The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Other Scary Stuff

I don't like Halloween.  I realize that makes me just about the least fun/cool mom out there but there it is.  I especially hate how the holiday has taken hostage of the entirety of October, a beautiful fall month that deserves so much more than tributes of skeletons, zombie brides and lawns decorated with headstones.  I think I could be a supporter if we contained it all to a day, or, at most, a week, but I'm much too sick of Halloween's grossness by the time Halloween actually arrives.  Still, while my house has no trace of a ghost, bat, witch or cauldron, I do my best to not ruin my children's fun with my cynical attitude by supporting Halloween activities at school, church and friends' homes.

I recently posted about how much I dislike being scared.  That fact may play into my anti-ghoul philosophy but I think all of the month's imagery and repeated playing of Thriller on the radio unknowingly got under my skin last night.   I didn't go to bed scared.  On the contrary, I spent the evening simultaneously watching Game 2 of the Giants vs. Texans World Series and playing Yahtzee on my phone (addicting!) until I took a relaxing bath with some lavender/chamomile bath oils and read a Family Circle magazine.

Once I finally got into bed, my thoughts were filled with how I was going to accomplish everything I hoped to the following day with a little bit of Yahtzee dice rolling in the background (come on, sixes!).  Then I heard what sounded like a song on the radio only it didn't follow the sound pattern of a car driving nearby.  It would come and go and then come again and I decided that someone must be outside my house listening to music.  A group of drunken teenagers, a drifter, an ax-murderer...could be anybody.

I have realized during the six months we have lived in this house that I can't hear when someone arrives.  That was made startlingly clear when my sister arrived a few weeks ago, came into my house while I was in the bathroom, walked around while calling my name, all without any notice by me.   That's freaky, right?  I should have heard her car.  Or the front door opening or closing.  Or her walking around.  Darn these thick walls.

So, to hear music...well...that was something.  Somebody was close.  Due to the rush of adrenaline that was now pulsing through my veins, my mind raced through possible scenarios.  Could I get my children safely out of the house?  Should I go and get my trusty chef's knife?  Should I wake Jay up?

When I heard the sound swell again, I got out of bed and went out to the dining room to see if I could see lights from a car or a bonfire somewhere nearby.  I didn't, but I did notice that the sound I heard was definitely coming from the direction of the pitch-black living room so I walked closer towards the source.

Turns out, itunes on the computer was playing but at a very, very low volume so only the high notes could be heard.  It must have also been playing while we watched the world series because neither Jay nor I got on the computer once we shut the TV off.  Feeling a bit exasperated for being so scared by my own playlist, I turned on the monitor to close itunes and noticed what was playing.

It was "The Lord Is My Shepherd" from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Heavensong album. 

While the song does refer to death, I may just be the first person in history ever frightened by this song.  Darn those sopranos and their resonance.  And damn and blast Halloween for putting me on edge in the first place!

Gross!!!!

Sam and The Clumf

This may only be interesting to Sam's mother and possibly grandparents, but Sam wrote this after he was done with his piano practice, homework and one on none game of football outside.  I want to remember his creative seven year-old self, which I think is pretty darn fantastic.  (Everything is as Sam wrote it with no corrections in grammar or spelling.  It'll help if you know beforehand to read it phonetically.  Sam has never cared much about spelling). 


Sam and The Clumf
Once opon a time there was a person named Sam.  Sam was poor.  He oned six miles of land and had a one story house.  He had one millon dollers.  Taxes were in a month.  But Sam was prepared.  He didn't yous any government stuff or LaPata county stuff.  He oned a ranch.  He had a nice bike that cost fivtey cents because he found it in the dump and payed fettey cents to clean it.  

One day he took his bow and erows and went out hunting.  He went sevendey six miles west and he had hit six dear, seven bunnys and three prarey dogs.  Sam had hered about this animal called a clumf.  Sam hered that it was six hundred thowson millon pounds.  Umagin that!  He also hered that thier are only one hundred of them left and that whoever brought in all of them dead or alive he will be payed a millon dollers evrey day for six years.   Sam looked and looked for hours.  But when he was about to give up a clumf jumped right in front of him.  He semed to be prety frendly.  After a minute nindey nine more clumf jumped in front of him.  After six more hours they became best freinds.  

Sam in the morning woke up and wisled.  One hundred clumfs jump loking in his window.  Sam at ten oclock he toke the one hundred klumfs to the govener.  The govener looked fritend by the klumfs.  He said wwhhaaatt iiiisss thaaaaaatt.  He said in a fritend look.  Klumfs said Sam.  Oh said the govener in a look like he was going to die.  In fact the other govener allready fantead and the other died.  Sam actully gave his one millon dollers to keep the klumfs.  Sam after all did get payed the one millon dollers evry day for six years.  Thats how Sam learned to never give up.  


I love him!  I don't know if I'm raising a future member of PETA or a member of the Tea Party but I love that he likes to write and that he's still willing to share it with me. 

Book Review - Nurtureshock

I think it'd be safe to say that I tend to believe things written in parenting books I read when they "ring true."  In other words, I like reading books that confirm what I already believe, whether or not I already know it.

Nurtureshock is not that kind of book.  In almost every chapter, there is a finding that doesn't make sense until the authors break down the data that shows that it does.  It's a troubling book because it makes a very good case against "instinctive" parenting.  Instead, what Po Bronson and Ashely Merryman state is that some of our best intentions produce the worst results in our kids due to our wishful thinking, bias, fads, our own personal history and old psychology.

For instance, showing your kids episodes of Arthur and Clifford can increase cruel behavior and aggression.  Praising your child for being smart may harmful to his academic performance (even if he is really smart).  Assuming children are "color-blind" and not talking about race may cause children to become racist.  DVDs like Baby Einstein and other videos that claim to speed up language development or produce multi-lingualism can actually delay normal speech skills.  Other chapters cover why less sleep is a significant contributor to childhood obesity and ADHD, why kids lie, why gifted and talented programs are flawed, why siblings really fight, why teen rebellion is a sign of respect (gah!) and why I wish there was a Tools preschool program in my area.

I enjoyed reading this because it was really eye-opening and also because whatever parenting myth was being challenged, the data supporting any new claim was thoroughly explained.  It helps that Bronson and Merryman didn't back away from using all of he scientific jargon that usually causes my eyes to glaze over.  Most of the time, the opposite happened and the empirical evidence presented was surprisingly accessible while the flow between narrative and research was smooth and convincing.

It isn't often that I claim that something or someone changed the way I think.  But Nurtureshock did just that.    The "shock" in the title is no lie.  This shocked me.  In a really good and, I hope, empowering way.

The Parable of the Skunk

A few weeks ago, after sharing the news of my new calling with my internet-savvy sister, Emily, she forwarded a few links to blogs that contained Young Women ideas.  It was a helpful gesture, of course, and those blogs do, indeed, contain many fun and wonderful looking activities.

They also completely paralyzed me with their freakishly perfect authors.   I've been blogging for four and a half years now, and I'm well aware of the concept of spin.  Blog material tends to rely heavily on the good stuff going on and for good reason too!  It's a nice counter balance to all the gloom and doom the media presents as the reality of life.   But when you don't know a person, and they have dizzying talents displayed on their blog,  it's easy to fall victim to the they-are-better-than-me comparison.

This very thing happened to me and I just haven't felt up to casting my not quite as spectacular pearls before blogland.  It seems to me that blogs have transitioned from their humble beginnings of social voyeurism to springboards of talent discovery.  The world is filled with unbelievably talented people and I've watched people with a eye for photography launch their photography careers through their blogs.  People who bake or cook discover there is an audience for their methods and recipes.  The list goes on and on.  Jewelry design.  Interior decorating.  Clip-Art.  Scrapbooking.  Quilting.  Knitting.  Furniture making.  Etc., Etc., Etc.   Many have multiple talents such as this Young Women's idea blog whose author not only shared her ideas for successful programs and activities but was also an amazing photographer (with her own watermark design to identify each photo as hers), dessert designer, visiting teaching hand-out maker, Halloween craft idea supplier, and cleaner extraordinaire.

It's not like I feel like I'm talent-less.  I have talents.  I can sing.  I'm pretty good with a book in my hands.  I'm an excellent floater.  But I can't present a tutorial filled with professional how-to sequential photos, or open an etsy shop with any of them (although if anyone can figure out how I can turn my extreme buoyancy into cash, I'm all ears) and that seems to be the point of writing a blog these days.

While driving around in my I'm-not-worthy-to-blog state last week, I frequently drove past a stinky road-killed skunk.  There are lots and lots of skunks in my area and they make the worst roadkill.  It's not just the usual gore and guts to gross me out but the mile before and after of stench that I have to endure for at least a week  At one point, I thought, "Even though it is stinky and less obvious with its purpose, a skunk must serve an essential role in the circle of life."  And feeling a certain kinship with an animal possessing what I hypothesized were less glamorous talents, but talents nonetheless, I set off to discover what those talents were.

Turns out, a skunk is pretty much just a stinky, rabies carrying, food scavenging rodent.  There isn't much that it does to endear it to the rest of mankind.  It does eat black widow spiders, scorpions and other even less desirable rodents, but that's about all it has lined up in its pros column.

The surprising twist to the parable is that my discovery about the skunk did lift me out of my blogging funk.  Because I am not a skunk.  I am a human being and considerably more talented.  I don't carry rabies.  I do not possess malodorous anal glands.  And while I many not reduce the black widow or scorpion population by eating them, I can certainly buy something or pay someone to kill them.

Plus....I can float.  Really, really well.

Sunday Thoughts - Called To Serve

I am the new Young Women's President.

Crazy, right?  I've never served in Young Women's.  I don't have daughters.  I don't have teenagers.  I have only been in the ward for four months and don't know the young women, or many other women in the ward, so even thinking about counselors was hard.  I didn't earn my Young Women's recognition award.  I struggle with the notion that homemaking is the highest, most noble profession to which a woman might aspire.  Teenagers scare me.

When the bishop extended this call to me two weeks ago, this resume of mine lodged in my brain and I had a hard time focusing.  All I felt was overwhelmed.  How am I supposed to know who to call as counselors?   Who am I, who slept in the guest room for three nights in a row because I don't know how to handle conflict with my spouse more effectively than giving him the silent treatment, to teach about the virtues of marriage (we have since patched things up and I'm feeling much more confident).   Where am I going to find the time and energy to do everything that needs to be done to magnify this calling when I already need down days if I have too much going on?

That was last week.

This week, I have felt a divinely given calm.  Names came.  Ideas came.  Priorities stood in a clear order.  As I've thought about the girls, I've realized that they are each unique and amazingly talented.  I'm looking forward to getting to know them better.  Mostly, I realized that while I may not be able to teach them how to make a cute skirt or handmade jewelry and I have absolutely zero vinyl lettering experience, those things, while lovely, are not essential.   What is essential is that these girls understand that they are daughters of God, important as individuals and as women, endowed with spiritual gifts that need to be developed and shared, beneficiaries of an infinite and eternal atonement that will allow them to return home to their Heavenly Father and entitled to receive continuing revelation, both personal and through restored priesthood keys.  And I can help them because I have a testimony of each of those things.

I have an excellent, excellent presidency that I'm excited to work with, a supportive husband and in-laws close by willing to help when Jay can't be around and even though I'm still nervous about all of my original doubts and worries, I trust that this is what I have been called to do at this time.   First up:  Priest/Laurel dinner on Wednesday night.  Wish me luck!

Book Review - We Need To Talk About Kevin

I have such mixed feelings about We Need To Talk About Kevin, a fictional story about a teenage boy who commits mass murder at his high school only days before the well known and real life tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999.    Written in the form letters the boy's mother writes to her husband after their son's crime,  the unwritten question posed throughout the novel isn't what happened but why it happened.  As the mother re-examines her own behavior towards her husband, her pregnancy and her son, we readers are allowed to weigh our own opinions about whether it was nature or nurture that turned Kevin into a sociopath.

On one hand, I felt like the author, Lionel Shriver, did an incredible job in allowing her protagonist, Eva Katchadourian, to be the kind of flawed but not evil mother who you want to blame but aren't quite sure if you should.  She is so obnoxious with her love of the world but not of her own country, the good old US of A.  Really, she's a snob but not one void of sympathy.  Her own mother suffers from agoraphobia and can't leave her apartment, which might explain Eva's need to travel.  When she discovers an aversion to pregnancy and how little natural affection she has for her son, her nurturing, or lack thereof, seems the obvious reason for Kevin's issues.

Except that Kevin is hard to like, let alone love.  Even as a baby, his personality was harsh and irritating.  Of course, we only know Kevin through Eva's eyes, but his behavior and lack of sensitivity certainly lend credence to the side that Kevin was simply wrong in the head.  Always was.

On the other hand, I felt like this entire story, idea, and presentation was incredibly manipulative not to mention insensitive.  Sure, we are all wondering how something like mass murder in a high school by a high school student can happen.  Who are these kids and how do they become so evil?  I'm not sure creating a fictional character and having him reference to actual events and actual people, like Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold with disdain and mockery is tasteful.   I felt uncomfortable.  Besides that, some of the scenes are downright squirmworthy.

What made me most uncomfortable, however, was something Kevin told his mother on one of her monthly visits to his juvenile prison.  During one visit, he defended his behavior by stating that not only do we need people like him to do things like he did, but we want him to as well.  After all, the rest of us just sit around, doing nothing but watching and reading about what other people actually do.  In other words, he considered himself a do-er and the rest of us simply spectators.  As I was doing just that, lying in bed and reading about a horrific event instead of living it, I wondered if he was right.  By reading books like this, was I, in actuality, encouraging horrible behavior?

I've since decided that that isn't true.  My friend, Amy, helped put words to my thoughts when she defended a book about rape.  She wrote. We read about awful things because by reading about them we can understand them without having to experience them. Or we read about them because we experienced them and are searching for commonality, for someone else's experience to erase the loneliness of our own. We read about the ugly, dark things in the world so as to understand how people overcome them, so we can see courage in the face of trouble and hope set against despair. We read so our empathy may be doubled. Ignoring the awful things that happen doesn't make them go away. Ignorance make them more awful. Keeping the dark things in the dark gives them more power. Shining a light on them takes it away. Choosing to read brings that needed light."

Yeah.  What she said.  Although I don't think We Need To Talk About Kevin is even close to a "must-read" it is an interesting, non-scientific look at what creates a sociopath.

Oh, I Think They Must Be Growing

 Age: 4 years 9 months - Preschool

Height: 41 inches - 26th percentile

Weight:  38 lbs - 41st percentile

Age: 7 years 8 months - 2nd Grade

Height:  52.75  inches - 91st percentile

Weight:  62 lbs - 77 percentile

Age: 10 years 6 months - 5th Grade

Height:  60.5 inches  - 96th percentile

Weight:  77 lbs - 56th percentile

The Missing Place

Jay sharing a story with Sam about how he felt when he was transferred out of his first area of his mission after five months.


Tonight isn't a school night so our evening routine was pretty casual.  Jay is on call and didn't walk in the door until after eight o'clock and although the boys were still all up, they were each doing something quietly upstairs (which I should know by now is never a good thing in Henry's case.  Cut up paper, wet playing cards in the sink and toothpaste everywhere!  I'll deal with it tomorrow).   Out of the blue, Sam comes into the living room in tears.  He had been looking at his first grade memory book full of his work and pictures of him and his classmates taken throughout the year, and he missed his old school.  Missed his old friends.  Missed his old life.

I knew just how he felt.

So did Jay and we sat there and empathized with him and gave him some examples from our own lives about times we had to leave and move on even though we wished we could stay.  There was no consoling Sam, though.  He knows he has great new friends and a great new school and a great new house, but, tonight....tonight he felt sad.

Sometimes, I too have these random moments of memory and I swear there is a dormant organ that only functions when in the throes of missing something or someone because it hurts. What is it? It's not my heart, my stomach or my liver. But, it's somewhere around there because there is an actual physical ache inside my body and I know Sam felt it tonight. What a sweet, tender hearted boy.

What Is Truth?

My good intentions aren't exactly translating into blogging gold, but I did have an idea this afternoon about what I'd like to write about today.  However, it's now ten thirty at night and my head is tired and I'm not positive my deep thoughts, not to mention my passion about the topic, are best expressed in my current condition.   Please accept my pre-emptive apology for any rambling, veering off topic, or dangling prepositions.

I was on a news web site today and out of the corner of my eye, near the bottom was a link to an article about Glen Beck and a Mormon Prophecy.  Curious, I clicked on it and was taken to the Huffington Post web site and read the rather poorly written and poorly researched article by Dana Milbank.  When I finished the article, I surmised that the point he was trying to make was that Beck, who is Mormon, is doing the things he's doing and saying the things he's saying to essentially incite other Mormons, who would understand his coded messages, to follow him.

While that hypothesis should be dissected and discussed all by itself,  the authors presumption that Beck does this intentionally is not what actually got my dander up.  What did were contents of the one-thousand four-hundred and seventy-three comments that followed (there are now nearly four-thousand.  I can't bear to look).  I didn't read all of them.  I don't even think I skimmed half of them.  I didn't have to.  From the first hundred, it was clear that the vast, vast majority were anti-Beck, anti Fox news, anti-Mormon, anti-Romney, anti-Joseph Smith, and just plain....anti.  I realize the people who take the time to comment on online articles are, in general, more opinionated and less nice about giving their opinions, but so many comments, attacking...well....me wasn't a pleasant part of my day.

There was all sorts of false accusations and misinformation being spewed about with very little opposition (one poor commenter was clearly a member of the LDS church and was bravely trying to fend off some of the more malicious or erroneous comments).  It struck me then and I almost made a comment (in fact, I tried but was required to create a Huffington Post user name and password and that extra step made my gumption go away) that these very individuals who rail and moan and abuse Fox News, hate Glen Beck, ridicule those who listen to him are essentially mocking their own reflection.

Sure, they may vote differently and maybe they even drive a Prius instead of a truck but they are mirror images of each other, clinging to their version of truth just as fervently and sometimes as offensively as the other side.

Fox News has a conservative bias.  It does.  They say they are fair and balanced and they are....to conservatives.  Almost every other news outlet has a liberal bias.  They do.  They are just so surrounded by like-minded people that they sound equally fair and balanced to each other.   But none are doling out truth.

And neither is Glen Beck.  He is giving his opinion.  His opinion is more lucrative when it's loud and controversial.   I'm not saying his opinion is wrong.  Just that it's his.  It's not mine.  It's not the opinion of the LDS church.  They have their own format for giving theirs and it happened last weekend and the Lincoln Memorial was not in the background.  

As for the author of the article, well, that's not the truth either.  It makes me sad and angry that the many comments I read assumed it was.  Think people!  Know the difference between information and speculation.  Recognize bias - both in others and in yourself.  When taking a side, know why and what for and allow others to do the same without fear of harassment or ridicule.  

Galileo said, "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered, the point is to discover them."  He was probably referring to His once controversial discovery about the earth revolving around the sun but do you think there is a "true" political side?  Ayn Rand made her case for capitalism.  Glen Beck makes his for his own brand of conservatism.  Many others claim social justice equals truth.  And then there are those fools who comment on the Huffington Post about what they think is truth.  Is there a truth for America?   If there is, as a Mormon, is it my responsibility to start listening to Glen Beck?  (That last question is not something I'm actually wondering.  And that's the truth).

My Attitude of Gratitude

I have been wearing some unflattering crankypants for the past few days.  I just can't seem to shake them off.  In an attempt to reverse my present mood into something more pleasant to be around, I thought I'd take President Monson's advice and see if I can't find an attitude of gratitude.

Things I am grateful for today:

• my swim buddy, Lori.  We usually swim on Wednesdays but she was willing to swim this morning because I needed the exercise and the requisite chat in the hot tub afterward.  

• My functioning kidneys.  I picked someone up from their dialysis session this morning and the waiting room was so sad to me.  It was filled with those waiting to be hooked up to a machine to do what mine do automatically and without pain or expense.  

• Albertson's great sales on meat.  Buy one get two free on packages of petite sirloin steaks!  I saved forty dollars on that alone today.   

• My sister, Sarah, who is fabulous and who is celebrating a birthday today.  

• the opportunity to watch conference yesterday.  I loved Henry B. Eyring's talk at the start of Sunday's morning session.  I felt the Spirit strongly and looked over at my boys and we had a moment with real power.  Then the choir sang a sublime arrangement of Dear To The Heart of The Shepherd and I felt whole.  

• a brain to think about things (still thinking...)

• opposition in all things because as cranky as I feel now, how sweet my better mood will feel when it blessedly arrives (hurry!)

Five For Friday

1.  I had my second ever pack meeting last night as Cubmaster.  It's the kind of calling that, in theory, seems like a piece of cake but when the week of the event comes, it's every bit as bad as ward activity chair or enrichment counselor.  It's a lot of prep work, a lot of set up and take down and a lot of song and dance,.  The first pack meeting, held in June, was horrible.  I don't think the boys knew it was horrible because when my game of water gun soccer didn't work, I just said, "You have 10 minutes to play with these water guns," and they were off.  But, it was bad.  No awards.  No idea what I was doing.  Bad.

Last night's was a lot better.  We had a talent show to go with the core values "Courage" and "Perseverance" and I was very impressed with the amount of talents these eight to ten year-olds have.  We had a magic trick, drum solo, geology presentations, light saber reenactments, a karate demo, a boy riding a unicycle and several piano solos.  Everything went perfectly.  Except.

They were reapplying fresh black top in the parking lot so it was roped off and everyone had to park along the street.

Fresh tar.  Eight to ten year-old boys.  Can you guess what happened?






Argh!!!!  I hope Facility Management can get it out.  What a nightmare.

2.  The other day, my friend was relating some parenting drama she was going through and casually mentioned something that happened during family scripture study.  Her reminder about what we are often counseled to do, that is, have family scripture study, gave me the urge to start that goal anew with my own family.  And, so, while the boys were eating ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner, I read aloud 1st Nephi from the Book of Mormon.  Now, I've read 1st Nephi more than any other book on earth (and a lot more than I've read the book of Moroni) but I have never noticed, or at least remembered if I did notice, that the vision Lehi saw which convinced him to leave Jerusalem with his family was shown to him in a book!  Not just a Look! vision but a "Here, read this," kind.  Thirteen angels came to visit him, gave him a book and told him to read!   Why wouldn't I remember this?  Why thirteen? Why a book?  Could they not talk?  It says they "bade" him to read but I suppose they could have used gestures.  Seems kind of like an inefficient way to use thirteen angels but, still, that is my kind of vision.   How awesome would it be to be given a book that showed you great and marvelous things and fill you with the spirit of God?  Oh....wait a minute.  Now, that's interesting.....

3.  I hate Miller Moths.  If you don't know what they are, it might be because no one else seems to call them that, but they are those ugly brown, fuzzy fluttery things, ugly butterflies, if you will, that go crazy around lights.  For some reason, a lot have been getting inside my house and it seems as if there is one going berserk every night when I read in bed.  It's not a good way to go to sleep.  The other night, one was moving in and out of the light above my bed so fast it was causing freaky shadows on my book, so I had to shut off the light, put a pillow on top of my head to make sure it couldn't land on me and then try and go to sleep.  That night, I had the craziest dreams.  The one I can remember is that a feisty black bat got into the house and was chasing me around.  I was running through the house and when I reached the foyer, I opened the door hoping it would fly out, but it was going so fast that it crashed into the door and it's long pointy beak got stuck in the wood.  Why would a bat have a long, pointy beak you ask?  I don't know, but at this point the bat turned into some kind of bird with a long, pointy beak that was still flapping its wings like crazy, trying to get unstuck from the door and I was lamenting that I had to deal with this all by myself.  In my dream, I actually put my hands on the bird to pull it out of the door (this is something I never would have done in real life, so, if I was in the movie Inception, I suppose a black bird going crazy because its beak was stuck in a door would be my totem) and when it was free, it flew into my hair.  This is when I woke up.

4.  I got pulled over for speeding today.  Jay read something once about the best way to get out of tickets and supposedly, if you are completely contrite, ready with your driver's licence, insurance and registration and basically stick to "Yes, Sir" and "No, Sir" without trying to give a sob story or argue about not knowing about the speed limit etc, cops are much more likely to let you off with a warning.

I've done it the last three times and gotten a warning....the last three times!!  The real lesson here is that I need to slow down.  But still!!

5.  I think I'm going to keep trying to blog daily.  It's a great part of my day.