20/20

More reflection on being twenty years out of high school will follow, but I am kicking something off, and I wanted to write about that.

I decided to treat my last doctor’s visit as a wake-up call. My blood sugar levels are being a bit stubborn about going back down after my little ER visit. They’re not horrible, but they should be lower, or I will need to start looking at more drastic remedies, and I don’t want to do that. The doctor focused on the importance of exercise, saying that simply walking just fifteen minutes a day could be really helpful.

Well, that was doable. I started on July 28th and have been doing pretty well, missing only two days. Part of that was insufficient planning. If I go on a walk with my sisters, we go in the evening, and sometimes we are good about that and sometimes we miss, but if I had been planning on a walk, and then it doesn’t happen, I have to work something in. This happened three nights.

The first night, I just wandered around the family room for twenty minutes. Sometimes it was walking back and forth, then running in place, then throwing in sequences I could remember from old aerobics tapes, but it was all very odd, and the only saving grace was that I did keep moving for twenty minutes. Yes, it was twenty instead of fifteen. There’s a reason for that.

During the first day, during the first fifteen minutes actually, I started remembering this recommendation made by a President Richardson at a stake conference. Looking at things to improve the lives of the members, he recommended what he called the 20/20 program, where everyone should exercise for twenty minutes a day and read the scriptures for twenty minutes a day. I decided to do that, so along with improving my health I would also be keeping on track spiritually.

Scripture study, like exercise, is another area where I tend to be off an on. I go strong for a while, and I know it has blessed my life, strengthening me at times and certainly increasing my knowledge of the scriptures. However, having been through them so many times by now, maybe I wane in my enthusiasm. Still, I want to be strong, and have mastery over my thoughts and behavior, so that is good.

Actually, at the time I had already started a new thing where I was reading the Book of Mormon backwards. No, I am not looking for evil messages. I can’t tell you how many times I have read it, but a conservative estimate is fifty, and I worry that the familiarity will make me miss things, and thought that perhaps going out of sequence would help me weigh each verse individually, and help them stand out. It’s going okay. I’m sure I am still missing things, which of course is one reason that I could read it fifty times more, but actually with the frequent use of chiasmus, there are passages where it kind of reads the same.

Anyway, the second time it happened, it was late and I hadn’t read either, and though it seemed unbelievably lame, what I decided to do was to read while doing various isometric exercises—I would just flex or stretch something and hold it while I read. Sometimes it ended up being more yoga-like, but I had done something for another night.
Still, both of those sessions were so lame that the next time it was late and I had not exercised yet I just blew it off. (I think that was when I spent two hours more than I had planned helping at the blood drive, and that had left me irritated, which did not help.)

The other time I did not get in my twenty minutes was quite recent, and it was a bad decision brought on by negative emotions. Julie had been showing some discomfort with my use of the treadmill. She didn’t say I couldn’t use it, but it was still there, so finally it came out that when she was researching them she kept finding a weight limit of three hundred pounds. I decided we needed to check for this one, and it is actually 275. Ouch.

I had already been worried about keeping the exercise going after starting work. Now I was losing one more tool (and I was still worried about the VCR at that point), and losing it in a way that reminded me how far away I am from normal people. So obviously, when you are depressed about being fat, the best thing to do is to skip exercising, and maybe eat a batch of cookies while you’re at it. (Okay, I did not eat a batch of cookies, but I should have exercised and I didn’t.)

I’ve covered my weight issues in depth a few times, and if anyone needs to go back to that, I’m putting links, but there is so much new material to cover that I don’t want to recap here:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2008/12/trending-downward-316.html
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2008/01/sporky-pig.html

The last time I posted my weight (June 2009), what happened was that the scale broke, which I mentioned, but I don’t think I ever mentioned why I didn’t start again. We replaced the scale, and the new scale weighed me about ten pounds higher than the old scale. That was a little discouraging, but the one at the doctor’s office always weighed more than the one at home, so I figured it was probably more accurate, and I could live with that.

The problem was that it varied so much from day to day that I was concerned. One day I weighed before and after my shower, and I was six pounds heavier after. Now, I know I have a tendency towards water retention, but I did not absorb six pounds of water in the shower! So I couldn’t trust the digital one. We do have an old-fashioned scale also, but as you move the weights back and forth, it can be hard getting the right balance, and if you shift position it throws everything off again.

As important as it is to monitor yourself, I think right now it is something that I can’t do closely. I did check today, and I was 316.8 on the digital and 315 on the old one (analog?), and that is probably about right. My heaviest on the old digital was 346, which was probably more like 356-360. I was thinking that I would probably not weigh again until Halloween, but I will probably do it at the end of the forty days.

You see, thinking about what I had accomplished, and what I need to accomplish, and what obstacles I have and will have, I decided I wanted to give myself, well, a Lent. The exercise and the scripture study will go well beyond forty days, but I am abstaining from video games. I had taken a break from them while I was finishing the one screenplay, and then I started again, and it is amazing how much time I will spend on them when I have other things to do, so really the only thing that works is abstinence, and with a specific time period, it is easier.

(Really, I get addicted so easily that the most fortunate break of my entire life may be having been born in the Church so that I never even tried alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. I don’t think I would have done well.)

Part of this (the non-game playing part) will be being more effective, and getting all these things done that I want to do, but another important thing is getting the exercise down and scripture study down, during the first few weeks of work, that it is just non-negotiable.

One thing that has always handicapped me for weight loss is that I will have specific targets in mind, and I want to fix—well, fix myself, really—and I can’t look at it that way anymore. Wrapping my personal worth (and worthiness of love) with my body size has just not been effective in the past. Also, I just need a more realistic scope.

I will not be thin in time for a reunion, or vacation, or wedding or holiday. This is a marathon. It could easily take me five years to reach my correct BMI, if it is even reachable, so I am not about that. (For my height and age, the range appears to be 110 to 145, which does not sound plausible, but that will not be my only gauge of my fitness.) I am just trying to make my body healthier, and I am starting slowly.

I remember once thinking that for me to really get healthy I would probably need to be completely regimented, with every meal and snack measured and planned ahead and multiple exercise periods worked in, and it didn’t seem possible. Well, maybe that needs to be reached incrementally. I have already modified this twice. On the first day I lengthened it, and shortly afterwards I felt like I needed to do something weight-related (maybe because the lame isometric workout had me feeling so loose.) So, now I am alternating push-ups, wall-sits, and crunches. And they are the weakest, wimpiest push-ups, wall-sits, and crunches you have ever seen, but they do cover different body areas. They will get better, and other evolutions will occur, long-range.

I don’t know where I am going to end up, but perhaps the biggest change in me personally has been my growing comfort with uncertainty, and acceptance of things beyond my control. Took me long enough.

Anyway, I intend to blog daily during these forty days, and there will be a little report at the end of what I did. We’ll see what happens after September 25th. (Oh, and the reason I did both push-ups and wall sits today is because I didn’t do push-ups yesterday, but I did walk.)

Beginning belly dance (30/30 minutes)
Push-ups and wall sits
Mosiah 15 – Mosiah 7

Thriving at your Reunion

I had not originally intended to blog about the reunion, but then Cheryl said, “I hope you do”, and I’d do anything for Cheryl. Also, I have been analyzing it to death, so there’s that. It may turn into a three-part series!

Anyway, this is actually the kind of event that I do really well at, so there might not have been much to write about, but I know some people who did not go because they did not enjoy the last one; I had one friend who was really nervous before, so I was trying to help her with that; and in my function as a greeter I found some people who had other concerns. Somehow, everyone seemed to end up having a good time, so perhaps there are lessons to be learned.

For my friend who was nervous, this is partly because another person was harassing her at the last one, and he has a minion, so even if one was not there, there other could have been. In a situation like this, it is important to plan ahead. First of all, this particular scumbag will only attach when the victim is isolated—whether from sheer cowardice or due to some conscious knowledge of wrongdoing does not matter—so the first part of the plan was to use the buddy system.

It was important to emphasize the positive, so the plan needed to be constantly looking for additional people, taking time to enjoy each of them, rather than looking over the shoulder for the big bad one. Part of this included going over RSVPs and yearbooks to remember all the cool people one could possibly spend time with.

That strategy is probably good for various kinds of pre-reunion anxiety. Jogging the memory and remembering good times helps build excitement.

So, what if your memories of high school were bad? Well, the good news is that people who were immature at various times, maybe even nasty, will have often grown up, and if you get to know them now you might like them.

This is where Facebook has been great. First of all, we don’t have to go all the way back to square one with each new person—we may already know how many kids we have or what they’re doing for a living. Also, you can get to know people you did not know the first time around. I knew a lot of people at school, but I didn’t know everyone, so that’s been nice.

Yes, there are invariably people who don’t grow up, or maybe even get worse, but the really beautiful part is there’s a good chance they won’t even come! On one level that should not be celebrated, because it’s really kind of tragic, but I must say it was kind of nice. I only even remember seeing one person who was likely to bring drama, and as far as I know she behaved herself.

It’s sad that some of the people who worried about possible drama and stayed away missed out, but the cost was very expensive, which was another deterrent, and I have no helpful advice for that. Actually, well, Facebook helped a little bit there too, because there were various unofficial get-togethers, but you don’t want people to skip the official one for that. I went to a multi-class gathering at the park the next day, which was great, and there were two separate opportunities for barhopping the following evening. Next week I am having dinner with friends, and then the week after that I am going to karaoke. You don’t have to fit it all into one night.

Now, one thing that never occurred to me as an issue, but other people did, was simply being overwhelmed. I have to admit that the venue did not help here. Things got pretty loud, which does not calm anyone down, but also the bar was right in front of the entrance with the nostalgia table on the other side, so right as you came in the first thing you hit was a traffic jam. Even if that had not been the case, there are stimuli on all sides. Just trying to cross the room to one person could lead to five different diversions as you keep finding other people to hug and question and snap photos of.

I like that kind of chaos, but if you are at all ADD, or PTSD, or introverted, it can be an issue. I think you use the usual coping methods. Take deep breaths. If you need to take breaks, do it. To some extent, you also need to just embrace the experience. Focus on one person at a time, and take them outside if needed, but also, you need to know your own capabilities. I can see where claustrophobics and agoraphobics, opposites though they are, could each have problems with the setup, and okay, maybe you need to visit with people one on one, and avoid the big gatherings. If this is a chance to stretch yourself a little though, and it works, it can be good.

Speaking of knowing your own capabilities, remember that alcohol is not your friend. Sure, it makes you feel a little looser, but it does that by eroding your judgment. Not drinking at all, ever, I don’t really have any helpful hints for deciding the right limit, but I suspect most people should stop at two drinks. It’s legally imperative to have a plan for not driving drunk, but it’s also tremendously helpful to have a plan for not humiliating yourself, or getting into actual danger, or getting into a bad hookup. I’m just saying.

For some of the people who did not come due to having a bad time at the ten-year, it was because they found people being competitive, and they didn’t want deal with that. Again, most people who are still attending seem to be above that now, but I do think it’s natural to want to be able to present yourself well, and feel like you are doing okay with your life. Personally, I would have really liked to have been married, physically fit, and financially secure. As it was, I’m just lucky Regence called the day before, so at least I had an upcoming job instead of being completely unemployed. Still, I had a few things working in my favor, and there might be some last tips here.

First of all, whenever people see me, they commonly tell me that I look great and that I haven’t aged a bit. In large part, I believe the reason for this is that I set the bar so low. If you remember someone as slender, and she puffs up after giving birth, then she’s gone downhill. I have gained a lot of weight since high school (I’m actually down a bit since the 10 year), but ultimately I have always been fat and had crazy hair, and so I’m primarily the same. (Certainly, not drinking or smoking helps.)

That being said, I think the big anti-ager is happiness, and I am generally pretty good at being happy. I have my moments, like anyone, but even with decades of weight problems and romantic disappointment, and two years of unemployment and underemployment, ultimately I still like myself, and life, and the world, and that’s your best strategy for thriving in any situation, including reunions, is to be okay with who you are.

Of course, if someone who you have always kind of liked is there, and feels so good to hug, and you can’t stop thinking about him but he’s in a relationship, and there are plenty of other obstacles, so it’s pointless, yes, there can be some wrinkles there, but ultimately you keep doing what you need to do and it works out. Hypothetically.

I got some other nice compliments that weekend, and they have caused me to think a lot about then and now, and I think there may be some postings on that. Otherwise, if you are wondering about the happiness thing, I do have some tips:

http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2009/03/october-2008-three-keys-to-happiness.html

The Resistance of Memory

I have already mentioned my irritation with Facebook status updates that order you to do the same (especially when they are accompanied by the accusation that you just don’t care), but there was one specific idea that had intrigued me. You were supposed to set your status asking people to share how you met, or your first memory of them (there were variations), and then they should make that their status so you could post on their wall.

Well, I did try that one, and that was okay, but there were some people whom I would have liked to have seen posts from that I didn’t, and some that posted, and I didn’t really have anything good to share in return, and sometimes my earliest memory was not the cool one. I kind of toyed with the idea of just picking one week and posting whatever memories I felt like on whatever walls I felt like, and maybe other people would do it. I could call it “Nostalgia week”.

Well the week before my twenty-year reunion seemed like a reasonable time to go for it, so that’s what I have done. I also looked through old yearbooks and literary journals, and there are some interesting things.

First of all, where did my 3rd and 5th grade pictures and 8th grade yearbook go? It’s weird that they are not with the rest of the stuff. It’s not a tragedy, but it’s a little annoying.

Mainly though, I have pondered the “stickiness” of memories. Some things are so clear, and some are faded, and some are just gone. For example, I was at a wedding reception lately, and I ran into someone who was my girls’ camp leader for, I think, four of the five years I went. She knew she knew me, but couldn’t quite place me, so I reminded her and she said, “That’s right! You’re the one who made all the wonderful crafts!”

I did not remember that, but then thinking about it, I did remember that it was true. I could even picture one craft, but it was very dim. I could get at faint traces with a reminder. Sometimes, there is not even that.

In my seventh grade yearbook, there is a complex coding system consisting of stars, hearts, mustaches, nose zits, and mouseketeer hats. Clearly it came out of a mixture of immaturity and boredom, and it is embarrassing now. Some of the people I remember quite well, and why they have that rating. There are some boys with hearts that I don’t remember, but I liked a lot of boys, and it was usually passive, so that’s not a big deal. However, there are mustaches (showing an active dislike or resentment) that I don’t remember at all. In addition, there are girls who are double-starred. This means that either we were good friends or that maybe I did not hang out with them because they were older, but that they were really nice to me and I respected them a lot. Still, the mind draws a blank.

Another issue is concern about putting the wrong memory. Oddly, there were several people who looked alike. When I look at class or family pictures from the seventies, it always kind of looks like mine, I guess because of the clothes. In the eighties, it’s probably the hair. So, I might have thought it was one person, but it was really another, and how awkward would that be! Actually, one issue with a lot of the athletes that I managed is that everything was kind of done as a unit. It’s not any more of a memory with Jason than it is with Mark.

Actually, thinking about the athletes leads to another issue, in that a lot of the things I do remember are not really good for Facebook posts—maybe they are just a little too crude, or not flattering to one of us, or maybe it is best forgotten, like “Hey, remember when you told everyone that I liked Casey and he went from being like my best friend to never speaking to me again?” or “I remember always being afraid you were going to kill yourself because you knew way too much about suicide for how alienated you were.”

It’s not that there can’t be good conversations about some of these things, and in a lot of the cases where I remember someone being a jerk, we’re cool now, and there’s no anger left, but they don’t necessarily work for nostalgic wall posts.

So, I don’t have stories for some people. Some of them I have always remembered their names and faces immediately, but I have no good stories. Others I don’t remember, but I really like now. And seriously, some of my Facebook friends I specifically remember that we never spoke or came into contact, but hey, why is that a reason not to be friends now?

I did have this idea that then other people would start posting memories to other people too, and it would be this kind of love-fest, and I don’t think it is happening to the extent that I wanted. Maybe I was unrealistic in my hopes, but I could also be missing things, because I am posting so much, I’ll see Gina posted on so-and-so’s wall and 29 similar stories. Still, some people have posted memories to me, and some conversations have gotten started on posts I have made, as we remember classes and teachers and things we have in our shared experience.

I wish I had a story for everyone—a good one, but we can always make new ones. In the immortal words of Simple Minds, Don’t You Forget About Me.

What's been going on

We’re having some downtime at work, so I’m taking advantage of it to do an update. I know it’s been a long time.

Well, as usual, things have been crazy. The last time I wrote was May 23rd, and there was a ton of stuff going on that I didn't even cover. First of all, there was a series of rough patches.

The first one happened in April, where I got behind on my medication, and I was just hoping to ride it out until some money came in, because I have skipped a few days here and there before and managed. I think the problem was that I ran out of multiple, instead of just one, or that it was a longer stretch. Anyway, one Sunday I started getting sick, and it came on much faster than it usually does, and I found myself in the ER getting pumped full of IV antibiotics. While I was on the second bag, my mother came in and told me that our cousin's wife, Shirley, had died. It was just kind of a low point.

Expensive medical treatment aside and sadness and concern for her family aside, life went on. I worked Monday, got back on my medicine, received several death threats in case I ever tried that again, and did manage it so that I could make it to the graveside service on Friday, and later that night Maria came home and had cracked a tooth. Always on the weekend. She did have an uncomfortable weekend, and we were expecting a really expensive bill, but it turned out that she just needed a filling replaced, making things somewhat better. That got fixed Tuesday.

Once again, life goes on, and the next Friday Julie came home sick. Well, it was a downer, but at least our issues were getting milder, with quicker recovery times. (I still had a week of antibiotics left.)

So life goes on, Julie was well enough to travel for her trip with Maria to visit a friend in New Mexico, and while they were gone I found out that my job was coming to an end. Granted, it was a temp position, and so that was something that was going to happen all along, but suddenly it was a reality, just when we were having weekly crises. I thought I might actually be done the following week, but I got a slight reprieve. That’s when things really got interesting.

My last day at Intel was to be May 21st. About a week before that, I got a call from a writer friend, who had another friend with a book that had gotten some interest from a movie producer. She felt it was important to come up with a screenplay, but neither had any experience with screenwriting. Enter me.

We agreed to meet on the 22nd. I started reading the book, but did not have time to do more than that. My last day at Intel, I concentrated on creating a few more documents to help my successor, and would be running around like a chicken with my head cut off for the last hour or so as I turned in my laptop and badge and tied up all the loose ends. Before that, though, the person I was training recommended me for another job. I said that was fine, and suddenly received a phone call, and had an appointment to go in Monday. So, I had my crazy hour, went straight to Vancouver, talked to Christine and spent the night, headed up to outside Tacoma the following morning and met with Liz, parsed out the scenes, headed back and filled out paperwork for the new job Monday. It was a whirlwind, but that's two great opportunities just dropped in my lap, right? Well, it's never that simple.

The new job was another contractor/temp job, which was fine. It paid quite a bit less, but since it was only for six weeks, I figured that would be okay. Getting to the contracting company was easy—it was right on the MAX line. The actual job site, well, let’s just say it takes an hour and a half and three buses to get there. Going from telecommuting three days a week to that was a little bit of a shock to the system. Never a morning person in the best of times, it was rough going, but I kept telling myself it was just for six weeks. I think I am in my eighth week now.

In addition, I was just not getting anywhere on the adaptation. I had written all of 24 pages, and I kept wanting to write and thinking that I needed to write, and not getting to it. Liz and Christine kept finding more potential buyers, and sure nothing is guaranteed but having those kind of options is still huge, so I felt like I was just blowing it all, and that was a lot of stress too.

Is it lame that a combination of bad hay fever and exhaustion got me sick? I think it was July 1st where my tonsils started feeling swollen, and then it was just worse on the 2nd. That was a miserable day on multiple levels. Everything was starting to wear me down anyway, and then I found out that another job I had been hoping for would not be coming through. Then the bus never came, and this particular bus only comes once an hour, so you need to make sure not to miss it, but I had time to spare but that was not it. Maybe one broke down. While I was at the bus stop, it started to pour and I was out of cough drops and it was feeling like a really bad day.

I had felt like the tonsils were just irritated by all the allergy symptoms, rather than actual illness requiring medical attention, but having just been in the ER makes you a little jumpy, so I went to the doctor on Saturday. The throat was definitely inflamed, with white and red patches, but the strep test came back negative, so all she did was prescribe me some cough medicine. Since that was what I was planning on taking on my own, I did not feel great about the out-of-pocket office call, but I had been having trouble sleeping, and the prescription Robitussin had codeine in it, so I thought at least it will put me out. Didn’t work. I mean, the syrup helped with the coughing, but there was no accompanying drowsiness--just the same old tiredness.

(This led to me cancelling my volunteer shift at the Blues Festival, actually, which was disappointing.)

One thing I had been a little concerned about was that maybe part of the irritation was that I have been taking fake Zyrtec (Walzyr) to keep the symptoms under control, but I have been taking it for a longer period than most years, and I wondered if the partial suppression of the symptoms increased the irritation. I skipped a few days, and Tuesday when I went in I had only cough syrup in my system, and no Walzyr. I was coughing and sneezing all day.

Wednesday I got up, and I showered and was all ready to go, and I just could not do it. I called in sick, went back to bed, and slept for another four hours. I was thinking, well, if I have to have a sick day, I can catch up on sleep and then catch up on writing, but I never wrote. Even after the extra sleep I was so tired. I slept more, and I spent a lot of time lying down but awake. At night I had a mini-breakdown because I had missed a day of work and accomplished nothing. I should have been done being tired, but I wasn't.

After talking with my sisters, I decided to take off the rest of the week, so I called in again, and went to bed without setting my alarm. That gave me basically four days of just sleeping and writing (and church on Sunday). I did slowly start feeling better, where Sunday I was feeling pretty good. There was physical relief from the rest and mental relief from accomplishing some writing, even if I had to force myself to do it. I mean, every writer encounters times like that, regardless of health, and at first I was getting into this weird mental space where I worrying about things like what if I couldn't do it at all, or was going to end up in the ER again, or what if I had chronic-fatigue syndrome? (No, it was just regular fatigue.)

It was a relief to make progress and feel better. It left me with a dilemma, though. This job is bad for me. I can't make myself fall asleep early enough to get enough sleep when waking at 5. The long travel time means that I am losing twelve hours out of the day, even if I am only getting paid for eight. That's normal, but those eight hours were also being paid at the wage I was making back in 1998, which made me want to cry a little. The job was literally getting me sick, but there were no health benefits. And it looked like it could go on for at least another two months. I couldn't put myself through that.

One thing that I had noticed in the previous months is that I just keep plodding along. It doesn’t matter how tired or discouraged or frustrated I am, I keep going. There are good things about that, but it needs to be combined with some judgment. It wasn’t making sense here, No matter how terrifying quitting was.

I ended up delivering an ultimatum, explaining that I either need to make X amount of money or that Friday would be my last day. I sent it before I came into work. Once there I found out that the rumor mill said I had pneumonia. Well, not quite that bad. Anyway, I will either be unemployed again or better-paid in a few days.

I do still have a lot to do on the screenplay, and I better get it done before I start getting sick again. I feel bad not posting though, so I was thinking of posting some short fiction and things I have already written. We'll see.

Pentecost

Well, it is fifty days past Easter. I had planned to bear testimony (in some way) daily from Easter through today. I did not make it for every single day, but I made it for most of them, and it was a pretty good experience. I wanted to write up a bit about that.

First of all, and I certainly did not have this in mind, I was entering a really rough period of my life. I didn’t know it, and I will write more about that later, but at first my little plan seemed ironic, because I was supposed to be making expressions of belief but I was struggling so much to feel any belief.

It seemed ironic, but it was actually very helpful. Having to be able to find something to say, and when to say it, and to whom, kept me from wallowing in self-pity. I had to remember over and over that things have worked out before, and that ultimately I believe they will continue to do so. I’m still not the kind of person who is grateful for trials while they happen, but I can concede that they often end up being helpful, and that things do work out. The timing was good from that perspective.

It also led to some good experiences that would not necessarily be expected. One night I remembered at eleven o’ clock that I had not done it yet, and so I went to where Mom was getting ready for bed, and I told her that I knew the church was true. Instead of looking at me and wondering if I was on drugs, she reaffirmed that and shared her own testimony, and it was a very touching, bonding moment in the bathroom, that would not have happened otherwise. That was good.

It can also be good to tell people what you are doing. My friend Jill will bring up religion fairly often, and she will sometimes disparage Mormons a little, not too bad, but I tend to shrug it off, answering questions and sharing things as appropriate, but not really paying attention to that, because she is kind of smart-mouthed in general and I tend not to take the bait. Well, because of my goal, I was taking all of those smart remarks and refuting them and testifying and just not letting her comfortably ignore the truth of it. In other conversations that followed, she kept telling me I was a control freak, and I think that’s way. If I had told her, by the way, I have this goal, maybe she wouldn’t have said that—but then maybe she also would not have taken what I was saying so seriously.

(Incidentally, I didn’t think I was, and that seemed ironic because I had just been talking to Julie about her being a control freak, but not the way Becky is, and Jill admitted she was a control freak too, so maybe everyone just has different things that they freakishly need to control. It really only bothers me if they try to control other people.)

There was another incident that was especially important to me. On Mother’s Day, I suddenly remembered that this would be the first Mother’s Day for a friend since his mother had died, and all of those milestones in the first year hurt. I mean, they hurt on subsequent years too, but I believe it starts to sting less. Anyway, I wrote to him, and among other things I told him that I knew that he would see his mother again.

It was his response that made the difference. He didn’t really say that much, but there was emotion conveyed where it was like he had not been thinking in those terms. That’s the one thing with bearing your testimony at church or with other members—yes, we do feel something and we are strengthening each other, but it’s usually just reinforcing what we already know. That the soul continues and that we will see each other again is just such a given for us, but it’s not that way for everyone. That realization humbled me. It’s an amazing thing to know, and I felt more grateful for it at that moment than I have before. And believe me, I have been grateful before, but remembering that not everyone has that, and being able to comfort someone, I felt it more.

I know it was not as effective as it could have been, at least in terms of reaching other people. I kept getting stuck inside my own head with worry and fear, and I just was not organized at all. I’m not planning on continuing the daily part, but it did remind me how powerful sharing faith can be, and that there are actually a lot of opportunities. Two of the nights that I missed, I had conversations that just skirted the area, and if I had been thinking I could have easily gone there.

More to the point though, as I was looking for people to share with, it reminded me to think about other people, and what they might need and what might help them, and that’s something I try to do anyway, but there is always room for improvement. If you don’t want my religious beliefs, but there is something else I can do for you, I really will try. That kind of things is great, and I love it.

Just let me reiterate, though, that it is an amazing thing to know, and it is a beautiful thing to share it.

My opinions on everything!

Seriously, I filled out my ballot tonight, and I thought I might do an election blog, but it’s pretty boring. Granted, it’s only the primaries, but so many of the races are either uncontested or foregone conclusions, it’s like there is not even a point. So, I thought I would just write about everything else going on.

Wearing the American flag on Cinco de Mayo: I do suspect that the kids in question were doing it somewhat defiantly, as is not completely unheard of with teenagers. That being said, threatening suspension is ridiculous, as is asking them to turn the clothing inside out. If they were trying to be intimidating by anything other than their clothing, but all means punish that. If they were wearing clothing that had a negative message even, maybe, though you don’t want to be overly draconian about the whole thing, but if all they are really doing is wearing flags, it’s not an issue.

Actually, this one does appear to be a non-issue. Most of the student body seems to feel it was an overreaction, the school board feels it was an overreaction, so basically you have one principal in trouble, plus Roger Ebert. People overreacting to (and via) tweets, though, is a whole other topic, and one I don’t care about very much.

BP versus the Gulf Coast: The damage that is happening there literally makes me feel sick. The rush of lawyers heading there to try and get lawsuits started is not as visceral, but still kind of sickening.

Arizona’s new law: There are a lot of things wrong with this. The part that makes it really ugly is that it is essentially turning Arizona into a police state for brown people, many of whom are citizens. I don’t imagine that many Caucasians are going to be asked for their birth certificates when they are out walking, and it’s just wrong. I think all the citizens who are against this law should start walking around with their birth certificates around their necks as a protest. Maybe it’s a lame protest, but it’s a nasty law.

The bigotry factor is what makes it ugly, but I’ll give you two things that make it stupid. Firstly, if the real purpose is to cut down on crime, I think it will turn into a pretty ineffective way of fighting crime, including the crime of illegal immigration. More to the point, you have to fix immigration from the employer end. As long as people can come here, get hired, and make money that even at horrible wages looks good to them by comparison with what they can make at home, they will keep coming. If they aren’t getting hired, it will take a while to filter through, but it will change things around, and I bet you will find it easier to crack down on employers than seal the borders.

Things that are appalling: The skinny jeans defense and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Kind of disturbing: In the picture of Kagan that AOL is using, she kind of looks like Brendan Fraser (which has absolutely nothing to do with her qualifications).

Okay, so what about that election? Well, the two ballot measures are both basically procedural, and the voters pamphlet did not have a single argument against either of them, most of the judges and representatives are running unopposed, and the gubernatorial races seem to be a lock for Kitzhaber and Dudley.

I’m actually not down with that, for what it’s worth. On the Democrat side, I favor Bradbury, and voted for him. I am one of those people having a hard time getting over Kitzhaber calling Oregon ungovernable back in the day. He needs to demonstrate that either he has changed or the state has changed to build confidence. The two things he has indicated don’t even come close. Yes, Oregon is not currently GOP-led, but that could easily swing back the other way in the near future. The margin is not really that wide, and partisanship has gotten much worse, so there are still going to be real issues there.

The other thing he has said is that he would focus more on dealing with the voters, and getting them behind ideas, rather than focusing on trying to work with the legislature to get his policies passed. Once again, partisanship has gotten much worse, and I just don’t see him pulling it off.

That’s not that I don’t think he’s a good man, and if I needed someone to head a special committee for working out medical reform, where we could reduce costs and improve care and get it offered to more people, I would totally put him in charge.

Bradbury I think has a more realistic view of the situation, and he really won my heart by pointing out that a lot of the issues we have stem back from Ballot Measure 5, which I say all the time but in general it gets ignored, and yet it damaged schooling then and it has never really been repaired. I’m not crazy about his Bank of Oregon plan, because what I really want is for people to leave big banks behind and go to credit unions, but his principles are sound. So it’s Bradbury for me, but if he loses I am sure I will be voting for Kitzhaber in November.

Honestly, I kind of like David Lim, and if I were registered Republican I would vote for him, but he really is a long shot. In fact, I recommended to my family members that they vote for Alley, because I think he is the only one who even has a remote chance of beating Dudley, and we all hate Dudley.

It is interesting to see how many people Sizemore has lost over time. He doesn’t seem to realize that he’s a joke. On the plus side, he saves Dudley from being the biggest ego in the race, so that’s nice.

The 26th district only has the one Republican candidate for representative. I did think about advising the voters to come up with a good write-in candidate, lest they have to choose between a lying child-abuser who manipulated his way into the office and a Democrat, but it’s hard getting a good write-in campaign going, so we’ll just worry about that in November.

There is one other race that is pretty interesting. There are three excellent candidates for Metro President, but one keeps raking in the endorsements, and he has mine as well—not just for the sentiment. Tom Hughes will be a great leader for Metro:

http://www.votetomhughes.com/home.php

Where was I?

No one who is a regular reader will be surprised that I have gotten busy and gotten behind on the blogging, because that’s sort of how I roll. There was an additional issue, though, in that I found I kept getting sidetracked on the subject matter.

Remember that I was starting on the issue of the lack of civility in politics—what I have noticed and why it was a concern for me, and how pride is a factor—and then I wanted to have one post on why this was bad for society and another post on why it was bad for individuals. Well I managed the first part of that way back in March, but every time that I started thinking over what I wanted to say regarding why pride and anger and all of that was bad for an individual, I kept getting back to why it was bad for society.

I always have been prone to tangents, but maybe I am just increasingly aware of the difference an individual makes for others—that you can’t really isolate yourself from your impact on society. What happens with the individual is still important for the individual’s sake.

Where I had kind of thought I would be going was that if you are full of anger, and your world is full of enemies instead of brothers, and if you are so confident that you are right in your ways that you would not be able to hear a still small voice suggesting that you are wrong, that you need to consider the fact that maybe you are a goat instead of a sheep, and that goats go to Hell. Granted, under my belief system that doesn’t mean that you are left there, but that still if Christianity is important to you, than loving your neighbor and having charity needs to be important to you, and it’s not enough to only be kind and respectful with the people who think the same way you do. Even publicans do that.

There are signs that are hopeful. I will frequently see stories of generous donations and volunteer work where clearly there are still good hearts out there. I also still see really ugly comments and arguing and wrong-headedness that will lead to bad decisions more to prove a point than anything else.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

If this is what you are feeling, perfect! But if you (for politics or other reasons) get caught up in wrath, scorn, contempt, hatred, etc., that is a problem, even if you political philosophy is sound. And because religion so frequently seems to flavor these political arguments, it can affect your salvation.

That seems like important information, and yet I keep getting distracted. That is partly getting distracted by how bad it is to have a bunch of angry, hateful people walking around and posting anonymously on message boards, but there is more.

Maybe it’s that trying to modify your behavior by fear doesn’t really work. If I only try to be good because I am scared of the results of being bad, chances are I am not going to be able to sustain it. Otherwise, people would probably have more success at dieting and quitting smoking.
However, as I try to do what is right, and I feel God’s love for me, and I act on that and love other people more, which also feels good, motivation becomes a totally different thing. I am acting out of love and gratitude and I am not doing it because of an eternal reward, but because I want to in the here and now. And then I find out that even small actions can make a huge difference with people, and I learn more what is important, and ultimately when I am worried about eternal salvation it is for other people, and all I feel is peace.

I don’t know if that sounds over the top Christian or ridiculous flower child, and really, I am a very practical, grounded person. Also, I do worry about my soul at times when there are weaknesses that I can’t seem to shake, and even when I am doing well at being kind, I often feel like I am totally awkward, or I realize later that there was an opportunity that I completely missed, so don’t get the wrong idea about me that way either.

What I’m trying to get at is that love changes things. Specifically, charity changes things. It elevates and uplifts, and beautifies. It increases your enjoyment, and it can bring some increased pain too, I suppose, because you do care more, but it has rich rewards, and it is a shame what some people will choose over charity.

You know, I could give different examples of that, but then I think it would become kind of scolding, and I don’t want to do that. Plus, then maybe I would feel pride for not being like these people, and that would just be wrong.

So I guess I am leaving it at “Love is good.” Aren’t you glad you read this?

I testify

My mother is really close to her oldest sister in Italy, and they talk about once a week. They do talk about us quite a bit. Elda does not have any children of her own, so she just adores her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and nephews, and always wants to know about them. Anyway, Mom said that Elda had mentioned something about how I am always going.

This seems funny because I do not consider myself energetic—in fact I feel tired a lot. However, I am always coming up with some new project. Elda remembers me as always being up for any excursion, no matter how minor, and studying when there was nothing else to do, or asking questions or looking through books—always being “on”.

Well, my aunt is eighty-eight, so by comparison I should look energetic, but also, I do very much always feel a need to be doing something. I am always getting ideas for things that I want to accomplish or ways to challenge myself, and I do tend to get overly ambitious, but every now and then I complete something cool.

The lead-in to this is that even though I am working, and doing a web site, and reading some thick books that are due soon, and have a lot of blogs and family history and preparedness stuff to do, I have given myself another project.

There were a few things that led to it. One is that a friend asked me if we observed Lent. My church does not officially do that, no. I have done it at times, given up or taking up something, because I do think it is nice to do something special while looking forward to Easter, but not on a regular basis. She called us slackers, of course, but actually what we do is fast one day every month instead of for a month, and sometimes we may do additional fasting if there is a special need.

For some reason the Lenten forty-day fast, symbolic of Christ’s forty-day fast, put me in mind of the forty-day fast our ward has been doing this pretty much annually. They have people sign up for a one day in a forty-day period, so that at any given time there is someone fasting for missionary work.

Somehow with those two things in mind, and sitting in fast and testimony meeting, I started thinking about how people say that when you bear your testimony your sins are forgiven. I believe the scripture they are referring to is Doctrine and Covenants section 62, verse 3: “Nevertheless, ye are blessed, for the testimony which ye have borne is recorded in Heaven for the angels to look upon; and they rejoice over you, and your sins are forgiven you.”

While this scripture is given to specific people as a greeting to them, a lot of people take it as a general rule. Even if there is not an exact correlation, bearing witness invites the Holy Ghost, which sanctifies us, and that is how we become clean and forgiven, and if we are bearing witness on a regular basis we are probably trying to do what’s right on a regular basis, so it all works.
And I was thinking that I would like the extra help. I feel like I just keep making the same mistakes over and over again, without really progressing, and I am tired of it. That busy-little-beaver aspect of my personality is that compulsion to improve myself and really be better and wiser and achieve my full potential. The point of all this being that I have decided that I will bear my testimony every day between Easter and the Feast of the Pentecost, which we also do not celebrate.

After all, the Resurrection is the turning point that changed everything. Yes, there were people who had already accepted him as the Messiah, but many still saw him as a prophet and many misunderstood his mission. His miracles were impressive, but not unprecedented. Yes, Lazarus had been dead longer than anyone else raised from the dead, but still, other prophets had raised the dead. No one had ever raised himself. Suddenly His power is certain, His mission is understood, and everything is brought together. I’m not doing it justice, but it is a watershed. Not only does it happen, but suddenly the Savior is everywhere, appearing to multiple people, and there are many witnesses, for fifty days, after which He goes and visits North America and gets even more witnesses.

So I will be bearing witness in one way or another from yesterday through May 23rd. I don’t know how all it will go. Yesterday after family scripture study I expressed my belief in and gratitude for the Resurrection to my family. Tonight, I am blogging it.

In other cases I may talk to people, or send e-mail, or write out cards, and maybe even pray it. Bearing your testimony to God can be really special. Yes, He already knows, but that does not detract from it. I assume I will get us on the fast Sunday in May—it seems like kind of an obvious one.

I don’t know how all it will go. I have some impressions of people with whom I will share my testimony, and some of them are a little intimidating, and I certainly don’t have fifty in mind yet, which is a lot—this is longer than Lent. But it will be okay, and I expect to be better at the end of it.

So, in case it was not clear enough a few paragraphs ago, I know that God lives, yesterday, today, and forever. Christ died, but He did not stay dead, and neither will we, and I don’t know how I would bear the separations of life if I did not know that. I know that Heavenly Father knows me and loves me, and that is true for all of His children. And through the Holy Ghost, I know that it is possible for anyone to know.

April Foolishness

I came across the paradox of me today. I knew April Fools Day was coming up, and wanted to acknowledge it in some way. I am a little mischievous, and I am certainly good at working out plans.

A good prank is not so over-the-top that it is not believable, and I don’t have time for anything really elaborate, and I certainly would not want anything malicious, so I kind of thought that changing my Facebook relationship status from “single” to “engaged” would be good—simple and non-labor intensive and harmless.

I didn’t want anyone to be going on too long, and feel really fooled, so I thought I would make a status update referring to April 1st as a clue. At the same time, I didn’t want the new status and the new relationship status to appear to close together and be too obvious, so I set the status update about April 1st at midnight, right before I went to bed, and then set the new relationship status first thing in the morning.

The way I believed this would work was that people would see I was engaged, think, “Really?” and then see the status update and realize it was a prank, so this was a one-minute thing. I was so wrong.

There were a few things I didn’t think through. With people you see on a regular basis, they know to be suspicious if you are suddenly engaged when you haven’t been seeing anyone. With Facebook people can see the status who may be sincerely interested in you, but not see you enough to be automatically suspicious. Therefore, I received a flood of well wishes, and begin to feel really guilty.

I was surprised at how bad I felt. I thought I was being a little bit bratty, which is not really so unusual for me, and there is the paradox: I am a brat, but I am also very susceptible to guilt about it.

I guess I felt bad that I had squandered all that good will. Suddenly I was feeling like I was letting people down by not being engaged, because they would all really like that for me. Bad Gina. And also I fooled them, which is not nice.

This is sometimes an issue in my daily life as well. My sisters and I rip on each other (and Mom) quite a bit too. We’re not really mean, but our humor kind of is. Anyway, I’m not sure of the best way to express this, but usually I score the most points. Generally that is fun, and no one seems to feel bad about it (unless they are in a bad mood and I notice too late), but what if it is having a harmful effect on their self-esteem that even they do not realize? I guess I will just have to stick to making fun of other people—only ones who are not around.

Maybe next April Fools I should go with something more elaborate and less believable, like a series of pictures of me with the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot and things like that. We’ll see.

Quick update because I am lame

Well, maybe not that lame, but I was really on a roll there, and getting pretty close to the conclusion of that particular series, and then life happened again, as it does.

There was some stress about the burning smell coming from our dryer, sure, but after a week that is resolved. Certainly, I am always fairly busy anyway, but I was busy when I actually was doing the daily updates too.

No the real issue now is helping my friend with her mother's web site. I learned HTML ages ago, and have had different web-based responsibilities on and off, but my current assignment has beefed up my skills considerably. I have been repairing broken links, and have done some resizing and little things like that. I am still no expert, not by a long shot, and also, every interface is different.

Well, I have a friend whose mother is setting up a beach rental, and she wants a site set up. She asked if I would help. She has done a lot of stuff for me before, including helping with the dryer and she is currently troubleshooting my desktop. Of course I want to help her.

I am glad to be helping her, not just for friendship but also for the ability to stretch my skills. I could be unemployed again in a few weeks (I am definitely employed through April 9th, and it could go all the way to August 6th, but it is being decided one month at a time), and increased abilities can only be a good thing.

Still, it is a little consuming. This time I am working with Wordpress, which I had only had a passing familiarity with, and I am doing a lot more. It is really cool, but there is not much time for blogging. That will probably only be for another week or so, then I will get back to the other 36 planned regular blog posts, and finally finish that animal-centric travel blog post, and oh, I'll do all sorts of good stuff.

And if somehow I am ever able to afford another trip, I have a place in the Cook Islands where I can stay for free!

Taxes and Terrorists

I took the weekend off, but now I am back at it.

Before leaving off, I was writing about the financial decisions we make as a society—what we will fund, and how it will be paid for. Those decisions affect us on two levels. Perhaps you could call it external and internal. We get the society we pay for certainly, so that is the external, and whether we were in the majority or not, that affects us and has its own perils. There are also some internal perils though, in the person that we become as we make those decisions. We’ll start with the external.

Back on the topic of infrastructure, there are some things that we need to be able to rely on if society is going to function smoothly and support positive growth. Sadly a lot of the watchdog agencies are not doing their jobs, so you may have waste dumped into your water, or find that your electricity rates go up and it is generating profit for shareholders rather than improving service, but that’s a topic for another day.

The topic for today is whether we really want a system that widens the gulf between the rich and the poor? Money can buy you bottled water if the water supply becomes untrustworthy, and can move you into the country if the air becomes polluted, and if you have enough money maybe you can even have your own helicopter so that the state of the roads never matters. Most of us will not be able to take our private helicopter into the country, but we will be living in neighborhoods and traveling through civilization to a job, and humanity will be around all of the time. We shouldn’t want to avoid humanity, but we can’t anyway, so we need to think about how they are turning out.

Say schools struggle with funding. Wealthy people can send their children to private schools, and less financially secure but still dedicated people could try home schooling or maybe setting up a charter school, but the majority of children will be relying on public school. If the public school does not have adequate resources to prepare their students for a future of employment and social responsibility, enough of that can bleed over into the lives of the private school kids also.

First of all, you need an educated workforce. This goes beyond being able to attract economic investment to simply being able to support it, as well as having a population that will come up with its own innovations. If you have your own company and can put Junior in charge of running it one day, that is great, but it is a more meaningful gift if he can find good employees who know how to think and develop. Even if you have no children, it makes sense that as you age you will want there to be good doctors and city planners and safety inspectors, not to mention people continuing to pay into Social Security and Medicare once you are collecting. For that to work smoothly, you need success in the schools.

You could argue that you also need healthcare, living wages, and other things like that, and could argue about how much is really necessary, but there shouldn’t be an argument that you productive citizens for a smoothly-functioning society where pretty much any citizen can feel safe and accomplish what they need.

Yes, it was Afghanistan that sheltered Al-Quaeda, and there have been attacks against our troops in Lebanon and Yemen, but the great majority of terrorists come from Saudi Arabia, which is considered a close ally. Well, our government is allied with their government, and we like buying their oil, and they find perks in the relationship, so why the terrorists? There are a couple of things that make Saudi Arabia a fertile breeding ground.

First, you have an economy where there is great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, and great poverty in other places. You also have fairly high unemployment. This is getting better, and I could not find statistics for before September 11th, but two years later, in 2003, it was 25%. In addition, they practice polygamy, and assuming they have a fairly even birthrate, with the same number of men and women, and polygamy is common, there are not enough women to go around. Finally, although the government is friendly to us, and they do not have the same interest in freedom of the press and freedom of religion as us, they don’t interfere with a strongly anti-American press and clerics, because they would rather have the hate being spewed at America than them.

So, imagine a young man born poor, with limited opportunities. He can’t find a job. He is interested in girls, but with no money or job, or prospects of that changing, he will never have a girl either. With no job or girl, he has a lot of time on his hands, and the people who are really interested in him are the mullahs, who will preach to him for hours, and may even feed him, and they will teach him how corrupt and evil Western civilization is, and how glorious martyrdom is, and then you do get the women.

It may sound overly simplistic, but why don’t we get more terrorists from Jordan or Lebanon or Indonesia for that matter? You get a lot of Palestinians, even if they are not directed at us, but again, they are coming from horrible living conditions, with a lot of time to listen to the preaching of hate.

I first came across this theory in Psychology Today, and one point they made is that we just don’t get a lot of American suicide bombers, even in our lunatic fringe, and it’s a combination of those differences. There are people who will listen to a lot of hate speech, but they can still have families. There are people who are unemployed, but they have gotten a balanced education. Generally speaking, our conditions do not create the complete lack of hope for the future that is then coached into anger and hatred. Not yet.

This is a big reason why I worry so much about the lack of civil discourse. We have been moving into uglier times. I believe I expressed some anger towards Aaron Campbell for the choices he made, despite feeling compassion for him. I will also give him this credit in that I don’t believe he was trying to cause any destruction other than his own.

I cannot say that about Jeffrey Grahn. It wasn’t enough to shoot himself, and it wasn’t enough to shoot himself—he also needed to shoot two of her friends. I can’t say that about Joe Stack, who loaded his plane with an extra fuel tank before flying it into a building. I’m sure he was very disappointed to find out he had only taken one additional life. People call him a hero because it was the IRS—no way. And if you won’t get over your anti-government feelings to see the wrongness of that, how about him burning down the house where his wife and step-daughter still lived first? Okay, I guess it was nice of him not to shoot them, but leaving them homeless is still a pretty big “Screw you.” He just wanted to destroy.

Not everyone will turn hopelessness into hatred, but it does happen, and with prolonged hopelessness it’s a fairly easy step.

Life is difficult enough—we should not be setting things up to make it harder for anyone to progress a little and get somewhere. They say a rising tide raises all boats. Well, a little scuttling might end up sinking the whole fleet. We are connected. At best we have a society that gradually becomes less efficient and poorer; at worst life imitates Grand Theft Auto, We can do better than that, and we should want to. That will be the next piece.

On a side note, I can only imagine what kind of keyword flags this one is going to throw out. I guess its a good thing I don't have any trips planned.

Pride and Prejudice

I forgot to mention something earlier. I had written about how it seems to me that the conservative side is ruder, and less interested in reasoned, fact-based debate, but that I do understand that there are examples of the same issues on the liberal side. I did briefly toy with the idea of making more of a point to seek those out, but I decided against it. Reading inflammatory and ignorant comments leads me into hating people. More of that would be bad.

I don’t want to quit reading the op-ed page, or keeping up with conservative friends, but I will try and exert more willpower in refraining from reading comments posted on internet articles. Also, if with friends my comments can help raise the level of discourse somewhat, where they do keep their opinions but lose some of the hostility, I would like that. These next few posts will be specifically about what is wrong with the hostility.

One thing that bothers me is that often people are too content with a status quo that benefits them but not others, like they deserve it but others would not. For example, one person who was incensed about voters passing 66 and 67 has benefitted from the Oregon Health Plan. That comes out of tax money. Another one who spoke out against health care is married to a school district employee. Well, they probably have excellent healthcare, and they have that through the efforts of a labor union. It’s not because they are good people and do a good job—they are, and they do, but that’s no guarantee.

Recently I was reading an article about charity and economic development, and what they had to admit is that we don’t really know what works. Microloans have some good effects, but there is a limit to how far they can take an area. Large aid distribution has flaws too. (Throw in a natural disaster and it gets even harder.)

I believe there are two main complications. One is just luck—that somehow there is an opportunity for growth where the timing is right and everything aligns. That would be hard to reproduce.

I think the other factor is infrastructure. Are there roads connecting the producer to the market? Is there a workforce capable of filling the needs? Are water and electricity available? That is something that microloans can’t provide, and it would be hard for a charity organization to really fix the big picture. It becomes capital development once you get beyond residential clean water and health care. It really would be the role of government, and it takes money.

One prominent supporter of this is Bill Gates Sr. and his support of the estate tax. Junior has become wildly successful, but his ability to do so was not just a matter of his ingenuity (and we can start getting snarky there about what made his success, but it would be getting off-track), and timing, but also having an available framework.

There are resources that the government provides like public schools so you can have literate employees, and there are resources that the government regulates, like the provision of utilities so your employees and customers can even fire up those PCs. Often these things get taken for granted, because they tend to run well, but imagine them being taken away and you can see the importance. Remember, Enron didn’t just cause people to lose investment money—they also faked an energy crisis that led to rolling blackouts and higher rates when the whole thing had been manipulated. And yes, that was related to deregulation.

So that infrastructure affects us on a macro level, and if there are problems a lot of people will be feeling it, but lets look at the micro-level, and it is just easy to stick with health care.

Some people have good healthcare, because they have good jobs, and they feel good about that. “You should just find a job where you get good benefits.” Yes, after being unemployed I should totally have turned down that job offer because it did not include health insurance. I’ve only had good health coverage once, and that company has changed their plans quite a bit now as well. It is more expensive for an individual now than it used to be, but still decent. However, if you want to cover a spouse and children too it gets pretty hard.

Labor unions fight for good benefits, but in the case of local teachers, they took good health and retirement in place of good pay, and now there are always people resenting that and wanting it “fixed”. (That is why when given a choice you should always choose good pay over good benefits, but nowadays most people aren’t really given a shot at either.)

Another comment on the ballot measures, regarding a higher income tax on those making more than $125,000 per year, was that if they are working harder let them enjoy it. I doubt they are working that much harder. I know the difference between what a department manager and an admin makes, and I know who usually works harder. Teachers work really hard, and we had some who voluntarily worked ten days last year so the school year wouldn’t be curtailed anymore than it was. Teachers usually need to work summer jobs to get by, so they took ten days they could have put into their other job and volunteered it for the kids. I know there is hard work there, but somehow the higher pay just isn’t attached.

I guess my point there is that we aren’t really a meritocracy. The last group I worked with started everyone at pretty much the same rate, but there was a vast difference in ability, and there has also (due to poor management) been a big difference in performance. So some people are working and some are surfing the internet or chatting, and everyone is making the same.

Someone else had asked, “Is $125,000 really that rich?” Well, the 2006 data showed the median male income to be $42389 per year (I specify male because for females the median income was $32,538). So, you make more than three times as much as half the people in the state. When Mom was still working both days and nights, and I was employed in my old job, and Julie and Maria were both employed, the four of us combined made less than that. Yes, I guess it does seem a little rich to me.

It was the same thing with the business measure. Someone wrote in to his representative saying that because the tax passed he was letting two employees go. More messages were exchanged and it turned out that his yearly gross was $5.4 million, and the tax he was going to have to pay because of the bill was $4000. So really, the issue is that the business had been struggling anyway, and he was not making a profit, and that is why he let two people go. Because if it is only the $4000, you can give them both 39 hour work weeks, or just lay off one, or make them take an unpaid vacation, it’s easy. But he focused on the taxes, because that’s what he resented. I would like to submit to you that the impact of that extra revenue on the economy can do more good collectively than leaving it there could have done for the individual businesses.

Earlier I was alluding to people taking the credit for things that were at least partly luck, and that would be one form of pride. Resenting those around you, and making assumptions about their unworthiness is pride too.

Last example on this one. Back when they were looking at expanding SCHIP, so all Oregon children would have health coverage, I remember a letter where the writer had calculated that all a parent would have to do is to give up one pack of cigarettes a day, or a six-pack, and they could afford to cover a child. I guess that way if you give up beer and smokes, you can cover two children, but what if you have three?

Joking aside, the contempt of that letter just oozed off the page, and there are so many things wrong with it. First of all, with most plans you have to put yourself in before you can add coverage for family, so looking at the cost of covering the child does not give the whole picture. Secondly, just that assumption that all poor people are blowing what they do have on vices is offensive, and there are a lot of people to whom it wouldn't apply.

Finally, okay, let's say that you do have parents who choose their addictions over the health of their children, do we really want to say to those children, "Sorry, I know you are getting a bad start in life, but doing things to make it better will cost a lot of money. Sure, by the time we spread it out over all of the taxpayers, it is not that much, but you're not my kid and I don't care." Is that really the right message?

Having had to re-examine my spending habits. I know that what you buy, and what you don't buy, says a lot about who you are. So, what do we want to say about who we are as a state and a country?

How I got here

I remember once asking my mother about her family, and the main legacy that she remembered was that they were all hard-working people. They were good at their jobs, but also quite constant in them, most people starting with one job and staying with it through retirement (generally working for the railroad, as far as I can tell).

On my father’s side, well, I think everyone is a good worker, but there has been a lot more innovation. My grandfather owned an electronics shop at one point, and did maintenance at a Joss house (it’s a temple for worship in various Chinese religions), and lots of other things that I can’t even begin to tell you. This was probably due to a combination of hard economic times and some restlessness. This approach is not great for accumulating wealth, but you learn to do a lot of different things, and it takes some capability to pull off.

Nature or nurture, my siblings and I are all good workers. We do good jobs, and we started working early. I started at McDonald’s at 16, but had earned money baby-sitting, pet-sitting, berry picking, doing yard work, and keeping score at athletic events before that, and it was kind of the same for all of us. Because we worked, we got paid and we had money, and that was cool. It brought a certain independence and confidence with it. Unfortunately, we did not have good money-management skills.

I have mentioned this somewhere before, but books about teaching your children about money will say to make them save half. That always sounded so excessive to me, but I finally get it. When you have no living expenses, it makes sense to take out a large chunk like that. Then, when most of your income is being pulled away on rent and groceries and utilities, you have developed the habit of being responsible with the disposable income. You learned it when everything was disposable income. I did not learn that.

My father was pretty free-spending. It used to be that every time he opened his mail, he would say “Dear Deadbeat” aloud, and kind of trail off. I assumed it was a joke. When he would bring home shiny new gadgets, or take us on vacations, it never occurred to me that this was stuff we could not, or at least should not, afford. Instant gratification seemed to be the norm.

I did a lot of things right. I did graduate from college, paying for it myself. I worked steadily, always being a good employee. I used my earnings to help my family and give to charity, just like you should. However, I did rely too much on credit.

First of all, I used my credit cards for purchases without thinking about it, because I could always afford my payments, and there were different rewards programs, and it was convenient to just put it on the card instead of carrying around cash. But it added up, and many of those purchases were unnecessary and not even really that wanted. How many figurines does anyone really need?

Also, there were unplanned necessities. I didn’t expect to charge a new roof and furnace, but we needed them, we didn’t have savings, and I wanted to help. I did start a savings account, but the hole was already being dug. The other thing that it took me a while to catch on to was that the cost of living was going up, and my pay wasn’t.

I should have known better. The prophets were always counseling to avoid debt, and I would hear that and think, yeah, but I’m okay. I was wrong. Of course, the advantage of having prophets is that they will tell you things before the reason becomes obvious, at which point getting in line is much harder.

Buying the house from Mom was supposed to help, because we would use some of the money for repairs, and some for her retirement, and some to pay off my credit cards. Then the repairs took more than we planned on, and I didn’t want to short her retirement, so I left the balances on the credit cards, which were still manageable. And then I lost my job.

Now, if you are in the mood to condemn, you can certainly say that my actions were wrong here. Julie was going to go on her sabbatical to Australia. She was going to go with a friend, but things weren’t working out, and she asked me to go, and Maria and I both decided to go. We made plans and bought tickets and I asked my supervisor how to arrange for unpaid non-medical leave, since I did not have enough vacation time to cover the entire trip.

I had accommodated every time-off request I ever got, some of which were pretty ridiculous. Maybe I shouldn’t even have asked, but just remotely filled out my time card with 0 hours and come back. Anyway, I could not get a straight answer. Weeks went by with no response, and I would call and they would say “We are still looking into that.” Finally, three days before I was going to be leaving, I called again, and they said no, I couldn’t go. It turns out what they were really investigating was not what I needed to do, but whether they were legally obligated to let me go. I guess I asked the wrong question.

All this time I had been frantically working to make sure everything I ever did was documented, and that other people knew how to do it, and suddenly it became a lot more frantic. My manager thanked me for being so professional about everything, and said to call when I got back and maybe I could reapply for the job. I thought the purpose of that was so they could make me take a pay cut, but that I would still have the job. Instead they launched a search for a replacement. I was already back when she started training, so they did not save any time and they lost a lot of experience, as well as chucking morale for the team, apparently largely because I had hurt their egos by going anyway, but you know, as long as they made a good decision.

Was my decision good? At the time it felt like the only decision. A lot of what we paid was non-refundable, it would have ruined Julie’s sabbatical, and I wanted to go. It was a great trip. I loved it. I just had no income and no unemployment when I got back, and the economy collapsed while we were gone, killing the already not-so-great job market.

I had some savings, and some vacation time paid out, and I got fairly decent tax refunds, but there were some months when there was just no money for the bills. Mom helped sometimes, so now I was really shorting her retirement, because that’s where it was coming from, and the church helped sometimes, and eleven months to the day later I am working again.

It is not enough to cover everything, so I have charged medicine, and I charge the cable bill, which on one level makes the credit card payment cover two bill (credit card and cable), but is no way to get ahead, but the money is just not there. A lot of things that seem like options are not.

For example, my sister-in-law suggested cancelling the cable. Well, that is television, internet, and phone actually, two of which are necessary for a job hunter, and getting the phone that way took a bill away from my mother, who is also stretched thin. Also, to lock in the lower rate, I signed a two-year contract back when I was employed. My cell phone is also on a contract, which will come up eventually, but again, as a non-driver and job hunter that phone is important.

Selling the house could get me out of debt, because even though it is not a great housing market, I could recover my mortgage and other debts without charging too much, but then I am not just homeless, but I am also evicting my mother, sisters, and pets, and we are not going to find a less expensive place to live. One advantage of a place built in the ‘70’s is that it has four bedrooms and a large yard. My house payment is about $1200 a month. I can’t do better.

Here’s my other problem. My current contract (which could end next week anyway) does not cover healthcare. Diabetes is a pre-existing condition. I don’t have enough money for my current bills, and there is no way that I can handle the sort of exorbitant coverage that would be available if I could find someone to take me.

Again, there is some responsibility here, because even though I clearly do have the gene for diabetes, I am sure that my weight triggered it becoming active, and I know I could have taken better care of myself over the years. That being said, there was nothing malicious there, and no willful laziness. There was some genetic tendency, and some societal shift in that direction, and some choices to prioritize other things over fitness, which did include jobs and helping others. (There’s a whole complicated other topic there.)

Therefore, when I picked up my insulin in January and found out that the price had gone up $7, I nearly started to cry in the pharmacy. (It’s over a $100 now. I am on the uninsured discount program too; it just doesn’t help much with injectables.) This is why sometimes I will go without my medicine for a few days, because I can’t afford it or I can’t afford the needles, even though my family helps a lot, and would want to help more, but how much can you ask of people who are already broke? And this is why I am out of Lisinopril, and almost out of Metformin, and I need to go back to the doctor, but she said that I needed to get my eye exam done before I come back, and I cannot afford to pay an ophthalmologist right now. Maybe I am making bad choices, but where is the good choice?

People mention free clinics, but those are practically mythical. I was being badgered to call Virginia Garcia, and I did, and they are useless. They take two uninsured people a week, and it is first come first served, but you need to call in the same week. If they are already full, you try again next week. They should just sell raffle tickets and be done with it. I thought going through the sliding scale discussion would be bad, but I can’t even get there.

So yes, I would love nationalized healthcare, where it does not matter who my employer is, or if I am employed. And the fact that all of these discount places for poor people seem to expect that you will have some kind of insurance really gives pause. Exactly how bad are their plans?

So, that’s where I am financially and physically. I have not always made good decisions, but I also don’t know anyone who can say that. I can say that I have not been lazy or tried to freeload. I have helped others where I could and still try to do so. So why don’t you want me to have healthcare? What have I ever done to you?

Yes, that’s taking it kind of personally, but I am a person, and I don’t believe that I am that much of an exception.

“The Others” in other applications

I know, these titles are getting repetitive. As long as each post is, they are part of a greater whole, and I am going somewhere. I think the titles will start using different words though, for differentiation if nothing else.

My main contention has been that the problem is with taking sides. I don’t know why we are like this. I guess choosing one side over another takes away ambiguity, but it also takes away accuracy. So the police feel beleaguered, and it is reasonable, and citizens are worried about police brutality, which is also reasonable, but the end result seems to be that people quit examining what they need to change and only focus on how they are wronged. (Maybe the reason I don’t relate is my deeply ingrained tendency to always think things are my fault. There are problems with that too.)

Anyway, this leads to my concern with how partisan politics has become lately. It’s the same principle. My side is threatened by your side, so it becomes perfectly okay to vilify and lie and do whatever is necessary to make sure your side loses. The weird thing is that I think it is important to let emotions play a part in your political philosophy, but it feels like it gets taken too far, where no intellect is taken into account.

Here is where I will admit some possible shortsightedness. It seems to be that this mindset is worse on the right. That may just be a result of the last cycle of losses, which did upset the balance, and so the threat factor comes into play again, but it seemed like it was that way before too—that conservatives were more likely to deal in insults and ignore facts, while liberals were more likely to be giving reasoned responses and trying to keep the argument calm.

Now, an article I recently read mentioned this occurring on both sides, and gave specific examples, so clearly there are liberals doing it too. I guess I still feel it less because I am not encountering it as often. My opportunities to encounter things primarily come through conversations with acquaintances, as well as Facebook postings, letters to the editor as featured in The Oregonian, and comments posted on AOL articles. I don’t generally watch television news shows or listen to talk radio—I prefer getting that information through print and internet media.

Probably that preference is because it seems to be more intellectual rather than emotional. I assume they write scripts for these shows, but I believe they spend more time on the writing when it is being turned into an actual article, and going through that process makes a difference. It can make you be clearer, because you have to stop and think, and the reader will have time to stop and think, and it is just a different mindset.

So, coming from that background, it looks like the conservatives are bigger jerks. I remember when I wrote my own posts against Matt Wingard, I did go back to check various sources, and I spent some time on blueoregon.com, reading their articles and the comments posted. Again, most of the people who were in agreement were very thoughtful—they referred to board history (going back two decades no less), they quoted other articles, they wrote in complete sentences—and the people who were against it could only say “You’re bad!” (I’m paraphrasing, but not as much as you might think.)

Now, do you see what I did here in expressing myself? I explained what my impression was, admitted some lack of knowledge but explained where the knowledge that I did have came from, and it’s civil. That’s what I like. Sure, it’s nice when I agree with someone, but you can disagree without calling someone a cancer and wishing them dead.
When we take that mentality of it being a fight, with a wrong side and a right side, suddenly we have created enemies, and we assume the worst about them.

I remember recently a small dust-up over whether Costco should be allowed to take food stamps, and how dare anyone who could afford a Costco membership get government aid! Well, okay, but what if they had just renewed, and then lost their job and were getting aid, or had a friend who had a card and would help? Because if you are feeding a family on a tight budget, Costco is great. You can get a 25-lb bag of rice for $8, when 5-lb will cost you $6 at a regular store. Peanut butter is a great deal too. Not everything there is a good deal, but there are some things that can really help.

Also there is a poll on whether drug tests should be administered to welfare recipients. Certainly, the purpose of welfare is not to free up money for drugs, but if you have your hard cases scamming the system, they probably have a method for passing the test. Apparently those tests are easy to work around. Would it really prevent bad people from getting something for nothing, or would we just be taking another shred of dignity from someone who doesn’t have much left? (I admit, my feelings on drug testing have changed since reading Nickled and Dimed.)

I have another example, but I am going to save it for later. The next post will be deeply personal, putting a face on this liberal who has been unemployed, underemployed, and struggling with debt and hoping for socialized healthcare.

Follow-up to The Others

More information has come out, and a lot of it is bad in different ways, but again what really bothers me is the reactions. There have been opinion pieces about how cops need to be aggressive, because their job is so dangerous, and others about how they are too trigger-happy, and maybe their guns should be taken away, and an article on this guy who goes around flipping cops off whenever he sees them. Apparently “I’m Ron Frashour” t-shirts are being printed, but I don’t know if any other protests are planned.

One development that I am somewhat hopeful about is that there will be a federal investigation. An outside look, but by law enforcement without regional ties or loyalty, might be the kind of clear-eyed antidote that is needed. I hope that’s not too optimistic. Clearly there are training and coordination issues, and those should be resolved.

In the meantime, there are several important points that are worth remembering. We know there are training issues and communication breakdowns, and that is bad, but if Frashour can be taken at his word, he was trying to protect his own life and that of the other officers and civilians. In addition, it sounds like James Quackenbush was doing good work, and de-escalating the situation, and it is tragic that other factors ambushed his efforts, but it is only fair to acknowledge the good with the bad.

From the other side, in general the police should remember that if they cannot hear what the other officers are saying, then the other people may not be able to hear them either. So if a person’s only offense is not following instructions, and it is loud, you can’t hold that against him. Also, if a person is hit in the back, they might put their hand there, and falling is not necessarily an aggressive move.

I know, that makes it sound like more of the blame is on the officers, but it’s not. Some people have stated that it is offensive to say that Aaron Campbell is responsible for his own death, but he is. His intended result was for the police to kill him, and that is what happened. Honestly, we don’t even know that Campbell was being honest with Quackenbush—he may have still intended to die at that point, and we can’t know—but even if he had changed his mind, the events were already set in motion, and there is a thought process that makes me really angry and sad here.

Campbell’s reasoning for wanting to have the police kill him was that if he killed himself, he would not be able to go to Heaven—because suicide is a sin. That makes sense. It violates the commandment to not kill, it flouts God’s will for living out the days ordained to you, and it hurts people horribly. They are left feeling betrayed and angry and guilty, because they take the blame for not being able to help. It’s a rotten thing to do, but a person can get to the point where they are in so much pain that all they can think about is ending it. How do you decide that making someone else do your dirty work makes it less of a sin?

We could go over legal precedents of pre-meditated murder versus manslaughter, or penalties for the person who hires someone to do a crime, but I think it is more useful to look at the damage. If Aaron Campbell shot himself, his mother would be devastated, especially having already been brought down by the death of one son, and friends and family would feel bad.

With a police shooting, we still have the devastated mother and sad family and friends. We also have (I assume, and hope) several police officers who have to deal with the guilt of that. It is not an easy thing to take a life, and even if you think that they did it too easily, that doesn’t mean that they shrug it off and forget about it. That leaves a burden.

This has not been mentioned, but presumable we have a traumatized girlfriend and three children, who were dealing with a desperate man with a gun, which can be pretty terrifying.

We have the guilt of the aunt for calling. The Skanner is saying that if you have a crisis situation that you should not call the police. So how do you feel if you made a call and someone ended up dead?

Most of all, we have more pressure on a relationship that was already strained, and that needs to be a good relationship.

How is that less sinful?

The police did not cause or create a tragedy. They failed to prevent a tragedy, and yes, I totally agree that there was incompetence in that failure, and it needs to be addressed, and this particular bureau has not shown themselves to be good at addressing their own failures in the past, so it’s really good that the feds are stepping in, but theirs is not the only fault.

I have great compassion on Aaron Campbell. I know what it feels like to wish you did not have to deal with life anymore, and to know that actually stopping dealing with life would be wrong. I also believe that God is a lot more merciful than we understand, and while I know that suicide is wrong, I have hope for the people who have done it. I have to, there are people I care about who have.

But I also know that despair does not last. Pain subsides, and new pain comes along, but new joys will too. I was thinking today about how they say that big things like getting married or winning the lottery generally only improve happiness for a year, and then you are pretty much back where you were. I thought it seemed like kind of a bummer, but then I remembered that I am usually happy, so it’s okay. I can be happy married or single, rich or poor.

It just stands to reason that a loss should wear off in about a year too. I know you still carry around the sadness—there are some things that I will remember suddenly, and it feels just as sad as it did when it was fresh, and maybe it always will, but my overall disposition does not change. But that is for an event.

If there is a choice to give yourself over to anger, or bitterness, or hate, that could be a permanent change. If you are an unhappy person and want to change that, it is more important to change your mindset than your circumstances. What I am afraid we will have here is people who are going to choose unhappiness, because they have enemies, and we shouldn’t be enemies. I think most of us want a peaceful community. That will require cooperation.

I read an essay recently likening civilians, criminals, and law enforcement to sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. I get the appeal of it, but it is exactly wrong, because it puts the sheepdogs as these creatures that the sheep don’t like, until they need them, but they are needed. No, lots of people love the police, and lots of people want to like them but have trust issues that can be kind of reasonable, and some people are just anti-authority, and besides which sometimes there’s kind of a thin line between a wolf and sheep, but really, the biggest problem of all is that we are all just people. For all of the good qualities of people, we also screw up a lot, and one of the big screw-ups is that we seem to have a hard time drawing a line without it becoming a gulf. We need to focus on what we share.

Reasons I am grateful for my sisters

Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I have spells where I let a lot of time go by. What you may not know is that when I do this there are always different topics going through my head. One thing that is really important to me is being present in any given moment, and I am least able to do this when I am not caught up on writing, because the words are spinning off and trying to get formed right. Anyway, yesterday I wrote out the various topics that I had ideas on, and, well, there are about 40 that I think are specifically blogs. That does not count ones that might be better for journal writing or fictional ideas, or things that would go in the travel or preparedness blogs.

I’m not saying that I am going to post daily until I get through them, but I intend to try. Again, for those who like to read and keep up, well, it’s okay if you don’t read them all. The side menu shows the titles of the various posts, so you can see which ones sound interesting. Believe me, no one gets as frustrated with me as I do with myself. On the other hand, if anyone is still trying to use the blog to keep tabs on me in a not-friendly way, this could be really frustrating for them, and I’m okay with that. Wow—40. If I observed Lent, blogging every day could have been perfect.

Regardless of all that, I am very grateful for Julie and Maria. We didn’t start out really close. I love all of my family members, then and now, but while I was growing up Lance was distant, Misty was resentful, and Julie and Maria were bratty and mean. Some of that was because of the age differences. Lance was seven years older, and that’s a lot before you become adults, which brings some equality. Five years is still kind of a lot, but I think the main thing that meant with Misty is that she had strong memories of being displaced as the youngest and the only girl, whereas if we had been two or three years apart it might not have been such a big deal.

Despite being five myself when it happened, I don’t really remember feeling displaced when Julie and Maria were born. It was more when they started walking and talking and hitting and biting that it became an issue. They were into everything, which often included my stuff, and if I tried to protest it was easy for them to gang up on me because there were two of them, and I would get in a lot more trouble for fighting with them than they would for me. Here and there I remember playing games with them and making stuff for them or twirling them around, but I had gotten into the habit of calling them brats. One day I realized that my friends thought of them as brats, because that’s what I called them, and it’s not that it was wrong, exactly, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I started to mature a bit then.

We gradually started getting along better, and becoming closer, but it has really blossomed now that we are adults. Vacationing together probably helped, and we have tackled many projects together, and working together helps too. Ultimately though, I think it is the sum of the little moments.

One thing is that I can say anything to them. I did do standup comedy at the talent show, and it was fine, but when bits are inspired by a specific person, I can tell my sisters the name. I can, but I don’t have to because they already know. I can use the harsher material too. I have this one punch line about ending up in a landfill in Utah, and it is dark humor. It does not stem from any bad feelings about anyone, and it is not intended to be hurtful to anyone, but there are still people who would be offended by it, and that’s okay. I have a home audience where I can be unadulterated. Sure, my dark side is pretty tame compared to most professionals, and still involves no profanity or vulgarity, but it’s still there, and it’s nice to have a safe haven for it.

Another thing is that feeling of connectedness with our similarities. I am so wordy—I know my posts are probably a lot longer than they need to be. I think I know why. It was never safe talking to my father. No matter how carefully I would plan what I needed to say, trying to choose the words carefully so that the meaning is totally clear and there is no reason for offense, there was always offense and I was always wrong. So one night we (Mom, Julie, Maria, and I) were sitting around talking, and Dad came up, and how you could not talk to him because you were always setting him off without meaning to, and I mentioned how I am paranoid about being misunderstood, and it makes me wordy. Julie laughed and asked, “Is that where that comes from?” It turns out she does the same thing at work. She got dinged on a review because she does not seem to be able to give simple explanations. They know she understands the material, and it was a good review anyway because she does a great job, but she just cannot abridge. Well, somehow the things that are wrong about yourself don’t seem quite as bad when you can laugh along with the other passengers in that particular boat.

I love their generosity of spirit, and that they are always thinking about other people and have great instincts as to what will be good for someone. Not only is it good in them, but it also means that I am not alone when I want to serve people. We aid and abet each other in that.

I am grateful that they have been following along with me. Somehow spiritual growth was easy for me, and I got a lot of it in early. They did not seem to have as much of an interest, maybe because of the vulnerability that it entails. But, when our attendance in that institute class (Writings of John) ended up being so spotty, they did agree to read the material as a family, and they agreed to keep going until we have read the entire New Testament, The Pearl of Great Price, Genesis, and are now in The Doctrine and Covenants and that has been good for us, and ultimately it would never have worked without their commitment. Now we are praying together, and that has changed us too.

I have referred to adulthood bringing some equality, and that may be the most profound way in which our relationship has grown. There were struggles at different times, but from about a year after I graduated from college to when I lost my job, I was always doing pretty well financially. I helped them with tuition, and bought them presents and gave them pocket money, and that was fine and I loved them a lot, but I was very much the big sister and benefactor.

That has changed a lot in the past year or so. Now they have had to help me, and sometimes we are almost playing Hot Potato with the money. The other week Mom got the water bill, garbage bill, and newspaper bill on the same day, but the water was unusually high, and was going to clean her out. I grabbed garbage and Julie grabbed the newspaper. Mom felt guilty about me taking garbage, so she signed over a refund check to me, but then I just bought groceries with it, and Julie bought some other items for the household, and then Maria picked up something, and it is just as close to living the law of consecration as we have ever been. It would be nice if money was not always so short (and believe me, it is short), but there is hope because we have each other. We can stay just enough ahead of the tide.

So maybe I owed them that one. There are still people who think I am nice and that they are not, and no, you just don’t know them. (And I think evil thoughts about people who talk smack about my sisters.) I am better at talking to strangers, so I can be friendlier that way, but that’s just because I have mostly given up on trying to not feel stupid, which is mostly because I have had five years more to figure out that there is just no point. Seriously, it’s excruciating for me too; I just do it anyway.

I have really come to see the value of having someone there, that you like and that believes the same way you do. On one hand I see sisters who are torn apart by competition, but there are others who are so lonely because they had to do everything on their own, and I’m blessed. We are blessed. This is not the future that any of us saw, but it has its good points.