Under the Skin

I have a streak of Pixar freak in me.  Maybe that's why I don't like it when this guy writes about Pixar. I didn't really enjoy the "All Pixar Movies are Related" Theory, and the "Emily is Andy's Mom" Theory was even worse, in my opinion. But I just moved along.  If other people thought theyw ere fun, who was I to judge.  But with his latest Pixar Theory, "Andy's Dad was a Deadbeat," I cannot remain silent. Mostly because on its tail is a huge rush of hailing single mothers. And I have a problem with that.  Because fathers are not worthless. First of all, all Pixar animators involved have neither discounted nor confirmed the theory.  They just said the truth. Humans were expensive to animate at the time of the first Toy Story, and Andy's Dad wasn't really relevant to the story of Andy's toys.  So, they made his mother single. They've even said that you can decide whatever you want. In my mind, Andy's dad died short...

In the news.  That's the phrase to describe my church these days.  Most recently, it's been because of church discipline.  Ordain Women leader, Kate Kelly, has been brought to Church discipline and subsequently was excommunicated.  I will join the conversation: First, a definition of terms: What is Ordain Women?  Ordain Women is a movement of women in the LDS Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) that advocates women holding the priesthood.  I might add that it is not a majority movement, just a very vocal one.  If you took the percentage of LDS women who agree with Ordain Women, and related that same percentage to the US population, you wouldn't even have enough to get a petition considered by the US Government.  In the LDS Church, the priesthood is held by men only.  All men in the church in fact.  My dad received the Aaronic Priesthood when he joined the church at the age of seventeen, and received the Melchizedek P...

It seems that with my blogging ideas, it is very much so a feast or famine situation.  That seems to be the way it is with my fiction writing as well.  Maybe it's because doing it creates more ideas.  There are probably some gospel allegories you could put in there.  But we won't go there today.  Today, we're honoring daddies.  Specifically, my daddy.  Today, I have two songs that remind me of my daddy.  The first is called Thaxted.  It is the tune to an old hymn called "Anthem to my King," which Holst then used in Jupiter from The Planets .  Anyways, it's one of my dad's favorite songs.  So, I have a piano rendition of that. The second is You Are My Sunshine .  My father is not a warm person.  I don't say that critically, just stating fact.  The only time you can see his love for his children (or now grandchildren)  is the way that he rocks them to sleep.  And I have many rocking to sleep memories of You...

I took up competitive Irish dancing again.  I'm out of college.  I have a job. I'm single. I have no kids.  This is the fun time of life. There are things that I definitely missed about Irish.  I can't lie about that.  However, there are also things that I definitely didn't miss.  I feel like Irish dance does a pretty good job of not being a "dance mom" sport, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Any competitive activity, especially of the non-team variety, is going to get those people who really just need to take a chill pill.  Your child is seven.  If she doesn't get first, or doesn't even place, there will be much bigger problems in her life.  I can guarantee that.  And I'll admit that Irish dancing looks over the top from the outside. The big wigs (which actually have a very important traditional context) and the sequined dresses (which have strayed much too far from their important traditional context) ask people to look ...

I thought that I would take this moment to go on record about Healthcare.  Because I'm worth it.  Or so Loreal tells me.  Oh, they were talking about expensive hair-care products?  Oh well. But let's face it. With all of this talk of Healthcare Debate, pretty much not one soul is arguing that the the US healthcare system isn't broken.  They just argue about how to fix it and what broke it.  Well, I guess there are a few people arguing its okay.  I was a teaching assistant for American Heritage at BYU.  It is fun watching conservative, Mormon eighteen-year-olds realize that they have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to healthcare. They realize that beliefs that they have are what we affectionately called "Dinner-Table Opinions" amongst the American Heritage Teaching Staff, and they misunderstood those Dinner-Table Opinions in the first place. They get to realize that the beliefs they espouse under the name of being conservatives w...

I'm the Young Women's Secretary, so I don't have a Sunday teaching assignment.  However, I do always have a lesson in my bag in case I need to teach. This is easier with the Come Follow Me curriculum because there are outlines for each month, and the order of these is not prescribed, and if you don't teach all of them, and teach one of them three times, that's within the curriculum.  So, I actually got to use my lesson today, and it was a lesson that I really enjoyed and valued.  I thought I would share some of it here. The lessons this month are all on the Priesthood.  This outline titled, "What are my responsibilities in the work of the Priesthood?"  It is an outline that was probably much inspired by the Ordain Women movement. For those not familiar with this all, a little background.  In the LDS faith, women do not hold the priesthood.  There is a movement within the church that seeks to have women ordained.  My opinion as an LDS woman?...

"Being right wasn't nearly as important as doing right....” I have been a bit lax in my book reviewing, and my blogging.  I have a few book reviews for you, and a few other things to write about.  So, prepare for some blogging in the next few days.  But first, book review! This is apparently the second in the series. I didn't know that.  So, I read it first.  Steven "Steel" Trapp and Kaileigh Augustine have been recruited to an elite private school. Steel doesn't really understand why, because he says he's not smart, he's just good at school because of his eidetic memory. Kaileigh is great at languages. But maybe they want their skills for a little more than learning Latin and algebra. This book is written by one of the co-authors of the Peter and the Starcatchers books, Ridley Pearson, and I can see who wrote the parts of Peter and the Starcatchers that I didn't like.  Every once in awhile, I would feel like, in this and in Peter and...