Mark My Words: Some random vignettes

This season, I've found myself getting annoyed with how busy it is. How am I supposed to do my chores or run or swim or do the various things I expect of myself?

But then I changed my mindset. All the busy-ness is one of the things that makes this time of year enjoyable. The chores and exercise will always be there, but the other activities are only seasonal. So I shouldn't resent them!

Here are a few vignettes from this week.

Christmas donations

My calling in my mid-singles ward is service committee cochair. For our ward Christmas party, the activities people wanted to collect donations of Christmas trees and decorations to donate to needy families. We couldn't find specific families, but we found a nonprofit that just collects Christmas things. So people donated the supplies for our party on Monday, and then on Tuesday I drove out to West Valley after work to deliver them.

And that might be my last official act. My ward has lost a lot of members with the YSA age change, so I think my calling is being dissolved.

Martha in Washington

This week, a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon was unveiled at Statuary Hall in the US Capitol. Each state gets two statues to represent them, and Cannon is replacing Philo T. Farnsworth. Cannon was the first female state senator in the US, and she beat her husband in the election. She was also a doctor. Her statue was supposed to be there long ago, but COVID put everything on hold.

A few of my colleagues at the Utah Historical Society were heavily involved in the process, and some of them were there for the ceremony in Washington DC. Those who were left behind held a watch party at our Utah capitol, so I went and helped out a little with that.

I helped set up this photo backdrop

There was a problem with the livestream, but eventually it got set up. Cannon's statue is next to a new Johnny Cash statue, and my colleagues were annoyed that three different people (Mike Johnson, Celeste Maloy, Mike Lee) talked about him. Like, can't a woman be good enough without having to invoke a man? Mike Lee was mostly OK, but he made a baffling comment about King Kamehameha that literally made my jaw drop. But Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson did not mention Cash, thankfully.

They had a closing prayer from one of Cannon's descendants that made me deeply uncomfortable. I literally winced. I didn't say anything about it, but my colleagues did, and I was glad I wasn't the only one who felt that way. One of them said, "It feels like I'm at church, but I'm at work." This was a national event, yet it was a deeply Latter-day Saint prayer. I'm pretty sure he literally said "no harm or accident will befall us." He invoked a blessing on "President Russell M. Nelson" and was grateful for the "gospel of Jesus Christ" that brought Cannon to the US. Has this guy ever been outside of Utah? Has he heard of ecumenicism? And I'm a bit uneasy with prayers in civic events anyway, even as someone who prays every day.

Christmas music

On Wednesday, I attended the Lower Lights Christmas concert with my mom. I have seen it every year since 2014, except the two years they were cancelled from COVID. It's always a fun tradition. It was their opening night, and they didn't have all the bugs worked out. Some of them sang the wrong lyrics or didn't sing when they were supposed to. I guess those are the hazards and charms of live music.

Every week I check the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and I'm always amazed at the Christmas songs that are played all the time.

I don't know much about music airplay, but it must be cheaper to play some of those old songs. That's the only reason I can think of for them to play them so often. I am indifferent to "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," but I dislike "Last Christmas" and "Jingle Bell Rock." There is an infinite supply of Christmas music, so why do those all the time?

(Similarly, there are at least two channels that have been showing the movie Christmas with the Kranks, which only has 5 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the audience score is only 39 percent. There must be some cheap licensing deal for them to show a movie that no one likes.)

I continue to diligently make it through my Christmas playlist of 2,083 songs. I'm in the 2023 section now, so I should finish within a few days.

Friday the 13th

I was so happy on Friday to wake up to snow. Remember when it was reliably snowy in December?

I like to think of Friday the 13th as a mini Halloween, and I had hoped to watch a spooky Christmas movie, like Gremlins or something. But instead, we had a power outage. That did seem appropriate for Friday the 13th. It lasted for five hours. I tried to do some work without internet, but I was very limited in what I did, so I had to go work at my sister's house for a time. All the weirdness set me back, so I only had time for the "Halloween vs. Christmas" episode of Teen Titans Go!

Running

Yesterday I ran to the Bountiful Temple from my house, which is my default long run in the winter (about eleven miles). I like doing that at Christmastime, because the houses around the temple have displays telling the nativity story. It's a fun gesture, though some of their picture choices are odd, and they spelled "forth" as "fourth."

When I hit 9.5 miles, my knee started hurting, and I had to walk the rest of the way. This wasn't unexpected, as that often happens in the winter, but it's still annoying, especially since I'm dressed warm enough for running but not for walking. This fall, I visited a sports med doctor, and he said he thinks it's IT band syndrome. It's more likely to act up when I'm going downhill on sidewalks, because it's worse when you have a longer stride. So it's rarely a problem when I'm on trails. The office gave me some exercises, but I haven't done them yet because a lot of them require resistance bands.

Sorry, that was probably boring for you.

Crisp

Last week I made gingerbread cranberry apple crisp, a recipe I invented. I modified it from another crisp recipe, but it's different enough that I count it as my own. I posted the recipe last year, but here it is again. I'm very pleased with the topping; it's chewy and gingery.

Ingredients:

Topping:
1 stick butter (8 tablespoons)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 cup whole wheat flour (all-purpose flour works too)
pinch salt
1 cup rolled oats

Fruit:
6 to 8 cups apples, peeled and cut
2 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
1/2 cup granulated sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Rub the stick of butter on the inside of a 9x13" baking dish.
2. Cut the stick of butter into smaller pieces. Cream it with the brown sugar and molasses. (A food processor makes this step quite easy.)
3. Mix in the lemon juice, spices, flour, and salt.
4. By hand, mix in the oats. (Don't use a food processor for this step, unless you want the oats to be all ground up.)
5. Combine the apples, cranberries, and sugar in the baking dish.
6. Put the topping on the fruit.
7. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes.

Finally, here are this week's dreams. I hope you're not sick of these, because I still find them entertaining.

Mark's character in a movie admires his hometown at Christmastime

a liquid seeps out of a batch of mashed potatoes because they were made with turnips (The generator wouldn't make it when I put "red liquid" because it detected "unsafe content")