Modern Mormon Men post and other musings

This is so belated, but here is a link from my last Modern Mormon Men guest post. Please enjoy...I sure enjoyed reading it.

I woke up discouraged this morning. Today is a very full Saturday, and while full Saturdays while Adam works are preferable to empty Saturdays that turn into one long craft project, I still am procrastinating getting started. (Hence this blog post.)

Also, on the subject of procrastination: I had a long battle yesterday debating whether or not to apply for an MFA in Creative Writing to jumpstart my writing career. I went around and around mentally, called a few people to talk it out (because apparently my decision-making process cannot be done in a vacuum or even independently) and finally asked Adam about it when he got home.

My dear man spoke truth, as he always does, but without the sugar-coating. All of you who actually know Adam know that one of his superpowers is being able to say the hard things to your face in a way that doesn't make you want to smack him. He confirmed my suspicions that me going for more school in writing was, on its face, a good desire. At its heart, however, was just procrastination of beginning to write in earnest. The kind of writing that is brutal and agonizing and includes a lot of throwing out the baby with the bath water and cutting off one's limbs, but in a metaphorical sense. This means writing pure garbage (kind of like this blog post!) and deleting it and starting over until I finally hone the idea and make it a slice of fried gold.

I have to do this.
I hate having to do this.
I hate the fact that I just wasted a half hour that I could've spent making today's banana cream and key lime pies by writing this stuff out, but I guess I wanted someone to hold my feet to the fire (in a metaphorical, internetty sense).

So, here goes: Peoples, the three peoples who are still reading this blog, I need some accountability out of you. I am making a promise to my Internetty audience that I'm going to write every day for an hour, and edit on the weekends. This is a laughably small goal (or large, depending on whether or not you're a mom), but I have to start somewhere. And I should've started years ago.

And with that, I leave you. I have to eat, shower and cobble together two pies before 11:30 and I can hear The Boy crying to be let out of prison.

I lost my heart in...Montana?

Adam, in his heart of hearts, has always fancied himself a lumberjack. His favorite shirts in the closet are the plaid flannel variety, and he's been wearing them long before the hipsters took them over and put them back in ironic vogue. He keeps an axe under his side of the bed (for safety purposes, he says) and prefers the Brawny brand paper towels.

This, naturally, propelled us to plan a trip to Montana this summer.

Like most harebrained ideas, it started out small: a quick jaunt to Colorado to visit some friends and family. We pulled the battered 2003 Rand McNally atlas out of the trunk and I measured the distance by thumb-lengths (turns out my thumb and a map legend scale are about the same length, and after learning this I pronounced myself a superior human being). Easy-peasy, we could totally do it.

After giving Colorado the look-over, I realized that--surprise!--Wyoming was a slight drive north. (Ken Jennings, forgive my geography-ignorance, for I have sinned.) My aunt and uncle live in Cody, which is spitting distance from Yellowstone and just saying the Y-word out loud to Adam increased our drive time by another six hours. Camping! In Yellowstone! Adam's little lumberjack-heart thumped a mighty thump at the prospect.

Since we were that far north and west, I said, we just had to skip over to Idaho. My mom lives there, as does Adam's cousin and his sister goes to school there.

Well, turns out you can't go straight from Wyoming to Idaho because of the mountainous terrain. You have to jog up into Montana.

Cue obsessive cash-stuffing in an old cigar box (a treasure I found on a job site with my pop-in-law) to pay for the trip.
Cue research into the University of Montana, which turns out to have a physical therapy program.
Cue combing Craigslist for job and housing listings in Missoula.

Cue some sweeping, panoramic music that signals the BEGINNING of an ADVENTURE.

Okay, really truly on a scale of one to 10, how insane is this?

New resolution: Blog more.

My blog has now become sporadic, slipshod, shoddy, shabby, crappy and carpy.

And poopy and scoopy and Snoopy and droopy.

And...a dog. A frog. A log. A noodle. A poodle. A doodle.

Okay, random association exercise over. (Thank you, Bob Wiley. You may sit down.) I figure that the point of consistent blogging is just that: consistency. It's not all going to be searing profundity or a slice of fried comedic gold.

Speaking of a slice of fried gold, I had a dream last night that Natalie Portman was trying to set me up with Simon Pegg. She was talking about how we were both funny and a little off and we'd be really great for each other. The encounter was going so well that I even touched Mr. Pegg's elbow in a flirty fashion. Then I woke up and realized that a) I was retarded and b) that the man I was dream-two-timing had taken the squalling boy out of our bedroom so I could get some extra sleep. Two-and-a-half hours more sleep.

I got up to make him breakfast, which he said he'd already had. So I helped myself to the same, which was a nuked-up bowl of leftover pasta and marinara sauce that had sat out on the countertop all night.

I swear some days I'm regressing. 

What did you learn today?

Thanks to this post by Louise Plummer, I got to thinking about What I've Learned in 2011, which reminds me of my friend Emily. Back in 2006 when we were all congregating at Sam's apartment almost every night, Emily was always there with the question, "What did you learn today?"

You think I would've come prepared with an answer, but the question caught me off-guard almost every time. Sometimes I had something smart to contribute but most of the time I slung back something like, "I learned that if you tilt your head back all the way and squint, the clouds will get kinda fuzzy."

Here are the things I learned in 2011 about myself and others.

1. I am strong and mighty. 
2. I have a childbirth story that most women want to slap me for. 
3. Adam is the greatest man in the United States of America.
4. Adam is also the greatest husband in the U.S. of A. 
5. I can work really hard without complaining (too much). 
6. I really miss my mom sometimes, and she is obliging enough to hop a plane and come see me.
7. I get endless hours of pleasure from designing my castle in the air. 
8. Given the opportunity, I will preach at you and/or try to fix your problems. This is a character flaw I am still trying to smother with a pillow. 
9. I show my love to others by trying to feed them incessantly. 
10. I love The Boy so much it makes my heart ache a little. 
11. I try to carry my family's pain. It doesn't work all that well. 
12. If I start the day with a round of scripture study, a shower and a proper breakfast, I can accomplish everything. If I skimp on these three, 4 p.m. will roll around to find me sucking down Cheetos and sporting the same greasy pajamas I wore the day before. 
13. Humorous, informative nonfiction is my favorite genre. Bill Bryson is my hero.
14. Thanks to Brandon Sanderson, I can now read select pieces of fantasy. The Mistborn series bent my mind and crumpled it into a little ball, like tinfoil. (But in a good way.) 
15. I can read new authors.
16. I can listen to new music. 
17. They make turntables that will record your vinyl onto CD. 
18. Adam wants a big flat-screen TV, and by gum he is going to get one. Someday. Not now. 
19. I think I want an iPad. I am ashamed to admit this aloud. 
20. God listens, and He cares. 

What about you? What did you learn this year? 

My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)

Friends, there have been manymuch happenings around our Casablanca this last year. For starters, in January and February I was enormously pregnant and then gave birth lightning-fast to a smaller version of Adam.

From March 'til probably July, I slowly got used to having a babe in tow. Our moms came to visit and we blessed our boy and once I got over the fact that I would be sleep-deprived for the rest of my life, the rest of it hasn't been so bad. Vomiting included.

We went on a multitude of trips from July to August, namely from Phoenix to Virginia to Florida to Phoenix to Boise to Albion, ID to Boise to Phoenix. We went to two different family reunions and reunited with two of Adam's favorite cousins in the same flush of trips. (G, I never blogged you, but that doesn't mean you are less favorite.)

Fall rolled in with record-breaking heat and we celebrated the 95-degree-Halloween by dressing up as Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Hyrum went as Dobby.

With fall came a few successes to tuck under our belts. Adam was a champion among husbands by completing one clinical rotation, successfully juggling a full class load, working part-time and studying the rest of the time. He passed all his classes, and finals were sandwiched in a two-month span where he was working seven days a week. Seven. We calculated that his time commitments were upwards of 85 hours a week between bringing home the benjamins and working the ol' grey matter. He's thiiiiiiiis close to a PTA degree and I could not be more proud of this man.

I finally stopped whining about not having writing opportunities and got my butt in gear. I've now written for the Republic twice, the White Mountain Independent twice, Modern Mormon Men once (second post pending), and I have a magazine article pending for my cousin's publication called Seeing the Everyday. This all came about between late October and the end of December. It's a blessing that God shook down opportunities instead of giving me what I deserved, which was a smack on the head for my incurable laziness and fear of the unknown.

This year brought about another tightening of the belt financially, which meant we payed our tithing and prayed like crazy. Through the goodness of God and the generosity of family and friends, we have had enough and to spare.

As 2012 takes its first breath, we made a goal for the year: gratitude. We've had less this year than we had even last year, and yet it's been one of the richest years of our lives. How plentiful our foodstuffs! How reliable our car! How adorable our son! How generous our loved ones! We thank God for what we've been given and look for chances to give back to Him by serving others.