TechieChic

So I was thinking the other day about an experience in my life that I haven’t ever journaled about or really written about at all… because I was too tired at the time to do so.  That experience was having mono.  Even though it was a couple years ago I still feel like I ought to get it down in writing.  So if you only want to know current stories about me and my family feel free to skip this post

So we need to jump back to the beginning of January 2007 – it was the beginning of a new semester, and (more importantly) just a few weeks after Eric and I had gotten engaged.  We were enjoying spending time together and getting to know each other even better every day.  We had decided to take one of our General Education classes together – MCOM 320: Written Business Communication.  I remember the first day we went to that class I was pretty excited because our teacher was Sue Boothe.  Sue was the wife of Randy Boothe – the director of the Young Ambassadors – and since I’d been on the YA tech crew for 3 1/2 years at that point I’d traveled all over the world with Sue and spent many evenings at her house for firesides.

Anyways, because Eric and I had dated for… less than an exceptionally long time… Sue hadn’t yet met Eric and I was really excited to introduce her to the wonderful man I had chosen to marry.  Unfortunately, that first day of class Eric was sick.  He had a sore throat and a headache, and wasn’t exactly his most cheerful and charming self.  Not to say that he wasn’t pleasant, just tired, sick and not really wanting to be in class that night.  So, it wasn’t quite the first impression I was hoping for, but there are worse things than that.  Of course, since I was around Eric every so often (read: every possible second we could manage) I came down with the same thing in very little time.  It didn’t bother me too much since my main symptom was a sore throat and I get sore throats fairly frequently as a result of allergies.  So, it wasn’t pleasant, but nothing that I couldn’t handle.

Of course, the end of that week also happened to be when we had scheduled to do our engagement pictures with Rhett Olson (Eric’s brother-in law), and we were both sick.  It also happened to be THE coldest day ever… and we were taking our pictures outside.  But since we knew that the semester was only going to get busier, and we didn’t want to reschedule, we decided to do it that Saturday anyways.  So, if you’ve ever thought that we looked less than entirely our best in those pictures, that’s why.  It was freezing cold, and we were both pretty sick.  I think though that Rhett did an awesome job with the subjects we gave him

A couple weeks went by and Eric was doing well, but I still hadn’t been able to kick this sickness.  In fact, I’d gotten worse and the glands under my neck were pretty swollen.  So I finally decided it was time to head to the Student Health Center and get myself checked out.  I went in on a Tuesday morning without making an appointment, which was probably a mistake.  I think I waited for at least a couple hours.    Finally the doctor called me in and checked me out.  After listening to my descriptions and feeling my glands and generally checking things out, she decided that she wanted me to go get tested for mono and gave me the paperwork to take to the lab.  This meant that I had to walk out of the clinic, down the hall to the lab and voluntarily get stuck with a needle.  Oh. Yeah. Right.  If you aren’t already aware I have a severe phobia of needles, so I don’t exactly have the capacity to walk myself into a lab to get blood work done.  I tried to be obedient and walked right down to the lab…. and past it, out the door and back to my car.

From there I called my mom and explained to her my situation.  She’d been through this many times with me and understood exactly how severe the problem was.  I really wanted to call Eric up to come with me, but I felt like a complete wuss to make him come watch me have a tiny prick.  It took me swallowing a bit of pride before I actually called him and explained what was going on and asked him to come help me.  Of course, being the awesome guy he is, Eric came up to go with me, even though he was in the middle of a busy day.  Unfortunately, by the time he came up, the Health Center was closed for devotional.  Dang it!  And Eric had class immediately after devotional.  However, he decided that we could go back to his place, watch devotional, and then he’d take me up to the clinic and be late to his next class.  Any wonder I decided once again that he was a keeper?

So, that’s what we did.  Luckily having Eric there gave me the courage I needed to actually walk into the lab this time, and between him holding my hand and the nurse being super awesome at trying to distract me from the needle I was able to narrowly avoid passing out!  We got me back to full consciousness (I did say narrowly avoid passing out, I still came pretty close which takes a little bit of recovery) and Eric went on his way to his class and I went back to the doctor’s office for the follow up with the test results.

When the doctor called me back in she said they’d wondered what had happened to me since the test was supposed to be super quick, and I didn’t come back.  I felt bad about leaving, but I hadn’t had the guts to tell them what was going on at the time because… well I’m a big fat chicken and I didn’t want to do it.  If I’d told her she’d have probably just had some one march me into the lab and get the work done, which would have been effective, but not something I was going to make happen.

Anyways, the test results had come back negative for mono.  So I was expecting the doctor to say that she suspected it was something else, but basically she just said that she thought the test was a false negative and that she thought I had mono anyways.  She instructed me to take lots of ibuprofen and get as much sleep as possible.  I left the health center a bit dumbfounded at the whole experience.  So… the test said I don’t have mono, but we’re going to pretend that I do anyways?  Why did I even have to go through that whole ordeal of being stuck with a needle if we were going to ignore the test results anyways?!  * grumble *

I decided the doctor was basically a hack.  But, since she hadn’t found anything really wrong with me I didn’t pursue it any further and took her advice of taking ibuprofen and getting more sleep.  After a week or so the swelling in my glands had gone down and my other symptoms had pretty well subsided so I figured it was just a cold that took me awhile to kick.

However as the semester continued I kept feeling really tired all the time.  I wasn’t taking a very intensive class load – 12 credit hours, only 3 of which were taking me much effort. I’d attempted 21 credits in a previous semester, so 12 was nothing.  Furthermore, it wasn’t that I was feeling really tired after long weeks where we’d had YA shows or midterms or anything intensive – I felt tired after getting 10 hours of sleep at night consistently.  It was really weird.

So I brought it up to my mom and she said that I was probably just under emotional stress from being engaged.  That this was a pretty huge transition and that because it was emotionally stressful it transferred to the physical side of me as well making me super tired.  That made sense, except that I wasn’t feeling emotionally stressed at all.  In fact, I knew without a doubt that marrying Eric was the right decision and I only wished that it was June so that we could be married already.  I didn’t *feel* emotionally stressed, but decided maybe it was a more subconscious thing, and it was the best explanation I had at my disposal so I decided to go with it.

So I spent that semester trying to allow myself to get as much rest as I needed and kept things low-stress.  Most weeks this meant (unfortunately for Eric) that at the end of the week when we were ready to watch a movie I didn’t have the brain power to really watch anything other than chick flicks or other low-brain power movies.  Luckily Eric was awesome and agreed to watch these inane movies with me to keep me happy.  Since we got married I think he’s been pleasantly surprised to find that I actually enjoy shows like Firefly, or movies like Sherlock Holmes.  When I’m not too tired I can really get into a good action film or a show with a mind bending plot line.  I remember feeling so bad at the time that I was making Eric acquiesce to my movie choices each week, but I really just felt so drained that I just thinking about watching an intensive movie at the time made me tired.

So, that’s how the semester continued, low stress, lots of sleep, taking the best care of myself I could manage.  Finally the end of the semester came and it was time for me to head on tour with the Young Ambassadors to China!  I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving Eric but I was really excited for tour.  I’d worked hard for 3 years to become the YAs Stage Manager and I was really looking forward to giving that role my all while we were in China and really proving that I could handle it.

Unfortunately… I didn’t handle it as well as I would have liked to.  As the tour went on I really was trying to push myself and give it 100% but I felt like I was in a fog.  I was super tired (not unexpected on tour, but in retrospect, I was probably more tired than I should have been) and just not able to get through things real clearly.  I don’t think I caused any catastrophes, but I just wasn’t completely there, and Matt Schetselaar (our former stage manager and a technical advisor/resident Chinese translator for the tech crew on this tour) definitely had to pick up a lot of my slack.  I thought that it was probably because I was missing Eric and kept trying to tell myself to pull it together and make the most of the experience.  The worst moment was when everything wasn’t going really well and I finally snapped at our costumer after she’d been late getting back to the bus.  I don’t even remember what I said now, but I just remember that I was pretty nasty in what I said.  I still feel really bad to this day that I snapped at her.  I don’t think it was entirely her fault, but I think I was feeling like I was doing a lousy job and I took it out on her that day.  Becca, if you’re reading this, I’m pretty sure I apologized before, but I’m really sorry I lost my cool with you.  It’s one of the moments that I truly regret.

Finally towards the last week of tour I noticed that the glands on my neck were getting swollen again.  As the end of tour grew closer they were getting bigger and bigger.  It was weird, but since it had happened earlier in the semester I wasn’t too worried and I was pretty sure it wasn’t mono.  It was just something that my body apparently did to fight off infection.

Well, the end of tour came and my mom picked me up at the airport in Los Angeles.  We gave each other hugs and packed my suitcase in the car and started back home.  While we were driving I mentioned my swollen glands again and my mom reached over to feel them.  Her response was something to the effect of “holy cow!”  She was a little bit stunned that I’d been writing them off as no big deal since they were about the size of golf balls and hard as could be.  She made an appointment for me to go in to the doctor’s the next day.  Of course, the only doctor I had back home was the pediatrician that I’d had since I was 10, but they agreed to see me anyways.

The doctor ordered me to go get tested for mono again.  Ick.  But, I’d made it through that ok before and so off I went with my mom to the lab to get tested.  I didn’t really like the lab much to begin with, and I can’t really say exactly why.  The nurse there didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable either, but I really was trying to tell myself it would be no big deal and that I’d be out of there in no time.  It was finally my turn and the nurse got one of those big rubber band things to tie on my arm to help her find my veins.  I don’t know why but those things really creep me out big time.  I think I made it through her cleaning my arm and probably pulling out the needle… and then I was gone.  Like, really gone.  I passed out worse than I had ever passed out before or than I have ever passed out since.  I really wasn’t sure if I was dead, it was not a good experience at all.

When I came back to (after several smelling salts) I thought that at least it was all over and I didn’t have to do that again.  Then they revealed to me that they hadn’t taken my blood yet because I passed out before the needle had really gone in and I was shaking so bad while I was passed out that they couldn’t get a needle in me while I was out.  When I heard that I lost it.  I just broke down crying because that passing out experience had been so awful… and it had been for nothing.  They still had to do it again.  My mom took me back out to the waiting room to get a grip on myself.  I just sobbed uncontrollably for awhile before she decided that we’d just go home and try again some other time.  Apparently she could tell from how I looked while I was passed out that it had been a particularly bad episode and she wasn’t keen on going through that again either.

The next day we pulled out all the stops.  My doctor prescribed some Xanax for me, we made sure that when I went into the lab there was no waiting time for me to psych myself out and Eric was on the phone with me the whole time.  Finally I was able to make it through the whole process without passing out.

When the doctor called me with the results I was actually surprised to find that they had come back positive for mono.  So that hack doctor at the Student Health Center had been right all along!  She wasn’t a hack, the test really did come back as a false negative, but she’d known better than to make me go through being tested again.  Since I had pretty well followed her prescription of resting all semester the sickness hadn’t really reared its ugly head again until I didn’t have time to take care of myself on tour.  Who’d have thought?

Sidenote: In case you were wondering, I figured out a year or so later why my passing out episode was so bad that time.  Because the mono had taken over my system pretty well at that point I wasn’t getting as much oxygen to my system as I needed.  This made it so I was much more susceptible to passing out in the first place, and didn’t help me recover quickly either.  It’s good that I figured that out because the experience tripped me out pretty bad and made it exceptionally difficult for me to go in and get any bloodwork done the next time it was necessary

So the next couple weeks leading up to the wedding I spent mostly sleeping.  This really bugged me at the time.  I’d never wanted to be the kind of bride that left everyone else to do everything and just showed up at the last minute expecting it to be perfect.  But I didn’t have much choice.  My mom was so awesome to plan most of the wedding since we were getting married in California and I was in Utah or China up until just the two weeks before the wedding.  Then when I finally was physically there to help, I slept while people ran circles around me downstairs.  I cried over my lack of participation more than once, but in the end I mostly just felt super loved.  It was amazing to me to see all the friends and family that I had that were willing to put their time and energy into my wedding, while I just laid around and slept.  Like when I’d come down because I wanted to help chop vegetables instead of nap, Sister Smith would shoo me right back upstairs to get more sleep.  There were countless people there that I could name who pitched in to make that day wonderful for me, while I slept that whole week away.  I can’t even describe how grateful I feel for the selflessness and caring of all those wonderful people I have in my life.

So the wedding day came and it really was a beautiful and perfect day, I couldn’t possibly have asked for anything more.  My glands were swollen up ginormously, but we never did get a picture of just how bad they were.  Rhett once again did an incredible job of taking pictures that didn’t make me look like Frankenstein.  I’m not sure if it was just the positioning he had us in or if he did some magic with Photoshop but you really can’t tell.  I should have taken a picture though for posterity, oh well

So, from there on out I at least knew what was going on with me.  Eric and I had a wonderfully relaxing honeymoon.  He unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) got sick right after our wedding as well so we spent the first week just hanging out at the hotel and being bums.  We watched movies and just laid around all day, which was pretty wonderful to just be able to spend time together with nothing pressing to do and a good excuse to stay put.  From there we went to a Hansen Family reunion, which was really fun.  We were able to still take it pretty easy and get plenty of sleep and I finally got a chance to really know all the wonderful people in Eric’s family.

After the reunion we completed our honeymoon in Paris.  After taking 5 years of French going to France was definitely a dream of mine and I was super excited to go.  I don’t know that we really took the best advantage of our time there however.  We never even truly changed to their timezone since I was still so dependant on my sleep.  We would sleep in until the afternoon and then go out and see some of the city and then come back to our hotel and stay up until late at night.  But I thought it was awesome.  It was so freeing to be that far away from everything with my husband and just have that time together.  We were able to see all the things that we really wanted to, and we had some really cool experiences that I’ll never forget.

Then it was home and back to real life.  After about a couple weeks of being home I was feeling pretty good, but probably not up for what I had in store next.  I’d been casually searching for jobs, knowing that I was going to be a counselor for YASE for two weeks out of July and didn’t really want to be working two jobs that week.  However, on the first day of YASE I had an interview at Axis41 and they wanted me to start immediately.  So I spent two weeks of waking up in the morning, getting my girls up and ready for breakfast, sending them to their activities for the day, racing home to Eric to quickly shower and dressing in more professional attire, driving to Salt Lake City, working at Axis41 until 3:30pm, hopping back in the car, driving home again, changing back into camp counselor-ing attire, going to all of the evening activities with my girls, and then staying up all night doing camp stuff (and by camp stuff I think I mean talking to Lexie).  Yeah, with mono.  It was an insane couple of weeks.  But somehow at the end of it I wasn’t dead and I had even secured the position at Axis41, where I still work to this day.

After that, life was more manageable.  I kept myself on as low key of a schedule as I could to avoid any flare ups of mono.  I’m not entirely sure when I really “got better” from having mono.  I was taking a birth control at the time that also made me tired, and when I finally got off that I started to feel better.  But of course, then I got pregnant and now I don’t know that I will ever not feel tired until we’re done having kids, and those kids are out of the house.  Maybe having mono was just supposed to get me in the practice of simplifying my life, taking care of myself, and just being tired

Some people come into your life for a little while and leave having changed it forever. Some people come and go without leaving much of a mark. Some people come and go, and reappear in the most unlikely places. You never know what kind of effect a person will have on your life.

Such is the case with Amy. My freshman year I lived in a ward of Amys. Literally I think we had 8 or more Amys in the ward. One of these Amys lived right next door to me. While we were always friendly with one another, I’d never say that we were fast friends. The year went by without us really getting to know each other too well.

A year or so later the Facebook craze hits BYU and we become Facebook friends and while it was nice to be able to stay in contact that way, our friendship remains at about that level.

Another couple years pass and I meet this guy, Eric Hansen. Well the story there is no secret, we met, started dating, fell in love, got engaged (about that quickly too). So, being the technological nerds that we are, one of the first places that news is announced – Facebook. One of the first people to comment on our engagement, was Amy. Why? Not only was she my neighbor for our entire freshman year, but she also happens to be Eric’s cousin. Who knew?

So, another couple years pass and Eric and I are sitting at a Hansen family reunion next to Amy and her husband Zach. Just as we’re sharing the news with them that I am pregnant, they tell us that she’s also pregnant! Furthermore, in an exciting coincidence Amy is due near her birthday and I am due near Eric’s. We are more excited still when a few weeks later we find out that she is having a girl and I’m having a boy. It feels like it’s meant to be the second generation of Amy and Eric as cousins.

So the weeks go by and we share pregnancy tips with each other over Facebook and through emails. Slowly we get close to our due dates. I go to Amy’s baby shower and we are so excited about the possibility of our kids being close friends. We commiserate about the third trimester woes and soak up all the advice that veteran moms are giving. It’s so close and our excitement is definitely high. We’re both to the point where we know that if our babies were born that, while a little premature, they would survive. The reality of becoming a mom is really starting to come home for me.

Then, not one week later, I get a phone call from Eric while I’m at work. I’d been watching for him online for hours wanting to share some link with him, so I’m really excited to finally be getting in contact with him. At the same time I’m a little confused because Eric almost never calls me at work. So I answer excitedly, not realizing what his phone call would mean. He tells me that Zach and Amy’s baby had been born that morning, which totally excites me for a moment. Until he gets to the part that warranted a personal phone call in the middle of the workday – their baby was born still. Honestly, the news doesn’t hit me right then. I know I should feel really sad about it, but it just hasn’t hit me yet. I acknowledge what he said and ask if there was anything we can do for them. He says that the only thing for us to do is pray for them and we spend a brief moment thinking about their grief. I guess it was too much for me to truly process in that short period of time because the next thing I tell him is to get online so I can send him this link that I’ve been waiting to show him. I still regret that flippant move. I don’t know what else to do though and I don’t want to focus on the somber topic at hand just yet.

For some reason grief takes a long time to hit me. When my family moved from Fairport, New York to Thousand Oaks, California I didn’t shed a single tear over that. Madness! I *loved* New York. It was my home. I had lived there my entire life and the last thing I wanted to do was to leave. Especially for California! I’d never pictured myself as a California girl and I never wanted to. But not a single tear. Until about 6 months after we’d already been in California. I was sitting down organizing our piano music one night and I just broke down. Why it hit me then I’ll never know. Why not when I was telling my dearest friends goodbye? Why not as we were driving across the country? Why not after my first day at a new school? Nope, one random night while sorting piano music.

Well, my grief for Zach and Amy didn’t take that long to hit me, but it did at least wait until the end of my work day. I kept myself busy until the moment I left. As I started to drive home I turn on one of my podcasts. But I can’t focus on it. Finally I turn it off and let all of my thoughts hit me. It all hit in a big wave. By the time I got to the end of Salt Lake and heading up to the point of the mountain, I am sobbing. I just can’t believe that this is happening. Yeah, I knew that sometimes babies were born still but the chances of that actually happening, and to someone that I really knew seemed so remote I just hadn’t thought of it. Well, I mean I had, but I hadn’t fully considered that it could happen to Amy. I’d just been at her baby shower a few days ago! She is supposed to be having her little girl that’s going to be friends with my little boy.

My heart aches for Amy. I can’t truly imagine the grief that she was going through at that time or that she’s gone through since but it wasn’t too hard to put myself in her shoes. I am only three weeks behind her. The awful thought strikes me that the same thing could just as easily happen to me in the weeks to come.

My tears were almost getting to a point where they would affect my driving so I need to find a way to calm myself down. I really want to talk to my mom and just cry to her over the phone for a little while, but I can’t get in touch with her. Luckily, about the time I reach American Fork I get on the phone with my brother Cody. Since I don’t feel like crying to him I am able to pull myself together and joke with him and talk with him the rest of the way home. While that may seem callous, it was probably for the best since it helped me get into a driving frame of mind and get home without crashing.

Over the next few days as Zach and Amy post pictures of their beautiful Alexis it hits me over and over again, the reality that their precious, perfect, beautiful baby girl was dead. That’s not what was supposed to happen! They were supposed to be able to bring her home and post pictures of all the cute things she did, and we were going to go visit them and have fun together with our babies! But that wasn’t meant to be. After awhile I have to cut myself off from looking at all the pictures and reading all the blog posts because it just hits too close to home. I start to get slightly hysterical at the thought that the same thing could happen to me and my Samuel. I know that thinking that way wasn’t healthy or helpful to anyone so for a little while I cut myself off.

I missed the memorial service they had for Alexis. I really wanted to be there but the day of the service I’d been up late working on a project that I was still working on and really needed to get completed. Plus it was a ways away and Eric wasn’t going to be able to come with me because he had class. I think though what really kept me was that I was worried about being a distraction. I was worried that at 35 weeks pregnant I was going to remind Zach and Amy that I was soon going to have – and likely get to keep – what they were there to bury. I felt guilty that it was them burying their baby and not me. Guilty for praying that I wouldn’t have to go through what they were going through. I knew I couldn’t change it, and I definitely don’t think they or anyone else would have wanted me to be praying otherwise… I just didn’t feel entirely like I ought to be there. So while I had other real and valid excuses that kept me away that day, I think deep down I just felt like I oughtn’t be there.

The next several weeks went by in a flurry of activity and excitement as we got ready for Samuel to come. But in the middle of it all, Zach, Amy and Alexis were always on my mind. We prayed for them every single night. I talked about their tragedy with anyone who would listen. I was so impressed by their openness in sharing their experience and how they used it as a way to share their testimony of eternal families.

Then Samuel was born and my life has been totally centered on him ever since. But I still think of Alexis all the time. As I watch my Samuel growing up, I think of the 2nd cousin that was supposed to be here with him. Whenever I get discouraged because motherhood is hard, I try to remember that Amy would give anything to be sitting in my shoes having those trials rather than the ones she has to bear. Recently as I’ve been thinking it’s time for Sam to learn to sleep in his own bed rather than in ours, I also want to cuddle him a little longer for Amy and Alexis’ sake. Alexis has become a very real part of every parenting decision that I make, and I think I’m a better mother because of her.

A year has come and gone since the day I got that phone call. Alexis may not have had her chance at this life, but her spirit lives on. Because of her my testimony has been strengthened in the reality of eternal families. I have seen the power of prayers given in someone’s behalf. I understand better the miracle that these precious babies are.

So, happy birthday Alexis. Your time here was short, but the world is a better place because you were in it. Thank you.

I already posted my report on my resolutions from last year but I haven’t yet posted my new resolutions for 2010! I want to make these more quantifiable than last year’s goals because I felt so good about being able to check those ones off, and the more abstract goals just made me feel sad that I wasn’t perfect at them (which, let’s face it, I never will be perfect in this life so why mope about it?) So without further ado…

Brittny’s Resolutions for 2010

1. I will make it to the temple once a month. Not a new goal, but still a good one
2. I will complete my visiting teaching monthly. Another un-original but important goal.
3. I will exercise at least twice a week. This is going to require me to either get Eric to watch Sam a couple night’s a week or go to the gym before they are up for the day, or not worry so much about leaving Sam in the daycare at Gold’s Gym. I’ll give myself a bye for this past week since Sam was sick, but it’s time for me to step it up!
4. I will memorize 10 scriptures. This is a goal I set just about every year and I don’t think I’ve ever actually done it. I think I’ll put picking out these scriptures on my list of things to do for this week.
5. Get a blog post up weekly. That’s not necessarily a goal for this blog. Hopefully most of my posts will be up in our family blog, but I will count posts here or in my family’s highs and lows blog.
6. Learn 25 new Chinese words. For each word I want to learn how to recognize the symbol, pronounce the word (with the correct tone) and be able to identify it in a sentence. Obviously if we move to China this year I will have to increase this goal exponentially, but hopefully this will give me a good start.
7. Set up a budget and stick to it. I’m setting myself up with Mint.com and I’m LOVING it. I want to set us up with a reasonable but frugal budget and stick with it. We’ve been blessed to have good steady employment and neither of us are spendy people which I’m very grateful for. However, I want to make sure we’re using our money wisely and working towards saving money for later. I really like using Mint.com because they make it super easy to do this (I highly recommend it to anyone else who’s looking for a good way to track their money).
8. Our condo is cleaned up acceptable for company at least once a week. I gave Eric the task of selecting one goal for me and this is the one he picked. It was a perfect pick too. Reasonable, quantifiable and will make our lives much better. Thanks Eric!
9. I will read through the entire Old Testament. I love the scriptures but I still don’t feel I’m super familiar with the Old Testament. Since this is the course of study this year for Sunday School anyways I think this will help me to be more prepared for Sunday School each week and to gain a greater appreciation for the Old Testament.
10. Arrange at least one social interaction for Sam each week. I worry that Sam and I are becoming too isolated. We can go an entire week without seeing anyone other than Eric and my sister and brother-in-law. Many weeks the only time we get out of the house is to go to church. Hopefully this will help Sam overcome his stranger anxiety and help us both feel less isolated. Of course I will suspend this goal if Sam is sick. Isolation is a fair price to pay to keep other kids from getting sick!

I feel good about these goals. Even if I don’t achieve all of them I feel like the pursuit of them will help me be a better person. And now you are all out there to hold me accountable for them! Ideally I’ll post each week to see how my progress is going, but realistically… I’ll probably post about them again in 2011 Here’s to 2010!

As 2009 is now over I think it’s time to see how I did on my New Year’s Resolutions this year. So here’s my reporting –

Brittny’s Resolutions for 2009

1. I will learn to balance motherhood, being a wife and working. Definitely still an ongoing goal, but I do feel like I’m getting better at this all the time. I still often get overwhelmed with all that I’m trying to accomplish, but it’s getting better.
2. I will make it to the temple once a month. That would have been nice… I did try to make it as often as I could and I think we at least made it once each quarter of the year, but the once a month thing just didn’t happen with a new baby and crazy schedules.
3. I will complete my visiting teaching monthly. Sadly I didn’t do too well at this one either. Although, I didn’t have an assignment August – October, and I did at least go drop off treats to all my girls in November. I don’t think I missed a month though from January – August, so I guess it was really just this last month that I missed
4. I will feed our family more nutritious meals. This definitely did seem to improve during the year. It helped not having to commute every day. It’s also helped as I’ve been working at planning out our meals at the beginning of each week so that I don’t just opt for Pasta Roni or quesadillas every night
5. I will exercise at least twice a week. HAHAHA! Yeah, not by a long shot. I do have a gym membership now… but I think it’s been used about 3 times since I got it. Which isn’t to say that I sit around all day. In fact, I now weigh less than I did in high school thanks to nursing and carrying/chasing a baby all over. I would like to get real exercise in though.
6. I will do better with my daily scripture study. We’ve definitely gotten better at making sure scripture study is a more consistent part of each day, but it could still use some improvement.
7. I will do better about having personal morning and evening prayer as well as praying with my husband each night. Better – yes. Long way still to go – yes.
8. I will memorize 10 scriptures. Ummm, no. Dangit. I need to come up with a good way to put some scriptures somewhere that I can focus on them to memorize them.
9. I will add 5 new meals to our family’s repertoire of meal plans. I think this one I actually did! I’ve added a new fettucinne alfredo recipe to our list (SO good), Jeanine Eyre Bee’s meatloaf recipe, slow cooker chicken and dumplings, baked barbeque chicken and baked macaroni and cheese! That’s not a comprehensive list, but it does go to show that I did at least add as many as I set out to add. Yay! This has been a fun goal to work on and I’ve really learned to enjoy cooking and trying out new recipes this year.
10. I will read 5 novels. I got an Audible subscription this year which definitely helped with this goal. I read Sarah by Orson Scott Card, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (and the sequel Catching Fire), The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (sorry, no link. This book had parts that were a little more explicit than I feel good about recommending to people), A Series of Unfortunate Events #1 – A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Looks like I was cutting it close on that goal! I read a lot of other books this year, but my goal was specifically for novels and I believe these were the only novels I read.

So overall not too bad. Definitely still room for improvement but I’m happy with the things I did accomplish over this past year. Stay tuned for my new resolutions for 2010!

Being a new mom has been an interesting experience. Spending all of your time caring for a baby changes your perspective on a lot of different things. One thing in particular it has opened my eyes to is how much media is inundating my life. See, as a new mom, I find it very hard to get out of the house much, which means that I crave spending time with people who have passed their first birthday (no offense Sam) more than ever. However, it seems like whenever I do get opportunities to get time with real people we’re generally sitting glued to the TV. Worse still often we waste time with real people by staring at computer screens, or cell phones, or listening to iPods. That face time that I am so anxious to have with other people is quickly wasted in a drone of media.

Another reason I am more aware of all the media around me is that I see how it affects a baby. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends not allowing children to watch TV until they are 2 years old. They say that introducing this much media at such a young age contributes to ADD. Although Sam is not yet 6 months old I can already see how this is the case. He is already very drawn to technology (no surprise considering who his parents are) and is fascinated by watching the moving pictures on a TV screen or cell phone. While I enjoy seeing him be fascinated by these things, I can already see that by introducing him to these mediums so early on he expects to have entertainment at his disposal immediately and isn’t as inclined to be entertained by learning things about his environment as he ought to be.

I’ve never been an anti-media type person but I feel that right now we are drowning in a sea of media. Which is why when I read this article it really hit home. It reminded me of a program we did as a primary one year. They had a cool name for it which I can’t remember now, but what we did was give up TV for the month of September right up to General Conference. The idea being that it got us more in the mode of being ready for Conference. At the beginning of the month I thought it was the worst thing ever. A whole month without TV?! How would we ever make it?? But as the month went on I missed it less and less. In fact, after the month was over I found that I just didn’t watch TV as much ever again… until about my senior year of college after which my TV consumption has slowly been on the rise. Who would have thought that a simple program like that could have such a long lasting (although obviously not permanent) impact? That’s not to say that I hated TV or I never wanted to watch it, but what had once been almost an addiction had lost a lot of its appeal. I really liked it better when I was that way and would like to return to that state of being less addicted to the media.

In preparation for this upcoming General Conference I would like to try a similar program. The hard thing is that the media I consume today isn’t just TV but a barrage of different types of media. Of course, in my line of work and in the age we live it is impractical to completely unplug for a month, but my plan is to set myself some very definite and drastic limits for my media intake for the next month. Since I’m accountable to all of you on the internet, I feel that much more responsible to actually follow through. My plan might change slightly between now and when I have to start but here’s what I’m planning to do:

Starting Tuesday, 01 September 2009 until Saturday, 03 October 2009 I will:

1. Not watch an episode of any TV show via cable, internet or stored on the computer
2. Watch no more than one movie each week – although I’d rather take that out and say no movies at all, but I’m not sure how Eric will take to me not watching anything with him for a month, right after he’s just gotten a new TV
3. Not play any games on my computer or cell phone (Word Twist, Bubble Breaker, Solitare… none of the exciting games that I normally play )
4. Only read blogs from my PDA while doing other things that might take up my time but not require my mind (i.e. mostly feeding Sam), or during a time not to exceed 15 minutes per day for blogs that don’t render well on my cell phone
5. Only sign into Facebook once per day and spend no more than 15 minutes on that site
6. Only go on YouTube to watch videos that are uplifting or educational (i.e. Mormon Messages or parenting help videos)
7. Limit my time spent shopping online (it’s the only way I shop, so I can’t eliminate it completely) to no more than 2 hours per week
8. Limit my time listening to podcasts or audiobooks to 1 hour per day, excepting scriptures, podcasts from the Church and other church materials
9. Limit other time spent on the internet for purposes other than work, email, calendaring and similar daily functions to no more than 30 minutes in a day

The real success is in the things that I want to do with my time instead. One of the hardest parts is coming up with other things to do in the time that we get so used to filling with media. Here are some of the things I’d like to do:

1. Read the book for the Relief Society book club for the month of September
2. Daily personal and family scripture study
3. Daily personal and family prayers
4. Find a piano and spend at least 5 hours practicing and working on a piece to be able to play with Eric (yes, I know that 5 hours over the course of a month isn’t exactly a lofty goal but I do still have a baby that likely won’t let me practice for very long at a time)
5. Have the dishes done at the end of each day
6. Attend the temple twice
7. Walk at least 3 miles a week (or more preferably finally find time to make use of my gym membership)

These aren’t the highest goals that I’ve set for myself, but I wanted to make sure they were attainable goals for me with a baby. So, there you have it, my goals for reducing my media consumption in preparation for General Conference. Anyone want to join me? I know it sounds daunting, but I can promise that if you will make your own such goals you will get more out of this upcoming General Conference as well as find more ways to enrich your life.