Friends, Service, Home Improvement Projects, and No One Dying of Typhoid

Joy says, "It was a great weekend on little sleep. It started out with Mommy reading scripture with Hyrum and feeding him before Daddy got home."

I had promised that I was responsible for dinner because it was my night for the date.

"And that made me feel free to not have to make any dinner for that night. So I totally exploded and made dinner for Sunday night instead."

Which is her preference anyway - making dinner for a future is much happier for her than cooking for today. "Less stressful, more enjoyable."

"So, feeling well prepared, Derrill got home with ... PIZZA!" PIZZA! Whole wheat crust pizza delivered as I walked up to our door from tiny local pizzeria Pizza Aroma. It was Nice. "Hearty and Tasty." Joy's comment throughout was "This is very flavorful, but still good." I teased her about the word 'but' - I think flavorful pizza is great because it is flavorful, not despite.

Then I took her out on a play date. "Which was easier to prepare for because we were all ready which made it nice to go. When we go play games with our friends, we put Hyrum down for the night at their house." He sleeps through Guitar Hero, Mario games, and loud Uno riots remarkably well. "I'm always amazed."

"We had a nice time visiting with them. We also played some games. I got to do the drums and the vocals. They have a great Beatles Guitar Hero where we know lots of songs and that makes it fun." The regular Guitar Hero gets old since the four of us only know about 5-10 songs of their 80 or whatever it is. "Twist and Shout!" Beatles songs are interesting in part because the Bass has a harder part than the lead guitar, and since Shari likes to be the lead guitar, I get the harder parts. "We played til my wrist gave out on me."

"Then we played Uno. It was fun hashing out what rules we were going to play." People were amazed at how many I wanted to clarify before the game started, but they weren't half so many as the ones we later debated during the game. "It was all friendly, and we all won at least once." Now variants to me: go again when you play a wild card (we ruled that one overpowered); ask the person you want to win what color she would like "That was cute"; and kiss your spouse if you play the same card "same color, same number."

"Then we got home and stayed up late together to read Potter."

Saturday morning was the Primary activity. When they called Joy to be a Primary teacher, there was a whispered warning that 'maybe I could help her out occasionally.' They asked me (and also Joy) to teach the kids about the symbolism of the Passover meal. Joy and another sister passed out the food while I explained the stories - not entirely in costume, but definitely with props. "I appreciated that you did it Derrill because I didn't want to do that part. I could've, but didn't want to."

I had a lot of fun. It was interesting to see what each group of kids remembered about Moses and the children of Israel. Some kids started talking about the tabernacle in the wilderness, another kid stole my thunder and told about the last plague before mentioning the others including details about the blood on the doorposts and on and on, and several kids got confused between Moses and Jesus. We served them a little chicken (instead of lamb - not my fault), romaine lettuce for the bitter herbs, matzo, and grape juice courtesy of the Primary. I told the story of the Passover as it happened to us (one group asked me if this really happened and I got to bear testimony that, yes, it did. Well before my time, but it did.) and when the Primary leader came to switch groups, I asked 'Moses' if it was time to go to the promised land and cheered them away.

One of the youth was kind enough to watch Fantasia 2000 with Hyrum and follow him around the building afterwards. Hy was happy to find us. "I had a really great time helping. I helped prepare the plates to go out to the kids and I really enjoyed visiting with Sis. Haney." Joy identified her as a kindred spirit.

Then we got home and took a nap it was very painful to wake up from. "Only because of its brevity." Joy finally convinced me that she was interested and happy to take over a house project that I was willing but not looking forward to: repairing our leaky roof by putting on another coat of aluminum stuff. I mixed the goo while Joy swept the roof, then she scrambled on up and started painting the roof while I cared for Hyrum and let him practice saying "yes." "That's going to take some time since he's accustomed to just echoing, but I think we'll get it."

"Well that project was bigger than I'd planned! Derrill seemed to have a better idea of what it entailed. I thought 'Half hour - no problem.'" *chortle* "Two hours later and not done yet I decided I'd better stop. Two blisters, blackened hands, black up my arms, on my legs past my knees (seeing as how I'd worn shorts and all)." I meanwhile, had discovered that rubbing alcohol is not the same thing as mineral spirits because it certainly didn't clean the aluminum off my hands. "So we had nothing to clean it off with! And it was kind of painful. I do have some exhema and the aluminum was pretty rough on my hands and legs." The Dawn foamy dish soap did a decent job, but left a lot to be desired. We both figured we'd be colored for several days. Thankfully, we had managed to keep Hyrum away from it. I went to the store last night to get some kerosene and that washes it off very quickly. So the next time someone like me googles: How to clean off aluminum mobile home roofing they will find this blog telling them to use kerosene.

Course, now the house smells like a fire trap inside and out after Joy bathed in aluminum, in kerosene, in water, and in skin moisturizer. I am very thankful for her. I don't like new heights - I'm fine with old heights, but new ones aren't my friends, and I didn't really trust our roof to hold my weight, so I was apprehensive and she saved me. My hero!

We were in so much pain when we went to bed! What a day. Oh right, and Friday we were fasting because one my mission areas was doing a 40-day fast and I had signed up for Friday. So this was the day of and after and while I was struggling with that evil scale that lied to me.

And we're all pretty healthy finally - no strep, no typhoid, no dysentery, ... "just the normal allergies." And today the Primary grabbed me to lead the music singing "Follow the Prophet" (a real learning experience for me!) while Joy taught her kids about Easter. Now she needs to go pick up the sister missionaries to feed them stuffed peppers. I need to do some cleaning, some table setting, and our son will probably wake up from his 4 hour nap eventually..... "Could he really still be asleep??" If not, he's happy. "Well, he didn't sleep well last night....." (fade)

Good Old Days

I was creating a LinkedIn account for myself and was trying to remember the name of a service program I had helped coordinate while I was at BYU. I found the Unifarce (sorry, old habits die hard - Universe) article that discussed my involvement in the program. Since it took a while to find, I'm just going to put a bookmark here for myself so I can find it again easily: Adopt-a-Grandparent. So there you go, future-Derrill. You're welcome.

I recall those visits to the rest home very fondly. They led Joy and me to talk to our local government program for the elderly. They put is in contact with a dear lady, Cora Wood, for whom we gathered food from the various food pantries in town once a week. She crocheted Hyrum a lovely blanket and gave him a bear with a matching outfit she made. We had to stop when Hyrum was born and lost contact with her after. If someone in Ithaca happens to run into her or knows her, please let us know. We'd love to be able to say hi again.

When's the last time you contacted your grandparents?

Sacked!

Hyrum got sacqued. And he's lovin' it.

For a little over a year, Joy has been crocheting this sacque for him to sleep in at night. As an infant, he needed to be tightly bundled to fall asleep, and his little sacques were a great help in that regard. He outgrew them or busted the zippers pretty quickly.

So Joy crocheted this ginormous sacque that will hold him for a good long while, keep him warm, provide a little comforting weight so he sleeps better. He really enjoys it - smiles really big as I drop him in the top at night.

"I'm so glad he can use it now. It still needs buttons" on the top so it will close. "Hopefully it'll get buttons before he's done using it. Thanks for all your help, Mom. And Derrill's help, helping me adjust the pattern when Mom wasn't around."

The Amazing Spiderman Should be Mormon

I mentioned in my last post that I was watching Spiderman 2 for the first time. I finished it last night and really liked it. The first movie did a fine job introducing Spidey, okay. This one touched me deeply and talked about a number of issues that I've been struggling with too.

But I'm not here to talk about them. I'm here to talk about Peter Parker's issues. His main internal conflict deals with finding balance: how can he be a college student, a part-time photographer, hold down a second job, keep up with a social life (maybe even date), and, oh yes, be a hero? The stress of it all is just too much to that point that he really can't do any of it effectively. Not for the first 15 minutes of the movie anyway.

After watching the first part, I was convinced that Peter Parker needs a couple LDS missionaries to knock on his door, convert him to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and get this boy a calling in the church. Y'see, from the LDS/Mormon point of view, all of us are called to be "saviors on mount Zion" (Obadiah 1:21) - to assist the Savior in His work. (It's ... kind of like being expected to be a superhero without tights or powers - unless you're the guy on the left - just a faith that somehow God will magnify our feeble efforts to reach out, that the Holy Ghost will touch people's hearts, and the Atonement change us all.)

And there are a lot of things that assisting in God's work calls on a member of the Church to do. This goes way beyond 10% tithing and not smoking or drinking. One of our speakers in stake conference, a state trooper, referred to this as the "Marine Corps of churches."

• Visiting several families monthly and looking after their spiritual and temporal needs;
  
• serving in any capacity where asked - in my case an extra 10ish hours on top of the 3 hour Sunday meetings every week, plus priesthood meetings, and that's all just so that the branch president doesn't have to spend that time too on top of the who-knows-how-much extra he voluntarily does; [don't get me wrong: I love my calling and have loved all my other ones]
  
• driving up to the temple 1:45 away as often as you can to do vicarious work for the dead [picture right is of the angel Moroni statue on the Hill Cumorah near our local temple, who, incidentally, was modeled by two of Joy's ancestors];
  
• taking opportunities to talk to people about the gospel;
• dropping most anything most anytime when someone calls and needs help;
• moving 10 families out or around every May and another 10 in or around every September;
• feeding the missionaries a couple times a month;
• reserving every Monday night for family time;
• teach your kids the gospel;
• make home a temple;
• daily personal scripture study, prayer, journal writing;
• search out information about your ancestors so you can do their work in the temple too;
• filling random service projects and assignments as they come up, usually with little warning;
  
• keep up and rotate food storage;
• get out of debt and make sure you have several months' worth of money for emergencies [which they said long before the current recession]...
  

And even that doesn't cover all of repenting, "putting off the natural man," and striving to become more like Jesus. At various points, church leaders have reminded us to be politely politically engaged, to plant vegetable gardens, you name it. It is, quite literally, more than any one person can do at one time, particularly when you add family, work, social life, and maybe some me time into the equation, and all of which are assigned important roles this grand, eternal plan we get to participate in.

I think Peter Parker would relate. I think he would gain a lot by associating with a bunch of mere mortals trying to be superheroes. I think that in the process of talking - as our branch does a couple times every semester - about how to balance it all without being overloaded, he would learn to find more of a center in his life.

At a church meeting I was at tonight, one of the speakers mentioned that when Jesus was on the earth, He didn't go around to heal every person around the globe. He didn't even heal everyone in all Israel. He healed those around Him who had faith. I gather there were a lot of sick people at the pool of Bethesda, but only one person healed. As He said to the Pharasees, there were many widows in Israel, but Elijah was sent to just one.

Yes, Pete, you are a superhero. You have a responsibility. "Where much is given, much is required" is how your LDS Uncle Ben would've said it. But you aren't required to give more than you have. None of us has enough to give and do all of it. None. That's one of the reasons we need the Atonement. We do all we can, and we leave the residual in God's hands. With great power comes great responsibility, but not all responsibility. You don't have all power. Don't take on all responsibility.

Prof. Stephen E. Robinson likened it to weight-lifting: you keep adding weights until you can't do anymore, and you lift that weight until it becomes easier and then you can add some more. Your schooling, Peter, your jobs, and even some down time, are essential parts to making you a more effective Spiderman later. [My parents are probably reading this and thinking, "Oh good, the boy was paying attention to something we said."]

I know [oh yeah, from your vast experience playing City of Heroes, I suppose? Pfft.]... Okay, I imagine it's hard to justify seeing Mary Jane's play when there's someone out there who needs you. People need Peter too, not just Spiderman. Sometimes you can delegate the crime fighting to the boys in blue, who really do a good job in the real world. It takes faith and prayer and serious thought to know when to do what - that I do know from experience. I also know from experience something I learned by applying what Brigham Young taught: if you give God the time He needs, He will give you the time you need. I've found that to be true again and again.

Do all you can. Do the best you can. Leave the rest in the Lord's hands "and [He] will give you rest."

Random Thoughts on Suffering

Today for part of church some of us debated the existence of trials and challenges. My mind turned to Brother Brigham, second president of the Church. For a man who is as firm and straightforward as he, he does seem to come down on both sides of the issue:

"As to trials, why bless your hearts,
the man or woman who enjoys
the spirit of our religion has no trials..."

"The people of the Most High God
must be tried. It is written that
they will be tried in all things..."

"We are now in a day of trial ..."

"If the Saints could realize things as they are
when they are called to pass through trials,
and to suffer what they call sacrifices,
they would acknowledge them to be
the greatest blessings that could be bestowed upon them."

These and many more excellent words of wisdom are here.

We did reach agreement at any rate that we pass through suffering. And one of the blessings of this suffering is the gaining of something called empathy. The example given was that when you break your foot, you learn to have empathy the next time you see someone with crutches.

I've been thinking about this empathy thing over the last few weeks. It seems that we, many of us humans anyway, do a good job convincing ourselves that we are so thoroughly unique and individual that no one has ever suffered or gone through what we do. Though prominent among teens, turning twenty does not remedy the opinion. We therefore only accept counsel or pity or acknowledge the suffering of someone who has suffered sufficiently similarly to us.

"No one knows my pain." Folks who have waited a long time to find their eternal companion (or to have a child or to graduate or to ...) discount the pain of those who had to wait less for those blessings. My sense of loneliness and not-belonging is greater than yours. My psychosis is bigger than yours. It's a perpetual game of Topper. Yet "charity suffereth long" and despite suffering a long time "envieth not and is not puffed up" - charity neither longs to exchange crosses nor is it proud because my cross is bigger than yours... charity doesn't compare crosses at all.

Even if trials are not universal, suffering is. We all suffer. Some more visibly, some more vocally, but all of us do. Why don't we a) accept others' suffering empathy or b) apply our suffering to others better?

J.K. Rowling had some wonderful things to say on the subject at Harvard's commencement 2008 (here's my summary, the original link is missing now). She started off, "I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates." She then goes on to discuss why we need imagination: it's not just for bedtime stories of wizards, but "it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

So the question for the night as I get ready for bed, is: Is common suffering enough? Can we learn to accept another person's love and concern simply by virtue of their having suffered something else? Can we learn to empathize with others to say, "No, I don't know precisely what you are going through; but I know what it is to hurt, and I join you in that pain"? In short, to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, not just those who mourn the way we have mourned.

Another moment of economic zen

I don't typically turn to politicians for outstanding discussions of important economic principles. As a profession, they tend to be tied with journalists for the worst scores on economics tests administered to professionals... a very frightening statistic when I get down to it. But Prof. Craighead of Miami University -- one of my erstwhile potential employers -- posted this clip from a Robert Kennedy speech in 1968, and I thought it really explained the limitations of "scoring" nations according to GDP accounting. So I thought I'd share it while Hyrum sleeps:



The thing I remember most my professors mentioning that isn't included in GDP but ought to be is time mothering. It's a major work (as we are rapidly discovering on a whole new level), and it's very difficult to impute the worth of a mother in terms of toasters, movie tickets, and haircuts. The typical proposal for 'how we might-could do such a thing' (as the Utahns might put it) is to figure out how much a family would have to pay an outsider for similar services: the cooking, the cleaning, the day care, and so on. This goes along with a discussion we had recently at the Friday Forum, and from a familiar article written by an honest feminist, that we'd all really like to have a wife.

But this misses the magnificent point that was made at the LDS Church's recent Worldwide Leadership Training meeting, to which all members were invited. They mentioned a need to separate our concepts of 'home-making' from 'house-keeping.' House-keeping, they said, can be delegated to someone else. Home-making cannot. What makes a house a home is a divine work that cannot be abrogated or done in absentia, and as the more important work, is the part that's hardest to put into any calculation of GDP.

So here's to my wife and my mother, and their noble callings, sacrifices, and divine natures.

This is Dedicated to the One I love

I have to say that I am really spoiled, so I feel the need to brag on my husband. I have heard many wifes discuss the need of more romance or romantic things in their marriages. I was blessed with the most romantic man that I could imagine and I am just left to wish that I were more like him and hope to become more like him through the years.

He likes to celebrate special times, like the anniversary of when we met (celebrated with a German breakfast with the closest thing to Nuttella that we can find around her) and every day of our marriage (by keeping track of how many days we have been married) so that each day is a celebration of us.

For Valentines he bought me a beautiful bouquet of pink flowers, got me some of my favorite kind of chocolates and even bought me some seafood subways that are my favorite and have been something that I have craved during my pregnancy. He is so thoughtful and kind. He never fails to remember special times that have come and gone and they become so much more special, becuase our remembering them. Unlike some people I do not expect such things or haven't in the past from men I dated and I am so lucky to have a man who can teach me what true romance is about. Forever gets better all the time.

Was Healthy in St. George

I had a great time in St. George taking care of Grandma Straw. I am so glad that Mom and Dad Watson let me help with her knee surgery recovery. I was the last person to stay with her. Mom stayed with her for the first month. I helped grandma get her exercises organized and then helped her get on her own with driving and exercises. Grandma had all the time in the world to visit and I enjoyed having the company.

My allergies were very minimal in St. George so I was almost a completely healthy pregnant lady there (for the first time in my pregnancy). My allergies have just been 3 times worse since I got pregnant. I survive just fine, but it was nice to feel so healthy for a couple of weeks.

Being at Grandma Straws we don't go many places, but Harmon's, and the bank :D. Grandma likes to watch the news while she eats, so I saw more news those two weeks than I have seen in my lifetime, only having turned on the TV once in my life to see news on purpose myself (the day of 9/11)

It was a delightful time and I was very happy to give mom a break. One of the best things for me was the feeling of being able to contribute to a loving family who has already given me so much I can never figure out to repay, but I am learning that is what it is to be family -- giving and being there for each other. I love you all

P.S. I am now is California for Christmas. I am so excited to see Derrill today