"Nate! My water broke!" "When?" "Just now! Get some towels!" I tried (and succeeded somewhat) to protect our bed and carpet from the sudden tidal wave as Nate stared stupidly at the linen closet (his words, not mine.) What seemed like 45 minutes later he finally handed me a bath towel which was soaked within seconds, followed by another one, and then a third. I'll cut him some slack, though - it was 1:00 on the dot on Monday morning, May 7th, and it'd been a pretty rough night. False labor contractions had been bothering me all Sunday afternoon and as the night progressed they remained painful and inconsistent. Ugh. Luckily, "The Happiest Millionaire" was on KBYU, and it really was as good as I remember it being from my childhood. I might have even guffawed a few times when they found the pet alligators frozen in the conservatory,  in spite of my 3-days-overdue-gouging-my-eyes-out attitude. Nate and I debated on whether to go to t...

Three weekends ago, I went with my sisters Shauna and Rebecca to the General Relief Society meeting of our church. It's a yearly meeting of the women's organization of our church in which our leaders address us and give us counsel. It's broadcast all over the world and usually we just watch it on t.v., so it was a special treat to actually attend the meeting live in the conference center in Salt Lake City. Anyway, one of my greatest philosophical musings these days is about the intrinsic value of womanhood. I feel like women are different than men (in more ways than the obvious) and have, as a whole and as individuals, their own unique characteristics and instincts that, when developed and brought to light, compliment those of males. And vice versa, of course. I think that men and women should be equals in this respect: that they have opportunities to develop those unique traits. I feel like women do generally have the opportunity to do that, but that society, for whatever ...