A Book Review, and a Goal

I just finished reading The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance a few days ago, and I greatly enjoyed it. In reading feedback from others, I've found this memoir seems to be of the love it or hate it variety. Nobody who feels a need to discuss this book seems to be shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Meh. Didn't really care."

I laughed; I cringed; I groaned; I empathized.

Most of the camp who have hated the novel seem to hate Elna's portrayal of herself as Mormon, but as a Mormon who does not behave in the strictest sense of the stereotyped definition of our faith. (I honestly knew I would love the book when she dedicates the book, minus the swear words and a couple of racy scenes, to her parents.) She swears; she struggles with physical boundaries; she doesn't exclusively date men from her faith. More importantly, she questions: she's not always sure about how she fits into her faith and she's not always sure how to explain what she believes. Hell, she's not always sure what she does believe. That doesn't make her unfaithful; in his November CES fireside talk, President Uchtdorf defined LDS church members as a "question-asking people" because "inquiry leads to truth."

I enjoyed the book because it felt so utterly honest and it rang true to my experiences. (And mind you, I have yet to move outside Utah! But Salt Lake City has a liberal scene all its own; and as a graduate student in a liberal arts program, I often find myself purposefully avoiding most church settings except my Sunday meetings, because I believe the doctrines--but I don't think that the culture is true. In fact, the culture can be exceedingly difficult to swallow sometimes.)

That said, if swearing offends you (and it would offend you even more coming from a Mormon mouth) or if you can't handle a candid discussion of sexual boundaries (including a couple of racy scenes--that, to be honest, I didn't find terribly scandalous...but I'm an English graduate student, and after several years of studying literature, I probably have a more broad definition of "racy" than most), this book isn't for you.

Now, onto the goal part: after reading the book, I admire something she addresses in the book: an ability to say "yes" to many, many things. As she notes, there's a power to saying yes: you never know where--or what--it will get you. And I've decided that's my new goal--to say "yes" to more of the opportunities I'm presented. To stop rationalizing away opportunities. To live a little. (Or who knows? Maybe a lot.)

A New Year

Another year has come and gone--far too quickly, it seems. I used to think time would never pass as quickly as I wanted; years used to feel eternities long. Now time passes more quickly than I wish it to, and I find myself expecting change. Welcoming change, even. And this year will be a year of change.

I should (if all goes according to plan, but really--since when has all gone according to plan?) graduate from my program this spring. And then I'm not sure what I'll do. Where I'll be. It seems like a time of infinite possibilities, I've decided. Sure, it's a little bit petrifying to think I should be planning on what to do with the rest of my life, but I figure that it's always served me best to make it up as I go along.

Last year I made a set of goals, and now I don't remember what they are. I can't decide if that means they weren't important enough or if I need to learn a little self-discipline. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

I can think of all kinds of idealistic goals I could make, but I'm not sure I want to make any of them; if I think of anything I actually feel an urge to express, I'll tell you. In the meantime, I welcome 2010 with open arms . . . preparing myself to embrace whatever life throws me at this year.

Or, at the very least, to catch whatever life throws at me--if only for a second, before I drop it.

Knowing It All

So this is one of the funniest gifts I received this year from one of my roommates, who spent a week prior to our actual gift unwrappings telling me that she could not wait to see my reaction when I opened up one of my gifts from her.

If you know me well at all, you know I do have a certain predilection for being a know-it-all. In recent years, I've curbed back my tendencies because--believe it or not--I've realized that I don't know it all. I've accepted that I don't know it all. And I have never claimed, in recent days, that I know everything. (Because really, who knows everything? And to be honest, who on earth would be crazy enough to want to know everything?)

On a random and only semi-related note, after I introduced my Dad to the Harry Potter books, he spent three months or so teasingly calling me Hermione. Except he pronounced it Her-me-own, despite my insistence on its pronunciation of Her-my-oh-knee. Looking back, I realize that teenage me did not realize for far too long that I was reinforcing his teasing.

I'll admit I'm a wealth of useless information. I can still sing the entire theme song to Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers. I can quote pretty much the entirety of How the Grinch Stole Christmas verbatim. If I've seen it or read it, I can recall particular lines or particular parts of text that impressed me when I first read or saw it.

But recently, I've decided that my apparent know-it-all-ness tends, in my case, to lead to providing information for other people. To clarify: I don't mind. But knowing a lot of information leads to requests to either a) be provided information or b) be led to information. (And I'll be honest. I only provide information to a certain point before setting people free with a road map to the info. Teach a man to fish and all that.)

So I'm resolving, this year, to be stupid. Or to appear stupid. Or, at the very least, not to give the impression of having more knowledge than I actually have. We'll see how well it works out.

Ballerina Bunny Bag

Oh, that I had a camera. Because if I had a camera, I would take a picture of my ballerina bunny bag and post it here. Instead, you'll have to settle with a description. I periodically forget that I still have it, but I can't help smiling every time I come across it.

My ballerina bunny bag is small. It's pink. And it has a lace-fringed heart stitched onto it. A cross-stitched ballerina bunny, more or less en-pointe, occupies the center of the heart. She's wearing a blue tutu, blue toe shoes, and she has a blue bow in her hair.

I have had this bag for almost twenty years. My mom made it for me when I started ballet lessons. (I believe I was five. Maybe six.) I used to carry my own shoes in it. And my, how I loved this ballerina bunny bag. Really, I still love this ballerina bunny bag.

Like my printer, it has served many functions. I didn't last very long in ballet, so the ballerina bunny bag became a book-carrying ballerina bunny bag I used to take down to the Bookmobile. As I recall, my voracious reading habits threatened to split the seams more than once. But my mom always mended the bag, and I kept finding inventive ways of packing ten or more books into it.

I've carried notebooks in it. I've moved it to every new place with me. Much to my dismay, if I couldn't find a different bag, it sometimes came with me to my first job. ("Really," she would say, "Isn't it time to get rid of that?") I've come to agree that it's probably not something to carry around anymore, but I will never get rid of it. And this is why: my mother made it for me.

She's a skilled seamstress and adept with a needle, so I'm sure that neither the cross-stitching nor the sewing took her long. But it was, nevertheless, an hour or two (if even that) that she took to make something for me. An hour or two when she had five little children, each of us with five different sets of activities.

This bag has a tendency to pop up, sometimes seemingly from nowhere, when I feel as though I've been ignored or as though I'm inadequate or as though nobody really knows me personally in quite the way I wish they would or could. It pops up when I feel disliked or un-loved. And every time, it serves as a visible reminder of one earthly person who has always loved me and who knows me and accepts me.

Any time I mention it, Mom begs me to get rid of it. But I can't. It's a visible reminder of a parent's love and I just can't let that go. I rather imagine that once I have a child, they will hear the story of a magically appearing ballerina bunny bag. And then they will see the proof. It's an odd thing to keep as a keepsake, I'm sure.

But how many tangible reminders do we get? And how easily can we let them go?

In Memoriam

Today, I mourn the loss of a friend. Not a human friend, because I doubt I'd be able to blog about such a loss on the evening it occurred.

No, I mourn the loss of a near and dear piece of technology: my printer.

In a last brave attempt to provide me with the reading for tomorrow (yes, I procrastinated my homework for my tomorrow afternoon class, but hello! Thanksgiving break!), my dear HP Deskjet 920c choked on one last piece of paper. It sputtered a final farewell. And then, it worked no more.

I'll miss it.

You may think me strange, but this printer has followed me since the summer of 2002. The summer I headed straight down to BYU for a summer semester instead of reveling in my last days of being an irresponsible teenager. My parents gave it to me as a graduation present. This printer never left me. It moved down to Provo, it moved back home with me to Centerville. It moved to my friend's condo with me (in another part of Centerville) and then back home once more.

If I was a boomerang child who constantly bounced back home, my printer boomeranged right along with me. It endured the entirety of my undergraduate education and almost three-fourths of my master's work. My first real-life, full-time job in the corporate world.

It moved with me to my first apartment in Salt Lake City. And it's moved twice more, to different SLC locations, as I've moved on with my life. It printed faithfully (albeit slowly...seriously, I could sometimes straighten my hair, apply make-up, and change my outfit a couple of times before it printed my longer seminar papers) until this fateful evening.

This printer stayed with me through several classes, several boyfriends, and several roommates. It endured crowded space on the floor when I didn't clean; it suffered (unintentional) kicks as I moved back and forth across my messy room in the dark. It printed the poetry and essays of others, but showed fairness and equality in printing all of my poetry and all of my essays just as easily. As tidily.

Rest in peace, my fair printer.

Also, for the record, you chose a heckuva time to die. (Seriously? This close to the end of the semester?)

Random Conversations

Sometimes, I don't even know how things pop into my brain. But sometimes they result in interesting conversations. To wit:

On Saturday, while I did some laundry, I bemoaned how long it was taking. And then I told my roommate that I wished I had Superman's powers because it probably wouldn't take Superman long to wash his clothes. My philosophy was (and I guess, still is) this: he could a) hand wash his clothes super fast and shake them around to dry them super fast or b) if he can fly around the world fast enough to go back in time, couldn't he fly forward in time...and just throw his clothes in the wash, make time speed by...and then throw his clothes in the dryer and make time speed by...and then voila, have his laundry be done?

I'm sure there's some sort of theoretical error to that, and I'm not even sure why it came to mind that if I were Superman, I could do my laundry faster... Anyway, my roommate put an end to the conversation when, as I continued to think out loud, I asked: "Do you think Superman has to do laundry less often because he wears his underwear outside his clothing?"

I don't know. What do you think?

Visiting Past Work: 10 Books That Have Had an Impact on My Life

So all of you know I'm a book nerd. In reviewing some past writing, I discovered this list that I wrote for an undergraduate senior writing seminar. So here you have a list. Parts may look familiar, but other parts...

Muggie Maggie: It was the first book I ever owned, and the first chapter book I read. This clever little book by Beverly Cleary detailed the struggles of a girl trying desperately hard to learn to write cursive. I identified with the protagonist. She was the first character in a book who seemed real to me.

The Babysitters Club: Some of us may be ashamed to admit it now, but all of my friends and I were attached to these books in elementary school. It took me two years of reading to realize how formulaic and generic they were--and yet how successful. They gave me hope. (To clarify: I thought, "If stuff like this gets published, surely I can successfully publish something I write.")

The Chronicles of Narnia: Since the last two selections are series, I apologize if I am going beyond my limit. But I have read many books. These fantasy stories inspired me to write things that were pure imagination. I didn't know then that the Narnia books had deeper elements, but I still love them for just that reason.

Number the Stars: This Newbery award winner by Lois Lowry introduced me to historical fiction and led me to discover just how fascinating historical fiction can be. It started me on an almost yearlong stint of reading books about World War II and the Holocaust.

Bridge to Terabithia: I did not fully comprehend it the first time I read it. But the second time, the tears would not stop pouring. It was the first book (one of a select few) that elicited an intense, visible emotional reaction from me. 1984 was one of the other select few books that created such a response. It actually motivated me to act. Granted, my action was throwing the book across the room in a fit of anger. But it was an action nonetheless.

Harry Potter riveted me to my seat in a time when books were starting to bore me. I thought I had read them all, had seen them all, and that there was nothing new out there. And then this series fell into my hands. I hated eating, going to the bathroom, blowing my nose, and doing all sorts of necessary things because they pulled me away from my book.

I used to think that no book had it all. No book had managed to encompass all of the elements I liked: adventure, romance, good characters. It seemed to be a one-or-the-other type of choice--until I read The Princess Bride. What a lovely surprise! (Besides, I could not resist reading it after seeing the words "son of a bitch" on the back of the cover--words my mother gasped at when she saw it. Shortly thereafter, the library began taping over the blurb on the back cover.)

Wicked completely blew my mind. I have never read anything quite so inventive in my life (which may mean I need to read more*...not that I truly need any incentive.) Gregory Maguire took a well-known story and turned it on its head, making an already-used idea completely fresh, new, and his own. It is a book infused with commentary--while still being entertaining.

Finally, the one work of non-fiction to make the list: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, a memoir about a mother who provided for her family by entering writing contests. It was a well-presented memoir that led me to realize how interesting real life can be. I forget sometimes.

*Three years later, I can definitely say that I've read things as inventive--or more inventive--than Wicked. Thank you, graduate school.