I Have a Little Too Much Time on My Hands at the Moment

 In a delightful turn of events, my 2 1/2-year-old grandson, Tyler, has learned how to send me Marco Polo video messages without his mother helping him. Sometimes, his mother isn't even aware that he's sending them. Today I got one such message, and I'm still giggling about it. He couldn't figure out how to turn the camera to face him, so I got a very up-close and personal look at his chubby little leg as he sat on the couch, but I heard him say over and over in his chirpy little voice, "Hi, Nanna! Hi! Hi, Nanna!" Then he must have realized his Mommy was coming back because he said, "Oh!" and the video ended. 

I immediately sent him a return video and gave him high-fives and fist bumps, which he loves. Sian says he often asks to re-watch videos from me. Could I be more in love with that adorable, precocious, mischievous baby? 

In an undelightful turn of events, my boss informed me that he had been mistaken in telling me I only had to wait four days after the last of Husband's symptoms before getting tested and returning to work. It's actually seven days, which means I can't go back until next week. Meanwhile, Husband, who actually had Covid, started back to work yesterday. I still don't have any symptoms (and neither has anyone else), and both Elannah and Joseph have already tested negative and can return to work. 

I am keeping myself busy by doing as much of my administrative assistant duties as I can from home. In my quiet moments, I do some editing and writing for Marco's website. I'm slowly getting my brain back into the content writing mode, remembering what I need to do for SEO and the algorithms. Marco is very good at cranking out content on a daily basis, and I'm good at editing. Sometimes I overthink the writing part, so when I'm mentally bogged down, I switch it up and do some editing. Marco can get content out quickly--and I'm very impressed with his ability to write so well in a non-native language (his native language is Italian)--but I'm still better at English grammar and sentence structure, so my editing powers come in handy at making the content more coherent and flowing. He's happy with my work, so we're good. I don't want to step on his toes.

I found some old photos. 

A webcam image from around 2010, when I first started my foray into content/website writing for a now defunct company. I had to talk to clients on the phone to understand exactly what information they wanted on their website pages--thus the headset. Gosh, I look young!

Also circa 2010-2011: Little Gary and his mama. Even though he is currently 13, Little Gary is still a very affectionate son. 

And here's a recent video of Tyler. Elannah had been delighting him by playing peek-a-boo and startling him, which he loves. After she was done, Little Gary kept up the game, but by that point, Tyler was only doing the courtesy laughs even though he was trying his best to sound very sincere. Sian told us that when Tyler laughs, he often shouts, "Nanna and Grampy!" so it sounds like he's contributing to the conversation. Of course, I'm delighted with that.

The Joy of Non-Professional Writing

 Husband is quickly recovering now. He's still fatigued, but all the flu symptoms have gone. None of the rest of us have had any symptoms thus far.

I'm not sure when I'll get to go back to work. My company is operating on a more stringent Covid protocol than the CDC's, so I may not be allowed back for at least another week, which is longer than Husband will have had to quarantine, and he's the one who actually had Covid! That's irritating, but at least they'll let me work from home so I can get some pay. Husband can go back to work on Tuesday.

I haven't accomplished much of anything during this enforced time off. I'm very disappointed in myself for that. I mean, there's always housecleaning and cooking of meals, but that's pretty mundane not very exciting. Why haven't I written a book yet? It's not like I haven't had the time! I've certainly had the time to watch way too many Saturday Night Live sketches on YouTube. I have a million things I need to do--especially as the Relief Society president--and all of them are hard and none of them are things I am anxious to do, so they feel overwhelming. Sometimes, you need to have a little success with something that's low-stakes in order to pump yourself up to do the harder stuff.

My friend, Marco, came to my rescue. I've known him since my mission to England in the early 1990s, where we both served in the same area and became good friends. He's an enterprising guy, and he has a lot of irons in the fire with his regular day job at a well-known software company, an adjunct professor of business at his local university (he does that for fun and not for the pay, which is terrible), and as the creator of some websites that he's been operating for a few years now, his most popular one being focused on his home town in Italy. 

Marco's most recent website contains little blurbs of about 200 or so words about why we do the things we do or use the things we use. For instance, why do we shake hands as a greeting? When did forks become popular? From which country and/or tradition did knights originate? You know, the kind of interesting little facts you can use to win a trivia game or pull out at a party to start a conversation or answer the unending questions from a curious child. 

Marco has asked me to help him with this website--both as an editor for his work and as a writer of some of the blurbs. It's good to get back to some writing and editing. It stretches my brain. I sometimes help the guys at work edit their school papers (they're all either getting their doctorates or obtaining certifications that will increase their pay), but I'm not missing the pressure and stress of professional content writing. It's fun to do something that isn't high pressure writing. While Marco has offered to let me keep any revenue generated by blurbs that I write, we both laughed about the idea of making a living off of this website--at least in the short term. You'd have to get hundreds of thousands of visitors to generate enough to live on, and while that can happen if you find the right niche and the right content and work like crazy to market it, I'm not holding my breath. For now, it's just a fun little thing to do.

I took the dog for a walk and my brain came up with a few good ideas that Marco didn't already think of, so I better get cracking. 

Q Time

 It's after 1pm and I only recently got dressed. That's okay because 1pm in Q Time (Quarantine Time) is 9am in regular time, so I don't count myself as lazy. 

Yes, Husband tested positive. He spent a long time yesterday, after receiving the test results, trying to find out the school district's current policy on how long he needs to quarantine. It was surprisingly difficult to figure that out. Even his principal was getting the runaround for that information as people kept passing him along to someone else who might know. Turns out no one really knows what's going on, which has pretty much been the theme of the years 2020 and 2021, no?

Anyway, the answer appears to be that Husband has to quarantine for ten days from the onset of symptoms. Unfortunately, Sophia and Elannah, who also work for the school district, have to quarantine for at least ten days from the testing day--not the onset of Husband's symptoms--and have to have a negative test result to return. Husband has sick leave he can use, but the rest of us won't get paid for being in quarantine. It's all very annoying in both the financial and the social senses. There was definitely some whining going on from some people (I won't name any names) who had boyfriends/fiancés on Valentine's Day.

Husband is making a slow recovery, but he has not felt well at all. It's like a flu with a low-grade fever, aches and pains, chills, and headache. At least he hasn't lost his sense of taste or smell. I had a painful earache for a couple days, but that's the only thing that has happened to me so far (knock wood). I sprayed colloidal silver into my ear several times, and now my ear is back to normal, so I'm hoping I have escaped anything worse. I very rarely get ill despite my continued weakness for ginger and lime Diet Coke (which they are making again, hallelujah!). None of the kids has had any symptoms at all.

As a teacher, Husband could have taken the vaccine, but he and I have both chosen not to. I guess Husband will now have natural immunity. I will not go into a rant about how useless it appears taking a largely untested vaccine would be given that nothing will change on the mask-wearing and distancing fronts for the long term according to experts such as Dr. Anthony "I flip-flop on everything I've ever said about Covid" Fauci. I'm so tired of politics. I'm so very, very tired of it all. 

On the positive side, I feel very rested lately.

The Impulse to Have a Mid-Life Crisis

 Last week at work during lunch, Skyler said, "Eva, you've lived a very interesting life!" Tanner heartily agreed. I was suspicious for a moment that they were teasing me, but they were actually sincere. I know it's hard to believe, based on how me-centric this blog is, but I really don't talk about myself all that much at work, so with the stories I have told, I have accidentally but successfully curated my life to sound like a series of grand adventures. 

Well, my life has been a series of grand adventures mixed in with the daily minutiae. I grew up in the generation before the Internet, and my parents hated television and wouldn't buy one until I was in my teens, so if I was bored, I had to find a way to entertain myself. As a person without a lot of money, I had to be creative. I cultivated interests and hobbies from early childhood and usually had some exciting project or other that I was working on at any given time. I was always eager (even if I was also nervous sometimes) to see what was going to happen next and what I was going to learn and feel and do and who I would meet and learn to love along the way. I expected adventures, and so I lived a life of adventure. In some ways, I haven't changed all that much from that younger version of myself. Adventures still happen.

I do understand the impulse to have a mid-life crisis, however. Being middle-aged is somewhat like being in your eighth month of pregnancy with your third child: you feel like you've always been this way, you can't remember ever not feeling this way, and you're pretty sure you'll stay this way for the rest of your life. Everything seems so frustratingly hard to accomplish, and sometimes just having to walk makes you want to cry. Your body hurts and is doing bewildering things, everyone around you constantly needs something from you, and you're so, so tired all the time. In addition, you find yourself becoming invisible to society at large. Sometimes you catch yourself wondering if everything is just going to be hard and tedious and stressful until the day you die. It would be very natural to want to reclaim some of that starry-eyed wonder at life you had when you were younger.

I remind myself that--for this moment only--I'm a tired, overweight, middle-aged woman. I'll get older. Maybe I'll get skinnier. I can definitely use my increasing invisibility to do whatever the heck I want without caring what other people think (#lifegoals). But I have a great relationship with my children and husband and family and some beloved friends and have acquired some wisdom I didn't have when I was younger. Whatever happens, I am grateful for this particular adventure. 

Me and Sian last Christmas. I'm so proud of the woman she has become.

One adventure this week is getting Husband tested for Covid. He's been pretty sick, and, of course, you don't just have the flu or a cold anymore and just stay home until you're feeling better. No, you have to get tested, and you're only a person allowed to interact with society once again if you test negative.  I did stock up on groceries in case this happened, so we should be good if we have to finish out the 10-day quarantine. I'm going to make Indian chicken curry tonight, just for fun. 

The Field is White, All Ready to Harvest

Are you seated comfortably? Then let's begin.

I have big news:

Elannah has decided to serve a full-time mission!

Yes, she's dating a very nice young man, and yes, she is working herself into a career in elementary education (she decided that--despite her talent--a dental career is not for her), but she has made the decision to serve a mission.

It wasn't an easy decision for her. In fact, the Lord had to push her a bit, and He used me to do it. 

A couple weeks ago, we were sitting in our Sunday church meeting when I had a quiet but distinct impression that I needed to ask Elannah if she had thought about serving a mission. At the time, that was a strange question for me to ask her. I've asked her that before, and she wasn't enthusiastic about it, even though she has a strong testimony of the gospel. Her boyfriend, who is a returned missionary himself, was planning to propose in the next few months, and she was thinking she would say yes, even though she is only 19 (nearly 20). She loves her job as a preschool aide, and the district is paying her to get the education needed to become a preschool teacher. 

Yet the thought persisted.

I've learned to pay attention to those thoughts. Revelation usually doesn't come with thunder and lightning. For me, it's often a quiet thing, easy to dismiss if I'm not willing to pay attention; but these little revelations also tend to stick in my head. There's a slightly different quality about them, as if someone is whispering patiently but persistently in my ear to pay attention to this even while other thoughts race through my mind and I'm distracted by daily life. The last time something very much like this happened, the prompting I got led directly to Gabrielle meeting and marrying her amazing husband. I definitely want to be open to these inspirations and revelations as a mother.

Anyway, after the meeting, we were standing together as a family group when I blurted out the question to Elannah. There was no time for her to answer as we needed to go to the bishop's office and get Joseph and Little Gary ordained as a priest and a teacher, respectively, and I didn't bring it up again until the next day.

The next day, we were in the car together as she drove me to work, and I asked her again. I told her that I was asking her this question right now because I felt prompted to do so. She was a little upset and stressed, and the question bothered her quite a bit all day. She also talked to Husband about how it stressed her out (which he confided to me that evening). The day after that, Tuesday, in the car again, Elannah told me how stressed she was by the question because she felt like she had her life kind of worked out for the short term. I told her again that I felt prompted to ask and I didn't know why but that if the Lord was prompting me to ask her, there must be a reason. I also told her that I would pray and make sure I was truly being inspired to ask her, but I already knew the answer. As soon as I said it, I knew it was the right thing to do.

Something happened between Tuesday and Saturday last week that completely changed Elannah's mind. It's not my place to share what happened as it's not my story to tell, and it's quite sensitive or I wouldn't be so vague, but suffice to say that Elannah received a revelation that yes, she is supposed to serve a mission. Between one Sunday and the next, Elannah's entire plan for her life has radically changed. 

I give Elannah a lot of credit for how she's handled this. Once she knew what she was supposed to do, she jumped into that water with no hesitation. She's always been able to laser-focus on what she really wants, and she is not easily deterred when she is on a course and a mission. As just one example, when she was in elementary school, she constantly struggled with her lack of organization. By sixth grade, when she was 11, she was fed up with always having to play catch-up on assignments, and she wanted good grades. She told me she was going to change, and she did! By the end of her sixth grade year, she was getting her assignments in on time--often early. She got straight A's. In seventh grade, she struggled again but once more applied her stubbornness to fixing the issue, and again she organized herself and received excellent grades. This became her habit in life. In her high school career, she was able to participate on the ballroom dance team, in back-to-back theatrical productions, and in Show Choir while getting her assignments completed and keeping her grades very high. I have loved watching her grow like this. Her stubbornness and determination often manifest as positive focus and action

Now that she knows she is going to serve a mission, she has immersed herself in the study of the scriptures, which wasn't something on the top of her priority list before. She studied, but not with real conviction; now, she told me, she listens to the scriptures in the car all the time and she's thinking about the stories and the messages all day. She loves the effect this studying is having on her daily life. She feels like she's suddenly able to receive revelation like she's never been able to before, and her days just go more smoothly. She is excited to get her mission application papers filled out so she can help other people learn that they are loved by God and find peace and comfort in that knowledge.

I was telling my mother this news, and my mom reminded me that when I was pregnant with Elannah, I once told her that I had had a revelation that there were multitudes in heaven who were so excited and anxious for Elannah to come to earth, that she was so, so loved and admired, and that her mission in life would bless so many people. I had forgotten I said that, as I probably didn't write it down at the time, so I'm grateful my mother remembered me telling her. Hopefully that will be a thought that buoys Elannah up when hard times hit.  

Sophia, her older sister, is being very supportive, but she did warn, "She better not leave before my wedding!" Elannah has also been gently breaking this news to her boyfriend, but I think he is being supportive about it. At least on the outside. 

I'm proud of her. She's accepted this total change in her life with grace and aplomb (though not without some anxiety). She'll be a great missionary.