Showing posts with label Worth... Two Cents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Worth... Two Cents. Show all posts
This is why everyone needs to be a parent
E started preschool. I know it will be great for him, but it panics me more than a little to think of him going out into the wide world if only for a few hours a week. There are thousands of "what ifs..." running through my head. It got me to thinking about all the things I have taught/have yet to teach my kiddos, good and bad. Being a parent is an interesting experience that is for sure.
I'm convinced that the reason God trusts us with children is for us rather than our kids because man alive! I'm a mess sometimes. It is a good thing He has my back or my kids would turn out nutty. My point though is that parenting is supposed to be about making your child the best possible version of themselves, right? And because you so often are teaching by example, that means that parenthood is essentially about making ourselves our best selves and hoping and praying that our kids follow the good stuff and ignore the bad.
As a parent, especially a stay-at-home parent, you have to watch your every action, word, and even thought because they will pick up on it (and copy it at the worst possible time). Every move you ever make at any given moment is monitored by a little being who is soaking it in and forming their personality and moral code largely based on yours. You slowly learn that every imperfect move you make will be duplicated and magnified 100 times. And then reflected back at you, right where you can see it best.
That time when you break your toe and let a word slip and your child repeats it in preschool.
That time when your child runs screaming from a butterfly because he's seen you do it.
That time when your child hears/sees something he shouldn't in a movie because you thought he was asleep and consequently he has nightmares for weeks.
That time you say a disparaging word about another to your mom on the phone and your child announces it to someone else.
That time when you speak sarcastically and your child--taking it literally--does something borderline insane.
Everyone has parent-of-the-year-award stories. Because whoever you are... if you are a parent, someone is watching. You have a 24/7 private detective observing you, sometimes five of them at a time. That is a lot of pressure. Thankfully, we haven't had too many disastrous moments ourselves yet, but the older E gets, the more I see my bad habits in him.
But one of the hard parts of parenting for me is that it isn't only the things you do that you have to be aware of; it is the things you don't do as well. If you aren't kind to others, how will your kids learn to be? If you don't keep your anger in check, how will your kids learn to? If you aren't honest, how will your kids learn to be? The best way I know to teach my kids to be strong enough to deal with the pressures of life is if I am. Granted--and very thankfully--we have a Heavenly Father and a Savior who can cover our bases when we fail (as we inevitably will), but the fact remains that whatever I want to instill in my children has to first be a part of my life.
That time when you break your toe and let a word slip and your child repeats it in preschool.
That time when your child runs screaming from a butterfly because he's seen you do it.
That time when your child hears/sees something he shouldn't in a movie because you thought he was asleep and consequently he has nightmares for weeks.
That time you say a disparaging word about another to your mom on the phone and your child announces it to someone else.
That time when you speak sarcastically and your child--taking it literally--does something borderline insane.
Everyone has parent-of-the-year-award stories. Because whoever you are... if you are a parent, someone is watching. You have a 24/7 private detective observing you, sometimes five of them at a time. That is a lot of pressure. Thankfully, we haven't had too many disastrous moments ourselves yet, but the older E gets, the more I see my bad habits in him.
But one of the hard parts of parenting for me is that it isn't only the things you do that you have to be aware of; it is the things you don't do as well. If you aren't kind to others, how will your kids learn to be? If you don't keep your anger in check, how will your kids learn to? If you aren't honest, how will your kids learn to be? The best way I know to teach my kids to be strong enough to deal with the pressures of life is if I am. Granted--and very thankfully--we have a Heavenly Father and a Savior who can cover our bases when we fail (as we inevitably will), but the fact remains that whatever I want to instill in my children has to first be a part of my life.
In essence, every day of my life I spend trying to make these little people who they need to be, and who they need to be is a way better and way stronger person than I currently am. Solution: become way better and stronger myself. This to me is the greatest challenge of parenting, but it is also the greatest blessing. As I make them stronger, I make myself stronger. As I help them grow and become better people, of necessity, I grow and become better myself.
Parenting is no cake walk that is for sure and it is only going to get more interesting from here on out, but I am awfully grateful that Heavenly Father is giving me a shot at it because boy am I learning a lot! And boy do I love my little teachers!
Parenting is no cake walk that is for sure and it is only going to get more interesting from here on out, but I am awfully grateful that Heavenly Father is giving me a shot at it because boy am I learning a lot! And boy do I love my little teachers!
A realio-trulio-cowardly Haley
As a follow up to the last post...
One of my favorite stories my grandma used tell is The Tale of Custard the Dragon wherein Custard, the realio-trulio-cowardly dragon lives in a house full of bravery and "cries for a nice safe cage" on a regular basis. The poor little thing manages to be quite fierce when a pirate comes "climbing in the winda," but after that he goes right back "crying for a nice safe cage."
In reading the story to E just a bit ago, I've decided socially speaking, I'm going to embrace the Custard way of life. Yes, more often than not I'm crying for a safe cage of my own--the cage being our nice little family bubble most of the time--but sometimes when I really need it (usually when the mama bear claws are ready to come out), I can buck up and be legitimately brave and do what needs to get done. I can hide in my nice safe cage where I feel comfortable and only bring brave-Haley out to gobble the occasional pirate when I need her. (Only nasty pirates of course as anyone who knows me at all knows that I'd rather join than eat most of them.)
God hath given you one face...
...and you make yourselves another. --Shakespeare
Warning: this post is not an update and it doesn't have any cute kids in it, so for anyone who reads my blog (all three of you =) feel free to skip this one and tune in next week. This one is more for me.
Having been forced to be somewhat of a recluse--with the baby and moving to a new place where we don't know anyone--has been an interesting experience for me. I'm pretty sure in the last three-or-so months I have thought, "Huh! I didn't know I did that," about 4,000 times. Lots and lots of realizations on my part.
Preface: When I was a little girl I was painfully shy--hide behind the couch when people knocked on the door kind of shy. A neighbor heard me speak once and she about died of shock because she genuinely thought I couldn't. I would talk non-stop to my family, but in public... not a peep. When we moved to Utah, it got slightly better, but only to the point where I could speak to someone who directly spoke to me. I managed to make some friends, but only a very few I considered close.
As a result, I had a moment in school where I found myself looking around the group of girls I was hanging around with and realizing I had nothing in common with most of them, nor did I particularly enjoy the things we did together. I decided then and there that I was no longer shy. It took a while to work my way into it, but I started initiating conversations in class, meeting new people, even seeking people out. I went through a tomboy phase, an intellectual phase, a life of the party phase, an apathetic phase... none of them lasted very long (nor, I might add, were they very successful) and finally I settled somewhere in between.
I started to see myself as an outgoing person, even though I had to force myself into any outgoing tendencies I had created. It became such a habit that I didn't even notice.
Until recently. For the last couple of years, I've been dealing with some anxiety issues (somewhat related to my stress-a-holic tendencies), many of them socially related and not paper bag breathing worthy (usually). As a result I have been dissecting how I went from the person I was to where I am now. Then it hit me: I am shy now because I always have been. And though every other person who knows me may have seen that, I had trained myself to think differently. I tried my best to ignore so many of my tendencies that made life more difficult, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. I am still the painfully shy person that I always have been. I don't run and hide behind the couch anymore when people knock on my door, but that doesn't mean I don't want to.
I started to think, 'Ugh! Yet another thing to add to the goals list,' but in the end I realized that yes, being shy is problematic in so many ways and I will always have to fight it to some extent because not being able to call and order pizza or be in a room with more than five people at a time is ridiculous. However, there is also absolutely nothing wrong with being shy. It doesn't mean I'm holding myself back or that I love others any less. I am still a friendly and loving person. I still enjoy people. It just means it takes me a bit longer to be comfortable in certain situations and with certain people, and attempting to pretend or force the comfort on myself only serves to make me feel more uncomfortable and take even more time to become legitimately comfortable.
So in the grand tradition of all silly Haley problems, I helped create this one myself; and it may be a little backwards, but I am shedding my outgoing shell (which more than likely only I thought existed in the first place) and embracing my own shy little self. Welcome back shy Haley, I've strangely missed you.
In a surprising turn of events...
I have lost my mind. This may not be surprising for anyone who has had more than a one minute conversation with me lately, but I didn't know it was this far gone.
Things I have learned in the last two days:
If your husband asks you to pick up something from the grocery store, writing it down will not be enough. In fact, it is probably safer to have him just go buy it himself because that is what he will end up doing anyway when you return with a completely different thing. Ex: When Bryce asked me to get him some sort of soda with caffeine. I down "caffeine" and I returned with caffeine free Dr. Pepper. Not helpful. I wish I could say this was a one time thing, but unfortunately I am a repeat offender.
Also, I now know that if you boil eggs long enough that they run out of water, they explode. Literally. The yolk pops out from the inside and launches a foot. No joke. A sad lesson to learn. And I now I have no breakfast, but a new found respect for the average egg. Oh, and a yellow kitchen. However, the good news is that I still have a kitchen and did not succeed in burning it down.
I had a friend who once theorized that instead of your children forming their own brain in the womb, they just take half of yours. Thus your brain power goes down by half for every child you have. I am beginning to believe it.
I am ashamed.
I hung Christmas lights the other day. I'm trying to convince myself that I just wanted to add a little ambiance to the room or blame it on the fact that Little loves them. That is false. I just wanted Christmas lights. I fully hang my head in shame, all the while wearing a silly little smile and sighing to myself because I'm enjoying them so much.
I am usually a strictly wait-until-the-day-after-Thanksgiving-to-even-hear-a-Christmas-song kind of girl, but for the last few years it has grown increasingly difficult. I don't know whether it is having Little or just an inevitable spillover because I love the Christmas season so much, but seriously... this is ridiculous.
I am the craftiest-of-all-crafty women
...and I think I need a tool belt.
I'm kidding about the craftiness thing (and only half kidding about the tool belt), but my latest project makes me feel more than slightly triumphant.
As I mentioned before--probably too many times to count--we live in a shoebox-sized apartment and thus have been forced to find all sorts of creative storage solutions. By the end of this stay, I am going to be the world's most organized and efficient human... and then we're going to have to leave this shoebox behind and start all over again in another one. Lame. But in the meantime, I think this one is my best solution yet. Our kitchen shelves hold maybe two boxes of cereal and a plate, so most of our food is in the hall closet (causing problems as we have a bug infestation of epic proportion at the moment. Blech.) and we needed to do some serious rearranging. I pulled a few ideas from the internet for pot racks--pallets, bicycle wheels, and some seriously awesome ladders--combined a few, and added a few ideas of my own to create this little beauty:
And my pride needs me to note that I managed to figure it out and build it all on my own (which doesn't look like a feat, but trust me... in my mental state, it was). Bryce helped me hang it, but that was mostly because he was home when the shelf supports came, otherwise this baby would've been all me.
Next up... The Closets: How to Turn a Closet into a Storage Room Without Making it Look Like a Storage Room.... I'll get back to you on that as I currently have not the foggiest clue.
Scripture power
I have used it here and there for personal scripture study, but I haven't really done the whole electronic scriptures thing much. However, I just discovered how awesome it is and I am never going back.
I have always been a hardbound book, millions of bookshelves, love the smell of paper kind of gal, but between the Kindle and the IPod... I'm feeling sort of like a traitor.
There is still nothing like flipping through the pages of your favorite book, but there is also something to be said for having all your favorite books with you EVERYWHERE YOU GO. Fantastic. Lets just say they are slowly winning me over to the dark (albeit paper saving) side.
I decided for my scripture study I am going to transfer all my notes that are worthwhile into the electronic scriptures on LDS.org and I am loving it. Not only do I get to study all my notes all over again, but I am finding that by doing it electronically, life is so much simpler. I can write a novel in the sidebar if I want to and it doesn't take up any space. I can link to everything I ever dreamed of linking too. It has all the colors my little highlight-happy heart could ask for. I can access not only the standard works, but General Conference, study helps, and every manual under the sun and link them all together. Plus, it is all quick and easy to find. Not to mention the fact that I can carry all this around in my back pocket.
In short, the Gospel is true, I love the scriptures, and I'm pretty sure making all this available at the touch of a button was divinely inspired just so I could get the spark back in my scripture study.
A typical conversation in our house
"Yes?"
"Mommio?"
"What's up?"
"Moooooommmmy?"
"What can I do for you?"
"Mommy?"
"Yes, sir?"
"MOM?!"
"What is it you need?"
...Continue this for about 15 minutes...
"What's this, Mommy?"
"A horse."
"What's this, Mommy?"
"A horse."
...repeat this pattern at least twelve times if not more...
"Mommy, is the horsey silly?"
"Yup."
...repeat this another twelve plus times...
"Oh. Daddy at work?"
"Yes, he is."
...Repeat this at least five times before...
"Mommy?"
"Yes?"
"Moooooomy?"
...You get the idea. Little is so fun to talk to and the most adorable human on the planet, but some days I think I'm changing my name.
Something important... wait, no... just more projects
I know I've been posting a lot lately, but I had to post just one more. Mostly because I finally got around to starting my teeny tiny little minuscule herb garden. I've always wanted a garden, despite the fact that I have no gardening skills and could probably manage to kill any potted plant in a 2 miles radius by wanting it to grow badly enough. However, it is one of the goals on my never ending list, so I figure, you have to start somewhere. I had planned to do a full blown garden this year (but figuring out how to get a plot from the housing people turned out to be way more complicated than it was worth), and then it turned into a hanging/half-hearted garden (but I couldn't find an old screen door/window/anything workable to do this: http://c497280.r80.cf2.rackcdn.com/2012/03/screen-door-plant-rack-cg.jpg), and then I thought it might be better to start small, so it turned into a simple herb garden which in my dreams will look like this:
Needless to say, any gardening tips would be most helpful.
Also... As a result of living in an apartment the size of a shoe box (not to mention our non-existent budget) we've been forced to find some rather creative storage solutions. The latest creation is this lovely hanging book storage system. Next time I think I'll hang them a little differently, but other than that, I'm please as punch. It also made me feel more than slightly triumphant that out of a some scrap pieces of fabric and a few dowel rods I created the perfect book solution and simultaneous solved the disaster that is Little's room.
The latest and greatest
Ok... so perhaps it is not the greatest, but let me explain why I'm so proud of this little cake: It started as a disaster. I kid you not. By the time Bryce came home my hands were dyed pink, I had been forced to change my clothes twice and Little's three times, there was frosting all over the kitchen from not one but two exploding containers and spewing bowl, cake scraps were everywhere from the oven to the counter from several overflowing cake pans... The list could go on for hours. Seriously. I should have taken before and after pictures. When I got it out of the oven it looked something akin to a science project gone horrifically wrong so I tried to cut it and frost it and fix the problem and I thought it was working up until the bright pink frosting started exploding across my kitchen and all over the newly frosted cake. I was about the bag the whole thing--which would have been something of a tragedy because it turns out from scratch red velvet cake is amazingly tasty--when I came up with a few brilliant solutions and figured out how to hide the poor cake's true nature for the most part, and this was the result. I'm so proud. And no, it's not the most fantastic cake there has ever been, but from where it started... it is pretty much a miracle.
Hello... my name is Haley and I'm a Stress-aholic.
I sort of hit a wall a while back and realized that my strange addiction to stress needed to stop lest I end up agoraphobic, if not in a padded white room. Luckily, I have a wonderful husband who acts as a resident therapist and tells me when I'm completely nutty and lets me talk it out until we're both exhausted, not to mention helping me set up parameters to keep myself in check, but following those parameters is growing increasingly challenging the more holidays we go through.
Admittedly, it is ridiculous to be addicted to stress and as with most of my silly, self-created issues, I wish I weren't so serious about it, but I mean it quite literally. I don't know when, but somehow stress stopped being a symptom and started being an outlet. Problem being that it has the unfortunate side effect of making me crazy. Seriously. Ridiculous. My sister and I were talking about it a while back and she told me something that stuck with me: "You are way too careful with your laundry, so you ruin it."
Let me explain... Ever since I started doing my own laundry it has been a cardinal sin in my family for anyone other than myself to do it. Reason being that I am ridiculously careful about following instructions/overly caring for most of my articles of clothing. Yet somehow, inexplicably it always gets ruined anyway. It is a mystery of epic proportion how this happens all the time. But happen it does. And granted, I'm not as careful as I once was (a necessity of motherhood I suppose), but I'm still careful, and it still gets ruined.
So, when my sister said, "Haley, you do this with everything. You are way too careful with your laundry, so you ruin it," we of course started laughing immediately because she almost accidentally stumbled upon a very effective mantra for my life. I spend my time worrying and fretting about something going wrong, making endless lists of possibilities, and doing everything humanly possible to avoid them and then they happen anyway (and sometimes because I spent so much effort trying to avoid it). Even if there isn't something legitimate to worry about, rest assured, I can find something. In short, it's a never ending cycle of stress. Hence the need to do something about it.
And now... back to the point: At this time of year when stress is a staple and making lists is fully sanctioned, I am having a backslide, an extinction burst if you will. Blech. I love Christmas, I do, but it turns out it is a challenge for a recovering stress-aholic.
That said, Hooray! for Christmas. I love this season and if I remind myself enough of why we have it, my stresses don't matter one bit. I'm totally not scrooging Christmas; in fact this year I sort of get two Christmases as we're headed to the Lowders for a fun-filled, stress free, three-week Christmas extravaganza, but we don't want to bring our gifts for each other, so we are having a pre-Christmas, and a real Christmas when we get to California. I couldn't be more excited.
Or more stressed.
And now... back to the point: At this time of year when stress is a staple and making lists is fully sanctioned, I am having a backslide, an extinction burst if you will. Blech. I love Christmas, I do, but it turns out it is a challenge for a recovering stress-aholic.
That said, Hooray! for Christmas. I love this season and if I remind myself enough of why we have it, my stresses don't matter one bit. I'm totally not scrooging Christmas; in fact this year I sort of get two Christmases as we're headed to the Lowders for a fun-filled, stress free, three-week Christmas extravaganza, but we don't want to bring our gifts for each other, so we are having a pre-Christmas, and a real Christmas when we get to California. I couldn't be more excited.
Or more stressed.
By small and chigger things are great things brought to pass
Or how God shows his love through chigger babies
Let me preface this by saying that I hate chigger babies. And not just hate. I loath them with all the fiery purple passion in my little being. This hatred has been completely unfounded (and admittedly still irrational), but let me just put it out there that any species where the babies pose the threat doesn't get my vote.
And so... on with the story. When we got home that night we put Little right to bed, so when I found our little monstrous friends--while sitting on the bed no less--I was freaking out. Completely irrational. How many are there? Where are they hiding? What dreaded diseases could I/my family now have? Had I put my baby to sleep in a bed of chigger babies? Had they already carried him away to eat him? I wish I could say that my thoughts hadn't gotten that far, but that wasn't far off. I told Heavenly Father that I knew it was a silly thing to ask, but that I needed to know what to do about the stinking chigger babies and how to calm down. Immediately I felt better and I knew what to do. Sadly it required waking up Little and another half hour or so of insuring no chigger babies were left unsmooshed, but we escaped the experience with only one chigger bite (thankfully on me, not Little). Anyway... it made me think just how much Heavenly Father loves me and even more, how well He knows me. Anyone would know I needed help if it was some big ordeal, but who needs rescuing from small insects? To the average person, chigger babies are not the end of the world. I wasn't bleeding by the side of the road. The proof is in the small things. The fact that He loves me enough to give me comfort when the only person it is a big deal to is me. Isn't that a lovely thought?
Making the laws of the universe simpler
Raising cane
So... we're back. And hopefully that means back to blogging. I make no promises, but I will do my best to make sure it isn't a month before the next post. Not that I have anything terribly relevant to say other than "we're back," but since when has that stopped me from blogging, eh?
So for lack of something better to share, let me share the oh-so-fantastic surprise we found upon our return (and yes... that is indeed a seemingly unimportant and utterly pointless cane hanging in the tree outside of our apartment).
To explain the joy of this we have to go back about a year to a Halloween party. We bought aforementioned cane to complete Bryce's costume, but afterwards couldn't quite figure out what to do with it. It floated around from place to place in the house, and even down to the storage unit a few times, but in a moment of purging, it was finally decided that we no longer needed to keep it around it for our not-so-geriatric selves and I told Bryce that he could go ahead and throw it away. We went about our business, cane-less and perfectly fine with that until a few days later when I looked up at the tree outside of our apartment, and there it was... our very own cane hanging from the branches. Bryce had apparently been waiting for me to discover it. I got a good laugh and left it there until I could go out and return it to the dumpster the next day. However, upon waking up the next day I found that it had moved. It was still in the tree, but in a different location. And thus it has been every morning since. Every now and again we'd see the neighbor kids playing with it or see it on the ground around the yard, but always it ends up back in our tree. I said my final goodbye to it as we headed out for the summer (I didn't really, but we did have a conversation about the slim chances of it being there when we got home) and then I promptly forgot all about it. That is until we pulled into the apartment at 2:00 am and saw it sitting in our tree, a little worse for wear, but still welcoming us home. Melodramatic, I know. However, the impressive part of the tale is that we had a storm to beat all storms the other night--lightning, hail, trees blowing over, etc. When we woke up in the morning, outside of our apartment was a disaster. There were tree branches everywhere and all sorts of craziness, but there sat our cane, like it hadn't noticed a thing in the night. We've decided it's a land mark.
So there you have it, a needlessly long story simply to say that I'm glad to be home and I think I might really miss it if my poor little weather beaten cane were to one day disappear.
Being a turtle is not so bad
There are the usual things I find when I haven't been home for a while: the neighborhood changes, having trouble finding my way around because of all the new building/freeway expansions, etc. And having been out East for a while there are new things to notice: the different color of the trees here, just how big the mountains are, the dry air that makes it hard to breathe if you move too fast and makes you realize the vital importance of lotion.... But the biggest thing I've noticed since I've been here is how I look at all of it. I love Utah--who can help it when you are surrounded by such beautiful mountains and fabulous people?--but I'm a visitor now. Which leaves me asking, when did it stop being home to me? I mean, it will still always feel a little like home because it holds so many memories, family, and friends, but now home is a different feeling all together. Home is waking up to little yells of "knock, knock mama" from the other room, and the pitter patter of little feet and growls as he comes to "surprise" attack your knee caps, and listening for silence because that means he is up to something he shouldn't be. Home is knowing my husband will be back at the end of the day with a kiss and a rescue attempt from the insanity that is life, or a silly song when I'm feeling not-so-hot, or staying up until all hours of the night talking and laughing about who knows what. Home isn't attached to a place anymore for me. Home is what I carry with me everywhere I go. When did I get so lucky? Maybe it's because we've turned into nomadic turtles who can load our entire house on our back at a moments notice and make do if the need arises, or maybe it's because my priorities have completely changed, or maybe I just don't have enough brain capacity to focus on both people and a place being home anymore. Whatever it is, I'm grateful for my little home and my little men who fill it up with love.
Twas the night before Dad's Day and all through the house, not a gift was delivered, not one for my spouse
It is Father's Day in two days and I am officially the worst present giver in the world. In my defense, Bryce is the worst present receiver in the world (for various reasons that would take far too long to discuss in this post), but all the same, he will not have one present to open on Father's day. Here is my problem: I ponder and ponder for months in advance until I find the perfect gift for the person, I purchase it right away (usually still months in advance), then get excited--full to the brim with the thought of giving my perfect gift and what joys it will bring, then I spill over and somehow (whether intentionally or no) spill the beans to the person, then I have to repeat the process all over again so that they will have an actual gift on the date. Why don't I just write a card as a reminder of said gift? you ask... because a gift isn't a good gift if you already know all about it. So say I. However, for this Father's Day, I was going to be smart. I decided to wait until the last minute to get the gift so I wouldn't give it away. And now I sit, the day before Father's Day-eve and his gift is still in transit. Curse my gift giving tendencies! Good thing Bryce knows we love him anyway.
Lots of good things
Two things...
Item One: I went with my sister to help her with a class she teaches for Poppyseed Projects and fell in love. Seriously. Fantastic. I am not much of a scrapbooker--and by "not much" I mean, my attempts usually look more like a kindergarten art project gone awry. Sewing, cakes, wire, even wood, those I can get at least a salvageable product with enough time and effort, but no matter how much I try to scrapbook, it always turns out the same. Give me yarn and paint over paper any day. So, needless to say, I was a little wary of making one of these because when I heard about it/saw a project I thought it would be every scrapbookers dream (read: my nightmare) to make, but it wasn't. It was absolutely doable and now I understand what all the hub-bub is about because every single project turned out looking fantastic. There is nothing to make you feel more crafty than something that takes you 2 hours (or less) to put together and looks like it took days (or more). I didn't even make one for me and I felt slightly triumphant at the end of the class just seeing all of them. I'm going to go make one on June 25th and if anyone else wants to, my sister has plenty more room in the class. I'm so excited to have a picture of the temple up (to replace the dinky little one we have sticky tacked to the wall that barely even counts). Anyway... The point of this is to say I have missed being in the land of two-story craft stores and do-it-yourself everything and it is going to be a challenge to not bring home my body weight in sewing patterns, craft supplies, and crafty doings.
Item Two:
This was posted on one of the blogs I follow and I thought it was worthy of sharing. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/05/mormons-rock.html
It just makes me happy to be Mormon, you know? Not that I wouldn't be pleased as punch to be a member of what Bryce's former boss refers to as "the club," even if it had the worst publicity in the world, but it warms my heart when I read articles like this and see good LDS people getting good recognition and helping others who are not of our faith get a real view of who we are. Hooray!
"If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." - Lewis Carroll
I had an epiphany the other day; and this time it wasn't one of those I've-lost-my-mind-isn't-it-laughable ones, it was a real, legitimate epiphany for me. It started because I had a moment of divine intervention about something that has been on my mind a lot lately and in reporting it to Bryce later realized that the reason I pegged it as revelation was because it was a logical/reasonable thought process. It made perfect sense in my head, so it must be revelation from heaven. Now, this may simply mean that I have crossed the line from quirky to completely insane, but I'd like to think that it just means I have some mental work to do.
Bryce is always the logical one, this is no mystery to anyone, but because of this I've let what small amount of logic I have slip out the window. With every time I've spent three hours trying to figure something out in the only way I can think to do it and Bryce has come home and showed me a much faster/easier way to do the same thing in 5 seconds or less, I find myself doing those things less and less. I don't tax my brain anymore or even bother to try to figure it out because I know if I wait for Bryce to come home, he will do it better. There are 2 major problems I see with this, a: Sometimes Bryce isn't around much/doesn't have the time and b: I am quickly losing the ability to use the logical part of my brain. Not to mention the fact that it is placing a large handicap on my confidence level. It sounds silly, but I am absolutely serious and slightly dreading the fact that I am going to have to put my logical mind to use despite how much it grunts and groans about it after so long of sitting generally dormant.
In other more exciting news, we've almost survived finals. There have been quite a few sleep-related incidents, and being woken up in the middle of the night to Bryce spouting law reviews or Latin terminologies explaining that he's just finishing the conversation we were having (a conversation that never existed as it is 3 AM and I was sound asleep), but other than that we are unscathed. We also found out the other day that we are going to spend part of the summer in Utah. And though packing our stuff and getting us all ready to leave in 2 weeks is not my idea of fun, it will be a good experience.
Dinosaurs and disillusionment
Not that I ever had any grand illusions about this, but I can't spell. This is a recent rather disheartening discovery. If we're being honest, I can't say it's entirely recent as I've been attempting to find comfort in blaming my deteriorating mental state on motherhood for quite some time now--and yes, there has been a serious decline in brain functionality since Little's been around; however, apparently my problems are much deeper. I hit a new low when, while walking in the baby clothing section, I had an epiphany (as much as I wish it weren't the case, the amount of awe and shock I felt can only be classified that way). There is a word, not a very common word, but one everyone knows (read: should have known how to spell from the third grade). A word seldom seen in print, but simple enough to be placed on a baby's t-shirt. A word that has caused me to question my existence as a college graduate. A word that I am way too embarrassed to actually mention. I took one look at that little baby shirt with aforementioned word printed on it and realized that my entire life I've been spelling it wrong, and not just wrong, egregiously so. It starts with a completely different letter for heavens sake! Now, I recognize that this post is ridiculously over-dramatic, but there really is no doing justice to the trauma I felt when faced with the staggering reality of my mental state. Ok. Dramatics done. Simply put: I would lose horribly if I ever played "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" and I find myself wondering how on earth I expect to write a book (or even a coherent sentence) in my current state.
Welcome to Spring
Bryce: "Hey, lets get rid of everything we own when we have to move again and just get all new stuff." (When we actually have a job of course)
Me: "But that'd be so expensive!"
Bryce: (insert some reminder about the cost of moving and storage)
Me: "But...but...but..."
and so forth and so on. I always win of course, but not because I have any sort of logical reason to keep any of it. I mean, yes the furniture works, but none of it fits together in the least. Yes, the kitchen stuff is limping along, but most of it is really worn out and crappy. Yes, the bookshelves are great for storage, but what bookshelf isn't? I don't have any excuse for most of the stuff in the basement storage, so that I win on pure sentimentality--which would be fine if it was all pictures and love notes, but most of it is extra kitchen stuff and decorations, or that thing that I keep saying "someday I'll use" but never have yet. I realized the other day that with every move, and every thought of moving, Bryce wins me over to his side by doing nary a thing; he just sits back and lets logic slowly seep into my brain (which is far more difficult than it should be).
My conclusion: the sentimentality/usefulness of a thing is directly proportional to a: the distance it has to be moved, and b: the amount of times it has to be moved.
Also... Dear Spring, I'm so glad you are here again. Oh! How I've missed you!
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