The Cinnamon Raisin Bagel Incident

Long ago, when our marriage could be measured in months easier than years, we were broke. Not in a wow this really needs fixed way, more like a can groceries be considered optional this week? way. Broke enough that fancy bagels, or even regular bagels for that matter, were a delicacy. My sweet new husband decided to treat me and picked up beautiful cinnamon raisin bagels after an early morning shift at UPS. Unfortunately I despise raisins; from the texture to the taste to the thought of poor grapes losing all their god-given moisture to become shriveled shells of themselves. Yuck!

They may actually be my least favorite food, but somehow the subject had yet to come up.

We've laughed about the cinnamon raisin bagel incident for years. It represented everything we still had to learn about each other and the surprises still left to find in our relationship.

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Peter still likes to bring home small surprises for me. He often picks something up when he's out, although after the cinnamon raisin bagel incident, he buys things he already knows I like. Which is why he was struck last week when he passed a case of Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper. Knowing my preference for DDP and my love of vanilla flavoring, he immediately picked it up to surprise me. But there was a major flaw, however, as this gift was Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper.

You see, three days before I was messing around with my "about me" section on this very blog. Trying to be silly, I had started with the most trivial information I could think up about myself. This is what I'd written:

"The most important thing you could know about me is that I hate the taste of cherries. Not cherries themselves, just the taste of them as a flavoring. This is due to years of cherry flavored medicine, which eventually led to my association of the flavor with nastiness. "

His timing was perfect, it was the cinnamon bagel incident all over again.

(Although I found the vanilla flavoring mellows the cherry taste, allowing me to enjoy my treat. Still I couldn't get over the rather hilarious timing.)

Have you ever inadvertently given your loved ones a failure of a gift?

Our Super Adapting Skills

I’ve noticed my family adapts extremely well. It’s amazing really. I mean, Darwin might as well have studied us when he developed his theory.

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For instance…

Our entire married life, my husband has probably averaged 55-70 hours per week working (and/or studying). I bet close to 99% of it was weekends and evenings, too. Or at least it felt that way. When we moved here, his work dropped closer to 30.

The first month, I was thrilled contemplating his new schedule. After so many years, the thought of him home more often made me giddy. The idea of regular family time blew my mind.

The second month, I couldn’t believe how many family activities he attended. No longer did I need to drag the kids out on my own.

The third month, I frowned a little when he worked on the same night as a church activity. What a pain!

The fourth month, I caught myself irritated -even slamming a car door- because he worked on a Tuesday; I had to drive the Suburban on my regular errands instead of borrowing his more fuel-efficient car! I mean how unlucky is that?

Then I had a reality check. Hello. My super-adapting skills caused me to go from ecstatic to whiny in four short months, way too soon take his new schedule for granted. Months 5 and 6, I kicked myself whenever I thought to complain. (I’ll not embarrass myself by telling you how often I had to do it.)

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Of course my kids have adapted, too. They’d probably seen their cousins, at most, 5 times their entire lives. Less than six months after moving closer, they think I’m inflicting cruel punishment if they go longer than 4 days without contact.

I won’t talk about my husband’s adapted need to be on the golf course 3 times a week.

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Perhaps our adapting talent is only surpassed by our whining one. Hopefully we get to continue adapting to more positive things instead of testing our ability in the other direction!

The Slow Track to Moving In

Sometimes I wish I had a remote for my children's vocal cords. One with volume, mute, pause, rewind, fast forward buttons. Especially since we still have one room with a wood floor and without furniture. And, since I must have selected the slow track this move for getting settled, I have yet to hang a single picture. It is echo-induced insanity waiting to happen over here.

Although, as of 9 o'clock this morning, we finally hung a TV on the wall, the kids no longer treat that room like a gym. Instead they've decided to treat it to slack jaw stupors. I'm weak; until I can get more unpacked, I'm encouraging TV related brain rot.

The missing couch (which is already ordered) and empty walls aren't the only things indicative of our slowness to finish unpacking. Today I finally plugged in my freezer. I suggest you don't let your freezer sit unused in your garage for over a month, especially if you didn't have time to give it a thorough scouring before loading it into a moving truck. Regardless, it is now clean, disinfected, cooling, and waiting to be filled.

Another item we've yet to get around to? We technically don't have any window coverings up. I use "technically" in the hopes that you'll think I've hung up something. Which I haven't, excepting the old mismatched curtains in the master bathroom, whose large windows faces the main road. Peter did remind me today that, "Love is blind, but the neighbors aren't," so I think we'll be taking care of this oversight soon.*

Did I mention that Peter just got home last night after being gone for two weeks? From his second, and final, trip back to Connecticut to finish work there? My molasses unpacking plan is starting to make sense now, isn't it? How often do you get to write a paragraph using only questions? Is it worth the improper sentence structures?

Anyway, he is home now: hanging televisions, moving around freezers, pricing blinds and helping hang pictures. Last night, after he finally got home, we celebrated his birthday.  It was belated, as it occurred while he was out of town. My sister and two brothers came over with their families for brownies and to belt out the Happy Birthday song. As I watched us all laughing around the table, I knew all the trouble was worth it.

Any neighbors who may have seen too much of us (so to speak) might think otherwise.

*I'd like to point out that on either side of us is an empty lot and on either side of that is a house that is still unoccupied. There is just an empty field behind us. Since I put up curtains in the two front bathroom windows that face the road, we don't actually have neighbors to whom we can expose ourselves.

Stress free moving? (And pictures of the house)

I am moving.

You would think this would be stress inducing, but you forget that I am the sort of woman who can handle stress and glides through life without any trouble. After all, I am the same person who showed up at church dressed like this:

Remember that post? Good times.

Anyway, Peter and I have done everything we can to ensure our move across the continent is as stress-free as possible. That is why we decided to move in the middle of the school year. In fact, to ensure as little stress as possible, we will be arriving in our new hometown two days before Christmas.


We are geniuses.

I know, I know, you want me to plan your next move. I seem to be so good at it. Let me tell you, we must be allergic to adrenaline, the way we avoid stress at all costs.

That is why we decided, when moving two days before Christmas in the middle of the school year across the Northern portion of the country in winter snow season, to build a new house. And my husband is picking all the finishes.**

**You see, when I chose the place I wanted to live I sold my soul made a deal with my husband that he got to pick the house we lived in. For some of you that may mean agreeing to live in a shack, but for me it meant living in a golf course neighborhood and spending 50% more on a house. After Peter started talking about the finishes of his dream home, I decided he better chose them and leave me in the dark about the cost of the upgrades. Which would have worked, if I wasn't required to sign all the work order changes. So anyway, I know we have the same taste and he has picked great finishes so far, and so this hasn't added to the stress at all ...um, not really, but it makes me feel better to say it hasn't .**

To summarize:

• I am moving into a house that my husband has chosen everything for and is still under construction a month from our move.
  
  
• I have not seen said house since it was an undeveloped piece of land.
  
  
• My life, it is like a calming stroll on the beach.

Did I mention that we will be living closer to family than we have lived in 12 years, since my oldest was a toddler? And that, to make it even easier, we are moving ourselves instead of using movers?

So, anyway...

I'm dealing with the stress really well.

• As long as you ignore the eye twitching.
  
  
• And the nightmares about living in a house that is just made of sticks.
  
  
• Oh, and the 3 pounds of chocolate I'm eating everyday. It goes well with the 100 books a week I check out of the library to supplement the 100 I've bought.
  
  
• Not to mention the fast food we're consuming at 50% of our meals.

See, I handle stress well. Twitch, twitch, twitch ....

 

Special thanks to my sister, who lives in town and takes pictures of my house so I have something to look at and calm myself when the stress gets to be a bit much.

How Friday Ended

"We're just picking up the kids and you're not getting out of the car," I impatiently snapped at the kids, "Just leave your shoes and jackets at home. The sooner we leave, the sooner we'll get home and into bed."

My fate was sealed...

Here are the quick facts from the last post:

• Elise is not home
• Peter is at work until eleven
• Ryan and a 16-year-old boy are waiting to be picked up 25 minutes away
• 3/4 kids jacketless, 1/2 shoeless
• Skunk issues in the yard
• 2 hours past kids bedtime, approaching mine

1 0 : 3 0 P M

Like all good parents, or at least experienced ones, I cranked on the heat during the drive to help facilitate sleeping kids.  As I pulled into the roundabout driveway, I realized it was blocked by another car and backed out, slightly grazing a bush as I went.  What can I say? It was dark, I was tired, I'm driving a Suburban double the height of the bush, and backing up is not my strong suit anyway. So I pulled in the other side of the driveway and left the car running while I picked up the other kids.

As we walked back to the car, I jokingly told the 16-year-old my brain and patience shut off at 10:00 so he'd better be an angel for the ride home. (Jokingly because he really is an angel; the brain and patience part is cold hard fact.)

As we pulled from the side road onto the main country road, my car tire went flat- or so it seemed.  I pulled over to the side of the road and checked: the tires seemed fine. Being that there is no real light on New England roads, I couldn't see that well and assumed a piece of the grazed bush had gotten caught in my wheel well. Of course the obvious solution was to drive faster until whatever was caught knocked loose. (Remember the part where my brain is shut off and my helper in the passenger seat has no real driving experience yet?)

Despite the intelligence of my idea, it worked!  As soon as I hit 60 mph the bumping stopped.  Satisfied with my car fixing skills, I slowed back down to 55. And then the fun really began.

1 0 : 5 0 P M

Clunk, clunk, clunkity, chuggity clunk. I thought all 4 tires must have exploded at once! I knew I hadn't hit anything, but it felt like I was running over a ditch, or more like several ditches in a row. Luckily I had JUST COME to a part of the road with a wide shoulder.  I pulled over and put the car in park to jump out and check those tires again.  When I lifted my foot from the brake, the car began to roll down the hill. Checked again, and I was still in park. So I engaged the emergency brake. Still rolled down the hill. It is the middle of the night, on a country road without lights, and I can't take my foot off the brake without the car rolling. Oh, and as it rolled it made a nice crunching noise. Extra fun.

This is where having an angelic 16-year-old with me became important.  We took turns pressing the brake while checking the tires. Nothing. Finally, after the person with a still-awake brain asked, I remembered I had a flashlight in the back of the Suburban. It was with the flashlight that I saw the car's blood spilled all over the road. Streaking and puddling down the 3 feet the car had rolled since we stopped, it was reddish enough for me to briefly wonder if I'd hit an animal.

1 1 : 0 0 P M
I'm stuck with my foot on the brake of a bleeding car- with good tires, by the way- but, in the 10 minutes it took to figure this out, Peter's shift at work had ended.  "Ended" is arbitrary as he usually doesn't leave the hospital until an hour or so after the official end of shift. Not tonight. I called the Emergency Room and waited to be connected.

Our conversation is a little hazy.

• I told him what happened ...
• he reminded me we have road side assistance on our insurance ...
• I told him I didn't have the most recent card- just as 16-year-old handed me said card from the glove box ...

I know Peter later chided me. Something about calling in the middle of the night, highly excited/upset, and rambling about car trouble. Apparently not answering the question, "is anyone hurt?" until the 5th time it's asked is not appreciated. Picky, picky.

He was on his way, I was calling insurance.

1 1 : 3 0 P M
Do you know the best time to find out your insurance has bad customer service? Well I know it isn't the middle of the night, with my foot stuck on a brake pedal, 6 mostly asleep kids in the car (many without jackets).

"We need to know where you want to take the car, then we'll give you a list of tow trucks that you will pay for and we might reimburse you for. You have to look all that up on your own."

After calling Peter to decide where to take the car, I called back insurance. After explaining that I didn't know what town I was in (there being about 300 choices on any given point of a New England country road), they transferred me and then hung up. I'd been explaining myself for ten minutes and they hang up on me?

I don't do well with idiots confrontations, so I decided I would rather apply the brake forever before calling again. (Remember that whole statement about patience evaporating at ten?) Luckily Peter arrived and checked the tires, checked the pool of car blood, and proclaimed it must be the transmission.  He called the insurance again and tried to give them directions for where we were located. After being told the roads of the intersection he gave didn't exist and giving them 50 alternate names for the roads (Thanks for that, too, New England), they finally put him on hold to find a tow truck.

1 2 : 0 0 - 1 2 : 3 0 A M 
Meanwhile I decided to take Peter's car to bring the kids home in batches. 16-year-old offered to stay behind and I loaded the oldest 4 kids into the car, leaving my 4-year-old asleep in the back of the Suburban. Arriving home, Ryan asked if he had to stay up since he was in charge.  "No," I replied, "just make sure you lock the door behind me." As I walked out the door to get the other load of kids I pointed at him and said, "Come lock this door RIGHT NOW." I walked away, pulling the door shut behind me. It was now half past 12, and I was starting to drag.

1 : 0 0 - 1: 3 0 A M

On the way back, I stopped to get Peter some food, since he hadn't eaten that day and had been planning to make a stop on the way home.  I also needed some caffeine if I was going to make the 30 minute drive to the broken car and back a couple more times. This is where I learned that Burger King is a happening place at one in the morning. Stupid lack of patience.

Back at the car, it turns out our customer oriented insurance had informed Peter that absolutely no tow trucks existed in our area that could take care of us- after a run around of 45 minutes on the phone.

It also turns out AAA will let you join in the middle of the night while currently in need of a tow truck.  One was on it's way to tow us to a shop AAA recommended instead of one pulled from a quick, random google search.

Peter had backed the car into bank on the side of the road so he no longer needed to brake.

"Why didn't you do that?" he asked.

"Remember how I am when I get tired?"
"Yes," he replied, with a sigh of resignation.

I grabbed our teenage helper -sidenote: his mom was out of town, so we couldn't call her to help us. On a plus side, that means she wasn't at home freaking out that her child was stranded in the middle of the night- and my youngest. After dropping off the 16-year-old, I headed home.

1 : 3 0 - 2 : 3 0 A M
It wasn't until I tried to open the front door and felt the resistance of the locked doorknob that I realized I had the set of keys that was missing a house key.  You see, I had Peter's set of keys and he had never put the key back after taking it off before our vacation last August. Despite my reminders every time he woke me up in the middle of the night to let him in.  I knew it would come back to bite some day, but I always thought it would be him that got bit.

At one-thirty in the morning, with a jacketless four-year-old shivering in my arms, I took a deep breath. Surely one of the four kids asleep inside will hear me knock and open the door. After all, how much more irritation could I have on this night? After a couple minutes, I decided to just go in through the garage.  Someone (who may be the same person who hadn't replaced his keys) had locked the garage-to-kitchen door. I tucked Matthew back into the warm car and went back to knocking and ringing the doorbell.  Now I started calling, too.  Leaving loud messages informing the kids to WAKE UP AND LET ME IN NOW.

After several minutes I decided to take a more drastic approach and sneak into the back side yard to knock on the boys' bedroom window.  They have bunk beds, so I would be knocking directly above my 12-year-old's head. As I walked around the house in complete darkness, I was relieved to see a light on in the back of the house. I was relieved, until the light revealed that darn skunk slinking around back there.

What to do? Risk getting sprayed or risk being stuck outside forever? You know what I did?  I knocked.  I was desperate and tired and ready to be done.  I then ran as fast as I could back to the front of the house.

It made no difference.  Not a single kids woke up to my risky knocking and I was too chicken to try again.

An hour after beginning I was still banging on the door, ringing the doorbell and calling the house. I just was doing it a little more desperately by then. And then when Peter called to inform me the tow truck had finally arrived, I gave up and went to join him at the repair shop.

Luckily he had my set of keys with a house key and we were able to get inside and end this awful night.  All told, we were stranded on the side of the road 3 1/2 hours:

• I had my foot on that brake for over an hour of it, 
• drove back and forth about 1 1/2 hours, 
• and knocked on the door almost an hour.

For those interested, it was the drive shaft that broke, knocking and breaking the transmission casing (maybe?)  The mechanic was amazed at the damage to the shaft and said they'd never seen anything like it.  He wondered how I was able to do anything with the car after it broke loose. On a positive note, the car is fixed and back in the driveway.  I have the rental minivan until Saturday, though, and intend to use it.  I'm not ready to forgive my Suburban yet. Also, I am think we'll be switching insurance companies when we move.  And I am getting Peter a new key as he has admitted his is lost, not forgotten.

Drive Shaft

Some part of transmission

On flag football, twirls, and running without abandon

The field is occupied by 5- to 7-year-old boys and so overflows with unbridled energy. That energy undulates through the 2 uneven lines formed facing each other, ostensibly for the purpose of running The Play, as father-coaches gently guide errant boys back into place.

My son is guided often.

_________________________

As the lines form...

 ...he twirls wildly, arms outstretched
and flags lifting from his side.

As the players face off...

...he hops back and forth between the lines,
a lifetime supply of offsides in every play.

As The Play begins,
a mass of boys forming a blob of running legs
and grasping fingers with the football at its heart...

...he tussles with the other stragglers
at the line for a moment
and then merrily skips behind the blob.

As the whistle blows and The Play ends...

...he begins grabbing random flags
from his nearest friends,
returning them in time to begin again
his twirling.

_________________________

Then, finally, it is his turn to carry The Football. The coaches, perhaps noticing his un-firm understanding of The Plays, whisper fervently in his ear, gesturing in a certain direction. My son nods thoughtfully and, when prodded, points more or less in the same direction.

"Hut. Hut! HUT!" he calls out with great precision. And volume. When he's handed the ball it transforms him into a statue. Finally perfectly still, with a dazed expression etched on his face. "Run!" remind his coaches.

It isn't until he loses both his flags that he shakes off the stone and runs down the field without abandon.

_________________________

He'll learn the rules. The seemingly random instructions will coalesce into game plans and strategy and positions. The Plays will mean something to him. Right now, I rather enjoy watching him run without abandon, twirling the game away.

Do you like watching your kids learn something new?
Was your kid ever the distracted one?
Ever been the coach of your child's team? Peter seems to really enjoy it.

The Keeper of Bad Days

{I have very limited internet access for the next several days so I am unable to do a lot of posting or commenting on your posts.  I will be back soon, but until then, I hope you enjoy one of my older posts.  It helps explain why we need a vacation!}

It’s getting late and I am tired. My husband’s shift in the Emergency Department ended a couple hours ago and I expected him long before now. A day off school means the children have had all day to chip away at my patience and sanity; I’ve counted down for the moment I get a break, or at least acknowledgment from someone who doesn’t call me Mom. Frustration builds as minutes multiply and by the time the front door opens, I’ve had the argument a thousand times in my mind: “What have you been doing?” or perhaps “You knew the kids were home today, how could you be so inconsiderate?“ maybe even a “Don’t you even care how difficult my days can be?”

But as he walks in, I see his troubled face and I swallow the angry words already half formed in my mouth. Instead I replace them with, “How was your day?” The world has weighed so heavily on him today, I worry the couch frame may break as he collapses into it. As the children crawl and chatter over him, he tells me about his day. There was an attempted suicide and his failed effort to reverse what was done. Followed by another attempt, half successful, leaving a body alive, a brain dead and a face half missing. He must call far away relatives to offer terrible choices: permanent life support or organ donation. Finally he sees an irritated family waiting for simple test results for their mildly ill child.

“They had waited a long time and I didn’t want them to be lost in the shift change, so I stayed till the results came back. By that time the hospital was nearly ready to take the man up for organ harvest so I stayed with him and, as I was leaving, his grieving sister called desperate she had made the wrong choice. I comforted her the best I could.”

As I listen to his day I remember something his colleague once told me, “I never say I’m having a bad day. I’ve seen thousands of truly bad days and to call mine bad would be disrespectful.” I see a glimpse of those bad days now reflected in my husband’s tired eyes. I can’t even begin to understand the memories my husband owns: the child he spent a fruitless extra hour trying to revive only to face notifying her still hopeful mother, telling a young father of three his wife’s stroke has left him a widow, child abuse leading to 3rd degree burns.

My husband sees bad days every day. He sees some of the worst humanity has to offer: suicides, assaults, attempted murders, child abuse. He also sees everyone’s worst nightmares: severed limbs, car accidents, strokes, psychological breaks, sudden and unexpected deaths mixed with long mourned ones. All this is a part of my husband’s existence.

I can imagine him, despite a long and difficult day, consoling a stranger over the phone, with the image of her brother’s wounds still fresh in his mind. I see him reluctant to leave that man alone his last minutes of life. Still willing to go the extra mile for a family visibly frustrated with their long wait and unaware its unfortunate reason. I see him hugging our children tighter and longer than normal, patient despite his exhaustion. He tells me he is sorry to come home so late, but I know that’s a lie. He doesn’t regret his actions today. As I see him, compassionate and kind despite the constant barrage of tragedy, I suddenly realize I’m not sorry for it either.

I Learn the Truth about the Extent of Male Conversations

I was teasing my husband the other day for his choice in television stations. In a huge deviation from normal, he wasn't watching news, business, sports, or HGTV. (Don't tell him I included that last one!) Instead I kept finding the station turned to Current TV.

He explained that their Rotten Tomatoes Show is too entertaining to miss. "After all that's all men really  talk about when they get together is movies."

I, of course, balked. "All you ever talk about? Let's be real."

He insisted that the majority of male conversations revolve around laughing at movies, quoting movies, describing parts of movies, etc. He even, when I pointed out that they must talk about hot girls sometimes, counterpointed that they talked about hot girls from the movies.

I rolled my eyes and added this to the list of Things-That-Show-My-Husband-Is-Full-Of-It and continued on my day.

It was, after all, an eventful day. We were throwing Ryan's birthday party and, since he turned twelve and in keeping with tradition, he was having a friend party. Later that evening we found ourselves packed in the Suburban with seven boys, ranging from 9 to 14, headed to Monster Minigolf. Over pizza later in the party, I was discussing the dynamics of the boys (who all knew Ryan but didn't necessarily know each other) and how much easier it was than a group of girls in the same situation.

"I mean 20 minutes in the car there and 20 minutes back and all they did was tell Yo' Momma jokes* and quoted..."

{Que goofy I-told-you-so smile from husband}

"...oh, I see. You mean you weren't kidding with the whole extent of male conversations thing."

"Nope."

I hate it when he's right and I'm wrong.  It throws the world out of balance.


* First of all, there was a rule that anyone telling a Yo' Momma joke to Ryan would be thrown from the car while it was still moving.

* Secondly, yo' momma's so dumb she told a Yo' Momma joke to her son.  (That one is my personal favorite.)

At least someone loves my parents enough to visit.

My poor parents had the misfortune of giving birth to a not-prone-for-homesickness sort of person.  I never wonder where my children inherited their lack of separation anxiety, it all came from me.  (And having to never worry about my kids freaking out when I leave them anywhere, I would like to take a minute and thank myself)

When I went to college at the tender age of seventeen (my 18th birthday a distant month away), I did not go back home till probably Thanksgiving.  It wasn't like a huge ordeal, either.  It was a 40 minute drive from Provo, Utah to Sandy, Utah.  (I just mapquested it and it was 37 minutes / 31.71 miles).  At least I called often, right?  Wrong.  I was and always will be the worst caller on the face of the planet.  Back then I, as a computer/electrical engineering major, had access to one of the only computer labs connected to the internet, but e-mail was a brand new concept and wasn't going to be a way to communicate.  (Lest you think I remained in an engineering program, I did not.  After my sophomore year I transferred to physics education- you know to teach high school physics.)


So anyway, half way through my freshman year I started dating some guy 3 1/2 years older than myself and newly home from a mission to Norway.  Guess what he loved?  Going home to visit my family.  So all of a sudden we were headed over almost every Sunday.


Fast forward five years.  I've married this guy, we have 2 children and live 17 hours away from my family (Mapquest says 17 hours 4 minutes / 1185.25 miles) while said husband is in his second year of medical school.  I had argued, quite successfully I felt, that we should stay home for Christmas.  It was too much hassle to load up the car with all the presents and drive 17 hours straight (yes, that is how we always made the trip, without stopping unless the car was hiccuping its last fumes of gas) for only a little over a week.

I know, I am a true sentimental.  Sue me.

Anyway, Peter finished classes up and came home with this look.  "I really, really want to be at your parents' for Christmas."  I was in the middle of protesting when the two by four made contact with my head (this is a figurative two by four, my husband wanted to go, but not THAT badly).  Hello?!?  My husband was begging to make an insanely long and cramped drive . . . to see my family.  How backwards is that?  So I took a deep breath and said,  "Yes."

We loaded up the car that afternoon and set off immediately.   We told no one except my sister and her husband (because someone needed to know if we never arrived).  With the exception of a terrible snow storm through Nebraska and a deer who nearly killed us when we almost hit it, we made it through great.  Actually the snow storm and deer hit (figurative again) at the same time and the storm prevented us from stopping to save the deer.  It was saved by jumping out of the way at the last second and gave us the adrenaline to not worry about getting sleepy for the rest of the trip.

The next morning we pulled up to the house, set our two kids on the front porch, rang the doorbell, and ran to the side of the house to observe the results.  It was awesome!  My family couldn't figure out why two little kids were on their porch at first, then they were recognized and reality hit.  One of the best Christmases ever.  Totally worth the 17 hour drive without being able to move my legs (I insisted we could only go if we fit all the presents into the car.  I was literally -not figuratively- packed around and drove the whole trip with presents on my lap, under my feet, and around my body.

So anyway, loving family, just know that someone in this house loves you enough to make sacrifices.  And you're lucky I married him.

The End.

(This post is part of 5 for 10: Yes! and also a response to a pleasant memory I had when reading Momza's blog this morning)

What we packed into that tiny car:

 Luckily, Peter's brother loaned us a car top for the return trip:

This was our first year with matching pajamas.

My mom made them after we showed up

(please do not note the flat topped hair

and yet to ever be plucked eyebrows):

The whole family (why are you not there Brenda?) at temple square:

Lest you think my husband heartless

we spent New Years in Las Vegas with his parents.

He loves you guys, too:

That fickle thing called Memory

I forgot my children had dentist appointments last Monday. Four of them. In a row. Technically I didn't forget as much as I thought it was next Monday.

My husband says he remembers telling me when he got the reminder post cards, when he got the reminder phone call, and when he went to the dentist last Thursday and was told they had appointments. I, of course, have no memory of any of these conversations and he was out of town the day of the appointments. I can't really blame him (although I would really like to) because I did have it written on my calendar and do remember, when coordinating piano lesson times last week, mentioning there were dentist appointments set for that Monday.

(Please, please do NOT tell my husband as I am still willing to fight the "well you should have let the answering machine pick up when you saw it was the dentist calling, then I could have heard the reminder call" fight.

Husband, who gets an email of this blog: I am making up the piano thing to make you look less guilty.

Every one else: *wink* *wink*)


So anyway, I am positively, absolutely, 50% sure I had a memory before I had kids. I always say each pregnancy and infant related sleep loss kills about 20% of brain cells. After five kids I was at full brain deadness. The 6th put me in a memory debt so deep Dave Ramsey couldn't dig me out.

I once knew, and could use, a multitude of physics formulas. I struggle now to remember words with multiple syllables. Case in point? The other day I googled "crazy person suit with long sleeves" to help me remember the term "strait jacket." Not only do I love the example because it doesn't actually fit the case I was pointing, but because of the irony of what I was looking up.

You want to know the hardest things for me to remember? My kids names. Or at least the correct name of the child I'm calling. "Elise, Ryan, Joseph, Matthew, um, whichever one of you is 9 years old, come here right now!" If I ever blank on your name, just be glad I remember I still know you at all. Seriously, I blanked my own husband's name the other day. ("You now, the guy I've been married to for 14 years, the name is on the tip of my tongue." - This does not make a good impression on people for some reason.)

So. Was I talking about something?  I kind of remember.  Something about appointments?  Oh yes, I was writing about how my husband can't seem to remember to tell me the dentist called to remind us of appointments.  I swear, What's-His-Name's memory is so bad.

Right?

Right?!?

RIGHT??

(If only I could remember where I hid some chocolate.)

Changing focus, learning to relax

You know those pairs of young men, wearing suits and name tags while knocking on doors?  Well, those are my brothers, my father, my husband, and (hopefully) someday my sons.  My husband went on a mission for our church in Norway.  Therefore, his memories of walking the streets sharing our beliefs have a unique quality of COLD.  Frigid, below zero, near frostbite COLD.  Funny thing, though, is that most cold no longer bothers him.  For years after getting home he didn't even wear a heavy coat.  One day, as I shivered uncontrollably in the middle of winter, burrowing into my coat as deeply as possible, he stood in his light winter jacket, not a shiver to be seen.  Slightly amused as I bounced in a failing battle to stay warm, he told me the secret he learned from those two years in Norway: if you want to feel less cold, relax.  Focusing on the cold makes it that much worse.  

I tried to relax myself and found he was right.

Giving birth was the same way.  I think the reason I was able to give birth without an epidural five times, never screaming or losing control, was an innate ability to relax and calm myself during contractions, allowing my body to do its work.  Focusing on the pain makes it that much worse.

This is a lesson we must learn as parents, if we want to ever go in public or keep our sanity. 

Imagine a scenario from the not so far past.  Broken glasses with an outdated prescription led to an unexpected trip to the optometrist and optical store. The tight scheduling left me with four children, who lingered in a dinky waiting room for over and hour only to be forced to spend time looking through frames and waiting again for adjustments.  The three year-old's whining was growing louder, his 5 year-old brother's energy level was growing exponentially, the 11 year-old obviously bored and unable to control the feeling without excess movement, and the 7 year-old swirling with anticipation for her new glasses.  Not only were they loud and obnoxious, they were using me as a jungle gym, complaint line, and source of entertainment.

In my losing battle to keep them quiet and within reach, while hoping to leave the store without paying for lots of broken frames, I could feel the stress eating me up.  Hissed threats (have you mastered the whispered yell?), ineffective time outs, dirty looks- they weren't helping and I was nearing a breaking point.  Seconds before I exploded in a tantrum of my own, I suddenly remembered my lesson and relaxed.  Focusing on the stress makes it that much worse.

Once I stopped focusing on the stress, I was able to look for solutions.  I borrowed a pad of paper and pen from an employee for my 5 year-old to color, gave my 11 year-old the task of counting the number of displays, played I Spy with the 3 year-old, and handed my iPhone, with its wonderful apps, to the 7 year-old.  The noise went from yelled exclamations and bickering to quiet whispers and giggles.  Their activity focused enough to confine movement to around the chairs where we were sitting. 

In 10 seconds we went from out of control to astonishingly well behaved.  The kids hadn't changed, my perspective had.  They were calm, I was calm, we enjoyed the last few minutes before we could leave.

Want to know how I survive life with six kids?  I've learned to just relax, focus on solutions instead of stress.






Have you ever found relaxing and stop focusing on the negative makes things better?  Do you have to learn a lesson in parenting over and over like I do?  Does your husband enjoy the cold too much, causing you frozen toes at night?

Abdicating as Cool Mom, or Am I?

I've been the mother of a teenager for all of one month and I've already abdicated my position as Cool Mom.  I would like to say I did so willingly, but my husband forced my hand with his good example.

Good examples sure can stink sometimes.

It went down like this...

Elise recounted a conversation she was having with her friend.  In response to Elise mentioning she wasn't going to a party that weekend, her friend asked, "Why not?  It's your mom again, isn't it."  Apparently the fact that she has a bedtime, she can't go to dances until she's fourteen, does not yet own a cell phone, and has to check with her parents before RSVPing a party makes us, well, less than cool.

(We also make her do chores and share a room with her sister. Oh, and there is the small matter of my dressing abilities, but her friend couldn't have known that.)

But wait!  I was sure the decade between me and the other moms' age allows me to be Cool Mom for at least another few years.  I mean I twitter, I text, my hairdo didn't come from the 1980's.  I felt sucker punched.

The worst part was Elise had assumed I wasn't letting her go to the party when all I'd said was that I needed to know more information about parental supervision.  I was misquoted.  I should still be Cool Mom!!!

Anyway, that night I was teasing Elise about stealing my Cool Mom status, when my husband piped in with his opinion:

"I'll tell you what my mom told me, you can always use me as the excuse for anything you don't feel comfortable doing."

Shoot!  He was, of course, right.  I should play the scapegoat happily.  (Don't worry, he was only right for about 5 minutes and then the keys he was sure I'd misplaced were found in his pocket.)

Anyway, have you heard?  Strict is the new cool.  I am Cool Mom after all, her friends just won't realize it for another 15 years.

Choosing our battles in the Hormone Wars.

We realize we're in a battle field

Getting ready for a lovely Sunday afternoon walk escalated quickly last weekend into a scream fest between my two oldest children.  Seems one decided the only acceptable bike helmet was her brother's and the other decided (after not wearing said helmet for a year or so) he absolutely had to wear it, too.  Peter and I watched, perplexed, and I asked him if my memory was shot or hadn't they both been wearing our helmets forever?  He assured me my memory is indeed shot, but I was correct in this instance. 

As we began walking down the street I asked him, "What, pray tell,  is wrong with them?!?" 

(Yes, I do speak sometimes as though I belong in a different century)

"Don't you know, yet?  The Hormone Wars have begun.  Estrogen makes her overly sensitive and testosterone makes him a territory protecting maniac and a bit of a confrontation junky."  

(I cleaned his response up a bit, there was some mention of hair growing in unmentionable places)

My husband is a wise man.  Hormone driven battles explain why those two have recently started fighting all the time! In that moment of clarity I saw the next 20 or so years of my life.  It would help if I wasn't also still a participant in the Hormone Wars from time to time.  We estrogen driven soldiers like to eat our own, don't we?

The battle is over, but the repercussions are not

The battle ended with a BRAND NEW not INEXPENSIVE bike left for dead at the end of our driveway.  I will let you decide if it was "dropped" or "pushed" as I wasn't there and both claims came from unreliable sources.  My daughter stomped inside to fume and my son decided he didn't want to ride a bike after all and joined the rest of the family on foot.


When we finished the 3/4 miles around the block, the BRAND NEW not INEXPENSIVE bike was still at the end of our driveway, laying there (lying there?) as a symbol of the devastation possible during the Hormone Wars.  This despite the fact that I had emphatically reminded my daughter, and made her repeat it back to me,  that she was to never, ever, under any circumstances to leave her BRAND NEW not INEXPENSIVE bike unattended outside.

I quickly captured it as a prisoner of war, stashing it on the side of the house, and going inside to tell her to put her bike away.   Unfortunately she found her "stolen" bike before taking my suggestion to run around the block looking for the thief.

(Hey, we parents have to find entertainment wherever we can.)

Punishment Ensues


So there we sat, my irritated daughter on one couch, my husband and I on the other.  As the hider of the bike I had instigated punishment and it is an unspoken understanding that the punishment instigator gets first rights in deciding punishment.  While she listened, this is the conversation my sweetheart and I had (please remember the remark about my memory being shot, this is the best approximation of the conversation that I can come up with):

"So, what are you going to do with her?"



"I haven't decided yet, any ideas you're particularly fond of at the moment?"


"The way I see it, there are two things that need punished, right?  Not going on the family walk and leaving the bike out."

"I was leaning towards making her cook dinner.  You know, serve the family since she abandoned us on the walk, plus I don't want to cook. What dinners are left on our menu for the week?"

At this point she breaks in with "Chicken and rice.  I know that was on the list this week and hasn't been made yet."


"Alright, Elise you have to cook chicken and rice for dinner tonight."

"Is that all you got!?!"  You're getting lazy in your old age."

"You mean you don't think making her do one of her favorite things (cooking) with one of her favorite meals (chicken and rice) is punishment enough?  All right, let me think."


(We are all struggling to keep straight faces.)

"I was thinking about grounding her from her bike, but that would be counterproductive.  We bought the bike so that she could use it for exercise.  No sense in punishing her by taking away something we want her to do.  What's your thoughts?"


"I was leaning toward grounding the bike, but you're reasoning is sound.  It can't be that."



"I know, let's punish her by making her ride her bike!  Since she didn't join us on a walk around the block today, she must ride her bike two times around the block every day for a week."


"Maybe 10 times."



"10?!?  That's over 7 miles.  How 'bout four times?"

"Seven?"

 

"Three.  Elise, you have to go around the block on your bike 3 times everyday for a week."


"Unless it's raining." 



(Remembering we live in New England)

            "Or snowing."



"You should be punished for mentioning snow."


All's well that ends well

Granted, the punishments were not severe, not even really punishments.  But in the process:

• We got our Hormone War wounded daughter to smile.  
• I didn't have to make dinner. 
• She is going out on her bike everyday (and her combatant participant is being "forced" to accompany her for safety).  
• We made our point: family walks are not exactly optional and leaving the bike out will not be tolerated (this was her one and only warning, we made it clear the next time it really will be GONE).
• Not to mention showing her that her parents are a unified front and our punishments are based on some sort of thought process and not randomly pulled from the air (most of the time)

In the Hormone Wars, we sometimes have to choose our battles.

How to Ruin Your Husbands Birthday in a Few Simple Steps

It is essential to develop my talents, right?  Turns out I have an exceptional talent for making my husband's birthday a wreck, and this year I came close to perfecting it.  In case there are any of you out there with a burning desire to develop this same talent, I have compiled a little tutorial:

How to Ruin Your Husband's Birthday

In a Few Simple Steps

__________________________

First of all, you must really plan ahead.  The day before his birthday you should make sure you find a huge puddle in your basement and find that it is coming from under the water heater.  Make sure you don't discover it until it is too late to call a plumber so the mess will be dealt with on his birthday.

Now, this might be enough, but if you can get his work to schedule a meeting on his day off, this makes things even better.  For better measure, make sure it is a meeting with someone upset with his department and wanting to vent on him for a couple hours.

Are you feeling the ruination?  We're not done yet.

Make sure that you have an event planned for the day (forgetting he has the day off) and make sure you are leaving about a half hour before he gets home from his meeting (see above).  Make sure that you volunteer to make his favorite treat for the meeting and ensure that there's not enough for him to have any.  (It helps if you're making the treat when he leaves for the meeting, so he knows you've made it).

Now, we have the day going perfectly.

While you're at your thing for a few hours, schedule the plumber to come.  If you can, make it so that the entire water heater needs replaced so that they're there all afternoon.  Also, make sure there is so much water at this point that the towels you laid out are soaked and your husband can spend a few hours using the shop vac to suck out 15 or so gallons of water from the basement.  All while you are enjoying yourself: feeding the 40 or so missionaries in your area, chatting with friends also there to help, and eating Cafe Rio style buffet.


We've done some excellent work, but the details make all the difference.

• If you could, orchestrate things so he must attend an activity at church due to his calling as Young Men's President that evening.  This would be excellent.
  
  
• Also, make sure the only gifts he gets are those you bought together online and only half arrive in time.
  
  
• Forget to buy the stuff for the football shaped birthday brownies he requested.  (Also, make sure the treat you made earlier were brownies.)
  
  
• If you could have his birthday on a major holiday that implies 6 more weeks of winter so everyone curses the day, that is the piece de resistance.

Congratulations, you have successfully ruined your husband's birthday!

If you're now feeling guilty, you can run to the store while he is at the youth meeting.  Buy brownie ingredients, ice cream, candles, birthday hats, favorite chocolate (dark), and a book. Then run home and make the brownies, clean up the disastrous kitchen, and decorate cake with football design. Have the kids make cards for him.  Keep kids up to sing happy birthday and then, after they're in bed, stay up late watching movie with him instead of going online.

 Determine to squash this talent before Father's Day and plan extra special Valentine's Day present (any ideas?).