Friday, March 31, 2017

My Eighth Stitch Fix Experience

I didn't do a Stitch Fix last quarter. I spent all my Stitch Fix money on Disneyland.

Did I regret it? No. Did I worry that Jessica V would think I'd abandon her? Yes, I did worry about that. The last time I waited a longer time than normal to schedule a Fix, she acted like I'd come back from the dead. Or she wrote like I'd come back from the dead, since technically I couldn't see what she did. I just read her note. Hmm. Now I'm wondering what Jessica V even looks like. I'm picturing...auburn hair? And hazel eyes. Or maybe she's Latina, and the "V" stands for "Valdez" or something. Yeah. That would be cool.

In the last six months, my life has freed up considerably, so I didn't even schedule my Stitch Fix on a Thursday this time! I scheduled it for a Friday, and it arrived as scheduled. Apparently Stitch Fix is only Thursday-impaired.

I mentioned that I need new jeans (because my favorite jeans now have several holes in them), that I could use some cute tops for various upcoming bridal and baby showers, and that I wanted a jean jacket (solely for the purpose of pinning my Over the Garden Wall pins to said jacket, but obviously I didn't tell Jessica V that).

Jessica V's response went thus:

Hey Awkward Mormon Girl! I have missed styling you, I hope that you are having a good year so far.

Jessica V, honey, if you're reading this, it's perfectly normal for a stranger you've never met to not contact you for six months. We both have our own lives. Okay? Okay.

I was excited to send you some jeans in this Fix since I have only sent you pants in the past. I choose the darker wash of the Liverpool jeans so that you could dress them up with a cute blouse when attending parties this spring. Try the jeans paired with the Papermoon blouse, this piece is similar to the top that you had posted. Add the Zad necklace from your first Fix to complete the look. I thought you would be a fun of the colors and print of the 41Hawthorn dress, it kind of reminds me of a top that I sent you. Perfect to throw on with flats and then layer with the KFTK jacket. If you need to exchange for different sizes please let me know, otherwise have fun trying these on! Cheers, Jessica V

"Cheers?" Jessica V done gone British, everyone.


Le Lis Sutherlin Contrast Print Knit Top: I liked this right away. It's pretty cute, no? Neutral, but cute. Although I'm in need of more short-sleeved tops that are neither blouses nor t-shirts, and although this shirt did not fill that need, I decided to take a chance on it. Verdict: Keep.


Liverpool Kay Skinny Jean: Kay Skinny "Jean"? "Pant"? Is there a requirement that you can't be a Stitch Fix brand unless you weirdly refer to things in the singular? "Skinny Jean" sounds like a person. I wish Stitch Fix had a field in the feedback form where you could critique the clothing names.

Name aside, these jeans were problematic from the start. They were so tight that it was a devil of a time to get them on. Once on, though, they were so comfy and so cute. I took them off and put them on several times before making any decisions. At one point, I noticed that the tag on the jeans bragged about how slimming the jeans were and how they make you look a size smaller than you are. I was taken aback because I don't feel like I need slimming jeans! If anything, I sometimes feel like I have the opposite problem. So that was weird, but in the end, my desire to not go to a store and try on a bunch of pairs of pants won the day. Verdict: Keep.


Kut From the Kloth Callie Denim Jacket: I tried this jacket on. I also pinned my Over the Garden Wall pins to it to see how they looked. (I wasn't lying when I said that was the only reason I wanted a jean jacket.) The jacket passed the pin test. Verdict: Keep.


Papermoon Abbott V-Neck Blouse: Jessica V was right; I did pin a blouse in a similar color to my Pinterest board. That blouse was a kelly green version of a pink blouse Jessica V found me last year. However, despite the similarities of this blouse to the pinned blouse, I struggled. The blouse in the Fix had a weird, silky texture. It was also strangely low-cut. In short, it seemed like a blouse unaware that it wasn't actually the top of an evening gown. I was having a hard time justifying its existence much less its existence in my wardrobe. Verdict: Send back.


41Hawthorn Renesme Geo Cube Jersey Faux Wrap Dress: I had five thoughts about this dress. 1) Jessica V knows me well; I love the color. 2) Jessica V was also right about sending me a similar top in the past. And a somewhat similar dress, too. 3) Wait, not only does this look kind of like that dress she sent me in the past, it's a knit dress like the one I got in my last Fix! 4) Hmm, and this wrap dress just isn't as flattering on me as it could be. 5) Also...is this dress named after the baby in Twilight?

Verdict: Send back. There were just too many strikes.

That was a few weeks ago. I'm loving my jeans and my new jacket! I'm still trying to figure out the best time to wear the blouse and what to wear it with. Apparently I should have tried it on more and with more things before buying it, because the neckline is not working super well with the stretchy t-shirts I usually wear under white shirts. But I'm sure I'll figure it out.

As always, if you want to try Stitch Fix, help a girl out and use my referral link. I'll get $25 in credit! Also, Stitch Fix is not just for ladies anymore...it's for guys, too!

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Becoming as a Little Child

Context: I gave this talk a few weeks ago. It says some things I really needed to hear and which I thought other people might need to hear, too.

Today I’m going to talk about becoming as a little child.

This topic comes from Matthew 18:3-4: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

That’s pretty serious. It’s not just a recommendation. Becoming as little children is essential to our spiritual development.

I found a talk about becoming as a little child from 2011 by Jean A. Stevens. I would highly recommend this talk to you. She mentions several spiritual traits that children possess. However, two sentences in her talk really stood out to me. She says, “These precious children of God come to us with believing hearts. They are full of faith and receptive to feelings of the Spirit.”

When my older sister and I were young, our baby sister got pneumonia just after Christmas. My parents were worried sick and frazzled. When New Year’s rolled around, they were too tired (and possibly too poor; I can only imagine what Little Sister's care cost) to put together any kind of New Year’s celebration. Our mom told us that there would be no treats that night. To be honest, I wasn’t even five yet, and I wouldn’t have even known about New Year’s Eve if they hadn’t told me. But once I knew what I was missing, well, I was very disappointed!

Older Sister, who knew all about holidays, said, “If only we could have a cheese ball with crackers for New Year’s!” For some reason, she didn’t want candy or soda; she wanted cream cheese rolled in a ball, covered with shredded cheese and nuts, with crackers for dipping. Older Sister told me that if we prayed about it, Heavenly Father would give us a cheese ball for New Year’s.

On my own, I didn’t care any more about cheese balls than I did about New Year’s, but since Older Sister seemed to think it was important, it must be. So she and I knelt down in our playroom and prayed to Heavenly Father so that He would bring us a cheese ball. Not long after, a neighbor came to our house bearing a plate with a cheese ball and some crackers.

I’d say that’s a pretty good example of the faith and the believing heart of a child. A miracle of that purity is hard to come by when you’re an adult. I found a quote by Elder Matthew Cowley about this topic. He was specifically referring to miracles from priesthood blessings, but I think it’s still relevant when it comes to getting personal prayers answered. His exact words were, “I can bear witness to you … that God can work through His priesthood and that He does work through it. I know that without any question of doubt. I’ve had too many experiences. I’m an expert witness about these things. …Now, except [you] believe as a child, you can’t receive these blessings. [You] have to have the faith of a child in order to believe in these things, especially when you reach college age and your minds are so full of skepticism and doubt. I guess there are some things that you should doubt, but you can become as little children in these things. Miracles are commonplace, brothers and sisters.”

Miracles are commonplace. Heavenly Father is eagerly waiting to bless us, and I believe He looks for reasons to give us the things we righteously desire rather than reasons to withhold them. Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many situations where people, specifically adult people, are afraid to ask God for things, things both miraculous and simple. If they do ask for them, they justify to themselves reasons why they won’t receive an answer. If they do receive an assurance that they will receive their desire, but it doesn’t happen right away, they begin to doubt whether they even received that assurance. And, finally, sometimes when their desire is granted, they don’t have the faith to see the hand of God in it.

Let me take you through a few examples. You remember Nephi’s brothers Laman and Lemuel, right? In 1 Nephi 15, they’re upset because they don’t understand the parable of the olive tree. Nephi asks them if they’ve asked Heavenly Father for the interpretation. Their response? “We have not, for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us.” Understanding is something that the Lord can easily grant if He chooses. Yet Laman and Lemuel lacked the faith to make such a simple request. They were afraid that the Lord wouldn’t answer them. It’s kind of like when you meet someone and you want to be their friend, but you tell yourself you shouldn’t try because they wouldn’t like you anyway! You don’t know that! And Laman and Lemuel didn’t know what would happen if they would have asked. It seems it was simply easier not to risk the rejection.

Contrast that to Joseph Smith who, although he wasn’t a little child, was still pretty young when he decided to literally ask the God of all creation to tell him which church he, a solitary uneducated teenage boy, should attend. Not even which church his family should attend…just him. Alone. It’s kind of an audacious request. But he knew that God had spoken to prophets of old, and he’d seen promises in the scriptures that God would respond to a sincere and faithful request. He chose to believe those promises. He chose to have faith. And he got an answer to his question. Wow, did he ever. Had he been afraid of rejection, had he told himself that God would make no such thing known unto him, so many things would not have been set in motion.

Another example is Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. Zacharias was obviously a faithful man. We know from the scriptures that he was a priest. We know that he continued to serve God throughout the long and bitter trial of being childless. We know that he was in the temple the day that the angel appeared to him. However, as faithful as Zacharias was, his faith shrunk in the face of the laws of nature. The angel told him that his wife would bear a child, which Zacharias thought was physically impossible.

Contrast that to the Savior’s mother. Again, she wasn’t a little child, but historical Jewish wedding traditions indicate that she was probably a teenager like Joseph Smith. Mary certainly didn’t have the rigorous spiritual education or the long lifetime of devoted religious service that a priest like Zacharias had. But when she was told that the laws of nature would be turned totally on their head, she believed. She accepted the angel’s explanation of the Savior’s birth without question. I think Zacharias is a classic example of the doubt and skepticism that Elder Cowley warned against. Doubt comes from trying to think about spiritual things in a logical way. I don’t mean that answers to prayers are necessarily illogical, but they do seem to operate on a different reasoning system than the one we human adults use. Sometimes they really do defy logic, reason, or nature as we know it. As the Lord said, “My ways are higher than your ways.” We can’t try to pin down His works with our flawed system of understanding. We don’t know enough. Mary understood that, it seems.

So what’s the cure? If we want to have a child’s faith, how do we get it? King Mosiah gave a great description of childlike attributes: “…becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

I think the humility King Mosiah mentions is a good cure for the doubt that gets in the way of our faith. When preparing for this talk, I spoke with my little brother. He just barely left Primary, so he had a lot of insights about little children. He said that if little children are humble, it’s because they are still learning. I think he’s right. Being teachable takes humility. You can’t be taught if you think that you already know everything! So if you want to be humble like a child, it might be useful to consider yourself a lifelong student of things both spiritual and temporal.

I’ve personally also found that humility comes more easily when we acknowledge the hand of God in our lives. A while ago, President Eyring recommended recording how we see the hand of God in our lives each day. Since 2017 started, I’ve had that challenge reissued to me several times through firesides, conferences, and institute lessons. On the days when I remember to make that record, I am more humble. It’s hard to be too egotistical when you literally have a written list of the many, many things God has done for you personally. You can’t help but recognize how much He helps you through all that you do.

If humility is a good cure for doubt, I’d say submission to God’s will is a good cure for the fear that gets in the way of faith. There is great peace in knowing that you have endeavored to do all God asked of you. We know from countless scripture stories that our Heavenly Father doesn’t abandon the obedient. Abandonment is Satan’s way, not the God of Israel’s. For one thing, the laws of the universe dictate that obedience to commandments bring blessings. Aside from that, just as earthly parents want to give their children all they can, Heavenly Father wants to bless us for doing what’s right. So if you want a safety net to counteract your fear of things not working out, submission to God’s will through obedience is just the thing. Do what Heavenly Father asks, both of His children generally and of you personally. Don’t worry about the things you can’t control. Do what you can, and leave the rest to Him. You’ll be amazed at how things fall into place.

We are entering an age where, more than ever, we need answers to our prayers. We need to believe in the answers we do get. We need miracles if we can get them! I testify from experience that as we become as little children in our faith, blessings and miracles that once seemed unreachable and fantastic will indeed become commonplace for us. The great darkness of the world will be combatted by the fires of our faith. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Not Only 90s Kids

There's this weird epidemic where people post something from their childhood on social media and then say something like, "Only 90s kids remember..." or "Today's kids will never know..."

Whenever someone posts something like, "Only 90s kids remember how awesome Blue's Clues was!" I am very puzzled, because this implies that the grandparents, parents, babysitters, and older siblings of 90s kids lack the ability to remember this television show that featured a grown man named Steve who wore the same outfit every day and an animated blue dog of indeterminate gender and during which you were supposed to incessantly shout "A clue! A clue!" That seems like it would be pretty unforgettable.

Or when someone posts something like, "Today's kids will never know how lit these little P.E. scooter boards were!" my reaction is, "First of all, in the time before today's kids, nobody said anything was 'lit,' unless that thing was legitimately on fire. Second of all, you just made a post essentially informing everyone of the litness of said scooter boards. So now everybody knows."

In fact, nowadays everybody can harness the power of the Internet to access clothes, music, movies, books, hairstyles, and recipes from all kinds of eras. I predict that in the future times periods will become obsolete because people will be able to wear, watch, listen to, and otherwise enjoy whatever they like without being limited to current trends.

For my part, I wish I had some of my 90s toys back. Not the stuff that everybody and their computer-literate dog is posting on social media, though. I'm thinking of things that are a tad more obscure.

Disclaimer: I found the images below from random Internet searches. Rather than citing all the sites where the images were originally uploaded, I chose not to crop the search details out of the images. Those details should give an idea of where these images were found should anyone desire to examine them more closely and/or need a reason to be dissuaded from suing me.

Sky Dancers
Sky dancers were pretty popular when I was a kid, but they don't seem to be getting much nostalgic love these days. Older Sister and I had...three or four sky dancers, I think. I think there was a pink one, a turquoise one, a lavender one, and/or a blue one. All had similar wing, clothing, and stand styles. I couldn't find an image of that particular style, but the closest thing is shown below.


Even better than sky dancers were the sky dancer movies. I showed my brothers the sky dancer picture above a few weeks ago, and I mentioned watching the pink sky dancer movie. They were all, "What? The movie was called The Pink Sky Dancer Movie?" I had to explain that no! No, it was not, as far as I knew. It was just that the three sky dance movies came on three different VHSs: bright pink, bright blue, and bright yellow. It was just easier to refer to them as the pink, blue, and yellow sky dancer movies.


The Bunny House
The bunny house (or Hideaway Hollow, as is apparently its real name) was a gift to Little Sister the same Christmas that Older Sister and I received the castle (pictured later). I actually liked the bunny house a little better than the castle, and so Little Sister and I played with the bunny house a lot.



The image above is the starter set. It had a mommy, daddy, and baby bunny; the house; some assorted furniture; and a strawberry pie. That stump was the coolest. The top could flip to be either a normal stump or a little table with milk and cookies. Little Sister also had an additional set or two. Mostly I remember the bedroom set with the big sister bunny, pictured below.


Baby slept in the trundle bed.

Little Sister and I were obsessed with expanding the bunny house. So many cool sets were pictured on the back of the box! We had a plan that we would go to the D.I. and find a few additional sets, including some tan bunny sets. The tan bunny sets came with a tan version of the gray bunny sets. They even had a pie with purple berries in lieu of the strawberry pie!


The Princess Castle
Although it wasn't quite as good as the bunny house, the princess castle was fun. There was a princess, a prince, and a bunch of furniture, pets, and accessories you could buy to furnish the castle. There were little holes in the bottom of the prince and princess's feet so that you could stick them on the revolving ballroom floor and make them dance.

You could get several horses to go with the castle. We had two or three. The blonde one below was considered mine. Older Sister had one with purple hair.


We loved this treasure chest, although maybe it was one of our friends who owned it. (Almost all our friends also had the same princess castle.)



We definitely had and very much loved this bed. We would often have our Kellys sleep in it.


The Little Tikes House
Of all of our doll houses, this one was the oldest. It probably dated back to before I was born, as I was forever climbing into it and getting stuck as a year-old child.


Exciting features: a closet that really opened. A bathroom with a sink, toilet, and tub (which I would flood with water). That brown deck would pull out to reveal a swimming pool (which I would also flood with water).


It's interesting, but the bed was just a little nook with a piece of padding. The image above has pink padding for the bed, but ours had yellow padding.

The image below shows various (all?) sets you could get for this house. We had the parents, the two kids, the picnic table, the normal table, the chairs, the car, the slide, and the green baby. (Later Little Sister and I bought one of the blue babies at the D.I...yes, while looking for bunny house sets.)



The picnic table, the chairs, the car, the slide, and the kitchen set were also sold as life-sized toys. It wasn't enough that Older Sister and I had the miniatures. We wanted the life-sized ones, too, and we were sorely jealous of the friends who had them in their playrooms and backyards.

There you go. Fun, huh? Do you remember these toys? Did you ever have any of them? Weren't they great? (While writing this post, it took all of my self-restraint to not buy myself a bunny house and some tan bunny sets. I'm still tempted. If I did, though, I can almost guarantee that Little Sister and I would set it up and play with it for hours.)

Friday, March 24, 2017

Four Years a Blogger

Earlier this week, we passed the four-year anniversary of this blog.

I intended to have some kind of wild celebration, I really did, but then life happened and stress from work happened and so instead of party favors and Chinese food and ice cream cake I passed a quiet evening of many books and mango-coconut sushi and eggless cookie dough.

At the very least, I thought I would write a blog post, but the only thought that came to mind was, "I used to organize the books on my bookshelf by how I felt about them, but when that got too complicated I started arranging them alphabetically instead." That...that was it. That's all I had. It didn't even have anything to do with this blog. So I forewent the post in hopes of being struck by that fickle mistress, inspiration.

Inspiration apparently doesn't feel abusive enough towards me to strike me. Regardless, happy blogiversary to me and this blog with which I am seemingly in a committed, long-term relationship. I'm surprised that we're not sick of each other yet.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

More Ado About Siblings

As a follow up to this post from last year, here's some more amazingness that my siblings are doing.

Baby Sister auditioned to be a performing missionary in Nauvoo. She was called back after her first audition, and we were so proud of her!

Suddenly, Baby Sister had an epiphany. The epiphany was, "I don't want to do this." The more she heard about what a performing mission entailed, the more perfect it sounded to her, but the more she felt like it wasn't right for her.

Out of nowhere, Baby Sister announced that she had no desire to be a performing missionary...but that she wanted to be a full-time missionary instead!!!

Baby Sister put in her mission papers and was quickly called to a mission in California! She leaves in just a few months.

Everyone else's feats pale in comparison, but for curiosity's sake, I'll tell you that Older Sister is still in NYC. She works for the National Dance Institute, raising money so that kids in lower income neighborhoods can learn to dance. She sees all the Broadway shows and has left the Big Apple on jaunts to Philly, D.C., and Canada.

I'll also tell you that Little Sister is still engaged. She and Mr. Little Sister are diligently preparing for married life. It seems that they're doing all they can beforehand to ensure that their marriage will be successful. Little Brother recently went on his first date, and Baby Brother—well, he is getting quite tall and grown up. It's a little difficult for me. In my mind Baby Brother is still a tow-headed toddler who would smack my bedroom door in the mornings to wake me and screech, "I want to play ball wit jou!" It's hard to reconcile that with this almost-grown not-so-child-y child who seems to know everything I know and then some. Except about Helen Keller. I found out last week he didn't know about Helen Keller. But as I made him watch a video about Helen Keller on Sunday, he now knows all about Helen Keller and therefore officially knows everything that I know.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

The One Where My Right Eyelid Swells Up for Absolutely NO REASON

Something bad happened to me a few weeks ago.

I got home from work. Usually I live at a frantic pace, but that day I had lazy plans: eat dinner, write this blog post, and paint my nails for a post-Valentine's Day dance the next day. Nothing too busy. I even made an impulse decision to stop by a boutique on my way home from work to see if they had a belt to wear with my dress. (I hardly ever make impulse decisions because who has time to be impulsive? Not me.) After finishing up dinner, I went to the bathroom to touch up my makeup, and that's when my laidback night became a disaster.

My right eyelid was swollen and filled with fluid!

If I knew how to faint, I might have fainted. But I stayed upright and conscious, and so I did the next best thing to do when distraught, which is contact my mother the RN.

My mother the RN was at work, where she was busy being an RN. She took time out of her busy RN life to call me and be a mother. (Little-known fact: Mothers and RNs are essentially the same thing. The only real difference is that one of them gets paid for their trouble.) Mom said that I was probably having an allergic reaction. To test this theory, she asked me if my face itched. It did, a little. Allergic reaction it was.

Here's what my RN/mother told me to do:

1. Take out my contacts

2. Take Benedryl

3. Have Baby Brother find the eye drops for me so that I could put said eye drops in my eye.

4. Put ice on my eyelid.

I intended to do all of those things, but since I had no Benedryl of my own, I called my dad after taking out my contacts. I asked him to come pick me up, let me partake of the family Benedryl and use the family eye drops, let me paint my nails in his home, and then drive me back after all was said and done and all nails were painted and dry (in case I was drowsy).

My dad said yes because he lets me be needy sometimes, and that's what I love about him.

Baby Brother and Dad were at the library when I called, so I had to wait ten to fifteen minutes for them to pick me up. While I waited, I paid attention to my breathing to be sure that my throat wasn't swelling up. I also kept looking at my eyelid. When it was opened, it merely looked puffy. But when I shut it, the fluid ballooned out like a frog's belly.

Do you want to see my eyelid? Do you?

If you want to see my eyelid, scroll down!

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When Dad and Baby Brother picked me up, it was much worse. When we got back to my parents' place, I showed my dad my eyelid. Then I showed Baby Brother my eyelid. A little while later, I showed Little Sister my eyelid.

Each of their immediate reaction was to make a verbal explanation of disgust. Then, quickly, "Sorry, it's not that bad..."

"It's horrifying," I responded each time, almost gleefully.

We found the Benedryl. Baby Brother got out the eye drops. News flash: it's hard to administer eye drops to your own eye. So Baby Brother made me lie down while he dropped them in for me! Being babied by a child you regard as your baby is a strange thing. Then I put an ice pack in a pillowcase and clapped it to my eye.

Throughout these ministrations, we tried to determine what I was allergic to.

I hadn't done anything differently that day. Well, I had gone to that boutique, and the boutique owners do keep a little dog there, but I'd never had a reaction like this to their dog before! I had also eaten a new recipe for dinner, but the new recipe didn't have anything unusual. Though I had eaten it from a piece of Tupperware a friend had given me. Is it possible to be allergic to Tupperware?!

Dad asked, "Could you have had an allergic reaction to your makeup?"

I told him that I'd worn the same makeup I always wear.

"Yeah, Dad," Baby Brother, ever my defender, said. "Basically today she did the same thing she always did!"

In the end, the swelling went down by bedtime. It never returned. We never found out what caused it. But I was able to paint my nails all the same, so we all lived happily ever after.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Et Tu?

Hello! Happy Ides of March!

The good news is that I have like four blog posts in the works. Longish blog posts with actual stories.

The bad news is that life keeps getting in the way. I was trying to finish one of these posts last night when I found myself in a delightful but distracting text exchange. The post didn't get finished. But I thoroughly enjoyed myself so is it really that much of a loss?

And now, in honor of the day, here is a list of things that I have stabbed:
-A pincushion
-A steak
-A particularly tough piece of chicken
-A baked potato
-A flaming coal
-Myself (for wound laceration purposes)
-A piece of cloth
-Myself (while trying to sew)
-A cardboard box
-Myself (while cutting onions)
-My Caesar salad at dinner on Monday
-Someone's humorous sensibilities with that cutting joke