300

According to blogger, today's post makes 300 posts. I've been watching this number approach for sometime, but it was only recently that I realized that we've been keeping this blog for almost three years (since Andrew was younger than Evelyn is now). Now, I'm perfectly aware that there are *many* blogs out there that acquire more hits on a regular basis, but I'm okay with that. My goal here is not to post narcissistic musings out there for public consumption--this blog has been first and foremost an effort to record our family's life for our own records. Secondarily, this blog has been to keep family and friends up to date on our lives. I feel pretty satisfied with our modest offering on both counts. I've certainly been more motivated to post regular updates about our family when I know that we have readers--much more motivated than I would be if I were recording in a journal for no one but myself and Dan to peruse. Besides, I enjoy reading my friends' blogs and I hope (perhaps arrogantly) that some of our readers enjoy reading this!

This week was the first week of classes, and we both (Dan particularly) came through more or less unscathed, although Dan did receive a mild blow to his ego when a student reported to another professor in his hearing that a friend of his (the student's) had transferred out of Eves' class because "he was an idiot." (I know I'm not exactly disinterested here, but I'd like to suggest that the "idiocy" was not on Dan's part . . .). But students, as we know, can be notoriously fickle, and Dan got over that pretty quickly.

Aside from that, we've managed to fill our days pretty well. Our back yard is full of fruit just now--I regularly pick a couple handfuls of raspberries from the bushes in back while the kids are playing. The raspberries rarely make it into the house, since my kids (Evelyn especially) are big fans. And I have to admit, I don't even *like* raspberries, but these aren't bad. The peaches are coming on (although absurdly small, since they don't get much water and they weren't pruned before the season started), we have beautiful blackberries, and a second batch of plums (a different kind this time--Poppy tells me they're Italian prunes) is starting to ripen. I haven't quite figured out what to do with all of it. We eat some, but most of it is staring blankly at me from the countertops in our kitchen.

Andrew is getting ready to start preschool. We jumped on the preschool wagon a little late, since the move disrupted us, and so we were only able to get Andrew on the waitlist of a school-district run preschool just around the corner from us. Instead, we were prepared to send him to a preschool some distance away (also run by the school district). We even went and met his prospective teacher on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we got a call saying that a spot had opened up in the nearby preschool--and since both curriculums are roughly equal, we gladly switched to the closer one. On Friday, we went to an open house for Andrew's new teacher: she seems great, and I'm excited for Andrew to start his twice weekly experience. I don't know if he'll learn much that he doesn't already know about academic topics (he's pretty good on his numbers, letters, shapes, colors, etc.), but I'm hoping he'll learn a lot about working with other kids.

Evelyn has discovered ice cream this summer. This is her, when she sees me holding a dream bar that I haven't given to her.

And this is Evelyn, in her version of baby Nirvana, when the dream bar is mostly consumed.


Andrew continues as squirrely as ever. You can tell in this picture that he's looking a little unkempt--his hair was in dire need of some attention.

Bubby gave us some money to take Andrew to Arthur, in St. George, who was Dan's childhood hairdresser. On Saturday, we duly proceeded south, only to find--to our dismay--that Arthur was out on vacation. We still enjoyed our trip--I did a little shopping at the outlet mall (which Dan patiently endured), then we went to Costco and finally got our membership (after talking about it for nearly a year). They must have had a special on samples that morning, because we were nearly able to feed our kids lunch on the quantity. After our "pre-lunch" we got a real lunch at In-N-Out, which was a big hit with all concerned.

I finally bit the bullet and got a basic haircutting kit. We meant to cut his hair last night, but didn't have enough time for the requisite 16 hour charging, so we cut his hair this morning. He was pretty patient, but since this was my first time (and I did most of it with the scissors, since he has an aversion to the buzzer), it took *forever*. I still don't like looking at it too closely, because I see spots I missed, but I think overall it's an improvement on the unkempt mop that he was wearing around earlier.



We've been doing lots of clothing changes this week--one of the downsides of the new sand and water table we got is that both my kids tend to get very wet when using it. One particular day, I sent Andrew inside with instructions to strip and get new--dry--clothes on. He came tearing out with nothing but his underwear on (on his head no less) and cackling madly. He thought he was just hilarious. Here is the G-rated version: you can see the gleeful glint in his eyes.

One of my favorite things, though, is seeing my kids play together. They both like to help me sweep and mop the floor (luckily Andrew has a toy broom *and* mop, so no one has to go without something). And I've been letting Andrew "swiffer" his own room (I touch up afterwards, of course), but it makes him feel important.

This morning, while Dan and I were cooking in the kitchen, the kids were playing together in Andrew's room. I came in to find this--Andrew said they were having a slumber party, but "Evelyn was staying up late." Funny kids. We sure love them.

The subtle persuasions of advertisers

Andrew has usually seemed more or less oblivious to television advertisements. If anything, he finds them annoying interruptions of whatever show(s) he is watching that morning. However, the other day I noticed a definite persuasion had been planted in Andrew's brain.

Apparently, the genius behind Barbie (and if any of you have seen recent Barbie movies, you'll know that I'm not being entirely sarcastic here--someone really has made some smart decisions with the movies, creating intelligent, likeable female heroines . . .) is coming out with a Three Musketeers Barbie movie, complete with, of course, the requisite action heroes (aka Barbie Dolls). And while I applaud their efforts to show women in control of their own lives and even rescuing their men, I'm not entirely sure Andrew was the audience that they had in mind for their commercials.

However, these commercials appear to have found their mark in my son. After watching one such commercial with rapt attention, Andrew announced that he wanted a Three Musketeers Barbie (some of you who know Andrew well will know that he is a long-time fan of Disney's animated Three Musketeers, having seen the movie at least a dozen times and having read the book even more). I think this is the first time he's actually wanted something--and remembered that he wanted it--after seeing an ad for it. At any rate, we were in the toy aisle of a store-that-shall-remain-nameless, and we walked past a display of the Three Musketeers Barbies. I wasn't sure if Andrew would even notice them (dolls--aside from dolly--aren't generally his thing). But no--he paused, and then stopped entirely, staring at the dolls. And then told me, again, that he wanted one.

Aside from being thoroughly amused by all of this, I have to wonder: obviously, I wouldn't buy it for him now, just on a whim, but if he continues to maintain that he wants it, is it bad to buy a little boy a Barbie doll for his birthday?

In search of some good advice

(Could also be titled: Sleep-training woes).

We need some advice about what to do with Evelyn. Now that we're settled in our house, and Evelyn is no longer dealing with constant ear infections, we decided the time was right to sleep train her (i.e. let her cry it out at night) in the hopes that she would eventually sleep through the night. This worked--up to a point. I made the mistake of deciding to go in to her if she woke up after 5, so that she wouldn't wake up Andrew. This led to her waking up every morning just a few minutes before 5 (you could almost set a clock by her).

So the last couple of days we've more or less decided to let her cry, even if it's later in the morning. Yesterday, she woke up around 3:30 and cried for about 40 minutes before my sleep deprived brain decided I'd go get her, so Dan could sleep and so I could go back to sleep sooner. Didn't really work. It took me almost an hour to get her to calm down, go to sleep, and go to sleep. (And by then, of course, I was so cold that it took me another 30-40 minutes to go back to sleep--just in time for Andrew to wake up!) I thought even letting her cry couldn't be worse than that. So last night, when she woke up at 3:50 (I think that's the time I saw on the clock), I decided to let her go. For real this time. And so she cried hard for a while, and then seemed to taper off, and I rejoiced inwardly that this was actually going to work. Uh, apparently not. She then proceeded to cry on and off for almost 2 hours--at 5:40 I finally went in and fed her and put her to bed. But honestly, I don't think I can (or want) to do much more of this--especially now that Dan's teaching schedule means he needs to be on campus by 7 every day but Thursday.

Does anyone have any ideas for how we can get Evelyn to break this habit of waking up around 4-5 a.m. and actually sleep through the night? She's almost 16 months old--and she has slept through the night (without waking up at all) approximately 0 times.

Old Reliable

Sometimes that's how I feel. I'm not sure if it really is reliability or just plain stubbornness, but here it is Sunday evening and so I'm blogging. Even if we have nothing to say, this seems to be my day to blog. I suppose that's not really a bad thing (we have to keep our few blog-stalkers happy), but it makes me (occasionally) feel boring and predictable.

This week has been--again--a busy one. Dan started new faculty orientation on Monday and had a slew of meetings all week (making it difficult to get his real work--getting ready for classes--done). He was especially excited about the sexual harassment workshop. I also ended up at a couple of meetings--one for the Humanities department and one for the English department, both of which lasted longer than I'd anticipated (although I probably *should* have anticipated that they'd run longer than planned). Apparently, budget cuts have led the dean of the Humanities department to downsize foreign languages--the university will no longer offer majors in French or German, only minors (and the professors, not surprisingly, are not happy with the situation). Ah, the joys of departmental politics!

We also had a bunch of social engagements--dinner at the university president's house Tuesday night (although not, apparently, *with* the president, who was upstairs entertaining Senator Bob Bennett--but they did make a short appearance mid-meal); a more informal dinner with the science department on Thursday, and then another potluck with the English department on Friday (I'm teaching one course of freshman English).

My own meetings raised mixed feelings in me. The English department currently only has one person whose area of specialty is rhetoric and composition, and she's pretty busy running the campus writing center. Which is to say, I get the feeling that some of the people in the department are excited to have a trained rhetorician in the neighborhood and, although no one said anything to me directly, I get the feeling that some members of the department are waiting for me to decide that I want a more involved role in the department. (But who knows? maybe this is all just my ego speaking.) And of course, because I like to please people, this subtle pressure sent me into another introspective phase. Should I be willing to work more? (I found myself wondering this particularly because the department's most recent full time hire--although not tenure track--is an LDS mom with two little kids, who thanked me for not applying to her job, since I have more qualifications--read: degrees--than she does). Maybe I do have something I can offer the department. Then again, I'm pretty sure that our family isn't finished yet (no, this is not an announcement), and I enjoy spending time--most of the time--with my kids. Just out of curiosity, does anyone besides me find themselves revisiting decisions they'd thought they'd already made? Or am I the only one who's chronically indecisive?

At any rate, all of this is a long winded lead-in to the insight/epiphany that came to me while I was waiting for the Oquirrh mountain temple dedication broadcast to start. Since they'd asked us to be in our seats a half hour early, I had the unexpected luxury of time alone to think (Dan and I took shifts today--he went to the morning broadcast and I went to the afternoon one). I flipped through the notebook I carry in my scriptures and found myself rereading some notes from previous conference talks, stake conference, etc. I won't bore you with all the details from the notes, but two things struck me forcibly: first, Iwas reminded that families should be our greatest priority in this life (for men and women), since it is one of the few things we can take with us; second, I was reminded of impressions I've had before (this week, even, during a conversation with our neighbor), that God has something in store for me and that my experiences--at home and with the few classes I teach--are preparing me for this. What this may be, I don't know--almost certainly it won't be exactly what I imagine. But the bottom line is that as long as I continue to follow promptings as best I can and live my life the way I think God wants me to, he will continue to mold me in ways that I need to be molded in order to do whatever it is that He needs me to do. (And I need to remember that the roles he thinks are important are not always the ones that I think are). While I may be putting off a "career" now (in the sense the world thinks of it) to be with my children, I am not being asked to sacrifice a meaningful and valuable life--God will find ways to use me and my abilities, such as they are, as long as I continue to trust him (or try to).

And here are some little reminders of the rewards of being with my kids.

Evelyn, at the park near our home--she loves the tunnels, although once she slides down into the bottom she can never climb out by herself.


Andrew has taken to piling all the pillows from all the couches onto one couch and using it variously as his pirate ship, his hide-out, or whatever other vehicle his imagination requires.

Our yard has this sandbox that just kills me--it's an open sandbox with really no easy way of covering it, and I know that the neighborhood cats must view it as one giant kitty litter box (you can see the sandbox in the background, up the steps behind the kids). And yet, I can't seem to keep Andrew away from it if he's outside. So we've been trying to figure out alternatives--I found this sand and water table on sale at Walmart, and think this may be the solution we've been looking for. We still need to get rid of the original sandbox, but at least this is something he and Evelyn can both play with. And I only wore one blister into my palm trying to screw the legs into the base.

This morning, Andrew and Evelyn were being unusually quiet. This is what they'd been doing--removing all the books from the little bookshelves in the corner. I have no doubt who the mastermind was behind this--funnily enough, when we put the books back on the shelves, Evelyn was much more helpful than Andrew was (she kept trying to put books in the same spot, so I had to help her, but she was quite the little helper).

And this, for no reason other than the fact that I was amused by Evelyn's equal facility in going backwards and forwards on Andrew's old riding toy.

Diving Diva

Today, I turned my back on Evelyn for just a minute or so to go help Andrew set up some play-doh in his room. I knew she was in the bathroom, but I thought she was playing with the drawers (some of you can already tell where this is going). Anyway, I came back in to find her happily splashing away in the toilet. After, of course, pulling all the toilet paper off the roll and leaving it in a heap on the floor.

Needless to say, I scrubbed her arms and made a silent resolution to keep the bathroom door shut from now on. And to keep Evelyn out unless she's getting a bath. (Baths are one of her current favorite things. Baths and dream-bars. Maybe she thought the toilet was her own private bathtub?)

Bubby and Poppy would have been proud of Evelyn tonight. After scorning most of her dinner (aside from a few pieces of squash), she ate nearly a whole orange dream bar. And she channeled some serious Leo while doing so--she was so excited when she saw the icecream bar, that she literally started shaking . . .

Domestic Doldrums

Sometimes I struggle with staying home with my kids. (I imagine most moms--if they're honest with themselves--have days like this). Sometimes, when I struggle to find time just to attend to basic needs (feeding, clothing, cleaning--for myself and my kids), or worse, when I struggle to keep my temper from exploding vitriolic fumes all over my children, I find myself trying to remember why it was I decided to stay home with my kids in the first place. And sometimes I come up blank. Sometimes, of course, I remember those quiet moments talking with Andrew and watching the funny play of emotion across his expressive little face. Or I remember Evelyn's triumphant grin as she masters some new skill. But most of the time, on those particularly difficult days, even those memories seem faded and distant.

Today has been one of those days, and I'm not particularly proud of how I've managed myself.

It started out okay, settling into our usual routine. But between naps it all went rapidly downhill. We had to go to the grocery store, as we were out of that most precious commodity: milk. And so we went. But Andrew, despite all his promises to be good, seemed possessed of some little devil, touching things he had been told not to touch, running down the aisle ahead of me, and worse still, hiding from me, refusing to come when I called him. And maybe his little demon infected me too, since I failed pretty spectacularly to remain calm with all of this. And only the most iron control kept me from marching him out to the parking lot and spanking him then and there. But we made it home, and he went into time out. When he got out of time out and started pestering his sister, my still simmering temper boiled over again. When I yelled at him (did I say that I'm not particularly proud of this?), he burst into tears and threatened to run away, even going so far as going outside to sit on the grass and weeping copiously. We finally calmed down enough for lunch, only for things to unravel again at naptime. I put Andrew down first, and then Evelyn. She was almost asleep when Andrew popped out of his bed and wandered into the hallway, yelling for me. So of course, Evelyn woke up, and I had to start all over again. In retrospect, this was perhaps just as well, because she had a poopy diaper. But by the time I discovered this and finally got her to sleep, I had spent almost an hour and a half trying to put kids to bed. All this, for a few minutes peace? (Peace that I'm wasting blogging, when I should be making a dessert for tonight's function at the university president's house).

But writing is itself a form of sanctuary--I find it hard to maintain strong emotions when writing about them, somehow the writing itself takes out the sting. And all this drama reminds me of a funny little poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Grown-up

WAS it for this I uttered prayers,

And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,

That now, domestic as a plate,

I should retire at half-past eight?

Family, family, and more family . . . .

After just a week of actually living in our house, we were on the road again for a family reunion with Dan's dad's family--well, actually Robert's sister, brother, and assorted children. All told, I think we had 30+ people living for three days in this nice ranch house just south of Birdseye, Utah (off Highway 89 on the way to Manti). Apparently, the ranch regularly rents out for family reunions, etc., (see link if you're interested). It actually worked out quite well--it was a beautiful setting, and the house was big enough that each family had their own large room, with some of the older kids sleeping on mattresses downstairs, and no one felt too cramped. Our room actually had a bathroom in the room, a huge closet, and a cubby behind the closet (where we put Andrew). Plus, there were some nice spacious living areas where we could gather to talk and play games. I think everyone enjoyed the time together.



And of course, this particular family gathering was enlivened with a family talent show. Here, you see Vince (Tony's son) modelling his skills at do-as-I'm-doing--although that wasn't actually his talent. He, along with some cousins on his mom's side of the family, sang some Korean songs.
I had no idea Dan's family was so musical--his oldest cousin's family sang a beautiful rendition of John McRae's poem "Flanders Field" ("In Flanders field the poppies blow/Between the crosses row on row . . .") that literally brought tears to my eyes. And I wasn't the only one.

Andrew and Dan performed a little number on their ukuleles ("Twinkle, twinkle, little star" in case you can't quite understand Andrew), which you can see (and hear, if so desired, below). What they lacked in finesse Andrew more than made up for with enthusiasm. Evelyn was asleep for the talent show--which is ironic, since sleeping does not, apparently, appear to be a talent of hers generally speaking.




And of course, like all family gatherings, there had to be food. (So much food, in fact, that people were asked to take some of the leftovers home). But my favorite food part was the Hamburger Throwdown, where different family members prepared their best hamburger recipe for the judges (Trisha and Jason). All of the hamburgers were outstanding--they were cut up into quarters so everyone could try them. Robert made a chicken burger with a yummy mango salsa; Dan also did chicken--a panko-fried chicken breast with ham and swiss cheese (we were thinking of a chicken cordon bleu), a little mayo and bulldog sauce, and fresh tomatoes and lettuce. Other entries included a guacamole bacon burger (Tony and Karen), "Peace, Love and Hominy" (oaxaca cheese, corn relish, burger--Matt's entree), and Aaron's hamburger, with a bleu-cheese sauce and carmelized onions. Dan won for the alternative burger category, and Aaron won the straight up burger category. But I think everyone had fun--and they polished off most of the burgers. Here's what the kitchen and tables looked like in the aftermath of the dinner.


And here are the proud winners and judges (who, reportedly, both confessed that they ate too much--they were given half samples of each burger, which added up to a mean two and a half burgers apiece.)
As if this weren't enough family fun, when the reunion was over, we headed back up to my parents' place for a couple of days because of another family gathering on Saturday--this one was just my immediate family, in celebration of two of my nephews' birthdays. Andrew had fun seeing almost all of his cousins in one week, and we managed to sneak in one more trip to our favorite pool before heading back south.

We got back home Saturday afternoon, just before they closed off our street for a neighborhood block party. The party was fun--some good food (Dan ate only reluctantly, since we hadn't had time to prepare anything to contribute. But I figure that we'll more than make up for that in the future, since we're generally pretty good about bringing food to functions) and a great opportunity to meet many of our neighbors.

All told, a busy week. And this next week promises to be even busier, as the last week before the semester starts. Dan will be in meetings all week, and I even have one or two of my own, as I'm joining the English department as an adjunct (just one class, but that's enough to win me a meeting or two.)

Pictures . . . as promised

Whether or not they'll live up to the hype remains to be seen.

A couple of weeks ago, before the move. Evelyn went temporarily missing. I had been doing something (packing, probably) and turned around and couldn't see my daughter anywhere (and given that our living space was basically one long room, this was worrisome). I asked Andrew where she was, and he didn't know either. I ran to the stairs (her newest favorite haunt); she wasn't there either. I finally heard some squeaking behind the brown recliner, and discovered Evelyn, happily perched in Andrew's underwear drawer.


We blogged last week about Emi's princess party. Here are a couple of pictures of the beautiful princesses--Andrew was the only non-sibling boy at the party, and, since his costumes were all packed, he couldn't wear his prince/knight costume either. However, he wasn't stymied by this for long: a few minutes into the party, he disappeared upstairs. He reappeared a few minutes later wearing Emi's yellow Belle shoes, which he wore for the rest of the party. Funny boy.

Incidentally, my mom made the beautiful white dress that Emi is wearing here. Emi's dad also made her a lovely teal velvet and white satin dress, so she must have been in little girl princess heaven.

In true modern princess spirit, Jeni encouraged the kids to act out a heroic princess line, where the princesses were supposed to rescue the frog "prince" from the dragon. I love this picture of Emi, who threw herself into attacking the "dragon." I also loved that Jeni read the kids some less traditional princess stories--a CTR ("Choose the Right") Cinderella, and the Paper Bag Princess (a must read for anyone who doesn't like the traditional helpless princess narratives). If girls want to dress up as princesses, I say let them. But let them be independent, resourceful, strong-minded princesses!
Here's Andrew during the freeze dance--I don't think those plastic shoes can be easy to jump in, but Andrew managed it. (If you enlarge this picture, I'm also struck here by how much Andrew looks like his cousin Joshua.)


Our new house has a full length mirror in the entry way. Evelyn discovered it the other day and made an instant new friend. She spent a good fifteen-twenty minutes kissing and patting and chattering to Evelyn-in-the-mirror. Andrew, of course, had to get in the action, and now I have a perfect nose and mouth print about three feet up on the mirror that I still need to clean off. (Evelyn's prints, of course, were all smudged together.)


We've been impressed this past week with Evelyn's cousin Leo's passion for food. He two fists everything put in front of him and muscles it into his mouth as fast as he can. Evelyn seems to have been inspired by his example to finally start eating real people food on a regular basis--however, she takes dainty little bites out of her food and picks up each morsel carefully in a delicate little pincer grip. Not quite as fascinating to watch as Leo's performances, but still cute in her own way.



Playing dress-up this morning before church.


Andrew wanted me to take a picture of him jumping. It only took five or six takes to get this. (I'm not the world's greatest photographer).

Walking

In my wordy post yesterday, I can't believe I forgot to mention the most significant happening of the day: Evelyn walked! Granted, only a few steps at a time before toppling over, but all of us (me, Dan, Andrew) can attest to her having, at different points in the day, taken one or two or even three shuffling little steps. Way to go baby girl!

In other news, we'll get pictures up soon. I hope.

Settling in

Some of the immediate frenzy of moving in is dying down and we're beginning to feel "at home" in our house. Today I felt rather domestic: sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor, washing the dishes, hanging laundry out to dry in our own yard, picking (a few--Dan did most of the work) plums off our plum tree . . . incidentally, we're swimming in plums just now, and will be even more so when the rest come ripe in a week or so. Anyone who lives close want some? And it looks like we have a couple more trees with a slightly different variety of plum, plus apples and peaches to come later on . . . I have to confess I'm just a little overwhelmed at the thought of so much fruit. Bubby has been making lots of jam from our plums, but I'm not quite sure what *I* want to do with all of it . . . (I'm reminded of a silly joke from a children's book we had growing up: "We eat what we can, and what we can't, we can!")

There's a nice little playground set just around the corner from us at the local elementary school: it's just about perfect for our two. Even Evelyn can climb around through the tunnels--there's an intertwined pair, one going down and one going over the top of this that Andrew and Evelyn both love: Andrew will climb over the top one and say, "I'm climbing over sister!" And Evelyn just slides down the lower one and has to get hauled back up out of the pit at the bottom. We've been three times this week, I think. Yesterday afternoon I took both kids while Dan was gone with his parents to pick up his brother at the Vegas airport. When we got home, I discovered that Evelyn was missing a shoe, so we walked all the way back and discovered it still on the school grounds. I put both shoes in the back pocket of the stroller so as not to lose one again, and got home the second time to find, again, only one shoe. This time, I left both children playing in Andrew's room and ran down to the end of the block--luckily, this time her shoe was only a few houses down. But still! I can't help wondering if the shoe is somehow possessed . . .

In other random musings, I've been reading a lot of Alexander McCall Smith recently (of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)--mostly his other series (the Isabel Dalhousie books and 44 Scotland Street and its sequel, Espresso Tales). I find that I really enjoy them, not only for the vivid characterizations and evocations of place, but for his musings over moral philosophy (an interest I'm realizing retrospectively that he also indulges in in the Ladies Detective series, but less overtly--the characters embody moral explorations, rather than discuss them). I find myself agreeing with many of his moral assessments--especially regarding the need for moral actions--and more interested than I would have expected by the idea of moral philosophy. It's too bad moral and philosophical analysis has gone out of vogue in literature studies, as these would make an interesting set of books to analyze.

But I think what I like most is his knack of articulating so clearly things that I've thought about, but in less succinct terms. For instance, in the most recent book I've read (am still reading), an older woman talks with a younger one about the idea of judgment, dismissing the idea that you shouldn't judge others, because we do, and must, on a constant basis in order for society to function. It's the kind of judgments we make that we need to be careful of. But certain judgments, moral judgments, are essential. (It reminds me of the JST: "Judge not *unrighteously*").

And here is another passage that I want to quote in full, because I like it so much. I've always been interested in the paradoxical viewpoints about "progress" that surround me. For instance, some would claim (and to some extent, rightly), that the world is much better now than it was fifty or a hundred years ago--that there is less racism, sexism, colonialism, etc., or at least that we have become more aware of the inherent problems in these various "isms." On the other hand, the church is quite clear about the fact that the world is degenerating in moral terms. So how to reconcile (or should we?) these contradicting views? Is the world getting better or worse? Or a little of both? While I appreciate the increasing attentiveness to the rights of others, I think that we have actually lost something in terms of more old fashioned morals: courtesy to others, consideration (less selfishness), personal integrity, not to mention morality in its most fundamental sense (i.e., a belief that sexual purity and fidelity is a good thing). So here's this passage I like (again from the older woman, who in many respects seems to be articulating a philosophy most approved by the narrator/author):

"I have the feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking att the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them [she refers here to the levelling effect of globalization]. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absense of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers--making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?"

Profound, isn't it? And so much better said than what I muddled through earlier. At any rate, I recommend his books! (And incidentally, find it interesting how some philosophers--with little or no religious leanings--are still so preoccupied with the question of morality. George Eliot, despite being agnostic at best, remains one of the most moral 19th century writers I know of.)

Adventures in Home Ownership

Today I took a shower for the first time in our new house. This was made extra remarkable for the fact that a) it was past noon and b) we've been officially living in the house (not just visiting to get things ready for move-in) since Sunday.

As it turns out, we'll be buying a new water heater rather sooner than we expected. Although the gas company kindly unlocked the gas for us some time ago, it was up to us to make sure all the gas appliances were lit and functioning (we didn't know this until recently). The furnace worked just fine, but three calls to the gas company and over an hour and a half of effort on Dan's part failed to get the pilot light lit on the water heater. We called in a knowledgeable neighbor--he pointed out that the knob that supplied gas to the pilot was broken, but he couldn't get it on either. So this morning, we called in a technician, who, for a mere $70, was able to finally get the light lit. However, in the process of all this, we learned that replacing the broken knob would require replacing a whole fixture, which, with labor, would cost nearly 1/3 of the replacement cost of a heater--not to mention the fact that we also discovered the age of our heater: at 22 years old, it seems past time for someone to put the heater out of its misery.

Luckily, the old water heater seems to work just fine for now (well enough for baths, laundry, and dishes), and we are hoping to have a new one in soon. In the meantime, we are looking forward to Dan's first paycheck . . .