Wuv, Twue Wuv (Into the World of Scrapbooking)

As some of you may know, and the rest of you are about to find out, in the last year Anna has rekindled a flame that had faded in her life. Yes, Anna once had a passionate relationship with scrapbooking. But over the last few years (strangely coinciding with her meeting me) her relationship with scrapbooking and much that comes with hit had fallen on hard times. I am pleased to announce that those hard times are no longer. She is now a consultant for Close to My Heart, a scrapbooking company, and has even been paid to make scrapbooks for others--which I think makes her a professional scrapbooker. Quite cool. This post is my attempt to further nurture that budding relationship.

Anna is in a competition to win a desk that would be pretty much ideal for her scrapbooking. The desk is made by The Original Scrapbox, a company that makes some pretty cool stuff. Their products would certainly improve the whole craft experience. Don't get me wrong, it would take much more than Scrapbox products for me to make anything that would not cause any serious crafty person to shriek in horror. But if there were products that might be able to make this possible, The Original Scrapbox desks just might be the ones.

So if you're a serious craft person, an aspiring scrapbooker, or someone like me (for whom developing competent craft/art skills would take a genuine miracle), you might want to check out their page. Here's the link to the page:

The Original Scrapbox

For extra fun and even more appreciation from me, Anna, and Joshua: If any of you have blogs and would be willing to post a link to the company's site as well as a short write up about a product (even just saying why you think it looks cool), Anna can get 50 points for each blog post someone does. And for a little less effort, but almost the same warm, fuzzy feeling, you can vote for Anna, #259, on this website:

The EZ desk Giveaway

Thanks for your help in rekindling this flame,
Justin

P.S. If out of the goodness of your hearts, and I know that you have good hearts, you do a blog post, please email Anna at 23banana@gmail.com so she can report it. And, if you do post, you will need to include a picture of one of the products (you can use the picture from this post if you'd like).

Running

Warning: Yes, this post is really about running. I apologize if it bores you intensely. At least this is my third post this month!

Today I ran 4.5 miles. Since I haven't run consistently for over a month, I've been taking it pretty easy. When I went this morning, it was 39 degrees and it was wonderful. Still a little too cold, but much better than it has been this winter. I really love running and am looking forward to warmer weather.

I know for some people, running (or working out) is a time for reflection/pondering/etc. Some people think through what they need to do that day and make a mental schedule. I think those are great reasons to run, but it's not how it works for me. When I'm running, I focus on running. I love thinking about the pace I'm holding, paying attention to how my legs feel, pushing myself (or just enjoying a recovery day). When I'm running a lot, it helps me get more done in my other pursuits. But, for me, running isn't something I do to be more efficient through the rest of my day or to lose weight or to relieve stress. Sure, when I do run, those things fall into place, but that isn't why I do it.

I've also noticed that running is best when it's over 20 miles a week. In all honesty, it's even better for me when it's over 40 miles a week (above 50 is great too). I've run as much as 75 miles in week (and over 60 quite a few times), and I might get there again sometime. But, I'll need to train a little more intelligently this time around. Last time, I pushed myself a little too hard--too many miles/too fast racing--and I couldn't run for about a month (or walk for a week).

I would love to be able to run 40-60 miles a week consistently. But it comes down to balance and discipline. For that reason, I'm not sure if I'll ever really find out how fast I could run a marathon or a half-marathon, and that's okay. But I would like to run a marathon under 2:50 in the next few years. I'm sure I could go faster, but for now, that's a good goal. Now it's out in the open and you can ask me how it's going.

Things I Would Like to Do Less Consistently

In the spirit of my previous post, I am going to make a list of things that I want to do less regularly than I currently do. This will take some work, but now is a good time to start. It's funny how some things that start with good purposes can quickly turn into nagging bad habits.

1. Checking email. For a couple years, I worked at Freshman Academy at BYU. It was a great job and really opened a lot of doors for me and helped me grow a lot, but it also set me on the path to compulsive email checking. Since we were working with students and on projects with co-workers, we were encouraged to stay up on our email. But that can quickly turn into a bad habit. So, I'm going to really try to limit how frequently I check my email.

2. Procrastinate. I really want to do a better job of not putting off projects/papers/proposals until the last minute. Even though things usually work out, things turn out so much better when you do them sooner so that you have time to carefully rework them before the deadline. Also, I think it will be good to set aside a certain amount of time each day for writing, even if I don't have something that has an looming deadline.

Well, that's a start. There are other things that I would like to do less regularly, but those are the first two that came to me as I wrote this post.

Followup on yesterday's post: I ran 3.5 miles this morning, and this is my second post in two days! I am also nearing the end of one book and over halfway in another two. If you want to track my running so you can hassle me if I fall behind (or if you want a way to track your own running/exercising), check out justinw.fastrunningblog.com.

Things I Would Like to Do More Consistently

I'm sure any of you who read this blog have long since (and largely rightly) abandoned any hope of this becoming a more consistent blog. But if I'm still on your blog feed, then here's another installment. And I really will try to do a better job of posting reasonably regularly.

So, here's a start with a list and a brief discussion of things I would like to do more consistently. These are most decidedly not in any order of priority, so don't try to read too much into my values, please.

1. Clean. This Saturday I swept and mopped the kitchen/dining room/living room floor. Let's just say that it has been far too long since this last happened. We share a condo with my sister who has a 9-month old. When you combine our two kids and their eating habits, it really is a shame that we haven't mopped our floor more often. That's something I will try to change.

2. Blog. No I will never (well, I guess I shouldn't say never) will be the blogger that my friend Janssen is. She is an impressively prolific blogger; I am, well, not as prolific. But I will try to post more often than I have. And, when you consider my track record over the last 6 months, I've set the bar low enough that any improvement will be most impressive.

3. Finish books. I tend to read far too many books at one time. I've been that way for most of my life, but I would like to be better at finishing books.

4. Run. I qualified for the Boston marathon this last fall, and, if admitted to a graduate school whose finals schedule doesn't clash with the race as formidably as BYU's, I plan to run it in the next couple years. I would also like to get my time down well under 3 hours (2:40s or faster). If I can just be a little more consistent with my running, that is a very achievable goal.

5. Have friends/family over. I realize that I am not nearly as outgoing as I used to be and am very out of the habit of getting together with friends... Sorry if this includes you (which it almost certainly does). I will try to do better about this.

There's a list of things that I would like to do more consistently.

And here's an unofficial 6. I would like to get into good PhD programs more consistently. I haven't tried that many times (once to three schools), but I'm hoping the next go round yields more consistent admissions.

The Politics of Patty Cake

I had no idea how complicated “Patty Cake” could be until Joshua started to learn it. Or rather, until we started to teach it to him. As he has learned the not-so-simple process of clapping, rolling his hands, and then tossing them up in the air, I have learned that nursery rhymes are not as straightforward as I always thought they were. I have wondered how flawed my “well-duh” knowledge really is. For example, I seem to have left mixing out of the nursery rhyme. I had learned “Patty Cake” with a little tune or jingle, which I have since learned (much to my chagrin) was not universally taught. And we haven’t quite broken it to Joshua that at some point he needs to mark it with some letter—“B” or “J”, depending on who you ask and how much they insist that nursery rhymes actually, well, rhyme. I’m not sure how long we should wait to tell him that he really should probably decide how to mark his cake. I think it’s important that he make the decision, so he can live with the consequences. But we haven’t talked with him much about the importance of rhyme and meter, probably because I, even though I just finished requirements for an English degree, don’t know much about them. That’s not entirely true, but I think he should have the choice of whether he wants to take creative license.

He’s actually learned the whole thing quite well. He really likes rolling more than anything else, and he’s not quite on cue at each stage. But it’s been a lot of fun. I sure hope that my incomplete knowledge of nursery rhymes, bedtime songs, and the like won’t put him at too severe a disadvantage. I mean, college and graduate school admissions are getting tougher every year. Who knows if someday he’ll be kept out because he doesn’t know how a particular nursery rhyme was supposed to go? But I sure like my little guy and we have a lot of fun together.

Have you ever discovered that you didn’t know something that was supposed to be common knowledge—especially nursery rhymes or children’s songs? It’s kind of a weird feeling and I’d like to know that I’m not alone. Thanks.

D is for Discorrect?

This last week we’ve been tending my cousins while their parents went to Italy. It’s been a lot of fun, but it has also made me grateful that children only come one at a time (at least usually). Going from one child to seven children overnight has been an interesting stretch. The kids have been great, but they have a lot going on. And they are quite the bunch. Sammy, the youngest, is a hoot all by himself. He’s in kindergarten, so we get to spend the whole afternoon with him. But Sammy is not your typical five-year old. He is a bundle of energy and creativity, extremely verbal and a barrel of laughs. Take today, for example. We were driving to the zoo and Sammy was playing with a rubber band in the back seat, twisting it around his fingers to make different patterns and shapes. After a while, he made what almost looked like the letter “D.” Here is the dialogue that followed:

Sam: Look! I made a “D” with my rubber band.

Anna: What starts with “D”? (Editor’s note: Remember that Sam is in Kindergarten so this should be a pretty typical question. The answer we expected was something like dog, or maybe donut.)

Sam: Discorrect.

Anna: Discorrect?

Sam: Yeah discorrect . . . or uncorrect . . .

Justin: Or incorrect?

Sam: Yeah, or basically, “you’re wrong."

Anna was driving at the time and it was all she could do to stay on the road because she was laughing so hard. What five-year old comes up with “discorrect” as the first word that starts with “D”? Suspending the fact that “disconnect” may not be a word, or at least a typical, dictionarified word, I was pretty amazed that he was able to go from “discorrect” to “uncorrect” to (with a little help) “incorrect” and then was able to explain what all of those words meant, or would mean if they were words. So, here’s my question: if you could add a word to the English language, what would it be?

Feeding Joshua

Call me a softy (some of you will not hesitate at all), but feeding Joshua has become one of my favorite things to do. There’s something deeply and yet so simply good about feeding another person. Of course this extends to having people over to dinner and other ways of sharing food, but there’s something special about feeding a baby who can’t feed himself. I don’t think I enjoyed feeding Joshua early on nearly as much as I do now. That might have something to do with the middle-of-the-night nature of those early feedings. Or it might be because I was quite sleep-deprived, especially during those first few weeks. (I know that Anna had it much worse than I did, but my sleep was much more spotty than it had ever been before). I also think that Joshua has become much more fun to feed as his personality has, well, arrived (or developed). Infants are adorable— don’t get me wrong. But in my limited experience, they don’t do all that much or express themselves very much at all. The occasional smile was usually a result of passed gas, or something to that effect. As Joshua has started to smile, respond, and babble, he has become a lot more fun. And that includes when he eats.

Today, for example, I fed him squash, cereal, banana/strawberry puree, and milk. I like to eat, but Joshua definitely wins our “enjoyment while eating” contest. Every spoonful he swallows, he emits this joyful “mmm,” after which he opens his mouth and waits, somewhat impatiently, for the next mouthful. Again, I am not a picky eater—there are very few things that I don’t like—but I can’t imagine trying to even fake that amount of ecstasy from a mouthful of squash (even if it was excellently prepared), let alone from the bland squash that seems to tickle Joshua’s palate. Anytime I need some reassurance, feeding Joshua fruit is sure to give it. And if I really needed a boost, all I would need to do is give him something with a little sugar and/or fat—French silk pie, ice cream, pudding, as hypothetical examples—and I would immediately feel like the most wonderful person in the world. Or at least like the person who wields the most amazing spoon in the world.