Joy

My beautiful, beautiful German sister emailed me this morning. I couldn't have dreamed up better words. They covered me in sunshine and hope. They infused me with memories of love and laughter. They "filled [me] with that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory" (Helaman 5:44).

I forgot how much I've missed her. Her thoughts. Her poetry. Her grace.


She tells me she is well, that she is happy. These are words I've waited nearly two years to hear her say. She wrote:

Was sitting in the park, hiding under a big blue blanket when it started to rain. Laughed a lot. I’m still laughing. You see, I’m happy. And I’m glad I can write you: I’m happy.

We are so much the same in so many ways. Our love for travel, for the way that you find home when you find yourself far from it, our love of art and poetry and things that inspire, our love of discovery. Our love of joy. She said she cried in Vienna with joy. I cried reading of hers.

She says she might be coming to Utah next summer. I can hardly wait to wrap my arms around her and hold her close like I've been wanting to for so long. I can't wait to fill my life with her joy, and possibly let mine fill hers.

Tweet

I got a Twitter. It's true. But only for the sole reason of keeping track of the priceless things the boys I nanny for say. The only thing to make them better is to have Mikey imitate their little voices. He's actually really good. I fall into fits of laughter every time he does. Keep in mind, Gabbin' is six and Paddy is "Three-and-a-half," meaning he turns four on Saturday.

• Kinkajous are not the smallest monkey. A marmoset is. Aaaand they're nocturnal. [Gabbin']
  
• Do you have enough energy to do three-thousand underdogs? [Paddy]
  
• My grandpa, Big Ed, died on April Fool's Day. [Gabbin']
  

- This is a musical vacuum. My mom only has a noise vacuum.
- Yeah I only have a noise vacuum too. A musical vacuum sounds great. Where can I get one?
- Um, the musical vacuum store on Wisconsin Ave. (long pause) In the sky.
- In the sky?! How do I get there then?
- A hang-glider [conversation with Paddy]

• Look Paige! I made a motorcycle jet fighter. It has two wheels and can fly. [Paddy]
  
• Paige where's the bottom of your mouth? . . . Oh. [Paddy]
  
• But when my bottom is on the seat it feels AWFUL! [Gabbin']
  
• Is Alaska the place where we store our super secret jet fighters? [Gabbin']
  
• Uncle Chris has six hairs. You're right! [Paddy]
  
• Any time you see someone looking at you and you think it's a ghost, it's just Paddy. [Paddy]
  
• How do you say peanut butter and jelly in french? I'll tell you. Pajellio. And in Chinese you say peanut butter and jelly: Poneesio [Paddy]
  
• The United States had to buy Alaska, right? And Congress had to pay a lot of gold chunks for it, right? [Gabbin']
  
• The only way to catch a bird is to put some salt on his back and then it goes super fast and then it goes down. [Paddy]
  
• Somerset doesn't have any bad men. Know why? Because there are like 46 policemen driving around it. 46. Right Paige? [Gabbin']
  
• Do you see any bikes that say "Pro Thunder" on them? Well it's mine. I ONLY ride "Thunder Bikes" because they're the FASTEST kind of bike. [Gabbin']
  
• Are you dying for a Madsen bike? You're DYING for one huh? So you can pull Michael around, right? [Gabbin']
  
• People who make sound effects in movies get a lot of money, right Paige? Like 40 dollars everyday, right Paige? Because making them is very hard, right Paige? [Gabbin']
  
• The man sitting next to me smells like cookies. [Paddy]
  
• Um, I can't eat any more hot dog because I just quit eating food this morning and I quit society. [Paddy]
• Do you know what a cow's favorite sound is? Moosic. Do you know what a cow's favorite food is? Grassic! [Paddy]
• Do goblins have green shoes? 'Cause Goblins are Irish. [Paddy]
• Did you know that even when I'm an adult I'll still cry when someone puts a needle in my eye? That's DEFINITELY a crier, right Paige? [Gabbin']
  
• You're bald. You look like a baldy Michael. That must be a crew cut. [Gabbin' in reference to Mikey's buzz]
• Do you want to come down and see how I really got the rhythm in my dancing and how the music really activates my body? [Gabbin']
• Do you want to see a hole that smells like a Christmas tree? If you put you nose in there you'll smell a Christmas smell. [Paddy]
• Paige I wiped until the wipe came out clean. So we should probably reuse this one right? [Gabbin' while showing me his used wipe]
• They just can't shut down NASA! I'm putting all my experience towards NASA! If they shut down NASA, I'll have to shut down all my experience!! [Gabbin']
• The magic word always has do to with poo. The word yesterday was poopy-head. Today it's poopylackading. Always poopy. Right paige? [Gabbin' referring to Paddy's magic words]
• You have to count to 4000 because I have trouble finding a hiding spot. [Paddy]
• This tree is easy to climb. WAY easier than my Japanese Maple! [Gabbin']
• But if I stop on my bike I can't get up my speed for one million and forty-seven hours! [Gabbin' after getting the eye for running into the back of Paddy]
• Did you know that there were dinosaurs in the ice age and they chased animals? Do you know who got away? The rats. [Paddy]
  
• Did you know that air is not food? Air is air. Right? [Paddy]
• Thanks! I NEEDED that money for my money collection! I'm a collector of money! [Paddy]
• I wrote a Y. I wrote a Y! What did I do. [Paddy]
  

My last day of nannying was yesterday and to be quite honest, while it has definitely been an experience that taught me loads, I'm so excited to be done. They used us up until the last minute last night. We were there late. So late, in fact, that we missed the last train into town and had to take a taxi. That's a whole other story. But such a classic one.

Fascinating

Read David Brooks' latest article, "The Power of Posterity." Just because my mind was zipping around fast enough, he had to throw this into the pot. The satire is genius.

For extra-credit and what Mikey and I think is an interesting glimpse into humanity, check out the comments on the article.

Interested

I've had three themes rolling around in my head for weeks, namely, Zion, family, education.

Sunday we got together with a group of LDS idealists and talked about what we think Zion will look like. We didn't get very far, but the discussion was completely illuminating and brought together a lot of things that I've been thinking about. Especially in the realm of family. I posted about the importance of the family unit a few weeks ago. Since then my mind feels like it's being driven by humming bird wings. There's a constant hum in my head because the ideas are so numerous and they're whirling so fast.

One of the caveats we explored Sunday night was that of education. Some were arguing to cut out a core curriculum entirely and focus more on community-based programs that meet the specific needs and interests of the families involved. Their bottom line was that our education system is debunked and it might has well be shelved and replaced with something else. It's just too far gone and out of control.

I do and don't agree.

I do believe there are a lot of problems with public schools. But I don't think the problems are unrepairable. I think that a majority of the problems could be fixed if we fixed our families first. The list of problems is long. Students are unmotivated. Teachers can't control their big class sizes. Test scores aren't where they need to be to be competitive internationally . . . but I think the underlying cause of it all is that parents are no longer invested in what their kids are learning. There is one extreme of parents joining commonwealths to bring in scholars who educate their kids on certain subjects. There is paying comparable college tuition costs to send your kids to a private school. But a much easier solution that could go a long way: read with your kids, do math together, research the questions they ask you together. Parents are the missing link in unmotivated, disinterested kids. They are taught at home that school is more of a rite-of-passage, rather than an exciting endeavor. Education always equals money, rather than fulfillment, understanding, culture, service (the list goes on and on and on).

I'm not a mom, but I have spent the last 3 months pretending. One of the best things that I've seen while I've watched these kids is how interested they are in everything. Their sense of wonder hasn't been lost in the sometimes mundane school days. But here's the catch: they all go to public schools. The difference? What happens in the home. Their place mats are maps of different continents and we talk about geography, history, and culture at dinner while pointing out the places we're discussing on the map. They like space. We do space. We build planets, we read books, we look up the launch of the Atlantis Space Shuttle on YouTube, we read clippings from the newspaper about the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, we . . . (get the picture?) Sure it takes a little more effort, but here these boys are, just as stuck in the so-called mire of the public school system as any other kid and they are still excited by learning.

So what am I getting at? Zion? Pseudo-momming? The Atlantis Space Shuttle?

Here's what I think would be great. I don't know how we could do it, but just picture this.

What if parents a) had the time and b) the motivation to not only be interested in what their kids are learning, but work on fostering that love of learning in them as children. These children grow up as passionate people who feel empowered by their education and some of them go back into the school system, infusing it with committed, passionate, practicing educators who not only teach, but are interested in their field of study to the point where their education doesn't stop either and they're actually working in their prospective field. So the cycle continues and continues until families are committed, education is a priority and all of the sudden we're closer to the society that can usher in the Savior.

I honestly believe that if we had a better handle on those two things, our world would look completely different. (And half of you are saying, well, duh).

But it has made me feel empowered. Like maybe I can be a little part in turning this ship around. Maybe I can raise my family in such a way that they are excited to contribute to the community and they are anxious to continue learning and expanding their minds in an effort to understand more fully the gospel, and humanity, and how they should live their own lives to bring about change.

Three

I have now had a husband for, count them, three months to the day. I love him. Here's a few reasons why.

Last Saturday we were waiting at the end stop of the Orange Line (coming back from a fantastic evening with Mikey's cousin) and we passed the 18 minute wait by singing Kate Nash and Alexi Murdoch on the station platform.

Sunday night while he was drifting off to sleep he turned and told me how glad he was that we got married in the temple. I'm glad too.

Monday night, we had a dance party. Just the two of us. (Did I mention that Mikey might have a career made for him if he goes into Dance Aerobics Instruction?)

We're best friends. And I couldn't be happier about it.

I love you my Mikey.

Dialogue

- Hey come one, let's start at the same time. You always get distracted.

- Am I your most distracted wife?

- By far! My other wives never get distracted.

- I knew it.

Health Care Solution: Wyden-Bennett

As expressed previously, the only true way that health care reform will really work is by adding incentives to change the health habits of Americans.

The Wyden-Bennett bill, The Healthy Americans Act, has this as its goal. Check it out.

Snipits

One of Mikey's Co-workers loaned us bikes for a few weeks which has been both a blessing and a curse (I don't think my ischium will ever be the same. On a side note: I just googled "ischium" to see if I spelled it right because Blogger didn't recognize it and the top hit was, "Ischial Burstitis/Weavers Bottom" which sounds horrible. I mean really, really horrible. I don't even want to know what you'd have to do to get a weavers bottom). But in all honesty it has been so fun to ride around the city and weave--without helmets--in and out of speeding vehicles.

Mikey insisted on giving me a pump out of Somerset (where I was sitting side-saddle on the bike frame--lemmetellya, there are more comfortable places to sit around town), and I thought I would die. I haven't gotten a pump since OlderAndWiserToo forced onto her bike and if I remember correctly, I ended up in tears. I kept telling Mikey, "Long story short: I just don't pump." Obviously I got on the bike anyway. And I'll admit, aside from the permanent dent in the back of my upper thigh, I had more fun than I thought I would.

We've passed this statue everyday for months on our way home from my job. Only recently did Mikey realize, it just might be me!

Finally, we had a day trip to Gettysburg and Harper's Ferry. It was a fun day (though it started out a little rocky). Here is the one and only picture from Saturday taken on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

Take Care of Me

The House and the Senate are currently working on a health care bill that can reform the current system and bring down the costs of health care for families. There are likely areas of health care reforms that are needed, such as to making the medication selection use cost-benefit analysis and other measures that can help that system not produce so many of those horrible stories that become the basis for movies like John Q. I buy that.

However, from what I have read, the conversation about health care seems to be completely one sided. I haven't heard anything that suggests how Americans can begin demanding less health care. After all, medicine has become iconic and ubiquitous in America. It is the cure-all. Indeed, it seems many in our society have convinced themselves of their right to live until 85 while maintaining sedentary lifestyles full of physical, mental, and emotional gluttony. For some people, medicine--in all of its modern varieties--reconciles the need to "feel full" and the need to feel "normal".

So, if health care is to be reformed and aided by the government, I would hope that prices don't become too low. I would hope that the costs are just enough so that people have incentives to take care of themselves rather than medicate themselves. I hope they cost enough to encourage jogging in the mornings rather than filling out another ambiguous prescription. I hope that the cost is high enough to encourage parents to recreate with their kids rather than let them fall into childhood obesity and/or diabetes. I hope that Congress knows that extending the all of the miracles of modern medicine to anyone for any reason large or small may be precisely what Americans don't need.

Individual

In the wake of the Nation's birthday, I pause to reflect on what exactly American Independence has come to mean. What used to be the strength of our nationality, our individuality and independence, now seems to be tearing at the very social fabric of which we are all a part. The current American social fabric is becoming one where people would rather stand on their own, relish in their own independence and put their individuality above the united body, rather than contribute to the strength of the collective whole. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that fabrics don't fair well when the pieces refuse to hold together.

What is causing this societal fraying? Last September, David Brooks wrote an article entitled, "The Social Animal," in which he states:

The problem is, this individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there has been a tide of research in many fields, all underlining one old truth — that we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his own life course is often an illusion.

There's the key. We are "deeply interconnected with one another," and hard facts are starting to prove that a mere sociality can't replace the integral, underlying structure of society: the family. It's the basics folks. If we want things to stop feeling shaky, we need to fortify the foundation. And that means getting back to creating a concrete family structure.

While running in the so-called, "Mommy circles" back East, I have been surprised at the number of women who regretted their initial distaste for family, placing every priority in front of settling down with a husband and having kids. One woman mentioned that she was raised by a feminist mother and as a result grew up with an attitude that family comes last because it's all about me, my individuality, my wants and my needs as a woman. Now she wishes she had known the truth. She told me that she has found an incredible amount of satisfaction in motherhood, even though as a 43-year-old, she's only been at it for 6 years. She said her children often "put things in perspective" and help her understand what society really needs: a band of determined and stalwart mothers. Determined to make marriages last and raise their children to want families of their own.

The sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin said that what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of "frequent marriage, frequent divorce" and the high number of "short-term co-habiting relationships." Taken together, these forces "create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country." In short, it's what he termed, "the Marriage-Go-Round" and it's ruining America.

Time Magazine's most recent issue is featuring the topic of American marriage failure and highlighting societal consequences (read the full article here). An excerpt reads:

"An increasingly fragile construct depending less and less on notions of sacrifice and obligation than on the ephemera of romance and happiness as defined by and for its adult principals, the intact, two-parent family remains our cultural ideal, but it exists under constant assault."

Sound familiar? The President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Kimball, was saying the exact same thing in the 70's. The family is under attack. And marriage is at the center of that attack.

Time Magazine goes on:

"How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage."

Government is on board now, trying to combat the attack on family and the decay of our social structure. From Clinton's welfare-to-work programs, to Obama's statement that, "We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one," the call is beginning to echo from sources beyond the church.

Marriages need not fail so frequently, and we can't let them if we have any hope in repairing the tattered social fabric that exists in the United States.

Elder Ballard may have said it best when he wrote, "The family is not just the basic unit of society; it is the basic unit of eternity."

4th

Patriotism

Amish

I never thought I'd find myself in this position so soon. Here I was making Amish Friendship Bread, a "friendly treat to share with your friends!" at only 20-years-old. I have vivid memories of my mom cursing the stuff when we made it as a kid. I thought it was just some weird Mormon thing, but no, it's out here too. (The boys got it from the neighbors who keep bees. Of course). Today was day 10 which means all the "mushing of the bag" is through and you get to bake it. 

Now I know why she rolled her eyes every time a gallon zip-lock back full of batter was dropped at our door.

Lost'n'Found

I didn't know how it would turn out. I was nervous, but confident. The Lord hasn't let me down before, so I lead the boys to the middle of the big grassy round-about and knelt down. 

We had lost the house key. I had it tied to my shoe while I ran along side the boys on their bikes to the park. But after an hour of underdogs, merry-go-round pushing, races to the drinking fountain, and a run home, we got to the front door only to realize we didn't have the key. 

"We're going on a detective adventure!" I declared, trying to minimize the gripes and groans I knew I would get when I told them we had to turn around and walk back. It worked semi-well and we "put on our best detective eyes" as we set to the task of scouring the mile long stretch to the park. We were about a block from the park and still empty handed when I told them I had a special way of finding things that were lost. And that's when I took two little boys with me to pray to Heavenly Father that we could find the lost house key.

It took some explaining before hand. First, that God and Heavenly Father were the same person, and that I call him "Heavenly Father" because he's the father of our spirit. GABBIN' chimed in, "Yeah, and he's EVEN the father of the first man who was actually a monkey right?" "Yep" "AAAAND the father of aliens. Right?" "Uh huh." Then he asked me which prayer I was going to say, and if when we opened our eyes the keys would just come "flying toward us by the Spirit!" Um, no.

We got to the park and did two sweeps over the areas we played in before I did the old lawn mower method of walking back and forth, making sure to cover every inch. It took about 10 minutes of this before I saw the shiny gold key in the grass. When I held it up Paddy exclaimed, "God helped us find the key!"

It was true. It was one of those totally elementary, but completely testimony building experiences. We promptly knelt and said a prayer of gratitude, and I was reminded once again that the Lord is there. And that he loves us.