Reflections

One of the most satisfying aspects of my job is the interaction I have with the students. 

This year, the kids suddenly saw me. They didn't see me very clearly last year--as if I was constantly under a cloak of invisibility even when I was attempting to interact with them--but this year I am suddenly visible to them, and I've made a huge effort to learn their names (as I have almost 700 names to put to faces, I'm still working on that). I have a whole little crowd of students who come and talk to me every day, a few of whom have used me as a bit of a sounding board/therapist on gospel topics or about life situations. I really enjoy their bright smiles and personalities, and I very much value the trust they have placed in me as an adult to whom they can share their thoughts and worries (though I always encourage them to talk to their parents as well). 

Obviously, when dealing with the students, I and the faculty are extremely careful to keep everything above-board. No teacher is ever left alone in the building with a student or students, and office doors are usually kept open; if a student needs some privacy during a discussion, the office doors all have windows that are kept clear and uncovered. Some of the students rely on the teachers as trusted counselors as they navigate depression and anxiety, questions or concerns about Church doctrine and policies, family dysfunction, and general teenage angst. Some of them just love chatting with their favorite teachers about anything and everything, and each of the faculty members is so good at the easy camaraderie that makes teens feel like they have a friend. Laughter is one of the most common sounds that I hear in the building's hallways and drifting out from offices.

A kid told me the other day that he had been told by an older sibling that one of the teachers, Skyler, has a fan page on Instagram. That didn't surprise me. Skyler is a dynamic teacher and very popular with the students. He is also good-looking and looks younger than he is (which is not even 30 yet), and all this causes some quiet swooning amongst the female students from time to time. Of course I wanted to see that page so I could tease Skyler about it, so I resurrected my Instagram account that I haven't used since my content writing days years ago, when I sometimes needed Instagram to do research, and looked for it. Alas, I couldn't find the one the student was talking about (it's probably since been taken down), but I did find a page dedicated to our seminary that some past student had used to create his own memes with seminary and church themes. They are innocent, clean memes, and a few of them made me laugh. 

(For the record, Skyler, while aware of his occasional effect on the girl students, is entirely pragmatic about it, his head unturned and his soul incorruptible. His wife is a knockout anyway. She was in the building a couple weeks ago and I looked right past her while I bustled into my office to finish a task. It wasn't until she came up to my window that I suddenly realized who she was. "Oh, hi!" I exclaimed in surprise. "I thought you were a student!" According to Skyler, that made her day.)

Just as senior students are graduating and leaving high school and the seminary, the members of my faculty will be changing come next school year. Skyler has decided to pursue an MBA (which will be in addition to his current Masters degree and his PhD, for which he is finishing his thesis) and leave the religious education career behind. He's moving his gorgeous wife and their adorable kids to another state so he can attend school and will, by my prediction, become as wildly successful in business as he is as a religious educator--and far more wealthy. Kim, who mistakenly thinks I'm hilarious, might be offered a regional position working with the adaptive/special needs aspect of Church religious education. Ryan will be retiring in the next few years, though I think he does plan to stay at our seminary until then. Griff seems to have an itch to take a coordinator position somewhere else in the country. Tanner seems content to stay put, thank goodness. 

Changes are also coming in the Seminaries & Institutes Department of the Church, so I think I will be seeing a lot more of the things people thought were pretty permanent in this industry become more fluid. It will be interesting. But the students will always be the number one priority.

Say Hello to My New Grandson!

He's here!

Dear reader, I present another most precious treasure in my life: my perfect grandson Nicholas.

 Is he not a most adorable, sweet little guy? He clocked in at a little over eight pounds and at nineteen inches long, which is very respectable. My daughter, Sian, who had never carried a baby to term before, was thrilled that everything went smoothly with Nick's delivery. The only minor complication Nicholas suffered was a slightly elevated bilirubin count, and after we kept him wrapped in an ultraviolet light blanket (that's a thing!) for a day and he started chugging down on milk and getting his digestive tract working, he was just fine. 

I stayed the night at Sian's and Nathan's house the night before Sian was scheduled for the C-section just so I didn't have to make the long drive to their house in the dark of the wee hours of the morning. The hospital didn't allow any visitors except for Nathan, so my three-year-old grandson, Tyler, and I hung out together for a few days. We had a great time. He's such a great kid, and I loved snuggling with him when he wasn't bouncing around like toddlers do. I bought some wooden beads, paint, and plastic cord our first day hanging out together. Tyler helped me paint the beads (though he enjoyed "accidentally" painting my fingers more), and then I tied a knot in the cord and showed him how to string the beads, which he called "plugging it in" every time he managed to string the cord through the hole in the bead. He spent two hours playing with those that first day.

Tyler would not pose nicely for a picture with his brother, but I love his silly little self.

Tyler didn't really grasp the concept of having a little brother at first, but he welcomed the addition of a tiny baby into the household with remarkable aplomb. There were a few near-misses as Tyler is still getting used to being careful around a fragile baby, but no damage has been done. What made my heart melt was when Tyler, sitting happily wedged in between his parents, whom he had missed a great deal, said, "Now we're four buddies, not three buddies!" If you don't believe a three-year-old can say something like that, keep in mind that this kid can already read thanks to his mother's patient teaching. The first night I was there, he and I counted to 150 (I was merely trying to help him relax and get sleepy because it was bedtime, but he just kept counting). He's a very, very intelligent child, but he also has a gentle and tender heart. I love it when I say, "How are you, Tyler?" and he responds, "I'm happy!" while wearing a big smile.

I stayed with my loves for a week and tried to ease their transition from one child to two as much as possible, though I don't think the shock wears off for a few weeks at least. They're tired, and Sian is recovering from a C-section, but they'll survive. Nathan's mother is coming to stay with them for a couple weeks, as well, and I'm sure they'll be very grateful for her help, as well. She's a lovely woman.

To be able to hold such a dear little infant boy for hours on end was a delight, and I'll get to do it again when I take Husband down to meet his new grandson this weekend. Husband bought a bunch of new books for Tyler, as well--books our kids loved when they were little--so it will be double the fun. 

How am I? I'm happy.

Bumblebee K-Pop Fries Dupe

 I was down with a bad cold for five days--fever on Day 3, but it was a small one and only lasted a day--and my worst symptoms were a seriously stuffy head and lots of coughing and sneezing. I sound like a croaky toad when I talk, as well. I could sing bass in the choir right now if I could sing at all. I'm still a little stuffy and I have a lingering cough, but I could tell when I turned the corner and started feeling my energy return.

I was back to work today after missing all of last week. If there were moments that I worried that my faculty would figure out they could do just fine without me and I'd be out of a job, those worries were laid to rest as soon as I walked in the door this morning. Each of the faculty members immediately told me how much they'd missed me and how relieved they were that I was back to take care of the things that I take care of. I spent the day attempting to unravel the chaos that had ensued while I wasn't there, and I'm happy to report that I've made serious inroads into restoring order and sense.

Husband has now succumbed to The Crud (is it Omicron? a flu? a cold? Who cares? Neither of us were required to get tested, and since getting tested just opens up a can of worms, we both decided to just stay home until we got better) and is on Day 3. He is also stuffy-headed and coughing, but no fever so far. Little Gary got sick when I did, and he had quite a fever, but he bounced back far more quickly than I did and now has only the smallest of lingering coughs.

To make Husband happy, I made my version of Bumblebee's K-Pop fries last night. 

Bumblebee is a Korean-American fusion fast food restaurant. It was started in Utah, and I believe it still only has locations in Utah (only three locations, I think), but it's seriously yummy. Our favorite dish is the K-Pop fries, which are seasoned fries smothered in bulgogi beef shreds, cheese, and sliced green onions and then covered in fry sauce (a Utah invention that, once you've had it, means you can never go back to mere ketchup) and eel sauce. 

My Version of Bumblebee K-Pop Fries:

Yield: 4 servings

2 pounds ground beef or thinly sliced beef steak

1 bag frozen seasoned french fries 

2 or 3 green onions, green parts sliced (save white parts for another use)

Shredded cheddar cheese

Fry sauce (homemade recipe below, or buy a commercial fry sauce such as Some Dude's Fry Sauce or Heinz's Mayochup Saucy Sauce)

Eel sauce (optional. You can find this at Asian grocery stores. It doesn't actually have any eels in it.)

Bulgogi marinade:

1/2 cup soy sauce

4 Tbsp brown sugar

4 tsp sesame oil

6 cloves garlic, minced 

2 tsp powdered ginger

1/2 - 1 tsp red pepper flakes, depending on how spicy you like it

1. If using ground beef, brown beef in a skillet until no longer pink. Drain fat. While the beef is cooking, mix the marinade ingredients in a separate bowl and pour over the beef when it is done, mixing it well into the beef. Lower heat to med-low and allow beef mixture to simmer while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Skip to Step 3.

2. If using sliced steak, marinate the beef in the bulgogi marinade for at least an hour, though overnight is better. Brown beef on the stove or under the broiler, slice into bite-sized pieces, and keep warm until ready to serve.

3. Cook frozen seasoned fries according to package directions. When fries are done, divide them among four plates. Spread 1/2 cup or so of the meat over each mound of fries, top with shredded cheese, sprinkle with green onions, and then squirt fry sauce and eel sauce generously over the top. Serve piping hot (if you are using oven-safe plates, you can slide them under the broiler for a minute to melt the cheese).

Basic Fry Sauce

1 cup mayonnaise

1 cup ketchup

2 Tbsp pickle brine from the pickle jar (or more, to taste, and to get a squirtable consistency)

Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and then spoon into a squirt bottle. Generously squirt the fry sauce over the fries in a criss-cross fashion, first going horizontally and then vertically. 

I Suddenly Feel Old

 I work with guys, a couple of them young enough to be my sons. This fact was once again brought to my attention last week.

After the students had mostly left the building at the end of the day on Thursday, Skyler was in my office telling me a story from his life. Tanner came in, grabbed my Sharpie marker, and said, "Dude, if you let me throw this at your back as hard as I can, I'll let you do it to me," and both of them immediately ran out of my office into the hall. I heard the thwack of Sharpie against dress shirt and flesh, a laughing exclamation of pain, and then the same thing again. Then I heard them decide to repeat the experiment.

Thwack. Laughter. Thwack. Laughter.

In explanation, Tanner stated that he just needed to wake up so he could focus on the work he had to do for the next few hours. I guess that's one way to shake off the sleepies, though it's not an idea that would have occurred to me--but I am not a guy in my mid-to-late-twenties.

 

We Survived Christmas

 We had an eventful Christmas, and I'm not even listing all the things that happened. I'm sure they'll come up later, as some of the events are having long-lasting consequences.

For one thing, Elannah came home early from her mission the Monday before Christmas. It was the right thing for her, as she had been struggling terribly with depression. She learned so much and was even able to teach and baptize a family in the short time she was in Nashville, but her mental health was going south so fast that I was getting really worried. Long story short (and there's quite a bit to that story), she made the decision to come home, and she made the right decision. I selfishly love having her home again, and now she's being a missionary to her sister, Sophia, and brother, Joseph. Her mental health has greatly improved.

And no, if you were wondering, there are no wedding bells ringing yet. As I keep telling her when she worries about not yet being ready to get married while her boyfriend is, she's only twenty! Don't take the plunge until you're sure, girl, and you've got plenty of time!

Another thing that happened was the prolonged attempt by my in-laws to get home to Indiana. It took them three days because of the constant flight delays and cancellations, and I will spare you all the exhausting, horrible details, but they finally made it home. Their dogs and cats were ecstatic. I'm sure the neighbor who had been taking care of the animals was also relieved, though she has been an angel to care for them for so long.

MIL has suffered through so many ups and downs with this cancer. She received good news that her live cancer cell count has dropped very significantly, so there's a great deal of hope. She also survived the long, horrible trip home, and that, I think, will give her more faith in her inner strength, though she has no intentions of traveling for a very long time.

We didn't get together to celebrate Christmas as a family until Boxing Day (Dec. 26th), but we had a lot of fun together. I made the traditional British roast dinner for Husband's sake, my mother brought the red jello salad that has been a staple holiday food since I was a baby, the kids all played games together and laughed loudly, and I got to hug my grandson frequently. 

Sian has now beaten her pregnancy record by remaining pregnant this long. Tyler came very early because of severe preeclampsia, and she suffered a couple miscarriages before this pregnancy, but she's had no problems with this pregnancy, and the baby is growing perfectly. She's exhausted and feels like a cow right now, but we are all very grateful for an uneventful pregnancy. I get to meet my new grandson in February, all going well.

Husband bought a rain shower shower head with his Christmas money. I love it. I live in the shower now.

I'm keeping this rather brief because I'm exhausted and want to go to sleep. I've started eating low carb/high fat again, and I'm still suffering a little of the "keto flu," though that has improved dramatically in the last twenty-four hours. I'm six pounds down in two days, though that is all water weight. We'll see how I need to adjust things as I go on. Be patient: I'm sure I'll bore you with details in the very near future.

Okay. I'm showered, blissfully tired, and going to bed now. Good night.

Showing Off Just a Little

 I could be really stressed right now, but I'm not. For some reason, I have developed the ability to look at all my responsibilities, break them down into small chunks of action, tick them off one by one, and move forward on a fairly even emotional keel. 

This welcome zen mentality might be attributable to the fact that my hormones are a little more stabilized. After a couple weeks, the evening primrose oil capsules I started taking knocked out all of the hot flashes entirely; where I was once suffering between fifteen and twenty intense hot flashes in a twenty-four hour period, I now cannot remember the last time I had one. I can once more enjoy hotter-than-the-surface-of-the-sun showers, I'm not cycling between pulling on and tossing off the blankets all night, and I haven't needed to whip out my little battery-operated portable fan to cool my sweating face in a very long time. While I wasn't having uncontrollable mood swings before (thank goodness I have at least been spared that peri-menopausal indignity!), I was almost always quietly floundering under a certain sense of doom and overwhelm. To now feel like I have the ability to handle just about anything thrown at me feels really, really good. It wasn't until I realized how calm I feel now that I realized how internally frantic I had felt only just recently.

At work, things are lovely--but they always have been. I love my job and the people I work with, but perhaps my newfound peace has helped me be more myself. I'm a little looser, a little more playful, a little less formal. I have stopped worrying about their perceptions of me while I continue to treat them with kindness and sisterly familiarity. I feel like I've finally stepped fully into the bond that the faculty share. Something has gelled in that arena that wasn't gelled before, even if we all got along just fine since the beginning. I can make them laugh now, and I am only ever funny when I am completely comfortable in my environment. I make Kim laugh so hard that he tells me I should be a standup comedian. Don't worry, I know my limits, and making a sociable, fun-loving guy from my generation laugh doesn't mean I'm the next Shayne Smith. It's just nice to feel so comfortable. I've even made the Millenials with their Millenial brand of humor, Skyler and Tanner, laugh a few times, which is a true accomplishment. 

The students are also more comfortable with me. Many of them make a special effort to come and speak to me or just say hello or good-bye. Some of them ask me for advice and actually listen to me. 

But now I'm just showing off, as my husband says.

Work is one thing. My duties at work are always neatly resolved, and I don't live with any of my co-workers or the students, which would make things more complicated. Work is tidy. Work is solvable. Everything else in life, however, isn't always neatly resolved and tucked away in a binder or file.

For example, my mother-in-law gets her second chemo treatment on Monday. She was suffering from unrelieved agonizing pain and extreme nausea, which I think even the strongest person would find demoralizing. She was in so much agony that she was ready to be done with it all and was on the verge of calling in end-of-life hospice care just to get the strongest pain relief possible, consequences be damned. Fortunately, her doctor was willing to try something experimental and injected cortisone into the schwannoma that has been growing in her spinal nerve sheath. 

A schwannoma is a benign tumor that grows in nerve sheaths, and the pain this tumor created earlier this year was what originally spurred MIL to keep going to doctors until they found and diagnosed her with the schannoma and then the metastasizing ovarian cancer, which, without the pain she was experiencing, might have been overlooked entirely until it was too late. The cortisone shots stopped the pain, hallelujah! MIL is still feeling extremely nauseated, and there is nothing they have found that can stop that, and she is also depressed and tired, but she isn't as fatalistic as she was before. Hopefully, the chemo shrinks the tumors, which will then be removed in surgery, followed by a few more rounds of chemo to finish off the smaller tumors. 

MIL and FIL have airplane tickets back home to Indiana on December 30, after which she will continue with treatment in the comfort of her own home because her health insurance will then be in Indiana. She will be so happy to see her dogs and cats again.

In other messy news, my parents, both fully vaccinated, are currently in quarantine because they tested positive for Covid. Fortunately, they haven't been very ill even though they are in their 70s. They haven't felt well, and they're very tired, but they haven't been dangerously sick, for which I am very grateful. 

Happy news: Sian is into her third trimester of pregnancy with my new little GRANDSON! Did I mention that she's pregnant with a boy? She's tired and slightly nauseated, but the baby is growing perfectly and Sian has had no symptoms of preeclampsia. We all hope that she will be able to take this little guy home with her from the hospital with no NICU stays. 

Speaking of preemies, my grandson, Tyler, is three and amazing. Of course he is! He's his mamma's and daddy's boy, and they are both brilliant. Tyler is articulate, kind, has a wonderful imagination, and knows all of his letters--both uppercase and lowercase. Most importantly of all, he loves his Nanna and always runs to give me hugs when I see him. 

Sian's husband, Nathan, is graduating with his bachelors in Computer Science next week and will begin his new job at Goldman Sachs right after graduation. Sian and Nathan moved out of the married student housing at the university and found a wonderful three-bedroom town home a little closer to The Big City. Sian is enjoying having a real kitchen (counter space! cupboards! a pantry!) and Tyler is enjoying having his own room with a big boy bed and playing in the little yard. Nathan is taking very good care of his pregnant wife while studying for his finals next week.

I'm not ignoring my other children or the long list of crazy stuff that has happened recently, but this post is long enough. My other children are doing well, however, and are having their own little successes in life. I will talk more of them next time.

For now, this cool cat is signing out.

Mortality

 As a commenter on a YouTube video put it, "It's starting to get a little weird. For the first time in history, a medicine's ineffectiveness is being blamed on those who refuse to take it."

Things are weird. But the weirdness of things is not what I want to say today. Today I want to talk about my mother-in-law.

As you know, my in-laws recently moved from just down the street from us here in our burg all the way to Indiana. While it was an excellent financial move for them, that wasn't why they did it. They picked up and moved from a place they loved because they both one day felt very strongly that the Lord was telling them to do so. The urgency was surprising, and they didn't know why they had to move, and the entire move was horrendous because it was done in such a short span of time with so much uncertainty. In the end, however, everything worked out, and they have a lovely home in Indiana near two of their other sons and their families. The fact that it was so good for them financially was interesting and welcome, but it wasn't the reason they moved.

A few weeks ago, MIL and FIL flew back to Utah (because their health insurance is still here) to go to some follow-up medical appointments for MIL, who had been experiencing a great deal of pain in her abdomen, a pain for which the doctors had not yet been able to diagnose the reason. A scan showed some masses in her abdominal cavity, but she ended up in the ER twice because of the agony she was enduring before she was finally diagnosed with cancer--presumably ovarian. 

Long story short, surgery revealed two massive tumors that, because of the amount of blood supplying them, were too dangerous to be removed. Instead, she started chemo last Monday in the hopes of shrinking the tumors and their blood supply so they could be safely removed. The pain has been excruciating and relentless, however, and MIL ended up in the ER again last night because of it. After another scan was taken, it appears that the two large tumors (unshrunken from chemo) have been joined by almost numberless new little tumors everywhere. The tumors--especially the large ones--are causing the pain. She's absolutely riddled with cancer. Even if the chemo shrinks the large tumors so they can be removed, the smaller tumors will grow and cause more pain in the near future.

MIL and FIL are not staying with us. One of my brothers-in-law's mother-in-law offered her empty, fully furnished four-bedroom ranch-style home (located near Salt Lake City and the cancer hospitals) for them to live in so they could isolate after chemo and so MIL didn't have to negotiate the stairs at our house. It's just one of the Lord's many tender mercies during this time, as that house was also available for my four BILs and one SIL, who all flew in from Indiana and England to be with their parents at this time. While they stayed for a couple weeks and spent every day with their mother at the hospital, they all finally had to go home and take care of their own families.

Husband just got off the phone with his mother, and it was a hard conversation. MIL wants to go. She is in so much pain, with only more pain to look forward to. The chemo treatments are three weeks apart, and she has two more to go before the surgery is scheduled for the two largest tumors to be removed. That's another eight weeks of this agony (two more weeks before the next chemo infusion, and three more weeks each before and after the third infusion). She is certain she can't last that long in such excruciating pain, and if she doesn't want to stay, I don't think she will live much longer, which may be the biggest blessing for her. 

There have been many sweet experiences amongst the hardships of this. These things just emphasize to me that the Lord is aware and involved in everything that happens in our lives, if we want Him to be, even if He does not always remove the trials. If we want Him with us, He will be. He holds us in His hands as we go through our trials. He gives us the strength to get through so we can learn everything that I firmly believed we wanted to learn in mortality. During a blessing that one of my brothers-in-law gave MIL, she learned that her beloved father is near her now.

MIL is in the Lord's hands. It would be a mercy if she could go quickly, if that's what is meant to be. Her children are talking to each other on Zoom and have agreed that they will support their mother in whatever she wants to do. One of my brothers-in-law is a doctor in Indiana, and he has been MIL's advocate this whole time. He's furious that MIL was allowed to leave the ER this last time with the level of pain that she is suffering and is determined to find out how the ball was dropped on her pain management.

More to come. Sigh. Mortality isn't easy. Things are weird.