A Post for My Mom

It seems only fitting that I write a post for my mom. I would post it on Mother's Day, but I will be at my parents' home for most of the day and we will be having family gathering-ness going on.

Besides, I also got her a gift and a card.

So without further ado, here is a bulleted list of things I've learned from my mother--by word, deed, and example:

• Don't talk with your mouth full.
• If you decide to tell a lie, try to make it at least a little believable. But even if it is believable, it won't matter. Mothers always know when you're lying.
• A laugh can turn a day around.
• Sometimes all it takes to make a body laugh is the right newspaper clipping.
• Even if the pun is not funny, your reaction to the pun may be so hysterical people will laugh anyway.
• It's possible to learn a whole heck of a lot when you have a desire to learn it.
• You take a 'picture' (pik-tchur) with a camera. You pour water from a pitcher (pit-chur).
• Kraft.com has some excellent recipes.
• The best books leave you feeling better when you've finished reading them.
• It's good to live near relatives.
• Singing and dancing make the work go faster.
• Even if singing and dancing sometimes cause others a certain amount of aggravated embarrassment.
• Sometimes it's just best to ignore the annoying sibling.
• Your attitude determines a lot of your life circumstances.
• Mothers always want to be near their children. Even when their children are being pesky.
• Don't burp. Even if it's funny. Even if it's funny when mom burps.
• Pay attention to dad.
• Good relationships involve excellent communication. Such excellent communication that it's possible to play Mom against Dad. Or vice versa.
• Cinnamon and cocoa look and smell remarkably different.
• You can't add garlic to just anything.
• Self-rising yeast has different properties than regular yeast.
• It feels good to give things away.
• Having sewing skills makes for some pretty darn cheap formal dresses. Also matching shorts. But the matching shorts came long before the dresses.
• Books can never replace people.
• Musical talent should not be wasted.
• Talking about it makes things better. Yelling about it--not so much.
• Staying at home to look after munchkins is not ignoble.
• Cleanliness is next to godliness.
• All of the neighbors love surprise zucchini. But they love surprise zucchini bread even more.
• Shoes are optional during the summer. Feet need to breathe.
• Playing in the dirt can be fun. Especially when it involves enjoying the vegetables of your labors.
• Chew with your mouth closed.
• Always be polite.
• Speak to the people serving you. You never know what you'll learn from a random conversation.
• Everyone loves the person who knows everyone's name.
• You can't settle on the first sweater you see.
• Smiling makes even an ugly person's countenance pretty.
• Reading your scriptures every day will make life easier.
• If you bake five loaves of bread, give one of them away. Someone needs it.
• It's never a burden to watch the neighbor's kids or pick up their newspaper while they're on vacation.
• Prayer works.
• Prayer works even better when an earnest mother is praying for some of the same things you are.
• Scripture power does keep us safe from sin.
• The scriptures will never get old.
• The prophet and apostles are all nice old men and we should love them. Even if they ramble.
• It's not cool to sleep through church. Except it's kind of inevitable to nod off a little during the last session of General Conference.
• Some church-wide revelation is given just for us.
• The right spouse can do wonders for a difficult child.
• It is not completely heretical to laugh before, after, or during family prayer. Heavenly Father has a sense of humor.
• It is also not heretical to add, after saying amen, "And please bless the Jazz."
• Priesthood blessings make coping with life easier. Even when they don't make life itself easier.
• Questioning the doctrine is sometimes good, as long as it's done with a prayerful and open mind and a desire to understand.
• Worrying about the "deep doctrine" is pointless. Even if it does make for interesting dinnertime conversation.
• Families can be together forever. And that, by definition, is heaven. (I believe it when I think about my mom. I get a little iffy about the propositions sometimes about my siblings . . .)
• God and my mom love all of their children equally.
• Living a gospel-centered life means never being dissatisfied with how you're living.

Collecting Thoughts

I suppose that, for me, it is inevitable.  Now that I'm more or less bored out of my head for seven-and-a-half of the eight hours of my work day because there simply is not enough to do around here, blogging provides an excellent outlet.  Which means that all of you who read my blog are about to get the joy of having at least one blog per work day.  More if there's more material in my brain than can be fit into a tidy blog entry.

 

(And by tidy, I mean somewhere around six paragraphs.  I tend to lose patience with long blog entries unless I'm very intrigued with the ideas presented therein.  So if I've ever left you a comment and you thought, "Hey, she sort of misinterpreted what I was saying!" Well, um . . . it's possible I reacted without reading the entry all the way through.)

 

Anyway, today I shall treat you to a number of random thoughts and questions that have been running through my head:

 

The word 'epistolary' is usually used to refer to a work comprised entirely of letters.  Is there an equivalent for something comprised entirely of e-mails?  E-epistolary, perhaps?

 

It's amazing how much my readership numbers spike when I mention a movie star.  My review of Shattered Glass spawned more hits in a day than anything else I've written.  Either that, or people like to google Hayden Christensen far more than even I would have thought possible.  (Maybe they're doing what I'm doing--hunting to see what he's done well.  Poor lad has gained such a reputation from his turn as Anakin.)

 

Sometimes, I dig myself into a hole because I aim too low--and hit the mark dead-on.

 

Happiness is a state of mind that is harder to achieve when my head hurts.

 

"Going out on a limb" means there is a higher-than-average probability that the branch will break.

 

Is there a reason I'm not writing a novel right now?  (Heh.  I almost wrote 'write now' instead.)

 

How does a person get past the 'If only I had done (or not done) x, life would be different" mentality?

Oh Yeah, THIS is Why . . .

Back in the day, when I worked at the glorious WSU Writing Center, I found myself more or less constantly befuddled at how I managed to gain the status of the resident Femi-Nazi. I'm no Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan.

My boss at the time rejoiced in having a kindred spirit--and though you could hardly call her radical, she seemed like--well, Gloria Steinem--in comparison to me.

I will readily admit that I believe there are certain contexts where women can perform as well as men, given the chance. The business world. (The glass ceiling, unfortunately, does exist. And far too few women shatter it.) The academic world. In certain arenas of the sports world.

Women are even on the rise in politics. (Not that I am particularly fond of most of the women on the rise in politics, but that's a different blog for a different day)

Anyway, last night I think I figured out why--aside from the aforementioned ideas I may have been a little vocal about--I became labeled as such a feminist. And it kind of made me laugh a little.

I refuse to ask a man to help me do anything I'm sure I can do myself.

But this doesn't make me any sort of feminist, because this behavior isn't restricted to just men. I refuse to ask anybody to help me do anything I'm sure I can do myself.

So here's the situation: my roommate and I have a new roommate moving in next Wednesday, and she is moving into my room. I am moving into the same room as my current roommate. We like having three roomies, because rent is cheaper. But that involves sharing, and our new roommate (who we dearly, dearly wanted to be the one to move in with us) had one requirement: her own room.

Anyway, I was more than happy to accommodate, but I didn't think about how I'd have to move my furniture. My bed, desk, and dresser will relocate to their new home in the other bedroom. And the bookshelves would have to be removed to the living room. (Which makes them a conversation topic for everyone who visits, because everyone is guaranteed to ask "Who reads this much?")

A week ago, I had removed all of the books from my bookshelves because my home teachers were supposed to visit. And since I was recently informed that men like to feel "manly useful" (which involves moving things and not, say, showing someone how to use a fickle digital piano as an organ for sacrament meeting), I thought I would help boost their egos by asking them to help me move the shelves.

Except they rescheduled. And so the books have rested, lined up in tidy rows on my floor, for a week. I didn't want to re-shelve them until the shelves were in their new places. Besides, the home teachers had rescheduled to four days in the future. I could wait till then. And by boosting his ego, I would feel I'd restored some of the confidence I'd unintentionally shattered when I talked to the new home teacher. (I may have--unintentionally--implied that he was wimpy, out-of-shape, and ignorant. Let me again emphasize--unintentional!! Don't worry--it has been duly noted that I need to exercise my filter a little more than I did.) But then they canceled.

Anyway, last night I decided that the bookshelves needed to move. They needed to move right then. And I could hardly expect my home teachers to show up spontaneously. Besides, I had a distinct impression I could move them on my own.

It would be a lie to say that moving them was one of the easiest things I've ever done, but it would also be lying to say it was one of the hardest. And they are tall shelves, so calling it a little awkward might be employing a little litote.

But I moved them. What can I say? As I told my roommate, I was having an I-am-woman, hear-me-roar kind of moment. And I didn't want to have to wait for a man in order to do something I could do perfectly well all by myself.

I blame my parents. They raised us to be as independent as we could possibly be. But let it be known: independence and feminism are not the same things.

(And unfortunately, I do need help to move the desk. So I'll try to be a good child and help my home teachers feel manly useful.)

Sorry, Carpenters but . . .

Rainy days and Sundays do not always get me down.

 

I actually appreciate Sundays more than I appreciate any other of the weekdays.  They are mellow days.  Morning is occupied by church, and then the rest of the day is mine.  To be filled with walks.  With reading.  With naps.  With long, winding trails of conversation traversed by my roommate and me.  With baking.  With delivering baked goods.  With visiting and being visited.  And most importantly, with no set schedule.  Structure, on Sundays, seems like the sort of thing that only happens in dreams.

 

And while I don't always appreciate rainy days, rainy days in the spring tend to have the most remarkable calming effect on me.  Early snow storms have the same effect on me.  Fewer people are out and about, and the world is quiet.  So still.

 

So still--and yet, growing.

 

It gives me hope.

Talk is cheap.

Except, I imagine, for the people who pay the salaries of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Sean Hannity, et al.

 

And yet, we live in an information-driven society.  A society that, by virtue of its information-as-currency model, places a great deal of value on information.  In talk.  Because that is how we receive information, after all.  By communicating it.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."  These days, I think some of us are talking so loudly that nobody around can tell if there is anything we are actually doing.

 

It's a society increasingly devoid of people willing to stand up and admit accountability for their actions.  Because after all, we just said that. 

 

What an engaging paradox for me to think about.  (And trust me, I've had a lot of thinking time lately.)  We value information; we respect and acknowledge those who know more than we do (while, of course, we simultaneously hate that they know more than we do).  And yet we devalue our main methods of exchanging that information.

 

After all, how many times do you act on a serious conversation you've had?  Or on something you've read.

 

To be frank, I'm far better and also far worse when the information affects my immediate existence in some way.

 

I'm far better when I'm feeling threatened.  And far worse when I have gathered data indicating I need to change something in an existence I have started to find otherwise comfortable.

 

And here is what I've learned about myself: self-talk is especially cheap.  Especially because the commitments I make to myself are the easiest to break.  The chasm between what I say to myself and what I do is roughly forty billion times wider than the gap between what I say to and do for others.

 

I would resolve to be more accountable to myself, but . . .

Because Even Movie Stars Deserve a Fair Shake

Who knew this guy could actually act? I had no idea.

That is, I had no idea until 3:30 Saturday afternoon, which was when I finished watching Shattered Glass.

Shattered Glass is the story of Stephen Glass, an up-and-coming young journalist who worked for The New Republic in the late 1990s. Think of him as the precursor to our newest generation of journalists/writers-with-issues. (Think Jayson Blair and James Frey for a more recent parallel.) When he published a piece called "Hack Heaven," and a Forbes.com reporter busted the piece wide open by discovering nothing or nobody cited in the article checked out, Glass tried to defend himself but ended up burying himself in lies that became so obvious that his editor connected the dots.

Anyway, because I'm me, and if you know me at all, I have to read up on someone or something before I watch a factual movie about them. And what I read had some very clear identifiers about Stephen Glass: an effeminate man, bordering on the seemingly gay. Not just self-effacing, but more or less a paranoiac who constantly asked "Are you mad at me?" And someone who transformed himself any time he spoke about one of his stories in meetings.

And I have to say--Hayden Christensen was masterful in this movie. He displayed the appropriate tics. Asked "Are you mad at me?" with just the right tinge of paranoia and pleading in his voice. And could transform himself, literally from a snivelling sycophant ("My story's not that good. I'll probably scratch it.") to a workplace rock star--as he enacted situations that had never existed and people who were born and thrived only in his head.

It was fabulous, as well, to watch his decline. As the movie started, you could see this peculiar blend of mild paranoia and confidence. In fact, the character was such a paradox to begin with--this desperate desire to please with this near-perfect confidence that whatever he wrote would be well-received.

And as the movie progressed, the dark circles under his eye grew and you could fell the character being more taut. More tense. More strained. And increasingly ready to defend himself and his writing and to insist that anyone who attacked his writing must have some type of personal beef.

As you can tell, I'm not the most spectacular reviewer. But I've got to wonder why this guy has made some of the career choices he has. Sure, toward the end, I could see hints of the ever-angry Anakin. But they fit. And this was, by no means, a one-note performance. I think that I could maybe--maybe--call his turn as Anakin a two-note performance. (Mostly because he looked more or less brooding to me throughout Episode II, and then he seemed angry throughout Episode III. And though I know they weren't intended this way, they came off as more comedy than drama. In fact, I think I laughed harder during those two films than I did through films that were billed as comedies)

As I said, everyone deserves a fair shake. Even movie stars.

What is now completely incomprehensible to me is that he doesn't seem to be giving himself a fair shake.

Either that, or he's opting for roles that amount to: "Hey, Hayden. Please just stand in front of the camera and look good. We'll pay you well to do it."

I sincerely hope he realizes he can do more. And he has.

P.S. Seriously, watch this movie. And then watch the Sixty Minutes interview included as a special feature and tell me if you think the real Stephen Glass really seems contrite to you. I'm curious.

Life: It Keeps A-Changin'

When I took AP Biology in high school, I remember a deep sense of anticipation when I realized we were soon going to be studying Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.  My school, and particularly my AP classes, were predominantly LDS.  And only the most liberal among us had the nerve to even speculate about being descended from apes.

 

And then, much to my surprise, I agreed with Darwin on something.  Part of the premise of natural selection is that those who are most adaptable are those who are most likely to survive.  And this idea of adaptability as success and survival tool made a great deal of sense to me then.

 

This idea makes even more sense to me now than it did to me then.  Ever since graduating from college, my life has been a steady barrage of change.  First a break-up.  Then a job.  A move.  A shift in job responsibilities. A test.  Graduate applications. Three sets of home teachers.  Another move.  Job changes.  Roommate changes.

 

In fact, if nothing much changed for a sustained period of time, I would begin to suspect I had died and somehow not realized it.

 

Whenever people used to talk about how the only constant is change, I used to snort; as a teenager, I was a particularly inflexible sort of person.  Everything in my world was supposed to go the way I expected, and change was completely unacceptable.  Especially change I had not orchestrated.  I needed to feel in control then, and that was how I thought I controlled my world best--by refusing to accept anything outside of my rigid life view.

 

My mother used to recite one of her favorite proverbs to me: "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape."  I would roll my eyes, thinking "I'm solid steel.  No bending here."  (I found my views on steel shattered later, when I learned that the hardest types of steel are also the most brittle.)

 

The transition from my freshman year of college to my sophomore year beat any ideas of inflexibility out of me.  A transfer from one school to another required a great deal of flexibility, an adjustment of certain mindsets, and a near infinite amount of patience as I transferred records and mapped out my new path.

 

After that, I decided fighting change was a losing battle.  Those who can surf the wave of change are those who find themselves staying on top of the situations instead of folding under.  Better yet, the best change surfers find ways of directing the wave.