The Secret to Fast Cleaning

I did a dumb thing. I downloaded one of those free guides from a commercialized mommy blog... the kind that means I'll be getting spam email for a while. (I realized this was a risk, so I didn't use my personal email, just the one I use for spam!).

The ad for it looked so promising... The secret to Spring Cleaning faster. It had a little preview of the document with some kind of list on a spreadsheet. I thought, awesome! This is a list of things you should do during spring cleaning. Being new to this homeowner thing, I hoped the list would be fairly comprehensive and include those random little tasks I probably haven't thought of yet. I was especially hopeful that this would be an actual schedule--do these 3 things on day 1, and these 4 on day 2, and so on for 10 days and then you are done. Something awesome like that.

Nope. Not even close!

Page 1 shares the amazing secret to cleaning faster.... which is... drumroll please.... to CLEAN FASTER. I am not kidding. That's what it advises. It says this right at the top of the page. Unfortunately in my initial skimming, I didn't notice this. I did see that I was supposed to list my top 10 most common chores. Then, she says, the next time you do those chores, time yourself. See how long it takes. Then, the next time you do the chores, try to be faster! If you are making a conscious effort to be faster, you will be!

This was not an impressive beginning, but okay. I kept scrolling on to page 2.... which ended up being a mostly blank spreadsheet with columns for your chores, how long it took to do them the first time, and how fast you were able to go the second time.

End document. 😂 I feel duped. No more free guides for me!

Rediscovering My Love of Reading

Reading has always been one of my favorite pastimes. When I was a kid, each time my mom took me to the library I'd check out a good 20 books or so, and I'd always read them before they came due 3 weeks later.

As an adult, sometimes it's not so easy to find the time to read. In grad school, I had to cut back a bit. Since I've gotten married, I've cut back a lot. My husband and I are admittedly pretty tied at the hip. When work is done, we are almost always together doing some shared activity--often something related to housework, or our callings, or whatever, but also fun things like board games and movies and just talking. Something that requires our focus on each other and whatever task is at hand--not prime time for reading.

But I've been feeling an itch to get back into my writing, to finally take my stab at the great American novel. And it's been said many times that you can't write if you're not actively reading.

So I've set a goal to make time for reading every day. I first set the goal about 2 weeks back, and so far it's gone well! I went on my library's CyberShelf page and found something readily available that I'd been meaning to read for a while--Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. That was a quick read done in just a couple days. I went back to see what else was easily at hand, and stumbled across a thriller novel (that sucked me in with a child psychology beginning) called The Girl With All the Gifts. So far I'm halfway through. This is just like old times. It feels good!

Now to see if I can beat down my perfectionism beast enough to delve into creative writing again...

Timing is Everything

At General Conference, Elder Brook D. Hales of the Seventy gave an awesome talk on answers to prayer. He said that "Sometimes our most earnest and worthy desires are not answered in the way we hope, but we find that God has greater blessings in store."

That really hit me. Sometimes when our prayers aren't answered right away, it's because God has a better plan for us than we are hoping for ourselves.

Lately I've been pondering the timing of Trevor and I finding each other. I'd expected to get married a lot younger than 30. I went to BYU anxiously hoping to be a "BYU success story" and find my eternal companion. (Also, to get my education!! Despite the common assumption about girls in my major, I was not there just to find a husband, but I did hope that it might happen along the way.) Four years went by... No husband. I remember spending my graduation ceremony with a friend of mine who experienced life the way I'd hoped I would--she had a crush on a cute boy during her freshman year, she wrote him faithfully during his mission, and when he got back, he finally asked her out. Soon they were married and tackling college life together. I remember at the end of our graduation, my friend and I went in search of our families. Her husband ran up to her to congratulate her, and she flung herself into his arms. There it was--my dream, playing out for someone else. Meanwhile I had yet to find a serious boyfriend.

But what I didn't know then, what I couldn't know, is that my dream guy was four and a half years younger than me. A month or so after I graduated from BYU, Trevor graduated from high school. We couldn't be together yet then. God knew that, and so He tried to counsel me to be patient and wait for the right guy and the right time.

I didn't understand. I was so impatient. Over and over I prayed to know what I could do to find my husband. I promised that I would do anything. Most of the time the answer I got back was, "Really? Anything?" "YES! Anything!" "Then... keep waiting!" AHHHH! I hated that answer so much.

All along though, God had a plan for me. He knows the end from the beginning. He knew that Trevor and I would meet one day and have our happily ever after, but it wasn't the right time just yet. Trevor had a mission to serve, and then a couple of degrees to finish. Trevor's aerospace program was pretty grueling. He didn't have much time to date while he was studying.

Within a week of him graduating, we were dating. The time was finally right. And he was worth every second of anxious waiting. I love him so much, and I'm so grateful that we are together.

I know there are many more challenges in life ahead. I'm hoping that I can remember this lesson--trust God's timing over my own. His plans are greater than ours, and He wants what is best for us. We have to trust that His vision is greater than our own.

Lost at Sea

Crazy dream last night.

Trevor and I lived on an island in a chain of islands. I was on a Relief Society committee (Relief Society is the women's organization in our church). There were 9 of us, including a couple women I know from my real life. We wanted to go visit the sisters in our congregation, but they lived on multiple islands in our chain, so the only way to go was by boat.

Our boat was small--basically just a big canoe, although we didn't use paddles to move it (motorized?). I have a terrible fear of drowning so I didn't really like traveling in the boat, but I did it. We made our visits. Finally, towards the end of our journey, I got off on an island to run an errand or something. The other sisters continued without me. And... that was the last time anyone ever saw them. On their way to their next destination, they were captured and kidnapped by pirates. A ransom note was sent, but that was it.

Then the dream fast forwarded, and it was 2 or 3 months after the kidnapping. There was still no sign of the women, and no one knew what had happened to them. Were they still alive? Where were they? I plagued by survivor's guilt. I desperately wanted to find them and I thought about them all the time, but there was nothing I could do. I kept talking to Trevor about how scary it was that I was almost taken too, that it was a 100% certainty that I would have been kidnapped if I hadn't decided to get off when I did.  I couldn't believe that I'd come so close, and I was relieved I was safe, but also feeling guilty that I was safe and the rest were lost.

My dreams can be so random sometimes! I wonder what triggered this one?

Don't Be Afraid to Hit a Wrong Note

Today was a very snowy, icy day. Which meant that a lot of our choir decided to stay home instead of coming to practice.

I was horrified when I walked in ten minutes late and realized I would be the only soprano. There were only 2 altos... and somehow plenty of men! Trevor realized this was my worst nightmare and whispered to me that maybe I could try being an alto today.

I've always been a self conscious singer. Choir is helping me become more comfortable, but somehow I still live in fear of being the one sour note in the choir, of being quietly excused by the director because I have nothing to add. I can't really read music--it seems like a lot of people can sight read it, but I can't. I have to hear it, and what helps me the most is to follow the people singing next to me. So when I'm the only soprano, I flail.

Fortunately one other soprano came a few minutes later. I sang along, but quietly. I get quieter when I know people can hear me, which is bad because you have to be loud to hit some of those high notes.

Then the sweet alto next to me gave me some advice. "Don't be afraid to sing out! Just go for it--if you hit the wrong note or make a mistake, that's okay. I just made a huge one!" She came in at the wrong time once, and you know what, I didn't think anything of it. She caught it, she corrected it, no big deal.

It hit me later that this is really good advice for my whole life. I am a bit of a perfectionist. Sometimes it's worse than other times. Lately, for whatever reason, it's been really really bad... perfectionism mixed with anxiety that leads to analysis paralysis. I'm so scared to mess up or do the wrong thing that sometimes I don't end up doing anything at all, or I berate myself for everything I do because it just doesn't seem to measure up. And when I inevitably do make a mistake when I'm in this mode--oy! It's so hard to forgive myself.

But I can't let the fear of failure keep me from living my life. I need to get out there and "sing out"--I need to live my life doing the best I can. Sometimes I will say the wrong thing and hurt someone's feelings. Sometimes I'll burn dinner or break a plate. Sometimes I'll try to help someone and just make things worse. All of that is part of life. The trick is to not hold back to avoid making mistakes--holding back means missing out on living. The trick is to learn how to pick myself up and keep going after I fall.

I need to remember too that other people probably aren't judging me as harshly as I am judging myself. Even when they do judge me, that doesn't matter. My worth (like everyone's!) is infinite and eternal, and it never decreases. My Savior suffered and died to save me, and He would have still done it if I were the only person in this world. That's a comforting thought.

Young Shelece Writing

I've been going through boxes and boxes of my old stuff lately... Things that used to be stored in my parents' basement.

I'm starting to think I never got rid of anything, ever. :) It's fun to see all the reminders of my past life, and also a little trippy. I thought a lot of this stuff was gone for good.

I found a ton of old stories that I wrote in my youth. In my elementary days, I went through a horse loving phase where I read and wrote about girls and their horses. Since I was a suburbanite with very little contact with horses, I got very creative sometimes. :)

In middle school and high school, I wrote comedy novels mostly. I really enjoyed reading through those... especially the comedy fantasy novel I wrote back in middle school. The plot is pretty loosey goosey and it was definitely written by a 13 year old, but you know what, the dialogue actually is funny. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it after all this time... but then, I am biased. :)

As I've gotten older, my writing has gotten more dramatic. It's funny, I tend to either write pure comedy or very dramatic. It's hard to decide which tone to take. Reading through my teenage writings that were almost always comedy... I wonder if that is what I should go back to! It is a lot of fun, and I do enjoy making people laugh.

Molly's Gotcha Day

Today marks 2 years since I brought this cute little bundle of fur home! Hard to believe it's only been that long.

She sure has grown up!