Tonight was the General Relief Society broadcast for church. Relief Society is the women’s organization for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s a world-wide organization, with the motto, “Charity never faileth.” Every woman who is a member of the LDS church, on turning 18 or graduating from high school (whichever comes later) becomes a member of this great organization.

Every year, there’s a General Relief Society broadcast, where women gather all around the world to listen to messages especially for them from the leaders of the world-wide Relief Society and from the prophet. Sadly, though I’ve been a part of Relief Society for almost 12 years, I haven’t attended many of these broadcasts. I’ll read the messages later in the church’s magazines, but I don’t remember attending many of the broadcasts themselves.

Tonight, I was nervous about attending. There was a dinner after the broadcast, and I immediately reverted to that high school/teenager self. “What if nobody I know is there? Who will I sit with?” But more than that, I’ve been fairly whiney and down about things lately. It got to the point this week that I was in tears during a morning prayer, saying things like, “Help us remember that Thou knowest we are here.” Rich told me guilt-tripping God might not be the best approach, but I wasn’t trying to do that as much as plead for help from heaven to keep at least a glimmer of hope in my heart. (This, after posting my Lemons to Lemonade post, I know – it’s not easy remembering the lemonade.) I had a feeling I needed to attend, though I felt like the child who knows she’s in trouble but doesn’t want to hear it and gets defensive, justifying her behavior, even though she knows she’s in the wrong.

The first hymn we sang nearly had me crying: Count Your Blessings. First verse:

When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings; name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

By the third verse, I had to stop singing to avoid the tears:

When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold.
Count your many blessings; money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven nor your home on high.

And we’d just barely sung the opening hymn!

The messages were so beautiful. First, that there is strength in the Relief Society, and that the Lord loves us and has a purpose for us, and history teaches us who we are. Second, we have a specific role to play in this life, and we need to stay faithful, say your prayers, study the scriptures, and serve others. Third, to see visiting teaching as a way to bless others’ lives, not just something we have to do once a month, to love as Christ loves. And then, the prophet’s message – do not judge others, but love, instead. While not all necessarily directly related to the employment situation, I felt like I’ve been slacking or failing in each of the areas discussed tonight. I really could be doing much better, being more grateful, more kind, more gentle, more loving, less crabby and grumpy, less judgmental of those I’ve had interviews with who sounded so eager to help me find something and who I haven’t heard back from.

In the end, I felt humbled, and so grateful I went to the broadcast. As I knew in my heart, I definitely needed to be there.

I finally finished the LOTR trilogy; turns out we don’t have the extended version for the 3rd movie, which, honestly, is fine…200 minutes for the non-extended version is good enough, as are the 6 different endings. I still am irritated by the fact they did 6 endings, and did NOT show the cleansing of the Shire. The only ending I really enjoy is the one where Aragorn is crowned. The rest…Frodo’s raised-eyebrow-nearly-crying-kind-of-smiling look just grates on me.

I mentioned in the first movie that one of my random thoughts was the fact that winning a battle with the Balrog makes your hair go straight. It seems that continued in the rest of the movies, as Viggo Mortensen’s hair gets all straight and pretty after the battle at Gondor.

I also love that Samwise Gamgee turns into Samwise Bodybuilder Gamgee at the final moments up the side of Mount Doom. Exhausted, hungry, and parched, he still manages to heft Frodo up the rest of the way to the entrance to the mountain. Impressive.

I usually think of Denethor as one horribly blind and stupid guy, but this time, I realized he was incredibly selfish, too. His army is out battling the orcs and other nasties while he indulges in one heck of a pity party. I wondered if the staff who were with him, complying with his desires to take Faramir to the crypt, were glad when Gandalf showed up? Or were they just glad for the excuse for a few more moments of life away from the battle?

At the end, I realized I needed to find the books to read them. Of course, that’s adding to the list of books to read and re-read after I finish the current series I’m on…Robert Jordan’s 13-book trilogy, The Wheel of Time.

Oh, and for the record, 95% of the laundry got finished by the time I was done with the three movies. (Yes, it was a lot of laundry to catch up on, though, to be fair, the movie did slow me down a bit!)

First, a few notes from the 2nd LOTR series:

1. I’m nearly completely caught up with the ironing. Hurray for the extended versions of the three movies!
2. I posted this on FB, and still think it an overlooked item from movies 1 and 2: when you win a fight with a Balrog, your hair becomes perfectly straight.
3. As I watched the 2nd movie, I kept anticipatiting the scene which apparently is in the 3rd movie with the ruler of Gondor. I forgot about the irritation he caused me in the 2nd movie. Talk about one blind parent.
4. When Gandalf the White rides in with the riders of Rohan at the end of the big battle with the Uru-kai, I couldn’t help but be amazed at the apparent strength he must have with that staff. Where others need swords, he can accomplish the same with the staff. AND come through without a stain on his nice, white robe. Must come with being a wizard.

And now some other thoughts that have occured to me this week.

When I was laid off, I was hurt. Up until that point, I had been blessed with consistent employment. If there’s one thing I fear in life, it’s failure – feeling like a failure, failing at something I’m trying to do, looking like a failure… If it smells like failure to me, I really get scared. The first few weeks after being laid off, I had lots of hope from conversations with contracting companies and other companies who showed a tremendous amount of interest in my skills. I felt hopeful – hopeful that the phase of unemployment wouldn’t be long, and I’d be on to new endeavors soon.

Weeks kept passing, and nothing seemed to happen with all those hopeful interviews I’d had. Then we had ailing family and other concerns that occupied time, so I didn’t really dwell on the situation. Then came a networking meeting-turned interview that I was completely unprepared for. I walked away from the interview feeling like a complete idiot. We’d just returned from helping friends and family, and I hadn’t really done my homework to refresh my memory on what was on my resume at the very least, before walking into that discussion. I had the address wrong, parking blocks away from where the meeting was taking place, and arrived late for the meeting. My head was NOT clear – in fact, it was complete mush. I couldn’t remember names, dates, responsibilities, or, it seemed, how to speak intelligently. I walked away feeling like a failure.

I tried not to let it get to me, but it did. It got to the point that one of our toilets needed to be unplugged, and I worked and worked at it, but nothing would come of it. Rich looked at it and said to just leave it alone, it would probably take care of itself with all the plunging I’d just done. I did, and 5 minutes later, the toilet was fine.

That’s when I broke down. I couldn’t even successfully plunge a toilet.

I like to watch movies while ironing. Today, the movie of choice was the Fellowship of the Ring. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched the LOTR trilogy, and the extended editions of each make for plenty of ironing time!

Today, a few random thoughts occurred to me while I was watching the first half of the movie (watching the two-disc extended edition; I said the movies made for plenty of ironing time, I didn’t claim to actually IRON for the entire duration of the movie!). For your consideration, I share these random tidbits from Z’s brain below:

1. I still don’t particularly like Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins. For that matter, Frodo still annoys me in the movies…Gandalf said don’t put the ring on, it’ll attract those looking for it, and when he’s faced with the wringwraiths, what does he do? PUT THE RING ON! Smart one. (For the record, I get it – the ring wants him to put it on, and the pull is just too strong, etc. etc.)
2. Considering Stryder/Aragorn beat off the wringwraiths with fire, maybe the hobbits having a fire wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Maybe torches would’ve been a better weapon to leave them with than the swords.
3. Humans always get such a bad rap; thank goodness for Aragorn living among the elves so long to save the race from being nothing but power-hungry, easily-corruptible…humans.
4. Viggo Mortensen is, to borrow a phrase from a friend, very easy on the eyes. So glad his son convinced him to play the part!
5. I still think Orlando Bloom makes a better elf than a pirate…
6. Maybe this says something about the movies and/or books I’ve been reading, but who was the first author to portray ravens and crows as being evil, or at least in league with the bad guys? I’m curious if they’re ever the good side’s spies?
7. Christopher Lee (Saruman) just makes a great bad guy.
8. Moths still creep me out, but they get a slightly less creepy quality when helping save Gandalf from Isengard. (Sidenote: that was one huge moth.)
9. When was the last time Gimli actually visited his cousin in the Mines of Moria…?
10. I wonder if Hugo Weaving (Elrond) did the one-eyebrow raised thing as part of his audition? Was that a requirement? Raising both would seem too much when Boromir walks towards the ring, but just raising the one speaks volumes!
11. The exasperated looks from Elrond and Legolas when Gandalf speaks the words on the ring still make me chuckle. You just don’t think elves would gives looks that say, “Ugh. You just had to go there, didn’t you?”
12. Hobbit foot hair must be one heck of an insulator.

Well, there you have it. Z’s random thoughts while ironing and watching the first half of Fellowship of the Ring.

2010 has been quite the eventful year so far, with no signs of letting up.

It started with Rich encouraging me to take a beginner’s sewing class that another girl in our ward was taking. As he put it, “You need to start hanging out with girls who aren’t 15.” In other words, start making more “adult” friends instead of just doing stuff with the girls I work with in the LDS Young Women’s program. My fantastic mother-in-law had taught me a few things, and I’d made some pajama pants over the Christmas break and I’d made a few simple skirts before, but I definitely still needed a basics class.

The class was 3 weeks, about 2 hours each week, and the class promise was that by the end, we’d have an Amy Butler reversible bag! The class was given at Fabric Crush, and when I had walked in to buy my fabric for the bag, I was a little overwhelmed with all the fabric! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED their fabric, but I was nervous about having flowers and stuff on my fabric for my bag. What if it turned out with half-flowers all over the place? But I decided to dare and got some cute fabric – purple for the outside and brown for the inside, to match the two colors I seem to wear most these days.

During the course of the class, I learned a lot! For example, not all sewing machines weigh 20 pounds. Not all sewing machines sound like a sewing factory (cured when my mother-in-law helped me oil it later). And I LOVE how simple my sewing machine is. Sure, it only has 6 stitches, and the tension and stitch length are changed with dials, but I love it. I didn’t have to keep pressing buttons on the machine to finally find where the straight 2.5 stitch was; and the needle on my machine stayed put when I unplugged it (my friend’s would go back to the default location, throwing her seam size off every time). I also didn’t realize how much about sewing I didn’t know. The funny part (for my hubby) was watching me helping my friend along with her bag. As my friend put it, it was the legally blind leading the truly blind.

However, during the blind-leading-blind time together, my friend had made one of the bag handles a little too narrow. She commented what a cute headband it would make. The next time we were working on our projects together, I took her headband, and, with my husband’s help (“Couldn’t you just put the elastic from end to end instead of threading it all the way through?”), we created a reversible headband to match her bag! I got jealous of her headband and made one for myself. Ta-da! Coordinating headband and bag…CHECK!

After the project was over, I started itching for more. I had bought a number of patterns for skirts and tops that I hadn’t quite tackled yet. I had tackled one that called for knit as a fabric option, and my mother-in-law had helped me learn how to read it and cut my fabric, but I had even more information now! I wanted to apply it! So…I decided to take out another one of the skirt patterns, buy the fabric required, and start a new project.

And voila – a new skirt made from a cute rayon print! WOOHOO! The fabric was tough to work with; I learned how to increase my stitch tension so the thread wouldn’t keep skipping stitches. There was a LOT of ripping seams for this one. I finally decided I’d just hand-hem the bottom. Of course, that hasn’t been done yet…but it’ll get done eventually. (Okay, so my sister-in-law and cousin-in-law have influenced me on this one…nobody will notice and it looks just fine as-is, why bother?)

After that skirt came a visit from my in-laws and my mother-in-law taught me how to bind a quilt. I haven’t quite finished it yet, but once I do, I’ll post a picture. My sister-in-law pieced the quilt, my mother-in-law quilted the quilt and helped me bind it. I hope to have it completely bound in the next week or so.

This last weekend, rather than work on binding the quilt, I decided to inventory all of my fabric I’d purchased in years past and done nothing with. I was a good girl and washed all the fabric I was intending to use. I found some red velvet type of fabric that looked like it was enough for a skirt. I couldn’t remember where I’d gotten it from, though. I decided I’d try out another new pattern that was a simple 4-panel skirt with a yoke. I learned to read the pattern through FIRST, BEFORE cutting the fabric. After cutting the first two panels, I decided to look at the pattern and realized…I only had enough fabric left for a third panel! OOPS! I put my new-found knowledge to the test, though, and, in the end, had a cute 3-panel skirt with yoke. (NOTE: I realized tonight as I was taking pictures that my seam for the yoke did NOT actually match up with the back seam as intended…oh well, I don’t tuck my tops in anyway.)

In addition to the skirt, I made another 3 reversible headbands (only to realize when I was done that I don’t have much yellow in my closet!) and two ribbon headbands (my friend shared this awesome link with me that gave instructions on how to make them).

Next up…my first try at making a top and an introductory embroidery class!! I’m loving this!

Genetics. Deoxyribonucleic acid. The thing that makes us individual…unless you’re an identical twin, in which case, it makes you exactly the same as one other person.

I was listening to information about genetics, chromosomes, DNA, assays, and alleles today, and it renewed my sense of wonder for the world of genetics. Genetics is one of the majors I’d considered after high school. When I was in AP Biology as a junior in high school, to me, nothing was as interesting as the section on genetics. That stuff was SO intriguing. At the time, the Human Genome Project was still fairly new, and I thought it would be so cool to be a researcher on the project. My grand plan was to major in genetics and music. Only one school in Washington offered genetics as a major, though – Evergreen State College. Somewhere along the line, my mother had heard that the field of Genetics wasn’t going to grow much after the Human Genome Project was done. For some reason, I didn’t consider the idea that the Human Genome Project would just be a starting point in many senses, and that there would be a vast array of applications for the study of DNA and genes.

I remember making grids to map out potential traits that could carry over into children, depending on the parents’ genotype. I had a BLAST doing that mapping.

In college, I took a microbiology course (because the description of the course said it would include a section on genetics) and one of the labs was analyzing our own DNA. We got a photo paper with our genetic markers showing…I honestly kept that thing for YEARS. I don’t remember why I finally tossed it; I think I looked at it one day and thought it was a little silly to be carrying around this picture of my DNA. But, I kid you not, I thought it would be useful to someone if they found my body somewhere and needed to do some DNA testing. I thought it was a better form of identification than my drivers’ license.

I don’t know why I felt the urge to post this, other than to walk down memory lane a bit and publish my ultra-geekiness to the world. Some day, I plan on going back to school to take genetics classes, just for fun.

Yes, I’m definitely a GEEK.

I know it’s the middle of January, which is nearly like being in the middle of 2010, but I had grand plans back at the end of December to post a 2009 in review. But that never happened. I never did take the time to write my very serious reflective piece about things I learned in 2009.

So, since I didn’t do it then, I’ll just share a few things now.

Movies

I think there were more movies I was excited about in 2009 than I remember being excited about for a long time! Among my favorites – Star Trek. I grew up a kid trekkie (sans Spok ears), watching the original, then Next Generation, then DS-9, Voyager, and Enterprise. Some time in my teens, I remember Star Trek phasing out of our weekly TV watching. So when the Star Trek movie came out, I was EXCITED. Watching that movie, I giggled and kept turning to Rich explaining the jokes about characters in the original Star Trek as though he wasn’t familiar with the series.

Later, when I realized that there were people who did not know about Kirk and Scotty, I was in shock. I felt…OLD.

Seattle Life

Growing up on “the other side of the state, where it’s dry and sunny,” Seattle was this place to visit on occasion. I really didn’t know much about what happened in Seattle. When I was in high school, I heard about Pike Place and how cool it was, but never visited it. Later, in college, I actually went to Seattle. I remember going to Pike Place and thinking it was cool, but really crowded, and loving the Piers. Never did I think of Seattle as a place that people LIVED in. Even visiting it with friends for a weekend vacation a couple of years ago, I commented that I couldn’t see anybody living in Seattle.

Z, my dear, eat thy words.

Seattle is cool. It’s pretty snazzy, even. There was finding Alderwood Mall (HUGE), walks around Green Lake, a kayak ride with Rich on Green Lake, taking a boat around Lake Union and stopping at the dock at Ivars on the lake with my team at work, but maybe the biggest highlight was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Dressing for the evening, I felt like I was playing dress-up. I even paid attention to the bag I was carrying and swapped out my canvas bag for a little bag that only held my wallet, my cell phone, and some lip gloss (you know, like those big girl evening clutches…kinda). Walking into the theater, I was almost giddy. Thankfully, my husband was helping me not make a fool of myself who wanted to act like a little girl in a candy store. It was definitely an evening to remember.

Friends

Having lived in one place basically all my life, it was hard to move to a new city. It was tough having to find all the basics, like grocery stores. It was even more tough to realize we’d have to exercise those friend-making skills. I was asked to work with the teenaged girls at church in the LDS Young Women’s organization, and I remember feeling extremely nervous. I didn’t know anyone there, and I was supposed to teach and help the girls learn about God and grow into beautiful young ladies. But I met