The odd thing about not . . . → Read More: My sisters say I don’t blog enough]]> And they’re totally right.  I told them to come clean my house so I would have time to actually do something else outside of work, but all I got were wrinkled noses and shaking heads on that one.  But, I’m trying to write a blog anyway.  YOU’RE WELCOME, SISTERS.

The odd thing about not writing much is that I don’t know where to pick up.  Do I go through and recap everything, like how cute Claire looked as a little witch on Halloween and how much she is loving preschool and regale you with tales of my quirky coworkers?  Or do I just pretend that I’ve been narrating all along and act like this bloggy and I are old friends?

I was reflecting today on what a rollercoaster ride this parenting thing is (SHOCKER, I know) and all the highs and lows we’ve been through recently with our offspring.  A few weeks ago she went on an all out poop strike, even going so far as to make itty-bitty signs and to form a picket line outside the bathroom.  (Ok, not really.  Instead there was lots of screaming and squirming.)  I was certain that we’d screwed her up and made her afraid somehow.  But after much trial and error and patience and Googling and hand-wringing and eventually a call to the pediatrician we have it mostly figured out.  Had I known ten years ago that someday my entire day’s happiness would be based on a little person pooping I would’ve been mighty depressed indeed.

So then after the high of thinking “hooray, we fixed our kid!” I was listening to her play today and realized that most of what she was saying revolved around her putting her toys in time-out and expressing her extreme displeasure with how naughty they were being.  And then whoosh, down the hill I went again on that roller-coaster realizing that THIS is what she’s picked up from us as parents?  Well, isn’t that lovely!  But then I thought about it some more and realized that this is probably normal, I think I remember doing the same thing as a kid.  And then the more I thought about it I realized, HEY, we aren’t such bad parents after all!  Because as she put her toys in time-out instead of saying awful things and calling her toys names and stuff, she was saying things like “I am not happy about this” in her most stern manner.  And that’s awesome!  Because that means we are doing something right by not using abusive language!  She learned that nice language from us!  I’ll have to remember to high-five my husband over that one before bed tonight.  It’s the little victories, people.

Anyway, life is good lately.  Busy and hectic and getting more busy and hectic it seems, but I’ve realized lately how very fortunate we are to be surrounded by truly wonderful people.  We have the most amazing family, friends, and neighbors, that I really can’t complain about anything.  And I’m not just saying that because I know my sisters are reading this.

By the way sisters, the offer for you to clean my house in exchange for blog posts is still on the table.  Babysitting is also accepted payment for blogging.  I’m pretty sure we can come to an agreement here.

*Tap tap*

I believe this is what is called a weblog, yes?  You…type?  And it goes out to the…Internets?  It’s been so long I’m a bit rusty on how all this works.

Dear bloggy friends, I have not forgotten you.  I’ve just been blasted busy.  Yes, really.  Busy and exhausted.  I . . . → Read More: Ahem…]]> Uh…this thing on?

*Tap tap*

I believe this is what is called a weblog, yes?  You…type?  And it goes out to the…Internets?  It’s been so long I’m a bit rusty on how all this works.

Dear bloggy friends, I have not forgotten you.  I’ve just been blasted busy.  Yes, really.  Busy and exhausted.  I switched jobs again at the end of June, which has been a wonderful and glorious thing.  This new job has like, people!  Who talk to me!  And a break room with cookies and popcorn!  And a giant panda pinata that sits at our receptionist desk and is rigged up to talk!  I’m not even kidding about that last one.  It has been a good, nay, a wonderful change.

BUT, here is the question I am left pondering this summer:

How does one…

Work 40 hours a week

Do laundry, and fold all that darned laundry

Scrub the bathroom on a somewhat regular basis

Play at the park with the daughter

Hold Family Home Evening

Plan and execute a birthday party

Prepare healthy lunches in advance to take to work

Organize the closets so they don’t one day bury you alive

Keep your car inspected, registered, clean, full of gas, and with air actually in the tires to boot

Pull weeds

Practice THE ORGAN for church during the week (and recover from the ensuing stroke every other Sunday)

Exercise regularly and count calories

Constantly work to arrange babysitters for this, that, and the other without making all your family and neighbors hate you

Go on dates with the husband now and then to make him feel special, and sometimes even put on lipstick or do your hair to look pretty

Enjoy quality time in the mountains

Scrub stains out of your carpet (a hopeless task…)

Keep fresh batteries in the smoke detectors so they don’t chirp at you at 4:00 AM

Hang out with extended family and be a decent daughter, sister, aunt, daughter-in-law, etc.

Commute an hour each day

Research and clip grocery coupons in desperate effort to not go broke

Help husband with homework

Scrapbook the precious moments of your child’s life

Catch up with girlfriends as to preserve valuable friendships

Take meals to neighbors in need

Field a million questions about your reproductive goals

Read books to the little one

Recycle

Think of ways to be creative and valuable at work

Keep a blog or two updated

Etc., etc., etc.

So, Internet.  HOW????  How does a single person do this and more?  Is this what is called “being an adult?”  I’m… pooped.

So blog buddies, can we be friends again?  I’m sorry for being neglectful.  I’ve just felt a little busy, is all.  Love you!

On Thursday the husband left for a 4 day backpacking trip through the Southern Utah wilderness.  As he has been finishing . . . → Read More: All by my lonesome]]> This week, everyone up and left me.  Just like that!  Can you believe it?  Total lame-sauce.  I suppose they didn’t leave me behind on purpose, it’s just how it turned out.  But still…

On Thursday the husband left for a 4 day backpacking trip through the Southern Utah wilderness.  As he has been finishing up his final credits for his degree this summer, he took a backpacking class to fulfill some goofy elective requirement.  The “final” was a backpacking trip.  From what I hear, he is in the middle of NOWHERE with no cell service, so I’m crossing my fingers that all is well and that he makes it home safely tomorrow.

So if it wasn’t enough to have my other half wandering through some desolate canyon four hours away, the rest of my family jetted off to Europe on Friday!  And I wasn’t with them!  Ahh!!  Instead, I’m the designated cat-sitter for them.  Which is almost as glamorous?  Let’s face it, this weekend I’ve been the lonely, crazy cat-lady.

Fortunately, I’ve had my sweet little girl to keep me company.  As it turns out, when not wetting their pants 2-year olds can really make for some great company.  When did my baby turn into a little person?  You know, with opinions and stories to tell and questions to ask?  I’ve realized over the last couple of days that we now can carry on actual two-way conversations (more or less), and it is delightful!  For me, anyway.  I don’t know about her.  I’m guessing it is any day now before she slaps her forehead in embarrassment over something odd I’ve said.

Speaking of odd conversations!  After putting her to bed tonight she started hollering for me from her room.  “Mom!  I need something!  Hey, mom!”  After going to the door and asking what she needed, she replied in the most certain tone, “I need a ball of yarn.”  A wha???  Pretty sure she’s never seen an actual ball of yarn in her life.  Still scratching my head over that one.

While the occasional evening of “me” time can be nice, I sure miss my husband.  There’s really nothing better than being married to your best friend, you know?  Looking forward to tomorrow… In the meantime, who wants to save me from being the crazy cat-lady?

I love the idea of taking days to recognize our parents.  Good golly, I would probably die without my mom.  She’s always been so great.  I know I definitely needed her as a kid- depending on her for all my physical and emotional needs.  We were . . . → Read More: Mother’s Day]]> Did everyone have a nice Mother’s Day weekend?

I love the idea of taking days to recognize our parents.  Good golly, I would probably die without my mom.  She’s always been so great.  I know I definitely needed her as a kid- depending on her for all my physical and emotional needs.  We were always always always well taken care of.  The funny thing is though, even though I’m all grown up and on my own, I feel like I need my mom just as much now, especially because I’m a mother myself.  I don’t think I can count the number of times I’ve called her all in a frenzy, worry and anxiety weighing down my voice, asking how to best handle yet another mothering situation that I’m clueless about.  I’m so lucky to have such a wonderful example of both a mother and a kind, generous, righteous, and selfless woman.

This mother’s day was hectic yet nice.  My sweet baby girl came into my room bearing a gift bag, accompanied by a big smile and a twinkle in her eye.

“Here, mommy!”, she chirped in her tiny voice.  “I have a su-pwise for you!”

Good heavens, do I need any other gift after such a sweet visual of a darling little girl who is happy to please her mother?  Even with the exasperating negotiations and power struggles, just having her in my life is the greatest gift I could ask for.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, sometimes the Internet makes things so very muddled thanks to the massive availability of everyone’s opinion.  Many in the world do not value motherhood.  Happily, many do and I think that more and more women are embracing it after the previous decades of trying to stuff it into a box labeled “family” and not letting the corporate world see it, lest a career be damaged.  Many recognize motherhood as being of the divine, and not merely limited to those who have borne children but extended to those who nurture all of God’s children.  I recently read and loved this article from Sheri L. Dew.  So many beautiful reminders for women, both those currently with and without children of their own!

One of the opinions that I’ve come across on the Internet is debates within my own faith about whether women are discriminated against and repressed because they do not hold the Priesthood.  In my heart of hearts, I have not felt that this is so.  But by feeling that way, am I falling prey to old-fashioned and incorrect notions and turning away from the feminist ideas that I am typically passionate about?  Despite feeling peace over the fact that worthy men hold the Preisthood and I do not, am I somehow wrong in this and should be outraged over gender inequality, as many other female bloggers are?  No, I don’t think so.  I think that if, as faithful women, we feel that way we are forgetting something vitally important about our roles on this earth and in heaven as well as our very natures.  Sister Dew puts it best:

“President Gordon B. Hinckley stated that ‘God planted within women something divine.^{‘ 6} That something is the gift and the gifts of motherhood. Elder Matthew Cowley taught that ‘men have to have something given to them [in mortality] to make them saviors of men, but not mothers, not women. [They] are born with an inherent right, an inherent authority, to be the saviors of human souls … and the regenerating force in the lives of God’s children.’ ⁷

Motherhood is not what was left over after our Father blessed His sons with priesthood ordination. It was the most ennobling endowment He could give His daughters, a sacred trust that gave women an unparalleled role in helping His children keep their second estate. As President J. Reuben Clark Jr. declared, motherhood is ‘as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the Priesthood itself.^{‘ ”}

Some might say that Mother’s Day is a nice way to honor the woman who birthed and raised us.  The cynical might even say that is is just another ploy by retailers to con you into buying pricey cards and flowers.  Personally, I’d like to think of it as a day not only to honor the kind women in our lives and kiss the cheeks of the little ones who depend on us, but also to remember the divine calling all women have to nurture and lead God’s children home again.

The end.

Ok, fine, that is a lame excuse for a post.  But yes, I do have writer’s block, in a way.  In reality, I write stuff all the time… in my head.  But lately it never seems to flow out through my fingertips and onto my keyboard.  Why is that?  . . . → Read More: Writer’s block]]> I haz it.

The end.

Ok, fine, that is a lame excuse for a post.  But yes, I do have writer’s block, in a way.  In reality, I write stuff all the time… in my head.  But lately it never seems to flow out through my fingertips and onto my keyboard.  Why is that?  I feel like I do a lot of thinking.  I have plenty of time to kill during my long commutes to and from work, where in the past I’ve had plenty of ideas and theories flutter through my brain.

However, these days I feel a little brain dead, for lack of a better phrase.  My head feels cloudy and blank much of the time.  Part of me wonders if it is because of my job, which is astonishingly boring and completely mind-numbing quite frequently.  I sit in a windowless office all day, with very little contact with other humans.  I talk with people over the phone for a small portion of each day, but otherwise it is all through email and chat.  My coworkers and I have very little interaction.  Not much is required for business, and any sort of social interaction with them is extremely rare.  For one, they are in love with their computers and video games and I am not.  Secondly, I am female and they are not, which makes me foreign and perhaps scary?

The way our office is set up is not really conducive to casual walk-by conversations.  If I were to want to interact with my coworkers I would have to walk down the hall and hang a left to their little den that I never have reason to visit, only to plop myself down and say “hey guys, what’s up?”.  That would end up being very uncomfortable because one would likely stare at me awkwardly but not say anything, the other would make some weird joke and then laugh loudly and nervously, the third one would say “YO!” loudly and then stick his earbuds back in, and the fourth would ask me if I was in love with my Mac yet and then we’d be out of conversation topics.  Sadly, that is an exact scenario of any socialization attempts I would make.

So, instead I sit in my windowless office which I am fairly certain is slowly but surely killing my brain cells.  I honestly feel like I am in a mental fog during most the day, and then finally when I find myself at home it is like my world comes alive again.  I’ve tried everything to make the long office days more bearable- I listen to music, I do squats, calf raises, lunges, jumping jacks, run in place… all sorts of crazy things to get the blood flowing back to my brain. (I’m always terrified that a coworker will walk past as I’m doing one of these activities, further solidifying in their mind how odd the new girl is).  I used to do push-ups before my hand/wrist went all screwy, but that is a post for a different day.  If it weren’t for my dear friend on chat, also working her life away at another company, I’d go insane.  Despite my best efforts though, I feel like this brain deadness is beginning to seep into other areas of my life and that I’m perpetually walking around simply trying to focus on what is before me at the moment and remember the important things required for functioning.  It is strange and frustrating and I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet, but that is my long explanation for the very limited posting these days.

Also, I’ve found myself having a bit of an identity crisis, maybe?  Most of the women in my part of the world are full-time stay-at-home moms or only work part-time.  Obviously, at this point in my life I am not one of them, although I hope to be in the not-too-distant future.  However, I have a hard time figuring out where I fit in as a working mother.  I am not working in a “career” that I love and find challenging but rewarding.  Again, maybe someday I’ll find a more rewarding way to bring in some money.  As a result, I kind of feel like a…misfit.  I’m not like the ladies in my neighborhood, I’m not like the men at my workplace, so who am I and where do I fit within the social fabric of my life?

I’ve found that in my social confusion over the last several weeks that the best thing for me to do is simply walk away from it, to just focus on me and my family and be happy with that.  I think one of the dangers of this wonder that is the Internet is that we are entirely too connected.  It is far too easy to surf blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and who knows what else and see what everyone else is doing and then wonder who and what you identify with and if perhaps there is something wrong with you?  There are the blogs from the cute little SAHM’s who modge-podge everything and make sure there are scalloped edges and tastefully shabby ribbons and damask fabric on everything they touch, and that certainly isn’t me.  Then there are the working mothers who agonize over the work-life balance like I do, but they are lawyers and advertising execs and intensive care nurses and such.  Not lowly sales reps sitting in cave-like offices, waiting for the day they can feel alive and worthwhile again.

Because the Internet is my lifeline during my long, coma-like hours in the office I spend a fair amount of time “connected” to others to a degree.  I finally realized that while I wasn’t intentionally comparing myself to all these other people, I was being bogged down by worrying about if I was “right” or “wrong” compared to these women I had never even met!  I really feel that in our society today we’re all so hyper-connected to others through social media that we begin to lose touch with the most important person: ourselves.

I don’t have a smartphone, and honestly I never really want to.  I see no reason to have that much information and connectivity with me at all times.  I have found it refreshing to step away from the computer and just sit and think.  To reflect on my life, my family, my strengths and weaknesses, my relationships, what I’ve done well, what I can do better.  Maybe our great historical figures were so noble because they had so much darn time to reflect on things, you know?  They weren’t constantly trying to come up with witty 140-character phrases or Facebook stalk their ex.  Instead, they reflected on who they were and mastered their inherit weak points in their character.

So I guess what I’m saying, in a very round-about sort of way, is that over the last few weeks I’ve found it helpful to untangle myself from the Internet a bit, including this blog.  I need to be a better and stronger person who is comfortable in my own skin.  I’m not giving this blog up; I like writing.  Just sometimes good writing ebbs and flows and right now it is just not flowing as I would like it to.  And in this space I don’t want to blog about nonsense that is neither funny, nor helpful, nor inspiring, nor profound, nor creative, nor meaningful or anything else of value.

Well, would you look at that- my writers block has turned into almost 1,300 words!  I guess the advice to just sit down and start writing does work.  Either way, I do plan to continue to write on this little bloggy as I do get great enjoyment from it and based on the word-vomit above it seems to help me organize some of the thoughts rattling around in my brain.  See you again sooner rather than later…hopefully…

AWFUL:

I’ve been summoned for jury duty.

I realize a fair trial where you are judged by your peers is one of the privileges of living in a free and democratic society, and that it is my civic duty to participate, but who has . . . → Read More: I suppose some would call it a privilege…]]> The other day I got that dreaded letter in the mail.

I’ve been summoned for jury duty.

I realize a fair trial where you are judged by your peers is one of the privileges of living in a free and democratic society, and that it is my civic duty to participate, but who has time for this?  In fact, in the letter they told me jury selection itself can take several hours and it is “recommended I bring a book to read to help pass the time.”  (Actually, come to think of it, that doesn’t sound so bad…)

I’m thinking of pulling a Liz Lemon to get out of this one.  They’d let me off the hook for sure, don’t you think?