A day of leisure (kind of)

Tonight I made it to a get together with some ladies in our ward. In order to do that guilt-free I had to finish my essay for my qualitative methodology course...which I did yesterday afternoon. 

Without going into too many details, I conducted a critical content analysis on a serial publication produced by the church, looking specifically at how gender was portrayed. I noted one scene in particular where a young boy claimed that he would grow up to go on a mission while his sister would grow up to get married (as well as several other scenes indicating that this male child was a future missionary and finding no scenes indicating that the female child might some day serve a mission). 

I wrote about the mission ages at the time of publication (19 for males, 21 for females) and discussed the change in 2012 lowering the mission age to 18 for males and 19 for females. What, I wondered, would be so wrong with females leaving at age 18? If males could leave at 19...and then females could leave at 19...what made it possible for males to leave at 18 but not females?

I submitted that paper and dusted my hands.

Then Rachel texted this morning: "Mission age for women was just lowered to 18."

And, I mean, I don't want to take credit for that or anything...but...uh...the timing is suspicious. 

Anyway, because I had finished my paper and because the weather was so nice and because we're all healthy again (though I forgot to give Phoebe her last dose of antibiotics with dinner—darn! I'll have to remember that last dose with breakfast), I decided I could fill Phoebe's request to go to the town green.

She has been begging to go to the town green for quite some time, but it's just been so...busy.

But today we ran to the town green between a couple of my meetings (after one meeting, and in time to take my other meeting on a bench at the park—the town green has wifi...which probably means we should go there more because I don't have the excuse of needing the internet to work). 

Here is a portion of the park (probably about a quarter of what's available to play on):

Aside from the blue spinny egg chair thing (which Phoebe spent a lot of time in), Phoebe spent most of her time sliding down this little bit of curb beside the stairs. There are like...five...slides at this park? But this is what this child wanted to do at the playground today.

She also wanted to walk over the bridge on the way to the car (even though we had to walk past the car to get to the bridge...and then walk back to the car from the bridge):

And then what was her favourite part of the day? Going to seminary this morning.

She had climbed into bed with me in the night and then woke up when my alarm went off. Miriam mostly does online seminary, but she goes to early morning seminary on Fridays because they have have breakfast and play games. She's planning on going to early morning seminary full time in January once she can drive herself precisely because of...scenarios like this morning. 

Phoebe is still not a dependable sleeper. So after putting her back to bed like 20 times in the night, I finally let her sleep with me (and got kicked and cuddled within an inch of my life). And then she woke up when my early morning alarm went off.

She came to seminary. I took her for a walk. We admired the dew and the fog coming off the stream. We listened to the birds. We sang "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" while we walked up a big hill. We saw some Christmas lights. We admired the clouds as they turned pink with the rising sun. We read some street signs. We saw a school bus stop and collect a group of children. 

When it was light enough (and we were back at our van), I pulled out our reading lesson book and we had our first reading lesson in two weeks (we didn't do any lessons last week because Phoebe was too sick; we didn't do any reading lessons this week because I was too busy with final projects). 

And that was her favourite part of the day. The playground adventure didn't even make it. 

Oh, a little kid came up to us at the park and wanted to play with Phoebe. Phoebe was feeling shy (the other child was not shy), so I tried to help Phoebe find some common ground.

"Look, Phoebe," I said. "You're both wearing Minnie Mouse things. You have Minnie Mouse on your pants and she has Minnie Mouse on her sweater."

Phoebe pursed her lips together and nodded her head slightly.

"Thank you!" the other girl gushed. "This is my sweater that I wear to protect me from the cold weather."

"It's a lovely sweater," I said. 

"Thank you!" she gushed again. Her enthusiasm quickly gave way to concern. "Where's your sweater? What's going to protect you from the cold weather?"

I blinked at her for a few seconds. It was literally 80°F (26°C) out this afternoon.

"Oh, I'm...fine...without a sweater," I told her. 

It was a pretty funny conversation! 

Phoebe reluctantly played with the little girl for a little while, and then the little girl's dad came and told her it was time to go home and Phoebe, my anti-socialite, was like, "I'm very glad it was time for her to go home."

I...don't quite know what to do with that child sometimes (especially because she's so hurt by the little girl in our cul-de-sac who doesn't ever want to play with her...?)

Anyway, we had to go home to get Benjamin ready to head off to swim team. I was going to take all the kids so we could head to the church to practice the organ (Miriam) and get a head start on cleaning the church (which we have to do tomorrow morning), but Miriam had a meeting, so I left her home with the rest of the kids (who were more than happy to play the Switch in lieu of cleaning toilets) and took Benjamin to the Y. 

I went for a walk, then did a bit of work on some slide decks for singing time...and then fell asleep...I guess. 

I woke up to Benjamin knocking on the window—scared me half to death!

I drove him home, we got some frozen pizzas into the oven. Dinner of champions!

I got some treats ready to go to the ladies' night. I cut some more papers to take to the ladies' night so I could fold some star points (and perhaps convince some friends to help me). 

My friend Katie picked me up to go to the gathering because...it's outside my driving bubble...and I've been driving a lot of places this week. She lives around the corner from me, so it was convenient. 

I left the treats in a container on the stairs. But I remembered the paper—Katie and Christine helped me fold the entire stack! 

The gathering wasn't as bad as I thought (I was a little bit dreading this outing...I'm not sure where Phoebe gets her anti-socialitism from) and in fact was quite lovely. About eight ladies were there; it was quite a comfortable evening. 

There were enough snacks for everyone without the ones I left on the stairs.