Jungle Jim's

I Am Batman!

I'd like to point out that Talmage makes no appearance in this video. And that Tyler's performance is oddly reminiscent of the Truman show. See Jim Carrey connection here.

No, David!

UEA in Roosevelt, Utah

Alright, this is pretty old (last October). I'm going through my computer's hard drive to clean things up. In the process, I stumbled upon this footage. Enjoy!

He's No He-Man, But Still a Pretty Good Superhero

This morning we had Family Home Morning. Yes, I know it's supposed to be Family Home Evening with Monday evening being the typical night, but this week I was teaching on Monday night and we forgot to do it the rest of the week. Tyler's two options on obedience are either 100% or not at all, and as we're only two weeks into a perfect family home evening year, Family Home Evening had to happen TODAY. I figure if we're only doing it to mark down 100%, we might as well subscribe to brother-in-law's theory where we could have Family Home Evening both morning and night this week, and then we could take off 3.5 months because we'd be 14 FHEs ahead.

Okay, that's overstating it a bit, because I'm very grateful Tyler has made this goal. Tyler and I have had a busy couple of years where one of us has a class (either attending or teaching) every evening and this is one area we've let slip by the wayside. So THANK YOU Husband.

Anyway, we were having Sunday morning Family Home Morning and Tyler was teaching a lesson about Samuel the Lamanite. He was teaching correct doctrine and tailoring it appropriately to a three year old (my favorite line was when he said the big guy with the bow and arrow was mad because he'd been naughty and Samuel said Christmas was coming). He got to end of the Samuel the Lamanite story when he took a second to point out how miraculous it was that Samuel wasn't getting hit by the arrows, because as you can see very clearly in Arnold Friberg's officially endorsed image of the event, two of those arrows are heading straight for Samuel! That's going to take one mighty miracle to get those arrows to veer their course.



I piped in at this point and noted that if the animated Living Scriptures had taught me anything, I knew that Samuel was protected by a powerful force field not unlike the one that surrounded the death star in Return of the Jedi. This superforce of charged energy radiated out from Samuel so that when the arrows approached him they were immediately repelled by the field and went "vroom" in another direction.

Talmage burst out laughing at this point in the conversation. So did I, because I thought I had been particularly funny. Then I realized that the point in my dialogue he had zeroed in on was the "vroom" of the arrows. He spent the next five minutes swishing his hand around the room saying "Vroom, vroom, vroom!" at which point his body would contort on itself and his nasal/belly laugh would erupt as he rolled on the floor at the imagined arrows. Tyler and I were both laughing at Tal already when he finally caught his breath, stood up, and declared, "Guys, I'm the funniest boy."

Next week we're going to reenact Ammon and the arm-tearing. Just wait for my appropriate sound effect. It's going to be a hit.

That's Not My Dinosaur

Seeking Immunity

It's Not Just My Nose That's Norwegian

Thank you to everyone for your sympathy and advice regarding the pain in the coccyx (doesn't that sound mildly vulgar?). I haven't decided whether to just gut out the last month of pregnancy or whether to be proactive about fixing it.

I have a confession to make.

Now as a warning, the confession goes against the grain of social convention and I'm pretty sure I'm going to offend some people's moral positions and personal sensibilities. I might lose friends over this.

I love winter.

I'm not just talking about fires and peppermint hot chocolate and Santa Claus and white snowdrifts, although I do love all of those things. I love crusty snow and dirty snow and slushy snow. I love when Grant Wayment announces red burn days when a single fire could cause the trapped pollution in the Salt Lake Valley to ignite, causing obedient Latter-day Saints to feel the Apocalypse is here and start consuming their food storage. (I personally will be feasting on dried red wheat and cans of corn, washing those down with stale water. I don't think that counts as obedient yet.) I love icicles that hang from the house, but I also love ice patches on the ground. In Quebec, I went tracting in negative forty degree weather (that's in Celcius AND Fahrenheit, thank you very much) and I loved the icicles that formed on my eyelashes. I love days when I don't see the sun. I love muggy gray skies.

I used to think this had to do with winter sports. I think it's time to be honest with myself. The idea of skiing makes me groan about gathering up that much equipment. Besides, I heard Tyler say this week (and I quote) "I'm really just too good for the sport." I've been sledding once this winter and I manned the camera instead of sitting on the sled and just the idea of the aforementioned tailbone pain bumping down a hill makes me wince. I've never been cross-country skiing or snow shoeing, and while I'd like to think of myself as a winter hiker, I go only a handful of times a year, with most of those ventures remaining on the plowed portion of Millcreek Canyon.

No, I've decided it has more to do with the sweaters. Maybe it's the Norwegian in me, who really likes practical $600 sweaters. Or maybe it's because I relish the fact that in the winter you can always put on another sweater where in summer there's only so much you can take off. But something has led me to keep all 27 sweaters I own in my closet when I can only fit two or three of them over my belly right now.

Which brings me to my point. Does anyone have any sweaters, sized extra large, that I could borrow right now? And do you think Dale of Norway has a maternity line?

A Question for the Internet at Large

Tailbone pain? Excruciating? Is this another normal thing of pregnancy that I missed the first time around that is killing me the second time?

Really, It's Just a Change in Date

I know it's probably irresponsible to post a New Year's post when I still have all sorts of Christmas stuff to post about, but it seems like you defeat the purpose of New Year's Resolutions if you make them the third week of January. They are also personal, but something about sharing them on the Internet seems to be a good way of making sure you do them. At least I'm going to try.

The small octopus growing in my tummy (Tyler's tried to get Talmage to say uterus, but so far I'm sticking with tummy) will be here soon, and if I remember the bleary haze of the first weeks of motherhood accurately, I'm pretty sure I will accomplish very little besides milking my son. So here are my goals for this upcoming phase of my life:

1. Milk my son.
2. Not to descend into the bottomless depths of daytime TV. My first year of nursing Talmage I knew what TV show was the best to watch at each half hour interval of the day (the ENTIRE 24 hours of the day) and by the best, I mean that I watched more Judge Judy than anyone should watch in a lifetime. There is no more depressing picture of motherhood than listening to a husband berate his sixth wife who is currently having an affair with a man 20 years her junior, all while nursing a baby. That first year cured me of television in general, and the only show I currently watch is "The Office." My goal is to keep it that way.
3. To continue getting out everyday. Pretty much every mother I've ever talked to has told me that's near impossible with two kids, but this has been the secret to my sanity as a mother. I plan to continue enjoying being a mother and I'm going to do everything I can to take Talmage and the new one to as many places as just Talmage and I go. Which means you can expect new fun-filled information about the zoo.

If I remember my post-partum body from last time, I think raw hamburger would really be the most apt description. It was just as malleable as well. Now a lot of the mommy body I've decided to just love and accept, but I think for my own health I need at least one physically oriented goal:

4. Run the Provo Half-Marathon in August. My mom has also committed to do this. See Deirdre? Now the Internet knows you've committed. You're stuck.

No New Years Resolution list would be complete without the goal I've been making nearly weekly for the past eight years. Truthfully, I'm really tired of making it, so this will be the final time:

5. Read my scriptures daily.

Five goals, huh? Not so bad. I'm going to do it.

This next part might seem self-serving, but I've really enjoyed blogging this past (almost a) year and I thought it might be kind of a fun tradition to include some highlights of the writing I'm most proud of this year. So here you go.

Second-seventh Night
In honor of this year's Second-seventh night, I'm posting the above picture which features Rob and Ty eating a dessert composed of scoops of ice cream garnished with precisely three jelly beans. Now if that isn't a mysterious food product, I don't know what is.

2 Years, 7 Months, and 13 Days Past September 24, 2005
Before I had you, I was a little nervous about being a mother. I wanted to be a mother, but I enjoyed researching and working so much that I was nervous to begin what I saw as the monotony of motherhood. I was worried I had twenty stir-crazy years ahead of me. I needn't have worried. I didn't count on the overwhelming love that filled me when you graced your Daddy and me with your arrival. You were 22 inches of slimy, screaming loveliness.

Men I Have Loved Not Platonically, From Crushing From Afar to Loving Passionately (In Roughly Chronologically Order)
3. Scott Kesten and Dustin Goodrich I list them together because when Mrs. Bush's first grade class found out I had a crush on Scott, I immediately traded my affections for Dustin. Apparently they were interchangeable.

Loving Long Locks (She's Been Blaming It On My Dad For Years. But I Know Who Never Let Me Cut My Hair.)
While on duty, my dad wrote The Most Romantic Letter Ever Written to his fiance, Mom. Perhaps I should caps the letter, so as to emphasize how truly, it was THE MOST ROMANTIC LETTER EVER WRITTEN. It included phrases like "I don't have much to say, except I love and need you. That need is very real, as is the love. I honestly think that I would do most anything for you; I would do anything that you asked me to do." Considering it was coming from an intelligent (albeit snarky), attractive man whose dimples showed even in his serious army photo and who was honorably serving his country, an engineer who used semicolons correctly FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, my mom might have considered herself a pretty lucky gal.

She's Very Licky, Too
Lu would also like your attention. She Would Like You to Throw Her Ball. Lu frequently will leave her ball at your feet and then pounce on it for the next twenty minutes, saying "Did you notice there is a ball right here? There is. I would like for you to throw it. Right now. Maybe you missed it. Because it's right here. And now would be a good time for you to throw it. You can think about if for another two seconds if you like, but after that I'm going be really insistent about the throwing of the ball, which, incidentally I would like you to do. Right now. RIIIIIIIGHT now. Right now."

Epiphany
I went through a period of life as a vegetarian, a moral decision fueled mainly by Disney movies that led me to believe that all species of the animal kingdom including earthworms and paramecia experience a full range of emotion and comprehension. I am no longer a vegetarian, but I still fall subject to this delusion, like when I admitted to my brother Sean that while I know that insects lack a central nervous system and can't feel pain, I still wanted his medical opinion on whether I should let the wasp who I had just removed from a puddle of syrup dry off or if I should just put him out of his misery. Tyler screams for me when he sees a spider, not because he's afraid of them as some friends have mistakenly believed, but because I need to gently and humanely remove it from the house. Sometimes I make it a little bed out of a matchbox and cottonballs and tuck it in for the night.

Pajama Pants Roll Call
5. 2004 Light blue with a small polka-dot print. I wore these pants when I was staining the fence, including when I sat on the bench with spilled stain on it, yielding pants that look like their stained by _____. Marissa commented yesterday, "Laura, you need to throw those _____-stained pants away." And I said, "It only looks like _____ stain. It's actually wood stain." And she said, "But it looks like _____ stain. Isn't that really the problem?" To which I NOW respond "Get off my back. You clearly are the most vocal critic of my pajama pants. And I keeping the _____-stained pants."

Tyler Howe: The Ultimate Kissing He-Man
So, behind my back, mind you, Tyler went to the library and convinced Talmage to check out He-man (and I'm told it took some serious convincing). Because really, what's more masculine than the words "he" and "man" put together? And what's more tough than a ripply muscled advertisement for the Aryan race whose lips move about as if independent from the rest of his body? And can you even imagine the intuition it took for his fabulous secret powers to be revealed to him the day he held aloft his magic sword and said, "By the power of Grayskull, I. Have. The. POWER?" I mean, how many word combinations do you think he had to try before he stumbled on that exact phrasing and the fabulous powers were revealed? Two? Ten? Ten thousand?

The Insomnia. It's Back
I told [my dad] that it's very difficult to go back to sleep when you're outside in the cold running around the neighborhood. The front yards on Twinbrook St aren't very conducive to early morning napping, particularly when you're the bishop of Twinbrook St. The Petersons probably won't look at it too favorably when they wonder, "Who's that homeless guy in the red sweatsuit with socks on his hands sleeping in the driveway? Oh wait, that's just Bishop Paulsen."

Nine Things I Am Irrationally Vain About
I make a killer salad. I'm so obnoxiously proud of this that when someone complimented me about the last salad I made (with yellow peppers instead of red peppers so that combined with the tomatoes the color palette would be aesthetically pleasing and with an array of artfully spread avocados) I said, "Oh this? This isn't even a fancy salad."

The Play By Play of Events Leading Up To and Surrounding September 24, 2005
September 24, 3:00 am. The hospital calls with a bed for me. I tell them I'll be there in 15 minutes. I have a momentary crisis, because I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to wear my LDS underwear to the hospital, so I instead shimmy a lacy black lingerie-style thong up over my pregnant thighs and hitch it up under my swollen and stretch-marked belly.

Who Would Believe Such Abuse and Neglect? And From Such An Attractive Family
At that point Tyler recommended pinning him in his crib, and I tell you what, nothing so mildly abusive has ever sounded better. Tyler placed movable fence pieces on top of the crib, tied them to the posts using a variety of Boy Scout knots, and we locked him in. He was asleep moments later. Talmage referred to it as his cage for several months.

And then we locked him in a closet filled with shards of glass and Draino.

Last Christmas You Gave Me Your Heart; The Very Next Day, You Gave It Away
Our conversation sounded a bit like a father and a daughter when the daughter desperately wants a puppy:

"But we kill [the tree] every year."
"I won't this year, I promise. I'll water it and love it and take it on a walk everyday."
"It will be a fire hazard."
"It won't. I promise, promise, promise."

Christmas Break Books: Garden Spells, I Capture the Castle, Writing with Style

I'm a little behind in posting about books which is WONDERFUL. There's nothing I like more than books in my stocking. Somehow they're books untainted by the guilt that I should be doing something else instead of reading. This year Santa brought me so many books that I'll be reading them well into February; this is mostly due to the Kristin Lavransdatter triology that's a couple thousand pages long. Tyler will be pleased; they'll be no boring book posts to muck up an otherwise entertaining blog.

In order from most recently read to least recently read:



The tag lines on the front of the book say "enchanting" and "magical." It was both of those things. It's a New York Times Bestseller, and somehow all bestsellers feel kind of the same to me. I'm not sure if its the writing style or that they were all written recently, but I usually get a little bored by them. This one still felt that way, only the magical elements kept any boredom at bay. I don't know that it inspired any profound thoughts, other than if this were made into a movie, it would be delightful.



This book was an enchanting and magical coming of age story.

As I was reading it I got nervous that the reason I love period movies and books is because they're all romances. Sure, we love Jane Austen because she is quietly humorous about her surroundings and satirizes them a bit and because she creates round characters, but in the end, isn't it really about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy? Don't you just long for a good Victorian make-out between the two of them?

And why am I embarrassed by that?

I Capture the Castle is quietly humorous. It satirizes it's time period--1930s England--when class matters less in matters of marriage than it did 50 years previous, but it still matters enough. The characters are wonderfully round, and you find yourself growing with Cassandra as she navigates her life and loves.

And it is WONDERFULLY romantic.



I assigned this reading for my advanced writing course because it is a writing manual that is more entertaining than other writing manuals. Trimble calls the book "Conversations on the Art of Writing" and does an excellent job creating a witty conversation. As an example, Trimble comments on someone who is picky about whether you should spell out numbers or use the numerals:

But why write eighteen when it's so much simpler to write 18, and when 18 is easier for readers to remember--not to mention already coverted in the numeral they'll actually use? What can possibly be objectionable about 18? I hear someone answer, "It lacks the dignity of eighteen." Such a person doubtless undresses with the lights out.

My main thoughts in response to this book are that I integrated the readings from this book really poorly into my course instruction. Next time I teach it, I will have reading guides for each assignment.

The Paulsen Family: Where All the Women Are Strong, All the Men are Good Looking, and All the Children Are Above Average*

*Garrison Keillor. Attributed to our family by Ms. Sarah Paulsen.