New Layout

Today I procrastinated homework by making a new blog layout. I think it was time well spent, don't you?

Not that there was anything particularly bad about the old one, but really the best thing I could say about it was that it wasn't too obnoxious. On kind days, I thought of the blog as sweet and simple, but most of the time it was just dull.


After meaning to change things up for months, I finally made a new one. All by myself (and several online tutorials). Sure, the banner may have been made in Microsoft Paint because I don't have a more sophisticated program, and I probably wouldn't know how to use it even if I did. And I may be alone in my belief that teal and purple look smashing together. But did I mention the all by myself thing? Yah, I'm probably a little too proud of my blog baby, I just can't help but love it .

Rock your body

Just got done watching this weeks Netflixed movie, Whip It. I loved every sweet bit. But, as I sat there, butt glued to the coach watching these awesome women with their wonderful pun names (Smashley Simpson, Smother Theresa, Jabba the Slut!) skate and jump and smash and move, I was oh so painfully aware that I use my body to type and sit and walk from the coach to the fridge.

I take no joy in the physical. My world has always been full of books and ideas played out in my mind, not the thrill of a good run or a killer jumpshot. Gym class was something to be avoided, team sports weren't even up for consideration.

The only thing I ever loved was judo. When I was about 8 my Dad signed me up for judo (I wanted ballet). Best choice my parents ever made for me. For a kid, I was good. Really good. And I really loved flipping people twice my size over my head. My last judo class was when I was 11, and I still miss that feeling of pushing myself until my body would just flow without a thought.

I want to do something with my body. Forget exercise. For me, exercise is the thing you make yourself do because you don't want to die young, and you can't afford to buy new jeans if you start to bulge beyond the constrains of your old ones. I want that feeling, that joy, that rush, that power. I want to make my body a part of me, not just the thing that hauls around my thinking bits.

You don't know what you've got til it's gone

Our power was out for most of the day today.  It sucked.

In these situations I'm supposed to say how great it was to focus on the simple things in life. To rediscover the joy of a good book or simple conversation. To discover how technology can interfere with really living.

Nope. I whined almost the whole time. I tried reading, but books just aren't as enjoyable when you have to read them. I was bored, my shower was ice cold and I was so paranoid about food going bad that I only allowed us to open the fridge once so the cold air could stay in better. While it was a little unerving to hear our appliances slowly lurch back to life when they finally got things up and running again, mostly I was too distracted by lunging towards my computer and reconnecting the life line.

You know why they invented things like electricity, computers and water heaters? Because they're usually better in some way than whatever they had before. Being able to flip a switch and have light appear like magic is better than worrying about whether the dozen or so tealights are going to burn your apartment down (not this time, but those suckers will singe your hair if your silly and forget that bending over a candle when your hair is loose is stupid). The internet is better than whatever people did before the internet (I have vague memories of playing outside, but I can't be certain).

Now sure, some if it is an issue of dependency. I don't have an ice box, because I depend on my refrigerator to keep my food from spoiling. I am overly addicted to my computer. I don't care. I like that most of the time these wonderful things are thoroughly interwoven with my life. If there ever is some sort of electricity ending apocalypse, I hope I'm eaten by zombies towards the beginning.

Videogamage of law school

In some ways, WCL (my law school) can be a little like a video game. You wander around semi-aimlessly trying to get all the required credits. At any moment you can be attacked by the Socratic method. Fortunately, some classes have cheat manuals passed around amongst the student containing the professor's script and warning you what combination can keep you out of danger. Little resume trinkets can be earned with side-quests like joining a law journal or moot court. Like any good gamers, law students can be found wide-awake and red eyed at ungodly hours trying to make it through one more level. The game ends with one last fight with the big boss - the bar exam.

And like any self-respecting video game, WCL has little nourishment packets just lying around for the replenishment of life points. WCL (which some surmise stands for will cater lunch) just leaves food lying around (theoretically its for meetings and conferences, but I don't buy into such crazy talk). Today I turned a corner and found a table full of hamburgers. Last week sandwiches appeared out of thin air.

All this school needs are some sound effects and tinny theme music start showing up, maybe a few crazy characters for extra pizzaz. Although, some guy dressed up as a crab was singing about "textual healing" in the lobby yesterday, so WCL is apparently heading in that direction.

In Celebration

• The snow has finally begun to melt. No longer are there giant snow banks to hop over, or mountains of snow to scale just to get to the bus stop. I step outside, and just walk. Pretending to be a grand arctic explorer was fun for a day, but being able to walk unencumbered is a great joy.
• I have a rough draft of a 30pg paper due in a week. For once, I have a professor who believes that a rough draft can and should be rough - not a perfectly polished masterpiece that will only be slightly tweaked. Hello weekend where I can do more than fight with Westlaw and gaze at the blank space of my word processor.
• I take back my cursing of Zach's brownie aversion. I still have 1/3 of a pan left, and sneaking into the kitchen for a slice feels so good. Even better was just sitting down, eating 1/4 of the pan in one delicious sitting - just basking in the sublime chocolaty richness of it all. No guilt, just pure pleasure. 
• I had my first seizure that required me to miss class of the semester. I can't believe I went so long without one, and that my body had the good sense to time it so I missed my ethics class (I hate every bit of its trite pretentiousness). Personally, I think this is my bodies way of rewarding me for feeding it brownies.

The Brownie Injustice

In general, Zach and I are fairly evenly matched. We're similarly intelligent, have similar senses of humor and the like. But in one very important area, he fully surpasses me. The man has a crazy high metabolism. I eat something non green and leafy, and suddenly my pants don't button up anymore. Zach eats the same meal, only twice as much, and somehow has to move his belt down a notch. It is in no way, shape, or form fair.

And he does not appreciate this gift. At all. He doesn't need to, but he prefers to eat like a 16 year old girl dreaming of the size 2 prom dress. He prefers that everything, even nice, normal baked goods like cinnamon roles be made with wheat flour. He doesn't like red meat - just lean chicken and fish. He eats fruit for dessert! He doesn't really like ice cream, cookies, cake or any of your basic sweets. It just isn't right.

It drives me crazy. At the very least, I should be able to use his metabolism for my own benefit. I should be able to make a delicious tray of whatever I'm craving, eat enough to satisfy me, and count on him to eat the rest and save me from myself. Instead, I have to face up to the fact that any and all sweet things are only in the house to satisfy my own cravings - usually the guilt and shame is just too much, and I won't even bother making whatever I'm craving.

But not today. Today, I needed brownies. I needed rich, chocolaty goodness. And heaven help me, nothing, especially not something as ridiculous as metabolism injustices was going to stop me. Not even my own guilt.

Which is why, whether he likes in or not, he is eating at least 1/3 of these brownies. And if there is any justice at all in the world, he will gain some weight. Seriously, that pan is like 5000 calories. This is why people make brownies from mixes - when you know that brownies are really fat, chocolate and sugar with a little bit of flour, its almost gross. Almost.

Don't look behind you!

Our bathroom is a little like a horror movie. It's always been a little dank and depressing, with its chipped tile and permanently foggy mirror. Not to mention the other worldly groans coming from the plumbing. It doesn't help that to get in or out of the bathroom you have to go through the closet, and the thought of what might be lurking in the clothes is not a comforting thought. But with the recent addition of an eerily flickering light, the horror factor has been pushed over the top. I now say a little prayer of protection every time I enter, and look heavenward in gratitude when I leave alive.

The worst part is when you bend over and look downwards into the sink. I'm familiar enough with the basic tenants of horror movie to know with an absolute surety that when you look away from a mirror and look back, something horrifying will be in the mirror. In the best of circumstances I try to maintain eye contact with the mirror at all times, bit with the addition of the flickering light, I've found myself forced to stay extra vigilant. A few times, I've been so scared, that I kept my eyes shut until I felt my way out of the bathroom and away from whatever may have been lurking therein. This lasted until I accidentally touched a towel, thought it was another person in the room with me, and freaked out. My fist wailed against the assailant who had melded into the hard surfaces of the wall and I shrieked with all the power and fear I could muster. I swear the mirror cracked a little bit, but all this really accomplished was annoyed bangs on the wall from my oh so concerned neighbors, and a sore hand.

The sad thing is, I almost never watch horror movies. When I tried watching What Lies Beneath, I ended up making the person I was watching it with change the DVD so it was going at 16x speed forward, and they would sum up what was happening. I still had nightmares. Most of the time when I find myself peer pressured into one, I can rely on the tried and true method of keeping my hands over my eyes. Unfortunatly, as part of the curse of being a curious person, I do have a tendency to read summaries of horror movies on wikipedia. I know that actually watching them will destroy my ability to function like a normal human being after dark, but surely just finding out what happens can't be bad? If anything, with my ample imagination I probably come up with worse scenarios than I would get if I just let the directors do the work for me. Zach made the mistake of once asking exactly what I was so afraid of. I told him in great detail exactly what might have happened to me. He's a rational, scoffing kind of guy, but even so I don't think he slept much that night. I'm a very effective imaginary fear evangelist.

So what I'm saying is that if you come to visit and the bathroom is a little messy, its only because I've been unable to clean in order to avoid a horrific death. That is all.

Wasted

I really, really want to get drunk. Just once. Purely for curiosity sake.

You see I've spent most of my life being a fairly good Mormon Girl - well as far as other Mormons are concerned, I'm dancing my way to hell with all my wanton ways (caffeine! R rated movies! The triple threats of liberalism, academia and feminism!).  But for normal people, I'm a total prude. Part of my prudishness includes an absolute prohibition of alcohol. Not that I've never used it for cooking, or even been to a few interesting parties where it lurked in the vicinity (or a few dinners with nice, responsible adults who appreciate a good Pinot). But actually drinking it, even a little sip has always seemed like the ultimate must not be broken taboo. A line of demarcation that shall not be crossed.

My one experience with alcohol was when I was about 5 or 6. Apparently I was getting really curious about alcohol. My Dad decided that the best way to nip that curiosity in the bud was to give me some. So, he went to the liquor store, asked the clerk what the worst tasting stuff was, bought it, came home, and called me to him. For some reason he felt it was best to tell me that he had some "special" apple juice for me to try. I wasn't an entirely stupid child, and something about the situation just didn't seem right. I gingerly raised the bottle to my mouth, wrinkled my noise and pushed it away. I did';t know what it was, but it sure as hell didn't smell like apple juice. After some significant cajoling on his part and grimacing on mine, I finally took a small sip. I can still remember its rancid, biting taste - or what little I tasted before I spit it all over the room. That on incident cured me of any and all desire for alcohol on the spot. I can't recommend this as a parenting technique in good conscience, but it has been effective for almost two decades.

Alas, the lesson has worn off, and now I'm back to my childish curiosity. I probably won't mostly because its outside my comfort zone, and also because that stuff is crazy expensive. But I still hate knowing that there is this experience out there that most people have had, and I'll never know! Am I a giggly drunk? Mean? Slutty (probably)? I'm sure that I'm happy to avoid a hang-over, but I'll admit to being a bit curious about that as well. I still think it tastes bad (this is why you are careful with children, they are an impressionable, easily scarred lot) but I just want to know whats out there.

Attack of the presumptious, single eating zombies

I generally try very hard to not act like a crazy married person. I avoid saying we when I really mean I (mostly). I've never ever tried to match up any of my single friends, especially not based on the flimsy reasoning that both of them are single and thereby perfect soul mates. I honestly don't think that being married has given me this vast insight into the universe that all you single folk can never understand. I do not use smittens.

However, I do tend to see marriage around every corner for everyone I know. I wish and imagine my friends into marriage. Has someone mentioned a guy more than once in the course of a conversation? Secretly in love, they will confess their feelings to each other and get engaged within a week. Taking a trip with a significant other? This is either a test drive for marriage, or a super special proposal weekend! Bonus points if the trip included meeting the parents. Did someone who I know is in a committed relationship just post something about how happy they were on facebook? Then they must have gotten engaged, and are now acting all coy about it.

Yah, I took almost every facebook status update made by a single person on Valentines Day as a secret message of imminent nuptials. After I realized that I was wishing my baby brother into marriage, I realized that I was acting like a crazy person, and needed to calm the hell down.

I swear, marriage is like a contagious disease or a cult or something. Or possibly becoming a brain eating zombie, forced to roam the world looking to devour the brains of the innocent, and turn them into fellow zombies you can now go on double dates with. It all works out though, married people pay penance by dodging the inquiries of the parents. I don't think anyone directly recruits parents, they just get judged by and compete with other parents over every little thing. People are odd.

I can be bought

 In general, I'm not a big Valentines Day person. In fact, I'm one of those people who generally makes it a point of pride to be above the mush and commercialization of the holiday.

But.... what kind of person doesn't enjoy chocolate and flowers? This is the kind of crass commercialism I can support. Please don't think too poorly of me.

Feel the burn

 How have a gone for so long without realizing that Netflix on demand has all kinds of exercise videos on demand? Better yet, most of them are from the 10-minute work out series, so I can feel like I'm doing something with minimal time and effort. Sure, 10 minutes may not actually do much for me, but it's something. Besides, I don't actually work out (if you can consider flopping around for 10 minutes once a week working out) for the sake of health and fitness, or even a smaller waistband. I work out because I feel guilty when I don't, and I'd rather use my guilt for things like sleeping in and procrastinating homework.

Unfortunately, I've now lost one of my excuses for not exercising. I justified not going to the gym by saying that since I only did cardio at the gym, I should just count walking to and from school as a work out. I suppose I could just use the weight machines, but they intimidate me. Did anyone else grow up watching The Brave Little Toaster? You know how all the inanimate objects in the movie have somewhat creepy, anthropomorphized features? The gym machines have that same feeling. The weight machines tend to look too face like, and the black weights heaving up and down look like giant mouths trying to swollow you whole. Every time you push up, the gaping maw opens. I don't like the stress of feeling that the gym is trying to eat me.

Anyways, after rationalizing my way out of the gym, I had to think of a way to get out of walking to school.  I used to say that I took the bus because it's so much faster, and health wise I would benefit more from sleeping in for a few more precious minutes. But once I figured that since I usually go out 10 minutes before the bus arrives (the bus usually shows up sometime within 10 minutes, plus or minus, of when its supposed to. I've learned the hard way to play it safe) after the actual 15 minutes on the bus and 10 minutes waiting, I'm only saving 5 to 10 minutes from how long it would take to walk. I now say that its just too cold to walk, but that excuse will stop working when spring rolls around. I'm confident I'll have found a new excuse by then.

I'm curious to see what excuse I'll use to get out of my Netflix workouts. If nothing else, I'll get a chance to exercise my creativity.

The taste of evil

I tasted evil tonight. Pure, stringy, slimy, hairy, horrifying evil. 

After being stranded in our apartment for about a week, we finally decided to bust out of the joint. No fancy plans, we didn't really care what we did, it just had to be not here. Or at least I thought I didn't care. Really, people only say they don't care what happens when they assume something good or at least something ok is going to happen.

Most of the day was fine, just wandering around oohing and awwwing at various pieces of overpriced cookware, because we are boring marrieds whose dreams now involve shiny suburban kitchens. Mostly, we were just killing time before going to dinner.

I was so excited to eat out. First of all, food cooked by someone other than me is always a delight. Secondly, we were going out for Mexican food, which I love and can never seem to cook right, probably because I avoid lard and other deliciousness. Thirdly, we were using a certificate from restaurant.com, so I got to feel all frugal and smart. The restaurant itself wasn't fancy, just your basic hole in wall, but it was next to our favorite Thai place, so I was pretty optomistic.

Our  first clue that this was a den of evil should have been that it was only 10 degrees warmer in the restaurant than it was outside (contrary to popular belief, I'm sure that hell is a frozen wasteland. I abhor the cold, as do all decent people). Frankly, I think the only reason it managed to be that warm was that the walls blocked out some of the wind. Even after keeping my winter coat on, my teeth were still chattering. By the time I left, my toes were starting to go numb. Still, there was food on the premises, and I've done worse things than be a little chilly for food before.*

One of the catches was that for our $25 certificate, we had to spend $35, which is enough for some appetizers as well as the main meal. This requirement for appetizers would turn out to be a tender mercy. The appetizers were solidly ok. Really, its hard to screw up a quesidilla. A little bland, but decent. I can only assume that this was meant to lull is into complacency.

It took a while for our food to get to us, and when it did my fajitas were covered in a thick haze of smoke. Once it cleared, I was greeted by a plate full of sad little vegetables, various meats, and something that may have been a shrimp, only it had little wriggly hairs sticking out of it. I have no idea how crustaceans could manage to grow hair, but these demon shrimp had somehow found a way. After I got over the cousin it shrimp, I remembered that hair or no, I wasn't supposed to have any shrimp or shrimp like creatures on my fajitas, I had asked for just basic steak fajitas. Generally I don't like to complain at restaurants, mostly because I believe in being nice to people who have control over what enters my mouth, but I do expect to have a minimum standard of getting what I ordered. 

 They pretty much told me I was lying. First they claimed that I had ordered the expensive steak, chicken and shrimp fajitas. When I assured them that I hadn't they told me that there was no such thing as just steak fajitas on their menu, it always came with chicken and shrimp. I checked, and no, right above the expensive fajitas was the basic steak fajitas that I had ordered.

Eventually, they sort of offered to fix my meal, but by then I had tasted a bite of my food and learned that there was nothing any human being could possibly do, so I decided to stop fighting. The steak they had served me was tough, stringy and a little burned. It didn't have a discernible meat like flavor, just a sickly red glaze that sort of tasted sweet and tangy like spoiled milk. Not everything tasted bad, the onions and peppers were devoid of any flavor, they just sat there in a slimy, bland ooze. I didn't have the courage to try one of the shrimp. I tried to eat a little more, but I finally decided that trying to force more down my throat would just kick in my gag reflux, and throwing up seemed ruder than not eating my food.

Zach's enchiladas were what he had ordered, but that was about their only redeeming quality. They looked like they had come out of a can, but he assures me that no company of any repute would be willing to can and sell such vile excrement. We tried really hard to eat our food, but we're only so strong. I should point out that Zach has served an LDS mission, where he was frequently fed by the members. This was usually a good thing, but at least once he was served fajitas made with chicken that had been microwaved, and was still kind of raw in the center. He was able to eat the raw fajitas, but even he couldn't stomach that enchilada. 

Mostly, we just sat there, pushing our food around and trying to make it look like we had eaten some of it. Occasionally new people would walk into the restaurant. I would try to warn them away with my eyes, but I'm afraid I wasn't successful.

It took them about half an hour to finally bring us the bill and set us free. I generally try to be a good tipper, so I usually leave about 20% of the bill (the full bill, not the amount after discount). I just couldn't physically do it this time, I felt horrible enough about having to pay for whatever that stuff on the plate was supposed to be. So I spitefully left only left 15%. I hope they learned their lesson.I would hope that they would eventually close down and be replaced with something decent, but clearly they have made a pact with Satan to serve the products of evil in the masquerade of food, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

*Such worse things include dates with really awkward and creepy guys and a host of even awkwarder and creepier singles ward activities. I've sat through some pretty bad things for the sake of a stale cookie. College students are so easy to buy.

Vacation in my mind

I don't know if it's the snow, or what, but I really want to be someplace else right now. (Yes, I'm talking about the snow again. I can't help it. After being trapped indoors for about a week, I'm starting to feel like the snow is purposely holding me hostage.  I believe that I am slowly loosing my grip on sanity. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to leave the shoebox again. Help.) 

A vacation isn't exactly in my immediate future. Somehow blowing student loan money on a big trip seems a little irresponsible. But that doesn't mean a girl can't dream.

Europe is generally the first place I'll go during a daydream travel session. Eating a fresh baguette as I stroll the streets of Paris. Gelato and a moped ride in Rome. Taking in the majesty of the museums and monuments. Maybe visiting a castle or two. Best of all just strolling around and being in Europe with all its history and culture and European glory. I don't think I'd be able to sleep the whole time I was there - how could I possibly sleep when there is so much to see and do?

I want to go to Europe, I really do. And after a week of hard-core enforced nothingness, I could be up for some intense tourism. But in general, I am a lazy person. And the best vacations to me are the somewhat lazy ones, preferably on a tropical island. Sure, I'd need to have some nice things to go out and see and do. I'm up for snorkeling around or maybe even a rain forest hike if I'm feeling particularly adventurous. But mostly I just want to kick back on a beach chair and look at how pretty everything is. Plus, warm. Always a plus.

Fortunately, I probably have a few years to iron everything out. So long as I'm only taking mental vacations, I may as well go where ever the fancy takes me.

Drabbles

• Yesterday neither of us had school, but there wasn't any active snowfall, so we went on another grocery expedition. We didn't have any immediate needs, but I couldn't handle being the apartment all day for the fourth day in a row. The store was even crazier than the pre-storm stock up session. I've never seen so many entirely empty shelves. We ended up just getting floss, peperoni and tomatoes - mostly because those were some of our only options. The lines for checkout went all the way to the back of the store. Fortunately, we ended up chatting with an Australian guy. And when I say he was Australian, I mean full out Australian. Not only did he have the great accent, but he had this outback looking shaggy coat on, plus he made fun of American football (he's right - compared to rugby, it is kind of pathetic). I half expected him to pull out a bowie knife at some point. Oh, he was also hot in a rugged sort of way (although lets face it, any decent looking guy with a great accent is hot). Mostly it was just fun to have some company. Its easy to feel a little isolated sometimes, especially in a city like DC where people tend to be kind of uptight (poor social skills don't help either). I love meeting people who are just effortlessly enjoyable to be with - it's a skill I hope I can develop.

• It's a good thing we went escaped for a brief moment when we did, because somehow the 4-8" we were supposed to get today has turned into a crazy blizzard. I can barely see out the window. I tried taking a picture for your visual enjoyment, but then decided no one was interested in seeing a grainy white blur. 

• I never though I would say it, but I kind of miss school. I'm not good without structure. When I feel like I have all the time in the world, it's hard to get motivated to actually do anything. 

• Although, I did manage to get motivated enough to make banana bread out of the sad black bananas I've been meaning to turn into bread all week. There were too many bananas for one batch, but too few to double. So I made a 1.5 batch, with the .5 becoming muffins. I also remembered that part of the reason I went into law was that I thought it would require less math skills than other more businessey professions. (I was wrong about that. Law is all about money. Just like everything else.) My efforts to up the recipe by 1.5 weren't the most successful. I'm not sure what I did wrong exactly, but that bread is really salty and kind of greasy. The salt part isn't that shocking, as I'm not sure how to do 1.5 pinches of salt, but the greasy part is odd considering I replaced half the butter with low-fat yogurt. This is why I avoid baking in general, and experimental baking in particular. Oh well, smother the bread with enough butter and honey, and it's fine. 

• That's pretty much it. Let's see if I can motivate myself into doing something somewhat productive, especially considering I have no idea when I'll be able to rejoin the outside world again.

Google Love

Overall I haven't been impressed with this year's Super Bowl ads (especially one that imply men have been forced to act like decent human beings by the women in their lives, oh what horror, and only an expensive car can save their penis).

 However, I love this ad by Google. I love its sweetness and its simplicity. It's so perfectly Google. I suppose I should be a little creeped out how fully a search engine is integrated into the most important moments of our lives, but I find it oddly reassuring.

Reconciling Feminism and Mormonism (or not)

I was recently asked a question on my formspring that I didn't expect (mostly because I didn't expect to get many, if any questions asked). I put too much time and thought into the answer (even if most of it was written stream of consciousness style) to not share it a little more broadly, so I'm reprinting it here, as is.

Is it difficult to reconcile being a feminist with being Mormon? If so, how do you?

Yes. Oh heavens yes. How do I do it? Well, in all honesty, most of the time I don't. Most of the time I have giant contradictions in my head between what I know to be true, what I'm told is true and what I want to be true. There are some truths in feminism that I know just as strongly as some gospel truths. And generally those truths aren’t in conflict, quite the opposite in fact, the same principles I love in the gospel about equality, charity, mercy, agency, etc are the same things that draw me to feminism– it’s all the other things that get packaged with those ideologies that get messy.

Different things work better on different days. For the longest time I just tried to put troubling things on the shelf and trusting that I would understand latter, or accepting that maybe I just didn’t need to know. Then my shelf broke. It’s a decent temporary fix, but long term I just can’t not think about things that are so important to me.

Some days I try to explain things by thinking that we all look at the world through the tinted lenses of our own experience and culture. So doctrines, culture, practices whatever in the church that bother me are just the result of good people striving for truth but ultimately being restrained or colored by the world they grew up in. As things change and those lenses cease to be, so will the things that bother me. That isn't 100% satisfactory - I want the church to rise above all that cultural stuff. I want pure truth. (And I want that truth to conform to what I think/want to be true.)

In a similar vein, I sometimes think that maybe God just isn’t much of an interventionist. Maybe the church is deeply flawed and some things it teaches just plain aren’t true, but God doesn’t correct them because he’s letting us work things out. I do believe in agency, and it makes some sense that God won’t force truth on those who don’t want it. However, if I accept that premise, it’s hard to know when to stop – what things to keep and what to personally throw out. I do think that ultimately I’m responsible for my own salvation, so I should bear responsibility for accepting and acting on what I think is true and not delegate that to church leaders. But I’m not quite arrogant enough to think that my opinions and perceptions are the final word on what is true and what isn’t (close, but not quite).

I've tried going the route where motherhood really does equal priesthood and patriarchy means something different in the church than it does in other contexts (and hearken for that matter) and everything else really is for the best, but frankly it never works for me. It tends to sound like double speak and flimsy excuses.

On my more depressed days, I get tired of trying to contort to make everything work, and I wonder if maybe the simplest explanation is true. Unfortunately the simplest explanation seems to be that women are less than men in the eyes of God. It doesn’t take much mental work to explain everything this way, but it doesn’t leave me liking God very much. I don't like those days.

And other times I willfully try to just ignore it all.

Most of time I just think. I wonder about what equality means to me. I think about what I want and believe, and if maybe I'm wrong? I try to look deeper at the doctrine and understand why it is what it is, or if it even is what I think it is. I try to separate culture from doctrine. I try to look at the simple principles, the things I know are true and build from there. I just try to understand it all. Every now and again I come up with something that almost works, but mostly I just get a headache.

So I suppose I usually don't reconcile things. I have quite a bit of pain, but I have so many good things and truths that I cannot seem to let go of, that I can't fully leave either camp.

My movie

This has been the perfect weekend for movies. From the steady stream of snow keeping us locked in comes this overwhelming feeling of calm laziness from knowing that even if you wanted to be living it up out on the town, you couldn't be. The universe wants, nay, demands that you be at home, curled up in a warm, fuzzy blanket. We even cleaned this morning, so the shoebox is a habitable, perhaps even pleasant place to be. Conditions are perfect.

Not being the type to waste a perfect opportunity, I watched my perfect movie. Do you have a movie like that? One that just speaks to your soul, where its particular quirky brand of humor melds perfectly with yours, and the story and the people just sweep you away into a bliss. It's not too happy, too sad, or too silly. It's your perfect blend. Waitress is my movie. It doesn't matter where I am when I start the show, my heart immediately pulls me and doesn't let me leave until the last frame. For 108 minutes I am blissfully lost in the tragedy and the sunshine of a life that isn't my own, but for the moment feels more real than reality. When the curtain finally falls, everything feels right. You're not laughing or crying or puzzling over deep, impossible questions. Just happy in all the right ways. Everyone needs a movie like that in their lives, especially on days like today.

Snowpocalypse

So, its apparently "snowpocalypse"* here in DC. Which isn't exactly the snow day I was hoping for on Wednesday, but as a major procrastinator myself, I can't get too annoyed if the weather wanted to take its own sweet time. Truth be told, after Wednesdays tease, I didn't really take the expected snowfall that seriously. The first time I heard 30 inches being tossed around, I thought I was just being messed with. Even as I heard more and more reports of the worst storm in DC since the Knickerbocker storm of '22 (Isn't that the best name ever? Although I am a little annoyed by all the good names having been used up, thereby sticking us with snowpocalypse), it didn't really sink in.

Which explains how I woke up this morning to a house of no milk, no eggs, and other evidence that we haven't been to a grocery store in two weeks. It was then that I realized that I was unprepared idiot. Snow was already starting to fall, so Zach and I scarfed down a quick breakfast, threw on the first warm things in sight and headed out for supplies.

The grocery store was, well, pretty much exactly what you would expect a grocery store to be like at the beginning of "snowpocalypse". They actually still had a decent stock of most things - with the odd exceptions of yogurt and beer.** But, even with the still reasonably supplied shelves, people were running around in a panicked daze, shoving whatever they found into their already overflowing carts. Really, if an apocalypse does come this weekend, it will begin in a grocery store as soccer Moms begin a violent uprising over the last gallon of milk, forming roving gangs of shopping cart bandits, set to duke it out over precious resources in the WholeFoodsDome. Against my will, I found myself getting caught up in the fervor. Every item I saw became an absolute necessity that I would never ever have another chance to acquire. What if I really, really needed a box of crackers or canned ham, and I couldn't get it? What then? It's snowpocalypse! anything can happen! Fortunately after feeling that my survival depended on getting a package of kumquats, my common sense kicked in, and I forced myself to back away from a Mad Max mentality and scale back to a normal load of groceries instead of my desired years supply.

It's now snowing buckets (by DC standards), and it looks like we'll be sitting tight and cozy for at least a few more days. I hope I don't need those kumquats.



* Yes, apparently 30" qualifies as the end of civilization as we know it. My Alaska-raised husband is overly enjoying mocking everyone right now. I suspect that he may be lying when he tells me about getting 6-10 feet of snow in an average winter. Those Alaskans are a notoriously tricky bunch. He also expects me to believe that moose can't walk up stairs. I really don't think he's very trustworthy.
**If you watch Burn Notice, you know what that is hilarious to me. If not, carry on with your sad, devoid of reasonably witty and thrilling basic cable tv shows, life.

The butter conversion (or why God hates margarine)

Still reeling from the snow disappointment of yesterday, I really did not want to get up today. I managed to bribe myself out of bed with the promise of mediocre, lukewarm pancakes for breakfast. The law school cafeteria is a sad little operation - mostly because it seems so reluctant to accept that it's a cafeteria. It tries so hard to reach beyond its function and serve fancy things like herb crusted salmon and creative tofu creations, but it never comes out right. Like how they tried to make the salad bar more interesting by adding a big vat of beets. However, in one respect they consistently get it right - they proudly serve little pats of butter, not margarine with all their breakfast goods. I'm solidly in the butter camp. The sweet, creamy butter can make the fake syrup and blah pancake into an effective self-bribe.

I grew up in a household that didn't seem to care too much one way or the other on the great butter v. margarine debate. Having spent many of his formative years working on his uncle's dairy farm, my Dad was a fan of real butter, but most of the time the "we have no money and kids don't know any better" point of view would win out, so us kids would smear goop from a giant neon-yellow vat of I can't believe its not butter onto our toast.

I probably would have kept right on doing so if my church hadn't intervened. I grew up Mormon, and part of that meant that as a teenager I would semi-voluntarily (guilt can be a powerful tool) head back to the church building on Sunday nights for a special youth "fireside" (basically an informal lecture/lesson/gathering thing). They were usually a pretty mixed bag. The best ones would genuinely dig into some interesting doctrine, inspiring me to really think and feel and know. Occasionally you would end up with someone a little crazy who decided to assault the youth with their crazy theories about how a shape in the ice floes in Alaska proved that Jesus really does exist or something. Most were just moderately interesting regurgataions of the same things I'd been hearing during sunday services for the past 15+ years. 

And then there was the butter fireside. It wasn't advertised as being about butter, it was sold as an extra-special fireside for girls only. One of those "its so important to have a positive body image, but make sure you eat right and exercise so you can be healthy, hot and skinny" things that are commonly thrown at teenage girls. It ended up being an hour long lecture about the evil of margarine and the glory that was real butter. We were introduced to the speaker as a nurse, but you never would have guessed that based on her presentation. On and on she went about good and bad fats in butter and margarine. Margarine was an evil industrial product that would cause cancer and kill puppies while butter would make you shiny and beautiful and support the Norman Rockwell farmers and cows of America. She showed us charts and graphs, and shared various anecdotes and studies. I never knew anyone would hate margarine so much, but I left the night convinced that her family must have been horribly massacred by a rogue tub of margarine. There was no other reasonable explanation for why else someone would feel the need to preach for that long over the morality and cosmic importance of our choice of toast toppings.

I may not have a positive body image or healthy habits like I had been promised, but thanks to that hour trapped with a crazy woman, I am a devoted butter eater. Sure, I went over to the dark side when I had to start buying my own groceries in college and "experimented" with margarine, but even some sweet savings weren't enough to hold my heart for long. I continue to keep my fridge full of butter mostly because I try to avoid an excess of fake food and it tastes so much better, but also because try as I might, I just can't get that crazy woman out of my head. I still think of her almost every time I buy another package of butter. 

Religion always has been and probably always will be a complicated thing for me, and there are many things I was taught at firesides and other similar events that I look at now and freely discount as being false or at least problematic. But I'm a butter convert for life.

Mental bow-chica-bow-wow (in marriage?)

I cheated on my husband last night.

Ok, not really. I just had a dream where I did. And even then, we just made out a little bit on a rooftop, and then I stopped because I knew that I would have to tell Zach, and he would be horribly hurt (I did tell Zach about the dream, he thought it was quiet funny. This is part of why I love him.) It's not my first non-Zach romantic dream since I was married, but it was my first one with a real person. I felt horribly guilty all day.

I don't really care about crushes or dreams of fictional characters. They aren't marriage threatening at all - well I suppose being obsessed would be problematic, but a general "oh isn't this imaginary person so dreamy" eh, not so much. I'm not going to leave my husband, mostly because I love him, but also because you can't run off with someone who doesn't actually exist. But real people are, well, real. I don't think checking someone out really matters, or anything else brief and momentary. But actual extended, crush like attractions are a different story.

I don't like to think of myself as naive, but I think a very real part of my thought that I would be so in love with my husband after marriage, that I just would never notice another guy. Nope. Hot guys continue to be hot. And hot guys who say smart, funny and interesting things in class continue to make my heart beat a little to fast for comfort.

I'm never really sure how to deal with things like that. Ideally I could just snap my fingers and have my brain re-categorize them as just a nice, normal, non-sexually attractive guy. My self-control just isn't that good. Avoiding any and all contact is just plain ridiculous. The grown up thing to do seems to be to just acknowledge that yes, I'm attracted to so and so, but it doesn't really matter, so lets move on. That seems to work fine, largely because this is just in school - I'm usually only seeing these people for a few hours each week in very limited circumstances where we don't really interact and I'm diverting most of my attention towards the lecture anyways. I imagine it would be harder with a good friend or a business colleague, or someone else that you have constant personal contact with.

I'm not really sure what I'm afraid of. I generally think that marriages break down because of problems within the marriage, it doesn't have anything to do with outside attractions. But that doesn't mean that outside people cease to exist or be interesting, even in good marriages. It seems naive to think that an extra-marital crush doesn't matter, that having part of your mind, heart or err other parts diverted elsewhere is healthy.

So far I've only had teeny-tiny extra-marital crushes that have all the intensity and longevity of a lit match - but I still don't like the feeling. I want to have a good marriage, I really do. I want to be one of those adorable old couple whose eyes light up when they see each other, where you can just tell how devoted they are for each other, where they can say in all sincerity that "he's the only guy for me." I don't believe in soul mates, I could have been happy with many other guys. But I chose Zach and I hope that as the years go by we'll grow together and become the only people for each other. I suppose for me that's what this all comes down to. I chose Zach two years ago, but every day I need to keep choosing him all over again so that we can build something wonderful together.

Ugh

It snowed. DC actually pulled its act together and got it cleaned up. So I'm in class. And not the least bit bitter. And I certainly didn't expect snow and blow off most of my reading.

Oh Mr. Snow, Snow

I don't care how many years I lived in Utah, I never got used to having to go to school when it snowed. I know that if that were the case, I would never have gone to class from November-March, which probably would have been a waste of tuition and blah blah blah. I still don't care. I have a very active inner-child, and that child expects to stay home at the first sign of a flake. I felt like I was betraying little Gena with every slodgey step I made towards campus.

People like to complain that the DC area completely shuts down with a little bit of snow. They're absolutely right. Everything goes into a panic and shuts down, its kind of ridiculous how handicapping one little inch can be. It's one of my favorite things about living here.

That being said, I feel a little cheated by the snow this year. The first big storm didn't do anything except make us miss our Christmas flight. The decent snowfall over the weekend did manage to get classes classes canceled on Friday. Which would be great if I had class on Fridays to begin with (3 day weekends every weekend almost make law school worth it). As far as I'm concerned snow is only good for two things: looking moderately pretty and holiday-esque (this benefit expires after Christmas. A winter wonderland can only exists when it brings the promise of imminent presents) and getting school canceled. It did reasonably well on the first thing so far, but I'm getting frustrated by its inability to deliver on the second part.

So, now that my little weatherbug predicts snow for tomorrow, I'm getting a little excited. Every time I see the little snowflake icon, the dreams of hot cocoa and sleeping in fill my head and everything on the horizon seems wonderful. I'm still going to do my reading like a good girl because I don't quite trust the snow to not betray me again, but my inner child is still doing a happy dance.

Wisdom Teeth Part 2

So Zach got his wisdom teeth out. I, as usual, was worried for no good reason. Everything went fine getting up there - which for public transit is a wonderful blessing. We did get off of the bus a little late, and had to walk through some crazy cold winds, but that's just me whining. Really, the main hurdle was the unexpectedly high bill. We do have insurance, but like most student insurance the deductible is low (I think our yearly deductible for dental is $150 per person) but the co-pays are high. Fortunately we have a little wiggle room in our student loan money, but I'll be cringing from the $1,000+ bill for a while. But hey, we did have the money and the insurance, which is worth being grateful for.

I don't know how the actual operation went for Zach, what with him being unconscious, and me hanging out in the lobby for an hour with a decent book. I haven't read for fun in a while - although if it takes Zach getting expensive surgery for me to read, its probably not worth it.

Zach was surprisingly lucid after the operation. Well, his mouth was full of gauze, so he couldn't really talk, but he seemed lucid. Kind of wobbly, but not to bad. Which is good, because I had to ditch him in the lobby while I ran across the street to grab his prescription before the cab that wasn't a cab came to take us home. Aren't I so loving and prepared?

You see, like most things I found a cab company on the internet. I apparently was silly to assume that Montgomery cab co. was a normal, regulated, cab company with standardized fare, like most cabs are in DC. No, it was a fancy towncar service. Which was nice, but I really wasn't fond of paying $75 just to get home. Fortunately it got us home in a prompt manner, and we happily settled into a weekend of Zach hanging out on the couch and living off of mashed potatoes and gellato and be trying to hover enough to take care of him but not so much to drive either of us crazy.

Things didn't get really exciting until Saturday night. Zach started out the morning just fine, but as the day went on his energy drained down to nothing - simultaneously and consequentially draining my nurturing reserves. I didn't really have much left for me, and kind of didn't eat much at all that day. I'm not much for cooking, and had expended most of my cooking energy making mashed potatoes and re-fried beans. So around 7pm or so I went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and collapsed onto the floor where I had a massive seizure. One of the really bad ones, where I feel pinned to the floor, choked on my pain tears, and can't even scream because I don't have the muscle control to make any noise more controlled than a soft moan. Zach was only about 8ft away - but being the genius I am, I got him sound-blocking headphones for Christmas. They're very effective. I think he noticed I was still in the kitchen after 5 minutes or so and came looking for me - although honestly there really isn't much you can do to help in a situation like that in the best of times, let alone when your drugged up and recovering yourself. It's still nice to have him there.

We were utterly pathetic that night. And most of the next day too. Don't ask what the apartment looks like now. We survived, and that's all that I'm choosing to focus on.