entitled, my experience upon the mothership, also autobiographical

As part of his interview with Smith, Aaron had to provide his top ten music albums of all time. This was a challenge for him being a giant music fan. I mean how do you pick just ten. Mentally I started compiling my own list. And I don't know if I could narrow it down to ten. I realized as I thought of albums/bands I would put on my list, they naturally fell in a chronological order in an autobiographical sense. Here is my list in order:

1. The Beastie Boys: License to Ill (Elementary. The first tapes I purchased. Honorable mention to Huey Lewis and the News: Hip to be Square)
   
2. The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me & Disintegration (The begining of Jr High)
   
3. Depeche Mode: Black Celebration & Violator (Dishonorable mention: New Kids on the Block)
   
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers: BloodSugarSexMagic (High School)
   
5. Beastie Boys: Check Your Head & Paul's Boutique
   
6. Pearl Jam: One
   
7. Steve Miller Band: Best of (Honorable mentions to Mettalica and Led Zepplin)
   
8. SaxMachine (ahh the rave years)
   
9. Enya (college)
   
10. Dave Matthew's Band
    
11. Beastie Boys: Ill Communication
    
12. George Winston: December
    
13. Oasis (Honorable mention to London's finest: Fingerbowl)
    
14. Soul Coughing
    
15. ColdPlay: Yellow (married years)
    
16. Beastie Boys: Hello Nasty
    
17. Travis: the Invisible Band (This will always be my month in Europe with Aaron)
    
18. Bee Gees (talking about crazy gold medallions)
    
19. Dashboard Confessional
    
20. Pinback (my latest anthem)
    

That's my life. The Beastie Boys have been an anchor. I ride on the bus to the city every day. I sit on the bus and dream myself away. I dream I'm on an island with that foxy lady too. And when I awaken, I must be mistaken, I'm on the avenue. Won't you take me away, or take away you. Get off the bus, it's time to get up and go to work.

Obama could be the Antichrist

But he's not. Although I can see how all the evangelicals are confused.

Awhile back I was completely obsessed with the second coming. I read a ton: Encyclipedia of Joeseph Smith, complied prophesies of latter day prophets, D&C, Revelations, you name it, I read it...as long as it was sited as coming from a prophet in a prophetic context. As a mormon, as far as I can tell, we don't believe in an single man that will rise up and gain dominion over us in the last days. Antichrists are just anything or one that opposes christ.

So during this phase, I stumbled over the born-again christian author LaHaye and his Left Behind series. 12 books was overkill, I made it through 7 before becoming bored. This series is incredibly popular among evangelicals and having read it, I understand their slant on christianity a lot better. You can see how they are confused, but they get some stuff absolutely right. Well the third book is the rise of the Antichrist. They believe him to be a person that will take control of the world essentially and brand us with the mark, etc.

LaHaye's antichrist is eerily just like Obama. I'm not kidding. I had this conversation with Natalie about how similar they are: Incredibly charismatic, full of hope and change (and how they lay out their change is completely socialist and vague), positions himself for the people--a humble servant to injustice...but really all the policy changes end up usurping our liberty and eventually create a one world government...sounds like Obama to me. Although, let me state again, I don't believe Obama is the antichrist, I am just pointing out why I believe so many evangelicals do. Something to ponder, right?

my master plan

I am a time management freak. I like lists. I like to check things off my lists; I find unhealthy amounts of joy by looking at checked boxes. Maybe that's how I define love. You know that crappy categorization of how people liked to be loved: touch, gifts, verbal...yeah I don't remember them all because I don't care. Although Aaron is 100% touch. (Having an inner Senior Dich, I have to sacrifice my space constantly.) Anyway, maybe mine is checkboxes. Sure that doesn't make sense. I'll have to figure out a way to fuse it with Aaron. You know like on Seinfeld when George combines sex and eating...although that didn't work out too well for him, which is a shame.

Anyway, back to my master plan. I just thought I would put an update on where I stand right now. Things on my imaginary life checklist:
get married
have kids (yeah we're done...I still have to convince Aaron of this.)
write a book (almost checked off.)
sell the house and just go on missions till we require assisted living. (yeah, I realize this is a bit of a hard sell for Aaron. He thinks I will want to stick around and see my grandkids or something. He's promised at least 3 missions...)
bust into the celestial kingdom. (Some days I feel like this is impossible and then lately Aaron and I have been realizing it might not be that hard. Sure there's a few locks to pick and then you got to get past Peter, but it's possible. Seriously though, sometimes Aaron and I feel like an anomaly, Aaron knows tons of mormons that "what goes on the road, stays on the road." I saw it at internap too. It's shocking.

60% of the time, it works every time

Jen sent me this. I don't know what makes me giggle more: the fact that it is true or that the guy from Hot Fuzz and Sean of the Dead is in it. Love those movies. Hot Fuzz could be in my top ten right now. Aaron didn't get it, he doesn't see why it is funny. And Aaron isn't this bad, when he gets sick he usually is dying, literally. Although this does apply to Ryan. Commiserations boys: Man Cold [youtube].

Bob Lob Law

Yeah, it is 3am and I should be in bed but I just finished the contract job and so I thought I would spew for a minute. So my children are obsessed with death. We talk about it a lot. They bring it up and we review the talking points:

1. Our bodies stay on earth and our spirits go to heaven to be with Jesus.
   
2. When Jesus comes back, so will everyone who has died.
   
3. Then we'll have a "we've missed you party" with those that have passed.
   

Sometimes the details change and now Lauren has moved onto planning the party (I swear this girl will make a great event planner once she is older). Driving to the store today, Bryn busts out that she misses Grandpa Gray and that she loves him and that she misses President Hinckley. Then she begins to cry real tears. I try to comfort her by saying we will see him again when Jesus comes. This calms her down. But then it gets me thinking, what do parents say that don't believe in Jesus? How awful that would be, I am so grateful for Jesus Christ and his plan for us. I can't imagine a world without that hope of being together again. I only hope I can teach the girls to have the same faith. On a lighter note, Lauren was wondering how she would travel through space to get to heaven. I think I explained it, I'll find out the next time we deconstruct death.

worthy sidebar: I am a supermom today. Four kids, one cart, and a crap load of food. No issues, no meltdowns, I can handle four kids...today.

skills

I have an incomprehensible ability to take on more than I can do. I don't take on one challenge at a time, master it and complete to perfection. Instead I take on 3-7 challenges at a time, do them pretty good, and burn myself out. Then I do nothing until I itch to check more things off my imaginary checklist. And then I rinse lather and repeat. This is my M.O.: Jack of all, master of none. I hate that. So then I say, I'm going to master something and I focus for like 4-6 weeks, until I itch to take on more, which I always do. And then I'm in the weeds again. For example, right now I am:

1. writing a book,
   
2. picking up another contract job,
   
3. taking care of 4 little kids,
   
4. building a loverson blog,
   
5. trying to pay a little attention to Aaron,
   
6. working out to get my momma butt back into my size 4 jeans,
   
7. and now I'm debating about picking my guitar up again and really practicing.
   

Boo hoo right? Everyone has tons of crap going on. But I desire to do all of these things really well which presents a time management issue and a reshuffling of priorities. And then when I don't meet my own standards for a job well done, I beat myself up. So do I take on too much so that I sabotage myself from succeeding? So that when I fall short I can say, well I was doing too much at the time. For example, right now I'm revising Nevaeh and I'm thinking about pushing back my revision deadline to accommodate all the other stuff. But that frustrates me because it is the one thing, the only thing I want to accomplish the most (for myself). I'm already sacrificing sleep (I rarely go to bed before 2am) and time with Aaron. He's being incredibly supportive, I love him--but then that's what's pulling me back from finishing. It's as if I see the finish line and I stop to run another race.

I'm an idiot for taking on the contract job. I just suffer from the inability to say no. And this one really builds my writing portfolio. Maybe it will go fast and be easy...it appears to be so far. We'll see though.

Alright, enough blah blah. I need to take care of Morgan. A quick sidebar: we get to take her into public next week. Hurray for not having to be a RSV nazi anymore. cheers.

After reading this, I'll let the guitar sit till this summer.

my money is on stripes

Ok, so who would win in a fight: a tiger or a bear?
A tiger, right?
What if it was two tigers and three bears? Personally, that's an even fight. Could go either way.