Week 19

I've been 'out' on my mission for over four months now. It's crazy. I feel like I just started. I have been very blessed. Normally a job like I am doing now, which involves processing lots of data, would make me miserable. However, despite the work sometimes being difficult and not my favorite, I really do enjoy my job in Publishing Services. I feel needed, which makes a big difference. When I began my service mission, I was afraid that they would just stick me somewhere and give me busy work to make me feel better, but that has never been the case. I feel like my contribution is valuable and my service welcomed.

I do have trouble transitioning between different kinds of jobs. If I've been handling data, it takes about twenty minutes for my brain to transition to writing. I wish it were like a switch that I could turn on and off, but that's just not how it works. I kind of have to dig into my creative zone like it's a foxhole. It's always under there, I think, but it gets buried. People don't want creative solutions to a termination form. I think I can move back to data okay, just not the other way around.

Two of my articles were published in the last little while. Listicles are popular, but they feel rather cold to me. My favorite was the Doctor Who article:

You can read "7 Tips to Make Prayer More Meaningful" here.
And read "When Bad Things Happen To Good People--Life Lessons From Doctor Who" here.


<<Insert logical transition here =) >>

One of the kids made a really gruesome jack-o-lantern this year. Besides the knife sticking out of its head, it's eating a doll's leg and there is blood dripping out of its mouth. It's both clever and disgusting. So while I wasn't planning on decorating a pumpkin this year,  I decided that our porch needed something more kid-friendly to balance out the effect. I actually had a lot of fun making mine. 

I present to you: Princess Patty. (I was just going to stick a crown and wand on a pumpkin, but mom donated all the old dress-ups, so I had to improvise. Hurrah for tinfoil!)

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Pet update: Ringo has a bow tie! I love our dog. He's so cute. It totally makes up for how neurotic he is. (He's getting older and therefore moodier.) We also tried to get him a dog sweater, but that didn't work out so great... It was too small. It was like putting the shirt on Gus-Gus in Cinderella. Poor little stuffed sausage. =)

I also found this picture, which never fails to make me smile. Ringo has since lost his raccoon tail, but we got a good laugh while he had it. He was afraid we were going to take it away, so he'd run around with it in his mouth and whine if we got to close.

And here we have Merlin, in his natural habitat. If you were to get close enough you would see that the inside of his mouth is as marbled as his fur. Unfortunately, most of those who get to see the inside of his mouth also see the inside of his stomach...

Here you can see us having a family learning experience from when dad was taking a class and had to prove that he taught five people about his experiment. Ringo is #5.

I also got a new missionary picture because they lost a bunch and had to take all of them over again.

Now for the weekly 'things I did' list:

• Process education reimbursements
• Process transfers, terminations, and every other weird request we get
• Finish an article
• Get up at 5:50 to set up for a writers symposium
• Mix up the building the symposium was in
• Be misinformed on the time the symposium started (are you sensing a trend?)
• Have a major wardrobe fail...(more on this later)
• Fix a watch (not mine)
• Fix a necklace (mine)
• Start an article for the church employee network which I think (read 'hope') nobody reads.
• Be told NOT to process paperwork because the managers are going about it all wrong and breaking the rules.
• Attend an absolutely awesome writing and editing symposium put on by the writing and editing resource managers. This made me miss school and realize how much I love the academic life. I just felt like I belonged there. These were my people! Also, I get their sense of humor, which makes a big difference in my ability to understand them.
• Fiddled with giant spreadsheets.
• Set up meetings.
• Got people building access.
• Ran into lots of glitches with the 'updated' PeopleSoft.
• Asked a bishop to clear his own wife for the Mormon Channel.
• Decided by Thursday that I am done with humans.

So...wardrobe fail. You'll get a good laugh out of this, Grammy. I know I did. 

It just so happens that I hate wearing nylons and tights. The people who designed superhero costumes obviously never had to wear nylons, because the only super thing about them is their discomfort level. I cannot see how anyone would wear a skin tight suit when they could choose street clothes. But I digress. It is starting to get cold for someone in a skirt and I was beginning to rethink my dislike of nylons, so I was delighted when mom found me thigh-high nylons. Those I can handle, right? Wrong. They were comfortable enough, but they didn't quite fit... Monday morning and I'm not even out of the conference center parking lot before I can feel them slipping down. I stop a few times and furtively adjust them but figure I will at least make it into work. By the time I'm crossing North Temple Street, in front of all the morning commuters, these nylons have mutinied. I have giant lace and elastic ruffles sinking around my calves like hideous upside-down bloomers. But as I march across the street I had the thought, "Well, it could be my skirt in the Walmart parking lot" and began to laugh. As Grammy taught me, you can cry or you can laugh. It's better to laugh.

I love you all. Have a wonderful week.

-Sister Ward