Honest Opinion (a.k.a. unpopular blog post)

(Warning: Please do not read if you get easily offended. I do not want hate mail, mean comments, or my apartment burned and my family ransomed.)

I guess it’s fitting that I finished a book about vampires on the day before Halloween. So, what did I think? I think I better preface my remarks first so that I don’t offend anyone. It’s interesting how something can be sickening to one person and loved by someone else. For example, Josh and I watched the film The Village when we were dating. He felt so sick in the middle of the movie that he had to leave the theater. I sat in my seat perplexed, wondering if I should follow but not really wanting to. I felt kind of bad for liking the movie since it was so obvious how he felt. A couple of years later we watched the DaVinci Code together. He had previously read the book but I had not, nor do I ever want to. I started feeling very sick in the middle of the movie, and when I asked Josh at the end what he thought, to my surprise he said he liked it. Several weeks ago Josh and I watched part of an episode of The Office. Everyone seems to rave about how great this sitcom is. Since we missed the first season of it, we were naturally curious to see what all the hoopla is about. We had to change the channel halfway into it, and we still don’t understand why everyone likes it so much.

With that said, I think most of you can guess by now that I wasn’t obsessed and addicted to Twilight like so many others seem to be. I can’t honestly say that it made me sick to my stomach, but it did have its moments where I was very disappointed, and I’m not eager to read the next three. I guess I would describe it this way: It’s pretty good for what it is, but what it is is somewhat questionable. In other words, it’s basically a 21st century equivalent of a gothic novel. If I judge it by those standards, I have to say that it’s good. It has romance/passion and terror—both essential in gothic literature as it evolved—and it keeps the reader excited and interested...mostly. Meyer sets up the novel well, and I have to admit (to my surprise) that she hooked me into it initially. Unfortunately, the novel then reveals that Edward is a vampire, and it starts to go downhill from there. Sure, I already knew Edward was a vampire from the beginning (How could I not with everyone talking about it?), but after he reveals he’s a vampire, the romance portion of the story takes over, and I’m afraid that’s what disappointed me. I almost stopped reading it then (and I did for a couple of days), but I continued more for closure (and under the notion that it couldn’t be horrible if LDS women were recommending it to me). Edward is a likeable enough character (he has his moments), though he’s certainly not perfect as Bella seems to think he is. Bella, on the other hand, is irritating to me. I liked her at first, but then she becomes a lovesick idiot, and it turned me off. It did get a little better for a couple of chapters at the end with the suspense of the tracker vampire James, but then it fizzled off again and didn’t end so well.

Truly, I cannot just judge this book by the standards of a gothic novel. Books are written and read in context, and I have to question why so many LDS women are hooked on this book and the others in the series. It may have been written by an LDS woman (which I also question), but Twilight was sensual enough, and I have to think that the other books in the series are much worse (I hope I’m wrong). I wondered before about the obsession with these novels, but I wonder more about it now. What is it exactly that is so appealing about them? If it’s the romance, count me out. I’m in no hurry to read the rest of the saga.

One final note: the novel has undertones of the Adam and Eve story (even the book cover gives that away), but it’s so twisted and somewhat blasphemous to me.

Austin

Josh had some time off last week, so we finally decided to take a trip up to Austin. We've been wanting to go for a couple of years because we've heard it's a great place for camping and outdoors. Plus, we didn't want to leave Texas without seeing the capital city of our state. It wasn't a long trip--just Thursday and Friday--but we had a good time and enjoyed what we saw.

On Thursday, we first toured the capitol building and learned a little more about Texas history. I was surprised by how many women have served as governor, senator, etc., even way back in the day when that wasn't too common.

Austin has a big park called Zilker Park. There are a number of things you can do within the park--swimming, hiking, etc.--but since our time was limited we just went to the Zilker Botanical Gardens.

We camped for the night at McKinney Falls State Park, and I decided that it's very deceptive here. I know it's almost November, but believe me, it is still very warm here this time of year. During the day it's usually in the high 70s to mid 80s, and I know it cools down at night, but I'm usually sleeping in my warm apartment. It's true that Austin is probably a couple of degrees cooler than Houston, but even Austin was very warm during the day while we were there. As a result, I was not expecting to freeze while we were camping, but I did. Fortunately, Eli seemed to be warm and just fine, but Josh and I had a long, cold night. I guess I need to get me some warm footsie pajamas like Eli has. It also didn't help that there was a burn ban, so we couldn't start a fire. I'm used to having a fire while camping. Anyway, we did enjoy the experience, even though we were cold.

The cold night on Thursday, however, turned into a hot day on Friday. We went hiking in the park and saw a couple of small waterfalls, an Indian cliff dwelling, and tons of turtles. We had some other things planned but decided to keep it a relaxing day, which it was. Overall, it was a great trip!

(P.S. He's not actually eating the pear. He just likes to bite on it because it soothes his gums.)

Growing Up

Eli doesn't like sitting around. I was told that he would probably sit on his own before he'd start crawling, but I guess Eli is determined to be different. He can sit up for a little while, but he soon topples over. On the other hand, he has carpet burns from moving faster and faster across the room and into the next. We really have to watch him carefully. I think he'll learn how to sit from crawling rather than learning how to crawl from sitting because when he is in crawling position, he sometimes leans back far enough that he is nearly sitting on his own. Go figure!

He's also understanding cause and effect a little better. We have a mirror in his room on the floor against the wall. He used to lunge into the mirror all the time trying to get at the boy in the mirror. I tried to help him understand that he would never reach the boy and would only get hurt instead. I think he's finally catching on because he doesn't really lunge forward into the glass anymore, though he'll still stare and occasionally lick the mirror.

His form of communication has changed too. He still has high pitched squeals, but he has added deep guttural sounds, what we like to call "monster" noises. Just recently he has been showing off his command of specific sounds such as the "ga" sound in the letter g and the "ba" sound in the letter b. He also seems to understand some of what is being said. He will respond and turn his head when I call his name, and when I tell him I love him, he will get a sheepish grin on his face. The best is when he gives me a very tender look and makes a specific noise that he only makes when he's looking at me that way. I'm probably reading too much into it, but it's as if he's saying I love you too.


Finally, he is sort of eating solid foods. We started with rice cereal, but he doesn't really seem to like it. He will eat bananas and carrots a little better, even though half still ends up on him rather than in him. That's all we've tried so far, but we will be adding others as we go along. I knew it would be a messy process, and I was right, but he does look really cute in his bib and high chair. He lets us know quite forcefully when he's sick of being in them. Remember the little baby Jack-Jack in the Disney movie The Incredibles? When Eli has had enough, he exhibits characteristics similar to Jack-Jack's superhero powers. He'll always be my angel, but he lets us know how he feels.

Hurricane Ike

I'm not going to include any photos with this because I'm sure the damage has been seen all over the news, but I wanted to share my thoughts and our experience during the hurricane. Basically, I don't really want to go through another hurricane again, although that's the risk we take living in Houston. If Ike was just a category two (though nearly three), I certainly wouldn't stick around for a four or five. For those who like adventure, it must have been a blast. For those like me, it was pretty scary. I couldn't sleep all night and realized that ear plugs are a necessity in our emergency supplies. Because it happened during the middle of the night and our power went out like everyone else's, we didn't see a whole lot, but we heard a ton. Banging, popping, creaking, crashing--you name it. I was just praying the whole time that our roof would not suddenly rip off. Eli was a little frightened when the eyewall first began hitting us, but we were fortunate that he slept through most of it.

When the worst of it passed, immediately around us the damage consisted of broken branches and fallen trees, ripped off shingles, broken fences, downed power lines, hanging traffic lights, and broken signs. We were thinking that wasn't too bad given what we had heard. Keep in mind that we couldn't see anything on television because of the massive power outage. All we had was a little battery-operated radio. It wasn't until Wednesday or Thursday that I actually saw the extensive damage to Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula.

Of course, the worst for us and the millions of other Houstonians was (and still is for many)probably the lack of power. We were very fortunate that we never lost our water. The pressure was low for the first couple of days, and we were told to conserve, but we were still able to shower. Granted, it was a very cold shower, but at least it was a shower. I was preparing to revert back to my mission days where bucket baths were the norm.

I did, however, have to revert back to the candles and flashlights and lack of air conditioning. I was painfully reminded of how uncomfortable heat and humidity can be without AC. But once again, the Lord blessed us by sending a cold front, so the heat was only bad for the first two days after the hurricane. Once the cold front came, we opened our windows and doors and cooled down a bit. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes then became a problem. Poor little Eli!

One of the families in our ward that Josh home teaches got their power back the day of or the day after the hurricane and allowed us to use their freezer for our frozen goods. That was a blessing! We then put our refrigerated goods in our freezer that Josh had previously filled with ice, and most of our refrigerated items kept okay in the freezer until we got our power back on Wednesday afternoon (a great gift that we were given on my dad's birthday).

Even as I write this, there are many people without power still, even in our ward. Our church building still does not have power. Meetings were obviously cancelled last week, and I hear that they're trying to get a generator so that we can at least have sacrament meeting tomorrow.

Despite the problems, I have counted many blessings that we have received amid the chaos of the storm and its aftermath. Our lives were unharmed. The rain didn't linger, so we didn't get as much flooding as we could have. A cold front came in. Damage could certainly have been worse. Most of our food did not spoil. We never lost our water. Our power came back fairly quickly compared to many others'. Unlike many other emergencies and natural disasters, we were given warning of the hurricane's approach. We were given service opportunities. We got to spend more time with each other. We have a better idea of what we need in an emergency but were prepared for almost everything. We received word that Eli's cousin, Sophee, was born.