the 12 themes are? These are listed in order from most to least common, with the positive version of the theme in parenthesis:

1. Being chased or attacked (being embraced or loved)
2. Falling or drowning (flying, swimming, or dancing joyfully)
3. Being lost or trapped (discovering new spaces)
4. Being naked or inappropriately dressed in public (being well dressed)
5. Being accidentally injured, ill, or dying (being healed, born, or reborn)
6. Being in a natural or man-made disaster (natural beauty, miracles, or rituals)
7. Having trouble taking a test or other poor performance (fine performance)
8. Having trouble with a car or other transport (vehicular pleasure)
9. Missing a boat or some other transportation (pleasant travel)
10. Having a house or property lost or damaged (house or property improvement)
11. Having trouble operating a telephone or machine (smooth operation)
12. Being menaced by a spirit (being guided by a spirit)

She addresses each of these themes in its own chapter, going into great detail about the specific motifs you might see. For instance, within the theme of natural or man-made disaster, the most common motifs are earthquakes, tidal waves or floods, fires, hurricanes, blizzards or cold, et cetera. If this is at all interesting to you, I recommend you check this book out and do some more in-depth reading on the themes that you recognize. She explains techniques to help you move from the negative to the positive versions of your dream themes.

I feel inspired by her plea that we all make a personal dream journal and start recording our dreams each morning. I actually have a dream journal that I began keeping in high school or college, but it does not have very many entries and I haven't written in it for a long time. She gives directions for keeping your journal, including the interesting observation that you will be more able to remember your dreams upon waking if you keep your eyes closed and try to stay in the same position you were in when you awoke. With your eyes still closed, after you have recorded what you can (writing with your eyes closed, or using a voice recorder), she recommends that you gently roll your body into another of your favorite sleeping positions, at which point you may recall even more dreams. She says that our sleeping position appears to have an impact on the kinds of dreams we have (!)

If you are wondering, why bother recording my dreams? I'll tell you. You can learn a lot of cool stuff about yourself from your dreams. If that isn't a good enough reason, try this: reading your old dreams is extremely entertaining. And if neither of these is compelling, I will simply remind you that Stephanie Meyer's inspiration for Bella and Edward came from a vivid dream that she recorded and then started writing from. You, too, could make millions and become famous, just by keeping a record of your sleeping stories. And with that, I bid you not sweet, but lucrative dreams.

Book Junkie

2011-04-13T23:38:00.001-04:00

Tonight I had an hour of free time while Dan was with the children at the church for Scouts. I was already out in the car, and I was trying to decide what to do with my freedom. The mall? Target? Salvation Army? DSW? The idea of shopping was not particularly appealing, so I stopped in at the library on my way home. I thought, I'll just return these two books, pick up the stuff waiting for me on the hold shelf, and be off. I have so many books already, the last thing I need is to look for more books. But I meandered over to the stacks anyway, and ended up spending one blissful hour in a single row, leaving with a tower of new books too tall to carry comfortably.

Which row was it? you may be asking yourself (just pretend). Our library system uses Dewey decimal call numbers and I was in the first row of nonfiction, so the 000-200 range. The Dewey system uses numbers, and is divided into ten big categories (as opposed to the Library of Congress system which uses letters followed by numbers and is divided into 21 main categories). Here are the Dewey categories:

000 Generalities
100 Philosophy & Psychology
200 Religion
300 Social Sciences
400 Language
500 Natural Science & Mathematics
600 Technology (Applies Sciences)
700 The Arts
800 Literature & Rhetoric
900 Geography & History

Within each broad Dewey category, there are 100 sub-categories. In the 000s, for instance, there is a subcategory for 000, 001, 002 and so on to 099. Some of the subcategory titles are quite interesting. 007-009 are "not assigned or no longer used," as are 024, 029, and 040-049. I can't help but wonder, if they are no longer in use, what were they used for originally, and why are they not being used any more? 093 is "Incunabula." What is that? (Now that I've asked, I must Google the word to answer my own question)

According to Phil Barber, incunabula refers to all of the printed books of the 15th century, starting with the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 and ending with books made in the year 1500. This word was created by 17th- century book collectors to replace the synonymous term "fifteeners". Hmmm. How many of you already knew that?

For your entertainment (so entertaining!), here is a breakdown of the numbers and the books I brought home today:

011 Bibliographies: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (Peter Boxall, editor)
028 Reading: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (Anne Fadiman)
154 Subconscious & Altered States: The Universal Dream Key: The 12 Most Common Dream Themes Around the World (Patricia Garfield)
158 Applied Psychology: Dream Big: O's Guide to Discovering Your Best Life (the editors of O, The Oprah Magazine) and Romancing the Ordinary: A Year of Simple Splendor (Sarah Ban Breathnach)

As I sat in the middle of the 100s tonight, Philosophy & Psychology, I just kept reading title after title to myself and thinking, I could not be going into a more perfect field of study. I just can't get enough of books like this. I cannot say the same for history, which was the subject of my first (aborted) Ph.D. attempt. I've honestly never had that much interest in history. That should have been my first clue...

Each time I browse the shelves and bring home a stack of books, I am filled with excitement. I wish I could devour the whole stack in one night. Even getting through one book a night would be lovely. But, sadly, many of the books end up returned without ever being opened. This has to do with a common (problematic) theme in my life: all or nothing. I either read every word and take copious notes, or I don't open the book at all. I am going to try to skim my books this time, just for practice. There are so many books, and so little time.

An Experiment

2011-04-13T00:39:00.000-04:00

Warning: Please do not judge my marriage by what you are about to read.

If you, like me, enjoy watching BBC adaptations of great British literature, you may have noticed that back in the olden days, if you lived in a nice big house with a servant or two, you and your spouse might have had separate bedrooms. I remember (before I got married) thinking this was absolutely bizarre; I could not wrap my mind around it. Why?

Fast forward. I was visiting some friends a few years ago, and during a quick tour of the house, there was a casual mention of the fact that one bedroom was the wife's and a different bedroom was the husband's. I remember thinking, "I had no idea their marriage was in such bad shape! They seem so happy..."

It is now December 2010. We have moved every stick of furniture down to the basement in order to get our hardwood floors refinished. Our king-sized bed won't fit in our cramped quarters unless it is on its side, so Dan and I, who do not love sharing anything smaller than a king, end up sleeping in separate beds (and rooms) for about a month, until we get the house put back together. As we prepare to move back upstairs, one of us mentions, so tentatively, that he has gotten significantly better rest since we moved to the basement, and wonders if it is because we've been in different rooms. That person adds, in a very gentle and kind way, that his spouse may be a bit of a snorer, and this snoring may wake him up throughout the night, and this past month may have been the first time in many moons that he has been able to get a solid night's sleep. (The snoring person would like to state for the record that, although she knew about the snoring, she did not realize it was actually awakening her spouse). I would like to add, as a side note, that we are not a couple that likes to snuggle while we are sleeping. We, in fact, like to have a nice piece of free space between us in order to fall asleep, hence, the king-sized bed.

I have been thinking for some time about having a space of my own--an office, perhaps, where I can study now that I am back in school. We have also both just read a great book called Mating In Captivity (Esther Perel) which recommends, among other things, that a certain amount of separateness between spouses can have a positive affect on their love life, making "things" more exciting and more like the days before marriage changed everything. And I do mean everything.

I then remember the friends with separate bedrooms, and the 19th century rich married couples as portrayed by the BBC, and I think to myself, having separate bedrooms might not be such a crazy idea after all.

Since it is mutually appealing (and I would not recommend trying this if it was not), when we move upstairs, I move into the former office and Dan keeps the former master bedroom. My first clue that this might be a good idea are the feelings I have as my new room comes into being. I feel giddy. I feel like it is Christmas. I feel an inordinate amount of happiness and goodwill toward all. Dan is feeling the same way. I do some calculations and realize that, after having my own room for the first 18 years of my life, I have now been sharing a room for about 17 years, first as an undergrad at BYU, then as a missionary in the Philippines, and finally as a married person. It never occurred to me in all this time what a difference having a private space of one's own could make.

It has been about three months since this experiment began. I find it heavenly, and I think Dan does, too.

Stay tuned for my analysis of why this new arrangement is working so well for us, and how these principles could apply to you.

I Heart School

2011-04-07T23:25:00.000-04:00

I'm back in school, and loving it. Last semester I took a night class at the community college--a psychology class on human development over the life span. This semester I'm taking two morning classes: abnormal psychology and basic statistics. Five days a week, my little girls and I make the journey down to the college. I drop them off in their classrooms and then head to my class. MW is psychology, TTh is statistics, and on Fridays I get three hours of study time in the library. How I love to be in school again! This coming spring term I'm registered for a psychology research methods class at the university. Fall semester I will take experimental psychology. I am working towards applying to a Ph.D. program in Psychology. Besides course work, I need to retake the GRE, take the psychology subject test, and keep trying to get research experience.

In order to get the research experience I need, I sent an email to several professors at the university asking if they could use any unpaid student labor. Apparently they all have too much of that already. But luckily for me, one professor passed my request on to the graduate students in his lab, one of whom contacted me. So on Fridays I am helping out with a study about narcissistic personality disorder by being the confederate. What is the confederate? you may ask. The confederate works in cahoots with the person running the study, but pretends to be just a regular research participant.

Here is what I do. I wait in the hall for the research participant to arrive, and try to act like I have also just arrived. The graduate student running the study gives us some instructions, a form to fill out, and sticks us in separate rooms. We are both supposed to write a personal experience which shows us at our best--something we've done that we're really proud of. After 10-15 minutes, the researcher collects what we've written and swaps them. We are supposed to read what the other person has written and then answer five questions about it. The questions says things like, "Based on what you have just read, do you think this is a person you would like to get to know?" "Do you think that what this person did is admirable?" Et cetera. The researcher tells me how to answer the questions. Some participants receive high praise from me, and others receive the opposite (low praise? no praise? anti-praise?). The papers and feedback are given back to the original owners, and then the participants fills out 5 questionnaires regarding current feelings of anxiety and anger based on the feedback they have just received. When they are done, the researcher tells the participant that my feedback was bogus and asks if they suspected. Then they are free to go and we wait for the next participant.

According to the graduate student I am working with, professors aren't too eager to take on a research assistant with no prior experience, so I am grateful he has thrown me a bone, as small as it may be. This study is almost over, but hopefully I will get some more chances to help with research, and eventually do some of my own, as this seems to be a key component in getting into doctoral programs.

I sometimes worry about going back to graduate school. My first experience was not particularly pleasant, and I only had two children at the time. But many things reassure me that I am on the right path. One of those things is my abnormal psychology textbook. I just can't put it down. When I run out of children's literature to analyze, you may get to hear some fascinating tidbits about mental disorders. Stay tuned!

I was in the car right after class today, talking to my neighbor in her driveway. After a few minutes she said, "you look so happy!" The tone of her voice told me that this is unusual. What can I say? School makes me happy.

A Troubled Marriage

2011-04-07T00:02:00.002-04:00

Although I do quite of bit of my own reading, I never read my own books 40-50 times in a row the way I do the children's. Tonight's post may be a testament to the fact that I have spent a bit too much time with the Berenstain Bears. I am troubled by what is happening in Mama and Papa Bear's marriage.

In the early days, they were both competent and hard-working. Take The Berenstain Bears' New Baby, first published in 1974. Papa Bear and Mama Bear seem well-matched in this book. Papa has made a home for them from a large tree, and furnished it with his own handiwork. He takes Small Bear out into the woods one morning to make him a bigger bed. He sharpens his axe on the grinding stone, he tests it to see if it is sharp, he chops down a tree and splits it into boards, he makes a new bed for Small Bear, chipping and shaving it smooth and neat, and finally carrying it back to the house and up to Small Bear's room. While in the woods, Papa Bear has a man-to-man discussion with his son about the upcoming arrival of a new baby.

Mama, meanwhile, brings the vegetables in from the garden, has breakfast on the table when the men come down the stairs in the morning, and while they are gone for the day, manages to move the small bed to a new room, give birth, and get the baby all dressed, complete with a pink bow, in time for the men's arrival. There is a comforting image of Papa Bear with his arm wrapped around Mama Bear as they watch Small Bear meeting his new sister for the first time. Another tender scene is depicted of them saying good night to Small Bear, Mama Bear holding the sleeping baby, Papa Bear still with his arm wrapped lovingly around Mama. They are a unit. They are two adults who love each other and work together for the good of the family.

Now it is 1981 and the story is The Berenstain Bears and the Sitter. They are older now, but Mama and Papa are still working as a team. While Mama is on the phone trying to find a sitter, Papa is explaining to the cubs why they can't go with them to the town hall meeting. Now Papa and Mama are walking off together to attend their meeting. At the town hall, they are on the same page, both worrying about how the cubs are doing back home. They go together to call home, Papa dialing, ear to the receiver, Mama behind him with her hand resting on his shoulder. At the end of the book, we see Mama and Papa walking back home from the meeting, arm in arm.

It is still 1981, and now The Berenstain Bears Go To The Doctor. Mama and Papa Bear are still working together, tucking the cubs into bed, driving them to the doctor's office the next morning, sitting next to each other in the waiting room. But Mama is a bit more of the heavy than Papa now, a tad more mature and competent. She announces tomorrow's visit to the doctor, while Papa assures the cubs that there is nothing to worry about. Sister asks Mama if she ever gets checkups. "Yes, I do," Mama answers. Papa, on the other hand, brags that he doesn't need checkups anymore because he never gets sick. In the middle of this statement, he sneezes, and Mama comments on what a sneeze it is. Papa assures the family it is just the dusty road. The next time he sneezes, Mama says "Bless you!" and Papa blames the bright sunlight. In the illustration, his eyes are wide and sincere, while Mama looks back at him over her shoulder with a frown on her face and a look of mild disgust. Papa keeps sneezing and claiming that he never gets sick, but eventually the doctor insists on examining him. He has a fever, a red throat, and a stuffy nose. On the final page, Papa is home in bed, the cubs are feeding him some gooey pink medicine, and Mama is standing behind them looking rather satisfied with herself, holding a thermometer. Papa, smiling weakly, says "Well, I hardly ever get sick."

Here we are just starting to see a subtle shift to what becomes a pervasive pattern in future books. Over time, Mama becomes the lone parent, while Papa devolves into the incompetent third (or fourth, after Baby Honey is born) child. Papa gets more and more buffoon-ish, while Mama grows increasingly aloof. You don't see them touching each other like they used to. They seem less and less well-matched. What is the cause of this? Has Mama never gotten over giving birth to Sister Bear alone while Papa was out in the woods for the day? Has Papa had an accident we are not aware of, resulting in a closed-head injury that has fundamentally altered his personality? Is the marriage of Mama & Papa Bear's creators, Stan & Jan, on the rocks?

Mama may have looked cute in her blue and white polka-dotted mumu as a younger bear, but after all these years of marriage and family life, has she completely given up on herself? Why can't she ever wear anything attractive, sexy even? It is like she is not a woman anymore. She is Mama, and that is all. She doesn't even remember her first name, and neither does Papa.

Papa, on the other hand, has been emasculated. Mama's low expectations of him over the years have rendered him as incompetent as the cubs, if not more. She is the voice of authority and reason now, and he is nothing but the comic relief. I ask you, dear readers: How much longer can a marriage like this survive?

I don't think that will happen for quite a while

2011-04-06T14:27:00.003-04:00

I do not love to play with my kids, but I do love to read to them.

For some time now, I have been wanting to write about one of my favorite mothers in all of children's literature. I don't know her name, but she was created by Russell Hoban in the 1960s and is the mother of Frances the Badger. She is also, incidentally, the mother of Gloria, but I don't get the sense that Gloria gives her quite the run for her money that Frances does.

My favorite moment in all of her excellent mothering occurs in the story Bread and Jam for Frances. Frances is singing annoying little songs about and refusing to eat all of the delicious food her mother prepares for her, opting instead for bread and jam at every meal. After Frances rejects first a soft-boiled egg for breakfast, a chicken-salad sandwich for lunch, and finally breaded veal cutlets with string beans and a baked potato at dinner, her mother tries a new strategy. The next day, Frances gets bread and jam instead of a poached egg for breakfast, she gets bread and jam (and milk) in her lunchbox at school, and she gets a nice snack of bread and jam after school. At this point she asks her mother, "Aren't you worried that maybe I will get sick and all my teeth will fall out from eating so much bread and jam?" To this her mother sweetly replies, "I don't think that will happen for quite a while, so eat it all up and enjoy it."

This is the part of the book where I start laughing and can't stop. I say this little line to myself throughout the day after reading this book, and it always brings a smile: "I don't think that will happen for quite a while."

That night at dinner, instead of the spaghetti and meatballs the rest of the family is having, Frances gets bread and jam. When she begins to cry, her mother says, "My goodness! Frances is crying!" When Frances asks for spaghetti and meatballs like everyone else, her mother responds, so innocently, "I had no idea you liked spaghetti and meatballs!" This time when she serves Frances her dinner, Frances eats it all up with no complaints, and, more importantly, no annoying little songs.

This badger mother is a genius: she is devious, she is innocent, she is sincere, she is ruthless. She is a psychologist and an actress to boot. Characters like her make reading a pleasure.

More on Intuitive Eating: Getting Rid of Your Scale

2010-06-13T13:48:00.003-04:00

If you are interested in learning more about intuitive eating, Wikipedia has a short article that you may want to look at here. The article mentions a number of different authors and titles, many of which I have checked out from the library and am starting to work my way through.

I finished reading Geneen Roth's book (Women Food and God) on the plan ride home from Tampa. During the next week I worked to apply the concepts I had learned from her:

Geneen Roth's Seven Guidelines to Natural Eating

1. Eat when you are hungry. (Truly hungry, body hungry not mind hungry)

2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.

3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspaper, books, intense or anxiety producing conversation and music.

4. Eat only what your body wants. (Big difference from what your MIND wants!)

5. Eat until you are satisfied. (This is different than full).

6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.

7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto and pleasure.

I lost about six pounds without ever feeling hungry or deprived (or sick or depressed from overeating). The next week, Eli & Dan had their back-to-back birthdays and I made a bunch of chocolate cupcakes and brownies. I pretty much ate those things all day for two days and gained some weight back and felt sick and unhappy. Each time I weighed myself and saw that I was not continuing to lose weight, I felt like my new eating goals were not working. At about the same time, I started a 14-week Biggest Loser Competition with some friends. The starting weight I entered was my new low weight, pre-birthday-chocolate-binge. After a week, I weighed in at +0.5 pounds. I tried to feel happy about the fact that the six pounds I had initially lost were still gone, but I was sad that I hadn't lost another six pounds the second week, and I started thinking that this new system was failing me (or rather I was failing the new system).

The third week I pretty much gave up and weighed in at +3.5 pounds, still down from when I first returned from Florida, but sad nontheless. I started reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Where Roth speaks from personal experience as one who has struggled with compulsive binging and dieting throughout her life, Tribole and Resch are registered dietitians who discovered many of the same eating principles by working with clients in private practice.

There is a section in Tribole and Resch's book called "The Scale as False Idol":

"'Please, please, let the number be...' This wishful prayer is not occurring in the casinos of Las Vegas, but in private homes throughout the country. But just like the desperate gambler waiting for his lucky number to come in, so is it futile for the dieter to pay homage to the 'scale god.' In one sweep of the scale roulette, hopes and desperation create a daily drama that will ultimately shape what mood you'll be in for the day. Ironically, 'good' and 'bad' scale numbers can both trigger overeating--whether it's a congratulatory eating celebration or a consolation party. The scale ritual sabotages body and mind efforts; it can in one moment devalue days, weeks, and even months of progress...Weighing in on the scale only serves to keep you focused on your weight; it doesn't help with the process of getting back in touch with Intuitive Eating. Constant weigh-ins can leave you frustrated and impede your progress. Best bet--stop weighing yourself" (pages 66-70).

This description of what the numbers on the scale do to me is right on. Regardless of how good I feel about my efforts to relate to food in a new way, regardless of the progress I might be making, I get on the scale several times a day and feel like a failure. After reading this, I took my scale down to the basement and have not gotten on it for nearly a week. I have noticed this week that without the scale, I am more able to turn my focus inward on how I am doing with my new eating goals. When I eat too much of something that makes me feel sick (usually sweets), instead of rushing to the scale to confirm my worst fears, I can be more philosophical about how, in spite of telling myself that the sweets will comfort me in some way, they really just make my stomach (and my heart) hurt.

Tomorrow morning I am supposed to weigh in again for my Biggest Loser competition. I don't think this competition is exactly in harmony with the things I am trying to learn and change in my life, but I don't want to bail out on my friends. I feel anxious for tomorrow, knowing that if the scale is up from last week I will feel like a failure. I know that feeling like that is not helping me--is harming me, actually. I am not motivated to "eat better" by a high number on the scale. I feel like the number on the scale tells me whether or not this new philosophy is "working" (i.e. making me lose weight), that this (what I see as) enlightened way of thinking about food is true if I lose weight, and not if I don't. But in my heart I feel that it is true and good for me to learn to live and eat this way, regardless of what the scale says, and according to the adherents of this philosophy, over time I will lose weight. But it is a process. Each "failure" is a learning opportunity, a step in the right direction. As I write this, my stomach is upset because I ate one too many Lindt truffle balls an hour ago. I am thinking about my weigh-in tomorrow and how that truffle ball is going to tip the scale in the wrong direction. Without the scale, I think it might be easier to learn a lesson from the extra truffle ball and keep moving in the right direction, toward wholeness, toward wellness, toward freedom from some of the demons that plague me.

I am not an artist, but in my mind's eye I can see a reptilian monster with open mouth and sharp fangs. He is trying to put me in his mouth. The scales that cover his body look like the one on the floor of my bathroom, the same unacceptable number in each little window on each little scale. I think this guy does belong in the basement, or maybe even at Salvation Army or a land fill somewhere.

Intuitive Eating

2010-06-13T11:40:00.002-04:00

Written May 30, 2010:

Dan and I recently took a trip to Tampa for a conference of his on Clearwater Beach. We enjoyed our time together, but realized we probably don't need more than 24-48 hours of alone time before we're ready to be reunited with the little ones. By the end of our five days we couldn't wait to see them.

I read a new book on our trip that was recommended by a friend called Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. Roth is a leading voice in the anti-diet/ normal eating/ intuitive eating movement. Adherents of this way of thinking claim that dieting (and the binging it inspires when the diet fails) leads to obesity and negative self-image. She encourages people to stop dieting, to stop thinking of foods as "bad" or "good" and instead to learn to really listen to their body. Feed your body when you are hungry, and stop eating when you are satisfied. Eat what your body is craving. Eat sitting down, pay attention to what you are eating, focus on the experience.

Roth's book deals a lot with emotional eating, eating that has nothing to do with the body's need for food. I really recognized a lot of what she was talking about.

Manicures

2010-05-30T21:25:00.000-04:00

The boys' fingernails had become a source of shame and embarrassment for me and Dan. They are usually long and dirty and the cuticles ragged. We do trim their nails, but they just get so dirty and they grow so fast. A few nights ago while Dan was reading them a chapter in The Great Brain, I had an idea. I brought a bowl full of warm soapy water, a nail brush, hand towels, cuticle butter, and my favorite lotion out to the living room and announced that I would be doing manicures while Dan read. One at a time, I had the boys soak both hands in the warm water and then I went to work gently scrubbing and cleaning and moisturizing. It was really fun! The boys enjoyed it as well, until I started pushing back their cuticles and nipping the dead skin. I nicked Adam once and Eli twice and they bled like crazy. That sort of ruined the mood. After that I promised no more cuticle nipping. These nightly manicures are already making a huge difference in the way their hands look. Now I feel happy when I look at their hands, knowing that I am helping to take care of them. Adam loves the Burt's Bees lemon cuticle cream. And I can't help but think of the Savior washing the feet of his disciples as I rub the lotion into their hands at the end.

P.S. If you are a Veggie Tales fan and know the song "Barbara Manatee", you might be amused to know that the boys are now calling me "Barbara Manicure."

Two prayers with one slice

2010-05-03T00:20:00.000-04:00

A few nights ago my friend brought me a delicious 5 point dinner (we are doing Weight Watchers together)--grilled chicken in a pita with hummus and veggies. I ate it and then sent Dan to buy pizza for everyone else for dinner. I was doing yard work (pulling dandelions in a somewhat obsessive manner) so Dan and the children ate pizza together and I came in later. After the children were all in bed, I started to feel hungry again and discovered that there was a box full of leftover pizza on the stove--a lot more than usual. I helped myself to several slices of the deep dish pepperoni, figuring it was my portion that I hadn't eaten earlier in the evening.

The next morning when Adam came to our bed to snuggle, he started talking about how excited he was to eat his remaining three pieces of pizza that he was too full to finish the night before. Doh. I told him that I was pretty sure I had eaten those pieces and he went ballistic. He was crying and screaming about how I always steal his food, and Dan told me later how he was picturing Adam in therapy the rest of his life working through this issue. When I realized what I had done, and then saw how Adam was reacting, I started praying that by some miracle I had left one piece of the deep dish pepperoni in the box, although I was pretty sure I hadn't. After a few minutes I told Adam that there were a few pieces of the regular cheese pizza left, so he went out to the kitchen, still wailing, to have one of those. When he opened the pizza box, there to our astonishment, was one last piece of deep dish pepperoni. Dan said, "See Adam, God does love you." But I was pretty sure He had conjured that miraculous piece of pizza, perhaps fashioning it out of a leftover crust, because He loves me.

Can I Help?

2010-04-18T22:48:00.000-04:00

Naomi has reached an age where she will no longer lay quietly on her back while I change her diaper. She squeals and writhes and does her best to flip over and crawl away. It is almost impossible to change her, unless...I give her a wet wipe. As soon as I hand her a wet wipe of her very own, she redirects her energy toward using it to wipe her own little bum. When she first began making it clear that she wanted to hold her own wet wipe, I had to be sure to give her a fresh clean one (she'd try to grab the used one from my hand) because it would go straight into her mouth. The next step was that she would try to wipe herself with it and then put it in her mouth. But now she will just do her best to wipe, and then let me throw the dirty wipe away with my wipe when we're done.

Tonight as we were going through this ritual, and I was marveling, again, at how quickly she transforms from fighting me to helping me when I give her that wipe, I remembered a talk by Kenneth Johnson, "We All Have a Father in Whom We Can Trust." In it, Johnson tells two stories. First, as a boy of five, he loved to watch his dad working in the shop in their back yard, building furniture for the family:

He invited me to help him by passing a hammer, a screwdriver, or some other tool. I was convinced that my help was necessary and that without me he would not be able to complete his task...As I look back and reflect upon those wonderful memories, I realize that my contribution was not necessary for my father to complete the work he was engaged in. I was the beneficiary, as through these experiences I came to know him and to love him.

In the second story, Johnson is now the father of a five-year-old son. One day he had prepared their front door for a new coat of paint. Just as he was about to start painting, Kevin asked if he could help:

I hesitated before responding, considering what effect this would have on the fulfillment of my dream, or alternatively how he would feel if I declined his offer. It was almost as if I heard someone else say, "That would be a great help. Thank you."

Providing him with an old shirt of mine that covered him completely, almost touching the floor and with sleeves rolled back several times, we went to work on the door that secured the main entrance to our home. He was applying paint to the bottom panel as I worked on the top section. I noticed that because of his age and physical stature, he wasn’t able to spread the paint evenly and that beads of paint were resulting. Each time he bent down to recharge his brush, I would hastily smooth out the paint on the bottom panel, returning to my assigned area so that he would not realize what I was doing. After a while I decided that more important than a first-class paint job was the opportunity to work with my son. On reflection I realized how well he was doing. Thereafter, every time I approached the door and saw the distinctive style of decoration, I was reminded of what is really important in our lives.

Johnson compares both of these experiences to our relationship with God. God invites us to help him in his work, not because he needs the help, but because of the relationship it allows us to develop with him.

Now I'm thinking about the work I do around the house, and the role my children play in that work. The easiest way for me to "get something done" is to stick the kids in front of a movie. Then they are so quiet, and I can concentrate and work quickly and lose myself in the task. Alternately, I can leave them playing, try to get some work done, and be constantly interrupted by them, the frequency of the interruptions having a direct correlation to the urgency with which my task needs to be finished. But this talk suggests a way that I rarely, if ever, employ, in which I ask the children to help me with the task I am trying to accomplish. Then, instead of having the completion of the task as my main goal, the goal becomes getting to know my children better, spending time with them, teaching them, loving them.

I really like the idea of this. It is so hard to do in daily life! For one thing, it requires that you have a much smaller list of things to get done, because working with children can be slow. It requires changing your expectations--the door doesn't look as nice when you are done painting it if you let your five-year-old "help" you. I can think of so many times when I've been hurrying to make dinner and a child comes into the kitchen and says he wants to help, what can he do to help? And I say, essentially, "go away, that would help me the most." Ouch.

Now, to be fair, Johnson was not taking his five-year-old to work with him at the office every day and letting him help there. The help was invited for weekend projects when he was home from work. As a stay-at-home type, I do not have an office to go to where I can "get my work done" without the children. But what if I think of the work as being the children, not the meals or laundry or cleaning or errands? Now that changes things. If my work at home is raising children, not housework, then involving them in housework is getting my most important work done.

What do you think?

Chinks in the Armor

2010-04-18T22:44:00.000-04:00

Reporting back on our lives without television. Remember how one of the benefits of only having a computer is that its use is password protected? A little problem with this occurs when I am trying to take a nap and the boys are home from school. They have discovered that if they awaken me from my nap, and ask for my password, I will usually give it to them, roll over, and go back to sleep. When I wake up, I am surprised to see them on the computer. "Hey, I thought your screen time was over," I say. "It was," they reply, "but you gave us your password so that you could keep sleeping." Hmm...

Things like this happen: Dan brings Adam home from an outpatient surgery to remove a growth on his lip. The stitches are causing him extreme anxiety, and he is hysterical. Dan suggests that the thing Adam needs most is to be "plugged-in." I immediately cave, with only the weakest breath/ just the half-formed thought of protest sounding faintly in my mind.

Eli spends two days home from school with pink eye. He begs for computer time because he is "so bored." I agree to 30 minutes. When it is over I hear him asking his three-year-old sister if she wants to watch some cute pink Pokemon. The next thing I see is Eli logged-on to Esther's account, using her 30 minutes to watch some more of his movie. When that time ends, he wants to know if he can have Adam's time, or if I will just let him use my account during the 2-3 hours of naptime in the afternoon.

When I say no, there will be no screen time today, or no, we will not extend screen time past each child's 30 minute allotment, one of the most common responses is that it is not fair that I get as much screen time as I want. When I tried to explain to Eli earlier this week that I do not sit around playing computer games and watching movies when I'm having screen time, he said, "can I have more screen time if I promise not to play any games or watch any movies?" He wanted to do Pokemon "research"--he is creating recipes using fruits and berries from the Pokemon world.

I'm kind of spineless. I do not like it when my children are angry with me. I don't like having to say "no" to them over and over and over again. I start to question myself...am I being too extreme? Would it really hurt them to have a few more minutes? Can I survive this day without my nap? Would I be willing to give up using the computer so that I could ask them to do the same?

The system that has been working pretty well is that they cannot have any screen time M-F, but then the weekend often turns into a free-for-all screen orgy. This is not exactly how I envisioned things. Because of all the begging, pleading, whining, cajoling, related to screens, I would really just like to throw this computer out the window sometimes so that I can get some peace while, at the same time, sticking to my guns. But it is such a beautiful iMac!

When I got rid of the television and DVD players, I also got rid of nearly every DVD and VHS tape we owned. I kept the "Sunday" viewing...movies made by the church, or about the scriptures. If I then restrict library trips to Friday afternoons or Saturday mornings, and then return all the DVDs they've checked out Sunday or Monday morning, there is less temptation in the house. But as long as we have internet, there is always plenty for them to do online (and for me), even without owning a single game, Wii, X-Box, etc.

I have tried a system in which I promise to have no screen time until they are in bed for the night, after 9 p.m. This kind of works, as long as I'm consistent. But I like my screen time, too, and I justify it by saying that I need the computer to run the household...pay bills, look up phone numbers, communicate through email, store and order photos, do family history research...

We've gotten off track recently because the last week of February was midwinter break and then the first week of April was spring break. Regulating the screen time is much harder for me when the boys are home all day. They really struggle to take "no" for an answer, and I really struggle to be consistent. Summer is right around the corner, and I really want to figure this out. This morning both boys are back at school, and here comes Esther asking for her 30 minutes of screen time. Just a week ago, she had completely stopped asking for screen time on weekdays, because I just said "no" every time. Darn that pink eye of Eli's and that mouth surgery of Adam's.

Sorry for all these ancient posts

2010-04-14T21:53:00.001-04:00

I was going through my post archives tonight and noticed a number of drafts from a long time ago that I had never published. I published a bunch of them, thinking they would show up way down in the blog according to the date that I started writing them (several years ago). But they all showed up here at the top, so now it looks like they are current posts. I'm so unsavvy.

Soporific Sudoku (written in 2006)

2010-04-14T21:24:00.001-04:00

Although, like most people, I had been aware of the existence of Sudoku for some time, I did not successfully complete my first puzzle until August of this year. After that, it became a kind of addiction for me. Now I use Sudoku to help myself fall asleep at night. There's nothing quite like a number puzzle to get the worries of the day out of your mind.

Eli & Adam's Other Mommy (written November 2006)

2010-04-14T21:23:00.001-04:00

Michelle told me this week that her kids refer to Leslie as "Eli and Adam's Other Mommy." I would say that this is a very apt description of her. Leslie is Dan's 25-year-old sister. She sleeps in a cold, dark bedroom in our basement, affectionately referred to as "the ice cave." While Leslie claims to be living with us in order to save money while she attends school, I think she may have been hired by an altruistic philanthropist to inject an element of fun into the boys' otherwise dreary lives. Leslie, for instance, is the creator of the multiple rainbow layered birthday cakes that are becoming a thing of legend among the boys' friends. Eli's birthday was in May, after Leslie had left for the summer. Knowing this, she made his 7-layer birthday cake several weeks in advance, freezing each layer, so that we could put it together on Eli's big day. When we cut into it at his party in the park, the kids and adults were amazed. It was so tall and colorful. Adam, of course, wanted his own, so for his fifth birthday in October, Leslie made him a 5-layer version. Leslie and Adam have the same birthday. Last year and again this year, Leslie crafted an amazing balloon festive masterpiece. This year's is depicted above. For Halloween last year and this year, the boys got to draw whatever they wanted on their pumpkins, and then Leslie carved it for them. Right now, as I type, Leslie is behind me in the kitchen making gingerbread cookie batter so that they can make gingerbread men together after school tomorrow. She is planning an ice skating trip with them before she goes West for the holiday. Leslie takes the boys on bike rides. She downloads pictures of Harry Potter and Legolis and Lord of the Rings and gemstones and whatever else they are interested in. If only all children were so lucky as to have Leslie as their other mommy.

Trippin' in the District (written April 2007)

2010-04-14T21:20:00.001-04:00

Last Friday (April 6), Dan came home from work early and we all piled into the car and drove to Washington D.C. We were planning to leave around noon (2 at the latest), so of course we left at 4:30. In spite of our late departure, we still arrived by 1 a.m., so I was pretty impressed with us. Dan drove the whole way, and we only stopped once...that is almost unbelievable, considering we had three children under the age of 8 in the car with us. We spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights at Dan's sister's house in Falls Church, Virginia. We were planning to sleep on an air mattress in the living room, but Melinda's roommate spent the weekend with family, so we had her king bed all to ourselves. Esther was comfortable in her portable crib, and the boys slept on the floor in Bug's room.

We were planning on spending Saturday visiting the museums with Dan's cousin Carma and her family, who were down for the weekend from New York City. When Melinda talked to them Saturday morning, they were headed to the Air and Space museum, and we were just waking up. She told them we could probably be there in 90 minutes or so. We first drove to Rockville, Maryland, to pick up my brother James and get a quick tour of his house. He had an ultimate frisbee game that afternoon, and had left his cleats at work, so our next stop was the World Wildlife Fund headquarters downtown. We found a parking spot just across the street from the entrance. James took us up to his cubicle, where he had some presents for the boys. Then we went down to the exercise room in the basement and played on the balls there. When we finally left it was a little after 1, and James had to catch the metro back to Maryland for his game. We got back in the car and went to find a parking place. This, of course, took a long time, and by the time we had parked, everyone was starving. Melinda had invited a friend from the Ukraine to meet us on the Mall, so we tried to find her in the Botanic Garden. It was hot and muggy inside, and the people were packed together like sardines. We were trying to maneuver the giant, unwieldy blue jogging stroller (which Esther refused to sit in), so everything seemed to take twice as long. Our next stop was the Museum of the American Indian, where Melinda had told us we could get all kinds of Native American foods in the cafe. Dan was craving a Navajo Taco, so we stood in the 30 minute line to get in. Esther was beside herself by this time, so I sat and nursed her while everyone else went to get food. We finally hooked up with Carma and Greg at the outdoor sculpture garden near the museum of African Art. They were exhausted by this time, and headed back to their hotel, after spending the day waiting for us to arrive. The kids ran around together for about 15 minutes, and then we parted ways. Our next stop was the Museum of Natural History. So much for meeting up with them in about 90 minutes.

Latest Favorites

2010-04-14T21:17:00.002-04:00

First on the list of our latest library book favorites is The Dog Child by Simon Black, illustrated by Honorio Robledo. I thought this book was cute, and a little bit weird, but it was a big hit with the boys. It is about a couple who treats their dog as though she is their daughter, even sending her to kindergarten. Finally they have a human baby, and the dog gets to go back to being a regular pet.

The next book that merits mention comes with a warning. I am not actually recommending this book. This is by far the most violent picture book I have ever laid eyes on. I actually couldn't believe what I was seeing. Because of this, I have been showing it to everyone who comes over. That has launched the book to celebrity status in our house, and Adam has begged for it ever since. I actually don't recommend that you read it to your child, but you might want to look at it just for shock value: The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas.

My third recommendation is this nonfiction book about a group of children who grew vegetables together one summer: A Harvest of Color: Growing a Vegetable Garden by Melanie Eclare.

Ode to Leslie (written June 2007)

2010-04-14T21:10:00.001-04:00

Yesterday morning, Leslie left us. Right now, it still feels like she might just be gone on an overnight trip to Muskegon, or even a week-long vacation in Utah. But she is not coming back, and that is very sad. Leslie is one of Dan's baby sisters. Adam was born on her 20th birthday. Leslie moved into our basement in late summer of 2005. She spent two school years with us, while completing a Master's degree in viola. Those two years were a gift to me and my children that I'll always be grateful for.

2nd Visit with New Counselor (written July 2007)

2010-04-14T21:04:00.001-04:00

Since I'm going to see my new counselor for the third time tomorrow, I thought I'd best hurry and record the highlights of my session last week. Here are some of the things we talked about:

1. "Positive Intent" This is a phrase that came up over and over again. My counselor kept telling me that every negative emotion has a positive intent. She said that actually, according to the theory of positive intents, every action has a positive intent as well. Instead of focusing on how bad if feels to have a negative emotion, she encouraged me to try to figure out what the positive intent of that emotion is...what it is trying to get me to do.

2. We talked a lot about my messy kitchen. We made a plan that I will focus on keeping 4 things clean as my first priority, because with them, I can usually make dinner: a knife, a cutting board, a pot, and the table. If the table is clean, we can sit down to eat, Adam can work on his writing, I can have a place to cut up things, and I feel less overwhelmed.

3. I received the assignment to research Daniel Goleman's concept of emotional intelligence so that we could talk about it next time. I haven't done that yet.

4. I received the assignment to search for research jobs on the LDS employment website.

We talked a lot about my plan to go to nursing school, and how that may not be the best plan for me. We talked about the fact that I may be using school as a crutch. Instead of relying on school to get me motivated to accomplish things, it would be good for me to figure out how to motivate myself to accomplish the things I want to do, like writing for a living. We talked about the three things I'd most like to do in a job, namely writing, research, and teaching. I guess I should add talking to people.

Anne Lamott: Sit Down and Write

2010-04-09T01:07:00.002-04:00

I would like to start out by thanking my friend Eileen for recommending that I read Anne Lamott. I had never heard of her, but Eileen gave her such a rousing endorsement that I took notice. I got Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, read some (or all?) of it, laughed a lot, and forgot about Anne Lamott for a season. That was many years ago.

More recently, while searching The Readers' Choice: 200 Book Club Favorites by Victoria McMains for titles to recommend to my book group, I noticed Operating Instructions: A Journal of my Son's First Year by Anne Lamott. It looked good, and I remembered having heard of her before...(see how keen my memory is?)

I read the book. I almost wet my pants I was laughing so hard in places. I also found great comfort in it, and hope. You will not want to read the book if you try to avoid profanity as a rule. But you will be missing out on one of the truest accounts of first-time motherhood I've ever read.

Now I'm in the middle of reading Bird by Bird again. This time I have not forgotten who Anne Lamott is. When I read something that I want to remember, I try to write it down. But I'm not sure where to start writing or where to stop with this book. I think I just need to memorize most of it. On the second page of the introduction, Lamott writes of her father, who was also a writer:

"He could go anyplace he wanted with a sense of purpose. One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around. Writing taught my father to pay attention..."

Have you felt this as a blogger, an historian, as a diarist or journal-keeper? When you are in the habit of writing things down, do you find that you notice more of what is happening around you? How frequently do you say to yourself, "this will make a great post" and pay special attention, or get out your camera, just to better capture the moment? If I write something down, I remember it. The rest is lost.

Lamott's father got out of bed every morning at 5:30 so that he could spend a few hours writing before the rest of the family woke up. She tells her writing students that in order to write, they need to sit down. "You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively" (6).

I was reading something recently about making sure that we are not so caught up in the busyness of life that we neglect the most important things. I asked myself, what important thing am I neglecting? The answer came in a flash, and it was unexpected: Writing. The answer surprised me because writing is something that brings me a great deal of pleasure, so I don't usually think of it as important. I like thinking of it as something that I am supposed to do, something that God has given me to bring me happiness, something that he wants me to spend time on. I like the idea that by doing something I love to do, I could also be doing something good for others.

So I am going to try to sit down a little more frequently to write, instead of waiting until I think something "blog-worthy" has happened. And if you enjoy what I write, please let me know. And keep reading!

Books, Books about Books, Lists of Books

2010-04-09T00:25:00.002-04:00

I like to read books.

I like to read books about books: Nancy Pearl's Book Lust is a great example.

I like to make lists of books that I've read. Unlike my sister Karen, who keeps her book list in a dedicated journal, I have always made my lists on random pieces of paper that get lost. Now, however, I keep track of my books on a website for readers called Goodreads.com, which, hopefully, will never get lost.

I like to collect lists of books to read in the future. One of my favorite Christmas presents of all time is a list my above-mentioned sister Karen made me of her ten favorite books in each of 6 different categories. If you have a list of favorites to share, please pass it on!

Besides lists of favorite books made by friends, I have a special affinity for "must-read" lists made by book "authorities" of some kind. One I recently discovered (and spent over an hour perusing) is Time Magazine's Best 100 English-Language Novels from 1923 to "the present" (list published in October 2005). This is a particularly nice list as it gives a brief synopsis of each book, alerting me to the fact that I do not actually want to read Lolita, no matter how many times I've seen it listed.

One of my mental hobbies is thinking up different reading lists or themes for imaginary book clubs. Here are some of my ideas:

*Books about by authors from a different country each month. I just found a blog tonight for a group in Scotland that does this very thing: Round the World Book Group.
*Books that have been made into movies. I might start with The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham or The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
*Books in thematic pairs. One pair of books I'd like to read and discuss is Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Max and the Cats by Moacyr Scliar (some say Martel plagiarized Scliar). Another pair I've been thinking of is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy with Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (married women having affairs and committing suicide).
*Dystopian Fiction: 1984, A Brave New World, The Giver, The Handmaid's Tale...
*Memoir
*Books with strong religious or spiritual themes
*Multiple books by the same author
*Books about the craft of writing. The one I'm reading right now and loving is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Car Accident, Bike Wreck, Pink Eye, Teething

2010-03-28T19:28:00.001-04:00

This has been quite the week, and we are ready to put it behind us. Monday night Dan's car started to hydroplane as he rounded a tight corner on a freeway on-ramp. He overcorrected and the car slammed front and then back into the concrete median wall dividing his lane from the rest of the freeway. He came to a stop facing the on-coming traffic, which had all come to a stop in time to avoid hitting him. Dan was able to move the car to the shoulder and walked away unscathed. The same could not be said for his car, affectionately known as Venus. Venus was the first new vehicle we bought together. She joined our family just a few months before Adam did, and has been a trusty and reliable friend ever since. We had dropped her insurance to liability and the body shop came back with an estimate of over five thousand dollars to fix her. The cost, along with the fact that she had almost 200,000 miles and no AC, led us to the difficult decision to say goodbye. Wednesday Dan cleaned her out and removed her license plate. We are selling her for $350 to someone at the body shop who plans to sell her parts on eBay. She's a DNR and an organ donor.

Tuesday on his way home from school, the chain slipped off of Eli's bike, causing an accident which resulted in a sad, scraped-up boy claiming that both arms were broken (although one was worse than the other). Being the kind, angelic mother that I am, I was dubious. I called the nurse and she said to give him some Tylenol and see if he felt better in an hour. I kept an eye on him. He seemed to be using both arms somewhat, and there was no visible swelling, but on the other hand, he was trying to keep the worst arm close to him and kept saying he thought it was broken. Dan offered to take him to the ER when he got home from work, and lo and behold, the left arm was indeed broken.

Wednesday night Esther's eye started oozing goo, and Thursday morning it was sealed shut. That meant a trip to the Pediatrician and a prescription to fill. Friday morning her other eye was equally bad, but I made an executive decision to just use the drops on both eyes, which she takes like a champ, and by now is almost 100% better.

Meanwhile, Naomi spent the week toddling around the house crying, probably due to an entire mouthful of new teeth coming in. Normally she plays happily with her dollies and the curtains between the back of the couch and the picture window in the living room, but this week there was no happy playing.

And what did I do this week? I decided that it would be the perfect time to dive back into one of my most addictive, obsessive habits: family history research. If I could do this in moderation, it would be fine, but when I get on the trail trying to hunt down missing information, it is really hard for me to stop or to limit myself. So I spent most of the week up until 2 or 3 in the morning doing research until my eyes crossed. It was a Little Caesar's week for sure.

Yesterday I got to a good stopping point and put the genealogy away in the basement. Today I took two excellent naps. We are getting closer to a decision on Dan's replacement car, and time is healing his sorrow and frustration over the accident. Eli goes to the orthopedist tomorrow to get a cast, hopefully one that will allow his elbow to bend. Naomi is back to her quiet playing behind the couch, and Esther's eyes are clear. Friday is a holiday for Dan and the children, my brother is coming to town, and it is almost Easter. Here's to a better week!

Walking. Very. Slowly.

2010-03-11T23:47:00.002-05:00

I may finally be maturing enough as a parent to allow my three year old to set the pace for our walks. Or maybe it is because my darling friend picks me up every morning at 5:45 so that we can work out together before child duty calls, that I can take a walk later in the day without feeling desperate to call it exercise. Today was the second time this week that I have taken the girls out on a nature walk. We walk very slowly around the block together looking for signs of spring. I told Esther to keep her eyes out for two signs in particular: buds and shoots. On our first walk of this kind, we saw a few buds, no shoots, and then a whole yard full of pine cones, several thousand of which we wanted to gather and take home.

Today we took a different route and found an exciting display of shoots, some really big soft furry buds that we petted gently, and...a sign of spring I hadn't expected... CROCUSES! Yay! The object of passionate collecting today was a yard-full of spikey dried brown ball things that had obviously fallen from the tree above. I did not know what they were or what the tree of their origin was called, so later in the day I tried to look them up. Striking out several times, I finally found a very helpful blog post from a naturalist in Princeton, NJ, who suggests that you identify the trees in your neighborhood by looking at what is on the ground beneath them. And low and behold, there he had a picture of some of the very same little objects that we collected so many of today: the seed ball of an American Sweetgum, affectionately known as a "gumball" or "monkey ball." As it turns out, this is an unusual tree to see in Michigan, because its range does not usually extend this far north. Right here in our very own neighborhood. I feel a new interest in tree identification coming on...

The FlyLady Teaches Me About Perfectionism

2010-03-10T21:57:00.008-05:00

One thing that I'm starting to realize about myself is that I have some perfectionist tendencies and they get in my way. This perfectionism does not take the form of "I will work myself into a frenzy and my stress level will go through the roof to do this task perfectly," but rather, "I don't have the strength, time, motivation or resources to do this task perfectly, so I won't do it at all. In fact, I may just do the exact opposite of this task. But don't worry, I won't enjoy myself, since the task I am avoiding is hanging over my head the whole time."

One of the things that sold me so quickly on the FlyLady's book was her understanding of this whole mindset and how it affects something as simple as cleaning the house (simple for you, maybe). Here are some of my favorite things she says about it:

FlyLady: "I have found over the last 2 years that perfectionism is the main reason our homes are in bad shape... Perfectionism is the reason we are depressed and perfectionism keeps us from making things better" (14).

PotatoGirl: Intriguing possibility. (evil voice: Handy excuse, too.)

FL: "What!? You are not a perfectionist! As strange as it may seem, I will guarantee that you have traits that those so-called perfectionist, Born-Organized People (BO) have. There is a fine line that separates you from BOs and it has to do with where we measure up on the perfectionism tally. BOs tend to be compulsive about getting it clean and keeping it that way, while some of us won't even start a job unless we have enough time to do the job correctly. So we do nothing! Or we are trying to do too many things at once and nothing ever gets finished so we just give up and say, 'What's the use?'" (16).

PG: [Nodding in agreement about doing nothing, giving up, saying "what's the use?"]

FL: "You may have picked up this book in your never-ending struggle to find the magic formula to fix your family and your home."

PG: I can't count how many books I've read on this topic.

FL: "But, sweetie, the problem with your home has nothing to do with idleness on your part."

PG: Really? But don't you find it problematic that instead of working on that pile of dishes in my kitchen, I am sitting here on the couch reading this book? That seems like idleness to me.

FL: "I hear what you hear over and over again--the reason your home is trashed is because of your laziness."

PG: This woman is reading my thoughts. "Lazy" is one of my favorite mean labels for myself.

FL: "I know for a fact that I have never been lazy and I will wager the same about you."

PG: That is kind of you, but I'm not so sure...again, look at me sitting here reading this book, ignoring the disaster that is my kitchen.

FL: "Your problem is that you don't know what to do first and when you decide on a course of action, you are continually spinning your wheels and unable to finish anything. By the end of the day you are exhausted, the house is still trashed, and you have accomplished nothing."

PG: [Somewhat stunned]. This is exactly how I feel. FlyLady and I are the same person! I feel like a chicken running around with my head cut off most of the time. I feel paralyzed by the chaos and by the thought that no matter where I start, I won't finish everything that needs to be done, and in the meantime, the kids will be messing it up more. I find myself walking into the kitchen, determined to face it, taking one look at it, turning around, and going back to the couch and my book, completely overwhelmed yet also disgusted with myself.

**************
Okay, well I'm tired now and I need to go to bed. I'm sorry to leave you right here in the pit of my perfectionism-induced despair, but stay tuned for a hopeful ending!

Goodbye Television, My Nemesis

2010-03-08T22:18:00.005-05:00

It all started with an icky feeling that letting my children sit, jaws slack, eyes glazed over for hours at a time in front of a flickering screen, was not the best choice I could be making as a mother. But fighting them was so hard, and the peace and quiet purchased at the cost of my aggravated conscience was so guaranteed, so total, so immediate, it was nearly impossible to resist. I have given away television sets before, only to buy new ones a few months later. I have canceled our cable and not tried to use bunny ears to get a picture. I have set rules and systems governing amount of screen time, type of screen time, timing of screen time. I have agonized over content, wondering what is too violent, what is educational, what makes them more hyper or more prone to fight with each other. But in the end, if I am tired, if I "need" a break, if I want to escape, I let them at it and enjoy (with a guilty conscience) my vacation.

If you know me, you know that I like to do research. Screen time became a pet topic for me, and in my trolling of the library holdings on the subject, I came across The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn:

It sat with its companions on my shelf at home for a long time until I finally took it with me on a road trip in read it in the car. The book changed my life. I am not prepared to tell you everything I learned reading this book (it is late and I am tired), but it did help me understand the guilty conscience I've had about using a screen to babysit my children all these years. Since I finished the book in August, I've been wanting to get rid of our television, but I keep talking myself out of this move for being too drastic. Besides, I reason, our lovely computer plays DVDs, so there would really be no point in getting rid of the TV because we could just abuse the computer screen instead.

Last week was a busy one for me, and I was counting on Friday to get a lot of housework done. Friday morning Eli woke up vomiting. That sort of threw a wrench in my day, and I ended up plunking him down in my bed with the television and a stack of movies. Esther, of course, made a bee line for the bed, and Naomi is a little angel child who never fusses or cries, so I sat down at the computer, freed from the demands of my typically needy children, to "check my email." The day went poorly for me. We watched our separate screens virtually all day long, and the next morning I was mad. I was mad at myself and I was mad at that screen for stealing my day and my children away from me. Now, getting rid of myself would be a bit tricky, but I knew I could get rid of the screen. So I finally sat down and wrote an email offering my television, DVD/VHS player, and DVD player to anyone who would care to take them off my hands. By Sunday afternoon the television and DVD/VHS player was gone, and today I dropped off the second DVD players at a friend's.

To be truly screen-free, we would have to get rid of the computer I am using to write this post. I honestly cannot picture doing that, although there are days when I wonder if it wouldn't be worth the extreme inconvenience. But one nice thing about the computer is that I have child locks on it that allow each boy 30 minutes of screen time a day. When that time is over they cannot get back on, even if they are being supremely sneaky, because they don't know my password. Another nice thing is that with only one screen in the house, I can't stick them in front of one and then stick myself in front of another. With the resource more scarce, we're going to have more competition for it, and hopefully less mindless wasting of hours and days.

If this post sounds radical to you (it kind of does to me), it is probably because I have not taken the time to walk you through Marie Winn's wonderful book and all I learned while reading it. It is not a radical or guilt-inducing book. It is a thought-provoking book, and I've given it a lot of thought. The things she says in her book ring true to me, and give form and weight and deeper meaning to many of the upsetting feelings I've had about the relationship our family has had with television over the years. I have been trying to implement things I learned from her over the months, and explaining my actions to my children as I go, so there wasn't much of an outcry this weekend at what I'd done. When Esther and Adam saw two big boxes of movies get handed from the back of our van to the back of another, there was a moment of panic, but they were easily pacified by the reassurance that the other family would give the movies back to us if we wanted them (no need to mention that I don't want them back). Dan, with the wisdom gained from watching my television purges of the past, did ask me to sign a statement promising that a certain amount of time would elapse before I went and bought yet another new television. I assured him that since reading Winn's book, I have no plans for such a purchase until the baby is a teenager and her brain is safely developed, free of "the plug-in drug."

Marla Cilley, The FlyLady

2010-03-05T12:24:00.005-05:00

I have just finished reading Sink Reflections by Marla Cilley, aka The FlyLady. A friend recommended this book to me several years ago. When it was obvious I hadn't done much with her recommendation, she loaned me her copy of the book. The book is pink, rather hard to miss, and it has been sitting on a shelf by my bed for several months. Untouched. Let's face it, there is a giant picture of a stainless steel kitchen sink on the front cover and it is about cleaning your house. Not exactly what I've been in the mood for. In January, while Dan and I were on our vacation, my mom read the book while watching the kids. I must admit, her admonitions upon my return that I read it were kind of a turn off, but at the same time, I was intrigued, and I can always use more suggestions in the homemaking department.

When I finally decided to read the darn book, it took less than a chapter to realize I had found a new soul mate. I don't know if Mormon women are really particularly good at balancing the care of a large family with the keeping of a beautiful home and the maintenance of a cute figure, but it seems like they are to me. I can't help but feel like a bit of a dysfunctional ugly duckling. I have often wondered if I am the only (Mormon) woman in the world who can't keep her house clean, and I'm not talking about the kind of deep cleaning that is only visible to people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I'm talking about you drop by to visit and it looks like our home was recently struck by a tornado. As Dan likes to say, "the good thing about our house is that if a robber broke in, he would take one look at the living room and assume that someone else had beat him to the punch." Ah, the ransacked look. So cozy. So inviting.

So, back to my new soul mate, the FlyLady. There is so much about her to love, but my favorite right now is the fact that she knows I am a perfectionist, she knows that my perfectionism gets me paralyzed with indecision ("Where to start...I know, I'll sit on the couch and look out the window!" ), and she says set a timer for 15 minutes and tackle one small job until it goes off. The 15 minute approach has really been helping me, and the boys like it too. She also says that cleaning your house the "wrong" way still blesses your family, and describes imperfect cleaning methods that work just fine, like wiping off the bathroom sink with the dirty hand towel at the end of the day. She is also encouraging me to get rid of anything in our home that is not blessing us. Dan is thoroughly enjoying pointing out things that are not "blessing" our home, such as the broken floor lamp that has been propped up next to the dresser in our bedroom for several months (in the garbage, baby, oh yes), or a bottle in our kitchen cupboard that Naomi wouldn't even drink out of when she was small enough to use it (um, not in the garbage yet, come to think of it).

If you ever find yourself feeling like your messy house is going to bury you alive and you don't know where to start, I highly recommend making friends with the FlyLady. You may find her website overwhelming at first, so start with the book if you can.

Coronado Island

2010-02-09T13:46:00.005-05:00

Many months ago Dan noticed that a law conference was going to be held on Coronado Island during the week of my birthday. He began the process of requesting permission to attend the conference, and finally received approval for full funding, including his airfare, meals, and 4 nights at the famous Hotel del Coronado, where the conference was being held. He also received permission for me to share the room with him, on condition that he not skip out on any of the conference. That is how I ended up spending my 35th birthday in a beautiful warm place, far away from the stresses of home and family life (not to mention the Michigan winter).

My mother and sister kindly agreed to fly out to stay with the children while we were gone. Dan was in meetings most of each day, so I got to explore on my own, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Although the California natives that I ran into were horrified by the weather we experienced while I was there (rain and temperatures in the high 50s/ low 60s), I found it delightfully warm and the scenery green and lush. One morning, as I was walking along the beach, a warmly bundled local stopped me and asked if I was from out of state. "Yes," I replied, wondering how she knew. It was my shorts.

Although I enjoyed a trolley tour of San Diego, walking in Balboa Park, exploring Old Town, a dinner in Little Italy, watching Avatar in 3D, and a long train ride and walk to the old San Diego Mission, the highlight of the trip for me was the time I spent on Coronado Island. I loved walking through the neighborhood near our hotel. The homes were so nice, beautiful landscaping, new plants that I wasn't used to seeing, lovely, diverse architectural styles...I loved eating breakfast at a little cafe on Orange Street, eggs scrambled with fresh tomato, onion, and cilantro. I loved sitting on a small balcony at the hotel right up at eye level with the top of a palm tree rustling in the wind. I loved the blue sky, and watching how quickly the clouds blew in and it started to rain, and then the clouds blew away again for another patch of blue. One night after dinner, Dan and I walked down to the ferry landing and enjoyed a beautiful view of the San Diego skyline across the water, all lit up.

Here is our hotel:

San Diego skyline from the Coronado Bridge:

A beautiful tree at Balboa Park:

The baby is 14 months

2010-02-05T10:12:00.004-05:00

Naomi turned one in November, and almost to the day I felt the cloud of first year baby haze dissipate. It has recently occurred to me that I used to post to this blog, and there is no reason that I could not start to do that again. In the past I wanted a separate blog for every aspect of my life, and I created "Healthy Potato Girl" about my quest for fitness, "Depression Club" about my struggles with my mood, and various blogs to post old journal entries from times I spent abroad. I have pulled all of these old posts from different blogs together into this blog, and I am going to start blogging about everything in my life that I want to talk about right here. Everything except my children. I did actually create one new blog, a private blog where I record family activities, interviews with the children, et cetera. If you are just dying to read about my kids and their glorious escapades, let me know and I will send you an invitation to their new "Tater Tots" blog.

P.S. The long list of links to friend & family blogs at the right of this page has gotten a bit unwieldy for me, so I'm going to start getting rid of links as I move them to my google reader. If you are still using my blog as your gateway to other friends, please make note of those peoples' addresses before they disappear!

Dan's blog puzzle

2009-08-30T20:56:00.003-04:00

Note From PG: Dan hacked into my blog to write this rousing endorsement for his blog puzzle. Can you believe that?!!! He even used my voice! But, he is my husband, and it is a really good puzzle, so I guess I will let it pass this time:

You should all go to Dan's blog, Unravel Every Riddle, to see if you can solve the puzzle he posted recently. You need several eclectic bits of knowledge and a flexible mind. Plus the prize is, well, unique.

Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette

2009-04-13T12:10:00.003-04:00

Thanks to the editor's of Cook's Illustrated for this yummy taco salad dressing, which almost caused Dan and me to die of yumminess when we tasted it this weekend:

5 T fresh lime juice
1 shallot, peeled (I omitted this)
1 jalepeno chile, stemmed and seeded (I also omitted this)
1 small garlic clove, peeled
1 t sugar
1/2 t ground cumin
salt
1/2 c fresh cilantro
3/4 c extra-virgin olive oil

Process lime juice, shallot, jalapeno, garlic, sugar, cumin, and 1/2 t salt in blender until shallot and garlic are finely chopped, about 15 seconds. With blender running, add cilantro, then oil, and continue to process until smooth and emulsified, about 15 seconds.

Little Brother

2009-02-04T15:17:00.003-05:00

Some friends of ours moved from Michigan back to Utah this past weekend and needed a family to care for their dog until they could have it shipped to them. That is how Little Brother, the Beagle, came to be living with us. He arrived at our home on Saturday afternoon, and if the weather is warm enough, will be flying home to his family on Friday. Little Brother (or "Brody" as I've been calling him) has been teaching me a lot about what life is like with a dog.

I bought Brody a bone at Kroger today because I've noticed that he wants to chew on something, and we don't really have anything that seems like a good candidate for that honor. I handed it to him right before our afternoon walk. He reluctantly left it by the front door, and then picked it back up when we got home. At that point he started whining and asking to be let out. I've never seen him do this after a walk before, and thought maybe he had to go to the bathroom. I let him out and he took his bone and went right to the back yard with it. He found a pile of dead leaves under a saw horse and began digging. He dug and dug and dug, buried his bone, and then diligently covered it back up. What a cutie! It just melted my heart to see him do that with his brand new bone.

I have never lived with a dog before. I've been begging Dan for a dog ever since we bought our house four and a half years ago. The main reason I have wanted a dog is so that I can have a walking companion. Since Brody arrived, I have been out walking several times a day, in spite of the single digit temperatures. I can assure you that without a dog, taking a walk would not have crossed my mind this week. But in spite of learning first hand what good exercise motivators dogs can be, I also discovered that having four children, including one baby, and then adding a dog to the mix, is a bit more than I want to deal with right now. So when we say goodbye to Brody, I think I will also be ready to say goodbye to my dream of having four small children and a dog.

Seven Weeks

2009-01-07T13:26:00.003-05:00

Naomi is seven weeks old today. That means seven weeks since I became the mother of 4. As I write to you, I am eating from a bag of Lindt dark chocolate truffle balls for lunch. I am surrounded by the post-apocalyptic mess which is my living room. I've got one baby falling asleep for her nap and one just waking up. We are running out of clean clothes and clean dishes. The bathroom...I would advise that you use your own before visiting. I read this statement in the Enisgn (church magazine) this morning:

"Have you received a recent calling and feel overwhelmed? Remember how easy it sounded when someone described how to play a piano or to swim? Then when you tried to do that, or any other challenging task, how complicated it seemed. Remember how as you persisted it became more comfortable and much easier to manage? As you diligently serve, the Lord will help you in like manner with your new calling."

This struck me as being quite applicable to my own situation. On days like today, after a night of being awakened by Naomi twice and Esther four times, I feel like I am wandering aimlessly in a fog. I have time to do what needs to be done, but I can't seem to get myself together enough to use that time. Esther had school this morning, and I squandered those three hours on a trip to the grocery store, a few KenKen puzzles, and iTunes. On other days I do much better.

The one thing that I am most happy about is the fact that I've been making good dinners each night so that we can sit together as a family and enjoy our meal at the end of the day. And of course the baby is well-fed and growing. The one thing that I think is most bothering me is that I haven't yet figured out how to make exercise a part of this new life. I was walking nearly an hour a day most days until the morning of the birth, and since that day, nothing. Last night I was trying to solve this dilemma with a list of times that I could exercise. After studying the list, the best option seemed to be 5:30 a.m. at the YMCA. So I set my alarm last night. No good. I got up for the seventh and final time at 7:30, barely in time to get the boys to school.

I think one of the reasons that I'm not posting to my blog very often is that I feel like a post should include pictures, but pictures take FOREVER to upload to my blog, so I always put it off. If I let go of the requirement to include photos, like I am doing now, it is easy and even therapeutic to post something. I think there must be a way to upload smaller versions of my photos. If the files were smaller, I imagine it would go much faster.

Well, I'm headed to bed. At times like this, being awake doesn't seem to do much good. The baby I thought was waking up is still asleep, so I'd better jump on this chance. Bye!

More Pictures of the Birth Day

2008-11-22T17:41:00.010-05:00

Disclaimer: Dan and I have never managed to have a camera with us for the birth of our children. So, this was our first birth with a working camera, and we tried to make up for past births by taking pictures of every thing and every body. Feel free to skip this post if the content is too boring :)

Here I am shortly after arriving at the Family Birth Center reception area. This was between contractions. I wanted to document my belly at its biggest:

Here I am in the triage room. They had just measured my cervix and told me I was an 8. Dan told me to put up 8 fingers and took this shot. I don't know why I look so happy...this must have been between contractions, too:

This is my anaesthesiologist (i.e. favorite person in the whole world). We waited for this shot until the epidural kicked in:

This is the doctor that delivered my baby. I had never met her before, but I liked her a lot. Dan had promised the boys a picture of the crochet hook they use to break my water, so here it is, moments before being put to work:

Thanks to the exquisite timing of Naomi's birth, Bug was able to be with us for the big event. The whole thing happened while all three of my older children were at school:

Here is Naomi's first photo op with her papa. She has been cleaned up and properly swaddled.

This is my labor & delivery nurse, Michele. She was the best:

Naomi's Birth: The Narrative

2008-11-22T15:00:00.002-05:00

Eli, Adam, and Esther were all born well before their due dates. Eli was due June 21, born May 24; Adam was due November 11, born October 19; Esther was due May 31, born May 13. So Naomi was due December 6, but starting in the first week of November, I was wondering if she could be born any day. We made it through the time Eli would have been born, Adam would have been born, and then we got to November 18, the day Esther would have been born. On that day, it seemed to me that the baby dropped, but I thought my mind might be playing tricks on me since I knew it was the day Esther would have been born if she had had Naomi's due date. When Eli dropped (the day before he was born), I felt a distinct change from not being able to breathe well (before), to having to pee all the time (after). But throughout the pregnancy with Naomi she felt low, like most of the pressure was down under, not up in my ribs. On the 18th, however, the pressure down low seemed to increase noticeably. Could this be a sign that she is coming? I thought to myself all that day.

In the night, I was awakened a few times by contractions, but went right back to sleep.

At 5:50 a.m. on Wednesday, November 19, my cell phone alarm went off. I got out of bed to take my morning walk with Janie & Elizabeth. I always have some contractions while we are walking, but this time it seemed like I had more. After our walk, as we were standing outside of Janie's house chatting, I continued to feel some contractions. When I walked in my door at 7:15 a.m., I said to Dan & Bug that today might be the day I give birth. Bug was especially excited, but I quickly warned that I could be wrong. Dan asked if he should go into work or not, and I didn't know what to tell him. He was about to take Bug to the mechanic to have her car fixed, so I told him to come back and check in before leaving for Detroit.

When I went to the bathroom, I saw some bloody show (too much information!), which I have only ever seen on the day I give birth. That made me feel a bit more certain that the baby would be born. I did the usual things one does to prepare for a birth: I shaved my legs and washed my hair. Contractions continued, but they did not hurt much at all. I folded laundry. I told Dan to stay at least an hour or so to see what happened. I didn't feel like eating, especially since I have always thrown up right before giving birth. Around 8 or 8:15, while trying to get the kids off for school, we started timing contractions. They were 4-5 minutes apart, and lasting 30-60 seconds. We called the doctor's office and told them we were heading to the hospital.

My contractions still weren't hurting very much, so it seemed strange to be driving to the hospital, but I've learned from past experience that I go fast. I was really hoping to get my epidural before I got to an 8 or 9. We checked in at 9:15 and while waiting in the reception area the contractions started hurting more and more. By the time I got to the triage room, I was begging for my epidural, and when they checked me I was an 8 already. That was good because it got the triage people to take me a little more seriously and hurry things along. I'd been telling them that this was my 4th baby and that I go fast, but I don't think they were paying too much attention until I was an 8.

My labor and delivery nurse, Michele, came to get me and we made our way painfully to the room where I would give birth. I was in so much pain I just stood by the computer station holding onto the desk for support. FINALLY my anaesthesiologist arrived and I had my epidural by 10 a.m. I guess that is pretty fast, but it didn't seem like it at the time. My OB broke my water at 10:30 and I started pushing around 11. It usually only takes me 10-15 minutes to push a baby out, but I pushed this little girl for a good 45 minutes. I was getting worried and it was really hurting, but when her head emerged she was face up, which explained why it was so much harder to birth her than my others. When they put her up on my chest she seemed much tinier than I remember the others being. Later they weighed her and she was my smallest...6 pounds 14.1 ounces and 19.5 inches long. The others were all over 7 pounds and 21 inches. I thought she would be my biggest because she was born the latest (well, just one day closer to her due date than Esther), so she surprised me with her relative tininess.

First set of photos

2008-11-21T20:55:00.007-05:00

I got home from the hospital today at about 4:30 p.m. It is wild to be home with four kids...taking care of a newborn is much easier at the hospital. Tonight I will just post a few choice shots of the babe so you can get an idea of what she looks like. More details and photos to come.

In this photo, Naomi has just been born and her umbilical cord cut. She has not yet been cleaned off.

Here she is having some formula to get her blood sugar up. Who is that sexy mama with her?

A few hours after her birth:

The day after her birth:

Here she is all cute and naked with a big ole pacifier in her mouth:

That's all for today, I need to prepare myself for tonight's onslaught.

Tater Tot

2008-11-19T19:53:00.002-05:00

Hello, DTR here, spouse of Potato Girl. She delivered a healthy baby girl this morning (Wednesday, November 19) at 11:37 a.m. The baby was our smallest yet: 6 lb 14 oz, 19.5 inches long. Mom and baby are great. Lots of pictures were taken, but they're all still on the camera, which is at the hospital (St. Joe's). I imagine PG will write a post with lots of photos and all the details you'd care to know. If there's anything specific you want to know, just leave a comment here. Thanks to everybody who helped us out today, and over the whole pregnancy.

Octopus Mother

2008-09-19T13:38:00.004-04:00

Last Friday night, September 12, I drove my friends Janie & Becky to Mt. Clemens to attend the opening night of our friend Abbi Israelsen's art exhibit Deep Breath (read more about it here). Here we are, being so cute (L to R: Becky, PG, Janie, Abbi the Artist):

Abbi almost died of accute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) earlier this year, and after she recovered, she agreed to do some fund raising for an ARDS research foundation. As an artist, she decided to donate an original drawing to each person who contributed $50 to her campaign. She has been pushing herself to do a drawing a day for this exhibit. Each of the drawings in the exhibit that has not already been promised to a donor is being sold for $65, and all of that money will go to ARDS research as well.

I had been debating between two drawings that I wanted to buy (scans of all of her drawings are on her blog, Drawing for ARDS), but one of them had already sold by the time I got there, making my choice an easy one. I am the proud new owner of "Octopus Mother."

I can't wait for the exhibit to close on October 3 so that I can bring my favorite new drawing home!

Better Than Christmas

2008-09-17T20:46:00.003-04:00

What could be better than waking up Christmas morning to the promise of gifts and family, friends and food? Waking up to the promise of flushing toilets, doing laundry, bathing the filthy children, and washing dishes in the comfort of your own home. Yes, I felt euphoric when I woke up this morning. By 8:30 a.m., Jim, Pete & Pete were already at work digging up the street to fix my sewer main. They were about my favorite people in the world at that moment. By the time I got back from running some errands, around 11 a.m., there was a huge hole full of stinky sewage water where just hours before a black stretch of asphalt had been. I could hear all of the sewage water on the floor of my laundry room being sucked down the drain and out into that hole. Here is a view of the action:

During Esther's nap I checked in and learned that not only was the bad orangeburg pipe running from the curb to the city main in the middle of the street, it was also running at least halfway across my lawn toward the house. It is possible that the only piece of cast iron pipe on the whole thing is a little patch they made near the house in the 1970s. So Jim, Pete & Pete will be replacing the whole thing from the house to the city sewer connection with PVC pipe, and we will be paying the full $9,000. But I am just so happy to know that these problems will be resolved soon!

Around 5 or 6 p.m. when I went out to see what progress had been made, they were finishing up for the day. They had laid the first section of PVC where the original break/ blockage had been, and connected it up to the orangeburg on both sides. They had reconnected the house to the city water line, and we could use all of our plumbing just like normal for the rest of the evening. The first thing I did was give Esther a bath and wash her hair. It took me about 30 minutes to comb out all the tangles after that, and it was a good feeling. The first thing Dan did when he got home from work was to start cleaning the kitchen counters. I put in a load of laundry, and then another. We flushed all the toilets. It was a grand feeling. Tomorrow morning they will disconnect us again so they can finish the job, but I think we'll have our plumbing back to normal again in the evening.

It is amazing how one day you can flush your toilet and it is not enough to make you feel happy and like all of your problems are solved, and then a few days later, that very same act seems like the pinnacle of joy and contentment. I have NEVER enjoyed starting the washer as much as I did tonight. If only each of you could experience this! Just kidding...

Sewer Saga Continues

2008-09-16T13:29:00.003-04:00

We spent the weekend praying for our pipes, that somehow they could hold everything including the neverending downpour of rain that we got. Sunday night the water was still slightly below the level of the floor, miraculously. Monday morning the water had come up to a few inches over the drain, but was contained in the floor depression and not spreading all over the floor. Monday morning plumber #2 came to the house to use his expensive video equipment and locating equipment to find the exact location of the blockage. He placed a black "X" on our street, about five feet out from the curb, i.e. worst case scenario.

Before plumber #2 arrived, I checked my email. There was a comment from HW about a company she had used for sewer work that she really liked called Perimeter. She even gave me the phone number. After plumber #2 left, I got a phone call from Garn-Girl telling me that she had used a company called Perimeter to have her footing drains disconnected, and she really liked them. When she said that, I got the chills. I felt that these two friends were giving me this information in answer to our prayers for our pipes. I called Steve at Perimeter and set up an appointment for him to come out at 2 p.m. to check out the situation.

Before the revelation about Steve, I had talked to Mitch, plumber #3 about doing the work. I had called him to see when he could come out and was waiting for him to return my call when Garn-Girl called, leading me to call Steve. Right after I hung up with Steve, I saw a man in an unmarked truck park in front of my house and begin inspecting my street and yard. It was Mitch. I was planning to tell him that we'd decided to go with Steve, but I chickened out. I told him we were considering someone else for the job, and would he like to come in to look around so that he could give me a bid. He did, but he didn't look too happy about it. When he left, he promised a verbal bid by the evening and a written bid the next morning. I still have not heard back from him.

Steve showed up at 2 and was super nice, professional, articulate, and thorough. I vastly preferred him to Mitch. He also told me that he could give me a verbal bid that evening and a written bid in the morning.

I didn't get any phone calls from either company last night, but this morning when I got home from taking the boys to school, there was a message from Steve. I also noticed that the city had come and marked up the lawn and street to show where all the buried things are for the excavation. I found out that Steve had called Miss Dig for us yesterday, just in case we decided to go with his company, so that they could get started right away. After verbally agreeing with Steve to do the job, for which we will be charged $5,000 if the problem is just from the curb to the city's main line in the street, or a total of $9,000 if there is also a problem with the pipe running from our house to the curb, I got a call from another friend recommending Steve at Perimeter!

Steve has already brought me paperwork to sign, and will be mobilizing the necessary equipment today. His team will start first thing tomorrow morning. Yay!!! Yay!!!! I can't wait to be able to shower/ bathe, flush toilets, do laundry, dishes, cook, et cetera.

I would like to add that my husband Dan is a genius. Last night, looking around the filthy kitchen full of dirty dishes he said that he knew a way to run the dishwasher without flooding our basement. He disconnected the dishwasher hose from the pipe under the sink and put it in a bucket. Then he ran a full load of dishes and the hose drained into the bucket, which he dumped outside in our bushes. I know we shouldn't be putting dishwashing soap out there, but I really really don't care at this point. I did another load this morning, and it felt great! We could technically do that with the laundry, but it would be a lot more water to dispose of and we'd have to haul it up the basement stairs. For now, I am delighted knowing that we will be back in business tomorrow or the next day. And did I mention that the rain has stopped and the sun is shining in the robin's egg blue sky?

Rewards for doing daily work: peace and iTunes

2008-09-13T21:47:00.003-04:00

If there was a school for homemakers, I might have flunked out.

I do not like cleaning the house, and instead of just doing it because I'm an adult and it needs to be done, I avoid it. Of course, I don't like living in a dirty house, so I spend a lot of time being unhappy with myself and my surroundings. For the past year or so, I have been trying to grow up. I was motivated after General Conference in April to turn my attention to making dinner and keeping the kitchen clean, after hearing Elder Oaks mention the great force for good eating dinner as a family can have on the children. I am getting much better in that area, and have been rewarded by many pleasant mealtimes with my husband and children and a sense of peace that comes from doing something that I believe is important.

Esther started her new preschool on Wednesday. Each week (except for the handful when I host), she will be spending three hours at one of my friends' houses attending "school" with four other little 2-year-old girls. As I contemplated how to best use my time while she is away, the answer came to me very clearly: clean your house. So this past week, I determined ahead of time that I would clean all three bathrooms on Wednesday. When the time came, I was having a very hard time getting myself to go into bathroom #1. I talked to Dan's sister about it, and she suggested that I give myself some kind of reward if I completed all three bathrooms, perhaps an ice cream cone at the end of the day? I told her that I would much rather buy myself a CD, or even just one song from iTunes. One song from iTunes. That was it. Only $1 spent to motivate and reward myself for a job that most adults just do as a matter of course.

I am delighted to say that I did in fact clean all three bathrooms while Esther was gone, and then thoroughly enjoyed buying my first iTune: "The Story" by Brandi Carlile. Now I'm trying to think of other onerous homemaking tasks that would be worthy of an iTune reward. And, I'm embarrassed to say, I'm spending a bit too much time making lists of the songs I want to buy.

One of Many Reasons I Recommend Renting

2008-09-13T20:55:00.002-04:00

Before we bought our house, I dreamed longingly of the day I would own my own place. I pictured how I would keep it clean, decorate and beautify it, tend its yard, plant a garden, cook dinner every night, and even start wearing makeup once I had an actual house to live in. We scraped together every cent we had (and many we didn't) to buy our first house four years ago. We love the neighborhood we live in. We are happy with our house. But there are days, like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and today, for instance, when we wish we were still renting.

On Wednesday while Esther was at her first day of "preschool" (playing with 4 other girls at a friend's house once a week), I cleaned all three bathrooms (significant accomplishment worthy of its own post). While I was in the basement, I noticed that the toilet could not flush down the bubbles from the cleaner I had used in it. So I got out the plunger and went to work. About ten minutes later, the toilet could still not swallow the bubbles, and I was noticing that each thrust with the plunger caused a corresponding gurgle of water to come up the drain of the sink. I am not a plumber, but I did not think toilet water should be coming up the sink drain.

Later in the day Dan called my attention to the fact that water had risen up and out of the large drain in the basement floor near the washer and dryer. It was just a few inches of water, and since the floor slopes down to the drain, it was contained in the bowl-shaped impression in the floor. But still.

The next morning when Dan's visiting sister tried to flush the basement toilet and then plunge it for many long minutes, in vain, she reminded me that I needed to call a plumber. By then the water had gone back down into the floor drain, but I could see it glistening just under the surface. Luckily for us, our next door neighbor when we lived in our apartment is a plumber, and he came out that very afternoon to investigate. Four and a half hours later, he informed me that something is seriously wrong. The main sewer pipe that takes all the water from the house to the city line in the street is blocked, and he could not get it open, not with all of the tools in his entire van. He gave me the name of a trustworthy friend that does excavating and recommended that I call as soon as possible. I asked him if this is the kind of thing that costs more or less than $1000. He looked at me as though I was a naive child and explained as gently as he could that this could cost us upwards of $10,000. Oh.

The next day, instead of calling the excavator, I went to Ikea. That may, in retrospect, have been a mistake.

Today it started to rain. And rain. And rain. The basement toilet is not flushing, the water level in the basement floor drain is rising, and I decided it might be the right time to call the excavator, Mitch. He told me to call his colleague Dan, the sewage pipe camera guy, to set up an appointment to have the exact location of the blockage pinpointed. Dan told me that he can come Monday morning, but that to protect my home in the meantime, we should not flush ANYTHING but liquid down our toilets, we should avoid doing laundry, and generally use as little water as possible. Did I mention that it is still raining, and the water in that drain appears to still be rising?

So, water (and other liquid-y things) cannot leave our house, and we may have to fork over $12,000 that we don't have if the blockage turns out to be in the street. According to plumber #1's estimate, the blockage is 50-55 feet from our house, putting it right on the curb. If it is in fact not that far from the house, we may be spared the quintuple digit figure. If, however, the blockage is under the street, we will have to pay to have the street ripped up and put back together, thereby plunging us into the highest possible price bracket. Every hour or so I go downstairs to see if the water has risen above the drain. So far it has not. But the dirty laundry is piling up, not to mention the toilet restrictions. Dan (my husband, not the third plumber) has had a pained look on his face all day. I sometimes point out the many benefits to renting a home, and he always argues that we are much better off as home-owners. But today, he is starting to see things my way.

Ruby Car

2008-08-31T21:42:00.002-04:00

Well, as you can plainly see, I did not manage to keep up with my ambitious start to documenting each and every day of our month-long road trip. Now we are home and I have some other things to write about, so I'm moving on. I hope to go back and fill you in on the rest of the highlights of the trip, but we shall see.

So, on to the latest happenings.

Our beloved 1993 Plymouth Grand Voyager, Ruby, survived the 5,000 + roundtrip drive from Ann Arbor to the Oregon Coast. At the time of our return, just one week ago today, she had driven over 216,000 miles. Before our trip, I just wanted to hang on to Ruby as long as possible, to drive her until she could drive no more. But my heart changed on our trip. She began to leak more and more oil. After one night on Dan's mom's driveway, she had hemorrhaged so much dark fluid that we moved her to the street. The same thing happened after one night in my parents' garage. It was like having a child that you thought was potty trained pee on someone's clean carpet. Her sliding door handle, which used to need to be slammed back into place every month or so, deteriorated to the point of requiring a hard slam or kick every time we wanted to use it. One night on the Oregon Coast her front windshield cracked while we were sleeping, grinning crookedly at us the next morning. On the freeway just outside of Boise, the rearview mirror fell right off without warning (we were able to glue it on the next day). On the final 4 days of our journey, she developed a greasy film across her entire backside, Dan believes from all the burning oil coming out the exhaust pipe. We had to put a new quart of oil in her every single day to get home. By the time we got to Michigan, I just wanted to let her rest in peace. I didn't have the heart to keep putting more money into this poor dear, already so long past her life expectancy.

We had decided before the trip to buy a newer used car in March or April of next year (tax return season), but a day after we got home I started looking on craigslist for something we could buy right away. For awhile the big debate was whether to buy a car we could afford to pay cash for ($5000 or less), which would be newer than Ruby, but still pretty old, or to get a loan and buy something newer. I have wanted the latest safety features, especially side curtain airbags for the second and third row of seats, and to get that we would need to purchase a 2005 or newer Odyssey. Those appeared to be selling for around $18,000 to $20,000. As an afterthought we checked the Honda website and discovered that for just a few more days, we could get a 2008 Odyssey with financing at 2.9% for 5 years. We would have had to pay a much higher interest rate to buy a used car, so we decided to look into that. We ended up getting a brand new van for just $22,000.

Friday, August 29, was the big day when we took our Ruby for her last drive with the family and traded her in for our new "baltic blue" Honda Odyssey, which has yet to be named. The boys are still struggling to forgive us for our betrayal of loyal and brave Ruby car. Esther is pretty fine with it. On Saturday, when I took her to the store in our new car, she just kept saying: "Ruby car all broken. Uncle Jake get new blue car." "Uncle Jake" is Jake Morse, the fine young sales associate at the dealer who sold us our new car. He was only 3 weeks out of training, and it was the first car he's ever sold (he's not really Esther's uncle). I feel pretty guilty to have given up on Ruby, too, but Dan and my parents are assuring me that the decision made sense. I can't tell you how almost obscene it feels to drive this beautiful new car. In one afternoon we upgraded 15 years and almost 200,000 miles.

We are having trouble choosing a name for our new family member. Dan wanted Ulysses or possibly Homer. I wanted Sapphira at first, then Bella, Penelope, and now I'm settled on Babe (Paul Bunyan's big blue ox). The boys wanted Sapphire and now Neptune. Please write in with your vote. And if you see Ruby getting destroyed at the next demolition derby, I'd rather not know.

Wisconsin to Idaho

2008-07-29T23:09:00.005-04:00

Day Two (Thursday, July 24) of our vacation found us driving across Wisconsin on a series of different highways, wondering to ourselves why we thought this route would be faster than getting on the Interstate. Wisconsin was beautiful, though, and we got gas for $3.93 a gallon. We finally got back to the I-94 and traveled across Minnesota (gas $3.79!) and into North Dakota. We made it to our motel in Bismarck by 10:30 p.m. I had agonized over this motel, debating between lowest price and highest likelihood of finding a room that was not nasty. I went for the Days Inn because it had supposedly just been completely remodeled, so I figured it would seem new and nice. I don't know about the rest of the place, but our room had DEFINITELY NOT been recently rennovated. I was super mad that we could have stayed in the Fairfield Inn for the same price, since I figured it would have been nicer. The Super 8 probably would have been nicer, and all of the other cheaper places. But it was 11 p.m. by the time we were all unloaded, and we just dropped into bed. The next morning we enjoyed the free breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, pancakes, bacon, english muffins, juice, and FRUIT LOOPS. And a few Danishes.

Friday (July 25) we gained an hour by passing from the Central to Mountain time zone. Also, our drive was a bit shorter, so in all the day felt much more manageable. One mile before crossing into Montana, we stopped at a Flying J to get gas. There I purchased a North Dakota snow globe for a certain almost 11-year-old collector I know. Adam was worried that Esther would break it, so he took charge of its safety. In no time he had pulled the plug out of the bottom of it (why?) and it was leaking glitter water all over him. Arrrgh! A day or two later Dan found the plug and restored it, and I think the snow globe will survive.

We stayed on the I-94 through Bozeman, Montana, and then took the highway south through Big Sky. The scenery was beautiful. My favorite part of the trip was being stopped so that a huge herd of about 50 horses could cross the road from their dude ranch over to their pasture. We finally made it to Ashton, Idaho, and then on a series of smaller roads to the Rock Creek Girls' Camp, home of the 2008 Thurman Family Reunion. We arrived at 7:00 p.m., just in time for a dinner of lasagne, salad & garlic bread. Then we bedded down in our A-frame cabin for the night. Next post: all about the Thurman Family Reunion.

Month-Long Vacation, Day One

2008-07-28T20:14:00.003-04:00

Hello, I am finally back to a computer and so I will catch you up on our travels and adventures thus far. We left Ann Arbor Wednesday, July 23rd, at 12 noon and drove to Kohler, Wisconsin, to visit my beloved friend LL. We arrived at her house almost exactly 7 hours after we left. She was out on her deck grilling us bratwurst, pinapple, and crook-neck squash. Esther was in heaven to be able to play with Javi & Andres, and to have free reign of the house and yard. Javi has a great climbing structure/ slide/ castle in his back yard that they enjoyed immensely. We had a wonderful meal together that also included grilled asparagus, baked beans, macaroni salad, potato salad, hamburgers, rolls, and a fresh strawberry pie. It was so great to see LL out of her tiny apartment and living in a nice big house with a lovely yard and a white picket fence.

We got the kids down for the night and then LL & I took little Mauri on a walk around the neighborhood. LL lives in the most picturesque, adorable neighborhood on the planet...it looks like a set from the movie Pleasantville. The streets are lined with big beautiful trees (which have not, by the way, been decimated by the Emerald Ash Borer as the trees in my neighborhood have). Each house is unique, with a neatly tended yard. The teenaged boys greet you pleasantly when they walk by, making eye contact and speaking intelligibly. The adults wave at you like you are old friends. The children of the entire Village attend one K-12 school, a beautiful brick structure with a pool and lighted tennis courts. There are several lovely parks. The only thing missing from LL's new home is me!

We had a great sleep and a delicious breakfast, and then hit the road for day two of our drive. Goal: Bismarck, North Dakota.

Tender Mercies

2008-07-21T21:28:00.003-04:00

This afternoon at 3:40 I had my 20 week ultrasound. I have never cared much one way or another if my baby was a boy or a girl, until this pregnancy. I have wanted this baby to be a girl SO BAD. But because I threw up when I was pregnant with my boys and not with Esther, and I threw up with this pregnancy, I've been assuming that this baby must be a boy. I've also resigned myself to the fact that it is a boy because I really really want a girl this time. In the past month or so I've lost all interest in every boy name on my list...I don't like any of them anymore. I can only bring myself to think about the girl names. I've been praying more and more frequently that God would give me a girl this time, knowing that is silly, since He will give me whoever is supposed to be in our family, regardless of my personal preference.

I was really excited for my ultrasound today because of the possibility of a girl, but also a little dreading the moment when I found out the baby is indeed a boy. The technician asked me if I would like to know the gender and I said yes. At first she couldn't get a good view, and moved on to looking at the heart, et cetera. I was now sure that I wouldn't get to find out the gender at all, and would just have to keep waiting. Then, unexpectedly, the technician asked again if I was sure I wanted to know the gender. "Yes!" I said. "It's a girl" she said, pointing out the tell-tale three lines. At that moment I felt the tears well up in my eyes and an overwhelming sense of God's love for me. That sense of his love has stayed with me all day. It seems too good to be true that I could be having my heart's desire of another girl, when really all that matters is that I have a healthy baby.

Right after this glorious moment, there was a knock on the door of our room and one of the receptionists poked her head in. "The father is here" she said. Dan surprised me by driving in from Detroit for the ultrasound! So I got to tell him we are having a girl, and he sat next to me holding my hand the rest of the time. Dan doesn't really like talking about names until the baby is born, but I am obsessed with names, so I made him discuss girl names with me for a few minutes. Luckily for him, it took just moments for me to realize that the only name I like any more is Naomi, and we both like the name Caroline for her middle name (after one of my coolest ancestors, Caroline Farozine Skeen). So I think that we're having a little Naomi Caroline.

When I got back to the Garns' house to pick up the kids, Adam was the first to hear the news. Up until today I've only heard him and Eli say that they want another girl so that they can each have their own little sister, and so that there will be a pair of boys and a pair of girls. But Adam surprised me by looking disappointed and saying that now he won't get to find out what it's like to have a baby brother. I asked Esther if she could say "Naomi" and she yelled "Yomi!" Then she yelled it over and over again, very enthusiastically. Adam wanted to know what the nickname for Naomi could be and I said it could be Yomi, Noki, Nomi...He and Eli liked Nomi because that would be like we had named her after a Gnome. Eli has been voting for "Naomi" all along, so he is content.

My Mood, My Kitchen

2008-07-18T03:05:00.000-04:00

I'm not depressed right now, just pregnant. That is why I haven't been posting. My mood has been especially good this week since I started making dinner and keeping the kitchen clean again. The inspiration for this was Elder Oaks' "Good Better Best" talk from October 2007 General Conference. One of the things he emphasizes is the importance of eating dinner as a family. I know how good I feel when we all sit down together to eat a meal, and it doesn't happen very often because I so rarely cook or clean the kitchen these days. I've been wanting to get back into those habits since my morning sickness has subsided, but haven't been able to. When I revisited this talk on Sunday, the thought of eating together gave me the motivation I needed to clean up and make dinner. I have kept the kitchen clean all week!

Photos by Jess

2008-07-12T20:21:00.007-04:00

Our friends the Mauches stopped by a week or two ago, and Jessica took these pictures of my kids. I love them! Check out her website: Fairy Toes Photography.

Pirates

2008-07-10T14:39:00.002-04:00

We have a little board book that Esther likes to look at. Each page shows a picture of a different face: baby, teddy bear, astronaut, bunny, et cetera. One of the faces in the book is a pirate. The pirate is wearing a red head scarf with white polka dots, and a black eye patch. For a month or so now, Esther has been letting us know whenever she sees a pirate. I, for instance, am a pirate when I come out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my head. Esther is a pirate when we take her shirt up over her head and leave it there around her ears. Her little toy dog is a pirate when Esther stuffs him in a pair of pajama pants with just his head sticking out. Wearing a winter hat also makes you a pirate. One time her white teddy bear became a pirate just by virtue of having a small wet wipe or tissue draped over its head. The other day when we were out in public, we saw a woman wearing a purple head scarf tied just like the pirate's in her picture book. Esther was VERY excited, pointing to this woman and yelling "Pirate! Pirate!" If the woman noticed, she didn't give us any indication. I was relieved, since the whole thing might have been hard to explain to a stranger. But now, if Esther calls you a pirate, you'll know why.

Lake Michigan, The Pictures

2008-07-07T13:34:00.012-04:00

The beach at Saugatuck Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan:

The boys reveling in the water:

A view of the conservatory at the Frederick Meijer Gardens:

Beautiful orchids inside the conservatory:

The beaver dam "club house" in the children's garden:

Replica of a 1930's farm house at the garden (love that big porch!):

Statue of the American Horse:

The kids digging, Dan relaxing on the beach at P.J. Hoffman State Park (PG in the water with the camera):

Lake Michigan, The Narrative

2008-07-06T22:03:00.004-04:00

We have lived in Michigan almost ten years now and never once visited Lake Michigan. We have visited a few of the other lakes, and the sand was gravelly or rocky, so we just assumed all the lakes were like that. It wasn't until this year that I heard (or read) that the sand on Lake Michigan is soft and white like a "real" beach, and nothing like the other lakes. So I decided we should go check it out for ourselves. I tried to find a camp site for us in one of the many state parks that dot the lake, but they were all full. So I ended up reserving a hotel room at the Residence Inn in Grand Rapids for the night of the 4th.

Wednesday night the 2nd we were enjoying a BBQ with some friends when a huge storm attacked us. The power went off and stayed off until Thursday evening the 3rd. Friday morning the 4th I had pictured us getting up first thing and driving to the beach. Dan, on the other hand, wanted to spend the entire day cleaning the house now that we had power again. We compromised by cleaning from about 6:30 a.m. until noon-ish. Before hitting the road we went to the grocery store to get sandwich fixings for our cooler. Then we drove straight to Saugatuck Dunes State Park, no stopping. I made sandwiches for everyone on my lap while Dan drove the car, managing to smear mustard all over my shirt. We hiked 0.6 miles on a nice wide trail to the beach. I had selected this beach specifically because of the hike in, figuring there would be a much smaller crowd to contend with than a beach with easier access to the parking lot. I was right.

I've been to several beaches in my life, but I've logged the most hours by far at the Oregon Coast. The beaches there are breathtakingly beautiful, but also pretty cold. The water, if you dare to get in, will freeze all your limbs numb so that you can barely stumble back across the sand to your towel when you get out. It is often overcast and rainy there, and even on the sunny days you are likely to encounter a stiff breeze. It is the kind of place where you "lay out" in a sweatshirt. The two beaches we visited on Lake Michigan were not the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to, but it was so much fun to be able to go swimming in the lake without getting chilled to the bone. The water was refreshing, not cold. The sun was shining, there were virtually no clouds, and the sand was soft and hot. There were lots of people there, and everyone set up their towels, blankets, umbrellas, coolers, et cetera in a long line down the beach just a few feet from the water's edge. The first day, we put our stuff way back away from the water, like we always do at the Oregon Coast, but it finally occurred to us that this was not necessary since there is no tide to come in and carry your things away. On the second day we claimed our own spot right by the water, which made it much easier to relax and watch the kids at the same time.

The two little boys went right out into the water. They just kept walking out farther and farther, and Dan and I finally realized one of us should get out there to make sure they were safe. Esther was completely focused on the sand. She virtually never looked up from her digging. It was the most intensely focused play I have ever observed. I kept trying to take pictures of her, but they all look the same, her head bent over her work, no time to look up and smile for the camera. Dan and I just went back and forth from the water to the sunbathing, and it felt like we were in Florida or California, just 2 1/2 short hours from Ann Arbor.

After several hours at Saugatuck Dunes, we drove to Holland, Michigan, to find some Dutch food for dinner. We failed. We ate at the 8th Street Grille instead. I had the all-you-can-eat soup bar for $5.99 with Boston Clam Chowder, Vegetable Beef, and Chicken Corn Chowder. The clam chowder was delicious, and I ate myself silly. Our next stop was the hotel in Grand Rapids, about 30 minutes from the beach. We got there about 9 p.m., and Dan and the boys had to leave almost immediately to make it for the fireworks display downtown. I put our things away, rearranged the furniture to make room for the boys' bed on the floor, and put Esther and myself down for the night. Dan and the boys got back close to midnight.

In the morning we enjoyed the hot breakfast buffet in the hotel lobby, and then made our way to the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park down the road. In two hours we only managed to see about half of the gardens, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. They have a large, award-winning children's garden that we explored, and Esther was delighted by the many different "club houses" that we found. Then we took a boardwalk through a beautiful wetlands filled with turtles basking on logs in the sun. We enjoyed the farm portion of the garden, and then made our final stop at the giant three-story tall statue of a horse.

We hit the road after that and drove northwest to P.J. Hoffmaster State Park, where we visited the Gillette Visitor's Center, dedicated to the study and explanation of Michigan's sand dunes. Then we had part two of our cooler sandwiches, and made the much shorter walk down to the beach. As predicted, the shorter walk meant much bigger crowds, but we still found a place for ourselves and enjoyed the afternoon together until Adam got bored and started demanding that we head home to Ann Arbor. Esther, too, seemed to lose interest in the beach, and began angrily pouring bucket after bucket of sand on my head while I tried to relax. So we gave up and drove home earlier than planned, with a stop for dinner at Carino's for some Italian food.

I enjoyed our little vacation SO MUCH. I love exploring new places, and we got to see a whole bunch of things for the first time. We felt pretty silly that we'd never made the short drive over to Lake Michigan before, but at least now we know what we were missing.

Gestational Diabetes

2008-06-24T21:09:00.003-04:00

So I took the 3 hour glucose test on Thursday, June 12. Late Friday afternoon, June 13, I got the phone call from the nurse telling me that 3 of my 4 numbers were too high. That earned me the official diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes (GDM). I started following the diabetic diet and testing my blood sugar on Wednesday, June 18. Today I gave my first week's worth of numbers to the nurse. After talking to the doctor, she called me back to tell me that he wanted me to start taking insulin once a day before bed. Groan. The needle that I inject myself with (in the belly) is very fine, and I can hardly feel it going in, but the insulin burns. With Esther, I would get a big red itchy spot at each injection site, and since you are supposed to choose a different site each time, my whole pregnant belly was leopard-speckled. When I told the nurse about this today, she said she would try me on a different type of insulin. I was very optimistic tonight for my first injection, but I think this new kind of insulin (Lantus) burned even more than the old kind! Too early for the red welt, though, so that is good.

Friday, June 13, was also the day that the veins in the back of my right leg started aching and throbbing in a sickening way any time I stood on it. That has never happened before, and it was very discouraging. I read that daily exercise would help my circulation, and I know it will help my blood sugar as well, so Monday morning, June 16, I started getting up a little before 6 a.m. to take a full one hour walk before Dan leaves for work. I am not usually very good at getting up early, especially not consistently, but this time I am extremely motivated by all of my desired health benefits. I have not missed a day since I started, and that is 9 days now!

A few days ago my leg stopped hurting. I imagine that this is due, in part, to the daily walk, but I think it also has to do with a few prayers I've said. I explained to God that I don't mind the morning sickness (which is still going on) or the gestational diabetes...I was expecting both of those things. But the unexpected addition of the leg pain seemed almost more than I could bear. Now the leg pain is gone, and I am so grateful. I think about it every day, and feel loved and strengthened by the thought.

Dan's New Nickname

2008-06-24T09:42:00.005-04:00

Every morning, Dan makes himself the same breakfast: yogurt with GrapeNuts. He mixes it up in a big bowl and eats it on his way to work. Esther has become an integral part of this daily ritual, insisting on helping Dan with each step of his meal preparation. For some reason, she calls GrapeNuts "no nuts", an accurate name for them, since they contain neither grapes nor nuts. Whenever Esther refers to Dan's breakfast, she calls it "Poppy No Nuts." She mentions it from time to time throughout the day, and it always brings a little smile, especially to me. We know that she means Poppy's GrapeNuts, but isn't that a great new nickname for Dan all the same? Take my word for it, the next time you see him, Dan would really appreciate being called Poppy No Nuts.

Out of the fire into the frying pan

2008-06-05T17:11:00.006-04:00

I had gestational diabetes with Esther, which means that with this pregnancy, instead of waiting to take the 1-hour glucose test until I'm in my 28th week, they wanted me to do it as soon as possible, even as early as 8 weeks. Because I was so sick, I knew that I couldn't go into the lab fasting and then drink that horrible glucola drink and then wait an hour to have my blood taken, because I would throw up. So I waited until this Monday to take the test, at 14 weeks, because I'm finally starting to feel like a human being again. I got the phone call today. My blood sugar was 158, and it is supposed to be under 135. Good times. The next step in this process is the 3-hour glucose test. This is an even funner test that you take if you fail the 1-hour test, in which you go into the lab fasting, get your blood drawn, drink the drink, and then get more blood drawn every hour for three hours. This confirms the diagnosis of gestational diabetes. Then you get to start following the DIABETIC DIET, and doing finger pricks four times a day to test your blood sugar levels.

So finding out about this at week 14 instead of week 28 gives me that much more time to enjoy this whole process. But I definitely prefer what is coming to what is passing. I would give myself 4, 8, 12 shots a day and follow the strictest diet in the world as long as I didn't have to feel sick and throw up. So bring on the diabetes, it is definitely not as bad as the morning sickness.

Weight Loss Secrets

2008-05-06T19:38:00.002-04:00

If you have seen me recently, you may have noticed that I'm looking pretty good. That is because I've lost about 7 pounds since I got pregnant. Here are my weight loss secrets:

1. Feel Sick. If you can manage to get yourself a nice stomach virus that makes you feel sick 24 hours a day, you will be on the right path. Motion sickness could also do the trick.
2. Throw Up. Letting your food make it through the whole digestive process really contributes to weight gain. If you throw it up before it moves beyond the stomach, you've saved yourself a world of calories. If you throw up enough, you begin viewing every bite as potential vomit. This really changes the things that look good to you, and can help you loads in the weight loss department.
3. Hate Food. If you are like me when I am not pregnant, you love food. In order to lose weight, simply change this love to hate. Once food is your enemy, your struggle to lose weight will be nearly over.

See how simple it is?

Zofran, My Friend

2008-04-27T18:10:00.002-04:00

My midwives gave me a prescription for an anti-nausea medication used for chemotherapy patients that has helped me to stop throwing up. Yay! Now I'm just tired and mildly sick, but I can eat and keep it all down where it belongs. It always amazes me the things I take for granted, like being able to eat food and drink water. My spirits are generally low, but I remember that this is how the first trimester always goes for me...it is hard to feel mentally peppy when my body feels so yucky. As usual, I am telling Dan that this is our LAST baby. He says I always say that. But I really mean it this time!!!

Next Post: June or July

2008-04-21T14:39:00.003-04:00

Hello dear Readers:

The completely inaccurately named "morning sickness" has set in and I am now laughing that I used to be worried about being tired. I'm totally sick and throwing up, and if I follow patterns from past pregnancies, this should last another 2 months at least. Also, if past pregnancies hold true, this baby is a boy, because Esther, bless her little heart, never caused me to throw up. Today I've thrown up three times. I can't believe I've gone and let this happen to myself AGAIN. Ha Ha, just kidding Baby #4, I love you!!!

PG

Elder Scott's Conference Address

2008-04-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

Elder Scott gave a bold talk on abuse at our most recent General Conference. Here is a link to his talk, "To Heal the Shattering Consequences of Abuse." Although abuse is not a problem that I have had to struggle with, I found many of the things he said about Satan's voice very helpful and applicable to depressed thinking.

Thanks!

2008-04-07T21:44:00.001-04:00

I know that my friends don't have any extra energy to send, because we're all pretty swamped by life, but after I wrote my last post, I felt much better! I've been making dinner and doing dishes and laundry and stuff. I think that you sent me some energy, or maybe just some loving thoughts and sympathetic vibes, but it worked and I appreciate it.

Send Excess Energy Here

2008-04-03T20:02:00.004-04:00

What have I been up to lately? Well, mostly napping and sitting around doing not much of anything. I am so tired. I've felt tired before, and I think I've forced myself to get over it, but since I'm pregnant I'm telling myself that my tiredness is legitimate and instead of working through it I'm just giving in. I'm not making dinner, I'm not doing dishes, I'm not folding laundry. I'm just taking deliciously long naps every afternoon when Esther goes down, and going to bed nice and early at night. Life is good when I'm asleep, but when I'm not it is kind of upsettingly messy and out of whack around here. I think soon I will need to figure out how to do slightly easier versions of my daily tasks so that we can survive as a family the next few months. I explained to the boys this afternoon that my body is using all of its strength to make a little baby brain and spine and organs and such. I told them that when the baby is all formed I won't be so tired anymore. I just made that up, I don't know if it is really true, but it comforts me to think it might be.

7:45 a.m. on Saturday, March 29, 2008

2008-03-29T08:00:00.004-04:00

I am no longer unsure of my status. I am officially pregnant, with a due date of December 2, 2008. I think this test is much easier to read than the first one, don't you? Thanks to everyone for your kind comments!

3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25, 2008

2008-03-25T18:12:00.002-04:00

Is it just me, or does the symbol on top look like a plus sign?

I Made Dinner

2008-03-25T14:12:00.000-04:00

I just made dinner! Great victory for a day like this. Now I think I'll take a nap.

Emotional Reasoning

2008-03-25T12:23:00.000-04:00

Monday I started feeling kind of low. This morning I woke up feeling even worse. Today I feel so tired and blah. I just don't feel like I have the energy or drive or motivation to do anything. It feels like I am drugged or in slow motion or in a heavier gravity than usual. It feels like it requires superhuman strength to make dinner and make lunches and clean the living room, when just a week ago that didn't feel very hard at all. When I don't exert the strength it would take to do my work, I feel bad about myself and my "weak character". I know that if I could make myself do my work in spite of how I'm feeling, I would feel better. If I don't do my work because of how I'm feeling, I'll feel worse. One of the Cognitive Distortions that David Burns talks about it "emotional reasoning." I don't feel like doing the dishes, therefore I cannot do the dishes. If I can get myself to do them anyway, I will have a victory. The thing that needs to be done right now is the dinner preparation. I'm off to the kitchen! Writing this has helped.

Dark Day For Potato Girl

2008-03-24T14:42:00.001-04:00

Yesterday at church I found out that my dear soulmate LL is moving this Thursday to Wisconsin. I thought I had a few more weeks with her!

"I'm dreaming of a White..." Easter?

2008-03-23T21:04:00.006-04:00

This past week our dear Ann Arbor friends, Jordan & Andrea, drove up from Dallas to see us. They arrived Wednesday afternoon and stayed through this morning. When they arrived, their children (Peter 9, Leah 6, Hannah 4 & Matthew 2) were so disappointed that it was freezing cold (for them; it felt warm and wonderful to us!) but there was no snow on the ground. I think that is why the heavens provided us with a beautiful snow storm Friday night! Our poor snow-starved guests from Texas were able to go sledding, build a snowman, do snow angels, throw snowballs, make a snow fort...everything! And we had a beautiful White Easter, just like we've always dreamed of.

Here is Adam sitting on the hood of our car, clearing off the windshield::

Eli's New Blog

2008-03-18T14:33:00.001-04:00

I am bursting with pride that my little Eli, oldest child and leader of the younger part of the family, has started his own blog. But because I am a mama bear, I have protected it like crazy, and you must be invited to read it. So far, I have invited his aunts, uncles, grandparents, and teachers. If you would like to receive an invitation to view "The E.J. News", send me an email and your request shall be granted!

Journal Entry: 19 February 1997, Manila

2008-03-15T13:03:00.000-04:00

I had a thought on the jeep this morning on our way to Uniwide [a store]. Usually when I’m feeling unhappy/ depressed/ down on myself/ discouraged I feel like God is mad at me or he doesn’t love me or I’m not good enough and that my discouragement is coming from him—Hey [Potato Girl], you’d better clean up this mess you call a life. Then it was as if the curtains were drawn this morning as I read verse 15 of Joseph Smith-History:

“I kneeled and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak.” It caused him to nearly “sink into despair and abandon [himself] to destruction.”

That is Satan, not God. I’m trying to record something the Spirit taught me in a thought, and words aren’t working too well, but it was as if the pieces suddenly fit together in my mind and heart. Pres. Gerratt at dinner saying I need to slam the door on Satan when he tries to discourage me, tell me I’m bad or unworthy. This attack on Joseph Smith right as he was doing his most righteous, correct, important act so far. All of the struggles I’ve had as a missionary to feel good about myself and my efforts. Satan’s affect on Joseph was to bind his tongue, stop his prayer. What happens when I feel worthless and discouraged? I can hardly pray I hate myself so much. I just cry and want to lie on my bed and not get up. I can only think about how pathetic I am—in affect, my tongue is stopped—i.e. I am stopped in the good works I’m doing, I’m immobilized.

Could this come from God? No! It is Satan and I let him in, I encourage him, I tell myself that God is mad at me, that I’m not doing enough, that I’m being cursed. It’s not true, is it? Lately I’ve had a new idea open in my mind, an idea that here I am in the mission field, trying to serve God, trying to let go of the world—why would God be disappointed? I’m here! I’m not perfect—I count the months left, I daydream about home, I often go to bed at 10:40 and not 10:30, and we usually leave 10 minutes late because I always am the last to get ready. I’m not talking to 10 people a day on the jeep. Those are the things that haunt me, and yesterday morning I was crying with despair because somehow my whole mission was a waste and Heavenly Father couldn’t accept it and wouldn’t bless me because I let myself fall in love [with my husband, Dan] before I left and how could a really dedicated person have done that? That’s like being mad at yourself for eating before you start fasting, or something. Weird.

So this morning I realized that next time I feel like that (you know how I cry at most Zone Conferences, for instance) that I can know it is not coming from Heavenly Father, but some jerk-face trying to keep me from doing this good thing I’m doing and to minimize my joy and peace so I won’t be as effective as I could be.

I think of the love I have for these investigators, love I know comes from Heavenly Father, and I have great feelings of patience with their “failings” and take great joy in tiny little right things they do. I don’t ever feel mad at them, I just keep thinking “how can I help them better to figure this out.” Now if I feel like this, if I can look at every other missionary and take great joy in the miracle that they somehow survived in the church long enough to make it on a mission, of all things, that they are worthy to hold a temple recommend (amazing—what would I do if a couple of Bicutan members could get worthy for the temple!)—I don’t care how ineffective they are, I’m just thrilled to think they’ve come this far, especially if they’re trying to be obedient and improve.

So if I feel that for others, and I’m just some punk kid, doesn’t God feel that for me? But more love, more patience and understanding? He doesn’t want me to feel unhappy and failure-like. That would be like one of my investigators berating herself for “only” reading though Enos after the first discussion, while I’m all thrilled she read at all. Okay, but God doesn’t compare us, and I can’t compare myself and say I’m good because there are other people that aren’t even active [in the church]. But still, none of this “God is mad at me” business. (Potato Girl's mission journal 350-351)

Mission Journal

2008-03-14T22:42:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about an important depression-related realization I had while serving as a missionary in the Philippines 11 years ago. I've been wishing that I could find the place in my journal where I might have written something about it, but I have had no idea which of the 439 pages might contain the story. All I can remember is sitting on a bus in Manila looking out the window and having an important, life-altering thought come to me. I've been really hoping to find the passage before teaching my next depression lesson in April, so today during Esther's nap, I sat down with the second half of my old mission journal and started reading through every page. I began with the entry for December 19, 1996, looking for any signs of the depressed thinking that plagued me as a missionary. I found several good passages, but when I reached the entry for February 19, 1997, I found exactly what I'd been hoping to locate.

It is late tonight, so I'll ask you to stay tuned for my next post, when I'll start transcribing this important section of my journal.

"Puddle!"

2008-03-14T22:34:00.005-04:00

A few days ago, Esther discovered a new word: "puddle". It has finally been warm enough this week to feel like spring, and we've been outside like crazy. On Wednesday night we were waiting for Dan to get home, so we decided to walk around the block. Esther was wearing her little red leather boots that I love. I let her walk for exercise instead of riding in the stroller. She discovered a puddle, and stepped in it. Oh boy. After that it was nothing but "puddle" "puddle" "puddle"! By the time we got back to the house her feet were soaking wet and dyed red from her little boots. So yesterday I pulled out the orange rain boots and tried them on her. A little big, but completely puddle-proof. So we took another walk trying out all the puddles in those boots. I think she could tell that her feet weren't getting wet and cold. She was very enthusiastic. Now she is very mad when I try to strap her into the stroller, as all she wants to do is walk multiple times through every puddle in the neighborhood. It does my mommy heart good to see her. Let's hear it for waterproof shoes.