Further confirmation of my ineligibility for mother of the year

CLIMBING ON THE BRICK FIREPLACE










FEEDING THE ANIMALS



ACCIDENTALLY RIDING THE MOTORCYCLE...



POISED PERFECTLY TO FALL AND HIT HEAD





Well. Maybe next year.

Congratulations dear prophet

What a wonderful life. You have been the prophet of my era. You're the one I remember listening to as a child and I couldn't help but smile as I taught my primary class about you today. I am so happy for you; Happy that you are now free from the weight of an aged body and a wicked world, and happy that you can reunite with your beloved to continue this great work on the other side together. It has been an honor to call you our leader.

Why CAN"T we talk about religion?

I got a vituperative email from my boss yesterday. I had sent him an article for one of our blogs in which I made a jesting connection between politics and religion. Quote: "And, please delete any references to religion. Very bad idea to bring religion into any discussion politics infuriates people enough. Politics + religion is deadly." Fair enough. I quickly realized my blunder and edited the article because his statement was true. But why does it have to be?
I belong to a religion that believes, in no uncertain terms, to contain the full and restored truth. But I also believe that all religions contain measures of truth: good values, teachings, beliefs, practices- all of the above. I find nothing more uplifting and/or entertaining than to discuss the wonders of God and the myriad religions which seek to understand and interpret him. The exchange of ideas and beliefs that can enrich the lives of others, or even merely intrigue, is a noble and noteworthy activity. Why must we tip toe around religious subjects without so much as a casual reference to God or our beliefs about him?

So we think, believe and practice differently from one another. So what. Why can we not talk about our different spiritual beliefs? Why is it so taboo to compare and contrast and give and take and contemplate the religions we all practice? That is my comeback wish for religion in 2008. I wish that we will be able to discuss each other's religions-together- in a non-confrontational manner. I wish that people will be able to ask genuine questions of one another for any purpose, be it sheer curiosity, spiritual conviction, disagreement, misunderstanding, etc. without the fear of offending.
I wish that the government would stay out of religion like the Constitution says it should. I wish it would let people believe, or not believe as they see fit and not intervene when conflicts arise; the government's past entertainment of religious regulation has given litigious people the springboard they need to launch spiritual debates which have no place in governmental spheres. I wish that we could escape the stranglehold that secularism has had for the past thirty years on American academia and start talking like civilized human beings about the things in which we believe, rather than suppressing those beliefs to be politically correct.
I wish that every American would start to live his or her religion a little more closely; if every person took some time this year to evaluate his standing within whatever religion he resides, I think he would find that his beliefs require it of him to be more forthcoming. We all might find within our own set of truths a need to spread and discuss it. I wish that I will be able to do it better this year.

Stupid skinny mirror

Doesn't a solid Hawaiian sunset always make you feel a little bit better about yourself and the world at large?
I came to a painful realization yesterday. I have a skinny mirror in my house. Gasp! Yes, I know. A skinny mirror. Go here for the definition: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skinny_mirror (Does anyone know why I can't get the stupid hyperlink to work?) I just wrote it, as if you needed it. You all know what the skinny mirror is. The one you are instinctively drawn to because you are always pleasantly surprised by the figure you see. You come to form your image of yourself based on what you see in THIS mirror, naturally, because you like it better than what you see anywhere else. Is not that the way our own little concepts of truth and fiction work in all things... At last, you have made peace with the person staring back at you. Why? Is it because you finally have the perfect body for which you ardently desire and arduously work? Not quite. The image you see is just a much improved version of those which have previously faced you. So, lowering your standards, you accept this as the good version of yourself. And you are pleased.

Until you find out that the mirror is indeed a skinny mirror. I lamentably made this discovery after I looked at my pictures from Hawaii. "Wait a minute..." I said to myself, "that's not what I look like in MY mirror!" Ah. The flood gates open and I begin to understand. Do you have a skinny mirror? If so, here are my recommendations:
1-Resist the urge to make it your staple mirror. I'm not saying don't look at it at all anymore; read on and you'll see that skinny mirrors do serve a useful purpose. But you need to find another more reliable source if for no other reason than to avoid wearing something truly abhorrent.
2-DO look in that mirror when you put on a swimsuit. Depression should always be avoided at all costs when trying on swimwear. Even if it's a lie.
3-Tell others in your household so that they are aware of this situation and can also take the appropriate measures to rectify their self image and esteem. He or she may, in addition, be a stronghold support while you come to grips with the loss of the image you thought you had.
The sun has set on my skinny mirror image.

Du da da da!

My husband finally gave in. THIS is a blog you cannot afford to miss. Blogdor strikes again!http://blogdorthebloginator.blogspot.com/

You got it, right?

I hope everyone knows how totally kidding I was about the Eli being smart thing...sometimes I wonder if my sarcasm translates in the blog world. I mean, I really do hope that my child possesses some smarts in that extremely well capacitated nogan of his, but I was mostly just making fun of people who really believe that their kids are gifted and talented at 10 months old...but-not to brag, or anything- Eli IS really gifted and talented at crawling down the hall crying for me, and hitting is head on our very child-unfriendly floors and screaming with wild, ravenously focused on food eyes in between bites. So yeah, maybe he is like SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo smart. I really hope that he does become a voracious and choosy reader someday. But he is not my child prodigy yet. I was just joshing you.

I totally Schruted it the other day. E fell off the changing table. He cried so hard and long. Hopefully you forgot how I mentioned that we only have hard floors two seconds ago...it was so sad. There goes my previously strong bid for mother of the year.

I got a new job. I just wrote and deleted several sentences about this new information and realize that means that I am not exactly ready to discuss it on the internet yet. Perhaps I should take a lesson from my not so speaky husband; he is much better at waiting to share information at the appropriate time. I just always think I should spill it all out all over the place because it is exciting. Anyway, I'll talk about it once I have a better idea of how it is going. Hopefully sometime this year I can translate work from home=supplementary income=new countertops to replace nasty germ infested 1979 white Formica.

PS

Can you believe all of the election uproar? I think Mitt might be done guys. I am so tired of Hillary misspeaking, again, and then everyone starting hissy fit fights about it that have nothing to do with things like immigration or the economy, you know, things that matter. So, for all of you that DON'T call yourselves obsessive about politics, go take this quiz to see who you favor: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/ongoing/select_a_candidate/poll.php?race_id=13
Go Duncan Hunter!

Randoms and picture vomit

1. Look at how smart Eli is. He LOVES to read. Seriously, it is scary how brilliant he is. He just read Isaiah, after he finished reading this Animal Kisses book. And look at the way he is trying to pull that book away from his cousin Lucy. Is is because he is a snotty, possessive brat? No. He just has an extreme and compulsive hunger to learn. I took a lesson from my scarily smart son and read a lot in Hawaii. It was so nice to just sit. Sit there and read and not feel guilty. I read Life of Pi (highly reccomend it) Thorn in my Heart (pretty good for romance fiction) and the worst book ever: The Memory Keeper's daughter. If you want to read about how people miraculously avoid disastrous consequences to horrible choices, ruin their own lives, the lives of people they love, and a pattern for how to create lackluster boring and worthlessly crappy marriages, then read this book. Oh, and it spends like 49000 pages talking about useless, mundane tasks that are somehow supposed to be deeply influential and mesmerizing because the author metaphorized it into something spiritual. Seriously, it took the guy four pages to walk to his old house. It was all filler. All of these immature people in the world who have such adolescent decision making skills...yes, I know this book was fiction but I am still mad at it.


2. I hate saying goodbye. For anything. I know that is a stupid cliche remark, but I hate it so much I would rather just leave than do the ceremonious thing. I think part of it is because I don't know when I will see my family and friends in Utah anymore. No, actually I have always hated it, but that is part of it. Like today, I went to the fabric store with some friends and just left without telling them all goodbye. Why? I don't know. I am lazy and I figure we'll see each other again at some point. I hated saying goodbye to everyone when we left Utah, and Hawaii and Las Vegas. I'm no good at it. I am way better at writing "I miss you" and "Thank you" cards. So if you felt the cold shoulder when I left, it's nothing personal. I just hate doing it.

3.Hawaii was so fun. We sat and sat and surfed

and ate all kinds of my father in law's famous meats and sat some more and snorkeled and took in all of the island living niceties. I think we are going to look for a dental practice in Hawaii, retire at age 50 and surf everyday. I want to get really good at surfing. We took lessons one day and it was SO fun. And so freaking hard. But I collided with a native surfer the next day while body boarding. It hurt real bad. I need to learn better surfing etiquette apparently. My leg still hurts but it was worth it. The waves were unreal. I have never seen anything so naturally out of control. Yeah, that's a surfer in there...it's me, actually... We went and watched an insane competition. This does this guy, who probably died, no justice.
4. Adam and I couldn't be more opposite in our picture taking propensities. I love taking pictures of people with pristine and compelling backgrounds; he thinks people ruin the picture, that it should ONLY be background. That's why I don't have any pics of my favorite things we did over the past three weeks, namely snowboarding, surfing and hot tubbing-I'm too impatient to do it, and Adam doesn't care to so we don't do it. So he takes 150 pictures of the sunset and makes ugly faces and protests like a four year old when I suggest we take a picture together or of anyone else. So forget it. Except E. He likes shooting E...with the camera. But not much of us. The ones I have came at a costly price so I don't have very many. Oh well. I don't think people want to see all of the pics of the sunset. They are cool, but you know. Let's be honest. Most of you scroll down just to see the pictures of Eli and how fat I might look in my swimsuit. Fat. Anyway, sorry to disappoint.

We're home

for a minute. I wimped out on running the 20 this morning. I crashed into a surfer the day before we left and my leg is pretty bruised and banged up. And I was really tired. And I miss E like crazy. He probably won't even remember me-it's been ten freaking days! We are leaving to go pick him up in Vegas in about thirty minutes. SO, at some point I will do a real post.

Briefly before I waste my beach time

Utah was cold. Christmas was lovely. I miss E, hope Duane is all right and miss my house after three weeks. But Hawaii, quite simply, rocks.