To all the men of the church:

I just ate the most fantastic pear.

Wait! No, that's not what I wanted to tell you.

What I wanted to tell you was this: You're Fantastic.

I am saying this simply because I think we have a cultural difficulty in the church, and it's one that (interestingly enough) gives women the advantage. I'm talking about the coddling we get in Relief Society, as opposed to the numerous 'Repent Ye!'s the men seem to get in priesthood.

Now, don't get me wrong--I see nothing wrong with telling the women of the church that they're pretty awesome. I think that we really do tend to be a bit hard on ourselves, and it's important to recognize and remember the value that each of us has.

However...do men not feel this way too? And yet, while the Relief Society gets lessons on how to find joy in our lives (including the important reminder to stop and smell the roses), the men get long lists of things that they're not doing and are told to (essentially) shape up or ship out. (Well, maybe not the 'ship out' part, but the 'shaping up' is definitely in there.)

So, to all you men out there, the men who learned incredulously of the deluxe lounges available for use in the women's bathrooms at BYU, the men who get the chastising talk(s) at Priesthood Session at General Conference, the men who feel culturally obligated to joke about their own ineptitude even as they praise their wives' wisdom, virtue and beauty, to you men I say, WELL DONE.

You guys are pretty great.

You're great fathers and husbands, sons and uncles, nephews and brothers. You do your home teaching. You carry inhumanly heavy boxes and unnavigable furniture down (and up) numerous flights of stairs. You give blessings and advice and you put up with our PMS and scatterings of beauty products and enormous hair clogs in the drains. You serve faithfully, giving up your evenings and weekends to try to provide leadership for this church of ours, and you do it all while wearing suits and ties. Good grief. Frankly, I don't know how you do it.

So women, just take a moment (even though Father's Day is totally over for another year) to celebrate the men in your life. Just. Heavens. Just tell them how amazing and wonderful they really are.

Like they tell us every week.

Would I sing if I were a bus driver?

So, I really need to get on that thing where I write about my New York trip. And maybe my Utah trip too. And I need to organize and upload pictures and generally just kind of fill everybody in on stuff...

But instead, I'm going to tell you about a singing bus driver.

First, let me paint the scene for you: I had gotten off work, had gone to get groceries (bow-tie pasta and bartlett pears, among other things) and then meandered down to get a perscription refill at a CVS Pharmacy down the street a ways. It had been humid all morning, and the clouds had finally gathered together and ripened to a dark blue-grey, lightning and thunder sending advance warning to those of us scurrying along the sidewalk. I got my refill, and glanced outside to see a wall of water coming down, making a little river out of the street.

Feeling some reluctance to do an impression of a grocery-carrying water nymph, I decided to wait out the fury of the storm by eating lunch. Luckily, I didn't have milk or any frozen things to worry about.

(Lunch was great, by the way.)

By the time I was done, the rain had eased considerably, although now all the stoplights along the street were out. (Which reminds me--does anyone here actually know how to blasted deal with non-functional stoplights? Because it seemed to me that mayhem reigned. (Mayhem is a tyrant, I tell ya.))

Because I am a lazy bum, and also because I didn't feel like walking through the still-persistent rain, I decided to wait for the bus to come and take me home. Because buses are actually kind of fun.

And this bus was extra and especially fun, due entirely to the driver. Because as he drove (navigating the unlit stoplights with remarkable aplomb), he sang.

He sang rather well, actually. Listening to it made me feel cheerful; it made me smile at the other passengers, it made me smile at the sodden landscape, it made me smile at my penchant for smiling.

And I had to wonder, if I were a bus driver, would I sing too?

I sing doing other things, like cleaning or...er...showering, but these are often solo activities (as it were). How would I feel with a bus full of passengers sitting behind me? Would I really be that carefree?

Maybe I'll prove myself in the future. Maybe I'll become the singing librarian, (a la Marian?) entertaining children (and their parents) with my renditions of old familiar favorites, like "The Bookworm Boogie" and "Once Upon a Treble Clef."

Or maybe I'll just stick to picture books and save my singing for the shower.

Out of the frying pan...

Well, I'm back in Boston again. It's odd--there's always this transition, or rather re-transitioning back to 'normal' life when you return to a place, things like which way you turn on the faucet in the shower, trying to recall where you keep your shoes, remembering just how dusty your room really is, being amazed at the ivy plant that survived three weeks without water.

It's kind of nice to be back again, though, even though it's kind of lame to be so far away from family again. I think I tend to get comfortable where I am, whether it's in Boston learning how to be a librarian or at home watching Star Trek with my mom and siblings--it's just the few days in between that tend to throw me off, days where I'm not quite sure where my foot is landing, days that I can't quite tell what I'm thinking or how to feel about it.

I like coming back, and I hate leaving--the problem is that they're all part of the same thing, and everything's all grouped together into one messy blob of tangled up emotions and I don't quite know what to do with it all.

So, it's probably a good thing that I'm leaving Boston again tomorrow morning to head off for a weekend trip to New York with my roommate. I've made an executive decision not to bring my laptop with me, mostly because it's just one more thing to pack (and it's kind of a heavy laptop), and it also means that I won't be using it to check my email every hour, which might allow me to actually enjoy my outing, rather than wandering about in a forlorn manner if I don't have any new messages from cool folks.

But, I will have my cell phone. So, those of you who need to call me (and report further on the absolute beauty and adorableness of my very brand newest wonderful nephew who was born today) should still be able to reach me.

I just may be inside the Statue of Liberty when I answer.

(Hah! So cool!)

Bippity Boppity Blog

So, I'm sitting at the gate in the Las Vegas airport, waiting for my flight to start boarding... (I have a layover here in between my departure from Salt Lake and my arrival at Boston Logan Airport tomorrow morning.)

And, naturally, (as young people's minds turn to love in the spring), my mind turned to blogging.

Also, I am terrible at using similies late at night. You may have noticed.

Anyway--I just wanted to report something I never knew: you cannot walk 10 feet in the Vegas airport without bumping into a slot machine. Seriously. You walk off the airplane, into the gate area, and whammo! Lights! Sounds! The scent of money running furiously into the pockets of casino owners! (It smells like fruitcake, liberally laced with doggy doo, in case you were wondering.)

Also, I saw a disposal container for used needles in the women's bathroom.

Ah, Las Vegas. How unique you are. It almost makes me feel affectionate about it.

Almost.

I'll add a picture (of the slot machines, of course) to the post when I get home tomorrow.

Edit: Here ya go!


Until then, happy...whatever. Happy living. And here's hoping I have a happy and sleep-filled flight.

Babies are even better than delicious breakfast sandwiches

I don't mean to imply with the title of my post that I enjoy consuming babies. (Unless, of course, you count those little nibbles you give them on their legs. And fingers. And neck. Oh, babies! They're so nibbleable!)

Really, what I'm talking about is this morning, when I woke up, and heard my 3.5-month-old niece (the same one whose cooing turns me into a viscous substance known to Science only as 'Auntie Goo') squawking indignantly, probably at the reprehensible neglect of the adults in the area who were refusing to let her eat and sleep, which is really mostly what she's interested in doing.

Being the non-lactating sort of female mammal, I was unable to help with the feeding bit. But, while my sister and brother-in-law and their other kids (plus assorted other family members) sat down to chow down on some delicious breakfast sandwiches (lovingly concocted by my culinarily talented sis), I got to hold the baby.

And she fell asleep in my arms.

And despite the numerous offers of Grammy (my mom), various sisters, and even my bro-in-law to hold her while I ate, I refused to give her up. Because the weight of her was just perfect, and the pleasure of watching her pacifier vibrate as she dreamed was too great. And because of those moments when you just get to sit and wonder at this extraordinarily wonderful tiny person, and even the moments when you hold them and stop breathing for a moment, just to be sure they still are.

I'm kind of in love with my niece at the moment. I'm apt to start composing odes.

But believe me, if she fell asleep in your arms, you would definitely feel the same way.