A catch-all post

Tonight was a perfect spring evening. J returned from a fun (and expensive!) weekend at the Mountain West Basketball tournament in Vegas. We grilled tenderloin and picked romaine from the garden for dinner. Then we went for a walk around the block. The sky was streaked with pink and H kept pointing at the half-moon and saying, "Moo! Moo!" Then we played girls against boys, kicking the soccer ball. H was bored and checked out the neighbors' open garages for better options.

Life has been busy. And hard. And fun. I haven't mustered up the energy to blog about any of it, obviously. Along with blogging, here are a few things I also have not been doing:

• Taking care of the broccoli in the garden--it died
• Returning my library books on time (and actually reading them! Out of the last stack I only managed to read Wednesday Wars--thumbs way up--and The Red Pyramid--pretty good. And I had to keep each a week past due in order to finish them)
• Visiting teaching (oops. And I'm in the Relief Society presidency. I should get on that.)
• Losing those last inches around my stomach from when I was last pregnant
• Planning something for spring break this week (yikes! I should get on that--need to be proactive or kids will fight the whole week)
• Sleeping--H has been sick. AGAIN. coughing all night, up all night. and at 5:30am.

But let's not focus on what I haven't been doing. Let's talk about what I have been doing:

• I blogged at Segullah earlier about sustaining the prophet. I feel like an expert on the topic (not on actually doing it) since I have now given 2 talks and 1 lesson about it in the last few months. And I love the photo of President Monson that I used in my Segullah post. Go here if you want to download it and print it at Costco.
• I've been spending hours outside with H--pushing him on the swing, threatening to take away his bike if he rides it into the street again, and watching him write with sidewalk chalk while I try to read those library books.

• Working on an article for Computers and Composition. Almost done! It's on online literacy sponsorship ("sponsors" meaning those who have something to lose or gain by promoting or encouraging another's literacy learning). I was hoping to get it off before spring break, but I'm not exactly running on time right now (let's face it, by "right now" I mean "in this lifetime").
• Going to the gym--I bought a $25-for-3-month trial pass to a new gym and I'm loving going to the classes again. I got burned out of running and lifting hand weights.
• I took part in a podcast at The Round Table: Inquiry and Insight into Mormon Womanhood last week. It should be posted on their blog sometime soon. They asked me to be a special guest and participate in the discussion on Mormon women and identity. Emily Jensen, the moderator, asked us questions about pressures Mormon women feel to be "an ideal Mormon woman" and how we can work towards getting rid of these false notions that Mormon women have to be a certain way, look a certain way, do things a certain way, or make certain choices in their lives in order to be "good." One of the most thought-provoking comments in the discussion to me was from Chelsea Shields Strayer, who said that, in her experiences living overseas, Americans seem, more than any other nationality, to rely on their communities to give them their identities more than on their individual ability to fashion their own identities separate from community norms and expectations (she said it much better, but I can't remember). I've been thinking about that because I'd love to raise my children, but particularly my daughter, with the ability to conscientiously construct a self-concept, to separate their beliefs about the self from others' beliefs. But I don't have the slightest idea about how to go about giving my children the tools to do this. Any ideas?
• Speaking of Mormon women, I've also been writing a short reader's theater program for our Relief Society birthday celebration in a couple of weeks. I love the history of the Relief Society--the early Relief Society women did amazing things. I think one of the many factors that led to the amazing things they did was that they built on individual women's diverse talents, personalities, life situations, etc. I'll step off my soap box now.
• I've been giving my kids piano lessons (while H jumps on my back, screaming, "Nay!" or tries to pound on the piano keys, or writes on random things with a crayon some other child left down while I wasn't looking); and I've been cleaning (the majority of the house--don't look in the guest room! Actually, you probably couldn't open the door to look in there. That situation will be rectified before my in-laws visit this Thursday); and I've been making dinners.
• Lastly (because I'm getting tired--see list of things I haven't been doing lately), I've been painting. While J was away, I painted my bathroom cabinets and I worked on a new aspen painting for my living room. I'll take pics when I'm not so tired. . . . (maybe next month?!)

Wish me luck on spring break! Hopefully I'll actually blog about it.

Purging and Running and Purging

Does the title of this post make me sound bulimic? Well, I'm obviously not (although if you've seen me pound cookies as I did last week, you might wonder). But that's what I was up to in January.

We lost a good week of the month to the flu, with all 5 of us having it at one time. It was horrific. Really. The sickest I can remember being since I had the chicken pox. I will spare you the details. So, that was the first round of purging.

I also spent the month trying to train for the London's Run Half-Marathon. I've wanted to run it for a while, but 3 years ago, I threw my back out, then I was pregnant, then I was sleep-deprived and nursing a 6-month-old. This year I was a little late in the game when it came to training. Due to our Christmas travels and bad weather in both places, I didn't run for almost 3 weeks and my usual running distance was 4-5 miles. But I decided to give it a shot. Then I got the stomach flu and laryngitis, but I managed to do 3 long runs and to kick up my speed on my 6 miles. I didn't have a running partner, which made the running really, really hard for me because, let's face it, running is really not that fun. And running 7-8 miles on the treadmill almost made me slit my wrists from boredom. The good thing about the boredom of it is that I wanted to finish faster, so I finally kicked my 10-min mile pace up to a 8-9 min-mile pace, especially on the shorter runs.

The race was last Saturday, and it was really fun! I was just planning on taking it easy since I hadn't trained well, and I really enjoyed the run. It was all dirt roads, which was nice, and I didn't push myself, so I didn't end feeling sick, like I have before. I ended feeling like I could actually run farther, which probably means that I should have pushed myself more. But it was a really good, empowering feeling to end feeling strong. And I made it under 2 hours--just barely! It was also so fun to have J and the kids waiting at the finish line. I have no pic other than the one Sports Shots took here. Not so flattering, eh?

And, to the last "purging" from the title. I have been determined to purge my home of all of the excess we've accumulated in the 6 years we've lived here. So, I've slowly been cleaning out the kitchen cupboards (sometimes it takes me a couple days to clean just 1 out seeing as how H takes it upon himself to "clean out" at least 4-5 while I am cleaning one), closets, files, and soon, the toys. I have to admit that I'm not so good at purging. I'm a sentimental, loyal person, which is all good when it comes to friendship but not so great when it comes to organization. But here's the lone visual I've taken so far in the purging process. I went through all of my files related to my dissertation, determined to get all of that paper under control. I ended up organizing all of the articles and my notes, but tossing this stack--all of the drafts of my dissertation chapters. It represents so much hard work that it's hard to just throw it in the recycling bin. But the process did remind me that I need to get to work on publishing some of this hard work. You know, assuming I can get through the purging and organize my life and my home again.

What have we been up to lately?

Besides not blogging? Well, life is pretty much kicking me in the rear end these past few weeks. How did I forget how much time it takes to teach a composition class? And remind me why I thought it was a good idea to do this right now?! But I figured I'd better take the time to blog so nobody worries that we might have fallen prey to heat exhaustion since IT WAS 111 ON SUNDAY. That's right. September 19. 111. Sheesh.

Other than staying inside and spending way too much time on school, we had a run of cold/flu, which stretched into 3 weeks for me thanks to an accompanying sinus infection and a return of the cold (and now we're on round 2, since Sweetie came home from school Friday with a fever and is still in bed 3 days later). Also, Mister started football and, whoa, football is quite the serious endeavor, it seems, even when you're 7. He has practice for an hour and a half 3 days a week and has to earn his way into playing time on Saturday's games.

Speaking of football (my students would be proud of me at that fabulous transition of old/new information, which was the topic of today's revision tip), we've been doing a little (read: A LOT) of football watching now that the season is finally here. J, H, and I flew up to Utah to cheer our Cougars on to their first victory. Our good friend Matt got us on the field and sidelines before the game.

And before heading out, for family game night, we broke out the BYU/Utah checkers game. J and Mister were the Cougars, while Sweetie and I were forced to represent the Utes. We were nervous that the outcome of the game might be a foreshadowing of the match-up this season, but J and I argued about his cheating and we quit early. (See, he should have been representing the Utes. Someone please tell him that once you take your hand off your game piece, your turn is over.)

In addition to his football practicing, Mister spent 3 of his days sitting in for recess this week because drawing dinosaurs and white and red blood cells and sickle-back whales have been vastly more important to him than doing homework this week and there's only so much a mom can do before kids have to face up to their own consequences.

Also, Mister lost his first front tooth. Sob, sob, from me. I have been ruing the day because once those new front teeth come in, he will never look like my little boy again.

Sweetie has been insisting that her front tooth is loose, but it's been that way for 8 months now. We'll believe it when we see it. She starts soccer this week and has been loving school, despite the fact that her homework involves recognizing shapes, counting to 10, and coloring. She loves coming home and tattle telling on all of her poor classmates who are not present to defend themselves. Here's a recent Sweetie funny: When we went shopping for discount school supplies to assemble humanitarian kits, Sweetie told me that we didn't need any pencils for the kids in Pennsylvania because they must have plenty already.

And both Sweetie and Mister have been obsessed with silly bands, which they pile on their wrists and trade with friends for different shapes.

Meanwhile, H has been ruling the roost while the kids are gone. He loves it when they come home, but while they are gone, he has been intent on learning new tricks, like bringing me his shoes all day because he wants to go outside (Note to H: IT'S STILL 111!); and like climbing on top of the couch, where he sometimes takes scary tumbles off and sometimes sits nicely reading the hymn book; and like removing his diaper and leaving little Desitin marks around the house; and like throwing or pulling everything off of every height he can reach. The latest object to bite the dust was my huge glass Ikea vase with sticks in it that stood by the door. I thought it was too heavy for him. Guess not. I did decide to put his love of the vacuum to good use. You're never to young to work in this house.

Mostly, I feel like I am not keeping my head above the water of life right now. But I'm still swimming so hopefully someone will throw me a rope or a huge floatie here soon. And hopefully I'll be better at keeping my blog updated . . .