From the Kitchen Sink

Lately as I do the dishes I've been pondering how much time I spend in the kitchen each day. Some days it really feels like an eternity. Wake up, get M some milk, go jogging, feed everyone breakfast, clean up breakfast, make lunch, eat lunch, clean up lunch, sweep the kitchen, mop the kitchen, load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, disinfect the counter tops, make dinner, eat dinner, clean up dinner, think about cleaning out the refrigerator, holy cow the microwave could use a good scrubbing, and have you looked in the oven lately? Does it ever end? Nope. As soon as is sparkly it's inevitably time to eat again. I get why people in America eat out so much. I think the reason we're supposed to cook on the Sabbath with "singleness of heart" isn't about the cooking, but the amount of cleaning up after. I've been thinking about this a lot. Which snowballed into thinking about what I really do all day anyway. I like to think I budget my time fairly well, but how do I know if the things I do all day are undone by the end of the day?

I've decided that budgeting time must be like budgeting money. Right? Both are finite(ish) resources that are necessary but we never seem to have enough of. And what's the first step to budgeting? Finding out where you spend your money. So I'm doing an experiment. For one week I'm going to track on paper what I do with all of my time during the day. I started this morning. It's been awesome. When I started tracking my money at first I realized I wasn't as great with money as I thought I was. When I started tracking my time this morning I realized that I do a lot more in the day than I give myself credit for. By 10am I had showered, made the husband lunch, eaten breakfast, fed 2 babies breakfast, cleaned the kitchen (not to total cleanliness), started sorting through two bags of amazing hand me downs, played with babies, read books with babies, unpacked from a trip, put the laundry away, picked up the living room, patched a pair of pants, changed three diapers, and put two babies down for naps. That's a lot. And it also turns out that my perception of how long things take me is also totally skewed.

I'll give you an update at the end of the week. My tendency to organize and analyze is kicking in and I'm planning on sorting my time into categories and percentages. I can't wait.

Wonder where you're spending your time? Experiment with me!

perspective

Sometimes you read something and you know right then that you are changed. 
I just read these paragraphs by Chieko Okazaki in her book Being Enough.  My perspective has changed.  I hope forever.  I know it's long, but read it anyway, it's worth it.

"In most Mormon gatherings, if I were to ask you who you are, particularly what your eternal identity is, many would answer, 'I am a child of God.'…But that is not enough.  Every living person is a child of God.  But that's the beginning point, not the ending point.  The ending point is to become peers of God.  He wants us to grow up, not remain children.

"I think that some of us sometimes regress to being two-year-olds of God and have tantrums when things don't go our way or when we get tired or scared.  Some of us get stuck being teenagers of God, who just got a driver's license and are out to see how fast we can move our lives from one lane to the next and play some pretty reckless and heedless games with this precious life God has given us.  Some of us jump ahead and are Alzheimer's patients with God where our short-term memory is disappearing and we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again because we can't remember that the exact same thing we're right now didn't work before either.  Some of us are junkies of God and go from one spiritual book or speaker or Education Week to another without ever thoughtfully sifting and sorting and laying out the pieces of our lives before God and asking him to help us shape these pieces into something meaningful.  Some of us are workaholics of God.  We plunge into our callings and our service projects and our personal gospel study and our genealogical research and God becomes somebody we meet at the drinking fountain or the copy machine long enough to gasp out a quick report before we rush off to the next project.

"Well, I hope that somewhere in your personal definition of who you are that there are descriptions such as 'lover of God' and 'disciple of Christ' and 'handmaiden of the Lord' and 'servant of the Most High' and even the term that Christ himself used: 'friend' of God."

I read the sentence about the "junkie of God" and felt a little sick in my stomach (in a good way).  My focus needs shifting.  It's about the relationship.  Knowledge and actions benefit me as they help me come closer to, not just know about, my Heavenly Father and Savior.  

Who are you?

bubble therapy

Sometimes when the babies (my own and the one I babysit) get restless and we just can't be in the house anymore, but we have nowhere to go, we sit on the porch and blow bubbles.  Here's what it looks like.  I open the front door and prop the screen door open, the stoop becomes my seat.  I sit and blow bubbles.  M (my almost 1 year old) crawls around on the cement because she prefers it to the grass.  A (the 18 month old I watch and love everyday) runs around or backs her little bum up to sit next to me on the door stoop (is that the right word?  If I had time I'd look it up).  We don't say anything.  The front porch area (we have a detached garage in front) becomes filled with bubbles.  No one cries or says 'no' (well, mostly).  It's heaven on the porch.

Here's what I realized today.  Most of the time the babies could care less about the bubbles.  That means the bubbles are for me.  Who knew that 27 year old college graduate moms still like bubbles?  But I do.  I love how they look so magical when the air is filled with them.  I love how they blow with the wind, no plan or destination.  And I especially love when the cement is wet and the bubbles melt half way and then stretch till they can't stretch anymore and pop with the best cartoon pop sound I've ever heard.

But the most profound thing I realized today is that blowing bubbles is a good as yoga to calm me and help me feel centered.  Not just watching the magic, but the actual blowing of the bubbles.  In through my nose and slow and controlled out of my mouth.  Just like yoga without the workout.   Amazing.

God isn't a bully and we aren't ants

Sometimes it can be easy to picture God as a bully over an ant hill, picking out unsuspecting and helpless ants to burn with his giant magnifying glass. Especially as women, we almost always think most (or magnify) all of the things we don't have or do or do well enough. My house isn't clean enough. I don't read my scriptures enough. I don't spend enough quality time with my kid. The list goes on and on and on. We feel frustrated and judged. After all, God is the ultimate judge and He expects perfection. And we all know that Jane next door has already achieved perfection with her spotlessly clean home and charming family home evenings. So that means God must be looking at me through his magnifying glass and seeing all the dirty laundry and potentially inappropriate media in my living room.

While I don't believe that God will turn a blind eye to my shortcomings, I do believe the perception of Him as a bully spending His time in the heavens tallying up every mistake I make and waiting for the next one, laughing as I squirm under his magnifying glass, is also wrong.

John 3:16 is perhaps one of the most famous and oft quoted scriptures in all of Christianity (I'm totally making that up, I have no evidence). "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Hallelujah! But that's not all. John 3:17 (by my uniformed estimation probably the least famous and least oft quoted scripture in all of Christianity) tells me God's motivations. "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." I am not an unsuspecting and helpless ant. God is not a bully with a magnifying glass. He is my loving Father who wants me to return safely to Him. He watches me, not to burn me on my mistakes, but to make sure I'm ok. He gave me a Savior because He knew I couldn't do it alone. I mess up every day and that's ok. He does expect perfection. But not right now, and not by my work alone, and certainly not perfection compared to Jane next door.

I probably spend a little too much time thinking about all the things I do wrong and how I can fix them. I need to do plenty of repenting in my life, but not alone, and not out of fear of punishment, and not so I can live up to Jane next door! God loves me so much that He sent me a savior, my older brother, to help me. He loves me so much that he sees the good with the mistakes. His work and glory are to bring me back to Him to receive immortality and eternal life. There are plenty of bullies on the earth. God certainly isn't one of them.

Birth Story of a Blog

Every time I do dishes I wonder about two things: 1- is it better for the environment to use Tupperware or plastic bags? and 2- do I use more water hand washing dishes or using my dishwasher? I'm not an overly environmentally cautious person, but I wonder about these things. And I wonder if you wonder about these things too. A couple of years ago I was standing at my sink thinking about water versus landfill usage and thought maybe if I blogged about it I could make up my mind and stop thinking about it.
So I started a blog. And it became my family blog. And I still wonder about water and landfills every time I do the dishes.

At the end of my student teaching I decided to not pursue a full time teaching job, but to take advantage of the time I have to stay at home with my daughter. I began to worry that if I wasn't working or going to school my brains would start leaking out of my head and I would forget everything I learned in my K-college education. I specifically worried that my writing skills would suffer. But let's be honest, writing just isn't the same without an (potential) audience. So I started wondering (are you catching a theme here?) what I could blog about. I read lots of blogs, and I like them, but do I have something unique to offer? Or would I just be another Mormon mommy blog. I have nothing against Mormon mommy blogs. I read a lot of them. And I like them. I guess that's kind of the point. Could my voice be unique in that vast community? Would writing exclusively about my mommyhood satisfy my brain? If people actually started reading would I be obligated to them in some way?

One day I was preparing to teach "I Stand Here Ironing" and tried to introduce the story by asking students what they think about when their hands are occupied but their brains are free. You know, like when you're doing the dishes. I explained to them the conversation I have in my head every time I do the dishes. They may have thought I was crazy. But at the end of the day my cooperating teacher told me, "that's it, that's what you should blog about." She wanted to read the things I think. And I think about plenty. As evidenced by the delay in my actually starting this blog. (What will the title be? What we address will I use? What font do I write it? Do I include pictures? What do I say in the "about me" section?)

So here I am. And here you are. So how about it. What do you think when you're hands are busy but your mind is free?