Who Won Conference?

No, General Conference it not a competition. However, people who know that I always watch all the sessions often ask me what my favorite talks were. This time around was no exception, though it took me a minute to settle on my top three. But settle I did, and now I'll share!

3rd Favorite 

Elder Ulisses Soares closed out the Saturday Evening session of Conference with a lovely talk that focused on respect and dignity for all God's children. He encouraged us to spread that respect across all borders to everyone, everywhere, regardless of circumstances. He spoke of how it requires individual effort to build those necessary bridges of understanding. Those who speak, look, act, or live differently than us should not be judged but rather loved and welcomed! There is no place for prejudice in the community of Saints.

But how do we live this principle when our very humanness leaves us quick to judge and exclude? Elder Soares said the answer is to look with the Savior's eyes. Since we are all "fellow travelers" through mortality and all imperfect, we must celebrate our differences and not criticize others; we must seek to see others as Jesus does. He analogized God's family on earth to a large waterfall. We all originate from God, but we travel in different directions as we find our way home. And through these travels, we are blessed by our diversity.

Finally, he reminded us that we re all equal before God and have the same eternal possibilities. Yes!!!

2nd Favorite

Robert M. Daines of the Seventy spoke in the first session Saturday morning about how to "see" Jesus in all we do. We follow Jesus, not a formula, not just a set of rigid rules, by which we are measured. If all we see are rules, Elder Daines suggests that perhaps we are blind to God's redeeming, transforming love. Our covenants are, instead, about relationships, with our Heavenly Parents, with our Savior, and with each other.

He spoke of the pitfall of trying to earn the Savior's love. Instead, he taught, our goal is to "shape our lives to His perfect love." Bravo! We already have His love, and we couldn't possibly earn it, even if we needed to. The Good News is... we don't! Instead, we choose to live in response to that love, that radical grace, that transformative power of sacred covenants. Woot!

Who Won Conference?

Sister Tamara Runia, First Counselor in the Young Women’s General Presidency gets my vote for the weekend. Her words offered so much hope to a world burdened with so much pain. Mortality is clearly not for wimps! But Sister Runia taught us that because of Christ, it all works out. It's all gonna be okay. She suggests that we choose hope over despair, hope in our Creator!

Step back, she admonished, and see the bigger picture. Eternity is a long time. Let's see our kids [and everyone!] through the "lens of love!" Everybody needs a cheerleader, she explained, so why not be that for those we love. Tell them just how loved they are. Tell them we love them more than anything. Forever. Just as our kids can't mistake their way out of Jesus's love, make sure they know they also can't mistake their way out of ours.

She went on to remind us that "The Savior can turn any nightmare into a blessing through His atonement." But it's not our job to judge or condemn. We are to love fully, and leave God's work to God. She called us "shared companions" on this earthy journey. How much do you love that? She concluded by promising that we can shine forth Christ's love to everyone because everything is going to turn out so much better than we think.

Ahhh, what a hopeful message! With Sister Runia and President Emily Belle Freeman, the young women of the Church are, indeed, in fabulous hands!

There's my list. Until April, friends...

Do you cheat at Wordle?

Let me say, unequivocally, that I do not. Cheat at Wordle.

For those unfamiliar with it....wait! Is there really anyone who is unfamiliar with Wordle? Just in case, Wordle is a game that you play once a day. You try to guess a 5-letter word in six tries. Everyone has the same word, so I suppose if you wanted to, you could look up the answer each day before you play. But why would anyone do that? What would be the point?

However, my family seems to think I do. To be fair, they probably think this because I am so terrible at games. I always lose. You can add games to the long list of things I suck at. My family feels comfortable when I lose Wordle. They're used to it. I always lose. But oddly, I'm not as bad at Wordle as I am at other games. Sometimes I win. And they can't handle it. 

For example about a week ago. Well, here's the screenshot of our group Wordle thread, so you can see what happened. 

Shulamith played. Then she left a clue. (A while back, we started leaving clues after we play for the others who haven't played yet. I stopped doing this because I usually play before anyone else, so I never got any clues, and everyone else kept winning!). Anyway, Shulamith played, and then left the following clue: "I should have put on my thinking cap for this one."

I literally read her clue, logged into Wordle, and typed the correct answer in one try: beret. It was the first word that popped into my head. Well, "hat" was the first word I thought of, but "hat" has only three letters. 

Anyway, suddenly the text tread lit up with everyone accusing me of cheating. MY OWN FAMILY! May I share copy/pastes of some of their comments? You'll be stunned!

Eli: You definitely cheated, Mom. No one thinks of that word from "thinking cap."

I protested: "I literally saw her clue, opened Wordle, and typed the answer."

Eli: Still don't believe you...

Shulamith: But it doesn't work like that with this word.

Amanda: Yeah, you 100% cheated.

The next day, it took me six tries, the worst you can do and still not fail.

Me: Isn't anybody gonna accuse me of cheating today?

Eli: I'll let ya slide today...or maybe you purposely got 6 to look innocent...

Amanda: Oh for sure. She's trying to take the heat off of her. 

Seriously? 

Another day I got the word in three tries.

Eli: So Mom cheated, right?

Shulamith: She only cheats on hard words like "beret."

MY OWN FLESH AND BLOOD (plus one who isn't, but it feels like she is). 

So I ask you again, my friends (excluding these three people mentioned above): Do you cheat at Wordle?

Because I definitely do not.

If I can grade 18 essays by Saturday at 10:00 a.m.......

 If I can grade 18 essays before Saturday at 10:00 a.m., I can take most of the weekend off to watch General Conference. Eighteen is a lot, though. Even if I could do half by then, I could maybe squeeze in the other nine before, between, and after the sessions, throughout the weekend. I hope that works.

I really love General Conference. It's partly because I appreciate brilliant rhetoric and solid writing, which we get lots of in General Conference talks. Rarely are there wordy or awkward sentence constructions, and almost never a grammatical error. I say "almost" because this one time several years ago, a speaker led his talk with a dangling modifier. I was stunned. The editors for Conference talks are fabulous, but they somehow missed this glaring dangling modifier. 

Memories of past General Conferences are numerous. I think back to the days when we had to go to the church building to watch. There was a guy in our stake in Washington who bought tons of candy, which he set out in a large bowl in the library. Then he watched the sessions on one of the TVs and handed out candy to everyone who passed by. I think his name was Dave. I remember grabbing a handful of candy, then going to the mother's lounge to nurse Seth and promptly falling asleep. I was SO sleep deprived! It was the Sunday afternoon session, and I missed Elder Maxwell's talk. I had waited all weekend for his eloquent discourse. Back then, the talks weren't available on the Internet hours after they were given; we had to wait for them to be published in the following month's Ensign, and read them. I was so bummed.

By the time we moved to Billings in 2004, we could watch General Conference on TV in our own homes. Pajama church for the win! It was a game changer. That said, now I had the task of bribing kids and teens to watch. Home offered many distractions. Bribery included all sorts of unhealthy treats, stuff I'd never bring into my house on any other day. I would hide these snacks in my room and bring them out, one at a time, throughout the two days. As they grew older, the kids began making requests for specific "Conference food." 

You'd think all this might be long over, since Seth moved out two years ago to live in Orem and attend UVU. But no. I'll have you know that I am sharply proficient at living in denial and pretending my kids are all still here. I do it every day. And yes, I absolutely still shop for all the Conference treats. And send everyone pictures of what I buy. And guess what? They still come! Not always for every session, of course, but throughout the weekend, they show up, watch a session with me, and feast on Twinkies, Pringles, Red Vines, and Oreos. If they're lucky, I'll even drive to Sandy early Saturday morning, wait in the long line, (other moms must do this too?) to buy a couple dozen Krispy Kremes. 

(By the end, we all feel nearly dead from the sugar highs and lows, but come on....it's only twice a year.)

Before closing this pre-Conference muse, and lest anyone might wonder, it is not only the solid writing and rhetoric that I love about General Conference (though I do love that!). Like many others, I rejoice to hear the often-inspired words from those in general leadership positions in my church. There are many methods recommended to members as they prepare to hear these messages. I sometimes write down questions about issues I'm pondering or things I don't understand. I study and prep the "Come Follow Me" lesson for the week, even though we don't have church on Conference weekend. Most importantly, I pray that some of the talks will lead me to an increased understanding of Christ's love for every person. 

Especially this time around, when the past two weeks I've been "careful and troubled about many things" (Luke 10:42), I will pour all that out at Jesus' feet, and pray that something in one of the messages will resonate with me and bring comfort and healing. Will I relate to and agree with every word spoken in the 10 hours of talks? Of course not! But if just one idea brings new light, if just one perspective offers a path toward "truthier truth," then I will feel blessed.  

I always do.

This is the most beautiful car I've ever seen!

We have an ironic situation in our family. The people who are under 6'3" (Shulamith, Eli, Amanda, and I) like to drive larger vehicles, such as minivans or SUVs. And the people who are over 6'3" (Isaiah, Seth, Luke, and Gerald) like to stuff themselves into the tiniest, subcompact cars they can find. While we are driving around comfortably with plenty of room, the three of them barely fit in their cars, their heads with but a fraction of an inch to spare. I'm pretty sure Isaiah's lovely curls graze the top of his Kia Rio!

As you may remember, recently, I've developed a problem with cars. They break. They crash. They suck! This was not always the case. My first minivan, a 1990 Dodge Caravan, we purchased when I was pregnant with Isaiah, so we could bring him home from the hospital since our car at the time accommodated only our then small family of four. I drove that van for 15 years, and Isaiah was quick to inform everyone that "learning to drive the same vehicle your parents used to transport you home from the hospital is just wrong!"

Fifteen years driving the same car. No crashes. No transmission failures. No broken emergency brakes (this one I managed to accomplish while driving Shulamith's minivan, but it still counts). 

What happened??? 

I have no idea. Truly, I'm baffled.

But here I am, yet again, in a rental. It took three days to get it. The dealership that will replace my failed transmission told me it was Chrysler Care who needed to provide me a rental. Chrysler Care told me it was the responsibility of the dealership. Back and forth I went. For three days. Finally, this past Monday, a miracle occurred (and it really was!). Chrysler Care assumed responsibility for providing the rental. They told me I could go rent a car as long as it was no more than $65/day, and they would reimburse me. 

Shulamith immediately called Enterprise, and the only car they had to meet that qualification was a tiny Nissan Versa. Don't get me wrong. It's a fine car. Just small. In fact, it would be the perfect car for Isaiah, Seth, Luke, or Gerald. But me? Not so much. I'm a minivan mom through and through, and I absolutely need all that space.

Still, at the end of this very sucky week, where absolutely everything sucks, my job still requires me to drive to three college campuses in three locations nowhere near one another. So for today, though I'd never buy it, at this moment, this is the most beautiful car I've ever seen.

"Point in the direction you're going to go!"

"Get on the train going NORTH. Toward Ogden. NOT Provo," Shulamith directed, as she pointed in the direction of north. "Point in the direction you're going to go," she continued. I pointed the same way she did. North. Once, just once, when we lived up in Sandy, I might have boarded the blue line Trax going north instead of south and wound up all the way downtown before I noticed. It's fine.

Today, she dropped me off at the Draper FrontRunner station, and I headed up to the U. for my afternoon classes. It had already been a sucky day, a sucky week really. I was dealing with some disappointing and emotionally triggering news. My family is totally fine, so don't worry; it is just some personal business that left me feeling hurt and sad. 

And then!

Last night, after driving home from a meeting at SLCC, I stopped at Maverik to grab a Diet Coke. (FYI, soon there will be a brand new 7-Eleven on the corner of Redwood and Porter Rockwell, right near our house! My level of excitement over this is startling, even to me.) When I returned to my car to drive home, I noticed it was behaving strangely. It made a loud noice when I accelerated, then wouldn't accelerate at all until I stopped, turned off the engine, and restarted it. 

"For real?" I thought. My car is a 2019 with just 37,000 miles. This should NOT be happening, When I finally got home, I drove to Shulamith and made her come drive with me around our block, "This is really bad," she said. 

She was right. First thing this morning, I braved the 5-minute drive to our favorite mechanic here in Bluffdale. He didn't even need to look at my car to know what was wrong. Just hearing the noice as I coasted into the shop, he said "That's the transmission." He's been repairing cars since 1969, so his level of ethos is pretty strong. They did the normal tests, and sure enough, my transmission is trash. On my nearly new car. Awesome.

I was already in a "mad at the world" frame of mind, and this didn't help, but my awesome mechanic assured me that power train stuff like this should still be under warranty. Dodge should replace my transmission for free. Really?? Well cool.

I spent the rest of the morning on the phone with Chrysler Customer Care, the Dodge service department, the towing company, and my mechanic. The Dodge dealership ordered a towing company to tow the car from the repair shop to their service department up in Sandy. That's where it is now, and it may be mid-October before they have time to look at it. Meanwhile, Dodge has promised to give me a rental car until this is all resolved. 

Rental cars, though. Like when I get in car crashes. That's how I'm feeling. Like I got in another car crash. Except I didn't. "You just have super bad luck," Shulamith's friend Bridget commented this evening as we sat in a park after I got back from the U. I've never thought of myself as a person who has bad luck, but where cars are concerned, I guess she's right.

Still, some good things happened today, after a crappy week. I made it all the way to the U. and back on all the right trains without getting lost. The weather was cool and breezy. I got to see more of the beautiful U. of U. campus as I walked to and from the Trax station. I received an entire set of writing assignments without one student using that horrific ChatGPT. I felt the Savior's presence right beside me through it all.

So I wish all of you a glorious weekend! Point in the direction you're going to go. You're far more likely to get there if you do.

"Were you consistent?" Mr. Gay wanted to know.

"Were you consistent?" my Honor's English teacher, Mr. Gay, asked me during the first week of my senior year of high school. He had asked me to T.A. for him, and he was teaching me how to evaluate and grade student writing from his freshman English classes. He gave me a set of essays to score, and when I finished and returned them, he read only the one on top. "This looks good," he said. "If you were consistent with all the others, then I don't need to look at them. Were you consistent?"

In that moment, I realized two things: (1) I had no idea if I'd been consistent in my scoring of those papers, and (2) that one day I would teach English professionally. I'm sure back then I was thinking high school, but thank heavens (!) at some point thereafter, I had a better idea. 

Education is a core value in our family. We were committed to helping our kids financially through their undergraduate degrees, and next May, our fifth and final kid will complete his bachelor's (Go, Seth!). So far, only Luke has moved on to earn a graduate degree (Ph.D in psychology), but I think both Shulamith and Eli will pursue master's degrees at some point, and Seth will for sure need grad school of some sort.

Still, I wouldn't have predicted that so many of us would remain in fields related to education. This week, five of us returned for the 2023-2024 school year!

As mentioned above, Seth began his senior year at Utah Valley University, completing a B.S. degree in sociology and criminal justice.

Eli returned to Ridge View Elementary, teaching 3rd grade. He says the kids are small! (Compared to his 4th graders last year.)

Shulamith made a roller coaster jump from teaching part time at Salt Lake Community College the past few years to teaching half-day kindergarten at her kids' elementary school. She teaches a morning class and is home by 12:30, and all three of her kids are so happy she's at their school.

I don't have a "Back-to-School" picture of him, but Dr. Luke Erichsen continues in his position as a school psychologist for the Maryland School District. 

And I'm still chillin' with my adjunct gig, teaching freshman writing courses at Utah Valley University, Salt Lake Community College, and (for the first time) The University of Utah! It's way too many classes this time around, but if I don't die, I'll try to pare that down spring semester.

Here's to the 2023-2024 academic year, everyone! I'm predicting awesomeness for all of us.

(One final note: Mr. Gay passed away four years ago at age 90. If you're watching from above, Mr. Gay, know that you were my mentor and hero as an English teacher, and to this day, I try hard to be consistent in my grading.)

The bliss of clean!

My house hasn't been clean since mid-June when summer semester began. "Your house is always clean," people like to tell me. But no. Not true. My house always looks clean because I keep it tidy. There is never clutter. As the saying goes, "A place for everything, and everything in its place." And I spot clean constantly. Ten minutes before I have to leave for class? What can I clean in ten minutes? Five minutes until I'm meeting Shulamith outside for a walk? What can I clean in five minutes? Microwave has three minutes left? What can I clean in three minutes? It works great, and my house always looks clean.

But that doesn't mean it is.

During the semester, I don't have the time or energy to deep clean regularly, which is what is needed. 

Oh how I wish I didn't need quite as much sleep. Or that I could grade papers faster. Or that I didn't teach so many classes. Or something. Because every semester, I get progressively sadder, as the weeks pass and my house deteriorates. 

I am now in the middle of my three-week break between summer and fall semesters. Let the deep cleaning begin! So far I have dusted every inch of furniture, as well as baseboards, ceiling fans and vents, hand railings, and light fixtures. I've vacuumed and mopped all the floors, scrubbed the kitchen and all four bathrooms, and cleaned out those gross window sill tracks in every room. Still to do: clean and sweep garage and back patio area, rent a power washer to wash the outside of house, and hire someone to wash windows. 

Already, my mood and overall well-being are improving. It's hard to describe how strong the positive correlation is between the cleanliness of my house and the peace of my soul. A week from today my semester at the U. of Utah begins, and two days later, both UVU and SLCC as well. The slow but steady deterioration will commence. 

But I won't think about that right now. Not today. Today I'm gonna gaze at these dust-free baseboards, and take in the smell of a freshly-cleaned kitchen. Bask in the joy of sparkling glass shower doors and mirrors. Feel the clean floors beneath my feet. 

A week ago, in a moment of insanity, I agreed to teach two classes at the University of Utah this fall. (These are in addition to my three at UVU and three at SLCC.)

I may die.

But that's okay. Because today. Today... I live in the bliss of clean!