Sarah & Co.

A really delicious casserole worth remembering.

2011-12-07T09:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Eggplant-Potato-and-Pepper-Casserole-347

I'd recommend George Foreman-ing the eggplant instead of frying it (less oil; delicious taste), but frying the onions, potatoes, and green peppers is a good idea. I'm not sure when I made this the first time I owned any actually thyme (maybe I used dried? maybe I used basil and/or oregano?), so feel free to season as you would. It was surprisingly ridiculously delicious.

Oh, and we definitely layered in canned roast beef to make it an entree. And we probably added cheese. Awesome.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

2011-11-19T10:17:00.001-08:00

The snow from last night is melting this morning, so the world outside is a mix of white snow, yellow and orange leaves, and a slick brown shininess to everything melting and being melted on. Necessarily, I wanted pumpkin something for breakfast.

I'm a solid cook, but I am not a great baker. These muffins, however, were fantastic and easy. (Except--I put in more chocolate chips than was called for, maybe just 1/4 cup more, because why not? And turns out, it was maybe too many chocolate chips. I was eating the muffin wishing I could taste less chocolate and more pumpkin. Weird, right?)

Ingredients

1 2/3 cup(s) flour
1 cup(s) sugar
1 tablespoon(s) pumpkin-pie spice (OR some mix of ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon)
1 teaspoon(s) baking soda
1/4 teaspoon(s) baking powder
1/4 teaspoon(s) salt (kosher is my preference, always)
1 cup(s) semisweet chocolate chips
2 large eggs
1 cup (do not use pumpkin-pie filling) canned solid-pack pumpkin (OR maybe 1 1/4 cup?)
1/2 cup(s) (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted (OR 1/2 cup applesauce and 1 tablespoon melted butter)

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Spray muffin tins.
In large bowl, mix first six ingredients; add chocolate chips, tossing to coat.
In another small bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients; add to flour mixture and stir just until combined (do not overmix). Fill each muffin cup about two-thirds full.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until muffins spring back when lightly touched (or, as I did, until they mostly look done and the edges look crispy but the top doesn't quite spring back but you have to leave to go practice a hymn for church the next day). Cool muffins on rack.

Adapted from http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/paula-muffins

Recipes I've been a-using

2011-09-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

This is mostly for my records, but feel free to look in. Both of these are delicious for breakfast.

Chilled Raspberry Soup
(adapted by Sarah from Betty Crocker)

2 bags (about 4 cups) frozen raspberries, thawed overnight in fridge
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cranberry juice or orange juice
1 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
1 tsp vanilla (or to taste)

1 Place raspberries, sugar, and juice in blender. Cover and blend on high speed until smooth.
Strain raspberry mixture through sieve into bowl. Discard raspberry seeds.
Stir yogurt into raspberry mixture. Add cinnamon and vanilla; stir.
Cover and refrigerate 1 to 2 hours or until cold. Serve topped with fresh raspberries.

Pear Clafoutis

(adapted by Sarah from the Domestic Goddess)

4 large eggs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/3 cup flour

1 cup milk

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 large pears, cored, thinly sliced

powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 F. Generously butter 9-inch-diameter glass or ceramic pie plate.
Beat eggs, sugar, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Whisk in flour. Add milk, butter, vanilla, and cinnamon - whisk until smooth.
Arrange pears in bottom of prepared plate (preferably in circular-fan pattern). Pour custard over pears. Sprinkle additional cinnamon and/or sugar on top.
Bake until clafoutis is set in center and golden on top, about 40 minutes.
Sprinkle or serve with powdered sugar.

Homemade Caramel Recipe

2010-10-30T20:54:00.001-07:00

The following is mostly for my own records, but you should feel free to use it too. It comes from this website.

CARAMEL:

3 c. sugar, divided
3/4 c. milk
1 egg, beaten
Pinch of salt
1/2 c. butter (cut up)

Sprinkle 1/2 cup sugar in heavy saucepan; place over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until sugar melts and syrup is golden brown.

Combine remaining 2 1/2 cups sugar, milk, egg and salt in a bowl, stirring well; stir in butter. Stir butter mixture in caramelized sugar. (The mixture will lump, becoming smooth with further cooking.) Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until a candy thermometer registers 230 degrees (15-20 minutes). Cool 5 minutes. Beat with a wooden spoon to almost spreading consistency and spread between layers and on top of cake.

Grandma Hoggard

2010-07-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

This past Tuesday morning, at approximately 12:30 am, my Grandma Hoggard died. Mom and Anika were there with her, in her hospice care facility, and I had seen her earlier that evening, earlier that day, and for many hours on the previous two days. We had been praying she would die on Monday because she was so uncomfortable. It was such a blessing to have it happen when and how and as peacefully as it did. Grandma considered her death a graduation, and she requested we play "Pomp and Circumstance" at her funeral, which the bishop thought was "resoundingly appropriate." So on Friday, at her funeral, as the cousins pall bearered her casket out of the chapel, Cousin Stephen played a version of the graduation anthem. I'm sure she was 100% delighted about that.

At Uncle Rick's request, I wrote a tribute to Grandma, which was included in the program for her funeral. For posterity's sake--and to update this long-neglected blog--I post it here.

Grandma Hoggard, we love you very much. I miss you already.

* * * * *

As Grandma Hoggard Would Say, “We Just Had to Laugh”

I once won $1100 for an essay I wrote about Grandma and Grandpa, in which I essentially just wrote down experiences I’d had with them. I wrestled with not submitting the essay in the first place—should I make money on Grandma’s idiosyncrasies? Could it really be okay to share her foibles with the world? In the essay, I describe watching Grandma give herself insulin shots, poking a sharp needle into her belly, sitting alone late at night at the kitchen counter. And of course, of course, I expose her fridge for all that it is—a tattooed appliance, covered by a collection of quotes, handwritten by Grandma in black permanent marker. “Pornography is the literature of the devil,” the freezer says. “If jealousy were a fever, all the world would be ill.”

I shouldn’t have worried about sharing these things. When I showed Grandma the essay, she laughed at every page. “You painted me perfectly!” she said. “You got me just right!”

The perfect, shocking thing about Grandma’s willingness to laugh is that she was also so serious about so many things. The gospel of Jesus Christ, for one. Her family. Genealogy. Graduations, events, holiday decorations. New clothes for the grandkids, new shoes for the grandkids. Pretty much anything for the grandkids. Fudge.

With seriousness, she decried sin. (She once told me: “Rick bought his kids a poker table. Someday he’s going to call me and say, ‘Woe is me,’ and I’ll say, ‘Woe IS you!’”) She advocated for achievement. (She counseled a soon-to-be-lawyer grandson to take all 50 state bars at the same time, “just to get it over with.”) She loved buying things. (One day, after hearing her emit a string of gasps and “That’s darling!”s in the BYU Bookstore, I asked her if she saw anything she didn’t think was cute. She stopped walking, turned entirely around, and said brightly, “Nope!”)

And she gave, gave, gave. Gave. Gave more. (For instance, a former roommate of my sister’s recently credited Grandma Hoggard with helping her avoid urinary tract infections, so plentiful was Grandma’s supply of cranberry juice to Anika’s college apartment.) Grandma never stopped giving—she was giving the rings off her fingers for weeks before she died—and she hasn’t yet. (Turn an object over in Grandma’s house, and you’re likely to find a “Stephen” or a “Coco,” written in Grandma’s own schoolgirl cursive. She long ago began preparing to divide her possessions among her family.) My guess is she’s already finding ways to keep giving, both to us here and to our family on the other side.

Grandma Hoggard is one of the finest, funniest, most passionate, most loving people ever to live on God’s earth. We who are lucky enough to be descended from her by birth or marriage have been trying since our very first days to live with as much meaning, good humor, and generosity as she showed everyday.

She’d like that, I think, because she loves us. And because she has always, always enjoyed a good laugh.

Salad Crazy?

2010-01-12T11:55:00.001-08:00

Me too.

Which is why Manfriend has made this:

sarahssalads.wordpress.com

He says he'll update it every time I eat a salad, which, it turns out, is typically at least once a day. But already we're two salads behind--a pork salad and a salad I ordered as part of lunch today at The Prime Rib, during DC's restaurant week. But he has an iPhone, plenty of access to me (hooray), and the desire to document our crazy salad eating.

Here's hoping even more attention to me and my salads doesn't go to my head.

(Manfriend, that pun was for you.)

Stay tuned.

Coolest (Thesis) Idea (Ever).

2009-10-21T08:13:00.001-07:00

http://writemythesis.squarespace.com/

I haven't checked it out yet, but it is the brainchild of my friend Brittany Watson, who has better taste and more personal class/loveliness than just about anyone I know.

Academedia revolution! That's what I say.

Spread the (design/media/academic) word.

Do you ever have days

2009-09-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

on which you want to be covered from head to toe? No skin showing at all?

I think it's my way of staying in bed. While going to work.

Hopefully it's not too hot today.

Question

2009-09-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

Would you rather have your president be fat or your lawyer be a terrible speller?

Recipe: Soda Cracker Pie

2009-09-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

Adapted from the recipe by Grandma George, heaven bless her.

In a cold bowl

beat 3 egg whites until stiff
then add 1 cup sugar
then add the crumbs of 14 saltines (which you've procured from finely crushing 14 saltines in a ziploc bag)
then add 1/4 tsp baking powder
then add 1/2 cup chopped pecans
and finally, add 1 tsp vanilla.

Fill buttered 9" pie pan with pie goop. Push the goop up on the sides.

Bake 30 minutes at 325 degrees, until it looks solid (not goopy) and golden brown. It will be puffy.

Remove it from the oven. It will fall.

Cool it. Slice fresh peaches or nectarines thin. Fill pie crust SO FULL. Add whipped cream (or even Cool Whip) to your liking.

Eat it before anyone else does.

Two Pictorial Updates

2009-05-27T21:18:00.001-07:00

1. Le dessert du triomphe.
An impromptu dessert made for the birthday of one Jeff S., during a recent spur-of-the-moment, whirlwind weekend in Rochester. Ingredients: one half-gallon of vanilla bean ice cream; one half-gallon of chocolate ice cream; one layer of homemade whipped cream with lemon zest; fresh mango, blackberries, and raspberries; shredded coconut; and tall skinny candles that turned out to be almost impossible to blow out. Can I tell you the truth? It was amazing. We were all surprised.

2. Kayak thumbs.
The remains of a short kayaking adventure in the Chesapeake Bay, had as the capstone outing to a perfect Memorial Day weekend spent lounging around a house on the water with friends. In real life, the sores are pretty dramatic. And liquidy. (Are my hands really that sissy? I need to get out more.) But no regrets. The weekend was perfect.

Louise

2009-05-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

It's been forever. And this comment isn't something big (it's small) or original (Louise wrote it). But I want to make it mine.

Louise wrote the following as a comment to her own post. Read the comment here: http://theapronstage.com/2009/05/14/in-a-panic/#comment-2678, and the post here: http://theapronstage.com/2009/05/14/in-a-panic/

To increase the likelihood you'll do one of the two, I'm reproducing the comment here. God bless Louise Plummer.

I forgot number 101: Learn to say no. You may have to practice. Never say yes right away. Say, “Let me think about it and I’ll call you back.” Then call back and say no. This is hardest to do when people you love ask you to do things you really really don’t want to do. “No, we can’t drive across country to be home for Thanksgiving this year.” “No, I can’t be on the R.S. enrichment committee.”"No, I’m not coming to choir practice at seven in the morning on Sundays.” I’m not doing anything early mornings. Get used to it.

Stand up for yourselves, anxious ones. Plan anxiety into your life. I need a long morning. Right now, I’m so nervous about my fiction writing that I have scheduled one hour a day to write (instead of four) and think I’m successful if I write one paragraph. But here’s the thing: books get written one sentence, one paragraph at a time, one hour a day. I can’t worry about those people putting out a book a year. I’m just not one of them. I can’t worry about anyone but me.

I think walking to the mail box is good exercise. Hot chocolate is good too–anytime.

Don’t you all see it? Most of the world is terrified. We’re rabbits on a chopping block. It takes a lot of faith to get over that view. It’s why people drink, smoke, eat too much, have unsafe sex and kill themselves. That’s why we watch too much TV, play too many video games, stay in bed. We’re scared to death. Recognize it, embrace it, expect to fail occasionally, and move on.

Decide to be a believer. Decide to be terrific in a doddling sort of way. When Jesus gets tired of crowds, he always walks away. Read the gospels and see how often he walks away. No THAT’s taking good care of yourself.

Saturday in Sunbury

2009-03-29T18:59:00.001-07:00

I spent Saturday in Sunbury, PA, with the lovely Reija M. Turns out, Sunbury is halfway between Rochester and my house in VA, so we decided to meet there, to hang out in the middle. I rented a car, borrowed my roommate's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book on tape, and drove the 3ish hours to mid-PA, where Reija waited for me on a swingset in a park built like a fort.

It was awesome.

We ate dinner at the restaurant in the first building in the world to have electricity. (Sunbury, PA, is the first town in the world to have been wired with electricity.) And we saw the Susquehanna (but only once we climbed over the flood wall); a 19th-century fort-like prison that is still in use (despite a lawsuit pending about the inhumane conditions for the prisoners inside); and rows and rows of houses and stores, all charming, sad, and/or cute. Sunsbury is definitely a place with history. Now for Reija and me, too.

Read Reija's account/see more pictures of my awesome Saturday here: http://reijagainsthemachine.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-meeting-halfway.html.

Having friends/Reija rocks. And so does America. And No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I commend them all to you.

Lettuce Eat

2009-03-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

Lettuce is my new favorite thing to eat. I crave it all the time. I don't know if it's the roughage, the wateriness, the almost entire lack of calories. Something.

I eat it under eggs. I eat it with grilled onions. I buy a salad and then buy more lettuce to add to my salad.

And I've been dreaming--for a week now, maybe two--about eating pizza on lettuce. (Not lettuce on pizza, as, I was told, is sometimes sold in restaurants like the California Pizza Kitchen.) But pizza on lettuce. A piece of pizza--pepperoni is my favorite these days--cut into bite-sized pieces and put on top of a bed of Romaine. Fresh, watery, piled high, topped with scattered pizza bites.

Oh man. Lettuce. LETTUCE.

I'm dreaming of lettuce tonight.

Today in Relief Society

2009-03-01T18:02:00.000-08:00

Stephanie: (whispering) Sarah, do you feel like that?

Sarah: Like what?

Stephanie: Like what that girl just said? Like sometimes you're on a roller coaster--and you feel up because you're confident that God loves you and you're doing what's right but then you hit an obstacle and you feel down and everything is hard. Do you feel like that?

Sarah: Um. I don't know. In some ways, but not all ways. Do you feel like that?

Stephanie: No. (pause) But maybe I should. I like roller coasters. You know like when you're going up and then you come down and you're like whoo!

Dozy Daisy and Zilly Notwithstanding*

2009-02-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

You know how word verification words tend to be fake words that have real-word-like characteristics? Spotus. Linita. Flackel. Like aliens posing as humans. So close, but not quite right. Creepy.

I wanted to comment on a blog the other day, and this came up as my verification word:

clowns

I looked closer. Was I mis-seeing things? I mean, my eyes have been getting worse. (It was five years ago that I got my eyes lasered.) But maybe the screen resolution? the colors? my perpetual tiredness? I tried other options: clouns. dovns. clowms. Nope.

Clowns.

Apparently, clowns are creepy enough.

* My roommate Jeanette recently met two professional clowns at the LDS temple in London. Or rather, she met two people who were at the LDS temple who were also professional clowns. They're married. He's Zilly, and she's Dozy Daisy. And they were super nice to Jeanette. Which is not a silly thing! So, they're excepted.

For KT on her birthday

2009-02-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

(The only picture I have of the two of us. We don't even look like we know each other well. This is totally ridiculous and must be remedied.)

Somehow, this says most of it:

"Thank you for the books you sent which connect
quite specifically to everything I have been thinking of
for the last 12 years."
(Naomi Shihab Nye doesn't come between us as much as she calls it like it is
and then leaves us to talk and live it out.)
You have given me bobby pins that fit this description.

I have to tell you, I live my life so it's more like yours.
The comforter
is only the first thing. You'll notice, it's gold. Not unlike your curtains.
The dishes, the lovely boxes of matches, the yellow gold earrings--
these are things
everyone sees.

But also, the way you read your scriptures in your bed in the mornings.
The way you make events out of Wednesdays.
"I'm going to lunch with Samantha
and then to the mall. I think I'll leave work at 3, 3:30. Bye!"
Then you'd come home later than usual
and from the temple.

The way you finger the stereo while you're driving, flipping confidently
through all six CDs. Or thousand. However many you're listening to right now.
I always wanted your long fingers.
(However, I do not plan to begin changing lanes in the middle of intersections without signaling. This is thrilling
but I am risk averse.
I am, after all, a lawyer.)

And the way you love the Word. And the women around you.
And the way you make goals
for yourself
writing them in big letters on your mirror.
You do not mention them to us
usually
but you leave them there.
And I see them when I come in to borrow your jewelry
when you are not home.
(And the markered note that said, "Please ask before you borrow jewelry. Thank you!")

You are always up for a talk on a bed, for a cuddle, for a tea party, for good pancakes, and lemon curd.
These are the concrete details that make life well lived.
This is not just the English teacher in me speaking.

This is the observer, the roommate,
the one who would watch you from across the chapel
and wish you were walking down the aisle
in your gold heels and herringbone skirt
towards me.

The one who is glad we share hair color so sometimes people mistake me for you, or say,
"Man, you looked like KT just now. You guys could be sisters."

At some point, it might sound to the world
like I've stopped talking about you
but listen close.

Fortunately

2009-02-10T18:44:00.001-08:00

Reija added this to our conversation re mini-crushes: http://reijagainsthemachine.blogspot.com/2009/02/for-s-my-favorite-mini-crush-poem.html.

If you don't read her blog regularly, you should. It's genius and beauty.

Going Public

2009-02-08T04:46:00.000-08:00

See my first NY Times appearance: http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/why-and-how-i-drink/?apage=6#comment-14915.

Just a comment, but still. I'm working my way into the real world.

(But not of the real world. Don't you worry.)

Discussion Topic: The Mini-Crush

2009-02-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

1. First you have a mini-crush*.

2. Then what do you do?

Discuss.

*I would define a mini-crush as a crush about which you are excited but for which your heart is not actually on the line. I'll also accept discussion re the definition of mini-crush.

A Civil Action

2009-01-31T22:13:00.001-08:00

You know how sometimes you read a book about a doctor or a nurse or a teacher or a female train magnate and you think, "Man, I really wish I were a doctor/nurse/teacher/female train magnate"?

Right now I'm reading A Civil Action, a novel on which a John Travolta movie was based. It describes this case in which a group of families sue some companies for dumping chemicals into the groundwater and inflicting the town with bad health and an unusually high incidence of leukemia, even before anyone knew that things like chemicals in groundwater could cause leukemia. It's pretty great.

But I'm reading it, and I keep thinking, "Man, I really wish I were a lawyer." And then I realize, I AM!

Also, pretty, pretty great.

(Also, lest you wonder, the stuff I do at work is actually pretty much like this. Not personal injury stuff, as in in this book, but some big cases, important. Interesting. So cool! Makes me want to go to work early on Monday.)

Sarah, Esq.

2009-01-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

So I'm a lawyer.

It happened today at noon, Eastern time. I walked into the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, and walked out Esq.

I will say this: The ceremony was nice. Very nice. Like a mini-graduation, with 700 other students (okay, like three times bigger than my law school graduating class), led by a panel full of NY Supreme Court Justices, and a soloist who sang, "Count Your Blessings" from A White Christmas. ("When I'm worried, and I can't sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep, so I fall asleep, counting my blessings.")

And the justice who was leading the ceremony followed the keynote speaker's talk with these words: "Thank you, Honorable Dunne, for that special and meaningful speech. It was so--special and so--meaningful. Thank you."

Great. All great.

Anika drove down from Syracuse (thanks to her friend for taking the children today) and Elizabeth J. (a former roommate from Austin, newly, NEWLY moved to Albany, of all places) came, too. And it was lovely to have them there holding down the fort for friends and family. We went to lunch afterward and ordered chicken enchiladas, and then all made our way to Syracuse, where Elizabeth and I are hanging out with Anika's family for a few days. Reija will join us tomorrow too, I believe. If my stars are aligned correctly. Turns out, upstate New York is a great place to be.

Upstate New York: Walk in a girl, walk out a lawyer.**

*The great Anna Kohler Lewis used to have a sign hanging over the door of her freshman dorm room: "Walk in a girl, walk out a legend." Pretty much encapsulated Anna's freshman year. And, the rest of us hoped, our lives, providing we lived long enough.

**Also, I'm not yet licensed to practice in DC yet. Just in NY. I have to file some paperwork, etc., to be licensed in DC. Then I'll be a real attorney, with business cards and everything. A new day.

In case you were wondering

2009-01-18T12:24:00.001-08:00

These are my inauguration day plans:

1. Wake up.
2. Check the weather.
3. Look at my bike.
4. See how I feel.
5. If I feel okay, bike the 4.5 miles down the trail that goes right past my house all the way to the National Mall; park my bike at the free bike valet by the Jefferson Memorial; battle the crowds; see the sights; feel the feelings; be one with the people; get cold; come home. Watch the rest of the festivities on TV.
6. If I'm feeling homebodyish (or cold), stay home. Watch TV. Or a movie. Do some work. Nap. Try to figure how I'm going to explain to my children and grandchildren why I did not go into the District on this historic day.
7. Eat food, no doubt. No doubt.

Note: My office building will be closed on Tuesday, because it's one block from the parade route, so no commute for me.

Yay for popular presidents!

When one is cold (or in need of comfort)

2009-01-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

one needs a hoodie.

This truism leads me to two thoughts:

1. The Hoodie Foundation. Maybe I should start a non-profit the sole mission of which would be to distribute hoodies to (1) the underclothed (e.g. the homeless, the scantily clad, the poor), and (2) the undercomforted (e.g. orphans, cancer victims, earthquake survivors). Think of the cross-cultural, multi-demographic populations this would serve. Maybe we could partner with this new college intern in my ward who, after she's done daylighting as a grunt in Sen. Hatch's office, goes to her newly rented office space on K Street, where she oversees her three East Coast employees (she may or may not have an office in California) (and Utah), as they work on establishing a non-profit factory in Rwanda that will commercially extract fibers from banana plant refuse, which they will then sell to another factory in Rwanda that makes, of all things, fabric from the fibers. Apparently, very soft, very durable fabric. (Sometimes they even mix the banana fibers with silk for high end apparel.) I know. I know! I know. The banana fiber craziness (and her awesomeness) totally aside, consider--super soft hoodies (made from banana plant refuse) for all. The Hoodie Foundation. Making Millions of Heads Happy.

2. Hoodie Suits. I have, on occasion, ridden the elevator from the first floor to the thirteenth, thinking the whole time: I wish my suit were pinstriped. And I wish it had a hoodie.

A Better Adult

2009-01-10T12:02:00.001-08:00

Fruit Trees by the Lake, Gustav Klimt

I've been thinking a lot about adulthood, now that I'm clearly here. Adulthood has been dawning on me gradually. I think part of me has always felt middle-aged. I used to say, "I feel like a grandma." Said it quite often, actually, until my then soon-to-be boyfriend said, "Sarah, no one wants to date a grandma!" Excellent point.

But I remember being a newly elected 10th grade class president, wandering the decks of an end-of-freshman-year party we had on a boat, listening to my classmates throw up in the bathroom. (It wasn't from the water; it was from the alcohol.) And I felt so old then, so old.

I've been growing into my skin ever since. I went off to college and became financially independent. (Though my parents have bailed me out with airplane tickets home and a few generous checks now and then, which they have never held against me. Thank you, parents.) Did my own taxes. Started buying my own "art." (Cheap prints of Klimt I hung on my wall.) Taught a year of high school. Moved to Texas. Got an array of jobs. Traveled. Made Important Life Decisions (to move there, not to move there, to apply to school there, not to marry him, etc.). I bought two cars. I graduated from law school.

Now here I am, with a bedroom, a bathroom, a car, a job, a commute, a professional wardrobe, a secretary. I'm 28. No longer beta. A full adult.

But still sometimes I miss the bus. I have few well-running routines. My finances are moving forward but sometimes only by the skin of my teeth. I'm sure that at some point, I will be good at much of this. Or at least, it will feel more normal. I'll have savings. I'll actually use my dental insurance. I'll be more likely to remember to bring the garbage to the curb on Thursday nights than to forget. At some point?

And then I wonder, surely God meant more for adults than just this, a competency at routine. And I wonder, What is adulthood anyway?

Say.

Sometimes My Room Gets So Cold, I Have to Wear These

2008-12-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

I cut off the tips myself, newsie style.

Sometimes, a girl's got to type when all the world is cold.

* All the world = her basement bedroom.

I took the night off

2008-12-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

and ate popcorn with a spoon.

My roommate Wendy made mention the other day of this possibility: you make microwave popcorn and then you cover it with something. She suggested cinnamon and sugar. Then she said something about almond joy (melted chocolate, coconut, and almonds).

So tonight, I didn't go running, even though I'm nearing the end of the Year of 100 Runs.* (And even though I changed from my work clothes into my running clothes, to make it more than a de minimis chance that I'd actually head out.) (No go.) And I didn't do any work. (Nothing billable, at least.) I didn't even leave the house once I got in (except a trip to el garbage can).

INSTEAD I made myself some pop-o-corn, covered it with melty chocolate chips and hot and crunchy peanut butter, and then ate it. With a spoon.

Spoon-licking good.

* The Year of 100 Runs has been my goal for 2008. I have to run 100 times between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008. Each run has to be at least 20 minutes long, and if I want to count two in a day, then each of those runs has to be 30 minutes long. We're at Dec. 17, and though I'm behind (I pretty much have to run every non-Sabbath day between now and New Year's), I've never had to do a two-a-day. Which I've just decided is success, too.

Hey. Read a poem that's almost exactly like this blog post by Elizabeth Alexander, the poet who will be reading at President Obama's inauguration: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16188. Turns out, she's good.

Introducing...

2008-12-08T04:21:00.001-08:00

This is a new blog I'm co-writing. Check it out. And tell everyone you know. We're going from beta (now) to HUGE (later?).

Also, the other writers are awesome.

The First Birthday Cake of the Week (!!!)

2008-12-03T06:37:00.001-08:00

This was on the table when I came home last night. It was angled so it was facing the doorway, and me, as I walked in.

You should know these things:

1. The card says "Hoppy Birthday, Sarah!"

2. It's my birthday on Saturday.

3. That is a little trail of chocolate chips behind the bunny. Turns out yes, my roommate's mind works that way. (I ate them anyway.)

4. We ate that bad boy last night. (As Erika said, "It's good that Jeanette made this on a Tuesday. Then we can celebrate again on Saturday!" Very, very true.)

5. It was a red velvet cake, so when we cut into it--it bled. ! (In the great tradition of the Texas/Steel Magnolias armadillo groom's cakes.)

IT WAS SO AWESOME I couldn't handle it. Really, by far one of the best moments of my day. My week. My 28-year life.

To the birthday week that's just begun!

(And to Jeanette, a rockstar and a patriot.)

Sarah's Most Favorite Work Conversation Thus Far

2008-11-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

The following interchange takes place in the "Coffee Room" (that's what the plaque says) on 13W, Sarah's floor. The high-tech coffee machine/tea brewer/water heater has just finished dispensing hot water into a biodegradable/made-from-corn cup to give life to Sarah's packet of instant oatmeal (a pretty typical Sarah workaday snack).

Machine (via insistent blinking text on a small digital screen): CAUTION--YOUR DRINK IS HOT.

Sarah (out loud, to machine): Caution. Your mom is hot.

Then Sarah, stirring her oatmeal with a coffee stirrer, laughs all the way to her office. First door on the right after the hallway to the elevators.

This is not the exact version we have in our office, but close enough. If there's an "Enjoy Your Drink" that comes up for us, it certainly isn't on an angle. That would have caught my attention.

When we were younger, my brother dreamt of taking one room of the house and spray painting it gold.

2008-11-19T04:32:00.001-08:00

In the past two weeks, I have spray painted gold the following things:

a dozen IKEA picture frames
the rim of a $2 IKEA clock
the faceplate & screw of an electrical outlet
the interior walls & wire lattice work of the giant dark wood china cabinet I bought on Craigslist (before I decided it was a no go)
a light switch (though unsuccessfully--anyone know how to make spray paint stick on a light switch?)
various parts of my body.

Spray painting things gold is by far my newest favorite pasttime.

This is part of my efforts to make the space around me more beautiful. After two years at Melville (my own domestic heaven), I have learned the value of being around beautiful things. My new standard is this: I want to be around things beautiful enough they make me want to be a better person.

At first my current roommates didn't understand this, and then they laughed at it, and now they use it as a guide to understand how I'm feeling about the things in our housescape.

Roommate: Sarah, how do you like this toaster? Is it ugly?
Sarah: It's not too bad. It's okay.
Roommate: Hm. You mean, it's just not beautiful enough that you want to be a better person?
Sarah: Yeah. Well--yeah.

(I hope they're not worried that I'm sizing them up similarly. They needn't--once again, I have found myself living with really, truly beautiful roommates.) (Wait--that was sizing them up. Well, okay, I did it. But they came out victorious! Hooray for beautiful roommates!)

To this end--the house improvement end--my roommate Erika and I have done a variety of things: bought all new, beautiful dishes; painted the kitchen white and "starry sky"; bought a fat and high red couch and armchair for recently unfurnitured living room; bought a china cabinet on Craigslist, borrowed a truck to move it, negotiated it from the District to my house in Virginia, unloaded it almost (almost!) before it started to rain, moved it around a million times, spray painted gold on the inside and the lattice work (and my airways, no doubt), and then decided the china cabinet was a no go; bought another much better china cabinet online; and spent a Friday night shopping for and thinking strategically about what on earth to do about the 12 accent tiles in our kitchen back splash that are limpid and bleh prints of flowers in vases. No resolution. Yet.

The no-go cabinet.

I worry, of course, that this is a superficial way to use my money. That I should be devoting this money to paying off my law school loans/supporting African refugees/donating money to fast offerings/saving/traveling to see my family, etc. But Melville--it meant something. Its loveliness made us calmer. It made us glad to see each other. It helped us love the world more and treat it more tenderly and feel more satisfied from day to day, from red bowl of cereal to polka-dotted cup of hot chocolate. It's a remedy for the world's elite, I know. Who but a small fraction of earth has the luxury to buy $8 dessert plates? And who on earth actually has the gall to say it's because it will help them lead a better life?

But I believe in transforming my spaces, and I want to be better at doing it. There's value in this. There's got to be--it has made such a difference to my last two years. There's got to be a scriptural analog to this, more even than just a house of order.

Maybe (and I'm thinking aloud here), maybe this is part of what God was saying during the creation. Maybe not only "It is good," as in, it's a good idea, let's keep it, that will work, I am pleased. But maybe more, or too, "It is good--it makes life good." Creations so beautiful, they make life good.

God on Day Three: "Yup, those fish definitely make me want to be a better person. Let's keep 'em. Good work, team."

Good work, team.

Because This Was Too Long to Say in Church on Sunday, I'm Raising My Hand Right Now. Please Call on Me.

2008-11-12T20:41:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday in Relief Society, my ward was discussing some of Joseph Smith's letters to his wife Emma. The letters were written on his many trips away--to preach, to set up business, to establish the church, to rein in the church, to deal with the lawsuits and allegations and legal charges laid against him. Etc. This was one of the points of the lesson: Joseph Smith was away a LOT, but he loved his family.

One of the women in my Relief Society said something about how it's evident that Joseph Smith put his family first, that they were his first priority, and that that's clear to see from his letters. And though I think that probably this is fundamentally true--that probably he did love his family more than anything else on this earth and probably they were his first priority--I don't think that's clear from his letters (even ignoring the fact that we were reading excerpts), if for this reason alone: Joseph Smith was away from his family A LOT. And, some might say, often voluntarily.

I sat on my padded plastic chair and thought about this. My father was away a lot when I was growing up. I'd wager (metaphorically) that he's still away a lot. And this is due primarily to his church callings. He was called as bishop of my ward in early 1989. He was called as stake president of our stake in 1993. And when in 1998 we moved--to be closer to his work, I thought--we moved right into the part of the stake they were chopping off to become its own district, and Dad was called as district president. He was unsurprised. That was ten years ago almost exactly. It's been twenty years since Dad sat regularly on our bench with us at church. It's been twenty years since he's been home regularly on Sunday mornings and since he hasn't had to go out multiple times a week for church-related meetings. Most of my memories of my dad from during my high school years are of him standing in the kitchen at 11 pm, tie off and white shirt sleeves rolled up, eating something microwave-reheated off a plate, while I sit at the kitchen table, reeling off about my day and my many life decisions. "Right, right," I can hear him saying. He is holding his fork, looking at his plate, and swaying a little from side to side. Periodically, he picks up a white ceramic mug and drinks some water.

And so, this past Sunday, I asked myself this: How is it that I can tell that, even though my dad spent a lot of time away from us doing church stuff, we were his first priority? How is that I can reconcile my desire to call us his "first priority" when, in reality, he so often chose to be away from us, thereby de facto prioritizing something else? And, more generally (even trenchantly, perhaps), how do we, as a religion that preaches so loudly--so consistently and, these days, so publicly--the central importance of the family, reconcile our claims that we value family above all else, even as we ask these men, these women, these families to spend so much time necessarily apart? (Despite the church's many attempts to get us to streamline our church work and increase time spent with family, a fair amount of church service necessarily means time away. You can't really make a daddy-daughter date of bishop's interviews.)

And, in good interior monologuing fashion, I came up with an answer. While my Relief Society teacher was teaching away, I realized this: I know that we were my dad's first priority because I knew--I KNEW--that he would rather have been with us. I always knew that he would rather have been at home with us. I knew that not even in his heart of hearts was he kind of glad for the responsibility or the power or the self-importance or the whatever that could come from being such a figure in so many people's lives if he were a less humble and a less good man. He loved us the most. He enjoyed us the most. And if he hadn't been called to do that work, then he certainly would have gotten into his car and come home straight to us. And to a sitting dinner.

And I can only think that he was able to communicate that to us because it was really true. Families are smart. They can read between the lines and sense deep truths and pick up the small messages sent by the small acts made by the small parts of us. They can accrue.

So that's my answer. I think that the only way to make our families know that they are the most important thing to us (after our commitments to keep our covenants and serve God) is if they really are. If, in our heart of hearts, we really do love them most. And that, my friends, is the kind of purity only Heaven can help us to. Because, let's face it, if I had had a kid while I was still making sacrament meeting programs, there's a good chance that kid would feel, alas, a little bit nexted.

Please heaven, help me love my hypothetical children so much more than I love the Microsoft Word drawing toolbar and the looks on people's faces as they see what I've got for them this week that my kids never have cause to wonder if I spend so much time on the program because I secretly don't want to be with them. Please. Please. Amen.

A Week Late But Oh So Great

2008-11-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

I don't take nearly enough pictures. This is all I have of the Halloween night that highlighted last weekend's adventures in which I had three sets of guests in town simultaneously: Becky R. and a BYU MPA contingent, Reija and Jeff from the Rochester parts, and a few key appearances by Mikey J., my former compatriot in SLS/LDS '08 crime (he was the only other single LDS kid in my class). They all came to Virginia and hung out with me and, on Halloween night, they made my vision come true: there we were, at 11 pm, roasting marshmallows Reija and I had decorated with colored sugar* over a fire Rebecca built in the fire pit we have stashed in our backyard, listening to Mike tell his stories and entertain us all. And then we played hide-and-go-seek in my house (with the lights off). I lost.

The long and short of it is: I'm almost 28 ("practically 30," as Michelle was wont to say), and I just had the best Halloween of my life.

It was a long time coming.

(Thanks, team. Would you consider: Halloween '09?)

*In the picture, Reija's holding the marshmallow version I made of her--red hair, blue eyes, purple shirt, surprised smile, and all.

My Sister Anika: An Overly Long, Long Overdue Introduction

2008-10-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

I've been in a long-term relationship since the day I was born. Anika (ANN-ih-kuh) and I are the third and fourth children in a family of nine kids. We follow two boys; we precede three boys; ergo, de facto, we were a pair. By necessity, we lived that way. We split a bunk bed until I was three, shared a pull-out couch until I was seven, and had matching white-metal daybeds until we moved--from the upstairs to the basement--when we took over Nate and Dan's room and lived out our high school years in their low wooden box beds. When I was fifteen, Anika graduated and headed off to BYU, and I became the first in my family to get my own room. I kept two beds.

I followed Snika (that's a nickname; it's pronounced Sneeka) two years later, living first in what had been her freshman dorm (a coincidence) and then in what had been her sophomore-year apartment complex (not a coincidence). I liked the idea of doing what she had done. This wasn't new. Growing up, we were riffs on a theme. She was wide-cheeked and blonde, I was wide-cheeked and brown. She played the violin, I played the cello. She was student body president, I was student body president. She was elected homecoming queen, I was nominated once. By one person. I think.

Despite that, I have to say this: Anika is one of the best people you'll ever know. If you met her, you would quickly agree. No illustrating necessary. But I do want to say this: though I've heard her described as an angel, as a "hummingbird with dignity," and as "the kind of woman we all want to be," she and I used to kick each other when we were angry with each other. Among other ways we disagreed. Once she had a little dish of plastic raspberries, shiny and pink and luscious in their fakeness. I wanted to touch them, to eat them, to make them mine. And when she left the room this once, I think she could see it in my eyes, and she said, "Don't take any of my raspberries! I've counted them, and I know how many I have!" I liked to read in bed at night, long after she wanted to go to bed, and I would say, "Just until the end of the chapter," and she--being generous and sympathetic--would agree. But I started at some point tracing my finger along the lines on the page; I thought it made me read faster and engage better with the text. (I liked to have theories even back then.) This didn't help because Anika would watch me, it turned out, and knew then when I had started a new chapter. "Hey!" she would say, and then yawn, "you started a new chapter..." and she would try to wait impatiently for me to shut my book and turn off my light, but usually she would just fall asleep before I gave in. By the time we were in high school, she consistently fell asleep with the light off, and almost always with her bed covered in textbooks and homework and clean, unfolded clothes. I would laugh and turn off her light and push her leg back onto the bed and hang my clothes on my chair, so they would be ready for me the next morning. I loved that Anika didn't go to bed; she gave up and fell asleep.

I have to confess: this is all old data. Anika and I haven't lived together, really, since 1997, though we've had a few stints here and there over the summers. The summer she brought home Rachel, a roommate, and we repainted the house. The summer she came home engaged, waiting out the summer by making practice wedding cakes with rich fondant frosting while her fiance finished out his study abroad term and made long-distance calls to her from the Jerusalem center. I haven't lived with her since before she was married, and she was married when I was 19.

But she still looks at me when she comes to holes in her stories, like maybe I'll know what she wants to say, like maybe I was there with her when the event happened and maybe I'll fill in the blank and rescue her from momentary forgetfulness. But the truth is, I rarely know her stories in advance, these days. She got married, moved, had a baby, moved, had another baby, moved again, got a washer and dryer, had another baby, bought a house, moved, started taking community ceramics classes where she's the resident Mormon and LDS living expert, and, just newly, started teaching early morning seminary. She wakes up at who knows when and bakes food (sometime this year it will be brownies, I guarantee it) and teaches teenagers religion around her dining room table while the sun rises and the other houses on her street come awake. And then she tends to her always widening galaxy of husband and kids and neighbors and friends and church members. And then she falls asleep and then wakes up and does it again.

That is not my life. Mine is a life of security passes and secretaries and elevators and case law. I have roommates, whom I love, and friends, who make me laugh, and usually some chocolate chips somewhere around me to eat when I want chocolate. What I'm saying is--my life is a good life. I'm grateful for it. But when at work people say--as they often do--"Oh, don't worry, you'll find a practice group you like"--I want to say to them, "Like? LIKE? If I wanted just to have a job I liked, I'd move to my sister's and be her roommate again and help raise her kids." It's a life that sounds great to me, though, like Elizabeth Bennett, I'm pretty sure I would teach them to play "very ill." But it's an outmoded model, one I'm pretty sure has gone the way of the hoop skirt, though, like civil war reenactors, I sometimes desperately wish it could come back into society's (and God's) good graces. Oh, Anika. I recognize I idealize your life. But it's such a nice, beckoning ideal.

And so I'm left with this, my only real question about beginning again to share a cohabitating life with the sister I almost continuously companioned for my first fifteen years: Were I to move in with Snika again, how will her husband feel about having to share her daybed?

Ms. Sarah Goes to Washington

2008-10-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

I took this picture with my very own camera phone just last night.

Last year, my grandparents sent me a card. "We are so proud of you," they said, "for becoming a lawyer in our nation's capital."

In our nation's capital. I felt like a small town hero.

But being in DC does make me feel a little like a small town hero. I recently watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington again, the Jimmy Stewart movie about a young idealistic senator's first time in the capital. Mr. Smith (Jimmy Stewart) becomes embroiled in corruption, unwittingly of course, and when he goes to tell the truth about his "distinguished" fellow senator, he becomes the subject of attacks from all of the powers of politics--the other senators, his state's political machine, big media. But he stands strong, literally, as he filibusters for twenty-three hours, while waiting for his state to send their support for him to Congress. (Technological advancement would clearly change this in a remake.) But the truth is stymied and the only word that comes from his state is anti, anti, anti, but he doesn't buckle. He stands for truth and righteousness, as he knows it, but then he collapses beneath the weight of his own exhaustion. And the movie only resolves and the girl gets the guy when the senior senator at the center of the corruption caves and comes clean. I just gave the movie away. But it's still good.

The point of this, I guess, is to say that my patriotic DC-self is awakening. The metro stop after mine is Arlington Cemetery. If I take a wrong turn leaving the office, I end up at the White House. Last night after work, I met Elizabeth at the Jefferson Memorial. The sun was setting, the high schoolers were touring, and the lights of Virginia shone in the Potomac. And then Elizabeth and I got scammed by a woman asking for money for a taxi ride.

I am not dissuaded. Tomorrow, I will wake up, and I will go to work, and I will be a lawyer in our nation's capital. I will stand for truth and righteousness. I will search Westlaw like a colonial revolutionary. I will bluebook like a citizen and a patriot. And when I turn over in my bed tomorrow night, George and Martha will turn with me, nuzzle into my pillow, and whistle "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" softly in my ear, as I fall asleep under a giant, down-filled flag.

Dutch Bike Dutch, For the Uninitiated

2008-10-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

Dutch.

Bike.

Dutch.

Peanut butter.

Dutch Bike Dutch (n.) is a homespun event planned by Jeanette and a few of her compatriots. This weekend it consisted of (1) one night's hotel stay followed by (2) bike rides of various lengths (15, 30, or 60 miles, give or take, depending on one's ability to get lost) and (3) free peanut butter. It was sponsored this year by Crazy Richard's Peanut Butter (http://www.crazyrichards.com/), the peanuts-only peanut butter brand owned by my roommate Stephanie's parents. Did I mention that before? She's a peanut butter heiress. (It's pretty awesome stuff, actually. Its only ingredient is peanuts. No joke. Totally worth buying online or in your local grocery store.)

This time was the seventh time (they go twice a year--once in Fall, once in Spring), and it was the happeningest Dutch Bike Dutch ever. More than 70 young/not-so-young single adults from DC, NY, and Philly converged upon the Quality Inn in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (to the other hotel residents' chagrin), for late-night chatting, mid-morning tire-pumping, and early afternoon peanut butter eating.

And my great friend and former roommate, Elizabeth J., is visiting me from Austin this weekend, so she joined the crew, too. (See her and me and some locals by a covered bridge below.*) Despite my perpetual nose-blowing and deep-throat coughing (see previous post), it was awesome.

Yes, for those of you wondering, I did the hilly 15-miler ride mostly on my Raleigh cruiser, much like this one.

I also rode a few miles on a friend's small road bike, which he kindly offered for a respite. On it, I did go faster, but I was essentially pedaling in fetal position. We switched back before the end. He looked disappointed.

Today, my rear end and I are sore. But happy.

* All pictures courtesy of Elizabeth J.

Okay, one story: My favorite single moment came at a stop sign. A group of us bikers were lined up behind a horse-drawn buggy, which was trying to turn left onto a busy street. A little boy was looking out through the back window of the buggy. He was wearing black and had little blond bangs hanging from beneath a little black hat. He was staring out the back window at us, specifically, it seemed, at Paul, my roommate's boyfriend, who was taking this small, downtime moment to check something on his iPhone. Paul on an iPhone, the little boy in a horse-drawn buggy, and me without a camera. America, circa 2008. Heaven love us.

Home sick.

2008-10-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today I stayed home sick. To convalesce.

I believe in the word "convalescing." It sounds healing and purposeful. It adds meaning and focus to the general sort of lazing about and alternating sleep/movie schedule that usually fills up a sick day. Before I started to use the word "convalesce," I felt guilty skipping obligations or activities just to nap or watch TV, sick though I may be. I felt like staying home to be sick was a sign of weakness. I'm my parents' daughter; I should just buck up. And carry tissues.

But now that I "convalesce," I don't feel guilty at all. Theory: Watching a movie when I'm "convalescing" is restorative, whereas watching a movie because I can't or don't want to get up is just plain lazy.

And who can say no to a convalescer? No, don't convalesce. No one can say that.

I will acknowledge that convalescing might, at least in part, be a psychosomatic thing. If I tell my body I'm convalescing, then when I'm sitting at home eating nachos with my roommates in lieu of going to the swimming pool with Jeanette or to the gym with Erika, what I'm subconsciously doing is telling my immune system to do its work. Go right ahead, body. Heal. I will not distract you with exertion.

"Oh, sorry, I can't exercise right now. I'm convalescing."

Try it. It's great.

Surprise! or How I Found Myself Floating in Cayuga Lake (Ithaca, NY), Fully Dressed and Surrounded by Empty and Bobbing Beer Bottles

2008-10-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

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You should know this: Jane (a friend from Stanford) and I decided to surprise Reija (my newly former roommate) by coming to Rochester for the weekend. We were close-lipped and stealth, and when she came home Friday afternoon from school, we were waiting in her house. "Aghhhhh!" she yelled and hugged us and smiled. "You're here!" We were. And it was a delight.

Saturday, we decided to go canoeing. We didn't know where we could rent canoes near a body of water, so Reija texted a friend. "Go to Ithaca," he said. "There all your dreams will come true."

We went to Ithaca. It was a beautiful drive. I fought the irrational coveting of every person we saw, every house we passed. I mean, I wanted (wanted) to be me, sitting there between Jane and Reija in the cab of Reija's trusty truck, speeding along the highway from Rochester to the land of dreams. Jane studying civ pro, Reija talking medicine, me trying not to quote Mary Tyler Moore at every turn. I wanted to be me there, with them. But I also wanted to live the lives we sped by on the way--to be the one to live in that trailer, hanging laundry in that yard, run past by that messy-haired boy bee-lining barefoot into that cornfield; to be the preacher or the secretary or the custodian of that white-steepled church, changing the text on the roadside sign from week to week: "MOVIE NIGHT: SPEED RACER / THURS 6:45"; to be the women selling honey, pumpkins, and hardy mums from roadside stands; the research paleontologist or the intern, holed up in the upper rooms of the Victorian-era wing of the Museum of the Planet; the mom ushering her young kids into the steel-and-glass hall of the Museum of the Planet, to look at the dinosaur skeletons and stare and stare and stare.

And I wanted to be the people, out on Cayuga Lake, boating, kayaking, canoeing in a blue bow of water ringed by trees of red and green and yellow and brown.

And then I was.

We rented a canoe at Puddledockers on the canal portion of Cayuga Lake and decided to paddle out to the lighthouse at the mouth of the lake. "Do you have any advice for us?" I asked the 20ish-year-old Puddledocker employee who saw us off the dock. "Well," he said. "Have fun. And jump in. It's a great day for swimming." We all three just kind of looked at him. We were sweatshirts and t-shirts and sneakers and jeans. "We're not really dressed for that," I said, thinking of the Moosewood Restaurant, where we were looking forward to dinnering after our afternoon on the water. We strapped on our lifejackets and stepped confidently into the canoe. We were off.

Along the way, we stopped at a park bench alongside the river, at the edge of a golf course. We sat and talked and watched the water, the trees, the river lapping up against the edge of our canoe, which Jane had tethered to a root on the river bank. When we decided to go, Jane picked up some beer bottles. Three beer bottles. "I want to take these back," she said, "to throw them in the garbage." "We could throw them on the greens in the golf course," I said, not wanting to have the beer bottles rattling around my ankles. "They'd find them there." Jane held the bottles and said again, "I want to take them with us." "Okay," I said. "Okay," we said. And we got back in our canoe.

At the mouth of the lake, we decided to canoe out a little bit, to do a loop around a tall red buoy. We'd sat there for a while, watching the motor boats drive by, feeling the wind, being jostled by the water which had gotten a little choppy out on the open water. But it was getting time to turn back, so we made to head back up the canal, when we were rocked by a wave. Jane was singing children's songs in French. We were rocked again. I was sitting in the middle of the canoe and tried shifting to my right, hoping to stabilize the canoe. No luck. We were rocked again--and apparently I made a noise--and we were in the water.

Then we were treading water and grabbing bags and trying not to lose the paddles and I was trying not to kick off the flip-flops I'd borrowed from Reija's roommate and we tried to reflip the canoe, but it was full of water and was floating underwater, and I was afraid we were going to lose it at the bottom of the lake, so we flipped it again and weren't quite sure what to do. We were too far from shore to pull the boat in and the water was too deep for us to have something to stand on. But a boat pulled up--and then a second--and then a third--and we were saved. Jane was laughing so hard. "This is so funny!" she said. "This is SO FUNNY!" she said again.

"They need their canoe righted!" one boatman said to another. I was relieved. "But I'm afraid they've lost their beer forever!" And that's when I noticed our little circus of canoe and paddles and bags and flip-flops and girls was surrounded by a distinctive triumvirate of bobbing beer bottles. Three beer bottles. Three girls. And Jane was laughing so hard. "Wait!" I said, treading water and holding onto the canoe. "We don't drink! We were just trying to take them to a garbage can!" Boatman #1 smiled broadly and raised his hands, palms forward, gesturing in a "I'm not making judgments of you three at all!" sort of way. "Can we do anything?" said a woman in boat #3. "Yes!" said boatman #1. "You can grab the beer bottles!" And as we were pulled on board boat #2 and handed towels and asked to sit back as they tied our righted canoe to their rope line, I looked behind us and saw woman in boat #3, reaching far out into the water, trying to grab an elusive bottle. Her kids were watching dumbly on. I can only imagine the lessons she was teaching. "See, kids? This is why we don't drink and boat."

Back at Puddledockers, the employees there were surprised to see us all wet. "Things haven't been going well for you today!" one guy said, after we told him we'd lost Reija's camera because I didn't know, apparently, how to close the waterproof bag they'd loaned us and probably after remembering that we had called three times for directions because we had made an unnecessary 45-minute loop on our way to the store. "Actually," one of us said. "It's being a great day!"

A great day. A great weekend. It totally was.

(Note: After we left Puddledockers, we headed to Wal-Mart and a dollar store to buy new clean outfits, from the skin out, which is why we showed up at the Moosewood--an awesome, awesome vegetarian restaurant--fully clad in identical but variously colored track suits and hungry hungry and cold. We ate so much good food, including vegan chocolate cake, and drove home fat and dry and happy. Who could have wanted it to turn out in any other way?)

An Irony of Modernity

2008-10-10T05:31:00.000-07:00

There I was, with my fourth genius bar reservation in one week, holding my iPod thinking, "Please don't work, please don't work, pleasedon'twork."

It didn't.

I'm pleased to say they're giving me a new one.

Personal Progress

2008-10-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

Progress is

billing five hours of direct client services in one day (which, Monday and Tuesday, I tried--and failed--to do; next week, I'm shooting for six)
running before work and swimming after dinner, on the same day
getting my iPod to recharge
socializing mid-week with ward members
buying kale
making my bed with my own sheets (finally found amidst my many packing boxes), my new TJ Maxx faux-down comforter, and my just-delivered-from-Amazon silk and gold duvet cover
returning Baby Mama on time
and going to bed (let's hope, let's hope) before midnight.

That's change I can believe in.

Personal progress. What's it to you?

Look Before You Lend

2008-10-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

One day in the nineties, my dad and I were standing in the kitchen area of the South Shore Ward building in Patchogue-Medford, NY. Someone was telling my dad who in the ward had volunteered to bring treats to a then-upcoming youth activity. He/she was saying that one family in our ward--a family with a lot of teenage boys--said they probably wouldn't bring anything. But whoever the speaker was said that probably, this family would end up bringing something anyway. They usually did.

My dad looked sort of disapproving. I said, "Dad, isn't it better that they say they won't bring something and then do, than say that they will bring something and then don't?" I said it kind of flippantly, sure that my dad would agree and appreciate my quick, logical turn-of-phrase. My dad, my kind and generous-hearted and gentle father, looked me in the eyes and said: "It would be better if they said they were going to bring something and then did."

Today I promised three things that I later learned I didn't have:

a crockpot (to make barbecue beef for a small post-conference dinner this evening; my friend Peter came over at 8 this morning to get it going; alas, we had no crockpot; alas, we had to call a friend whose engagement has already elicited a crockpot; yes, we did slow cook chuck eye beef in it today, using it even before the happy couple did)
baking powder (to make corn bread for our dinner; fortunately, Peter had some; unfortunately, he had to drive home to get it, missing the first few minutes of the afternoon session of conference)
What's Up, Doc? (Peter and Jeanette and I wanted to watch it this evening after dinner; I said I owned it; I thought I did; I can visualize it even, even on my shelves; I could not find it in my hastily unpacked moving boxes, at least the ones that looked like they were producing movies; Peter went home, thrice disappointed, and Erika, Jeanette, and I ended up watching some of Baby Mama again; which, to be honest, is a surprisingly funny and subtle movie).

Saying I'm going to come through for people makes me feel great. Not coming through for people makes me feel bad. This is, of course, an eternal truth.

"We are already a covenant-making people. We need to be a covenant-keeping people."
- Camille Fronk Olson

May I work harder and with more humility to come through on those eternal covenants I have already made. May I be a better friend, promising and delivering the things that will help others' lives to go meaningfully and well. And may I please find What's Up, Doc? in my stuff somewhere. It's such a funny movie.

Amen.

Three for Three

2008-10-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

Note: This is not my actual cheeseless pizza. It is a dramatization.

Tuesday

Stephanie had asked me if I wanted to go to institute with her. Feeling like I don't leave my house enough and that I should try to be a part of the larger DC singles culture--and, as happens periodically, feeling guilty about my eh-institute attitude--I said yes. Later, I asked Jeanette if she wanted to come. The plan: Leave for institute at 7:20. It starts at 7:30. It's 15-20 minutes away. I didn't say anything.

I got home from work at 6:30, with just enough time to make the cheeseless pizza I'd been talking about since the night before. (Cheeseless pizza = crust + sauce + toppings.) Erika wasn't a believer. "Prove me wrong, Sarah," she said. "I hope I'm wrong." But, of course, I didn't start the pizza until 6:55 (I found Erika on her bed, where Stephanie found the two of us; there was talking). As I sauteed up some old garlic (found on the butter shelf in the fridge), onions, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, the girls gathered. I baked the crust (pre-made) with some olive oil above it and olive oil beneath, then I added the toppings, and slipped it back in. By the time the pizza came out of the oven, all four of my roommates had gathered in the kitchen, waiting to eat, waiting to leave. "We never do this!" Stephanie said. "We're never all home at the same time."

I rolled the pizza cutter across the pizza, four times, five girls. And Erika took a bite. She shook her head. "I'm a believer," she said. "It doesn't need the cheese. I was wrong."

Then it was 8, and Stephanie's friend pulled up outside to take us to institute (a part of the plan I hadn't seen coming). We went outside, and there were two in the car already. But we piled four in the back anyway--Wendy, Steph, Jeanette, and me--and headed off into the crazy rain. We got stopped in bad traffic one exit out, made room for the police cars, pulled off the highway, and headed home. Then Jeanette and I watched a movie. It was awesome.

Wednesday

We went swimming. Jeanette has started swimming, and I want to be like her, so I wanted to go too. I invited Kim G., a new friend from my ward (and the daughter of my former Plainview New York Stake stake president). Steph sent me an email titled: "gah swimming!"; she wanted to come, too. So Wednesday night, we gathered in the kitchen with swimsuit and towels and $4 each. Jeanette with goggles; the rest of us with goggle envy. And we took off to the pool. It's a high school pool, turned county pool at night, and the room is steamy, the lanes are narrow, and the parents watching their kids' swim practices look as bored as I remember.

But we swam--though we're not all confident swimmers--and we came home again, through the rain, wet and cold and ready for dinner.

I made linguine with clam sauce and broccoli. Jeanette set the table. Kim did a crossword puzzle and filled the water glasses. Wendy made corn on the cob. Steph provided sliced cucumbers and grape tomatoes. We had grapes. "You're eating dinner as roommates?" Kim asked. "We never do this," Wendy said. We sat around the kitchen table and ate until we couldn't. Then Wendy made milkshakes, and we watched a movie. That was Wednesday.

Thursday

When Erika and I got back from the gym on Thursday night, the debate had already started. I had backseat debated for the first ten minutes as we tried to follow it at the gym, trying to read the closed captioning as we ran. "She's not answering the question!" I yelled. Erika would look over and smile. "No, don't say it!" I said. Erika would look over, smile. "I can't believe he just said that!" I said. The man on the treadmill next to me got up to leave.

We walked into the house, sweaty and cold but feeling good, and we found the girls in the livingroom. Wendy was eating ice cream. Stephanie was eating double-stuffed Oreos. Jeanette was eating dinner. "What are you eating?" I asked. "What's on the stove," she said. I got some, too. Then Erika and I sat down, and we watched Palin and Biden smile and wink. "I don't like women winkers," Erika said. "Oh really?" I said. "My sister's a winker. I do." Half of us would talk and the other half would watch the TV. Then we'd all be quiet and listen to the thing. Then two of us would talk, and the other three would watch TV.

When my plate was empty, Jeanette stood up to get me more. I sat in our fat taupe recliner, sweaty and tired, and she handed me my plate, full of noodles and tofu and something else. I looked down at the plate and up at the room, full of women I am coming to love. I was glad to have all this. I was hungry for more.

Sarah and Men: A Story in Two Parts (with Glossary)

2008-09-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

Part I.

At one point last year, Reija turned to me and said, "Sarah, I've been trying to picture all of the men that I know you think are attractive to see if I can find what they have in common."

"Oh?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "And the only thing I've come up with is that none of them have great hair."

Note: My apologies to those of you male readers who might think I find you attractive.

Part II.

This last Sunday was my second Sunday in my new ward. Because I've been busy with my move-in-to-do list--namely, painting my room and setting up my bed so I can stop croaching on Jeanette and Erika and the couch, and sleep in my own bed, which I finally did last night (wahoo!)--I haven't been thinking much about the fact that a new city will also mean new boys to meet. And date. If all goes well. But the thought started coming to me this Sunday as we were walking into church, so as the services started, I looked around to check out the situation. A quick survey of the men in my ward and the thought, These boys look nice, but there aren't any yet that I feel like really could be, you know, for me. At first look. I figured I'd have to wait to get to know people or know more people or let life unfold or whatever, but that's what I was thinking. Until the second speaker.

He stood up. He started telling his leaving-Provo-and-coming-to-DC story in this way that was funny and charming and tender. He spoke heartfully of his testimony of repentance and of the Savior. He was bald. And I thought, "Oh good, there's at least one guy in this ward who looks like he could be my style."

He was the high council speaker.

The end.

Note: To my credit, he was youngish (in his early thirties? nothing the Stanford Second Ward hasn't seen), and he isn't married. He wasn't wearing a ring, he didn't mention a spouse or children, and then we checked him out on the stake website afterwards. No woman with the same last name at his address. In fact, he lives near me in a townhouse with some single guys. But still. STILL. Still.

But who's surprised?

A Glossary for the Mormoncentric Terms Used Above:

Ward: An LDS church congregation.
Stanford Second Ward: One congregation of young single adults between the ages of 26 and (heh hem) 35 (or older) in northern California. I was a member of this ward for about a year and a half.
High Council: A group of men selected from a number of wards in a given geographic area (we call it a "stake"), who are chosen for their spiritual maturity (ish). They are typically middle-aged or older. And are almost always married; though, it turns out, they don't have to be.
High Council Speaker: One Sunday a month, each ward in a stake is visited by a high councilman from (often one from another ward in that same stake) who gives one of the talks during services. High councilmen, being middle-aged or older, are known for being long-winded and dry. Not the kind of speakers that usually prompt crushes by girls in the visited congregations.
Reija: Pronounced RAY-uh. A newly former roommate of mine, with whom I lived for two years at Melville, an Edenic sort of mansion-cottage in the un-self-sustainably affluent and idyllic town of Palo Alto. She is seerlike and observant. Like an eagle prophet.

I just saw Charlotte Gray with Billy Crudup and thought he was ridiculously good-looking. And he has great hair. Ish. Right?

(He's the one on the right. The one who doesn't look like a high councilman.)

We do!

2008-09-28T20:25:00.001-07:00

I attended a wedding in Pennsylvania on Saturday afternoon. That's one of the glories of the East coast. State-trotting is like hop-skotch. It's child's play.

It was the wedding for a friend from law school, who was one of our most discontented law students during our first year. And maybe all the way through. But she ended up marrying the law association president, who was essentially the posterboy for law school and the law school life. As Karren would say, life unfolds.

But they were a beautiful couple--beautiful--and they were married on the front steps of her family's home. They had a Quaker ceremony, which meant that there was no officiator, just my friend's grandma reading them questions and waiting for them to reply, simultaneously, "We do." I don't remember the questions, exactly, but they were wedding-like and lovely.

Do you promise to love each other, cherish each other, value each other's independence and spirit, while working still to become one and one family?

We do.

Do you promise to be rich and poor and still in love?

We do.

Do you?

We do.

And then, at one point, the grandma asked us, the audience, a question:

Do you, friends and family, promise to welcome this new couple into your lives, to support them in their marriage and help them to become parts of your communities and become the strong and loving family that they desire to be?

And, from our white folding chairs under a large white lawn tent, the eighty of us had to/got to answer:

We do!

We do. Which of course made me wonder--do we? Will we? Do I? Can I? Will I? How?

I'm still thinking that through. But it was lovely. And it was followed (in an even larger white lawn tent) by barbecue chicken and pasta salad and cupcakes and the best veggie burgers I've ever had and drinking (but not for me), and I was back in Virginia before midnight.

Welcome to the East coast. We love marriage here. We do.

When the L Burns Out, Whose Gym Is It Then?

2008-09-25T20:17:00.001-07:00

At one point in college I thought I was earning $7.00/hour because I had been earning $6.50, and they gave me a ten-cent raise.

I was 19 years old.

It took me a few weeks to figure it out.

Tonight, I joined the Gold's Gym near our house. I went in, bought a yearly contract from a woman named Victoria Valeur (rad, RAD name) (but no, she was not wearing a velour suit), worked out, and walked home, all between 8 and 9 pm. As I told V.V., I needed to get home in time for the season premiere of The Office. She was sympathetic. And sufficiently speedy.

My point is this: As I was running at minute 19:30, I thought, "You have thirty seconds left until you can change the speed," and then I thought, "No! Don't get caught in that trap! You really have seventy!" And then I remembered college.

Oh, time. How it teases.

(I actually saw a Gold's Gym in Austin with the L burned out. It was glowing there in the dark, a floating, illuminating reminder that heaven cares about our corporeal existence. And wants us to take action.)

A Coffee Cake So Immense

2008-09-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

I saw a coffee cake today that was so big that it made me think of a poem KT recently posted on her blog. It is a poem about autumn. It begins with this line: "Lord: it is time. The summer was immense."

I quoted it to one of my co-workers, another new associate with whom I was going to lunch. She and three others and I found ourselves unusually without scheduled lunches (it's typical for new attorneys at my firm to lunch with more senior attorneys for most of the days during the first few weeks of work), so we headed to the Corner Bakery. We paid for ourselves. I'm not sure what she thought of my comparing summer to a coffee cake or quoting Rainer Maria Rilke at a casual Tuesday lunch, but it was a nice moment. A nice moment of collegiality and humanness and food we were buying ourselves (like real working adults) in the midst of two days of sitting, drinking free herbal tea, eating free fruit, and listening to people say, over and over again, in many and different ways, "Welcome to firm life." For example: "Here's a gift umbrella."

Tomorrow I start actually working with my assigned practice group, which works solely on pro bono cases (meaning, cases we do for free, for the good of thing). I'll spend three or four months with them, until I rotate into another group, another practice area, another kind of law with other co-workers. Maybe by then the mean blisters I got yesterday will have healed.

But my shoes. They were oh-so-pretty. Once the blisters die down, I do plan on wearing them again. Half-size too small and all. Patent leather stretches, yeah?

My next goal is to have a job where I don't spend the second day of work thinking mostly about my feet and whether or not anyone would notice if, underneath my computer-training console, I wore the flip-flops I'd smuggled in my bag.

Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

(Translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann, “The Essential Rilke” (Ecco))

Mary Tyler Moore

2008-09-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

I've started watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show on hulu.com. I'm about eight episodes in to season one, and already I'm charmed. Wikipedia calls it one of the best sitcoms of all time. I can see that. It's about Mary Richards, a girl who'd been putting her boyfriend through medical school, until she realized he was graduating but still wasn't going to marry her. So she took off for a new life--and got a new job as, she was boggled, an associate producer of a news show--in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her new day had dawned.

The opening credits are this lovely montage. Pictures of Mary Richards/Tyler Moore driving off in her car, alone, overlaid by images of her last days at work, the party that bid her goodbye, packing her things up. And she gets to Minneapolis and she wanders the streets in her fur-lined hooded overcoat and in the end, she's surrounded by the people of her new city, who walk by busily, and she revels in it all and throws her mod beret triumphantly into the sky. Mary Tyler Moore. You're going to make it after all.

I start work tomorrow. I'm a new girl in a new city, with a job title that sounds incomprehensibly adult to me. I'll go to work tomorrow, put on my new clothes (no beret), and hope that when I'm pushed on the metro and passed by others busily walking by I'll feel triumphant and not just infinitesmally alone.

Resolution #1: Be like Mary Tyler Moore. Make it after all.

How will you make it on your own?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem
worthwhile?
Well it’s you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it
Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don’t you take it
You’re gonna make it after all
How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you’re all alone
But it’s time you started living
It’s time you let someone else do some giving
Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don’t you take it
You might just make it after all.

For the Halibut

2008-09-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

If I were to say that I had just come back from Alaska, you might ask something well-meaning like this: What was your favorite part? (As did both my parents and possibly one or more of my younger siblings.)

Alas, it's a question that stumps me. But I'm trying not to run from challenge, so, as a stop-gap measure, I will nominate three.

Three Possible Favorite Parts of My Trip to Alaska

the (almost) sheer beauty of the place
Whittier, AK
Christy Y., a long-lost friend I met up with, who was spending her summer driving tour buses around Alaska.

The Beauty
It was rainy and gray about half the time I was in Alaska. The clouds were serious, sometimes masking entire mountain ranges (if I had a dollar for every time someone said, "If the clouds weren't out, right there would be Mt. McKinley!", I'd be well on my way to being able to afford some Sarah Palin glasses), but still, still--the hills were green and the rivers were white and I saw the northern lights. Just one night, in Fairbanks. We had to walk out of the light of our hotel parking lot and stand in the shadows of behind a hulking building. But there they were in the sky. A faint green swath through the low sky, undulating on the south end like a slow, frayed ribbon. And the sun came out for my final few days there. Half the trees were yellow, and valleys opened up on both sides of us as we deadheaded (drove) the coach bus home from Fairbanks. I wanted to build a house on the side of the highway and never never leave.

If I half-closed my eyes and ignored the industrial lots, the functional and unpretty buildings, and all the machinery, it was a seriously beautiful place.

Whittier
Alaska's state motto is "North to the Future."

During the forties, the Japanese claimed two small islands off the coast of Alaska, and, according to my reliable tour bus driver friend Christy, the American government freaked out. From Alaska, Seattle is only a hop away. (It is three hours from Seattle to Anchorage on a commercial plane today.) So the U.S. government looked to strengthen their Alaskan presence. One place they chose was Whittier because, apparently, Whittier is almost always covered by clouds, making it virtually impossible to see by air. The only way into Whittier (besides navigating through the waterways) was by railroad, twelve miles through a mountain. In Whittier, the government built one giant building, in which everyone did everything. This one building housed all the housing, the doctor's, the grocery store, a church, a movie theatre, everything, apparently. Everyone spent almost every day inside of it, because, it being Alaska, the weather was usually bad.

Today, the one main building still stands, but it is hollowed out, moldy, defunct, and vandalized. Now people live in two buildings: a row of apartments one street away from the water and one high-rise backed up against the base of a mountain. Cars can drive through the railroad tunnel into Whittier, but the tunnel's only wide enough for one car at a time. So the tunnel alternates. In to Whittier, from 4:30 pm to 4:45 pm. Out from Whittier, from 5:00 pm to 5:15 pm. In to Whittier, from 5:30 to 5:45. You see.

Christy and I decided to drive to Whittier on our last day. We hung out at a glacier visitors center until it was 4:22, then we drove to the tunnel. We paid our $12, waited for the green light, and in to Whittier we went. 25 mph, 12 miles, through a small, dark tunnel. And when we emerged, we were in Whittier, which, no one told us, was absolutely beautiful. The small town of Whittier is ringed by high green mountains, with waterfall cascades and blue and brown glaciers. It was covered by clouds today (as usual), but with no rain. A white cap of clouds, a blue water inlet, and a ring of green mountains and glaciers and waterfalls. We got lost trying to get to the old and the new main buildings (who knew there would/could be a dead end in Whittier?), but saw the whole thing (including the excessively creepy old building) in time to make it out during the next out-from-Whittier tunnel window.

(I didn't take this picture of Whittier. Like most publicly available pictures of Alaska, this one is unrepresentatively sunny. But you can see the beauty of it--and the buildings. The old creepy moldy one is the big white one on the left. The new apartment/multipurpose building is the high-rise on the right. Yes, it does have a waterfall right behind it. So awesome.)

If anyone had spent any money making the buildings in Whittier be charming and not just present, it would be a hideaway destination of our dreams. Oh, the forties. If only they hadn't been distracted by fighting that war.

Christy Lu
I met Christy in the year 2000, during my first (and only) summer home from college. She had been roommates with two of my first-cousins in Cedar City during 1999-2000. When a neighbor in New York wanted a summer nanny, we thought of my cousin Becky, who didn't want the job. But she thought of her roommate Christy, who did want the job. So Christy came to Long Island and nannied, and I came home to Long Island and worked as the drivers' ed department secretary, and when we both weren't at work, we were together. It was a great summer. But we lost touch after one or two post-summer emails, until August, when I emailed her and asked her if I could come stay with her for a week in Alaska. You know how I am.

I found Christy again because I'd run into my cousin at a family reunion. I told her how I was thinking about Alaska (state #46!), and she told me how she'd just seen Christy and how Christy was in Alaska this summer, driving a bus. I was on that bandwagon fast.

So Christy's company let me come along with her for her final tour of the year. I got to watch her charm her passengers, joke with them, delight them. "You had the halibut?" she asked one passenger, after we'd had dinner on a train. "Oh, yes," said the middle-aged, white female passenger. Christy smiled, all dimples and cheeks and little white teeth. "Now you can say you came to Alaska for the halibut."

I got to watch her maneuver the 45-foot coach, checking her mirrors, turning the steering wheel slowly, backing up straight into a 10-foot wide space with her eight-foot wide bus.

And I got to hear her thoughts, watch her movies, share her food, and remember how good it is to be with good women, who are confident in God and positive about life and willing to watch four hours of Jane Eyre before bedtime. What a good time. What a blessing. What a mercy.

Now, South to the Future
Christy is trying to decide what next to do with her life and with her talents and schooling. She knows she will tour Europe this fall and then visit many of her nine siblings. She might even come and stay with me for a month or so. But what then? She's not sure. Talking with her about what is next for her made me think about what is next for me. I'm done with college. I'm done with grad school, with law school, and with any sort of student living, probably. I'm done for now, for the time being, with California. And though my heart remains loyal, I've already moved out of Melville. I am, as I write, on a coach bus to DC, where a key waits for me under a flower pot, where my car waits for me in a driveway, and where I will wait for my new roommates to come home.

I loved Alaska, and I am glad that I went. And I am now especially glad to come home to a future I've been waiting for.

"You've Got to See It Before It Melts," Said Mrs. Klein. (Mrs. Klein Is My Parents' Next-Door Neighbor.)

2008-09-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I go to Alaska.

!

I have a goal to go to all fifty states before I'm thirty. Alaska will be state #46 (following which I'll have two years to hit four states before my birthday in December 2010: North Dakota, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky).

I'll be honest: I actually never thought I'd go to Alaska in my lifetime. Turns out, all you need to travel are time and money. I guess I grew up thinking that there would be more barriers to exotic locales than those. Checkpoints, papers, purposes, questionnaires, savvy, know-how.* A minimum threshold of glamor or good will, at least.

Nope. Alaska. If Sarah O. can do it, you can too.

I'll be back in a week, and I will tell you how it goes. And if I get a glimpse of the Palin brood.

Oh man. I'm so excited.

Woop woop!

P.S. If you have some extra time and are wanting some more media to consume, I'd like to recommend the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I've been watching it on hulu.com. I started with season one, episode one (to do it right), and I've got to say--the show deserved its fame. It's still charming. And she's still beautiful, fake eyelashes and all.

*Okay, I guess technically when traveling abroad there are checkpoints and papers. But I'm a low-hassle kind of girl, I'm realizing. Which deserves its own post. For now, I want to say this: checkpoints and papers are much less hassle than I expected. Maybe because, in my experience thus far, both checkpoints and papers were, at core, just issues of money and time. And, as a new law school graduate, I've got the latter and no meaningful way of appropriately valuing the former. I'm good to go.

Mix Tape?

2008-09-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

Or mixed tape?

I'll take comments.

A Short Story (with Plot Points) About My Sister (and a Friend) on Her (Their) Birthday(s)

2008-09-09T08:50:00.001-07:00

Today is Beka's thirteenth birthday. She is a teenager.

This morning I made and hung nonsensical and plentiful birthday signage around the house (continuing/importing a long-time roommate tradition because, as Michelle once said, "There's something about signage that's so effective").

In addition to this real world posting, I wanted to do an online posting and bedecor my blog with a short story to the world about the arrival of Bekarek, my youngest sibling and newly teenaged sister.

* * * * *

Thirteen years ago on a day right around today...

[insert graphic of flashback time waves--dddddddd, dddddddd, ddddddd]

Exposition
My good friend Jen was prepping for her 14th birthday, which was to be on September 9, 1995. She was really excited that my mom was due somewhere near her birthday, and she often (often) tried to convince me to deliver her a baby sibling with which to share her birthday. I tried to explain how little control I had over the situation--so few inducements at my disposal--but she was still hopeful I could work it out. I thought, what are the chances? My life is never that cute.

Rising Action
And then, la, on September 9, 1995, my sister was born. I couldn't believe it. She was beautiful. And she was the things we'd hoped she would be--healthy, human, and compliant:

she was born two years after our youngest, making us all two or four years apart--> Nate, two years, Dan, two years, Anika, two years, Sarah, two years, Joseph, two years, Dad's dissertation, two years, Jacob, two years, Peter, four years, Rachel, two years, now Bek, AND
she was a girl, keeping with our grouped gender pattern--> boy boy girl girl boy boy boy girl girl. Now Rachel would have a partner, too. (The big boys: Nate & Dan; the big girls: Anika & Sarah; the little boys: Joseph, Jacob, and Peter; and now the litte girls: Rachel & Rebekah.)

But, she wasn't blonde. She was darker (well, just not blonde, really), which, at the time, we figured disrupted our oft-remarked upon alternating complexion scheme--> vanilla chocolate vanilla chocolate vanilla four years vanilla chocolate four years chocolate, now another chocolate.* We were happy to have her anyway.

AND SHE HAD COME ON JEN'S BIRTHDAY! What more does a 14-year-old girl want than to surprise her friends with really good birthday presents? Very little.

Conflict
So, I decided not to tell Jen or any of my other friends until Jen's birthday party, just a few days after the 9th.

For Jen's 14th, we went to a nice Japanese restaurant. I learned how to use chop sticks and ate food cooked at my table. The beef was so good, and we were laughing so hard, and it was a great, great time. Then came the moment when Jen would open the gifts. I'd covered a box in magazine cut-outs and Modge Podge (a shellaq substance totally in vogue in the mid-nineties), and inside the box, I had placed a piece of paper.

Climax
Jen: I love this box, Sarah! It's mint! [Or whatever we were saying then.]
Sarah: Open it, Jen! Open it! [As fourteen-year-olds, we were always talking with exclamation points, I'm sure.]
Jen: Okay! Here I go!

She opens the box. She sees the paper, which says

Born September 9, 1995
Baby Girl Olson [she wasn't yet named]
some lbs, some ozs [I don't remember those details, alas]
Chocolate
Healthy

Jen reads it silently. Her face! Her face! I can see it! She's excited, too! She exclaims!

Jen: Yippee!

Then, her face falls. She is puzzled.

Jen: (slowly) You named her Chocolate Healthy?

Denouement
Oh man. I laughed so hard I think I fell off my Japanese bar stool.

Resolution
No, no, we didn't.

* * * * *

To Jen and especially to Beka: I love you both. Happy, happy birthday to the two of you, on this good September day.

*Not too long later, we realized Beka was a breed all her own. Blue eyes and light brown hair. Caramel.

What We Lose, What We Hope to Find Again

2008-09-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

She told me what she misses most right now is the hugging. "No one hugs me here," she said. "I'm so lonely, and no one hugs me." She listed her new friends: "My roommate doesn't hug me. My friend doesn't hug me. My neighbor doesn't hug me. My classmates don't hug me. And I don't have visiting teachers, so they don't hug me."

"Do you hug them?" I asked, knowing, of course, that it was an unfair question. Unfair because I didn't really ask it to know the answer--if she was hugging in her new life, she would already have said so--and because I had wanted to imply that the solution was within her grasp. (Her grasp. That's funny.) My know-it-all/colonizing tendencies. I'm working on them.

"Well," she said, "I already instigate enough touching that I'm trying to be sensitive about it. Sometimes I give side hugs, and sometimes I put my arm around this boy I know. I don't want--I don't want him to get the wrong idea."

She and I were talking on the phone. It was late where we were, in the same time zone, in the same state, but not within six driving hours of each other. I wished my arms were longer.

I was okay with her living apart from me, I thought. We'd been roommates before we both moved. "I'm okay with you living apart from me," I said. "But only when I think that the people around you are treating you well."

"Oh, they are, they are!" she said quickly, then stopped. We were both quiet.

"Maybe I should start hugging them," she said. "Or scratching their backs in church, like I want to. Or playing with their hair when I come into a room and they are sitting down." She laughed. "What would I say to them, when they asked what I was doing?" She laughed again. I said, "You'd say--the human body needs to be touched seven times a day to be healthy." Touched positively, I thought. I didn't say it out loud. I figure she'd understand the distinction. "Launch your loving on them," I said. "I'm for."

Seven times a day. Here, where I am, in this few-week period when I'm between lives--between California and DC, just living in NY with my family--the touching for me is fine. My sisters and I are close, and we voluntarily squeeze onto couches, onto the benches around the kitchen table, onto the chairs at church. I get hugged well at church, too, by Jane B. and Marissa and a variety of other Relief Society sisters when I see them. They hug me often and tightly. In my home branch, I feel like a rock star.

But I'll soon be on my own, too. Making a new life in DC. I'll need to find new grocery stores, new Blockbusters, new places to buy sweet potato fries. I'll spend the first weeks, months, picking up new habits, routines, defaults. I'll refit my old things into new spaces: my mugs in new cabinets, my clothes in new closets, my oh-so-familiar face looking back at me from mirrors that shine and crack in ways that are new to me. And I'll have to find people to hug. To hug and be hugged by.

I've lived in DC twice before, and I already love my roommates there. So I will, I'm sure, have a leg up. An arm, I guess, if you will. But this moving and loving and need for touch.

What else am I going to find I've lost in the transition?

Wrinkles in Time

2008-09-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

I have a wrinkle. My first one. It's a small vertical line in my skin, not quite halfway between my eyebrows. It doesn't go away when I stop smiling. That's how I know it's a wrinkle.

I'm not so much concerned that I have one. I'm one of those who's excited about finding gray hairs, admittedly maybe at least as much from principle as from a sense of aesthetics. (Though among many others, a young John McCain reminded me again that gray can be good--who knew he was so good looking back in the day?) But I am worried about how I got it.

I got it from furrowing my brow.

Brow furrowing! Alas. I didn't realize I'd spent so much time being grim.

I told this to a friend recently--"I have a wrinkle, and it's from furrowing my brow"--and the friend said, "I always thought it was a prayer line."

Prayer. That's a nice thing to think about me. But always, as in, before this conversation?*

I just got back from a week-long visit to Texas, and there my best friend Laura had this idea: If I want laugh lines (and I do--they're the romanticized result of a life of buoyancy, good health, and cheer), then I should turn lemons into lemonade. I should start laughing with my wrinkle.

Genius. Reminds me of my brother Jacob's newest favorite quote: "There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them." (Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin)

As a child the "it will stay that way" threat about ugly face-pulling seemed silly to me. Its illogicality was so obvious as to be nonsensical. The face--it's so plastic, so malleable. Wide mouth, rabbit nose, bubble cheeks, evil eyebrow, pursed lips. Turns out, I was wrong and folk wisdom is finally having its day. Who knew?

What I'm saying is this: The furrowing. Watch out for the furrowing.

*

A Gchat Lesson on Patience and Action

2008-08-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

I wrote like three drafts of this blog post with all kinds of high-falutin' and mock epic ramp ups, but really I just want to say this: a friend of mine said a seriously beautiful and seemingly true thing today about how on earth we reconcile the need for patience and the need for action.* I feel like its truths will unfold.

Here:

5:10 PM David: patience is the essence of fine mexican food, sarah o [...]

that's what my favorite mexican restaurant in san diego has painted in large print on the wall

so i've decided to apply it to other aspects of my life

me: Wow.

5:12 PM Wow was too big a word for that moment, maybe.

Nevertheless, I am impressed.

Though how do you balance patience with taking control?

David: here's how i see it

me: say

5:13 PM David: i walk up to the register

and i spell out my order

tell them what i want

that's taking control

then i wait as they prepare it

knowing that it will be delicious

that's patience

I know. Seriously. A metaphor that is genius, elegant, and tasty.

Muchas muchas gracias, David Shoe.

*Or in scriptural words:

James 1:4: But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

versus something like

D&C 58:29: But he that doeth not anything until he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned.

With Peter* Gone

2008-08-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

We decided to drown our sorrows in fruit.

Missing Peter (and missing California), I went to Trader Joe's before dinner and bought

the six-pound container of blueberries
three containers of white nectarines (my favorite summer fruit, hands down)
one watermelon
one crenshaw (like a not-quite-ripe canteloupe)**
six pluots
a honeydew melon
a pineapple.***

At Trader Joe's, the checker had said, "How are you today?" He seemed to mean it, so I told him: "I'm good--but sad." And I told him how my brother left today on a two-year mission to Japan for my church (which, of course, required explanation) and how my family sent me to the store to buy comfort food. He said, "But you are proud of him, yes?" "Yes," I said. "Absolutely. Very proud."

But sad, too. The checker packed my groceries, and I considered the sadness. Peter's leaving this morning was tender. Beka buried her face in Peter's suit and cried as she hugged him goodbye. Rachel watched the huggings wet-eyed and solemn-faced. Jacob hugged Peter firmly, like a man-brother, and then said (with unexpected brightness), "Have fun." When Dad and Peter drove away, Mom and Rachel ran after the car. They stood on the sidewalk crying, long after the car had gone. When they finally came in, they told us that a neighbor had seen them out there and had come out to ask them if everything was all right.

Tonight Dad reported that Peter had cried all the way to the airport.

Grief seems too heavy a word for moments like these. Mourning, too. But they are the words that come to mind. I am grieving for Peter, and I am grieving for Palo Alto. I am mourning the loss of Melville and my law school days and the salads I loved and bought and got with the ridiculously good beef at Pluto's. Mourning that Peter will not raise his arched eyebrows at me across the table at breakfast tomorrow.

But Peter is not dead; he's in Utah. And Palo Alto and Pluto's are not gone. They are only gone from me. For now. And "Melville" may be gone, but the three women I loved are not (they exist, they assure me, though I'm having trouble visualizing their lives with others and apart from mine).

I both worry and have faith that I will not so acutely pine for days gone by forever. I know I will feel happier about Peter's whereabouts, and soon. (After nine years of my own away-from-home living, including one year of his own college life, I am used to having him gone, am I not?) My life will soon (too soon) fill up with the concerns and the chatting of new roommates, ward members, friends, visiting teachees. I am callous/faithful/pragmatic enough to move on. But what should I do in the meantime, in this interstitial zone? I don't even have a good name for it. The Empty Room. The Time Between. The Crossroads of Some-of-the-People-I-Love-Best-Have-Gone and There-Has-Not-Yet-Been-Enough-Living-to-Muddy-My-Memory-and-Mask-the-Leavings. Maybe that's the damnablest part of all. I can't even name the place I'm at and the feelings I have. At least, not succinctly. The sadness cat has got my (articulate) tongue.

When I left Trader Joe's, I left with four paper bags and one plastic one. As I pushed the cart away, the checker said, "I hope you have enough food." He said it half tenderly, half teasingly.

No more Melville and two years with no Peter?

No. The answer I'm going with is no.

*My use of "Peter" here is multivalent, of course. It's both literal and symbolic. Peter represents Peter himself, a seriously good 6' fellow of the brotherly persuasion, but also he represents the things I recently have moved from and/or lost. It has been a time of emotional and compounded leavings. Which is, I have to say, both exciting and totally sucky.

**Only these first four fruits were served at dinner. I'm sure we'll need fruit tomorrow. (Also, among other things I believe these days, I'm newly thinking that to be fully appreciated, honeydew melon should be served as a lone fruit. Preferably as the side of something hot and juicy and savory, like sausage. Or quiche. Consider.)

***(I also bought Trader Joe's marshmallows, which were square (because Trader Joe's has to be different) and which we roasted on forks and fondue skewers over our electric stove to make smores after dinner. We stood around the kitchen, trying to gracefully eat the drippy, sticky marshmallows we sandwiched with dark chocolate bars and pistachio-white chocolate chip cookies, and trying not to notice that Peter wasn't there.)

Elder Peter Boshard

2008-08-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

It seems almost unnecessary that my brother Peter was set apart today as a missionary.

He's going to be serving a full-time mission for two years in Tokyo, Japan, so, yes, in our church, this meant that he needed to be "set apart" (which is what we call the rite when he is given the official responsibility of being a missionary and blessed by the priesthood with the gifts he will need). And yes, being a set apart full-time missionary means that he will not be around, that he will not be on facebook, that he cannot read for government or study math or hug girls, that he will not come home for Christmas or leave me short voicemail messages about how he loves me and about what songs he's been singing non-stop of late. So yes, after today, having been set apart, his life will be different.

But I'm trying to imagine meaningfully, how.

Full-time missionary work seems to me to be about (1) learning to live in a fully consecrated, single-eyed, disciplined, and devoted way, and (2) blessing others through, among other things, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But, as a sister, I have to say, these are ways of being Peter is already practicing. He is, already, a student in AP Godly Living.

For one. Peter has led a more fully focused life than anyone I know, really. And he has since--I don't know, he started getting grades, probably. Maybe before. I probably wasn't consistently paying attention. Peter's focusedness has led to a lot of (entirely deserved) public acclaim, acclaim he likes (but only very, very privately) but also that he (entirely rightfully) finds highly problematic and distracting from what he really wants, which, I think, is to love God, serve others, and live in accordance with God's will for him. So, even as Peter was working towards being valedictorian, concert master, homecoming king, the physical education student of the year, an Eagle Scout, a seminary graduate, then a freshman at Harvard, a weekly homeless shelter volunteer, and a home teacher--he was also focused, sacrificing sleep and energies and so so much time--on being a rockstar, loving, and tender brother. A faithful pray-er. A diligent scripture-studier. (Even right now, as I write, he is sitting with the family in the living room, talking Judaism and Jesus and our nephews, when he really needs to pack. Dad said, "Peter needs to pack." And Peter said, characteristically, "This is more important. I can sleep on the plane.")

And, two, Peter shares his love of God thoughtfully and routinely with the people around him. Today, seven hours after he was set apart as a missionary, he baptized and confirmed his long-time friend and mentor (and, formerly, his high school teacher), with whom he has been working to study the gospel (as well as AP Java, AP Spanish, AP calculus, etc., etc., among other things) for years. Daily (literally, daily) conversations about the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, Preach My Gospel, God, Jesus, the Spirit. Even when Peter left New York and went to college, he was talking with Ross, praying for him, and trying with heart and Spirit to answer his many searching (and analytically minded) questions.

Missionary/hard work? Peter knows thee well.

But I do have faith--I do--that a full-time mission will teach Peter things. I'm sure he does, too. I have my own private hopes for him, of course (I'm a colonizer, we know, and spend too much time wanting other people to be what I want them to be). This includes a desire for him to come home more familiar with heart break. But too, interestingly, with a more natural joie de vivre (we, as a family--we're all working on this--we have a talent/tendency, we're realizing, for the intense and the sober). Maybe with the desire and ability to orate loudly, maybe like a Baptist preacher. (Okay, now I'm just making a wish list. How AWESOME would it be for Peter to come home from Tokyo able to preach like a Southern Baptist orator? AWESOME. And what are the chances? Almost nil. But a girl can dream.)

I was trying to explain earlier to Peter and Beka that, for me, as someone who has never served a full-time mission, missions are like this: "Ahhh? Twinkle twinkle twinkle! Ahhhh!"

I'm not sure what will happen during Peter's twinkling. And I feel safe predicting that it will not feel like twinkles to him. (Especially if heart break is on the horizon.) But I know that he and his companions and Japan will all be better for their years with each other.

As I am already better for my years with him.

Peter B., I love, love you so.

I ate so much zucchini bread tonight

2008-08-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm hurting right now.

(But my mom made it, and it was so, so good. Maybe I'm making up for living away from home and thereby missing any regular chance at periodic but sane consumption of her baked vegetable sweet bread goodies as they've emerged from her lovin' oven over the course of the last nine years?)

On This Day in 1988

2008-08-21T13:57:00.001-07:00

Twenty years ago today, on August 21, 1988, my family arrived in NY.

We'd lived in Stanford for four years, while my father was getting his PhD. We'd never lived in the East. My parents met and married in Salt Lake, and in 1984, they and the five of us then-living kids picked up and moved to CA. For four years we traveled back and forth between Palo Alto and Salt Lake, summer after summer, Christmas after Christmas, but it wasn't until 1988, when Dad finished school and took a job, that we packed up and left the West. In the end, it was a choice between Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Long Island, NY. (Maybe, if they'd chosen differently, I'd be blogging now in an OSU sweatshirt.)

Grandma and Grandpa Hoggard drove ahead with our stuff in a Hertz-Penske truck. We followed behind in our old tan van, driving 55 mph without air conditioning through Nevada, Nebraska, New Jersey, to, finally, New York. We wound our way around the city, found Long Island and the LIE, and, on a summer afternoon, pulled into West Sayville. 118 Cherry Avenue, West Sayville, NY. It was a new day. For dinner, we had Chinese food from the Wai Wah Kitchen. When second grade started a few weeks later, I told people who asked that we were planning to be in NY for "three to five years, seven at the most."

Twenty years later, today, Mom hung signs in our livingroom. "Happy 20th NYersary!" For dinner, as usual, we had Chinese food (but not from Wai Wah's Kitchen--our move in 1998 put us an hour west of West Sayville). We looked at old pictures, wrote fortunes for our fortune cookies, and made predictions about what would be true for us in 2028. "We'll have forty grandkids," Dad said to Mom. "That will require some more marriages," she said, looking at Jacob, Peter, Rachel, Bekah, and me significantly. "One hopes," I said. (I'm for children being born in wedlock, is what I mean.)

But today--also today--is my own anniversary. Today I made my own trek from Stanford to NY. I've finished law school, I've taken the bar, and I've moved out of Melville. Yesterday I made a final victory loop around Palo Alto. I said goodbye to my favorite tree. I bought chocolate chips from JJ&F's. I ran up College Ave, stopped by the Klutz store, returned a key to the law school, picked up my transcript, picked up my diploma, and walked down Embarcadero through our leafy, lovely neighborhood to Melville. KT, MH, and I had dinner at Pluto's. I hugged KT at Melville, RM in my heart, and MH at SFO. MH said, "Today San Francisco. Tomorrow, the world." And I dragged my suitcases away.

I JetBlued it over night and ended up here this morning. It's August 21, and I'm back in New York.

So Much* Has Been Funny to Us Lately

2008-08-18T09:26:00.001-07:00

Sarah: I eat my Ben & Jerry's with milk. Appreciate my superior ways.

Michelle: Remember when our home teacher today tried to explain why he thought I was more "innocent" than you?

Michelle: I would have expected this mint ice cream to be green.

So once, we tried to be serious. (Note Michelle's regression, particularly.)

It's a good life.

*I'd say everything has been funny (that's the blog title Michelle and I agreed upon), but KT has had some super tragic family news. We are praying for her cousin and his lovely wife. See the wife's charming (ridiculously charming) blog here: http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/.

Last night I was reading in D&C 78, and I came across this:

17 Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;

18 And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.

May heaven be with us all but especially, especially with the Nielsons.

Sunday: A Day to Lift, A Day to Level

2008-08-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

Today, I made this beauty:

It was, of course, originally full of heart-shaped watermelon chunks and blueberries, until it met seven girls I know.

Let's see that again. (Here, modeled by the lovely Sara S., one of the seven girls I know.)

And also today, I made this mess--gratuitously:

I'd made a normal sort of mess prepping my dinner (a bowtie pasta salad with salmon and edamame in a dill-ginger-mayonnaise glaze), but during dinner we decided that I would maybe take KT's bookshelf with me on the move, which meant a quick unloading of said bookshelf in preparation for the packers and movers coming early, early tomorrow. But the kitchen was messy, and MH was in it (but on the phone), and I didn't want her to think--Oh, those roommates, always leaving messes they may or may not remember to clean up--which, of course, she could rightfully think--so I was faced with a choice: clean up the mess, so it will be taken care of, OR find some way to let her know that the mess was on my mind and that I would, in fact, return.

I chose the latter. Go big or go home. So I scattered the edamame pods all over the counter, and I took the lid off the PAM spray and the lid off the ginger container, and then I turned to the pasta.

It was while I was sprinkling the remaining dry farfalle on the counter by the sink that Michelle turned from her phone conversation and said: "Sarah, WHAT are you doing?" And I threw the empty pasta bag on the ground and ran.

As Michelle says and said again today: "Sarah, you're on one."

Melville at Night

2008-08-16T22:47:00.001-07:00

Points of interest:

The second window from the top left is slightly ajar. It is now, as it often has been, propped open by a small blue plastic elephant that appeared in my room one day. The first two windows on the left are mine.

The next two windows are Michelle's room, where she is, right now, peeling and cutting five green apples and talking on the phone with a boy. When her phone rang, we both guessed who it would be. As she flipped open her phone and walked from the kitchen, I heard her say, "I'm taking my apples with me."

The bottom two left windows are the kitchen, where I was (until I went outside to get a blanket from my car and ended up taking this picture) cutting watermelon into heart-shaped chunks, with a cookie cutter that disintegrated just as the job was done. Michelle (in her room) and I (in the kitchen) are both preparing our contributions for a Tea and Testimony party two ward friends are having after church tomorrow. We'll drink herbal tea and eat mini-apple turnovers and heart-shaped watermelon chunks and talk about how the Lord has blessed our lives recently. It will be a good Sabbath.

The bottom two right windows are the windows to our eating room, what I began to call the Cupcake Room after Reija's birthday cupcake extravaganza. (You can see the curtains Reija bought and hung for our first Christmas at Melville.) Michelle and I ate beef stroganoff there two hours ago (at 9 pm)--she made it with mustard, as per the infallible instructions of Rachael Ray. Also, two hours ago, there I demonstrated for Michelle what my moving this Wednesday will be like. She was a large slice of nectarine (bruised, significantly); I was a small one. The beef pieces came (my movers) and packed my stuff off to the right side of the table (DC). My nectarine slice flew from the plate it shared with Michelle over the table and through the air, landing (just north of the beef pieces) on my plate, which happened to be covered with stroganoff gravy. "The gravy of my family's love," I explained to her.

She said the move is now, finally, clear to her.

Actually, no, she didn't. I totally just made that up. I think she's in denial.

And the dark windows (which you can't see) to the right of Michelle's windows are the glass that protects a sleeping KT from a Palo Alto night. Karren has been working hard for work and hard for Prop 8 (it's newly her assignment to rally ward members to support California's initiative to state constitutionalize marriage as between only a man and a woman), but she is, gratefully, asleep now in her wide, white bed.

Beneath palm leaves and moonlight, Melville wants Reija.

The Pantry

2008-08-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Melville has a pantry.

It's a cute pantry. A little three-foot-by-three-foot sort of job, in the corner between the fridge and the stove. Since Christmas, it has held not only our food stuffs--scattered on shelves and floor--but also a small Reija-made painting of a ship and a great white whale. In honor of Mr. Melville and the name he contributed to our street and, derivatively, to our house.

The success of the pantry is its slimness, its size of two-peopleness, its folding blue door that allows someone(s) to enclose themselves in the pantry. Shut off from the kitchen. Alone for a moment. With the cake mixes and the sugar and the syrup--and with each other. The makings of many sweet things.

The pantry. Place where Melvillain dreams have come true.

I have one week left (before I move) for it to happen for me. I'm ready, and I believe.

We're in Ohio.

2008-08-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

At the Delux Inn.

Doesn't it look delux?

(I didn't misspell that. The picture I found online says it's the Fremont Motel, but it must be under new management because the sign outside definitely says DELUX INN. Yes, it is kind of creepy.)

To update: Second day of the bar went fine. The family picked me up. We got squished by a semi (some noticeable but only cosmetic damage) and kept driving, all the way to Utah, where we family reunioned at the family homestead (that will be a post of its own, if ever I get the pictures from my mom's camera--turns out, I come from people who Lived By The Land), and where, on Sunday, I was picked up by Reija and whisked away. East again, back on I-80, through Wyoming and Dix, Nebraska, and Lincoln, Des Moines, Chicago, South Bend, Toledo, to here, Fremont. Home of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. And the Delux Inn.

Tomorrow, Rochester. And a new life for Reija. And maybe more than one night in the same bed for me.

Here's to intransience.

How did it go today?

2008-07-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

The short answer is it went fine. No stories.

But because I am me, and I love stories, I will also give you the long answer, which is, at the moment, in bulleted form.

This is how it went today:

Woke up around 4:15 am because I was hot (and because Anika was trying to quiet Ellie, who woke up because she was on the opposite side of the bedroom we're sharing with seven and cold--too close to the AC)
Dozed nervously/restlessly until 5 am
Showered, had a father's blessing, heard my mother use the word "discombobulating" in her blessing over my breakfast (in a reference to the bar exam--as in, "Please help Sarah to feel at peace during this exam that they engineer to be so discombobulating"), ate cereal with skim milk that may or may not have been sour
Caught the 6:32 am train to Penn Station
Reviewed Evan's five-years-old condensed outline on the train
Was asked by a woman sitting behind me, "Last-minute studying?" I smiled. She said, "I figured if it isn't in me by now, it isn't in me." I smiled again, maybe sheepishly. I went back to studying.
Joined a posse of laptop-carrying recent law grads, marching the four blocks from Penn Station to the Javits Center
Considered that if this posse was crossed, there's a high probability that we'd either snap, cry, or file timely actions pled with particularity
Saw a man in a Columbia Law shirt that (a) I didn't know but (b) I thought looked Mormon
Unceremoniously chucked Evan's outline in a garbage can outside the Javits Center
Waited in an virtually unmoving herd, like glass-eyed cattle, for over an hour, while Javits Center staff tried to put 3000 neon green wristbands on 3000 people and put them in 3000 individually assigned tables/chairs
Wondered if NY really needs a yearly crop of so many new lawyers
Overheard Columbia Law shirt man talking to a woman about Deseret News, KSL, and his time working for "the church" (I turned and said, "Are you Mormon?" "Yes," he said, unexcitedly. "I thought you were Mormon from the first time I saw you," I said. He said nothing. "I'm Mormon, too," I added. Turns out he knows Amanda and Dan.)
Met my tablemate, Rosaria, a beautiful, dark-haired, smiley-faced woman, who speaks Italian (Italian?) to the people she knows around us. (They also speak Italian. (Italian?))
Took part 1 of the NY bar exam
Waited in line for the bathroom
Paid a ridiculous sum for lunch, which I, of course, spilled on myself
Chatted with the lovely Marin T.-B., one of my favorites from some of my favorite BYU days
Waited in line for the bathroom
Began part 2 of the NY bar exam
Wish I knew when an easement by necessity is extinguished and how exactly it does (or does not) run with the land
Finished part 2 of the NY bar exam, with less than a minute to spare
Did not, as Rosaria pointed out, finish early enough to fall asleep before time was called (as I did, apparently, during the first session; it's my testing treat to myself--if I finish early, I get to fall asleep)
Went to, but didn't wait in line for, the bathroom (!)
Joined the throng of law students returning half-excitedly, half-dejectedly to Penn Station
Took the 5:48 to Rosedale
Was whisked away by Anika and Joseph to pick up Peter, newly arriving at JFK from his glamorous summer internting at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Our Nation's Capital
Joined the 4,000 people who seem to have congregated at our home (Mom, Dad, Anika, Joseph, Jacob, Peter, Rachel, Rebekah, Elin, Isaac, Andrew, Mr. Lipsky, and a host of Jacob/Rebekah's Dungeons & Dragons friends)
Happily received Joseph and Anika's gifts of various kinds of "bars"--snack bars, a Cliff bar, a bar of soap, and two beautiful but unfortunately soap-tasting chocolate-covered pretzel bars
Packed for Utah, which was daunting because I hate the possibility of leaving behind important stuff
Watched some Colbert
Laughed at some Colbert
Packed for Utah, which turned out to go quickly because I was particularly good at adhering to my at-home-with-the-family rule of personal property (i.e. keep everything in one pile, in one corner, out of everyone's way; do not, under any circumstances, mix goods or leave them unattended or in plain view)
Answered a knock on our front door at 10:30 pm, welcoming in a local boy scout and his father, come to certify a genealogy merit badge with my father at the only time their various schedules aligned
Updated my blog
Checked others' blogs
Read el scriptures
11:30 (I'm hoping): Went to sleep in the bed I renegotiated from Ellie. She and Snika took my bed, and I took theirs. Across the room. Near the AC.

And that--that is what I did today.

Tomorrow? Bar exam, parts 3 & 4 (the multi-state) and then, whisk zip, the family picks me up at the Javits, hands me my cellphone (which I can't bring with me to the testing center, which makes me feel free and sad), and zip whisk, we're off to Utah. Among other places.

This life?

You said it.

Social Lockdown

2008-07-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm still on social lockdown so as to finish off my studying for the bar (T-3 days), but being on social lockdown at home is a lot like being at a family reunion.

(There were seven of us asleep in one room last night--the room with the AC--and twelve in the house total, even with my dad out of town. Par-ty.)

Note: These pictures were taken while we were updating my mom's new profile on facebook.

And studying.

Of course.

ADDENDUM (added ten minutes after this post's first posting)

My nephew Andrew just walked into the common bedroom to deliver some flowers that my nephew Isaac chose for me while he and his mom were at Trader Joe's today buying us all some good snacks.

He told me he chose this particular bouquet because the little pink flowers looked like the earrings I'm wearing today. Who knew he even noticed them?

I love this family so much.

Also: I just heard the front door open. Dad's home from Scotland. Plus one for the party. Studying my foot.

Tonight, I came home to this:

2008-07-22T01:43:00.001-07:00

Soon I will leave California and fly home, to study, see family, and face my destiny with the New York bar exam. I will travel around the country a bit (to Utah with the family for one day, then to NY with Reija for two days, then to Atlanta for a wedding and Nate & co. for two and a half days) and then I will come back again. For one week.

But tonight, one of my last nights in anything resembling the sort of regular life I know, I came home to the love of my friends: handwritten notes of test-taking encouragement, taped around my bed, written on little flyers I designed for a recruiting event I held at BYU last year (two years ago?) that someone must have drudged up or kept and recopied, pulling them out to show me love in a moment like this.

Tonight, I came home to this. And soon, this is what I will leave.

But I'm taking this with me:

What people do

2008-07-19T02:17:00.000-07:00

when they're not studying for the bar:

http://improveverywhere.com/2008/07/06/human-mirror/

and this

http://improveverywhere.com/2008/01/31/frozen-grand-central/ .

Or maybe, it's exactly what people do when they should be studying for the bar.

This all leads me to ask a serious and recurring question: Who ARE people? I wonder if God sometimes looks down at us and laughs to see what we've made of ourselves. Let people do their thing on earth for millennia, and what do they come up with? Football games, cheerleaders, and urban pranks. Among other ridiculous things.

Like the bar?

Note: Full points go to Christina and Ryan S. for linking to improveverywhere.com on their blog. Within one minute of hitting that website, I knew I was going to have to blog about it. One hour later, I finally left the website and did. Thanks, Team Skousen.

"But thou, when thou prayest"

2008-07-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

3 Nephi 13 notwithstanding, I want to write a post about my prayers.

I am overwhelmed by my praying. With the onset of the bar and the recent realities/tragedies/good things that have arisen, I want so many things, I do not know where to start. I cannot spend as many minutes on my knees everyday as I would need to be able to individually pray for all of the things I want deeply to pray for. And when I try to list them off--zip through them, even just to say the names of the people involved--two things happen: (1) I've torn the bag open, and it all comes whooshing out. My mind's eye (a General Conference phrase that always makes me laugh, though I know exactly what it means and how aptly it says the thing)--my mind's eye races around the country/world, praying for the people I love. New York, DC, Utah, Texas, California, Utah, Georgia, Texas, Texas, New York, New York, New York, upstate New York, Utah, Arizona, Utah, Utah, California, Melville, Melville, Melville, Melville, Melville again, Georgia, New York, Liberia, California, California, Iraq--and I am suddenly and again caught up in the torrent of desires for people I love.

Dear heaven, please bless the whole world. Amen.

But the second thing that happens, (2), is that the prayer begins to feel rote. Not rote, exactly. Boring. Boring, I guess is what I'm saying. (And maybe here's the answer: Maybe I shouldn't be worried about having boring prayers?) They're boring because I want the same things. I still want the same things. I still want Nate & Brittyn & Soren & Cokie to keep finding happiness in life and meaning at work/school and love for each other. I still want Dan to find a job he enjoys and Amanda to have chances to bless the world with her greatness. I still want Anika & Evan to be buoyed up in their ministries to their children and their community. Still want Joseph to be guided and sustained. Still want Jacob to be able to use his genius for good and to know that he is loved. Still want Peter to be close to his family in the ways he wants and has always wanted to be. Still want Rachel to know that I want to be like her. Still want Rebekah to feel confidence in defending love and truth and righteousness and Christ's gospel, even as a seventh grader when, let's be honest, there's so much defending that needs to happen. Want Joe F. to be preserved and protected, in body and especially in spirit. I want my parents' work at home, at church, at school, around, to be blessed and guided and effective. I want to have a heart that is soft and strong and others-oriented, to be ready to marry the good man when he comes along, and to do well at the many ridiculously cool opportunities that I have placed before me. And I want to be forgiven.

And these are only my immediate-family desires. I haven't even begun to pray for my visiting teachees/visiting teaching companion, or the many, many good roommates I've had, the friends I've loved, and the people I've served with or brushed past or take on faith exist--the military, the youth of the church, church leaders, missionaries, the nation's political leaders and presidential candidates. You. Etc.

So that's it. I am overwhelmed by the task of praying, by my sheer desires to see things effected. By my almost superstitious concern that if I'm not praying for it--verbally, vocally, regularly--then heaven won't know I want it. Then I won't remember/know I want it. And then all will be lost. (I'm being a little overdramatic now, but the bar is in T-two weeks exactly. That seems to be carte blanche for all sorts of emerging idiosyncracies.) But can prayer really be like that? I know we're commanded to ask ("Ask, and it shall be given you")--and for good reason--but can it really be if we don't say it every time we want it, heaven won't know to or won't give it to us?

How do we do it? Both practically and spiritually--how do we functionally and heartfully approach the charge to pray with specificity and with "all the energy of heart," and not end up saying every day the same long and true and real list of things that we continue to want, every day, morning and night, and, when we're good, all day long in our hearts as well?

Tell me, I pray you.

Hyah.

2008-07-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm heading into it. Today is the first day of my last two weeks of bar study, and I've started praying for tunnel vision.

But you have to know, I will be heading off to library-holedom with at least one-non-bar thought on my mind:

I guess I should have expected Anika & Evan to have cute children--as Grandpa Hoggard says, it's in the genes--but really, they've outdone themselves.

May I approach the bar with the martial determination of Andrew and Isaac and the regal equanimity of Elin. Amen.

Note: As per the bar, I would appreciate your prayers. I've not practiced memorizing since high school French (except that one semester of college French, where my TA told me, "You're just not an A student," when I remarked on the absurdity of having 1000 words to memorize for a weekly 25-question test), so the law--the bar--this thing--it's a challenge for me. A high bar, if you will.

I hope you will.

"Have a faithful, happy day, or fill up your gas tanks and gather your armies and know that you are loved."

2008-07-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm in the midst of studying for the bar (I'm trying, I really am trying), but there have been births and deaths and the long-awaited delivery of twins, with one live and one stillborn. A birth and a death, I guess. There are weddings to attend to (invitations, RSVPs, gifts, and receptions), still-pending births and past and coming birthdays to celebrate, visiting teaching to do, home teaching to be done to, and Relief Society lessons to plan, prepare for, and pray over.

There are cars that overheat, friends who are sick, molasses cookies that are too cakey (too cakey, even on a second try--what would do that?), and fruits/veggies that need to be bought so I will eat them and not the too-cakey molasses cookies. (Or any of the other sweet treats that fill our kitchen. At this exact moment in time, our kitchen holds chocolate chip cookie bites, freshly homemade chocolate chip cookies, Milano cookies, some strawberry-plum pie, and a secret stash of Skittles that MH is ready to break out when we need them. I am studying in the library today.) And Palo Alto is beautiful, and I'm leaving here soon, and there are only so many more hours I can spend on my favorite blanket in my favorite spot in my favorite park.

I'm trying to pray earnestly and make good decisions well and be close to the Spirit and to the people around me. I'm having even more trouble with those who are far away. But my prayers are harried, restless, list-y, and heartfelt. And I was called to action, to arms, by reading again or for the first time Elder Maxwell's 1995 talk, "Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father" and Elder Holland's "The Grandeur of God," except really I should stop reading their articles, stop blogging about them, and shut my computer down and study like a mad woman.

All of this is to say that this is actually being a tender time and a holy time, when, of course, it's not being a straight-up stressful and there-is-work-needing-to-get-done time.

I'd tell a joke here to show that I'm not feeling dour and to lighten the mood, but for the life of me, I can't think of anything funny.

(Juice? I've always thought juice was funny. It's like fruit blood. And we drink it. Imagine: a pen filled with juice. Oh man. Still, after all these years, I think it's funny.)

My mom's family letter of yesterday, which usually would end with a rallying "do good, be good" admonition, ended with this: "Have a faithful, happy day, or fill up your gas tanks and gather your armies and know that you are loved."

Let's review the options.

1. Have a happy, faithful day, OR
2. Fill up your gas tanks, gather your armies, and know that you are loved.

I think I can handle that. At least one of the two. (Ha. It just struck me. Multiple choice is right up my alley these days.)

My heart is with all of you who are also feeling like choosing the second.

"Every Baby is the Sweetest and the Best"

2008-07-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

That's what Marilla says to Anne (in the movie, not the book), and that's what I say here. And so, I'd like to introduce the sweetest and best baby, my best friend Laura's new son--

Samuel Asher T.
7 lbs 12 oz
20 in
Born July 7, 2008

If we were Catholic, he'd be my godson. (Laura? Nick? Can I get a quorum?)

Welcome, Samuel Asher. The world could use more people like your parents. We are glad glad to have you around.

For the Living and the Dead

2008-07-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

My mother said this to me today during our Sunday afternoon/evening phone call: "I am glad that in the scriptures what the Lord offers to us, what He invites us to enter, is His rest. The scriptures do not say, 'enter into my fire.' The scriptures say, 'enter into my rest.'"

We Mormons get excited about the promised productivity of the Spirit World. Revelations to the prophets and to individuals glimpsing through the veil indicate that the next life is much like this one in its bustle and energy and in its citizens' desires and efforts to get stuff done. It is a heaven that attracts me. A promise that the sociality we experience here, we will experience there. A knowledge that our godly propensities and desires to create, progress, and grow will be in effect there, especially if we live up here to the full measure of our covenants.

But I have spent today considering some of the vicissitudes of this, our living, and the pangs and reality of death, including the sudden deaths of those close to those I love.

And though I am only 27 and young, I have already lived long enough (on this earth, it doesn't take long) to be grateful for a God who promises that life with Him will bring us creativity and progression and growth yes, but it will also bring us rest. I am grateful for a God who understands that after this living, after (and while) here living, we might be ready to feel some measure of rest from whatever it is that makes us so often feel weary. Loneliness, uncertainty, goofiness, accidents, pride, ineptitude, malaria, hunger, unfulfilled desire. Even the listing makes me tired.

And so God extends His promises to us, for comfort and for hope, for growth and for rest, for the living and for the dead.

Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having the love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest.
Alma 13:29

Also

2008-07-06T00:11:00.001-07:00

My phone has died. It died a few weeks ago but was resurrected when I went to the T-Mobile store to buy another and the salesgirl pressed down on the power button and it came on again. Magic.

But tonight it slipped out when I was running and landed hard on the pavement and has not yet turned on again, though I've been trying the salesgirl trick and pressing down on the power button. In any case, in the mean time, at least until Monday, probably, I'm without phone. Which means I love you, happy Sunday, don't call. :)

Updates

2008-07-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, a LOT has happened. I must catch you up.

1. Some of my roommates and I just watched North & South, a BBC mini-series (four hours, four episodes) based upon a Victorian-era novel of the same name. It's like Pride and Prejudice without the wit and with labor unions. Pretty darn satisfying all the same (despite its serious cinematic unevenness and obvious editing-for-time). Mr. Thornton. He worked for us. (And I'm reading it online, thanks to Google books. Mr. Thornton. He works for me.)

2. I am trying to live by a new rule: I don't listen to what I call "popular music" (non-religious, non-classical music, the kind I don't listen to on Sunday) until I've read my scriptures for the day. This is to encourage me prioritizing things that are important (studying the word of God and His prophets) over things that, though delightful, can distract me from better things (Feist, Joni Mitchell, Canoe, the soundtrack to Dan in Real Life, etc., etc., etc.). It's going pretty well. I'm just putting it out there.

3. Reija made a pie. Another pie. And it was the most beautiful pie I've ever, ever seen in real life. MH took a picture of it, thank goodness, and maybe I can get it on here one of these days. Apple pie, in honor of her father's birthday (it's his favorite pie and a yearly classic) and in honor of America (as American as...). She made it on the Fourth of July, you see. The birthday of her father and the U.S., as it turns out.

And that's my story. Other than that and a Fourth of July post that deserves to be written and commemorated, I'm doing well. I'm on social lockdown so I can study for the bar ("hearsay evidence is an out-of-court statement introduced to prove the substance of the matter asserted; as a general rule, it is impermissible" and the like), which means both that I don't get to do things that I want to (e.g. laze about all day and watch every good movie under the sun) and that I don't have to do things that I don't want to (e.g. go to the singles wards' Fourth of July barbecue). The single-mindedness of it is kind of lovely. And I get to study on a blanket in the prettyish sort of wilderness that is our yard. Or in my bed. Not too shabby, this learning stuff. Though I am hoping that heaven answers my persistent prayers for a "sticky brain." Memorizing. Trick-y.

Palo Alto Weather

2008-07-01T00:52:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, I googled the weather for this week in Palo Alto. This is what I got:

I figure this can be explained by the following: Palo Alto weather is so paradisiacally consistent that either (1) this is the away message the weatherpeople picked while they were on vacation for a week or two, figuring no one would really notice, or (2) they, the weatherpeople, just aren't trying anymore. Palo Alto wasn't using their meteorological skills anyway. They didn't go to weatherperson school all those years to throw their gifts away on a measly temperate climate like that of the mid-to-lower Bay Area peninsula. Heck. Mama always told them not to cast their pearls before swine.

Their meteorological capabilities: pearls.
Palo Alto's consistently beautiful climate: swine.

I'm mocking, but I hadn't considered. Meteorology. Not a booming industry in paradise.

Note: Despite the vaguely smoky haze, it has been lovely for at least the last two days. High 74, low 54. No doubt.

Melville Pie Days Come to a Close

2008-06-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

And here's the pie I actually entered into today's competition. Or didn't, because we didn't get there in time for the judging, which was, reports say, done so haphazardly that one of the judges missed it too and the top three winning pies were all store bought.

It turns out I don't like baked cherries (I'm feeling glad I did a test-run yesterday), so today I went with an Apple pie:

Yup, Apple.

P.S. With all this pie-making, you may be wondering how my bar studying is going. My bishop was wondering, too. Today at the barbecue/pie competition:

Bishop: How's your studying going?
Sarah: It's not.
Bishop: Repent.

So, I'm going to stop making pies (except maybe one more Monica's raspberry--for dinner tomorrow) and excuses and repent.

Coming up: Bar/Bri Days at Melville.

Pie #6! Homemade cherry pie! And pies # 4 & 5!

2008-06-27T20:05:00.002-07:00

I couldn't wait to show this one. It just came out of the oven, and it's kind of unbelievable. I'm planning on having this be a test pie--since I've never made it before, and my last few attempts at gastronomic winging it have left me a little disappointed. But good goo, it's beautiful! If weird!

The pie before I baked it.

(It was inspired by some Tiffany glass I've been thinking about.)

These are my fingers when I was done with all my pie creating. I'm amazed my laptop keys haven't turned blue yet.

But here's the baked pie--newly removed from the oven!

Oh man, I am satisfied.

And, for completeness' sake, pies #4 and #5 (both of which are presently keeping cool in the fridge):

R's pie (a beautiful, beautiful pie we know will taste good)

And pie #5, Monica's frozen raspberry pie. It isn't decorated yet, and I think next time I'll make it with more filling, but good goo it tastes good. (Yes, I licked the filling bowl.)

2008-06-27T20:05:00.001-07:00

Pie Days at Melville

2008-06-27T15:56:00.000-07:00

My roommate R has already made three pies this week: one strawberry, one experimental strawberry-plum, and one full-blown strawberry-plum. She served the first at a ward function, and she and I have eaten the other two.

R is at the store now, as we speak, buying more strawberries and plums to make into a pie for a regional YSA pie competition being held tomorrow.

Her fantastic crusts and strawberry-plum-with-a-kick pie notwithstanding, I'm going to be making two pies today, in preparation for the pie-making I will do tomorrow for entrance into the pie competition. (I was personally asked to enter a pie, though it was an invitation I neither deserved nor turned down.)

And so--Melville pies #4, #5, and #6 begin.

The recipes are included here for (1) sharing and, more directly, (2) consolidation. Much easier to look at one webpage than two. I will tell you how it goes.

Pie #5: Frozen Raspberry Monica
This is the astonishingly good pie my friend Monica made for my 15th birthday in 1995. We think. Awesome.

1 graham cracker crust
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup water

3 egg yolks, beaten

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Dash salt

1 1/2 c crushed raspberries (fresh or frozen)

3/4 cup whipping cream

fresh raspberries & whipped cream, for garnish

1. Prepare crust. Set aside. In a small saucepan combine gelatin and sugar. Stir in water, egg yolks, lemon juice, and salt. Cook and stir over medium heat until boiling; remove from heat. Transfer gelatin mixture to a large bowl; stir in crushed raspberries. Cover and chill for 1 to 1-1/4 hours or until mixture is partially set (consistency of unbeaten egg whites), stirring occasionally.

2. In a chilled large mixing bowl, beat the whipping cream with an electric mixer until stiffpeaks form. Fold whipped cream into raspberry mixture. If necessary, cover and chill about 20 minutes or until mixture mounds when spooned. Spoon filling into cooled crust. Cover and chill at least 4 hours or until filling is firm.

If desired, garnish with piped whipped cream and fresh raspberries.

Pie #6: Homemade Cherry Pie
From allrecipes.com. I've never had homemade cherry pie before, let alone made it, so we'll see how it goes. But I have all these cherries I haven't gotten around to eating. And I think it might taste awesome.

INGREDIENTS:

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch

double crust pie

4 tablespoons quick-cooking

tapioca

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup white sugar

4 cups pitted cherries

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 tablespoons butter

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Place bottom crust in piepan. Set top crust aside, covered.
2.	In a large mixing bowl combine tapioca, salt, sugar, cherries and extracts. Let stand 15 minutes. Turn out into bottom crust and dot with butter. Cover with top crust, flute edges and cut vents in top. Place pie on a foil lined cookie sheet --- in case of drips!
3.	Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown.

Two Cool Things Totally Unrelated to the NY Bar Exam

2008-06-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

1. This website! www.fontstruct.com It was profiled in this NY Times article: "Down with Helvetica: Design Your Own Font." On it, you can design your own fonts FOR FREE! Oh man, my inner amateur graphic designer is overwhelmed by the sheer possibilities. True: The best day of my working career was the day that Dean Hansen let me and Natalie, the other secretary, spend the afternoon picking new fonts from a CD for our desktop publishing responsibilities. I've only begun tinkering around on fontstruct, but you can bet your favorite dollar that I'm going to be working towards a font specially designed and hand-constructed for the Stanford Second Ward's sacrament meeting program. Oh man. Oh. Man.

2. Turns out, learning to love truly and heartfully, even when spurred on by romantic feelings, can be tricky. My roommates and I have been talking about this, and one today pointed me to this article: http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/faith.htm. Long but pertinent, I think. At least for us. My favorite part upon a first read-through:

[T]here is something attractive about the idea of being totally self-sufficient and self-contained. It seems safer and easier. If our world is self-created and self-contained, nothing seems beyond our understanding or control. Hence, many of us relate, not to other people, but to our mental images of other people. This tendency also explains, I believe, why so many people have preferred theories about the world to the world itself–have preferred, that is, to develop philosophical systems rather than to step out into the real world, vast and beautiful and terrifying as it is, with all that they do not understand about it, and grow step by step in their understanding. I believe this is also one reason many people have preferred to worship a conceptual God–a God in their minds–rather than the true and living God whose voice, though it pierces to the very center, comes from outside themselves.

Parts of the article that feel salient and true to you?

As a Hen Gathereth Her Chickens

2008-06-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

I've been rereading the story of Moses and the exodus of the Israelites as part of my daily scripture study, and I've been asking a Jewish friend for some insight on some of the passages that seem to me to be either cryptic or culturally significant.

Last night I asked him about Exodus 3:13.

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

I wondered why Moses would ask this particular question. Would the Jews really have asked him what God's name was? And, if they would have, what answer would they have been expecting? Or what would they have done with that information?

I wondered if maybe Moses was anticipating that the Israelites would try to identify Moses's God as theirs--as opposed to all of the Egyptian or other gods that were running around being worshiped.

Or I wondered if Moses himself was wanting more information about the deity he was talking to, so he was using the Jews as a decoy, as an excuse to find out more about the God he was talking to.

Steve, my Jewish friend, raised this possibility: that Moses asked God what His name is, or what Moses should tell the Jews what God's name was, not to find out a name but to find out information about God himself. To explain, Steve pointed me to an online source:

In Jewish thought, a name is not merely an arbitrary designation, a random combination of sounds. The name conveys the nature and essence of the thing named. It represents the history and reputation of the being named.
This is not as strange or unfamiliar a concept as it may seem at first glance. In English, we often refer to a person's reputation as his "good name." When a company is sold, one thing that may be sold is the company's "good will," that is, the right to use the company's name. The Hebrew concept of a name is very similar to these ideas.
An example of this usage occurs in Ex. 3:13-22: Moses asks God what His "name" is. Moses is not asking "what should I call you;" rather, he is asking "who are you; what are you like; what have you done." That is clear from God's response. God replies that He is eternal, that He is the God of our ancestors, that He has seen our affliction and will redeem us from bondage.
http://www.jewfaq.org/name.htm

And we see this, of course, in God's otherwise unusual/interesting response to Moses's question:

God is eternal

14 And God said unto Moses, ^aI AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

God is the god of our ancestors

15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The ^aLord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my ^bname for ever, and ^cthis is my ^dmemorial unto all generations.

God has seen the affliction of the Israelites and will redeem them from bondage

16 Go, and gather the ^aelders of Israel together, and say unto them, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely ^bvisited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:

17 And I have said, I will bring you up out of the ^aaffliction of ^bEgypt unto the land of the ^cCanaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the ^dJebusites, unto a ^eland flowing with milk and honey.

18 And they shall ^ahearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The Lord ^bGod of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now ^clet us go, we beseech thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may ^dsacrifice to the Lord our God.

19 ¶ And ^aI am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, ^bno, not by a ^cmighty hand.

20 And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my ^awonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you ^bgo.

It is interesting and beautiful to me that the Israelites might have been anxious to be reassured about the nature of God. After so many years, will He protect us? Will His involvement be kind to us? Will He remember and save us, or will He continue to neglect us or--worse, worse--add to our sufferings? And so, God answers Moses's question--so fully, so lovingly--so that Moses can take back a message of love and protection to a people who have been wounded for so long.

I was struck, then, by the relationship between Steve's answer/this insight and this month's home and visiting teaching message by President Eyring.

The Savior has always been the protector of those who would accept His protection. He has said more than once, “How oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not” (3 Nephi 10:5; see also, for example, Matthew 23:37; D&C 29:2).

The Lord expressed the same lament in our own dispensation after describing the many ways in which He calls us to safety: “How oft have I called upon you by the mouth of my servants, and by the ministering of angels, and by mine own voice, and by the voice of thunderings, and by the voice of lightnings, and by the voice of tempests, and by the voice of earthquakes, and great hailstorms, and by the voice of famines and pestilences of every kind, and by the great sound of a trump, and by the voice of judgment, and by the voice of mercy all the day long, and by the voice of glory and honor and the riches of eternal life, and would have saved you with an everlasting salvation, but ye would not!” (D&C 43:25).

There seems to be no end to the Savior’s desire to lead us to safety, and there is constancy in the way He shows us the path. He calls by more than one means so that it will reach those willing to accept it. Those means always include sending the message by the mouths of His prophets whenever people have qualified to have the prophets of God among them. Those authorized servants are always charged with warning the people, telling them the way to safety.

So here it is--a parallelism of probable truth: That even as we are, as I am, as the Israelites were, so anxious to know that God remembers us, that He will rescue us from (our various kinds of) bondage, that He will be good to us after all this time, God is anxious--eager, anxious, wanting--for us to remember/know that He wants to be good to us in our suffering, that He always remembers us, and that He will protect us, if we will let Him.

"How oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not.”

Ye would not. Ye would not.

That's a charge I'm praying I can change to avoid.

It's here!

2008-06-17T08:14:00.001-07:00

My directorial debut is finally uploaded to the internet for (y)our viewing pleasure: http://vimeo.com/1185293.

It's called "Puppet Love" (and there are bloopers, too, linked on the same website). I directed this short film for my ward's film competition, and on Saturday, we beat out the competition (one other video) for the audience choice award. And we won best production, best actress, and best actor.

There is, of course, explanatory backstory to this little film and how it came to be, but for now, I have to run to school. I just wanted to post it because, I have to say, making it totally delighted me. It was a ward activity success. And it makes me maybe want to give up my chosen career thing and make movies instead (like most of the Hoggard-Olsons I know).

Enjoy.

Fostering Religious Diversity in the Public Schools

2008-06-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

I received this email via the area LDS listserve today:

I'm doing some informal research for a presentation I am giving at a conference for soon-to-be teachers this Friday. My presentation is on creating respect for religious diversity in the classroom. If any of you have personal stories about:

a) A time during your school years in which a teacher/school official was not respectful of your religious beliefs, or said or did something that made you feel marginalized for your religion,

or

b) A time during your school years in which a teacher WAS respectful of your religious beliefs, and how that impacted you,

Would you be willing to share them with me, so I can use them as examples in my presentation? I won't use your name, or any identifying details, just the story. Also, this isn't meant as an opportunity to complain about persecution; rather, I'm hoping to use these experiences to help create awareness among my fellow prospective teachers of the issues that might arise in the classroom for their students who are religiously devout.

I remembered an experience and then another (and another and another--I'm feeling a little e-chatty, as you can maybe tell) and sent him the following:

In 11th grade American history class, my large, loud, and frank-faced sort of teacher began his lesson about the Mormons by saying these words: "Now, Joseph Smith was a crazy man. I mean--a crazy man. He thought he saw angels, got these gold plates, starting testifying. He was a crazy man." I, of course, am sitting there, 17 years old, wondering how on earth he could have taught me and two or three of my older siblings and not known that I was Mormon. Also, I was sitting there wondering what on earth I would say in this moment. I felt like I should say something--something--but I also felt like I was pressed up against a wall. I mostly wanted to cry. I finally raised my hand and said something like, "Mr. K? I want you to know that I'm a Mormon and Joseph Smith is important to me, and I believe he is a prophet, so please don't speak about him that way." I was, of course, beginning to cry from the sheer intensity and awfulness and something of the moment. My teacher stared at me from his lean against the front chalkboard and sort of sputtered. "Oh, yeah, no. I didn't say he WAS crazy. I said other people thought he was crazy. Didn't I? Didn't I say that?" He turned to one of my classmates for confirmation; she shook her head, no. He vaguely apologized, I remember, but that's all I remember. I zoned out for the rest of class, staring at my desk and wondering why that moment had been so awful. I was glad I'd taken a stand and was feeling embarrassed it had made me cry, but I was feeling sad that I'd had to take a stand at all. In a safe place like history class, no less.

Also, a related but more subtle moment. I was in driver's ed one day, in the driving car I shared with three classmates and my driver's ed instructor. We were talking about physical intimacy, unusually and for one moment, and I was trying to say something strong and clear but cool about my thoughts about physical intimacy, my decision to be abstinent before marriage and to stay well within romantic boundaries before then. And my teacher turned around, looked at me with wry, self-satisfied sort of irony, and said, "Sarah, are you saying that you're a prude?" He wasn't joking, kind of. And I felt stupid. And I wondered why I wasn't getting support for this (a) hugely important and (b) (I thought) hugely valuable decision of mine (growing, among other things, out of my religious convictions) from a teacher.

And a third, totally third-hand story. I've heard of teachers who, for fear of the law or social repercussions, wouldn't let students list their own religious rites as some of the most important moments of their lives on those "get to know me" posters that kids sometimes make. They weren't allowed, absurdly, to put up pictures of them in baptismal dresses or christening dresses or confirmation clothes or bar mitzvah attire to hang on their posters on the wall. This is ridiculous.

Also--one more (a good one): my brother's great friend from high school was Sikh, and he received his turban (apparently, a very important ceremony in the life of a Sikh man) during his senior year of high school. They let him wear his turban and not his graduation cap during his graduation ceremony, and we loved seeing him up there with his red turban (the color of the graduation caps, probably not coincidentally) with his '07 tassle swinging from the back of his turban. That was a triumphant religious diversity moment I thought.

You? Team, you? What have been some of these moments--good and bad--for you?

P.S. It's 11:45 pm. My goal is 12:20. Let's see if I can make it happen.

Weird, Possibly Regrettable Decisions from Today, a Sunday

2008-06-09T00:14:00.000-07:00

1. I put a dash of Worcestershire sauce in my chicken-broccoli-rice casserole.

2. I put a lot of other things in my chicken-broccoli-rice casserole (garlic salt, kosher salt, peppercorn medly, marjoram, basil, parmesan cheese, crushed whole wheat saltines, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, cream of chicken soup, cream cheese, minced garlic, rice, broccoli, chicken), but I didn't put onions in. No onions. We didn't have any onions.

3. I didn't, in any meaningful way, follow a recipe for my c-b-r casserole.

4. Nevertheless, I served my casserole to people other than myself.

5. I didn't bring a sweater with me to the ward dessert potluck tonight, despite being pretty sure it was going to be chilly. Which it was.

6. I wore giant (GIANT) yellow-and-gold flower earrings all day.

7. I didn't watch Dan in Real Life again.

8. I provided, moderately recommended, and didn't stop some friends and myself from watching Shooting Fish (a circa 1998 British romantic comedy starring Kate Beckinsale before she sold out with Pearl Harbor but after she peaked with Cold Comfort Farm), which, it turns out, is less "vaguely charming" (how I described it) and more underwhelming and plot-spotty than I had remembered (I first and last watched it sometime in 2001)--all when I could have been watching Dan in Real Life again.

9. I made a comment in a packed and particularly spiritual Sunday School class in which I explicitly said that perhaps a possible way I could stop a friend from making a poor religious/moral decision was by "punching her in the face." Also, my convert friend Sarah's non-LDS mother was there. Her mother literally applauded when, much later, a guy in the class said that perhaps we should accept people for who they are and stop being self-righteous and be more like the Savior. Also a possibility (though I want to point out that I'm trying these days to make sense of the crazy important commandment to really, honestly, heartfully love people and the commandment to stand for truth and righteousness, which sometimes seem to complicate each other).

10. I stayed up late (it's 12:31 am), I spent more time cooking today than I did reading my scriptures, and I didn't call my mother.

Mom, Dad--happy Sabbath. I love you. We should talk soon.

P.P.S. Yes. No. Sort of.

2008-06-08T16:09:00.001-07:00

Here's the scoop: 12:12.

The last time I looked at my phone after I'd prayed, scriptured, and turned out the light, it was 12:12 am. Not quite midnight, but close, very close.

Waking up was easy. Church was awesome. I wasn't even tempted to fall asleep. This is a good thing.

One note, however: Remember how my concerns about early sleeping revolved around missing out, because I have these nocturnally optimistic tendencies that make me feel like if I were just to stay up later, something great might come my way like boys or lovin' or cookies?

When I woke up this morning, I had a text. It said this: "Bob's?" It was, of course, a late-night invitation, from boys, to drive to SF and get, really, honestly, the best donuts ever. An invitation I shouldn't have taken--and wouldn't, I have to say--but still. Still. That's some old-fashioned irony for you. With a warm and heavy sugar glaze.

P.S. Can I do it?

2008-06-07T23:45:00.001-07:00

It's 11:46 pm. My teeth are brushed and flossed, my face is washed and shiny, and I am pajama-ed, email caught-upped (ish), and sitting cross-legged on my bed. The only question remaining is this: Can I go to bed before midnight, and on a Saturday, too?

Tune in tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion. (And find out if, in fact, this kind of "early" bedtime affects Sarah's alertness during and enjoyment of 9 am church services.)

Goodnight, friends.

"I know why you're always tired..."

2008-06-04T00:21:00.001-07:00

I was telling my friend Steve that I always fall asleep places--in school, at church, and now, each morning during my Barbri review class.

"My family--" I said, "we can fall asleep anywhere. It's a family thing. We heard once that you know you're under-rested when you can lay down on the floor of your office and fall asleep in ten minutes. We laughed when we heard that because we can always fall asleep, almost anywhere and at anytime." Steve looked nonplussed. "It's a family thing," I said. He said nothing.

Tonight, I called to ask him a Barbri question, and halfway through the conversation, Steve interjected emphatically (emphasis like this being something of an anomaly with him): "I know why you're always tired. I see your light on in gchat until like...two in the morning! Falling asleep in class. Ha! It's not a family thing. You're tired because you stay up late!"

I laughed. I laugh. I thought back to two nights ago, when some new boys were over, and one said to me, "Are you a night owl?" and I began to say "not really," when Michelle made a sort of snorting/knowing/objecting noise, and I looked at her, and she said, "You are a night owl. Yes, you are!" She turned to the boys and said, "I go to bed, and when I wake up, Sarah tells me things that happened to her after she went to sleep. Things she's learned, conversations she's had, things she's done. Sarah has this entire life after I go to sleep."

(Note: Last night after Michelle went to sleep, I drove her car to Las Vegas. And back again.)

I remembered back to my second year of college, when I had a roommate who went to bed consistently and uncomplainingly at 9 pm. She did work early in the morning, admittedly, but to go to bed, every night, during the summer, at 9 pm STILL requires discipline and decision-making the likes of which I had not yet theretofore seen. So, one day, I asked her: "Jacqui, how do you know when it's time for you to go to sleep? How do you decide when your day is done and you should go to sleep?" She said, almost without blinking, "I go to bed when I've done everything I need to do." I was baffled. She had a to-do list. When she'd completed it, she went to sleep. Wash dishes--check. Fold laundry--check. Do visiting teaching--check. Next up? Bed--check.

I realized then that I was a sort of nocturnal optimist--that each night I stayed up late and late and later, waiting, waiting, waiting, just in case the best part of my day was still ahead of me. Thinking (irrationally, I know) that if I stayed up just a little bit longer, the day might bring its best treasures. Boys? Lovin'? Cookies? Transcendence? I'm not sure exactly what, but something. Something GREAT.

Having identified it--and becoming more committed to the sheer and almost overwhelming goodness of sleep--I thought I had left those voluntarily nocturnal ways behind. I really, honestly thought I had become a different girl, more committed to sleep, to good habits, to daytime living than I was in my pre-grad youth. All these years--all these years, I thought I'd changed.

But it is 12:41 am, and I am up entirely at my own volition. And when I'm falling asleep tomorrow during my review class (as I inevitably will), maybe it will not be the product of some mysterious narcoleptic family tendencies. Maybe it will be because I went to bed--again, again, for the umpteenth night in a row--at an indecent and ungodly* hour.

* "Retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated." D&C 88:124

The Memorial Day Weekend Wind-Up

2008-06-03T23:36:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm well back from my whirlwind mid-Atlantic East Coast adventure. I saw my foster brother Joe in his new Marine Man mode. I had my toenails painted by my nephew Soren (his first time nail painting; I was grateful he was willing--my nail painting is profession-confirmingly bad). I jumped into a cold, cold pool, courtesy of the many enthusiastic demands of my intrepid niece Coco. I raced Dan and Nate in an underwater swimming competition (Dan won, but I like to think it was a close race). And I realized, once again, I am my parents' daughter, as we three similarly and delightedly negotiated our South Carolinian hotel's breakfast offerings.

Once back in DC, I reconnected with former and future roommates--Alison, Jeanette, Erika, Becky, Stephanie. I cartripped from DC to OBX (North Carolina's Outer Banks) in a baby blue convertible VW with J-Lym, E-Borg, R-Rygg. In North Carolina, I spent two afternoons on a beach, one morning at church, one morning running and panting through the hot (hot!) NC sun, and two evenings choosing couch-chatting with the girls instead of crowd carousing with the young single adult LDS masses. I reconnected with Rich A., the first boy I ever went on a date with; with Maren R., a blonde-headed woman out of my Stover Hall heart and past; with Bobby H., a law school compadre expatriated to DC for year; and with Jed B., a white-toothed and smiley-faced law student friend, with whom I had two Welch's fruit snack fights (the second of which, I have to say, he totally won).

And then, given a day by myself in DC, with an empty house, all my friends at work, and all my Barbri books and supplies around--I watched an entire day of TV. I opened with Fever Pitch in the morning (a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy I'd never even heard of, surprisingly satisfying) and, in the afternoon, I stocked up on 3, 4, maybe 5 episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City, a Bravo-network reality TV show (of course). And then I did a short run before a short trip to the airport and a 5-hour, TV-full flight on JetBlue back to OAK (and to Reija, who so kindly picked me up and returned me home).

That is my Memorial Day Weekend report. I did not hike the Grand Canyon. I did not visit a long-distance boyfriend. I did not decide to go medical school. I did not make any professional or academic headway. I did not even meaningfully consider the wartime sacrifices of those who lived and died in ages past. (Memorial Day Weekend doings of some I know and love.) But I did have a good, good time. A good time.

And I will remember that.

Probably.

The New Awesome

2008-05-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

You know what's the new awesome? Unsubscribing from all of the commercial lists that automatically generate me emails. I have, in the past, just deleted those that come in. Whipwhip, check box click button, deleted. But I've decided--maybe I should just use those two clicks to hit the unsubscribe link (always hidden at the bottom of the email) and then to hit the "confirm remove" box that inevitably comes up and see if I can free myself from the files that bind.

It's a gosh darn liberating feeling.

Here's to a lighter, purer inbox of tomorrow!

Two Recipes

2008-05-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

I'm about to head off for a week(end) on the East Coast (DC to SC to GA to DC to NC to DC to home because, among other things, my sort of brother Joe F. is graduating from marines boot camp, and I'm going to get to see him, my parents, my brothers Dan and Nate, and Nate's kids, all in the beautiful southern locale of Parris Island, SC--how appropriate is that for Memorial Day?), but before I go, I wanted to post these two recipes I collected at a recent surprisingly satisfying enrichment about cooking.

I plan on making both in my near future lifetime. (Thanksthanks, Rechele.)

Edamame Puree

2 1/2 C cooked edamame (without pod, of course)--you can put more (the recipe originally called for 2 1/2 lbs of cooked edamame, but Rechele made it first with the smaller amount, and I liked it better)
2 lg garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 1/4 t fresh thyme, chopped
1 lemon, zested
1 T lemon juice
1 1/2 t salt
pepper to taste
1/2 C extra virgin olive oil
2-4 T water

Combine all but olive oil and water in a food processor and pulse to a coarse consistency. Slowly add olive oil with motor running. Adjust seasoning. Slowly add water to reach desired consistency.

Serve on crackers or--what did Rechele call them?--crustinis. Crustinis. Little slices of sourdough bread, toasted with a bit of olive oil. So, so good.

Omi's Coconut Curry Cheese Ball

11 oz cream cheese, softened
3 heaping T sour cream
1/2 C currents (or raisins)
1/2 C chopped cocktail peanuts, salted
1/2 C chopped green onions, chopped fine
2 t curry powder
sweetened flaked coconut
mango chutney (if desired)

Mix the first six ingredients together. Put coconut on wax paper. Roll cheese into a ball on wax paper. Put cheese ball in refrigerator. Serve with mango chutney (optional) and crackers (less optional).

I really liked this second recipe--I'm all for curry--but it was a little sweet for me. Maybe the currents are less sweet than the raisins I had it with? Maybe I'd put in more curry and more salted peanuts and less raisins and more sour cream? Maybe I'd put in more green onions chopped less fine? I don't know. Something. In any case, it was super tasty, and I'm make it (and experiment with it) again again for sure.

Let me know how it goes. Semper fi.

"It's like elf food."

2008-05-16T01:19:00.001-07:00

I watch what TV I watch online via a site called hulu.com. You have to register for it (it's beta right now; beta, of course, being internet speak for hip*), but it has a good sampling (and clean design supporting) some of today's best shows. The downside is that during each show, you have to watch "limited commercial interruptions," which means anywhere from 3-5 15ish second commercials. There is not a wide variety of commercials.

A particularly frequent commercial is a Citi Card commercial, in which a couple go to an exclusive restaurant, enjoy the decor, the ambiance, the service, the wine--and then the food comes. It is, as the husband/boyfriend says, "like elf food." The scene changes, of course, and we see the couple happily/hungrily grabbing chips at a convenience store, as they buy real food and end the commercial by toasting each other with dingdongs or Hostess cupcakes or something. (You can tell I've watched this commercial too often. I have, as a final recourse, taken to muting the commercials to at least avoid the haunting, tinkling music and ergo keep my sanity.)

Tonight I went to SF to hang out with Kristine, a good friend who moved there last year. We walked the streets of the Castro, where she lives. We climbed a beautiful hill and walked a park that gave us a view of both sides of SF--towards the bay and towards the sea. We wandered down Market and Valencia, looking for a place to eat. We passed up Thai and Indian (they've been feeling too sweet for me lately, which is ironic, seeing as I just downed a late-night bowl of chocolate frozen yogurt/banana/chocolate chips/mini chocolate peanut butter cups/and milk) and an Italian restaurant with only five dinner entrees and a room full of patrons but only one female. (This is the Castro, after all.) We ended up at Farina, a lovely looking Italian place that boasted a 40-minute wait (it was a beautiful evening, and everyone and his mother was getting out to eat). Kristine and I were hungry--we'd walked this big hill--and we were eager to eat, but we put our names down and dutifully meandered till she was called.

Once in, we drained our bottle of water, manhandled the four pieces of bread they gave us, and chose quickly before our server could forget we were there. I ordered pasta with pesto, green beans, and patate (potatoes). $20.

I was told once, by somebody, that a true serving of pasta is one-half cup. I was also told by this someone that American restaurants typically serve pasta in two-cup quantities. (Just another example of American gastronomic excess.) Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you--I almost found myself wishing I'd ordered the primo and the secondi whatever, cost be darned, just like the menus always intimate I should. On my plate, my little pesto pile was very much like elf food.

It was such a small pile of green, on such a big plate of white, that I wanted to laugh. In fact, I did laugh. I laughed between each of my ten bites, until I scraped the plate clean of sauce, ate the basil garnish, and cried.

Afterword: But you know what? Afterwards, I wasn't particularly hungry. Turns out maybe one-half cup of hand-rolled, homemade pasta is a serving. Dieticians, you win.

*william corrected me: hulu.com no longer requires registration, which maybe means it's no longer beta, which maybe means that while it's both more user-friendly, it's also more mainstream and is quickly becoming both (a) (revenue for) the man and (b) closer to jumping the coolness shark. That being said, I've recently watched more than 30 hours of hulu, and I was supremely grateful. Note: If you are watching a show on hulu and you are being limitedly interrupted by the new commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups--you've scored. They're all music and printed text that is, all things considered, comparatively witty. No muting required.

"What have you been doing since graduation?"

2008-05-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

I've been blog-quiet of late. I will admit that I haven't even been particularly busy.

It's true that graduation weekend was (happily, happily) jam-packed. My family came for the Great Weekend, during which we lunched at Melville, hiked the Dish, surfed in Santa Cruz, ate at Pluto's, shopped at the Milk Pail, prepped for my graduation barbecue (which included, among other things, the preparing of six homemade sauces, three kinds of buns, four kinds of grilled "meats," eight kinds of cheese, more than 2o sundry toppings, and I'd guess more than fifteen pounds of hand-made sweet potato fries), served my graduation barbecue (to more than 70 people--thanks to all who came), mingled at the law school, chatted, attended my graduation (which was blessedly short), toured Escondido Village and our old haunts (we even took a picture of us kids lined up in front of the bush we always used as family photo backdrops during our California years), attended church at the First Ward, dinnered with the Pearsons, opened Peter's mission call, reclined at my favorite park, and ran (literally ran) to get Rick's classic ice cream. On a sunny Monday afternoon, we stood in the Palo Alto half-shade, red-faced and sweaty, licking ice cream on cones and being glad we'd run and glad we didn't have to run home. And then the family was gone, and I was left without family, without school, without obligations to my name.

So I watched TV.

Over the course of four or five days, I caught up on The Office, 30 Rock, House, Top Chef, one episode of Hell's Kitchen (one episode was enough for me), and, finally and engrossingly, Friday Night Lights. And I watched Ironman (pretty fun) and Spellbound (a long-time favorite). Sunday came, I repented from my TV watching, and I determined to live this week anew.

I've stayed home mostly. It's strawberry season here (is it strawberry season everywhere?), and they're sold red and fat and freckled by Hispanic men and white women who stand under tents and on street corners. I eat the strawberries greedily, whole pints at a time. I think the acid is starting to burn my mouth. Still, still, it's 10:19 pm, I've eaten a bowl of Reese's Puffs cereal and I'm one cut strawberry into making a bowl of strawberries I'll cover with milk and eat while I listen again and again to Jose Gonzalez's "Heartbeats" on repeat.*

Yesterday I spent prepping for the 22nd birthday of one of the best women I've ever known, and before I showered at night, I was covered in fingerpaints and glitter; I had permanent marker streaks on my hands and one red birthmark-like star on my right elbow, the imprint of an unthinking lean onto the pants I was decorating for Jane; and following the traditional and celebratory cake-throwing at her birthday dinner, I found cake in my hair and in my ears. I showered at 9:00 pm and washed the glitter, the cake, and the paint down our bathtub drain (the permanent marker star stayed behind) and then I watched Cold Comfort Farm.

That's my story. Everyone's been asking, "What have you been doing since graduation?" And this, this is my answer. I've done some dishes, some laundry, some errands. I've run a few times and watched a few movies. I've eaten a lot of strawberries, celebrated a woman I love, hung out with people I admire, and slept in.

A good living this. A great living.

Come next week, I start studying for the bar.

*I've embedded "Heartbeats" on the page for your listening pleasure. Good goo, it's a beautiful song. Feel free to listen to it on repeat as you read this post. That's how I wrote it.

Another Red-Letter Weekend Moment

2008-05-05T16:12:00.001-07:00

What are the chances that when Peter's mission call came, 9 of the family would be in the same place? (And that I, the Californian, would be one of those 9?)

Japan Tokyo Mission--Peter is the good stuff that's coming.

(My newest favorite part of this picture? That Reija's tambourine makes a cameo appearance.)

One Highlight from My Weekend

2008-05-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

Consider:

From Paradise, Returned

2008-04-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

Appropriately, I finished reading East of Eden, John Steinbeck's pseudo retelling of the Adam & Eve/Cain & Abel story, early, early this morning sometime, as my Delta flight sped 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, carrying me from Hawaii--land o' pineapple soft serve and sand like cornmeal--to northern California, Steinbeck's erstwhile home and the low-hilled setting for this book.

Man, it was appropriate on multiple levels.

And while I'm gearing up for the Great Weekend (in which my parents and seven of my eight siblings come to celebrate with me as I graduate from el school of law) and, consequently, may or may not be around to make satisfyingly updated posts on this blog--even to tell you the details of my fun and lovely trip to Hawaii--I did want to take a moment right now to say this: Steinbeck might be genius.

[I'm searching for this great quote in East of Eden about Americans as being both terribly courageous and terribly fearful simultaneously, among other things. Anyone know which one I'm talking about or where it is?]

Hello, world.

2008-04-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

I am done with law school.

Note: But law school is not yet done with me. I officially graduate on May 4 and will participate in all sorts of festivities surrounding that, including the Final Cleaning out of My Locker and the Emotional Abandonment of My Cubby. But if I do nothing else--if I do nothing else--chances are 99.999999999% that I will end up with a J.D. after my name. Who would ever, ever have guessed?

Sarah's Sacrament Meeting Talk (March 16, 2008)

2008-04-21T09:35:00.001-07:00

I gave a sacrament meeting talk on March 16. It was in all kind of a ridiculously wonderful day. The other single LDS 3L also spoke, in sort of a law-student-themed meeting (the third speaker was a non-lawyer woman). The other law student, my friend Mike, had two law student friends who said they'd come to church if he spoke, so he finally asked the bishopric if he could give a talk. They said yes (probably yes!) and invited me too, I think because they thought it would be cute.

We invited our classmates to come. About twelve(!) did. One even drove down from Berkeley (an hour or so drive) and arrived early to the 9 am meeting. It was wonderful--wonderful--to see them sitting in row after row after row, mixed in with my wardmates, grouped in pews on the right side of the chapel. I also had a beloved former (and future?) roommate from DC in town, and for some reason, the chapel was packed. It was a beautiful morning. The topic was the Good Samaritan.

Turns out the Second Ward has taken to recording sacrament meeting talks. Yesterday, I was emailed a copy of mine. The sound is a often fuzzy and a little edgy, but I'm almost entirely comprehensible. I hope you enjoy it. (Note: The talk begins with a reference to the squirrel story, which, awesomely, I posted a few weeks. It's a great story. One worth revisiting.)

https://stanford2nd.davidrixnelson.com/files/2008-03-16/SarahOlson.mp3

A dating theory.

2008-04-18T14:15:00.001-07:00

This is my newest dating theory. I'm going public with it. (Remember, it's just a theory, meaning (a) it's not even "true," necessarily, and (b) even if is true as a general principle, as a rule, there will be exceptions.)

Relationships may begin because two people like each other's best behaviors, but relationships end because either one or both people do not like each other's worst behaviors.

Thoughts?

Oh man, so cute.

2008-04-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last year, I got my dream calling*: sacrament meeting program maker. Every other week, I make my ward's sacrament meeting program.

Over the course of the last six months or so, I've tried to tone down both (a) the amount of time I spend making the program (I'm not really a perfectionist--most of you know this--except for when it comes to text and graphic design, turns out) and (b) the edginess of my designs (I have often ignored left-to-right sort of reading styles and once put a picture of the bishop's face next to his name in the program--so great). I worried that my programs were distracting from the real purpose of sacrament meeting (renewing our sacred covenants with God, for one) and were garnering undue attention (kind of the way my father has worried that a pink tie my sister gave him for Easter earns him more compliments than he's comfortable with). And, too, I began to feel heaven try to tell me that "it's about the people, not the programs." Which is true and makes me laugh.

Knowing all of that, I did want to share the program I made for this last Sunday because, I have to say, it was so, so cute.

Rather than using a full sheet folded in half, I used quarter sheets and folded those in half. Oh MAN. So cute.

Note: Usually I avoid using the traditional sacrament meeting program template for my programs, but in honor of the particularly diminutive nature of this week's program, I decided to go straight-up traditional. I even put a picture of the Savior on the cover, which admittedly I should do more often. (I realized that I've put more pictures on the program of nature--and some shamelessly ripped off pictures by Ansel Adams--than I have of religious scenes, perhaps leading investigators to wonder if we are, in fact, pagan. Note: We are not.)

And, of course, a story: Saturday night, I was in the law library making this program, and when I was done, I was so excited about it--so, so excited about it--I turned to the law student in the carrel next to me. I don't know him well--he's a 1L--but I said to him, "Can I tell you something?" He looked at me for a moment and then, seriously, said yes. I showed him the program and, super quickly, explained lay clergy, volunteer service, callings, sacrament meeting, the tradition of sacrament meeting programs and their full-page folds, and said, "And this is the program I'm bringing to church tomorrow. Isn't it so cute?" He nodded kindly. I was pleased. And then he said, "Actually, when I looked over and first saw that, I thought, 'That is so cute.'" "Really?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "Really."

And before I left he said to me, "Tell me how it goes tomorrow!" At church, the first counselor began sacrament meeting by holding up my program and saying, "As you can see, we don't have many announcements today. And, the Second Ward is going green!" Then the bishop winked at me from the stand.

On Monday I saw my friendly 1L and told him that the program had gone well. In fact, I said, "It went over huge."

*In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, each full congregation is called a "ward." Since we don't have any professional clergy or paid church workers, all of the jobs to serve the congregation are done by members in the congregation as volunteer work. We don't volunteer, lobby, or nominate ourselves for these positions; rather we are asked by the congregation leaders to do particular jobs, usually for a few years at a time. An assigned volunteer job issued in this manner is called a "calling." Right now I have two callings (having more than one calling is not unusual): I make the sacrament meeting program (the paper program handed out to parishioners at each Sunday's church service) and I teach a doctrinal lesson once a month to the women in my ward, which I will do this Sunday, if you're reading this and want to come.