Sunny Southern Cal

How great is Southern California? I always get upset with my pious friends to the southwest tell me how great the weather is when I'm drowning in Utah's snow, but now I am on the other side, and it feels wonderful to be pious. MaryAnne and I are in Carlsbad, just a few miles from the beach. We took a walk along the beach with Annie this morning, and I was in jeans and a t-shirt, but it was too warm for me.....I needed to be in shorts and a t-shirt, and on the 30th of December! It is such a fantastic experience to stay with Tanners. They are warm, inviting, and expert hosts. We are looking forward to a couple comfortable days in Southern California before heading back to Provo on the 2nd. We think we've found the place for residency (even before we've started med school).

One Good Thing

I had one of those days. Several things did not go just how I had wanted them to. But the one thing I really wanted to get done today was bake bread. We're out and I've been craving hot, fresh bread. Even when most of my other chores were left undone, I thought to myself, "I've got 5 perfect loaves coming out of the oven in 17 minutes". Then I was cuddling with Annie to get her to sleep (at 3:30 for her first nap of the day) and I heard Brad say, "I don't think there's any salt in this bread." Right then, I realized I never put the salt in. For some reason, this devastated me. I was hungry, frustrated, and tired and it felt like too much that I'd forgotten to put in the salt.

Several hours (and some tears) later, I walked into my apartment and it smelled like fresh bread. I may not have anything to show for it, but at least I got the scented apartment. One of the reasons I love to bake my own bread is for the smell. I'm so glad I had that one good thing come from the disaster.

Thinking back on the whole silly thing, there are lots of good things; chiefly that I have an understanding and compassionate husband who is kind to me and who cleaned our apartment today. I guess I shouldn't be so sad about one ruined batch of bread.

Thoughts from an Insomniac

Last night I finished my final assignment for school EVER! It was such a great feeling! I wanted to share my elation with someone, but Brad had long since gone to bed and no one was on g-chat to share in my joy (I was hoping my nursing friend or sister would come through for me, but no luck). I quickly got in bed, but I had no luck sleeping. I had so many emotions and thoughts running through my head. Some of them were quite trivial and some were quite poignant.

As I laid in bed, I contemplated being done with school, quite possibly forever. Initially I felt elated. It is an exciting thing to never have another deadline from a teacher again. The stress levels in my life are about to go WAY down. And most importantly, not being in school will allow me to focus on my daughter FULL TIME (watch out Annie, we are about to get really bonded).

But then I started thinking about my friends from my cohort. I teared up in bed thinking about how much I will miss each of them. I thought about the ways that each of them has impacted my life. I love that they have been a constant in my life for the past year and a half. I honestly love each one of them and it is going to break my heart to not see them very frequently. My mind raced with all the memories from the past year and a half. I thought about working ridiculously hard on a completion only paper, stress relieving ice cream runs, how loud the printer was in our corner of the lab, food talked about and shared, a visit in the hospital after Annie was born with cheddar and sour cream chips, trips, putting up with my highly emotional and pregnant state, etc. (It's made me tear up again . . .) This is the part of school I will desperately miss. I am a social creature. I've loved the skills and knowledge I've gained with this degree, but the people have MADE the experience for me.

On to my more trivial thoughts during the night . . . If anyone else was watching the Sing-Off, they will appreciate why I thought about it at 2:30 in the morning. I am TICKED that they kicked Noteworthy off. I am convinced that it was because they were LDS and not wearing little negligees on stage. The judges had nothing negative to say about the groups before that had pitch problems. Then they railed on the BYU girls who sounded SO much better than the other groups I heard. Discrimination. Hmph! It was definitely something worthy of losing sleep over. ;)

I think I had other trivial thoughts, but they are eluding me right now. And they were trivial, so probably not that important to blog about.

A Confession.....

So, I'm pretty into Glee. Enough into it that I've seen all the episodes and really want the soundtrack. Embarrassed? You bet. Enough to stop watching? Not a chance. I got caught in the MPH lab the other day catching up on an episode that I missed and endured the snickers with grace. For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's about a show choir (glee club) made up of misfits who find a place to belong in the club, and happen to all already be professional-quality singers. The New York Times called it "blissfully unoriginal in a witty, imaginative way." I couldn't agree more. Fox ran the pilot last year after the American Idol finale, and while I did not see it then, I heard about it and watched the pilot online a week later. I was hooked. It plays on my past. Was I ever in a show choir? No comment. Did I go on tour with said show choir? No comment. Did I once dream of being in a boy band? Again, no comment. A few years ago I was in the BYU Student Service Association and worked with the clubs. Our whole mission was finding places of belonging for students, especially those who felt marginalized. I remember that BYUSA clubs once got an email from a girl's dad who told us how much the Tall Club had helped his vertically gifted daughter to find a strong network of friends (and dates). The show's got me on too many levels. So, I've watched the show struggle to find itself through the pitfalls of plots surrounding teenagers, but the last 3-4 shows have been much more impressive (and have allowed me to skip a lot fewer parts). I'm hoping Glee stays on the right track.

Seeing with the Heart

I just finished watching the leaders of the LDS Church give their annual Christmas Devotional. I was impressed with the remarks by President Dieter F Uctdorf. He quoted a phrase from The Little Prince. A fox tells the Little Prince "here's my secret, it is very simple. One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes." He then spoke about how most of the people who lived in Jerusalem during the time of Christ could not see Him for who He was. Reflecting upon his words, it seemed unfathomable that so many people could walk among the Savior and His Disciples and not know who He was. The people in Jerusalem had been waiting for their Savior for centuries, and yet most of them missed him. My thoughts quickly turned to the story of Christ's birth in Luke. When Mary and Joseph went to the inn, Luke writes that "there was no room for them in the inn." The phrase "for them" stood out to me. I've always pictured the inns at Bethlehem as being filled to capacity, with no room for anyone. That may be true, but what if it wasn't? What if there was just no room for a poor couple and their donkey? Maybe the inn keepers were embarrassed to have such a couple at their inn, or maybe they could see that Mary was about to give birth and didn't want the trouble.

For the past hour since President Uctdorf's talk was given, I've been contemplating about the realities that I am unable to see. Do I ever neglect my family because a pressing task takes priority in the moment? Have I formed incorrect judgments about the character of my associates and missed their goodness? Are opportunities to serve the truly great presented to me, only for me to ignore them or consider them unworthy of my time?

This then led me to think of the book Blink (which I recently read). In the book, the author relates an experience where someone tried to sell a counterfeit of a type of statue called a kouros to the J Paul Getty museum in LA. The statue looked perfect and all of the tests that were performed on the statue led the experts to believe that the statue was real. There were a couple of experts, however, who felt that the statue was a fake. They couldn't explain how it was a fake, but they just knew, even though everything that their eyes saw told them that it was real. In the end, they were right. It was a fake.

So, I've set a new goal for the Christmas season. It is to see with the heart. Those words look corny on the page, but their intent is not shallow. On December 25 I want to be able to tell MaryAnne that I now realize a truth that I previously was oblivious to. I have no idea what it will be (hence the current state of oblivion), but I am anxious to find it.