Easter

 I had a lot going on this week!

On Monday, I had my weekly video call with my boss. As I mentioned previously, her two-year-old son likes to say hi to me and will often say "Want Mark." This week, he was very clingy to his mom, and at one point he was eating her hair, then saying "Icky." But someone else joined our call, and I could tell that the toddler was saying "Off." My boss later told me he was saying, "Want her off! Want Mark!" It was funny, but I could tell my boss was flustered.

On Wednesday, I went on another steep bike ride to the top of Summerwood, but I went a different route this time that was just a little longer. It was really hard, and I thought, "I can't stop, because if I do, I'll never get going again." But I was still pleased that I was able to do it—and yet, while I was going up, another cyclist went fast past me. He said, "Have a good ride!" It was another reminder how I'm not a cyclist.

On Thursday, the Utah Historical Society hosted an event with the Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City. The winter 2024 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly is a collaboration with the consulate. To celebrate the 110th anniversary of the consulate (1911), there was a Spanish-language publication a few years ago in Mexico. For UHQ, we had the articles translated and then published them in English. 

It was a real headache to edit this issue. There was one article that I was sure had been translated by a computer, because the translation was so bad, but apparently it was a human. (I don't know whether the translator was bad, or if the original publication was bad.) Some things had been mistranslated. For example, one article talked about "Marquis de Frazer Mont wheat," but that was actually marquis wheat from Frazer, Montana. One writer made a claim about Latter-day Saint business practices, but when I looked at the citation, it was a sarcastic anti-Mormon article from the Salt Lake Tribune, so the facts were wrong—but the writer, not having English as their native language and not having a background in Mormon history, didn't get that. With every article for every UHQ issue, I clean up the citations, which usually means finding the original sources. That's hard in English, but it was especially hard with Spanish sources. (I took four years of Spanish in high school, and I was really good at it, but I'm not fluent, and I only got a 2 on the AP Spanish test.)

Anyway, the event was to honor the publication. We got the print copies in the nick of time (and it still hasn't been published digitally). Some of the authors came, including one who flew in from Mexico, and the Mexican consul himself was there. I had a lot of impostor syndrome: I did do a lot of work on the issue, but it wasn't my idea, and I hadn't really communicated with all of the authors. I must admit that it was hard for me to pay attention during the presentations. But at the end my boss pointed to me as someone who helped out a lot with the issue, and the woman who kind of spearheaded the project seemed excited to meet me.

I found the image for the cover in the Utah Historical Society's digitized collection.

Since I worked on Saturday last week, I got to have Friday off, which also happened to be Good Friday and my half birthday, as well as the thirty-third anniversary of us moving into our house. I went to the pool, and there was a group of special-needs adults there. One of them came into the locker room meowing. Like, it sounded exactly like a cat.

It's on my bucket list to visit every state park in Utah, and I thought it would be a fun day to go to Utah Lake. Even though I lived in Provo for four years, I had never been there. Most state parks are reservoirs, so I want to save them for the summer so I can swim and paddleboard in them. But Utah Lake has so much algae that I don't anticipate swimming there anytime soon. I went with my mom, and I walked around the edge of the lake. It was a lovely place, and I'm glad I got to see it. But it makes me sad with all of the environmental problems it has. And I'm not a fisherman or a boater, so I don't have much reason to go back. 

Yesterday (Saturday), I colored Easter eggs with my family, which is always fun. These are the ones I made. 

The plain ones are actually from brown eggs, which colored better than we expected

And my mom—I mean, the Easter Bunny—still prepares Easter baskets for us, even though I'm a grown adult. I appreciate that. But only my niece and I got chocolate bunnies.

Then last night, my ward (among others) was asked to help with manual labor at the Bountiful Temple while it undergoes annual maintenance. I was in a group that tore up the carpet in the celestial room. We pulled up the carpet, then pulled up the black padding underneath. Then we had to scrape the glue off the concrete floor. This was difficult work, even though I think I'm more fit than the average person. It certainly was strange to be in the celestial room, with its white walls and chandeliers, but drenching myself in sweat while performing manual labor. We wore white jumpsuits with casual shoes. Probably the only time I'll wear Easter-egg socks in the celestial room.

This morning before church, I made carrot cake for our family's Easter lunch. I used a cookbook from the 1970s that is falling apart, but it was one of the best carrot cakes I've ever had, I think. Carrot cake is my all-time favorite dessert, but I only eat it at Eastertime. 

I made the cake and the frosting, but my mom actually frosted it and put the decorative carrots on

I sang in the ward choir at church. I sing tenor—I think I'm better at bass, but I like tenor better (when I can hit the notes), and tenors are harder to find. For both our songs, the tenor line was really weird and unintuitive. But I think I got it down and it worked out—even though I had to sing falsetto because it was extra high.

I thought about explaining how I like to treat Christmas and Easter equally, and how various factors have made Christmas bigger than Easter, but I don't feel like it right now. Maybe another year. It makes me sad when Easter is in March, because it makes April less exciting, but next year it's late. I'll just leave you with this song, "I Wish I Was a Whisker on the Easter Bunny's Chin," which I genuinely, unironically love.