Results of Ruminations

When a youth from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decides to volunteer for an eighteen- to twenty-four month mission, said youth agrees to abstain from a lot of things that generally comprise the majority of a kid's living experience: No dating, no popular/secular music, no contact with home save emails once a week and a couple of calls, and no watching movies, especially not in the theater. This list of Don't Commandments is designed to strip away the distractions of normal life so that the limited time as a missionary can be focused on the purpose of dedicated missionary life: Preaching the gospel. So it makes sense within the internal logic of the Church's system and it is, for the most part, an effective maneuver that does help keep missionaries honed in on their purpose. The fascinating thing about this forced fast of films is that there's an unspoken but fairly well understood cultural expectation on the other end of the service. Young women (a...

I took my kids to the Walmarts nearby in order to buy not one, not two, but three  birthday presents for my second son's friends, all of whom are celebrating their birthdays over the next three or four days. This wasn't a big deal, save that we were 1) in Walmart and 2) I forgot my wallet in the car, necessitating hauling all of the kids from the toys section (which, in case you were wondering, yes, my four year old was sobbing as we left because I wouldn't buy him a Spider-Man glove) and back out to the pinnacle of suburban success, the minivan. Not my actual car, but it gives a sense. Source Wallet obtained, I trekked back into the store, reclaimed the birthday presents, bought the kids some over-sugared, under-nutritioned drinks, and headed out to the parking lot. As we walked, I teased my oldest about running into a sign, and pretended to be a bee, buzzing and stinging him. We marched along, everyone holding someone's hand, and arrived safely at the car. The...

I'm clawing through my memories, trying to remember the books that I loved as a kid. See, my two older boys love listening to audiobooks (whilst reading along) when we're in the car. It's a great pacifier, too--they don't argue or fight or wiggle too much, because the books keep them occupied and focused. Plus they help them improve their reading, and it gives me something to do whilst driving. Since the daily commute equates to about an hour a day, that's pretty good. Though there are more Pern books, I kind of don't want to revisit McCaffery's special planet again for a while. The emotional ending of All the Weyrs of Pern is so perfect I'd rather let it rest for a while, as I mentioned before . Being "done" with the series for the nonce, we scoured the library for the better part of an hour, trying to find the next set of books to read/listen to. I managed to score a digital audio copy of Redwall , by Brian Jacques. Frustratingly, there wer...

A late Saturday afternoon in the beginning of March means that the sunlight is already slipping toward its bed. The temperature is fish stick quality--frozen in the shade, but broiling in the sunlight--and the lawns all revel in their video-game-brown hues. My neighborhood has the same color palate, to be frank. With the now decades-long interest in beige stucco, the builders have almost made it so that the houses are camouflaged into the background of dead grass and dusty hills. Outside, my boys roll around on their scooters and bikes, zipping in horizontal paths on the sidewalk. Newly minted friends and same-aged cousins join in, and their voices drift into the office through the window that I've opened for the first time since last year. They shout at each other in the high-pitched treble of prepubescence, their lisps and slurs of words bouncing off the houses. Nearby, the main thoroughfare hums in its asynchronous rhythms, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, depending on the ...