A Day in My Life

Alarm goes off at 6am. I hit snooze as the thought of continued sleep sounds so much better than even a gentle Rodney Yee session of yoga.

My children wake up, one by one, to pee and then commence talking and making loud bumps doing heaven only knows what in their bedroom.

I get up and yell at them calmly tell them that I would like a few more minutes of sleep and that they should be in their beds, silently waiting for me to wake them.

I go back to bed, get comfortable only to hear the real alarm go off at 6:30am.

I get out of bed and abruptly flip on my children's light again calmly tell my children in a sing-song voice that it's morning and time to get up. I stomp off to the kitchen, not the least bit grumpy or feeling guilty that I chose sleep over stretching with Rodney. (Yes, we have a lightning rod on the house. Why do you ask?)

I make a delicious breakfast of eggs and pancakes (did you notice I didn't have to add any strike throughs there?) and feed my children (and the two dogs - one akita, one black lab) patiently waiting and drooling at the edge of the kitchen.

I sit on the couch and read my scriptures and pray (assuming the call of the couch doesn't lure me back to sleep) while, ahem, gently reminding my children to get ready for school. (Yes, I'm that good. Aren't you glad God doesn't grade on a curve? And yes, the irony of reading about the kindness of Jesus and the value He placed on children while I'm yelling and, perhaps, even at times using sarcasm to motivate my children is not lost on me.)

Around 7:29am I frantically pull my daughter's hair into some sort of do so it isn't in her face so that at 7:30am we can start family scripture study.

At 7:45am (five minutes late now), we have a prayer and I kick them out of the house. Then I sit on the couch and spend the next five or ten minutes involved in an intense inner dialogue about whether or not I really want to work out and how strenuous that work out should be.

Around 8:15am (I have to change clothes and what not), I actually start working out.

9:30am - I'm in the shower.

10:am  - I'm making my breakfast (tofu scramble anyone?) and my lunch (kale chips and a turkey-hummus sandwich). I also try to throw a load of laundry in the wash sometime during the morning.

10:30am (ish): I stroll into work and thank God, literally, for the benefits of being a bookkeeper for a small family business owned by the man who sired me (how mad could he ever get at his grown daughter?) and the man I'm sleeping with (how mad could he ever get at the one who puts out?) and then further milk their affections by playing games, reading blogs and checking email.  I did give up Facebook so that's one less thing.

11:15am: Walk home to pee. Change the laundry.

Somewhere in there I throw in a few hours of balancing books, finding money we didn't know we had to pay bills that we've known about for a little too long, sending out statements and paying taxes to one government or the other. If I'm feeling real virtuous, I might even walk the aforementioned doggies so my dad doesn't have to. I'm generous like that. (And there are usually one or two more trips home to pee. And change the laundry.)

3:00pm: I drive to town to pick up my three children from their various schools and head home. They have snack and I start frantically combing the kitchen for something that can be dinner within the next half hour. The rest evening is a whirl of karate, church activities, skating lessons, or staying home and folding all that laundry, depending on the day of the week.

9:00pm: Bed. So. Tired. I know people say that exercising gives you energy, but I think they lie. I could stay up MUCH later before I started working out.

The rest, as they say, is a matter of rinse and repeat, which never ceases to amaze me; that so many nothing, ordinary, routine days can add up to three children half grown, 13.5 years of marriage and my being middle aged. How did all this happen?!

Discontented

And it's not even summer. . . .

I love people like Amy and Allie and I must admit, making people laugh being like crack, that I totally have blog envy. I dream of a day when I could type up witty posts, perhaps featuring TMI that would bring people to my blog in hoards merely to comment things like: "You're so awesome." "Oh my heck! I peed my pants laughing." Really, it would be fabulous. But Amy and Allie and others like them possess this rare quality that allows them to turn the oh so mundane into snort out loud funny.

While thinking of this post, I thought of all the things that Amy and Allie could make funny: my two sons learning the clarinet and the sounds emitting from the instrument sounding more like a duck being strangled than actual music; my daughter's ability to practice karate while examining the length and condition of her finger nails; everyone in the family (including myself) getting extremely sick except for my oldest son whom we have dubbed "the silent carrier of death;" the joys of living with my almost senior citizen dad, who's by nature just a wee bit grumpy, and three young children who enjoy masticating their food with open mouths. Really, the joys just keep coming but I am hard pressed to turn any of them funny.

What comes out of my head when I actually sit to type? I think this morning it was along the lines of: I'm cold and it's rainy.

Scintillating stuff.

12 and 7

I love numbers. I'm pretty sure I've bored you previously with some love prose to numbers and math, so don't worry; I won't repeat myself here.

Well, not quite.

Several years ago I was reading a book of commentary on the Book of Revelation; the author talked a bit about the importance of numbers in Hebrew and what those numbers can mean. 12 means perfection in regards to the priesthood and 7 is complete and total perfection.

I think about these numbers while reading the miraculous feeding of the five and four thousands.

After feeding the five thousand, Jesus delivers the incomparable sermon (which always feels a bit cannibalistic to me) on the bread of life and the heart of the gospel - that through the atonement we are saved. After feeding the five thousand, there are enough pieces of bread and fish to fill 12 baskets which leads me to thoughts of Jesus establishing His church, it's organization with the 12 apostles and the priesthood connecting to the atonement, with the atonement being the center of the gospel and also the culminating moment of the priesthood in Jesus our ultimate high priest.

After feeding the four thousand, a mixed audience of Jews and Gentiles, there are enough pieces of bread and fish to fill 7 baskets, indicating to me, the perfection of the work of the gospel once it has been received by all mankind.

I don't know how accurate all these thoughts are, but I certainly pause whenever I see numbers in the scriptures; I doubt that the amount of remnants was a random event and I wonder what God was trying to communicate not only in the miracles but through what was left after the miracle was accomplished.

Christians and Mormons

I am wild about comparative religions; I wonder why people believe what they believe and exactly what they believe. I wonder, with the pattern finding craziness of a mathematician, how beliefs interconnect and how we are all alike more than dislike.

But, along with this study, come disturbing heart shrinking moments when the veil is lifted and you see what others, in their separate beliefs, think about you.

And it hurts.

No matter how many times I hear "speak the truth with love," I always return to what they really mean to say which is more along the lines of the words "cult," "not the REAL Jesus," and "you're not really saved and your mom's not really in heaven," and my heart gets crushed every time.  And I begin to wonder if any of us, with differing beliefs, can ever really be friends; how can someone be my friend when they think so little of me and the things that I hold the most precious to my heart?

Only on the Weather and the State of the Roads

It is hard, having be an irregular poster (gad but that sounds odd) for so long, to find something to talk about.

It's not as though I have nothing to say but rather that I have TOO much to say; every piece of witticism, every vague thought, every long item I've pondered over the last few months all come crowding to the fore and try and jump out of my fingertips at the same time; my hands begin to look like possessed marionettes involved in a tug-o-war as they pull from one side to the other side of the keyboard, pressing delete and backspace in between.

Then of course it comes to me: I should just post about the weather right? Because y'all are just fascinated.

I know - not true - but I wonder where to start.

The weather is remarkably balmy (by which I mean sunny and in the low 50's - but compared to a few short weeks ago when I was beginning to wonder if spring would ever really and truly come this year, it's balmy) and such a refreshing change that I'm afraid to breathe for fear that my breath will start a chain of events that will return us to sub-freezing temperatures with below zero on the Fahrenheit scale wind chill factors.  On the other hand, blue is remarkable color for me; it makes my eyes pop.

And our roads are clear.  Just in case you wanted to know.

Naomi the Diva

As I haven't been a regular poster, I'm sure you are completely unaware that I've cleaned up my television/movie viewing.

Yup, I did.

And it's been hard.

Can I tell you how difficult it is to find movies and tv programs that don't violate the law of chastity or are overly violent?  Diff-i-cult, my friend.

I had to give up all my favorite shows: Grey's Anatomy, Bones, Burn Notice . . . the list goes on and on.

As a result, because I still like to watch movies, I've been searching, particularly the religious channels, for movies.

Yesterday I watched The Book of Ruth: Journey of Faith.  Oh. my. heck.  The acting and writing were horrible.  Boaz shows up and says, "Man! Who's that over there?"  Or something to that effect.  "Man?!"  Somehow I never picture that word coming out of Boaz's mouth with such connotations.  But perhaps that's just me.  Perhaps "dude" is really from the old Hebrew and it just gets lost in the translation.

Everyone is clean.  So, so clean.  The kind of clean that comes with costumes whipped out of storage for the annual Christmas Pageant.  Clean.

Everyone has makeup.  Not the subtle "I'm on TV so I need to wear makeup" makeup, but MAKE-UP.

But what really got me?  Naomi had manicured nails: polished, long, perfectly rounded manicured nails.

Really?!

I never knew.

No wonder Ruth stayed; she was hoping for some of that action herself.

Slightly Disturbing Traditions

I just gave my two boys the wishbone from Thanksgiving to make a wish.

It gave me pause.

I handed my children a dried bone from a bird killed and eaten to celebrate gratitude.

Hmmm....just a little odd.

Of course, I don't know if it rates higher on the odd scale than searching for hidden eggs and treasure to celebrate the birth of spring.

Are other cultures just as odd?