more to come...

i took my first-ever trip to zion national park this weekend (yes, i realize i have lived in utah for almost three years, making this long overdue) and there are many tales to tell and pictures to share. but... i am exhausted (not to mention partially paralyzed) and my poor computer is taking ages to upload photos. so, for now, i am going to leave you with this glimpse of how awesome and hardcore my weekend was, with more to follow very, very soon...

this is real, and it's fabulous!

doing some very serious journalistic internet research yesterday i stumbled upon this amazing article. yes, the sub-headline really reads, "harnessing the untapped power of breast motion."

with that introduction, i can't imagine any of you not wanting to read this article for yourselves. but in case you are at work or your mom's house and pulling up an article about boobs might get you in trouble (or make you blush), i'll give you a quick run-down. basically, the article explores the possibility of converting the motion of a woman's breasts into energy that could power, say, an ipod. as it happens, the breast moves along three separate axes (up and down, side to side and front to back), and a poorly-supported d-cup can move up to 35 inches while a woman exercises. who knew?!? so, as the author points out, "why not put the girls to work?"

the article also sheds some light on the hygienic practices of scientists, or maybe just their lack of exposure to women and their undergarments. consider the following exchange:

'so you can generate enough energy to power an ipod?' i asked.
'definitely,' wang said.
i asked wang if this bra would be machine-washable.
'you don't need to wash a bra!' he said.
i disagreed.

all of this could certainly be seen by larger-busted women as a sort of karmic payback for the annoyance of exercising with big breasts. i, myself, wouldn't know anything about that as my particular cup size is used in this very article as an example of one that would not, and i quote, "get that ipod up and running."

you can't win them all, right?

for my father, embarrassingly late

someone said something about father's day the other day, and i had a moment of panic that i had forgotten all about it. because i do stuff like that sometimes. then i remembered that i had remembered to call, but i also realized that i let both father's day and my dad's birthday pass with no blog shout-out. and that simply will not do. so, here are some of my favorite memories and stories about my dear old dad.

i made a less than graceful entry into this world, and my mom was whisked away as soon as i was born for some, um, repairing. i was left in the cradle of my dad's arms, apparently forgotten by everyone but him. i don't remember it, of course, but we have long maintained that my dad and i really and permanently bonded in those first few minutes together. even today when i am sick, heartbroken, sad or scared, it's him i want.

my dad loves watching old music videos on the internet, like "love shack" by the B-52s. he also loves watching funny clips from "the daily show with jon stewart" and "the colbert report." sometimes he laughs so hard he cries.

my dad always has my back, and because of that i have rarely been afraid to do hard things. when i reported one of my junior high teachers the to administration for sexual harassment, dad was behind me all the way. he encouraged me to go to summer camps, fellowships and college far away. he never missed a week of writing me on my mission, and made sure i got all the care packages i needed. he is always my biggest fan and almost never criticizes me, even when i do really stupid things. instead, he helps me learn from my mistakes.

a couple years ago i had a really bad break-up and i was pretty depressed about it. my dad called almost every hour, on the hour, and recited that skit from "saturday night live": "you're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh-darnit, people like you." if i didn't answer, he left a message.

i was sort of a mess when i first came home from my mission, and my dad was really understanding and supportive of my rocky transition. there were a couple mishaps, like when i was getting discouraged about finding a job and he said, "oh, frances, i had to send out at least a thousand resumes before i got my first job!" (i burst into tears) or the time he sat next to me on the couch, put his hand on my knee and said, "frances, i know this is a difficult transition and you are doing a great job and i just want you to take as much time as you need. but how much time do you think that will be?" (i burst into tears), but most of the time he was my biggest ally and support. one particularly bad day, i had just been rejected from another job and my mom was hosting a bridal shower at our house. one of the ladies from the ward saw me in the kitchen and said, "still here, frances? what, no job?" i couldn't decide if i wanted to cry (yet again) or punch her in the face, or both, but my dad quickly intervened and took me out to dinner and a movie. it was just what i needed.

my dad loves to ride motorcycles, and he has a lot of them. five harleys, to be exact. sometimes he shows up unexpectedly at my door after having ridden, literally, thousands of miles. he is a member of the "iron butt club." he pretty much exclusively wears harley-davidson t-shirts and, if they come from somewhere special, he buys two of them. one to wear and one for his "collection." he also had some of them made into a quilt. this summer, he is riding his motorcycle to the arctic circle. none of this seems strange to any of us anymore.

my dad is interested in me and my life, and this encourages me to be an interesting person and do interesting things. he never, ever, ever pressures me about dating or marriage; instead he calls to see what i think about the eliot spitzer scandal, how my bike training is going, what i am working on at my job. he keeps magazine articles he thinks i might be interested in. he gives me story leads. he stays involved in the best of ways. i like and want to tell him things.

and, finally, this. a while back i was reading a book called "reviving ophelia" (i think i have mentioned it before) and there was a chapter about how a girl's relationship with her father shapes a huge part of who she will be for the rest of her life. i think i have been hugely shaped and influenced by the fact that my dad never treated me like a girl, he always treated me like a person. there was no reason i shouldn't do well in school, move away from home, travel, play sports, pursue leadership opportunities. the words, "that's not very ladylike" or "why can't you act more like a girl?" never escaped his lips. but there was also no reason i shouldn't make quilts, wear skirts and have giggly sleepovers if i wanted to. he always let me choose, and he set an example that has helped me choose wisely. when he says he is proud of me i know he means it, and it is the greatest affirmation there is.

and so, on no particularly special day, i say thank you to my dad, and give him lots of love. better late than never, right?

the solstice with the mostest

first, a disclaimer. we had a most adventerous summer solstice, but we also all forgot to bring our cameras, so you are just going to have to take my word for it. think you can do that? i thought so.

i started off the longest day of the year by riding my bike over to the avenues bakery to meet suvi for breakfast. she was in town for her sister's wedding, and it was wonderful to see her and hear all about her big city adventures. she works at the UN. pretty rad, huh?

then it was up the big hill home to start our kayaking adventure. last weekend when heather came over for frances cake we cooked up a plan to go kayaking on the great salt lake. none of us know much about kayaking (in fact, most of us had never been), but it didn't seem that hard. just go to REI, rent some kayaks and head out. right?

well, only sort of right.

for starters, REI didn't have any kayaks available to rent. though they did have a lot of canoes.

me: is it a good idea to rent canoes if you happen to be the kind of person who has swamped every canoe you've ever been in?
rob: i don't want to be in your canoe.

instead, we found another sporting goods store that had plenty of kayaks to rent. there was all kinds of discussion about how many we should get and what kind and then there was the issue of loading them onto the trucks, which took a pretty long time. by now it was the beginning of the afternoon, so we decided to bag the great salt lake and head just a few minutes up the canyon to mountain dell reservoir. it's a protected watershed area so you can't swim, but you can "fall in," which sounded good enough to us at this point.

i wish we had taken a camera just so you could see how beautiful mountain dell is. clear, sharp blue water and green, green mountains. sunny, open sky and a mountain breeze. it was truly gorgeous.

our next obstacle hit when we unloaded the kayaks (no small feat with the super-complicated knots the sporting goods guys had used to secure them) and realized we only had three paddles when we needed five. we still have no idea where the other two paddles ended up. it was ok, though, because two of our kayaks had foot pedals so you didn't really even need paddles. it was basically like paddle-boating in a kayak, which might seem like cheating, but it was also all kinds of fun so i didn't really care. jessica did have her pedals in backwards for a while, but once we got that sorted out it was smooth and most enjoyable sailing (unless dave was in the vicinity, trying to "help" you fall in). there might be nothing better in the world than floating for hours on the water.

loading up the kayaks wasn't as hard as we thought it would be...

heather: that went faster than even at the store.
rob: which might not be a good thing.

...and all the boats, paddles and people made it back in one piece. then it was off to a delicious dinner of fish tacos at lone star taqueria. whoever thought of fish tacos is a genius whose hand i would like to shake.

we wrapped up the longest day of the year with sallee and joan's annual summer solstice party. plenty of delicious food, dancing, guitar playing, poetry reading and sallee and i performed our now-famous rendition of "charlie on the MTA." joan (that's sallee's mom) thanked us all for coming to "celebrate the time when the universe changes" and i felt happy and full and alive.

welcome back, summer. welcome back.

why, sometimes, the grocery store is awesome

generally speaking, i despise grocery shopping. which is why i have been subsisting mainly on cheeze-its for the past few weeks. i hate taking the time to plan meals, make a list, go to the store and search for everything i need. and, since i almost always skip the first two steps, i usually get to the store with no real idea of what it is that i need in the first place and just wander the aisles aimlessly, tossing things in my basket only to get home and realize i still don't have actual food. plus there are about one trillion things i would, and do, choose over going to the store and by then we're out of toilet paper and shopping has become crisis management and the whole task seems too big and overwhelming and all i can do is run in and get the few things i need the very most and i'm pretty much right back where i started.

but, sometimes grocery shopping is like other things that seem so much cooler and more fun if you come back to them after not having done them for a while. like when you have weeks' worth of celebrity gossip to catch up on, or when you run into an old friend who used to kind of bug you but it's so fun to reconnect because now you hardly get to see each other so all that annoying stuff doesn't matter anymore. the smith's in the avenues was that friend to me last night. here is just a small list of the rad things that happened to me while i was there.

1. i ran into miaken who i had seen, literally, just a few minutes earlier at my office. we should have carpooled. and, she bought a five pound bag of cinnamon bears. you should ask her for some.
2. i ran into katie clifford, who wasn't phased at all that i recognized her in the shampoo and cosmetics aisle even though we have actually never met. she looks just like her sister (and my new friend), emily, so i played that card and decided to leave out that i may or may not sometimes stalk her on facebook and/or her blog. she was lovely and friendly and i hope we can be friends, even if she reads this and gets a little scared for a minute.
3. there was a guy in front of me by the cheese wearing a t-shirt that said, "not the kind of grass you take home to mama."
4. when i got over to the eggs, i remembered this dream i had a few nights ago that i really, really needed an egg, like for something really important, and when i opened the eggs in our fridge, they weren't eggs at all but just empty shells. and the few that were eggs were so fragile that they cracked all over as soon as you put a finger on them. weird. the eggs i bought appear to be fine.
5. newman's own pasta sauce was on sale.
6. when the cashier asked the woman behind me how she was doing the woman replied, "not so great. i think i have the tomato salmonella."
7. i ate a creamsicle in the car on my way home.
8. i didn't forget one single thing. not one. i even remembered the toilet paper.

wednesday wishing well

it is currently my fondest, fondest dream that a scene like this would unfold at my office. or at the grocery store. or on my front lawn. or anywhere else where i could see it. and maybe even join in.

the f(eminism) word

ever since coming home from denver (can one come home from home?) i've wanted to tell you about the rocky mountain retreat, an annual gathering of wonderfully broad-minded and free-thinking mormon women who are devoted to spirituality and truth. some of us call ourselves feminists and some of us do not, but one truth we all believe is that women should have every and equal opportunity to excel, to discover and develop talents that help themselves and everyone else. call it whatever you want, but i think that's an ideal everyone can (or at least should) get behind.

it's also an enormous and complex mission that i could write about for days and still feel like i had barely explored. which is, i think, why i have put off writing about it at all. where to begin? where to go? so i've decided to take baby steps (which seems the best way to approach all things enormous and complex) and tackle one small piece at a time.

first, let me say this. i do call myself a feminist. i didn't always, but i think that was only because i didn't realize the way i lived my life and expected to be treated was something out of the ordinary that needed a name of its own. i grew up in a family and environment where equality was a given, where moms and dads both worked and both did the dishes and both said smart and funny things at the dinner table, where boys and girls were both right and both wrong, both got masters degrees and both cuddled babies. i loved transformers as much as my little ponies and have no memory of ever thinking i couldn't do something, or should do something else, because i was a girl. it wasn't until college that i realized how unusual and lucky my life had been.

for this year's retreat, my mom asked me to sit on a panel about, basically, generational perspectives of feminism. at first i was totally jazzed because "sitting on a panel" sounds really important and grown-up and like i'm really smart and interesting, and every time someone asked me why i was going to denver i would say, "well, i'm sitting on this panel..." but then i got really stressed out because i didn't know what to say and i felt really uninformed and unqualified and it made me pull funny faces and gave me a little bit of a tummy ache. but, it was really fine and completely compelling and i learned a lot, from and about myself and the other women there as well.

in fact, i could probably write a dozen posts (or one super duper incredibly long one) just about the panel. but, baby steps. so i am going to start with this idea, which is a really pertinent one, i think.

one woman in the audience raised her hand and brought up the question of girls in junior high and high school using their bodies and their sexuality to exact and exert power over other people: teachers, friends, boyfriends, parents, even other girls. it's the oldest formula in the book and has endless expressions, but usually goes something like this: cleavage+short skirt-discernible intelligence and/or personality=success. being flat-chested (sternum all the way, baby!) and otherwise generally body-conscious, and being basically incapable of reining in my oversized personality (not to mention my crackling wit and brilliance), this is not a system it has ever occurred to me to employ. but, i have also lived long enough as a girl to understand that this is a real temptation and problem, no doubt borne from a belief that there is no other power a woman can wield. and i am just as much a slave to hair straighteners and mascara and new clothes and cute shoes as the next person (probably even moreso on that last one).

so, what to do?

the ideal solution would be, of course, to root out our damaging, body-obsessed popular culture and replace it with a healthy, nurturing, realistic vision of women and womanhood. seeing as that might take a minute though, i struck upon this idea for the meantime.

it's all well and good to tell girls they shouldn't rely on their bodies and their sexuality to get what they want. but, when you take something away, you have to put something in its place. a bad habit is much easier to get rid of if there is a better habit waiting in the wings to fill the hole. think nicotine gum or words like "fetch." and i don't think this case is any different. if we don't want girls to rely on short skirts and empty heads to get ahead, we have to give them something else to use.

which got me thinking, what is it that we emphasize and value about women, about each other? i guarantee that at least 90 percent of compliments i get have something to do with my physical self. either i am wearing a cute outfit, or my hair looks nice, or i look like i've been working out (read: i look skinny). not that there is anything wrong with these compliments, and i certainly enjoy receiving them, but let's look at the long-term, unintended consequence. if, for example, i am always being complimented on my clothes, i am naturally going to put a lot of time and effort (and, in this case, money) into my wardrobe because i know from experience that i will be validated and valued if i do. but what if, instead, i was always being complimented for being a hard worker, an articulate speaker, a kind friend? it follows that i would put a lot of time and effort into those things instead. can you start to see the difference we could make? just by changing what we say? it's so simple it seems like it can't be true, but i really think it is. certainly as good a place to start as any.

and now, dear readers, a challenge, proposed by another woman at the retreat. it is this: no look-related compliments, for anyone, for a week. or a day or a month or however long you want to try. no, "you're so cute" or "OMG, i love your shoes!" but instead, "you are so thoughtful" or "i admire your organized closet." (hey, i said it was just a place to start.) i think we will all be surprised about the many different and substantive things we find to honor in each other. and ourselves. good luck! (and don't forget to report back!)