Build Your Food Storage With Crispy Fries and Snack Cakes

While everyone else is excited about chicken fries, I'm going to share another type of fry with you.

As the result of a free food event, Alex and I were introduced to CRISPY FRIES. Now, for those of you who may not know, these crispy fries of which I speak are a certain potato chip brand's attempt at expanding their snack food repertoire while apparently rescuing stale french fries from being thrown out. I don't want to name this brand because I don't want them to sue me, but this I will say: contrary to their brand's tag line, these fries do NOT have ridges.

They're all-American. We may be the only country that can't settle for either french fries OR potato chips; we've gotta have both. I'm not sure why this hybrid needed to happen, but here it is. To quote Alex's response when he tasted one, “It tastes like one [french fry] you would dig out of the seat of your car.” Yum. You know you want one. 

I think the real advantage to these fries, in addition to uniting the American definition of chip with that of the English as the back of the bag proudly claims, is the fact that really, these things would probably last forever. They have the freeze-dried feeling of astronaut food and enough salt to ensure that they will never go bad, even though they have a “guaranteed fresh by” date for some reason. In the event of a nuclear holocaust, plan on eating crispy fries and those little cream-filled yellow snack cakes that sometimes dress as cowboys because they will remain unchanged regardless of circumstances.

Unfortunately, immediately following Alex's car seat statement, I found myself nodding and popping more in my mouth. “Yeah, you're right,” I agreed, and kept eating. At the end of the bag, I still thought so. But I ate them. Why? Well, it could be that I like astronaut food. It could also be that I ate many forgotten fries from the car as a small child, so it didn't faze me to eat them now.

But my point, aside from showing you that I used to (and still do) eat just about anything, is that crispy fries are a somewhat edible, but passing fad that will fill your food storage wonderfully. If you, like I, enjoyed eating french fries from the backseat of a mini-van, stock up and enjoy the nostalgia while you can!

The Grace of Lovingkindness

Consider how I love thy precepts: quicken me, O Lord, according to thy lovingkindness.

Psalms 119:159

Words have meaning—even words in the scriptures. Whoops! I mean, especially words in the scriptures. I've often come across scriptural language that made me think, “Well, why didn't you say so?” but as I become more familiar with the language of the time, I see that is exactly what the authors were doing, and so beautifully, too! One of my favorite words as of late is lovingkindness. I think it's such a tender word, quite perfectly suited for its use.

The word was recently called to my attention by my grandma. She mentioned that while reading scriptures, she and my grandpa had come across a “funny word.” And while she tried to remember what it was, I thought of all the funny scriptural words that I could. Firkin. Whithersoever. Sackbut. Heh, sackbut. (I know it's a musical instrument, but it gets me every time!) I was surprised when she finally remembered. “Lovingkindness. Isn't that kind of funny? It's so long!”

So I spent the next little bit trying to figure out why my grandma would think that lovingkindness was a funny word. I concluded it was because it was an interesting combination of words that we don't typically use anymore. I mean, it seems somewhat superfluous. Is it really necessary to have both words? Doesn't kindness presuppose love? Aren't we kind to people we love? And then I thought of families, and both my questions were answered.

But really. How many times do we mistreat the people we love? Far too often. And yet, at the same time, we go on being kind to others that we don't love. We do this for various reasons. We may feel it's our duty to be kind. We may be behaving because people are watching us. Whatever the case, we are human; therefore, for us, the connection between love and kindness must be made so that there is no mistaking our Heavenly Father's role.

Isn't it wonderful that we can know that God is kind to us because He loves us? It's not simply because it's one of His Godly duties to treat us well. But because He is God, we can be sure that He will love us perfectly. Kindly.

Lovingkindness. It reminds me of an institute class I had in which we discussed tender mercies. The teacher explained that the Lord has given us many mercies. And then there are tender mercies. Some of his examples were “It's a mercy that God created this earth for us. It's a tender mercy that He made it beautiful,” and “It's a mercy that God blesses us when we have obeyed His commandments, but it's a tender mercy that sometimes, He just blesses us.”

I really love Isaiah 54. It begins with the Lord promising us that while we may have made mistakes in the past and sometimes feel as though He has left us, He has not forgotten us. Verse 10 reminds us that permanent as we may see the mountains and other geographic features, they will change. What will not change is our Father's everlasting kindness. Due to His lovingkindness and tender mercies, He is able, as verses 11 and 12 show us, to “lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.” However He does it, He trades our hardships for precious stones. This is something that I just can't do on my own. I try, but I mess things up. I can harden my heart to stone, but that is of no value to me or anyone else. Somehow, though, He does it. He makes me into a “precious stone”-type person who is fit to live in this “precious stone”-type place talked of in Revelations 21 (especially verses 18—21).

To bring this back to my original verse in Psalms, let me explain why I find this verse to be particularly awesome. Did you know that, in addition to the “go faster” definition we tend to think of for the word quicken, it can also mean “to give or restore vigor or activity to; stir up, rouse, or stimulate,” “to revive; restore life to,” “to become more active, sensitive, etc.,” and “to become alive; receive life”? In pregnancy, quickening occurs when it becomes clear that something in there is alive. So, as a blessing for obeying the Lord's commandments, because of His lovingkindness and tender mercies, we can be more sensitive, revived, and restored. I find that to be lovely, and it makes me want to develop my own lovingkindness.

Cheap Yogurt and Hypocrisy at Walmart

Walmart is an interesting place. There are people who will smile back at you when you smile at them, and there are people who won't. We all come together in this one place to purchase almost anything we could want or need, and we all respond to that opportunity differently. Sometimes we get stressed about how many other people are doing the exact thing we are: just shopping and minding their own business. I often catch myself hypocritically feeling like I have a right to be the only one in the store. “WHY DOES EVERYBODY ALWAYS HAVE TO SHOP AT THE SAME TIME I COME?” *Ahem.* Please excuse my outburst(s).

My grandma likes to tell me about how she enjoys psychoanalyzing people according to the contents of their carts. She invents stories about what kind of people they are because they have healthy/unhealthy food in their carts. Well, as much as I may judge people in my head, I try not to be too harsh because I know my cart must be giving healthy people a laugh heartier than their oatmeal. And I always try to keep my judgments to myself.

This is a lesson I learned while shopping at thrift stores with my sisters. No matter how ridiculous the item you are mocking, there WILL be someone who comes up right after hearing your “Who would buy this?” who will pick it up and buy it. Always. So, I try to discreetly whisper about how silly certain items are, instead of broadcasting it to the entire store. And though the local DI's sales have dramatically decreased, my embarrassment has followed suit. I consider this to be a win.

Unfortunately, a lady in the yogurt aisle today had not learned this lesson. I was minding my own business and making my way toward the cheap, store-brand yogurts that are, I know, less nutritious (but also much cheaper) than name brand yogurts that are all-natural with great probiotics and such. As I approached, I listened as a woman loudly explain to her children that she would be buying GREEK yogurt, and that they could have some. Her children evidently didn't want Greek yogurt because they continued to pester her to have a different type of yogurt: “But moooom, look, strawberry banana!” To which she replied even louder than before: “NO. Those yogurts are full of sugar and artificial colors!”

So, I paused for a second and tried to decide what to do since I was heading right for some colored sugar myself. Should I grab a more healthy yogurt? Just because some stranger lady was berating her children in the dairy section? No. I'm better than that. I would have my cheap, inferior yogurt.

I toyed with the idea of walking past and circling around again after the yogurt aisle was deserted, but decided that was taking the easy way out. Not to mention it would be utterly ridiculous! I don't know why I found it so intimidating to just walk up and get my darn yogurt while a woman argued with her children about the nutritional downfall of normal yogurts, but I did. For just a second. I mean, it's not like she made an example out of me after I left by telling her kids “See, what happens to you if you consume sugar and coloring? You'll be like that girl!” If anything, she probably just judged me quietly, like my grandma would. I mean, what kind of person comes home from Walmart and obsesses with people they saw in the yogurt aisle . . . ?

And thus the hypocrisy continues.

Haircuts

I have an inescapable urge that has become hard for me to argue with. Although I normally get feelings that I want to cut my hair, I am able to shake them off and convince myself that's not really what I want in life. Now, though, it feels like part of my identity. I mean, I had my first child over two months ago; isn't it about time that I got a “mommy” haircut?

It's been a few months now that I've been considering chopping my hair off. I've gotten a major haircut about every four years since 5^th grade. It's been over five years now that I've been putting this off. I've cut in bangs as a compromise and since grown them out again. I repeatedly tell myself that any haircut will be like that—a passing fancy that will take years to grow out. It always is.

The truth of what pushed me over the edge? I tried to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica. (Hangs head in shame.) The first episode was a bit racy for my tastes, but before I turned it off, I was tempted. And my temptation came in the form of a naughty thought: “Hmm . . . that sexy Cylon sure has great hair.” And that's all she wrote. (Though, she obviously wasn't me, because I'm still writing.) I immediately went to the computer and Googled “wavy chin length haircuts.” This minor infraction led to an even greater evil: the establishment of a Pinterest account. (My head slips even lower in the ignominy of the whole situation.)

Saturday morning, I was ready to go for it. There are such cute hairstyles available! I don't know if any of them would actually look good on my head, but they sure look great on the people who have them. Every time I looked in the mirror at my less-than-great Saturday hair, I thought about doing something different. If someone would have knocked on my door and said “I'm here to cut your hair,” I would have said “Let's do this!” Now, though, I'm a bit more hesitant.

First off, I hate caving to peer pressure. If every sexy Cylon got a cute short haircut would I jump off a cliff? Absolutely not; that's completely illogical! I might follow suit and get a haircut, though.

There's just the main problem that my hair is naturally straight more than it is curly. I keep justifying that with less hair weighing me down, I might be able to coax my remaining locks to cooperate in a bit of a wave, but I don't want to spend much time in styling. There's also the issue that I hate for that much hair to go to waste, but Locks of Love, the group that I've donated through each time before, requires 10 inches of hair. I don't know what that means for my future hairstyle. There's also the “What if I don't like it?” factor. Well, if that happens, I suppose I can grow it again for the four years. I've done it before, and I'll probably do it again.

[Some Arbitrary Number of] Things You Shouldn't Say to People Who Hate Lists of Things You Shouldn't Say

 

If you're on the internet, chances are that you've seen at least one of those lists entitled “[Some number of] things not to say to [some group of people].” These lists can inform us of things we shouldn't say to a wide variety of individuals: pregnant women, people with/without kids, deaf people, sober people, and people with anxiety. I understand liking to make lists, but I'm starting to realize that while it may be beneficial to write down everything you need to get at the grocery store or that you are hoping to accomplish in the day, it's less helpful to write down lists of every possible way you can mess up at a thing or all the wrongs that you're trying to avoid. For cases like these, I'm starting to recognize the wisdom of having one or two guidelines that you may actually be able to adhere to. I'm going to help you out here. Instead of writing a long list of things you should not be saying to single people (“When are you going to get married?”), married people (“So, it's probably about time you had a[nother] kid, right?”), rude people (“Can I offer you some manners?”), and old people (“Do you plan on dying anytime soon?”), I'm going to simplify this: Don't be stupid; be courteous.

The beauty of having a guideline is that it is so widely applicable that I don't have to spell out every thing you could be saying to offend various groups of people. Goodness, it even applies when you may not even be speaking.

One of the many problems with creating lists of things NOT to do is that you could be eternally adding to your lists. To pretend that you can exhaustively iterate offenses is pretentious—and to be honest, obnoxious. I also find it ironic that through informing us how not to offend an “in” group, list-makers, whether intentionally or not, are quite offensive to the “out” groups—both by assuming that we are so unintelligent as to be incapable of our own thought and by mocking our opposing positions.

I realized that I usually only read through the lists for positions with which I agree or identify, and then I smirk and think about how stupid people are. Today, though, I read through a list which contradicted my own opinions. Because it was a good friend who had posted it, I spent the whole time thinking “I don't think I've ever said that to her, but is that REALLY how she feels?” I also found myself feeling many of the concepts were juvenile and unfunny—sad, really. But I'm sure if the person who compiled that list were to read through the opposite view's “What not to say to people who ________,” they would feel similarly. We're all different. And we're all in different points of our lives. Let's exercise a bit of restraint and show some compassion.

It wasn't necessary for Thumper's mother to qualify her advice “If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all.” One of my favorite quotes from Benjamin Franklin recommends that we “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” Before you speak to someone, whether your best friend or a stranger, consider how it will sound. Is it stupid? Then don't say it. Is it courteous? If not, just chill in silence, my friend.

Lights on Hills

The Jehovah's Witnesses came by to see me again today. They hadn't been by in awhile. When they came by during the Saturday Session of April's General Conference and I accidentally answered the door with eyeliner and mascara on just one eye because I thought it might be my in-laws, I was nice to them. And while trying to show them but one side of my face at a time, I smiled and chatted for a bit. After all, I've known enough LDS missionaries to consider that it's got to be hard knocking on doors to try and talk to people about your church—especially in Utah! I tried to credit my kindness later when they came nearly weekly to try and talk with me, usually while I was at work. I thought they must be trying to catch us at the 8 to 9 months of pregnancy stage so that they could take advantage of the fact that we were starting a new phase in our lives and were a little bit anxious to do things right. And while I was telling myself that they kept coming back because of the way I was, it danced across my mind that their persistence speaks to their credit, not mine.

Yes, I was nice. But not “come-back-weekly-for-the-next-month” nice. Yet they came. And around this time I became determined to keep my front room clean so the next time they came, I could ask them to come in. Not because I'm interested in converting, but because I'm interested in the people themselves. I figured I would be honest and tell them “We're happy with our religion, but we always like to meet new people, so if you'd like to come in and visit, you're welcome.” Unfortunately, after I had discussed this with Alex and we had agreed on a plan, they didn't come back.

Until now. But they caught me off guard. I had just gotten to a good stopping point while feeding Melody (but was only half-way done) when there was a knock on our door. Since I'm home alone all day with a baby, I made sure to get to that door—I didn't want to miss out on any adult interaction! They offered me a pamphlet about their website, and seeing as I was holding a baby, let me know that their site had a lot of good stuff for strengthening families there. Young, old, married, single: their site could benefit all.

I appreciated it. And I don't think they came by just because they want to get greater numbers in their church, but because they want the world to be greater. This world can be a scary, nasty place to live, and families are being weakened by everything from adultery to zingers (as in, clever but hurtful comments, not the Hostess treat). Television shows minimize the importance of parents and celebrities model the ease of marriage—and divorce. We NEED people going door-to-door distributing pamphlets because their websites are good for families. So, if you're looking for a website to help strengthen your family, maybe you'd like to browse JW.org, LDS.org, or a site of your own. As members of different religions, people in various areas, or just unique individuals, we're bound to disagree on some things, but the value of family is fairly universal. If it's a cause we believe in, what are we doing about it?

Because of the feeding situation, my messy house, and the fact that I had a spider running loose on my couch, I still didn't invite the Jehovah's Witnesses in, but I hope they come again. When they do, I'm going to invite them into my [hopefully sans spider, clean-ish] front room to thank them for caring about families. They offered me a wonderful reminder about just how important my own family is to me and how I need to value and care for them. While we may differ on some points, I'm grateful that the Jehovah's Witnesses are persistent and that they're spreading the word about having strong families.

Great Expectations

I often find that big life events don't turn out much like I expected. They aren't necessarily awful, they just leave me wishing that I hadn't imagined them so much that I got a totally unrealistic idea of how they would be. I think the only time I wasn't let-down in my expectations was when I went to kindergarten.

When I was in the pre-kindergarten phase, I was obsessed with going to school. I would load the diaper bag with every book that I could and carry it to the front door to imagine that I was going to school. (Kudos to my mom for allowing me to string a trail of books to the front door on a regular basis. Also, for not ruining my fantasies by telling me about how truly awful school can be sometimes—say, as an eighth grader.) I found it unfathomable (“It means without fathom”) that I would ever be cool enough to go where the BIG kids go—the elementary school—let alone graduate from a university and be a mom. And yet here I am. How did this happen? It sort of went like this . . .

One day, I finally DID get to go to kindergarten. I put on my [empty] backpack, my mom took a picture of me, and I went to class. It. Was. Awesome. We decorated paper cutouts so they looked like us—and they were almost half my size! Mine had mismatched blue button eyes, approximately three strands of light brown yarn hair, and a scrap of fabric that I would guarantee would not adhere to the For Strength of Youth modesty guidelines, but I was so proud. Later, we rotated through several activities. We played with blocks, and there was a large plastic trough full of water that we got to dip toys in to play, and we listened to Raffi (you may know him for his masterpiece, “Down by the Bay”). It was so wonderful. The only problem was that apparently the book on tape about some pigs that we got to listen to had a song at the end, but my partner rewound the tape before we got to hear it. Other than that, it was just as great as I thought it would be. With promises of finger painting, the trough being filled with a new substance, and the thought that I would get to hear the pig song, I was looking forward to my next week of Kindergarten. Then we had our assessments, and it was determined that I was better suited for first grade. My kindergarten experience had come to an end.

First grade, though! It would be even better because most of my friends were there, anyway. I think as I pictured walking into my first day in Mrs. Munk's classroom, I envisioned that it would be something like the Arthur theme song: I would be surrounded by my teacher, my friends, and some other kids who would all say “Hey!” What a wonderful kind of day.

It wasn't like that, but it was still pretty good. I've found that most of the so-called “big” events in my life have been kind of like that. Not quite what I expected, but still good. A bit anti-climactic, but good. I expected something crazy important and big each school year. Then I would sometimes be disappointed and a bit surprised to discover that this year, like the last, was good. The same thing happened with my high school graduation. The whole bit seemed surreal, but when it was all over I found myself thinking “That's it?” And life went on with some ups and some downs, but really I just found that things were very much the same as they were when I was in high school, and so on.

I have since discovered that dating someone is very much like being single, except that you're dating someone. And when I got married, my wedding day was a very exciting, happy day that made my life after just that much better. I had many people ask how life was being pregnant. Well, it was a lot like life, but I was pregnant. Now I'm a mom, and I love it. However, with all the time spent thinking about what it would be like, I would think my dreams would share a bit more fidelity with my current reality. Much like I haven't noticed day-to-day differences in the mirror, I still don't feel like my life has changed until I look back through snapshots of time and discover there are major differences. I wouldn't trade my current situation for what I thought it would be, though. I don't think my reality's broken, I think it has to do with my expectations. Maybe I need to finish kindergarten and renew my imagination.