A Mother's Day Tribute

I love and respect my mom, but that's not what I'm going to blog about today. Each year, when Mother's day rolls around, my mind goes back to the years before I had kids. I have infertility problems, so every month after I got married would be another negative pregnancy test. Every month: another heartbreak. People made very unkind comments, assuming that I didn't want kids. One of my husband's aunts actually said, "Well, I guess you're just more interested in money." As if!

My sister had gone through all sorts of infertility treatments with no luck, so I assumed it would be the same for me. Imagine my surprise when I got pregnant with Joseph the first month after seeing the infertility doctor! I was completely shocked. I thought, "I should have tried this sooner. Duh!"

I was even more surprised when I conceived naturally about a year after Joseph was born. Those of you who know me will know that that ended in a heartbreaking miscarriage. I was in emotional wasteland at that point. We were living with my Mom while building our new house and it was a very stressful time other than the miscarriage. I chose to miscarry naturally, since all of my births are via c-section. "This is one thing I can do without help," I said to my OB. He agreed. I remember when the moment came and I was all alone.

A year after that, I was on infertility drugs and again I will never forget the moment the ultrasound tech said, "Are you on fertility treatment?" and I said, "Yeah, how can you tell?" (Duh!) Then she pointed out the TWO embryos in there. It felt right immediately. We never had any doubts and I remember thinking, "I came in expecting only one. But if I miscarried now and only had one, it would feel like a death in the family."

Each child was so wanted and so looked forward to. I adore my boys and can't imagine life without them. They are like colors on the rainbow: completely different from each other but beautiful in their own way. Here are a few moments from the last few hours:

Joseph

Today at lunch I was fiddling around, trying to get some lunch preparations done. Josh had made the lunch but I was helping serve some things up. (I'm sick again! And this is worse than before! Grrr!) Joseph said to me, "Mommy, you're sick so you really ought to sit down. Dad can get that stuff." He's so thoughtful! He loves to tell people how pretty they look and how much he loves them. He has the biggest heart.

Thomas

He came to sit on my lap a few minutes ago and said, "I love you, Mommy! I love you, Mommy! I love you, Mommy!" Then he started saying, "Mommy loves Joseph? Mommy loves Thomas? Mommy loves Elijah?" and grinning when I said, "Of course!" Another moment worth mentioning was when Josh grabbed a bottle of glue an hour ago and said, "Thomas, what does this say?" He thought for about a second and answered, "Glue All." Whoa!! Then we asked him to read the word "NO" and he couldn't do it. Funny kid. I don't know how he learns so much so quickly.

Elijah

Elijah is sitting here by me with a Sunday shirt on, with the sleeves rolled up and a cooking apron over it. It's adorable. He was helping daddy make lunch, putting potatoes in a pot and rearranging celery. He loves to be helpful and he is the most sociable child I know. Every day, when he wakes up from nap, he wants to lie down on the couch with me and have snuggle time. He sits there giggling and smiling and saying, "Don't close eyes, Mommy!"

I love you, kiddos. You light up my life and cheer me up, even when you wear me out. Happy Mother's Day to my sweet children who make this day meaningful for me.

When People Move

When Josh and I first got married, we were welcomed with open arms into our new neighborhood. People were so kind and concerned about us. Then one day, several years later, we put out our "For Sale By Owner" sign and expected to get bombarded with people sighing in regret.

And then we kept waiting.

Apparently, we had fallen off the edge of the planet. Never mind that we were building a house in a development that was adjacent to the neighborhood we were moving out of. Across the street = another planet! Nobody called. Very few people mentioned it at church. I could almost hear people thinking, "They're moving so there's no need to cultivate their friendship anymore. What's the point? They'll be gone soon."

This reaction was obviously a bit disturbing to me. It made me question the motivation behind the kindness people had shown us before. Were they simply trying to keep relations smooth because that's neighborly? Or something more cynical: because keeping friendly with the neighbors makes it easier to resolve conflicts? It may be cynical, but I've seen it happen plenty because I'm a landlord.

It happens every time. When the tenants move in to our basement, they are super willing to work around any problem and they profess to be the world's easiest-to-get-along with people. They don't care if my kids run around early in the morning right above their bedroom. They don't care if I sing... very loudly... especially while I'm in the shower. They don't care if I forget to get the mail until it's so full that they can't get their own mail out.

Then they give 30 days notice. I could call those 30 days a "chilly" period. They no longer have the motivation to play nice with us anymore. (Well, actually, they do because I have their rent deposit but they usually seem to forget this aspect.) Suddenly, they're all business and common courtesy goes out the window.

Two evenings ago, I lost track of the time and was quietly singing as I was taking out my contacts and getting ready for bed. Apparently the tenant below me didn't think it was very quiet and actually SCREAMED at me to stop! I was in total, total shock. I have never in my life had a tenant do something so disrespectful! For heaven's sake, please pick up the phone. Or come knock on my door. I may have been at fault for losing track of how late it was, but a little common courtesy still goes a loooong way!

It's not coincidence (in my mind) that they just notified us of their intent to move out in a month. In the past, when I've asked if my singing bothers them, they just sort of laugh and shake their heads. And now...

So what? So a few weeks ago, a couple was moving out of our neighborhood into a new home of their own. I really wanted to tell them I'd miss them and had enjoyed being with them in choir, but I just was a bit too shy to make the words come out. They moved. The moment was lost. Then I noticed the wife is included in our Book Group emails. I quickly repented and sent her a quick note expressing my sadness that we wouldn't see them as often. And I really meant it. I adore my neighbors and I hate losing them to the tides of life change. But it's not enough to show my love when they're here. I need to let them know that I still value their friendships... even when our lives are diverging.

Anthill in the Sky

When I was young, my older siblings liked to torture me by saying, "You need to eat all of that! Kids in Africa are starving and you're not even eating your peas!" I was a very, very picky eater and, although their taunting never made me eat my food, they at least instilled a healthy sense of guilt in me for all of the food I was wasting.

I have often pondered this: how many people in *insert improverished nation* could eat for a week just on the leftovers from my family's dinner tonight? The problem is that I can't just pick up my dinner and take it to them. It requires more deliberate action--action that involves blindly handing cash to some humanitarian group, who spends my money however they want. This requires a lot of faith in people I don't know and results in no knowledge of whether my money actually did the help I wanted it to.

But all that is changing. I now know that I can feed an entire civilization just from one homemade meal. It's true! Each night, our belated sweeping results in hundreds (if not thousands) of little black ants swarming into our dining room and proceeding, in a very organized way, to transport our crumbs to who-knows-where.

Yes, at first I was utterly disgusted. Somewhat nauseated in fact. But then I saw this:



I saw my little, disgusting visitors in a new light. Not that I really want them to clean up the floor for me (which they do very well) but I started to find their habits fascinating. So last night, when Joseph asked if he could drop a chip on the floor to see if the ants would find it, I said "NO!" and then quickly relented. He dropped the chip and then sat, fascinated, as the ants found it and started to actually carry it away. Okay, it's disgusting, I admit. But it's still interesting.

It's almost enough to make me not call our pest control service and demand they get their bodies over here STAT to take care of this. Almost, almost. Alas, all of our new little friends will soon be floating up to that great anthill in the sky, where they can dream about the feast we provided them with each dinner time. We'll miss them, but it's for the best.

Child Abuse

Child abuse is rampant in my house: my children abuse me every day.

How was your NIGHT?

I spoke too soon. Waaaaay too soon. I thought the day from *insert expletive* was over by the time I blogged at 9:30 p.m. If you haven't read my blog entry titled "How was your day," be sure to read that one first to put this in perspective.

So I finished my "blog entry" (read as "rant" or "self pity fest"?) around 9:30 and was very ready to plop into bed and zonk out. I was still feeling really high strung after the day's drama so I laid down to read for a couple minutes. Around 10:15 Josh and I heard Joseph's door open and groaned.

"I think he's just going potty," I said. We went back to our reading. Then the coughing started. He couldn't stop coughing. Then we thought we heard Thomas crying, but the sound seemed too far away.

"Is that Joseph?" Josh asked.

"No, no," I said. That sounds like Thomas. We both groaned.

"There goes our sleep time," said Josh.

Then we heard something more. "Is Joseph throwing UP?" I asked. Josh didn't think so, but after listening for a couple more seconds, I insisted that Thomas was still asleep but Joseph was upstairs coughing up a storm and vomiting. Josh rushed out of the room and the next thing I heard, as I was climbing out of bed, was Josh saying, "Aaaauuuuugggh! Do it in the toilet. Don't just stand there on the stairs!" Yes, Joseph was vomiting onto the stairway.

Now is a good time to remind you that we got our carpets cleaned yesterday and were still wet. Thank you.

I urged Joseph down to the bathroom and made him kneel down over the toilet. Then things got serious quickly. Joseph was trying to cry and cry but hardly a sound was coming out of him. It sounded like he was choking and each breath was a struggle. He was still breathing, though, even though the effort made him silently cry and scream. He would occassionally vomit a little yellow stuff into the toilet.

I panicked, didn't know what to do. I called the doctor's office, trying to remember if the after-hours service was open until 10:00 or 10:30. They'd just closed. I called the answering service, thinking I had to talk to a doctor quick. I didn't know what to do! I exercised excellent self control, might I add, since I have the phone number for our neighbor who is a pediatrician and I resisted calling him! So I finally got connected to a nurse who calmly explained that if he had croup, like I suspected, I'd have to take him into the doctor sooner or later. She said it was just a matter of time, so I might as well head to ER early in the night.

By the time she said this, I had already changed out of my pajamas and told Josh to get Joseph some socks and shoes. I hung up and we rushed Joseph out into the car and over to the ER. Naturally, by the time we finally saw the doctor, Joseph wasn't coughing anymore and seemed to be breathing just fine. I guess that's good, but it's still annoying. The doctor listened to him and said it sounded like a bit of asthma and a bit of croup as well. (Asthma, I learned, causes a wheezing sound when they breathe OUT and the croup has the wheeze when they breathe IN. I never knew.) So he got a breathing treatment of epinephrine. (Me: "Will this have any side effects?" Nurse: "He might get a bit high strung. It's like pure adrenaline.") After the treatment, his breathing sounded much, much better and he actually had a voice again! Yea! (I will admit that I enjoyed the two hours of voicelessness because Joseph usually talks nonstop, and yes, I felt guilty about enjoying it while he was in pain.)

So right around midnight, the difficult day appropriately came to a close. I tucked Joseph into bed around 12:30 a.m. and went to sleep. Now I'm off to go fill his prescription and I'm having a good laugh. There are days that are difficult and then there are days that are just waaay over the top. Yesterday was so over the top that I can enjoy laughing about it now. (And for those of you who asked... Thank you for your concern, but I'm not worried about the lump. I'm really not. I think it's just scar tissue from one of the c-sections but we're making sure. Don't worry on my behalf!)

How was your day?

Warning: this blog post is hideously filled with self pity and patheticness. Continue at your own risk.

You or somebody like you : "Hey, Juliana, how was your day?"

Me: "Fabulous, as always! How are you?"

How good are you at reading between the lines? If you were an expert, this is what you'd find:

Me: "Well, I went into the doctor yesterday because I have a lump in my abdomen that I've never felt before. Ya know, it's probably nothing but it could be something life-changing or deadly. Sweet. So yeah, he scheduled a CT scan and I said, 'What does that involve?' and he said, 'It's just an X-ray. No big deal.' Sweet again. So I scheduled it for this afternoon and they told me I'd have to fast all day before it. Yeah, okay, no prob. I do that every month. But then yesterday around 10 p.m. I was like watching a movie and stuff and remembered that the carpets were getting cleaned here at my house today, so I had to like move all the furniture and stuff, ya know? So we stayed up until midnight moving the big stuff but there was still a tooooooonnnn that had to get done this morning... while fasting. So then I got to bed after midnight and then the kids wouldn't sleep well because they're sick and have high fevers, which incidentally freaks me out because my brother died of meningitis when the only sign my mom had was a fever the night before which she thought wasn't a big deal. So anyway, they kept waking up and I kept stressin' and not sleeping and I'm on a medication right now which makes it hard for me to sleep anyway. So the highlight of the day was that the kids (after not sleeping during the night) slept in until.. drumroll please... 7:15!!!!!!!! Can you believe it? I was totally stoked. I was so tired that I literally couldn't move or open my eyes, but when you're a mom, what ya gonna do? So I got up, tried to feed the kids breakfast even though all of our furniture was in the dining room and there wasn't anywhere to sit but I had to eat before 8:00 a.m. because of the x-ray thing. So then I had 20 minutes to clean the rest of the house (HA!!!!) before driving my nephew to school. It was good to see my nephew, but then I had to come back and work my head off to clean an entire tornado's worth of toys from the toy room, move a toddler bed, three mattresses, miscellaneous furniture and trash random disgusting garbage that no good housekeeper wants to see on their carpets. Yeah, it was nauseating on more than one level. Then, while the kids cried because they hate the vacuum, I vacuumed the entire house while trying to listen for the doorbell because the carpet guy was due already. He finally came and said it would be "6-10 hours" until it was dry. Huh. Okay, so we hopped in the car and fed the boys lunch at Wendy's, which normally sickens me, but since I was fasting, it naturally looked like the most delicious food on the planet. (Eww!) Then dropped Joseph at school, drove to my Mom's house where the twins zonked out for nap time early. I had just fallen asleep for a much-needed nap when Tommy woke up crying. I tried to ignore it but my conscience is too healthy to let a sick child cry for long. Dang. When I got Tommy, he was burning up. He sat there on my lap, listless and exhausted and breathed hot, hot air onto my arm. I didn't know what to do and called the nurse and felt like a totally lame over-anxious mom because the nurse essentially didn't care whether my son had a fever or not. Fine. Tommy sat on a barstool and laid his head onto a counter, ignoring the snack I got for him while I sat down to try to relax at the piano, singing a new song. My singing woke Elijah up (which was fine) and then it was time to rush all the way back to my neighborhood to pick up Joseph before my CT scan. Joseph got home late and I didn't get back to my Mom's house (where there was miscellaneous babysitting drama as the day went on) to drop the kids off until two minutes before my appointment time. I rushed to the hospital (15 minutes late) and then sat while two co-workers jabbered with each other instead of checking me in. When the registration person asked if I wanted to just pay the $25 copay or know the full amount I was going to get billed for, I said, "Just the $25 please" and rushed across the hall to radiology. When I got there, they said that my appointment would take 50% longer than expected and I needed to down six cups of disgusting tasting stuff before the appointment--one cup every 15 minutes. I sat there watching "Extra" feeling bored and anxious. Then they sprung on me that I'd need an IV for a medication coursing through my veins. I HATE IVs. HATE. So now I was filling my bladder with nasty stuff and I was going to have it coursing directly into my bloodstream, too. Awesome. I wondered how my miserable little Tommy was doing with the babysitter. Poor little guy. After about an hour of waiting, I discovered that I was developing a nasty case of.. well, you don't want to know. I rushed to the bathroom... twice... before they finally took me in to the torture chamber. They told me that I'd have to quit one of my medications for 24 hours after this and when I asked why out of curiosity, they sort of looked aside and said, "It just doesn't react well to this." That did not boost my confidence. As I stretched out in the lovely stylish hospital gown, I stared up at the huge machine over me and was entranced by a little red light. Then a small sign below said something like, "Don't stare into the laser." So I shut my eyes and kept them shut. Did I mention I sometimes get a tad claustrophobic? The person doing the scan told me, "When I inject the medicine, it'll feeling really strange, but don't worry. Your kidneys will filter it out within about 60 seconds." Dont' the kidneys work to remove TOXINS from the body? My comfort level in what was happening dropped a little further. When it was done, the radiology tech asked how I was doing and thought I was being particularly funny when I replied, and I quote: "Other than the emotional trauma, I'd doing just fine." I walked out of the radiology room feeling like I'd been absolutely run over. And needed to find a bathroom again soon. I drove home and asked the husband man to pick the kids up so I could rest a bit. Drove to Taco Bell and discovered that when I've been fasting, Taco Bell's spicy chicken soft taco is the most delicious food on the planet. So I came home, walked across the wet carpet and pulled some of the furniture out of the heap upstairs so I could sit down and watch TV to unwind. I've never seen "High School Musical" but keep hearing that it's so good so I DVR'd "High School Musical 2" and watched part of it. To my chagrin, I found it rather amusing. I like to pretend like I'm so stinkin' cerebral but... ya know. I had to pause the movie regularly to make emergency visits to the bathroom, which was highly unpleasant. When the kids got home and I started walking to Joseph's bedroom, I started feeling dizzy like I was gonna pass out so Joseph offered me a shoulder, which melted my heart. With his assistance, I got him into bed and stumbled around the house randomly until I decided that a good blogging session would clear my mind and help me relax. Voila. Oh, I'm sorry, did you just want me to lie and say 'Fabulous?' My bad."

Fundamentally Wrong.

I don't lose my temper easily. But it took all of three seconds for my temperature to start rising yesterday while reading a CNN article. Within a couple more minutes, I realized I better walk away or else my mood would be totally upset. What caused this uncharacteristic frustration? Yet another article about the FLDS drama, making inappropriate, misleading and damaging references to my own beloved religion.

The word "fundamentalist" seems to imply that the FLDS church believes they are living the true spirit of the LDS teachings. The media play it up and report them as a "sect" of the LDS church, as if the Mormon church has many different "sects" under its wings. This is like saying the LDS church is a "sect" of the Catholic church, simply because we share some views.

I don't call myself a "Fundamentalist Catholic" and don't want to be viewed that way. Whatever the common roots are between our churches, we are in no way connected now. Similarly, whatever psychological connection the founders of the FLDS church seem to have to the LDS church, the two churches are in no way connected now.

It's time for the media to stop misrepresenting this situation and get on with some other titillating fairy tale.

A New Nephew!

Yesterday was one of the happiest days I've had in a long time. I am so excited about having a new nephew! My mom is now the proud grandma of SEVEN grandsons and ZERO granddaughters.

When my nephew was born, the OB/GYN exclaimed, "Someone call Bronco Mendenhall!" The baby weighed in at 10 pounds, four ounces! That's close to the twins birth weight combined. Wow.

Isn't he cute?

Motherhood :: Increasing Returns

I had been a mother for less than a year when I realized an awful truth: I didn't enjoy being a stay-at-home Mother. It came like a slap in the face and left me riddled with guilt. I knew that I loved my son, so why didn't I enjoy spending all of my time with him?

I had graduated from college less than a year before my son was born and had worked full-time teaching at a private school during my first trimester. Soon after I quit teaching, the pregnancy got complicated and I ended up on bedrest until Joseph was born. After being on bedrest, then recovering from a c-section and living every young mother's sleep-deprived life, I felt like I'd been sucked dry.

In the following months, I loved watching my son grow and sharing sweet moments with him, but I was just plain bored. Mothering offered few intellectual challenges and it was lonely. I didn't have the freedom to get out like I had before, and I suddenly realized that many doors were closed to me--literally. People whom I had socialized with before didn't want to come over to hang out at my place with an infant. They wanted to go out to eat then see a movie, things which I wasn't willing to take my son along for. My social life was slowly caving in.

Pretty soon, I came to that moment of crisis: wishing that there was more to my life. I envied my husband each time he came home and told me about his business lunches eating filet mignon or gourmet food. Sometimes he would bring me home a cookie from his catered meetings and I felt like I was in heaven. It was a piece of the outside world! My husband was traveling frequently and I was feeling more and more sick of Utah. My wings had been clipped and I was one sad bird.

I tried to push the feelings aside but eventually I knew I had to face up to them. I started doing intense gospel study to try to understand my role and the importance of what I was doing. After much reading, I developed a deep appreciation for my significance in the grand scheme of things. Here is one of the great articles that I discovered during my research:

Wife and Mother: A Valid Career Option for the College-Educated Woman by Sydney Reynolds

I listened to an old BYU fireside a few weeks ago titled, "A Law of Increasing Returns" by Henry B. Eyring. His talk brought much of my research on motherhood together under the idea of "Increasing Returns." To understand this idea, you need to understand the law of diminishing returns.

Elder Eyring teaches, "[Y]ou understand something called the 'law of diminishing returns.' Most of you use it when you cut a lawn. You cut it in one direction, then may cut it in the other, to get it smoother. But not many of you would cut it a third time. Why? Because you'd say, "It isn't worth it. I've gotten about all the smoothness I'm going to get. And more than that, cutting it the third time will take nearly as much time as it did the first.' "

In other words, the first time across the lawn is very rewarding. Your effort is clearly rewarded. The next time across the lawn will provide significantly less reward but the same amount of effort. And a third time across the lawn would provide virtually no reward but require the same effort.

The law of increasing returns is explained by Elder Eyring this way: "The simple fact is that there is a God who wants us to have faith in him. He knows that to strengthen faith we must use it. And so he gives us the chance to use it by letting some of the spiritual rewards we want most be delayed. Instead of first effort yielding returns, with a steady decline, it's the reverse. First efforts, and even second efforts, seem to yield little. And then the rewards begin, perhaps much later, to grow and grow."

Motherhood is the greatest example of Increasing Returns. Children are darling and fun when they're newborn, but they also demand some of the most tiring effort a woman can give. Then they reach the Terrible Twos, the "Mom will you drive me to...?" years and eventually teenagerhood! There are certainly rewarding moments, but they grow and develop through a lifetime, not reaching maturity until after they've started homes of their own. The wonderful thing about mothering is that the rewards never diminish. They continue to grow and grow and become more beautiful throughout eternity.

Of course, working mothers (and fathers) are blessed by Increasing Rewards with their children as well. Still, mothers who are able to stay at home all day have an amazing chance to have a hands-on role in the process that is incomparable.

That's not to say it isn't boring sometimes. Or difficult. Or messy. Or stinky. Or frustrating. It is all of those things and worse, but the rewards will continue to grow. For that, I am deeply grateful.

I Am Isabel Dalhousie.

People have been inquiring if I'm still alive. Depends on if you mean physically or intellectually. My brain feels like it's stuffed full of marshmallows so I've been trying to avoid that old saying about keeping your mouth shut and letting people wonder if you're stupid or opening your mouth and removing all doubt. (See how I couldn't even form that thought without making it all rambling and weird? Yeah. Welcome to my universe right now.)

I have a cold. My kids have had colds. I've been stressed. All in all, things have been weird. I haven't wanted to write. I haven't even wanted to READ. If that's not a sign of some serious mental defect, I don't know what is.

I was saved from this humiliating disgrace (after starting, but not finishing about seven books) by the third installment of the Isabel Dalhousie series (by Alexander McCall Smith) finally being held for me at the library. I loved the first two: The Sunday Philosophy Club and Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. They are written at a trudgingly slow pace plot-wise but are packed full of humorous philosophizing and moralizing.

Imagine how surprised I felt when I checked out the customer reviews for these books. A lot of people HATED them. People repeatedly stated: "I expected these to be great like the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency but the characters were completely unlovable and the plot was ridiculous!"

I felt somewhat slapped in the face by the first statement there--the characters were completely unlovable???--mostly because I had decided that the main character, Isabel Dalhousie, is practically me on paper. Okay, I'm not rich like her or beautiful like her, but I can relate to her internal dialogues and arguments. So if Isabel is unlovable and pathetic... and I have decided I'm just like her... gosh, I don't always like putting two and two together.

Back to Isabel. She's a 42-year-old editor of the "Review of Applied Ethics" and freelance intellectual. The reason the book is so slow moving is that the reader is privy to the constant and thorough analysis of Isabel's circumstances. Here are a few examples from the pages I just read:

"Angie would not dress down; she would war a cocktail dress and there would be jewellery. She looked at her wardrobe, and felt, for a brief moment, despair. There were word people--idea people--and then there were clothes people--fashion people. She knew which group she belonged to."

"Was electronic memory a place? Before they appeared on the screen weren't they just endless lines of noughts and ones, or odd decimals? That, she thought, was the ultimate triumph of reductionism: Shakespeare's sonnets could be reduced to rows of noughts ... And what about ourselves, and our own reduction? We could each be rendered, could we not, down to a little puddle of water and a tiny heap of minerals. And that was all we were. Imperial Caesar, dead, and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. Or, as binary code might so prosaically put it: 010010010110110101110000 ..."

With internal monologuing like this, one day in the life of Isabel Dalhousie could take 900 pages. (But it doesn't!) If you were to look into my brain for the two minutes it took me to drop my oldest son off at school today, it might resemble Isabel in some small way:

As I pulled to a stop and put the car into park, I turned to my right and saw another car waiting. I recognized both the car and the driver, Amy. Amy looked over and, recognizing me, waved at me. I smiled, waved back at her and urged my son to expedite his exit from the car. As Amy was engaged in the same activity with her son, we were both splitting our attention between our children and the world outside the car.

Situations like this, innocent though they may seem to a confident person, rattled me somewhat. I always felt that I would somehow show either too much or too little amiability. Waving my arms and grinning would seem a bit too enthusiastic for greeting a neighbor, but was one wave enough? Should I wave at her each time she looked my way? Should I wave the first time and then smile each time we made eye contact afterward? Facial expressions are so difficult to understand when seen at a distance and through two sets of automobile glass. Perhaps if I merely smiled, she would not see it and think I was staring at her rudely without acknowledging the bond between us. So perhaps something more would be required by common courtesy or rules of etiquette.

As my son finally exited the car, I chose the coward's way out of the social encounter. I turned my head and stared off into the space on my other side. It's perfectly acceptable to glance about the parking lot, isn't it? As I began turning my head, I saw in my peripheral vision that Amy had turned back toward me and was waving goodbye. A second wave! I knew I should wave twice! But it was too late. I had already turned away and could hardly whip my head around now and admit that I had seen her. She would have already driven away, assuming that I was focused elsewhere.

I felt ashamed. My actions were not an actual rejection of the friendship between us--merely awkwardness that I always feel like I wave too often when at an audibly inaccessible distance. As I pulled away from the curb and eventually behind Amy's own car, I recognized in my peripheral vision another car driving past me. The glare on their window made it impossible for me to see the face, but as I drove a few feet further the view cleared and I saw another neighbor. He, too, was waving at me and apparently was in the final moments of the wave because his hand was starting to move back down to his side. His face had already started to turn away from me.

Gack! Another neighbor whom I had inadvertently snubbed. He had seen me staring at his car and frowning (in concentration) but no friendly gesture of greeting. He will never know that I simply couldn't see due to the sun's immediate angle to his windshield, unless I tell him, which would seem altogether too ridiculous for such a small moment. He will simply think, "Ahh yes, there's Juliana. I waved at her and she just frowned at me. Not too friendly, that one."

When Whining Rocks

Bad whining: "But Mo-o-o-o-om, I don't want to eat coconut curry chicken! It tastes yucky! Noooooo!"

Good whining: "But Mo-o-o-om, when do we get to learn about the kidneys? We already learned about the respiratory system!"

I love the kind of learning that gets Mom scratching her head and asking the doctor, "How do you pronounce Vena Cava? Is Cava like CAVE? Or like it rhymes with lava? And is vena pronounced like vein-uh? Or venna?"

Movie Talk :: Gaslight

This 1944 classic, starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten, is completely saturated with suspense and drama. I was completely drawn into it and loved every minute of it. I first heard of this movie when I was reading "The Emotionally Abusive Relationship," which coins the term "gaslighting" to describe the type of abuse in this movie.

I love this kind of movie--packed with the kind of suspense that makes you just a tad uncomfortable, but without any substantial violence, sex or bad language. It reminds me of another great classic I recently watched: "To Catch A Thief." I wish people still made this kind of movie. It's just so, so, so good without any of the sleeziness that completely defines the Hollywood industry currently.

Incidentally, this movie marked the acting debut of Angela Lansbury, who plays a saucy and insolent maid. It was worth watching the movie just to see Lansbury playing such an uncharacteristic role.

Now I just need to find some friends who are willing to watch this movie with me again, so I can catch all the stuff that I didn't understand the first time...

The Middle Ages

A renaissance--

not of birth,
but of death.

A rebirth of darkness--

Joy has fled,
There is a falling away.

All eyes look forward to safety, kindness and joy.

The light--

On the horizon, misty and dim
Will open arms to us all, in life or in death.

Twist my arm, why don't ya?

In reply to my previous post, I received a request for a video of my friend Craig doing his own version of Irish Step Dancing. Well, gosh, twist my arm. I was hoping you would ask!!

Before you watch, please observe the following cautions:

1. Hi, don't be scared.
2. No, he wasn't drunk.
3. No, not even a pint.
4. Yes, this is how we entertained ourselves after Sunday Dinners back at the homestead... Back in the day. Those were the days.
5. Yes, he's actually a VERY good dancer despite the comic quality of this video.
6. Yes, it's a dress. I don't remember the story behind the dress but it fits Craig nicely, doesn't it?
7. Sorry, ladies, he's taken. His wife is one lucky lady, don't ya think?

Without further ado:



And if you that didn't satisfy your daily craving of "Huh?" then you can see some more of my awesome friend Craig (beardless in this one) in the The Plague: a HALO mockumentary (around 3:30 in):

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here is a wee bit of jolly Irish fun for all you lads and lassies!


Now that's some fast fiddle!


In honor of a new season of "Dancing with the Stars" : Irish Step Dance military style?

03/14

Happy Pi Day!!!!

A few quirky Pi quotes to cheer up your celebration of the beloved 3.14...

Question: What is the volume of a cylinder with radius “z” and thickness “a”?
Answer: pi z z a
-Unknown

“If, in a circle, a line
Hits the center, and runs spine to spine,
And the lines length is D
The circumference will be
D times 3.14159.”
-Unknown

And since I'm talking about Pi, I'll admit something quirky about myself. I like to memorize Pi. I used to have more of it memorized but I have (mercifully?) forgotten a lot of it. My current digits stand at:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971

Don't ask questions. It is what it is. Happy Pi Day y'all! Happy circular celebrations!

Angel Face

I love using affectionate nicknames for my kids. Honey, darling, sweetheart, sweetums, babe, friend, etc. A few minutes ago, Elijah wanted some milk. So I said: "I'll get you some milk in a couple minutes, okay, angel face?" In true toddler fashion, he wanted to wrap his mouth around the funny word mommy just used. So he experimented, trying to say "Angel Face." But it didn't come out right. It came out as "In Your Face."

Sometimes my kids know themselves better than I could have imagined.

March Madness :: American Idol Edition

I'm going to stop feeling apologetic about loving American Idol and get serious.

Time to make some wagers! Winner of the American Idol March Madness will receive:

(a) Bragging Rights, and
(b) An authentic digital certificate of achievement from the owner of this site. You'll need to provide an email address if you win.

The rules are as follows:

(a) Anybody can play! Whether you're a neighbor, a friend, family or somebody who randomly google'd "I *heart* David Archuleta" and ended up here. Anybody is welcome!

(b) You have to enter before next Tuesday's show (March 18th). If you enter before tomorrow's results, you'll get 5 bonus points for entering early.

(c) Post your prediction for:

1. Top 10
2. Top 8
3. Top 6
4. Top 4
5. Top 2
6. Ultimate Winner!

(d) Scoring is as follows:
* One point for each correct answer for round one (top 10)
* Two points for each correct answer for round two (top 8)
* Three points for each correct answer for round three (top 6)
* Five points for each correct answer for round four (top 4)
* Ten points for each correct answer for round five (top 2)
* 30 points for correctly predicting the next American Idol!

(e) I'm pretty flexible. Let's have fun!

Your choices are:

David Archuleta
Jason Castro
Chikezie
Christy Lee Cook
David Cook
David Hernandez
Michael Johns
Ramiele Malubay
Syesha Mercado
Amanda Overmyer
Carly Smithson
Brooke White

Good luck! I hope you play along!

Not half bad.

Not the kind of thing I'd usually post, but I thought it was kind of sweet. Enjoy.

That. Was. Dreadful.

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face...You must do the thing you cannot do."
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Thank you to my friend who sent me this quote yesterday, after I told her how devastatingly badly I screwed up my performance! That quote explains why I walked out on a limb to compete in the NATS competition.

On Friday, things went great. The two judges that I sang for put me at ease and I was able to deliver a fairly smooth performance. The remarks on their judging sheets were very encouraging to me and I appreciated their positive feedback immeasurably.

To take one step back, all of my voice teacher's students got together last Monday to practice performing their competition songs. I got their late, looked terrible and was nervous. The audience told me I was fidgety, kept clenching my fists and looked dreadful. (Jeans and an old, worn black t-shirt.) So I really practiced trying to look the part for Friday and got very positive reviews from the judges on the areas that had been my weaknesses.

Apparently you can teach an old dog (I mean, youngish woman) new tricks.

My division (adult novice) was quite small. Only a handful of people. I knew it would be both devastating (yet relieving) to be cut from that small group. I was not cut. I was chosen as one of the four to make it to the final round. Let me tell you about the final round.

Final Round = singing a solo in front of a large audience in the Madsen Recital Hall at BYU in front of a myriad of music professionals and singers who are not in the adult novice division. Imagine the bright lights focused on you. One grand piano, a house full of people who will know exactly how badly you're doing, a couple relatives, and bright lights shining on you. Then the music begins, you open your mouth, and ...

It wasn't pretty. I absolutely slaughtered the song in front of that audience. People looked at me with pity in their eyes afterward. My voice teacher tried to be comforting, but in the end it was devastating. I just wanted to do my best. Or close to my best. Or halfway decent. I wanted to look fear in the face, spit in its eye and amaze myself with how well I could keep my cool.

I was simply terrified. I was shaking. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I couldn't sing. It was painful to me as I heard each off-pitch note coming out of my vocal chords. I have no doubts that I was the worst performer of the dozens who competed in the different divisions. I expected to get fourth out four in my division and lived up to my expectation.

But.

I did it! I'm so proud of myself. I never thought I could do something like this and I proved myself wrong. I'm actually brimming with pride that I overcame my anxiety and fear and did something so far out of my comfort zone.

And so... I carry on. I keep pushing myself and hating myself for it. Isn't this what life is about?