We are living in a time when Pediatricians need to medicate children with a healthy dose of free-play. Read this article: 
http://www.aap.org/pressroom/playFINAL.pdf

I am taking an online course this semester for graduate school. I am studying mothers and mother figures in literature for children. I wondered what the suffix -hood means. I looked it up on m-w.com and found -hood means these things:

1 : state : condition : quality : character

2 : time : period 

3 : instance of a (specified) state or quality 

4 : individuals sharing a (specified) state or character

Living in married student housing with so many other LDS people makes me feel that number 2 is the induction to motherhood. Once you have a baby you live in the time of motherhood forever after. Then you move on to number 4 and become part of the club. Move to married student housing and you will see motherhood is a clique. Not that any of this is necessarily bad, only that motherhood is exclusive. Number 1 and 3 are a matter of pride and living up to the ideal mother image.

I am playing basketball with my Ward, and I play hideously. Ryan has taken it upon himself to teach me not to embarrass myself so badly. Since he has been helping I have realized two things:

1. Ryan is AMAZING at basketball–seriously he is amazing
2. Basketball is an excellent workout for the butt–ouch

We went to NJ for Christmas this year and it was awesome. I was sad to go, but our trip home was made a little happier because we took back a lot of furniture that Ryan’s mom was trying to get rid of. We are now the proud owners of a washer and dryer.

Ryan hooked them up so I could test the first load. I did a large load of towels and announced proudly to Ryan that our first load of laundry was underway. About 20 minutes later someone was banging on our door.

Ryan answered the door and someone who didn’t speak more than 10 words of English said something about water. Ryan ran to the washer and saw that our whole laundry closet was full of water and the carpet was wet!

Apparently, the hose that leads to the drain doesn’t securely stay in the wall, so we had a super sized load of water pooled around our new washer and dryer and dripping down into our neighbors apartment through their smoke detector. We have since duct taped the hose down, but I don’t know if I trust the thing to stay. Worst of all, our neighbors don’t speak English, so we can’t properly apologize. I truly am SORRY!

I made a new word yesterday. 

Neverywhere- (pronounced nevrywhere) a compound word of never and anywhere. Example: My car keys are neverywhere when I need them. It also can mean everywhere but where something is needed. Example: Tom Clark has hair neverywhere. (For those of you who don’t know Tom Clark–he is bald, but hairy.)

What do you guys think?

I was reading Properties of Light for my American lit class and came across an interesting fact.

The Greek word “cosmos” means “beauty” and “universe,” an interesting  parallel. 

I like learning about which words are connected in foreign languages; it tells a lot about their ideologies. 

As an editor, I am able to read a little bit about everything. Some things I edit turn out to be very interesting reads. Others are very slow going and require many breaks for sanity’s sake.The last paper I edited for my class was about Peter I the Great and all of his reform policies.

While reading about Peter I’s reform of the Orthodox Church, I came across some very funny information. Part of Peter I’s reform process was to institute mandatory beardlessness for everyone except clergy (because they had great superstitions attached to their position) and peasants (because who cares about them anyway).

Peter I actually shaved the noblemen’s beards himself to get the process going. Ha, what guts. He was determined to modernize Russia and take them away from their old-fasioned habits. Oh I guess I should say now that beards were considered a gift from God and a man without one was an effeminate beast. Needless to say the Russians were outraged and fearful God would deny them admittance into heaven without there traditional beards.To assuage his people’s fears, Peter I decided to allow beard-growth on any man (what about bearded ladies?) so long as he payed a beard tax and had a beard license.I found this picture of what the men with beards were given after paying their beard tax. Notice the beard replica at the bottom of the token.

What absurdity. Peter I the Great Beard Enforcer.