Yellow Wallpaper

About once a month I have a few days that are just terrible. Everything is bleak and awful, I'm a terrible person, and my life is just plain hopeless. Than I wake up one morning and things are great again (well, things are less-than-great physically for a few more days, but mentally they are fine). Despite the fact that this happens regularly every 30 days, when I am in the middle of it I have a hard time remembering that what I am feeling is just temporary and will eventually go away if I just wait it out. Although some of the things I feel or say during those days may be true, or at least partially true, I should more closely examine my conclusions once my brain is a little more calm. Hence, last night's blog post and today's reconsideration of my thoughts.  A few years ago I read about an idea that, while it makes perfect sense, I'd never heard articulated so clearly before. For some reason it just had never penetrated into my brain, and obviously it didn't mak...

I've been feeling a bit melancholy the last few days. It's the kind of thing where there isn't a logical explanation for it, and I've been having a lot of really great experiences too so there's not an obvious external cause. I think it's just a combination of the usual monthly hormonal fluctuations, the stresses of adjusting to a new job, and the fact that I have the hardest time making sleep a priority for myself (that's a constant theme here, isn't it?).  First of all, the new job is great. I felt like taking my last job didn't make a lot of sense logically, but it felt right. This job made much more sense for me logically, but I wasn't feeling a strong prompting about it like I did last time. However, since being in my new position for the last two weeks I have really come to see that this is a great job for me in many ways, and I have also seen the ways in which my previous job and other experiences have prepared me for it. The first littl...

When I got home from my mission eleven years ago, everything I owned fit in a few suitcases and boxes. I had some books, clothes, pots and pans, a CD player, and other small things. I didn't own a car, a computer, or any furniture. When Mr. Fob and I got married shortly after that we moved into a one-bedroom apartment. We bought a loveseat at D.I., inherited a bed from family, and rented a kitchen table and chairs from the university. Now I live in a five-bedroom house and I own a car, a large amount of furniture, and even two refrigerators. There's a bedroom for each person in the family and one for guests. It's a bit ridiculous. I mostly enjoy my level of comfort and feel humbly blessed to have so much abundance, but sometimes I feel guilt at the high standard of living I enjoy compared to the rest of the world. Either way, I now have a lot of stuff. In addition to the stuff, I have a much more abundant life than I used to. I have three kids, three-hundred friends on Fa...

I wrote this yesterday and sat on it for a while. I probably should have just put these thoughts in my journal, but I decided to put them up here instead. I always hesitate to post serious stuff, because usually by the time I get it out of my brain and onto the screen I feel better, and then I just end up feeling sheepish when people try to give me sympathy. It's Leap Day again. Just like it was four years ago when I wrote this post. Early 2008 was a good time in our lives; we had a good year from the middle of 2007 until the fall of 2008. I don't regret too many things, but sometimes I regret the fact that I didn't just listen to my feelings and stay in Utah during the summer of 2008 instead of moving us to California. At the same time, I think regret is kind of silly. The past is done and over, and it is impossible to imagine redoing it because the threads of so many decisions wind together to make our lives. How can I judge the decisions of the past through my current...

If you are not offended by a bit of profanity, click here for a very funny commentary on life. If you didn't click on the link, it's a post about how it is easy to sit around not doing much except for those days when you get a burst of energy and decide to clean and take care of bills and answer emails; you know, all those things that responsible adults should do. Although I think I'm usually pretty responsible, largely because I have kids and I have a job with set hours, there are definitely a lot of areas of my life that feel like that. Sometimes I feel like I do the bare minimum and shove anything I can get away with over to the side to be dealt with in some future, nebulous "later". I was realizing the other day that, in some ways, the ease of modern living encourages inertia and sloth. Because the necessary tasks of feeding, sheltering, and clothing my family take relatively little effort, it is easy to make the rest of my life take little effort as well. I ...

Now that Halloween is behind us and November has started, I feel like I'm staring straight down the barrel of the holiday season. I love Thanksgiving and I love Christmas, but they can also be stressful. I've also already started feeling sad because those holidays, especially Christmas, used to mean a lot of spousal love and togetherness--things that I don't have anymore. I was in the storage room tonight getting something and I noticed the wrapping paper, and I realized that I'll be wrapping the kids' presents alone this year. Maybe I should buy blue wrapping paper in honor of the occasion. Christmas every year always brings up mixed feelings for me when it comes to gifts. I've always struggled with buying good gifts for people, and I always struggle with the fact that I feel like a grinch when I realize that we don't need anything. I know gifts are not about need , but it feels silly to ask for anything when we have so much. I look around at the cupboar...

In May I went to the dentist for the first time in about five years. Yes, I know I should have gone more regularly in the past. I have a lot of excuses, including some good ones like the moving around we have done and the occasional lack of dental insurance. I didn't think that skipping the dentist would be a big deal because I've had good teeth for most of my life. I also floss and brush every day and I don't drink soda, coffee, or tea. Well, after spending a very long time in the dentist's chair that day I learned a few things. I had several small cavities between my teeth. I also had to endure a deep cleaning of my teeth and gums to get off the stuff that had built up during my years without regular cleanings. Apparently I have been experiencing both periodontitis and gum recession . The dentist sent me away with special medicinal mouthwash and an appointment in a few weeks to fill my cavities. The appointment for my fillings was definitely the worst experience I...

This afternoon S-Boogie had a dress rehearsal for her dance class. Waiting the hour for her class to finish has become increasingly difficult as P.Bibby has gotten older, and I knew that today would be especially torturous for both the baby and Little Dude because we were in the Senior Center and there was nothing to do (plus the heat was on high and it was exceptionally stuffy). Today's weather was somewhat moderate for December so I decided to take the kids over to the park next door for a little bit of playground time. When I got there I realized that P. Bibby was probably big enough to try out one of the swings for babies. I was right; when I put her in the swing and started gently pushing it, her face lit up in a big grin and she began giggling. I love her giggling; she is my first child to giggle so freely and so often at such a young age. She really is a delightful baby and nearly every day I think about how much fun she is and what a joy it is to be her mom. And every time ...

The ladies at Segullah have a new anthology out that I really want to get and read. I read a review here and loved the first two quotes, one from Anne Morrow Lindbergh and the other by Sharlee Mullins Glenn. Lindbergh compares life to the ebb and flow of the sea tides, and Glenn compares motherhood to a dance, in which we have to be flexible and try to work together. I've been thinking about these kinds of things lately. A while ago I was reading someone's blog post about breastfeeding where she was complaining about the term 'feeding on-demand'. She didn't like the fact that it made the baby sound like some sort of taskmaster with the mother as her obedient slave. For this woman, nursing is more of a relationship, a give-and-take. I also resonated with that; sometimes my baby leads, sometimes I lead, but we try and work things out together. This week I've been riding the ups and downs of parenthood as usual. Some days I think 'wow, I really feel like things...

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. I was a junior in high school; I remember seeing something about it on TV in the classroom of a teacher that my friend and I liked to eat lunch with. The weird thing is that I mostly remember the day because I got my hair cut. After school I drove to the salon and had it chopped up to my ears, my first short hair-do in about eight years or so. During the last fifteen years I've often thought about that day and the particular combination of events. Other tragedies I've experienced have demonstrated the same thing; while we are getting our hair cut, planning our class schedules, eating, sleeping, playing games, someone is suffering. Times like these remind me that that Auden was right. Most of us see the splash and go on with our lives. Or we read about it in the paper and then throw that paper away in the recycling bin. But during the last fifteen years I've also learned that all of us will some day be Icarus,...

I think it's very easy for most of us to think of things that we aren't very good at. For a lot of reasons there is a human tendency to play down our accomplishments and to focus on the negative. There can be good reasons for this, because no one likes a narcissist, and because humility helps us see the things we can improve on. Lately, though, I keep feeling like I've been blessed with the ability to see ways in which I've made progress in my life. Sometimes I think it's good to take time to acknowledge ways in which we're doing well. Here are a few things I've recognized today: As I grow as a mother I really do have days when I feel like "hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this" (of course they're always followed by those days that are humbling in the worst way). This morning we got up and went to Church as usual; during Sacrament meeting Little Dude was particularly whiny and clingy and kept wanting to sit on my (nonexistent) lap. Afte...

A few weeks ago I read an interesting article about parents who forget and leave their children in the car. It was a horrible article to read, but fascinating at the same time. Several things stood out to me from it. First of all, a demographic survey reveals no common link between any of the parents that do this. They are all over the map, and even include parents that have gone through great time and expense to adopt children. It's certainly not a case of neglect or an absence of love. The article pointed out that these parents are often vilified in the media or by law enforcement (in many cases they are arrested and charged with neglect or even manslaughter). The writer theorized that the reason for our visceral reaction to this phenomena is the fact that in our subconscious we are afraid that we could be that normal parent who just forgets, and to escape that fear we must demonize them and turn them into the 'Other', some kind of non-human monster. Another, related poin...

This is a post that's been rolling around in my head all week, but we've been busy and I haven't had time to write it down and post it. Now it's late and I worry that my thoughts won't be very coherent, but I still thought I'd try and write it out to see what I come up with. The title of this post was inspired by a few things I've read recently on blogs by a variety of people. One poster works with the young women in her ward and has been troubled by their lack of ambition. They don't seem to have solid plans for their future and don't feel a lot of motivation to get educations or to even plan for much besides motherhood. Another post was on Segullah, discussing the importance of education for woman as a component of provident living. A third source was this article from the New York Times that discusses vocational education and manual labor, as well as the role that our chosen careers can play in determining our character and the quality of our liv...

I've always loved art, although I'm a very unartistic person. Lately I've been thinking about art and why we have it. Why do people feel a desire to create art? Write poems? Write stories? Sing? Dance? Sculpt? Build buildings? Why is every piece so different and why do we all have such different tastes? I don't really know the answers to these questions, and I think that the answers are myriad. Perhaps we want to teach a lesson, express our feelings, or just explore the aesthetic properties of color, shape, sound, or texture. Each of us experiences the world in a different way and I think that all forms of art are an attempt to put a piece of ourselves out into the universe in the best way we know how. Today I spent a lot of time looking through the slide show of the most recent LDS Church International Art Competition . I find it fascinating to see how so many different people interpret the gospel and share their testimonies through different types of art. I also know ...

This morning the kids got up early (like six o'clock) so we were all ready by nine (we don't start church until 11). I decided to kill some time by making cranberry orange muffins. I finished baking the treats and was prepared to sit down and enjoy a tasty snack with my kids, until they both started howling in protest. "We don't want muffins. I want my own snack. Muffins are messy!" (I think the 'messy' thing was just a ploy to get out of eating a muffin). S-Boogie sat down to eat a granola bar while giving the muffins dirty looks. I felt disappointed because I thought I was giving the kids a special surprise, and they just plain didn't want it. Well, it was mainly S-Boogie who didn't want it and Little Dude just followed along with her. I realized after a little while that her distress wasn't so much the fact that I had made muffins but that she is going through a very independent phase right now (well, she has been for most of her life). She...

Or, maybe not. For most of my life I have thought of myself as somewhat shy and introverted. I feel uncomfortable in large group situations and I'm generally not very assertive. I don't like to call people on the phone and I rarely go up to people I don't know and introduce myself or start up conversations. I also really hate being in charge of a group; telling other people what to do gives me anxiety like nothing else--another reason why I'm not sure I want to be a teacher. One of my professors shared with me the letter of recommendation she had written: she stated that I had a tendency to be soft-spoken. I've heard that description of myself numerous times and I would agree that I generally tend to have a "quiet voice". On the other hand, I think most people who know me in real life would hesitate to call me an introvert. Once I'm comfortable with people, I tend to take over and talk their ears off. When I come home late from visiting teaching or pre...

There's a bumper sticker I've seen around a few times during the last few weeks that's been irritating me. I actually don't mind politically motivated bumper stickers, and sometimes they even make me laugh (like "Who would Jesus bomb?"). But this one just bothers me: "My child was born at home." It's a simple statement, but I hate it because it just seems so divisive. I'm certainly not against home birth. I was born at home, as were my three younger siblings. I think it can be a great option for many women, and I wish we were a little closer to the British system in which home birth with a midwife is the default option. I wish more states would license midwives that attend home births and that more babies could be born peacefully at home without unnecessary interventions. I also think it's sad that the current climate of insurance costs and lawsuit fears has pushed doctors to do whatever it takes to produce a healthy baby, even at the ex...

I've been thinking lately about identity and the way people see us, and how we see them. This was partly inspired by reading a friend's blog who was talking about how she teaches piano students and arranges music and things like that. I realized that most people who have known me for the last few years would probably not think of me as a musician, or even musical. Yet all through high school I thought of myself as "musical" and it was an important aspect of my identity. I was in band for the first two years of high school and I also played the piano. I played for Young Women's as well as for extra things like baptisms, enrichment nights, etc. I also spent nearly a year playing piano for sacrament meeting in the Spanish-speaking ward that shared our building. For a few years I planned and coordinated an annual sacrament meeting program that the Young Women put on (it was modelled on the Primary program with musical numbers and talks). I also loved playing piano sol...

The other day at the grocery store I bought two containers of strawberries. I always check the label to see if they are from Oxnard, CA; this time there were two options, and I chose the Oxnard berries. Purely sentimental reasons. We moved to little Port Hueneme , CA (which is surrounded by Oxnard) when I was in fifth grade and stayed through the summer before my final year of high school. The smell of strawberries reminds me of the fields surrounding town, not just of strawberries, but onions, broccoli, lettuce, celery, and other vegetables. The drive to the stake center in a neighboring town was perfumed by farm smells. I'm sure that many of those fields have been covered in houses now, but Oxnard continues to produce a lot of vegetables. When I think of Oxnard I also think of the smells of eucalyptus trees, the feel of the ocean breeze on my face, the smell of rotting fish at the pier, hot Santa Ana winds, and the smell of wet earth from spring rain. My childhood memories are fu...

Several years ago I was a member of a message board for LDS women. One time a member posted her feelings about the fact that her sister was getting married outside of the temple to her boyfriend, because she was pregnant. This woman was upset because her parents were going to pay for her sister's wedding, and she didn't think that non-temple wedding deserved equal treatment with her own temple marriage. The reaction to this post was interesting; some agreed with her and felt that withholding a fancy wedding was a just punishment, others disagreed and thought that the parents deserved to treat their children equally and that the daughter was at least making a good choice in marrying her boyfriend. This experience has stuck in my mind because it opened my eyes to something I had not realized before: when we attack others it often reveals some kind of insecurity within ourselves. I realized this after reading a few comments that went something along the lines of "I followed ...