Cell phone guy

So now i'm on the bus home - that same annoying guy is on my bus! And he must be talking to someone different - his language is more colorful this time. And I thought I was a phone junkie.

Bush

So you may have heard that he's in town. Well it seems the entire city's streets are blocked off. My buses are on weird detous. The painful part is some crew cut jock type is on his cell phone giving a detailed play by play of every turn we take. I'm wondering who the poor person on the other end is. I also feel bad for people who normally catch the bus on those blocked streets. I know of at least 2 regulars who aren't with us.

driving by the salt palace I saw 2 news vans and crowds of people dressed like they would for general conference. I wonder what that's all about. And yet I just plow forward in my normal routine of work.

More

And now i'm being rained on. 10 more minutes before the next bus comes.

Argh

I missed my bus by a minute! and my feet hurt. On the bright side - tonight I get to be interviewed by some lady doing a thesis on mormon sociality - or something like that. She's an ex-mormon but very easy going and friendly (i'm told). I can't wait to hear what sort of questions she has.

Chimichangas

Here's the recipe you've all been waiting for:

3 c cooked chicken
16 oz med/mild salsa
16 oz refried beans
2 Tbs taco seasoning
12 8" flour tortillas
1 lb monterey jack cheese (pepper jack is pretty good)
4 oz green chiles diced

Shred chicken and cheese separately. Combine chicken salsa beans peppers and seasoning in a skillet stirring well and heating through. Lay tortillas out. Put about 1/3 cup mixture in bottom of each one and top with some cheese. Fold in sides and roll up. Wrap in plastic if freezing and place in freezer bag. Or just place in dish and bake at 350 for 15 min until cheese is melted. Serve with sour cream and salsa is you choose.

forgiveness

fhe last night was good. i took notes since mark and lynn couldn't be there. i just have to share - you're the token audience - enjoy.

Forgiveness - they don't change, you do. It is letting go, for us, releasing and freeing self, change of direction (repentance). Satan is the one that says it's too difficult and painful to forgive and let go. The forgiver is in a sense repenting - becoming a new being. The things we should "repent of" should be phrased "things we need to change." bad feelings keep you from god - that's what would need changing. Anger can be so debilitating. It sucks up energy. Can't be joyful and angry at same time. Need awareness - make decision or choice. Forgiveness is an opportunity to find meaning in the situation. You have to repent (or give up) your story - not necessarily real but your version of real. Pain is real but atonement can take care of that. Don't deny atonement. There's pride in saying your pain is too big - implying christ didn't drink the whole cup or fully descend below all - that is the biggest lie of all - christ really did take on all suffering. Can't serve two masters - suffering and joy. That's where you have to make a choice. You have to get really good at forgiveness if you aspire to godhood - 99% of god's job is forgiveness. We came here to get a body so there’s something essential about experiencing pain in our spiritual development. All pain is connected spiritually and physically. Hiding and smashing down pain is like avoiding shame - it will only drag you down - satan's plan - you have to be actively involved in dealing with pain. Forgiveness is not: forgetting, condoning, excusing, call wrong right, understanding - you may never be able to do so and neither may they understand your pain - some horrible atrocities don't deserve understanding, liking them, putting yourself back in a situation to be reoffended. Sometimes your virtues can be turned to vices if you give beyond a point of appropriateness - discontinue unhealthy abusive situations otherwise you are allowing them to continue to sin as they abuse or take advantage of you. Forgiveness is not about trust - just love - don't let alcoholic tend a bar. Some situations requiring forgiveness aren't about sin at all - offense is often taken when malice is not intended - perspective is what needs changing. Sometimes we adopt stories that we buy into completely and they've taken over our lives - see story in movie moonstruck - just an accident. repenting and changing just means recognizing your trigger points that feel offense when malice may or may not be intended. The only thing you can know are your own feelings - if even that - so you can't figure out what others mean. forgiveness doesn't take away their consequences - but it's not necessarily an accounting to you that they need to make. justice will come but it's not ours to exact. Forgiveness is a process and may take awhile - don't beat yourself up if you can't do it right away - serious prayer or not. Trust can come - but it's measured and should be inspired not emotionally initiated. Forgive yourself - this can be a challenge - if you find yourself justifying things - essentially it's an inability to forgive yourself. Self justification prevents you from forgiving yourself - others can't make it better for you or make you feel okay. Only prayer and self forgiveness will help you let go of blame. Satan is all about you running and hiding in the shame place. figure out what laces in your life you need to forgive yourself and be done with it. Then forgiveness for others will be easier. Find the balance in your life. It's okay to make mistakes - be willing to laugh at yourself. Know yourself as god knows you and together you can work out your exaltation. Laugh as you fall and rise with hope - be joyful. Embrace your life experience.

Weeds

On the walk to school I pass these old dried out weed things. They're really rather beautiful. I wish my camera did them justice.

This is the place

Saturday night the party/dance was having a pretty slow start. So my friend val insisted we go check out the nearby "this is the place" monument. It was awesome. The art/details are amazing. And to boot we saw a great sunset. With my sad camera on here I took a coule shots. Please be impressed.

in utah

So I was just sitting at my bus stop when this car drove by. The driver was shielding herself from the sun with a magazine - the ensign - which I could tell by its distinctive back cover. I liked feeling smart for recognizing it but it also made me happy to see it had such a practical use.

grow old along with me

i don't necessarily want to live super long, but i do want to get to be a decent age with minimal health problems, so i always like to read about the old people still kicking. an article in the yahoo news today was about the oldest woman who just died - at 116. they were speculating how she got so old:

"She always had a very tranquil character," Irma said in last year's interview. "She does not get upset by anything. She takes things very calmly and she has been that way her whole life."

even if i don't live forever i really wish/hope i can be like that. i have a lot to work on - but i really do dream of being calm. jon mentioned anita's class on an earlier post and one of the best things i gained from that class was making a self talk tape. one of my self talk statements was: "i am always calm and in control." i keep repeating it. i think i'm getting better.

Dancing

Lynn and Veronica at a dance - not enough people here yet but still a good time with friends.

Silver lake

I went hiking this morning with my ward. We have a "life preparedness committee" that planned it. Every month this year we have a theme to "become more" and this month we are more alive so we went on a hike. We hiked to twin lakes at the top of one of brighton's ski resort. This photo is of silver lake where we started the hike. Very very very nice hike. Except the whole uphill lack of air hurting knees part. Good times!

food!

i had my big cooking session last night with allison. we made tortilla soup, baba ganoush, pesto, curry chicken, escalaveda (or some vegetable dish with a weird name) chocolate chip zucchini muffins and chimichangas. they're all in the freezer, along with chopped mangoes (e or no e?), costco pizza (in smaller square sizes), and fancy bread loaves from costco. oh, also, al made some cheese stuffed chicken during the week of which she gave me some portions. today sometime i need to make a mexican chocolate cake (thanks for the recipe plewe!) and she's making manicotti. those were the two things we didn't get to that we wanted to. oh, she's also mixing up some cookie dough. we wanted to be sure to have enough deserts for all our meals. =) aren't we clever?

we did sample everything before freezing it so we'll know what it's supposed to taste like. eventually we'll try it thawed and reheated (well i may not reheat since i'm not terribly big on having to have hot food) and hopefully it will all taste just as good!

friday

finally - the end is in sight. it's friday morning of the first week of school. okay, so school started wednesday so it's only been a partial week, but it's been hard. i tell you i may be burned out already. teaching is hard. the hardest part is the self talk you have to do daily to not let yourself get overwhelmed by all the expectations of others (but mostly yourself) and the heat. yes, my building is a/c-less. my good friend from my last job brought by a fan on wednesday afternoon - nearly brought tears to my eyes! i really just want to sleep. in fact, this morning i was going to give myself an extra half hour since i have first period prep and the normal bus get's me here about half an hour early - but then my body just woke up - earlier actually than normal. so i tried to fall asleep, but then finally just got up at the normal time and came into work and have been catching up on blogs and stuff. yesterday in our boxes someone put an article about how info-mania (constant emailing and cell phone use) causes us to be more distracted and less productive then the use of marijuana. i think it said it drops our iq by 10 points. sigh. like i need one more thing in my life to feel bad about. the good news is that the iq drop is more significant in men than women.

Iniquity

I love my palm treo 650 so much! I can blog from it (as I usually do) and I can read my scriptures on the bus! Like I was just doing when I came across a great verse in Mosiah 8 I believe. It said something to the effect of "and thus they did labor much to support iniquity." I love that bit because for one thing I love the feeling of the word "iniquity." I also like it because it makes me think twice about how much work and effort life is full of. I wonder how much is going to waste in efforts of supporting iniquity. I know that far far too much of my day is filled with negative talk with teachers when I could instead be creating some good lesson plans. Anyway, good stuff to think about.

Boring

So i'm sitting in a faculty meeting and am happy to have my treo on me for entertainment. I'm worse than a student! Teachers can be such blabbers. We're having a presentation on generation y. The generalizations remind me of fortune cookies. The presentation began with a whiney quote of children these days being all selfish and chatty. Turned out to be a quote from socrates. That was the best part so far.

Wallpaper

This is the photo that's currently the wallpaper on my phone. They are old work friends. I can't remember why they were doing this and they'll probably never know i'm using their photo, but it makes me smile. What would our homes be like if we used random photos for our real wallpaper. I guess some homes are like that - covered in photos. What would be on your walls?

freezer

did i tell you i got a freezer for my birthday? yep. today i met with a good friend and we planned a bunch of meals we can put together and freeze. okay, we planned on five. but that will be a lot of cooking on friday (our big cooking day). we did the costco trip today. i'm really excited - i will have so many good meals in my freezer to choose from. right now i have pizza in there - easy to buy a big one from costco and cut it into smaller sized ones. it's like a 10 inch pizza for only two bucks! what a deal!

Tomatoes

I know this is a terrible photo - cameras on phones aren't the best - but I found this bag of yellow tomatoes so pretty and liquidy I had to share. They are yummy. I grew them myself. Well, dona helped with the watering system.

More tomato

This is what yummy home grown juicy yellow tomato looks like on your shirt when you try to enjoy every last bit. Sadness.

spam

so is it me or do others out there wish that spam mail were real mail? it's hard not to get excited that so many people regularly email me every day. if only they had something to say that i wanted to read. it just sort of makes me sad to delete so many emails whose content i'll never know.

Singles life

Heading back to being totally single again can be scary. I try to be positive and hopeful. This morning, though, I came across this gem of a photo; not exactly encouraging. It was taken at the New Year's dance. Both times I've been I've had a boyfriend (in Hawaii) so I wasn't too bothered. Keep in mind too that I was the first on the dance floor - so this was taken a bit early in the night - around 10 probably. I really like the disco ball effect.

English Plan

I’m making my plans for the year and am trying to work up a basic daily outline of a period – a skeleton to work with and I need some feedback. Please tell me what you think. Anything you have to say or question is more than welcome – you are my sounding board. Picture yourself being the student – how would you like or not like it? If you’re the teacher what would you like or not like about it?

Typical period:
15 minutes silent independent reading
5 minutes talk about what they’re reading – sharing time
25 minutes instruction on World Lit topic of the day
10 minutes writing mini-lesson
30 minutes independent writing and conferencing
5 minutes wrap up/clean up/debrief

kids

my youngest sisters each have a kid. lanelle is about 1 and a bit, logan is only a month or two. lanelle loves logan. she is constantly trying to touch or hug or stroke or kiss or see him. this photo cracked us all up - but really she is being affectionate.

Happy bday!

Thank you all for the kind messages and what not. It was a great weekend of celebration. I wish I'd managed to get a photo of the Young Dubliners from last night's show - what a good time that was! I did take a hoto of myself tonight - I felt some sort of historical obligation to record the start of the 34th year. Now I just need some valuable self reflection. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Here I am, though, in my favorite church outfit - orange top with cream skirt (big orange flowers on it) and chunky orange earrings from Chicago.

relief society

i've shared these notes from my relief society lesson with a few people, and as i was about to copy and send them to someone else i decided they were blog worthy.

8/06/06 "bondage" -stuck like playing same note on a piano. Causes: lack of faith and perspective, traditions or habits, insecurities, any extreme emotion, laziness, discouragement, sins of commission or omission, false beliefs, sometimes tutorial exp from lord. 3 dangerous words: "I deserve it" - this leads to bondage. Bondage of disillusionment, anger, physical, expectations, etc. Sometimes we say "i deserve bad things" - red herring from satan - both attitudes are. They distract us from: god's blessings, god's plan, humility, what we can do and give, hard work. In scriptures "i deserve it" is called murmuring. See 2 nephi 5:3 and 1 nephi 17:21 for examples of laman and lemuel's expectations. We often forfeit agency by not choosing. We do that when: too many choices, don't want responsibility, lack of confidence fear we'll choose badly, we're victims, we lose faith that our choice will make a difference, fear responsibilty and accountability, what we want isn't an option, think/hope it will go away. 1 nephi 15:8,9 - laman and lemuel gave up their agency. We all fear making wrong choice or fear consequences - mosiah 23:27,28 "hushed fears" - acknowledge them but take control. How to get unstuck: someone says have faith, goal setting with baby steps, major self evaluation to recognize bondage, desire to change, get help from others, take self out of situation to be more rational and analytical, service to others, remember times you've done it before, any kind of movement. Introspection great way to get unstuck. It's an apostolic quality - matt 26:21-22. Red herrings for introspection: get thinking "why me" so maybe ask "what is required of me now" instead. No self criticism. Exercise faith by exercising agency. Quote from packer where pres lee advised him to step into darkness then light will appear. Sometimes life comes in ways we can't choose but we can choose how we react - victor frankl. Don't have to be stuck in an attitude even if circumstances seem stuck. mosiah 21 and 24 both groups suffer afflictions and have heavy burdens. In 21 people begin to murmur when stuck, in 24 they cry to lord but did not "raise their voices to the lord"- just poured out hearts. Are you stuck enough to cry mightily? In 21:16 god did prosper them and lighten burden but some may not have noticed. In 24:15 they were made stronger and were cheerful. God suits our sustaining according to our spiritual needs during those stuck times - 24:14. Like piano we don't have to be perfect (play all 88 keys) to have beautiful unstuck lives.

Morning in the park

I still have a touch of summer left so I biked to the park for my morning scripture study. I think the rising sun is my favorite part of such outings. The scripture study has been good too. Old Testament (SS lesson) on the temple. It's cool since just last night Naud and I were discussing ourbodies as temples. I finally put together the ideas about how it's our body but we were given it by God and we are asked to consecrate it back to Him. The idea of a one on one partnership - sharing our physical being with God - inviting Him into our life in that full sense - is powerful. Hope all those thoughts aren't too serious for a blog post.

$$$$

Want lots of money? Who doesn't? Well on the bus today I think I discovered the answer. A fellow across the aisle, nicely dressed, obviously doing all right for himself, was reading a book. All I could make out was the backside: "Read yourself into a fortune!" I read like the wind. I think i'm on the right road. Just watch me rake in the bucks...one of these days.

I will miss riding the bus. Like Ariel, I want to sing about a whole new world every time I board one.

Self portrait

This is me riding the bus to work. It reminds me of famous art - like dali or meonch (the scream man) because of my bending neck. Taking self photos while trying to be inconspicous with a camera phone on a bus makes for interesting angles. What I wonder is how artists back in the day (before digital cameras) managed to find such new and interesting perspectives. I read somewhere recently that the best way to appreciate some art form is to try doing it yourself.

I also took a photo of the pretty hollyhocks at my downtown bus stop. They greeted me with such nuances of color that I knew this was going to be a good day. Pretty colors are always a good omen.

Pear

I'm being super poor these days but when I saw this perfect pendant for only $3 I bought it. I think it looks like a pear. A silver pear, not unlike the ripe green pears once purchased by Bert at Orchard Market years ago in Sugarhouse. I've painted Bert and his pears. I loved Bert for his pears. Now I can at least wear a pear of my own.

games

have you ever played milles bornes? what a great family game it is! you can practice your math and learn the rules of the road while having a good time with friends or family. i'm a fan. i played last night with some friends and won a few hands, but mostly we enjoyed trying to beat each other while at the same time not being too mean to each other. i guess we're not a very competitive bunch.

Haircut

I decided I was in a haircut rut. Long was getting old. My sister convinced me to donate it - 10 inches - so I did. Here's the after look - sans makeup. I'll get around to putting it on sooner or later - but for now here I am with short hair. Feedback is always appreciated (positive and negative and constructive).

Bike photo

So it's not the fanciest, and you should ignore the rusty paint cans - but here's my bike I ride to the park!

new bike

well it's not new. just new to me. it was a gift from my sister moving to texas. she gifted a lot. i'm also hoping to buy her deep freezer. imagine the stock pile of popsicles i'll have! anyway, i rode it to the park this morning. while there i wrote in my journal. the thought occurred to me: today i will blog. the challenge was coming up with my blogger name. my good friend plewe gave some input - she thought exactly like i did - that my blog should be about telling stories. i love stories. mine and others. this is a place for me to tell my stories. we'll see how it goes.

my bike's brakes squeak. i think the handlebars are too low. it's a beautiful blue. i'm lucky to have a bike! i'm lucky to have a park!