The Beginning of the Action Plan

Alright peeps, here's the deal: the action plan is beginning. For the first month, I have decided to focus on three things: exercise each day except Sunday (this doesn't have to be a certain amount, I just need to do something active each day), wake up everyday at 7:00am (this is important to me, I need to start training myself to get back into a normal schedule, and I need to ALWAYS pray on my knees ( I know this sounds silly. Our apartment is hard, hard old floors, and I have a hard time always ripping myself out of bed and putting my knees on the cold hard ground, but my prayers are more meaningful on my knees, so maybe I need a prayer mat/rug thing, but there it is). SO, these are the three I will focus on for the next month so until August 10th. KEEP ME ON TRACK FOLKS. HOLD ME TO IT.

So to recap:

1) Exercise everyday except Sunday

2) Wake up at 7:00am everyday

3) Always pray on my knees

Someone in my family suggested I get good couple bonding time with my hubby, I shall put that as number 4.

4) GOOOD bonding time with Hubby....not just in the same room, but actually engaged in something meaningful involving each other. I love this idea, sometimes it is too easy to be together but not actually spending quality time together. DONE and DONE.

So, I will report back on my progress in these four areas through out the week and on into the month. Thank you all for your wonderful ideas! I loved them.

Pretty, Big, Fat Blog Post

Hello to all my readers.

I am totally failing at keeping you up to date on my life, but I promise I think of brilliant things to share all the time, I just always want to capture something in a photo to put with my blog post, and I am not so good about that. So, here's the deal. I PROMISE I will put up pictures of my cute apartment soon. I LOVE it, and I am so excited to call it home for the next three years. But I thought I should probably blog about the goings on in my life, just to give you all a heads up.

FIRST OFF, it is official, I received my very first invite for a drinking party tonight via the University of Utah Law School email listserv. Some fine elder students were inviting us young'ns for a good time. Flattering though it was, I think staying sober will be my path of choice for this next phase of my life. My favorite portion of the email was the following, "If you should find yourself annoyed by our weekly ramblings and would like to be removed from the list, you're outta luck! We encourage you to stop by the Technology Help Desk located in the Law Library and ask to them about email filtering." To this I say, I hope that he will not mind my signing him up for the weekly newsletters from MedTox Substance Abuse Program. Too bold...? I think not. It is law school after all. I will tell you how it goes.

Secondly, Parker and I are house sitting currently. On Monday, Parker called me and asked if these yummy little fruity bar things that I made should be refrigerated. I honestly didn't think they would need to be. Yesterday, after cleaning up a large poop filled mess by the dogs we are watching at this house and washing my hands thoroughly, I grabbed a couple of those bars from the dark kitchen and quickly shoved them in my mouth on my way to work. HOLY CRAP! I cannot tell you from personal experience how it would be if your body all the sudden decided it was going to reject an organ or something, but I imagine it is like what I have felt the last day and a half. It took me a while to locate what offender could have wreaked such havoc on my body, but today when I got home from work, I flipped on the lights in the kitchen, pulled back that lid on the container of the fruity bars, and there lie glorious little breading ground of mold . YUCK. I don't know how I couldn't have tasted that, but I have definitely had like a million flash backs to that part in Minority Report where he eats that nasty mold covered sandwich thing from the fridge while he is still blind. SO GROSS. Though I am not Tom Cruise, and I am not in fact blind, I sort of feel like I can relate a little bit now. After two days of disgustingness...my stomach is feeling a bit more settled but there are many waves of grossness still working their way through my system.

Last thing for this post, yesterday at work, we had a bunch of the University of Utah's Rugby players out to teach the Boys and Girls of the Boys and Girls Club all about Rugby. I normally love when these volunteers come, and in truth, I loved it yesterday. But as they were leaving, one of the volunteers pulled one of my male co-workers aside and whispered something in his ear. Later on, I asked my co-worker what the volunteer had said. My male co-worker said, "Oh, he just asked where the "hot" girl-staff was." Then filtering from what was said to him into terms more suitable for me as his audience, he said one of our co-worker's names to clarify who the volunteer guy meant. NOW, let me explain why I am writing about this story. First off, I LOVE working with this particular male co-worker; he is awesome, and certainly was not meaning to nor had any idea this info would phase me in the slightest. Secondly, the "hot" girl-staff being asked about is absolutely adorable, and I love her to pieces as well; she is so nice and sweet and awesome, and in truth, very pretty. Thirdly, I am not on the market in any way, shape or form. I am married and love my husband. I have eyes only for him, and he for me, and I love that he loves me for BEING me.

BUT even with all those disclaimers, for some reason, hearing this comment, HURT.

I don't know if it is because my greatest insecurity about myself is my appearance. Or the fact that years of being overlooked always made me feel less-than in this category. Or because I have never felt that I have achieved "hot." Or because the word "HOT" took me way back to high school and singledom. Anyway, all the same, this comment kind of left me reeling. I hadn't really thought about "HOT" in a long time, and probably for good reason, but all the same, I felt somehow like the wind had been knocked out of my sails. For all you reading this, thinking to yourselves, "How very surprising that this affected Bekah at all." I AGREE 100%, I am sure that I am more surprised than anyone that I even cared that a few guys who volunteer at the club didn't put me in any category as personally flattering as HOT, because I mean, why would I care? And yet, despite all the disclaimers and logic and knowledge I have of who I am and how loved I am, this still hurt. CAN ANY OF YOU RELATE?

Realizing that this was clearly a chink in my armor, one that certainly needed to be dealt with, I decided to make this a point of pondering, and I have come to the conclusion that this comment hurt because I was already hurting in this area. I was already feeling negatively toward myself about my appearance. SO, I would like to deal with this. I already know that there are certain things I can do which help me stay positive about myself regarding my appearance such as: regular exercise, regular showering, controlled eating, limiting sweets, competing in races, a full night's sleep. During today's ponder session, I came up with a few more that are unique to me. Exercising in the morning instead of a different time of day, flossing my teeth, washing my face, going to sleep at 10pm, reading my scriptures. I would like to know what helps you though, SO PLEASE COMMENT AND MAKE SUGGESTIONS, because folks, I am going to be making an ACTION PLAN, and I would like to share that here on my blog, so that you can all know my progress, but to keep you interested, I would like to incorporate some of your ideas. So please tell me your thoughts on this. I hope this all made sense. Also, if you actually made it this far in my post, GOOD WORK. You are truly worthy of the title "blog follower."

Hotel Rwanda

So the other night, Parker and I watched Hotel Rwanda. I am sure that most of you have seen it before, but Parker hadn't. In fact, we had it for about a month before we actually watched it. I just knew I would be sad after it, and I had to be in the right mood. Before I jump up onto my giant soap box, I want to tell a different story.

I just started working part time at the Boys and Girls Club in Mid-Vale. It's a summer gig, and so far, I can't get enough. I LOVE IT. Which for those of you who followed my blog during the dark months of my last job, welcome to the arrival of Bekah's happiness in the working world. Am I making near as much money as before???? NEVER! But, I love going to work each day. I have awesome people to talk with, awesome teens to work with, and awesome satisfaction knowing in a small way, I am making a positive difference.

NOW, let me tell you my story. I worked a teenage girls' sleepover last weekend. Besides the fact that the girls didn't go to sleep until 5:30am and had to be up at 8:00am, I would call it a success. I was pretty tired by about 5:00am, but I am glad for the bonding which occurred. Earlier in the day, I was talking with one of the teenagers. She is a nice girl, kind of loud, and pretty silly, but I really like her. I think maybe DRAMA is a good label for her. All day she had been putting me off when I would try to talk with her, and that was just fine. So imagine my surprise when around 4:00pm, I sat down on the couch next to her, and she turned to me and said, " I like a boy here at the club...but you can't tell anyone." How is that for opening up? She was really funny about it and kept saying she didn't know where these feelings were coming from while simultaneously swearing me to secrecy. I swore not to reveal this secret love...and with that promise, she decided to talk a bit more about "him."

Still not knowing who the boy was, I asked "What do you like about him?" Well, let me just preface this by saying that this girl is black, and she turned to me after I asked this question and said, "Well....no offense, but he's black." That was the number one trait folks, and I was A okay with that, but it made me laugh that she prefaced it with "no offense." As if, being white, I was pulling for all the other whities out there.

All chuckles aside, however, my mind was triggered back to this conversation later that weekend when I was watching Hotel Rwanda with Parker on the couch. I am sorry if I spoil any of the movie for those who haven't seen it...but it is based on a real life event...so history kind of spoiled it first. Essentially, there was a massive genocide taking place in Rwanda between the Tootsies and Hutus...both natives of Rwanda and only distinguished as such by the colonizers.

Anyway, there is this part of the movie where the real killing of the Tootsies by the Hutus has begun, and people of both Tootsie and Hutu background rush to the Hotel for safety....a hotel run by a Hutu man married to a Tootsie woman...a very good man named Paul Rusesabagina.

Anyway, after days of trying to shelter so many displaced people, Paul is practically crying when he sees the troops show up to protect, evacuate, and SAVE these people...his people. AND THEN MY HEART BREAKS. The troops are not there to protect his people...instead they take only the white people...the non-natives...and save them, leaving all the colored/black/native people to wage this awful genocide alone. At this part, my whole heart breaks open, and I feel guilty for a moment to have been born into such privilege. I feel guilty that the world looks on the outward appearance and not on the heart like the Lord does. I feel sad that a sweet teenage girl telling me about her innocent crush has already learned in her young life that skin color matters, that it makes her different, that it is an important distinction...perhaps THE most important distinction.

So where is the silver lining? Where is the blessed release from this depressing event in history? From this awful mistreatment of others? Well, I am not entirely sure how others find hope in light of these events without the atonement, because that is my answer. I suppose I fall back on the KNOWLEDGE that Heavenly Father's work is to bring to pass our happiness and joy, and that is for EVERY person, so I believe... in fact, I have to believe, that as unfair as the world often looks, feels, and is...every person is exactly where God intends them to be...where they have the greatest chance of finding REAL joy...perhaps not on Earth, but certainly for eternity.

And, I suppose it gives me a great deal of purpose, hoping that I have a chance to help bring a little of what will be to the here and now...THAT is a work worth doing.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is from a sweet little Indian man, he says, "EVERYBODY HAS 5.5 LITERS OF BLOOD." I agree...everybody is the same in some way, and it is focusing on those similarities, NOT THE DIFFERENCES that will bring the world and each of us happiness, joy, and peace. I know that is TRUTH.

Spring Cleaning and A BIG MOVE!

SO friends, CH-CH-Changes are a brewing in the Wightman household.

Way back in January, when we still thought we were going to Norway, Parker and I hopped on the waiting list for a two bedroom apartment because we thought we would be moving out, and we didn't really want to move back into a one bedroom. We have been married two years, and though we have loved all 483 square feet of our current apartment, 604 square feet sounds so much nicer.

Anyway, I have been slowly getting our life prepped and ready for the move. Hence the picture that I have included of Parker's tie collection. I went through his closet and decided to arrange them like a little store because honestly we had enough to open one. That is a queen sized bed under there! So, Parker had to pick...mean? Yes. Necessary? DOUBLE YES.

SO, for those of you who need to find us, the Wightman's are officially moving from 603 University Village, Salt Lake City, UT to 601 University Village. I know that you all think that sounds like a small move...and small it will hopefully be, but alas, it is BIG for us.

Also, here is a big and exciting GASP, we are totally painting this new apartment. I am so excited! I feel like I finally have an idea for decor that will reflect more of Parker and my colorful personality. So please stay tuned for more pics and exciting updates on our new 2 bedroom adventure.

Washington D.C.

So Parker and I went on an awesome trip. It was more than a month ago now, but all the same, here are your pics :-)

Parker and I got a private tour of the Capitol building. It was pretty awesome. Our tour guide was this awesome BYU student too, and that made it even more fun. If graduating in International Relations limited my options for work in Salt Lake City; it certainly made up for a lot of that in this vacation :-) I had so many awesome friends and connections out there that made our trip AWESOME.

I wish that I had thought to put make-up on this day since we ended up taking a ton of pictures, but alas, you all have the pleasure of seeing authentic me.

This is the Capitol's rotunda, it was so beautiful.

This is the Korean War Memorial. I thought it was so neat, probably my favorite of the bunch. Also, did Parker and I mention that we stayed with this really nice Jewish family while we were out there? Well we did. My greatest regret was setting off the house alarm at Six in the morning, the day we left. Whoops...we had good intentions, but at least this way, everyone got to say their final goodbyes.

This is in Ford's theatre. It is the booth where Lincoln was shot. The more I learn about that man, the more I like him, and wish that our last few presidents democrats and republicans a like had a bit more Lincoln-esqueness to them.

This was at the Air and Space Museum. I think this was Parker's favorite of the whole trip; he was kind of like the boy in a candy shop. I love that he loves space. I was really hungry and grumpy during this particular visit though, so I doubt that really showed through.

I love this quote. It was at the F. D. R. monument. I think that one of my blogs coming up will touch on this more, but all I can say is, AMEN.

This is the Jefferson Monument. In front of this monument, there is a huge lake pond thing, and you better believe that Parker and I with the assistance of my friend Jennifer paddle boated that pond with all our might :-)

Cute Jennifer! She was my roommate freshman year of college. LOVE HER.

Isn't he cute? I think so. Though this was probably his only cute moment during this particular venture. Parker's feet hurt, and he was less enthused than me about paddle boating.
Here Parker is "acting" excited because I asked him to. We are at Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home. I really want to read more about George Washington. He was kind of a romantic, and I am sure he was a great many other things that aren't always displayed so prominently on the history channel, but I left having so much respect for him and all the founders of our nation. They truly were AWESOME.

The house where we stayed was just down the street from the National Zoo. So we went for a look see. Notice the hype about the pandas in the top of the pictures...turns out the pandas didn't want to be seen the day we went...lame.

Chinatown had the best restaurants, namely OUR FAVORITE, Matchbox. It is a pizza and burger joint, but I promise it is nothing like what you have had before. It was SOOOOO good, we came back on the last day of our trip just to have it again.


Yes, these little mini burgers are divine. I can taste them now. If you go to Washington D.C. Matchbox is a MUST!

The Long Pause

So, there was this one time when I took a HUGE break from blogging. People's hearts broke. Tears were shed. There was an all out panic. Where were people to get the somewhat useless and usually strange stories that make up my life???? It was hard, people took all sorts of drastic measures...I got texts...I got in person comments...glares and the like, but have no fear, I have returned, and here's the real heart stopper. I have pictures!

Here are the Boston pics for your viewing pleasure.

Ms. Lucy had an Easter Egg hunt, and she was soooo excited.

But not so eager to share her loot....

Earlier on Easter Day we had a family photo shoot.

This is my brother Andrew and Ms. Lucy.

So, as it turns out, photo shoots are not all they are cracked up to be.

But we got a few winners :-)

Here is the Brighton-man... he is such a sweet little guy.

So Lucy LOVES to read books. My brother Andrew is really good about reading them to her, but this picture just makes me laugh...I swear to you, they really were having fun, and Andrew doesn't even beat his children with books.

This is Ms. Lucy in the B-man's bouncer chair. She LOVES to recline in this baby and read the day away.

One of the days, Ms. Lucy and I made cookies, we had a blast, and she of course wore her fancy apron to help. Aprons are the MOST important part of cooking when you can't actually participate in the making of the food.

And that is that, I promise to you to have pictures of DC soon, and then even more exciting posts about my current life after that.

HUGE UPDATE

Alright everyone, if I told you pictures were coming, would you believe me?...Me neither. I keep putting off blogging so that I actually have some pictures to go with my blogs...I even bought a shirt to announce which school I am going to, but I have yet to take a moment to just put it on a snap a picture.

So, let's get real...real serious. Um, in backward order to make things interesting. I FINISHED my first half marathon today. As you will all recall, I attempted one in October, but well, that ended in heart break as I fell and killed my ankle in the first 1.5 miles. TODAY, however, my race was excellent. I had trained very well. It helped that this time I had a partner living here in Utah...my sister-in-law was my training partner for this race, and boy did she ever make me stick to that training schedule. Also...I will never mock Katy Perry again. I don't really LOVE her...but today, her song Firework did get me through the last 2.5 miles of my race. I just set that song to repeat and felt the endorphins flow. If you have never listened to the song before...I will post a link, I can unfortunately only recommend this ONE song of hers...but I think you will understand how the beat lends itself to good running music. Anyway, it was an excellent experience, and I am certain that I will be running another one. Parker says I have to take a little break, so I will, but soon, I will train for another one. Racing is so fun. Everyone is so positive. I LOVED it.

One sad story, on the route, there was a turn off for the full marathoners...as is the halfers went right and the full marathoners went left. As we were running, we saw several marathoners that had missed the turn off. The saddest one was a lady that we saw about three miles after the turn off, she was running back the other direction, tears filling her eyes...can you imagine mentally preparing for 26.2 miles, and then suddenly realizing you would be running 32 plus because of a mistake. Yikes. My heart went out to those marathoner folks.

NEXT big thing, I chopped my hair off. I have a lovely little pixie do now. I am really digging it. It is fun to see all the new things that I can do with my hair now.

SCHOOL. Where am I going to law school? Well, some of you already know, but here is a big ol' announcement. I will be attending the University of Utah in the Fall for law school. This was a very difficult decision for me. More difficult than I realized it would be. I was really torn between BYU and the U. However, after a lot of thought, discussion with Parker, and prayer, we came to the determination that the U will be better for our family. I think part of me will always wonder how things would have been if I had attended BYU, but school is what you make of it, so I will just make sure I give law school my all :-)

Also, NORWAY. Well, it's not happening. This was sort of a blow. I found out two days or so before my last day of work that things had fallen through with our summer plans to go to Norway. I am bummed that our European adventure has been reduced to a state-side, utah-side experience, but I am going to make the most of it. I have considered finding a part time job for the summer, so far, Parker is still lobbying for me to just relax and chill for a while before summer. I am thinking that might be good, but I will just take that one day at a time.

IN conclusion, I WILL be leaving in about three days for Boston. I will be there for two weeks....I can't wait. Hopefully, my soreness will be gone before I embark because I can't imagine that 8 hours of sitting in a plane will do much for me to recover :-)

Sorry that this post is not real funny or fun...but I assure you that I will try to make my blogging return to a regular regiment complete with more posts full of my life's adventures and the crazy funny things that happen. Thanks for reading :-)