The only time I felt cold, once I was used to layering, was when I was sluggish on the couch watching TV after the kids were in bed. Between that and the evening sickness, I started going to bed earlier (our bedroom is on the second floor). Before I knew it I was canceling our cable, waking up earlier, shopping on a tight budget once a week, feeling invincible and virtuous and capable of orchestrating three separate school carpools for next year.

So then Lent rolled around, which Mormons don’t celebrate/observe, but we do a monthly food-and-water fast, though by “we” I mean several people I know fast. I have never been good at fasting — one of the best things about pregnancy and breastfeeding is the free fast-pass; but that has nothing to do with my current plans to nurse Scout until she’s seven.

Anyway, Lent. Every Lent (since I started reading Conversion Diary and Writer-Mommy anyway) I get Lent-envy, not only because  it sounds like a great time of renewal, sacrifice, and inspiration, but because you can give up something besides food and beverages. Food and I are in what you might call a committed relationship, so giving up electricity instead is pretty appealing.

It also seems like a great way to live deliberately, as my old boyfriend Thoreau would say. But since the point is  to live deliberately, to re-match our wakings and sleepings and comings and goings with the seasons and the sun, to enjoy (discover) oldfashioned pleasures rather than to just live as austerely as possible, it’s not as simple as turning off our main power. I’ve decided to make exceptions in a few cases where the disuse of electricity would create drudgery that interferes with the spirit of the experiment or would encourage us to make other bad choices like consuming more processed foods.

In other words, this isn’t a gimmick. I want to fast from enough electricity (especially the electronic variety) that we re-set our default expectations of what life is like, but I’m not going to say “no electricity period” in hopes of getting a book deal or something. (That’s my jab at no-impact man who somehow blogged through his entire year of living without using electricity or purchasing anything.)

For example, I’m not planning to unplug my refrigerator/freezer, because, really — I don’t want to spend all my time figuring out how to live without it. I’m sure I could; I’m sure we could learn a lot from that sort of experiment, but I want to free myself from things rather than burden myself with new tasks (at this point). Here’s another quandary: do I not use my oven ever which means I have to start buying bread again, or do I figure that homemade bread is more “natural” than using no electricity? (Too bad I don’t have a gas oven, right?). We could live for forty days with no bread, no yeast bread, just pitas and tortillas on the grill, or I could fashion an outdoor fire-based oven (I think). I might make an exception for my crockpot since it is such an efficient use of energy, but we’ll try to eat raw or grilled food as much as possible.

The stove is also a hard one, because I make pancakes and breakfast burritos so often (for dinner, too). Obviously whole wheat pancakes are better for you and cheaper than cold cereal, so these are legitimately competing goals. (I’ll probably make and freeze a bunch of granola beforehand.) Another thing I don’t want to do is acquire a bunch of gadgets (like emergency preparedness or camping-type work-arounds), because a) we have no money, and b) if I just get lanterns for every room, we won’t be going to bed with the sun. And batteries are out because they’re just stored electricity.

What we will give up completely for sure: lights, blender, vacuum, dishwasher, clothes dryer (though not the washing machine; maybe next year), TV/dvd player, computer, hair dryer, toaster, air-conditioner, fans, humidifier, microwave, waffle iron, mixer, iPod, popcorn popper, rice cooker (or maybe that gets the crockpot exception?).

I have asked Tom to think about how he can cut back on his computer use; he does a lot of freelance work, so obviously he’ll make exceptions, but I am confident he will agree to keep the computer off until the kids are in bed so that our family time is protected. (Right, honey?)

Since I am making food (and laundry) -based exceptions, I think the hardest thing will be the internet, obviously. For a couple months I’ve been thinking a good rule would be I could go online once a week during the fast, just to check my email and write a short update post, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that that’s the most important part of this, to be unplugged virtually. (So if you need to contact me between June 1 and July 10, you should probably ask me now for my cell number. Speaking of which, the cellphone charger would be an exception for emergencies, since we don’t have a landline — though if I think about it, I can get Tom to charge them both in the car during his commute.)

This whole thing is possible because Utah summers are gloriously sunny, from 5 am till 9:30 pm. I have so many plans, the first being to wallow outside barefoot all day long. That’s also the second and third plan, too, actually, although I may put on shoes if there is any shoveling needed in the garden. This is also why I will probably survive without internet for forty days, because who wants to be in front of a screen when there is sunshine, and grass, and . . . air . . . out there?

The other big change will be the air conditioning/fan/cool mist humidifier, especially because of this internal heater I’m growing. But I plan (well, plan to get Tom) to move our master bedroom to the unfinished basement), which is always cooler than the second story,  no matter how cold you set the thermostat. On the main level we get a nice north-south cross-breeze, and hey, I will remind myself daily that it’s nothing like my summer pregnancies in Florida.

I’m curious how this will affect my kids. The only TV show they have asked about since I canceled our cable (we don’t get any channels out here without cable, so they have watched maybe one movie a week, that’s it, for two months now) is Little Einsteins, and they are not the ones with the problem staying up late watching Justified on hulu.com (not that I’m recommending Justified; it may be awesome, but it’s also weird and violent in a strange, justified, sort of way).

But I do want this to have a spiritual component, in more than a transcendental appreciate-the-earth-and-life sort of way (though we will read some Emily Dickinson and Emerson just for fun). I’m not exactly sure what that will be, beyond the negative (taking-away) part of eliminating all media influence. Maybe I should explore my Adoration-envy for inspiration on that. Maybe I can meditate on what Jesus meant by abundance when He said: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Either way I’ll have to visit the library more often. No more late-night reading on Project Gutenberg, which really is almost enough to make me wonder if my parents and sister are right in thinking I’ve finally gone crazy.

I don’t see David often anymore, in fact the last time I remember was when he stayed with us a few nights in Harlem on the way to one of his exotic adventures, before Sally was born. We took him to our favorite Indian restaurant and nodded when he explained the harm reduction needle exchange he was supporting.

David emigrated to New Zealand a few years ago and is homesteading with his new wife. I think he’s also going to law school or something. Maybe some sort of international program.

This summer, though, he thought of me because he  and Andrea are back in New York City, doing summer internships at the United Nations.

My summer is shaping up a bit different. I’ve got swimming lessons for my three water-babies and a first-ever garden that is teaching me how God must feel about his precious children. I’ve got stories to read and weary heads to cradle on my shoulder after hours in the sun and otter-pop-fueled hyper pony games.

I love summer. Summer is like New Years, only better. How serious can you get about making resolutions when it’s bleak and frozen outside? Summer is three short months of light and air and possibility, freedom from outside schedules and time to grow things, make things, become things.

I’ve got a bunch of goals for myself, and I’ve made a schedule for the kids and me. Schedules and goals, with daily three-hour siestas and plans for excursions and lazy days and accomplish-a-lot days actually feels freeing to me. It might sound appealing to plan to do nothing, but even there half the enjoyment is in the planning of the nothing.

We’re waking up earlier now than we did during the school year. Using an alarm clock, even. Because I’ve got a summer internship of my own. My own goals are important, and I’m not forgetting them in my focus on the kids, but I am determined to teach my kids two things this summer, or, get them in the habit of doing two things.

If they learn these two things this summer, things that probably should’ve already become part of them, but they’re young yet, and there’s still time — these things will go a long way to making next year, and all the rest of their years much better.

First, we’re reading scriptures every morning. The alarm clock starts ringing at 7:30, and by 8 or 8:30ish, we’re piled in my bed, reading from three different books, the real one, the one-for-eight-year-olds and the board book for toddlers. Yesterday we read about contention, and how it’s not a good thing. I wish I could tell you that our insightful discussion led to a bickering-free day, but the truth is the kids seemed to think that learning about contention was an excuse to practice it. We even prayed to not have contention in our home. Maybe next time we should pray that part silently.

Second, we’re learning how to work, and to not whine “Why do I have to do everything?” when Mom asks you to pick up your books from the living room floor. Susan and Spot are young enough that they take direction pretty well. Sally is old enough to know how to do some chores well without constant supervision, but unfortunately that means she is also old enough to argue about the why. We’re making some serious progress on this one, already. It’s almost miraculous. I’ve been slow at pushing this, because I was sure that it was just faster and easier to do things myself than to encourage and praise and fix and follow-up, and maybe it is, but if the goal is to teach them the value of work, and taking care of themselves, and someday even doing things for others without being asked or rewarded, then it’s worth a couple extra minutes (or hours) now.

Dick had a sick day on Wednesday, and he commented at the end of the day that our routine is impressive. Before when Dick was home, I’d feel resentful of his ‘work’ on the computer and things usually deteriorated from there. This week I was quite gratified that he thought we were getting a lot done, because it often feels like nothing gets actually finished. I cross “mow lawn” and “repair screen door” off my list and add “organize pantry” “shampoo carpets” and “read The Road and Julie and Julia and review The Bell Jar” to the whiteboard.

But maybe enough is getting done. My tomato plants are lush, my corn is tall and leafy. The girls set the table outside for dinner on the patio and put away their clean laundry. We read about Enos praying for himself, his family and country, and his enemies. I feel exhausted, and happy. It’s hot in the middle of the day, and almost-cold an hour after sunset, just as it should be. Throw in a short afternoon thunderstorm, and you have paradise.

And as for my summer internship? I’ll know it was an absolute success when my daughters are hardworking adults who pray for those who hate them, and then sign up to dig wells in Africa.

You know the Christmas letters that sound as if you’re trying to pimp out your kids? Family reunions can be even worse — a full-color, animated Christmas letter you can’t tape to the refrigerator door and ignore.

If you’re in the market for a career, or have children who need a swift kick in the rear career advice, you might want to keep in mind that the bar for bragging has been raised in recent years. Where once it was enough to graduate from a respectable college and enter a respectable profession (engineer, doctor, engineer, lawyer, dentist, engineer), now you need a little something extra to get respect around the family reunion campfire.

My sweet cousin Peter, who’s number 30 of 57 first cousins or something (I lost the cousin chart they handed out the second night) is not someone I’ve talked to much before (I hang with numbers 10-20). He’s returning to college this fall, and it’s a safe guess that his major is chemical/mechanical/civil non-disobedience engineering.

Peter, who knows that I am a stay-at-home mom like all the other female cousins my age, said to me, “You studied at BYU for awhile, right?”

That night around the campfire, we had family sharing time, where each of my dad’s three sisters and six brothers (except that one brother who’s always “busy”) introduced their kids, beaming proudly if they’d managed to produce their kids in the flesh, hoping to produce adequate excuses if their kids couldn’t make it. Being out of the country on a mission for our church earns a pass, barely.

Occupations and recent accomplishments were mentioned, as were their children’s children. My oldest cousin is turning 40 next year, and he and his wife have adopted several — my three girls are a small, if glittering, contribution to the family tree.

So what’s the most coveted bragging point for mostly-Republican, highly-religious, mostly-high-achiever families? (And an automatic get-out-of-family-reunions card?)

Highest honors around the campfire go to those who have at least one child working in a top secret job for somebody like Lockheed or the NSA.* Then you get to say that you’d like to explain what Johnny does, only he can’t tell you because then he’d have to kill you. Or as my dad’s next oldest brother’s wife says her son says: “I can’t tell you or I’d have to do a lot of paperwork.”

Several of my dad’s nine siblings have sons who have every reason to view more paperwork as the kiss of death.

After my grandparent’s youngest kid told us about his youngest kid’s bluegrass band, my dad said he needed to amend his progeny spiel.

Turns out he has daughters, as do all his brothers and sisters, and, though they are not secret undercover operatives, or even doctors or lawyers or engineers, or MAYOR OF WASILLA, they are doing something wonderful: raising children to become secret undercover operatives or doctor or lawyers or engineers.

Or, as in my case: raising mothers. Mothers who will become governor of Alaska, if I and my studying for awhile at BYU had any confidence in the current fairy tale.

Dad even said that his oldest daughter does the blog, and boy! does she post often.

Then, since I am a supportive wife, I pointed out that Dick also has a top-secret, classified, vital job, and since he works for our church, he answers to a higher power. So there. Your sons might be keeping the free world safe, but my husband? He’s protecting God’s secrets.

And I am raising kids and doing the blog.

*My cousins don’t actually work for these people. I’d tell you who they work for, or where in the world they’re deployed, but then I probably wouldn’t be invited back next year . . .

A few years ago, Angela from New York sent us the children’s book Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear by N. M. Bodecker and Eric Blegvad. It’s a poem about a woman in New England who has chores galore before winter comes. “Stack the stove wood, string the beans, up the storms and down the screens.” Round and round and in and out she whirls, while Hubs lolls in bed and then waits for his tea in his rocking chair.

Dick isn’t that bad, we live in an apartment, and if ignoring your children were an Olympic sport I’d be the Shawn Johnson of mothering. (Finally a gold in something!). So other than the adequately-helpful husband, easy access to mass-manufactured canned goods, and kids happy to watch movie after movie, my life is exactly the same as the under-appreciated, over-worked Mary Dear.

That’s my excuse for not blogging, anyway. Of course, probably you managed to find other means of entertainment in my absence (Just kidding! — of course you sat and moped while I slumped and Michael Phelps won yet another gold medal. I mean, after awhile, doesn’t all that winning and breaking world records and million dollar bonuses from Visa get just a bit . . . old?).

Have you noticed how many sports have four events or four strokes, or how much better baseball would be if there were only four innings? So I tried to think up four categories for my blogging break, but there’s a reason I’m not an Olympic athlete, despite doing my best to eat as close to 12,000 calories a day as possible. So I fell back on pros and cons:

Seven Pros and Cons of the Blogging Break

(1) Pro: Fun Outings with the kids (pools, dinosaur museums, parks)

Con: Since Susan (turning 4 in October) will not start kindergarten for 734 days, there are more pools, dinosaur museums, parks and McDonald play places in my immediate future than June Cleaver ever imagined.

(2) Pro: All this swimming = best tan of my life.

Con: All this no-routine-in-general, not-going-to-the gym-in-specific = flabbiest stomach since Spot vacated the premises.

(3) Pro: Gorgeous Utah weather — it’s getting chilly after dark now, and we’ve been stopping at parks on our way home.

Con: That’s on our way home from seeing every single (cheap) house, townhome, and condo in a thirty-mile radius. Apparently we are poor, picky, poor, and soon-to-be homeless.

(4) Pro: Quality reading time.

Con: Spending the better part of two days reading Breaking Dawn = “quality” might be a stretch. (That’s nothing time-wasting-wise though — I read Scarlett, arguably the worst book ever, in 18 hours straight).

(5) Pro: More time for “real life.”

Con: The house is still a mess anyway. “Real life” should not include “clean house.”

(6) Pro: Time with good friends from high school and my sister.

Con: Real-life problems like complicated pregnancies and lousy husbands are much harder to cope with that quirky servers and mean Stumblers and feelings of raging blogging-inadequacy.

(7) Pro: If you don’t post, turning on the computer is much less “what-if-no-one-commented-on-my-last-post” angst-ridden.

Con: If you don’t post, getting fewer comments is almost for sure. (Although I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the emails, tweets, and IRL comments; my acknowledgments page is all ready in case I ever write anything real).

If you wrote a great post while I’ve been gone, let me know. I hate it when people say that. Duh, all my posts are great, and if you weren’t such a loser, you’d know that and whenever you come back from a break you’d be camped out at my blog catching up. Right? Well, let me know if I missed your epic/ramble/etc. I’ll stumble it for you! Seriously. Unless you’d rather I didn’t, in which case tell me why, ’cause I’m planning a post on Adventures in Stumbling.

We’re going to my dad’s family’s reunion tonight; back late Thursday. Had to promise Dick I’d do all the laundry this week in exchange for him getting to go on the funnest camping trip ever with the coolest people ever. ! So if you send me a post url after 3 pm today, I’ll stumble it early Friday. I’d really like to read your post, stumble it, and then get some feedback from you as to what sort of response/traffic you get from the experience. Like a focus group, only better.

Of course he does this completely wrong, letting Spot play for “five minutes” in the big girls’ room before being banished to her lonely crib, but I accepted that it was a nice gesture.

We celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary and recounted our highlights, which consisted mostly of remembering fights in exotic locales (remember that discussion in Hyde Park when we went to Iceland and England for Spring Break at Columbia? There’s a reason people head SOUTH for Spring Break).

Then this weekend we went to my parents’ to celebrate my sister’s birthday. My dad got a little upset when I volunteered Dick for some outdoor labor, saying I shouldn’t “take advantage of his good nature.” I think my parents have spent the past ten years living in fear that my shrewish nature might finally push Dick over the edge, and I suppose now they’re really worried: What if Dick decides to follow the Prince of Darkness’s example and leave his innocent wife and three kids?

Well, I got news for you. First: I want Dick to know that if he ever left, I wouldn’t fight him for custody of the kids. It’d be a sacrifice, naturally, but he can have them all to himself. And second, I cannot imagine a person more different from my more-selfish-and-self-centered-than-Lindsay-Lohan-and-Bill-Clinton combined PoD brother-in-law than Dick. Whereas the PoD has both a Bentley and a Mercedes, Dick would like to buy a bike. From DI (like Salvation Army). Because riding a bike would be better exercise than the train.

I could go on, (I could mention our connubial life, and how superior Dick is in that area as well, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that my sister and I compare notes on that sort of thing. But we do, and Dick is. Much.)

Mostly I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am blind to Dick’s flaws. He does have a few.

Number one being that he is, in all honesty, a dork. I should probably look in the urban dictionary for a term from this decade, but “dork” just fits. Here he is, pretending to drown. How inappropriate.

dick pretends to drown, susan swims the length from jane on Vimeo.

Just ignore those pet names we have for each other.

And here is Sally doing underwater somersaults. I am afraid that I might be a dork, too. At least I didn’t attempt a Michelle Obama-style bump. It’s humiliating enough to have your high-five go unacknowledged.

sally doing flips in the water from jane on Vimeo.a>.

Dick thinks I should get the kids in swim team. I think he should try driving them everywhere before he starts inventing new activities for them to do. I know, Nana and Grampa, Dick was a star in swim team. But, remember how annoying it was driving him to all those practices?

What? You say that sort of hands-on parenting is what produces such wonderful, dorky grown-ups? Argh.

Well, swim lessons start again on Monday, and I’m planning to keep my dorky husband, and that’s what works for me this week!

Things That Must Go and an LLBean Tote Bag giveaway are this weekend!

Dick and I were married in the Manti temple ten years ago, and the temple is a symbol of our marriage and our family, of our belief that we can be together forever. Even on the days when that sounds more like making license plates with my bare hands for seventy years than a heavenly blessing.

Mary Poppins is a bit more secular than that, and apparently feels she has to compete with those Disney Princesses. So she called her craft:

Sugar Cube Princess Castles

When planning a war campaign craft, the most important thing is gathering the correct supplies.

A box of sugar cubes is just over a dollar. Glitter, glue sticks and tin foil are cheap at the dollar store. I cut up a cereal box to get the cardboard for the bases.

Sugar + shiny stuff = serious enthusiasm. When we ask Susan what she wants to be when she grows up, she says, “Just like Sally.” It’s only a matter of time before Spot realizes that she, too, wants to be just like Sally, and also that sugar tastes better than glitter.

Wrap the tin foil around the cardboard for the base, like so. And stop eating the sugar!

What?

While they concentrated on their castles, I pondered the fact that Sally now has freckles on her chin, and her ears are still elf-pointed, just like her daddy’s. We got her to think positively about the birthmark on her arm by telling her that it was how I knew I was taking the right baby home from the hospital. My sister asked me today if we’d be letting Sally get her ears pierced soon. Probably for her eighth birthday, but only if she realizes she wants it done. So far she hasn’t mentioned it, or the fact that she has Spock ears. Wonder how we’ll make her feel good about those.

Here’s Susan with her finished castle. Mary Poppins forgot to buy the right kind of glue (plain old school glue is best), and some frustration was expressed when trying to get the dang cubes to stay stacked, so we did squares and triangles, and built a house.

Here’s our best rendition of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. It’s a castle just like the house we’re hoping to buy before summer ends or Mary Poppins loses all patience (whichever comes first) is a castle.

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And that is not me screaming.

But the best part of swimming lessons?

Don’t forget Things That Must Go this weekend.

Brought to you by Jacki.

Here’s Spot in the pool yard, not swimming. 

Usually we save movies for when it’s too hot to be outside, but last Saturday we gave up on that and took the kids to Horton Hears a Who at the dollar theater. That’s Call Me Princess Ruby in the front and Miss I Like to Dress Like a Pioneer in the back. Girls are so blessedly anti-violence.

Horton Hears a Who is an awful movie, even worse than Bee Movie, and if I were a homeshooling mom, I’d be UP IN ARMS over the outrageous vilification of the “pouch-schooling” kangaroo mom, who is the source of everything evil and intolerant. Who writes these movies? 

Our diet deteriorates drastically stays about the same during the summer. Susan is so helpful: here she has shredded the chicken nuggets into microscopic pieces for Spot.

In anticipation of hot days, we bought economy-size sunscreen, swim rings, diving toys, and sunglasses for all. Sally wears her sunglasses at night. I think Corey Hart’s a little old for her, which is good, because otherwise we’d be beating him off with a stick.

Spot got a little depressed about the weather and hit the bottle.

I’m praying for a warm front. I don’t know how much more sparkling apple cider Spot’s system can take.

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