The Least Busy You'll Ever Be

I attended a leadership conference while an undergraduate student at BYU. Henry B. Eyring was the speaker. He spent a lot of time speaking humorously about how busy he and his wife had been when they were students. He went on and on about the impossible demands on a student's time; the financial hardships of student living. There was no way one could do it all. He was clearly building to a crescendo of offering some kind of relief about how it would all be worth it, or it will be over soon; it gets better.

I will never forget his outrageous conclusion. I won't use quotes, since I don't recall if this is a quote, or just the way I remember it all these years later. He concluded, in effect, with: Well, it's just going to get worse, so you'd better get used to it now. This is the least busy you'll ever be and the financial concerns grow as fast as your income.

Well, he knew what he was talking about.

I have a work mate with one child, 2 years old, and I enjoy when he complains about how expensive it is having a kid. How quaint. I have one word for him: braces. Toddlers are a bargain. Toddlers can be entertained with cat toys.

The Adventures of Solo Lobo

I am quite accustomed to being alone on the road. I am not used to being alone at home. It is not remotely similar. On the road I have daily housekeeping, lounge access, laundry service, free buffet breakfast, and so on.

Well, you already read how the laundry service is going here. And the adventure continued this morning. I ran out of detergent. Two store options: A) Penny is a five minute walk with fewer options, B) Rewe is a 10 minute walk with all imaginable options. I just just need one item and I'm planning a busy day, so I go to Penny.

None of the detergent options ring a bell. Dang it. Well, I'll just buy anything. Only, I recall that our washer requires detergents with a little energy saver logo on the packaging. Can't find any such logo. Off to the Rewe. What? None of these detergents have the logo either. Back home to inspect the old package. It doesn't have the logo either, and was available at Penny. What is happening? Then, another recollection: you only need the logo if you're buying American brand detergent. Ugh.

Otherwise, I am very much enjoying that when I clean the house, it stays clean. Take that upgrade whenever it's offered. Super handy.

Also, the three week fixing of the roof and replacing of the windows is now in its eighth week. Remember that movie The Money Pit. Yeah.

Overlooked Reasons USA is the Best

America! I love her. Why? I'm glad you asked.

Toilet seats. The toilet seat in the restroom down the hall from my office in Islamabad was found broken in half about once a month and had to be replaced. First of all, that bathroom was the most disgusting non-out-house bathroom I've used. But, whatever. What can one be doing with a toilet seat that causes it to break monthly?

But then I encountered frequently breaking toilet seats in Cairo. And then broken toilet seats at our AirBNB apartments in Rome and Paris and our hotel room in Austria. One place I've never once encountered a broken toilet seat: USA. America, where we give a crap about toilet seats!

Washer/dryer capacity. Doing laundry is just not that great. Don't get me wrong, it beats wash boards, but it's laundry. So you stuff in all your whites. One hour later you switch those to the dryer and stuff in all your colors. One hour later you switch those to the dryer and maybe you have a specialty load left over. The whole thing is done in three or four hours perhaps twice a week depending upon size of family.

Now imagine that each load takes 2.5 hours and that you have to do three loads of whites and three loads of colors because the washer has a capacity of roughly 2 cups, which makes it handy for measuring flour but kind of sad for doing laundry. Ugh. I really don't understand how the natives do it, especially since they absolutely love sweating. It is seriously their favorite thing. 80 degrees outside? Perfect, wear a sweater. It's like they're all trying to make weight for a wrestling meet.

Often they don't even have dryers. Just clothes lines. Okay, way better for the environment. I'm cool with that. I respect that. It's just, as a logistical matter, I don't understand. We would need 874 yards of clothes lines. Maybe they just buy one shirt and one pair of pants at a time and go naked for the 5 hours it is being washed, which would explain why Germans love being nude in public.

Katie usually does the laundry, so this problem was on my radar, but not a lived experience. Well, Katie is gone. So I spent the entire day for the last two days doing laundry, and that's with no one around dirtying more items as I go. I have new found respect for Katie's ability to ever achieve anything other than laundry. Also, America! Where you don't have to spend your entire life, sweating and naked, squatting over a broken toilet seat while you wait for the laundry.

Bum-adook is Seven

First, a bit of context: I generally dislike horror movies. However, I really like watching the trailers to movies. So I know the general plots of most horror movie released in the last four years. One in particular, The Babadook, caught my attention for its originality and positive reviews from respected reviewers. Mind you, I haven't seen it, and probably won't, but the title, the name of a the movie's boogie-man, is catchy, right?

So catchy, in fact, that when Katie and I decided to scare the kids one night, we pretended to be the Babadook. The scaring was too effective, Maddie and Caleb were terrified, and I felt bad. Alas, I am not that mature, so I recently felt the itch again to do some scaring, so I turned into the Babadook for Henry (he had been already asleep when we previously terrorized M and C).

Henry the Intrepid found an effective response, however, and quickly fought off the Babadook by inventing his own monster, which he called the Bum-adook. The Bum-adook, I quickly discovered, scares away would-be Babadooks by showing its naked bum.

Anyway, Bum-adook turned 7 on Saturday. Photographic evidence is included below (along with a few other family highlights and updates).

Party at the Haligali (basically the German Chuck E. Cheese)

And then the at-home version of the party, later that day

Before

After

Last day of school