And For Those of You Who Don't Want to Read Laura's Long-Winded Explanation Below

We're going private. If you would like to still read this blog, either leave your email address in a comment on this post, or email me at lauraphowe@gmail.com.

Don't You Hate When You See This Message on People's Blogs? Me too.

One of my mother's greatest talents is that she believes her children are very smart. This doesn't necessarily mean they are very smart. But she is certain that her children are more intelligent than all the other children. As a child, I trusted her, which meant I believed I was very smart, too. And somehow, whether it was due to my own ability or the confidence in my ability bestowed to me by my mother, I did well in school.

Similarly, my mom has always known I was an excellent writer. I remember once in high school lying on my bed reading a book--probably A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or Dicey's Song--and hearing my mom shout up a flight of stairs, "LAURA!! Come downstairs IMMEDIATELY!!!" I raced down the stairs, panicked that her office was on fire, or that the computer had exploded, or, at the very least, she had run out of Diet Dr. Pepper. "What!?" I exclaimed bursting into the basement. "You're going to win Reflections!" she announced, joyfully handing me the entry form.

I did win the Reflections contest.

But I'm not sure that I loved writing. I just believed my mom that I was good at it. My best friend Shelley spent hours chronicling her thoughts, her feelings flowing through images that leave me pondering them fifteen years later. (She still does.) Shelley loved to write. I envied her. I didn't love to write. My mom just knew I was good at it. Something felt a little false, rang a little hollow. My writing was a breach of integrity.

In college I grew satisfied with my writing. I still sent essays to my mom--academic essays balanced with logos, pathos, and ethos so that I could convince my audience of the correctness of my argument, that Mrs. Freake and Baby Mary was fraught with Puritan propaganda, or that the fine arts museum was truly the best place to display Navajo baskets. I hated gutting through a five, ten, twenty-page essay, but in the end I felt what my mom felt, that I had written well. And that, though it wasn't quite as honest as loving writing, was something I could be proud of.

This blog, this little space I've carved out in the internet world, has made an honest woman out of me. I still write for my mom, because sometimes I need to believe that I'm an excellent writer, better than all the other internet writers, though I don't think that's true. But now I write for a whole host of people. I write for Chelle, a tangential turned good friend who I know mostly through writing. If I run into her at the store tomorrow, I will smile and we will say hi, but on our blogs, we share with each other whatever ideas are taking up space in our heads. I write for my cousin Kari, who was my older and elegant relation who I didn't really know, but admired. But through our blogs, I feel she knows me better now, and now I know her. I write for that unnamed guy I went out with a couple times in college who I wonder from time to time how he's doing, and think that if he wonders from time to time how I'm doing, he can find out here. I write for people I know. I write for people I little know. I write for people I don't know at all.

This blog has made me love to write.

Tyler is going to be a principal this fall. (Insert celebratory band music here.) With all the recent education on the news, we've started to realize that he's now a public figure. As brother-in-law Scott R. pointed out, a perusal of our recent blog posts could yield mild child pornography, a tribute to guy love, me filming while driving, and a whole bunch of rather personal stuff that probably shouldn't be made known to the public at large. So despite my desires to the contrary, we're making this blog private.

I know I flatter myself by thinking that there are actually people who read this blog. But if you do read this blog, I'd love for you to continue reading this blog. If you are Chelle, Kari, or the guy I went on a couple dates with in college, let me know. If you are one of those people I know, one of those people I little know, or one of those people I don't know at all, I'd love to still share my thoughts. Either leave your name and email address attached to this post, or if you feel uncomfortable publishing your email address on the world wide web, send me an email at lauraphowe@gmail.com.

And if you're my mom, I'll add you, too. Because I still need to believe I'm a good writer.

Sense and Sensibility

I think the only really appropriate adjective to describe Jane Austen is "delightful." Yes, I am aware that I overuse the word. But it's Jane Austen. I dare you to read her without musing to yourself, "This truly is delightful." (And yes, you'll muse the word "truly.")

Here is the passage I found the most delightful on this read:

"Edward was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week; for whatever other claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a week should be given up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or suffice to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and the future; for though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of incessant talking will despatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet, with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over."

Remember that? When there weren't enough hours in the day to discuss all that needed to be discussed, so you and your intended had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to get all that discussion discussed? What with all the talking and the making out and the more talking to override the sexual tension, and then a little more talking about more discussion, Tyler and I didn't get to bed until 2:00. And that's after he very responsibly left my apartment at midnight because we were Very Obedient Followers of the BYU Honor Code. FYI: A six-month Mormon engagement is too long an engagement.

Also delightful is Emma Thompson and her movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. A classic. Go watch it with your lover and then discuss.

Maybe After Tyler Posts Five Videos in a Row, It's Time for Laura to Write Something

Nothing makes me happier than Talmage loving Asher.

I was, well, panicked frankly about adding another child to the mix. I worried that Talmage would be jealous and angry and feel all of those feelings that What to Expect told me he would feel. I was immensely relieved when Talmage told me he wanted another baby. "How many more babies would you like?" I asked him. Talmage furrowed his brow before he suggested optimistically, "Um, twenty-one babies."

He's grown up a little, and so the number of desired babies has decreased. Talmage would now like four more babies. Besides the obvious I'm not sure I'd like to raise six children concern, this raises big problems. Namely, I'm not sure Tyler and I can name four more children. I've referenced Tyler's and my struggle with naming children here, here, and most recently here. (And if you want to know, Eva, Mae, and Catherine are now off the list.) So to resolve this issue, Talmage has decided to step up and take over naming responsibilities for the family. He's thought of a good boy name. Wintertime. If the anticipated baby is a girl? Summertime. Ooo! And he's got a great one that would work for either a girl OR a boy! Nothing. We'd like to introduce you to our baby: Nothing Wintertime Howe. (Or as the case may be, Nothing Summertime Howe.)

But, as I've noted before, no child has been conceived. Tal's a little impatient with my pace. So he's taken to giving the present members of his family alternate identities. He, for example, is Brade. Daddy is Grade. Asher is Hade. I (lucky me) am Lazorblade. These new names come with superpowers as well. I (Lazorblade) am able to break lightbulbs. And also, I have a gun.

Macho Men

Old School Like the Old School

Classic footage I dug up of me observing the floods of 1983.

And He's Mysteriously Leaving on the Second Seventh Night . . .

Noah and Poah

Tandem

Not That We're Announcing

Tyler has thought of a new boy name. And you are supposed to keep an open mind. And maybe imagine the yet-to-be-conceived man child as the president of the United States. Ready?

Horton. Horton Howe.

And you wonder how we came up with Talmage and Asher.

FYI

If you call us at home, Tyler now only responds to the title of Principal Howe. Or "O Captain My Captain."

"Mr. Principal" works just fine for me, too.

Because I Was Apparently WILD in High School

Tyler: So I learned more about the world today.

Laura: Okay.

Tyler: So there's these kids, who go to parties. And they don't drink at the parties. They do drugs. Ectasy. I can't really remember what they're called.

Laura: Raves.

Tyler: What?

Laura: They're called raves.

Tyler: How did you know that?

Laura: People from high school went to raves.

Tyler: Not at my high school.

Laura: Tyler, we went to the same high school.

Tyler: No, cause you always know all this stuff. Maybe you learned it in fifth and sixth grade when you were at a different elementary.

Laura: I learned about raves at Upland Terrace?

Tyler: I think so.

Laura: Tyler, you don't know about raves because of your adorable naivete.

Tyler: [...] Could we maybe call it my hot naivete instead?

Because Laura Needs a Little Help Getting to 10 Posts This Month

The way I see it, the iPod Touch is the absolute antithesis to those cute family-promoting Mormon commercials.

Daddy: Talmage, which do you like more: Daddy or the iPod?

Talmage: The iPod.

Daddy: Wait, I asked it wrong. If you only got to keep one, Daddy or the iPod, which would you keep?

Talmage: The iPod.

Daddy: No, wait. What if the one you didn't pick went away forever and ever, and you never saw it again? Which would you pick then: Daddy or the iPod?

Talmage: The iPod.

Daddy: Well, if I had to pick between Talmage and the iPod, I'd pick Talmage.

Talmage: I'd pick the iPod.

When Trying to Decide Whether or Not You Like Your New Haircut, Don't Mention in the Same Breath That It Looks Just Like Your Sister's.

It won't go over well. Trust me.

Is It Really True That It Took Me Two Months To Finish A Fantastic Book That I Love? Yep.

Do you have someone you look up to? That you think of when you make mothering decisions, that you hope to emulate when decorating your house? That you choose the same favorite color as, just because she's adorable when she talks about red?

Hi Sarah! It's nice to be your sister-in-law.

Now first off, I'm surrounded with amazing people, namely each and every one of my sisters and sisters-in-law, my mother and mother-in-law, my cousins, all my friends. I'm blessed like that. No buts about it.

But Sarah somehow crams her day full of all the things I hope to accomplish, and I'm not sure how she does it, and that kind of balance just kind of floors me. I'm not jealous, and I promise I don't feel inadequate, and I'm sure Sarah struggles, too, but I would like to refinish my front room table, read Anna Karenina, raise beautiful (seriously beautiful) children, weed around my hastas, and kiss my doctor husband goodbye as he spends days (and nights)at the hospital, all in the same 24-hour period. Okay, that's an exaggeration. Sometimes it takes her 48 hours.

Sigh.

I'm not there yet.

So I've done a MUCH better job at housekeeping in the past few months than is typical. I'm very proud of myself and I'm pleased at the homey feel it brings to the Howe home life. But I don't read all that much anymore. Maybe when Tyler finishes this program. Maybe.

My cousin-in-law Cheree has a mother who raised something like 12 children. And that kind of mothering required serious cleaning, so much so that in her older life when she wanted to take a vacation and needed a passport, she had no fingerprints to speak of. SHE HAD NO FINGERPRINTS. Scrubbing her children's smudges and marks and smears, wiping the grimy prints off her walls and tables and chairs, she washed off her own, losing her identity, her self in her great sacrifice to her home. Okay that's my more poetic rendering of it, but doesn't a small part of you want to be the fingerprintless woman? To make such a home?

I looked forward to reading An American Childhood at the end of everyday, caught up in the words and images. I loved keeping company with Annie Dillard, nervous that at some point her mother was going to die, or her sister was going to get cancer. And they didn't. She had a beautiful childhood. And she wrote a beautiful memoir. I mentally highlighted several passages, but the following quotation seemed to strike a chord in my 12-year-old heart, my reading-on-Saturday-morning-(or afternoon, or evening)-when-I-should-be-cleaning-my-room heart. (And it made me proud and grown-up that even while 29-year-old me longed to still be reading instead of vacuuming the rug, I was, instead, vacuuming the rug.)

Parents have no idea what the children are up to in their bedrooms [...]. They are reading the same paragraphs over and over, dizzy with gratification as the young lovers find each other in the French fort, as the boy avenges his father, as the sound of muskets in the woods signals the end of the siege. They could not move if the house caught fire. They hate the actual world. The actual world is a kind of tedious plane where dwells, and goes to school, the body, the boring body which houses the eyes to read the books and houses the heart the books enflame. The very boring body seems to require and inordinately big, very boring world to keep it up, a world where you have to spend far too much time, have to do time like a prisoner, always looking for a chance to slip away, to escape back home to books, or escape back home to any concentration--fanciful, mental, or physical--where you can lose your self at last. Although I was hungry all the time, I could not bear to hold still and eat; it was too dull a thing to do, and had no appeal either to courage or to imagination. The blinding sway of their inner lives makes children immoral. They find things good insofar as they are thrilling, inso far as they render them ever more feverish and breathless, ever more limp and senseless on the bed.

On a side note, how on earth do you write like that?



So again, due to my beautiful friend Hana who regularly leaves me books on my doorstep, I've been reading a lot of fantasy. I remember reading Robin McKinley as a child (I'm pretty sure I read The Hero and the Crown (a Newberry winner) and Beauty) and I liked reading this book because it felt straight out of my childhood. You know, juvenile fantasy before Twilight. A little slower, a little less sexual tension.

I liked it.

If You Think This Email Exchange Is Funny, You're Probably a Paulsen

Friendly Ward Member: Just a reminder for the Breakfast with the Bishopric activity on March 6th at 9am in the church Gym. Will each of you make a list of 10 fun facts about you that we can use in a get to know you game? I need the list as soon as you can get to it. Thank you all!

Dad: I don’t think there are any fun facts in my character. What would you suggest?

Laura: Loves to read, but only nonfiction. The only fiction I can remember him ever reading is Harry Potter.
Has run everyday of his life since he was 25.
Is allergic to peanuts.
Believes water while exercising is for wusses.
Is 1/2 Norwegian.
That grumpy look on his face? It's only for show.
Can muscle his way through just about any food. Expired milk? Sure. Just not the peanuts.
Loves to hike and backpack. And read while he's resting.
Has no interest in fashion, whatsoever.
Only owns black socks.
Loves his daughter Laura the most.

Sean:I think he also read Eragon.
Is occasionally whimsical, albeit in an unvarying way: "See you in the funny papers!"
Has gone so far as to voluntarily take a day or two off work at his own initiative on the holidays instead of being told to do it by his wife or forced by the hand of fate in the form of a wedding or a funeral.
Skis old school on long boards (impresses the crusty oldster ski bums at Alta)
Used to read while freeway driving until it dawned on him that it just might not comply with either common sense or the subtle nuances of the legal code.
His favorite t-shirt reads, "So many books, so little time."
His favorite t-shirt should read, "Engineers do it in CAD first" or possibly "You know you're an engineer if you have no life and can prove it mathematically"
Loves his semi-beautiful daughter Laura.

Scott: Once offered to mortgage the house to help finance his oldest daughter's college education.
Actually did have to mortgage the house to finance youngest daughter's college education.

Oh Well, Daddy's My Favorite, Too

Words Asher has tried to say:

1. Uh Oh
2. Da-Da
3. Lu
4. Woof
5. Ball
6. I'm Hungry (Mmmmmm)
7. Night-night

Word Asher has no interest in even attempting:

1. Mama

Presenting the Many Talents of Asher Howe

Asher Turns 1

Dizzy