Maple Caramel Seven-Minute Frosting, with (pan)cakes underneath

I'm not naming which celebration this was for, because I think the internet at large already knows quite enough about what I celebrate when, thank you very much.

Do you ever get a taste-thought in your brain? I think that the closest word for it in English is "craving" (and no, I don't know of a word for it in any other languages), but craving implies that you are at some level obsessed with consuming the thing, and what I'm describing is more like when you close your eyes and see a picture in your mind, or when you are walking along and your brain plays music for you, and if you like it well enough, you try to draw it or describe it or write it down or in whatever way you can realize the idea which has come to you.

Anyway. Today I was thinking about whether or not to make cake for (un)said celebration, and the thought came to me: caramel. And then I remembered how I am wealthy enough-- unlike much of the rest of my life before now-- that I have REAL maple syrup to play with, culinarily.*

So this is what I did. I looked up a recipe for maple syrup caramel, and decided to "use" this one: pinch of yum magic vegan caramel sauce. And by use, I mean that I only used two of the four ingredients she lists; I substituted one, and left one out. (But I linked to it to give credit where credit is due, and besides which, if I could have those ingredients, I would have just gone with them). In my situation, though, I used a teacup in the microwave and put in 2T of maple syrup, 2T of oil, and 1/16t of salt, and microwaved it for a minute. And at the end of that I had a delicious tasting syrup at the bottom of a bunch of oil, so next time I'll be reducing the oil by half and deciding about further modifications from there.

But boy howdy did I mention how good it is?

OK. Next, I used Paula Deen's 7-minute frosting recipe, which I modified this time just because my eggs are oddly small (and which I usually modify by putting in 1 cup of sugar instead of a cup and a half) BUT the modification that matters this time is that instead of vanilla-- which never does taste good to me in frosting-- I put in two teaspoons (as in the kind you eat with teaspoons-- sorry I didn't measure, but I think they were pretty close to a standard teaspoon?) of the maple syrup caramel stuff. Every time I've tried to flavor this frosting recipe before, the flavoring has come out too strong, but not this time! Probably because the flavoring can be eaten straight up on its own. But this part of the recipe is definitely getting made again, especially since three ingredients in the microwave for one minute is my kind of recipe.

I dished out some frosting for Mom to eat (of course snitching as much as I myself wanted). Then I took the leftover oil-and-syrup, and mixed it in with the egg yolks, and then mixed that in with some cake mix, and then folded in the frosting that I thought would not be needed for the top of the cake, and then I put the whole shebang in the oven.

I'll tell you in the morning how it went.

IN THE MORNING: After tasting my cake experiment, I decided to eat my frosting with some pancakes I had made earlier. The flavoring which was just right for the frosting was too weak for the cake, which was also just a little dense. Meh. I never make cakes, partly because I've never liked them that much, partly because my body doesn't like ingredients that allow them to taste good: butter, milk, almonds, any form of coconut. I'll survive. Next time, maybe I'll just make meringues. Or pavlova.

*If I didn't have real maple syrup, I would definitely make some simple syrup by boiling 2 c. sugar** with 1 c. water and then adding a flavoring like mapleine or almond extract or something. It doesn't taste the same as maple syrup, but it tastes good enough that it's sometimes just what I'm in the mood for, over real maple syrup. I'm never in the mood for corn syrup faintly flavored with maple, though.

**OK, fine, most days I'm only cooking for myself and I haven't made a 2 cup batch of simple syrup in at least a decade, but what I DO do is put one tablespoon of sugar and one of water in a teacup and then microwave it for 30 seconds at a time until the viscosity gets to be syrupy-looking. This makes enough for me for one meal's worth of pancakes, and then I don't have to worry about putting leftover syrup in the fridge or whatever. The water boils off much more quickly in the microwave than on a stove, which is why after a couple of tries in which I ended up with crystallized sugar instead of syrup, I changed the proportion for the tiny version of the recipe.

How taking a walk with a three-year-old helped me figure out my writing goals

One day when my oldest niece was about three years old, I stopped in at my sister's house, which at the time was close to a credit union I belonged to. At some point in our conversation that day, we decided that I would take my niece with me on my errand to the credit union. I wanted to hang out with her; I had a couple of hours free; and the credit union was a twenty minute walk away, even if we walked very slowly.

Our plan worked perfectly. She got to walk the whole time, because I wasn't worried about getting there before it closed or in time for me to go do some other errand. Once we got to the window, she announced proudly to the teller, "I'm Cinderella!"

The teller looked at me in confusion. "Is that really her name?"

"Let me give you a clue. I'm her fairy godmother."

And then I did whatever business I had come to transact-- I truly don't remember what it was any more-- and then we walked back to her house, and all was well.

Now, the moral you might take from this story is that you should leave plenty of time for walks with  three-year-olds, and if that is the conclusion you draw, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. But I feel like there's an even more interesting lesson you could take away from it.

I realized as I was going home that I had two sets of goals for that walk. I wanted most to hang out with my niece and let her explore and have fun. But I also had an errand to run, and it was actually easier to accomplish the first goal once I had that second goal in mind.

I've come to think of these kinds of goals as end-goals and guardrail goals. For me, loving people, protecting the environment, and obeying the law are among my guardrail goals. They are all so important to me that the only way I would break one of them deliberately is if another guardrail goal were involved. But having end-goals as well makes keeping those guardrail goals more interesting, and sometimes even easier.

So, for instance, for a long time-- too long, for my taste-- one of my end goals was to get a bachelor's degree. And I finally have one! Along the way, I lived with roommates, which brought me into contact with others and gave me a chance to figure out how to love them both more and more effectively. Through my general education classes, I also learned enough science to be able to appreciate science writing and interpret it for myself. And in my philosophy classes, discussions about Kantian ethics would always start out with the caveat to his "never tell a lie" rule that we all agree to: if I have Jews hidden in my house and Nazis are at the door, I will definitely break the law.

But wait, you say. Getting an education is kind of a good in and of itself, so it's kind of not fair to be listing how it helps with all of those other things. Aren't there some end goals that aren't good?

Well, yeah. As we can see from the Nazi example mentioned above, if your end goal in and of itself violates a guardrail goal, you gotta chuck it.

But other than that, as far as I can tell, not only does the ethical human have the right to choose whatever end goals she likes; she may even be under obligation to do so, because they are so helpful in accomplishing those guardrail goals.

And that brings me to my writing goals. I want to bring delight, information, and helpfulness to others: that's an end goal. I want to be dependable (and of course honest) in my business relationships: that's a guardrail goal. And what I want for myself is a combination of end and guardrail goals: I want to write things which I enjoy writing (end goal); of course write ethically (which can get tricky when you write about real humans, but I would argue can even be an issue when you write about fantasy worlds-- so, guardrail goal); and at some point I would like to make a profit, which I am leaving as an end goal but would sure be a lot more comfortable if it were a guardrail goal. But it's best to leave guardrail goals as things have more control over, and end goals as things you have less control of, so there you have it.

I was able to distill these goals into a one sentence purpose statement, and it's held for-- let me check-- wow, since December 24th! Well, isn't that nice! (I checked the version history on the document where I listed my writing goals to figure that out.) I'm open to finding out more about what I want, but so far I'm holding to this one: I write to create joy.

I write to create joy.

Daily Feelings Sort + choosing gratitude

I do a "feelings sort" every morning, right at the top of my daily journal entry. (I write in the morning, about the day before, because I tend to be approximately twice as gloomy in the evenings as in the mornings.) It's pretty basic: I write down five words (or very occasionally phrases) that answer the question "how am I feeling?" So, a typical day might include sad, cheerful, OK, thoughtful, and thankful.

Part of the point of the feelings sort is to notice and label the sort of brain-stem, I-don't-get-a-choice-about-them feelings like sadness or anger (please anyone who knows the neuroscience of this better than I do off the top of my head be very gentle in the comments-- I'm just trying to get this written, for now). If I notice and label those feelings, I can work on them; I can take a walk, or organize part of my house, or call a friend, or something. Or, if I'm feeling joyful or triumphant or happy, I get that right down at the top of the entry, to be explored later, and remember that recording my emotions isn't always about controlling them.

I always include thankful, or some variant thereof. That's because I can choose which emotions to project, both to myself and others, and by writing these down, I am nudging myself to that choice. Occasionally I have to write "trying to be thankful" because I do want to be honest, but usually I can find at least one little thing to make it true.

Map Mystery in The Library, Part the first: How this home-made escape room was played

For the last two summers running, our school has applied for a grant to have our library open during the summer, because our boundaries are such that walking to the public library for most of our kids isn't really practical. I got to be the summer librarian this year (yay!) which was SO fun and also kinda stressful. But mostly fun.

Part of the stress is that I had advertised two different escape rooms, but I didn't have either of them actually figured out all of the way until the Friday before they opened on Tuesday. Since I was only being paid for my time, and not for any materials, I set myself a budget of about $20 for the whole summer, and got to work. I'm pretty sure that I used less than that, but I would have needed a little more if I hadn't been able to use school resources for some of the things I did. Also, I used a reasonable amount of my down-time at work to figure this out before the summer started, which means that if you figured in the cost of my time as well, it would have been WAY over-budget-- but part of the reason I'm blogging about this is so that other people who think this sounds cool can do it without having to invest all that time.

This post will describe the escape room as the kids experienced it. The next post will go into more specifics about how I developed and implemented this escape room, with the hopes that my readers can implement these ideas for themselves if they so desire.

1. You enter the escape room

This is where I admit that I've never done a real escape room, though I have done a couple of escape room board games, which were pretty fun. But even in my ignorance, I am aware of the differences between this and a "real" escape room. For one thing, neither of my scenarios involves actually escaping from anywhere-- though this isn't actually as unusual as you might think.*

Even if it had been practical to provide a sense of being actually locked in a space (which it wasn't) I wouldn't have wanted to do it. For one thing, liability! Sheesh! And for another thing, the kids who come to summer library tend to be in upper elementary school (grades 3-5), so I felt like they would be looking for a less-intense escape room experience. And in fact, I got one third-grader who had gone to a real escape room with some older family members and had NOT enjoyed it, but when he came to ours, it was just right. Huzzah!

My boss, the main librarian, suggested that I create a sense of at least being separated from the rest of the library, though, by using our moveable wall that sometimes gets used to partition the library during testing. This wall folds like an accordion, with both ends being on wheeled platforms. Using the wall was a GREAT idea, and worked like a dream. So, when the children entered the "escape room," they went into a space defined on two sides by bookshelves, and on two other sides by this partition wall. Besides helping the teams feel like they were in an actual room, it also allowed the secrets of the escape room to be NOT discovered by a team until they actually got into the "room" itself.

So. You walk into the escape room, and either the game master explains or else you can read the opening scenario:

You have just put a chicken dinner on to roast when a gang of international thieves comes and steals your mother's necklace. You need to locate the gang's secret hideout, find the necklace, and get home, all before the chicken burns. Good luck!

A more important difference between this room and most "real" escape rooms is that both of our summer library escape rooms were 100% linear-- meaning that the teams in the rooms were NOT solving multiple mysteries at once. I was (and am) aware that having multiple mysteries leading to the solution of one puzzle is the most common way to set up an escape room.**

However, since I was making this up all on my own, and couldn't quite figure out how to make multiple mysteries feed into a larger one in the amount of time I had to plan, I finally decided to be OK with it. The advantage of that approach, which I only noticed after I accepted that I would be using it, is that it's a lot easier for the kids-- which again, since my target audience is maybe the youngest that would possibly be interested in an escape room, might not be as disadvantageous as might first seem likely.

All of that is to say that when a teams walks into the escape room, the first clue is a bunch of papers which have been ripped up and are in a small, pink garbage can. Their first task is to put those pieces of paper back together, like a puzzle (tape was provided for this purpose). I took a picture of the escape room after this step had been completed:

On the backs of these sheets were math equations, which, when the children solved them, revealed four numbers. The team could then correlate these clues with numbers on the fronts of the papers to figure out the combination to the lock on the box with "top secret notes" inside:

Once they opened that, they could read the document inside-- helpfully titled "Notes from the secret meeting of our gang of thieves." These notes set out conditions for where the gang wanted their hideout to be. Luckily, the fronts of the "puzzle" pieces were "fact sheets" for various locations. Once the kids figured out which location fit the requirements, they got to go to the next step: the "blast shield shop."

2. The "blast shield shop" and "secret hideout"

Now the team moved from sitting around the table to an area just in front of an aisle between two shelves. In that aisle, we (actually, not really we-- my awesome assistant, a rising 10th grader from our local high school, did this part 100% himself, for which I was and am deeply thankful) set up a "laser maze" with 1/8 inch, metallic washi tape, thus:

At the end of the maze is a "glitter bomb"-- a jack-in-the-box stuffed with some glitter pom-poms. The team's instructions were to use these pompoms to "explode" the "doors" to the hideout so that they can get out the back way-- but the trick is, they can't get exploded themselves. So, at least one pom-pom has to touch one door, and no pom-poms can touch any team members.

And that's where the "blast shield shop" comes in. The truth is that this particular pom-pom-and-jack-in-the-box combo is not particularly explosive. It's pretty dang easy to just point it in the right direction and not get hit. But THEY don't know that, going in, so we gave them the option to get some protection before they do so. Thus:

I added the requirement for the youngest member of the party to answer the questions because I knew that several of the teams that were interested in this escape room were non-twin sibling teams, which I suspected would mean that the older sibling would be more likely to dominate during the math-equation-solving portion of the game. I turned out to be correct in that assumption, and I was really glad that I added this requirement.

Oh, and what are the blast shields? Pieces of posterboard, left over from a library project. Having to carry them through the laser maze added an enjoyable level of challenge to the whole thing.

I did also bring a dollar-store picker-upper that I already owned, from home. This turned out not to be terribly helpful-- which my trustworthy assistant correctly predicted it wouldn't-- but I pointed out to him that we didn't KNOW that it wouldn't be helpful, and that if it wasn't, it would be an interesting red herring. Which it was.

The papers you see were the two maps we used for the geography questions. More on those in a later post.

3. Find the necklace!

Astute readers will notice that unless a team has located the necklace, they have failed in the mission. The necklace I chose was an INexpensive one from home-- something from a thrift store or yard sale would have worked fine, though.


The part that was a little more expensive/elaborate in this section of the escape room, however, is that I ended up making a hollow book for it. It wasn't monetarily expensive, but it WAS pretty time-expensive. But at least now I own a hollow book, which I think is pretty awesome!!!

And the extra cool part is the fact that the particular section of library books at the end of those shelves just happened to be the 916-917 section, which covers travel guides. :)

This is what it looked like on the shelf:

Yes, I made a cover for the book. Yes, with an accurate call number as if it had been an actual book. Yes, I might have put more effort into this escape room than was strictly necessary.

So, that's it for this week! Hopefully in the next week or two I can post about how playtesting helped me refine this escape room, and suggestions for if someone wanted to copy it in detail. Yes, this is explicit permission: if you want to use this for your own home-made escape room, GO for it.*** I would be so pleased. :D

*I learned this from the following source, quoted below: Nicholson, S .(2015). Peeking behind the locked door: A survey of escape room facilities. White Paper available at http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/erfacwhite.pdf

Many narrative paths listed above do not necessarily make sense with a story element of “you are trapped in a room and must escape.” This means that to fit the escape room name, the designer must add a layer onto the game of the players being trapped in some way and needing to escape. Facilities  were asked in what percentage of the games were players actually needing to escape the room as part  of the narrative. Overall, about 70% of escape room games require players to actually escape the  room as part of the winning condition. This means that 30% of the games in escape room facilities aren’t actually about escaping rooms. For the Asian respondents, however, this percentage was much higher – 96% of games in Asian escape rooms require players to escape a room, while in Australia  and the Americas, only about 60% of escape room games are about escaping a room.

** I only figured out how to articulate what I felt like was wrong with the escape room I had come up with from reading the above-quoted Scott Nicholson paper. Even though in the end, with this round, I decided I was more than OK with the all-the-mysteries-in-a-row format, I feel like knowing how to make it more like a real escape room/more complicated will be very helpful, should I ever decide to try this sort of thing again.

*** Just, you know, be safe. I did my best to make this one as safe as I could, and indeed no one got hurt-- but in particular the size of the pom-poms as compared to the strength of the jack-in-the-box could make it not as safe, so please be careful!

Stuff that's kind of great about being in your forties

My older sister and I are both in our forties now, and we both kind of love it. It isn't that we don't miss our younger, more capable bodies of former years... but there are some advantages to getting older that almost seem to outweigh the disadvantages. Such as:

I know where my emotions are coming from, and it is SO much easier to manage them

I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen to everyone, but both my sis and I have noticed a distinct uptick in our ability to remain calm. Of course some of this is about being able to let go of stress from the outside, but some of it is definitely about knowing ourselves and knowing how to manage ourselves. We know if we're cranky because we're tired, or major life stress is happening, or we just yelled at someone, and we further have this ability to recognize and then do what needs to be done in order to get ourselves out of this emotional trap. Take a nap, take a break, apologize, talk to a friend. All the stuff that has worked our whole lives, but somehow our ability to remember these techniques and actually use them seems to be improving. Neither of us is complaining.

I am much more able to recognize and label crazy or unhelpful behavior, while simultaneously being able to let go of judgment about the person engaging in the behavior

About that second part: I am old enough now that if I'm being honest, I know that I have probably engaged in that exact same crazy/unhelpful behavior in the past, and I also know that it's possible that I will engage in it in the future. :( When describing stressful situations to others, or listening sympathetically to their descriptions of stressful situations, I try to remember to describe the person "causing" the stress as a real human: capable of change and also probably under a lot of stress themselves.

And as to the first part: if a behavior is crazy or unhelpful, I am able to be so much calmer once I recognize it for what it is. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt means not judging their character on the basis of a few behaviors. Having good boundaries means that you recognize when a behavior or situation is causing you problems-- no matter how nice (or "nice") the person behind that behavior is-- and and choosing to take steps to solve those problems. Often that means going to the person and trying to work out a solution. Sometimes it means sucking it up/learning to let go. Occasionally it means removing yourself from the situation until things have changed. I used to only have the "try to let it go" response, but it isn't always the best response! Having the other two in my arsenal has helped me be calmer, happier, more cheerful, and (I think) a better friend.

I moved from being a silver medalist to being a bronze medalist

My brother-in-law was the one who told me about the conclusions mentioned in this article:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/why-bronze-medalists-are-happier-than-silver-winners/

Basically the deal is that if you get a silver medal, you are most likely to be thinking about how if you had done just a little better, you would have gotten gold! But if you are a bronze medalist, you probably recognize the likelihood that if you had done a little worse, you would have not gotten a medal at all.

And this is how this works for me. I spent a lot of time in my twenties and thirties worrying about things which were not happening for me, which I wanted to happen-- some of which were more under my control than others. I wanted at least financial stability, if not success-- but, nada. It would have been nice to have found academic or any other kind of professional success, but again, not so much. And of course, elephant in the room, of course I wanted to be married, which is in some ways pretty far out of my control, but still... no dice.

Now, I will admit that some of my increased happiness in all of these areas is because I have made measurable gains in at least some of them. I have financial stability of a sort, as long as my mother keeps subsidizing my rent. In a couple of years, when I have my student loans finally paid off, I will even have it as a possibility to rent with roommates ("why don't you rent with roommates?" "It's too expensive") instead of being my mother's housemate. Professionally, I am working steadily on my writing, and have accepted that I'm not going to have a "real" profession other than that. And if I get married? It's a bonus! Ladies in their forties who get married for the first time are not even in the same race with those who married at a "normal" time, whatever that time was. It feels splendid to be less worried about it. I am doing things about it, but being able to let go of some of that stress is the just the best.

(If you know a lady in her thirties who is fretting about not being married, do please try not to scold her for it. Or tell her that marriage isn't that great. Or tell her that she should enjoy being single. If you enjoyed being single so much, maybe you should get divorced? Otherwise, stop picking on people who are already clearly stressed out.)

This is the thing. Unless you choose to stop being friends with people, stop reading or watching the news, stop basically participating in the human race, you will be confronted on a regular basis with people who have stuff that you want, but don't have, and you will probably be uncertain about whether or not they deserved those things more than you did. Failing, hard, at professional and financial things for about half of my thirties taught me that there are worse things out there than other, possibly-more-but-possibly-less-worthy-than-me people having things I wish I had. What I really want, and need, and this is backed up by research! is friends and family to confide in, to rejoice with, who trust me with their hard times and whom I can trust with mine. And since I started seeking that, I have found it, and while I will not be ungrateful (I hope!) when or if any of those other lovely cherries-on-top happen, I feel deeply, deeply grateful for what I have and for the chances I have to make my life even better.

To sum up: being in your forties is the BEST. I highly recommend hanging out on the planet until you get here, if you haven't already. :)

What I actually said at the funeral, as best I can remember (the "Life Sketch")

I wrote this the morning after the funeral and then edited a tiny bit in the middle of church, that same day. Underneath my own talk, I also wrote what I remembered of what the bishop and stake president said. (Relevant to their remarks is the fact that they are bishop and stake president in a Polynesian ward and stake in Utah, where the funeral was held.)

**************************

One of Dad's best gifts to me, especially at the end, was that he wanted people to be able to learn from the past, which you can't do if you don't know the bad stuff. I'm not going to focus on the bad stuff today, but if you are interested in learning from it, ask questions, observe, be open.

I look a lot more like my dad than my mom, and my personality is a lot like my Dad's, both for the good stuff and for the bad stuff. I like the scripture in Mormon chapter 9 that says "Condemn me not for my imperfection, neither condemn my father; but give thanks unto God that he has shown unto you our imperfections, that you may know how to do better than we have done."

I was listening to a BYU devotional the other day, and the speaker said that he had tried to give other talks, but that this was the one that he needed to give. And I thought, that has never happened to me, it then I thought, oh, nope, it has. Dad's life sketch. I keep feeling like I should compare him to Jesus Christ.

So. Here goes.

Number one: obscure birth near sheep. [Everyone laughed at this, which I had hoped they would.] I have a work colleague who doesn't think much of Southeast Idaho, and in fact I can almost hear them saying, "Can there any good come out of Southeast Idaho?"

Next, he defied his parents to go to a place of learning. He went to BYU, even though his parents wanted him to attend Idaho State University. He also went to the temple when he was fifteen, and that was where he learned to love landscape architecture. He loved the temple his whole life.

He also sacrificed. When I was two, I needed a medical test which required me to fast for twenty-four hours. Dad thought it was unfair to ask a two-year-old to fast for that long, so he fasted along with me, and prayed that he would feel my hunger. Every time he told that story, he said it was the hardest fast of his life*, but that I acted like I wasn't even hungry. I walked by a candy machine without even noticing it.

This reminds me of the scripture in Alma 13 that says that priesthood holders should be types of Christ.

He also learned as he went along. Dad liked to create, and learned how to take pretty good photographs. Jesus also learned and grew. The scriptures say that he needed not that any man should teach him, but they also say that he grew in wisdom and in stature. I remember the one story about Jesus healing the blind man, and he put the clay in his eyes, and asked if he could see, and when he couldn't yet, he tried something else. So, Jesus didn't know everything at first, and had to learn some things. This means that when someone needs to learn something, that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, so just keep that in mind. 

They also performed practical miracles. One time, Dad was driving to California and kept having car troubles, and finally gave the car a blessing. When he got to California, my grandfather, his father-in-law, said he shouldn't have made it, and Dad didn't know if he meant he shouldn't have driven in a car that bad, or that it wasn't possible that a car in that state could have driven that far.

He also loved the islands of the sea. He always talked about how much he loved the Polynesian assemblies at BYU, and how they were his favorite assemblies. He especially loved New Zealand, but he never did get to travel there. I was talking to friends about this, and he did get Maori grandchildren, and we figured that this was probably better. [This also got a laugh, which I was pleased about.]

His own father died when Dad was in his early thirties, and he was sad about that for the rest of his life, I believe. When he had his major stroke seven years ago, I believe-- and I am not the only one who believes this-- that he had a choice about whether to stay or to go, and that he chose to come back so that we would have a chance to say goodbye. So he stayed, and suffered, for seven more years, so that we could do that.

Dad was just exactly like Jesus Christ, except in this one thing: Jesus didn't have any of the bad parts, and through Jesus, all of our bad and broken parts can be healed, and mended. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

*******************

 

The bishop mentioned that Dad would talk to anyone. 

The stake president mentioned that when he was a high councilor, he had visited the ward maybe three times, and all three, he ended up talking to Dad. He said that the first time they talked about plants, and that the second time, they talked about how to keep plants alive.

He said that Dad would talk to anyone, old or young, didn't care, and no matter their race. He said that in addition to the qualities I had mentioned, Dad had another Christlike quality, of humility. 

He also said that he had ancestors from Southeast Idaho, and that when the Lord puts someone in a place like that, it is for a reason. He said that the Lord often has a work for them to do, and that this work can take generations to accomplish. 

That made me ponder, and I have most certainly not finished pondering.

 

*For readers not familiar with fasting in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: if an adult (or youth) is physically able, they are supposed to fast once a month. This means that Dad presumably had quite a few as a basis for comparison.

Tiara-wearing experience

I was sitting in my youngest sister's room one day not too long ago-- I often visit her after church, since she lives between me and the church I attend-- and she asked me what I had done for my last birthday. Since my birthday always fell exactly during finals at the university I attended, I have been pretty well trained that having birthday parties is fairly useless, but I did have a lovely time at a friend's house; we made challah* together and she sent envy pics to her brother-in-law with whom she has a friendly rivalry about matters domestic.

My sister looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "I think I should lend you my tiara." Her friends had bought her a tiara for her graduation from college, which she suggested I could wear around the house from time to time. She can't do this so much because she lives with some guys, and they probably wouldn't understand the need for a girl to wear a tiara around the house. She got it out for me and I put it on; she took a picture, which I think I look funny in, but it is also kind of cute, so I don't mind so much.

After that I was going down to a friend's house, and since I was just driving, I decided to wear it that far. Once I got there, I sort of felt like wearing it inside-- but of course that would be silly. But then I saw that a small child was visiting her auntie, my friend's roommate, and I decided that this kind of silly would be my kind of silly, today.

I wasn't really expecting the response I got. The small child's parents immediately said, "Oh! Look! Do you see that a PRINCESS is visiting us? Do you want to say hello to the PRINCESS?" And my first thought was: this is a little odd... but my second thought was, people who wear tiaras in public should be prepared to play along with games like this.

And I would have, but the little girl was just not into it, which I was absolutely fine with; I feel like most kids do better when you don't push them on things like this. Her parents explained that they hadn't been to Disneyworld yet, but that they were planning a visit. Ah-hah!

Then I needed to leave the room for a couple of minutes, and when I came back, the child was ready to talk. She wanted to tell me about a couple of her friends who had needed to go to the doctor, and while her parents thought her choice of topics was hilarious, I felt it was my obligation as a princess to listen to her very seriously, which I did.

And then I had to leave.

But the best part happened when I visited the next week, and we were talking about it, and the auntie-roommate mentioned casually that her niece had cried when I left. I mean, I'm not normally in to making children cry, but if one is going to do so, this is definitely the way that makes me happy.

It kind of makes me wonder where else I should wear a tiara. More on this later, perhaps.

*Challah is Jewish Sabbath bread. Pretty yummy, braided, has eggs and is a bit sweet. They sell it in the stores around here, and after I had bought it a few times I decided I should just start making it myself. I use Epicurious' Chernowitzer Challah recipe, with half the oil, in case anyone is interested.