One Unpretentious Blog

2011-10-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm cheap. Seriously cheap. This has been a frequent theme throughout the past two years or so; I doubt it comes as a shock to anyone who knows me on any level at all.

How cheap am I? Well, I bought my sister's Christmas present the other day. In a thrift store. For $3. If it had been more I would have seriously considered walking away from it. (Please--no screams and comments about how selfish I am. She KNOWS I buy used things for her because she's the one who started it. She is the queen of thrift stores and garage sales. I kneel in her presence. She can haggle like you cannot believe. She could talk a Bedouin camel trader into giving her the beast in question for a smile and the slightly creased postcard in the bottom of her handbag. I'm cheap, but she is miles ahead of me. Come Christmas I will find under the tree a large box full of fabulous loot from her forays into thriftland, all of which will be vintage, retro-chic, and utterly perfect--and it will have cost a total of $2.50. And I will hang my head in prodigal shame.)

How did I become so cheap? Well, to massacre the immortal words, "Some are born cheap; come achieve cheap; and some have cheap thrust upon them." I was born with a latent cheap gene, which finally evinced itself during my college years (when my food budget ran to $5 per week. Thank goodness for food-service jobs!). But what really sent me happily down the frugal freeway was buying a house.

We bought it from my parents, at very favorable terms, but there was still a huge gap between the money we had and the money we needed. We had two options: make more money, or slash our expenses dramatically. The first was not much of an option. My husband was already gainfully employed, and I was not--and could not be, because our first child had been born with severe developmental disabilities. All my time went into caring for him. ALL my time. And I was pregnant again.

So the only real route was to cut our expenses to the bone. We examined everything that had to be paid for with some form of money: food, supplies, clothing, living style. And we discovered that a lot of the things we were paying for were actually non-necessities, in the strictest sense of the word. That is, if a natural disaster had hit at that moment, we would not die from a lack of those items. Discomfort was a possibility, but not death.

That became our line in the sand. Air-conditioning? In the day, yes--necessary. At night, no. (We slept with ice packs for several months.) That winter we shivered without central heating and piled on the sweaters. (We bought one small space heater to place in our son's room, then, since I'm a worrier, we took turn sleeping on the floor in his room to make sure the heater didn't start a fire. The floor was hard, but toasty. And, yes, I did this while pregnant.) Diapers? Cloth, not disposable. Food? Vegetarian, basic staples, and lots of creativity. New clothes? None for us, homemade for our son. (Remnants were cheap, and I copied the patterns by hand so I never had to cut them apart and thus buy another to use in a bigger size.) Home decor? I couldn't live with blank walls, that would be death to the spirit for me, so I painted one picture to hang over the fireplace, and to fill a large empty wall took some old wooden hangers printed with hotel names from cities I had visited, and hung them in rows. We had only one car. We did not have cellphones or cable.

In the process I learned everything I could find on making a small budget stretch. I devoured Shattering the Two-Income Myth, and made The Tightwad Gazette my daily consultant. I begged tips from my frugal aunts. I sought out stories from the Great Depression and World War II, figuring that people had made it through those experiences with wisdom I could use.

It's been exactly eleven years now--to the day--since we moved in, and cheap became our lifestyle of choice. We're still cheap. We spend more these days--we also have four more children. But my mantra has become the rhyme my grandmothers used to repeat to me: "Use it up; wear it out; make it do, or do without." Trust me--you can get far more usage out of something than you expect at first.

So, I'd like to experiment with sharing some of my frugal moments. What's the use of being cheap if I can't have a little fun with it? (Hey, don't worry. I figure I can be snarky, and sharp

-tongued WHILE being cheap. It's a working theory--let's just see how it plays out, okay?)

Drum roll, please. (Ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat)

Make-Do Monday

We just reclaimed out master bedroom. (After five+ years of "loaning" it to our sons, whom we figured were safer on the ground floor in their earliest years.) Gasp not, gentle reader, we did not splurge on luxury fittings and decorator redoes. Actually, we used the leftover extremely pale yellow paint from re-painting the living room--improving the color-flow throughout the living space, as a cable-show designer might snootily say--and our largest expenditure was for laminate flooring. (69 cents per square foot. Whoo-hoo, big spenders!) Everything else was stuff we've had in our room for ages. (Cedar chest my dad made me for high school graduation, dressing table my parents gave me when I was an insecure 16-year-old. My parents have been EXTREMELY generous furniture- and all other ways-wise.)

Slight problem: Our bedside tables were being used elsewhere (living room and laundry room--long story), and we needed places to stash stuff that would otherwise fall to the ground with loud thuds when we dropped them.

Our solution:

We had bought some IKEA Trofast frames for our sons to use as dressers. They worked, but the boys outgrew them quickly. And since the soul of frugality is to use what you already have, I thought we could re-purpose them as bedside tables. So we added legs, cafe curtain rods, and some curtains I whipped up from fabric my mom gave me years ago (thanks, Mom!). And suddenly, we had very useful, very capacious, very CHEAP pieces of bedroom furniture.

Here's a view of the interior:

Look at all that stash space!

(Ignore the fact that one of the bins is askew. Not even I am perfect. Cheap, but not perfect. And would you take a gander at that babe in the picture. Me, circa 1997. Sigh.)

I got a place to put by bedtime book and reading glasses, with a clean, simple look (I hate fussiness; it tends to cost more), for a minimal price. Waste not, want not.

2011-07-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again (probably some time in this post) that motherhood isn't for wimps. But I'm getting ahead of myself--that's the moral of the story. Perhaps I should tell the tale before I moan the moral, no?

Where to begin? Hmmm. . . . I became a mother twelve and a half years ago . . . There've been quite a few times when it seemed like perhaps my children weren't suited to my calling in life. (I'm suited to it; it's the kids who don't get it. Amateurs.) For instance there was the great three-year-old-with-a-tool-kit debacle of 2004. (One deadbolt down, four stripped screws.) There was the poo on the playground incident. There were many, many, many other occurances when I figured surely I was on some cosmic version of Candid Camera. (Seriously, if there is some Celestial gag reel being made for the Judgement Day cast party I will be a major star in it.)

But today. . . . Today makes me wonder if my true calling in life is as an Alpine hermit. The quiet. The solitude. The distinct lack of "Mom--he's breathing too loud!" It would be just me and the mountain goats, and between you and me, mountain goats smell a whole lot better than my kids sometimes do.

Deep cleansing breath . . . in . . . out . . . once more. . . .

Okay. I'm steeled and ready. Today. [Deep breath.] We have a microwave. For some inexplicable reason it is a constant source of deep fascination for my children, which I can understand on some level. In go ice shards of a pasty hue, and in five short minutes golden savory chicken chunks emerge. (That's usually what our amazing piece of modern technology and design is used for: chicken chunks. Six thousand years of human development, and we employ its pinnacle for non-discernible poultry parts. Our civilization is doomed.)

As soon as they can teeter on a step stool (or a series thereof), my children want to press the microwave's grease-smeared touchpad. They yearn to hear its hum. They itch to control the source of all yumminess. And then they think 60 minutes is an appropriate length of time to melt a slice of cheese onto bread.

So when I returned home from taking a small feminine child to piano lessons and her brothers greeted me from the backyard fence, and the acrid smell of charred electronics wafted from the exhaust fan vent, I had a good idea of what I would find inside.

I was right.

My house was filled with a smell I know from experience won't be eradicated without time, strenuous cleaning, and the help of possibly toxic chemicals. I've turned on every bathroom vent in the house. Bowls filled with white vinegar now dot our interior-scape. And in desperation I pulled out the only smell-masking substance in the house: pine-scented room spray left over from Christmas.

Now my house smells like a forest fire.

Sigh.

I told you so: motherhood is not for wimps.

2011-06-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

You know the axiom, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? (Which is severely overused, particularly by teens with blue hair and pierced septums who always insist that you--the person with semi-natural follicles and un-holey nostrils--are judging them by their appearances. And that, by the way, is pretty much the purpose of such physical alterartions--to get attention through glaring idiosyncrasies. Note to the dyed and pierced: We see you. Heaven forbid we should accurately read your meta messages and consider you as a slightly different species of exotic and mildly deranged bird.) [Please note: I do not have biologically-related teenagers in my home--yet. My tone may change dramatically in a few years. But it probably won't.]

May I submit a more accurate, more personally-applicable, aphorism? More accurate because, frankly, EVERYONE judges books by their covers. (That's why publishing houses allocate so many resources to cover design. As a veteran used-book-finding-under-time-limits-type person, I know that sometimes the only thing you have to go by is the cover--and maybe a few laudatory blurbs on an inside page.) And more-personally applicable because, well . . . just keep reading, if you dare.

Here it is: Never judge a house by its exterior.

But why is such advice necessary, you may ask. That, my friends, is a explanation best given in pictorial form.

This is my house. Lovely, no? I especially enjoy the roses over the gable. Pity they only bloom once a year. In March. When the chaste trees--those dead-stick-like things in the foreground--look more like tumbleweeds on steroids than the purple-bloomed charmers they are later in the year. Anyway, most people, driving by mi casa would think, "Well there's a perfectly adorable cottage-style revival with intriguing landscaping." (These are very kind-hearted passers-by. I believe the neighbors who put up with us refer to our house as "the jungle in the middle of the block." ) "Oh," the unknowing observer would say, "I'm sure the interior is as gracious and inviting as that welcoming blue door."

Ha Ha, kind people--because inside, this ostensibly well-appointed home is in fact an interior-decorator's hall of horrors:

Eek! It's been eviscerated!

Why? Why was this brutal mauling necessary?

And what, what is that horrible galvanized monstrosity lurking

behind the feeble protection of a single stud?

Gasp! The mantel has leprosy and has been quarantined!

(And, yet, the piano practice must go on in this torture chamber. I like to think of it as a demonstration to the children of just how far we're willing to go to get the desired results. Just a kindly tip, kiddos--Heed it or else.) [I'd also like to point out the stenciling above the windows, done in a fit of ennui-inspired redo-ing, and a morality tale for almost a decade now.

Let this be a warning: Friends don't let friends decorate bored.]

Shriek! The quarantine failed--the pox has spread to the entry!

Blue tape! Blue Tape, STAT!

Chaos and confusion everywhere!

Rugs on sofas! Sewing machines invading dining tables!

Furniture placed with neither rhyme nor reason! Books both helter and skelter!

Oh, the humanity!

Only a miracle can save us now.

Photo Book

2011-05-27T13:34:00.001-07:00

Click here to view this photo book larger

Vroom, Vroom

2011-02-16T08:45:00.001-08:00

I confess, I have an addiction. And it's my father's fault. He's the one who introduced me to my compulsion of choice. But if I'm going to admit to something so shameful, I should follow the appropriate steps. So let's do this right.

Hi. My name is Melia, and I'm a Top Gear fan. I watch it on YouTube. I watch it at my parents' house. I search it out via Google. I need a fix at least every other day. I've seen every episode at least one--some more than five times. Like the race to Blackpool, or the amphibious cars challenge. Those were awesome. Oh, am I getting off topic? I guess so. Anyway, I love it because it makes me laugh--and because it captivates my toddler sufficiently to give me ten minutes of peace at a pop. And it's educational.

How so, you ask? Well, I can now speak somewhat coherently on the characteristics of the Bugatti Veyron. I can discern between a Ferrari and a Lamborghini at five paces. Those are vital skills in some settings, I'm sure. I have no idea what those settings may be, but when I find myself in one, I will be ready.

Furthermore, this knowledge is applicable to my life. No really. Stop laughing. True, I no longer drive. And even if I did, a half-million dollar supercar would hardly be a practical. Fun for a carefree weekend, yes, but not helpful for a mom who spends most of her time hauling things like multiple children and big packages of toilet paper around. You know, those things don't even come with luggage racks on top, so no possibility of stashing superfluous humans or tissue purchases there. But, because of my addiction I have recently made a discovery: my stroller is a Porsche.

Think about it: a Porsche has two seats, so does my stroller. A Porsche is open-roofed (well, some of them are), so is my stroller. A Porsche draws attention from crowds, so does my stroller. Here's the kicker: a Porsche's engine is at the back. My stroller's engine--that would be me--is also at the back. True, my stroller has more carrying capacity than a Porsche, but in all the really essential things like number of wheels, ability to steer, and transportational capability, they are the same.

So, the next time you see me walking down the street with my hair blowing in the wind as I stylishly stroll along with my convertible two-seater, I give you permission to be just a wee bit jealous. After all, I am driving a Porsche.

Stripped

2011-02-15T14:39:00.000-08:00

A lot can happen in five months and four days. A LOT.

For instance, one could give up homeschooling after four years and six weeks.

One could learn that all one really wants to do in the morning is take a really long walk to exhaust the dog or to take care of one's errands.

One could start eliminating all excess (or at least most of it) in one's life.

One could do all of these. That's what I did.

Let me explain--because, really, after a multi-month blog silence, some information is in order.

I loved homeschooling. Really. I loved the freedom; I loved the time with my children; I liked the possibility of them finishing the chores on their lists. But I have a son who is not only intelligent and curious, but also very good at pushing buttons--especially the ones marker "drive Mom crazy" and "drive Mom ballistic". I'm not going to name any specific infractions or repeated errors in judgement. I'll simply say that hazard pay was a consistent negotiating point when my husband and I discussed the budget. So, I would wake up every morning, full of zeal and determination to keep my cool, and within the space of not more than twenty minutes (thirty on a particularly determined day--or right after General Conference when I had been once more admonished to "love the sinner") I would be a wild-haired, bug-eyed, spittle-flecked raving lunatic. I'm pretty sure that's not the way education is supposed to work.

One day (I believe it was a Tuesday, sort of warm, but partially overcast) I had had it, as in HAD IT! (Moms will get this. Dads will shrug and chalk it up to hormones. That's why most of those who are reading this are moms.) The die was cast: "I am putting you boys into school, so help me all that is holy!!!!" They started on the next Monday. (There was a delay while we convinced the school that we were responsible parents with wonderful children who desperately needed their school. It required some red-tape cutting, some ego-massaging, some smooth talking, but it worked.)

It was an interesting transition. At first, I had no idea what to do with myself. For a major chunk of time I had defined myself and my life by the educational process taking place in our dining room: I am a homeschooling mom. Now I was adjective-less: I am a _________ mom. With nothing to fill in the blank. I moped around for the first week, stewing in my own perceived failure. (It was September in the Desert Southwest--stewing is inevitable even on good days.) Then I started walking.

At first I walked the dog. She had been chewing up household items: rugs, toys, furniture, and I thought the exercise would use up some of her energy. It worked, and I liked it. So I started finding new reasons to walk: books needed to be returned to the library, or there was a sale on toothpaste at the store. Almost anything became a good reason to drop the laundry basket, pack up the toddler, and head onto the pavement.

My walks started getting longer--two or three miles at first, then four; now we're up to around five to seven. Anything else doesn't seem worth the time. Mileage, people; it's all about the mileage. It's amazing how much I can get done on foot. (I'm not looking forward to summer, since I know that will put an end to my mobility, but it's been nice while it's lasted.)

It's also been good for the budget, since there's only so much one can fit into a two-seater stroller. (Twenty loaves of 50 cent bread is about the limit, although I did fantastically the other day with bread and Valentine's Day supplies, but I was in some sort of stroller-packing zone.) So I've stopped buying anything that wasn't strictly necessary. Apparently I had been buying frivolously, because I was able to cut my spending by one-third. That adds up. In the last five and a half months, I've been able to save up enough to take the family to Disneyland, to send the kids skiing for a day, and to sign them up for a week-long summer arts camp--all of which I would have said was impossible last year. Granted, there are days when the total age of my clothing equals that of my children, and I'll never be as glamorous as I want to convince others I am. It's a trade-off.

So really, what I've done is stripped life down. (Notice I did not write I've stripped down. That would imply less clothing, and there is no way in Tahiti that will ever happen!) I've eliminated some of the things and practices I considered necessary for years. And I like it. (Of course, there may be a day when my son comes to his senses and we can homeschool again. Then we'll have to change again. Change is good.)

Shameless Commercial Plug

2010-09-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

Some people are not meant to take things easy. (Not me, obviously. I can lounge with the best of them if I have to.) My dad is one of those people. He tried retirement, and found that it only led to endless trips to Home Depot and micromanaging the organization of my mom's kitchen spices. Not a pretty situation.

Now he's got a new gig:

Pretty fabulous, no? That's my dad. He came out of retirement to give the masses what they want: super-chilled ice ream and a whole lotta smoke.

I now return you to your regular programming.

A jingle for my WC

2010-09-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

(To the tune of "On Top of Old Smokey"/"On Top of Spaghetti", depending upon your generation or musical background)

I want a new bath--room,

not covered in pee,

with shiny clean fixtures,

and a shower for me.

I need a new bath--room;

this one is too small.

If I get much fatter,

I'll push out through the wall.

I've looked at new ti--le,

and pedestal sinks.

But am I the only,

for whom brown is the stinks?

I'm dreaming of whi--ite,

and azure tones, too.

But all of the ti--le,

looks like new baby poo.

Oh Angel of bath--rooms,

and mommies who scrub,

please rip up the flooring,

and blow up the tub.

I've got to re--mo--del,

and freshen the space.

Because if I don't

it may doom the whole race.

So if you like ti--ling,

and plumbing a line,

Give me a sweet phone call,

and my gratitude's thine.

Adventures with Sunny

2010-09-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

You know how it is with most experiences--you head into them with excitement and enthusiasm, only to discover quite soon thereafter that things aren't quite as good as you had hoped. (As examples I can offer: High School, possessing a driver's license, owning any pet that sheds, drools, shreds, or requires feeding, and motherhood--which is very nice on the whole, but a whole bag of dried beans some days.) And with each new experience, you think, "Hey, this will be fabulous, and it will always be wonderful and exciting, and I will love every minute of it!" And then reality hits. Every time.

Except for this time. Because having Sunny in our family is fabulous every day. Seriously--who knew it would be so great to have a person in the home who can carry on an intelligent, non-argumentative, non-fourth-grade humor conversation? Who knew how amazingly refreshing it would be to have someone here who is willing to take a bath without protracted negotiations? How amazing is it to have someone polite and kind and positive around this place? This is soooooo much better than I imagined it. Thank you Sunny and parents--you have made my month.

One of the not-quite-fringe benefits is that we now have an excuse--no, a responsibility!--to explore the state and its wonders, even though we've pretty much sat on our tushes for the previous several years, procrastinating the heck out of in-state travel. ("The Grand Canyon? It's been there for millions of years--it ain't going anywhere soon. We'll catch it later.")

So, now we go places. (And since I was raised in a family that thought monthly road trips were essential to salvation, this is what I've always thought family life was supposed to be like.)

We've gone canoeing up on the Rim:

We've visited Montezuma Castle:

(Side note: there are a LOT of German tourists at Montezuma Castle. A Lot. I would like to take this moment to inform all those tourists that not all Americans are stupid hicks. Some of us even speak civilized languages other than our own. And if you're going to be so rude as to make fun of the American mom who has spent all her money on taking care of her children, and thus has none left over for trendy or even acceptable clothes, and thus must wear stripey pink pants that no clown would be seen in

BECAUSE THOSE ARE HER ONLY PAIR OF PANTS!!!!!,

then for heaven's sake, don't compare her to a tacky chameleon--because she understands you and will give you the glare of your life, you snobby, stupid, snooty assumer.) (BTW, I don't think your t-shirt was all that tasteful, either. So there.)

We visited--and thoroughly enjoyed--Montezuma Well:

And we even survived the traffic coming home. Thanks, Sunny!

This goes out to . . .

2010-08-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the '80s? Seriously? Wow, you must be as old as I am. Sorry about that.

Anyway, the '80s were big on dedication nights on the radio. (If you don't remember the '80s, a radio is an old-fashioned device for getting music to your ears. Sort of like an MP3 player, but with an electrical cord, and the programming was done for you by guys in loud plaid suits and with no discernible taste. Just a little archeo-techno info for your more enlightened generation.) Dedication nights were entire evenings set aside so those bold/crazy enough to call in could proclaim their love/lust publicly and forever immortalize the object of their love/stalking in one song--thereby ruining certain classic tunes for those who found themselves dedicated to by someone they couldn't stand in the first place, "totally loved forever" but then later broke up with, or eventually had to get a restraining order against. (Il Roberto has a great story about dedication nights up at Ricks College [of Beauty and Automotive Repair]--sorry, private joke! Ask him sometime about it. Just be prepared to groan.) I used to listen to those dedications--knowing full well nobody ever was going to be daft enough to put themselves on the radio to dedicate "Forever Young" to me. (It seemed like a tragedy then, but now it's a major relief. How times and perceptions change.)

Amazingly (and completely unnecessarily), the '80s are making a MAJOR resurgence--hideous clothes everywhere!--so I thought I'd bring back the art of the dedication, but update it a bit for the digital generation. Thus, my dedications are not lame songs on an archaic analog technology, but fabulous full-color videos on your computer screen.

Enjoy!

For el Jefe:

For Maya:

For Gina:

For Kate:

2010-08-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

What are you doing at 10:14 p.m.? Are you heating milk to make yogurt? 'Cause I am, and if you are, too, we could be buddies in lunacy.

I've been waiting now for an eternity, it seems. It takes a while for the milk to reach 180 degrees--45 minutes so far, because I really hate it when the milk scorches, so I do this s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y--and then it takes a double eternity for it to cool to 115 degrees before I can add the culture. (Hey, if something has to be 115 degrees before it can have culture, then the Beautiful Desert Southwest is the best-cultured place on earth! Just a little desert humor for you there. Very little.) So I'm looking at a long sit here in front of the computer while the seconds tick by.

I wasn't planning on doing the eternity thing tonight. I was planning to read a little--some thing nice and literarily murderous, nothing too serious--but then I read something that struck the fear of breakfast into me: the weekly meal menu.

Somehow I had developed the insane notion that making blueberry coffee cake--and, yes, I know I will have to explain to my kids, again, that this particular carb-fest does not violate the Word of Wisdom. It just shatters the hope for balanced blood sugar.--for our morning meal tomorrow. Great idea. As long as someone else does the baking. But when I ask if there are any volunteers to take on the task, only the crickets respond. So it's me mixing up the batter and greasing the pans. And stupid me, I chose a recipe that sounded yummy. Which wouldn't be too bad, except that I'm sure most of the yumminess is due to the inclusion of sour cream in the batter. And--I'm sure I've mentioned this before--I'm cheap. And sour cream is expensive. So I substitute plain yogurt for sour cream. And I'm too cheap to buy yogurt. So here I sit, waiting for the stupid milk to come down off its frigid high horse and just warm up a little, darn it! Cause and effect really stinks at this moment.

Sigh. 175 degrees. Five more to go.

2010-08-12T21:21:00.000-07:00

Whew--the first semi-week of school is nearly over. (And, boy, doesn't that sentence reveal how much of a wimp I am? Whining after only two days of school. How do I survive whole months? That, friends, is the ultimate mystery of the universe!) We've made it through multiple Meet-the-Teachers (kids in three different schools!!!!!!!!), a multi-day high school registration experience (a BIG Thank You to the helpful staff at, dare I admit it?, Mesa High), and the truly frightening thrill of sending my teeny-tiny kindergartner off to school in a big yellow school bus. Again I say with complete sincerity, "Whew!"

And have I mentioned that it has been a little warm lately--just to add to the overall experience?

I've had a lot on my plate lately (can't seem to kick that anxiety eating habit. Some day they'll make me into one of those scare-you-straight PSAs: "This is you. This is you on anxiety-induced nachos. Any questions?"), but what keeps coming to me--in the moments when I can take a second to actually think lucidly--is that courage is a rare and wonderful thing. I saw it in the child who thinks she's in charge, who was determined to ride the bus--the only one on at the first stop. She was one weensy morsel of humanity in all that diesel-powered empty space headed into the unknown. Her mom, sad to say, was not nearly so courageous and spent most of the day praying no one messed with her daughter, 'cause then she'd have to go all momma-bear on someone, and I've never had to do that before.

Another one of the people who has the ability to ignore the fear is our foreign exchange student, Sunny. How many of you would have been willing to leave your home country and language for a full school year in high school, to travel half-way round the globe to live with a family you'd never met, to go to a school where no one understands what you're saying when you stub your toe, where you know no one? Strange place. Strange food. Strange(r than some) family. There's no way I could have done it: it takes guts, and I break a cold sweat just contemplating calling people I know on the phone. But this sweetie dared to leave everything normal behind, with only two suitcases of familiarity in tow. She took a chance on adventure and experience--she risked a lot with no guarantee of anything. Plus, she does it with a smile! Wow. I am totally bowled over. (And she hasn't even cried over the fact that we live in God's own toaster oven. Guts, I tell you)

She's amazing. And when I grow up I want to be like her.

2010-07-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

Announcements: New Arrival to the Kydd Family!!!!!!!

(No, I did not have a baby, am not pregnant, and do not intend to be without an act of God.)

The Kydd Family--of which I am a founding member--is pleased to announce the imminent arrival--next Saturday, to be exact--of a healthy, happy fifteen-year-old girl. We're welcoming an exchange student into our home. Friends, as a way to expand one's family, this is definitely the way to do it--no stretch marks, no morning sickness, no colic, no teething. The hard work has already been done. And we are the lucky people who get to share the next year of her life. Yeah! ! !

In preparation for the exciting event, our house has been turned topsy turvy. Well, strictly speaking, that isn't quite true. Our house was already semi-topsy turvy as we prepared to change every bedroom and 2/3 of the bathrooms. And then we found out we were going to be able to host a student, and we accelerated into renovation warp mode.

[The rest of this post is mostly for Sunny, our new short-term daughter. If you aren't her, go ahead and read if you're interested. If not, check back later as the continuing--I hope!--story of my existence unfolds.]

Sorry, Sunny. Since I am totally technologically inept, and no matter how hard I tried I was unable to paste the following photos into an email, I had to post them this way. (Seriously, I'm going to learn as much from you as you will from us!) I apologize for being a complete numskull when it comes to anything with a power cord.

Here's what your room looked like before:

Totally and irredeemably brown. Ick. And it was Robert's office, which meant it had his stuff on the walls. I did NOT decorate this room.

One month--and a lot of paint--later:

So much nicer, no?

Also, the desk:

And the closet:

So much better--cool, crisp, BLUE!!!!!, and cheerful.

Aren't you excited to come? We're excited to have you!

2010-07-18T23:47:00.001-07:00

Please excuse the possible jerkiness of this post. I'm writing it between bouts of "Bedtime Tag", which is a delightful game played by the parents of nearly-two-year-olds-who-can-climb-out-of their-cribs and the nearly-two-year-olds themselves. The rules are simple: immediately after Mommy or Daddy (parents are allowed to take turns in the initial stages of play. Eventually, one parent will dominate play while the other enjoys an extended penalty [for the other parent] phase known as "Just resting my eyes, Honey!") place the toddler/opposing team into bed with the pacifier, blankie, and twenty-three books (all of which contain the toddler-soothing words "bed", "night", "moo" and "dark"), the toddler climbs out of the bed/parental goal zone, and scampers for the couch-toy box-kitchen-bathroom-living room-hallway/child goal zone. The toddler scores one point for every 60 seconds he remains out of bed. Parents score one point for every 60 seconds the toddler remains in bed.

Current score: 34-36 (Slight advantage currently to the parents because the child is almost imperceptively wearing down, although I suspect the ten-minute nap he took in the car three hours ago will soon emerge as the decisive factor in his ultimate victory.)

Kids: gotta love them. The alternative is a rapid descent into chocolate-assisted madness. (It would be much more rapid without the chocolate.)

For example:

I grew up being told that Sunday was a day of rest, of spiritual rejuvenation--a time for meditation and spiritual contemplation. I believed this until I had children. In reality, for moms at least, it is a slow torture conducted in full view of the ward--depending on where you sit. As exhibit "A" I offer the following discussion, quoted verbatim, "enjoyed" only this afternoon.

Mom: (singing sacrament hymn, considering the role of music in creating an atmosphere conducive to the Spirit) La, La, La

Child (the one with the mischievous grin): Hey, Mom. Mom. Hey. Do you have a wipe?

Mom: (absently, but compassionately) Sure, honey, let me just pull one out for you. La. La. La.

Reaches into extra-large-grande-size, Super Mommy Bag of All that Can Be Carried Without Large Animal Assistance.

Mom: Here you go, Sweetie. La. La. La. (Pause after chorus and consideration, having been attempting to focus on the hymn and its spiritual conducive-ness, and thus not having actually looked at the child yet. But sensing, somehow, that all is not quite as it should be. Perhaps.) Why do you need a wipe, anyway?

Child: Well . . .

Mommy: (in--and I'm extremely proud of this--incredibly restrained pianissimo shriek) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is there blood all over your face and hands!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that, dear friends, is why the one with the mischievous grin took the sacrament this afternoon with a blood-soaked wet wipe stuck half-way up his nose. Dangling, I might add, over his mouth, thus requiring a rather odd head toss maneuver to drink the water. Also, eliciting smirks and fascinated/horrified stares from the priests, speakers, bishopric, and member of the Stake Presidency.

And you wonder why my temple recommend interviews take so long.

2010-07-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

110 days to go--110 days to go! In only three and one-half (ish) months the Beautiful Desert Southwest will be free of the annual sweat-fest known as Summer. If I had enough energy, and enough construction paper, I'd make one of those wonderful Elementary school-inspired paper chains and cut off a ring every day from now until Halloween. (Which, incidentally is the typical cut-off day for heat around here. It's called a "cut-off day" because that's the day you'd be willing to cut off you own head if the thermometer didn't announce the arrival of something dramatically colder.)

50 days down. 110 to go. We can endure this, folks. Somehow we will survive.

On a positive note, extreme temperatures lead to creative thinking. I've discovered that aprons are THE accessory for the summer. Not for bar-b-cue-ing (because that would require being
OUTSIDE IN THE MIND-MELTING HEAT, STANDING NEAR A CHARCOAL-FED FIRE!!!!!!!!!!,
which is, obviously the last thing I want this time of year. More heat is not the solution to any problem I can currently think of), but because the bib, if you cinch the waist ties tight enough (breathing is overrated at this point in the summer, anyway), makes a wonderful place to stash one's polar-gel pack. (Note: when running those errands that cannot be delayed until sometime around November 1st, there is a wonderful invention called a bra which will perform roughly the same cold-source retaining service. There may be a few side effects, but really--who complains about frost bite at this time of year? I think I'd welcome a little hypothermia right about now.)

Continuing that theme, gel-packs are my little summer survival tip du jour. I sleep cuddled up to them the way my husband wishes I would with him. (Sorry Honey, not this season. I have a heat-ache.) I sit on one when working at the computer. For some reason, that one doesn't last so long, though. I may soon resort to duct-taping them to my thighs before I walk the boys to their piano lessons. (Ha! All you skinny people could never get away with that little trick. But on me, a couple or twenty extra bulges--no one will notice. Fat can be our friend.) If they ever need a spokes model for polar-gel packs, I am theirs for the asking. (Wide-angle lens required.)

So, now that we've had our obligatory digression and some seasonal moaning, how about some cool and refreshing thoughts for your summer day?

See, here in the Beautiful Desert Southwest, climactic conditions aren't always as predictable as they might seem. Yes, you can basically depend on it being HOT in the Summer, and cool in the "Winter", and humid in August. But every now and then, we get thrown for a loop. This tends to happen mostly on my son's birthday. Seriously. This year we had a rain storm so fierce we lost power in our neighborhood. (Birthday candles--they're not just for cake anymore!) We slogged through foot-deep puddles on our way to buy him his birthday gift. (It also rained--less dramatically,thank goodness!--on the day he was born. Looking back, that seems like a sign. Of what I'm not quite sure.) But on his fourth birthday we had the mother of all Freak Desert-area Weather Occurrences. A picture will illustrate this better than any words:

That, friends, is the birthday boy in front of the snowman he made in my cousin's front yard. In the Desert Southwest. (Which was particularly beautiful that evening). His little hands were frozen--who carries gloves in the desert?--that's why his face is not as cheerful as one would expect of someone who has just participated in a miracle.

What I wouldn't do for another one right about now.

Nothing to get alarmed over. Honestly.

2010-06-26T05:06:00.000-07:00

Snick.

Snack. Whack.

Snap.

Don't worry--those odd and vaguely ominous sounds you heard in the wee small morning moments were only me, pruning my garden at 4:30 in the morning. Nothing at all to be concerned about.

Unless you're like my neighbors and get a little uneasy when you realize you live quite close to someone who may or may not be all there. After all, who in their right mind does yard work before the sun is even up? (Barring all other considerations, how, exactly, does one know what one is pruning at that time of day/night? And further, how can one prevent clipper-related injuries to one's self? Or is that all part of the fun? Answers: the human eye gradually adjusts the size of the pupil in response to available light, allowing one to become more sensitive to low light under exposure to dim conditions; years of semi-blindness have taught me to be aware of the position of my extremities in relation to personal activities; and, yes.)

My neighbors have nothing to fear, of course. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for my quasi-nocturnal horticultural endeavors. Two reasonable explanations, actually.

First, I am the product of generations of raving insomniacs. Like most of those whose surname I share, I either cannot fall asleep in the first place, or after miraculously achieving sleep before one a.m. I cannot stay asleep. I can count on only one hand the number of people related to me who have the ability to sleep though an entire night. (One of them is my own child. Only one of them.) The rest of us are doomed to an endless cycle of wakefulness and exhaustion. A recent item for family debate was whether or not a good night's sleep is one of the promises of the Resurrection. (I cannot scripturally prove my position that it is, but there are vague hints in the relevant chapters in Alma. The whole "restored to its proper frame" concept holds great hope for me, suggesting as it does the thought that my REM cycles may be returned to what they were when I was a child. According to my mother I was a consistent 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. person until I went to school. Sigh.) The others saw our point, but quibbled over the idea that sleep will be unnecessary in a perfected state. To that I say Balderdash! I have several years of sleep unclaimed, and I cannot imagine letting them go to waste, perfected state or not. Besides, can you imagine what Celestialized dream might be like?

The major culprit in tonight's wakefulness was The Child Who Teethes Grumpily, a.k.a. The Happiest Baby in the World, when he isn't currently pushing molars through sensitive gum tissue. His wails at 1:30 doomed me to my present state. He is, naturally, sleeping soundly now. (Someday I will have my revenge. Let's just say there are several potentially hysteria-producing photos in my possession, and I am prepared to whip those puppies out at strategic moments during his adolescence. Nothing perks up a prom date like pictures of my cutie trailing soapsuds across a floor after a bath, if you know what I mean.)

Second reason for pruning before the (in these parts) whimper of dawn: I live in the beautiful desert Southwest. For those who abide in more temperate climates--say California, or Hades--this may not make sense. Allow me to whine/explain. Forget frying eggs on the sidewalk; it's hot enough here during the day to fry eggs in the palm of your hand while looking for a spot of sidewalk to demonstrate said phenomenon. It's only June and already I want to sob in surrender. It's 5:30 a.m. and 90 degrees outside! This isn't a climate so much as a solar-sponsored war. The only chance I have to do anything without burning major expanses of flesh and/or spontaneous combustion is during the very earliest of hours. Forget working under a large hat and regular hydration--this time of year my favorite gardening is done under a roof in front of the fan, preferably in a recumbent position. Not a lot of plants grow under those conditions. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. What most people call "summer gardening", the kind done outdoors, with vegetables, trees, and such, is a strictly nighttime event for me. When you live in a place that doesn't cool down into the nineties until midnight you adapt. There's a reason the desert seems so empty: all the intelligent creatures spend the day and most of the night indoors, praying for another Ice Age. Let me tell you, Global Warming takes on a whole other and very personal meaning in the middle of a desert Southwest summer.

So, for the next while--120 days or so, but who besides me is counting?--I will be pruning, weeding, trimming, hanging laundry, sweeping, and in all other respects tending to outdoor chores while the sun is on the other side of the globe. If it worries you, I suggest ear plugs. They work for my neighbors.

2010-06-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Better Homes and Gardens, Country Living, Home and Garden, et al:

In view of the current economic situation, and in light of the fact that reading your gorgeous, glossy pages induces hours of weeping from this loyal but chronically cash-strapped reader, may I suggest a new feature to be included in your wonderful, but ultimately depression-producing publications:

Making Do with Melia

Honestly, I think the time has come to reassess our home-design ideals to reflect a more realistic approach to interior decor. Namely, the fact that NO ONE HAS ANY MONEY FOR FANCY DOO-DADS! (Features Editors: you know who published that fancy spread on French Rococo lamp finials. Aren't you just a wee bit ashamed of yourself?) A more current, socially-relevant path is needed these days, and I graciously offer myself as guru du jour. (Martha Stewart, eat your heart out with your exquisite Colonial-era pewter fork and knife. There's a new diva in town, and she owns Melmac plates! 1970s vintage. Pre-scratched. Top THAT!)

Allow me to present my credentials:

Age: Old enough to understand the beauty of Photoshop in a biography picture. Young enough to remember in which Mason jar I stored my marbles.

Education: Yes, thank you and my parents very much!

Experience: 12 years as wife in a single-income family.
9 years as mother to a ravening horde of children who prefer eating to staring at beautifully matted and framed artwork, although we offered them the choice when we overhauled the budget last year.

Significant time as Tightwad of the Month.

Skills applicable to this position: Can repurpose innocuous bedroom furniture as high-fashion living room objets d'art.
Have high degree of glue-gun aptitude.
Can perform and spell "decoupage".
Ability to use ludicrously low monthly allowance for purposes of good instead of evil.
Zealous commitment to never buy new when you can scrounge it free.

Ideas for features: Instant $anctuary--combining bedroom, office, and family art gallery into one serene space on a budget of $50 in less than two weeks.
Use It or Lose It?--the morality and aesthetics of retaining the inevitable detritus of family life. With special emphasis on recycling worn-out socks as furniture protectors, high-concept puppets, and sources of both artistic inspiration and mental breakdowns.
Art for the Colorblind--teaching one's husband to appreciating the nuances of hues other than white. Bonus: how to cope with "I don't care, Honey, they all look the same to me!"
Dinner as Decor--using the principles of design to create an inviting environment based on the spaghetti stains in the kitchen. Extra feature on the merits of differing sauce brands as inspiration.

I await your enthusiastic responses. In the meantime, I have a bathtub fiasco/artistic challenge awaiting my attention.

Creatively yours,
Melia

The camera never lies--unfortunately

2010-04-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Blogs are interesting things, ya know? They allow glimpses into lives we'll never live, into insights we might never have, into experiences we'll never fully share. I love that--mainly because it reassures me that I'm not the only one wandering around pushing on the "pull" doors all alone.

But here's the thing: the glimpses are carefully edited. Rare is the writer who puts it all into view and says, "Here it is, folks. Complete and uncensored!" Which is kind of a relief, both for the writer--because a little mystery makes a gal feel fabulous, and for the readers--who don't need to know exactly how the kidney stone felt as it scraped its way down the urinary tract. That's the role rightly filled by Aunt Myrtle at the family reunion, not bloggers.

But, in the interest of semi-full disclosure, I will allow a more-candid-than-normal peep into the glamorous but unpretentious life that is mine.

Ready? Got your glam glasses on? Are you prepared for the swankiness that I live daily? Don't say I didn't warn you!

This, my blog-perusing friends, is the perfect visual metaphor for my existence: a poorly-shot photo of the laundry line on my back porch. I told you it wasn't all Martinelli's on yachts and soirees in Paris here in blogland. Now prepare yourself for the one thousand words the picture was supposed to spare you.

Things you never would have known about me if you hadn't seen this blog today:

I am cheap. Really cheap. So cheap that when the dryer broke in January I declared it a non-necessary luxury item and chose not to replace it. Now, my lucky neighbors get a close-up view of the ever-changing art installation I like to call "Ephemeral Cleansings: a journey into the evanescence of a mother's work".
I am so cheap that when we replaced the back door of our house after 27 years of devoted protection from elements and bad guys, I determined it to be the perfect future gate to our vegetable garden. Every garden should have a bright blue portal, no? If only my husband agreed.
I have multiple jeans-wearing children. Children who will not be pried out of their jeans, even when said jeans are developing stress fractures in strategic regions. Even when those fraying denims are two sizes too large and falling from their non-existent hips or three sizes too small and showing inappropriate lengths of calf.
Also, one of those children has the courage to wear brightly green jeans. Thank heavens the child in question is the female of the bunch.
I love my backyard trees so much I am loathe to prune them, even when they start encroaching on my work space. It isn't logical--especially in the height of summer when I have to dodge potentially eye-gouging twigs with every article I hang, but the alternative seems like sacrilege, especially in a place where every tree is a leafy miracle.
We have waaaaaaay too many chests of drawers in and out of the house. Last count: 12. In various colors. And that's after giving some away. They are my storage system of choice. They store everything from extra sheets to hole punches around here. Some day I will achieve chest-of-drawer paradise: a workshop completely lined with drawers, with a big work table set on top of drawers in the middle. When that day arrives I will weep. And then I will immediately get hot glue all over everything.
I am apparently too busy to paint the porch. That's the gentle, face-saving fib I tell myself every day.
This lady is cool enough to cover tables with contact paper. The kids don't mind and the pigeons seem to approve.
Apparently, I have a subconscious desire to moon my long-suffering neighbors, but since I know that would be wrong--also potentially psychosis inducing (for the neighbors)--I allow my laundry to do it for me.

Don't you wish you were me? And aren't you glad you don't live next door?

Dim the lights, raise the curtain

2010-04-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

At some place on this blog I must have stated the case for me keeping my big flapping mouth shut. Now I wish I had labored less diligently on my sentence construction, and had heeded my own advice slightly more wholly. Because, friends, I am stuck in the mud pit of my own making for sure this time.

As always, a disclaimer is in order:
I am not a personal horn-tooter. The role of making me sound better than I am falls to my loving husband, who does so heroically. My job, as I see it, is to do what needs to be done--as well as possible--and then get onto the next task. Is that so wrong?

Somehow, though, this time I sort of volunteered myself--after being asked to do so, mind you!--onto the biggest, most ulcer-producing project of my soon-to-be-extremely short life: the Stake Anniversary Pageant. Oh. Dear. Goodness. And Calgon, take me away!

Forget what you think you know about pageants--there will be no tiaras. Sashes will be kept to a bare minimum, and will be tied solely around waists. The talent portion will consists of pre-memorized lines, delivered to an audience which I pray will consist of more than theater-loving crickets. It's somewhere in the wasteland between really hopeful home-grown theatrical and heart-felt tableaux vivants. And I have landed smack in the middle of it, right up to the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. (Mostly kept unnoticeable by steady applications of Nair and tweezers.)

You see--and I am loathe to toot this particular horn--I seem to be in a directorial position here. I, the woman who has never directed more than a single roadshow. Who managed to graduate from university in a theater-related field only because she was too afraid to fail. Whose biggest stage triumph to date was as "popcorn" in the annual dance recital--and even then I forgot to put on my toe shoes!

I am so doomed.

But, the show must go on. I think. Most people assume.

Auditions start tonight.

This can only end in tears.

Go ahead and Google it!

2010-02-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

In case you ever have a serious need to discover the exact number of Google results for the term "exploding guinea pig" don't bother searching: I got your number right here. It's 55,800. That's about 53,000 more than I would have estimated, but, let's face it, there are a lot of sickos out there.

Count me one of the sickos, because I'm about to push the number up to 55,801.

This is the story of our own exploding guinea pig.

If you are a card-carrying member of PETA, or just really serious about the sanctity of animal life (even those things that I'm sure even Linnaeus wouldn't have considered animals--sea cucumbers come to mind) fear not: the guinea pig in question never breathed a breath of air, never gave one of those endearing little guinea pig "squeaks", never chewed up a $80 textbook in a burst of sheer joie de vivre like some mice I once kept for a science experiment. (I got my revenge. And the high school boa constrictor got lunch. I was cheap and vengeful even then.) No, the guinea pig whose guts now waft over my back porch was a toy.

You see, my kids go to Swedish school. (I believe I've mentioned that before--maybe you've seen the photos or watched the embarrassing footage.) So, there are many occasions when they take part in activities at the local IKEA. I love those occasions, because it gives me a chance to wonder what my life would be like were I to move across the Atlantic and have carte blanche to outfit an abode. (I love my home, but one does get to "if-ing" occasionally.) I ponder deeply the psychological implications of my fondness for certain lamps over others, and wonder if the over-the-sink-strainer would really change my existential outlook on life as it seems to suggest. And then I usually buy a couple of inexpensive sheets. I'm cheap, and I'm a mom.

My children also enjoy these occasions, but not for the same reasons. They love them, because IKEA--being a very progressive company--rewards its Swedish School helpers well. And thus it was that this year, after the Lucia procession and singing (sorry--no embarrassing photos this time, but whoo-hoo, did el Roberto look fab in that white dress!) the children were given very large IKEA bags (which I have appropriated. The grocery baggers' eyes always fall out of the sockets when I whip those babies out. Current record: three gallons of milk, five pounds of rice, and a half ham. Thanks, IKEA!) and cuddly stuffed guinea pigs. One for each child. (Even the one whose sole contribution was to grin and sweetly drool.)

And now for the exploding part.

The other night--being the night before Valentine's Day--my husband and I hired a babysitter so we could do something REALLY romantic: return to the used book sale at the state fairgrounds, and then go to buy a wedding present before grocery shopping. Try not to be jealous. Especially about the part where the book sale mostly smelled like llama pee. Well, at some point in the proceedings/general chaos that prevails around here, the dog found the absolute love of her life: one of the guinea pigs. It was apparently a tender tale of dog meets pig, dog licks pig, dog gnaws hole in pig's neck. Ah. L'Amour. And then. my children being the most helpful brood in the world (most of the time. When I threaten to yank all privileges, including indoor plumbing) tossed the sadly disappointed and unsatisfied guinea pig in the washing machine, where it reposed--probably thinking deep thoughts about love and the inevitable decay of mortality--until I dumped in a ton of laundry and started the washer up.

Poor pig never had a chance. Death by centrifugal motion. Sounds like a physicist's secret suicide fantasy.

And I didn't know until when, in the act of hanging out the laundry (16 days without a dryer, and counting!), I started shaking out piles and piles of pure white fluff.

I am a decent woman. I hung the emptied corpse up to dry. And since I'm both cheap and a believer in the afterlife, I fully intend to make the poor thing into a hand puppet. As soon as I can wrestle it away from the dog.

Normal? What is this thing normal of which you speak?

2010-02-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

Well, my friends, I now have three laundry lines hung above the stage in the basement.

I'm sure something about that sentence sounds odd to everybody who isn't a member of the immediate family, so explanations are in order.

First: the drier broke Saturday. Perhaps broke is too nebulous an explanation; gave up the ghost may be more appropriate, but until we can call out a diagnostician whom we trust and who will appraise for cheap (usually, that would be my dad, and he's unavailable currently--something about the desire for a vacation, although I can't imagine why someone would want a vacation when he has a daughter with extremely needy appliances, can you?) we'll just have to call the thing comatose and find a temporary work solution. Thus, the four laundry lines on the back porch were inadequate to the unimaginable washing load this family produces. (Three boys, one girl, one dog. You do the laundry math. If Tide ever wants to sponsor a family for promotional purposes, I'll be pushing to get at the front of the audition line.) Additionally, I must mention that as I was setting laundry out to dry--counting (overly-optimistically, as it turns out) on our wondrous desert aridity for it normal effect--it started to rain. Timing is everything, friends! So, seeking a largish, openish, dryish space--which would eliminate all bathrooms in this house (designed in the 1980s by a male whose ablutions consisted solely of wet wipes and travel-size toiletry supplies to judge by the square-footage and workability of the bathrooms in this house--40 square feet, 40! And you have to sit on the toilet to close the door. You can't tell my a woman drew up the blueprints. No way.), as well as rooms currently taken up by sleeping arrangements, schoolwork, cooking, and normal in-house movements, we (I) came to the brilliant solution that the only truly available space was the basement. And the best spot in the basement was over the stage.

Second: the explanatory bit about the stage. Yes, there is a stage in the basement. It isn't terribly large--slightly larger than a bathroom, though--nor is it professionally equipped. You might call it a stage in embryo. It exists--raised by eighteen full inches above floor level, but no productions have been staged as yet. But they will be. They will be. Mainly because I am who I am, and because we have the darn thing and are going to use it if it kills some of us. Also, because I have a daughter with a very feminine penchant for dressing up and dramatics. (Her bedtime soliloquies are wondrous to behold and be-hear.) The stage in the basement is tradition. It was there when I was a child growing up--the pride of my heart, and the setting for many brilliant productions. One of which, if I remember correctly, was called "How Sun and Rain Got Together." I believe I still have the original script somewhere. It was a triumph of juvenile theater. Naturally, I wrote, directed, costumed, and starred in said production. There are some advantages to being the oldest child. Not many, but some.

So, recap: laundry lines above basement stage. All in all this is whatever passes for normal around here.

And that brings me to the real point of this post (it isn't really about laundry or dramatic production spaces--too bad!). The real point is that there is no such thing as normal around here. Really.

I realized this yesterday as I was walking home from dropping off the boys at their enrichment school. There I was, halfway home on what is usually a three-mile walk, but which yesterday stretched to four miles because of errands which had to be run, crossing a freeway overpass, when the thought struck: "No wonder we have a hard time with our planning--we have no normal to plan around!"

Chalk one up for freeway overpasses as places of inspiration!

Honestly, though, what day would you consider our average day: the one where I wake up at two to write on whatever project is currently at hand, then supervise school until ten, then attempt to motivate the kids to do chores until it's time to hop on a bus, and then the light rail to get to Swedish school and eventually return home at 7 p.m. for dinner? Or the one where I wake up exhausted from a night attempting to teach the most stubborn child in the world to sleep for more than four hours at a time without my physical presence (sixteen months of failure, and still counting!), then rush one child off to his school, then supervise the chaos of the remaining three while attempting to maintain home and sanity until child and spouse return from their respective activities? Or is it the day at the end of the week when I'm frazzled and pooped, but have to teach lessons, and then catch two buses to take a daughter--and her unwilling brothers--to dance class, after which the weekly grocery shopping must be done if there is to be both peace and food in the house the next day? Is there an average in there somewhere? Is it so carefully hidden as to escape my careful scrutiny?

The thing is, I always seem to be making plans (trying to fit in exercise, personal study, reading more than one paragraph at a time, etc.) based on the elusive "normal"--supposing, I guess, that one day all these weird aberrations such as sleepless nights and teething and wildly differing workloads will cease. As if next Tuesday everything will magically fall into place and our life will become predictable and calm on a daily basis.

HA! I know something about what next Tuesday brings--and I'm sure involves at least one child complaining about what is served at dinner. Because even if there is no such thing as "normal" around here, at least a few things come standard.

Melia's Month of Memories--Post Second (because I just can't seem to get in the habit of writing every day. You would weep if you saw my journal.)

2009-12-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

Some months have personalities. July and August are bullies here in the beautiful Desert Southwest--beating us mercilessly about the utility bill and forcing us to cough up protection money, "Or face a day in the sun, if you know what we mean. Heh, Heh, Heh." February is a flirt--teasing us with the lure of romance and eternal affection, but then speeding away just when she was getting interesting. December is the sprinter, always rushing by to claim yet another, "Gee, that was a quick month" record. And he just whacked me on the be-hind with his baton. (Of course, in the case of December the baton is made out of peppermint. Even so, there's little welt right where I was smacked.)

So, yeah, I let a few days get away from me. But how is a middle-aged mom supposed to keep up with the flash that is December?

Excuses aside, on to the memories!

Today's topic:

ornaments and the trees that go with them

I suppose that there are probably people that don't really care what the Christmas tree looks like--or even if it makes it into the house in time for the holiday. I may even have known them and not fully understood the gaping holes that were their souls. How can you not care what the tree looks like? It's going to dominate the whole darn house for a month or so, and everyone will see it! So do a good job on it, darn it!

I, naturally, come from the other end of the spectrum. I blame it on my mother. (My father is one of those for whom the tree is a nice concept, but not so much of an obsession; it's more like something to dodge when vacuuming. If he vacuumed. Which he does. But only when my mom is out of town. He's come a long way, baby.) Mom grew up in a family who liked the tree just so--and habits like that are hard to break. And luckily for Mom, she always had a Christmas tree that gave her scope for just so-ey-ness.

I grew up in a house with a twenty-foot tall vaulted ceiling. That was nice in the summer when paper airplane contests were popular. (That was a quiet enough activity for us to do when we were cooped up by six solid months of temperatures hot enough to melt your spleen.) But it was a real asset when it came time for the Christmas tree. Mom and Dad--who clearly knew the power of BIG in creating wonderment in the juvenile brain, always went for the tallest tree they could find. (And now that I think about it, how? Because even in the 70s, when such things were not twenty dollars a foot like they are now, my parents were not exactly rolling in the dough. Did they have a Tree budget which they contributed to all year long? Did they fast on Fridays and save the money? Did my dad moonlight as a gold miner to accumulate the cash? These are question I really ought to ask and include in my personal history if I ever get around to that. Which seems unlikely, given my propensity for procrastination of the typed type.) One year we kids were very proud when we were able to score the sixteen-footer that had been set aside for one of the banks in town. (Really. We were apparently budding anti-capitalists.)

When we got those monstrous--in the very best sense--things home, Dad would wedge the trunk of the tree of the year in Mom's largest pot (see--too poor even for a tree stand!) and Mom would set to work. All the ornaments from the past thirty-odd years would come out, and be exclaimed over. We children would claim all the ones we had made or had been given over the years. There were the felt angels Mom had made when I was four or so, and the little china Dutch shoes, the doves from Mom and Dad's wedding reception, and the angels from Mom's childhood. And they had to be placed correctly. Even spaced; no two similar ornaments next to each other; breakable glass ones at the top. It took forever. And when we were done, we girls always wanted to sleep underneath the tree. We even got to once or twice.

Every year the trees became more elaborately decorated. Mainly because we each received a new ornament each year--something that commemorated an event from the year past. That was part of the fun--to see what we had done on display in felt and lace and glass.

When I grew up, the tradition continued. On my mission I received a glass globe. The year I got my driver's license (AFTER the mission and the college graduation, pathetically enough) I was given a red car ornament. Christmas ornaments were/are a BIG DEAL.

So is it any wonder that when Roberto and I were engaged I gave him an ornament for Christmas?

He didn't get the concept.

There I was, warmly welcoming him into the wonderful welter of my family's traditions, and he was disappointed it wasn't a watch or a tie or whatever a twenty-something-year-old guy really wants for Christmas. (Something illicit and highly inappropriate, I fear) It took him nearly a decade to understand the significance of that gift.

Naturally, I tease him mercilessly about it every year. It's on the agenda for this one, too.

These days we actually have two trees. Our first is the artificial one we (I, mostly) set up as soon as possible after Thanksgiving. It's covered in fruit ornaments, and is actually rather restrained, when you consider how I was raised. We have a family tradition--started almost five years ago, and thus of comparatively ancient vintage--of adding one additional ornament a day. All these ornaments are on gospel themes: the temple, families, missionary work, the Savior and His birth. We call it our "Fruits of the Gospel" tree and it's our one point of sanity in an over-commercialized celebration.

The other tree is the big one. The one for which all the living room furniture must be arranged. The one that tales up more space than should be legally allowed. And Santa brings it and decorates it on Christmas Eve while the children sleep. (Last year Santa scored by going on Christmas Eve to Home Depot, where they just GAVE him the tree for free. It was one less they had to chip up for mulch. Santa is a frugal shopper.) When everyone (except Mom, who still hasn't mastered the trick of sleeping on Christmas Eve--too excited, if you can believe it) wakes up, there it is, bright and shining and covered with all the well-loved ornaments that Santa had apparently quietly retrieved from the basement without the insane guard dog licking him to death in the process. (Guard Dog likes Santa, it would seem. Or maybe Santa keeps his pockets full of peppermint-flavored mace for just such a situation.) There are the felt angel from my pre-school days, my globe, my Dutch shoes. The boys have their ornaments for trips to Disneyland and to the aquariums. There is the cloth angel I stitched for our first son the year he was born and I couldn't afford two dollars to buy him one. The icicles I bought when I worked in the trim-a-tree department at the mall are scattered--and still quite effective. And my husband's first ornament, his knight-in-shining-armor hand-blown glass ornament, that he really didn't think much of at first, is near the top.

It's a pretty darn fabulous sight.

2009-12-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

Good heavens! When did December sneak up on me? No knock, no warning whistle, no flash of the twinkly lights. Just WHAM! And suddenly everyone is spouting Holiday Cheer like it's some sort of chocolate-induced acne and I only have three weeks--no, make that 19 days!!!!!!!!!--to get everything done. Because it just ain't Christmas if Mom isn't frazzled and slugging back hot cocoa to steady her nerves.

In an effort to remember and reinforce to my poor shriveled soul what Christmas is all about (and no, Virginia, it isn't about your six-year-old son's fifteenth re-write of his letter to Santa--this time with major emphasis on highly specific and probably unlawful-in-the-hands-of-an-unlicensed-minor type toys.) Christmas only comes once a year--one chance in 365 to make a memory to last through the joys of spring, the blisters of summer and the muddy paw prints of autumn. One day to GET IT RIGHT, dagnabbit!

And so, only six (and one half) days late, I begin my

Month of Memories

A month--if I can keep it up; feel free to bet--of the memories that I hold near, dear, and occasionally cringe-worthy.

Tonight's topic: Christmas food (mainly because I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, and it just feels right somehow.)

I know there are people who eat ham or turkey on Christmas Eve. I've been friends with a few of them in my time. And on my mission I met others who celebrated with tamales, enchiladas, and even lasagna--a particularly festive bunch. But the fact is, nothing in the whole wide world says Christmas so well as Swedish Meatballs or Clam Chowder.

You see, I have a large family. Not that my parents were so very prolific or anything--there are only four of us siblings, although that prior to our births many more were planned. (Sorry about that, Mom!) When I say family I mean FAMILY. With a big red letter in front. With lots and lots and lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, great-aunts and -uncles, grandparents, and people we just figured were family until we started doing genealogy and found out those trees did not intertwine. When my mom married my dad she thought she was getting a bargain. She was--but it was the marry one, get 59 free type. My mom grew up in a nice, picturesque Northern California town. Just she and her brother and their parents. Meals were decorous affairs. Conversations were hushed. And manners were always observed. When she married Dad, she was thrown right into the maelstrom of emotion, humor, and extreme decibel-levels that is my father's family. How was a girl to cope? By making a bargain: one Christmas with dad's family, one with her family. Evenly balanced. The best of both worlds. Sanity and lunacy in alternating waves.

So, in odd years we would head off to the Bay area, and my Aunt Michelle would make her fabulous clam chowder--I got used to the chewy bits at around age 13--and we'd have sourdough bread and veggies, and lovely desserts, and it was all very fancy and festive. I loved it. Somewhere in my young brain, the ideas of chowder and the thrill of holidays in a place far more interesting than my home town fused, and I still can't eat chowder without feeling a little shiver of anticipation down my spine. (These days my spine is usually anticipating a child asking if he/she can finish off my soup, but the vertebrae still get excited.) Unfortunately, I never had a hand in making the chowder, so I can't concoct a big pot full of the heavenly stuff. These day I have to rely on Campbell's to take me back to memory lane.

In even years, we'd stay home in the desert, and my grandma would do her best that no matter what--even if the only snow was on the television, and most of us could only say "tack"--and that with poor accents--we were SWEDES. By all that was or ever could be holy, we were SWEDES! And don't you forget it! So we gorged on Swedish meatballs (kottbullar--and that "k" at the beginning sounds like a "sh", and the "o" that follows should really have two dots over it and sounds a bit like a cross between a short i and a short e, so you can see why we kids liked to call them by their proper name loudly and with slightly-less-than-innocent smiles on our faces) and rice pudding (which is a whole 'nother story and the reason my grandmother has over fifty great-grandchildren), and crispbread, and cheese, and mashed potatoes, and my stomach is cramping up just thinking about it. (And every year my grandmother pulled out the jar of pickled herring that had graced the table since 1946. No one ever had the courage to eat it--would YOU?--and the same jar will probably be set out this year. You'd think the joke or the hope or whatever it is that motivates my grandmother to do so would have evaporated by now, but you'd be wrong. Sadly, painfully, wrong) My memories of Christmases with Dad's side of the family revolve around my fingers freezing stiff from mixing up the meatballs (we could only help if we were old enough to take the pain without excessive whining) and guessing how many of the products of my agony my little brother had eaten. (23 one year.)

This year, we'll be at the church by my Swedish Grandmother's house--we outgrew her family room about ten years ago. There goes that rice pudding again!--and I'll be the one with a plate full of meatballs in front of her and the big smile on her face.

Here's to yummy memories and a big pile of kottbullar!

The Post-Mortem

2009-11-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

Who knew there was a floor under all that sparkly stuff?

Don't mind me--I'm just digging out after FINALLY finishing with the roadshow. The costumes are now packed away, props have been dismantled (except for the glittery mop, because you never know when that might come in handy), and my makeup brushes have been washed and are drying on my kitchen counter. Whew.

Alas, I must reveal that we didn't win. Agony! I know, when I really stop and analyze it without the influence of chocolate--which seems to make me belligerent for some reason--that the better roadshow won: they practiced more than we did (twice every Saturday, instead of only once each weekend), had better participation, and when I saw their director at the first meeting I knew my ward was sunk. But my heart is stronger-willed than my brain, and a faint flicker of hope still existed through these past difficult weeks.

I wanted to win. Not because I want to be considered the Grand Pooh-Bah of Roadshows (although that would look nice engraved on a plaque in the ward cabinet), but because I wanted to right a wrong perpetrated many years ago.

You see, I was a member of the Great Roadshow Rebellion of '85. I rose up--along with several other members of the cast, lest you think I was some sort of rabble-rouser. I was actually more of a really stupid follower--and struck (like we were some sort of union: the International Disciples-Indignant of Overworked Teenagers--go ahead and acronym-ize that one) for some meaningless and ultimately forgotten "right", demanding that our director give in to our demands or no roadshow would be performed that year. In retrospect, we were all a bunch of two-bit doofusses, loaded with acne and puffed up with an unbelievable combination of self-importance and self-loathing. Making matters worse, our esteemed (now and for many years previous!) director was my grandmother.

That's right, I rebelled against the gentle stage direction of my adored grandmother. It is not something I like to recall. (But my mom remembers and refers to it whenever I get snippy with her. Mothers are a lot more like elephants than we like to admit.)

So you can see why I was willing to sacrifice everything--EVERYTHING!!!!--to bring home the Grand Prize this year. I wanted to do it in honor of my grandmother, to make up for hormone-induced imbecility, to prove that I had actually learned something in the intervening years. (How to tell stage left from stage right, and the importance of sparkly ribbon come to mind.)

Alas, it was not to be. We were outclassed by a lethal combination of (really fabulous!) poster-board shining armor and 90% participation. In the end we won only for best director (irony, folks!) and best script.

We even lost out on the award for best costumes. Oh, my aching ego.

So, in the end, I could have saved myself a whole lot of exhaustion and frustration if I had just tossed everyone t-shirts for costumes and forgone the worry over sets. All I really needed to do was yell, "LOUDER!" at every possible rehearsal interval, and the results would have been the same.

Karma, friends, karma. It'll bite you in the end.

(Blogger enters, stage right)

2009-11-19T19:28:00.000-08:00

I would like to make a sincere apology for the nation-wide glitter shortage. It seems I got a little carried away with what my mom calls "gussy-ing up" the costumes for the roadshow. But on the up side I now have a glitter-spangled white-powdered wig made from the panty part of a pair of pre-worn black tights and half a yard of polyester batting to add to the costume collection. (Just don't tell the actor who has to wear it what it's made of. Teen-age boys are so sensitive to silly things like that.)

Apparently that college degree in costume design has started to pay for itself. Or it would if I were being payed by the hour at a rate commensurate with my abilities (tights panties and batting--c'mon, does anyone want to try to top that?) and my adaptability. (I made rats' tails out of wire hangers and duct tape; the girl rat's tail has a perky bow. Did I mention that our budget was only $100? The instructions said to use our resources. Done.)

Instead, I'm being paid in celestial savings bonds and promises at another crack at the trophy in three years.

With that in mind, may I offer a few of what I consider reasonable suggestions that would go enormous lengths to improve the current Roadshow system?

Tag-team directors--so that when the kid who hasn't shown up for seven practices in a row decides he feels like crashing the dress rehearsal, the director currently in charge can take a few minutes to pop a couple Valium.

Parisian Street Mime Roadshows. Because then at least there would be an excuse for not speaking on cue.

Hook the actors up to radio controllers. "Dang it all--I said LEFT FOOT!!!!!!" (Optional extra: shock-administering dog-training collars.)

Strap bull horns on actors at the first practice; arrange for them to be removed at the cast party. Maybe then I won't have to shriek "Speak UP!" every ten seconds.

Institute new judging system: points for greatest efforts in the face of enormous odds. Bonus points for best sob story. Judged by fellow directors.

Order mandatory costume weigh-in. Costumes not meeting minimum glitter requirements to be awarded negative points for lack of proper roadshow spirit. Extra ten points for every conspicuously-placed sequin on already too-shy deacons.

Eliminate song and dance requirements. Instead, ask the audience to hum along as priests and mia maids shuffle awkwardly in what is optimistically called a "Viennese Waltz". (More of a Vienna sausage two-step, but we're hoping for the best.)

Secret "director's points" (awarded in calm-inducing chocolate bars, delivered in plain brown wrappers) for every time an actor says the "secret word" on stage. Possible suggestions: shoot, dang, walrus, ummmmmmmmm.

That's all, folks. You've been a great audience. (Blogger bows, waves. Exit stage left.)

Now Accepting New Members

2009-11-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

I just found out that November is not just for Thanksgiving and torturing my children with pop quizzes on the Pilgrims. (Quick--name the first successful permanent English settlement in the New World and tell me the date of its founding!) It isn't even just a month to really, really wish I had a novel in me somewhere (no fat jokes, I beg of you!) so I could take part in National Novel Writing Month. It's also National Adoption Month.

I found this out only today--apparently, I haven't been keeping as up to date on my quasi-official memorial months as I'd like. But there they were, splashed across the newspaper page: pictures--heart-wrenching ones, no less--of teary-eyed children seeking families. They get me every time. Why do I let myself forget about them in the midst of the lunacy I let creep into our life?

Here's the thing: I've always wanted to adopt. Well, maybe not always--but pretty much since I married el Roberto and figured that with our late start 10 kids would be a physical impossibility. (I've been reading the Old Testament lately, and with all due admiration, there is no WAY I'm pulling a Sarah. I can only imagine the spasms it would give my poor OB, not to mention my tortured kidneys.) Unfortunately, it isn't quite as easy as just saying, "Okay, I'm ready. Hand over those superfluous kiddos!" There are forms to fill out and money to scrape together, and visits and tests and red tape up places where no one (not even my afore-mentioned OB) ought to look--and that's even for the children that supposedly no-one wants! (I do! I do!--I've had enough babies to think starting after potty-training would be a VERY good idea.) It seems like a huge mountain to climb, and every time I steel myself to get us going, I hear a horror story.

They're out there--the sad tales of adoptions gone horribly wrong, that messed lives up, and that made people more miserable than they'd be willing to admit. Those are the ones that scare me.

And yet, the longing is still there. Heaven knows I'm not getting any younger--sassier, but not younger. And richer keeps getting postponed. This may be the best time for us to take the plunge and put ourselves and our family in the hands of the Lord and say, "Okay, help us find a way." Logistically, it makes sense. We have the room. We still have a modicum of sanity. We've always managed to find a way to make things work. Truthfully, all things considered, I'd rather take a shot at finding real joy than in missing it through worry and apprehension.

So here's my declaration (sorry, Roberto, if this comes as a shock. We can talk about it soon, promise!): I am ready to take the plunge. I am opening my arms and declaring open season on my heart. This momma has space for anyone looking for a permanent situation. These arms are waiting to be filled.

Keep us in your prayers.

Testing. Testing. Is this thing working?

2009-11-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

My clothesline has sprouted brightly-colored upside-down mushroom shapes. My living room has been overtaken by blue plastic bins. I bought a mop simply to wrap it in red, purple, and yellow ribbons. I have plundered my lace and sparkly-fabric supplies.

The Roadshow is coming. And I'm directing it. Take a moment or two to let that thought sink in. And a couple more for the laughter-induced spasms to subside.

We have only two weeks to go. (Sorry, make that twelve days; I was wighfully thinking when I wrote that sentence.) I may die of stress before the big performance comes.

You see, they called the wrong person to do this job. (The fact is the right person moved out of the ward a few months ago. ARE YOU LISTENING, ALLISON? HAVE YOU NO GUILT FOR WHAT YOU'RE PUTTING ME THROUGH?) I am, reluctantly, I must admit, more of a Roadshow writer than a director. Heck, I'd be happiest as the designer and seamstress. But here I am, the most delegation-challenged person in the world tackling the most difficult non-Nursery-or-Relief-Society-based calling in the world. And so, most of the lunacy devolves to me to see to.

Thus, the upside-down mushroom on the clothesline are chefs' hats being so stiffly starched they can literally stand on their own merits. (The merit is the part below the pouffy bit at the top--just a little costume-related humor for ya, there.) The blue bins that have precluded any possibility of actually sitting in the living room are the temporary repositories of extra-sparkly costumes and shiny ribbon-bedecked props. (Including, and I am absolutely not kidding about this, 15 large shiny, brown Christmas tree ornaments turned upside down and hot-glued into tin foil baking cups to fool a willing and very tolerant audience into thinking they are absolutely decadent chocolates.) The scenery lies face up on my driveway as I type, awaiting my ministrations with glue gun and red sequins. (For the first time in my life, I'm actually praying that it won't rain. Garden be darned--it's all for the Roadshow!) I still have to buy multiple rolls of colored duct tape, as well as super glue, and a large plastic nose attached to a pair of eyeglasses with a faux mustache as the last costume piece.

I have demonstrated the fine art of Roadshow singing--which differs from every other sort of singing by emphasizing quantity over quality. I have repeatedly implored stage-shy teens to yell their lines--CLEARLY!!!!--to the deaf older sisters who will inevitably be sitting in the back rows. I have choreographed dancing rats, taught chocolatiers how to do a pas-de-bourree, and agonized over the entrance timing for the villainess. I have abandoned dignity at the door twice a week for the past three weeks. And I'm still not done.

Can anyone tell me how to make a white powdered wig out of a yard of quilt batting and the top of a nylon stocking? Does anyone have any good ideas for persuading teens that what they most want to do on a Saturday morning is sing and prance? Will somebody tell me the proper procedure for bribing a Roadshow judge?

I have sacrificed my sleep, my fabric, my hips, and my diet to the success of this thing. I've visited Goodwill and DI so often they're both sending me "Thank You" cards on a bi-weekly basis. My prayers are almost exclusively for the youth and "will heaven please bless whoever sets up the microphones to over-compensate for sound absorption in the Stake Center cultural hall? We could really use a little boost."

Call me obsessed. Call me loony. Call me Sister Kydd. But don't call me early on November 22nd. I'll finally be sleeping of the dead-tired just.

PSSST: wanna hear a secret?

2009-10-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

Attention moms:

I have found the secret to maternal serenity, and it can be found in the candy aisle at your local grocery.

Who'da thunk the key to living calmly with children under the age of 35 was a small, chocolate-based treat I had always known and loved? M&M Mars has created the source of all familial goodness and light, but they don't tout it in their advertisements, which seems a real shame, since I'm sure their stock prices would go through the roof if this caught on. (Dear M&M Mars, if the afore-mentioned scenario DOES take place, I'm staking my claim to a share of the profits now. I'll call you with details later.)

Here's the scoop: I have always understood the link between M&Ms and enhanced performance. In college, my standard procedure for taking tests was to run to the bookstore, purchase a half-pound bag of M&Ms--any variety, but my preference was for peanut butter--and consume the whole bag in the hour before the test, while sitting in the hall outside the classroom and reciting the mantra, "You can do this and you'd better do well, because if you don't you'll look like a big fat idiot. SO DON'T SCREW UP!" On the occasions when I followed this pattern(which increased in frequency as I noticed the correlation between M&M consumption and test-taking success), I never earned below a B+. Seriously. I owe my grade-point average (but not my current weight--that's a separate issue) to the candy aisle of the BYU Bookstore.

I had no idea a similar magic could work on my children. But it does.

Every morning I dole out ten magic candy-coated pellets into each egg cup--one per child, because anything else would be illogical, and motherhood is all about logic. And temporary insanity. Throughout the day, as those same egg-cup-claiming children act up or misbehave or induce me to rip out large chunks of bodily hair (mine, typically), I remove one M&M from the offending child's egg cup and eat it. Notice I take only one M&M per offense. I try not to abuse the system. I might extend the punishment to two, maybe, if the breach is particularly heinous. (Like leaving your underwear in the family room after being asked THREE TIMES to put them away. That's a major--and unfortunately, daily--offense in this house. I'm just telling you in the interests of warning an innocent public: should you visit, please do not look too closely under couches, if you know what I mean.) In this manner, the child is warned and punished and learns to feel the disappointing effects of disobedience. (Doesn't that sound wonderfully gospel-related? I'm working on it.) and I get a small taste of heaven to soothe my ruffled temper. At the end of the day, children who have not sent their mother permnently around the bend get the remaining M&Ms for dessert. Call it a win-win situation. At least on most days. I can imagine a truly horrible day when the children drive me to the utter edge of sanity and back multiple times, and I might on such an occassion end up eating all their M&Ms and then finish up the bag for a final shame-inducing encore, thereby creating a win-win-"Oh dear goodness, how am I going to lose all this weight" situation. But that one is safely still in the future. So far.

And there you have it; all your maternal frustrations and discipline problems solved in one easy formula: M&Ms = parental sanity + improved offspring obedience (and excellent test-taking skills).

Remember, you heard it here first. (I may be asking you to testify if the whole intellectual-rights infringement thing goes awry.)

Happy Robot Day!

2009-10-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

What? You've never heard of Robot Day?

I'm shocked and a little dismayed by that. And I'm sure Charlie is crushed. Because it was his idea in the first place.

The whole thing started on Monday--that was only three days ago, and even in the age of instant communication it still takes a while for ideas to spread and grab hold of public imagination. (Unless the information is something truly disgusting and utterly unspeakable, in which case it will pop up in every email box in the world about ten seconds after its creator sends it out to eight hundred of his very best buds.)

So, to fill in those of you who haven't received your Robot Day cards yet, Robot Day is a Charlie-created holiday to celebrate mechanical and electronic forms of skill and ability. He's a boy. And he's six. It was highly unlikely that he would choose to celebrate ponies.

It started with a school assignment to design a new holiday. He got to pick the day of year--and what were the chances that he would pick a date six months from now? (Boys cannot comprehend the idea of delayed gratification. It's a genetic trait. They get it from their fathers.) He chose the decoration scheme: red light to symbolize lasers, and robot streamers--which will probably eventually turn out to be toilet paper festively decorated with random marker-generated blobs. He even had the opportunity to choose the soon-to-be-traditional foods for the holiday. (Subway sandwiches--maybe because subs are built using robotic assemblers?--and chips. I'd like to say the chips were because of the use of computer chips in building and controlling robots. But it's far more likely that he chose them because it's a good excuse to eat something that I typically don't allow. Ha! I'm sneaky too, and served apple chips as part of breakfast. Who's tricky now, huh?)

Now you know--go ahead and mark your calendars for next year. There are only 364 shopping days left.

A few scenes from our Robot Day festivities

Yeah, I know red lights are the appropriate decoration, but I haven't hit the after-Robot-Day sales yet. Plus it was six-thirty, and I wasn't going to do more storage-room diving than absolutely necessary to make my son's dreams come true.

The construction of the traditional Robot Day costume--a nice twist added by Roberto at six thirty-two this morning. I suspect that next year's costume may be slightly more elaborate.

The wearing of the robot costume

Another Robot Day entertainment: watching one's baby getting a buzz from gnawing on the traditional red lights' cord. (Please let it be known that I did not take a picture while said baby was in imminent danger. The child has no teeth. It would take him a year to gnaw into anything that could zap-fry him. And by then he probably would have lost interest.)

2009-09-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the computer for a while--mostly trying to get my act together, because, really, the tap dancing/juggling bit wasn't meshing (too much shuffle ball-change, too few flaming chainsaws)--but, fear not!, my keen powers of observation were still tuned in to the little quirks that make life interesting to at least five of you out there.

So, without further ado:

Thing I should have realized before I reached the age of 37, but didn't because either they just never came up before then or I was oblivious at the time

(it'a working title)

Any day that begins with the baby creating a syrup trail throughout the house is almost certainly destined to end in a carb-induced coma.
You can lead an eight-year-old to the piano, open the book for him, place his hands on the keys and wait expectantly, but you can't stop him from asking, "So what do you want me to do?"
Nor can you stop the resulting maternal scream from exiting at least two cranially-located orifices.
You can't reason with a four-year-old, but you CAN sentence her to an extra-long nap, as long as you have earplugs and a strong bungee cord.
Eventually, and with a little divine intervention, obstinate four-year-olds become six-year-olds. You CAN reason with a six-year-old, but he's just going to do what he wants after the discussion.
Grocery shopping DOES count as "getting out of the house for some alone time" but only if you're really desparate.
And eventually you'll have to get back into the car and go home. The bakery ladies look sympathetic, but they're not willing to adopt you.
No matter how much you beg.
Regardless, never pass up a chocolate chip cookie.
There will be days when the dog will track mud over the newly-mopped floor. Accept it and go on. But if it happens three times in the same day, you'll also have to accept the fact that something is not right in your housework/dog equation.
Gardening in the Desert Southwest is fabulous in October, exhilarating in February, but lethal in July.
Which is just when every magazine is touting the benefits of the family garden. Ignore them--and enjoy the fact that you can have fresh tomatoes in March.
As long as you remember to water the darn plants.
Because while all weeds are desert-adapted, tomatoes are horticultural whiners. And no amount of tough love will ever change that.
There is no Anasazi Program for garden vegetables. Get over it.

Shhhh . . . I'm supposed to be overseeing schoolwork!

2009-09-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm taking a quick break from listening to boys write about robots and killing machines in their journals (I'm pretty sure these are personal records that will be deleted from the heavenly hard drive in the eventual eternities. I know we've been counseled to keep a personal record--but how many descriptions of impossible multi-missiled machines of doom do we need to write about to gain celestialization? Because I'm pretty sure there's a limit on that sort of stuff, and I'm just as sure that my sons hit that limit about a month ago.)

But I digress.

Now, before I get to the core concept of this post, there are some background facts you need to know--or it just won't make any sense. Trust me--I live this reality, and it's barely comprehensible to me. You NEED the exposition. Heck, I need the exposition most days.

First: I have been knitting away ever since camp, making Christmas stockings for my sister and her family. I have never knitted stockings with heels before. I have, however, knitted spiral-ribbed tube socks. (Muy fabuloso!) Because this is a semi-new skill, I'm taking my time on it. It's taken me a month to knit 4.8 stockings--and that's knitting at all possible hours of the day and night. I am determined to do this right so my sister doesn't have to make an explanation to every person who visits her during the Christmas season. ("Oh, those? Well, my sister--you know, the crazy one--tried her hand at knitting a few years ago. Thank Goodness they only have to stay up there for a few days!" Only, I'm sure she'd phrase it in a kindlier way than that. The reference to me as crazy would remain, however.) Take this as a warning: never EVER mention that you may want something that I could possibly learn how to do, or my ineptitude will be forced upon you and you will have to make explanations about the thing inhabiting your living room for the rest of your life.

I have been going slowly blinder than I had ever planned to be for about five years now. I'm used to it, but it has required a certain set of needs that must be filled before I can do anything other than staring fuzzily ahead. Namely a pair of reading glasses at all times and extra light--as much as possible.

The best light in this house, sadly enough, is in a room designed for nothing more task-related than a quick peruse of the headlines. I should have installed brighter lamps in the family room, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. So, if, after a certain hour of the evening, I want to do anything requiring sight--like perhaps setting a heel on a Christmas stocking--I have to go into the guest bathroom, which has four lovely high-wattage lights and an equal number of nicely reflective walls.

So--and this is the core concept I mentioned earlier--when my husband came up the stairs from the basement and saw me sitting on the toilet knitting away for dear life, is it any wonder that he almost split a gut laughing after the initial shock and resulting double take?

The prodigal returns

2009-09-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh, the joy of typing for pleasure and not for work-sheet production--the cheerful clack of the keys as I mistype and then hastily backspace through three sentences The soft roar of the overburdened computer. The finding of goodies dropped between keys by munching children. (Is that a cookie bit? Mine-sies!) A moment to myself and the universe with whom I commune. Via Internet. Because the medieval notion of ether-filled space was a bunch of hooey. Unless you follow recent astrophysical discussions, wherein the speculation is that there is indeed something filling up the nooks and crannies of our hitherto-thought empty cosmos. Go think about it in gospel terms. It's mind-blowing.

I needed a break. True. The world was crushing the life out of me. Too many demands for too little time, and the thing that could go with the fewest screams of despair was blogging. But, now that I think I have a handle on it, I'll try to squeeze in some deep/humorous/oddball/wacky/just-too-strange-for-explanation musings occasionally.

I've spent the time well: read some relaxing books (murder mysteries--relaxing because at the end of the book I'm still alive), knitted a few Christmas stockings (latest count: 3.85--and sill knitting), finally got the schedule mostly squared away.

The last one was the biggie. We had had the same schedule, with some minor tweaks, for years. It was a good schedule. It worked for us. I could live quite happily within its limitations and strictures. Slight problem: the kids have gotten older, and the burden of responsibility grows heavier for them. (Permit me a small, slightly satisfied, cackle--BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Who's feeding the dog now, kiddos? Who's feeding her now?) And yet, we still have the standard-issue 24 hours per day. (I'd like to discuss that someday with someone who can do something about it. It would be a lot better for those of us with older children if our days could be variable in length--longer on the days we have too much to do, and shorter on the days when we all frazzle out a bit at the ends. Maybe a dial/watch sort of thing with a twisty bit on the side to speed up or slow down time. That would do us quite well, thank you.) So, our time for lunch kept bumping into our schedule for piano practice, and then they both jostled up against my (mostly imaginary anyway) free time, and the science and the math and the heart-to-heart discussions about feelings and aspirations just sort of had to work their own way in somehow. It was not a happy time.

In desperation we did what I suspect all successful parents do: we juggled everything around, reconsidered every aspect of our time-stressed existence, made a few changes, chanted a few calming mantras, ate some chocolate, and came up with a new schedule. A new way of looking at the day for a family that cannot define itself as "family with small children exclusively" anymore. In the process I've had to give up some things I enjoy--like 90% of my computer time. And my children have had to learn to get their rears in gear earlier in the day. (Me? Well, I'm still working on that one. Thank goodness for a husband who can wake up at the crack of 6:34. Most of the time.)

So, here's the concept: I will continue to write, because something has to be done to get all these random thoughts out of my head. Call it catharsis of the brain (because catharsis of the bowels is so MUCH more disturbing). The entries may be less frequent, and certainly will be less polished, but they will be written by someone who isn't trying to type with one hand while she combs hair, makes lunch, and corrects math tests with the other.

Balance, people. That's what it's all about.

I will survive (hopefully)

2009-08-23T21:16:00.001-07:00

Have you ever felt like time was slipping away? Or maybe that it wasn't time but intelligence and the brain matter it's associated with doing the slipping? Yeah. Me too. A lot. Especially this past week, when in spite of my best intentions to be a woman of poise and class, I mostly ended up being a woman of ludicrous ineptitude.

I used to think I could do most of it all--I could have the lovely, immaculate home; the well-mannered, well-educated, wonder-children; the perfectly organized existence; and the fabulous (but secretly purchased at thrift stores) wardrobe. I was willing--if absolutely required--to negotiate on total perfection in return for sustainability. But, seriously, this has gone too far. Lately I've had to accept a house with floors mopped by the family canine, children who almost always remember not to belch too loudly at the table and who can usually add seven and six to get an answer within two places of thirteen, a life fueled by desperation and anxiety, and a wardrobe that, while purchased, openly, at thrift stores, is not so much a contender for chic-of-the-week as an object lesson in applied economics. This is not quite what I had in mind.

I feel like I'm swimming upstream, and the stroke I'm using is a doggie-paddle. And my water wings have a leak. And my snorkel is plugged with spit. (I could extend this simile forever, but I'll end it mercifully just a wee bit long. Be thankful, because my next sentence would have mentioned an abnormal tightness of swimming attire.)

So, I'm going to take a couple of days--maybe weeks, but hopefully not--to pull my head and my life back together. I'll return soon--full of vim and vigor, ready to fight the good fight, and able leap medium-sized buildings with the aid of a trampoline and a strong tail wind. It'll be worth the wait.

I promise.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, then I have a few left with which to muse a bit

2009-08-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

I wonder if this is why she wakes up so cranky

The secret to not falling off my rocker in one long-winded and self-congratulatory post

2009-08-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

Confession: I am thirty-(cough*cough*cough*mumble*mumble*something that sounds like frickin' freven) years old, and I'm just now learning how to balance.

(Some of you probably think that this might explain why my shining future in gymnastics went south right after toddler-hood. Wrong-o, people. Not that kind of balancing--trust me, I've had that type down for years. "Old Nimble-Knees Merkley" they called me, when they weren't calling me "Four-Eyes" or "Hey, You! The One With Her Head Stuck In A Book!" And by "they" I mean the mean imaginary people in my mind. You should have heard some of the junk they came up with during my adolescence!)

Balance--the sort where one part or aspect of one's life does not overshadow or dominate all other aspects of that life--is something I've been seeking for a loooooooong time now. Like maybe 35- or 36-ish years. Or so. And I think I may actually stumbled (ironically enough, if you get the whole balance metaphor thing) across it today. It was lying there, right in front of me!, all along. Go figure.

Here's the skinny. (Another ironic pun, if you know me at all.) I am a basically lazy and selfish person. Really. I know I've fooled a lot of people over the years into believing I'm some sort of super-competent, super-active, super-giving over-achiever. HA! In reality, everything I've ever accomplished was done in frantic spurts of concentrated effort so I could just get it done with and go back to reading on my comfy couch. That was the story of my life in High School (less frantic activity; more comfy couch), college (slightly more frantic activity; more staying up 'til 4 a.m. gabbing with roommates; lots less sleep--usually on the comfy couch), and into ten-plus years of child-rearing. Sure, I got quite a bit done, but it was all at the expense of my sanity, my sleep, and my children's perception of "normal". (The children think I'm a total loon--and not in the humorous "My mom is so bizarre" sort of way. More like a scary "Get me out of here--she's going to destroy us all!" sort of way. Up until today they would have been correct in their estimation.) Most of my actual effort was directed at figuring out how to get everything necessary done while not having to put any real physical or emotional investment into what was going on. (Roberto, since I know you'll read this, I'm sooooooooo sorry. You have some serious gloat time coming to you.) Honest. If there was a short-cut, I'd take it at top speed. If I could do it poorly and still get away with it, I would. If I had to neglect the most important things to get something more showy done, it was not a question of "if", but of "just how little will I have to do? And may I eat crackers while doing so?" It looked impressive--appearances, people, it was all merely appearances!--but it lacked any sort of honest depth or caring. Also, I was really cranky. (Caveat: the 18 months of my mission were the exception to this sordid tale. Once I had a companion who could show me how to do the work correctly and with a proper attitude, I worked my sincerely-happy little tush off. Look at the pictures--no tush! Thanks, Debi!)

Today, though, I have had an epiphany. The secret is--oh, how I will regret admitting this some day when I just want to shirk!--is getting my lazy butt up and focusing on the important--read: NOT ME--things. That's it, the magic formula. Don't believe me? Here's how it went down:

Child practicing piano, and having a rough time of it. Normally, I'd be in another room, paying very little attention while I did something more engrossing, like turning pages, or--if I HAD TO--folding laundry, but today I was on the piano bench with said child. You know what? I had trouble with it! And I've been playing (badly) for more years than I want to admit! We worked it through, and we enjoyed it. And there was no frustration!
Child going through schoolwork. Typically, this would be my chance to escape and do something else--the instructions are right there, aren't they? Today, I read the instructions with him, discussed any questions he had, stayed with him every step of the way. No problems--work done in the right amount of time, with no whining, but lots of learning. (Also, I had plenty of time to turn the heel of the sock I'm knitting. But it wasn't my primary focus. That would have been un-balanced.)
Child practicing alphabet (different child). I hate this usually. C'mon, how hard can it be? Read, already! This morning we sang the alphabet song and used the magnetic letters. It worked! She can tell "A" from "B"! How long have kindergarten teachers been sitting on this secret?
Two minutes ago: strange, non-sleeping sounds emanating from a bedroom during nap time. No yelling while I kept writing, this time . No, I stood up, walked down the hall, opened the door, and explained the situation. Apparently we're on some sort of roll here, because there was no arguing. And now it's quiet!
Because I was so very virtuous this morning, I have a clean house, peaceful and cheerful children, and a whole afternoon to enjoy both. (Feel free to kick me for my smugness. I've been waiting for 37 years to feel this good, and now my ego has come out swinging. It will be stuffed back into its cage shortly.)

Wow. So the points that I have missed all these years were that 1) I am in fact NOT the center of the universe, 2) life DOES NOT revolve around me, and 3) if I would just get off my lazy and selfish be-hind more often, I'd be a lot happier.

How come none of you told me this before?

Why I'm here blogging when I could be catching lake creatures with marshmallows on a hook

2009-08-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

Children. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. The ones in my line of sight at this minute may be flesh of my flesh, but I am not terribly fond of them just now.

Normally my children are bright, energetic, creative, wonderful small people. I love them--honestly. Most days you couldn't persuade me to part from them. Yesterday, though, I would have sold them to the circus for a handful of peanuts and Jumbo's autograph. And I would have negotiated on the peanuts.

Too harsh? Let me explain.

I am not an unreasonable person. I have certain sensible standards for conduct and behavior, and most intelligent mothers would agree that I do not ask over much of the developing personalities under my authority. (The unintelligent ones--the ones who feed their children Hershey bars and Pepsi for dinner--would disagree, but then I disagree with everything they do, so we're even.) All I require are honesty, diligence, and respect. And the occasional hug.

IS THAT TOO MUCH?

Apparently.

Because yesterday--the straw that broke the mommy's back, the day which brought me to the very last fiber of my figurative rope of sanity--the boys, Proto-Sundance and Mini-Butch, refused to do anything they were asked to do. Wipe down the bathroom? Nope. Do your math work? Nuh-uh. Practice the piano in under an hour? Forget it. Having read all manner of books on the subject, and considering the infinite worth that my children have and the eternal blessing they are supposed to be, I started off calm. Knowing this would be a challenging day, I prayed for patience. Finding that wasn't enough, I pleaded with heaven to grant me serenity. Heaven told me I was on my own with this one. I pulled out every mother-approved-obedience-achieving tactic in the book (and a few non-approved tactics as well, don't ask, when I became desperate), and nothing changed. Even when the "persuading" was done at top volume, as it increasingly was as the day went on, the boys remained obdurate. That's some granite-hard obstinacy, folks, and one-half of the family is paying for it today.

Today, you see, was the day my parents and their offspring had planned to spend at the lake to celebrate the first-ever Merkley Crustacean Fest. (Translation: we were going to bask in the mild mountain climate while sending innocent crawdads to their Celestial Maker. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Unless you're a crawdad.) Yesterday, with my final desperate shot at salvaging a rotten day, I vowed to the boys that if they did not straighten up they would miss out. It was my last haven of hope to convince them, my last refuge of redemption, and they charged into it with metaphoric poop on their boots. They had edged me into fighting mode, and I fought back with fire in my eyes and an ulcer in my belly. So help me, Hannah, I was not going to give them the enjoyment of goofing off in the mountains after a day when all they did was goof off at the expense of my blood pressure. It was an epic battle. We all lost.

Today, since their sister did not take part in the rebellion, and since their father can drive while I cannot, Roberto is taking Lindy up to have some artificial reservoir fun, and I am stuck in desert suburban purgatory for the sins of my children.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

A really long post--you might need an intermission to get through it all

2009-08-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

I saw the following list posted on my cousin Jay's Facebook page. I've seen lists like this, compiled by various literary "experts" (who determines the qualifications to achieve "expert" status, anyway? I've been reading for 33 years now--doesn't that make me somewhat able to chose my own reading materials?) a few times--and I've always compared my reading habits with the supoosed "correct" or "educated" reading standards. Most of the time I fall short--but I have to admit that the BBC seriously underestimates me: I've read 33 of them. (And have included my ever-so-helpful thoughts on a few.)

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
[ ] 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (whoo-hoo--number one! Totally my pick, too)
[] 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I'm still working on it. Tolkein was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, and it shows.)
[ ] 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (Oh. Dear. Gads. It is such a melodrama.)
[ ] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Cool, enjoyed it enormously--but is anything that can be made into a really cruddy movie worthy of an uber-snooty list?)
[] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (yes, I liked it--but not enough to read it every year. Once a decade, maybe)
[] 6 The Bible (!!!!)
[ ] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Selfish people messing up other people's lives)
[] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[ ] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[] 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (We called our first son Pip. IT WAS NOT AFTER THIS BOOK!)
[ ] 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (Like it, have it, but it gets a little Victorian at times. Still, not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon.)
[ ] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Any book whewre the title character commits suicide is not worth the trouble--personal mantra)
[ ] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[ ] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (80% there!)
[ ] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (Shouldn't this just be lumped in with the Lord of the Rings? Are they that distinctive?)
[ ] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[ ]20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
[ ] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Yeow! Overemotional twaffle. I wanted to slug Scarlett after the firt two pages. Do not read this for historical information!)
[ ] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[ ] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ ] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (People doing everything they can to remain miserable)
[] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Chortle. Chorlte.)
[]27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[ ]28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[ ] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (a tribute to the literary benefits of opium)
[] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Beautiful, but really difficult for a seven-year-old to understand. I know; we tried reading it together last year.)
[ ] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[ ] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[ ] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (WHEEE!)
[ ] 34 Emma - Jane Austen (Fabulous! Much better than the movie, nice costumes notwithstanding)
[ ] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen(Love it)
[] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Good for a beginning, but not my favorite)
[ ] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[ ] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[ ] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Harmless (which is more than can be said for many of these listed titles) and fun (ditto))
[ ] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
[ ] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[ ] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
[ ] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[ ] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (If you get bored with this one, try Anne of Windy Poplars, instead)
[ ] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[ ] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!! Why do they inflict this on us?)
[ ] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
[ ] 51 Life of Pi
[] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ("All highly-sexed farm boys are called either Seth or Reuben." HEE HEE)
[ ] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Maybe my third-favorite Austen novel)
[ ] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[ ] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[ ] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[ ] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[ ] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[ ] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[ ] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
[ ] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[]70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (The only reason I know the first line of this book is from watching Love Boat in the late 70s.)
[] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[ ]72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Still have the copy my fourth-grade teacher gave me)
[ ] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (very good--but you might need to watch your language after reading it. Toad in the Hole always sounds faintly naughty to me.)
[] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[] 76 The Inferno – Dante
[ ] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[ ] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
[ ] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[ ] 80 Possession - AS Byatt
[] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (The only Dickens book where I don't start screaming about the thickness of the prose two paragraphs in.)
[ ] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[ ] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[ ] 84 The Remains of the Day
[ ] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ("WIIIIIIILBUR!"--although that was Mr. Ed. Still applicable, though.)
[ ] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[ ] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[ ] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
[ ] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Makes me cry cathartically)
[ ] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[ ] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[ ] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Much wordier than the movie)
[] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Everyone and his pet pig dies)
[ ] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (My boys have read it. Does that make them pretentious BBC snobs?)
[ ] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (You'd think a romance, a revolution, and a redemption would make it interesting. You'd be wrong.)

Now for the part where I tell you what I think of all this.

First of all, I cannot understand for the life of me, why just because a book is bleak, dreary, and utterly incomprehensible when one is not under the influence of drug, legal or otherwise, it is automatically hailed as a literary landmark. Seriously, would it have killed some of these authors to look in the mirror, tell themselves they weren't really all that intellectually monumental, and then set to writing a genuinely knee-slapping short story? Admit it: with half of these ponderous tomes if you've read them at all, you plowed through doggedly to cross them off some list, and when you shudderingly turned the last pages, you exhaled huge sighs of relief and thanked your blessed stars you never had to read them again. They are beynd dismal. They are the ultimate and unjustified punishment for passing Kindergarten. No one reads most of these books for enjoyment--except people who have the emotional fortitude to withstand the inevitable depression that ensues. (I have a few of these people as friends. My admiration for them has no bounds. I adore them for their intellectual prowess. They accept me as light comic relief.)

I've tried on numerous occassion to wade through any book by Charles Dickens. I actually endured all the way through Great Expectations. It was a struggle. A Tale of Two Cities gathers dust in my bookcase now--I have attempted the slog of reading it four times, never advancing past page 24. My cousin, Kate (Hi, Kate! You don;t mind if I cite you, do you? Because you are the most knowledgable-on-the-subject person who I actually know, and are great deal more reliable than Wikkipedia.) tells me that Mr. Dickens was paid by the word for his work. It shows. His are some of the most bloated pages I have ever seen.

On the other end of the reading-list spectrum are bizarre trifles by Mitch Albom, Helen Fielding, and Dan Brown. Yes, they are best sellers. But serious masterworks of the craft of writing? No. Are they on the list as examples of popular taste at this point in history? Because as portraits of a decadent society they work. As telling revelations of the human spirit or condition they lack massively.

And don't get me started on books that every English Lit. teacher raves over, but which I have to take a bleach and lye shower after reading to rid myself of the crawing of the flesh feeling they induce.

So here's what I'm going to do for you: I'm going to give you my own approved reading list, with explanatory notes. Every title on it guaranteed to uplift the spirit, enlighten the mind, or evoke glee (some of these titles may do all three--they're my oersonal favorties). Go ahead and copy it, and then start reading. When you finish a book, place a check mark next to the title. There's no rush, and if you only read one or two, I won't judge you like I know the snooty folks at the BBC are at this very moment.

The Bible (well, of course--the basis for all Judeo-Christian thought and philosophy, and the foundation for most of post-classical, pre-modern literature. Seriously, this is required.)
The Book of Mormon (naturally--a companion to the Bible, and the ultimate "feel-good" read)
The Chronicles of Narnia (I know the BBC listed only the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe as a stand-alone choice. Sillies. My personal favorites are The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle. Decide for yourself.)
The Anne of Green Gables series (Kate says, and I agree, that the latter books are better if you're over the age of 14. Don't forget to read Rilla of Ingleside. It always gets left off, for some reason.)
Winnie-the-Pooh and the companion books. (Because if you don't, you'll never get the joke about Henry Pootle.)
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (the BBC recommends Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island. I liked it, but I like this one better. Mainly becuase the BBC's recomended book is about Braitain--go figure--and this one is about what happens when an American returns home after twenty-something years abroad. It's funny and thought-provoking.)
White Goats and Black Bees (I found it in a sale years ago, and re-read it whenever I get overwhelmed with my life. It makes me smile. Surely that's enough to pique your interest!)
Hamlet (yes, I'm going with the BBC on this one. But I also like Macbeth, A Midsummer's Night Dream, As You Like It, and almost everything else except the dull Tudor histories--which he had to write to be economically and politically safe. He caved to the powers in charge, but he made the resulting plays so boring that they get shoved to the side--how's that for the last laugh?)
1776 (Not the movie--although I do enjoy it--the book by David McCullough. Seriously, you should read this one.)

You know what? There are a ot of good book out there, way too many to list here. I have a few of them on my shelves. If you need something to read, come on over; I'd be glad to let you peruse for a while.

My eyes have seen the glory of the starting of the school

2009-08-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

Whooo-hooo, the boys are off to "school." (!!!!!!!!!)

That may be just a little confusing who aren't acquainted with the beautiful Mesa Public Schools Eagleridge Enrichment Program. (The program is beautiful, not the whole MPS--that's a subject for a much crankier post, one which I will pass on writing.) So, yes, we homeschool. But because MPS loves its homeschooling parents (or at least the chunk of student-tied funds they bring), it gives us a place for our children to go once or twice a week to take "enrichment courses"--things we wouldn't be able to provide very well on our own. Like PE (which I squeaked by with a "B" in during my own school days--due to a total inability to run a mile without death-like symptoms), computers (I'm still pounding the keyboard in utter frustration 60% of the time. It's an improvement; I no longer call Roberto in tears three times a day. Sometimes I wonder if he misses that.), and fun classes like American Biographies, It's Disgusting and We Ate it, and Internet Cruises--all of which Jobe is taking this semester. This is a good thing: there is no way in Tahiti I was going to make him the chocolate-covered crickets he was asking for. That's something best left to a state-approved-and-qualified professional far, far away from my home kitchen.

And now the house is quiet--or at least as quiet as it can be with a four-year-old pounding on the piano, a toddler bumping into everything while trying to keep up with the four-year-old, and a manic dog who thinks oxygen atoms are a threat to household security. It's bliss, I tell ya.

"Ahhh," you think, "If it's so blissful, why don't you put your children in school full-time and cut out this homeschooling nonsense? Why not give yourself a real break?" That. my friends, is a good question--one I ask every day after about the middle of January. (Because no matter how much I love something, after a while it gets a little stale, and I start to see the flaws in the original plan. This is not unique to homeschoolers. My sister has her children in the excellent public school near her home, and she whines to me at least as much as I whine to her. Then we part, each smiling smugly that we got the better educational bargain. Validation: that's what sisters do best.) I homeschool because I wanted to really be the primary influence in my children's young lives--not their teachers at school, not their friends. I wanted to be the one to give them their first taste of educational success. I wanted to see their minds open up to new ideas. I didn't want to miss the most exciting moments of these years and have to hear about them in parent-teacher conferences. Basically put, I'm selfish and these are MY children--hands off! (Also, having suffered through more than my fair share of idiots with educational degrees I figured I could do at least as well as they did. At least I can pronounce "denouement", unlike one spectacularly ill-educated English teacher. Seriously, if you're going to teach the intricacies of the language you should be able to pronounce them correctly. Is that too much to ask?)

I'm giddy about this first day of school--just as I was when I was attending. I had trouble falling asleep last night, and so did Jobe. He feels the excitement of it. (Charlie felt only the comfort of his mattress, but he's a far more practical being than Jobe or I.) This is the start of a whole new adventure--the start of something that could change history, or at least the course of a life or two. It's a day for new backpacks, new pencils, new folders, new clothes. Everything and anything seem possible. Deep down I know that disappointment will come, that the new clothes will have pizza sauce stains on them in a matter of weeks, that the new folders will get torn, and the new pencils will be sharpened down to stubs. Reality is out there; I acknowledge that. But this day is a day for optimism.

Wish us luck! (and pray just a little, as well.)

Flippin', frickin' things that are driving me crazy--literally, in one case

2009-08-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else have major mechanical/techno stuff with neurological problems? Is it just me? Am I the only lucky one who gets to deal with cars with Tourette's Syndrome and computers with ADD? Seriously?

"Ha Ha," you're thinking, grinning to yourself in that quirky but endearing way you do when you contemplate beings of a lower mental plane (small inarticulate children, dogs, plates of three-month-old cheese that have decided to sit up and take notice), "that Melia--she's such a kidder!" (Although, to be strictly consistent, I ask to be referred to as a "Kydder".) But, dear people, I swear on a stack of grammar texts, I am not exaggerating. This time.

Our station wagon, which we bought fortuitously the weekend before Charlie was born, thereby enabling Roberto to be present at the birth of his third son, and not blissfully unaware of the drama he would have left behind when he jumped into a taxi on his way to a business trip in L.A., has always had a few tics. The windshield wipers, for instance, would spring to life without prompting, without even the slightest hint of a cloud in the sky. (This is the desert, for Peter Paul's sake!) We have the perma-scratched windshield to prove it. Then there's the electrical system, which delights in refusing to allow us to turn off lights, or even--a month ago--to shut off the air-conditioning. (It would have been a blessing in the depths of a desert summer had we actually been driving at the time. We were not. But when we later decided to jump in the car and put it to its intended purpose the battery was drained and the electrics were fried and sulky.) A few years back there was the month of auto-swearing, when the Great White Road Whale would for no discernible reason whatsoever let off a blare from the horn--repeatedly, and often massively inappropriately. (A very belated and heartfelt apology to the people in that funeral cortege.) I can only assume that the blasts were the sta-wag versions of four-letter words, emitted at uncontrollable intervals. And don't get me started on the bits that would not stay put--panels flapping open, compartments that had to be jammed shut every ten minutes, and an antenna that could never make up its mind to rise or lower and finally settled for a prolonged, ineffective, groaning that accomplished neither.

And now the computer is showing signs of instability. It refuses to stay connected to the Internet--usually just at the climactic moment of a show I've been dying to see. And when it gets tired of that delightful little trick, it starts randomly connecting to the 'net, unstoppably, so I have sixty-three unusable windows open at the same time. After which it has exhausted itself and needs a prolonged nap. It has no focus, no ability to withstand distraction. It loses comprehension at the drop of the proverbial hat. It's no wonder that I spend so much time with it; the computer has become the electronic equivalent of an overly-hyper child who just needs some attention and consistency to help it gain some self-discipline. I've become its surrogate helicopter parent--hovering nearby to help it over the rough patches. It's actually become more demanding than my human children, who at least can make peanut butter sandwiches when they get hungry and self-entertain quite well, given a few thousand books and a box of crackers. Who'd've thunk my problem child would have a power cord and an attached mouse?

I know the tendency in such cases of psychological instability is to look closely at the social culture in which the patient resides. Everyone wants to blame the mother/owner at a time like this. But I've been blameless. I never flogged the car's engine mercilessly. (Although there were a few times when I had to leave a few overly-macho types in jacked-up trucks in my station-wagging dust back in my driving days. But that was rare--I'm quite mild-mannered usually. And not at all inclined to resent those rude louts with their obnoxiously-loud engines or their precariously-balanced cabs. I just hope they learn wisdom before they tip over and burst into flames while travelling down a deserted stretch of highway where no one can hear them scream.) And as for the computer, well, I've been the picture of compassion with it--neither shouting excessively after the fourteenth re-booting of the day, nor beating it overly harshly with a sledgehammer after it cut off my favorite program FOR THE THIRD TIME JUST BEFORE THE KILLER IS REVEALED!!!!! Nominate me for owner of the year for my endless patience with these two damaged souls.

So, if you know of any good computer/automotive therapists--or just have a real hankerin' to pound out the frustrations of contemporary life on the helpless carcass of a modern "convenience," give me a shout. Something tells me my patience is about to give.

Warning: Full-blown panic attack coming your way

2009-08-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

OK--Girls' Camp is over. (Fabulous, by the way--you should have been there; you totally missed out! The tap-dancing alone was worth the trip. Maybe next year.) That means it's time to de-stress and relax for the

FOUR DAYS WE HAVE LEFT UNTIL SCHOOL STARTS!!!!!!!!!

There is something amazingly wrong with that thought, isn't there? It's like I spent all summer hoping and planning for something, and completely forgot to live while I was waiting for it. And now it's all over, and I have nothing left to look forward to, and a ton of stress is about to fall on me and crush me into a large greasy smudge on the pavement. Sort of. I guess.

And apparently, I'm still stuck in some kind of a do-it-all, Mrs.-out-to-impress-people mode (which, let's face it, is sort of useless. Because either people are already impressed by me, or they aren't, and if they are or if they aren't nothing I do at this point will make a bit of difference), because today, after swearing on a stack of camp manuals last week--they were the holiest printed works I had handy at the moment--that I would not touch that sewing machine again until the Christmas ornaments were up and Santa was winging his way south, I actually whipped up a sweet little dance bag for Lindy (she chose bold pink flamingos and pink with white polka dots--she has a bright future in design, no?) and a fabulous red sailboat-printed sling to carry Anders in when we ride the bus for educational- and mobility-related purposes. I am forced to conclude the fourteen loads of laundry calling my name were not enough of a challenge. (And apparently neither were the basic rules of nutrition, because I'm cruising on a steady diet of brownie mix and hamburger buns. Too much info?)

You wanna know what I think? (Surely you must, or you wouldn't be reading this.) I think it's a form of procrastination, this compulsion to create. Somewhere deep in the inner portions of my brain, there is a lobe, or a relay, or a synapse or something (Note to self: ask Tricia what that part of the brain is called so I can use it in casual conversation and intimidate people with less neuron-knowledgeable cousins) that thinks that if I am busy making something new and semi-interesting, then time is unnaturally slowed down and possibly even reversed to accommodate the task, and I will then have more time to address the unpleasant facts of existence at a later date. Seriously. You can always tell when I have something scary hanging over my head--I'll be working with intense concentration on totally unnecessary pieces of cloth, or paint, or paper. (Unless the something scary over my head is a spider. In which case I will be shrieking at top decibel level and jumping hysterically about the room in an ineffectual way, and accomplishing nothing except entertaining my children.)

See--I'm doing it again. Here I am, at 11:40 at night, writing a post that, while refreshingly candid and slightly humorous in a frantic sort of way, is totally unhelpful to the rotation of the earth, while a pile of textbooks awaits my organizational touch. I have books to find places for, folders to fill, pencils to sharpen, maps to hang. But there is no way in Tahiti that I will do them tonight, because I fully intend to fritter away my time filling in people on the meaningless details of a life they already know entirely too much about already. DANG IT ALL TO HADES! I HAVE HOMESCHOOL STUFF TO PREPARE, AND I AM WORRIED TO DEATH ABOUT IT! So I'm blogging, of course. Because nothing says I'm 100-percent focused on my children's education than sending trivia into the universe.

Dear goodness, I need help. If you have any compassion at all, send me a wake-up-to reality call. And maybe some salad.

Don't cry for me, Marge and Tina!

2009-07-31T22:10:00.000-07:00

Camp starts tomorrow--let the ritual eating of unpalatable snack foods begin!

I know you'll be bereft and listless without steady doses of my particular brand of inanity, so I won't leave you to wallow in misery. I'm going to share with you the secret to sounding like a total lunatic in just a few EZ steps. So, pull your computer chair closer, adjust your monitor to maximize your comfort, and away we go!

Mangle like Melia: a choose your own unpretentious blog adventure

Well folks, today I (insert completely trivial and utterly useless tidbit of information--it must have no relevance whatsoever to the human condition or current philosophical debate. Your object here is not so much to shine a light on human nature, as to really make people wish they had been born sensible hippos instead.) Seriously. You should have seen it. It was like (here's where you include a wildly hyperbolic comparison, hopefully cramming in as many hyphenated descriptives as possible. Be careful--make it flow! A little alliteration never hurts.)

You know, it was just like (this is the spot for a totally tangential reminiscence. It can't be at all relevant to the discussion at hand, but should probably contain the words, "folderol" and "metamorphic.")

No really, I'm just a (now, you need a completely honest, yet self-deprecating partial description of your character. Make it as obscure and highly colored as possible. And don't forget to refer to yourself as a "wack job" and/or a "nut noggin.")

Ha ha! Isn't life funny! (Sum things up with as many unnecessary adverbial phrases as possible. If at all possible, try for one totally superfluous word that you made up on the fly. Try to be as sincere in your usage of it as you can. Sell it to your readers. Make them question their own vocabulary. You get extra points if they hunt up their dictionaries to find a definition!)

(End here with a witty one-liner, just to keep people coming back for more--or at least to see if they've carried you away yet.)

See, you'll hardly miss me at all.

A letter to the part-time love of my life (not for impressionable readers!)

2009-07-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

Amore mio,

How can I express the depths of my infinite sorrow at our soon-coming parting? I weep; I wail; I sigh; I despair. I will burn with the heat of ten thousand suns.To live apart from you is to feel myself melt with anguish. My soul quivers, aflame with the pain of being ripped from your cherished embrace.

Though we have existed apart before, it seemed a trivial thing, not to be feared or dwelt on. But those were different days, and now my need for you increases steadily. Having so long known your gentle touch, your ever-eager presence, your soothing hum, how can I turn to the sere bleakness that will be my life without you?

The cruel sun will beat upon me, and I will have no respite. The torrid night will close upon me, and I will have no relief. Bereft, I will swelter with desire for you. My parched lips will call your name. My heated dreams will be of you, and when I awake, I will moan with the agony of our separation.

You are my protector, my solace, my life-giver. You make my days possible and give me hope for a future filled with mutual care and affection. Gazing on your sturdy exterior, I have faith in your power and continued vigilance against the elements that would destroy me. Without you, I would be nothing--a mere puddle of pain, a smudge of sweat, a burning ember charred beyond recognition.

While I wander, others will surround me. They will be but pale imitations of you. Without your overpowering strength, without your miraculous abilities, they will be as nothing to me. No one can quell my burning as you do.

In five long days, I will return, and our steamy love affair will reignite, to continue always. Or at least until October, when I will hose the grime from your dusty exterior, and turn you off until the temperature reaches 100 again.

Beloved air-conditioner, until then, whirr a gentle song for me.

Ti amo,
Me

Step this way

2009-07-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I signed my daughter up for dance lessons. "How precious!" you may think. Yes, I'm sure it will be that. "She'll develop some skills and maybe show some aptitude," you may opine. Hopefully she will. "Every little girl wants to be a ballerina," you offer. Well, except those who want to be mutant space rangers. "You're hoping she's inherited some of your talent!" If I had ever had any talent, yes, I would pray fervently for it to have been passed on. These are not the reasons why my daughter will be taking dance lessons starting in two weeks.

She will be taking dance lessons because we have a basement.

Incomprehension is spreading itself across your face; I've dealt with that before. Explanation is on the way.

Most foundations here in the Beautiful Desert Southwest are laid flat on concrete slabs. We have no frost heave problems, so concrete foundations are economical and secure. (Very unlike the foundations in less blessed places, like Missouri, say, where they have to have crawl spaces to deal with ventilation and ground freeze . Also so the snakes and spiders will have safe habitats. We wouldn't want them crawling around in the cold, would we? Far better to keep them in a warm and homey place so we always know where to find them.) But my parents, being of a very different, and very Mormon, breed, decided that any house they built would have a basement--so necessary to store all the Young Women's, Elders' Quorum, and Primary stuff, you know. Oh, and for the thirty-year old wheat. (Sociological note: it may be possible to identify someone's religion based solely on their choice of foundations. It would make an interesting study for anybody on the verge of selecting a Senior Thesis topic. Go ahead and use it--just send me the results of your research so I can see if my hunch has been validated.)

When my parents built the basement-foundationed house in which I currently reside (please no snarky comments about people never leaving their comfort zone. I left it with joy in my heart and stars in my eighteen-year-old eyes, but ten years later the siren call of low mortgage payments lured me back. That and the fact that this is the only spot in town with no scorpions. Which was at the top of the home-requirements list), they covered the particle board subfloors with ceramic tile--ugly ceramic tile, it must be admitted. Ugly ceramic tile that cracked thirteen seconds after it was mortared in place, but that is neither here nor there. It was the 80s, and the choice of ugly ceramic tile it can be blamed on the general cultural malaise of the era. When the floors, which were not only non -attractive, but also set over a cavernous echo chamber and thus exceedingly good at carrying sound waves, were done and only starting to crack a bit in the more heavily-trafficked areas, they moved in with three daughters, ages 11-7.

It took my father exactly fourteen minutes to proclaim, "If I had wanted this much noise, I would have raised elephants! Are you young ladies or pachyderms?" (Well, I know he said something to that effect, but I was too shocked to believe it. Who was he calling ungraceful? I tripped over my feet fewer than thirty times per day! And then I figured he was talking about my sisters and started laughing too hard to get an exact quote, and was eventually too lazy to write it in my journal even if I had. So I'm working from an extremely faulty memory. You'll just have to take it on trust that there were elephants somewhere in his pronouncement.) The point was made: after paying for dance lessons for seven years, he expected us to make good his investment. No more heavy feet. Henceforth we would trip lightly through the house, swaying gently with the breeze as we tip-toed our way around. Being dutiful daughters--I was actually able to type that out while snorting emphatically! Ten points for me.--we accepted his word as law. Or at least as suggestion. (We were on the edge of teen-hood, after all.) Thenceforth, we wafted around corners, and glided about rooms. Our movements were studies in adolescent pachydermic grace. Unless we were ticked. (Which, as teenagers, was pretty much all the time.) Then we made the basement reverberate with the thunder of our ire. "You want elephants? I'll show you elephants!!!!! Take that, you tiles and shaking support beams!!!! Feel the weight of my wrath!!!!! I am half-grown woman, hear me roar!!!!! Metaphorically!!! Through my thudding feet!!!!!"

Fast forward twenty-some-odd years: I can still move about pretty silently. I've scared the blibbering jeebers out of my husband when he thought I was in a room far, far away, and then looked up, choking on his purloined cookie, to see me glaring at him. My kids think it's pretty nifty that I can jump and land without a sound except the shrieking curses of my knees. They know that when they can hear my tread, they're meant to, and doom is on its way. This whole step lightly thing is a very useful ability.

As for Lindy? Poor girl. She's the only young female in a house full of brothers. She needs the ability to move about gracefully and silently--for the pure-hearted purposes of scaring those boys half to death and collecting incriminating information. If dance lessons will give her a fighting chance, then I'm all for them. Bring on the tutus!

All that and a bag of chips

2009-07-27T22:57:00.000-07:00

Four days to go until we head off to camp. I can feel the ulcer making its annual presence known. My dining room table is slowly emptying. (Good heavens! Who knew dust bunnies could live under two feet of stuff? Their standard habitat is under my daughter's bed.) I'm steadily checking things off the "to do" list. (Extra hot glue gun--because one is never enough while CAMPING!!!! Bought and binned. Extra-strength painkillers? Packed. Banners, multiple? Sewn, pressed, and placed carefully into protective receptacle.) Blue plastic RubberMaid containers are colonizing the front half of the house.

My one and only suitcase is out, and is crammed to the point of explosion. Or maybe spontaneous combustion will occur first. Whatever the ultra-extreme situation is for tortured luggage, my suitcase is there. And by "there" I mean lying on the counter by my stairs, bloated and strained, like a toddler who tried to compete in the annual Merkley "So you think you can eat Swedish meatballs" competition that other families refer to as "Christmas Eve." And this, you must know, is no wimpy little bag, bought on a whim for a quick getaway. My parents, when selecting this particular article, carefully considered my personality, my goals, and my propensity to consider everything within grabbing range as absolutely essential. They had seen the size of the purse I carried daily and took their luggage-purchasing cue from that. This is the amazing been-everywhere, done-everything, holds-anything Bag of Destiny. I was clutching this bag for dear life the first time I ever walked on foreign soil. (Amsterdam, 1997) It's the one I stuff for family vacations. (Disneyland, 2009) It has held all the supplies a baby can use for a week. It has never lost an article of clothing or busted a zipper despite the torture it has endured. I've had the thing for almost 13 years--far longer than I've had my husband, and almost as long as I've had the sneaking suspicion that if reincarnation were a true principle, then I was surely the re-embodiment of some obsessive-compulsive hobo. That or a cucumber. It's a toss-up.

When filling the suitcase I started working from the standard Camp packing list: clothing for five days, personal products, towel, journal, scriptures, UNO cards. That took up maybe half of the suitcase. Who were they kidding? This was too easy. Camp should be a test of one's powers of endurance, proof of one's abilities under atypical circumstances. Clearly, I would have think unconventionally. (In all honesty, when have I ever thought conventionally in the first place? This wasn't as much of a strain as it might seem. Normal is not my hometown, if you get my drift.) In desperation--because I cannot go to camp with a partially-filled chunk of luggage. It defied the laws of logic!--I started really considering what items I would not just need, but long for at camp. Therefore, the lesser portion of the packing is what everyone else brings, the rest of it is my personal spin on what is truly necessary for a fantastic camp experience. I'm almost certain that nobody in the world packs for camp like I do--but just to make sure, I'll give you the run-down, and you can tell me if this is excessive or not.

Into the bag have been placed:

Seven pairs of reading glasses, color-coordinated with outfits, and selected for daily themes. Included in the spectacle gallery are one pair of pick glitter-covered glasses; one pair of black polka dot glasses (for Sunday, when a really classic pair seems most appropriate); and one pair of tinted, Grace Kelly, 1960s-chic, white glasses, just to emphasize my hard-earned reputation of retro-hip modernity. The others are just your standard pink gingham, leopard print, and ethno-funky glasses.

Three carpenter's aprons; one printed with butterflies and flowers, one printed with the Sunday-appropriate black polka dots, one the standard Home Depot-issued orange-stenciled staple. Because I never have enough pockets at camp, and a girl needs a place for her folding fan, her camera, her spare toothbrush, and her emergency safety pins. Also her sixteen spare pens, with which to take notes on hands, because she can never remember to pack a pad of paper. Go figure.

Seventeen trial-size shampoos from the nice hotels my husband gets to stay in when he goes on work trips. Sure, he gets the nights on the town and the uninterrupted sleep, but I reap the reward in the form of itty-bitty bottles of magic beauty potion. Camp is more enjoyable if I can lather up my gnat-filled hair with something expensive and nice-smelling. And if you're going to bring something that good, you'd better have enough to share with everybody.

Two purple emery boards, even though I never use them at home (emery boards of any color, not just purple)--but, who knows, the inexplicable urge to file my nails might overcome me whilst I commune with nature, and that's not an urge that I'll be able to resist. Better prepared than trying to find an acceptable substitute amongst the flora and fauna.

One ball of yarn and four knitting needles, so I can use all my (fourteen minutes of) free time to start on my Christmas projects. (This year I'll be attempting stripey socks in cheerful colors.)

Two battery-operated Chinese lanterns for mood lighting. The mood may be uncontrolled lunacy, but it'll be more enjoyable if lighted well.

Star sequins. This is GIRLS' CAMP; there will be a time and a place for sequins. I will be ready for it.

Blue star-spangled ribbon, three yards, for which I have no intended purpose, but which may be useful in a ribbon-related emergency. Of said emergencies, I predict several for camp.

One pair of tap-dancing shoes. Because despite the dearth of hard-surfaced flooring at camp, I'm convinced that tap shoes will be not only helpful, but actually somehow needed. Tap dancing's not on the current certification-skills list, but mark my words, it will have its day in the woods.

Now tell me, doesn't that sound reasonable to you?

Things thought about while waiting for rolls to rise

2009-07-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

More women need to donate their white dresses to DI. (Because there is NO WAY IN HECK that I want to see one there donated by a man.) I've cleared them out four times trying to accumulate enough white dresses for the Commitment Hike, and I'm still worried we won't have enough. Seriously, sisters, are your white dresses so classic that they never go out of style--or do you use them too infrequently to get sick of them? Search your hearts, friends. The answer to many of our problems could be solved by increased usage of those dresses!

Girls' Camp may last just five days, but the messes created in the pursuit of its success endure eternally. Mostly in my living and dining rooms. Please don't come to visit me anytime soon, I have a reputation to maintain.

Cute yellow T-shirts bought on sale may look fabulous for a while, but they will eventually pill something fierce under the arms. Another reason to keep the appendages close and movement limited. I'm not stiff, folks, just frugal.

If you can just stay awake until the kids fall asleep, the resulting quiet is almost worth the sleep deprivation.

A newly-mopped floor is worth the trouble. As long as I don't have to trouble every day. Becuase that'll never happen, reputation be hanged.

Rolls take too darn long to rise--especially when you consider that I'm going to bust the diet eating too many of them and will regret the entire process by this time tomorrow night.

I need to remember to keep my inner dialogue just that after ten p.m. if I want anyone to take me seriously. Nothing good comes of spilling one's guts after the late-night news.

A post from the bottom of my grubby little heart

2009-07-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

Let me set up some previously overlooked--silly me!--rules for Date Night:

There should be no hairnets involved in Date Night.
Washing/drying dishes is not an acceptable date activity.
"Dressing up" should not mean changing in a cubicle into a white dress and shoes.

Mystified, aren't you? Wondering just what kind of a cheapskate husband I married; doubting that any marriage in such circumstances can long survive. Worry not, good people. There is, as always, a plausible, probable, if somewhat unexpected, explanation. (And Roberto isn't a cheapskate. That would be my assigned family role. When we were first married, we divided up the unpleasant chores. He would have to sing and dance in grocery stores and clean the toilets. I would have to be the grouchy cheapskate and do the laundry. The secret to a happy marriage is in the equitable sharing of household duties.)

We spent our Friday night--that evening of the Great Mormon Date Night, recommended so highly by teachers of the Family Relations course and Bishops everywhere--volunteering at the Temple. In the cafeteria. Wearing the aforementioned articles (Can any one tell me why I bothered to do my hair?????) and engaging in the Washing/Drying activity stated above. (Although, to be honest, there was also the washing of tables, the precision-stacking of dishes, and the Lysol-ing of all surfaces. I'm telling you, when the scriptures say the temple should be a house of cleanliness and order, it's taken very seriously, even in places where you think someone might be slightly tempted to allow things to slip just a little. After tonight, I'm thinking of issuing recommends for my home, just so certain people will take better care of it. Do you think it would impress the kids into cleaning up their [unholy in the extreme] messes?)

I think we may have misunderstood the "Date Night" concept. Sort of like my parents, whose dates always seem to be spent at Home Depot. Because there's nothing better for a marriage than to spend an romantic evening discussing features on a garbage disposal with a scruffy guy in an orange apron. (Gets me all goose-pimply just thinking about it. When Roberto and I married I suggested that we hold our reception at the Depot, because of the tender feelings it always evoked. That didn't go over well. But I still maintain it would have been a better predictor of our wedded future than would the cultural hall where we eventually did have our reception . For one thing, we spend way more time looking for plumbing-repair items than playing Church basketball.)

Anyway, tonight we traded our free evening--the only one we'll have in a long, long time--for a fat wad of Celestial Savings Bonds. (Legal tender for all spiritual blessings and rewards in heaven. Good for laying the foundations of one's celestial mansion.) Only problem: I'm actually pretty darn content right now. (Not to worry; I doubt this is a permanent condition. I'll be back to moaning and ranting soon enough.) I suppose I could stash them away and count on pulling them out when I need massive spiritual assistance, but I'm going to earn a lot more tomorrow and the week after next. (Girls' Camp is my key to spiritual enrichment. Like they say, "Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven." Trust me, camp counts in its own highly enjoyable way. Anytime I have to share my one shower of the week with two spiders and a lost grasshopper, I expect to be well blessed for it.) Call me Melia Megablessings.

So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to take this thick wallet of promised blessings and distribute them to people who could use them far better than I right now. I'm sure the heavenly accountants will understand and balance my account accordingly.

I send my promised extra love and strength to my friends who are in turmoil today.

For those people who are weary, I give you the physical and emotional strength I'm sure was coming my way.

The wisdom and knowledge intended for me can go instead to those who are seeking same.

My friends who are in emotional pain can expect a quick delivery of sunshine and optimism.

Any of you who are wondering how you'll make it through one more day can have my hope.

If there's anything I forgot, just ask that it be put on my account--I'll make sure it's covered. And then some day, when you spend the most anticipated evening of the week scrubbing pots and pan for the glory of heaven, you can pay me back.

Apparently, procrastination makes me creative

2009-07-22T11:19:00.001-07:00

A song for my sisters in (YW) service

With just twelve days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Pack up six big plastic bins
(dum-dum-dum)

With just eleven days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Buy lots of RAID
and Pack up ten big plastic bins
(dum-dum-dum)

With just ten days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Get yummy snack foods
Buy lots of RAID
and Pack up fifteen big plastic bins
(dum-dum-dum)

With just nine days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Stock up on Advil
Get yummy snack foods
Buy lots of RAID
and Pack up twenty-one big plastic bins
(dum-dum-dum)

With just eight days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Christmas tree lights!
Stock up on Advil
Get yummy snack foods
Buy lots of RAID
and Pack up twenty-eight big plastic bins
(oh, mercy me!)

With just seven days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Scriptures and journal
Christmas tree lights!!!
Stock up on Advil
Get yummy snack foods
Buy lots of RAID
and Pack up thirty-five big plastic bins
(I'm going nuts!)

With just six days til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
Camera for blackmail
Scriptures and journal
Christmas tree lights!!!!!
Stock up on Advil
Get yummy snack foods
Buy lots of RAID
and Pack up forty-two big plastic bins
(dear gosh, what have I gotten into?!)

With just five days 'til Girls' Camp,
my schedule said to me:
More toilet paper
Camera for blackmail
Scriptures and journal
Christmas tree lights!!!!!!!!!!

Stock up on Advil

Get yummy snack foods

Buy lots of RAID

and Pack up forty-nine big plastic bins

(what was I thinking?)

With just four days 'til Girls' Camp,

my schedule said to me:

Cute stationery :)

More toilet paper

Camera for blackmail

Scriptures and journal

(and extra pens for all the girls who will inevitably lose theirs)

Christmas tree lights!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stock up on Advil

Get yummy snack foods

(not the kind I brought last year--they wouldn't eat it)

Buy lots of RAID

and Pack up fifty-six big plastic bins

(Oh. My. Gosh.)

With just three days 'til Girls' Camp,

my schedule said to me:

Foofy decorations

Cute stationery :)

More toilet paper

(or else we'll end up using paper towels like last year)

Camera for blackmail

(I'll get them back for that shot of me in my pj's if it's the last thing I do!)

Scriptures and journal

Christmas tree lights

(We need to buy some more!)

Stock up on Advil

(and Valium)

Get yummy snack foods

(or else the squirrels up there will starve)

Need more cans of RAID

and Pack up sixty-three big plastic bins

(I'm getting scared)

With just TWO DAYS 'TIL GIRLS' CAMP

(gasp!)

my schedule said to me,

Make armpit hair for skit night

(ewwwww!)

Foofy decorations

Cute stationery :)

More toilet paper

(please, heaven, don't let us run out!)

Camera for blackmail

(my revenge will be sweet)

Scriptures and journal

(when will I find the time to use them?)

Christmas tree lights

(whaddya mean, "they aren't in stock this time of year"?)

Stock up on Advil

(twenty bottles should do it)

Get yummy snack food

Buy a case of RAID

and Pack up eighty-five big plastic bins

(my knees are weak)

On. The. Night. Before. Girls'. Camp,

(when I was praying for release)

my schedule said to me:

HAVE A TOTAL BREAKDOWN

(it's your only hope)

Make armpit hair for skit night

(next year we're doing this classy!)

Foofy decorations

(I need more lace! and sequins! and glitter!)

Cute stationery

(Dear Sister Green, we're sorry that we lost your daughter on the hike . . .)

MORE toilet paper

(I refuse to use bark this time!)

Camera for blackmail

(BWA-HA-HA-HA!)

Scriptures and journal

(my lifeline to sanity)

CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!

(and glow sticks, too)

Start taking Advil

STOP EATING the snack food

~~Buy a case of RAID~~ Take an exterminator

and Pack up ninety-four big plastic bins!

(whimper)

Slight problem: we leave in ten days.

The post where gravity and slippery lettuce leaves conspire to reveal the inner me

2009-07-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

I dropped a bowl of mashed potatoes on the floor tonight. Riveting news, no? Stick with me anyway, since the elements of the incident and its resulting follow-up are windows into my psyche. Smudgy, dog-snot smeared, long-over-due-for-a-wash windows, but windows nonetheless. (The nice kind, with the wood spacer bars, and maybe a simple linen valance.)

I opened the fridge to get out a slice of cheese. Hey--it's 9:30, Sunday night, kids are in bed (sort of--you never can tell with mine), and naturally, I want cheese. Doesn't everybody under similar circumstances? Sadly, I can't say that I was peckish for some brie, or some Stilton, or something equally pedigreed. I actually wanted a slice of good old, processed-within-an-inch-of-its-unnatural-existence American cheese, which I intended to carefully place on my also way-too-processed hamburger bun. Haute cuisine, I have arrived!

Unfortunately the person who had closed the fridge before the cheese urge hit--that would be me, or this post would be about me blaming someone else instead of this verbiage I'm subjecting you to--had not done such a hot job of securing the bowl of potatoes. Secure as a way of describing their position is a bit of a stretch. Suicide jumpers on six-inch ledges are more secure than these potatoes were. They were precariously half-balanced on a pound-package of strawberries, propped up with some romaine lettuce leaves, which are known far and wide for their structural integrity, and which will make their way to the dinner table tomorrow. (See, I'm not totally kitchen-inept; my classy choice of lettuce proves it.) So when I yanked none too gently on the fridge door--because this puppy has a seal like an rusty old-time safe on it--the poor potatoes had no chance.

I'd like to say that everything slowed down and the potatoes' short life flashed before my eyes. Sadly, not so much; it was over too quickly for poetic reflection. The bowl landed with a low-class-sumo-wrestler's thud on the floor that I had mopped last night at 10:30, and which floor I had hoped against reality to keep semi-clean for another day. I barely had time to squeak out a half-decent semi-cuss before it was all over. (The half-decent semi-cuss, if you really need to know, started with d- and ended with -amnation. In retrospect, it was a poor choice--too many syllables to push out before the bowl hit. I need to find shorter semi-cusses.)

I once had a mission companion who--though being from Utah--was Jell-O-challenged. It never turned out for her: it was either too thin and unset (and made wonderful popsicles), or it was barely moistened and too thick in consistency. (In which cases it made highly useful, if colorful, spackle.) I used to laugh about it. Not anymore, because I have a similar problem. My particular ineptitude concerns mashed potatoes: I never make the right amount. If everybody is ravenous, then I make just enough to satisfy the baby, so long as he's not in the mood for potatoes. If everyone is heaping their plates with meatloaf and asparagus and pineapple--like tonight, yum!--then inevitably I have enough potatoes to feed the army of a decent-sized third world revolutionary army. I think the problem has to do with my unjustified disdain for measuring instruments. I have a well-stocked kitchen; there are quite a few--multiple sets of measuring spoons, lovely Pyrex measuring cups, even a nifty little food scale. All of which I refuse to use because I have the (admittedly inane) notion that cooking should be an intuitive, natural thing, and that my Swedish roots should instinctively guide me to the proper amounts without resorting to anything so artificial and arbitrary as teaspoons and quarter-cups. (Here's a handy household hint for you folks of Scandinavian heritage: never ever trust your Swedish roots in the kitchen. They have serious problems with portion control and size guesstimation.) So there were quite a few left-over helpings of potatoes available to besmear my semi-clean floor.

Are you still with me? Eyes glazing over yet? We're almost there--and I'll provide a handy summing up of the major points so you don't have to reread my rambling paragraphs. Namely:

1-Given the choice of a fridge stocked to the proverbial gills with fresh fruits and veggies, I will always choose the most unnatural thing contained therein. In a world of fresh peaches and juicy tomatoes, all I really want is the three-year-old Twinkie.

2-I have a sever case of "heck no, I don't need that ridiculous measuring cup--I've got a knack for this sort of thing"-itis, and the hips to prove it.

3-My real regret in all of this was that I chose my cuss poorly.

Here's the final bit of information you need to deduce what kind of person I really am:

I called the dog over to clean up the resulting splattery spuddy mess in her own detail-oriented way. And I was okay with the job she did.

Draw your own conclusions.

(The cheese on bun was delicious, by the way.)

The (not so)faithful correspondent returns

2009-07-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

I'm back--did you miss me? Did you even notice? Shucks, people--sharpen those observation skills!

I have a good reason for letting the blog lapse for the past few days. And it isn't that Roberto was out of town, though he was--enjoying the excitement of the big city with its fancy-schmancy restaurants, its culture, its comfy hotel beds, while I was "enjoying" being the ultimate hermit mom. (We ate frozen pizza and I slept on the couch. The only culture I encountered was green and found in the back of the fridge. It may have once been a bowl of soup.) No, I blogged not because I was getting ready for camp.

Those of you who may be male or non-young women's organization-affiliated females may not fully understand the enormity of that last statement. You are perhaps picturing a slightly feminized version of Male camping. Male camping means taking a tent and some jerky into the wilderness. Pyromania is a recurring theme. Hygiene is disregarded to an extreme degree. Organization is minimal, and loud bodily noises are encouraged through a complicated rating system.

Young Women's camping is a whole 'nother planet. We start attending planning meetings in early January. A theme is carefully selected, and then the leaders blow through every penny of their budget finding just the right hair ribbons, bandannas, and poster board to express their excitement over the theme. Packing consists of 42 carefully labeled bins--each one containing precious cargo: skit costumes (6 bins. Except for the year when we made papier-mache giraffe heads; they required 10 bins all to themselves. The other costume articles took up 4 more bins and most of the back of a mini-van.), certification supplies (1 bin), journals and fancy pens (1 bin), banners (1 bin), Christmas tree lights (3 bins), etc. Songs are memorized. Skits are written and practiced to meet to Oscar-level standards. Endless conversations are held over whether the snipe costume for said skit should or should not include a feather boa . (Final decision: no boa, but the grass skirt is still under discussion.) Organization is the name of the game--from what ward cleans what area of the camp at what time of the day to which group of YCLs will make the cute signs for which bathroom. This is a serious thing, people. It only comes around once a year--we have to make it count!

Through all the preparations my part is relatively easy: I attend meetings and I sew. My machine and I bond, and my children forget what I look like without pins stuck to my clothes and tape-measure hung round my neck. I sew banners. I sew skit costumes. I sew doo-dads. I sew whatever needs to be sewn. Heck, I even sew what doesn't need to be sewn, and some things which almost certainly shouldn't be sewn.

Best of all--unless you ask my children, who have very little tolerance for anything which takes attention away from them--I get to sew costumes for the Commitment Hike. You've probably never heard of a Commitment Hike. It's an old stake tradition--going back to the days when it debuted during my fourth year of camp back when camp was held in Brother Brigham's backyard. Back then it really was a hike. Ward groups would set out, one by one at set intervals--no crowding, please!--and hike from station to station where scenes would be acted out, or stories told, or experiences shared. It was quite the experience. It was testimony building and tear-inducing . That's the way we like things at YW camp. A few years back, I have no idea when, since I wasn't living here then, the hike morphed into a play acted by the sixth-year YCLs--but no one got around to changing the name. So when I say I sew for our Commitment Hike, most people assume I'm sewing pink plaid shirts or embroidering puffy vests. Not so! Two years ago the Commitment Hike required a plethora of scripture-story costumes. We had a smashing Queen Esther, a sweet Mary, a pretty convincing Sarah. Last year I cranked out pioneer dresses and the aprons, bonnets, and accessories that went with them. This year . . . I'm not saying. The Hike is a closely guarded secret--we're all sworn to absolute secrecy on it.

So that's why I was incommunicado this week; I spent those four days taking advantage of my forced isolation from the world. I woke up each morning with a long list of things to finish, and by gum, I was going to get them done or die in the attempt. Cloth was washed, ironed, and cut. Patterns were altered and/or drafted. Seams were sewn. Buttons were attached. I yanked my serger out of its sulks and impressed it into service. I stitched from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. every day. The baby got familiar with the view from his playpen. The older children refound their housekeeping skills. No obstacle was too big to meet, no task too small to obsess over. I jammed needles into my fingers. I went cross-eyed threading machines. It was a heroic performance by all involved.

We leave for camp in 14 days. I hope I survive until then.

Now I regret taking the time stamp off my camera

2009-07-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

Rob is out of town. It must be time to PARTAY! --especially if you're under five years old and your mother is exhausted.

This was the scene a few minutes ago (that was at 1:18 A.M., people! After hours of rocking, cajoling, and pleading. The gods of sleep are vengeful tonight.):

Ironically enough, this morning I put Anders in the t-shirt that says, "Party at my crib, 3 a.m." He is still wearing it. I have GOT to find him one that reads, "Somebody find me a pillow, I feel a nap coming on." I'd pay big bucks for that slogan on an article of his clothing.

If you feel the need to call me tomorrow, don't bother. I'll be zombified. But if you can wait until midnight, well then, I'll be up and running. These two will make sure.

This soap won't get you clean

2009-07-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

Do you remember back in the 80s--if you can remember that far back, GOOD FOR YOU!, and if you can't, well, just humor me--and somewhere in every Young Women's lesson manual was the counsel to avoid soap operas (daytime dramas these days, although it seems to me like an awful lot of anytime dramas are soap-opera-ish)? The teachers would bear solemn witness that soap operas stole days from their lives, set them a bad example for decision-making, and led unsuspecting females down the path to immorality. Remember that? I was secretly fascinated with the things after every one of those lessons. (So much for the voice of warning.) And, micro-rebel that I was, every summer I would attempt to cultivate the soap opera habit.

It never worked, of course. Poor acting, unfathomable "plots", rotten dialogue, impenetrable relationships--who had the energy? Besides, my mom had a fool-proof plan for foiling would-be soaper-in-training: chores. That's right, housework kept me on the straight and narrow. (It also gave me dishpan hands at the tender age of twelve, but grouse I shall not.)

If any of you had a mom who was less chore-oriented than mine, or if you were better at inserting earphone plugs than I was, you may remember the opening voice-over to Days of Our Lives, and wouldn't have to look it up on Google like I did: "Like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives. . . ." [cue cheesy music] Okay--I have a problem with that statement. Sands through an hourglass make it seem like there is an order, a sensible progression to these days of ours slipping silently and calmly away. Yet more proof that the purveyors of media are not like you and me. My life is nothing like sands through an hourglass. If I had an overly dramatic voice-over introduction to my day, it would be more like this:

"Like electrons in a quantum mechanics model, like mood swings in a teenager, like gassyness in a toddler, these are the days of Melia's life. . . ."

[cue extraordinarily cheesy music involving cowbells, oboes, slide whistles, and random animal sounds]

Since we've waded whole-heartedly into the soap opera theme, let's stick with it, 'K? For those of you who may have (intentionally or not) missed the first 10,000 or so episodes, here's a quick run down of the current day of my life. As per the great sop opera tradition there is neither rhyme, nor reason to the plotting. But there will be lots of overacting.

Scene one: Anders has a cold--again. The cold has made him more clingy than normal. Typically, he spends his day in exploring the house--pulling down books, charting unmapped hiding places, attempting to reach the secret man-cave know as "the boys' bathroom." Not so today. His mother must spend most of the day "enjoying" Mommy-and-Me wrestling--in which she lies down on the floor and allow Anders to maul and baby-handle her.

Such enforced floor-level contemplation leads her to all sorts of profound discoveries:

The floor smells like dirty dog. The dog smells like corn chips.
The dust bunnies under the couch have bad attitudes.
Baby barf, when puddled in the small of one's back, feels nothing like an icy-hot patch.
Sound carries quite well through non-carpeted floors. You can hear a four-year-old in the basement smack her older brother in the head with a baseball bat surprisingly clearly.
Lying face down on a hard floor is a better indicator of body mass than a scale.

Lots of shots of pained resignation and repeated murmurs of "Don't gouge the eye, sweetie."

[It's a slow scene, but its importance and relevance to later events will become apparent soon.]

Scene two: [partial flash-back] The basement has become a disaster zone on a post-tsunami-effect scale. With thunder in their voices and overemotion in their gestures, the mother and father had previously warned the children in no uncertain terms that IT MUST BE CLEANED UP OR ELSE! The children who heard these words have no idea what that means. Bafflement ensues. That phrase seems to translate into child terms as "Go and re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg with cars, blocks, and puppets as your troops. Extra points for realistic gore." They faithfully follow their parents' apparent orders to the letter, with realistic gore being supplied by the afore-mentioned baseball smack to the head. Two points to Lindy.

Optional: the Battle Hymn of the Republic played over slo-mo shots of miniature cars hitting walls and plastic foods being ground underfoot.

Scene three: A mom, clearly at the end of her rope, covered in various baby-supplied bodily fluids, summons the from the basement the re-enacting miscreants to justice. One--hastily patched up in authentic Civil War fashion--bless them, they've done some research!--slumps wearily against the wall. The mother--with wrath and exasperation in her eyes, sentences all the toys to immediate banishment! Close-up of children weeping and wailing--optional shot of teeth-gnashing.

Closing voice-over: Has evil triumphed? Will the toys get a last-minute reprieve? (Don't bet the farm on it!) Can our heroine--that's me!--survive another day, or will she succumb to despair and untidiness?

Tune in for our next episode to find out.
[re-cue cheesy, cow bell and slide whistle music; roll credits.]
********************************************************************************

Yup, this is the episode that's going to lead me down the path to Baskin-Robbins.

This post's title is after the second paragraph. Don't worry, you'll get there in a few seconds.

2009-07-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Okay--I may have gone a little overboard on the snark and venom yesterday. (My apologies to whatever poor overworked peon had to read it and, ultimately, attempt to placate me. But seriously, if you could memo the engineers and ask them to look for alternative employment--I and the rest of the sewing populace would be grateful.) So here's the deal: for one day only--I don't think I can sustain it any longer than that--I will be all sweetness and light. I will be full of gratitude and cheer, and whatever the other stuff is that the Relief Society teachers always say we should have. (It's been a while since I sat in on one of those lessons. Allyson, can you remind me what the third thing is? Thanks!) I will be positivity personified.

In that spirit, I bring you today's post:

Stuff about which I can say nice things

Doctors--specifically the one who saw my son at 8 a.m. today, and who didn't chide me for being an over-anxious hover-mom. Even when the "worryingly high temperature" my child was running turned out to be 98.9. And who doesn't mind that I named this same child after him, sort of.

Penicillin. Wonder Drug, Soother of Achy Ear-Drums, Bright-Pink Panacea in a Bottle. I nominate its discoverer (Dr. Alexander Fleming--I checked it on Google) for my personal Hall of Adoration. Also-ran-sort-of-thing I can say something nice about: the fact that my children, unlike me, are not allergic to it.

A Washing machine that is on its last, second-hand legs, but which at least moistens my clothing 90% of the time. And the other 10% of the time it makes nice thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk,etc. noises, so it at least sounds like something in the house is working. (Because, you know, I go around this house working, silently, all day. Go ahead, point out the obvious inaccuracies in that statement. I can't--I promised to be sweetness and light.)

Window-washing fluid--the cheap, homemade stuff. (1 tbsp rubbing alcohol and 2 cups water--10 cents or so per bottle. You can even write Windex on the bottle with magic marker if it'll make you feel more affluent.) Because no amount of explanation is going to convince the--how can I say this sweetly and lightly?--endearingly dedicated pooch that the cat next dog is not on the menu.

Windows, which keep the cat next door off the menu.

Floors that are impervious to puddles of dog drool produced by a large pooch dreaming of recipes with cat-next-door as a key ingredient.

Air-conditioning,

Because I live in the beautiful Desert Southwest. And it's going to be 116 by Saturday.

The fact that I only made my sweetness-and-light promise for today, because by Saturday I'll have a doozy of a rant coming on.

Clotheslines, with which to take advantage of the infinite blessings of living in the beautiful Desert Southwest in the summer, where it'll be 116 by Saturday.

Thermometers, to tell us just exactly how hot it is; because "hot enough to melt the tan off your be-hind" isn't specific enough for the 6 o'clock news. (But don't I wish it were.)

Beds, specifically ones that are made semi-regularly, because in a home infested/inhabited by children they are rare and precious things. Extremely rare and precious.

(Oooh, perilously close to sarcasm there. I'd better step away from that edge, because it's a long way down, if you know what I mean. And I suspect that you do.)

Blog platforms which auto-save, so when I totally inadvertently hit a wrong key while attempting to shift a paragraph and instead delete THE ENTIRE THING mid-way through another semi-coherent post it's there after I pull my quivering, blubbering self off the floor and seek a sensible, non-sledge-hammer-related solution.

English teachers who taught me that the above is a run-on sentence and should never be allowed in well-thought-out writing.

English teachers who followed up their admonishment with the statement, "But it's going to happen sometimes--just don't be excessive about it."

The fact that I know I can ignore the second part of that statement now and no one can do a darned thing about it.

Venting my spleen--whatever that really means

2009-07-08T15:19:00.001-07:00

Two days ago I described my various traumas with sewing machines. Today it's the serger's turn.

The email I sent to the manufacturer says it all--well, most of it all. Before I sent it off, I did some heavy editing to remove the swearing and the references to irregular parentage. (Yes, this is the real email--although I was gibbering and foaming at the mouth so badly that I misspelled several words. I doubt they noticed.)

I have waited several years to purchase a serger. I sew frequently, and at a proficient level. I have a degree in clothing and textiles. I am not a novice. With those facts in mind, please consider that my opinions on your product are not those of a neophyte or an unskilled individual.

I am extremely disappointed in this serger. I purchased it with the expectation that it would make my sewing easier and more enjoyable. It has created quite the opposite result. This serger has brought my sewing process to a grinding halt. Any serger which requires one hour of rethreading and testing before sewing a two-inch seam is not worth the trouble of taking it out of the box. I have spent approximately four hours sewing with this serger and sixteen hours rethreading it. Keep in mind that I have used sergers in the past. This is not my first time using this type of machine. I have read and reread the manual. I have followed every step and hint given in the manual (despite writing and illustrations that are complete rubbish and of no help whatsoever), and the machine refuses to stay threaded. It is unreliable, inconsistent, and frustrating beyond belief to use.

Please inform you engineers that they are incompetent.

Sincerely,
A former customer

Color me crazy (or maybe: Color? Me crazy!--it works both ways)

2009-07-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

Do you have technical difficulties with the boxes on official identification forms that ask for hair color? That one always baffled me. In my defense, I am a reasonably intelligent individual, but some things are beyond human ken--like just what kind of answer they want. Do they want the color I was born with, the color it is now, or the color of the last treatment I applied? Do they want documentary proof? Do I have to prove the veracity of my color? Would doing so hurt? It'd be much simpler if they asked for the relative density of a nitrogen cloud at absolute zero. (That question has almost as much application to my driving ability as hair color does.) That I could at least look up and give a definite answer to--and seem smart and scientific as a bonus. The hair color thing, though--that's a stumper.

For years it was easy: blond--very, very blond. After the overly-extended bald period of my life (which my mom swears lasted until I was two--but I've seen photos, and it couldn't have lasted past 20 months--22, tops) I developed the finest, whitest, thinnest cap of hair seen on this planet. The family term for this follicular affliction was "halo hair"--I guess they thought "lint on a lollipop hair" would have been detrimental to my infant self-esteem. Fortunately, I grew out of that stage just before kindergarten. (Which was a blessing, because by then they had fastened thick glasses on my face, and I couldn't have handled the combined mortification of being the weird fuzzy girl and the funny-looking kid with glasses. Although, now that I think about it, it might have cut down on the taunts while the other kids blew their cranial circuits deciding which rhyme to tease me with.) For the next six or so years I went through the very blond, very straight, very cow-licked stage of hair-development. There are very few pictures from that part of my life.

About the time I hit junior high--glory be!!!--my hair started to darken up and exhibited a certain stringy quality. As if puberty, adolescence, and an absolute lack of social skill weren't enough to keep me from a total confidence breakdown.

I should explain here that I did my time in junior high during the 80s--the early part of that decade. Nobody had good hair, but most of them didn't realize it. There were the 70s holdovers, with their over-lacquered Farah Fawcett feathers. There were the protopunks. There were the chicks with the "large and in charge" hair--the responsible parties for at least 10% of the ozone-depletion scare. Me? I fell into a small subset of the embryonic very-early grunge movement (we had no idea that we were on the cutting edge of hip--back then it was just attributed to poor hygiene, and sadly, most of us outgrew it before we could use it to our advantage): limp and lifeless. Style we of that dark era may have lacked, but color was far more important. Blond was best--flirty, sassy, cheerleader-quality. Dark was desirable--intelligent-looking, witty, exotic. Vaguely indefinable blondish-but-sort-of-green-under-institutional-fluorescents color was nowhere on the scale of junior high acceptability.

By high school, I had developed hair schizophrenia: short and (accidentally--no joke!) dyed red one semester, long and almost natural the next. ( I had a brief fling with that stuff that was supposed to lighten your hair while you were in the sun--probably not the best color-altering option for someone who burns under 60-watt bulbs.) I spent a month teaching myself to French-braid my own hair just to get it mostly hidden. My hair was no longer blond in the classical sense--that sense being "like the color of well-ripened wheat" or even "vaguely honey-hued." I called it blond, but like most of my high school experience it was all a bluff. I knew my hair was less honey-colored and more the shade of botulism-infused pork and beans. But admitting that would have required infinitely more self-esteem than I had. (And can you blame me? Who states something like that in high school? My goodness, we were all seething masses of insecurity and sensitivity at that point. No one was going to admit to anything other than indifference!)

In college I discovered that even good girls can hit the bottle [of hair coloring]. I tried every shade of red--from deep auburn to slightly strawberry. No one knew how to describe me because they never knew what I would look like on any given day. If I had done the job the previous night I might look like an over-ripe eggplant. And if I was currently cash-free, I might look like a long-haired chihuahua with mange. (Perhaps my professors took pity on me and inflated my grades, figuring that anybody with hair color that bad needed something to keep them from despair. I'm okay with that.)

My color epiphany came on my mission. (One of those blessing of missionary work rarely admitted when speaking in church.) I served five months on the Navajo Reservation, in a trailer which was located in the center of the rodent cosmos. One day I noticed a strange funk wafting from the couch--the very cushion, in fact!--where I typically sat to study. My former mission companion tells the story better, but the upshot of it was that the funk was emanating from a squashed mouse. That's not the worst part, so stop gagging. The worst part was the realization that my hair and the fur of the flattened, slightly oozing mouse were the same color! That, my friend, is not a realization to build confidence on.

There is no box on the driver's license form for "rodent colored" hair. No one goes on TV and admits they take a small rodent for their colorist to match. There are no boxes of L'Oreal labeled "Rongeur Brun." (Go ahead, use Google Translate--I'll still be here when you're done.) But there it is: my hair was the color of furry disease-carrying pests. (Some would argue that I am a furry, disease-carrying pest, but they would be exaggerating.) I lived with this knowledge long enough to learn to laugh at it--sort of a follicle-related coping mechanism--but the laughs were a pale imitation of true mirth.

Still, you know, life has a way of evening things out eventually. I may have lived 37 years with really bad hair, but my time is coming. My son--the one with the majority of the future inheritance--showed me with a picture he had colored in Primary the other day. "That's Dad," he explained, "that's me, that's Lindy, and that's you, Mom." He had given me red hair--"Because that's what you have, Mom." Ha! I knew he was a genius. And from now on, if anyone asks what color my hair is, I know. My hair is red; my son said so. It's easier than explaining the mouse thing again.

The sewing machine suicides

2009-07-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

I never intended to pray to the iron idol--I'd had the scriptures quoted to me enough times. The meaning was very clear in those passages: don't rely on false gods to save you or to provide your eternal happiness. I must have gone wrong in the early, formative years.

My first sewing experience was with my mother's 50-year-old Singer. That machine weighed a ton; it had exactly one stitch type (straight--zigzag hadn't been invented yet); and it gave me a headache every time I went to thread it. It still does: the dratted thing refuses to die. (It will, however accept expensive tension repairs, light-bulb replacements, and quarts of sewing machine oil. It's the mechanical equivalent of a crabby miser who lingers at death's door for years, all the time enjoying the fun of making his downtrodden heirs miserable.) I was ten, and my mother had determined it was time for me to learn the feminine art of sewing. Or maybe I just complained too much about never having something new to wear. Whichever. She picked out the pattern--the fewest possible seams, no zipper, no buttons; she had realistic expectations of my aptitude. I chose the fabric--the brightest sock-you-in-the-eye yellow with strawberries I could find. We set to work. She demontrated the cutting, I tried my hand at it. She bought more fabric and cut it out herself. She showed me how to sew a seam. I copied her movements. She taught me how to unpick the seam I had sewn. The pattern (ye gads! terrible yet unintended pun!) of my sewing life had been set. I still have that dress folded carefully in my cedar chest, as a reminder of how far one can go astray even while using a pattern.

My next project, using the same machine, was required for a Home Ec grade. I received a D-.

I figured that nowhere in the rulebook of life did it state that Melia had to sew. All the sewing machines in the land breathed gratefully.

I went to college with a firm declaration of majoring in International Relations. I was going to bring peace to the world and enjoy the diplomatic life. My clothes would be expensively made by someone else. That was the plan. Until I learned a little something--almost enough for a D--about Economics, which was my downfall. I needed a new major. Flipping through the university catalog, I saw a class that sounded good--Costume History. Practically a guaranteed A, since I had been studying my mom's costume history textbook for years. (Three years later I earned a C+ in the class. It's a long story.) On the frail foundation of that one course requirement I selected my major: Theatrical Costume Design. I figured I would get some good, stimulating challenges, and there weren't too many sewing classes required.

The writers of university catalogs should be spanked.

I started sewing in classes the very next semester, and wasn't allowed to graduate until my fingers were callused, my eyes were squinty, and my posture was permanently ruined. Each time I turned in an article I had sewn, my teachers would wince, close their eyes--I swear they all went to inservice training for this maneuver--and say kindly, "You know, your creative ability exceeds your sewing aptitude." I persisted regardless of professorial pain. I sewed until 3 a.m. on graduation morning and had to sign a contract pledging myself to sewing my own wedding dress, blessing clothes for all my (then future) children, and prom dresses for at least 13 needy young women.

Along the way I acquired my first sewing machine. I received it from my mother, who had been given the beast five years before, and who had refused to touch it. Now I knew why. The tension was permanently off-kilter, the internal computer was programmed by a mad scientist, and the thing weighed 42 tons. On the plus side, I was able to take it in to the Physical Education department and receive a Weight-Training grade for lugging it around campus. Somehow, we came to an agreement and it--unwillingly, to be honest!--sewed all of my projects (some of which are still in wearable shape), all of my "I'm so sick of my clothes and tomorrow is Sunday" dresses, and some of the clothes I took on my mission. One week after I graduated, while I was in the middle of a tricky seam, it died. Out of sheer cussedness, I assume.

My second machine was bought soon after because I was getting married and needed to fulfill the terms of my graduation contract. It was bought for $99 and the price reflected the absence of anything resembling guts. It spluttered when I sewed chiffon, for Pete's sake. I had to drag thin cotton through its works, muttering curses under my breath. None of my children have hand-me-down homemade jeans, because fabric that thick would have spelled instant flaming death for my machine. It finally gave up the ghost while on my husband's workshop operating table. Its last whirrs were feeble and relieved. "At least she'll never flog me with a zipper again," it whispered in its last moments.

I searched the Internet for machine recommendations. The next victim would be sturdy and strong, capable of tearing through upholstery material, ripping through denim, and still delicate enough to make sweet Easter dresses. I chose and bought one, and loved it. I praised it to the skies. It had a self-threading mechanism! It had stretch stitch! It could sew anything! It gave up the ghost after 18 months! The repair man called it a bent bobbin spindle. I still maintain it died of jealousy. I had bought a serger the week before, and my poor Janome couldn't handle the division of affection.

I opened up my new machine's box today. I have costumes to make and banners to sew. Camp is coming up and my machine and I will become very close. My husband is already considering taking out a life-insurance policy on it.

I am an American

2009-07-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be totally serious here--no snark, no curiously inverted sentences, no hyperbole. Just honesty. If you tuned in to be amused, read the earlier posts--I'll be back with my own brand of lunacy later. Promise.

Here's the thing: I really love America. Tomorrow's the Fourth, and I know everyone and the cowboy next to them will be writing their opinions and perceptions of this country, and so it's probably a stale topic already. So what? I have emotions, and I will not be stifled! (Real quote from a real argument--you fill in the cast of characters and the scene.)

My husband, il Roberto, is not an American. (gasp!) He hails from the frozen northlands. He loves America almost as much as I do, though. Yes, he sings O, Canada on Canada Day, and cheers occasionally for the Canadian hockey team during the Olympics, but that's really just to set a good example for the kids. We met in Ukraine, outside the airport. We've done a decent amount of travelling together, in and out of the country. There have been places where I would gladly plunk my rear down and stay for a few years. He and I have talked about moving to foreign places for many years now. No luck yet. (If anyone knows of a really good job in Sweden, let us know!) But even if we did get such an amazing opportunity, we wouln't stay there forever. We couldn't. This is our home--everything else is just adventure and distraction for us.

I know it's not cool to be respectful of the Founding Fathers. I've done the reading; I've heard the scuttlebutt. They weren't perfect. Again, So What? Who's perfect? They were determined, though. And they were courageous. Who in their right mind takes on the superpower of the day and says, "Hey, you know what? You guys are a bunch of morons, and we're just going to go our own way, thank you very much." Think about it! No standing army, no navy, no centuries-old way of organizing these things, and they still did it! And they started without knowing if they would win or if they would die the next week. And they won! How incredible. And to go from there to writing the most innovative governmental document ever? WOW--were they cool. (And don't even get me started on their wives. You have no idea how much I respect Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison, and all the others, who said, "No, honey, I'll be fine taking care of everything. Just make sure you do a good job and don't catch malaria there in Philadelphia." Although, to be strictly accurate, Dolley didn't marry James Madison until after the Constitutional Convention. And John Adams helped with the Declaration of Independence, but was our ambassador to England during the summer of 1787. Just some helpful facts you may need if you're ever on Jeopardy or something.)

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to watch 1776--the musical (which is not at all historically accurate, but which I love anyway. I'll try to ignore the blatantly anachronistic waltzing scene), and that BYU production that we had to watch for American Heritage on the writing of the Constitution. And I'm going to shout historical facts at my kids and possibly the dog--because everyone should have a working knowledge of the country in which they reside. And I'm going to bawl my eyes out just for the sheer joy and thankfulness of getting to live here. You can join me, if you wish. There'll be space on the couch. Bring your own hanky.

Helpful mothering tips your mom couldn't share with you because she was laughing too hard when you asked

2009-07-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Our topic today: bathing the bouncing baby boy in no more than fifty-seven EZ steps

1) Fill bath with scant 1/4 inch water--any more than that is asking for trouble.
2) Add assorted toys: ducky, measuring cups, teething ring, shoes.
3) Take out shoes that the four-year-old helpfully added to the toys.
4) Lay out supplies: towels (2--one for baby, one for you), washcloth, soap, lotion, wet wipes, broom, mop.
5) Take baby into bathroom.
6) Shoo out helpful four-year-old and inquisitive dog.
7) Brush Cheerios off baby's clothes, diaper, face, hair, hands.
8) Invite helpful dog back into bathroom to take care of Cheerios mess.
9) Shoo out inquisitive four-year-old.
10) Take off baby's pj's.
11) Run to get camera for cute shot of baby stuck inside his pj's.
12) Miss cute shot of baby stuck inside pj's, but get shot of frustrated baby crying his curly head off because his arms are stuck.
13) Brush off Cheerios stuck to chest and upper arms.
14-15) Repeat steps 8-9.
16) Take off baby's diaper.
17) Hastily re-apply diaper when fragrant surprise is found lurking therein.
18) Grab wet wipes.
19) Repeat step 16.
20) Clean up baby.
21) Dispose of diaper.
22) Fend off commentary on stinkiness of discarded diaper from helpful four-year-old who has re-entered bathroom.
23) Repeat step 9
24) Place baby gently in water.
25) Hold baby down on his tush to discourage standing up in tub.
26) Desperately attempt with toys to distract baby from standing up .
27) Demonstrate chewing on plastic duck to give baby the general idea of the fun he can have if he doesn't stand up in the tub.
28) Repeat step 27 with each of the toys in the tub.
29) Accept gracefully the fact that the baby would rather gnaw on the wet shoe.
30) Convince self that the two-second dunking of the shoe has washed off any germs accumulated through three previous wearers.
31) Fill measuring cup quickly and dump on baby's head.
32) Wrestle measuring cup away from baby.
33) Repeat steps 31-32 five times.
34) Pour small amount of baby shampoo into palm.
35) Curse quietly when too much dumps out.
36) Add baby shampoo to mental shopping list.
37) Quickly soap down baby, getting in all nooks and crannies. Especially the crannies.
38) Gently dissuade baby from standing up in the tub.
39) Use washcloth to gently wipe baby's face.
40) Attempt to dissuade now crying baby from standing up in the tub.
41) Repeat steps 31-32 five times.
42) Place towel #1 on lap.
43) Remove violently squirming baby from tub and place on towel in lap.
44) Catch baby after he rolls off lap, and repeat last half of step 43.
45) Quickly towel down baby while repeating step 44.
46) Apply diaper while fending off suggestions from helpful four-year-old.
47) Reapply diaper that only covered one cheek due to distraction from helpful four-year-old.
48) Repeat steps 34-36, substituting baby lotion for baby shampoo.
49) Attempt to wrestle baby into clean outfit.
50) Catch escaped baby.
51) Repeat step 49, this time with leg across baby's chest to hold the squirmer down.
52) Implore helpful four-year-old to distract baby while step 49 is repeated yet again.
53) Release baby back into freedom.
54) Apply towel #2 to self.
55) Survey damage to bathroom.
56) Apply broom and mop to surveyed damage.
57) Make mental note to pawn this "fun" off on husband tomorrow.

Questions of the Day

2009-07-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Why--Oh, WHY--was there a caterpillar in the pile of dirty sheets this morning?

It was not one of those cute, furry, tiny-teddy-bear-with-multiple-legs caterpillars, the kind that pops up in the cartoons that seemed so hilarious when I was a kid, but which now are just annoying. It was fat, green, and decidedly hairless--less teddy bear than nasal discharge. And it was mixed in with the pile there on the laundry room floor.

At first I thought it was a carpet shred--an oddly-shaped, lime-green carpet shred. Which would have been plausible in a house with light green shag carpet. We do not have such a house.

I bent down to get a closer look. (One of the beneficial aspects of slowly losing one's sight is that it forces one into unplanned and healthful movements, like stooping to see anything farther away than one's chin. It's a simple exercise, and I enjoy the benefits of frequent reps throughout the day.) When my eyes reached waist level, I discarded the carpet shred theory, and began to hypothesize on the possibility of it being a cucumber slice--such as one eaten out decoratively by a four-year-old learning her letters. As my eyes finally made it down to knee level, the poor thing gave a wiggle, and my eyes rocketed upward, eventually reaching basketball hoop level, in that type of involuntary self-defense reaction that all moms develop at some point. I had (foolishly, for someone who lives with multiple sons) not considered the possibility that the green squiggle on the white sheet might be alive.

The way I see it, there are two probable explanations. The first is that this was no ordinary caterpillar, but a heroic invertebrate adventurer, seeking his fame and fortune--whatever that might translate to in caterpillar terms. (The largest leaf at the caterpillar conventions? A very small and very slow parade? A tiny but posh cocoon mansion? I hope it's good, because any bug that risks entering my house deserves rich rewards for his daring, if it survives.) If that's the case, I wish him well in his future travels, as long as they are conducted outside my home.

I'm banking on a far more likely possibility: the boys/girl/dog were/was playing with mud/dirt/sticks/rocks and unknowingly brought the thing into the house along with dusty foot/paw prints and about two tons of dirt and assorted souvenirs. I can imagine that in the chaos that is the boys' room, a hitch-hiking caterpillar might find himself a cozy, unnoticed spot. But this begs my second question:

Just how long was that thing inhabiting my children's sleeping space?

Which, of course, leads naturally to my third question:

What exactly do my children hear when I say "Clean up your room?"

Whoever said motherhood was endlessly educational was a real joker.

The post in which I blog my way to inner peace

2009-06-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, I agree with Garfield: Monday rots.

Not usually--I tend to enjoy Mondays, because I'm starting fresh after being spiritually "topped off." The cynicism that occasionally bogs me down doesn't normally hit until Tuesday. Mondays are filled with possibilities: maybe this week the kids will clean the cotton balls out of their ears and actually hear the sound of my voice. Perhaps this will be the week when everything on my to do list gets crossed off. There's a chance that I will have the energy at the end of the day to exercise, study the scriptures, and write in my journal. Tuesdays know better, but Mondays are optimistic.

Except for this Monday. This Monday was born a pessimist, and is rapidly developing misanthropic tendencies. It came into being when my husband announced that the dog had horribly violated the rug in the boys' room and that the baby had intuitively made his way to the steaming pile with that unerring instinct which babies have for finding the most inappropriate plaything in any given room. An emergency bath was administered. And then the rug had to be taken outside and washed--but first the porch had to be swept of all the accumulated sand from the party we threw Saturday, lest it add to the rapidly thickening crust on my feet from the floors, which had been mopped post-party, but which were mysteriously gritty and sticky again. Then I had to find a working hose, and the water sprayed all over my clothes, and the can I had carried the soapy water in cut up my fingers. I was bleeding, wet, cranky, and filthy, and it was only seven-thirty. Things were off to a rollicking start!

That was the high point of the morning. Let's just admit here, that any day in which I find the guest bathroom soap too filthy to healthfully touch is not a day when I will stick to my determination to speak with a soft and cheerful voice. Stupid goal, anyway. Anyone who never raises her voice has either perfect children or uncorrected myopia. (HA! Time is on my side for once! I started losing my sight five years ago--five more years and I will be cheerfully unaware of the mess around me. Blindness is the key to motherly serenity.)

Now I'm tired. Tired of hobbling around--did I mention that my ankle is either broken, sprained, or simply severely messed up, just to add to the fun?--putting things away that were conveniently left where I could find them with my tender toes. Tired of doing unplanned loads of laundry created by lazy bladders and exuberant strawberry eating. Tired of completing the jobs of people too distracted or disinterested to finish the jobs themselves. Tired of realizing that there are still twenty-three things to do today. Tired of warning my children that anything not put away by lunchtime will be donated to the Toys for Cross-eyed Orphans effort. Tired of being the only sane and responsible individual in a household of people who are willing to argue about the "sane" description. I'd crawl back into bed--but that's where I put the unfolded laundry, and I'm not up to a nap that strenuous yet.

My mommies-amidst-mayhem friends say that when days like this happen, the only thing one can do is breathe deeply (probably not a good idea because of the whole early-morning dog deposit issue), count slowly to forty-three, and recite a calming mantra. Okay. In the spirit of total exasperation and utter desperation, I will breathe, count, and recite:

I'm a mom, not a superbeing.

Days will snot occasionally.

No matter how much laundry you do, there's always one more load .

My children will not die of malnutrition after one lunch of cold cereal.

At least the air conditioning works.

And I have a new mystery to read.

There's brownie mix in the pantry.

And if the kids are in time out I won't have to share.

Ommmmmmmmmm.

There's hope, sisters. Cling to it until Tuesday comes.

The tin-foil halo is under construction

2009-06-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

In my bookcase in the living room, there is a very battered art history book. It's a relic from my mom's university days. (That makes it sound like she attended Nineveh U, doesn't it? Poor word choice. Let's just say that she studied from the first edition of a book that is now into a double-digit printing.) When I finally achieved hometown escape velocity I took the book with me. That isn't normal. Most people dump their musty old college textbooks (if they can't sell them at the end of the semester for laundry money)--and no sane person totes around their parent's highlighted tomes. Now tell me, at what point have I tried to convince you that I'm normal? Or sane?

I loved that book. I read it, and my mom's costume history textbook, so frequently that I based my choice of major and minor on them. (Theatrical Costume Design, and Art History, respectively. But that's a post for another day.) The pictures and the text--dry and academic as they were--opened all sorts of possibilities to me. And when I was actually able to go and see the works that had been only pictures on a page until that time, I was blown away. I believe my exact words were, "I cannot believe I'm actually here. I have spent my whole life wanting to be here! Do you know how fabulous this is?!!" (Apparently it got stale after a while for my companions, who took to openly mocking my awe-struckedness. You'd think sisters would be more charitable.)

That overly long bit of exposition gets us to the point: saints. Most of those works of art were representations of saints. (I have a real thing for Italian Renaissance art. I'm pretty sure Michelangelo and I dated in the Pre-Existence. I probably turned him off by my pathetic inability to keep the two past tenses of Italian sorted out. Another match fails because of linguistic incompatibility.) They are everywhere--you can't walk forty feet in Italy without stumbling over a saint in some form--on a canvas, carved in marble, advertising fast food. There's the patron saint of butchers, the patron saint of sailors, the patron saints of candlers, carders, and cookie bakers, too, I'm absolutely positive about that. You name a profession, a condition, an odd and unnatural proclivity, and there's sure to be a saint who is assumed to take care of such things.

Well, I don't live in Italy (good thing, because that whole past-tense thing would be the death of me, no doubt), and I'm about 16 generations removed from Catholicism--depending on which family line you follow. But if I did, or if I weren't, I'd be totally willing to nominate a new saint, if such things are democratically done: Saint Jessica, Patron Saint of Put-Upon Piano Teachers Everywhere. (It's molto impressive with all the capital letters, no?)

Jessica is my sons' piano teacher. She is encouraging, and kind, and patient. And for the totally paltry sum which I pay each month, she actually smiles when she teaches my boys. Even I don't manage that every time I teach my sons. Trust me, there were no smiles while we learned the multiplication tables. Plus--this is where she reaches far beyond the realm of mere mortals and into the stratosphere of sainthood--she comes to our house to teach! (I told you she was amazing. Not even doctors make house calls anymore!)

She's been enduring with us for two years now. We are most appreciative; not many people have the ability to withstand the inevitable mental breakdown that is the result of long-term exposure to our family circus. This is not a quiet, contemplative household. People do not tread lightly here. Children are often heard and not seen. More frequently they are heard and smelled, and then seen. Babies crawl around; dogs sniff and bark at odd times and at odder objects; phones ring; appliances break down; children model their latest paper bag and duct tape fashions. It's chaos. And somehow, piano lessons are managed. Without yelling. With good humor. And the boys are learning. One of the requirement for sainthood, I think, is three verified miracles. Reread the paragraph: there are your miracles, right there.

You want verification? Do I have verification for you!

Yes, that is a toy truck on the piano. It was not part of the original design of the room. Neither was the Cheerio flooring motif.

Totally gratuitous pic of Anders.

Another son, another lesson--Jessica still not frazzled, even while tip-toeing around cereal detritus. How does she do it?

I'll start petitioning the Vatican next week.

God Bless America

2009-06-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

This is the first time one of our boys has helped in a flag raising.
Excuse me if I get a little misty-eyed. Or if I chuckle slightly. Life is a mixture.

It's even better if you imagine the MoTab singing in the background.

A look into my linen closet and my psyche

2009-06-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

I am not a control freak, really. I'm not. But I like a certain amount of order in my life. And that's where life gets interesting, because my concept of order is not always shared by those with whom I share my life.

Example: I always put the freshly washed sheets on the left side of the linen closet, and take sheets from the right. It works. I can look forward to using the red tie-dyed sheets after the white sale sheets after the blue bleach-spotted sheets after the good white sheets. I actually look forward to using them in this order. I get excited every Tuesday night, because I know clean sheet day is the next day, and I know what I'll be sleeping on that night. The sheets all get the same amount of wear, and there's a regular, orderly progression. Plus, my linen closet always looks patriotic.

Problem: my husband, in a fit of sweet assistance, retrieved the sheets for bed-making yesterday--and TOOK THEM FROM THE LEFT SIDE!!!!!!!! It was supposed to be really good white sheet week, and now it's just decent white sale sheet week--which, I might add, we already had two weeks ago. And now I have to wait two more weeks to have really good white sheet week--because who in their right mind has two white sheet weeks in a row? There's a system for a reason, people!

I love him, but he's toast if he interferes with my towel rotation.

Why I should have listened to my mom

2009-06-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

My mom never let us have Play-Doh. It was one if the great disappointments of my young life. (I also never had an EZ-Bake oven, a sock monkey, or a pogo stick. All of which many of my friends had--I usually tried to go to their houses when we played. On the up side, I did have a massive backyard, a jungle gym--truly fabulous, made by my dad one Christmas Eve--and a really smokin' balcony from which to throw paper airplanes. Later on we had a stage. It all evens out.) Mom gave various reasons for the no Doh rule: it ruined carpets, she knew we would forget to put the lids on and let it dry out, it was expensive, the smell drove her nuts. (Side note: did you know there's a Play-Doh perfume??????? Who wants to smell like a pre-school? Is it supposed to be alluring? Does it only attract men with Peter Pan complexes? These are vital questions the perfume industry needs to answer!) It was Banned Substance Number One for us.

We tried to be sneaky, as sneaky as children with limited grasps of deviousness can be--no Play-Doh, but salt dough (usually provided by sympathetic Primary teachers), or modeling clay (a less-effective stab at slipping past the rules through playing the fine arts card. Mom knew we had not a stitch of sculpting talent. I think the 21 failed attempts to make a snake were clues). Those were soon included on the Not In My House list. The only place we could play with the forbidden substances was my great-grandma Johnson's house. She had a massive stash of the stuff and all the accessories. She usually urged us to eat cookies while we played with it--and she never got frustrated when we mixed the colors. There's a reason they call them GREAT-grandmas.

After twenty or so years of begrudging my fate I grew up--deprived childhood notwithstanding, and became a mostly normal, only slightly neurotic mom myself. (The adjectives refer solely to me, not my mom, who was not neurotic, just a little stressy when company came over. I take full responsibility for my own psychological dilemmas.) My children brought home Play-Doh from Halloween trick-or-treating and various birthday parties. This, I was sure, was the end of the destructive cycle. Play-Doh would be allowed, the deprivation would end, and joy and happiness would reign forever.

Apparently, my mom was on to something all those years ago. In spite of my best intentions I hate the stuff. It ruins not only carpets but tile, laminate, and wood floors. It gets smushed into sheets and rugs. The dog is strangely--is there any other way with this pooch?--attracted to it, and Play-Doh colored dog vomit is not my favorite thing to discover while walking in bare feet at three in the morning. The lids are always left off, and the stuff dries out in milliseconds. It gets stuck in the crack down the center of the kitchen table. It makes my house smell funny. It is now a banned substance indoors. The kids have it--but under no circumstances it is to come through the patio door--UNDER PAIN OF DOOM!!! (I'm now committed to breaking only half of the destructive cycle. The kids can take care of the other half when they grow up. I'm hoping that the Millennium will have arrived by then, and surely when all things become terrestrialized Play-Doh will be less horrible. Or maybe it will go the way of all sinfulness, and cease to exist. Either way, I'd be happy.)

But the biggest problem with Play-Doh is one we discovered last week. (It traumatized me so deeply I couldn't write about it for seven days. That's pretty bad. Even kidney stones didn't get a seven-day blog delay.)

Lindy woke up in the middle of the night last Wednesday/Thursday. That itself is nothing new, and cannot be ascribed to Play-Doh, unfortunately; imnia is another destructive cycle destined to be passed on to other generations. What was unusual was that she was crying that her Play-Doh had gotten stuck in her hair. (See, kids? When you break the rules, bad things happen. Another example of natural consequences at work.) It was 2 a.m. I was barely coherent, and Play-Doh-encrusted hair barely registered on my sleep-deprived brain. She climbed into bed with us, fell back to sleep, and I zonked out again without worrying about the root cause of her mid-night trauma. (No blood/no vomit=mom goes back to sleep.)

The next morning was another story. Brushing her hair was more frustrating than usual--and it typically requires threats during the process and treats afterward to get us through it. No matter what I did, the horrible knots in her hair would not come out. They were large, matted, and grayish. That was what tipped me off. Gray hair on a four-year-old is usually a sign that something is awry.

Curses on the inventor of Play-Doh. May he/she/it writhe in agony throughout eternity. I'm pretty sure there's something about the final fate of him/her/it in D&C 76. All will receive a kingdom of some glory, except the sons of perdition and the inventor of childhood's most heinous clay-like product.

I tried to get the stuff out. I combed; I greased; I briefly contemplated the efficacy of peanut butter. I plead for higher wisdom from the Internet. No luck. I finally took the only path left.

Last week, Lindy looked like this:

Smiles, glee, and educational activity.

This week, she's sporting a new 'do:

Distress, grief, and inactivity while mom wails and takes pictures.

Play-Doh: proof that the devil exists.

Please--don't read this post! It will scar you for life and may be considered a form of birth control

2009-06-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

My clothesline has sprouted a crop of tennis shoes. This is, I realize, an unusual fruit for a laundry line--which is typically festooned with--oddly enough--clothing, as well as tablecloths, towels, napkins, all the general fabric-constructed paraphernalia of our lives. But today is not merely a day to check off chores from a list. It is, I hope, the final battle in the current War on Stench.

I am a mom, which may or may not seem significant until one realizes that I am the mother of three boys. Those of you who have extensive knowledge of the life cycle of males are now nodding their heads in understanding. These boy creatures, they are not like you and me.

They wear socks for multiple days without removal--even during baths, occasionally. They call it efficient. I call it disturbing.

They eat inordinate amounts of food-related substances, but refuse to touch anything with a measurable nutrient count. (This may not be exclusive to boys, though. My daughter exhibits the same tendencies; whether from a general childhood trend, or from living awash in males has yet to be determined.)

They like weapons. Any weapons. At anytime. I found my son making a gun out of his program in Sacrament Meeting yesterday. It was not the most spiritual moment of the day.

They have no discernible observational skills with regard to messes. Again, moms are shaking their heads in shared dismay. No boy ever has walked into a room wherein were scattered the dismembered remains of his diurnal activities and said, "This place is a mess." It will never happen. And if it ever does it will be a sign of the impending Apocalypse.

They have extraordinary abilities and a complete disinterest in using them. I speak, obliquely, of the intended function of a bathroom. Enough said.

But their most significant difference from fully-developed human beings is their total lack of olfactory sense. Simply stated, they cannot smell the stench under their noses.

Now, I am not a perfect mom. I do not always show the proper concern for some aspects of motherhood that I ought. I rarely tuck my children into bed--mainly because there's nothing to tuck in the heat of summer (when sweltering is a finely-honed skill) and also because if I did they'd simply ask where their father was and bellow for him instead. I do not clean my children's rooms, other than the occasional floor-scrubbing. They made the mess; they can darn well clean the mess. Why should I have all the fun? I do not gently sing my children awake after their slumbers. Nothing less than an air horn works effectively and my brain hurts too much already in the morning to attempt something my husband endures better. Is it so amazing, then, that I had not entered my male offsprings' room for almost a week?

I wish now that I had not waited so long. The delay only gave the smell a serious head start to whole-house permeation. Earlier in the week it may have only been an offensive odor, or perhaps an unpleasant fragrance. I suspect that around Wednesday it developed into a robust reek. By Sunday, though, it was a full-bodied, soul-rending, no-way-to-evade-the-damage STENCH, and it was wilting my houseplants. On my odor-hunting expedtion I walked into a wall of nasal pain.

Unfortunately, the only way to discover the source of such revulsion is to invite further damage by sniffing out--literally--the culprits. This, my friends, is not a task for the weak of heart or stomach. It requires that one buy inordinate amounts of life insurance, and then, after donning rubber gloves and a hazmat suit, actually pick up and SMELLING EACH POTENTIAL OFFENDER IN THE ROOM!!!!!!!!! Think about the detritus usually found on the floor of a bedroom occupied by small males. THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!!! Now call your psychiatrist, because you will need therapy. Discarded clothing of uncertain vintage: sniff. Left-overs from meals long past (and that we don't have ants is a testimonial to the efficacy of our pest dude's monthly applications): sniff. Toys in such states of decay that they can only be termed germ warfare in embryo: sniff. Sock tucked inconspicuously under pillows: sniff. Shoes hanging on their ordained receptacle, (for once! It should have tipped me off that something was amiss. I can only surmise that the stench had deadened my thinking process.): sniff, sniff, sniff. Gag. Wheeze. Gasp. Retch. Heave.

Houston, we have a problem.

The culprit: four pairs of tennis shoes. All worn frequently without socks--after repeated demands to don such protective articles. All in various states of mind-numbing, heart-attack-inducing, elimination-of-the-ozone-layer-capable stenchiness. I am still trembling after our encounter.

Today they went into the wash, where they tumbled for thirty minutes--bathed in a solution of detergent, color-safe bleach, washing soda, borax, and anything else I could toss in without imminent risk of explosion. They emerged sopping, smudge- and dust-free, and are now being de-germinized by the ever-obliging summer sun.

It's supposed to hit 110 today. I sure hope it does, because if solarization doesn't work, our next battle will include nuclear options.

An unexpectedly normal post--if you can stand it

2009-06-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

So Charlie says he's tired of me writing about myself--why don't I write about something interesting instead, like him? You got it, Carlo.

This is Charlie:

Seriously--that picture tells a lot about this guy. For instance, he likes to dress up in goofy outfits. (Sadly enough, this was my father's university graduation robe. No, he didn't go to Hugh Hefner U. He refused to walk, and his sisters made him wear this at the party they threw. Revenge Merkley style. And the good times linger.) He really likes weapons of all sorts--especially when he's made them himself, which he does out of every material imaginable. If I ever gave the boy a pile of fabric he'd try to make a gun or a sword out of it. It'd be interesting, but less than lethal, thank goodness. This is the child who tried to persuade me to buy him a pirate sword at Sea World, for pity's sake. Not a dolphin, or a whale toy--a sword with no connection to the place. How many pirates are there at Sea World? (I didn't relent, so he opted for a biting shark toy, instead. Same effect, different path.)

Charlie was very nearly named Calvin--but my mother insisted that it was not good form to name a child after a raging terror of a comic-strip character. She thought it would warp his personality. Apparently, merely thinking about it does the same thing. If any child could be considered the living embodiment of Calvin, Charlie's the one. He has sticky-up blond hair. He's six. He spends most of his day exasperating me with his mischief and attempted mayhem. Like Calvin he isn't mean-spirited, just way more boy than his mother can sanely handle.

Right now he's supposed to be putting away the clean dishes. There were twenty or so of them--utensils included. It has taken him sixty minutes, and he still has ten dishes left. He's been filling the time with trips to the bathroom--I REALLY hope he washed his hands well, banging on pots with whisks, hanging spoons from his nose--they were rescued from the drawer and tossed back into the sink, and making faces at the baby so no nap can be taken. I've admonished him thirty-seven times, and I'm going to lose my patience soon. What, on God's green earth, is the natural consequence for dawdling over putting dishes away? More dishes to put away? Heaven forbid! It's summer, so the day is long enough to fit in whatever he wants, so merely allowing him to waste his time isn't doing anything. AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! We have this problem every day.

In spite of that--and in spite of the high blood pressure and heart palpitations he has caused--I still love this dude. He makes me laugh. He hugs me unexpectedly--but never when told to do so by his father. He says what's on his mind, loudly and with great emphasis. He can think of sixty-nine inventions to catch a fly, but is baffled by the simple process of hanging up his towel.

This is a child of destiny.

["How'd I do, Charlie?" "Good. Great! " "You're welcome. Get back to doing the dishes."]

I'm a bird; I'm a plane . . .

2009-06-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Like most moms I have a secret identity. Sure, we moms look normal and perfectly mild-mannered, but we're good at controlling images. Nobody ever got to be a mom because she let it all hang out. Well, not my type of mom, anyway. Trust me: my type of mom keeps it very carefully covered and buttoned up. I learned sometime in college--I was a slow learner in this area--that one had to conceal the more outrageous aspects of one's personality. Crazy Wild and Wacky Woman? Just keep a lid on it until you're back at the dorm. Looney Tooney Eats-Balloonies? Save it for those who really appreciate you. Sail beneath the radar; keep a low profile; eventually someone will fall for it.

(Note that this is not advice for those people who are living on the outer edge of social acceptance. Far be it from me to advise those who may or may not be experiencing personal anomie. It's just what I discovered for myself. Go ahead. Pick your own path; follow your own road to social and personal acceptance. Just remember that standing on the steps of the dorm and belting out the lyrics to I Will Survive may bring you attention, but it won't get you any kind of desirable date. An interesting date--as in "let's write it in the journal so I can show it to my future daughters and warn them about guys like this"--possibly, but not something to build a permanent relationship on. I should know.)

Anyway, I stowed my crazy college self away and assumed the role of wife and mom many years ago. That's my public persona, the one the ward and the neighborhood get to see when I peek out of my burrow. It's what I use when I go about the daily business of life. Face it, nobody whips out a secret identity to do the shopping, unless their average person clothes are in the wash and the cape and leotard are the only clean things left. Except if they're Batman, who I think secretly gets a huge kick out of the whole costume thing. Must be all that latex. But moms save the good stuff for when it's really important.

My secret identity is, well, I haven't ever named my secret identity. If I ever do, I'll probably go for something like MOMRA, Contender with Chaos, or maybe THE MELINATOR, Doom-Slayer of Sass. It's a work in progress. I'm sure I'll come up with something good about two days after I write this. Suggestions would be appreciated and carefully considered.

The costume is simple: pajamas and reading glasses. My secret identity has a relaxed side I don't display in public. I'm probably the only person in the world whose super secret alter ego has less style than their mild-mannered selves.

That's the whole idea. People out there see the organized me, the on-the-ball me, the yes-I-can-do-this-and-forty-two-other-things-at-the -same-time me. They see me waltzing (one, two, three, one, two, three, dip) through my seemingly innocent life with my skirt and appropriately coordinated top on and they think I'm--well, amazing sounds braggy, how about competent? Some people honestly think I am a put-together, well-thought-out, non-safety-pinned-together type of person. [Snort.] I've even heard myself described as "creative", "energetic", and even--hold on to your hat--"talented". [Snort, snort.] I've worked hard to create this fiction, and it's pretty convincing.

The real me--the me who actually lives and breathes, as opposed to the image everyone thinks they see--is a person who would like to do nothing more than lie on the couch all day and contemplate the absolute fabulousness of good mystery novels and pop-tarts. My idea of paradise is having all the time I want to do nothing of vital importance. (Not nothing, just not anything necessary to life or its continuation beyond the occasional heartbeat.) I dream of a whole 24-hour day when no one expects me to do anything. That dream has never been completely fulfilled. I've approached it on certain sick days, and there was the whole forced bed-rest during pregnancy thing--but those are cheap imitations of the real deal, which would require serious strength of will to ignore the tearful pleas of my children to feed and entertain them while not medically required to so ignore.

Someday I will shed this aura of ability, this role of reliability. I will admit to all the world that Yes! I am the reason junk writing and junk food were invented! No, I don't actually enjoy mopping floors! My spices are sorted but not alphabetized! I haven't dusted the bookcases in two months! I convinced my husband to clean the bathrooms during my second pregnancy and never took them back!

My day will come; every superhero gets outted eventually. In the meantime, don't spread it around. Every mom is entitled to a few secrets.

I'll bare my soul, but don't lay a hand on my stuff!

2009-06-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

I took the required biology classes in high school and college. (And passed--whew!) I've attended the marriage relations class at church. I've even studied an anatomy book or two in my time. (Who knew the spleen was so interesting?) Those sources--informative though they were--only skimmed the surface of the true difference between men and women. Because the truth is not merely that we are physically different, or that men have the incredible ability to have nothing going on in their crania for hours at a time. (Which baffles me. I mean, Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." So most men are imaginary, apparently. That would explain my dating record in college.) The real difference, my friends, lies in our dissimilar acceptance of junk piles.

Admit it, women--you have one. It's the stuff on the convenient horizontal surface which gets shuffled, stashed, sorted, and shifted, but which never quite goes away. Unless the in-laws,the Relief Society president , or other such worthies are visiting, of course. The items may change, but the pile remains. Permanently. Indelibly. Ineradicably. A monument to life's endless tasks and the stuff that accompanies them.

But, see, that's the key to how women are different from men. Women--and I'm basing this rant on the fact that I am, in fact, a woman, as are my sisters, mother, and quite a few of my friends, and we all act similarly--have ONE pile (large and unwieldy though it may be). Men--my husband, father, brother, husbands of friends, this is a scientific sampling!--have multiple mini-piles, just as permanent and ineradicable, in lots of places throughout, and sometimes outside, the residence. There's the mail pile, which becomes the papers-to-sort-through pile. There's the bottom-of-the-stairs-to-take-upstairs-when-I'm-going-that-way pile. There's its mirror-image twin at the top of the stairs. There may be others, depending on available flat horizontal surfaces and wifely tolerance. The items in the piles may vary by season or work load, but the piles remain. They are a fact of life no one told you about in those entertaining lectures during P.E.

Still, I write here not to snark, but to confess. It's good for the soul, if not beneficial for the blog.

My pile is on the dining room table. That's the flat surface which hasn't been used within its intended purpose for over a year now because of life and its intersection with flimsy excuses. It's a convenient spot: right off the kitchen, large-ish, easily accessible. And the fact that it can be seen by anyone who enters the front door is a real bonus. I'd like to think it gives my home the appearance of a place where Important, Interesting Things get done. Or maybe it just makes me look like a slob. Potato, potahto.

In the spirit of soul-cleansing confession, I will now reveal for all the world--or at least the minuscule portion which will actually read this--what is on the table of dread and doom:

a Christmas cactus, because I wanted the table to look pretty. The obvious contradiction in reality is not lost on me.
two solar ovens constructed for and used by the Young Women during their pre-camp certification. They will go downstairs just as soon as I get rid of the ginormous birdcage down there. Anybody want a birdcage?
a small pile of discharge papers from my recent visit to the hospital. Should I shred them? Save them for tax purposes? Add them to my personal history? It's a dilemma.
a cardboard box of things I keep thinking would be interesting to use in our homeschooling next year. The receptacle changes, but this is one feature of the table which will always be with me.
blue and white star-spangled ribbon to be used at camp, and which will probably be taken upstairs to join the rest of the camp supplies today, fingers crossed.
an orange folder with some unused YW info. Or it may be empty. I haven't looked at it in a few weeks. It has achieved a certain junk pile maturity which gives it almost total immunity. I'm thinking of redecorating the room around it next time. Sort of really shabby chic.
a copy of the Church News which my counselor gave me because it had articles dealing with YW stuff. I need to stash it in my horrifically overly-large YW-stuff binder, which is residing in my huge black bag of doom on a chair next to the laden table.
Tracking sheets from YW meeting yesterday, so I know how the YW are doing with their Book of Mormon reading, and which will be discarded as soon as I enter them into the computer, which I will do when I'm done writing this. Probably.
some containers purchased with the intent that they would be used for my gardening lesson at Enrichment meeting last Thursday, but which never found fulfilment because I was stuck in the hospital instead.

That's it. For the moment. I'd better get it cleaned off, because I'm going to DI today, and I'm sure I'll find something that will need time on the table. Think of it not as messiness, but as an exercise in stuff-rotation.

Stoned

2009-06-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

Note: The following was written while I was under the influence of a really fabulous pain-killing prescription medication. (Seriously, I would recommend this stuff to anyone in mind-melding, fall-on-the-floor, writhing in agony-type pain. If you fall into that category, give me a call, and I'll tell you the name of the pill in question; I'm sure your doctor can help you with the follow-up steps. If you aren't in that type of pain at the moment--and I really hope you aren't-- just file away the fact in your memory, and pull it out when needed.) If this post seems rambling and pointless, cut me some slack and try to put yourself in my very sensible and bought-on-sale shoes. I was not at my best while writing, but at least I did try to convey the experience in its horror-inspiring entirety. Again, it isn't me; it's the meds talking.

This week didn't quite turn out the way I had planned it to. For one thing I now have a hole in my jugular that wasn't there before and which certainly never made it onto the agenda I had written up. Isn't the aphorism "Life is what happens when you're making other plans"? If so then this week was definitely a real slice of life.

It started normally. Monday went smoothly. Tuesday, Rob set out for the airport to catch the flight to New York for his trip, and I was happily (or not so much, but at least willingly!) doing the kids' laundry when I started one of the back aches I've learned to dread. I tried to convince myself that I has eaten too much sugar the night before, or perhaps I had just slept wrong the night before. Those have their effects sometimes. I took some Tylenol and slapped a heat patch on the area and decided to take a rest.

It wasn't until I started vomiting from the pain that I finally admitted the truth: I had a case of the stones. The kind that originate in the kidneys and slide excruciatingly down to the bladder, prompting their victims to beg for dull kitchen cutlery with which to perform emergency self-directed surgery.

I've gone through this before--you haven't experience true pain until you've passed a kidney stone while pregnant. I faced true pain three time with this last pregnancy; I am an experienced stone warrior.

Thankfully I knew what to do. Like any other mature and independent woman I pleaded for a barf bowl and called my mom.

I even knew which hospital to go to--not the one closest to us, which has an emergency room permanently packed. (I don't like to gibber and carry on in public. My dignity is important to me, personal barf bowl notwithstanding.) I went to the one a few more miles distant, but which has a relatively undiscovered ER. Total patients in the waiting room: two. How's that for superior planning under extreme distress?

I was checked in, checked, and medicated after minimal moaning--90 minutes, tops. And then after a CAT-scan they told me the news: this stone was a fighter.

Just a bit of preliminary info in case you are not personally acquainted with the wonderful world of kidney stones: the things tend to be tiny, usually mere flakes. But considering the weensy diameter--totally scientific terms, there--of the passageway they must traverse, even the smallest stones are painful beyond belief. Note to any males who may be perusing this blog for any odd reason: I've given birth while in an unmedicated state, and I've passed kidney stones. They are comparable on the "Dear goodness I'm going to claw my eyes out from the pain" scale, although I've never vomited while passing a child. (My cousin, fellow warrior in the war, has actually passed stones WHILE giving birth, WITHOUT medication! She is the kidney stone-passing She-Ra in my book.)

The stone I faced this week was a major heavyweight: seven millimeters. You may be thinking, "Seven millimeters? That's nothing! HA--what a wimp!" Wimp I may be, but pull out that ruler from the drawer and measure it off, then consider that the bodily tube through which it must pass is only TWO millimeters wide. Do the math, and don't forget to factor in the horrible jagged edges of the typical stone, and you may just pull out your own barf bowl in sympathy.

Not only was it an abnormally large stone, but it seems that I tolerate narcotic pain killers too darn well. The sweet, sweet angel of mercy-type nurse gave me a drug which is supposed to be seven times stronger than morphine. It made me feel great--absolutely floating on air. For about 15 minutes. Then I was screaming in pain again. (Well, not actually screaming. I tend to try to be overly polite and restrained in these types of situations in the hope that my exemplary behavior will be rewarded with really fabulous painkillers and maybe lollipops, sort of like when I used to go in for my annual shots and the nurses would pay me off in sugar for all the screams I had choked back.)

Long story short: there was no way in heck that I was going to pass that thing on my own. Trust me, I tried. For two days. Under extreme medication. (Including one usually prescribed for prostate problems. My beard should come in nicely they tell me.) I had surgery yesterday, and woke up with an IV stuck in my neck, so I spent the next 24 hours looking like something from Dr. Frankenstein's lab.

And to think the druggies in high school made being stoned sound like fun. Just another example of poor communication skills.

Thar she blows!

2009-06-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

I broke a rule today. Or at least I laughed while my Mom broke it, which amounts to the same thing, because it was one of those all-important mommy-rules: Do Not Give Children Under One Year of Age Chocolate. (It ranks right up there with oldies but goodies like Change Babies' Diapers Semi-Daily, and Do Not Allow Your Four-Year-Old to Carry the Baby Down the Stairs--neither of which I have lapsed in observing, to my parental credit.)

Whooo Baby! Are we going to pay for this one, or what? (But look at that bliss on his little face. Who can deny a face like that the joy of chocolate?)

Breaking that rule made me think about when I was a teenager. Remember when you were young, and adults would start spouting off their accumulated wisdom--sort of like a whale does with its spray when it surfaces to breathe? It can't help it, that's part of its life; just a whale being a whale. It's exactly like that--the whole adults and spontaneous outpourings of wisdom thing, I mean. You'd be sitting there innocently in your Mia Maid class when BAM!!! Sister Whosit (a really lovely person in retrospect, now that you are about the age she was when you were sitting in class, and these days you totally get what she meant) would start crying and telling about something she had done and how it had affected her, and she'd finish it up by saying, "just be smarter than I was, and don't make the mistakes I did." Seriously--just like whales spouting, because I've been whale watching, and that's all you see--if you're lucky, and I'm pretty slow to react, too, so I only saw the tail-end of the spray after everyone else on the boat had OOOHed and AAAAHed. That's what it was like to sit in those classes; everyone else would get it, and I'd only hear the last couple of sentences or so. They never made sense. "She's sorry she did what?" I'd be thinking. "Did I miss a really juicy story? Is there going to be a quiz on this later? Is this going to affect my Personal Progress completion?" And somehow the painfully accumulated wisdom (I'm assuming it was painfully accumulated since they cried so much about it) passed somewhere over my head or between my ears, and never quite penetrated the thick layer of inattentiveness I tended to cultivate as a teen.

[Short note to all who care about the English language: yes, I do intend to continue slaughtering it in this fashion. I do know what a run-on sentence is, but since I passed my ACT with a darn good score in English I feel free to take creative license now and again. It's my reward for actually listening occasionally in High School. It never helped with my social life, but BOY does it pay off now!]

Anyway, back to accumulated wisdom. It seems to me there were quite a few things we were warned not to do lest dire and tragic things happen in consequence. [See, all you still-reading English-loving-type people, that was a beautifully balanced and executed sentence. Take that all you who thought my triumph in winning the 8th-grade English award was a fluke!] I never did any of the BIG ONES--never fooled around, never broke the Word of Wisdom, always told the truth in interviews with Priesthood leaders both ward and stake. I was always too afraid of the dire consequences foretold to try anything with possibly long-lasting results. But I was still a rebel in my own very small way.

There was, for instance, the Pink Hair Incident of 1987. (Let me tell you: when the box of rinse-out red dye says not to use on blond hair BELIEVE IT!) Ummmmmmm, there was . . . nope, that's it. My one small rebellion was dying my hair an unnatural shade of red for Halloween, and paying for it for two months of increasingly unlovely pink hair with rodent-colored roots. (Because I wasn't smart enough just to permanently re-dye my hair back to its original shade. Rebellion makes people stupid; my sophomore-year pictures are the proof.)

It wasn't until I grew old enough to really spread my wings that I defied all the semi-important wisdom of the ages. And through the miracle of survival I now have my own store of accumulated wisdom which I am willing to force upon you.

If you get to attend college, use your time wisely. Teachers do not give credit for work missed because you were busy trying to convince "Mr. Right" that your name is "Ms. Right-for-him."

On a related note: if you decide during your college days to ascend Mt. Timpanogos do not wear your roommate's two-sizes-too-small shoes, watch your tongue when the ice-shelf collapses under you and you plunge twenty feet to almost certain death--swear words echo longer than regular ones, and if a guy tries repeatedly to help you on the climb and you refuse his aid it's almost certain that he liked you until that moment and now finds you insufferably pig-headed.

Don't get married without dating the guy you intend to wed. Blew that one out of the water. Note to future un-dating brides: a shared month-long trip to Europe does not count the same as a year's worth of dates. Especially if the guy had no idea you existed during the trip. (Thankfully neither of us likes to admit mistakes, so we keep plugging away. Eleven years of joy, and counting!)

When you move out on your own, make sure your job pays enough to allow you to use a laundromat, because otherwise your arms will get really tired and your bathroom will always be full of dripping clothes.

Consult a map and a neighbor after moving into a new apartment and before setting off on foot to the grocery store. There are no groceries in the direction you intended to take.

Cute wooden clogs from Holland are great Halloween costume-wear. But if you have to take the Freeway from Heck to get to the party wear sneakers until you actually arrive at your destination.

Do not attempt to drive a friend home at two a.m. the night after your sister gave you a five-minute lesson on using a stick shift. The police may seem kind and understanding when they pull your sobbing tush over, but they will be laughing at you the entire time they are following behind to make sure you arrive safely.

And last: if you are waiting for a BYU Devotional, and you arrive two hours early because the Prophet is scheduled to speak, do not pull out your figure-drawing homework to pass the time. Those around you will be neither amused nor edified by the semi-nude figures which you are sketching.

Thank you. You may return to your regularly-scheduled inattentiveness now.

A dream is a wish your heart makes

2009-06-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm in the throes of preparing for YW camp. Granted, camp isn't until the first week of August (Yippee! At the height of heat and humidity here in the beautiful desert Southwest.) Technically, we won't start practicing the skit or memorizing the camp scripture, or singing our songs over and over and over until next month, but I get to throe earlier, because I'm in charge and I need every chance that I can get to stress . (I've previously mentioned the stress that camp induces in me. I'm good at stress. Not at accepting and dealing with it, just in piling it on. Hey, at least I've got the first part of the equation down.)

The theme this year--and I love it, just in case any one needs to know--is "Sweet Dreams." (My only regret is that this year we aren't branding our wards with cute names based on the theme. I was thinking along the lines of Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Stars, or Sleepy Sheepies, or something equally adorable. There's nothing like running around frantically at Walmart the night before camp trying to find blue canoes or something equally unfindable with which to decorate the camp site. It's good for the heart--lots of cardio-aerobic exercise.) We've been encouraged to focus on what we really want in our lives and what we plan to achieve using our dreams as our guides. It's good stuff.

My dream? I thought you'd never get around to asking. Nothing much, really, just the perfect house for a frazzled mom. I've decided on a few items I would pay sort-of-big bucks for:

Big, beautiful windows in all the rooms, made with smudge-proof and snot-proof glass.
Enough bookcases to fit all the books in--and which would stay perfectly organized using a revolutionary homing technology which automatically returns books to their proper places at the touch of a button.
Bathrooms with patented Reek-Guard anti-bacterial, anti-disgusting-substance surfaces. Because no matter how hard I try to impress the idea into my sons' brains, missing the toilet still seems to be an option for them.
A kitchen with a conveyor belt extending directly to the grocery store. Four kids, three boys--you get the picture.
A raised garden on a giant mechanized turntable so I could water the garden from the large smudge-proof windows. (See above reference to heat here.)
Bedrooms for the kids with sensors on them which would automatically bar the doors in the all-too-frequent event of a child attempting to leave the room without picking up first.
Motion-sensored lights. In all the rooms. If we aren't moving around the space why do the lights have to be on?
A laundry room modeled on automatic car washes. Full laundry hampers go in at one end, and clean and folded clothing comes out from the other.
Baby guards on all the things my youngest is irresistibly drawn to. At the push of a button--or better yet, using a sensor, dear heavens how I love those things!--a clear screen would slide up from an inconspicuous slot in the floor to prevent baby-created destruction of books, papers, plants, and dryer lint.
Melia-thermic air-conditioning, which would make any room I was in ten degrees cooler automatically.
Magnetic walls everywhere, so I wouldn't have to deal with the inadequate space the fridge affords.
Speakers that would broadcast mommy-mood-related music to all occupants of the house. It'd be like a public service announcement, but much more personally relevant.

And my personal favorite and the one absolutely non-negotiable feature of the ultimate Melia-approved dream house:

A comfortable soundproof room with a comfy couch and lots of
bookcases so I can pretend that none of the chaos around me exists.

Let's all admit that I believe in the impossible dream.

Losing it

2009-06-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

At two points in my life I was a skinny person. The first was from birth to age 15--I can't take the credit for it, because the thinness was the result of dance lessons, games of tag, and a mother who insisted that we play outside a lot. (A technique which I adopted shortly after my third son was born, and which I am happy to say works wonderfully for soothing frazzled nerves. Unless it's the middle of summer and the thermometer--or as we call it around here: the therMOMeter, because I'm the one who cares enough about it to consult it--is pushing 110 on the porch. In those cases sending the kiddos outside seems more like a evil dictator kind of thing: it's brutal, but it's either that or one of us loses our head.)

The second time--which came after the two-year chub-o-rama I sometimes refer to as "high school"--was the eight years between the start of college and the birth of the first son. For that period I can take the credit. I did it by pushing myself into poverty and by being too scared to learn to drive. The results: I was too poor to eat, and had to walk everywhere. There were times when my budget and travel mode conspired to make me a size 2, but usually I had a job with food services and managed to scrape together enough leftovers to maintain a size 6. (Thank you BYU Food Services for allowing me to remain corporeal throughout my university experience! If we ever get rich there's a big, fat donation check coming your way. I hope you name a cutting board in my honor.)

But ever since the aforementioned birth of said first son, skinny has not been a term I use in my self-descriptions. (I could use all sorts of other terms, though. If I'm feeling decadent it's voluptuous--because the word connotes a certain European disregard for Puritan American morals; blessedly, it also hints at European chocolate, which I can live with. If I'm descriptive it's curvaceous. If I'm being humorous about it it's pleasingly plump--although the only person who could be pleased with this amount of plump is Santa. Most of the time I just say heavy and let it drop like the 2-ton hippo I sometimes feel I resemble.) I haven't had a positive body image since I wore a wedding dress, and I've celebrated eleven anniversaries since that time.

The problem all comes down to on thing: I eat when I'm stressed, bored, nervous, frustrated, or tired. I'm a mom; those emotions happen on a five-minute rotation throughout the day. So weight-loss has been a perennial goal, as well as a consistent disappointment. I want to be thin, but my offspring and my mental state are working against me.

This year, though, I'm really working hard at it. I've eliminated simple carbs--and most days all carbs altogether. I'm eating more veggies, and cutting out all sugar. I've said good-bye to chocolate, chips, bread, crackers, cake, brownies, and everything else I ever enjoyed eating. My life is now sustained by chicken chests, broccoli, soup, and sugar-free Jell-o. (I live for the Jell-o these days.) I am trying sooooooooooooo hard to really do this this time, because I know I have hips somewhere under there. And once upon a time I'm pretty sure I had a waist.

Did I mention that my kids are out to get me? Seriously, I wake up in the morning, totally determined to be the valiant diet woman I know I can empower myself to be. But by the time I walk down the stairs and greet the chaos that is the result of my loving offspring, all I want is a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts and a couple handfuls of M&Ms. Celery was not created to soothe jangled mommy nerves.

I've read that therapists encourage their patients to keep a food journal--writing down everything they eat, and commenting on how they felt at the time of ingestion. Apparently, the idea is to demonstrate the links between over-eating and emotional stress, which can then be dealt with to eliminate the eating problem. I'd love to do this exercise for a therapist. I bet he/she would end up wailing on the floor in pain after reading my food journal. I just want my frustration validated. Is that so wrong?

But since I'm too cheap for a therapist--chocolate-covered cashews are closer to my price range--you, poor sucker, will have to do.

Warning: some portions of the narrative below may be too descriptive for sensitive readers. As always, if you are of a delicate nature, or are simply of an incurably optimistic nature, I advise you to end your reading now. It is not pretty.

7:15 a.m.: ate Snickers bar stashed under mattress. Slightly melted, but still satisfying. Emotional state: exhausted after being up with baby all night and barely falling asleep three minutes before husband cheerfully awoke me with news that child two had decided to learn to make waffles and children three and four were experimenting with syrup recipes.

7:45: ate three left-over waffle trials with two cups of what can only be described as the stickiest substance on earth. Emotional state: totally overwhelmed with the fact that three children + kitchen access = EPA Superfund site.

9:30: asked by children two through four simultaneously 1) "how do you do long division again?" 2) why is the toilet leaking all over the floor? 3) Did you know the baby just urped all over the schoolwork? Ate: macaroni and hot dogs left from yesterday's lunch, with a side of turkey and stuffing from last night's dinner.

10:25: explained long division for fourteenth time this morning. Ate: peanut butter and jelly sandwich rejected as snack by daughter.

12:00. Ate healthful lunch of tomato soup and carrot sticks. Go Diet Goddess! Attempted for two hours to get children to eat lunch, have some manners, clean up after selves and take naps, while at same time feeding, soothing, rocking, changing, and entertaining baby. Inhaled dessert of brownies intended for afternoon treats, ice cream unearthed from depths of freezer, and the last 2/3 of the jar of fudge sauce purchased for a family birthday party last year.

4:45: started dinner. Dealt with complaints, suggestions, and "helpful assistance". Ate: Most of what was planned for dinner. Determined to order pizza instead.

8:45. Bathed children, read scriptures, fulfilled three "story" requests, handed out 33 1/3 drinks, ushered daughter to bathroom 14 times, yelled "Go to bed or ELSE!!!" 26 times. Pulled kids out of bed when it was revealed that the "toothbrushing" that had taken place earlier was, in fact, entirely imaginary. Remedial toothbrushing demonstration. Ate: anything I could get my hands on. As best as I can piece together from scraps left on counters and from wrappers in the trash can it was something like three hamburger buns with peanut butter, four pieces of Easter candy stashed for next year, two slices of pizza set aside for lunch tomorrow, an apple--trying to eat healthfully, you know!, two Twinkies from 1979--how they got in the house I neither know no care, and a large Hershey's bar my husband gave me when I screamed "There had better be chocolate in your hands the next time I see you, buster!" It was not my finest hour.

Skinniness is a far, far-off goal.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

2009-05-28T12:48:00.001-07:00

Apparently Anders is auditioning for the role of Santa at this year's Christmas party.

Oh, my aching wallet!

2009-05-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

I believe I have already admitted my inherent and much-practiced frugality in previous posts. Some are born cheap; some achieve cheapness; others have cheapness thrust upon them--to mangle some quote about something completely different. I am the first type--born cheap (if not cheaply). I worried about family finances before I could pronounce the phrase. I also fretted about expenses, even while perpetrating some amazing blunders of monetary insanity. I'm cheap--not always wise.

Today my compulsion to save money ran head-on into the brick wall that is reality: we were out of wipes and shampoo. I couldn't put off the expedition any longer. The first I could have done without for a while. I have plenty of cloth wipes (some might call them washcloths--don't look so horrified, I won't give you one to wash your face with. They are very specific washcloths, in a very specific place, and almost never get mixed-up with the regular washcloth) stashed with the cloth diapers--which I may just pull out today after my shopping-induced coronary passes. The second, I have found no adequate substitute for--but if anyone has any suggestions, let me know. I'll try anything! (Hey--I use cloth diapers, for Pete's sake! After that, nothing else is a challenge.)

Okay--so shopping-induced coronary as mentioned in the paragraph above. Wipes and shampoo by themselves are not particularly expensive. Unfortunately they were not the only things I had to steel myself to purchase. Anders, as may be assumed safely, is getting bigger. He hit the 20-pound mark at the doctor's office today--whoo-hoo! But with larger baby come larger problems. Namely: the problem of where he will sleep, and the problem of where he will sit. We've pushed the limits on the sleeping thing: he was supposed to be out of the bassinet five months ago, but he managed by making sure he never slept through the whole night in the thing. I believe our record is two hours. The rest of the time I held him through the night. (He's the last baby, and I'm spoiling him rotten, but that's a subject for another post.) But eventually, even for adored last babies, reality asserts itself. And the reality is that I'm almost sure I'm ready for him to sleep on his own--like 75% sure, because this whole separation thing is much harder this time around. So the bassinet just will not do any longer.

Remember, the key word today is "cheap." That means I'm not adverse to alternate possibilities. I've done my research on sleeping spaces for the under-two -set. Cribs are ridiculous! Who wants to pay $245 for a tiny, plastic-covered platform, no matter how trendy or precious? (People who enjoy spending--ye gads, that's who, and if the store stocks are any indication, they outnumber us frugal people 10 to 1.) Just in case you were wondering why I didn't do the sensible thing and use the perfectly serviceable crib that had worked so well for children 1-4, I gave away said crib--which my parents gave us after buying it at a garage sale; I come by my cheapness genetically--to my brother and sister-in-law, who were pregnant at the same time I was, and I refuse to renege on a gift, cheapness notwithstanding. I just sort of figured we'd find something in time. No Luck. That's why I found myself weeping in the aisle of a major retailer this morning while Roberto took two of the kiddos to a doctor's visit (two birds, one stone, less gas-wastage; money saved).

The upshot of the story: we have a new playpen which will serve as sleeping quarters for the tiny tiger. Also a new high/booster chair combo ($19.99--gasp! hack!). So to assuage my guilt at spending, I came home and made laundry detergent in my food processor, out of bar soap and various powdered additives. Total spent: way too much. Total saved: $4.50.

I need an aspirin.

Shameful admissions I'm prepared to make

2009-05-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

Facebook is a entry-level addiction--sort of like glue-sniffing. You start it totally innocently, maybe after a few months of wondering why people would waste so much time on something so unnecessary--like I did, and then one day you realize that four hours have gone by and you've spent them all with people who are not only in another room, but actually in another state. (Or country, if your circle is particularly wide-flung, which mine isn't, yet. But I'm working on it!) It leads to all sorts of new distractions. Heck, the whole reason I'm here at my desk in my pajamas at 1:07 p.m. is because I got started on Facebook. When the thrill of telling friends all about the insignificancies of my life wasn't enough I had to find a larger audience--a "bigger high" in drug-parlance, if you will. (Sadly, my blog audience is actually smaller than my Facebook audience, so my increased dependency on telecommunications has not had the desired effect.)

But here's the thing: Facebook is the ultimate in absolutely useless introspection. It is the repository for information about yourself you never knew existed, and which I'm pretty sure you never hungered to know until a friend found the information on her/him-self first. You know what I'm talking about--all those personality tests created by the same psychologists who brought us the "Cotton-ball Rorschach" test, and the "What your sleeping position reveals about your future income" exams. The same psychologists who passed their first two semesters of psychology classes and then decided that they knew enough, that's who. They, in their infinite wisdom, and total lack of real standards to measure us by, have created for Facebook the "What is your Patronus?" tests (mine would be some sort of imaginary creature that I could never concentrate hard enough on to do me any good because I would get bogged down in the insignificant details. Yeti: three-toes per foot or four? By that time I'd be toast.), the "What color is your aura?" tests (I've been told that mine is white--by a budding psychologist, no less!), and my personal favorite, the "What Jedi Master Are You?" test (The one who dies in the first four minutes of the film for basic ineptitude and general un-Jedi-like goofiness).

I want to get in on all the fun my friends seem to be having, but with all I have to do (the whole pajama/1 p.m. thing notwithstanding!), and with my general distrust of computer-generated psychological analysis, I've resisted. But the urge is becoming more insistent. I. Must. Take. a Test. And in this case, a mere mathematics exam will not do! So, for those of you who are active in the Resistance to All Token Tests (R*A*T*T, because we couldn't find a more congenial rodent-related acronym) movement--or even if you just have a few spare moments of time and a burning yen to know yourself better--I present my non-psychologist-approved, not-at-all-scientific, totally-stun-your-neighbors-and-in-laws personality test:

What Refrigerated Condiment Are You?

What is your skin color generally, without the aid of cosmetics or artificial measures?

a) pasty white--1 point
b) rosy red--2 points
c) sort of sun-kissed--3 points
d) mottled, like a lab-experiment gone wrong--4 points

If you had a choice, which food would you rather be slathered on?

a) white bread--1 point
b) French fries--2 points
c) hot dogs--3 points
d) Aunt Martha's "famous" meatloaf--the one most relatives avoid at the Reunion (the meatloaf, not Aunt Martha, who while a "kooky character" is a sweet soul with a mean mouth for family gossip)--4 points

Your secret life-long dream is to:

a) own a small pet rabbit, whom you would name "Mr. Ponsonby"--1 point
b) set off the fireworks for the Fourth of July celebrations in Washington D.C., making sure they were very carefully aimed at certain points of interest, if you get my drift!--2 points
c) finally tell the neighbor across the street what you really think of his "going to get the newspaper" attire, with helpful illustrations on a white board and relevant hand gestures --3 points
d) travel the length of the Amazon river in an inflatable swimming-pool-appropriate ducky float--4 points

Your guilty secret is:

a) you once called your teacher--the one with the flabby upper arms and buck-teeth--"mom" (and you still can't live down the shame)--1 point
b) your enormous collection of dentist-visit toothbrushes--each lovingly preserved in its original wrapping and none used!--you dental subversive, you--2 points
c) sometimes you sing along with ALL the words of the songs on the radio--even when you know they aren't church-dance appropriate--3 points
4) you haven't changed your socks since third grade--4 points

In your shower are:

a) one shampoo (fruit-scented), one conditioner (in a complementary scent). one razor (sort-of sharp), and one bar of soap (Irish Spring or Zest!)--1 point
b) one bottle of shampoo/conditioner combo (plus dandruff fighter!), two bottles of body wash ( citrus and lavender, respectively), one loofah--2 points
c) half-used bottles of whatever was on sale, partly-used hair dye, two razors, and six nylon scrubbies (assorted colors and stages of disintegration)--3 points
d) one tub of wet-wipes, six hairballs pulled from the drain, and a toilet brush for unspecified purposes--4 points

Whew! Now, total your points, and discover what your condiment alter ego says about you:

5-7 points: mayonnaise. You are bland, boring, and the perfect appetizer or sandwich mix-in. You work hard to cooperate with others, and strive to blend in with whatever crowd you find yourself in. Try to assert yourself more frequently and you may raise your status to Mayo with Zip! or even, if you try really hard, Miracle Whip.

8-13 points: ketchup. You are all-American, loyal through and through. You have zing, but are oddly comforting. You are dependable, if lacking in excitement. Work on standing out a little more, or at least add a little Tabasco for some kick.

14-17 points: mustard. You are bold, assertive, and when aged, a little too vinegar-y for endurance. You aren't afraid to be yourself, or to completely take over a situation. You come in a variety of styles and versions. (Including that painfully hot Chinese version that I can't get enough of, even though it clears my sinuses and makes me cry like a Miss America winner.) Try to restrain yourself, or your total dominance will cause people to reject you in favor of someone a little more "palatable."

18-20 points: relish. Face it, there's no explanation for you. I'm baffled why someone would want to be this, anyway. It's chopped-up pickles and gunk. If I want pickle taste, I add a pickle. Take the test again, and this time, lie a little bit.

There you have it: you personality analyzed by an expert who actually PASSED high school psychology. Feel free to enjoy your enlightenment.

Skip this if you have a fertile imagination and/or a sympathetic stomach

2009-05-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

This is the weekend of the big family reunion. No need to hyperventilate--I know you're excited. Everybody's excited: there'll be games, and food, and crafts, and lots of Merkleys doing what Merkleys do best: namely, stand (or sit, if occasion allows) in groups and discuss things of vital importance loudly. (Vital importance is Merklish for items such as deep doctrinal discussions of whether one's Sunday sock color is indicative of testimony status--complete with mostly-accurate scriptural referances, and can-you-name-that-obscure-movie-quote challenges. They're vital to us, if to no one else.) I looooove family reunions.

But I'm stuck here. Not at the reunion.

But why? you ask. Haven't I warned you about this before? Must we do this every time? You have been warned.

Because I am the victim of extremely poor planning. My own, unfortunately.

Ha! You thought you got away easy that time, no? Think again, bucko.

Here's how it all went down:
I will occasionally admit to being in the Young Women's organization in my ward. I usually phrase it as "Serving with the YW." I try not to name the actual calling I have. Not that I'm ashamed of it or anything--I just hate the disbelief that creeps into people's eyes when I tell them I'm the president (small "p", please). I understand--I am not the stereotypical YW president. I'm not hyper-organized; I don't cross-stitch, embroider or crochet; and the depths of my wisdom couldn't swamp a paper boat. But for some reason I said yes when the bishop asked me to do it--and in my defense I love serving with the young women. I think they and the other leaders are amazing, and they reciprocate with a tolerance that surpasses belief.
So, knowing these fact about me, you can hardly be surprised that I accidentally scheduled the YW fundraiser for the same weekend as my family reunion. My thinking was somewhat along the lines of: Hey, look, the only free weekend ALL the young women have is the weekend of the 23rd! And we can actually use the church cultural hall for it! Whoo-Hoo! It is a miracle!! The gods of all planning and organizing endeavors smile upon me!!! How perfect is this? . . . What? (slowly coming to reality after the initial burst of adrenaline-powered euphoria and AFTER setting the whole thing in stone by announcing it to the entire world who was willing to listen--total count: six young women, their moms, and one lone pigeon who flew in for the refreshments.) That's Memorial Day weekend? That's the weekend of the family reunion? Why, oh all that is holy, why?

And so I sit in an almost quiet house--if you don't count the frantic and poorly-timed barking of Tibby the wonder-weirdo. And if you don't count Anders, who is actually cooperating at the moment by taking an extremely well-timed nap. (small, hushed whoo-hoo! for naps!)

I've decided that if I can't enjoy the family reunion, I'll at least enjoy the spirit of the reunion: the absolute thrill we Merkleys get out of the completely useless. I've watched old TV shows on the computer, stashed stuff for Christmas (find THAT, kiddos!), and torn out all the irritating and extraneous slips of advertising cardstock that my magazines are infested with. But mostly what I've done is watch Anders enjoy his day.

I've never had this chance before. Our first son was born with extreme developmental difficulties, and never reached this stage, and his care sort of took up all our extra attention. I loved my older children as babies, I just didn't get to stare at them all day with no distractions. So this is what it's like. Kind of fascinating, and kind of boring, with moments of sheer panic when an inquisitive baby takes a fancy to things like electrical outlets and cords.

So, after a good chunk of the day watching a baby's explorations, I can make one certain announcement:

my son is crazy for dryer lint.

(Explanatory note: our laundry room opens onto our kitchen, with only a doorway separating them. And we don't have a gate there, because the only gate is blocking the stairs--a much bigger baby booby trap, in my opinion, and because I go between the two rooms so frequently. I'm getting older and lazier about such things. The dryer lint in question has been removed from the dryer--obviously. Not even Anders, who will probably grow up to be a problem-solving genius, in a weird mad-scientist sort of way, if his older brothers are any indication, can get it out of its original location at only seven months of age! It--the lint, not the baby--is tossed after removal into a wastebasket which has been inexplicably placed above head level. Trust me, I've tried to explicate it, but alas, no success. Sometimes my tossing of lint into the designated receptacle is ineffective--no basketball scholarship for me!--and the lint falls to its doom among the brooms and mops, from which doom I rarely rescue it. I believe I've already explained the older/lazier component of my existence.)

Anders, in his wanderings about the house, has discovered that lying among all those amazing cleaning tools are golden nuggets of fuzzy goodness. Yum! He can find them, retrieve them , and pop them into his mouth faster than I can rush to his aid while simultaneously fighting a monster gag reflex. I have cleaned out his mouth three time already today--and those are the times I was aware of what he was doing! Who knows how many good-and-lintys line his stomach after the craziness that was this morning's packing and car-stuffing preparation. Please, don't think about it; it will only cause you pain, and maybe a small bout of empathetic vomiting.

So recap of my day:
Not at reunion
Rotten calendar-reading skills
Anders likes lint

Sometimes it's good to be the mom.

Oh, what should I do in the summertime?

2009-05-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

*Side note: I remember singing that song in Primary and wondering just what the songwriter was smoking, because around here the dominant summer color is not green. It's yellow and brown, and it's so stinking hot that it would have been a much different song if she or he had lived here. I suspect it would have gone a little something like this:

Oh, what do you do in the summertime,
when all the world is hot?
Do you play in the park,
when it's well after dark,
or crank the a/c to high?
Is that what you do?
So do I!

Oh, what do you do in the summertime,
when all the world is hot?
Do you gasp like a fish,
and sit still and wish,
that the sun would just go and die?
Is that what you do?
So do I!

Oh, what do you do in the summertime,
when all the world is hot?
You're still singing this song?
It's gone on too long,
and my brain is beginning to fry!
Are you crazy, too?
So am I!

Yup, that's the desert version of the song. Not quite as Primary-appropriate, but much more accurate. (And I suspect even the senior Primary would be willing to sing this version.)

Okay--so summer plans, that is the topic. I only have 12 weeks-- if you count the five days of YW camp, which I'm not, because it's not so much a part of summer vacation as the mother of all really efficient stressors. (I love it, but it enlarges my ulcer every year. I have a recurring nightmare that we arrive at camp, only to find I only packed the skit costumes and feminine hygiene supplies and left all the certification materials/decorations/snacks/necessary stuff at home, and then have to decorate the addie with things you don't talk about in mixed company while the other leaders shake their heads and just mutter something about "snack fob" or something to that rhymes with it. Trust me, it's more realistic-seeming than you think. That explains the extra ton of stuff I cram in at the last minute every year. It also explains why my basement is no longer adequate for the storage of camp-related items.) And in that almost 12 weeks I need to work in some goal-setting-and-achieving-type stuff, some educational stuff, some recreational stuff (without actually taking a real vacation, because it just doesn't fit into the schedule this year), and some of that organizational/cleaning stuff that we moms seem to feel is necessary to life. So, in no particular order, here are the things I want to do in the next somewhat less than 12 weeks:

Label everything in the house with its Swedish name to give myself a real chance to learn the language I've been vowing, and failing, to learn for two years now.
Sew my brains out (Commitment Hike costumes, pants for camp, cute dresses for my daughter, slipcovers for couches and chairs) even though it's 110 in the studio.
Install a real air conditioner in the studio. Something that reaches farther than two feet and which actually cools the room, rather than just making it just seem clammy.
Take the kiddos to an observatory. For Pete's sake, there are several in the state to choose from, and yet we've never been to one! Wasted opportunities!!!!!
Read something totally frivolous. Also try to refrain from snarky criticisms. After all, I'm not brave enough to attempt to write a book myself, so I have no right to snark at those who are.
Attempt to write a book. If I can choose a genre. And maybe a plot. If I don't fry my brain on choosing character names first. That always throws me.
Really get the porch converted into the kids' art/craft space. And make it inhabitable by installing a fan. And some shade. And make it Country Living-worthy. Or at least blog-worthy.
Remember to water and harvest the veggies in the garden. Not like the other years when I screamed out the back door, "Fend for yourselves," and then wept over the seared remains in October.
Totally immerse myself in creating an innovative/inspiring/exciting curriculum for the next school year. That way I won't feel so guilty when I abandon it two weeks into September. At least I will have tried.

Call me ambitious. Call me crazy. Just don't call me when I'm sobbing with exhaustion.

We're loaded (with talent)

2009-05-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm so proud--Jobe took part in his school/ enrichment program talent show today. Unfortunately my videography skills are not equal to his musical abilities. My apologies for not getting the introduction and first part of his performance.

Gotta love that nose action!

The day I didn't ditch Swedish School

2009-05-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

My attendance record at Swedish School hasn't been all that stellar, I admit. I've related my pathetic excuses for the extreme number of absences before. (If you missed that one it all boils down to I DON'T SPEAK SWEDISH! Big revelation.)

But how could I have missed today? Who misses the last day of the Swedish School year? I mean other than me last year, anyway. Not me this year! I was present for all the festivities, even the ones that were embarrassing to those dear to me. Make that ESPECIALLY the ones embarrassing to said loved ones.

And just to make sure I get the full measure of enjoyment from my attendance I'm sharing the embarrassment with you. Just think: all the hilarity, and none of it reflecting poorly on you! Consider it a little Swedish School gift from me to you. You're welcome!

There was dancing around a Maypole. (Frolic, Roberto, frolic.)

Complete with odd hand placements and movement.

Sadly, not all family members knew all the songs.

Have I mentioned the sack races?

Would you like to see the sack races in video form? Of course you would!

Yeah, that's not embarrassing at all! Funny, but embarrassing.

Luckily, at the end of all the embarrassment there were hot dogs to ease the shame. Hot dogs make everything better. Yum.

Sing along with Sniffy's mom

2009-05-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Sing it like you mean it:

(to the tune of Hinges, page 277 in the Children's Songbook)

I'm covered in snot from my head to my toes.
And snot comes from noses as everyone knows!
There's snot on my front,
and there's snot on my back.
I've got to wipe snot off
before I barf--
ACK!

An open letter to an uncaring Universe

2009-05-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Universe,

We haven't always seen eye to eye, have we? The whole me not ending up 5-foot-10 wasn't quite like the deal we had, and I'm pretty sure there was some unfulfilled obligations on your part regarding the whole "Blondes have more fun" concept. I'd hire me a lawyer if I knew where to send the resulting court-related paperwork.

But this latest shenanigan of yours really takes the cake. Cake . . . yeah, that's the idea.

You see, dear Universe, dear sweet, well-organized-and-yet-cruelly-humorous Universe, I am starving. Unfortunately, perhaps, not literally.

Here's how it all started:
I woke up this morning, according to the rhythms of life which you ordained, and nearly scared myself out of my wits. I had inadvertently looked in the mirror, and saw not the lovely, svelte 25-year-old I am used to seeing, but something hideously distorted. When, O Universe, did I get this old and this fat?

Oh, sure, I may have craved the products of Messrs. Ben and Jerry--your evil minions of all that is yummy--through my first pregnancy, the resulting post-partum period, as well as my son's infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood. I may have become the best homemade-bread baker in the world--or at least on my street. I may have indulged from time to time in a small snack or thirty of whatever chocolate was lying around the grocery store. (Not that I stole it--I've always been scrupulously honest about my commercial activities. I just bought in bulk. Thank you, Costco--I'm drafting my letter to you next!) I'm willing to admit my part in the current fiasco. But the majority of the blame lies with you, dear Universe.

Did you have to make chocolate and carbs so tasty and broccoli so green? Whose idea was it to make the dressing more enjoyable than the salad it drenches? Why can we send a robot to Mars, but not perfect the no-cal sundae? Seriously, what were you thinking?

And so I have been forced to take action. I have parted from the loves of my fat life: chocolate, bread, anything enjoyable, and have sentenced myself to veggies, chicken chests, and water. Humph! I'm hungry, and it's all your fault. I'm suffering for your sins.

I'm willing to negotiate. I'll stick this out for as long as I can, and in return, you'll remove the calories from cheesecake. We'll call it even. If you have a counter-offer, you know where to find me. And this time it won't be in the snack aisle.

Chubbily but determinedly yours,
Melia