Rats and Boars and So Much More

My last post was written from the church gym while protecting my laptop from flying basketballs and tucking my feet way under my chair so my girls wouldn't run my toes over with their scooters.

Motion blur is a way of life

There was no school that day, and I needed to A) do some work in the primary room and B) get my kids out of the house to a place where they could burn off some energy.

None of this has any significance other than to say, wow! Time flies! That was two weeks ago!

Here we are at the end of January already!

I've lost my New Year's momentum, as is expected by January 23rd. The good thing is, I didn't set any goals for this year, so losing my momentum isn't going to amount to any degree of failure. What I've really lost in the past few weeks is the air of excitement that I feel when the year changes, and it's okay for that to go away, but I do miss the burst of energy that accompanies it. 

I toyed around with the idea of making some resolutions for Chinese New Year instead of New Year this year (how many times can I say 'year' in one sentence?) It's a good idea, really, since New Year's Day is my birthday. I shouldn't have to make big life changes on my birthday. Especially changes that have anything to do with health. What am I supposed to do? Forgo all my free birthday meals? I don't think so! But Chinese New Year gives me a little bit of time to party hard for my birthday (i.e. eat all my free food) and still make resolutions. 

My decision: I have none. I'm just as likely to give up on my resolutions for Chinese New Year. But I like setting goals. I have two days to decide. 

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Side note: This is the year of the rat in the Chinese zodiac, which reminds me of one of the complications of being a New Year's baby. 

I was born in 1984, and a lot of my friends and classmates were born in 1983. It shouldn't matter, but as a child, this caused some division. For example, at church, we were put in classes by the year we were born, which meant some of my friends were in a different class than I was. It also affected when we could take driver's ed in school. 

Likewise, whenever we did Chinese New Year activities at school (which, I swear, was a regular thing), I was isolated as a rat while my friends were boars (I had friends born in 1984, so I don't know why it was such a big deal, but all I saw was separation from the boars. They might as well have worn matching t-shirts and hollered a special boar chant while I cowered in my sad, little rat corner! Oh, to be a a boar!)

Well, little did I know... all the Chinese zodiac placemats had led me astray. I found out in my twenties that, because I was born before Chinese New Year in 1984, I actually was a boar. 

I spent the first two decades of my life believing I was a rat. 

Maybe I'll go to therapy someday to address this. Hopefully it will be an exciting, new opportunity for my therapist, since it's probably not very common for someone to come in to work out their issues with being assigned to the wrong Chinese zodiac sign for over twenty years. 

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Anyway, the past two weeks have been busy. Mostly with good things. I've taken on some new volunteer tasks at my kids' school. We've had some family events, like my sister-in-law's birthday party for which I was asked to bring a veggie creation. I made a "keto-friendly birthday cake:"

My SIL loves the beach - hence the palm trees

We've spent a lot of time at the temple. I went 2.5 times last week - twice for endowment sessions and .5 times driving from temple to temple trying to find somewhere to get Nicky in for baptisms in under three hours. The shortest wait was at Oquirrh Mountain which was 90 minutes, but the temple is so small that there was nowhere to wait other than standing against the wall by the recommend desk. Bountiful, Draper, and Jordan River all had up to three hour wait times. It's a good problem to have - too many people doing temple work! But we ended up going home because it was late at night.

In addition to that, I joined a book club and went to our first meeting (other than my book exchange that I've done for the past twelve years, I've never done a book club, so this is new for me). And, for the first time in almost two years, I went and spoke at a Relief Society event. The last time I spoke was in April of 2018, and while I was preparing for that event, I felt a prompting from the Spirit that told me I needed to take a break for a while. I felt really good about it, too. I love speaking. Really. But I knew I needed to set it aside for some time. So this week, I spoke for the first time since then. They asked me to come to their ward and speak on the Book of Mormon and the Come Follow Me curriculum. It went well, especially considering how out of practice I am. I planned this presentation with a lot of discussion (to align with the goals of Come Follow Me), and the women were so great to respond. 

I've had sick kids off and on. Last week Eva had a fever with no other symptoms. She slept for an entire day! Dare I say it? It was wonderful! Then Zoe got a barking cough. It really only lasted a day and a half so it wasn't too bad, but I did keep her home from school - bringing her to a total of 17 absences this school year! Oi! (she missed three weeks for her tonsils and subsequent hemorrhaging, and then we went to Disneyland. I've never racked up absences like this, and of course it's my kid that's the most behind academically). 

In October, my in-laws took us to Hale Theatre see the Addam's Family, and we had to be evacuated 15 minutes into the show because a cast member in the other play (Phantom - which is different than Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. Just throwing that out there because I only learned recently that there is a different Phantom musical that was written at the same time) bumped the sprinkler head with a piece of the set and set off the alarms and flooded the basement of the theater. Hale Theatre gave us all ticket vouchers and concessions coupons to come back and see another show. Last week we went to see Seussical. It was such a fun show, but it also stressed me out because there were aerialists in the play, and I spent the whole time envisioning myself as an aerialist, which repeatedly ended in me plummeting to my imaginary death. 

Aerialists, you have my respect.

Now off I go to do the next right thing** (which is pretending to eat the Play-Doh meal Eva has been lovingly preparing for me for the past half hour). 

*Except for in sacrament meeting, but I've never been assigned a topic I love. 

**The Frozen II soundtrack has slowly wormed its way into my life. Darn you, catchy Disney tunes! You did it again!