The wearing of the green, and the orange

17 March 2014, 12:13 pm by Giggles
Categories: Learn Something

I had a professor in college who was of Irish Protestant descent. As March 17th rolled around she explained to us what that day meant to her and her ancestors, including where the tradition of wearing green on the 17th came from and why people pinch those who don’t.

Random Giggles: The Wearing of the Green, and the Orange

The Irish flag is a field of green and a field of orange separated by a field of white. The green represents the Catholics. The orange represents the Protestants. And the white is in the hope of peace coming between the two.

On March 17th, in commemoration of the Catholic saint, Saint Patrick, the Catholics wear green. If you are not wearing green it means you are a Protestant. And the two have not gotten along historically. So historically, not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day meant you were someone the Catholics wanted to beat up. The “tradition” has of course been modified to simple pinching these days. But the history of it remains violent.

While I still wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, ever since I have also worn orange. I’d rather not be part of religious violence in any way, even if it’s “just for fun.”

3 Shared thoughts

A blessing on the food

13 March 2014, 2:24 pm by Giggles
Categories: Food, Gospel, Happy Things

A while back I started thinking about the words we generally say when praying before a meal. How often does someone unthinkingly ask for doughnuts to be nourishing? I definitely want to express gratitude for what I’m going to eat, especially doughnuts. But I started to wonder exactly why I was asking a blessing for the food. Just what kind of blessings does a plate of tacos I’m about to consume need? In an effort to be more mindful in my prayers I stopped asking for the food to be blessed and instead started asking for us, the consumers, to be blessed. Rather than ask that my food be made healthy for us, I started asking that we be blessed with health.

img_1486Friday night Brett came home from work with our week’s groceries. We were planning to have McBlatts for dinner on Saturday so I commented that while we were putting away the new groceries we ought to get the bacon out of the freezer so it could thaw for the next day.

Except the bacon was already almost all thawed.

That’s not right.

I’d been noticing frost building up in our freezer for a few days and now we realized why. Our freezer was dead.

My first thought was the 50 some odd bags of breast milk I was storing in the freezer. If those thawed they’d all be lost. Breast milk has an insanely short shelf life. To lose all of that would’ve been devastating.

I got on the phone and called a neighbor I knew would understand and hoped she’d have room in her freezer for it. She did. I walked it around the block and breathed easier. If the chicken thawed before we could get a new freezer it would still be edible as long as we kept it cold.

We sat down for dinner. Brett asked me to pray before our meal. This time I knew what blessings our food needed. Our food needed to be blessed to not spoil before we could get a new freezer. I asked for a blessing on the food.

By the end of dinner it was clear it wasn’t just our freezer that was gone, but our fridge too. Three brand new gallons of milk (cow’s milk), in danger of spoiling before the night was through if we didn’t do something. I put a post on facebook and we made a few more phone calls.

Before Iddo went to bed that night we’d taken all of our food to various friends in the neighborhood and had offers for twice as much space as we needed. We bought a bag of ice and figured we’d keep the food for one day in our cooler, buying a new bag each day until the new fridge could arrive.

Saturday afternoon we went to the store to buy our fridge. They originally told us they couldn’t deliver it till the 15th, one week later. But he double checked and they had two of the one we wanted in the basement. We only needed one of them. They’d deliver it Tuesday morning. That night we were at some friend’s house and they mentioned they had a mini-fridge in storage we could use in the mean time.

Because of the blessings of our friends, the only thing we lost was a can of frozen orange juice concentrate that thawed enough to spill all over everything. Our food was truly blessed.

5 Shared thoughts

You are a safety hazard

6 March 2014, 11:52 am by Giggles
Categories: Exercise, Venting

To the woman taking a leisurely stroll along Rita Rd. this morning,

I commend you for exercising. However, you are a safety hazard.

It is technically illegal to run in the shoulder of the road in Arizona if there is a usable sidewalk nearby. While I have no problem breaking that law on infrequently traveled residential streets (especially when the driveways on some of those streets are so short anything longer than a smart car hangs out past the sidewalk), Rita Rd. is a divided 4 lane road with a 40 mph speed limit and constant traffic.

I yelled at you multiple times to move out of the way as I came up from behind you with my jogging stroller going just over 6.5 miles per hour. However your music was too loud in your headphones and you did not notice us until we were passing you in the dirt because there was no room next to you on the sidewalk.

Turn your music down. Take out one of your ear buds. Because next time I can’t guarantee there won’t be a tree next to the sidewalk when I’m trying to pass you and you’re going to need to know to move to the side.

Sincerely,
A jogging mother

3 Shared thoughts

Then don’t ask for it!

28 February 2014, 10:52 am by Giggles
Categories: Family, Health

I was recently given the advice to not ask for advice if I didn’t want any. Thing was, I hadn’t asked for advice, about anything, especially not advice on asking about advice. But people love to give advice. Especially about babies.

Before getting pregnant I had a few friends give us advice about how to become pregnant. Which is just weird. Their advice generally was “relax.” Which is awful advice because stress doesn’t cause infertility and relaxing wasn’t going to cure the medical condition causing our infertility. I’d never asked them for advice. I asked our fertility specialist, who has a medical degree, for advice. And I asked God for advice.

When I was pregnant I had a homeless lady and some not-so-close acquaintances give me labor advice. I hadn’t asked them for labor advice. I asked our doula and OB for advice.

Now that we have a baby I’ve received advice from other not-so-close acquaintances, family (although that’s generally been of the form “we tried this when our baby was doing something similar” and “why don’t you try this” rather than “do this” type), friends and random people on the internet. I’ve asked for advice from our pediatrician, lactation consultants, and our pediatric gastroenterologist. And I’ve asked God for advice.

However, according to some random person on the internet who told me not to ask for advice if I didn’t want any (when I hadn’t asked for any), I’m going to have to go to college with Iddo so I can wrap her up in a blanket because at 8 months old she still likes to be wrapped up for naps. Loved the jump from 8 months to 18 years that person made there. Am I going to have to go to college with her so I can change her diapers as well? She’s still doing that at 8 months too.

I imagine the list of people giving unsolicited advice, as well as the topics they give advice on, is only going to grow as Iddo does. I’ll just have to keep the advice my mom gave me in mind. She told me to say basically, “Thanks for your concern. We’re following the advice of our doctor.”

4 Shared thoughts

See your body as your temple

26 February 2014, 7:03 am by Giggles
Categories: Gospel, Musings

A week ago we went to the open house for the Gilbert Arizona LDS temple. It will be dedicated this Sunday and after that only members with a recommend will be able to enter. But before that there is always an open house where anyone can come in and see what it is like.

The temple is gorgeous. I have yet to visit a LDS temple that isn’t beautiful. I love the unique little things about each of them as well. And as a quilter I like looking at the motifs that are repeated in the design work of the stained glass, wood work, tiling, carpets, etc. The Gilbert temple has a stylized agave plant that reflects the surrounding nature.

The temple is a physical building where the Spirit of the Lord can dwell. It is the House of the Lord.

On Sunday we talked about Elder Nelson’s talk “Decisions for Eternity” which had this quote:

Each time you look in the mirror, see your body as your temple. That truth—refreshed gratefully each day—can positively influence your decisions about how you will care for your body and how you will use it. And those decisions will determine your destiny.
– Elder Russell M. Nelson, Decisions for Eternity, October 2013 General Conference

My body is the physical building where my spirit dwells. And until this past weekend, I’ve rarely thought of it as more than just a physical dwelling for my spirit. I had not made the full comparison between the beautiful temple buildings and my body, the temple for my spirit.

But my body is more than just a building, it is a beautiful building. It has its own uniqueness. It’s own patterns that reflect my surroundings and past. I’ve never thought I was ugly, although I’ve definitely figured out my style a lot better over the years. Learning to belly dance gave me a great appreciation for the ways in which my body can move. But I don’t always compare my physical body with the magnificent temples.

My body is magnificent. It grows and develops. It heals and repairs itself. It dances. It runs marathons. It grew a whole other person. Brett is fascinated with the conservation of mass as it relates to living things, being slightly disturbed that green onions can grow in just water. He’s not sure how water molecules are transformed into green onion molecules. Other than a bite or two of peas, carrots, avocado, etc, the molecules that make up our daughter all came from me. My body sees and hears. It feels textures and sound.

The beauty of my body is not just what it looks like, but what it does and what it has been through.

The greatest miracle we see each day is the one we see when we look in the mirror.

3 Shared thoughts

до свидания – Do svidaniya – Goodbye

23 February 2014, 9:38 pm by Giggles
Categories: Olympics

Olympic ringsThe men’s 50km mass start cross-country race – Almost 2 hours of cross-country skiing, reaching speeds of 45 mph some times. Crazy. And that poor guy whose ski broke there at the end. But he got a new ski and finished anyway, even though he’d lost the chance to win. The pile of bodies and skis at the finish line where they just dropped like flies as they finished was an amazing tribute to the effort they all made.

I love how they’ve used the projection screen for both the opening and closing ceremonies. I wish NBC would’ve used Vladimir to help commentate the opening ceremonies though. If you have a Russian specialist, get him to help explain all the Russian culture displayed!

The shimery water effect with the big sparkly sleeves – beautiful. And the chandelier during the ballet portion – absolutely magnificent!

The Russian national anthem reminds me a bit of a military drinking song.

One thing I noticed about the broadcast shows, not the cable ones (because we didn’t have cable) was it seemed they set them up and planned to showcase the US doing great. And then the US didn’t do that great at speed skating and wasn’t in the men’s gold medal hockey game. Oops. All but one of the Netherland’s 24 medals came from speed skating, and that one came from short track. They simply dominated that sport.

I loved the beauty of the preview from South Korea. I’m excited for those games in 2018.

It was interesting that they used a very similar way to extinguish the cauldron as they did in 1980 when 65 countries boycotted the games in Moscow.

Good job athletes. Até Brasil em 2016!

5 Shared thoughts

A little bit of everything at the Olympics

21 February 2014, 7:36 am by Giggles
Categories: Olympics

Olympic ringsI’ve been watching the Today Show in the morning and they’ve had some Russian singers on every so often. It struck me Tuesday morning how “мужской” (macho) the Russian men are when they sing and dance. It’s a big show of bravado. All the movements are very large and exaggerated.

I had no idea altitude could have that much effect on how ice glides. Seems the US team forgot to train at sea level.

Prime time coverage leaves a lot to be desired in their limited coverage. For instance, I have only seen a single medals ceremony during prime time, the ice dancing one. But at least the two of them sang the whole song. Good for them.

It’s one thing when you make a mistake and are out of medal contention because of what you did. The thing that eats me up watching snowboard cross or short-track speed skating though is when one competitor falls and messes it up for others.

Speaking of falls, how are there not more falls during the team cross-country skiing events? That exchange area is just crazy with polls and skis and people. It’s amazing there aren’t more tangles.

I loved watching Meyer’s fiancé drive the bobsled with her from the stands. Bode wishing his daughter a happy birthday. And Ligety’s parents kissing when he won. Family is so key for these athletes, certainly not an “alternative” lifestyle. Here’s another piece on Olympic parents – Olympic-sized challenges: Parenting and competition meet at the 2014 Games

The women’s gold medal hockey match was exciting! Overtime! I just wish it would’ve gone the other way. The announcer said it best – they didn’t win silver, they lost gold. I’d cry too. I did really enjoy that the team captain would call a team huddle that excluded the coaching staff though. To me that shows a lot of leadership and team closeness.

Ski cross racer from Slovenia with the curled handlebar mustache – you have a style all your own. I thought Juell from Norway was never going to land on that jump. Fist bumps seem to the international “good race” sign for ski cross. No translator required. The bronze medalist falling across the finish line.

The figure skating commentators confuse me. On one hand they’re telling us how much they expect the teenagers to win. And then they turn around and say how wonderful the older skaters are because of the maturity they bring to their program. Brett wants to see individual ice dancing in four years. Perhaps ice line dancing.

2 Shared thoughts