25 Years... but who's counting?

Today I have officially lived for a quarter of a century. I like birthdays. I find them a wonderful time for quite reflection; my new years. As I have been pondering today I find that, while there are many things I have yet to accomplish and many weaknesses yet to overcome, that I happy with my life, where I am, and who I am becoming. It is a wonderful life. I have a loving family, supportive friends, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ if my life and what more does a small town girl need.

On a less serious note, my friends and family have made this whole week practically perfect in every way.
Sunday: my wonderful visiting teacher made sure that everyone knew my birthday was coming.
Monday: my friends made me a cake and sang to me during FHE.
Tuesday: I was out running errands and ran into a friend and while we were chatting in the bread isle he asked me out which felt great - it has been a while.
Wednesday: My boss gave me the nicest card and little present
Today: My coworkers brought in strawberry shortcake and all signed a card for me and I am taking off work early because my parents are coming into town today.
Forecast for the rest of the week: I get to hang out with my parents today and tomorrow and Saturday I get to go to a Relief Society activity and then on a date.

If the next 25 years of my life are a great as the last 25 have been that I will be the luckiest girl in the world

Unbounded Domesticity

Normally I am a single working girl living in a one bedroom apartment, but for the next few weeks I am leaping head first into domestic life. I am house-sitting for a few week for a member of my Stake Presidency. He is a doctor so they have a very nice home a little out of town with lots of property and a large garden. In addition to caring for the house and land I am looking after their three cats, four dogs, sixteen 5-week-old puppies, and their 13-year-old daughter.

As you may guess, I have my hands full and am spending a lot of my time feeding pets, caring for puppies, cleaning up after puppies, bringing in produce from the garden, preparing meals, cleaning the house, driving the daughter to and from various social engagements and friends homes, grocery shopping, or running out to get the last few things Johanna needs for girls camp next week. Now that I have more of less got the rhythm of everything I find I rather enjoy it. There is something decidedly nice about teaching Johanna how to cook, having a full sized Australian Shepard try to sit on your lap, or waking up to find a purring cat curled up beside you. There is also something satisfying about cleaning up the house each day even when you know the dogs will come tearing through at any minute and it will be messy again.


I very much enjoy my quiet, working girl, one bedroom apartment life, but I am also enjoying this little taste of what a different life would be like and considering the possibility that my own life could be like this sometime in the future. One thing I have already learned from this little experience is that, while I like pets, I will never have this many at one time...

All about the little things

Lately I have been thinking about the little things that make me happy in life so I decided to compile a little list of the simple pleasure of my life:

Driving on a nice day with my windows all the way down and the radio up.

Sitting outside on a nice day reading a good book or indulging in a little people watching.

Ice cream, pretty much any place, any time, and with anyone.

Dancing with a guy who really knows what he is doing, or, if that is not available, a little spontaneous dancing by myself in my kitchen.

Cooking something new and having it turn out really good then sharing it with friends.

Watching a summer thunderstorm blow in.

Listening to NPR each morning while getting ready for work and realizing that I am slowly turning into my father.

Spending time with those really good friends, you know, the kind you can talk to about everything from the Gospel, to politics, to boys.

Having my bus driver say "Have a good day, Hun" when I get off to go to work each day.

We can never forget what they did here

I spent Memorial Day in Gettysburg this year and it was a wonderful experience on several levels. First of all I got to share the day with a friend from college to shares my passion for history and I loved having a travel buddy and having the time to catch up. Also, as a history buff I enjoyed browsing the museum and traipsing around the battle field with a very well informed park ranger.

I also experienced some poignant moments of reflection those that have fallen in battle and on the experience of the Civil War in general. I find that I have rather complex emotions about the Civil War. Of course I am glad that the Union was preserved and that it was the beginning of the end of Slavery, and yet there is something so horrible about brother fighting against brother and the sheer amount of death and destruction that makes even the eventual Union victory feel like a loss of sorts. Perhaps this is more personal to me because my own ancestors fought and died on both sides of the conflict. Thomas Jefferson once said that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." I very much hope that is not true.

My bus friends

Everyday I take the bus to and from work. I generally take the same bus and there is a little group of people who are almost always on the same bus as well. Some of them I see everyday on my ride in, some on the ride home, and some I see on both rides. I have an odd variety of relationships with these people that I see everyday. I only know the names of a few of them and some of them I smile and nod to every morning, some of them exchange basic pleasantries with me from time to time and occasionally I spend the ride talking to one of them. In my head I think of them all as my bus friends.

One of my bus friends is almost always on the same bus home with me. I don't know his name, we have never really talked although if the bus is full we occasionally sit together. Despite the complete lack of interaction between us, he is one of my favorite bus friends. He is an Asian gentleman, probably in his mid-thirties. He get off the bus a few stops before I do and everyday when the weather is nice his wife, baby, and little boy are standing outside waiting for him to come home. Everyday it makes me smile to see his little boy come running towards his father when he gets off the bus and it makes me happy that this little family, who are in no way a part of my life, share a little of their happiness with me each evening as I come home from work.

Dignity for All

Today I joined several of my co-workers and attended a lecture by Dr. Robert Fuller called "Rankism: A social disorder Dignity: A universal human right." It was a fascinating presentation which I found very informative and thought provoking.

Dr. Fuller presented the idea that all people have a right to be treated with equal dignity and discussed ways we can be more self-aware of rankism both in ourselves and those around us. What particularly surprised me was that he used Darwinian evolution to support his claim. He explained that all of humanity is equal because we all came from the same core group of homo sapiens who knocked out all the competition and took over the world and that we have now developed beyond survival of the fittest to embrace equality. As interesting as I found this point of view I could not help by feel that his wonderful message would be much more powerful if he supported it with the eternal truth that we are all children of God and have uncompromisable potential and that we are not really in competition in this life.

For an hour an a half I listed to Dr. Fuller and he had great ideas and the world would be a better place for listening to him. Yet, to me, everything he said is wrapped up and even more powerfully expressed in this simple statement by C.S. Lewis:

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. "

All Grown Up

Last week my lap top died. It lived a long and happy life, getting me through my last year of undergrad, faithfully waiting for me while I was on my mission and getting me started in grad school.

So I reached a new benchmark in my growing-up process and went out and bought a new laptop all by myself. This is always something that my father helped me with in the past. In fact normally I just go, Dad talked to the sales guys and then he would tell me which one I should get. But this time I did research all by myself, went out and sounded reasonably intelligent to the sales person, was flirted with my the check-out dude, and brought home a laptop that I have been very happy with. I feel all nice and grown up.