My drarwings!

I just found out that President Hinckley passed away tonight, and I wouldn't feel comfortable going on and writing a bunch of relatively unimportant drivel without at least mentioning how grateful I am for everything that I have learned from Pres. Hinckley over the years. I always learn something new from his talks and the times that I've heard him speak, but I have been equally influenced simply by the person that he is. His humility, faith, and confidence in all of us make me feel more humble, faithful, and confident that I can actually become the kind of person I want to be, and do things that will help those around me. Yay for Pres. Hinckley. :)

Ok...judging by his stellar sense of humor, I think Pres. Hinckley would be in support of me continuing on and reporting on the not-so-significant things that have happened in the last week.

1. I love lists. Hence the chosen format.

2. Over the last two weeks, I was subjected to some psychological testing. I know you're all thinking, "It's about time," but this was actually a service opportunity to my friend Heather, a PhD student in psychology who needed to perform a battery of psychological tests on one person. It sounded interesting, and with my obsessive email checking and envious speed-typing skills, I was the first to respond to the mass email and won the desired position. The testing occurred over several days and took about 10 hours.

It began with some basic background information (I'm super boring - no interesting background info), and then a whole bunch of random tests, such as an IQ test, which included doing pen and paper math problems, head-math problems (which I did shockingly well on, considering my head-math history), a spelling and vocabulary test, a general knowledge test, playing connect the dots, repeating series of numbers backwards and forwards from memory, putting colored blocks together to create an assigned shape, finishing patterns, finding oddities in pictures, looking at pictures and creating a story about it, etc. There was also a "personality test," which after I completed over 500 true/false questions decided would be more aptly titled "abnormal personality test" for consisting mainly of questions like, "There is someone following me, true or false." "I have strong urges to steal things, true or false." "There are periods of time that I have no memory of, true or false." "There is someone stealing money from my bank account, true or false." "There is someone out to get me, true or false." "My soul has left my body, true or false." Get the idea? I passed that one, I think.

I also completed the infamous and frequently mocked Rorschach test, aka the Ink Blot Test. The very first card she flipped over, I looked at and immediately responded, "it's a wolf-pumpkin-bat. With a frog coming out of its head." She then asked, "Show it to me to so I can see it." So I spent quite a while explaining how it had furry cheeks and a wolf-shaped head, but the triangular white eyes and curved mouth against a black background made it look like a jack-o-lantern, but then it had black wings coming out the sides. And there was a very clear frog head with little hands and extended back legs behind the glowing pumpkin eyes, so it looked like it was trying to climb out of the top of the jack-o-lantern. After she wrote all that down, she said my response would be very difficult to score. She also said that the test was "a bunch of [word that I'm not allowed to say]." I asked if I could scan this particular ink blot, and she said it wasn't allowed, so I muttered, "alright, I'll just find it on the internet." Which I did, courtesy of google images.

Other interesting ink blot interpretations included witches with their cronies, Donkey from Shrek, a penguin wearing a bow-tie (that same blot was also a beaver with no tail climbing a rock wall), and others.

But perhaps my favorite part was the drawing. She asked me to draw a boy, a girl, a house, a tree, a self-portrait, and a family. I think that out of all the things I was tested on, this particular one was the most revealing. I learned a lot about myself, mainly that my art skills are the exact same as they were when I was in 2nd grade. And that is not an exaggeration, because every Christmas my Mom pulls out the diorama of the Nativity that I made when I was in 2nd grade, and the people in that look just like the ones I drew last week. After I drew each picture, I had to explain what/who it was and what they were doing. Here are the pictures (I scanned them in using my new 3-in-1 scanner/printer/copier - thanks, Dad!) - don't laugh. I was working quickly and under pressure, but I kind of think it was the best I could do...

This is "the girl." She is 18, a freshman in college, and on her way to church. I know, her clothes don't match.The above picture is "a boy." He works. ("Where does he work?" she asks.) In an office. And I know, his tie is too short.

This is a house. It's in Washington. A family lives there. (I couldn't get it to be right-side-up.)

This is my self-portrait. After drawing it, I decided she was "pretty." Note my three moles.

And the best one of all, my family. Note the extensive attention to detail.

Now, I don't care how bad it looks, I am so totally in love with the above drawing. I feel that despite the obvious lapses in artistic talent, it pretty accurately represents my family. Particular details of note, going from left-to-right: Alexis is wearing a Maya wrap, which she has helped to market, and in which my newest nephew Bennett is comfortably slung. She's also wearing a pearl necklace and matching earrings, because Alexis is always very coordinated like that. Cam is wearing a Hollister shirt, his favorite brand. And on the far right, Burke has just a little bit of handsome stubble, along with a hooded sweatshirt and his hands in his pocket, because he does that a lot. He's my favorite part of the drawing. I just think he looks really cute, except that his head is shaped like the swearing, cigar-smoking baby Stewie off of Family Guy.

I realize that this was all part of psychological testing, but please do not overanalyze the above drawing of my family. The fact that my parents look like they are still married is not a suggestion that I am in denial that they are, in fact, divorced, or that I live in some sort of dream world. Nor is the noticeable absence of Mike and Rusty, my parents' respective spouses, any indication that I do not consider them part of my family, because I do. It's just that I was working under a time constraint, so I began with the biological, original family members, and then I had a little bit of extra time, as well as some space next to Scott on the left-hand side, so I gladly added in my fabulous sister-in-law Alexis and my three little nephews.

Another side-note: I think the above drawing also indicates that I may have finally recovered from the death of our beloved dog, Buffy. She didn't make it into the picture. I was reminded of this after discovering an 8 PAGE!!!!!! journal entry today dating from May, 2003, about how much I loved my dog. Mind you, that journal entry was written when I was TWENTY (20) YEARS OLD!!!! Seriously, 8 pages??? ALL about a dog? An 8-page description, in vividly detailed, well-written, stream-of-consciousness remembrances of all the adorable, beyond-cute things that Buffy had done regularly for the last 17 years of my life? And I seriously actually recall thinking at the time that writing that would be important for my posterity. It was deliberate. The event that spurred such an outpouring of written thought was my mom FLYING ME HOME for TWO DAYS to see Buffy because she had kidney failure and we all thought she was going to die before I came home for the summer. I came home to see the dog. And I'm sort of mocking myself, but I still admit that the trip was totally worth it. Except that Buffy was alive for an entire month after I came home, only to be put to sleep on the day I went through the temple for the first time. Great timing.

That's all for today.