Thought had while reading a book

So Pride and Prejudice, right. We're talking the original novel here. It's definitely an excellent work of literature and one of the most beloved novels of all time (Probably made so mostly by women who hope for some Mr. Darcy to come sweep them off their feet) (Though I've decided that a Mr. Knightly would  . Yet I don't think you'll ever see it among the list of book to read for high school English. (ok, you may see it on some reading lists, but I don't think it's one ever done as a class unit) In fact I think that if I proposed the idea of making a bunch of high school boys read a 18th century romantic novel to any administration I'd probably get laughed at. But here's my story-

This last week I was substituting for Mr. Weeks whom I had worked with last semester doing my student teaching in two of his geometry classes. I taught his class Wednesday and Thursday and because he offered to pay me, I went to parent teacher conference to hand out grade reports and record any questions or concerns I couldn't answer. Mr. Weeks teaches not only math, but also computer programming. Well, I don't know to much about computer programming and the kids were pretty self sufficient in those classes so I didn't really have a lot to do during those periods. On Thursday I was particularly bored during the last hour of computer programming and decided to read a book on the ipad that Mr. Weeks had left and let me use while he was gone. (they're pretty darn cool, but I wouldn't trade in my laptop for one...) There's an app on there that is pretty much a small library. I browsed through the available/suggested books and decided I should pick something I'd read before so I wouldn't get sucked into it and neglect my duties as his substitute to walk around and make sure no one had died. I selected one of my favorites- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Along with enjoying the story, for many reasons, I also find that I like the language she uses and the way that she writes. Her humor is so subtle some times I love it. Anyway- I began reading somewhere close to 2/3 of the way through just where the youngest daughter Lydia elopes with the insidious Mr. Wickham. As I read and continued to read during parent teacher conference I was struck by the variety of characters in the novel and the moral lessons each has for us. I'm not much of one to do the english class "What did the author really intend for us to learn here" as I think that most people probably just wrote a good novel, and as with anything we can learn from it and make application. This has become a really long paragraph. Allow me to break...

So, I'm reading and I realize, so many of the lessons to be learned from this book are right in line with the troubles ailing our society in general today! Silly people who only think about themselves and immediate gratification. People who are proud for whatever reason and see people and things beneath them that aren't actually. The importance of family and personal values. We see in so many of the characters the flaws that our society exhibits en mass. I wonder if high school students were to examine the behavior of Lydia and Wickham if they wouldn't see some of themselves, or maybe in the character of Kitty or Mary, or Caroline Bingley and Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Even in comparing ourselves to the main characters of Elizabeth or Darcy there is good and ill in their characters, what do we have in common? What kind of person would we ultimately like to be? One of the reasons I so much enjoy this novel is because it's wide cast of characters represents almost everyone. Sometimes we'll be like different characters at different times in our lives, but they're very good generalizations of people as a whole. Now, Pride and Prejudice isn't the Bible or Book of Mormon that obviously teach us about what we should strive to become by teaching us about Christ and Christlike people, but you can't read the Book of Mormon in a high school english class...

Um, so there you have it. I think I've about run my course on this really strange post. Just think about that next time you dive in to a seemingly superficial book. You can find application in anything...

The flower

So, back before Christmas when Mom came up to visit she brought me and Ashley some amaryllis flower sets. They come in a box and have the soil (in a really cool dehydrated disk- add water and it expands to fill the whole pot! It's amazing!), pot, and flower bulb all ready to go. I took a really long time to getting around to planting it, but when I finally did, it sure did surprise! I guess Mom's was a dud and didn't grow much, Ashley's grew and bloomed, but was pretty short, but mine shot up like a rocket, two tall skinny stems that just can't quite stay straight. I had to rotate it every day to help it grow more straight.

See how pretty it is? Lovely. Crooked but lovely. If you look carefully you can see the 3rd branch shooting up behind the shorter one. All seemed to be going well until one morning we came upstairs to find the flower fallen over and a bunch of dirt spilled all over the ground. Well, it damaged the flower stems and they just couldn't quite stay upright anymore. So I gave it a little help:

 Note brown pipe cleaner helping one individual stem stay upright, the rope lashing the pot/bulb to the table to keep the bulb upright and the pot firmly planted on the desk so it won't fall over any more. And finally, the ski poles used to prop up the flowers so they wouldn't sag and break the stems. Lovely, no? Oh it get's better. It fell over again. All over Dana's guitar. But I was not ready to give up! The 3rd branch was growing still. I wanted to see it bloom! So I helped it out again!

Isn't is wonderful! Creative if you ask me = ) That's a broom handle shoved between the desk and wall to stay still. The flowers that fell off when it fell I piled up in the pot as a memorial to it's trials. And yes, yes those are kabob skewers taped to the flower with masking tape to keep the stalks from falling over. They'd sustained substantial damage in the most recent crash. The sticks were a great support. But the saga does not end there!

 Alas, the sight that greeted us in the morning.

 And the fix. The new blooms are quite delightful. Definitely worth keeping this poor flower in one piece for. You're probably thinking "Good gracious. How many pictures is she going to post of this one silly flower?!" Answer: only one more.

Um, I think I'm done fixing it. Thank you flower. You have been beautiful. You had a life of trials, but brought joy to many. R.I.P.

Let me explain...

...No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
1) blog post #1
The setting: I have been contemplating this whole blog thing for a long time, and wanted a really good, fitting blog name for it. Well, turns out that it's not the most pressing thing in my life and I have had a hard time thinking of a name that I felt worked for my blog. I know it's not that big a deal, but I still wanted to have one I liked.
Scene 1: (USU dorms, summer 2010) I decided I'm going to blog and write the above post with the intent of creating the blog next time I have a few minutes and posting it. It doesn't happen and the entry just gets saved to my computer.
Scene 2: (Logan, yesterday) I decided again that I should actually do this whole blog thing. I get on after church while I'm eating dinner and spend the entire break between church and ward prayer not coming up with a name for my blog. Feel like I waste a lot of time on this pretty minor detail...
Scene 3: (Logan, today) I come up with a name and create the blog. I pull the old post from my files where it was saved an posted it first, cuz that's what it was meant to be, the first blog post. I haven't actually read it since I wrote it I think, so I hope it makes sense still = )

2) Rome.
It might seem strange, considering I've never actually been to Rome, that "always a roman" would be my blog address, and the title of the blog what it is. So, here's the thing: Rome is the name of the house I live in. As you walk in the door you will immediately notice a big banner hanging in our living room that says "When in Rome..." and we change the ending for every party or occasion we celebrate. So, all the inhabitants of the house are naturally called "romans", and once a roman, always a roman. Hence the web address, and the title.

So there you have it. Two really long, random posts to start off with. In the future they'll probably not be so long, but probably just as random. That's just how I roll.

#1

SO, I have decided to start a blog. I personally believe that my life is extremely ordinary and don't know really what I'll ever have to write about or who will want to read it, but a few things have prompted me over that last few weeks to start writing. I feel like recounting these things, so I will:

First off, my family has a little tradition that began back when my oldest sisters got married and our family got a little more spread out. We've never been great phone talkers, except for my mom who can talk to her mom for hours on end, so we began to write letters each Sunday detailing the events of the previous week and the things we've learned and enjoyed. Sandra, my second oldest sister, is not very good at sending these e-mails so she began a blog and will just post things periodically about her life, kids, husband, and various other adventures. I find that I also am not very good at writing these e-mails. Not because I'm communicationally challenged like Sandra is (love ya babe!) but because I don't feel like I have that much t o say at the end of each week. I don't have a husband in school/work, kids with funny stories, or even grand adventures with my friends. I feel, whether this is correct or not, that my life is just full of the day to day ordinary things that are of no interest to anyone not directly connected to the situation so I feel bad making people read an email full of thins they probably have no interest in besides the fact that it means I am alive and well. So now I can yack away and people can keep up on my life as much as they wish without me feeling like I am inflicting my random thoughts on anyone.

Also I find that I am not much of a journal keeper. I do frequently however have thoughts I would like to record whether or not anyone wants to read them. I know that this blog is not really a replacement for the daily journal I am not keeping (I do keep a study journal quite faithfully) but it will at least be a support to the journal I don't write in. And who knows, maybe I'll find I enjoy detailing my days so much I will start to keep a real journal.

One more thing that I like about the idea of a blog came from facebook this last week or two. I was on facebook and saw that a friend of mine who was a session director's wife and was with us for a week at EFY had a blog. I opened it just to see what it was like and ended up engrossed in reading about her life and struggles and family. I learned so much about her just by reading her blog. I was amazed. I'm not sure why this encouraged me to write a blog, I would think that it would on the contrary deter me from writing one because I am naturally a very private person. However it did encourage the idea of a blog and pointed out another usefulness of it.

The final prompting came today. For several months now I have been contemplating this thought of keeping a blog. This summer I've been doing EFY again and was sitting in my dorm room in Logan today after church and started watching Mormon Messages on lds.org. There's one called “My New Life” that is all about a mom who was in a small plane crash that she and her husband survived but are now not as pretty anymore. It's really cute. But in it she talks about writing a blog and the therapy it provided as she copes with the changes and challenges of her new life. Now, I don't need therapy (I think...) but as I watched it the idea of a blog really stuck out to me again. In the past the idea has come up. I've even looked at a couple different blog hosting sites online, but have never really started one. In fact I'm writing this post before I even have a blog to post it on. But after watching that video I kept thinking of what I would do with a blog and what I would say, and I want this to be my first post, so here you go.

I hope you enjoy. If not, you don't have to read it. And that's why I love blogs.