Grumblings

I follow Sistas in Zion on Facebook. I'm not sure how to categorize them. They are faithful members of the Church, and before the pandemic, they would frequently appear at the joint venture between the Relief Society and Deseret Book which is known as Time Out for Women. I've attended that twice since it's been offered, but they were not presenters either time. They share their perspectives on what it's like to be a Black member of a church which began as various tints of White. As the decades pass, and membership around the world has grown, the complexion has become more varied and interesting. The culture is changing more slowly, as culture does. Thanks to the writing of these sisters, and the greater transparency about Church history, my perspective continues to broaden and deepen.

I read a post today in which one of the Sistas narrated her inner dialogue while reading the 23rd Psalm. Some of her questions are analogous to my own, and inspired my comment: "My late husband and I used to talk about the concept that we knowingly and intentionally chose each and every thing that we experience here on earth. I maintained then, and still maintain, that I would not have signed up for some of my experiences, nor would my children. When I was new in the faith, I believed that the universe ran like clockwork. If I obeyed A, then the blessings for that obedience would flow. Maybe not immediately, or where was the faith, but directly. I resisted the idea that randomness was a part of the plan, that the promised protections were intermittent and incremental rather than continuous. Oh dear. I feel a blog post coming on. Thank you for making me think."

This, dear readers, is that blog post. It may be one of several. Watching historical fiction or adaptations of Jane Austen's novels tends to make me think. From The Musketeers, an extremely loose (in multiple senses) adaptation of Dumas' novel, I've pondered why it should be treason for a queen to be intimate with someone other than her spouse and king, while the king was free to dally with or seduce anyone he chose, without it reflecting badly on him, much less be considered treasonous. Yes, it was important for the king to know that his son was a legitimate heir to the throne. And yes, actual history has been massively complicated by illegitimate sons who wanted to be the next king. What kept running through my mind was a phrase from the Book of Mormon about the descendants of the first Nephi: "pretended nobility."

The only nobility we mortals can claim devolves from the fact that we are literally the spiritual children of our Heavenly Parents.

Reading the annotated edition of Persuasion has opened my eyes to the cultural mores and ideals of that time. I am relieved to have arrived on earth when women have somewhat more freedom to act than in Regency times. During my lifetime, women have gained the right to take out loans without a man's signature on the instrument. Once we cleared the cloud on the deed, I was able to refinance the mortgage in my own name. This house is not entailed to Beloved's eldest son. I have an interesting, well-paying job in a traditionally female role. (And my life would be considerably different had I been born a male. I would be retired from some sort of profession. I might have been a CEO with a golden parachute. My 401K would be significantly fatter. My children would never have known hunger, nor neglect. They might still have their current physical and mental health challenges, but we would have had greater resources to deal with them. I would not have invested a significant amount of time, attention, and anxiety in the effort to protect myself, and my children, from sexual predators.)

On the other hand, I would not be sealed to Beloved. And I would much rather have served briefly as a Relief Society president, than several years in a bishopric or stake presidency, had the Lord been inclined to call me. With all the frustrations of an aging body and a misogynistic, racist, and materialistic society, I'm still glad to be a modern woman.

P.S. Sherry, you asked about my favorite Jane Austen adaptation. That would be the 1995 Sense and Sensibility, with Emma Thompson et al.

For this I put on a bra?

Theoretically, the plumber was coming today with the part to finish fixing my commode. Given what a mess North Texas was all last week, it's likely that he got stuck on another job or a fresh emergency. Does not change the fact that I have been shoehorned into a bra for the greater part of this day, and the girls are not happy about it.

I've finished reading Persuasion. The annotated version was highly edifying and a bit of a slog. I am, nevertheless, going to order annotated versions of as many other of her works as possible. I found myself getting impatient with the ending. In the Root/Hinds movie, they have a nice kiss on the street (which doesn't happen in the book), her father and sister are oblivious jerks when the good Captain comes to ask for her hand (they are better-mannered in the book), and we get to watch them literally sail off into their future together. That movie is my second-favorite Austen adaptation. I like it a vast deal better than the book.

I am now going to log off and finish watching Bramwell. I'd like to crawl through my phone and pinch the head off both the heroine (who is becoming sullen, whiny, and bitter) and her former fiance (who is revealing himself to be an opportunist of rapidly fading charm). I am delighted, however, with the autumnal romance of her father and the posh lady. I know from personal experience that autumn love is the sweetest of all.

I do rather wish that Beloved could pop in for an evening or two. I'm trying to be careful about the media I'm consuming and after eight years, I could do with a conjugal visit. He was enormously fun to kiss. I don't expect that to have changed since last we smooched.

As Kenny Chesney sings, everybody wanna go to heaven, nobody wanna go now.

Daruk, Daruk, Daruk, Daruk of Earl Earl Earl

Daruk is a character in The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Mel-Mel and Squishy came by tonight, properly masked and socially distanced, and brought us Christmas. Quick, take a look at him, then come right back. He reminds me so much of Beloved. Daruk and three of his cohorts came for Middlest and Fourthborn. I got a gorgeous red and white mug, which has been properly christened with cocoa and is now soaking in the sink, three bars of Godiva goodness (if I were still variations on the theme of blonde, we would be Goldilocks and the Three Two Bars), and a goats-milk lip balm which I will try out when I go to bed in a few minutes.

Work was amazing today. I worked six hours of overtime on Saturday to try to make up for the three days of weather-related inactivity, and I made an enormous amount of progress. Today I got my primary inbox whittled down to less than 30 items and both of my team-related mailboxes effectively managed and cleaned out. I also worked all of my ToDo's and all but two items of incoming mail. If I have another day like this tomorrow, I should have time to get a little ahead on my mandatory compliance activities.

I've discovered another wonderful BBC series on Amazon Prime: Bramwell, about a female doctor in Victorian England and all of the nonsense she has to put up with to get taken seriously and to provide healthcare for the poor. She's confronting her own class prejudices, dealing with her very conservative and very loving father, who is also a practicing physician, and learning what the workhouses and asylums were like. Jemma Redgrave is the star, and she's amazing.

Jane Austen is calling my name. Later, gators!

Adventures and "interesting times"

As you are no doubt aware, the US is experiencing severe winter weather. It is particularly hard on Texans. Our homes are built to endure heat, not arctic temperatures. Our power went out briefly about 3:00am on Monday morning and was restored 15 minutes later. I slept through that, waking a little before 8:00am on my own, as my clock radio was flashing because of the outage. We had power, but we had no internet. I could not get my router to fully reset. We lost power for good around 10:00am and started adding layers of clothing.

That night Middlest bundled up like a polar bear in his room, and when I awoke for a comfort break around 1:00am yesterday, I invited Fourthborn to join me in my room. We may or may not have slept. Around 3:00am, we were all most definitely awake, so Fourthborn and I sat up, and Middlest sat at the foot of the bed, and we talked until a little after 7:00am, when I texted our friends who had offered their home if we needed it.

We packed up and headed out. The roads were treacherous, but I grew up in Idaho and know how to drive on them. About half of the signal lights were out. Our friends fixed us scrambled eggs and pancakes. We thawed and visited and thawed some more. We were all masked, except to eat or hydrate. They've both had both of their vaccinations, and the three of us have each had our first. My kids crashed mid-afternoon in the guest bedroom and were still sawing logs when I went upstairs to an incredible fold-out bed a little after 9:00. Easiest way to catch you up from that point is to steal from various Facebook posts.

Post the First: In which your intrepid heroine missteps and executes an impressive back somersault down the stairs. (I crumpled into a neat little ball and rolled.) Nothing broken. Neck is fine. Scared the dickens out of my friends. Toes, right shoulder, and a couple of fingers are likely to be colorful in the morning. Heart rate is nearly back to normal. CPAP is plugged in. I'm [soon to be] dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. Y'all, I'm *warm* and it's lovely. (This was about 9:30 last night.)

Post the Second: Pleased to report that I'm none the worse for wear after last night's "let's roll down the stairs" adventure. No visible bruising. Barely more than the normal amount of stiffness. Neck is a little more creaky than usual, but I attribute that to sleeping in a (blissfully comfortable) strange bed. Slept like a rock. At the urging of my kids and our hostess (who is a physician's assistant), I am reluctantly downing *an* ibuprofen. (One works as well for me as 2 or 3 work for many people.) And I might go take a nap. (This was about 10:30 this morning.)

Post the Third: We are home. We are safe. I was only able to drive Diana partway up the driveway, even with Middlest pushing, but she is not hanging out into the street or impeding sidewalk traffic. In the 45 minutes or so that we've been home, we've rebooted the furnace, the router, this computer, and the oven is preheating to bake a box of stuffed green peppers that we didn't take with us to [our friends']. When we walked in the door, the temperature was 55F. It was up to 56F when I checked a few minutes ago. In an update to last night's excitement, [our friend the PA] encouraged me to follow up with my doctor if my neck and shoulders continued to hurt (they were only slightly more tender when I awoke this morning, and two ibuprofen ~ yes, I took a second one an hour or two after taking the first ~ have worked their magic). Which I will, of course, if things start hurting. At this point, still no bruising. I responded: "Seriously, I feel as good or better than I have in weeks. Maybe I did a hard reboot of my body?" (Posted about 5:30 this evening.)

As of this writing, the temperature is now 59F. Which suggests that when we wake in the morning it will be our preferred 69F. We seem to be warming up at a little more than 1F per hour. I would insert degree marks, but my right monitor, where I park my Word and Excel documents, is not communicating with my CPU, and I'm not in the mood to troubleshoot. I did not take that possible nap while at our friends' today, so I might go to bed in an hour or so. Bonus: this house is all one level, so no chance of falling downstairs!

I'm a little miffed that at my next checkup, I will have to disclose last night's adventure. I hadn't had anything that could be considered a fall since my chair broke at work and tumped me on my derriere. I'm not quite sleepy, but I think I'll bum another ibuprofen from Middlest and watch an episode or two of The Musketeers. I'm in the mood for some mindless entertainment.

Night, y'all. Be careful out there.

Winter has swaggered down from the North.

There was a huge wreck in Fort Worth yesterday that made the national news. Several people have gone Home because of it. Snow is forecast for the near future, and we have our taps dripping slowly to avert burst pipes. I'm grateful and relieved to have had our groceries delivered before the roads got bad. I wouldn't want someone to get in a wreck, just to keep us fed.

A minor downside to working from home is that I won't get any snow days or ice days this winter unless a hailstone the size of a moped comes through the roof and lands in the hall between my boudoir and the living room. On the other hand, the chances of my falling hopelessly behind are minimal.

I'm nearly caught up on reading Persuasion. The annotated pages take as long or longer to read than the text which they accompany, and they chop the flow for me. However, I'm learning context and subtext that I would otherwise miss, so it's worth it.

I started watching the BBC's 2007 Sense and Sensibility last night and managed to add several rounds to the current baby sock while doing so. I much prefer Dan Stevens to Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars. Or should I say, I vastly prefer him? In the second episode, he is chopping wood for Elinor's family in order to productively manage the anger he feels at his social predicament. He doesn't sulk. He doesn't swear or punch a hole in something. He does something useful to serve and bless the woman he loves but is honor-bound not to have. I find it noble and deliciously attractive. It's the sort of thing a man who holds and honors the Priesthood would do. Beloved certainly did.

I do miss that man. Not with the searing pain of the newly-bereaved. It's quiet, like breathing or my heartbeat. With each passing year the excitement to see him again brightens and sweetens. I wish every woman could experience this kind of love.

Good day at work + The Durrells

The overtime that I put in on Saturday helped me to get quite a few things accomplished. I did spend an hour and a quarter on the phone (my cellphone) with tech support because there was a push over the weekend, and I forgot to change my password on Friday or Saturday, and I was locked out. There's still one smallish glitch that it turns out didn't get resolved, but I have a workaround for that, and I'll try to get it fixed tomorrow after we return from getting vaccinated.

People who think the British have no sense of humor need to watch The Durrells. I've just finished the third season (what a cliffhanger!) and spent much of it snorting at snark or giggling like mad.

That's all you get today, my dears. I have a bowl of oatmeal calling my name, and I want to eat it while the phone charges so I can finish my studies, and I want to read a chapter or two of Jane Austen. And I also want to be in bed an hour ago. Ish.

Zola-ology

Tonight after work I finished watching the second season of The Paradise.  Screenplay by Andrew Davies, who also wrote Sanditon (which I also enjoyed), the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice, Daniel Deronda (loved it, especially seeing Hugh Bonneville play a cad), 2008's Sense and Sensibility (which I am waiting to watch until during or after we read it in my book club),

Tonight I've had enough functional synapses to dive into the annotated Persuasion. Right now I'm waiting for the brownies to cool, and then I shall read some more. But I don't want to stay up too late, because ~

WE HAVE APPOINTMENTS FOR OUR COVID-19 VACCINATIONS ON TUESDAY!!!!!

~ and this article in Atlantic says that research suggests getting sufficient sleep in the days before getting the shot may minimize any side effects. We're getting the Moderna, which is presently known to be the drama queen of immunizations. SemperFi had to take the next day off after getting his, and he's in way better physical shape than I am. I've proactively arranged to take off Wednesday if necessary. Another article in Atlantic explains why it's a good thing if the body goes berserk after the second dose of vaccine.

The house smells heavenly. Time to divvy up the brownies and take one of my servings back to my room and my book. I'm working a little overtime tomorrow, to catch up my virtual desk after dealing with my literal desk all day yesterday. Eighty emails waiting for me when I logged on this morning. Eighty. Oye!

Hand sanitizer is the devil.

It burns us, precious. I will not show you a picture of my crabby, crinkly, exceedingly clean hands. Today it was my turn to go into the office (!!!) and deal with the paperwork that has crept, strolled, and/or flooded in, for my one-and-a-half dockets, while we have all been working from home. SemperFi has been mucking out the mail cubby any time he's needed to go into the office. Office Manager said during last week's quarantine check-in that my desk was buried. She was not wrong, but because it was SemperFi doing the burying, there were half a dozen or so neat stacks, all between four and six inches tall.

First item of business: print off my list of closed files. Second item of business: file as many documents as possible, either into their respective red ropes or into an A-Z sorter. Mystery documents into a small pile of their own, for further investigation. Then start pulling red ropes for closed files and chucking their contents into the top basket of a double-decker rolling cart. I decommissioned 44 files today and emptied 11 or so trial notebooks. This required two big trips to the shredder bins and a few quick dashes with handfuls of paper after I'd figured out the mystery documents.

My desk is now as orderly as SemperFi's. The A-Z sorter is filled with neatly clipped bundles of documents for open cases which were opened after mid-March. They do not have red ropes at this time, except for a couple where there were massive amounts of stuff, so I struck out the names on the labels and wrote in new ones. That'll do, pig, that'll do.

Dinner the First was two of the simplest cheese quesadillas: flour tortillas, folded in half around grated cheese, then nuked. Dinner the Second was a couple of hours later: really good oatmeal, nuked with dried cranberries and a fat spoonful of nut butter. Dessert has been a tallish mug of Mexican hot cocoa with a spritz of whipped cream. I am ready to brush my teeth, take my meds, and go to sleep.

I started reading my new annotated Persuasion. I do not have the brainpower for it until I get some sleep. Re-reading part of a chapter I'd read earlier this week, this time with footnotes, made me feel as if I were having a deep philosophical discussion with Hugh Nibley, whom the children's father and I fondly referred to as Brother Footnote.

I did manage to wash one load of laundry and get it into the dryer. And I am finished with adulting for the day.

Harrumph. Also, poohbah!

 

Thanks to the comments of several of my fellow Janeites in the reading group, I've ordered my first annotated copy. (Persuasion.) In theory, it will arrive day after tomorrow. I'm hoping it will reduce the amount of toggling between chapter and Google. Curiosity about "quarterly sessions" in Chapter Three led me to "assizes" and then to wondering how they might be related to, or different from, an American grand jury. (Did you know that the United States and Liberia are the only two countries who still use the grand jury system? I did not, until tonight.)

 

In other Austen-related news, I rented the forgettable "Modern Persuasion." Best thing about it was that the heroine's cat is named Wentworth. (Yes, I am praising with faint damns.) Although Bebe Neuwirth did a fine job as the modern equivalent of Lady Russell. She was both forthright and apologetic; so, not consistent with the character as written but far more palatable to my modern sensibilities.

 

There has been no knitting today. Yesterday I frogged the *maybe it was going to be a mitten*.

I'm not bored. But the Inspiration Fairy has decanted for Club Med. I am sitting here with an ice tea spoon in my mouth and an open jar of Nutella.

I enjoyed watching Dr. Thorne so much that I put several collections of Trollope's works on my shopping list. I've just downloaded The Barchester Chronicles to my Kindle after deleting the YA novel with the barn language. If y'all will excuse me, I'm going to retreat a couple of centuries and adjust my attitude.

Surely.

That word jumped out at me in my Book of Mormon study last year. Today I became curious about how many times it's found in the scriptures: 271 in the Old Testament; 7 in the New Testament; 49 in the Book of Mormon (I wonder how many of those are in the Isaiah chapters); 7 in the Doctrine and Covenants; 10 in the Pearl of Great Price; and 88 in various study helps.

Surely is an adverb, "1. used to emphasize the speaker's firm belief that what they are saying is tru and often their surprise that there is any doubt of this. 2. with assurance or confidence." If the scriptures, or the Spirit, or authorized servants of the Lord, say that behavior A will surely produce consequence B, then that is what will happen, whether it the happy result of obedience or the grievous result of disobedience. You can take it to the bank.

That's all I've got for you tonight. I'm not feeling sufficiently inspired or diligent to read all of those citations. I need to pick up more milk, and I want dinner and a bit of ice cream.

Friday, blessed Friday

I did not fall asleep during the virtual staff meeting.

I found out how much my raise is going to be. I would be pleased with it, had this been a normal year. I'm both relieved and a little abashed, given how many people are looking for work. It takes effect at the end of next week.

My first skein arrived for this year's yarn club. The color name is Barcelona. I've never been to Spain (but I kinda like the music, LOL). To me it looks like Albuquerque on steroids. Do you remember the Southwest colors that were so popular in the mid-80's? Right color families, greater saturation. This might end up as socks-for-me, or combined with another skein from the same dyer to make a cowl. I'm going to let things percolate for a bit.

New yarn shop a (very) few miles north of me. Their grand opening was today. I may go check them out tomorrow.

I've got less than 14 hours to go in Anna Karenina, to which I am listening (and listening, and listening) on Audible. Maggie Gyllenhaal's narration is superb. I'll be driving in to the office one day next week, so depending upon traffic, that should knock out another two to three hours.

Why am I driving in, you ask? to empty out the mail cubicle. Office Manager said during our staff meeting that SemperFi has covered every available inch of my desk with mail and deposition transcripts. I will have to sort that out before I can start decommissioning the red ropes that contain closed files. The man dearly loves paper. I suspect that I will fill at least one, and possibly two, of the three locked recycling bins. I will take a fresh jar of Nutella. I have an ice tea spoon in a drawer at work. And on the way home, I hope to stop at Trader Joe's. I've been there once or twice since last March. And I am craving their triple ginger cookies.

I suspect my phone is charged-enough for me to watch another episode of Grantchester before calling it a day.

I'm almost caught up.

After months of struggling with my workflow at the office, I am suddenly and inexplicably* and most gratefully almost caught up. It's both wonderful and a little unnerving.

I'm getting a little fed up with the good vicar in Grantchester. I can understand the crisis of faith, the difficulty of having to choose between the woman he loves but didn't have sense enough to propose to before she married someone else, and now can't marry because a vicar can't marry a divorced woman. Which I think is absolutely stupid, but we're talking about the 50's and a very conservative church, and I think it was the same for bishops in my Church until recently. Maybe still is; I couldn't say for sure, but Beloved married a twice-divorced me after having served as a branch president (like a bishop for a small congregation) when he was married to his first, late, Beloved.

Anyway. He smokes too much (the vicar, not Beloved) and he drinks too much, and as three of his friends have told him, he has a bad habit of disappearing when they need him the most. And he has a serious weakness for pretty women. I don't think he quite gets the meaning of repentance. If you repent, then you don't keep doing the same damn thing over and over again and whining about how badly you feel about what you've done. (Yes, the Lord understands that we are fallible, and sometimes we do do the same damn thing over and over again until the repentance sticks. As I've said many a time, direction is more important than speed.)

*Inexplicably. I think what it might be, is that after a lapse of three or four months in which my gospel study and my Book of Mormon reading just petered away in favor of reading political opinions and praying that the election would turn out the way that I wanted, I have a visual, organized system to keep myself on track. I am midway through week four, and every day it's easier to stay awake at the keyboard, and I'm less distracted (at work, if not in reading Church stuff, but I'm not tumping over sideways in mid-read nearly as often)

My W-2s arrived in the mail today. Maybe I can get my tax return knocked out on Saturday?

The phone battery is down to 20%. I'd estimate my personal battery at about 12%. Time to plug the phone into the charger and Ms. Ravelled into the CPAP. Night, y'all.

A soupçon of recognition

In sifting through and whittling down my inbox at work, I discovered that a letter I had created will soon be converted into a template for all of the secretaries to use. (That plus too many dollars will buy me not-my-favorite hot cocoa at Starbucks.)

What is my favorite hot cocoa, you ask? Currently, 3/8 of a block of Abuelita (Mexican hot chocolate) and 10-12oz of milk in a tallish mug, nuked in three stages as follows: two minutes at half power, stir, two more minutes at half power, stir again, two final minutes at half power, stir like crazy, spray a nice swirl of ReddiWip on top, then sip and feel those old bones start to thaw.

I've begun reading a YA novel on my Kindle, as palate cleanser from Howards End. It's not much of a success as a palate cleanser. Stepping up momentarily upon my Victorian/Edwardian soapbox, I do not believe the S-word and the B-word belong in YA novels, regardless of how actual YA's may choose to speak.

I'm nearing the end of season two of Grantchester, and my phone is currently in the charger. The last couple of episodes have been rather dark. By "rather" I mean that the vicar, his unhappily married female friend, and the policeman have each had a meltdown, and when I plugged my phone in there'd been a fistfight and a shouting match.

So I read a few chapters of the YA novel and am waiting for a batch of StoveTop to be edible. And then I'm going to spend three or four hours in the 1950's, hoping for a little sunshine in Old Blighty.

There is no there there.

Challenge in my non-Austen reading group: Book that starred an Oscar winner in the movie: Howards End, by E.M. Forster. (Emma Thompson) Three stars at most. I know that this is considered a modern classic, and maybe it is in England, but I found it difficult to summon enthusiasm for any of the characters, or their inner thoughts, or the plot as a whole. It's as Gertrude Stein said, "There is no there there." I wonder if the movie is any more interesting? Emma Thompson's pretty amazing.

I'm now into the second season of Grantchester and am going to fit in one more episode before calling it a night.

Amazon package arrived for me today. Feeling it through the plastic envelope, I couldn't imagine what it might be. Too small for a book, and not quite the right shape. Ta-Daa! A six-pack of 08 black Micron pens for coloring in larger bits when I'm tangling.

I had another good day at work, very productive, and I'm getting closer to being approximately caught up. This will be made simpler by the fact that SemperFi is retiring at the end of May, and he's been told that we're not getting any new cases, just polishing off the existing ones. I will miss working with him. It's been easier, working from home. Because of the pandemic, the courts keep rescheduling our trials, so there have been no trial notebooks to prepare (huzzah!), and none of the usual pre-trial intensity on his part and concurrent anxiety on mine. Attorneys, even the best and kindest ones, get intense leading up to a trial.

I could probably think of more things to say, but I would rather go feast my eyes upon the good vicar. Night, y'all.

No posts at all, last year? I make up for it tonight.

Mostly I just hunkered down, working from home, and enjoying the company of my bipolar bears. I'm still working from home. The commute is wonderful. All of fifteen seconds from my bed to my work desk, which is set up in the living room.

I drew a lot last year, until I didn't. When the pre-election anxiety got too strong, I started binge-watching British TV via Amazon Prime. Victoria. Poldark. Sherlock. Elementary. Good Omens. This year I've joined a Jane Austen reading club on Facebook, in addition to the local(ish) group I joined last year. (It wasn't all TV. I read Bolton's expose, and Woodward's first one, but not his second, and not the niece's book. Interspersed with lighter reading. I particularly enjoyed Becoming Duchess Goldblatt.)

I have a Kindle edition of Austen's six finished novels plus The Watsons and Sanditon. I've read the latter two works. Sanditon was blown up into an eight episode mini-series that bears little resemblance to the original. (The guy who plays Sidney ~ Theo James ~ is drop-dead gorgeous. His character, along with Tom's wife Mary and the ingenue, Charlotte, are the most sympathetic characters. The costuming is lovely, the seacoast makes me want to travel, and the idiocy of most of the characters makes me want to spit.) We are going to begin reading Persuasion on February 1. I love the movie featuring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. I've also watched five versions of Pride and Prejudice, and my favorite modern adaptation is the one set in Utah with lots and lots and lots of little Austen-esque digs at Utah/Idaho church culture.

Because when I'm watching some movies, I tell myself, this would turn out a whole lot differently if they had cell phones. Romeo and Juliet. Burner phones. Nobody dies.

Tonight I finished season 1 of Grantchester. It's set near Cambridge in the early 50s. So I'm loving the costumes. The final episode has two exceedingly brave and strong women in it. One refuses to continue a romance in which the man she loves has been unfaithful, telling him that while her husband was unfaithful, she is not going to put up with that now, or in the future. And the second very publicly outs her husband as an abuser, without saying a word. You'll remember that my husbands were neither adulterers nor abusers. And in real life, the second woman's actions would likely get her killed offscreen and make her the subject of episode one of season 2.

If we are friends on FB, you'll know that 2020 was not only the year of the pandemic, it was the year that I became outspokenly political. I was cautiously optimistic when Biden was declared the apparent winner in November. I felt better still when the Electoral College confirmed the popular vote. I was appalled and heartbroken, but not surprised, at the insurrection fomented by the former President on January 6. And when the Inauguration came and went without further chaos, and with dignity and grace on the part of our new President and Vice President and their spouses, I finally began sleeping better and longer.

It's late. I really should be in bed. There are clean sheets piled on a corner of the bed, and the cotton blanket to retrieve from the dryer. (Oh, we have a new washer and dryer, and they are nothing short of mechanical miracles. I'm researching a new stovetop and oven for 2021. We shall see.)

General Conference, tangling, and knitting. In no particular order.

I don't think that I have enough yarn for another repeat of the pattern on my sister's birthday present, so tomorrow I will probably grab a 4" DP and bind that edge off.

I've joined two more Zentangle groups on Facebook, and I've commenced Inktober (which I hadn't heard of until earlier this week), combining the prompts from the official list with those on one of the Zentangle groups. I realized after this morning's session of Conference that instead of toggling back and forth between two saved posts, it made more sense to take tiles for the rest of the month, number them sequentially through the end of the month, then add the prompts for each day.

I was uber-focused on Conference during the first two sessions, taking several pages of color-coded notes, but this evening I just listened while noodling around with my pens, pencil, and tortillon. I've completed the third day's tile for Inktober and am about to go back to my room to maybe knock out the fourth one. I also shaded this week's tangle for the first group that I've been part of for about a month. I need to photograph both tiles, and the reference tiles that I drew, and upload the former tiles to their respective groups.

Last night I found an online tutorial that taught me how to draw a reasonably realistic human skull, which is not something I thought I'd ever want to do. As I once told the children's father, the reason it's called gross anatomy is because it's gross.

This is likely to be more rambly than usual. Sleeping in, spiritual over-stimulation, omitting my morning studies in favor of hitting Costco before Conference began, trying to wrangle my various series of tiles into some approximation of order. Not gathering sufficient snacks before each session of Conference to keep me alert and non-crabby for two hours. I feel as if I'd eaten all day long, and it was almost exclusively really good, nourishing food, and my brain has been blowing through it as if it were angel food cake.

Learning stuff, whether it's art or eternal verities, is wonderful. And exhausting. I'm very happy, intellectually and emotionally engaged, and right on the cusp of knackered.

Later, gators.  Be good, and remember Whose you are.

P.S. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland knocked it out of the ballpark this morning.

A much better day, thank you.

While I haven't been getting much sleep, I'm feeling better-than-OK, and today I had a steadily productive day at work, followed by minimal dinner and maximum drawing.

When I have a new Zentangle prompt, my first instinct is to cram as many shapes that I know into the confines of the string (outline) on the 3.5" square. I just basically run amok with my Micron pens until nothing else will fit. I've taken to drawing more than one variation on the week's theme. Tonight I finished over-stuffing the first tile, and I think I'm about ready to start shading the second one. Which looks far less like the love child of Pablo Picasso and Peter Max than the first one does. I like drawing in black and white. I like starting with a minimal suggestion for shapes to fill, then freehand drawing until I'm all drawn out, or I need to go to bed, or my hands and eyes are tired and want to do something else.

My 2-in-1 volume of Asimov's Guide to the Bible arrived yesterday. I've read the few pages of background that are related to Galatians, which is what we are studying this week. There is minimal guidance in Come, Follow Me. Apparently in Chapter 2, Paul tears into Peter over no longer eating with the gentile Christians. I haven't gotten there yet. I've spent much of the past couple of days mindlessly scrolling Facebook, reading a couple of articles here and there in The Economist (I'm behind again), and thinking about the children's father.

The obituary is done, I think, and the eulogy is coming together nicely. 1BDH will be reading it, because he can do so without breaking down up on the stand during the service.

I found myself arguing with Asimov's suggestions or conclusions regarding bits of Galatians. I think he will be useful in terms of what was going on in the rest of the world, and why the various authors of the various gospels were discussing a particular subject. I know enough about how the Brethren work together in the upper levels of the church to quibble with Asimov's ideas about schisms between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians while the original apostles were still alive. The Savior Himself said, "If ye are not one, ye are not mine." The modern Council of the Twelve Apostles do not bicker. They state opinions, counsel together, hearken to the Spirit, and come to a consensus. If even one of them is not fully supportive of a proposed plan, they table it and revisit it later.

So I think Asimov is going to be a little more right than the proverbial stopped clock that is right twice a day. And from the little I've read so far, I think he is doing the best he can with the sources that he had, and occasionally talking through his hat.

I need to take my meds, put away the art supplies, and actually read Galatians 2 to see what my own sources say the fuss was all about. Night, y'all.

Mission accomplished.

Not mine. The children's father's. Ten years ago he experienced several severe bilateral strokes. They were probably not his last. They were definitely not his first. The TIA's began more than 35 years ago, before he began chiropractic school, before LittleBit was conceived. Back when I still had some hope that the marriage would end as it began, rooted firmly in eternal covenants between us and our Maker.

The marriage died long before I divorced him. It sounds clinical on paper: he stopped loving me when I stood up to him and brought the US Postal Service into it. He stopped listening to me. He stopped touching me. He fell in love with talk radio, if only to boost the testosterone level in our home and to tune out the needs of a wife and five children. My mother died. I suddenly had money that was mine. I bought my freedom, paid off the IRS and the dentist and the midwife and I don't remember who-all else, and I told him to go.

The children were angry that he had to move out on his birthday. I got it then, and I get it now. I was the bad guy then. Our ward did not understand it. I later learned that there was gossip that I was having an affair. (I was not.) Or that I divorced him to protect my inheritance. (Partially true, but not the only or even the primary reason.)

His personality, always quirky, darkened with each successive stroke. At the end he was passive and defeated, but verbally abusive to the two of our children who had his medical and financial powers of attorney, and to the staff at the assisted living center where he got moved when the nursing home in Fort Worth could bear him no longer. Our two eldest would no longer visit him without one or both husbands in attendance.

He had been in and out of the hospital several times in the past few months, most recently with cellulitis. He could not or would not care for himself. He refused to eat the diabetic-appropriate meals, preferring to do without. I have prayed recently, if he crossed my mind, that he would live to complete his mission, though we didn't understand why he was still here. I'm grateful that I was able to pray without bitterness. There have been occasional spikes of irritation over the past ten years, but for the most part I made my peace with him when we thought he was going to die a decade ago.

He only stopped asking what it would take for us to get back together when I went to visit him after Beloved's diagnosis and told him that I didn't know if I would be getting a proposal, but that if I did, I would be accepting it. Before that, he brought it up every Thanksgiving and Christmas, sometimes asking the kids to intervene on his behalf.

Sorry, y'all. So much good and bad cycling through my mind as I wrap my head around the fact that the man with whom I made five precious babies is gone. He passed peacefully in his sleep overnight. Today would have been Mom's 106th birthday. It's two days before what should have been our 42nd anniversary. It's going to be a complicated grief for all of us. Middlest and I have picked out the music for his memorial service. We had a conference call this afternoon to hammer out some details. He was a veteran, so there'll be a place for his ashes at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.

Please pray for our kids and grandkids. I may be AWOL for awhile.

Yesterday was better. Also, yarn chicken.

I've completed 35 steps of the 42 for my sister's Hitchhiker. I have 35 grams of yarn left. I've decided to stop and weigh the yarn at the completion of each remaining step so that I don't run out of yarn midway through a step.

SemperFi was almost his usual delightful self yesterday. He was obviously making the effort.

The Col-O-Ring which I ordered earlier this week was waiting when I got home from work. I am drawing a small sample of each tangle that I've learned so far and putting them in alphabetical order. When I've worked my way through all of the official tangles, I'll regroup them by shape (round, square, triangular, weird, etc.) while keeping them alphabetical within the subgroup. That way, when I want a certain shape of tangle to fit into a particular space, I can flip through a handful of like shapes until I find the one I want, rather than having to sort through all 160+ of them. Last night I drew six of them.

Today I take Middlest and Fourthborn for their monthly doctor appointments. I knew that. It's on my calendar at work and on my phone, and I remembered it last night but entirely forgot it until a few minutes ago when they said something. I had finished this morning's scripture study and was thinking about what to pack for lunch and what to wear (it's football season, so I guess it's my "Go Pack" Green Bay Packers shirt over leggings) and was wondering if there'd be time to knit or draw more samples before leaving for work.

I have time to knit. I have time to draw samples. A good day just got significantly better.

A h#!! of a day in the neighborhood

I knew it was likely to be at least somewhat stressful, as I needed to work on and hopefully complete a trial notebook for SemperFi. So I ate a healthy breakfast before going to work and spent the morning swilling Cherry Coke and eating Keebler's Faux-Moas (the fudge stripe cookies). At lunch I went across the street and picked up a chicken teriyaki bowl and took it up to the rooftop patio in our building. Then I came back down to our break area and tangled until it was time to go back to my desk. (I knew that knitting was not going to cut it. I'll do some of that when I log off here.)

During the day, SemperFi didn't listen to me, OR the office manager in training, when we told him how to print certain documents. He went and got the IT person, who told him exactly what we had said, and he did it. The office manager in training (OMIT?) was quietly and visibly-to-me irate, as was I. She took a little walk to cool down. I took another swig of Cherry Coke, and when he returned to his desk, I said quietly, "I'm feeling a little frustrated. It took three women telling you how to do something before you listened." He's not normally like that, and he responded equally quietly, "Thank you for the feedback."

Later I told him, "You get really crabby when  you're in trial prep."

"Yes, I do."

Naturally, because I wrangled 400 documents into submission ~ it took 22 minutes to upload the folder to his outbox ~ the judge granted opposing counsel's continuance. I am magic. I should run for office. (My friend Tan says on the Murphy's Law ticket.)

The OMIT was still not quite herself by the end of the day. I was still simmering but no longer irate. At some point SemperFi remarked, "So you feel my pain." To which I retorted, "No, I feel you are a pain." Still later, I asked if he would be in the office tomorrow or working remotely. I hope I was able to keep the disappointment out of my voice when I said, "OK, see you tomorrow."

I flew my snark flag high and free today. I was definitely not nice. I was probably also not kind, although tipping tables over is certainly within the realm of possibility when you're trying to emulate the Savior.

I told SemperFi to go home and drink some wine tonight. Me, I will probably add a muscle relaxer to the usual evening meds.

The day did turn around for me, however. I took myself to Rockfish to eat some crab cakes homeopathically. They were stellar, as was the service. On the way out, I nearly collided with a younger couple at the door, so I held it open for them and wished them a good evening. As did they, to me. I said, "I'm going to go home and draw." The husband stopped, spun around, and asked, "Are you an artist?" "I'm learning to be. Right now I'm learning Zentangle." His face lit up. "I'm an art teacher in one of the schools. I teach my students to Zentangle!" So I had him take a picture of a page from the Facebook group I'm in, and I PM'd a moderator to be on the lookout for a membership request. Very nice man, and his wife is equally charming.

I'm going to put myself in timeout now. Later, gators!