Sam's work

 

All during the time that everyone else in our family is doing every other thing, Sam is just quietly working, working, working to make it possible. He works all the time. [Though not on Sundays! He is…religious…about taking Sundays off of regular work (ha ha) and I love him for that. Also for usually cooking Sunday dinner.]

But other than that! So much work. Class prep, teaching, department meetings, "citizenship" (BYU's word for all the random extra stuff you have to do), committees, and constant freelance work on top of it. I'm grateful that he can work and has enough work to support us, of course! But I'm even more grateful that he is willing to do all those things, and do them so well!

Sometimes the freelance work he does is repetitive (cards for trading games😵). Sometimes it's interesting (book covers, game trailers, ads). And sometimes it's actually something lots people get to see, like for the Mario movie. A few years ago he did a ton of concept art for another movie. He did SO MUCH art for it—just pages and pages of folders and folders on his computer. A staggering amount of art, really. And of course with movies, you never even know if they'll actually be made. He is always working at the very beginning of the process doing concepts. Sometimes they scrap the characters he was working on. Sometimes they scrap the whole movie. But this movie finally came out, and it is actually pretty cute, AND so many of his characters and designs actually got used! We were all so happy to see them, after seeing them on his computer and iPad for so many months while he was working on them.

This is the movie. It was called "Pookoo" when he was working on it but now is called "Swapped." It was the #1 movie on Netflix for a while!

He didn't know if he would be in the credits (sometimes artists aren't, if it's not in their contract) but he was!

He did a million designs, most of which I don't even have pictures of, but these are a couple of the cutest ones. The little baby pookoos (?), based on baby bunnies, of course!

These little pinecone hedgehog guys were super cute too (especially the babies).

To me it seemed like a cool movie to do concept art for because the whole aesthetic was so original. All the animals are designed like plants. I love the aspen-tree deer at the top of this post so much! I have never seen any other animals like them! There were fish that looked like lily pads, and snails that closed and opened like flowers, and birds that seemed to be made of leaves, and a bunch of interesting things like that. Somehow they made them all just look cool and not strange. And then even all the tiny details—their life cycles, how they move, the little backpack the guy carries, the way the light comes through the skin of the fish, the insides of their mouths when they yawn or speak—all those things have to be thought about and drawn and iterated on. It is an amazing amount of work, and I'm happy Sam got to see it go toward a finished product he liked!

And, while I'm at it, here is some other tangible artwork Sam did recently. These were advertising posters for an ice cream shop in Vienna, Austria. Their ice cream looks amazing. (I told him to tell the company he had to go there and try the ice cream in order to do the work, but he wouldn't.) It was nice of the ad agency he worked with to send him photos of some of the posters up all around Vienna! Fun to see! This was a cool job because it wasn't like he was one of a huge team. It was all just him!

And that's all I have. Good job, Sam!

Blessed by being asked and blessed by not being asked

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 2013 Conference.

Daisy is the choir director for our ward, and she's doing great at it, but it can be a very discouraging calling! I know just how she feels. I think I have never felt so discouraged in a calling as I did when I was choir director. There really are only a few people that ever come. They are the same 4-5 people. And no matter how much you invite, and make treats, and tell people "you don't have to be a great singer! All are welcome!", and try to sing fun music, and ask the bishopric to keep announcing choir practice—all the other people in the ward seem to think of themselves as "non choir people" and be perfectly at peace with leaving it to others. And for those who have, somehow, established themselves as "choir people"—not even necessarily because their voices are great but just because they are willing to sing, I guess—being one of the 4 people that supports the choir is its own kind of burden, knowing that if you don't go, no one will!

It seemed extra hard to me when that was my calling, because I hate asking people to do things they don't want to do. (I have to do enough of that with my own kids to truly detest doing it at any other time.) I hate "recruiting" or feeling like I'm imposing or seeming like I'm criticizing or judging someone. I get that for some people, it's just too hard to make choir practice right now. For some, it's super intimidating and they feel self-conscious. For some, their other duties won't allow it. I know all that only too well because I've had times of life where I just can't handle choir either. It's not like I think no one has a valid excuse. BUT, as choir director, if that's your calling, you can't just NOT ask anyone to come! You can't just make do with a choir of two people—or at least, it's hard to! And surely not everyone is so busy they can't possibly come? But I hate being that person who everyone else starts to want to avoid because they feel reluctant/guilty/hesitant about what they know you're going to ask them. UGH. So hard. (And poor Daisy! The bishop thought maybe people would support her more because she's a young woman. But no. They do not. I mean, some do! And everyone means well! No one is TRYING not to support her—but the fact remains. And her discouragement makes my own heart hurt extra!)

Anyway, in context of all that, I thought this section of Elder Eyring's talk was interesting:

You asked others of the Lord’s priesthood to help, with confidence that they would respond with compassion. You were not afraid to ask those who have responded most often in the past…You asked them, knowing that in the past they have felt the Lord’s generosity when they chose to help. You asked some already heavily burdened, knowing that the greater the sacrifice, the greater the compensation they will receive from the Lord. Those who have helped in the past have felt the overflowing gratitude of the Savior.

You may [also] well have been inspired not to ask someone to help load and then unload that truck. As a leader you know your quorum members and their families well. The Lord knows them perfectly.

He knows whose wife was near the breaking point because her husband was unable to find time to do what she needed done to care for her needs. He knows which children would be blessed by seeing their father go one more time to help others or if the children needed the feeling that they matter to their father enough for him to spend time with them that day. But He also knows who needs the invitation to serve but might not appear to be a likely or willing candidate.

You cannot know all your quorum members perfectly well, but God does. So, as you have done so many times, you prayed to know whom to ask to help serve others. The Lord knows who will be blessed by being asked to help and whose family will be blessed by not being asked. That is the revelation you can expect to come to you as you lead in the priesthood.

I wish so much that I could have this type of revelation better! I don't know that I have yet experienced that gift. And I get discouraged easily when trying to balance "don't ask too much, don't annoy people" and "people will be blessed by helping even if they don't want to at first!" But this gives me hope that it is possible to find that balance. Maybe someday??

Intentions, Murderous and Otherwise

Have you seen Giselle? It's one of those ballets one always hears of, but I had never seen it before the girls' ballet studio put it on this year. The story is a bit horrifying, I must say! Giselle is betrayed in love, dies of a broken heart, and then after her death, she (for some reason??!) saves her faithless lover, barely, from being danced to death by the ghostly wilis in the forest! And whom do you suppose were two of those vengeful wilis? Daisy and Junie, that's who. Tsk tsk!

Even though I didn't think I'd seen Giselle or the wilis before, I was somehow familiar with their signature step, this strange flattened arabesque that the wilis do while hopping across the stage (arabesque chugs, they call them). You will perhaps be shocked to hear that this move "signifies their murderous intentions"! Yes! They are quite evil! Not a role I can condone at all.

But let us leave this ghastly scene and go back to earlier in the ballet.

Thank goodness Goldie remains sweet and innocent. A charming village lass. (I suppose Daisy is one too. But not for long!)

Here is one of their pretty peasant dances

Junie had a part in the pas de trois and also a long solo!

j

Watch her, if you'd like! She is so good! (link: https://youtu.be/RNuIESzD2Rs)

https://youtu.be/XEB5g-Aces8

I like this picture of Junie and Brynn just standing casually in midair

Such high leaps!

In the last few performances, someone (another mother, I'm afraid😬) has been VERY ZEALOUS about the costumes—excessively zealous, we might say—not wanting the dancers to so much as set FOOT in the lobby while wearing them, and since they also didn't have any dress rehearsals to speak of (they had them, but no one dressed for them)—it was very difficult getting pictures of Daisy and Junie in costume. We had to sneak out the back door like thieves in the night! (DO thieves in the night sneak out the back door? They probably have to sneak IN the back door first, but then surely they must then sneak back out again?) But I'm glad we did it because their costumes were very pretty and they wanted a record of them!

The wilis do this low, cradling-arm pose a lot too, and we read somewhere that it might represent the babies they will never have.😢

It doesn't excuse their murderous intentions, though!

The Second Act of Giselle looks really spooky and cool. The backdrop is all black and the wilis, with the spotlights on them, really do look like glowing ghosts against it.

The girls have these long veils on at the beginning of the Act. They tied fishing line to the tops of the veils and then at a certain moment, people backstage pulled on the fishing line and all the veils just whisked off their heads and disappeared behind the curtains. It was really cool to watch!

(Like this)

It was so dark, and their dresses were so white, I had a hard time even taking pictures of them.

https://youtu.be/4YCa0g0eecM

Here are those murderously flat arabesques. They're so interesting to watch. So distinctive. And the girls have to do it without crashing into the lines of other dancers going the opposite way!

https://youtu.be/6vLxL3mrrTw

Sometimes their murderous intentions are emphasized by a red light from below. Scary! And they do not smile. Never. It wouldn't be fitting for such murderous young ladies.

Poor Hilarion pleads with the queen of the wilis for his life. But she refuses. She is heartless. They're all heartless. (Except Giselle, of course. She manages to save her own [unfaithful!] lover, Albrecht, when he shows up later. But Hilarion has no such luck.)

The queen of the wilis dooms him to dance until he dies!

And then he is forced to do so, hemmed in on every side by the unrelenting wilis!

Very sad!

Clementine wore her tutu to the ballet and enjoyed it very much! I can only imagine what valuable life lessons she was learning from the story.

She was definitely paying attention, as evidenced by this dance she did for me me later the next day!

Haircuts

The first time Daisy cut Junie's hair it was a great and terrible sorrow to me. She was four, Junie was two, and I don't know quite when else I had been so upset as a mother (up to that time). I cried and cried and cried, and I didn't think it was even a little bit funny, and I didn't think I ever would or could think it was funny! I'm not sure why it hit me so hard—I can't summon up the feelings anymore, only remember that I had them. My dear little girls! And their darling hair! Ruined!

Of course it all turned out fine in the end, and they were, if possible, even cuter with their little pixie cuts. And it was so fun for us to have a little afternoon out at the haircut place (even getting ice cream after, if I remember correctly—which I really probably oughtn't to have given them at such a time!) that I remember worrying maybe they would cut their hair again because it was all so fun! But they never did.

Until now!! After her success cutting Clementine's hair a couple times, Daisy took it into her head that she was perfectly capable of cutting any hair she pleased, and as you should know by now, if Daisy thinks she can do something, she will proceed to do it competently and without delay! Now, I have cut the girls' hair myself from time to time, but as we Nielson girls are blessed with indecently, not to say embarassingly, thick hair ["It's like cutting five heads of hair," said the haircut guy the last time I went in], it takes forever and is not for the faint of heart! Luckily, Daisy's heart was not faint. Junie's may have been a little faint, I admit, especially with Daisy mischievously letting out Oops's and Oh dears! left and right—but I must say the end result was much better than her attempt of thirteen years ago! She cut Goldie's hair too—and then Junie cut Daisy's—and thus, I told them, they were all nicely trimmed at very little expense or inconvenience to myself (as Mr. Bennett says about sending Lydia to Bath). 

Alas, just like Mr. Bennett, I would come to rue the day those words were spoken! Clementine had been saying a great many things about haircuts in the days following this event. Things like, "Daisy, your hairs are so pretty. Did you have a haircut? Is my haircut so pretty like yours?" In retrospect we should have seen it coming. Because one morning not long afterward, I went into the library to see this:

It was really quite a lot of hair! And my heart did sink a little when I saw it. But honestly, it surprised me how different I felt compared to all those years ago with Daisy. This time I just…almost didn't even care! I mean, I gave Clementine a stern little talking-to. I told her in appropriately sober tones that she must never do it again. But the whole time all I could think about was how cute and sad and sorry she looked, and be curious about what was going through her tiny little curious brain as she performed this operation on herself. She of course burst into tears, as she does at the smallest reprimand. And then I just hugged and hugged her while she cried! Poor little mite!

Daisy was really the most upset by it of anyone (as she was the one who had just given Clementine such a cute little bob a couple months ago!), and she scolded Clementine quite severely until I gently reminded her that she, of all people, had no moral high ground upon which to stand in this matter! Ha!

Unfortunately for the building of Clementine's character, she somehow managed to cut her hair rather well, tapering it down along the sides becomingly and only getting a few little pieces really short, almost like bangs. So we didn't feel compelled to take her into a salon to have it fixed. And really, after a day or two, we mostly forgot all about it! Clementine herself has not quite forgotten—I believe her feelings are still a little hurt—and she said soberly just now, watching me as I wrote this post, "It's bad that I did that." And then, a little accusingly—"Mommy, why do you still remember when I did that?"

Dear little sweetie. I suppose I should "remember her sins no more," but if she ever reads this when she's older, I want her to know that all my sternness was for show—for her sake, really, so she wouldn't make a habit of haircutting—but all I really felt was just pure love for her in her secret moment of naughtiness, and a wish that all "bad" behavior was so innocent and so easily mended, and an aching wistfulness for the far-off days and the far-off person I used to be, when the worst thing I had to cry about was little Daisy cutting poor Junie's hair.