Ever notice how, when it comes to delaying bedtime, a determined kid can out-match an exhausted parent (or two) quite easily? No? Not at your house? Well, maybe its only Jacob, then.

Tuesday night he was at his endlessly-stalling-best during Family Bedtime Reading, specifically the part of the ritual after scripture reading, when Jacob picks out one of his books for us all to read. Frequently this results in Green Eggs and Ham, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, or Horton Hears a Who. But tonight, instead of simply picking a book, he decided to run to his room and bring out an armful, lay them all out on the bed, and invite each of us to indicate our favourite, presumably to help him narrow it down to his final selection.

Exhausted as I was, I just wanted him to pick one already, so we could read it and be done with it. I said again and again, no, this was his book to pick, he could pick whichever he liked, and just pick one please!

I gotta break the narrative here for a second. If you know me, you know that I’ve been married before, and the other guy had, well, sometimes had a bit of a temper. This kind of situation right here, when we’re tired and short of patience and the little one is not very compliant? This is exactly the sort of thing that would set him off.

So subconsciously, I’m already tensing. I don’t even realize that I’m bracing myself, feeling more and more protective, and ready to jump in and intervene if Ryan, like that other guy, should snap and lose his temper. Only at this moment Ryan jumps in and announces, in a voice infused with child-like wonder and enthusiasm, “Jacob, your vote is like…4 votes!”

Even Jacob couldn’t argue with logic like that, and promptly selected the winner.

I picked a winner, too.

<3

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlcUwUwjLrs

I’d read a lot about this song, “Prelude to War.” It was thrilling. It was legendary. It was, if you believed the reports, nothing less than a feat of modern musical genius. Everyone said so, so I downloaded it. The first time I listened to it, I was just like, “Meh. This is it? This is what everyone was raving about?” It just didn’t impress me. Yet somehow between that first listen and repeated plays it worked a combination lock in my head. Randomly flipping through songs a few months back I came across this one and didn’t even recognize it. Somehow I’d gone from, “This is ok,” to “Yeah, I guess I like this,” to “Oh, wow.” Today, it’s absolutely blowing my brain apart.

What’s funny is that there’s not much to it. It's not a complicated song. Basically it’s 8.5 minutes long and made up of essentially the same 30-second theme in many different variations. You have the theme low-key, the theme hyped up, the theme’s chord progression hovering idle, or the theme with just percussion. But you rarely ever actually get away from the theme. Sounds boring and predictable. It’s not. It hooks me within the first minute, and then the next thing I know I’m completely possessed, my body a conduit of musical expression. My teeth resonate with the drums, my circulatory system rushes with its rhythms, even my heartbeats are keeping time. It's coming out of my eyeballs, my pores. Freaking amazing.

Anyway, if you like film score music, you might like this. Give it a few listens before making up your mind.

Last week I had my bridal shower at Rebecca’s house. It was supposed to go from 7-9. I didn’t want to stay too much longer than that because I still had some things to do at home that evening before I could go to bed. And a lot of people left around 8:30 when we had pretty much wrapped everything up, so I thought my odds were good of getting home at a decent time. But then the trickle of people leaving slowed, and eventually, stopped completely. There were probably five or six ladies left at the party, and no one was leaving. So here I was feeling a little bit stuck, as the hour ticked over 9, 9:10, 9:20. We sat chatting in a circle in the living room, and no one made any moves towards the door whatsoever. I finally realised, as determined as I had been to not leave until all the guests had gone home, these guests in particular were every bit as determined to outlast *me*. Then something else occurred to me – they were all LDS women from my ward. And it suddenly made sense. They wanted to stay and help Rebecca “clean up” after the party, but didn’t want to start on that until I had left, so I wouldn’t feel obligated to pitch in myself. Duh.

I tell this story because, to me, it perfectly illustrates the character of the Mormon women in my ward, who are kind of amazing.

Take Rebecca, who not only opened her home to me while I was taking the discussions last year, but since then has pretty much assumed I belong to her. :) She’s done about as much planning and work on this wedding as I have, I believe. She’s made phone calls arranging for sisters to bring food, help set up for the reception, and help clean up afterward. She loaned me everything she had on hand leftover from her daughter’s wedding. She helped me plan out almost every single detail for the reception. She is letting Ryan’s sister and brother-in-law stay at her house this weekend since we don’t have room at my house. She and her husband are hosting the brunch after the ceremony for our families. I often find myself referring to her as my “Mormon Mom” and then I realise – she’s not related to me. She doesn’t have any obligation to do all this for me. But she does it anyway, and so graciously you’d think I was doing *her* the favour.

Another example, which is only on my mind because it happened so recently:

I was feeling in kind of a bind last week because I didn’t have anyone lined up to watch Jenna during the wedding ceremony at the temple. Jenna is Kerry (Ryan’s sister) and Braden’s baby daughter, and they are going to be with us in the temple during the ceremony. So we needed to have someone there in the temple waiting room willing to take care of her while we had the ceremony. That’s not as easy as it might sound – I went through a few lists in my head, and came up with nothing. My family was out – Nana was going to be taking care of the boys and bringing them to the temple, but later in the morning. We really needed someone to be there with Jenna the whole time. And the rest of my family wouldn’t go near the temple – I certainly couldn’t ask, for example, my grandma, who barely agreed to come to the non-temple reception later that evening. She, and the rest of my family, are pretty irritated by the whole concept of the temple wedding, which they can’t attend. That left someone from my ward, but that was a problem, too. I’d already invited five or six couples, that I felt the closest to, to attend the actual ceremony. So they were going to be in the temple with us too, not waiting outside with Jenna. And since it is during school hours, I couldn’t ask any of the young men or women from the ward, who are not eligible for temple recommends yet, to come watch her. Surely there were a lot of people left in my ward, but I was worried they fell into two camps: a) people I barely knew, and thus couldn’t ask for a favour like this, or b) people I was friendly with, who then might be offended that I was asking them to come to the ceremony but only for the purpose of watching Jenna outside, and not to attend the ceremony itself.

Last Sunday before church I prayed about this problem, asking God to impress on me the right person to ask. Then I promptly forgot all about it. Which was actually a good thing, because as we were leaving church Jacob’s primary teacher, a really nice sister who recently moved into our ward and I don’t know very well yet, asked if she could come to the temple to watch Jacob during the ceremony. I explained that Nana was going to take care of Jacob and he’d be coming late anyway, but would she mind coming to watch Jenna? Absolutely she’d do it. And what a perfect solution God had for me. No way would this sister be offended that I hadn’t invited her to the ceremony – I don’t know her that well at all. But she’s lovely and good with the little ones and not only that, she offered her services herself, without any prompting from me.

Sometimes I feel so absolutely blown away by the sweet generosity of spirit of these LDS women, who seem to be every minute thinking of others. When I was without a car earlier this year, they lined up to take turns giving me rides to and from work every day. For weeks, they did this. And they are every bit as giving with other people as they are with me – I see it all the time. It’s a totally constant, totally spontaneous attitude of “What can I do for you?” and “I want to help” and “Here, let me.”

I don’t know if this kind of behaviour is pretty much just my ward, or if this is the worldwide Mormon standard. I mean, obviously it’s what the church teaches. But to see it so consistently lived out is, honestly, a bit jarring. Either way, I know I fall pretty short of the standard myself. I hope eventually I’ll be more like this – I really do. But so often I’m wrapped up in my own problems that I’m oblivious to the needs of others around me. So even though none of the people I’m talking about here read this blog, I will take this platform and this moment to say, thank you. I’m humbled, and inspired, by the way you live your life. I want to be more like you.

I've been doing this temp project downtown since the beginning of the month, and now they are offering me a full-time position. I am really, really thrilled about this and more than a little relieved. 

So now to learn how to actually use public transportation...after all, I do live in Portland, for crying out loud. This is the city that got me ok with veganism and taking my own bags to the grocery store, so... It was only a matter of time.

(No, James, I'm still not a Democrat.)  :p

*happy dance*

Ryan was scheduled to arrive this evening around midnight for a 5-day visit. Now due to thunderstorms in Philly he's delayed...until 1pm tomorrow at the soonest (assuming weather miraculously clears and no more delayed flights, etc). I'm so frustrated and disappointed, and I'm sure Ryan is feeling about 10 times worse due to having spent half the day at the airport today and not even getting off the ground. Grumble grumble grumble.

You are The Empress

Beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, dissipation.

The Empress is associated with Venus, the feminine planet, so it represents,
beauty, charm, pleasure, luxury, and delight. You may be good at home
decorating, art or anything to do with making things beautiful.

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts, yet at the same time, she can, in anger withhold, as Demeter did when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. In fury and grief, she kept the Earth barren till her child was returned to her.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.