salt flats, sunrise

first, there was a text message from elliott: "come sleep on the salt flats friday night. 9pm depart. come back at sunrise."

next, i decided this was an adventure not to be missed.

then, briana and i put on our pajamas and loaded up our (minimal) camping gear: sleeping bags, pillows, a tarp (graciously procured for us by emily), water, headlamps, courage.

afterwards, we drove and drove and drove to the west and west and west in nathan's sturdy jeep, towards our destination, a small road off the freeway that google earth had promised would lead us to the flats. we kept our eyes peeled for "no trespassing" signs. we saw none.

suddenly, we were there!

accordingly, we parked the car on a breakwater, loaded the gear onto our backs/shoulders/waists and began walking and walking and walking, for three long, flat, dark miles, away from the car and the maniacal hum of the freeway. when we decided that we had arrived, we stopped, threw down our tarps and slept soundly on the salt.

by and by, the glorious sun arose, and our world looked like this:







slowly, our little colony awoke to greet the strange and stunning morning.





















whereupon, we concluded that waking up in the great expanse of nothingness was better than anything we had imagined or hoped for.







subsequently, bathroom breaks were in order. but the flat(FLAT!) expanse of the salt flats(FLAT!) affords little privacy, no matter how far you wander. and so our tarps were put to a different, most practical use.



(also, a word to the wise about peeing on the salt flats. get low (it splashes!) and move often. the salt flats do not absorb.)

ultimately, it was time to leave our temporary and alien home.

and so, we traversed the great expanse of nothingness again. rested. renewed. awed.













the end.

truth be told

among many other things in which i believe, i believe in telling the truth. now, telling the truth is not always one of my favorite things, but neither is the pythagorean theorum or going to church for three hours a week, and i believe in those things, too. i had to tell the truth-- the real, until-then-hidden truth-- just the other night, and it gave me one bad dream and a 12-hour panic attack. but i believe in being honest about what you think and what you feel and so i did it even though, for a few seconds, i would rather have died. or at least had a brief but life-threatening illness that let me off the hook.

and you know what?

when i was done telling the truth i felt so calm. and relieved. and happy. and i also felt really, really, really brave. i didn't put it in an e-mail. i didn't shove it to the back of my head. i didn't hint around. i said it. out loud. and there was a lot of power for me in that experience, whether or not the anticipation took five years off my life.

and that sort of powerful experience is why i have sort of a problem with the anonymous blogosphere. i started thinking about this back in may, at the rocky mountain retreat, during a panel discussion about mormon feminism on the internet.

now, i recognize that not everyone is as in love with honesty as i am, and that i have been lucky to grow up and exist in environments where it was safe for me to tell the truth. for many of the women on this panel, and at the retreat, the internet had become that environment; a place to find kindred spirits and share thoughts and feelings without fear of repercussions or judgements.

i can certainly see the value in that kind of space. we all need and deserve a place to be open and communicate as ourselves. but i also think hiding behind the mask of anonymity is just that: hiding. and it ends up shortchanging us in the end.

for starters, people say all kinds of invaluable and unkind things when no one knows who they are. (i guess i should clarify that my love affair with honesty does not include the kind that unnecessarily or maliciously hurts people's feelings.) it's plenty easy to be snarky, judgmental or just plain wrong when no one can call you out because they don't know who "you" are. it's sort of like leaving steaming poo on someone's doorstep, ringing the bell and running away (gross). i just don't like it. anonymity can also absolve us of the need to back up what we say. i can rant and rave all i want with no foundation or proof if no one can find me to demand that foundation or proof.

(editor's note: i realize that we are dealing in generalities here, and i hope you do, too. there are, obviously, exceptions to every rule, and some anonymous honesty is worthwhile and valuable. in general, though, i think it just gives us an excuse to be jerks, an excuse we are all too happy to accept whenever we can.)

more importantly, though, i think relying on anonymity to communicate important and hard truths cheats us out of the power of the experience that truth-telling can be. i do agree with the author of this article that your identity is not as important as your message. but, your identity makes your message that much stronger. we grow, we learn, we perfect as we do hard things. and when i am looking for advice, consolation, celebration of a shared experience, i am not looking for anonymous. i am looking for you.

most importantly, i really believe that if we are to see the change that truth promises, we have to be willing and able to put ourselves squarely behind that truth. we have to say it. out loud. with our names and everything else attached. it's all fine and good to vent feelings and frustrations behind the mask, but if i ever want those feelings and frustrations to be resolved, some day i am going to have to woman-up and deal with them in the real world. i am going to have to tell someone what i, not anonymous, thinks and feels. i am going to have to tell the truth.

easy? no. but, for the strength and power i believe the truth gives us, a nightmare and 12 hours of anxiety, even a little embarrassment, vulnerability or judgment, is a small price to pay.

frances cake, take eight: the bon voyage! edition

this is marcey.



marcey is sassy and fun and sarcastic, all of which are some of my favorite traits in a person. she also wants to be the next martha stewart (sans a criminal record, i am sure), which might be annoying to someone domestically-challenged as i am, but she's not annoying about it, so it's no problem. it also means that she will bring amazing lemon tarts with real whipped cream on their own fancy cake platter to your dessert party. so there's that.

our first cake date was foiled by a dental emergency+wedding invitation emergency and i had been kind of slow about rescheduling, until she texted the other day and said she had accepted a job in seattle! and is moving next week! now it was a frances cake emergency! it was now or never, so we went with now. this was also a particularly significant frances cake outing because it was the first in my new, expansive, easy-to-use, totally-the-bomb kitchen.

marcey found this great recipe for rainbow cupcakes. these kinds of recipes are my favorite, because the finished product makes it look like you did something really hard and technical and creative and amazing, when all you really did was whip up a white cake mix, divide the batter into different bowls and add some food coloring.





my secret is safe with you, right?

though i guess you could say scooping the layers into the cupcake tins, one by one, was sort of difficult.







they baked up beautifully and colorfully,



and in the meantime we talked about lame men who can't commit, tv shows we should be watching (i am still on a quest to become addicted to "gossip girl." anyone with me?), joe biden, marcey's new job and why sometimes being a mormon outside of utah is better. briana also worked hard on her speculum sterilization pouches. (she's a midwife so she's allowed.)



marcey was only sort of terrified when she saw a bunch of speculums out on the ironing board in the dining room. i am no fan of those things, don't get me wrong, but i am used to seeing them around by now.

back to the baking, the final product was both delightful and delicious, outside and in. i ate two. (my secret is safe with you, right?)











and then, marcey was off. not forever, of course, thanks to the magic of blogging and facebook and text messages, but it won't be the same as a face-to-face over cake. good luck, marcey! we'll miss you something awful.

timeout

a few days ago briana and i went to a workshop about time management. we were late. so that should give you a pretty good idea of how good i am at managing my time.

anyway.

i wasn't sure what to expect, but i thought it might be something along the lines of: don't overschedule yourself, don't agree to things you know you can't do, get enough sleep, take "me time," wear a watch, buy a planner, "be your word" and maybe some other stuff that i couldn't even think of because i am such a bad time manager to begin with.

instead, the presenter (excuse me, life coach) took us through this really cool exercise of identifying our core values. if you know your core values, she said, you instantly become a better time manager, because the only things that are worth doing are things that line up with the values that are most important to you. if something doesn't line up with your guiding values, you can just dismiss it out of hand (though exceptions can and should be made for vampire romance novels).

so, first we all wrote down an example of someone, someone we know or someone we don't, who stood up for their values even when it was inconvenient and unpopular. martin luther king, jr., the suffragettes and my mom were some examples. (my example was the time when my mom was approached by some people to select a family to receive a secret santa christmas, and then the people didn't want to help the family she chose because the people felt like that family had brought their misfortune on themselves. i don't mean to judge, but those people were really, really lame. my mom, who is not lame, did christmas for this family herself.)

then we all wrote down what a value or a value system is to us. something that guides you? something that is imposed on you by family, or a religion? a responsibility? a privilege? something for you or something for other people? something static or dynamic? something that affects every part of your life or just some parts? something that you follow all the time or just when you want to? how you define it influences how you follow it, so defining it is pretty important. we talk about "values" a lot, and it was nice to put my own meaning on it, something i could get my head around and make some sense of. for inquiring minds, i define my value system as something that helps me accomplish the things that matter most to me, but also something that focuses me outward, towards helping other people.

next we flipped our little worksheets over. there was an enormous list of values on the other side. the presenter (life coach) told us to go through and circle every single one that stuck out to us. there were all kinds of things to circle: endeavor, be amused, educate, uplift, originality, assemble, imagination, set standards, adept, tenderness, part of a community, energize, move forward, in touch with, to experience, and the list goes on. there were also lots of things i didn't want to circle: risk, danger, govern, rule, preeminence, prevail, score, energy flow, sensations, attractiveness, religious. (no one panic. i did circle relate with God, honoring, devoting and holy, which i think are all better than just plain religious anyway.)

from there, we narrowed our long list of circles down to ten: influence, set standards, serve, improve, be connected, family, part of community, learn and accomplish were mine.

then it got hard. we had to narrow our ten down to three. from those ten things, which were the absolutely, indisputably most important things that i couldn't live without? i finally settled on: learn, improve and be connected.

and i feel pretty good about it.

ultimately, i feel like those things encompass all the other values i circled originally. i can be connected to my family, my community, God. i can improve myself and the situation of others by serving, honoring, being accepting. i can learn by experiencing, using my imagination, embracing the unknown.

i also learned that sometimes the end is not as important as the means. accomplish, for example, was one of my ten values, and i think it's pretty important. a lot of the work i have done in my life has been to accomplish something: finishing college, a mission, meeting a deadline, crossing off goals. i like to accomplish. but the things required to accomplish are, ultimately, more important to me than the accomplishing itself. i didn't know that before.

all in all, a most enlightening and well spent evening, and i highly recommend trying it. there is something really empowering about knowing what is most important to you, knowing why you act the way you do and make the choices you make. it certainly has the potential to remove the need to justify every decision we make, which can only be a good thing if you ask me.

the only trouble?

"none of these really include an addiction to vampire romance," i whispered to briana.

"that's why you need to add this one," she said.

and then she circled, "be hedonistic."

what a friend.

p.s. this and other empowerment sessions are free to you if you become a member of the ywca. (i know you wanna!) for more information, go here.

i believe in a thing called love

if it can happen for tortoises, it can happen for me. right?

frances cake(plates)

one of my more recent friend crushes is emily, with whom i have been trying to schedule a frances cake date for what seems like ages. we seem to suffer from the same (spacey in my case) over-scheduling malady (nice to know there are others like you, no?) so we scheduled a bunch of cake dates that didn't work out and then she went on this cleanse with no sugar or dairy or, basically, food, and frances cake just does not work without those things. it seemed doomed.

but then, she invited me over to make cake plates! if there is a better substitute for making actual cake, i don't know what it is.

making cake plates is possibly the easiest craft in this history of craftiness (besides, i guess, buying crafts and pretending you made them). so simple, in fact, that even i could not mess it up. too badly.

first, you buy a plate. we all made some great finds at d.i., which is where i was faced with the first moral dilemma of the project. to break up a set of four plates by only buying one, or not? i did. judge me if you will.

next you find a base. bases can be anything with a bottom wider than the top, including candlesticks, vases or cups turned upside down. the only trick, i learned the hard way, is to make sure the side of the base you are attaching to the plate (i'll tell you how to do that in just a minute. patience!) is perfectly flat. one of my bases had a not-perfectly-flat edge and it never adhered properly. the good news was, there were lots of extra bases. the better news was, my replacement base was even cuter than the original.

so, once you have a plate and a (flat) base, you take some epoxy, spread it on the top of the base, stick the top of the base on the bottom of the plate and, well, actually, you're done! don't believe me? check out some photos of our crafty night here.

yep. that's it. my kind of craft, for sure. and maybe it should be yours, too. pretty much impossible to screw up (well, i guess you could glue yourself to something, but none of us did, so it seems like a small risk), and all you're out is $2 in thrift store dishes. in fact, these guys are so cheap and easy to make, we decided it would be cool to take people cakes and cookies and other treats on our little creations and then leave them the plates, you know, as a little gift. be super nice and maybe, just maybe, you'll get one soon.

perfect end to a perfect day (cliffhanger resolved)

the trouble with a cliffhanger ending, i have learned, is that it does put a lot of pressure on the next post. i mean, with all that anticipation i feel like i should be announcing that i met jake gyllenhaal in a gas station in vernal and now we're engaged, or something equally magnificent. but really the perfect end to our perfect day was that, on our way home, we stumbled upon the most perfect small town parade in duschene.

disappointed? well, it was no jake gyllenhaal, but it was still pretty much the best thing ever. it was everything you might expect from a small town parade, including a high school band, pretty girls on pretty horses and children who probably can't even walk driving four-wheel vehicles.








there was also candy! so much candy! just flying through the air. we did pretty well, but not as well as the kids next to us. there were pretty aggressive, and if you check out their stash, i think you'll agree that it paid off.







but, did the fun end there? of course not! we learned from the people standing next to us that it wasn't just a parade. there was a fair! a real life, small town fair. which is my favorite kind. it was cousin bucky's first fair, so i think you can imagine how excited he was.







after i completely mortified myself dancing along to the music of some completely lame and untalented band, we settled down to a delicious dinner of fair food, one of my favorite kinds of food, and luckily one of heidi's, too. even heather broke her no-wheat, no-sugar, no-dairy rule (you kind of have to with fair food) and joined us.

we started with dutch over potatoes...









... then a red dog, which was really just an oddly-colored hot dog (don't ask, don't tell, right?)...



and finished it off with funnel cake, the ultimate in small town fair indulgence.





so, not jake gyllenhaal down on one knee (maybe if i keep typing it, it will come true), but not a bad perfect ending, wouldn't you say?