when upon life's billows you are tempest tossed...

WARNING: Rant blog ahead, heavy with LDS terminology. (This could be the one that gets me axed from the VFRS blogroll.) My non-LDS friends will probably want to just move along to the next entry in your reader...

Look, I know I've been railing on about this forever. Especially if we are facebook friends I'm sure it must feel like I'm beating a dead horse by typing blog entry 2119807282 of why I dislike my ward.

But....

Too bad.

I've got more to say.

I've found myself in the position lately of dreading the third hour of church. I've always loved RS, had callings in RS and in general felt uplifted and inspired after discussions there. But lately, I've been feeling a little excluded by the lesson topics and discussion. Like, it's been so bad I am considering volunteering for a stint in nursery. I am not exaggerating, last week we heard about the sacred covenant of marriage , the lesson before that (that I have attended, I've been on vacation) was about getting along better with your spouse. I know that the lessons are more or less prescribed to us in the manual and that they are important and inspired yadda yadda but MAN am I tired of the marriage and family theme. Can't we throw in a service lesson once in a while? Missionary work? Something? Anyways just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, enter today's lesson: chastity.

For obvious reasons, not my most favorite discussion topic. I considered leaving right after the opening hymn.

I probably should have.

But I decided to stay.

It started off on an interesting path, actually. The teacher was saying how we as a church needed to look at the way we taught this concept to our youth, because they are being told their whole lives that sex is bad and dirty and not to be talked about and then when they get married and all of sudden it's a-ok and I guess people are developing complexes when they try to be intimate with their spouse. The psychology major in me found this intriguing but we didn't discuss this for too long.

Then we moved onto the meat and potatoes of the lesson: Adam and Eve (Replenish the earth!!!!!), homosexuality (We sure love those gays, bless their hearts, but what they do is gross!!!), some quotes from the Strength of Youth pamphlet (Passionate kissing = bad!!!!! Getting naked with someone = worse!!!!!) and then we began to discuss the seriousness of breaking the law of chastity. That's when the discussion started to cross the line from uncomfortable and awkward into hurtful, inaccurate and just wrong. I'm not going to recap every unkind thing that was said, but my feelings were intensely hurt by judgmental comments that were made.

After having my moral worthiness be compared to someone who has committed murder, I had enough. I stood up, swung my church bag over my shoulder, turned to the girl next to me and said something to the effect of "Can you let me out? I've had about as much as I can take of this lesson" and I stormed out of the room.

Fortunately, a few people had the good sense to recognize how abrasive some of the commentary must have been to me and chased after me. I ended up in the parking lot having a really good discussion and cry with one of the sisters I actually feel like I can relate to. During our talk a member of the RS presidency came and apologized for what was said and actually encouraged me not to come back because the commentary had gotten even worse.

So, not my best day at church. Want to know the best part of all of this? Guess who is substitute teaching Relief Society in two weeks? Yours truly. Should be nice and awkward.

Anyways, believe it or not, I'm pretty much over the comments that were made. I had a good cry this afternoon and made an appointment with my Bishop to let him know how I feel about everything but I'm not going to dwell on it any longer. I wish people in my ward would be more open-minded and a little kinder, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. What other people think of me is none of my business.

But what really leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that we can't be real in church. Why do we have to sit there and perpetuate this impossible standard that like 90% of people sitting in that room are struggling to meet? Why can't we just be truthful? Your average RS congregation isn't filled with people with perfect lives and perfect hair and perfect marriages with perfect children. Your congregation is filled with women in unhappy marriages, people with wayward children, or women who grew up in abusive homes, people who had unexpected crisis pregnancies and people who weren't virgins on their wedding days. Why can't we just cut all the crap and have honest discussions about how these are things people legitimately struggle with every single day? Maybe, we could even come up with ways to support each other instead of putting blinders on and just insisting that everyone besides you is leading happy little LDS lives. I can't be the only one feels terrible that they don't measure up.

I don't know. Thoughts?

don't wanna go to sleep

First of all, I keep seeing "joy school" mentioned on LDS mom-type blogs. I think I must really be turning into a cynical wench in my old age, because I can't think of anything less joy inducing than having a bunch of three year olds over to my house and playing pre-K teacher. It actually kind of makes me want to gag. And why can't it just be called playgroup? Is that not "joyous" enough? Although, looking back on it, I'm pretty sure my mom did a short joy-school type of playgroup with me when I was a young child living in Utah and I guess I turned out all right. (Yes, little known fact, I'm actually from Utah originally). Whew, now that that's off my chest...

Today I took a personal day to be the mystery reader at Isaac's school. It was so fun to surprise him and help out a little in his class. Apparently no other parents have been mystery readers, so that was fun to actually put a check in the "things mom can still do even though I work full time" column, since the "things I have to say no to cause I work full time column" is filled with entries.

I also wanted to take some time for spring cleaning today. I'm pretty impressed with myself.

I:

• Did six loads of laundry including both of our sheets, comforters, duvet covers, dust ruffles, etc. etc. AND they are folded and put away.
• I vacuumed and flipped our mattresses.
• I moved my bed and night stands and vacuumed the carpet and dusted the baseboards. I haven't done that since I moved in and it was absolutely disgusting how much dust, etc. was back there. Also cleaned all the junk out from underneath my bed and found approximately 87 pens.
• Organized my jewelry, shoes and closet in general.
• Cleaned out my purse. I'm no longer hauling around 5 pounds worth of old receipts.
• Updated Google calendar with all of my events for the coming months.
• Found a whole bunch of cool online resources to use in my classroom.
• Went to the gym and ran two miles.
• Got some great books for my classroom at the used book store for supercheap.
• Cleaned out both cat boxes.
• Made cream cheese cookies.
• Called my sister (and nearly gagged the whole time. She and I have very opposite views on things like breastfeeding, vaginal deliveries and whether or not placentas are interesting organs [she is a labor and delivery nurse]).
• Finally called the builder about my leaky roof (Hello! My house is barely two years old! Why is the roof leaking?!) and completed some paperwork for the HOA to officially report my neighbors for letting their dog crap all over the place. They should be getting a fine in the mail shortly. Yeah, I'm that neighbor. And I don't like your freakin' dog.

I didn't get to most of what's on my list but I feel like spring cleaning is in full swing. Isaac's room is next. I will carry on Saturday hopefully after our first soccer game. Not sure what's going on for the weekend yet. I'm up for something low-key which conference weekend usually is. Have a fab Friday!

and I thought I overshared on the internet...

My "friend" on facebook (read: old acquantance from the singles ward) just posted pictures of her and her husband right up for any old person to see. She is in a lace-up spandex dominatrix type outfit holding a whip and he is shirtless, handcuffed and kneeling in front of her. TMI! TMI! TMI! Thank goodness she and her husband are not in my church congregation anymore. I seriously don't need to see that!!!

what to do?

I have always been opposed to the idea of a private blog. I follow lots of blogs that I stumbled across or discovered by clicking "next" on blogger and I like the idea that someone could have stumbled on mine that way. I also follow the blogs of lots of people I barely know IRL who would probably think I was a weirdo if they knew their blog was in my reader. I don't want someone to feel awkward that they have to delurk to get an invitation to my blog.

And yet, sending someone an invitation to view my blog feels presumptious too. Cause why should I assume anyone really gives a crap about the insane stuff that floats around in my head? I also think private blogs are irritating because they don't appear in my blog reader. I have to make a point to check them individually, which is just more work. BUT I also don't want to have to censor myself or worry about who is potentially reading this (that I encounter in various situations IRL). Blogger is not sophisticated enough for me to make certain content open to all and other content closed (unless I am missing something? Please let me know if I am mistaken!)

I know, I'm all over the map here.

What is prompting this? Little birdies have pointed out internet posts written about me that range from venting about innocent school interchanges to completely false accusations and slandering of me (and my co-workers) as professionals. I do not go looking for it. I really don't. But since someone else has brought it to my attention it has caused me to wonder how easily these people who are apparently so unhappy with me could be tracking me down.

And I mean, here I am reading information that they obviously felt was somewhat private, that would never be seen by me. Who knows who could be reading this? Not that I ever write about anything work related, ever. But... I mean, some of my stuff is on the more personal side that the parents of my students don't really need to know about.

I've been googling myself with different combinations of personal information to see what comes up....

Gah. Feel free to weigh in.

These two...

are both completely nauseating and seriously both deserve to go straight to hell. They have got to be the two most selfish, greedy people on the planet.

If you watch their show, or read their books, you are contributing to their evil empire and you will be partly responsible for the fact that these kids will all need therapy and be totally messed up for life. Their parents' marriage falling apart continues to be documented for them to see in horrific details because middle aged housewives can't change the freakin channel.

It seriously makes me sick...

http://www.lifeandstylemag.com/2009/07/932-jon-gosselin-inset.html

Dear arrogantly self absorbed bride and groom, Although I don't know either of you very well, I was honored to have been invited to your wedding. It was lovely and I enjoyed myself very much. I recognize that you probably spent a small fortune on the lavish affair, and for me personally to attend/have a sit down meal/etc., so again I was surprised but pleased to have been invited. Since you opted to have your wedding more than an hour away from your hometown where 90% of your guests live and since you opted to make the start time 5:00 on a Friday afternoon I left my house in a bit of a rush and completely forgot to bring along the present that I purchased for you off of your registery. An honest mistake and complete accident. As I said, I had purchased the present ahead of time and had every intention of bringing it along. Since then it has been sitting on my dining room table for approximately three weeks. My bad. There were several occasions when I had planned to be out towards your house and drop it off but for whatever reason wasn't able to. I supposed at this point a trip to the post office is in order and had planned to go tomorrow. In spite of all of this I was taken aback to recieve an e-mail from you, Mr. Groomsman, telling me that you were "a little confused" as to why you don't have a present from me with links for your not ONE, not TWO, but THREE registeries. It was also helpful of you to remind me that I could also send you a gift card so you could purchase what you "need". I am sure you are having a hard time living without the 900 above ground swimming pool, or the flat panel TV or the 400 dollar wii game package on your registry. I will totally take ownership for buying the cheapest thing I could find on your registery-- Taboo the board game. There is absolutely no way I am buying you a digital camera or GPS just because you two decided to tie the knot Although I was certainly not in the right in my delay at mailing your present, your e-mail demanding is it is RUDE and TACKY. Sincerely, Lisa Stephenson

Political ranting