JD: Russian Heart-breaker

A couple weeks ago Josh went out with the missionaries on some visits. Around 8pm they went to meet with a Russian woman whom the missionaries had previously contacted, but apparently it was too late in the evening for her to receive them (she greeted them in her robe and with a slightly stern expression and reprimand).

Despite this intrusion (or perhaps because of it . . . ), the elders were able to visit her at a better time a few days later, and apparently the follow-up conversation went something like this (you have to imagine her comments in your best Russian accent, as I can't quite do it justice):

"But vhere is ze third one? Dere vere thrree of you last time."

"Oh, well, Bro. Dalton was just visiting with us that evening--he's not a full time missionary."

"Too bad. He vas . . . incrredibly handsome."

I thought: hey, at least she has good taste. Josh expressed surprise that she even noticed him, considering they were only on her doorstep for about 30 seconds, and she seemed a bit brusque and irritated. I once again tried to drive home my point about the rapid analytic powers of women when it comes to assessing male good looks in great specificity.

By this I mean that where a man would notice a woman and think: "she's pretty," a woman would notice a man and note the slant of his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, and the texture of his hair. I remember walking down the streets of Oxford and London during my study abroad, and turning around to catch the eye of my dear friend Nelly, who was walking behind me. One sly smirk between us was all it took to acknowledge that yes, we had both seen the Robert Burns look-alike who had just passed us on the other side of the street (yes, Robert Burns has been dead for 200+ years, but there are pictures and statues of him all over the British Isles, and he was one handsome Scot). Granted, in this particular instance the only males on the study abroad were our professor, his 12 year-old son, and the one married and long-suffering Physics major who came to be with his wife, so we may or may not have been slightly man-starved.

In brief, there is no moment too short and no mood too cranky for a woman not to notice a darkly handsome half-Japanese man on her doorstep, brooding in the shadows behind two bright-eyed young missionaries. Or something like that.

And sure enough, the elders let us know that this good lady had shown up to Stake Conference last Sunday. Josh even nobly offered to go say hello, but the elders declined, perhaps with a look or two in my direction. I am rather formidably large these days.

Why Children Should Pray Often in Church

The new year brought me a new class of children to teach at church. I traded in the rambunctious 5-6 year-olds (you may remember such comments as "Are you in marriage with him? He looks like a Chinese man" from the loquacious and affectionate Clara, or "I can karate you in half from head to toe" from freckle-faced Gideon) for an angelic little troupe of 4-5 year-olds (five girls, one boy). They are beyond adorable.

Every Sunday offers several of those delightful, artless, and brilliant conversation pieces that only imaginative children are capable of delivering. The winner for this week came during the closing prayer, given by the most precocious and heart-meltingly verbal four-year old I have ever encountered (that fact that she is quarter-Japanese may also warm my heart towards her). She has an articulate, pronounced little voice that belies her tender years, and began her prayer with the endearing but customary petitions for everyone to be nice to each other, and thanking the Lord for the nice day at church. And then came this jewel:

"Please bless us that we will not be eaten by foxes, and that we will not go into the woods without our parents."

Not only was the initial "bless us that we will not be eaten" a shocker, but to be followed up by "foxes"?! Too wonderful. The best part may have been that no other child in the class blinked a figurative eye at this. This is why children are so marvelous. They perfectly understand the sincere desire in one of their peers to not get eaten by foxes, even when sequestered inside a sterile church-building in suburban northern Virginia, and do not think such a wish in any way out of place with "thank you that we learned about Jesus today" or "bless us to be nice." Who knows how many of them were feeling slightly nervous about the trip home from church, and if foxes might be encountered along the way.

Adults could not similarly impress children because most of our fear-driven petitions would either sound boring ("Please bless our 401K to be fruitful and our tax return to be mighty") or totally irrelevant ("Please bless me to not get skin cancer from all those times I should have worn sunscreen") compared to possible dismemberment and consumption by foxes.

To My Groom . . . 15 Months Later

In honor of Valentine's Day, here is a brief tale of homage to my beloved groom:

One of the first things I learned about Josh was his love/obsession for football. I made a lucky move at a critical point in our early dating relationship when I suggested we go to a park and throw a football around, and I credit this moment for spawning a mutual twitterpation. I think his twitterpation stemmed from (1) the fact that I said the word "football," and (2) my pathetic/endearing but dogged attempts to throw a spiral, while mine probably had more to do with his forearms rippling in the moonlight, or something like that. And that he didn't laugh at the throws that weren't spirals, which were most of them. And that the cherry blossoms were in full swing, and it was spring . . . something along those lines.

When Josh was overseas during our engagement, I sometimes wondered which he missed more: me, or the college football season. During our first fall as a married couple, I spent my Saturdays listening to middle-aged men on TV excitedly spout phrases like "true freshman" and "play-maker," and learned to memorize the same four inane commercials that ESPN 3 recycles about every five minutes.

The point being, Josh loves football.

So four months before my wedding, I bought a football cake pan, thinking I would "have time" the night before we got married to bake and decorate a groom's cake for Josh. Ha. In reality, I spent the night before my wedding having various breakdowns about whether or not we had enough utensils for the reception or trying to getting peach bows tied on the lanterns, and I didn't even have time to start packing for my honeymoon until around midnight. So the football groom's cake didn't happen . . . until . . .

. . . Superbowl Sunday, 2012 (almost 15 months to the day after our wedding), when I finally decided it was time to follow through on what I'd started. So in honor of the last official day of the football season, Josh finally got his groom's cake, and here it is:


Happy Valentine's Day to all, and especially to my football-loving true love. And yes, Jack already has some BYU football attire purchased and ready for wear (thank you, Jen!).

*You may be wondering about my attire in the above picture. I have my thoughtful mother-in-law Shigeko to thank for what I like to call my "culinary surgical costume." It's a full-body Japanese chef's apron, and it even covers my great-with-child belly. She gave it to me for Christmas this year, and it has already saved many an outfit from the inevitable cooking-while-pregnant destruction (my belly ends up in everything). It is especially visually effective when I am carving a roast or chopping vegetables with large sharp knives.

Also, as a bonus and tribute to another of Josh's endearing obsessions, here is the batman cake I made for Josh's mighty 30th birthday a few weeks ago. Hooray for holidays and celebrations!

Introducing Jack Dalton

This is what our awesome little dude looked like about two and a half months ago:

And here is his adorable little foot:

Out of respect for his privacy, I am not including the pictures that specified his gender. His name is Jack Dalton, and we think he may be destined for heroism (or at least, to one day grow a really big mustache and serve as the trusty sidekick to some Macgyver like character . . . ).

Jack is due to make his grand appearance on the earth around April 4th, and we are very excited to meet him and see whose genes won out. The physical possibilities are intriguing: if he gets the McDonald length/height and the Dalton musculature and athleticism, Jack could have the makings of a demigod. As for hair, if he gets my curl and Josh's body, he could rival any hobbit's head in Middle Earth. If he gets Josh's eye shape and my eye color, he would be one tricksy little ninja. I tend to imagine him most as a little Mowgli baby, loin cloth and all, with rather wild hair and mischievous glints in his eyes.

All supposition at this point, of course. I am prepared, however, to make some preliminary assessments of Jack's character and disposition, based on the only sources I have available to me: doctor's visits, fetal movement, and lots and lots of weird dreams.

Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick

Granted, this is my first child. I have no basis of comparison. But I'm pretty sure I have one squirmy little dude in there. I have a feeling this child will be an energetic one, payback for what I did to my own parents as an infant. Apparently I was a pretty fussy baby until I learned to move on my own. Dad says he remembers walking in the door from work and Mom greeting him by way of passing my squirming self into his arms. Once I learned to crawl and walk, however, my disposition improved and I became a much happier child.

I even had a dream that I was holding him in my arms and it was all I could do to keep him from flying out because he was kicking around so violently.

He also has an irreverent streak with his movements. He likes to kick really hard, with no warning, during church. It startled me so much the last time he did it that I fairly jumped in the pew. He also starts going a bit ape when I am working in the temple, as I do once a week. I seriously wonder if the patrons ever notice the way the big pregnant lady's belly starts writhing and bouncing during what should be very quiet, reverent moments. Hopefully this is just a phase that he will grow out of in a decade or two . . .

Ginger or Afro?

Josh and I have both had dreams that Jack had red hair and blue eyes. I also had a dream where I had just delivered him and was trying to get my first look at him through the nursery curtain, and suddenly he had a huge Afro. And his skin was black. I was pretty sure there had been some sort of mix-up....

Precocious Verbal Genius or Creepy Talking Baby . . .

In Josh's same dream where Jack was sporting bright red hair, he also demonstrated astonishing verbal prowess. Jack was about 2 days old, and Josh went to go get him from his crib. Jack looked at him and said: "Hi Josh!" Josh wasn't sure if he was encouraged or creeped out by the dream.

A Rogue in the Making

One thing I am quite sure of is that Jack is bit of a rascal. He likes to be evasive, especially where intrusive technology is concerned; he instinctively resists it. This could be a good thing if he is destined for a career as a spy or special forces operative.

For example, it has always been a bit of an ordeal getting his heartbeat at my OB check-ups (not good for my nerves/motherly anxiety) because he starts moving and flipping around as soon as she starts rubbing the machine over my belly. The nurses usually end up muttering something like: "You've certainly got a mover" or yesterday she just turned to me and said: "I really don't think he likes this thing," gesturing to the heart-rate monitor.

Our ultrasound took a good 45 minutes because he kept flipping over and refused to move his arm and show the tech his right aortic valve (mind you, he had no qualms about displaying his manhood . . . that was revealed within the first minute or so of the ultrasound. Not sure what to make of that one yet).

Whether or not Jack ends up with uncanny savvy to evade the surveillance technologies of foreign governments or terrorists, I do think he will have lots of fun playing Hide and Seek with his dad. If Josh and I are sitting on the couch, and Jack starts in with the acrobatics, I will grab Josh's hand and put it on my stomach so he can feel him. Sure enough, the lad goes completely still, so Josh will move his hand away and go back to whatever he was doing. As soon as he does so, Jack will deliver a quick roundhouse or left hook, and then of course fall silent again as soon as Josh puts his hand back on my belly. I imagine Jack having a good chuckle over these antics, snorting little bubbles of amniotic fluid as he flip-flops back down onto my bladder.

Josh loves him more for his roguishness, of course, and gets this gleam of fatherly pride in his eye whenever Jack pulls an evasive maneuver.

Truth is, we are mostly just excited to meet the great Jack. Even if he comes out with a Ronald McDonald red Afro, addressing us both by our first names, and karate chopping the nurses who try to measure his vital statistics, he will be our little hero.

The Return of the Unemployed

As you can see, I have been blog-absent for half a year--only making it to day 3 of our 10 day Scotland trip, and then dropping off the face of the blogosphere in July.

In my defense, two significant (but unrelated) events happened in July that brought this about:

(1) I got pregnant

(2) I got "unofficially" promoted at work. This means my boss departed, my work load doubled, and I received no recompense in salary or title.

What did happen is that I got unhealthily busy at work at exactly the moment when my body was working on building another little person. The end result is that for the next several months I worked, ate, took some Tums, worked, and went to bed. Thus, my disappearance from our fledgling blog.

Happily, something else happened in early December that brought about my return, and I have politicians and revenue-hungry executives to thank for it (literally--I am probably the only person in my company to be grateful for it). The war in Iraq ended, our troops pulled out, and my company reduced its corporate staff by 60%, and gloriously, I was among the reduction.

Before the cuts came, I had pulled my boss aside and let him know that if I wasn't on the list, I should be, as I was going to resign in a few months anyway, so would he please take that into consideration. It was an odd conversation . . . essentially: "Sir, could you please fire me?"

And this is how I found myself, one beautiful December morning, eating a donut on my couch at 8am in the morning, blissfully inaugurating my unemployment.

The transition from dashing around as a frenetic, over-worked defense contractor to a puttering housewife has been shocking easy and exceedingly joyful. I thought that maybe I would feel a sort of "ghost limb" connection to my missing BlackBerry, which had been my faithful, around-the-clock poltergeist for nearly three years. I felt no such thing. It was near immediate mental liberation, and mostly I was left to wonder at the luxury of being able to take my time with activities that I had normally rushed through in order to get to work on time, make dinner before 7:30 at night, and get to bed in time to get up and start it all over again.

All that, and the fact that my head feels miraculously uncluttered, leads me back to here. Josh's two conditions for my unemployment were (1) that I write; and (2) that I have dinner on the table by 6pm every night. So far I have failed at both, but thus begins my effort to accomplish the first.

My Wife's Weakness

AM is a lady of steely resolve and iron character.

She does, however, have a weakness (this of course excludes her insatiable obsession with Disney movies, DisneyWorld, and all other things Disney). That weakness is holiday/seasonal marketing. To say that she is susceptible to marketing and advertising is like saying that Kurt Cobain was prone to suicidal tendencies. I suppose I always knew this because every time we go to the grocery store she almost invariably rushes excitedly to the seasonal candy section, unconsciously gravitating to whatever candy is being peddled for the next holiday.

My wife, worshiping at the altar of the Marketing gods

"I'm a sucker," she just readily admitted, sitting next to me while she cross-stitches her Halloween-themed pattern and I type out this blog.

I guess I never realized the extent to which she is susceptible until last week when she started asking if we could go to Wendy's and get the Caramel Apple Frosty Parfait. I thought it was a random strange craving, but in the end, I really only have myself to blame for her demand: I have been obsessively watching college football on ESPN3 (not as good as "The Ocho", but still pretty awesome) and they play the same three commercials over and over...one of which is -- you guessed it -- for the Caramel Apple Frosty Parfait. We went last week but they were out of the vanilla ice cream so they couldn't make it. She was VERY disappointed. At long last, we finally got her one tonight.

The assessment: "The apples were crap, but the rest was good."

I have decided to roll with this weakness and use it to my advantage. Starting now, I am launching a marketing campaign to name our first boy "Scotch" (Scotch Dalton -- how strong of a name is THAT?!?). Who's with me?

Scotland Recap: Glasgow & the Bonny Bonny Banks

Day 3 of our Scotland adventure was spent (1) resting our feet from the previous day's mighty hike, (2) doing a whirlwind tour of Glasgow and (3) worshipping with the Glaswegian saints, AND (4) singing "The Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond" over and over again.

But first, the magnificent and sizely Glasgow Cathedral, built mostly in the 15th century, and Scotland's only cathedral to have weathered the Reformation:

A shot of the quiet interior, moments before a band of middle-aged American tourists invaded:


Beneath the choir (shown here) was my favorite part of the cathedral -- the darkened, creepy crypt, which holds the ancient tomb of St. Mungo (a 5th or 6th century bishop who founded a monastic community here). Not only does he have an awesome sounding name, but apparently it was a miraculously powerful one as well, as medieval folks would make pilgrimages from all corners of the land to be blessed at his tomb.

Overlooking the cathedral (and all of Glasgow) is the Necropolis, a veritable city of the dead. It's a steep, grassy hill shooting up with spires, angels, mausoleums, obelisks, and other stony monuments to expired Glaswegians. The day was far too cheerful and sunny to do the brooding grey stones justice, however:



Before leaving Glasgow we hit up the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, which, among other things, boasted the creepiest grand lobby decor of any museum I've ever visited:

Yes, my friends -- disembodied heads floating ghoulishly in the air!  E'en so, we turned our embodied heads towards the north and west, leaving Glasgow behind.  We had a rather tense 8 mile drive from the loch-side village of Balmaha to Rowardennan, dodging Scottish road-hogs on a windy one-track lane, wincing as we scraped shrubbery on our left side and prayed not to scrape Fiats and Minis on our right.  In the end, we arrived here, at the Rowardennan Youth Hostel, where the road ends along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond

(You can't tell, but AM is, of all things, flossing her teeth. You'd think that during a possibly once-in-a-lifetime trip to Scotland together we'd be doing something not-so-mundane, but the girl does floss 5 or 6 times a day)
 
Rowardennan sits in the shadow of Ben Lomond, and is the point at which intrepid hikers head off into the wilderness of the West Highland Way.  This was our view:

Oh, the bonny, bonny banks! We strolled along before dinner, warbling to ourselves, cooing over bluebells (me), skipping rocks in the loch (Josh), and generally feeling like we'd found paradise:

The sky set beautifully over Loch Lomond, and took its sweet time about it.  Josh snapped this picture around 10pm:

And sunrise the next morning was just as lovely.  I took the below picture of Josh on the dock moments after a rather astonishing revelation from my English roommates.  This hostel only had same-sex dorm rooms, and I shared mine with 5 very cheery middle-aged women hiking the West Highland Way (hard core).  We all woke up around the same time, and the lady in the bunk above me was checking her BlackBerry. 

"Oh dear!  Do you know who's died?  Henry Cooper!" (All the British ladies exclaim mightily with grief and shock; the cheeriest of the lot informs me that Henry Cooper was an English boxer who once knocked down Muhammad Ali).  Then the lady above me speaks again, sort of as an afterthought:

"Huh.  D'you know who else has died?  Osama Bin Laden" (with the "Laden" part pronouced with a short "a" like in "lad"; very English). 

I nearly fall off my bottom bunk in astonishment while the ladies merely make a disinterested "oh" or two in acknowledgment, still reeling from the news about Henry Cooper.  The English and national loyalty.

At any rate, this is Josh down on the dock, moments before I told him my news, initiating a good 12 hours of him trying to read news about Bin Laden on his Kindle: