Recipes for Life

Hey, sorry about that last post. I suppose there are some who read this blog, but still don't know me well enough, to know whether I'm joking or not about some things. If you didn't know for sure whether I was joking, then don't worry - my wife never does either. So maybe it isn't about knowing me well - just don't ever take anything I say seriously... ha ha!

Well, having said that, I do have something serious that I'd like to publicize. I am working on developing an instrument to measure marital quality and we're currently collecting data to test it. If you are married (you must be married to participate), and would like to help me out, please click here. It takes about 20-30 minutes to complete one time through; you will be asked, after a week, to take it a second time.

Thanks for all your help, and for forgiving me (if you so choose). Peace.

Big News!

2011-04-01T15:27:00.002-06:00

Sorry it's been so long, but we have been so busy with a new baby and a new semester...that is almost over, now. In fact, I'm not quite sure I have a whole lot of time right now - being busy at work and everything. But even though I'm extremely busy now, I'm just tying up loose ends - 'cause I won't be working at BYU for much longer. Here's how it came about:

About a year ago, this guy moved into one of the units above us. His name is Chet, so of course Beth and I spent our evenings making fun of his name when he first moved in. But one day, he came downstairs and knocked on our door to borrow a cup of flour. Beth wasn't home, so I invited him in while I searched for it (let's just say I don't know my way 'round the kitchen too well). After about ten minutes of searching, I had found the flour; during that time, however, I had found a friend, and Chet and I have been virtually inseparable since then. Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. We did become good friends, though, and even though he's single, he hangs out with us quite a bit.

So turns out Chet is a bit of an entrepreneur. As we've gotten to know each other, he's been really instrumental in helping me get my marriage workshop marketable and conceptualized, and he's done all this thinking and stuff for free. He's said all along that there's good money in my ideas and has been nothing but encouraging. So every now and then, he and I would talk shop and in just the year I've known him, I've made serious strides in getting my business idea off the ground (for those who don't know, I've been developing a marriage workshop and pre-marriage education program that I've been trying to market for a while).

In the meantime, Chet has made friends with pretty much every family in the building. He's done wonders for making us feel like a community - he just has this magnetic personality and everyone just can't seem to avoid his charm, no matter how cold they are personally (or, no matter what language they speak - we have a couple of Spanish speaking neighbors...). Well, a few months ago, Chet starting going up to Idaho every two weeks on business (not my business, but we've talked about that option). Every time he goes, he buys lottery tickets. About two months ago, he started asking us (and the other neighbors in the building) if we'd like to play. He's not Mormon, and found out soon from some of us that Mormons aren't supposed to gamble. But when he asked me, I thought, 'what the heck, this guys my friend.' So each time he went to Idaho, I'd give him a couple bucks.

Then came Wednesday's drawing - the jackpot was $187 million. I didn't actually find out about it until today, but with our pool of money he had bought 12 tickets (that's six of us, at $2 a piece). Chet didn't actually get home until yesterday night, but early this morning he came down before I went to work and told us that the six of us would split the jackpot - that's $15.7 million each (after taxes)! I'm sure it's hard to believe, especially given today's date, but isn't that something?

Beth and I are still in shock, but we've come to some conclusions: I'm retiring (early) from BYU and will now be working full time with Chet on my marriage workshops; we'll be buying a house real soon (not sure where, if we'll stay in Utah); and each of siblings will get a very special surprise from us. So that's our news; hope luck will shine down on you all soon!

...sleep in heavenly peace!

2010-12-24T18:35:00.003-07:00

An Early Morning Intruder

2010-12-19T16:45:00.005-07:00

Sunday, 19 December, 2010, 2:21 AM:

I woke to a rustling that was obviously coming from outside. Late at night, when these sounds occur, I have to say my heart gets to racing a little. My wife trusts me to protect the house, and I do keep a fire bat under the bed - not just for breaking windows during fires. So I know, when there's a sound, it's up to me to confront whatever is lurking in the darkness.

But before I confront anything, I try to listen closely to determine what I'm up against. In the past, I've never been up against much: a child wandering around the house; neighbors up making a lot of noise outside, or even upstairs. The scariest moments I've had to confront up until last night is Liz crying about some nightmare she's had. Typically, I'm pretty asleep, and I hear her scream out for me. In my fog, I try to understand why she's crying - only to learn that it was a nightmare from which she needs a parent's comfort to calm her.

She would wake from a nightmare on this night, too, but that isn't the sound I was hearing at 2:21 AM.

Instead, the sound I was straining to hear was something I hadn't heard before. Foreign sounds are definitely the worst. At first, I couldn't locate the sound spatially. We live in a bottom-level condo that is partially underground. All of our windows are on the south side of the building. Each bedroom has its own window; ours has a sliding glass door leading to our back porch. As I strained to hear, I knew the sound certainly came from outside, but at times it sounded far away, as though someone were trying to open the blinds in one of the kids' rooms; at other times, it sounded quite close, like someone were on the back patio - right outside our glass door.

But, after a bit of straining, I was sure that whatever was making the noise was on our back porch.

I now knew where the noise was coming from. I lay for a few moments trying to determine what was making the noise. I'll admit, I was a little scared to get out of bed and look out the blinds.

Sometimes, it's harder to be brave when my wife doesn't hear the noises. I suppose that's because if all else fails, I want her to hear me falling to floor and writhing in agony when whatever the disturbance is beats me up or shoots me. Even if there's nothing she could do at that point, it would be nice to know she knows I'm risking my life for her.

It was quite a relief when, through the fog of being just awoken, mixed with the emotion of having something just outside our door, to hear my wife speak up:

"I think there's an animal on our patio."

I could be brave now, because when she said that, I was finally able to place the sounds that were being made: a rustling of leaves (we have something of a collection on our porch from all the storms lately) and the scratching on the glass of the door, that could not have come from anything larger than a ... cat? No, too small. Mouse? No, too large. Rat? Outside of our door?

Sort of.

Turns out it was a muskrat (we have a creek that runs through our property). I'm glad I didn't have to use the fire bat. But I did have to get the thing off our porch. Since the porch is underground, the walls are cement; a cat could get in or out; a muskrat would be stuck there all night, scratching at our window.

Anyway, long story short: went to the dumpster and dragged a large tree limb over to see if I could get it to climb out on its own; that explains all the sticks in the picture; he used it as a good hiding place. So I removed the limb and used a shovel to...

...scare it into a bucket, which I promptly threw over the side of the porch (hey, I thought it could be rabid or something). I think it was just as relieved to be out of there as I was to get back into bed.

Home Security

1 Fire-bat

1 Shovel

1 Bucket

A whole lotta courage!

A pinch of wimpering in bed

P.S. In the middle of the ordeal, Liz woke from her nightmare - which I think turned out to be a half frightened/half irritated man walking through her house trying to decide how to get a muskrat off the porch.

Forgive My Self-indulgence (just this once)

2010-12-01T06:49:00.003-07:00

One of the reasons you don't see me post so much is because I'm not really sure what to blog about. A lot of blogs are online journals and I suppose I don't care to leave a more detailed record of my life online. I guess I'm afraid the world will find out how self-centered I am, then more than just my closest friends and family would know. So I just keep to myself and let my wife do much of the blogging. But for some reason, I couldn't resist this one clichéd blog.

Apparently, the BBC says that of the list of books below, an average person will read six. I have bolded those I have read and italicized those I have read some of (not just opened). I've also added some parenthetical commentary after some of the books, in case that's interesting to anyone. Because I'm bragging, I should add that my PhD is in psychology, not the humanities, and most of these books I've read in the last 10 years while getting my degrees. Oh, and in a couple of months, I will have finished the first ten in their entirety. Thank you very much.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (just 120 pages to go, actually)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (only slightly a disappointment)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (probably the best book on this list)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (this was a good one)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (not that I'm proud of it...)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (this shouldn't be on this list)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I read the abridged version, one of the most shameful things I've ever done - I didn't know it was abridged till about 3/4 way through)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (28 freakin' chapters! guh!)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

This happens every year

2010-11-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

Halloween

2010-11-09T21:39:00.001-07:00

Pumpkins…

Candy…

Charlie…

Happy Halloween!

Adventures in Breastfeeding

2010-10-11T14:22:00.001-06:00

This post may not be suitable for children and male in-laws.

You would think that I would be used to it by now. This is the fourth baby I’ve nursed but I still don’t know what to say when:

My wide eyed two year old asks,

“What’s that mommy?”

or with even bigger eyes,

“Is the baby eating you?”

or when my enthusiastic five year old says,

“Mom you should be a cow for Halloween!”

or asks skeptically,

“Does one of those have chocolate milk in it?”

Some Shots

2010-10-11T11:20:00.001-06:00

The cross eyes…

A rare quiet moment

“I a big brother like Kipper!”

Just so sweet.

This year we spent Conference in the mountains.

Sunday was just way too peaceful.

Happy Birthday Girl

2010-10-08T21:22:00.001-06:00

I love my girl because she likes to wear hats. She gets hats from school often and she wears them all day long. Doesn’t matter what it looks like…last year she got a pretend yellow hard hat and she wore that one around for a week. This one she got for her birthday and I’m pretty sure once she got it on it didn’t come off until bed. I had to keep fixing the elastic. Unlike me, she likes accessories.

And she still likes princesses!

Happy 7th Birthday Sweetheart!

Gabriel Joseph Ostenson

2010-09-19T18:14:00.002-06:00

So we finally decided on a name, the day after our new boy was born. Not quite sure how it happened, except that I think my oldest brother had to make the final decision. Appropriate for the patriarch of the family, I suppose, since his little brother had some sort of naming deficiency. Anyway…

So Mother and child came home today and I have a couple pictures I’ve taken. He was born in the early afternoon on the 17th of September, 7 lbs 5 oz, 19 inches long (for those who care about numbers). Labor was about 5 hours, pushing about 2 minutes (though it seemed a lot longer to Beth). And I guess that’s about it, right?

Here are a couple of pictures:

First shot of Gabe with his eyes open.

An excited sister and distracted brothers.

And a cousin – that’s about all the shots we have of him right now.

We haven’t been enthusiastic picture-takers yet, though grandma has some pics that I’ll try to upload soon. I’ve been napping a lot (almost as much – more? – as Beth) lately, so been kinda lazy. For now, you’ll just have to be content watching the next youngest, Isaac, bend some fire and some earth:

Some Friends are Meant to Be

2010-09-10T10:37:00.001-06:00

We miss you already! Good luck in all you do!

First Days of School

2010-09-10T10:33:00.001-06:00

1 all Knowing first grader (“Mom, I got used to first grade SOOO fast.”)
1 nervous Kindergartener (changed his clothes three times)
1 sad little sibling (the only one who cried)
1 anxious mother (“Wait! don’t you need just one more hug?”)

Good luck kids!

Last of Summer

2010-09-10T10:24:00.001-06:00

As our last summer hurrah we spent some time at the reservoir near my old home town. In honor of the occasion, and in keeping with tradition, we didn’t let the kids bring their swimming suits since my parents were usually too poor to afford suits. Yes, long ago I used to be the naked baby at this very same lake…. ah memories!

Points for Mom

2010-08-10T10:13:00.001-06:00

Last night we were all cleaning up for bed. I was in the boys room helping (persuading) Kipper and Isaac to clean up the cars when Liz walked in and announced “Isaac gets 1 point, Kipper gets 1000 points and Mom gets 12 points.”

Joe said, “Gee honey, that’s not even good enough for runner-up.”

Maybe next time mom.

Boy Name Dilemmas

2010-06-04T20:59:00.001-06:00

Many of you know that we are going to introduce yet another Ostenson boy into the world this September. So far so good except we seem to have hit a brick wall when it comes to naming this little one. Joe and I, being overly thoughtful, overly idealistic and overly symbolical, have run out of meaningful, faith promoting, character building, and otherwise cool names that also don’t sound awfully outlandish….at least we think. It doesn’t help that there are nine uncles and twelve male cousins in the immediate family plus the scores of Hulets and Strebels that populate the Salt Lake Valley. So we really feel like we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Just to give you a glimpse: we considered Melchizedek for a whole day and then it dawned on us that it might be a little embarrassing to not be able to spell your own name as a sixteen year old. Eros was a slightly better alternative but again we have to think about those teen years (“so guess who I’m named after baby …”) We tried on Gideon, Nimrod and Teancum thinking that it is possibly cool to name your son after a warrior, but then we decided not to ask for trouble, since we are likely to get it anyway. Nicholas is too jolly, Wolfgang is too brooding. Amadeus seems a little cumbersome and possibly guilt rendering. We had a whole list of names given to us by Joe’s brother that have ‘inappropriate connotations’ some that I never ever would have guessed…so we just avoided those entirely. Even though we do really like the “Avatar” cartoons I told Joe that we can’t name our son Aang, or Sokka. We were inspired by the Lost season finale and tried out Desmond for a while only to find out that it means “one from South Munster”. How lame is that?

So one day we were in the car, we had just finished a lively conversation with some members of Joe’s family who decided that I was being way to picky about this little boy’s name…possibly I am…anyway; we decided to ask the kids. ‘What do you think we should name the baby?’ I think Kipper said Melissa or something like…he still thinks we should have a girl. Liz was quiet. “How about Shadrack,” I said, I was on this kick that Shad sounds like a cooler Chad…don’t worry that one passed. “How about Gideon?” Joe said . Liz said, “I can’t even remember those names! Just call him Bob!”

So welcome to the family, Bob.

What does it mean to Believe?

2010-03-17T14:46:00.001-06:00

I have to say that (most of the time) I have loved having my sweet four year old at home this year. Since Liz is gone in the mornings Kipper and I get to go on adventures together…usually to the grocery store. The other day we were out running all the errands that piled up during our sick week and I got to hear a little more of just how this guy thinks about things. Here’s how it went:

Kip, from the back seat: “Mom, I believe in EVERYTHING”

Me, thinking: “I guess I do too, bud.”

Kip: “But I DON’T believe in coffee and alcohol and cigarettes.”

Me: “You’re right, those things are bad for our bodies.”

Pause.

Kip, sighing: “Mom, I believe in Black Tacos…!”

Kip’s Belief:

1 four year old

1 black taco from Taco Bell last October (now discontinued… “sigh”)

1 Article of Faith that I’m not sure we grownups understand

I sure do miss my four year olds when they grow up….

Has it really been that long?

2010-03-14T17:28:00.001-06:00

So, I have recently been generating controversy over some of my strong opinions concerning gender roles and marriage. As an example, I thought (for a while) that women were supposed to maintain the blog. I was sure the proclamation meant something like that when it said that women should nurture. Anyway, I've since repented and decided that I could share in my responsibility to blog-readers.

I suppose I should start at Miami, since that is the first exciting thing to happen since Liz woke up with nightmares three months ago. I flew there three weekends ago to attend a conference with a bunch of smart Doctor types (of philosophy) like me. We talked a lot of steam for a few hours and spent the rest of the time enjoying the Miami weather in the middle of February.

I presented on what to some might seem the most unlikely of topics: the connection between psychology and ecology, or the parallels between our relationships to people and our relationships to creation. It was the most effective conference presentation I've given in the four or five years I've been doing academia, and likely the most fruitful. I was fortunate enough to tag along with some of the best minds of this coming generation and we had a great discussion during the conference.

But you don't want to hear about that, as must I as I could go on an on about it. What you really want to know about are my Epicurean adventures. So I'll start with the rental car: I split my trip (hotel, food, car, etc) with a group of students and, since I was arriving first, I was the designated driver. When I got to the rental car company, a cherry-red convertible Mustang was sitting smiling at me by the front door. I turned to Sam, the guy with whom I'd flown in, and said, "we should rent a convertible." To make a long story short, the guy at the counter gave us a screaming deal and we drove away from Avis with this:

In all honesty, the primary reason I got it is because I thought that as I went back and forth from the airport to the hotel, everyone would be happy to ride in a Mustang convertible. I wasn’t really sure how much I’d enjoy it. But I enjoyed it. Oh yes, I enjoyed it. It was worth far more than the extra $100 I paid.

By the way, lest you think I thought I was cool driving around Miami in this car, you should know that on the way to the hotel, a Rolls Royce passed me and, not ten seconds later, a Ferrari followed. Our Mustang was white-trash compared to the number of Bentley’s, Mercedes’, Maserati’s, Aston Martins, and other cars that characterize the amount of money floating around down there. Probably the best part was when we drove to Key Biscayne. Sam wanted me to put the top down (in spite of the threatening rain clouds), so I pulled off to do so. As we were sitting there, a bright red Lamborghini ($250,000 car) with its top down pulled out in front of us. Sam said it best: “I don’t really feel that cool right now.”

Here are just a couple other scenes from my Epicurean ad venture:

We went to the beach Sunday afternoon to commune with nature (in the spirit of my conference presentation). The cruise ships were going out from port, the water was warm enough to swim in, and I was so relaxed, I actually wanted to go on a cruise. What a weird feeling.

Here are the trees as we left the beach while the sun was setting. Leaving Miami Beach at Sunday around 6:30 was quite an adventure. We had the top down and five people piled into a car really on meant for two. Traffic was jammed almost all the way into Miami, and you know what? I didn’t mind at all. In fact, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed being stuck in traffic. (That’s my shoulder in the brown t-shirt.)

And finally, I know this is backwards, but those of us from the Western half of the US are used to the sun setting over the ocean. In Miami, is rises over the ocean, so it seems fitting to end my trip with a sun rise. This view is of the bay across the street from our hotel. All in all, it wasn’t a bad trip.

Of course, it had to come to end. I drove our minivan home from the airport and lamented the entire way that it wasn’t a Mustang. Beth had to be pretty patient with me. It wasn’t long after I got home that it snowed. A cold reminder that all good things must come to an end. But I was a good sport and took the kids out to make a snowman:

And then reality hit the next weekend. After bath time, Kip was complaining about a stomach ache. As we got the other kids ready for bed, Kip decided to expel his stomach ache all over his bed and his bedroom floor.

And that was only the beginning.

About every 1/2 hour until ten that night, Kipper got rid of a new stomachache. Then, at ten, it didn’t end. Isaac woke up and started doing the same thing. Both Beth and I spent the first part of that night on the floor with our boys – I with Kip and Beth with Ike – putting bowls to their faces every half hour. About 2am, it ended and Beth and I finally laid down together for a few hours of sleep. It certainly wasn’t Miami.

Thursday it hit Beth. Liz and I are the only two who haven’t yet caught the bug. But cross your fingers or pray or both – this thing tends to hang out for a few days before striking.

Finally, this weekend has been very busy as well. But not with Epicurean gallivanting, nor with late night carpet-scrubbing. Yesterday, while Beth was off judging some music festival and the kids were playing with friends, I ran my first official 5K since high school: the Rex Lee Run.

Those familiar with Rex Lee know he was not only an avid runner, but also died of cancer just after being released as BYU’s president. This is the run’s 15th year – and my first – raising money for cancer research. Running was both painful – primarily because I didn’t run for a week after coming back from Miami – and something of a pleasure; I ran in honor of my father.

Opposition in all things

1 Weekend of bachelor fun

1 Weekend of pure, having-children reality

1 Weekend where pleasure and pain seem to be the same thing

Nightmares and Unicorns

2009-12-05T05:54:00.001-07:00

It’s 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. It used to be so easy to sleep until 8 or 9 on Saturdays – even 7. But not this week. This week, I finally finished my dissertation, which should come as a relief. Instead, the last push threw off my whole Circadian thing and since I turned the actual dissertation into my committee, I’ve woken up at 5 a.m., 6:15 a.m., and now 5:20 a.m. for the past three mornings. But at least I get to blog again, right?

It hasn’t all been bad, though. The reason I’m awake it because Liz came to bed after having a nightmare. I usually let her hang out a little bit before taking her back to bed. This morning, I thought she was asleep when I picked her up. (By the way, she was lucky to be picked up – Kipper came to bed two hours earlier and when I went to pick him up, I actually pushed him out of bed.)

As I took her down the hall, back to sleep under the Christmas tree, she asked for her unicorn. See, her parents are the default comforters when she has a nightmare. But when her parents bring her back to bed – which we invariably do sooner than she’d like – she asks for her stuffed unicorn, who (she claims) will come and protect her in her dreams and nightmares when she needs.

I sure am glad she has that unicorn. Not so much to protect her from her nightmares – her mom and I can do that just fine. But I think that unicorn has become something of a symbol to me of how simple it is to find comfort and protection from the nightmares of life, if we will only believe.

Peace and Comfort

1 Unicorn

43:50 Alma

Hand-Me-Downs and Hidden Treasures

2009-10-22T14:58:00.001-06:00

Living in the poor college town that we do, means we see a lot of hand-me-downs. Dr. O and I have purchased exactly one piece of furniture in our seven years of marriage. My whole three bedroom condo is filled with 2nd hand furniture, and we have a lot of furniture…for a three bedroom condo. Yard sales are rampant, usually filled with children’s clothes dating back to the prehistoric era. Everyone holds onto everything because even if you don’t need it, there will probably be a poor university student down the road who might. Our local thrift store no longer accepts donations of furniture because by the time the couch makes it to the furniture store it has been used by five different families whose children have managed to break it and spoil it; then it has passed into the dorms where it has changed apartments exactly 42 times. It becomes lower and lower to the ground as the legs give way, the upholstery becomes a muddy grayish color, it has been pieced together with duck tape, and because the springs are all entirely uncovered and there is no longer any possible spot to place ones behind…. the couch gets dragged to the thrift store. Because this happens so often in our smallish town….no more furniture donations!

This particular hand-me-down has a pretty good story. My friend (who has two little girls) went to her husband’s great-aunt’s home (really), sometime this fall. The weather was cold and the girls didn’t have jackets. Mrs. Great Aunt happened to have two jackets in her closet, left there by some other family member. Mrs. Great Aunt, had kept the jackets for years knowing that someday they would come in handy (which they did). My friend passed the jackets on to me because they are made for boys. Giovanni fell in love with this jacket almost right away. Red happens to be his favorite color but I think he likes it because I made a grimace when I first saw it. Understanding the history of our town I am sure this jacket is at least as old as I am. Denim lasts forever you know.

Anyway as we were walking home from school the other day, my four year old decided to really break in his “new” jacket by filling the pockets with acorns. Inside the left pocket however we discovered a new treasure, some plastic pilot’s wings with a “Super N” as Gio calls it.

Pretty cool when you are only four years old. Now not only do we have “new” favorite jacket but we have a “new” favorite toy as well.

Thanks a lot.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

2009-10-21T16:12:00.001-06:00

Six reasons we like our six year old:

1. she still likes to play dress up better than anything else

2. she has a hardcore sweet tooth, and takes her black licorice like a man

3. she always let’s her little brother win

4. she fills up her coloring books and “improves” the pictures by filling in the blanks and adding her own doodles

5. she loves to tell stories and share her dreams from the night before

6. she wishes she had six little sisters to tuck into bed with her, but she is content to snuggle with her two little brothers instead.

Happy Birthday Sweet Six!

Happy Anniversary

2009-10-12T09:04:00.003-06:00

517 years ago, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered this big, fat continent in the middle of the ocean that got in the way of his search for a water route to India. Though he wasn't the first person to set foot on the America's (there were tons of people here already), everyone in Europe still pretended like he was, and he became an international hero! Then everyone started coming here because there was this thing called the American Dream that everyone thought was so cool compared to wherever they were living. This Dream is best characterized in the books of Steinbeck, especially The Grapes of Wrath. Ha ha!

But seriously, though...

510 years later, my wife and I got married. That was the second most important event that occurred on this continent. So, on behalf of all my many personalities, may I say a hearty happy anniversary to my lovely wife! (who probably won't see this post for another few days - which means I'll have to actually SAY something to her before the day is up...)

The Marriage of Doctor O and the Missus

1 Year of newlywed bliss

1 Year of raising a daughter, disturber of bliss

1 Year of anticipating a second child and buying a new dresser, then finding our apartment is getting smaller

1 Year of having two children, discovering postpartum bliss (and realizing it requires a little postpartum everything else), then buying our first home - thanks Christopher Columbus! (we named our second child after you!)

1 Year of not having newborns or nursing babies, finding more energy to put our kids to bed earlier and to stay up later, realizing that bliss, though fleeting, is still possible, developing our talents on the diamond and in the concert hall, because we seem to have so much time, then realizing that the more we develop our talents, the less time we have, but we still love each other, so we decide to have another baby (is that was love is?)

1 Year of having another child, this time a world-mover in more ways than one, but particularly because we thought we had so much time and suddenly realized how quickly illusions fall when babies arise (or was it just neglect), but still decide to cultivate our talents, which usually means that Wednesday nights, we hire a babysitter, then go our separate ways, only to realize later we have no money to hire a babysitter for the weekend, when we can finally be together - and this time, the kids go down later and we go down earlier - but as our baby grows, hope springs (eternal, right?) and we anxiously await the day when he will sleep for more than four hours at a time, when he'll stop pushing older kids down (that may never happen), and when I can have my wife back!

1 Year of anticipating things calming down when, really, what happens is I get close to graduating with my PhD finally, but instead get this raging illness in my lungs, right before another raging illness makes for a busy summer, from which I finally return to see that the university I HOPED to graduate from has hired me full time and expects me to finish my dissertation while I'm working as a visiting professor - well that's great, since we lived off credit cards for a whole summer, except upon receiving my first paycheck, it suddenly dawns on me how long it'll be before summer is paid off; meanwhile, the Missus weans our son, but for some reason neither one of us feels much more energy, and while I play on two softball teams (which sometimes means three or four games in one week), we're still getting babysitters for nights when we're both "cultivating" our talents, and the Missus is sitting second chair for the first UV Symphony concert, which means she practices a lot during the day and by the end, is so tired that even putting the kids to bed is a chore - and it gets later; in fact, the kids' bedtime almost corresponds to our bedtime now. Whew!

Thanks, Christopher Columbus! If it weren't for you, maybe our lives wouldn't be so complicated! I lied, by the way, we didn't name our second after you.

Happy Anniversary, anyway.

Our Dream House

2009-09-25T21:25:00.002-06:00

Someday…

Notice the yard…

and the flowers on top.

Can’t get much better than that!

More Cookies!

2009-09-10T20:50:00.002-06:00

Okay so I'm not the Chocolate Chip Cookie Mom I hoped to be...But I did make more cookies this week and I thought they turned out quite good. Giovanni, my lonely four year old, helped me. I tweaked this oatmeal cookie recipe a little and this is what I came up with:

Cranberry Dark Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 Tbs. molasses
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
6 oz. dark chocolate bar
1 cup dried cranberries

Cream the butter. Add sugar, eggs molasses and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients. Chop up the chocolate bar...or let your son beat at it with the rolling pin, and add to the mix with the cranberries. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

Miracles of Technology

2009-09-03T19:15:00.004-06:00

Back when I was a boy, I remember we had this really long phone cord because, for a while, all we had was one phone in the kitchen. The cord was long enough to stretch to my sisters' room, because my oldest sister used to go into her room and close the door while she was on the phone - probably with some guy. Now, she and the rest of us have access to one of the most amazing technologies ever invented: the cell phone.

I had a cell phone once in 2001. It was really cool, because I could download baseball scores in the middle of class. But then the expense got to be too impractical and I stopped paying for it. It wasn't until 6 years later that I got another one - this time prepaid. Needless to say, I don't use it all too much - at least, that is, to make phone calls.

Today, I discovered another wonder of this technology. While I was walking to the bus stop, I spontaneously began talking to myself. Immediately feeling how foolish I must look, I realized that all I had to do was pull out my cell phone and say whatever I had to say to myself into the phone! No one would ever know!

To talk to yourself without looking crazy
1 Cell phone

I could hug the person who invented cell phones.

First Day of School

2009-08-30T20:31:00.001-06:00

1 five year old girl

1 melancholy little brother

1 oblivious little brother

1 large backpack

1 new outfit

1 school-the same school her Grammy attended

=Good luck this year sweetheart!

Summer Daze

2009-08-26T21:41:00.006-06:00

Beppina starts school tomorrow so I guess our summer is officially ended…over before it begins it seems. Ah well, I try not to complain to much and I do love the Autumn. Here is our last Hurrah for summer!

Summer Hurrah:

Water

More water

A handful of neighbor kids

One smallish climbing tree

Stuff to haul up the tree

Some more water, please?

Good bye summer!

Excuses, Excuses

2009-08-26T11:13:00.003-06:00

So I must have made some sort of secret pact with myself to never make excuses. It's starting to wear on me, so here's my excuse. I have had one crazy summer and that is why I'm not defending my dissertation before school starts. If I could tell my department chair this, it would ease a little bit of pressure here at work, but I guess I can't make excuses. So in the spirit of self-absorbed blogging, I give you:

One Pretty Good Excuse of a Summer
1 Invitation to a visiting position
1 Hiring Freeze (= one "rescinded" visiting offer)
40+ Job Applications
0 Interviews
1 Prospect of being a student for another year
1 More invitation to a visiting position
1 Trip to Santa Fe
1 Monkey internship
3 Very important interviews
1 Very sick father
1 Father's funeral
1 More term in the internship office
1 New semester
1 Week of meetings
2 Courses to think about (including one new prep)

Trip to Toronto

2009-08-22T07:02:00.011-06:00

So I spent the first part of August in Toronto and I thought since, hey, this is a blog!, I ought to tell you about the trip and share some of my observations. Now, I've been to Canada a few times before, so this wasn't the first trip. But I'm not sure I was quite as old the last times I went, so obviously I was looking at Canada from a new lense (by the way, today is my 30th birthday - see, I'm wise now). So here is the narration of my trip in pictures:

To save money (and it did save money), me and my buds flew into Buffalo and drove into Toronto, which of course, necessitated a stop in Niagra Falls. Here is Dr. O neatly framed by the ugly American falls and the wondrous Horseshoe falls. If you've never been to Niagra Falls, I'm not going to say you should go, especially for your honeymoon - it is likely the biggest tourist trap in the world, next to Venice. But if you're amazed by lots of water going over a tall cliff and you're in the area, you ought to stop.

Here was our next destination: the 8 hotel with lots of Chinese writing on the front. We didn't really know what the hote was, but we decided to stay there cause it looked cool. And, no surprise, we were in the middle of Chinatown Toronto, down by Kensignton Market.

Okay, so I can't help making this joke since I was in Toronto for the American Psychological Association annual convention. As a psychologist,

one is permitted a quota of dirty Freudian jokes every month and I have yet to use my quota. So I took some pictures of downtown Toronto to

show that, over the course of history, men have been driven by the power of their own...well...members, as Freud would say, and it is manifest particularly in their architechture, both old and new.

Oh, and if you look real close at the picture on the right, I'll give you a little tip for driving in Toronto: don't drive an ugly car; you're likely to get hailed as a taxi. I was quite surprised at all the ugly cars driving around Toronto - then I realized they were all taxis. So a tip for the tourist.

Toronto, as you know, is a large city in a socialist country. I've got family members who are afraid of socialism here in the states and I'm famous for letting them know that if the US were to turn socialist, things probably wouldn't look much different. It's not like we'll just turn socialist over night, right?

Well, I think I'm probably right. Toronto didn't seem a whole lot different. In fact, here's a picture of a beggar in Toronto:

Wait: I thought socialism was supposed to take care of everyone. So why are there beggars in Toronto? Maybe cause that cop is giving him a ticket for begging and his socialist paycheck doesn't cover the ticket.

Well, that's about all I saw that was too interesting. I did go see the Toronto Blue Jays play, but that wasn't too interesting, since - hey - it's the Blue Jays. But I did get to see a man playing the bagpipes. I love big city street performers.

One good trip to Toronto

1 Funky Chinese meal (only as daring as eel)

1 Almost-Americanized Vietnamese meal

1 Almost-Americanized Italian meal

2 Delicious street dogs, just outside the Toronto Convention Centre (Center)

3 Visits to the gelataria

A love Letter

2009-08-17T14:08:00.003-06:00

Giovanni, my four year old, received his first love note last week. The picture is drawn by the lovely Miss Emily, a fellow pupil in the turtle class at swimming lessons. Here's how the exchange went:
E: "This is for G."
G: looks blankly at the picture
Me: "Oh, how nice. Say thank you G."
G: mumbles "thank you."
E: emphatically "It's because I love him!"

I took the picture as my mouth formed a silent "Oh". Emily's mom quickly added "But only as a friend."
"Of course..." I said. Emily rolled her eyes. Quite the grown up.
As we made our way to the car we were bombarded with Emily's 'hello's' and 'goodbyes' directed toward my son. Giovanni remained silent. Beppina and I repressed our giggles. I suspect this might be the first of many...

Fish!

2009-08-12T13:05:00.002-06:00

I made fish the other night...Oh, how I miss living on the coast and the easy, cheep and yummy fresh fish. Since being so far inland I used to just avoid fish, but in my longing for seafood I have ventured into the unknown world of fish buying and cooking, and surprisingly my kids and even my anti-fish husband seem to like it. I've developed a recipe that even works well with the fish that make their way up to Utah Territory. Here goes!

2-3 fish fillets (I don't really worry about what kind, I just look for fish that is fresh, local, unfrozen, and without added color. When you buy fish cook it the same day.)
juice from 1 lemon
1/4 cup of feta cheese
1 package Italian dressing mix (I like Good Seasons)
2 Tbs butter

At least 1 hour before baking, squeeze the lemon juice over the fish and return to the fridge. The lemon juice takes away much of the "fishy" taste that fish acquire from sitting. When you are ready to bake preheat the oven to 425. Grease your baking dish with butter. Place the fillets in the pan and add a little more lemon juice. Sprinkle the dressing mix over all the fillets. Sprinkle the cheese over the fillets, as much or as little as you like. Dot the top with butter. Bake for 7-10 minutes depending on the thickness or until the fish will flake away with a fork. Check often and try not to overcook as this will dry out the fish.

How to While Away...Take two

2009-08-05T13:04:00.004-06:00

1 five year old girl
1 new box of crayons
1 old coloring book (there is always plenty of room in the margins)

Something is magic in a new box of crayons...

The Curse of the Purple Toothbrush

2009-07-30T16:18:00.005-06:00

It happened again. It's going to wreck our marriage. Dr. O and I are going on a date tonight and as I am cheerfully getting ready....you know makeup, perfume, brush teeth, deodorant, things that don't normally happen....that's when I did it. I reach for the toothbrush and start brushing. About halfway through my brushing session I realize that I have the PURPLE toothbrush! Drat! The purple toothbrush is not mine. It belongs to Dr. O. I get the blue one. I'm not sure how this absurd discombobulation of toothbrushes occurred, because I always pick the girl color, but somehow, this time, it all came out wrong. The problem is, I always reach for the purple Reach....not only that but I have a tendency to demolish my toothbrush. After I use a toothbrush for three weeks it looks like I've been using it for three years. The blue strip is gone. The bristles are almost totally flattened. It looks like the toothbrush that you have been cleaning toilets with (that in no way should reflect how you view the quality of my mouth or my speech). So I have been merrily demolishing two toothbrushes this round because the only time I remember who's is who's is when Dr. O grabs his first. He ALWAYS grabs, or rather snatches, his first when we are together, which is very helpful. But when I am alone just cannot come to grips with this blue toothbrush thing. My sweet husband tries to be patient, but I know he hates it. Every time he looks at his PURPLE toothbrush, I can see him eying the flattened bristles and the disappearing blue strip, and I know he is wondering how many times I have used it. Tons! I have used it tons and tons! I try to tell him that it is kind of like kissing me....really he should be thrilled that I am using his toothbrush....sigh....I think it is time to buy new toothbrushes, I guess our marriage is worth the four dollars. This time I get the girl color.

1 purple toothbrush +1 blue toothbrush =1 confused Missus

Hairdos

2009-07-30T12:30:00.002-06:00

This is for Lara...I'm glad you like the do! I like to do my daughters hair...however, sometimes Beppina doesn't have the patience for me and sometimes I don't have the patience for her! I have checked out a few hair-do blogs and find that most of them are way too complex or just silly looking; not generally conducive to mother daughter bonding. The one blog that I like is Girly Do's by Jenn. Generally simple, fun and easy...and not stupid looking!

Recipe for a cool hairdo:
1 cool blog (not this one)
1 cool daughter (get your own)
1 cool mom (it's okay if you're not always cool)

The Month of July

2009-07-27T20:16:00.010-06:00

Here we are at the end of July and it has been quite an eventful month. I won't bore you with travelogue - mostly 'cause we didn't go anywhere - but I will bore you with some of this month's activities:

On the third of July, we went early in the morning to watch the balloon festival. They launch about 6:30a - we made it just in time - then they spend the next hour and a half dropping things on the ground in some sort of balloon competition. For the most part, the kids like the donuts that we buy for this occasion - it's likely the only time they get donuts. Then the sun rises so it's shining right in our face, so the kids get bored and want to go home. Perhaps next year we'll get there earlier and sit on the opposite side of the field...

Daughter Beppina got all gussied up for the fourth (which we actually spent up in Idaho with my mother - so I lied, this is a travelogue). The missus likes to do those fancy doos that make little girls sparkle, so she did this patriotic star for the 4th of July. We spent the evening ducking illegal fireworks that my brother shot off at a park near the airport. There were no casualties, but there were a lot of glowsticks, s'mores in mom's backyard, and even a night in the tent.

After we got back home, it started to get really hot. Believe it or not, it took until the middle of July to get hot here in Utah. When it gets hot here, we have just a few options: either we can while away a summer day or sprout wings and go crazy in the house. That's what son Giovanni likes to do.

Days like that, the missus doesn't have a lot of patience. Our children spend a lot of time getting ants wet.

An alternative which we decided to explore was a trip to our local reservoir. The water was muddy and it cost us $10 to park the van, but all in all, it seems the kids had a good time. Little Raphael spent a little time in the waves, eating licorice:

The other kids got their life vests on and dared to venture out past the weeds. I got muddy:

All in all, the $10 surcharge and the dead bugs didn't spoil our fun.

Finally, we spent the 24th of July in classic pioneer fashion: lighting off fireworks before dark so we could put the kids to bed before ten. There was some good homemade ice cream that got mostly eaten by our neighbors and friends - there was even a batch that didn't quite turn out, so noone got to eat it but us...mmm...

That was our month in a nutshell. Now it's back to writing the ol' dissertation for me (okay, I confess, I'm not a doctor yet...) and going crazy with bat-boy in the house for the missus.

Sleepy Children
1 Balloon fest
1 Fancy hair-do
1 Bat-boy adventure
1 Piece of licorice and some waves
Lots of ice-cream and fireworks
$10

How to While Away a Hot Summer Day

2009-07-17T12:55:00.003-06:00

1 four year old boy
1 Spiderman water bottle (it's okay if it's broken, logo is optional)
268 free refills
infinite number of things to dump water on: ants, rocks, feet, flowers, little brothers, older sisters, etc.

Salsa, or summer goodness

2009-07-15T14:48:00.004-06:00

Sometimes when I am alone I talk to myself....okay, all the time I am alone I talk to myself. Sometimes I have a pseudo conversation but mostly I just pretend off-the-wall things. Like yesterday I was pretending that I was on food network teaching everyone how to make fresh salsa. I really do like to make salsa. I like to eat salsa. It tastes like summer. It's easy and I think I have a good formula. So here is my formula. And just imagine me in my kitchen talking to myself because I will never be on the food network!

Salsa
or
summer goodness: chopped up small

start with the fruit

(Tomatoes...or if you are feeling it: mangoes, pineapple or peaches)
this is the base and you should have more of this than anything else

add mild peppers
(any color of bell, or Anaheim peppers)
I usually add about 1/2 as much as I have fruit, but you may use as much as you like

add onions
a little less than the peppers

add cilantro
a little less than the onion but don't skimp...cilantro brings a good fresh taste to salsa

add hot pepper
jalapeno or Serrano
chop this up really small, as small as you can get it
I always start with about 1/2 as much as I think I might need...you can always add more but you can't take it out. Peppers are hottest if they come from hot climates. Peppers from Mexico are hotter than peppers from Idaho. Generally your store will tell you where the peppers are from so you can know what to expect. The hottest part of the pepper is just around the seeds so if you want to you can cut that out. I find that a salsa without hot peppers is somewhat flat, so even if you want a mild salsa you should add a little.

something acidic
(vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice)
each will give a slightly different flavor but you need one of these to bring the flavors together

Salt
enough to balance the acid

Sugar
just a little to bring out the tomato flavor, you can skip this if you a using a sweet fruit

Now you have your basic salsa. Chop it how you like it, or put it in the blender. I can tell when I have a good mix by how pretty it is, a good mix of colors will give a good flavor. Mix it up, taste frequently and let it sit just a bit before serving. You might also like to add: Black beans, corn, tomatillas, zucchini, garlic powder or cumin.

If your salsa is too hot: add more fruits and vegetables; beans and zucchini especially will soak up the heat. If that doesn't work try cooking the salsa; that will soften the heat considerably.

...and of course, talking to yourself makes the salsa taste just a little bit better...

Happiness

2009-07-10T12:01:00.003-06:00

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
~Samuel Johnson

Unexpected Things that Make Me Happy

Giving cookies to a fat baby. It must be a fat baby though, it is not as fun when they are thin.
Pushing my kids super high on the swing set. Super, super high.
Listening to opera music. I know, that's just weird.
Throwing away toys. Nothing satisfies me more than to get rid of a whole bunch of obnoxious toys.
Playing Kreutzer Etudes. I always hated etudes when I was younger. Now I love the constancy and the flow of them. Funny how we change.
Pickles. No explanation needed here.
Baseball Tonight. For some reason when we get home at the end of the day and my honey turns on Baseball Tonight, it feels good. Even when the Cubs lose.

Redemption

2009-07-08T13:35:00.004-06:00

No one wants to play through the loser's bracket, so losing in a double-elimination tournament is always best to avoid. Most important is to avoid losing your first game of the tournament, because then playing through the loser's bracket just means you have to win more games or go home. But that's exactly what my city team did just a week ago. Well, you say, it happens, right? Sure it does. But when it happened to my team, it also happened to me. You see, with two outs in the bottom of the last inning, I was the tying run, up to bat. Hero situation. Slow. Pitch. Softball.

I grounded out.

Now, we're not just playing through the loser's bracket, we're playing through the loser's bracket.

Monday was our first loser's-bracket game and we take the field first. I'm playing left because our left-fielder is pitching (I usually play rover - the tenth position in softball). I'm thinking to myself, this is a moderately tough bracket, but I'm a moderately tough softball player. I've got to redeem myself so everyone forgets I got the last out in the first tournament game. What better place for me to do that than here, in the outfield, where playing well is second nature to me.

So imagine this: first man up to bat, blooper to right; second man up to bat, grounder to rover; third man up to bat, blooper to rover. Bases loaded, number four coming up. In baseball, they call number four the clean-up batter, because he's the first one to take a shot at "cleaning up" the loaded bases in a game (which rarely happens in reality, but for some reason Monday, was the case). Well, I was ready. I was going to redeem myself.

Fourth man up to bat, line drive down the left field line. I will pick that ball up and throw it home. I will pick that ball up and throw it home. I will...and the ball bounces right over my glove and rolls to the fence. By the time choice words were spoken and the ball was finally flying to the third baseman, fourth man up to bat was 10 steps from home.

0 outs; four runs in the first inning; not the best way to start a game.

Redemption
1 Blooper to right
1 Grounder to rover
1 Blooper to rover
1 Line drive that bounces casually over your glove

This recipe is guaranteed to make your teammates forget you got the last out of the previous game.

Water is Cool

2009-07-07T20:12:00.006-06:00

How to Float a Pin in Water

1 glass of water
1 sewing pin
a heaping tablespoon of patience

P.S. It's not really floating it is just being held by the surface tension of the water. Here is one my five year old did. If you like this check out Walter Wick's book A Drop of Water, and learn more about how cool water is.

Memory of my father

2009-07-02T18:13:00.006-06:00

When my father got really sick, my sister starting making a photo slideshow of my father's life, with a soundtrack. One of the songs that accompany the photos was one of those new-fangled versions of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The video played and re-played during the three hours my family greeted guests at my father's viewing, so in the background of this somber (well, as somber as my family can be - which actually wasn't very somber) occasion was this constant, though quiet, soundtrack of my dad's life. And sometimes we'd hear Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I imagine every time I hear that song, from now until I die, I'll think of my dad.

My wife has one of those new-fangled versions, though it's different than the one playing on my dad's video. Still, her CD was playing tonight (yes, we still listen to CDs) and once again, I heard Somewhere Over the Rainbow playing in the background of my life. I was picking up after my son at the time, who had spread all the pens and pencils we own on the ground to lay the plans for a house. One of those pencils was a black-painted Scripture Marker that is popular among Mormons. I picked that pencil up while Somewhere Over the Rainbow played.

Anyone who knew my father - Mormon or not - knew he loved the Mormon church. And he was a seminary teacher by trade, so he had a lot of those pencils sitting around the house while I was growing up. They remind me of a lot of things - mostly of the number of times I went to the junk drawer searching for a regular pencil and could only find a couple of old Scripture Markers (which, by the way, only write in red). But when I picked up the only Scripture Marker pencil we own this evening, I was reminded of my father and his love for all things Mormon - but in particular, his love for the scriptures.

I thank God he left that love to me before he died.

One Memory of My Father
1 New-fangled version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow
1 Black-painted Scripture Marker
Hundreds of early mornings around the kitchen table, reading from the Good Books

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-07-02T11:54:00.002-06:00

I've decided that I want to be a chocolate chip cookie mom. I think that there is something cozy and loving and friendly about chocolate chip cookies and that's the kind of mom I want to be. Generally I'm the stingy mom. I don't like junk food. No fruit snacks, no sugar cereal, no white bread and chips are only for field trips. We get desert once a week, and I throw away any leftover Halloween candy when my kids aren't looking. However in my quest to be a good mom, I can miss something. This week everyone is tired, everyone is a little sad and I think chocolate chip cookies can help a lot. I still firmly believe that one really good way to heal tiredness and sadness is by taking care of your body and that means eating right, but it sure can bring a lot of joy to your home when you sit around the table eating cookies and milk with your kids. So I decided to make more cookies! My mother has a fabulous cookie recipe and I have altered it slightly over the years to fit our family. Go make some cookies and give your kids a smile!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar

1 cup butter (softened, unless you are Becca)

2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 cup ground up oats (I just use a blender)
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. soda
1 pkg, semi sweet chocolate chips

Cream together butter and sugar. Add remaining ingredients. Drop onto cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

To make a blog

2009-06-30T21:08:00.003-06:00

Making a new blog is really easy, especially when you have good ol' Blogger to help you out. You simply point and click 80 times and voila!, you're online. Of course, blogs are really more like online diaries that you share with the world, so it takes a healthy dose of self-centeredness and a dash of self-importance. Check.

Then you need some cool pseudonyms so no one can really tell who you are (and so future employers won't know it's you making really odd rants about Obama and the state of affairs in Kentucky). And if you hope to be really popular, you need a creative idea and a little bit of wit.

And here you have our attempt at creating a blog. Hope you enjoy.

Create a blog:
1 Blogger
80 point and clicks
Healthy does of self-centeredness
1 Dash of self-importance
1 Cool pseudonym (or more, if there are more than one of you)
1 Creative idea
A little bit of wit

Mix it with years of patience, because that's how long you have to be online before people will take you seriously - oh, and you have to wait and see if you really are creative or not.

Laundry Soap

2009-06-30T15:40:00.007-06:00

My mother told my that she would cry if she ever had to make her own laundry soap. It made me think: Should I be crying? Then I remembered that my mother also cried when a large glass of milk was spilled because she knew there was not enough money to buy more. I've never cried over milk...and we have spilled a fair amount of milk in our family. Maybe it is my generation, after all I don't really need to make the soap, there will still be plenty of money even if I don't. As we emerge from graduate school I realize that we are poor, we have been poor for a long time....but being poor today is different than when my mom was poor. I remember her telling me of a time when they had only two things in the fridge. We have never been like that. In the book Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary decides to sell their blankets so that she can buy food for herself and her dad. It is summer time and though they will need the blankets in the winter, if they don't survive until then it won't matter if they had the blankets or not. It was a time I don't understand at all, but the stories help me to remember to be grateful for plenty of milk, blankets that I will never have to sell and cheap laundry soap. So here it is for anyone who thinks they are poor, or doesn't want to be poor or maybe for someone who just likes to make weird stuff like this!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

1/2 cup of Borax
1/2 cup of Washing Soda
1/3 of a "Fels Naptha" Soap bar
(All can be found in the laundry asile)
Water

Bring six cups of water to a boil. While the water is comin to a boil grate 1/3 of the soap bar with a cheese grater. When the water is boiling add your grated soap and stir until it is dissolved. When it is dissolved add 1/2 cup of borax and 1/2 cup of washing soda. Stir until disolved.

Now take 1/2 of the soap mixture, about 3 cups and pour it into an empty gallon milk carton. Add warm water slowly, to avoid suds, until the gallon is filled. Repeat with the remaining soap mixture.

To use: shake up the mix and add 1/2 cup to each batch of laundry.

Final price for 2 gallons of laundry soap (I didn't double check this):
$.33 for 1/3 of soap bar
$.30 for 1/2 cup of borax
$.20 for 1/2 cup of washing soda

final price $.83 for a batch of soap or about $.01 per load

I used my laundry soap yesterday and it seemed to work fine. You can also use Ivory soap instead of the Fels Naptha, it smells different and is gentler on fabrics but doesn't clean as deeply. Happy laundering!