Shove Me in the Shallow Water

On Fire

2012-03-16T21:24:00.003-07:00

We headed up to Salt Lake City tonight to cheer for Roger's sister Joan, who received an award for a piece of her artwork currently displayed in the exhibition of the Ninth International Art Competition at the LDS Church History museum. It was a pretty big deal in these parts. Congratulations, Joan!

Because this year's blog posts are all about my memories (sorry to overshadow you, Joan), I thought I'd write about the one and only time I got an award for my artwork. Fifth grade, fire prevention poster contest. Do yourself a favor . . . don't play with matches!!

Is That True?

2012-03-15T20:44:00.004-07:00

In honor of our illustrious state legislature and our governor who will likely sign a bill tens of thousands of people have requested him to veto, I will share one of my most memorable educational moments.

I was in sixth grade. My mom and I were driving home one day, and for whatever reason, I decided it was a fine time to ask her if something I'd heard about the male anatomy was true. Without a word, she immediately pulled over to the side of the road.

"Where did you learn that?" she asked.

"J. and I read it in the encyclopedia," I said.

"It's true," she said, and then she pulled back out into traffic and drove home without saying another word about it.

Update: Well who could have guessed it based on his earlier comments? The governor vetoed the bill. Good on him!

Birthday Pi

2012-03-14T20:09:00.005-07:00

Happy Pi Day! We celebrated by waiting for an entire hour for a table at Village Inn, then giving up and getting slices of pie to take home.

This is a picture of my sister Maryann on her first birthday and our family's traditional and very tasty birthday pie (cream cheese filling in a graham cracker crust with sliced peaches on top). For many years we had birthday pie instead of birthday cake because my brother was allergic to wheat.

Sometimes it was hard having a brother with so many allergies. Out of both a sense of caution and a sense of fairness, my parents often deprived me of foods that he couldn't eat. Thankfully I didn't develop any food allergies. And I think I've long since let go of any residual resentment. The hardest to get over was the annual confiscation of Halloween candy. Robbie was allergic to chocolate and Mom would buy other kinds of candy that she'd trade for our candy bars. That may be why I often don't have dessert unless chocolate is involved.

Except when it comes to pie. My top choice? When I can't have birthday pie, I choose cherry.

Such a Sacrifice

2012-03-13T18:47:00.004-07:00

My family took a trip to Mexico when I was in grad school. We stayed in a small fishing village called Akumal on the Yucatan Peninsula. One day we drove down to the ruins at Tulum. The tour guide picked me to sacrifice on the altar. It's funny to think that I probably ended up in the vacation pictures of some of the strangers who were on the tour with us.

Favorite adventures on that trip involved scuba diving, which I highly recommend and which I haven't done enough. On one of the dives we went down about 80 feet. The ocean floor was a tangled mass of coral. All of a sudden there was a giant sea turtle right in front of me. I tried to swim after it, but I even with my flippers I was clearly no match for something so powerful and awesome. I didn't have a camera with me, but my memory of it is picture perfect.

Who's That Walking Over My Bridge?

2012-03-12T21:51:00.004-07:00

Visiting the bridge that Gramps and his engineer friend built across the

Nashoba Brook for a trail he maintains on conservation land behind his house.

Winter 2007

We went on lots of hikes when I was growing up, and Dad always made it entertaining. Sometimes he'd get way ahead of us on the trail and hide behind a tree, then jump out and growl like a bear making us scream and laugh. Sometimes he'd hide under a bridge and pretend he was the troll and we were the billy goats. It never got old.

Dear Diary

2012-03-11T19:52:00.007-07:00

Some friends and I were laughing about our old journals this afternoon, so I decided to pull mine out and look through them. The earliest one I kept starts halfway through 8th grade. And I actually began each entry with "Dear Diary."

Some random quotes:

Monday, March 21: "I wish Mr. C. [music theater] saw me in the road show because he thinks I'm an idiot with no spirit."

Monday, April 4: "Mr. H. [metal shop] is such a jerk. I did a perfectly good job of welding and he still won't grade me."

Thursday, May 5: "I think P.T. has a crush on G.J., but I think he sort of likes me. I don't mean to sound conceited and I could be totally wrong, but it's the way he looks at me. I hope he doesn't ask me to the dance. I mean I hope he asks me, but I can't go."

Wednesday, May 18: "I found out G. asked P. a week ago. What about me?"

Friday, May 27: "We didn't get our tests back in math so I have to suffer until Tuesday, I skipped lunch, and J. said my pants were too short."

Monday, June 27: "Why me? I'm only 13 years old. Why am I going through this? I never act right. I never know what to say. Nobody has invited me anywhere for who knows how long. I'm stuck with a brother who embarrasses me to death, a mother and father who say I'm lazy and I never do anything for other people so they want me to wash windows. How pathetic can you get? I even have a best friend who hates my guts (I think). I'll show everybody. By the way, I went to see The Sting and it was excellent."

I'm so glad we don't have to live through junior high twice.

The Flirt

2012-03-10T18:15:00.004-07:00

My first real job was working at the Great Road Pharmacy for Bob. I happened to ask him for a job the same day he happened to be hiring. Mostly I worked the register, inventoried magazines and cigarettes, that sort of thing.

One day I was using the restroom in the back of the store and I heard a whistle, the you're-a-pretty-girl kind of whistle. I heard it again and again. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and I was beginning to feel very self conscious.

Then I remembered the pet store next door. When I got off work, I stopped in. Sure enough there was a parrot in a cage, right through the wall from the pharmacy's restroom. It whistled when it saw me.

No Where To Go

2012-03-09T16:22:00.006-07:00

An anatomy class I took in college involved a weekly lab with three cadavers. More advanced classes actually dissected them. We just studied them and took quizzes that required us to identify various parts of them.

I handled it pretty well until the day the lab instructor had us crowd around one of the bodies, and I ended up trapped in the middle of a bunch of students, our backs up against the wall. It was a tight fit. I was directly in front of the cadaver's abdominal cavity and the instructor started scooping up the intestines and plopping them on the cadaver's rib cage so he could show us something underneath. Waves of formaldehyde assaulted me. I suddenly felt a little woozy, and I realized that if I were to pass out, the only way I could fall was directly into the abdominal cavity.

"Mind over matter, mind over matter," I chanted silently to myself. Thankfully, I made it through without incident. But I wasn't very hungry for lunch afterward.

Equality

2012-03-08T17:52:00.028-07:00

In honor of International Women's Day, I will now share some of my memories about the Equal Rights Amendment. Apparently I've hit on a theme. And sorry, this is a long one. I've been in bed sick for three days with time on my hands. I'm actually surrounded by the books I refer to below, which I've been meaning to revisit for awhile. I'm curious how my position on the ERA might have evolved differently if I'd been older and more aware.

By the time I really knew about the ERA, it had already passed in Massachusetts (1972), so I never had the opportunity to vote on it myself. Frankly, I didn't really think much about it. A few years later, the LDS church came out against it. I have no idea how my mom voted in 1972, but I do remember her carefully studying up on the church's position and expressing some concerns about the amendment long after the Massachusetts vote.

In 1981, when I was 17, I visited my aunt and uncle, and while we were sitting around the kitchen table, the subject of the ERA came up. I think that my uncle asked me my position, and I hesitated because I had no idea what my position was. Seriously, I hadn't really thought about it at all. It had already passed in Massachusetts. I wouldn't be voting on it. He slammed his fist down on the table, loudly recited the language of the amendment, and then demanded to know what on earth was wrong with it.

Of course I believed in equal rights for women, but even though the ERA seemed straightforward enough, I didn't know what I thought about it. I stared my uncle down (which was, in retrospect, extraordinarily brave because he was a Very Intimidating Person) and said, "All I know is that if my mother has concerns about it and my church is against it, I need to learn more about it before I decide what my opinion is."

That experience stayed with me, but it was a while before I really took the time to learn more.

The next memory I have is when our new LDS chapel was built in Littleton and reporters were at the open house. One stopped me in the hall and asked me whether I thought it was fair that I couldn't go fight in a war because I was female. I confess I was fairly oblivious to the larger context of her question. I have no idea how I answered her, but I know I wasn't particularly keen on the idea of going to war whether I was male or female.

At some point in college at BYU, I was asked to give a lesson on the ERA in church (this was before I developed my aversion to political discussions at church). Remembering my earlier exchange with my uncle, I dug into the research with zeal. And because I believed in equal rights and didn't understand what on earth was wrong with the ERA, I figured I needed to focus that research on why the LDS church was against it.

So I read these books, all by members of the LDS church:

A Lawyer Looks at the Equal Rights Amendment by Rex E. Lee
The Equal Rights Amendment: Myths and Realities by Orrin Hatch
From Adam's Rib to Women's Lib by Maureen Ward

Despite the fact that I was a college student, it never even occurred to me to read opposing views. Of course, my job was to teach a class that represented the church's view. That view was primarily based on concern about unintended consequences that could negatively impact families. The basic protection of equality for all already existed in the 14th amendment, the LDS authors argued. Ongoing issues should be decided on a case-by-case basis with scalpel-like precision.

After being steeped in all of the anti-ERA arguments, I don't remember having any issues teaching the anti-ERA class. Funny how looking at only one perspective does that to a person. But here's the irony (and I don't think this is where the anti-ERA voices intended for me to go): after all that reading, I was concerned that without being privileged, women could find their reproductive choices restricted and they might end up with even less support as mothers in the workplace. This was all back in a day when the idea of widespread paid paternity leave was an even more elusive dream than paid maternity leave. At the end of it, I don't remember feeling much one way or the other when the ERA was ultimately defeated. I just assumed we'd continue to move forward, tackling the outstanding issues case by case.

All through those years, I was pretty darn clueless about why people were agitating so fiercely for women's rights, even though I was an avid reader of the Exponent II. I think this was because I had personally never felt held back because I was a girl. I give my parents great credit for that, as well as all of the people who had already broken down so many barriers by the time I came of age. At the most, I remember being irritated that boys at church got to do cool outdoor activities and the girls always seemed to be doing sort of lame things. But I pushed back, and as a result we girls got to do cool activities, too, sometimes right along side the boys. Rappelling, camping, canoe trips.

The past few years my inner feminist has reawakened. I'm having a hard time, for example, with the way my community has reached a relentless fevered pitch on the issue of modesty that is objectifying women and girls. The latest image that keeps niggling at me is the recent Congressional hearing on contraception and religious freedom that consisted entirely of men. Lots of people were bothered by the fact that women were not included in a discussion that involved contraception. But what especially bothered me was that all of the religious leaders were men. Seriously, where were the women? I know, I know, I belong to a church that excludes women from the priesthood. The world is complicated, isn't it?

So there you have it. This is what happens when I've been cooped up at home for three days without much energy to get anything else done. I'll get back to work and post something short and sweet tomorrow.

Is This the Tail End of an Era?

2012-03-07T17:03:00.003-07:00

In honor of the upcoming Republican caucuses here in Utah next week, I will now share one of my favorite memories about Senator Orrin Hatch.

In 1984, I did an internship in Washington, D.C., and every week our group of interns met with various dignitaries around town. One week we headed up to Capitol Hill for some time with Orrin Hatch.

Toward the end of our meeting, he took us on a tour of his office. He stopped in front of a rocking chair that held a couple of Cabbage Patch dolls, picked one up, pulled down its bloomers and gleefully pointed to an inscription that read "Cabbage Hatch" on the doll's little behind. Yes, he did.

Also, I don't know what cologne he was wearing but he smelled very nice.

Is it Over Yet?

2012-03-06T21:51:00.002-07:00

In honor of super Tuesday and the Republican primaries, I will now share one of my favorite memories about Mitt Romney.

It was during the 2002 Olympics and Romney had gotten into a bit of hot water with a volunteer who had apparently followed the security rules a bit too carefully and prevented some VIPs from getting where they needed to go. The volunteer accused Romney of yelling at him and using vulgar language.

On the evening news, Romney laughed at the accusation and said something like, "I haven't even said h-e-double hockey sticks since junior high!"

I sure wish someone would dig up that clip.

Steamy

2012-03-05T21:29:00.004-07:00

Everyone in our family enjoys a good shower with plenty of water pressure. All three of us are prone to getting hypnotized under a steamy stream of water. Maybe not the most responsible habit here in our Wasatch Front steppe, but lovely nonetheless.

My parents' house had practically non-existent water pressure when I lived there growing up. It's much better now, but I remember taking showers and washing my long hair early in the morning before school, wondering if I'd have time to rinse out all of the shampoo with the tiny trickle.

I come by my guilty pleasure honestly.

Life and Death by Committee

2012-03-04T19:35:00.011-07:00

I taught a class for the teenage girls at church today about supporting family members, and I shared a little bit of the story about how difficult it was to love my brother and a little bit about his death nearly a year (!) ago.

Robbie's death was not a simple death. He struggled for months with a debilitating condition. In the end he could not move, he could not breathe on his own, he didn't open his eyes and he wasn't really conscious, he required heavy dosages of pain medication, and after months in a hospital, antibiotics could no longer help him fight off one infection after another without serious ramifications. The last one in the arsenal was shutting down his kidneys.

We sat in a conference room twice with his team of doctors, nurses, a social worker. At the second meeting it was decided. Technology was prolonging an untenable life. We would take him off his respirator. The decision was heart wrenching and unanimous. I consoled myself with the thought that if he was meant to live, he'd begin breathing on his own.

Sitting in the conference room having those discussions was surreal. I couldn't help but remember the last time I sat in a conference room discussing a matter as weighty as the end of Robbie's life:

The beginning of Jack's.

When Jack's birth mom was seven months pregnant, we were summoned to the agency to meet her and her parents. Both of our caseworkers were there to facilitate the meeting. It was simultaneously the most natural and the most unnatural experience I've ever had. Good, but totally surreal.

While I watched Jack's birth mom talk, I kept seeing members of my family in her face and her mannerisms. My cousin in the set of her jaw. My grandfather around the eyes.

On the way home I said to Roger, "Between her childhood allergies and the allergies in my family, this kid doesn't stand a chance." Of course that was absurd, but it made me realize that Jack had already become a part of us on a deep, subconscious level.

My only immediate experience with bringing life into the world and letting life go involved meetings in conference rooms. Surreal, yes, but the only actual real for me.

Cookies and Brownies

2012-03-03T22:36:00.007-07:00

Got the word that our Girl Scout cookies are on their way. Mmm mmm.

I never was a Girl Scout, but I did join the Brownies for about a month. We met on the second floor of the Acton Women's Club in the center of town.

Remembering the 10 cent dues I was supposed to bring every week was a problem. And even though we probably did only one activity that involved picking and arranging flowers, it seemed like that's what we did every time. It awakened my general angst about crafting in public. The uniform was cool though. And I liked singing that song about the smile in my pocket.

Frankly, I just don't think I'm a joiner.

Big B Little b

2012-03-02T20:16:00.009-07:00

Because today is a very special day, I'm dipping back into the file for another paper from my school days.

Apparently the effort I put into the cover of a paper about Dr. Seuss my sophomore year didn't save me from a B minus. Topic sentences didn't always tie into my thesis or were missing altogether. I lacked examples from his books to prove my points. And my teacher felt that I'd digressed for several paragraphs after my introduction.

I closed the paper with this quote from an eight-year-old fan of Seuss who wrote the following in a letter: "You sure thunk up a lot of funny books. You sure thunk up a million funny animals. Now this I want to know. Who thunk you up, Dr. Seuss?"

I'd cite my source for this quote, but I neglected to cite it in my paper. I have no idea where it came from.

Yeah, a B minus was probably about right.

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Double-Edged Sword

2012-03-01T23:31:00.013-07:00

Yesterday's post generated some discussion about religion in public schools. It would be nice to have a healthier balance in our current approach. Learning about religions and what people of different faiths believe is critical to understanding one another and understanding human civilization. What I don't believe we should do, however, is practice religion in public schools. Separation of church and state is key to living peaceably together in a pluralistic society, each of us enjoying our own freedom of conscience.

That said, learning about religions in school--like just about anything in our world--can be a double-edged sword.

When I took U.S. history in high school and we discussed westward expansion, my teacher talked about Mormons in an extraordinarily derogatory way. The guy sitting next to me raised his hand and said, "Miss S___, did you know that Margy is a Mormon?" Let's just say it was not the most comfortable moment for me or my teacher.

So while I'd like students across the country to learn about various faiths, I'm not so sure every teacher across the country would teach the basics with appropriate objectivity and an eye toward increased understanding. The backlash from the faithful wouldn't be pretty. People within religions tend to share positive, faith-promoting stories among themselves and anything that smacks of criticism begets entrenchment.

As it turned out, it was a valuable reality check for me to hear my history teacher present such a negative view of Mormons. I began to understand that persecution of the early saints did not happen in a vacuum.

Maybe we don't just need to learn about one another's beliefs. Maybe we also need to learn about why people fear/distrust/misunderstand/overgeneralize/and even hate one other because of their beliefs (or lack of belief). And maybe we (and we includes me) could all then humbly self-reflect.

Oh, wait. That might lead to world peace, thus disrupting the path to armageddon. Never mind.

Simultaneous and Contradictory

2012-02-29T22:03:00.011-07:00

There's been a firestorm in the LDS world today. A BYU professor made some truly unfortunate remarks in a Washington Post article about the fact that black men were not allowed to hold the priesthood from the time of Brigham Young until 1978 (by the way, black men were ordained into the priesthood before Brigham Young became president of the church). Click here for a good concise summary of the recent controversy, including the swift renunciation of the professor's comments by the LDS church.

I don't want to dwell on his comments in this post, but I do want to write about some of my experience with the issue.

My parents joined the LDS church when I was five, so I was essentially raised Mormon. When I was in the sixth grade, we were assigned to write a report about a religion, our own if we chose. It made sense for me to write about our family's faith.

For part of my report I interviewed my mother. After I asked her whether she was "bored reading alot [sic] of scriptures at one time" (biased questioning much?), I asked her if there was anything about the LDS church that she didn't like. Part of her answer addressed her dislike of the policy regarding blacks and the priesthood. I learned an early and valuable lesson about the possibility (and probability) of being ambivalent even if you believe the leaders of a faith are generally inspired. This lesson has sustained me in many areas of my life.

I was 14 in 1978 when the LDS church changed the policy and black men were welcomed into the priesthood. I remember my mother whooping through the house when she heard it about it on the national news. What a joyful turn of events!

I also remember my Sunday school teacher at the time. He was a black man. I remember being impressed at his capacity for faith given the circumstances of his restricted status. And I remember feeling truly happy that things would change for him.

I can still picture his face.

Go Figure

2012-02-28T21:31:00.005-07:00

I'm helping Jack study for a math test tomorrow. Solving for variables. Very satisfying. Wish Jack could feel that way, too. Maybe one day.

I read something the other day that made it sound like geometry students (at least in Utah) no longer do proofs. Remember these?

Not that I really know much about math education, but it seems like learning how to do proofs is extremely valuable because they teach students how to use logic across all sorts of disciplines.

Even though I outwardly professed to hate math in school, I actually really liked it. Especially doing proofs in geometry. And I liked balancing equations in chemistry.

While He Was Sleeping

2012-02-27T22:28:00.002-07:00

When I turned seven, I got a turtle as a pet and named him Max, though technically I don't think I actually knew whether he was a he or a she.

One day I came home from school and my mother told me gravely that Max had died and she had buried him.

A while after that we learned that turtles like Max are prone to hibernate. He may well have been dead when Mom buried him, but it's more likely he was just sleeping.

Sorry, Max.

Night Noises

2012-02-26T19:20:00.006-07:00

The wind is howling outside tonight.

When I was five, my family moved to the house my parents still live in. Our best estimate is that the house was built in the 1730s, an old center chimney colonial on a stone foundation.

For the first few years before we added on, my room was in the old part of the house. Once in a while I could hear scratching and scampering coming from inside the wall, most likely little critters who had snuck in through the cracks.

I can't remember if I especially loved books like The Littles and The Borrowers because of the critters in the wall, or if I embraced (rather than feared) the idea of critters in the wall because of the books.

Either way, I'm thankful for feeling cozy inside then and now.

In Which I Discover Han Solo

2012-02-25T20:33:00.002-07:00

Roger and Jack have gone off to see Star Wars in 3D. Big fans are they.

I saw the first (um, fourth) Star Wars when it was first released with my Uncle John, who often took me out to see movies when we visited my grandparents in Connecticut. It was one of my favorite traditions. We saw some true classics together, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.

Uncle John is still a little mortified, though, that he took me to see Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I. Hee hee.

On the Fringe

2012-02-24T20:10:00.008-07:00

I drove up to Salt Lake today to do some research on issues related to helping inmates and ex-offenders obtain the trifecta of personal identification required to participate in society (birth certificate, state ID card, and social security card) and to meet with a state senator about putting together legislation to eliminate some of the unique obstacles many of them they face as they try to get this documentation. It's just the beginning of a new adventure which will likely consume much of my mental energy over the coming year, but it was a very successful beginning.

While I was driving on I-15, I was listening to someone talk about the 1992 election and his involvement with far right politics, including interning with Gayle Ruzicka and the Utah Eagle Forum, meeting Cleon Skousen, and supporting the Bo Gritz presidential campaign.

I flashed back to 1992. Roger and I lived in Highland at the time, and our neighbor was Bo Gritz's Utah County campaign chair. She was really very nice, and she was happy to help me out the time I locked myself out of my car about half an hour north of town and our other car was in the shop. She lent Roger her van, he drove up to rescue me, then he suggested I drive her van back.

When I dropped the van off at her house and started walking home, I caught a glimpse of all of the bumper stickers on the back that I'd never noticed before, like "God, Guns, and Gritz" and "No New World Order." It was an odd sensation to realize that as far as other drivers were concerned, I'd owned those political views while I was behind the wheel. How did I look out there on the fringe?

We were sad when armed IRS agents came to repossess our neighbor's house. She and her husband hadn't paid taxes for 15 years as a political statement, and they had to move away. She was really very nice.

First Hand

2012-02-23T22:05:00.005-07:00

Today I attended a conference on addiction at Utah Valley University to get a better sense of what many of the inmates I work with at the jail are dealing with and to get a better sense of the resources available to help them in our community. I'm encouraged by recent research that was presented. It was well worth my time.

Conferences seem to be a part of my life no matter what I'm involved with. Except for the reminder that it can be hard to keep the energy up when I sit through too many presentations in a row, I love the opportunity to learn and to interact with people who have varied interests in and relationships with the topic at hand.

The first professional conference I attended was when I was in graduate school in the mid-1980s. I was studying political science and writing a thesis on how Utah prosecuting attorneys could go about implementing a recent statute that would allow children in abuse cases to testify via videotape or closed-circuit television. The purpose of the law was to protect children in a justice system that is designed for adults. It's one thing to pass a law; it's a whole other thing to figure out the policy for implementing it, especially when it walked a precarious constitutional line in relation to the rights of the accused to be faced by their accusers.

During that time, academics and professionals in many fields were grappling with the newly emerging range and scope of child abuse issues. So when the opportunity arose to hop in my car and drive to Reno to hear some of the most prominent voices speak in person and engage in immediate conversation with one another, I couldn't pass it up. My research, my writing, and my understanding of real-world problem solving took on a whole new dimension after that.

Epilogue: The US Supreme Court handed down a decision in an unrelated case shortly after I defended and passed my thesis that essentially nullified the Utah statute before any prosecutors took the chance to test it. Was my work wasted? Not in my mind. What I learned was priceless.

Electives

2012-02-22T21:50:00.005-07:00

During the last period of school today, Jack and I attended an assembly about class registration for eighth grade. His elective choices included band, chorus and exploring technology. The counselors also had the students write down careers they've been thinking about. Jack wrote jazz musician (a lovely idea, but maybe not too practical).

One of my favorite electives in junior high was mechanical drawing, and I dreamed about becoming an architect one day. I designed a triangular house for the class (a creative idea, but maybe not too practical) and wrote a report about Frank Lloyd Wright.

I didn't grow up to be an architect, but I do spend a good deal of mental energy thinking about how spaces work (or don't work) for people. I believe good architectural design can change the world.

This One Dates Me

2012-02-21T21:54:00.006-07:00

So here's how old I am. Diet Coke was not launched until 1982, after I graduated from high school

My drink of choice when I was a teenager was Tab, which I still enjoy from time to time. Every time I buy it, someone says, "I didn't know they made that anymore!"

I once heard a deejay on the radio speculate that they haven't actually made Tab since 1972, they're just still trying to empty the warehouse.

My friend Janine was my best Tab drinking buddy. We worked together at the Great Road Pharmacy when I was in high school. One of our favorite things to do was drive to the Burlington Mall and hang out drinking Tab while we people watched. Living in style, we were.

Not as Suspicious as It Seems

2012-02-20T22:23:00.010-07:00

We met some friends at the BYU library today to do a photo shoot for an upcoming Friends of the Library newsletter Roger is working on.

My second most dramatic memory of the BYU library is the night that I got locked in with my boyfriend. They used to play the theme song of Hawaii 5-0 at closing time and somehow we missed it. I'm sure we were just studying really hard. Can't say it wasn't an adventure being alone together in the library with all the lights out.

My most dramatic memory was the time I passed out while I was waiting in line to take a physical science test in the testing center, which used to be in the library. I was so sick, but I had a deadline. The line was so long, it went out of the building and down the sidewalk.

It seemed to take hours, but I finally made it to the head of the line. Just as I got up to the counter to get my test, I felt really horrible and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor and someone behind me in line was saying, "I know her! She lives in Helaman Halls!"

I couldn't just leave when I came to. Oh, no. I had to be escorted by campus security to the health center to get checked out. So there I was with my No. 2 pencil in hand and an officer at my elbow guiding me past the long line of students on the sidewalk to the waiting patrol car. Can't say at least some of them weren't thinking the worst.

Relatively Speaking

2012-02-19T21:34:00.005-07:00

Once upon a time, many years ago--I think I might have been home on a break from college--I was listening to an elderly woman speak in church.

I can't remember what she was talking about, but all of a sudden she paused mid-sentence, looked out sort of above the congregation, and said that she felt especially close to her mother. Then she went stiff and keeled over backward, dead.

Nothing like that happened at church today.

Accent

2012-02-18T22:13:00.003-07:00

My uncle sent us a link to this regional accent quiz. Only 13 questions and the answer was dead on. A bit freaky if you ask me.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston   You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
The West
The Midland
North Central
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Inland North
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

When I was a growing up, we spent part of each summer with my dad's family at our lake house in Wisconsin. My cousins from Illinois used to tease me about my accent. They made me say certain things over and over while they laughed and laughed.

"Let's go in the wahtah!"

I love them anyway.

Changing Gears

2012-02-17T23:49:00.005-07:00

When I was 16 and learning to drive with my permit, our family owned one car with an automatic transmission (a giant gray station wagon that we dubbed the Elephant) and one car with a stick shift (a bright yellow Pinto hatchback).

First I learned how to drive the automatic. Of course.

Then on New Year's Eve, I asked my dad if he would take me to a party at a friend's house. He said he would, but only if I drove and we took the Pinto. Way to throw me in the deep end.

I did pretty well until we got to the center of Chelmsford, where I needed to pull out of an intersection on a slight incline. It took a few tries, but then the whole clutch/accelerator thing suddenly clicked for me, and I connected with driving on a whole new level.

From that day forward, I've chosen stick whenever I can.

Continuous Loop

2012-02-16T22:04:00.005-07:00

We haven't had much snow around here this winter, so here is a happy memory of winter past. I love the way the camera caught the giant flakes still falling.

Gracie and Jack, January 2005

I'm most likely past the point of safely writing about Jack in the same breath with girls, but I'm going to do it anyway. Sorry, Jack!

My fantasy about Gracie and Jack ending up together isn't about them actually ending up together. I promise I'm not a schemer like that (click here for a little more backstory).

No, my fantasy about Gracie and Jack ending up together is about compiling the video of photographs that would run in a loop at their wedding reception. Can you imagine? They've grown up knowing each other. We could make the entire video showing the span of their lives comprised only of pictures of the two of them together.

How romantic would that be?

Putting It Off

2012-02-15T22:21:00.002-07:00

A marathon day of teaching at the jail in the morning and at UVU in the evening with jam-packed hours and hours of grading in between. Truly, I brought it on myself by procrastinating.

When I was in college, I realized that the bathroom was never cleaner and my things were never more organized than in the days leading up to finals week. Anything but study! My roommate and I dubbed it constructive avoidance behavior.

Now I still procrastinate, but I no longer feel guilty enough to use the time productively. I'm much more inclined to hang out and read instead. Or catch up on all of the CSI episodes that have built up on the DVR. I like to think of it as "learning."

Is it too much of a stretch to call that instructive avoidance behavior?

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

2012-02-14T21:53:00.010-07:00

I should probably write a memory of love since it's Valentine's Day, but I've been under the weather and working all day, including grading a big stack of papers. So the romance will have to wait until the mood strikes.

Instead I'll tell a story I shared with my class at the jail this morning about getting my job at Novell. We were discussing resumes and job applications and how important presentation is. One of the recommendations on the handout I use is to avoid wrinkling or folding applications before turning them in.

In the early 90s, I started doing some freelance work writing customer success stories for Novell corporate communications. One day Mike, the manager of the team I worked with, asked if I'd be interested in meeting right that minute with someone named Darrell about a full-time job.

"Sure," I said. "But I don't have a copy of my resume."

"I think I might have one somewhere," said Mike as he disappeared into his office. He emerged with a copy of my resume all wrinkled. "I think I must have sat on it. Sorry."

So I carried my wrinkled resume to the education department and carefully presented it to Darrell. We had a good laugh, he interviewed me, and then he hired me.

Rarely have I gotten a job without breaking at least one cardinal rule. It makes it a little ironic that I teach a class on how to get hired.

Logos

2012-02-13T22:28:00.011-07:00

I just took a survey to give input on the three finalists for Provo's new logo design. (I know, I don't even live there, but doing the survey was the only way to see the designs. I'm a bit of a design junky.)

One of finalists reminded me a bit of this Novell logo that was unveiled the same day I gave the company notice in the mid 90s.

Leaving Novell marked the end of a nearly 10-year stint in the computer software industry. I had never meant to work in that industry. It just sort of happened. While I wouldn't have traded the experiences I had and all of the valuable things I learned, I never looked back when I left.

Novell's new logo was meant to revitalize the company, which had been struggling to find its way after buying WordPerfect. I took one look at how that expensive new logo fell totally flat in a full-page, black-and-white newspaper spread, and I knew I'd made the right choice.

I Can Laugh About It Now

2012-02-12T22:24:00.005-07:00

When I was a teenager, I was asked to play the piano for someone who was going to sing in church. I practiced and practiced and practiced. But I didn't really have a chance to practice with the singer. We had about ten minutes to run through the song the day of the performance.

Turned out he was an improvisor. And I was totally inexperienced with accompanying anyone, never mind an improvisor.

In front of everyone and somewhere in the middle of the song, I completely lost track of what I was supposed to be playing in relation to what he was singing. Luckily, he was an experienced musician and he simply carried on without me. I think I managed to get back on track during the last verse (or maybe I just wished I did that). What a long, long song it was.

We sang it in church today.

Blue

2012-02-11T22:44:00.002-07:00

My dad built an addition onto our house in 1972, the year my sister Linda was born. I turned nine that summer, and one of the new bedrooms would be mine. I got to pick the paint color.

Blue.

So it would feel like I was swimming in a pool.

On My Father's Shoulders

2012-02-10T21:49:00.003-07:00

So as you can imagine, I don't actually have any memories of the moment captured in this photo. But tonight is Dad's last night here, and I thought it would be fun to post the earliest picture I have of the two of us together.

The picture was taken at our house on Mt. Hope Terrace in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, in late 1963. Dad was 26, and he worked for Texas Instruments while we lived there (if you look closely, you can see his ID badge). Above our heads is a little sailboat mobile with hulls made from walnut shells, which I do remember because we had it for years.

Dad looks pretty engaged here (and handsome, no?). Not sure what's on my mind.

Tumbling After

2012-02-09T22:05:00.002-07:00

Jack was born a few months after we opened our bookstore. He was a darn cute baby, but it turned out that he and the store weren't always a good match, especially at nap time.

Roger and I decided that we'd trade off shifts at the store and at home with Jack. We hired our first employee to help us out with the transitions.

I love that her name was Jill.

Sheep in a Jeep

2012-02-08T21:59:00.004-07:00

Story time at The Read Leaf Bookstore, May 2003

We had many visitors for story time over the years at our bookstore, including several dogs, baby chicks, and even a one-day-old calf that the kids got to name.

The morning the lambs were scheduled to come, their owner called and said he couldn't make it. But we were welcome to come pick the lambs up ourselves. Roger took the call, and because he didn't want to sound like a city boy, he said he would be right over.

Heh heh. With a little help, he managed to get them into their crate, get the crate in the back of the Jeep, and get back to the store in time. Then we let the lambs out of the crate, and things got a bit crazy. It was immediately clear that we lacked the necessary lamb wrangling skills.

At one point the lambs were running freely through the non-fiction section, pooping as they went. We had to shift into high gear, wrangling the lambs and wrangling kids to keep them from stepping on the lamb poop (which, thankfully, consists of easy to clean up pellets).

And then, somehow, we managed to get the lambs back in the crate, back in the Jeep, and back to where they came from.

The end.

Truth in Advertising?

2012-02-07T21:09:00.007-07:00

While I was looking for the Mick Jagger photo for yesterday's post, I came across these two fine Parisian images that still make me smile.

Having done a bit of urban parallel parking myself, I was impressed with this parking job. The emblem on the car on the left that reads "elegant" sums it up beautifully (especially when you read it with a French accent).

This billboard made me worry a bit for customers who might be disappointed when they get to New York and don't find the wild west there.

This Close!

2012-02-06T21:31:00.006-07:00

On the way home from class tonight, I was flipping radio stations, stopped on an old J. Geils Band song, and cranked it up. When I was in high school, J. Geils lived in the town next to ours. He used to bring his film into the pharmacy I worked at for processing.

I never saw the band perform in Massachusetts. But I did get to see them when I was a college student studying abroad in Paris during the summer of 1982. They were part of an all day outdoor music festival headlined by the Rolling Stones.

Yeah, yeah, it was fun seeing J. Geils, but I was this close to Mick Jagger!

The Calling

2012-02-05T22:21:00.005-07:00

Substitute teaching Jack's Primary (Sunday School class) 8 or 9 years ago

I got a new job at church today. In the LDS church most of us have jobs--known as callings--that we're asked to do. We usually get swapped around to different callings every year or two. It's often a bit of an adventure, a stretch outside our comfort zones.

Over the years, I've done all sorts of things. Teaching adults, teaching teenagers, teaching kids, hanging out with the really young kids in nursery, putting together monthly newsletters and typing up the Sunday bulletins, organizing ward activities, being in charge of girls camp, and so on.

Today I found out I'll be working with the teenage girls as the secretary in our Young Women's organization. I think it might be the best job yet: I get to hang out with truly awesome people and I will be the adult leader with the very least responsibility.

La Dolce Vita

2012-02-04T21:30:00.004-07:00

Jack pouring a Limonata at La Dolce Vita, age 5

We took advantage of Dad being in town to go out to dinner at one of our old (as in college days) favorites, La Dolce Vita. And we were very happy that our niece Sarah and her husband Jason, who are in town for the weekend, were able to meet us there.

Now our hearts are happily full with a new family memory and our bellies are happily full with our long-time family tradition of gnocchi and Limonata. Sì, la dolce vita!

Roads Not Taken

2012-02-03T22:13:00.008-07:00

Jack got to go with Roger to work today as part of the 7th grade take your kid to work day. Lucky for Jack, one of the items on Roger's to do list was to deliver fliers to bookstores all over the Salt Lake Valley for the upcoming annual book collecting conference hosted by the BYU library. No surprise they came home with a stack of books!

I never had the chance to get a day off of school to go to work with my dad (which would have been ironic as he was a high school teacher), but I did get to go on a few field trips to explore various careers options. We also took a comprehensive career assessment test my junior or senior year. The top two jobs it recommended for me:

(1) funeral director

(2) being in charge of evacuating cities

Helping people meet death or helping them escape it. Does my destiny still await?

Flow

2012-02-02T21:33:00.004-07:00

Jack requested a volcano cake for his fourth birthday.

I could use a bit of work on my technique with the lava frosting, but the dry ice eruption was captivating!

Doctor Love

2012-02-01T21:53:00.004-07:00

Jack's throat was a mess this morning. Time to go to the doctor. And, yes, he got to enjoy his first throat culture. Strep confirmed. Antibiotics prescribed.

Just before Jack was born, I asked a few conscientious moms around the neighborhood who their pediatrician was. They all told me about the same doctor and how much they loved him.

Turns out the doctor was a guy I knew from the dorms my freshman year in college! The last time I saw him we were 18, and the main thing I remembered about him was that he dated the girl next door to me the first semester, broke up with her, and then dated the girl across the hall the second semester. Good times.

He wasn't really taking new patients, but because he knew me from way back he made an exception for Jack. We're very glad about that. My conscientious neighbors were right.

Sicko

2012-01-31T21:39:00.004-07:00

Poor Jack is pretty sick, feeling lousy with a high fever. We had a quiet day at home.

Right after Roger and I opened our bookstore, we both got very sick. I suppose it wasn't too surprising, but it was sure inconvenient. We had our grand opening and then we closed. Roger was worse than me that first morning, so I drove down to leave a note on the door explaining that we'd reopen as soon as possible.

For days we were utterly incapacitated. We just laid there. Luckily we weren't parents yet. And luckily we had a furnace to keep us warm. We decided that if we had to put logs on a fire to survive, we'd pretty much just have to give up and die.

Ultimately it was cold applesauce that saved my life. My throat was so sore, and it was the only thing I could bear to eat. I think it took a week before we had enough strength to go back to work.

Life works much better when we take turns being sick. The worst, though, is when it's Jack's turn.

My Cheerleader

2012-01-30T22:13:00.005-07:00

Jack just requested a cough drop to soothe a sore throat. I hope he's not getting sick. He already missed some school the first week of the term due to illness, and he's barely caught up from that.

Sore throats make me nervous because they can lead to throat cultures. And I am so not a fan of the throat culture. I believe that the older I get, the less equipped I am to deal with them. It is so hard to let the swab touch the back of my throat without grabbing the nurse's hand to stop it.

When Jack was little, maybe three or four years old, I had to take him along with me to the doctor when I was sick. The doctor decided I had to have a throat culture. As I sat on my hands, I asked Jack for some moral support.

"You can do it, Mom! You can do it, Mom! You can do it, Mom!" he chanted over and over until it was over. And I did it!

Building a Relationship

2012-01-29T21:33:00.003-07:00

My dad became Gramps when Jack was born. Roger and I were sort of joking when we suggested we call him Gramps, but it stuck and I think it fits!

In honor of Gramps being in town for a visit, I thought I'd post these early memories of Jack and Gramps building a house with Lincoln Logs and a tower with Duplo when Jack was probably a few months shy of two.

Getaway

2012-01-28T21:35:00.006-07:00

My dad is in town, and he's hanging out with Jack while Roger and I run away for the night.

The first time Roger and I traveled together was for a quick trip to Las Vegas. No, we weren't eloping. In fact, we weren't even dating yet. But we were taking a scuba diving class together, and we were headed to Lake Mead to get certified.

Somehow we ended up staying at the Klondike Hotel at the far end of the strip. It was pretty cheap and rundown. I confess that I felt no guilt flinging my sandy wetsuit and all of my scuba gear around my bathroom to let them dry.

We're staying in a nicer place tonight. I'll probably keep the bathroom a bit tidier.

Stranded

2012-01-27T21:03:00.004-07:00

Car troubles that left me stranded for a few unproductive hours earlier today reminded me of the time I drove my aunt and uncle's old Land Cruiser from Massachusetts to Illinois. They needed it transported, and I needed to start working my way across the country to get back to college in Utah at the end of the summer.

It was a grand adventure driving something that size. I loved owning the road. What I didn't love, though, was breaking down over and over along the way.

The truck was okay unless I stopped twice in a row without letting the engine run long enough in between stops. For example, if I parked to get something to eat at a rest area, then drove to the gas pumps, I'd have to wait an hour or so before I could get the engine started again. Turns out there was some sort of kink in the fuel line.

But the old Land Cruiser and I did make it!

Seeing More Clearly

2012-01-26T22:22:00.009-07:00

Jack is trying out contact lenses. As soon as we got home from the eye doctor, he begged to take them out. Time for tough love. I told him he had to keep them in until 7:00. He didn't take them out until 7:30. Good job, Jack.

I started wearing glasses in the fourth grade and didn't get contact lenses until I graduated from high school. Of course, back in those days we didn't have disposable lenses and we had to be extra careful with the one pair we'd get. I'm much more willing to let a 12-year-old get contacts knowing that he'll get 12 pair to last all year.

When I was a little bit older than Jack, my mom took me to my yearly checkup with the eye doctor, and while he was examining my eyes he asked me if I used drugs.

"What?!" asked my mother. She was alarmed.

Apparently my pupils were very dilated, and the doctor was suspicious. The answer was no (I have polygraph results to prove it), but if it was yes, I can't imagine saying so with my mother in the room!

Fried

2012-01-25T21:40:00.003-07:00

I am so tired tonight I can barely focus my brain. When I got home from class at 9:00 p.m., I found Roger making our bed with the clean sheets I'd left in the drier. He's always doing thoughtful things like that.

When I was a teenager, I remember coming home late one night, and while I was dragging myself up the stairs, I realized with much regret that I hadn't made up my bed. When I opened the door to my room, I discovered that while I was gone, my mom had found my sheets and made my bed for me. To this day I am grateful to her for that.

I believe I have hit upon one of my love languages. And now to lay my head on my freshly laundered pillow . . .

Hanging Out in D.C.

2012-01-24T21:55:00.004-07:00

Political geek that I am, I enjoyed watching the president's State of the Union speech tonight and was reminded of the very first time I voted in a presidential election. It was 1984, and since I was doing a college internship in Washington, D.C., I cast an absentee ballot from my home state of Massachusetts.

The ballot came with a thin sheet of styrofoam that was meant to be placed under the ballot so that when I punched holes with a pin to indicate my selections, they'd be more likely to go all the way through the paper.

At that point, the idea of a hanging chad hadn't yet entered the nation's consciousness. In retrospect, I hope my votes counted!

Emergency

2012-01-23T21:37:00.003-07:00

After class tonight I discovered that one of my students, who left the class coughing, had a really scary time of it trying to catch her breath and had almost called 911. By the time class ended and I found her in the hall with some of her classmates, she'd pretty much recovered from the worst of it, but didn't think she could drive herself home. She was waiting for her husband to come pick her up.

While we talked, she asked me to take her pulse. I'm totally out of practice, but I have had some training!

When I was in high school I took a CPR class. As you can see, I've never filled out the bottom half of the certification card because I've never administered CPR. I did have the chance to come to the aid of two different people who were in obvious distress soon after I took the class (a woman in Mexico who couldn't quite stay conscious and a man at a campground in Utah who seemed to be suffering from heat stroke). But neither of them required mouth-to-mouth or CPR.

Although I kept surprisingly calm as I helped them, I realized that I wasn't going to be cut out for any sort of job in the medical field. The clincher? When the heat stroke victim's wife suggested that we take out his dentures in case he vomited. Yeah. Not my strong suit.

Child Labor

2012-01-22T21:30:00.002-07:00

Putting Benny and Jack to work to keep our bookstore doors sparkling (circa 2003).

I Would Not Eat Them Here or There

2012-01-21T20:54:00.005-07:00

We're getting our first really good snow of the season, which made our drive to Sportsman's Warehouse this evening a bit more adventurous. But we had to go to take advantage of a special, one-day discount for law enforcement personnel. (It still makes me laugh, by the way, to think I work for the sheriff!)

After we picked up the things we were after, we browsed a bit. I discovered they have quite a selection of food there, including freeze-dried eggs.

Once upon a time, long long ago, my dad made me eat freeze-dried eggs. I think we were testing them out before a camping trip. Oh. Ew. Even after all these years, I can still taste them when I think about it. They were especially nasty when I washed them down with grape juice. Ew. Ew.

I'm sure freeze-dried eggs have improved over the years, but I don't ever want to eat them again. Even with a special discount.

The First Roll

2012-01-20T23:19:00.009-07:00

These are pictures from the very first roll of film I ever shot. It was summer 1972, the year I turned nine. We had the kind of box camera with a view finder that you look down into. Apparently, I thought it would be nice to take a portrait of everyone at the house that day.

Here's my dad and my mom:

And here's my best friend Judy holding my brand new sister, Linda, on the left, and my older brother Robbie on the right.

These black and white photos are aging far better than many of the color snapshots I took in high school and college.

Up Too Late

2012-01-19T21:39:00.003-07:00

Tonight we launched our new "So You Want to Read" series at the Springville library. Our speakers, authors Ann Cannon and Louise Plummer, were absolutely perfect for the kickoff presentation. They spoke about books they've read over the years that they loved, that they hated but then loved when they reread them as adults, that surprised them, and that stretched them. And they completely charmed us.

So I thought I'd write a memory about reading in their honor.

When I was in early elementary school, I always made sure that my bedroom door was a little ajar when it was time to turn out the lights. I only had to lean a little bit from my bed to catch the light from the hallway and stay up longer than I was supposed to reading books. The book I remember the most from that time was Danny and the Dinosaur. My favorite part was when the dinosaur totally failed at the game of hide and seek because there was nothing large enough for him to hide behind. (What would a psychoanalyst have to say about that?)

I still like to stay up too late reading in bed. Roger loves that about me. Don't you, Rog?

Being Wrong

2012-01-18T21:51:00.004-07:00

My reach back to junior high school memories continues for a third day in a row. In class tonight I shared the following video with my students, then had them write a short personal essay about a time they were wrong about something.

As an example, I shared a story about the time I got into a big argument with my 8th grade science teacher. I remember so clearly that I was right and she was crazy. I was unwavering in my conviction.

I knew that if an object like a potato or a rock was broken into pieces, total surface area would decrease because the pieces would be smaller. I was so sure. And I was so wrong.

Being Horrid

2012-01-17T22:27:00.003-07:00

Jack started a new term today, which included starting a couple of new classes. He traded science for social studies and PE for Spanish. I happened to meet his Spanish teacher in the hallway this morning, and I flashed back to my 7th grade Spanish class.

Every once in a while I am horrid without really understanding why. I did something horrid to my 7th grade Spanish teacher. I wrote a very mean insult, directed at my teacher by name, on a test paper before I turned it in. I wrote it very lightly, somehow thinking he wouldn't actually be able to read it. Duh! It was a situation that warranted a written apology and several trips to the school counselor, who just sat there waiting for me to explain myself. I had no idea what to say. She finally gave up.

In retrospect, I realize that my teacher had been making me very uncomfortable. He sat me in the front row and constantly drew attention to my work in front of the class. My little 12-year-old brain didn't know how to stop it and may have sensed something a bit more insidious than just being the teacher's pet. I felt guilty for years for being so hurtful, but I think my subconscious was simply protecting me.

In 8th grade, I started studying French.

Roots

2012-01-16T22:09:00.004-07:00

I'm watching a reunion interview with actors who appeared in the mini-series Roots. It seems like a very appropriate thing to do as this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day winds down. When Roots aired in early 1977, I was 13 years old and I remember being completely glued to our little black and white television, watching the entire series.

I was not alone. The final episode ranks as the third most watched television show in the history of U.S. television, beating out every single Superbowl.

Even with my terrible memory, I can remember many scenes and how they made me feel. I know that I was influenced on a very deep, formative level. In a very real sense, the story rooted itself in me.

Maturing?

2012-01-15T21:32:00.005-07:00

We played cards tonight, and Roger and Jack totally creamed me.

I used to be more competitive. One time I made Roger play cards with me until 2 a.m. because he kept beating me at gin rummy and I wanted to win.

I can't decide if I don't do that anymore because I grew up or because I got old.

Menace in Venice

2012-01-14T21:59:00.008-07:00

This is a receipt from lunch on my 19th birthday in Venice, Italy. I was traveling with friends while on break from a study abroad program in Paris. I have no idea what we ate, but I'm certain it was delicious.

What I do remember is what happened the moment we walked out of the restaurant.

Sparing the details, all I will say is that it involved a pigeon and my t-shirt was history. Luckily I had a sweatshirt in my backpack. But I needed a private place to change.

I found that place in a quiet corner of St. Mark's cathedral. Yes, I did. Happy birthday to me.

Shower the People

2012-01-13T21:15:00.005-07:00

Remember the days when top musicians came to play at BYU and we packed the Marriott Center to see them? This was one of my favorites.

How sweet it was.

All I Want for Christmas

2012-01-12T22:49:00.004-07:00

When Jack was six, he tried to discourage customers from buying this little guy for sale at our bookstore. He was hoping Osbert would be under the tree for him on Christmas morning. How could we resist? Osbert is still part of the family.

Crammed

2012-01-11T22:12:00.010-07:00

I had one of those packed, logistically challenging days.

Dropped Jack at school at 8:00, got ready for work, met with two inmates at the jail, drove to UVU to listen to a live recording of Radio West (yes, I got to hear Doug Fabrizio say "and then we'll invite you to join the conversation" in person), totally miscalculated how long it would take to hike back to my car which was in the hinterlands (and being waylaid by an instructor acquaintance who felt moved to recite a lengthy poem for me didn't help), was late to a meeting with the marketing director of the Mountainlands Applied Technology College and people from the Department of Corrections workforce development program, headed back to the UVU campus after filling up the car with gas and filling up my belly with a sandwich, hung out in the faculty lounge in the library preparing for class, stopped by the English department to photocopy some handouts, chatted with another instructor who totally validated one of the new teaching strategies I came up with yesterday when she mentioned something she learned at a recent conference, taught from 5:30 to 8:15, walked out to the hinterlands to find my car, realized that no, that was where I had parked earlier in the day, backtracked to my regular parking area, headed home, got lost in thought and missed my exit, finally made it there just after 9:00.

Phew. But I love cramming it in like that from time to time!

One of the most complicated trips I remember taking was a combination of friends' weddings and law school visits back in the late 80s when I was thinking about going to law school. All within the course of a week, I had stops planned at the University of Michigan (but I missed a connecting flight for that), Omaha (wedding), Connecticut (Yale), upstate New York (wedding), and Chicago (Northwestern). I can't remember exactly what order I went in, but I do remember flying through the Cincinnati airport four times.

Phew.

Trashed

2012-01-10T19:11:00.012-07:00

Apparently I am taking teeny tiny itty bitty baby steps organizing my office. Today I managed to empty the waste basket. I went in to find a copy of an old textbook to use in preparing for class tomorrow and felt that I had to do something, no matter how small.

When I was growing up, my family had a very complicated system for waste disposal. We separated into at least a dozen different categories.

Organic waste like banana peels and egg shells went into the bucket beside the kitchen sink, ultimately destined for the compost pile at the far end of the garden (a very long trek when we had deep snow).
Meat bones went into the in-ground garbage can just outside the back door. Raccoons quickly made off with them so we never had to worry about formal garbage collection. I still remember the clang of the heavy lid of the garbage can in the middle of the night.
Separate boxes under the kitchen sink collected recycling: rinsed plastic bottles, clear glass, green glass, brown glass, tin cans (lids off, cans squished flat with our feet), and aluminum soda cans (which I believe my parents now collect for 5 cent return).
Plastic bags, including bread bags, went into a rack on the cupboard door below the sink to be reused.
Paper went into a box by my mom's desk to be recycled. We also saved some newspapers in a bin by the fireplace for fires and other projects, and Mom was very good at reusing scrap paper for miscellaneous notes.
Odds and ends went into a bin by the refrigerator or waste baskets throughout the house. We collected all of this trash in giant bags and store them in the barn until the next trip to the dump. No curbside pickup for us.

When I grew up, I rebelled by throwing all of my trash into the same bag and letting the city collect it. So easy! Bit by bit I've grown up and reconnected with at least some of the good lessons my parents taught me. Not quite there with the composting, though.

Friends

2012-01-09T22:06:00.007-07:00

Jack and Gracie

Waiting for the kindergarten bus

October 2004

The Screamer

2012-01-08T19:07:00.007-07:00

When I started grad school I took a job as an editorial assistant at an educational software company called Wicat Systems. I worked there off and on for about five years in a few different positions in a couple of different locations, including this very industrial former carpet warehouse. Eventually I became the manager of the documentation team.

Now that I think about it, I started working for the company shortly before I met Roger in 1985, and I left the company for the final time shortly after we got married in 1990.

Speaking of Roger, how could I have not married him after he and our friend Sally made this guy, affectionately known as The Screamer. I came into work one morning to find him hanging from the pipes over my cubicle, complete with a syphon tube and a can of Diet Coke strapped to his leg.

That's what I call courtship!

The Drop

2012-01-07T22:31:00.005-07:00

When I was in the fifth grade, our teacher had us pair up to pack an egg in a shoebox using any sort of packing material we thought would protect the egg. Then he dropped them from the roof of the school. According to the article that accompanied this picture, the first time we did the experiment half of our eggs broke. The second time only 3 out of 14 broke.

One of the challenges I've had in designing the transitional skills course I teach at the jail is that most of the inmates aren't going to be applying what we talk about straightaway. Whenever possible, I try to give them images that represent some of the concepts so they'll have a better chance of remembering them later.

I use the egg drop experiment to illustrate the idea of creating cushion in our lives--a margin of error that can keep our eggs from breaking when something goes wrong. Like having a backup plan for child care so we don't risk losing our job when the regular babysitter falls through. Or giving ourselves extra time to get to a job interview in case the bus is late. Or not using up all of our sick days when we're not really sick so we can use them when we are.

I'm so glad I found this picture. I honestly couldn't remember the outcome. Now I can tell my classes with confidence that, at least on our second try, our egg survived.

For Grandpa Charlie and My Friend Carly (In Case You're Listening)

2012-01-06T17:39:00.008-07:00

Today my Grandpa Charlie would have been 100 years old. He passed away the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, and it was the first time I really faced the death of someone close to me.

I remember we got the news while we were at Lake Geneva, and my first impulse was to find a quiet place to think on my own. I went out to the end of a pier and watched the waves while I thought and probably prayed.

What did I think about life after death? Would I see my grandfather again? I wasn't sure, but I had been taught that I would, and it was a comforting thing to hope for. I wished faith came more easily for me.

Why not believe?

Today I attended the funeral for Carly, a beautiful 21-year-old neighbor of ours. It is a comforting thought--especially for her family--that after such a short but brilliant life, she would be reunited with her father, who doted on her adoringly before he preceded her in death.

Carly's parents adopted her from Romania when she was six months old. During the service, a family friend shared the story of their journey, including a description of the plight of children raised in orphanages there. She told how children would be sent out to fend for themselves on the streets with virtually nothing when they turned 15.

My thoughts turned to an inmate I met with at the jail earlier in the day. She's just 18, her father is in prison, her mother is an addict. On Monday she'll be sent out to fend for herself on the streets with virtually nothing. We spent time going over some of her options, and I wrote down a few names of people she could contact to help her get on her feet.

By some sort of cosmic coincidence, or perhaps an answer of reassurance to my silent pleading, one of the names I had written down for her was the name of the man who gave the closing prayer at Carly's funeral. Worlds can collide in the oddest ways. I shook his hand before he left and told him that I needed to talk with him on Monday about someone to look out for.

Why not believe?

Are You Going to Play It?

2012-01-05T23:08:00.009-07:00

Shortly after I started working full time and got my own apartment in my 20s, I decided to purchase a full size electronic keyboard.

When I told my mother she said, "Are you going to play it?"

I suppose I deserved a question like that. I was never, um, very disciplined about practicing the piano. The last piano teacher I had told me that the following year she'd only be taking serious students. I took that to mean I wasn't welcome back.

In my defense I have played it over the years. Not seriously. But I love sitting down and noodling around. And every once in a while I go on an actual practicing binge.

My investment all those years ago has, however, paid off in spades with Jack.

For Christmas we gave him a midi adapter so he can plug the keyboard into a laptop and record what he plays. He can also manipulate the recording on the computer and generate scores for original compositions and arrangements.

Not only does he play it, he can now play it over and over and over on a continuous loop.

Early Out

2012-01-04T21:23:00.007-07:00

I decided that I needed to use my new scanner today, so I reached into a box of old papers and pulled this out at random: my schedule for my senior year of high school. I figured out that if I doubled up on English and PE, I could meet all of the requirements for graduation and graduate in January instead of June. My plan worked! (If you look carefully you can see that I'm signed up to go to the library every period spring semester.)

I generally remember that I enjoyed all of my classes that last fall, especially because as seniors we had the latitude to pick classes that interested us. But I only have a few specific memories. Like writing a final paper on Tolkien's The Hobbit for my British literature class and being told that I should have used more examples from the text to support my ideas. And getting a comment on one of my stories for creative writing that suggested I avoid using the words "a lot" and "really" all the time. Valuable comments that I still try to apply in my work. Really.

The Cut

2012-01-03T19:19:00.004-07:00

Roger was organizing some of his photos yesterday and came up with this gem documenting the very first time I gave Jack a haircut. I had absolutely no idea the cord was in his mouth until Roger developed the picture. Such a good mother.

The Big Dig

2012-01-02T21:39:00.016-07:00

There's another layer to this 2012 writing project. Actually many layers. Of buildup. In my office. It's just been a place to deposit things; I haven't actually worked in there for months and months.

I figure that organizing my office and mining for memories will go hand in hand.

After debating about posting a photo, I decided in the end that a public visual confession will help motivate me to action.

I meant to start tackling it today (once I packed up Christmas decorations, which I also didn't get to). My token effort was throwing away the long dead roses in a vase on the windowsill.

Flash back to my 16th birthday when my grammie sent me 16 long-stem red roses with a crisp new dollar bill tied to each one with a ribbon, delivered to our house by an actual florist. Sweet.

Update: Three days in and I've already had a serious memory fail. I woke up the morning after I wrote this obsessed about finding the picture of the 16 roses I knew I had somewhere. Turns out there was not a dollar bill tied to each rose, but rather the bills were tied together in a bouquet, which was then tied to the roses with a ribbon. Still sweet!

Co-Opted

2012-01-01T17:25:00.013-07:00

Memory is such an unreliable thing. When the idea that we could have false memories took hold a couple of decades ago, Roger and I used to joke that we'd implant positive false memories in our future children. "Don't you remember the time you met Mickey Mouse at Disneyland?"

Our bookstore once hosted a very famous children's book author and illustrator who lived in New England. She was visiting relatives in Salt Lake City and graciously offered to do a signing for us.

I drove up to Salt Lake to pick her up. On our drive back to Springville, we passed Provo and the campus of BYU. I described how stunning it was to go to college at the foot of towering rocky mountains after growing up in the gentle hills of Massachusetts. My whole freshman year I felt like I was at a resort, with a spectacular view out my dorm window. We even had tennis courts and swimming pools!

After the signing, Roger and Jack joined us for the ride back to Salt Lake. As we passed the BYU campus, this lovely woman started telling Roger about her first visit to BYU to give an address at a children's literature symposium. As a New Englander, she was stunned by the towering rocky mountains and felt like she was at a resort, with spectacular views and tennis courts and swimming pools.

I sat in the backseat of the car listening to the same words I had spoken hours earlier coming out of her mouth. I suppose her experience had been very similar to mine. But still. She had co-opted my memory!

My memory, by the way, is particularly dodgy. That's one of the reasons I want to take this journey, to get some experiences down in writing before I completely lose track of them. Please feel free to correct me if you think I'm making something up. Or co-opting your memory.

365

2011-12-31T20:28:00.013-07:00

Except for one day when blogger was down and I had to post two entries the next day, I met the goal I set for 2011! It seems fitting to announce a new writing goal on my last day, especially because the discipline of daily writing has been truly valuable for me.

My inspiration for the new project comes from a trip two friends and I took to San Francisco about five years ago to see an exhibition of quilts made by the women of Gees Bend, Alabama. This collection of images from the exhibition hangs in my home office to remind me of that adventure.

Many of the women who made the quilts spent the better part of the day working in the cotton fields, and while they worked they'd dream about how they'd piece together the scraps of fabrics they had waiting for them at home. They didn't follow patterns. They followed their own imaginations.

One woman told the story of how one day she decided to follow a traditional pattern. Following that pattern, she said, sucked the joy of quilting right out of her. It took her years to recover her own quilting "voice" again after that.

When I heard her tell the story, I understood deep down in my soul exactly what she meant. Whenever I try to follow a pattern of life thought up by someone else, it sucks the joy of living right out of me. At first subconsciously, but gradually more consciously, I've stopped trying to follow many of those patterns. As a result, I've got a life full of bits and scraps of experiences that aren't measured carefully or cut evenly, and don't fit into prescribed patterns.

Each day in 2012 (with some exciting exceptions that may involve actually leaving the continent), I plan to stitch together small colorful fragments of memories here on my blog and watch the patterns of my own imagination emerge.

Ladies Who Lunch

2011-12-30T21:17:00.004-07:00

Sadly, the last of five items on my Utah Valley Magazine list, Nellie's Diner on University Ave. in Provo, failed to open in time for me to try it this year. Apparently they've been trying to open since this time last year. I may or may not save the coupon I clipped from the magazine for a free cinnamon roll. Oh well.

But happily, my friend Jackie, a dear neighbor who is celebrating her 88th birthday tomorrow, came to my rescue and invited me along with a group of ladies (I was by far the youngest) to the Riverside Country Club for lunch today. They've got a beautiful new club house there, and we enjoyed views of the golf course which was surprisingly busy on this warm December day.

Thank you for a delicious lunch and a wonderful afternoon, Jackie. Happy birthday!

Picas and Pixels

2011-12-29T21:41:00.002-07:00

This winter solstice bookmark is the very first thing I scanned on the new scanner I got for Christmas and finally opened up today.

We've been scanner impaired for a very long time, and I decided that I need a scanner for the new blogging project I've thought up for 2012. (I'm saving the details for the last posting of 2011.)

The bookmark was designed by Sally Gardner, one of my very favorite friends from college (we go all the way back to freshman year in the dorms). Her sister Joanna, whom I am also pleased to call a friend, wrote the lovely poem.

Sally and Joanna printed up the bookmarks on Sal's very own letterpress in her very own printshop in upstate New York.

You can bet that I'm dreaming up a project we can do there one day.

Aunt Margie

2011-12-28T20:46:00.004-07:00

Today we drove to Manti, Utah, to celebrate the life of Roger's Aunt Margie, his mom's oldest sister in a family full of girls. Of all of Roger's aunts, she is the one I knew best.

Aunt Margie loved her sisters, loved Uncle Don, loved her children, loved her small town, and loved God. All of that love always spilled over onto us whenever we stopped by to visit.

It was impossible not to love her back.

Downtown Rising

2011-12-27T23:28:00.006-07:00

Checked the fourth item off of the last stretch list I compiled last month from Utah Valley Magazine by having lunch at the Blue Lemon.

Except that we actually ate at the Blue Lemon in Salt Lake, not Utah Valley. Oh, well.

Roger and I wanted to go see the progress on the house renovation his sister and her husband were enduring (extending the foundation under an add on back porch, gutting the kitchen, etc.). They live in the Avenues in Salt Lake City, and so we turned it into fun downtown outing with their family.

Lunch was fresh and fabulous. I will definitely be going back. I especially liked the sign that listed which local farm grew which vegetables the restaurant purchased. And because we were right downtown, we walked off a bit of our meal as we explored the new City Creek development, which is very near completion.

I feel like I had a tiny vacation. I love it when that happens!

The Battle of the Deadly Sins

2011-12-26T23:25:00.006-07:00

Sloth Loses

I was planning to write about hanging out all day in the new pajamas I got for Christmas. I made it until early evening. Then I got restless.

Gluttony Wins

Jack was at a friend's house, but Roger was accommodating. He'd been telling me about the tasty onion rings he discovered at--of all places!--the hospital cafeteria.

So, we went there. And had fries with them.

They were very, very tasty. And we washed them down with soda we got from the magical fountain. I tried a mixture of orange and vanilla Diet Coke. Mmmm.

The hospital isn't working on building its future customer base, is it?

Adventures Await

2011-12-25T21:54:00.004-07:00

Behold my favorite surprise under the tree: a handmade basket for my bicycle!

Deliveries to neighbors, picnics up the canyon, fresh corn and tomatoes from the farm stand, library books. The possibilities are endless! (At least as soon as the weather warms up . . .)

Light in the Dark

2011-12-24T22:58:00.006-07:00

We hosted the family Christmas Eve party tonight, but broke with tradition when it ended. Usually we get into pajamas when everyone leaves and settle in to take care of last minute preparations for Christmas morning. But tonight we piled in the car and headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house to wish them a happy Christmas Eve. They weren't able to come to the party.

On the way we drove by the cemetery in south Provo and noticed lots of cars and people there. What were they doing? They were lighting graveside lumières. The cemetery was full of them! I'm sure this has been a tradition for years, but since we're never out and about on Christmas Eve, we'd never seen it.

What a beautiful way to remember loved ones on a cold, dark night that marks the beginning of the season of light. Merry Christmas to all!

Good Vibrations

2011-12-23T22:57:00.004-07:00

We had a wonderful evening stopping by to visit friends to wish them a happy Christmas. At one home, Jack discovered a corner filled with intriguing musical instruments that our friends had collected over the years from their world travels.

One of the instruments was a Tibetan singing bowl, which I'd never heard of before. It vibrated with incredible sound as we held it in our hands and played it.

I found this endearing instruction video when I got home.

And then I found this. Awesome!

So You Want To Read

2011-12-22T21:00:00.004-07:00

From "The Latest at the Library" section of today's Springville Independent News:

It's been a long time since I posted this teaser about a new Springville library lecture series I've been working on. We'll be going on a grand adventure as we explore authors, genres and specific books.

A fun grand adventure. Which is why I've invited the amazing and clever writers Louise Plummer and Ann Cannon to kick off the series with a tag team presentation about books they've read over the years that have stretched them in unexpected ways. Expect to be enlightened and enlivened!

2012 presentations will include gems like So You Want to Read Shakespeare, So You Want to Read C.S. Lewis, So You Want to Read Poetry and So You Want to Read Moby Dick.

Sounds Painful

2011-12-21T22:43:00.003-07:00

Most of my day revolved around the jail, trying to get on top of things before we head into the holidays. I never, ever know what I might end up researching on any given day to help an inmate out. Today I learned about tattoo removal options in Salt Lake City.

The Other Side

2011-12-20T21:38:00.004-07:00

Opened up the new wrapping paper we picked up at Costco a couple of weeks ago and discovered that it's double sided. So nifty! (Though who'd want to hide those adorable penguins away on the inside?)

Five days before Christmas and except for two gifts for Roger that will be arriving shortly, I'm completely caught up on my wrapping! That actually sounds more impressive than it is. Roger has most of Jack's presents stashed away in some secret location, and I can't risk snooping even if I'm trying to be helpful. You know, it's that time of year!

The Gray Cat

2011-12-19T21:43:00.010-07:00

The other day Jack asked if we could get another cat because, you see, we are allowed to have three cats here in Springville and we only have two.

Tonight we dragged Jack to a grownup activity, an art show put together by a friend. As usual there were consequences for our actions.

Jack fell in love with a piece, and I fell in love with the idea of Jack having an original piece of artwork. And so "The Gray Cat" by artist Rebecca Wagstaff (pictured here with Jack) is now the newest resident in our home.

This means we've met the cat limit, right?

Scratch That Itch

2011-12-18T21:10:00.008-07:00

I don't know why I don't indulge in books that scratch my travel itch more often. Maybe because scratching makes an itch worse? And I am SO itching for a far flung adventure!

Jack and I have been reading Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. While we read I scheme about how we can go around the world. Then Roger brought home a beautiful photography book called The Tropical Modern House from the library. I spent a bit of time reveling in it this evening.

Can you imagine waking up in the morning to this view? Ahhhh. Yeah. Right there.

Jiggety Jig

2011-12-17T22:22:00.004-07:00

We went to a white elephant party tonight and brought home a white pig.

Jack has never owned a piggy bank before, which may constitute a severe lapse in parenting. It may be too late to make much of a difference, but I still feel better now.

Gurus (with and without an Apostrophe)

2011-12-16T21:49:00.007-07:00

I'm making a bit of a stretch today because I want to write about something that brought me joy but wasn't a exactly a new experience. It's just been too long since I had lunch with my wise and wonderful friends Linda and Lisa.

I am blessed to know many wise and wonderful people, and Linda and Lisa are among my favorite. Hanging out with them is very good for my soul.

But I can make a small homage to the spirit of my 2011 blogging project: Even though we met up at our usual place (Guru's in Provo), I didn't order my usual (Asian chicken salad). It was far too wintry a day, so I tried the Thai peanut pasta instead. I think that was good for my soul, too.

Mnemonic

2011-12-15T23:04:00.004-07:00

We are working on getting Jack in a better habit of studying for tests in school. Tomorrow he has a science test on taxonomy, and I quizzed him from the study guide he brought home.

I suggested he come up with a mnemonic to remember domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

Dumb kids play carelessly on fine grain sand.

I might actually remember the order now myself! (But please don't quiz me. Thank you.)

We Will, We Will Rock You

2011-12-14T22:18:00.004-07:00

The event we've been waiting months for finally arrived. Jack's first band concert went very well. I can't believe these kids have only been playing since the beginning of the school year!

Slop Your Dripper

2011-12-13T22:06:00.002-07:00

Tonight Roger and I went to our first Utah County employee Christmas party. Ironically, it was held at the events center at UVU, my other employer. After dinner, we got to attend the Bar J Wranglers concert.

During the summer, they play every night at the Bar J Chuckwagon Western Music Show in Jackson Hole and during the winter they tour. I went to the Bar J Chuckwagon once 30 years ago, but it's a distant memory.

I'll tell you they are Entertaining. Yes, with a capital E. Fiddling, harmony, and standup comedy.

At one point one of them dressed up like his granny and told the story of Cinderella, but he mixed up all of the cows and then ate them backstage O.o

[Jack just hijacked my blog post. I'm back now.]

So he told the story of Cinderella, but he mixed up the first sounds of the words. For example, she went to the bancy fall and met the prandsome hince. Let's just say it got a little awkward when he reached the point in the story where the shoe fit.

That Is If Sentimental Jack Will Let Us

2011-12-12T21:40:00.007-07:00

Today was one of those jam-packed days. All of a sudden I'm on my way home from my last evening class of the semester, and I realize I haven't a clue what I'm going to blog about. I also realize that I need to stop for gas.

While I'm filling the tank, I start paying attention to the video screen on the pump, which is advertising specials at the business that owns the gas station. And then I realize that they've set it up so we can actually print coupons at the pump. Brilliant!

We may abandon our traditional Christmas tree lot to get $10.00 off this year.

Bells Are Ringing

2011-12-11T21:39:00.003-07:00

Checked off the third item on my Utah Valley Magazine list when Jack and I headed down to the art museum this afternoon to hear the Utah Valley Handbell Ringers play some Christmas music. A perfect way to enjoy the holidays!

Click here to listen to one of the carols we enjoyed today.

Down

2011-12-10T22:46:00.002-07:00

Our internet connection is down. Roger lent me his iPhone to write this. They can't stop me! But they can slow me down. I'm typing this with one finger.

Checking the List

2011-12-09T18:02:00.002-07:00

Checked item #2 off the list I made from Utah Valley Magazine last month. While I was out running errands, I stopped by Cherry Lane Boutique in the old women's gym on University Avenue to check it out.

It was definitely boutique-y, and it turned out I wasn't really in a boutique-y shoppy mood.

But I did pick up local singer/songwriter Mindy Gledhill's new Christmas CD called Winter Moon, opened it up on the spot, and listened to it all the way home.

'Tis the season!

The Queue

2011-12-08T22:15:00.004-07:00

In addition to teaching transitional skills classes at the jail, I meet one-on-one with inmates at their request to go over their immediate and longer-term plans when they're released.

Depending on their situation, we may spend most of the time talking about how they can meet basic needs like food and shelter or we may spend most of the time talking about how to apply to college and what they can expect when they get there.

I ask them questions and I listen. I look them in the eyes and I see them, I hear them. And then I find specific answers for them. How to get a birth certificate from Nebraska. The address and phone number for a particular drug rehab program in southern Utah. The requirements for a degree in illustration. Anything I can do to help them hit the ground running and deal with obstacles in their path.

Sometimes I am hopeful for them. Sometimes I'm not too hopeful, but I find ways to give them honest encouragement.

Today I conducted my 50th one-on-one. I also got completely caught up on my request queue for the very first time since I started. Before I left for the afternoon, I checked the computer and discovered two more requests.

I'm glad. I'd rather not be caught up for very long. I really like what I do.