Musings From the Basement

The Adventure Story: Singles Wards in Provo

Author's Note: So those few readers that I have know that the past six months have had me doing quite a few things that I never EVER thought I would do. The purpose of this particular post is to tell you of the adventure of the singles ward that I embarked on a mere six weeks ago.

A little background: I was quite happy in my family ward in Salt Lake. They loved me, thought I was brilliant, gave me a calling teaching, and everything was going swimmingly...until I up and quit my job, moved all my stuff into storage, and started hanging out in Provo. Still, this wouldn't be a problem--my bishop up there was quite happy to keep my records until I decided where I was going to land--except that my temple recommend expired on June 30, 2008. So I needed a ward. One where I would attend so that they would give me a new recommend. At any rate, I am now attending a singles' ward, and it is not the nightmare I have imagined, although it is definitely not without its adventures. And I'm gonna share a few with you now. Here goes:

Setting up the Temple Recommend Interview

So I had met the executive secretary once or twice and we had had a conversation on at least one occasion, so I don't think I was out of line in assuming that he would remember my name. I'm cute, I have an interesting name, I was sufficiently obnoxious, all things that bode well for being remembered. Alas, this was not to be. When I approached Roberto and asked him to put me on the bishop's list, he gave me a blank look and asked me who I was. "Dani Johnson? We've spoken before." I said "Oh, right. Dani. See, the problem is, we haven't flirted before. I don't remember anyone's name until we flirt at least twice. One more time and I'll for sure remember." First of all, who talks like that?? Secondly, doesn't the flirting with the guys make them feel a little uncomfortable?

Waiting for the Temple Recommend Interview

Tuesday night rolled around and I show up to my appointment right on time. 8:30. And they were running late. WHile I was waiting, who was there to keep me company but Roberto. I said a quick hi and found an Ensign to bury my nose in hoping to curtail any further awkward conversations. Roberto peeked his head around the corner and said, "So, are you donating blood tonight?" (There was a stake blood drive going on in the building). "No", I said, "I've been in weird countries this year and they won't take my blood." To which Roberto replied, "Sure, that's the reason. It's probably that one thing you did that one time that you don't tell anyone about."

I sat there for a minute trying to make what had just been implied match my physical surroundings. I was sitting outside of the bishop's office waiting for a temple recommend interview, and I could think of only two things that I could do that would make my blood unacceptable. And both of them are pretty serious transgressions. Did he not see it? Was he trying to be funny? Should I continue to give him the benefit of the doubt? Is this silence as awkward for him as it is for me? All I can say is that I hope that this conversation didn't count as 'flirting', because I don't think I want Roberto to remember my name.

The Temple Recommend Interview

The bishop is a great guy. He's genuinely concerned about marrying off everyone in his ward, so the discussion we had during the recommend interview shouldn't have surprised me. He actually asked me to spend the next couple of weeks putting together a 'top ten' list of people in the ward that I would like to date, and then he would take a look at it and let me know if they were good guys. No joke. He also told me the following: 1) assume all guys are creeps until they prove otherwise 2)that he worries about half the guys because they had maybe one semester of college and couldn't support a family, and 3) that I had a pretty good chance of being 'successful' in this ward because I was fairly physically fit and attractive. Whew! That's a relief. The good news is that I passed the temple recommend interview.

And finally, Sunday: the day when the stars aligned to prove to me that I do not belong in this ward.

High council Sundays are never my favorite, and if I am completely honest, I didn't go to church with the right spirit. But for some odd reason, anything that I thought would annoy me about going back to a singles' ward happened today. A brief summary:

12:55. I sit next to my friend Mel (who swears his name is Melissa but he goes by Mel because Melissa just doesn't suit him.) so far, so good.

1:00. I look around and realize that I have made the horrible mistake of sitting right in the line of sight of a guy who has been staring at me for the last four weeks. He's creepy and it makes me nervous. Oh that I were ugly and not physically fit...

1:15. The high councilor gets up and starts to speak. He starts with a joke about retirement and I can feel that it is going to be a very very long talk. After all, he's retired. He has nowhere else to be.

1:25. The high councilor is still speaking. He kicks into his "I'm-speaking-to-young-people-with-no-experience" mode and begins telling the women that they need to let the guys know if they're interested, and that we need to be careful with our money because someday we may need to pay a mortgage. Yeah. I have three mortgages. Do you want one? (Please? How about the one in Michigan?)

1:32 Still talking. I start bouncing my foot and immediately think of Dallan Flake because he can't sit still through church either. Mel asks me if I'm nervous about something and I give him a dirty look because I'm getting ornerier by the minute. And yes, I am nervous about something. The creepy guy won't stop staring.

1:45. Still talking. The bishop on the stand must have been distracted by my fidgeting because he looks my way and shoots me a smile.

1:50. He finally stops. I just about start applauding, but another speaker gets up and tries to compact all of his talk into the remaining time. Luckily he's a geology professor and is used to being boring and ignored and the time seems to go fairly quickly from there.

2:24. I'm sitting in Relief Society listening to a lesson given by a girl who is an archaeologist by profession. How cool is that? Binders are going around with new visiting teaching routes in them and I'm excited because they promised me a route. I finally get the binder and look up my name and find that I am in a three-some. Ok, that's cool. Then I look at who we visit teach. There are three girls and a guy's name. Ok, that's odd. Probably a typo. So I start looking at other lists, and there is at least one guy in all of the groups. I am completely kerflummoxed. I lean over to the girl sitting to my right and ask her what the deal is. "Well," she tells me, "There are twice as many girls in this ward as guys. And about a year ago there were too many for the priesthood to home teach so instead, you just get together with your group once a month." I am not kidding. They basically took the responsibility of home teaching off of the priesthood.

But that isn't what bothered me the most. During my stint as RSP, one of the many things I gained a very strong testimony of was visiting teaching. In a group like this how could you possibly ever get to know someone well enough to figure out if they needed help? And a guy? Seriously? Want to guess who the guy in my group happened to be? You got it. The creepy staring guy.

2:59. I'm sitting in Sunday School waiting for the lesson to start and I'm sitting by my other friend Mel, who is a girl, and who has red hair. This random girl I have never met comes and sits in the row in front of us and turns around with a piece of paper and a pen, looking all official. "Are you guys red heads?" Uh, yeah. "Do you sometimes wear it straight? Like two weeks ago?" Uh, yeah. "Is your name and picture in the ward directory?" No, I'm new. "Great, can I get your name and phone number?" Why? "Well, two weeks ago, my friend Seth was here and he saw a red head with straight red hair and he wanted her number but he didn't get it so he asked me if I would track her down and get it for him." No, I am not giving my information to a random girl who is then going to give it to a random guy. Are you kidding me???

Is this really what I signed up for?

Circles

So in the past six months, as I have been a little unemployed, I have had the chance to make some major changes in my life. In my haste to change some things I didn’t like, I may have gone too far. Let’s review:

Eight Years Ago

Now

Lived in Provo, Utah
Lived in my parents’ basement
Spent lots of time at BYU in the Mechanical engineering department as a grad student
Made as much money as a kid with a good paper route
Spent lots of time hiking around the mountains
Drove a six year old car with the check engine light on
Felt hopeful of the future

Live in Provo, Utah
Live in my parents’ basement
Spend lots of time at BYU in the Mechanical engineering department as a faculty member
Make as much money as a kid with a good paper route.
Spend quite a bit of time hiking around the mountains
Drive a six year old car with the check engine light on
Finally feel hopeful of the future again.

Returning to most of these I have done with a little grimace on my face. But the last one—the hope—I wouldn’t trade for anything. Hope is a strange thing. It changes everything—it keeps you looking forward. It saves you from being too focused on the present. It’s what savings accounts and IRA’s and even the stock market exploit. It’s why there are so many online dating websites (not that I would know personally, but I have HEARD), and it’s what ultimately keeps us sane.

I stopped by my friend Steve’s house the other day. I hadn’t seen him for about six months and I like to keep my eye on him. He’s got this great house in a rural part of Mapleton (as if it isn’t all rural) that he started building about eight years ago and has just about finished. Everything in it is exactly how he wants it, of the highest quality, and beautiful.

Three years ago, when I was still living in Michigan, I remember visiting the house. I hadn’t been there in a few years and I was interested to see the almost-finished product. Steve took me on a tour. He showed me the five bedrooms and the finished mother-in-law apartment in the basement. He showed me the loft, complete with bookcases that looked over into the family room where his future children would play. He showed me the office, which had been fitted with 5 study areas, each complete with its own electrical outlet and drawer bank, where his future kids would do their homework. He showed me the piano that his future wife would teach their kids to play. And finally, he showed me the quilting frames in the attic that he had built for his future wife.

I was astounded. And a little bit angry. How could he plan the rest of his life when he had no idea what it would look like? Buying real estate for an investment was one thing. Planning to the level that he planned was outrageous. What if he only had three kids? What if one of them was intent on playing the tuba instead of the piano? What if his wife had no interest whatsoever in quilting? How was he ever going to find people who fit neatly into the house that he had built? I remember arguing with him and I remember that the conversation led to long months where we did not speak.

But the visit I made on Tuesday was different. The piano is still in the front room and Steve still doesn’t play it. None of the built-ins that belong to future children have changed at all—in fact, I think some have been added since my last visit. I'm sure the quilting frames are still in the attic. The difference about this visit, I think, was me.

The way Steve has lived his life and the house that he had built suddenly made sense. I don’t think Steve is set on having five kids and I don’t think he really cares if his wife quilts. What he was building wasn’t a blueprint for the only future he was willing to accept. What he was building was a physical manifestation of his hope. Nothing else. He hopes to be married and have a family. He thinks about it and plans for it and it keeps him moving forward and looking forward.

It was an eye opener for me. What do I have in my life that represents how I hope my future turns out? And do I have enough faith to have a constant reminder of that hope in my life? I don’t know.

But I do know this: despite that my mentors think quitting my career just as I was making a name for myself was a stupid move, that in the past six months I have turned down a couple of pretty lucrative jobs and grad school, and that I still do not have a solid plan for how I am going to pay the bills after about October, I wouldn’t trade it. Because those six months helped me to find my misplaced hope—my belief that there is something greater out there for me than fame and fortune. The time I took has let me see that what I hope for isn’t achievable by working 80-hour weeks and traveling the world. What I hope for takes me and God together. How would I have ever learned that otherwise?

Parable: the ferris wheel

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to go to girls' camp in northern Michigan.

A few days in, Harvey came up. Harvey and I were friends and I trusted him quite a bit. I had heard stories about the wonderful structures Harvey had built over the years with both the Boy Scouts and the girls at girls camp. It was a big hit every year and, never having experienced it (and being an engineer) I was pretty interested in what we would be building .

So when he came up to camp, I volunteered myself to be his right-hand person. We recruited some girls, and set about lashing together a working ferris wheel. Let me repeat that just in case you missed it: we were building a ferris wheel. But we were not building one with bolts and nuts and things that you would associate with sturdiness. We were lashing it together. Wood and ropes. And it was being put together by 13 year old girls.

After a few hours of work, the girls finally had this ferris wheel built. It looked like it belonged on the set of an Indiana Jones Movie. Two side supports built of wood held a crossbar on which a 15-foot structure, also built of wood, rotated. On each end of this structure was a very short swing. The idea was that you put two people of more or less equal weight in the swings and let the thing spin. If the weight was unbalanced, it shot the lighter person up 15 feet in the air really fast. And yes, we learned this the hard way.

The girls LOVED it. There was just the right mix of danger and novelty and soon we had a line of people that wanted to try out the ferris wheel. Instead of trying to match the girls weight-wise, we made them find someone their own size that also wanted to ride the ferris wheel before they got in line. Soon even the leaders were lining up to take a spin. And I was blissfully directing this all with both feet firmly on the ground.

I have never been one for heights. I hate them, in fact. I am also very careful about the faith I put in any sort of man-made structure. When I go over bridges, I hold my breath. When I go through tunnels, I try really hard not to think about the metric tons of soil above me. And when I fly, well...I actually took a class in grad school to help me better understand how an airplane works so I wouldn’t be so scared. Instead, I learned all of the ways that an airplane can fail. Let’s just say that they aren’t messing around when they de-ice planes.

But I digress. At some point, a girl named Tara came up to the ferris wheel and wanted a ride but she didn’t have a partner. Harvey, seeing that I was roughly the same size as Tara, said, “Dani, get on.” “Are you nuts??” my brain was thinking, but with a little nudge from Harvey, I climbed into the swing, held on tight, and felt myself being lifted up over the cross bar and come safely down to earth. I felt this sensation two or three times before I finally heard Harvey say, “Dani, open your eyes.”

So I did. And I have always been thankful that I did, because if I hadn’t, I would have missed the most amazing view. 15 feet really does make a difference. From the top of the ferris wheel, I could see the lake, and its colorful sailboats, and trees for miles and miles and miles. From 15 feet in the air, I had a perspective of the camp that I couldn’t get from the ground.

When I was finally allowed off of the ferris wheel, I started to analyze (as I am apt to do) why I got on in the first place. I hadn’t had time to stress test the wood. I had seen the thing built before my very eyes by 13 year old girls. I am terrified of heights. Why the heck did I get on?

I got on because I trusted Harvey. He had the plan. He knew his plan would work and he knew how to direct imperfect people to build it, maybe not perfectly, but well enough to give people an unforgettable experience.

I have been thinking about that experience a lot lately with respect to my life. Lots of times I miss the view because I’m not willing to even get in the ferris wheel. Sometimes I pass up opportunities to gain perspective and experience, and even joy, because I don’t trust the man with the plan enough to follow the prompting. And that’s sad.

But what is even sadder is when I actually put forth the effort to listen to the prompting: “Dani, get on” or “Dani, quit your job and live off savings for awhile”, and then miss the view because my eyes are so tightly shut and I’m holding on for dear life to my way of thinking and doing things because I’m sure that the situation is unsafe.

I need to learn that Heavenly Father has a plan. And it will work. And even when it isn’t executed quite to spec because of decisions I make, He’ll ensure that it will be safe and rewarding if I’ll do more than be an unwilling passenger and open my eyes.

Ode to Provo: a small collection of poetry

Author's Note: a small collection of memory-invoking (I'm sure) poetry for those who have, at one time or another, resided in Provo.

The Roundabout on Center Street Couplets

The Michigan Left is an engineer’s dream
To regulate, neatly, the motorist stream.

While Provo is smaller, and not yet on par
With Michigan’s way of dealing with cars,

It seems that they recently figured it out
And added, on Center Street, a nice roundabout.

It's a thing to behold! It’s a beauty, I say
And it should be, what, with the taxes I pay.

Squaw Peak Haiku

High above the town
Places to be all alone
Students making out.

Movies 8 Free Verse

At 9pm lines of minivans
Awaiting the preteen movie goers
Just exiting the most recent PG flick.
Sticky seats and floors
Spilled popcorn and jujubes
Spotty movies and thirty minutes of ads
Only costs a buck fifty
Which is exactly what it’s worth.

The “Y” Limerick

Partridge created the “Y”
In 1907, oh my!
So climbers who pant
Have reason to rant
At the man who placed it so high!

The Western: Cow Pokin' in Central Utah

Right smack in the center of Utah there is a tiny town named Redmond. There are no stop lights, no stores, and the post office is the one and only official building. It is in this town where my brother has just built a home. His wife Katie was raised in Redmond, and in the years since they met, he has lassoed his inner cowboy and decided to raise his family there as well.

My brother and I have become close since I moved back to Utah, and so when he offered me the opportunity to come to a real-life cattle drive there was no way I was saying no. Apparently (and I didn’t know this, what with growing up in the ‘burbs) there is a need to move cattle from place to place depending on the time of year and it just happened to be this weekend that these cattle were going from the dry farm (a farm where they do not irrigate) to the summer range (or something similarly named).

I got there at about 9, just in time to see Kate load her three kids, ages 5, 3, and 1, into the mule. The mule is not a live animal, but rather a Mitzubishi-made vehicle that looks like a toy truck. It goes about 15 mph at top speed, has one gear, and seats two comfortably. We all jumped in (all five of us) and drove over to an intersection where the cattle would pass. We sat in the mule blocking the road and heading off any cattle that decided to wander away from the herd. Then we followed them—on four wheelers and the trusty mule—out of town and over to a holding pen where they would rest on Sunday, ready to continue on Monday.

It was magical. Days that you can actually smell are not soon forgotten. This one smells like sunburnt skin, cow manure, barbecued beef, insect repellant, and Gatorade. Scenes I won’t easily forget: watching my five-year-old niece go after a wayward cow on a four wheeler; real live cowboys on horseback practicing their roping as they drove the herd down the road; watching Vance disappear in a cloud of dust and sagebrush as he tackled a calf that wasn’t moving fast enough; Ashley in another mule complete with car seat so her baby wouldn’t miss the first cattle drive of his young life; watching all of the kids passed around from motorized vehicles to horses and back again, and how they were all adored and loved and part of the experience.

I’m sure that my view of the drive is highly romanticized. In some ways I’m no better than those with voyeuristic tendencies that pull off of I-80 to film my brother and his in-laws in their chaps and hats driving cattle on horseback. Kate mentioned that later on there would be a big family argument about the way the drive was done, the cows that got away from the herd, and what someone should have done to prevent it. The hazards of working with family, I suppose; but I like my version better.

I still wonder if my nieces will ever really learn to play piano, or be encouraged or have the opportunity to get PhD’s and contribute in the way that I hope they do, but I can’t fault my brother’s decision to move there to give his kids the lessons that will truly make a difference in their lives: that a hard day’s work really does matter; that sometimes you do things just because they need to be done, not because you'll get something out of it; and that no matter what happens, or where you go, or what you learn, there is nothing more important than family. A lesson, incidentally, that it took a lot of years and several thousand miles for me to learn.

Madlibs: a day in the life...

Author’s Note: Have fun! and seriously, if you can’t figure out what’s going on in my madlib life, that makes two of us. I’d love any suggestions you may be able to provide...also, it’s been awhile since I had to work with parts of speech so pardon any mistakes.

Once upon a ____________(noun) there was a girl who lived in her parents’ _____________(noun). She didn’t always live in her parents’ ____________(noun), but she had left a good job at a ______________(type of business) because she didn’t like to ________________(verb) so much. She found __________(verb + ing) to be very __________(adjective).

Anyhow, one day this girl woke up and realized that she was running out of __________(noun). It had been a fun six months, including a trip to ________(place), but that was all about to come to an end because she couldn’t afford the three ___________(things) she was currently responsible for. So she put aside her dream of being ______________(adverb) forever, and started looking for ___________(noun).

At first, she tried ______________(verb + ing) by _____________(verb + ing), but it didn’t seem to work that well and was too _____________(adverb). Then, she contacted ___________(person) but that proved to be _____________(adverb) as well. So finally, she remembered the invention of the ____________(noun) that allowed her to search ad nauseum (I know, just the kind of words you find in madlibs) hundreds, even thousands, of __________(noun) that she was pretty sure she didn’t want. Most of them involved _____________(verb + ing).

In the end, the girl continued to _________(verb) for the unwanted _________(noun) although it went against everything she had recently come to believe about the workforce because that was the ____________(adjective) thing to do. Sure, she would probably have to give up ___________(noun) for ________________(adjective) life again, but they would __________(verb) a lot to do it and she could start racking up the frequent flyer _______________(noun) again. Maybe security isn’t so overrated after all.

Although she still believed that the answer to the energy crisis was the 32 hour work week. Those french get a lot of things wrong, but they live their lives instead of enduring them.

Fill-in-the-blank for Dummies: Unemployment for Dummies

Note from the author:

This book was written after many months of practice. While I still do not consider myself an expert, I do consider myself to have adequate background to speak to this intelligently. In this brief introduction, I will outline three key factors for being successfully unemployed. For an extensive discussion on each, please look elsewhere.

Unemployment must be a choice.

If someone is unemployed, yet they want to work, they will never be successfully unemployed. They will always be wishing for something more, which will not lead to a content (if useless) life. While this is sometimes unavoidable, the most successful bums I have met are always bums by choice. They demonstrate the following two characteristics:

They have significant education. The more expensive the education, the better. I have met several Ivy Leaguers who still rely on their parents for a monthly...let's call it a stipend...and are very happy with their current state of unemployment.
They have adequate experience working to know that being a bum is how they want to spend the rest of their life. This is an unfortunate truth: in order to be successful in the unemployment realm, you must have experienced the other side.

Support of loved ones.

This is key. Many choose to jump directly into unemployment without first determining how others are 1) affected by such a decision and 2) inclined to help them. This becomes even more complicated when spouses and children are involved In my case, there is no one to answer two but myself and my parents, whose couch I currently inhabit.

If support of loved ones is not forthcoming, might I suggest the following options for gaining it:

Throw a temper tantrum. Many think that this tactic is valid only for those under five. I have several siblings who continue to use the tantrum as a way to gain their spouse's, and in some cases, children's approval for a given desire.
Save enough money to justify your new lifestyle. As pointed out in the first factor, in order to be a happy and successful bum, you must first work. During this time, you can save significantly for your future lifestyle as opposed to saving for more material and immediate concerns ( food, clothing, children's educations, etc.). The more you work and save early on, the more content you will be during your bum years.

Willingness to jump back into a job.

While this is not the ultimate goal, many things may force you back into the workforce unexpectedly. Rapid disappearance of cash is the most likely and the most common. When this happens, it is important to look at it as a temporary setback, not a radical change in your goals. While from time to time this may be necessary, do not lose sight of the ultimate goal, that is, to master the art of being a bum.

I hope you found this excerpt useful.