Age arithmetic part II

Here's the picture to accompany Libby's math:

Taken just after church on 15 June 2008.

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A handful of fives

I just remembered Lillian tagged me to speak in fives. Here goes!

The rules:

1. Post the rules of the game at the beginning.
   
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
   
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
   
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

In a meme about the number 5, doesn't it seem there should be one more rule?

What were you doing five years ago?

In summer of 2003 we went on a trip to the panhandle of Idaho to visit the family cabins on Priest Lake, after which we took a detour into BC, Canada to visit a friend. I was pregnant with baby #6. My eldest was just nine years old, and I had no built-in babysitters.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Exercise. (done)
   
2. Get application over to Wasatch Academy. (done)
   
3. Check at post office for misdirected package. (done)
   
4. Get white sandals for next week's wedding.
   
5. Make time-consuming lasagna for dinner.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1. Tofu cut into cubes with a drizzle of soy sauce
   
2. Smoothie
   
3. Apple
   
4. Celery and refried bean dip
   
5. Almonds

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1. Landscape my yard, home improvement projects
   
2. Buy a new Suburbuan
   
3. Travel—show my children my favorite places, get away with Blaine
   
4. Let's be honest—plastic surgery to make my chin a single, and vision correction surgery on my eyes
   
5. Help other families with lots of kids accomplish little dreams

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Wasting time on computer doing nothing of importance.
   
2. Not starting dinner until after 6:00 p.m.
   
3. Jumping to the ceiling when I see spiders. (Hello, I'm bigger! What makes them so scary?)
   
4. Procrastinating.
   
5. Forgetting to sprinkle the lawn on our day.

Where are five places where you have lived?

1. My mother's belly
   
2. Salt Lake City, Utah
   
3. Provo, Utah
   
4. Sendai, Japan
   
5. Fairview, Utah

What are five jobs you've had?

1. Selling vacuums door-to-door
   
2. Pressing cleaned clothes at a dry cleaner
   
3. T.A. for Physics 122 (Electricity and Magnetism) at BYU
   
4. Japanese language teacher at MTC
   
5. Full-time mom and teacher to seven great homeschooled kids

I don't think I even have five people who read this blog! o_O So if any of you want to pick this up and do it, I'd love to read your answers in your spot.

In which I confess

I don't like gardening.

I am programmed to think I should get up before dawn each lovely summer's morn (which is almost all of them here in Utah) and enjoy the peace, quiet, and cool as I pull pernicious weeds endangering my precious, thriving vegetables. My heart tells me I should devote several hours a week to raising all the produce a family of nine can consume, and I should take great pride in doing so.

My brain says, why? The grocery stores are full of the stuff, and a buck for a huge bunch of spinach certainly isn't my biggest grocery expenditure.

We Mormons have a pretty advanced sense of guilt. It's pretty common to feel really crappy for things we aren't doing, aren't doing well enough, do too much of, etc. We even tend to feel guilt for things other people do or don't do, if we can in any way tie their actions to our behaviors or deficiencies. And as I said before with the programming, we Mormons are Gardeners. We believe in being proficient at raising our own food and being able to care for ourselves. It isn't dogma, but it's certainly part of the culture.

Except, if I'm getting up pre-dawn on lovely summer mornings, which I am, I want to be outside running. I'm not a gardener, I'm an exerciser.

I don't have pride in a well-organized garden plot, I don't feel a sense of accomplishment from neat rows of carrots and cabbage, and when the weeds overtake the crops I think, "Oh well, I don't feel like pulling them."

But I totally want to lift weights, to jog, and to walk briskly up steep hills. This gives me a sense of well-being, accomplishment, and, yes, pride. To be almost 40 and still improving my physical condition! That's worth 20 bushels of home-grown spinach to me.

If only I could release the faint sense of guilt that whispers, "But the garden is the worthier pursuit."

In other news, I've totally revamped my exercise program. (Instead of gardening.) I feel great. But I've decided I can't weigh myself more often than fortnightly, perhaps even monthly. Because after a hard week of working out when I see the needle in the same place or (horrors!) even half a pound up, I think GAH it isn't working it doesn't matter what I do and then I eat whatever I want. Counter-productive. Solution: no weighing. Yay!

And no gardening.

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