Merry Christmas!

3 Years Ago...

I was single. I was the co-chair of a church Activities Committee. I was living in a house in Lake Oswego on Seville Street with my three goddess roommates. I was a paralegal. My life was more or less consumed with dancing salsa and swing. My superpsychojealousfreak boyfriend didn't like me to go dancing. Bless his heart, he tried to manage even though I would usually bail on him Friday nights about 10:30 or 11:00 to hit the dance floor (that part, I understand. It's the other stuff was nutty). Among other things, he also forbade me to talk too much to certain people. One person in particular, actually. There was this one guy at church who went to law school with one of Boyfriend's buddies, and Boyfriend thought that if I talked to Law-School-Guy that Buddy might hear about it and Boyfriend might be embarrassed or something. I don't know, I never quite followed the logic, but I tried to respect his feelings about it. Thing was, I happened to really like the guy he didn't want me talking to. Not in a sexual-attraction kind of way, but just in a he's-really-cool-I-like-talking-to-him kind of a way. Three years ago I remember talking to him and another guy briefly in the hallway one Sunday.

Anyway, Boyfriend and I broke up shortly (duh), and a few months later I did, in fact, become better friends with Law-School-Guy. We had lots in common. Our minds thought similarly, and he was fun to talk to. Our friendship steeped slowly, and became more and more intense as the next several months wore on.

I think it's so funny to imagine, now, what would have gone through my head then if I had known the future. What if I could go back and say to myself, "Hey self! By the way, three years from now you will be pregnant with Law-School-Guy's child. You will be living in a great old house in WestSlope with a beautiful backyard. You're working on remodeling your kitchen. Today the two of you picked out a light fixture and then raked leaves together off your front lawn. You have a kitten, and Law-School-Guy always cleans the litter box so you don't have to. He loves you and cares for you like you never imagined anyone would. And you love him in a way you never thought possible. And you're happy. And it's all with THIS guy! This one you just chatted with in the hall for 2 minutes. The one who can't laugh because of a scab on his lip from a basketball accident this week, which will become a scar, which will become one of your favorite features about him. And right now in the three years' future he's playing the piano in your living room with a fire burning and baby in your tummy and a cat sleeping at your feet."

HA! Would I have believed myself? I would surely have gawked and been shocked. The real question is.... would I have been happy to know that? I mean, there's a reason you don't know the future. If I knew I was going to marry Jared in advance, would we have had the magical and suspenseful union that we did, that created the spark, that made it all possible? Without uncertainty, would I have had the humility and ambition to love him? I'm not sure. And for all the frustration involved in not knowing the future, it sure seems it would have taken the fun out of it. I love Our Story. It's so full of each of us thinking various things and accidentally falling in love and not knowing what was going on. It's funny and suspenseful and torturous in a chick-flick kinda way. Without all that, what would it be like?

I'm glad we only live in one moment in time, and that we can only see one direction from there (backward). Whatever benefits knowing the future has to offer, they must certainly be outweighed by the adventure of finding your way.

And so I'm also glad, I guess, not to know what this child will bring to my life. It gives me the room to dream and hope and imagine things that may or may not ever be. It leaves room for surprises. And it spares me the pain, from this end at least, of many things that will inevitably come to pass, because those things are known only from the other side of time. And hopefully they are easily forgotten, just as the torment and sorrow and loneliness of so many lost loves has paled and softened with with time and with Jared and with my selective memory. And the joy and excitement and fun of the adventures is only magnified with each passing day, as events' significance is added to by their rippling and repeating effect over time. One special moment can remain just that and be forgotten. Or it can become a fond memory, a moment of enlightenment, a step forward, a tradition, a new beginning, a shared understanding, something that pops its head into the present over and over and adds to itself. Like that chat in the hallway that day. I can't think of it without smiling, remembering the brief and seemingly meaningless connection, which eventually contributed to the blossoming of the most beautiful and powerful thing I know: Us.

Things You Do Not Say to Your Pregnant Wife

Which of the following is not an appropriate response to your pregnant wife's suggestion of "cuddling":

a) Why, yes, Honey. I'd love to cuddle with you.
b) In fact, why don't you come lie over here, and I'll massage your feet.
c) You have never been so beautiful as you are now. Can you sit closer to me so I can see and feel you better?
d) We can't cuddle on the couch. There's not room for both of us because you are like a Baluga Whale.

I've got money says any other reasonable human being who reads this blog will easily pick out the (in)appropriate answer.

Oh well, though. He made me laugh, which is sometimes the best thing to do of all.

Published!

A piece of mine has been published in a real magazine! Hurrah! Sunstone Magazine's September 2006 issue includes a short memoir of mine in its "Touchstones" section (theme: Small Miracles). You can't see the text online, so I've pasted it below for those who don't have access to the magazine:

SMALL MIRACLES
by Skye Pixton Engstrom

When I was a little girl, my brother gave me two quarters so that I could use them to buy cotton candy at the fair the next day. I lived on a practical farm, and had never had cotton candy before (nor did it seem the type of thing my whole-grain mother was likely to buy me). I cherished those quarters with my stubby little four-year-old hands and heart in great anticipation.

It wasn’t long, of course, before I misplaced them, and was completely beside myself about it. I remembered a recent Primary lesson, that if I prayed in a private place, God would answer me. I went to the privatest place I knew – the small bathroom – and uttered my first little heartfelt prayer kneeling over the toilet.

After praying, I got up and wandered about wondering how God would tell me where the quarters were (my teacher hadn’t gotten to the part about how prayers are answered, and I didn’t know). Mind and heart open, within minutes I got a picture in my head, clear as day, of the quarters lying under the pillow on my bed. I went directly to the bed and looked under the pillow and, behold! Quarters.

I realize that it would be easy to explain away the spiritual significance of that event: I mean, maybe I just needed some focus and time to remember where I had put them. And it would be easy to think that I self-manufactured the idea that God had answered me, simply because I wanted it so bad. But almost all of my “spiritual experiences” to date are similarly simple: a feeling of peace, quiet assurances, wind at the right moment on a mountaintop, a bird stopping by for a significant moment – things that are unmiraculous and known only to me. Does my wanting the experience somehow create and therefore invalidate it? Our commonly used definition of faith (“things hoped for but not seen”) inherently implies, by the word “hope,” an actual desire, not just willingness. So the very ingredients of faith make it easy to dismiss.

I don’t remember the cotton candy I bought with the quarters anymore, nor do I remember the fair. But I have never forgotten my first answer to my first prayer. And while sometimes I think it’s a silly story – why would God answer such a trivial and insignificant request? – I also realize that the desires of our hearts, however simple, are of great interest to God. He lost nothing by reaching out to a four-year-old girl, in a four-year-old mindset, with four-year-old desires. He gained a lifelong friend in me. -|||-


A Story and a Brief Thanks: about 3 or 4 years ago Emily, Lumina, Michelle and I wrote "titles" on paper and stuck them on our bedroom doors. You know, like whatever you might put under your name on a business card: "Skye Pixton: songwriter, paralegal, salsa dancer," etc... I think we each boldly put at least one thing that we weren't really qualified to put there, but wished we were and hoped someday maybe we would be. I put "writer." And that month I started experimenting with writing occasional memoirs. I'm pretty sure every one of us has accomplished our title we weren't qualified for by now. Emily has a CD. Lumina is an art teacher. I can't say I know a ton about Michelle's doings at the moment, but I know we've all changed and grown and progressed in ways we probably thought nearly impossible at the time. Thanks, girls, for encouraging me!

Hawaii Sunset

Originally uploaded by skyepixie.

Our first evening in Hawaii last week. To see more pics, click the link.

I Have Sunburned my Bellybutton

Seriously. At 6 months pregnant, I have developed somewhat of an “outtie” . It’s not outrageously out yet, and it depends on how I’m sitting or standing and what time of day it is. And thus, it would never occur to me to put sunblock on my bellybutton. My sunblock application techniques, developed over the last couple of decades, involves rubbing lotion in a circular motion around my tummy, never paying heed to the little hole in the center which has not seen the sun in as many years.

It was a shock, seeing my bellybutton again for the first time. I remember the day I looked in the mirror and could see into my bellybutton hole and the light from the lamp was actually shining on the crumpled bit of skin at the back. "Holy cow," I thought. Before then, I’d always had to reach in and stretch it or poke q-tips in there in order to ascertain what was going on. Suddenly one day I could just SEE it.

And NOW that little soft fleshy piece of crumpled skin is beginning to turn inside out and poke out sometimes. Apparently when I’m on the beach it pokes out, because I have an excruciating sunburn on the tip of it. Remember: this piece of my body hasn’t seen the sun in a score or so. And then I went and thrust it into the tropical Hawaii sun as if it’s been hardened and calloused like the rest of me. Unfortunately, it responded like baby skin. Now everywhere I go, my shirt painfully rubs against it, causing my hand to reach down and try to press it back into the hole from whence it came.

And as such, I have developed a sort of obsession with my bellybutton. It’s so SOFT! It’s so squishy and tender and cute, like a baby-something, and unlike anything else on my body. It’s maybe closest to an earlobe (a part I have also long had an obsession with), but even then there’s no contest. Touching it is like touching – I don’t know – but it’s like there’s really really soft baby skin over just air or just water or just feathers or jello or clouds or something. I feel like I have to touch it carefully how I would touch a baby bird, or a delicate flower petal, or how you would touch a tomato seed without it slipping from under your finger.

I understand now why you don’t want to sunburn babies. Their skin is probably all tender like that, having never seen the sun EVER, not even 20 years ago.

Learning to put sunblock on my bellybutton falls into the category of the many things about pregnancy that you find in no book. Or if it is in books, you don’t understand what the heck they’re talking about until it happens to you. So here’s my list of advice and warnings for pregnant women-to-be of things your pregnancy book won't tell you:

1. Put sunblock on your bellybutton.
   
2. Everybody knows that pregnant women have to pee a lot, but they don’t tell you that sometimes you have to pee but you don’t really. Like the equivalent of dry-heaving when you have the flu, sometimes you really think you have to go but there ain’t nothing in there.
3. It is entirely possible that all children will suddenly become annoying and unbearable to you. I assume this goes away when you give birth to your own, but I have yet to find out.
4. When “morning sickness” (a.k.a. every-minute-of-every-day sickness) finally “goes away” it morphs into this other thing: if you don’t eat for more than 90 minutes or so, you get this feeling like your intestines are eating themselves, and you must put food in them before you are consumed from the inside out.
5. You might turn into a total sex-hound, and your husband might find he has to hide at certain times of the day to avoid you ravishing him senseless all the time.
6. You’ll probably start to bump into people and furniture and corners, because you used to be able to squeeze through any teensy space by turning your svelt little body sideways and mincing a flirty “excuse me” through the aisle. I have bumped so many people with my stomach and knocked so many chairs over and stepped on so many feet losing my balance because I forget that my profile is no longer my slimmest dimension.
7. For some reason, lots of other women feel compelled to warn you about the horrors of birth by sharing their horrible birth stories. (Why they think I want to hear this is beyond me. I’m ALREADY pregnant people! There’s no way out of it. If you wanted to scare me out of having a baby it’s too late. Now you’re just giving me unnecessary anxiety.) (As if I don’t already have enough of it).
8. The stuff our mothers were told to do and not to do while pregnant was a bunch of wacko advice that’s all been debunked by now. Don’t trust your mother’s generation when they give you advice and do’s and don’t’s about pregnancy. (Also, this tells me that probably half of what doctors advise now will eventually be proved unnecessary, stupid, or harmful, so I can’t stress about it too much. Still… it’s not like I’m gonna go eating mercury-burgers or anything).
9. You might get cellulite on the FRONT of your thighs. The FRONT, people! (I know this makes you think I’m one of those fat pregnant ladies, but I’m really not. I look mostly normal. Not that being a fat pregnant lady is bad. I personally don’t understand how anyone could possibly “control” their weight while pregnant, given the host of nutrients we’re supposed to get daily (which is impossible without eating like a horse), and the fact that you are SO hungry all the time and you’re not supposed to diet or deprive yourself of food and you’re supposed to “listen to your body” – which is probably telling you to eat chocolate and pasta like there’s no tomorrow. Here’s to fat pregnant girls!)
10. Trying to sleep with a baby in your tummy is like trying to sleep with a 15-pound bowling ball strapped to you. Only all your skin is around it, so it will painfully yank all your organs wherever it goes. Unless, of course, you lie on your back and balance it on top of yourself cutting off your circulation, your air supply, and any space that previously existed in your bladder. Not to mention how it throws you off balance in your day-to-day operations.
11. Whatever ideas you had about being the hard-core, bike-riding, backpacking, super-productive pregnant lady were likely wrong.

…more to come as I think of them…

Death By Spider

Jared wants me to get counseling of sorts for my arachnaphobia. I’m not opposed to the idea, inherently. I’m just opposed to those immersion methods that I’m afraid is what they’ll really do to me even if they say they wont – the one where they lock me in a small closet full of tons of big hairy spiders, Indiana-Jones-style. I swear, I will actually go into cardiac arrest.

Anyway, this counseling idea all came about because of a recent spider-incident in my new house. We just bought this house built in 1940, and it comes with all the associated pestilence of old houses with crawl spaces, attics, plaster walls, and old inbred species of dark black insects who've evolved with the house. See, there’s this picture rail along the top of the wall with a very small gap between it and the ceiling, so you can put picture hangers in it without damaging the plaster. The problem is that this is really actually a spider rail. They live in there, in the gap. Or in the walls, I’m not sure. Jared says the gap goes through to the inside of the wall, and the spiders live in there, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Regardless, I’m amazed at the size of spider that can come out of this tiny slit.

Mind you, I’ve calmly handled quite a few spider-findings to date. I’ve informed Jared, in a soft and controlled voice, that there’s a spider in such and such a place, and I measuredly leave the area while he takes care of it. A couple of times I’ve even got the spider killer spray and poisoned the dickens out of them myself, much to my own fear and trembling, but nevertheless it took care of them.

A couple of weeks ago, however, a spider appeared that could not be reckoned with by me. No sir, this thing was huge. I still don’t know how it got out of that rail, it’s legs alone were so beefy and black and muscular that it seemed they would get stuck coming through. It was morning; I was home alone. I quickly determined that this was beyond me, and called Jared. He told me to deal with it myself, gave me some instruction and advice. I got closer to it and felt my stomach turn, my face burn hot, and my hands go numb. Nope. I couldn’t do it. It was overhead. If I tried to spray it, it would fall down, right on top of me, and he was so burly that the poison might not kill him anyway. If I tried to crush him with a broom/towel/duct-tape apparatus, I would hear him crunch, which I can’t handle, or else I’d miss or only injure him and he’d run around and I’d end up smashing all the lamps and pictures and wilt into a crying mess afraid of the house for two weeks. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.

I called my brother. He would come, but he’s 30 minutes away. “There’s no way it’s not going to move for 30 minutes. Can you maybe get a broom?” The same things Jared said, only Jared said 15 minutes. I figured Bryce was right, but Jared might be wrong. Maybe. It hadn’t moved for the last 10, had it? So I called Jared back. While on the phone, it began to move, and panic overcame me. “Oh damn, it’s moving! It’s movingitsmoving! Oh damn oh damnohdamnohdamn...” I was getting shaky and I thought I was going to throw up. Jared could hear it in my voice. “Okay, okay, I’m coming!” click.

I’ll spare you the description of the next 15 minutes of horror (it was eventful and terrible). Suffice it to say that Jared arrived in time, took care of it and I collapsed into a sobbing, quivering thing. That night, Jared vowed, he would caulk all the openings in that damn picture rail.

Since this incident (or maybe before, I don’t know), Jared has decided that if he had to place bets on how I would die, it would be on: Death By Spider. Spider in a car, to be specific. That’s what he thinks. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, and if I don’t get this under control, I’m going to kill myself. Scarily, he’s probably right. I’ve almost killed myself already at least once in my driving career because of a spider in a car (saved by my passengers who yanked me out from in front of the oncoming semi in the lane where I’d run to get away from the spider after screeching to a halt on the freeway). I’ve also jumped into dangerous cold-water rapids, out of cars onto shoulders, leapt backward down stairs, and a host of other stupid things because of the irrationality of this phobia.

But it seems such an insurmountable task to get over it. I mean, there’s nothing rational about it. It’s not like some therapist in a tie is going to be able to logically tell me why I shouldn’t be afraid of spiders. I KNOW! I get it. I got all that. I’m bigger than it. It’s more scared of me. It’s probably harmless. Blah blah blah. Phobias are not driven by any rational part of the mind. No matter how many times I tell myself a spider is harmless, I still experience a primal, uncontrollable terror when caught with one.

If only they could all be bees. For some reason, I have a deep affinity for bees. Since I was a child, other kids crouching in the corner afraid of the bee on the floor, I walked up, coaxed him onto my hand, took him outside to a flower, “go, little bee!” I love bees. They could sting me and I wouldn’t care. I mean, it hurts a little, so what. They love flowers and sunshine. Not deep, dark, dank, secret, evil places. Like spiders. And like that place in my mind that holds onto my fear.

25 years later...

July 16, 2006
I woke up last Sunday morning to four ladies in the living room, all in pajamas and blankets, all behaving like 13-year-olds. But they are all in their 50's.

See, I was in Seattle for my sister-in-law's wedding, and my mother-in-law, of course, was frantic putting it on. A few days before the wedding, her three best friends came into town (no short trip). They stayed the whole time, cleaned, helped, arranged. But mostly they talked, laughed, teased, told stories. They loved and supported this old friend of theirs through her daughter's wedding. I got up on Sunday to find them all in their pajamas and blankets in the living room talking and shreiking so loud it rang through the house. They told stories about each other, made fun, laughed, went on girly tirades, accused each other of all kinds of funny stuff. It was hilarious. And it reminded me so much of me and my best girlfriends, and I longed for them so much.

How cool is it, that this woman, in her 50's, is still so close to the girlfriends of her youth? She bore and raised children on the same block as some of these friends -- at the same age or younger than I am now. I saw the Emily, Lumina, and Michelle of her life rally around her, in the most beautiful ceremony of women and women's love I have almost ever seen. And I bet most people didn't notice a thing, or think about how special it was.

When we have big events in our lives, all my dearest friends, will we rally around each other and come to each others' sides, even across long distances? Will we come together in a circle of women (or friends), and be the love and support we have been to each other in our youth and vibrance? I know I have experienced this kind of love and support from you. I was surprised, somehow, to see it surface in someone's life who is in stages so much later than mine. It's given me a new appreciation of you my friends, and rekindled my desire for us to be forever a circle of love for each other.

I love you all. I hope you will call me when your children marry and you could use an extra cook, or musician, or flower arranger, or... friend.

Love SUV II

My pregnancy book tells me to be sure and tell my partner that I need extra attention and love right now, and to tell him why (basically because I'm pregnant and have hormones and sickness and lots of needs and I guess all women want extra love and attention. Apparently. Duh.).

So I dutifully explain this to Jared. He laughs. "I don't need a book to tell me that!" he scoffs.

I gape at him and try to act offended. He rubs my foot in damage-control mode. "Like it's not obvious," he says. "You're my little love-SUV," he references our recent conversation about my inefficient love-mileage.

And we've joked these last few nights that he's recently hitched a trailer onto his love-SUV and so the SUV needs more gas than ever. And he can't exactly just unhitch the trailer, so he's just gonna have to keep giving it extra gas. It's his fault there's a trailer there, after all.

I remind him about the trailer.

"Humpf." he responds. "This is not just a trailer. In the last few weeks you've gone from being an SUV to being a three hundred thousand dollar Italian sports car."

"But isn't that the car of your dreams?"

"They don't get miles to the gallon, they get gallons to the mile," he quips.

Humpf. He's right, I think. I don't have a lot to offer him these days. I'm too sick to do any cleaning, I definitely can't cook anything (I would have to smell it), I hardly work, I can't seem to bring myself to take care of any household stuff, and I mostly just demand his attention when he gets home.

But I handle like a dream where it counts. I'll have remind him of that later...

"Sixth Sense of Humor"

...This is the name of my next album. Or maybe "Souled Out" (man, I must have a thing with puns). Or maybe I'll come up with something new, who knows. I can't ever decide.

In any case, this all came about because Jared and I were reminiscing about songs and bands we both liked in high school (we wish we'd met back then, when we had similar tastes in tunes)(except that would have been bad because I would NEVER have dated a junior high baby when I was in high school. eewww!). Anyway, we found a ring tone online for Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumors," and I related a story about when I was fifteen, spending the summer in Germany, and I translated the lyrics for a german girl. I honestly thought ol' Dave Gahan was saying "I think that God's got a sixth sense of humor/and when I die/I expect to find Him laughing." To me, this was a very optimistic and happy song, the point being that life is happy, and humorous, and when we die, we will find that all things are not only happy, but also joyful and funny and we and God will laugh about it all together.

I still prefer this interpretation.

Nevertheless, I am aware now, in my jaded and cynical grown-up state that Dave Gahan meant no such thing. And it reminded me of how many times I've wanted to make a list of all the songs I and others misheard the lyrics to. I can't remember very many at the moment, but I can remember some of my favorite examples from childhood:

• Mary Had a Little Lamb: "whose fleas were white as snow" (cute little snowy white fleas, they were)
• The Pledge of Allegiance: "and to the republic, for witches' stands, one nation, under God...." (I'm imaging a bunch of witches in pointy hats at their stands selling witchery, not unlike lemonade, or advice from Lucy in Peanuts)
• Angels We Have Heard on High: "Gloria! In egg shells is day! Oh! Gloria...." (makes sense, right? I mean, we associate religious holidays with eggs, so why shouldn't we be singing about the day dawning out of an egg? It would tie the whole mystery together.)(I can't take credit for this one. It was my sister Kyrstyn who was shocked to learn that in excelsis deo is a real latin term meaning some thing or other)
• Love One Another (the children's Sunday School Song): "By this shalmeno/ye are my disciples" (What's a shalmeno? I often wondered. I figured it was some thing you got when you were older if you were one of Jesus' disciples, and you showed it to people as proof.)

I can't seem to think of any pop songs at the moment, but I know that they abound. If I think of any I'll post them, but I'm curious if anyone else out there has good examples? Maybe it'll jog my memory.

Jared Thinks I'm Hot

And, bless his heart, he tells me this often. But there are two kinds of hot (especially when we are in bed):

There is the "I want to touch your body" kind of hot, and then there's the "I don't want to touch your body, keep it away from me, stay on your side of the bed, I like my sheets cold!" kind of hot. I often don't know which one he means. I know, I know... you'd think it would be obvious to me, his wife. But Jared is a subtle guy. He would tell me that I'm attractive or that he wants to get it on in the same dry manner that he would tell me that he wants me to stay on my side of the bed so he can sleep without my body heat disturbing his cool slumber.

...men...

Sunday School Drivel

I have one of those "Dust-Off" cans of aerosol spray for cleaning electronics. It's on my desk. Sometimes, when I'm on the phone, I sit there and aerosol everything in sight... my keyboard, my calculator, computer speakers, remote control, stapler, tape-dispenser, anything else lying around.

When I do this, I feel totally OCD. But I can't do something audio without something visual to entertain me. I can't pay attention in church these days for that reason either. I've been in primary for the last year, and before that I always had one of those "busy" callings that meant you never actually sat for 3 hours of church. How do people do it? One hour of Sacrament meeting is about all I can take. By Sunday School, I'm not just doodling, I'm doodling and thinking of something other than what's going on around me.

Speaking of Sunday School... I agreed to attend a "member missionary" class last Sunday. Jared assured me the idea of this class was to teach about the new "Preach My Gospel" missionary guide, not to lean on us to get our non-member friends involved. When the teacher started, he whipped out the Preach My Gospel guide, and started talking about agency, and how our mission is to preach His gospel, not to force or pressure our friends into the church. He talked about how people all have their agency, and our measure of success in sharing the gospel should not be based on whether they accept.

"Harrah!" I was thinking. "Jared was right, they really ARE teaching abouthe Preach my Gospel book." (It's really cool, by the way. They really have changed the way they want us to think about preaching the gospel).

The teacher then proceeded to tell us how to set a date and have a goal that by that date we'll have a friend prepared to take the missionary discussions. (!) "Did you READ the book?!" I'm thinking. "Did you HEAR what YOU just said? Cuz you're totally contradicting yourself."

The poor leaders of the church are trying to get the members to get away from a numbers and goal-oriented way of pressuring people into sharing and accepting the gospel, to start following the spirit instead of some numbers-goal or word-for-word "lesson." And here my ward is NOT getting the point. They are just manipulating the new program into the old one with different words.

It's so typical and so disappointing. I used to be really frustrated with how slow change is in the church. I mean, I still am. But I guess I used to blame it on the "church leaders." Ha! Now I wonder who I was thinking were the "church leaders." I mean, there are lots of different levels of that, from The Big Guy himself, to prophets and apostles, all the way down to Bishops and Relief Society Presidents and even teachers and committee chairmen. We're all leaders at some point. Most of the change in church culture is slow because We The People are dense and set in our ways. We misinterpret the wishes of the higher-ups and can't bring ourselves to accept their humble advice. And then we can't bring ourselves to accept it as ADVICE! We run around acting as if everything any leader ever said is doctrine now (as if prophets haven't been contradicting themselves for YEARS on the finer points).

When we can settle down and realize that Christ's central message is THE message, that everything else is probably subjective or unknown, when we can be tolerant of each other, including our "leaders," when we can humble ourselves enough to take each other with a grain of salt... then I think we're onto something.

Why the church ain't workin' for singles

(Personal discretion advised: it's very late at night and I might sound overly honest, opinionated, and ungraceful)

Several of my friends who are single all seem to have this constant battle raging in them: “Is the church right? Is it true? It’s so lame sometimes! Sometimes I can’t stand being associated with a lame church. Ugh.” etc.

Welcome to the club.

I suspect that the church is better and easier for married people, and here’s why: Married people learn a thing or two from marriage. They learn to roll their eyes and step forward when things happen that they don’t like. They learn to choose their battles. They learn that there is no such thing as perfect synchronicity in a relationship that is ever changing, because the people involved are ever changing. They learn that some things take a lifetime to reconcile, and they learn that some things just have to be let go. They learn that you can live with things you disdain, and that sacrifice is worth the reward. They learn that relationships have ups and downs, and that the downs don’t make the relationship “not right.”

I suspect some of my single friends have a hard time with the church for the same reason they can’t settle on a love partner: they have this idealized vision of what it should be like. The church should always be right, and true, and well behaved, and inspired. Any flaw is fatal (since the “right” church couldn’t have any flaws. That would make it not “right,” right?).

Sound familiar? It does to me. My idea of romance a few years ago is nothing like what I understand it to be now. I look back and laugh at myself then. What I truly, honestly believed to be romantic seems superficial and hollow to me, like the candy coating on an empty possibility. True romance is so much deeper and more fulfilling than I ever could have imagined then. And yet it is so much less... perfect.

I had to go through a major transformation of my expectations to be prepared for the step of marriage in my life. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I “settled;” Jared is more perfect for me than I could have made up had I tried, but I certainly did have to adjust my vision of what I wanted for my future an awful lot to be open to the idea of him. Thank God.

And yet there are things I can’t stand about living with my lover, things that I might have considered “deal breakers” at one time. They seem so silly to me now. The power and joy that we share by committing to each other in order to accomplish great things together renders my adolescent vision irrelevant and childish.

People who are single, and roughly my age, have lived with the church long enough to get past the honeymoon phase. No longer attending EFY in the summers and finished with their BYU glory days, they are beginning to see how much of a hassle real church commitment is. They begin to see all the shortcomings of the organization, and the places where they disagree with the doctrine, and the proverbial dirty socks lying around the house. Without the benefit of marriage experience, I suspect they continue to wish for a honeymoon-like relationship with the church.

My relationship with the church, on the other hand, is not unlike the one I have with my husband. It is imperfect. It goes up and down. The church does stuff I can’t stand all the time, and sometimes I want it to go away, or I want to leave. Sometimes I roll my eyes and move on. Sometimes I vent at my girlfriends about it. I choose my battles. Some things about it will take a lifetime to reconcile. And some things never will, and I’ll just have to let them go...

Nevertheless, I love the church. Only with it, through it, and by it can I accomplish the dreams closest to my heart.

Even if sometimes it annoys me.

Matches! Matches! Come get yer matches!

So I was reading an article the other day about the Duke Lacrosse team rape allegations. Like all such stories, it is sordid and confusing and sad and horrible. Whether it’s true or not, the details are nevertheless disturbing and disheartening – partially because they very well could be true. They’re not so fantastical that no one believes it could happen.

And while I was reading this story on CNN.com there was a sidebar ad flashing away at me. It happened to be an advertisement for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition: photo after photo of sexy, scantily clad women in sweaty, oiled come-hitherness. One after another they were displayed in rotation, all in different positions, with different swatches of fabric covering different essential spots, leaving not much to imagination (and yet directing that imagination with suggestive poses and facial expressions). You all know which ads I mean. They could be for a singles dating site, Victoria’s Secret, whatever. They’re all the same.

Meanwhile, I’m reading a wretched story about the forcible choking and rape of a stripper by five college athletes in a bathroom. It was like, “HERE’S SOME VISUAL AID TO THE HORRIBLE STORY YOU’RE READING!” or, “MAYBE THE VICTIM LOOKED LIKE THIS! SEE MORE PICTURES!” or “WANT TO FEEL THE SAME DETACHED LUSTFUL FEELINGS AS THE RAPISTS? HERE ARE SOME FACELESS WOMEN WHO WILL ALSO SELL THEMSELVES FOR SEX, NOT UNLIKE THE VICTIM IN THE STORY!”

Doesn’t anybody at CNN.com pay attention to which ads accompany which stories? It was like reading a story about a drive-by shooting opposite a gun advertisement. Or an alcohol poisoning death with a liquor commercial on the side. The juxtaposition of the stripper/rape story and the swimsuit/porn ad was a sad commentary on modern American culture.

“PLAY WITH FIRE!” we say, “COME GET YOUR FIRE HERE! IT’S FUN, AND OH SO AMUSING!” But when somebody actually gets burned we act amazed, offended, scandalized. We talk about the burn victim as someone who is shameful, stupid, and a bad person. In the name of free speech and free all-kinds-of-stuff we allow morally reprehensible things to actually be marketed to the general public. In fact, we’ve changed our definition of what is moral by saying that as long as you don’t hurt anybody else you can do anything you want. But the line is so fine! I’m not sticking up for criminals here, but doesn’t it bother anybody else that we can sell sex and chastise the consumer of it in the same breath?

The alleged victim in the story was a stripper -- hired, legally I believe, by the athletes. No one seems to be saying you shouldn’t hire strippers, or that you shouldn’t be a stripper. They’re just saying… don’t let that lead to anything.

um... Hello? Are we daft, or what?

A Sunday Night Chat

"Is there, like, a leak in your love tank?"

My husband, Jared, and I recently read "The Five Love Languages: How to Express Hearfelt Commitment to your Mate." For those unfamiliar with the tenets of its philosophy, it analogizes that everybody has a "love tank." Our job as a romantic partner is to learn how our mate best feels loved, and become proficient enough in that "language" to be able to keep their love tank full, which keeps them happy. Once you know your "languages," the book suggests that you check in with each other at night and ask, "on a scale of 1-10 how full is your love tank today?"

"A leak?" I respond. We're lying on the couch together. His goal tonight is to "dote" on me, and he's doing his best to follow my very specific instructions (I wrote a song about that, by the way. I should post the lyrics sometime).

"Yeah," He explains. "Not like the regular diminishing of the love tank. I mean a steady stream of it just... being gone. Like, I keep putting love in your tank and... like, is there love in there that doesn't ever get used? That just... gets wasted?"

I furrow my brow. "No, I don't have a leak," I say, formulating my defense. "I just... I have a lot of love-needs. I use a lot of resources. I'm a high consumer of love because I have so much going on." Yeah, that's it, I'm thinking. "Your love doesn't go to waste, I use it all."

"So... you just get really bad love-mileage. You're like the SUV of love vehicles." We laugh. "My little love-SUV," he croons. mmm. We lay cheek to cheek on the couch, me in misty-eyed contentment and bliss.

"So...[pause]... can I trade you in for a hybrid sometime? .... ow! ow! I was kidding! I was KIDDING!!"

This was our conversation tonight. I think we're making progress.

Midnight, Here I Come

Sometimes, late at night, I indulge in sadness.

If I can manage to so much as break a tear, I can prime the pump and bring forth a wellspring of deep sorrow, covered by time and inhibitions and daylight and more important things. I can reach deep into my soul and spirit and find remnants of lost pain, grief, fear, longing, fury, disappointment, anger, loss, defeat. It bubbles up and flows for me in the darkest hours of the night, and I can almost savor its sweetness. It's hard to turn off once it starts, except for falling asleep.

This cleansing, this ritual, this purging of negative feelings... it is the hope that tomorrow I will feel clean and fresh and new and happy.

And then tomorrow comes. And sometimes, to be totally honest, I just feel dumb. What the heck was I crying about, anyway? Am I really cleaning out the corners of my battered soul, preparing for a brighter tomorrow? Or is it possible, just maybe, that late at night I just feel emotional and worn down and... I'm just making some of it up? Am I really so sad about all these things? If I cry them out will they be done, or is it possible that I could cry about them any old night because the sadness just exists there in me?

Maybe I need to embrace the sadness and live with it, rather than always trying to "cry it out." And maybe, if that's the case, crying about it over and over late at night is nothing but simply indulgence. It's not cleansing or purging, but just... entertaining. And if so, is that bad? Well... I want to say no. But poor Jared! How many nights does he have to hold me while I'm crying, asking me what I'm crying about to my "I don't know." If I don't know, is it doing me any good?

Can you tell Jared's out of town? I've posted, like, four times in twenty four hours.

Okay, okay, okay!

I give up! I'm joining the crowd. I'm going with the flow. I'm on the bandwagon. I'm on myspace.

I've been made fun of, cajoled, harassed, and questioned enough. Okay I believe you all! I should be on myspace. And now I am. :)


Are any of you on myspace? I feel kinda lonely there so far.

• If you are on myspace, add me as a friend (lest I look like a hermit to people who visit).
• If you are on myspace, use my tunes on your profile! Yeah!
  
• If you are on myspace, listen to music, comment on it, tell friends.
• If you are not on myspace, maybe you'd enjoy checking it out and listening to the audio-stream.
  

myspace.com/skyepixton

Really, thanks, all you who love me, (ahem. Tamara) for making me do it.

Ouch. My Heart

Kaaren, Clayton and triplets
Originally uploaded by tompixton.

I just made the mistake of looking at pictures of my nieces and nephew that moved to Kansas a couple of months ago. I miss them so much. I am so afraid they will grow up not knowing who I am. I know they will. There's no way around it. I love their little souls. I miss them like you wouldn't believe.

Never look at pictures of babies in the middle of the night.

sniff.

I met my husband last night.

It was weird. There we were at the Belle & Sebastien concert. I have never listened to Belle & Sebastien until three days ago. Jared's childhood buddy was coming to town for the concert, and so Jared scrambled to find tickets to the sold out show. Then he went and bought the album, since he didn't have the new one.

I've long known that Jared is into indie rock. I'm a folk-singer. And, strangely, I really like pop-punk radio-ready music. That and alternative. And jazz. And techno. And anyway, indie rock is good too, but I've never really had a "thing" for it. In fact, I don't like a lot of indie rock. It's too... indie... for me. I like the convention of the ABABCB song structure. I like 1/4/5 major chords paired with melodic harmonies and driving choruses. I like to be able to tell which instrument is which and have a clear identification of what I'm listening to.

Things I don't like: voices that are bad, people who can't sing and think it's cute, lots of distortion so you can't distinguish a melody, too much dissonance at one time, bangy crashy abrasive sounds, weird formless songs, long rants on a theme in the middle of a tune that don't match. Anyway. Indie is hit and miss for me.
Love: Death Cab for Cutie.
Hate: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

So anyway, I didn't expect much of the concert for myself. But here's my dilemma: "Jared wants to do something fun together and I don't? That can't happen!! So, yeah, I'm going to the concert. I'm gonna like it too. I'm gonna dance. I'm gonna listen to B&S on my ipod until I've force-fed myself into liking it."

But little did I know what I would really get at the Roseland that night.

There we were, surrounded by a sold-out theater of other Belle & Sebastien enthusiasts. Here's this kinda geeky band onstage, the lead singer all twiggy limbs and unassuming charisma. I looked around at the audience and saw a sea of thrifted button-up shirts, plastic-rimmed glasses, short messy hair. Guys like Jared. Hundreds of them! They all looked up at the stage with spacey and contented looks on their faces. They bobbed to the music. They swayed. Not a foot left its spot on the floor all night. It was like watching a gentle breeze come over a wheat-field. Only the wheat is geeks in glasses and cool shoes. All night! It was so funny! (in a good way, of course. Cool geeks, of course. You know what I mean. The kind of endearing sexy geeks you see on, like, "Friends").

Jared stood next to me and beamed like I'd never seen, his little head bobbing up and down to the music, his ears carefully protected by Leight Sleepers (TM) earrplugs. Suddenly, it clicked. This is Jared's tribe! These are his people! All this time, I've been trying to figure out what makes Jared tick. Who is Jared? I mean, it's not like he's a misfit or anything, and obviously I know him really well. But he does remain somewhat of an enigma to me. Especially among my friends. But those are my friends, from my tribe. So there I was visiting his world, and it suddenly all made sense. Uuuuoh! Jared is one of these people!

And now, of course, I can't really tell you what I actually learned about Jared (wouldn't that be convenient). But by the nature of the thing, it's something you'd have to be there to understand. It's like when I traveled to England with my mother. Having experienced British culture for just three weeks, I felt like I understood so much about her. So much of her personality traits came from her upbringing there, and I always just thought they were unique to her. All Brits love to to garden, value aesthetics and high culture, enjoy a good tea-time, and believe in ettiquette (to name a few things). My mom is partially a product of this, and so my trip helped me to understand her in a different way. Last night I saw where Jared came from. Not his family or his home town, but his "tribe" that he himself chose to be a part of. I saw his heart. I watched him experience something native to him, not trying to fit into me.

And the concert really good too. Now I genuinely like the band. Thanks, Belle & Sebastien.

Mantras for Marriage

"CONFLICT ALERT! CONFLICT ALERT!"

This is what we're supposed to say when we sense an argument coming on from now on. The other night it was about whether the original words to the song are "popcorn popping right before my eyes!" or "blossoms popping right before my eyes!"

This little spiff, believe it or not, got rather heated. So, we decided that desperate times call for desperate measures (or stupid people call for stupid solutions). Since neither of us seems to inherently have the maturity in the moment to recognize that we're not mad about the issue at hand, but rather about things like being respected, feeling heard, etc., we developed this mantra, which we're supposed to recite together after either of us has sounded the "conflict alarm."

"Honey I love you.
Your opinion is valuable to me and I respect your experience and feelings.
It is OK if you don't agree with me.
If one of us is swayed in our opinion, I will be gracious, and not boastful."

Pretty good, huh? The funny thing is, neither of us ever actually calls the other one "Honey," so I'm sensing the possibility for sarcasm right away. Also, I guess we'll just have to see if it works at all. I mean, I'm never thinking "uh oh, I sense a conflict coming on. I'd better lovingly point it out." No. I'm always just thinking things like, "I"m SO right here! Oh! Oh! That was the stupidest point ever! Doesn't he see the flaw in his reasoning? Wait. Let ME tell you how it is, buddy!" (or something like that).

I have faith in Jared though. He'll sound the alarm. He's good at being mature. Even when I'm not.

No. Seriously. I jest. We can quip about who is more mature. But the truth of the matter is... the words "popcorn popping right before my eyes" are just better, even if they're not the ones in the children's hymnal! I mean the whole point of the song is the metaphor, right? If you have to spell it out for the idiot children who don't understand the whole blossoms-look-kinda-like-popcorn concept, then it ruins the poetry of the song! What kind of morons would change the words?! Morons who don't understand and appreciate artistry, that's who! Morons who are out to destroy all that is good and beautiful in the world! Morons who might be right historically, but that doesn't make them right artistically! That's who! So there. hmph.

"Sunday Night" at Skye's

Talking to Emily Potter on the phone (she's the litle blue glow behind our feet.

Feet (in order of appearance, I think): Skye, Emily, Keith, Kaarina, Bryce, Audrey (Jared & James were also in the room somewhere)

Two Kinds of People in the World:

I had an email snafoo yesterday. I am the administrator for an email list of over 500 people. I am very conscientious about keeping email addresses private and not spamming people.

BUT nevertheless, my server changed some settings as part of an "update" which overrode the protection that allows only me to post. Thus a family message about prayer accidentally got sent to all my music fans and list-ers.

I was embarassed, but also sortof chuckled that of course it would be an email about prayer. I don't mind my fans knowing that I'm spiritual, but I am very wary of being pigeon-holed as some religious or christian artist. Anyway, I didn't expect much response, but I have got a few emails, and they are either:

"TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST! I DON'T WANT PERSONAL EMAIL AND YOU'RE CLEARLY A BAD PERSON FOR FORCING THIS FAMILY DISCUSSION ON UNSUSPECTING LIST SUBSCRIBERS LIKE ME!"

(or something to that effect)

or else:

"Ha ha. No problem. We could all be thinking about prayer a little more anyway. :)"

Am I crazy to think that the polarized responses have to do with the religious nature of the email? It was pretty innocuous. Just a comment about the value of family prayer: it being nice to see each other once a day, whether we had prayed or not.

It's a good thing that a few people responded with the "How funny. I feel blessed to know you" style email, because I was getting really depressed and feeling personally wounded by those who were so vitriolic about wanting off the list over ONE little mistake (that wasn't my fault, I might add).

Anyway. Religious or not, I guess some people just get their panties in a wad over little things, and others are more relaxed and roll with it. And it seems like the difference between those types of people, in this instance at least, also corresponds to their spiritual openness. I'm sure that is not a P.C. thing to say. But I'm just sayin'.

My Favorite Person Today:

is this beautiful girl right here! She's my baby sister, Kyrstyn. This picture was taken last Saturday, while she was dressed and made-up for a show with one of her groups "The March Fourth Marching Band." (It's a really cool group. You can see pictures of their anniversary show that my Dad took by clicking HERE.)

Anyway, she also played with me on Monday night at The Edgefield. She's an amazing musician and an amazing person with such a beautiful soul!

In my large family, I'm the oldest daughter and she is the youngest. I was paid $5 to potty-train her years ago. I babysat at times. I taught her to burb and remember her first steps. As as older sibling, often you never have a chance to get to know your younger siblings like adults. But I've been blessed to have Kyrstyn near me and in my life the last couple of years and it's such a JOY! I mean, she's the coolest! I would never have known, had I not spent some time with her recently, how very extremely awesomely amazingly deeply rad she is! I am so honored to be not only her friend, but also her blood relative. If you dont' know Kyrstyn, you should. I am so lucky.

Ah, Modern Chivalry!

What do we do, in the modern world of today, about holding doors open for people and walking through them? I don't mean any old time. I always appreciate a man holding a door open for me. I'll always walk through it and thank him.

But.... these rules were invented before the modern phonomenon of the "double-doors."

Almost every LDS church building has them. Most office buildings have them now too, including the one I work in. So I encounter this dilemma often.

The first set of doors is no problem: walk through it, say thank you. But two steps later I find myself staring at a second set of doors, and I'm thinking, "um... okay, he's behind me now because he just opened the first doors. What do I do now? Do I wait for him to come through and get these doors for me too?" Pros & Cons:

• Pro: it acknowledges his chivalry and my gratitude for it.
  
• Con: I risk looking like a snobby woman who expects every man to open every door for her.
• Con: It's akward, standing there waiting while he shuffles by. I even have to step aside to make room like we're sharing a phone booth.
  
• Pro: it's a nod to old tradition and chivalrous ways, which I like.
• Con: I risk looking like a weak sniveling woman who thinks she might faint any moment or who wants to be dependent on a man. blech.
  

"Or do I walk through like the capable, self-actualized woman that I am?" Pros & Cons:

• Pro: less akward.
• Pro: I get to keep moving.
• Pro: demonstrates (as I said) that I am a capable woman and doesn't make me look weak.
• Con: Totally flies in the face of what he just did: "thanks, but no thanks, buddy. I can handle this myself, as you can see."
• Con: Doesn't this seem like the haughty woman just trampling on the polite men, whooshing by, flipping her hair behind her, and now I'm ahead of him in line, for the elevator, the DMV, the food, whatever else.
  
• Con: How rude! Shouldn't I, like, open the door for him now or something?

"Which brings up a whole new option. Do I return the favor?"

• Pro: Seems polite, on its face. He scratched my back, now I scratch his.
• Con: Weird! Girls don't open doors for guys. It might make him uncomfortable or make him feel, again, like I'm spurning his gesture.
• Con: That's really beyond the line, don't you think? Now I'm acting like he needs the door opened for him (he surely does not). But wait, isn't that what men think about women? I mean, I don't need the door opened for me either, but I appreciate it. But it's just weird the other way around!
  

I CAN'T WIN!

And then there are the variables: sometimes it's my dad or my brother, sometimes it's my husband, sometimes a stranger, sometimes another woman. AAAAAaaaurgh!

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone have The Answer?

The End of an Era

Tonight I finally said goodbye to my driving-love of the last ten years. My Rossinante, a.k.a. African Queenie, a.k.a. 1987 Subaru Wagon.

Two very nice men with mustaches checked her out, drove her around, asked me about all her problems (she has many), and gave me few dollars cash to take her off my hands.

I'll never forget all the beautiful trips we took, the sunsets, the beaches, the forbidden logging roads, the snowy mountain passes, the nights asleep (or not) in the back, the times stuck on the side of the road, the campsites no one else could get to or else no one else dared, the boyfriends that came and went, the endless visits to Les Schwabb, the cases and cases of oil, the new sports we undertook together, rescuing friends and family across icy roads when they were stuck with their two-wheel-drive woosie cars, the adventure and spirit and determined life we led...

...until the introduction of the newer, younger, less scratched-up, shinier, upgraded model.

I feel I've betrayed Rossinante in a way. Will Jared one day go for a newer model when I don't work as well anymore and am kindof an eyesore?

I teared up sitting behind the wheel for the last time to say goodbye. She has seen me through almost my entire single life. She could tell you more about me than probably any human being. (Is it weird that I have such affection for an inanimate object? Well, she' not inanimate. She took me all kinds of wonderful places. But still...)

Oh well. She'll always be remembered with love and fondess in my heart. Goodbye Rossie. Love, Skye

Where's my dinner, woman!

Is it true that the expectation of something does not negate the joy in its fulfillment?

Jared & I have been reading the infamous love languages book. His primary language is "acts of service," and no matter how many times I press him, he still says he feels loved when I do things like... oh, say... do the dishes, clean up the house, take out the garbage, make him dinner, vaccuum the living room..."

Are you serious? This is so unromantic. I mean, those are things I have to do all the time ANYway. So how does he get "I do this cuz I love him" from what may very well just be "this kitchen is gross. I've gotta do something about it."

Anyway, my biggest fear with "learning his dialect" is that if I make him dinner every night, that he'll come to expect dinner every night, and then it will be a requirement of our relationship, rather than an expression of heartfelt love. If he comes home and I haven't made him dinner, maybe he'll start calling me "woman" and take off his shirt to reveal a wife-beater underneath. Then he'll grab a beer and watch some tv.

No, seriously. I could lovingly make dinner every night, but I can't fathom that the warm fuzzies wouldn't eventually wear off for him. What happens when expectations become entrenched in our every day lives? Wouldn't we have to run faster and faster to keep up? Like developing a tolerance for our favorite drug?

Jared begs to differ.

Okay, and I have to admit... even though I expect flowers and chocolate on Valentine's Day, I don't like them any less from year to year (although I'm only on year #2. Ask me in 2057 and see what I say then.) (j/k). And even though I expect a kiss goodbye each morning, I only look forward to it more and more and revel in the moment more and more as time goes by. It's like expecting presents on Christmas. Who gets tired of presents? Not me! Hmmmm. Could he be right about wifely, domestic service too?

Trying to grasp someone else's love language is a challenge (if it doesn't involve presents, candlelight, or snowboarding anyway). But I guess no matter what floats your boat, there's something to being able to expect it to happen. I mean, not just that expecting isn't bad, but that it's actually good.

Expectation is part of the foundation of trust - a crucial element in a loving relationship. Why would we hook up with people if we didn't come to expect that they would provide the things we need to feel loved?

...From All My Labours

“People shouldn’t work on days like this,” I told my Dad/Boss.

I had walked out the door that morning to beautiful streaming sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky!

In Portland? In February?!

We had just ended a record-long streak of straight rain and gray. I don’t think I’d seen the sun since November. My heart instantly grew three sizes.

I took in the sunshine for a moment. My very first flowers were blooming (there was actually a bumble bee in one of them), I could hear a mess of birds chirping in the tree nearby, the breeze blew slightly. Aaaaah! I rejoiced for a moment. Then I sighed, walked to my car, and drove to work.

“The city should totally shut down, really," I continued. "We have Snow-days... we should have SUN-days!”

oh. wait.

“...and on the seventh day thou shalt rest...” (Exodus 23:12, King James Translation)

There is actually a commandment that we stop working and enjoy life once in a while. Crazy.

Crazier still, is that pretty much everything God has told us is designed to help us enjoy life and have joy. Immature, adolescent, defiant godlings that we are, we’ve twisted most of our Creator’s direction into guilt-provoking prohibitions. Pity.

Well, I for one am going to have joy. I’m taking the whole day off in two days!! Oh, wait. That’s Sunday. Well, I take every Sunday off! Ha!

Praise God!

7-Grain Soul

When I was little, my mommy didn't love me. How did I know? My Adam's all-natural, no-sugar-added peanut butter told me so. While other kids were eating gloriously white Wonderbread, Skippy, and Smuckers sandwiches for lunch, followed by fruit snacks, Capri Sun, and Oreo Cookies, I was muscling down my homemade-whole-wheat bread sandwiches with that Adam’s no-sugar peanut butter and homemade jam, followed by an apple, water from the fountain, and – if I was lucky – an orange-rind-pumpkin-whole-wheat dessert thing that my Mom thought she could pass off as a cookie.

My fellow geek-friends soon discovered that they could bribe me to do humiliating things in exchange for a morsel of their marvelously saccharine fruit rollup. Half the time they didn’t want it anyway (I never understood this), and would just have a little fun watching me bark like a dog, or whatever cruel prank they dreamed up this time. Luckily, they were not very creative, and I don’t think the other kids ever noticed my desperate antics. Not that it helped my popularity any.

Nevertheless... childhood scarred me. And as an adult, I defiantly and enthusiastically buy Skippy peanut butter now. It’s one of the beautiful things about adulthood. We responsible people working the daily grind often lament the loss of the old days, when we had no responsibilities and knew nothing of the pain and suffering in the world. In this moment, though, I choose to rejoice in my adulthood! Finally! I can eat what I want! I can go where I want! I can do what I want! Remember how we used to think we couldn’t wait to grow up and not have parents telling us what to do all the time? Remember that cruelty really did exist in the world, among our own name-calling peers? Remember that summers were actually boring as often as they were fun? I do. Childhood was great. But adulthood is also Great. I mean, hey! I get to eat Skippy now.
I just at a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich, and oh, the bliss!

Truthfully, most of my tastes were eventually brow-beaten to match my mother’s in the end. Or else I’ve returned to them after briefly experimenting with the dark side of refined foods and transfats (so unfair, to call foods “refined” which are actually evil, menacing fragments of real food which coat your intestines, stay beyond their welcome, and make you fat). Nowadays I buy the wholest-wheatest bread I can find. I prefer all-natural ingredients. I am actually grossed out by fatty, ready-made, boxed or frozen entrees. I love fresh fruit and vegetables. I’m a huge fan of broccoli. And I make almost everything from scratch if I possibly can. Very like my mother. It’s only on a few points that I’ve diverted, like the peanut butter.

It is our privilege as adults to decide which of our parents’ values to adopt, whether it be religion, child-rearing, marriage, moral values, habits, etc. I would say my food preferences somewhat follow my more important life choices so far. In the areas of morals and values, mostly I’ve come to agree with what my parents taught me. I diverge here and there (but then, as an adult I also know now that they don’t even agree on everything. Go figure). But I generally subscribe to the same whole-grain-whole-life religion they do. In the end I married a man my mother actually approved of. My political and social opinions are, well, sort of the same as my folks’. Overall, I can’t complain. I’m really grateful to my parents for teaching me good values and helping me develop an early taste for goodness, honesty, joy, God, love, gratitude, the outdoors, personal accomplishment, and natural foods.

Here we go again...

Every year, in January, I have an emotional - what would you call it - upheaval, breakdown, rebirth, journey, catharsis, transcendent experience, purging, cleansing, any of the above. For some reason, each year I experience the reinvention of self. It's a painful process, but one from which I always emerge.

This always happens in December and January. Is it the weather? Is it the New Year? The aftermath of the holidays in general? Is it my birthday (tomorrow)? Is it the alignment of the stars and planets? Is it my tarot and numerology (which does, by the way, indicate I should have a rebirth every year around early January. crazy stuff.).

Does anyone else have a regular, predictable schedule upon which they do these things? It seems so transendent, so spiritual, so left-brained and personal to be tied to something like a "schedule," which is the opposite of all things "feeling" to my mind.

In any case...

like the phoenix, this year too I will rise from the ash, having cried my tears of redemption and having sung my heart to pieces.

Fun-oholism.

My mother-in-law and I were talking about our husbands over the New Year. They share a penchant for "accomplishing things" and both seem to lead purpose-driven lives.

"Scott just likes the satisfaction of having done something productive" she said.

"Oh, I know! Jared is the same way!" I empathized. I quipped about how Jared prefers to spend Saturdays doing stuff around the house over snowboarding or something mindlessly fun and adventurous. He likes to feel like he accomplished something that day, or else he can't even really have fun. He has to earn his fun, I guess (in contrast, I always feel I already deserve it).

Jared and his father both have a very strong sense of responsibility. They have integrity in their actions, whether to their employers, to church callings, to neighbors, to conscience, to family. It's a good thing for us, to have married honorable men; my mother-in-law and I agreed.

"It's not like he actually likes working, he just has a really strong sense of responsibility, and he gets satisfaction from fulfilling his duties. He's not a workaholic or anything."

I nodded my head. But I was thinking... "is there any difference?" I've always thought of a workaholic as someone who actually enjoys work more than liesure (what a freak). I've thought of workaholism as a distant disease of some weird people who are strange, antisocial, backward, money-driven, home-wrecking, and aloof.

But wait... like I said, is there any difference between him and the "purpose-driven" guy? Lots of people find their work satisfying or meaningful. If someone enjoys the satisfaction of completing work projects enough that they choose that over liesure or family time, then isn't that the same thing as liking work more than fun? Is workaholism anything other than a simple matter of where and how some people choose to spend their time, whatever their reasons for their choice?

Jared & I had a conversation on our drive up to Seattle about whether you can truly learn to like anything, if it's something that you have to do. He says that you can. He concedes that most people feel that some parts of life are unenjoyable, but we tolerate them because we know we will gain satisfaction from the end result. Simply put: any sacrifice we make is for something we believe to be better. (This is how I feel about life. I don't like every piece of living, but I choose my activities according to my view of what will bring me the most happiness in the future. duh.).

Jared, on the other hand, thinks that he is different from most people because he actually likes to do everything he has to do. Or at least he tries. The knowledge that he will gain satisfaction in the end gives him a certain amount of enjoyment in the actual act of whatever it is, even previous to the desireable end-result.

"What about wiping your butt?" I retorted (pardon me, for this). "Surely we all derive satisfaction from having a clean butt, but it doesn't mean you actually enjoy the act of wiping the poo off of it." (... I won't keep going down this road, for your sake, it was funny and inappropriate and we made many analogous points that you don't want to hear about. )

In any case, the conversation ultimately supports my secret theory... that Jared is a workoholic waiting to happen. Kinda like a genetic alcoholic who hasn't yet really had a lot of alcohol. But already Jared has worked some days I wouldn't have and expressed that he actually likes working. Uh oh. I like my job too, but, I would sure go snowboarding before I would draft an estate plan.

Don't tell him I'm thinking about this. For one thing, it's pure speculation. He's actually a really fun guy at the moment. And it's not like I don't want him to like his job. We all have days we'd rather be at the office than puttering around the house. But for another, I don't want to perpetuate this phenomenon that keeps happening: if he takes time to spend with family (me), it's because he wants to make me happy, not because he wants the time (or so it sometimes feels).

Maybe I'm just a funoholic paranoid of the opposition. That's entirely possible. I've actually been quoted in the Salsa dance community: one dancer was asking about my work and I said, "I don't have time for a full-time job." I was serious (I had a lot going on, with music and other stuff). But he laughed and laughed, and then said his goal was to someday be like me.

Why can't we all aspire to someday be like me?

My Sacrament

I cannot really pray in the belly of a church, walls made by the hands of men, surrounded by white-costumed, noose-necked 12-year-old boys marching to the beat of The Drum.

Give me the sky, and the wind, mountains, bees and birdsong. With wild grasses in my fingers, there I find my maker, and weep in sweet loving arms.