What I Remember about American Girl

American Girl is huge in the world of my nieces.  I guess rightly so, but the intrigue to me pales from what I remember them as during my youth.  I remember a catalogue coming in the mail with pages full of girls with their dolls.  The doll respresented characters from history, there were books about their experiences, but the coolest part:  there were period appropriate outfits to match the dolls!  What an opportunity to pretend.  I think Mattel really missed something when they retired these.

http://curtdanhauser.com/AG_Collecting/Dresses.html

Here's a link to the images of the dresses.   

Thoughts on Guns, Marriage and the Constitution

I reread the constitution tonight. Actually, I'm not sure that I had ever just read the constitution but I had some thoughts running through my head and the constitution seemed like the best place to turn to sort through them. It helped, but it didn't organize them completely. I hoping that placing these thoughts into words, maybe it will all come together for me.



Here's what I believe:



I believe that a society can have righteous and unrighteous leaders.

I believe that an unrighteous leader is one who suppresses the needs/wants of the majority for the desires of a few.

I believe that preventing tyranny (or unrighteous leaders) was a strong motivator as the founding fathers drafted the constitution. I think it is interesting the steps they took to protect the people from its own governing body.

I believe that these steps included establishing a repbulic, creating checks and balances, term limitations, and due process.

I believe in the right to bear arms, not because we own a gun, want a gun, or because I even like them. I believe in the right because it allowed our forefathers to overcome the tyranny they felt oppressed by. They wanted to ensure that right to future generations. The freedom of speech and the right to assemble are also part of this protection. They work well for the majority of circumstances, but the right to bear arms is crucial for extreme circumstances. (I hope I never see the need, but I'm glad we have the right, if it is needed).

I believe most laws are cultural institutions created to reflect the values of the society in which those laws are prescribed.

As a voter, I believe I should vote according to my values. I need to share my voice so that the laws will best represent my values. If I am a dissenting voice, so be it.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to live in a society that also believes this. I want the laws of the land to reflect this belief. I vote in accordance to this value.



Reflections on Prop 8:

So that brings me to my consideration. It seems to me that the judicial reversal of prop 8 is only partially a question of the morality of same sex marriage.


Here are the questions this law and its being repealed are really asking:
Does the judicial branch (one person) have the right to reverse laws enacted by the states that clearly represents the values of the society that established it (majority vote)?

Are the states limited in what they can allow or disallow in their state constitutions?


Is the California law a violation of the first amendment?

I imagine that this could be a debate that would go all the way to the supreme court.

10 Surprises About Being a Parent

10) I didn't realize how much the sibling "rivalry" would affect me They compete, they're jealous of each other at the same time they adore and idolize one another. It is a very complex relationship. I see it, yet can't really do much about it.

9) No one told me all my stuff would grow feet. You can't put anything down without it moving when you're not looking. At first you have some tricks...like surfaces they can't reach, but then they keep growing so those surfaces diminish. How did all my shoes walk out of my closet? I'm pretty sure I haven't worn those red heels in years.

8) Some activities, no matter how fun they sound, couldn't possibly be fun enough to make up for all the effort required to participate. My friend invited us to go to the snow. It sounded fun until I began thinking through the steps... find/ buy warm & waterproof clothes, mittens, hat,snacks, pack diaper bag, wipes, is the car in good enough condition to make it? Hmm, my 6 month and 2 year old just aren't going to appreciate it that much.

7) I spend a lot of mental effort worrying about if I'm giving them everything they need.

6) Its really hard not to compare them to each other. They have different personalities and reach milestones at different places, but I'm really only familiar with how my first did it, so I always compare my second to that.

5) They are your comedians.

4) I remember growing up having to call for my mom multiple times before she would respond. Now I hear many times a day, "MOM, MOM, MOM, MOM"... when I finally figure out what she's asking for, I have to wonder why I'm being interrupted in the first place. Its no wonder mother's develop a delayed response time.

3) It really puts your body through the ringer. This one they tried to warn me about. I'm not the same as I was before kids. In some ways thats a positive, but suddenly, my typically weak abdominal muscles don't even have the strenght to help me up from a lying position. I'm just like my baby, I have to roll over and push myself up with my hands!

2) They have/need/want lots of stuff, and the surprising thing - I really want to give them those things. Opportunities to play on sports teams, music lessons, pre school, nutritious food, play kitchens, swing sets, bikes, strollers, fun treats, cute bedrooms. Mine are even too young to ask for things and still the list of things we have is long, the things we still need exists, and the want list... well, between me and the kids, that's pretty exhaustive.

1) Joy takes work. I had children because I believe they bring joy. This has proven true, but as I mopped the floor today it occured to me... things that bring real joy, take lots of work. Having a clean organized house - lots of work. Having a fit, healthy body - lots of work. Having happy well adjusted children - yeah, that seems to be a lot of work too (and there are still no guarantees)   I guess you just have to do the best you can and trust that everything will work out in the end. 

How Much Would a Christlike Society Save Us?

Today I taught a Sunday School lesson to my rambuctious but lovable 9 year old boys.  It was on 4th Nephi Chapter 1 in the Book of Mormon.   Christ has just completed his visit to the people of ancient America and all are converted. The resulting society is peaceful and wonderful. I decided to take some of the social ills that were eliminated and quantify how much money that would save if we could eliminate those expenses in our society. The amounts were googled, so I'm not claiming they are scientific or even accurate, but they are interesting. Here's what I came up with:

Scripture	What Changed in Christlike society	What we do to try and Eliminate in our society	Cost to our society
4 Nephi 1:16	no murderers	Prisons	37 Billion
"	no robbers	Police	30 Billion
"	no lyings	Regulation	1750 Billion
"	no tumults (riotings)	England 2011	0.5 Billion
4 Nephi 1:2	no contentions	Wars	663 Billion
4 Nephi 1:5	Sick healed, blind see, dead raised and all manner of miracles	Healthcare	2400 Billion

The figures are all from 2011 and unless noted are for the US. The total comes out to be $4,910,000,000,000,000. That's 4.91 Quadrillion dollars. With that kind of savings we could pay off the national debt in less then a year. Hmmm. Its interesting to think about anyway.

The highlight of the class: when one of the boys completely sincerely exclaims,"Yeah, Math!"

I Need a Musical Montage, Please!

I struggle with change.  Does anybody else?  Growing up, I shared a room with my sister.  She would get a bug to rearrange furniture every year or so and I hated it.   I had adjusted to the status quo and I was happy with it.  Even now, when I find the system that works for me, I'm staunchly loyal to that process and change within it brings me anxiety.

Well, we are going through a big family change and I'm having anxiety.  My husband has changed employment status.  He has gone from "working for the man" to working for himself.  In many ways we have been helped in this transition.  His former employer has taken him on as a consultant, so he's still earning a portion of his salary, but there is still some financial loss at least for the immediate future, while he figures out how to acquire new clients and builds a name for himself. 

We were recently able to refinance our home and reduce our mortgage payment significantly... So, just as it seemed that our time of financial sacrifices were being rewarded and relieved, we again find ourselves in a position where we need to be extra cognizant of the budget's incomings and outgoings.   I am war weary. 

I think the financial dependence on somebody else has been the hardest sacrifice for me as a WAHM.  I know he wants to provide well for his family.  When I step back and look at the big picture, I think he is providing well for us.  That's not where I spend most of my time, though.  I'm in the trenches, making the day to day details work out.  And the vision gets pretty obscure down here as we wade through the dirty details of trial and error.  There are a lot of strategies that are tried and abandoned.  And those starts and stops are unsettling to me. 

You know the scene in the movie where the hero decides to leave his old ways and starts working really hard to achieve a goal.  They always show that change of heart in a series of scenes with an energetic song playing in the background...the musical montage.  I never liked the scene that follows where the selfish unsupporting wife leaves the hero just before he reaches his goal, and the he finds a prettier, more supportive love in the process?  You never feel sorry for that first wife.  Well, right now, I do.

See, the first wife never got to see the musical montage.  I want to be the good supportive wife, but I'm having a hard time looking past all the times before when plans have been made and then not followed through on.  Can somebody please just randomly start playing music so I'll know that things will work out... or is it time for me to stop delegating the bulk of my financial well being?  I'm pretty sure I would resent having to leave my children with somebody else, but it would relieve this unsettling dependence I feel.  My choice, right now, is to trust and hope, I hope its right.  

The Recycling Rant

We are avid recyclers in this house.  We have the list of can do and can't do posted on our bulletin and we follow it.  I have a box upstairs and a bin downstairs, both dedicated to collecting the things we throw away that our city has deemed "recyclable."  I guess in this thing, you can say we're being sheep, because I'm really not sure why we go to all the trouble. 

I remember the day I first seriously questioned the value of recycling.  I was standing at the kitchen sink, water running as I rinsed my trash off in the sink.  I live in Arizona, a dry, arid desert, with lots of land and very little water.  Then I realized... here I am, spending my time and the scarce resource of our community, water, to protect the plentiful resource, land?!?!?  At that point, I kind of started resenting the time and effort it took to recycle.  For a while, my city made it up to me, they implemented a program called Recyclebank.  It would weigh your recycling when it was picked up and then apply points toward rewards based on the amount of recycling you did.  I cashed in on a few free museum passes.  It didn't alter my doubts that it was possible I was participating in a cultural ritual that had little beneficial impact on society, but at least the efforts resulted in something positive for my family.  I think their free trial period expired though, because they quit participating in the program. 

Well, that's about all there is to the story.  Sadly, I'd like to say that I've rebelliously quit recycling and I now put everything in the trash, but I haven't.  I still rinse my trash, put it in a container a little too small to hold all the big plastic jugs and hope that my community is able to resell it to somebody for a high enough premium to make up for costs it generates to pick up.   But something tells me the $300 I pay each year for trash pick up is what pays for that service... and if the community makes anything from the reselling, its nickels... but perhaps there are some enterprising businesses out there who have figured out how to create new products from this renewed raw material.  To this business, I reluctantly, but cheaply, dedicate my time.  To my children, I can naively claim to be doing what I could to improve their future. 

As I think about it, my attitude might move from resentful compliance to apathetic compliance if they just didn't ask me to rinse my trash.  I'm pretty sure they rinse it again after they get it anyway.  And, doing the dishes that I'll reuse is an ongoing task of its own, but doing the dishes for somebody else to reuse, is down right annoying! 

Is Whole Wheat the Solution?

There are so many ideas about nutrition out there.  Honestly, it is a very frustrating thing to me.  My husband's philosophy is, eat for calories and then take a vitamin pill.  The Weston A Price Foundation says you have to eat lots of grass fed meat, raw milk, and fermented grains, especially while young or pregnant.  The vegetarians believe that the way to fight off cancer is to keep you diet to less then 5% animal products.  There is the paleolithic diet, the Adkins diet, the SouthBeach diet, and many more I'm not aware of.  So with all the choices and differing opinions I can relate to Joseph Smith who felt very confused about all the different religions back in 1805. 

I've given the ideas of the diets, much reflection, probably not enough study (I can only do so much before I'm throwing up my arms in frustration) and some experimentation.

What we've tried: 
Vegetarianism.    We still had milk and eggs, but no meat.  We had lots of beans, rice, nuts.  We ate lots of chick peas.  My husband was the initiator on this.  I was freaked out because I had NO idea how to cook without using meat.  I did have fun experimenting with new foods and recipes.  This felt good in a lot of ways, but we were always hungry!  I think that is what did us in finally.  My husband would say, it was because of all the chick peas I was feeding him, "If I have to choose between bacon and chick peas, I choose bacon." 

Raw Milk:  This one came as I nursing two children, and I was always hungry.  The baby wasn't responding well to milk, but I was CRAVING it.  I needed to find a middle ground.  I read a post about nutrition during pregnancy and the writer recommended the Weston A Price diet.  They suggested raw whole milk.  I was intrigued.  The literature said many people didn't have the same negative reaction to raw milk that they might have to pasteurized, milk.  I was convinced I wanted to try it, so I drove an hour, with a screaming baby in the car to buy two gallons from a local farm.  It was the best milk I've ever had, and it really hit the spot so I think it was the right decision then, but I'm not convinced it is the right decision forever... here's why: 

Its inconvenient and expensive.  Expensive as in $10/gallon.  Inconvenient as in ...Did I say I drove an hour each way to get it?  Its also risky, since they don't pasteurize or homogenize the milk, its safety is very dependent on the health of the cows and the cleanliness of the dairy.  This adds to its inconvenience, because it makes it very difficult to find and apparently not legal in many states. There is only one farm in Phoenix that sells it.  Once I reached the farm, I realized from the lack of grass and the number of flys that entered my car when I opened the door, that these were not grass fed cows.  This farm uses organic feed, which is okay, but its one more bump in the supply chain... and that matters when you're foregoing standard food safety protocols. 

It was the best tasting milk I've ever had!  I like to think that some things that are good for you do taste good, and this milk tasted GOOD!  So maybe someday, when I live in a house with a big yard, I'll buy a milk cow, but until then, the raw milk might only be an occasional treat.

Now What?  Whole Wheat!

So, now I'm embarking on a new experiment where I'll mill the flour for our family's bread and then bake homemade bread.  I'll try the experiment until I have used 3, 5 gallon buckets of wheat.  Then we'll review and decide how it is best to move forward in our family.

A Reluctant Start:

Honestly, people who mill and make their own bread always seemed a bit too "relief society-ee" for me.  A wheat mill has been on our "purchase list" for years now mostly as an emergency preparedness/self reliance tool.  The holdback has been the combo of the mill and the fancy Bosch mixer is an investment of nearly $700 dollars.  I can buy a lot of bread with $700 and that bread doesn't come with the added burden of actually having to make it! 

Why 15 gallons of wheat? 

Well, I compromised. I'm foregoing the Bosch mixer and settled on a $160 wheat grinder. I figure at $1.25/loaf, once we've consumed the 15 gallons we'll have broken even (based on a very rough estimate) on the grinder.  After the 15 gallons, if I feel strongly that I want to integrate bread making into our families' lifestyle, then I'll invest in the Bosch.

How I feel now:

I've moved from a reluctant start to a hopeful beginning.  It seems that my self-reliance experiment might actually hold some solutions to my confustion with nutrition as well.  Here are the reasons why: 

First and foremost, there is that clause in the Word of wisdom that says,  "Nevertheless, wheat for the man." 

Secondly, there are my own observations... many of the families I've known that are blessed with shapely figures seem to consume abundantly a few things in their diets:  eggs, milk, and whole wheat bread.

Third, there is some research that indicates this effort might help with some of my nutritional frustration.  Research claims that freshly milled whole wheat contains 26 known vitamins and minerals.  It contains a high percentage of the bran and fiber.  All which helps fill you up with nutritious calories.  My toddler will eat of piece of this toast with honey, so we're off to a positive start.

So, I'm finally ready to try a "Wheat for the Man" experiment.   My hope is that by improving this one thing in our families' diet it might provide some additional lattitude for the other things that we do kind of poorly in our diets.  Maybe if I feed them a quality whole grain bread toast in the morning, it won't be soo bad when we have frozen pizza for dinner that night?  That's my feeling, anyway... if I can be more obedient in this one thing, the Lord can open up more knowledge and ideas so I can be better in other things.

Its interesting to me how my effort to simply be more obedient in self-reliance has already provided some spiritual perspective.  I find myself asking, could storing wheat and baking bread (what I considered to be the uncool Relief Society pasttime) really be a valuable key to the healthy eating of my family?  Not funny colored smoothies or carbohydrate deprived diets?  It seems almost too simple.  Maybe it is, but maybe it isn't.  We are told that sometimes the simpleness of the way is precisely what keeps us from being obedient to a commandment.   Perhaps I'll check in again with recipes I've tried and lessons learned.  At any rate, I'm planting my seed of faith and now I plan to experiment on the word, specifically the  words that say, "Wheat for the man!"