Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Gail Lomond’s book Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a trip. A trip to Scotland, for those who haven’t been there—but also a trip through a very messed-up brain. Eleanor Oliphant begins the book by explaining what a perfectly normal person she is, working a perfectly normal office job in Glasgow, and for a while, it all actually seems—well, normal. But then things start to get weird.

For starters, Eleanor falls madly in love/obsession with a singer. A singer she’s never met. So, obviously, she stalks him. And gets a bikini wax. Just to be ready. And a haircut. And a new wardrobe. While all of this makeover is slowly happening, you get to follow her interactions with coworkers, stylists, retail workers, and various other people, and you get the feeling that something’s off with Eleanor. She doesn’t seem to understand the same social cues everyone else does. And she’s got a horrible burn scar on her face that people keep staring at.

And then her mom calls. Oh, heavens, this woman is a nutcase. She takes her weekly call from her mother, who is apparently in a high-security prison, and is an absolute psychopath. I mean, the woman is the very definition of manipulative. Suddenly, some of the social issues Eleanor deals with start to make sense. And as Eleanor is navigating her way towards the singer of her dreams, she has to start grappling with some issues and situations she’s never been brave enough to deal with before.

This book is something of a slice-of-life, and something of a psychological thriller. I mean, there was a while there when I was afraid Eleanor was going to turn out to be a serial killer or something, but she was actually just a messed-up kind of normal. And it’s got a surprisingly happy ending. I really liked this book. Which is a little frightening, because it felt like a wild ride through a therapist’s office. But a good one, in the end. ♦

Radical Acceptance

One of the perks of working as a janitor is that you get a lot of alone time with your headphones. Believe it or not, with four hours in a day, you eventually start to run out of reading material (gasp!) I had a list of Books I Still Meant to Finish, then worked my way down the Books I Always Meant to Get Around To, and the Books Everybody Told Me I Should Really Read Someday. Now I’m at the point where I just randomly click on Stuff Because It’s Available.

This has led to some happy accidents. One of those happy accidents was Radical Acceptance, some self-help book I clicked on because I was in the mood to help myself. Radical Acceptance, written by Tara Brach, is a Buddhist mix on psychology—or maybe a psychological view of Buddhism. Brach is both—a psychologist and a Buddhist— and the book uses both methods to explore the idea of self.

In a nutshell, Radical Acceptance teaches you why and how to just accept yourself as you are. It’s not a cop-out for negative behavior, but the idea is to still love yourself as you are now, including your mistakes. Instead of rejecting parts of yourself, you embrace them, accept them, and eventually find better directions to point them.

I liked this book. It helped calm a lot of my anxieties. Surprisingly, though, my husband gained more from this than I did. After I talked to him about it, he listened to it and found it helped him a lot to figure out his feelings, sort through old baggage, and keep from getting angry with rude customers.

All in all, this is a good book, and a good practice. Brach does a good job of packaging Buddhism into a beginner’s guide to meditation, and focuses on simply allowing yourself some breathing room. ♦

Lessons Learned: Freshman vs. Senior Year

Lessons learned from my freshman year of college, 2007-8:

• Thirty dollars is all in how you spend it.
• You can buy a lot of black beans with thirty dollars.
• If you don’t like someone, don’t let them eat your bread; once you feed them, they’ll never go away.
• Manbrownies don’t taste as good as regular brownies, but most women still prefer them. Maybe we just like the attention. Or maybe it’s the convenience. In some cases, maybe we just like the men who make them.
• Men’s soap is cheaper than women’s soap.
• Men’s razors are cheaper than women’s razors.
• Men’s pants are cheaper than women’s pants.
• Men’s pants don’t fit me.
• Poltergeists bring brownies. Men also bring brownies. By deductive reasoning, then, men are poltergeists.
• The words “you did what?” usually indicate a flagrant breach in social etiquette.
• 3-person dates aren’t really much fun.
• 4- or 6-person dates, however, are a blast.
• Masked men, though dashing, are seldom to be trusted.
• Cameras are never present when you need them.
• If your door rattles during the night, you can wedge your roommate’s shoe against it to keep it still.
• Hillary can condense an entire truckload of junk into six square feet beneath her bed.
• Nine blankets in wintertime are not enough.
• You never realize God is carrying you until He puts you down and you see how far you’ve come.
• I can go exactly three days without Matchbox Twenty.
• Ancient Romans had a brilliant language. Don’t ever learn it.
• Some TAs will give you extra points on an essay for knowing the names of obscure alcohols.
• Missionaries may write their mothers, but they never tell them anything.
• Chewing annoys me. Reading over my shoulder annoys me. Both, apparently, incites homicidal tendencies.
• Constant movie quotes, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable, as is hysterical laughter.
• Jenna and I were squirrels in a former life. Phoenix-squirrels. Tshaiga, I call them. If you can pronounce the word “chmig’pa,” you might be one, too.
• Rochelle’s hiccups are violent.
• Finishing an essay a week in advance is much more fun than finishing it the night before it’s due.
• Multiple-choice history tests are amazing.
• Multiple-choice religion tests are a crime.
• I’m a freaking pansy.
• Rhapsody in Blue relieves stress.
• Some men just don’t know when to shut up.
• Jackie’s nervous baking + my nervous eating = 5 lbs. gain… and somehow, a smaller pants size.
• Some people never stop dancing.
• Irish dancing produces man-calves.
• Knee-length boots and man-calves don’t work well together.
• My mother really doesn’t understand Homestar Runner.
• Sugar burns. Spectacularly.
• I hate cold weather.
• If you put the peanut butter on the counter, Jackie will eat it in a day. If you put it in the cupboard, she’ll eat it in a week. If you put it on a high shelf, it might last a month, depending how long it takes for her to find it. But if it’s under your bed, she doesn’t touch it.
• God is merciful. Were this not the case, I would have been struck down by now.
• Lightning doesn’t strike indoors.
• Nothing makes you appreciate your parents like moving in with roommates.
• Nothing makes you appreciate your roommates like moving in with your parents.
• The gospel is true; if it weren’t, its teenage members would have destroyed it by now. Instead, somehow they survive, thrive, and grow, as does the church. Miraculous.

Lessons learned from my senior year of college: 2012-13:

• If you’re a good cook, you can go weeks (or months) without buying groceries. Especially if your roommates aren’t good cooks.
• The most attractive thing to be is yourself. If your self needs work, work on it. But make sure you’re working on the parts you want to change – not the parts you think a guy would want you to change.
• If you like someone, tell them.
• If you want to date someone, tell them. Then ask them on a date.
• A date is not a marriage proposal.
• If a guy won’t call it a date, you’re not dating.
• If you’re not dating, ad you wish you were, stop. Just stop. Go find someone else to wish you were dating. And then date him.
• If you’re in danger of failing a class, talk to the professor. They don’t want you to fail.
• Being on a first-name basis with your professor isn’t sucking up. It’s spending enough time to prove you want to learn the material.
• Finishing an essay a week in advance is much more fun than finishing it the night before it’s due.
• Multiple-choice history tests are horrifying.
• If your essays are good enough, sometimes the professor will overlook a failing grade on a multiple-choice test.
• If you still think your answer is right, go talk to the professor. If you can prove him wrong, he might still give you points.
• If the food is really good, it will cause dancing.
• I’m a super wimp in cold weather.
• When biking, slow down under bridges.
• Cool river water will do a wonderful job of icing a broken hand. Same goes for frozen vegetables. Smoothies help, too.
• It’s simply amazing how many things you can do with only one hand.
• It takes a really long time to put on women’s jeans with only one hand.
• Tying a ponytail with one hand isn’t worth the time and effort. Chop the hair off.
• I look good with short hair. Who knew?
• Chocolate milk makes everything better.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was a boss. So was Fred Shuttlesworth, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and Diane Nash.
• People get mad at you if you turn off your cell phone for a day.
• Turning off your cell phone for a day and “unplugging” is well worth the trouble.
• Park City is beautiful,has clean air, and is about 10 degrees cooler than Provo.
• “Doctor De Soto Goes to Africa” is quite possibly the funniest children’s book ever written.
• Love isn’t just about romance. It’s about sticking together when things get rough.
• If you’d rather be in the hospital with him than anywhere else without him, you might be in love.
• If he inspires you to be better every day, he’s a keeper.
• God will take care of those who follow Him, and those who wait on His timing.

Death by Papercut

Hello, folks.

You may have noticed that I haven’t written in a while.

Don’t worry. It’s not because I don’t like you. It’s not that I don’t like writing. It’s not that I died.

It’s because of papers. Silly papers. Silly, horrible papers. Silly, horrible, accursed papers. Papers most unpleasant.

Last Monday, I turned in a paper on the response of the American news to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Last Friday, I turned in a paper about Haitian Vodou (or voodoo, as Americans spell it). Today, I turned in a paper about the religious significance of the word “fear” in the Doctrine & Covenants. Today, I got the first draft of the Rwanda paper back from a professor, and I’m turning in the final on Wednesday. Thursday, I’m turning in a paper on the conflict and/or blending of traditional and modern medicine in Africa, specifically relating to childbirth.

Am I stressed? Yeah, probably.

But it’s all going to be okay. Because I have a secret weapon: one that is sure to propel me forward into the week of finals in the midst of a chocolaty cloud of success and glory.

It’s not coffee. It’s not even caffeinated.

It’s chocolate milk. I have a whole tub of that chocolaty powder, and it is absolutely ridiculous how much milk I have gone through in the past few days. The inner health freak in me is screaming. The inner two-year-old is grinning ear to ear.

And a part of me is grateful for the papers, because it gives me an excuse to let the two-year-old win the fight. ♦