Put down the anger. Now who do you want to be?

I had a bit of a thought provoking experience tonight, so I thought I would take a minute and try to process my way through this in writing.  Recently, I've become more and more frustrated with how long it takes to put my two year old son to bed.  We (generally me now that Amy has another little one to take care of) lay with him and cuddle him while he falls asleep which occasionally is a really lovely experience.  But more often than not, it is an experience of a boy crawling up and down the bed and on top of your head and the only time he is still is if you put him in a death grip.  Tonight, I had been working on getting him to bed for two hours.  I'm taking a CPA test in two days and was feeling remarkably frustrated that this was taking away from my study time.  At about the 1 hour 45 minute mark, Amy took off to go to some party (where I'm assuming she still is, although I have no idea why an adult party with an infant would still be going on at 1am) for some much needed out time.  At about the 2 hour mark, I just kind of lost it and screamed at him and threw him in his crib with a string of profanities under my breath on my way out.

He cried and cried.  Terribly confused and scared.  Obviously tired.  He called for daddy.  He called for mommy.  Through stifled sobs, he cried for Brennan.  He promised to, "Stay in the Bed."  He begged to "cuddle with Brennan."  But I was just so angry that none of it penetrated me.  This went on for a bit.  It probably wasn't very long, but I don't really know.

The thought came into my mind, "Put down the anger.  Now who do you want to be?"  I took a moment to ponder in the hallway and collect myself.  My memory was transported to a letter that I had written to myself last summer during a "self-help camp" for lack of a better term.  It was a letter written from my golden father.  It contained all of the kind words that the little boy in me wanted to hear from my father.  As I was a fairly new father to my son at this time, it also contained the words that I wanted to always be sure to say to my boy.  That night at "camp", I had the opportunity to be held by a man and to have this letter read to me.  I vowed that I wanted my son to be held by me and and to hear these kind words from me frequently.  I realized instantly that my intense anger was stopping me from being the father I intended to be.  So after taking a brief moment to collect myself, I ran into him and held him tight and apologized profusely and told him how much I loved him.  I held him on my chest stroking his hair long after he had fallen asleep.

As I sat folding laundry and watching Meryl Streep videos on YouTube, I thought further about the anger in my life.  I have been morbidly (mostly inwardly) angry at the Mormon church for a few years now.  It's grown especially bitter as of late (most surely not helped by having recently joined the group feminist mormon housewives on facebook).  While still being relatively active in the church from an outward point of view, any actual spirituality on any level has been pretty much absent as my initial knee jerk reaction is just to stay away from it all.  I've been so angry that I haven't even been able to honestly ponder who it is that I actually want to be.  I'm very unsure about the role that organized religion will play in my life from here on out... but I do know that I don't want who I am to be dictated by my anger.  As I saw very, very clearly tonight, I don't like angry me.  Angry me lets me ignore the most important people in my life while they wail in distress.

It's time to put down the anger and figure out who I want to be.  Twenty years from now (or even a few months from now), I don't want who I am to be someone whose primary spiritual characteristic is being mad at some organization.   It's time to figure out who I want to be.

God's wrath (or sense of humor). You pick.

You might say that I was a very fastidious student. That might be an understatement. But that's not specifically what this post is about, so we'll leave that there.

There was only one time in particular when I remember free loading. It was the last week of my university career (the reading day before finals). My international tax teacher had agreed to let us do the final project (filling out a 5471 information return) in groups. While I normally prefer to not work in groups at all (so much easier to be fastidious on one's own), I was fairly worn out by this point of my career (new baby, both of us trying to finish our grad degrees, senior-itis) and I was eager for a little "help" from my classmates.

So I did something completely uncharacteristic of me and organized a 'party' for anyone in the class who wanted to get together to complete the return. Also completely uncharacteristic of me, I didn't really even look at the return before the party (okay... a little... but way less than the normal me would have). I went to the party, copied down the answer that we came up with together and got it ready to hand in.

The teacher had promised us a lively discussion about the form... or as lively as is humanely possible about a form put out by the government. So I had promised myself that I would at least look over my classmates' answers before our final and try to understand it. But I didn't.

Then came the first portion of God's wrath. The Gardner had a fun game for us to play.

"Everyone, this is going to be the best final ever. Please pick a number one to one-hundred." I settled on 67. The magic number was 62 and I was the closest. Oh goodie, what did I win. An A? A candy bar? what?

I had won the opportunity to come down in front of everyone and explain each line of the 5471. Gah! Thanks to some jokes and some help from the class... I made it through. But it was rough.

I figured that this ordeal was punishment enough. But the wrath had not ended. I come to Canada and start my job and immediately, I am put on a project with a different group than mine to prepare some 150 odd 5471s for a very wealthy US citizen gone Canadian. I've prepared some 50 or so. The man's social security number and address forever ingrained in my psyche (this hasn't been one of those cases where you type it in once and it flows to the rest of the return. Both of those facts about him must be typed in three times each on each one).

As God as my witness, I will never freeload again. The consequences are more than I can bear.

Can man survive without woman?

Amy and Hyrum are gone for the week to Washington. So I attended a ward potluck today without them. As I introduced myself to people, I let them know about Amy and Hyrum's situation... so they wouldn't be too shocked were I to be holding a baby next time they saw me... and telling people that they existed seems to just be part of the introduction process. Repeatedly, I got similar reactions usually revovling around how hard it was going to be for me to not have someone to provide me with some good homecooking. I've gotten similar responses when Amy was pregnant, when she toured the UK with BYU Singers, when we were apart during our move etc. So I'm pretty used to them. I generally just smile and say yup.

One comment today in particular was laughable. A woman responded, "Good thing there was a potluck today so you could at least have something to eat tonight." I really wanted to reply, "Oh yes, it is such a miracle. I don't know what I would've done. This is the only thing I'm planning on eating this week. I mean, by Wednesday or so, I might get desperate enough that I'll have to figure out how to order a pizza or open a package of oreos or something. But yeah... I'm completely uncapable of even remotely taking care of myself."

Then my next instinct was to be a little more truthful yet sarcastic and be like, "Yeah, it's rough. Last night I had to cook for myself. The best I could do was a medium rare steak with roasted red potatoes and broccoli. Then this morning I had to settle for breakfast sausage, fried egg, toast, strawberries, bananas and camomille tea. And tonight, I was thinking I was going to be forced to eat a cheddar dijon chicken broccoli mixture on authentic made-at-home-by-me flour tortillas." [side note... I just finished making/eating the above mentioned thing (I'm not sure what to call it...burritos? wraps? heaven?) and it was AMAZING!]

I settled on, "Yup I'm glad there's a potluck" and moved on. I don't want to upset the world too much because I know how scary a man who is powerful in the kitchen can be to a woman. I assume I'm not the only man feigning helplessness to help women feel good about themselves. I mean, if women knew that we could survive [as in eat and keep house] without them then they might feel that their only real purposes in this life were reproductive and to help us spend our salaries. And we [men] do like them [women], so we don't want them to feel unneeded or useless. And for this reason, I just say yup.

But this got me thinking. Are we just being nice and letting women think we need them for this or are there a good proportion of this men who are helpless in the kitchen? I know I'm a little more adept than most, but I don't I've ever met anyone who was completely hopeless. Like, my dad's one of the more macho men I know... and I believe that he could survive. Once when I was an early teen my mom went to Europe for a month... and I don't remember much about that month besides burning my mom's tupperware in a bonfire, but I'm pretty sure we survived okay. I did hear a tale from a friend about a roommate who turned frozen chicken nuggets into charcoal... but I feel like stories like this are hopefully the exception.

Thoughts?

Please revel in the rejection a bit longer....

Today Amy sent me to the store on the way home to pick up ground beef because our loveable neighborhood grocery store supposedly gives you 10% off on the first Tuesday of the month, and she had forgotten earlier (although she had remembered the hummus because she is a hippie and not a carnivore).

Anyways, so I get to the self checkout with my ground beef and Canadian oreos (yet another thing that just isn't quite the same). I check out and get to a screen where it asks me whether I wanted 10% off or extra skymiles for my special first Tuesday of the month thing. I clicked on the 10% and then it proceeded to tell me that I wasn't qualified for the deal (I learned later that it was because I hadn't spent over $30).

Then to ensure that I acknowledged that I was a failure, another screen popped up asking me to push a button to acknowledge that I wasn't getting the 10% off. How much rejection do grocery shoppers need these days? If I hadn't spent enough, was it really necessary to even offer the 10% to me to begin with? And then was it really necessary to dig the rejection into me like a spork dripping with poisoned macaroni?

It's a good thing the machine took my $20 bill... because if it had rejected my queen paper, that would've been a bit too much.

If YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

Then maybe you shouldn't ask.

I'm pretty open... duh. And I'll admit that there have been plenty of times when I have volunteered information without being asked. But if you ask, there's no question... I'm probably going to answer you. And you probably better be okay with that.

Here are the times when questions have led to the most problems....

I had a roommate at BYU that I didn't get on great with. Once I was in a bad mood and he suggested that I take a cup or something back to the girls who had lent it to us. I told him that I didn't want to talk to girls. He asked if I was heterosexual.... let's just say that our relationship never really recovered from that one.

Tests.... these aren't really a part of my life anymore sadly. But I would always hate the "What did you get" question. I have an uncanny ability to do well on tests. It's really my only life skill and it's not really useful anymore. So last semester, in my tax classes, I got the high on every test... time after time after time unfortunately. Questions would only result in strange reactions. Whenever anybody would ask, I would want to scream, "Let's look at the track record okay.. .it's higher than yours... I'm sorry... but at least you have lots of job offers" (I was hard pressed to find one). I just wanted normalcy. I would hate the reactions that would clearly seem to state, "I didn't really want to know." Well friends, don't ask, don't tell.

Most recently, a co-worker (3 years my senior in accounting experience) asked about my salary. Now I know you aren't supposed to discuss these kind of things.... but he asked. So while slightly more hesitant at first, I did tell him. Only to find out that I did in fact make substantially more than him. He hasn't been awful about it.... but it has been awkward... and he has brought it up a few times since then. I apologized profusely and said that I had no idea why it would be so (informing him that I'm positive that he's more valuable to the company than me)... but yeah.

So moral of the story... unless you're going to be okay with whatever possible answer comes out of my mouth... you should be careful what you ask. I'm just not the sort of person that waits for the most heated sessions of truth or dare to let things come out. Gah... I sure hope I never have secret information. I wouldn't last long in interrogation.

Segregation

Did you know that the Orem city library separates its religious books into different areas depending on whether they are written by Mormons or not even though they have the same call numbers? I realized this the hard way when I had to find a book written by Rabbi Kushner for my ethics class this weekend. Would it really be that concerning if books by Rabbis occasionally touched books that were written by Sheri Dew? I was curious to see if they separated Stephanie Meyer's books to a holier plane than other books about vampires, but I had a cold, pregnant wife in the car, so I didn't do more research on the matter.

Major validation

I'm writing on my blog to avoid writing a rather lengthy paper for an organizational behavior elective that I took presupposing it to be easy. It hasn't been difficult, but getting myself to work on this paper has made me re-realize how much I dislike writing.

In short, I finally think that I'm in a good major for me.... very little writing for the most part.