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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.