Mr. Fob is Awesome

Friday night we stayed up really late having one final blow-out party with our good friends Theric and Lady Steed. We were both pretty wasted yesterday, Mr. Fob especially since he needs more sleep to function correctly. But he still deep cleaned the house yesterday, including the bathrooms, the windows, and all the floors. And he's been taking care of the arrangements for utilities for our new house and scavenging dumpsters for boxes to start packing. Plus today I got several complements on S-Boogie's cute hairstyle that I had to deflect back to him and his artistic skills.

The reason why we were up so late partying on Friday (not just our impending move) was the release of The Fob Bible, a collection of writings by members of Mr. Fob's writing group. I was impressed looking through the book at the variety of things in there and their quality. I've also been impressed by Mr. Fob's devotion to the craft of writing and the great friendships he's maintained along the way as leader of his group. If you want to find out more about the book, see here. Or to buy it, go here.

Signing away a year of our lives

We just signed a lease on a house in Orem. It has many of the things we would like to have in a home: a yard, a garage, three bedrooms, central air, and a great location close to an elementary school and park. It has a few things we didn't really want, like an occupied basement apartment and no dishwasher. We also haven't seen any pictures of it; Mr. Fob's sister agrees with the landlord in warning us that the kitchen is small and old. Nice kitchen was lower on our list than garage and neighborhood, so we ended up compromising. And this is the third time in a row that we've moved into a place without seeing it first. We wanted to do things differently but keep reminding ourselves that we're too poor to have the ideal life we'd like to have, and this really is the cheapest and most convenient way to move. Hopefully I won't regret this, but I'm looking forward to seeing it in just two weeks. At least we're only a few blocks from a pool.

Ambition, Education, and Default Choices

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 lives.

First of all, I think that education for women is just as vital as it is for men. Over and over I have seen the benefits for women I know of having options that come from degrees and experience. At the same time, I don't think that everyone, man or woman, needs a four-year degree to be happy and productive. I think we need to consider carefully our futures and figure out what our ultimate goals in life are. I've also struggled with balancing getting the education and skills I need for a good career, "just in case" while trying to maintain my family in the present moment. I don't want to spend so much time prepare for future uncertainty that I neglect the present moment. And I've realized that I don't want a career in academia and I'm tired of getting education just for education's sake. As in all things, we need to proceed with wisdom and order, setting flexible goals for our long-term progress. I can see myself working outside the home in ten or fifteen years, but for right now I just want to stay at home as much as possible. But I'm open to change (and maybe some part-time teaching).

The other issue I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the young women seem to be feeling aimless and undefined. On the one hand, I think that's a fairly normal state for youth to be in. When I think back fifteen or so years to that time in my life, I had a hard time seeing my future and feeling like I knew what I wanted. I've never been a particularly ambitious person and I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. As I've thought about myself as a teenager I've realized that I spent my years of my life with a sort of inferiority complex. I often excepted myself in my mind by assuming that others were more capable of doing things that I was; one of my most common thoughts was "I'm not the kind of person who..." It's not that I didn't want to grow up and get married, I just assumed that was an impossibility. I'd never had a guy show much interest in me or even ask me out. I didn't have much to offer besides geeky glasses and a love for trivia. The other day, though, I realized that I've finally moved beyond this stage in my life. I feel so normal it's refreshing. I'm so glad that I don't have this sense of awkwardness and exceptionalism anymore, or maybe it's just that I've realized that most people feel uncomfortable at times too. I've also learned that I'm capable of doing things, of learning new things, and of trying stuff that's new and sometimes uncomfortable for me. I've also learned that I can know what I like and that if I don't like things that others do, that's OK. I do sometimes feel geeky and awkward around other women because I don't like to shop or craft and I read several books a week. But I've found friends that share my interests and I've grown more comfortable in my own skin.

So I guess that's what I'd say if I were working with the youth. I think all women should figure out their own interests and be comfortable with themselves. Even if they are just going to grow up and make the 'default' choice. Just because you are a mother doesn't mean you're not a person with a life and interests beyond that. They don't have to be the kinds of things you earn money from or that are flashy. But they should help you become comfortable in who you are. And, bringing this back to the issue of education, that's why I think it's valuable. Even more than an 'investment' in a future or a backup plan, I think attending college or learning some sort of manual skill is a way to open our minds and see ourselves in a new way. To put ourselves into new territory and figure out what we're really capable of.

This week I finally realized that what has been bothering me is the fact that for me the PhD program was the 'default' choice. For many people it's not; it's something they've been struggling for and working towards their entire lives. I'm good at school, it's what I do. Acing the GRE and getting great letters of recommendation was not a problem. But I've also realized that graduate school is only a means to an end; I'm a great student and a terrible teacher. I dislike teaching and writing, and if nothing else this year has helped me clarify myself a little better and to see that there are other choices for me out there. I don't know what they are just yet, but I'm feeling excited to leave this behind and for us to move on to a different point in our lives.

Monday Musings

I had a good day today, and I think it went well because I got up and went to the gym for the first time in a few weeks. I only walked on the treadmill because I was feeling out of shape, but it was still a good way to start the day. It was a little weird because the counselors in my bishopric were at the gym working out this morning too. That's the funny thing with being in a student ward; last quarter I had a class with my home teacher.

This morning I had to go to the Verizon store to get a new battery for my phone. It was a surprisingly painless experience; I had worried that the salesperson would pressure me too much to upgrade, but he didn't at all. I do have to say that he has a job I would never want to have. There were five salespeople all sitting around this little store in a strip mall just waiting for someone to want to buy a phone. I think that would make me want to scream.

I also went to Walmart this morning. I almost never shop there anymore; partly for philosophical reasons and partly because everywhere we've lived for the past few years has been far away from it. But today the store was actually on my way home from other errands, and I've been trying to find a canning kettle and I thought they'd have one. When I first walked in I will admit that I was pretty excited. Their selection and prices were definitely better than my usual neighborhood store. But then I had the same problem I always do when I shop at Walmart: the thing I want or need is not on the shelf. They had canning kettles for a cheap price, but they were out of stock. And my cashier was surly and bagged everything in its own separate bag. Do they specifically train their cashiers to be grouchy and to use as many bags as possible? I can get better service (most of the time) at my local store, which is only five minutes away and not fifteen. To be fair, Target often is just as lousy as Walmart at keeping things in stock and keeping their store clean, but their cashiers usually aren't as surly either.

I also saw the missionaries at Walmart. They were buying a large box of frozen corn dogs and a big bag of generic Cocoa Puffs. I made a mental note to make sure they get plenty of fresh veggies when they come for dinner next week.

Tonight for dinner I thought it would be fun to make a "dipping dinner". We had bean dip with chips, apples with cream cheese dip, and snap peas with ranch. The kids were not impressed and just dipped their tortilla chips in their fruit dip. In theory we eat healthy nutritious food in this house; in practice, my kids live on cheese, crackers, chips, and ice cream (that was our family home evening treat).

I have a final paper to write and should finish a draft this week, and yet feel little motivation to get off the computer and do my homework. But I've promised myself that once I get a draft completed I can go buy some fruit and make some yummy jam (it's apricot and cherry season here). Now I just need to find a canning kettle.

The Ear Saga and the Terrible Threes

Pretty much every doctor who has taken a look in S-Boogie's ears has done the same thing: try to look in, exclaim "you have tiny ears!", and then choose a smaller otoscope attachment. Thankfully her tiny ear canals have really not caused her very many problems in the past, other than a copious amount of wax that we occasionally have to get flushed out by the doctor. When we did that last fall, the doctor told us about some drops we could buy at the store that would dissolve the wax, so I bought some and used them a few weeks ago. Well, I don't know if it's related or not, but then a little over a week later (nearly two weeks ago), S-Boogie started complaining that her ear hurt. We let it go for a day or so, and then when she was still complaining we took her in to the doctor. There was no fever, so I was surprised to find out that she had an ear infection.

Thankfully we got antibiotics and after two days of major pain the infection seemed to be clearing up. Until this past Tuesday, when she started complaining again. By Wednesday morning she was screaming when we touched her ear, and since she'd been on the antibiotic for a week I was concerned. When the doctor took a look that morning, he told me that her ear drum was now fine, but that she had an infection in her ear known as "swimmers ear". Her entire ear canal is full of wax and pus, and apparently very painful because we've had a few sleepless nights lately. Hopefully the drops they gave us will turn the tide soon because we are very tired of sore ears. And yes, we did go swimming last Saturday and even though the doctor thinks the two infections aren't related, I'm not taking chances and will never let a child with an ear infection go swimming again. And now I'm really worried about her future swimming and that the water won't drain out of her tiny ear canals. I've also decided that we're done with over-the-counter wax removal. Eesh.

Little Dude has decided that since he's almost three it's time to start acting naughty. He's generally a very sweet kid and mostly easy going. But for the last week or two he's started testing limits a lot more, whining, hitting, and generally being disagreeable. I've had some friends tell me their kids have 'terrible threes' instead of 'terrible twos' so I worry that's what we're in for here.

So the moral of the story is to never get complacent in your parenting. A few weeks ago I noted that S-Boogie had not been sick for over a year and that she had perfect attendance at school. And I told someone that Little Dude is usually pretty pleasant and easy going, but that has changed as well. Oh well; I've learned I'm just along for the ride so I might as well hold on until things get a little more stable around here. Because they always do.

Automobility

This morning I had a meeting for an interdisciplinary conference I'm participating in on Friday. One of my colleagues is an anthropology student and is presenting a paper on the use of cars in China. She brought up a term that is often used in anthropology and cultural studies when talking about the study of people and their interactions with cars: automobility. I thought this was an interesting term, and the things she had to say about the impact of rising car ownership rates on China were fascinating. It got me thinking about cars and their impact on my own life.

I didn't own a car for my first three years of college; I just walked or biked to where I needed to go, and often ran errands with roommates or friends that had cars. Generally my life was pretty simple and I didn't have much need for a car. When Mr. Fob and I were dating, he got a car so we've had one for our entire married life. During those years we've gone through various stages of car usage. I will admit that when we lived in Wymount we would often drive our car to campus (yes, I know we lived "on campus") rather than spent the twenty to thirty minutes it would take to walk to class or work. We often justified this by the fact that we wanted to go home for lunch and usually only had an hour to do this, but I still feel kind of silly for it. Then we moved to Orem when Mr. Fob got a job at the library there. It worked our really well because we got an apartment right across the street from his work, and since we could walk to church our car use was really limited. The apartment wasn't the greatest, but it was cheap and gave us the opportunity to not waste time or money commuting. When we lived in Seattle we also lived on campus, so Mr. Fob could walk or bike to class and we also didn't use our car very much. Our apartment was right next to a big shopping center, so during the entire time we lived there I never drove to a grocery store and even started doing most of my other shopping at the drug store nearby. Now we also live on campus so I ride my bike to class, and my husband works at home. I do use the car for grocery shopping and most of the winter we used it to take S-Boogie to school. Our town has a lot of nice bike lanes and accommodations, but I've discovered that they are mostly in the peripheral areas of town and across campus, but not downtown where I want to run my errands.

Now as we're preparing to move I'm trying to figure out what my automobility will be. In my ideal world we would be back in a situation where we could use our car as little as possible, but I know it's not going to happen. I don't want to have to get a second car because my husband has to drive to work every day. I don't want to have to unload kids in and out of the car several times a day just because I have to take them to school. It may seem like I'm trying to be environmentally friendly, but I'm really just lazy. And one of the things I'm going to have to try hard not to grumble about in Utah is the lack of alternatives to driving. When we lived in Orem I used to sometimes walk to nearby shopping centers for groceries and things. And I hated it because each time felt like some sort of death-defying feat. None of the stores (ahem, Target and Smiths) would even have any sort of access from the street other than crossing a giant parking lot. Smiths also places all kinds of extra stuff on the display area around the doors, so even if there were a sidewalk leading out to the street you couldn't get to it because the displays force you to walk straight ahead to the sidewalk. I don't think we're going to live right by State Street again and I hope to end up in some kind of more pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, but I wish we could make some small changes in our infrastructure. It doesn't have to be something like this town (although I would love that), but maybe small steps like this one. I've never been much of an activist, but I realized the other day that if things are happening in my community that I don't like, I might as well see what I can do about them (don't worry, if we were staying here there are some issues I'd probably want to talk about too--it's not just Utah).

Yes, I'm Going There

I admit that I hold back on a lot of things on my blog for fear of offending people. I tend to overshare some things on my blog, but generally avoid making the kind of snarky judgements that other people can get away with on theirs. In real life I'm actually fairly judgemental but usually keep it to myself or complain to my husband when no one is listening. There's one issue that I know everyone is opinionated about and I've been scared to say anything for fear of offending: baby names.

What is up with the things some people name their kids? The Social Security Administration just released their list of popular names from 2008, and the website is an awesome place to waste your time. I will refrain from sharing too many of my opinions, but there are a few issues I really want to complain about. I randomly looked up a few states to compare their most popular names and was not surprised by the results (for example, Angel is the number 3 name in California). What I didn't really expect was the popularity of the name "Nevaeh" in Oregon. There were 79 babies named Nevaeh in Oregon in 2007 alone! What is up with that? You want to know something even scarier? 14 people in the same year had the bright idea to name their twins Heaven and Nevaeh. Wow. At least I know two names I can cross off my list because they are apparently getting way too popular.

Is it Thursday already?

The weeks are flying by; I just realized the other day that we only have about six more weeks until we go to Utah. In my mind I keep thinking of it as a vacation and not a move, especially since we don't have firm plans on where we're going to live or anything like that. I'm also not stressing myself to death over this move. I guess I've finally learned my lesson from the last few times. It also helps to be moving somewhere that we can actually afford to live and where we can pick out our new place and see it before committing ourselves to live there.

I had good intentions of getting back on track with a lot of things this week, but my groove got thrown off. S-Boogie has had an ear infection since Monday afternoon, and even though we started antibiotics for her she's still been in a lot of pain and waking up at night. At least we made it through most of the last year without any major illness for either child. I'm already crossing my fingers that they will stay healthy and safe until we can get health insurance figured out after our move.

I'm also feeling really lazy as far as school goes and it's taking a lot of effort to just to do my assignments and show up for class. But I've learned in the past not to burn too many bridges or throw away opportunities, so I'm trying my best because credits are forever and I might as well make my transcript look good. And because I've learned that it's better just to get over myself and do hard things instead of wasting my time wallowing around in self pity or wasting time on the internet.

So that's where I'm at this week. Once again I always have good intentions of writing a 'real' post and end up just throwing something at the internet in hopes it will find an audience. If anyone is interested, I learned the other day that the word for bat in Spanish--murcielago--comes from Latin for 'mouse' (mus) and 'blind' (ciego). In English, the word "tawdry" comes from St. Audry, who died by strangling to death with a necklace as punishment for her vanity. For some reason some decide to start selling necklaces known as "St. Audrey's laces" at country fares, and cheap jewelry ended up becoming "tawdry". I find this kind of stuff fascinating. Do you?

Happy (Dos) de Mayo!

This was supposed a cool picture of me and Mr. Fob riding across the Golden Gate bridge on a tandem bike. Instead, it's a photo of me in front of the Asian Art museum. The museum was pretty interesting, but we couldn't take photos inside and so this is what you get. Unfortunately the cold and rain ruined our plans to do something slightly out of the ordinary, so we settled for Gyro King and an art museum. And of course the entertaining ride on BART under the bay.

It was good birthday and I want to thank everyone who wished me well, and especially our good friends the Thteed family for watching our kids for several hours so we could go gallivanting around like childless people. They even bought me a birthday cake as a surprise; of course S-Boogie had to choose the enormous chocolate one with "Happy Cinco de Mayo" written on it. I've never had a Cinco de Mayo cake before, but it went well with the massively meaty pizza to create a birthday dinner that none of us will forget.