Running Away From Your Problems Redux

So one time, I was thinking about going on a mission.

I knew a couple of people who were very dear to me but were really struggling. There wasn't much I could do to help, but both Older Sister and Best Friend Boy were on missions, and I could see how through their missions, they were able to help others with similar struggles. I'd never wanted to serve a mission, but I was suddenly overcome with a desire to go so that I could help people.

I wanted to finish school before looking into going on a mission (because I was pretty sure that if I quit school, I would never find it in me to go back). So I had a few years to think about whether to go. I did mention it in passing in a letter to Best Friend Boy, who responded some weeks later by saying that I should pray about it to see if that's what Heavenly Father wanted for me.

I was really annoyed by this. I was planning to pray about it, just not yet. It was a few years away!

However, being so annoyed, I decided I would pray right then and there, just so that I could write back to Best Friend Boy and let him know that I had. I was the only one home, so I knelt right down in the living room, and—

It was one of the most unmistakable prayers I've prayed in my life. I asked if I should go on a mission after graduation. I felt sickish and headache-ish. Well, what about right now? Still sickish and headache-ish.

Lovely. I asked a couple other questions, and I immediately felt pushed in a direction that didn't entirely make sense to me but that felt right. So be it.

A couple of years passed, and I found myself deeply entrenched in the path that had felt right. Only everything was going terribly. I was so frustrated and wondered if I'd interpreted what I'd felt correctly. Maybe I just wanted to walk down this path so badly that I'd manufactured feelings of confirmation. Madam President seemed to think so. Shortly before we were called to the Relief Society presidency, her serious boyfriend broke up with her. She hadn't been able to get over how badly she wanted to get back together with him until getting a blessing from a General Authority that she knew. The blessing laid out a different path for her life than she'd hoped. Then, ta-da, she got a job and got married and everything worked for her, and she was happy! She gave me the General Authority's number and recommended that I get a blessing from him, too. I knew she was hoping that my blessing, too, would tell me that I'd been wrong about the direction that my life was going to go and that I should do something else. I sat on the number for a year and then I decided to find out for myself.

The blessing was lovely, but it was also frustrating. It basically said that I could do what I want. It cast no aspersions on the path I'd been walking, which meant I was free to keep walking it if I so chose. Before the blessing, the General Authority also told me that I wouldn't get an answer before making a decision but that I should choose and then start moving forward with the choice. Then I'd get my answer.

Once again, lovely, but how to choose? I went straight from his home to a semi-solo trip where I pondered my options. I wrote a list of pros and cons and I studied and I thought.

In the end, I decided that whatever had (or hadn't) happened since then, there was a reason why I stayed, and it would be better not to throw that away. Once again, I choose to stay, and I'm glad I did. The following year was incredible. So many of the things that frustrated me righted themselves. Things were really looking up. In fact, the reason I felt I should stay seemed to be finally coming to fruition.

In December of that incredible year, I was stepping into the shower when I suddenly had a thought: "If you wanted to go on a mission, this thing will wait for you."

A third time: lovely. But I was honest: I didn't want to go on a mission now. Things were finally going well for me. Once again, I chose to stay.

I never felt like it was a mistake to stay. The thought was fleeting, anyway—not persistent the way important thoughts tend to be. However, over the next six months, my life got wild. So many things went wrong, and my reason for staying eluded me yet again. My eyes turned toward a mission once more, but it didn't feel right. I told my bishop as much shortly before he extended the calling of Relief Society president to me.

Everything was hunky-dory for a few months. Then came an Interpersonal Crisis that was literally one of my worst nightmares.

The great thing about the Interpersonal Crisis was that it eliminated one of the things I would have felt I was missing out on by going on a mission. Ah-ha! Almost immediately I began to wonder if now, at last, this was the time to go. Almost everything else in my life was going wrong, too, so it seemed like it was all screaming that I had nothing to lose by leaving. I thought about it, then talked to my bishop, then set a date to make a decision.

The date rolled around, and...found me recovering from appendicitis. Whoops. Obviously not a good time to make life-changing decisions, so I forewent it, but even after I recovered, I didn't know what I was feeling. At work, at home, in the temple, in San Diego—no real answer seemed forthcoming.

My stake conference came around, and with it forced interaction with the person with whom I was having an Interpersonal Crisis. Some time had passed, so—well, I don't know what I was thinking except that I knew this person was a good person and didn't believe they would double down on the way they'd treated me. But they did double down on it. I felt like I'd been slapped, and I left the building in a daze. All of a sudden, it became clear that if more of this treatment was in store each time I saw this person, I couldn't stay here. I remembered about what the General Authority said about making a decision and getting confirmation after moving forward. So be it. Every time I'd chosen not to go on a mission, things hadn't really worked out. What is it they say: that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Time to do something different. I rushed to speak with my bishop the next day.

My bishop, a wise man whom I very much look up to, thought I would make a great missionary. We agreed to officially start the mission papers. However, he also said: "Don't go on a mission to run away from your problems."

Easier said than done. No matter the other reasons, the sole thing that allowed me to feel free to pursue a mission was how terribly my life was going. Those problems would be a catalyst regardless of anything else. I worked to resolve them as much as I could to make the decision-making process clearer, but they refused to resolve.

Meanwhile, as I filled out my mission papers, I felt terrible. I felt a sick feeling similar to the one I felt the first time I prayed about it. I didn't like talking or thinking about the mission even as I prepared in earnest. I knew in my heart that this wasn't right, but I was so tired of choosing to stay yet being so unsuccessful.

Things came to a head, and blessedly I was able to take a step back and say, "What am I doing? This doesn't make sense." I was just a few steps away from completing my mission papers, but I decided not to do so. The sick feeling went away. I knew I'd made the right decision. I wish I could say that things got better, but they're still pretty up in the air. I'm hoping for a couple of miracles, but in the meantime, I at least feel stronger and more able to deal with some things.

And that's how I almost ran away from all my problems.

Random Updates

What's new with me? Not a ton. But there's a lot new with almost everyone else. So...

The Seamstress is getting married. Obviously this is a good thing, but because of this everything is slowly being moved out of the apartment. Like the piano. And the TV. And the things we sit on. Also, it's been a while (think over three years) since we've had any turnover in this home, so that's a little jarring. But it's grand for the Seamstress to get to move on to the other parts of life.

Flower Child is also getting married.

So is Valiant.

Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister went to New York to visit Older Sister a few weeks ago. Not long before that, Rosebud and her husband were in New York. When they returned, Rosebud said to Little Sister, "Oh hey, there's this Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image you might like..." And Little Sister was all, "YEAH I KNOW." Because the exhibit finally opened in summer 2017. And Little Sister got to go this month, and she geeked out a ton on Instagram, videoing the Cantus and Gobo puppets and the like. She brought us back nice Fraggle souvenirs, too.

Baby Sister is still loving the mish. Here's a recent email snippet that I found particularly amusing: 

Little Brother is starting to scare me on account of his Disney collection (which was augmented with the Robin Hood display piece over Christmas).

EARTHQUAKE HAZARD. BEAUTIFUL EARTHQUAKE HAZARD.

Return to Arizona

Last year at my grandpa's funeral, someone mentioned that they had written Grandpa while serving their LDS mission and asked him if he'd really thought about the gospel. Grandpa wrote back and said something like, "I've been waiting for this. Every single grandchild who goes on a mission writes me a letter like this at some point!"

I guess that makes Baby Sister the first missionary not to write a letter like that. For one, our grandpa passed away before she left on her mission. Nay, before she was even thinking about it. For another thing, back in October, we went back to Arizona and had Grandpa's temple work done!

Some people find posthumous temple work polarizing. I feel like it's pretty straightforward. There are a lot of restrictions on who you can do work for, and we believe that if someone doesn't want to be a Mormon, they're free to reject the ordinances in the next life. We just happen to believe that the living cannot be saved unless all of the dead also have the opportunity to be saved. It's, like, equal-opportunity salvation.

Being in the temple and seeing that ordinance performed was really special. I for one feel strongly that my Grandpa did accept it and that he now wants to be Mormon. All those missionary grandkids finally wore him down, I guess. But I won't know for sure until I see my grandpa again...which hopefully won't be for a while.

(This trip was also a road trip. It was also very short, although we did leave a day earlier than we did last year (Thursday instead of Friday). This time, we had no Baby Sister but we did have Mr. Little Sister, making this the first time we ever took a family trip with more males than females. Oddities of the trip included Baby Sister and Mr. Little Sister obsessing over cacti, Baby Brother spilling syrup on his pants during the hotel breakfast and being called "syrup pants" by Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister, and all three of the brothers arguing over whether "hash browns" is pronounced "hash browns" or "hash browns." (The dispute over this literally went for like a half hour.) We also swam, night and day—that's how I met the Canadian I mentioned in an earlier post. Plus, we were able to spend some time with Grandma, which was great because it's unlikely she'll make it back to Utah anytime soon.)

Another Yuletide Over

Guess what? I Christmassed again this year!

Christmas version 2017 included such traditional delights as:

-Lunch with sisters! The weather was pretty bad, so we ended up at the same restaurant we lunched at last year. Which is against the Little Sisters' Annual Christmas Eve Lunch rules, but we already broke the rules by letting Older Sister come last year and this year (since she no longer lives in town and we don't see her much). Plus Baby Sister wasn't here, so we just broke rules all over the place like a slap in the face of the tradition founders. Who are us. So we basically slapped our own faces. Ouch.

-Christmas Eve dinner with my mom's family! Each family unit exchanged small gifts and Christmas cards before dinner started. This year, I got a lot of chocolate and some popcorn and my own personal bottle of Martinelli's. I loved that, but it was a little awkward to be given my own gifts because, being unmarried, I don't consider myself to be my own family unit, so I didn't bring anything for everyone else. I just piggybacked on my parents' gifts. Someday, though. (Fingers crossed.)

-Presentation of the nativity story! The older cousins round up the little cousins and persuade them to dress up as sheep or shepherds or wisemen. This year, Dino Cousin's mom encouraged Dino Cousin (who is four years old) to join the nativity. We asked Dino Cousin what she wanted to be: a sheep or a shepherd or a wiseman? Without batting an eye, Dino Cousin said, "Jesus." We always have the newest baby or a doll play Baby Jesus, but we weren't about to refuse Dino Cousin, so we said okay. When Dino Cousin's mom came to the rehearsal area, she asked Dino Cousin who she was going to be. Dino Cousin promptly said, "Jesus Christ." It was equally adorable and amusing.

(P.S. If you ever wonder why I have such a prodigious amount of cousins, it's because not only do I have quite a few first cousins, I also know many of my parents' cousins (my first cousins once removed), their kids (my second cousins), my first cousins' kids (also my first cousins once removed), and my second cousins' kids (my second cousins once removed). Many of us see each other regularly.)

-A slideshow review of the year! There are ~five pictures of each extended family member in the slideshow, and since the family keeps growing, the show just keeps getting longer and longer. (Re: prodigious amount of cousins.)

-Waking up really early on Christmas morning and annoying our parents! We then gather in a line (age order, youngest to oldest; this year Mr. Little Sister was between me and Little Sister) and rush into the living room to open our presents from Santa and each other. (Yes, we all still get presents from Santa. Santa is legit, and no one will ever convince me not to believe in him.)

We also had a few novelties this year:

-Christmas Eve was on a Sunday, something that hasn't happened for years. The Little Sisters' Annual Christmas Eve Lunch was therefore held on the 23rd and not the 24th. (P.S. I found out that Valiant and her six sisters all get lunch together on Christmas Eve, too! How interesting.) My ward had one hour of church in the morning combined with some other wards in the stake. The program was mostly music, which was lovely. I sat with Best Friend Boy. He got a real kick out of trying to predict what Christmas hymn we'd be singing next.

-We got to talk to Baby Sister. (Most of the time, missionaries call home only on Christmas Day and Mother's Day.) She's a cutie patootie. Even though her mission is English-speaking, she's learning some Marshallese because of the area in which she's serving. She told us that she was the happiest she's ever been.

All in all, a good day during a good season. Now on to the new year.

Every Day I'm Timehoppin'

Late last year, Baby Brother became obsessed with Timehop.

I think it was during our trip to Arizona that he became so engrossed. We were all together for three days straight, and at some point or another I showed him Timehop.

Around this time, Timehop starting doing "streaks." That is, if you checked Timehop for a certain number of days in a row, you got a streak.

Baby Brother was curious about what would happen if I got a month-long Timehop streak. So I set out to check Timehop every day for a month.

At the end, Baby Brother was underwhelmed by whatever it was that Timehop did to acknowledge a streak of one month. However, his curiosity peaked (not piqued, although that's also relevant in this situation) at the thought of what might happen when one checked Timehop every day for a year.

A really awesome sister would then proceed to check Timehop every day for a year...right?

Well, please give me the really awesome sister award, because I did just that.

Through horrible snowstorms and sweltering summer and my birthday and holidays and good days and bad days I kept checking Timehop—and yesterday, I finally got me a year streak.

I let Baby Brother know right away. (He's allowed to use Baby Sister's phone on a limited basis while she is on her mission.)

...underwhelmed again.

A Day of Thanks

Older Sister used to make stuffed mushrooms every year for Thanksgiving. When she left on her mission, Baby Brother took over, and he refused to step down when she returned. (This was a source of tension for a while, especially since Baby Brother doesn't even like mushrooms. Now that Older Sister lives in NYC, though, the dispute is moot.)

Baby Sister's Thanksgiving job is making a homemade cheese ball or two. She can make a few different varieties to go with our annual assortment of crackers. I had this vague vision of Baby Brother taking over that job this year and then slowly taking over everyone else's jobs (due to various circumstances of absenteeism) until he and he alone is preparing the entire Thanksgiving meal. Didn't happen, though. My mom instead bought a couple of homemade cheese balls, so I guess Baby Sister's job is secure until she returns.

My job varies from year to year. I'm just one person, so instead of receiving an official assignment, I usually bring some miscellaneous appetizer or dessert. This time around, I volunteered to make the Whopper pie.

If you haven't had the pleasure of ever trying Whopper pie, you should. My aunt introduced our family to it (though I'm not sure if it's something she brought from her family or if it's just something she discovered after marrying my uncle). She used to make it every year, but after my cousins were diagnosed with lactose intolerance, she stopped bringing it around. The kids grew out of their allergies, though, so it's made a comeback in recent year.

Usually either my aunt or my mom makes it, but since they also have annual assignments of turkey, potatoes, and homemade stuffing (my aunt) and rolls, green bean casserole, and all the appetizers (my mom), I thought I could do it this year.

Here's how you do: take chocolate cookie pie crust. Mix crushed Whoppers with either vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Scoop the ice cream-Whopper confection into the pie crust. Garnish with whole Whoppers and whipped cream. Freeze. And then eat the most delicious pie you've dreamed of in your life.

I actually struggled with feeling grateful this year. I didn't have my usual happy Thanksgiving glow. But at least I'm always grateful for Whopper pie.

Correspondence from My Missionary

Baby Sister had her preparation day (p-day) on Tuesday, so she was able to email us. I got quite a few emails from her. A few years ago, only missionary family members could email missionaries, but in many missions that's now changed. All of Baby Sister's friends and family can email her if they so desire.

My sister's writing style is very zesty and bubbly, as you can see from the excerpts below.

Male missionaries are Elder So-and-So, and female missionaries use the honorific of "Sister". So now Baby Sister is Sister Baby Sister. Or, rather, Sister Obnoxious.

Sounds like she's doing well!

How Do I Love Thee?

Since this post, a lot has happened.

Baby Sister is gone! She's in the MTC. The night before she left, I stayed over at my parents' house. So did Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister. Baby Sister said that she wanted all of us in the house with her so that if she woke up in the middle of the night, she could come round and look at us.

I don't know if she actually did that, but she did "tuck us in" the night before. She stopped by everyone before we went to sleep. I'm not sure what she said to everyone else, but she told me to tell you that she said words so wise and deep that they cannot be repeated.

When we dropped her off, we took our new minivan. (Our Mormon Assault Vehicle aka Moby Dick aka the 14-passenger van perished in the fall. I won't embarrass family members by saying how the van perished, but I will say that my fear of sneezing while driving has been completely justified. Why did we even have a 14-person van when there are only eight of us, you might wonder? Because minivans generally stop at seven seats, and if you have too many people for a minivan you have to buy a humongous monster van instead. Both Shutterbug and Best Friend Boy's families, of eight and nine people respectively, also had 14-person vans.) Unlike our Mormon Assault Vehicle, the minivan had a back window that I could actually see out of. I took advantage of this innovation by watching Baby Sister as long as I could as we drove away.

I miss her, but not as much as one might think. First, she's off doing something we both believe in, and that's good, so how can I be sad about it? Secondly, almost immediately after she left, I ran off to go camping with my ward. I haven't even had much time to miss her.

While on this camping trip, I thought a lot about love. I thought about all the different ways a body can love someone and the meaning of those ways. For example, on this camping trip we were accompanied by the counselor's wife whom I referenced in this post about the ward book club. (Update: she's now the bishop's wife! Because the counselor became the bishop...not because she changed husbands...I just wanted to clarify that.) That book club meeting was pretty frustrating for me. I went running afterward, and then following my run, I went back to her house, late at night and unannounced, and told her why I was frustrated. And she just rolled with it. She was so nice to me even though I'd just broken all 75,847 rules of normal social engagement. And then we became friends, which seems unbelievable, just because I feel like a real actual adult mother who isn't my real actual adult mother should be put off by my quirks and personality, not embrace them!

She was so kind to me this entire campout even though I was in a terrible mood, and I was reminded of the power of friendship love. Which is a very important love! Yet it's very different from the love I feel for Baby Sister and my other younger siblings, which in turn is different from the love I feel for Older Sister, which is again different from the love I feel for my parents. All those loves are different from the kind of affection I feel for my roommates. Those loves are different from the people I often see whom I have a vague sort of fondness for but don't know well enough to love. And all of those are again different from the loves I've felt for the boys I've cared for as friends and beyond. And all of that is again different from the love I feel for God and Christ.

All of these thoughts were so much more eloquent and deep inside my head, but now I'm essentially just vomiting all my thoughts and have lost track of the purpose. I don't know what I mean by this. I don't know. It all made so much more sense when I was camping in the mountains and staring at the stars.

Loss

The past several weeks have been strange.

Little Sister got married. Weddings are happy events, but they also mark a cleaving. Weirdly, "cleave" means both to cut apart and put together. So Little Sister is being cleaved to Mr. Little Sister yet she's also, to a certain extent, being cleaved from the family she was born into. It can be a rough transition.

Then there's Baby Sister, who's off on her mission in just a few days (!?). That is also a happy event that will mark a rough transition.

Apart from those things, I think I might be on the verge of losing a friend. It's a sensation with which I am unfamiliar. I haven't lost many good friends over the last ten or so years. Being my friend is a lifetime commitment. Sometimes, though, things fall apart.

However, the most difficult and terrible thing that is happening is the thing that happened today.

There's a Chinese buffet in Hometown which we affectionately call "the ghetto Chinese buffet". It's in a part of town that's really not conducive to hosting a well-frequented restaurant, thus the name. But I love that buffet. Yes, I love it. They serve a few items I've never eaten in any other Chinese restaurants (and I have eaten in a lot, and I mean a lot of Chinese restaurants). They have a delicious chicken skewer with perfectly browned and slightly crispy skin. They have these eggrolls that, well, honestly, I'm not sure what's actually in them. I think it's meat...and some cheeses...and a veggie or two? Whatever. They're amazing. The restaurant also serves almond cookies. I love almond cookies. When I was a kid and my mom took me to the ghetto Chinese buffet on mommy dates, I would wrap some almond cookies in napkins, sneak them out, and hide them in my underwear drawer for future consumption.

Earlier this week I had a great idea. I would surprise Baby Sister with some takeout from the buffet! Baby Sister is the only person in our family who comes close to loving the place as much as I do. A few years ago, the buffet implemented a takeout system where you could buy food by the pound. Baby Sister and I are big fans of this inexpensive option. Baby Sister likes to load up a bunch of wontons and pot stickers in her takeout box, while I'm more partial to the skewers and eggrolls.

So, today, when I went to the ghetto Chinese buffet after work to get Baby Sister's surprise takeout, I was met with a surprise of my own.

The door wouldn't open.

Now, the doors of the ghetto Chinese buffet are notoriously heavy, so I just thought I wasn't pulling hard enough. Soon, however, it became evident that the doors were locked.

I peered inside. Either the buffet was undergoing extensive remodeling, or...or...or...

It went out of business.

I couldn't believe it. First my sisters, then my friendship, and now this???!!!

Numbly, I got in my car and drove home. I cried on the way home, and I'm not even exaggerating this time. I legit cried.

ME: (to me) What am I supposed to do, huh? What am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do when I'm sad?

(I frequent the buffet a lot when I'm feeling sad. Like I was, ironically, feeling at the moment.)

ALSO ME: (also to me) Will the trials never end?

This is how I feel right now:

Please Be Nice to My Baby Sister

I just spent an hour going through a Facebook friend's posts.

I won't explain just how far back I went, but suffice it to say that there was some stuff about Mitt Romney in there.

What was my intention? My intention was to find a status that this person posted years ago, when Older Sister was on her mission. To the best of my memory, the status said something along the lines of how Mormon missionaries don't deserve any kind of respect unless they've earned it. I suppose that's a fair statement, though I didn't love it. What upset me was that, if I recall correctly, in the comments of this status this person and some friends were trading stories of ways they liked to troll the missionaries.

I got really close to leaving my own comment: "Hey, my sister is serving a mission right now. If she were serving here, would you do those things to her?" Something like that. Something just to remind them that, hey, missionaries are people too, and just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean they deserve to be harassed. Yeah, I get it that no one likes to be approached by people they disagree with, but when I went to Nameless Utah College, I was approached by so many political and religious activists that I didn't agree with. I still managed to engage with them civilly, even when brushing them off. I didn't go out of my way to harass them, because why would I do that? (Okay, well, that's mostly true. There was one time when a girl brought voting registrations to the school. She explained to me that the political party that most people in my college supported needed help in the elections. She asked me to register and offer my support. Since I wasn't registered to vote, I took that opportunity to register...for a party that believed the exact opposite of the party she was promoting. And then she had to mail my registration in. So I guess that was a little harassing. But it was still civil.)

The reason I'm thinking about this long-ago status now is that Baby Sister is due to ship out on her mission any day now. Consider it: she has something she believes in so much that she's willing to give up her family, her job, her schooling, her friends, her right to sleep in, her free time, the many Netflix and YouTube shows that she follows, fry sauce, the premiere of How to Train Your Dragon 3 next summer, the ability to celebrate the epilogue day of Harry Potter (September 1st 2017—so close!), and her beloved makeup palette with approximately 7,000 kinds of eyeshadow. Whether you believe that sharing the gospel helps people, she believes that sharing the gospel helps people. And in the end, it's those people that she must be going on a mission for, because the enormous amount of sacrifice required of her suggests that she's sure not doing it for herself.

I guess the title of this post is misleading, because if you see my cutie baby sister when she's out in the mission field, you sure don't have to be nice to her. But I hope that you will not be actively rude to her...and not just because if you are, super irrational Big Sister! Awkward Mormon Girl will track you down and give you several paper cuts.

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.

The Parting of the Ways

I did at least one musical a year for eight years straight. Then I quit. I was graduating high school, and I wanted to focus on my degree.

For years, I did no theatre. I missed it, but I didn't have the time or the energy to devote to frequent rehearsals and weeks or performances. Then, one Sunday, I saw Goldfinger at a fireside.

I really didn't know Goldfinger. I'd seen him perform with the local improv troupe for years. In fact, one night he irritated me by trying to talk to me after the show while I was waiting for one of my parents to pick me up. If I recall correctly, he was trying to inform me that the theatre would be turning off its lights soon and/or making sure that I would be able to get home okay, but I usually don't like it when people I don't know approach me, even when they're trying to be helpful. I was not very responsive. A year and a half later, I saw him at Older Sister's mission farewell, where we were formally introduced. He kept listening to my conversation with Little Sister and laughing.

When I saw Goldfinger at the fireside, he remembered me. He asked about Older Sister and then blurted out, "The troupe is having open auditions on Tuesday. You should come."

I was taken aback, because although I had a lot of musical theatre experience, I didn't think he knew that. Plus I knew nothing about improv theatre. So I politely declined.

Now I tell you what, up to this point I'd only had one audition experience that I would call "spiritual." It was when I auditioned for Anne of Green Gables. At that age I'd been in three theatrical productions and was working on a fourth, but I'd never ever had any lines or been featured in any way. All of my productions had been through a children's theatre program where you paid a fee to participate, so I'd never even had a real audition. I don't think anyone thought I actually had any aptitude for theatre. I was a body to fill up the space in the chorus, and that's all. So when I saw the poster for Anne of Green Gables, I shouldn't have felt as strongly about auditioning as I did. Later in life, I realized that feeling as a prompting.

The last thing that I expected was to feel a prompting about auditioning for an improv troupe. Sure, I loved improv...as an audience member! I admired the skills Goldfinger and his colleagues possessed, but I didn't think I had them. Besides, some of the things I loved most about being in structured theatre were a) getting to be someone else rather than presenting myself to the audience as Awkward Mormon Girl Obnoxious, b) knowing exactly what I was supposed to say or supposed to do (unlike in real life, where maneuvering unexpected social situations was completely beyond me), and c) getting the chance to do the same thing over and over again; if I messed up one time, I could always do better the next. Improv had none of those things. Improv was the exact opposite of those things.

In spite of all this, though, I felt like I should go to the audition. I mean, yes, how awesome would it be if I did well at the audition and I got to work with this troupe that I'd been a fan of for years? I did consider that. The greater part of the feeling, though, was that this was something that God wanted me to do. So I decided that, what the hey, I would go to the audition.

This was back in the day when I didn't drive much, and when I headed to the audition after institute, I couldn't remember how to get to the theatre! I showed up rather late, which was extremely unprofessional and embarrassing and, for most theatrical opportunities, would have automatically disqualified me. Yet in this instance, I was still allowed to audition.

Like I said, I knew next to nothing about improv, so throughout the audition I just had to follow my basic knowledge of theatre, my own instincts, and what I'd gleaned from watching many improv comedy shows. At the end of the audition, I was surprised to realize that I'd done all right. In fact, if the comments a few of the troupe members gave me afterward were any indication, I'd done pretty darn well. And, now that I'd dipped my toes back into theatre, I not only hoped the troupe would invite me back...I knew that if they did, I probably wouldn't be able stay away.

Happily, they offered me a chance to workshop with them and learn some actual improv skills. I worked hard and had fun, and at the end of the workshop, they invited me to join the troupe.

I came to appreciate the "throwaway genius" of improv. Lack of repetition, I realized, could be a gift. Instead of trying to replicate my own performance night after night, each show was a do-over, a completely fresh opportunity.

There were some improv things that I learned to do really well. There were some things I never quite grasped, and there were some things I naturally excelled at in the beginning but which I lost under the weight of the knowledge of improv theory. All in all, though, it was a great experience with great people.

After four years, I got another prompting. This time, the prompting was not to audition, but to leave. So I left.

It was hard, because a lot of people wanted me to stay. I questioned my decision multiple times, especially as my last show loomed closer and closer. But I felt like it was the right thing to do. I felt (and still feel) like Heavenly Father wanted something else for me. Although the commitment to an improv troupe doesn't require the almost nightly commitment of a musical, musicals end. I found improv troupes require a greater commitment, just spread out over a longer period of time. That was all right with me...until suddenly, it wasn't. I know that's not a super rational explanation, but I feel like all will be made clear to me in time.

My last show was sad but also happy. A lot of kind friends and family came to see me. My troupe saw me off in a grand style, with flowers and a card.

I don't know what, exactly, lies in my future that will replace improv. I do know that someday, when I look back, I'll know why I left when I did. Sometimes, a guarantee on the future is all we can hope for.

Sofa So Good

We got a new couch today. It was brought to us in the rain. It is the size of a small country, and it is as puffy and beautiful as Baymax. It almost didn't fit through the door.

One of our family friends, Bessie, and I used to be students of benchology. I once described benchology as "the study of benches. Many life lessons can be learned from the nature of a single bench: lessons about support, structure, weathering through all kinds of conditions..."

Well, fahgettabouhd benchology. Let's talk about sofalogy. Or perhaps not sofalogy so much as the study of people through looking at what kinds of couches they are drawn to.

As I said, this new couch is huge. It's bigger than my bed. It's softer than my bed, too. And it came with fat, fringed, matching pillows. It is the Lexus of couches; nay, the Humvee. Not that I really know what either a Lexus or a Humvee is like. Or anything about them, really. These are just words that I hear people say and then I use them in a vain effort to sound like a normal human who knows about human things.

The point being, I think my idea of the best couch ever is a small couch that is slightly fuzzy and which has a matching footrest. I would never have purchased this wonderful but gargantuan thing that wouldn't even fit in the houses of probably 30% of the world's population. I don't think the Seamstress, who obtained the new couch, would have chosen this one if it weren't used at a decent price.

But. The beautiful thing about used couches is that sometimes the owners leave things behind in the cushions. I went through the cushions of the new couch just now and found some lint, a couple of Cheerios, two M&Ms (both orange), an old piece of duct tape, and a gift tag addressed to "Elder Davie."

I've ruled out eating the Cheerios. I'm still deciding about the M&Ms.

R-E-L-I-E-F

Recently I was called as the first counselor in my singles ward's Relief Society.

Every time I hear the words "Relief Society" I sing that song from The Rescuers: "R-E-S-C-U-E, Rescue Aid Societyyyyyyyyyy." Except I sing with new lyrics that don't sound as good. "R-E-L-I-E-F, Re-elief Societyyyyyyyy."

But what can you do?

Part of the calling of the Relief Society presidency is to know and visit with all the women in the ward. The problem is, some of the women on our list haven't been to church in years. So in order to find out who they are, we have to go to their houses and knock on the door. It's kind of like tracting, except we're always looking for a specific person at a specific destination.

We do these kind of visits for two or three hours on one weeknight per week. So far, we've had lots of unanswered doors, wrong houses, and general confusion about addresses in general.

The last problem can be partially attributed to me, myself, and I. Let me tell you a shameful secret: I have minimal directional discrimination skillz. Sometimes I can't tell my right hand from my left.

It's an inconvenience when, for example, I'm looking in the mirror trying to do my hair and I have no idea which hand I need to move in order to finish the hairstyle. But when I'm trying to find an address, it becomes a much larger problem.

PERSON DRIVING: Which way?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Right.

(car turns right)

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL:...I meant left.

Not even going to tell you how often the Relief Society president and I get lost whilst trying to find addresses, but it's a lot. A lot of times.

And then tonight, this happened:

MADAM PRESIDENT: What do the numbers on those houses say?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I'm not sure...

MADAM PRESIDENT: Here, let's drive by again.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Now might be a good time to mention that I'm legally blind.

The Neediness and the Twenty-Fourth

It's the twenty-fourth of July, and y'all know what that means!

If y'all don't know what that means, then you must not live in Utah. Here in the Beehive State, the twenty-fourth of July is affectionately known as Pioneer Day. We dress up in red, white, and blue, have parties and parades and fireworks, and talk about how great America is and how much our forefathers' actions have blessed us. It's basically the fourth of July, just three weeks later, and with more handcarts.

Hometown's carnival for the twenty-fourth is always worth dropping by. There are rides, food, games, and a concrete stage with a makeshift tarped-over auditorium where Baby Sister performed with her clogging group. She said she didn't know the numbers very well this year, but no one in the audience could tell because she's Baby Sister.

When I arrived at the carnival, I was immediately dazzled by the sounds (music and conversations and laughter), the smells (fried bread and barbeque pork sandwiches), and the sights (sparkly face paint! neon posterboard signs! glittering costumes!) And the people! Seemed like half the city was there, tons of people I knew and tons I didn't. There was a guy dressed up as a mountain man, and a guy dressed up as a suspendered pioneer, and a guy in full Native American regalia, just standing around eating nachos, headdress and all. It doesn't get much more legit than that.

"Wow," I thought, "I love this holiday!"

That was when The Neediness struck.

Immediately I felt that I should not, nay, could not be alone. Because if I was alone, then I would never stop being alone. No one would ever love me. Never. Ever.

Such is The Neediness.

Swiftly I latched myself onto the nearest family member, which so happened to be Baby Brother.

MOM: All right, kids, here are your tickets. Now, does everybody want to go on the tilt-a-whirl?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Actually, I'd rather go on the whirl-a-tilt. #hilarious #funny #joke

MOM: Oh, is that what they're calling it these days?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...never mind. #shame #nobodylaughed #neediness

#THEneediness

And oh, that Neediness grew. It grew so much I was unable to extricate myself from the gaggle of cousins and siblings, even though I really would have preferred to go on a whirl-a-tilt rather than the tilt-a-whirl. I normally love it, but the portable, rent-a-cheap-carnival version is nothing but a blot on the illustrious name of tilt-a-whirl.

Alas, The Neediness made it impossible for me to refuse to go on the tilt-a-whirl. All my companions went, and so by necessity did I.

Suffice it to say, I felt nauseated by the time the ride ended. It wasn't stomach nausea, though. It was brain nausea. It felt exactly like my mind was about to throw up. My head was scrambled--but my gut was hungry.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: So... can we get fried bread now?

No. No, we could not. That is what I gathered from the social cue of everyone ignoring me. We could, however, go to the fishing pond, if the way Baby Brother and Ginger Cousin trooped over there was any indication.

The fishing pond was a bit lacking in pondness. It was just a small booth where children forked over their carnival tickets and got a fishing pole to pull up a prize from inside the booth. Baby Brother and Ginger Cousin were determined to fish up some prizes, and The Neediness dictated that I go with them.

There were three levels of prizes. The kids wanted the most expensive. The worker asked Ginger Cousin and Baby Brother their ages, took their tickets, and dropped their poles into the booth. And lo and behold! Exciting, age-appropriate prizes appeared on the end of the fishing poles. Ginger Cousin had a whistle shaped like a bird of paradise and a vial necklace filled with multi-colored sand. Baby Brother had a soccer ball whistle and some kind of manly craft kit.

At the last moment I decided to go fishing as well. I was here, wasn't I? Why shouldn't I get a sweet prize, too? A prize could be just the thing to soothe my needy soul. Only I didn't want to spend the tickets for an expensive one, so I gave a single ticket for the cheapest.

WORKER: How old are you?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Twenty-____.

WORKER: ...twenty-____?

From the way he was acting, you'd think I was the oldest person using the fishing pond or something. And if you thought that, you'd be correct.

When I reeled in my line, attached to the end was a pink plastic pen decorated with hearts. Except half the hearts had fallen off. And it didn't seem to be able to actually produce ink.

Oh, sure I thought as I compared my prize with the kids'. Just because I'm cheap and old. The pen perfectly embodied the loneliness of my soul. I wept inside. And became even more needy.

For the rest of my time at the carnival, I passed from companionship to companionship. The younger kids. My parents. My friend and troupe member Snow Angel. I even ran into Older Sister, who has returned from her mission to the land of America South and who had come to the carnival after work with our friend Rosebud. Anyone who crossed my path, I took turns sticking to like sticking plaster.

(Sticking plaster is something I read about in British books that is never satisfactorily explained. So I don't actually know what it is. Apparently I should never spend time with any British literature whatsoever, as it seems to be a source of much confusion in my life.)

For most of the carnival, I managed to be successful in not ever being alone. Then, when I'd finally convinced Baby Sister to go with me for fried bread, the unthinkable happened.

Baby Sister left.

The consequent events are a little fuzzy. Hyperventilation was involved. Possibly seizures. How I survived on my own is unclear.

What I can remember, however, is that I ate my fried bread like a crazed, ravening thing. Consumption was the only way to make certain it, at least, would never leave me.

In Which I Cause Violence at the MTC

Best Friend Boy was at the Missionary Training Center for a short time when a most unfortunate incident happened. And as is the case with far too many unfortunate incidents, the whole thing was entirely my fault.

It all started when we were seniors in high school. One day Etch-a-Sketch accidentally nudged Best Friend Boy in the face with her elbow. She apologized and joked, "It was a sign of affection."

This exchange pleased me. I turned to Best Friend Boy and announced, "From now on, when I'm being affectionate, I'm going to elbow you in the face."

And I did. Frequently. I would yell, "AFFECTION" and stick my elbow in his face. Gently, of course. I wouldn't have wanted to injure him. His severe discomfort was enough. Though he quickly grew used to it. People who are friends with me have to grow used to any number of things.

Time flew by, and before we knew it, Best Friend Boy left on a mission. Our goodbyes went something like this: Temple trip. Smoothies. Hugs. Finally, "AFFECTION! See you in two years."

For the next few months, it seemed like all I did was say goodbye to missionaries. Friends, guys who'd taken me on dates or who I'd taken on dates, kids I barely knew--all of them chose to serve full-time missions. Including Math Dude. Etch-a-Sketch and I went to hear Math Dude speak in church a few days before he headed to the MTC.

"If you see Best Friend Boy at the MTC," Etch-a-Sketch said to Math Dude after, "give him this from me." She hugged Math Dude.

"If you see Best Friend Boy at the MTC," I said, "give him this elbow in the face from me."

"Noooo," Math Dude said, backing away from my elbow. "That looks like it would hurt."

"It doesn't hurt," I said, and I tried to explain. However, Math Dude stood firm, so finally I just said, "Fine. Then give Best Friend Boy this hug."

We bid Math Dude a fond farewell and left his home for parts unknown aka our places of residence. Life went on, and the whole scene was promptly forgotten.

Forgotten, that is, by everyone but Math Dude.

A few weeks later, I was driving Etch-a-Sketch and myself to the temple when she feebly said, "Um, Best Friend Boy wrote me a letter."

"Oh?" I said, intrigued, because while having Etch-a-Sketch get a letter from Best Friend Boy was not as good as getting one myself, it at least was a means to hear his latest news.

"Yes. And... he wants me to tell you something."

"Okay," I said, trying to sound appropriately serious in order to match the tone of her voice, a someone-may-have-died-or-at-least-is-going-bald voice. It was a tone grave yet timid at the same time.

So gravely yet timidly, Etch-a-Sketch began to recount Best Friend Boy's words.

One day at the MTC, Math Dude had come across Best Friend Boy. Math Dude told Best Friend Boy he had some messages to pass on.

"This is from Etch-a-Sketch." Math Dude hugged Best Friend Boy.

"And this," Math Dude said, "is from Awkward Mormon Girl" and he slapped Best Friend Boy in the face.

"So," Etch-a-Sketch finished, quaveringly, "Best Friend Boy said for you to be more careful about the messages you pass along-"

I couldn't help myself. I started laughing so hard, I almost drove us off the road.

Meditation

It all started when I was looking for an easy class.

An easy class, something not too difficult and that would require zero skillz. Something that wouldn't exhaust me. Something, perhaps, even... fun.

With these requirements in mind I ruled out class after class until finally, I settled on a class on meditation. I figured it would be easy. I figured it would require zero skillz. I figured that meditating would probably be a lot like sleeping, and if sleeping isn't fun, I don't know what is.

News flash. Meditation isn't like sleeping. Meditation is hard.

The meditation teacher would be like, "Listen to yourself breathing. Can you feel your lungs?"

And I would be like, "Yes. Can we sleep now?" Except only in my head. Because meditation time isn't talking time. It's quiet time. Even I know that.

And the teacher would be like, "Focus on your breathing! Feel the air enter and exit through your nostrils. Feel it fill you! Feel it leave!"

And I would be like, "I feel it, man, I feel it." And I would be pretty pleased with myself for about thirty seconds until the teacher said that the breath was all we could think about for twenty minutes. No distractions. No thinking about what we were going to eat for lunch or our recent friendship entanglements. No thinking about our favorite television shows. No nothing.

"If you do think about something else," the teacher said, "the breath will bring you back. You will remember the breath and then you will let the distraction go. It will float away like a ship on a passing sea."

"Passing sea," I said to myself. "Got it." I settled in to meditate.

I breathed in. I breathed out. I felt my lungs expanding and contracting and felt my breath in my nostrils. Pretty soon, though, I was thinking about missionaries coming home and cooking dinner and the book I'd read the night before and alligators and Phineas and Ferb. Theoretically the breath would have been able to bring me back and then I could have sent all my distractions shipping down that sea. The problem was, in order for the breath bring me back, I had to remember I was supposed to be thinking about the breath. Unfortunately, I was way too far gone for that. If remembering breathing was a place in North America, my thoughts were somewhere off the coast of Australia, frolicking with some marsupials.

Thus I learned the truth. Meditation isn't easy. Meditation does require skillz. Meditation is perhaps not as fun as sleeping.

It is, however, very useful.

After the meditation session the teacher went on to bring out all these slides about brain activity. Over the course of the class, we learned about how meditation can affect the brain.

The top way meditation affects the brain? It helps you become an adult.

Allow me to explain in laymen's terms. When something upsetting happens to you, be it a bear attack or a suspicion that your crush likes someone else, it wires a response in a place in the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala sends all these signals to your hormonal centers, telling you to freak out. So you freak out, and you initially freak out just as much as about the crush thing as you would about a bear attack.

There are, of course, other parts of the brain that realize that your crush not liking you is not as big of a deal as the bear attack. These are the inhibitory parts of the brain. Their job is basically to keep you from being a fool. When they realize that you're freaking out over something that doesn't put you in actual danger, they help you to stop freaking out. However, the connections to those parts of the brain aren't as strong, especially in generally anxious people. Or people who are young. Or people who are young and anxious aka teenagers and college students.

When a person meditates, the inhibitory parts of the brain activate. They get exercised, and they become easier to use. This helps meditators to consciously shut down overactive emotional responses, if not react more moderately in the first place.

As soon as the teacher told us this, I could almost feel my ears twitching. Having emotional responses that don't overwhelm=maturity=being a real adult and not someone who has the age requirements of an adult but is otherwise a fraud.

Okay, okay, I'm not exactly a fraud. It's not like I'm totally irresponsible or anything. It's just that sometimes I experience strong emotions. As I've gotten older and older, I've become better at dealing with them in adult ways. In some instances, though, they seem too strong for me. And then a tsunami of feelings sweeps over me. And sometimes I do things I regret or act in a way that does not befit my true self. Which is not pleasant, but which becomes a bigger problem when people I care about get dragged into that tsunami.

If meditation could help, then I would meditate my face off.

Every day. Twenty minutes of sitting still and 'being mindful." I was supposed to only think about the now.

"Note the now," the teacher would say. "Breath in, breath out. Feel the breath. Feel the carpet beneath your feet."

One breath, two breath. It feels scratchy. Three breath...

"Feel your heartbeat."

What color is this carpet? Isn't it... ah, no! Breathing. That's all. Six breath. Seven breath. Just the now.

"What do you hear?"

I hear -ten breath. Eleven- a dog barking.

"Hear the sound. Don't think about where it's coming from. Just hear it."

 I mean... I hear barking. Well, if I'm just hearing it maybe I shouldn't put a name to it...

"Feel the breath."

So... I hear a noise... and it sounds like... that.

"Don't name sounds. Just follow them.

...what does that even mean?

"What are the distractions that come into your mind?"

Do I listen to what she's saying, or just follow it? If I'm focusing on what she's saying, can I really be mindful?

"What distractions are coming into your mind?"

Does interpreting her words take away from the now?

"Just let them go by."

...the now... after this I can get lunch.

"Let them float away."

Tacos. Homework, baklava, workplace policies.

"They are not part of you. They just are."

That one time senior year when the band went to Disneyland and we got to go in the back of Toon Town and everyone had a Disney crown and mine had Tinker Bell on it... ahhhh. NO. Why aren't we being mindful, brain?! We're supposed to be maturing!

"If you can't focus, don't judge yourself," said the teacher. "Just love yourself. Go back to the breath. It will bring you back to mindfulness."

Yes. Yes. The breath will bring me back. Let's count the breaths. One, two, three... hmmm, Pinterest recipes....

And so it went. Every time I meditated, at the end of the session I always found myself spaced out for the last five minutes or so. Instead of exercising the inhibitory parts of my mind and learning to de-tsunami-ize my emotions, I was thinking about Christmas or examining my biceps or singing a Beatles song in my head.

...I'm never going to become a real adult, am I?

Monthiversary

Guess what I'm not doing right now?

If you guessed, "Not studying for your final tomorrow," you're right. If you guessed, "Not dancing with a penguin," or "Not having luncheon with a hobbit," you're technically also right, though those weren't the answers I was looking for.

What's that? You say that's not fair? Well, guess what else? I'm the one grading here, not you. So you have to accept whatever grade I give you, and there's nothing you can do about it. I refuse to give you so much as half a point more, not even if you need that half a point so you can keep your college scholarship and not fail at life and not cry.

...did I mention that I have a final tomorrow?

I promise I'm not being irresponsible by writing this blog post right now instead of studying. Here's my reasoning on that matter:

a) I've studied so much today, I understand the things I'm studying even less than I did when I started studying. That can't be good. So taking a little refresher before the last lap of studying can only help, not hurt.

a) part b) My studying sessions weren't doing much for me anyways, because I could only study for so long before I would start thinking about other things, like Older Sister's mission and good food and all the things I still need to do before finals week is over and everything I'm gonna do after.

Also, I thought about shiny things.

Clearly, if I'm not focusing on what I'm doing, then the studying isn't doing me much good, anyways. So, again, a break might be more beneficial than detrimental. Maybe I can get some of this stuff out of my system.

and, b) by not studying, I am accomplishing something crucial that I wouldn't otherwise be doing.

See, it's impossible to not procrastinate. If I am productive all the time and always do what I am supposed to, I'm only procrastinating my procrastination. Sometimes, I just have to be more responsible, and not procrastinate procrastination, which is very important to me and is a priority seriously undervalued by this nation and the world in general, even though it's a huge part of our daily lives.

Guess what else is a huge part of our daily lives?

Toast, probably. Also, in some instances, this blog.

See, today is actually the one-month-anniversary of Awkward Mormon Girl. Or, as I like to call it, our monthiversary. 'Cause an anniversary is all about years and blah blah blah etcetera technical English term you get it what was I saying anyways?

Oh yeah. Monthiversary. Well, I just wanted to say that I'm soooo happy I've had this blog in my life for a month! Seriously, it's changed my life. I don't know what I'd do without it. It's made me a better person, and it doesn't hurt that it's super attractive! Love you, sweetie! Bloggie! Hunny bear!

That's what my Facebook friends say about their monthiversaries. If you didn't throw up in your mouth a little, then I'm not doing it right.

Oh, and thanks for being here. I know you're here. Even though you never say anything, your views show up on my dash. And when they do, I like you just a little bit more than I did before. Which I guess isn't hard to do... because in all honesty... I'm not sure if I even liked you before at all. I mean, we probably don't know each other. And yet you're eagerly devouring my anonymous words and probably thinking how cool I am and how much you wish you really knew me. Which, now that I think about it, basically makes you a stalker.

...wow. This is awkward. Maybe it would be better for everyone if I finished studying now.

Younger Siblings That Talk Back

Sometimes, I just start craving Indian food.

Or Chinese food. Or Thai food. Or Japanese food. Even though I come from a racial background that's European-Jewish-Slavic aka ethnic white (and yes that is a thing and no I'm not making it up), sometimes I feel, deep down, that I'm actually an Asian. Especially when I start craving all sorts of Asian-y food. Like Indian food.

So the other day, I decided to take a break from homework and to go to an Indian restaurant for a little while, maybe an hour or so. At first I was just going to go by myself, but then The Neediness overcame me.

The Neediness is a sensation of acute loneliness. Acute loneliness meaning not the kind of loneliness you feel when you want someone to hang out with, but more of a feeling that if you don't find someone to hang out with, you're going to be alone forever. So you surround yourself with people as often as possible and have psychologically scarring dreams about going alone to the grocery store.

You know what's almost as bad as going to the grocery store when you have The Neediness? Going to an Indian restaurant.

Even though my sisters and I have the same parents, for some reason they don't feel the whole Asian thing, just the European-Jewish-Slav thing. To my sisters, going to an Indian restaurant seems both like a terrible waste of money and downright repellant. Therefore, to stave off The Neediness's effects on my homework-weary soul, I had to exert all my persuasive capabilities to convince Little Sister and Baby Sister to accompany me to lunch.

"The lunch special is only ten dollars," I wheedled, "and to save money you guys can just have water, and maybe some naan bread. You'll like naan bread, it's really-"

At which point my sisters burst out into fits of hysterical laughter.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What? What did I say?

SISTERS: Naan bread. Non-bread! Bwahaha!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Naan bread. N-A-A-N. It's Indian. Not non-bread-

SISTERS: BAHAHA!

We ended up going for Italian.

A few days later, when I got home from a grueling day at school, I saw that as part of her redecoration project my mother had placed a mirror just inside the front door.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh no!

BABY SISTER: What?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: This mirror. My face is the last thing I want to look at right when I get home.

BABY SISTER: Then look at your face last.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

These are just two brief incidents in a recent outbreak of younger sibling insubordination.

I don't know if it's that Older Sister has been gone for so long or what, but the younger siblings seem to have forgotten their place in the sibling hierarchy. I mean, okay. If I was going to give my family a fake last name for this blog I would give them the fake last name of Obnoxious. And aside from having a reputation of bursting out into song and being able to reference obscure Jim Henson productions, part of being an Obnoxious is being, well, obnoxious.

However. My younger siblings are getting to be too much, even for Obnoxiouses. They seem to have forgotten that you never, ever talk back to your older siblings. Talking back to parents, teachers, church leaders--that's not such a big deal. But older siblings, particularly your awesome older sister? Unacceptable.

Hopefully when Older Sister gets back from her mission, she can whip these little rebels into shape. Otherwise, they're just going to get further and further from the unspoken rules of society, until they end up as high school dropouts who live under a bridge and eat newspapers for breakfast.

Either way, I predict Baby Brother will prove unsalvageable. His level of sauciness far outweighs his number of years.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Baby Brother. Don't put so much butter on your roll. You're going to get a heart attack and die.

BABY BROTHER: But everybody dies.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: *involuntary facial twitch*

BABY BROTHER: Well they do.

I hope Baby Brother doesn't turn out to have the Asian strain in his blood. There's precious little Indian food under a bridge.

Say Wind

One of my nonGospel rules of life: Don't pay too much attention to the weatherman. Or weather websites. Or the weather app on your iPod. Or a weathervane. Or a psychic. Or anything else that tries to tell you what the weather of the future is going to be like.

Because guess what? It's probably going to be wrong.

So the other day, we were supposed to have an intense windstorm where I live. Mom ran around the house, unplugging things to avoid electric surges if the power went out. She handed out emergency flashlights and advised me to set my phone alarm for the next morning instead of relying on my obnoxious, electricity-using clock. I took her advice, but skeptically, oh so skeptically, because I knew just how tricky these weather types can be.

And sure enough, when the next morning came, was there an intense windstorm raging throughout the town?

Nope. Just a moderate wind, a light snowfall, and a bit of a chill in the air.

I didn't say "I told you so," but that was more because everybody else was asleep than because I'm a nice person. I guess, however, that if I really wasn't a nice person, I would have woken them up for the express purpose of I-told-you-soing. So I suppose the jury's still out on that one.

I got ready for school, grabbed my puffy winter coat, and headed out for Nameless Utah College.

However. As soon as I pulled out of the driveway, the expected intense wind started up. Clouds of snow swirled in the air and brushed the sides of my vehicle.

Well, I thought this is annoying. And it was annoying. It was so annoying that I started to feel, well, annoyed.

BUT. It got WORSE. At the bus stop, the wind was blowing from the north. Guess what? My bus comes from the north. So instead of peering into the distance to look for the bus, I had to turn my back on the expected bus or else my face probably would have been blown off in the wind. And while that would have been pretty uncomfortable, standing backwards in the wind was not much funner. 'Cause I still got wind on me, just... on my back. Also I had to worry about whether or not a tree or a small house might blow into my car, which was parked across the street.

Finally, the bus came and took me away to College City, where I was in for a big shock.

See, one of my other nonGospel rules of life is this: Whatever the weather is where I live, in College City it's always going to be about ten times worse. If it's snowing at my house, it's snowing ten times harder by the college. If it's a little warm by my house, it's a veritable oven at the college. And so on and so forth.

I got to College City expecting ten times as much wind and snow. Instead I got there to find, like, six and a half times less. It was utterly bruising to my ego, because my ego thinks it and I have the best rules of life ever.

"Don't worry," I said to my ego. "We're probably still right. The wind must have died down back home too, that's all."

With that happy thought, I went through the rest of my day. When I got on the bus to get home, the wind was very mild, so I of course expected to find it at least fairly mild when I got off the bus.

Well, it wasn't. In fact, that wind was freakishly strong.

To get to my car, I had to walk into the wind. Which meant that I was going at the approximate pace of a crippled turtle. Which just wouldn't do, because I had things to do and places to be and no time to make like a handicapped reptile. So I started running into the wind.

Imagine, if you will, a turquoise marshmallow that actually is a human in a puffy turquoise coat. Now imagine that marshmallow human running into a very strong wind, pumping its arms with all its might like a thing possessed. Now also imagine that this marshmallow only gets twenty minutes of exercise a day and because of that is somewhat out of shape and because of that is huffing and puffing like a chain smoker using an inhaler.

That's basically what I looked like.

Finally I made it to my car, completely out of breath but very pleased with myself. I unlocked my car and climbed in. Then I happened to notice a kid sitting in the next car. He was watching me, and, I highly suspected, had been since I started running. If he could say something to me in that moment, I figured he would say, "You're a loser."

And then I would say, "Au contraire, mon ami." And then I would hope that he didn't speak legit French. Because if he did he might say something in French back to me. And the only other thing in French I could thing of was "Mon petit chou." Which I'm pretty sure means, "My little cabbage." Which really doesn't add much to a conversation.

Then I drove home. On the way home I realized that the steering wheel was shaking. And I was like, "Why is the steering wheel shaking?" Then I thought that the brake was making a weird noise. And that the entire car was trembling.

First I thought my car was broken. Then I realized that it wasn't broken. The shaking and the weird noises came from the buffeting of the wind. It was so strong it was rattling my poor car right to the bones!

That was pretty disconcerting, but the last straw was when I got home. When I got home, the mailbox was wide open.

Now, this sent me into a bit of a panic. I love to get mail. Because I am a college student with friends who are all either a) married, b) living in a different city, c) just as busy and unavailable as I am, or d) all of the above, my soul often feels lonely. Getting mail makes my soul less lonely. Letters are the best, particularly from Best Friend Boy or other missionary friends, but I also enjoy getting newsletters, thank-you cards for wedding gifts, and even bills. Well, no. Not bills. My soul isn't quite that lonely.

The thought of not getting my mail was more than I could bear, so I dashed up and down the curb of my yard and the neighbor's, still looking like a turquoise marshmallow, still panting ridiculously, and pinwheeling my arms in a most spastic manner.

I was thinking that the wind had blown open the mailbox and stolen my mail, but I didn't find a single piece of correspondence lying about. Finally, I was forced to conclude that either the wind had blown my mail into lands unreachable and unknown, or that we simply hadn't gotten any mail that day at all.

I don't know which of those scenarios would be worse.

Anyways, this experience taught me three important things:

1) From now on, I should listen more to the weatherman and his ilk. This will save me a world of confusion and possibly some ego-bruising.

2) To avoid the trauma of not getting mail, I should write a postcard and send it to myself every single day. It will be like Fraggle Rock. Except without Fraggles. And without the rock. Unless I can find a postcard that has Fraggles on it. Or a rock.

3) I should invent an ingenious new system for the door of the mailbox, in order to avoid its being blown open and the mail possible being scattered to lands unreachable and unknown.

I'm thinking something with magnets.